The Art of Manliness - Build Muscle Without the B.S. — A Straightforward Guide to Size and Strength

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.480 Whether you've never stepped foot in a weight room or you've been lifting for years without

00:00:14.700 seeing significant results, figuring out how to get big, strong, and jacked can feel overwhelming.

00:00:20.920 There are endless programs, conflicting opinions, and a lot of noise about what actually works.

00:00:25.260 Today on the show, Paul Horn offers a grounded, field-tested take on what really helps average

00:00:29.580 guys get stronger and more muscular without burning out.

00:00:33.300 Paul is a strength coach and the author of Radically Simple Strength and Radically Simple Muscle.

00:00:37.780 We discuss why you need to get strong before you get shredded, how and why Paul modified

00:00:41.900 the classic starting strength program, the strength benchmarks men should be able to hit,

00:00:46.320 when to shift from powerlifting to bodybuilding-style training, why you should train your lower body

00:00:50.780 like a powerlifter and your upper body like a bodybuilder, the physique signal that shows

00:00:54.620 you're in shape, the body fat percentage every man should get down to at least once in his life,

00:00:58.460 and more. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Simple Muscle.

00:01:17.800 All right, Paul Horn, welcome to the show.

00:01:20.200 Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

00:01:22.100 So you are a barbell coach. We've met at a starting strength conference a long, long time ago.

00:01:28.120 You've actually helped me with some, when I was doing the low bar squat, I was having some issues

00:01:33.040 with shoulder tightness, getting under the bar, and you were very kind to give me a tutorial on

00:01:38.380 a stretch on how to make that happen for myself. That is my biggest contribution to the literature.

00:01:46.160 Yeah, I figured out a shoulder stretch and made a YouTube video, and to this day, it's my most popular

00:01:52.180 YouTube video I've ever put up.

00:01:54.820 It's important information. Well, let's talk about your background a bit. You've been training for

00:02:00.320 decades, and you've been a coach for a long time, too. How did you get started with barbell training?

00:02:05.220 What were you doing before that? When did you decide, I got to pick up the iron?

00:02:08.940 Yeah, well, I was wasting a lot of time in the gym, like most young guys are when they start lifting.

00:02:14.100 The short version is I was a vegan in college, and I'm 6'1". I weighed about 160 pounds.

00:02:21.640 And I was a camp counselor, and some of the other coaches were older and kind of bros and thought,

00:02:28.920 you know, we're going to take you to the gym and try and bulk you up a little bit. And I went and

00:02:34.020 absolutely loved it. Got hooked on the training, but my muscles were seizing up. I was cramping a lot.

00:02:41.640 And my buddy in his bro frat boy wisdom was like, you know, hey, man, I think maybe you need some

00:02:49.320 protein. And so it went from, you know, being a vegan to eating tuna fish and then chicken and

00:02:57.240 then full, you know, carnivore now. And so that was great. I, you know, towards the end of college,

00:03:03.720 I had bulked up quite a bit. And just again, doing bro workouts and things that you find on

00:03:09.720 the old bodybuilding.com and T nation and all the websites that we used to go to. And then I got

00:03:16.380 hurt. And I ended up having my first shoulder surgery from bench pressing. So I was out for

00:03:22.700 three months for the first time since I had started lifting. And I thought, you know, I should try and

00:03:28.800 figure out why that happened. And maybe like, if there's a right way to bench press, because you know,

00:03:35.340 when you're a college guy and you're just screwing around in the gym, you just look at what the other

00:03:40.440 bigger guys are doing and copy them and they don't know what they're doing. So in that hiatus,

00:03:46.280 I stumbled across this book called starting strength. And since I couldn't lift, I just read

00:03:52.000 about lifting. And it was, as you know, the best book on how to do the basic barbell lifts and why you

00:03:59.480 should do them that I've ever read. And it just, you know, it blew me away. I was like, this is,

00:04:06.180 I've never heard it explained this clearly. So I went back to my college gym after I recovered from

00:04:12.700 surgery and I started doing the starting strength program. And, you know, this was a time when the

00:04:17.820 gym had one squat rack and no one was ever in it. No one had seen a pair of weightlifting shoes,

00:04:22.640 you know, belts were Velcro and nylon. And, uh, I just started doing this thing where you squat

00:04:29.540 three times a week, which was crazy. Cause we'd squatted maybe if we squatted, it was like once

00:04:36.440 a week and you did seven other leg exercises. And so I started doing this simple starting strength

00:04:42.500 program. And all of my gym buddies were like, dude, what the hell are you doing? You're squatting three

00:04:47.760 days a week. And I was like, I don't know. This crazy guy in Texas told me that I should do this.

00:04:52.280 And within about three months, I was probably, you know, one of the strongest guys in the gym,

00:04:58.500 which wasn't saying much at the time, but then people started asking, okay, what is this program?

00:05:03.500 What are you doing? Started asking me questions about, you know, lifting shoes and technique. And,

00:05:09.480 and then I got really into it. And my girlfriend at the time as a gift sent me to the starting strength

00:05:17.820 seminar in Wichita falls just to, I just wanted to meet rip a toe. And he was like my hero. I had

00:05:24.880 been reading all of his books. And so I went to that and back at that in, in those days, uh, they

00:05:32.220 just kind of pulled you aside and said, you know, we think that you should take the test for coaching.

00:05:39.420 Like we've been watching you and we think you might be a good coach. And do you want to take this

00:05:43.400 coaching certification test, which was, you know, a very difficult test, but I thought, yeah, sure.

00:05:49.940 You know what the hell? And ended up passing. I was one of two guys from that group that passed

00:05:55.500 and came back to LA and thought, well, that was cool. You know, and they, they emailed me and said,

00:06:00.360 your name's going on a, a coaching registry. I was like, okay, whatever. And I went back to my,

00:06:06.100 at that time I was working a marketing job for a tech company. And then within about a month,

00:06:13.460 I started getting emails. The book started gaining more popularity. People were buying it on Amazon,

00:06:19.780 seeing how dense and technical it was, and then going to the coaching registry. And I was the only

00:06:27.960 starting strength coach in Los Angeles. And so I just would get these emails all day, like, Hey,

00:06:32.780 I see you're a coach. Can you help me out? Can you help me out? And I'm like, I mean,

00:06:36.060 I'm not really a coach, but you know, I know a little more than you do. And so it just became

00:06:41.680 so frequent that I asked my wife then at the time, if I could convert the garage into a personal

00:06:48.380 training studio, a little, put two racks in there. And I just started training people before and after

00:06:54.200 work. And it just kept growing. And within about a year of that, I quit my job and opened up

00:06:59.720 horn strength and conditioning, which was the first starting strength affiliate gym on the West coast.

00:07:05.300 And it just blew up from there. I ran that gym for about eight years and then the pandemic happened.

00:07:11.960 And the rest of the story is me moving to Idaho and all that stuff. But that's, that's my little

00:07:19.200 bio. So yeah, you're starting strength coach. And while you're coaching, of course you continue to

00:07:23.840 train. You did some competitions, some amateur stuff, I believe. Yeah. I was a, what we would call

00:07:29.780 a recreational power lifter. Recreational power lifter. So you're doing the main lifts. And then

00:07:34.580 you talk about in your books, we're talking about today, it's radically simple muscle and radically

00:07:39.140 simple strength. You reached a point with your training journey, as people say, where you started

00:07:47.420 shifting goals, like for a long time. And I had the same sort of thing. It was just chasing numbers.

00:07:51.860 Like how much more can I squat? How much more can I deadlift? And then you reached a point like,

00:07:56.300 man, this isn't doing it for me anymore. And you kind of became a bodybuilder. Tell us about that.

00:08:01.720 I mean, that is in my experience, the evolution of most lifters. Most guys get into it because they

00:08:07.660 want to get laid and they want to, you know, look good with their shirt off and they just want muscles.

00:08:12.380 And then, you know, a lot of it had to do with changing trends. CrossFit came out around this time

00:08:18.340 at the same time, starting strength came out and there was this push away from, you know, machines

00:08:24.460 and bro splits to like, Hey man, like how much can you deadlift? You know? And it became a thing.

