Philip Pape: 0:01

you've put in the work, you follow the program, you've built a solid strength foundation, but now your progress has hit a wall. That linear progression that works so well in the beginning isn't delivering results anymore. Today, starting Strength CEO Nick Delgadillo reveals why lifters get stuck after the novice phase and what to do about it. You'll discover the biggest mistakes that halt your progress when it's time to change your program and the principles to keep getting stronger for decades, not just months. If you're wondering why your strength gains have stalled, stop blaming your genetics or age. This episode will help you build your skills as an intermediate or advanced lifter.

Philip Pape: 0:47

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.

Philip Pape: 0:53

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are tackling one of the most frustrating challenges in the strength world why progress stalls after your novice gains and what to do about it.

Philip Pape: 1:05

My guest today is Nick Delgadillo, the CEO of Starting Strength Gyms and a starting strength coach with tons of experience over a decade of experience guiding lifters through this exact transition. He's also host of a new podcast, stronger is Better. Go follow it, go check it out. He goes into very specific and useful detail on really the principles, which I think are important, but also the details on the methods. So today we're going to discuss the post novice period, after linear progression starts to slow down and that's where all the complicated questions start to pop up the critical errors that lifters make in their training after that phase, and then how to structure your approach to have a long lifting career, given the challenges of life, the injuries, the circumstances we all face as humans who just want to be strong until we die of a deadlift in our nineties. Nick, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Nick Delgadillo: 1:56

Absolutely. Thank you very much, philip. That was a fantastic intro man. I appreciate it.

Philip Pape: 2:01

That's what it's all about, man. I mean and it's great to have somebody on who is deeply embedded in the world that I care most about, which is strength training in general, the word strength being extremely important there, but also from a practical standpoint people can definitely get confused when they starting strength, they go through the basics, they get newbie gains. It's kind of almost easy for a lot of individuals. Let's just oversimplify it and then they start to hit a wall, sometimes very early, and we'll talk about when that is. But, in your experience, what separates the people who keep making progress from those who don't around that?

Nick Delgadillo: 2:37

period.

Nick Delgadillo: 2:38

Yeah, there's a combination of things that happen and you're exactly right. The beginning is exciting and it's easy. It really is easy because there's a lot of things going on. You're learning a new skill, you're learning a new way of moving, you're actually getting stronger and that happens very rapidly and you start to make a lot of progress and there's even some depending on who you are and how your brain is wired you may actually start to see some uh, some aesthetic benefits as well, even if you're like lying to yourself, it's to some extent. But there's a lot of uh, positive feedback occurring in the novice program and it's uh, it's kind of like this compounding process. That is pretty exciting and it's really cool.

Nick Delgadillo: 3:19

Pretty soon, uh, after you know, after, depending on on how young you are and how well you recover and all the things that we always talk about you're looking at four to six months, maybe a little bit longer than that, typically for that kind of exciting novice period where you're just doing the most basic version of strength training and making a lot of rapid progress. A few things happen. Number one just from like a psychological slash, emotional standpoint. Stuff gets to get, starts to get really hard all of a sudden and it goes from like easy to like a little bit hard and you're still enjoying it to really, really hard and you have to, and that happens sooner because of how aggressive the starting strength program is and how quickly you're making improvements. That happens fairly quickly and sometimes, especially people who haven't done really hard things physically before, it's kind of a wake up call and that's one of the factors that makes people stop progressing or shift their goals, or shift their goals away from strength training or find some other hobbies, some other, some other physical thing to do, right. So there's that. There's also the the physiological situation, which is that, uh, you know, everything follows the law of diminishing returns and your, your body, is the same way. Strength adaptations are expensive, they're metabolically difficult to achieve and you're coming up on that reality at about the four to seven month mark. So the key to continue through that and to continue progressing forever is actually slow, heavy reps, and that's the key to strength training.

Nick Delgadillo: 5:00

People who are predisposed to enjoying strength training. They thrive off of that, they enjoy it. That's not the case for most people walking around and they can learn to enjoy it sometimes, but it's really just, is really hard work. So there's that aspect of it. There's the recovery aspect of it in terms of needing more resources in order to continue progressing, needing more food, needing more protein, better sleep, all the things that happen outside of the gym.

Nick Delgadillo: 5:25

And that's difficult. That's very difficult because that involves you extending training, extending the hour or 90 minutes that you're in the gym into the rest of your life and thinking about the next training session. What are you going to do in order to be able to add more weight to the bar in the next training session? And then there's also the time commitment. There's the time commitment. You know the workouts are taking a little bit longer.

Nick Delgadillo: 5:48

And then there's also just the human nature is to is to get distracted right, especially as things are getting things are getting more difficult. You start questioning what you're doing, and then other other uh, ideas, methods, concepts start to become really, really appealing. So one of the things that I really try to do is get people to understand the fundamental concepts and the basic principles so that they at least have a guide on their path, because it's totally understandable to not wanna be a strength athlete. That's a little bit insane, and our contention isn't that everybody should be a strength athlete, but that you should pursue strength training for probably the rest of your life. And so what does that look like?

Nick Delgadillo: 6:26

Going forward and that's a question that each individual trainee and each individual lifter will have to answer for themselves and that happens again at like, the four to six month mark is like. What do I want this to look like? My opinion is that it should be sustainable and that you should incorporate strength training into your life, because it's absolutely necessary If you want to. I mean just as a human walking the earth right.

Philip Pape: 6:53

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I personally love it. I know people who get into lifting and think about principles like you're talking about in that way are much more it seems, much more adaptable and open to learning and growth. You know, mentally and physically, as their body changes, the situation changes, the circumstance changes, but the principles remain the same. Um, just just my story, real quick, right.

Philip Pape: 7:09

It was back in the pandemic. You know I hadn't even learned much about proper strength training. I did CrossFit for like eight years and then, having to be at home with hardly any equipment, I just started diving into books and podcasts, including starting strength, and I learned about go mad as well and I knew that wasn't the right diet for a 40 year old. But I will say I drank probably a half go mad diet for a few months and gained a ton of weight, but it helped tremendously Right and I was. I was gaining cause.

