What Everyone Gets Wrong About Science-Based Training w/ Exercise Scientist Dr. Pak

Did a podcast with Mitchell Hooper and he's like, "I'm not doing any science back training. "I don't listen or I don't read studies. "I'm an example of one of one. "Why would I read these studies?" And then I'm listening to you and I'm going, "Based." That lived three times. What a deadlift, so he's opinion counts for much more. But Kevjako's Grizzly is my very good friend, so. (dramatic music) Who wins here? I think I do. No, I can't actually lift weights. And it's like, well, you can get on a machine, but also you could just do body weight squats and you're still likely going to reap some type of resistance. No, cancel the body weight recommendation for beginners, man. Like, honestly, if we're saying that they're going to be a bitch with reps and reserved, you're going to get somebody to body weight squat unless they're like an absolute beginner, are they going to take a body weight squat at home to failure versus sit down on a leg press, loaded, press yourself. You did three reps, cool. They were close to failure, happy days. Is there any specific supplements that you would be like, "Yo, I would definitely try to rip a couple of vials "of trend every single day?" Anything that comes from a bathtub of a friend's basement. If it's made there, it's good for you. And this is legal and financial advice. Thank you. The podcast had a good run. Take care. Enjoy the lawsuit. Just kidding. We're going to the reality of science-based training with Dr. Pack. And we're going to start, right? No. We were fortunate enough to sit down with Dr. Pack who has his PhD in minimum effective dose training. And so what we ended up talking about were things based around science-based training. He goes into the different caricatures that people project on the science-based training. And then we actually get into the nitty gritty. What do we need to do? How many sets should we be hitting per muscle group? How do we even figure out if we're doing a bench? Does that impact the chest or the triceps? All of these questions get answered. I take a ton of notes. It's a freaking fun podcast. Listen all the way to the end. Now, let's hear from Dr. Pack. All right, Dr. Pack. If I'm a 42-year-old slub, and I'm somebody here who I want to get a little bit more muscle mass, but I want to get leaner. So I want to be less fat. What do you think when you're approaching this type of situation? Are you looking at trying to get somebody more consistent with nutrition or get more consistent with their training? What is it specifically that you would try and focus on as like that first step of getting someone's health and fitness in line? Yeah. So as a first step, I would definitely focus on getting used to lifting weights and being in the gym and overall upping one's physical activity. Because what we see in the literature consistently is that if you're a complete beginner, especially if you have a bit more fat on you, you can make both amazing muscle gains, but you can also lose some fat while building muscle at the same time. And from a health standpoint, engaging in physical activity and specifically resistance training, even if your diet is not yet on point, will still help you massively. So once we have a few weeks or maybe a couple of months of consistent resistance training in, and that habit is sort of getting built, that's when we can focus more on the nutrition side of things. Obviously, some guidance in regards to nutrition would still be given, like advising someone to do their best to consume mostly whole foods and need protein with every meal. But if I have somebody who's completely untrained, I'd first want to get them in the gym, get them to be comfortable in the gym and build some level, some form of consistency in there. And then we can start counting calories, tracking body weight daily. But if we're talking about just a short term period, simply lifting weights, even if that's not for a whole lot of sets per week, will have massive effects on the ones health, body composition, strength, and overall wellbeing. How long would you say somebody would see those newbie gains? You'd mentioned a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months. How long does that typically last for somebody who is, like let's say they lifted when they were 16 to 20 or 22 in college, and then now they're 42, they're 20 years later, they haven't done shit. How long would that be until you would maybe cease to see those, those semi-rapid increases? So if you're also somebody, as you said, who has a bit of fat on them, I would say that in the first three to six months with consistent resistance training, maybe even in the absence of huge nutritional modifications, but in the first three to six months, you'll see big gains. In some cases, it could be up to a year. However, if you then introduce the diet aspect of things in the equation, that's when you can completely transform your physique in a year. You could be a completely different person if you lose body fat. That's obviously true for anyone. So even if you're somebody who's already built a ton of muscle, but you have a bit of fat on you, simply by losing body fat, you can look like a different person. But from a muscle growth standpoint, I'd say committing three to six months and telling yourself, I will not stop no matter what I'm seeing for, you know, around six months, I think, is a good way to approach things. Because by that time, if you're putting in the effort and you're training with intent, it's likely that you will start seeing noticeable differences. Terms are going to be applied, obviously, you know, if you're 400 pounds, you may not see a whole lot because you're 400 pounds. But, you know, if we're not talking about extremes, you'll see, you'll start seeing some signs of muscle growth. And obviously huge strength increases. The Gerard Strength Podcast is sponsored by our own strength training app, Peak Strength. Peak Strength was developed based off of what we do here, on site, Accurod Strength, where we're trying to improve strength, endurance, hypertrophy, and explosiveness. If you're somebody who's watching this, and you want to have a program, you want to be able to be as consistent as possible. You want to commit to your goals and your gains over the next six months, 12 months. Click the first link in the description. We have a program built exactly for you known as athletic fitness. If you click that first link in the description, or the pinned comment, head over to peakstrength.app. If you've got an Android, you go to the Google Play Store. If you've got an Apple iPhone, like I do, you go to the iOS store, download Peak Strength, and then once you submit your email, okay, you're going to submit your email, now you're going to start to select the specific program that you want to train for. That's where you can select specific goals. Or in my case, I use the total athletic fitness program. This is going to provide you with a program that can focus more on explosiveness, endurance, strength, and hypertrophy. And you can even alter things along the lines of it. If you want to replace exercises, you don't have specific lifts. Maybe you want to move a workout. You need to know the specific rest periods. All of these things are provided just for you inside of peak strength. So once you sign up for your, you're going to get 38% off. Again, click that first link in the description. Now, let's get back to Dr. Pack. - When you're talking about the actual training, the resistance training, I was thinking through this. And I'm like, all right, do you start with a specific type of split? And this individual who is just trying to be less fat and gain muscle in the beginning, what would a weekly split look like for that lower level individual? And then do you, at what point might you think about progressing? And so if we looking at these two types of splits maybe, but then also what type of training would they be doing? Is it just, you know, is that body weight training? Is it bodybuilding anything along those lines? Power lifting or anything? - Yeah, it would be equipped power lifting with a lot of PDs though, but like, and I'm godly amount. So frequent visits to the ER. No, I'm joking, obviously. So I'm a huge proponent of machine, of mostly having machine-based training for beginners and for most people that don't necessarily love barbell lifts. We all grew up on barbell lifts. I