Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're the type of person who spends lots of time focusing on your training and going to the gym to build strength and muscle for your ideal physique, but you haven't seen the transformation that you envisioned, this episode's for you, because today I'm explaining how the critical path method and engineering principle clarifies why bodybuilders and marathon runners train so differently and how this applies to your fitness journey. You'll learn to identify the most impactful activities for your specific goals, and that allows you to focus on what truly drives progress and then eliminate wasted effort. This approach often means doing less overall work while accelerating results, efficiency being the name of the game. So if you've been putting in this consistent effort but not seeing proportional gains, what I'm outlining today will show you where to refocus your energy for maximum impact. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're dissecting a question that puzzles many people who are into this fitness and strength training. Why do different people with different goals, like bodybuilders and marathon runners, train in such radically different ways, such that they get different results? It might seem obvious, but it's not, because you are probably one of those in the camp who lift weights, who want to build muscle, want a better physique, and you're a bit frustrated because it doesn't seem to be going the way you expect. So we are going to use the critical path method, cpm a tool from project management to break down these contrasting approaches and show you how to apply this principle to wherever you fall on that spectrum to optimize your own training regimen. And, of course, before we dive in, if you're finding value in these engineering inspired insights and episodes, hit the follow button. Just push follow right now so you get notified of future episodes. You don't miss them and it helps others discover the show. And, as a bonus, if you'd like to give a rating and or review in the podcast app you're listening right now I would be very grateful for that.

Philip Pape: 2:19

All right, let's get into it today, and I want to talk about the paradox of the world we're in here when it comes to fitness physical fitness Because on one hand, we have bodybuilders and I pick that because those are kind of the extreme example of people who are focused on consistent heavy lifting and weight training and volume, isolation exercises, compound lifts all of it to kind of build the strongest, most developed physique they can. On the other hand of the spectrum, we have marathon runners who are purely focused on endurance, logging extensive mileage, almost to the detriment of any resistance training. Of course we know now that fitness and strength and resistance training is helpful, no matter who you are. But even if you watch the Olympics and you just look at the physiques, you can tell there's a marked difference in muscle mass and body fat and things like that. And this stark contrast. You might think, okay, that kind of makes sense because they train differently. But it's still perplexing when both are held up as a model of fitness. Right, like people are, on one hand, a marathon runners are considered athletes and they're very and they're in the elite, you know the, the ones who are very competitive. On the other hand, so our bodybuilders but they couldn't probably run in a 5k and do super well. Uh, and I say that in all kindness, because kindness, because I know that if they did, they would have to sacrifice some of their bodybuilding goals. So it's not an insult to them at all. It's a matter of specificity, right? How do you determine which method aligns with your objectives in the most efficient way, the most specific way so you're not wasting time doing the things that don't really matter for your goals, and that's the important thing. I care doing the things that don't really matter for your goals, and that's the important thing. I care about efficiency. I don't know about you. I'm kind of lazy in that sense. I don't want to waste time doing these other things. So here's where we bring in the critical path method, cpm.

Philip Pape: 4:17

Now, in engineering, anybody who's familiar with managing projects and schedules and this could be hey, if you're a stay-at-home mom, if you're a homeschool teacher you guys are some of the best at managing budgets and schedules. But in the business world and engineering, a lot of people are familiar with this concept where you have to identify the most critical tasks in your project from start to finish. That if that thing is delayed, it's going to push back the entire schedule, right? If your materials for the foundation of your house haven't arrived, you can't build a foundation of your house and it's going to delay everything else with your house. You can't build a foundation of your house and it's going to delay everything else with your house, whereas if the you know siding hasn't arrived, you might have a lot of time until that happens before it matters, right, and even then you could live in a house that has no siding, for you could literally live in a house without siding. So the essential tasks form what we call the critical path.

Philip Pape: 5:14

And so if we apply this to this extreme of bodybuilders versus marathon runners, starting with the bodybuilders right, the bodybuilders have a critical path that usually includes spending time in a building phase, the improvement season some people call it right A gaining phase, using progressive overload, resistance, training, building muscle, being in maintenance or in a surplus, having sufficient protein, calories and carbs and plenty of recovery to just build, build, build, build. That's the critical path. Why? Because if you don't take that time, you'll never have anything to reveal once you diet down later. So if you forget that, it's like the foundation of the house. You're done. You have to start there at some point. Obviously somebody who's already built muscle multiple times over their career or their life. They've gone through that already. They've built that foundation.