00:08:29.020 Strength training became real popular. And so like you, a lot of us got into it and realized that

00:08:35.240 like, Oh, this is, you know, now I have like a real goal. It's like a tangible concrete number

00:08:40.140 and it keeps going up if I keep training and maybe you do a powerlifting competition and you're like,

00:08:45.700 you know, who cares about how big my arms are? Like how much can you squat? But then there's this point

00:08:50.800 where, you know, when you start strength training, as you know, as a novice, it's fun. Cause every time

00:08:57.500 you go to the gym, you put more weight on the bar and the stronger you get, the harder it becomes to

00:09:02.400 put more weight on the bar. And so you reach this point where you're like, you know what? I am not

00:09:08.180 really enjoying this. Like what it would take for me to put two and a half more pounds on my breasts.

00:09:14.000 It might not be worth it. And like, who cares? It's two and a half pounds. Like it's not a motivating

00:09:19.260 training goal anymore. On top of that, again, as you may have experienced most of us who were

00:09:26.720 pursuing the strength thing got fat and we got hurt. So you get older and you know, the weights

00:09:34.400 are heavier. They're beating the crap out of you and it's not fun. And you put on all this body weight

00:09:40.780 cause everyone's, you know, rip a toast telling you, you got to weigh two 75 and you just don't feel

00:09:46.420 good. You don't feel like you look good. You're hurting. And you're like, what am I doing? And

00:09:51.560 we all seem to have the same epiphany around that moment in your training journey, as you said, where

00:09:57.260 you look at the machines and the, you know, the hammer strength bench presses and the lat pull

00:10:02.880 downs and the, you know, the cable and you're like, you know, those look pretty fun. Like, you know,

00:10:09.020 maybe I should mix it up a little bit. And then you sort of move back into bodybuilding. And if you

00:10:15.460 look at the history of, you know, the trend in fitness culture, that's how it went. The nineties

00:10:21.420 was all about the bodybuilding. And then the two thousands was CrossFit and strength training and

00:10:26.980 starting strength. And then everybody started shifting back to a little bit more bodybuilding,

00:10:32.740 you know? And now if you go on fitness Twitter, it's just threads of guys posting, you know, like no

00:10:39.180 one's doing a squat at all anymore. It's all leg extensions and rows and isolation work. And so I

00:10:47.660 like to, you know, I think what, what I landed on with my books and what works for me now as an older

00:10:53.680 lifter is a mix of hypertrophy training, bodybuilding stuff. And then, but you still like, there's a part

00:11:01.300 of me deep, you know, it's an intrinsic thing of, I still have to squat and deadlift. Like it's not a

00:11:08.160 real workout. You're not on a real program unless at least once a week, you're getting under the bar

00:11:13.100 and picking something heavy up off the ground. So I assume that your fitness journey was very similar

00:11:19.000 to that. Very similar. So I, you know, back in the 2010s got really into barbell training, starting

00:11:26.000 strength, did recreational competitions like yourself and just chasing numbers. And it was great.

00:11:31.180 It was fun. I was, it gave me direction. I enjoyed it, but then I reached this point. It was like

00:11:36.580 probably 2021, 2022, where I just started hurting. It was like tendon stuff. It was just like the

00:11:44.720 tendons. It's just really hard in the tendons. And then I was just looking haggard and I was fat

00:11:50.360 and my wife, I remember she looked and was like, what do you, like, what's the point of this? You're

00:11:54.080 like Sisyphus just pushing up that boulder. Like you just go down to the garage gym and just go up and

00:11:59.920 down. That's all you do. You come in and you tell your wife, like, honey, I pulled five,

00:12:05.140 five Oh five today. And she's like, okay, is that, is that good? You're fat. Yeah. Right.

00:12:10.920 And I was just tired and beat up. And then also I just started not enjoying lifting. Cause as you said,

00:12:14.660 once you get really strong, there's diminishing returns on your training. It just takes a lot,

00:12:19.760 lot more effort to just add, you know, five pounds to the bar. Yeah. The commitment,

00:12:24.800 you know, might is it's just, you have to say, is it worth it? Like, okay. I, I, my last,

00:12:30.380 you know, squat PR was, you know, four 65. I've detrained. I went on vacation. I got sick. I'm at

00:12:37.520 four Oh five. Now, do I want to do what it takes to get to four 70? You know, is that going to be

00:12:43.980 fun? And a lot of times it's not, and you know, and that's okay. Like we hammered people so hard

00:12:50.760 back in the day on the only thing that matters is the number on the bar. It doesn't matter how fat

00:12:55.200 you are. It doesn't matter if you're having fun. It just matters that you put five more pounds on

00:12:59.840 that bar. And I can tell you what changed my mind was owning a gym and having, you know,

00:13:03.900 relying on paying clients to keep coming back and paying me. And you lose a lot of clients. If you're

00:13:10.440 like, look, I don't care about your goals because my goal for you is that you lift more weight. And

00:13:14.220 they're like, great, I'm going to go to someone else. So yeah, it's a, it's a balance and that's okay.

00:13:19.540 You know? Yeah. So what I hope we can do this conversation is talk about your philosophy

00:13:25.040 towards strength training and then muscle building. It seems like you've landed a nice

00:13:28.940 happy medium. That's kind of where I've landed as well with my training. And I think this

00:13:33.560 conversation will be useful for people who maybe are, you know, been lifting for a long

00:13:37.340 time doing the barbell lifts, but I really hope, I hope we can get these guys who haven't started

00:13:41.460 strength training or weightlifting at all and get them into it. Because what you talk about

00:13:47.360 in your books, it's all about your goal with your clients is getting a little bit stronger,

00:13:52.940 getting a little bit more jacked, more muscle, and then leaning out. And that is possible

00:13:58.100 with barbells along with some hypertrophy stuff, some bodybuilding stuff with a few, you know,

00:14:03.540 dumbbells and a few machine exercises. And I'm going to talk about that. Let's talk about

00:14:07.500 for the rank beginner. When someone comes to you and they're like, I want to get strong.

00:14:11.200 I want to start strength training. I've never really done it before. I might've messed around

00:14:14.340 with some program that I saw, you know, people don't read muscle magazines anymore,

00:14:18.300 like on the, on Instagram. What are the common misconceptions guys have about strength and muscle

00:14:25.700 building when they first started working with you? Yeah. Well, there's a couple. One is that,

00:14:31.740 I mean, I tell them all the time, you are not going to look like you take steroids unless you take

00:14:35.440 steroids. I mean, I don't care how good you are at this. There is a difference between the guys,

00:14:42.760 you know, the Instagram influencers, like you said, or back in our day, it was the guys on the

00:14:46.840 covers of the magazines and the bodybuilders, like drugs work. And there's a reason that those

00:14:52.360 guys are on the cover of that magazine. So one of the misconceptions is like, Oh, I just have to like,

00:14:56.820 you know, lift some weights and I'm just going to be, you know, 250 pounds at 4% body fat. It's like,

00:15:02.720 it's not, it's not going to happen. So there is that layer of misconception, but I think the big one,

00:15:08.120 the practical one that most guys have to accept, and they're going to learn it one way or the other

00:15:14.060 is that you can't get big and strong, you know, and lean at the same time. You have to do them

00:15:21.720 in order. And if you're not big and strong yet, you got to get big and strong first. You have to

00:15:28.340 build a foundation so that when you cut, when you go into a fat loss phase, you actually have something

00:15:34.280 to show off. And so many times I'll get a young guy who's, you know, a buck 50. And he's talking

00:15:42.080 to me about wanting to cut and wanting at wanting to see his abs. And I was like, and it's just like,

00:15:47.060 dude, you're going to look like you're sick. If you cut anything off of your frame right now,

00:15:52.160 you don't have any muscle mass. So you have to spend a period of time. You know, I use the word

00:15:58.520 bulking cautiously because you can definitely get too fat and you don't have to do that,

00:16:04.360 but you do have to get bigger in order to get stronger. And that comes with a little bit of

00:16:09.520 body fat, hopefully. And if you do it right, you can skew it. So every, most of every new pound you

00:16:15.980 put on is muscle. And so you still look bigger, you know, you don't look fat because you're kind

00:16:20.500 of filling out your frame. And then after you've spent, you know, a year, two years, maybe

00:16:26.040 working on your form, learning how to lift, adding muscle mass, all that stuff. Then you've sort of

00:16:33.160 earned the right to cut. You've earned the right to say, okay, I've hit some benchmarks, you know,

00:16:40.200 with barbell training and I've put in my time and now I feel like I'm getting a little chubby

00:16:45.040 and I want to spend six months trying to take as much fat off as I can while preserving the muscle

00:16:51.020 mass. And that, you know, understanding the order and the importance of the order is like,

00:16:56.820 that's the number one thing that most guys who haven't done it think they can do it all at the

00:17:01.080 same time and it never works. So they either figure that out or they never make any progress.

