Ep 237 – Should You Trust Advice from Bodybuilders?

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TRANSCRIPT

[Ben]

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Protein Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben.

[Alice]

And I’m Alice.

[Ben]

Welcome to the show. So Alice, today we’re going to be talking about what bodybuilders can learn from recreational athletes and vice versa, which I think is an interesting topic and one that came to me when I was thinking about some of the tendencies of the really competitive athletes and how sometimes actually those tendencies can end up I think biting them in the butt so to speak. And I think vice versa, there’s probably some things that kind of your everyday folks who are just looking to be fit could learn from the people who are trying to pursue physique development at the highest level.

So I’m excited to get into that. But before we do, I’d love to know what’s new with you. I know it’s the holiday season, so I’m sure you’re busy running around.

I know family is a very important thing for you and your family’s nearby. So are you looking forward to celebrating the holidays?

[Alice]

Yeah, I mean, holidays are always nice. We tend to have everything just kind of on repeat. And that’s not a bad thing.

I tell people, it’s like, it sounds kind of boring when I talk about it, but we just are very traditional. And we just me and my family are so close. It’s kind of ridiculous.

And I think that when you have that relationship with your family that, you know, you don’t really have to do anything extra special. It’s just sort of like, yeah, I’m just really looking forward to hanging out with them. I think the most exciting thing is that my sister just got married on November 15.

And they literally like a week and a half later closed on a house. And it’s not just any house. It is my grandparents old house.

And it’s been rent out. And oh my gosh, like, I’m just, she has agreed to have Christmas Eve at her house. I was hoping for Christmas Day, but I think she’s not quite unpacked yet, which is totally understandable, but so much nostalgia.

We went to go see the house together, not thinking that she would even buy it, which she’s been on the market like very casually for a long time. But that house popped up because her and I are always looking at real estate. Like it could have just as easily been me then like, oh my gosh, grandma’s house is on sale.

She found it. And I’m like, are you going to go see it? You have to bring me.

So we went and we saw it. And it was just like so emotional, at least walking up to the house, like because the outside was unchanged. So it was just very much like, whoo, as soon as we got there.

So I have that to look forward to. That’s probably the most exciting thing. I just helped her move and all that.

But what about you? How’s your new kitten?

[Ben]

Good, good. Right before this, he was trying to jump up all in my business and get up here. And I said, buddy, you’re gonna have to go lie down in the chair for the podcast.

So he’s over there, just hanging out behind me. But no, he’s good. He’s the most friendly cat that I’ve ever met.

Any stranger who comes to visit our house, if they sit on the couch, he’ll come up and just lie down in their lap and purr and give them attention. And he’s very playful. So he’s a great cat.

No complaints there. So we brought him over to my parents’ house the other day. And he got to meet my sister.

My parents were actually out of town, but the dogs were gone. So he got to explore a new environment. And he liked that.

So in terms of the holidays, yeah, it’s just going to be my immediate family, no extended family. So it’ll be kind of small. My girlfriend, so it’ll be relaxed.

But I’m always looking forward to this time of year, just if nothing else, you know, you can see that I’ve got the tree up in the background, the lights, just the vibes of the holiday season, I think, are something that we really enjoy.

[Alice]

I love that. Yeah, that’s good.

[Ben]

So I guess we can transition into our topic for today, which is about bodybuilding, tangentially. And I was thinking about this because I feel like one of the most underrated or underlooked aspects in terms of someone’s success in building muscle, losing body fat, whatever results they want to get with fitness, being consistent with their habits, is managing stress. I think stress has a huge impact on everything, really.

It has an impact on our recovery. It has an impact on our sleep. Those things impact what we do in the gym in terms of our training, digestion.

You know, if you’re stressed, you might not be digesting your food as well. And so I was thinking about how I think bodybuilders can fall into different stereotypes. But I think a lot of bodybuilders tend to be more type A, kind of neurotic with a lot of the things that they do.

And I feel like that inherently creates some stress, whereas I think the everyday person going about fitness, if they have kind of a level head and they understand that it’s more about being consistent over time and not sweating, you know, sweating the really small details, somebody who’s more of kind of like a recreational or lifestyle bodybuilder who still does a lot of the same things, but they’re not as caught up with having to be like 100% on it all the time.

Like I think a lot of bodybuilders fall into that mindset of, you know, maybe during a contest prep, they’re 100% like all in, no meals missed, like eating the same thing every day. Their routine is completely dialed in, but then they go into their off season and there’s like, there’s such a fluctuation in their habits. And you know, the, just the consistency on the day to day is not there.

