Ep 39: Training Principles, Rep Ranges, Avoiding Pain, and Flexible Dieting with Matthew Spiewak
I am joined by a member of our Wits & Weights Facebook community, Matthew Spiewak, to chat about training and nutrition, including flexible dieting, compound lifts, pain and injury, and programming.
Matthew is an ACSM-certified Personal Trainer in the Chicagoland area with a degree in Kinesiology.
He loves helping people feel and look better and transform their health through his hands-on work in the gym as a trainer, so Matthew has both the educational and practical experience to help you succeed.
Matthew also hosts a 30-minute Instagram live every Tuesday at 5pm Central time in the U.S. and brings on new guests every week.
Topics discussed in this episode:
How and why Matthew got into fitness
Flexible dieting and who benefits from it
Whether anyone should NOT use flexible dieting
Whether people should squat and deadlift, benefits, how to incorporate in training
The best rep ranges for strength, hypertrophy, and physique
Bench press form (and getting the entire body involved)
How to avoid low back pain
How to deal with an injury
Why programming is so important to get better results
How to start and stick with a training routine
and lots more
RELATED LINKS
Find Matthew on Instagram
Matthew's website
Watch the episode on video here
Join the Wits & Weights Facebook community
🎙️ ABOUT THE SHOW
At Wits & Weights, we help you achieve optimal health that fits your lifestyle—without excessive dieting, cardio, or food restrictions. Philip Pape, podcast host and head nutrition coach, helps high-achieving people burn fat, get lean, feel energized, and project confidence in their lives through one-on-one nutrition and lifestyle coaching at witsandweights.com.
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Transcript
Philip Pape 00:08
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast, where we discuss getting strong and healthy with strength training and sustainable nutrition. I'm your host, Philip pape, and in each episode, we examine strategies to help you achieve physical self mastery through a healthy skepticism of the fitness industry, and a commitment to consistent nutrition and training for sustainable results.
Matthew Spiewak 01:15
Like, theoretically, we're going to take the keto diet and just like, we're going to take out an entire food group, throw it out of there, get rid of it, throw, you know, throw everything in your house, get rid of it, we're going to be able to expand actually, what you eat. A lot of times, that's the best part is, a lot of people have this mindset of, oh, I need to get to this Wait, look this way and get down to this body fat percentage, I need to close down on the types of foods that I'm eating, and I need to kick things out. And in all reality, once you start giving them more information, and giving them the tools to understand what they can do, and add the foods that they can use to actually start to expand the options that they have. And all of a sudden, now they have all the options. They have the freedom, they have the autonomy to eat what they want. And it'll work because at the end of the day, it's sort of looking at the macro base side of things, you know, does this fit with our macros? Is it good for us? If it Chuck's off those boxes? By all means? Go for it run with it?
Philip Pape 05:59
Yeah, so I love that approach. It's flexible, because it's flexible. But you talked about diversity of food options, and really opening it up as opposed to closing it up with the restriction. Taking a quick tangent here. How did you how did you originally learn about flexible dieting? Because I know I can think of my past of books like lean Norton's fat loss forever. And you've got Alan Aragon and all the all the guys like Trexler and Eric Helms, right. The evidence based guys, how did you come across this concept?
Matthew Spiewak 06:27
Yeah, so it was more or less just the idea of being in college, I'll be honest, and it was an how I got into it was just on the total end of the spectrum of the pop tarts and pizza diet pretty much like it is anything if it fits the macros it, it works, because you know, I was a young kid in college, you know, consuming some alcohol here. So I had to work with what I had, I didn't want to spend, you know, a lot money on some things, not to say that eating healthy is expensive whatsoever. But it was just more or less, hey, I'm in a rush because I need to go to class, can I just grab like a quick protein bar or something like that? That sort of aspect. And so I started going into it. And I just continued to see all of this success with, hey, if I just hit my macros every day and hit the calories every day, I'm seeing the physical success, and I'm seeing it in the weights and all that everything is progressing. And then as I continue to learn about I say, hey, what if we started to make this a little more in terms of feeling better, because with all this processed food that I was eating it my diet was I mean, you know, as I said, Before, I was on the one end of the spectrum there, you know, so it was a lot of processed foods and all that. And so I said, Okay, how can we make that, you know, a little bit healthier here? How can we make some better choices while still using that ideology of if it's the macros if it's the calories, I'm good, and so slowly, but surely, I started to kind of change it and tinker it around. But that whole idea of the flexible diet is still a staple. Today for me,
Philip Pape 07:59
that's awesome. So you can came to it just naturally by how you love to eat, and you're like, how can I get away with this but still meet my goals? Initially, but you know, you're actually referring to like the the muscle and food pyramids or some of the priority pyramids, you see where, you know, rule number one is calories, right? Like to gain or lose weight, you have to adjust your calories. And honestly, you could do it however you want, you're gonna gain lose weight. But then the question is, like you said, how are you going to feel? Are you going to preferential prevent, prioritize fat loss doing that? Is it going to fuel your training and all the other things when we get into the nuances of protein, and then timing and fuel, food quality, etc. So it sounds like a great way to eat. And I use that with my clients as well. But should anyone not use it?