00:17:06.520 They just kind of don't look really jacked and they don't look really lean and they're not very

00:17:11.360 strong. Yeah. And I imagine too, I had to learn this, that stuff takes time. You can't expect this

00:17:17.520 stuff to happen in less than a year, like do the putting on mass and then cutting. I mean,

00:17:22.400 you can make significant gains if you're first starting out with your strength and your muscle

00:17:26.200 mass, but really the secret sauce to getting stronger, getting more jacked, it's just, it takes

00:17:32.020 time. Like you're not going to see instant results after you, after your first couple sessions.

00:17:37.400 No, it does take time. You're literally building tissue. It's a biological process that it does take

00:17:42.640 time. The cool part is, you know, it's persistent. And as you add on those layers and then with

00:17:48.940 intelligent bulking and cutting strategies, like the first run in both the bulking phase and the

00:17:55.220 cutting phase is the longest because you want to get as much out of your novice phase as you can in

00:18:01.720 terms of strength and size. And so if you're a true novice that can take, you know, six months,

00:18:06.740 a year just to run out the novice phase, maybe early intermediate phase.

00:18:10.860 And then the first time you cut, especially if you're 25, 30% body fat. And if you're going to

00:18:17.620 try and cut down to where you can see your abs, which is around 10%, you got a lot of fat to lose.

00:18:22.500 So that, that first block, their cycle of bulking and cutting is the longest one. But then once you

00:18:27.940 get through that, the cycles get shorter because you don't put on as much fat. So you don't have as

00:18:34.100 much fat to take off and the cycles get more fun because, or your training overall gets more fun

00:18:39.340 because you see a light at the end of the tunnel for each phase and you know, like, okay, a couple

00:18:43.740 more weeks of this, and then I can do something different. But yeah, it's getting people through

00:18:47.460 that first phase. And I'll tell you, like in my gym, it was like the end of the novice phase,

00:18:52.360 usually around the six month mark where it's, they've been focusing on just driving up the

00:18:57.480 numbers on those, on, you know, squats and deadlifts and presses. And at that point it starts to get

00:19:03.880 hard. They start laying awake at night, thinking about their next workout. It's a grind. Every

00:19:09.460 session is, it scares the hell out of you. And like, if they can make it through that and keep

00:19:14.260 coming and not quit and get to the intermediate phase, they're lifters for life. But I've lost a

00:19:19.620 lot of clients where they're just like, I don't know, man, like, this is really like, this isn't

00:19:24.820 fun anymore. And it's grindy. And then that's it. They go do, they go sign up for jujitsu or

00:19:31.740 something and we never see them again. Yeah. Okay. So for someone who's first starting out

00:19:37.240 lifting, like they want to get bigger, they want to get jacked. They want to get awesome. You know,

00:19:42.040 those death star deltoids. Um, it sounds, it sounds, is that a thing? I think I've, I've heard

00:19:48.560 that somewhere. Death star deltoids. I think a lot of guys, that's their goal. They'll immediately go

00:19:53.640 to sort of a bodybuilder hypertrophy program where they're doing, you know, four day splits,

00:19:59.880 six day splits where they're working one body part a day. You take a different approach. It seems

00:20:06.180 like your first priority with someone who's first starting out is just to get generally strong and

00:20:11.440 big first. So what is the best programming for that? Yeah. I mean, the idea here is we're going

00:20:17.740 to spend some time laying down a foundation. You know, we're going to build a foundation of just

00:20:22.460 strength and size. You're going to learn how to lift. You're going to be doing these basic barbell

00:20:28.060 lifts for your entire training career. They're always a part of the program. You may add other

00:20:32.860 stuff, but, but this is really what's causing the most stress and doing the most work is squats,

00:20:39.380 deadlifts, benches, presses, stuff like that. So we need to spend some time getting proficient at

00:20:44.040 those lifts. You need to learn how to push yourself. You need to learn how to, you know,

00:20:50.040 unrack a weight that scares you and try it anyway, and then learn that, you know, you can do things that

00:20:55.380 scare you and all of that. So you need a lot of reps. You need a lot of practice time under the

00:21:01.400 bar. And so a basic linear progression where you're just, you know, you come in and you lift

00:21:08.180 one day and then you try and beat it the next time. So, you know, it's five pounds is two and a

00:21:12.460 half pounds, but the program is very boring and very repetitive. It's just a couple lifts and all

00:21:19.760 your, the only variable we're manipulating is how much weights on the bar. So it's a very large,

00:21:24.720 this is why software developers love programs like this. Cause they get it. They can wrap their

00:21:28.500 head around it. It's like, Oh, I came in, I could bench press 95 pounds. Now I can bench press one

00:21:33.660 85. I guess it's working. So, and we want to keep it simple. You don't need all that stuff. You don't

00:21:40.180 need six different chest exercises and you don't need to be in the gym six days a week. You just need

00:21:47.160 a simple program where you're getting better at the compound lifts and just driving the weight up.

00:21:52.520 And so, you know, the starting strength program is a fantastic beginner program, like a novice

00:21:59.180 program. My version that I put in my book, a radically simple strength was just a modification

00:22:05.060 of that program based on, you know, training real clients in the gym and needing to get them in and

00:22:13.340 out in an hour, keep them excited, keep them, you know, interested in training, not to beat up,

00:22:19.060 not dreading their workouts. So, I mean, do you want me to get into the details of my novice program?

00:22:24.600 Yeah. Let's talk about, let's talk about, let's talk about the general programming of,

00:22:27.140 let's start talking about starting strength first. It's really easy to explain whenever

00:22:30.060 someone comes to me like, Hey Brett, I want to get strong and bigger and jacked. I'm like,

00:22:34.140 you need to start with starting strength. And I, I, the reason I tell them that cause it's,

00:22:37.740 it's literally, it's the best weightlifting program for a beginner. And I'll tell you why first,

00:22:44.080 cause it's just so simple. There's just four lifts you have to do. That's it. It's just deadlift,

00:22:49.240 it's squat, it's bench press and shoulder press. You're only going to train three times a week.

00:22:54.840 Yep. Anyone can do that. And then the workouts are easy. It's just like, you're going to squat,

00:22:59.320 you know, at the beginning of your workout, the three times a week, and then one workout,

00:23:03.620 you're going to do bench press and then the deadlift. And then the next workout, you're going to do

00:23:08.120 press. And the next work you do, do bench press and deadlift. And then it just kind of alternate,

00:23:12.780 you alternate between the bench and the press and you're getting a full body workout. You're

00:23:17.140 going to get really strong. And it's just so simple. It's like, it's fast, especially when

00:23:21.600 you're first starting out, you're going to be in and out of the gym in like 45 minutes. Even,

00:23:26.760 I mean, I've got my kids doing starting strength. They're like, you know, teenagers for them,

00:23:31.320 like the weights really light. So they can get done in like 30 minutes. Oh yeah. And for a person

00:23:35.280 who's first starting out, I think one thing that keeps people from being consistent is just

00:23:39.400 workouts can be too complex. They're doing too many lifts and it just takes forever because

00:23:44.100 they're doing like seven different exercises with, you know, three sets of 10 with starting

00:23:50.100 strength. You're doing three exercises in your workout and it's three sets of five. So the

00:23:55.300 simplicity of it, I think is one of its virtues. And then also with the linear progressions,

00:23:59.300 we're just adding weight to the bar, incredibly motivating. I remember when I first started my

00:24:03.040 novice linear progression, I was excited. Every workout was like, wow, I'm going to add more

00:24:07.480 weight to the bar. This is exciting. So you get that dopamine rush and that dopamine rush

00:24:11.980 gets you motivated and it just helps build that consistency for training. Like I was not

00:24:17.300 someone who trained consistently before I started starting strength. After that, I am a guy, like I'm a,

00:24:23.780 I'm a guy who trains, even though my training has changed, right? I'm doing different stuff now.

00:24:29.100 Starting strength helped establish that foundation because it's motivating and it's super simple.