So I feel like that’s one thing when I was thinking about, you know, okay, what can bodybuilders actually take away from people who they might view as like, oh, these people aren’t as, you know, aren’t doing what I’m doing on as high of a level, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t learn from other people who are maybe doing certain aspects of whatever it is that they’re doing better than them. So what do you think about that?

[Alice]

Absolutely. I think that’s a really good point. And one of the biggest like things that came to mind when I was thinking about this is like, I think lifestyle athletes are going to be better at having like more of a variety of hobbies.

I think, you know, it’s really, really easy for us to just sort of like focus in and have that, you know, have that front and center in our lives, but just having more variety of hobbies, more balance in general and just, yeah, being able to define themselves different ways. But yeah. And I think they’re just more open to just like trying new things as well.

Like, okay, this is, this is a lifestyle thing. I’m not going to do or die. So maybe we could, you know, potentially try different sports or a combination of sports and it doesn’t have to be necessarily a competitive thing.

So yeah, I think so.

[Ben]

I think even like experimenting in the gym, one thing that just came to mind for me is I feel like in every competitor’s head, there’s always a clock ticking, like time until next prep time until like, there’s always something that they’re thinking about. And there’s like this, at least I always feel this way. Like there’s this pressure on me, like, okay, there’s it’s, you know, X number of weeks, months, years until the next time I step on stage, you only have so much time, even during an off season.

I feel like that obviously during prep, that’s really amplified. So that, that can create, I think, a, a fear of missing out sort of. So like, okay, if I’m doing something it’s worked for me in the past, I’m going to continue to do that thing.

Even if experimenting with something else could potentially get me, you know, a little 1% better, or even just like kind of turning over some stones that I haven’t turned over. Okay. Let’s say somebody is training five times a week in the gym.

That’s what they’ve always done. They’re a competitive bodybuilder. Maybe their life stress starts to get really high and they would actually probably benefit from being in the gym a little bit less, having better recovery.

So training four days or three days per week. But I feel like the average bodybuilder will just kind of bear down and be like, no, I have to go in five times a week or else my results are going to be worse. And I’m a, you know, I’m a bad athlete or something like that.

Is that something that you’ve seen, or can you resonate with that at all?

[Alice]

I can resonate with it. I think there’s sort of two sides of the coin with time, because I think bodybuilders are a lot better at understanding, like this is going to be a major investment of big chunk of my life. I think whereas like someone who’s more a lifestyle kind of rolls into a sport thinking like, all right, you know, maybe six months, maybe a year in, I’m going to be like, hoping that they’re going to be like pretty high level.

Right. And pretty advanced. And when you’re a bodybuilder, like you quickly learn that, no, you’re to be like top of your sport.

Like most people have to be in this sport or, you know, 10 years, unless they were already like very, very deep into another sport and already had a lot of hypertrophy, like under their belt, just like from that, from the benefits of that training. So we are able to have, we as in like body, you know, a competitive bodybuilder, like able to like think about the long game and not be like super disappointed when six months or one year hits. And it’s like, huh, I feel like nothing’s progressed.

So we understand just like, all right, patience more, but yeah, I can see, I can see both sides of it for sure.

[Ben]

That’s definitely something that I think that the kind of gen pop folks or the more lifestyle folks could learn from competitive bodybuilders is like tempering expectations. Like if a competitive bodybuilder, maybe who’s been training for a couple of years, puts on like a couple of pounds of muscle in a year, they’re like, yes, this is the best thing ever. Let’s go.

Whereas somebody who’s maybe just getting into it. It’s like what a whole year. And I only got like four or five pounds of muscle.

But in reality, like you think about that, you think about, you know, how small some of these muscle groups are that we have four or five pounds of muscle is a lot. You’ll notice that on a physique, especially if you’re elite enough to kind of display that. So I think that kind of managing your expectations, the patience and the kind of, you know, methodical nature of bodybuilders and being able to kind of consistently show up and keep doing things like over and over for, you know, one, two, five, 10 years with the delayed gratification.

Now, of course, you know, if you’re a more lifestyle, you don’t necessarily have to have the same level of like adherence and commitment that entire time. But I do think that is something of like understanding, okay, what’s realistic for me, honestly, just understanding that over time, you’re going to have to continue to work harder in order to see results. And I think that, like you said, oftentimes people expect these big transformations, maybe social media has something to do with that, because whenever you see, yeah, I think when you see some, whether it’s a coach posting about someone that they’ve coached, or it’s somebody posting about themselves, of course, the posts that you’re seeing are the posts that have gotten a lot of traction.

You know, you’re not, it’s the classic, like survivorship bias. You’re not seeing all the people who tried and failed. And so if you have a transformation that isn’t as impressive as somebody else, of course, you’re going to think in your head, I was a failure.

