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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Philip (00:00:38):
Clients that I’ve worked with, especially women who have have what they think is a, an adrenal failure or an issue, you know, an issue with their cortisol, they have hormonal issues, they might be as young as 27 or in peri post menopause, and it’s often that they’re just,

Brad (00:00:56):
Hey listeners, I have a great discussion to share with you from Philip Pape, the host of the Wits and Weights podcast. I had the pleasure of joining him on his show, and he was a really sharp guy with some nice focused and quantified insights about how to lose excess body fat the right way. And if you visit wits and weights.com, you’ll see some nice free offerings of his free metabolic assessment, nutrition coaching, nutrition guides, and some great content at the Wits and Weights podcast. So, our conversation we had a, a nice breezy start in talking about the fitness industry and what he’s doing. But then we kind of focused in on the topic of <laugh>, the popular topic of trying to drop excess body fat. And I think he has a life changing insight to start out the conversation by saying, it all starts with strength training.

Brad (00:01:57):
You have to work on building muscle in order to succeed, even with dietary transition, because if you don’t, you’re gonna fall into old habits. You’re gonna get hungry, you’re gonna want to chomp on something. But when you start working hard on the strength and the resistance training, you are going to have muscles actively taking glucose in from the bloodstream and replenishing, uh, the larger muscle, the more muscle mass that you build, as well as recovering from the workouts where you are burning glucose in the workout, burning glycogen, and then replenishing stored glycogen. So it was a really, uh, interesting and very simple takeaway that it’s not just about locking in on your diet, watching your portion sizes and all the things that we’ve been programmed for so long to think is the main starting point to getting the physique that you dream of.

Brad (00:02:53):
It starts with the hard work and pumping the iron. And of course, you can, uh, gently transition over in a graceful manner, with learning good technique and learning the proper exercises. But it does mean going and you’re nversation in the middle where we talk about this theme that I’ve talked on the podcast often about the full cellular energy, the fully fueled approach to fitness and longevity, where you’re eating more food, moving more frequently, recovering faster, and living longer. And we got talking about it ’cause he was describing a gaining phase that he goes through in his training where he’s doing some strenuous workouts, the hypertrophy style workout, and deliberately and systematically consuming more calories over a sustained period of time, whether it’s a month or six weeks or whatever he is doing.

Brad (00:03:50):
And during that time period, wouldn’t you know it, he has more energy, he’s more active, he’s tapping his foot more at his desk and feeling great and recovering and building muscle. So I think it’s a nice little vote or a little reflection on the importance of fueling yourself with, of course, natural nutrient dense food exclusively. And then getting to work and working those muscles. And that is the path to not only getting off that stubborn, excess body fat that might have been sitting there even when you’re doing hard work on your diet. So opening a new portal, new possibilities. Enjoy this weight loss, fat reduction body composition expert. Philip Pape of the Wits and Weights podcast. Philip Pape, we are here.

Philip (00:04:37):
We are here. Good to see you again, Brad.

Brad (00:04:38):
I had so much fun joining you on your fabulous podcast, wits and Weights, where we talked about the book Born to Walk and a broad-based approach to functional fitness. And so I said, we gotta get over to, to B.rad And and get in deep with, uh, the great work you’re doing over there, especially as you describe your, I guess a a quantified and analytical approach to, uh, proper fitness protocols. And I’ve always been kind of a intuitive style athlete and not getting deep into a regimented approach. ’cause I know that doesn’t work for me from experience, but I also realize when I’m performing or pursuing these complex goals, like trying to be a sprinter in the old man’s division and dealing with minor injuries and aches and pains and things that set me back, that you really have to be careful and strategic with your dispensation of energy in order to progress with fitness. So I thought we could get into that background mission statement of your podcast and then some of the fun things that you’ve learned as a host and fun topics that really have resonated with your, your listeners. How’s that for an intro, man?

Philip (00:05:50):
Yeah, man, that’s a <laugh> that’s a great intro. It’s funny, I just heard you talking on your show about, you were talking to one of, of the greatest runners of all time and how she has an intuitive approach. And I get these comments all the time from folks that say, well, I’m not a data person. I’m not, I’m not an engineer. I don’t think that way. And yet I’ve talked to experts who are professional bodybuilders, competitive bodybuilders, who had one point in their life where they said, look, I need to buckle down and use some sort of tracking or measurement just to know where I am and to calibrate where I am first and build that skill and build that intuition. And then at some point in their lives they have that level of intuition that they don’t need to do it anymore. So I hear what you’re saying, man, I could go both directions and the spectrum is wide and I’m all about flexibility. So, yeah, let’s get into it.

Brad (00:06:38):
Yeah, you were talking about Shelby Houlahan, the American record holder, Shelby at middle distance, who just came back from a four year layoff. And I was really blown away about how she mentioned that intuitive approach and just getting out the door and, and running at whatever pace she felt like. And so here’s like one of the fastest female runners in the world who if you, you know, were, we’re training with you, you’d be like, how fast are we going today? I don’t know. We’ll see. And it was really a profound insight. But at the same time, she’s working with the greatest coaches on the planet who have a very, very refined and sophisticated approach. I had, um, grant fisher’s coach on, on my show, Michael Scannell, old friend of mine who I used to race with in, uh, professional duathlon. And he reported how they sat down in November and plotted out his path to the Paris Olympics and where he had the magnificent performance of winning two bronze medals in both the, the long distance events of 5,000 and 10,000.

Brad (00:07:34):
But he had every workout planned from November to August 4th for the first race and August 9th for the second race. And that was fascinating. And he said he was so structured and, and so focused that he hit basically every single workout. So that’s the sign of a really well-informed training program if you can lock in and perform every workout as desired. But of course, for the average recreational enthusiasts that’s listening to Wits and Weights or trying to get out there and stay fit and as well as coach soccer and perform in the, in the corporate setting, that’s when we have to, we’re forced to have a more fluid approach, but we still might benefit from that foundation of, uh, structure and, and quantification.

Philip (00:08:15):
Yeah, I think there’s a place for guardrails while being simplified and also the, the intuitive aspect in terms of, let’s say your biofeedback, how your sleep is, your stress, your digestion, your hunger. Those things can be quantified even though they’re subjective. And so you’re kind of melding the two together just to give yourself an idea of where, where the heck you’re landing right now, <laugh> to even go make a decision from and have, you know, have informed data.

Brad (00:08:41):
What kind of stuff is important? Like if someone came in as a new client who’s proclaimed a desire to get fit and they’re doing a little bit of this and that, but now they want to get into a program.

Philip (00:08:52):
Yeah. So I help with clients with strength training, body composition, fat loss. And it’s funny ’cause we do, we have a lot of the same approach when it comes to getting stress off of the body through potentially reducing the amount of cardio and how much of working out and also training in a way that gives you more recovery. Especially as we age. People complain about, you know, their joints and injuries and health issues. And they’re stressed because of life and they’re family. They have families, like you said, gen pop, we have, you know, two jobs or running a business and parents. And so, um, when we start, I, I just like to spend two months baselining what you’re doing and giving you your own self-awareness of how much you’re eating, what you’re eating, the composition of the food, some of the micronutrients and the fiber, um, how the movement and the training you’re doing affects your recovery.

Philip (00:09:43):
Because I don’t wanna say, Hey, here’s the best program for you on day one if I don’t even know you yet. I do an intake, but I really know, I wanna see how your expenditure and your metabolism responds to the things you’re doing. I wanna understand how your hunger and your sleep responds. Because after two months, you may be in a great position to build muscle rather than try to diet and lose fat and have the best outcome that way. We just don’t know until we have that initial, you know, data set. So having a coach to guide that, uh, you know, with you, it’s kind of like the analogy you said with these elite athletes. Even a gen pop person can have that person in their corner and take off some of the mental stress and even emotional stress, right? <laugh> mm-hmm. Where they can be the person that you can unload to, and all you, all you gotta do is just enter the numbers <laugh> and your coach can kind of help you understand what the numbers mean and then you can make decisions from there.

Brad (00:10:31):
What is a gen pop person?