Philip Pape: 6:03

Now, on the other hand, we have endurance athletes and marathon runners, and their critical path looks like gradually increasing their running volume, improving their cardiovascular endurance, optimizing the economy of their running and then properly fueling for those efforts which may be at the detriment of, say, protein or building muscle or even strength? Potentially right, not that those things aren't a foundation as well. And so the divergence in these two paths, these two critical paths, which are completely different goals, stems from their distinct end goals. The end result right, the bodybuilder aims to maximize hypertrophy of their muscles. The marathon runner is focused on peak cardiovascular endurance two very hugely different adaptations.

Philip Pape: 6:47

And where most people go wrong is they attempt to pursue multiple, often conflicting goals simultaneously. They want to build substantial muscle, but then they also want to improve their work capacity and their endurance. And then they're trying to lose body fat. Right, and this is akin to trying to, you know, construct a skyscraper and a highway with the exact same crew and resources. Right, they have to go back and forth and back and forth. It's very inefficient and it's often very ineffective.

Philip Pape: 7:17

And so the beauty of the critical path method is emphasizing prioritization. Like, what do you really care about? Right, like in a complex engineering project, you can't do everything at once. Same thing with your fitness journey you have to periodize, you have to focus on the tasks that will propel you the most directly toward your specific goal, and then the training itself has to emphasize that specificity. So what does that look like?

Philip Pape: 7:43

Well, first we have to know what that goal is. If you listen to this podcast, it's probably in the realm of building your physique and health, building muscle. There's an underlying reason that you're doing that right, a deeper why. And yes, you definitely want to start there with who you are and who you want to be, who you are living the life of now, the routine that would be lived by someone who's an athlete, someone who's strong. But then you obviously have to get to the nuts and bolts of something not vague, like I want to get in shape, or I want to get healthier, but I'm going to lose 20 pounds of fat, or I'm going to gain 10 pounds of muscle. I mean, we need to get to some level of specificity, just from a practical perspective, right.

Philip Pape: 8:24

And then you want to identify the critical path for that goal. What are the non-negotiable activities? So, if it's fat loss, this might include, of course, creating a calorie deficit. I mean, it's just a very simple thing that a lot of people take for granted, because you get hung up on well, I need to cut carbs, I need to cut this, or I need to increase my cardio, whatever. No, you just need a calorie deficit, however, that comes in a sustainable way for you, and you need more protein to hold onto the muscle and you have to use resistance training to maintain that muscle. So these are elements on the way with your critical path.

Philip Pape: 8:59

And now that you know that, you get to allocate your resources, your time, your energy, your mental focus to those activities and those activities alone, not to the exclusion of your family and your work and those things, but to the exclusion of other physical fitness related activities that don't get you to your goal, does that make sense? And so then you're going to de-emphasize or, yes, temporarily eliminate activities that don't directly contribute to that goal. It doesn't mean you're never going to do that, but they take a backseat to your focus in this moment, in this period. And then, guess what you do? You execute to that and you regularly assess the critical path because it's going to shift as you progress. Your needs and your goals might evolve, and they can evolve next week. I'm not suggesting that you constantly change what you're doing. I'm suggesting that as you transform, as you progress, as things happen in your life, like potentially injury or your vacation or whatever, you might need to shift those. Maybe you have a new goal you want to go after, like you want to run a 5K. Well, that's going to shift your goal.

Philip Pape: 10:04

So let's say you're a 40-year-old person and you're aiming to lose 30 pounds of fat and you want to gain noticeable muscle definition. Your critical path is going to include some key things. It's going to include, at some point, a moderate calorie deficit that's well controlled. It's going to include a certain type of macro balance, high in protein and enough fats and carbs for hormones and performance. It's going to include resistance training, probably three to four times per week for most people, emphasizing compound movements, strength, higher load activities, but also supplementing with accessories and isolation work. It's going to include a certain amount of sleep right, nightly sleep that's high quality, seven to nine hours typically and it's going to include some level of activity and movement daily right, a daily step goal or some other way to keep yourself active. Now notice what is not in the critical path for this person Excessive cardio, overly strict calories, like a crash diet would have, because that would actually be so detrimental You'd lose muscle.

