Ep 153: Time-Efficient Muscle Growth, Cardio for Lifters, and Metabolism Myths with Jordan Lips
Want to unlock time-efficient muscle growth? Tune in as Jordan Lips spills the secrets of hypertrophy optimization and the truth about metabolic adaptation!
Today, Philip (@witsandweights) is joined by personal trainer, ex-gym owner, and MNU Certified Nutritionist Jordan Lips, who works exclusively online with people who want to get healthier across a broad range of goals.
Philip invited Jordan on the show because of his straightforward approach to topics like metabolism and building muscle, which are often misconstrued in the fitness industry. Today, he shares his expertise in three big areas we're hearing a lot about: time-efficient hypertrophy, incorporating cardio as a lifter, and clearing up some of the misconceptions about metabolic adaptation.
Jordan has over 15 years of experience as the mind behind Jordan Lips Fitness and offers both 1-on-1 and group coaching. His online group programs, including 'The Hyper Trophies' for the gym and 'Home Bodies' for those working out from home, are designed to respect your time and lifestyle. And it doesn't hurt that Jordan deeply understands biomechanics, nutrition, and individualized program design. His podcast, "Where Optimal Meets Practical," is focused on optimizing your training, nutrition, and mindset but doing so in a practical way.
Today, you’ll learn all about:
2:50 Time-efficient hypertrophy
7:29 Intensity techniques for muscle growth
11:52 SFR and time efficiency
13:58 Muscle-building for beginners
16:03 The foundation of strength
19:25 Workout splits based on experience level
24:27 Cardio for lifters
40:04 Cardio during the fat loss phase
43:12 Defining metabolic adaptation
50:47 Does metabolic adaptation accelerate?
55:02 Are diet breaks/refeeds psychological?
59:46 The effects of hormones, alcohol, sleep, and stress on metabolic adaptation
1:03:19 Philip's metabolic adaptation after his surgery
1:06:38 The question Jordan wished Philip had asked
1:10:35 Where to find Jordan
1:11:01 Outro
Episode resources:
Podcast: jordanlipsfitness.com/podcast/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA1dws6_fvP1ue7auf31QOQ/featured
Group training programs for people in the gym or at home: https://jordanlipsfitness.com
In the world of fitness and muscle building, there's a prevailing myth that one must live at the gym to see significant gains. This notion has deterred many, particularly those with packed schedules and varied commitments. But what if I told you that it's possible to achieve your dream physique with a well-structured, three-day workout routine? This is precisely the topic that was explored in a recent podcast episode with Jordan Lips, a personal trainer and nutritionist who specializes in helping busy individuals maximize their fitness without overwhelming their schedules.
The conversation began with a discussion on the concept of efficient hypertrophy and the realization that many of us could see gains without being gym-bound six days a week. The key lies in maximizing per-set stimulus by taking sets closer to failure. This method increases the effectiveness of each set, thereby reducing the overall number of sets and gym time required. It's not just about doing less but doing it smarter. By employing techniques like drop sets and myo-reps, one can significantly enhance the muscle-building stimulus of each workout session.
Delving deeper, the episode examined the advantages of using compound lifts and machines to save time and increase efficiency. The rationale is straightforward: by focusing on movements that use more muscle mass and provide greater stability, you minimize energy leaks and fatigue that could detract from your main goal—muscle growth. For example, substituting a back squat with a hack squat allows you to better target the quads without the added complexity and energy demands of stabilizing the body.
As the conversation continued, the topic of metabolic adaptation was brought into the spotlight. A common concern among fitness enthusiasts is that their metabolism might become 'damaged' due to rigorous endurance training or dieting. However, Lips explained that metabolic adaptation is simply a natural response of the body to caloric restriction or increased activity and is not something to be feared. Instead, focusing on controllable factors like weight training and maintaining step counts can help counteract the subconscious reduction in movement that often accompanies metabolic adaptation.
Furthermore, the episode addressed the role of cardiovascular fitness in a hypertrophy-focused training regimen. While cardio may not directly contribute to muscle growth, it does play a crucial role in overall health. Cardiovascular work enhances pulmonary function and fills a significant portion of the 'optimal health pie chart,' making it an indispensable part of a balanced fitness routine. It was emphasized that strategic, low-intensity cardio could boost endurance without compromising muscle gains.
Finally, the emotional aspects of fitness were tackled, challenging the fixation on calorie numbers and encouraging listeners to prioritize personal health indicators and biofeedback. The discussion highlighted the importance of adopting a mindset for sustainable progress, ensuring that listeners were equipped not just with physical training strategies but also with a mindset geared towards long-term wellness.
In essence, this podcast episode was not just about sculpting the body but also about shaping the mind to approach fitness with a balanced, informed perspective. It underscored the importance of fine-tuning your fitness journey with science and personal insight, making it a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their health narrative without letting fitness consume their life.
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Transcript
Jordan Lips 00:00
The greatest indication of recovery is performance. And so am I consistently performing? You know, and that means ability to progress that stuff. And so if we were to take a hypothetical of a person who lifts who wants to do some cardio, how do they know they're doing too much? And it's like if you start showing up to your lifts, and you can't progress and you start to regress, and I don't just mean as a one off by the way, that shit happens. You know, you have a day you know, something didn't progress you match last week. No worries. I'm talking about a trend of regression.
Philip Pape 00:30
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights Podcast. Today, I'm excited to be joined by personal trainer X gym owner and MNU certified nutritionist Jordan lips, who works exclusively online with people who want to get healthier across a broad range of goals. Now I invited Jordan on the show, because not only do I follow his podcast, it's called where optimal meets practical, so make sure to follow that. But I really appreciate his straight up approach. And the way that he communicates topics like metabolism, and building muscle that often get misconstrued or at least overcomplicated by the fitness industry. And Jordan just tells it like it is. So today we're going to have him drop his expertise in three big areas that we're hearing a lot about time efficient hypertrophy. So how to save time while getting jacked, incorporating cardio as a lifter, and clearing up some of the misconceptions about metabolic adaptation. Now Jordan has over 15 years of experience as the mind behind Jordan lips fitness, and he offers both one on one and group coaching. His online group programs, including the hyper trophies for the gym, and home bodies, for those working out from home, are designed to respect your time and lifestyle. And it doesn't hurt that he has a deep understanding of biomechanics, nutrition and individualized program design. Now I also mentioned his podcast already where optimal meets practical. And that is exactly what it sounds like optimizing your training, nutrition and mindset, but doing so in a practical accessible way. So definitely give Jordan show a follow up. Today's conversation resonates with you which I know it will. Jordan man, thank you so much for coming on Wits & Weights.
Jordan Lips 02:33
Now that is an intro. Thanks, man. Appreciate Yeah.
Philip Pape 02:37
Yeah, man, I was very excited for this. Because again, I follow your stuff. And I heard you on a few other podcasts recently, and wanted to dive into the hot topics, right. And we'll get into your story and, you know, real world kind of interaction as we go along. But time efficient hypertrophy, we've got a lot of folks listening who are maybe they're in their 40s, like me, I'm a dad, we you know, we're busy, we have obligations, we're not looking to compete, but we all are looking to look our best and have this sort of fitness lifestyle. How do we design that lifestyle? We can get into details as we go along. But what's your general approach to that? Thank you. The
Jordan Lips 03:13
first thing that comes to mind to me when I'm thinking about people who are interested in efficiency is just kind of taking a small step back and acknowledging and maybe just shifting people's expectations of how much they need to do in the first place. And so I think people who are interested in efficiency, I think those are the same people that would benefit from understanding actually how little you need to do and to make gains, let's say. And the truth is that every time we we look into this, the bar gets lower and lower, you know, specifically for strength. But also for hypertrophy, we don't need to go into super specifics here. But there are people out there that are like trying to train five, six days a week for five, six days a week that could also see gains from from three days a week. So when we're talking about time efficient hypertrophy, I think the first thing to understand is, you know, a lot of people probably don't have to do as much as you think in terms of time allocation. If you do some of the stuff that we're gonna talk about today, you can shrink the time allocation for a weekly perspective, more and more and more, the more knobs you turn in your favor in this regard. So I do think that the first thing people say, oh, I want to be more efficient. And they're like, Well, I train six days a week, I'm like, Well, for starters, you could just do what you're already doing, like three to four days a week, and you'd still also make gains. And so just first understanding that and kind of just maybe calming down some of those expectations of all I have to do a whole lot to see any progress whatsoever. That is the first thing comes to mind for sure. Yeah,
Philip Pape 04:27
fair enough. And then it's kind of like this false alternative people have have like, I either have to do all this training and frequency and days per week, or I'm just not going to work out because you know, there's a middle ground to get the 80 90% that I'm looking for. And yeah, I've had a lot of clients that come in just doing way too much. And it's usually a it's like a, an not an obsession, but they just love going to the gym or they love doing stuff and they feel like if they don't, they're just going to lose everything. So let's talk about some of the specific techniques we can start with maybe how At a beginner, intermediate, lifter, you know, spend as little time as possible just to get great gains to begin with.
