Jess (00:02.158)
Welcome back to another episode of How to 20 something with another brand new guest to talk about when is it actually a good thing to add weight. This conversation came about when Jake and I were talking about common stereotypes and how most women are afraid to lift heavy and gain weight. We hear all the time from females in our group fitness classes that they’re afraid to get too bulky and as a result gravitate towards the lighter weights at the gym. But what they fail to consider is the fact that

Biologically, they can’t bulk like a man does, and lifting heavy won’t make you massive. So this concept of when is it good to add weight is in relation to your body and the bar, and is for both men and women. We just hear this fear come out of more females’ mouths than men’s. But throughout this episode, Jake and I will be debunking any myths or preconceived notions you have around adding weight, as well as making you feel better about your choice of exercise

and how to push yourself to see the results you are after, and how adding weight to your body will help you add weight to the bar. But first, let me introduce Jake so you guys know a little more about him. Jake hails from the once great state of Maryland and wishes his true home was where he used to live in Texas. From Texas, he and his wife moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2016 and have since built an amazing community within the local church and the local fitness scene here.

On weekends, you’ll find Jake doing leg day on Saturday, probably with me, and dreaming about a new restaurant to try, but unfortunately none of them come close to Bird Pizzeria. Hi Jake, welcome to How220-something.

Jake Packett (01:43.334)
Hey Jess, how’s it going?

Jess (01:45.154)
It’s good. I’m glad that you’re here and I’m glad that I could finally convince you to come on, but we’re just gonna start.

Jake Packett (01:51.172)
Easy sell Jess, what an honor. Thanks for asking me.

Jess (01:54.788)
Of course, we’re gonna start with the burning question of why should someone want to add weight to their body?

Jake Packett (02:02.876)
Yeah, I think that ultimately it begins with what is your goal? know, I think a lot of times when we approach fitness, we forget to start with short-term and long-term goals. Some churches and organizations or leadership cohorts would call it like lead and lag measures. So like, what’s the thing that’s close to you that you want to achieve? And then what’s the thing that’s far away from you that you want to build towards? And so to your question with like, when it’s appropriate to add weight.

It really depends on the goal and I would want to start there first before really unpacking what what that looks like because I might go on a long soliloquy about why you should do it for this particular goal but then one of your listeners is like well I’m not interested in doing any of that you know what I mean so

Jess (02:51.098)
Okay, well then let’s focus on you because I know that you’ve had your own bulking and cutting journey. So why do you put weight on your body?

Jake Packett (03:02.076)
Yeah, so as far as my own body weight, I noticed that whenever I want to get stronger, I have to be comfortable being a little rounder. You know, and especially when not just in society, but even the fittest person you’ve ever seen at the gym, like has a good dose of a good dose of body dysmorphia. And so what we do is we think that like, I have to be as lean as possible.

I guess you could say like the the vernacular for a lot of people would be as skinny as possible obviously, that’s not the thing for gym people but the the mental gymnastics that we play is very similar with both of those terms and so you have to be comfortable with the fact that like you know what I’m just not gonna have abs, you know, they’re not gonna be as Fantastic as they could be or my my muscles aren’t gonna pop the way I’m used to them popping and so with things like that it can be really

challenging because you want to make sure that first off you get your mind right because those aesthetic things are the first things that we see oftentimes those those tend to be Most easily measured in those short-term goals. Whereas how you feel how you sleep how you perform those more often are your long-term goals And so whenever I’m trying to add weight to my body first off is because I want to get stronger by getting stronger Oftentimes I can promote greater

bone density. So I don’t break any bones. I’ve never broken a bone before torn some ligaments, but never broken a bone. I wouldn’t say that specifically because of weightlifting, but I would also say that it didn’t hurt some of the situations I’ve been involved in. I also want to make sure that I can move my body efficiently. And so being able to teach your body how to move well under load is really important to me, especially when you see older people picking something up off the ground or something like that.

you really have to teach your body how to do that under load because especially if you’re picking up like a box, you don’t really know how much that’s going to wait until you start. So knowing how to get your feet plays, drop those hips, you know, and push up and turn those knees out as you squeeze glutes, you know, like all those beautiful things, come together to make it so that when I’m older, I can perform at the level at which, I see people like my dad performed. My dad is 77 years old and he’s still run several miles a day. He’s doing pull-ups every morning and curls and.

Jake Packett (05:24.486)
He looks like he’s easily 65 and maybe younger. and so things like that really inspired me to be comfortable with the fact that this isn’t about how I want to look or the ideal or the Instagram model who somehow is lean 7 % body fat all year round. It’s more so about how do I perform? And if I want to take my performance to the next level, that means aesthetically, I’m going to need to take a step back and be mentally ready for that.

Jess (05:49.858)
Hmm. Yeah, all of that is very true. And I have a client who will send me Instagram reels of old ladies and it does a back and forth clip of I’m training now and then it does a forward clip of an old lady picking up doing the same motion in real life. So it could be farmers carries of I’m doing farmers carries where I’m holding a dumbbell in each hand and I’m walking with my arms by my side and then it’s the old lady carrying groceries on her own and she’s able to do that because she’s built muscle. So

Jake Packett (06:16.144)
Yeah.

Jess (06:19.328)
you put weight on your body to gain strength. I will say as a female, I am definitely part of the population that we’re talking to where I don’t want to put weight on my body, but I know I needed to. I was at a place, I was having this conversation with one of my clients literally yesterday and we were going back and forth of how she used to be so much smaller. She’s from Italy. She moved to America, lifestyle changed and all these things.

and we were showing pictures of what we looked like a couple years ago. And I explained to her that a couple years ago, I looked amazing. I’m not gonna doubt that. I was skinny, I was ripped, but I was working out way too much than I needed to. my mental health wasn’t good, my skin wasn’t good. There were so many other factors that I actually needed to put on weight to be healthier, to be a better version of myself. And I think that’s a…

Jake Packett (07:12.402)
Wow. Yeah.

Jess (07:15.086)
huge disconnect and you brought up of I need to put the aesthetics on hold. And that goes for both male and females of why you’re putting on weight and what happens when you do. And it’s not even to say all the weight is bad weight. I put on a buttload of muscle in the last couple of years and I can acknowledge that. It has come with some body fat but as a female I also need that. So it is, you are spot on with what are your goals? Why should you be gaining weight?

Jake Packett (07:37.766)
Yeah, yeah.

Jake Packett (07:44.848)
Yeah, isn’t it funny like when you said you put on a buttload of muscle just made me think of the average female lifting weights because they all want a big old fat booty, you know, and what’s interesting is that like a lot of women who even have that goal will hip thrust to the heart’s content, they’ll squat all day, they’ll show up to the gym, the Bulgarian split squat, and they’ll do all these things to try and build those glutes, but they refuse to eat.

And it’s like the reason why that girl over there who has like the crazy ripped arms and she’s got great abs and she’s got unreasonably large cheeks is it’s not because she didn’t eat. It’s because she ate and she was willing to say for a season that maybe my abs aren’t going to be as good as that girl over there, but long-term goal that booty be popping now. And so like, just like an example, that’s like kind of funny is you’ll see that all the time. We’re like, even at our gym when we do classes.