00:24:33.620 And I think that's really important for a beginning lifter. As you said, you know, this is something

00:24:37.940 that takes time. And so you need quick wins. If you're not going to be satisfied or excited about

00:24:43.980 your training until you can deadlift 405, like you're going to be miserable, but you know, it's,

00:24:49.960 it is a long journey. And so you need those little victories, those small victories of like, Hey,

00:24:56.140 you know what? Like today I might not be where I want to be eventually, you know, I might not be at my

00:25:01.060 ultimate goal, but I'm better than I was last time and I can see it. And so you're right. You get

00:25:06.100 those little daily workout victories of like lifting five more pounds than you did last time

00:25:11.320 are enough to keep you going. And then by the time for me, the big shift, what got me hooked was you

00:25:17.340 do it long enough. And then you look in the mirror or you look at your training log and you go, damn, 0.99

00:25:23.200 like I, you know, I just went into the gym for like an hour, three times a week. And I, 0.97

00:25:28.340 I picked up some heavy stuff and like my physical body has changed. Yeah. I mean,

00:25:34.200 it gives people agency. You realize like, look, you know, I might not be where I want to be in life,

00:25:40.180 but I'm not useless. I have a say in how I present myself to the world and it's very motivating. And if

00:25:49.660 you can get the guy to that point where you have this realization that I can actually change my own

00:25:56.340 reality, just with work, just with effort, it's like, it's a part of you. You're in the brotherhood

00:26:02.660 of iron for life. Yeah. You know, it's, it's very powerful. We're going to take a quick break for

00:26:08.160 your words from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay. So starting strength, it's three sets

00:26:15.660 of five. You're doing three workouts with these four different lifts you've modified. What is your

00:26:19.620 version of sort of a novice program? So my take on the novice program, the main difference with

00:26:25.220 how starting strength approaches it and how I approach it just again, from, from, it was a

00:26:30.180 more practical strategy for running clients through a commercial gym. And that was starting

00:26:36.160 strength is like the novice phase is your most productive phase. You eke out every little bit

00:26:41.240 of progress that you can for as long as you possibly can, no matter how hard and grueling and grindy it

00:26:46.840 is. If you can press two and a half more pounds, you do it. I look at my novice phase as the way that

00:26:54.180 we're going to get you to the intermediate phase, because if we can get you to the intermediate phase

00:26:58.960 of training, that's when we get more variety. That's when things get more fun. Everything

00:27:02.720 becomes less grueling. You know, you, you space out your workouts. You may maybe have upper and

00:27:07.000 lower workouts. So my novice phase was like, let's just learn how to lift. Let's get a lot of reps in a

00:27:12.920 lot of practice. Let's build a reasonable foundation of size and strength, and then let's move on.

00:27:17.520 So I do ascending sets of five instead of three sets of five. So this is an old bill star thing

00:27:23.940 rather than do all your warmups, take a five minute break, and then do three sets of five at

00:27:29.780 the same weight with the five minute break in between each one. We just do the bar. And then,

00:27:35.680 you know, we do a set of five at 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 100% done. So your warmups kind of count as sets

00:27:44.480 gotcha. And it's real fast. And is it as productive for as long as the starting strength

00:27:51.760 novice program? Probably not. Cause at some point those ramping sets tax you a little too much. And

00:27:58.140 so you're kind of tired for your heavy set, but it's good enough to keep the workout really short

00:28:03.600 and make a lot of really good progress and build that foundation. And it'll take you, you know,

00:28:10.840 you'll be able to run that for about three to six months before it kind of stops working.

00:28:15.200 You have to make some modifications, but every guy I've switched over to that program after running

00:28:20.640 the starting strength program was like, God, this is so much like faster. It's just like,

00:28:24.320 I like going to the gym just be in. And again, if that keeps you training that little modification,

00:28:29.440 then great. You're going to end up in the same place eventually down the road. So,

00:28:33.120 so that's really the big one is we start out squatting, benching, and deadlifting,

00:28:36.840 but we're just doing sets, ascending sets of five. Gotcha. That makes sense.

00:28:41.520 And then we move on, you know, in the second month of workouts, we start adding in some chin

00:28:47.240 ups and lat pull downs. So we're not deadlifting every time. And, and then in the third phase of

00:28:52.940 the novice program, which is like workout 25 sort of till it stops working, I start adding in some

00:28:59.140 curls and tricep extensions just because, you know, curls are awesome. Guys want to curl.

00:29:04.840 Right. So you've, by that point, you know, you've, I think you've earned the right to curl,

00:29:08.560 to throw a couple of sets of curls in at the end of the workout. And, and again, just like,

00:29:13.120 just to keep it, you know, you give people a lot of what they need and a little of what they want

00:29:17.540 and they're happy. So that's really the difference between my novice program and the starting strength.

00:29:23.120 And again, starting strength is a fantastic program and it works really well. I've used it for decades.

00:29:28.380 Yeah. And so again, the goal here is just getting bigger and stronger, like putting on muscle mass,

00:29:33.100 full body. The focus isn't like hypertrophy per se. There will be hypertrophy. Your muscles will

00:29:38.060 get bigger, but it's not like that's your main focus. Just get bigger and stronger.

00:29:42.260 Learning again and learning the technique, like five sets of five ascending is that you get a lot

00:29:47.240 of reps in there. You get a lot of practice and we need that early on. And, and, and then again,

00:29:52.640 it's also learning how to grind, like learning how to push yourself and you have to learn how to do that.

00:29:57.800 And so you need a lot of time under the bar and exposure to those sets that scare you towards

00:30:03.040 the end of that novice phase. Yeah. For a guy, you know, that first year when they're just starting

00:30:08.200 out, they're doing that novice phase, they're learning the lifts, getting bigger and stronger.

00:30:12.080 Like what are some like good goals a guy could get to? What should they be going after? Like,

00:30:18.220 are there any specific numbers you found? Yeah. I mean the, the first tier of goals in my book are

00:30:23.920 what we call plate goals, you know, a 45 pound plate. So you want to be able to press one 35

00:30:29.540 bench, two 25 squat, three 15 and deadlift four Oh five. So it's one plate, two plate,

00:30:35.700 three plates, four plates. And, and that's for one rep. So that's the first like benchmark that

00:30:40.800 any guy can hit. And if you do that, like you're going to be like stronger than a lot of people.

00:30:46.220 Oh my, I'm yeah. I mean, the bar is so low, you know, and, and especially now with the,

00:30:52.820 you know, influencer trend away from heavy lifting and back to the machines and stuff,

00:30:59.620 like there was a period in, you know, probably like 2010, where if you went to a gym, those numbers

00:31:06.360 weren't that impressive and to competitive lifters, they're not impressive, but to the average

00:31:12.140 gen pop gym goer, especially these days when all the machines are coming back, if you could squat four

00:31:17.640 zero five, like you're like, you know, 1% of people at that gym. So yeah. And they're very

00:31:25.000 reasonable goals. They're not hard to do. And I think it, what it also does is it makes you

00:31:28.980 generally strong for life, like generally strong and healthy for life. Like you're not, if you get

00:31:33.880 those numbers, you're not going to be beat up, you're not going to hurt, but you'll be able to

00:31:38.080 like help move your buddy, you know, on the weekend. And it's like not hard because you're,

00:31:42.820 yeah, it's a solid, respectable foundation of strength and it's attainable to anyone.

00:31:49.780 And the thing is that, as you know, like the numbers don't matter. I don't care if you can

00:31:54.660 squat three 15, you know, I care that you're doing a program and you're trying to get a little better

00:32:00.000 every time and you're pushing yourself, but you do have to have a target guys need to have a goal

00:32:04.720 because you did, you know, if you're just training and you don't have a, a, there's no lighthouse

00:32:11.040 you're sailing towards, like it's hard to stay motivated. So that's the starting point. And then

00:32:16.180 once they hit those, we can either move on to what I, in the book, I call them hundo goals. So

00:32:22.060 200, 300, 400, 500 lately, what I've been doing is just saying, let's take those plate goals, you

00:32:28.200 know, one plate, two plates, three plates. And let's just, instead of your goal being to do them

00:32:33.120 for one rep, let's try and do them for five reps. So you're going to end up, you deadlift four Oh five

00:32:37.460 for five. That's your sort of phase two target. And then, you know, from there, there's more goals,

00:32:44.440 but most people never even get there. And that's okay. Cause that's when they, that's when they,

00:32:49.180 as we talked about, start asking about more bodybuilding stuff.