Philip (00:10:34):
Oh, gen what? What do you mean? Like general population? I just mean like,

Brad (00:10:37):
Oh, gen pop. Okay. I thought you, you were gonna say like, gen X, gen Y and gen pop, like for old old mans or whatever. Yeah. Okay, got it. General population is, uh, dropping excess body fat, the preeminent goal that you see.

Philip (00:10:53):
Yes. And in fact, sometimes it’s weight loss is the intent is the person’s thought when they come to me, weight loss or building muscle, and we have to reframe it. And that’s one thing we can get into is we reframe weight loss away from scale weight and to body composition, metabolic health and, and having a muscle centric approach to, um, health and physique.

Brad (00:11:14):
So maybe you can go deep on that term. Sure. What does it mean to you?

Philip (00:11:18):
The term body composition,?

Brad (00:11:20):
Muscle centric approach?

Philip (00:11:21):
Oh, Muscle centric approach. Yeah. So, you know, we think, I guess we, we talk about being over fat or obesity being a concern in society, and for sure it is. I’m not gonna deny that. And there are a lot of extrinsic factors, environmental factors behind that. But what I find is people are attempting to lose weight or lose fat as the predominant weight that they get, quote unquote healthy. Kind of like they, many people think running or cardio is the predominant way to get healthy <laugh> fat. We know that’s not case

Brad (00:11:48):
Burning calories. Yeah,

Philip (00:11:49):
Yeah. Burning calories. And until you’ve spent some time understanding how to train properly to add some strength and muscle to your frame, you can’t maximize the the health that you’re going for, even if it is a great physique because you have, you haven’t built the foundation. So you can’t sculpt a pebble is the analogy I like. You can sculpt, you know, a nice big stone, but you can’t sculpt a pebble. So you’ve gotta build that at some point. If you’ve got excess weight to lose or excess fat to lose from a metabolic health perspective, fine, we can get there. It’s not a big deal. But at some point you then have to build muscle.

Brad (00:12:24):
It seems like someone who is succeeding building muscle is going to shed excess body fat in the process.

Philip (00:12:31):
Exactly. That, that’s the thing. That’s the secret that I don’t like. You don’t know what, unless we

Brad (00:12:36):
Gave it away, all the other trainers are listening going, oh, I’m gonna redo my branding now. Yeah, yeah.

Philip (00:12:41):
Right. <laugh> No, and that’s the thing. You can’t, you don’t, you can’t, you can’t know that until you experience it. We can talk, talk about it all we want on our podcast, and, and I do, Brad, like half of my episodes in the last month are probably about why you should gain weight, you know, or why you should build muscle. Mm-hmm. And it’s not always about gaining net weight on the scale, Brad. Right. It is really about energy and fueling yourself and performance a form performance mindset rather than a, even a physique or a scale mindset. And once you’re focused on performance, all the other things start to come in line. Whether you’re trying to lose fat or not, like you said, you will start to lose fat, it gets easier, your metabolism increases because of the extra muscle mass, the extra weight you’re carrying around, the lower stress, um, the higher protein, the higher fiber. It’s, it all aligns really well.

Brad (00:13:28):
It also seems like right now, as I am a member of the 60 plus division, I just turned 60 recently. And so I’m looking around at my peers and I have a lot of lifelong friends who have had, uh, extreme or a decent or good devotion to athletics and fitness and all that. But it seems like we’re now kind of turning a corner or hitting a fork in the road where the first and foremost objective is to build or preserve that lean muscle mass and muscle strength and not so, uh, concerned, uh, primarily with keeping the waistline down. But I think, you know, the dad bod and the busy working parent male or female from ages 25 to age 50 or what have you, is kind of just not eating too much food and, and keeping your, your pants size the same. But now it seems like, you know, we have an intense focus and a desperate need to keep that muscle on, uh, to the extent that we might even, you know, rethink some of these strategies that maybe have been successful to manage caloric intake.

Philip (00:14:35):
Yeah. Are you familiar with Jonathan Sullivan? Some people call him Sully or Dr. Sully. He wrote the Barbell, the Barbell Prescription, and he uses a term called the Athlete of Aging <laugh>, uh, to that exact concept. If we think of life as, you know, not an inevitable decline, but really, um, an athletic pursuit where we want to thrive as a human. And again, this is why I resonate with your message so, so hard is that that’s what we want. When I’m 95, I still wanna be deadlifting, like I wanna die doing a deadlift. You know what I mean? Like, whatever that means to you. And it hits really close to home for me, Brad, because I’ve had two situations just in the last two weeks with family members. One who passed away after being in a nursing home for a number of years and declining very quickly because he just wasn’t mobile.

Philip (00:15:23):
He could have been, but he kind of, I’ll say, gave up on life. I hate to say it that way, but it was, it was sad, you know? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And he was in a wheelchair, and then the health issues accelerated, because of it. And then another family member who went to the hospital with heart issues. And it’s, it’s the same story we’ve heard so many times. The predominant story we hear with older folks of polypharmacy, right? Taking so many medications on top of each other of heart conditions of metabolic disease, type two diabetes, all of these age-related diseases, even some cancers could all be prevented with a little extra muscle mass, a little more movement <laugh> and, and just watching what you eat and really enjoying the process too.

Brad (00:16:05):
So when you have an intake or a thousand of them, what are the prevailing themes? Like what do you think is the biggest and most egregious offense to healthy living and longevity?

Philip (00:16:20):
Hmm, that’s a good one. The most egregious offense.

Brad (00:16:23):
So is it the junk food diet or is it the, you know, sedentary baseline, daily pattern, that kind of thing?

Philip (00:16:31):
Yeah, I, I mean, I guess the red flags are going to depend on the person, but it generally is the lack of training or training properly. So we’re talking lifting weights, and I know there’s kind of this triumvirate, and I know you talk about it as well of, you know, lifting heavy things and then moving a lot, and then some sort of explosiveness, right? Whether it’s the sprinting or the play or what have you. People are not training, and so no matter what they do with their diet, it’s not going to matter because they’re going to lose muscle. That’s my perspective. So when someone comes to me and says, I wanna fix my diet, I don’t care about lifting weights right now. I’m like, let’s flip that around <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>. Let’s flip that around. If I can get you in the gym, it’s going to cascade to your desire to fuel what you’re doing in the gym to want to eat healthier. You’re gonna have better regulated hunger signals, you’re gonna have greater insulin sensitivity. All the other things that lead to the eating side becoming much easier. And guess what? You’ll have a little more resilience even if your diet isn’t so great. Like, at least to start until we start to optimize it going forward.

Brad (00:17:32):
Yeah. I think what you just said is hugely underrated. Like, people do not make that connection. They, they, you know, the diet industry is massive and all the programming and things we’ve heard our whole life to where, you know, you just gotta manage your portion sizes and fast a little bit or try keto or do this or do that. But then maybe like, describe in more detail how going and hoisting some weight around is going to optimize your dietary habits.

Philip (00:18:00):
<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is a great topic. I mean, I think, so there’s multiple reasons for it. The, the big one is I think the hormones and the insulin sensitivity from lifting weights, which is extremely underrated because we know that in insulinemia, you know, the term term

Brad (00:18:18):
<laugh>, hyperinsulinemia hyperinsulinemia, chronically excessive production of insulin

Philip (00:18:22):
Hyper. Yes, yes, yes. Always trying to suck out the technical terms, um, which is related to cortisol, which is related to, um, the, the lack of muscle mass is extremely important ’cause muscle ing for glucose, right? So the more muscle mass you have, the better you can utilize the carbs that you’re eating. And I always, I always talk about carbs in the context of how sedentary you are, because you can’t simplify carbs being good or bad, right? You can’t just say, well, carbs are bad. Well, if you’re sedentary for sitting on the couch all day, the more carbs you eat, sure it’s just gonna go to fat storage. Really any excess of calories are, but carbs especially, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there’s inflammation and et cetera. And quite the opposite happens when you, your strength training is that your body wants to suck those carbs up.

Philip (00:19:04):
The, you know, both the a TP and then the glycolytic process that comes after that from long training sessions, from having the muscle mass. It’s just gonna suck it up like a sponge. That’s another way I like to say it. And so you need those carbs, you know, you want those carbs. Um, where was I going with this? In that <laugh> from a from a metabolic and insulin perspective for food, it means that you can have a very flexible diet, both in terms of macronutrients and calories. You can be fueled up, you can eat more food and be living the vast majority of your year, not dieting. That’s what I wanted you to get to is where you’re almost never dieting. Isn’t that great?

