Ep 7: A Journey of Strength (Interview on Finding Your Strength Radio)
I had the pleasure of being on another podcast called Finding Your Strength Radio Powered by Romeo Athletics, where I was interviewed by Andrew Romeo. He’s an excellent host, experienced coach, and the owner of my long-time gym, Romeo Athletics (in Enfield, CT).
He asked me a ton of great questions about my journey to fitness, how I got into lifting and strength training, different movements and programming, my recent bulk and cut, body recomposition, sustainable nutrition, and other random topics like metabolism, walking, and even the similarities between music and lifting.
I think the conversation has some interesting and valuable information for those of you looking to transform your life in terms of strength, diet, and overall fitness.
It was a fun interview, and if you want to learn more about Andrew’s podcast, Finding Your Strength Radio, I’ve linked to it below, and I encourage you to check it out and subscribe.
Enjoy the conversation!
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Transcript
This podcast was transcribed automatically, so please forgive any errors or typos.
[00:00:00] Philip Pape: Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast for busy professionals who want to get strong and lean with the strength training and sustainable diet. I am your host Philip Pape. And in each episode, we'll examine strategies to help you achieve physical self-mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry and a commitment to lifting heavy and eating right.
[00:00:29] Welcome to episode seven of Wits & Weights. I had the pleasure of being on another podcast a few months ago called finding your strength, radio powered by Romeo athletics, where I was interviewed by Andrew Romeo. He's an excellent host experienced coach, and he's also the owner of my long time gym, Romeo athletics.
[00:00:53] He asked me a ton of great questions about my journey to fitness, how I got into lifting and strength, training, different movements and programs. My recent bulk and cut body recomposition sustainable nutrition and lots of other random topics like metabolism walking, and even the similarities between music and lifting.
[00:01:13] I think the conversation has some interesting and valuable information for those of you looking to transform your life in terms of. Diet and overall fitness. It was a fun interview. And if you want to learn more about Andrew's podcast, finding your strength radio, I've linked to it in the show notes, and I encourage you to check it out and subscribe.
[00:01:34] And if you enjoy this episode, I really appreciate if you could leave a five-star rating on apple podcasts for Wits & Weights, strength training for skeptics, enjoy the conversation.
[00:01:46] Andrew Romeo:What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of finding your strength, radio. I'm your host, Andrew Romeo guys. I'm super lucky today.
[00:01:53] And I think you guys are super lucky as well for our guests. Our guest is Phillip. Phillip Phillips has been with me since 2011. So if you're doing the math on that right now, that's a decade. Phillip has been training at Romeo athletics, which used to be across at revelation for 10 years. So he's seen a lot of our changes, a lot of.
[00:02:13] Come what's gone what we've prioritized, but we don't prioritize and how the whole gym works. So welcome to the
[00:02:18] Philip Pape: show, Philip. Hey, thanks for having me. You trying to say I'm old here. I am
[00:02:22] Andrew Romeo: not trying to say you're old by any means, because I've been here for 12 years. I'm calling myself even older.
[00:02:27] Philip Pape: Thanks for having me on the podcast.
[00:02:28] Andrew Romeo: Yeah, man, I was really excited to bring you on. I know we were chatting the other day. We briefly mentioned podcasting. Immediately popped into my head. I was like, ellipse should come on the podcast. Um, so here we are here we are, um, to dive into this, I know a lot of members do know who you are, but there's also probably a lot of members who don't know who you are.
[00:02:48] So if you want to just give us a quick background of w where are you coming from? What's your background look like? What do you do? All that kind of
[00:02:53] Philip Pape: stuff. The problem, I kind of keep to myself here at the gym. So. So I am a, an engineering manager at Raytheon technologies based here out of Windsor locks.
[00:03:03] Um, I bet in technology, product development, software, and project engineering for about 20 years, that'll be 20 years next year. Um, and you know, I love my job there. I love working on products that keep people safe in the air that protect our military really cool stuff. Um, and that's, that's like my day job, but as you know, I have a lot of side ventures and hustles and endeavors that are.
[00:03:26] Andrew Romeo: Were you ever involved in sports was sports, anything that was ever, uh, like kind of put physical activity and that kind of stuff in the back of your brain where you're like, I like being active. What did that look like for you? Yeah,
[00:03:36] Philip Pape: the answer is an emphatic. No. So I have a very different background from a lot of folks.
[00:03:41] I was not in organized sports. We grew up in Florida. The weather was great all year round. So I played football in the street. My brother and friends played baseball on the street. So it was active in that sense, but never an organized. I went to an arts high school. Cool. Didn't even have athletics. Okay. I went to college, gained the freshmen 15, then the sophomore 15.
[00:04:02] Gotcha. Skinny, fat, fluffy, you know, my whole life. And finally the senior of college, they built a brand new gym. This is over at RPI. New York. And I decided to try some machine, some cardio kind of flare around in the gym. Like most people didn't know what I was doing. And then that's it graduated college still?
[00:04:21] Not, not in great shape and didn't know what to do in the gym. I knew how to maintain my weight. Diets, so to speak Atkins, what do I do? All
[00:04:31] Andrew Romeo: right, nice. See this ad for Atkins, as you're referring to that'll help me lose my freshmen 15. Let's go
[00:04:37] Philip Pape: for it. Yeah. It's like conflicting sources of information
[00:04:39] Andrew Romeo: all the time.
[00:04:40] Of course. That's what's out there. Right. I try to be the beacon of a truth for a lot of people in that
[00:04:45] Philip Pape: regard. Tell me about it. And today it's a lot, it's both a lot easier and a lot more difficult with the internet, right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:51] Andrew Romeo: The information era where everything is at our fingertips and we can do anything.
[00:04:55] But there's a downside to that because there's a lot of misinformation out there. That'll lead you down a bad path. Um, diving back into one thing you said. So you went to an art school. What, what type of art did you practice?
[00:05:05] Philip Pape: Yeah, I was a musician, so I played saxophone jazz, and I did that well after college.
[00:05:10] I mean, when I met my wife, we were set up on. We were set up on a date when I was actually playing a gig. Wow. You know, and this is while I'm an engineer and this is just the thing I do on the side of the chair. Right. So I played music for three years and it was one of these high schools where you had to travel on a bus and a Metro rail at a Metro mover into downtown Miami.
[00:05:30] You were there for probably three hours longer than average high school kids because half of your day is music. Very cool. So it was a great experience. It was a small school, especially being in a big city, you know, and they had a good academic program as well.
[00:05:45] Andrew Romeo: Absolutely. I mean, if you become an engineer and gone to the lengths that you've gone with your education, they must've had a good education system.
