Episode 133: Muscle Meathead Meanderings and Getting Results for Clients with Ryan L’Ecuyer

On today’s episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, Ryan L’Ecuyer and I talk about meathead stuff, hypertrophy, exercise, and a bunch of other fun topics. Ryan has been competing as a natural bodybuilder for many years. He’s also coach @lacurefit on Instagram and coach and assistant bro at The Costa Rica Center for Bro Research.

Stay tuned for information about a documentary on post-traumatic growth Jodie and I took part in while in Costa Rica.

Episode Notes

• Programming for clients
• Training program rationale
• Getting results for clients
• Unrealistic coaching expectations
• When numbers don’t add up
• Signs of a plateau
• Managing hunger during prep
• The fasted cardio debate
• Meanderings from training in Costa Rica
• Figuring out your goals
• Find Ryan at Rebel Performance or follow Ryan on IG @lacurefit
• Ryan’s top two tips for doing a lat pose

The Flex Diet Podcast is brought to you by the Flex Diet Certification. Go to https://flexdiet.com/ for 8 interventions on nutrition and recovery. The course opens today, Jan. 3rd to Monday, Jan. 10th. If you are outside of the enrollment window, sign up to be notified when the course opens again.Rock on!

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Dr. Mike T Nelson

Hey, welcome back to the flex diet podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. Today on the podcast, I’ve got my good buddy, Ryan locura. And we are all talking about meathead stuff of hypertrophy, exercise and just generally catching up with him, saw him in Austin, this past December, which was awesome, always have a good time together. And I think you’ll learn some really cool stuff from him. He’s probably not a guy you’ve heard of, he likes to be kind of hidden away. But he’s been competing in Natural Bodybuilding for many years. And he’s very good at doing lat spreads, and does a really good job of coaching people also super intelligent guy. And I wanted to get him on the show, and just chat with him and also catch up.

You’ll notice when it starts, like most of these as of late, it’s just more of a conversation that’s pretty wide ranging but good topics and think stuff you will enjoy. This podcast is brought to you by the flex diet cert, speaking of stuff you may enjoy. It is eight interventions to help you with nutrition and recovery or if you’re a coach, teach you how to apply this to your clients in a complete done for you but you have flexible system. So go to flexdiet.com for all of the information and you can get on the waitlist for the next time that it opens. Go to flexdiet.com for all the details that will put you on the daily free newsletter also. And as of this recording with podcasts will be out this coming Monday.

You probably saw on social media and through the newsletter that I am still quarantined in Costa Rica. We had a really good time down here, Jody and I were down here. And we did some filming for an upcoming documentary on post traumatic growth. I did five hours of interviews for that threw some friends, which will be awesome, we’ll have a lot more information about that coming out, I think it’s going to be amazing. So stay tuned for that. We did some DNA or ayahuasca and also a combo the jungle, which was great, you can find my podcast last year when I did something similar. And everything went really good. And I may have more details in the future on that I might not haven’t decided yet. And then we went to leave, I tested positive on an antigen test at the airport. A little bit of a weird cough. But other than that, I felt fine. And I told Jodi to leave because I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen.

I tried to go back and get another antigen test figuring, hey, if this next test is negative, then the first one was surely a false positive. I don’t have symptoms, I can still make our flight. Well, turns out you can’t do any other testing. So it was not able to do any other testing was not able to do a PCR test. I was banned at the airport from doing any other testing. And yeah, so I’m on an automatic quarantine for 11 days, which I guess could have been 14 days to my hotel room. But then I asked them, I said, Well, can I go out and get food? They said, Oh, yeah, you can go get food. Like can I go for a walk? Like, oh, that’s okay. So I asked them, can I go to Nicaragua? Like no.

I’m still not 100% sure what I can and cannot do but I basically stayed holed up in my hotel room not to put anyone else at risk or get some huge fine or anything like that. The whole irony of the thing is I was finally able to get a PCR test paid out of pocket was quite tricky to get. And it was negative. So I’m quarantined here in Costa Rica for COVID. But by PCR test, I don’t have COVID I’m almost kind of wishing maybe at some point I did. And I could just kind of get that part over with but but good to be feeling healthy. Everything else is fine, much worse places to be trapped. So that’s the update on that and enjoy the podcast today. With my good buddy, Ryan liqueur, Nabil, how long do you program clients out? This is something I’ve always debated with myself.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Usually four weeks is enough. Yeah, that unless I have like weird phases that are that are shorter. But I’ll do like I do have these kind of like pivot weeks on the back burner at all times. I did that with a few people. Whereas I didn’t really I wasn’t really ready to write a whole new block of training for them because we hadn’t really communicated especially for the month of December. So I was like, Okay, I’ll just give you two weeks of like we’ll do like eight by eights for for like, on four different days and then do like I put in like a sensory motor type of week, which is more like tri planar type of stuff, just stuff that they normally don’t do in the gym. So hey, this is you’re probably not going to get to the gym much this week anyway. So here’s the here’s this this workout, it’s like, you’re pretty quick, though you’ll feel good, the more robot nature you get some different movements in. So that’s actually been really helpful. So I can kind of have those on the backburner for when I because I don’t like to just program endlessly for people if I haven’t communicated with them. But then if I have, then I find that I can usually get away with like four week blocks of training, what are you usually doing more more frequent changes, everything’s your programming. I’ve been trying to get it where I can program in theory four to six weeks ahead of time, but in reality, does that ever really happen?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Very few. Okay, you know, because what would change that? Well, for the good or bad, like I I still probably allow people to do stuff a little bit too much custom, but it highly depends upon the person. Right? So they’ll, something will happen. And you know, just life stuff happens a client. So it’s like, oh, I missed like three days this past week. And so I’m like, Oh, shit, well, you probably shouldn’t go up to four sets next next week. So let’s Yeah, program that down a little bit, or let’s move this around. But I think the downside of that is, nobody does it consciously. But unconsciously, they know that I’ll adapt the program to them, which is what I would want to do, versus them, figuring out a way to get it done. But that’s also a double edged sword too, because I’ve had people just smoke themselves in the past about getting their, you know, mandatory four sets in and then week, two weeks after that they’re just a complete shit show, because they forced themselves through it.

I think they’re making the right decision. But I don’t know, it’s like, I always feel like I’m trying to adapt the programming to their lifestyle, which I think is I deal. But then you wonder, why am I just making it too easy for them to do that? Should they be more autonomous? Should they be able to figure it out on their own? And the reality is, it’s relatively usually small changes to you know, so I figured that’s just like their, maybe seven weeks, you know, somewhere around there. And I’ve been getting better at asking people like, Hey, I know you had two weeks off for the holidays. I get it as a Tommy, you know, I know you had like two weeks off for the holidays, you got some sessions in you were gone. You’re in you know, friggin Iceland and shit. Do you mind if we rerun like three weeks of the last program? Or are you so bored? Silly of that. You never want to look at it again. And if so we’ll retool it and just kind of, you know, motor on to the next one. But I know you’ve got some travel coming up. I know, you’ve got other things, you know, kind of going going on. So like, what is kind of the happy medium. So I’ve been getting better about just fucking asking clients, and he’s like, Nah, man, that’s cool. Like, I felt like I was doing good. On the last program. I want to repeat, you know, some of those exercises to do a little better. Like, okay, great. In my head, I’m thinking, oh, man, he probably doesn’t want to do the same thing again. But I realized that’s my bias because I wouldn’t want to do the same thing.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Or you just feel like, I feel like I do that a lot. Because I’m like, trying to justify me being a coach. And like, I have to be young mean something. Like, right, but yeah, a lot of times you do when you do ask the same thing. Like, they’ll be like, no, no, like, I’m good. I actually like it’s actually harder for me to have to do all this. I just started to figure this out. Like, right. Yeah, just which is cool. No, you can’t go wrong with that. Yeah. No, once I guess you probably just gets into our podcasts and sees or just chats anyway, we record so what the hell.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’m totally Yeah. I mean, I, I think in the past, I probably changed stuff too often based on my own insecurities and nothing else. Right? Because to me, I was like, Oh my God, this person’s paid me so much money and like, why would I have them do a progression of the same thing again, they’re gonna think I’m an idiot, and I don’t know what I’m doing and I need to tweak this and I need to prove to them that I know my shit. And the reality was I I think it cost people results, right? Because I think I was too quick to change stuff, not based on their physiology, not based on them not, you know, plateaued on a result or their HRV tanking or wasn’t based on anything. It was based on my own insecurity of, they’re gonna think I’m an idiot if I don’t change stuff.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

100% Yeah, that’s, that’s, I was so that way, especially when I first started training as a personal trainer at 18. And that was there was very much there’s a lot of that in the culture at my gym. Like, you know, oh, he’s doing the same workout that he did with his other client, you know, right. He did bench press, he’s been on that bench press all day, you know, or whatever. And, and I remember going through progressions with people planning out their, their workouts and, and just running out of progressions. Just what’s the next hip hinge.

Right? I don’t know, like, and then I’m just making up exercise. And it took me a while to figure out it took me like, having a few clients that I had for a few years where it’s like, I literally have no more ideas left, I can’t come up with any more stupid ass exercises. So I’m gonna have to just rerun things at some point. And then eventually, you just start dropping off these exercises and realize there’s there’s so much variation within the loading schemes, the rep ranges, the time rest periods that you can keep people interested. And I think you’re actually giving them a better physiological results.

You can, the coolest thing for me was fine. You know, anytime you can find research that backs your bias, and that’s always fantastic. All right, of course. Yeah. About that. Right. Yeah. So so that was kind of the cool thing. For me a lot of that the research from from Damas, I think is like, the first paper that I read from him was in 2016, on some of the muscle protein synthesis responses to training and seeing that there’s these huge elevations in muscle protein synthesis, following a novel training program, but not necessarily a whole lot of changes in in hypertrophy. And we kind of already knew that a lot of the changes that take place in the beginning of a training program are neurological in nature, that you’re learning how to do the exercise, you’re getting stronger.

Because of that you’re getting more synchronous, muscular contractions, and everything’s just getting better on the neurological level. And it isn’t really until weeks later that you actually start putting on muscle, but it kind of even confirm that further. And, you know, I don’t know if that research has been refuted in any way at this point, if there’s any additions to that, I’ve kind of kept up with it a little bit. But I think the concept is pretty sound, and that you do see it, if you’re just changing things too often, there’s never really a chance to get good enough to actually see some real physiological changes.

