S1:E2 - John Meadows on The Enterprise Fitness Podcast

G'day, it's Rhys Adams here. Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information, but in a good way. It's the Enterprise Fitness Podcast, proudly brought to you by the good people at Enterprise Fitness. For all your health, fitness, nutrition, and comp prepping needs, see the coaches at Enterprise to get the job done right. Today's guest is John Meadows. I had the pleasure of meeting John in person when I did his hypertrophy and comp prep course this year. Which helped me throughout my prep for the IFBB Victorian Championships, where I won my division in the Mr. Physique novice category. This was an exciting win as it was in a huge lineup of 15 guys. I believe using John's activation techniques was what enabled me to bring my back up to the standard it needed to be on the day. John is a comp prep coach to many elite-level IFBB pro bodybuilders. He's even had Charles Poliquin follow one of his programs. With great success. John not only coaches but is an athlete himself, recently winning his own IFBB Pro Card. Let's get into it and I'll see you on the other side. So welcome to the show and thanks for coming on. So basically, if you could just give us an overview of how you got into the fitness industry, um, and how you got into bodybuilding.

Well, thanks for having me on and Hello everybody, my name is John Meadows. I got into the industry at a real early age. I was probably 12, 11, 12 years old when I picked up my first muscle magazine. I actually started competing when I was 13, so it didn't take me long, even as a little skinny runt, to figure out that I really had a passion for this. And here we are 30 years later, and I guess I must like it because I'm still doing it. But I, you know, I just looked through the magazines when I was a youngster, and I liked what I saw. I had no friends that did it. In fact, everybody thought I was weird, and there's probably a lot of truth to that. But, but, uh, so I got kind of hooked on it at a real early age and just have loved it and done it ever since.

Yeah, as a kid, were you always athletic? Or as you're now known as the Grain Train, were you always like that? Or is that something that you had to work on?

You know, I like to think I was athletic, and every year that I get older, I think I was a little better than I probably was. The reality was I was probably above average, but nothing special. I loved, loved, loved football. American football, it's absolutely my favorite sport. I ran track. I was kind of mediocre at track, but I had— I was pretty unique though. I was a sprinter that also pole vaulted and threw the shot put. I wrestled for many, many years. I did really well. That's the sport I actually hated though. I love the discipline the most. I loved how hard I had to work, but, um, I just didn't like rolling around the mat with another sweaty guy. I just, I just didn't find any joy in that, man. I mean, the last year I wrestled, I only lost 2 matches the whole year, and I told them I'm not wrestling anymore. I just don't like this. And they're like, why? I'm like, man, this is— I just don't like it. I mean, but I really like the discipline part of it. You know, we had to train really hard particularly endurance work to be able to sustain yourself through a full wrestling match. It's a really tough sport. So that aspect of it, I loved it. So, and I was, I wouldn't say I was a big kid, but I was pretty strong. I remember when I was in 7th grade, which here would see that put me at 17, 16, 15, 14. Probably about 12 years old. I remember being 105 pounds and actually benched 200.

That's impressive.

Which is pretty good for a really young kid. And by the time I got to high school, I was, I could squat 500 pounds. And that was just because I was just training hard. I mean, way too much, to be honest with you. I was just picking up magazines and everything I saw in the magazines I would do it because I thought it would make me look just like the guys who wrote the— well, they didn't actually write the articles, but the ones the articles were about.

Yes.

So I didn't kind of pick up the size part of it until I got to college. So I was strong, but I didn't weigh a whole lot. And then when I got to college, I think my body started to grow a little bit, and I, you know, I was eating like crazy, probably triple the amount I eat now. And finally I started to grow a little bit.

So when did you start to implement your Metto System, and what is the Metto System? Can you just give us a brief overview?

Well, so I would call it an unfinished system because in my opinion, I personally want to continue to learn and I want the system to evolve. The things that I believe in now, I'm not married to them by any stretch. It's just what I believe now based on what I know and what I'm seeing work in the field. If I found a better way, a better technique, a better sequence, a better utilization of rest, whatever the factor is, I would adopt it in a heartbeat. So it's the things that I see working now, but it's always subject to change because I'm a student of the sport. I love learning. I'll continue to learn. I'll never be the guy that says he knows everything. But the system itself really is Part of it's just accidental, accidentally doing things that seem to work out well, or just stumbling onto different things because you try so many damn things over the years. Part of it's actually thought out. I've actually thought out a lot of things that made sense to me. So it's kind of this, the result of years of experience and things that I've learned over the years, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. But to kind of sum it up for your listeners, my training system, number one, is set up for hypertrophy. So you have to remember that. That's my goal. My goal is hypertrophy. So I think one of the shortcomings of the, of a thought process, I'd call it, in bodybuilding has always been this obsession over what is, you know, how do you grow? What is the best rep range? What's the best way to grow? And people have always said, well, they've always said it's one thing. Well, it's progressive resistance, it's doing 5 sets of 5, or it's doing whatever. But the way I looked at the system, the way that I've built, I looked at it as, you know, what do we know creates hypertrophy? And there's There's not just one answer. There's the things that are kind of more mechanical in nature, such as progressive resistance and adding to your loads and getting stronger, which is very cool. But there's also things that are a result more of, I would call them chemical changes in your body, where you train to get like crazy pumps and you know, just you really, you take muscle fiber activation to muscle fiber exhaustion. We really put a lot of stress on the body and force it to adapt. So what I tried to do is look at the different techniques that create hypertrophy and logically put them in a system that takes advantage of all of them. And in doing that, I developed a sequence that I also believe increased longevity in addition to that. And the system has worked well. It consists of base workouts in which every major muscle is hit once during the week. And we have different phases built into it to take advantage of that method of hypertrophy. There's a phase that's more where you train a little more explosively. Where there's a little more progressive resistance involved. There's another phase where you're looking more for kind of that pump that we talk about. So there's different phases. Just to kind of lay them out, the first phase, I'm a stickler for mind-muscle connection and establishing that. So the first phase of my training is done more to activate muscle, get a good pump going. but most importantly establish this mind-muscle connection where the right muscles are doing the work. And this is, you know, when you say mind-muscle connection, it's obviously it's been said for, you know, decades upon decades, but I don't think people are really, really good at it. I think when you come out of the gate right from the start of your workout and you really focus on it, I think it has some really good benefits. And then when you move to the second phase, which is training with a little bit lower reps, you know, now the first phase, you know, you might be in an 8 to 12 rep range, establish a good pump, establish a great mind-muscle connection. Now you move into the second phase, you go a little bit heavier, the movements are very basic, it's more progressive resistance driven and it's more explosively driven. I believe you can alter, well, I mean, it's not I believe, it's pretty well documented. You can alter, your training style can alter your muscle fiber types, you know, a slow twitch, the fast twitch. So it contributes to that and, you know, you've done a good job in phase 1 hopefully where you've established mind-muscle connection. The second phase, even though it's more progressive resistance, very compound movements, I think you're still going to get more out of your target muscles that you're working. Then you have this third phase where you try to take advantage more of those chemical changes that I mentioned where you're doing drop sets or iso holds or you're using these high-intensity techniques to create the craziest pump you can get. And now, you know, you kind of loaded the muscle with blood and now the final phase of these base workouts is training with a good full range of motion and in some cases kind of an extreme stretch depending on what the body part is and what you're doing. But basically you're putting a real good stretch on the muscle once it's loaded full of blood and, you know, there's a lot of debate over what's the What actually is the benefit there? Is it some type of occlusion when you hit a hard stretch with a muscle full of blood? And I think the answer to that is yes, that's definitely part of it. It's muscle spindles, there's a whole lot of people, a lot of people will even say it's hyperplasia even though there's very little data, if any, to suggest that's happening other than the old bird studies that Jose Antonio done. Those base workouts are done every week, and then what we do is I believe to get to your goals the fastest, you have to be able to train the most you can possibly train, which means adding training frequency, and that's where we add in another type of workout that's less traumatic on soft tissue, connective tissue. And I call those pump workouts. In those workouts, you're not really doing the heavy basic movements. You're more driving blood into the muscle. You're helping it recover, but it's also still a stimulus too. So, and then a lot of times what I do with people is the way we determine which body parts to train with that extra frequency would determine, would be determined by what needs the most help. So what we're trying to do is establish these base workouts that hit hypertrophy from every angle possible, and then we add frequency to train more often intelligently so we don't beat, beat up your body, so there's longevity also. And, you know, that's probably, in terms of training system, that's probably about the quickest way I could sum it up.

