This question has persisted throughout training for thousands of years.

-Take Neurovolt and you will have the cognitive energy for high volume lifting AND thinking.

Its a reasonable question and line of thinking. In most athletic endeavors, more training produces a higher level of athlete.

Whether the training is perfectly efficient is secondary. For classic competition activities, for example running, to run far you must practice running far.

In fighting, the more you fight, the better you become.

But what about growing muscle tissue?

The volume argument has run continuously since Jones started selling Nautilus machines in 1970.

Arthur Jones said you could do one set and everyone else was doing junk training.

Mike Mentzer adopted this philosophy and it turned into Heavy Duty. Dorian Yates later took up the mantle of intensity. So did Dante Trudel, with the argument the long term strength gains with big weights matters most of all.

These are not bad arguments.

But on the opposite side, there is also the undeniable reality that the majority of bodybuilders, both natural and enhanced, and at the highest levels of competition, they did A LOT of sets.

From the High Volume position, each hard set is a growth signal.

Signals accrue the more sets you do, so the lifter putting 20 quality sets into a muscle each week sends 4 times the signal of the man doing 5, and the size difference over time reflects it.

The “science” does directionally support this.

Schoenfeld, Ogborn, and Krieger pooled 15 studies in 2017 and found a graded dose response.

Lifters doing 10 or more weekly sets per muscle gained measurably more size than lifters under 5, and each added set bought additional growth.

Radaelli’s 2015 trial ran men through 6 months at 1, 3, or 5 sets per exercise.

The 5-set group built the most muscle at nearly every site measured.

Schoenfeld tested it again in 2019 on trained lifters, the population that supposedly needs less, and the group running 30 to 45 weekly sets grew the most quad and triceps thickness of the three conditions.

Thats not to say that everyone should be doing 30 sets, but double digit sets is historically Common

Silver Age natural bodybuilders often followed full body routines and did 10-20 sets per muscle per week. They had specialization routines which consisted of double digit sets for each muscle.

Steve Reeves trained total body 3x a week, for 2-3 hours. Never did less than 10 sets a week per muscle

Vince Gironda considered 12-15 sets the ideal.

Every Mr. Olympia up to Dorian Yates followed a high volume program, as did every Mr. Olympia after him.

In the natural bodybuilding world, the majority of champions follow moderate to higher volume programs.

To say high volume training does not work is bullshit.

It CLEARLY works and has worked for decades.

Is High Volume the BEST way to train though?

This the question that starts stupid arguments.

Training is N=1 because

A) Its hard to define “best”. The reality of genetics means that some people will ALWAYS be low responders to training stimulus.

Best for them means finding a stimulus they can adapt to.

And within this “hardgainer” population, you have people who respond best to low volume and get overwhelmed and dont recover from too much volume.

Then you also have people who only respond to high volume and have stimulus threshold level that must be crossed before they grow.

You then also have the Moderate Middle, people with “average” genetics.

You have people that excel with lighter weights. You have people that can grind out super heavy singles. You have differences in structure, muscle bellies, tendons, joints.

Then you have the FREAKS. They grow from anything, and it doesnt seem to matter how they train, because they adapt regardless. Most every Olympia champion had freak genetics before they ever took steroids.

B) The body changes over time. As people get bigger, stronger, more kinesthetically intelligent, their training evolves. There is also the fact the changes in stimulus are needed to keep adapting, and this can can come from manipulation of volume, intensity, and rep ranges. There is no set science to this, its an N=1 art form

C) Recovery capacity can and does increase. There is a false belief that your ability to recover from resistance training is finite. This is untrue. Similar to aerobic training, the body can handle larger volumes over time. Does this mean more muscle tissue? Maybe it does, provided training is intelligent. Someone who has never trained can be tired from 6 moderate sets for a muscle. Someone who has trained for 20 years and is stronger could do 18 sets. Do they NEED to do 18 sets to grow? Not necessarily, but it is TRUE that they are capable of higher output and can recover from more training.

D) personality plays a huge role. Some people love the concept of high intensity and are drawn to practice it. Others are not. Some try it and quit. Others stay with it for many years.

E) the body ages over time. Training age shifts it, sleep shifts it, a stressful quarter at work shifts it, and 40-year-old recovery is not 25-year-old recovery. The man who grew on 20 sets at 28 may be handling only 10 at responder at 50. Or maybe he trained higher intensity when he was young, and now trains higher volume, more moderate weights being older.

F) Response to training is fat tailed. This where the bell curve model of thinking is misleading. When you actually TRAIN clients, and have trainees (Ive had tens of thousands who have used my programs), you realize learn that EVERY training style works, and that unusual adaptive responses will happen. Ive had people who sent me results of putting on 20lbs of muscle of from low, moderate, high volume, high frequency, low frequency, 3 hours a week, 6 hours a week, and every mix thereof. You dont KNOW until you try something.

That's the whole practical lesson of N=1

When a trait is bell-shaped, the average is a reliable prescription and you can follow it.
When it has a long tail, the average tells you where to start and nothing more, because the tail is populated enough that you might be in it.

The exercise science research gives us the mean, and it gives a start point. We know that about 4 sets is the minimum. About 10 sets is the middle.

But only your personal experience tells you whether you're a center-of-the-curve responder or a tail case, and there's no way to know but to run the dose, do a program, and see what results you get.

Ancient Greek athletes did not train randomly, and their training was as effective as any method that exists to today.

the Acient Geeks loved performance enhancement and definitely would have used NeuroVolt before competition

The model that developed over many centuries was a 4 day training split called a Tetrad

Day 1-Light Training

Day 2-Heavy Training

Day 3-Rest with very light training

Day 4-Moderate Training

This was not always strictly followed, and many athletes did not use it at all and instead a favored what we would call a “peaking” program today, where they’d train easy and then ramp up training intensity up until the competition, 

But regardless, the fact that periodization exists shows they clearly understood that the body required rest and recovery, and their training was not a random process, it was intentional and foresight and consideration went into it. 

1. Progressive overload-this principle was well understood and for those athletes that needed immense strength and power, resistance training was used 

2. Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands-This was also well understood. Different athletes naturally required different training to excel at their given sport
   
   

3. Cross Training-Every athlete cross trained. Running was done by every kind of athlete, as was wrestling. No matter how specialized an athlete was, they never neglected a basic level of general physical preparation
   
   

4. Resistance Training with different intensities-Light hand weights were used (weighing up to 25lbs), as well as heavy stones (used to deadlift and atlas stone style lifts). Much like I advocate today, the Ancient greeks used different lifting intensities to fully develop their athleticism. They did not only do “low reps” or “high reps” they did ALL the reps
   
   

5. Functional Training-Everything the Ancient Greeks did have to WORK IN PRACTICE, NOT IN THEORY. Their training was effective because if something did not work, it would not be practiced, period.
   
   

All Athletes Trained According for essential athletic abilities 

• They trained to run and sprint 

• They trained to lift heavy weights and carry them

• They trained to strike and to wrestle

• They trained to throw objects (throwing stones was a war tactic in fact)

• They trained to condition the arms for endurance (based on how often they fought each other, this is sensible)

• They trained the grip and the back

Training high frequency

You will train on a 6 day training schedule. But you have the option of taking a rest day whenever you NEED to and choose to. Its 6 days of training, but those days are not restricted to a one week time frame. 

That means some weeks you might train 6 days in a row, other weeks you might train 3 days, rest one day, train 2 days, rest a day, and so on and so forth. 

I am trusting you in your ability to regulate your own recovery each week, and giving you permission to take a rest when you feel you need to do. 

This program does NOT use any barbells, or any machines. 

This is quite unique. The only equipment you will be using is Dumbbells, kettlebells, and medicine balls, along with your bodyweight. 

Why no barbell and no machines?  Because that is not what the Ancient Greeks trained with. They had weights that were analogous to dumbbells, they lifted heavy stones and did throws, they performed many calisthenic exercises, but there was absolutely nothing they did that was lifting a metal pole with weights attached to it, nor did they have anything resembling machines in their training. 

This program can be done in a home gym easily provided you have dumbbells and pullup and dip bars. You will also need a suspension trainer. This means a TRX, or something similar. You can build your own suspension trainer for very little money if a TRX is too expensive. 

This program uses ALL rep ranges

Every workout in this program has you do explosive movements, heavy movements, and high rep movements. You can expect to see marked differences in your athletic capacity within a few weeks. 

This said, BE CAUTIOUS

If you have not jumped or sprinted in years, be very conservative with these exercises. I am trusting you in your ability to AUTOREGULATE your training, meaning that you can make your own workout adjustments and not injure yourself. 

This program WILL build Muscle, Strength, and Power

The Ancient Greeks did not train the body as a collection of parts, they trained it as a whole organism. Power came from the legs, the back, the shoulders. You can see in the statues of their athletes how strong they were, they trained for pure performance, the aesthetics were a manifest effect of the training. 

This program will do the same for you. 

Each Workout in This program consists of 4 exercises

• An explosive movement, done for very low reps with a focus on power

• A heavy exercise, done for low to moderate reps. 

• A  supplemental exercise that builds muscle for the prior two movement 

• A pump movement that is high reps and works a corresponding muscle group
  
  

If you would like to add in EXTRA exercises, you are free to do so, BUT...do not ask me about you can add in extra exercises. 

Once you begin changing a program, it is YOUR program, not mine. 

How Long to Do the Program…?

The Program model of training Power, Strength, Hypertrophy, you can use this model the rest of your life. It is infinitely adaptable and can be adjusted to suit many different purposes. 

In regards to the length of the program, I firmly believe that you could run this program and learn to customize for practically FOREVER. While my other programs I suggest following for 12-16 weeks, this one you can use essentially life long. It is designed to be AUTOREGULATED, meaning you adjust it as needed based on your energy levels and needs. It is not a program you will plateau on so long as you adjust exercises and get the necessary recovery. 

Training Day, and Recovery…

You have 6 training days in total. These days DO NOT need to all be done in one week. 

If you want to train 6 days a week, you can, but the program is designed as a “rolling schedule”, meaning the training days can go past the traditional 7 day time frame.

So depending on how many rest days you want to take, you can train 4 to 5 to 6 days a week, while following a 8 or 9 or 10 day training schedule.

Because of muscular and coordination overlap between the workouts, you will NOT lose “gains”, if you follow a 10 day training schedule versus a 7 day.

. In a given month, you can complete the workouts 3-4 times.

Remember that all results come from RECOVERY.

Recovery means you SLEEP ENOUGH and EAT ENOUGH. If either of these things are lacking, your results from this training will be lackluster at best. You cannot negotiate recovery. You either get enough, or you are under recovered and your “gains” will be compromised. 

The Hercules Program 

DAY 1 – Swing Day

A) Box Jumps-Perform 5 sets 3 jumps.
Take 1-2 minutes rest between. Start with a LOW box that you know you can jump to. Elevate the height of the box with each set.
If you do not have boxes, you can do standing vertical jumps in place, reaching as high as you can upwards. 

Always land softly and do not crash your landings. 

B) Heavy KB Swing – 5 sets of 10 reps
If you do have a Kettlebell, you can make a T-handle that you can load with plates. 

Or you can perform DB swings.
Your heavy swings should be ¼ to ½ your bodyweight. This is an explosive movement. Rest 1-2 minutes between sets 

C) Posterior Chain Building– 50-60 total working reps in 2-5 sets
For this exercise, you have options.

The first is bodyweight 45 Degree Hyperextensions. Try 2-3 sets of 15-25 reps each.
The second, a bodyweight GHR if you have access to one of those (do 5 sets of 5-10 if you have one of these). 

The third, a horizontal Back Extension machine. 2-5 sets of 50-60 total reps. 

Lastly, you could do perform 2-3 sets of 1 minute each of isometric supermans.
The goal with all these exercises is to work the glutes, hamstrings, and spinal erectors together. 

D) Leg Curl 4 sets of 10-20 reps
You can use a seated leg curl, a lying leg curl, a TRX leg curl, a stability ball leg curl, a bodyweight leg curl...any kind of leg curl. 

Whichever you use, do working sets for high reps. This movement is for the lower hamstrings and strengthens the attachments in the back of the knee and the lower leg. 

DAY 2 – Press Day

A) DB Push Press - 5 sets of 5 reps
The focus with these is not how heavy the weight is, but how heavy can be while be EXPLOSIVE. Your reps should be crisp and powerful, not grinding and losing your balance while struggling to lockout the weights. Start light and ramp up your sets, with the last 2-3 sets being the heavy sets

B) Standing Alternating DB Overhead Press with Neutral Grip – 3 sets of 10-15 reps
You will use the same weight for all sets. Press one side, press the other side. This exercise is for time under tension, and as its done standing, your core and entire body stays engaged and gets trained. A small amount of momentum is acceptable to get all the necessary reps in. 

C) Bodyweight Rows-5 sets of 10-20 reps
These can be done with rings, in a squat rack, a smith machine, or with a TRX. My preferred version is with a TRX, with your feet elevated on a low box. Start at whatever level you need to. If sets of 20 reps becomes doable, add weight to your sets and perform heavy sets of 8-10 reps. 

