Better her. Listen very carefully. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially at this point, the fight is over. So you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready.
Speaker 2:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJ podcast. I am j t and I'm here with the natural Joseph Worthington. What's up guys? King of the Nats. Believe it. But we're gonna talk about bulking for bjj. Yeah. Talk to a naty guy about bulking.<laugh>. It's a hard thing, right? And so many people out there are training a lot of jiujitsu and therefore really struggling to put on weight. It's actually a big request from, uh, specifically guys, lightweight guys. They're may be trying to go up a category or, you know, put on some muscle. Everyone wants to look, you know, kind of jacked, but it's like, it's actually far harder than people think. It's simpler than people think, but to actually go through the process is hard. Why? So tell me why, why would someone wanna put on weight? Well, I mean, usually people, when they say they wanna put on weight, they're saying, I wanna put a muscle. Yeah. No one's like, Hey, can I just get fat? Can you just, if I could just chuck on 10 kilos of gut, that'd be great. No, no one, no one's saying that. But here is the thing which we probably don't appreciate because we get sold so much nonsense on the internet. You have to go into a calorie surplus to put on muscle, which means you might put on a little bit of fat, and that's, that's perfectly acceptable. But because of all the like anti-car, you know, like, uh, keto, like all this stuff that's out there in the world, people are like, oh, they're scared of carbohydrates. When people don't understand that actually that will really help you, um, build muscle over time. We're gonna kind of break that down. But, um, I think the main reason, other than aesthetics, people trying to get like zzz, you know, zzz, bro. Um, that's all it is. One pin a week, it's one pin, one pin.<laugh>. Is that his? Yeah. Right. His dosage.<laugh> just dialed it back to one pin. Um, if you are not someone who wants to take steroids, which is the vast majority of everybody, but the vast majority of everybody, I don't know if you've ever had a conversation saying, you know what, think about going on a cycle. You're like, who has those conversations? I mean, I've had that, I have had that chat a couple of times, but it's a dirty secret. We live in the gym world. People just do it, but they don't wanna talk about it. Oh, of course, of course. And it's probably only older men. It's like, dude in his mid to late thirties being like, man, Joe Rogan's on that T r t, isn't he? Yeah, he looks stacked. I could hit some t r t, you know, like, it doesn't, it's, it, it's, it's like destigmatized steroids. Yeah. It's like controlled steroids. Oh, I can, I'm not cheating or anything. I just wanna look better. Whatever. Whatever. We're gonna talk about how you can build muscle and specifically we talk about bulking, which requires<laugh> eating a lot more, lifting a fair bit, and also resting a lot more. But let's break it down. Let's talk about the lifting portion just on that. I think the other thing for, for a jits players is Yeah. Like you said, going up a weight division. Yeah. So it's like, okay, you're sitting here, you always kind of feel like you're in between divisions and you want to just firmly put yourself in the middle of the category above. Yeah. So it's like, well, the best thing to do is just try and put on a few kilograms of maths. Yeah. And you're gonna be there. Yeah. And you wanna feel stronger. No one likes to feel weak. It doesn't matter what category youre in. You want to feel like Ken. Yeah. You wanna feel competitive. You don't want strength to be a weakness. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, so how can we do this to build muscle? There's a few things you need to do with your lifting. Now you can take the exercises out. First part though is you need to be doing some strength training. You need to be doing some lifting. Yeah. If you're not doing it, you can maybe put on some weight, but you want to be putting on some, like, that's how you're gonna be building muscle. Yeah. And there's a compounding effect here, because when you break muscles down, this actually elevates your metabolism, which is increases hunger, and which makes you then ingest more calories. And then the, the growth cycle continues. But, uh, when we were doing the prelude chat to this, we were talking about, uh, two, two key things which are really good for stimulating muscle growth. One is muscle damage, and two is time under tension, which is actually a big thing that, uh, is, is obvi. It's very obvious in the body building world, the strength realm. But jujitsu people don't really talk about it at all. So we get into that a little bit more. Um, had actually listened to Luke Tik talk a little bit about this. He had his own ideas about he, he had changed his mind over time as to what he thought was most important for building muscle. And for those of you