Why Women NEED to Bulk for Long-Term Strength and Longevity (Niki Sims) | Ep 292

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Are you worried that lifting heavy will make you "too bulky"? What's holding you back from building muscle as a woman?

I'm joined by Nikki Sims, strength coach, and Chief Experience Officer at Barbell Logic, to break down why most women are leaving huge muscle and strength gains on the table and how understanding the science of muscle growth can change your fitness journey.

Nikki also shares her journey from skinny to strong, her experience with bulking and cutting phases, and the biggest lessons she's learned from coaching women for over a decade.

Today, you’ll learn all about:

02:09 - Why do many women fear their physical potential?
03:58 - The influence of media and beauty standards
07:12 - From aesthetics to strength and performance
10:49 - Strength training as a gateway to confidence
19:11 - Can you be "too strong" or "too muscular"?
27:17 - Nikki’s personal bulking and cutting experiences
32:39 - Gaining weight vs "getting fat"
39:31 - How long should you bulk?
50:33 - Building muscle even when you can't squat or deadlift
56:20 - The surprising mental health benefits of lifting heavy
1:06:19 - Why every woman should get a strength coach
1:10:00 - Outro

Why Women Need to Bulk to Stay Strong and Healthy for Life

If you’ve ever worried that lifting heavy or gaining weight would make you look “too bulky,” it’s time to throw that fear out the window. The truth is, building muscle is one of the best things women can do for their strength, confidence, and long-term health. And no, you’re not going to wake up looking like a bodybuilder overnight—because that takes years of intentional effort.

Strength coach Niki Sims joined me on Wits & Weights to talk about why so many women hold themselves back from getting stronger, how to bulk strategically without unnecessary fat gain, and why this shift in perspective could completely change your fitness journey.

Why Women Fear Muscle (and Why They Shouldn’t)

Women have been conditioned to believe that getting stronger means getting “big and bulky.” Niki pointed out that this fear is rooted in outdated beauty standards from the ‘90s and early 2000s—the era of ultra-thin models and low-rise jeans. Society told women that being as small as possible was the goal, and lifting weights seemed to be the opposite of that.

But here’s the reality:

• Muscle doesn’t appear overnight. Even men, who have significantly more testosterone, take years of dedicated training to build serious muscle mass.

• Getting stronger makes you look better, not bigger. A well-trained body isn’t “bulky”—it’s athletic, powerful, and lean.

• You won’t gain muscle by accident. Building muscle requires strategic training, progressive overload, and enough food to support it.

Strength vs. Aesthetics

Shifting the focus from appearance to performance changes everything. Instead of worrying about getting too big, imagine being able to deadlift your body weight, carry your own luggage without struggling, or maintain your strength well into your 70s and 80s.

Strength training helps women:

• Prevent osteoporosis by increasing bone density.

• Boost metabolism by maintaining lean muscle mass.

• Improve body composition—muscle is denser than fat, so even if the scale goes up, your physique will look more toned and firm.

• Enhance confidence by proving to yourself what your body is capable of.

Bulking Without Getting “Fat”

Many women think that “bulking” means eating everything in sight and getting fluffy. Not true. A smart bulking phase is controlled, gradual, and focused on muscle gain, not fat accumulation.

Niki shared her personal experience going from 185 pounds to 155, using strategic bulks and cuts to build muscle while staying comfortable in her body. Her key takeaways for a successful bulk:

1. Eat in a Small Caloric Surplus

A slight increase of 300-500 calories per day is all you need to build muscle without excessive fat gain. This allows your body to use the extra energy for muscle repair and growth.

2. Prioritize Protein

Aim for at least 0.8-1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight to fuel muscle recovery. Good sources include lean meats, eggs, dairy, and protein supplements if needed.

3. Train with Progressive Overload

To build muscle, you have to challenge your body. This means gradually increasing weight, reps, or intensity in your lifts over time.

4. Measure Progress with Strength and Performance

Instead of obsessing over the scale, track your strength gains, body measurements, and how you feel in your clothes. A slight increase in weight is normal—and necessary—for muscle growth.

5. Give Your Body Time

Muscle-building is a slow process. A bulk should last at least 3-6 months to see meaningful changes before considering a fat-loss phase. Trying to stay too lean year-round prevents muscle growth.

The Mental and Physical Benefits of Strength

Beyond the physical transformation, lifting heavy has profound mental benefits. As Niki put it, “You’re rewarded for how present you are.” Training forces you to be in the moment, to focus, and to build resilience—both mentally and physically.

It’s not just about adding muscle. It’s about training for longevity, being able to move well as you age, and developing an unshakable confidence in what your body can do.

TL;DR — Women NEED to Lift and Eat to Support Muscle Growth

The idea that lifting will make you “bulky” is one of the biggest myths holding women back from reaching their full potential. Strength is not just about aesthetics—it’s about health, longevity, and quality of life.

Instead of fearing muscle, embrace the challenge. Train with intent. Eat to support your performance. And recognize that getting stronger is one of the best gifts you can give yourself for the long haul.

If you’re ready to break free from diet culture and step into your strongest self, start lifting heavy—and don’t be afraid to fuel your body properly.

Episode resources:

• Beast over Burden Podcast

• Instagram: @barbell_logic 

• Youtube: @BeastOverBurden 

• Get a free coaching consultation with Barbell Logic: barbell-logic.com/experience
  

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're a woman who's been hesitant to lift heavy or build muscle, worried about getting too bulky or confused by all the conflicting advice about gaining weight, this episode is for you. Join me and strength coach Nikki Sims as we reveal why most women are leaving massive gains on the table and how understanding the science of strength training and muscle is a game changer for giving you confidence with your fitness, so you can finally just get strong. Learn why the fear of getting too muscular is holding you back, discover what actually drives muscle growth in women and get practical tips, as always, to start thriving in strength. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're going to utterly dismantle one of the biggest barriers holding women back from reaching their physique and longevity goals with the one and only Nikki Sims. Oh my gosh. Longevity goals with the one and only Nikki Sims oh my gosh. She's like I'm just Nikki.

Philip Pape: 1:10

Now for those of you who don't know Nikki, and come on, if you don't know her already, go check out her stuff. She is the Chief Experience Officer at Barbellogic. She's host of the Beast Over Burden podcast. Definitely give that a follow. She spent over a decade helping women overcome their fear of building muscle and getting stronger we're going to talk about today, while transforming her own relationship with training and nutrition. By the way, she loves deadlifting. Check out her Instagram profile Best Good stuff. She's up in the four plates and I, for one, I'm a huge fan and stoked to talk with her today. So you are going to learn today what drives muscle growth in women. You're going to learn how to bulk strategically without getting bulky. You're going to learn how to break free from some of the myths and mindsets that hold you back. And stick around, because Nikki will be giving you plenty of tips as we go along to get started later on in the episode. Nikki, thank you for coming on the show.

Niki Sims: 1:59

What an intro man. It's good to be here.

Philip Pape: 2:02

It is awesome to be here. It's so much fun to meet somebody who I've followed for a while through Barbell Logic we talked about before recording. I came from the Starting Strength community and I've shared a lot of your videos with folks, so anybody who's looking for really good form checks go check out your YouTube channel and then definitely follow the podcast. I want to talk about what we're here for today, which is do you find that many women fear their own physical potential?

Niki Sims: 2:28

It's a really good way to put it at the base of what might be happening inside them, and I think they're fearing what they might have to look like in order to be strong, because there's such an instant image that pops into most people's head when they hear I have to put on muscle is that of a stage-ready bodybuilder or someone who's gone really far, and very successfully far down the road of putting on as much muscle as they can, and so I think they're afraid that that's what they are hearing, that they have to become, when it's really not the case.

Niki Sims: 3:04

That may not be the journey for them, and if they want to do it you don't get there by accident. I'm sure you've said this a million times. That doesn't happen on accident. That happens with a lot of hard decisions and a lot of hard work. So, yeah, I think when women are hearing this conversation about needing to put on muscle or hear that they should put on muscle, it's a fear of what could happen to them and it's something that they don't want to happen to them, and that's always worth digging into to learn more about what those words like bulky really mean to them.