Brad (00:19:43):
I mean, I hope people, do you really get this insight deeply? You powered through that with, uh, with a great explanation, uh, and, and the sink concept. Uh, so I want people to fully understand like when you have a lot of muscle mass on your body, or you’re stimulating the muscles in a workout, the, the glucose is going into the muscle to refuel and replenish. That’s insulin’s job is to restore energy into storage depots. We know about how it does that into the fat stores, but it’s also doing that to, uh, help, you know, replenish and recover your muscles and compare and contrast to someone who’s sitting around what happens to that glucose. Well, in the case of the trends of modern lifestyle in America and, and across the world, you’re gonna get type two diabetes over years in decades because the glucose just flows around in your bloodstream. Insulin is produced, that mechanism gets exhausted. That’s that hyperinsulinemia. And then you have elevated glucose and elevated insulin, and that’s the disease pattern of life. So it’s sorta, you, you know, the reason that going and lifting weights is important is so you don’t get diabetes in a nutshell.

Philip (00:20:57):
Yeah. And, and in the short term, take advantage of the fact that it, you know, it suppresses those pro postprandial glucose spikes mm-hmm. Blink spikes, which then affect your hunger signals. Mm-hmm. You have much better regulated, you know, satiety, um, all this GLP one talk about the weight loss drugs. Well, your body has that naturally and, and strain training can,

Brad (00:21:14):
Without side effects,

Philip (00:21:15):
Can trigger it. Yeah. Can trigger it. And it, which intends to decline with age, which is one of many reasons. People have more and more difficulty as they age, unless you’re training, training. So to me, lifting weights, it kind of, I don’t wanna say it solves everything, but it is kind of the magic pill to a lot of these issues that people have with age. And, and Brad, I’ve had clients who are very well muscled and they need to lose some body fat. ’cause they’re, they’re very over fat as well, but they have much better health markers than somebody with less muscle who’s overweight. And, and that just tells you something right there, that it, there’s a huge mitigating factor that muscle mass that can’t be under underrated.

Brad (00:21:52):
I’m kind of curious, um, how someone gets to that point, because if you are a fit enough person to carry around an impressive amount of muscle mass, why the heck do you still have a gut there? And it must be, oh, I’ll

Philip (00:22:04):
Tell you, <laugh>,

Brad (00:22:05):
Just, you know, horrible dietary choices that override all these beautiful insulin sensitivity benefits of lifting the weights every day.

Philip (00:22:14):
Yeah. I mean, there’s multiple reasons. One, one is intentional in that power, in the power lifting world, people intentionally gain a lot of weight to push more lifts and, and get bigger numbers. And so

Brad (00:22:24):
Yeah. Physics. Yeah.

Philip (00:22:25):
Y you, that’s all it is. Uh, yeah. Yeah. You get more cross-sectional area, um, yeah. You know what I’m saying? The, these allometric scaling that occurs and then, um, the absolute numbers that scale up once you gain more weight, um, and frankly, just some people never had a great diet to begin with, even though they lift weights, it doesn’t, they’re not mutually exclusive. It’s very possible to have a poor diet and still have been able to lift and build muscle over time, as long as you have the just net fuel in your body. It’s not efficient. But guys come to me and they’re like, Hey, I’ve tried carnivore, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that. And we, we work together to say, look, all you need is a good nutritious whole food diet. Look at your protein, look at your fiber. You’re still gonna have plenty of calories coming in, but we’re just gonna, you know, track what’s going in your body, and we’re gonna regulate that so that you can drop some of that fat and then get back to a, a nice lean state, and then you’re good to go. I’m right now in a gaining phase, Brad, I am, I’ve gained 15, almost 20 pounds over the last six months. But you could, I mean, you can see me just my top. It’s not like I’m, I’m fat, right? <laugh>, uh, but I do that on a regular basis. I will gain 20 pounds and then lose 20 pounds, but with the intent to build muscle over time.

Brad (00:23:32):
So describe how and why you initiate these gaining phases.

Philip (00:23:38):
Yeah. For efficiency. So if you gain, right now, the, the research based on the latest studies and meta-analysis, which are quite recent, there’ve been maybe four or five studies in the last five years that have given us the most of this data. Gaining weight at around, let’s say 0.3 to half a percent of your body weight a week for a beginner, intermediate is kind of the optimal level where you’re going to gain the most muscle without gaining too much fat in terms of time duration, you know, and it’s gonna depend on the individual. So if you’ve done it before, you may know your individual numbers mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, and they might be higher or lower. Um, if you kind of know that, and let me tell you, I have spreadsheets for all this stuff, right. You know, I have a numbers guy where you can plug in numbers and know exactly how efficient your muscle gaining was, so that next time you go in bulk, you could either go faster or slower. Um, but then you do that and, and now you’re talking six, nine, maybe 12 months, where you add a significant amount of muscle, and we’re talking multiple pounds, right? Five, 10 pounds of muscle. Uh, and then you can do a fat loss phase, and then you can effectively sustain that. The alternative is doing a more intuitive approach and kind of maintaining your weight and building muscle slowly over time. It’s just gonna take a lot longer to add those slabs of meat to your body. That’s all.

Brad (00:24:53):
So are you systematically over consuming calories when you’re in the gaining phase? Uh, and as well as doing hypertrophy style workouts?

Philip (00:25:04):
It, it’s exactly what it is. Yeah. You’re in an intentional calorie surplus. It’s not crazy. It’s not a, a dreamer bulk as they would call it back in the day, or power lifters, you know, go in and order, you know, 10 cheeseburgers and like three orders of fries. It is maybe 200 calories a day surplus, right? Something like that. For most people, that’s

Brad (00:25:22):
50. That’s what every age, Philip, come on.

Philip (00:25:24):
Just naturally, right? <laugh>

Brad (00:25:25):
Come on.

Philip (00:25:25):
But they’re not training. They’re not

Brad (00:25:27):
Training. There ain’t no surplus. We’re, we’re not training in a lifelong surplus. Yeah.

Philip (00:25:30):
Yeah. What happens though is if you’re doing it, uh, consistently, and by consistently, I mean because you’re tracking, you don’t fall too low or you’re unintentionally not in a surplus, um, your expenditure, your metabolism will tend to ramp up quite a bit. Um, hundreds of calories. Like for most people, for women, it’ll, I’ll tend to see anywhere from like a hundred to maybe four or 500 calorie increase over the months. For guys, it could be a thousand, it could be 2000. It’s insane. And you’re eating, you know, where you start eating 26, 2700 calories, you might end up 4,000 or more. Like I’m up to 4,000 now. Ol,’s a lot of food, man. <laugh>, it’s a lot of food.

Brad (00:26:06):
So your metabolism is increasing as a consequence of both eating more food and doing these strenuous workouts

Philip (00:26:17):
Yes. And gaining more weight. Right. ’cause you’re carrying around more, your BMR is higher. Right. Um, and probably metabolic adaptation that ac it’s like opposite metabolic adaptation where your body is just so flooded with energy. It’s, it tries to be as inefficient as possible in burning calories. You know, the opposite of, um, how so? What do you mean? How so? I mean, I mean, you’re,

Brad (00:26:39):
You’re over consuming calories. So what is the adaptation that’s occurring where the body’s trying to

Philip (00:26:45):
Yeah, I, I mean, I believe it’s just your body is not trying to hoard calories like it would during a fat loss phase. When, I mean, at the, at the mitochondrial level, you’re even conserving energy. The hormones get down regulated. I think it’s just the opposite of that. Right. So I don’t know to what extent that’s the case. I don’t think we have science that says it’s, these are the exact components. Yeah.

Brad (00:27:04):
It’s, I just know it happens. It’s fascinating. Yeah. A fascinating topic. Well, you know, it happens and the science is, uh, what your scale says, uh, three months later, because theoretically you would gain, um, way more than you did if you just counted calories and, and had the same lower metabolic rate. Right?