[00:05:50] You did. That's very cool, man. Cause one interesting thing that I have noticed from musicians that come into weightlifting is typically musicians are meticulous in terms of wanting things to be perfect, right? Because when you're making music want it to sound perfect, and then you come into the world of lifting and they have that same mindset of how do I make this movement?
[00:06:10] How do I make what I'm doing? Perfect. And it really gives people a solid work ethic and also an ideal. Trying to do things really well. So I think that's a great background to come into probably engineering. Cause I'm assuming if you're designing flight controls or whatever you're designing, it needs
[00:06:28] Philip Pape: to be, it is funny, you link all of those because I've always linked music to engineering.
[00:06:34] The math that's inherent in music. You know, the music kids in my art school were always the top of the class compared to let's say the artists or dancers, right. Just different type of minds. So that's the way your brain works. Pretty mathematical. But I hadn't thought of the fact that lifting is its own science that can be thought of in that way.
[00:06:52] And I remember when I first met you, we talked about plate math. You know, you could just, just say a hundred thirty five, one hundred five to 25. Right. And I was like, what are you doing? I have to calculate what's on the box.
[00:07:02] Andrew Romeo: Right. I've just seen those combinations so many times where there's no thought behind it anymore.
[00:07:07] And I'm there
[00:07:07] Philip Pape: and I'm finding that. I'm sure you are.
[00:07:09] Andrew Romeo: Absolutely. It's the only thing that always throws you for a wrench is when there's a 35 pound bar. Wait a second. Hold on. Minus Ted,
[00:07:16] Philip Pape: or have you heard the joke about 35 pound plates from
[00:07:18] Andrew Romeo: Kabuki? How they absolutely hate them, but
[00:07:20] Philip Pape: what's the joke? Well, well, how do you make a 35 pound plate?
[00:07:23] Well, together a 25 and a 10, because you're not supposed to have 3,500 places. The joke, right?
[00:07:27] Andrew Romeo: That is Kabuki did a big thing out there with Christophe and about trying to get. 35 pounds. It's just obviously joking. And, but for the most part, you don't use them that
[00:07:37] Philip Pape: often they're here, they're convenient.
[00:07:39] Um, or you can use them for calf raises, you know, have you ever
[00:07:43] Andrew Romeo: looked into, um, why they decided to go with 45 pounds things and not 50? I, I mean, I've been in the strength industry for probably over two decades and I've never looked into that, but like, why would you make a 45 pound plate and not a 50 pound plate?
[00:07:57] Philip Pape: That is a good question. I don't know if it's really to be in 20
[00:07:59] Andrew Romeo: kilos. It's probably something that came from lifting of like 20 kilos is a 44 pounds for closest to 44 is 45. We'll cast them that way. Do that. So super interesting stuff. So a little bit of background where you're coming from. So you get out of college and you're you, did you go right into the engineering world and you also, you stayed in the music world.
[00:08:19] So you're in both of them, um, was physical fitness part of your life at that point?
[00:08:24] Philip Pape: Not really. Um, I, there was a gym at, I actually lived at Bigelow comments right here. And there was a, a little gym there with just like every gym. You've got some cardio machines and you've got some like Nautilus style machines, maybe a couple of dumbbells.
[00:08:40] Definitely. No barbells it's too dangerous. So before, up until I was 30, so that was like my first eight years living here, um, on and off global gyms didn't have program. He didn't have a plan and pretty much stayed where I was.
[00:08:54] Andrew Romeo: Gotcha. So how old were you when you decided to venture into the world of CrossFit?
[00:09:00] And look me up on the internet and go down that path. When was that in your life?
[00:09:05] Philip Pape: I had just turned 30 when we got pregnant with our first child interests. You know, it's these moments in life that make you think right. I'm going to be a father. I need to get in shape. I don't know how to do it, but I can figure it out.
[00:09:17] So I did the research and there's this big craze called CrossFit, right? There was 2011. It's getting toward its peak. I think CrossFits peak was like mid, I
[00:09:27] Andrew Romeo: would say to you probably. Yeah, like 2013, 2014. It was like every week there's a new gym charting. There's more. And you're like, oh my God, how big does this bubble get before?
[00:09:39] Philip Pape: Yeah. It's like bank branches. You see a new one, like every week on every corner. Um, yeah, so that was, I saw I, so I tried a couple gyms and I ended up here, I think it was convenient to work and I definitely liked the vibe and the culture. And you guys were pretty small back then. It was like a third, the size of this today.
[00:09:56] So yeah, I'm trying to
[00:09:57] Andrew Romeo: think back. I think when you first started, we were probably the L-shaped facility where it was, you walked in. You walked into the bay where all like the exercise equipment is right now, like the sore and extra eggs and the turf as you would walk in there, but it was a green carpet and a wall with a big window.
[00:10:16] And you walked through that and there was a standalone rig that went the language. Yes. And then to the right there was like another little, like half bay where I built a pull-up bar out of two by four, by whatever, by eight and then plumbing pipe that I ran through and connected to both sides of the wall.
[00:10:35] And everybody loved that pull apart. Cause it had like this big flex to it. So when people were doing pull ups, the bar would flex down and like kind of prop you back up. Yeah, exactly. Right. It was popping back up and down, but, um, did that was. A long time ago. It seems like it. Right. So coming into the CrossFit world, what was, what were you looking to do?
[00:10:54] Well, I don't even know if you remember, it was long ago, a long time ago at this point, but what was your goal? What were you trying to get get into at that point?
[00:11:01] Philip Pape: Yeah, I, I didn't, I figured that I couldn't do things on my own successfully in that space. And I needed somebody to tell me what to do. It was basically what it came down to CrossFit sold itself.
[00:11:12] Small group classes with coaching in a, in a good community environment. Right. And with all this cool stuff that I just didn't know about. And I say stuff like that, cause that's what it was in my head at the time. And I think CrossFit for introducing me to some things that were new to me, barbells. Sure.
[00:11:29] I mean, I had never picked up a by my entire life.
[00:11:31] Andrew Romeo: I think that might be one of the greatest gifts that cross it has given the world is putting barbells in people's hands and somewhat like rejuvenating. Even rejuvenated in powerlifting, rejuvenating, Olympic lifting, rejuvenating, all of these things where before people looked at a barbell and they're like, you can bench press with it.
[00:11:49] You can incline bench, press with it. And people didn't even think like dead lifting or squatting with it. Cause they're like yeah.
[00:11:56] Philip Pape: Cleaning and snatch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:11:58] Andrew Romeo: Nevermind that stuff that is outrageous.
[00:12:00] Philip Pape: It's crazy. Yeah, exactly. So, and I agree because I think there was several decades between, I don't know, the seventies and eighties when power lifting and bodybuilding and kind of on the wane at the big gym model came into,
[00:12:13] Andrew Romeo: into play and the Nautilus machines are big.