Jordan Lips 05:06
Yeah, you want to always say it in a way that might sound complicated, but then we'll break it down as you want to maximize your per set stimulus, right? If we use the number of sets I'm doing, it's just a proxy for how much time in the gym, we want each of those sets that we're doing to be maximally stimulative. So what are the things we can do to make each set more beneficial, so that we don't have to do as many of them and the biggest one by far is going closer to failure. And the closer you are to failure, the more you get on that, the more stimulus you get from that set, the less of those you'd have to do to kind of amass an amount of stimulus that you need to make gains over time. Now that there's a smidge of nuance to that but I think on average, if we're talking, hey, I don't have a lot of time, I want to make gains, guess what we're training on average, Artur, that is the biggest, most important one, by far the most. Everything we talked about today is secondary to taking resets close to failure. If you're somebody looking to save time, want to get the most stimulus per set, the best way to do that is to train freakin hard. And to go close to slash to slash beyond failure, depending on the context. And so don't leave an intensity on the table would be the would be the biggest one for sure. Yeah, I
Philip Pape 06:15
love that. And we were joking about Brian Borstein was recently on the show, we got into all the nuances of intensity techniques and things like that, but just at the principal level here training hard. How do we reconcile that with the volume and the frequency of that heart? So you know, people are asking, Well, what does that mean? Does that mean I have to do I do the compound lifts? And then I go toward failure? Do I you know, how many days per week like, we want to go to that next level? Sure.
Jordan Lips 06:44
Sure. If we and we want well, I can list out what I would do if I was speaking with someone whose goal is efficiency. And we can pick apart any of them that we'd like I think the stuff for starters, remind people that they probably need less of the less than they think if they do these things, number two would be the most important thing is going closer to failure, then the utilization of intensity techniques like drop sets, my reps, shorter rest periods in general, you can talk about Super setting lengthen partials, on average, use more compound lifts, on average, train more in the length of position of a muscle, use exercises that provide more stability, and potentially utilize lower rep ranges. If you do all of those things, your program will get a lot of stimulus per time. And you will have to spend as much time doing.
Philip Pape 07:28
So you mentioned intensity techniques, more compound lifts. That makes a lot of sense, right? More, you're using more muscle mass for fewer movements and less time training more in the lengthened position. Stability, I want to I want to dive into that one a bit. And then you said lower rep ranges, right. Yeah. Yeah, of course, stability, expound on that one. Yeah, the
Jordan Lips 07:46
more Listen, the more the less work your body and other muscles have to do to stabilize, the more output you can get at the target muscle. And so if we look at something like a back squat versus a hack squat, a hack squat takes care of a lot of the stability, you're moving on a fixed path, you don't need to stabilize the hips, the machines doing all that for you. And so you're able to get greater output in the quads. There's bad exercises, we could do more stability slash less technical, less coordination heavy. And so the more you know, I listen, I think free weights are amazing. This isn't like an anti free weights thing. But on average, if I can find a really great machine option, or a really great cable option, chances are I can get greater output there. Because I'm going to be provided the stability that normally I'd have to create internally. And so when it comes to rows, let's get a chest support. When it comes to squats, hack squat, leg press, leg extension, more controlled environments, less technique, heavy, less coordination requirements, less stability requirements, you'll get greater output at the muscle or set. That doesn't mean remember, we're talking about a spectrum, we're talking about skewing things on average, we're not talking about only doing I wouldn't say only compound, I wouldn't say only lengthen, I wouldn't say only mega high stability, perfect scenario stuff. But But on average, if you're like, Hey, I'm writing my program, should I have a hack squat? Or should I do a back squat, I only get one squat pattern for my quads. It's like, you know, the at least appeal to what would be more optimal for your quads, you'd go with the hack squat because of the additional stability because of the fact that you don't need to use hips and glutes as much. Yeah, and
Philip Pape 09:15
I totally agree. And honestly, in my personal experience lately, running some bodybuilding type training, mainly to manage fatigue for me, you know, being that I've had low back fatigue and doing a lot of the big lifts for so long. I definitely get it the counter argument people might make is, well, with the squat, you're working out so many different muscle groups. And yes, stability as part of that. That's actually by definition part of it. So why isn't that more efficient than breaking it up? Now I have to do four different movements.
Jordan Lips 09:42
Yeah, that is fair, if you're going to say, well, if I'm going to do a hack squat that's hyper biased towards the quads, or I'm going to only back squat and I'm going to make it kind of, you know, the, the I say annoying term because people aren't using it. But the term that we were taught is Omni just meaning like covers many bases, covers more than one thing and not just squatting to squat. And we're getting a decent adductor stimulus, decent quad service, decent glutes stimulus, yes, if I only get one lower body movement, it wouldn't be a hack squat, it would be a balanced, it might be a hack squat with a higher foot position, right, engage a little bit more glutes, it wouldn't be something hyper specific from a biased perspective. But I would still pick something of more stability. I mean, if I only get one lower body, let's say lengthen position movement, it's gonna be a leg press or a high foot hack squat, let's say, still, with the stability, but I just wouldn't bias towards one thing too much. And neat and not, but I don't know where your listeners are on the spectrum of like, terminology. But like, there's no such thing as like a stabilizing muscle. And when we're just talking about muscle growth, having to expend extra energy stabilizing or engaging the core, we're just talking about muscle growth, those are negatives, those are energy leaks, those are things that you're doing that are going to take away from ultimately bringing the target muscle close to failure too much, you know, I need to brace my core, I need to think about what my core is doing, you know, I need to make sure my technique doesn't break down, I mean, 99.999% of people are going to stop an RDL or a back squat, because of a technique breakdown, or core demands or breathing demands or lower back fatigue. Notice how none of those things, you know, had to do with lower body musculature. But if I asked you why you stopped doing a leg extension, it's because your quads hurt. And that's it. And so, the goal for hypertrophy is to take target muscle, or muscles close to failure, not something else. And, you know, the amount of precision that you need to target one muscle at a time becomes greater than more advanced, you get becomes more general when you're just starting out. And so that definitely is another piece of context of where people are in the journey. But but it's not, it doesn't change all that much. I think at the end of the day, we are looking for, on average, more stability, on average, more output, on average, closer to failure to get a bit more bang for the buck.
