PAUL HORN | Radically Simple Strength (Ep. 895)

Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional. It is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31. life/31day to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31day. Start your reset today. This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. All right, guys. We got a special guest on the podcast today. His name is Paul Horn. He is a strength and fitness coach, and he is a credentialed starting strength coach. And he's the author of this book, Radically Simple Strength. and also has another book called Radically Simple Muscle. And so his mission, I love it. It's helping average guys build awesome bodies. And so we talk in this podcast about how we got into the starting strength world. That's Mark Ripto. That's one of the books that's on our 100 books every modern Christian read uh every modern Christian man should read list. That's on our website. And kind of like, okay, how do you get into that world? What were the things that you learned? How did you turn that into a business? But then at some point he realized, wait a minute, I'm losing guys that I'm trying to add, you know, 5 10 more pounds to their deadlift, and these guys just want to look better in a tank top. And so he realized the aesthetic approach was something he kind of needed to bring in. But what this podcast is great for today is if you are a novice lifter, an intermediate lifter or an advanced lifter, or you want to be one of those things, we address all those groups today. So we talk about the lifts you should be doing. We talk we talk about, you know, your recovery, your sleep, your diet. We also talk about people that use anabolics or they're trying to use some different things to get an edge when perhaps they don't have the foundation to to be there yet. I talked to him a little bit about my training regimen and some things that we can adjust. So, out of all the people we've had on the show before, we've never had someone really that's just like a flatout strength coach that is helping people on an individualized basis reach their fitness goals. And so, you guys can check him out. You can check out the book in the show notes and also he's got his own coaching website. But really enjoyed my time with Paul. So without further ado, let's get into it. Paul Horn, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. >> Thank you so much for having me. It's good to finally talk to you. >> I know I wanted to use the word finally because this has been on the books for a long time because that's just the way the cookie crumbles with my schedule. But it's been a long time coming, but we made it here. The day has finally arrived. >> You're a busy dude. I've been uh yeah, I've been following you on social media and uh yeah, you're you're posting a lot, man. You're >> Hey, there's a lot going on here out in Undaunted Lands, just trying to make my way through the algorithms. But the the thing I've been so excited about for this particular podcast is because I talk to my guys all the time about being physically fit, physically resilient, and there's so many things that come into that. And everyone's got a little bit of a training modality. Everyone's got a different starting point. Some people are at a different place athletically, from a health standpoint. It just kind of goes everywhere. And this really does dovetail into what you know your your book is about, which we'll be talking about today, because it doesn't seem like it can be that simple. And for a lot of guys, if it's not simple, they never get started, right? Because they're like, "Oh, this is too complicated. I don't know how to do anything, so I guess I'll just be fat and terrible my entire life." But before we get to all of that, I want to know for you individually as Paul, where did your interest in strength and fitness start? Where where did that come from? So, I'm sort of an unlikely fitness coach or strength coach. I was I always did alternative sports. I wasn't like a teen guy. So, skateboarding, snowboarding, you know, rode my bike a lot, played in bands, but practiced drums a lot. And uh I was the the the short version is I was a vegan in college and uh I weighed about 160 pounds and thought everything was fine. And I started uh I was a camp counselor at a summer camp for kids. And two of my coach buddies, uh, you know, other counselors were these frat boys. And I had been, you know, playing in punk rock bands and skateboarding and they they were the jocks and whatever. And but they ended up being really fun. And uh, and they were and they went to the gym like all good frat boys do. And so one summer they're like, "Dude, you're 160 pounds. Like we're going to the gym." And I just loved it. like I loved seeing my body change and just knowing that and you know it's it's like a it's something you can do by yourself. So it kind of fell into that groove. But but really what stuck with me was like I can change you know my physical form just by like eating some protein and hitting the gym a couple times a week and it just became like this obsession. And then of course you start bulking up and getting more attention and you're like, "Okay, this is I like this." And uh right around, you know, early 2000s, uh I got hurt. So I was benching and no one had ever taught me how to bench press. So I, you know, eventually just tore my shoulder and was out for three months having my first shoulder surgery. And so I couldn't lift. And so I decided I'll look into, you know, why did that happen? Is there a correct way to bench press? You know, you when you're a guy in college at the gym, you're just looking at the other dudes who are stronger, >> and you're like, well, he must know what he's doing. He's lifting more weight than I am, but he did the same thing. >> So, no one is, you know. >> So, I uh just stumbled upon this book called Starting Strength, and uh it was written by Mark Ripto, this guy in Texas that like no one really had ever heard of. He had posted an article on T- Nation. He was a a subject matter expert for CrossFit, but you know, and uh but I found this book and I like I said, I was out for 3 months, so I just decided to read about lifting. And it's I don't know if you've ever read Starting Strength, it is the in my opinion, and I'm totally biased, so but it is the most eloquent explanation of how and why you should do the basic barbell lifts. and uh went back into the gym after I recovered and started doing his program and all my bros thought I was crazy cuz he has you squatting every time, you know and >> he remembers squats were like, "Okay, maybe you squat and maybe you do it once a week with six other leg exercises." Yeah. So, he's like, "You're going to squat three times a week and you're going to put five pounds on the bar every time." And I was just like, "This sounds insane." But within three months, I was the strongest guy in the gym, which at was not saying much at the time. >> And then people started asking like, "What are you doing? Like, what is this program?" And I was like, "I don't know. This kooky guy in Texas told me to squat three times a week." And >> but it worked. And from there, I got I went to a starting strength seminar just to meet Rip because he was kind of my hero. And and uh got the coaching certification. and uh your name goes on a registry and I was in Los Angeles working a marketing job and and within a month I started getting all these emails from guy other guys who had found the book the starting strength started kind of going viral people were finding out about it reading it it's super dense and then calling me I was the only starting strength coach in LA and within about a year of I I opened a garage gym put some racks in my garage and within about a year I had so many clients I quit my job at a tech company and opened up Horn Strength and Conditioning which was the first starting strength affiliate gym on the West Coast and did that for about eight years and then COVID happened and I was in California and you know how that story goes. So uh sold the or sold the gym and went up to Boisee Idaho where I am now and doing a lot of online coaching. Well, I want to get back to the starting strength stuff because with that book, we have a we have a book list on our website, the 100 books every modern Christian man should read. And we have different categories. There's money, there's marriage, there's uh Christian apologetics, there's philosophy, there's there's all kinds of different things, but there is a fitness category and starting strength is in there, but also uh supple leopard. Those are the two books where I'm like, "Okay, if you really want to deep dive, here's the two ones. You're either going to be a Starting Strength guy or or a Supple Leopard guy." Um, and then there's also, you know, the the Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding with Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's bigger, leaner, stronger. You you never know what a guy's going to be drawn to or attached to. Because I'll say for me, >> as a little kid, I was drawn to like muscle and fitness and all that because of my heroes who were pro wrestlers. So, we're talking Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man, Randy Savage, like all these guys were so jacked. And I didn't even understand like I I hadn't even heard of steroids. I didn't even understand that once you got the muscles, you didn't just get to keep them. Like you had to keep working at it and working at it. But like the very first thing I bought when I had my first job, I was a bus boy at Outback Steakhouse in Lton, Oklahoma. I get my first paycheck and I go to Gold's Gym in town and I go, "Look, I can't afford the monthly membership. I'm a bus boy. Like, this is about how much I'm going to make. Can you do a