Coach Trent and Jordan discuss a sample day of their diet, and the thought process and years of refinement that have gone into their food choices. For the Jones family, there are five simple rules (really three rules, plus some addendums) that drive food choices:

1. No seed oils
2. No food dye
3. We prioritize whole foods
4. We grow/raise as much of our food as we can
5. We cook what we eat

The seed oil and food dye rule is stated half-jokingly, but only half. While seed oils and food dye have very noticeable negative effects on their own, what cutting them out does is eliminate most of the processed food you could buy at the supermarket. Naturally, this leads to rule three, which is prioritizing whole foods. Real foods. Single ingredients. Mostly meats, greens, dairy, eggs, rice, and other whole grains. Very little comes from a package, preprepared.

Trent and Jordan point out that eating this way not only satisfies the macronutrient density required to live an active, heavy lifting lifestyle, it's also in harmony with the place they live in and the people they come from. Their food is, at its core, Southern soul food, with a few practical additions like tuna and salmon, maple syrup, etc. They are of northern European stock, and thrive on dairy and whole grains. Folks from other ethnic backgrounds may struggle on the same diet.

This episode, therefore, is an analysis of what Trent and Jordan eat, and why, not necessarily what you should eat. That said, this diet is over a decade in the making, and is the result of constant refinement, learning, and intuition.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• How Canola Oil Is Made
• Azure Standard

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

Press got you down? We'll help you lift it back up! In today's episode, Coach Trent and Jordan discuss why the press stalls out, and steps you can take to get it moving again.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• How to Press with Good Technique (Barbell Logic)
• The First Three Questions

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

Coach Trent and Jordan explore the idea of leisure as an essential component of health -- leisure being not mere idleness or passive amusement but an activity of opening oneself up to receiving the gifts of creation from the Creator. They discuss how leisure is the key to understanding oneself, and developing a life of contemplation to allow for spiritual development.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Leisure the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

In the Stress/Recovery/Adaptation model, a lifter must adequately recover from the stress imposed in the gym by lifting weights in order to adapt and get stronger. The main components of recovery are food and sleep, and today Coach Trent and Jordan are talking about food.

The long and the short of it is that if you want to get strong, you will need to eat a lot of food. Possibly a lot more than you are used to. There are a few exceptions, such as the morbidly obese, who can successfully run a novice linear progression in a slight caloric deficit, but the majority of people will need to eat in a surplus to see strength gains. This means gaining weight on the scale, to provide the nutrients necessary for your body to build muscle mass, and to gain the leverage necessary to move heavy weights. Remember the weight on the bar is what is driving progress in the NLP, so anything we can do to continue adding weight to the bar will result in more strength and more muscle mass.

As the champion bodybuilder Lee Haney says: "You can't train like a horse and eat like a bird."

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

Hey we've got standards here! In today's episode, Coach Trent and Jordan talk about strength standards for the beginning lifter, basic targets that any serious lifter should be striving for in the first couple years of their training. While everyone's journey is different, and everyone's absolute strength potential is different, the vast majority of people picking up a barbell can hit these numbers, and should strive to reach them.

Coach Trent and Jordan also discuss some basic healthy habit standards such as sleep, general activity, leisure, and socializing.

The Base (for Men), lbs

115x5 Press

185x5 Bench

225x5 Squat

315x5 Deadlift

The Standards 1.0 (Men)

Simply put, 1/2/3/4 plates for 1 rep. Ideally for 5 reps.

135 Press (one plate on each side of the bar)

225 Bench (two plates)

315 Squat (three plates)

405 Deadlift (four plates)

The Standards 2.0 (Men)

2/3/4/5 plates for one rep, i.e. the Starting Strength "sticker" numbers

200 Press

315 Bench

405 Squat

500 Deadlift

The Base (Women)

70 Press

100 Bench

135 Squat

205 Deadlift

The Standards 1.0

80 Press

115 Bench

185 Squat

250 Deadlift

The Standards 2.0 (sticker numbers)

100 Press

155 Bench

225 Squat

315 Deadlift

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

There's nothing like the community and energy of a great black iron gym, but in our experience, there's also nothing like a home gym. Whether it's a spartan setup in your basement or a luxe sprawling gym in it's own building, a home gym gives you space to train in the way you want, with your own equipment, your own rules, and at your own pace. Perhaps most importantly, a home gym is right there -- no commute, no waiting for equipment. You can train consistently and efficiently when you don't have to drive to a gym and wait for equipment. In the long run, it's the consistent lifters that accomplish the most, and a home gym is the ultimate for consistency.

In today's gym, Coach Trent and Jordan walk through everything you need to build a basic but complete home gym. They also discuss some things to look out for, what items to priotize on a budget, and different options to fit your space, including:

1. Power rack: we like the Rogue R-3 best but the Titan T-3 is a good budget alternative. Rep Fitness also makes very high quality racks in a huge range of sizes and configurations.
2. Barbell: Rogue B&R 2.0, Texas All-American Bar by Buddy Capps
3. Plates and collars: StrengthCo, Rogue machined plates, Rogue HG 2.0 plastic collars, Rogue OSO aluminum collars
4. Plate tree: Rogue vertical plate tree, Texas Strength Systems A-frame plate tree
5. Lifting platform: the best platforms are DIY; they are easy to build and a fraction of the cost of premade platforms. See links below for build guides.
6. Other stuff: chalk, 5gal bucket for your chalk, cool posters, lifesize cutout of Ronnie Coleman that says "lightweight baby!"

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• How to Build a Lifting Platform
• How to SHIM a platform (easy method)

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

Yer a lifter, Harry! Or whatever your name is. Once you begin the simple, powerful, transformative process called the Novice Linear Progression (or just LP for short), you are officially a lifter. You are training now, not just exercising. There's a plan for what you're going to do, and a plan for how you will progress. But what about your very first day in the gym?

In order to know where to begin your LP, you need to find your starting point for each of the lifts. In today's episode, Starting Strength Coach Trent Jones walks you through exactly what to do on your first day in the gym, to begin a successful linear progression.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd Ed. by Mark Rippetoe
• The Novice Linear Progression (including an explanation of how the basic program begins to change as a lifter gets stronger)

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

Ok, we've talked about why you oughta get strong, but how do you do that exactly? With four basic barbell exercises and a simple linear progression -- the novice linear progression (NLP or just LP for short). Trent and Jordan walk through the fundamental concepts of programming, the stress/recovery/adaptation or SRA model, and why you have to lift a little heavier every time you go to the gym to see progress. This program is simple, hard, and very effective when done correctly.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd Ed. by Mark Rippetoe
• The Novice Linear Progression (including an explanation of how the basic program begins to change as a lifter gets stronger)

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

We use the word "strong" all the time -- building strong families, strong communities, strong minds. It's a good thing to build strong things, things that we want to endure, but the only way we can build strong things externally is to start with getting ourselves strong. Building strong communities is a complex endeavor, but fortunately, building physical strength in yourself is fairly simple. Not easy, but simple, hard, and effective.

In today's podcast Trent and Jordan discuss the base of the pyramid of your physical existence -- strength -- why you should train for it, and how you can acquire it. In the course of this podcast, we'll make a lifter out of ye!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd Ed. by Mark Rippetoe

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews

Everything is broken, but we have to keep living. Let's talk about how we're going to do it.

Connect With Us

Email: [email protected]

Trent IG: @marmalade_cream

Jordan IG: @babayaga_sews