Weight Training for Beginners with Alex Bush | DFIO Ep.259
About Today’s Episode:
Today, I interviewed a newer friend of mine—Alex Bush. Alex is a co-owner of Physique Development and he is an expert on all things training related.
I wanted to get him on here to give a little bit of a different perspective on training because training is such an important part of weight loss and transformation—if your training is not in the right place, it will yield very different results than if your training is set up correctly.
We talk about not only training with the optimal program/plan—and doing things the best way possible—but also training in a practical way. Where does ‘optimal’ training and ‘practical’ training intersect for the average person?
Alex gives some amazing insights around the most common questions our listeners have about training, like what constitutes a good workout, how to prepare yourself mentally to go into a workout, how to select the right weight, and much more.
I’m super pumped for you all to hear this episode, so let’s get into it!
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Introduction & About Today’s Episode
03:00 Our Sponsors
07:54 The Dichotomy of Optimal and Practical Training
11:20 What Got Alex Interested in Deep Training Knowledge
15:40 The Mindset for Strength Training
19:00 More is Not Better
21:42 What Makes a Good Workout
25:17 What Helps Focus
28:56 Training to Failure
34:18 How to Pick the Right Weight
38:29 Women and Weight Training
43:00 When You Don’t Have The Best Set-Up
47:59 What Alex and Physique Development are Working On
55:42 Jared's outro and how to apply for coaching
Transcription (click to expand)
Ep. 259 Alex Bush
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Weight Training for Beginners with Alex Bush | DFIO Ep.259
0:00:00.0 Alex Bush: "Do I feel like I really pushed myself? Did I challenge myself with my load selection or did I feel like every time I stood up from that squat, I could go right back under the bar in five seconds and go again?" If that's how you feel, you probably should have increased weight, you probably should have done a couple more repetitions.
0:00:16.3 Alex Bush: You could have done a little bit more to really challenge yourself and be in a position where you needed to have that rest period to go on to the next set or whatever it is.
[music]
0:00:27.8 Jared Hamilton: What's going on, team? Welcome back to a brand new episode of Dieting from the Inside Out. If you are new here, welcome to the show. My name is Jared Hamilton, I'm your host and I have another really cool episode ready for you today. I just got finished interviewing a newer friend of mine, his name's Alex Bush. Alex and I...
0:00:47.8 Jared Hamilton: Actually, it's weird. We talk about it a little bit and we talked about it some off camera, but we've known of each other for quite a bit of time, but never really fully connected, and I've been wanting to get Alex on the show because he's so brilliant when it comes to all things training related.
0:01:02.5 Jared Hamilton: And that's what I wanna get him on the show to talk about. Alex owns a coaching company called Physique Development and he is such a genius and so brilliant when it comes to all things training related. So I wanted to have him come on here and get a little bit of a different perspective around training, like for specifically for the goals that you have.
0:01:23.5 Jared Hamilton: Because training is such a valuable piece to everything. I know in the world of fat loss and transformation we talk about nutrition and everything like that, but if your training is not in the right place or you're not training the right way, it will yield two different results.
0:01:37.6 Jared Hamilton: Like if you go to the next year training the absolute best way possible, or a year like doing bullshit, you're going to have two entirely different outcomes. So I wanted to have Alex come on and I had some specifics I wanted to ask him, but the biggest thing is I wanted to have him talk about he did an amazing job about, with doing, was talking about things around the idea of where does things like training with like the optimal program, the optimal plan and doing things the best way possible.
0:02:05.3 Jared Hamilton: Also just practicality, where does optimal and practical meet together for the average person? Because I'll be honest, most of you listening to this are not bodybuilders or physique athletes or whatever, we're all just normal people. But we really need to look at training through a different lens and Alex is one of the best people to talk about this.
0:02:24.4 Jared Hamilton: So that's why I wanted to get Alex on the show and interview him around this stuff, and he did an amazing job and gave some amazing insights around a lot of the questions and problems that you struggle with, like what constitutes as a good workout, how should someone mentally go into a workout? What about failure? How do you even select the right weight?
0:02:45.9 Jared Hamilton: All of these different things. How to mentally frame a workout where like going into a gym and going to do your thing, or the best way conceptually to go about it so you get the best results possible without living in the gym. All sorts of things like this. So I know you're gonna get a lot out of the episode, but before we get into all of it, I do wanna give a big thank you to the sponsors of the show.
0:03:05.6 Jared Hamilton: Sponsor number one is FlexPro Meals. You guys know I love my FlexPros because for me, things are just so all over the place with my schedule, and even the best schedule still have stuff come up. But if you find yourself either always on the run, always on the go, schedules all over the place, taking kids to soccer games and dance practices and all these things.
0:03:24.1 Jared Hamilton: And you find yourself either not wanting to cook, not having time to cook. Or you always end up in a drive-through spending way too much money, always running into gas stations. Something like FlexPro can be a game changer for you. Because number one, is cheaper than going through a drive-through. It's gonna save you so much time.
0:03:40.6 Jared Hamilton: It tastes amazing and it's calorie and macro-friendly. It's made by a chef, they call themselves the Amazon Prime of like meal services, and it's like I said, it's cheaper than going through a drive-through, it's freaking spectacular. So if that's something that's up your alley and you're like, "Man, having some meals on deck where I can just grab and go, would be pretty helpful," definitely check them out with the link in the description.
0:04:00.8 Jared Hamilton: Or go to flexpromeals.com, and to save you a little bit more money, use my code "HamiltonTrained" and it will save you 20% at check out, which is pretty dope.
0:04:10.3 Jared Hamilton: Second sponsor of the show is 1st Phorm, the supplement company. I have on one of their shirts. Whenever I wear this longer sleeve first form sweater shirt thing, because of where the logo is at, people say I look like a 1st Phorm priest, it's really kind of weird.
0:04:22.5 Jared Hamilton: But anyway, big thank you to 1st Phorm. We're actually, depending on when this podcast drops, 1st Phorm actually just hit me up and they're going to be... They want to offer my community a giant supplement giveaway. So here very soon, keep an eye out in email and the Facebook group, all the links to that are below as well. We're gonna be doing a big huge supplement stack giveaway from 1st Phorm because of how well you guys are doing.
0:04:45.0 Jared Hamilton: And they just hit me up and they said, "Hey, we wanna give back to your community and do a big supplement giveaway." So keep a look out for that coming very soon, but otherwise, here's the thing, when it comes to the goals of transformation and feeling better and looking better and having more energy and moving better, supplements are not the end all be all.
0:05:03.9 Jared Hamilton: They're never meant to replace food, but they are meant to fill the gaps you are not getting with food. Whether this be something like you're always, your joints always hurt, or whether it be your recovery is not as good, or you just can't get any more protein in your day, or you don't eat seven servings of fruits and vegetables and you're missing some vitamins and minerals, all these kind of things. If you're not gonna get where you need to be with food, then this is when we utilize supplements.
0:05:27.9 Jared Hamilton: So two things. Number one, if that's up your alley and you wanna make sure you're taking the best products that are safe, that are accurate, that are tested and the whole nine yards where you're not just wasting your money on bullshit, 'cause the last thing I want you to do is just go into like Amazon or GNC, go, "What will taste the best and least shitty and what's cheapest?" That's just never the best way to go about it.
0:05:52.2 Jared Hamilton: So definitely check out the link below to check out 1st Phorm stuff and see what they have going on. My link is below, it does support me and I really, really appreciate it. But if you're not quite sure where to get started with supplements, I will also have a YouTube video linked down there that gets into supplements, on like what to take, what not to take, what I take, what our clients take, things like that.
0:06:10.6 Jared Hamilton: Alright, I'm gonna shut up now and get Alex's clip moved over here. [chuckle] Be sure and subscribe to the show if you have not already. Also, this episode is on YouTube. If you're just listening to it and you wanna watch the interview with Alex and I... Alex and me? I'm not sure. I think it's Alex and me is the correct way to pronounce that or the correct grammar with that. Anyway, you guys know I don't talk right. I will get to that right now, I will talk to you in just a minute.
0:06:37.9 Jared Hamilton: But yeah man, I feel like... And this is how it always goes, I feel like we have all the mutual friends across the board. I'm trying to think, I don't know, I can't remember when I started finding your stuff? 'Cause I went... Whenever I started getting into coaching in the space, I got hyper-obsessed with the technical side of execution, with training specifically, that's when I got studying some N1 stuff, some Joe Bennett stuff, like all those guys, back when like MI40 stuff...
0:07:07.1 Jared Hamilton: And I think I may have found you somewhere around in that mix, because that's what you, especially now post so much about and stuff, but yeah.