love deadlifting, I love squatting, yada, yada, yada. But for somebody who's entering the gym for the first time as long as they're training certain movement patterns, IE, squat pattern, hip hinge pattern, horizontal push, vertical push, horizontal pull, vertical pull. And they're doing some exercise that allows them to push themselves close to failure in the five to 15 rep range. They're covered. And in my opinion, the easiest way to introduce somebody to the gym is not to get them to low bar squat as some of us were taught back in the day. Those who know what I'm referring to know. But rather having them sit on a machine that has very little, requires very little technical mastery and teaching them how to push close to failure and how to push themselves on each set. Obviously, in terms of this is applied, that doesn't mean that barbell lifts are wrong or bad for any reason. But for somebody who doesn't really care and is like your average person, I would mostly focus on something like either an upper lower split where you do five to six exercises per session or even a modified full body split performed two to four times per week, both for the upper lower and the full body split. So when we're talking about like a minimum effective dose for this, with the people who are just starting to get into it six months in, is it upper lower split? Let's roll with the upper lower split. So like a day one, they come in, they bench, they row, they do a seated, one of those seated military press cable machines. They do some shrugs or whatever. And is it two to three sets close to failure? Is it their building in and they're just priming on the floor? one or two sets, then they do one set where they have a couple left in the tank. What's the best as far as like maintaining consistency in that regard? Yeah, that will come down to to an extent to the art of coaching or like learning one's preferences in terms of whether you take all sets to failure or some as long as they are close to failure, they're more or less covered. So as long as there are zero to two, let's say zero to three reps in reserve in that range. But obviously for a complete beginner pushing some sets to failure will be beneficial so that they know that they're actually close to failure. That said, in terms of volume, I would think of it mainly from a sets per muscle group or a week's standpoint. And I would aim to have at least four sets per muscle group per week. So that could be if they're doing upper lower the goon, they want and they do two sets of chest press and then two sets of lat pull down and two sets of whatever military press or machine shoulder press and then they do the same on day three. But they could do all sets in one session as well. That's where I constantly highlight that the game is not only for beginners for advanced lifters as well is played mostly by focusing on consistency and key variables. So with a lot of beginners, I'll be like, look, sure, have a program, have some structure to help you navigate the gym because you will need it because you don't know as much as you and I know and it's a foreign environment. But just make sure that you go to the gym and do something with a high intensity of effort. Even if you miss out on a couple of exercises on any given week, sure, you missed out on a bit of stimulus for some muscle groups, but it's not the end of the world. As long as you're doing mostly compound exercises so that you can take a lot of boxes mutaneously and you're pretty consistent, the rest is more or less details. Again, obviously not talking about any extreme examples. So when you're talking about the high intensity, are you monitoring anything like heart rate or anything along those lines or mainly just the perceived exertion or when they measure internally for reps and reserved? I guess where this question comes from is like, I've always felt like one of the downfalls of both of these measurements, RIR, RPE, is that I feel like people as they train longer, they become, they're less of a bitch. Like they can handle stress longer and longer and longer. And I guess is there any other way to measure in in a early time frame that first three, six, nine months of training outside of that RPE only because it could maybe theoretically lead to faster gains? I don't know if that question even makes sense. It makes sense and I like that you used intensity to define effort versus how, you know, traditionally in some circles intensity would be used to define the load on the bar, which I was like, why? Anyways, ADHD aside, I would just advise, so if I saw that a person is not good at gauging proximity to failure, I would say take everything to failure. There's nothing wrong with that. Especially if you're doing machine based training and we have like long term data on pretty much like middle aged women and men that, and I'm talking about data for over seven years, 15,000 participants, 20 minutes of very simple resistance training per week. So four to five exercises, one set to complete failure for each exercise, those individuals made gains with 20 minutes per week, they made strength gains 50% above baseline on all exercises for the first one or two years. So if I have a beginner, especially if they're healthy and they're not 80 years old, that'd be like, look, it's important that you're close to failure, but I'd recommend that on most sets, you go to the point on the machine where you're actively pressing against it and it's not moving anymore. And that will allow you to gcheck your subsequent sets or your previous sets, because if you had gone 12 reps before and you thought, oh yeah, I'm close to failure and then you got 20 reps, it means that you weren't, but going to failure on a few sets here and there sort of covers your bases, because it does ensure that you are getting a good amount of stimulus at least on those sets and it allows you to know whether you were being as you put it scientifically at bitch. So is there data that would show that machine based training like, and this is the question I had to around bodybuilding specifically, is like, is machine based training going to enable someone to maintain greater consistency from a research perspective, from a science back perspective? Machine based bodybuilding style is easier to uphold earlier in in someone's like fitness journey as corny as that sounds. Is there any actual data on that? I don't think there's any direct data. That's me speaking mostly from a coaching experience, but because we have data on machines and free weights being equally good at increasing muscle size and obviously strength when strength is measured with a neutral assessment, obviously if you want to get better at squatting, you have to squat, if you want to get better at leg pressing, you have to leg press. Obviously, there will both have some transfer to one another, but it's not going to be perfect by no means. However, what we're seeing in society, we live in a society wake up, we start another political rant now I'm joking, but what we see is that very few people resistance strain and the amount of resistance training that you need in order to reap the health benefits of resistance training is very little. So I do feel like putting that message out there may help with some perceived barriers because I do see it in many countries where resistance training is associated with weight lifting and difficult exercises that also people falsely associate with injury like deadlifts or jerks. They're like, "Oh yeah, weight lifting." They do this motion where they're lifting their arms above their head and the idea that you need to become a connoisseur and learn how to barbell deadlift or barbell squat, amazing exercises if you like them, learn them, but you could very well do hyper extensions. You could do leg press, you could do chest press, you could do a bunch of machines that will remove that technical component which I personally feel may be a barrier to entry. Yeah, I think that's a fair point where especially the that ideology or that preconceived notion is very evident. I think it's like, "Oh, I can't, I can't actually lift weights." And it's like, well, you can get on a machine, but also you could just do body weight squats and you're still likely going to reap some type of resistance. No, cancel the bodyweight recommendation for beginners, man. Like, honestly, if we're saying that they're going to be a bitch with reps and reserved, you're going to get somebody to body weight squat unless they're like an absolute beginner, are they going to take a body weight squat at home to failure? Sorry for around, I'm not ranting at you. I'm ranting at some of the guidelines where they're like, "Do body weight squats at home." And I'm like, we all know that that set at home was 50 reps in reserve versus, you know, sit down on a leg press loaded, press yourself. Sorry, sorry for for screaming at you. Yeah, but that's even one of those things too. It's like, it's interesting because I would I would make the argument like, let's say we have somebody who's older now. He got somebody 60, 70. My mom and I'm like, "Mom, just sit on the freaking box and stand up and jump. Sit, stand up and jump." Like a little hop, just a little hop. Sure, sure. And you're going to get a crazy quad pump. It doesn't need to be that challenging. Fair enough. It's better. 