Philip Pape: 3:37

Yeah, yeah, because like a man might hear that and be like heck, yeah, like, let's bulk up. You know, and it's a different intonation or a implication. It's funny you mentioned the. You know, it can't happen by accident. You wrote a really good article about this whole topic and get pretty vulnerable in your thoughts on this and you said if you don't want to look bulky for muscle, I'm sure you won't. So I mean, let's just hammer that point home. I'm still surprised having been in the industry for I don't know four years now not a huge amount of time, but long enough to even see trends evolve in that time that this is still a big fear. Let's explore that. Why is that? Is there marketing behind it? Or is it just a lack of clarity with the information out there?

Niki Sims: 4:18

I think it's a fear because, especially, I think, women in my age group and I I'm in my late 30s I have, I think, less than two weeks in my 30s counting down the days we grew up with this idealized image of like Kate Moss or in really thin actresses, and there were even a lot of movies and magazines that told us what it meant to be fat and we were probably all that weight range which was a healthy weight range.

Niki Sims: 4:49

And so there's this and it was shoved into our brains when we were really young and still developing. So it's really hard to break away from this idealized image that we still Part of our brains still think we need to look like that image that we still part of our brain still think we need to look like that. And we're afraid to be far away from that, from those physical characteristics which are really skinny arms, super duper, flat stomach, the worst jeans ever, which are the low rise jeans Like you can only wear those if you are really really thin, which, if you are, that's great for you, whatever. But it's like a fear of not being what we really thought we were supposed to be.

Philip Pape: 5:29

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned, like Kate Moss. I know, the SNL 50 thing is going on and there's like all these actors in there and you can kind of see some of the standards, the beauty standards, and I know, for guys like Brad Pitt, the Fight Club thing gets thrown out all the time and you know, to the credit, today, like you're seeing some of the bigger guys, like I don't know if you've seen Reacher on Amazon Prime, that guy, yep, it is definitely a double standards. It's not like you see women, big, strong women, coming out in these positions, in these roles, even today, Even in the superhero roles, they're like wait, I was like, I wouldn't even trust you to pick up a 15 pound dumbbell like no yeah yeah, yeah, that's right.

Philip Pape: 6:06

There was a movie called the gorge with like a sniper.

Lisa: 6:09

I just watched that yeah wasn't it good?

Niki Sims: 6:11

wasn't it good?

Philip Pape: 6:12

um what's her name? Joy, joy's in her name, yeah and something like yeah and with the big eyes and um, and she's doing all this athletic stuff and you know, some of it actually makes sense if you're thinking of the calisthenics part of it and like the acrobatic part of it. But then she's also supposed to be this like superhero, you know, strong and everything. She's kind of small, you know.

Niki Sims: 6:30

Yeah, and you know, some people are genetically certain ways Sure and when their bodies are left to their own devices, meaning they're not trying to change them, they might end up being easy gainers or it might be really hard to gain weight. And you know we're left thinking about these things, like when you start to get into the industry, like you, of changing bodies. You cannot help but think about that stuff. When you're watching someone whose physicality is part of their role is like I know what you have to live like to look like that and you can't do it for long.

Philip Pape: 7:04

Yes, and then when it bleeds into clients, then you're like now, wait a minute, let's take a step back and focus on what we really are going for here. Maybe that's a good segue, nikki, into talking about strength and talking about, like, the things we can really go after from a performance perspective, even if physique is a little piece of that. You know, I guess. What does strength mean to you, and as a woman and more generally, as a human, you know, and maybe we can go off of that tangent.

Niki Sims: 7:32

Yeah, and even just this pivot is important because it's going from this kind of outside like image of what you think you should be and how you should be seen to something that's yours and like being in your body and making choices about your working out and your training.

Niki Sims: 7:52

It's about how you interact with the world. It's about how you eat, it's about how you feel, it's about how you sleep, it's how your whole 24 hours actually feels like, how you're able to experience it, how you're able to take ownership over it, versus someone looking at you from the outside and you thinking that you should look a certain way to them. So now we're really pivoting it to something that we cannot control, to something that we have a lot of control over and we can actually get a lot of joy and rewarding feelings out of. I think that's such the way you pivoted, I think is really just a great example of why it's really important to actually start thinking about okay, well, how, how does it feel to be on the same team as my body? Yeah, and how does it feel to see what it it performs like and looks like when I'm in a good relationship with it?

Philip Pape: 8:40

Yeah, yeah, it was in my notes here. It says when, when Nikki says this, you want to pivot to the strength topic? I'm just kidding. I like how you said it is the locus of control. I don't think you used the word locus, but I know that's what you mean.

Philip Pape: 8:58

I don't think I've used that word, but I'm going to them are mine and you said taking ownership of your 24 hours or, to paraphrase, which is amazing, because I do see a mindset shift with people who are struggling and feel like they don't have control and don't have confidence and they're not sure why what they're doing doesn't translate to some result, and that's a lack of control, right, and they might even do things that are extreme, like dieting that, and then it doesn't work. And so this idea that, wow, you could become a beast, right, and then you can conquer your burden, to take your podcast title and kind of mold your physical relationship as a physical relationship with yourself, in terms of relationship with strength. So I mean, maybe dive into that a little more because I want to know. You've talked about going from skinny to strong. Why is it important, I guess? Why should people care?

Niki Sims: 9:49

about that being strong at all. Being strong is a different way of being in the world. You are able to do so many more things than you ever knew you could, and you start to really understand what your body is for. I think a lot of people can just get completely tied up and being in their head and they have no relationship with what it's like to exert their bodies. You know there are so many people who are just so completely sedentary, you know, living on the internet, doing whatever, but have no appreciation for what it feels like to contract your muscles really, really hard and to earn fatigue and to realize that you can do a single chin-up, which maybe you thought was just something completely impossible, or to squat your own body weight. There's this whole world of feeling that, before you really get into it, you don't know exists, and when you do learn about that, and once you get into it and feel what it's like, it's so hard to go back.

Niki Sims: 11:04

Once you know what strong feels, like you just can't, you can't not be it. It's like too devastating I totally jive with that.

Philip Pape: 11:10

100 because yeah, it's like a different version of yourself emerges from this cocoon.

Philip Pape: 11:15

You've been like sedentary in it's like the matrix what you're saying. It's like you're taking the red pill or whatever the pill is that shows you what it could be. Yeah, and you're a human right Like so. I just interviewed Brad Kearns. I think his episode comes out before this one. He co-wrote a book with Mark Sisson on the value of walking right Born to walk. It's walking versus running, and the whole premise is just our relationship with the world. When you talk about, you know walking barefoot, or you know sprinting or lifting heavy things or playing. Those are human things. What are many people doing? It's the opposite of those.

Niki Sims: 11:48

Yeah, Right, yeah, and they, like both our bodies and our brain, can be really victims to hormones, or they can create hormones that we really want, and so, interestingly, those chemical reactions can make us feel out of control. But when you get organized in your training and you get organized in your eating, your ability to understand what's going on increases and you can experience less stress by feeling like a victim to those hormones and even just your own thoughts. And so when you become more physical and when you interact with the world through your body, I think you can be a lot more accepting of yourself.

Philip Pape: 12:39

Yeah, it creates acceptance and also maybe resilience from that. Yeah, you just said something very powerful. You said get organized with training and eating, which hits a nerve for me because I talk about physique engineering and using data and tracking, and I know you guys do as well. And just today, I think, or yesterday, somebody who had like dabbled in one of my group programs. She's like I think this is going to be too overwhelming because I have three kids and you're asking me to track things right. And immediately I thought, okay, I've seen this story before, right, because you've got to meet people where they're at. But also, I think people don't necessarily realize how valuable it is to get organized, in that it reduces the stress eventually if you kind of get over that hump.

Philip Pape: 13:19

Tell us more about that. When you say get organized with training and get organized with eating, what does that mean?

Niki Sims: 13:25

It means appreciating that your actions today may not be felt until two, three, four or five weeks later and your ability to appreciate or to feeling a payoff is not instant anymore and it can be wildly rewarding is not instant anymore. And it can be wildly rewarding, but what it feels like in the moment is you do a workout and, instead of the goal being complete exhaustion and no longer able to do any more reps, and you're just totally done. Or you look at your fitness tracker and you see, oh good, I've burnt 600 calories. That's great. That's not the reward anymore.