00:32:53.440 Right. We're going to get to that in a second, but what we do is stick on this like mass phase,

00:32:57.160 getting generally strong, getting bigger. When you're first starting out, nutrition plays an

00:33:01.740 important role. And I think I noticed with a lot of guys that start training is they're,

00:33:05.800 they're doing the program, but they're not eating to fuel the games. And what's interesting,

00:33:11.600 people have a lot of misconception about diet. I think people have more misconception about

00:33:15.740 nutrition when it comes to training than the programming itself. Cause there's just so much

00:33:20.300 stuff out there, but you know, really simply, what is a good diet plan look like when you're

00:33:24.980 in this beginning phase? Well, the high level concepts is it. Protein is the biggest thing.

00:33:31.940 And you're right. The hardest thing to do is not the lifting. It's the eating because you have to eat

00:33:37.560 three or four times a day, every day, even if you don't want to, especially if you're a skinny guy,

00:33:43.600 you got to eat more food than you want to. And when you get into like a cutting phase,

00:33:48.240 you got to eat less food than you want to diet is the hardest part of this whole thing.

00:33:53.860 Um, but the number one mistake guys make is they don't eat enough protein. And it's just,

00:33:59.780 if you're not, I used to tell my guys all the time, if you're not eating enough protein,

00:34:04.600 then you are wasting your time in the gym because the protein literally builds your muscle tissue. 0.98

00:34:10.940 So you're doing all the hard work, you're busting your ass in the gym, 0.84

00:34:13.740 and then your body's trying to rebuild, repair, and add more contractile tissue. And you're not 0.94

00:34:20.660 supplying it with the bricks it needs to build. So under eating protein, and then under eating

00:34:25.840 calories. If we're talking about the novice sort of bulking phase for an underweight male lifter,

00:34:31.420 it's they don't need enough food. And specifically, they don't even eat enough protein. So carbs and

00:34:36.740 fat, I try and keep this as simple as possible. Just hit your protein goal. And at this point in my

00:34:42.620 coaching career, I just tell everybody, your goal is 200 grams of protein a day. More is better.

00:34:47.960 Like if you're a 200-pound guy, fine, 220. If you're a 185-pound guy, 200 is great.

00:34:54.760 So for most guys, just hit 200 grams a day. And then with those meals will come carbs and fat.

00:35:01.180 And then just check your weight. If you get on the scale every morning after you go to the bathroom

00:35:06.200 naked and look at the number. And if we're in the novice phase or we're in a bulking phase,

00:35:11.920 that number needs to be going up every week. So total it up over the course of the week.

00:35:16.800 And if you're a pound heavier than you were last week, you're doing great. If you're not

00:35:21.600 and you go two weeks in a row, you need more food. It's a math problem. You're not eating enough

00:35:27.080 calories. So the mistake that they make is usually it's gaining too much weight too fast. So when you

00:35:35.140 first start training, if you've never lifted, I always tell people in the first like two, three

00:35:39.980 weeks, don't worry about the weight on the scale. Cause a lot of times when a guy starts picking up a

00:35:43.960 barbell, he'll gain like five, 10 pounds within a matter of weeks after the first month, that should

00:35:50.140 start to slow down. And you want to hit an average of about a pound a week. If you're a little fluffy

00:35:56.220 coming into it, maybe you're going to maintain depending on how much body fat you have. But if

00:36:01.020 you're, you know, just your body fat's a little high, maybe shoot for half a pound a week while you're

00:36:06.500 trying to build this foundation of strength. But if guys are, if you're six weeks into the program

00:36:11.800 and you're gaining three pounds a week, you're just getting fat unnecessarily fat. And you're

00:36:17.020 going to end up getting to the end of your novice phase and thinking, well, this strength training

00:36:20.740 just makes me fat. It's like, you don't have to do that. It's a very, very modest amount of weight

00:36:26.340 gain that you need to build that muscle tissue. Cause there's only so much muscle tissue you can

00:36:30.640 build in a month, your body, you know, unless you're taking drugs. So, and it's like two pounds of

00:36:35.980 actual lean tissue. So that comes with other stuff. So at most you're looking at four pounds

00:36:42.620 a month, anything beyond that, besides a rank novice underweight, you know, 17 year old, it's

00:36:51.100 like, if you're gaining more than four pounds a month, like you're getting fat.

00:36:54.880 Yeah. Yeah. The trick is you want to gain weight, but like keep fat gain to a minimum. You have to

00:37:00.140 gain, you're going to gain fat as you put on mass. There's no escaping that. But the goal is like,

00:37:03.920 make sure it leans more towards muscle tissue and less towards body fat. And I think, I know back

00:37:09.700 in the day, starting strength got a lot of flack for the go mad gallon of milk a day. And like all

00:37:15.320 these guys just getting really fat and like eating sheet cake and. Dude, we were so fat. We were so

00:37:21.380 fat. It was like, you don't need to do that. You don't have to get fat to get big and strong. Like you

00:37:26.040 can, you can get slightly bigger week to week. So, so my first, you know, I, I looked around at

00:37:33.640 the starting, I remember being at the starting strength coaches conference and looking around

00:37:37.100 and, and we had some real strong guys there. Like, I mean, real good lifters and Matt was

00:37:43.380 one of them. Jordan was one of them. Um, and I looked around and I thought, you know, I'm

00:37:47.840 trying to make a little niche for myself in this community and I'm not going to be the

00:37:52.300 strongest guy. In fact, someone had totaled up all the training logs on the starting strength

00:37:57.020 forms and ranked all of us coaches. And I was like, my strength was dead center. I was totally,

00:38:03.340 totally like mediocre. And I thought, you know, okay, I'm 252 pounds. I'm fat. I mean,

00:38:10.120 I feel fat. I'm never going to be the strongest coach. So let me see if I can just lose. Let

00:38:15.460 me see if I can get down to 10% body fat. I've never done it. Let me see if I can see my apps.

00:38:20.800 And so I did. And it took, it took, but I think I was the first coach in our community to do that.

00:38:26.700 And I remember, uh, texting Grant Brogy, who, I don't know if you've had him on

00:38:31.340 podcast, but, um, a fellow coach and I, and I had just hit 10% body fat and I took a picture

00:38:37.240 in the bathroom mirror and, and I sent it to him. I was like, I'm thinking about putting this on

00:38:42.360 Instagram and it feels kind of lame, you know, like it's a picture of me shirtless. Like it's,

00:38:48.120 and he just texted me back. He's like, dude, post it. And I did. And, and within a matter of like a

00:38:54.340 year, all these other coaches and lifters started just shedding body fat. Yeah. And that became,

00:39:01.700 you know, starting strength is, as we've said, it's fantastic for lifting. It is a horrible book

00:39:07.500 for nutrition, you know, unless your goal is to be a 275 pound fat lifter power lifter. Yeah. And

00:39:15.620 cause a gallon of milk a day works. I've done it and it works, man. It'll put weight on you real quick.

00:39:20.520 But most guys, like my average client is like, he doesn't want to be a power lifter. He doesn't

00:39:25.000 want to be a bodybuilder. He just like, like I said, he wants to be a little bit bigger,

00:39:28.540 a little bit stronger, not fat and not hurt. And so that first time through of learning how to

00:39:35.520 manipulate my diet to actually get down to 10% body fat was sort of the, what I thought I could

00:39:42.020 contribute aside from the, you know, sort of more abbreviated novice program and stuff to fill the

00:39:48.620 hole in sort of the starting strength community of like, Hey, if you guys want to really talk about

00:39:53.520 strategies for getting lean, like maybe I have something to offer cause I've done it.

00:39:58.400 And then I did it a couple more times and I've gotten a lot better at it, but yeah.

00:40:02.540 Yeah. So yeah. Um, if you're first starting out, put on some mass and if you're underweight,

00:40:07.340 make it your goal to put on one to two pounds a week, maybe. And then if you're already coming into

00:40:11.920 it heavy, there's a lot of guys who they're starting out, but they're overweight. They've got a lot of fat

00:40:15.580 tissue. Like you just reduce your calories. So you're losing about a pound during that strength

00:40:21.460 phase. If you're bigger, you can get away with some recomposition. So you can put on some muscle

00:40:25.200 mass while losing body fat at the same time. So yeah, you can get put on muscle mass while reducing

00:40:30.520 body fat as well, but it's going to be a gradual thing. You don't want to be no severe cuts where

00:40:34.580 you're reducing calories way low. You just want to lose like a pound to a 0.5 pounds a week.