[00:12:16] Did you look to the, to what you were saying, like your, your last year of college or P everybody that goes to the global gyms while I don't have a lot of money, so I can join this gym for 20 bucks, 30 bucks. And the machine right here has this little diagram that says, put my hands here, press this direction.
[00:12:33] And I work my, sorry, sorry. If you guys can't see what I'm doing, do sitting down and doing like a skull cross hopping around on a machine. Um, so it's like, uh, I mean it's very convenient and they kind of figured out
[00:12:44] Philip Pape: the scalability could sit down and do all your workouts, just sitting down and you can look
[00:12:48] Andrew Romeo: like Arnold Schwartzenegger when you're doing.
[00:12:51] And that's the hard part of, we were talking about booth misinformation. If they sell you a bad bag of goods of you can get all of this and they're not wrong, if you dialed in your diet and did all of the machines stuff, you could look really
[00:13:02] Philip Pape: good, but sure. I mean, there's value in, in some of those, especially the cable machines and some of them.
[00:13:07] Yeah,
[00:13:07] Andrew Romeo: absolutely. I mean, that's why I bought a lat pull down and a cable stack. They're awesome. Um, there's a lot of good stuff with that. Um, and I know as we've trained together for a long time, you've had history of back stuff going on. Was that prior to gyms or is that developed in
[00:13:23] Philip Pape: gym? I don't think I'll ever know.
[00:13:26] I, my wife and I have a theory that it was a snowboarding accident I had around that time 10 years ago, where I just took a hard fall, the board smacked right into my, um, like rear oblique area.
[00:13:40] Andrew Romeo: So you went forward, then you went forwards and your feet
[00:13:42] Philip Pape: kicked into what direction? I don't even remember. I just know I got hit really hard extras on the left side.
[00:13:49] Um, and then it wasn't long after that, that I would occasionally squat and it was always in a warm-up it was never with heavy load. Sure. And it would just. Go like that's the best way I can put it. You know, you feel that playing twins, a lot of people have spoken about that, such a bad feeling, but it, but it always recovered within a few days and I got back to normal stuff.
[00:14:12] And finally this year, uh, again, I was warming up a back squat at home and I felt. And this time it got worse over several days to the point where I couldn't walk, sit or stand, the pain was so bad all the way down my left leg lay down. And all you do is lay down with your feet up in the air. Like people people know back pain, know about that.
[00:14:34] I know exactly
[00:14:34] Andrew Romeo: I've had, I've had to the point where. Lay in a bed where it was like, I, and that, but I found out with Elvis was stuck in a certain position. So it was just creating a lot of tension where I just had to get everything popped and put back in and it was fine. But to your point yet back pain is very debilitating where you can't put your socks or your shoes on.
[00:14:52] Philip Pape: Yeah. And it, and it never really held me back all those years really. Um, and the funny thing is this year, I would say I've had my best fitness year this year, despite. Which is kind of funny, but I had the, I had the issue back in March, late March and all through April, went through the physical therapy and then finally had to have surgery microdiscectomy.
[00:15:14] Okay. What is that? That is where they make an incision in the spine between the vertebra of where the issue is and incise or cut out the tissue. That's herniated disc. So, okay. Which was impinging on my,
[00:15:29] Andrew Romeo: what was pushing them nurses. They just cut that away in Pinterest goes away. Optimally life
[00:15:35] goes
[00:15:35] Philip Pape: back to normal.
[00:15:36] And the thing is back surgeries is they don't have the highest, uh, success rate. It depends on what you have. So what I had was is a very acute issue that the surgeon literally said, the tissue like flew out when he opened me up, you know, it was just easier to just get rid of it,
[00:15:51] Andrew Romeo: waiting pressure on this thing where it's like,
[00:15:54] Philip Pape: oh, look at that popped her.
[00:15:55] Exactly. And so when I woke up. From the surgery. I Amelie felt no pain. I could stand up. I could walk. And the recovery for that is just a lot of walking. Can't really do any weights until you get green-lighted. Sure. And of course, when he said, all right, you can start lightweights. And I said, is that light for me?
[00:16:13] Or just, is this an absolute number? And he's like, not in a light for you. He works with athletes and people like that. And he could die. Yeah, no good doctor, because when everything was done, he's like, I'm not going to tell you what else to do. Just go have. You know, if you're back here again, you're back here again, but you'll be fine.
[00:16:28] Go
[00:16:28] Andrew Romeo: live your life. That's awesome, man. And I gave you a ton of credit because a lot of people that have been battling the back stuff that you've been battling at a certain point, you'd be like, well, I'm done lifting weights. I guess this is never again. Will I do that? Then that's where you took a different approach to that where you're like, okay, clearly there's something that's missing.
[00:16:45] That's triggering this. How do I strengthen everything up around it? What do I need to do to combat this, to stay active and achieve my goals whilst. Moving forward, which is awesome. Then I gave you a ton of credit for that.
[00:16:58] Philip Pape: Um, yeah, I I'd rather have, like, they say a strong, bad back than a weak, bad back.
[00:17:02] Like, I don't want to be 70 bending over to pick up a ball and then there's an issue just because I didn't strengthen my back.
[00:17:09] Andrew Romeo: Yeah. And I mean, you hear a lot of these doctors talk and I've talked to PAs that are in these surgeries where they're like, most people have some fucked up discs, something is wrong, somewhere in there, but as long as you're not that aware of it and it doesn't hurt you every day, you can pretty much, as you're saying, just develop strength around it and you're going to be okay and you're going to be able to do whatever you need to do.
[00:17:32] And I, I feel the same way where I, I I've gotten pretty good at self-diagnosing. I feel something out of alignment with my background, like, all right, I just need to get a pop out of this area. Right. And I'll get all of this tension relief and I'll be fine. Um,
[00:17:47] Philip Pape: but don't you find that working out usually makes it feel better?
[00:17:49] Not
[00:17:50] Andrew Romeo: 100%, man. I mean, so I'm in the middle of squat Tobar right now. Um, so if you're ever have. Uh, tired back is now in a day that you don't look forward to getting back under a barbell. The squad is right now for me, and today's a great example yesterday. I squatted heavier, went up to like 92% of my best and like a Seesaw.
[00:18:08] And then today I had to go back under the barbell and do paused back squats. I didn't look forward to it, but when I walked away from the session, I was like, man, I feel a lot better way. Things are, things are popping. Things are moving. I'm feeling. So we're, we're diving into kind of, you're in, you just got into the cross that world.
