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Hosted by Dr. Val Civelli, White Coat Black Sheep explores physiology, functional medicine, and the medical questions most people are told not to ask.
This is where evidence meets curiosity, where dogma gets uncomfortable, and where real world medicine takes priority over headlines.
From understanding your lab work to debunking hormone myths, medication misconceptions, and optimization strategies, this podcast helps you understand what is actually happening inside your body.
If you care about health and think there might be a better way to practice medicine, you’re in the right place.
All right. Welcome. Here with me today I have Jerry
Tehira.
Close.
How'd I do?
It's close. It's Teixeira.
Oh, Teixeira. Okay. Founder of Bodyweight Strength, where
he teaches busy professionals over 40 how to build real strength at home,
no gym required.
So I know a little bit about you. I love the whole concept, and you look very
healthy and into fitness. And what I do know about you
is pretty cool, like with your son and yourself, your family, because everyone
except for your wife really is into jujitsu.
Yeah, for the last two years.
Can't get her on board with it, though.
Yeah. Are you from Bakersfield or where are you from?
McFarland, if you know where that is.
I do know where that is.
Yeah. So-
I worked at a small clinic there for a bit.
Okay. Yeah, my grandparents had a dairy there.
Oh, wow.
And so I grew up on her dairy, and then we moved back and
forth to between Southern California, Orange County, and then back to Bakersfield a
few times.
Okay.
Um...
It just brings people back.
It does.
Yeah.
When people move and I'm like, "You'll be back."
It-
They always come back.
Yeah. After I graduated from training here,
I thought, "Okay, now I'm going to go back to Florida and..." But then all the
good jobs were here and the people were so nice, and then my friends are here.
And then, you get relationships here, and it's just like, "Oh my gosh, I just
can't... This is where I live."
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's-
And it's nice.
Yeah, it's what you make of it.
Yeah.
If you want it to be bad-
Yeah
... you're going to find the bad.
Yeah.
If you want it to be good, you're going to find the good.
Yeah. That's exactly right. So,
how long have you been into the health and fitness world?
Well, right out of high school, I turned 18 and left the next day for the Marine
Corps.
Okay.
And so that, I was never an athlete, and so that was my first
real hard physical training. And luckily, because
we're creatures of habit-
Yeah
... right? We always think we have...
I mean, and you do have agency, but at the end of the day, the habits you develop
are kind of what you default to.
Yeah. Definitely.
And since I had to wake up at 5:30 every morning to work out for four
years- ... it just stuck.
So I do recognize when I work with people, like, "Hey, this is not a current
habit for you."
Right.
And so that's kind of the first goal is let's build a habit.
Yeah.
And then once you have that habit formed, it's a lot easier to keep it going.
What was your fitness state when you did just first enter the
Marines?
How much habit were you walking in with?
So, we had a pool on the dairy, so I swam a lot in the summers.
Oh, that's cool.
So I wasn't super sedentary, but I was-
Yeah
... like a video game kid. We lived out in the middle of nowhere.
Okay.
So I read books, played video games, whatever to pass the time.
It's so pleasant out there, honestly.
Yeah.
When I was younger, it's like, "Oh, I can't wait to go do other things."
Yeah.
But then now that I'm much older, I'm like, "Man, the country's calling
me." Like, I just don't want people everywhere.
Yeah.
So it was nice.
Oh my gosh.
So I wasn't overweight or anything like that, but-
Mm-hmm
... probably the summer before I left, for three months, I ran and did
body weight pushups, stuff like that, just-
Yeah.
When you go into the military, boot camp's not a lot of weightlifting.
It's mostly endurance-based stuff and then body weight exercises, so I-
Like you have to be a functional-
Yeah
... human-
Yeah
... to perform whatever the asset needs to do.
Yeah. And so I just basically prepped doing that type of
stuff.
Mm-hmm.
And so that was my first real
consistency in doing anything like that.
And then when I joined the military, you have your morning PT.
It's like I mentioned, kind of by force. You don't have a choice.
Mm-hmm.
And I never went to the gym or worked out outside of that.
And then
it was probably two years after I was in, they moved me, and I got stationed in
Twentynine Palms back in California. I was in North Carolina at the time.
Twentynine... Oh, okay.
Yeah. So then they moved me to Twentynine Palms and there's, especially back then,
there was literally nothing out there.
And my barracks was across the street from the gym,
so I was just bored. And one day I was like, "I'll try working out, like going to
the gym."
Yeah.
So I walked across the street, and I walked in, and then all the exercise equipment
just looked like torture devices.
I was like, "What is all this stuff?"
It's overwhelming, right?
Yeah, because I have no idea.
A lot of people feel that way. Yeah.
I had no idea what to do. And I'm the type of person, like, I'm not afraid to try
something-
Mm-hmm
... but I'm not just going to go bumble around with absolutely no clue what to do.
So I walked back out, and then I went, they have a PX,
like a big store, mall, whatever, on the base.
Mm-hmm.
And so I went and bought Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Guide to Modern Bodybuilding" at
the time.
I love that.
So I was like, "This is at least... Maybe it's not perfect, but at least-"
He was such an icon, right?
Yeah.
Like, look at what he-
Well, and I grew up with all his movies.
Progression of-
Yeah.
Oh, okay. Like "Terminator."
"Terminator" and all. Yeah.
Yeah.
So I was like, "Okay. I'll do this." So-
Yeah
... I read that front to back, and for maybe, it took me like a week, I got through
it, and then I went to the gym and started...
At least then I was like, "Okay, I kind of know what I'm doing."
Yeah.
And the science has evolved since then.
Totally.
But it was good enough-
Yeah
... that I got pretty good results.
Yeah.
And I think when you do decide to do something
in life, whatever it happens to be,
you're not going to be good at first, but if you reap rewards-
Exactly
... from it, there's like that...
It's like the carrot that you want.
Yeah.
If you keep trying to reach the carrot but you never get it-
Yeah
... you're going to quit. And so I think a lot of people, when it comes to their
health, it's like they have a desire to
change things, right?
Mm-hmm.
And to improve. But then sometimes, like maybe January, everybody goes to the
gym, and if they don't have a plan, they do go put in effort-
Mm-hmm
... but it's just kind of discombobulated, and it's haphazard.
Well, they're still in the crawling stage before they walk.
Right. And sometimes not having a plan, you don't even need an amazing
plan. You just need an okay plan-
Yeah
... with consistency, and you'll get decent results.
Yeah.
But people will do things that are highly inefficient-
Yep
... and then they're in there for three months grinding away, and you've got kids
and a career, and you're taking all this time-
Yeah
... right? And then you're like, "This is like, I-"
You don't feel better. You don't look better.
Yeah.
Your labs maybe aren't better. You're just like, "What is this all for?"
Yeah. And so then I think people get frustrated-
Yeah
... and they quit.
Mm-hmm.
And then of course, there's tons of misinformation, and there's
like-misleading stuff-
Oh, yeah
... in the fitness industry and when it comes to strength training.
We could spend a whole hour on myth-busting.
Yeah, absolutely.
Half the stuff I did,
even back then, I got results not because of necessarily the
exact programs or whatever that I did.
Mm-hmm.
It was just because I was consistent.
Mm-hmm.
And then being consistent at something that's okay-
Yeah
... ended up working out. But I invested way more time
where I could've done things much more efficiently and gotten a similar result with
a much smaller commitment, which I know that now, but back then-
You were just starting.
Yeah.
Did the book by Arnold Schwarzenegger, did he have anything specific
that was like, "If you do this, then you will get that?" Was it that linear?
Well, he had
a lot of it, so it's like-
I'll have to get it. I'm actually curious
... it was actually interesting because it was back in the day when he first came
from Austria, he talked about how he got here and a little
autobiographical type.
Yeah.
And then
he gave complete workouts, and it was just the way he did things.