D) Deltoid Raises+Bicep Curls Pump Circuit
This is a circuit of exercises done back to back to back
Seated DB Front raise-15 reps
Seated DB lateral Raise-15 reps
Seated DB Hammer Curl-20 reps (use a heavier weight than you used for the delt raises)
Perform all exercises without rest in between, break for 1 minute, then repeat the circuit for a total of 3-4 times. 

DAY 3 – Lunge Day

A) Broad Jump-Perform 5 sets of 3 jumps. 

Soft landing on all jumps. Start with an easy jump, then increase the power and distance over the sets. 

B) Weighted ATG Lunge with Heel Elevated–5 sets of 8 reps
Start with bodyweight, and gradually add weight every set, the last 2 sets will be the heaviest set. If you can perform the exercise on flat ground, do so, but I suggest starting by elevating the front foot 2-4 inches off the ground, you can do this easily by stacking two 45lb plates on top of each other, or using a low box. 

The first set is ALWAYS bodyweight. Add weight each set in a manner appropriate to your level of strength.
Example, bodyweight, then 10lb DBs, then 15lbs, then 20lbs, then last set 25lbs. 

C) DB Walking Lunge-3 sets of 10 steps per leg
Perform these with a GLUTE emphasis, be sure to watch the accompanying video. Use the same weight for all sets. Quality of movement takes precedence over the weight. Each step should be smooth and controlled, and you should be balanced the entire time 

D) 3 sets of seated Calf Raises, 3 sets of Standing 1-leg Calf Raise

Seated Calf Raises are to be done first. 3 sets of 20, 15, 10 reps, increasing the weight each set. Full descend and come up as high as possible on the ball of the foot. No momentum. 

For standing 1-leg calf raise, 3 sets of 10 reps each leg. When that becomes easy, add weight by holding a DB in one hand. Use the other hand for balance.

DAY 4 – Dip Day

A) Medicine Forward Throw- Perform 5 sets of 3 reps
Ideally you have a wall you can launch a medicine ball into. 

If you do not have a wall, you could alternatively go outside and do medicine ball throws, and simply walk to the medicine ball and pick it up after each throw. 

If that is not possible either, perform plyometric push-ups, 5 sets of 3, with the focus being to get as high off the ground as possible. 

B) Weighted Dips-Perform 4 working sets of 8-15 reps
The first set is always bodyweight. 

The second set add weight

The last two sets are your heaviest sets. 

C) Decline Pushups (pushups with the Feet Elevated), or HandStand Pushups-

You have two options here.
The first option is decline pushups. These require propping your feet up on a box or bench, performing what is essentially a bodyweight incline press. Perform 4 sets of 8-20 reps

If those are easy, or become easy, then progress to a handstand push ups.
For Handstand pushups, perform 4 sets of 6-10 reps 

D) Pushups DB Raises Complex
Perform a set of moderate or close grip pushups to positive failure

Perform a set of bent over DB rear delt raises to positive failure 

Repeat for 3-4 total sets 

DAY 5 – Pull Day
A) Heavy Farmers Walks-4 sets of 30 seconds
These are as simple as it gets. Pick up a pair of heavy DBs, walk with them for 30 seconds. That is all there is to it. Rest 1-2 minutes between sets

B) Weighted Chinups or pullups (alternate each workout) – 5 sets 12-10-8-6-4 reps  

The first set is always bodyweight for 12 reps 

The second is bodyweight for 10 reps. If this is EASY though, add a small amount of weight (5-10lbs)
The 3rd, 4th, and 5th set, add weight. The easiest way to do this is with a dip/chin belt, adding 5-10lbs each set. The last set of 4 should be your heaviest set. 

FYI-If you are not yet strong enough to do weighted pullups and chinups, then stick with bodyweight for 5 sets until you. Use bands if necessary to assist yourself 

C) Bodyweight Rows-5 sets of 10-20 reps
These can be done with rings, in a squat rack, a smith machine, or with a TRX. 

My preferred version is with a TRX, with your feet elevated on a low box. Start at whatever level you need to. 

If sets of 20 reps becomes doable, add weight to your sets and perform heavy sets of 8-10 reps. 

D) Hammer curls with Fat Gripz if possible, 3-4 sets of 20-30 reps

These can be done seated or standing. As the reps are high, you won't be using very heavy weights obviously. Rest 1-2 minutes between sets

DAY 6– Squat Day
A) Alternating Jump Lunge-5 sets 5 reps per leg (10 total each set) 

Start with easy jumps on the first set, then gradually increase the power and height on each sets

B) DB Goblet Squat with heels elevated– 4 sets 10, 10, 20, 10 reps  

The first set start with light weight or no weight 

Second set, increase the weight slightly 

Third set, this is your all out to failure set. As many reps as you can do.
4th sets, 10 more reps with the weight you used in set 3

Once you’ve achieved ½ bodyweight, then work on achieving 30 reps with ½ bodyweight on the 3rd set

C) DB Romanian Deadlift- 4 sets of 10-15 reps
These can be done with rings, in a squat rack, a smith machine, or with a TRX. My preferred version is with a TRX, with your feet elevated on a low box. Start at whatever level you need to. If sets of 20 reps becomes doable, add weight to your sets and perform heavy sets of 8-10 reps. 

D) 3 sets of seated Calf Raises, 3 sets of Standing 1-leg Calf Raise

Seated Calf Raises are to be done first. 3 sets of 20,15,10 reps, increasing the weight each set. Full descend and come up as high as possible on the ball of the foot. No momentum. 

For standing 1-leg calf raise, 3 sets of 10 reps each leg. When that becomes easy, add weight by holding a DB in one hand. Use the other hand for balance.

Cardio

The cardio on this program is NON-NEGOTIABLE. You WILL do it. 

It is simple though. 

You will Walk or Run 1 mile daily. 

That is it. 

You can walk the mile, you can run the mile, or some mixture thereof, but you will always do your mile. 

The Goal is that overtime, you increase both your walking speed, and your mile time, but you will do so slowly and incrementally. This steady improvement in aerobic and anaerobic capacity will improve your bodycomposition, your endurance, and your overall stamina for training in all forms. 

There, I got it out of the way. I was talking with a friend over the weekend who had a low back strain and he said he was icing it and I told him to stop and he was surprised and I realized that people still believing you should be icing sprains/strains/injuries and how could I be so naive to think that “everyone knows RICE is wrong” simply because Ive posted about it in the past.

What am I talking about here?

Get a bottle of Neurovolt and take advantage of Soviet Super Soldier research for Stress resilience.

RICE is an acronym. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

This is what most people are told to do if they are injured.

RICE originated in 1978, based on the writings of Dr. Gabe Mirkin. He wrote the definitive sports medicine text of the era, titled, The Sportsmedicine Book.

The influence of that book on injury treatment is hard to overstate. Athletic trainers, doctors, coaches, physical therapists, all of them used its methods, and RICE became synonymous with treating any athletic injury. You need rest. You need to ice to reduce inflammation. You need to keep it wrapped tight. You need to elevate. This is still considered cutting edge advice for normies.

Correct, right?

Wrong.

Mirkin himself has reversed his position on every point except elevation, and even that comes with a caveat. He coined RICE in his 1978 book and formally retracted the I.C.E. in March 2014, writing that both ice and complete rest may delay healing instead of helping.

Decades of research and applied practice have shown the protocol to be not just ineffective but actively counterproductive.

Icing and time off leads to atrophy and lengthens recovery time.

Icing interferes with the inflammatory process that does the healing. The mechanism is simple once you understand what inflammation is for. Ice constricts the blood vessels around the injury and shuts off the flow that carries the healing cells of inflammation into the tissue, and those vessels stay closed for hours after the ice comes off.

Icing is simply not doing anything for the actual healing process.

A 2014 trial published in Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy took 11 men, damaged their muscle through hard eccentric work, and iced it. The ice did not speed recovery. It delayed it, and produced a rebound in muscle hemoglobin compared to the men who did nothing.

What are you supposed to do then?

Enter the PEACE and LOVE Protocol

PEACE & LOVE is the real cutting edge preferred method over routine icing (RICE) for most acute soft‑tissue injuries. Icing itself has been relegated to being an immediate intervention done for pain management (by way of numbing), but its no longer prescriptive

Peace and Love is what Ive personally done and had people do over many years, and it WORKS, far better than RICE does.

What PEACE & LOVE actually means

PEACE is the protocol to follow in the first 1-3 days after the injury

• Protection: Temporarily limit movement/loading 1–3 days to prevent further damage.

• Elevation: Raise the injured area above heart level to help fluid drainage and swelling.

• Avoid anti‑inflammatories (and usually ice): Allow normal inflammation, which is necessary for tissue repair.

• Compression: Use bandage or wrap to support tissue and manage swelling.

• Education: Understand the expected course, avoid over‑treatment, and stay engaged in active recovery. This is a big one. Many people fall into depressive states post injury and believe they are damaged for life, they question whether they will heal, they are scared to move again. The right MINDSET is the difference between full recovery versus a chronic pain outcome.

LOVE comes after the acute phase, from about day 4 onwards

• Load: Gradually reintroduce weight‑bearing, unloaded, and loaded movement as pain allows.

• Optimism: Maintain a positive mindset; fear and catastrophizing worsen pain and delay recovery.

• Vascularization: Add pain‑free cardio (bike, walking, pool) to improve blood flow and healing.

• Exercise: Structured rehab to restore strength, range of motion, and balance. Start with stabilization, unloaded movement, isometrics. Progress to increased weight bearing, full range isokinetics aka lifting weights, and eventually low grade dynamic and plyometrics.

If you are going to ICE at all, its in the first 12-24 hours

Again, the reason to ice is numb the affected area and reduce perceived pain. This can have a positive mental effect. But you do not keep icing beyond that.

Practical Summary

For a typical sprain/strain (ankle, knee, wrist, muscle pull)

• First 1–3 days: Follow PEACE: protect, elevate, compress, avoid heavy NSAID use and continuous icing; use brief ice only if pain is limiting sleep or basic function.

• After a few days: Shift to LOVE: start gentle loading, light cardio to get blood flow, and progressive exercises, ideally under PT or sports‑med guidance.

A note on NSAIDs. Please use them sparingly. Yes they reduce pain, but they do nothing for actual healing, and the research on them is worse than people realize. NSAIDS inhibit muscle protein synthesis.

In 2002, Trappe et al showed that 1,200 mg of ibuprofen suppressed muscle protein synthesis in the 24 hours after training. This was an 8-week resistance training study found that 1,200 mg of ibuprofen per day blunted both strength and muscle growth compared to a low 75 mg dose of aspirin. The mechanism runs through satellite cells, the precursor cells that fuse to your fibers and let them grow. NSAIDs inhibit satellite cell proliferation for up to 8 days after a single bout of hard eccentric exercise.

NSAIDS should only be used for acute situations where pain is BAD and you need mental relief. Do not turn them into a habit.

What ELSE Can you Do?

Long time readers should know I am very favorable to Peptides, collagen (10-20 grams daily), vitamin C (500-1000mg), and you could include potentially include curcumin as well if inflammation is an issue (500-1000mg daily with piperine, the liposomal form). Although I’d personally just use KPV. And growth hormone (if you can source it)

I cover my recommended protocol here.

Lastly, If You want to go ALL out on healing after injury, Get a Redlight

In the situation of “Im injured and will do whatever it takes to heal” then I would in fact recommend redlight therapy daily.

Infrared light stimulates the mitochondria and accelerates cellular regeneration. A 2025 meta-analysis of photomodulation studies using wavelengths from 660 to 950 nm found significant reductions in soreness and large improvements in strength recovery at 24 and 48 hours after muscle damage. The mechanism is mitochondrial. Red and near-infrared light is absorbed by cytochrome c oxidase in the electron transport chain, which raises ATP output.

=More cellular energy, faster repair.

Ive owned a large full body Mito redlight since 2021. My wife uses it more than I do. I have used it sparingly when Ive had minor injuries. In the hierarchy of health tools, I dont consider it essential…BUT it is useful for when you are hurt.

Id suggest getting a small panel that you can use for the affected area. 10 minutes daily at about 1 foot away wherever you are hurt.

Get a Mito Pro Panel

Patriotic music only this weekend.

Lets talk about Muscle

Americans love to build muscle, and America is the bastion on bodybuilding. We are going to BRO OUT with this article.

A Muscle has 4 Sides

This is a Vince Gironda bodybuilding concept, the original Iron Guru.

Like many of Vinces ideas, it preceded formal proof from exercise science. Modern research has demonstrated that the positioning of an muscle during an exercise affects its ability to contract, and it IS possible to emphasize and bias different sections of a muscle. Exercises are NOT all equal in how they recruit muscle tissue.

Instead of treating a muscle as a 2D flat, single entity, Gironda argued that every muscle group possesses distinct architectural “sides”.

Gironda typically categorized muscles into an upper, lower, inner, and outer aspects (or its various anatomical heads).

The 4-side model maps to the muscles origin and insertion point, as well as its medial and lateral sections.

While you cannot change the underlying structure of your muscle bellies and tendons, you absolutely can train your muscles with a complete set of exercises that hit all 4 sides and maximize your genetic potential.

The Workout Structure

A workout that followings this model typically breaks down to 4 exercises. These can be one at a time (straight sets), and done for 3-4 sets.

