Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:00

Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast, episode 42. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:06

Hi, everybody. So, since this is episode 42, maybe we should title it The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:13

Okay, I actually have a thing about 42. So, I was on academic team in high school, and if we didn't know the answer, we would just answer either 42 or E.B. White.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:23

Oh, yeah. How often were those correct answers?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:26

One time, it was correct.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:29

Yeah. Yeah. And if you're not familiar with that, it's just from a nerdy book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So it might be worth reading.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:37

I'm going to be honest. I've never read it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:39

That's really disappointing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 0:40

Okay. I'm really disappointed you haven't read all the Stephen King books I have.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 0:45

So our actual topic this week. Anyway. Is talking about the different obstacles and limitations that may come up while lifting weights and can also apply to like some body weight things or just kind of moving your body, things like that. And then we'll also cover our myth of the week, which is that building muscle is the best way to burn fat. Hmm. Have you heard this?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05

I've seen it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06

We'll talk about it. But first up, new news.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09

New news.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:10

So the first piece of news is not necessarily new, but it's interesting, I guess, kind of restarting this year. So New York City has a rule that makes their residents split out organic waste from like normal trash. Organic waste being like food waste, food-soiled paper, like the example I saw was greasy pizza boxes and stuff like that, and yard waste. They process, when this is in effect, they process 100 to 150 tons of organic waste in a day and turn it into high-quality soil.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:39

That's wild.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:41

Yeah. So it goes up to like 250 tons a day when it's leaf season, basically.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:46

Man, I don't know why people rake their leaves. I just like to let them rot in the backyard.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:50

We should start adding them to our compost bin.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:53

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:53

Or at least throw them in a- I like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:54

Seeing them on the

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:55

Ground. Um, I guess they had to pause this program for a little bit last year. I'm not sure exactly why, but they're going to start it up again this year, 2026.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:03

Yeah. This seems like a good thing every town should do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:06

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:07

Um, the thing I like about composting over, over like recycling, like recycling actually takes a lot of energy to recycle and like some things you can't recycle and it gets kind of confusing on like what things are recyclable. So I think, um, I think I read at some point, like a lot of the things you think you're recycling just actually end up back in the trash.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:25

Yeah, it makes sense.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 2:25

But, like, the things that you can compost, like, why would you throw those in a garbage bag anyway? Because that shit's going to compost in a garbage bag and now it's sitting in a garbage bag in a landfill. Right. Where it could actually be useful.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 2:37

I guess there was also a point about the food that sits in a landfill releases methane, which is like an ozone layer issue. But the thing about New York's program that makes them unique, because there are some other cities that do, like, this organic waste program. I think one we've experienced is in Milwaukee. Yeah. All the restaurants have, like, a separate organic waste bin, stuff like that. But the one that's unique about New York's is they will give soil back to the residents for free that comes from the program. So they're hoping that gets more people on board.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:04

That's what I want my tax dollars used for. Yeah. Fucking useful shit.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:07

Exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:08

Yeah. But if you don't have something like this in your town, you can buy a compost bin, which is what we did.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:13

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:14

So last year we tried to do above ground gardening because our soil sucks. And so we bought these huge above ground gardening. Beds. Beds. Yeah. Yeah, and they're freaking huge, and apparently, like, our preliminary math wasn't very good because we had no idea how much soil we'd actually need. Yeah. So, we've been trying to compost a bunch of soil for the last year, for hopefully this year we can fill up more than one.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:41

Yeah, you basically just turn them into compost bins until they are soil.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:46

Yeah. But it's really easy. You just kind of chuck it in a compost bin and turn it once or twice a day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 3:51

Yeah. We keep a handy sticker that shows us like where to put in, you know, what kind of things in the compost to make it. Yeah. Make it work.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 3:59

Yeah. And you can do it with your cardboard boxes. Like if you're getting deliveries and stuff, you can use cardboard boxes. We throw in parchment paper. Lots of stuff.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:08

Yeah. So anyway, composting is pretty cool. It turns into something actually useful. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:13

And then you can grow vegetables.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:15

There you go. So next up, there is a Dutch company called Those Vegan Cowboys.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:20

I really like that name.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:21

Me too. It's really cool. But they're making an animal-free casein protein, which is the protein that's responsible in cheese specifically for like that melt and that stretch.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 4:30

Yeah. If you've tried making vegan cheese before, getting that stretch without it getting like sticky, you know, like a lot of the store-bought vegan shredded cheeses you get, they have that like really sticky coconut oil quality to them. Yeah. But even if you try to make it on your own, it's really hard to get that stretch without any other unpleasant textures. Like, the closest we've gotten was using tapioca flour. But it's still just not the same.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 4:54

Yeah, not quite. So, hopefully this will be better. They're expecting to launch in the U.S. this year, 2026. So, we'll be looking out for that. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:02

Those vegan cowboys are coming to the U.S. Very exciting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:06

And then last up, yet another precision fermentation story. We've had a lot of these lately, but it's, like, the most fast-moving updates kind of in the vegan nutrition space.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:15

Yeah, it's like the AI of vegan food space.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:18

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:18

There were, like, probably 15 other stories I saw this week, and these are just the ones we narrowed it down to.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:24

Yeah, they're making all kinds of stuff. A lot of it is focused on, like, protein and other, like, fats and specific nutrients and stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:30

Yeast is cool. We like talking about yeast here.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:32

Yeah. So this one is a Swedish precision fermentation startup called Melt & Marble. They recently got approval to sell their animal-free fat in the U.S. They also have like a cosmetic fat that's animal-free.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:48

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 5:49

And they said basically it's like solid at room temperature, but then when it touches your skin, it melts, I guess.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 5:54

Yeah. I was reading through that, and I think a lot of people don't realize how many cosmetic products have animal things in them, which is kind of disgusting. Yeah. So this could be pretty game-changing for that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:07

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:07

Because why should cosmetics have animal parts?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:09

Yeah, I agree. The product for food is going to be called Melty Marble, and it can be used in recipes and stuff where the plant-based fat options don't really behave the way you want, because it is still a saturated fat, but it's not as saturated as something like the coconut oil or the palm oil.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:27

Yeah, I think this is really interesting, especially since you mentioned palm oil, which a lot of people have a lot of moral objections to. If this could replace palm oil in a lot of vegan options, that would be pretty neat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:37

Yeah, cool. So that's it for the news. Let's go ahead and get into the main segment here. So we're going to kind of talk about some limitations you might come across when you're lifting weights. So we'll kind of identify maybe what the limitation is, talk about if it's a limitation that you should do something about or just kind of work through, and then what you might do to be able to overcome that limitation.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 6:57

You should just always push through, right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 6:59

Maybe, not always. No, I don't know. We'll find out. i think the most common one that probably comes up for most people are issues with grip so you're doing like heavy workouts and the weight is slipping out of your hands and that's what causes you to like end your set it's like i can't hold on to this anymore yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:18

This this is one for me that happens a

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:20

Lot yeah this is mostly prominent during pulling exercises but it could also be something where you're holding like dumbbells and trying to do weights yeah so um there are a couple situations that you might want to try to either fix or improve or change something for your grip. So some options there are changing your grip. So if it's something like deadlift, where you're pulling it from the ground, there are a couple other grip options. So instead of grabbing it like with both hands in the same direction overhand, you can use something called a mixed grip, where one hand is like palm facing forward, the other hand's palm facing back.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 7:55

Okay, yeah, I've seen that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 7:56

Yeah, it's a much stronger grip position. You don't want to just switch to it with heavy weights because you can, you know, hurt yourself basically. But there's also with mixed grip over a long period of time, there's a slightly higher risk of like messing up your bicep tendon because you're exposing it with the hand that's underhand.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:12

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:13

So I actually deadlifted mixed grip for a long time. And, you know, I ended up with issues with my bicep tendon. I don't know if it was related to that, but I, you know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:23

So you don't do that anymore.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:24

No, I don't do that anymore. And it was on the arm that was underhand. So it's definitely a possibility that's what caused mine. But, you know, who knows? But a lot of people do that. And, you know, most of the time it's fine, but it just has a slightly higher risk of causing some issues there. Especially if you're doing heavy deadlifts normally and then you just like switch to doing mixed grip. I'll see a lot of people like online who like do their whole warm up with regular grip and then like switch to mixed grip. And it's like, OK, that's not really you don't want to do that. It's probably like, again, it's probably fine most of the time, but not a great idea.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 8:53

Now, if you were doing the mixed grip, do you do you switch which ones over and which ones under?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 8:59

Sometimes, but I never did. And sometimes people don't like to. Like, I kept my stronger hand over hand and then the other hand over hand.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:06