Philip Pape 11:51
So this concept of stimulus fatigue ratio, you're basically saying the denominator, the denominator, the fatigue is what we're trying to minimize here through this process and eliminate the leaks, eliminate the, I'll even say psychological effort, right with some of these high technique lifts all of it compounds into fatigue, that doesn't translate directly into our goal,
Jordan Lips 12:14
which is to build muscle not to pick that at all, because your heart isn't right. 100% right, you can you can nitpick it though, or those are all appeals to SFR to make that ratio better. But what's interesting is we're talking about efficiency. And I don't want to take it to the extreme in the sense of a full blown minimalist. But what's interesting about efficiency, when you're training with someone who's I'm, I'm looking for time efficiency, is if you look at SFR, the the F really doesn't matter that much. Because it's unlikely that in three to four days of lifting, unless they're really long workouts, which again, kind of goes against the efficiency thing, it's it's on likely that you're going to run into a fatigue endpoint. And what I mean by that is like it's, it's more about maximizing the percent stimulus I'm when we talk about maybe adding in cardio, and all of a sudden, somebody's doing a lot of training, lifting and cardio, that overall fatigue is certainly something we need to focus on. But like not to be, again, everything is nuanced. Everything is context. But if I have somebody training three days a week, there's just three days a week, 60 minutes, let's put a cap on it. There's just nothing they could do in 180 minutes per week, and I'm worried about them overtraining, unless they're in a huge deficit, and if death in the family, and they got laid off, and they're, unless you have a ton of extra life stress, I'm less concerned with the F part of that equation. And I'm more concerned with the s part of that equation. Because I just don't think, you know, you're going to sooner run into an issue of I'm not progressing because my stimulus isn't high enough, then I'm not progressing because my fatigue to
Philip Pape 13:38
that totally fair point, right. And maybe the fatigue comes in when you're violating the whole premise here, which is you're not being efficient, and you're using too much volume. Also intermediate or advanced lifters who are maybe, you know, incorporating big lifts or things like that, like that. That's where I come from sometimes. What about the rank beginner, who, you know, we talked about a lot of times here, just maybe focus on strength and compound lifts initially, because they're simple, they're effective, you recover fast as a beginner, but I know there's some counterpoints to that when your goal is specifically to build muscle. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah,
Jordan Lips 14:13
I think the truth is that they're the things that are better for building muscle or better for building muscle for everyone all the time. And it's like saying, Oh, do beginners need to be in a calorie surplus, it's like, they'll build muscle just a lot faster, just like everyone else does in a surplus. So I agree with your initial statement of like, Well, I agree with the sentiment from your initial statement was that if these things matter less, they matter less because no matter what someone does, it's above the minimum effective threshold for growth. It's like, you know, if you're just starting to learn a language, go grab Duolingo or something on your phone and like you'll be you'll be infinitely better than you are today in a week. But that's still not a great tool if you want to be if you want to be fluent and that might you know, that might not matter in the first week in the first month, but at some point you're like, oh, this tool is no longer meet no longer taking me further, I need something else. And so in the big anything anything is is enough for you to grow. And so these nuances, they certainly matter less, but they are applied equally. So like I have a rank beginner is like I want to grow muscle as optimally as possible, or as efficiently as possible. I'm like, Great, let's, let's use the leg press. And if we do that, that person still has, let's use three by 60 minutes, that's just like a rough proxy for someone who's trying to train efficiency efficiently, I'm gonna use that person's 880 minutes a week, the same way, it just, they can lose less sleep over whether or not they've been doing something else for a while a lot of people that come into the hypertrophy space, they discovered that as a term, and they're like, Oh, my God, I need to be only doing these high stability machines. And it's like, okay, like, you're probably you probably haven't left a ton of gains, or you very least have been gaining just fine without this stuff for a very, very long time. And so the principles all still apply in a relative sense, were like a beginner will still grow way better. And a surplus, a beginner will still grow better with the same things that you know, Arnold would be growing better with, but it just matters less in the sense of you can probably make gains that you're satisfied with without worrying about something. Okay,
Philip Pape 16:04
yeah. And to be even more specific, where I was going with that is the idea that there has to be some foundation of strength to really push the hypertrophy movements. And I know there's a little bit of a an assumption there that that's flawed. Maybe but that that's the argument that's made, right. Yeah,
Jordan Lips 16:20
I you still finding that you're saying that is that I have a man who said we're just gonna take a small d I'm gonna derail us for just one second. It's all good. And I have a clip from the mind pump guys basically making this like just react, just want to talk about this. And so I have a clip of, of the mind pump guys basically saying like, the best thing you could do for muscle growth is like spend a lot of years getting strong, just like, literally makes no sense at all, as if they're two totally different things. As if you're not getting stronger doing hypertrophy, as if there's some base of strength that potentiate greater hypertrophy later, it doesn't derail us again, that they just had Dave Asprey on the podcast and and I kind of went off in the comments section, and there's like, 900 notifications of people ripping me apart in there, which is hysterical, but I don't know where they're going with that. But anyway, anyway, anyway, this idea that you need a strength base, just it's just like, it's more of this like, romanticized being from like, the old 70s and 80s. And clanging and banging the weights around before you can get into the nitty gritties is not true at all, like, you know, there's hypertrophy and strength in the beginning, are there overlap? Imagine a Venn diagram, the overlap is like, basically completely overlapped in the beginning, you're getting stronger and building muscle as fast as humanly possible, simultaneously, for a very long time. And then if you want to diverge into more strength related pursuits, then yes, they diverge, you know, the further you do something, but you certainly don't need to be like, Oh, I should be focusing on sets of three to five in the beginning, because I'm a beginner and I should focus on getting strong first, it's just, you just, there's no rationale for that at all. I mean, if you want to build them, I mean, what could be a rationale for that? Just psychologically, maybe there's something cool to expose people to like, you know, heavy hard sets, maybe there's something psychologically there, but I actually think even more so. Working with more moderate loads in moderate rep ranges, probably more beginner friendly. So you don't need a strength base, you're gonna get stronger doing hypertrophy. Sometimes I'll have people in my group, which is, it's literally called the hypertrophy. Alright. So like, obviously, that's our goal. And I'll have people come in and you know, they're like, Well, I really was really hoping we'd focus on strength. I'm like, you should be doing that. Every time you come to the gym. You did eight last week, for nine. Like what even is strength? Strength is a vague thing, like strength is a contextual word like strength at what like, do you want to get better at a one rep max, deadlift is that strength? What about an eight rep max? RDL?
Philip Pape 18:48
Right, right. Yeah, you're right. You know, it's like the specificity aspect of it, I think, is what people talking about with strength, right in the low rep range. But you're right, there's, you know, my coach, Andy Baker comes originally from the starting strength world that definitely has broadened into what we're talking about. And, you know, he's makes the argument that if you if you work, your leg press, it won't translate directly to a max PR squat the next day, but once you get the neuromuscular adaptation back, you'll get there quickly. Yeah, yeah,
Jordan Lips 19:13
that's, that's a site and again, you got your your added context was translate to a backs back squat, which with that added context changes the game for sure. So
Philip Pape 19:23
maybe one or two more things around this aspect of time efficiency. What about splits? We talked about minimalism in terms of number of days, what do splits look like that for say, beginner, intermediate, intermediate versus advanced? You know, do we like you said, you do need five or six days at some point, or can you be pretty effective at say for once your intermediate
Jordan Lips 19:42
forever? Yeah, that's a good question. I think if I am my I'm a bit of a bit of a cynic, maybe even a bit of a nihilist with this sort of thing where I think that you know, if you are a beginner that you grow with anything, grow with two days a week, grow three days a week. me for a very, very, very, very, very long time you can grow with three days a week, especially if you're doing some of the stuff we talked about four days a week, starts to be the muddy water of like, maybe this is all you'll ever need. But if I was like, you know, someone puts a gun to my head, like, hey, like, you need to be the biggest possible human you could ever be. I probably would train more than that. But I think over a 10 to 15 year span, a training career, so to speak. I think that the four day we trainee and the five or six day a week trainee who have been doing all the right things, all else being equal look, look indistinguishable from each other outside of on stage. And so I think that there's a bit of a I know in my trading career right now I know what I would have to do to get a little bit bigger is such a bad ROI. It's I'm at such a diminishing returns point, I'm not even that big, I already think my diminishing, I'd have to be in gaining phases for most of the year, I'd need to be up in the five, six days a week push really pushing my maximum recoverable volume not doing nearly as much cardio, and I probably would get bigger, for sure. But I do think that if you get to four days a week, I'll be honest, it's probably very practically speaking, I think, outside of people who want to look like bodybuilders. And the image you have in your head of the body you want can be achieved three to four days a week. And outside of like, I want to be looked like this person who has IFBB pro underscore on their name, you know, yeah,
Philip Pape 21:26
and then extrapolating that because it's not, you know, it's not so much the number of days so much as what the number of days get to you. And so if someone's schedule was like, they have a home gym, and, you know, so they're not commuting, and they have much, they don't have very much time for their sessions, could a five or six day kind of spread out the fatigue program match a four day program in that sense. Absolutely.
Jordan Lips 21:49
I mean, without a doubt, I actually quite like this approach for people with home gyms. I quite like this for myself for a while I train seven days a week for a while. And then I went to six days a week for a while, well, what maybe two to three exercises a session maybe like 20 minute sessions. And it worked fantastically well. I mean, there was emotionally looking at that workout, there was never a moment where I was like, Oh, I can't get through incline dumbbell press, single arm, half kneeling, pull down bicep curl, you know, there's just there was never like something that had happened to me where I'm like, I can't put 20 minutes in. And so that made that was really accessible. I do find that psychologically, it wasn't my favorite over the long term. It was really great to experiment. But I really liked having, like when it comes to, there's almost like a buy in fee in terms of fatigue, where for me, it was like, you know, after doing that, for many months, I was, I started to add in some cardio, which I'm sure will transition to at some point. But it felt like a lot of two days. Now all of a sudden, were just when I was looking at that as again, instead of doing this for six days, even if they're more like these workouts, snacks, again, total work across the week, equating to let's say, you know, 180 minutes across the weeks, I'm four by 45, or three by 60. This was like six by 30. Right? 180 Cool, good math. Once I started incorporating some cardio, it felt like I was having two days all the time, which psychologically now that started to take a toll. But you're kind of initial comment of like, okay, but what, you know, days per week doesn't really tell us much. It's a proxy for work, potentially. But someone's like I'm training six days a week, they're doing two exercises per day. That is not a high volume program, even if it's a high frequency split, let's say so you're 100% right, what the total work you do across the week matters. By far the most, the only way to really violate that is to try and squeeze a five day work program with like 25 Plus working sets into one workout. But I've seen people do pretty well on like twice a week, two hour sessions. Yes, I think that there's plenty of arguments that there's probably some percentage of gains left on the table again, because that's a pretty extreme example, but it does have you know, whether we're talking about three or four or five, I think how you split it up is less important than do you get the work done. Yeah,
Philip Pape 24:00
no, cool. I want people to be aware of that. And also not violate it in the other direction by saying, Well, I'm going to work out six days a week for 90 minutes each day, because that's not what we're talking about. The other thing you mentioned was like, if you have six or seven days, like you pretty much can't have any zero days or else your schedule gets off. And that's the psychological part. I'm guessing you're talking about where it's just you got to be super, super consistent, constantly. Yep. So cycled between things can be helpful. All right. So cardio, first of all, what is the role of cardio? If you're not an endurance athlete, but you're prioritizing hypertrophy, because that's the assumption I want to make the start.