And back then-
Like the frequency, the weight.
Yeah.
The reps.
And the thing I didn't realize then, because I was naive-
Mm-hmm
... is that
all these guys, and even today, you look at influencers on Instagram and things
like that, and
not all of them, but a great majority of them are taking a lot
of PEDs, so they're using performance-enhancing drugs.
Yeah.
So they can handle these very high volumes of exercise-
Yeah
... and they get good results.
Yeah.
And when you're very young, I was 19 at the time when I started.
Oh, that's such an interesting...
I haven't heard that term before, but-
Yeah
... this is exactly what I love to learn.
Yeah, so
everybody has a maximum recoverable volume of
exercise.
Yeah.
So whether you're an endurance athlete or you're lifting weights or whatever,
you can only handle so much.
Mm-hmm.
And then you start to
lose efficiency from-
Mm-hmm
... the exercise. So you do a certain thing, and it stimulates a response.
Your body gets stronger.
Like weight, volume, reps-
Mm-hmm
... recover.
To me, whenever I try to teach clients is we want to target that sweet spot-
Mm-hmm
... where you get an efficient return for your time investment-
Yep
... and you get results, then you go home and recover.
Yeah,
which is when you really do build the muscle.
Right. And it takes less
volume than most people think to get-
Mm-hmm
... good results.
Mm-hmm.
So a lot of the
sets and a lot of the stuff that I did, it's not that it was wrong, it was just
terribly inefficient. So I could've walked in-
I love it
... I could've walked into the gym-
Yeah
... and trained for 30 minutes and
left.
Efficiently.
Right. And probably gotten 80% of the possible results.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of research that they've done that shows,
for example, on your first set that you do of an exercise, we're talking strength
training, and we're talking if you perform hard sets.
And it can be push-ups or it could be a bench press, maybe
you're just starting out, you're not very strong, and just
no weight, just regular lunges are hard for you, right?
Yep.
If a set of lunges is hard without weight, then you don't need weights.
Yeah.
You don't need to make them harder yet because you're just-
Gravity is plenty.
Exactly.
And if your set is hard of any exercise, meaning you
actually put a real effort, when the muscle starts to burn, you don't just quit.
Mm-hmm.
You push for a few more reps.
Yeah.
You don't have to go all the way to what's called muscular failure, so you don't
need to go till you physically can't move the muscle anymore.
Mm-hmm.
But you want to go close to that.
Mm-hmm.
So maybe one or two reps from that.
Mm-hmm.
So when you start resistance training, when you feel the burn and when you're like,
"Okay, this is getting hard."
Mm-hmm.
Or a better way, a more scientific way to
know if you are in the right place is when you're doing, say it's
a body weight lunge or you're doing a bicep curl with weights, whatever the
exercise is-
Mm-hmm
... you're able to move at a certain pace.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
And it'll not necessarily feel easy, but it doesn't feel hard.
Mm-hmm.
And then-
Like you have the cadence of it.
Yeah, exactly. So you're moving at a certain pace, right?
So let's just imagine you're doing just air squats, body weight squats-
Mm-hmm
... no weight, and you're just doing them, and it takes two seconds, three seconds
per squat, for example. You'll get to a point where all of a
sudden you'll realize, "Oh, I have to push harder now to
maintain that cadence."
Interesting.
And that is when you're starting to actually get results from
that set.
You're so right. That's a good way-
So-
... to gauge.
Yeah. It's basically the velocity that you're moving at.
When you have to, "Wow, I need to try harder now to maintain-
Yeah
... my velocity"-
Yeah
... that's when you're starting to build muscle.
Yeah.
And so when that happens is when you want to push for a few more reps.
Okay.
That's how you know, okay, I'm getting closer to that
failure point. And from a hypertrophy perspective or muscle growth perspective,
those are the reps that actually matter.
Mm-hmm.
And this can apply to both men and women.
If you're newer to exercise and you don't have much experience with it, you may not
even realize that.
Mm-hmm.
So what I see a lot is people go, "Oh, I do three sets of 10 of whatever." And 10's
just an arbitrary number. There's not a good rationale for why you're doing 10.
Yeah.
And so maybe you get to 10, and the velocity barely started to slow down at the
last rep.
Yeah.
Well, that's when you should've pushed for a few more, but you're stopping because
you got to 10.
Right.
Right. So if your goal is to build muscle from your exercise,
then you should do your sets close to failure,
and that velocity changes when you can tell, "Okay, I'm getting close."
Right.
But you'll hear some people say, "Oh, you have to go all the way to failure," but
you really don't. And they've found that there's something called reps in reserve,
which is a way that you can assess...
Researchers have subjects report, "Oh, I could maybe get one or
two more."
Mm-hmm.
And that would be eight reps in, I'm sorry, two reps in reserve.
Yeah.
If you get to where you think you've got one or two left, and it's honestly one or
two left-
Yeah
... you're going to build
a statistically insignificant difference in the amount of muscle you're going to
build. So maybe pushing all the way to complete failure would
build... slightly more, but the research, it's so close-
Yes
... that it always doesn't reach significance.
Yeah.
And then the last
rep or two for most people sucks, and they're like, "Ah, I don't want to do that."
No, that's where it's miserable.
Exactly.
That is the pain part, that you're supposed to get the gain.
And you have to just like, "Okay, is this too much pain?
Did I get gain at the last one?" That's where you start negotiating with
yourself.
Yeah, because people tend to do things they like-
Mm-hmm
... with less friction.
Yeah.
And so if you hate your strength training, you're going to be less likely to be
consistent with it. So if we can structure it so you get results, but
there's going to, like I mentioned, the slower velocity, you need to feel a
little that burn in the muscle. You're going to feel that.
Yeah.
But it doesn't have to be to complete misery.
Yeah.
Right?
It's really the compression. So you're
essentially flexing the muscle, right? So you're putting a large stretch on it.
Mm-hmm.
And you're putting a load on it, and then the
blood vessels, you should be shunting a bunch of blood into it, but then at certain
phases of the movement,
you're pinching that off and then allowing a lot more of the growth factors to come
in. So it's like a whole process.
Yeah. The interesting thing, and I think
we know now,
there's actually quite a bit of research that has showed this over the last maybe
five to 10 years, where before people thought, "Okay, when I work out, I
like to do," for example, "high reps." Which high reps are fine.
I'm not saying don't do high reps.
Yeah.
So people would like to do high reps and lots of sets-
Yeah
... because you get this really big pump.
Yeah.
And they would think, oh, well, pushing all kinds of blood into the muscle-
Like shunt, yeah
... more nutrients. You do need some-
Yeah
... obviously. But what they found is that really, when it comes
to muscle growth-
Yeah
... it's just mechanical tension that matters.
Yeah.
So really what it comes down to is,
yeah, the pump and growth factors, all that stuff matters, but that's downstream
of just mechanical tension-
Yeah
... and hard set. So really, if you do a hard set,
so get close to failure like we talked about-
Yep
... you're going to get the maximal muscle that you can get from that set.
Yeah.
And so what you really want to try to do is say, "Okay, I'm going to put a good
effort into every set that I do." And your first set will get you somewhere around
55% of,
let's say, a set of pushups or a bench press.
Mm-hmm.
If you did 10 sets or 15 sets or whatever number-
Mm-hmm
... let's say you do them all, and you get maximum growth from that.
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's going to take you all day to do 15 sets on the bench.
Yeah.
But the first set would get you 55% of those
gains, and then sets two and three of that exercise will get you between
75% and 80% of the total.
So what I normally have clients do is two sets or three-
Mm-hmm
... and then that's it, because you're getting close to 80% of the total
muscle you could build at that workout-
Yeah
... and it's very efficient. So you could do six more sets,
which is more than doubling your time in the gym-
Right
... to get the extra 20%.
