Why Bodybuilders Need Phases (And How To Structure Them) - From Fat To Lean To Jacked PHASE-BY-PHASE

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
Join Nathan and Aubrey in this episode as they dive into the foundational concepts of bodybuilding, including different training phases, recovery strategies, and hormonal management. This episode is packed with practical insights on how to structure your training cycle for maximum growth and health.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS 
00:00 - Introduction to answering client questions about phases and protocols
00:24 - Clarification on how Nathan's communication style differs for public content
01:16 - Overview of phases: cutting, bulking, deloads, and transition strategies
02:37 - Factors influencing headaches and nausea during dieting and supplementation
03:07 - Managing water and mineral intake for dehydration and hydration balance
04:03 - Caffeine effects, genetic considerations, and supplement alternatives like paracetin
05:20 - Use of NAD Plus, methylene blue, and other compounds for mental clarity and energy
06:39 - The dangers and proper protocols for using Methylene Blue
09:19 - Balancing demand and supply in mitochondrial support compounds
10:13 - The importance of symptom monitoring and blood work in cycling steroids and support compounds
11:17 - Transitioning off stimulants and managing adrenal health
12:35 - Structuring bodybuilding phases: fat loss, growth, mini cuts, and health phases
13:04 - Typical timelines for fat loss and growth phases, and the importance of patience
14:25 - How to optimize muscle growth during bulking phases while preserving health
15:47 - The role of insulin sensitivity and body composition in progressing through phases
16:44 - Duration and structuring of growth phases, including mini cuts and health phases
17:39 - Prepping for contest with peak week and peak day strategies
19:55 - Blood work and biomarkers to monitor health during cutting and bulking
21:12 - When to consider a short fat loss phase before competition
22:11 - The importance of consistent nutrition, meal planning, and adaptive strategies
25:24 - Adjusting workout volume during fat loss versus bulking
26:45 - How training volume and recovery change during dieting phases
29:03 - Liver and kidney markers to watch during fat loss phases
32:35 - Fatigue and tiredness management during push phases
33:54 - The impact of stimulants and hormonal environment on energy levels
36:15 - The significance of recovery and lifestyle for optimal bodybuilding results
38:30 - How to incorporate rest, recovery, and lifestyle for better progress
39:50 - Understanding deloads and when to implement them
41:15 - Managing lethargy and energy dips with carbohydrate cycling and compound choices
42:26 - The debate on diet variability versus consistency for gut health and progress
45:58 - Micronutrient focus, food variety, and practical meal planning tips
47:24 - Final thoughts and how to get your personalized questions answered with Nathan and Aubrey

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome, you guys, to another episode of the Opticast with me, Nathan. And me, Aubrey. Where today we are answering client questions. Every single Wednesday, we answer client questions here for you guys. So you get a little bit of a sneak peek on Monday. You get a sneak peek into my brain on how I actually design protocols and run your own shit. And then on Wednesday, you get a sneak peek into how is my actual like coaching process and how I address some of these client questions and stuff. Now, you want one note here that I want to add is that whenever I am answering these client questions, I usually already answer this question to the client. And then now I'm going to try to make it into a little bit more public-facing so it's useful for you guys as well. So don't make the mistake of assuming that because I'm talking to you in this way in this video, that this is how I talk to my people. This is not how I talk to my people. This is how I make a video entertaining and also make the podcast episode nice for you to be able to watch it at home. And by the way, wherever the fuck you're watching, because we are literally everywhere on the internet, I need you to drop a review. It's our first review here. Whoever drops me the first review is gonna get a kiss in the lips from myself, man. Just a little, just a little Selin, Brazilian hello, uh, good morning, goodbye. That's what we're going for. So uh enough with all that rambling. What are we covering today? We're covering phase science, growth phases, cut phases, push phases, deloads, what's actually happening inside of each one of these phases that we run, how to read your body for transitions, and it's gonna be a very foundational episode for you guys to be able to understand how I run these phases so that maybe you can run them in this way as well. Now, as you can tell, I'm pretty, pretty hyped up right now because I've had my viance, fucking love viants, just kicking in into my bloodstream. But also, before we do anything, like we always do with every single episode, we have to do the one thing, the ritual. What is the ritual?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Sip of pre pre-workout. It is like communion. Today I'm only going for 600 milligrams. I don't want to push it too much. Yeah, I don't want to push it.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Pulling my hair out.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah, you you really would. I would be like this. Like if I didn't have anything, I would just be like, watch, watch like one of these videos that I upload like really fucking early in the morning, like 5 a.m. And you're gonna see what it's me like early in the morning. It's just like crusty eye, like all fucking like this, and I can't even read whatever the fuck it's on my screen. And um, you know, the nicotine pouch is just like always making me gag on my own spit, and my nostrils are all clogged up and fucked, and even though I blew my nose 17 times, but right now you don't get that. We were gonna record this at the end of the day, and I said, babe, um, I'm feeling pretty fucking good. Let's hammer this shit right now. So let's start with the first question that was asked.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