Jordan Lips 24:35
Yeah, why do you think that there's a whole host of theoretical, physiological routes, we can go with this conversation. But I will start with saying I don't think there is any and I know it's a bit of bit of an absolute. And I'll probably walk it back from that as far as an absolute statement, but I actually think that there's like, for hypertrophy, you're just free to rest a little longer if you want. So we're talking about like, Hey, I only care about means should I do cardio? Not really, you know, you should do it for general health because a generally healthy person probably builds muscle a bit better. But if you're not watching this on YouTube, I'm squinting pretty hard when I say that. And so I think this should be I think, when we talk about cardio, how
Philip Pape 25:16
old are you squinting? Because like, if you're lifting and have that lifestyle, you're generally healthy. No,
Jordan Lips 25:21
no, no, I'm saying because I don't think that it's going to make you better at hypertrophy in any meaningful fashion.
Philip Pape 25:29
Okay, so even even even the word capacity and all of that you don't think has, I
Jordan Lips 25:32
think the word capacity shows up in your ability to recover between sets. So from an efficiency standpoint, I get, let's say I do split squats, and I do my right leg. Man, at my worst peak, 30 pounds heavier than I've been here, no cardio 220 pounds, I rest three minutes between legs, I do one leg, I lay down on the back on my back on the floor. Now in the best cardiovascular shape I've ever been in, which is to say, like, average, across like a population level. You know, I could do 75 seconds, I could do 60 seconds, you know, I could train that my right leg really freaking hard and be kind of ready to go again pretty soon. So my ability to do more work in a short span of time is better. So efficiency can improve efficiency. Look at that, like this, like better work capacity. It's interesting is better work capacity. The implication is I can do more work now. But I'd be interested if the ability to do more work is one of those physiological adaptations that have made you able to do more work, as that also turns you into a person who has to do more work. Right. If we talk about some of the adaptations from an a&p CAE perspective, from a fiber type perspective, I don't even think they're all that meaningful. I'm already transcending into something I don't think matters. But I don't think, Oh, I'm in better cardiovascular shape. Thus, I can do more work. We've already decided we are talking about this, this in the context of a bit of efficiency. And so the ability to do more work, it's like, Yeah, but I'm already capped for time. And so I think this matters more from going in a state of poor health to a state of generally better health. So if we're talking about somebody who's, who has obesity, potentially not in a metabolically healthy place, if we get them to a place where they improve their cardiovascular fitness, they can now probably survive an hour of hard training. But if you're already kind of a generally healthy person who can do an hour of lifting without, like keeling over, like getting an even better cardiovascular shape. I don't see how that makes you better at hypertrophy. I'm the biggest advocate of people doing cardio. So let's just like get that out of the way. I'm, that's like, I'm a complete cardio. Yeah, we
Philip Pape 27:32
can talk. Yeah, no, we can get into that. But yeah,
Jordan Lips 27:34
yeah, not, I'm not sold on that as an aspect, I guess.
Philip Pape 27:37
And you know, I want to connect to that in like with real world examples here, because a lot of my clients are longtime lifters who want to work on their nutrition. Some of them have desk jobs. So they get like 3000 steps a day, there were their resting heart rate isn't as low as it could be. Right. They have some of the lower cardiovascular health, but it hasn't really slowed them down. And that is kind of what you're saying. It really hasn't. I want to say sir, walking a little more, they get a little bit healthier. They don't get out of breath as much. But like you said, maybe it doesn't quite move the needle, unless you're coming from a very obese, very sedentary situation. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. So then if there's not much of a, let's say, positive, other than a little bit of this in between set, recovery, what other reason we have cardio or, you know, should we do cardio? What's the dosage like that? That's where I'm going because, and also fat, fat loss versus gaining because people think of it as a cardio or a calorie burning thing, which we know there's a lot of misconceptions there as well. So yeah, go down all that rabbit hole. Cool.
Jordan Lips 28:36
I've just closed the book on that. Just to clarify, before I have the pitchforks out, it's like, I just don't think that the average person who's only like, if someone's like, I'm doing cardio, I'm like, What are you doing before and they're like, so I can get more jacked. It's like, there's the I don't think that there's a direct route that you can point me towards, but moving to like, why you should do it. general health. I mean, general health is a bit vague, cardiovascular fitness pulmonary function, just like every other. Like, if you think of health as a pie chart, and you think of all of the things you could do, and having a full pie chart, every kind of sliver filled is the optimally healthy person. The truth is, and I've been, you know, I grew up as a very hypertrophy focused, complete, you know, egomaniac only cared about how I looked like, which by the way is great, it kind of whatever, it served me as like a young 20 year old idiot. Like, you know, if somebody were to ask me, Hey, Jordan, I lift and I eat nutritious foods. I don't have too much body fat, and you know, I get, you know, a decent amount of steps, but that's it. I don't do any cardio. Is that enough to be optimally healthy? The technical answer is no, because you use the word optimally. If you said is that enough to be generally healthy, I'm good, go to my doctor and have good blood markers. Absolutely. And if people are trained four days a week, get 10,000 steps. eat nutritious foods try not to have too much body fat and are doing just fantastically well. I think that is if we talked about the pie chart, filling it a ton. It's a filling that pie chart a ton, but that pie Listen, there's this blank sliver here and it's covered by something more intense than walking, right, some sort of cardio more intense by walking and then even that sliver is balanced a sliver like a small sliver, it's actually quite a big sliver in terms of optimal, the pursuit of optimal health is going to be covered by some form of higher intensity, higher, just meaning higher than walking the dog. And so I think for general health, we're talking Listen, CDC physical activity guidelines, we're talking 150 minutes of low to moderate intensity cardio, which for some people could just be intentional walking, risk walking, other Morfitt people, just on average for that person is going to mean maybe zone two training. And then we're 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, which is, you know, whatever more in that like, north of zone to jogging sports, something where you're, you know, really get your heart rate up huffing and puffing so 150 minutes, low to moderate 75 minutes. vigorous exercise is, you know, the CDC guidelines for physical activity and what's funny is like, people were like really anti government recommendations for stuff the RDA for protein sucks the RDA for salt sucks, like, we can have those chats, but they get this one spot on and spot if you are like a confused person for where to start. 150 minutes a week of low to moderate intensity cardio and two days per week lifting bad is their recommendation and it is incredible and they get it so spot on. I just chuckled because I feel like I feel like there's just such an anti like governmental government recommendations when it comes to health, but they really do get that spot on.
31:29
Hi, my name is Alan. And I just want to give a shout out to Philip Pape of Wits & Weights for being a huge part of the foundation for my continued health and well being. Philip exemplifies a nutrition coach who demonstrates how much he cares. Phillip works tirelessly, and with dedication to provide coaching support and major content for us to use. He creates a practical approach from research. And Phillip empowers all of us to use food as quality for our health. He is skilled in how to assess and direct nutrition. Phillip creates a community full of wisdom, support and camaraderie. In summary, Philip Pape is the real deal. He knows how to assess in direct nutrition, and he continues to steer me in the right direction. Thank you, Phil.
Philip Pape 32:20
So if we were to extrapolate a person's lifetime, right, let's say they're that they're a lifter, they lift three this week, they get 10,000 steps, they eat nutritiously. They get enough sleep, their stress is good. Longevity wise, because that's the other people argument people make or maybe there's complicated things going on at the cellular level with mitochondria with everything else, right? Is Is there anything that says hey, you're gonna miss out or you're going to like die five years unit sooner or something like that without having some little more vigorous cardio in there. We don't have
Jordan Lips 32:49
a longitudinal study of people who didn't do any cardio and another group who did just like looking into like a, like looking into those people's lives for the last 25 years seeing when they die. We don't necessarily have that. But we do have a non perfect piece of data that vo two max is the correlates the greatest it's the single greatest correlate to healthy aging to longevity is VO two Max, not muscle mass and I'm not muscles again, muscle is the fucking Fountain of Youth man, I'm big, biggest again, biggest advocate of lifting. It's just like, there's nothing like it. It's completely unique. You need to be doing it. And I wouldn't. There's a lot of people who are like, let's say more on the cardio is way better side of things, which I'm not that will hang their hat on this research of hey, VO two max is the single greatest correlate to healthy aging that we have. And it's a correlate. You know, people who live longer probably also have healthy beauty maxes. And so, you know, there's a bit of healthy user bias maybe. And so it's it's not, it's not a human randomized control trial. It's not a 30 year cohort study. It's not like this amazing, amazing thing, but like it is can't really get away from the fact that improving your VO to max is whatever and VO to max doesn't need to be complicated. Let's use that as a proxy for cardiovascular fitness. Who cares? People with good cardiovascular fitness. That's like an amazing correlate for healthy aging. And so it's really hard to reconcile that.