0:07:19.5 Alex Bush: Yeah, no the... Yeah, the old MI40 days. It's interesting because Austin... Austin interned at MI40 when we were in college, and that's how we got connected with those guys, and then Kassem and Adam and Joe Bennett, everybody kind of branched off into their own things. And so then, yeah.
0:07:35.2 Alex Bush: And then all the information just kind of spread, and that was the, I guess the origin of all this exercise execution stuff, getting super duper into the weeds. Five or six, I guess longer than that, probably six or seven years ago, I suppose.
0:07:48.2 Jared Hamilton: Yeah. 'Cause I started... 'Cause I started following Austin and I think that's what eventually led me to you, but one of the things that... This is honestly why I wanted to have you come on. 'Cause with my show, it's called Dieting from the Inside Out, and it's very much like talking to people about how to just sustainably get to where they wanna be and doing some of the more uncomfortable work to get there.
0:08:08.5 Jared Hamilton: But the thing that I wanted to really talk with you about, 'cause I love your content, I love the way that you conceptualize things, and my nerdy side really, really digs into the technical aspects of execution and deep levels of physiology and all of that. But my thing is where, in your opinion, where is the dichotomy between when it comes to training, the optimal side with getting...
0:08:33.8 Jared Hamilton: You're talking about deep into force vectors and strength curves and all the overwhelming stuff for most people. When it comes to that, where is the dichotomy for you in what's optimal, but then what's practical for the average person and how to approach that?
0:08:47.1 Alex Bush: Yeah, so with this, it is a matter of really being able to meet the individual where they are at personally. That's the big driving force here. So wherever their knowledge base is at, you as the coach or you as the educator, need to be able to meet them exactly where they are.
0:09:03.6 Alex Bush: And so my big thing is that no matter how far I'm pushing within my own education the greater understanding of all these different topics and training modalities and those different aspects, I always need to be able to work back and get to the core of what this really all means, and be able to explain it to a 2nd grader type situation.
0:09:23.7 Alex Bush: You wanna be able to always explain it in the most simplistic terms, so that no one feels like I'm talking over their head or feels as though that they are self-conscious, that, "Oh my gosh, I want this person to help me, but I really don't understand anything they're saying, so now I feel uncomfortable and now I'm nervous," and all these different factors.
0:09:42.7 Alex Bush: That's the last thing that I want anyone to feel like. And I think that unfortunately, especially in the education space from a Instagram perspective or just social media in general, oftentimes people want to feel as though that they're talking over other's heads because that makes them feel superior and makes them feel like, "Okay, I do know more than you. You should listen to me," and that's kind of how some people really like to teach.
0:10:05.3 Alex Bush: And I am the opposite to that, I want everyone to feel very welcomed and make them feel as though that we can break everything down to wherever you're at, so we can build you up together, and so that you can run forward and have those things in place. So where that really means for me is simply wherever that person is and then being able to make everything digestible and then be able to move forward if they're wanting to expand their knowledge or where they're at with their understanding is like, this is a good spot.
0:10:31.5 Alex Bush: Because a lot of people, and you may resonate with this, 'cause I know I do, that as they get deeper and deeper, you start to feel almost dumber and dumber.
[chuckle]
0:10:41.1 Alex Bush: You learn more and more and you're like, "Damn, I really don't know all that much." And so there's kind of a threshold of I know this much and I'm kind of in a good spot, and I feel like I'm confident in what I know. So it may just be good for me to hold steady here and not try to push too far. Because there is a threshold where it starts to go down and you're like, "Man, I don't know shit about any of this."
[chuckle]
0:11:00.8 Jared Hamilton: No, I totally agree. I remember when I first started getting into the deeper levels of this stuff, it's like understanding the universe, it's like the more you learn, the more you realize you're a speck and have no fucking clue about anything. Yeah. I'm curious, what got you into this kind of stuff? 'Cause I don't even think I know your full story and stuff. So what got you... What even got you interested in this deeper level of stuff?
0:11:25.4 Alex Bush: So when I was in high school, I was very fortunate to have an incredible teacher and strength coach in high school, his name is Josh Wildeman, he's a great friend of mine now. I was very fortunate to have him be a coach to me in high school, was a professor to me in college, and has like I said, been able to be a friend growing up.
0:11:47.0 Alex Bush: So he really instilled in me just the quality and what training can really be for individuals if done correctly, and how a lot of individuals are doing it incorrectly, and there's a lot of ways to not do it properly, and there's only a few ways to really do it right and have the best results within things.
0:12:06.0 Alex Bush: And so he was very, very strong in just teaching how to do exercises properly. There was a, four like 8th graders at the time, they were having like... You would go into the weight room and you had, I think like six months of just learning how to do all the exercises.
0:12:23.2 Jared Hamilton: That's incredible.
0:12:25.2 Alex Bush: That was your entire incredible training at that time, was just learning how to do all the different exercises. And he had regressions and progressions to all the different exercises to learn how to squat properly, to learn how to deadlift and power clean and hang clean and bench press, all those movements properly, and he was very, very strong within the technique of all these different exercises.
0:12:44.4 Alex Bush: And so that was how I was brought up, just that was my first exposure to resistance training as a whole, and so I was extremely, extremely fortunate. I had no idea at the time, but as I've grown, realized how lucky I really was to have that individual in my life.
0:13:02.1 Alex Bush: And so with that, and he was somebody who I looked up to at the time, and still to this day, he is someone who has been a really big piece of my life in general, and so him being something that I looked up to, it was just like, "This is how this is done." And he was very regimented and very technical in those things, and that was just something I continue to carry on with me from high school into college and to now as a whole. So that was kind of the originating of me being very technical to the exercises and those different factors.
0:13:30.8 Jared Hamilton: I love that, man. That's so... People forget how big of a role someone like that plays in someone's life. You know what I mean? 'Cause I remember when I was... Before I got into online coaching, I was a personal trainer, and I would work with locally a ton of the high school athletes and stuff, but the overarching running theme from all the strength coaches are, "Oh as long as that bar gets up, that's all I care about."
0:13:51.9 Jared Hamilton: I had this kid come in to me one time, I'm still friends with him to this day. Now he's an adult. But the kid was just one of those corn-fed kids that can just put all the weight up effortlessly, dude was squatting 500 pounds effortlessly on his toes.
0:14:08.4 Alex Bush: Wow.
0:14:09.7 Jared Hamilton: Just like boom, and it shot, right back up. No injuries, no problems. But I saw a video when he hit it for the first time, his strength coach was excited and was like no critiquing, and then he came to me for all the stuff he wasn't getting, and I'm like, "Bro, we have problems."
0:14:26.0 Jared Hamilton: And so I fixed his execution, then lo and behold, his weight skyrocketed even more, but I think there's just that overarching piece that so many people are just missing this conceptual levels of understanding of how your body works.
0:14:37.4 Alex Bush: Yes, and I think that it's very difficult for individuals like that to take that step back to really learn how to execute. It's like, "Dude, I just squatted 500 pounds. How are you gonna tell me that I need to do something different than what I just did? I'm squatting potentially more than you ever have," type situation, "and you're trying to tell me something different."
0:14:55.9 Jared Hamilton: I was not squatting 500 pounds, so. [chuckle]
0:14:58.5 Alex Bush: Right? And so that's where things get challenging. I also wanna state just the aspect in which I am just very curious of being able to get that 1% better, this is like my whole life I've just been very obsessed with the small details of all the aspects of playing sports and getting into resistance training and running a business and those different things.
0:15:23.2 Alex Bush: I just love the nuance of things, and so that has been something that I've been able to apply within resistance training and teaching clients and those different factors. And so the obsession with the 0.01% as well as the upbringing or certainly the root of it all.
0:15:39.0 Jared Hamilton: That's huge, man. I love that. Now, I know with your brand and everything, I know you work with a lot of competitors and higher level like athletes and stuff, but let's say looking through the lens of just your average person, the average 35-year-old Mrs. Jones, who has never really done a whole lot of the outside of, let's say, some Beachbody programs and stuff like that.
0:16:01.1 Jared Hamilton: 'Cause that's where so many of my community is at. What are some... 'Cause I know obviously, every person's different, every person's bio-mechanics are different, all of that stuff, but for some overarching mental concepts going into approaching strength training from a very newer to intermediate level.
0:16:20.2 Jared Hamilton: Is there anything in particular that just over-arching themes that you don't see talked about very much or where a lot of people go south pretty quickly on ways that they can approach strength training as a whole? Even if they're doing this on their own, just some general concepts from your perspective?
0:16:34.6 Alex Bush: Of course, I think that there's a couple of things that we can look at. The first thing is going to be, more is not better. Right?