out there, if you're not across Luke Tik, he's awesome strength coach, body building coach, and just a specimen of a human, also a major studied neuroscience. Very intelligent. Yeah. Some. One of the smartest guys. And, and he had said that actually for himself, even though he had craved a lot of muscle damage at the start, when he was like, yo, this is what breaks muscle fibers. And then we build them back up, it results in a lot of soreness. So a way that you can do that is by doing, uh, eccentric focus training, like slow eccentrics. So for example, if you're doing a squat, instead of just doing your normal up and down at a second or two going down and up, you would actually slow down the eccentric portion. Same thing with a chin up. Go really slow on the way down, come up as fast as you can, but really slow on the way down because you actually have just a little bit more strength eccentrically. Like you can produce a little bit more force a safety mechanism, but that's where you get sore. Like when you do eccentrics, it kills you. Yeah. I remember just being like a teenager and I learned about this thing. When you couldn't curl anymore, your partner would lift it up for you and he fight it on the way down and then do it again and just do it again until your after quintessential 16 year old training session. Oh my god. 15 sets of bicep girls. And then you couldn't even pick up the soap, try and clean your hands and you Yeah. Uh, but oh my God, what that does for, for muscle growth, it doesn't necessarily make you stronger doing big eccentric training, but it does create muscle damage, which then causes protein synthesis to get your body bulking. Yeah. And actually I think something that, that Luke Tak has mentioned, uh, um, another point he's mentioned as well, which is that for a lot of people, they just like, whether you do an eccentrics or, and here's the thing, like whichever kind of training you're doing, whatever kind of strength work, whether it's barb body weight, whatever, but he's like, if you're trying to grow muscle, you've actually gotta, like, the sets have to be hard. Yeah. And a lot of people just don't go that hard each set. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right? Like if you're training sub maximally, you will still be getting stronger, you will still be eliciting some muscle growth gains and, and all of the other great things that come with it. But if your goal is to gain mass, you should be looking to, to kind of go within near failure on every set. Near failure is the tip, right? Yeah. I remember when I first started, it was all about failure. Yeah. Like you had to just do drop sets, like leg extension machine, just as many reps as you could, drop a plate, destroy your legs just so you just quivering, couldn't be as piano sets. Piano sets. Yeah. And the, the thing about this is they've kind of realized over time is, you know, 20, 20, 25 years ago, they're like, ah, yeah, you get so sore you can't train for a week. Yeah. That's not good for Billy. Like, and it's definitely not good for jujitsu, right? No. Because if you can't walk, you can't guard shoot or anything else. So it's one of those things that you have to be able to do repeated efforts. And so the, the, the reviewed approach to working to failure or near failure is you want to just have left yourself one rep or two reps in the tank. That will be enough stimulus to kind of Yeah. Get the muscles to grow basically. Um, in terms of that, like, I guess just to talk briefly on like how much strength training you need to be doing. Yeah. My opinion, two workouts a week is enough for you to get muscle gains. I, I agree with that. Three's great. I think I'm always leaning on the side of war. Why do I say that? Because actually what we don't probably appreciate about jujitsu, uh, in terms of the context of this conversation, it will steal your gains. Uh, so just recently, well, actually this morning, talking with Julian, um, we haven't got him micd up. We should, he, he woke up this morning, like he didn't say anything anyway. No, he, he just smiled. Yeah. He put on weight. He's been trying to put on weight for ages. Right. And, uh, he put under your tutelage, well, I dunno about that as, but, um, he put on a kilo and he was like, wow, I was surprised. You know? And I was like, oh, have you reduced how much jujitsu you've been doing? He's like, yeah, I haven't been training as much. And I was like, boom, there it is. There's two, there's two elements to this guys. One, because when you train jiujitsu, it does break down your body and you burn a, a crap ton of energy way more than most people estimate when they train jujitsu. Also, it suppresses your hunger. So the, the other key component of this, apart from lifting, is the eating. So if you are doing an activity four or five times a week that is suppressing your hunger, then that's, that really flies in the face of trying to build muscle. So yeah, I, I agree with you. Ja, I think two is good, but even if your, your real focus is to build muscle, I would go so far as to swap