Philip Pape 34:08
Okay, so then the other side, fine. Yeah, and I'm totally on board with all of that, because I don't want to start telling my clients, you need to do three HIIT sessions a week, or you're gonna just die young. The other side is what the interference effect. And we know, we know, that's been overblown as well, but there is some negative from too much cardio, I would suspect so. And also depending on your recovery capacity, your age, and also if you're gaining or losing, given all of that, like what is general recommendation for dosing, if you want to have that in there, maybe because you enjoy it, maybe just because you'd like to do it or you're doing a sport, something like that.
Jordan Lips 34:42
Yeah, I'll start by saying, you know, you're doing too much if you start to regress, and I don't want to just be myopic and very reductionist and make it all about that, but the greatest indication of recovery is performance, and so am I can consistently performing, you know, and that means ability to progress that stuff. And so if we were to take a hypothetical of a person who lifts who wants to do some cardio, how do they know they're doing too much. And it's like, if you start showing up to your lifts, and you can't progress, and you start to regress, and I don't just mean as a one off, by the way, that shit happens, you know, you have a day, you know, something didn't progress you match last week, no worries, I'm talking about a trend of regression, a trend of, of feeling fatigued trend of showing up to the gym not being able to match what you did the previous week, that is a sign of, I'm doing more on average than I can recover from. Now, you can blame the cardio there, but it is technically more of like your cup is full with, with ever from everything you've poured into it. And if you care about lifting, then you'd look at the cardio as hey, that's interfering with what I really want. If you're an average lifter, and you're like, Hey, I hear Jordan talking about this like sliver of health thing that I should probably care about, but but I really like statically care about getting jacked, and I'm short on time, where do I put my eggs, I would start with, if you had two days of cardio, one of them, I would do low intensity zone to training one of them, I would do something higher, something in the zone 345 I think there's a lot of room for not needing to be so crazy with where you are in that context. But I think that there are adaptations that happen at higher intensities, that that happened much better there. And there are adaptations at a low intensity that, you know, the biggest benefit of doing low intensity cardio is it's less likely to interfere with your lifting. There's all this talk about So in true training, there's so much hype right now, the biggest benefit of zone two is that it has an elite SFR is you can do so much zone you can do and benefit from so much the way by coach Alex viata. Shout out Massmart describe zone two as it has a really low floor in terms of how much you need to do and get a benefit. And it has no ceiling. And so it's like you can do 30 minutes of Zone Two, and it's helpful and not fatiguing. And you can do 300 minutes a week or zone two and not get tired. And it's it's not so black and white. Technically everything has a fatigue cost. But practically speaking, if you're a lifter who's like, Man, I don't want I don't want to do that thing Jordan just said where I show up to my lifts and I can't progress. Cool. Start with some zone two sessions, which just means slightly, slightly more intense than going out for a walk in the park. You know, some incline walking, you know, for doing Stairmaster a little bit faster, some biking like something that's a little bit more intense than walking the dog.
Philip Pape 37:28
Maybe rucking. Yeah. So now we'll explore that a little bit. I heard you talking about the SFR of endurance activities. I think that may be on Jeff's podcast, I thought it was a nice, parallel, because we always use it in the lifting world. And I think they have more well established understanding of that, if anything in the Cardio World. But if, let's say in a fat loss phase, recovery capacity is limited. And you're trying to keep that expenditure relatively high. And you normally would get, say 10 to 15,000 steps. Would it be more effective from an SFR perspective than to replace some of those steps with zone two in this context and get more for your time? Without added fatigue?
Jordan Lips 38:05
Yeah, definitely. Oh, my God, definitely, I think if you're, if you're someone who normally gets on the treadmill and walks at three miles an hour, and you're looking for a way to not cost yourself more time, but get more benefit, yeah, walk at three miles an hour on a 10 incline, get your heart rate, whatever, you know, roughly in like 120 to 150, it could differ for people who've been helping telling clients that like, Hey, I'm not, we're not necessarily looking for an addition of another session. But when you're already going for a walk outside, you know what if you jog for 30 seconds, five times throughout the walk, and you were able to just reach up and get a little bit of that benefit that's at higher that you can only get at higher intensities. You know, I really am a probably said this on just podcast. But every time we talk about cardio as a person who comes from a lifting background has a big community that is very lifting dominant, we run the risk of making people feel like they have another thing they have to do. And I know this is great. Trust me, I have a great chat here about efficiency like you're super in, Your Honor, you obviously work with real people, because that's where you're coming from here. And so I really do think that Okay, guys, listen, we're not trying to say you need to go ahead and all of a sudden do five days or zone two, but maybe look at, it's like when people are trying to increase their portion of their protein intake. It's like, before we freak out or anything, take the protein you're already eating and increase the portion size, scale it up. Right. And so that's kind of what we're saying here. If you already get on the elliptical, 510 minutes, let's say you do like, let's say you do like a five minute warm up before your session. Maybe it's 15 minutes now and it's sewn to and maybe on the back end of that you throw another 15 minutes and it's slightly faster. The thing about Zone Two is like actually challenging Zone Two is more boring than it is hard like you're done with a zone two session and you can't wait to get off more because you're like kind of just want to go do other things less because you're like knackered I don't know why I've never said knackered in my whole life but that's the word we're gonna go it's cool.
Philip Pape 39:52
Oh, man, that was a word used on the other podcast, I thought was like the word of the day. You must have like a thesaurus ready to go with it was concomitant ly Yeah, let's go. Okay, well, one more cardio question and that is during the fat loss phase how what are your just general thoughts on using cardio for expenditure? When you can fit it in? Is it anything beyond what we just talked about? Because some people again, I think overdo it.
Jordan Lips 40:15
Yeah, I definitely think some people overdo it, I would put at the top of that hierarchy of like steps as a proxy for overall movement. And certainly the thing that I would talk about most get X amount of steps, do it in a way that you enjoy that feels sustainable. Let's have a discussion about fatigue. If you're first to answer to that question, have you doing nothing but a ton of high intensity sprinting and running because then I think we might be looking at some fatigue bleeding over. But I'm way more concerned with people getting enough total movement in a way they enjoy that feels sustainable. Before I'm worried about what and how they're doing that. I think I've been more open to the idea of, hey, if you always walk, what have you tried doing some so to like, it's rare that I'll encourage somebody to change what they're doing. If they're already getting like eight to 12,000 steps, like I'm super pumped that you're, that's a very active person. But there is something to be said, maybe when people who are even more active like, just walk all they do is walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk 15,000 steps, there. And if they are looking for, they're like looking under a rug for something to help them push fat loss a bit more, maybe they've hit a plateau and they don't want to go lower calories. There is some I'll take a complete flier, I'm putting a million disclaimers here because I don't think it's a big deal. But But changing what you're doing based on a theoretical efficiency that you've built doing that thing. So if you just walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, you're getting 15,000 steps a day, Man, am I going to tell you to go to 20 and just walk even more, you're probably so efficient at that movement that those next 5000 steps, that's a 33% increase, you're not getting an extra 33% calorie burn off, it's a lot less. So maybe I'm like, hey, you've been Walk, walk, walk, walk walk at like zone one more like just just getting like movement throughout the day. What if you did a couple days of higher intensity a couple of ways and so on to maybe you change the modality, you don't even have them to higher intensity, you're like, Oh, you were walking let's bike, let's do something you're a little less efficient at. And efficiency is great for performance. It's less good when you're trying to burn calories, which true. We're not trying to make cardio all about that. But I also think in the same breath like, that is a good thing. Cardio does like it let's be real like It's like moving more as if you're like, yes or no moving more will correlate better with like weight maintenance, like yes, but I wouldn't want like getting super hyper focused on the calorie burn side. Nice.
Philip Pape 42:34
I think there's a really important message for people to hear, because we do hear that a lot. I've had people say, Well, I'm doing 20 or 25,000 steps like oh, you know, how much compensations probably going on to it's it's the exact same thing. And yeah, I've heard that argument before. If you if you're really clumsy at biking, you never do it go bike because you're going to be burning a ton more calories per work put in. So yeah, great, great ideas. And you're sort of quotable from this section that I liked that was just very simply put was the greatest indication of recoveries performance, you just want people to remember that, because that is a great, self limiting thing that you can experiment with and measure. All right, metabolic adaptation. Let's get into that moment here. I've talked about this on the show many times, and but I enjoy the brutally clear way that you explain it, especially the fact that it just exists, you know, we can't change that it exists. And people misconstrue that concept with behaviors and lifestyles and things that you can do around the fact that that adaptation exists. So what is it? Why or why doesn't it matter? And what should we really put our energy into carrying about?