0:16:42.4 Jared Hamilton: I literally have that in my notes, like I literally added that. I wanted you to talk about that. [chuckle]
0:16:48.0 Alex Bush: More is not better. Because I think that oftentimes individuals get into the gym and they may only be familiar with, let's say, four or five exercises, and they're like, "Okay, I'm just going to go in there and crank away at these particular exercises that I have some understanding of, and I'm gonna do 15-20 reps of whatever the weight is."
0:17:09.0 Alex Bush: And find themselves in a situation where they're just repping it out and not really doing a whole lot, they're just moreso moving through space, they're burning calories. And there's a time and a place that that could be a useful tool, like you do need to burn calories, and if that's something that's just gonna get you to the gym and get you into the habit of going, I'm all for it and I'm rooting for that person, but there's going to be a progression that's necessary for them to really see the progress that they want to see in their body and to see the changes that they want to see.
0:17:37.6 Alex Bush: And so I think that getting to a place of really understanding how the body functions and getting an idea of what these different exercises are doing or how we can get better within the quality of our repetitions and being able to really challenge ourselves. Because when we look at the weight selection, for someone who has never been in the gym, has never had direct guidance within their training and they're just going in for the first time.
0:18:01.4 Alex Bush: They have no understanding of what true failure feels like and really any sensation to the tissue is like, "Okay, that burning or this kind of feels like it's pulling, I'm not really sure, so I'm just gonna stop training at this point. I don't have any understanding or awareness of what this really is."
0:18:19.4 Alex Bush: And so they find themselves in a situation where they're like, "I don't know how to find failure, I don't know how to push myself within the training 'cause I haven't had that guidance." And so I think that that's one of the more powerful things that online coaching, in-person training can really provide, by allowing for the individual to have the confidence of like, "No, you can keep pushing yourself, there's more in the tank here." You can really challenge yourself within the gym more.
0:18:45.0 Alex Bush: And so I would say understanding the exercises and having a plan going in, and then also really challenging yourself and trusting that your execution's in a place to challenge yourself, those would be the two first things that I would dig into for sure.
0:19:00.4 Jared Hamilton: I love that. It's interesting, we see a lot of people, like on the concept of that more is better, that we've seen people go from the place of going from whatever, what I call the bullshit they were doing, to doing things the right way. Because of the mass differences in it, but the lack of understanding, it's like, "Oh, but this isn't enough."
0:19:19.9 Jared Hamilton: I was spending two hours a day doing what I call back kick-flip workouts where we're doing single leg bosu ball squats with an overhead press with a back flip and all this crazy shit that we see online, but then going to some basic fundamentals and really pushing great movement patterns, spending a fraction of the time that they were doing two hours a day, but now we're down to 40 minutes, and then a lot of people right out the gate are like, "But it's not enough. What is this bullshit?" What are your thoughts on that?
0:19:49.0 Alex Bush: When we look at just the aspect of individuals only having an understanding of difficulty being aligned with how much I'm sweating and how heavy I'm breathing, it's difficult for them to understand that this is not the only metric that we're tracking, there are other things that we're trying to implement here and your resistance training and really trying to change your body composition and add muscle tissue is not going to be dependent on how hard you're breathing or how much you're sweating necessarily.
0:20:17.4 Alex Bush: Are those by products of us being able to put on some muscle tissue? Certainly, but they're not going to be the main catalyst of, "If we do a bunch of this, all of a sudden we're gonna be in the best shape of our life," type situation. And so moving then to a situation where we can really focus on, are we getting stronger, do we feel ourselves having muscular tension, do we feel challenged within the set itself, those are the things to really try and focus on.
0:20:43.1 Alex Bush: And seeing themselves maybe record their training exercises to compare and say, "Okay, this is my example," maybe you have a Physique Development, this is a plug for our YouTube channel. [chuckle]
0:20:54.2 Jared Hamilton: Let's go. [chuckle]
0:20:54.2 Alex Bush: You can use the Physique Development YouTube channel, look up any exercise, we have almost every exercise on there, you can look up the exercise, use that as your example, take your video, put that side by side and say, "Okay, this is how to execute this properly. Am I doing it in a similar fashion? If not, what can I adjust? What looks different?"
0:21:13.0 Alex Bush: And then continuing to progress in that way, are important things to keep in mind and things to focus on as you're trying to really change your body composition rather than just simply, "I'm sweating a lot, I'm breathing heavy," and those things.
0:21:25.8 Jared Hamilton: I love that. I love that so much. I think so many people are still stuck in the old 1960s model of training where it's like, "Oh no, two hours is better than an hour, lots of sweat is better than a little bit of sweat. I got really out of breath so that must have been good," or whatever.
0:21:42.7 Jared Hamilton: So for you, let me ask you this, so then what would you constitute as a good workout? If someone's like... "You just threw out all the things that I thought was made a good workout."
[chuckle]
0:21:52.8 Jared Hamilton: "Great job, Alex." How does someone quantify a good training session?
0:21:57.5 Alex Bush: Good training session. So one of my big drivers is, live to train another day.
0:22:03.9 Jared Hamilton: That's so good.
0:22:05.7 Alex Bush: We are not wanting to walk out of here in a place where we are immobile. I'm not celebrating the aspect of I trained legs on Monday, it's Friday, and I'm still having trouble getting up from the toilet. That's not something to celebrate, that's a problem. We need to make some adjustments to the training. And so live to train another day is huge.
0:22:25.9 Alex Bush: The second thing is going to be an aspect of, are we progressively getting better from session to session? Now, if you're in for your first week and you're creating a baseline within these different exercises that you've selected to be part of your program, you've gotta create that baseline, you're not going to be seeing this necessary progression.
0:22:43.4 Alex Bush: But as we make from week to week, how are we looking from the week prior? Are we able to increase load? Were we able to film our set? Was it better than our set prior? Do we see any differences? How do we feel following this set? Are we seeing less fatigue, do we feel stronger? What are some of the things that we're noticing within intrinsically in our body of what do we feel?
0:23:04.4 Alex Bush: And then the other thing is going to be an aspect in which do I feel like I really pushed myself? Did I challenge myself with my load selection? Did I feel as though that I was... The rest periods that may be I allotted or rest periods that I had in place, were those necessary? Or did I feel like every time I stood up from that squat, I could go right back under the bar in five seconds and get in and go again?
0:23:27.4 Alex Bush: It's like if that's how you feel, you probably should have increased weight. You probably should have done a couple more repetitions. You could have done a little bit more to really challenge yourself and be in a position where you needed to have that rest period to go on to the next set or whatever it is.
0:23:41.7 Alex Bush: So I would say that those three factors would be a good base for you to understand of I had a good training session today, and the fourth thing, and I'll use this has a bonus because I think that this is very common as well, is that you were focused in the training session.
0:23:57.4 Alex Bush: You did not find yourself in a situation where you were just people-watching the whole time, or every time that you got done with a set, you sat down and started scrolling Twitter or Instagram, and were face-timing your friend or Snap chatting. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a public gym and I just see these now kids, it's wild to me 'cause I've always viewed myself as the kid, I'm getting out of that realm now, and now I'm seeing these kids like Snap-chatting their entire workout and then...
0:24:23.2 Alex Bush: Or they're on like TikTok live and they're recording their entire session and it's mind-boggling to me. And so really having that focus factor of, "Did I really spend an hour or an hour and a half," whatever the time is that you have, "and did I focus on myself? Did I get better today within what I was trying to accomplish?" And I think that that's a big marker as well.
0:24:43.6 Jared Hamilton: That's huge. I think that's something that no one talks about. We talk about like you'll see across the board all the things that the specifics around working out and technique and drivers and all these things, but I think that that's one I can tell you I struggle with the most is like right now, what I do with my training, I'm right now doing longer rest periods than I have just this current training split I'm on. And I have...
0:25:06.4 Jared Hamilton: And it's all I wanna do is get on Instagram for the two and a half minutes or whatever between heavy sets. But I think the focus is something that not a lot of people talk about. For you other than just like refraining from Instagram, is there anything that you or your clients have seen that helps focus when people are like, "Bro, I don't know how to stay focused without checking on the kids or worrying about dinner tonight, or laundry when I get home," or whatever? Is there... Do you have any thoughts on that?
0:25:32.9 Alex Bush: Yeah, I think that this is something that I would say almost everybody struggles with to a degree. I find for myself that if I have, let's say that two and a half minute rest period, I hit that stop watch at the conclusion of that set. I add weight to the bar, I take weight off the bar, I'd get new dumbbells, what have you.
0:25:51.1 Alex Bush: Either, I like to pace, I'm big on pacing during my training just because if I sit in... Well, there are obviously scenarios that I need to sit and catch my breath, but if I'm in a situation where I'm doing like a flat dumbbell bench press, I'm probably gonna want to pace, I'm not just gonna wanna keep sitting there, so I do like to pace a little bit.