[00:18:28] Um, you had a back injury early on. It was snowboarding and squatting and it was some stuff through there. We're not attributing to the squatting, but how you felt it while you were squatting lightweights while you were warming up and things were popping with that. Um, as you progressed over the last decade, It seems like your goals have shifted, um, and your goals have shifted from, Hey, I just need to get fit and healthy to where are you now with your goals?
[00:18:50] What are you doing
[00:18:51] Philip Pape: now? You're like a mind reader, man. I mean, you, you, you know this all about me without me telling you, right? Um, so I want a good coach. So I agreed like about eight, nine years of that timeframe was. Fairly inconsistent. You know, I came in maybe two or three days a week.
[00:19:07] Andrew Romeo: So I would see you in the mornings, typically around 7:00 AM, 7:00 AM
[00:19:09] Philip Pape: is the only one.
[00:19:10] Sometimes
[00:19:11] Andrew Romeo: that timeframe of the Jim's history for a lot of people that don't see me coaching a lot. Now I used to coach almost every class, um, in, for a little while. Brian CARF, Brian you're listening. Hi, Brian. Um, Brian used to coach along with me and we had some other coaches that coached as well, but for the majority of classes, I ran ran them all.
[00:19:29] So Phillip and I got to know each other really, really well throughout classes, because as you said, sometimes it's like right now, seven 30 is a really popular time. Right. A lot of people come in, but back then, no one came to seven. Right. Maybe Phillip, maybe mark did when mark wasn't retired yet. Um, so I will, yeah, Lauren and I'd have an opportunity to talk to these guys for an hour.
[00:19:48] Three times a week, which is actually a really interesting and unique opportunity because how often do you have an opportunity to connect with somebody for an hour, three times a week? It doesn't happen often.
[00:19:58] Philip Pape: It's like a fun social club and get together.
[00:20:01] Andrew Romeo: I mean, I call my parents once a week for 15 minutes, like nevermind three hours a week.
[00:20:06] So you get to know, I get to know all of the clients and athletes and everybody really, really well. Um, so Phillip, when you went from training kind of inconsistently two to three times a week, 7:00 AM, and then. It wasn't just COVID shift of training at home, but there was, I feel like you were shifting before COVID happened, um, into more of the strengths.
[00:20:26] Philip Pape: Did you take a look at my notes? I know I was thinking, how do I do, I was looking back at that timeframe. I said, you know, 2019 is really when I made the shift. Cause I started doing RA strength. I, so
[00:20:37] Andrew Romeo: the way that I. The way that my mind works. I can specifically remember when the Soren next rigs were against that wall.
[00:20:44] So the far wall where the bay doors there in the middle bay against that, and I can remember squatting in the rack next to Philip and chatting, chatting about strength and that kind of stuff. So that, that's where my pinpoint comes from of being like somewhere around that timeframe, your mind switched from being like, Hey, I want to exercise for time and fitness.
[00:21:02] I want to start prioritizing strength a little bit more.
[00:21:04] Philip Pape: Exactly. Yeah. And I didn't entirely know why, like I have a much better grasp now of how important strength is as a foundation to everything.
[00:21:13] Andrew Romeo: I agree. I couldn't agree. More
[00:21:15] Philip Pape: aging and mood and energy and productivity at work. Like everything that's, that's better now from a physical standpoint is because of strength.
[00:21:22] That's awesome. That that's my opinion. But, uh, yeah, it was around 2019 doing RA strength, which for the listeners is, is rooms. Custom group programming for people used to be called the barbell
[00:21:33] Andrew Romeo: class. It was Barbara and we still have a barbell club and I kept that as Olympic weightlifting. So that's now before it was like a mix of whatever kind of strength things my head was at.
[00:21:42] And I've peeled that off to be like, all right, barbell club is straight Olympic weightlifting, and now RA strength is kind of like. My training program that I run through that I put everybody else through this at the same
[00:21:53] Philip Pape: time I would, I would classify it as like power building. Yes. Because you always have the compound lift to start one or two of those and then some form of hypertrophy or.
[00:22:04] Accessories, barbell rows,
[00:22:05] Andrew Romeo: things like that. Exactly. Yeah. 100%. I mean, you're definitely dead on with that. We'll start out with a squat or a deadlift or a bench press, and then we move into the auxiliary movement and more so for our listeners that don't know what hypertrophy is, anything over eight reps, uh, or, I mean, so you're talking what a four to eight reps is, um, Mio fibrillary hypertrophy.
[00:22:26] And then eight to 12 reps are talking about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. So if you guys don't know what I mean by that is four to eight is get stronger. Eight to 12 is get bigger. And then above 12, you're talking more about muscular endurance. Yeah. So right around that timeframe, you're switching over to RA strength in somewhere in your brain.
[00:22:43] It's making the connection of, I think I might like
[00:22:46] Philip Pape: this more. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. Cause, uh, co COVID, I mean really did a lot for me in our car because everything shut down. We started working from home. All of a sudden I had all this extra times, I said, well, why don't I just work out five days a week now?
[00:23:01] Right. And then you offered custom individualized programming to all your members. That was,
[00:23:06] Andrew Romeo: yeah. As soon as we kicked off COVID. What do we do? How do we keep people engaged? If I give you equipment and give you a program, will you do it? You will. Great. Let's do that then.
[00:23:15] Philip Pape: And what do you have? Right. Like I said, okay, I've got some fifties, some 25 Dumbo, no barbell, you know, maybe a ball or a limited.
[00:23:24] Andrew Romeo: Let's make it work, man. Let's make it work. And I've, as I've watched you, it seems like you're very similar to me in this, regardless. You've just slowly started collecting equipment and finding deals for equipment. I'm like, dude, I, if anybody is a fitness equipment junkie, it's me like, and I've had to pull like reel myself in recently because shit's gotten so expensive out there, but I am the same.
[00:23:46] Pick
[00:23:46] Philip Pape: this up. Well, rogue has her boneyard sale right now
[00:23:51] Andrew Romeo: because I just saw an email from them or they're like, just so people know for our black Friday stuff. Like the price of steel has gone up 300%. Nevermind. The price of cardboard. Nevermind. The price of tape. Nevermind the price of stickers. So take that into consideration when you're purchasing equipment, nothing.
[00:24:09] Philip Pape: Yeah. So I, I didn't have any equipment at the time. Right. And so you programmed for me, something like a moderate strength program with what I did have with. Yep. And here's the thing like when you're newbie, right? The newbie gains are still there on the table. I got to take advantage of that because my tonnage of volume went up, even though my load went down.
[00:24:28] Gotcha. Right. And I think, and then I also went on kind of a unintentional cut, you know, I just wasn't eating that much,
[00:24:35] Andrew Romeo: not eating that much. And you're lifting five days a week. So your caloric expenditure just went
[00:24:38] Philip Pape: through the roof, metallic metabolisms, going up with the muscle mass. Right. My activity is going up my energy inputs coming down.