Oh, I didn’t make as much progress as I could. But I really think that, again, another thing that I think the lifestyle person could probably learn from a bodybuilder is really comparing yourself to yourself, you know, looking to, you know, one, six months, a year, two years, five years ago, and seeing where you were, of course, it requires the patient to actually be consistent for that period of time. But really, like using yourself as that only metric and not looking, looking towards others, because yeah, bodybuilding, if you try to compare yourself to other people, you’re just gonna, you’re always will find someone better.

So I think that’s a, that’s a good lesson to learn as well. What do you think about that?

[Alice]

Yeah, not only will you always find someone who’s better, most of the time, you’re going to be finding people who are on PEDs. So the social media thing, and I want to like build off of a couple of things you said, experimenting, you brought up like, like being more experimenting and in the gym, I think like, yeah, a lifestyle person is going to be on social with more of a like, attitude of like, what can I learn? What new exercises can I find that look fun?

Hopefully, they’re not too, too much like, you know, I expect if I do XYZ, like this person’s program that I’m going to look exactly like them, there is a little bit of that, like, you know, complication that occurs. I think it’s a good thing to be able to be like, that looks fun. And let me go try it.

Because, you know, on the other hand, a bodybuilder is going to be very, very much like regimented into their program, they’re going to be very dedicated, their programming is probably going to be very, like steady over the years, not a whole lot of change, or maybe some isolation variety, but just having the ability and the enough attitude to just be like, I’m gonna try that and keep things fun and keep things fresh. Whether rather than being like, so so narrowed in, like focused on like, how to do this, because it’s going to get me these exercise, or these these results, according to such and such new science that came out, you know, they’re talking about like leg extensions, for example, how can we do this new variety of leg extension, it’s gonna get so many more results.

It’s like, that’s not necessarily going to apply to you as an individual. That’s how it appeared in the science, like, on average, how the average person responded.

[Ben]

I think what you’ve been talking about, and you kind of mentioned a couple times, like it could go either way, I totally think it could, because I could also see it being like a lifestyle client who wants to change things like every two seconds. In that case, they could probably learn from the bodybuilders. All right, you know, you want to try to have some consistency with the exercise that you’re doing, focus on progressive overload, getting stronger over time.

So I think reality, when you think about this, it’s not really like one versus the other. It’s like everyone’s on a spectrum, right, in terms of, you know, what their aspirations are, and what their goals are. And bodybuilders are really just somebody who have goals that are require them to be extremely consistent for long periods of time.

But I think the problem is with a lot of bodybuilders is because they hold themselves to that high of a standard, they also tend to fall into that like black or white mentality more often. So you’ll get bodybuilders who are like either completely on it or completely off it. And I think that Jeff Alberts from 3DMJ has a really good analogy when he talks about there being a dimmer switch.

And like at certain points during your bodybuilding, or certain points during your fitness journey, wherever, again, whatever your goals are, whoever you are, you may have to turn up that switch in terms of your adherence, your consistency, with your meals, with your sleep, with your training. And there are other times where you might have to turn it down a little bit, depending on how aspirational your goals are, and what it’s going to take to get there. And that doesn’t mean that you have to always have that switch turned up for everything all the time.

Maybe your training is really on point, your sleep’s really on point, but your nutrition is not as much so. Like that’s still getting you a certain level of results. And of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to like, okay, you know, can I make these improvements here and there for nutrition?

But it doesn’t have to be like, okay, I’m all in or I’m all out. Like there might be one of these levers that you can’t pull on at the time, or you know, you try your best, but it’s not as, you know, as consistent as it’s been in the past. I think it’s about knowing yourself.

Like, are you somebody who you tend to be too hard on yourself? Or are you somebody who needs to push a little bit more?

[Alice]

One thing you brought up was nutrition. I think that lifestyle athletes, like they get really excited about the gym, and that’s like such good energy. But I guess having a better understanding of like, oh, there’s a lot more that goes on, you know, with your physique, with your health, with your hypertrophy, with your performance, with your, you know, strength and power, than just in the gym, like taking it home and looking at your nutrition, looking at the total picture of your life.

[Ben]

One thing that I was thinking about earlier was bodybuilders are often very regimented about, they have this number of meals, and these are the times that they eat. And it’s very consistent day to day, because oftentimes they’re tracking certain variables, they want to have consistent inputs to get consistent outputs. I tend to find in, you know, the majority of my clients are lifestyle clients.