Jess (08:07.908)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Packett (08:35.643)
the lower body heavies, or especially if you just say that it is in fact a glute day, like people come out of the woodwork to those. And I’m like, that’s great that you showed up for a glute class, but first off, do you do this consistently because this one class isn’t going to do it. And then second off, do you eat? And I mean, eat, because otherwise you’re not going be able to achieve even the aesthetic goal that you’re looking for. And something that you said that I thought was particularly interesting was like, you know, we, can sometimes. Mistreat our body.

and not maybe knowingly or unknowingly, you know, and end up in a place where we end up actually holding ourselves back from where we could be in our health. And for women in particular, you know, and I’m a guy here, so, you know, every lady listening understand that I’ve learned this secondhand by deeply loving my wife, which means that I want to make sure that she has 13 periods a month or a year.

want to make sure that she had a year, not a month. my God. but 13 periods of a year, because that’s natural. it’s this whole 12 in a year thing is just like not even right. And, someone brought that to my attention. I counted out the extra days that we have in the month, you know, 28 days, roughly a month. Right. But then you always have the 30, 31, if you count all those up and then subtract two, because you know, February it is what it is. then you end up getting an extra whole extra month in the year. And so.

the idea that you should only have 12 in a year is just crazy. And like you’re not eating enough fats and things like that. And women have three levels of hormones that are constantly going throughout the month. For those of you listening, I just did a wave motion with both of my hands up and down. And so it’s just like, we really need to be, especially for women, much more holistic in how we look at these things and not just focus on am I skinny? Because while that is a metric that we, I don’t think we should entirely throw out.

because a higher body fat percentage will obviously mean you are not lean. And if you have a very high body fat percentage, can normally lead to, it can potentially lead to some chronic disease and things like that, especially as you age. But really, if you have a whole lot of muscle, that’s going to offset a lot of whatever negativity you may or may not experience in your life from that body fat percentage, which is why like, I’m rambling a little bit now, but like why the calculations like BMI are really unreliable because it doesn’t take into account how much.

Jake Packett (10:53.072)
of your body is muscle in comparison to the fat because I think I’m like two points overweight BMI. So throw that trash out, you know, so.

Jess (11:02.394)
Yeah, and we’re gonna break all of those down. So I’m so glad that you brought them up. And even the episode that comes out right before yours is on burnout. And I talk about burnout within your health. And what you said is what I also mentioned there, if you chase your health, aesthetics will follow. If you chase aesthetics, you’re gonna lose your health in the process. it’s, yeah, it’s such an important mentality.

Jake Packett (11:11.014)
Mm.

Jake Packett (11:23.494)
You better preach. Come on, girl.

Jess (11:30.54)
when you’re going on this journey and when it comes to these fears around putting on weight. So I want to start with you bringing up nutrition. What role does nutrition play in smartly adding weight to the body? Because again, we want you to be adding muscle. Muscle is that healthy weight gain. Some fat is going to come with it when you increase your calories. But there is a way to do this with intelligence. So what role does nutrition play and what does that look

Jake Packett (11:59.132)
Yeah, I would love to overestimate because I think overestimating leads more to realism is that nutrition is 85 % of the battle. Gosh, just in group fitness, you see various levels of fitness and various dedications to their fitness journey. And it is just amazing to me how hard people are willing to work on a gym floor sometimes, but will not apply that same level of dedication to the kitchen. And

I’ve been working out. I’ve been lifting weights since I was about 15 or 16 years old consistently. Always would go to a gym, always was going to the gym in college. And one day there was a picture of me, if you want Jess, maybe I’ll send it to you later. It’s kind of funny. There was a picture of me driving a boat that we rented because I ain’t balling like that.

but I was driving a boat that we rented and I looked at myself and I was like, man, I put in a lot of work. Like I’m there five to six days a week and I feel tired and I feel like I’m putting it all in and I look like a little man. And that’s just like, that’s just unacceptable for how much time I put into this. Now what’s interesting though is I didn’t chase the

What I saw in the picture is I had just the tiniest little belly pooch and for as many ab moves as I did, was like, why is there a belly pooch there? And what was funny is what I, what I changed wasn’t that I worked out more or added more weight to the bars. Now that did happen, but the biggest thing that I changed was I think I overeat and then when I do eat, it’s normally trash and I’m not hitting my protein. And so

Maybe a good spot to start with the nutrition thing, because you’re talking about fat mitigation as you gain weight. A good spot to start with is what is clean eating? What is the definition of clean eating? Because depending on where your Google search may take you or the nature of your Instagram algorithm, a lot of people would define this differently. And I think bringing some clarity to that could really help people to understand how to do that.

Jess (13:59.652)
Do you want to define clean eating for us?

Jake Packett (14:02.002)
Sure. Jess, I was laying you up because you’re so smart. Fair enough. Yeah. There’s a, there’s a coach at our gym. I’ll shout her out. name is D she’s been on your show before. And I had a, would say a decent understanding of what clean eating looked like, but D really took that and moved the needle for me. And it’s really making sure that that food is undenatured as, as, as, as undenatured as possible. Now.

Jess (14:04.794)
Well, you talk all the time. This is for you to show your expertise.

Jess (14:17.377)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Packett (14:32.236)
Let’s break that down. Un, so not. D, removed. Nature. So you haven’t removed it from its natural state. And the fewer steps there are from taking it from wherever it’s grown or wherever it grazes to your plate, the cleaner it is. And also making sure that whatever that thing feeds on that you’re eating is natural to it. But that’s kind of a rabbit hole. So with that being said,

One of the things that I’m really focused on right now is learning to love the taste of vegetables. So my wife and I, went to, I landed a new role recently. I’m pretty excited about it. Start Monday, is cool. And she took me out to a really nice steak house here in the city of Charlotte. And I’ve always wanted to go there and it’s supposed to be amazing. And I ordered a Wagyu New York strip and I was immensely disappointed because the second half.

my steak was rare and I ordered it medium rare. And so every time I chewed, would hear in my mouth. It was horrible. But that being said, one of the things we ordered was some Brussels sprouts and these Brussels sprouts were so bogged down with it was probably either olive oil or some type, some type of oil or butter or something like that. And there was also some bacon bits in there, which by the way, delicious with Brussels sprouts, but there was just so much fat from those, from the bacon bits.