[00:24:46] Um, You started to see it physically. I started to see the physical transformation, which was very motivating because my whole life, I thought, ah, my genes, you know, there's no way you can look like this or that. And it's not all about looks, but for a lot of dudes, it is somewhat about looks right.
[00:25:01] Andrew Romeo: And even if it's not about looks when you circuiting results in that category, as you said, it's very motivating.
[00:25:07] It's motive. You're like, wow, that, that traffic is starting to pop out a little bit more. Oh, my shoulder. No matter what anybody says, you're going to enjoy the, that aspect
[00:25:17] Philip Pape: of it. Exactly. And it feels great. You know, you feel lighter, you feel stronger. So it started to get me into. A little bit, I won't say an obsession, but a hobby of learning about strength.
[00:25:28] Right. And so I started to read a lot more and listen to a lot more, you know, starting strength and bigger leaner, stronger. And, you know, you've got the power athlete guys and, uh, RA and all the, the old timers. What's his name, Marty Gallagher and the power I can just listen on and on. And those are great
[00:25:44] Andrew Romeo: resources.
[00:25:45] And I mean, Phillip and I will talk about the podcast that he's going to be launching soon and what he's starting to do with that. But the resources that you're citing are all solid and quality resources, which I'm super happy that you found compared to finding people. Aren't going to lead you down a bad, bad path that you're like this, this doesn't look.
[00:26:05] Yeah.
[00:26:05] Philip Pape: Like the men's health guys or the supplement folks and whatnot. Yeah. Um, so once, once I did that, I started collecting equipment. As you mentioned, you know, I found, I found a bar about found some plates. Then I bought a power rack and it went on from there to the point where, okay, I've got everything I need.
[00:26:23] What do I do now? What do I really want to focus on? So I said, let me, let me strip everything away. I even said, you know, RA strength is great, but it's got a lot of stuff I don't even want to worry about at the moment. I just want to learn the lifts. I mean, big lists. We're looking
[00:26:37] Andrew Romeo: at primarily, you're looking at squat, dead bench and press and press.
[00:26:41] Okay. I love the overhead press. How many people do cause it moves. So. Uh, that's like the technician in you.
[00:26:49] Philip Pape: It's a very technical lift. People don't realize that. Right? Most people think the squad is the most technical, but the press is very technical and there are, I would say three styles of press. Right?
[00:26:58] You have the strict press. Everybody's familiar. But then you also have the Olympic press that went on a favor back and you get, you get hit. You get the,
[00:27:07] Andrew Romeo: if you had anybody has ever, if, so Steve Powell is listening to this. People used to refer to him as old Steve, and that's not an insult. And Steve knew we were calling him that at the same time, but he had the Olympic style press where he would like to go up Steve's Emma, would it be like your front squatting?
[00:27:20] He would come up and say, Pressure barbell, but you'd always look at it and be like, well, he's not push pressing, and almost looks like
[00:27:26] Philip Pape: the hip. And then it looks almost like a bench press lean
[00:27:29] Andrew Romeo: back and press it over
[00:27:30] Philip Pape: your head. Yep. And then, and then there's an intermediate form of that, or there's a combination of two where you can do the Olympic on the first rep and do strict with the stretch reflex on the subsequent reps.
[00:27:42] And.
[00:27:43] Andrew Romeo: I will say I dabble in a little of those, uh, those they're almost cheater reps, but it's how do you move a bigger weight? Well, if I let this bar even like, sometimes you take it out of the rack and you let it just drop like an inch or two and then boom, use that stretch reflex to drive it up. And you're like, well, I can press 10 more pounds doing it.
[00:27:58] Like, yeah.
[00:27:59] Philip Pape: Is there anything part of the range of motion that then gets the benefit from exactly that. Lion tricep extensions, full range back with your shoulders. Right. You can do a higher load. So part of the, yeah,
[00:28:11] Andrew Romeo: exactly. And then if you slip that tricep creep back or that four, or that you're to get your tricep creep back a little bit and then pull going, boom.
[00:28:17] And you're like, wow, that's all. And I mean, again, that comes back down to the training principle of overload. How do you overload a specific training? A body part? Well, sometimes giving a little body English. Isn't the worst thing in the world. Like the cheater curls, but that's fine because at the top of your curl, your.
[00:28:33] Philip Pape: Yep. Curling it. Yeah. So I basically those four, the big four. Also Paul's right. Cause I couldn't deadlift twice or three times a week. So I'd alternate with poles and chins and then some power cleans as well. Cool. For polling. Um, and I did kind of a variation of starting strength in some of Andy Baker's programming and some other things that I mixed in there, uh, like a novice linear progression.
[00:28:57] Andrew Romeo: Yup. I liked the fact that you mentioned a linear progression because typically. Uh, a lifter is considered a novice lifter until you've completed a linear progression and it doesn't have to be power athletes bedrock, or Jim Wendler is 5, 3, 1, or anybody else's, it can be one of your own creating, but if you don't know how much strength you can accumulate or what you're leaving on the table until you fully go through a linear progression where you're failing, and then you go back down and you reload it, you go through it and push it up again.
[00:29:28] And then you. Honestly, I've been veneer. Progressions are probably one of the hardest things I've ever done because with mine, I'd be squatting twice a week and you barely squeak through squatting session one. And you know, two days later you have to add more weight to the bar and try to do it again, force your body to adapt to it.
[00:29:43] Like linear progressions are hard.
[00:29:45] Philip Pape: Yeah, no, no. They're super hard. And each lift wants to go at its own rate of progress. Yep. And. You got to eat like yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually the shoulder press is the first install in my, my personal experience with
[00:29:58] Andrew Romeo: all shoulder presses. That's why I, that's why I said I was surprised at your favorite.
[00:30:02] Cause it's the most fickle fucking lift in the world where you're like, why doesn't this thing move.
[00:30:07] Philip Pape: Yeah. And, and one week to the next you could, all of a sudden lose 10% of Australia. Let's go.
[00:30:11] Andrew Romeo: What happened here? Teeny bit fatigue. All right, fine.
[00:30:14] Philip Pape: And do you remember, I don't know if you remember when I was doing, I was pressing like three or four times a week.
[00:30:19] I was doing like singles one day strict one day Olympic one day. And, and I've heard that that's what you need to do a lot of volume on the press for it to keep going up. So that works well for you. It worked at the time. Like if I wanted to get into it again and push, push the press up, that would work cool.