And I do tend to find the ones that I think are more successful, have a structure to their day, like they eat a breakfast, lunch and dinner, or whatever their kind of meal structure is at similar times, they might have a key meals that they rotate through, or they have certain habits in place, like, I’m going to get, you know, try to get this number of grams of protein at each meal, I’m going to try to eat some, you know, fruits or vegetables at each meal.

But I think that the meal timing thing, you know, in terms of like your actual results that you get, you know, like, okay, if we had two people who did an identical, you know, they had identical macros, and one person ate six meals per day, and one person ate three meals per day, and they were able to adhere to it perfectly. No, you know, there’s not going to be really any difference over the long term. But I think what happens is the consistency element, I think that when people have a, like a random meal structure, one day, they eat two meals, the next day, they eat, you know, six with like some snacks and some, you know, they go out to eat, and then the next day, it’s completely stuff they prepped when they’re when their schedule is just a little bit more erratic.

I think it’s hard to when it’s hard to assess like, okay, am I actually making the progress that I want to be making? But two, I think there, it just ends up being like their energy levels are a little bit more fluctuating and all over their place, their sleep is a little bit more all over the place. So I feel like sometimes bodybuilders, you know, the reason that they have a similar routine day to day is because it provides consistency for energy for training performance for sleep.

And so I think that if you’re somebody who maybe you are kind of ticking a lot of these boxes, but you still feel like there are areas that you can improve upon, I do think that like consistency with it applies to your sleep routine to you know, waking up and going to bed at the similar times every day. I think that getting your body into a rhythm and a routine, it doesn’t mean you have to live like a robot and every day has to be exactly the same. You don’t have to be perfect with it.

But I do think that a lot of people could probably take something away from that.

[Alice]

Yeah, no, you’re making me think of social media now because I a lot of things in my feed at the moment are like bodybuilders living on Groundhog Day, bodybuilders being very similar to like autistic folks, the neurodivergence of like thriving in like the same thing day after day after day. But I mean, you know, I think it’s cute. I think it’s funny that people poke at that.

But I think it’s also like something that’s a good thing. Because if you look at, I’m just gonna dark out if you look at something like child psychology, you know, I always think of I have a really good friend in Maryland. And she I always talked to her about her kids.

And she’s really interested in psychology and psychology stuff. And she’s just like, kids will just really thrive when they have this really, really set schedule. And yet constantly as a parent, you’re trying to like keep them on the schedule while this child is like, constantly fighting.

No, no, no, I want to stay up late. I want to eat now. I don’t want to eat later.

I want to do this earlier. I don’t want to do this at all. I want to completely go off of my routine.

Why do I have to do XYZ? So it’s like this human nature to be wanting to stray away from that and think, oh, it’s so much life is so much better when we don’t have this, this formal structure. But at the same time, as soon as that child deviates from the routine, like it’s just a matter.

It’s just like a ticking time bomb. When are they going to like explode with like a tantrum, like a fit of rage, or just complete meltdown. We thrive when we have these schedules when we have, especially our bedtimes, our mealtimes.

And so it’s a good thing. And it’s not just kids. Everyone needs that.

So taking at least a little bit of that, of course, having the flexibility to have a social life and go out to eat sometimes is great. But you really, really want to get ahead in your sport. Like the more routine that you can get, like you’re going to have a really good stretch.

Because these strengths, like your progress is not like day in and day out, especially in bodybuilding, right? Like I’m always looking at my progress photos, probably like two or three months apart. And so that’s how much I judge like, all right, I’ve had a good like stretch.

But if I’m not on that routine for that two or three months, you can forget it. That’s out the window. Like it’s like, oh, well, this was like, fine.

I didn’t lose muscle, but I didn’t really have any gain. So I don’t know, do you experience the same thing?

[Ben]

Yeah, I think that routine doesn’t, like you said, routine doesn’t mean that it has to be all, all the time similar. And you know, year round, like you could build into your routine that you go out to eat on, you know, Friday and Saturday nights or whatever it is, like, it doesn’t mean that you have to track every macro to the gram, you can’t ever like engage in social activities, you know, you could, you could have a solid routine and not necessarily, you know, be tracking, or you, you know, maybe you are in a bodybuilding prep, and you need to track, you know, there’s so many different scenarios where you can still create consistency, and the level of diligence and the level of accuracy that you need to have with your habits can vary.

So I thought about when you’re at the end of a contest prep, and you’re transitioning into your off season, you go, a lot of people will go from like having this extreme structure, where everything is the same every single day, to I remember feeling this at the end of my prep, I’m like, I feel like I’m living in jail. And I don’t want to, I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to like live Groundhog Day anymore.