Philip (00:27:25):
Right. Exactly. That, that’s where you would hit plateaus if you weren’t tracking that and staying on top of it. Um, you, you basically have to over consume, buy more each week as your body is ramping up. Its

Brad (00:27:37):
<laugh> its, it’s, it’s the opposite of, um, of the traditional approach to, uh, fat loss where you’re lowering calories, lowering calories, and uh, a lot of times, uh, that doesn’t work so well as we know.

Philip (00:27:49):
Exactly. Yeah. It, it’s, I’ll say it’s not a symmetrical problem, right? Like the fat loss side of the equation has lots more detrimental potential when you are chasing down into a deficit. ’cause now, you know, getting to zero means you starve to death. Right. Going the other way is a bit of a different situation. It’s more of you’re maybe trying to stuff yourself. And I don’t like to put it that way. ’cause if somebody gets to that point, we need to talk and figure something out that is more sustainable, but it’s not a symmetrical problem, if that makes sense.

Brad (00:28:19):
Well, also what’s interesting is I assume you’re choosing exclusively healthful high satiety, high nutrient dense foods. And so it’s not the cheeseburger and the milkshake, uh, diet. And you know, therefore, like you say, it’s a ton of calories, uh, it feels like you’re a chore to eat that much food because you still have optimal appetite and satiety signals, but you’re overriding them in order to add some more muscle.

Philip (00:28:49):
Yeah. That is a, actually a big challenge is <laugh> when you have that high volume food Yeah. And you’re trying to gain weight. Now, if we think of whole foods, there are calorie dense whole foods. Right. Like nuts. So that is where you start to incorporate more, um, nutritious foods that are also calorie dense

Brad (00:29:06):
And try to, it’s like a, a smoothie

Philip (00:29:08):
Yeah. Predigested, things like that. Um, and you know what, for flexibility though, I, I do think it’s okay to have maybe five, 10% of your diet just, I don’t wanna say free for all, but it’s there for some flexibility. I know, I, we may not be on the a hundred percent same, same page there, but in my view is when people restrict completely, they tend to binge, they tend to get go the other direction. Yeah. Um, and honestly, when you have everything else dialed in, you’re, you’re, you’re pretty good from that perspective. Um, the other thing what’s interesting, you mentioned hunger. Your hunger signals regulate, and then what I find happens is you are really good at telling whether your body needs more calories before you know it, like before the data tells you. Because you can actually get hungry in a gaining phase. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. If you’re starting to fall behind your metabolism. Yeah. Just be, I’ll have clients say, why am I hungry? I’m eating 3,500 calories. I was eating 20. I’m like, because your body is hungry. <laugh>.

Brad (00:30:01):
Yeah. That’s fascinating. Even though

Philip (00:30:02):
You’re eating a lot of calories.

Brad (00:30:03):
Yeah. That’s fast. Yeah. And, and you’re turning up these important dials. I’ve talked about this a lot on my podcast referencing the work of Dr. Herman Ponzi, author of Burn and talking to Jay Feldman four times the Energy Balance podcast, where he has this bio energetic model of health where Yeah. Yeah. Jay. Yeah. The more you, the, the more you consume in nutritious foods, I’m talking exclusively about that. Not shoveling junk down your throat, but when you consume an optimal, or even, uh, in your case, like a, an aggressive amount of calories, you’re going to turn up the dials of reproduction, repair growth in locomotion. I wonder if you experience certain symptoms like you’re a little warmer or you’re more fidgety at your work desk. ’cause your knee’s tapping because you have so much energy and so much energy to burn.

Philip (00:30:47):
Yeah, that’s a really good one. You definitely get hotter. I hear that all the time. It’s like you get hotter. And so for women who are in peri post menopause and they have hot flashes already, it’s a, it’s kind of an interesting one, <laugh>. Um, although some of those symptoms get mitigated when they’re actually building muscle. Just ladies who are listening, just so you know, uh, it’s kinda interesting. But yeah, the fidgeting is another one that definitely explains why your metabolism takes off like a rocket because everything stacks on top of itself. You, you actually move more unconsciously. And that’s, this leads to the joke about power lifters trying to do as little as possible when they’re not lifting weights so that they don’t have to eat even more <laugh>. Right. It’s kind of a joke, right? We want to be active, we want to be walking. Um, it’s great for recovery, et cetera. But there is a long time joke about powerlifters just like acting, like sloths between their lifting sessions. Yeah.

Brad (00:31:37):
Well, what’s really interesting about that is now emerging research in the endurance athletic world, uh, especially with these Norwegian triathletes who coached by Olav Alexander Bu, a scientists with a scientific approach. And, uh, we’re now realizing that the consumption of calories as many as possible, is fueling a more ambitious training regimen than we’ve ever seen. Whereby these guys can go faster for longer and train harder than any triathlete, uh, from back in historical times. And it’s really fascinating to me, ’cause I felt like I stuffed my face every day for those nine years of training and traveling on the professional triathlon circuit. And we always had to have food around us. And I traveled with a bag of food, but it was the only way we could sustain a really ambitious training regimen. And we also learned from like old time bodybuilding culture that, uh, the limiting factor for Mr.

Brad (00:32:34):
Universe to not have even bigger muscles or Arnold in the movie Pumping Iron, the limiting factor was not that they couldn’t train another hour a day and go from five hours a day to six hours a day. The limiting factor was the ability to digest and assimilate calories. And your stomach will explode if you go over 7,000 calories every day for six months time, requiring you to downregulate your training. But, uh, somehow the triathletes who are training eight hours a day, now, they’re, they’re inhaling so much food, not only in real life, but during exercise that they’re able to go really fast and be in the carbohydrate burning heart rates rather than this huge emphasis we’ve always had an endurance of like, you wanna be a good fat burner and you wanna lower your heart rate so you’re burning emphasizing fat burning during your workouts and you’re not getting tired. So it’s kind of like flipping it on its ear to say, eat more, train harder, get fitter, build more muscle, live longer.

Philip (00:33:33):
Yeah, exactly. And I, I didn’t, I didn’t know, I didn’t know if that’s always a good thing, but in general, if you’re doing it right and you, you structure your recovery well, you can avoid, because what I, what I also see is if you go, you know, if you go too hard, then now you potentially have joint and tendon issues, especially for those bodybuilders where they’re almost outpacing their own ability to, with their connective tissue to support what they’re doing. Of course, that’s where enhanced and steroids come into play too, for some of those. But that’s another great point about why we, we become this huge furnace, is that you can train harder in an almost exponential way when you’re highly fueled, thus accelerating the ability to build that muscle. Maybe that’s why it’s super efficient to be in a calorie surplus. Yeah. You know, that, that kind of ramp up of your, I see it myself as well.

Philip (00:34:20):
And one of the hardest things is to pull back from that when you need to, when you’re trying to like peak out on your strength, when you’re trying to peak out on your strength and you actually wanna reduce the volume and actually hit max loads, it feels like you’re not working out that much <laugh>. Mm-hmm. So you’re almost, you almost have to have to hold back. Like just today I didn’t do accessory work in my training ’cause I’m in a final three week phase where I’m gonna peak out on week four on my squat, my deadlift, my press. I’m deliberately eliminating all that volume to put it all into the ability to hit those, those lifts. And it, it feels like I’m not working <laugh> because I have all this energy like you suggested.

Brad (00:34:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, I’d say it’s become a hugely controversial subject because we have so many longevity experts touting the amazing life extension benefits of fasting and restricting carbohydrates to the extent of ketogenic eating. And I’ve had a big recalibration in my own, um, mindset and belief system and, and strategy to realize that if you’re in that category of healthy, active athletic person with good blood values and so forth, the restriction of calories for any reason is unwarranted. And I’d much rather focus on eating more, moving more training harder, recovering faster as my path to longevity. My new mantra as, as listeners know, is perform, recover, perform, recover. And that there is no, um, role of fasting in that equation. And I appreciate this discussion about kind of the opposite strategy, because you look healthy on the screen, man, you’re putting up some big weights. I mean, how are we gonna measure your longevity and your basic health and fitness status right now? How about pulling a new PR on the deadlift? So whatever you’re doing is working by definition as opposed to, um, starving yourself and heading to the gym and pulling some moderate weights or whatever the, the opposite would be.