Niki Sims: 14:07

The reward is a cumulative effect where you're managing your stress and you're managing your recovery and change happens over a longer amount of time, but it's very much a lasting change. It takes a lot of work to build muscle. You can start to see the effects pretty soon if you're new to training. But when you look at people who are really jacked, they've been doing it for a long time and you can really appreciate how much work went into that body composition changes. It's so hard. It's so hard to make those decisions every day and to kind of learn how to be at peace with the discomfort of saying no to things that you really want to say yes to, but the end, actually there's not even an end anymore, it becomes infinite. And that's another mindset change is. You know, when you're organized with your training, it's just this repetitive cycle of learning, trying something and learning, trying something and learning instead of the mindset of well, as soon as I do this, I'll be happy, huge shift.

Philip Pape: 15:17

There's no end point. We're so on the same page.

Lisa: 15:20

man, I have there's a buddy of mine he's another lifter.

Philip Pape: 15:23

We he and I are like Socrates philosophers the way we get into the same kind of stuff. And we're like man. We just love the process. You really fall in love with that process, even though it's always hard, like I think that's an important message.

Philip Pape: 15:36

It's never easy, but, like, the things that come out of it make your ability to interact with the world way easier. I would argue right and I think you're arguing that to some extent in that the things that become hard with age and frailty are not going to be the hard things you have to deal with as much because you're dealing with the. You have the voluntary hardship today. Right, it's the term you guys use. You also said you become at peace with discomfort, which is again amazing because it's the concept of ever changing, always changing and growing, and not just sitting back. So what are your thoughts on? Like dopamine hits and endorphins from exercise, which get a lot of play out there, that is an instant gratification, is it not?

Niki Sims: 16:15

Oh yeah, and I love that. I love that.

Philip Pape: 16:18

I am here, for it.

Niki Sims: 16:21

And I think it's important to have stuff like that in there, but it does change over time. You know, a dopamine hit for me now, like I do spin classes. I live across the street when I'm in California from a great spin studio, and that has sometimes a probably positive effect on my conditioning, but sometimes I can go too hard with it and it actually steals from my recovery. I accept this, but in that space it is a huge mental break for me, and it is such a win that I come out of there less stressed, and so that's a huge win. So that's important, but I also know that is not contributing to my muscle building. It's not how I lose weight. I don't care how many calories I burn, it is just for fun.

Niki Sims: 17:14

And other dopamine comes from, or dopamine hits can come from. You know, marking your workout complete, that counts Same as, or not even as big, but hitting a PR boom, that's a huge one. The interesting part of that, though, is you hit a lot of PRs in the beginning, and you get addicted to that, but it's not going to happen very much, as you know, as you keep lifting, so it's not a huge like ah, this is the best, I'm only going to get better and better. You're going to squat 225 a million times in your life where it used to be one arm.

Philip Pape: 17:47

Your new PR is my shoulder didn't hurt after those presses. Yes.

Niki Sims: 17:52

Yeah. So you have to know like and you've experienced this, like you have you know, 20% of your workout days are full of those kinds of dopamine hits Like everything's awesome, you hit some PRs, or it's just a really good day, and then some days are the complete opposite Nothing feels good. You have an old tweak that's acting up, the music is crappy and even though it's your own music but today it just sounds so dumb and you cannot get into your workout and you just want to throw a tantrum. But you could do the exact same work and have two different experiences, and your body still needs it.

Philip Pape: 18:28

I feel you all the way you just look for those wins, whatever it is. I was joking with some buddies where I had 395 on the bar and they're like, why don't you just go to 400? I'm like, well, the math works out that way because I'm progressing. Last year last week at 385. I'm doing 4055 next week and I actually responded something nerdy, like it's, I'm holding my mental reserve until I go to four plates next week or something.

Philip Pape: 18:50

You know what I mean and they're like you know, you gave me, gave me shit for it, but um, uh, yeah. And if you guys look at, if you look at nikki's game face after she does her deadlift on instagram, you can see this like satisfaction right after that rep. That's just a subtle difference. It's like yeah, some people are like I will clap myself.

Niki Sims: 19:09

I'll be like yeah, it's good stuff, it's such a good feeling.

Philip Pape: 19:15

So before we I do want to get into the whole building muscle science and everything, but before we do that, is there another extreme where you can be too strong or too muscular. I just want to get that out of the way, sure.

Niki Sims: 19:26

Well, I talk about this with nutrition a lot.

Niki Sims: 19:30

I don't love saying that a certain food is healthy or not, because I think it comes down to the quantity of any food.

Niki Sims: 19:39

Like cashews, you might hear that they're healthy, but if your diet only consists of cashews, not so healthy, especially if you're trying to not gain body fat. So, similar to training, there can be a point at which the pursuit of muscle actually starts to deteriorate your health, which could be, you know, if you start using supplements, that you know, if you start using a lot of steroids like that can have a very ill effect on your heart. So it's whenever you start doing things that are at all costs. How is it influencing your internal organs? How is it influencing your connective tissue? Are you able to enjoy your life outside of the gym or are you just saying no to everything because you're too exhausted, or you believe that the only way you can obtain joy is by being the most muscular person in the world, or for yourself? So if you start making trade-offs for your health, your heart, your joints and in your life outside the gym, then I think that that can become too much. It's probably not what you actually want.

Philip Pape: 20:44

Yeah, I'm glad you put that in the context of you've got a system. Is your life Like you've got more things? It's not that they have to be in quote unquote balance. I don't like that term necessarily, because things get more important sometimes and then less others. Sure, in my opinion. But you're right, I was thinking about how some guys push the deadlift so hard that they might have some low back fatigue right, or they're doing a bunch of RDLs or whatever, and now their wife asked them to help out with something they're like sorry, I'm too sore for my lifting and that thought goes through my head.

Philip Pape: 21:13

And my wife's. Like the cinder block is frozen to the ground because it's like nine degrees here. Can you pick it up Now? In that case, I couldn't get it, but there's something called leverage. So if you're an engineer.

Philip Pape: 21:22

You know you can use a pole. Anyway, that's a good one, all right. So let's get into the building muscle. So where do we want to start? Let's start with you, because some of my followers I said Nikki's coming on, they were like gaga about it and they wanted to hear your, some of your story. I don't want to do the whole thing here, but the strong, the skinny to strong, right and like, and then specifically like, we want to hear about bulking phases you've gone through and then maybe we could parallel that with some of the generalities and science behind it.

Philip Pape: 21:54

So, yeah, go for it.

Niki Sims: 21:56

Short story was I was a gym rat in high school. I tried to play sports. I was terrible at it. The coaches were like what have I done? She's tall and useless, and so team sports were never for me.

Niki Sims: 22:09

But I loved being at the gym, which eventually led me to meeting CrossFit and I really enjoyed CrossFit. My boyfriend at the time and I were just doing it at the gym some sort of pull-ups and squats and whatever. And then a gym opened up and we started going to those classes and I really, really enjoyed it. I loved the community. It was the first time I really had fun working with the barbell. I don't remember a lot of it, but I remember doing really dumb things, like really ugly power cleans and this one I'm really embarrassed to admit, but I have used a band and added weight to myself to do chin-ups, thinking that I was doing weighted chin-ups Interesting, Very shameful. I wake up at nine and just like oh, I can't believe I did that, but you know that's what. And like no, CrossFit coach was like that's not really working, which is like such a.

Philip Pape: 23:01

So you were just making yourself heavier, but then still using a band. Yes, that's okay, interesting.

Niki Sims: 23:05

You know, I didn't know what I was doing, but I think pretty shortly after that I had $1,000 in a weekend. So I went and got a CrossFit cert and I started just coaching at that gym there and I was working in construction management at the time. That's what I got my degree in. But I wasn't happy there and I was happy at CrossFit. So I was like, all right, let's leave this job and start doing CrossFit full time. And then I did.

Niki Sims: 23:28

The other thing that always happens in CrossFit is you believe you can do it better than they're doing, so you open up your own gym. So back in I think it was 2009, we opened up a CrossFit gym back in New Mexico and so lots of barbell fun taught me how to build community, and it was four years later that I encountered starting strength, which totally that flipped another switch of oh my gosh, I just want to get strong, and now I can see that there's a program to do so and that sounds amazing. So the joy for CrossFit decreased and the interest in dedicated barbell strength training really increased, and so I pivoted from CrossFit to becoming a private or personal strength coach. I'll say it that way Moved to San Francisco, moved to Atlanta and that's when online coaching started back in 2016 and then eventually wound up here in SoCal working for Barbellogic Online Coaching. So through that journey it was like kind of being a gym rat getting more into the barbell, barbell via CrossFit and then just boom, full barbell.