Matthew Spiewak 08:47
I haven't come across it yet, I would say there might be a couple of cases where it just doesn't work for you. And this is where the individuality of working with a client one on one really comes into play. Sometimes people do actually work better if it is super strict, because they're just saying, if I'm giving this amount of freedom, I'm gonna run with it. And I'm not gonna be able to control the calories and not be able to control the macros and all that. And so sometimes you do need to take that approach with more strict. Now I think it's easier. A lot of the times when you're working with a new client to start broad, and, you know, ease the weigh in a little bit more. But obviously, there are a couple of cases where it's, Hey, we're getting rid of this right now. The only time I would I've done that before is has been with alcohol and that's when they specifically go like I need to get this like, I don't want this in my diet. Sometimes people say I want to still be able to have drinks on the weekend and all that. But when there are the times that they say, Man, I want this out of my diet, I don't want it then we say okay, like we won't incorporate into the diet. We will not include it whatsoever. So yeah, and honestly, I think in my opinion, that approach is still consistent with flexible dieting, because what you're telling me is, the client is making the decision. They're planning
Philip Pape 10:21
Cool. So we'll probably get back into nutrition or if there's other topics related that you want to bring up, I definitely can do that. But let's get to training.
Philip Pape 10:31
I want to hear your perspective, first of all, on the big three, because when I when I talk to a client doesn't know much about training, that's usually where I want to start, in my mind is just basic introduction to strength, the compound lifts. And let's start with the squat and deadlift, because I think they're intimidating for a lot of people, especially when we talk about barbells. Should most people be doing these? You know, what are the benefits? How do we incorporate them?
Matthew Spiewak 10:54
Yeah, I think I mean, right off the bat, I think most people should at least be trying to work up to them. Because not everyone is going to be in the right position, starting off, maybe they have some sort of reoccurring injury underlying injury, they just don't know how to do the movement, you know, maybe we don't start them off with a deadlift day one, you know what, that's kind of a basic rule there. But the whole idea is that we should be more or less working towards that, because we need to look at, okay, what kind of movement is the deadlift? It's a hip hinge movement, what kind of movement is the squat, it's, you know, that's idea of we're sitting down standing back up, we need those movements in life. So we can start off with variations of those movements that either simplify it by reducing the load, maybe reducing, or decreasing the range of motion that they're performed in, for example, for example, a lot of times, when I want to work with someone to eventually say, down the road, like in three months, we're gonna get you to be deadlifting. That's, that's a pretty scary sight. For some people, all of a sudden, like deadlifting, like, Oh, I'm gonna hurt my back, I'm going to do all this, I'm not doing that. Say, Okay, we're going to be doing rack poles, where we're starting with the bar, almost at halfway up the the thought of the quad. So the, we've just shorten the range of motion by about 70%. There, we're still getting that top portion of a deadlift, where it's still a hip hinge moment, we're utilizing the lats utilizing the upper back. And we're just going to now slowly progress, we're going to work on that. And then we're going to master that right there. All right, of the of the raffle. And then we're going to lower it by an inch, and we're going to master that. And then as we go down, we're slowly going into it, building up their confidence. And that's one of the things I talk about a lot is like, I'm trying to build your confidence in this, because I know how scary it can be sometimes to say like, Man, I'm doing a delet doll Southern, I'm doing this new movement, a lot of times just because it's a new movement, and they, you know, have this little bit of fear in there that like something's gonna go wrong, something's gonna, you know, snap and get hurt. It's just building your confidence in the gym in order to actually perform the movements.
Philip Pape 13:01
Yeah, and I like that confidence approach. As I like that you didn't go straight to something like mobility or physical limitations, because I know that also, I'm gonna say it's use that as an excuse. But I believe most people can do the full range of motion of most of these movements, if they can work up to it. And it's getting them there. So like, on a squat, right? If I were to take your analogy of using the rap pole, the deadlift, it might be going to a tall box, right? Or it might be sitting into bands, if you want to get the full range of motion, but like, take some of the load off. So for the for those of you listening, like this is great advice. Because if you're doing this on your own, and you're like, No, there's no way I can do X movement, think about ways to gradually work your way up, right? And the rack pole is do you want to just explain that for people. So they know how to do that.
Matthew Spiewak 13:50
Yeah, so the rack pole you'll be working at, at the rack itself, with the safety catches that are there. So it's the it's the long flat part that actually extend out, and you want to set it up at first. So ideally, a good rack poles anywhere, kind of right above that knee, if you want to set it up there, you put your quads right in that middle part of the Olympic bar where it's smooth, because we don't obviously, we don't want to scrape up your entire leg there, you have your hands just outside of, of the thighs. And so what I tell people is the bar never leaves your quads, it is staying on your legs the entire time, alright, it should never leave. And what we want to do is want to squeeze that upper back as tight as we can to maintain that back with the lat tightness or at the upper back tightness, all that getting the traps involved a little bit. And the whole goal I tell people is we're not shrugging the bar up. If we think about the hip hinge movement. All right, all we're really doing is just starting in this hinge position. We're kind of bent over almost done. We're just standing straight up. What a lot of people do is when they are in that position, they tend to stand up with their back, you know, and they go into it like that. And so we're trying to teach we're going to stay up by moving the glutes forward and moving them in that in that like sagittal plane of motion kind of. And it's that hip hinge movement that like really opens up the box, if we can get the hip hinge movement down, like and it becomes second nature to us, that opens up everything, we can do so many more exercises, and really, really improve ourselves.
Philip Pape 15:21
Nice. And for those listening who are confused in any way, you know, you could always hire a coach like Matthew Walker. But he's talking about cues as well. Right? Which and different cues work for different people I know. Like, my daughters, they're eight and 10. If they see me working out, I use fun analogies. I'm like, Yeah, I'm using gorilla arms on my deadlift, you see grill arms that just hangs down. I don't pull, they just hang and I'm driving my legs grill, you know, or, or I'm pushing the earth away, you know, or stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. So what about the benchpress? The other big three, the benchpress, maybe is a little more complicated than people make it out to be. But if you know if people can use their full body and the right grip and the leg drive and all that, I'm sure they could, you know, realize the benefits of it. So what are your thoughts on that move?