Philip Pape: 11:04

It doesn't include two a days. It doesn't eliminate entire food groups. It doesn't include lots and lots of running, I think I mentioned that. Excessive cardio. There's a lot of things that it doesn't include, and if you're doing some of those things, even if you're doing them for fun, you still want to reassess your priority for those relative to what you're doing.

Philip Pape: 11:23

I'm not saying cut fun things out, I'm just saying you're probably doing a lot of things and some things can stand to be reduced or eliminated, at least for a while, and so the power of this method extends beyond just identifying what you need to do. It's what you don't need to do, and that's where a lot of people get stuck. They try to incorporate every little fitness strategy they come across, every podcast, every idea, every tip that they hear, every 1% thing, right From cold plunges to red light therapy, everything, and then they spread themselves too thin and then they get a suboptimal results, whereas most people just finding the few critical path things they need to do and doing them modestly, consistently, right, not even like 100% consistent. They're gonna get incredible results that way, right. And so if you apply CPM, you'll find that a significant portion of what you're doing right now is probably wasteful, it's probably not necessary, and so if you can eliminate the non-essential tasks, you're going to save time and energy and you're going to get better results. And that is the definition of efficiency, because you could have a greater focus on, and intensity on, what truly matters, and that's going to reduce your stress, that's going to give you confidence, that's going to improve your long-term adherence, which is sustainability. So, again, it is not about just what to do, it's what you can skip right?

Philip Pape: 12:44

A lot of the clients that come to me are exhausted. They're trying to do it all. They're cramming in daily spin classes or cardio or boot camps. They might be lifting six times a week. They might be doing tons and tons of um I'll call it meal like, obsessive meal prep, obsessive calorie tracking not kind of a more relaxed, uh, flexible tracking that I prefer.

Philip Pape: 13:07

And then when we apply this approach of what can we get rid of first rather than what you need to do right, I don't, I don't even want to tell you what you need to do. Let's say what not to do first and get that off your plate. Give you some more resources back, give you reduced stress. Then the effort goes to where they need to be and then you reclaim your time and energy and you start accelerating your progress because you're no longer dividing your resources. And again, that is why something like this, the critical path method, can be very effective Strategically not doing the wrong things. That's the way I'm going to put it Strategically not doing the wrong things so you can optimize your time and energy and basically be a super efficient, well-managed you know fitness enthusiast here.

Philip Pape: 13:49

All right, as you contemplate your strategy based on this episode, moving forward, keep this critical path method in mind. Take out a sheet of paper, ask yourself and write down the things that you're doing for your physical fitness, physical health, and ask yourself for each one is this truly essential for my goal? If not, what do I do about it? Do I reduce, do I eliminate? And if this discussion resonates with you and you're eager to identify your own critical path and you're not quite sure where to take it, I always provide free calls that you can get on with me.

Philip Pape: 14:19

They're called 15-minute rapid nutrition assessments and it's very focused, very fast-paced. We look at what you're doing today, where you want to be, what are your critical path activities and what are the things in the next 90 days that will get you unstuck so that you can accelerate your progress and have less stress doing it. So if you want to schedule that, just click the link in the show notes or go to witsandweightscom and click the big button at the top. Again, the 15-minute rapid nutrition assessment is always available. I always have spots on my calendar and what I see is the people who sign up for these are the ones who stop stagnating. They start getting tangible progress even when they do it on their own.

Philip Pape: 14:59

I'm going to be totally honest Not everybody signs up with me as a client. That's totally cool. If I could even get you some information that gets you moving and reduces that stress and gets you toward the physique you want, I'm all for it. So go ahead and use the link in my show notes or go to witsandweightscom, click the button at the top for the rapid nutrition assessment. Until next time, keep using those wits, lifting those weights, and remember that in fitness as in engineering, success often comes down to identifying and following the critical path and eliminating what is unnecessary. I'll catch you on the next episode of the Wits and Weights podcast.