00:40:40.620 Yeah. In my book, I sort of break the, the novice lifter into three categories, the underweight

00:40:46.800 guy, the sort of like fluffy untrained guy, and then the overweight guy. So if you're coming in

00:40:53.600 and you're just a rail, you're, you have a high metabolism, you're a skinny dude, you know, for

00:40:58.800 the novice phase for the first couple months of the program, you should, your goal should be to gain

00:41:03.440 20 pounds. And then if you're kind of in the middle, maybe it's gained 10 pounds, slow it down,

00:41:08.880 go half a pound a week instead of a pound a week. And then if you're coming in, carrying a lot of

00:41:14.340 body fat, what I say is just maintain, don't try and gain weight. And because you will be able to

00:41:21.100 recompose. So the only time you can add muscle and lose fat at the same time, there's three scenarios.

00:41:26.940 You are a brand new lifter. You're already carrying a lot of body fat or you're taking drugs.

00:41:34.620 So outside of those three States, you're doing one or the other, you're building muscle or you're

00:41:41.140 losing body fat. But so yes, for the guys who are coming in, who have a high body fat percentage,

00:41:46.440 just, you know, eat enough to kind of maintain. If the scale goes down a little bit, that's okay.

00:41:50.980 If it stays the same, that's okay. Because if your weight stays the same, but you put, you know,

00:41:57.860 a hundred pounds on your deadlift, you obviously gained muscle and lost fat. Right. And that happens

00:42:03.300 all the time. Every time I have my guys do body scans at the beginning, like body composition

00:42:08.520 scans at the beginning of their training, when we start and maybe at the six month mark.

00:42:12.620 And so many guys are able to just recompose and it's amazing. And then it goes away.

00:42:18.040 Yeah. You gotta do something different. All right. So we've been talking about just getting

00:42:21.120 your, for first guy starting out, you're going to do the basic barbell lifts, squat, bench,

00:42:27.120 deadlift, shoulder press. You're going to work out three times a week. You've got your version

00:42:31.500 of what a linear progression looks like, sending sets of five on the lifts and the goal is to add

00:42:37.020 weight each workout. Let's say you've been doing this for a while. And then you have to kind of

00:42:40.720 modify your programs. You can keep driving weight up the bar. Let's say a client reaches a point.

00:42:45.380 It's like, you know what, Paul, I'm happy with how strong I am. Like I'm generally strong. I can

00:42:50.340 deadlift 405. I can squat 315. I'm not going to do any recreational power lifting meets. I want to start

00:42:57.900 getting jacked. I want to get those death star deltoids. What does your programming look like 0.98

00:43:03.800 for these guys? Cause it sounds like you're going to keep doing these barbell lifts, but you're going

00:43:08.120 to add in some other stuff. What does that look like? Yeah. So like I said, the intermediate program

00:43:12.100 is where things get more fun. There's more variety and it's less grueling. You have hard workouts,

00:43:17.720 but they're, you know, you're not squatting heavy, benching heavy and lifting heavy in the same

00:43:22.900 workout. So my go-to intermediate program in the book, it's called the intermediate B program and

00:43:29.320 it's four workouts. And I have my guys run them over a three-day week. So we're staying consistent

00:43:34.540 with the three-day training schedule that they're used to, but we move from full body to upper lower

00:43:41.020 splits, right? So now on Monday, you're going to bench press and then you'll do like a light overhead

00:43:46.600 press. And then you'll do some like arm work, tricep extensions on Wednesday, you're going to squat

00:43:52.360 and deadlift. So I have you squatting heavy and deadlifting light and then some chin-ups or

00:43:57.840 something. And then the Friday you'll flip Monday's workout. So you're going to press heavy

00:44:03.000 and bench light and then do some curls and bro stuff just for fun. And then the following Monday.

00:44:09.060 So the fourth workout would be deadlifting heavy and squatting light. So it's upper, lower,

00:44:13.440 upper. And then the next week is lower, upper, lower. So you have one hard week where you have two

00:44:17.940 lower body workouts. And then you have one easy week where you have two upper body workouts.

00:44:22.340 And one lower body workout. And so we're spreading out the frequency, you know, you're not hammering

00:44:28.080 yourself all the time. And the beauty of that is it's flexible. So with upper lower splits, you can

00:44:33.740 train two days in a row. You don't need a day off in between upper and lower, which is nice.

00:44:38.000 It's a lot more flexible that way. And then the other thing I start incorporating, and this is where I

00:44:43.640 sort of branch off from starting strength, but it's something that I am very passionate about

00:44:48.860 is introducing rep ranges. So before when you were a novice lifter, it was like, no, you get five

00:44:54.900 reps. Your goal is five reps. If you don't get five reps, you failed. Okay. And that's okay. We all

00:44:59.800 fail. You're going to fail, but you know, you have that target and you need to push yourself really

00:45:05.480 hard. If you want to add more weight next time, you got to get that fifth rep. When we get into the

00:45:10.500 intermediate phase, I like to, you know, pump the brakes a little bit on the intensity of the

00:45:15.960 live and die by the fifth rep mentality, because guys are burnt out by that. And it's like, you

00:45:22.820 don't want to hate your workout. Like you work all day. Your boss is yelling at you. Your kids are,

00:45:26.800 you know, running around screaming. You go to the gym and then you get four reps instead of five.

00:45:30.660 And you're like, can I do anything right? You know, it's like, it's, it's demoralizing. And

00:45:35.240 so the rep range, what we'll say is like, for example, you're going to squat. So you're going

00:45:40.320 to go in and you're going to warm up and then you're going to do one set of squats. And the

00:45:44.600 rep range is three to five reps. So you have a minimum and a max. Your goal is five, but Hey,

00:45:50.080 look today, if you only have three or four, that's okay. You're in the range. You still had a good

00:45:55.520 workout. And the next time you just try again, you know, and what you'll find is like, we all have bad

00:46:01.240 days. Doesn't mean your training isn't working. Doesn't mean you did anything wrong.

00:46:05.240 Maybe you didn't get enough sleep, whatever, but you walk out of the gym going, look, at least I got

00:46:11.160 three. So that's okay. And the mental shift of taking that pressure off. It's like one of the

00:46:18.040 things I get emailed about most when guys switch from like the Texas method, where it's like five

00:46:23.160 sets of five rigid to this flexibility. It's a mental, it takes a lot of pressure off and it keeps

00:46:30.440 them really enjoying their training more and pushing. If I tell you like, Hey man, let's see

00:46:35.460 what you got. Maybe you only have three today. That's okay. A lot of times guys will, you know,

00:46:40.620 when they know that that pressure's off, they'll push themselves harder for five.

00:46:45.040 It's a surprising, like psychological thing. So we work up, you do one set of three to five,

00:46:50.160 and then we do a back-off set. So instead of doing, you know, sets across, we're going to do one heavy

00:46:55.080 set. And then we're going to take some weight off about 15%. And then you do another set for me,

00:47:01.320 like if it's the squat, it might be five reps or five to eight reps or something like that.

00:47:05.580 But if it's the upper body stuff, you know, you, maybe you push for as many reps as you can,

00:47:10.580 but that other shift of like, you have one hard set. Okay. You're going to warm up and you have

00:47:15.220 one hard thing to do today, especially on those lower body days where it's like the deadlift. Okay.

00:47:20.560 Look, dude, you got one set of three to five today. And then after that, we're going to pull a little

00:47:25.920 weight off and then you squat like everything gets easier. And so just giving guys that like,

00:47:31.780 everybody can do one hard thing. You know, I don't care how tired you are. I don't care what you,

00:47:36.940 can you just get it together to do this one hard set and then you move on. And those two things,

00:47:43.280 the rep ranges and the one hard set, and then a back-off set is what I've found kept my clients

00:47:49.140 and my current clients training with me because they're not constantly failing, you know?

00:47:54.640 So you're going to shift to a four-day split. So that means you're going to train upper body

00:47:57.920 one day, lower body, upper body, the lower body. So when you said in, in radically simple muscle,

00:48:03.500 if like your goal is hypertrophy, it's like, we're not just working on getting generally big and strong.

00:48:07.340 We're actually going to do some bodybuilder stuff. You talk about your philosophy is train your lower

00:48:12.060 body like a power lifter and train your upper body like a bodybuilder. What does that look like?

00:48:18.100 So we're talking about a trainee who's gotten to the point, like we said, where they've established

00:48:23.800 that foundation of strength. So they're moving heavy weight. So these workouts can be stressful.

