The Smarter Sculpted Physique: Training | Nutrition | Muscle Gain | Fat Loss

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♦ JC Santana on Hybrid Training, Biomechanics, Supplements and More ♦

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JC Santana returned once again to discuss a wide variety of topics related to functional training, mixing various hybrid forms of training, diet, supplements, aging, real life, and more.

♦ Assorted Topics ♦

The trio discussed different gym environments. Sometimes JC will spend literally 2 hours going through his workout, and yes, that includes lots of chatting with friends. But he still gets the work done.

Scott lamented the differences in gym environments these days, comparing your average big commercial gym to the comradery you can see in Pumping Iron.

Mike noted that Daniel Coyle talks a lot about talent hot spots or talent hot beds in his book, Talent is Overrated, and his upcoming book, The Culture Code, is actually going to be all about these.

JC admits to being a “biohacker,” and downs 35-40 pills a day. But he thinks when you get into it for vanity reasons, well, that’s a slippery slope.

Bret Contreras’ glute work has helped JC a lot recently with his squats, and for the first time he’s actually feeling his glutes in his squats. But to do this, it involved a lot of exercises that guys typically don’t want to do… because they’re misguidedly viewed as “women’s exercises”.

There was a lot of discussion about hybridity and hybrid forms of training – when to bring bodybuilding into functional training, or vice versa.

The dumbest thing JC has done? Stepping on a stability ball to talk about how dumb it is to step on a stability ball. Yes, it led to injury.

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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JC’s Main Website – IHPfit.com

JC Santana Instagram - Instagram.com/ihpfit

Facebook - Facebook.com/JCSIHP

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♦ The Client Assessment File for Online Coaches ♦

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Scott and Mike discuss the coaching “Assessment file”, a tool for online coaches to use to assess and track their clients’ progress and specific needs.

♦ The Client Assessment File ♦

• Give Scott a breakdown of your current training regimen and how long you have been following it.

• Your vital stats: height, age, weight.

• A brief breakdown of your lifestyle and lifestyle stressors.

• A detailed 3 day diet – current history.

• Provide information on how many days per week you can realistically workout and for how many hours per training day.

• A breakdown of your training goals: physique transformation, get fit, feel more energetic, gain muscle, lose fat, get strong etc…

• Pictures of yourself from front side and back.

• List any injuries or medical conditions and medications which may affect training protocol.

This is deliberately open-ended and not a specific form that people fill out, because “how” any client answers these questions provides Scott with a lot of info. How much do they know about diet and training? How do they approach their daily diet? Are they buying into buzzwords?

Scott bases his assessment file on his experience in social work.

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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The Scott Abel Starter Set - scottabelfitness.com/starter

How to Be An Insanely Good Fitness Coach - http://scottabelfitness.com/ebooks/online-fitness-coach/

Scott wanted to talk briefly about an interview with Tom Brady, where he felt there were important lessons about making training progress in the real world.

♦ Calibrating Training Intensity ♦

In the interview, Brady mentions there’s a difference between working hard, and then “working hard at the right things” and then “working hard at the right things consistently.” He says too many athletes work hard at the wrong stuff and then see no benefit, so they double down and get hurt or burned out (or as Scott adds: overtrained). This is one reason why, as we’ll see below, it’s not one thing, it’s everything. Various elements of training influence one another. For example, doing the “wrong stuff” is already wrong, but on top of that, it also tends to cause some athletes to double down and hurt themselves. Whereas if someone is doing a program that works, they’re more likely to ride the wave of progress it’s giving them, without panicking and driving themselves into the ground.

Key quote from Brady: “It’s not one thing, it’s everything.”

This is because various elements tend to feed into and mutually reinforce one another. Getting a good sleep helps you train better, and training better helps with sleep. Having good nutrition helps with training, and training helps with hunger, cravings and motivation. Aside from the obvious benefits of doing so, sticking to a program for a reasonable period of time allows you to learn to feel what the “mastery phase” of a program should feel like, and this gives you (the trainee) insight into the cumulative realms of time with respect to training effects — something “program hoppers” will miss out on —. All these things, taken together, add up. Doing “just one thing” won’t have the same effect as doing all these things together.