a jujitsu session for a lifting session, right? Yeah. That's just in this context of putting on muscle and that I think that's your priority. Yeah. And that goes to, that definitely goes to the next part, doesn't, which is like calories Yes. And energy balance. Yeah. But bef just before we go there, I wanted to say time under tension. So this is maybe something you've never done before, but for example, instead of doing say 10 or 15 squats, do one squat that lasts 10 seconds on the way down and 10 seconds on the way up. It will absolutely just leave you shuttering like, oh, like what it does to your nervous system in terms of control. And muscle recruitment is really full on. This can also be done with higher rep, like higher volume training. So for example, um, uh, Thor Hemsworth, he does super high volume training, super low weight, just obviously a bunch of steroids as well, but whatever. Um, he, he does that because one lifting lighter weights. Did you read this in Men's Health? No, I didn't. It was actually an interview with his trainer. Well, his trainer wasn't like, yeah. Look, I think that we've tweaked, questioned those celebrity trainers. No, look, no, I met him one time. I I I think he's a legit trainer. Right? But then also they got Ross Edgeley in, for those of you out there who are not, oh, he's the, the Brit super dude. Yeah. Superman, who I would say is also on a gang of supplements. Yeah. He, you know, it's very hard to run a marathon with a 90 kilo log on your shoulders and then swim the English channel, right? Yeah. He's doing untested events. He's so Hi guy. He's so stacked. I mean, he might do the adcc<laugh><laugh>. He should special guest super fight<laugh>, um, Thor versus Ross Edgeley. No. So anyway, long story short, doing higher volume sets means you spend more time under tension. Yeah. And so that can be done through more reps or slower reps. Yeah. This causes greater muscle recruitment and that tension, the tension in the muscle pulls more muscle fibers in greater stimulation, greater growth. So I just wanna say that I remember, um, referencing Luke Tik again, he said the, uh, you know, based on the science, looking at, uh, the amount of working sets mm-hmm.<affirmative> needed per week for muscle gain was between 10 and 20. Right. And, uh, I like that as a guide. And I, and I think if you look at any of our programs, shameless plug,<laugh>, you're generally hitting, you're generally hitting 10 sets. Yeah. For folks listening, it's like, if we're talking about like the hamstrings and the glutes and the muscles of the lower back, well, if you do five sets of deadlifts and then you do three sets of kettlebell swings and then three sets of single leg glute bridges. Yep. You've just completed like 11 working sets tick the box. Right. So yeah. So that's enough. You know, and so the way the programs tend to break down, it's like anterior hip quads push pattern pull pattern. It's like it's all there. So you, your training don't, you don't have to go super complex, keep that simple, but master these other parts. Yeah, definitely. It's just something to consider if you're someone who struggles. Yeah. Because that's the thing, we probably we're reaching out to the, the slimmer folks who want to build muscle and they're like, it, it, it is challenging. It's way harder than I think people imagine. Yeah. But if that's right. And, but it's easy to go, oh, I need, I need to get on a, like a specific programs like, nah, you just need to do the other. Yeah. Make sure the sets are hard and then let's eat. Yeah, let's eat. Now. I can't remember who told me this, but I I've said it because it just resonated. Probably me. Yeah. Maybe it was Joe, maybe it was before I knew Joe. It was just that it spoke to the fat child in me, which was like, to be a bigger person, you have to eat like a bigger person.<laugh>. I was like, oh yeah, yeah. I'm on board with that. You know, you, you know, whatever your body weight might be, if you wanna put on five kilos of muscle, which is very hard to do, it takes time. You have to consistently eat in a surplus. Now, the mistake I used to make was I would eat like two kilos of steak. I just like you, I'm just gonna eat a whole cow here. When actually digestively, you can only absorb a, a certain percentage of that, and the rest of that is just gone in the toilet. That's an expensive trip to the, to the bathroom. You know, same thing like people just smash. I used to be like, I'll put three scoops of protein powder in my protein shake. It's kind of hack the system. It's kind of pointless. You actually, even though it, it, it's just the nature of things, it's a little bit harder. It's far better for you to be able to space your protein out over the day because you can only absorb depending on your digestion. And there's debate about this anywhere from 10 to 30 grams at max at any one time. If you've got a really healthy liver and really good digestive enzymes, liver king, uh, enzymes, um, you can absorb a lot of protein, but some people can't. Just a thing here. If you are