And then all these other dressings and things like that, it was, it was so not a Brussels sprout. I couldn’t eat it. I didn’t enjoy it at all. And I was thinking, gosh, like this is, you know, really nice restaurant. We spent decent money for this side of Brussels sprouts for me not to like it. And I understand that, you know, the chef wants to do their thing, but it was so denatured that also, also the health benefit I might’ve gotten from eating. Now we went to a nice restaurant, so it’s not like I was trying to eat clean, but it was just so interesting. I couldn’t even enjoy it because

I’ve been disciplining myself lately to eat cleaner. So when I’m roasting something like zucchini, I’ll toss it in the oven. I get it just soft enough that it’s good. I might do a sprinkle of salt. And when I say a sprinkle of salt, I’m talking to sprinkle, right? No oil whatsoever. So it’s dry. I think like zucchini at this point tastes like sweet to me. Same thing with carrots. Carrots is a literal candy to me now. And we have to learn because

Jake Packett (16:52.858)
And I was trying not to go down that rabbit Hill hole a second ago when I was talking about, making sure that the thing that you eat feeds on what it’s supposed to feed on as well. But our food industry has got us so screwed because we are so accustomed to crunchy foods. are so accustomed to very rich foods. We actually just as much as we need to train our bodies, need to train our palates to change. We need to learn what sweet actually tastes like. We need to learn what savory actually tastes like.

because with things like vegetables or water-based vegetables in particular, are bogging, we, all of us in America, we bog them down with so much oil and that oil oftentimes is not good oil to begin with anyway. So there’s like failing on two counts that you’ve removed it completely from what it actually is. Like, can you imagine taking a grape and smothering it in barbecue sauce? Like it would be awful, right? Like grapes and barbecue sauce don’t go together. I use that example to say that there are things that we think go together that don’t actually go together.

but we’re so accustomed to it because of our country’s diet and just the way that we’ve been trained to eat really since we were children that we, we, we love to denature food. So an example of a plate, take the vegetable. If it’s a vegetable that needs to be cooked, cause it tastes better cook it until it’s soft enough to eat. You don’t want to also turn it into mush. Cause that’s disgusting. And so just get it to where you like it, but hopefully not mush. Don’t use a ton of oil. Don’t salt it to death either.

and then with same thing with meat, salt and pepper, call it a day. And something that is a huge moniker in my house is we let eating out food be eating out food, but home food needs to be home food. So we don’t need to bog our food down in all that oil. We need to make sure that it’s as close to nature as possible, prepare it as simply as possible. And in quantities enough that we are not setting ourselves up for opportunities to make bad decisions later.

Jess (18:42.798)
Yeah, I refer to clean eating ads at caveman times. So what were you able to eat when we were just hunter and gatherers? And that should primarily be your diet today. It’s not to say all the time. I mean, I had an acai bowl yesterday. There’s a bunch of crap in that. It was a free bowl, so I was gonna take it. But, I’m gonna say yes to vegan ice cream, because I have a dairy allergy. But so there is a give and take. You don’t have to take it to this extreme where you cut out.

everything because you guys know, you’ve been listening to me long enough to know that that’s also gonna set you up for failure. So the goal would be to put on weight smartly is to work on first cleansing your palate and that does take time. That is not an overnight switch, that’s not you throwing everything out of your cupboard, but it’s not continuously buying those same processed foods over and over again.

It’s having them once in a while. If you’re on a bachelorette trip, if you’re at a party, Halloween’s coming up. I by the time this episode comes out, Halloween will be a pass. So the holidays are coming up. Knowing that there’s a give and take, but if your goal, if you have aesthetic goals to put on muscle, to have those nice abs come next summer, it comes with eating properly. It is 85. Honestly, I would even go higher, 90 % your nutrition.

Jake Packett (19:41.895)
Yeah.

Jake Packett (20:05.234)
Do it, do it. The higher, the more realistic. And then the second piece I’d say to that puzzle is also you’ve got to hit your protein goal. So you want to eat clean foods, but some people hit their protein goal all the time and they’re morbidly obese because their protein goal comes from things like fast food or something like that. So I like to start with the clean eating piece and I think you nailed it. Like I love that.

Jess (20:06.074)
10 % what you’re doing in the gym. Yeah.

Jess (20:17.124)
Yes.

Jake Packett (20:30.088)
caveman mentality, you know, what’s a great taste like that is sweet. What is a carrot tastes like? That’s what sweet tastes like, right? So once you get that clean eating piece down, then you got to move on to you’ve got to hit your protein. Now, what is hitting your protein guys or girls? I think it’s kind of unanimous at this point. But really, if you’re a guy or girl, then you need to eat one gram. Some experts would say 80 %

of your body weight, but I would say one gram for every pound that you that you weigh or that you want to weigh. So let’s say you’re you know, you’re medical professional, your trainer says that, hey, we’re a little bit overweight here. We need to lose 10 pounds. Then if you weigh 190 pounds, we need to eat 180 grams of protein. And generally speaking, if you eat clean and you always hit your protein goal. And one of the beautiful things about protein is it’s kind of like green vegetables. You can eat as much of it as you want, and it’s not going to negatively affect you for the most part. It’s coming from clean sources.

and it’s not a super fat protein source, so you can’t have rib eyes every day. I love a rib. I just have one the other day, but not every day. but making sure that you hit both of those, I think is the smartest way to be able to increase your body weight. It’s going to be mostly muscle. If you’re training hard while you’re eating that way, and you will also mitigate body fat, as a personal example, I have gained, or well, what I did is when I, when I was in college, I’ll go back a little bit. was.

weighing in and I for me this is not a huge deal. I’m a five, five, six and a half. So I’m a half size man. And so sorry, all my short kings out there. Side note, I was watching this dating show once and there was this dude in this person who like was the matchmaker was like, look at this hobbit. Look at this hobbit man. He’s so tiny. He’s a hobbit man. And this is like 10 minutes of the episode. Look at his little hobbit fingers. He’s so tiny, blah, blah, blah. And then in there like, how tall is he? She goes five, nine. I cried.

Jess (22:29.86)
you

Jake Packett (22:31.944)
But all that to say I’m five six and a half need the half and so when I was younger in my 20s, I was like Fluctuating between 150 and 145 fluctuating right and What was interesting was that my body fat percentage was about 15 to 18 percent and mind you this was that period of time where I was lifting all the time I was working out very consistently and I had been for years and my body fat percentage was sitting between 15

and like 18, 20%, somewhere in there, it would fluctuate. And anybody who knows anything about body fat percentages about guys, that’s pretty much like smack dab in the average zone, right? And so that’s average build, maybe tiniest, tiniest hint of delayed onset dad bod, but overall I was pretty skinny. That’s what it was, right? So then I started eating clean and eating one gram of protein for every pound that I weighed, which was not as much as I weigh now. And I gained

10 pounds. So I’ve been 160 roughly for most of the past few years since about 2019. So then I wanted to get my shoulders strong because I’ve always had weak shoulders. So I upped my protein and upped my clean carbs. Some of you who may have known me, I called it operation man-sized shoulders because I’m a half-sized man and I wanted to have full man-sized shoulders. I gained five pounds. Abs weren’t as great, but shoulders were popping, right? So then

cut down the carbs just a little bit, clean carbs, and cut my protein a little bit, kept eating clean. Guess what? Went back down to 160. Started talking to D, shaved off some more body fat, increased body, the weight of my skeletal muscle, still at 160. So it’s really interesting how like the training didn’t actually change that much, but the way I hit all of those goals was directly tied to what I was eating.

Jess (24:08.651)
you

Jess (24:27.034)
Yeah, and it’s gonna affect everybody in that way as well. You can’t burn off a bad diet, I think is the saying. So, not to. I think both of them work. I feel like they both, whatever, besides the point. One thing that you had mentioned a couple of minutes ago was that your BMI is wrong and that it’s awful. And I agree. think BMI is your body mass index. It only takes into account your height and your weight.

Jake Packett (24:34.458)
Mm-mm. Out train a bad diet. Yeah.

Jess (24:57.092)
So it doesn’t actually look at what your body is made of. So when someone’s on a healthy weight gain journey or a building muscle journey, how can they track these metrics that they know that they’re putting on the good weight versus maybe the not so good weight?