The exercises can also be done as a Giant Set, done one after another. In Girondas system, this would be a more advanced strategy. Milo Sarcev is an example of a modern bodybuilding coach that uses a Giant set strategy, although he goes crazy with it and will do 10 different exercises, each from a different angle and strength curve.

To be clear, I dont recommend this for natural lifters, but it does illustrate the concept.

Setting up the Workout

• You select 4 exercises, each precisely targeting a different “side” or angle of the muscle.

• For reps do 8-12 reps per set. You can pyramid up in weight if you want, or use the same weight for all sets.

• For sets, you do 3-4 sets per exercise. That works out to 12-16 sets. Start with 3 sets per exercise.

• Dont train to failure. Leave 1-2 reps in reserve on each set. If you want to go to failure, do so on the very last set of each exercise.

• The Density Principle. Vince advocated very short rest periods, 30-60 seconds maximum between sets. He liked a higher volume approach to training, usually doing 10-15 sets per muscle group. You can choose to do this or not do this. Short rest periods do create a cardiovascular training effect

Workout Examples

Chest (Pectorals)

Chest is probably the best example of the concept. You have your upper pecs, the lower pecs. The pec minor. And if you grow enough muscle and get lean, you can see inner fiber detail.

• Upper : Incline Barbell Bench Press (Grip wide, lower to the collarbone with elbows flared wide).

• Outer, Lower Sweep: Wide-Grip V-Bar Dips (Chin tucked, torso leaned forward, feet flared out in front).

• Overall Mass: Gironda Neck Press (Flat bench, wide grip, lowering the bar strictly to the bottom of the throat).

• Inner Sternal Fibers: Low Cable Fly Crossover (Bring hands together and cross them over at hip/waist level, squeezing the inner sternal fibers).

Back (Lats & Mid-Back)

The Concept maps well onto the back, although its moreso because the back is multiple muscles, with multiple lines of movement.

• Upper Width: Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown to the Chest (Leaning slightly back to hit the upper, outer lat sweep).

• Lower Lats: V-Bar/Close-Grip Pulldown (Pulling down deeply to the lower ribcage to target the low insertion points).

• Mid-Back Thickness: Seated Cable Row to the Belly Button (Chest out, pulling low and pulling the shoulder blades hard together).

• Outer/Lower Tie-In: Straight-Arm Cable Pull-Downs (Keeping arms locked, sweep the bar down to the thighs using pure lat power).

Shoulders (Deltoids)

The delts is where the concept gets murky, but still useful. The deltoids are actually the largest muscle group in the upper body in terms of overall surface area, with seven subsections. They dont have “4 sides” but rather a large circular range of directions that can be thought of front, side, overhead, and posterior, with each direction working a different section of the muscle.

• Lateral Head (Width): Seated Dumbbell Lateral Raises (Palms facing down, slightly pouring the pinkies up at the top).

• Anterior Head (Front): Seated Alternate Dumbbell Front Raises (Lifting the dumbbell up and slightly inward toward the midline).

• Posterior Head (Rear): Prone Incline Dumbbell Rear Delt Flyes (Lying chest-down on a 30-degree incline, flaring elbows out).

• Overall Mass: Dumbbell Upright Row (Standing lateral raise where you swing the weights up from the hips, flipping the wrists smoothly at the top—a unique Gironda favorite for capping the side delt).

Thighs (Quadriceps & Hamstrings)

During Girondas time, the development of the hamstrings wasnt particularly emphasized and especially not the glutes. This is not to say that bodybuilders ignored the hamstrings and glutes entirely, as they did do leg curls, and occasionally stiff leg deadlifts, but there wasnt any emphasis on having shredded gluteals or hamstrings, and having oversized legs was considered undesirable. As good as the Golden Age bodybuilders looked, by modern standards their legs would be underdeveloped.

That said, they also look much more aesthetic than modern bodybuilders, and its not as if their legs were SMALL.

That said, Girondas leg workouts all emphasize quads, and he famously avoided the back squat, as he considered it a “butt lift” that was only useful for women (who wanted a big ass).

Times have changed. Regardless, his leg workouts are joint friendly and quite excellent for mobility+mass.

• Lower/VMO: Gironda Hack Squat / Frog Squat (Heels together, toes flared wide at 45 degrees, keeping hips forward to force the load onto the lower tear-drop quad).

• Outer Sweep and overall mass: Leg Press with Feet Low and Close (Puts the tension into the vastus lateralis on the outside of the thigh).

• Rectus Femoris (Upper/Mid Quad): Leg Extensions (Lean back and pause at peak contraction to hit the upper hip-flexor tie-in).

• Hamstrings: Lying Leg Curls (Keep hips pressed firmly flat into the bench, toes pointed to maximize hamstring loading).

Biceps

I have awful bicep genetics (short muscle bellies, long tendons, and orangutang arms), and while I personaly dont exactly follow the 4 side concept (wide grip curls give me tendintis), Ive found it effective for most people, especially those with more proportional structure. And if you’ve got long muscle bellies, its fantastic.

• Outer Head and Peak: Incline Dumbbell Curls (Seated on a steep incline, palms facing strictly up/forward the entire time to stretch the long head).

• Inner Head and Width: Wide-Grip Barbell Curls (Hands spaced well outside shoulder width to load the short head).

• Brachialis and Lower Tie-In: Dumbbell Hammer Curls (Neutral grip, targeting the muscle that sits between the biceps and triceps).

• Peak Contraction: Gironda Drag Curls (Keep the barbell scraping directly up the line of your torso, pulling elbows straight back to isolate the bicep belly without front delt assistance).

Triceps

Just doing pushdowns is not enough. Gironda emphasized doing an overhead movement as a staple in every tricep workout. Make sure to warmup thoroughly on the first exercise, and keep the weights moderate. Tendinitis once it starts can be hard to get rid of. Train for the mind muscle connection.

• Long Head (Inner Mass): Overhead Dumbbell or Overhead Rope Extensions (Deep stretch at the bottom to target the back of the arm).

• Lateral Head (Outer Horseshoe): V-Bar Cable Pushdowns (Flaring elbows slightly out to emphasize the outer sweep).

• Medial Head (Lower Elbow Mass): Reverse-Grip (Supinated) Cable Pushdowns (Underhand grip, driving straight down to isolate the lower tricep fibers near the elbow).

• Peak Contraction: Tricep Kickbacks (Emphasizing a hard, 1-second lock-out contraction at the very top).

This is a VERY Bro Bodybuilder way to train.

If you train only one muscle a workout, this 6 days a week of training each muscle once per week.

Gironda would often recommend antagonistic supersets. So for example, biceps and triceps together. Or chest and back. This reduces the training days from 6 down to 5 or 4. You can combine or keep separate per your own training preferences.

I would close with an acknowledgement that Gironda wrote all of this down in the 1960s-1979s. Regional hypertrophy research validating it started showing up in journals around 2010. The man was a true broscientist ahead of his time.

Enjoy the 4th.

Grill something.

Then Monday, go build some American muscle.

(Take some Neurovolt before your workout).

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I published this research in a series of newsletters, and it eventually caught the attention of an academic named Charles H. Stocking, who himself was a professor and had written a seminal text on Ancient Greek Athletics. He commended me for my scholarship and gave me a signed copy of his book.

Ancient Greek Athletics

What stood out the most during this period of research was how much the Ancient Greeks and Romans had figured out in regards to periodization, aka the science of training.

By way of observation and logical thinking, they correctly ascertained that exercise and its adaptations could be categorized, systemized, and that training should be tailored to the athlete based on the desired outcomes.

They also believed truth, beauty, and goodness to be inseparable from aesthetic FORM.

How something looked was not a surface level phenomenon, but was an multi-level manifestation of the metaphysical nature of the object itself and the divine forces that comprised it. Form and function were symbiotic with one another.

The Ancient Greeks were a truly special people, and their contributions to Western Civilization are unparalleled, both in the physical and intellectual reals.

As far back as 750 BC, it was recorded that the culture of Physicality was so dominant that every city in Greece had a gymnasium, and that men trained daily there. To train was prayer, mediation, and physical/mental development all in one.

The very origin of the word “gym” comes from the Greek Gymnasium.

The word calisthenics comes from the ancient Greek words kallos (κάλλος), which means “beauty” or “beautiful” (to emphasize the aesthetic pleasure that derives from the perfection of the human body), and sthenos (σθένος), meaning “strength” (great mental strength, courage, strength, and determination

“eating alone will not keep a man well; he must also take exercise”.

Hippocrates

All this prefaced, what EXERCISES did they actually do?

While its well established that the Greeks and Romans loved athletic competition and trained as a way of life, there are not clear records of “workouts” that exist where Greek bros wrote down their exact exercises with sets and reps and weights.

They describe doing movements in a way that can be approximated to rep ranges, with some movements done a few times, and others many times, but theres no clarity like “do this for 4 sets of 8”

What does exist is excellent descriptions of the Exercises, and the intent behind them.

The Roman physician Galen, who behind Hippocrates is the most influential ancient voice in medicine, he wrote a number of guides and treatise on health, and in one them he explicitly names entire categories of exercises. As Galen was highly influenced by Hippocrates and studied ancient greek medicine, its the best record we have for how the Greeks and later Romans actually “worked out” and trained.

Finding this translation of his work, let me tell you, I was excited as hell (it was not easy to find). I have paraphrased it below for brevity, and I’ve added in my inference and interpretation of some of the exercises so they make sense. Some the translation into english is not clear (and to be fair, this is translation of a translation of a translation, so no doubt clarity has been lost)

One of the difficulties of translation is that exercise was so common practice to the Greeks and Romans that they rarely felt the need to describe anything.

It’s akin to bro culture today, there is an entire lexicon for those who are dedicated lifters, but outside the gym, the average person would not know what you are referring to.

I do not think this a complete list by any means, but its a close as one will get, and it offers bountiful insight.

Hopefully this is not too pedantic either. I could spend an entire series of emails analyzing this list exercise by exercise, (and I just might do that), but for the sake of completion, here is the full list.

Ancient Exercises According to the Doctor Philosopher Galen

This was written sometime between 165-210 AD.

Galen organizes exercises into three categories, which are very similar to modern categorizations of exercise and show a high degree of scientific insight.

Category 1 are called “Strong” exercises.

These were fundamental movements that were practiced to build strength and muscle. They are as follows

1. Digging (yep, this is number 1, good old fashioned manual labor)
   

2. Picking up something heavy (essentially doing deadlifts with different heavy objects)
   

3. Picking up something heavy and walking with it (what we would call a Farmers walk or loaded carry today)
   

4. Walking Uphill (as Greece is a hilly country, this is mentioned very often across many many many records on health and medicine as being integral to do)
   

5. Climbing a rope using hands and feet (this is the only pulling type movement that can be explicitly identified, and it was done quite a lot according to various records. Grip strength and a strong back were paramount for wrestling and Pankration)
   

6. Hanging onto a rope or beam as long as possible (dead hangs)
   

7. Holding the arms straight out with fist closed (this was usually done with halteres and was an isometric movement)
   

8. Holding the arms straight up with fists closed ((this was also done with halteres and was an isometric movement)
   

9. Holding out the arms while partner pulls down on them
   --Side note, this would explain why all the statues always have buff shoulders, the Greeks were fanatics about doing these static arm holds. This is mentioned in other records as well
   

10. Breaking loose from a wrestling waist lock
    

11. Holding onto a person trying to escape from the waist lock
    

12. Picking up a man who is bend over at the hips and swinging him around
    

13. Doing the same but bending ones self at the hips when picking him up
    --These two probably don’t make sense unless you’ve wrestled, but basically Galen is describing two different version of how to lift and throw a person
    

14. Pushing chest to chest trying to force the opponent backwards
    

15. Hanging from another’s neck, attempting to drag him down
    --the last three require a wrestling pit
    

16. Entwine your partner with both your legs around one of his and try to apply a choke or force his head backwards

17. the same but using only one leg to entwine both of his legs

18. the same but using both your legs to entwine both of his legs

For those that don’t know, thee Greeks invented three different forms of wrestling (freestyle, Greco-Roman, and Pankration), and they wrestled all the time. It was more or less what they were known for. Hence why wrestling figures so prominently into this

Category 2 are called “Rapid” Exercises.