Philip (00:36:18):
Yeah. And I, I feel like the, when you get to that point of building that foundation, even if you are gonna go into a calorie deficit and go into a fat loss phase, it tends to be so much easier and almost not feel like a diet. I mean, I have a lot of clients in this situation where I say, look, let’s, let’s not worry about cutting right now. Let’s build a, build a foundation. What you’re gonna find after that is that a quote unquote diet, maybe the only diet you’ll ever do, because you’re trying to get to that whatever leanness that is, that you’re gonna walk around as, even that isn’t gonna feel that hard. It might take 12 weeks and it might be at a moderate rate of loss. And because you have this high metabolism, it’s kind of easy to do and you’re still gonna eat mostly what you like. You know, you have to cut out a few things here and there, um, and then you’re done. So doesn’t that sound great? Like if you’re listening to that, just understand how powerful that is versus the yo-yo dieting always losing weight, losing muscle when you lose weight. ’cause that’s what happens when you don’t train. And then you get more and more skinny fat or fat over time. And then the metabolic issues ramp up, you know, as we age.

Brad (00:37:17):
Yeah. I wonder, you’ve probably seen this too, when we were, uh, you know, really first building the Primal Blueprint community and doing retreats and interacting with a lot of people. There was a lot of people that came to us with seemingly severe metabolic damage from a long history of yo-yo dieting. And they’d come forth and report that, Hey, I tried your eating style of, uh, the ancestral approach with meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. I don’t eat any grains anymore. I don’t eat processed sugars. I’m not drinking my Starbucks anymore and I’m still, uh, struggling to reduce excess body fat. And I wonder if you see that amongst your population. And are there some people that just because of their past history or their current status of poor metabolic flexibility or whatever you wanna call it, do they require some kind of a different approach? Or how do you, how do you deal with that?

Philip (00:38:10):
Yeah, sure. I mean, there, I’m, I’m that, I might be that guy. So I was <laugh>, so way back in the day I did at Atkins, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Remember Atkins, even Slim Fast. I mean, it’s crazy the stuff I tried over the years. And then I joined the CrossFit community back in 2010. I did that for about eight years, and I found out about the primal community and paleo, and I actually did that. I have so many cookbooks still in my kitchen with paleo recipes, <laugh>. Okay. Um, and I did, I was still overweight and I couldn’t quite get there either. It helped a little bit, right? It helped in terms of other aspects of health. But without that training stimulus, you’re right, there was a big missing piece. That’s the piece that I’m so passionate about now. That’s why I like put it at the top of the list.

Philip (00:38:57):
And everything else kind of falls from that. Hmm. Um, the, the, the other thing is, what was I gonna say about that? I think people get too hung up in the fact that certain foods, whether you talk about the quality of food or the exact type of food or the macro, are going to solve everything for them, or mm-hmm <affirmative>. Vastly improve their metabolic health. I think even if you had the quote unquote perfect diet, it is not enough. It is just not, you have to give yourself a chance to live like a human, a functional, physical, pushing things around human <laugh> in the world. I knew a guy, Kevin, Kevin, um, what’s his name? Oh man. Kevin Shan, is that his last name? He’s in a wheelchair. He’s paralyzed from the waist down. And one of his favorite things to do every day is lift weights. And he talks about it so passionate. He’s like, no one has an excuse, if you can, I mean, if you can move something on your body, you can be active and you should be active. He’s very inspiring guy

Brad (00:39:50):
Right there, <laugh>. There’s, it’s within reach of everyone. And interestingly, it doesn’t take, uh, huge chunks of time to dabble and, and, and progress down this road of being a competent person who does resistance exercise. So it starts there. Diet is not enough. Love it.

Philip (00:40:12):
Yeah.

Brad (00:40:13):
And how about compare contrast to the widespread pursuit of steady state cardio in with the goal of weight loss? Um, you know what I’m gonna have to say about it? ’cause I, I said it on your show, but is there, uh, do you have some insights about the difference between a protocol that, uh, has strength training, some brief explosive activity like sprinting, a foundation of, you know, comfortably placed movement versus the people who are getting that sweaty red face, climbing the stairs for 45 minutes, however many days a week at the gym, or going to these difficult classes like the morning spin class and all that thing as their main and perhaps sole pursuit of fitness, steady state cardio?

Philip (00:40:58):
Yeah. There’s a couple angles I could come at this one from. One is the fact that you can find thousands if not millions of people who don’t do any of that type of cardio and have amazing health. I mean, if that’s not proof, you know, people who lift, people who walk, they eat, right. You know, like you said, they might, they might do occasional activity, they might play sports, you know, they have fun, but they’re not doing that. I know what you refer to as metronomic day in, day out cardio, that, that’s one, that’s one answer I have. Another one is just clients that I’ve worked with, especially women who have, have what they think is a, an adrenal failure or an issue, you know, an issue with their cortisol. They have hormonal issues. They might be as young as 27 or in per and post menopause.

Philip (00:41:46):
And it’s often that they’re just doing too much, that the stress is compounding what’s going on with their bodies. And when I tell them, let’s just drop all of that, I mean, I like to take a, like, eliminate all the cardio approach first, add in the lifting, and then start to add in the other things until you hit a equilibrium, a nice equilibrium. Right? You’ll know when you’ve gone past that point. And I had a client who she thought she would have to be on medications forever. And she was a massage therapist, so she was active like seven, eight hours a day working with people. And she was going to the gym five or six days a week. She was doing Peloton, she was hiking, she was doing a lot. And I got her training three days a week for about half an hour lifting really heavy.

Philip (00:42:31):
And they say, no, you shouldn’t put women who have adrenal issues and high stress on medications. Don’t do that. They talk about autoimmune conditions don’t lift heavy. Quite the contrary, the evidence supports lifting heavy for just about any population. And, and I think you know, this, Brad, like, and by heavy I mean 60 to 90% of your max, you know, like whatever you can lift for the, for one single rep of let’s say a deadlift or squat, 60 to 90% is a really solid range to lift in. And what happened to this client is she came off her medications because her stress dropped significantly without any other changes to her lifestyle. It was mainly the movement, like you’re talking about. It was just too much cardio. Um, that’s, that’s just two angles I come at it from. I, I, I, the whole sprinting thing is actually a little bit newer to me, to be honest. And like I said before we started recording, I’m telling everybody about it <laugh>, because I’m doing it myself too. I just did my couple first sprints over the last few weeks.

Brad (00:43:26):
Nice. <laugh>. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a difficult one to ramp up with because most of us stopped from, uh, our last season in middle school soccer or high school or what have you. And then we know from research that we lose the anaerobic explosive muscle fibers at a much greater rate from aging than we do our aerobic conditioning. And for some reason, the fitness population at large, are are getting their, getting their cardio in, but, you know, grossly deficient in anything that resembles near maximum effort.

Philip (00:44:02):
Yeah. And I, I wonder in the lifting community specifically, ’cause I’ve talked to a bunch of guys since you came on the show, there are different pockets of knowledge and understanding when it comes to quote unquote conditioning because it’s, it’s always been a hot topic with the old adage of like, cardio’s gonna kill your gains, right? And then there was the, the counter argument of no, no, no. In reality, you can actually do a decent amount of cardio up to like half the amount you lift without detriment. The question is, what do you mean by cardio <laugh>? Because that’s a very broad umbrella. And so I start with the lifting and I say, okay, lifting itself is a, is is really a form of cardio. Um, your heart rate is constantly spiking when you’re doing heavy, especially when you’re lifting heavy. I can show you on my Apple watch how <laugh>, you know, look at this

Brad (00:44:48):
Guys.

Philip (00:44:49):
He went on a

Brad (00:44:50):
Jog with a lot of stoplights. I guess

Philip (00:44:52):
It looks like that it, you know, every spike is a rep of, of my dead life. And it pops up to, you know, a hundred thirty, a hundred thirty five, like actually right around the fat max heart rate, believe it or not, kind of interestingly, I dunno if there’s a correlation there. Hmm. Um, but the cumulative amount of getting your heart rate high plus the epoch, right? The post active mm-hmm <affirmative>. Postoc, you know, I’m trying to say exercise post, uh, whatever the, the acronym

Brad (00:45:15):
Is excess post exercise.