deal for me?" Right? So, I was trying to wheel a deal. And the manager was like, "Man, if you want to work out here that bad, you can come for this amount." And I was like, "Perfect. Let's let's do the thing." And so I've kind of been on that trajectory and all that, but but over time you run into these different I mentioned, you know, four different books. You run into these different modalities and these different fads and oh, you have to do this and oh, there's muscle confusion. You can't do the same workout all the time. And then people talking about bang for your buck versus, you know, uh, risk to your body, which I want to talk about a little bit later. But overall, the philosophy of starting strength, it's basically five exercises. like if you could boil it down to like it's it's five exercises is so well how about you go ahead and give us like an overview because we'll get into your stuff and the stuff that you recognize but let's just do an overview of what the philosophy is of starting strength. >> So the big the general overarching philosophy is that variety is the enemy and that we're only going to manipulate one variable for a while in our training. And we're talking about beginners right? >> Right. >> And uh and that variable is load. So we're going to pick the most bang for your buck exercises. And there's a definition for that. It's the it's we're going to choose the version of the exercise that works the most muscle mass over the longest range of motion with the most weight. So you got to have all three to decide what are we going to include. If you have an hour in the gym and you need to work your legs, you got hundreds of exercises you could do. But there's only one that works the most muscle mass over the longest range of motion with the most weight, and that's the low bar back squat. And we do that for everything. Bench press, right? Same thing. Overhead press, deadlift, right? There's a lot of stuff you can do for your back and your hamstrings, but the criteria of most muscle mass, longest range of motion, and most weight. It's also why we don't sumo deadlift, >> right? Because you can lift the most weight. >> Cheating. That's why. Don't be a diplomat. It's cheating, Paul. >> Yeah, it is because it shortens the range of motion. So, it doesn't meet all three criteria. you are you get more you get to lift more weight at but you cut off the range of motion and it's like okay if you're trying to win a powerlifting meet sure but most of us are just training to get stronger why would you want to shorten the range of motion right it's like why we don't bench press >> with a grip all the way out here >> with a bench press shirt on where your your range of motion is about 2 in the shirt smack yeah your wife smacks you in the face before you lay down in your stupid suit Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I I came into I started competing in powerlifting right when equipped lifting was sort of dying. And uh man, it was a it was a scene. These guys look like >> these were the most out of shape men I've ever seen. taking an hour and a half to >> Well, part of the thing is is yeah, like people don't understand most of that world, but they don't understand the suits that these guys are wearing, especially bench press is especially egregious because they have all this equipment that they're they're doing so that they can move a preposterous amount of weight just a few inches. But I did specifically want to ask you about one of those exercises being deadlift because I was at church on Sunday. There's a guy that weighs about 150 lbs. He's always weighed about 150 lbs. He's in his 40s. He's like, "Kyle, I just, man, I would love to gain some weight and gain some muscle, but every time I've tried, it hasn't worked." And then I I asked him kind of like, "Hey, what are the what are the things that you've tried?" And, you know, he was talking about how he's basically sitting over the sink, choking down his third protein shake of the day, and he's, you know, but then he described his lifts. And I was like, "Well, none of that's going to get you strong." Like, you know, bicep curls, calf raises, like, you know, uh, leg extensions, that's not going to really get you strong. But I've heard from a lot of people, cuz I'm a deadlifter. I started deadlifting about 10 years ago. I've never even messed with sumo. I just recently picked up straps because I thought straps were were the devil, but I just picked those up just for a little bit extra grip strength. But when you hear guys like Eddie Hall, former World's Strongest Man, when you hear guys like Robert Obur, the Joe Rogan Experience say, "Guys, if you're not a strong man, like, and I don't mean like as a person, I mean like competing in strong man, and if you're not competing for money in like these these lifting competitions, the the riskreward ratio is way out of whack with deadlift versus bang for your buck." And so when you hear guys like that, I mean Eddie, you know, deadlifted 500 kg right before half the just, you know, went went crazy with it. But for me, as a guy that deadlifts, I like I wear the belt so I can create the interabdominal pressure so that I keep everything in alignment. I don't glory lift. I lift by myself. I usually leave something in the tank, which I do want to talk about a little bit later. But I'm I'm scared of deadlift. That's why I do it every week and I try to do it very well, but I've never been coached by a person there in front of me. I read starting strength and then I just do what it tells me to do. But just talk specifically about deadlift because to say it's gotten a bad rap is insane. But I just tell guys I'm like, dude, you want to work, you know, from the backs of your ankles to the back of your head. There's one lift on the planet that does that and it's deadlift. But go ahead. Yeah, I mean, you know, the internet uh is an interesting place and you don't get a lot of uh traction by the algorithms by saying you should squat and deadlift and add 5 lbs. Just like saying, you know, if you want to lose weight, you should eat less food, right? >> You have to do no, it's keto, it's carnivore, it's intermittent fasting. Those are the things everybody wants the hack. And the hack works online in terms of getting attention, right? Whatever the thing is just I mean take fitness whatever the thing is in a year or two it will be the worst thing you could ever do. So you know we had machines and then we had no just deadlifts and barbells and then we would we start going back to machines and like on my fitness Twitter now it's just like >> no one's squatting anymore. No one will do a barbell squat and they're like >> it's all belts, >> you know. And what what these guys don't realize is the point of the lift. Yes, it's physical, >> but it's so mental. The lessons that you learn getting under a heavy barbell that's scaring the crap out of you and and you don't know if you can do it and you've been sitting up all night thinking about whether or not that thing's going to pin you to the floor. and then you go out and you do it or you don't, but you learn a lesson and it's like you don't learn that lesson on a machine. There's no there's no risk. You just put it down. It it catches it. The point of a deadlift >> is you're going to pick I mean, yes, it is to stress your body and make it grow and make your bones stronger and your ligaments and your tendons and in a very short amount of time. It's the one of the most efficient lifts you could do. But for your brain and your soul to to I mean you you said you've been deadlifting for 10 years, right? >> There are days where you just it that life is kicking you in the balls, right? And >> and and you got all these and you you get in a fight with someone on Twitter that eats up like your whole day and you're kicking yourself because you're like, "Why do I respond to these trolls?" and whatever whatever's going on. And you go into the gym and you pick up a heavy ass deadlift and and like your your top set, your work set and it's just bone on bone and you put it down and all of that stuff just you're like why this it's like a calmness. You you do jiu-jitsu, right? >> Yes, sir. Powerlifting and jiu-jitsu take a lot of that. Yeah. So, I I I did jiu-jitsu for a couple years and but uh I remember it's the same feeling as when you have like a allout hard roll >> and you're just everyone in the room is just laying up against the wall gassed and you that drive home. It's like nothing nothing can mess with me. >> Nothing is I and plus do you see what I just did? Like I might feel like a useless piece of you know what, but I picked that thing up off the ground, right? I can do that. And so so what what you said about the the you know the guys who are in you know on the other side of their training career you know like Eddie Hall and and they're like oh you shouldn't do it. Well it's like okay first of all what did you do to get what did you do to get to the point that I'm even listening to you? >> You probably deadlifted for decades. Right. And >> Right. And then you've decided to compete. And when you compete that is ve that's a different decision. You are putting your your physical health you know you're putting the competition ahead of your physical health which is that's what you have to do. But an average guy like you said a guy who's 150 pounds. I mean it's like you don't listen to the you know to that guy. What do they call it? Phenomenology where you look at you look at the strong guy and you work backwards, you know, oh well, he deadlifts sumo, so that must be the best way to deadlift. It's like, no, he deadlifts sumo and he's really, really strong, you know, or this guy >> high bar squats and he won this powerlifting competition, so high bar squat must be the best thing to No, imagine if he low