trying to bulk and you are also fasting, oh off. You need to get rid of that right away. Fasting has no place but don't exist. They don't even, yeah. It's like, oh, I wanna do the fasting thing for my health, but I also want to get bigger. It's like, no, no, no, just do one thing. Now you can do the other thing down the track if you really want to, but it doesn't work because Yeah, you gotta space the delivery of the calories and the nutrients out. Mm. And I mean that the whole idea of fasting is that it, it stops you eating as much. Did, so it restricts your calories. Two very different things. So like, one is just designed to put you into a deficit and there's many other associated benefits for you not taking in food at a time. Sure. And some people might say eating surplus calories for a big period of time is not healthy. Maybe, but you're not doing it forever. You're just doing it for a period of time to achieve an outcome. And that's fine. That, that's totally good peaks and troughs. Can I just paint a picture on that whole calorie thing please, for folks? Um, so for, for, you know, if you're not initiated on this, so calories is just a simple measurement of energy. So all foods have some amount of calories in them, right? It's a very simple measurement. Uh, it's not taking into account nutrients or any of that. It's just like how much energy is in this piece of food. Now talking about energy balance, you have an amount of calories or energy that you need to consume to maintain your bodily functions. Um, you then have an amount that you also need to add on top to support your activity. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, right? And so if you're someone who's just trying to perform and support your activity, then you're eating what we call a maintenance level. If you're trying to lose weight, you're gonna eat a deficit. You're gonna eat underneath that. And that means your output is gonna be exceeding the amount of energy you're consuming. If you're trying to gain weight, you need to be in a surplus. Now it's very simple. Mathematics surplus means you need to be eating more than it takes for you to, uh, have sustain the output. Live your life. Right. It's not easy because you are, all of your physiology is geared towards just getting enough, just enough, right? Like, unless you're eating ice cream or some like that, that kind of ha hacks your body's mechanisms, it you, it's very hard. And I think that the people listening to this will be like, people who have tried bulking will be like, man, it's so hard. People listen and be like, yeah, this sounds fun. It's not fun at all. No. Like eating a lot. I is, I would say it's, it's easier to eat less, it's easier to lose weight than it is to gain weight from that point of view. Yes. Because actually eating is an enjoyable thing. Right. Eat to win. I'm, I'm father of the Eat to Win nation. Um, it, when you eat for enjoyment, it's great, but when, you know, when you get full, and I've, I've had, I've been doing this for the last two, three months, which is you get full and then you're like, how much further can I, how many reps of fried chicken do I have left in the tank? Like, and you know, just keep the hash browns coming. It's just, I just kidding. There's a potato shortage. I don't give a.<laugh><laugh>. Oh man, there is now the farmers. I'll eat the potatoes, bro. Um, dude, I'm the reason why there's a potatoes shortage, but essentially you have to eat to be uncomfortable. Yeah. And that's kind of gross. You gotta force feed. Yeah. You gotta eat more than you've and it makes you feel a bit nauseous. Oh, it's gross. It's kind of gross. Right. And it, and in some ways it's, and it's absolutely not a healthy choice to make for a prolonged period of time. No. Which is why strong man bodybuilders, like they face a lot of negative health consequences as a result of a lifetime of this. Right. And they typically live shorter lives. It's like big dogs. Like I was shocked when I heard that. Great Danes, they only live like six or seven years. Wow. They get way more circulation problems, way more organ problems. It's just not sustainable to be that big. Yeah. And we see it a lot in the kind of, in the world of, of, of people who try to put on heaps of mass. But we're not saying that you have to be one of those people, but you are gonna have to get uncomfortable when you eat. But I'm gonna give you two of jts bulking hacks.