Philip Pape: 7:37

You talk about resources, gaining a ton of strength and, as well, muscle, but I didn't care at the time about the muscle side of things yet and the things you mentioned about it being easy, because almost anything works. So we need to understand the principle that makes it work and then carry that forward is missed on a lot of folks in my opinion. And then the how it's physically expensive and you need to keep up with that, uh, is also important, and I'm more of a nutrition guy now because of that, because I see that's often a missing piece for folks. It's just eating plenty of food and carbs and getting the energy, but anyway. So when we look at this arc of someone's lifting journey, when do they hit that first wall? And when they do so, are they intermediate at that point, and I know the answer or are there things that maybe give them feedback, objective feedback, that they should take to continue their novice phase before we get to the intermediate phase?

Nick Delgadillo: 8:29

Yeah, people tend to think of it as an achievement or an endpoint or some kind of like a hard transition from one phase into another. I really, really would like for people to stop thinking about things in this sort of rigid paradigm of novice, intermediate and advanced, because it's all very squishy. The only one that's really an actual category that I can point to somebody and say this is your category and this is the process that you're going to embark on is the novice phase, because that's really simple. All it means is that you can add weight to on is the novice phase, because that's really simple. All it means is that you can add weight to the bar every single time. And even like the novice nomenclature is a little bit, I hardly use it, like in practice it's good. I think it's good for coaches to have this language, to be able to discuss programming and be able to discuss these concepts, but in practice, like if I'm talking to a client or a member at a gym, I will rarely, or if ever, use the word novice, because novice carries some uh, some implications, uh, connotations, and then I have to explain myself. Really, all I want you to know is that you can add weight to the bar every time you come to the gym and we're going to do that, and that's what a novice is and not that's all, and it doesn't matter. Like it could be 65 pounds on the bar, it could be 315 on the bar, so beyond that, it's kind of like a joke at the seminars. It's like some of your lifts are in a novice program, some of your lifts are in an intermediate program, some of your lifts are in an advanced program. So what are you? I mean, pick one right. I tend to look at it as like the squat, because that's the sort of the in my view. It's kind of, or the way I think about it. It's kind of the driver of the of the program, but it does. It doesn't matter ultimately, right? So anyway, point being, it's not, it's not like this, this end point, it's not this smooth or not smooth, it's not this hard transition from like one day you're, you're novice and then two days later you wake up in're intermediate.

Nick Delgadillo: 10:23

I understand that in starting strength and practical programming there are references to an approach where you run the novice program until you stall and then you take a deload and then you run it again and then you take a deload and then you run it again and then you switch into an intermediate program that works in a demographic of trainees who are actively growing and getting bigger, which pretty much narrows it down to young males, and that's it. That's the only demographic that should really be following that approach, because literally between like this week and next week, that kid may have grown a little bit or their body said better. Their body is in a position to grow rapidly and aggressively and respond to an aggressive program. That approach is not well-advised for almost anybody else. So unless you're a 25-year-old guy or under 30-year-old guy and under, and maybe needing to gain some weight, don't do that. So what you're going to do instead is a gradual approach which follows just solid principles.

Nick Delgadillo: 11:29

For anything that's process-based, you have a process that's working. Something in that process is not working anymore, meaning like your press stops going up or your deadlift stops going up, whatever. So what you do is you look at your process and you say, okay, what pieces of this are not working for me anymore? And then I make adjustments to just that piece of it and then let everything else continue the way it's working. So that's kind of the magic. This is referenced in practical programming in the advanced novice chapter. But I and every single person who's done starting strength ever has managed to miss that part of practical programming because we don't actually read the book. You just look at the programs and then I really started to hammer on that with my own thinking and with my own clients and with my programming lectures. And that's actually where the magic is.

Nick Delgadillo: 12:19

It's like understanding how to make small changes. And people have taken this concept and like rebranded it and renamed it, other things, but just making a small change, the smallest possible change to affect the least number of variables, because you have a process that's working. Let's not change everything at one time. Just change one thing and then see what happens and then reassess. You're on a short enough timeline at that point that you'll know if something's working or not within a week generally, but even within a couple of weeks you'll know whether or not you made the right programming change. And that's the key to the whole thing. It's small changes to continue progressing. So there's never this like go, go, go, stop and then switch programs. It's always like go, go, go, go, go and then, rather than stopping, it's just throttling back. You know, just just take the foot off the gas and then take the foot off the gas a little bit more, and that's, that's the. That's the way it looks forever after that.

Philip Pape: 13:11

Yeah, yeah. So you hit at the heart of the systems thinking that I love to talk about too, as an engineer. I'm an engineer by background of controlling the variables, getting the feedback. I just had a client who, for the first time, is eating a pre-workout Right and and he's like what should I eat? He said, try a banana. He's like well, how much? How you know how many? I said just try a banana, you know, so he ate a banana.

Philip Pape: 13:32

A couple of days there he's like man, I feel stronger. I got more reps in the gym. Should I double it, like how many grams? I said, well, that worked. Now double it and see if it works better, and if it doesn't, you're good. You got your answer. So I think it can be quote unquote, simplified in that way. But where the challenge might come in for people listening is what if it isn't the programming? What if it's all the other things outside the gym which I know you also like to talk about? How do we normalize those, at least even if they're not optimal, just kind of make them stable enough or identify what those are so that we can identify programming as the concern?

Nick Delgadillo: 14:04

That's a great question, man. You cannot have an intelligent programming discussion and you can't make a wise programming decision in terms of continuing to progress if you don't have all the other variables controlled, and, just like you said, they don't have to be optimized, but they do have to be controlled. So, uh, that includes things like, uh, nutrition, for sure, it includes things like sleep, and then, uh, you know, all the other things like rest times and appropriate weight jumps, all the things that rip a toe covers in the first three question article. So, um, the things that you have the most control of, probably in order, is your nutrition and then, secondarily, is your sleep. Uh, so, you know cause, depending on the situation, you may or may not be able to sleep, you may have small kids in the house, you may have a crazy work schedule or whatever, but a variable that you definitely can't control is is what you put in your mouth, right? So, uh, and and that's a thing that that almost doesn't matter too much, especially in the beginning oh well, it does matter. But people, uh, you can get a lot of progress without thinking about it, right? So you can do a shortcut or a hack, like GoMad, as a smaller guy and take care of a huge chunk of your nutrition needs just by drinking milk, but that's not sustainable and a lot of times it's not a good idea for who's doing it. So, yeah, that's another aspect that needs to really be looked at at that. Uh, at that critical point, at the four to four to seven month mark, it's starting to look at all the all the habits and things outside of the gym, right? So first step, it's the same kind of systems, uh, thinking that you're you're talking about First thing is just to get a handle on what's going on.