Like I’m getting tired of it. Like after doing it for, you know, eight, 10 months, I’m like, I’m sick of this, I need some like spontaneity in my life. But if you do that too quickly, and you get completely away from your routine, so you know, you stop doing your steps or your cardio, maybe you, you know, stop going to the gym as much, you start eating, you know, food, just like, okay, I’m just gonna eat whatever I feel like eating, and there’s no structure, then you start to feel pretty crappy.

And I think that’s where people struggle in the post competition window, because the goal, the immediate goal is gone, they are kind of just like doing whatever they feel like doing. And then oftentimes, that ends up doing is decreasing their self efficacy, because they start, you know, gaining weight too fast in a way that doesn’t feel good. Of course, you have to gain some weight, you know, post competition, but you know, just basically, a lot of the habits that they’ve built a lot of the really solid habits that you could still maintain, just like, okay, I’m going to still have these habits, but I’m going to eat more, and I’m going to recover.

Like, like, that’s, that’s the kind of the quote, unquote, ideal way of doing it. But again, you kind of have to go through that process and really learn that before you, you know, before you know better, like you before you, you know, realize, oh, okay, you know, I probably should, you know, not have this extreme of all structure to absolutely no structure. But you know, myself, like, that’s even something that I struggled with, and that I felt like I learned of, like, okay, you know what, you need to give yourself some time to transition, like, you’re not going to get back to the way you were doing feeling in your, you know, peak off season, a couple weeks after your competition, it’s going to take months.

So I don’t know if you can, if you can relate to that.

[Alice]

Yeah, I mean, coming off of competition prep, you just want, like, the taste of food for the sake of having the taste of food. You feel like you haven’t, like, eaten anything enjoyable in, like, a decade, it feels, it feels like life has slowed down. That’s the time when you want to rebel against your structure and your routine the most.

And it’s really too bad, too, because when, like, I’ve noticed this about myself, you know, in my nutrition, there are certainly times when I’m further away from, like, the perfect nutrition adherence. And now, like, right now, a lot of times, if I’m feeling burnt out from nutrition, it’s like, all right, in my head, I am keeping track of my protein. And then I’ll write down a couple things, if there’s something different that I’m eating and being like, all right, how far am I straying away from my calories, but like, there’s not a whole lot of logging that’s going on right now.

But I’ve logged for a long time. So I think that’s why I don’t think everyone can get away with that. But it’s working for me.

But the frustrating thing about that is, like, when I am really dialed in, and I really am, like, hitting very, very close to the same calories every day, hitting those macronutrients, like, body recomposition, like happens very, very quickly. And that’s when it’s like, I start to see the most definition coming back. And so, you know, that’s why I talk to people so much about, like, the importance of that nutrition consistency, like, your body is going to do some magical things.

If you can just provide it the exact same resources every day, it’s like your body is this mastermind. And it’s like, wonderful, magical things start happening. And that’s when you look your best.

So I mean, even if like, going back to coming off of competition prep, you know, I’m, I’m a big fan of like, recovery diet, not reverse diet. And, you know, setting your calories at a place where it’s manageable for you, you’re not feeling like you’re super in denial, but trying your best to like, stay consistent with that, like, the better you can hit that, like, of course, we’re all supposed to gain a little bit of weight, but it’s gonna look really, really good if you can just start magically hitting like that higher goal. So did you experience that?

Like, what was that like for you?

[Ben]

I do think that there is an element of like, the more consistent you are with everything that you do, the more predictable your results come. I think it just becomes like, what are the tradeoffs in terms of what that consistently consistency does? Like if it’s getting to the point where like you said, you’re not able to engage in social occasions that much, okay, maybe that starts to be like, I’m going to shoot for 90 to 95% instead of like 100% all the time.

So I think it’s always like a needs analysis and a needs assessment of like, how extreme is my goal? What is it going to take to get there? And what are the habits that it’s going to take?

And sometimes having a coach actually can help to assess that as well, because you might not know exactly what it is to get there. Something that is a little bit, you know, it’s related to this conversation, but it’s not necessarily nutrition is I was thinking about training earlier too. And I think that’s something that lifestyle folks can take from bodybuilders is the training intensity that they use in the gym.

I think that’s a huge one because most bodybuilders that you wash, they are taking their sets, you know, near or to failure. A lot of their sets doesn’t mean every set has to be taken to that level. And there’s certainly spectra, you know, there’s a wide spectrum of how intense people train and how crazy people get in the gym.

But I do think that having those kinds of slow grindy reps, getting close to fair, getting close to, you know, being comfortable with discomfort and a little bit of, you know, pain, you know, not the bad kind of pain as if like you have an injury, but you know, a little bit of burning in the muscle, you know, as it gets close to the end of the set, that’s something that I think that, you know, most lifestyle folks could probably benefit from is just learning how to train very hard.