Philip Pape: 24:39

I'm smiling because it sounds like me. I mean not to make it about me, but it's so funny because I was in CrossFit for eight years. Yeah, and it sounds like me. I mean not to make it about me, but it's so funny because I was in CrossFit for eight years and my coach, who owned the gym, he kind of evolved away from CrossFit himself. He was more into just straight up lifting and powerlifting and whatnot. And then I discovered starting strength in like 2020, during the pandemic.

Philip Pape: 24:57

You know it's funny how many people came that route and that's how I found out about you guys too, cause I know you kind of branched off from that and a few other guys, like barbell medicine, you know, met Jordan on the podcast too and stuff. So okay, so that's like the what and it's good. People understand like hey, crossfit, there's maybe a place for it, there's the barbell piece, there's the community. There's definitely a lot of things that are maybe detrimental, especially if you go too crazy with it and you can get injured and stuff. We all know this, we all know that.

Niki Sims: 25:29

Yeah, Well, they're like. I think there are three pathways. You find out you're really good at CrossFit and you become a CrossFit athlete. That's for you know not that many people. You get hurt and you leave, or you get into barbell training. Yes, yeah.

Philip Pape: 25:39

You don't get great results and then you go into barbell training. All of a sudden the world changes. So that's what people want to understand is like okay, what happened? Like so you're still doing that because obviously it's given you something. Did the change happen pretty quickly, Like your strength doubled in a few months doing the novice linear progression, and what did that look like?

Niki Sims: 25:58

It did, yeah, and I had been, you know, doing CrossFit for many years by the time I did the novice linear progression. But yeah, I got much stronger. I wish I could remember my numbers, but I remember being stuck at a 200-pound squat for a really long time, definitely got past that eventually. It took me ages to squat 300 pounds but I finally did it. But getting to two plates was really fun.

Philip Pape: 26:20

There's a lot of guys that can't do 300.

Niki Sims: 26:22

After that I was like, cool, I'm retiring the squatting, I get it. But yeah, I think I got my deadlift up to fives at 265 at some point, maybe more, I can't remember, but that was like pretty good in the CrossFit world. So you know, even with going to the gym that many times and being that invested in constantly varied functional fitness, yeah right.

Niki Sims: 26:45

Yeah, I wasn't as strong as I could be, and so I got stronger. Once I had a dedicated program Right, and then, even since then, I've gotten stronger, you know, as evidenced by weight on the bar in certain lifts. But I've only continued to put on muscle and while not all my numbers have gone up that entire time, I have put on more muscle.

Philip Pape: 27:09

That's an important distinction, yeah.

Niki Sims: 27:10

Yeah.

Philip Pape: 27:11

So let's link that to what you did to make that happen. Right, there's obviously the training and the lifting, and then nutrition is a huge part of this. Yeah, so over the last when did you start starting strength? What year was that?

Niki Sims: 27:23

13.

Philip Pape: 27:24

Okay, so it's been a little over 10 years, so it's been like 12 years. Yeah, like, what did the nutrition look like? And when did you do some periodization, like your first bulk, for example, or first cut or whatever? How does that look?

Niki Sims: 27:37

I think one of my my most notable bulks was it wasn't really an intentional bulk, but it was a really stressed out bulk I got divorced and I wanted to leave my gym and I moved to another state and then I didn't have anywhere to live. So it was like in a year I left my gym and I moved to San Francisco and I had to live in this Airbnb until I found a place to live and I was so stressed out I was just eating jelly beans, thinking that I need the carbs to lift and enjoying San Francisco, which is such a fun city. But I got up to my heaviest, which I think I was like 185 at my very heaviest. And that's when I was like, oh my gosh, I do not like this at all and I think my lifting was going well. But I was so uncomfortable in my body so I did a cut through macro tracking. I did. If it fits your macros, I'd eventually got down like 30 pounds to 155 and I competed in a meet at that time.

Niki Sims: 28:40

So since then my body weight goes as high as 170, 172. And that's as much as I'm comfortable. I don't feel comfortable above 170. And it's not a payoff in my training anymore. Okay, a bunch of weight, I'm going to get stronger. No, that's not going to happen to me anymore. In fact, it just makes me really uncomfortable. And really to add muscle, you don't have to be in a tremendous caloric surplus. You really don't. It's not 1000 calories a day, it's like 300 calories a day, depending on how much you weigh going into it. So that's another interesting thing to take away from this is like you can do GoMad. You can put on a bunch of weight, you will get stronger, but I don't think you need to go to that extreme.

Philip Pape: 29:29

Right, right. Yeah, GoMad's a whole separate thing. Yeah, I couldn't even do GoMad if I tried. It's just too much milk. But it's funny because you say it's only 300 calories and I know when I see typical bulks it's like between 150 and three, maybe 400 calories. You know, for the average person and for some men it might be higher. Right, but 300 calorie surplus might sound crazy to a lot of people listening or a lot of women listening. I want to address that topic of the fear not just of getting bulky, but specifically gaining weight on purpose, Because I did a podcast episode recently or right before the end of the year, called like the most underrated fat loss secret keeping you from getting strong, and it was basically like you need to gain weight, Like that was the spoiler alert. It's like you might be dieting too much. So I kind of want to address that, because you just mentioned it doesn't have to be getting fat, it just has to be strategic yeah.

Niki Sims: 30:20

Yeah, and it's so important to learn how to do that, because if you are in a mindset of thinking that you need to work harder and eat less, you actually really end up setting yourself back, sometimes quite significantly, because more likely to get hurt and you can't progress in your training. And if you can get into a little bit of a caloric surplus, as much as you're wanting to do and comfortable doing, you end up learning what it feels like to feel really freaking good in the gym and it is fun. It's really fun. And that whole lesson of recovery and how it's fueled by your nutrition is a big one, because under eating and overtraining is it can be really devastating.

Niki Sims: 31:10

I went through a period of doing that and that's where I was my most injured and that has set me back in a few ways for a really long time and the mindset and I think this is really important for women. You don't have to max out your energy expenditure when you're training and I think this is really important for women. You don't have to max out your energy expenditure when you're training and it's like working out is not the reward for or it's not the punishment for eating. The goal is to feel energized when you're training. And to train four times a week? If you don't have to do it seven days a week, you don't have to feel starving. What if you felt really powerful and good while you're working out and you could end a session excited for the next one because you know you can do more? Such a different way to be.

Philip Pape: 31:59

It is. And again, going back to one of your recent posts on IG where you did like doubles I think it was for 300, whatever. It was like sub max doubles on your deadlift and you said this is recoverable. Like you're, like, I'm done and this is. It was a good turn. Like at first, I'm like do you mean, did you get injured or something? What do you mean? And I'm like, oh, she's talking about the fact that she's managing her stress and recovery.

Niki Sims: 32:18

to come back a few days later, a week later, and do more.

Philip Pape: 32:21

Yeah, you're right, because it's not. You know, you're not burning calories, you're not trying to get your heart rate up, you are training. You're training, yes, and you're powerful.

Niki Sims: 32:28

Yeah, there's more, there's more. There's going to be more time. It never ends.

Philip Pape: 32:31

It never ends, but that's a good thing, so okay. So this like not wanting to push too hard, like you talked about your comfort level, at whatever that was 180, or you said 172. 170 something, yeah, and I imagine a lot of women don't quite know where that is yet. Or even, what would you say to someone who the only time they've ever gained weight in the past was accidentally and it was fat because they weren't training?

Niki Sims: 32:57

Yeah, why is this so different? This is different because your calories are going to be coming from food that's really useful to what you're doing, meaning you know how much protein you're getting and you're also filling in the calories with fruits and vegetables and fiber. Nutrient-dense food.

Philip Pape: 33:15

It's not pop tarts, it's not a bloat.

Niki Sims: 33:17

It's not sugar, it's not booze, yeah, and there's a place for stuff like that, absolutely, and I think it's really important to have, you know, those delicious things in there. But it's coming from a place that's driving your body growing in a good way, building muscle, and it's also at an amount that you are in control of. It's not an uncontrollable amount, it's not an uncontrollable rate, and so it's not a runaway train of Girl's cat cookies. It's a strategic amount of increase and so you're still in the driver's seat and you know that you get to have fun with that weight when you're strategically gaining weight and in terms of like how you look because you are, what I have found for myself is I will only compare myself to when I was very lean and I forget about all the other days that existed when I wasn't that, and I will decide that I was at my happiest at this moment in time and I imagine that I was like that all the time and that's not the case and you'll and especially with women you go through like so many changes throughout the month. You basically get four of you for the price of one where you're like really happy and lean, and then you're really fluffy and tired and we can sometimes only remember or believe that that current reality is the forever reality and forget all of the cycles that actually exist.