What causes headaches if I'm already drinking a shit ton of water and haven't been drinking hardly any caffeine? What causes nausea?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Okay, so um this is this is very complicated because there are multiple things that are going to influence um just like the your your like headaches. Um, it's not just one thing. So caffeine, it could build up from some pressure, but you also need to look at the other things that you have on your supplement stack because there could be coming from other things. Now, if you could actually be drinking too much water and that could be causing you to be dehydrated regardless of the mineral intake that you have, you're literally just pissing away your minerals. So if your urine looks very, very clear and it always looks clear, even first thing in the morning, it looks clear. One, you need to make sure that it's not foamy as well, because that could be a sign of early kidney damage. But two, um, it shouldn't really be that way. That is a sign that you're overfilting things, there's just running through things out of your system way too fast. If that's the case, you're gonna have like more headaches. So, what I generally have people do is generally drink one to two gallons of water a day. Most people are drinking one gallon of water a day and putting a quarter teaspoon of salt um into every 20 ounces of water that they drink. So this is just an easy way to make sure that you have enough salt if you're not putting them enough in your food. But for a lot of people, I actually have them use light salt because it's it's a ratio, if I believe like four to one, where you get more potassium versus compared to uh sodium, because most people have enough sodium from their diets because they're not tracking this, but they don't get enough potassium because they're not eating a lot of things like potatoes or or dates, for example. So this is just something that you need to take in consideration. Now the nausea, the nausea could be caused by the caffeine. You're putting your body into this fight or flight state. In this fight or flight state, your digestive system goes to shit. So whenever your digestive system goes to shit, you're gonna start having all of these like one-off symptoms that could be very predictable in the sense of like for me, if I drink over like I need to get close to like 1.5 grams of caffeine to actually get like noticeable side effects. But then then I'm gonna get like really, really nauseous. But if I bump the dose significantly down, like I cut that in half and go like 600 milligrams, I actually prove feel pretty fucking decent. So you also need to find exactly what dose works best for you because not every dose is gonna be the best one. Now, one last note here on caffeine. The majority of people do not convert caffeine into perizanthine very well. There's three types, there's one type of a genetic polymorphism. There's three types of uh possibilities of your G and your T genes uh coming together that is going to basically influence how fast you're going to metabolize this and how efficient your body is at transforming this. So, in order for you to get the focus benefits of caffeine, you literally need to have enough parazentine. Parazenthine is the thing that you're seeking. It's that drive, it's that focus. Honestly, if you're not dealing with extreme fatigue and sleep deprivation and things like that, I would just run parazenthine. Because you're just skipping that conversion step entirely. It's the same logic of like running T3 as opposed to relying on a bunch of cofactors and having to deal with the THR uh 92 ALA dio2 polymorphisms. So, just this is just an easy way to bypass all of this, and you're not gonna deal with the headaches and stuff like that. And then if you need more energy, things like NAD plus are going to be massive. I literally just injected, I don't know how much because I fucked up when I was reconstituting because I wasn't counting out loud, and I need to because I have ADHD. Uh, but I probably injected like probably 50 milligrams of NAD plus right now, which gives me a little bit of a boost of energy for about four to six hours. Methylene blue, it's gonna be another one for about four to six hours that's really good for like mental clarity and things like that. So Samax for that drive, Selenc to calm down a little bit of the anxiety that you could get. I think all of these compounds really have their place and they're much more refined in caffeine. So, in general, you would not see me recommending someone take caffeine for the reason that's a very blunt tool for the job that we actually need. I prefer to use a scalpel. Now, is it more cost efficient? No. If cost efficiency is your primary concern, then obviously caffeine is going to be better, but you're also going to have to deal with the anxiety. So you're also supplementing with L-theanine. And by that point, probably could just run parazentine and a methylene blue. Methylene blue is so fucking cheap. I, if I remember correctly, last time I bought methylene blue, I bought it for like a fucking year and I spent like a hundred and some dollars.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Didn't you say not to use that on a regular basis?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, don't use methylene blue on a regular basis. But watch up the scientific snitch. She made a video breaking down the mechanisms of which, like, how methylene blue works. And um, she she's basically demonstrated uh, to my satisfaction, that methylene blue at high doses. Now, this is a conclusion that I'm taking from her video, not her conclusion. Her conclusion is different. But my conclusion is that at high doses and continuous exposure to methylene blue could actually promote the growth of cancer cells. So this is different in growth hormone, which would promote the the it would increase the growth rate of a tumor, but it won't create a new one. Methylene blue could theoretically do that at very high doses. And you also have to understand when we're talking high doses, I'm not talking 10 milligrams. We're talking hundreds of milligrams, okay? So, like when I say that I take a very high dose of methylene blue for a very like work-intensive day, let's say 60 milligrams, people go like, what the fuck? That's like, yeah, but it's like the if you depending on what the application for methylene blue is, and there are like hundreds of them, literally it's used everywhere in the world, you're going to get like much more of a um um, how can I say helpy?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

I don't have no idea what you're looking for. Ah, fuck.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

I lost my train of thought. So, um, but in any case, um, methylene blue, I think it's like the the the applications that you see, they're gonna use like doses that are like, if I if I'm not mistaken, it's gonna be something like 300 milligrams or like 600 milligrams, like shit like that. Like you're it's it's a pretty, pretty fucking massive dose. Now, if it was the case, the methylene blue causes the growth cells to grow and to like to create cancer cells, we wouldn't be using them everywhere in medicine. So I'm not convinced from that video that um, and I've talked to Dom Cusa about this inside of the blueprint, which by the way, if you guys haven't joined and you were a coach, you probably should join the blueprint or something like that at least, so that you're equipped to actually deal with your clients. But in in general, like I haven't found that convincing because the practical application of methylene blue just seems to go bypass this evidence altogether. So it seems to me that the evidence is just it's being a little bit overblown or something like that. I don't want to, I don't want to put words in her mouth. I don't want to like say anything negative about it because I do think the video is very valuable, especially for people who are hammering this stuff every day. But also going back to the principle of periodization and sequencing at logic here, you don't need to run every single compound every single day. One of the main issues that people face whenever they're dealing with anything mitochondria related is that you can lead your mitochondria to overspin, which means you have too much supply of energy, but you don't have enough demand. So you literally can start getting brain fog and fatigue from these mitochondrial-enhancing peptides. So, like one issue, I remember I was talking to you in the kitchen one time, and like we're talking about my fatigue and everything, and I was like, I think my mitochondria is overspinning because I'm starting to get the opposite results from MOD C and SS31 and methylene blue and NAD plus than I used to get before. So I lowered my dose drastically. It was like 30 milligrams of MOD C a week and 70 milligrams of SS31 a week. I lower that to like two milligrams a day. Gone. Like I feel I feel perfectly fine again. So you need to match the demand of what is it that you're about to do with the goal that you have. So, like for competitors, I like to have methylene blue before a big competition. For entrepreneurs, whenever you have like some big meeting days or days that you need to work on a lot of like new projects and like brain-intensive tasks, that's really good because that oxygenation is not going to create a problem for your brain. But if you're just taking it to be able to fucking do groceries, just fucking take Adderall in that case. Like just work with like something that's gonna enhance working memory is gonna be much more beneficial than working with something that's just going to create an alternative route inside of the ETH uh chain, right? So it's it's it's not really what we are looking for. You need to match the demand to the the supply that you're actually giving. It would be like you're moving from taking, you know, 200 milligrams of testosterone to now you started taking a gram of gear all combined, but you're still doing four sets per body part a week, and you're going to the gym three times a week. It's like you're gonna get side effects because you're not utilizing everything that you're putting inside of your body. But good, good, good, good question. Do you have anything to add to this one with your experience with caffeine and coming off caffeine?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