Philip (00:45:16):
Excess post, yes.

Brad (00:45:17):
Oxygen consumption is, there you go. There you go. The concept is that you, there you go, you burn more calories after the workout, and that’s where you get the really strong driver for fat reduction. It’s not the 800, 700 calories you burned right at the workout, but it’s the next 24 hours. That matters a lot.

Philip (00:45:34):
Yeah. And I, I still use that, the old term afterburner effect and, you know, yeah. Yeah. Well that’s, that’s not real. But actually there is, there is, it is still a, a thing. Um, so there, so just lifting alone is gonna get you somewhat well conditioned. And then I go to the next step and say, okay, does your strength training program include speed work or enough volume that that also increases your work capacity? So that takes you to another level of conditioning. So for example, um, the west side barbell guys like Louis Simmons, the conjugate style program. Now those guys were like big enhanced power body power lifters. But the principles that they used, and, and I don’t have to go into all the training principles of conjugate, but they had two days a week that were max effort and two days a week that were dynamic effort.

Philip (00:46:20):
And on the dynamic effort days, they would use accommodating resistance. So they would use bands or chains. Um, if you don’t have bands or chains, you just use vol. You use speed. So you do a lot of, uh, sets of low reps sub maximally. So rather than doing say, three sets of five heavy squats, you might do 10 sets of two at 70%. Right. And you’re taking 30 or 60 seconds rest instead of 2, 3, 4 minutes rest. And you are exploding on that concentric as, you know, as powerfully as you can, where the, the power, the, the plates are rattling. Like that’s a good indicator that you’ve done it right. And that builds work capacity. It builds, uh, the movement pattern. You know, it like, it’s a, uh, developmental variation for the main pattern when you’re not without, um, taxing your central nervous system with the load.

Philip (00:47:11):
And then you’ve got conditioning as well. So I like that approach. If you’re a lifter, then I say, okay, what else do we need walking? That’s the next form of cardio. We’ve gotta, you know, get to that eight to 10,000 steps is usually solid for a lot of people. It’s very practical. If you wanna be a 20,000 a step a day guy, go for it. But, you know, eight or 10. And then it’s the big question, Brad, what do we do? Do we need anything else? And so when my clients are in fat loss, they’re like, should I get a little cardio boost? And what I’ve recommended up to this point is some form of medium steady state, like on a bike or pushing a prowler, but not running. ’cause I’m, I’m a big fan of, you know, recovery involving using the concentric and not the eccentric, right? Mm. You do all those, those, um, squats, those air squats and CrossFit mm-hmm <affirmative>. That is you’re gonna be sore, <laugh>, you’re gonna be sore. Right. Concentric the centric.

Brad (00:48:00):
Yeah. Just define that a little bit in case case people are falling off a bit falling.

Philip (00:48:06):
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It’s, it’s the, I’ll guess, I guess I’ll say the pushing up part of the movement the contractile part of the, so like in a squat, it’s the coming up part of the squat where it’s going down.

Brad (00:48:15):
That’s the concentric.

Philip (00:48:16):
That’s the concentric, yeah.

Brad (00:48:17):
Down the concentric is, is lifting up. And the eccentric the centric is like when the muscle is length, uh, it’s lengthening and shortening at the same time or something. That’s why you get sore. Is that the definition?

Philip (00:48:32):
Yeah. Yeah. I should get a better way to describe it, but yes, I, I think of like running, for example, the concentric is when you push off the ground, the eccentric is when you land.

Brad (00:48:42):
Yeah. So when you’re landing people like going down a hill and you see your quads tighten or, or, or, or tense. But they’re also being forced to, um, absorb the impact. So they’re, they’re kind of, uh, they’re, they’re, they’re flexing, but they’re shortening at the same time. Same with lowering down, uh, from the deadlift is lifted off the ground and then you lower the eccentric part is what causes that. Uh, micro tears in the muscle and soreness. And I believe that’s exclusively so like you can’t get sore doing concentric things. Only the eccentric,

Philip (00:49:18):
Right. ’cause the eccentric is what controls the resistance against gravity. Right. So that’s what leads to the muscle producing force and then tearing and, and

Brad (00:49:28):
Sorts. Oh, right. You, you’re, you’re absorbing gravitational force while you’re Yeah. Flexing the muscle as opposed to, um, not absorbing the, the gravitational force. Yeah. Yeah.

Philip (00:49:38):
Which is why I like say swimming or biking or pushing or pulling a, a sled Yeah. As forms of quote unquote cardio. But like we talked about before, I like the idea of sprinting as opposed to hit. Um, I used to, I used to be into the Tabata style CrossFit hit, which is like the inverse of what you, you know, it would be like a two to one work to rest ratio. And then I kind of evolved toward a maybe one-to-one. But I like the one to six that, that you talk about with sprinting as well, regardless. Very few. My clients do much of that cardio anyway, <laugh>, because they find they don’t need to, and most people don’t quote unquote, like doing <laugh>, this kind of cardio.

Brad (00:50:18):
Yeah. I mean that’s a great yeah, that’s a great reason is for, for recovery from the other workouts. Yeah. You’re gonna be bashing your muscles with the ultimate eccentric behavior of, of, of running down a paved road. Especially. You mentioned Tabata, which is a popular, uh, interval training protocol. But what’s so funny about that has been widely, um, misappropriated and abused because the original research with the Japanese speed skaters was, it was a four minute workout, it was 20 seconds on ten second rest, 20 seconds, 20 seconds work, or is that the opposite? Excuse me, 20 seconds work 10 seconds rest. Yeah. Two

Philip (00:50:59):
To one. Yeah, yeah,

Brad (00:50:59):
Yeah. Two to one work to rest. Yeah. And, um, then you’re done in four minutes, but you go to the local neighborhood fitness club and they say 9:00 AM Tabata class. And so they’ll do like all kinds of crap with this two to one work to rest ratio. First with your bicycle pedaling, and then you get off and do some, uh, some pole work or whatever. But the workout’s meant to be an extremely challenging high intensity interval session. And that’s the, it’s over in four minutes besides warmup cool down and all that stuff. So it, it’s a great protocol unless you extend it out to an hour of CrossFit where you’re doing Tabata box jumps and rope climbs and upside down pushups and things that get people injured when they get fatigued at the end.

Philip (00:51:44):
And then, and then you do grace and you do, you know, where you’re doing like 30 power cleans with 1 35? I I was there, I did it for eight years. It didn’t, it didn’t do anything for me other than gimme some injuries, some tweaks. I was miserable most of the time. Although I love the community <laugh> and I touched a barbell for the first time, which was great, but I didn’t, I didn’t learn proper form until after I stopped doing CrossFit and just focused on, on training. Um, and that’s important for people to know because I think, I think it’s okay to be, I don’t wanna say judgmental, but I, I try to discourage people from doing those things at all. Like, I’m not sure that there is any positive, even when you have the community aspect. I think there’s other ways to do that. <laugh>, there are some really good group traditional strength training programs now where you can get any group but actually train with progressive overload. Do it low and slow, take your rest periods, have your recovery. Yeah. Um, that’s what I would encourage people look to look for.

Brad (00:52:38):
I’ll tell you, my CrossFit strategy that was very successful for me is you bail out at around the one third or the halfway mark. ’cause I’ve done a grand total of three or four CrossFit classes in my life visiting someone. Hey, let’s try this out. Um, and there’s so many good aspects of the community and the philosophy of broadbased functional fitness and all that great stuff, as opposed to training for a marathon, it’s the run fit club where we show up and we jog six miles every day. We’re CrossFits building all these skills, but like at the one third to halfway mark, I was good and I’m a fit person, but you know, they’re saying, okay, we’re gonna do 15 pull-ups and then come over here and do the box jump and then climb the rope. All right, I did it high five.