Progress is not always measurable. If you’re training for physique development, strength is not the only indicator of progress, and yes, it is FINE for your weights not to go up for months.

Often, your 1-RM won’t go up, but what Scott calls your “strength density” will improve. This means maybe your 5 X 5 of squat doesn’t improve, but the intensity with which you’re able to hit isolation work later on in the workout is slowly improving over time.

Scott thinks the phrase “All it takes is all you’ve got” is downright misleading. What is “optimal” is not always what is “maximal.” Optimal is optimal!

Yes, you can nudge or edge your way into the “red zone,” just to be sure you’re not being lazy, but be careful and be aware of what you’re doing. This is just about being realistic and honest. There’s no secret.

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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Link to Tom Brady’s Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBwf6vB1hyc

The Innervation Primer: https://scottabelfitness.com/primer

Program Design Masterclass: http://programdesignmasterclass.com/

Hardgainer Solution: http://hardgainersolution.com/

♦ Social Media, Lifestyle and Balance in the Modern World ♦

The key theme was balance and lifestyle in an increasingly frenzied modern world. Changes in work/life balance, social media, lifestyle, and certain other trends, and – frankly – real life problems make these things more difficult. This is something coaches and trainers need to be aware of because it is something real people need to deal with in their real-world, busy lives.

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♦ Social Media, Lifestyle and Balance in the Modern World ♦

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♦ Key Quote from JC: “Sleeping is food for your Central Nervous System.” This was in the context of talking about athletes who starve themselves of food and then wonder why they have no energy. Well, athletes also “starve” themselves of sleep (and then wonder why they’re so lacking in energy…)

♦Social Media offers consumers a way to find information, but also lures them into believing things that aren’t necessarily true. For JC, personal trainers that constantly publish ‘selfies’ of their physical state is just a showoff without providing valuable content. Scott points this issue to a form of attracting consumers – and personal trainers as well – into a baseless ‘black and white’ answer system that fails to address real problems that needs more indebt analysis.

♦ Can great athletes be great coaches? According to JC, it’s not common. Despite the similar focus they might seem to have, the difference relies not only on their physical capacities and performance (even genetics), but on how they approach their chosen field. This distinction can be seen during a combine (a test for performance and endurance). Unfortunately, combines do not illustrate specific field tests (grind, vision on the field, etc), and because of this some of the best athletes are dismissed early on.

♦ Technology has the power to measure the finest detail of the body’s movement and give precise data, but having this objective information for most situations can be unnecessary or even misleading (over-quantification of data) when a subjective view can easily and logically dictate that the training is working the proper way.

♦ JC: “You don’t need to go to failure”. Scott agreed.

♦ Some of the negative side effects that Social Media presents to the North-American and western culture are focused on the acquisition of stuff, not just material stuff but ‘doing’ more, ‘showing’ more, all as a way to display success. In a diet context, Scott says, “We think the more we’re circling the exhausted state, the more we deserve weight loss when it’s actually the opposite“.

♦ Finding a balanced lifestyle is becoming increasingly more difficult as time and resources are being cut shorter, thus creating a necessity to consume or mass-consume mind numbing substances like drugs, liquids or food –as a chemical- to try to keep up with the demands and rhythm of modern life. Being able to not abuse and instead moderate these and other damaging factors will physically, spiritually and mentally help to keep a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle. Creating small strategies to day by day combat hunger, lack of sleep, and lack of exercise can change a person instantly.

♦ According to eastern philosophy, balance as an external goal creates imbalance. In Scott’s point-of-view, “Balance is something that is experience-based and never thought-based” and “the engagement produces the reality”. In JC’s view, “Balance is a state of mind, it’s not an action or a lifestyle” were both working and relaxation states have to coexist within each other.

♦ Generally, a generation tends to blame their current problems on previous generations, but what makes a generation thrive is learning to be resilient and take responsib...