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I just sort of assumed you'd try to do it 50-50.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:10

Yeah. Some people try that, but then you kind of have to train it that way. You have to get them both used to doing it if you do that. Okay. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:17

I've never done any of those.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:18

All right. The other option is something called a hook grip. It's very uncomfortable for the most part. You, like, tuck your thumb under and you're pinning your thumb between the bar and your hand. No. That's actually the basically almost mandatory grip for sports that don't allow straps. So something like Olympic lifting, they'll almost always use a hook grip.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:38

Interesting.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:39

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:40

Yeah, I have really strong little fingers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:41

Yeah, you can use finger tape to make it a little better. A lot of Olympic people do that. But, yeah, it's definitely something to get used to. And if you don't have to do it, I wouldn't do it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 9:49

I have such, like, short fingers. I feel like that would be real bad for me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 9:54

Yeah. Those are mostly useful for things where you're pulling from the ground, like the deadlift or something like that. For other things, you might consider using chalk. So you've seen chalk it, like, if you watch the Olympics or anything, you see gymnasts use chalk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:08

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:08

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:09

Okay. I tried using chalk for the first time, what, like two weeks ago? because you were like, I used to always wear the gloves.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:17

Yeah, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:17

Because I like my little gloves.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:19

Yeah, a lot of people like gloves.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:20

Yeah, but you were like, try this chalk because I was having trouble like really holding on to the bar thing when I was doing my lat pulldowns. Right, yeah. And holy shit, chalk works.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:29

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:30

I had no idea.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:31

Yeah. Chalk is basically allowed in any competition or whatever. It's actually another thing that's almost mandatory for a lot of them. It doesn't really like fix your grip. What chalk does is it helps with sweaty hands and kind of increases the friction.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:44

Wow. You had to tell everyone I have sweaty hands.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 10:46

We all have slightly sweaty hands. It's not like your hands are sweating. They are. It pulls all the moisture out of your hands.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 10:54

But you can buy like the liquid chalk or they have like powder chalk. But you have this little bag of chalk that I like.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:02

Yeah. Some gyms actually say they don't allow chalk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:05

Because it makes everything dirty.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:07

It makes everything dirty. But liquid chalk is, most of the gyms that say no chalk, liquid chalk is fine. Really? Because it doesn't leave much residue. It doesn't make a mess.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:15

I don't like the smell of it. Whenever you use it, I'm like, I want to run away.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:19

Smells a little weird. But they come in tiny bottles. You can like stick it in your pocket. And you kind of spread it on like a little serum and then it dries up in just a couple of seconds into chalk.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:28

Yeah. And like another benefit is that I can tell when you've been using chalk because the handrail going down to the basement will be like really, really rough and high friction. And so it's a safety thing. I didn't know that. Yeah. You're making our house safer. There you go. With your little trail of chalk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:47

But yeah, like you mentioned, so there was the liquid. And you can also get kind of chalk in a bag. It's like you see baseball pitchers kind of use.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:53

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:54

Where it's just, you know, you slam the bag on your hand a few times and chalk just puffs.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 11:58

Out of it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 11:58

But then there's also block chalk, which is the cheapest option usually. It's just a big block of chalk. You kind of rub it on your hands and then you keep it in a bowl. I've got a cool, like, metallic 3D printed skull magnetic bowl that you got me that sticks to the squat rack and just holds chalk. So it's really handy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:16

I know. It's like the coolest find I've ever found on Etsy. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:19

So, yeah, chalk is probably the next step up to try to help your grip without really changing anything. If you can't do a grip change and the chalk is still not to the point where you're not losing grip anymore, the next step up is to just go to straps. There are a couple different kinds, but the general idea of straps are you have some kind of strap, right, that's wrapped around your wrist.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:42

You don't say.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:43

Wrapped around your wrist, but then you also wrap it around the bar. So it's basically like this thing attached to your wrist is what's holding the bar, not your grip.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 12:50

Like the Versa Gripp straps?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 12:51

The Versa Gripp straps. I like those. Yeah. But there's also a kind of really like really wrap it around the bar. Yeah. You can't really use those for like an Olympic lift where you're going to put it overhead because then it's all tied up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:01

Yeah, that'd be pretty dangerous.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:02

That's actually why you don't use straps in Olympic lifting basically at all. You learn the hook grip. But yeah. So you have straps you can wrap all the way around the bar. You have something like Versagrips where it's just easy on off. You kind of grip it and secure it. And then in that case, your fingers are just kind of like hooks, but the actual holding of the bar is done by the strap. This is a good option in a lot of situations, like anything really where you're pulling heavy and you're not prepping for like a powerlifting competition or you're not a competitive Olympic weightlifter or whatever. You should be using straps for like almost everything pulling related on your actual heavy sets.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 13:33

Yeah, if you can't hold with your hands.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 13:34

Right. Yeah. And there's a lot of stigma around this. People don't like to use straps, mainly because, you know, if you're using straps, your grip doesn't necessarily get quite as much stronger from doing that exercise. But I think the thing to remember is if you're like doing a lat pull down or a row or something like that, you're trying to train your back and your back is always going to be quite a bit stronger than your grip. So if you're doing these exercises, like you're doing a heavy row and the reason you have to stop rowing is because you can't hold onto the thing anymore. but your back could still do, like, you know, 20 more reps. Yeah. Then you've got a problem, and you should probably fix it with straps.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:09

Yeah, your hand shouldn't be the limiting factor.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:11

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:12

I would say, like, with straps... If you're going to be buying those, really look at what materials they're made out of because vegan ones are kind of hard to find.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:20

Yeah, a lot of them will be leather. Yeah. But there are a lot of canvas and then the VersaGrip ones are. Pleather. Like some kind of really fancy material, but it's all composite synthetic stuff.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:30

Yeah, they work really well.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:31

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 14:33

Do you have any advice on if you're willing to like do straps in the meantime, but you really want to bulk up your hand strength so that you don't need them?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 14:41

Yeah. And I think this is what most people should do is you should use straps for your heavy pulling stuff and then just do forearm exercises separately. Like I do them at the end of my workouts. I'll do usually wrist curls, just do wrist curls with a barbell or a dumbbell. You can also do wrist extensions. You can do those little crusher things you can buy off Amazon, probably even have them at Walmart where you just kind of squeeze it a lot to train your grip. So there are a lot of different ways where you can train your forearms and your grip strength directly without messing up your deadlifts or your rows or whatever. But if you want to keep it simple and you really don't necessarily care if you get a lot stronger in something like a deadlift and you just want to keep your grip up to date with whatever you can pull, then don't use straps. But you just have to accept that that's probably going to limit your progress with like your back or your posterior chain or whatever it is you're trying to train.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:32

Really depends on your goals then.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:34

Yeah, exactly. And there are a lot of people who are just like, I want to be able to hold on to whatever I pick up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:39

Yeah. Like if you're going to fall from a building, like it happens in movies all the time. Yeah. You want to be able to hold on to that ledge. Right. Because you're not going to have a strap.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:47

That's true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:48

Or chalk.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:49

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:49

I'm fucked because I have sweaty hands, apparently.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 15:52

Yeah. Well, you can try rock climbing. If you take rock climbing on as a hobby, you'll get really strong grip strength.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 15:58

I'm still going to have sweaty hands, man.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:00

No, they use chalk. Rock climbers use chalk. Oh, on the building.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:03

If I fall off a building.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:03

On the building.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:04

Yeah I don't know yeah it's tricky can't go on top of roofs mm-hmm

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:11

All right, so that pretty much covers, like, grip limitations and how you might want to deal with those. The next thing we can talk about is if you're trying to do a movement and you can't, like, safely or comfortably get into the right position for the movement.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:24

Do you have any examples?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:25

Yeah, so this could be something like a barbell squat. Like, say you go to do a barbell squat and you start to do it and you're like, oh, this hurts already. Or it's just, like, really uncomfortable or I can't balance and you're, like, tipping over or something like that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:39

Yeah, no, I have had this. My squats are really bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:42

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:43

I can't do squats properly. And I've tried like all the other things they tell you to do.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:47

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 16:49

So anyway, what would have your advice been to me?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 16:51

Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff with squats, first of all, that like your positioning has to do a lot with like the length of your upper leg compared to the length of your torso. Yeah. But then, you know.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:00

I have short torso, long legs, so. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:03

Yeah. Most of the time that would mean like you might have to bend over a lot more. Yeah. But also, you know, you've got like the scoliosis thing going on and that adds some other complications to it. So, but yeah, in general, so you just think about it in terms of maybe, maybe some people could just start with a lower weight and they'd be able to get in position a little better.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:21