bar squatted, he'd probably lift even more. He's just that good. he's good enough to high bar and still win the competition. So, you have to take that all that stuff from those guys with a grain of salt cuz, you know, again, they're looking for to be, you know, uh, controversial, to say the opposite of what everybody's saying. And they and they're biased. They've probably gotten really hurt, had some real bad back blowouts competing for years, and they just don't think it's worth it anymore. But the the structure of their body and their physique, it was built with con with deadlifts. >> Yeah. It wasn't built I always think it's really funny. So walk through like a Ross or walk through like some sort of sporting goods store and you get to the section where you have all the fitness gadgets. You have all these dudes that got jacked not using those gadgets and not doing those exercises, but they're doing them for the camera. I'm like, bro, that body was not built with bands. That body was not built like with with any that body that body was built by discipline, steroids, and a good diet. Like like that's how that body was built. But for steroids, though, >> yeah. Well, that's that's the other thing. Well, actually, let's let's peel the the top off of that before we get to a radically simple strength. So, this is something that I tell people. So, you know, I tell people if you're going to be online, you can't engage with people in the comments. The odds are they're not even a real person. It's a robot from Iran, North Korea, Russia that's trying to ruin your day. And when you post stuff like I do, the comment section can be an absolute cesspool. So, I just don't ever go in there. But also, I tell people, I'm like, "Take just about everything you see with a grain of salt." So, you'll see one of these influencer lifters that it's like, "Oh my gosh, that's 700 lb on on the deadlift bar and they're repping it out." But what they're not telling you is that four of those plates are foam, right? Not the ones on the outside and not the ones on the inside, but four of the ones in the middle are foam. And so, that's how they're repping out. or maybe they are really lifting that, but they're on an insane amount of gear and they know they're shortening their life. They know they're increasing the risk of cancer. They know the the potential uh detriment to themselves, but they got to get that sponsorship from the supplement company. They got to win that competition. They got to get another 10,000 followers. They got to stay the influencer, right? And so I tell people all the time, please do not compare yourself to these people online. And some of those people are legitimately strong, not on gear and all that, but you can't surmise it and you can't tell. So why are you trying to be like the this guy that's got 20-in arms, but he's basically a white belt when it comes to his personal relationships with his children? It's like I don't think you want to trade one for the other, but specifically when it comes to gear, we are talking about anabolics, we are talking about steroids, we're not talking about creatine and whey protein. What has been your experience uh with that? What has been your experience with athletes that have dabbled in that or tried that or maybe even some some bad news stories about people that went down that road? >> Um, well the just before we get into that, the creatine thing on Twitter was a couple like a year ago. Everybody found creatine for the first time >> after >> and like the threads are like the the ultimate guys you guys creatine is the ultimate hack for your physique and this is what it does and then guys are taking it and they're like it I feel this and I feel that. I'm like dude that's you don't feel creatine. Creatine is like it's been around forever. You're not going to know you're taking it and it you might get another rep. It's it's worth taking. It's very safe and and there's now they're finding some cognitive benefits, >> but god it is not steroids. Um steroids are part of the deal, man. And uh I mean they sorry they're part of the culture, >> but you know, you don't most of my clients, most of the guys that come to me, I always said, you know, they want to be a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, not fat, and not hurt, right? And my goals for these guys is above average muscle mass and below average body fat. And we we have strength goals in the book, right? You should be able to press a plate, bench two plates, squat three plates, deadlift four plates. I mean, that's the first tier goal, right? And everybody, you don't need steroids to do that. You need beef and milk and you need rice and you need to go to the gym and you need to figure out how to push yourself. So, you know, I have coaches and buddies who have decided after 20 years of lifting, you know, maybe they're going to experiment with some anabolics, but you know, and and a lot of times it's for injuries. You know, stuff like deca is if if you're an older guy and you've got beat up joints, a little bit of that, sure, fine. you've earned the right to do that if you want to mess around and you're definitely more responsible in your, you know, but the guys who do some stupid, you know, split program that they're in the gym seven days a week because some influencer told them and then and then just decide like the peptides now too. It's like we're going to do the gear like the steroids, the peptides, the sarms, all that stuff. It's like you're just you don't even you're not even going to learn. Like you got to do it. And and then you hit this point where you look around after you've been busting your ass and you go, why are all these guys like more jacked than me? Like how much more could I work out? How much more beef and rice could I eat? And then you realize, oh, like, oh, there's another lever I can pull. But >> yeah, the lever's called your heart's going to explode. >> Yeah. It's just like it it but I you know look I get it if if if I told you right now you can go down to GNC and you can take this pill and it'll you know make your workouts incredibly more productive and you'll get I mean that's we would all go do it. So, I get the logic of it, but it's so unnecessary, especially if you're a younger guy, you know, or or you've got like if you've got a kid who's in 15, 16, like I would you got to watch that cuz they're just going to mess up their hormones and they don't need they can get big and strong, scary strong without touching steroids, you know. >> Hey guys, real quick. You may have noticed a lot of companies out there that are advertising and marketing that they're American companies. But guess what, guys? All of their manufacturing and all of their jobs are overseas, right? These companies are manufacturing overseas in order to increase their profit margins, but they're allowing globalism to put America and Americans behind. And I've been wanting to partner with an American company with really all across the board, American companies that prioritize American workers, their families, and keep their word. And guys, I have been working with this company for so long. We're going on, I think, four or five years now. That's why I want to remind you that we are partnered with Origin. Origin is an apparel company based in Maine. And what do they make? They make, guys, literally the best jiu-jitsu geese on the planet. And they are the only jiu-jitsu geese that are made completely in America with all American products and completely with American hands. And I use the Rift 2.0 and the Nano Pearl geese exclusively. Now, they also make jeans. That is their bestseller. They have very, very awesome stretchy jeans. And they also have work jeans and bootcut jeans. They make amazing hunting and outdoor gear. They offer handmade leather boots to include steeltoe boots. My personal favorites are the Whiskey Main mocktoe boots in a natural wedge sole. I wear those around all the time. And they also make great workout clothes. They have everyday pants and shirts. They're getting more into kind of men's casual stuff. They have indestructible hoodies. They're launching new apparel all the time. It's just an amazing amazing company. So guys, if you haven't already, you need to check them out and support a company that supports Americans. Try Origin out today by going to origusa.com. That's originusa.com. Use the promo code undaunted to get 10% off your order. Again, that's originusa.com. Promo code undaunted to get 10% off your order. Well, and I'll tell you like cuz I'm like I'm all I think peptides are fine. I think supplements like we repo Fuel. There's a bunch of great supplements that are third party tested. all the vats are clean. Like that's great. Never messed with anabolics or anything. That that's down that road. But I I tell guys, it's like look, like we made fun of this guy in college because he drank whey protein shakes all the time, but he never lifted. And so he just got fat. And it's like, bro, like you're like you you have to lift like you don't need 250 g of protein, bro. You'd barely move your body. And so like you need to have a foundation of disciplined activity. And so like this morning, the week, you know, I I I lost a couple of lift days or or I had to kind of push a lift to later. So I like to knock out deadlift and squat earlier in the week, but here I was, you know, back squatting this morning. And it's like I didn't want to be there, but it's it's just what I do. It's discipline in the same direction. Peptides aren't going to help your mindset when it comes to, you know, just going and doing your workout. Steroids aren't going to help your mindset. If you're not going to actually do the work, it it's it really doesn't matter. And ultimately, we've seen the people that are abusing anabolics, their muscles are growing