Matthew Spiewak 16:12
Yeah, I love the benchpress. But I do agree with your words, a lot of times people will kind of take it a little bit too simple. I will say it's off from just the physical superficial perspective, yes, it's the easiest one out of none of the three, it's the less technical, we're not utilizing our entire body that's actually moving. But that's not to say that we're not utilizing the entire body. So a lot of people go into it and think, oh, all you do is you just move the bar down your chest, and you press back out, okay, it's one muscles you're working if there's someone knowledgeable themselves, that chest, triceps shoulders, so yes, that is correct. But we also need to think about the setup and how to get as much power as we can as much force as we can not only to improve the amount of weight that we can actually lift, but to also keep us tight as we can, because a lot of times people have a shoulder problem, or they actually will injure their lower back on the benchpress, which is really interesting. It's like you're injuring your lower back on the bench press, how are you doing that. And it's when we're creating that arch in the lower back. But we're not utilizing the hips and the legs. And so whenever we are moving that lower back, I'm in more of the realm where we can move that lower back as much as we want, as long as we are directing the pressure that the exercise is placing upon us into the right muscle groups. So in that movement, and what I'm saying by that is, we're going to have that arch in the lower back. So we're going to move it a little bit. But we don't want the pressure go into the lower back. We want the pressure going to the hips, because if we can bear the lower back to the hips, the hips is so much stronger by 95%. I mean, they can bear so much more load produce so much more power. So we the goal there is to pinpoint all the pressure into the hips, so the hips then can drive the movement forward.
Philip Pape 18:03
Yeah, awesome. I love that. So you're moving the back, and you're supporting the load going through the back to the hips and really relying on the hips. And the back is just a stabilizer, right? So to speak. What about the shoulders? What about the shoulder blades on the back of the bench? Because a lot of people tend to just relax and not think about that. What do they need to do there?
Matthew Spiewak 18:23
Yeah, I mean, it's this is the simple cue where you're just pinching the shoulder blades back. And this is where either if there's two main cues that I would use for this, and it works for different people. So either pinch the shoulder blades back, which you're literally just retracting the scapula as close as we can. Alright, and the second one is I just get a high chest, get a big chest in there. Because what we ideally want is we want the chest to be above the shoulders, when we do a movement. If you're to look at yourself in the side, you want the chest here and the shoulders down here because then the chest is the main mover compared to the shoulders. And so some people don't have that mind muscle connection to per se, of actually being able to retract the scapula. But if I say hey, just make up the chest, pump that chest out as big as you can. Naturally you're gonna pull your shoulders back and move it out. It's the same thing. It's just that we're relaying the information differently. We're really in the instructions differently to you.
Philip Pape 19:22
Yep, again, we're a coach is very beneficial. Do you do you do online form checks for folks? Are you just in person?
Matthew Spiewak 19:30
I do them if they send me a video at this point. I'm only training in a gym right now. So only personal training and coaching in the gym. But by all means I always love I do have people like will send me their videos to see like, is this form good? Can I improve this? If they do have that scenario where my back is hurting in the squat? You know we we go through it a little bit because I'm always trying to help because I know that pain of being lost and confused. And then if you are in that position where you're getting hurt, or you're getting injured in these movements that you want to perform to the best of your ability, it sucks. And I've been there for so long. And I know that pain and I'm like, I don't want you to be that I want to help you as much as I can.
Philip Pape 20:17
Cool. Yeah. And I, you know, I could tell you talk like a coach who knows what he's talking about. And there, there's a lot of coaches that don't. And so people struggle if they're trying to find someone to help, or if they're working from their home gym of, you know, who to go to. So just trying to throw some clients away when people are listening. And we're gonna send you some form checks. What about, what about the fourth big lift? The one that I really love the overhead press? Do you program that in? Do you consider it a big lift? Like, what are your thoughts on that?
Matthew Spiewak 20:42
Oh, yeah, overhead press is? Yeah, we talked about the big three, just because those are going to hit all the muscles. But in all reality, we do need to include overhead press. And I would also include a row in that. Yeah. But yeah, 100%. I mean, I always like to say this, if I could go back to my past self, when I first started working, I would only program those, what those five movements pretty much. And I would tell myself just get really good at those movements, build the skill, build a base, build a foundation, just to get really good at moving your body through that pattern. And then later on, we can start to add in some new new movements in there have some fun, but I mean, honestly, you can grow so much muscle and improve so much, if you were to just focus on those.
Philip Pape 21:29
Yeah. And you mentioned a row as well. Do you throw a pole in there into like the fundamentals like pull ups and shins? Or do you just rely on the deadlift at that point?
Matthew Spiewak 21:38
Yeah, if they can do a pull up and chin ups? Yeah, it's 100%. I'm going to do it. I mean, if not, we just set it up an inverted chin up or inverted row, where we just set up the bar on this AP catches, once again, you just doing, you're grabbing onto the bar there, and you're pulling yourself up. So it's strong from the ground. But 100% Those are the main movements. And for everyone, obviously, I'm when I program for clients, it's going to be different for everyone. Everyone has one goal, they're starting off at a different starting point. They have different limitations, different strengths, different weaknesses. But ideally, I try to find how can we fit these main movements into every single person, whether it be a different variation, whether it be different intensity, different frequency, all that stuff? Ideally, the same. Main foundational movements aren't every single person's workout.
Philip Pape 22:31
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, some people No, no call these functional movements. But unfortunately, the the CrossFit world also kind of took that over. And, and I know, what you're referring to, you mentioned earlier is you got your hip hinge your squat, your vertical and horizontal presses, and polls, just just how we move in real life, right? What What about intensity? So if you're starting someone new, who's never trained before they want to get stronger, you know, I will say an average person, they may, you know, they may not be in the greatest of health, but they're not they don't have any significant limitations. Taking the squat, for example, are you working in a fairly low rep range? Or do you start higher? What's the programming look like?