Jake Packett (25:16.028)
Yeah, I’m a huge fan of the InBody scanner at our gym. There’s a lot of places, some of them are like medical weight loss clinics. Watch out for those people because don’t forget they’re also financially incentivized. they might, they might say thanks to you to try to get you to join a program. Just use the InBody, get out of there. Because they’ll put you on like a severe caloric deficit and all this kind of stuff. I used to work for one of those people, stay away. Unless you you really, really need it.

It’s not a blanket statement, but you get my point. Anyway, so the in-body is great because what it does is it shows you your percent of body fat and you can get, would say, talk to a personal trainer at your gym to find out more about percent body fats. I think for women, a really, and Jess, please correct me, because I know I’m really well for guys, but I don’t have a memorized for women, but I think a really lean woman is normally between like 15 to 20%, like a really lean woman, like a bodybuilder woman.

Jess (26:10.874)
I’d like, yeah, a bodybuilder, yes. I think like a lean limit would be 18 to 22 of you’re not risking hormonal damage.

Jake Packett (26:18.94)
Gotcha. like bodybuilder women, they can get down to like 10%, which is kind of wild, sometimes sub 10%, which is even more wild. whereas like for guys, a really lean guy, like a guy that you’d probably want to holla at at the beach, he’s probably sitting between 10 and 12. and then like a really lean, like he’s super muscular looking, probably doesn’t talk to girls because all he does is lift weights, bro.

he’s probably sub 10%. So I would look at like metrics like that and think, where am I in relation to, if I was to have an example of what different ranges of body fat percentages generally look like aesthetically, where am I in relation to those? And then try to get the percentage to that level step one. And then step two, when you’re looking at your in-body scan is my skeletal muscle weight going up. So the ratio of my weight that a skeletal muscle is that going up body fat percentages and everything.

I think I, for me, I put more stock into how much of your body is muscle. but with all that being said, the average person, you’re going to see that body fat percentage go down and you’re going to want to see that skeletal muscle go up. And as long as you’re seeing that trend month over month, not week over week, month over month, especially you ladies, because you might have a several pound difference at certain times of the month versus another time of the month. And it’s just not worth riding home about.

often do this like once a month, maybe once like every 90 days kind of a thing. Don’t be crazy. Just let your body ride the wave and be consistent. And it’s pretty amazing how, how your, your, your progress will show.

Jess (27:52.632)
Yeah, I, for the ladies listening, if I, sometimes I do an in-body every two months, I think has been me taking it a little more seriously this year alone. And I always do it right when my period ends. And I do that for two reasons. One, I feel the best. I feel mentally the best. I feel the best in my body and I’m not holding as much water. So the body fat percentage that reads on these in-bodies don’t.

marry those numbers. Look at the trends. That’s why Jake’s saying like not every week, but every month, maybe every 90 days. Look at where it’s progressing. So don’t just take your starting and then I’m going to do it again X amount of time later. Like plan it out. You’re on a journey. You should be on a plan that you’re consistently checking in with yourself with your own body metrics. Your I would say like another way that you can track if you’re gaining healthy weight is through circumference measurements. So if you’re

If you just measure two parts of your body that I would recommend would be around your navel and where your underwear line sits. And if around your navel, your belly button, is reading a bigger number than where your underwear line sits, then you are not putting on good weight. That’s where that comes from because that’s an hourglass figure is when that part of your body is smaller. And you could be growing your butt so that your underwear line measurement is going to read bigger.

Jake Packett (29:11.698)
Hmm.

Jess (29:17.422)
But that is a metric, your menstrual cycle and how consistent it is is another metric, how you’re feeling, your hair, your skin, all of those things are good, healthy weight gain metrics because if you put on too much weight, you’ll also start to lose those things. So your body, especially as a female, gives you that track record once a month. It gives you that feedback, well not once a month, like one week a month of here’s your report card.

Here’s how you’re doing, are you over training? Are you under eating? Are you overeating? Are you like under training? Like all those things. And you need to listen to the feedback your body is providing you. It is not, if you only rely on what you look like in the mirror, you are playing a losing game.

Jake Packett (30:02.6)
Absolutely. Yeah. Jess, that’s so good too, because one of the things that I think is kind of a superpower, as much as it’s also, some women would say it’s a curse, is that you get so much more feedback at a regular basis, at very particular points throughout your cycle. And I think that’s honestly something that if we framed it up slightly differently is kind of a superpower of women because for guys, our hormones, reset every day.

We’re roughly the same every day, you know, and if you work out at roughly the same time every day, you’re going to feel as long as you got the same amount of sleep and you ate okay, roughly the same every day, which some people would say, that’s great. But what’s interesting is that if I’m actually having an issue that could potentially become something worse for me, whether it be in my diet or in my sleep or whatever it is down the road, I’m going to have to wait until those symptoms start to come up before I really start to notice something. Right. Whereas women have very particular.

times throughout the week, throughout the months where they feel very particular way and they’re intuitively aware of how they should feel on this week versus that week. And I think that’s, we’re even understanding the fact that maybe you can lift heavier certain times of the month, maybe you shouldn’t lift as heavy, like it’s kind of amazing. so women really can, if you lean into that, lean into your femininity, it’s beautiful. It’s really a superpower and it’s just your body.

and maybe saying no or saying yes to giving life and that’s a beautiful thing and whether you choose to have children or not, it’s just kind of amazing that through that process your body gives you a ton of feedback and I wish I could have that much data to work off of in my own fitness journey.

Jess (31:43.61)
Yeah, I was listening to a podcast this morning and it talked about how our ovaries are constantly scanning our environment for whether or not it should reproduce. Whether or not you want to reproduce. it’s just know like your body is constantly as a female being like, am I safe? And that comes from your nutrition, your workouts and your work stress. Think of like any stress that comes into your life. That’s where that’s coming from. So I feel like we’ve talked

a good deal about adding weight to the body in a healthy way, let’s switch over to adding weight to the bar. When is it good to do that? So yes, when it comes to adding weight to the bar, we’re really referring to progressively overloading your lifts. So it’s not just the literal bar, but this could be dumbbells, this could be cables, machines, everything. So why you’ve kind of mentioned this a little bit, but I want you to repeat in terms of just in the gym.

Jake Packett (32:21.572)
Always.

Jess (32:42.564)
Why is it important to add weight or focus on increasing your strength?

Jake Packett (32:49.234)
There’s a couple ways to talk about this. I think that one thing in general is that when you lift heavier weights, you incorporate more muscle fibers for the lift. So when you lift really light weights, your body doesn’t necessarily, you don’t stress the muscle that much. Like, cause a bicep, for example, it’s not this hunky.

little muscle that dudes flex and think it’s the greatest muscle ever. It’s many fibers that reach down to where your elbow connects to your forearm and all those fibers are all firing at the same time or at different levels based on the nerves that run through them. And so it’s not just like this one muscle and every muscle is like that. The

bodybuilders for example, when they get really low body fat, you can see the striations or the individual muscle fibers of like their chest and things like that. so like when we’re talking about lifting heavier, what we want to do is it’s not so much that we want to train too hard. It’s not that we want to stress our bodies out and cause injury or something like that. It’s not that at all.