10 minutes of doing that than not doing anything else. 100%. 100%. Yeah, I go triggered there. And obviously it's not just body weight squats. If they were to do pushups, pushups will likely cover. Most people, same with chinups, same with dips, same with other body weight exercises. I just, yeah, I get triggered when I hear like, "Oh, yeah, just do somebody with stuff at home." And I'm like, sure, as a starting point, better than nothing, but let's advise people to also go to the gym and, you know, push things. And you do work. Okay. On that, what are like the two to three things that trigger you the most in the fitness world right now? The illusion of optimal is one, the idea that like where you see people that think they care about optimal gains without understanding that we're talking about insane diminishing returns and chasing very marginal gains that require an insane amount of effort. When in reality, all they want is to get jacked and strong. So an analogy with strength since I'm here is like when we look at long-term data on power lifters and their performance by looking at the open powerlifting.org database, we see that in the first few years of powerlifting participation, you get 7.5 to 12.5% strength increases on average above your baseline. And then over the next 10 years, you get the same, but not per year, but over 10 years. A powerlifter who will spend a year or two to get a PR of 10 pounds on their squad, that for them is a meaningful increase in their archessing, chasing quote unquote, optimal increases through every mean possible. But for the average person, if you explain it to them like that, they wouldn't dedicate that time. But then people fall in this trap where they're like, "Oh, I need to optimize every variable and I need to have the perfect program because I need the optimal way because if it's not 100% or theoretically 100%, it's 0%. When in reality a suboptimal approach could very well mean that you're getting 90% of your potential gains with 30% or 20% of the effort." So that's one. Yeah, I like that. That is very, I think that's an interesting aspect too. We'll have some people and we'll have to your credit, GenPOP individuals who will say, "Oh, well, I've been back squatting the same for the last six months." It's like, "Yeah, but you're single leg squat went up. Your pull-ups have increased your your your your your let's say a 5k run or something has dropped by a minute and a half It's like well, what do you it's okay that your squad is the same? Yes indeed that's that's another thing where people tried to draw inferences from a single exercise where they're like I haven't increased my bench and it's like brother you've lost weight You've also increased your strength on other lifts that have involved the same musculature and Your bench is already pretty solid for your body weight plus it's only been a few months plus you have a life outside the gym Which is mind-boggling as well and the sad reality is that for advanced individuals because I'm sure you get that a lot through coaching There's a point and this is something that I I talked about with SNC coaches here that work with the Olympic teams of Great Britain is that there comes a point where there's not many gains to be made no matter the approach They're you're not gonna be adding much strength and it may come down to whether you're a bit more rested on testing day or 100 other variables that you're not really in control of which then also creates the illusion that I must be doing something wrong because I'll be able to progress forever But with all athletes power lifters, smour lifters, whoever that comes a point where that's it. That was the last PR There's nothing else that's it the end and yeah, it's there's a big a big Decrease in the amount of gains that you can you can make both for strength and muscle growth after the first few years obviously that's where you Address your definition of meaningful and that changes for you and I hitting if I hit a 10 kilo PR on the deadlift now all time PR that's huge for me That's out of this world for somebody in the gym for the first two years spending three years to chase a 10 kilo PR or a 20 pound PR That's not that big of a deal anyways Well, do you do you think based off of that I want to get back to the triggered question But do you think based off of that there is some there's some point of Like establishing some realistic Expectations or some real list. So is there some clear way that you could sit there and say in the beginning the beginning of time, you know, we're gonna establish these These expectations for training so that you can create this long time horizon that's 510 15 20 years down the road And what would that look like from from your perspective? Yeah, this is something that we attempted to do in one of my PhD studies where essentially we wanted to Analyze the results of some training studies with powerlifters not just using statistical significance because that in practice may not say much to you as a coach If I tell you was statistically significant you'd be like okay cool How much are we talking how many kilos how many pounds what happened because statistically and cleanly meaningful are two different things So we essentially asked powerlifting coaches and athletes to tell us okay, what do you think is a meaningful strength increase in X amount of weeks because that was the amount of weeks that our studies were and so A project like that could help set some rough Expectation guidelines for people when it comes to strength increases, but obviously there's gonna be a lot of variability there for muscle growth It's even more difficult because a sad reality is that when we talk about muscle growth in studies and we're talking about like You know increases in muscle thickness ultrasound measurements, etc. We don't necessarily know whether though at what point those actually correspond to a visual change Which is at the end of the day what people are after and there's also big limitations with looking at things like fat free mass Viadex etc. Where I'm pretty sure you've heard or seen yourself how somebody will say oh I lost five kilos of fat free mass or I gained and in reality They look exactly the same and it's just an error of the machine. So it's a bit more difficult to say with muscle growth Which again goes back to the very simple message of hey make sure you're doing the Make sure you're taking the most basic of boxes stay consistent and whatever Whatever gains are to be made you will make them you're not missing out on muscle gains because you didn't do the optimal Exercise that the guy on YouTube showed you or because your program is wrong if you're recovering fine if your performance is Training up over time to an extent and you're pushing yourself hard It then comes down to your you know genetics because that's a sad reality as well and that would be another trigger Another trick triggers around genetics or another trigger is around Around genetics Like the fact that people don't accept that hey I for example take myself as an example my arms are like the the insertions of my biceps and triceps and the muscle Villas are how they are I have done I've been training for 15 years done in like super long term bogs Have done every sort of lift in the world relatively strong at least for gen pop standards They're not gonna grow much not because I'm doing something wrong, but because genetically that's my limit The same goes with a lot of people out there who fall in the trap of following influencers who are either Genetically elite so they because they were genetically elite