Yeah, and that way, by increasing the training frequency and the volume, do you find that you can increase someone's food, which in turn increases their hypertrophy potential. Would you agree with that?

I would agree with that. And the other thing I would say too is I've had a lot of people come to me and say they have, um, they don't have an appetite. And in my opinion, training hard is literally like the best thing you can do to stimulate appetite. So what I do with a lot of people is I, for a very short period of time, I actually have them train twice a day. And I don't think I've had anybody that this did not work for. You know, some people worked in a matter of days, some people might have taken a week, but everybody said, "Man, now I'm starving." Training hard and training very frequently just seems to drive your appetite. I'm sure there's a lot of physiological things going on there, but I would agree with that though. You're training hard, you're doing more work, so you need more nutrition to back up and help you recover. You can't really take advantage of all that training frequency if you can't recover, right? So you've got to be on your game with recovery as well.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. Have you found your system not to work for some people?

Well, I have. Then you do some root cause analysis and you figure out sometimes they're not eating enough, sometimes they're doing too much. I'll give you an example and I know he wouldn't mind me saying this. One of my really good clients is Fouad Abidod and Fouad had a really successful year this year. 2 pro shows and he got 2nd in the other one he'd done. Fouad's biggest challenge was he would do too much. You know, he'll call me and he'll say, "Well, I don't think it's working now. My body's starting to ache." Once we dig into it, he's not doing the pump days the way I constructed them. He's doing another base day, so he's beating the hell out of his body. You know, so we pull back the raise, I get him refocused, and boom, he's doing great again. I'm not going to say I have developed the perfect training system or anything like that. That's silly because everybody's different and everybody responds a little differently. But what I would say is most people do have, they do see results and it just comes down to, I also like for people to, believe it or not, to think a little. A lot of times I'll get people to say, hey, you know what, John, I see you've got this exercise programmed here. Well, I was thinking about this. What do you think about this scenario? And I will say, you know what, let's try it, let's figure it out. Because ultimately what I want is people to figure out what works for them. Um, if they take my templates and it works perfectly for them as it's written, then that's great. But if it— if there's a way to make it better for that person, I'm all for it. You know, I— that's what I want. I want somebody Nobody cares that you turned on their mTOR or, you know, or you've made their muscle cells produce more GLUT4. They don't care about that. They care about results, and whatever it takes to get results is what really matters.

Yeah, for sure. You actually trained Charles Poliquin as well at one stage. The biggest mistake that happened there, he wasn't eating enough, was he?

No, he was not. He definitely was not consuming enough calories.

How did you address that?

Well, he was doing a post-workout shake and then like an hour later he would do another one. So he had these two post-workout shakes that are really big, but that's what it took for him. Now he had a little trouble with the intro workout. So he didn't tolerate the intra-workout as well as most people do, so I think that was a factor too. But we basically increased his calories around training, particularly in the post-workout phase.

Yeah, yeah, just to help with the recovery from being glycogen depleted after the workout.

Yep.

What inspired you to get into coaching? So you obviously loved training beforehand, but what inspired you to coach?

Well, you know, I'm a teacher at heart, and if I wasn't doing this, I'm sure I'd be a teacher teaching something somewhere. I love to teach. It's a passion of mine. I just love it. It's a great feeling when you can teach somebody something and they get a lot of benefit out of it and improves their life. I also like teaching, you know, various business stuff and, you know, mentoring in terms of business, you know, like the business aspect. In addition, a lot of people have, you know, they might just have concerns that questions they have. We know things that are going on in their personal life. I'm not saying I'm a psychologist, but I do like just helping people in general. And if I can teach people or help people in some way based on the, you know, what my experiences have been, then that's a good thing. So I just, I mean, I've been, I was coaching people in college. I just loved it. And I didn't really do it on a large scale until probably about 6, 7 years ago, and I started to do it on a little larger scale, but I had been coaching all along, kind of in the background, you know, before social media was out.

How did you get into coaching in high school?

Well, when I was in college, I was competing and I was winning shows at 19 and 20 years old. I won every show I was in when I was 20, actually, in the men's class. And, you know, inevitably people at the gym would just say, hey, can you help me out? So it was, it was just a simple thing where I was doing well at that age and people wanted to get a little help. And, uh, it was as simple as that.

Yeah. So how old were you when you entered your first competition? 19?

13.

13. Wow.

Can you compete that young? I competed. I was in a show when I was 13. I was in an official NPC show.

What category would that be?

You know, back then it was a little different. They used to have two teenage categories. They had an age 13 to 17 and they had an age 18 to 19. And then the winner of the 13 to 17 class would face off against the winner of the 18-19 class, and then you'd have your overall teenage champion. And I remember, Reece, I can remember like, I can't wait till I'm 13. I can get in, I can officially compete. I mean, this is crazy looking back at it. Like, I mean, I was thinking this when I'm 12 years old. And so when I was 13, of course I got in the age 13 to 17 class. And of course it's 16 and 17-year-olds that absolutely just thrashed me and killed me. I got last place in every show I did. Um, in those, in those years. Um, but nowadays they really don't have the teenage classes at all. You know, you have every once in a while show will have a teenage division, and then you have Teenage Nationals, but that's it. Uh, and whereas it used to be, man, all the shows had teenage classes. It's just not like that here anymore.

Yeah. Since you didn't do so well as a teenager, what kept you coming back?

Well, I just love training for one because I was, I was active in all those sports. So it helped me become stronger and a better athlete. So I never really stopped doing it. And it's funny, I remember when I was 19 years old, I remember saying to myself, I'm going to try this one more time. And if I don't place well, if I don't win, then I'm just going to never compete again. I remember putting this ultimatum on myself at 19 years old, like I had tapped out all my genetic potential. I mean, in my mind, that was as good as I was going to get.

So this is where the tables turned when you started winning?