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:21

Because maybe you're trying to do, squats isn't actually a great example because in my opinion, weight actually helps you get into position for squats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:28

Yeah, that's what you always told me.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:31

But with something else.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 17:32

They'll push you down. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 17:33

But with something else, like maybe you're thinking like heavy dumbbell bench press or something. Like if you get really heavy dumbbells and it's just awkward to get into position and or you just can't get into position because they're way too heavy, then that's a situation where I just switched to lower weights. So I would like go to lower weight dumbbells, do higher reps, and then you're able to get into position fine because the weight's not super heavy, but you can still get a good workout in by just increasing the reps. Something else you can do is just try other variants. So like with the squat, your main goal with a squat is to work your quads, like your upper leg and some of your glutes. So then you can switch that out for something else that trains the quad instead. So you could do something like step-ups or you could do split squats, which is still a squat, but sometimes a little easier to get into position for. You could do just like walking lunges. That's a quadricep exercise. Or you just do leg extensions and just use a machine for that. So just because you can't do barbell squats doesn't mean you can't train your quads. Right. There's a lot of options there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:29

And like if you had trouble with dumbbell bench press, maybe you go to a barbell bench press.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:34

Yeah, exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:34

It's like if your problem is getting the dumbbells like safely, getting safely on your back with the dumbbells.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:40

Yeah, exactly. It's a great example too. And there's, I mean, most people will end up in a situation where with shoulder press or bench press, it's like going to be annoying to get the dumbbells into position and you want to kind of graduate.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 18:49

Or sit back up without dropping your weights on the floor.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 18:52

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you have an adjustable, you don't really want to drop those. So there are a lot of situations where switching to barbell is safer and more effective.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 19:01

Yeah. Going back on the squat, though, I will say there are a couple things that when I was having trouble doing them properly. Yeah. I looked into. So they basically have like those, the shoes with the heel. Yeah. That are supposed to help you kind of get into a better position. Yeah. But then they also have wedges that you can buy, either like a long one or like two shorter ones that you put behind your shoes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 19:24

Yeah, specifically for a squat, a lot of people will find it easier to get into position if you can elevate the heels. Yeah. So sometimes that's just an ankle flexibility thing and you can kind of work on your ankle flexibility. But even if you have good ankle flexibility, elevating your heel helps you get deeper in the squat and kind of get a better position. So a couple of ways to do that, like you said, are to get squat shoes or shoes with an elevated heel. You'll see them probably called weightlifting shoes online. You can also get a wedge like you were talking about. You just stand on it. Your heels are a little elevated. And then a lot of people will just do kind of like a budget wedge option where you just grab a couple of weight plates and stand on top of them with your heels while you do squats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:02

Which, like, I don't know. If you're lifting a lot, that could be potentially kind of dangerous if it shifts,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:08

Right? If it shifts, exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:09

If it shifts. Yeah. I don't know. I'm a very catastrophizer thinker. Yeah. I'm always like, what's the worst thing that could happen here? Because I think I watched too many Final Destination movies. I'm like, oh, what if the wind blew at the exact right moment when I'm at my most vulnerable and then the plate shift and then I can't walk again? That would suck.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:29

Yeah. So that's a good reason to get weightlifting shoes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:31

Or a wedge.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:32

Or a wedge. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:33

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 20:34

Yeah. There's another one that's like maybe if you're doing deadlifts and you find it a little awkward, make sure you're not wearing shoes with an elevated heel. So a lot of people like to deadlift in just socks to try to take out any of that weird positioning. So if you have a day where you're doing squats and deadlifts, like I'm in there switching shoes, really just taking off my shoes. I do deadlifts in socks now. So, yeah, I mean, there are some things where some like little equipment tweak like that can help you get a better position.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 20:59

And then kind of in the same vein, just because, I don't know, apparently my proportions are just a little odder than the normal person. But I know we did leg press at the gym once. And you were like, you need to look exactly like this video, basically, like you're not going deep enough. And I'm like, I think like it feels as deep as I can comfortably go. and you were like but trust me trust me you're not deep enough so i went deeper and then my rib popped and then i was in pain for six months so like also i think like know your own body

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:33

Yeah that's definitely a good tip not.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:35

To chuck you well yeah just wanted to make him proud

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 21:39

It happens that's definitely a good tip like get used to your body and your limitations and like especially ease into something that's a new position yeah another good tip is if you're going to change like your position or change maybe like the range of motion or the depth you're going to do on an exercise that you've already been doing, uh, lower the weight first before you do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 21:58

Yeah. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:00

Sorry about the rib.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:02

I bring it up like once a year. No, I bring it up like once a month. And sometimes I get chocolate, so.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:10

All right. So next, let's talk about kind of equipment limitations specifically. So one example of this is maybe you reached the maximum weight for the equipment that you have available. So a lot of times this happens if people, if they're doing a workout at home, they only have maybe a couple of different weights of dumbbells. Yeah. So they'll end up at like, oh, this is as heavy as my dumbbells go. what do I do next? It could also be if you're working on a cable machine, maybe you're at like the full stack is what they call it, where you have all the weight loaded. This will happen sometimes with like cable crunches and things like that, where you can just put a weight on there. Or you're on the leg press and you can't get any more 45s on there because leg press is kind of easy or whatever.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:48

Until you pop your rib.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, also a lot of people who stack up the leg press with weights go about an inch down and back up.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 22:56

Not if he's watching you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 22:58

All right but yeah if you've reached the maximum weight on the equipment the best option is to switch to a more challenging variant or to switch to a different a different implement right a different piece of equipment so if you're using a machine switch to like a barbell or a dumbbell it depends on what you're doing obviously you can't do barbell leg press but you can switch to something different so if you are doing maybe let's use the leg press as an example and it's full, whatever, you can start doing one leg, leg press. Or if you're doing something and, like, you maxed out your dumbbells, maybe you get a barbell and go from there. So a couple different things you can do with that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:36

What I used to do at home before I bought adjustable dumbbells and only had up to, like, 15 is, like, sometimes if I hit, like, the max of 15, I would, like, double fist two dumbbells at once in my hand, which is, like... They were not very secure.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 23:51

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 23:52

But they were more secure than what I've seen some people do with dumbbells at the gym where they like rubber band on some plates. Yeah. Don't do that. That stresses me out. Don't post pictures of it. I don't want to see it.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:02

Especially if you're bringing it up over your face.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:04

It makes me so stressed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:06

And I guess like I mentioned, if your dumbbells are so heavy, you can buy a barbell. That's kind of a cop out because we're talking about an equipment limitation, I guess. So what you could really do is like if you're doing an example I see a lot is you're doing Romanian deadlifts, right? So you're using two dumbbells. Yeah. So then you get to a point where you're like, oh, okay, my dumbbells are done. I can't make my dumbbells any heavier. Then you can switch to like a one-legged, like a single-legged Romanian deadlift. Yeah. And you kind of start building back up because now it's not quite twice as hard, but it's a lot harder and you'll probably go down in the weight on your dumbbell. Yeah. And then you can even with the single-legged Romanian deadlifts, you can be holding one dumbbell or holding two dumbbells.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:40

That's true. You can be holding both dumbbells on one leg.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:42

Right. Exactly. So you can kind of change the actual variant of the exercise to a more challenging variant and, you know, you'll be able to work your way back up in the weight again.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 24:51

We can just always do more reps, which is going to take longer, but, like, ultimately the volume will go up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 24:56

Yeah, more reps. As long as you're able to keep it under, like, 30, 35 reps, you're still in a really effective spot. So, I mean, that gets pretty boring and people hate doing it. But if that's your only option, increase the reps.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:08

Ask for more weights for Christmas.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:11

Um, also maybe still in the equipment limitations, if the equipment you need is not available. So like if you go to the gym and you're like, okay, I've got to do leg press today or I've got to use the Smith machine.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 25:23

But there's some guy there with a tripod that's been there for 45 minutes.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 25:25

Somebody's camping out, reading a book. I think this is when it's good to know, like, why are you doing that exercise? That way you can have a list of other exercises in your head either, or some apps actually that you just put in alternate exercises you can swap to, put them in your app that work either the same movement pattern or the same muscle group. So like if the Smith machine's not available and you had Smith machine squats today, then you can go to the leg extension or you can go to the leg press and maybe substitute those in. It's not going to be optimal because you're trying to track progress on your Smith machine squat. But today you've got to go do leg press, which maybe you haven't even done in four months. So you're not really tracking progress in a great way, but it's better than sitting in the gym for two hours with your thumb with your ass. Getting angry.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:06

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:07

Exactly. So, yeah, just know, okay, I just need to work my quadricep. I can go work my quadricep on a different exercise.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:13