Matthew Spiewak 23:09
Yeah, so it's interesting here, I wouldn't even look at what rep range I'm starting with, because that can vary. And I'll explain why. But I would really automatically start at a low intensity just because they're coming off. What whether it be that they have some experience in the past, whether whether it be they've been doing stuff on their own, and they can probably handle it. When they work with me, I'm throwing a new stimulus at them, and their body automatically is going to be like, Well, what is happening, we need to adjust, we need time to adjust this. So I always tell people, the goal of the first week of the workouts is for me not not to make you sore, I'm really planning not make you sore. That being said, you might be sore a little bit, but I'm not trying to drive you into the ground, you are only going to be sore just because it's this is a new fluid pattern for you and all that. Now going back to why I said the volume per se, yeah, let's say we're already going to be a low intensity, we know that. But if we're at a low intensity, we can play around with the volume. So let's, let's say we're going back to what you said, I'm working with the squats. So we can either work at a low intensity and a higher volume, per se, with a four by eight, just all of a sudden we're getting, you know, 32 reps in there, my math is correct there. Or what we could do is actually go you know, six sets of three, because sometimes if you throw them in to do eight reps at a time, that's just a lot at once, and it's too much to focus on and they get fatigued even on a very mentally fatigued. So you just say three reps at a time. You can actually help them out and do like focus on one cue here for these three reps. I don't care about anything else. Focus on no keeping the elbows tucked in for three reps. They do that everything's fine. And then you focus on I focus on keeping the heels down just for these three reps. And then they do that and they focus and slowly you're building up all these cues because honestly I tell them like I'm throwing a lot of stuff at you right now. Sure. And it's hard. Yes, it is skill. Exactly. But as long as we're starting with that low intensity, we can vary depending on how much volume we want to put into it.
Philip Pape 25:13
Sure, yeah. And then I imagine peep different people will take to it more quickly than others if someone is more athletically inclined versus not. And yeah, like you said, your skill and technique and form sets you up for eventually making a ton of progress, doing it fairly quickly, later on, and not injuring yourself, Oh, my God, versus trying to go all out initially, and then just just having bad habits. You know, I just heard about a study that came out, I think it was, I think it was stronger by science, put it on the website might have been today, showing that in the back squat. The more the higher the intensity, the more recruitment of the hips, right? So at higher reps and lower intensity, it's more quad dominant, which will kind of kind of know that I mean, trainers know that someone intuitively you know that, but it's interesting to see in the research, how that recruitment ramps up and take the load goes more and more to the hips, based on your relative intensity. Just just mentioning that. And you know, if you had heard that, it's pretty cool stuff. Now, that's cool. Yeah. It's always interesting to hear that. Yeah. Cuz then we talk about, okay, how do people get really strong in the squat is like a whole body movement, right? And eventually, you do have to lift pretty heavy. So how do you work with somebody who's like, I want to get stronger, and I want to improve my body composition, and you're past that initial training phase of skill development, they've got the list down, you trust that they know what they're doing? What is your programming look like at that point?
Matthew Spiewak 26:37
Yeah, that point, that's when we can say, you know, I like to tell people, we're trying to check off these boxes here. I just had like a client the other day, like, we finally got to that point where the I didn't even need to, like remind her of the deadlift cues and anything like that, we just added the weight. And she finally got it. All five reps were like, perfect. And I said, That box is checked off now. Now we can start to work with the deadlift, and manipulate the intensity and actually go into okay, what is that main goal that we're trying to get to how can we actually utilize the intensity to actually achieve that goal. But I mean, first and foremost, obviously, we do have to check off that box and just make sure that we have that movement down, then what we go into is more or less, increasing the intensity a little bit, so we're still going to be working on that main movement of of the squat. So we have the skill, the squat down, we can perform a squat without, you know, failing without having really bad heels coming up, knees caving, and all that all that bad stuff there. So now we can say, Okay, now we're gonna start increasing the weight, and they're gonna feel what the intensity is. Because before that, we were keeping the weight kind of low, though, that load was pretty light, just because we wanted to be good at the moment, we didn't want to get fatigued too much, because we still wanted to be strong enough to do the movement and get the practice reps. And now we're saying, we got the practice reps, and we're going for the actual game now like this is this is where it matters. And the intensity goes up, obviously, it's not like we're going to max out, I tell my clients, I'm like, I'm never gonna have you max out not going for like less than a two rep max or max here. But we're still trying to go anywhere between anywhere between the 7075 80%. For anywhere between, I would say four to six reps is a good mark for just building the overall strength, which is where I usually tend to throw the mat if you're going anywhere above, it's, it's taxing on your CNS, if you're gonna go above 10 reps for a squad, and there's only so much weight that you can put on and sure, yeah, that's the tough part. So
Philip Pape 28:40
that's like a mark of if you can, if you can do what is it three sets of 20 or something on the squat is a test of yourself, you know, I can't imagine doing that. And, and I and you're supposed to do it in like a 10 RM to get the 20 at a 10 RM you know what I'm saying? Okay, so, I like what you're saying, and that's good for people to hear, right? Because a lot of people have, I think conventional wisdom is more the hypertrophy or bodybuilding range, eight to 12, you know, especially a lot of my female clients come in doing everything is set to 10 with like, the pink dumbbells and and kind of the same thing week after week. And I say that a little bit facetiously, but they know it. And you know, when we talk about strength, and what you're talking about here is, Hey, you want to build muscle, and you want to get stronger and it's not just about aesthetics, right it's about health but guess what, it all ties together. So if so, you somebody somebody comes in you say yeah, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go really intense here. And they say, Yeah, but I want to, I want to get ripped. You know, I want to get big muscles, big biceps or a female client, you know, bigger glutes. What's your response? Is this going to help them?