If your coach says to do it, do it. Um, I was very skeptical. I was drinking probably six to seven cups of coffee a day. And at one point I was also doing I mean, probably not in addition, but maybe four cups of coffee plus like one of those little energy shots.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Plus Adderall.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Those energy shots were like 300 milligrams.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

It was really bad. I was very productive, um, definitely overworked um myself and very productive and also crashing a lot. Dealt with the effects of it, and I'm still dealing with the effects of it, so would not recommend.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah. Yeah, which in in her case, she was using caffeine as a way to basically survive adrenal insufficiency. So as we're correcting this and we're already like in the end final stages here of correcting adrenal insufficiency for her, when we can actually introduce caffeine in a in a better way, but it's still like with methylene blue, with perizentine, it's like you only need caffeine a few days. The only reason I'm drinking so much caffeine is because right now I'm dealing with a lot of sleep disturbances. Otherwise, I would not be taking, like I would max out at like 200 milligrams a day, especially after running mitochondria enhancing peptides, which if you guys remember when I started running these, man, like I cut my dose of like all the stimulants. I stopped taking caffeine immediately. My adderall dose went from like 20 milligrams a day to two milligrams a day. It was it was wild. But the sleep, like, like I always say, like you can't out foundation the the like you can't out-peptide your foundational problems. So, like the the the sleep is the foundation, which is why I have a sleep course for my clients inside of the optolab engine, which is the the the sleep is gonna be the most important thing. So I'm just using it to power through this moment in time because I literally cannot stop making these videos and making content for you guys because I just fucking love doing shit for you guys. So I'm just you know, just just but um, anyways, let's go to the next question.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

What are the phases of bodybuilding or a typical cycle people will follow? How do you briefly describe those phases?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Um, can you just move a little bit over to scooch just a tiny little bit? Yeah, there we go. Um now we're center screen and my OCD is satisfied. Okay, so um, with regards to bodybuilding phases, let's say you were starting bodybuilding, the first thing that we are going to do is put you on a proper fat loss phase. This is going to distinguish itself from a prep because we're not trying to dig the living fuck out of you. We're not trying to get you to like 5-4% body fat. For most people, it's gonna be around 8 to 12% body fat. And for most, for some people, it can be down to like 6%, but I'm not comfortable dropping anyone lower than 6%. Uh, this phase is going to run for about 12 to 16 weeks for a lot of people. But like if you're if you're already a bodybuilder, if you're not already a bodybuilder, for a lot of people it takes longer. Because like you got to remember, people have lives, right? So it's not that like, oh, the coaching program is so slow. It's not slow. It's like people have a limitation on how many steps they can take a day, how many sessions of cardio they can do a day, and how many times they can even go to the gym every single week. So for a lot of clients, like they do a hybrid of training at home and training like at the gym and doing accessory at work and then doing stuff at the gym and have a bike at home or a treadmill at home, just doing steps while you're entering emails and things like that, because we're trying to maximize that amount of time. But for a lot of people, it could expand itself to like over like six months. It's, it's, it's, it, it happens. Um, it just also it's your starting point, right? Like depending on how fat you are, you're it's just gonna take longer for us to like chop everything down. I'm not really comfortable dropping anyone like more than 1.5% body weight a week because I think we're risking muscle loss. And also, I I really enjoy making people grow while they're cutting because everyone says that's impossible. And it happens with every single fucking client that I deal with. This bitch literally just finished a growth phase in which she started at 149 and she ended exactly at 149 on the dot. Look at the pictures, go to the highlights on my Instagram. You can see a bunch of transformations there. Look at that. It's absurd, right? It it really, it really does work. But that's gonna be the first phase. So this is like a separate phase because if things go right, you're never gonna have to run a proper fat loss phase ever again in your entire life. So then we're going to start a growth phase. Why do we get lean in the first place? It's not just so that, like, oh, so you have a transformation photo. No, no, no. Your markers are going to be so much better and you're going to respond to less drugs, less food, and you're going to need less sets to grow as well. And you're going to recover in between sets as well. So your cardiovascular capacity is going to be improved, which means your NAD plus storage are going to be improved as well, which means you're going to get better recovery in between sessions in there as well. And you can see your and you can see your progress, which is very, very important, right? For a lot of people, I always wonder about this, man. I'm glad you brought this up. I always wonder like how these people who are like close to 20% body fat, they're like, man, I'm growing so much. And I'm like, how can you tell? You look like a f a piece of ham. Like, what the fuck? I don't, I just don't see the benefit of it. Now, some people they have a different set point, meaning a point of body fat in which they feel more comfortable in. So we have to respect that. I like to push the boundaries a little bit and try to bring that set point down progressively with other phases that we're going to cover. But in general, like it's just more beneficial for you overall to grow leaner. Plus, if you come in and you're fat and then we are going to grow you, you're gonna add more fat. And then that just means we're gonna have to spend even more time like not growing. So it's much easier to like just get you started the right way and then move over to all the pro the next phases. So within the growth phase, you're actually going to deal with several different sub-phases, so to speak. So, like for myself, I see a mini cut as as part of a growth phase, and I see a health phase as part of a growth phase as well, depending on the context. Reason being, the goal here is for us to put as much muscle as humanly possible while preserving your metabolic markers and your health. So, to do that, it just takes a fuck ton of time. If you think that 16 weeks dieting is a long time, you're not ready for bodybuilding. Because growth takes so much longer, and you're never gonna see these changes on a week-to-week basis. Like you're just you're never gonna wake up one day and just be like, oh my gosh, I'm bigger. But but that does happen when you're cutting. You just like go to the mirror one day and you're like, what the fuck happened? And it'll touch your belly, and it's like, I felt like that shit was thicker yesterday. Like, I just don't know how it happened. That never is gonna happen on a growth phase. So the the the the way that I like to structure growth phases are at least 18 weeks um, usually for a guy. For a guy and a woman.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