Yeah, and if you're in the gym, a lot of machines will actually show on, they have like a little diagram that shows like what muscle it's working. So, you can kind of, if you don't know offhand,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:21

You can go. Yeah, just walk around the gym until you see one with legs lit up. There you go. And you do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 26:25

The legs are red. I'm going to sit there.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 26:27

Yeah. And then if you're trying to use machines, kind of the same thing. Like, you know, this machine's a chest press, but the guy's sitting on the chest press machine. He looks like he's not going anywhere for a while. then you can go do a smith machine bench press you can do dumbbell bench press you can do you know a couple other cable bench press if you really need to uh just know there are some other options you can do and then the last one is kind of like if you're in your home gym and you're just really constrained on what you have maybe you have dumbbells that go up to 35 pounds and uh that's it no barbell hopefully you have a bench you know i would say you've got to just work with what you've got if you do have a bench and you do have dumbbells that can go a really long way mainly because like you said, we can always just increase the reps. And most of the things, if you've got dumbbells that go up to 30 pounds, we can probably get a pretty good workout and going up to like 30 reps. Like there's going to be a lot of stuff that you're not going to be able to make it to 30. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:13

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 27:15

Um, and then another thing is like unilateral exercises, especially leg exercises and go a long way because maybe 35 pounds for Romanian deadlift is not a lot, but 35 pounds for like a single leg Romanian deadlift is quite a bit more because you're also adding, you know, your body weight and you're switching to just using one leg. Same with like, uh, split squats, walking lunges, like all that stuff is you've only got one leg doing the work and you've incorporated your body weight into it to some degree. so we can really get a long way with low weight dumbbells in a situation like that as well.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 27:46

Yeah. So I switched recently from RDLs to one leg RDLs and have been humbled. Because like basically I have scoliosis and I think I figured out that one of my legs is like slightly longer than the other. So it was taking the brunt of the work when I was doing my, like the shorter one seems to have been taking like a lot of the work when I was doing my double leg articles so now that i'm switching to single legs i'm like oh one is definitely not as strong as the other so i'm having to go back down and wait yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:16

A bonus you can help with the imbalances.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 28:19

Yeah all

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 28:20

Right so that's pretty much it for equipment limitations now let's talk about limitations from like pain or discomfort, And it's important to recognize like what is normal because, you know, working out is hard. You're not going to be comfortable. You're going to feel like the muscle. You're going to feel the effort. But then there's like pain, which is not as good. So some of the things you might feel from like normal discomfort, which is fine and expected, are like your muscle burning. You're just kind of feeling really fatigued, like cardio. You're like breathing hard. You're tired. You know, that kind of thing is like uncomfortable, but it's part of the process. this. And then feeling like a big stretching sensation. It's like, usually that's what you want to feel when you're doing these exercises, because, you know, the stretch is a big part of how the muscle grows and getting the tension in the muscle. So for feeling like burning, stretching, and just like really tired, those are all good and expected ways to feel uncomfortable during an exercise. Some of the things that are a little more concerning are what you might think of as actual pain. Yeah. Right. So if you feel like a sharp pain or a sudden pain. Or you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:23

Hear your rib pop you

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:25

Hear anything pop anything pops that's not it's not necessarily true my my knees pop a lot yeah but that's more of a crackle like.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 29:33

An unusual pop that you've never heard before and you're like what was

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 29:37

That yeah pops are usually not a good sign um and then you have maybe joint pain that's getting worse while you're doing your set so yeah you know i had the surgery on my elbow so sometimes i'll be like doing something and like the elbow pain is just getting worse with every rep and i'm like okay i guess i'm done for a little bit uh you don't want that and then next week yeah exactly and then if you find yourself kind of changing the movement pattern the exercise to avoid pain you probably just put it down for the day but yeah those are things you really want to try to avoid and just maybe stop doing what you're doing if you come across any of those yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:09

And i also think you're gonna know if it's good pain or bad pain because like After you're kind of done with your set, after about 30 seconds, the burning stops. Yeah, yeah. And if it doesn't stop, maybe you did something bad.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:23

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:23

Right?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:24

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:24

Like, it's still going to hurt when you, like, go to do things that use the muscle, but it's not, like, sitting there, like, burning, hurting, aching.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:32

Right, yeah. If a movement is consistently causing your actual pain, just stop doing it. Maybe you try it again in a few months, you know, whatever. If you have, like, some kind of tendonitis or some kind of overuse thing going on, maybe that'll clear up. But again, there's always another exercise that'll hit that same muscle. So don't do the ones that hurt.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 30:48

You're not saying like slap an elbow brace on it and keep going,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 30:52

Keep chugging? No, definitely don't do that. Slapp an elbow brace on, get a cortisone shot or whatever. Yeah. Good to go. No, don't do that. Just switch the exercise. Tons of other options. No reason not to try other things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:02

I think this is also a good place like if you get injured.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:06

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:06

Like how to keep your training up. Yeah. You know, like kind of work around it, figure out what else you can do to train it in the meantime.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:12

Yeah, and definitely, you know, on the advice of your doctor and probably a physical therapist in a lot of cases, they'll say like, okay, don't do this thing with your leg, but you can do curls. And you're like, okay, I guess it's arm month, you know, and you have a broken ankle, but you can train your arms all you want.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:26

An excuse to skip leg day.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:27

Right, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:29

You did stuff when your elbow was completely effed.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:32

Yeah, and even going through, so when I was, when my elbow was completely screwed up, I was going through physical therapy and they would give exercises and you could do some of that stuff at home. And, you know, you could basically, I didn't really, after a certain point, I didn't really have restrictions. It was just like whatever you can do. Yeah. But it would still hurt when I did it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 31:49

Well, yeah, you have like metal things in your arm now.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 31:51

But yeah, you know, some, but a lot of that was like, you should still do it because you need to increase the strength on it. But that was under the advice of, like, the physical therapist was, like, push through the pain in these specific situations. Right. Talk to a doctor.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:04

Not try a GPT.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 32:05

Oh, definitely. And then also for pain, if there's, like, a specific, you know, like, getting into position, something causes you a lot of pain. So, like, if you do try to do squats one day or something, you're just like, okay, this is, like, I have lower back pain while I'm trying to do this squat. Yeah. Like, don't do that. You can try to find, like, an in-person coach who can maybe make sure it's not your form or something. But if you're trying to do something for the first time and it's just like, ow, this hurts, this hurts, this hurts. Yeah. Something's wrong. It might be like an anatomy thing. It might be a form thing. But, you know, just go try something else for a little while. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 32:39

As someone who has blown out their back multiple times, which is probably maybe related to the scoliosis thing. But, like, I can kind of tell when we're, like, reaching a point where, like, oh, if I've been down the wrong way today specifically, I'm not moving off this couch for, like, the next seven days. Yeah. So I'm just like, I'm gonna baby it today. Baby it and maybe do some stretches, but like be very gentle with it. And I think, I don't know, maybe this is just my bag, but like I can kind of tell when my back's about to blow out.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:09

Yeah, definitely enlisting to your body territory there again, for sure. And then the next kind of limitation might be a limitation from muscle imbalance.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:17

So sometimes if you're trying— Kind of like your broken elbow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:19

Right. You're trying to do something like—that ice is actually a good example because for a while it was like I'd go to try to do bench press. Yeah. But it was like one arm was quite a bit weaker than the other arm, so it was kind of wacky.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:30

I remember watching you do planks and it was really— Oh,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:31

Yeah, the planks.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:32

Your plank form was so bad because you're imbalanced with your elbow.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:36

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 33:37

It's better now. Yeah. But it was, I was like, do you know what you're doing? Let me take a picture for you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 33:43

Yeah. So there are a couple of cases where an imbalance can like really impact the form and then also kind of hold you back. So you want to be careful there. But if it's a minor imbalance, like if you're, you know, let's say you're doing curls and one arm could curl maybe one to two reps more than the other one. That's not really something you need to do anything about. That will eventually kind of work itself out or it's just going to be that way. And that's okay. I mean, a lot of people are a little stronger with their dominant hand. Yeah. So everybody probably has a little bit of an imbalance, but unless it's something that is really impactful, you probably don't need to do anything. But if it is something that you feel like is impactful and you're concerned about it, so like let's say you've noticed your, you know, one of your legs is like the muscles quite a bit bigger or quite a bit stronger or one of your arms you just feel like is a lot stronger, then you can kind of address that by doing unilateral exercises, which is like one side at a time. So one arm at a time, one leg at a time. Something, again, like split squats or even like curls with dumbbells is a unilateral exercise because you do them one at a time. But the thing you should do there, if you're trying to address a muscle imbalance, is to do the weak side first. And then whatever weight and reps you're able to do with the weak side, then just do that on the strong side and don't do any more.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 34:54