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♦ OPTIMIZING METABOLISM ♦

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We discussed optimizing metabolism and what that means in the real world. There’s more to it than just having a "faster" metabolism.

♦ WAYS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR METABOLISM ♦

In terms of optimizing your metabolism, think of it as a puzzle: the more pieces you put together, the more clear the picture becomes. No system of the body acts by itself; they all influence each other.

One way to optimize metabolism is to within a relative caloric deficit. If you’re eating just short of daily needs, you create a more efficient machine to burn those calories. You function better. This is different from an absolute caloric deficit.

If you want to build muscle, you can increase the frequency of cheat days and refeeds.

One should always focus on metabolic optimization in the longer term. A lot of positive changes that take place tend to happen in what Scott often calls the "residual" and "cumulative" realms of time. (Similarly, a lot of the things that are damaging to a metabolism might look good in the "immediate" realm of time, so they go unnoticed.)

One of the most underrated methods of optimizing metabolism is the 5X5 reps scheme.

Aerobic cardio has been proven to not have a great effect on metabolism. Scott's written about this in many of his books. (See the Intro to MET in the Starter Set at scottabelfitness.com/starter). If you go on a long run, you can feel your body trying to be more efficient and use as little energy as it can to maintain the rhythm, which is the opposite of what you want.

To burn fat with cardio, you have to cycle the cardio - 8 weeks on, 6 weeks off (depending). You get a way better fat burning effect, than if you just do it all the time.

If you do something where you binge a weekend, and don’t train the next week, you won’t make much progress. You need to figure out what lifestyle changes need to happen.

A lot of the times "over analyzing" and questioning whether something is working kills the potential benefit of what you're doing. 

Maintaining regular sleep and wake times, as well as meal times as much as possible helps to train and optimize your metabolism.

When sugar isn’t a part of your normal diet, it can have a narcotizing effect once you do finally have some (e.g., like on a refeed). This can be a benefit if you think of it as a way to get a really good sleep, and plan your days/weeks accordingly.

Low-carb diets can get in the way of reading your body’s signals: hunger, lack of energy, etc. Scott always advocates a diet with plenty of carbs.

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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Dr. Diana Schwarzbein Lecture - https://youtu.be/6qUSvzUj6jo

Understanding Metabolism - https://scottabelfitness.com/ebooks/understanding-metabolism/

Beyond Metabolism - https://scottabelfitness.com/ebooks/beyond-metabolism/

The Cycle Diet book - https://scottabelfitness.com/ebooks/cycle-diet/

The Cycle Diet course= http://thecycle.diet/

Journal Writing Superpower Secret - thehabit.space/books

We adapt Buddha's eight steps to end suffering and suggest specific journaling prompts as a way to deal with food issues and weight loss.

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♦ BUDDHA'S 4 NOBLE TRUTHS ♦

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• First Noble Truth •

Life contains suffering.

(This is sometimes better translated as “Life is stressful, or unsatisfying, or unreliable.”)

• Second Noble Truth •

Suffering has a cause and the cause can be known.

(The desire and want for “more” is a common one.)

• Third Noble Truth •

Suffering can be brought to an end.

• Fourth Noble Truth •

The path to end suffering has eight parts.

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♦ THE 8 STEPS ♦

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1) RIGHT VIEW, RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND INTENTION

How do you look at your weight as a reflection of your lifestyle and the sum total of the choices you have made up to now?

2) RIGHT INTENTION

What is your "why" behind what you're doing? Are you losing weight for solid, self-nurturing reasons, or is it driven by self-punishment?

3) RIGHT SPEECH

This is not just what you say to others, but also the words you use to talk to yourself. How do you *frame* your questions or ideas?

4) RIGHT ACTIONS & BEHAVIORS

These are more often the direct result of the thinking and feelings that precede them. See above.

5) RIGHT LIVELIHOOD

Are you living in a way that supports your goals to lose weight with self-nurturing?