[00:30:34] Then. What's his name? Bill Starr had his athletes years ago doing weighted dips. He did a way to dip progression to where you were repping a hundred pounds hanging off of you. Dibs are awesome.
[00:30:48] Andrew Romeo: So bill SARS, big influencer, not so people think influencer and they think Instagram bill Starr was alive when there was no such thing as Instagram, um, by influencer, I mean, he had a big influence on these strength community.
[00:31:01] Um, there's even something called a star shrug, which is named after him for his shrug. I was aware of that. So it's more of like you at the bar slide down to the top of your knee. And then as you. Where you would normally shrug. You get a little bit more momentum and you can pop that shrug up. So you can go a little bit heavier rather than holding the shrug and just shrugging
[00:31:20] Philip Pape: kind of like a power shrug, putting pins.
[00:31:23] Andrew Romeo: You hold it, hold it the whole time. So he was a, um, more of than the Olympic side of things. And that's kind of where if you look at a clean or a snatch, that's where that's coming from and trying to get some hip momentum behind it. But, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know where I was.
[00:31:38] Philip Pape: You're talking to that linear progression.
[00:31:40] Yeah. If you want to get strong, just, just strip away all the nonsense and all the accessories and all the bodybuilding stuff and just focus on heavy lifting and adding weight to the bar. Yup.
[00:31:51] Andrew Romeo: And in a consistent controlled pattern, it's very measurable. It's actually really satisfying. Yeah,
[00:31:58] Philip Pape: it's
[00:31:58] Andrew Romeo: active.
[00:32:00] And if you talk to any strength person, pretty much anywhere, they're going to be like, well, if you are you a novice athlete, are you an advanced athlete? And the way that you're going to differentiate between the two is have you completed any type of linear progression? Yes or no? So it sounds like the beginning of COVID you took that opportunity to focus on your big four to five lifts.
[00:32:17] You went through your linear progressions. So that's probably bringing you to like mid 2020.
[00:32:22] Philip Pape: That was, I didn't really start that til the fall ish of 2020. Got you. Okay. Yeah. So I started eating a lot. I mean, I gained 30 pounds in like four or five months. Just really fast for you. I know I'm fine with it.
[00:32:35] Like normally you'd call that almost a dirty bowl for some people you don't look like you put on any bad weight. Well, no, I didn't put on that's the thing. It's the first time I ever put on muscle at a decent clip. And then, uh, and then I maintain that for a long time. And then I'm about done with a cut.
[00:32:52] Okay. So I'm about done with the three month. Gotcha.
[00:32:55] Andrew Romeo: What if you don't mind sharing, what weight did you start at and what weight did you go to and where are you cutting to what's that look
[00:33:01] Philip Pape: like? Yeah. So I started in like the one sixties kind of not skinny fat. I mean, I had a little bit of muscle, but that was, you definitely had muscle on
[00:33:10] Andrew Romeo: you because you've been exercising.
[00:33:12] So at that point you've been exercising for eight years, as you said, inconsistently, but. You're leaner. Yeah. But you're like, you're not bigger. You don't have
[00:33:21] Philip Pape: a lot of exactly. So I went from that to 1 95. Wow. I was thinking of getting to 200, but, but it's true when you start, when you start getting up above where you normally sit there's impacts, right?
[00:33:34] Like it's hard, it's hard to eat. You don't feel as good. Even my blood didn't look your sweaty, like higher blood pressure and cholesterol. I mean, these things do start to creep up. They do, um, very strong correlation. So I was like, okay, this is it. So that's when I did my first real cut, that was last summer heading up to my brother's wedding.
[00:33:55] It was just coincidence, but it was a way on the beach side. It wouldn't be, you know, fat, Hey, we're going to
[00:34:00] Andrew Romeo: a beach and
[00:34:02] Philip Pape: I want to look good for this. Right. So, uh, that, that was, uh, that was kind of a random cut. I think I was trying to do keto or something at the time. I still wasn't dialing in my nutrition.
[00:34:11] Like I do today. And that worked out. And then I kind of maintain that, uh, for a while until then my back surgery. Right. So I was starting to get back into the end of my linear progression, moving into an intermediate four day split. So where
[00:34:27] Andrew Romeo: did you cut down to with the keto thing for the. 1 65. When, so you went for it, you started the one sixties, you went up to 1 95 and you went back down to,
[00:34:35] Philip Pape: okay.
[00:34:35] Yep. And then I kind of gradually got back up into the one eighties. Gotcha. And just hovered. Um, but I was working hard. I was training hard, so I still was building muscle, but I was more in a maintenance, so I don't know how anabolic it was. Who knows. Right. Um, then Baxter. Kind of interrupted and that was making good gains.
[00:34:55] You know, I was, I had just, and my deadlifts, like two weeks before, right here in the gym. So yeah, I had the back surgery then after about a month started to get back in. Then we went on a trip to Maine for 10 days. And I had appendicitis. I think
[00:35:11] Andrew Romeo: that you and I were communicating at this point about something on the digital side of things.
[00:35:15] And I think you were like, I just got back from vacation and I'm down and out for a while. Oh
[00:35:20] Philip Pape: man. Yeah, exactly. It was on, it was on the day back. So silver lining, we enjoyed our whole vacation. It was not till the day we came home. When St. Francis hospital, they had me sitting there all day. P three times had to give me painkillers.
[00:35:32] So it's like, man, you're just not a priority compared to these, you know, people losing their arms and whatnot over
[00:35:37] Andrew Romeo: here, your stomach hurts and your side hurts or whatever. You'll
[00:35:40] Philip Pape: be fine. You're good. Yeah. Yeah. More than pills. That's rough. So whatever, you know, I read, read books all day or whatever. I listen to podcasts.
[00:35:50] Find your straight radio who knows. And finally, they got me in at like 6:00 PM, took half an hour for the surgery. I mean, I was out completely cut you open and they do the appendectomy. And that was a lot faster recovery than back surgery. Absolutely. Maybe a week or two,
[00:36:05] Andrew Romeo: make sure that those stitches hold and when your blood pressure goes through the roof, you're not ripping anything or tearing it.
[00:36:10] Yeah.
[00:36:11] Philip Pape: So then I got back to me again and I said, you know, what, if I can't live heavy, why don't I lose weight? Sure. And go on a real cut. Okay. And I started to do it properly. So by properly, I mean, in my, for me, it's more of a flexible dieting. I track my calories, check my macros. Okay. Eat whatever. As long as it fits in
[00:36:30] there.
[00:36:31] Andrew Romeo: Absolutely. I mean, you'll hear it. Think there's so many different opinions on dieting and shit like that. And in my opinion, if that's what worked really well for. Awesome. That's an adherence. If you can adhere to it and you can achieve the goals that you want.