So that that for me was when I started looking into that stuff and understanding about it a little bit more, it really justified this concept of keeping things similar enough to get better. And that is better coaching, it just doesn’t feel like it is where we’re changing other things, we’re but primarily what we’re supposed to be changing is physiology, and not supposed to be changed in a spreadsheet. So that’s how they’re paying you for. So. So yeah, I think that the concept is huge, huge for coaches. I know that was really, really important for me, and it does make my life easier. For sure. There’s so there is a bias there. I did want that to be the case. But I was also willing, like, you know, I’m, I’m a hard working person, probably to two faults, like I think I will always kind of err in that direction. But knowing that just I think has made me a lot better, a better coach and more effective coach.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, the other thing that helped me out too, was I realized, like, oh, especially early on with some of the clients I had, you know, probably 8-10 years ago, left to their own devices, like what did they do? Ah, I don’t know, whatever flex magazine said this week, or this online site or that online site. And one of the questions I would ask him is like, okay, dedicated program, how long did you do it? I would say the average was like, if they were honest, they probably lied to me. Two to four weeks, you know, so I’m like, Okay, so maybe by having some level of consistency, I’m actually helping them because the extreme novelty they were doing before, didn’t seem to get them to where they wanted to go.

And then the other part I realized is I, when I switched to doing like, online software, I was like, man, you know, maybe I should create some template and I had a bunch of coaches and business people like Nah, man, you just need to template everything and don’t custom stuff. What are you doing, you idiot, you’re spending hours writing these programs for these people. And I had one person just flat out tell me he’s like, just come up with three templates, put people on it. They’ll never ever know what’s going on. And this is someone who legitimately did this with like 75 people, but then advertised it as you know, completely customized coaching.

And so I hated that whole thing altogether. But what I realized when I went to do some online software was okay, I have to learn the new software. You know, maybe I should put it in an assessment. Maybe I should formalize stuff a little bit. So I drove myself bananas for two weeks and took all the spreadsheets I had done and retro actively looked at them to see okay, what what’s in common?

And my bias going in was? It’d be like 20% in common. I’m a coach. I’m customizing all this stuff for everyone. And to my horror, and maybe to make it easier, I realized like, oh man, like 70 to 80% of it is the same Pretty awesome. And these are like pretty, you know everything from you know, person trying to qualify for the CrossFit Games to, you know, a mom who just wants to lose 20 pounds and has three kids. You know, it was a pretty wide at the time demographic of people. I was like, Oh, shit. So you get like most things like the truth is somewhere in between. Right? So you can go back and see what is kind of common and start there. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad horrible coach either.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

No, not in a way. And I think that’s, yeah, it’s really important stuff because he because he does, it allows you to actually be a good coach at the same time, because you’re not wasting your time rewriting the same damn, right. I mean, I did what I was doing. Dude, I did this for nine to 10 years. I mean, it’s really only been in the last couple of years, just out of necessity, that I’ve started to that I actually have templates like like this is the more metabolic local metabolic template. And then I just have that as a master template. And then I work different individuals into that thing, maybe their gym equipments different, maybe they have certain exercises that they don’t like, or they do like or they can’t do or whatever the case is. But it’s a general outline.

And I never thought that that would make my life that much easier. Because I am still going to take the time to look at this person’s questionnaire and forgive the information that they’re giving me, I’m still going to take time to do that. But just the fact that I’m not opening up a new spreadsheet every damn time and typing it in. It’s actually it’s been an amazing time saver, and it’s maybe way less resentful of, yeah. Because I hate being on the damn computer. So it’s actually been really, really great. And it’s allowed me to focus on other things and be a better coach because of it.

And yeah, I think that we do find it, you know, it’s like, how many movements are we actually capable of doing? Like in the human body, like, like, everyone’s got the same ones. It’s like, we got flexion, extension, external rotation, internal rotation, abducted, like we have, like, there’s no, you’re not going to encounter somebody who has this ability that like nobody else has, it’s like, they have this, this whole new exercise where they I don’t know, they could like fling a thing around one side of the back over the other say, you’re not gonna encounter that person, like it doesn’t like we all have the same movements, we just have different levels of capacity within those movements.

So inherently, it’s gonna look pretty damn similar. Like, if you’re healthier, and you go after the same, will a lot of us have the same problems. So so it’s it’s I definitely don’t think that it makes you a bad coach. I think it just allows you to be a better one, when you when you use some of these templates.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and part of it was completely my own neuroses of, I’m hardcore, I’m starting with a blank spreadsheet for every person, like I’m custom coding all this, you know, and it would take me like two to four hours. And then, like you, I was kind of sort of almost resentful at myself that I’m spending this much time doing it. They don’t appreciate how much effort goes into this. And, you know, finally I realize like, no, they don’t, and they don’t care. They want the result.

That’s why they’re, they don’t give two shits, if it took me six hours or 10 minutes, if they’re getting the result that they paid for. And it fits with what they’re doing. You know, if they tell you, you know, my favorite exercises, you know, kettlebell swings, and you never program it in, then, okay, you’re an idiot, and you’re not really anything and you’re like, Yeah, overhead pressing works. And they’re like, pressing three days a week, you know, then you’re just a dickhead. And, you know, should, you know, take yourself out, but do something else. But you don’t need to be a complete martyr and feel like you’re better because you’re starting over from scratch every time which in hindsight, was a complete waste of time.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s cool. I have a, I got one mentee that I work with that. I told him I, you know, I don’t know he’ll he may listen to this. I told him, I don’t do mentorships I have no capacity to do that. Right now. I don’t have any kind of program. There’s better people to do this. And he’s like, Well, let’s just talk every week. And that’s one thing that we’ve been talking about a lot is like, just don’t do this thing that I’ve been doing for so long. But it’s it’s, it’s I’m really happy that we’re talking about because I because I really don’t hear people talking about it that much. And it really, I mean, for me, I have to learn everything that that the hard way. But I don’t think that ever I don’t think I think everybody so so it’s cool. I think I think that it’s I hope that this message goes through and I hope that it eliminates some of the guilt around that if you find yourself as a coach, programming a lot of very similar things. It doesn’t make you a bad coach, you probably just landed on some of the patterns that we just very often see. That’s that’s okay. Yeah,

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I think it’s reactionary to there’s other people in the industry will leave nameless, who you know, again, advertise completely custom codes. You only work with me, and then you see how many people they work with. And this unfortunate is more common in the bodybuilding prep world. Although it’s getting a lot better than it used to be, I think you may have more insight on that than I do. But I don’t know how you could handle 75 competitors even if you did nothing but you’re glued to your computer am like 6am to 6pm don’t even know how that is feasible like how do you even keep them straight or have the mental capacity to even want to do that? I don’t know that to me just just seems insane

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, I think what you see and I don’t I don’t have a like I have less experience with this than you would think that even though I’ve been in bodybuilding since I was 17 competing but I never actually work with a coach this will be the first year that I’m going to go to work with Chris Bearkat and I have awesome actively doing it the the commitment days great guy. I’m super excited about it. Yes, it’s this so it’s challenging for me it’s going to be it’s definitely going to be as I give up my control is very very tough. But it but I think it’s going to be a really good learning experience. And so I haven’t really worked with a lot of coaches but from what I’ve seen it’s like you see either two things you have the the meal template guy. Yeah, just right like so it’s just and I know that I know the meal template like it’s gonna broccoli and tilapia bro, broccoli and tilapia, maybe there’s some rice in there every now and then, oh, if you’re a guy,

Dr. Mike T Nelson

it’s broccoli and chicken, if you’re female fitness competitor is broccoli and tilapia block is

Ryan L’Ecuyer

the tilapia comes in later because the tilapia actually thins the skin, of course, and I don’t know this. Yeah, yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s obviously common knowledge. Yeah, you gotta you gotta wait until the end, because that’s when it really gives you the finishing touches on stage. So you got you got tilapia, broccoli guy, and then you’ve got macro guy.

And, you know, if you’re doing those two things, I can see how you could run 75 to 100 clients where it’s just yeah, they send you a photo, you send a couple numbers back for the adjustments, you keep them out, you keep a spreadsheet of the adjustments that you made, or maybe you don’t, I don’t know, and then you say, on the other guy, you know, okay, well eat a little eat half a cup of rice this week instead of one cup of rice. And so I guess I could see how you would do that. But I don’t know how you would. Jesus, I mean, how much time you have in the data to really sit down and write out actual meal plan for each person and no, yeah. And how that would be done.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

But yeah, and then plus, you know, like all the other like, to me, that is like, the the entry to coach and that is like the base level that you should be competent with calories in calories out expenditure exercise, nutrition, and we both know, and everyone else listening to this will nod their heads, I’m sure to that. It’s so much more than that. It’s like, okay, what’s going on in your life? Why are you stressed out? You know, it’s not that you’re a bad person because you made birthday cake last night? It’s like, okay, what, what happened? You know, what are the you know, stressors that, you know, drove you to do that? Yes, you’re hungry? Yes. You’re trying to step on stage, I get it. But why did you do it Friday night? Not, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you know, like, those are all the things that I think a lot of those other coaches were named nameless, just don’t think, talk about, and then people have something where they have a binge, or they have a high caloric intake day, and then it’s like, oh, six hours of cardio tomorrow to make up for it. And it’s just the sun’s like, just horrible cycle.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah. And I wonder how much of that is even known by the coach to your, like, the writers be kind of they could just be correcting for themselves because because I think it does it a lot of times it does get to be like that. i That’s always something that that’s really important to me as, as a coach is I want my clients to feel very comfortable talking to me about their their birthday cake vendors, you know, yeah, I wanna, I want to know, like, when that happens, it’s okay. Like, yeah, it’s you’re human. You’re human. Yeah, like that’s, that’s totally fine. So So that’s always something that I try to make very clear is that you know, if you don’t finish this program, or if you don’t follow the adhere to this, whatever nutrition plan that we came up with, together, that’s okay. Like this, just keep me keep me in the loop here. So so we can not be completely crazy. And and doing these things, because, again, I’ve learned that the hard way I’ve done that stuff myself as well. So coaching myself, I’ve I know all of my own tendencies. And I imagine they’re not that much different from a lot of other people. That just having, you know, making people feel comfortable enough to talk to you about that stuff, and you’re not going to completely berate them when they make a quote unquote, mistake,