No, either.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah. Um, and and most of the time we're pushing this closer to like 32 weeks or so. Um, reason being it just takes a lot of a lot of time. But you gotta remember a mini cut is part of that and a maintenance phase is part of that. So, like for yourself, we came off of by the way, we need to start YK11 and Kispeptin 10. Yeah, forgot about the YK11 to give it to you, but I'll give it to you later. Um But in general, like we we we want to um um uh basically like remember the goal of the phase. So the goal of the phase is to add as much muscle as possible. So when we're dieting down within a growth phase, the goal is just to bring back sensitivity to insulin as well as bring back your appetite, fix some problems like sleep apnea, some joint naggings and things like that on a health phase is gonna be to maintain your body composition and not push body weight higher during this period of time. So, like we have to remember like it's while in a in a foulosh phase very aggressively from the beginning or in a prep, we may reach a point in which sleep is not going to be 100%. It just it just happens. Like, I don't want people to get the wrong impression because they listen to to people talking about this on Instagram and they're like, I'm I'm three weeks out and my sleep has never been better. I'm like, motherfucker, you're one out of a million. This is not normal. This is not like your body is being put in a state of being energy deprived, and your body knows exactly what the fuck to do when those days come. So it's gonna try to preserve energy as much as possible, and it does that in some really, really wonky ways. So, within the growth phase, this is gonna be a phase where we ramp up training volume a little bit more because now you have the capacity to recover from those training sessions. We're gonna maintain the cardio or even ramp up the cardio compared to what we were doing on the fat loss phase, depending on what your baseline was, because I truly believe that cardio improves muscle growth. And we're also gonna be making some different choices with compound selection. So, for instance, I don't see the benefit of using something as aggressive as trembolone in a growth phase for the majority of people. It's just very toxic. It creates plaque in your brain that is very hard to uh to get rid of. It can create some sleeping problems, it can create prolactin problems, libido problems, and stuff like that. So, mapping out the compound that's gonna work best for that person is gonna be very, very important in this phase. And then using it one compound at a time. Like you've been using anabolic energy steroids now for a year and some change, right? Um, how many times did we use two compounds at a time?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Never.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah, never, right? Because we're still trying to map out and understand how your body responds to every single drug. So if we had run, you know, Anivar, Anadrol, Mastron, and Primo all together, and you started feeling like shit, which one did it?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Yeah, you can't figure out, right? So now you know because now you know that you don't respond very well to Mastron, right? It crushes the fuck out of your estrogen. So for an off-season phase, it's very bad. But it's also very good data that we gathered that when we come to a contest prep, Mastron is probably going to be the one that we're gonna use, right? Because it's going to absolutely crush your estrogen and give you that really dry, peeled look that you had on your photos whenever you were sending to me when I was in Brazil, just being like, What is my triceps? What the fuck? And like your back and everything. It's like that's the effect of having low estrogen. Feel like garbage, but look at my abs, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

It is terrible, but look at my abs.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