Jordan Lips 43:38
Cool, good. Let's see, let's keep it succinct, keep the vocab going. Metabolic adaptation means when we're talking about in the context of fat loss, is the reduction in metabolic rate beyond which you'd expect from the weight loss alone. So if you were 200 pounds, and you're now 150, like you're a smaller machine that requires less energy, metabolic adaptation as well, based on mathematically, how much we would predict how much less energy we think you would need based on the fact that your record is the size, we see that there's an additional reduction in metabolic rate beyond which you'd expect from just the weight loss alone. So that is what metabolic adaptation. The reason I and I think metabolic adaptation and hormones are fascinating to learn about fascinating to talk about and should never come up in your brain as a regular person. Like it's just they're simultaneously fascinating, but also not anything they are. They are things that like that we won't go to hormone side, let's stay let's stay focus here, Jordan, or metabolic adaptation perspective. It's just the truth is like, the things that you should be really focused on are modifiable variable. And so like, you know, except the things you cannot change all that that whole quote thing, but like you can't do anything about metabolic adaptation. You know, you can do things is to continue to see success in the face of metabolic adaptation. But as an isolated variable, you can't affect metabolic adaptation, you can do things like lift weights, you can do things like cuts, maintaining muscle, you know, gives you that slight, slight slight benefit of having more muscle, you can maintain a step count, because what we see is that the greatest reduction, the greatest portion, where reduction happens is in your subconscious movement. So if subconscious movement is going down subconscious, by definition is something you can't do anything about. You can manually override by making sure you're hitting your step count. And so you can do things to make metabolic adaptation less of an issue, but you can't do anything to affect it. And the reason I think that's such an important distinction is because there is so much rhetoric around fixing a damaged metabolism, healing, metabolic adaptation, reversing metabolic adaptation, like there's just nothing, no reason to believe that that's even possible. While it is possible, but it's just not ever, it should never be the thing you're trying to do. Metabolic adaptation exists when you when you go into a calorie deficit, your body doesn't know if that's a starvation million years ago, or a voluntary calorie deficit and 2024. And so process has happened down regulation of thyroid and sex hormones, cortisol goes up, you know, hunger signals go up all of that, but you can't do anything about it. Now, you can do practical things to make your fat loss phase more successful, but they don't have anything to do with blunting metabolic adaptation, or reverse dieting at the end to heal metabolic adaptation. And the reason I'm so bullish on this is because if this was an area of research that we didn't know a lot about, and we were doing a lot of like mechanistic speculation of like, oh, this would make sense. And, you know, metabolism can upregulate Emily have a ton of research, metabolism can up regulate, and I can word vomit on that. But if this was something we weren't quite sure about, and we were really trying to fill the gaps with something we think made sense. And this kind of, you know, has some people out there who have had experiences like this. Fine. But we do have a ton of research on this. Like we have a ton of we have boatloads we could seek the Titanic with the amount of research we have on weight loss and weight regain, and changes in metabolism when people do that. And so that that, to me is something that Eric Trexler opened my eyes to in the last couple of years of like, you know what, like, if this was something we weren't all that sure about, like I would, I could change my tone and accept people making like logical leaps. But we have a ton of research that and when I say ton of research, what I mean is that the idea of alright, what are my biggest gripes here? Let me get the gripes out on the stage is that if you are if you go into a calorie deficit, you lose weight, and then you gain that weight back, there is an idea that if you keep doing that, that you will have a reduced metabolic rate. That is not something we see in the literature, we see the complete cessation, the complete reversal, the complete undoing of metabolic adaptation all the way back to baseline when people regain the weight back. And so this idea of you're not losing weight, because of metabolic adaptation, or because you were a chronic Dieter are because you're a chronic under eater, and you've damaged metabolism, and you have to eat more, so that you can fix it. It's, it's, it's that I don't even remember what this guy's name is. Oh, my God, it's so depressing. The like, it never happened to guy but like, it never happened. It's made up like,
Philip Pape 48:14
yeah, I don't know, my writer,
Jordan Lips 48:17
I'm not sure what to say. But like, that just doesn't happen. That's just not a thing. And my last gripe with that is I like, there are people out there listening to this right now. They're like, Jordan, that's not true. That's what happened to me, I increased my calories. And I started losing weight, or I increased my calories. And then I was able to go down and cut at higher calories. So they have a lived experience that seems to go counter to what I'm saying. And I love that for you. I'm so happy when someone's like, no, Jordan, I was eating 1200 every day. And then my coach reversed it up to 2000. And now I'm cutting on 1700 and losing weight. I'm so happy for that person. But I've mean this in the nice way. Like that did not happen. Like, technically that did not happen. Your experience totally happened. But you were not eating 1200 and by going by changing your targets in my fitness palette 2000 What What actually happened was you were able to be more consistent, actually adhere to your calories, and actually probably reduce the average calories you weren't eating, you are eating because at 1200 You benched every six, seven that day on the weekend, are you forgetting calories here and there? And so I just think metabolic adaptation isn't something you can do anything about it exists in differing amounts we we have it's highly genetic, highly individual. And it's not stopping you from losing weight. It's not the reason you're overweight. I'm not not sympathetic to the fact that weight loss is hard. All I'm saying is that's not the boogeyman I agree with everyday
Philip Pape 49:41
man. I mean, I did an episode A while back called Why reverse dieting doesn't work like you think because the same thing Trexler was actually on the show. We talked about that and you know I use recovery dieting with folks all the time. It's it works wonders. Just come right back to maintenance. It's the best way to recover. So a few things come to mind. First, you mentioned that you can't do anything my metabolism your baseline metabolism, right, you can definitely change your neat, which, like you said is the thing that unconsciously goes down and actually made me think of our cardio conversation because I like to track cardio and steps separately sometimes because if people add cardio, their steps will go down, often, right? Compensating, even when they don't realize it, even though cardio is a proxy for steps. But there's a hint Greg Knuckles was talking about it on stronger by science recently, the tolerance that we have for BMR in the population around the the mean that calculators tell us is like 800 calories. But for any individual, it hardly changes right over your entire lifetime until you're like in your 60s and 70s. And it starts to drop. And that could be because of muscle mass. Anyway, that's one. And then I did want to ask you a question. However, because this comes up, you know, we want to keep the rate of loss reasonable when we're in a dieting phase, not just for the sustainability of it, right, but also the the metabolic adaptation or the loss of muscle mass, we don't want to lose too much muscle, does metabolic adaptation accelerate, you know, is there like a curve? Where if you go too quickly, the adaptation above and beyond? Like you said, the weight loss changes? Or is it fairly linear? Like to give me an answer that,
Jordan Lips 51:08
yeah, absolutely, you should have Martin McDonald come on and talk about this. It's like a rubber band, metabolic adaptations, like a rubber band, if you pull a rubber band back three inches fast of it's actually a bad example, because if you let pull it back fast and let go quickly, then it will react with the stronger force. But if I pull it back quickly, three inches and hold it there, where I pull back slowly, three inches and hold it there, there's the same amount of tension on this rubber band. And so this idea of like, all your gear, gotta be go, I have more time. If you're like, we want to rant rant more on this, but this idea of, you're gonna go so low, in cat don't go so low in calories, because then you'll have nowhere to go. I just doesn't make any sense at all. It's I'm not saying to diet aggressively. I think there's practical reasons not to go aggressive for sure. But it's not because Oh, you'll adapt, and then you'll have nowhere to go, you know what the biggest adaptations that you'll make to 1000 calories. A ton of weight loss, like the biggest adaptation we make is the accrual of or loss of tissue, muscle tissue, fat tissue, all tissue. And so if you're like, you know, two and a pound person, and there's someone out there, like don't go to 1000 calories, because it's going to tank your metabolism, or you're going to adapt too quickly, and you'll have nowhere to go, you will adapt a lot quickly. At 100 By the time you're 150 pounds, so
Philip Pape 52:20
you'll lose a much better way to Yeah, now. Now, again, that's
Jordan Lips 52:23