Brad (00:53:22):
And then they go, okay, now we’re gonna do a set of eight and then break it down to four, and then we’re gonna do five. And I’m like, what the f are you talking about? I just did 15 pullups. That’s a, you know, that’s a personal best for the year. Uh, so I think the fatiguing aspect of a lot of traditional fitness programming is the big problem, not the workout design so much. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You know, when we’re talking about elite, high performing athletes, especially the people we watch in the Olympics, they’re not blasting these workouts to the point where they’re on their hands and knees and having shitty times in the last four reps. They are very consistent and they’re almost always working well within their capacity. We will watch, uh, Gabby Thomas collapsing on the ground after running a mile time trial since she’s the Olympic 200 meter champion. And that was not her cup of tea, but even then she got up if you wanna watch the video, and did four straightaways of one 50 builds or whatever. So, uh, we’re socialized, I think, to struggle and suffer. And CrossFit is extremely to blame there, as well as the endurance community to blame rather than a properly organized training session where you don’t walk out of there staggering to the nearest pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

Philip (00:54:34):
Yeah. And I think it comes down to what are you trying to accomplish? And if that is not getting you what you’re trying to accomplish, I

Brad (00:54:40):
Wanna crush myself, man. That’s my goal.

Philip (00:54:42):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I wanna be miserable and I want, you know,

Brad (00:54:44):
<laugh>, I wanna be injured. I want to be miserable.

Philip (00:54:47):
Yeah. Even if, and, and I’ll tell you, if you, if your goal is to get your VO two max up, you could do that with lifting and walking <laugh>. And if you wanna get a little bit higher, apparently sprinting, which by the way, I’m gonna do a official VO two max test. It’s been a long time. I got one scheduled for later this month when I’m at the peak of my bulk and I’m at my heaviest, and I’ve barely, I’ve barely started sprinting. That’s gonna be my baseline. I’m gonna report back after about three months, once I’ve lost about 15, 20 pounds and have been sprinting for a while. We’ll see, I’ll give you that, I’ll share that data with you. You

Brad (00:55:16):
Guys, listeners, VO two max is a volume of oxygen per milliliter per kilogram of body weight. So you’re, you’re gonna be gaming the test if you, if you drop 10 pounds, your VO two max score. I don’t.

Philip (00:55:29):
Yeah,

Brad (00:55:29):
No, I’m just, yeah, yeah. No, it’s great. We,

Philip (00:55:30):
We can normalize it. You can nor I bet you can normalize it by, uh, by body weight

Brad (00:55:34):
And, you know, also, uh, yeah, well, you have maximum volume period, and then, and, and that’s, you know, I don’t think that would be, um, affected by anything, whether you’re lifting weights or, or, or sprinting. I mean, you, you kind of have, that’s why VO O2 max is, uh, largely genetically determined. It’s just how much oxygen can you consume when you’re exercising at high intensity. Yeah. But I’m also annoyed at how, um, the, the fascination and the, and the hype around VO two max is like the ultimate anti-aging marker. And it is, if your VO two max is terrible, then you’re in bad shape, son, and you better get your butt together and get out there and move your body and, and work your heart and lungs. However, once you have a competent VO two max, which I’m certain that you’ll have from your life, fun lifetime commitment to fitness, um, it, it’s, it’s not such a big deal. And arguably we might want to negotiate for carrying around more muscle mass as hitting another important fitness pillar that directly compromises your VO O2 max potential.

Philip (00:56:35):
Yeah. Which then brings up another issue, or not an issue, but, um, a curiosity people might have is how important a lot of these health metrics are resting heart rate, um, lipids and

Brad (00:56:47):
HRV.

Philip (00:56:47):
Yeah. HRV, especially in the context of your current periodization phase and the body mass and muscle mass you’re carrying around. It is really important. Like BMI, for example, is a totally worthless statistic unless you’re just looking at a population, right. And we know that, um, new metrics like body roundness are more relevant. And honestly, just taking a tape measure of your waist, you, you know, you can kind of, that’s one of the best proxies for body fat right there. Hmm. Anyway, it’s very simple and that’s the kind of data I like working with clients on where it, it’s data, but it’s easy to measure, it’s easy to track. Where I was going with that is that going back to those clients who are highly muscled, but also overweight, I, you will still see health metrics that are not where they need to be because they’re not walking enough. For example, I’ve had clients who are lawyers, they sit around all day, they get 3000 steps, they’re highly muscled. We don’t change anything except their steps. They go up to 6,000, 7,000 and their resting heart rate starts to decline. And a lot of their health markers, according to blood work improve just from the walking. And so that’s just, just, you know, more proof of the power of being an active person in general and not having to do it via miserable cardio or <laugh>, you know, chronic cardio

Brad (00:57:59):
Is 3000 pretty crappy. Is that like a pretty inactive person? So you will, even if you’re just going from the parking garage to the office building, and then you go down the hall to use the bathroom, and then you walk around the house, are you gonna get up to like one or two or 3000 steps with doing almost, you know, minimal exercise?

Philip (00:58:21):
So if I think of my own self working at home, if I was recovering from surgery and I could hardly do anything. No, I, I’ve been in that state. I probably still

Brad (00:58:30):
Got, imagine this <laugh>, I

Philip (00:58:31):
Still got like 1500, 1500 steps. I don’t know, you can almost, not it. Oh, really? Unless you’re just Wow. Just sitting in one spot all day, which ipo? There are people who do that. Um, I mean, this guy was lifting weights, so just from the lifting sessions, he, you know, three days a week he was probably getting 3000 steps from his lifting session, or 2000. I really

Brad (00:58:49):
Say Wow.

Philip (00:58:49):
Maybe 2000. Yeah. Um, I pace I, between my sets Yeah. To get steps while I’m working out. Yeah. So that’s a good trick for people to have it stack uhhuh <affirmative>. But going from three to six and then six to eight or nine, we know that that seven to nine is really the sweet spot, right. Based on the mortality literature. Yeah. On a massive step change Yeah. In your health. And that’s not inaccessible for most people, seven to nine. It’s not crazy.

Brad (00:59:12):
If it is, then we got problems and we gotta talk about it. We gotta set you up with your lifestyle with Philip and, and take, do that intake form and say, what the heck’s going on here. That’s right. I mean, back to the message of the book Born to Walk, like this is a whole separate category from your fitness objectives and your to-do list is that we are obligated to be in movement throughout the day. It’s, it’s a, it’s a no-brainer. It’s like on the same category as sleeping, and then, oh, do you want to have a high quality fit, active, energetic life? Then let’s talk about fitness. But I kind of put that, I put that in the given category rather than, oh, okay, I have to do some weight lifting twice a week and I gotta <laugh>, I gotta walk. Like, no kidding. Yeah.

Philip (00:59:53):
Yeah. No, I, I don’t, I don’t know what to say to that other than I agree hard, like a hundred percent emoji. Right. Because <laugh>, uh, to, if I have a client who is not walking, and they should be, and, and here’s the thing with coaching, right, is that you can’t force people to do things, but you can try to frame it in a way that shows them it’s inevitable that they need to do this for their own health. I do think like the training consistently and the walking are must dos, no excuses. If you can’t do them, then something else has gotta change. Whether that’s a time audit, getting something else off your plate, eliminating, delegating on and on, it’s a time management thing for a lot of folks, to be honest. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It’s, it’s, that’s your excuse. And there’s no excuse. You could do it with your dog. You do it with your kids. You can do it walking around the house. How many of you’re watching Netflix or scrolling social for at least an hour a day? That hour? Go ahead and scroll social, but walk while you’re doing it. Like, don’t make an excuse.

Brad (01:00:47):
Yeah. It’s like saying, I don’t have the budget for nutritious foods. And then I have my, B.rad Nutrition Guide where they, I rank the world’s most nutritious foods by, by category. And we have sardines up there. We have liver up there, which is dirt cheap compared to buying a steak or even even a hamburger. And so there’s numerous foods that are among the highest on the planet, and they’re pennies compared to driving through Chick-fil-A. I just lost another sponsor, sorry. But you know, <laugh>, there is budget concerns with people and time concerns too. And I’ve heard from those people and they’ve given me some plenty direct feedback that I strongly appreciate and empathize with people that are really jam packed. And we don’t want to cut into sleep with nonsense social media badgering. Like, just get up at 4:30 and do it, man. No excuses. No, not gonna happen. Not gonna be successful. But there’s that time management layered underneath where, oh yeah, I forgot about my Netflix hour to three hours every evening. Can I pinch into that?