Nick Delgadillo: 15:48

People start wondering it's like what, what's happening? Like, why isn't this working? And then they, and then they, and then they start consuming information and worrying about detail when, like, the big stuff isn't taken care of. I think you know my, my wife the other day said something about it was like genius, but it was, and people have heard this before. But it's like worrying about the pebbles or the sand instead of the boulders Right. Like, get the boulders right and then you'll have bandwidth and room for everything else you need. So it's like, do you even know what you're eating every day and you don't have to tell me a number? But like do you have an idea of how much protein you're eating? And people will say something and it's like it's probably wrong, right? So it's like maybe just write it down, put it in an app, whatever, and let's get a handle on what's going on.

Nick Delgadillo: 16:34

And again, optimizing isn't the first step, because optimizing, especially from a lifestyle standpoint, which includes nutrition and sleep, is a big ask for people. You're now affecting potentially social situations, emotional stuff and just comfort and lifelong habits at that point. So step one isn't like let's figure out exactly your macro split that you need, because you won't even know, right? So it's like somebody could tell you, but that may not be right. Let's establish your macros and then let's start tracking. You're asking somebody to rearrange their entire life. That's not sustainable. Again, sustainability is important. So let's get a handle on it, see what's going on, and then let's make small incremental changes, exactly like we would do for programming, and see what's happening.

Nick Delgadillo: 17:21

But to answer your question, I think I got a little sidetracked there. To answer your question, you cannot have, in the context of continuing to progress your strength training, you can't have a good discussion without making sure that you have control or that you have a good idea of what's going on with your recovery, and it's just that simple. And form is another one. Like, your form has to be close enough that you're not causing massive inefficiencies in the lift that are holding you back, and that can happen in stuff like the deadlift, that can happen in stuff like the overhead press, for sure, and, to some extent, the squat. So the way I describe it is before you make a programming change, we need to do like a self-assessment, and the first step in that self-assessment is is my technique good enough? All, right, and when I say good enough, like, these lifts aren't hard guys, so like, within 90% of what we at starting strength, um, have spent a lot of time thinking about the uh, the most efficient way to do these things, meaning that they allow you to lift the most weight and they, they uh, produce the least amount of wear and tear on your joints because of the lack of extraneous movement during these, during these movements, right, joints because of the lack of extraneous movement during these, during these movements, right? So is your technique close enough, right? In other words, are you not causing any issues that are that are leaving weight off the bar?

Nick Delgadillo: 18:44

Second thing is um, are you compliant? Uh, and that's probably even more important than form and nutrition, anything else is are you actually doing the program like a program and are you actually showing up? So if you go on your training log and you've got a month's work of worth of a training scheduled and you've missed two or three workouts in that month, I would say you're not compliant. I would say that that the first step is like okay, in this case, let's take a little bit of a reset and let's make sure we don't miss a workout for X amount of time and see what happens. That may, in and of itself, take care of the problem for you.

Nick Delgadillo: 19:12

So it's form, it's compliance, and then the third thing is recovery. Am I doing the things that I need to do outside of the gym? And the answer may be yes or no for each of these things. So the next step in that self-assessment is what do I do? Do I get compliant? Do I get my form checked? Do I meet up with a coach and fix that issue? And if it's a recovery issue, then okay, what do I need to do from a nutrition standpoint? Because you're not going to be able to uh, effectively progress and really like with any of your goals if you don't have at least the nutrition side of it, uh, taken care of. And when I say taken care of, it's just like we've been saying, it's like get a handle on it and then start making progress towards optimizing. Yeah, we're dealing with physiology, we're dealing with bodies and we're dealing with improving structural and metabolic adaptations, and that requires a level of attention to your nutrition situation that may be a little bit uncomfortable and you've got to be moving towards that all the time.

Philip Pape: 20:10

Yeah, everything you said is it provides a great framework to kind of check off the boxes and in priority, uh order, the form and the technique. I can't stress, re-stress what you just said as to how important that is, not to the extent that you prevent trying to progress in your lifts, cause that's a whole other excuse people make, like oh, I'm looking at my form but that I mean I'm not a starting strength coach, I'm a nutrition coach.

Philip Pape: 20:35

But I do provide form checks and a lot of it is based on what I've learned from starting strength and I'll tell you, somebody who's been lifting for 20 years can still have pretty bad form until they get it checked against the proper biomechanics and bar path and all of that and you can fix it very quickly within a couple sessions. I went and saw Cody and Nino here in Connecticut after applying starting strength on my own and I'm the type of guy man that reads the book. You know three times highlights it, take notes. I did all the exercises from the pictures. You know, empty bar, everything, and still I had a ton of stuff that had to get fixed and that's great. That's why you need that third-party perspective and happy promoting starting strength for that purpose, cause there's a lot of great guys and gals out there that can do that. So getting that will help you progress more efficiently with less injury.

Philip Pape: 21:20

We'll feel better for your joints and actually do the program you mentioned doing the program where if somebody is doing these things, so let's say they got their form checked, they got their, they're being consistent in the gym and their recovery is unchanged. Let's call it. Is there a sense of uh, when we talk about stalling out right People? When they stall because they they went in for a session, expected it to progress and it didn't. On a weekly basis, let's say, for intermediate programming, what's your normal recommendation? What do you look at? Once all these things are checked off. That makes sense.