Exactly, exactly. Um, now for these, for this phase here, um, before starting a growth phase with someone, I'm always gonna be running blood work, unless it's a very specific situation where we ran blood work before and I pretty much know what the damage is or something like that. But in most cases, we're gonna be running blood work, and blood work is going to dictate the drug selection and the duration of that phase. And then sometime in the middle towards the end of this phase, I want to see what the damage that we cause to your system. So I want to pull blood work again for us to basically figure out like what's the next decision? Can we push growth for a little bit longer, or do we need to go into a health phase and pay off some of the debt that'll be created with your health? Now, whenever we are getting to this point of the end phase here, we need to decide: is body fat at a level that is appropriate? Is this person having sleep apnea and is this person dealing with appetite issues? If yes to one or more of these questions, odds are I'm gonna put you in a short fat loss phase. So this is not going to be very aggressive. It's gonna be around one to one point five percent body fat loss a week. And we're gonna be doing this for a short period of time, say a maximum of eight fucking weeks. I do not want to go any longer than that. Um, just because we're not trying to dig you, we're not trying to create any recovery problems, we're just trying to resensitize you for the phase that it's gonna come again, which is gonna be another block of a growth phase. Now, let's say your body composition is in a good spot and your appetite is pretty good. By the way, and my stomach is rumbling right now. Can you hear that? Wow, it's gone. Um, but dude, it sounds like a fucking alien living inside of my stomach because I'm supposed to eat my meal at 10, but I decided to record a podcast right now. Fuck yes, entrepreneurship works great with bodybuilding. So, so so that's the decision that I'm going to make. Now, when we get to a contest prep, before getting to a contest prep, I like to go through a pretty Pre-prep. So the pre-prep phase is where we're going to be like, okay, you're going to continue eating foods that you enjoy and stuff like that, but the macros are key. You cannot be swapping macros or anything like that anymore. Cardio needs to be locked in. If you skip your steps, I'm going to punch you in the fucking nuts and you're never going to be able to have sex ever again in your entire life. And we're also going to be like reducing a little bit of your training volume and focusing a lot on the execution again, just making sure that everything is proper and it's working for the prep that we're about to get in. Now, how I actually structure a health phase or a pre-prep phase that's actually inside of the Optolab engine, the link is in the description here. But I have a full six to eight-week protocol that is going to be basically allowing you to recover at a cellular level so that you don't have to waste so much energy and time trying to shed fat. I much rather you just start a fat loss phase and fat just fucking comes off. So I rather spend six weeks, eight weeks in the beginning prepping your body for what we are about to do with it and then move over to the prep. So within the prep, we have basically several different phases within the prep itself, right? We have peak week, which everybody knows, but the first part of the prep is what I call a dig. So this is going to be very fucking aggressive fat loss. Why? Because you're fat. You can afford to uh spend more energy right now because you're not like so fatigued. And there's also a little of buy-in whenever people start it, like, fuck yeah, I'm in prep. Let's do this shit. I want to do more. So cool. Let's say for six weeks, we're gonna dig the fuck out of you. And then after that, that's when we're gonna start having refeeds and we're gonna start like basically putting you on the phase of prep that most people either start or they only run this phase, which is going to be the proper fat loss phase part of prep. Now, when we're getting closer to peak week, I'm gonna be running peak week trials. I'm gonna be running mock trials with uh different refeed structures, a different timing of structure, different types of food, different macro allotments, as well as different drugs, because I want to see how your body responds to these things so that when we get to the actual peak week, it's very predictable what's going to happen. Now, I do think there's a mistake that a lot of coaches make, which is they trial too many things, and then that ends up eating up the time that they would have to spend on the prep itself. So they end up not being in shape because they were so fucking obsessed with the peaking that they end up missing the proper fat loss. There's no peaking protocol that can save you from needing to drop another 2% body fat. There's just, it just doesn't exist. So whenever you listen to a lot of like big coaches who are very established in bodybuilding circles, you know, Kyle Wilkes, uh, Andrew Berry, whenever you are listening to Chris Tuttle, Stefan Kinzel, like all of these people, like in general, you hear them talking about the peak and it's like it's the cherry on the cake. It's kind of like peptides part of a protocol, right? It's just the the extra that we put you to be like 2% better. But it's like a lot of people, my goal is to have you ready, like at least a week out, preferably two weeks out. So that I'm looking at the photos and I'm like, dude, if you were to compete today, you're fucking bringing it. That's the goal, right? So this is an overview, not very brief, but an overview of how I run and structure the phases. Questions, comments, concerns?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

No, but I'm curious who wrote this question because they purposely included briefly. I will say that sometimes whenever I ask you a question in the kitchen, I'm like, hey, what can you in two minutes or less explain this?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Hey, if you guys want five-minute podcast episodes, let me know. That's easy for me to make. That's easy. That's easy. I'm here, I'm here spending at least guys to write all of these scripts to go over to research first to find my fucking research notes because I'm not that organized. People think I have like an ironclad system, and I do. But when it comes to organization, it's not really good. I'm just very good at searching and finding shit.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Organization of your own of your yeah, of my own stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

My client stuff is dialed the fuck in. Yeah, it's dialed the fuck in. It's perfect. I just open it as like glorious. But it, but in in in general, like it just takes me about four to five hours a day just running through like this stuff for you guys. So please like the video, comment, subscribe, share. All the I'll ask fucking questions. Just let's keep the ball rolling, okay? Because it takes a lot of fucking time and a lot of fucking effort. And most days, man, I'm spent. I don't I don't want to be recording and doing research on a Sunday, but I do it for you guys. So um, let's uh let's get back to your to the subject and let's go to the next question.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Is it normal to have a lower volume or output in the gym during a fat loss phase compared to previous growth phase output? Or is it more common to maintain the same volume? Maybe just more difficult to make the same amount of progress?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Good question. The way that I like to do it is to reduce volume because you don't have enough recovery available to you. So because you don't have enough food, because sleep might be taking a toll, and because we need a lot more of your energy allocation towards cardio, it just may not be the case that we should be spending so much in doing so many sets. So we know from the research that like 10 sets a week is like goaded, right? Five sets twice a week, perfect, right? This is just amazing. Three sets three times a week also doesn't. But in general, if I'm seeing someone and they have like eight to 12 sets per body part a week, I'm happy for a fat loss phase. Now, once we're getting to a growth phase, that usually tends to ramp up for their weak body parts, but I'm not moving every body part to like 15 to 20. I've done that with myself before, and I just end up getting injured and just so fucking fatigued and beat up that by week three I need to take a deload. So I like to uh just lower things and just again, matching the energy that you have to the phase that you have. So, like with this phase, you won't have a lot of energy. You're gonna have to spend more time doing walks, doing cardio. Like, there's just I much rather you use the extra energy to fucking bang your wife than to like just fucking, you know, just do two more sets at the gym to get like 0.01% more growth. Like, you gotta remember, and Coach Dorian Bates has made a lot of good videos on Instagram about this. That like your first set is gonna be the most growth promoting one. When you go to your second set, you're dropping about 40% of that recover of that growth signal already. So if you're just pushing like 12 bot sets per day on like a given body part, it's just like, man, is it worth it? Is it worth it for a growth phase? Probably, because we want to squeeze every little every single little bit of progress out of you before a foul loss phase, like where the goal is to maintain muscle. And then also if we gain muscle, great. Fucking, I'll take it. But the goal is not to add muscle because it's it's so fucking hard to to to uh to um do that, especially if your uh recovery is not on point. So that's basically how I how I think about it. Yeah, but in general, like you see myself telling you, like, hey, a D-load, cut all the sets in half for this week, or like fat loss phase, cut one set off of every single exercise, and that's just like an easy way to do it. So we don't have to like change your whole workout schedule and stuff like that. By the way, people change their workout plans way too fucking often. Run the same shit for a year and then let's let's see the results from that and then let's pivot from that at least six months, but don't change your workout program less than that.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

You have mentioned previously that the liver would begin to show symptoms that would signal the end of a cut. What are those signs or symptoms? What are a few markers that we are looking for to signal that the phase should end?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