But really it’s just a strategy to make sure that you incorporate as many of those muscle fibers as possible for whatever the lift is that you’re doing. And in that you will promote more growth because then they will all grow. And so I think that’s like one of the biggest things for me is that I, tend to, and as a male, this is kind of one of those unfair advantages that I get to have is that, you know, since my hormones reset every day, can, and every guy should, by the way, lift.

lighter every now and again to give your body a chance to rest, to heal and recover. But just as a general statement, you can kind of just hit it hard every day and call it a day. Like that’s just what it is. Right. and so, but for women, again, you got, you y’all have so much more feedback, which is amazing. Maybe there are certain times where it’s more appropriate to like know that this is the time to push it. And maybe it’s less appropriate to do that. And you get that those, those cycles more often than a guy does. Right.

Jake Packett (34:56.924)
But all that to be said, I think it’s always appropriate to add weight to the bar. I think it’s always appropriate to add weight to your curl. I think it’s always appropriate to add weight to your squat. I think in general, we should always come into the gym with an expectation that we are going to do more than what we did last week or what we did yesterday. but I say that again, with the caveat that you’ve got to listen to your body, especially the ladies because

We’ve seen it with guys who like get involved in ego lifting and they’re just like, I’m going to go hard no matter what. And I need a spotter for every lift. And it’s like, dude, you’re going to kill yourself. Your joints are not happy with you. You’re not giving your body a chance to heal and you’re going to end up getting injured. And then you’re that long-term goal of being somebody like my dad, who’s just an absolute baller at 77. You’re actually setting yourself up not to be like that. You’re setting yourself up to have more issue.

So I just want to make sure that that caveat’s really important because there’s a strategy to it. But in general, think sometimes.

especially with the ladies, to be honest, I will see, well, I’m just going to take it easy. And I’m just going to do like maybe three or four sets of 20 reps of this lightweight. And I just want to feel it burn because when I burn, I’m going to get toned. And anybody who knows me knows that that T word drives me up a wall because it doesn’t exist. It’s not real tone is just how much muscle can you see? And so like, like, and what happens is you actually set yourself up to be.

wasting a lot of time in the gym and not reaching your goals because the most toned girl, and it’s almost like the same thing when we’re talking about food, like the girl with the biggest butt eats more than you. The most toned person lifts heavier than you. And so you’ve, it’s just like, we are almost setting ourself, ourself up for self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. And, so I think it’s always appropriate in general to come in with that expectation that to do more than last week or do more than yesterday.

Jess (36:53.56)
Yeah, without ego lifting and making sure that your form is perfect because the heavier you go, the higher your chance of injury. But we’re on a great topic of I like to call them myths around the gym. And part of that is the toning of I need to lift lighter and do higher reps. And it’s like, no, no, you don’t. It’s honestly what’s going to change your body is what you haven’t been doing. So if you’re constantly doing that, then you need to lift heavier and go with lighter.

lower reps. it’s what are some what are some of your favorite myths that you want to debunk around weightlifting?

Jake Packett (37:33.795)
The one where it’s like, well, Jess.

Jess (37:38.52)
You can at me, you can call me out.

Jake Packett (37:41.072)
We’ve talked about this. I think a huge one is just the whole like, I don’t want to get bulky thing from females. And then the whole thing where it’s just like, I think that’s like the biggest one that girls do. The biggest one that guys do in my opinion is the idea that I’m bulking. So I’m just going to eat trash, put on 10 % of body fat. Then I’m going to lose that 10 % of body fat and call it a cut.

Jess (37:42.362)
I know.

Jake Packett (38:09.606)
Hilarious stop doing that. You know what I mean? So I’d say for guys and girls. Those are the two biggest myths that I think is quite comical.

Jess (38:18.52)
Okay, so how can you debunk them? Like what’s the truth behind what they’re saying? Or like, guess the opposing truth.

Jake Packett (38:26.652)
Yeah, on the guy side, I would say that you are actually setting yourself up to, yes, you are, you might feel like you have more energy due to the caloric intake. That’s just a fact. Calories in means you will have more disposable energy. But especially if it’s not clean eating, you are setting yourself up for not near as higher performance level as you possibly could. And you are actively undercutting your body’s ability to put on muscle while you’re lifting. So my suggestion would be, yes, eat the extra calories.

but still try to eat as clean as possible. I do like, some people say 80-20, I’m more like a 85-90-10 kind of guy, 85-15-90-10 kind of guy. And that’s just for me personally and my personal goals, but really make sure that that food is dialed in and then lift as heavy as you possibly can with great form and not ego lifting and giving your body chances to rest when appropriate, all those things. And you’ll be able to bulk really healthily and…

The goal when you’re bulking is not to put on weight. Some guys will put on weight and they’re like, yeah, I’m bulking. No, the point is to put on muscle. So especially when you reach a particular level of fitness, that might be, you’re lucky to get a pound kind of a thing. So if you’re just going to load your body with tons of Oreos and things like that, you’re, you’re not actually setting yourself up to be able to achieve that goal. You might gain like maybe, you know, 20 % of muscle or like, you know, point two.

pounds of muscles, what I was trying to say, not 20 % muscle, that’d be amazing. It might be 0.2 pounds, but like, you’re not gonna go crazy with it. And so I would just recommend eating clean and making sure you hit that protein.

Jess (39:58.111)
What?

Jess (40:09.114)
Yeah, and I forgot what I was going to say. Hold on, got to think for a second.

Jake Packett (40:13.006)
Aw, dang it, Jess.

Jess (40:16.92)
It was on the topic of guys eating so much.

Hmm, maybe it’ll, right, all right, okay. Got it now. I wanna say that newbie gains are not going to consistently be in your life. So you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, but Jake, I did this last year for the first time and I had these amazing results. So I’m just gonna do it all again. No, the newbie gains happened because it was the first time.

but it’s not, and your body was still new, it was still in this massive building phase. As you become more experienced in the gym and with your nutrition and it’s more consistent and becomes your actual lifestyle, the gains taper off. You hit plateaus, you really have to put in extra work to move that needle and the results you’re gonna see as a result are not going to be exponential. So know that that happens upfront for sure.

I that when I first started weightlifting, but it does not continue to happen in that same way.

Jake Packett (41:28.552)
That’s unreasonably helpful. I’m so glad you said that. When I first, when I was talking about like that time where I first started dialing in my nutrition, after I saw that picture of myself, I got ripped. I wasn’t as big as I am now and I’m half size man, so I’ll never be big, but you know what I mean. But I got ripped fast. Like it took three or four months quick, you know? And now I’m sitting there fighting for an extra pound of muscle. I mean fighting.

months at a time, years at a time sometimes, or in certain lifts where I’m trying to go up in weight. And generally speaking, I don’t do one rep maxes. I’m too old for that. And so I’m 33. So I’m giving the wisdom to you 20 somethings. I’m just kidding. Please edit that out.

But like one of the things I realized is that you know, I when you’re younger and when you just started lifting out lifting weights and stuff like that it just hits hard but now if I can get an extra two and a half pounds on a lift, I’m feeling very accomplished if I mean if I can get an extra pound on a lift I can feel the difference and I’m feeling very accomplished. So just know that that is absolutely in your future and I’m really glad you brought that up Jess.

Jess (42:42.67)
Yeah, for the body and the bar. want you to, you talked about the men debunked, or talking about the opposing truce with the men’s debunked. Can you talk about how it relates to females not wanting to get too bulky and what you have to say around that?