0:26:10.2 Alex Bush: And then the other thing is just going to be closing my eyes and visualizing the next set as a whole. I'm really big on the visualization prior to the set in and of itself, because I think that it's an opportunity to already see yourself accomplishing what you are about to do. Rather than going into the set of like, "I hope I can do this," it's like I just watch myself five times do exactly what is about to happen, and it's already ingrained into my mind that this is going to happen.
0:26:38.1 Alex Bush: And so... 'Cause I think that that's one other thing for individuals, is that they find themselves in a situation where they are going up to a weight that they've never handled before, and they're like, "I hope I get it, I hope that I am able to get under this weight and do it for however many reps I'm supposed to do," and a lot of it is just the mental block of understanding, "I've never done this before."
0:27:00.0 Alex Bush: And then something kind of feels maybe just a little bit off and they just rack the weight or they're like, "I can't go again." And the reality is, is that their mind is just defeating them. Because more often than not, for the greater majority of clients that I can review videos on, and for the listeners, this is something in the online space that I've been coaching for nine years and I'm reviewing tons and tons of exercise execution videos every single week.
0:27:24.8 Alex Bush: And in that time frame, more often than not, it's not going to be the muscular failure that the individual is experiencing, it's more often going to be that their mind is telling them like, "You can't do this, or you are not able to, or you don't have the muscular strength to do this."
0:27:38.4 Alex Bush: And so they're being defeated by their own mind rather than actually seeing that muscular failure happen. And so having that time for visualization, and I'm sure that some listeners are probably thinking, "Man, that sounds a little woo-woo, and I don't know how... " I don't know...
0:27:50.8 Jared Hamilton: I'm telling you, dude, I say some crazy woo-woo shit. So...
[laughter]
0:27:55.6 Jared Hamilton: I mean the podcast is called Dieting from the Inside Out. So I got all the woo-woos over here. [chuckle]
0:28:00.5 Alex Bush: Yeah. So the visualization, and then the breathwork, getting your breath back to a stable position and working through nasal breathing rather than just like huffing and puffing through your mouth, is probably a good situation as well. So that occupies my two and a half minute rest periods.
0:28:22.5 Jared Hamilton: Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. Well, even for those listening that get weird with the visualization stuff, there are so many studies with sports teams on, like big boy studies, on like on free throws on, on all these different areas in sports where they'll do groups of like, "Alright, this group just practice for two hours a day, this group just visualize for two hours a day, this group practice... This group didn't do anything, but for your control."
0:28:48.9 Jared Hamilton: And it's astounding, and they have so many studies on that for those listening that I think it's woo-woo shit. But I'm curious, 'cause you brought up a couple of times, and I know everyone has a different opinion on this, and I don't know if one is wrong or right, but what is your thoughts on failure?
0:29:09.0 Jared Hamilton: We hear some people like, you go to failure every set, then the side like no one has ever experienced true failure, 'cause everyone's a bitch. There's that side. Where does... Speaking through the lens of the average human, not necessarily a competitor?
0:29:23.9 Alex Bush: So there was an interesting meta-analysis that was reviewed in MASS Research, so for the listeners, this is ran by Greg Nuckols and other individuals that are not coming to my mind right this moment.
[laughter]
0:29:39.4 Alex Bush: But anyway, they review recent research that is... And it's very easy to digest. If you're someone who's wanting to get into the nerdy stuff, I highly recommend it. And so there was a meta-analysis going over the self-selection of... Or self-assessing RPE. And they had found that the individual is picking about 53% of their 10 rep max, thinking that they were getting... Hitting that 10 rep max, and it was actually 53% of what they could handle. Which was a staggering number within this meta-analysis that was looking at many different studies.
0:30:11.9 Alex Bush: And so when we look at failure, it's something that in the terms of truly meeting failure multiple times in a training session, is probably not in the best interest, and it's going against the idea of live to train another day. Because if we're going to failure, true failure, multiple times in a training session, the likelihood that you're able to recover to maybe train that tissue in 72 hours again, is pretty slim. It could be pretty slim depending on where your calories are at in those different aspects.
0:30:39.5 Alex Bush: But now when we're talking about, okay, we look at, I think there was like 16 studies in this meta-analysis and within that, all of the individuals picking 53% thinking that they were close to failure. It's like if that's the average gym goer, then I'm gonna push you to go to failure every single time because we've gotta get much closer to that failure than 53% of it to really see the results that we want to see.
0:31:01.7 Alex Bush: And so it's going to be context-dependent on the individual and their understanding of really where failure's at. And so for the general gym goer who has maybe never really pushed to failure, really reach that level of muscular failure, what their understanding of failure is is probably about a seven or eight RPE, and that's going to be where we want them to be anyway to really reap the hypertrophy benefit that they are seeking probably.
0:31:28.4 Alex Bush: And so in that context, then I would encourage them to go to failure all the time.
0:31:33.4 Jared Hamilton: All the time.
[laughter]
0:31:37.4 Alex Bush: But in the absolute nature of it, then that's not going to be the best case. So then the self-assessment is the challenging part, and that's going to be where we run into some issues of absolute nature when we're talking about it, because you are the only person that really knows where you're at from a failure standpoint.
0:31:55.7 Alex Bush: And so when it comes to failure, and to give kind of a complete answer here, I like to take a couple of sets per training session to failure, to really see in a controlled environment, there's the... I think a good analogy is that I'm not going to take many sets of squat to failure, but when I'm training biceps, you're sure as shit that I'm taking every set probably different. I'm gonna...
0:32:19.7 Alex Bush: That bicep curl, I'm going all out and I'm going to max out every single time. That's just the reality of it. And so, depending on the exercise selection, depending on where your experience level is at in those different factors, I'm always going to lean towards having the challenge and really pushing yourself, provided that it's in an environment that's going to be safe and not putting you at a greater risk of injury.
0:32:40.9 Jared Hamilton: That's so good. That's so well said. That's so good. For the people who lean more on the side of, "No, I could totally leave five reps in the tank and that's my normal," and it's like, let's go... Let's go harder. But then the people who's like, "No, I literally couldn't have a tenth rep if I got paid." You know?
0:33:00.7 Jared Hamilton: One of the things, I think I heard at first years ago, I think it was from Joe Bennett talking about it, on the exercises, like you said, that we would tend to take to failure and those not. The big barrier entry is safety. If someone's taking, let's say your average person taking a, or say a conventional dead lift failure, well that...
0:33:21.6 Jared Hamilton: Let's say technique going out the window and you're going to mechanical failure, well, we're talking low back injury, we're talking about hamstring problems, glute problems. Versus a lateral raise, you might just get like 15 degrees versus a full 90 degrees or whatever. So I think that's a big thing to note for those listening, that what are the ramifications from an injury perspective, if that movement pattern goes south.
0:33:46.3 Alex Bush: Yeah, I think there is a difference within... And failure training is such a unique topic, I feel like you could just go on and on and have nuance and like, "Oh, well, there's this caveat here, there's this caveat here." It's challenging, for sure.
0:34:00.9 Jared Hamilton: Yeah, for sure. And you know, that's part of my questions with the stuff that we're talking about is these are just some of our community's most common questions around training, like with you having such expertise in this on such a deep level, I'm really curious to hear some of your thoughts on these, for those listening.
0:34:17.1 Jared Hamilton: Another question we get a lot from brand new lifters and brand new people that just getting into this world is, what are your thoughts on how to pick the right weight? For the average person where it's like, "Well, I've never done that before, and I have this three sets of eight to 10 thing that Coach wrote down," but how do we even know what weight to pick, for the average person?
0:34:36.9 Alex Bush: So what I have within my client's training is that the first week is considered more of our baseline training, and I kinda talked about this a little bit earlier, is that this is where we're trying to set our foundation. And so if we can... If we hit things perfectly from a repetition allotment perspective, great.
0:34:53.5 Alex Bush: But the big thing is finding ourselves in a situation where we feel challenged from the load selected, and then we also are finding ourselves in a situation, let's say if it is the three sets of eight, that we complete the first set and then we move into the second set, where we able to... Or how did we feel after that first set? Did we think that we can go up?
0:35:10.0 Alex Bush: Okay, let's go ahead and just go ahead and go up and see how we handle it for another set of eight. If you go up again and you find yourself, "Okay, I hit eight," I'm gonna say, "Could I go up again? Maybe the next weight's gonna be too heavy. I'll just go ahead and stay." And then you go ahead and hit that same weight.
0:35:26.8 Alex Bush: But then the following week you're like, "Okay, now I know that I hit two sets at whatever that weight was, I'm gonna start at a higher weight this time, and can I handle that load?" And then it's gonna be moreso, it's gonna be a self-assessment constantly of really trying to see and push yourself.