Matthew Spiewak 29:48
Oh, 100% it's still going to help them. Are you talking about specifically if how I'm going to do a squat to help with bigger biceps or just
Philip Pape 29:56
no no, no, not as compromised. So just you know, the the a notion that you have to do bodybuilding style movements almost exclusively to build your physique. Hey, this is Philip Pape. And if you feel like you've put in effort to improve your health and fitness, but aren't getting results, I invite you to apply for a one on one coaching to make real progress and get the body you desire. We'll work together to figure out what's missing. So you can look better perform better and feel better. Just go to wits & weights.com/coaching, to learn about my program and apply today. Now back to the episode.
Matthew Spiewak 30:33
Oh, totally. Yeah, I mean, I built a lot of my physique on, on doing the lower reps, rarely do I go past 10 or 12 reps and a lot of things. Now granted, if I'm going to do that, I need to be going at a higher intensity because the volume is down, we know that there's an inverse relationship between volume and intensity. So that is there. If we wanted to go more hypertrophy we can this is this is the beautiful thing about weightlifting and trying to build muscle and trying to build strength is that there's 1000 ways to skin a cat. So I can work I can go somebody strictly with just doing six to eight reps on pretty much every movement and they are still going to build muscle. And then the same time I'd be with somebody else and not even touch six reps stay around like the 10 to 12 if they really wanted to. And we would still see a lot of muscle and a lot of improvement. Now it's expensive when we can like combine both worlds and like go up and down and change things around. And that's where the programming comes into play. But I always tell people like do like there's so many ways we could do it. If you really don't want to go that low and wait, I'm not going to force you, I'm going to try my best to explain why I want to do it. But if you are saying there's no way I'm doing five reps on a squat, I say alright, I'm not gonna do it.
Philip Pape 31:45
It's just so true. There's so many ways to get there. And I think the like the bro science has evolved to kind of catch up to where anywhere between you know, three and three and 18 reps or something is getting is going to work pretty effectively. And the only reason more than more reps. And that doesn't work is because most people can't actually mentally deal with the amount of work required to do more than that. Right? Yeah, exactly right at the right level of failure. Cool. So let's talk low back pain, because you alluded to that a little bit earlier. Somebody you know, you tell them you're gonna deadlift, and they're like, No, that's gonna be bad for my back. And I personally had back surgery last year, I had a micro diskectomy on my L five, s one, and F and since then I've done I can't tell you how many squats and deadlifts and it feels great. And I think it's the best thing to do. But form is really important, as we've talked about, how do people avoid pain? Or maybe if they come to you with pain, maybe get rid of pain?
Matthew Spiewak 32:42
Yeah, the first thing we do is we actually move that back. That is that is what we want to do. A lot of times I tell people when they come in, and the I'm a big Stickler, the very first moment I do for every single client, no matter what is going to be a cat cow, or a cat camel is what some people say, I think cat cow, it makes a little bit more sense. But that's where you're just in that tabletop position. And you're flexing and extending that that entire spine pretty much. And I want to tell people is like, Yeah, our lower back. If we get so afraid, we have this natural fear of moving the lower back and hurting the lower back, which obviously is there because you know, either you've experienced an injury before or you've seen somebody else with that injury with in your case, you've had that surgery, oh, I don't want to move my lower back, I don't want to have the surgery that Phillip had. But in reality, if we don't, you know, move that lower back and move that spine in general, we're teaching it to pretty much just be stiff that entire time. And so then all of a sudden, when we are in a position because you know whether it be in life, we're bending down to pick something up, or we are in the weight room, you know, we're moving around putting a plate back, all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a vulnerable position where the back is in flat, that lower lumbar isn't a flexed position. And also we haven't prepared for that. And then it snaps. So then then it like pulls and back spasms and all that and then and then we get hurt. So the first thing is just moving and putting that lower back in those flex and extended positions.
Philip Pape 34:10
That's awesome. Yeah. So you are preparing for, and this is great for people to hear when you lift a lot more onto the back of a truck. And you're flexing your back and then you're lifting and then you're twisting. Have you prepared for those movements? Because if not, that's where you get injured is what you're saying. And don't be afraid of the very controlled environment of a deadlift, which Matthew is going to help you actually work up that that load on against those muscles to be able to handle that movement in real life. And even you know what else I think of strongman the strongman competition, they just had the rogue Invitational right with those events. And you see them doing the Atlas stones. And you're like wow, there they are rounding their back significant breezy it that's like you have to so you have to prepare for that right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So then, what if you do get into heard, like a strain tendinitis something else. And there's so many there's so much complexity when it comes to injury. Because there's nerve pain, there's things and PTs and doctors half the time don't know what they're talking about no offense halftime they do what? Somebody comes to you and says, you know, I just have shoulder pain all the time. And I've had it for years, like, what do we do? Yeah,
Matthew Spiewak 35:21
well, my job I always like to go back into my kinesiology degree, you know, the study of movement. Alright, how can we move your body to possibly make it feel better, I really try to stay in, stay in my lane of, I'm not trying to diagnose you, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physical, we're not going to spend an hour training session working on your shoulder, because you know, that's not the point. But what we can do is look at how you move, right? Does the shoulder hurt when you come in? When you're externally rotating your arm all the way back? Is it hurting? When we're bringing it behind our back, you know, we can look at those movements. And I can say, honestly, it's a quick YouTube video from the past that I've done, and just say, oh, usually, when you're in this pain, when you can't rotate your arm this way, there's here are five moments that you can include. And just by doing that, we can sometimes you know, maybe it's it's almost never a, oh, it's fixed in one inch. Wow, this is great. It's saying, Hey, this is the problem that we have. It's not an underlying issue, because it's obviously an issue in front of us. But this is what we're gonna be working on. Every time we come in, we're gonna dedicate 510 minutes of our time, just by working on this, because this is what's really holding us back. We can't make a lot of progression until we can take care of this slowly, but surely, we're gonna get it done. Don't just like going through the movements of our body, what can we actually do, and this is where like, all the biomechanics and actually understanding muscles and all that stuff comes into play. But it's just taking that approach of moving your body the way that it's supposed to
Philip Pape 36:55
love it and moving and not just resting right, because people probably try that for years. And now they've got the scar tissue. It's so funny, because few years back, I had golfer's elbow, right bicep tendonitis. And I know for a fact, it was from a terrible squat group I had, which is not something people would necessarily jump to right in their head is the squat group, which I fixed the squat rack,
Matthew Spiewak 37:16
we're talking about, hey,
Philip Pape 37:17
you know what I'm talking about, right? So you know, now I use a thumb over and a half, and you do it a certain way that works for me, where there's no strain on the elbow, but the pain was still there for a while. So then I had to rehab it. And the best way to rehab it was chin ups. And you're like, oh, that way. So you know, and they were painful, right? But I kept it light. And I did high reps and rehab it. So you're talking about movements, like re instilling the basement basic movement patterns that are natural to kind of push through that.
Matthew Spiewak 37:44
Yeah, the easiest for that I'd like to say is, let's say they are having shoulder problems when I'm benching and we try to make the adjustments on the barbell bench, and they're still feeling it, you know, half the time, or more than half the time, if we could just step away from the barbell and go to a dumbbell bench. It the pain goes away immediately. So then all of a sudden, we found a way. I mean, we found a way to actually still get that, that thrusting motion of the chest without any pain. Yeah, great. Look at that.
Philip Pape 38:13
There you go. That's great advice to people listening, just an alternate or very have a move, try it out. Awesome. Okay, so we've talked about, we talked a lot about the show on the show about the difference between exercise and training, right, like, exercising, going to the gym, not really having a plan and just, you know, having fun getting a sweat and whatever. Whereas training is something that's planned out right are a difference between a workout and a program. So for you as a personal trainer, programming is a huge part of what you do. I mean, it's basically what we're your expertise comes from, and why somebody would need a coach. So help us understand why it's important to getting results.
Matthew Spiewak 38:51
Yeah, well, we need to get results because we want to be efficient with our time. I always I always go back to that. It's like, don't you value your own time? Don't you respect your own time? Okay, so you're already paying money to go to a gym, and let's say you're at a home gym, right? Even if you're not paying money to go to your home gym, you're still paying time you're putting some sort of an investment in, don't you want to get the most out of your return on your investment? Right? So how do we do that we need to be able to have a plan for efficiency in there. And so that plan of efficiency comes through actually programming and saying, Okay, you're going into this day to do this moment, this many sets this many reps, and then you're gonna have this moment and do this and this and this, okay? And that is how and then you say, take a step back. Okay, how is this going to help me reach my goals, you say, Oh, well, in a month, you're going to actually be so good at it that you can probably go up to this sort of intensity. And then after that, you're gonna get so good at that, that we're going to actually change the exercise and make it a little bit harder on you. And then you're gonna have so good there. Then we get to this point, and you're saying it all comes back at the end and all circles back to your goal. And that is the main difference is that everything that we do in the gym In one way or another is going to lead to the goal if you find yourself that you're doing an exercise, and you have to ask yourself, How is this helping me? And you can't answer that, like, how is it helping me reach my goal? The reason why I started working out and trying to get better, and you can't answer that, then why are you doing that exercise? Why is why is it in there?
Philip Pape 40:22
Awesome. So you are wasting your time, and you're not being efficient unless you have a plan and a program. And that's basically time and money down the drain for weeks, months, years of your life, probably why if you're listening, and you haven't made progress in the gym, definitely programming can be a huge part of that. So are there is there a specific type of programming you really like to use in terms of, and we can get a little a little more complicated here, if you want to talk about mesocycles block programming, progression, like, I don't know, just digging a little bit of that.
Matthew Spiewak 40:51
Yeah, a lot of the block programming is pretty good, we can also always just kind of put somebody into this, you know, let's say we're taking a Gen pop, right, now, let's majority of our clients, we're gonna put them through a restorative phase. First and foremost, I don't care how advanced they think they are even, you know, or how little advanced they are, we're gonna put them through a restorative, that we're sort of phase my bed. And that's and what is that, that's pretty much just teaching them the movements. And not only teaching the movements, we're reteaching different movement patterns. Because what I love telling people is, you've spent so much time developing this movement, that is a has become your normal, it is your normal, and whether it be a muscle imbalance or something like that, it is normal to you, we need to untrain that and put in a different movement and create a different normal. So it's always setting these blocks of this phase is here, when we get done there. And we are confident in our ability that we've checked all the boxes, once again, then we can go into a different phase. And with a different sort of goal, a sub goal, I guess, within the overall goal, but the phases, I always tell people, it's very fluid, I've never seen, we're gonna work two weeks here, and then two weeks here, and then two weeks here, because for one person, they might check off all the boxes in two weeks. Sorry, but for another person, it might take six weeks. So always have to be adjusting. And that's where you're taking it week by week with the programming, you know, you have to look at and say like, we did really good on the deadlift this week, I think we can progress there a little bit. But that squat is still really struggling a little bit. So we're gonna stick with that and try to focus on it a little bit more. So, yes, that's the beauty of just the programming in general.