Jake Packett (42:56.732)
Yeah, think that it’s really interesting because within fitness, you have an intersection of a couple of industries, which is you have your bodybuilding community, you have your athletic community, right? And then you have kind of like the…

Like this cat, and of course, like I’m just categorizing these as I speak, but like this more casual kind of, just trying to be healthy kind of a person. And what’s very interesting is that like, I actually would say outside of the fact of teaching classes at the gym, that I actually hang out in that third category. I’m just someone who wants to be healthy for the long haul, long haul. That’s all I’m trying to do. But what’s interesting is I noticed with ladies in particular, as they will skip out the athletic community, jump straight to the bodybuilders and go, if I lift heavy.

I’m gonna look like them. And I think that if you’re a competing athlete and you’re a female, that’s a wonderful thing to aspire to. There’s amazing male and female bodybuilders at our gym and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. So much hard work and dedication and unreasonably dialed in diet, a training schedule that most people could never keep up with. It’s incredible what they do. And I say all of that to say,

What makes you think that if you add an extra two pounds to the bar, you’re going to look like that. Like it’s just impossible, right? Like the level of training and the dialing into the diet is just, it’s just a completely different level than what the average human being is doing because they are professional body, what builders. So they are doing something as a science to get them as big as possible with the smallest ways possible with the most striations possible and as even and as,

aesthetically and even all around their body, all around. That’s what they’re trying to do. What you are trying to do, what I am trying to do is just be healthy. That’s it. So if you’re adding weight and you get strong, you’re not going to look like the bodybuilder. You’re just not. Not to mention for a lot of women in particular, the quote unquote bulky look, you don’t have the natural testosterone production in order to even get close to that.

Jake Packett (45:10.144)
as a female, you just don’t have it. And so it’s actually biologically impossible from the overwhelming majority of women to look like that. And then of course, there’s some other variables that I don’t necessarily want to get into here, but there’s just like a bunch of things going on that make it impossible for you to get bulky, which kind of almost brings me back to what we were talking about earlier. We’re like, everybody comes to, you know, my lower body heavy classes and it’s just like,

Like you’re not going to get bulky if you add weight, there’s, there’s, girls at our gym and the women at our gym, high fitness shout out. the women at our gym are just absolutely unbelievable. They are so incredible. And one of the things I love about the women at our gym is that we’ve got women who, some of them naturally competed in bikini competitions and they are just.

so muscular and their performance is out of this world. There’s one girl whenever she comes to my class, I’ll tell her that like, I almost wish you demoed the workout because you do a better RDL than me. you should have done it. she’s just like amazing, right? But then there’s like another girl. We’ve got girls who we’ve got girls who they’re short, they’re tall. We’ve got girls that are they’re wider, they’re leaner, and they’re throwing up like 60 pound incline press like they’re crazy strong and they’re

pushing the sled with me sitting on it, which is, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of weight. And so, but none of these ladies look bulky. They, they, in many ways, some of them have the, the Instagram fitness body. And then some of them don’t have anything close to that, but they’re so strong and the performance is so good that it’s just like, they’re living the dream, right? What their capabilities are. So I think just to kind of shuffle that down a little bit is that, you know, there, there is a.

unspoken, guess at this point in 2024, but it still exists. cause I don’t hear anybody say it, but I know it’s out there and I know a lot of women deal with it. So I just want any girl listening to know that I see you and I understand the world that we live in from the vantage point of a man and what people tell me to think is attractive. So I can’t imagine when women are seeing those same things and saying, that’s also what you’re supposed to look like. I know it hits totally different. So I empathize where I can and sympathize where I can’t empathize, but

Jake Packett (47:29.613)
I just want you to know that.

being skinny or being lean is not the goal. And what’s beautiful about what I’m seeing in culture nowadays is that it’s shifting a lot to where being as skinny as possible is no longer what’s attractive. I don’t listen to country, but Instagram’s always trying to catch boys in a trap. I have to, I’ve trained my algorithm pretty good, but every now and again it fishes. And there’s like this country artist with like a huge butt that everybody loves. And it’s just like, she’s not a skinny girl. She’s just not.

She doesn’t look like Britney Spears in the nineties did, you know, like she’s just not, she doesn’t look like Christina Aguilera on that, on the cover of that album. can’t remember the name of it, but we all know which one I’m talking about. Like that’s just not what’s considered attractive anymore. And I think that that’s actually a sign of progress. And if I can just encourage the ladies like lean into that, like there was room at the table now for every body type. And it wasn’t like that when I was a kid.

So if you’re a naturally taller, thicker, wider, whatever that looks like, maybe you’ve got a naturally larger, larger quads, larger legs. Maybe you’ve got really skinny legs. There’s just room at the table for everyone now based on your fitness level. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. And you don’t have to worry about getting bulky unless you want to do something that’s like requires an unbelievable amount of dedication and an unbelievable amount of effort that, that there’s a reason why they’re professionals and they make.

you know, lots of, lots of money if they win. So you don’t have to worry about that. And I’m just real passionate about that. Cause my wife is a little, is a little twig and she, her words, not mine. And, you know, she was always jealous and still is even sometimes of the girl who, you know, just has more feminine features or more curves and things like that. And it was really amazing watching her unlock a whole new level of confidence because she’s gaining weight and in the process.

Jake Packett (49:28.442)
She started eating more protein. And then in the process, she put on just a little bit of extra body fat. And then in the process, her body is regulating more, more in the way it’s supposed to. And she feels so much more beautiful, even though she’s not even close to as skinny as she was when I married her. And like, I’ll be honest, I don’t know. I mean, I might not sound like it just on the video on the audio, but I’m a black man and I’m happy about it. So it’s just like a great thing. Like it’s just like.

Beautiful and I think that’s that if more women can have that type of confidence and if more men in the world Can celebrate women for what their bodies are capable of now how their bodies please their eyes my gosh, would that change everything and so I know that you don’t work out for guys But there’s just like biological eventualities that we can’t run away from we want to we want to feel attractive To who the opposite sex, know, like it just is what it is and just know that

You know, we live in a better time than ever. So be the best you, you possibly can be. And if any guy says otherwise, tell him to kick rocks. I hope he’s single forever.

Jess (50:34.842)
All right, you unpacked a lot, which I’m very glad you did. It’s why I wanted you to come on this episode and talk about, talk about this topic on this episode. And a lot of things you brought up I want to ask you about. I’m going to specifically hone in on when you started talking about your wife and about watching her body journey recently. Like this isn’t from 10 years ago. This is recent. This is real time. What’s…

For the women and men listening, when we talk about adding weight to the bar and the body, what’s the relationship between body composition and strength?

Jake Packett (51:16.066)
I think it depends. because there are, are, Hmm. That’s a really good question, Jess, because yeah, like, cause there are

Jess (51:26.33)
I can reword it.

Jess (51:30.234)
Well, I think where it comes from is that if you are eating more and you’re lifting heavier and the scale is going up or the scale is even staying the same, that it might not even look like body weight gain all the time, but you’re still changing your overall composition of your body for the better, for when it comes to adding weight to the bar, to the body.

Jake Packett (51:55.996)
Mm-hmm. I don’t know if that cleared it up.