00:48:29.720 And a lot of them are like, okay, I did the boring workouts. I built this foundation. I'm strong

00:48:35.960 and I want to mix it up. I'm feeling beat up. I've accumulated some injuries. And so the radically

00:48:42.640 simple muscle program, which was just supposed to be a PDF, but ended up turning into a,

00:48:47.880 my second book, I have guys shift to, especially if their goal is now like aesthetics, you know,

00:48:54.380 I've got this mass that I've built, but now I want to kind of shape it. So training your upper body,

00:49:02.520 like a bodybuilder and your lower body, like a power lifter. There's a number of reasons for that.

00:49:06.300 One of them is exercise variety. So bodybuilding typically uses lots of different exercises,

00:49:11.020 isolation movements. And that's primarily because your upper body muscles can be segmented into

00:49:17.440 basically pushers and pullers. You've got your lats and your pecs and they do opposite things. So

00:49:23.900 if you do a bunch of, you know, seated cable rows, that doesn't build your chest. You have to do

00:49:30.300 some type of pressing variation and those presses don't really build your back. And the upper body

00:49:35.400 demands that there's a reason for it. If we contrast that to the lower body, you can think

00:49:40.360 of hamstrings and quads as pushers or pullers and pushers, but they're both covered by the squat 0.57

00:49:47.320 and the deadlift. Both of those functions happen in both of those lifts. So let's just squat and

00:49:53.560 deadlift. Like I don't want to do seven leg exercises when squats and deadlifts work everything

00:49:58.500 all at the same time versus, like I said, I can't just have you curl because it's not going to train

00:50:05.240 your triceps. So that's one part of it. The other part of it is, you know, aesthetics when you size

00:50:13.000 a guy up, right. And we all do it. You see a guy and he's like, you know, like that guy's jacked.

00:50:18.020 You're looking at his upper body, right? You're looking at those landmarks, those desirable aesthetic

00:50:24.660 features, cap shoulders, a vein in the bicep, things like that. Okay. That shaping that is a bodybuilding.

00:50:32.900 If you just focus on overhead presses, I promise you, you will not have shoulders. Would you say

00:50:38.940 death star? Death star deltoids. Yeah. I mean, I, my shoulders never looked worse than when I was just

00:50:44.540 pressing 200 pounds over my head. Like it just didn't fill out the deltoids the way that something

00:50:50.260 like very light lateral raises do. So we need there, there's a bunch of different examples of that

00:50:56.520 with the upper body, you know, you need to do some curls. Like chin-ups are great, but curls, 0.58

00:51:02.120 tricep stuff, it makes those muscles pop. And, and that's what we want when we talk about an

00:51:08.180 aesthetic physique versus the lower body. You know, unless you're walking around with your 0.66

00:51:12.500 pants off, your lower body just needs to be big, right? You need to have big legs and a big butt. 1.00

00:51:18.920 And you could do that with just squats and deadlifts. So again, that will just squat and

00:51:23.620 deadlift for the lower body. And we'll spend some time doing bodybuilding stuff for the upper body.

00:51:28.300 And then finally it comes down to high reps versus low reps. Bodybuilders use high reps

00:51:33.420 traditionally powerlifters use low reps. Your upper body joints are much smaller and much more

00:51:41.140 sensitive. They don't have as much structural integrity as the lower body. If you think about,

00:51:45.920 you know, your, your hip joint, it's like a sturdy ball and socket, your glenohumeral joint in the

00:51:52.280 shoulder. It's like a shallow cup. And I've had three shoulder surgeries. So I can tell you that

00:51:57.000 as a very unstable joint, just banging out, grinding out heavy triples with bench presses

00:52:02.840 and stuff like that. Your wrists are going to hurt it. Your upper body joints are not as tolerant of

00:52:09.300 heavy weights as your lower body, where you have more sturdy joints and a lot more muscle mass

00:52:14.560 helping move the weight. So, you know, when you get into that phase of like, do I really care? Am I a

00:52:21.120 powerlifter or do I just want to kind of look good and feel good? And you know, then maybe you

00:52:26.340 spend some time bumping up the rep range in the upper body, taking the stress off a little bit

00:52:33.080 with loads that are less likely to sort of fall out of the groove and end up, you know, tweaking

00:52:39.500 something. And then the lower body, I don't know about you. I do not want to do high rep deadlifts.

00:52:45.160 Like they're miserable and you don't have to, you could just do, you know, a set of five, a set of

00:52:51.920 three. So squatting sets of eight is just, I mean, it's brutal and I use it sometimes for cardio

00:52:58.760 development, but ultimately like I have a hard time counting past five for lower body stuff.

00:53:04.940 So that's the philosophy is like, we'll do the bodybuilder stuff for the upper body. Cause it

00:53:09.480 works better for the requirements and the demands of that. And the lower body, we just take care of by

00:53:15.060 training like a power lifter, you know? And at that point in my training, one of the biggest

00:53:20.740 shifts that I've made is squatting and deadlifting heavy every other week, which I thought would be

00:53:29.080 counterproductive, but it's actually been, I mean, my, my lifts have never been better

00:53:33.280 with only squatting heavier every 14 days, but you got to get to the point where, you know,

00:53:38.680 you can make that work and we can talk about that another time.

00:53:41.360 Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. My, my programming has kind of shifted to that

00:53:44.300 sort of train your lower body, like a power lifter, upper body, like a bodybuilder. So my

00:53:49.480 current split that Matt Reynolds has me on it's Monday is a lower body day. And I start off with

00:53:56.140 a heavy set of deadlifts. And then I do accessory work after that for the quads. So I've got, you know,

00:54:02.740 I got a leg extension machine in my garage gym. So I do some leg extension, like, you know,

00:54:07.340 not high rep, it's like 10 reps, but going heavy, do some calf raises. And then my upper body day

00:54:13.420 on Tuesday, I start off with heavy bench press, just kind of typical bench press workout. And

00:54:18.340 then after that, I'm just doing like bodybuilder stuff. So I'll do some shoulder work. So I do

00:54:22.040 shoulder dumbbell presses, maybe some lateral raises. So the accessory work is more shoulder

00:54:27.180 heavy. And then I'll throw in the curls, tricep extensions, lat pull down. And then Thursday is my

00:54:33.420 next lower body day. I'm squatting. Like my first lifts, the squat. Then after that,

00:54:38.100 I do accessory work for the hamstrings. So I'm doing a RDL and then I'll do some leg curls

00:54:43.780 for the hamstrings. So, and then Friday it's upper body. Start off with the press. So I'm doing

00:54:49.320 like barbell press and I'm not doing a lot of sets. Like I do like one heavy set and then like two

00:54:55.300 back off sets that are like as many reps as possible. And then my bodybuilder stuff, it's like

00:55:00.220 more chest focused. So I'm doing like an incline dumbbell bench press and then some cable flies or

00:55:06.020 maybe some dumbbell flies. And then I'm doing a great exercise, then a curl variation and another

00:55:10.820 tricep exercise variation. And then a row for the back, just get a different, and that's it. And

00:55:16.900 it's, yeah, my lower body days like are fast. Cause really there's not much there. The upper body

00:55:21.740 stays take a little bit longer. Cause like you said, you can do a little bit more variety

00:55:24.760 on the upper body. I'll have to send you my, uh, so at the end of, I added a program after radically

00:55:31.500 simple muscle came out because I did an experiment. I was at a point with my training that I was just,

00:55:37.220 I mean, I've been doing this for a long time. As my buddy says, my training partner, he says,

00:55:42.860 man, I hate training. I just hate not training more. You know, that feeling when you haven't

00:55:47.460 worked. So, but, but it's like training just got after decades, just got, I just hate it. But

00:55:53.740 so I was like, how can I make this fun? Let me, let me try something. And so I decided to see

00:55:58.920 how little I could get away with. So I just picked, you know, a couple bang for your buck

00:56:05.520 exercises. I think I did a, like a bench press, a row, a squat, a deadlift, a pullup, you know,

00:56:13.780 like a overhead press curl lateral. I just one exercise for kind of each thing. And then I just

00:56:20.800 started doing one set and I was like, I'm going to try and hit eight reps. And if I hit eight,

00:56:25.320 that's it, I'm done for the day with that exercise. And, and then my rule was, if I don't

00:56:33.000 hit eight, two workouts in a row, then I'll do a second set. I'll do like a back off set. So I go

00:56:39.300 in thinking one set and it worked for a couple of weeks. It was like, I'm getting eight every time

00:56:45.260 it's going up. This is great. And then I'd stick for two weeks. And so I'll do a back off set.