faster than their ligaments and tendons are. They're not strengthening at the same time. So, as and even for me, that's why I kind of leave some in the tank whenever I'm lifting because if I'm planning on going up, I'm like, I'll just do it next week. I'll let my body start, you know, adjusting to this weight in very, very, very small increments as opposed to, well, I feel I feel really strong today. Let's add a couple of 45s on either side of the squat. Like, that's not really what I want to sound like all my I've got a you sound like some of my clients who they're like you know I have a program for them and it's you know sometimes we we it's not all out all the time right it's there's a there's a logic to it where I know in two weeks that we're going to try and PR and you know we have to build a volume and intensity to so that that adaptation takes place. So, I see the matrix and I have these guys. They're usually like finance guys and I'll just be like I'll look at their program what they did. I'm like, "Dude, did you like did you go for a one rep max today?" He's like, "Yeah, man. I felt good." Like, "Okay, well, well, you know, when it doesn't work in two weeks, like, you know, like I >> Well, it's it's the same thing. But those are guys on the same at the same token, they'll say things like, "Man, I wasn't feeling it today. I got to listen to my body. I'm just not going to lift." And it's like, bro, no. Like last week, if you had just listened to me instead of your body, you would have been ready for this week's lift, but you know, you so you go this route with with starting strength. You know, you do all that. You're a certified coach, but then at some point you kind of crest the hill and you're like, "Okay." And you even hated the using the language in your book where you were talking more of an aesthetics focused approach because you had dudes that were super strong, right? But a little fat. They didn't really like how they looked in a bathing suit. They didn't really like how they looked in the tank top, but they were really, really strong. Now, that is better than looking strong and not being strong because before I started powerlifting, I looked strong, but I wasn't very strong. And then I started powerlifting. I'm like, "Oh crap, I'm not very strong, but let let's get after it." And so, that all kind of led to to your philosophy, which ended up in this book, Radically Simple Strength, a practical plan to help average Guys Build Awesome Bodies. Great title. This is back from 2022, guys. You can check it out in the show notes. But I'm just wondering for you because some people would see that as like, oh, you're a downshifter. You were a starting strength guy and now you're telling guys to do, you know, bicep curls. What's wrong with you? You're violating the rules. Like, we can't be doing skull crushers. You're taking away from the sets of bench press that we could be doing. But you did adjust based on what the market was telling you, based on what your clientele was telling you to where it's like, you wanted this guy to maybe add another 50 lbs to his deadlift and instead he's like, I just want to look a little bit more jacked for spring break or I don't want to be nervous taking my shirt off at the pool all summer. So when and how did that philosophy and your approach start to adjust? So the the great thing the thing I respect a lot about Rip and starting strength is he sticks to his message and and it's a good message which is if you're not big and strong the you need to spend most of your time getting big and strong. You don't need to curl yet, you don't need to you don't need to worry about a state. You need to get bigger and you need to lay on slabs of muscle. And the way you're going to do that is by forgetting all the noise and all the variations and everybody pumping different exercises and different programs and different templates. And you're going to take a very simple program, right? You're going to squat, bench, and deadlift. And then you're going to squat, press, and deadlift. And you're going to add, you're going to figure out what you can do the first day you go into the gym. Okay, I can squat 135. Great. Every time you go in, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for as long as you can, you're going to put five or 10 pounds on that bar. And you can do that. And I didn't know you could do that back when I started, right? I was like, this is insane. I just now and you you have a target. you're like, "Oh, the the the my goal is that that number goes up." Because if it goes up, right, if I started squatting 135 and by the end of my novice linear progression, you know, 6 to 8 months down the road, I'm squatting 365, right? It worked. >> I put a lot of weight and and I my body had to adapt to do that. So, it's proof that you got like if you're changing exercises every six weeks or every workout and you're changing rep ranges and you're changing all these different things, you don't know if it's working. >> But if you can add, you know, 400 lb to your deadlift over the course of a year, >> you got stronger and guess what? You're going to look a lot better, too. >> Right? And so that's and so we we take variety off the table. It's not our variable is load. Okay? Okay, so we the exercises are the same, sets are the same, the reps are the same. It's a controlled experiment. The only thing we change is how much weight's on the bar. Now, that will work if you do it if you eat and you sleep and you train, right? You can do that. A a an average guy can do that for about six months and it's awesome. And then it starts to slow down, right? Because you can't just keep putting five pounds on the bar. you have adapted to the point where you have to mix things up a little bit and that the in the starting strength world it is like you ek every last you know pound out of this program before you switch to something else and I was running a commercial gym right so I have you know 80 year olds I have uh moms I have uh you know nerdy software developers all kinds of different people that don't want to be competitive powerlifters that are not on the football team. They just want to get a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, you know, not be fat, not be hurt. And so me hammering them with like, look, I know you want to do something else and maybe you want to try curls or maybe you want to lose some weight, but I'm going to my goal for you is that you lift five more pounds. And they've been doing it for six months. Like, dude, I don't care. So, I would lose clients sticking to the hard, you know, and uh yeah, like you said, the market decided and I figured out, okay, I need to figure out a way to get these people, you know, what they need, but also give them a little bit of what they want. And so the book that I wrote after running the gym for 8 years was practical adaptations to the foundation that I learned from starting strength that work for the general population and you know keep guys happy and engaged because you know it might not be the most effective strength training program but if you're not going to do it like if you won't do starting strength anymore because you hate it then it's it doesn't matter right so I tried to write a book that like an a normal dude would pick up. The other thing is starting streak is very dense. I mean, and it it should be and everybody should read it, but it is thick and technical and I wanted something I could hand to a guy, he could read it in a weekend, get the gist, and go start getting excited about it, you know. So, that was the that was the change. And um you know, I owe a lot of I I owe a lot of gratitude to the starting strength community. I love you know, they're great. and RIP was a huge part of my life, but I just figured maybe this would resonate with a certain population. >> Well, it's funny because I I told someone the other day, they asked me like, "Hey, what's the what's the best way to share the gospel of Jesus Christ? What's the best strategy for for sharing your faith and blah blah?" And my answer was whichever one you'll do. I was like, "So, it may be one I don't like, but if you do it, it's better than the one you don't." Same thing with the strength stuff is it's like if someone said if they suggested a book to me that was outside of the books that I normally recommend to somebody but they were following it and doing something. I'm like great. Maybe your road that you're on right now will eventually lead you to starting strength or supple leopard or radically simple strength or whatever. But I don't care. You're doing it man. Ready, set, go. It's like it's the jiu-jitsu thing. People they they get in their own heads for months about when they should train, if they should train. They're scared of getting hurt. What if it affects my golf game? it will because you don't need golf, but you do need to know how to fight, but at the same time, you're sitting there like, and then you become a white belt and then you're like, you know, worried about getting your blue belt and worried about, you know, what you need to be doing in competition and all that. I was like, bro, just go just go and get on the mats. Like, the rest of that stuff will take care of it if itself. I'm 9 years into jiu-jitsu now and I look back on my white belt worries and my blue belt worries. I'm like, you [ __ ] Like, all you needed to do was get on the mat. You've like I've forgotten more uh things than most people will ever learn. It's like, but you got to stay on the path. you got to keep going. Now, in the book, Radically Simple Strength, you know, you do a lot of things. You talk about kind of pros versus pros. We've already talked a little bit about that. You know, you you talk about essential equipment, like if you're going to have a home gym and all of