Yeah, yeah. I was, it was, you know, I was 181 pounds. I was at the bottom end of the light heavies. So I go to this show and there's maybe 80 guys in the show total. And I get perfect scores in my class and in the overall. And everybody finds out I'm 20 years old and they're like, wow, that's crazy for a 20-year-old to be winning a men's show. So I, there was another show 2 weeks later, it was called the Mr. Midwest. I did that show, I did the same thing. I won the overall at that show. And I was like, hey, this winning thing's pretty cool. So then the next year I did 2 or 3 shows and I won all those. And I had quite a winning streak going until I was, let's see, 1995, until I was probably about 23. And I remember thinking, okay, I'm gonna step it up now, travel out of state and do a really truly regional show where people come from other states. So I went and did two shows. I did the Southern States in Florida, which is a huge show, and I did the Eastern USA in New York. Both of those shows were huge. They still are huge. And I got my butt kicked in both of them. Just, I didn't place in either one of them. I wasn't in the top 5 in either one of them. Got my butt kicked. So it was like, you know what, maybe I'm not as good as I thought. It's time to go back to the drawing board.

So you've been competing for a while now. How many competitions do you reckon you've done to this day?

Oh man, if I had to guess, I'd say somewhere between 40 and 50. It's somewhere in there.

It's pretty crazy.

Yeah. And I never really competed a lot. It's just that when you do it for so many years, it adds up, you know?

Yeah.

I actually competed more this year, Reece, than I've ever competed in my life. I did 4 shows this year and I've never in my life ever done 4 shows in one year.

And it had the greatest result, didn't it? Because you got your Pro Card. So congratulations on that.

Yeah, yeah, I was, uh, that was, um, that was one of the top things, top events ever in my life, um, outside of getting married and having our twin boys. That would probably be a strong third. That was 30 years of hard work that went into that and a lot of second place finishes, more second places than I care to remember. And when it happened, it was unbelievable, was incredibly emotional. I, I remember, I just remember when they announced second place and it wasn't me. I remember the crowd went crazy because I had a lot of people there that were supporting me and were following me, and I, and that meant the world to me. And it was just incredibly emotional, and I was feeling pretty good, so I was like, you know what, I'm 43 years old, I'm just going to just jump right in these pro shows. And so I did 3 pro shows and I placed in all 3 of those. And so it's been quite a year.

Awesome, awesome. Do you think you'll ever retire?

Yeah, I've actually already retired twice. You know what I always say, Reece, is I'm going to retire when I feel like my body's not getting better, when it's going backwards. And I truly mean that. I don't want to be one of those guys that their body goes, you know, south and they look horrible but they keep competing. I don't want to be that guy. But I've continued to get better and the results have been there to back up my statement there. You know, I try to be really honest with myself and not be delusional. There's certainly a lot of delusion in the sport, and I don't want to be somebody who's delusional. I think I'm pretty honest with myself, and I think I really have gotten a lot better in the last couple of years. So, you know, I— and my health is as good now as it's ever been. My blood work, my blood pressure, my pulse, all the measures that I really consider key have been as good this year. Probably they're better this year probably than they've been in 5, 6 years at least. So I feel healthy, I feel good, and I've made some improvements. Now this could all change next year, you know, maybe next year I, I don't look quite as good, I start going the wrong way, then it's time to hang it up. But that's kind of what my gauge has been. It's, are you getting better or are you getting worse? Because you're one or the other usually.

Yeah, yeah. What changes have you made for the, obviously, the ultimate result that you got to at the comp. So winning your Pro Card, you must have made some changes to finally do that.

Well, I think I've just continued, continued to refine my training system, and for me, avoiding injuries and having a system that promotes longevity has been key. You know, there's so many guys my age that have torn pecs, torn biceps, torn lats, torn quads, torn hamstrings. And I've been pretty fortunate to not have tears, and it's not just me. The people that I've worked with have stayed injury-free. You know, of course we get little aches and pains and minor strains and things like that, but I'm talking, you know, injuries that really put you on the sidelines. So I think that has been key, and in doing that, it's actually made me a better bodybuilder because it's forced me to think more and more and more about mind-muscle connection and squeezing and tension as opposed to just moving weight. And so I've continued, you know, now I'm stuck in a weight class, so my goal isn't necessarily to get bigger. In fact, I don't really want to gain any weight at my age. But, you know, up until a couple years ago, I was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and using, for many of my exercises, actually less weight. But I was using it in a manner that's better for hypertrophy and staying healthier. And again, as we mentioned earlier, the frequency was a lot higher, so I was hitting the muscle groups a lot more often. So I think just continuing to refine my training system has helped. I think nutritionally, I think the biggest change for me in the last 3 to 5 years has been the emphasis on nutrient timing. I believe that if you train at a certain intensity, a certain volume, the nutrient timing really has a lot of benefit. Whereas if you kind of go into the gym and you're just kind of exercising a little, not really pushing yourself, I don't really see any value with nutrient timing in that situation. So I'm not one of those guys that says yes for nutrient timing or no. I think that's really short-sighted. I think the more intensity you use and volume you use when you train, the more benefits you see out of nutrient timing. And I see that over and over and over with people, but that's probably been the biggest change nutritionally.

Yeah, and just observing how your body's responding, I think it's important, like you said, for people to think for themselves. So if they respond to timing their nutrition in a certain way, they're probably on the right track.

Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I'm not married to any idea that I have nutritionally or training. If I find something works better, I'll move on to it. I really don't care. I would, if I found out for sure, if my clients convinced me that the nutrient timing they were using wasn't, was having no benefit, I would have no trouble saying I no longer support nutrient timing. I could care less. I just want people to get results. That's all I care about with clients, you know, and whatever it takes for that client to get the results is what, is what matters. So I think people, to your point, keep an open mind. Don't think in terms of black and white. Just figure out what works for you. And who cares if people agree or disagree with you? It doesn't matter. You know, just stand up for what you believe in, but also realize it's just what you know at that time and never think you know it all, you know.

Yeah. What methods do you use to make sure that you're constantly progressing? Do you use girth measurements, scale weight, DEXA scan, or everything?

Well, at this point it's strictly the good old-fashioned mirror, but I will tell you that I was obsessed with underwater body fat checks for a while. I really, really enjoy doing that actually, crazy as it sounds. There's a university here, Ohio State University, obviously a huge university that has a lab that has a Bod Pod and they also do underwater weighing and they use skinfolds. So you go in and you get 3 different, they actually have a DEXA machine now too that I haven't used, but So I would go in there every 6 months and I could compare, I could track my results and look at the trending and see when I was gaining muscle, when I was losing fat and all that stuff. And I was, I wouldn't say I was obsessed with it, but it's really cool to know that stuff. It's really cool to see it. I kind of miss doing that. You're making me wish I should, well, I probably should go back and start doing that again. And you know what? They would do all that for $69. Wow.

Isn't that crazy?

That's crazy. Like, that's like dirt cheap. I was like, seriously, that's all? So yeah.

What stopped you then, John? And why did you stop?

You know, I think I just got, I think I just, I got so busy with life and with business. I just, it's just a timing thing. I think I just need to make time and go back and do it, to be honest with you.

Yeah, so with your programs, I noticed that they're all 12 weeks long. How did you come up with that? And I noticed also weekly you change exercises or rep ranges, etc. You do make changes on a weekly basis. Can you just explain why you do that?