6) RIGHT EFFORT

Are your efforts the result of positive, self- directed thought and intention, or the result of self-rejection, self-judgment, self-measurement, and unstable emotional wants and desires?

7) RIGHT MINDFULNESS

Are you examining your thoughts with calm and patient energy, or are you letting them run wild? Are you thinking about what you are thinking about?

8) YOUR CONCENTRATION

What is your focus, and what kind of energy is influencing that focus?

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♦ EXERCISES ♦

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THE 8 STEPS "MINI SPRINT"

Using Mike's mini-sprint framework (free how-to here: https://thehabit.space/journalwriting), create a 4-day mini sprint in which you address two of the eight steps each day. First prompt yourself with what areas of your life have WRONG view, intention, or whatever, and then address how you might turn that into RIGHT view, intention, and so on.

JOURNALING PROMPTS

• (From Marcus Aurelius) Identify one change that you want to make in your life:

• All the that this change will benefit me...

• All the negative consequences of *not* making this change...

• What if I don't make the change? Where will I be in one year?

• Anything stopping me from making this change:

• How true are these things? Are there things I can do?

» Now go back and re-read and add to all the above.

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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Mike's book, The Journal Writing Superpower Secret

https://thehabit.space/journalwriting

Scott's book, Permanent Weight Loss

https://scottabelfitness.com/ebooks/permanent-weight-loss/

If you're trying to lose fat (or gain muscle) when should you pay attention to the number on the weight scale?

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♦ The Weight Scale ♦

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Scott wanted to begin by emphasizing again how absurd some marketing has gotten.

Scott also wanted to think of the weight scale as a bank account. With a bank account, you don't check it every day, and you don't freak out about every withdrawal or think you screwed up because of a withdrawal. You accept that there are withdrawals and deposits, and what matters is whether or not you're headed in the right direction in the long-term.

Sometimes no weight loss at all is a good sign. Things are going on under the surface.

Mike actually doesn't like the advice to "only weigh in once a week," because weighing in every day is "too much." This is because, paradoxically, when you weigh in every day, it very quickly becomes clear how all-over-the-place these numbers are, so you learn it doesn't really matter. By contrast, if you weigh in once a week, every week, you end up focusing way too much on that number and thinking it means something.

In Scott's own business accounts, he sees a big huge ~scary~ withdrawal every quarter, for taxes, but he knows that he needs to look at the whole picture. To Mike, this is equivalent to just figuring out what certain ups and downs on the scale mean. You can still pay attention to it, but you need to not over-think what you're seeing.

Things that can seem to add pounds to the scale: the later in the day, the heavier you weigh! Also, eating, stress hormones, lack of sleep, eating extra salt, slight changes in diet.

Mike also points out that in the National Weight Loss Registry, there *are* big, big correlations between self-monitoring and long-term weight loss. People who lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off *do* tend to keep an eye on it.

One danger are low-carb diets that promise quick weight loss. If you don't realize it's just water weight, you're setting yourself up for rebound and disappointment.

Almost always, if you're on a decent weight loss diet or fat loss diet, if you plateau, you need to be patient and wait things out. Also, some people need to be real: there is no magic formula to get past this plateau that's sustainable. Yes, there are things that *will* help you lose weight, but these things won't actually make you look that much better, and/or they won't be sustainable.

Another option is cheat days or refeeds. The answer to this is "it depends." A good coach has to read the context. Is the client hypersensitive to cravings, or are they genuinely experiencing never-ending "intolerable" hunger?

When it comes to gaining weight, it's the reverse side of the same idea. If you start eating at a surplus right after a fat loss diet, you're not putting on "10 lbs. of muscle in two weeks." You're storing glycogen and water.

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♦ Fancy Tricks to Lose (Water) Weight ♦

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How to add pounds and inches to your legs!

Diet for a bodybuilding show, then measure your leg when you're at your most strung out, before doing any final fat loading or carb loading or whatever. After the show, eat a pizza and two liters of Coke. Boom, your legs have an extra inch or more!

How add inches to your arms!