that. So, you can kind of get into the book if you want some more information on that. You know, why you focus on radical simplicity, which you touched on there. But for this next section, I want you to talk to three different groups of people. and then we'll we'll take breaks in between. But I want you to address the novice lifter, the intermediate lifter, and then the advanced lifter because they're all in this audience listening to you right now. Now, those are separate chapters in the book and you have actual workout plans and actual, you know, hey, this is how much of this percentage you need to do of this on which days a week and all the things. But to the guy in my audience right now that is a novice lifter, so maybe they've lifted a little bit, maybe they go to the gym and they walk around, they're confused for 30 minutes and then they leave. What would you say to the novice lifter and what all should they be doing? >> So we have to define those terms and we do have a definition for them. So novice intermediate advance has nothing to do with how long you've been training, right? It's it it's a definition based on the rate of adaptation that you can do. So a novice lifter can put weight on the bar every workout, right? So if you squat Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you can go up five pounds every time, you're a novice. And if you can do that two years later, you're still a novice. And you and everybody wants to be advanced. You don't, right? You novice is the most. I mean, you're putting 60 pounds a month on your squat. You want to stay there for as long as you can. Now, once you get to the point where you can't keep up that rate of adaptation, you're an intermediate. And what that means is instead of every workout, you're adding weight. We're going to add weight once a week. Okay? Now, most people never get out of the intermediate phase. You can run the intermediate program in my book, you can run for years. That might be all you need with some modifications here and there, but weekly progress, you know, life gets in the way. You get sick, you get hurt, you it you get reset. you're kind of in these cycles as an intermediate lifter where yeah, a couple times a year you got a shot at a new PR, but other than that you went on vacation and you know it's you're dealing with like but you're already you've built a solid base, right? And then the advanced lifter is a small percentage of the population. This is a guy who has to make monthly progress, right? So now we're getting into training cycles where at the end of every month we're going to shoot for a new PR or as a competitive lifter you're looking at you know a 12week training cycle. So every 12 weeks you you know you spend the first part building up all this stress and volume and then you you know pump the brakes a little bit and let your body respond so that on meat day you might be able to eek out five more pounds than you did the last meat. So novice and intermediate is the, you know, most people, they live in that world. For the novice guy, you need to learn how to lift, right? You need to learn the basic barbell exercises that are going to be a staple of your program for the rest of your life. I don't care if you go into bodybuilding in two years or whatever. Squats, deadlifts, presses, bench presses, chin-ups. These are things that are going to be in your program, so you got to get good at them. So we just keep it real simple. It's basically a version of the starting strength program. You're going to squat every workout. You're going to alternate bench and press. And you're going to deadlift every workout. And you're going to go up 5 lbs every time. When that slows down on the upper body lifts, you're going to go up 2 and 12 lbs every time. And you're going to do that for as long as you can. And you got to eat. You got to get enough protein, right? You got to get enough calories so you're gaining weight. Muscle's heavy. If the scale is not going up, right? And you're not already a fluffy guy. If you're an underweight male, you that's you need to be gaining about a pound a week and you need to be eating probably around 200 grams of protein every day and going in and and learning not only the technical aspect how to do the lifts correctly, right? But also how to push yourself, right? Because it's fun in the beginning. Everything start everything's going up every time and you're like, "This is great and whatever." And then it starts to scare you, you know? that you start to wonder if you can do it and you start laying up in bed worrying if I don't get enough sleep I'm not going to get my squats tomorrow and that's where the real fun starts. So, we do that for, you know, 3 or 4 months, just real simple. We we'll after a couple maybe a month, we'll add some chin-ups and give you a little break from the deadlift. And then towards the end of my novice program, I start working in on one of the days after you squat and bench press, you're going to do some tricep extensions or some curls cuz, you know, you've kind of earned the right to curl by that point. Mhm. Like I said, you got to give guys a little bit of what they a lot of what they need and a little bit of what they want. So, and then we just run that out until you're you start missing, right? You're supposed to do five reps on your squat and you do four, right? And then you Yeah. You sleep, try again, maybe you get it, keep going, maybe you get three. And at that point, we let the performance, we don't go by a spreadsheet. We let your performance in the workout dictate what we do next, right? So, if you can if you're there's no reason to change your program if you're putting five pounds on your squat, you know, every time. But eventually that stops working and then we have to switch to intermediate lifting. And that's where things get fun. You get more variety. We slow down a little bit. It's not as grindy and we start working in a little bit more, you know, bodybuilding stuff and assistance exercises. So for the intermediate guy, it's really about kind of picking a goal. You know, at that point, you've built this foundation of size and strength. You've hopefully hit the tier one goals. You can bench 225, you can deadlift 405, you can squat 315. Hopefully, not everybody gets there. That's okay. But as an intermediate, we we kind of look to like we're going to we're going to keep trying to drive up the big barbell lifts, but then we're going to add in some, you know, some stuff to fill out the lagging parts of your physique. For example, you know, overhead pressing alone doesn't really build up your deltoids aesthetically. It's a great I mean, in terms of stressing your core, I mean that if you can hold 200 lb over your head, you're a strong dude. and and but aesthetically it doesn't give you those sort of capped delts and you know look let's not pretend that we don't care about how we look and so so we throw in some lateral raises we kind of fill out the lagging like I said the lagging parts of the physique and and we're looking for you know driving up the the progress on those big lifts you know once a week and uh that's when we can also talk about bulking versus cutting right So, in the beginning, it's like your job is to get strong. You know, these novice guys a lot of times they'll come in and they'll be like, "Well, I think I should cut." And it's like you're you're one you're a buck 50. Like, if and you don't train. You just drink whey protein shakes all day, right? So, you're you're if you cut, you're going to look like you have cancer. Like, yeah, okay, if you're walking around with your shirt off, maybe you have some abs, but you're but most of the time you have a shirt on, you're going to look terrible. you have to spend some time building putting on a bunch of muscle mass before you have anything to show off when you decide to cut. So, in the book I talk about starting points if I have like a really if you're a skinny lifter, if you're sort of an average, you know, lifter and then if you're like holding a lot like you're a fat guy, if you're a fat guy, it's different. I don't need you gaining a whole bunch of weight because you're going to recompose. you're going to swap out some muscle for fat, which you can only do in the beginning, >> you know, or when you take decide to take steroids later. But, but, you know, most guys need to gain the skinny guys need to gain about 20 pounds. The med, you know, the sort of fluffy guys need to gain maybe gain 10. And the the overweight dudes can they want to hold steady and just kind of maintain their weight while they're driving the numbers up, right? Then when we get into the intermediate program, you might decide, you know, look, I've put in the work and now this belly is starting to bother me. And you've earned the right to do a cut at that point, right? So I have some guys who hit the intermediate stage and want to compete in powerlifting. That's a different trajectory, but intermediate is where you choose your goal. Your goal from novice to intermediate is get as strong as you can, right? And and stretch it out as long as you can within reason. And if you start hate hating your training, move on. But the intermediate is where we get different goals. And some guys are some guys, a lot of guys, you know, they want to they're going to go back to jiu-jitsu or they're going to ramp up their jiu-jitsu. Like if we have an off season on season during the off season, I get I get the priority and I get to hammer them with, you know, heavy weights and lots of volume. And then then it's, you know, we get into the jiu-jitsu season or their competitive season and I we have to back off the weights and and so they can focus on having the resources to recover from the jiu-jitsu workout. And that's fine. That's fine because you're strong now, right? You're reasonably strong and you get to make that decision, right? And then advanced lifters are by definition really competitive powerlifters. So most of the guys aren't if if those guys don't need to hear from me. They already by that point you know what you're doing. I have some advanced programs in the book just to cover my bases. But by the time you actually need advanced programming, you know, you know how to trade and what works for you and what doesn't. Hey guys, real quick. You've probably heard the phrase ignorance is bliss, right? 