Nick Delgadillo: 21:54

Yes, my goal as a coach is to not have anybody stall or fail. So I think, if you're paying attention, I think if you are well, it's always a good idea to be anticipating issues right. And again, if we're thinking of just handling processes well, handling systems well, you need to be anticipating issues right. And again, if we're thinking of like, just handling processes well, handling systems well, you need to be ahead of problems. You can't be reactive, you have to be proactive. So a good strength coach will do that. A good strength coach will be proactive and not let you get to the point where you're pushing at the limit because there's multiple things going on. Part of it is like, you know, it's like the stress the stress is going up, but your recovery ability is going up and you're kind of reaching all these inflection points at the same time. So, in a situation where you have lots of variables that are being controlled, the failure point, it represents a situation where you have not accounted for certain things and now you've got some potentially uncontrolled variables that you have to deal with. So I don't want to. I don't want to get there, in addition to the psychological problems that come along with like failing, especially with something like a squat it's, it's, it's too much. It's too much to at one time to deal with, right? So I want to be proactive. I want to make programming changes, not early, but proactively, while at the same time making programming changes reluctantly. So that's kind of the way I think about it the programming changes should be proactive, but they should be reluctant. So I'm not changing programs just because, because what we're doing is working, I am changing programs ahead of when I think there's going to be a problem. Because if I'm looking at a lifetime of training, even if I have a client or a member for two years, I'm looking at the long game, and this week of training or this session represents a very small chunk of the next two years of training. So I would rather have success, I would rather have progress, even if that means slowing down a little bit, if that means that we're going to be successful for another three months, another another year, another two years. You know what I'm saying.

Nick Delgadillo: 23:58

So, um, so yeah, as soon as, as soon as I and, by the way, the way I'm doing it is I'm looking at at the bar speed, I'm looking at what's happening under the bar, along with the things that the lifters reporting right. So if they're starting to feel aches and pains, they're starting to feel like they're getting, they're having trouble going to sleep at night, we're going to. We're going to talk about nutrition, we're going to talk about sleep, we're going to have all these discussions about recovery factors. And if, if I'm satisfied that there's nothing that they can do or that they're willing to do right. So that's two different things there's nothing they can do or they're willing to do in order to fix that situation, then we'll make a programming adjustment and it's going to be a small adjustment. It might be taking a light day on a squat, it might be progressing the training early into intermediate programming because we can spread stress out rather than having these large doses of stress multiple times throughout the week. So, yeah, first thing is like because I probably didn't screw up the loading, I probably didn't screw up the rest times or anything like that.

Nick Delgadillo: 24:55

As a coach, I've been doing this for a while, so usually it's something that the lifter is doing outside of the gym that's causing problems. So we're going to run the assessment, see what's going on, see if we can make any adjustments there and then, if not, we'll make a programming adjustment. The lifter may very well just not want to continue doing the things that they need to do outside the gym. That's okay, like that's cool. There's going to be lifts that you can continue to drive up. There's going to be lists that are going to have to take a little bit of a backseat, and that's on me to to make it work for them, right, while at the same time doing like the Jedi mind trick coach stuff in the background to try to get them more compliant, more to what they need for their own good, right. So yeah, I don't know if I've answered your question, but-.

Philip Pape: 25:36

Yeah, no, you're always answering the question. There's no. We go on tangents here that are great, and the fact that your immediate answer was well, you basically shouldn't miss reps. I mean, let's just simplify it, you shouldn't miss reps and if you did, there's some reason for it, and we try to anticipate those reasons, like if, then what is the strategy? Again, same thing, like I think, with nutrition, is you know things are going to happen and you know your life looks a certain way, so let's account for that, and it may not be perfect and, like you say, you may not things, and you're just going to accept the trade-off. But you've talked about on other shows being undernourished versus overtrained. You've kind of addressed the undernourished piece. Have you seen people get overtrained or overreach at this level?

Nick Delgadillo: 26:20

No, I don't think that's actually the thing. It's under-recovered for sure. I mean, your body can do amazing things. So I think the idea that someone training for five months is over-training is not the deal. That's not happening. A guy who's been training for two to three years, who's squatting 500 plus, pressing near 300 pounds, benching near 400 pounds and deadlifting 600 plus yes, that guy can overdo it Absolutely. So it's like people at that level.

Nick Delgadillo: 26:49

My job as a coach is almost to hold them back. Um and and hold them back. It's like the wrong, the wrong word, but like I think you understand what I say. It's like like manage their stress, right, literally manage their stress. For almost everybody else, my job is to figure out how to help them manage their relationship with the high stress. So that doesn't always work out, because this is like, like I said at the beginning, is really hard work, right, so, but that again, that's okay. So, no, it's not overstressing, it's under recovering is the way to think about it. So we can either address that through better recovery habits outside of the gym, but then you have all these things that we've talked about in terms of lifestyle. Stuff doesn't always work out. So it's like what can I get out of the trainee in order to help themselves? Along with, what small changes do I need to make to the program at this point in order to continue making it work for them? So it's just going to be slower progress, right, and that's just the reality of the situation.

Philip Pape: 27:51

Yeah, yeah, no-transcript burned out, that's kind of colloquial. But more specifically, uh, things like tendonitis, right, like physical, what might seem like an overreach injury, it could be a form issue, it could be many things could be things outside the gym, we know, and given your programs to produce some sort of it's intended to produce some sort of output, do you switch priorities? Do you manage that in a certain way and get back to it? I know it's a huge topic, but shout out to Dustin Lambert he's a host of Working Weights LLC and I wanted to pass that question along to you because he wanted to know you know, how do you manage that? Things like tendinopathy?

Nick Delgadillo: 28:26

Yeah, okay, yeah, great question. So first thing is and this is something I missed talking about originally, but the novice phase. So, as you're running through the novice program, you have one objective, you have one goal and that's to get stronger. Because you're doing this with the realization that getting stronger will improve all of your physical attributes. It'll improve your health in various ways, right. It'll improve your blood sugar, your metabolic panel, all these things. It'll just improve your physical existence, right. So there's no discussion, there's no need to do anything other than just get strong during the novice phase. That's not the case once you are moving into intermediate and definitely when you're moving into advanced programming. It's not that you have to have this deep discussion about goals, but at the point that the novice program starts to slow down, it's time to start thinking about and, as Andy Baker says, declaring a goal. You have to have a goal in mind because it orients your training, it keeps you focused and you can have an intelligent discussion with yourself or with your coach about how what you're doing fits into that goal, because lifting in and of itself is not a worthy goal for most people, especially when it gets hard because all of a sudden you're waiting. It's like is it worthwhile? Why am I doing this? I'm going to go to hot yoga instead, because that's like easier and more fun, but still hard, you know. So what is the goal? What do you want to do?