not a suggestion. It's only just to remember the calorie number you choose to use. That's just not a factor in your decision making. I'm even more bullish on the muscle loss isn't a factor in the decision. And that's, I think that's a contestable thing that I happen to stand on the side of, I don't care if you lose, you know, if you lose 20 pounds, and more of it is muscle. I think you've gained those four pounds of muscle back in the next four months of training and eating with more food, so I'm not too worried about it. I think if you can avoid losing muscle, you absolutely should. But if I have a client who's you know, going to perform better on their overall calories on point five grams per pound of protein? Again, I think from a satiety perspective, I do not see them higher from the other practical. Yeah, for muscle building perspective, I'd nudge them higher. But if they're bullish, I'm like, I don't want to eat that much. And I'll do my calories, but I'm not eating them. Okay, great. I'm not worried about using muscle, you're gonna lose 20 pounds, you're gonna be super mega happy, as long as you're training. I mean, the training stimulus is like, infinitely more stimulative towards muscle growth than the deficit is catabolic than the protein is anabolic. Yeah, I'm not worried about short term deficits causing muscle loss. I'm worried if you're a chronic lifter, you know, I mean, if you're a lifetime lifter, then this is just a non issue that we're looking at a graph of like, that would be going up in lifting. It's like you're digging a hole. And every time the hole gets deeper, you're building more muscle. It's like, okay, for this one deficit, you kicked a little dirt in the hole, but like, you're still digging, so okay, the dirt went in the hole. And, you know, the next three months, you're still bigger than you were before. So I'm not so worried about that. Yeah, bodybuilders
Philip Pape 53:53
show us it can be done over and over again. Don't get down to crazy leanness over, you know, eight month long cuts. And it still works. And it's funny because Dr. Bill Campbell is on he's gonna be on next week as well. We're gonna talk about rapid fat loss because he's doing all that research. Yeah, she's amazing. And I think was able to survive. He say his name, you know who I'm talking about. He was recently talking about the exact thing you said where, and maybe we shouldn't be so concerned about the muscle loss if you're training hard. And if you want to go more aggressively, just do it. If you want to go 1.2 1.5% And you can handle it, do it. Now. There's the practical and sustainability factors where, you know, most of my clients, I'm not going to do that with them. But occasionally, lifters Yeah, we'll do that two week, you know, super fast microcut get them out. And like you said, Yeah, metabolic adaptation increases with sodas, the weight loss, you're kind of getting one for the other. And when I look at people's expenditure curves, generally it just trends fairly linear in parallel with their weight loss. So it's not like it's dropping away down below the rate of rate loss. Okay. I was gonna ask you a bunch of questions about like, rate of loss and stuff, but I mean, people have heard that a million times here. or what else about metabolic adaptation? Do we want to address because there's the psychological aspect? You know, you talked about the one of the illusions, I think Trexler called them the illusions of it. Diet breaks, refeeds, things like that, you know, we talked about on the show that these are mainly psychological. Do you agree that 100% That's what they're for? Or is there some other benefit?
Jordan Lips 55:18
No, I think your psychological and I probably was, there was a period of my coaching where I went really hard on that rhetoric and treated, listen, let's be real, like, the goal is to get your clients the best success that they can. And that means I got really bullish about, Hey, you don't need to die breaks unless you need to. And what that means is like, the implication is we're going to die with an open ended timeframe until you feel like shit. And then we'll die break. All right, and then we'll die break on any timescale we want. Maybe it's a day at maintenance, two days of maintenance, three days of maintenance, you know, the shout to Bill Campbell, brilliant man, but his diet refeed study had some flaws. And I don't think that for the average person, it makes any difference physiologically. But I said circled back around recently, just an alternative appeal to psychology saying, maybe people do better with loose timelines. And so I couldn't bind them to the two of them. And I'd say, hey, like, we're starting this diet. I'll first ask, Do you have something on the calendar, a life event that we could shoot for and say, Hey, let's take a break them. And if we're along the way and you feel like crap, let's take a break. And so giving people a light at the end of the tunnel, but keeping the door open is as Ben become my new mentality and on the metabolic adaptation thing, things that I'd be remiss if we didn't say would be there's no amount of eating more that will change how your body adapts in the future. And the reason I'm so that's so powerful is because there's there's just so much rhetoric of that's exactly what people are doing selling you reverse dieting, and I want people to think about this for a second if you ask any bodybuilder I had. Oh my god, Australian dude. Great, great content, Steve.
Philip Pape 56:56
No, not see. Australian.
Jordan Lips 57:00
bodybuilder coach is wife is Lauren Simpson. Sorry, I'm NorCal Oh, my gosh, okay. Okay, I had more Carolyn pockets, and we're talking about the guys coached a million women to stage and if eating more changed how your body adapted to less calories in the future, bodybuilders would have the easiest job ever, because and then as I said, Mark, like when you're dieting people to stage for the 10th time, does it get any easier because think about it 10 times they went down, and then they and then they reverse diet it and if that process of eating more affected how their body would adapt in the future, it should get easier every time it gets. If anything, it gets harder every time. And Mark says it almost to the to the exact calorie comes out to the same. And so the entire offseason that a bodybuilder spends eating more food doesn't change the fact that they go to the exact same calorie amount to get to the exact same body fat level. So there's there's no amount of eating more that will change how your body adapts to calories in the future. Like even if the metabolism adapts upward, which it does. Of course it does it metabolic adaptation happens in both ways. We didn't talk about it or whatever. There's no of like starting with a higher calorie number has nothing to do with where you'll ultimately end up. Metabolic adaptation happens within 24 hours. And so you know you again, not to shout Trexler. But like when we looked at research of like the what are some of the common factors of people who undergo the most metabolic adaptation? The common factor of people who undergo more metabolic adaptation when they're dieting is having higher baseline metabolic rates. It's like the ultimate irony. It's like the the people who saw more metabolic adaptation, we're starting with higher calories. And so this idea of, well, if I could just start with higher calories, or even like, that guy over there that I know, Jordan Jordans, it must be so easy for him. He starts at higher calories than me or that isn't technically true. And what I loved in that initial episode between Eric and Greg is Greg talking about the fact that Greg is like, he was like, 220, at the time trying to lose weight. And he was on 1800 calories. And he was having so many people say that's too little. That's too little. That's too little. Yeah, making the assumption that he must be tired, must be losing muscle must be hungry, must be eating up his metabolism. And he's like, guys, like, I feel fine. I'm losing at a half pound a week. What am I supposed to do with that information? Like I mathematically, it's like eight times bodyweight, right, which we think might be low. But we need to get less emotional about the numbers and absolute and start dealing with the facts of how my client feels and what the data is telling. Yeah,
Philip Pape 59:32
agree because there's things you can't change. I think the biggest indicator of your BMR the correlator is your organ size. Okay, do you have a couple more minutes? Yeah, I got some, okay, because I love talking about this. And one of the things that comes up often is hormones and we don't have to go down too deep a rabbit hole, but like thyroid hormone, for example, which we know is kind of a direct regulator of your metabolic rate in some sense, do we do we include that in the equation of metabolic adaptation or we can assuming that a different variable that affects your metabolism, and you know, caused by imbalances or dysfunction or something like what are your thoughts on that?
Jordan Lips 1:00:08
Yeah, I'm counting it. I'm certainly counting it in there. It is one of the adaptations that happens metabolically just because of its impact on metabolism. So for sure, the the interesting thing, so people will say that to me all the time about well, what, what about what if my thyroids tanked? And I'm like, well, first of all, if you need medication, get medication. I think if you have hypothyroid, that's like, you're absolutely right. You should fix that. Well, let's say you're just an average person who thinks your thyroid is tanked. I'll use that word because that's the one that's sorted out from dieting. It's like so, okay, so when we deficit, thyroid goes down. And your your plan is to eat more to make thyroid go up. do you think's gonna happen again, when you go back to eating less, I just mean like, it is interesting to me that you're there. Like you're like trying to fix a problem that was caused by x. Assuming that when you go back to doing X, that same problem won't come back. And so it is a outside of like, mega mega niche scenarios. I don't even know if there aren't megami scenarios, that niche scenario being somebody who needs brews court requires medication. A lot of people Yeah, well, whatever your hormones are in a bad spot. I'm like, What did what caused the hormones being in a bad spot? You're like dieting? And I'm like, Well, what are you going to do after you eat board? They're like, diet, I'm like, What do you think's gonna happen that they're like, not the same thing that happened last time. Like, I just don't like crack up. I'm like, this is yeah, we're not getting anywhere. Yeah,
Philip Pape 1:01:23
no, I like to ask because there's a difference, like you said, between medical condition and just the natural cause result of dieting, I definitely have had some clients, you know, pre menopausal women, who all of a sudden had medical issues with their thyroid. And if we had been tracking properly before, then we see a very different metabolism all of a sudden, and then that's a red flag, alcohol, sleep stress, all of these other factors, again, do they affect metabolic adaptation Are they just affect the kind of compensatory factors that cause you to burn fewer calories?