[00:36:46] Philip Pape: That's great. If you can eat keto for the rest of your life, go for it.
[00:36:49] Sure.
[00:36:50] Andrew Romeo: And I know with me, I can't do that. I can't, I mean, I, I work out, I lift weights five days a week and I can have a pretty open diet, but my primary, my state, my principals of my dieters, there has to be animal based protein throughout the course of the day, some solid carbohydrates throughout the course of the day.
[00:37:07] And then I filter in a bunch of junk, unfortunately, and that's probably why I have more fluff than I have on me than I need, because when you're lifting it like the middle of squats, I crushed one of the grand day home record burritos today for Moe's and it was awesome. And I had
[00:37:20] Philip Pape: enjoyed it. And if it fits overall in your plans, that's fine.
[00:37:24] Right? That's
[00:37:25] Andrew Romeo: fine. So on this final cut, where
[00:37:28] Philip Pape: did you come down to? All right. So I started at one 90 and I'm today at like one 60. And my goal was 1 65. Okay. I measure myself every week in terms of body fat. And I do that with calipers. I do it with the Navy tape measurement because I'm not going to go do Dex or bod pod or something that there's,
[00:37:48] Andrew Romeo: there's so much, as long as you're using the same thing consistently, that's all that matters.
[00:37:53] It's like consistency of the tool is what matters. It doesn't matter necessarily if it's the bod pod or a DEXA scan or. Uh, hydrostatic weighing or whatever, as long as it's the same tool every time. Cool.
[00:38:05] Philip Pape: And honestly, for most people, if you measure waste yes. You know, you drop inches on your way, so you probably dropped body fat.
[00:38:10] Yeah.
[00:38:10] Andrew Romeo: I've gone back to, and I know what April, April does tape tape measurements as well in terms of that is the least, um, variants. Right? As long as I'm the same person, as long as I measure the first time and I measured the same with a second. I'm going to have consistent, consistent, trackable results where there's no machine, there's nothing that comes in between what we're trying to get.
[00:38:31] Philip Pape: Exactly. Right. And you can measure both fat loss and muscle gain, right? Because you can measure your biceps in your thighs and your chest. And of course, I've seen those slightly dip because as you're leaning, I'm leaning down and again, for people listening, you know, when you really go farther into a cut because.
[00:38:49] I started around 18, 19% body fat and probably around 11, 12, maybe, I don't know, around 11 or 12. And that's what I'm gonna end up. Cause I don't want to go any further. You know, you start getting hungry, you start to, you know, you lose muscle mass first and then you lose strength is what I've found. And. My deadlifts going up, my squats about stalled, the benches stalled and the press going back.
[00:39:11] Gosh. And I'm like, I'm done. I need to start.
[00:39:14] Andrew Romeo: I was going to ask. So that was my next question, because I know myself personally, I have a specific number where if one of my body weight drops under it, I know it. I can feel it in my lifts. And I'm like, I'm too light. I know that I'm too. I don't know. Have you found that number yet where you're like, okay, I think this is
[00:39:27] Philip Pape: it.
[00:39:27] I think this is it like to go beyond this would be more of the obsessive. You're going to do a physique show or something. Sure.
[00:39:34] Andrew Romeo: And then you're doing it for the pure aesthetic aspect. You're
[00:39:37] Philip Pape: suffering on purpose and I don't need to do that. So now my goal is five pounds and five months of muscle. Wow. So to do that, I probably have to gain about 15 pounds in the next five months,
[00:39:50] Andrew Romeo: but it's good that you have that.
[00:39:52] Yeah, because a lot of people are like, so again like seven pounds and five, it will be muscle. No,
[00:39:57] Philip Pape: I think if you're new to. Like a third of it will be muscle.
[00:40:02] Andrew Romeo: And it's like for me to do that, like, it's real hard
[00:40:05] Philip Pape: now for you. It's probably like I have a training.
[00:40:08] Andrew Romeo: I have a training age of over 20 years at this point where like to change my, like, to put on five pounds in five months, I would be slamming steaks.
[00:40:16] Yeah, like steak three times a day and sleeping my face off
[00:40:19] Philip Pape: 300 grams of protein a
[00:40:21] Andrew Romeo: day. Yeah. That's awesome though, man, you have a plan, so you know what you're going to, so this next game you said you're going to get about 15 pounds. So it's going to put you back in the low one
[00:40:29] Philip Pape: eighties. Yeah, that sounds about right.
[00:40:31] Yeah. So about half a percent up to a half percent of. Of body weight gain. So like, if you, you got to plan all this out, like this is one of my big takeaways for sustainability, right? You have to track, you have to track it and know what your numbers are. If I know I want to gain a half percent of my body weight, I know exactly what I need to weigh on a seven day moving average week to week.
[00:40:52] And if I'm going higher or lower than that, adjust the calories. No.
[00:40:56] Andrew Romeo: This is the concept that you're talking about is really hard for a lot of people,
[00:41:03] Philip Pape: because it is hard, super
[00:41:05] Andrew Romeo: hard, and people don't understand the journey like, so I talked to people a lot about the journey that you need to go on. Like, if you want to make a body change, it's not something that you can do in six months, or you can, you can change.
[00:41:17] Don't get me wrong. You can lose a lot of weight quickly and you can keep weight off quickly, but the journey that Phillip's going on, it's a very similar journey that I went on. Takes a long time. Um, I went from somewhere around, one 70 up to, so my bulk brought me up to about 2 25. I gained about 55 pounds doing that.
[00:41:37] Um, and that was, I was eating a lot of five guys and they took me five, six years to do it. And then I would do what you're saying. And I pulled back down to one. And then I popped back up to two 20 and then I went back down to like 1 95. Then I popped back up to like two 20 again. And I've just yo-yo that.
[00:41:54] And that's not a yo-yo diet thing. I've done intentionally. These are all intentional mass gains and cuts and mass gains. And it's just slowly, every time you're just layering on a little bit of more muscle and a little bit more muscle. So you're just stacking that on and over the years and over your training age.
[00:42:10] You just find yourself, you get a little bit thicker and a little bit stronger and things just as long as you're consistent with it, move in the right direction,
[00:42:17] Philip Pape: stock Monterey up and down, up and down, but always up. It
[00:42:20] Andrew Romeo: always slowly works its way up magically. Um, and I, I admire the journey you're on.
[00:42:26] Cause it's not easy. It's not an easy journey. And to have the mental fortitude being like it's okay to get a little bit. Um, cause I'll pull it off eventually and then I'll put it back on and then I'll pull it back off because as you said, there's a plan and it's all trackable and you're going to do it in a way that makes sense to you.