Nick Delgadillo: 29:54

I've actually advised people to find another hobby. Like lifting is not, like you're very strong, but lifting is driving you insane. Like you need to go find a physical hobby where you can use your strength and see how much progress you've made. Um, because you, being in your garage gym by yourself driving yourself crazy over, like missing this, this 410 pound rack pull as a woman is nuts. Like don't do that. You're, you're, you're driving yourself crazy, right? So anyway, that's a, that's a sidetrack, but anyway, the answer to the question is you have to know, as a coach, what your lifters goal is at that point, and, as a lifter, you have to know what your goal is, and then you have to decide that continuing to strength train and drive the weight up on the lifts is going to get you to that goal, and that's where a good coach can help you.

Nick Delgadillo: 30:45

So, in the context, so the question was about tendinopathy or some kind of an overuse injury or something like that. I almost always default to assuming that it's an inefficiency issue. It's a technique issue. So and you can almost like pinpoint it's like if somebody's knee hurts at a certain point, you're like, okay, well, yeah you're, you're knee sliding at the bottom of the squat, their hip flexor hurts. Uh, yeah, you're slamming into the bottom of your squat, their elbow starts to hurt. On the bench press, for example, yeah, you're doing something with the squat grip, you're collapsing at the bottom of the press, right? So these are these kind of like common injuries that are, yeah, common overuse injuries that people get, and sometimes they'll blame recovery, which may be true, but a lot of times it's just that they're doing something in the gym to cause that to happen, or outside of the gym also. So I would assume one of those things first.

Nick Delgadillo: 31:36

So first thing to do is check technique. If there's an obvious technique error that's occurring, fix that first and then see if it resolves. If that doesn't fix it or you can't identify a technique error, then the next thing to do especially with tendon stuff, tendonitis, you know any, any tendinopathy is to not reflexively deload the bar, because all you're doing is like there's a threshold right and there's a threshold for pain and there's a threshold for the tissue and all you're doing is just kind of hovering back and forth or at that threshold and it never gets better, or it gets better very, very slowly, uh, and you're just in pain the whole time. Right? So the key to doing this and shout out to will morris for for opening my eyes to this many, many years ago the key to doing this is to stay heavy and keep driving the weight up. And then you have to figure out how to do that, right. So, through pause, like let's just take a knee pain in a squat, for example, somebody develops a knee tendonitis.

Nick Delgadillo: 32:34

So fix technique first. That doesn't work. Okay, let's figure out where in the squat does it hurt. So maybe you slow down and you keep the bar as heavy as you can, but you do tempo work instead of just normal squats. Or you do paused work, right. So you pause just right before the, the, the, the knee's going to hurt, and then you hold it there for two or three seconds and then you stand back up. But the key to that is to load it as heavy as you can tolerate, rather than the typical approach was like okay, we're going to keep squatting, because squats are a great exercise and we're going to take 50 pounds or a hundred pounds off the bar and then run it back up. It doesn't actually work Like you have to. The stress recovery adaptation deal applies to injuries as well, and you have to drive healing. You have to make it heal, not let it heal. That's a quote from Rip, which is awesome. Right, you have to make it heal, not let it heal.

Philip Pape: 33:21

That's a quote from Rip, which is awesome right, you have to make it heal, not let it heal. Yeah, that's a great concept. I've worked with John Patrizzo on some of my own things because I had rotator cuff surgery and it is so true that sometimes you just need a tweak here or there. But actually going heavy, you often surprise yourself when you're like you know, actually it doesn't hurt and it feels great and I'm getting stronger despite the injury. You're like you know, actually it doesn't hurt and it feels great and I'm getting stronger despite the injury. It's a whole mind shift. Speaking of Jedi mind tricks, it's like it makes you realize that there's power in what you talked about to drive healing and use the tissue and break up scar tissue and all the fun stuff. What about the more extreme case where somebody has had an injury that got to the point of of surgery? Is is just a function of get the surgery recover, come back to it, or is there more to it?

Nick Delgadillo: 34:04

yeah, come back to it, but come back to it gradually and slowly, right so, you're yeah, anytime you have you have a situation like that. First of all, you know, depending on the injury, uh, there are some things that you might not be able to do or that are not a good idea, right so. And then also, the other part of it is the the timeline for when it's a good idea to start again. So, you know, when I'm dealing with with somebody who's in a situation like that, I'll ask for advice. I'll ask Patrizzo or Will or Nick D'Agostino or Rory or one of these, one of these physical therapists for their opinion. Make sure that the lifter has at least had a discussion with their orthopedic surgeon about what they intend to do and at what point. Right, so you at least get their opinion. So it has to be up to the lifter whether or not they're going to follow the guidelines that the surgeon sets or recommends, or disregard them.

Nick Delgadillo: 34:59

Now, in my experience, most reasonable orthopedic surgeons are in favor of people getting back to lifting pretty early. So that's, that's good news. In practice, like when they send them off to physical therapy, that actually doesn't occur. Uh, but either way, that's kind of a separate discussion so you won't get too much uh, uh pushback from, from, uh, from orthopedic surgeons. In my experience at this point about people going in and doing stuff like this, it's just like you want to have a reasonable expectation of when it's a good idea and they may say and this is a thing that's happened, I've heard people say you won't be able to lift that amount of weight in a year for over a shoulder surgery, like a Mumford procedure, and it's like dude, that's just not true. But that's okay, like if, if, if. That's just something you're saying, like you're not saying don't lift for a year, you're saying that's how long it's going to take. All right, it's going to take two and a half months.

Nick Delgadillo: 35:50

So, anyway, but there are some injuries, some. There are some some procedures that need're cleared. We're good to go. We're going to start training. Um, it's the, the. My general approach is going to be to get range of motion back and then start loading Right. So, and range of motion may be no weight, maybe a little bit of weight. It may be just like a wooden dowel or a PVC pipe. Um, it may be like. Ripito has this excellent video on shoulder rehab where we're using the rings. You know he's using the rings and showing you?

Nick Delgadillo: 36:24

Yes, it's good, fantastic stuff, right so, and that's the same, that's the same concept Range of motion first and then, and then loading and I've used that protocol at least three times now with people coming back from shoulder surgery, and it works. It works phenomenally well. Like people go to their follow-up appointments and their doctors are just surprised by how well they're doing, right. So, yeah, that's the general concept. It's it's range of motion first and then loading after, right?