I don't remember talking about the liver specifically as a marker for a phallos phase to end. But in general, when I'm looking at blood work, what I want to see is that you are still being like held together in one piece by by like bodybuilding standards. Now, if you're a lifestyle client, I want to I want to see optimal values always just across the board because we don't need to run very aggressive phases. As a matter of fact, for a lot of people, like we're we're just maintaining a TRT dose indefinitely. And then we might add like anvar pre-workout and that's it, because there's nothing else that we need to do. We don't need to put a lot of toxic shit into your body and just ramp up your supplement expenses by threefold just to be able to add you a few more pounds to go to the beach and you know have some fun with your wife. Like, come on, it's it's non-necessary. So whenever we are getting away from functional ranges, that's usually where I'm going to be like, okay, it's probably time for us to like pay off that debt. And reason being that I started with the functional ranges and not just the lab corp ranges or or quest ranges or whatever the fuck you use is because like I rather catch shit early because that's faster to fix. So if we can spend five weeks on a health phase, I'd much rather do debt than spend 16. I literally just heard someone that after the prep had to run 24 weeks of a health phase. Because, I mean, they did a great at a show, didn't win. Uh, they did pretty good, but like, man, you lost over half a year now just recovering. Like, was it worth it? Would it wouldn't it be better for you to just like show up 0.5% less dick skin peeled or like bursting out of your skin or like less vascular? Generally, it's what happens. You just show up less vascular if you're running less drugs. There is a certain drug look that you see on stage that it's like that guy's running a fuck ton of gear. That is like, is it worth it to go for that? Because the judges are now rewarding that versus like actually stepping out of stage, taking eight weeks off, and then running your ass off to put on as much muscle as possible on those body parts that the judges say that need more work. I'd much rather do that. It just seems so much better for me. So, like, let's say your insulin sensitivity is drifting. I'm gonna be looking at things like your A1C as well as your HOMA IR for uh your uh kidney values as well. I want to take a look at your GGT. I want to take a look at, you know, some like AST and ALT, because though they are very much influenced by training, if you time this thing correctly, you can actually see what's actually happening with liver enzymes, even though they're part of the entire body. But in general, like cystin C, I want it to be really good. Um, I want your hematocrit and your hemoglobin to be very good. I want your estradiol and your prolactin levels to be very good, even though those are not gonna drift so much. But they can drift if people have added significant amount of body fat. Um, but also if they're losing body fat and they're not on thyroid hormone, which usually doesn't happen because I kind of put people on thyroid hormone hot. Like I want to see what your thyroid output is at. I want to see where your GHEA is as uh S is at related to your cortisol, so that we we can catch like if there's any adaptation that your body now is trying to run on cortisol because it's just literally too beat the fuck down. So, like, it's it's all going to depend on what I'm seeing there, it's gonna dictate what approach I'm going to give for that particular person. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Sweet.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Okay. Let's move to the next one.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Is it normal to feel tired or fatigued during a push phase?

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Yeah, it's very normal. And don't try to avoid that because, like, dude, if you're if you're never tired from your training session, if you're never like, damn, that I really need a day off, it's very likely that you're not pushing as hard as you think you you are. So, like, just in general, try to use that as a gauge of like, don't go to the gym to stimulate the muscle. Don't go to the gym with the purpose of being tired. Okay, that's something that people do. They're like, man, that leg day fucking killed me. I'm like, yes, so what? That doesn't mean you had a lot of stimulus. I saw your fucking reps. You act like you're just trying to get out of the gym as fast as possible with how fast you're moving this weight. Like, that's not the goal. The goal is just to generate enough stimulus. But the feedback that I get from you as a coach is that, like, this person can tolerate more volume. Let's put more volume towards, let's say, the legs or the, you know, the quads specifically, because this person needs more quads, or let's put a little bit more towards shoulders, or let's take some off arms and let's put it over in back. You know, like that's the type of um like uh rationale that I want to have. And it's gonna be based off of your biofeedback. So it's very important that you are tracking these things, especially if you're doing this on your own, because they're gonna be so fucking biased towards your own like natural default state, which is either gonna be to run yourself into the ground because that's what men do, or you're going to just be too much of a pussy and you're never gonna actually see uh any any results because you're never fatiguing, uh you're never fatigued in the first place because you're just not generating enough stimulus.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah, I think that it you have to just pay attention. Like that it comes down to paying attention and tracking stuff. Yeah. I feel like whenever I'm in a push phase, I feel more tired than when I'm in a cut.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah, the food has a big thing to do with that.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

And the lack of stimulants. Because when you're in a foul loss phase, you're usually taking something like climbuterol. You know, so like clen helps a lot. Like when I when I do my days off the gym on my non-training days, I raise my calories and I also take all the stimulants out. So I give my system a reset, and bro, those days are brutal.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Although recently I s had to stop taking Clembuterol because it was making me anxious. Yeah. Like when I took it before, I I think it probably was contributing to my anxiety. I just had factors that I thought were causing my anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Well, not just that, but you also were more tolerant to stimulants as a whole.

SPEAKER_00 34:32

True. Yeah. I was wow, yeah. I was so numb.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

So it's like whenever whenever I'm starting Clambutro for someone, um, like I just had a guy start prep and we are like 20 weeks out and I added clambuterol in. And a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, why did you add clambuterol so late? Oh so early. I'm like, dude, first of all, I don't want to risk anything. Like, if I can just guarantee that you're gonna come peeled, I'm gonna do that. Like, it's it's not gonna be like, oh, we waited eight weeks, so he's so much healthier now. Shut the fuck up. Like, just add some nebivalol on top of this to prevent the cardiac remodeling problems, and you're good to go. But also, the reason I'm doing that primarily is not even because of the fat loss, it's just because I want to give your body enough time to adapt to the lower doses so that we can escalate the doses very, very slow, and you never feel all of these side effects that people talk about with Clann. So, like for myself, I usually escalate doses every week. But for a lot of people, sometimes it's every three weeks or every four weeks. It really just depends on the person. So, like for myself that I'm running a longer fat loss phase right now, I'm escalating the doses of Clint every three weeks instead, which just makes it so that I don't even notice that I'm taking Clem Burrow. I literally take Clembutro and I can fall asleep, which has never happened before because like my sh my my fat loss phase, the longest fat loss phase that I've ever ran was five weeks long. Um, and the the the like most peel that I've ever gotten was on a one and a half week cut. Where I took I I only had 1200 calories and I was doing 25,000 steps a day. That was kind of brutal. Uh, do not recommend, but I got really fucking peeled. Yeah, I got really fucking peeled. It was really nice, uh, but also did not put me in a place that was conducive for growth, which is why I now think about phthalos phases as part of your growth phase uh for the majority of people. But good question here.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

What is the minimum amount of time that I should rest, aka be still and chill out per week or even per day, not including sleep during a push phase?