0:35:43.1 Alex Bush: And don't be afraid of yourself in a situation where it's a set of eight and you go up maybe 5 pounds with those dumbbells on that press, and you find yourself in a situation where you only hit seven. It's like, that's actually good information, that's great information for you to know now, that this is where your strength level is, that this is what our challenge is of like, "Okay, now I wanna get that weight for eight repetitions."
0:36:03.7 Alex Bush: "Can I take another 30 seconds of rest and get the eight rep? Or am I just in a place where this is kind of the wall and I've gotta work through this for maybe one or two weeks to be able to do this?" And so I think that it's always gonna be a matter of just wanting to get that little bit of extra weight on there and continuing to seek that strength improvement while maintaining the execution.
0:36:25.8 Alex Bush: Because that's one thing as well, we can continue with the example of a press, is that I have clients who want to push themselves from weight selection perspective, they want to have that extra 5 pounds, but then the range of motion that they're achieving is, because they get nervous and where the weight is probably heaviest is at the bottom of those exercises, and so they cut off that bottom end.
0:36:47.2 Alex Bush: They're like, "I'm doing it." It's like, no, no, no, you're only doing about 50% of the range of motion that we were doing prior, and so we actually need to go down in load while we want to maintain the range of motion. So this is where filming those sets becomes so, so, so important because I'm sure, and I'll speak for myself here, is that in a...
0:37:04.3 Alex Bush: In a hack squat I can find myself in a situation where in my mind, that was the heaviest I could have gone, there's not a chance I could have got another repetition. And I watch the video on my phone and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I had every bit of two or three reps left, I could have put on a 25 pounds."
0:37:23.1 Jared Hamilton: Smooth sailing. [chuckle]
0:37:23.6 Alex Bush: Yeah. It was... A lot of those exercises that are going to be more systemically fatiguing, making your whole body tired, are going to be ones that in your mind, you're probably done and then you watch the video, it's like, "No, no, no. There's more in the tank there. We could have kept pushing."
0:37:37.7 Alex Bush: And that's where I think that a lot of individuals maybe fall short because they're scared or don't want to film themselves in the gym, and I think that there's a lot of rules now within LA Fitness and Globo gyms that you can't film, which makes things even more challenging, because with all good things, there are bad people who abuse those things, and now we can't use just the generally good things. But that's a conversation for another day.
[laughter]
0:38:03.4 Alex Bush: So I think that using the videos is huge, as well as if you're lucky enough to have a good training partner who's willing to push you and you guys can kind of build off of one another, is a really helpful tool. I was very fortunate when I started training that I had a training partner from the time that I got going that was wanting to... We were challenging each other, we were competing against each other every day, and so that's a really helpful piece too.
0:38:27.1 Jared Hamilton: That's huge. I love that. I would be remiss if I did not ask this question, 'cause I know exactly what you're gonna say, I know exactly what you're gonna say, but I just know I'm gonna get a lot of hell from the listeners if I don't ask this. It's one of my biggest pet peeves ever, and I still can't believe it's 2023 and people still think, it's like the equivalent carb store fat. I'm like, we're beyond that.
0:38:54.5 Jared Hamilton: Women are still scared shitless they're going to turn into a bodybuilder if they touch a set of dumbbells and do less than 20 reps. I would love to hear you talk about your thoughts on like... 'Cause again, and you're someone who specializes in working with women to build muscle and who need to grow tissue and all these kinds of things.
0:39:15.5 Jared Hamilton: So for you, with the average person that is, the average female that is scared shitless she is going to get a big, bulky, nasty, vein gorged out like crazy from adding weight. I would love to hear you talk about that?
0:39:28.7 Alex Bush: Man, [chuckle] sometimes I wish it happened that fast. It would be amazing.
0:39:34.8 Jared Hamilton: I would love it if it happened that fast. I'm on test and it doesn't happen that fast. Like fuck.
[laughter]
0:39:40.7 Alex Bush: Yeah. It would be amazing if that was the case. I think that there's a lack of understanding of how much hard work really goes into adding that level of muscle tissue, as well as the aspect in which the potential of PEDs and those different aspects are needed to get to whatever that's being visualized.
0:40:00.5 Alex Bush: But I think that a big part, and this is some of the things that I've had conversations with some of the women that I've worked with, is that oftentimes, one of the more common places that women carry body fat is going to be through their legs. So they have a thought process that they already carry a lot of muscle tissue to their legs and they don't want to grow that, and having the conversation of, "We can lose the body fat, and you're going to actually like the look of your leg significantly more if we lose the body fat and that is replaced with muscle tissue."
0:40:30.2 Alex Bush: And what that's going to come from is going to be us training hard and really pushing ourselves within the gym, it's not going to be a matter of now your legs are bigger and your legs are not fitting into specific shorts or pants or what have you, it's going to be a matter of you're gonna actually like how your legs look more, provided that we get you into better shape and those things.
0:40:50.1 Alex Bush: And the same thing goes for upper body, it's one of those situations where it's like, "I don't wanna have these big bulky arms and these big traps and these big delts," and it's like I have been trying to have big delts and big traps for over a decade, and I'm still going, and I've been very consistent over this time frame. This did not happen in two months, and I'm still on year 11 or whatever it is, and it still hasn't happened.
0:41:14.7 Alex Bush: So I'm still chipping away, and I encourage you that just a couple of rounds of pull-downs and some rows are probably not going to elicit these just monstrous traps that you can...
0:41:25.0 Jared Hamilton: That's probably not at failure anyway.
[laughter]
0:41:28.6 Alex Bush: Exactly. And I think that oftentimes you're gonna reap so much more benefit from your time as well. I think that that's another thing, that when they are only going to 20 repetitions and not really challenging themselves within the session, they get upset or they get let down because they're not seeing the results or the change that they want to see within their physique.
0:41:50.4 Alex Bush: And it's just a matter of changing the approach and changing the way that you're going about things, to really see the results that they want, and then often times that's gonna be lifting heavy weights.
0:41:58.9 Jared Hamilton: Yeah, absolutely. I think it goes back to... We're way past that time, women touching weights and getting yoked out of their gourds, it's like carb storing fat. And the Earth is flat, it's like we're talking about the same bullshit.
0:42:13.7 Alex Bush: Wait, the Earth isn't flat?
0:42:14.3 Jared Hamilton: What??
[laughter]
0:42:18.1 Jared Hamilton: Dude, total tangent here. I heard the best joke the other day on the Earth being flat, and I can get on board with this one. Someone said, "Well, most of the Earth is water, correct?" "Yeah." "Is it carbonated water?" It's like, "No." "Okay, so it's flat water then?" "Well, yeah." "Well then yes, the Earth is... The Earth is flat."
[chuckle]
0:42:40.4 Jared Hamilton: So maybe that's the context everyone thinks, like not pancake flat, but as in not carbonated.
0:42:44.4 Alex Bush: Interesting. That's an interesting... Yeah, interesting look at things.
0:42:49.2 Jared Hamilton: Yeah, total left field on that one.
[laughter]
0:42:53.7 Jared Hamilton: One of the other things I was also wanting to hear your perspective on is, and I have one of these where I go right now, for people who don't have the best set-ups, we all don't have Prime Fitness USA at an arm's reach everywhere. I am beyond jealous of what you have in your garage.
0:43:13.5 Jared Hamilton: But to use myself as an example. The gym I go to is not the gym I want to go to. I'm going to it because it is the most convenient and what will give me the highest level of adherence. Because the gym I want to go to is a good drive that way, and I know I just completely will not be able to go as much as I go right now because of the drive and just the, it's not gonna work in my schedule.
0:43:36.7 Jared Hamilton: But I have a normal Anytime Fitness like 90 seconds from my home, and it's 24 hours. So for me, there's not a single reason I can't have a consistent training schedule, but because it's a normal commercial gym, it does not have... It doesn't even have a lap pull-down machine in this, so we're getting creative with cables and stuff.
0:43:57.3 Jared Hamilton: But for those that are doing their protocols and their plans and places that don't have the best equipment, do you have thoughts on how to approach that with still getting great results?
0:44:09.8 Alex Bush: Yeah, so oftentimes I will speak to being more voluminous with the exercises that you do have. So you're lessening your exercise selection, but you're increasing the quantity of the exercises that you can do or that you can execute well. And so it becomes something where it may be a little bit boring relative to having all the great equipment around you and being able to have all these different types of approaches and targeting the tissue in different ways and so on and so forth.
0:44:42.1 Alex Bush: But the reality or the best way to go about this is just getting really good at the exercises that you do have available to you, and if there's any way to change the bias of the exercise, we'll use the split squat, for example. 'Cause I think that this is probably the easiest one to understand.