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Well, we mentioned Eddie Hall and Robert Oberus earlier, but look at a guy like Half Thor Bjornson who did 501 kilogram deadlift, then he did 505, then he did 510, and now he's going for 515 in the enhanced games. And the thing is is with how well his program went to get to 510, and with how easily 510 came up off the floor, I don't think 515 is going to be a problem. But when you're in that stage, adding 5 kilograms would be like uh you know the wimpy skinny kid adding 300 pounds to something like it's it's it's absurd. But so I want to I want to like cuz obviously you do personal coaching guys. You can go to his website. It's in the show notes. You can check that out. But I even want to ask you like from my perspective because people ask me about my goals when it comes to fitness and for the longest time I'm like dude I'm just trying to maintain. I weigh between 100 and 195 lbs. I'm 5 foot 10. And in terms of uh my lifts, I want to be generally strong, but I'm never going to be the strongest guy in the world. And I want to be strong for jiu-jitsu, which uh part of my game in jiu-jitsu is I use pace as a weapon. So, because I use pace as a weapon, my cardio has to be on another level. Cuz if we're doing a six-minute round, you have 5 and a half uh minutes of cardio and I have six plus minutes of cardio. I'm eventually going to wear you down. So, I want to keep that edge. But in terms of the big lifts for press, I'm around 185. For bench, uh, I don't really do a lot of one rep maxes, but it's around 300. You know, I can do 225 for 11 12 13 reps, something like that. On squat, just actually last week, I I squatted 405. Maybe could have had 415 maybe, but it was a it was a solid rep at 405. And then in terms of deadlift, the highest I've gone is around mid450s. It was either 450 or 455, right? So that's kind of where I'm at. But in my head, I'm like, I don't want to rejigger my entire life to add 50 more pounds to my deadlift so that I could say I deadlifted 500 lb. It just doesn't matter that much to me because an extra 50 lbs on my deadlift isn't going to help me finish or stop a double leg takedown in jiu-jitsu. And so for a guy like me, and there's a lot of guys in our audience that are maybe on the maybe on the latter tier of the intermediate, they they never want to compete, but they're the latter tier on the immediate lifter side, but they're also doing jiu-jitsu, but they're also 40, 45, 50 years old. They like I'll be honest, I don't even know what my goals should be. Like I like to stay lean. I don't bulk and then cut. I'm about 195 lbs at any point throughout the entire year with around the same amount of body fat. And so like, you know, if you were working with someone like me, what would that look like? What would you encourage me to do? What questions would you ask? Like I'm just curious. >> Yeah. Well, it's all about, you know, picking. Like I said, it's when you pick a goal and and those goals change, right? You have to figure out a way to keep it interested. I've been training, you know, for I god over 20 years and I you know, it just gets like I hate it >> as I was >> my my training partner's like I like we just sit in the gym and look at each other you know when the it's like dude do you hate this like yeah I hate this but we hate not training more right so I hate the feeling of having not trained for like if I miss a week or a workout it's like I just feel like a slob and uh so but I'm not, you know, I'm not competing anymore. I I So, you have to find interesting goals, right? So, a lot of times it's weight loss. You've you've you know, you're you're a lean guy and that's great. Not all these everybody has genetics like that and and discipline like that. So, you know, sometimes you get strong and then a guy wants to do a cut. So, that's when we're just going for maintenance. We're trying to hold on to your strength while you focus on fat loss. And that's a whole different goal. if you've you a lot of my guys I'll say look if you've never cut down to 10% body fat like let's that's a different kind of journey >> and it's harder than the lifting um but you know it gives them something to shoot for the other thing is uh picking up new exercises maybe shifting the second book I wrote radically simple muscle was about uh incorporating more bodybuilding stuff that yeah >> look at you look at this guy >> I had dude I had I had to I had to By the way, you're missing out. >> By the way, I look like that for about 10 minutes. >> Hey, and then you had the ice cream. I get it. >> Blow all the air out. One photo and then boom. No, I had to I hate it when these guys use uh you know uh stock photos for their for their books. It's like I that's the same abs from that other guy's book. And like I was like if I'm going to do like a muscle book like I'm going to put me on it like you know and like otherwise it's just like what are you doing? Like it's so anyway um yeah but that was I wrote that in my own training. I was like look I'm done with the powerlifting and I'm bored and I I don't want to squat three times a week and grind out stuff. So let's the machines look kind of fun. You know you're walking around the gym and you haven't messed with that stuff in a while. So, it's a program I wrote for myself and then other guys uh dug it. And it's about sort of blending the basic strength training, which is the foundation, with some more bodybuilding stuff, higher rep ranges, more isolation work, stuff like that. So, the goal could be, you know, I'm going to fill out different parts of my physique. Um, and it could the goal could be completely it could be maintenance, right? Like if you like I said if you're if you decide I'm my actual goal recreational goal is my sport then the best you can then we would tone down your program so that we're reducing volume so we can try and maintain your strength as much as possible while you hammer yourself. I've got a lot of cyclists I work with. It's like >> same thing off season I get them. on season. It's like, dude, if you can get into the gym maybe twice a week and maybe do a set of squats, that's enough to hang on to all this progress that we've built over the last year or two. And then so maintenance is a goal, too, right? Just just fighting entropy is a goal. In your case, you know, I don't we'd have to talk. I don't know. You're in great shape. You're strong. You got a family. You're busy. You're running a media empire. Like what? You know, sometimes sometimes I have clients uh that are similar that they sort of have one lift that they've always wanted to, you know, we we we're all better at some lifts than others. And there'll be a guy who's like, you know, I hit every other thing, but I've never squatted 405 for five. It's like, great, >> you know, that's great. Or or, you know, my biceps look small and can we just really like ramp up the arm work? Fine. or I've got a high school reunion coming up and I you know and I want to get I want to get at least down to 15% body fat by then. Right? So lifting is going to be it should be a part of every man's life and woman's life forever. But you can't get strong. There will be a day in your life where you are the strongest you're ever going to be. And you'll only know what day that was looking back. >> You're like, "Oh, it was that was it." Well, let me ask let me I want to ask you I want to ask you about that because one of the things that has kept me from really making any major adjustments to my lifts because I basically been doing 3x5s for 10 years. But I'll do so like on deadlift day I'll do my four uh warm-up sets. Then I'll do my three working sets. But then I'll do on the same day after that I'll do pull-ups or I'll do uh like some glute ham stuff. And then like on squat day I would do like you know barbell bridges. is I would do like uh RDL's. I would do uh Bulgarian split squats with with dumbbells, like something like that. And I I what I didn't want to do because it would take way less time if I just did 5x5 of squat and then I don't have to do those other things that suck and they hurt and I don't want to do them. But then you're adding two things of squat. But I guess my question for you is like my fear has always been it took me so long to get here and I got here very slowly on purpose because I never wanted to hurt myself cuz I always wanted to be able to go out there and roll on the mat. Right? And look, I got a 5-year-old and a three-year-old son and my main goal in life is when one of those kids tells another kid on the playground, "My dad can beat up your dad." I want to make sure they're not lying. Right? That's the that's the overall goal. But I I've just been terrified of downshifting on any of the the squat, deadlift, bench, or press because I'm like, shoot, it took so long to get here. So, am I really going to do bicep curls and skull crushers like, you know, uh instead of doing, you know, a set of uh of RDL's or something like that? You know what I mean? >> Yeah. Um, so here's the thing. The the there's a lot to that. So, first of all, strength is, as you've probably found out, is a very persistent adaptation, right? It it takes a long time to get strong, but you never go back. Even if you took a year off, you would not go back to