Niki Sims: 34:49

But the discomfort that can come from gaining weight, I think can be solved by knowing that it's not forever and something as simple as wearing the right clothes. It's such a hack that I find is really worth it. You might have clothes that work really really well when you're at the skinniest part of your cycle and you might have clothes that make you look freaking amazing when you're in the thicker part of your cycle and play to the strengths of your body. I think it's totally fine to do that, because if you're trying to gain weight, you are going to gain circumference in places. Get the clothes that look good on you, yeah, and if you don't, it's honestly just like torturing yourself.

Philip Pape: 35:32

Yeah, and resolve to the fact that you're going to need different sizes, and probably forever, if you're going to periodize like we do, I know I have two or three different sizes of different clothes and I'm like all right, these shirts no longer fit right now. I'm going to switch to these loose ones over here.

Niki Sims: 35:45

And you'll look better when you put them on. And then you're like, oh okay, this is okay and it's just the number on the brand. I wear so many different brands and the sizes aren't consistent and we can get into a whole destructive thought process around that. But you're building your body. Show off what you're building. It's not easy, but do yourself a favor and celebrate it, because it looks really good. When you start getting thicker legs and a thicker butt and your back gets muscular, get a new sports bra that shows it off. Don't get the one that's just like a little pinchy for size two girls, not worth it.

Philip Pape: 36:20

I agree and as a man and I am married and I love my wife, she's attractive and this is not a but um, I can tell a woman who lifts and is strong and even if she's totally dressed up, um, you know, you, you even see it in the face, but in a good way, like there's this muscularity, there's a strength there. That's really good. And I like the way you reframe all that, because some of us gain fat in different areas and I hear that comment as well Like, well, you know, I gain it all in my stomach or I gain it all in my butt. I'm a guy, I gain it in my butt. It's weird. And you know you gain it in certain areas, yeah Right. And so you're like, but embrace that, because maybe that helps your leverages or squat or whatever. You know, you never know.

Niki Sims: 36:58

Yeah, it's discomforting in the times when you're looking at yourself in the mirror in a certain light, in a certain outfit, but it's really good when you are deadlifting, when you are squatting, when you are benching, when you are actively trying to build. You cannot build if you don't have enough, and so once you do it and you put in the work and you see your new shape, it's really really fun because you know it took a lot of work.

Philip Pape: 37:25

A hundred percent. A hundred percent, yeah, and it happens fairly fast. If you're a beginner, it happens fast. And why wait? Like I always say, why wait? You know somebody, she's you know somebody reaches out and they're 60 years old. I've never built muscle, like, don't wait, don't wait till you're 70. Do it now? Yeah, I also have there's a male client I have who's never built muscle in his life, older client, and he's like three weeks in and already expressing some of these fears himself, like it happens to men too. He's like I'm feeling frumpy, I'm feeling puffy, like, and some of these symptoms are just, are more of a fluid retention issue initially.

Niki Sims: 37:58

Very helpful to know that and maybe we can talk about that. Does your body adapt to that? Is that something you have to get used to? Like it's great? Take that as well and also just know that when you don't want to see that bloat, you can make it go away very quickly, like when, for example, when bodybuilders get ready to do a show to. From what I understand, they don't do legs for like a week or something and you would think they'd be doing a bunch of legs, but like a big, heavy leg day, it makes you retain more fluid and you'll even see that in your waist measurement.

Philip Pape: 38:46

And the scale.

Niki Sims: 38:47

Yeah, and the scale yeah.

Philip Pape: 38:49

Yeah, yeah, cause they'll, they will drink a ton of water, uh, to get their body to start releasing water as an adaptation, and then they'll stop drinking water and then they'll release more water and get dehydrated.

Niki Sims: 38:59

Yes, to go along with.

Philip Pape: 39:00

What you're saying is avoiding the inflammation from the bigger. That's pretty cool stuff to understand when bodybuilders manipulate it. Yeah.

Niki Sims: 39:07

Yeah. So even when I do like my measurements and I'm just like, okay, well, these are the measurements. After like a mega leg day, they're going to be a little bit bigger.

Philip Pape: 39:15

Yeah.

Niki Sims: 39:15

Okay.

Philip Pape: 39:16

Yeah, that's good to know too. If you have like a shifted training schedule and then you're taking measurements the same day every week, that might throw off the numbers schedule and then you're taking measurements the same day every week, that might throw off the numbers. That's good to know. Yeah, you said so. A couple other things I wanted to address. One is the duration of a bulk, what you like, because I've heard different recommendations from different experts. I have my own thoughts. Like I think you should bulk for plenty, like six, nine, 12 months. If you can help it just to kind of get into that super anabolic mindset, just keep going, but you also don't want to gain too much.

Niki Sims: 39:50

So what are your thoughts on length of a bulk that would have to do. I mean a big kind of buffer I would put. There would be your waist measurement. The classic waist measurement that is correlated with more health risk is a 40 inch waist for men, Like if you, if your waist starts getting over 40 and you're not like a huge guy who's also super muscular, that is a measurement where, when you're around that range, like okay, this might be the time to pull it back a little bit and get under 40 safely for a while.

Niki Sims: 40:20

I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. And then thinking of what you want because if you're bulking for a year, I think that's an important thing to keep in mind and then thinking of what you want, because if you're bulking for a year, you have to think, well, what do I want the next year? Am I okay with this? Do I just want to do a little cut and be like five pounds lighter? Am I actually really happy? Are you doing this for you? Are you doing this because someone said that it's important that you can lift a certain mountain and the only way you can do that is by gaining 40 pounds? You know, I think it's always just a question of is this what you want now, six months from now, and maybe like a year from now?

Niki Sims: 40:58

I've been thinking just in the timescale for women, like when we get into this age range of early 40s, when our body is just going to be like hey, did you enjoy yourself, Did you have fun? Well, too bad, it's over now. I'm just going to really mess with you for the next five years. It becomes so much harder to lose body fat. I feel like um kind of ticking time clock now where it's like I don't want to go into the throes of menopause with extra body fat because it's only going to get harder to lose it and I don't want to have to fight that battle as much as I might have to if I go in with a lot of body fat. So I'm trying to like prepare for that part of my life by being muscular and, you know, comfortably lean, because I don't want to have to be, you know, without any estrogen and exhausted and mad at the world and fat.

Philip Pape: 41:54

Yeah, and you're hitting on like. What we know is the main cause of like a dropping metabolism and menopause is the hormonal changes causing muscle loss, which then you gain fat, cause you're not eating any less and then it just spirals, yeah, so so wait, going back to the bulk, if you tie this to, no, no, it's okay, no, it's all related, right, it's good to know If we tie this to. I'm only 40 years old, nikki, just you're young, you're so young.

Philip Pape: 42:18

You got years. I'm 44 and I'm younger than I've ever been. That's the way to reframe it, right, yeah? So if we go way back to a comment you made about like a 300 calorie surplus, I don't know about you, I like to use 2,500 calories per pound for building.

Philip Pape: 42:31

Oh, okay, because of like the density between fat and muscle, and if you assume 50-50 fat, muscle, blah, blah, blah, all the nerdy stuff, it comes out to like 3.6 pounds a month. So that would be, then, like 40 pounds for a year If you just built, built, built, built, built, built, built. You know. Now, granted, if you were going to build for a year, you might not want to go that aggressively, you know, to make all the trade-offs. So that's kind of like what I was asking. I like that. You came from the perspective of well, you don't want to be too big for metabolic health reasons. You also don't want to be uncomfortably large where now you're just like a far cry away from your lean goal. So is there a minimum though that you're like you got to at least build for a certain amount of time in a surplus.

Niki Sims: 43:14

What kind of experience level are we talking about that?

Philip Pape: 43:18

is a good question. I guess we're talking to people who've never bulked before, so we can go with early intermediate kind of deal. They've been training for a bit and like on the thinner side, that's another good question. Yeah, let's say yeah, let's say for. So for a male, what are we talking about? Let's say, 20% body fat, where you actually do have a little bit of fluff right and you haven't gotten all the way to as lean as you want to get. But maybe you had a fat loss phase to get you there. At least that's a common situation, I see, where people have a lot of fat to lose. They lose some of it, they're not quite there and then they want to build.

Niki Sims: 43:50

Yeah, I would, man for someone like that, they probably. First we need to figure out what they're actually eating and get to like a stabilized caloric intake and it's very likely that, you know, I'll probably start with four to 500 calories a day extra because their training is going to go from nothing to something big. You know, and see how they respond to that. I like to give nutrition changes three weeks of consistency before I make a change and if I find that they're feeling energized, they're recovering, and if I do see a half a pound to a pound a week of increase, then we're in a good spot right there.

Philip Pape: 44:34

Cool, yeah, I like that. You said start a bit aggressively because again people are afraid they're going to just blow up and gain a bunch of weight. But are you doing that because you know there's this hump to get over and also perhaps that your metabolism is going to start ramping up, cause you said, the training becomes like you have more volume in you, more intensity, the weight's going up faster all that.

Niki Sims: 44:49

Yeah, Like you go from squatting 95 pounds a week and then you know, not that, long after you're at, like you almost double that and the there's a delayed onset of nutrition effect where you know it goes both ways, unfortunately. Like you can be in a deficit and not really know it, and then you feel it two weeks later when you're just like, oh my God, I feel terrible when I'm training, Like I'm just so under recoverance because, well, you might've been in a deficit for a while and now you're realizing it because your training output is really high.

Philip Pape: 45:19

It's the hunger during a build that people talk about.

Niki Sims: 45:27

Yeah, how am I hungry? I'm like because you actually need the food. It hasn't happened yet, yeah. And so, yeah, when you're about to really increase the amount of tonnage someone is working with, from zero to thousands and thousands, you need to prepare them and you need to prepare the habits, because it takes a while to figure out how to get 150 to 200 grams of protein a day. You're really changing how you're living by where you go to the grocery store, what you buy at the grocery store, learning how to prepare chicken in a way where it's not gross. So there are a lot of habits that have to be established, and so it's okay to get that moving along pretty quickly. Yeah, for sure, takes a while, totally agree.

Philip Pape: 46:02

And the good thing about a bulk I would say is or maybe tell me if you agree or not but like it's asymmetrical, like fat loss versus bulking, it's not. It's not really two sides of the same coin. Like bulking, you have all this energy coming in right. Fat loss, you're really stealing lots of resources from your body.

Niki Sims: 46:30

So it's not like they're just the opposite. Does that make sense? Do you know what I'm saying? Totally agree. Yeah, very, very different way of experiencing the changes and making choices. You know, when you're when you only have so many calories and you're in a deficit, you're like, well, should I have this piece of bacon or should I have this type of meat? And it's like when you're in a surplus, you're like mom, both. It's great, life is good.

Philip Pape: 46:46

It's true. Where's the next one? I don't have enough.

Niki Sims: 46:51

And you have to like really partition your energy and be like well, I need to make sure I have this amount by this time or else I'm going to become a hangry monster at 4 pm. So let me make sure I do this. And, like you have to math out your day so much differently because just you're hungry and all you, sometimes all you can think about is your next meal. It's really hard.

Philip Pape: 47:09

Which is another reason you want to bulk a lot if you can like, if you can spend a lot of the year not dieting. I should say not necessarily you know, yeah, which gives you.

Philip Pape: 47:17

then you know, what are your thoughts on having more muscle and having a higher metabolism? And I ask it because I feel like there's some myths or people overestimate the contribution of muscle mass to calorie burn. But I do think the fact that you can carry more weight and you have more muscle and you can train more with more load and tonnage, that's what burns more calories. But like what do you think?

Niki Sims: 47:40

I totally agree, and as far as I understand, there are some people that have to get down to really low amounts of calorie to lose weight and that's pretty challenging, even when they are muscled. There's definitely a genetic range in there, true, but if you do have that, I call it like an. It's a. It's an expensive tissue to maintain, which is what I want. Like, I want that muscle tissue because it needs a lot to be happy. That is beneficial because, like you said, you can burn more calories while you're working out, even though it's not exactly what matters as much, it's just that you can burn more calories between your training sessions and you get to eat more to support that, which is really way more fun, like some of my friends, when they're trying to lose weight, like they're down and like 1500 calories and I'm just like, wow, I'm at like 2100 in a deficit.

Philip Pape: 48:31

Like and that's all carb difference. Right there, too, you're like differencing keto and like 150 grams of carbs or something. Oh man, yeah. And speaking of that you did mention earlier uh, we joked about the pop tarts, but it is. We are on the same page. I think people need to understand that you need to be eating a lot of whole foods and nutritious foods that support your performance, but there's plenty of room for other indulgences in there, and you should have a flexible diet. So I don't think we have there's no argument there. So I guess, when we talk about women being bulky and the physique side of it and the muscle you mentioned earlier, you can get stronger to a point. At some point the muscle keeps going. What is that like? Where does that come from? And then what's happening? And then what does that kind of look like for a woman?

Niki Sims: 49:14

The way I learned this was by getting really hurt, okay, and that happened because I was training really really hard. I was doing jujitsu three to five times a week and I was lifting really heavy four times a week. I was very, very lean, so I was not recovering, and it was during that time when I hurt my back. I don't have a diagnosis, I don't know what happened, but I can say my ability to lift kept decreasing, which meant my ability to perform a squat and a deadlift to the full range of motion I was unable to do without pain, and the amount of weight I could do in any range of motion decreased to the point where it was zero across every way. And that's a huge identity crisis, because this is what I do for a living.

Lisa: 50:06

It's what I've been doing for almost 20 years.

Niki Sims: 50:09

What am I going to do with my life now? I'm also a coach. I got to figure this out and I just knew okay, if I can't do those lifts that I have built my house upon, I still need to build muscle. What am I going to do to build the muscle? So it went from this shift of just being dogmatic and thinking like I must do these lifts and I must see the weight on the bar go up to thinking like, well, this is what I can do. How do I do the right amount? What is challenging like and what does progress look like?

Niki Sims: 50:44

And so that shifted to going to the gym using machines that I could do, learning what machines I couldn't do, doing unilateral work at the gym and do a lot of machines that kind of make you tired but it's not really useful.

Niki Sims: 51:06

And so it went from figuring out how big of a movement can I do, just like we do on a squat You're using your hips and your knees and your back. How close can I get to simulating that kind of training movement? And then I would just kind of dial it back to being more isolated, based on how I was feeling during that time, and eventually I was able to get back to squatting, even though my back still doesn't really like it. But I was able to get back to deadlifting gradually over time. But I was able to still challenge, whether it be one muscle group at a time or several muscle groups at a time, in a way that was hard but doable and recoverable. And so amazing. You can still build muscle and you don't have to squat, even though I still advocate for the squat, just for the record.

Philip Pape: 51:56

Yes, yes, and it is not mutually exclusive. And what you're saying hits really hard with a lot of people as they get older and go through training either training injuries or just injuries from real life. Usually that's where you get injured. It's just life. And myself included, I had a back surgery, an appendectomy a month later and then rotator cuff surgery last year and through each of those it's kind of like oh no, I can't do certain things, but what can you do? Like what can you do? And there's even this like cross-education effect where you can use one side of your body and it will translate to maintaining muscle on the other. So no excuses, people, right? Nikki's telling you that like, you can learn from that. Those experiences, yeah.

Niki Sims: 52:34

Go, you know, get out of your comfort zone. Go to the gym. You know, I know a lot of listeners probably make fun of people in the gym doing God knows what, but when you are in this position of not being able to do the things that worked in the past, like it's time to start having an open mind and get down to the principles of hard but doable and recoverable. Yeah, and you can make that work in a lot of different domains.

Philip Pape: 52:57

ABT always be training I just made that up?

Niki Sims: 52:59

Yes, always be training.

Philip Pape: 53:00

It's funny because the people I follow now you know I also came through starting strength and you know they get accused of being a little dogmatic, but they're for a certain population, you know, they're for the novice who can do all these things. But, like Andy Baker you mentioned, he was just on the show talking about all the ways you can squat if you don't want to or can't do low bar, or if it's not right for you, right Like if you're trying to hit your quads and build those suckers. That's not going to be the quote unquote optimal to do that. Lauren Colenso-Simple, she was on the show, she's in mass. She talks about machines being just as effective if you're, like you said, using the movement pattern. So people you can train no matter what. And so, with that in mind, what would you say are the non-negotiables, besides finding a way and doing it consistently? What are the non-negotiables when it comes to building muscle for women that they have to have in their pillars, their foundation?

Niki Sims: 53:51

I think you got to squat Cool Because you move your hips, you move your knees, you learn how to engage all of your abdominal muscles, all of your back muscles, and you just get such a big bang for your buck. It is such a crucial part of a training program and if you can't squat, I recommend a leg press although there are a lot of different leg presses in there that vary from great to crappy or a belt squat, but a big leg movement also deadlift. Pretty much everybody can deadlift. I don't know if I've met anybody who couldn't deadlift, but that is a really important one because you are very likely going to lift the most amount of weight that you possibly can in a deadlift. Depending on how you're built, it's going to be the deadlift or the squat, but you can impart such a huge training effect on your body. It's so much more impactful to do like a couple sets of five deadlift than do like an hour long orange theory class.

Philip Pape: 54:58

I'm so glad you said that I was doing rack pulls the other day. I'm like I know what you mean. You just feel it everywhere. You gotta take a nap right after.

Niki Sims: 55:06

Like it's big but you gotta spend some time buying into that, like it takes a while to to build everything stronger together. Usually what happens and that's when we see like the back start to round and the deadlift is usually the form breakdown. There are a lot of little muscles going on in the back. It's a huge system of joints and insertions and origins and at a a certain point, parts of your body are going to become stronger than others and so it's kind of going to feel like two steps forward, one step back for a while. But over time and over time you learn how to be strong as your whole self. And that's what I love about the deadlift, and I think this is what some people experience with a squat. I think I've maybe done like four squats in my life where I'm like, yeah, that felt good.

Philip Pape: 55:53

But like I'm so with you there, no wonder I like you so much, like I love the deadlift.

Niki Sims: 55:58

It's 100 pounds more than my squat, so yeah, but you feel like you can use your every cell and be completely present with what you're doing. I have never felt what I have felt in a max deadlift in anything else in my life. It is the pure experience of being alive and doing something huge and it's so fun. And you got to learn how to do that because, like I said, I just don't think there's anything like it.

Philip Pape: 56:28

My God, I trained this morning and I want to go out and do a deadlift already. I know, right Today, I need to recover. It's so good it is. It is so good Seriously. Have you found people with back pain feel better after they start deadlifting?

Niki Sims: 56:40

Oh yes.

Philip Pape: 56:40

Yes, so people are aware.

Niki Sims: 57:06

That's a, and women who I train, who are pregnant, they're like I just want to squat. It feels so good, I just want to squat. And I'm like, okay, well, we might, we can also maybe take out your deadlift. And they're like no, my lower back is just like you know, they have relaxin, so their hips are like separating, and learning how to brace actually feels really good. So the deadlift feels really good for them too. So those two movements, I think they've got to be in your game at varying degrees over time, but those are so big, and then you got to do some upper body stuff too. I think rows are really, really important Bench pressing, overhead pressing, multi-joint movements where you can eventually move a lot of weight and eventually move a lot of weight.

Lisa: 57:28

Hi, my name is Lisa and I'd like to give a big shout out to my nutrition coach, philip Pate. With his coaching, I have lost 17 pounds. He helped me identify the reason that I wanted to lose weight, and it's very simple longevity. I want to be healthy, active and independent until the day I die. He introduced me to this wonderful app called Macro Factor. I got that part of my nutrition figured out. Along with that is the movement part of nutrition. There's a plan to it and he really helped me with that. The other thing he helped me with was knowing that I need to get a lot of steps in. So the more steps you have, the higher your expenditure is and the easier it is to lose weight. When it's presented to you like he presents it, it makes even more sense. And the other thing that he had was a hunker guide and that really helped me. So thank you, willow.

Philip Pape: 58:11

This is kind of an off the wall question because when I think of rows I also think, you know, people do a lot of mid-back type rows, like the barbell row, or they'll do more cheater style rows, like upright angles, but I don't think a lot of people put as much credence into rotator cuff health and, like you know, scapular retraction type, like higher level rows. What are your thoughts on that and like, maybe your favorite types of rotator cuff specific work?

Niki Sims: 58:35

Man, that's a great question. I can't say I've gotten too nerdy in that, usually like like shoulder vegetables, like or like you got to eat your broccoli, so like um, light banded work, or like face pulls stuff like that sure I don't know if these count, but straight arm, lat pull downs.

Philip Pape: 58:51

Those just feel really good oh yeah, okay, I get it yeah, it's straight almost like a pullover, but standing yeah yeah, those just feel amazing.

Niki Sims: 59:00

Nice dumbbell rows you can have a lot more variety on. You know, if you're how much weight you're doing, you can change how you're raising the weight, if you're pulling it back towards your hip. Or if you're how much weight you're doing, you can change how you're raising the weight If you're pulling it back towards your hip or if you're changing the angle with your rowing and with that type of accessory work. I found times when it's useful to you know, go for the heaviness place in your program to be used with a, an eccentric or a pause, because then you really actually start to feel what it's like to use your rotator cuff and to stabilize your shoulder and like, oh yeah, that feels really, really good, which helps your bench press and you know all the big things.

Philip Pape: 59:39

Yeah, yeah, because that's I mean, at least I see it like shoulder health is probably yeah, other than low. Back by the most common complaint for people All right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't come. Yeah, exactly yeah, and a lot of lifters and coaches have their own personal experience with that too. Okay, so the last piece here I think wanted to cover you mentioned it a couple of times was the longevity piece, and also you talked about living in the world functionally being useful. How does the physical strength relate to the mental resilience in that longevity? So by longevity I didn't just mean health span, although that is important, but more of the training longevity and the mental longevity and the stress resilience and all of that stuff that you kind of alluded to earlier. Am I making sense?

Niki Sims: 1:00:25

Can you phrase it one more different way?

Philip Pape: 1:00:27

Let's talk about mental health and the impact. Let's do it that way, just say mental health, yeah, that sounds great.

Niki Sims: 1:00:32

So the way I have found it to be useful is it teaches you how to be present with something, and in a world where we're so easily distracted, that really becomes a skill to hone. When you have the bar on your back or in your hands, you are rewarded for how present you are. You do not want to be distracted. You can tell when you're trying to think about too many things and you feel how great a rep can be when you're focused on like one thing at a time. You know what does it feel like to be in my midfoot, what does it feel like to place my knees here, and that's such a great place to be in your brain. And I like to keep my entire training sessions present. I hate when I get down in an email. I don't even like to look at my phone when I train anymore. I just want to listen to my music and I want to do my lifts and to have that kind of sacred space where you can let your brain breathe and just connect with your body. I think having that spot in your calendar is really important for mental health, or else you're spending the rest of your day in a really kind of reactive territory, most likely. So I think that's a big one.

Niki Sims: 1:01:56

And also we touched on this earlier but taking responsibility for yourself. It's your training, it's your eating, it's your body. You are the one who's responsible for it and you can blame stuff on your coach. You can blame stuff on your parents. You are the one who's responsible for it and you can blame stuff on your coach. You can blame stuff on your parents, but you're the one who's making the choices and when you train for a long time, you learn what you have to, I guess, roll with in terms of hormones and energy fluctuations and injuries and stuff like that. But you also learn how to succeed because of what you do and the choices you make and the resources you start to call upon. And that's fun to learn how you can win and you can feel successful and at peace with yourself. I'm glad I asked you the questions.

Niki Sims: 1:02:46

I think about that a lot. I just want to sit on that no for real.

Philip Pape: 1:02:49

Like just you said, we're being rewarded for how present you are. I really love that and it actually makes a good kick in the pants to me too, cause when I lift sometimes I get distracted by emails or whatever. Yeah, and then the opposite would be like, like you said, just being mindful even if you don't listen to music. Try that. I've found that that's an interesting, it is nice to be too, because then you can like almost talk to yourself about the cues and stuff yeah, yeah, one of my favorite things is feeling the midfoot when I'm dead lifting and when I'm squatting.

Niki Sims: 1:03:18

It's the ultimate cue, like if, if something's wrong down there and you fix it, probably something or two or three other things are going to click into place, and that's a fun one because it's I don't know. I just always feel much stronger when I figure out what that feels like. It's a fun one to warm up with too.

Philip Pape: 1:03:35

And I know you're a good coach you probably look at form checks and you can just see that tiny bit of deviation.

Lisa: 1:03:39

you know in the toe or the heel and be like okay, that's what we got to work on.

Philip Pape: 1:03:43

And you also said taking responsibility, which I totally agree. I definitely see a dichotomy in there, in the lifting community, between the folks who are kind of committed to it and they no matter what happens. They're like I'm going to learn from this and I'm going to keep going versus the ones who are like excuse, excuse, excuse, it's like it's not my fault, it's something else.

Niki Sims: 1:04:02

Sure, it's going to happen to you. So what, what?

Philip Pape: 1:04:04

are you going to do with it?

Niki Sims: 1:04:05

Yeah, and that can look like program hopping. It can look like getting the instant fix that is being pushed on you on Instagram. You know biohacking, but when you train for the long haul, when you coach someone for the long haul, that stuff doesn't. It's just kind of noise. You really have to learn how to adapt training to the circumstances of your life yeah, which you have to do all the time, and it translates to life too.

Philip Pape: 1:04:36

Yeah, it just makes. Yeah, translate.

Niki Sims: 1:04:38

So would you say lifting is more art than science, or a little both I think programming has a lot of art to it because you have to be creative. And you have to be creative and you have to elicit an emotion. There's some people who don't really care. They're just like give me my 3x5s, give me my 3x8s, whatever I'll do it. It's great. But when someone is bought into their program, it becomes more effective and the relationship improves. So I think a good coach knows how to program, based on what a client's goals are and what makes them feel good about themselves, and invested in their training. That makes it more successful.

Philip Pape: 1:05:17

Love it All right. Last, or maybe second to last, question would be for any women listening to this right now. She knows she wants to get stronger. She's very inspired. You know how this is like you hear a podcast, you're energized and it falls away if you don't do something. What is she need to do to commit to this? What is the next achievable step?

Niki Sims: 1:05:36

I think you should get a coach, and I say this because I'm a coach, but it's also be and I'm a coach because this is what I believe in. I agree, I'm sure you have coaches too. Yeah, I have a coach, for sure. So many times I get excited about something and then I start to research it and I get completely overwhelmed with all the things that people are telling me I should do. Before I know it, I haven't done anything.

Niki Sims: 1:05:56

But a good coach will find out what's important to you, they will learn about what you have available to you and they will give you the recipe to get started. And that can be the biggest. First step is like get someone to help you get started for your first week or your first month, and then you're going to be on a really good trajectory from there. But I think a coach is a great thing to outsource your training to, because they have so much experience experience and that's what you hire them for. Hire them for their experience. They know better than you. It's like such a good way to respect your own time. If you respect your time, get a coach.

Philip Pape: 1:06:39

No matter how stubborn you are, get a coach, trust me. Yeah, yes, do you know. You know John Patrizzo.

Niki Sims: 1:06:44

Oh my gosh, I love him. Yes, I call him Dr Cargo Shorts.

Philip Pape: 1:06:47

Yeah, yeah, cargo Shorts. Yes, he helped me out early in the year or last year with just coming up with a training program for like one month, you know, as I was dealing with some regression in my post-surgery situation and again I was being really stubborn. I'm like frustrated, frustrating, hitting a wall, hitting a wall. I just got to get a coach. It wasn't even about money or anything, it was just my stubbornness. And way back when I started starting strength, I went to Cody and Eno here in Connecticut and like an hour he fixed, you know, months and months of bad habits even though I read the books, watched the videos, did the things.

Philip Pape: 1:07:20

So, listen to what Nikki's saying, get a coach, yeah, get a coach. All right. So I do like to ask this of all guests, and that is is there anything you wish? I had asked that we didn't cover.

Niki Sims: 1:07:32

I always ask people that's in their PDC interviews. Well, I'm thinking of you know, it seems like every year or I don't know, every stretch of time, there's like a theme in my own lifting around my coaching, and the one that's coming up for me now is just really appreciating time and how important appreciating that as a variable is. It's one that we have no control over, and so the best you can do is appreciate what it can do for the other things that you do have control over. And I keep seeing this as like an example in when I'm programming the deadlift and when I'm doing my own deadlift, it does so well when I don't load it heavy every single week. It needs time.

Niki Sims: 1:08:24

And same thing with nutrition. Your choices they're hard at the day, they're hard for a week, but if you let that pile up for three weeks and six weeks and two months and three months and four months, stuff happens. But you can't control time. And it's a really. It's one that you can only appreciate after you've been doing this for so long and you can feel how it becomes a really special part of your training because it also makes you realize, oh, I have time, I don't have to force this PR right now. I don't have to do a significant deficit. I can do a more conservative deficit. I have time. So really appreciating how that can be a it can't be something that you ignore. You have to, you know, include that in how you're thinking about things.

Philip Pape: 1:09:21

So, guys, nikki just reframed a constant fixed variable that we always think of as limit limitation yeah into an advantage yeah of like you, go through the process and let it percolate, let it marinate, let it ruminate whatever the word is over time that's so good.

Niki Sims: 1:09:39

Yeah, thanks for saying that so eloquently.

Philip Pape: 1:09:42

No, no, you said it, you said elegant, I just built off of it. Um, yeah, you should do a whole like episode about that. On, on on beast over burden.

Niki Sims: 1:09:49

Just talk about time. We keep bringing it up, and I think that's why it's just like. You know, how, how is this? How am I putting so much gravity on this moment versus what if I let myself think of not just this one moment, but the next three weeks? And how does that change the pressure of this decision? It's an important one, yeah.

Philip Pape: 1:10:13

Yeah, and I don't know if this helps or not, but the more you give yourself the time to grow, probably the more time you'll have in your life Like literally, your lifespan and your health span will be longer. So you're almost getting a payback for that investment.

Niki Sims: 1:10:28

Yeah, that is nice to think about. Yeah, to me that just feels like a relief. You don't have to have it all figured out right now. You have to take action. But again, there's never an end. It's just infinite, until you die.

Philip Pape: 1:10:43

Love it All right, this has been a lot of fun. I mean really really so much fun. I'm so glad that we connected and that we were on the show.

Niki Sims: 1:10:50

Thanks for having this podcast.

Philip Pape: 1:10:52

Yeah, yeah. No, it's the labor of love. It came out of my own passion before I ever got into coaching or anything. So keep it going Nice. Um, where should people find you? I want to send them to the best place.

Niki Sims: 1:11:09

So I Instagram.

Philip Pape: 1:11:10

I haven't figured out a good way to say, my Instagram handle yet.

Niki Sims: 1:11:13

Nikkiinthegym. Thank you, yeah, I just need a rapper, I need a hype boy. Nikki in the gym, it's Nikki with one K. There's a period between each word. I'm also at barbelllogiccom slash team. You can just Google Nikki Sims. I think my image search history. There used to be another Nikki Sims that would pop up when you typed that. But she is the Nikki with two Ks and we have very different jobs.

Philip Pape: 1:11:38

Okay, and now I'm curious, but okay.

Niki Sims: 1:11:44

And on YouTube I'm also. What am I? Nikki Sims in the gym.

Philip Pape: 1:11:50

Got it and of course, the podcast.

Niki Sims: 1:11:52

Yeah, yes, yes, come to our podcast. We're Beast Over Burden, powered by Barbell Logic. I'm sorry for the worst delivery of. Where can I find you answers ever? Not at all, not at all, don't worry.

Philip Pape: 1:12:01

I'm just going to edit it all out. I'm just kidding. No, it's all good. It's all good. We'll include those in the show notes. As always, really solid, so much fun. If anybody has questions, you guys should reach out to Nikki for just to answer the question, to say hi, she will respond to you. Love it, you can go to If you need a coach, whatever. Yeah.

Niki Sims: 1:12:18

Yeah, if you want to learn and I am in the abundance mindset of online coaching, like love that people are able to do that. Now, if you want to do a call with us, you can go to barbellogiccom experience. It's a free call with a coach. Again, I just want people to get coaching and that's a way for you to see what it might be like with us or with whoever, so check that out too 100%.

Philip Pape: 1:12:42

Yeah, all right, nikki, it's been so much fun. It's been awesome we're it's been awesome. We're going to get a lot of people strong, bulky jacked, whatever phrase hits with you, down with the thickness.

Lisa: 1:12:52

Yeah, let's get down with the thickness.

Philip Pape: 1:12:54

Yeah, I like it alright. Nikki, thanks so much for coming on thanks for having me.

Niki Sims: 1:12:57

Thanks everybody.