<laugh>. So, um, before Christmas, uh, up Jills early December, this young Julian, I was 92 kilos and I knew I wasn't gonna do much juujitsu over Christmas. And I was like, I wonder how strong I can get and how big I can get. Because typically people blow out over Christmas. Yeah. I'm like, I'm just gonna eat protein. I'm just gonna eat. Like if there's prone steak, like this is Australia, this is the kind of thing that we do. We have lots of produce here. Um, mate, I'm just gonna do it any opportunity I can. I'm just gonna eat protein at every meal. And I put on eight kilos in eight weeks just from eating protein, protein. I mean I was eating everything else. Eating right. I gone hard on the protein. Excessive calories in protein. Right. Um, cuz I didn't wanna be too fat cause I'm still a bit vain. Yeah. Also, I was taking creatine<laugh>, so there's a bit of water attention there as well. And I was being quite conservative with my, uh, creatine consumption cuz I've never been a big creatine believer. I was only taking about two grams a day. And then I read a study that showed that anywhere from five to 10 grams of creatine a day is very beneficial for anyone. Like over 90 kilos. It's like the more body weight you have, more creatine you should get in. So for those of you who have no experience with creatine, it's just basically like a super processed form of carbohydrate that allows you to get more reps. So it helps, it's a form carbohydrate. Yeah. Okay. Like it helps re-up your, um, ATP stores. Yeah. So let's say I say, Joe, I reckon I could do more pushups than you and Joe's like I'm an athlete dog, you're a meathead. Let's do it. JT goes to the toilet, chops up a big fat line of creatine<laugh>, I'm pumping two grams right now.<laugh> what's go, there's blood tickling this side<laugh>. So the thing is, when hey girls, whatever, a bag of cretin right here,<laugh>, y'all want party<laugh>, y'all want a deadlift max set what you got? Um, so if you were to do your maximum repetitions, that's very much dictated by obviously your strength endurance, but the amount of ATP you have in the muscles, what creatine does is it gives you just a little bit extra so you can get a couple more reps. It's not like, oh, it makes you stronger, but it just gives you that little bit of extra energy that top end. Yeah. When you, so if you are doing a set where you could only do three reps, maybe it would give you an extra rep, or if you're doing a set of 10, you might get 12 or 15. But cumulatively, if you keep doing this over more and more workouts, you're getting way more volume, greater work. And so you ultimately will build more muscle over time. But it does make your body retain water. That's where people go, ah, I'm not looking so lean and I'm definitely not looking so lean. So I was basically eating steak every day and I was taking 10 grams of creatine every day. And Right. I, yeah, I've heed up hench. Yes. I can, can attest. Can attest. If you can't see I keep<laugh>, keep drawing in so you can't see my belly. Um, the other thing, there's two things here. Watching television while you're eating blocks your full mechanism. We had talked about this, so that's very unhealthy. If you're trying to lose weight, do not eat in front of the television. But if you're trying to maximize how much food you can eat, watch a watch, watch us on YouTube,<laugh>,<laugh>, and have a meal because it actually, it actually blocks your ability to know when you're full. So people tend to overeat if they eat in front of the television. Yeah. That's a little bulking. Hack also work out when your full mechanism kicks in. I know for me, I've only got about 15 minutes, so I'm just like, oh no, no. Just disgusting. Uh, pig of a human just eating as fast as I can because I'm trying to get maximum calories in, um, in the time. Now I'm not saying don't chew, definitely chew, um, because that can lead to indigestion. But what I do is I, and Joey's exposed my methods, I precut everything up to minimize the process of the chewing so I can get, I mean I'm halfway through myre you and you're still chopping up.<laugh> preparation is everything Joe. I don't care what you say. So look, the eating portion is difficult. And we've discussed this before. It is difficult to get all the calories in. You need eating clean. Yeah. So that means eating like not too many saturated fats, not too many processed carbs, blah blah blah. Yeah. Like if you're eating like whole grains, like, you know, whatever like toast steak, chicken and brown rice and you know, vegetables. It's very hard to eat in a calorie surplus Yeah. With those foods. But you get a quarter pounder in that bad boy. Ooh, you go to McDonald's, maybe Hungry Jacks. Yeah. Couple of them. Family pack, big thing of breakfast, cereal, tub of ice cream, top ice cream. Uh, yeah. So I would say like for me it's, I've always like, I don't have a big appetite. I'm not, I'm not a big eater. So I need to get a bit of the dirty stuff in order to, to get the bulk on. The way I like to do it is like still eat clean, like good food for three meals, but then I'll supplement little like snacks and stuff that are maybe suboptimal food choices. Yeah. Like rice bubbles, cocoa pops. Sure. You know, all that kind of. Like it's, it's processed stuff that we would never usually advocate for. This is something that, that's right. If you're trying to get healthy, you don't with this, don't do that. But we're not actually talking about that. We're talking about trying to get in maximum amount of calories that will enable you to be in a surplus. Because for most people, day to day it's hard. If you're at work and you've, you know, maybe you work at a cafe or restaurant, you run