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, especially I think with Instagram, it’s easy to see all the sort of the successes, but you don’t see like the laundry list of like broken people and like people that just, you couldn’t make it then, you know, I know one top competitor, she basically just at the end for her prep, she just lied to her coach, you know, cuz I looked at all the stuff that he wanted her to do. And I asked her, I said, Hey, I know you have a life and you run a business on top of this, like, there’s literally not enough hours in the day, like they’re, you know, two hours a car to you, like, you know, get 15,000 steps, you know, and from a calories in calories out perspective is it doesn’t work. Maybe. But, you know, I said, What did you do? You know, because obviously, when you did work, and she’s like, well, at the end, I just got tired of telling them about it. So I just lied and told them I did it. I was like, oh. But I get it, right? Because you don’t want to keep having the argument. And then you feel bad, because you didn’t complete the thing you’re supposed to do. And you said this was a high priority. And, you know, so I understand it. But to me, that’s just unrealistic. thing, like, the the coach is thinking that all these things are getting done, like simple math would tell you that it just doesn’t add up. You know?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting. I wonder if it’s like ridden and knowing that people aren’t gonna do it, but they’re gonna do like, 50% of it, right? Really what they want or something? I don’t know, like, yeah, because you look at it, like how the hell you’re not gonna do that, like that’s gonna happen. But maybe Maybe the key, maybe the key to getting in shape is putting in fake numbers into a spreadsheet. And then your body somehow knows the numbers and then the changes or something. I don’t know how to try that at the run some tests.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. Which brings me to my next question of what do you do in the like, well throw out all the psychological stuff on the side for now, I’m not saying it’s not important. But what do you do when the numbers just don’t add up? Right? Like you’ve done this long enough, where you’re looking at someone’s caloric intake, let’s say they’re training, this is just completely hypothetical person. They’re training five days a week they’re doing cardio to other days are getting their 10,000 steps in their, you know, log in their meals. And they’re at like, 2200 calories. And they’re female. Yeah, let’s say they weigh 150. Right, I won’t use 120. Because everyone is a female competes, weighs 120 Online, which is insane. Um, at some point, you’re like, just, it doesn’t, you know, in your head, you’re going to doesn’t add up like, what do you where do you go at that point?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah, that’s, I mean, I don’t have I don’t think anybody has the answer for this Exactly. Right. Like, we know that something’s, there’s some type of adaptive thermogenesis stuff changes, a neat something going on, right? There’s some way that that it’s not happening. But yeah, the that doesn’t really change anything. Anyway, we have to find like, what’s the practical way of attacking this thing? So for me, the first thing is always like, well, how much time has it been? Like, has it been an adequate amount of time to really make the assessment that this thing isn’t working?

Because I think that people do get impatient a lot of times and for whatever reason, but we’ll talk about in the context of weight loss, but I think it could still happen in the context of gaining weight as well, not just as challenging and just as frustrating, and much more disgusting in terms of how you feel different, different matters. So the first thing is just, it seems that it’s sometimes it happens, like in spurts. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this with all your clients like, especially, I mean, either way, all the way up all the way down. It’s like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing three pounds, like, where did that come from? We didn’t change anything. Right? So I, I don’t know what that’s about. But it seems to be a thing. I’ve seen it enough times that it seems to be something so. So that, again, is where it’s like really useful to have a coach to just say, hey, let’s let’s just chill here for a little bit. Let’s see what happens.

So that would be the first thing as it has been an adequate amount of time, how much time I don’t know, like maybe three to four weeks or something, if nothing’s really changing, especially if we’re talking about the context of weight loss if they’re also starting to see a decrement in performance, and they’re really feeling bad, and they’re very food focused, and they’re not sleeping and all the things that you expect to happen that have to happen at the end of something like a contest prep, right. But if we’re seeing that taking place for a long period of time, then it’s like, I think it’s probably time to just pump the brakes if we can. And I think the best strategy seems to be like doing these diet breaks at those times of these refeeds as much as possible. So that’s where I was like, I wasn’t seeing that for something like three weeks straight. And we really are starting to see everything’s just declining, that I would say it’s time to just bring calories back up. If we have the ability to do that.

Sometimes that’s not the most convenient time to do it. But sometimes you don’t really have a choice even if it’s at the end of the prep and you’re really not where you want to be body comp wise, you’re probably not going to get much more anyway. So you might as well try like from a bodybuilding perspective. Try to fill out a little bit and sometimes that seems to get things running again, I don’t know exactly what’s going on there. I don’t know why that is. This. You have some hypotheses why that may be the case but that That’s kind of the first thing I tried to get ahead of that as much as possible by using the same strategy. Just I know that after eight to 12 weeks of pretty severe dieting, even if we are using reefy days, a few times a week, they’re probably still going to need like an extended diet break at some point.

So five to seven days of calories back up at maintenance, somewhere around where we started. And at the very least, it’s a nice psychological break for people most of the time, it helps to kind of segments, the, the, the, the whole process of the the training, and the in the prep. And I think there’s probably some physiological things taking place there that that allow things to get moving again. But that’s, uh, yeah, I mean, that’s really my, my first strategy, of course, like, I don’t go to the place of like, well make sure they’re not lying to you, because I’m assuming that they’re not lying to me like that. Like, but I guess like, you have to consider that to like, are they actually doing, what there’s what they’re saying they’re doing. And but I again, I would have already gotten ahead of that, I think at this point like that would have been addressed. Like, oh, I’m not supposed to eat a cheesecake every night. I didn’t realize. I should have said that. I forgot to say explicitly don’t eat entire cheesecake every night. So my fault as a coach, but I assume that’s not the case.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’ve even had those conversations more often than not, because, again, it’s like, it’s not that the person is trying to actively lie to you. But there’s this weird, subconscious thing of like, Yes, I weigh all my food, and then you have like a piece of cheesecake that you don’t weigh. Because in your head, you’re thinking, Oh, it’s not that much. It’s only one item. I didn’t weigh it. And if you see a picture of it, you’re like, Dude, that’s like a quarter of that cheesecake, you know, but in your head, you’re like, I’m good. I’m good, bro.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, well, there’s the deficit for the week. That’s it. Okay. Well, that’s good. At least we know why. Yeah, yeah. That happened.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

years ago was this happened and I’m just hitting my head against the wall. She was not a competitor. But she was at like, 1800 calories a day. And activity and performance, and everything was still pretty good. I’m like, what HRV was still pretty good. So we go through everything. You wait for the high. Yeah. Fabulous. Okay, let’s talk on the phone. Go through everything. She’s like, well, you know, I drink like three cups of coffee a day. I was like, Oh, okay. Do you have any trouble sleeping at night or anything? No. offense. I’m like, we don’t put anything in your coffee, do you? And she goes, Well, I do. And I’m thinking she’s gonna like, oh, you know, I put one of those little creamers in there. And I’m really worried about it. She’s like, well, I put like a tablespoon of butter and at least one or two tablespoons of coconut oil. I’m like, you have two to three tablespoons of oil per cup of coffee that you have three times a day, is this correct? And she’s like, Well, yeah. But there’s no insulin response. So that’s fine, right? I’m like, but it’s still a lot of calories.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Like an extra 100 calories a day, at least. Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Like, how much do you cut back down to one every other day and just just started losing weight? Like crazy?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, it’s wild. Yeah, I found that many times with with fat in particular, sneaks in there a lot with oils, and butter and things like that. People just don’t even don’t even think about it. Especially if they’re eating out and stuff. It’s kind of eating out. No, you just have to know that it’s going to be that way unless you unless you’re eating stuff that nobody wants to eat. But it’s restaurants usually are in a business. I mean, they’re actually it is nice that there are a lot of meal prep services now that are that are pretty solid. So that’s that’s good. But yeah, I think I’ve had that conversation, multiple people now. It’s just something I kind of like went on a rampage for a little while there with oil with people just kept like asking everybody Are you good with oil? And they’re like, yeah, like, yeah. Why? ask you this now? Like, it’s okay, that makes a ton of sense. Like, let’s start to monitor that a little bit.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Or you have the other conversation of Well, yeah, I put a little in the pan like, Oh, how about you measure this? And like, wow, you know, it was like a tablespoon and a half, like, but that doesn’t count because it doesn’t end up in the food. And I’m like, look in the bottom of the pan because you’re done cooking. Is there a table and a half spoon of oil left? They’re like, Well, no. Like, then it went into the food. It didn’t just magically evaporate into the

Ryan L’Ecuyer

air. You don’t need to lick the pad after you’re done to actually get that that oil into your system. Yeah, it’s in there.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

And then if you’ve ever worked in restaurants like that, I can guarantee you that the chef back there is not going oh, you know the macros upfront. really say that. It’s just more oil more whatever. You know, that just happens.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, I’ve worked in those kitchens. I know exactly how that goes. And then the least of your worries should be how much butter is in this food. Yeah, that’s there’s no way that that person that 16 year old sous chef in the back there. Macros.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, they’re they’re pretty much to about it being nonlinear. To me. It’s just been fascinating. Because for years, I’ve kept, you know, just daily bodyweight because I want to see the variation. And you want to see the trend, right? Because if someone just does or weigh in every Sunday, it’s like, I started running to people that would do the craziest shit on Saturday, because I knew they’re gonna weigh themselves on Sunday. And then it’s just even one data point, if they’re up like a pound and a half, they would lose their shit. And so you got to try to talk them off the ledge for three days.