SPEAKER_01 36:25

As much time as you can afford. Honestly, like if you can afford to take a nap, if you can afford to spend time hugging your dog, if you can afford spending some time just outside, just not without your not with your phone, but just like petting your dog and just fucking having some your your foot on grass, like that's going to be very, very, very fucking beneficial for your recovery and you're gonna see more growth. Watch, start watching uh YouTube videos of people talking about their growth phases and like these guys that basically make so much fucking progress out of the blue, and it's like every year you add like five pounds, five pounds, and in one year you added 40 pounds and you asked them, what changed? Was it the drugs? And usually they're like, Yeah, we push the drugs a little bit more, but it was like a 20% increase, which is nothing crazy. But like the food, fuck, the food went up really high. And then also the recovery. These people really prioritize recovery. They basically stop going out entirely, they just live at home like a fucking monk, just doing bodybuilding, and that's it. You're you're counting every single gram of food that goes in your mouth, like you're living this lifestyle to a full extent. That's the secret. Like the problem is like we want to do things that feel productive, and we have associated in the United States specifically, we have associated productivity with busyness. So lack of movement feels unproductive. And since our value is attached to productivity, you feel like shit and you feel like you're not doing anything useful. You need to detach yourself from that mindset to be able to course correct and basically put yourself on a phase that's going to actually be beneficial for you in terms of your recovery capacity. Recovery is really severely underrated. I do think that, like, like for myself, I started doing breath work, started doing red light therapy, I started doing low intensity cardio, uh, I started doing at least one walk a day where I don't listen to podcasts or anything like that. I'm just fucking walking and looking at the trees and shit like that. And like I do see that that has a noticeable effect on my growth. I grew on my on my um health phase. Like, and I was not expecting that at all. But like I look at the photos and I'm like, damn, my back really widened up. Like, that's not Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

My last bush phase, I had a bit of a career change intentionally that I chose, and I'm curious like how much of that impacted. Because it was right around the same time, and I'm thinking that it might have actually contributed to my ability to grow, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

No, I absolutely I agree with that, and I I think that people get very caught up in like milligrams or drugs specifically. So they're like, Well, I'm gonna take this and it's gonna make me grow so much better. Last growth phase I took EQ, but this one I'm doing DECA and I'm gonna grow so much more. And it's like, no, focus on the recovery. I'm telling you, it sounds wishy-washy, it sounds very granola, but it is real, it is true. Like you grow in your like you go into this like anabolic state whenever you are resting, not when you're in a fight or flight, go, go, go non-stop every time. Which is why I say, like, you know, entrepreneurship is not really very conducive for bodybuilding. Like, you can still do it, but you're not gonna get 100% of the results. You're gonna get like 95% of the results, which it's like, oh, that's not that big of a difference. I'm like, motherfucker, 95% of results versus 100 is the difference between you getting first place and getting 12th on a show, you know. So, like, um, whenever you're like competing with people who are also at a very high level, like the the margins are very, very, very slim, you know? Like in competitive shooting, how it's like literally uh an uh one hundredth of a second that decides who wins a world championship. It's like fuck, that's insane, you know?

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Yeah, yeah, for sure. What does D-Load mean?

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Deload is just a period of time where we are catching up with recovery because we have either predicted or we have outpaced our recovery with fatigue. So it's just a period of time where we're taking care of like, oh, your joints are a little beat up or your sleep is a little beat up and like you need a little bit less food. Let's actually do a de-output time. So basically, like we reduce your step count, we reduce the number of sets you're doing. Maybe we reduce intensity instead of sets. It just depends person to person. Uh, but in general, like we're just trying to reduce the load. So that's therefore de-load to reduce some of this load so that we can come back a little bit more sensitive to it coming up on that over the next weeks. We know that your system adapts very fast. So, like, if you you could be running, let's say, a total of a hundred sets a week, you do a deload and you do 50 sets for a week. On your next week, you could actually get away with doing 70. And then the week after you do 80 sets, then the week after you do 90 sets, then the week after you do 100 sets and you're back on track and you run that for X number of weeks, then you deload again. So that allows you to get more results out of less work, which I'm all fucking about. So yeah, that's in general a D-load. But a lot of people don't like deloads. They feel like D-load is just their coach being like overly concerned with like their health and recovery and stuff like that. Nowadays, dude, I crave a deload. I'm like waiting for my D load, and I'm like, I know that I only need to push for six weeks because after that, there's a fucking god cent of a deload. It's just the more time for me to recover, less time spending at the gym. Love being at the gym, love doing all this shit, but like really need some more time to like actually chill out. One thing that I wanted to note on a previous question here is like being uh like super tired on a growth phase, carbohydrates are gonna have one of the are gonna be one of the reasons for that. It's gonna be the uh like a higher amount of carbs that your body has to digest. So you're actually going to have more energy crashes during the day, which is one of the reasons why I like to cycle calories and go high fat, low carbs for a few days during your week. Um, but also like depending on what compounds you're using, the lethargy could be coming from that. So, like if your androgenic load is too high, that could be causing the lethargy. If you're running too many different compounds, that could be causing the lethargy, even if the doses of those compounds is low. And whenever like you're running high doses of growth hormone, you're literally inducing lethargy. So, like it dep you you gotta understand, like, yeah, it's normal, but also like let's take a look at what's actually happening here because that's gonna be important as well.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Sweet. On maintenance and push phases, does it matter if the food changes every week as long as it fits the macros, or is it better to keep eating the same thing?