These are movements that are cyclical (repeating) and are done quickly. Galen and Hippocrates understood pragmatically that different exercises are done at different speeds and this differentiates how they are done and how often they can be done. These are are exercises that would have been done for longer durations/sets than the prior exercise

1. Running (short and long distance)

2. Shadow Boxing

3. Boxing

4. Hitting a Punching Bag (they had both heavy bags and speed bags)

5. Throwing and catching a small ball while running

6. Running back and forth, reducing the distance each time (basically they did wind sprints)

7. Stand on the balls of the feet, raise the arms into the air, and alternate lowering and raising the arms rapidly (while funny sounding, this is something akin to a total body calf raise done for balance)

8. Forward and backward rolls on the wrestling ground

9. Rapidly changing places with people in group formation (this would have been practice for war and being in a military unit)

10. Jumping and kicking both legs backwards (this trains triple extension and total body power. Imagine a person jump up and slamming a ball into the ground, or doing a vertical jump)
    

11. Kicking the legs forward alternately (in Greek Pankration, pushing and front kicking your opponent were common techniques. I’ll dive into this one at a later time)

12. Move the arms up and down rapidly with a closed fist, increased in speed (this sounds similar to striking drills for hand speed)

Category 3 are called “Violent” exercises

Interestingly, Hippocrates specifically warned against doing these types of exercises too often. Which makes sense, as they are the most neurologically draining. By modern standards these would largely be considered power and explosion movements, exercises that can be done only for short periods of time

1. Digging rapidly

2. Throwing the Discus

3. Lifting a heavy as possible weight from the ground (the Greeks did maximal deadlifts basically)

4. Holding an object for a long time (Holding translates to holding something at chest/was height with the arms. This would be roughly akin to a stone lift or odd object lift today thats done in Strongman competitions. Again, there is this emphasis on static holds with weights that I find interesting)

5. Full and Loud Breathing (Breathing is mentioned in a few medical treatise from this era, and this seems to have been a form of forced exhalations and inhalations to build lung power, probably similar to Wim Hoff today)
   

6. Placing two weights on the ground outside of shoulder width, approximately 6 feet apart (I THINK this is a bad translation personally), then bending and picking up the left weight with the right hand, the right weight with the left hand, then setting them down and repeating the exercise many times, while keeping the feet stationary

--Okay, this last one was confusing as hell when I first read it, and I had to think about, and after experimenting, I believe its a type of rotational DEADLIFT or ROW movement. The 6 feet directions make no sense at all (you would not be able to lift the weights), but done as a sort of contra-lateral row or deadlift, its an effective exercise.

Based on that whole list, what Did they Train For?

The best approximation today would be something like a “tactical athlete”, with a major emphasis on combat.

Wrestling and running were both considered cornerstones of physical development. For combat sports like boxing, upper body strength was heavily emphasized.

• They trained to lift heavy weights and carry them

• They trained to strike and to wrestle

• They trained to throw objects (throwing stones was a war tactic in fact)

• They trained to condition the arms for endurance (based on how often they fought each other, this is sensible)

• They trained the grip and the back

The TWO areas that do not get any attention by modern standards...chest, and squats.

Outside of pushups (which I am sure were done) I do not think it ever occurred to anyone in the ancient world that you needed to prioritize chest training. Bench press did not exist. They already trained to push each other around. Getting on your back and pressing weight wasnt intuitive. Bench press is a 20th century invention.

All the statues have broad shoulders, but you’ll never see any with exceptionally large chests.

Theres also no record of anyone doing squats

There are movements which appear to be akin to a walking hinge or lunges, but no description of deep knee bend squats.

I THINK they did something like a death march, a gait based RDL. Its a great glute movement.

But why didnt they squat?

My conjecture is that between the wrestling, the running up hills, the sprinting, it just wasnt necessary. Clearly they achieved aesthetic physiques without needing to do bodyweight squats. I have no doubt it was a position people did in their daily life (likely while defecating), but again, much like chest pressing, there was no connection made that “we should do this as a core exercise”. They were already training their lower body in various ways.

What Philosophical and Practical Lessons Can We Draw from These Exercises?

What impressed me the most is that the Greeks categorized training by neurological demand 2,000 years before sports science formalized the same divisions.

Strong exercises built bodily structure.

Rapid exercises built conditioning.

Violent exercises built power, and Hippocrates warned against overusing them because he understood, through observation alone, that explosive work drains something that takes longer to recover than muscle.

We call it CNS fatigue now.

The Ancient Mindset of Training would be called Tactical or Hybrid by Modern Thinking

To be strong and athletic required key capabilities.

They trained the grip, the back, the shoulders, and the legs through carries, hangs, hills, throws, and grappling.

Every movement mapped to a physical skill: lift a man, throw a stone, march up a mountain, hold your ground chest to chest.

Form and physique were an outcome of competency in these functions. The fundamentals they landed on are the same ones that still work: heavy lifts from the ground, loaded carries, hanging and climbing, hill walking, sprinting, throwing, grappling, isometric holds.

Professional bodybuilding is far removed from this.

I say that not to be critical. Its simply the reality. Were not all fighting for survival in the same way that an Ancient Man may be called upon to fight in a war. Professional bodybuilding has become specialized and the goal is attainment of an elusive aesthetic dream. No one pretends that bodybuilders are training for warfare or fighting.

Modern training starts with how you want to look and reverse-engineers exercises to produce it. The desire to look HOT or be BIG is certainly a good reason to train.

Whether this translates to longevity or adventurism or being “fit for life”, thats up to the individual. As I often say, training is N=1. Train how YOU like. From a holistic mindset and reduced to the most simple of advice, I would encourage everyone to both lift weights and do cardio. You can prioritize both.

The Greeks and Romans started with what a man should be able to do. The look then followed.

Kallos and sthenos, beauty and strength, one word because they understood it as one thing.

If you want to adopt the Ancient mindset, train for what your body should be able to do. Your physique takes care of itself. The Greeks proved it, and the proof is still standing in museums.

After two thousand years of trial and error, A man could train nothing but the above list for the rest of his life and he would be stronger, leaner, and more capable at 60 than most men are at 30.

GO TRAIN.

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Mentzer started off with higher volume training, but in the final years of his career adopted his lower volume, heavy duty approach.

Mentzers orginal recommendations for working-sets-per-muscle-per week came out to around 4-8 sets.

This is in line with modern recommendations for minimum effective dose.

HOWEVER…Exercise science research and bodybuilding history DOES tend to favor higher volume training

I expected this trend to reverse itself at some point, and with the recent backlash against science based lifting, theres been a rise of high volume advocates

See Set Volume for Muscle Size

What does higher volume mean?

Volume refers to the total number of sets you do per muscle per week.

Low volume is generally defined as doing less than 8 sets per muscle per week.

Moderate volume is 8-12 sets.

High volume is 12-20+ sets.

The most influential researcher on training volume has been professor Brad Schoenfelds.

His original research from 2016 found that muscle gain increased with volume.

10 was the sweet spot, but more growth could be seen as you got closer to 20 sets per week. Strength gains generally plateaued around 10 sets a week, but muscle gains incrementally increased as you got to 20 sets per week.

This research was not a one off finding. It was found repeatedly in multiple studies over the past 2 decades. (see above and below articles)

A Systematic Review of The Effects of Different Resistance Training Volumes on Muscle Hypertrophy

A LOT of people like to argue about “How many sets??”

This argument Ive seen happening since I started reading muscle magazines when I was 15. It was happening in the 1970s.

Im sure it will still be argued about in the 2050s.

There are no PERFECT answers and protocols in Bodybuilding and Exercise Science

Its human nature to think in binary. Biological response to training is a spectrum though.

Ive made the point myself in the past that starting off with a lower volume approach to determine your own training response is a smarter path than going immediately into high volume training.

How your body adapts to training is something you have to learn through experimentation. Some people grow MORE when they train more. Some people simply overtrain.

You don’t KNOW this until you try different training programs.

Theres also the dynamic factor that your body will change over time

Your strength, endurance, mindset, life conditions, energy, and metal-physical connection will evolve.

This is to say that your training program will change as YOU change.

There is no ULTIMATE program

If bodybuilding and broscience and exercise science have shown anything, its that every kind of training program and stimulus CAN work, given the right conditions and application.

That brings us to High Volume training

Its worth trying and doing. Its a very different experience from the All-out-one-set strength based approach.

You emphasize neurological connection, mental inhabitation, muscle tension, and repeated repetitions across many sets. You add weight once a month at most. Quality of contraction is the priority.

How strong you get is secondary. You are working the muscles, not fixating about the number of lbs.

This style of training has its own endurance requirements, especially with shorter rest periods. The workouts are more cardiovascular, they have a rhythm and flow that is distinct from high intensity and low volume.

High volume training DOES require more recovery time

If sleeping enough and eating enough are challenges, going into a higher volume program generally isnt advisable.

Some people transform with high volume. Their particular genetics seem to have a “volume activation” threshold.

Too few sets, they dont get much growth.

Do more sets though, and THEN the adaptations begin to happen. They need a higher volume of stimulus.

Training is a self discover process, you never wake up in the same body twice.

Recently Ive been watching some of the videos of Dr. Nash Jocic PhD.

To preface, this is not a paid endorsement. He has no clue who I am. I always like to share the knowledge and spread the word of great teachers I come across.

Hes a french bodyybuilder that trained with Serge Nubret, advocates building up to 20 sets per muscle…and he looks fantastic. And healthy.

He has a well defined philosophy with lots of training literature. His approach is to start people with around 10 sets per muscle group a week and build up over time. He does 4-5 exercises per muscle, for 4-5 sets. He likes the classical pyramid approach and stopping just short of failure, not forced reps or grind reps. He likes to train muscles once per week.

This is all blasphemous with the current orthodoxy. But the client testimonials are there, along with the historical evidence.

Myself personally, Ive been on a low volume train for years now, the last time I trained high volume was a decade ago at least. During my combat sports phase, I was doing as little as 4-8 working sets a week.

I’ve been very open that training has been a 3rd or 4th tier priority in this particular season of life.

That said, my schedule has a bit more stability to it this summer, and Ive been feeling a need for a training change. I train mostly at home now, and higher volume programming has been calling.

Of course, I dont expect to build new muscle at 37 as a natural lifter (and Im always realistic about my average genetics and poor structure).

That said, I decided to start one of his programs recently on July 1st. We will see how it goes.

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I grew up near a golf course.

It was inside of a Retirement Community. AKA, a place where old people lived.

My childhood was firmly middle class. My entire hometown was a middle class bedroom community. It had arisen around the Retirement community over the years.

I only had the vaguest idea of there being a class divide with exercise and recreational activities. What I did know about Golf is that it seemed to be for older people, and according to my dad, only rich people played Golf.

The only person I knew growing up who played was my step grandfather. He came from a dirt poor Irish-American family and grew up in New England.

He was the most successful of his many siblings. Had no college education, but made it big in advertising, real estate, owned a fair amount of stock.

Somewhere along the way, he took up golfing. His mentor was Jack Kent Cooke. He worked for him in the 1970s. I dont know the details, but at some point he was told that if he wanted to become Rich, he should learn to play.

He and my grandmother lived in Los Angeles, in what was a very rich gated community with a golf course.

Myself, I never learned.

My father eventually became a doctor in his late 40s. A white collar profession. At no point did he ever entertain the idea of playing golf, although he knew many physicians that did. My father is hispanic, Golf to him was always a sport for older, rich white men. He never had any level of interest in it.

I was 20 when I became a personal trainer. I started training clients in Silicon Valley. Later I worked in Hollywood. There was a year I moved to Florida and worked in a very affluent, country club community.

Those clients all played golf and tennis. Some of them did Triathlons.

Lifting weights and bodybuilding I learned were coded as lower class, working class.

Talking about class can be a provocative conversation. Americans on the surface dont like to subscribe to entrenched social classes, but theres also no question they exist. And that certain beliefs and behaviors are generally shared.

In ancient times, the ability to exercise at all and be in great physical health was a luxury afforded by Patricians, Aristocrats, and Nobles.

The wealthy don’t need to sacrifice their body to make a living. A working man does.

Lower classes and slaves did not have access to gyms.

Over some many centuries, and especially post industrialization and greater food abundance, the division of recreational and exercising became less concentrated, but also more specific.

Some activities aligned with aristocratic sensibilities. Others did not.

The practice of resistance training became more rooted in working-class culture. Lifting weights is a simulation of manual labor, moving heavy iron and sheer physical effort.

In contrast, sports like golf and tennis became coded as upper-class leisure pursuits. These activities historically required access to expensive, private country clubs, specialized gear, and significant amounts of leisure time.

They act as networking arenas for the wealthy, a club with a high barrier to entry.

I trained A LOT of clients who thought of lifting weights as dumb, brutish, but necessary

The men who said “I dont want to get TOO BIG” tended to skew upper class. I found this hilarious, but I realized over time there were a dramatic difference in our social views on exercise.

I grew up enamored with strength and power and physicality.

They had grown up in social setting where that kind of outward display was considered vulgar.

Their upbringings were a world where everyone used their minds to make money.

Some people say a man is made out of mud
A poor man's made out of muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's weak and a back that's strong

They preferred endurance sports, activities that required equipment and outfits and exclusivity.

Golf, Tennis, Badminton, Sailing, Rowing. You could could include equestrian sports as well.

The preference for these activities was not just their expense or exclusivity, there was a phenotypic, moral dynamic as well.

These types of sports were long duration, requiring pain tolerance to chronic discomfort, competition with another individual, and maintaining a zone of focus.

I am not the first person to notice this

Social survey research going back decades has documented the class difference in attitude towards exercise.

How the Other Half Lifts: What Your Workout Says About Your Social Class

I read this article years ago, when I was about 5 years into my personal training career. The author, a self identified white collar urban liberal, described his experience of spending a lifetime in endurance sports, taking up lifting, enjoying being bigger, but finding it incongruent with the norms of his social class, and in the end defaulting back to aerobic sports.

If you want to deep dive on the subject, the “foundational theorists” are French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Thorstein Veblen. Their research documented that exercise habits, sport preferences, and even the ideal body are expressive of class position.