And it may have just been, they were retaining water, because she women was that time of the month, or they drank more fluid or whatever, they found just by getting them to do daily weights, you can kind of see the variation. And what I’ve noticed is exact same thing you said, it’s like nothing, nothing up, down, up down, who’ve lost three pounds up, down, up, down, up down or lost two pounds, or it’s almost never like, like straight linear. And again, this is body weight and body fat. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’ve noticed when they start losing that fine scale variability, like that makes me nervous. Right. So if they’re weighing in, and they’re like one 50.11 49.91 50.11 50.21 50.0, I get more nervous about that than if their average is 150. And they’re like, 140 8.1, you know, 150 1.51 50.1, right, they’re oscillating a little bit around that number, their rate of loss, or weight stable is about the same. But I’ve just noticed time and time again, when that fine scale variability goes away. It just seems like they’re more likely to be stuck at a plateau, either going up or down.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. I never thought about that before. But I’ve definitely noticed that with myself and with, with clients, for sure, it’s like that, it seems to correlate with just things are not going well, altogether. It’s like, Yeah, I think, when I think of that, I’m like, thinking of my, my way ends at the end of prep. Yeah. And, and even like, looking at things like heart rate variability, or heart variability is like going through the roof. Like, it’s, it’s like, all of a sudden, like resting heart rate, super, super low. And our variability is really, really high. And that’s also around when that’s starting to happen. And then it’s like, you know, I haven’t had an erection in three months.

I can’t I can’t stop thinking about food, I see people and I think about, you know, that they would probably taste pretty good. If I put them on. There, there’s just there’s, you know, every, every waking moment, just like, you know, looking at stairs, and wishing there was somehow a way that I could just end up on top of the little seats that goes up. Yeah, like, how do I stall that? You know, like, I mean, the craziest thing, the funniest thing to me is when I, I used to work at a gym that had two levels, it was so as a pretty big gym. And what I started to notice was that I never went upstairs anymore. And it was like, you know, I do my I write my programs for my clients. And it was like, subconsciously, I was writing everything to be the force level. Like, I was like, Why do I don’t have I don’t do leg curls with anyone upstairs anymore. It’s like, it was almost like I was getting ahead of it, just knowing that I was not going to want to walk up the stairs. So yeah, there’s a lot of that stuff going on. But that that to me would be at the same time where those plateaus are really taking place. So it’s it Yeah, I guess it’s like your, your body really defending that, that setting point? at that spot? I suppose. I mean, what’s your what’s your thought process on on why that may be the case?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Sure. That’s my thought, right. So we look at most physiologic systems, you’re going to have some fine scale variability. And that’s a marker of health, all systems are cooperating, they’re kind of properly coupled together. And when we lose that fine scale variability, such as in heart rate, variability, sway, there’s some stuff with gait, and I did some stuff with our ER, looking at metabolic cart data for people to try to, you know, equate metabolic flexibility. It just seems like every time we lose that fine scale variability, they’re, they’re not in a happy place, right, like some shits going on. And I just noticed that with bodyweight also for probably the last seven years.

And I’ve tried to get like some app developers to, to look into it, because it’s super easy to do. I mean, I can teach them how to do the math and how to run it just seems to happen and like everybody I’ve talked to that just seems like it’s something that they also notice. And I think it’s useful because if I see a loss of variability, and the plateau is shorter, odds are I’m going to be more aggressive sooner than if I still see that variability even though the average isn’t changing. Right? So let’s say I’ve got one person where it’s only been a week, but they’ve their body weight shows no variability, all they’re just boom, they’re just 150 Dead nuts on versus someone else, let’s say identical for over three weeks are kind of oscillating up and down a little bit with fine scale variability, but the average is still the same. I feel like I’m going to let them ride longer because I don’t think the rest to a point where I need to be so aggressive, I think they’ll autocorrect on their own.

Right, and then boom, all of a sudden you see two and a half weeks, then they lose like three pounds. So I kind of use it as a marker to try to cross check to see, okay, how aggressive should I be getting? And how soon Should I do it?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

So what kind of changes would you make at that at that time? What does it look like to get more aggressive at that point?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. So that’s what’s interesting. So at first, my answer was always okay, if they’re going down, I’m just gonna cut their calories even more. But as you know, you at some point, you just run out of runway, right? I mean, what are you gonna be doing? Like, you need 400 calories, you know, two weeks before your show? I mean, come on, right. I mean, you, you just, you eventually at some point, you just run out of room and your body hates you even more than what it did before. So now I, I tell clients, it’s like, if you get a car stuck in like the winter here in Minnesota, like you don’t just push on it. Like your whole goal is like to start, you know, rocking the car back and forth and try to get some momentum. Like, what are you doing to the system? You’re you’re trying to inject that fine scale variability, and then you push it out of the snowbank, right. So the question I asked myself, then is I’m probably going to be more dramatic and aggressive. But then the question is, do I need to go up or down?

Yeah, and a lot of times, I’ll go up, which freaks the crap out of clients, right? Because like, my goal is to inject some fine scale variability and then see it move. I’m not as concerned about the direction yet. And I know that if I cut even more, I’m nervous about just running out of runway, right? But if it’s a short, maybe bump in calories, it’s not gonna affect their long term progress, if they start working again, for God knows whatever mechanisms are governing us if we’re even correct. I’ve just noticed that they’ll go up like two or three pounds, and then all of a sudden, they’ll start dropping. And then a week later, they’re like, below where they were before.

And sometimes you get lucky. Like, sometimes I had a client was a competitor a couple years ago. It was Superstock. Super stuck. It’s just probably like four weeks out. I’m like, Well, you know, we got a little bit of time, she wasn’t that far out. She was, you know, pretty good. But she just starts getting super nervous. She’s like, you know, on my head, I was thinking I was gonna be like, you know, down two more pounds. And, and I’m like, Okay, how about Wednesday night, in terms of your normal calories, just have another 120 grams of carbohydrates. And she’s like, What, you’re an idiot, this is insane. I’m only at you know, 80 grams of carbs, 200 grams of carbs. And one day, I’m like, you’ll be fine. Even if those extra 100% converted to fat, which it’s not going to, you’re talking about almost an undetectable amount, right? That’s just like, okay, okay. Get on the scale, the next day lost like a pound and a half. Yeah, you know, and I don’t know if that’s a stress response. I don’t know if it’s water. I don’t know what it is. But sometimes you see that happen, too. And again, you’re talking about scale weight and body fat. You know, so you just see, weird stuff,

Ryan L’Ecuyer

usually usually looks like a decrease in body fat as well, too, because they look like Yeah, I mean, if you’re, if you’re eating 80 grams of carbohydrates, it’s pretty safe to say that you you probably don’t have completely capped out glycogen.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

it’s not even close. You’re training that hard, either.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

There’s no way yeah, there’s no walike, it’s like, we know they’re not completely depleted, but they’re sure as hell not capped out. So it’s like you’re talking to an extra 100 grams of carbohydrate, you got plenty to store before you even start converting that to body fat. So you’re just going to probably end up storing more glycogen in the tissues that you’re training especially. And you’re just going to, like, you’re going to look more filled out, it’s going to push out against the skin, you know, that’s bodybuilding talk. Yeah, it’s like, yeah, but it actually it’s a real thing. It’s like, it’s like seeing this, like cell swelling kind of take place, in a sense. There’s just more substrate in the tissue with pushing out like, you’re gonna end up looking tighter anyway. So yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s cool.

That’s where it’s like, you know, it’s some, there’s, there’s always talk about, well, how much do we educate our clients and how much you know, their clients don’t give a shit about glycogen and all that stuff, or, you know, some of the, the, I mean, you could go far deeper into it than I but there there is a certain level of education that I think that we need to provide as coaches because knowing that it’s actually really helpful. It’s like, hey, like, yeah, you know, you realize like, you know, the amount of muscle you have, like, you could store 500 grams of carbohydrate. So if we, if we gave you 200 grams of carbohydrate, you’re probably not completely kept out there.

And, and by the way, even if you did, you still got to put some into your liver as well, like so there’s, there’s probably some amount of this that it can’t even get converted to body fat. So it’s just knowing a little bit of that is actually really useful. I think you can make people feel like oh, okay, I guess that does make sense unless this guy’s completely full of shit just making stuff up. But no, I think I think it’s helpful.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, wasn’t that some of the old data by was Atkinson? I could have got that wrong but where they did like massive carbohydrate overfeeding and people for like, I want to say 123 like five days in a row and biopsies and stuff. And the short answer which I get I could have completely botched the study was that they didn’t really gain any fat, right they if they were glycogen depleted almost all of it went to glycogen both liver and muscle, it took multiple days to cap out muscle glycogen. And body weight went up a little bit but not substantial, right? And they didn’t you know, I don’t know if they measure body fat in the experiment or not. And then if you look at healthy people for metabolism, most of the time, if you start over feeding them carbohydrates, they’ll actually oxidize more carbohydrates, where if you overfeed people fat, they just tend to store more fat. Again, that’s a theoretical thing. But it does kind of explain why if you look at like old school bodybuilding diets in general, other than the weird phrases that come and go, I would say, I don’t know what your opinion would be as high protein as higher carbohydrates as you can get away with but probably lower fat. I don’t know if you would agree with that.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah, I would, I can’t really think of any cases why that wouldn’t be the case. I just, it was just like an inherence thing or something, someone just really, it’s usually just a belief thing, someone has been told that high carbohydrate diets Make You Fat. That’s the only time that I’ve really seen that be useful. And it’s just like, our I feel like arguing with this person, like they said on the saying and like, you know, whatever. But it makes way way more sense to me, I every bodybuilding contest diet eventually just ends up being a low everything diet, except, of course, I like it, especially at the end, but but it does, it does make sense that to really try to cap out carbohydrates the whole way through from a performance standpoint, and from an aesthetic standpoint, like a like, you’re just going to, I mean, we do have a certain amount of like, of injured muscle or triglycerides on board.

So like, you don’t want to completely deplete that. But it seems like the the glycogen and the subsequent water along with that, like has a much bigger impact on on the look. And the performance. So and yeah, like you just mentioned that it’s probably it’s, it seems like it’s a little bit easier to to store fat as adipose tissue than it is carbohydrate for those reasons. So I Yeah, I’m a big fan. And they you’re eating more usually there’s like this, there’s more to actually eat with carbohydrates a bit more full? Well, yeah, if you add if you add a tablespoon of oil, so I don’t know, I’m not going to maybe you’ll feel it later. But during that meal, it’s like this is the same size meal, right? It’s really nice to be able to add some actual substance to your meals. So yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

But uh, John Meadows Scott, when you get to the end of prep, I think he called it lettuce mode. Thick eating roughage and protein. And that’s it.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, there’s, there’s a point where like, it actually does become easier because you’re just like, well, I just given up on the idea food, like three doesn’t really happen anymore. So So that’s cool. I mean, I used to wrestle so wrestling was oh, there you go. It was it was actually pretty easy because it was like, you’re okay, you leave practice in your you’re half a pound under and your way into the next morning, say, okay, I can I can eat half a pound of food like, which isn’t really a lot of fun. Not much. It’s not very much but it’s but it’s just it’s kind of easier, in a sense.