Nick Delgadillo: 36:51

So the main thing to understand, though, is that, because these lifts are, are, um, they're, they're totally natural movements, right, so, it's, it's just you're moving your body through normal ranges of motion, through normal joint angles, um, you're able to use them as the tool to rehab effectively. So you don't have to, you don't necessarily have to modify anything other than maybe, like range of motion, loading, but you can basically just take people through the squat progression or the deadlift progression might have to be a rack pull rather than a deadlift, um, you might have to press off of pins or something like that bench press off of pins, but you just take the fundamental movement and you use that to rehab people, and you know, as you know, that's what John, that's what John does, and that's the good physical therapists who are associated with us do Uh and it works great good physical therapists who are associated with us do, and it works great, yeah.

Philip Pape: 37:48

And I guess the final thought about this is is there an anatomical situation, or multiple that could occur that would prevent somebody from doing a main lift like the overhead press? When we're talking about shoulders, there's something I just learned about the type three acromion, which is like a very hook, like acromion that where you could have much more easy friction on the rotator cuff.

Nick Delgadillo: 38:06

Right.

Philip Pape: 38:07

Would something like that require alterations? And if you say this is like outside your scope because it's more of a medical thing, I understand.

Nick Delgadillo: 38:13

No, it definitely is outside of my scope. But I'm pretty confident in assessing whether or not I can proceed with somebody. And, uh, you know, the way I look at it is if, if I can get the person to move unweighted through the complete range of motion without causing them pain or severe discomfort, they're good to go Right. Um, so yeah, I think in the instance of, like, a hooked acromion, they're going to experience pain when they put their arm up over their head Right, and they'll be like, oh, okay, we let's. Uh, maybe that's not a good idea, we'll come back to it and I don't like I don't need to send them off to an x-ray or MRI or anything. It's like, okay, we're just not going to do that. Uh, let's go to the bench press. But I know, okay, look, if I can't get your Probably full range of motion bench, not a great idea. So we're going to do some partial, partial benching and go pretty, go as heavy as we can without compromising the stability of the shoulder and putting them in a in like an extreme range of motion, and I'm totally comfortable with that. I'm also thinking, okay, it might be a challenge to get them under the bar in the squat. So it's like, let's try low bar. And if you, if you get under there, and it's just like you gotta tell me if it hurts, and I'll be like, okay, we'll try high bar, if that works, you can do it without any pain, great, all right. But then even high bar hurts. So we're gonna go to a Mars bar, we're gonna go to a safety squat bar, right, and then I just know that that's gonna be the deal with them, and then we're gonna drive the hell out of the deadlift, right, and we're going to make the deadlift kind of the main thing.

Nick Delgadillo: 39:39

So, as a coach, I have all the tools that I need in order to know whether or not somebody can, can, can do something or not, just based off of really based off of the teaching methods that that, that Ripto, starting strength, have developed, and they're they're super, super useful as assessment tools as well. It's just, it's just kind of almost common sense If something hurts, like if somebody comes in and tells you I got a bad shoulder, and you start putting them through something like, oh, that really hurts, I believe them and I'm going to say, okay, well, let's adjust it or skip it, and then we'll come back to it. Right, if I have an actual diagnosis from somebody and they tell me, like, whenever people say I can't do something, like I want to see, right, I want to like just put your arm up over your head real quick. And if they just like throw it up there, I'm like, well, let's look. And I won't dismiss anybody. I'll say, hey, come over here, let's take this wooden dowel, let's run it up the rack and tell me how it feels.

Nick Delgadillo: 40:32

And then you know, I'm kind, the minute this starts to hurt, we'll stop and we'll do something else. So don't, don't worry about it, I just want to see. And then that tends to work out pretty well. But you know, if somebody does this and they go like this, like all right, we're going to or something from a physician, an orthopedic surgeon, or something I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask people, I'll ask Rupert Till, or I'll ask Will, or I'll ask somebody like, hey, what do you think about this? And just just see what they say. So we have enough resources now that I don't have to. I'm not in the in the dark by myself, right.

Philip Pape: 41:23

So it's a good combination of common sense, experience, yeah, finding a way to train despite what's going on, I mean and I had, I used a harness for one arm, deadlifts with a sling back when I was recovering Cause I was just so I had cabin fever of not doing deadlifts, you know.

Tony: 41:32

My name is Tony. I'm a strength lifter in my forties. Thank you to Phil and his wits and weights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training. Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning. That's what I like about Phil. He's got a great sense of humor. He's very relaxed, very easy to talk to. One of the greatest things about Phil, in my view, is that he practices what he preaches. He also works out with barbells. He trains heavy not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy. So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice and I would strongly recommend you talk with him and he'll help you out.

Philip Pape: 42:16

Actually speaking of that. That brings me back to the statement you made earlier about finding a goal to orient your training, to focus yourself. It seems like there's a small percentage of people who actually do love lifting for its own sake. Is that a problem? You just love doing it for its own sake? I know you said you think everybody should have a goal. That's not a problem at all, those are the easiest people to work with. Okay, yeah, yeah.

Nick Delgadillo: 42:38

Yeah, because I don't have to convince you of anything. Right, it's like you're, you're down and you love lifting, you love feeling heavy weights, you love grinding through reps, you love hitting those, uh, those, those PRS. Um, again, those are the people that usually I need to, um, I need to, uh, put the brakes on, put the brakes on them Right, yeah, cause they'll cause they'll do too much.

Nick Delgadillo: 42:56

So, yeah, those are, but those people are easy. I love coaches that will tout and present their strongest and most successful athletes, people who are competing at the highest levels, and show them off as like, essentially, you didn't create that that person would be successful, no matter who they're working with. And I've, I've, I've been lucky to work with people like that, and I've, I've, as I think is like an honest assessment. It's like what did I actually do? It's like, you know, I actually just I actually told you, hey, don't do that, that's a bad idea. Like, do this instead, chill out a little bit, slow down, and and you're, you're essentially like keeping those people from being their their own, their own worst enemy.