Yeah.
So you just have to think, opportunity cost-wise,
"Do I want to spend another hour in here, or 30 minutes?" Or whatever it happens to
be.
No. Although, I've gotten to where I enjoy it, right?
Mm-hmm.
After you get past a certain phase, then you look forward to it.
But that starting out phase is just misery.
Right.
Misery.
And the thing is, when you're a novice, you build muscle a little more easily,
and it doesn't require as much. The more advanced you get-
Mm-hmm
... the more that you may need to increase the total volume or the total amount of
work you're doing to get-
Yeah
... further growth.
More friction.
But for most people,
for example, if I say, "Hey, you can do a 30-minute workout three days a week,
super efficient-
Yeah
... and you're going to get 80% of the total results."
Mm-hmm.
Meaning, let's say in a year, you could gain 10 pounds of muscle if everything was
optimal.
Mm-hmm.
Well, you'll gain 8 instead of 10, but you'll work out half as much.
So for most people, they're like, "Okay, 8." You're not even going to see a visible
difference, 8 pounds to 10 pounds of muscle on somebody's frame, really.
Yeah.
So for most people that aren't trying to body build, it's just not worth all the
extra time.
Yeah.
And where you see a lot of arguing and stuff online and on social
media is people get so obsessed with what's optimal, and so they're like, "Oh,
that's not optimal. You've got to do all these sets." And it's like, sure, if you
want 100% of the possible muscle growth-
Yeah
... you've got to do all the sets. But the vast majority of
people, that's not worth the time trade.
And then-
Yeah
... if you're saying, "Hey, you've got to do an hour workout four days a week," and
that's just strength training. So what about endurance? What about cardio?
If you like to do other things, it can add up very quickly-
Yep
... and you end up getting some of these influencer optimization protocols
where you're exercising 10 hours a week.
Oh my gosh, yeah.
Which most people can't do.
So it's really your genetics matter, your food matters,
how you're loading the muscle matters, how you're moving.
The time that you spend is less important.
The reps is less important, although in theory,
lower reps, higher weight
is-
Yeah
... like the fundamental-
Yeah
... for muscle building.
Well, the way it would work is,
strength is,
there's a neurological component to getting stronger, and-
There is
... or a lot of times people will say strength is a skill.
Connecting the brain to the-
Yeah.
Area.
So if you want to
get as strong as possible, and strength correlates strongly to longevity.
It's good to get stronger. Right?
Absolutely.
And as you age, your strength and power will go first-
Yep
... and your muscle mass will follow-
Yep
... if you don't do some kind of resistance training.
And so most people don't realize that that starts happening in your 30s,
and people just don't... I think it's about 8% per decade that you can lose.
Oh, interesting.
In the 30s, it might be a little lower, 5% or so, and then in your 40s, it's around
8%, 50s and 60s is when it starts to accelerate.
But you start losing power first. Even in athletes in the NFL and
sports like that, the reason their careers are so short is because they might still
look just as fit-
Mm-hmm
... but they're losing some of that explosive power.
Yeah.
And that happens to everyone.
Like the density of the muscle... fiber is going down.
Yeah, and their ability to force and speed-
Fire
... concurrently. Yeah.
Yeah.
And so they might be able to squat just as much-
Yeah
... but they still can't explode when they sprint or whatever, to the same
degree. But that happens to everybody, not just those athletes.
Right.
So if you're in your 30s, you're already starting to lose some of that optimal
performance-
Yeah
... at the muscle, which, whatever, most people aren't athletes.
They're not that worried about it.
Right.
But that's the
leading indicator-
Mm-hmm
... that you're going to start losing muscle mass, and you're going to start losing
strength.
Yeah.
And then once those things happen, the good thing is you can reverse it.
You can.
So it's not the end of the world. And you can reverse it
at even very advanced ages. They've done studies-
Mm-hmm
... in people, 80s, 90s, and they build significant strength and muscle
mass. Not maybe to the extent they would've at 30, obviously.
I don't know, but with the performance-enhancing modifiers, I
think you can, and I think they're proving that.
And I think even your profile, you've done a lot, and it
wasn't in your 30s. It was in your 40s.
Yeah. I'm kind of-
You're kind of launched. I saw. I read it.
Well, yeah. I really do believe, because as I've gotten older,
I think that a big
part of aging is mental.
Mm-hmm.
And there's research to support that as well.
As people that have a healthy attitude toward aging, and they don't look at it as
an excuse or whatever, they tend to do more, and they're healthier and stronger and
all of that. Just because,
well, you're a physician, right? So the placebo effect is real, which is why-
Oh, yes
... your mind's really powerful. So the reason they-
Yeah
... they test protocols or pharmaceuticals against a placebo is
because if a patient 100% sold that this thing's going to
work, it will work to an extent.
Mm-hmm.
So they have to test a medication against a placebo to make sure that if you,
all things being equal, if you believe this thing works-
Mm-hmm
... does the one that's the real pharmaceutical work better than the sugar pill?
Yep. I think it's like 30%.
It's crazy.
Yeah. It's pretty high.
And so it's almost like you hear stories of oncologists that are like,
"You don't always know which patients are going to make it," but they're like, "I
can almost always tell." It's like the attitude is everything.
Because-
It is
... if you believe you're going to beat something-
Mm-hmm
... your mind will make
things happen to give you that outcome.
Not always, obviously-
Yeah
... but it helps stack the deck in your favor.
It really does. It shifts neurotransmitters and pathways and
neurocircuits. It's-
Yeah
... proven. Harvard did some pretty,
I would say, extreme studies to show
that exact point.
Yeah. So that's one of the things as I got older, I thought, "Well, I
don't want to
cede any ground to aging." It's going to take it eventually, right?
But I'm going to do everything I can to fight it.
Absolutely not. Yep.
And it's like, one day,
the Grim Reaper's going to come for me too, but I'm going to make him pack a lunch.
Nice.
It's not going to be easy.
So yeah. I think a lot of people end up having regrets too.
It's like, well, when I was younger, I should've done this or I should've done
that. And yeah, maybe you can't do it to the same degree.
Like, oh, I should've played football or whatever.
There's certain things that, yes, there's a time that I guess you can't necessarily
go back, or maybe the risk/reward doesn't make sense.
What-
Mm-hmm
... I'm going to risk my body now for something.
But for the most part, I started doing jujitsu at 44, and then I
started competing at 45. And I fight guys
that are 20 years younger than me all the time.
That's awesome.
And so
I think a big part of it's just if you tell yourself you can do something-
Mm-hmm
... and then you identify, okay, here's the plan.
Yeah.
You should have a plan, right?
Yeah.
Because as you get older, you have less time to waste.
Yeah.
But to your point with...
If you look at pictures of the guys and the girls from "Cheers," the TV show,
right?
Yeah.
Or look at "Seinfeld."
Yeah.
When they were in their 30s, you're like, "Dude, they look 50.
Why do they look so old?"
They did. Yes. That's so true.
And then you see people now who are that same, and it's totally different.
So like-
We look good at 50. We look great at 40.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. And the thing is, I always think of
it
that aging is the loss of fitness.
Mm-hmm.
And it's physical fitness, mental fitness, your resilience.
At the end of the day, that really is what aging is.
Mm-hmm.
Right? And so if you strength train, if you manage
your cardiorespiratory fitness, and when you strength train, you do actually
improve your cardiorespiratory fitness-
Mm-hmm
... especially if you're out of shape, coming off a couch.
So sometimes people think, oh, I've got to run, I've got to lift, I've got to do
all this stuff.
Yeah.
And you can.
Yeah.
But at first, if you just strength train at a brisk pace, you're going to improve
your cardiorespiratory fitness and your strength-
Yeah
... and your mobility. If you go through full range of motion, you're improving
your mobility.
Yep.