So I’d love to know your thoughts on that.

[Alice]

Yeah, there’s again, there’s so much variety in the person, but that that makes me think of like, you know, I want to talk to a lot of clients about, you know, trying to get close to failure and trying their best, you know, to have lift more reps, lift heavier weight week over week over week. There are plenty of people who take that as if you’re not lifting a new PR each and every week, and that means I’m failing, then that means I’m not, you know, making progress this week. And I think, yeah, I think bodybuilders have a good understanding that like, yeah, you’re still pushing, you’re still like, really, you’re trying to get as close to failure as possible.

But I think they also have a good understanding, like not every week is going to be like this gold star workout. And checking the box is the most important thing. It’s really easy for lifestyle athletes to get really discouraged if they have a bad week in the gym.

I know some of my female athletes like getting like, discouraged when it’s when it’s their time of the month. And it’s like, I just can’t do this. Why am I even showing up?

And it’s like, nah, most of your success is going to be just checking that box and your consistency. So you can go in there, it can be a sucky workout, you’re still stimulating that lean muscle tissue, like you’re still encouraging hypertrophy over the long run. So knowing the difference, again, it’s still just like you said, it’s a spectrum.

[Ben]

No, absolutely. And I think that this comes down to a misunderstanding often of what progressive overload actually means. I think people often have it reversed.

It’s like, okay, if I don’t add a rep, or if I don’t add weight this week, I’m not growing any muscle, like nothing’s happening, I have to do more, or like the workout was a waste. When in reality, it’s kind of the inverse, you provide a stimulus to your muscle. So you work it hard in the gym, you let it adapt or cover and grow.

But by the time you come back in for that next workout, it might not have grown enough or adapted enough for you to be able to add a little bit of load. So what do you do, you repeat that performance, you know, you try to get the same number of reps with the same weight, if you can, if you can get get more, great, you know, go ahead and take that. But if you can’t, or even if it’s a rep less, that might just mean yeah, there was a performance fluctuation, you haven’t had enough time to adapt.

But if you keep providing that consistent stimulus week after week after week, eventually, you’ll get to the point where you have to use more weight. If you think about the example of, you know, let’s say you decide you’re going to use the 20 pound dumbbells for bicep curls. If you were to do that for three or six months straight, however many reps you were getting at the start, if you were to do that same, you know, number of reps at the end, that would no longer be providing that same kind of stimulus.

And so you would have to add more reps, or you would have to add more weight. And that’s really what progressive overload is about. It’s about, you know, over time, you want that weight or reps to be going up, because you’re getting close enough to failure, that you know, you’re providing providing that whereas like, okay, if you stick with the same, you know, weight and the same number of reps over and over, which a lot of people do, it’s like they go into the gym, and they, they know that this is the weight that I always do, this is the reps that I always do, but they’re not thinking about how intense their sets are. And so that’s something that I encourage people to do is, you know, try to push yourself a little bit, see if you can do a little bit more.

And I think oftentimes, people can and there is, I think, sometimes a fear of injury. That’s, that’s one thing that I think happens a lot is like, I’m afraid that I’m going to hurt myself if I’m training really hard. So you can get people on like selectorized machines.

I think that’s a really great way to teach people like, it’s okay, if you fail a rep, like nothing bad is going to happen. If you’re doing a bicep curl, like, okay, if you can’t, if you fail a curl, you just don’t get the weight up and you drop the weight, like it’s not a, not a big deal. And I think that bodybuilders, again, thinking about this, like idea of there being a spectrum, bodybuilders are so extreme.

Oftentimes, I find that they will push through pain, they will push through injury, because they feel like I have to do this in order to to get good results or, you know, screw my pain, I just I’m going to do whatever it takes to get the physique that I want. But then, you know, years down the line, they end up with these chronic injuries that prevents them from training as long as they could. And I think sometimes lifestyle athletes, you know, they can take it too far where they get a little bit afraid or timid in the gym.

But they’re pretty good at listening to their body and saying, you know, okay, this is, you know, this exercise is bothering me, or, you know, this is my knees been bothering me for a little bit. And again, I think a coach is really helpful here of like, okay, here’s what we can do to modify things, you know, modify the exercise or the range of motion or the loading to be able to still work those muscles without making your pain any worse, and hopefully kind of recovering that slowly over time. I’m curious to know what you’ve seen with the people that you work with in terms of like, do you find people are more on the spectrum of like, I’m scared, kind of like, I don’t really want to push that hard, I’m worried about getting injured, or people who are more pushing through or kind of a mix of both.