Yeah, I've been doing that with my single leg RDLs. And it's like I can... I can tell what I'm, like, not going to be able to do anymore on one leg. And then my other leg could have gone for a while.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 35:05

Yeah. And you're going to feel like, okay, well, the strong leg's not getting stronger. But, like, in a way, you kind of don't want it to for a little bit. Yeah, like. You just want to make sure you're maintaining and let the other one catch up. Yeah, exactly. And which usually won't take that long. So you can just let the other one catch up somewhere in the reasonable territory. And then you can start doing bilaterals again. Or you can just always do unilaterals. I mean, there are a lot of movements where you're always probably going to do unilaterals. like bulgarian split squats yeah those were just a unilateral movement that's fine and then another limitation is kind of fear and like psychological barriers uh there are a lot of things where once the weight starts getting heavy psychology really starts playing into the effort you're able to put into it yeah bench press is a huge one for this if you're not like super confident and super sure under a bench press uh you're going to be limiting yourself so uh i think that's one where it probably comes up the most bench.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 35:55

Press has so much going on though like your feet have be in the right position you got to get like your shoulders like locked in the right position and i

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:03

Don't know for as simple as it looks bench press is one of the more technical lifts that you could do yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:08

I also think it's like how many movies have you seen where like a guy accidentally drops the like

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:13

Bar yeah and.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:14

Then can't get up or like something horrible happen i mean maybe i just watched too many horror movies but like i've seen that happen so many times yeah and it's like calming down towards your face and stuff

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:23

Like a lot of yeah and this kind of plays into my little sub point here which is specifically for like fear of failing an exercise and not like fear of failure like i'm a failure i feel fear of i don't want i don't want to try another rep because what happens if i don't get this next yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 36:37

Like you don't have a safe way

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 36:39

To fail yeah so i would say um you should always have a safe way to fail even if you're not doing super heavy stuff, Um, you can either use a spotter arms or like safety pins, depending on the exercise, like squats, it's usually like a safety bar, a safety pin. So you, and it's right near the bottom of your squat. If you can't get back up, you're just going to lay it down. Everything's fine. I've failed plenty of squats that way. It's totally fine. Um, if you don't have that safety bar and you fail a squat, you're in a problematic situation because now you're pinned under a bar you can't stand up with.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:08

Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:09

So you don't want that. And then good luck. and also using spotters is always good if you have that option or both is ideal like use a safety bars and a spotter if you have that access a lot of people don't work out with anybody so they won't always have access to a spotter so um i would say you know especially for bench press is really the one i mean like squat is bad but almost everywhere you're gonna squat has a safety bar setup um other than like a really cheap squat rack yeah i just wouldn't squat in those personally but you know it depends on how comfortable you are with it like people who are doing training for the Olympics, they don't squat with any kind of safety because they practice a lot about how to fail, like throw the bar away in the right direction and stuff like that. So if you don't know that stuff, you really need to be practicing with safeties.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 37:50

I feel like dumbbells are like kind of intimidating, especially if you've invested in the adjustable dumbbells. It's like, I don't want to throw those and toss away a couple hundred dollars.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 37:59

Yeah. No, a lot of the adjustable dumbbells are not made to be thrown or like to fall, which you know ideally you would never drop any weight but for dumbbells specifically like a normal fixed dumbbell they can take a lot of abuse so if you're like failing a bench press you just dump them that's pretty common yeah but yeah with an adjustable you don't really want to do that because you're probably going to break your dumbbells so and.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 38:20

Uh another safety side note like if you're lifting and your failure plan is to toss weights or just dump weights make sure you don't have children or small animals around because like You know, they're going to, like, if you fail something and you scream or something, like, they're going to come check out what the hell's going on with you. And then, like, you don't want to kill your cat or your dog. You know, like, I heard some, like, pretty crazy things, not specifically around weightlifting, but it was around, Peloton had a treadmill or something. Peloton treadmill was a death trap. Like, yeah, I think a couple toddlers were killed just because, like, they don't know what the fuck you're doing. So, like, just make sure you have, like, small kids and animals are, like, in safe places when you're doing stuff. It's not just about your safety. It's about other people's safety as well.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:06

Yeah. I've been to some gyms that have, like, a gym dog, and that always stresses me. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:12

Or, you know, or also, I guess, yeah, if you're at a gym, make sure your safety plan does not involve smacking someone else with a weight.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 39:19

Well, I just saw somebody on, I think it was on, maybe it was on Threads or Reddit, I don't know, somewhere on the internet last week that was talking about, I guess, they had a little bit of trauma. because they had two squat wrecks next to each other at some point and somebody had like failed their squat one time and had to dump the bar like without clips on it and like dump the weights and they like rolled over and almost hit them while they were doing squats. So they were like telling people like, hey, always use clips on your squats.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 39:44

Yeah, I think that's like a really good example though of, I think- You should, I think I'm kind of like a safety police in general because like I've worked at very dangerous places, but you should, I think, go into any exercise you're going to do with like a plan of like what happens if I can't do this or if I'm failing, what am I doing? And like look around your area and like, is it safe for me? Is it safe for everyone around? Am I going to cause any issues to other people?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:12

I'd go further than that. I would say like practice failing with a low weight, like not with your actual weight, but like, you know, on bench press. and squat specifically, like do whatever it is you're going to do when you fail a rep.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:24

Yeah, make sure it's going to work.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:26

Make sure it works. Because like with a squat, what will happen a lot of times, people will set up the safety bar, but they won't really confirm they're in the right spot. So like you'll go down to do a squat and either you'll hit the thing because you set it too high or it's actually like six inches below your squat and you're not going to be able to ever use that for a safety. So yeah, just try it. With nothing on the bar, like 10 pounds on the bar, it's not a big deal.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 40:46

Make sure it's in the right spot.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 40:47

You just set it down, go out from under it, make sure it does what it's supposed to do same thing for bench press like like uh kind of with the safety bars i have on our bench press like i can fail and sit it down like anywhere above my sternum but if i like tried to fail below my sternum it wouldn't really yeah it wouldn't really hit the bar necessarily so i have to know like where to sit the bar down if i need to right so there's a lot of stuff like that you should just practice a little bit and make sure the safeties are at the right position confirm that yeah safety.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:16

Is important kids

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:17

I mean bench press Like, if you were literally benching something really heavy and you didn't have a spotter or any safety arms, people die. Not, like, all the time or anything. And it's, like, relatively safe exercise. But, like, if something in the gym is really going to mess you up, it's probably a bench press.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:32

Or, like, you're having a heart attack or something and you fail. Like, I mean, there's, like, all kinds of crazy shit that can happen.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:37

Or the bar, like, slips out of your hands because you get real sweaty. Yeah. A lot of weird stuff can happen.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 41:40

We should have a whole episode on safety, actually. Safety is, like, one of my favorite things to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, so what are you going to do if there's a fire?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 41:49

Oh my gosh. All right. Uh, so that's kind of like fear of failure. The next one is just like general kind of fear of being under the heavy weight. Um, this one's kind of interesting because you won't necessarily be worried about failing. You're just not sure you can do it. So like with really heavy squats, um, you get like the, the bar on your back and you're just like, there's no way I'm standing up with this and I go down with it. But I find that that confidence really builds over time because there have been so many times that I've gone to do a squat and I felt that way. I'm like, wow, this is like extremely heavy. This is impossible. I can barely stand here with this. How can I squat this?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:27

What am I, Atlas?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:29

But then you do it. You do 10 reps. And you're like, okay, I don't know how that happened. But it's just the way it works.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 42:34

So how do you get that confidence, though?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 42:36

Yeah, it's just slowly over time. You can lower the weight and kind of work your way up. But if you were confident at 20 pounds, you're probably going to feel okay at 25 pounds. But this is especially a problem when you kind of start doing something new because, you know, even with a relatively light squat, you're like, oh, I don't know if my form's right. I don't know if like what the failure situation is. So like, I think just practicing all that stuff together, like doing lightweight to like get your form in check, you know, maybe get some, maybe get somebody to like look at your form and reassure you that it looks good. Yeah. And then like you practice the failing thing. So then at a certain point you're like, okay, this is heavy. But like the worst thing that can happen is I missed the rep. And then also, like, missing reps is part of the process, too. So a lot of the time, you're not always going to be able to increase the weight. So at some point, you're going to fail on pretty much any exercise. So, I mean, you need to be able to do that with confidence and safely and not get too torn up about it and just be like, oh, yeah, I missed a rep. Okay, next set. Whatever. So.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:31

So. like if you didn't want to hire a personal trainer or like you couldn't afford a personal trainer like what would you say the best way is to like get that confidence or like know that your