But they were FRENCH!

Sure, but speaking generally, the patterns they observed are consistent both in France, Europe, and in America.

Higher income adults have more time to exercise, and are drawn towards forms of exercise that signal conspicuous leisure. Different activities have distinct class connotation; golfing, yoga, pilates, triathlons and cycling, these all cluster among the college-educated and professionally employed.

Strength sports and team athletics draw more from working-class backgrounds.

Per Bourdieu’s observation, class shapes not just whether you exercise, but how and why.

There are crossovers and exceptions to all of this, I would emphasize these are GENERAL patterns.

I also have observed these social patterns changing.

As Boomers are getting older and passing away, there is a major shift amongst Gen X and Millennials and Gen Z of fitness culture becoming more egalitarian and practiced by all social classes. The old stereotypes are dissipating, especially amongst the newly wealthy. People like Andrew Huberman have done a great deal of heavy lifting (pun intended) that everyone should lift weights as they age.

Even combat sports like BJJ have attracted an affluent, white collar crowd.

On a personal level, my message to everyone is the same.

Lift weights, do cardio. Whether this aligns with social expectations of your particular tribe, thats for you to care or not care about.

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Approximately a week before Reindustrialize, I had a Broscience dinner at my house (this is a private supper club that I host with my bro Alex Feinberg every other month. For a small fee anyone can join)

The dinner started at 3pm, and by 930pm, everyone had left. I was cleaning up and walking down some stone steps from the porch of our guest house.

The stone steps are not stable, basically they are leftover limestone the previous owner stacked up. Theyve always been a bit slippery.

Unfortunately this time as I stepped down with my right leg, one of them gave out.

I was thrown off balance and put into a deviated position with my right knee as I caught myself.

My right knee I had a menisus I had torn years ago when I got my foot caught in rocks while hiking, and the knee has had patellar tendinitis in the past.

In this case, I didn’t tear anything badly, there was no loud pop, but I could feel I tweaked something inside the knee. It wasnt immediately painful, but it was the odd feeling where you can sense some kind microtear and misalignment.

I was still able to walk alright, so I went back to the mainhouse, showered, and went to bed.

Over the course the knight my knee started to hurt, and in the morning it was STIFF.

It wasnt swollen with fluid, but bending was NOT comfortable at all.

OH HELL NO

Once you get to an age where you have a “bad knee”, you are getting OLDER.

This kind of situation is also preventable though.

I was not about to be passive and “wait” for my knee to get better. I knew I had to be aggressive with the rehab.

Aggressive Rehab means you

1. get the joint moving as soon as possible
2. first use isometrics and unloaded movement
3. then proceed to loaded movement (isokinetic) done heavy.
4. Do explosive and plyometric movements

Rehab done correct is intelligent strength training, muscle building, and performance training.

Its not “sit on a bike for 20 minutes and do BS balance exercises”

That next day, I immediately started the following DAILY Peptide protocol

to be taken in the morning
2ius of Growth Hormone
3mg of BPC157
5mg of TB500
5mg of GHKcu
3 grams of Vitamin C

-Peptides were sourced from Eliteresearchusa. Use code AJAC10 for 10% off

WOW THATS A LOT!

Yes. I am not telling anyone else to do this, but after having seen many many people experiment with higher doses, I am convinced the “Wolverine healing stack” that people use works much better with larger amounts.

This is NOT a long term every day protocol. This interventional for short term recovery ONLY.

Of course, I didnt just take peptides though, I also started my rehab by doing heavy loaded isometrics

I have a bulgarian split squat stand in my garage gym. I did a total of 3 minutes of Loaded Iso Holds like you see here, leaning forward to put as much pressure on the knee as possible. I did mine with my heal elevated, holding onto DBs. I did 30-45 seconds at a time until I got to 3 minutes total.

It was NOT comfortable the first day, but by day 3, my knee was feeling much much better

I did these EVERY single day for 7 days

I also made sure to WALK an hour a day on a small 5% incline. Movement is medicine.

By day 5, my knee pain had largely diminished.

By day 7, there was zero stiffness when I woke up that morning, and the day before I left for the Summit, I did a leg workout of

100 Hindu Squat

5x5 Front Squats (with 135)

100 Sumo Squats

And my knee felt GREAT

Post workout, it didnt hurt at all. It was back to 100%.

During the Summit, I walked around 20,000 steps a day. Zero pain. I would have forgotten that it was even hurting just 10 days ago had I not recorded what I was doing.

If you get a minor injury, throw the the kitchen sink at it.

Peptides, nutriton, isometrics, daily motion.

Dont sit, dont wait, dont take time off. You will end up weaker and deconditioned.

You can purchase here

Im going to make a prediction, and also give away the marketing sauce. Five years from now, creatine will be marketed more to women than men.

The “gym bro supplement” framing will be completely dated.

This wont just be for marketing purposes, but for physiological reasons

Women naturally have lower creatine levels

Women store 70 to 80 percent less creatine in their muscles than men. And the recent decade of research has pointed to women benefiting MORE than bros in regards to physiological benefits.

Creatine Supplementation in Womens Health

Creatine does A LOT.

It supports memory and processing speed, in a brain that started with lower creatine stores.

It holds mental performance together under sleep deprivation, which describes every mother with young kids.

It has shown real promise for mood and depressive symptoms, with some evidence women respond more strongly than men.

It preserves muscle and bone after menopause, exactly when declining estrogen levels lead to higher risk of osteoporosis and sarcopenia.

It may even improve pregnancy health and support fertility.

I watched this play out in my own house. My wife started taking creatine during her third pregnancy, on her own. She still takes it daily and loves using it.

We have plans for an full line of nutraceuticals for reproductive health, and creatine monohydrate is what we are starting with

Now in stock and shipping out daily from fertasupplements.com.

-If you a founder, operator, business owner, get yourself a Chief Health Officer to stay strong and fit while your building your business. Talk to Velocity health.

I attended the Reindustrialize Summit this week in Detroit.

The mission of Reindustrialize is simple; we need to make manufacturing better, cheaper, and faster through technology. it should be as easy to make physical things as it is to make software. The end.

I was excited to attend. American Dynamism is a real movement, and the alignment of elite human capital, silicon valley, government agencies and programs, and financial capital are all taking place in real time.

This is a real, aspirational vision for America in the 21st century. We have the most abundant natural resources in the world, the most elite talent, and we oriented ourselves towards a future where we reclaim technological supremacy via industrial production. Economic growth and GDP will be found in factories, materials, energy, and mastering of the elements.

The future belongs to those that BUILD and Show Up

Nothing exists by accident. American civilization is exceptional because this country was founded by the finest Men who ever lived, of noble character, and this country has produced greatness at unprecendented scale. If you want this to continue, fight for it and build.

There is no middle ground. The era of “Im not really political…” is over. There always entropic forces, malevolent individuals, and godless communists who destroy everything to rubble and live amongst insects under a false god of fairness.

There can be no neutrality. There can be no wishful thinking. Courage and strength are what drive forward human spirit.

If you are passive, you get what you deserve.

Choose the courageous path.

I was pleasantly surprised by the city. Detroit has a terrible reputation as a burned out, “lost city” that is beyond repair, and thats simply not true.

While it has its many bad neighborhoods, the core downtown area has undergone a revitalization, the bones are still there.

Are the all surrounding areas shitholes? Some yes, some no.

But nothing is impossible. New York was a dump in the 1970s, and it was remade.

American society will undergo a dramatic transition over the next 20 years. You can be optimistic and participate, or pessimistic and bitch out.

I know my path.

From the time I graduated up until the appearance of Trump in 2016, I became acutely aware of how neutered and emasculated my generational cohort of millennial men were. “Real men are feminists, be a good human, LISTEN to woman” was the message that was circulated.

This was years before the term “redpill” hit mainstream, and the only place you could find counter cultural perspectives were blogging sites such as Return of Kings. Views that would be considered far right and horrifying back then are now fully mainstreamed.

The Obama years were a strange time, as the media, hollywood, and democratic party were fully aligned, and the mainstream narrative was a Progressive, feminized assurance that this would continue for forever.

At the same time, I saw fundamental cracks in the well being of regular Americans. Obamacare was a disaster, deindustrialization was in full swing across Middle America, and the forces of DEI, CRT, cancel culture, and anti-Americanism were all becoming dominant. The array of of white man bad/white people bad articles was infinite. America was something to apologize for.

It was a bleak time to say the least.

My favorite writer, and now a good friend, Jack Donovan, he wrote a great essay during this time noting the lack of masculine figures and disappearance of traditional values.

Then Trump appeared. And everything changed. The social order was upended.

And for those of us who would identity as being on the Right, the trajectory of American civilization shifted.

This was not an overnight victory or an “end of history” moment in which we definitely won forever, but the overall cultural movement has been in a distinctly masculine, stronger, industrious, much more fun direction.

The war is always for eternity.

There is so much more to do, and the forces of entropy and malevolent people are always against you, but overall I am confident and optimistic for the future.

I said this 2 years ago, and its coming true

When I speak of being Right Wing, I dont mean that every young man will LOVE Trump and LOVE republicans.

The old republican party is sclerotic and largely useless, and while Id consider Trump a great president, young people will understandably be more skeptical of him.

That said, the shift from my early 20s to now is still remarkable.

In 2012 if you were a young man (especially a young white) and you were openly Right Wing and anti-mainstream, you’d risk cancellation and having your life destroyed.

It is a night and day difference compared to the present.

The UFC 250 Fights symbolized a reborn American Fighting Spirit
This goes beyond the aesthetics of the event. I can attest firsthand being a part of the “American Dynamism” movement that technology, growth, industry, knowledge creation, all of these things are exploding. There are thousands of exceptional people starting companies, leading companies, capital is flowing, and the recent of IPO of Space X is a signal that the future is going American dominance and American Supremacy of the globe and frontier of Space.

Its exciting times. I am excited for the future

Never black pill. Never troon out. Never give up.

God wants us to win. So build, and fight for the future you want to live in

This post has been brought to you by Neurovolt

When I first saw the video, I didnt think much of it. Hesgeth is exceptionally fit, and has been filmed multiple times doing a 1RM on the bench press of around 315.

Hesgeth was doing upwards of 40+ “pump” style reps with 135. He wasnt locking out, but the fact he could get the weight to the chest and keep it moving for that many reps was impressive.

Pump style refers to non stop reps that are momentum driven.

To generate momentum and move weight this easily, you need muscular strength. Which he clearly has. Hes got great strength to weight ratio.

As he was training with his fellow soldiers, I assume this was probably some sort of burn out at the end of a workout, done for fun, camaraderie, and the challenge of it.

His form was no different than what you’d see in Pro sports bench press tests.

For example, every year at the NFL Combine there is the 225 bench press test, and practically every athletes does fast, momentum driven, sometimes crooked reps, with no real lockout.

I will be blunt and say people that arguments about the purity of FORM all come from basic bitch men whom I dont take seriously as human beings

Every day across America, people go to gyms and use less then ideal technique on exercises.

Ironically, this form was not acceptable to a wide range of liberal male commentators.

Obviously these are not men that anyone considers paragons of masculinity, strength, or anything imitable. At best, they are spiritual enuchs.

Regardless, it was rather hilarious.

James for example belongs to the political punditry class who have seen their life’s work destroyed by Trump and the ascendancy of Based Politics. They have no purpose to their existence anymore other than to bitch post every day online.

This is James daily life

None of them posted their own videos of them bench pressing of course, because they are irredeemable faggots.

That aside, lets talk about PUMP Reps

Are they GOOD to do?

Yes. Doing rhythmic reps with a weight is fine provided there is sufficient Range of motion.

There are many many many examples of top tier bodybuilders who dont fully lockout their reps, and like to lift fast.

The truth is that so long as tension is on the target muscle and intensity is high, you WILL stimulate muscle growth

8-time Mr Olympia Ronnie Coleman was well known for his fast paced style of training. He never fully lockouts when training chest.

Here is Branch Warren

Branch contorts his whole body when lifting, never lockouts, and turns every lift into a total body exercise.

Should you do ALL your exercises like this?

Thats up to you. There is no ultimate lifting style that is superior to all others. Some exercises are more suitable to fast reps, others are not. Over the course of a workout, you may do some movements with more control and slower negatives, and some faster.

Again though, there is nothing INNATELY wrong with training like this.

Is it working for you? Are you getting stronger and building muscle?

If its working keep doing it.

If its not working, train with more control.

But those guys are on STEROIDZ!?!?!?!

Okay. Heres natural bodybuilding chamion Brian DeCosta

He also has a fast style of lifting, and on many exercises doesnt pause at the top or bottom of each rep

Heres Doug Miller, another natural bodybuilder

He’s doing high rep DEADLIFTS, and doesnt lock out at the top. It doesnt matter becauses he’s a fucking MUTANT and strong AF

The validity of any training style is best assessed by its OUTCOMES.

Your training is always an N=1 process. You find what works for you through experimentation, and refine that personal methodology over time.

This was post was powered by Neurovolt

I take it. I don’t sell things I don’t take.

Order Neurovolt

As Ive been in the vortex of venture capital and meeting Silicon valley people, Ive realized theres an entire culture around Founders building their companies, fighting to raise, proceeding through the building period (and subsequent raises)…

and getting fat in the process.

Whether its grossly fat or skinny fat, the general consensus is that your health is going to nose dive.

Analogous to the Freshmen 15, there is a Founder 50.

This happens to men, and this happens to women.

Ive seen it first hand.

You’d be surprised how many peoples profile pics are from years ago before they founded their companies. They were skinnier and hotter then. Then they founded a company.

And they are not looking so good now.

I say all this not to beat up on people and be cruel. Rather I suggest a better approach and mindset

You are a BETTER Founder when you are HEALTHY.

If you do a cursory search of startups and survivability, the numbers are grim.

About 62% of seed funded startups fail.

Roughly 15% make it to Series B.

At best, 1% make it to the hallowed “Unicorn” status valued at $1 Billion.

The odds are not in your favor. What determines success?

All other factors being equal, its the Founder(s) and their ability to execute, lead, adapt, and drive the company towards a successful outcome.

The following is a statement of truth that I dont believe can be argued with:

No one has peak cognitive abilities in an inflamed, overweight, stressed, chronically underslept state.

“Im at my best when my body looks like shit”

This is not real.

However, we must account for the reality that the “Founder” life of attempting to start a moonshot company, dedicating months and years of your life to exponential outcome, no one does this because they care about exemplifying health.

Health is a tertiary priority, if that.

So how does a Founder Stay Healthy then?

Before I share the solution, I must credit the Scott Adams book “How to Reframe your Brain”.

The answer starts with a reframe of Health

Most founders treat health as a distant priority. Its a side hustle project, something that is probably important, but also distracting.

And priorities inevitably compete. When you’re closing a round or shipping before a deadline, or struggling through a construction phase, your immediate goal is NOT “is this healthy”. Deadlines are real. Missing a workout is not the end of the world.

I am telling you to stop treating health as a PERSONAL priority.

Start treating it as COMPANY infrastructure.

I am dead serious about this. I dont care how cringe it is or if it sounds like Linkedin advice.

Your body and mind is at the same if not greater level of importance as getting funded, running payroll, finding customers, and making sure your team executes.

You are the Keyman to everything. Your physical and mental wellness is the foundation every decision runs on. When the foundation degrades, everything built on top of it degrades with it.

Your judgment. Your energy. Your ability to think clearly.

Every unhealthy founder I’ve met is running on at least one of these lines. Read them and find yours.

Six lies founders tell themselves about health

1. Health is a side project I’ll get to after this quarter/raise/phase…

Your body is the platform the company runs on. Strategy, sales, every hard call executes on top of your biology. Shoddy hardware means downtime, and there is no version of the company that keeps running while the founder is down.

2. I’m stealing time from the company when I go workout.

You’re maintaining the one asset the company cannot replace or hire around. You would call it negligence if an engineer skipped maintenance on critical systems or equipment until it failed. You are the equipment. Treat the 45 minutes as work.

3. Real founders grind through exhaustion.

Sometimes you will need to grind, no question. But if your company only survives when you’re running yourself into the ground, you didn’t build a company. You built a trap with you inside it. The grind you’re proud of is negative feedback. It shows you exactly where you failed to delegate, automate, or say no. Constant heroics are evidence your system is broken.

4. Sleep is negotiable

Again, I am not prescribing that you must sleep 7-8 hours a night and have perfect sleep scores. Fuck the devices honestly.

BUT, sleep debt produces worse judgment, slower thinking, and a shorter temper, which means every all-nighter raises the odds you make the one decision that sinks you. There are periods of time when all nighters or very long days are necessary, but you dont want that to become the Modus operandi. Its something to deploy when needed, as needed.

Bad sleep leads to worse resistance to stress, which then creates more internal stress, which worsens sleep, and then you become the person who goes to bed tired, sleeps poorly, wakes up tired, runs tired, and now youre in a hormonal and metabolic tailspin.

5. Food or booze is the reward after a brutal day

Food is fuel. The brutal day is exactly when you can least afford to run the machine on garbage. Eat for the next four hours of output. Let the reward meal be the exception you choose on purpose, not the default you reach for at 11pm because your willpower is spent.

6. Taking care of myself is selfish.

Backwards. Your investors, your team, and your family did not back a one-time burn. They backed your judgment over years. Letting yourself decay is the betrayal.

Throw out the lies and the system underneath is simple.

The Founder Health Infrastructure Plan

Forget the influencer morning routine bullshit. That is health as performance art, and you don’t have time for theater.

Here is what to do

1. Delegate your health management

A few months in, I signed up for Velocity health. They assigned me a health coach. That coach is basically my chief health officer. She doesn’t write my workouts, but she checks in weekly to remind me to get bloodwork done, followup on labs, and keep me accountable long term.

If I were more a more normal, less fit patient, I’d have the option of working with a strength and conditioning coach and nutritionist if I needed one. If I need to talk to a doctor asap, I can do that as well.

Why would a health coach need a heath coach?

Because I dont want to think about it. I dont have time. Someone else can run my calendar, assess my labs, and be the voice of medical reason and encouragement.

The same way you delegate legal to lawyers and accounting to a CPA, do so with your health management. Get comprehensive bloodwork twice a year. Hormones, inflammatory markers, metabolic panel, the full picture, not the 8-marker physical your insurance covers. Have someone competent read it and adjust. Concierge and performance medicine exists precisely for men whose time is worth more than the cost of the service.

Founders who spends $300K a year on engineers and $0 on the biological system running the company have their priorities inverted.

2. Put your workouts on your calendar

I am very favorable to the idea that training intensity matters more than anything else, even diet and recovery. If you train hard weekly and can maintain benchmarks in strength, you’ll be health ENOUGH.

Your workout blocks get the same status as your investor meetings. If something has to move, you reschedule it on purpose. Dont treat training as optional.

3. Get your food on autopilot

I dont give a damn if you order doordash every day, thats on you. What I would tell you:

-eat protein at every meal
-Dont feed on sugary bullshit
-Dont wait until the very end of the day to eat

THATS IT. That braindead simple. Protein, dont eat fucking treats as snack, and dont wait all day and binge eat.

4. Cap the two founder drugs: caffeine and alcohol. Stop with the Caffeine at 2-3pm.
Cap Alcohol caps at 2 to 3 drinks a week, ideally zero during a sprint. Dont get caught on the caffeine and booze doom loop. Caffeine to override exhaustion in the morning. Alcohol to override stress at night. You will end up carrying around the Founder 50.

5. Walk as much as you can. Take calls walking. Walk after meals to blunt glucose spikes. Put the midday or morning, or evening walk on the calendar. Block it out.

Walk to clear your head and think. 80000 steps, 10k steps, whatever, the number doesnt matter so much as you not being stuck inside for 12 sedentary hours between bed, card, desk, car, couch, and then bed again. Walking is the cheapest intervention in all of health and the one founders skip first.

6. Sleep ENOUGH, and stop stressing over a lack of sleep-I am giving you permission to throw away your apple watch or whoop, and not give a fuck about perfect sleep scores. Sometimes we will be tired, thats fine. So long as you can hit 5-6 hours a night at least, you

7. Resiliency to Stress matters more than eliminating all stress-Running a startup is stressful, without question. The approach then is to improve your resiliency, eliminate excess stress through smart decision making (like FIRING bad hires, tightening your decision loops), and doing what YOU need to do to RELAX your nervous system. Whether thats sauna cold plunge meditation nature walks a psychiatrist an executive coach walking your dog playing videos games…IT DOESNT MATTER, DO WHAT RELAXES YOU AND GIVES YOU A BREAK.

A startup is a bet that you can sustain elite output for 7 to 10 years.

Not 18 months. Even the most hallowed unicorns in venture capital rarely hit it big in year 1. You are looking at 2-4+ years before the big breakthough. You must last all of that and beyond. Startup world is littered with companies and founders burned out, got divorced, were making desperate decisions with degraded judgment, and ended up needing a sabbatical to recover.

Your company’s most important asset doesn’t appear on the cap table. It’s your brain and body.

Treat it like the infrastructure it is. Then go build the company.

Neurovolt, the nootropic brain energy and stress resilience formula I had in the pipeline for a year, its finally available.

Get yourself a bottle or two (standard serving size is 3 capsules).

Recently I was on Wall St Papis new podcast, talking about Athanor and the journey of starting the company. It was one of the most enjoyable podcasts Ive done, and we managed to cover the entire timeline of when I started personal training in college to today.

Near the end of the interview, I touch on the role of mimetics, Rene Girard, and how I never wanted to live an “imitable life”. Ive always pursued things that I find personally meaningfully, and engaging in short term status games or following conventional expectations is simply not how I operate.

I was this way when I was very young, and Ive never changed.

In my late 20s, I would read “Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World” by Rene Girard.

René Girard’s philosophy centers on the claim that humans learn what to want by imitating the desires of others. This imitation creates our personalities and psyche.

No one is truly “original”. We learn a language, all have the same base desires, and we assemble ourselves through experiences.

We can be original in what we build, discover, or create, but also recognize that this originality is assembled from imitative raw material.

Im not the first person to start a chemical company, attempt to onshore a supply chain, and take a risk. But I am doing something unique thats never been done before in this way.

Models exist for everything, but how they are expressed and combined and live IS highly individual.

Overall, the reaction from my following has been immensely positive. That said, when Ive described the journey Im on, it has broken peoples brains at times, there is a current theme of incredulity.

You are REALLY doing this??! How?!

This is not discouragement from, more pure surprise as to how one can simply pivot towards something else.

Personally, I found the “status game” of being a creator to be hollow.

Its simply not fulfilling. I have faith I am a useful person with purpose, but the trajectory of online life is assessed by likes, shares, impression.

Im good at this. I don’t denigrate marketing, storytelling, and advertising as skills and abilities. If you have these powers, you possess something akin to magic. Use it for good.

But it also became a game that I simply did not want to play for forever is my primary game. I did not want the path of my life to be defined by how many views I could get as a fitness personality.

I wanted to solve problems that were more critical, more important, more essential to the infrastructure of civilisation, and success was not contingent purely on traffic generated and conversions.

There is a model of what a health influencer is, and what an influencer does.

Ive always been aware of this model, Ive lived it after all. Im supposed to post, talk about a certain set of subjects, and stay within particular lanes. Ive done this better than most, but there is still a formula.

But I decided to change and pursue something I see as a higher, more meaningful mission.

What I want to tell all of you,

Do not ever be constrained by your identity and expectations

There is no such phenomenon as having “no identity”. To be a fully formed individual, we need concrete beliefs, virtues, and orientation.

But an identity can constrain which models and paths feel available or legitimate to you. If you see yourself as a particular kind of person, you limit yourself models that reinforce this, and reject desires that would threaten the internal narrative (“people like me don’t do X”).

Your internal loci can gradually become more external over time, and the “identity crisis” people sometimes experience is this awareness that fate has guided them and they never made their own individual choices. Their choices were decided for them by others. Family, the group they belong to, the profession, the social world they inhabit.

This is NOT automatically a bad thing. But its not always good either. It can become a cage.

But you have the keys, and the locks are on the inside.

You can change. You can redefine yourself. You can take your skills and stack them with another one.

The 20th century mental model of a definable and linear “career” is dead anyway. The most successful people of the 21st century are intelligent, adaptable, and have unique talent stacks.

(The concept of skill/talent stacking I credit to Scott Adams. Get good at enough things, and you can carve out an incredibly unique life path).

You can just do things.

Last year I wrote a long string of articles on peptides and thought “that about covers it”.

Silly me, I was early by about a year. Every day, every week on X, YT, Tiktok, IG there is peptide talk, and thousands of new people discovering them for the first time.

Per many of the comments, people wanted to know what this was, how it worked, what does it do????

So once again we are discussing the ever popular “Wolverine” protocol for connective tissue and general orthopedic healing.

​The Wolverine Protocol is many peoples introduction to Peptides

Its a combo of peptides that improve blood flow, connective tissue regeneration, and inflammation control. ​

More blood flow+better tissue reconstruction+less inflammation=faster healing

The Modern Stack Consists of 3 (sometimes 4) Peptides

The first is BPC157- In sufficient doses, it promotes angiogenesis (new blood vessel formation), enhances fibroblast migration, and modulates nitric oxide. This is everything you want for damaged tissue. ​

The second is TB500-It has the effect of improving formation of healthy actin, which is a foundational structural protein in all cells. This reduces fibrosis (scar tissue) and leads to overall healtheir tissue formation. It also stimulates stem cells and repair-related cells at the same time for faster healing. ​

The third is GHKcu-Its major effect is increasing collagen production, which by extension enhances skin and soft tissue healing. It also increases vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and superoxide dismutase (SOD), which improves blood supply and reduces oxidative stress. ​

FYI-This stack is experimental, NOT approved by any medical body, and if you decided to try this out, you are in Sovereign health Broscientist territory.

The Healing STACK Protocol Breaks down as follows

1. ​BPC157

   local site injection, or close to the injury site, 1000 mcg 1-2 times daily. Subcutaneous or shallow IM injection.

2. ​TB500,

   2.5mg, twice weekly be injected anywhere, also subcutaneous. ​

3. ​GHKcu
   2mg daily, inject shallow intramuscular anywhere on the body.

4. KPV
   This is a potent anti-inflammatory and can alleviate chronic. Its optional. Usually dosed at 500mcg daily

   Typically people use this for 4 weeks.
   

If you are going to go BROSCIENTIST,

Elite Research is my recommended vendor.

​ ​​ Use code 10AJAC for a discount.

Got Questions on researching?

Join the Biohacking group

-Elite Research is who I recommend for peptide research. Use code AJAC10 at checkout

-If you a founder, operator, business owner, get yourself a Chief Health Officer to stay strong and fit while your building your business. Talk to Velocity health.

We are always in the act of creating ourselves

From 2010 up until the end of 2026, my professional life was health, exercise, fitness. I was a full time personal trainer from 2010-2017, and then committed to being a creator from 2017 onward.

Over the course of those years, I had a recurring struggle, not with burnout, but rather BOREDOM.

Health and fitness can get repetitive. Same questions, same conversations, same arguments, same subjects that you are endlessly repeating yourself on.

While the field of health science has progressed, the fundamentals have never changed. This is good in that we know what works quite clearly, but it would get stale as a subject.

Im an innately curious person and always want to be learning new things, thus every year Id have periods of not studying or paying attention to anything to do with fitness for months on end, and would instead go into various rabbit holes of research.

In the middle of the year, it was deciding to get into supplements.

I formulated Neurovolt for brain metabolism and delivering cognitive energy memory and focus, and in the frustrating process of trying to get it to market, I learned how much the USA lacks real manufacturing ability for Nutraceuticals. Sourcing quality ingredients was a primary concern

Neurovolt DID finally get made, 3rd party tested, and its now for Sale

In the frustration of that experience came to learning that Creatine monohydrate is is about 90% made China, 10% made in Germany.

Why cant we make Creatine in the USA?

Because beyond the Creatine itself, there is a massively bigger supply chain that America lacks, and we are missing key capabilities in Defense, Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical production.

Come December of last year, I brain dumped on X, to surprisingly enthusiastic response.

Then I recruited a team of scientists and engineers. Then we started working to get the supply chain back. Then I attended a Hard Tech Accelerator.

Now we have some enormous announcements coming. We have investors. Development is happening, so is building.

There has been some level of incredulity from people,

AJAC, are you REALLY going all in on this industrial project? You have a REAL company that will be making creatine and specialty chemicals and building factories?

YES.

That ironically brings us back to fitness.

My daily life has changed dramatically, I am in calls and meeting and steering the proverbial ship. There is a team of 20 people I lead (yes really).

Along with communicating, my time is spent researching chemistry, engineering, supply chains, and industrial manufacturing.

My free time is limited.

When I do need a break, I exercise…and I listen to Fitness content

Fitness has become the thing that gives my mind a break, because its FAMILIAR

What I listen to is high level and more for advanced lifters and coaches, its not '“causal” listening for someone who is a noob.

That said, I wanted to share my favorite creators with all of you, and what Ive learend from them

Jonathan Warren-The Expansion/Compression Model

Jonathan is a veteran personal trainer in Orange Country, California. Him and I are similiar in age, and he’s been training clients for close to two decaces.

Jonathan is a student of Bill Hartman, a physical therapist who has pioneered a dynamic anatomical model of the human skeleton not being fixed and static like a terminator skeleton, but rather are able to compress and expand in structure in alignment with breathing and loading and movement.

Simplified, your rib cage and pelvis are able to expand and compress

=ECM, Expansion Compression Model

As Warren is a competitive bodybuilder, he uses this model in training, and illustrates how lifting weights is not simply moving something from Point A to Point B. On a deeper level, its understanding how your muscles and skeleton are dynamically moving in real time.

The obsession with Range of Motion is a misplaced focus on the weight, and it tends to ignore whats happening with the joints and muscles themselves.

Id suggest starting with his ECM video

And then seeing what others interest you. His videos on troubleshooting training are phenomenal

Eric Seifert-Muscle Activation applied to real life training

Eric is AMAZING. He has the best hands on instruction of movement form, mechanics, and deep understanding of anatomy and physics that Ive ever encountered.

His background is combination of being a neuromuscular therapist trained Muscle Activation Technique, and then a strength coach.

His videos are often him training real clients, and its magical how he can solve problems most lifters struggle with for years.

Every video breaks down muscle activation, movement assessment, and how equipment mechanics all work together.

He constantly makes the point that most injuries, stalled development, and chronic joint pain don’t come from a lack of effort, they come from poor fit, poor execution, and misunderstanding how the body interacts with machines and lifting implements, be that a barbell, a dumbbell, leg press, or something else.

Eric is the best example of truly PERSONAL training.

He doesnt have templates and copy paste workouts. He doesnt guess.
Every session is real time assessment, real customization, and real results.

If you’ve ever struggled with “I train hard but this muscle won’t grow,” or “this exercise always hurts,” WATCH his videos.

I have many friends who work in DTC products (such the founder of NOBs, and Yapper), and I was inspired watching their journeys.

This was in mid summer, before I discovered the massive hole in the supply chain for speciality chemicals and American Creatine and my obsession with industrialization and starting Athanor.

My thinking at the time was simple; I have a large following, theres many unique products I use, why not create my own supplement mine?

And off I went.

I elected to start with a nootropic. It was a combination of ingredients that I had used myself for a long time, for mental energy, memory, and focus.

I named it Neurovolt

To understand the formula, I have to describe my own journey: I started using preworkouts as a teenager. I remember Ripped Force, the Original Jack3D, and NO-Explode.

Id double the serving sizes, I’d take them at night. I was young and dumb and full of stimulants. On more than one occassion I gave myself a headache and heart palpitations.

I used and abused SO many products . I tried adderal. I tried modafinil. I chewed way too much nicotine gum. I couldnt begin to estimate the number of nootropic formulas Ive tried over the years.

At a certain point in my mid 20s, I did an objective assessment; have any of these things measurably led to MORE muscle growth and gotten me stronger?

NO, they had NOT.

I had tweaked myself out so many times with so many powders, and for what?

Sure, there was the ritualistic aspect to taking them, but I coulnt say there was a definable long term benefit.

The truth is that most nootropcis and preworkouts don’t fuel your brain.

More like they flog it into temporal performance. And then you crash out

Adderall, modafinil, nicotine, high-dose caffeine stacks, preworkouts…these compounds and formulas basically force neurotransmitter release, or they block reuptake.

You feel wired because dopamine and norepinephrine are flooding your synapses faster than your body can replenish them.

Two weeks in, its working great. Two months in, you cannot function without them.

Everyone arrives at needing to be stimulated just to feel baseline normal.

Because what they actually do is downregulate receptors, deplete catecholamine reserves, and demand higher doses for the same effect.

Everyone that uses this stuff eventually experiences a depletion effect.

You are making your brain work harder, but not BETTER.

I needed to recalibrate. Where does “performance” actually start?

The BRAIN

If you want to perform better, feed your brain. Improve your mental state. Maybe make yourself more resilient to actual stress versus stressing your neuroendocrine system out…

So I reframed the situation; what can I do to support my overall BRAIN function for better physical and mental performance?

I looked into brain metabolism. Real cognitive support would be improving brain metabolism itself: ATP production in neurons, mitochondrial efficiency, oxygen and glucose delivery, neurotransmitters, the stuff that actually powers thought, not just the feeling of being wired.

That lead to the ingredients that make NeuroVolt

The Ingredients

Rhodiola Rosea-often called “rhodiola” for short, is a plant in the genus Rhodiola that’s used as an herbal supplement with adaptogenic properties that help to provide general resistance to stress. Rhodiola is an adaptogen that only grows in very cold temperatures, and this unique property of stress tolerance is the effect it has on the body. Although its mechanisms of action are not completely understood, it is clear that rhodiola increases resilience to stress at both the cellular and systemic levels.

Alpha GPC-Alpha-glycerylphosphorylcholine (alpha-GPC or α-GPC) is a compound used by the body in the synthesis of neurotransmitters, specifically acetylcholine. It is taken as a supplement for cognitive enhancement/prevention of cognitive decline and for increased power output in athletic performance.

Tyrosine-L-Tyrosine is an amino acid that is used as a precursor for the synthesis of the catecholamines dopamine (DA) and norepinephrine (NE). DA and NE are depleted under stressful conditions, which can compromise cognitive function. L-Tyrosine supplementation may help alleviate acute stress-induced cognitive decline by restoring catecholamine levels in the brain.

Theanine-L-theanine, is a naturally occurring amino acid found in tea. Supplementation with L-theanine may help reduce stress and anxiety and might improve sleep quality and some aspects of cognitive function.

These four ingredients became staples in supplement regimen over the years.

I would take them in combo with each other, usually in the morning with coffee. Id take them before training. My cognitive energy was high, my workouts were great, and my mind lucid.

What I noticed is the absence of friction. My work goes faster. my focus holds longer. Im not inclined to caffeinate myself in the afternoon.

This is what cognition feels like when your brain has what it needs to function.

Neurovolt is FINALLY for Sale

I had naively assumed that product development would take 12 weeks at most and I’d be selling it in Q3 of last year. Here we are now in 2026 and its finally ready.

FYI-My original plan was to use a 3PL service to ship. That fell through, and I ended up having 1000 bottles sent to my HOUSE. Now they are sitting next to my office and Im packaging them up myself.

Regardless, Im proud of the product. I know its a great formula. And im giving everyone a sweet deal I think on this initial production run.

You Can order Neurovolt here, and I will ship it to you

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Orthorexia-is a pattern of disordered eating characterized by an unhealthy, obsessive fixation on eating only foods perceived as “healthy,” “pure,” or “clean,” to the point that it harms physical health, mental health, or social functioning. It focuses on the quality and perceived purity of food rather than on weight loss or the quantity of food.

Orthorexia can be extended to overall health practices, with a growing obsession on purity that takes over all aspects of life. This obsession takes on a pseudoreligious, moral dynamic.

In that context, I read this article recently on X, by Will Manidis (a fantastic thinker/writer)

The article, titled “On Grindslop”, is a missive on the psuedoreligious culture in tech world and beyond of of how “hardcore” one can be in their work, and how this culture of esteeming suffering is endlessly circular and performative.

I saw obvious crossover with the health and fitness world. On the heels of Bryan Johnson has come an increasingly manical focus on measuring, data-fying, scoring, optimizing, tracking every aspect of existence, from wake time to steps to heart rate to HRV to training minutia to protocols to sleep to hormones to preventative testing, and everything in between.

Add in a fearmongering over ingredients, toxins, detoxng, perfume, EMFs, plastics, polyester…and you can keep purity spiraling until you arrive at a “return to nature” enlightenment in which the only decision is to live in a forest, interact with no technology, and wear natural garments while growing/hunting your own.

Only in a savage state could we possible be healthy.

Or vice versa, only by turning every waking minute our lives and bodily function into data can we hope to transend this moral coil and meat suit, and overcome death itself.

Both of these paths are, bluntly, fucking nuts.

To be clear, I am of the belief that the care of the body has a moral dimension, and the body is not separable from the Mind. The Mindbody are one.

I believe we should honor ourselves by taking care of our Mindbody, and being strong.

That said, the Cult of Data and the Cult of Return to nature are both fun house mirrors reflecting one another.

They have the same attitude of righteousness. The same attempt at moral superiority.

One sees salvation in shedding modernity. Mankind is fallen, we ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and it gave us iPhones and EMFs. Pray to G-D for foregiveness and get naked “proverbially” on the tradlife homestead.

Or, find your salvation in transhuman. God is dead, or maybe not real, or maybe we can beat him by overcoming death itself and becoming immortal. Reddit Atheists cyborg squared.

What is being attempted by all this is the oldest human project: to escape sin and death by being good enough.

The zealots within this realm, the carnivore raw-milk forest-dweller and the Blueprint disciple are both, at root, terrified of dying.

They have responded to this fear by constructing elaborate moral systems that promise, if followed perfectly, to keep them safe from death and from evil.

The systems, extracted from books, podcasts, and slop clips, function as a simulcra of worship.

Health orthorexia is grindslop for the body.

Again, I must emphasize…

I am not telling you measurement is bad. I take bloodwork. I check my hormones. I follow progressive overload in my training. I have used peptides for a decade and experiment with lots of things.

I’d like to live a long time.

I also get diet coke from mcdonalds, enjoy cigars and spirits with my friends, and harbor no illusions that I will look 30 when Im 60, achieve immortality, or “reverse age”. I dont turn my wifi router off at night. I sleep amazing.

I live in the country. I “ground” all the time. I also wear polyester workout pants, because frankly the cotton alternatives suck and I just dont fucking care.

The major in minutia is both tedious and pointless. My life has love, family, and purpose. I dont need a wearable to tell me when to wake up and fall asleep and whether Im recovered enough to train hard on any given day.

Someone is going to read this and their reaction will be some version of me being a Heretic and fraud because Im dont adhere to their side of the orthorexic religiousity

Thats fine. I am okay with that.

For everyone else who hasnt been driven into psychosis, I am telling all of you

The purpose of being healthy is a well lived life that you ENJOY.