[Alice]

For the most part, you know, I don’t know if this is just the way I talk to people, or maybe if I’m just not picking up on it, I don’t find that most people are scared. The most fear I think out of any lifts are probably like deadlifts. We do a lot of discussing deadlifts, and what if I hurt my back?

And so there’s a lot of conversation around that. But the problem is, you know, a lot of people don’t know the difference between like, yeah, I’m pushing to failure and experiencing like, you know, that discomfort, right, of pushing hard versus like, oh, I’ve just, you know, hurt some connective tissues. And this is bringing me back to my time when I did my internship at YMCA.

And I talked to so many, it was mostly men that I’m talking to, of course, they’re like, the bros in the gym. And I remember talking to this one guy that he’s talking to me about his troubles with his elbow. And I got the impression from the from our conversations that he’s been dealing with this elbow injury for many, many years and never saw any kind of help, never saw any kind of like, like corrective exercise, didn’t even like Google what he can do about it.

He just continued pushing through that pain. And a lot of a lot of his elbow was very non-functional now. And yeah, that’s something that when you get when you think that, oh, I’m getting serious about the gym, the whole no pain, no gain thing, like that’s a big misunderstanding.

And like, it’s so important to know the difference. Like, no, that’s my elbow hurting. That’s not my muscle being like, I’m tired.

I’m ready to fail. So trying to like, distinguish that and having those conversations, I think really, really like calms a lot of those fears. Yeah.

What else? With, with, uh, I want to talk about like how advanced people get too, because again, you know, you’re talking about someone doing a bicep curl for like six months and maybe not ever going up. Like if you, it’s hard because the more and more advanced you get, the longer you’ve been going at this, like the longer those gaps are going to become.

And it’s, it’s really hard, especially on your own. Again, another advantage of having a coach of knowing like, okay, when is it time to change things? Because we are plateauing.

When is it like, when is it just like, I’m just very advanced and I’ve just sort of capped out on this, on this particular lift at this time. So yeah, it’s not always like possible to go up. Like week after week after week, like happened in the beginning.

Right. And this is, there’s, there’s pros and cons a lot. I think everyone should always be logging their workouts, but if it comes at the expense of who you are opening, like say your phone app or your journal and being like, Oh, the last week I did, you know, this many reps for this much weight.

And then you take that as like your instruction and you’re not even pushing.

[Ben]

No, I think you’re spot on something that you said kind of earlier on, and that was talking about deadlifts and something that I was thinking about was, I think that that’s one of the trickiest exercises for people differentiate like pain versus their muscles being stimulated. Because sometimes when you get a pump in your spinal erectors, it feels like almost painful, like the, cause you kind of have to walk a little bit funny after that. And you’re like feeling a little bit like stiff almost.

And I think that sometimes that can inspire a little bit of anxiety in folks. But I also come back to the fact if people are nervous about that, I, you know, I tell them that actually, you know, if you are concerned about having lower back injuries, the gym is probably the place that you need to be because that’s where you’re going to strengthen those muscles. So when you are out in the real world and you’re picking up, you know, helping to move the couch or picking up a box, you have those muscles developed and you are less likely to run into those acute injuries.

Like there is a great function to it. I think that sometimes just reminding people of that, that, you know what, you know, if you’re maybe a little bit more timid or, you know, you’re concerned about this is this pain or is this not, you know, strengthening our muscles and our bones and our joints and all of that in the gym is one of the best things that we can do. This is completely unrelated, but kind of the last thing that I had written down here was, was food variety.

I think that’s something that probably differs a good deal between bodybuilders and more lifestyle folks. You know, bodybuilders are known for kind of eating. Like I’ve known some stories of people ate like the same eight foods during their contest prep for like months and months and months and months and months.

And, you know, we, we know pretty, pretty solidly at this point that in terms of your gut health, that eating a wide variety of, you know, plant foods is going to be beneficial. Of course, that doesn’t mean that, you know, you’re going to necessarily tolerate all of, you know, all those plant foods the same. So, you don’t start with small amounts of different things, but I do think that that’s something that like it’s probably the lifestyle person, you know, Hey, we’re going to manage, I’m going to shop seasonally for my fruit and veg.

You know, this is in season, I’m going to get more of this. And now this is in season, I’m going to get more of this. Whereas the bodybuilder, I think sometimes gets attached to like these certain foods that they’ve like always kind of eaten.

Like, Oh, I’ve gotten good results. And they, they correlate these things, right? Like I’ve gotten good results.