They fell in love with a gym because they saw a lot of return on investment and then essentially that became their career And they they fail to recognize that a lot of the people that they see online have either really good or elite genetics and Thinking that you can get your physique or your strength to be On par with some of those individuals is a bit of a pipe dream and they may come a point where yeah Unfortunately, you won't get huge cows or you know a huge chest You can you can increase the size of it, but it may never look like what you have in mind Is there okay When you're talking about the genetics and even when you're talking about seeing some influencer who's super fucking jacked and And they're they're laid. Yeah, they're you're you're trying to project yourself with that body image like I want to look like this Individual I can I can get to that point is there a specific method that you would use or or recommend like If you're let's say somebody who's natural and you're watching and you're engaging on social that you're like That dude's not even like genetically. He's gifted He's talented and and he also trains more than you But he's also probably on some performance enhancing drug. Is there any is there anything to look for or to To be aware of from that perspective as far as like you know when you see x wire Z there likely sauce It's difficult to say because once you Like obviously people use ffmi fat-free mass index Which is highly flawed in terms of like how valid it is because they they use like 25 ffmi as a cutoff point based on that one study from back in the Day and there's plenty of natural athletes and even myself when I was a fatter I was way above 26 fat-free mass But nobody would call me Would say that I'm juiced simply because of ffmi the issue there as well is that we do not want to be Extremely pessimistic obviously we do not want people to lie in our face and say yeah, this is achievable naturally But when it comes to muscle growth specifically with strength and maybe a bit easier to tell because you're like okay, bro Yeah, sure, natty You're natty dead lifting 400 kilos at you know 190 pounds sure But with muscle growth. That's what people don't realize when it comes to videos and Pictures you can if you're lean you can look Absolutely jacked out of your mind and huge, but in reality next to a heavyweight power lifter You would look absolutely tiny so looking at body weight and also understanding the game of angles lighting and the pump is extremely important I'm sure you've experienced that if we put up a picture of Andre my landscape now. You're obviously aware of Andre my landscape yeah And we showed it to people who don't know he is they'd be like okay some some guys some facho in reality that person next to Any like natty bodybuilder would be four times their size much more muscular Humongous, but if we were to just have one picture and then the other picture everybody would be like Oh, yeah, the other guy's much more jack because they're his leaner etc Which can then confuse people and think that okay if you look impressive on camera or in pictures You must not be natty, but there are genetic freaks out there Looks super impressive, but again, it doesn't it doesn't matter. It's just like it won't change anything There are some telltale science, but they're not that concrete to be able to tell In my opinion like sure yeah, if their skin is super tight and they look full and extremely lean and extremely big that big throughout the year that's huge So but besides that But then that also comes down to the perception of its individual and their standards because for some people who are into bodybuilding You know my physics it could look soft to them for somebody who's not into bodybuilding and they say oh wow he's shredded and vice versa Sorry, yeah, I think it's well, I think it's it's one of those issues where it is I mean especially with younger kids too like well, you know, we've got a lot of kids that come to our gym where they'll bring in a video And it's like what do you think about this person? It's like well Do you want to be diced up as much as possible or not and and and then we've got to roll through some of those questions on whether they're on drugs or not and it still comes back to it doesn't change anything in the regards to You've got to be consistent and trained for a long period of time to get to that point anyway, so let's just start back at square one of you showing up instead of two days a week show five days a week or four days a week whatever it might be Yeah exactly That's that's what gets me there like don't fall in that trap keep lifting and if if you're going to get jacked you're going to get jacked Is there any other things that trigger you substantially? Um, I mentioned the genetics and on the back of that I'm I lost it now I lost it yeah, okay If if you're this is a Sounds dumb, but if you're doing a bench press, okay, and I wanted to you brought up doing um minimum of four sets per muscle group over the span of a week. That's a minimum. You know, maybe, and I could, you could correct me on this, but I've heard that you should try to get to probably, you know, 10 to 12 sets if you want more growth per muscle group. How do you break down if you're doing a bench and you're looking at like, you're counting the chest versus counting triceps? Like, how do you break that down in your own calculation as to what that is primarily training? Yeah. So, okay, obviously, we don't have the perfect way to determine that as it stands. And in terms of quantifying training volume and how much like your triceps will contribute, but if the prime mover is your chest, then you'd measure that as one set for the chest and then half for every other muscle that is heavily contributing without that half being a perfect number because obviously like if you're, if you have a super wide bench, your triceps will likely get involved much less than if you were to do a close group bench. So that's the ideal fractional sets, but when it comes to having a simple and relatively easy and based on the literature, okay way of quantifying training volume because you have to quantify the involvement of other muscle groups, then that's a good way to go about it in practice. You could also just count direct sets, but then there's a question mark. You know, there's, that made it make things a bit more complicated, especially for those that are looking to get the most bang for their buck training because if you are doing a bunch of chin ups, rows, lat pull downs, bench pressing, shoulder pressing, etc. You are getting a ton of bicep and tricep involvement as well and from the dealt involvement, etc. So if you were to not count those sets at all, you may then find yourself in the gym for much longer because you think that you're not training biceps and triceps. When in reality, yes, you've likely gathered some volume there. It would be that it's not perfectly scaling to half a set per half a set for each muscle group. Sure, it may be point two in some cases, point three point six, whatever. But when it comes to like having an easy way to measure things, that's a good way to develop it. Remember, our podcast is sponsored by our own strength training app, Peak Strength. If you're a football player, a basketball player, a baseball player, click that first link in the description. Head over to peakstrength.app, go to the Google Play Store or you can go to the Apple iOS store, download Peak Strength, put your email in and then look for your specific sport. If you're tired of doing a lot of work and not really getting anywhere, we want you guys to get to the next level. All you have to do is download Peak Strength and then submit your email, click on the specific sport. And when you sign up for one full year, you're going to get 38% off. And I'm going to challenge you right now. I'm going to give you this challenge. If you sign up for one year, imagine where you're going to be one year from today. If you're training three to four days a week, imagine where you'll be focusing on the things that actually matter one year from today. All you have to do is head over to peakstrength.app, Google Play Store or the Apple iOS store, start committing to yourself. Now, let's get back to the podcast. As far as muscle growth was concerned, another question I had, is it, let's say, sets, okay, we, let's just use this for the four sets aspect. Is it better from a muscular, from a growth