SPEAKER_01 42:15

What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 42:16

I think it's I think it does matter if it changes for two reasons. The first reason being um your you have to have a system in place so that it can survive life. So as soon as something goes wrong in your life, it's probably easier for you to maintain your macros if you've been eating the same thing. It's less thought. But on the other hand, your gut microbiome, as I've been learning, the what is it, flora?

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Your gut microbiome.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Yeah, uh thrives better when you have a variety of food. So I can imagine that there's a little bit to be said for both options.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Yeah, so like if you're that's that's exactly right. So you want foods to be consistent enough that you can track changes week to week so that you're not having a lot of fluctuations of like sodium and potassium and all of your other minerals because that's gonna move your weight all over the place. It's gonna be very hard to assess how uh like what's actually being in what's actually happening. So when when people change their foods a lot because they just want to be live a little bit, these people are generally the people who are gonna have to run more fat loss phases. Uh just because like you you are you you add fat just because there's no way for me to predict whether that's change is coming from water or not. So you just have to be a little bit more reactive with it. Um but in general, like I do find variety to be very important and I do not prefer people to be eating the same thing all the time. I want to teach people, and this is why I run very few people on meal plans, but you want to I want to teach people how to eat so that like when life goes to shit, you can literally adapt it on the fly as you go. So, like, you know, uh yesterday we hadn't done groceries yet. I woke up, my first meal is 200 grams of tilapia, five rice cakes, and 20 grams of sauce. Well, I didn't have 20 200 grams of tilapia. So what the fuck did I do? I grabbed like uh like six chicken hearts and uh like 70 grams of ground beef and then 60 grams of uh grilled chicken and then I mix that with the rice cakes, and it's like it works, right? Like that's the an adaptation that you should be able to do it on your own. You shouldn't have to send me a message to just be like, coach, what do I do? Right? Like you should be able to be independent. That's uh one of the goals here in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Autonomy is a big one. So I try to prioritize the hierarchy of needs in my own coaching. I've posted about this several times, but in in like I I want to make sure that people have the autonomy to be able to make their own decisions on the go. Again, this person is asking for like a maintenance or a push phase where I'm much more lenient. If it's a prep, you're probably going to be eating the same fucking food every day just because we need the signals to be very consistent. But I'm still going to be making changes so that we're not dealing with gut issues, you know, mid-prep, because that's absolutely fucking brutal. We're already going to be adding orals that are going to be very disruptive for your gut. I don't want to be adding more like problematic signals to that, you know, uh, in general. Also, like, as long as it fits the macros, I don't like the sound of that because I think you should prioritize micronutrients. I've been talking about the thyroid a lot and how important the minerals are, for minerals are selenium, zinc, iodine, and iron are for your thyroid. So, like, if you're one week you're eating no beef, but then the next week you eat beef, and then one week you have like you're a bunch of Brazil nuts, and then the next week you just have peanuts. Like, there's no consistency there. So your body cannot ever like adapt. So I want people to prioritize the micronutrient intake, which is why I pay for a separate app apart from my training app. I pay for a separate app entirely just to be able to take a look and see exactly what people are eating, what micronutrients they're deficient in, and stuff like that, to then be able to suggest and make changes based on this. Now, this is also like if you see me making changes to your plan based on like the type of food and stuff that you're eating and stuff, it's gonna be because you're more advanced. Like because you can make those changes. I I can ask that from you because you've proven to me and to yourself that you're able to stick to things consistently. Now, if you're if you're just eating whatever and I'm like happy, we hit the macros, let's go, let's go, let's go. It's because you're probably very much in a beginning stage where we don't, we shouldn't really worry about the minutia, even though they have major consequences. And so I'm usually just gonna be supplementing these things and then just have you eat whatever because adherence to the program is the most important thing, as opposed to like just fitting like a perfect diet onto you or something like that. But like for myself, I have one meal that's gonna be fish, one meal that's gonna be chicken, or two meals that's gonna be chicken, and one meal that's gonna be beef. And that's it. That's what I run for today. And then one meal is gonna have carrots, the next meal is gonna have zucchini, the next meal is gonna have broccoli, the next meal is gonna have green beans. And then one meal is also gonna have eggs, the other meal is gonna have cottage, the other meal meal is gonna have kefir, the other meal is gonna have milk. Like I'm having variety of multiple types of protein sources, carbohydrate sources, and things like that. One meal I run rice, the other meal I run sourdough, the other meal is sour is rice cakes, the other meal is potatoes, right? Like you want this variety because it's good for your gut. And a happy gut is a gut that converts T4 to T3 very well. It's also a gut that doesn't recycle estrogen a lot, so you don't get side effects. And it's also going to be a gut that is partitioning nutrients towards muscle growth and towards muscle as opposed to just storing everything as fat. So that's the long answer there, but that's actually pretty fucking good.

unknown 47:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

I'm learning.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Yeah, you are. Um, and anything else you want to add? Uh or should we wrap it up?

SPEAKER_00 47:28

I think we're good to wrap it up.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

Yep, good to wrap it up. Awesome. Guys, thank you so much for coming to another episode of our weekly QA's. If you guys have any questions for myself, put those questions inside of the Optalab engine. I'm answering every single one of those questions every single day for you guys. Sometimes those questions get turned into a voice message, sometimes get they get turned into a DM where I'm sending you a lot of detailed stuff. Sometimes they get turned into lectures where I'm actually teaching people how to think like I think so that they don't have to ask me these questions again. And you can just be more independent as you go. The goal is for you to achieve independency. So that's that's what the Optolab engine is for. You guys should check it out. And I'll see you guys next week. Peace out. Peace.