Jess (51:59.482)
I feel like I can’t answer my own question. Okay, re-track.

I’m gonna just ask it, I’m gonna ask a different question then. Okay, when it comes to this topic of adding weight to the bar and the body, is it in your opinion, in your mind, is there an order of operations that comes with this phenomenon, this topic, as in which should you prioritize first or which one is better to prioritize first? Should they work together at the same time? Like where?

Jake Packett (52:30.888)
Mm.

Jess (52:36.322)
If someone were to choose one, what would it be? I guess would be the better way to answer that.

Jake Packett (52:41.55)
Yeah. I think like if I was coaching someone on this, I would say that the first thing we need to do is get your diet dialed. And I mean like a maintenance calorie level. I’m actually like, I would want to see, say someone’s particularly deconditioned. and even if someone was obese, I would consider this now with someone who’s obese, you, you, you have a bit more impetus to lower the weight faster.

But the challenge is that can sometimes be such a shocking lifestyle change that you set, the trainer will then set the client up for failure. my modus operandi, is that right? Is to make sure that I, let’s just get your maintenance calories and get you eating clean foods and just see if you can do that. Right? And if you’re someone who’s.

particularly deconditioned, then maybe I’ll cut the calories a little bit, but overall we’re not like in diet world. We’re just trying to get you to learn to eat clean foods, not to add a ton of oil and salt to them, And then from there, we got to lift and we’re gonna do both of those things at the same time. And if you’re like the average person, then I just want to see you continue to eat clean and then we’re gonna continue to slowly increase your strength over time.

One of the big things that I notice is that as soon as someone starts regularly eating their in, in, from clean sources, their daily allotment of protein, then the body composition follows, especially for newbies quick. there are some people that have unearned superpowers and

You really can’t compare themselves to them. You know, there’s there’s a there’s a guy that comes to our gym and I know he doesn’t sleep and I know he doesn’t eat enough and I know he drinks a decent amount and he’s just ripped. It’s just is what it is. You know what I mean? He’s just it’s so annoying. I’m like, I wish I could drink every weekend and look like that. You know, some people have unearned superpowers and you just got to like take that and understand what it is and put it to the side in the same way that some women who never live just look a certain way.

Jake Packett (54:53.536)
and they put a bikini on and it just is what it is. You take that and you put it to the side. That’s an unearned superpower. Nobody likes those it makes for boring movies. So just don’t worry about it.

Jess (55:02.714)
want to add to the superpowers because the last time Jake and I did a leg day together he detoured to go talk to one of the other trainers about how does his legs look like that. He’s one of the people that he runs like 50 miles a week and has the most amount of muscle on his body and that is not a normal occurrence. It is false advertising. is an unearned superpower. So focus on what we’re saying in this episode rather than on what

Jake Packett (55:24.936)
It is!

Jess (55:32.122)
other people are doing because what other people are doing are not necessarily what’s best for you. Yes, this is general advice, but I think unknowingly follow the order of operations of how we weighed out this episode and what we talked about where Jake brought up eating clean and then he talked about reaching your protein and then he talked about adding weight to the bar and that’s the order. Focus on that and you will see results.

Jess (56:04.154)
Did you care to add anything? I froze.

Jake Packett (56:05.0)
Sorry, you froze. You froze. Yeah, and so was trying to, you froze earlier too and I just waited and then I was able to kind of see what you were talking about and hop right on in, but it didn’t unfreeze. I’m sorry.

Jess (56:19.002)
Am I still frozen?

Jake Packett (56:20.74)
No, no, no, you’re unfrozen now. What’d you say? What was the last thing you said? I appreciate that you said to follow the flow of the episode, how we talked about, you know, eating, then we talked about, you know, protein, then we talked about lifting, and that’s when you froze.

Jess (56:24.405)
gosh.

Jess (56:33.356)
Yeah, and basically like that’s how you’ll get the results that you want.

Jake Packett (56:38.054)
A thousand percent, you know, like I think in life. It’s really easy to get bogged down in the what abouts for everything. We see this in political conversations. We see this when, you know, husbands and wives are discussing things. We see this when friends are trying to figure out things is there’s a variable that even if everything that was said was logical and true and helpful and good, there’s a variable that makes us go, what about.

And if you get bogged down in the what abouts, you will never get anything done. Really think about that. just with everything going on in the world today, because sometimes there are things that are just true, but you’ll never get anything done if the what abouts rule. Right. And so like a good example is just the one that Jess brought up is like this guy, he’s our friend. So we could talk about him. He’s amazing. And he has the nicest quads and people who run the mile, like as many miles as he runs, they just don’t have, I mean,

Not like, you can see his quads. mean, they’re big, developed, beautiful, manly quads. Ladies, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Guys, true for y’all too, but really for the ladies. A lot of guys can go in the gym and build a bicep, but if he’s got quads, you’ve learned something about him. You know what I’m saying? And this man, I mean, he works hard. He does lift and all that good stuff, but it’s just crazy. there’s always those whatabouts and try not to get bogged down in those. The general rules are what you want to focus on.

and make sure you hit that protein, make sure you eat clean. And then in general, ladies, for you in particular, there’s a little bit more complexity there. Guys, just don’t be ego lifters. Make sure you take rest weeks, rest months even, but always add weight. More than what you did last week. What I always tell people in my class is, I just got my first pull up. And I’m like, that’s awesome. Time to add weight. They’re like, what? I’m like, yeah.

like strap two and a half pounds to yourself, strap five pounds to yourself, I don’t care how much, it is time to add weight because if you can teach your body to do that pull up under load, it makes doing 10 pull ups feel like nothing, you know? And so it doesn’t matter what it is, push ups, you can do 50 push ups, put a plate on your back, let’s go. Like add weight, always add weight and I promise you won’t get bulky ladies and guys, I promise you won’t shrink if you take a rest day, I promise. So.

Jess (58:56.91)
That was another one. That was an important one. For the people who are still fearful about adding weight to the bar, my ladies who are afraid to get bulky, there are other tactics you can do to elicit a positive response from your body. At the end of the day, yes, adding weight to the bar is what’s going to be the best for so many more reasons of like strengthening your bones, et cetera, getting the body you want. But Jake, can you talk about

what else someone can change in their workouts that will still allow them to, I don’t want to say be just as effective as, but at least be effective towards increasing the weights that they use. So maybe not necessarily adding a heavier weight, but they can change some other components that will still help them build muscle.

Jake Packett (59:47.41)
solid layup of a question. love it. I think something that I notice a lot is guys will go past the point of form breakdown in order to hit quote unquote failure. Whereas women will start to feel that they are approaching they haven’t yet but they are approaching form breakdown and then we’ll call that failure. Both are wrong. Okay. So for guys what they will do is it’s like I just got to squeeze one more out the squat looks like trash you know.

Jess and I were training not too long ago and I probably could have done it like another three or four squats, but my hips shifted and she told me because we helped keep each other accountable. And I was like, that was failure. That was it. My form broke down, even though I didn’t feel like I was tired enough for that. If my form breaks down, then I know that’s failure. So guys, if your forms breaking down, don’t train past that. That is technical failure period. Okay. That’s it with girls. I noticed like when I train with my wife in particular, actually also when I trained with you, Jess,

Well, we’ll be doing one time Jess was doing legs with me and she was like, all right, I don’t know why she lets me do this. She like does some of my programming sometimes and I’m like, why, why do you do this? Jess is a beast ladies. So Jess’s goals. And so one of the things that I did is I said, all right, we’re going to do three triple drop sets of leg extensions. Then we’re going to go squat. And that’s because

Jess (01:00:48.95)
I know.