Because you’re, you’re basically just get out of happiness, you’re not gonna eat. You’re not eating, you’re just like, Alright, I just got to distract myself from this thing. But when you’re when you’re eating these, these little baby meals that have nothing in them, that’s that’s kind of like the worst thing ever is you’re just constantly reminded of how hungry you are. So that’s another thing I’ve kind of shifted more towards a lower frequency of eating because I was definitely I was definitely in the you know, I’ve I have I’ve cried being 30 minutes late for meals in the past. I mean, I can remember multiple times one time in particular that I literally was, was crying. I’m not ashamed to say it I should be. Yes, I was a few weeks out from my first bodybuilding contest and I was 17 and I got stuck into stupid meeting for I used to do this. It was it was one of these like network marketing companies.

And their meeting was going like half an hour later than it was supposed to and I’m just tweaking out in this I’m like for my meal like I made a little bit of my meal I’m losing all my muscle I can feel my muscle literally feel yourself at Yeah, I’m I’m so catabolic right now like I can anybody else see me getting smaller. Anything. And I got Yeah, I remember like just thinking that that was so important. And then what it has been is like you’re eating eight to nine meals a day. On 2200 calories. Burn food. It’s terrible. It’s like you’re eating like a little nugget of food. Every couple hours like oh, yeah, I’m still hungry. Good. Yeah. Glad glad I got a nice reminder there. So I don’t know if that had anything to do with what We were originally talking about, but he’s reminded me of that. Yeah, yeah, rethinking some of this stuff.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

But I think even that’s a at some point, not that I say you throw all physiology out the window. But when there’s not that much of a difference between smaller meals, meal frequency bigger meals, you’re really at that point kind of splitting hairs. But if you have someone who you’re like, man, old school is six meals a day, and you’re at like 1000 calories, you’re like, F you, like, four should be hungry, all that and you just get enough food just to be more hungry. Like, I don’t think you ever even get remotely close to feeling like you ever even ate anything. But you can take those same calories, which is still extremely low, and have three meals of 300 calories. And granted super low, but you can kind of do a little bit of something with that. Right? Instead of sloppy and broccoli. Right. And you could look, you could look at it and it looked like food, you know?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I think that I think it’s a big deal. Yeah, I think so I was I was thinking about the just the difference between like wrestling and and bodybuilding at that time, where it’s like, I’d rather just not eat farming to eat a 200 calorie meal right now that I don’t want it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’ve noticed that when I started doing intermittent fasting, God probably 11 years ago. My first thought was, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. Right. I remember being at Subway, a buddy of mine, shout out Jason Rhymer is it? Yeah. And I started doing this, you know, one hour fast for like, one day a weekend. It’s been amazing. I’m like, what, what the hell are you talking about this is probably 12 years ago, now maybe longer than that. And I’m like, what, and so I started looking at the research. And then Brad Pilon came out with his book, eat, stop, eat, which I bought. And it probably took me about six or eight months to convince myself that if you go through a period of not eating, like all the muscles not gonna fall off your body, right? Because I was convinced by that point that you know, you’re missing out on muscle protein, synthetic response was a protein breakdown was gonna get higher, you went from, you know, high intake, you know, oxidized protein and all this stuff. But if you looked at the actual studies on it, which are extremely limited, like, Oh, you’re definitely probably not gaining a ton of muscle, for sure.

But you’re not losing all of it. Right? I mean, at least on a shorter fast, as far as we know, now. So I remember trying it out. And playing around with it didn’t go so well, mentally got to a point where I did a little bit more progressively started doing with clients. And with all the clients was like, This is gonna be a disaster. Like, maybe this is okay. And research, even though it’s preliminary, like clients are gonna hate this, right a period of time you’re not eating. And these are not like, you know, extremely competitive, people are gonna step on stage. But what I found wasn’t for myself, too, is that it was easier to do a period of time not eating, than it was to have a very low caloric day.

Right, it would be easier for me, if I worked my way up to it. I could do 12 Even now, like I needed to fall to 20 hours, and I’m hungry. You know, it’s not super fun, but it’s not too bad. But if I were to do that same period, you said, bro, you only get 300 calories today, and I’ve tried this so much harder, just from a pure compliance standpoint. Yeah, I don’t know why that is. But it just seems to be that way.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, I know. It’s i i noticed that it I don’t know if he does as well, it tends to come in waves, like, Oh, definitely waves 100%. So I wonder, and that, you know, there’s a million things that could could lead to to hunger and thinking about food, right, but, but I wonder if it has something to do with, like, maybe you are beginning to oxidize different substrates at some, some points like you need to, to not have readily available substrate coming in. In order to do that. It’s like, it’s almost like you disrupt that, when you when you eat a little bit of food or something. I’m not really sure.

But that’s something I definitely noticed were like, as long as you if you can make it through this, this 30 minute wave, you’re gonna have another few hours where you really don’t think about food, as long as you allow yourself to I mean, if you’re gonna spend that the next few hours standing outside of a Krispy Kreme, then you’re probably going to be but yeah, if you can, like distract yourself for a little while, go do something. And honestly, the thing that I love about because I’ll use intermittent fasting, as well. I’ll use it intermittently. But yeah, it’s it actually, I love it for the days where I have to just like crush something caught. He says it just because eating for one is just kind of a disruption a lot of times and it does typically make me feel a little bit groggy afterwards, especially if I’m like, you know, in a gaining phase, like I’m going to be diabetic after every meal for the entire offseason.

So that’s really not conducive for forgetting a lot of a lot of hard mental effort. And so that I find to be really helpful. So just using those days I already well, I’m not going to eat until 2pm today, so I’m going to be able to really crush that and your your level of focus is really, really high. Typically, it’s just really nice.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’ve thought the same thing too, that it’s anecdotal. And I don’t have any direct lab measures. But it just seems that if your body is better able at using fat as a fuel, right, so you can upregulate fatty acid oxidation, you’re fasting, right? So everyone who poopoo is this idea that like, Oh, if you hook people up to a metabolic card, you know, you’re not really seeing what’s going on, because the food will change it. And yeah, I think that’s true, right? I mean, baseline, our Q, or R er, is kind of more related to baseline diet than anything else. But I do think that if your body has the ability to switch into us fats more easily as a fuel, it just seems like fasting becomes an actual possibility that, right, so what I would love to see, and I don’t know, if a study has been done, just measurement of fatty acid oxidation, and how people get used to a longer period of fasting.

Take, you know, six, eight weeks, and then have them do like a 20 to 24 hour fast, relatively easy, maybe do some low level real big, fast IQ training and some other stuff, when you increase their vo to max and higher vo to max use a higher percentage of that as fuel, you’re gonna look at Fat max and a bunch of other stuff. But my thought would be that, I think we get too hung up on the actual macronutrient we’re using, and we forget what that means for compliance. Right?

My thought would be that if you’re better at using fat as a fuel, it’s easier for you to physically do a 19 to 24 hour fast. Therefore, your compliance and doing it is going to be better compared to Bob who is used to eating every three hours. And he’s got a white knuckle it for 24 hours, and it’s going to end and just you know, birthday cake feast one on one, right? Physiology wise, you can say oh, but they both made it through the same period of time. It’s just calories, bro, they cut all the calories out. But do you think Bob who had a white knuckle it through is really ever going to try to attempt that again? Like probably not your real experience, right? So the other person who is better able to use fat as a fuel, even if we say calories in calories out is the only thing that matters. I just think from a compliance standpoint, it now becomes a real option for them to do where in the case of white knuckling it literally you’re like, Ah, screw that. I’m never doing that again.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, so how would you get someone up to that point like a because you mentioned that fasting cardio that like that, to me is like setting off some some bells for me because I because I remember being for like, my first introduction to a lot of training and even cardiovascular training was like I came up in like the the hit error. Oh, yeah. You know, so. So there was if you did low intensity exercise, like it was not only a waste of time, but it was also going to be to burn up all of your muscles somehow. Right, right. Very catabolic, bro. Super catabolic, whereas like high intensity exercise is actually anabolic.

I did all of that for the longest time. And I go, Yeah, I mean, I like to torture myself like so I think it was, I think it was beneficial in the long run, because it’s created a lot of context for me, and just remembering how awful that all that crap was, and when I didn’t know is way easier. Yeah, it’s just like, it’s just way easier. So I still I still enjoy going to this place is really just just a suffering purposes. And the satisfaction I derive from that, because I’m a weirdo. But I think that there’s there, there’s like a correlation there between like, when I started doing lower intensity work, and learning how to like, I don’t know, use my my nose to breathe.

Just hyperventilating like to go on every single effort that I do and getting super hyper aroused for everything. And the ability to to actually not eat for long periods of time and not freak out. So I’m curious if there’s like, if that’s a strategy that you use intentionally for their ability to be able to start to implement some of those, those fasting strategies that you see a correlation with that?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Possibly, like the literature on it, I’ve gone back and forth on this like so many times, right? Because, like now, within the last couple of years, if you even mentioned the words, fasted cardio, like number one, people assume that you only give a shit about body comp, and that’s all right, so everyone almost online is gonna assume that it’s a body comp thing and other people send me hate mail of like, bro, you were talking about fasted cardio? And don’t you know that if someone did that they could still be using some other type of fat and when you measure on a metabolic card, you’re not always looking at body fat that it could be dietary fat.

They took him in like on a ketogenic diet, and I’m like, Yeah, but we weren’t talking exclusively about body comp. Well, that’s what we all inferred when we’re listening to it. And that’s on you because like everyone puts it in their own kind of reference, which you know, Good feedback. So to qualify, the context you’re talking about is helpful. You know, and then they always have the law. Did you see Brad Schoenfeld study where he looked at this? And he said it didn’t matter? And, you know, yeah, six weeks study on females, it didn’t use a metabolic cart.