where you started, right? You've built you've changed the structure of your skeleton, right? You've added muscle, you've built tissue. So, that's why we focus that's why we don't we don't focus on cardio in the beginning because cardio is the opposite. And I'm sure you know this cardio you it comes on real quick. You get but it goes away >> real quick. >> Exactly. Right. You Yeah. So strength is it takes a while but it's persistent. Um and the other thing is as you get stronger right you you are able to generate more stress right in the same amount of time because you're able to handle heavier weight. you're able to push yourself harder, right? You can actually grind a weight back up that you would have put down when you hadn't built that mental that grit and determination, right? So, as lifters get stronger and they move closer to the advanced phase, they we actually reduce their workload, right? So, in your case, because because you could really overdo it, right? A novice lifter is not going to overtrain. He doesn't know how. I felt like I got I was pretty close, Paul, because at one point my weights were getting to a place where I was able to finish my lifts. I was able to finish my workout, but my body was not adapting well. It was it was hurting like and everything just hurt. I was like, man, I'm going to back off just a little bit. >> And and what So, personally, I'm down to doing I do one set of heavy squats or heavy deadlifts every other week. So, I have a a week where I squat heavy and deadlift light and it's one set and the next week I'll do the opposite. I've reduced it and and I'm still setting PRs, right? Because if I did anything more than that, I it would I wouldn't be able to recover from it because of the amount of stress that I can generate in a workout. So, it's actually the and you strike me and forgive me if I'm reading into you, but you you're a you're sort of a wired dude. you've got a lot of energy and and a lot of focus and uh you like to you like to get in there. Guys like you, I have to it's a it's a fight to pull them back and be like, "Listen, you're only going to do one set of deadlifts this week, right? That's it. One set and then you're going to go home. You're not going to do a bunch of low back stuff cuz we already worked that. We deadlifted. You covered all your bases. Do one set and go home." And what you'll find is the next week, you know, maybe you were stuck at a certain weight doing three sets of five and I drop you down to one set of five, give you a week off, you come back and crush it just right. So, not everybody, right? We got to adjust and stuff like that. But, um, yeah, most of the time it's like the other thing is squats are enough, deadlifts are enough for your lower body, right? You like I said in my book, your lower body just needs to be big. You don't need to develop a capped like glute, right? You just you're going to be wearing pants, right? So, you know, you you don't you just need mass down there. And squatting and deadlifting is enough in my opinion, right? To just blow up your legs and your butt. You just got to have big legs and a big butt. And then you could spend your, you know, your time physique-wise doing more isolation work on the upper body. And you know that needs a little bit more separation of the the pushers and the pullers and all that stuff. But >> you know if you if you deadlifted hard enough, right? If you if you went in and really you're you don't the idea of doing this Bulgarian split squats. Like forget it. You should have put 20 more pounds on. >> They're the worst. Oh, they're the worst. >> They are the worst. They suck the most. And like because it's a balance move, it's all that. Look, as it gets closer to elk season in the mountains, yeah, you should probably be doing some stuff one leg or the other, you know, making sure you can balance getting on and on and off a box or something like that. Like, I get it. But yeah, like, but the thing is is doing the the Bulgarian split squats and then also adding 20 lbs to the deadlift. They kind of suck equally, but just in different categories. But for me, I'm trying to maximize my time. And so, cuz I only get three days a week typically where I lift. If I get a fourth day, I'll do some sort of hit thing, some sort of metcon or I'll throw the ruck on my back and go walk, you know, with 45 lbs in there or something like that. Get some zone 2 cardio for the most part. But then like when I'm lifting, like I'm doing my power lifts, I'm doing all the, you know, auxiliary lifts. I do neck every single time. I do the iron neck because with jiu-jitsu, super susceptible to neck injuries and I was injured, you know, quite a bit as a white belt. Hasn't haven't had that since I got the iron neck. I do core uh all the time and then I usually end with the aerodyine bike or with sprints on the street outside my house and the reason why I do sprints and I and I've started doing the plyometrics as well. The reason why I do those things is because I don't want to because they suck so bad. But if you stop jumping, if you stop jumping up and landing and if you stop running at at top speed, your body's not going to be able to do that very well. You can't just take 10 years off from sprinting and now you're 45 and it's like, "All right, we're going to sprint today." That's how you blow an Achilles. That's how you blow your hamstring. That's how you you mess something up. And so, I just don't want my body to ever get used to not doing something. My jumps will get lower over time. My sprints will get slower over time, but I'm still be going to be able to jump as high as I can, and I'm still going to be able to run as fast as I can. Now, before we get out of here, because we're running up against time, we've talked a lot about the performance aspect, the lifting aspect, but equally as important is recovery and diet. Now, guys, you're going to have to go get Radically Simple Strength because you you give a lot of uh detail and you really help people out there and you do make it very accessible, which I appreciate. But, dude, I heard someone say it. He was like some um forget his name, but he he was like the the CrossFit champion guy for the long time. Not frowning, but the the next guy that came after him, Matt Fras Fraser or something like that. Okay. He said if you could get the recovery and the bodily benefits of sleep from a pill, >> like it would be the the the bestselling pill on the planet because you have guys that are waking up because they, you know, they're big Jaco Willing fans and look, we're Jaco Fuel guys, but no guy out there listening to this, you need more than four or five hours of sleep. That's preposterous. People don't sleep faster than other people. That's not a thing. But here you are trying to shave another hour of sleep off every night so that you can wake up earlier to lift when if you just did that extra hour of sleep, your recovery and your performance would go up from there. So give us a little primer as we wrap up on uh just overall with recovery and diet. >> Yeah. Well, my coach used to say you don't get strong lifting weights, you get strong recovering from lifting weights. >> Correct. >> Right. So the the the workout is the stress, right? It's the signal that your body needs to lay down muscle, bone, tendon, repair things, right? But that all happens when you're sleeping. That all happens after the workout, right? So, if you do, you know, I tell all my guys, if you go in and bust your ass in the gym because you love working out, but you hate eating and you hate sleeping and or you don't sleep well, you are wasting your time, right? Yeah. >> You are wasting your time because you're sending the message and then you're not providing your body with the resources it needs. So, >> right, >> recovery. Look, sleep is do what you have to do to get as much sleep as you possibly can. If you can sleep 12 hours a night, do it. It is the most anabolic time of the day. And so, you know, it's hard. Get blackout curtains. I don't know. Take some melatonin if you're into that. You know, earplugs. Just I wish you know, do what you can do to sleep. But it is as important as lifting as is the diet, right? You have to eat enough calories for your goal. Now, that might mean eating less than you want to eat because you're cutting. But in terms of our young guy trying to get big or our 40-year-old guy trying to get big and strong, same thing. You go into the gym and you do all your squats and you're just loving it. You're telling all your friends about your workout and then you eat 120 grams of protein a day. It's not going to work. You'll get you'll get a little stronger in the beginning. You're getting more technically like you're learning how to do the lifts. You're learning how to muscle use the muscle mass that you already have. But there's a certain point very soon where if you're not laying down new contractile tissue, you're you literally cannot your muscles can't produce more force and you're not going to be able to lift more weight. Right? This is why it's useful that we just go by weight on the bar for a while. It's like did you did you get it or not? It's binary. Did you finish all five reps or didn't you? And if you didn't for more than, you know, two or three sessions, now we know you have a problem and we can address it. And the problem might be you need more sleep. The problem might be you need more protein. You need more calories. Look, some guys I've I when I was competing in powerlifting at 252, I could I could hold that weight on 3,000 calories a day. I have a slow metabolism. My body's perfectly happy to just take that burrito and put it away for later, right? But I at the same time I was coaching a kid in my gym who was strong as hell and uh you know he was probably 150 and and if he ate anything