Philip (01:01:52):
Yeah. And it’s funny, I just, in my Facebook group yesterday, we posted the question like, what’s one of the, what’s one of the most challenging things about your fitness? And somebody said, getting up at 3:00 AM for cardio. And I replied, all brutal. And I replied, well, I see two problems with this. Do you want me to say what they are? <laugh> cardio

Brad (01:02:10):
And getting up at three 30. Exactly.<laugh>. Oh my goodness.

Philip (01:02:12):
But then, but then to be fair, he said, well, I’m just walking on an incline. I’m like, okay, well, that, that’s a little better than when I thought what you meant with cardio. Mm-hmm. But I’m still saying, you’re getting up at 3:00 AM i hope you’re going to bed at like 7:00 PM or something, <laugh>, because

Brad (01:02:26):
You need your sleep. Hey, that’s a pretty disciplined person right there. If someone who gets up in the dark and walks on an incline Yeah. They’re gonna, they’re gonna succeed with a little, a little tweaking. So Exactly. Before we wrap up, like, if someone just wants to get started and drift over in that direction of being a competent resistance training person that’s building muscle and looking toward that longevity goal, what’s a, what’s a baby step one can take if, if we haven’t gone near that side of the gym, uh, over there with the bros clanking the plates?

Philip (01:02:56):
Yeah. I would really love for somebody to have access to a barbell, and I could give them the baby steps from that. This is the challenge. This is the challenge, Brad, is people, this is one of the excuses you get is, I don’t have access to this or that, or my gym doesn’t have this, or I have a home gym. So really it’s starting what with what you do have access to. Right. And not making any excuses. And then working on the main movement patterns, squatting, picking things up, ing, pressing, and everyone’s at different strength levels. Everyone has different equipment access. Obviously if you reach out to me, I’m happy to give you a free program template or guidance based on what you have. Um, but that’s really what it comes down to. Um, we, we, we could do a whole podcast about progressive overload and training session mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Philip (01:03:39):
You know, training and all of that. But it’s really three days a week usually is sufficient for most people. Um, shouldn’t take more than half an hour to 45 minutes when you’re a beginner. And what we’re looking at is, uh, fairly heavy, fairly low reps. You know, we’re talking four to six, maybe up to eight to 12, you know, in that range of reps, maybe three sets of three or four exercises, uh, full body. And you do that, you take a long, you take long rest periods. By long, I mean at least two or three minutes. These aren’t the 32nd circuit training. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You’re not super setting. You’re just one exercise and then the next, uh, three sets each, and then you take a day off and you do it again three days a week. And that’s it. Like, it’s not at all like anything that you guys think of with F 45 or CrossFit or, you know, the running club. Right. That’s just to keep it very high level, Brad,

Brad (01:04:30):
That’s great. I mean, you can probably, utilize the machines if you’re completely in incompetent with a bar and you wanna learn carefully and slowly. I saw people getting trained with PVC pipes with the experts that came to our Primal con retreats, and it was like, you know, if you do 20 reps with a PVC pipe on deadlift, you’re gonna feel it, even if you’re pretty fit. Like, uh, you don’t have to load up right away and bring in injury risk. I was, I would, I would hope.

Philip (01:05:02):
Yeah. Actually, like, it’s funny, I was just talking to another lifter about the concept of progressive overload. I had a podcast, in fact, today’s episode that just came out, whenever this is coming out, it’s, it’s called, The Only Strength Standard you Need. And it was the idea that the overarching principle of getting strong is that your body needs stress. And by stress I don’t mean chronic stress. I mean, it needs a stimulus, it needs to recover and then it will adapt. But the stress has to be enough, just like in your thermostat. Mm-hmm. It’s only gonna kick in when the house is too cold or too hot. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You need to push and challenge yourself just enough so that you adapt for the next time. So you come in on Monday, you squat, you do three sets of five at whatever weight.

Philip (01:05:44):
I don’t care. Maybe it feels super easy. You go on a Wednesday, I want you to add a certain amount of pounds. Maybe it’s five pounds, maybe it’s two. You know, if you’re not super strong, maybe it’s 10, maybe it’s 20. If you’re just a, you know, 20-year-old male, you know mm-hmm <affirmative>. Testosterone coursing through your veins. And then do that each session at, at some point it’s gonna start to feel heavy. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But you also are gonna be able to keep going up for quite a while. A beginner can double or triple their strength in just a few months. Right.

Brad (01:06:11):
You know, the legend of Milo of Croton, the great legendary ancient Greek Olympic athlete, he was undefeated as a wrestler. One of the, one of the greatest Olympians of all time in the old days, he in Greek history. And, um, he gained his strength by he raised cattle. And so he’d pick up the calf when it was born, and then he’d pick up the calf every day for the rest of his life until he is picking up whatever, a 400 pound <laugh>, 400 pound animal. But yeah, that progressive overload, that that’s, that’s the, yes. I gotta get better at that man. ’cause I’m kind of working with the same weight on my hex bar deadlift. ’cause I, I have some fears about injuries. I, I’ve strained my back before and then I’m performing or recovering in my sprint workouts, my bread and butter. But it’s, it’s a really important point to remember that the body loves that, uh, a challenge adaptation. And that comes when you extend out and, and get toward your limit.

Philip (01:07:05):
Yeah. And you can do that with, you can do that with anything. Like you mentioned machines. There are obviously more, there are obviously different tools for different jobs, some more efficient than others, depending on your goal. And again, we can talk about those details, but doing something and progressing on it is going to be helpful. It’s funny you mentioned the, the low back thing. A lot of people do have fears about injury and I’ve known so many folks. I can think of one guy in particular. He’s an engineer, a guy from India and kind of very skinny, you know, kind of skinny fat, if you will, about 40 years old. Um, eats a lot of Indian food, which delicious. But you know, the, the macros aren’t always optimal for <laugh>, for building. And he had really bad back pain. And this is super common with desk jockeys, right?

Philip (01:07:48):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I’ve experienced it myself, just really sore back pain. I said, why don’t you try deadlifting? I’ll come to my, he lived nearby. I said, come to my home gym and we’ll just do it together. I’ll show you how to do it. Right. And then I’ll give you a simple progression. And he started doing that, and all his pain is gone. Okay. And I’m not, I don’t mean this to say, oh, this is a miracle thing because your particular back issue may be specific mm-hmm <affirmative>. But many of people have seen pain go away in their joints, in their back just from lifting weights. It sounds counterintuitive to folks that don’t quite get it. Like with the deadlift. Yeah. Dead lift’s one of the best tools to improve back pain. You gotta do it right. And you can have good form. Yeah. But, uh, I’m super passionate about that. Yeah. Excellent. It’s great for your joint health. Yeah.

Brad (01:08:28):
You’re getting, you’re getting the blood flowing, you’re getting the disc, uh, lubricated, and you’re working toward a, a stronger, more resilient body. So whatever you’re, whatever got you that back pain in the first place, now you’re a stronger guy. You’re gonna ward it off.

Philip (01:08:41):
And would you rather have a strong bad back than a weak, bad back <laugh>? That’s, that’s the, that’s what I have to say.

Brad (01:08:46):
Phillip Pape, everybody from Wits and Weights podcast, tell us how to connect with you on your, Facebook group and the other places that we should engage.

Philip (01:08:55):
Yeah. I mean, on Facebook we can put the link in, but it’s called Wits and Waits on Facebook. My podcast is Wits and Waits and on Instagram at Wits and Waits. So pretty easy to find me.

Brad (01:09:04):
And you offer this remote service for a consultation and programming.

Philip (01:09:11):
Yeah, I do online nutrition coaching. So it’s really about fat loss, building muscle, all of that. Um, and again, you can go to Wits and Weights.com, learn all about that or hit me up and I’ll, what I really want you to do though, is listen to my podcast first and, and get the basics and understand my philosophy and learn first before, because what I want you to have that foundation. ’cause then you’re gonna really take off and level up.

Brad (01:09:34):
Love it. Nice little assignment. Okay. First people go listen and then, then reach out. Come and form, man. Bring your A game to Philip when you finally That’s it. Reach out and connect. That’s, thank you so much for spending the time and love what you’re doing. Keep it up and thanks for listening everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.