And if he even talked to Brad, he’s like, Well, you know, maybe at a higher level, if they’re more competitive, it might have made a difference, right? It’s even the guy who did the author of the study is like saying, well, it’s not that big of a difference. But, you know, in this other population, maybe it matters, we don’t have any data. So I don’t know, I think it probably helps. But, you know, some of the newer data, like Jeff Rothschild has some stuff showing that what you eat immediately before, doesn’t appear to affect oxidization as much as what we thought.

But again, I think there’s going to be limits to that. Right? If I have four pop tarts and whack my insulin skyhigh is probably going to move my rvr. Right, if I have a moderate amount of food, that’s a mixed meal with protein, and, you know, carbohydrates and fat, probably not that big of a deal, right. And again, in the real world, it’s like, by far and away, like do the exercise number one, right, everybody agrees that that’s gonna buy you the most benefit. And after that, worry about the state that you’re gonna do it in. So my argument is just generally been, it’s just easier to do fasted cardio? Because like, what is the reason and the list of excuses you have beforehand? I think of all the questions you normally get, well, what do I eat beforehand?

Don’t worry about it. What do I have to do this, this warm up, I’m doing high intensity stuff, I need a big warm up. Now you’re doing low intensity you bro, if you need to warm up for that you have other issues, right? So like, the amount of excuses, you can just cross off the list so that they just get it done? I think is just easier with that, you know, body comp? And I don’t know, I mean, I do think there, there may be a benefit to increasing fatty acid oxidation. But again, the research very split. I mean, the biggest thing from an exercise standpoint is probably their vo two Max. Right?

I mean, if you’ve just got a bigger aerobic engine, even if your percentage of fuel you’re using is different, you’re still burning, like on a calories basis, way more calories from fat, right? So that’s the thing that I pay the most attention to, you know, they’re vo two Max is like a frickin field mouse like 19 or something. It’s like, man, you need to work on that. First, you’re just completely out of shape. You know, if if it’s pretty high, and again, you don’t need to be, you know, a, you know, cross country in a region ski or have you know, 80s, or some crazy thing like that.

But if you’re in the 40s, or 50s, depending on what you’re trying to do. Yeah, I think that’s probably, you know, pretty decent. You know, from there. Yeah. Maybe worried about fasted, but again, that comes back to lifestyle, what do you have time to do? What’s the easiest thing to do was not gonna interfere with your other training. Because we’ve seen that with the high intensity stuff. It’s like, Yeah, you look at a lot of Martin Kaballah stuff, amazing research, huge benefits, even an untrained population, I think there’s definitely a time and a place for it, by anyone who’s done a lot of true high intensity training is not fun, and it’s fatiguing. And it will take away from some of your weight training at some point. Just because there’s only so much high intensity shit you can do, especially when you start lowering your calories and start lowering your carbohydrates.

You don’t sleep horseshit, you know all the other stuff that that factors into it. So don’t think again, there’s a right or a wrong, but my bias is like, you know, weight training should be your number one priority, like make sure your performance is good there, do some higher intensity stuff. And then you can probably maximize and expand lower intensity work. And even step count has a lot more capacity to change even in a low caloric state than a lot of the high intensity stuff. Because people I’ve seen tried to do high intensity work at the end, some people can do it, they tend to have a much higher robic base than other people. But a lot of times if you monitor their output, their output is just like just just super low. And it’s hard. I mean, it feels like a horrible, but if you look at what they’re actually burning from a true caloric sense, it’s actually a lot less. So. That’s my little ad.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, no, I think that. I mean, I’ve that over the last few years, I’ve really come to appreciate the aerobic system and how important some of that lower end stuff is because I really was adamantly against it. Previously, anytime that I would look at any endurance athlete, I’m like, wow, cool. Something really easy for a really really long time. Right? Excellent. And now I’ve definitely gained a different appreciation for it and a lot of that is actually is a from from reading that book under which

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Oh, I love that book. Alex Hutchinson.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

And you know, and also listen to guys like you talk about nasal breathing work. And that’s the guts made a pretty big impact. I just look at it now as like, the bigger your aerobic engine is the bigger Europe, just adapted potential is for for everything. Oh, you know, just from like a nervous system perspective, I mean, you’re just less likely, if every time you stand up and walk into the kitchen, you’re going 110 beats per minute, like you’re not spending your day in a predominantly parasympathetic state. And that’s not going to be great for adaptation for any any sort.

And I mean, less adaptation you’re going for is, I don’t know, hardened arteries or something. But that’s fine. If you are they. But yeah, I look at it as just in the fasted cardio, like you said, just been a very easy way to get it. Because because I don’t think the fasting part really matters all that much. It’s just like, are you getting that low intensity stuff? So when I hear it, you know, first thing in the morning cardio, it’s like, I know, that’s probably not going to be super high intensity cardio is going to be pretty chill. It’s actually a really nice way to start the day.

A lot of time. Yeah. So So yeah, I think there’s, there’s just so many benefits to that, even for someone who’s not primarily focused on that, you know, for like, someone like myself, like I don’t, I don’t really care all that much about my aerobic performance. But it definitely, I believe that it has to carry over into my ability to do efficient and productive work for the things that I do care about. Yeah, and

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I use it as an example to people who don’t necessarily do classic aerobic training, but you know, and then had you do the 2k in Costa Rica. Like your numbers were really good. I think I came in when you were just finishing the test, and you’re just, you know, hammering it. You finished it. I was like, looked at your time was like fucking 657. It was like sub seven, I think for a 2k Which to me is like super impressive. You know, for someone who’s not a dedicated rower, right. I mean, that’s not your, your main stick. And I asked him, like, what did you do is like, oh, then came in here. He just told me Don’t let that other Facebook beat you. So that’s what I did.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Very simple, meathead task. At least distract me for less than seven minutes, I guess. that’s

Dr. Mike T Nelson

What pace did you set it out? He’s like, I want to like 655. Like ships.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

I guess it works. Yeah, I didn’t know that the rower gets so annoying to me, because I start to I almost like start to get ahead of myself, because I’m just really bad at it. Like I haven’t really learned how to do it yet. So I’ll start by it started become really choppy for me the technique. I started to get really annoyed with that, which is probably helpful because it makes me angry, and then it makes me so and then that you know that the little fishes are swimming away on the screen.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

That’s one thing that helped me the most was, oh, yeah, like when I do a max test. It’s gonna be several minutes long. So I shouldn’t be a complete spasm monkey the whole time. Right? Because like, it’s so easy, because you’re trying so hard, and it’s just so miserable the whole time. Anyway, it’s so easy to get discord nated. And to think that you’re really trying hard and you are is just like your arms and legs are just not coordinated at all. Yeah, so for me, especially under max test, or like, you know, RPE is of like, you know, nine to 10 was like, just to think about, okay, drive with your legs. And then as it gets more tiring, just focus on the average watts that I need to hit. And then I have to keep telling myself, okay, smooth is fast, smooth is fast. Because it’s so easy. Just to get ahead of yourself right in your your arms, and your legs are just like not coordinated at all.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, screw it. I don’t need my legs anymore. Right. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s why I like the the echo bike, like, cuz that’s right away with it on that. Oh, yeah. It’s just the ultimate it’s miserable. Oh, it’s so bad. Yeah, I mean, so I bought it. I just bought an eco bike for my job. As I know, I’ve just, I’ve just spent too much time on this thing that I need other people to feel the pain that I felt. It was really important to me. And I actually it actually is really important to me from from a training perspective, because I think it really does teach people. So you gotta have something like that.

The thing that’s cool that I’ve really come to appreciate about traditional robot training, I guess. However, we’re defining a robot training, right? You know, I guess we should call it cardiovascular training. So it’s something that you can do cyclically, and for a long period of time, additive, circular rhythmic motion. Yeah, we’ll call it we’ll call it that. So no one gets upset about versus anaerobic stuff, or whatever that means. So the thing that I’ve come to appreciate about it is that you always have one more repetition in you. There’s always one more rotation, there’s always one more pull.

And the only reason that you don’t get it is because you didn’t want to really so that that’s that’s pretty cool. And you think about in those terms, it’s like yeah, these guys are pretty badass like that, that really do these these long distances. or anything in that, that mid distance or it’s just it because it is just so it’s so gnarly. We can’t really do that on a on a, on a benchpress or something or any weight training. Like it’s like there’s a pretty hard stop and he might be able to muster up a couple more reps, but it’s once it’s done, it’s kind of done. But on the on the, you know, on the echo bike, for example, like I mean, you can always keep going like it might slow down, but you just keep pushing as hard as you can eventually. I don’t know what happens. I haven’t ever seen anyone die. I mean, I feel like I’ve come pretty close. Like I feel like I’ve seen I’ve seen the light. Matt Fraser standing at the top of it. But yeah, it’s taught me a lot, for sure.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah. And I think I’m having flashbacks to all the heinous stuff Pat made us do in Costa Rica. And yeah, some of the OH BOY stuff, man. Oh, what was the I’m blanking on? I should know it. The five rounds of the three rounds five exercises? He lost his toe.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, the that were I guess I was technically it was like a modified Cajun is what he was aged 20 to 2040. Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

20 seconds on 10 seconds off. Is that right? Is that what we’re doing?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

No. 20 2040 to 10 is the only 40 conditions that you’re expected to get. So you get 20 reps, then 42nd. Rest. Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

And then you do that between what was a trap bar deadlifts, bench, pull up? Over the other two incline press. And back squat? Right?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yes. Back Squat and incline?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Do that as a round. And then you’ve got a couple of minutes rest and then do it again. And then rest and then do it again, is just yeah, you start off and you’re like, you know, this isn’t too bad. I’m doing okay. You know, by the third exercise, you’re starting to hate life. Or like the fourth and fifth exercise. You’re like, Oh, God, how did I get so weak? I feel so weak.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Especially out there. Especially like you pour all this water on me.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

And people just like Dobbs just wander out of there and just collapse. Like literally laying on the floor. And the next room like, are you okay is like, yeah. And I remember, I got someone was testing. And we were down by the little shower down by the kitchen there. And Anthony comes by. Not fuzzy here, Anthony. But Anthony and Dean Anthony. The harder Yeah, harder. Yeah. Yep. He walks by in the background and passes out like almost having a convulsion like under the shower. And I’m looking over, and I remember who I was talking to, and they look over the same time and they just start losing. It’s like, Oh, my God, he’s having a seizure. What’s going on? And like, Pat walks by and he goes, Ah, just fucking cage and he’s fine. I went over there. I’m like, You’re right. He’s like, Yeah, Yeah, I’m okay. I’m okay.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, it’s it, I do a do a cycle of like a modified because I actually think the 3030 is even worse, like the traditional like patch 3030 is actually worse. So it’s 15 reps, 30 seconds, 30 seconds to get 15 reps and 30 seconds off. And there’s more men different exercises. So I do a modified version of that just because it’s easier to set it up. So it’ll be a trap bar deadlift, a bench press and pull up, rear foot elevated split squat, overhead press and a chest supported row. And that 3030 setup with two minutes rest, and it’s four rounds. So that that workout takes 32 minutes. Exactly. Oh, I have to I have to Matt, I have to plan out three hours in my day. Do you actually do that? Because it takes me a solid 45 minutes just to get started for me to just get myself in that place like okay, this. I mean, I’m here.