Go on a low-carb diet for two weeks and don't train at all. Measure your arms and take photos. Now go out for 3-4 days fat-loading and sugar-loading, and do 5 supersets of barbell curls and tricep curls. Immediately measure your arms. Voila!

How to lose inches from your waist!

Cut carbs and water. Also,

Traveling and social events can be tricky situations to navigate for dieters. We discuss how to do it sanely, and how to tell the difference between dedication and obsession, or between being flexible and just "making excuses."

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♦ Sticking to Your Diet While Travelling ♦

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The episode began because while Andy was travelling in Vegas for a photoshoot, he stuck to his diet the entire time. So even though Andy regularly practices huge refeeds and cheat days with The Cycle Diet, in this case he chose not to partake in some of the huge buffets and smorgasbords of foods that Vegas had to offer. Why?

Similarly, Mike, while traveling to Kingston with his fiancé, chose to pretty much stick to his diet without going out to any fancy restaurants. He brought some food along, then stopped at a Loblaws grocery store to get the remainder of what he’d need for the rest of the trip.

In both cases, there was a decision based on practicality, desire, and goals. Mike had his dog with him the entire time, so eating options were already limited, and it was just easier for him to stick to the diet than to try to make decisions about how to “make it work.”

In Andy’s case, first, he was at a photoshoot, so until that section was over, of course he needed to stay pretty strict. And beyond that, he too found some of his options limited by time and responsibilities, so he just kept off until he returned home, and had a real cheat day the Sunday he was back.

Key Concept: Mike likes the idea of “satisficing,” especially when traveling. That is, you don’t need to be perfect… you just need to get things good enough. The challenge is that our brains really like being perfect, and just being good enough makes us question ourselves. The solution, for Mike, is to use personal weirdo rules. These are personal rules that will keep you satisficing your diet over the long term. They work by balancing real life with psychological bright lines; they give your brain something to latch onto, something that says, “Yes, I followed the rule. This is definitely a win!” (As opposed to: “Uh… that was probably good enough… but oh geez… what if… what if… what if…” etc.)

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♦ Recurring Themes: ♦

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» “Choose the behavior, choose the consequences.”

Don’t be a diet martyr. You don’t “have” to diet. It might be a bummer that you need to diet “more” or “harder” than that other person over there with a six-pack, but focusing on this doesn’t help. All there is, at the end of the day, are your decisions, and the consequences of those decisions for you. That’s it.

» “Mindset determines behavior.”

Two people engaging in the “same” behavior (e.g. eating a lot of food for a “cheat” day vs. an uncontrollable binge) can be engaging in what looks like the same thing, but the mindset behind the behavior is totally different. There’s a difference between being a diet martyr who “has” to stick to their diet, and who makes everyone around them miserable, versus being someone who simply, politely and firmly says, “No, thank you. Not this time, but thank you for the offer.”

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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Andy's website: realandysinclairfitness.com

Awesome Abs: http://absbyandy.com/

Lou Schuler shared his wisdom with respect to communicating, being real, and aging healthily while also developing empathy, humility, and seeing things from your client’s eyes.

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♦ Writing & Communication ♦

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Writing is communication, and the key there is the other person.

If you’re trying to engage someone, tell a story. People remember stories. They’ll stick more.

A story that emotionally engages the reader (or the person you’re talking to) is far more useful than just chest-pounding.

People talking themselves up are a dime a dozen. It’s hard to separate yourself out from the crowd if you’re just another one of them.

Lou really likes focusing on humility and using a bit of self-deprecating humor; in the long-term, if you have a lot of good information to give, couched in good stories, these will work much better incessant chest pounding.

Mike pointed out a quote from Jay Abraham: “If you can articulate your audience’s pains better than they can, they will assume you have the solution.”

This is difficult, however. Getting outside your own head, and into the heads of your market, or your clients, or your readers — or whoever it may be — is really hard and takes focused effort. You can’t assume you already know what they’re thinking.

Scott pointed out the tension, or difficulty, in trying to communicate important ideas that are couched in “entertaining” stories.