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:40

Form's correct yeah uh i would say record yourself first of all and then like a lot of communities like reddit or some like forums for weightlifting and stuff you can just post a video and people be like yeah do that do that do that now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 43:51

Could they post that video in our discord

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 43:53

Oh yeah we can also post the video on our discord i'll be happy to and i'm sure other people will jump in and give you feedback as well um yeah you can definitely do that so anyway yeah so that is kind of stuff around like fear and the psychology of it just you know practice failing um build up your confidence over time by increasing the weight and i know i remember when i first started squatting it was just kind of just talking about psychology in general i guess when i first started squatting like i went to do it and i like couldn't even do the bar and i didn't even want to like go to that side of the gym right because i was like wow people are doing really heavy stuff over there like I don't belong over there like I don't know what's going on so I like started out on the hack squat until I got comfortable with like that movement of like going down and standing back up and like you know I built that up slowly over a couple months and I was like okay I guess I can try the bar thing again I got the bar and I was like oh god am I doing this right and actually it was funny because the gym I was at I went over and I like grabbed a personal trainer there and I was like can you just like watch me squat and that's not really something they do like yeah I'm not paying this guy but he was like okay I guess yeah cool he didn't really want to do it So I did it and he was like, not super invested, but he was like, yeah, it looks fine. Which like, even though I could tell he wasn't really paying attention, it made me feel like, okay, I'm not doing anything so horrible that he felt the need to intervene. Right. So I guess I can start adding some weight to this. And then I slowly did it. And then, you know, after a couple of weeks of that, it's just like, you're, it's, it feels more natural. You're just like, okay, today's squat day, whatever. But yeah. And then slowly, you know, you just, you don't feel anything anymore. You're just like, okay, yeah, squats. I like squats. And now it's like my favorite exercise.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 45:23

Yeah. Yeah. I would say, like, the experience that you described, though, I think is what a lot of women feel like when they go into a gym. Like, I think, and I don't think it's an imagined feeling, like, gym intimidation's real. Like, men will look at you if you go into their area of, like, what they deem, like, where the men should be. Yeah. So, like, do you have any advice for women that are going into gyms like that? Because, I mean, it can be, like, really scary. Like, they're giving you evil looks if you're not lifting really heavy. But, like, in my opinion, like, you're paying for the same membership. so like fuck those guys

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 45:56

No I mean yeah that's how I feel and I know that's like, But, you know, my go-to, like what I think of when you ask me like that is, I guess, don't give a shit about what they think. But I know that's not as easy. So I think it's really just understand that, like you just said, you're paying the membership too. You have just as much right to be there as anybody else.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:14

Everyone starts small.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:16

Yeah. And, I mean, just because maybe you feel like the weight you're doing is less. So you're like using time or something. Like, I mean, everybody starts somewhere. Some guy like me, I was over there squatting, you know, empty bars. I'm going for a while. And so I think you have every right to be there. And you should just go in there and don't rush yourself. Use as much time as you need to do the exercise. Be safe. Be safe, just like everybody else is going to do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:44

Yeah, I think even if you don't ever move up in weight to where you're like, I belong over here. Like you still belong wherever you need to be to do your workout.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 46:51

Yeah, I mean, you're just, you've got all the same muscles that everybody else in there has. And you want to exercise them.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 46:56

I mean, even if you never get heavy in weight, it doesn't give it, it doesn't fucking matter.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:00

No, it doesn't.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:01

Right. Like you're paying the same gym fee.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:04

The squat rack is not reserved for the people who are like doing powerlifting competitions. It's there for everybody.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 47:10

Exactly. So I will say there are some gyms that feel like a little, I think, safer for women than others or like, or like lighter lifting people than others. um I like when we've gone to Planet Fitness I don't really it may be it's just because for me I am like looking at my phone to see like what is my next thing to do then i go and do that thing and then i like literally don't pay attention to anyone because i'm anti-social yeah so like if they're giving me dirty looks i haven't noticed yeah but like i think planet fitness is kind of like a nice place i feel like there's a good mix of men and women there it feels a little safer than other gyms it

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 47:46

Definitely you know and their whole thing is like judgment free zone or whatever and i feel like they do deliver on that i've been to a lot of different types of gyms i've been to like the planet fitness i really like planet fitness and i've been to like really serious power lifting gyms or whatever yeah and i think in either one you can probably encounter people that are assholes but um yeah i think if you're if that's something you're concerned about something like a planet fitness is a great option especially to start and kind of build your confidence because at a certain point you know you've been going for a year or two then you're going to walk to any gym and be like leave me the fuck alone i'm doing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:16

Squats yeah i'm doing whatever the hell i want and i'm squatting with 40 pounds that's not a year freaking business yeah and then i think the other good thing about like a planet fitness or really any kind of chain gym is that if you have like like we have like i don't know four or five planet fitnesses within like a 30 minute drive so like if they're a bunch of assholes and one of them go try another one yeah right like i don't know find one where like the people aren't douchebags

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:39

And the good thing about the change is the membership usually gives you access to all of them so you.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 48:42

Can yeah exactly and

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 48:43

It's like that's really the unfortunate thing is like the the gym culture at the gym you go to is going to be basically defined by the regulars yeah and they're like most gyms i've been to everybody is super cool i bet there probably wouldn't be any problems with women going to whatever they want to do but there are definitely some gyms where that's probably not going to work and that really sucks.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:00

I will say like uh you know what's his name swole oh joey swole he has like his problems but like i do appreciate um the stance he he takes basically like don't bully people at the gym and i also think like if you're if you're at the gym and you're frustrated because you're seeing someone not lift very much and you're like I need to use that machine just like remember that's where you started and like The person probably feels self-conscious about it too. And it took them a lot of courage to go over there and lift that. So just like have some empathy there.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:34

Yeah. I think a lot of people, when they first start going, don't feel super comfortable. Yeah. Especially with something like, you know, something a little more, a little heavier, I guess, like squats, deadlifts. Yeah. Like deadlift is like you're literally standing up on a mini stage making more noise than anybody else in the gym, even if you're not doing super heavy.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 49:51

It's so embarrassing.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 49:51

So it's like, you're just standing there like boom, boom, boom the whole time. And that was like, that was a really intimidating thing to do the first couple of times. Yeah. But then, you know, eventually you just get comfortable and you're like, okay, I mean, this is my exercise for the day and it is what it is. And then also over time you start to notice, and this is probably different for women to be fair, but you start to notice that like nobody's really paying attention to you. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:13

I don't think that's necessarily true for women. because and i will say is like as a woman like you're having to overcome like society's expectations that you're going to be on the treadmill like other women's expectations that you're going to be in the cardio section on the treadmill yeah and then like now you have to like overcome like judgment from men that think why are you taking up space you should be lifting heavier or don't come over here like the ones

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:35

That want to give you advice just to talk to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:37

You yeah it's like there's a lot to overcome as a girl in a gym if you're going to the weight section um so like my advice to any men listening is leave women alone unless they ask for your help specifically just like unless

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 50:53

They're yelling help help.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 50:54

Yeah or like asking you for help on like form or like anything for the most part just like leave them alone yeah or there was this one time we went to planet fitness and i had just done i can't remember what it was like leg press or something and this this guy that we had seen like a few times there he just said like i've noticed that you've been like going up in weight. Good job.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:14

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:14

And it like made my day. Like he wasn't creepy. He didn't say anything creepy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:18

Just a little fist bump.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:19

Yeah. It was so I felt I was like, oh, my like initiated and like the I belong here club. Like it felt good.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:25

Yeah. Yeah. For the, If you feel compelled to interact with the girl for some reason, just talk to them the same way you talk to the men in the gym.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:34

Yes, like don't be creepy. Just act like they're one of your bros. Don't mansplain. High five maybe.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:43

Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:43

Or ignore them.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:44

Yeah, I wish I could say there's like a gym you could go to that doesn't have any of those problems, but that's not.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:49

There was that one all-female gym, and I can't remember. It was Curves or something. Oh, yeah. I don't know what their weight situation is, though. I think it's a lot of cardio.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 51:57

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 51:57

But... Anyway, good luck, ladies.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:01

Even in those situations, your confidence does build the more you do. Yeah. So, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:05

Just remember, everything you lift is middle finger to the patriarchy.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:11

I can't fix the whole patriarchy, you know. All right. And then the last thing we want to talk about is kind of how do you know when you're pushing too hard? So this is kind of a limitation because this does hold you back. Yeah. If you're really trying things you shouldn't be trying, really. But one of the big ones is your form is getting worse. So, like, maybe you're moving up in weight too fast and suddenly you're, like, doing half reps. You're, like, doing lat pull down. You're just pulling it up a little bit. Or you're doing, like, the leg presses where your knee barely bends.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:40

Or you're using momentum too much.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:41

Oh, yeah, the big cheat reps.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:42

Like, I've seen people, like, with bicep curls. They're really, really swinging those suckers.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 52:47

Yeah. And that kind of thing has its place, but it's definitely a sign that, like, if you're not, I guess if you don't know exactly why you're doing something like that, But it's probably just a sign that you're pushing too hard.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 52:58

You really want to be at, like, 50-pound dumbbells, but you shouldn't be.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:02

This is so bad with bench because people have these milestones at 225 because there's two plates or 313 because there's three plates.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:08

Yeah, you want to get to them so bad. Right.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:09

So they'll, like, bring the weight down just a little bit and push it back up and be like, oh, I finally got 225. I did.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 53:14

I'm part of the club.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 53:15

Which is, you know, that's all fun. You know, it's nice to make progress. But as far as, like, actually doing effective workouts, I mean, you've got to work your way up slowly. So if you notice that you're, you know, you're slowly moving up weight, maybe your goal is that 225, but you get up to like 195 and to get it done, like to get your five reps done or whatever you're doing, you have to like really start cutting it short and not touching your chest anymore or like, you know, you're changing your grip or something like that. And it's like, okay, well, maybe we just, you know, go back down and wait a little bit or we stay here and we like, you don't move up until your form is great. So that kind of thing. Also, kind of in the same vein, like, I guess this is still like ego lifting where you're like lifting way more than you should. Like, let's say, you know, you're like, oh, I just got 225. I'm going to try 285. And it's like, we don't do that.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:01

Just a little bit more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:02

Yeah. So the form getting worse and like cutting your rep short is a pretty good sign that you're pushing a little too hard and you need to back off and get a little more regular progression. Missing reps too often. So this is more of like from session to session. If you just graduated to a new weight, maybe in your progression, and then, you know, maybe you're trying to get three sets of 10 just to keep it simple. And then one week you get like, you know, 8, 8, 8. And the next week you get like 8, 6, 5. Like it's going down. The next week you're at like 8, 6, 2 or something. Like you're just missing stuff over time a lot. That's probably a sign that you need to like deload the weight and kind of build back up. Because you got a little too far too fast or you just reached the end of kind of your current progression there.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 54:49

Yeah. You kind of did this to me on bicep curls this week. Yeah. You were like, you actually were never supposed to move up because you never hit 12, 12, 12. And I was like,

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 54:58

Okay. I'm pretty obnoxious about it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:00

Didn't know you were looking that closely. Guess I'll go down.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:02

And that's not because like, I mean, you could definitely lift the next weight. It's just making sure that you have kind of fully checked all the boxes before you progress keeps you from stalling out as much. Right. So it's like, you know, wait until you get all three weights. sets at the goal reps and then you move up and then you're going to go a lot further before we have to reduce.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:23

The weight right and i think like that's where following your double progression thing of like move up in reps clear the reps then you move up in weights then you start back down to the bottom of the reps and move back up like i think that really kind of keeps you in line on and you won't move into this where you're like pushing too hard because you're kind of like progressing at like a specific pace yeah

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:43

It's just a long-term continuous progression for as long as possible before we have to do some.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:48

Kind of duty. Yeah, and it probably helps prevent injuries and stuff too.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:50

Yeah, definitely.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 55:50

Like it has its place.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 55:51

Right. There's a lot of little smaller reasons for it as well, like injury prevention. Another sign that you're pushing too hard is you're still sore in that muscle group going into the next workout. So it's normal to get sore. It's not like necessary, but it is normal to get sore. Like you do a big tricep workout, your triceps are sore for a day or two. But if you get to like the next day, you're supposed to work triceps and your triceps are still sore. And it's like making you lose reps on that because like you're coming into it with sore muscles um that's a sign that we need to like probably reduce the sets or like how many times a week maybe we shouldn't be doing triceps that second day something like that what if.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:25

You're doing like three days of full body though i feel like this can happen

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:28

Yeah sometimes sometimes.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 56:30

My shit's still sore when i do my wednesday workout from my monday workout

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 56:34

Yeah and it depends it's also like how long have you been doing this workout yeah so like when you start doing anything new you'll be more sore for longer than me, But if you're like in the middle, like say you're like three or four weeks into a program and then one day you're like, oh, my legs are still kind of sore from Monday and you come in on Wednesday, then yeah, it might be a good sign that maybe we need to either move something off of Wednesday or maybe make one less set on Monday or something like that. And it's only really, like, if it's still feeling sore, but it doesn't really stop you, that's probably okay. Yeah, just like a dull sore. But if it's so sore that you're like, oh, wow, I really, like, only did half as much on this first set as I should have.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:14

Like, it's reducing your reps and sets.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:16

Yeah, exactly. And then the next one is, like, if you have too much general fatigue. Like, if you just feel really tired kind of all the time, you're either probably pushing too hard on your workouts or your calorie situation is a little messed up. Or maybe just your carbs even. So there are a couple of things that could be. But that is still a sign that you're pushing too hard with either the workout or the nutrition side of things.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:40

Or you're just a girl and it's your time of the month. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 57:43

Or your sleep's jacked up, I guess. But yeah, it could be all those things. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So that is pretty much it for the main segment about, you know, limitations and how to overcome them and how to deal with them. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 57:55

If you have any specific limitations you're struggling with, just send him a message. Yeah. He loves answering questions. That's true.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:02

Uh you send me a message jump in the discord we can all talk about it together whatever you want to do.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:06

The deficient vegans discord that'll be linked in the show notes that's right

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:09

Now let's talk about our myth of the week so the myth of the week this week is that building muscle is the best way to burn.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 58:14

Fat so i saw a post on about this in vegan fitness on reddit and it was basically i mean yeah i think it basically said that like building building muscle is the best most effective way to burn fat and then like the comment section was like a little crazy because i think they're picking up on like this is this kind of uh A clickbaity thing to say that doesn't really give much context of what we're talking about.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 58:38

Yeah. So there's a general idea and there is some truth to it that like, you know, maybe a pound of, I'll just compare it this way. A pound of muscle burns more calories than a pound of fat. Yeah. Which is true. But it's not much, right? Basically, it's like if you, even if you gained 20 pounds of muscle in a year, let's say, which is like really significant, that'd be hard to put on 20 pounds of muscle in a year for a lot of people.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:01

Even for like a newbie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:02

Yeah. For a newbie, maybe they could pull it off if they're doing everything right. But yeah, it's hard. So 20 pounds of muscle on its own burns probably an extra 100 to 150 calories a day. So you put on 20 pounds of muscle, you can eat an extra banana a day.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:16

But what was that with fat?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:18

Yeah, with fat it was like... 70, 80? 70, 80, yeah. So the difference is really only like 50. Right. So like, you know, you can't really replace fat with muscle. But like, let's say you lost a pound of fat, gained a pound... say you lost 20 pounds of fat and gained 20 pounds of muscle, which, by the way, really great progress. Then, yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:36

You're eating like maybe 50 calories more.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:37

Yeah. So then you're like, basically in a situation where you're maybe burning 50 to 60 calories a day more than you were.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 59:43

Before you lost the fat and gained the muscle. Right. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 59:45

Yeah. And so, I mean, you could also do this by gaining fat. That would also make you burn more calories, but not quite as much as muscle. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just the the idea that muscle directly burns slightly more calories than fat is correct but it's not something that's going to be super noticeable.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:00:02

Yeah um i've seen this mostly with like women fitness influencer types are pushing this because they know that like one of the largest things i think for most women it's like we don't really get that many calories because we're smaller framed we're shorter like yeah once you get to like your goal weight you're still not gonna have as many calories as a man and like that does kind of suck as a woman right like especially like if you're going out to eat like proportion sizes are more built for like men who have more calories and stuff so like it does like You know, even if you hit your goal weight, you're still kind of limited by like, if I don't want to gain weight back, I need to kind of like check what I'm eating and maybe limit what I'm eating if I go out to a restaurant or like whatever. Anyways, so basically these female fitness influencers have figured out what like an annoyance point for women is, is that we don't have as many calories as men. So now they've started saying like, oh, well, you just need to put on muscle like I did and you can pretty much eat whatever you want, which is like a fucking lie.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:02

I mean, I fully support putting on muscle. There's a lot of great ways to put on muscle. It's just not going to do this thing, really. Like, you're not going to, you're going to be able to increase your calories for like 100 a day per year, maybe. Yeah. Like, what are we even talking about?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:14