0:44:56.9 Alex Bush: Is that if we have a positioning within the split squat that we're able to drive the knee forward and we're able to stay a little bit more upright with our upper body, we're able to bias the quad more. If we have a split squat where we're pushing our hips back and we're not having as much knee flexion, we're gonna have a greater bias towards those glutes.
0:45:13.0 Alex Bush: And so with those two examples, I can use the split squat with two different intents. Maybe I train legs on Monday and I train legs on Thursday, and I do a quad focused split squad on Monday, and I do a glut focused on Thursday type situation. And so getting creative in that way and being able to understand, this is where the understanding of how the muscle works and how we can set up different exercises comes in so much utilization.
0:45:41.7 Alex Bush: Because especially just coming off of 2020 and 2021 and what that all entailed, we had to get creative. We were all just stuck at home with bands and dumbbells and we had to get resourceful to create exercises that worked for us, and it wasn't overly... I'm not sure that everyone loved those training sessions, but to make progress and to still stick up with your training, you had to get resourceful.
0:46:04.1 Alex Bush: And so it's gonna be kind of the same process there, and trying to do the most with what you have is the thought process that I would go with.
0:46:14.2 Jared Hamilton: Yeah. No, I love that hat. I would agree completely, completely with that. I remember whenever "14 days to flatten the curve" was the headline, and I just knew like this is not gonna be that. But people getting resourceful was one of the... I think everyone saw it was... It was one of the things that turned into three years.
0:46:33.6 Jared Hamilton: There are some people that are still working out at home, I don't know why, but they're still working out at home. But a lot of people kept their head above water, a lot of people made great progress about... 'Cause they just said, "Well, what's still in my control? My nutrition, my mindset, and I guess I'll do some stuff with some fucking bands and push-ups." And lo and behold, a year later they lost their 60 pounds or their 50 pounds or whatever. You know?
0:46:56.3 Alex Bush: Yeah, it was a unique situation for sure.
0:47:00.5 Jared Hamilton: Yeah. But you had Prime Fitness USA in your garage.
[chuckle]
0:47:02.7 Alex Bush: Not at the beginning.
0:47:03.3 Jared Hamilton: Oh, you didn't?
0:47:05.8 Alex Bush: At the beginning I had a barbell, I had a, I had plates and then I had bands. That was what I had at the beginning.
0:47:11.7 Jared Hamilton: That's awesome.
0:47:13.1 Alex Bush: And then we got the initial... Our first order from Prime maybe two or three months into the pandemic, I would say, and then we were able to keep things outfitted from there. And yeah, I'm very fortunate with what I have in my garage for sure.
[chuckle]
0:47:26.7 Jared Hamilton: That's awesome, I love it. That's so cool. Dude, this has been so good. I really, really appreciate you doing this. This is... You're so stoic, the way that you can you explain these things.
0:47:34.7 Alex Bush: Thank you.
0:47:35.6 Jared Hamilton: 'Cause we're talking about a lot of deeper stuff, but you do such a great job at making it where it's digestible and totally, like when you say at the beginning, I can't remember if this was off the camera or on the camera, when you mentioned that you should be able to explain this stuff to a 2nd grader where, but you don't... But the person doesn't feel like you're talking down to them. And I think you do a very good job at that. It's awesome.
0:47:56.6 Alex Bush: Thank you, I appreciate that.
0:47:58.0 Jared Hamilton: So last question. What are you guys excited about right now, and what are some stuff you're working on that you're pretty pumped about?
0:48:07.6 Alex Bush: In terms of like Physique Development or anything?
0:48:10.8 Jared Hamilton: Sure, yeah, yeah. Well, anything at all. But like with the business and with what you guys are doing and things like that?
0:48:17.8 Alex Bush: I'll talk about myself first. So for myself, right now I am expanding my horizons of fitness into other realms. I grew up playing sports, as I've kinda talked about it a little bit here, and I have not really had a whole lot of athletic ventures since I stopped playing baseball in college.
0:48:38.2 Alex Bush: And so it's just been resistance training, resistance training, resistance training and adding muscle tissue, and I've been fortunate to be able to do that, and now I'm in a position where I haven't ran consistently since I was like 175, 180 pounds, and now I sit comfortably at 215 pounds. And so I'm in a situation where it's like running is a different venture now at this time of my life.
[chuckle]
0:48:58.9 Alex Bush: I'm a little bit heavier trying to run and my shins and my ankles are not well-equipped to run well. So right now I'm getting back into running, which has been a really cool and challenging venture. This is... It's a eye-opening experience as a whole. The other thing that I'm doing is that I'm getting into yoga very consistently.
0:49:19.6 Jared Hamilton: I've seen you post about that.
0:49:21.4 Alex Bush: I have found myself... So in terms of my competitive sense that I've spoken about a little bit here, I'm just very competitive in general, and so being in an environment with... I'm taking more intermediate to advanced classes because I want to be the worst one in there, honestly.
0:49:38.1 Alex Bush: I like that feeling of like I am so behind the individuals in here that I honestly may be offending them that I'm here. But I want to feel that way, so that I can, I have examples that it's possible. 'Cause I am big on the aspect of, I just want to have one person show me whatever I'm trying to do is possible, and then I'm able to use that as an example of like, I can do this as well.
0:50:02.8 Alex Bush: There's not a whole lot different between me and X person and I can also do whatever they did. And so yoga has been a really fun experience to get into because I was horrible at it, and I would say that I'm not good now, but I'm significantly better than I was when I started, and I'm much more comfortable in those different aspects. So those are the two fitness things for me that I'm digging into personally.
0:50:28.6 Alex Bush: From a Physique Development standpoint, man, it's something that we were very fortunate through 2020, 2021 and last year, to grow quite a bit, and now we're in a place where there were things within our foundation that I just kind of neglected, It was kind of one of those situations that it was, we can keep growing, I can keep working more, I'll just keep adding hours to my day and just keep working, working, working.
0:50:47.9 Alex Bush: Now we're having to pull the reins back and plug the holes in the ship that I just kinda neglected over that time frame. Which is not a fun experience, and I encourage anyone who is trying to build a business or trying to grow as a whole, that plug those holes in the ship much earlier and don't try to sweep things under the rug early on.
0:51:08.2 Alex Bush: So that's been a fun experience in a way of having gratitude that I'm able to do that, type situation. Not that it's fun and plugging holes and going back and fixing things, but having gratitude that I'm willing to do it now and didn't wait any longer than I did. Other stuff. I guess that those are the main things going on here and very fortunate to have the clients that we do and the community that we've been able to build.
0:51:38.7 Alex Bush: I think that one big project that's on the super horizon for us is that we have a training app that is not for our one-on-one clients, but it's for individuals that just want a cheaper option for training only. There will be specific like one-off programs that will be going on there in the next couple of months that I'm really excited about.
0:51:55.6 Alex Bush: There's been some demand for athletic-based programs, so like golf intensive and sports like snowboarding and these different programs that individuals have had asked for, and so I've been working with some strength conditioning coaches that I went to college with, and they're at different universities now, and so we've been constructing these programs for much longer than I'd probably like to admit, but they're almost all done.
0:52:18.8 Alex Bush: And so I'm really excited for those to come out, 'cause I think that a lot of people will benefit from that to where... 'Cause I have a lot of guys who golf on the weekends and weekdays and it's part of their work, and they don't really have a training that's benefiting them to get better at this game that they're playing consistently, they're just going in and training as they would, of just like, "I'm hitting chest on Monday and training legs never."
[laughter]
0:52:42.9 Alex Bush: So having a specific program that's gonna help them get better at golf and help them within that specific thing, I think will be tremendously helpful, so those are kind of the things going on for us right now.
0:52:55.6 Jared Hamilton: I love it, man. That's so fucking cool.
0:53:00.3 Alex Bush: Thank you.
0:53:00.3 Jared Hamilton: Tell me when you get a... If you get some jiu-jitsu ones on there.
0:53:01.1 Alex Bush: Okay.
0:53:03.3 Jared Hamilton: That is currently one of my biggest struggles personally right now, is balancing my own training with jiu-jitsu because of how recovery intensive jiu-jitsu is with like, not like muscle belly, is I'm talking about ligaments and tendons and joints not working and getting crushed by like two to 400 pound men and all this crazy stuff. So it's a whole different animal. [chuckle]
0:53:26.7 Alex Bush: I would say the clients who I have who practice jiu-jitsu on a regular basis, I just have them... They have a lot of yoga in their protocols, to be honest with you.
0:53:36.5 Jared Hamilton: Yeah? Really?
0:53:38.6 Alex Bush: Yeah, a lot.