off your feet, you barely get a break. Like how are you gonna get your food in? Yeah. And you're training jits three times a week and go to the gym a couple times. Yeah. It's a, it's a hustle. So being organized about your food is super key. I'm very fortunate. I have, uh, a Polish partner who cooks for an army. So there's always food in the fridge. It's never a problem. But also I always carry protein bars with me and I always bring extra snacks because I just know that that's, that's what I'm gonna need. And if you haven't done this before, you know it's kind of famous in the body building. Wor world is the idea of meal prepping is like, I don't know cuz I know Joe, you love to cook, but usually our house on a Sunday, three or four dishes will get cooked like a soup, a bloody Oh wow. Baked veggies, you know, roast up a whole gang of drumsticks. Maybe a bologna, like there'll be a bunch of dishes there so that JT can eat on Monday. But yeah, you start again on Monday night.<laugh> one day's worth of food. I do that one for the whole family. yeah. Unlucky mum. You're on a diet<laugh>. But I, I mean you, you like to cook so I like to cook. I'm Do you have to do the cook up? I go through periods of the cook up mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, I don't like to enter the week without having something made something in the future. Yeah. These that like sometimes when I'm super busy I might not get to it. Sure. Uh, but I will always have a plan. Like even if I'm going home on a Monday night and I'm like, I don't have any dinner prepared. I'm already thinking about, all right, what car am I making tonight? I'll chuck some rice in the pressure cooker. Yeah. Matt, I got some pasture beef sausages. Yeah. You know, like it's coming together. Yeah. But yeah, absolutely. Like if I think back to me sort of um, before I had a family and stuff, I wasn't thinking like that. Yeah. And I, and I, you know, and the pe and the people that are successful with this are those that prep, they're all organized and if you look at your friends who are into body building, they're usually prepping. They're always so like if you're trying to gain somewhere like prep, like be about it. Go go do your grocery shopping on the weekend and cook some so that you can start the week strong. That's said, I'm gonna put this out there. If you are someone who hates cooking, just saying there is a lot of really good pre-organized food now. There is like way better than it used to be. Yeah. Like whether you like eating to kind of choose your macros Asian. Yeah. Like my muscle chef like it, it will even tell you how much protein, carbohydrate and everything else is going on there. Yeah. And so that's so helpful that it, which means look really simple. I went into the sevo the other day and I young tra guy ahead of me. I got some petrol. I also bought a liter of milk. I'm back on the milk. People. Milk's a great way to get calories in if you want, if you wanna get fat. Smash a cream milk, man milk has a lot of sugar in it. A lot of people don't realize that's the lactose. But anyway, so I had a liter of milk. Um, people thought I was buying it for my young family. They didn't realize I was about to walk outside and neck the whole thing in five seconds. Young tra dude in front of me bought two massive things of Powerade. He had two chocolate bars, my god. And a pie. And then a chocolate like Big m Chucky milk. Chalky milk. Right. And I was looking, he was a skinny Yeah. Purple belt. He was a skinny probably. He was a skinny dude. You know, he was skinny. I was looking at him like, oh that seems like I was looking at like cool respect. But this guy isn't trying to get bigger. He's just trying to get nutrients into, he's trying to get fuel, just get fuel cause cause he's gonna be working all day, you know, on the job site type thing. And I was like, dang To me, I was trying to calculate all the calories he was ingesting. Yeah. This guy doesn't care about nutrition. He's like, I'm just trying to get whatever I can into me. But that is expensive. Yeah. You, you like, this is what you're spending$30 on junk food. Right. But it, if you buy pre-prepared meals, they usually shake down to about 10 or 12 bucks a thing. You could have three pre-prepared meals, you know what I mean? Like Yeah. Which would be quite healthy. So a lot people are like, oh I can't afford it. Well maybe you're spending that money somewhere, somewhere else. So yeah, bringing some it will, I was saying this to Julian and he was like, well gimme a pay rise then Boss<laugh>. I was like, you're gonna have to, he did say that. Those are exact words you gotta invest. Like I, the amount of money I've spent on stake in the last three months is ridiculous. Well you pay somewhere, right? Yeah. Like you buy, you you're buying food, so it's like Yeah. If you wanna put on mass, you think of it as you're buying muscle<laugh>. Yeah. You know, like Yeah. Actually it's an investment in yourself. Yeah. But okay, so here is the next piece, which is huge. Um, I more recently had not had caffeine and that was cuz I actually got food poisoning, but not to worry. Um, so I didn't have caffeine for about three weeks and yes, sleep was better, but I have made a big effort to sleep better. That's my whole thing. I'm not getting up as though I'm not doing 4:00 AM I'm making sure I'm in bed around nine getting. Oh, Dave Goggins. Sorry bro. You're not getting up. What time are you getting up now? Uh, five. Wow. Moderate<laugh>. I'm just going to bed earlier. Yeah. That's all it is. And yes, sleep, sleep is so hard to explain guys. No it's not. No, no, no, no. Do it more. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm saying it like to try and there's a, there's a whole book on why it's so beneficial, right? But if you are just thinking, how do I grow muscle steroids, sleep equals steroids, growth hormone, testosterone. When you go to sleep, your body regulates your hormones. You don't sleep well, your hormones don't regulate, which means you just don't grow. Like you could be out there eating all the best foods and lifting the weights. You're like, yeah, but my sleep. Okay, well they, you, you yourself up. So, um, we, we've discussed sleep pretty in depth in other episodes, but it is an essential facet of muscle gain, isn't it? The biggest, strongest humans in the world sleep more than anyone. Yeah. Like it's a, they're truly disciplined around their sleep. That's it. And that's the thing, we don't really think of it as a discipline. We go, ah, it's just something I have to do. Yeah. Like, if I could sleep less, I would, it's like, well no actually, if you want better quality in everything you do, including growing muscle and being stronger, the biggest, strongest humans in the world, they'll sleep nine hours a day or more. Yeah. Because that's really what you need to heal your body and get things to grow. Um, do you have any tips for people out there who are struggling to sleep? Joe? Uh, yeah. I mean I got some generic ones that you've, you've all heard but turn the lights off. Like early dark. Yeah. Like get the house dark, put your lamps on and stuff just so that you don't have like, huge amounts of illumination. Um, of, you know, I say avoid the blue light. I, I do often, like, we were on a call last night, we were five minutes before I went to bed, but I will try to limit that as much as possible. Right. So, uh, you know, don't be on your computer. Don't be on your phone, eh, what? Watch a bit of tv personally. Like last night I opened a book, uh, a fiction book and just read that for 10 minutes in a low lit room and then I was like, Hmm, ready for bed brings you down. Yeah. Yeah. I, that's my piece. I often, I like the eye mask as well. Okay. Even though I've currently lost'em. I don't know where they're ah, Leo stolen them. Yeah. They're somewhere in the bedroom. I just dunno where<laugh>. Yeah,<laugh>. Yeah. I definitely, for me the reading, the reading definitely brings me down a notch. And I like to stretch actually. I find doing a bit of a stretch is almost like a meditation. It helps me get my mind off murdering our dev team or conquering the world. You know, whatever delusions I have in my brain by stretching it makes me think about my body and I chill and stretching helps bring my nerves a tension down. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So I don't do it for ages. I might only do like five minutes bit of roller, but that, that helps me just let the brain chill. Yeah, that's a good one. But um, I think if you, if you are really keen and your intent, you have to look at these three things. Look at your lifting. Are you getting enough reps? Are you getting that exposure to stimulate your muscles to grow? How often are you actually lifting Two, you gotta be eating surplus calories and that, that will be hard to do. And the thing we didn't talk about is everyone's basal metabolic rate. So your base rate of energy output, even if you don't train, is at wherever it's at. It's different for everybody that the thing which is hardest is jujitsu burns so many calories and we don't have an accurate way to measure it. So definitely always err on the side of trying to eat that bit more, um, eat to your uncomfortable and then taking your sleep seriously. And if you're doing these three things and you're still struggling to put on muscle, I believe Gordon Ryan has a special black market D V D that no no. Anyway, not to worry. What I'd say is the most important thing you can do is maybe swap one gig jitsu session for a lifting session. I know it might sound strange Commercial less jujitsu will mean you can grow more muscle and then when you have the muscle you want, you can go back to training. Yeah. It's way easier to maintain it than to attain it. Yeah. That's, this is what I have found. A hundred percent. Cool. If you need help in terms of the training side, get on our SW program. Ooh yes. It's got all the you need. Sets, reps, volume per week to get you hench. All you gotta do is add in the sleep in the food and your golden gotta Bulletproof for bjj.com State free trial. See you on SW and.