[00:42:41] And if you like. Super hard thing, especially what I've found is people that come from being overweight and they've lost all that weight. And then I tell them, well, you need to put on some fat. They're like, I'm not doing that. And you're like, well, I can understand. You've worked really hard to get down into your body weight, but unfortunately you're going to need to put on some fat, if you're gonna put on muscle, it's just the.
[00:43:03] I guess I would say the only way that you can put on just straight muscles, if you play with drugs. Uh, and if you, if you play with drugs yeah. You can do it. And that's when you see people put on 20 pounds of just straight muscle and they're super vascular and they're purple. And you're like, well, what the fuck happened to that guy?
[00:43:20] He's probably playing with some drugs along. So that's kind of brought us to where we're currently at, right? This is what you're currently doing. And it seems like over the last decade, you've really developed a big passion for strength, training and fitness and trying to help people put them in the right, um, the right paths.
[00:43:37] Anything that I missed anything that we didn't talk about that I should
[00:43:40] Philip Pape: have taught. Uh, the only other thing I want to mention was how, how walking has kind of changed my life to really fill me in. And so when I broke my back, broke my back, when I hurt my back and had to recover, I had to walk, right. And I used to hate walking, found it boring.
[00:43:58] My wife loved walking and she had always drag me out to go on a walk and. When, when I recovered and started walking again, I eventually started building up where I, I was getting like 12,000 steps a day. And that's what I do every day now, effort,
[00:44:13] Andrew Romeo: especially because as you said, you're working from home.
[00:44:15] So treadmill, a treadmill
[00:44:17] Philip Pape: treadmill, and then walking outside. Cool. Cause I would say
[00:44:19] Andrew Romeo: if you were at an office, you could try to make a loop or find something, but I could see a lot of people falling into the trap of when they work at home, they walk from their bed to. Table or the refrigerator back to their class and their steps drastically decreased.
[00:44:33] Nevermind. Going the direction where you're seeing where they yeah. Right. It sounds like yours have drastically increased.
[00:44:40] Philip Pape: And I've found that because of that, I really don't need to do any other type of cardio. And I also, my resting heart rate has come down. So for my whole life, it was in the upper fifties.
[00:44:51] I mean, at least for the last 10 years or so. And it dropped to like 52. Wow. When I started walking, interesting cholesterol went down, you know, all these things improved. Um, and my metabolism has shot up beyond what I think it would have from lifting. And this is while I'm on a cut. So I'm just, it's just this epiphany.
[00:45:10] Is this all from the walking and there's no other variable. It seems to correlate. Have you read the book
[00:45:15] Andrew Romeo: comfort crisis? No. Okay. So there's a, there's a book out there. A lot of people have read it recently. It's called comfort crisis. And what it does, it talks about how we're more comfortable now than we've ever been in the history of humankind's right in the last a hundred years, our, our technological developments, our food, our.
[00:45:31] The ability to be comfortable has increased drastically, but they talk, he also breaks down part of it, how we are genetically designed to walk, um, and. Designed to be fast, right? If we're not out outrunning animals and he was making some analogy in the book or not knowledge comparison of, um, a kitten that's like 10 weeks old can run faster than us.
[00:45:52] Um, and there's more equipped to kill something than we are with our bare hands. Cause we don't have claws. Sharp sharp teeth and, um, all of these things, but what we're genetically designed to do is walk long distances and then carry loads over long distances. I E we're designed to walk down an animal until it dies and then process the animal and carry it back at that.
[00:46:16] Exactly. So we've been designed to walk and there's a lot of really big health benefits that come with walking, which we are discovering. And, and another part of it, what was really interesting, he was talking about the mental benefits that come from walking are exponential, but to receive them, you have to put your phone away where if you're walking and you're on your phone, checking your email, checking, whatever, which I find myself guilty of.
[00:46:40] Um, technical. A lot of times I try to listen to a book, um,
[00:46:44] Philip Pape: Is it okay to listen to something and still be looking at nature? You have to think
[00:46:51] Andrew Romeo: I do the same thing. Right? Um, it's so it's, it's really interesting. I literally just read this book where it really connects that all together of like, that's what we're designed to do.
[00:47:00] And going back to it, you're finding a lot of these really big benefits. Um, and I also know from a recovery side on the weightlifting side, walking shoes.
[00:47:07] Philip Pape: Oh, it's huge. No interference. Yeah. And even, even rucking, like I actually have a backpack and throw some weights in there and that'll, you know, step it up a little bit.
[00:47:16] And they actually
[00:47:16] Andrew Romeo: talk about, um, in that book, they talk about the guy that created the GORUCK challenge, where it came from, what he did, what he was designing to do with it, how he was designing and all of that fun stuff. So for any of our listeners, I actually really, really enjoyed the book. Um, comfort crisis, check it out.
[00:47:30] Uh, I have no ties to the book. I'm I get nothing from you buying this book, but I thought it was.
[00:47:36] Philip Pape: Amazon link in the show notes. I will drop that in there actually. So another book somewhat related, it's called burn. It came out earlier this year by Henry ponsor. He's like a very well-known researcher in, in the metabolism space.
[00:47:50] He's the one who came up with a constrained model of energy as opposed to the additive model. So we all, we all are familiar with the additive model where. The idea is the more activity you do, the more calories you burn indefinitely, the constraint model suggests that after a certain amount of activity, your body starts to adapt metabolic adaptation.
[00:48:10] And so the total calories level out plateau. Now a lot of people took this to mean, oh, so I shouldn't even do exercise, right. Because it's going to be one where I get to a certain point and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. But. First part of the graph that does show an increase anyway. So you should still be exercising and walking does that, but he, he did all the studies with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, where they did the double isotope water analysis.
[00:48:35] I think it's called when they can measure precisely calories in calories out. Interesting. And they can, and they found that HODs HODs are highly active, right? Westerner is not very active at all, but they have similar metabolisms because of this phenomenon. But the other cool thing was where do the HODs that get their activity walking.
[00:48:54] They pairing
[00:48:55] Andrew Romeo: water to carry they're
[00:48:56] Philip Pape: hunter gatherers.
[00:48:58] Andrew Romeo: So where we originally
[00:48:59] Philip Pape: came here, an animal and they walk all day and they walk up back and they get about 15,000 steps a day, 20,000. It's not a crazy
[00:49:06] Andrew Romeo: amount. And the big difference is they're doing it because their lives depend on it. We're doing it because we're like, man, I want to close this ring on my iWatch today.
[00:49:14] Like I better get out there so
[00:49:15] Philip Pape: true when I'm good today. Yeah. Okay. There you go. So you're close
[00:49:18] Andrew Romeo: to rings already. You're good to go. I think that's awesome, Phil, but I think that's a great place to leave it.
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