Jess (01:01:01.688)
I die every time.

Jake Packett (01:01:17.736)
I’m sadistic. and for those of you who don’t know what a drop set is, that’s where you do a set until you hit failure. Then you drop the weight and then you do another set to you hit failure, but we were doing triple drop sets. So you had to drop the weight again until you hit failure. And we had to do that three times. And so it was crazy. what was interesting though, it was, would, you know, Jess would start to struggle and she’d do her Jess smile where she’s like, you know, and I would say you’ve got more because her muscles weren’t shaking yet.

There was no technique breakdown. She wasn’t like pulling her arms. Sometimes we’ll sit ourselves into the end, almost kind of arch our back in order to get another leg extension. She wasn’t doing that. And I was like, you got more. She’s like, no. And then she did like another 10. It was something crazy. And that’s because first of all, Jess has extremely strong quads, but also we have to learn to train to, a level of failure. and that is technique breakdown or where you cannot do more than one rep.

after the one you just did. Some would say maybe two to three reps in reserve. You can get in the weeds with all that kind of stuff. I just say one rep, it’s fine. See, everybody says something a little different, but as long as you know that you’ve got very few, meaning like one to two, maybe three left in the tank, that’s where you’ve hit failure. And so here’s the funny thing, to Jess’s question, now that I’ve said all of that. I feel like I’m on the presidential debate. I say a lot and I haven’t answered a question.

Jess (01:02:25.094)
I say two in the tank.

Jake Packett (01:02:48.136)
so to answer Jess’s question, one of the things ladies in particular that you can do is just make sure you hit that particular point of failure. So maybe you might have, an issue with your back. And so putting a barbell on your back feels really strange when you’re doing squat squats or something like that. That’s totally fine. You can do something lighter. You could do goblet squats, or you could do a machine squat of some kind. Totally fine. But make sure you take that weight lighter, but you still hit that failure point.

And that’s going to be a way for you to also make sure that you exhaust fully exhaust the muscle. As you start to tire out, your body is recruiting fibers that have not yet been used, in order to move the weight. And so then you get the most, some people would call it motor unit recruitment, on the movement. And then you will still get close to the same amount of gains as you would if you would just increase the caveat to that though, is that if you always just make sure, say if like,

If you were going really heavy, it would have been eight to 10 reps. But because you’re going lighter, you’re still hitting failure. It’s 15 to 20 reps. That doesn’t mean that once that gets easy, you try to do 20 to 25 reps. You still at some point need to progressively overload that muscle with more weight. But you can keep those weights trending lower by making sure you still hit failure even with the rep count higher, which I hope answers the question.

Jess (01:04:07.018)
Yeah, it does. And I want to add to it of if you are gravitating towards that lighter weight, or yeah, lighter weight, higher reps, you should still be taking the tempo nice and slow. So just because it’s super light, those first 10, 12, 15 reps does not mean you should be whipping them out. It should be a nice slow tempo. You could do a two, two, two, a three, three, three. You slowing it down will also add tension and make the bar feel or the weight feel.

Jake Packett (01:04:33.17)
What’s that, Jess?

Jess (01:04:36.41)
heavier.

Jake Packett (01:04:39.08)
What’s a 222 or a 333?

Jess (01:04:41.878)
It’s a, there’s three components to any type of lift. It’s eccentric, isometric, and concentric. basically as you, well I’ll use a squat for example. As you lower down into a squat, as you sit your butt down, you count one, two. Then you hold at the bottom, one, two, and then you stand yourself up, one, two. So that’s a two, two, two.

you can change that up to be anything. It could be a one, two, three, a three, two, one, like whatever you want. It could be a one, one, one where it’s all just a one second movement. It’s typically what the normal person gravitates to the most, I would say, which is why I didn’t say it, because I wanted to challenge you guys. But it’s different, it’s tempo. And knowing that those breakdowns is different seconds as you move through the different portions of that rep, of that exercise, of that movement.

fill in whatever word you want to make sense for you.

Thanks for asking me that, Jake. But I wanna wrap up this episode and yes, time under tension. wanna wrap up this episode and ask, do you have any final piece of advice or information that you want to share with the listeners, the 20 somethings listening, when it comes to their relationship to the gym and to their body?

Jake Packett (01:05:41.67)
No problem. That time under tension,

Jake Packett (01:06:03.388)
Yeah, aesthetic benefits are great, but a better life is better. And so I think sometimes, especially when we’re young and especially if you’re unmarried or not in a relationship, you want to make sure you put the best version of yourself out there aesthetically because that is generally speaking how we attract a mate just as what it is.

was watching Love is Blind the other day and some guy says, I don’t care what you look like. I’m like, yeah, you do. You’re lying. And that’s not a bad thing. That just is how we are biologically. Now that doesn’t mean that some people might not be super shallow and ridiculous, but ultimately you want to like what you’re looking at at some level. But if we get too bogged down into that, then we actually set ourselves up to be pretty miserable. So as you…

start to build a relationship with the gym if you haven’t yet, or if you already have a relationship with the gym, I would take a step back and say, like, why do I do this? Do I do this because I want to look a certain way or do I do this because I want to feel a certain way long term? And if I feel a certain way long term, that’s going to translate, just like Jess said earlier, to how I look. And that is from a guy who, you know, something terrible happened if I was back on the market, right? That would be more attractive to me than how the woman looked right now.

because that tells me that long-term down the road, this is gonna be someone I can continue to do life with, not necessarily that they’re gonna just do this for a time until they get snatched up and then call it a day. So I’d be thinking about that a lot is making sure that what is the long-term goal and focusing in on that.

Jess (01:07:36.858)
love how you brought that full circle because it’s kind of how you started with the lead and lag and now we’re wrapping it to here. amazing. Jake, thank you so much for being a guest on How to 20 something. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch or ask you any questions?

Jake Packett (01:07:41.148)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Packett (01:07:53.05)
Oof, I teach group fitness classes at High Fitness and so you can come see me there when I have my trainer hat on. Otherwise, you’ll probably hear me talking about Bible stuff. And you can find me on at Jake Packett Instagram and you’ll find a lot of that. So just be ready. If you really hate Jesus, don’t recommend it. Ten out of ten do not recommend. But.

That’s kind of where I spend most of my time is studying the scriptures and things like that. It’s really important to me to make sure that I live a life that is authentic and authentically true to the scripture, which I think is where a lot of us who might have negative connotations when associated with organized religion, where we get it from. And I’m with you in that because we’ve removed ourselves from the book. So that’s what you’ll find on my Instagram. But if you want to talk fitness, come hit me up at the gym.

Jess (01:08:42.988)
and his Instagram will be linked in the show notes. Unfortunately, I can’t link him being at the gym in the show notes for you guys, but this does conclude another episode of How to 20 something. If you liked what you heard, if you learned something new, if you know someone who needs to hear this episode, then please pass it along. Send it to a friend, post it on social media, tag me, tag Jake when you do. And as always, I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode.