Weights and Plates Podcast

Starting Strength Coaches Robert Santana and Trent Jones discuss how to modify your programming during a cut. A cut implies that an athlete is in a caloric deficit to produce weight loss, and specifically body fat loss. Whenever you put yourself in a caloric deficit, you are essentially under-recovered, meaning that you have less ability to recover and adapt to intense training sessions in the gym. However, we still want to preserve muscle mass during the cut as much as possible. Consequently, most athletes will have to modify their programming to lower the intensity of their exercises while increasing the volume of the exercises. When and how much the program changes depends on the athlete and their level of training advancement. A novice lifter, for example, may not need to modify their programming at all, especially if they are already overweight. They essentially already have a surplus of resources they can draw from their fat stores, and as a novice, the relative intensity of their workouts is not that high yet. For an intermediate lifter, it depends on energy levels. As energy levels begin to drop, the program needs to shift toward lesser intensity and greater volume. Santana often shifts the compound lifts from sets of 3's or 5's to sets of 10, which produce a little more hypertrophy due to the longer time under tension during the set. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Let's be real. Most people come to the gym so they can look better naked. For many people -- the so-called "skinny fat" demographic -- that's going to mean gaining muscle mass to improve their figure and lower their body fat percentage. For others that are legitimately overweight or obese, a BMI over 30, they need to also lose bodyweight to reduce their adipose tissue. Strength training is a great start for those folks, but it's not the end, and they need to make dietary changes as well. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Robert Santana and Trent Jones are no strangers to the DIY concept, and embrace the idea of learning and trying things for yourself. With any do-it-yourself endeavor, however, you're going to encounter a fair amount of mistakes and setbacks in the process of learning a new skill. Fitness is no exception, and while a few have successfully DIY'd themselves to a high level of fitness, most people fail to achieve their fitness goals, especially over a long period of time (how many people do you know that have lost a significant amount of weight, only to gain it back in a year?). This is where a coach comes in. Just like any master teacher or instructor, a coach has a solid grasp of a cohesive system or model of training. With this system a coach can effectively evaluate a person and determine their deficiencies, and devise with a plan to address them. A coach has both the knowledge and experience to evaluate an athlete and draw up a training program. So, if you want to take your fitness to the next level, or have been struggling for years to make progress and achieve your goals, hiring a coach -- even for a few workouts -- can help you figure out where you are going wrong, and what you need to do to correct your deficiencies. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Robert and Trent discuss the role of the back and the trunk musculature in lifting weights and in developing a good physique. As Robert says to all his clients, "your back is never off the clock!" The back and trunk (or core as many people are fond of calling it nowadays) comprise a large part of the body's muscle mass, and are perhaps the most important and least understood of the body's levers. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Today Robert and Trent demystify the nuts and bolts of nutrition for productive training, fat loss, and health. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Today Robert and Trent discuss why you need to train for strength, and why your lifts MUST be heavy to build muscle mass. It's popular these days to train for "hypertrophy" -- the fancy term for increasing muscular size -- utilizing sets of 10-12 reps on a large variety of exercises, many of them single joint lifts such as curls, tricep extensions, and hamstring curls. The problem with this approach is that, for the vast majority of people, they do not do these exercises heavy enough to drive muscle growth, and they lack the strength to do them heavy enough to see results anyway. Then there is the problem with ergonomics -- how heavy can you do a single joint exercise anyway? How much can you really hamstring curl? A much better solution to gaining muscle mass is to use the barbell, which can be used to do compound lifts, which involve more joints, use more muscle mass, and can be performed with heavier weights too. Barbells can be loaded with very light weights for the most novice trainee, extremely heavy for advanced strength athletes, and anywhere in between. Most importantly, mastering a few simple exercises with the barbell is the most bang-for-your-buck thing you can do in the gym, regardless of your goals or athletic focus. There are physiological reasons for lifting heavy too. Moving heavy weights involves anaerobic energy pathways that burn large amounts of carbohydrates. Heavy weights produce a hormone response which lighter aerobic exercises does not -- heavy weights stimulate production of more testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin growth factor (IGF-1) -- which causes your body to grow more muscle mass, increases your metabolism, and partition calories in a more efficient way. So, next time you hit the gym to "lift," you need to lift heavy. Heavy weights provide the stimulus for growing muscle mass, and the weight must get progressively heavier over time. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Starting Strength Coach and Registered Dietitian Robert Santana continues the introduction to Weights & Plates with a "plates" episode, this time about the source of your nutrition information. Where does it come from, and have you considered the source of your information? These days we are inundated with information about what we should eat and how we should train, from trainers, from celebrity actors and fitness models, from doctors, and doubly so on the internet! Often the information is conflicting, even though it's littered with verifiable facts. It's no surprise, then, that many people feel lost when it comes to making sustainable, effective changes to their diet. What's missing is many people lack the ability to sift through the sea of information and find that which is relevant. To do that, first you need to understand the context of where the information is coming from, who is saying it, and where they are coming from. Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Starting Strength Coach and Registered Dietitian Robert Santana kicks off the Weights and Plates Podcast with an episode charting his journey through the jungle of fitness and nutrition information. Though he's taken a number of wrong turns along the way, Robert's journey has taught him the value of some basic principles for fitness and body composition. Robert is joined on the podcast by Starting Strength Coach Trent Jones. First, those guys and girls on the fitness magazine covers that look "ripped" and "toned" have more muscle mass than you do, and they're probably stronger too. So, if you want to look better -- leaner and more muscular -- then you need to get stronger, and heavy barbell training is the answer. Second, you can't ignore the influence of genetics and steroids on the looks that bodybuilders, fitness models, and today's celebrities achieve. Genetics play a big role in how a person looks, from their bone structure to their muscle insertions to their natural propensity to store body fat and where that fat is distributed. In other words, if you're a hard gaining, skinny ectomorph, don't expect to look like The Rock after training for a year. You can look good, but you can't fundamentally change your genetics. Stay tuned for more episodes of Weights & Plates. In the meantime you can find Robert at the links below: Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert's Instagram: @the_robert_santana Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast! Starting Strength Coach and Registered Dietitian Robert Santana aims to bring you practical advice about dieting, nutrition, barbell training, and more based on his 17 years of experience. Life isn't a science experiment. Training and eating well doesn't have to be either! https://weightsandplates.com