When you're new to training, you can get a whole lot of huge improvements
from-
Yeah
... a small amount of activity.
Yeah.
And then as you get more and more fit, then you have to expand.
Yeah.
But for most people-
And even your recovery from one exercise transition to another, how
long does it take you to bring your breathing down?
And training yourself to even do that is a part of the process that I had to
learn.
Yeah.
But I think if you
recognize, because longevity's a big buzzword now, right?
It's getting more mainstream. But if you think in terms of
how fit am I?
Mm-hmm.
I'm not saying you need to be a pro athlete or anything like that, but fitness and
resilience, how fit are you? How resilient are you?
Mm-hmm.
That
slides with age.
Mm-hmm.
It tracks very closely.
Yeah.
And so if you can maintain your resilience, you can maintain your fitness, then
people throw around the term biological age.
Mm-hmm.
I don't know if that's, maybe we should call it functional age.
But your functional age is still 30-
Yeah
... even though you're, for example, 45.
Mm-hmm.
So there's a lot, I think you can be proactive, regardless of when you start.
Yeah.
Because once I started training people, which we can get into or whatever, but
once I started training people, I saw people get results
that even I was like, "This can't be legit."
Mm-hmm.
I had a lady who was 70, and she reached out to me.
She saw me on social or whatever, and she's like, "Hey, I want to train at
home."This is what I want to do, and so we got her
all set up, and I manage their progress. They log everything through an app.
So I'm sitting there week to week, I'm reviewing everything so I can make
adjustments on a weekly-
Mm-hmm
... basis to her program, and I was looking at her numbers, and in my head, I'm
like, "Okay, this lady's 70, and she's a female." And women can build strength
really well, but just generally,
men have a higher absolute strength.
Mm-hmm.
So they start from a higher point. So,
she was, I think, curling 30-pound dumbbells or something, and I was like-
No, that's really good
... at 71. And so I was like-
That's really good.
Yeah, she was making like-
I'm maybe twenties.
She was making week to week just big
jumps, and I was like-
Gosh
... "Okay."
Is she on testosterone?
No. And so I text her and I was like-
What is she eating?
I was like, "Leslie,
are these numbers legit?" And she's like, "Yeah." And I was like...
When I have female clients, I don't ask for pictures, I ask for measurements
because I can see by your measurements and your weight if we're making prog- And
your numbers.
Yeah
If your lifts are going up or whatever exercise we're tracking.
If you're running, I can see-
Yeah
... metrics. I don't need to look at you.
I want women to feel-
Right
... comfortable.
So I was like, "Hey, do you mind sending me a picture, like flexing?" So she sent
me a picture and I was like...
She probably has good genetics for building muscle because some-
Yeah
... people do. It's just like, I'm not saying we're dogs, but if you look at- ...
when breeders breed dogs,
some breeds are more muscular.
Yeah.
Right? Some dogs, some are smaller. Humans are similar.
I have a Yorkie.
Okay. So-
He's very dainty.
Yeah. So some people build muscle easily.
So granted, she could have those genetics.
Yeah.
But still, she's 70, and when she sent me the pictures, I was like, "This is
amazing. I've got to post this."
Interesting.
So even women, I've been surprised multiple times with how good of a
result. And again, she's probably prone to build muscle more easily.
Yeah.
Another one may not build muscle that easily.
Right.
Maybe your genetics. Most people actually are biased one way or
another. So you gravitate naturally toward endurance-
Yeah
... and you enjoy running more because it's just easier for you.
Yeah.
And some people gravitate towards strength-
Yeah
... because it's just easier for them.
Right.
I think we should all do some of both.
Yes.
But, yeah. I think regardless of age, I've seen phenomenal results, and so
that's one of the things that I think as you get older,
I think there's the midlife people don't always perceive that they're
losing that functional capacity.
I didn't until I started to track my own data.
The data just spoke for itself. I was like, "Stop. I have to change." And I did.
I changed everything. But I noticed a dramatic loss in
collagen and strength and performance and recovery.
If I worked out too hard one time, then I'm down for a week.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely not. That's weird. That wasn't my norm.
So just recognizing your recovery time and
if all things are the same, you're eating the same, you're sleeping the same.
And I had to reevaluate my sleep and get a wearable because I thought
subjectively that my sleep was great, but it wasn't.
I was just having all light sleep. I wasn't doing any cycles of
REM and deep sleep. So
I had to just first recognize that, look at it, acknowledge it, and make those
changes.
Yeah. I think wearables are good for that exact
reason. I've-
Yeah
... never had a problem sleeping. I fall asleep super fast.
Sick.
My total sleep time was good.
You're disgusting.
No, but the problem was, so I thought-
People are hating you right now, throwing tomatoes.
To
your point, I thought
subjectively, "Hey, I sleep great."
Yeah.
And so I ended up getting a Oura Ring this last year,
and then when I looked at my deep sleep, I was like, "Why is it so low?"
Isn't that weird?
Yeah. And so it was better light discipline at night.
I have to do that. I'm very sensitive to light.
Yeah. And honestly, I love espresso. I got an espresso machine at home.
So I was like, "Okay."
I quit espressos.
I still do them, but it's like morning, cut them off at a certain time.
Yeah.
And then my deep sleep's significantly better now versus then.
And-
It's small changes
... larger meals too late will, at least for me, wreck my deep sleep.
Yeah.
As long as you don't let it become to where it's obsessive.
No.
Because
you want to minimize stress. We all have enough stress in our lives-
Yes
... as it is.
Yeah.
And so, I've seen people where they're so stressed out over the Oura data that then
they're not sleeping and they're waking up in the middle of the night-
They can't even look at it
... checking screens.
Or some people can't even look at it. I'm like, "Then don't look at it.
Just send it to me. Let me sync it. Let me-"
Yeah.
"I'll look at it. You just wear it."
Yeah. So I think-
No, you're right. It can be too much, like in the wrong direction, and now you're
spiking your cortisols. Now you're catabolic. You're not anabolic.
Yeah, and your
flight or fight response is triggered-
Yes
... and so then you can't-
You're not building muscle right there, so you've got to chill.
Yeah. So yeah, I think
that's what I do with clients is talk
about resilience and work to improve resilience and
then, again, with an efficiency as
the goal.
Mm-hmm.
What can we do if it's
cardio respiratory fitness, if it's whatever we're working on, it's just what can
we do to get the lion's share of the result-
Mm-hmm
... efficiently? And then the scraps.
I've had some clients say they want to do it all, and that's fine if they've got
the time and they want to do that.
Yeah.
But for most people, you don't have to.
Yeah.
So like you mentioned, you learned to like exercise, and most people-
I did
... when they start getting good results, they-
I used to dread it.
Yeah, but then
you get used to it, and then your-
Yeah
... body starts to have a craving to it.
But also, I think psychologically, when you start to get results, so for a woman,
maybe it's, "Hey, I want to build muscle in my lower body,"
and they start to see that happening, then it's like, "Oh."
"Wow."
It's kind of like-
"I'm actually doing things." Yeah.
Yeah. But it's-
It's rewarding.
Exactly. I think it's like when you first start saving money or something, and it's
annoying, but then you look at your retirement account eventually, and you're like,
"Oh." It's like-
Yeah
... "This is totally worth it."
I'm not going to starve.
Yeah. So I think it's very similar.
Just being able to see the return on the investment's important for people, so I
try to get that to happen quickly.
Yeah.
So I try to take that perspective in medicine with how people
feel.So there's always that initial buy-in, right?
They have to believe in you, they have to believe in your process, you have to
believe in you and your process.
Mm-hmm.
And you have to know where you're going to drive them, and how fast you can drive
them. And so I take a similar approach, and I try to always let the data
lead. And I would say a lot of my patients are like high performers, they're
professionals, they're people who do a great job taking care of other
people, at the cost of themself. Which was basically me.