0:53:38.6 Jared Hamilton: Nice. There's a... What do they call it? I've been seeing around the space there's like yoga... Jiu-jitsu specific yoga that models certain positions like, "Hey, you get put in this really weird upside down spot here, let's practice it right here," and stuff like that. But to be honest, I've never really even thought about doing yoga like ongoing for jiu-jitsu. That's interesting.
0:54:02.1 Alex Bush: Yeah. I highly encourage, for sure.
0:54:03.4 Jared Hamilton: So that makes it such logical sense, I feel like an idiot for not even thinking of that. [chuckle]
0:54:08.0 Alex Bush: Well, honestly, 'cause it will just make you more sore, and then you're gonna be like, "Well, I wanna resistance train at some point." And so the transition is gonna be the hardest part.
0:54:15.5 Jared Hamilton: Fair, fair. I love it. Where can people find you? 'Cause I know there's a lot going on right now, and whether it be from an education standpoint or people are like, "Well, I think I just wanna work with you." Where can people find you guys at?
0:54:30.1 Alex Bush: So for Instagram, you can find me @alexbush__. The individual who has "Alex Bush" is not kind and will not sell me the name, but whatever.
[laughter]
0:54:37.6 Alex Bush: I still hold that near and dear to my heart that he will never sell that to me. I inquire every six months. But you can find me there. And then on YouTube, you can find us @physiquedevelopment, that is probably our most common platform, my favorite, honestly. And then we have our podcast, which is also the Physique Development Podcast, and you can find us on TikTok, @alexbush__. Again, somebody else has Alex Bush.
[laughter]
0:55:05.4 Jared Hamilton: Probably the same person.
[laughter]
0:55:08.0 Alex Bush: It's a very common name. If there was one thing I could change, I would like a little bit more of a unique attempt at my first name from my parents, but yeah. So that's where you guys can find me. And if you are wanting to work with myself or you guys just have any questions, I'm big on email, so you can just alex@physiquedevelopment.com, shoot me an email with any questions that you may have following this episode, or anything at all, I'm more than willing to help.
0:55:32.5 Jared Hamilton: Beautiful. And I will make sure we'll have all that in the show notes and all that good stuff. So dude, I appreciate this, this has been a pleasure. Thank you again for coming on.
0:55:39.9 Alex Bush: Absolutely.
0:55:42.5 Jared Hamilton: And we're back. Thank you once again for tuning in to today's episode of Dieting from the Inside Out, because we know outer work without inner work just doesn't work. For real though, I really, really appreciate you tuning into today's episode. If you stuck around for this whole thing, I know you got a lot out of this.
0:55:56.8 Jared Hamilton: So be sure, number one, hit up Alex, tell him that you heard him on the podcast and that you really appreciated it and what value you got. The other thing is this, be sure and share these episodes. Here's the thing, guys, I love doing this podcast, I do it completely for free. I put a ton of time, energy, money, the whole nine yards into the show because I really wanna help you.
0:56:17.2 Jared Hamilton: My one ask is to share the show. Whether that be share it with a friend if you got value out of it, because don't keep this knowledge to yourself, but also if you could even share it on your stories or things like that, it would mean a ton to me. That's my one ask.
0:56:31.6 Jared Hamilton: But otherwise, I do have a lot of stuff in the description area for you depending on where you're at, so I'll just kinda go through it. If you are not following me on your other smaller platform, like the small... Like the shorter form platforms, like TikTok and Instagram, be sure and do that. If you like this kind of content in your feed, it'll change everything when you start putting better content in your daily scrolls. Be sure and do that. Links are below.
0:56:52.6 Jared Hamilton: Also, if you are not inside my Facebook community, what the fuck are you doing? [chuckle] For real though, I think everyone to be successful needs a home base. I totally understand how this game goes with how crazy you feel or how lonely this journey is, like you decide to change your life and all of a sudden half of your friends are like, "Oh, Diana's on her diet kick again," or your family is like, "Oh, are we eating healthy?" Or whatever. It's...
0:57:15.8 Jared Hamilton: And a lot of times people don't know how hurtful those things are, and it's so powerful getting around a group of people who get it. Where you're not alone, where everyone is on the same journey and totally for free. So you should definitely go join my Facebook community, it's called Fat Loss Simplified. The link, you can either search that or the link is in the description. And if you like this kind of content, I put so many resources inside that community, it's completely for free. We'll let you right in.
0:57:44.0 Jared Hamilton: But I put a ton of trainings, ton of value in there, and if you like this kind of content, you'll love it in there. Be sure and join if you haven't, 'cause I'm telling you, having the right circle is pivotal to get to the success you're trying to get to in this world of transformation, okay?
0:57:57.0 Jared Hamilton: Next, if you are new and you're like, "I don't even know where to freaking start with all of this stuff," in the world of training and transformation and all this stuff, I have a completely free course just for you for this exact reason. If you're listening to this episode and you're like, "Man, I wish I could have some of these workouts that like Alex is talking about."
0:58:15.3 Jared Hamilton: Now, Alex didn't make the ones I'm about to say, but if you're listening to this episode and you're like, "Man, I wish I had those kind of workouts that are for my goals and that are really effective," I have these kind of workouts inside that free course that I told you about. It's called The Fat Loss Checklist. I can't remember what day it's on, it's a five-day course, it's through your email.
0:58:32.4 Jared Hamilton: But on the workout or the training day, I have a full... I think it's my Minimalist Fat Loss Manual, where it's workouts that are completely designed to, no matter where you're working on, I have to workouts, tutorial videos, the whole nine yards of the kind of workouts that are gonna benefit you the most, and it's totally for free. So just go through the Fat Loss Checklist, it'll change your life.
0:58:52.4 Jared Hamilton: I've had tens of thousands of people go through it, and people go through it and they're like, "I literally can't believe you did this for free. I can't believe like how much simpler this game of fat loss is." So you'll wanna go through that. It will literally change your life. And if it doesn't, it was free, you're not out anything, but some time. I'll leave that down there as well.
0:59:10.9 Jared Hamilton: What else we got? Also be sure and subscribe to the YouTube because all these episodes are on YouTube now, and if you like to watch your episodes, definitely go check that out, subscribe there. And then also there is a option for coaching at the link in the description. If it's one of those things for you where...
0:59:29.3 Jared Hamilton: Where you could really use some higher levels of accountability, support and someone walking you through things, designing workouts just the ones we're talking about, making sure your nutrition is in check, stopping you from sabotaging so you don't ruin everything and yo-yo again.
0:59:42.3 Jared Hamilton: If having a higher level of that kind of help is something that you're interested in or wanna kinda see how we do our thing when it comes to coaching, definitely apply at the link in the description, I'll leave a special calendar link down there. Because like I always say, there is a special place in my heart for my podcast listeners, 'cause it takes a special kind of person to sit here and listen to me talk or interview people for like an hour.
1:00:04.0 Jared Hamilton: So number one is that link will put you to the front of the list, so like as in if during the month we are getting close on how many people we can accept, 'cause we only accept a certain amount of people per month into coaching to keep quality high. If we're like from a weight list perspective, the podcast listeners get top priority. So you'll definitely wanna schedule schedule that at the link in the description. There's a special calendar link there.
1:00:26.8 Jared Hamilton: This way you can schedule a call with my team. We can learn more about you, we can make sure that coaching is the right fit on both sides. Then we can walk you through how our entire program works. That way you have a full understanding, you feel good about things, and then we can answer your questions there.
1:00:41.6 Jared Hamilton: And then because you're coming from the podcast, I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of free shit if you get accepted into coaching. So it's pretty dope. So that link is down there as well. But I know I just kind of verbally puked all over you, I just wanna meet everyone where they're at, that are listening to the show.
1:00:55.5 Jared Hamilton: But otherwise, I appreciate you tuning in and it means a ton to me. So thank you so much. I'm always here if you need anything. I will talk to you next time.
[music]
The Dichotomy of Optimal and Practical Training:
Alex finds that the big driving force of balancing optimal and practical training is about meeting the individual where they are at—personally. No matter how deep his knowledge of training becomes, Alex maintains the ability to scale back to the core of what it all means and how to explain training in an easy-to-understand way.
As a coach, he finds being able to approach clients at their level is essential to making them comfortable with the topic of training.
He often sees in the training education space on social media that people will talk over others, with the intention of establishing themselves as an authority on the subject. Alex, however, has the opposite approach—he wants everyone to feel welcome and know that everything can be broken down so they can learn, take that knowledge, and move forward.
Alex and Jared both find that, when it comes to knowledge about training, as you learn more and more you almost start to feel as if you know nothing because there is so much depth to training. This is part of why Alex really focuses on meeting clients where they are and making information digestible.