I’ve been thinking about this all weekend. Here it is. Maybe I should just puke now. And then it’s like, you know, it’s like it now it’s become like, it’s just a response. It’s like, I finished the last set of rows. And then I just walk out and puke. And then just kind of lay down hopefully not in the pew but sometimes not so lucky. And then it’s like it’s a good like for like 40 minutes. Like I’ll usually actually fall asleep and just kind of like wake up what will happen do I have to do more? Is it over?

But yeah, it’s it’s like, you know, obviously that stuff and you when you take it to that place, like that’s not somewhere you should be going every day like that that can very easily become a very big problem. But I think you got to go there at some point you got to know what it’s like you got to know what that’s like man because it really it really does build a context for everything else and in training in in life honestly, like I think if you can endure something like that it becomes everything else becomes a little bit easier. And so you know, for me personally going back into it Bodybuilding training after that, it’s like, Ah, I have to do some bicep curls and you know, a couple sets of squats or something like, come on like it, it’s gonna be hard. I’m gonna put as much effort as I can into that.

But there’s no way that that exercise can take as much out of me as that, that 3030. So, so yeah, I think having that context is really important, just like that, that the tolerance to stress is a big, big deal.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, and that’s why I kind of like the rower for that too, because you can take people who, because the biggest thing that I worry about is that inexperienced people it turns into kind of very bad CrossFit. Right, your risk versus reward is just, you know, on a back squat that looks like a bad Good morning, your straight bar deck looks like a pooping dog. Yeah, on people who are experienced then yeah, there used to manage and stuff under load. It’s a little bit different.

But a new people it’s like woof, but on a rower you can you can teach, they may not have the best form or technique, but out of all things to do that’s really exhaustive assault bike would be the same. It’s a pretty safe biomechanical movement for the most part, you know, and even if you’re just doing three minutes, where you’re not actively pacing yourself, like you want to, you know, Wingate there, you know, there’s some power output tests and use this, like, just three minutes, like all out. It doesn’t sound that bad on paper, but when you do it, it’s absolutely freaking miserable and disgusting.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, it’s like, you look up to the clock. You’re like, I gotta have like, 30 seconds left. It’s like 50 seconds in, right? Oh, God. I haven’t crossed the one minute mark. Yeah, it’s like, Okay, we’re gonna, we got that a serious talk here. This is.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, I’m the last time I think I even did the three minute tests on the rower was probably three years ago. Now we were teaching for the Carrick Institute, so anybody can stay was teaching. And we’re doing lactate testing. And so we had tested everyone who was on staff already, and I was the only one who hadn’t been tested yet. And like, wow, I don’t really know if we have bloods approval to test anyone other than people run staffs.

And if you’re on staff, you’re probably not going to sue us anyway. So I’m like, Oh, shit. So I got to do the three minute test in front of the whole class, and had just fractured and strained my ribcage like four weeks before and snowboard incident. So that was just beyond miserable. And then when they’re testing you for locked it at the end, you have to sit there with your finger out and you can’t move. Like the thought of just sitting in that position at the end for another you know, two to five minutes just It’s is a horrible because you don’t want to be in that position. Like your first thing is like to get as far away from that thing. That was like awesome.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

yeah, that would that would kill me that yeah, that was hard. Yeah, yeah. That’s like the thing that’s like, it’s the weirdest carrot ever dangle for yourself. But that’s kind of what I think about in like, round three of that workout. It’s like, if you just make it through one more round, you can go puke. Yeah. That’s like how I’m negotiating with myself. Like you just got to come on, just get 15 reps here. And then you can puke and go lay down in it. And you can roll around and you can feel great like this. What is wrong with me? Is what’s what’s the what’s the worst thing that you that you’ve done? Would it? Would it be one of those wooden gates, would you say?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

It’s a toss up? Like I think the three minute Wingate all out. It’s pretty up there, right? Because it, especially if you’re, if you’re doing it in a situation that you don’t want to get humiliated. Right, it’s one thing to do it on your own in your garage. But it’s another thing to do it in front of a group or you know, somewhere where you know, you’re going to be accountable for it and you’re really not trying to pace yourself. And you are going to pace yourself to some degree anyway.

I would say the Cajun stuff was was pretty up there just because I don’t train that way a lot. You know. I was so not looking forward to that at all in Costa Rica. I was like the dumbest idea ever. Like I don’t do this kind of stuff. Like it’s like everybody lives like four times the amount of weight I do, you know. I was glad I did it, you know, but people are like, ah, but you didn’t train for this. I’m like, No, this isn’t like my highest priority. Like I did a few rounds to make sure I’m not so friggin sore that I can’t walk out of bed the next day, you know, from just like your dogs from the sea centric in the load. Outside of that I’m like, I could have trained for a whole year for this hated my life for a year. I’m I’m still gonna finish in the bottom third anyway, so I’m just being realistic.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah, it’s a different kind of thing. It’s, it’s, you know, I think a lot of people that know me and that they’ve watched what I’ve done over the last few years, like competitively and all that over the last few years, 20 years of training and everything like wow, like you must have so much discipline you have so much discipline. Like, not really. I mean, it’s just really focused discipline, like I guess really care about this thing for whatever reason, I’m highly motivated. But if you’re not highly motivated to do something like that, why the hell would you do that be like, like for me, like, you know, I’m going to learn how to code. Like, I can tell you right now, I’m going to be the least disciplined person in that. Because I have zero motivation. I barely even know what that means. Like, there’s no way that I’m going to actually do that. Yeah, it would be the so so I could see like, something like that, like, Yeah, I’ll do it just to see like, how challenging it is like, I mean, I respect that you still showed up and, and did it. But yeah, I can definitely see why. Like, like, no, I got other things I care more about doing?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

But I think that’s good, even with clients and stuff, too, is like, I asked him like, what is, you know, what are your main goals? Like, what are your priorities, and, you know, if there’s someone like yourself, where you’re gonna strip down to your banana hammock and walk around on stage naked, you know, that, to me takes a whole nother level of discipline that I 100% You know, salute, and you got to be pretty friggin motivated to do that, you know, and if that’s your number one thing, then cool, that’s awesome. You know, other people, if they do better with lines, if they just admit to me that like, lifting is not their main thing. You know, it’s like, hey, I want to be in good shape.

You know, I want to play with my grandkids or whatever, great, or, yeah, I wanted to compete in the CrossFit Games or obstacle course racing or whatever. But you always have to have a realistic discussion. If you’re not a professional athlete, about where is that line, like how far you can go when it starts to impact the rest of your life. Like for me, like, if I had the choice to go kite boarding or lift, I go kite boarding all the time, right? If he told me, you can squat 500 Or you could, you know, kiteboard into a 40 foot jump, and 40 foot jump all day, like number one. But knowing that makes everything else easier, right? So if my legs are too sore for six weeks of you know, beating the shit out of myself on the water, and salt, pod rain, all my squat numbers go even lower than what they were before.

I’m okay, that’s all right. That was the thing that I signed up for. I did the main thing. I think a lot of times it’s easy to be like, No, I want to do both. I want to do like all three as like, ooh, now you’re trying to ride two horses with one ass and that’s gonna be a lot harder. You might build and make progress. But you have to have a realistic discussion about when you have to decide one or the other. What is the higher priority to you? No. And I think that’s something that’s always changing too. And like for myself, like I I’m very intolerant of any pain associated with lifting it’s like I get Dom’s all that stuff. I don’t care about that. That doesn’t matter. But like if I started having a lot of joint pain, I That for me is just like a no go with other people. They’re like, I have joint pain all the time. I don’t care, like a squat. 50 more pounds. My joint pain doubles. Like, oh, I take that all day, you know?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, that’s funny. I’ve never I’ve never been like that. Like, I’ve always been like this. This sucks. Like, I mean, I don’t mind pain, discomfort. But it’s kind of like, because to me, it’s always been like when those things start to happen, that that just means the runway is about to end. Right, like so. So yeah, like that. That to me is it’s kind of short, short sighted in a lot of ways. But that’s, I guess, in a way I respect that mentality. But I don’t know, it’s probably a cost to that.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, but you just I think, for me, maybe it’s just because I’m getting older. Like I, as much as it pains me to say this. I’m actually prioritizing being able to do the thing the rest of my life, right, were 20 years ago, and I probably wasn’t that concerned about and I got close to like completely destroying myself from stupid ass lifting a very low weights than I ever want to get to again, you know, and that was probably good that happened earlier instead of later because I think I probably would have done some severe damage to myself long term. That the older I get, the more I’m just like, oh, and then you get injured, right? have blown my ankle blood, my shoulders out a bunch of stuff. And you realize like, what it’s like to not be able to just lift without pain. And you realize like, how much you like really missed it. You know, I remember, you know, just limping around it pulled both my hip flexors and my groin. I’m like walking around like a geriatric penguin. Just thinking about not even squatting or dead lifting, just being able to walk without pain. And I’m like, wow, like how many days that I like totally take for granted in the past just because my squat or my deadlift and go up.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah, I’m lucky that I, I also got that out of the way a lot. A long time ago. I was I was like, like, 20s they things were starting to like early, early 20s. Like things were definitely starting to go in a bad direction. So I think because I’d never been very strong like I think When I graduated high school, I think I benchpress. I know I benchpress 205 for nine reps. And I know that because I did two of five for nine reps for the entire my entire senior year, and never moved up. I never thought to like maybe try a different loading scheme or a different rep range or something. But, but so I was never like, really super strong. I mean, that’s not I don’t think that’s like weak for necessarily, right. But yeah, I’ve been lifting for seven years at that point, right. And I had a pretty good amount of muscle. But at some point, I started to get, like, in my, like, when I was 1920, I started to get a little bit into powerlifting. And, and that’s kind of why I started to get stronger. But then that’s like, when the wheels started to come off, move into ABS very fortunate to, to learn some really good stuff at that point in time.