So I feel like I take care of me all the time.
Right.
Like, "Um, are you eating? Did you eat?
Did you drink water today?" I mean, just even that, we're all
dehydrated. Um,
skipping lunch. Today, me not eating breakfast, that's unusual for me, okay.
I usually always... Because I know that I need it, because I do have,
from the time that I work out, which today was around 11:30,
I know how I'll feel at certain points of the day, and what performance is
needed from me. So I have to plan accordingly.
So, just, when to do what thing, people
just don't know. So a lot of
the places that I start at with people is, "How do you feel?" And we
give categories. And, "How much is
each area impacted?" And then we kind of just target those.
And then I use the wearable device and then their labs to track and
show them their proof, because a lot of times their labs will show us
before their body shows us.
Right.
Because the body re-comp takes like, I don't know, three months.
Yeah.
So.
When you first start strength training, you'll make
gains in strength first. So week to week, if it's...
And because I specialize with people at home, a lot of it's just body weight with
minimal equipment.
Mm-hmm.
But I do have clients that they go to the gym, they have everything available.
Yeah.
So the first thing you'll see is, you'll start seeing improvements in
performance. So you're, "Hey, I did six push-ups last week, I did
eight this week." Or-
And that's so fun.
Yeah. Or, "I put another two and a half pounds on the bar," or whatever the case
is.
Mm-hmm.
"Moved another plate."
Yeah.
But you usually get stronger first because those neurological adaptations happen-
Mm-hmm
... faster than noticeable muscle growth or whatever happens.
Mm-hmm.
And then as you keep going, then you see the muscle growth-
Mm-hmm
... as kind of like a little bit of a lag to it.
Yeah.
So like to your point, you want to focus on strength gains
first. "Am I seeing performance improvements?"
Mm-hmm.
And as long as you keep seeing performance improvements, the body's going to catch
up visibly. You're going to see that.
It does.
It's just-
It just follows.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think that's important. And something else I think
actually is pretty important, because we talked earlier about building muscle,
which is one goal of-
Mm-hmm
... strength training obviously, but you want to get stronger.
And you'll build strength, whether you do a five-rep set of something
with a heavier weight, or you do a 15-rep set of something.
If you can move the weight for more reps, you still did get
stronger.
Mm-hmm.
It's just that as your reps per set go up-
Mm-hmm
... you just build strength less efficiently. You still build muscle fine.
Mm-hmm.
Up until around 30 or so reps. So you, if you're just-
So you slow the rate of your building.
Yeah, exactly. From a strength perspective.
Yeah.
But from a muscle growth perspective, so if your goal is hypertrophy, to build a
bigger muscle-
Mm-hmm
... you can go all the way up to the low 30s, and you still will
build muscle, as long as you get close to failure.
So they call it the proximity to failure in a five or six-rep set, and a
30-rep set, for example, need to be the same.
Mm-hmm.
As long as both sets were equally hard, you'll still build the muscle.
Mm-hmm.
The biggest differentiator will be at that lower rep range, you would've gotten
more strength out of it.
Mm-hmm.
But if you really don't like struggling with a very heavy or a difficult load,
you can definitely go lighter and you'll still build muscle.
Yeah.
You'll also build some bone density, which we want as we age, of course.
It's everything. Honestly, I think that is so under-talked about.
That your ability to heal, fight, your
immune system, your recovery, your GI, the whole
thing is connected.
Yeah. Which I like,
totally off topic, but I get why we need specialists that
are world-class experts at one organ.
Yeah.
Because there's so much to learn, no one can know it all.
Yeah.
But I feel like from a GP especially, you want somebody that
looks at it as a system.
Yes.
Because they're starting... And research is showing, like when one thing's going
bad, things are connected.
Yeah.
And so the longer you wait, the worse everything starts to snowball and-
Oh, totally
... if you get one chronic disease, it ends up being two, then three, then four.
Yeah, it's a snowball.
Yeah.
But what I was going to mention with the lower rep ranges being better for
strength, they're also better for
bone density.
Yes.
But what's interesting is if you want to get stronger, and you're
talking about the muscle-
Mm-hmm
... you're going to want to keep your...
If you're biasing strength, you want to stay on the lower end of your reps per
set. For bone, you can do one set
that's very hard. So maybe,
I'll give you an example. Maybe just regular push-ups are super hard for you, and
you do five, and it's like, "That's all I can do.
I could not do six."
Mm-hmm.
You could do that one set of push-ups, and that's going to stimulate the
bone because it was in that low rep range, five to eight.
Yeah.
In that five to eight range. That means that the tension...
So basically, your muscles are pulling on tendons, which are attached to the bone.
Mm-hmm.
And the force is, whether you're pushing the ground with a pushup or you're lifting
a heavy bar-
Mm-hmm
... are the same. Your muscles don't have eyes.
Your body doesn't know what the implement is. It only knows tension.
That's cute, yeah.
So if you can apply tension to-
Yeah
... your musculoskeletal system-
Yeah
... in that five to eight rep range for a single set on that particular,
maybe it's a pushup, you're getting the bone density gains that you can get.
Yep. Building the muscle.
And then after that one hard set, or I'm sorry, heavier set-
Mm-hmm
... lower rep, then you can go back to higher rep sets if you want.
Mm-hmm.
So if somebody prefers doing higher rep sets because they don't want
to lift a heavier weight for whatever reason-
They're really incorporating more cardio, right?
Because you're in a higher heart rate.
Yeah.
But they bias basically strength endurance.
Yeah.
That's why I mentioned 30. Once you go north of 30, it's almost all just
muscular endurance.
SoIf you're trying to build muscle, you don't want to do very
high rep sets.
Mm-hmm.
You want to keep it below 30.
But you can do one hard set. So let's say you've got five
exercises you're doing. And
when I say hard, I should say, actually, you could do one heavy set-
Mm-hmm
... of each exercise, and all the rest of your sets could be higher rep.
Mm-hmm.
And then you would still stimulate the bone density that you're looking for.
This is interesting. It kind of is like, I guess we're talking about the difference
of fast-twitch, slow-twitch muscles.
Yeah.
That's really what we're doing.
And-
I never thought of that
... yeah, because as you
use a heavier weight,
but again, below 30 reps.
Mm-hmm.
So the weight doesn't have to be heavy.
It just needs to be heavy enough to where you fail around 30 or less, then
that's going to be primarily type II fibers.
Mm-hmm.
And then as you go above that, it shifts and it's going to be more endurance based.
I love this. I need to read more into it.
That's a very interesting and unique way of talking about it, which I don't think
I've had this conversation.
And okay, if you think in a very basic way, like dark meat
versus white meat and chicken.
Mm-hmm.
The difference is the amount of
type of fibers and the fast-twitch, slow-twitch, and the amount of
myosin that's in the meat. So you can
develop one over the other.
Yeah.
You're choosing it.
Yeah. The type of training you do, so if you're an endurance athlete or just
a soccer mom or whatever who likes to run.
So what I always tell clients is,
what do you find least torturous or most enjoyable, whatever.
Mm.
Maybe you hate all exercise, but when it comes to your past in high school, PE-
Yeah
... whatever, did you gravitate more towards strength stuff, or did you like
endurance stuff? Because if-
Yeah
... if a person says, "Well, I really like
riding my bike," or, "I like hiking."
I played soccer.
Okay, so then it's like, great.
So I was a sprinter.
So let's do endurance-based exercise.
Mm-hmm.
Five days a week, for example, and then just two days a week, 20 minutes of
strength training because if you have that bias already-
Mm-hmm
... then you should lean into what you find enjoyable because it's going to be way
easier for you-
Yeah
... to maintain that.
Yeah.
And the most important thing when it comes to
all types of exercise is just consistency.
Mm-hmm.