perspective in one session? Let's say we're doing three to five sets. Let's say five for, should say, let's say five. Is it better to do three sets of five than two sets that we might take to one to three reps left in the tank? Or is it better to do three sets of eight to ten reps, you know, still having three to five reps left in the tank and then come back and still hit those, those last two sets closer to failure? Are you going to see if the load on the bar is going to be heavier with the sets of five? Will there be, is there any difference in muscular growth between the, let's say, the load being heavier on the set of five and the load being lighter on the sets of eight to ten as the first three sets? Yeah. So, what we see in the literature is that load for hypertrophy, assuming you are at the same proximity to failure, is not that important of a variable. So, it wouldn't make much sense for you to go and do a few, like, unless you're focusing on strength at the same time, I would just say go in and make sure that you do all your sets at five plus reps, whether you go to ten reps or twelve reps up to you, but make sure that all those sets are close to failure. So, in the comparison you drew the sets that use the lighter load, but were closer to failure, would be more hypertrophic than the heavier sets further away from failure. Without that meaning that the heavier sets are completely useless, it's just that load doesn't seem to be that important for hypertrophy, assuming you're training close to failure. But hey, this is where I'm a big proponent of going heavier in many cases, because we do see in the literature that once you go past twelve reps, your ability to know how close to failure you are becomes worse and worse. And that's why, and when we then look at the literature on what way people self-select when they're asked to self-select, many people tend to self-select ways that are close to like 53% of their 1-RM, meaning ways that they could easily rep out for twenty, twenty-five reps, which I'm sure you've seen in practice as well, people self-selecting loads that are way too light and stopping the sets before failure because they're feeling, you know, a burn, a pump or whatever. So, don't be afraid to go heavier. Heavy won't magically injure you or whatever. Assume you're doing that, you know, slowly over time, I'm not doing anything too crazy. So you brought up like the data, the literature, and you're referring to the twelve reps sort of threshold there. And the first thing that popped in my mind was when I did a podcast with Mitchell Hooper and he's like, no, I'm not doing any science back training. I don't listen or I don't read studies. I'm an example of one or one of one. Why would I read these studies? And then I'm listening to you and I'm going paste. But that's a mischaracterization, obviously based in Redpield and Mitchell Hooper that lived three times what I did lived. So he's opinion counts for much more. But Kyriak was Grizzly is my very good friend. So who wins here? I think I do. The Grizzly stamp of peace. I'm not sure if you know who Kyriak was. Yeah, I know exactly who he is. We did a react to his lifts like three years ago. It was awesome. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, joking aside, the thing is that that's a caricature of what science based means. Science based doesn't mean, oh, yeah, let's take the abstract and grab that number and that's our training now. It means using the totality of scientific evidence, having that as your base and then your experience and then your personal preferences. But think as Eric Helms once put it, think of science as a torch in a labyrinth in a maze where you know, you can't, it doesn't allow you to see the whole way, but you can make, it can help you navigate that maze a bit better. So for somebody like Mitchell Hooper or Edney of high level strength athlete there, a science based approach to training wouldn't be, oh, yeah, take the abstract of the, you know, 20 college students and then that's your training for the year. But rather look at the totality of scientific evidence, which in terms of strength says, hey, make sure that you're lifting heavy and make sure that you're doing training that is specific to what you want to improve. And then the rest is pretty basic. So like the idea that science based training is the sort of like over complicated, take key BS approach is a bit of a caricature. And I'm sure that a lot of what Mitchell Hooper or other strongmen do would be classified as evidence based because it follows very basic principles of strength training. Yeah, I think that's the, the interesting part is it does tend to, it probably still would, yeah, evidence based training that is going to be using the reps to failure. Like let's say if you fail, if you're an experienced lifter and I could be, you know, cracking me up if I'm wrong on this, but let's say you're doing six sets. If I'm doing my first set to failure and dying, I'm going to do a lot less volume throughout that. If I'm doing six sets of four, I'm not going to be able to hit as much volume at a very high load on the bar. And therefore my volume would be less and I won't get the mechanical gains that I would want, you know, long term. So based off that, I'm sure Mitchell probably does follow this principle. And in turn has some type of evidence based practice. Yeah, because if you look at strength specifically and it's relationship with proximity to failure for strength, the literature shows that you do not need to train to failure or extremely close to failure and you need to manage fatigue much differently than you would with hypertrophy training. So for a power lifter or a strength athlete, a strong one athlete specifically, you wouldn't be like, okay, max out on every set because that will then impact the amount of weight you can use in subsequent sets, maybe the quality of the movement, et cetera. But at the same time, I assume that even in Mitchell's training, obviously, I'm speaking about the guy, like I don't know what he does in his training. I don't want to speak for him. But I assume that there are lifts that are taken to the point where, you know, it mimics the competition demands. And there is a mix of like corner quote, sub maximal training where you're lifting heavy but you're leaving some reps in reserve, but also, you know, you do need to know how to grind a squad or whatever, at last, or whatever lift. So there's a mix of that, which it would be pretty much heavy than spaced. So yeah, it's, there's this inherent need for people to think and come and then want to draw a narrative of the. But there's the good guy, the bad guy, the hero, the anti-heroine. We see that very much with a science-based training and the science-based people and what they say. Yeah, do you think going off of that, I wanted to think through this consistency thing long term, and I like the Mitchell Hooper discussion there, but I was also thinking through like, as someone who, let's say they progress past a year of training with consistency, is there any information or anything along the lines where it's like, all right, now get off of the machines. Now get into this style training. Now, we see somebody will commit longer term if they become more hybridized or more powerlifting based or more athletic focused or whatever it might be endurance focused or anything. Is there any evidence along the psychological impact of long term training that you'll see when to veer off of just being on a machine? Yeah, I keep it like, allow me to clarify myself. The example of the machines was specifically for like a complete beginner who wants to get into the gym. Ideally, you'll mix and match and have both free weight exercises, body weight exercises, machine exercises. And I made a video on this. It's not out yet, but I talk about the value of like old school and quotation marks. I mean, it's 2026, so they're pretty much old school by now, strength training programs, like your five by fives and so on and so forth, because those can be fun because the difference between like machines and free weights is that we have some universal strength standards that you do chase for free weight exercises. And at the end of the day, that's where being truly evidence based come in the picture where you know that, okay, machines and free weights are equally effective at muscle growth. But I see that I'm enjoying deadlifting a lot. And you know what, lifting is my hobby. And