Philip Pape 42:42
Cool. Yeah. And you're working with the individual. And it kind of reminds me of, again, nutrition coaching, same thing where you work on one thing at a time, and if it doesn't, if you're not quite there, you got to keep keep working on it. So I think a lot of this, I mean, I'm sure you agree. Rule number one is consistency, right? Can somebody show up and do it? And the reasons are, are many, right, like for people, for some people, it's how fun it is. And others, it's the results and others. It's how much their coach yells at them, because that's what they want, you know, or whatever. But without that, it doesn't matter. A perfect program is irrelevant if you don't stick with it, right. Show up. Yeah. So how do you get people because you deal with all kinds of people? How do you get them to start and stick with the routine? Yeah, so
Matthew Spiewak 43:28
starting with the routine, it's starting them easy. Starting them off easy, alright, and letting them have autonomy in it. I always like asking two questions. It's how many days can you come into the gym on your worst week? You know, work is work is hell, your family is going crazy. You know, some something happens. How many days? Do you know that you come in here. And usually that's that's the common denominator. There's like three days is like usually like, I know, I can be here three days a week, even on a worst week. And like, Okay, sweet. We're over three days. And then I always like to tell them, what movements do really love doing, you know, is their machines, free weights, kettlebells, cables, bands and stuff like that. Because the whole goal is if we're trying to get them into this new stimulus, this new habit, this, this this new practice in their life, if we were to throw all of this new things, all the new things out them at once, it might be too much of a new stimulus, it might overload them a little bit, and then they kind of shy away, you know, they burn out pretty much. So allowing them to have autonomy in okay, I really like machines. All right, I can focus on right in the beginning. Maybe we do some bodyweight stuff just on the ground, get them moving. And then we go into the machines but deep down I know in my head I'm like, in a month I'm getting away from machines is once they start getting used to exercise and intensity and different levels. It's like okay, look at how we can progress and get away from machines. But I say I'm like yeah, totally. Let's do machines first. Like we can do an hour machines. Then it's going to be great, because I know you can still get a workout with machines. Now, do I want them there the entire time? No, I'm going to progress them to free weights and all that stuff. But yeah, it's starting it off with the stuff that they want to do.
Philip Pape 45:12
Yeah, like that. And yeah, you can't come, you can't just say, here's the ideal thing you need to do, especially if they're not gonna enjoy it, or they're gonna be stubborn, bad or whatever, however you want to phrase it. And you start with what they like, and gradually convinced them just through their own through osmosis, that there's a better way. Cool, is there anything about nutrition? You wanted to come back to with all this? Because I know you you do you do both? Right. Like, do you? Do you have clients where you'd give both nutrition and training coaching?
Matthew Spiewak 45:41
Yeah, yeah. And that's, and that's something that I do is, I try my best to actually provide that because I understand that like, hey, they can come in here, I can give them the program four days a week, I work with them once a week, maybe twice a week or something. And that's all going good. But if they're going home, and they're eating, like, crap, and or they're overeating, or they're under eating, a lot of times, it's they're under eating, a lot of times they come in and they want to build muscle, I'm like, Dude, you got to start eating a little bit
Philip Pape 46:08
more fasted, right? Exactly.
Matthew Spiewak 46:11
And then it ends up just they don't see the progress, and is the is the most interesting thing ever. Because this is what will happen, they will see the progress with the weights, the weights will steadily increase week after week after week, they won't see a physical difference in the mirror. And they're asking me what's going on here, I've been going up in the benchpress. For the last five weeks, I'm like, Yeah, we're simply just getting better at the skill of the movement. Like, that's all it is, we're just becoming more efficient and movement, we're using more muscle fibers, we're having better higher recruitment pattern. But we're not actually increasing the size of the muscle fibers themselves. And that's coming from the fact that you are not in taking as many calories. So it's given them guidelines on that, because I understand, it's like, it's a two pronged effect, you can't just have one aspect of it and expect to get the results.
Philip Pape 46:59
Yeah, you know, what you just said is, is really critical, because you're making me think of it in a different way than it had before. So when I talk to people about when they start training, and they're getting stronger, you know, there's neuromuscular adaptation, you referred to that, where you're getting better at the skill, and you're recruiting more muscle fibers that you already have, it's like this inherent potential that you haven't tapped into, and you're starting to tap into it. And and, and the way I've always said it is eventually you get to a threshold where your body needs to create new tissue to keep getting stronger. But what you also said is, if you're not in that anabolic environment to begin with, and feeding yourself, you're leaving gains on the table right from the beginning as well. Which is great for people to know. Yeah,
Matthew Spiewak 47:41
yeah, exactly. Exactly. Call I've just,
Philip Pape 47:43
I've just repaired for you. I'm just paraphrasing.
Matthew Spiewak 47:46
I mean, that's what it is. And it's, it's, it's been able to actually have them understand. And that's, that's what I love to tell my clients and like, I know that I can tell you to eat. But are you going to how much motivation is that? Is there enough of a reason to do that, just because I, your trainer is telling you to eat. If I were to explain why it's important, say, hey, remember that goal that you have that you want to have a bigger chest and a bigger back? Alright, well, we need in order to do that, we need to have muscle muscular hypertrophy, we need to increase the size of the muscles, we need to build muscle per se. In order to do that we need to eat more and weight and lift weights. So then they have that reason of why they need to eat more. And so if they can understand why they need to do something, they're going to be more inclined to actually doing that habit and doing that daily task. Rather than like, I'm doing it because my trainer said it's good for me. So I guess I got it. It's like, but now they're like, Oh, I know, putting this meal into my body right here is going to help me with my goal. So they're going to do it a lot more.