For Lou, part of the answer is just that sometimes a bit of entertainment is okay. That’s a service too.

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♦ Active Aging ♦

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One of the tough things about aging is that there are elements to it you only learn through experience. And the moment you turn 40 you don’t suddenly understand all aspects of “training over 40.” You just got there! You’re barely over 40!

For Scott, this is even harder because although the industry likes to lump together everyone over 40, the changes that take place after 50 are often more drastic, so a 45-year-old trainer assuming that he or she is in the same camp as a 55 or 60-year old can often be very mistaken.

Lou also points out that people age very differently, and this is true emotionally as well as physically. Yes, that grandmother over there just deadlifted 900 lbs. That might be inspiring to you, but what you’re looking at is a freak of genetics. For many people, things like this are just not within the realm of the possible.

This ties into the earlier discussion about getting outside your own head. Just because X, Y, and Z worked for you doesn’t mean it’ll work for everyone.

Part of empathy (somewhat paradoxically) involves realizing no, you don’t know what’s going on with that guy, and finally accepting that there are experiences that exist outside your own.

Another takeaway here is that you can’t just say EVERYONE NOW MUST STOP DOING X AFTER AGE Y. Trainees are different. The guy who’s been in the gym hanging and banging for 30 years is not the same trainee as the one who’s 80 lbs. overweight and finally wants to do something about it because their doctor has told them if they don’t do something they’ll be dead in 3 years.

As Scott points out, one of the difficulties there is not just the recovery abilities of these trainees, but the work capacity changes. The experienced trainee can hammer himself into the ground in ways the other one can’t, even if it would take far less to drive the overweight untrained person into the ground.

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♦ LINKS & RESOURCES ♦

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• LouSchuler.com - Lou’s homepage. Find links to his books, social media.

We had JC Santana on again to talk functional training, as well as what he’s learned over the decades in industry. JC’s an expert on program design, functional training, and coaching, and Scott was excited to have JC on to share more of his wisdom, expertise and knowledge.

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♦ JC’s Travel Lessons ♦

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Scott began by asking what JC noticed or learned on his recent travels, pretty much around the world (Middle East, China, South America).

JC noticed the similarities between our culture and others. Parents loved their children and wanted them to grow up safe in a better world. Families expressed affection.

JC emphasized the importance of not just playing well with others, but coming from a spirit of giving. Scott likes to say “having something to offer.” (Mike thinks it needs to stay from a frame of giving.)

Both JC and Scott talked about the importance of always growing. Mike thought this is true, and that often the economic side of things (read: how much you earn) matches how much you serve/give and/or grow so that you can serve/give even more…. yet this is also — obviously — not always true.

Scott also pointed out that you don’t necessarily have to begin or start from a healthy, positive mindset. You should, but you can also start something for the “wrong” reasons, but then learn and grow and transition and keep doing that same thing, but for better reasons.

In China JC also noticed the huge surge of economic growth going on, leading to an increase in disposable income, and a demand for trainers who know what they’re doing.

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♦ Training ♦

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The difference between stability versus balance? Stability is a pyramid, wide at the bottom, small at the top. Balance is a pyramid turned upside down, resting on its tip but still remaining stable.

When you don’t have stability, you don’t have a fixed point, and it’s hard to generate power. For example: try running across a tight rope. You can’d do it, and you can’t generate power. Now try it on a flat track. Suddenly you can.

There are some rare times to use more balance training. In particular, when there’s a need for a lot of proprioception work without concern for the quality of the proprioception.

JC likes 7-frame training (single-leg stuff) for people who need to be fast, since it’s involved so heavily in loco-motion.

One of the over-arching themes in what JC talked about was knowing why you were doing what you were doing: what does my trainee need to do, and what is the easiest, fastest way to train for this need/demand? This is very different from “well balance stuff is always good, right?” It’s about using tools for specific reasons.

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♦ Links & Resources ♦

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Functional Training by JC Santana

(Get it from Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ojEomH)