I believe a great deal of this sentiment and phenomenon stems from the reality that the religious instinct is innate in humanity.

And a man without a religion will invent one. This is what I see happening across both extremes of the health world right now. The guys wanting to grasp at immortality and the guys optimizing for ancestral purity are playing the same fallacious game.

Health is a means. It has never been an end.

So use the tools. Find your own balance. I encourage everyone to be sovereign in their health choices and their lives.

Dont go crazy please. Be a little crazy time to time, keep it fun. When you start stressing over something that was supposed to make you healthy or make life easier, you’ve likely gone too far.

Train hard. Eat real food. Sleep enough. Use the tools that serve you.

Drop the ones that do not.

Build something.

Love your wife.

Raise your kids.

Do the work that means something to you.

Live Well.

You have a cardio problem, but it isn’t the one you think.

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15 years ago, Martin Berkhan published a blog article that would go on to become famous (at the time)

He described a condition known as..

Fuckarounditis

Fuckarounditis is a behavioral disorder characterized by a mediocre physique and complete lack of progress, despite significant amounts of time spent in the gym.

Fuckarounditis most commonly manifests itself as an intense preoccupation with crunches, curls, cable movements, belts, gloves, balance boards, Swiss Balls and Tyler Durden. Fear of squats and deadlifts is another distinguishing trait. Physical exertion is either completely lacking or misapplied (towards questionable or unproductive training practices).

Despite an alarming increase of fuckarounditis in recent years, prevalance may vary greatly depending on location. However, in most commercial gyms, it has been estimated that 90-100% of individuals are afflicted to varying degrees.

Environment and social networks are crucial factors for triggering the disease. It has been proposed that the roots of the disease stems from misinformation and counterproductive training advice found in popular media (“fitness magazines”) and information hubs on the Internet.

Human nature and the so-called “laziness”, “magic bullet” and “complacency” genes plays a permissive role for allowing the disease to take hold.

The disease spreads rapidly, as carriers of the disease communicate with other individuals in locker rooms, Internet discussion forums and other arenas of interaction and information exchange in real life or otherwise.

The onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood and may go undiagnosed for a lifetime. Diagnosis is set by a professional and based on observed behaviors and physique progress.

The article, while tongue and cheek, is undeniably accurate

• Strength and muscle are built by doing basic, boring exercises over and over again

• effective training is uncomplicated

• Most people major in the minor, and complicate exercise to entertain themselves

• the Illusion of Complexity traps people in minutia and pedantry

Taking inspiration from Berkhan, the same phenomenon occurs with Cardiovascular training

Ive lost track of the number of podcasts episodes that have covered cardiovascular training. The past few years its been all about ZONE 2 and Zone training, and lactate threshold. And mitochondria. And Norwegian 4x4. And STUDIES

Rewind back to the late 2000s, and it was more focused on high intensity intervals. Tabata. Prowler pushes. METCONS.

There were endless arguments about frequency and intervals and rest periods and pseudoscience bs articles on how running was for PREY, but sprinting was for PREDATORS.

There was a whole movement around lift weights faster (rebranded circuit training). People were buying tires to flip and sledge hammers to smash.

How much of this was ever done consistently? Almost none of it.

Remember these? Back in 2010 they were the hottest thing and articles abounded on why they were the ultimate training tool. Now theyve been forgotten

I encourage everyone to do cardio. Cardio is good for you. Theres no arguing around the obvious short and long term health benefits.

But inevitably, everyone is still arguing today. Except now its running, biking, Zone training, and whether you need 75 minutes or 150 minutes or 300 minutes or some number inbetween and how to structure it…

All of this is an exercise in pedantry. Its bullshit time wasting.

I would bet some of you reading this have a high demand career, maybe a wife, kids, and you have spent time debating whether Zone 2 jogging is better than incline treadmill walking. Youve read five other Substacks about this.Maybe you bought a chest strap. And an assault bike. You’ve listened to multiple podcasts on lactate threshold and intervals. Maybe you decided to try rucking too. And bought a bike even.

But your mile time is still the same as it was a year ago.

You’ve made no objective progress,

but youve tried everything. In fact you’ve been trying things for years

You Have Fuckarounditis ala Cardio

And I am telling you today

JUST FUCKING PICK SOMETHING

Meanwhile there is a older bro lifter in his his 50s, he does 40 minutes of incline walking or the bike 5 days a week. The tool doesnt really matter. He does 40 minutes. Thats what he does.

And its all he does. He doesnt measure the pace. He tries to sweat every time.

He’s done it for 30 years. And he has fantastic cardiovascular health. He doesn’t know what his lactate threshold is. He doesn’t care.

The older bro lifter is getting all the benefits from retardmaxxing his cardio.

Meanwhile you’ve spent thousands of dollars on devices, equipment, and being consistently inconsistent in everything.

But what does the SCIENCE say??

It says cardio is good for you, and doing ANY AMOUNT is better than doing nothing.

The mortality science on cardio is one of the most settled bodies of evidence in human physiology. It points in one direction:

ANY consistent aerobic activity reduces your risk of dying.

• A 2023 meta-analysis of 227,000 people across 17 studies found that every 1,000-step increment in daily activity correlated with a 15% reduction in all-cause mortality. The benefit started at roughly 3,800 steps per day.

  
  That’s a long walk after dinner.

• A study from Taiwan tracking over 400,000 adults for 8 years found significant mortality reduction from just 15 minutes of moderate activity per day.
  Fifteen fucking minutes.

• A 30-year analysis of 100,000+ people published in Circulation found that meeting basic activity guidelines, 150 minutes of moderate aerobic work per week or 75 minutes of vigorous, produced a 20–21% reduction in all-cause mortality.

• Doubling that to 300–600 minutes pushed the reduction to 26–31%.

• How many people reading this are doing 600 minutes of cardio a week? Thats 2 hours daily. Unlesss youre a pro endurance athlete, no one is doing that
  
  But 150 Minutes a week is 30 minutes daily, occasionally skipping a day. Brain dead simple

• A study of 55,000 people followed for over 15 years found that low-dose runners; 1 to 2 sessions per week, less than 52 minutes total, less than 6 miles a week, they got nearly identical mortality reductions compared to high-dose runners.
  
  1-2 sessions a Week

Meta Point=The dose that produces most of the lifetime benefit is shockingly small. 15-30 minutes of sweating. On any kind of schedule.

Most men never get there because they’re still picking the modality.

—>You’re not losing the cardio fight because the volume is too high. You’re losing it because the volume is zero.

Also, the interference effect is overstated

The other reason men don’t do cardio is the persistent fear that cardio kills lifting gains.

This fear is roughly forty years out of date.

Back in1980 there was a famous Hickson study that showed concurrent training reduced strength gains in untrained men.

Since that time, the research has changed. A 2022 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine found no significant interference effect for hypertrophy when cardio and lifting are performed in separate sessions, or when they’re separated by more than 20 minutes within a session.

The interference that does persist is mostly limited to explosive power output, which is relevant if you’re a power athlete, irrelevant for a 38-year-old lifter trying to look good and stay healthy.

For most men reading this: 25 minutes of moderate cycling on Tuesday is not blunting your bench press on Wednesday. It’s making your heart stronger and your recovery faster. It’s working in your favor on the days you lift.

The only “Rule” I have about cardio is not doing hard cardio on a day that you train legs. Dont squat, leg press, and lunge and then plan on a run.

Aside from that, do any cardio any day. Before training, after training, does not matter. Just DO IT.

The Genius/RetardMaxx prescription

Here’s what works. I’ve used it with men aged 30 to 65, with wrecked knees, busy careers, and one open hour in the morning.

Frequency. Three sessions per week.

Duration. 30 minutes per session.

Intensity. SWEAT. Whether thats a lot or a little, SWEAT. At the end of the session, you should be sweating. Whether its profusely or mild, doesnt matter. SWEAT DAMN YOU. If you are sweating, the intensity is sufficient

Modality. Whatever doesn’t break you. Walking, incline treadmill, stationary bike, stepmill, rower, sled or prowler, jump rope, kettlebell complexes, heavy bag. Stay off the road if you’re heavy or beat up. Again, it doesnt matter WHAT you pick. Before y

That’s it. There’s no secret modality. There’s no protocol that beats the others by a massive margin worth optimizing for at this point.

Consistency is King

The cardio fuckarounditis is an emblematic example of the circular optimization conversation in fitness. Talk endlessly about options, but do none of them well.

Consistency is built by removing options, not adding them.

The men who get stuck choosing between modalities aren’t analyzing themselves into excellence. They’re reproducing a problem the supplement industry, the influencer economy, and the medical establishment all benefit from: the belief that the next protocol will fix what 18 months of consistent basic work would have already fixed.

Hence my point to pick something and stick with it. Its the most powerful thing you can do right now.

What to do this week

Pick one modality. Walk, bike, row, prowler, stairs. Pick the one you’ll actually do when you’re tired and requires a minimum of thinking.

Schedule three sessions on a calendar this week. 30 minutes each. Be sweating by the end of it.

Do them. Don’t research. Don’t optimize. Don’t post about them.

Come back in 8 weeks and assess.

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When I got into lifting weights, it was around 2005, and the dominant online influence was from the powerlifting world and hardcore bodybuilding.

The “science” around lifting could be considered primitive compared to today. True broscience theories based on nothing but personal anecdotes abounded.

Since that time, hundreds of studies have been the past 20 years on strength and hypertrophy training.

But if you were to ask me whether any of them have fundamentally changed what we know to work…Id say no.

If we go back in time…

There was no “online media” beyond message boards.

Westside Barbell was at its peak, as equipped powerlifting meets were the only strength sport that you could find on the internet due to people taking videos and pictures. An early lesson in the power of media in shaping belief and perception.

Does anyone do “dynamic effort” day anymore?

Now, if you werent into powerlifting, you of course had bodybuilding and the muscle magazines for articles.

Videotapes of the top bodybuilders could be purchased through muscular development.

These videotapes are now on youtube, and they are golden to watch.

This is all to say that the dominant philosophies at the time were either

1-Powerlift, Big 3

2-Bodybuild, high volume, lift heavy weight and go to failure with reps

There was also a hybrid of the two…

POWERBUILDING.

This was most identified to Metroflex Gym (home to Ronnie Coleman, Branch Warren, and Johnnie Jackson").

The gym was legendary even then, owned by Brian Dobson in Arlington, Texas, and it was resident trainer Josh Bryant who pioneered the powerbuilding philosophy.

Looking back on it…its held up. There is nothing about it that can be said to be wrong by modern exercise science standards.

If anything, exercise science has proven to be a largely ridiculous field respective to Strength and hypertrophy training.

After decades of research and a Rise in “Science based lifters”, weve been left with the same practices and training strategies.

Core Powerbuilding Principles

1. Heavy Compound Movements: The foundation emphasizes lifting heavy weights on core exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, chin-ups, and bar dips.

-The overall global muscle growth gains from these is still indisputable.

2. Progressive Overload: the second cornerstone of the training philosophy, requiring consistent increases in demands placed on the body over time.

-Nothing to argue about here either

3. Volume Training: Sessions typically include multiple exercises per muscle group with several sets and reps to fully exhaust muscles and stimulate maximum growth. Split routines focusing on different muscle groups on different days allow for both intensity and recovery.

-The low volume and HIT crowd will always argue about sets, but considering how many physiques its built, its a stupid argument. Moderate to high volume training clearly works for most people, provided you eat enough and sleep well.

4. Balanced Exercise Selection: The approach balances high reps, low reps, fast reps, slow reps, compound movements, peak contraction exercises, free weights, and machines

-Yes, you can do multiple rep ranges in the same workout. You can a barbell movement for low reps, say 5-8. Then do dumbbells or machines for sets of 8-12. Then maybe some cables for moderate to high reps. No one is stopping you. You can even use multiple kinds of resistance. You dont have to choose between free weights, machines, and bodyweight.

5. “No Pain, No Gain”: Training to failure and beyond is common, with discomfort embraced as a sign of effective training. This intensity-driven approach, combined with discipline to repeat it for years without deviation, separates champions from average lifters.

-This is another point that people argue about, such as Reps in Reserve. I consider RIR to be a bullshit principle based on bullshit reasoning. On any given day, your ability to give 100% to a training session will fluctuate. Intensity drives adaptation, and rarely has anyone lacked results from training TOO hard. “I worked out too hard with too much focus, and my muscles didnt grow”…this is not a widespread problem. Maybe amongst a small subset of hardcore lifters who do too much junk volume, but that is a scarce group. When in doubt, train to failure, or at least very close to it.

Part of the Appeal of someone like Sam Sulek is the fact he trains HARD

I dont watch Sams videos, Ive only seen clips. What I have seen, Ive been impressed by. Hes earnest, thoughtful, and his training intensity is undeniable.

Sam does NOT obsesses over angles, moment arms, and “optimization”. He trains like a golden age bodybuilder, and LOOKS like one.

After the past decade of optimal exercises, optimal workouts, optimal schedules, optimal macros, optimize everything…so much of is pedantry. Majoring in the minor and the inconsequential.

When in doubt, lift heavy, lift hard, use all the reps ranges, and get a sick fucking pump.