less than 5,000 calories a day he'd start losing weight. It's just genetics and uh you know it's it's really tough for those skinny guys cuz they got to eat to an uncomfortable amount. But like that's the thing. It's a math problem, right? So, if you're not if you're if you're if the scale isn't going down and you're cutting or it's not going up and you're bulking, it's just math. You're not eating enough food or you're eating too much and you got to adjust it. So, in the book, again, it's radically simple. So, I tried to make it as easy as possible and just put in a template of like here here's the meals. Here's the meals if you weigh, you know, between 200 and 220. Here's the meals if you're bigger. here's the meals if you're a little stronger. All the things are adjusted. It's a it's a basic template and just if if you're a guy who's like, I don't even want to think. I just want this guy to tell me what to do. That was my goal because a lot of people like to be told what to do. And so I said, this is it. And just eat that and then eat your weight diet. You know, the the category for your current weight. Eat that. And then when it stops working, move to the next one. Okay. Now, one of the most common emails I get is like, "Okay, it says I'm supposed to have sweet potatoes, but uh I don't like sweet potatoes. Can I change it?" I'm like, "Yes, you have you have my permission to not to replace sweet potatoes with rice." Like, it's it's just a starting point cuz, you know, all of this stuff is so confusing. Every day, you know, on social media, there's a new supplement you have to take. And like, look, I I have a lot of supplements. I I take certain ones, but the basics, if you were in a coma, I always think about this, like let's say you've been in a coma for the last 20 years and you woke up, you would know everything that you need to know about lifting and eating, right? You would have missed all the podcasts, all the blogs, all the articles, all the all the hacks, all the like must oh my god bio hack, whatever. you and you'd still know I gotta eat like mostly whole foods, you know, beef, rice, not junk. I gotta sleep, and I got to pick heavy stuff up and try and make it heavier. Like, you'd be an expert in how to do this and and would have missed that whole thing. So, it's it this stuff is not complicated, right? It's not easy as you know, like it's hard, but that's the point, right? Everything's easy now. Like I just had a AI, you know, build a website for me in like two. It's easy. So we need hard things, right? We need to go out. We are not human. We are not ourselves in the absence of physical struggle. It's the thing that connects us to reality and we are in this digital delusion all day. And to be able to go to your garage and remind yourself that re real your reality is fundament fundamentally physical. your connection to it. It's a gift and it's hard and it's supposed to be but we need to do it. More people need to do it because we are everybody is talking about this crisis of masculinity and I think it really comes down to a crisis of weakness, right? It starts physical strength is the foundation of psychological strength, emotional strength, all of it, right? But it but it starts if you're sick, you know, if you if you haven't sleeped or you have a or the flu, you you just you don't want to do anything. You're not mentally there. But when you like we talked about earlier, when you walk out of that gym having just done a set of deadlifts that scared the hell out of you walking in, it's like you you're a different person. You go home, your wife, you're calm, nothing. Your kids have been on you all day. You're just happy to see them. the world can't screw with you anymore, man. And it's like I just there it's available to so many people and so many people don't know about it, you know, and and they're they're like, "Oh, I got to do the the the fitness bro fitness Twitter thing with the hack squats is no, you need to you need to squat. It's more >> Yeah, >> there's more to it. >> Well, and Paul, the thing is is luckily for most of us, we get to choose our hard. So, if you don't use your body, if you abuse it with bad chemicals and bad food and you don't use it, you're going to have some some pain later on in life. But also, for the guys that use their body, the guys that lift, the guys that eat right, and all that, there's pain guaranteed for us physically uh from overuse typically, like that's that's going to come. But you get to choose your heart because don't you want to be strong when your body starts to break down? Because look, whenever you have these elderly folks, they lose all quad and glute strength. They can't get on and off the toilet. they can't decelerate coming downstairs. They fall, they break their hip, and within weeks or months they pass away. And it's it's indicative of an overall uh body weakness. And so, I want to encourage guys uh to be able to utilize stuff like your book, utilize your coaching, and all those types of things so that they can get over whatever hump that they have for themselves. But we've talked a lot and we've gone in and out of a lot of different subjects, but for now, that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? >> Yeah, just one thing. I I've been, like I said, I've been uh following you on social media uh and and checking you out and I just have to say that I think you are missing a huge opportunity. Um you know what you're doing is valuable and you're I'm sure you you know like a lot of guys are getting a lot of but what this I I think a lot of people will back me up on this. We need like a beard grooming tutorial, man. Like we >> shut this is an epic you have an epic perfect I like I want to know I want to see the process of how you created that thing man I think there's a big opportunity there. >> Well there might be but I'm going to go ahead for all the people that stayed to the end of this podcast. I'll let you in on the secret. And the secret is there's not really a secret. The thing is is like if I wanted to, like if it were just me, like if I were that caveman in the woods, I'd be tucking this thing into my socks. That's how much I would touch this thing. It would just be as long as can be. But my wife kind of likes more the 5:00 shadow thing. So this current, you know, beard length, this is uh we'll call it a compromise. But ultimately, man, it's just, you know, I get my hair cut, you know, every every 3 weeks or so or so. And then, you know, I just I trim the beard up, right? So I make sure it's, you know, it's kind of even. And I guess I start with the four guard and then I just work my way up. But I will tell you my barber gave me one little tip. >> Hold on. I got to I got to write this down. >> Yeah. So it's got to be long enough for you to be able to get the four guard on there though. But he did say where people go wrong is they don't get the one and a half guard on the beard. So it's four guard here, three guard here, two right in there. But basically where you the very top of your beard, which a lot of guys kind of cut too low, the very top of your beard, you use a one and a half guard there. So then if you're fading up into like a fade or whatever your your haircut is, even if you got like the donkey mullet or something, it's going to look like it fades in and out, right? It should fade out of your head and then into your face. And that's all that's all I work for. And then I just I keep her trimmed and uh you know, put a little beard oil on it, throw some shampoo on it after I do jiu-jitsu, and that's it. Bob's your uncle. Bam. That's how you get it. >> Dude, I want a YouTube video. I want a I want I want in an instructional YouTube video. >> We'll We'll figure out We'll figure it out. Hey, I will tell you though, you know, it's all right if you're one of those guys. You, some guys comb their beards or brush their beards. But here's the thing. Ginger hair apparently is the coarsest hair there is. So, I can't really shave it and then let it grow back cuz then my face is basically like raw meat for 2 or 3 weeks. And so, I got to kind of keep it maintained year round. That's why you don't see the food man chew as often. But, hey, there's there's a YouTube idea. Hey, I appreciate that. Hey, I had to stare at you with your shirt off the entire time uh by looking at this book that was sitting there in front of me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man. I know. I know. It's so embarrassing. >> Yo, you know what's funny about that is there are people that are only listening to this. They now thought that for the last hour that you've been sitting there with your shirt off cuz they don't understand what I just held up in front of the screen. >> Oh, yeah. >> Could be worse. But Paul, it was an Hey, it was an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you coming on the show. >> I appreciate it so much, man. Keep doing what you're doing. >> There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Paul. But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Guys, if you want to check out Paul's website, it is hornstrength.com. That's right here in the show the show notes. hornstrength.com. Guys, you need a coach. A lot of you guys need coaches. You know, we've got, you know, different apps and things that you could be a part of. But if you want someone that's going to give you that individual coaching for your individual goals, I would highly recommend Paul. And then also I've got a link a link to where you can buy your copy of Radically Simple Strength. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undantton.life. That's info@undanton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is their song Perpetual, which is off their self-titled debut album on Faceown Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.