So I was able to kind of turn things around. But there is there is some times like where, I mean, there was an extended period of time where I would go into the gym on Monday, and I would go to deadlift, and I would get over 400 pounds, and I would just blow my backout I like well, that that sucks. Okay, well, I can’t really walk for the rest of this week. And I can’t really pick things up. But I’ll, I’ll try again next week, like I did again. The other Yeah. And so I just did that over and over again. And it really did. I mean, I was very, very bummed out that it’s not like borderline depression, I was not in a good spot. And is like it which is which is kind of sad. Because it’s like, Man, I mean, come on speaker problems in the world than that. But it really did buy me out.

I realized, like, at night, I like this stuff way too much to do it incorrectly. And to get myself hurt, like because that now it’s like, I totally get that where it’s like, I just want to be able to pick like stuff up off the floor. Like forget about the the dreams of Delphi six pounds that’s over, you know, like, which turned out not to be it’s a which is which is cool. But I think like yeah, like it’s it’s really it’s, you have to go through that, again, learning lessons the hard way. I think sometimes you have to go through those periods, where you realize like this, this thing really is a privilege and do not take it for granted. Because it’s it’s pretty cool to be able to do this stuff that we do with our bodies. And when you have for me when I when I don’t have that like in like joint pain things. It’s kind of just a signal. It’s like, hey, you’ve been here before. Don’t do this. Like, like you got to reassess your because this is this is gonna take you down a bad road. Not not worth it.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Do you think when you’re younger, if someone more experienced, even someone you respected came up to you and said, Hey, man, I think you’re going down the wrong path. You may get injured, you should go this direction. Do do you think you would have listened to him? I know. I would love to say I would have listened to him. But I know I wouldn’t have.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, it depends on the context if I mean if they caught me crawling for your real after but yeah, before you’re injured. No. I mean, people had, I mean, plenty of people had I remember when I was like 12 years old. I first learned how to deadlift, like I mean, learn how to deadlift in quotes. Yeah, like this. This guy walked up to me in the gym. He was like, Hey, man, like, I mean, I think I was like, I was like, 12, I had like to 25 in the bar. And it was just like, every, like, the worst thing you can imagine with deadlifts, like all the worst things, right? And he walked up to me and he’s like, Hey, man, like, I don’t think that’s good. Like you, you should try something else. And I’m like, but I’m trying to like make my lower back bigger, like it fucking hurts. So it must be working right? Like she was like it he he tried to have he do with like dumbbells and he’s like, I want you to try with dumbbells to keep that your size.

And he was trying to teach me how to do like a dumbbell RDL he’s trying to teach me how to do a hip hinge and actually control my pelvis and be able to, you know, push my pelvis back and actually get the full hip extension at the top and everything and not just grind through it my back. And yeah, I was like, soon as you walked away with the dumbbells on to another set of the list like Scott doesn’t know anything. So know that plenty, plenty of moments like that. You got to learn the hard way a lot of times that’s

Dr. Mike T Nelson

yeah, I always like asking trainers and other people that question because the the consensus appears to be if you were not injured at that point, and you’re young enough almost no one will listen and I’ve noticed this with I don’t train a lot of younger clients now used to a little bit and so my thought then change from Okay, they’re not going to listen to me talk in the modest stupid shit. So can the car still gonna go off the road? Can I just haven’t put it in a snowbank and not go off the 50 foot cliff? Right Can I have a make a mistake that they’ll learn enough from but not permanently? Injured them? Yeah.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. That’s it. That’s a interesting. Let’s see. She thought like I have a young kid that I’m going to start working with seeing this kind of thinking that as I was putting this program together, me like, you know, I don’t want this program to be too good. Right? It’s got to be a little bit stupid like this, because there’s no reason for an app a perfect program right off the bat. So So yeah, that’s an interesting concept. I like that.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

I also am Being at the tactical strength challenge DOD, probably 11 or 12 years old, and I’m standing next to my buddy Adam Glass and we’re watching a guy, you know, do a pooping dog version of a deadlift at like 455. And we both looked at each other. And we’re like, wow, you see the angle that lower back and the thoracic? Like he looked like a human cashew, like trying to pick up weight. And we’re both like, on one hand, that’s extremely scary. I never want to see that again. And equally impressive. He just walked away without any pain from this is cool. Yeah, this is like, wow.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

It’s like, what does it look like?

Dr. Mike T Nelson

For both impressed and horrified?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, especially when you’re young, like, you can definitely get away with this stuff. But it’s like you said, just kind of setting them up to have a place to fall. You know, when when it happens. Like, let me just soften this blow a little bit when it does when it does happen.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Yeah, it’s like you’re, you’re still gonna jump out of the plane? Just for God’s sake, put a parachute on?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

You change your mind halfway down. It’s there. You know, you may want to use it.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah. If you want to just let you know that. You know, it’s there, bro. Yeah.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Well, man, well, thank you so much for the chat. I really appreciate it. Always good to talk with you and appreciate all your training knowledge and sharing it with everybody here. Where can people find out more about you? If you want to be found? Maybe you’re still hiding? You don’t want anyone to find you? Which I totally get?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, man, thank you so much for having me on. Like you’re an absolute legend in the field. And I have the utmost respect for you. Like you’re one of the one of the people that have been just, I feel really, really grateful to have my life and you Jody, as well. So thank you for having me on. It’s been a lot of fun. But if anybody wants to find me, honestly, rebel performance is probably a good place to go. I think rebel performance has more content of me than I do myself. I would say that’s 100%. True. Yeah. At least more current. So yeah, row performance is a good place to go. If you do find me on Instagram, at luckier fit. I will probably I won’t respond until either Thursday or Sunday. It’s the only time I checked my Instagram. But if you didn’t want to contact me directly, just just because I will tell you if you if you find me on Instagram, just email me at lacurefit@gmail.com. But always happy to talk shop.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

Awesome. And I’m training Mr. Cerbie. So this would be pretty fun. I put up there all the heinous row and stuff we’re just about.

Ryan L’Ecuyer

I can’t wait to hear about it. He’s awesome. James is the man. But he’ll he’ll give you everything that he’s got for that program for sure. So that

Dr. Mike T Nelson

oh, yeah, yes. Yeah, it was pretty fun. I was just like, well, I said, we can have you do this kind of heinous assessment. Your goal is lifting and running. So I said it’s not super specific, but it’s something you can retest. And if you find you know, like, Ryan certs or cars, little niggly issues or whatever, you know, it’s it. Plus, it’d be kind of interesting data to see, you know, what kind of where you’re at in the spectrum and stuff. And it’s super cool. He’s like, Yeah, whatever you program. I’ll do it. I’ll do it, man. Yeah, totally. Yeah. He’s almost through most of it now. And yeah, he’s done. Good. It’s been good. So it’s been pretty fun. Nice. That’s very last question. Top two tips to do a lead pose. For if you’re doing a lead spread. What are the two things people must keep in mind?

Ryan L’Ecuyer

Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that people might not know is that you actually don’t need to have actual lats to look like you have lats. So that’s so I’m a lucky Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that’s like, there is hope. I like you just got to spread your arms out. And people will think that you have lats. So that’s, that’s number one. But yeah, the number two thing that the thing that I found is like learning how to like so most people walk around like try at least like the bros typically the ones that are actually interested in lats, they tend to just pull their shoulder blades together, like all the time, they kind of walk around like that. So learning how to first just protrack your your scapula and just let that kind of relax.

And you do that by just, you know, falling forward, just let your shoulders kind of come apart. I’m treating this like as an actual question, by the way. And then and then and then standing up and just trying to lengthen your torso as much as possible and just keep protracting like you just got to like keep keep opening up your your shoulder blades. That’s kind of that’s kind of the key. But yeah, and then, I guess the number two tip is just spend as much time as possible in front of the mirror. But make sure that you’re not in a public place, please, because it’s just embarrassing. Like, let’s not do the selfies at the gym anymore. Do that on your own time.

Dr. Mike T Nelson

One time Jodie was out whenever we were first kind of I don’t even know if we were engaged at that point. She comes up to me and she’s like Oh, he seems really nice. Does he sunburn his armpits?

So later we’re like, oh, sunburn armpits. burn pits. I love it. Cool, man. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast and my little interlude there about being stranded in Costa Rica. Much worse places to be I know, and I’ll be able to get a lot of work done. And it’ll be okay.

Anyway. So I apologize to all the people who went to the neural sports conference, as you’re listening to this this past weekend that I was not able to do my presentation there. They set everything up to do it live this year, which I think is amazing, and a much better way to go. So they were not able to do any virtual talk. So I wasn’t able to submit a talk there. So bummed that I missed it. Hopefully I’m planning to be there next year. They were super nice and gave me an invite to present there next year. If you went let me know how it went. sounded like it was amazing.

So thank you for everyone listening to the show. Really appreciate it. Any feedback on this episode with my buddy Ryan, please post it up. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, share it around, leave us a review. That helps us to get other guests on the show and just keeps everything going. As always this is brought to you by the flux iodide certification if you want eight interventions to help you master nutrition and recovery for yourself and also for your clients. In a complete done for you flexible system.

Go to flexdiet.com. I’ll put you on the waitlist for the next time that it opens. Thank you so much, really appreciate it. Talk to you all next week where I’ve got a great interview with my other friend, Dr. Lisa, all on the aspects of psychology and mental fitness. Stay tuned for that. Talk to you then.