And so if you go into it thinking that-
That's the hardest part.
Yeah. And if you're like, "Man, this is like pulling teeth.
I hate this."
Yeah.
You're probably not going to stick to it.
Yeah.
And
it's getting better now, too, especially the last couple of years.
People that are more into running and endurance sports, cycling, whatever-
Mm-hmm
... they're seeing the value in strength training, and you see that more.
Mm-hmm.
Where it used to be, people who lifted did not do cardio, really.
Yeah.
Other than walking on a treadmill, maybe.
Yeah.
And then people who did endurance sports didn't lift because like, "Oh, that's for
the meatheads," or whatever.
Yeah.
But really, if you look at any professional athlete, they do it all.
Yeah.
Right. They optimize everything.
Yes.
So I think you're starting to see that filter down
now to the average person. So it's important to strength train because
while endurance exercise is important, cardiovascular health super important.
Yeah.
You can do cardio and still be
sarcopenic and have very poor muscle mass.
Mm-hmm.
And when you get older, that's going to cost you-
That's a problem
... potentially.
Yeah.
And not only that, but if you're a runner, just as an example, if you're a runner
and you strength train, your economy of motion improves-
Mm-hmm
... and your times will actually improve.
Even if you're a marathoner, you will actually run...
Well, we live in Bakersfield, so the whole run might be on flat ground,
but for most people-
Yeah
... if you're going to go on a run, there's usually elevation.
Yeah.
And if you strength train, you're going to handle elevation better.
Right.
And then you're also likely to get less, your injury risk goes down, and if you do
get injured, the severity of the injury also goes down.
So that's one of the things with muscle I try to think of it is, it's
like we don't have an exoskeleton.
Mm-hmm.
And so your muscle is your armor.
Not yet.
Yeah.
But really, your muscle's like your armor.
God forbid, you get in a car accident, and of course, if you get in a car accident
and there's 3,000 pounds of steel, I don't care how much muscle you have,
really bad things can happen.
Maybe I'll have the exoskeleton at that time.
But if you have a strong musculoskeletal system-
Yeah
...
and some kind of injury happens, or I'm sorry, an accident,
the severity of injury is likely to be lower.
Yeah. Your bones are stronger. The muscles are bulkier.
So you just have a higher chance of surviving.
Right. So I think for some people it's like, "Why
do I want to do this thing?"
Yeah.
So it's like, well, here's why you should strength train.
You, again, don't need to body build. You don't have to do huge volumes.
Yeah.
But here's why you should put that at least 30 minutes twice a week.
Mm-hmm.
It's going to give you all these benefits.
At the same time, strength training's great.
It does help increase cardiovascular fitness.
Mm-hmm.
But I don't think it's enough.
Yeah.
I do additional cardio. I don't just strength train.
Yeah.
So I do think if you want those additional gains-
Yeah
... then you've got to do the stuff that, maybe you're not an endurance person, but
you still got to do a certain amount if you can.
Did you learn all of this stuff, really in your 40s
or whenever you first went into the military?
At what point do you feel like you
hit expert level at,
I don't know, for yourself and for...
Well, okay, so when I went to the Marines, my job was
nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare defense.
Oh, wow.
So it was a very science-heavy-
Sounds a little off. Okay, yeah.
Yeah, it's like a tongue twister, but it was a science-heavy curriculum, and I've
always really enjoyed science. And so when I started
lifting and I got into it, then it was like, okay, if I'm investing all
this time-
Mm-hmm
... I want to get good results.
Yeah.
An efficient use of my time. So I started studying
more for just optimizing the time that I'm spending.
Mm-hmm.
Not so much for optimal health, because I was 20, right?
But even then, it was like, okay, I cut out french fries. I'm not drinking soda.
I tried to eat better. I did care about my health-
So you're pretty strict-
... even then
... on yourself then. Yeah.
But really when I was 30, my father-in-law got
diagnosed with cancer. He ultimately passed away, and it was terrible
watching that happen.And so when that happened, it
was like, "Oh, I want to try to make sure..." Because my wife was,
we were both, we were the same age, so she was 30 at the time as well.
But I watched her lose her dad at 30, and I have kids.
Oh, gosh.
And so it was, that kind of really impacted me where I thought,
it can happen to anybody, regardless.
Yeah.
But I want to do everything I can to minimize my risk so that that doesn't happen
to my kids.
Yes.
Or if, God forbid, I do get diagnosed with something like that, at least I can say,
"Hey, I did everything I could to not."
Yeah.
So this is just my battle to fight. It is what it is.
Do you check your labs regularly to just check in with yourself?
Yeah, I've been doing it annually.
Mm-hmm.
And just because I've never had anything, and I'm very healthy, I haven't.
Yeah.
But as I've gotten older, my doctor's even said, he's like, "Dude, we should go to
twice a year,"
just to
be proactive. There's nothing wrong with you, but-
Yeah
... he's like, "As we get older, things can-
Like he just randomly just, "I'm just going to increase the frequency of the
checking."
Yeah, the last time I went in, he was-
Does that make you nervous?
Yeah, he's like, "No, nothing's wrong." He's all, "But now that you're north of
45," he's like, "I like to start seeing it twice a year."
It's not wrong.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's like, "Just that way, just in case something pops up, we catch it as early as
possible."
Yeah. I feel like cholesterol likes to become problematic around then.
Blood pressure likes to be a problem.
Kidney function likes to give a little issue.
Yeah, and
interestingly, there was,
maybe it was a year ago now, I can't remember exactly when it came out, but there
was a study on aging,
and they found that we don't age in a linear fashion.
Yeah. It's so sad.
But you might not have read this.
Yeah.
It was like at 45, in mid-40s, not exactly 45, but basically in the
mid-40s, certain organ systems, certain things accelerate.
And I think people intuitively they're like, "Oh man, I felt great until right
around 45."
Mm-hmm.
It's like there's that-
Yeah.
And then things accelerate.
Yeah.
And then they level off, and then it happens again in the mid-60s.
Right.
So it's like mid-40s and mid-60s are-
Mm-hmm
... the two kind of like areas where you have that acceleration.
They're not doom eras.
No.
Or eras, but they are something to note.
Yeah. So it's like,
so when that-
Doomsday prep.
Yeah.
So it's like, okay,
I really feel like if you're listening to this and you're below, if you're
in your early 40s, it's like now's the perfect time, because physical
activity and the things that you can do to be proactive-
Get it together now
... do slow that.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then same thing, if you're in your 50s or you're getting close to 60,
it's like it's another one of those times where it's like, "Hey-
Yeah
... you can really push now-
Yeah
... and build a better reserve before that hits."
And you can actually do that, which is just crazy.
And you could even see it in somebody's hair.
Like, you if you start to see gray hairs coming in, and then you take those really
proactive approaches, and you make all the changes, you can see the grays kind of
fade out. You can prolong it. You can put it off.
Yeah.
And
there's
another
one I found interesting was, people would use the excuse like,
"Well,
I'm in my 30s now, over 40, so my metabolism has slowed down."
But that's actually not the case. They found that through your teenage years,
obviously, you're still growing, it's higher, and then for women, late teens,
for men, it's usually like early 20s, then the metabolism levels off, and
it stays the same until you're in your 60s. And then in your 60s, it does decline.
But throughout the course of your life, your metabolism doesn't slow down.
So,
the thing that's really interesting, when that study first came out, it was, is the
decline in metabolism after 60
some artifact, like we don't understand, or is it because that's also when muscle
loss happens the fastest?
Muscle loss.
So muscle being a very metabolic-
It's in your fat with you
... metabolic active organ. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So even the slow down your
metabolism at 60, if you're focused on building muscle, if you're doing those
things proactively, you can even delay that.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, they're extreme outliers, but there's-
Yeah, like your 70-year-old that was just like jacked at-
Yeah
... her first three workouts.