Nick Delgadillo: 43:40

But they're going to be successful because they're driven, they're motivated, they have, they have exactly their goal in mind and they're going to do whatever it takes to make it happen Right. So, um, it's for them. It's more about like, helping them think about things in an intelligent way rather than like just just, uh, screwing themselves up, cause it's hard for people who are super high performers like that to look beyond, like what's in front of them, um, so so you gotta, you gotta, keep that, that perspective in in there for them. Um, but, dude, training, training people who, who are uh, who are super motivated and super uh, who are athletic and are, um, very strong. That's, that's easy, man.

Philip Pape: 44:17

That's all you gotta do is not screw them up yeah, and you alluded to the. I think you call it something like the high performance coach bias or something that bias where like high performance? Um, you know, I wonder about this. This makes me think of, like you and your, your history of lifting. Um, do you work regularly with a coach yourself and have you had, like, parts of your life that have been super stressful where you had to massively adapt your training?

Nick Delgadillo: 44:41

Oh, absolutely, yeah, Uh, I don't, I don't have, I don't use a coach now. Um, will Will Morris was my coach for two years and I hired and he was actually the first coach I uh I actually ever worked with. So I'm uh, I'm very much I think I think you mentioned it very much like a figured out myself kind of kind of dude. Um, so I picked up the book through well, I picked up the videos in the book through CrossFit when Rip was the barbell guy for CrossFit and then started doing it myself, started doing it with my clients and then went to a camp a three lift camp it was squat, bench, deadlift with a starting strength coach and then quickly learned that I was doing everything wrong and then I had been coaching for a while then. So I went back and just like fixed everything, um, and then I went and did the certification. But in that whole time I've the only coaching I have received myself was at that camp and then at the, at the starting strength seminar that I went and certified in 2011. So, other than like just being around rip or being around other coaches when we're lifting together and they'll like say something, you know, give me some feedback.

Nick Delgadillo: 45:48

But, yeah, my first actual coaching relationship as a lifter was with Will, after I injured my back. So I had a really really severe back injury. This would have been 2022, I believe. Really severe back injury. This would have been 2022, I believe. And uh, yeah, it, uh, it knocked me on my ass pretty bad. I was, uh, I was in bed for a while. I was on a Walker for or not a Walker on a cane for I think two months. Um and um, yeah, talking to Will afterwards, he thought I was uh going to have to go have, uh, some kind of a surgery on my on my low back. So, yeah, it was pretty severe and then he coached me through that. I was convinced at the time that it would take me, that I would never be like back to normal, so to speak. But uh, three months later I was, I was training again. Um, four months later I was back on like a novice linear progression. Uh, a year later I had uh, or not even. A year later, I think it was like seven, seven months later, I had uh, rack pulled 500 pounds, which was uh, which which you know I thought would would. I really thought would never happen again, like based on how I felt, but yeah, so I would say, to answer your question, that was a pretty life-changing event for me, because it's one of those things that makes you realize how shitty your lifestyle is and reorients your priorities. So, yeah, a lot came of that in terms of training and how I approach training and how I think about training.

Nick Delgadillo: 47:20

Up until that point it was very much like a lift heavy, even if things were pretty insane during that time period because it was like lockdowns and I stopped flying. So I was driving all over the country in a car, in a little tiny car. I was driving a Nissan 370Z and I was at the time I was like a little tiny car, I was driving a Nissan 370Z and I was I'm a at the time I was like a 330 pound man. So that's probably what screwed up my back, cause I would like go and drive and go and drop into the gym and lift, uh, after not after sitting for hours, and then, um, and then I would go do jujitsu stuff and, uh, not take care of myself. I wasn't eating, well, I was. I was training really inconsistently, still trying to lift as heavy as I could, and then it, it all just kind of accumulated and, and I think, just culminated in that, in that situation. So, anyway, yeah, so that that that made me realize how important being consistent was, made me realize how important everything, especially at the age of 42, 41 at the time.

Nick Delgadillo: 48:16

Like you, you have to take care of yourself. Like you have to, you have to uh to put it, to put it as simple as possible Like you have to move, like lifting by itself is not enough. Like you gotta, you've got to move. Initially, lifting takes care of all your needs. But when you've been at it for a while, and especially if you're going to do other hard physical hobbies, like, um, I do, I, I, uh, I do a lot of Brazilian jujitsu, it's not enough. Like just going to jujitsu, just going to to lift weights three, four times a week is not enough. Like you have to intentionally uh take care of your, your joints. You gotta, you gotta move around, you gotta even just walking, whatever, like any, anything that that uh gets you moving, where I'm not sitting for six hours and then going to lift and then sitting for another three hours and then going to jujitsu, it's a terrible idea.

Philip Pape: 49:01

Yeah, yeah, those make or break moments I mean I can relate to it. I'm sure lots of folks listening can where you know, when I had back surgery, what now, four years ago and I wasn't much of a walker before that and then the thing they want you to do right Day one of you know, recovering your back is to start to walk and I significantly increased my walking and actually started to love it because of what it? You know that feedback loop of how it helped me feel and for your health and everything. And I think some people will give up and there's moments where you give up because it's too hard or because you think you can't do it. You can do again.

Philip Pape: 49:34

And that goes back to what you talked about earlier grit, persistence. It's maybe the number one driver of success. Honestly, when they do studies on even children, you know, and how, their lifelong success. So when you talk about jetty mind tricks, for example, as a coach, if somebody's listening, who has a higher propensity to give up, and we see those folks like, well, I did this, it didn't work, I got frustrated, I stopped, I moved to the next thing and you just want to shake them and be like, no, there's something on the other side, man, that you're missing out on, but it's their personality or how they're raised or conditioned. Do you have something to tell them that would help unlock that? Or like a different way, a mind trick, anything that would? I know it's a big question to get them moving forward.

Nick Delgadillo: 50:15

Yeah, that's tough. I don't know, outside of no, there's not a single thing you can say to somebody like that, and I've dealt with many people like that and it's. I mean, this is one of those situations where you become not only someone's strength coach but also their sort of therapist, right? Yes, for sure. Yeah, it happens probably in all coaching. But, uh, the yeah, man, it's just you. You, you got you got to get them to trust you.