It's just like a new clickbaity thing. Yeah. And I think most people can, I mean, I don't think most people can really see through this.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:21

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:21

Because I know, like, I started seeing this stuff like 10 years ago. And it's like, oh, my God, I can eat like 2,800 calories a day if I just like put on some more muscle.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:30

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:30

And it's like, no, I'm never going to get to eat 2,800 calories a day probably for just like maintenance calories.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:01:36

And it's one of those things that's hard because like it has got a kernel of truth to it. It is something that's like talked about a lot. It's out there a lot. So people see that. They're like, oh, yeah, I've heard muscle burns more than that. And, you know, there's also the element of like, yeah, you probably are burning a lot of calories doing all the workouts you needed to build muscle. Exactly. But at the same time, a cardio workout burns more calories than a weightlifting workout one for one. Right.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:01:58

They're burying what is actually happening is like you're going to be doing like maybe strength training six hours a week on top of like two to three hours of cardio. That's what's burning your fat.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:09

Yeah, exactly.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:10

Is all of the workouts you're doing to maintain this and build the muscle, right? Like, I don't know. I just think it's a sleazy thing to say.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:17

Yeah. And again, lots of really good reasons to build muscle, burn fat. Obviously, that's like a lot of what we talk about here, too. Yeah. It's just it's not going to do this thing where you're going to have a much higher calorie budget because of it.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:02:28

Yeah. It's just like one of my biggest pet peeves is like the influencer, personal trainer, marketing stuff, because like they take people that are like. desperate to be able to eat more calories right or like you're desperate to be able to lose the weight and then they give you this like quick fix and they gloss it up in like one or two sentences something that's like splashy and it'll get you to click on

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:02:49

It yeah well this is especially true so like our example was basically if you gain 20 pounds of muscle and lose 20 pounds of fat but like the people this is really targeting are people who are trying to lose weight yeah so like as you lose weight that's going to get less calories that's going to cancel out the muscle gain so this is really like a situation where it's like like a realistic year maybe for a person would be like you gained 20 pounds of muscle and you lost 60 pounds of fat right your calorie total is gonna be less i know because the bigger somebody is the more calories they burn right just naturally even if it's all fat just naturally that's why like the tde calculators if you lower the weight on there your calorie maintenance goes much lower yeah so if you have like a standard year of a beginner where you like you gain 20 25 pounds of muscle you lose like 60 pounds of fat for somebody who's like really overweight, your calories aren't going to go up. They're going to go down.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:38

Right. Exactly. Which I think was like some of what people were saying in the comment section. And then, of course, this person was just like, oh, well, you know what I meant. Like, obviously, I meant like get your food right and get your exercise right. And it's like, well, that's not what you said.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:03:52

And that's a really good idea. But that's not what that's not what you said, though. Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:03:55

Yeah. It's just like so I think if you see like a one or two sentence that seems clickbaity and it seems a little too good to be true, probably dig into that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:02

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:02

Because they're lying to you. They're trying to sell you shit. I could do a whole episode on this. This shit pisses me off. You know, because, like, I think we've all been at that point where we're, like, desperate to, like, lose weight or, like, get really ripped or, like, whatever it is. Like, you're looking for that quick fix and they, like, they intentionally, like, try to get you with, like...

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:23

And, you know, it's one of those marketing things where people are more likely to click on it for sure. But if you're going to do clickbaity marketing, it doesn't need to be misleading also. It can be clickbaity and attractive and true.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:35

Right. Because, like, what's going to happen now you get these clients and, like, you're like, actually, you're going to eat less. Yeah. Actually, I've been lying to you.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:04:42

Yeah. I mean, I'd be curious to see how this would play out in practice.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:04:46

Right. Well, yeah, you can eat 2,500 calories after you lose those 80 pounds you need to lose. gain 20 pounds of muscle and then we're also going to be working out 10 10 times a day and getting 20 000 steps then then i'll give you your 2800 calories

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:01

Yeah because we're going on a bulk we're trying to gain weight so like what yeah yeah okay yeah we'll go to 2800 calories because now we're trying to gain weight after.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:09

A year and a half of this right

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:11

Yeah so anyway the the myth that building muscle is the best way to burn fat is busted yeah but still really good idea yeah Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:20

Build muscle for other reasons, but it's not going to burn fat better than, like, cardio.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:24

Yeah, yeah. All right. What updates do you have in protein-deficient vegan land this week?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:29

Okay. I don't know if any of you guys have tried my high-protein banana bread or pumpkin bread, but I just dropped a new recipe that is high-protein orange cranberry loaf.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:39

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:40

It's made with vital wheat gluten again. What do you think about it?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:05:44

I like it a lot. I made it a few times. Yeah, orange cranberry was never one of my favorite flavors, but then you made those muffins, and I liked those a lot. And now the bread, I can really appreciate it, because I feel like it's very orangey, but not overwhelmingly. like i can really taste it and i get it now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:05:57

It's like a nice little fresh fruit thing in the morning and it's like 40 protein which is nice yeah it takes all five minutes to make so might want to check that out i'm also working on a black bean brownie recipe which i have always hated black bean brownies so

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:12

It's funny early on in your your videos we actually made a video about like it was basically the premise was black bean brownies suck don't let people tell you different.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:21

Well, yeah, yeah. Because, like, okay, I've always seen people be like, oh, my God, these black bean brownies are so good. They're, like, just as good as normal brownies. And we were like, okay, let's try, like, the most highly rated vegan black bean brownie we can find online. So we picked one that had, like, crazy good ratings, and we tried it, and it sucked. It sucked.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:40

It tasted like— It tastes like beans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:41

It tastes like beans. Yeah. And the texture was really off-putting. Like, last week or something, I was just really, really wanting—my period was coming up, That's when I wanted chocolate. And we've been on a really, really big bean cake.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:06:55

How many recipes do you think we've ended up with because of that over the years?

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:06:58

Probably a lot. But I was like, go downstairs and blend up a whole can of beans. And you're like, okay. And so they actually turned out really good. Yeah.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:11

They were like gooey, creamy chocolate on the inside. Yeah. I don't know how you managed to do that with beans.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:17

Peanut butter powder.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:18

Yeah. Really covered up the bean taste.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:19

Yeah, it really covers up the bean taste really well. And yeah, I don't know. I have to make it again.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:26

But I think hopefully people like it. I think it was really good. I did use monk fruit and I don't normally use monk fruit in my recipes. But it was like close to 30% protein for the brownies and like only like 100 something calories per each.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:40

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:07:40

Definitely don't try it if you have some serious sugar alcohol issues.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:07:45

Yeah. The monk fruit, you can get it. I think you can actually get like pure monk fruit sweetener or you can get it mixed with like various sweetener substitutes. Yeah. Like erythritol is the one we had. And then I think you can also get it with xylitol or just get pure monk fruit. And some people do have sensitivities to various artificial sweeteners.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:02

I found out I have some sensitivities.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:04

Yeah. So you might want to pick the one you don't have sensitivities to.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:08

So I limit myself to one. The rest has a pretty highly laxative effect if you're sensitive to sugar alcohols.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:16

It's a fun thing to learn after you make some brownies.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:18

Yeah. No, it was a pretty good time.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:20

Now, we should mention that's not a feature of the recipe. No. That's specifically the erythritol.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:25

Which apparently most people don't have an issue with the erythritol.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:28

No, I mean, I ate a bunch of those brownies.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:29

You ate like six in a day and they had no mal-effects for you. Yeah. Which apparently, yeah, we looked it up and most people don't actually have sugar alcohol sensitivity. So I just am one of those blessed people. Yeah. What about you? You got any updates?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:45

I've been working on plans to start taking other paid clients from the general public after the Veganuary giveaway training is over here.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:08:53

Which will be like in April?

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:08:55

I think it's like five more weeks from now. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been working on like pricing and set up for that kind of thing.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:01

You can watch out for that. Yeah. See if it's something you'd be interested when his books open up.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:06

Yeah. So I think that's it. We appreciate you all for listening. If you could rate and review us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, it helps us out a lot. And you can also leave comments on Spotify and YouTube.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:16

We love that.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:17

And also, like I mentioned earlier, we have the Deficient Vegans Discord down in the show notes. We got a nice little influx of people last week. Yeah. So we're up to 60 now.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:25

It's hopping.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:26

Yeah.

Protein Deficient Vegan: 1:09:27

Yeah. You can send your questions in any, like, forum videos to MDV over here. He loves answering questions. So.

Muscle Deficient Vegan: 1:09:35

Yeah. Questions, forum videos, if you just want to talk about your workout or maybe, like, ask about exercises. I don't know. I can help you out. Yeah. So I think that's it. You want to say bye? Bye, guys. Bye, everybody.