Philip Pape 48:47
I love it, man. Yeah, I'm totally fine with you on helping people understand why I'm gonna use what you just said, with clients as well that, hey, you're gonna gain strength, but you're not going to look as good as you want, unless you also keep it.
Matthew Spiewak 49:00
It's crazy. But yeah, that's what it is. No, it's true. And then
Philip Pape 49:03
and then you do see the interesting phenomenon where somebody who's very overweight, and they they go into a slight deficit and they start starting training, you see them gain weight and lose, you know, you see them gaining strength for quite a while. What in that scenario? What do you think? are we experiencing body recomp? Or is it still the neuromuscular adaptation for a while?
Matthew Spiewak 49:24
Yeah, it can be a little bit of both there. Yeah, yeah. It's
Philip Pape 49:30
to feed the muscles
Matthew Spiewak 49:31
right? Yeah, they have a bigger runway is what I like to say. And that's that's this is a metaphor that I learned from Dr. Jordan shallow if you guys he uses a lot of bigger fancy words than I do. So if you have trouble understanding me then I don't know if you're gonna understand him, but he always explains it as you have this sort of a runway of how long can we actually do this movement for this, this pattern for until we actually hit that roadblock we need to take off. So starting off from your base there, if you have more body weight, you actually have a much longer runway. Compared to somebody who started off at 110 pounds and has skin and bones, they have a much shorter runway where we can only develop that neuromuscular adaptation for that long, until we need to really start increasing the caloric and looking at that aspect, but with someone who's more on the heavier side that was looking to go down in weight, and bodyweight, their runway is a lot longer.
Philip Pape 50:30
Awesome. Yeah, that's a great way to put it the runway. Again, man. So this is gold. So much good stuff this interview. So I like to ask all my guests. Is there a question that you wish I had asked? And what's your answer?
Matthew Spiewak 50:43
Yeah, the question that I wanted you to ask would be like how to understand that less is more, because this is something that I love to fight with people about, because that means that we've gotten to a point where you are working out so much, and you love to work out, you love what you're doing that you're actually coming in here too much. And you're actually negating some of some of your strength and fuzzy gains that you could get, because then I need to fight you and bring you back down. I would much rather have that battle with someone to take him down today. Rather than like, Dude, you're only coming in here one day a week, we need to get you up to two, that step is huge for them. I would much rather have the Battle of like, you're already there. Let's just take it down a notch. Right. But understanding that less is more, and I've heard that quote, throughout my entire life. And throughout my entire life. I was like, nah, nah, I'll just work hard. I'll just keep working hard. And it wasn't until I actually took time. And I decided, You know what, I'm gonna implement it for like one month, trial for one month, cut down my the number of days I go to the gym, everything else stayed the same. I just cut down the number of days I went to the gym. And I felt better. I got way stronger and everything. And I was noticing a lot of physique changes in the good sense. So it was crazy. It was like, it took me you know, six or seven years to figure it out. But once I did, once I did it was it was it made a lot more sense.
Philip Pape 52:11
Less is more that's that's awesome advice. So if we're where's the sweet spot for most people? Right? Is it is it that they're, they're trying to lift four days a week and then fill in the other days with like, boot camps and cardio, you know, air squats and stuff are running, you know? And what is the sweet spot? Like two or three days a week? Generally?
Matthew Spiewak 52:32
Yeah, it's there's, I would say two to four days a week for the weightlifting per se you can easily do that. If you look that week or seven days, you can afford to go back to back days on one day, as long as you take that rest day on the third day. But yeah, it's a lot of it is like they come in, let's say they are doing the four days though. But then the other three are like heavy cardio days. It's like another heavy bootcamp days. And then we take a look back and like do every day you're taxing yourself. So so much. Where's the recovery aspect to it? There's no recovery in that,
Philip Pape 53:02
like, but I wanted to fat but I want to burn fat Matthew? Isn't that how I do it?
Matthew Spiewak 53:07
Yeah, it's oh my gosh. And that's and that's just where it's going back to the idea where if we can allow them to understand it, and teach them so that they can understand it, then they understand why and then they're not going to do it, compared to oh, I don't want you to do cardio for these two days. And then they say oh, like my trainer said I don't I don't have to do cardio. But I really want to because I bet it's going to help me, you know, because now they're just going off of whatever I say. I want them to understand why they shouldn't do it. Because then they're gonna realize, you know, they can practice.
Philip Pape 53:36
Yeah, they buy into. Yeah, and another question I like to ask is, are you doing this? Because you enjoy it? Are you doing this? Because usually the answer is not really. Like very few people enjoy all the success of cardio very few people, somebody might like running and then it's then it's a question of okay, do we still need to incorporate running because you enjoy it for consistency, but know that it might interfere with some of your gains over here? Yeah, great. Less is more. And then finally, where can listeners find out about you and your work?
Matthew Spiewak 54:07
Yeah, so I'm all over Instagram least I try to be the Spiewak underscore personal training. I do have a Facebook group similar to Phillips, but try to do my own spin on that, you know, I don't not just try to do a carbon copy of him. But pretty much those two places are the most I do have YouTube also on there. So that's some original content as well, unleased physique on YouTube.
Philip Pape 54:32
Cool. All right. So a lot, a lot of places. I don't think I'm in your group yet. I need to join that. So we're going to include all those links to Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and your website in the show notes. Matthew. Again, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a blast.
Matthew Spiewak 54:46
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was it was awesome to talk about. Yeah.
Philip Pape 54:51
Thanks for listening to the show. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask. If you enjoy the podcast, let me know by leaving a five star review in Apple podcasts. I'm telling others about the show. Thanks again for joining me Philip Pape in this episode of Wits & Weights. I'll see you next time and stay strong.