I’ve eaten these foods. It must be because I ate these foods that I got good results, but it’s like, okay, you know, you could have had blueberries or raspberries or blackberries or strawberries, and it probably would have been the same no matter which one that you ended up using. So I think that understanding that, Hey, you know, it might be good to, okay, let’s say I have a vegetable at my dinner every night.

It might be good to rotate that, you know, you could eat the same vegetable every day for a week for dinner, but then next week, you might want to rotate that vegetable and the following week, you might want to rotate it again. And it doesn’t mean you can’t come back to those kinds of favorites that you have or keep those in the rotation more often. But I think that being a little bit more diverse, that includes going out to eat too, right?

Going out to eat, I think is a great opportunity to try new foods that you wouldn’t typically try. And also like ways of preparing them. So maybe, you know, you’re not a huge fan of tofu, but you go and you try, oh, these restaurants, wow, like they make tofu taste so good.

And now you’ve tried it a couple of different ways. And it gives you some ideas of how you can incorporate it into your diet and your nutrition. And, you know, those experiences of, or maybe even like going to someone’s house and they’re cooking a meal for you.

Like those things, I think, expose us to new ideas. And then we get to include more diversity in our diet, which I think is good for our overall health.

[Alice]

I think the last thing that I had, and I should have completed my thought before, but it just slipped my mind. So thinking about like form checks and stuff for injury prevention, I think so many lifestyle athletes are very afraid of injury. And at the same time, they’re also very afraid of feedback.

Being willing to record yourself in the gym or being willing to have a professional there with you to help you through those things, I think is going to be super beneficial for you. And I know it’s a lot of just like feeling like, oh, I feel embarrassed for being a beginner, but you know, putting in that like investment in the beginning is just going to help you so much down the line as far as injury prevention is concerned. Like, yeah, don’t, don’t be too, try not to be too afraid of feedback, whether that be from a coach or even sometimes, now this could be hit or miss, but sometimes people, other people in the gym might say something to try to help you out.

And that makes some people very afraid, right? But I mean, I’ve had some really good experiences where actually the people coming and talking to me were other personal trainers, just training and not being with a client and just wanting to strike a conversation, help me just because they’re good people. And so just, I don’t know, maybe feeling like, you know, a little braver about that and feeling like it’s okay to be learning and just always being very diligent about your form checks and stuff.

I think that’s something that lifestyle could learn.

[Ben]

Yeah. Cause I think bodybuilders from my experience, they’re a lot more likely to be recording themselves in the gym, checking it over, like, okay, am I actually trying to, am I stimulating the muscles that I think I’m stimulating is my intensity on point. So you can check not only your technique, but am I actually training as close to failure as I think, because you might feel like it’s really hard, but then you actually look at your rep speed and it’s pretty similar, you know, from your first up to your last rep.

And so I think that, yeah, what bodybuilders get right a lot of the time, I think is recording their training, being very diligent with that, checking themselves, making sure that they’re doing what they think that they’re doing. So I think that that’s probably a good one to end on. It’s been, yeah, it’s been a good discussion with you, Alice.

I always enjoy our talks. I think they usually relate to bodybuilding in some way. And it’s nice to kind of feel like, you know, we’ve shared similar experiences.

And also I think that there’s something that I’ve heard a couple of times recently and just people being like, you know what, I, you know, it’s like, I’m not a competitive bodybuilder. So this doesn’t necessarily apply to me, but I think that there’s always something to learn and vice versa. If you’re a competitive bodybuilder, that doesn’t mean that you have nothing to learn from somebody who is like a recreational athlete.

Like they have, they might be doing some things better than you, but because you do, you know, these things with more consistency, then you feel like you’re, you know, above that, or that’s not relevant to you. But I think we all have something to learn from other people.

[Alice]

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s a good place to end. Thank you, Ben.

[Ben]

Okay. So everyone, if you’ve enjoyed this episode of Vegan Proteins and Muscles by Brussels Radio, please be sure to share it on your stories. That would be super appreciated.

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And then outside of that, if you’re looking to get in shape and you feel like you could benefit from having somebody in your corner who can provide personalized recommendations, check in with you, provide that emotional support, accountability, that’s what we do at Vegan Proteins. All of our coaches here, we work with clients to help them build muscle, lose body fat, any goals related to their fitness that they might have. So if you’re interested in that, there will be links down in the description below.

You can also head over to veganproteins.com and check out our services there. On social media, you can find all the coaches at Vegan Proteins, at Muscles by Brussels, at Vegan Proteins Alice, at Ben A. Mitchell, and at Soyboy Fitness Coaching.

And thank you so much again for listening to another episode. I’m Ben.

[Alice]

Alice.

[Ben]

And we’ll catch you in the next one. Bye everyone.