00:56:49.440 And then the week after that, it would move. And so cut the back off set. And so I'm just

00:56:54.840 literally the workouts for like 30 minutes, it's one set. And man, I'm having a great time in the

00:57:00.940 gym again. Cause again, it's that mental thing of like, look, I'm only doing one set, so I got to

00:57:05.720 make it work. But that type of program. And I always tell guys who email me about the book,

00:57:10.940 the reason that it works is because I've put in the time to figure, you know, to learn how

00:57:19.200 to grind, to learn how to like really push yourself. And that you just takes, it just takes

00:57:27.300 time to, to understand what you're capable of, you know, that you are, you have a lot more in you than

00:57:33.960 you think. But if you're a novice lifter, like you don't know how to push. So one set isn't going to

00:57:39.580 work. Cause that one set isn't going to be very stressful. But if you get to the point that like

00:57:45.040 you're at where you, you know, I've seen your deadlifts and stuff like that. And, and you're

00:57:48.960 like, look, right. You have one set. That's it. Like you will, that will be a very stressful set

00:57:55.920 for your body. And, uh, I was, I was, it was totally an experiment. I put up a YouTube video

00:58:01.020 about my new training experiment and I'm never going back. Like it's so fun. And the programming is so

00:58:07.820 simple. Like programming is people make programming so complicated. It's like, look,

00:58:14.980 here's the weight. Did you get all the reps you were supposed to? Great. Go up next time. You

00:58:19.400 didn't. Okay. Well, you need to add a little bit more stress then do a second set. Did it go up next

00:58:23.920 time? Good. Like if that's it. Yeah, no. Okay. So, um, once you get to that point where you, you know,

00:58:30.620 you're working hypertrophy workouts can become a lot of fun and it can also become really fast.

00:58:36.660 It sounds like you're kind of doing some Mike Metzner, like heavy duty type stuff there

00:58:39.540 with the one rep or one set workouts with the exercises. I'm curious if a guy's with their,

00:58:45.460 if their goal is now physique at this point in their training, when you're lifting for, you know,

00:58:50.020 strength, the goals are pretty easy. It's like, well, if I just get more weight, what are,

00:58:54.280 if you're working on physique, like what are some good physique goals or benchmarks to hit for the

00:58:59.460 average dude? Yeah. So there's, there's two. I mean, I, in my book, I talk about getting your

00:59:06.360 bicep vein, getting arm vein lean, like everybody always talks about abs, but like you're, you're

00:59:12.640 walking around with a shirt on most of the time, but like you see a dude at the coffee shop and he's

00:59:16.840 got like a big snake running down his bicep. You know, that guy's in good shape. Like it's, it's a,

00:59:23.220 it's a good, like, it's cool. So that I much prefer that metric. And that's just reaching a certain

00:59:31.080 level of body fat. So numbers wise, I always tell guys that your first goal, when you cut

00:59:37.940 is 10%, you want to get down to 10% body fat. You should get down to 10% body fat once in your life

00:59:44.520 to figure out how to do it. Right. Cause it's, it's hard. I mean, for some guys, they'd like walk

00:59:50.080 around at 8% body fat, whatever. I hate you. It's not me. It's probably, it's not you. Like most of us 0.99

00:59:57.000 are very happy. Our bodies are very happy to not be 10% body fat. So, you know, you cut down to 10%

01:00:03.860 and that's usually where you can see your abs and your lean and, and, but you kind of, you're going

01:00:07.980 to look kind of skinny with your clothes on. You look pretty ripped, you know, at the beach, but the,

01:00:13.760 once you get down there, you know, now when you bulk back up your bodies, you're going to skew more

01:00:20.460 towards muscle gain than fat gain. Cause you've, you've sort of the nutrient partitioning changes once you

01:00:25.340 get that lean. So your body's much, it's much easier to put on muscle and not as much fat once

01:00:30.620 you strip it off. So the first goal is 10% and then you're going to, and then once you get sick of

01:00:37.460 restricting, you know, of being miserable and dieting for that long, cause getting to 15% is not

01:00:45.200 hard from, but as you start getting close to 10, your brain starts messing with you. So that last

01:00:50.420 3% is, can be brutal. Of course, now we have these miracle GLP drugs that just make this whole process

01:00:58.960 like super easy, but, but yeah, you want my, my goal is you get down to 10% body fat. You can see

01:01:04.760 the veins in your arms, you know, that's a good measure and pay attention to when that comes like

01:01:10.140 mine pops up around 13%. So that's kind of my gauge do DEXA scans. So you, you want to get good at,

01:01:16.800 you know, understanding your visual cues, like of, you know, your level of leanness. So, and then

01:01:22.880 you, you're tired of that. You want to go back, start moving weight again, setting PRs, bulking back

01:01:28.520 up. Right. So we're going to bulk back up till we hit 15%. Okay. That's the, that's sort of my cap.

01:01:34.840 Of course, I'm saying that to you right now at like 18% because I have not been taking my own advice,

01:01:41.180 but traditionally you want to just cycle between 10 and 15%. That's my approach to this 15. You

01:01:48.560 still look good. You still look athletic. You know, you can still see maybe your top abs and

01:01:54.300 it's a, it's a healthy athletic physique. You'll look good with a shirt on. You'll look like a big

01:01:59.160 dude. And then every so often, you know, you, you got a vacation coming up or a high school reunion or

01:02:05.760 something. Maybe you use that as motivation to try and cut back down to 10 or 12% or something like

01:02:11.180 that. And then you just keep cycling as you want to, but, but hitting that first 10 is like hitting

01:02:17.260 those, those first barbell goals, you know, those tier one goals. Yeah. That's, that's exactly what

01:02:23.440 I've done. Like I did a pretty big cut in 2023. How lean did you get? I think I don't think I got to

01:02:29.960 10. I probably got down to 11. Okay. And then it was fun, right? Yeah. No, it was awful. It was

01:02:35.540 terrible. And then after that, I've just been bouncing back between, I've been hanging around

01:02:40.940 like 15 to 12 is where I've been hanging out at. That's great. And that's great. It seems to work

01:02:47.260 for me. And then the, the physique part, you got to keep training hard because you want to maintain

01:02:50.960 muscle mass, but a lot of it's just nutrition. It's just learning how to learn to reduce calories

01:02:55.920 and be okay with being hungry and things like that. But again, it's a skill that you develop and

01:03:00.800 once you develop it, it's pretty easy. Yeah. You learn how you learn to, you know,

01:03:06.640 how to deal with the cravings that you, you don't eliminate foods, you replace them. You know,

01:03:11.680 if you, if you have a, I mean, you know, if I have a habit of having a cocktail at the end of the night,

01:03:17.160 it's like, you don't just try and like sit on the couch and stare at the wall, like, you know,

01:03:22.520 get us, get a sparkling water and put lime juice in it and make it, you know, there's little

01:03:27.320 psychological hacks to, uh, for that last part, but man, yeah, it's, uh, it's no fun and you're

01:03:35.040 training, you know, big misconception guys have is like, well, if I'm cutting, then I'm going to get

01:03:40.240 weaker. And that is not true. I find that most guys can hang on to their strength in the gym.

01:03:47.580 I mean, at least maintain, I've had plenty of guys set PRS during a cut, but it's usually once it gets

01:03:54.820 below 15%, you know, 14, 13, then all of a sudden your strength just like falls off a cliff and you

01:04:02.020 feel like you're a hundred years old. Yeah. And then you just got to ride it out and do the best

01:04:06.280 you can to finish the cut and then, and then, and then get back to eating like a normal human.

01:04:12.360 Well, Paul, it's been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the books in

01:04:15.540 your work? Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This is fun. I'm glad we got to reconnect.

01:04:19.160 Connect. Everything is on hornstrength.com. That's my website and you can find links to books and

01:04:24.540 all my stuff there. Fantastic. Well, Paul Horn, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

01:04:28.700 Yeah. Same. Thanks for doing what you do, man. I appreciate it.

01:04:32.040 My guest today is Paul Horn. He's the author of the books,

01:04:34.260 Radically Simple Strength and Radically Simple Muscle, both available on amazon.com.

01:04:38.340 Check out his website at hornstrength.com and also check out our show notes at a1.is

01:04:42.400 slash simple muscle. We can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

01:04:49.160 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

01:04:57.220 artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives. And while you're there, sign up for

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The Art of Manliness - September 23, 2025

Build Muscle Without the B.S. — A Straightforward Guide to Size and Strength

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