Jordan Lips 1:01:55
Yeah, they, they affect your experience. And they affect your dieting experience. And so lack of sleep stress, they are things that will make this harder, they aren't things that will make you lose less weight, transiently, we can talk about water fluctuations up and down. But I think that that's almost again, a non thing to talk about, because it is transient in both directions. But lack of sleep. And having a lot of stress are more likely to impact how you feel on a day to day basis, your proclivity to want to get up and move your feelings of optimism, your likelihood to do something that's good for you, you know, even willpower, which is a bit vague, but a kind of willpower kind of bundles up a lot of that stuff. You're like, natural clippety to want to make decisions that are positive for you that that is all affected. But they are all to the left of the equation. They're not an outcome. They are things that impact your experience and how you feel and they're super duper relevant. I mean, God, I'm almost I've gotten to a point where I'm like, we're not doing a deficit until you're sleeping seven hours. Yeah, just because I've seen how hard that can make things. Right. But again, if someone's like, Hey, I'm not sleeping, and I lose weight. I'm like, Yes, physiologically. Sure. Yeah.
Philip Pape 1:03:07
Some of the misunderstandings, I think, come from the fact that the sleeping, lack of sleep makes you hungry. And therefore, if you weren't tracking, you end up consuming more thinking you're consuming the same, you know, things like that. Just a couple more questions. One is, and this is actually kind of a selfish question, because I had a very interesting experience last year with surgery, rotator cuff surgery, where post recovery, and apparently there's, there's studies that support this from like the 80s, that show your metabolic rate skyrockets during the recovery process, because of all the new tissue being rebuilt after a rotator cuff repair. And my metabolism skyrocketed by about 300 calories within like, a few weeks. And so I started to lose weight, but then it dropped and it dropped much further than it was before. And I'm in a gaining phase. And then it started to build, build, build, build, build, and is almost back to where it was. Is that a case of like, The Biggest Loser phenomenon where it just takes a lot longer to recover? But it's still gonna recover? Is there something else going on? Like, Hey, maybe I might need just wasn't as high, which I think it was, but just wondering about your thoughts.
Jordan Lips 1:04:07
So you had surgery and the reparation process boosted metabolic rate, which it totally does. And then after that process was done, you'd return to the tissue back to baseline, you're saying that it, the data would say that your metabolic rate dropped lower than that 300 lower than whatever it was elevated. Right.
Philip Pape 1:04:27
And I'm using macro factor, so and so you started. Yeah, and then I Well, I've intentionally been gaining weight ever since last April. And my point was the expenditure dropped even further below where it had been before and it took a lot longer to recover from previous cycles. Because we talked about earlier I brought it up because you mentioned earlier how like bodybuilders, we always get back to the same levels no matter what. And I've seen that personally every bulk every cut, and this one was different because it's like not up to where it normally is by a few 100 calories. So I just wanted to throw that That sounds like an interesting scenario. And what are your thoughts on it? That's yeah,
Jordan Lips 1:05:04
that is interesting scenario. I
Philip Pape 1:05:05
mean, I'm not to put you on the spot. It's good. It's
Jordan Lips 1:05:08
good. It's good to talk about these, just from a hypothetical standpoint, I don't think that it is the case that there was like a, an some sort of recoil effect, some sort of like, oh, it bounced up really high. And that the physiological response of you know, that you're like, I'm not saying you said this, but like that your body was like tired from pulling, putting all that tissue. So it recoiled by reducing metabolic rate thereafter. You know what I do at times like this, like, as much as we're having great conversation about, like, what we know about metabolism? I do think that that is also why I come back to center and say, We got to deal with the data in front of us. Yeah. There's a reality balance. There's a healthy balance of being a detective and trying to figure out why something's happening. And being a realist and acting upon what is happening. And I think a lot of people spend so much time in the Why am I up a pound today? Why did I lose weight this week? Why aren't I losing weight? Why isn't the number that I got from this calorie calculator working? Instead of I'm not this is not yielding the response that I should be getting? What do I do about a lot of I should be losing weight? I should this be should I shouldn't have to go this low. I should be. Unless of like, this is my limited reality. Let me take how I feel and the data into account and act on it. But as a hypothesis, I really don't know. That's interesting, though.
Philip Pape 1:06:23
Yeah, we can follow up on that. I mean, yeah, so like you said, so what did I do? I just adjusted my calories really needed to be based on that. And I've been writing ever since I
Jordan Lips 1:06:30
dare you. Not freak out. It just it just your calories.
Philip Pape 1:06:33
I know. It was fun when I got to up them significantly after surgery, even though I didn't need them because I couldn't train for a few weeks. But anyway, okay, cool. So I do like to ask this question of all guests, Jordan, what one question is you wish I had asked, and what is your answer? Yeah,
Jordan Lips 1:06:49
it was the thing I just said. So I blew it. And it was what like, what's like, what's like a, where do you find the most frustration with the metabolic adaptation, reverse dieting community? Where do I find the most frustration and it's this the rhetoric of feeling like they shouldn't be losing weight. And it's the emotional attachment to numbers and absolute. And so I talked about this client once a while, and which is unfair, invariably, people get upset. It's like a client, she's 160 pounds, like pretty active, pretty muscular. And when we die it she's regularly in the 1200s to lose weight, you know, eight times body weight, let's say, and she loses at a rate that would indicate that that's not a huge deficit, she loses half a percent to 1% a week, she loses maybe three quarters of a pound a week. And she has maintenance calories that are quite low. And the reason that I think I share her so much is because she came to me from like, many, many, many, many coaches reverse dieting her to the point where she gained 40 pounds. And she gained 40 pounds, because the coaches couldn't believe that she was gaining on x, right? I say x, because that's how you should think of it. She was gaining at 150 pounds 14,000 steps on 1700 calories. bloodwork looks great. Thyroid was great sex hormones were great. Biofeedback was great, sleep was great mood was great lifts are great. But without looking at that number. This was a person who was by all accounts at maintenance calories arriving, but the number and absolute when seen by the coaches, fuel them to raise her calories. And then when she started gaining weight was told, Hey, you just need to keep doing this, keep doing this, keep doing this. And when she ultimately jumped ship, it was you quit too soon. And so she's had so much success, lost 30 pounds be in the best shape of her life, and fee. And I don't just mean at the expense of her health. I mean, while like if you were to watch her biofeedback trends, if you could somehow map all of them, you'd be like, wow, this person was in a very moderate sized deficit from a state of good health in print to deep into underweight. But when I tell you the calorie number, people freak out. And so I think that there's this emotional attachment to the number. And when people are really emotionally attached to the number, what it says is they think this is a very exact science. They think that they cause I think I'm eating X, I'm really eating x because the package says it's it's 340 it's really 340 Because I'm the, you know, the calorie tracker says this and the net carbs. And there's so many variables that go into this, that, like you said, from metabolic perspective, we take if we take averages, there's, there's up to 800% on eight and 800 Calorie difference from what the calorie calculator told you. And so, I think a lot of coaches and I'm not saying if you have 180 pound person who comes to you and is saying, Hey, I'm not losing weight, and they're like, how much are they you eating? And they're like, 1200 that you should say, yeah, go ahead, just eat 1100 Like you it's okay, if that sets off an alarm. And that alarm should sound like let me make sure they're actually doing that. I think that should sound off. Verify that yes, that should sound off and I'm okay with you. Being a skeptic. You should if someone's like eating eight times bodyweight 10 times body weight not losing any weight. By the way, times bodyweight super rough back of the envelope math, not the ranges though. Yeah. You shouldn't be like, Okay, let me make let me go through and make sure they're doing as close to within a reasonable deviation of what they say they're doing. But after that, like if I could take away the emotion, I just dealt with the client, how they feel what the data is telling me, I'll see a lot more success.
Philip Pape 1:10:14
Love them in that we're going to leave it at that because I think people need to hear that message. It's like you said, x is different for everyone. Don't compare yourself to others. Don't use the static calculators and assume that to you, like you've got to get this awareness and as we've talked on this show, you've got to track you've got to measure and go from there and make decisions. All right, where Jordan can listeners find more about you and your work. Yeah,
Jordan Lips 1:10:37
I hang out on Instagram Jordan lips fitness I also podcast where optimal leads practical, I'm guessing similar host of golf guests. I have a YouTube where you could watch them as well and as 1004 videos if that's something you're interested in, but uh, yeah, if you have a question shoot me a message on Instagram. I'm I'm not too hot shit to answer. I'll answer to
Philip Pape 1:10:59
men yet. You're super responsive. So I'll throw all those in there all the links as usual. Man, this was a blast. It was even better than expected I knew is going to be good. But you covered a lot of great stuff today. So thanks so much for coming on. It was it was a lot of fun. Thanks, man. I
Jordan Lips 1:11:10
appreciate I appreciate it.
Philip Pape 1:11:13
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