Yeah. I mean, that was eight weeks when I first was like, "This
lady-"
Maybe she eats fish. Like what does she...
And then when I first asked her, I was like, "Are these numbers real at eight
weeks?" And I think we worked together for almost a year.
And she was like, "Yeah, that's legit." And I was like, "Dang, good job."
Yeah.
But it wasn't that crazy yet. And then another eight weeks, when I saw them, I was
like, "This cannot be accurate." So that's when I was like, "Can you send me a
picture?"
So yeah, there's a guy I saw on Instagram, Robert
Wolf. I haven't talked to him or anything yet.
But the guy won some world's jujitsu
competition. And he's 70.
Wow.
And the guy was just talking to an interviewer, and when you look at him,
his movement quality, I'm like, "That's a 40-year-old man." I mean, he might be
70, but he moves-
Yeah
... like he's a healthy 40-year-old-
Yeah
... athlete.
So really-
So really, are you just... Okay, so whenever you say that, the way I know movement
quality, so there's like an age-related movement.
So like when you're younger, you use your hands, you're expressive, and you
show elation in your face or sadness.
You get up with just one-
Right
...
action. But if you're older, slower, getting
into less movement, then you're more still.
Yeah, exactly. Like if-
Your face is more boring.
Right. If you didn't know how old the guy was, and I just said, "Hey, how old do
you think this guy is?" I mean, he's very fit for any age, let alone 70.
Mm-hmm.
You would look at him and say 40. I mean, maybe 40.
Like the guy, I was like, "This is one of the best cases I've seen-"
That's awesome
... as somebody... But the cool thing with that is, like I'm the type of person,
when I see that, I think, "Okay, that's me at 70." Like if that guy can do it, I
can do it. See, there's-
Yeah.
You know what one man can do or what one woman can do, another can do.
Yeah.
So it's not like... If there's outliers out there, you can be one too.
Yes.
So I always tell clients that, like, "Just be an outlier." I get that it's not
normal to be super-
I don't want to be normal. Reference range labs are normal, and that's like-
Right
... the barely sustaining life. Like you're alive. Good job.
Yeah.
Yeah, 100%. So I think like
that's the thing that I try to teach people.
Even with my content, it's like I always struggled with, I
don't want a bunch of attention. I don't really care.
So it's like, well, I didn't even want to put my jujitsu stuff on the internet at
all, and I haven't much. ButSome people are like, "No, that's really cool that you
went and won a
competition at 45 and you started at 44."
Yeah.
Because there's other people that are like-
No, your story is really cool. It's badass.
Yeah.
It is.
And so people are like, "You should not feel like..." It's
not like, "Oh, I'm trying to show off," because that's how I always think about it,
you know what I mean?
But I think for people, when they see somebody that's in their
demographic and they're like-
Mm-hmm
... "Oh wait, that dude's 45 or 46 or whatever," and they're like, "I'm-"
It ain't over.
Yeah, exactly. So, then I realized, okay, I just need to get over myself and-
Yeah
... not care.
Because it's not about you. I feel like this is not about me.
I'm a conduit of information, and
people get something from it, and it can teach them something, and it
could change their life, and it could change someone else's life because they
changed their life. So, the snowball effect could be the other way.
Yeah. And so it's like if you can be an example, if you can be a city on the
hill and people go, "Oh."
For whatever reason, different people resonate with different people.
Yes.
So, if you find in life, if you're a leader in your business or whatever
else, you
can make a positive impact on people.
Yeah.
And so it's like if you're in a position to be able to do that,
like why not do that?
But that's not the intention to, okay, so I'm stepping into this
platform not with the intention to be a
star or to even like, "Oh, I'm here to change you."
No, I'm here because somebody needs to hear it. I don't know who it is.
Yeah. Exactly.
And I don't even know why.
And especially because
most fitness content,
especially when it comes to strength training and stuff like that-
Yeah
...
it's not very approachable.
Mm-hmm.
At least I don't think it's very approachable.
No, it's not.
And so for most people-
They're trade secrets.
Yeah. You look at something where it's like, I'll give you an example, like, oh,
this childless influencer who doesn't have a spouse, who's
single,
can do all this stuff, and not knocking anybody. He's totally fine.
Yeah.
But I think a lot of people look at that and they're like, "I don't
identify with that at all." Right?
No.
Versus like, I've got two kids, and my wife has a career in medicine.
She's super busy.
Yeah.
And so it's like I help out a ton with our kids. I'm taking my kids to judo.
I'm doing all kinds of stuff.
Yeah.
Plus-
I have several patients to see after this. They're at a facility.
Yeah. And then managing a business-
It's hard
... and still like, hey.
Yeah.
So I realized when my son was born, my daughter's
19 now.
Mm-hmm.
She was a gymnast. We put her in gymnastics, and I used to go to regular gym.
And I would sit there and watch my daughter at practice, and she was three, four,
five years old, whatever. And of course, they're fit for little kids.
They're gymnasts, right?
Mm-hmm.
But as she got older, and then you see male gymnasts in their teenage
years and stuff.
Mm-hmm.
I would sit there and I'm like, "Dude, these girls are beasts." These boys are
like superheroes.
Like that tall? Or they're like really strong?
No. Yeah, just super strong.
Yeah.
Lean.
Yeah.
And the boys look like little Marvel superheroes running around.
At like high school age. And there's no weights.
No.
Very few gymnastics gyms that I've ever been at for competitions, for anything,
have any weights at all.
There's no way.
It's all body weight.
Yeah.
So my daughter was a gymnast. My wife was pregnant with our son.
I was going to regular gym. And then
because when we had our daughter, I stopped working out for a year plus.
I got 50 pounds overweight. I got pretty unhealthy for about a
year and a half.
Wow.
And then-
I was going to actually ask you if you had any health dips or
swerves.
Yeah.
She was born when I was 25, 26, so right around 26, 27.
Okay.
And then I went to the doctor, and my blood work wasn't the best.
He's like, "Hey, dude, you gained 50 pounds."
And cholesterol.
He's like, "What's going on?"
Yeah.
Because I gained 50 pounds in a year and a half.
Wow.
And my wife was telling me, "Hey, you're getting kind of fat," and just
trying to be nice about it. But
I just wouldn't-
Elbow
... but then when the doctor also told me, I was like, "Okay, I got to do
something." So then I got back on it and lost the weight and all that.
But when we had my daughter, I knew, okay, with a new baby, it's not realistic for
me to go to the gym every day for an hour and just leave the kid at home
after we've worked all day.
Right.
So, when we had my son, I thought, okay, I've seen the gymnasts do it.
I understand how muscle is built. It shouldn't matter that it's weights or if
it's the floor, a pull-up bar or whatever.
Yeah.
So I'm going to try to do this at home.
Yeah.
So when my son was born, I started working out at home, and then I just never went
back to a gym.
Oh, I love that. That's like where it all started.
Yeah. Because of my son.
That's a perfect start, too, because
that just shows that you have no excuses. You have no excuses.
Yeah.
You just started.
Yeah.
You jumped in and just did it.
And it was like wake up in the morning before my family's up, and then I would do a
quick 30-minute workout. And some days,
kid's sick, whatever. It doesn't always happen.
Yeah.
But if you're working out at home, the good thing is you do have to be disciplined
enough to actually do it.
Yeah.
Because obviously you're at home.
Yeah.
The couch is right there.
Yeah.
But the nice thing is there's days where it's like, okay, we need to make dinner.
And so what I did is I opened my kitchen door, goes into the garage.
Mm-hmm.
And there's no longer cars in my garage. I turned it into a little gym.
Mm-hmm.
And so I'll literally prop the garage door open and be making dinner and help my
wife with dinner or whatever, and I'll just pop out and do a set and then come back
in the kitchen, wash my hands, keep cooking.
That's so good.
So there's a lot of days where I'm working out while I make dinner-
Yeah
... because that's just the only time that I had.
So no excuses.
Yeah.
No excuses.
Yeah.
That's one of the benefits to doing it at home is it
can work around your schedule 100%.
Yeah.
Your
kids can be doing homework, you can be helping them and like, "Hold on, let me do a
set real quick."
Yeah. And I think there's anxiety around working out, too.
Like the thought of, okay, now I have to go to the gym and plan all this stuff.
You build it up. It's the build-up that it's like you self-created
that, and really, you just jump in.
Yeah.
Break out with some sets right now. Just do some push-ups.
Yeah. And one of the other things, and I didn't know this until
reading the data, that there's
basically the work that you do over a weekly period, for
example, is what your body responds to.
Yeah.
So if you took a program and you said, "Hey, I'm going to go to the gym or
work out at home, whatever, Monday, Wednesday, Friday for 45 minutes."
Okay, and you do that 45-minute dedicated workout.
If you took those same 10 exercises or whatever it happens to be, and you just did
them throughout the day in little micro workouts-
Mm-hmm
The results will be the same.
Yep.
You will still build the same amount of muscle. The strength will still be there.
Heart health is still-
Yeah
... going to benefit.
But people get used to you're a little out of breath because you did
this 45 minute... There's endorphins that, you do get a little different
feeling-
Mm-hmm
... from doing a dedicated workout, right?
Mm-hmm.
But the results
will not be different. So what I always tell people is if you have to wake up and
do just some squats, especially for moms with kids, housewives and stuff
like that-
Yeah
... it's one of those things, I'm like, "Look, I get it.
Kids are
totally unpredictable." So if you just take your eight exercises and just do them
throughout the day when you can-
Yeah
... you can literally do them while you're doing laundry.
You can do them while the baby's asleep.
It's not meaningless. It's not pointless.
No, and you'll get the same result.
So, I think that's what I mentioned earlier talking about
misconceptions is there's just like what most people think, like, "I've got to
dedicate this many minutes in a row."
Yep.
It's like not really. You can do micro workouts or
there's actually some people call exercise snacks- ...
in the research.
That's cute.
Yeah, so
really it's just about doing-
Snack on your exercise.
Yeah, so doing the work-
That makes it fun
... in whatever way it fits your schedule, the results will still be the same.
Half the time that's what I'm doing at home.
It's not like the whole workout at one chunk.
That's perfect.
Yeah.
I love that advice. So, it kind of goes back to keep it simple, stupid.
Yeah.
You know that? Wasn't that like a book or something?
Yeah. In school, I think, when I was in school too.
But it just is so true because you don't need all this...
The fancy stuff is nice, right? Like it's a luxury that's wonderful, and if you
have time, then by all means. But if you don't, you still have no excuse because
there's so much that will benefit you.
It'll make you live longer. Your heart will be healthier.
You can still keep the muscle, build muscle.
You just have to put in a little bit of diligence and consistency.
Yeah, and
everybody, like we all have... There's that old saying, people say,
"Oh, everybody's got the same 24 hours in a day."
But one of the things that always bothered me-
Yeah
... is I would see
young, and I was young too, I get it, but I would see younger
influencers who don't have a family, who don't have anything like that.
Zero responsibility.
And they're like, "You just got to make time." And I'm like, "You're telling
somebody that's like 35 with three kids and all these other responsibilities-
Yeah
... you just got to get in the car, drive to the gym." Like, "Bro, my kids are
asleep. What am I supposed to do with my kids?"
Yeah.
"Wake them up and take them to the..." You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So I think there's seasons in life where maybe there's a period where you're
like, "Man, this is great. I can make it to the gym three days a week.
My schedule's perfect for this."
Mm-hmm.
Then maybe there's something where business is really accelerating.
You're stuck at the office all the time.
Okay, well, that 10-minute drive to and from the gym and then waiting around for
equipment is just not feasible.
Yeah.
So, that's where you can say, okay, you can feel confident knowing I'm just going
to work out at home.
Yeah.
I'll still get good results.
Yeah.
Maybe
I'm getting 80% of the results I could get with a whole gym-
Right
... if I had everything. But if you're consistent, you're still getting results.
Right.
So that's where I think
when people do say, "Oh, I don't have time to exercise"-
Yeah
... the traditional way people think about exercise, yeah, I don't have time for
that either. I'm not going to get in my truck and drive to the gym.
Yeah.
I'm just not.
I did today, and I even did a post that was like, "Pack your bag."
Yeah. Oh.
But it works for my schedule and today, now.
And it doesn't mean that I wasn't speeding there, and then I did my rapid
45 minutes, and then I sped back.
Yeah.
So it was
stressful, but I still went, and I felt better after.
It was like this whole wave of energy that I got after.
Yeah, and I identify with you because I can't do
jujitsu at my house. I have to go, right, to train.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess I could do it by myself, beat myself up, but- ...
so I already have to do that. So it's definitely not realistic for me to say, "Oh,
I'm going to go drive to go train three days a week or whatever doing jujitsu."
Yeah.
"Oh, also, I'm going to go to the gym now.
See you later." Like, when am I going to be home?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So that's why I think it's important for people to, like
you just said, if you're in a season where your schedule's favorable to be able to
go to the gym, cool.
Yes.
But if it's not-
It's not
... and you have other responsibilities, if your kids are still really small-
Yeah
... or whatever the case is, you can make gains at home.
Yeah.
And then when that season's passed and now you have your schedule open up again,
cool. Now I can go back to the gym. Because too many times I've talked to people
and they're like, "Man, I was going to the gym, everything was good, but then we
had another baby or whatever." And then it's three years later and they haven't
been back-
Yeah
... because they think, "I've got to get back to the gym to get results too."
Yeah.
They just identify like, "I have to go there for that."
Right.
You know what I mean? Instead of just, hey, do the best you can with what you have
and still move forward. And then once things change, then
add that back in if that's what you want.
Yeah, definitely. There was a moment where I
had no time. There was no time to just go speed anywhere.
I had to just be present. And I had to also get through this course.
And so I had to get through the course, and I still wanted to worry about my
fitness, and I was building a business. And my partner is sitting next to me.
He's actually playing the course.
It's like
videos and questions and answers.
And so I'm like, "I'm so sorry." And then I just did some pushups
and sit-ups, and I'm like, I was sweating. And I'm sure...
I mean, it's a 12 by 9 room, so I was like, "Again, I'm so sorry." And he's
like... But I'm listening to the course, so, and I was learning, so it worked for
me. And he didn't complain, so it was just like,
you just do what you got to do.
Yeah. And that's the thing is that it'll look different for
everybody.
It does look different for everybody.
And so, when you see your favorite influencer or whatever and they're doing things
a certain way, it's not that that's wrong. It's totally fine.
Yeah.
But it just might look different for you.
Right.
And you can still get results by making...
Like fitness should work with your life and your schedule.
Yeah.
You shouldn't have to rearrange your entire life-
Yeah
... for fitness.
Yeah.
Unless if you love it and that becomes your hobby,
that's fine.
I'm-
It's totally fine
... becoming, like loving it.
Yeah.
I'm just arriving there.
Yeah, that's totally fine.
And it started there.
That's totally fine. There's like that process.
Yeah.
But if you try to go straight to that, for most people, it's
not going to work.
Right. Oh, well, I so appreciate your time.
I know you're a busy guy. Is there anything that if anybody wanted to reach out to
you, that you would want them to contact you at a certain email or phone
number?
Yeah. I have a website. It's just bodyweightstrength.fit.
Okay.
Or though my name's hard to spell, it's-
It's a little tricky.
Yeah. My YouTube and is just my name.
Okay.
So I have a YouTube channel you can check out, and it's just Jerry Teixeira.