I do want to chase that five plate deadlift. So I'm now going to do a strength modified program where I'm chasing this arbitrary number for the fun of it, which then leads to you being more consistent, training harder and setting this like big goal. And after two years, you've now spent two years chasing that goal, but you've also done a bunch of training on the back of it. So it does come down to enjoying lifting. There's no shit. And that's what annoys me with the like, quote unquote, optimal approach to lifting for 99% of people out there that are not a competitive athlete. So yeah, I part-lift there. If a part-lifter or a strong one came to you and said, you know what, I enjoy cycling every day and not doing my sport. Can I do that? You have to do your sport. But for the majority of people out there, hey, find some things that you enjoy, find a way to make lifting fun and just stick to it for a bunch of time. If that means you doing, you know, every day squatting fair enough, whatever, extreme example. But you know what I mean. Right, right. Yeah, okay. Strength standards. I wanted to ask this. If you've got like a sub 90 kilo athlete, or let's say, again, I'm going off this very relatable avatar of myself, if I have someone who's 42, sub 200 pounds versus somebody who's over 200 pounds, what are like good strength standards that they could work for? That's a Jen pop person. Like they're looking at this going like, all right, what can I build towards pull-ups, bench, dead, whatever else? Squat. What do you weigh? Sorry. I weigh right around 104, like 225 to 230. Are they revoking? Are there agents outside your building? I'm not ready to revoke your citizenship for speaking in kilos. I would not be surprised in the current state of the United States. I was just thinking about what's on my mind really. I weighed in in kilos. I will wait lifting coach. So kilos is like my first brain. I know what you like to look at. What's your best quad? What's your lifetime? Whatever. Carden. Life time. Life time. No, no. It's a Sunday I did. I did one fifty three, I did three, forty or whatever that would be one fifty three kilos. No, kilos kilos. I'm Greek. Yeah. One fifty three. For four. For four. Astagraphs. That'll squat like a bitch. 180. What's your all-time best? I did when I was in college I did low bar 600 for six. My best for six. Yeah, recently during COVID I did two forty three. Astagraphs. Oh, nice. That's insane. So. But I had to do now. I'm old now. Exactly. You're not old. You are mature. That's. Yeah. Yeah. So what like obviously chasing your first like two plate bench and three plate squad and maybe four plate deadlift depending obviously like we're talking male or female. But what I like to do is I use powerlifting data via a website called strengthcheck.me which essentially uses all powerlifting data in the world via openpowerlifting.org and essentially shows you how you compare to a powerlifter in your weight category. And like for example I plugged in your data and for forty to 59 years one of five KG weight class or from nine to three kilos to one of five kilos of two hundred and forty three kilos quad would have you better or equal than 88% of lifters which means that yeah that's amazing because you'd be surprised based on the inflation on social media how people think that they're weak and when in reality like I've had a female powerlifter that I'm coaching at the moment she was like yeah I'm only deadlifting like 140 kilos and she weighs like 57 kilos and I was like yeah like well that we were in like the top 20 to 20 15% of every powerlifter not even recreation or lifter. So I tend to use those strength standards just to give people because even if you're below average if you're just a gem of individual it's still cool to hear that yeah compared to some powerlifters you are stronger. So yeah it will depend I don't have any universal strength standards that I use because we don't really have good established standards if you look at websites like strength strength level strength standards whatever it's called the standards for body weight exercises I insanely inflated but for deadlet squad and bench they're pretty low in my based on my like I'd be an elite deadlifter based on those numbers but like my dips are intermediate at best. So we don't have like proper established standards because those are also self reported standards you know when people say yeah I squatted 300 and it's like with wraps you know quarter squad etc. Anyways what are your best dips? My best dips I've just started my my gel I'll talk about the squad and deadlift if you want an overhead press and my best dip I did last week was so at 92 kilos body weight I did three reps with plus 60 kilos okay plus close on my phone it's not bad it's okay it's okay that's started that's where I like to think about this where it's like all right you get somebody who's 40 let's say they're listening and it's like look if you weigh over 200 and you can work to like a 115 120k bench that's good and then once you hit that the next goal is like go to 140 150 and you work towards that and then you see where you're out with injuries and shit like that and if you're somebody who's over 200 and you've been at it for a while it's like you know try and get the 160 try to get the 170 you know I don't know if you need to go much more past 180 on a bench but like with squat to me I don't know that's where I wanted to see what you had in mind as like this little carrot to get people to just keep pulling through and improving their strength. Yeah it's I don't know from coaching I've seen wild differences in terms of how some people respond so I've worked with elite strength athletes that you know I've exceeded expectations and I've seen insane PRs and then other people who no matter how much work they put in their strength is not really responding as you'd expect to but what I would highlight is that for the majority of people out there even if you're you know squatting two plates deadlifting two plates and benching one plate in terms of being like capable and strong enough to deal with their life you're definitely taking a good amount of boxes there. Yeah you mentioned earlier the difference between recovery being different for hypertrophy and strength and I wanted to see if you could elaborate on that like how would someone let's say I want to get as small as possible to get as big as I can muscle muscle mass wise but without getting fat let's say the let's say that my my mass stays the same versus the athlete who wants to increase strength what would the differences in recovery be for the exact same body weight athlete. Yeah so I'm in mostly in intercession how you'd approach your training sessions so if you're training for hypertrophy and it's your life's goal to get as huge as a jacked as humanly possible you'd try to do as much training volume as you can recover from and add more maybe over time with some terms and conditions obviously you'd do a bit you wouldn't do all the volume for everybody parts simultaneously but your goal would be to you know do more over time you'd train very close to failure on 95 98% of your sets and overall your focus would be mostly on you know training very hard and doing as much training as you can while recovering highlighting while recovering for strength athlete though or somebody who wants to maximize strength much like many old school powerlifting coaches and strength coaches would advise your goal is not to leave every session feeling absolutely shattered obviously you want to do more volume and I assume in your case with a limbic weight lifting because of the skill component you want to practice a lot but for somebody in the gym doing squat bench and deadlift if you just care about strength leaving a few reps in reserve resting a bit more between sets and focusing on movement quality and lifting heavy is how you should most likely approach your training journey. Without that meaning that training will be easy or your sets will be easy, it's different doing a set of bench for hypertrophy where you're focused on taking that set, like almost or two failure versus a set of bench where you're trying to master your technique and you're also trying to lift a heavy weight for a low amount of reps while still being fresh enough to do a few more sets with a heavy weight, etc. So earlier in the podcast, you talked about Whole Foods and Protein and that was sort of where I was thinking too in this