Nick Delgadillo: 50:44

Um, you'll have lots of like sort of arguments about just random things, uh, and, and essentially what what's going on is that they're sort of their own worst enemy. Right? The difference between an individual like that versus an individual who performs at a really high level and let's set aside anybody who was genetically predisposed to be really athletic and successful, I'm talking about normal people who do really impressive things the difference is that the other person just believes that they can do it, it, and, as cheesy as that is, that sound, it's like if you, um, yeah, that's not something you can, you can uh instill in somebody. So, as as a coach, my job is just to kind of take it day by day and uh and de-conflict their own brain, like where they're just like everything is, everything's a problem, everything's the end of the world, I'm not good enough, type stuff. It's like, uh, you, just, you just find small opportunities to um, uh, and, and with some people I just ignore it, you know, that's sometimes just yeah, if they're, if they're being hard on themselves, it's just like I won't even respond, cause, cause, cause, maybe sometimes it's like they, they, that's that's how they get like the, the, the feedback, right, it's a positive feedback. So I'll just disregard, like somebody just says, oh, this, uh, I'm such a shitty squatter or something I just won't, I'll just ignore it, right, and I'll just be like great job, you know, and just just move on. Uh, looks good to me, you know, Uh, and I won't even acknowledge it. So I guess that's kind of the, the, uh, yeah, man, I don't know, there's not a single thing you can say.

Nick Delgadillo: 52:15

I will, uh, I guess, as a piece of advice, it's just like don't shortchange yourself, because whatever you believe is what's going to happen. So if, if you think that, um, you can't do something, um, why would you, why would you not try? Uh, it doesn't make any sense, like, why would you just attempt it, right? And because even even in just attempting it. Um, you can learn a lot, right? So it's not the. The fundamental problem is like looking at an end goal rather than rather than enjoying the process, and that's almost, that's almost cliche at this, cliche at this point. But it's like enjoying the process, enjoying the journey. Um, that's, that's actually not even enjoying, but just participating is what matters, right, participating in the, in that, in that process of doing something hard is profound, uh, so you can choose to just uh not participate, but uh guarantee that there's no good outcome from that.

Philip Pape: 53:06

Agree, a hundred percent certainty you will fail. Yeah, a hundred percent, right, that's good. Yeah, make the attempt. That is, that is, uh, that is a good principle of all of this. So I know we're short, I know we're almost out on time here. What's, what's exciting? You now in the world of starting, strength, going forward.

Nick Delgadillo: 53:20

Oh man, a hundred percent starting strength gyms, that that, that, that's, that's the. Yeah, it's very exciting. Um, people are really interested in this. You know rips rips been talking about uh uh on his podcast, about, uh, about gym ownership.

Philip Pape: 53:35

Yeah, he's been doing the advertisement at the beginning. I'm like cool man.

Nick Delgadillo: 53:38

Yeah, so we've got lots of people interested in owning gyms. We've got lots of passionate gym owners, We've got awesome coaches, and it's cool to be bringing starting strength to the world, like in a retail setting, in these beautiful gyms. So, yeah, it's really exciting. We've got a lot. We've learned a lot. We've got a lot, we've learned a lot. Um, we've got a lot of work to do to make this work. Uh, at scale, which you know, we're getting to that point where it's like things are going to start growing. So we're just we're going to get better at all of this stuff. So, uh, yeah, that's that. That's it, man. It's really, really exciting. It's becoming, if it's not already, it is part of the popular culture, so to speak, Like people know, people understand that strength is important. And, yeah, I feel like we've done this at exactly the right time and we intend to be the sort of the gold standard for how strength is delivered to the general public.

Philip Pape: 54:35

Yeah, man, I think it's exciting. I mean, the kernel of your ideas started like 20 years ago but you're just getting going now with really expanding and you're right about the timing. You know what would be a cool topic for your podcast would be like the culture of lifting over the decades, you know, and how, because we had the Arnold culture and right you have. You fast forward all the way. You had the CrossFit culture 10, 20 years ago and you're right, like in on podcasts and in just the general lexicon, there's way more acceptance for this.

Philip Pape: 55:03

A lot of the myths about you know, bulking and injury and all that are starting to be dispelled and it's really exciting.

Nick Delgadillo: 55:09

Yeah, hardly even have those conversations anymore. And, and you know, one of the things that we've learned from the starting train gyms is you get. You get a 58 year old woman walking in the door into a barbell gym and uh, and, and she knows that she needs to get. She doesn't know how, she doesn't know what, anything, she's never done a squat before, but all she knows is that, yeah, I need to be, I need to be strong you need to be doing it that tells you everything you need to know, right there, right, and also the kids.

Nick Delgadillo: 55:30

the kids, like I was just thinking. I've just been thinking about this recently, but the kids want to be jacked and they didn't grow up with Arnold and Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone and these action movie stars that were huge. They grew up in a different cultural environment than I did, for sure, but right now, in 2025, the teenagers want to be jacked. So that's great.

Philip Pape: 55:54

Yeah, and my daughters are starting to think about getting into it. I mean, I have a 13 and 11 year old, so I told 13 year old when she's 14, I think it's a good age to start training with daddy in the gym regularly. But make it fun, you know just make it fun. Uh, cool man. Where do you want folks to reach out to you? Do you want the podcast or website? What's the best place?

Nick Delgadillo: 56:12

IG, ig there's a few places. Yeah, my instagram is, uh, nick d, underscore ssc. Um, if you want to, if you want to check out the podcast, it's on youtube, uh, starting strength gyms youtube. Uh, rip, and I well, I mean rip, but I'm on the show. We've got the starting strength radio podcast on the starting strength youtube channel. Um, we've got a podcast at um ssgymscom. If you, uh, if you want to email me and uh, yeah, I think that. I think that pretty much covers it.

Philip Pape: 56:40

Cool man. Yeah, I'll include that, all that in the show notes, and I've gladly promote your stuff because I think it comes from a good place and very sound principles, and we're all about efficiency, engineering systems here as well, and why not use the most efficient tools and process for, you know, to get the job done? That's kind of makes a lot of sense.

Nick Delgadillo: 56:55

Thank you, man. I love efficiency too. I came from the logistics world. I love efficiency. It's my favorite thing in the world.

Philip Pape: 57:01

It's awesome. It's awesome. All right, man Well, thanks so much for agreeing to come on and having this conversation. It was a lot of fun.

Nick Delgadillo: 57:07

Absolutely. Thank you very much.