What Got Alex Interested in Deep Training Knowledge:
When Alex was in high school, he had a really great teacher and strength coach. His coach really impressed upon him the knowledge of what training can do—and be—for a person when done correctly versus incorrectly.
His coach was excellent at teaching proper technique when it came to strength training—starting his students with foundational knowledge on how to properly perform various exercises.
When Jared first started working as a personal trainer, he found that many high school coaches had an attitude of “as long as the bar gets up,” but this mentality doesn’t teach appropriate technique. He remembers having a kid come in once who was naturally very strong—squatting around 500 lbs in high school—but his form was not good. Jared was able to teach him proper technique, further increasing his squat numbers, and getting him even better results while keeping him much safer.
Jared and Alex both find that many people lack a fundamental understanding of body mechanics and it can be hard to get them to step back and learn.
Alex is the type of person that is very obsessed with the small details in all areas of his life—strength training, business, etc. That dedication to the nuance associated with training and his early experiences with strength training are what led him to gain such a deep knowledge of strength training.
The Mindset for Strength Training:
The first thing someone needs to know, Alex says, is that more is not better. He finds that oftentimes a person gets into the gym and is only familiar with 4-5 exercises, so they just focus on doing those—and end up going way overboard on volume.
In reality, they are just moving through space and burning calories.
While there may be a time and a place for this—like someone who is just trying to get in the habit of going to the gym—to really see changes in one’s body, a progression needs to take place.
Alex finds it necessary to get to a place of understanding how the body functions, what the exercises are actually doing, rep quality, and getting to a place of challenging oneself.
A person who has never been in the gym—and has no experience or knowledge of how to train, what failure feels like, etc.—is often lost because they have never had any guidance. This is where he believes in-person and online coaching can excel in providing knowledge and instilling confidence to know when to keep pushing themselves.
More is Not Better:
Jared sees a lot of people in his coaching program who come from the “more is better” mindset.
Before starting with coaching, they were not training optimally. They then learn basic fundamentals and feel like—because their workouts are now shorter and more optimized—they aren’t doing enough.
Alex finds that when an individual has the association of difficulty being associated with “how heavy I’m breathing and how much I’m sweating,” it is difficult for them to understand that there are other metrics that are being tracked.
It is also difficult for them to understand that their body composition is not going to change based on how much they are sweating.
What they really need to focus on is transitioning to a situation where they can focus on getting stronger, feeling muscular tension, and being challenged within the set itself.
Recording your exercises, comparing them to examples of that exercise with proper form—perhaps from the Physique Development YouTube Channel 😉—and assessing where you are or aren’t doing said exercises in a similar fashion can help you continue to progress.
These are much more important to focus on rather than simply sweating and breathing heavily.
Jared has had the experience of most people being stuck in an old-fashioned mentality of training where 2 hours is better than 1 hour and so on, when the reality is quite different.
What Makes a Good Workout:
For Alex, one of his big drivers is, “live to train another day.”
He says we are not wanting to walk out of a session in a place where we are immobile. You should not be celebrating doing a workout one day and still having trouble moving a week later. If that is happening, adjustments need to be made to the training.
Next, are we getting better from session to session?
If you are just starting, you will have to establish a baseline—but as you progress in your training, you need to track from week to week what changes are occurring.
Are you becoming stronger? Are you feeling more or less fatigued? What, intrinsically, in our body do we feel?
Do you feel like you pushed yourself? Did you pick an appropriate weight? Were the rest periods necessary, or when you stood up did you feel like you could go right back under the bar and do more?
If you are feeling like you could go right back and do another set, that is a good indicator that you should add some reps or increase the weight.
These factors are a good place to start when determining whether or not you had a good workout.
One last thing is whether or not you were focused in the training session.
Were you becoming distracted by scrolling through social media or FaceTiming your friends during your workout? Or did you truly spend your time focusing on yourself and getting better at what you were trying to accomplish?
Jared admittedly struggles with focus during his rest periods. He is taking slightly longer rest periods currently and often finds he has the desire to hop on Instagram instead of focusing on whatever is coming next in the workout.
What Helps Focus:
Alex is big on pacing (walking around) during his training sessions. Sometimes it is necessary to sit down and rest, but when he doesn’t need to do that he will pace.
He also finds visualization helpful. Seeing yourself accomplishing what you are about to do—and ingraining that image in your mind—helps overcome potential mental blocks, as well as keep distractions at bay.
This can be especially useful when someone is approaching a weight they have never handled before.
When a person approaches a weight they have not done with the attitude of “I hope I can do this,” as soon as something feels ‘off’ they will often just rack the weight and not go again—but it is often just a mental barrier. Their mind is telling them that they can’t do this.
Lastly, Alex also finds that focusing on breathing and getting back to nasal breathing—not just huffing and puffing—in addition to pacing and visualization helps him focus during rest periods.
Jared points out that there are numerous studies in sports that support the benefits of visualization.
Training to Failure:
There was a recent meta-analysis reviewed by MASS Research Review, where they looked at self-assessed RPE (rate of perceived exertion). This study found that the participants were picking about 53% of their 10-rep max—thinking they were hitting their 10-rep max.
When you are talking about reaching true muscular failure multiple times in a training session, the likelihood that you are going to be ready to train again in a few days is pretty slim.
However, if the average gym-goer is only reaching 53% of their true capacity (while thinking they’re at 100%), then Alex would rather push them to reach ‘failure’ much more often because they need to get closer to failure than 53% in order to sufficiently stimulate muscle growth.
This means that the idea of pushing to failure varies by individual.
For someone who is newer to strength training—or someone who doesn’t have a good idea of what true failure is—pushing them more may be appropriate so they can truly reap the hypertrophy benefits they are likely seeking.
Tangibly speaking, Alex likes to take a couple of sets to failure during training sessions. For example, he won’t take many sets of squats to failure—but if he is training biceps, it’s likely he will be taking every set to failure.
Failure will also depend on the exercises chosen and the individual.
Jared notes that you need to think about the ramifications from an injury perspective when thinking about going to failure.
For example, mechanical failure on a deadlift could lead to a lower back injury—but on something like a lateral raise, mechanical failure may just be not getting to 90 degrees. It is a much safer exercise to perform to failure.
How to Pick the Right Weight:
With his clients, Alex approaches the first week as a baseline establishment week—where the focus is on finding a place where you feel challenged.
For example, if you are supposed to do 3 sets of 8: you try a weight and if you think you can go up, then the next set you try a slightly heavier weight—or if you think the next weight may be too heavy, you keep the weight the same.
If you hit all your sets, the following week you would try a heavier weight.
You get into self-assessment of how you are handling the weight.
Don’t be afraid of getting into a situation where you go up in weight and only get 7 out of 8 reps because this information is good to have.
From that point, you can see if a short break allows you to get that 8th rep or if you have reached a wall and need to work on it for a couple of weeks to get all 8 reps.
Alex finds that always wanting to get that extra weight on—while maintaining the movement quality—is important.
If you select a heavier weight but cut-off part of the movement, this signals that you actually need to go down in load. This comes back to the importance of filming yourself while training and reviewing your movement quality.
Alex himself experiences sessions where he thinks he did as much as he possibly could on an exercise, but then watches the video he took on his phone and realizes he actually didn’t push himself enough.
He believes that a lot of people fall short here because they are scared to film themselves or they are limited by the rules of their gym (many large chains do not allow you to film in the gym).
Having a good training partner is another good tool because you can push and compete with each other.
Women and Weight Training:
Alex says there is a lack of understanding when it comes to the development of muscle tissue.
He finds that, oftentimes, since one of the places many women carry fat is through their legs, they don’t want to add muscle—not understanding that they can lose fat and build muscle and like the look of their legs even more.
It’s the same situation for other parts of the body.
You will reap more benefits for your time by lifting heavier weights versus doing 20 reps that aren’t really challenging you. The heavier weights will lead to the physique you want.
When You Don’t Have The Best Set-Up:
Alex will usually narrow exercise selection, but increase the quantity of the exercises you can do.
Getting really good at the exercises you can do or adjusting the bias on the exercise is a good way to utilize the same exercises and make progress.
Trying to do the most with what you have is key.
What Alex and Physique Development are Working On:
Alex is currently expanding his horizons in fitness. He is getting back into running and learning yoga.
Yoga has been challenging. Alex was horrible when he started—and says he is “not good” now—but he is enjoying learning.
Physique Development has continued to expand in the online training space and is now working on revamping its training app in the direction of making more sport-specific training programs available to non-1-on-1 clients.
CONNECT WITH ALEX:
‣ Website: https://physiquedevelopment.com
‣ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PhysiqueDevelopment
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‣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexbush__
‣ Email: alex@physiquedevelopment.com
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