that I wanted to ask you. Are you looking at, would you in this case, so that you clearly stated the interest session rest is going to be different, that the approach that a load on the bar is going to be different, those things are going to have a big impact on what your adaptation would be. Is there anything, is nutritionally, is that going to be the same as well where it's like, do you have specific recommendations that you start off with with protein or carbs or fat or anything like that that you would then build upon or is it like they would follow the same exact type of nutritional recovery? Yeah, and so look, when it comes to nutrition and protein in particular, we see that things are again relatively simple. If you want to take most of your boxes and we're talking maybe 90% of your muscle growth and strength muscle growth boxes because for strength, you likely be taking all boxes. If you're eating roughly 1.5 grams per kilo of body weight or 0.7 is grams per pound of body weight, you are already in the optimization range. However, if your natural bodybuilder or somebody who is cutting and you want to leave no stone unturned, eating two or 2.3 grams per kilo of body weight of protein per day might allow you to get those extra few percentage points. When it comes to carbs, unfortunately, as somebody who loves carbs, we don't see carbs having that insane effect on muscle growth. On strength, obviously, you don't want to be training completely fasted with absolutely no carbs in your system, but the idea that we've gotten from strong man athletes and very high level strength athletes who are also super heavyweights on PDs, the idea that you need to be eating 70,000 calories a day and having seven pancakes before you train is unfortunately not supported by much data. As long as you're doing your best to go to training in a state where you're fed and you're not feeling hungry, as long as you've consumed some carbs and you're feeling good, obviously some trial and error required there, there's no specific amount of carbs that you need to be hitting in contrast if you're an endurance athlete, that's where carbs become a very big big part of your nutritional strategy, but as a strength and hypertrophy athlete, if you're doing your best to consume mostly whole foods, eat 1.5 plus grams of protein per kilo per of body weight, then eat 0.6, 0.7 grams of fat per kilo of body weight coming mostly from healthy sources like olive oil, avocado, eggs, etc. The rest can be carbs and you can be pretty flexible with your diet. It's boring, it doesn't sell, but that's the reality here. Now, if you're a strength athlete, sorry, and you you know, you're very light, gaining body weight slowly over time while also training progressively, will likely help you get stronger, maybe not relatively stronger, but you will add weight, you'll most likely add weight to the bar and that's something that maybe needed regardless, whether you're a strength athlete or not, like if you're a beginner and you're relatively skinny, gaining some body weight slowly, conservatively, while also being physically active is a good idea. What was the fat again? Was it 0.6? 0.6 as a minimum from for health for health reasons, but even if you're not tracking, assuming that you're not doing anything extreme with your food choices, and you're doing your best to eat mostly whole foods and eat fruits and vegetables, you're covered. It's very unlikely that you're outside of that. Do you have any recommendations around things like fiber or anything like that? Yeah, about like 25 to 40 grams per person seems to be a good general sweet spot, which again, you'll likely hit if you're doing your best to eat mostly whole foods. Is there any specific supplements that you would be like, I would definitely try to, I don't know, rip a couple of vials of trend every single day. Is there any specific to make the same joke? Anything that comes from a bathtub of a friend's basement, if it's made there, it's good for you. Thank you. The podcast that I did run, take care, enjoy the lawsuit. Just kidding. Yeah. Look, unfortunately, there's nothing over the counter that will absolutely skyrocket your gains. Creating monohydrate, solid supplement for muscle growth and strength. Five grams per day, make sure that you get like a creating that's third party tested. And that other than that, you know, if you live in a country like the UK where there's not enough sun, maybe supplementing with vitamin D3, but there's really no supplement that, you know, I would say you need to buy this or like you are missing out on a lot if you don't buy it. Even magnesium. Magnesium, there may be something through magnesium as well, but it's not like you, it's a mandatory supplement that I would say, yeah, you got a supplement with magnesium. I think it's interesting that this is going to be, you can troll me as much as you want from this statement. I will track my HRV and you can tell me if that's worthless or not, but I will track it and when I'm traveling, even if I'm traveling a lot, if I don't get like 600, 800 grams of magnesium, I will get shit sleep and my HRV will drop substantially. And I was wondering if that, if you ever had that same experience or not. Yeah, I like look, I, I'm all for it, even if it's placebo, if it's helping you, placebo it. And there may be something to it. Yeah, there is some data on magnesium and sleep. But HRV, for example, is not a bad thing to track. However, then like I'm opening another door here, if you want to go through it, then feel free to follow me. It's the, this obsession with data tracking, not in your case, in your case, top, I track my sleep, I've been tracking my sleep for years, my body weight every day for the past seven years or so. But the, you know, using red in the scores and overly obsessing over, you know, the what your fit bit or your aura ring says on any given day, not going to the gym and using your performance on that day to sort of gauge recovery. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes that makes sense. I think that's a, I mean, you could expand into that a little bit further. I would use this example directly today is like I, okay, so I snowed like crazy, shoveled for probably three to four hours yesterday. I woke up this morning. HRV was okay. My, you know, my, uh, garments like, oh, you know, maybe you shouldn't train as hard. Go to the gym. I, I lift it a little bit and then I did this insane cardio thing. I've been on this running kick for a little bit, a little while. And PR four sets, five minutes at nine miles per hour, the each time. And I'm like, and my heart rate was good. The first set my heart rate was shit. And then it sort of started to adapt. And I got, I felt better. And I'm like, if I want to listen to my freaking Garmin, I wouldn't have done shit. I would have just been like, oh, well, based off of my, based off of what my Garmin tells me I shouldn't go in and do my actual session. And it's like, that's how I think the downfall is with the data. Exactly. Last, I flew back from Greece last Sunday. And I, I recorded this and I posted it as a real, I asked my wife. She didn't know I was recording. I said, so I was hungover because we had gone out drinking the night before. And obviously after traveling and I had done legs two days ago. So I was sore, hungover, and after flying. And I asked my wife at 12 a.m. I said, do you think I can deadlift 260 kilos off a deficit? It's like, no, you're hungover. You've never done it before. I was like, okay, let's bed 50 pounds. And then I went to the gym at 12 30 a.m. And I hit an all time PR in the not worst conditions possible, but in poor conditions. So that's a funny example of where like listening to your body is not meant to be listening to your body before you go to the gym, but go to the gym warm up, see how you're feeling. Do a set. And you may be surprised. I'm sure from your experience and from your athletes experience, you've had days where they've come in. It's a bad day. They've had a, you know, I don't know, something happened at work. And then once they get into the session, all of a sudden, one of the best sessions they've had in a while. Yeah, and I think I think a lot of time that also can relate directly to expectations. Like, if somebody comes in and weightlifter comes in and it's like, you know, let's just do four or five sets, get dialed in with your technique. And let's just worry about getting the worked on. That's all it is. And then by the third set, it's like, oh, they look pretty sharp now. They're actually, they've lowered the expectation. Their ego's a little bit removed because of how they feel. And then now of a sudden, we can just let their body execute what they need to do. And they will get close to if not hitting a PR because of that aspect. I ask you a question. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Are athletes at your training facility allowed to walk over the bar? So that's a great question. And I had a question I was going to ask you of not to deflect. Okay. If we have football players, okay, American football players are goons, like just absolute goons. I don't mind when they do that. Typically, they will not walk over the bar. throwers that we train, a lot of the throwers that we have, usually we'll get chalk. They walk behind the bar. They're not walking over the bar. The weightlifters that we have will never walk over the bar. So I don't know if that answers your question thoroughly, but I usually have this approach of like more respect in the sports that train in a competitive like a barbell sport, essentially a power lifter, a weightlifter. I would expect more with the football players. I expect next to nothing outside of like yelling and slamming things and smelling, you know, sniffing ammonia and just acting like complete morons and same similar with the throwers that we have. So what has your thought process with that? As a Greek who's been in some like traditional, like really traditional weightlifting facilities in Greece with like, you know, I even mentioned the Olympic weightlifting hall in Athens as well some other gyms. It's like, it would be times where we'd be training over the powerlifting side and weightlifter would scream, and tell us to stop our training. So some guy does like a block pull or something. And yeah, I do feel that there's something to not walking over the bar and maintaining some traditions. But when it's done, you know, when somebody who doesn't know what they're doing goes over the bar and then gets told off, that can often be a bit weird. But I am fully behind your approach and you find me in complete agreement. So part of my question was going to be, how do you come from Greece and you're not into weightlifting? I feel like, I feel like, bro, this is the illusion of Greece. Like you think there's funding for weightlifting? No, you think there's, what do you think pirus is over there, not in Greece? He's true though. He's in there a little more now because he just had a baby. So bro, the, I'm forgetting his name now. Shout out to him though, the one of the athletes that represented Greece in the Olympics recently, I'm blanking out. I think he was in the 70s kilo class, whatever. His name shout out to him. He had gone on Greek TV, like almost breaking down in tears saying, guys, I can't, like, I'm expected to pay for my traveling, for my recovery, for my nutrition. There was, there's zero support from the government when it comes to sports, let alone now Olympic weightlifting that is not in its glory in Greece. And that obviously, like when Olympic weightlifting hall in Athens, we're talking about the Olympic weightlifting hall that you're seeing, pirus, the Amazon, his prime, in some cases, train, nowhere conditioning, no water fountain. I had some guests from the US come over back back in the day, back in 2016, maybe there is water founders there. And they were like, where's the water fountain? And I was like, they're ain't none. Like, it's just bars. Yeah, that's a sad reality. But weightlifting is not as popular in Greece as you'd think. It's known in Greece, people know off Olympic weightlifting because of pirus, themas and other athletes. But it's not a sport that people participate in, they play soccer, AK football and basketball. Yeah, I think you'll see. I was thinking about the long, there's a long jumper and then pole water currently. And the interesting part there, because I've talked to pirus about this and he's like, look, the difference with those sports is there actually a, not that it's a ton of money, but the long jumper will get, he can get funding from a sponsor. You know, same thing with the pole water. He's top three at Worlds and he's, he's, I think he is a Nike guy. So it's like, those guys will get it. So they won't be as vocal even though they still should be vocal because for the sport of athletics to even grow, they need some type of government support to an extent to see that success long term. Exactly. I was just thinking about that with you getting into powerlifting versus weightlifting. But yeah, I got into powerlifting, but keep in mind, I didn't do, I wasn't big into power lifting. I tried it for a couple of years and that was it. I love lifting weights and I, I still deadlift, so I'm still chasing PRs on the deadlift and I had a period of my life where I was just squatting, but I never liked benching, for example. So yeah, I don't regard myself as a powerlifter nor was I ever a good powerlifter. So the athlete I was talking about is the other, theodore, Jacob Vides, he was in the 96 kilo class. I was mistaken. Shout out to him. Okay. I wanted to ask because you had mentioned earlier, you're close with Kiriakos, what would be like the, a couple of the best things that you have learned from the Grizzly? Or is it not the other person you Grizzly doesn't expect it? And now I'm joking. It's not like, it's Grizzly, I don't know if it's the Grizzly, but yeah, it was an hour close, French to the point where we speak multiple times per week on the phone and whenever I'm in Greece and I can make the 10 hour drive, I make it and I visit him. But he, the main thing that I've learned from him is that, you know, the whole you have to live it or be in it for the love of the game. He's been in it for the love of the game since the beginning because he does post all the crazy lifts, but he's never makes any claims about how strong he is or this or that or the other. And he just enjoys lifting. So mostly taking that sort of romantic view of lifting, which unfortunately, because we are both professionals in the thing we love the most, sometimes, you know, it feels like you're missing that, you know, the days where you just go to train and training was the only thing that mattered. And Grizzly still has that. Grizzly will still call me at 50 years old and be like, yeah, I sled pulled the 600 kilos today, even though my knee hurts and he's excited about it, even though he doesn't pay the bills, even though it's not a competition, even though, even though, even though, which is, yeah, it's something I often miss out on. And I'm sure many of us do where we go to the gym and we take it for granted. Yeah, I think that that is like the, the old school, I often say that even to my son, so my, my oldest son is now like on this, this come up in training. And I'm like, I don't even know the sad part is even in our gym, which is like a, this raw facility in the middle of a cornfield. And there's dust everywhere. There's, you know, chalk flying everywhere. I don't know if he would still have that, that emotion that I, I feel like I had it with like growing up lifting and cold, a cold gym with no heat at all. It's like, I don't know. You know, I, and I think that's a, you can, I feel like you can get that from Grizzly's, his videos. Yeah. And in, in his gym where there's literally barbels, so I like to bars, a vanco plates and multi-lapolda machine and obviously the homemade sled, which is steel on concrete. Like whenever I go there, the few times I've been there, I've had amazing training sessions that were, you know, not optimal hypertrophy sessions and I didn't have the latest Atlanta is whatever, but I had a ton of fun. And I'm sure your, your son will get much of that experience through you and your, you know, your teachings and your environment. And me just telling him that I will always love him as long as he's an Olympic champion. All right, Dr. Pack, thanks. Where, where can everybody find you? Where can, you know, your website, your, your Instagram, everything like that. Yeah, my, my Instagram is Dr. DR double underscore PAK because the normal user, new rules and available. And my website is doctorpack.com. All my links are there. I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody has about everything we talked about. Thank you so much for, for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Peace. Peace. [Music]