Yeah, so the 12-week period is not based on any scientific study or anything like that. I just feel like I feel like when you push somebody really hard, you're, you're getting to that upper limit for most people at around 12 weeks. And I also feel like 4 to 8 weeks is probably not long enough to see some crazy changes. Now you gotta realize too that this is geared toward more advanced athletes as opposed to beginners. I would not suggest a beginner go out and do my routine or do my programs. It's for people that have experience, that have been training for several years. So I want to make that distinction too because with beginners, I wouldn't do so much exercise rotation and I wouldn't have so much focus on like say the pump phase, that phase 3. For a beginner, it would be more like We've really gotta learn stellar form. We gotta spend a lot of time in phase 2 and phase 1. Phase 1 and phase 2 are gonna be pretty much where all your work is done. That phase 3 and phase 4 stuff is more for, okay, we gotta get you to your genetic potential and get you as much lean tissue as we can. So the 12-week point just seems like about the right time for most people. Where you can handle that, then you get kind of worn out, then you back off a little bit, rest up, deload, then start a new program.

So when you say with beginners, Phase 1 and 2, you're talking about making sure that they focus on the activation exercises at the start and then the explosive, and they don't necessarily need the pump exercises at the end? Is that what you're saying? Like they just can't handle the volume?

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. I use this rule, get the most out of the least. There's no reason a beginner needs to be in there doing 25 sets for legs like I might do. They could probably do some leg curls, some really good squats, and then maybe some really good stiff-legged deadlifts, and that's a great leg workout for them. They're done. They could probably, instead of just doing legs, then maybe they might even do a couple exercises for something else. So yeah, I look at, you know, training is very different in my opinion for somebody who's in kind of the early years of their training versus somebody who's been doing it for a long time.

Yeah, so with training volume, since we're on the topic, I found good success tapering the training volume up through a 12-week period and using deloads along the way. And then repeating the cycle by tapering the volume down and then going back up again, just trying to manipulate recovery and stress. Because my understanding is the body needs to be stressed, but chronic stress, meaning ongoing stress, can only happen for so long. You need time to recover also. So how would you— what kind of a base volume would you recommend for most people?

Well, first of all, I couldn't agree with you more. I absolutely believe in that as well. I like to push people's training intensity and their volume up as they go, take it to the point where they think they're on the verge of dying, and then pull back, pull back. And interestingly enough, that's where probably most of the training adaptations take place. But that's the the kind of the 20,000-foot overview I like as well. But in terms of volume, in terms of sets and things like that, well actually let me back up for a second. What you described to me is what I, that's how I look at periodization. Periodization, most of it is looked at from the perspective of a powerlifter or like an Olympic sprinter, they train quite a bit different than a bodybuilder. So you can't use the same periodization ideology that you would use for, say, a powerlifter that you would use for a bodybuilder. Powerlifters are training with much higher weights relative to their one rep maximums, so there's a lot of CNS stress. They're really pushing their connective tissue a lot harder. So it makes sense to have planned breaks for powerlifters, for example. But for somebody who's more interested in looking good and just hypertrophy, I have people use more of an instinctual approach. In other words, if you feel awesome, then keep pushing. If you feel like hell, then it's time to pull back. It's not rocket science. It's very, very simple. And the way I do that specifically is I don't allow people to do any of the high-intensity techniques. So no partials, no drop sets, no forced reps, none of that stuff. I don't even let them go to failure. I say leave 2 or 3 reps in the tank on every set you do. Don't use any high-intensity techniques. That's the first step. If that doesn't work and they still feel pretty fatigued, then I'll pull back their volume and say, "Okay, let's pull your sets back. Instead of doing 16 sets, you're back. Now let's do 9 sets." If the first attempt didn't work, then the second pulling back the volume will work. Those two things will work. Usually you're looking at about a 1 to 2 week period with most people where when you do that, they'll come out of it and they'll feel really good. And then, so that's like when you, for somebody who's been really pushing hard, that's not to be confused with somebody who's just had a rough night out, stayed up too late, they don't feel good the next day. That doesn't mean you automatically initiate a 2-week deload. So people like to do that too. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Take a day, one day off, eat good, and then start back where you were. So I really like talking about the periodization thing because I think that's a big key in continued progress. You push your body really, really hard, but then you pull back. And it just makes sense, it creates longevity, and it creates results. So that's a little bit of an overview there. And then I think your question was what kind of volumes?

As a general rule of thumb, what would you say is a good base for say a beginner versus advanced?

You know, I would probably say that 15 to 20 total sets for a beginner is enough. I would use more compound exercises, but not exclusively. One of the things you have to do as a beginner is you have to learn mind-to-muscle connection. If you don't use any isolation work, you will never learn mind-to-muscle connection. If you're only doing compound movements, then you'll have a hard time with some body parts because you never really learned how to contract them. I like a good I do like the larger compound movements, but not exclusively. You also want to make sure that somebody's doing isolation work as well. So that amount of sets, and then as you progress, for me what's typical is between, like for instance, if I'm doing chest, shoulders, triceps, and say abs. Then I'm probably looking at more like 30 sets. Probably about double that. I think the key is for people to just do what's the least amount they can do and get results and then just work up from there. So even though I said 12 or 15 sets, hey, if you can do 6 sets and you get great results, Then hell, just do 6 sets, and then when you need to go to 7, go to 7. When you need to go to 8, go to 8. But it's like dieting, always give yourself somewhere to go. That's how I look at it. So that makes sense?

Yeah, absolutely. And with enhanced versus natural clients, do you adjust the volume at all? And if so, like, how much would you say you do?

Well, I, you know, enhanced, I athletes can obviously handle a lot more. The drugs help you repair faster, quicker. That's just facts. They just do. So a lot of times the actual soreness though that people get really has nothing to do with whether they're taking drugs or not. What I find is when people's nutrition, particularly around their training, is really, really good, they're going to repair really, really fast whether they're natural or not. And on the opposite of that is when somebody's nutrition is really poor, particularly around training, whether they're enhanced or not, their recovery is not going to be good. But the actual workouts themselves, you know, I believe that people who are enhanced can handle a lot more volume and come away with it doing okay. I do think, though, it's very individual. I've seen guys that were natural. I've coached guys that were natural that could absolutely bury guys that were enhanced. So I wouldn't— it's going to be a little different for everybody, but there's obviously a role that drugs play and they obviously do help people's able to probably train more and get more out of it. But don't underestimate the role of nutrition though, because whether you're enhanced or not enhanced, the nutrition piece to me is one of the biggest factors in how well you recover.

Yeah, with that said, you use a lot of intra-workout nutrition. What does yours look like at the moment?

Well, what mine looks like at the moment is probably a little extreme. I just hit a phase where my training intensity is really, really high. So I'll give you an example. Today I had 105 grams of carbs during training with 30 grams of aminos. That's what I did today, you know, but I'll typically do, you know, maybe a third of that, and then when I'm training a little harder, I'll do more. But now I'm training my hardest, so I'm doing the most. So again, the more I'm doing, the harder I'm working, the more I think I can benefit from it. But if I was just going in doing calves and abs, would it make sense to take in 105 grams of carbs? I don't think so.

Yeah, so do you take in more on, say, leg days versus, say, an arm day?

Absolutely, yep.

Do you think Do you think training like a powerlifter is a good idea for bodybuilding? The reason I ask is you train with Dave Tate, and he's got a powerlifting background. Has his training influenced yours at all?

I actually met Dave at Westside Barbell. I trained there. I actually was a powerlifter in the mid-'90s. I really enjoyed it. I was actually a really good squatter. But I've always felt like powerlifters, there's certain things that they do that can help bodybuilders and vice versa. I've always felt like getting the best of both worlds is probably the most optimal strategy. In the simplest terms, the compound movements the powerlifters really, really do a lot of create a great base for for bodybuilders and a lot of the assistance work that bodybuilders do, although we don't really call it assistance work, it is, help powerlifters to overcome specific weaknesses in different areas and become better powerlifters. So, you know, when I was at Westside Barbell, we did our standard powerlifting workout and then I would jump in the car. I lived on the east side of Columbus and the powerlifting gym was on the west side of Columbus. So I would drive across town and do the powerlifting workout and then jump in my car, shoot, hey, Jonathan, can you shut my door? Sorry, my kids just got home. Thanks, buddy. So I would do the powerlifting workout and then I would come home or I would drive to the gym and do the bodybuilding workout. So I was actually doing both in the same day, one right after the other and I could, you know, we had a good time. But to answer your question, I do believe there's a lot of benefits to using both styles of training.

Yeah, they actually complement each other as you said.

Yeah, and the powerlifting stuff honestly is really fun to me. I always enjoyed powerlifting and there's nothing funner than squatting heavy and deadlifting heavy. That stuff's just really fun. Unfortunately, at 43 and having 30 years under my belt, I can't quite do the heavy stuff like I used to though.

So you have had to adjust it a bit. Would you say you do more activation exercises now just to make sure that you really fatigue the muscle so you don't have to go as heavy, or?

Well, I definitely have had to adjust my training. Absolutely. My lower back flares up pretty easy if I'm not careful. I would say that when I get to that second phase where it's more progressive resistance related, I don't really push the heavy weight. I don't— here's what I would say. I don't take training to the point where I'm doing a set where my only focus is to get the weight from point A to point B. I don't mind going heavy as long as I can maintain control and feel the movement working where I want it to work. Whereas before, you know, I would say load it up, I'm just going to get it from point A to point B, which is a powerlifter, that's how they train. But now I can't really take it that far. I'll take it as heavy as I can as long as I continue with perfect form. When my form breaks, particularly on a compound exercise, I stop the set. If I was like, for example, doing a squat and my form broke and something weird happened with my mechanics, I would absolutely stop. That's probably a good idea no matter what, what phase you're in. But I'm definitely a little more cautious with just piling on weight now as opposed to what I did. I used to every Saturday squat 6 plates 6 plates for sets of 10. And no knee wraps, no squat suit, just a pair of sweatpants, a belt, and a sweatshirt. And this was when I was in my 20s. Every Saturday, man, all Friday, all I would do was think about the next morning, what my squat workout would be like. And then Saturday you go in there, the music's blasting, and we'd work up to 6 plates. And for years we did this, and we'd do a set of 10 with 585. But if I try that now, it'd probably crack me in half.

Yeah, as we do age, obviously our recovery isn't as good. Have you found that your recovery's starting to slow down, or is it still pretty good?

It's still pretty good as long as I maintain my focus on nutrition around training, but if I get lazy with that, I pay the price. You know, like if I get done training and I decide to go, I don't know, say Christmas shopping, and I don't really put any food in me for 3 or 4 hours, then there's a good chance I'm not going to recover nearly as well if I would have had, you know, a nice meal after I train.

Yeah, what happened to the organization, John? You got to be prepared, mate. To take a meal with you?

Oh man, I think the kids took it out of me. Kids cause me to work at a frantic pace and I, it's funny, man. People will tell you all these clichés like, you know, your life changes, you're never going to be the same and all this stuff. And it's true, man. When you have kids and you have all kinds of things going on, you sometimes don't think as clearly and you forget.

Yeah.

Part of that's probably some senior stuff going on with me at my age, but I'm not, I definitely don't, I'm definitely not as prepared as I used to be. I used to be the guy that had everything in the trunk of his car. So it's like no matter what happens, if I get stranded in the desert, I'm going to have enough meals to last me for 3 weeks.

Yeah, absolutely. Where did you learn to program from, John? What would you say that the top 3 resources you use currently are?

Well, a big influence on me was Louie Simmons. He runs Westside Barbell here in Columbus. Louie was a really great coach of mine and, you know, it was all powerlifting related but he taught me a lot. I really, really enjoyed my time with Louie. I've been influenced quite a bit by Tom Platz and his bodybuilding methods from a psychological perspective and how hard to really push yourself, and then an actual exercise technique perspective, you know, partials, drop sets, forced reps, doing all that stuff and how far you can actually take it. So that's been, I say Louie and those are probably my top 2. The 3rd one is probably Dave. I mean, Dave and I love to experiment, man. We will, you know, we might do a back workout where we do 9 different exercises. Then let's try this, let's try this, let's try this. And, you know, maybe one of the ones that we try, we'd be like, that was stupid, we'll never do that again. But we might find one where it's like, oh wow, that actually felt pretty good. We should incorporate that into the program. So now, I mean, Dave and I, we really, I think Dave is very similar as I am in the fact that he doesn't mind doing something a little different if it's going to give him a good result. He doesn't, he's not married to his ideology. It's just, all of the ideology is just all about getting better. So I'd say Louie, I would say Tom Platz, and I would say Dave are probably my 3 biggest influences.

Yeah. And would you say that they've been pretty consistent? You haven't really changed your ideologies as you've gone?

I would say they've gotten better over the years. A lot of the things I do now, Reece, is it's, you know, I'll do a program and then I'll write another program that looks different and it's not that one's necessarily better than the other, it's just different. It's just a little different, a little different exercise selection, a little different philosophy. Sometimes, you know, one type of person might respond better to one program versus the other because I do have some different little nuances in my programs, but hopefully they're getting better, but they're not always better. Sometimes they're just different. I'm at the point with most people that I coach in the professional ranks and myself where we're trying to literally get that last 2 to 3% out of our genetics. Not that we know our full genetic potential, but my point is you've come a long way. Now you're really trying to get the last little bit out. You know, I have a guy, Ken Jackson, that I'm pretty proud of. He's a really good guy. And Ken was, you know, he started competing in the pro ranks and he honestly just wasn't doing very well. And, you know, he comes to me to help him and I see these big guys, they come to me to help. And, you know, I'd be honest with you, man, sometimes I'm intimidated. I'm like, man, what in the world can I do for this guy? This guy. He's already awesome. So Ken comes along and he's like, man, I gotta get better. I'm not placing well. He's already, you know, what most people would consider a monster, but we found a way over the course of 3 years to put 15 pounds conservatively of muscle on him. Still has a teeny, teeny, tiny waist, one of the smallest waists in the IFBB. But it took time, it took a lot of thought, it took, um—

What would you say goes through your head, John, when you have someone come to you who is at that level and just trying to get more out of them? What would be the first thing that comes to your mind?

Well, the first thing is I wonder what kind of person they are, and what I mean by that is character. Is this a good guy? Is this a guy I want to associate with? Or is this guy a shady guy? Is he somebody that I don't really, maybe not necessarily have the moral constitution that I like to have in my athletes? And I firmly believe in surrounding myself with the best possible people. And I have no desire to coach people people who are hard to deal with. If you're hard-headed and you don't want to try anything new, then why in the hell did you come to me in the first place? So I, first of all, want to make sure the person and I are going to click and that they're what I think, you know, they're a good person. Now, I mean, can you tell right off the bat? No, but you can talk to people and you can get a first impression and you can get an idea. What it's going to be like, and I have absolutely no trouble telling somebody, you know what, I'm not— I can't take you on at this time. I have no problem saying that at all. So I look at the kind of person it is, that's what goes through my mind, but then it's like, okay, I wonder what this person has been doing to get to where they are now, particularly if they're stuck, because whatever it is they were doing, we got to change. So that is another big thing too, is I just wonder, you know, and then of course you always wonder how hard does this person really work? Because when you're dealing with these high-level professionals, they're all pretty genetically gifted. So, you know, you kind of wonder, is this guy leaning on his genetics or has this guy just have above-average genetics but he's just worked his ass off and done really, really well. So, you know, I'd be lying to you if I said that didn't cross my mind a time or two as well.

Do you, when they come to you, say you get an online client, do you get many IFBB pros that come to you on an online level? Or is it a lot of face-to-face? Because obviously you have to make sure they train hard enough, and being online would make it hard to make sure.

It is, but obviously the pros I coach are from all over and they can't all be here in Columbus. But what they do is they come in to see me quite a bit. You know, you'll see me doing videos quite often with these different guys. And I tell them up front, you know, I'm going to need you to come see me every, you know, X number of weeks. And usually when they do, it's really productive and then they can't wait to come back again. So it works out. I just got to get them here that one time. And then when I can really study what they're doing and make some changes, it's usually a great experience and they're like, "Oh man, I gotta come back." And so, you know, then they come back.

Yeah, because having someone look at you is very different to training yourself and just going by how you feel. Having someone observe as well can help, especially with a trained eye like you. So you can make those minor changes which have a a major effect.

Yeah, and some of that stuff, to be honest with you, is really hard to even teach online. You know, there's little nuances with exercises that I may not even see until I see the person's mechanics. You know, and a lot of it's just, you're right, it's just a lot easier to see it in person. And, you know, somebody can tell you, hey, I'm doing everything you're telling me, but Maybe they think they are, but maybe what you were expecting is a little different than what they're doing. It's impossible to say with 100% certainty unless you're actually with them.

Yeah, where would you recommend for the listeners to go to get an understanding of hypertrophy? My first recommendation would be to check out your website, not only to read the countless articles but also to experience the workouts that you've generously shared. Shared on there. So my brother and I actually did a lot of your workouts and we definitely got some good pumps out of them. So I definitely recommend people check out your website. Where else would you recommend?

Oh boy, um, I gotta think about that because there's certainly a lot of resources out there, but to fully back them. I would say Brad Schoenfeld has some good stuff. Brad is a really, really bright PhD that's up in New York. He does a lot of research and he used to compete as a bodybuilder, so I really look up to Brad. There's another gentleman named Scott Scott Stevenson, who's a friend of mine who's a PhD down in Florida that also competes at a really high level. He is an awesome resource. If you look up Scott Stevenson Fortitude Training, he's pretty easy to find. He's an absolutely fantastic guy. He actually co-wrote my training book with me. I have an ebook that shows my kind of training philosophy A lot of things we talked about today, he actually co-wrote that with me. He's a fantastic resource. So I would say those are two other people that I have a tremendous amount of respect for.

Awesome, awesome. I've learned a lot from Mike Israel as well. I just saw that you've done an interview with him as well.

Yeah, I think if I'm not mistaken, I think Mike might have— we might have done two interviews. It might— it was either a two-part or we did two, but I think we got into some pretty good subjects.

With lagging muscles, what have you found the most common mistake people make in terms of trying to bring up a lagging muscle? Would you say that they, they don't address the activation issue beforehand before increasing the frequency? Would you agree with that?

Yeah, most of the time they They don't feel like their, for instance, they don't feel like say their back is growing, so they just train it more often. But when the problem is rooted in a lack of mind-muscle connection and muscle fiber activation exhaustion, you can train as much as you want, it's not going to help. So that's why that phase 1 is so critically important, learning how to contract muscle groups. Usually when you can teach somebody that, they'll start to see start to see some benefits. Generally speaking, that's the biggest problem.

Yeah, I've got a good question from our receptionist at Enterprise Fitness, Anna. She wants to grow glutes to the point that when she walks in the door, she wants them to come in 5 minutes later.

Okay.

She was wondering if you had any advice on how to do that.

Well, there's 2 ways you can do that. The first way involves a lot of ice cream and you can develop quite the large glutes if you consume enough ice cream. The second is more exercise related and I would say, I personally like, you know, I like those, the one-legged, oh God, my brain is turning off. The one-legged squat, Bulgarians, duh. Bulgarian squats are great for glutes. I also like just your basic barbell squat. Those are probably my two favorite glute exercises. I do like good old-fashioned hyperextensions too. Where instead of using your lower back as the main mover, you just pull your torso up by flexing your glutes. So I would say Bulgarian squats, barbell squats. A lot of people like, you know, there's a guy, Bret Contreras, who's a really, really nice gentleman that's done a lot of research on glutes. That's what Bret's known for. But he likes for you to put a pad on your hips and lay under a bar and do these glute bridges. I think that's probably a good exercise too. I've never really done those consistently. I think if I had, I'd probably see some good results, but that's another thing you can do is glute bridges. Brett might even have a different name for them. But you can look up the Glute Guy and you'll see what I'm talking about. I think he even made a machine that you can use.

Yeah, he did. He actually did.

Yeah. Yeah, Brett's a good guy. He's a fantastic guy. Super nice kid. Very intelligent. Very well researched. And he knows his glutes, that's for sure.

Thanks for that, John. So with sodium loading, I just want to quickly touch on that. And water manipulation. I remember when we did your course that you touched on a system that you had good success with. Has this changed since the course, or do you still use the same system?

No, not really. I think I saw you guys in April, and I had, I had, I've had, I think, 4, no, 3, 3 or 4 guys win pro shows using that protocol. So, you know, again, it's gonna be a little different by person. It's not smoke and mirrors changing a bunch of stuff, just very, very minor changes. But what we talk about that course was kind of establishing a baseline on carbohydrate intake and then slowly ramping it up toward the show just to ensure your glycogen levels are full. And not doing anything crazy with water and making sure you had adequate levels of sodium, which involved, you know, usually I would have people use a little bit of sodium throughout their whole prep for a number of reasons, but not removing all their sodium. But those things that we talked about are still kind of the basic format that I use to start with, with most people.

Yeah, could you touch on that just briefly, like what you tend to use? So it's mainly just sodium, and I remember you, you put it at the end of a meal and you put potassium at the start of the meal. Was that correct?

Yeah, yeah. What I, what I like to do is separate liquid from the meals. So what I'll do is I won't have any water 15 minutes before a meal or about 20 minutes after a meal. And what I do is before the meal, I have people take a little bit of potassium, and then after the meal, I'll have them take— and then they shut off their water. And then after the meal, you know, 15, 20 minutes later, I'll either have them consume a little bit of salt or I'll have them use sea salt on their meal. There's no really exact science to it, but it just, it seems like a very, making sure you have enough potassium and enough sodium will create a nice full muscle with carbohydrates, it's nice and tight. That's something that you may have to adjust. Sometimes when people use too much sodium, they have— they do start to retain water. I mean, that's one of the things that sodium does. The question is just where you're retaining the water. If it's intramuscular, hey, that's great. If it's not so much just intramuscular, it's probably not so good. But like anything else, it just requires some some practice. So for people who are fat-free and really, really lean, it's something cool to play with. Be careful with it. You obviously don't want to take a ton of potassium and cause cardiac arrhythmia and have a heart attack and die. That's not a good side effect.

Yeah, you definitely want to be careful with potassium.

Yeah, so don't be reckless. But yeah, so potassium about 15 minutes before. Now, now I do want to emphasize too that we typically only do that for about 36 hours.

Okay, so it's a short, a short period of time.

It's a very short period of time. It's not something you do all week, just something you would do about the last 36 hours. Sometimes I only have people do it the last 4 meals. Sometimes I have people do it the last 8 meals. It depends on We play around with it 2 weeks before, and that gives me some data on how that person's body works, and hopefully their body will be working similar 2 weeks later.

Yes, that is the key, because sometimes it can change.

That's right, it absolutely can.

With fats and carbs before a show, so say the week leading up to the show, have you had any success with fat loading? Or do you tend to just use carbs?

I used to be a fat loader. I used to use steak, whole eggs, and peanut butter. I kept, you know, this works well for people who tend to be really water-retentive with carbohydrates. You can take your carbs down to anywhere from 50 to 100 grams, or if it's a really big guy, maybe 150 grams, and then you can just add in more fat. You can have a little fattier cuts of meat, or you can have scrambled eggs, you could, you know, peanut butter. Those are the 3 fats that I used before a show, and I always, it really helped, man. I had a really ripped and dry look, but as I got older, believe it or not, I actually developed, it's probably just 'cause I got bigger, But I can tolerate carbs a lot better and still keep that nice and dry look now. So now I tend to use more carbs. But for those who are listening, if you tend to be a little more water-retentive with carbs, then give it a shot. You know, pull your carbs down to 50 to 100 grams and just add in an extra 15, 20 grams of fat a meal, something like that, and see how you look. 'Cause it works really, really well for a lot of people.

And then on the day of the comp, would you say just stick with fats until about an hour, hour and a half before you go on and then get some carbs in you and start pumping up? Or still stick with fats?

Well, I like for people to kind of have an empty stomach when they're up there so that they have good stomach control. And I don't want them to feel sick and bloated. I don't want their stomach to be distended. So I typically don't let people eat for 2 to 3 hours before they get on stage. If I've got somebody getting out on stage, say at noon, then 9 o'clock is gonna be their last meal. Now in that last meal, I actually like to have a balance of fat and carbs. 'Cause what happens is if you go low fat, many times people will get a pretty good insulin dump from their pancreas from all the carbs. And then they get lightheaded and then they start to feel funny and then if you throw in the fact they're not drinking a lot of water and then you got this snowball effect where all of a sudden they start looking worse and then they start stressing out and then the stress kicks in and then all of a sudden they look horrible. So I like to keep fat in there, keep them, keep the glucose levels, keep glucose kind of trickling in, but not dumping in really hard from a ton of insulin all at once. Fat does slow the entry of glucose into the bloodstream, so it kind of controls how much insulin your pancreas is pumping out. Plus, the fat just, I think for a lot of people, you just feel a little better. And so that, I like to, I actually have both. About typically 3 hours before stage.

Yeah, you said that about 3 hours before, so would you say that you have any, say, a small amount of liquid with the carbohydrate in it at all, or you just completely nothing for the 3 hours?

Honestly, the day of a show, I prefer to not have any liquid up until prejudging. What I will do sometimes is sometimes I will have people use a small little intra-workout drink before they pump up with no more than say 500 milliliters of water the max, probably closer to 250 milliliters. Now I'm not talking about a big intra-workout drink, I'm talking about like maybe 1 scoop. Sometimes I'll have people do that. You know, some people like they volumize. It's like their muscles respond really well to cell volumization, and if you put a little liquid in them, some carbs, they pump up really good and they stay tight. Some people pump up really good, but then their stomach starts to be a little, maybe a little more blurry or a little more distended, so you know, you gotta be careful, but that's another approach people can consider.

Yeah, it is a fine line. I found that with my trial competition, because I did 2 competitions, the first one I found what happened was I didn't carb up enough. So, yes, it had the benefit of keeping my stomach smaller, but I found that because I didn't have enough carbs, I couldn't keep tight enough. I found that the more I ate, the tighter I could keep my midline, within reason, because But there is that point where you start to have too much in your stomach. So I guess it is about finding that fine line that works for you.

Yeah, you know, and I like to just keep things pretty simple. You know, that's why a practice run is so important a couple weeks out so you can give it a shot, see how your body's reacting. But I don't do these crazy depletions. And crazy loads, I just think it's unpredictable.

So you're more of a fan of cruising in, in terms of glycogen levels, like not depleting too much?

Yes, absolutely. Awesome. Absolutely, yep.

Yeah, I found that I depleted a bit too much leading up to mine and had to bring myself back up because—

Well, a lot of times you can't get out of a depletion, especially with some of the bigger guys, a lot of times they can't get out of the depletion. And it's not just big guys, it's anybody, any guy really, any competitor. If you deplete yourself hard enough, you're not coming out of it for days. Literally takes days. Now you can eat a bunch of food at once, but eating a ton at once, all it's gonna do is blow your stomach out, and it's not like you can, shovel all that glucose into your muscle and make glycogen instantly, you know. If that was the case, hell, we could just have 1,000 grams before we got on stage and we'd all look massive, but that's not how the body works. So yeah, sometimes, man, it's really hard to get out of depletions, and I've been guilty of this myself. I've depleted overly hard and thinking I could overcome it and get this massive supercompensation effect, and it didn't work out that way. You know, you might get your body weight back, but it won't look the same, and that's not a good trade-off.

Yeah, I found that increasing training volume, obviously it helps with basically taking in more glycogen, helps with giving you that full look. So obviously around a show, do you— how do you adjust volume?

Well, I don't really adjust my volume, but I do adjust my intensity. One of the things I've found is that people look better on stage when the last 7 to 10 days they really pull their intensity back training-wise, so the muscles are fresh, they're not beat up and depleted. So I don't let people, you know, do the high-intensity stuff I tend to have them just focus more on contracting really, really hard, keeping tension on the muscle, and I think that produces a better look on stage. This is another one I've been guilty of, training really, really hard right up until 2 days before the show or the day before even sometimes, and then I just couldn't, just didn't quite look right, you know? And when I I kicked my ego aside and said, you know, I'm going to go a little easier. Poof! All of a sudden I look better when I competed. So I've adopted that with pretty much everybody that I coach, that we pull back on the intensity the last week, 7 to 10 days, and they always look better.

Yeah, I guess the magic in that is making sure that you're actually training hard enough leading up to it before you back it off.

Right, that's, um, That's, um, the, the assumption. So that's the assumption. It's not always true, but I, I, yeah, I mean, you have to be busting your ass in order to need to. You don't have that need to if you haven't been busting your ass and working really, really, really hard.

Yeah. Do you get regular blood work, John? And when you do your blood work, what do you look for?

Well, I get blood work done every 6 months and I look for my insulin level. Now I'm not talking about fasted glucose, I'm talking about my true insulin level. I look at that, I look at my vitamin D levels, I look at my homocysteine levels, I look at my C-reactive protein levels. C-reactive protein and homocysteine are will show inflammation in your body. I like for inflammation to be almost nonexistent in my body, just a low reading. I get all the basic liver and kidney stuff done, AST and ALT for your liver, which by the way are pretty much always slightly elevated in people when they train hard. The kidney stuff, the blood urea nitrogen, uric acid, all that stuff. Stuff, I look for that, creatinine. I look at the lipid panel, triglycerides. If I'm looking at HDL and LDL, I try to get a particle size test so you can determine if the LDL particles are smaller in size, which are the more dangerous ones that can lodge in vascular tissue as opposed to the larger size molecules which they call fluffy molecules which just tend to kind of bounce around and not really lodge anywhere and cause any damage. But what I like to see is a low triglyceride and a high HDL. And I like to see obviously a low insulin level, MINS level that's within range. I like for those LDL particles to be larger and fluffy. I like to see low inflammation. The other thing is not blood work, but getting your blood pressure checked is very key. I do that all the time. And I got, you know, there's these little, you know what, let me, I want to tell you the name of this thing. I'm gonna pull it up on my phone right now while we're talking. But there's, I went to the dentist and she's the one that showed me this. She puts this thing around your wrist and then hold your arm a certain way. And it does your blood pressure, and it's called an Omron, O-M-R-O-N, device, and it says IntelliSense Omron, and I'm looking at my last one, it was 119 over 75, but so I like to really keep a close eye on blood pressure too. I think that's what, when it stays elevated with people, for people over years and years and years, I think that really can cause havoc. It's not one of those things that kills you quick. It takes time, so you got to really keep your eye on it, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I guess it's a good sign to say that you're overworking it when that blood pressure starts to come up.

Yeah, you know, mine is, if anything, mine is kind of low sometimes, which is weird, but, and my pulse is in the low 60s, which is good for I'm happy about that. Yeah, I mean, having Dr. Serrano be a mentor of mine, we obviously spend a lot of time talking about this stuff. And especially now that I have kids, you know, we have a family, I want to obviously live forever and never die.

Where would you live forever as old, John?

Yeah, I'm still working on that one. I haven't got that one figured out. Oh yeah.

Do you ever get your cortisol tested? I found that with clients, the ones that have high cortisol, I found that they don't tend to respond to training as well, and their body composition is very hard to adjust.

I started to say that. It's hard to get them leaner, isn't it?

Very hard.

Yeah, it is, it is. And as long as you're getting the cortisol test where they're measuring it throughout the day so they can determine the right— because you're Cortisol obviously has peaks and valleys that are just a natural, you know, just that they have natural peaks and valleys. So just getting it done at one point in time through like blood work, for instance, is not typically very informative. But if you're doing saliva testing and you test it when you wake up and at other points during the day where you can see where it's at, if it's following the normal pattern. That's what you want people to do. But yeah, I do think that's very valuable, and I agree with you, man. It's really hard to get people lean when their cortisol levels are through the roof. Their body composition sucks, they lose strength, they can't sleep. It's usually not a good thing.

Yeah, the biggest thing I've found is I'll just taper it back from where they're currently at by about 1 to 2 days a week of training, and then all of a sudden they'll start getting results again. It's pretty crazy.

Yeah, sometimes it doesn't take much. You know, sometimes they're just right on the edge or just right beyond it, but they're not that far over it. So it doesn't take a huge change. The challenging ones are the ones where people's lifestyle is producing constant stress. You know, say somebody's job constantly stresses them out, whatever is happening at their workplace, or let's say they're in a relationship that's constantly stressing them out. You know, is my spouse constantly cheating on me, blah, blah, blah. But these things that happen just in life that cause stress all the time are much harder to deal with. And harder to correct than the ones that are created maybe by a little bit extra too much training or too much, a little too much intensity. Those are the ones that I really have a hard time with because it's tough situations, you know, and I try to live as stress-free as I can. I really do. I put a lot of effort into trying to be stress-free because I think stress is an absolute destroyer. Really, really, I think takes years off your life and does a lot of bad things to you physiologically when you're always stressed. Your blood pressure, your insulin sensitivity, there's a lot of markers like that that go south. And then just your quality of life, man. If you're sitting around negative all the time, what kind of life is that, you know? So yeah, that's the tough one for me.

Yeah, yeah, couldn't agree more. John, I'm a big fan of your website, like I mentioned before, MountainDiet.com. Yeah, MountainDiet.com, and love the workouts, like I mentioned also. I noticed that you dropped the price under $10 now, so that was very generous of you.

Well, I moved it up. It was, uh, Well, it depends on how long. It depends on how long you get. I should clarify that. For someone who only wants to join it for a month, it's $14.99, but it goes all the way down to $8-something per month if you join for a year. I think when people get on there and see all the information that's on there and the workouts— I don't even know how many workouts are on there now. There's probably 60 or 70 at least. And these are really, really good workouts. They're not just 3 sets of 8 on the bench, 3 sets of 8 on the incline. I mean, they're really detailed workouts. Many of them have videos attached to them, but then all the articles. We're actually doing some new things on the website right now that are going to launch next month. I'm putting a forum on there, and eventually it's going to replace the Q&A. People send me questions that are members and I answer them, but I wanted something better. I wanted more information for the person. I wanted their answers. I wanted them to get answers quickly. So I'm going to have a forum on the member part of the website where you can ask questions and then either myself or some of the coaches I have will answer, or all of us, giving you maybe differing perspectives. So I'm doing a lot of things now to improve it even more. It's something that I gotta keep improving. If you're not getting better, man, people are gonna go by you. So I'm trying to make that thing as good as I can.

Well, you don't have anything to worry about. You're continually improving. Like, a good example is you just got your Pro card, so never say die.

That's right. That's right.

Do you have any upcoming courses that you're presenting?

I am, uh, in July I'm going to be going to England and then to Ireland, and then in August I'll be in Norway. Um, where else am I going? Uh, I just got back from Scotland and Canada. I don't think I have any. I think— I don't think I have anything till July. So England and Ireland in July, and then Norway in August.

Where can people go to sign up to this?

Um, the one in Norway is not announced yet. The ones in England and Ireland, just, um, get on my Facebook and, um, you can just Facebook message me regarding the course and I will— there's a thread on my Facebook, you got to go back a little ways where I kind of announce it and the guys that are promoting it have put their information there. But if somebody just sends me a Facebook message, I'll put you in contact with the guys that are running the course.

Awesome. Thanks for your time, John. Look, I really appreciate it. The reason being is it's so close to Christmas. It's Christmas Eve here and it's Christmas Eve of Eve for you. So we even interrupted your Christmas shopping.

Yep. Now I'm going to go back out into the war zone.

So thank you very much. It's genuinely appreciated.

Hey, you bet, Reece. It's my pleasure. Tell your brother I said hi. You guys keep on doing good things.

We will. One last thing, how can people keep your wisdom coming their way? Like, what's your website, Facebook, Instagram examples?

Well, I'm on mountaindogdiet.com, and I really, I really enjoy Instagram. My Instagram is Mountain Dog 1, and my Facebook is my name, John Meadows. But I would encourage everyone to Bookmark my website and follow me on Mountain Dog One on Instagram and John Meadows on Facebook. I put a lot of exercises up. If you go to my Instagram, you'll see I do like every other day. I was doing it every day. Now it's kind of every other day. I'll put up something I've done that may or may not be a little unique in terms of my workout, and I think people are really digging that. So If that interests you, then follow me. Or if you want to just see pictures of my kids, I got those on there too.

Awesome. Thank you again so much, Sean.

You're welcome, my friend.

You have a great day.

Thank you. You too.

Thank you for listening. Hope you got as much out of that as I did. Check out our website for more information at melbournepersonaltrainers.com or our hotline 1300 887 143. Remember to subscribe by downloading the Eat Later Abs ebook, which is full of information to keep your knowledge-thirsty brains growing.