[00:00] Young men of the internet, Adam Raducia here. I come before you today mostly unclothed, mostly unscripted, with some news. It might seem like bad news, but I don't think it has to be taken as bad news.
[00:16] If you've been lifting weights for about 30 years as I have, with normal life interruptions and setbacks, this right here, this is about as good of a body as you can reasonably expect.
[00:32] I mean, not this specific body. People have all kinds of different bodies. But genetically speaking, this is really a very, very average body, except for possibly the hair. The gods did give me one gift in the hair.
[00:44] But in terms of fitness and physique quality, this is about as good as it's ever going to get for most of you, which can be disappointing to learn, But it can also be like liberating to be relieved of unrealistic expectations, which many of you do have.
[01:01] And who can blame you given the media environment that you have been raised in? A media environment that gives you the false impression that extraordinary things are ordinary. They're not. They're extraordinary.
[01:14] The last video on my channel was a lifting 101 video. I am not an exercise physiologist or anything like that. I do follow that literature pretty closely. I'm just a science literate guy who is a good communicator,
[01:27] and I want to spread the gospel of the iron. And the vids seem to be pretty well received. I felt qualified to do that video because it's like a 101 video. I think I can teach the, like, introductory gen ed.
[01:40] I might do a 102 video at some point, but of course, I know that the 200 level and above courses are way beyond me, and other people can make those, and they do make those. Go watch them. Like I said, most people did seem to like the video, but we gotta talk about the bros who were like,
[01:56] do you even lift? You're small and soft. Yes and yes, young man, and that or something comparable is about the most that you can reasonably hope for.
[02:09] And if you have unrealistic expectations for the guy on the screen, you're gonna have unrealistic expectations for yourself, and you will suffer as a result. And even if I snark back at you online, I do care about you, and I care about what influence my content has over you.
[02:25] I think if I have an influence on you, which I do just by virtue of, like, talking to you right now, I think that gives me an obligation to try to be responsible and to set you up for success in life as best you can, especially considering that, statistically speaking, you are probably a young man, considerably younger than me.
[02:40] When you see people who look a lot bigger and or more cut than me, those people probably have extraordinary genetics, or they dedicate a lot of their time and effort to their fitness and physique, or they're on steroids.
[02:59] It's probably some combination of the three, actually. And let's take them one at a time. Number one, extraordinary genetics. Some people have amazing genetics for building muscle.
[03:11] The genetic variability that we see there is staggeringly wide. I think that I have about, like, average genetics for building muscle. And you might say, whoa, but I've seen, like, way more people who look incredibly way more muscular than you, Adam or Lucia.
[03:26] Well, yeah, that's what average means. It literally means that half of the population has better genetics for muscle building than I do. Yay for them. It also means that half the population has worse genetics for muscle building than I do.
[03:42] Sucks for them. The funny thing is, you could do a whole lot worse than this. And if you're able to achieve something like this in your life, then that's awesome. It's not that I deserve praise, it's that you deserve praise.
[03:54] You could do so much worse, and most people do. Some people also have extraordinary genetics for being lean. It drives me crazy when skinny people talk like they have more discipline than fat people.
[04:07] I mean, yes, there's a chance you may be skinny because you're super disciplined, but it's more likely there are some other causal factors involved. Some people are skinny because they live in a place where calories are scarce. Some people are skinny because they live in a place that's built for walking,
[04:22] and so everybody walks everywhere all the time. And that is the very best cardiovascular exercise, by the way, for everyone who asked. Build walking into your life as much as you possibly can,
[04:34] which can be really, really hard for a lot of us living in a country like the United States. Most people who are skinny here are skinny at least significantly in part because of unearned biological or socioeconomic differences.
[04:49] For example, some people just have a weaker food drive. They just don't get as hungry as you or me. I put on some weight this summer. I dropping it right now in part because I cleaned up my diet a bit but mostly just because again I had to change up my psychiatric medications again and I on another one that has a side effect of making me
[05:10] less hungry. That's the main thing that's going on, again. I think that taking mind-altering substances of all kinds is a great way to become a more empathetic person. I mean, obviously, be safe, be legal, talk to your doctor, yada, yada, yada, but taking things that turn up one
[05:25] fader in your brain while turning down another fader in your brain can really help you to experience how not everybody's brain feels the same. We talk about this in a culinary context
[05:37] all the time, right? People's taste and flavor sensations can vary a whole lot due to a lot of biological factors and your reward system develops differently over the course of your life depending
[05:49] on what you've eaten and how you felt about it. If you and a friend eat something and you really like it and they don't, there's a really, really good chance that you're not just exhibiting different reactions to the same experience.
[06:02] The two of you are actually having really different experiences. So naturally, your reactions are different. Until you had a really hungry brain, you don't know what it's like to have to resist food.
[06:15] So don't tell me you do. People who are really, really hungry by nature are people who feel like they have to eat in order to just be able to concentrate on any of the many more important things that they do in their life.
[06:28] And of course, the metabolic syndrome is way more complicated than just food drives. There are so many ways in which your metabolism can become disordered, ways that we don't even fully understand. So if you're a naturally fat person who has got skinny and stayed skinny through sheer force of will,
[06:47] bully for you. I mean, honestly, really. But, statistically speaking, that probably ain't you. Of course, the wonderful thing is that we now have this new class of drugs on the market that are getting better all the time, and they are rapidly rendering this entire conversation moot.
[07:01] So, yay. Rejoice. I mean, maybe I'll take one of those new weight loss medications someday. If I do, I will tell you about it. Anyway, yeah, if you see somebody whose physique is, like, way better than this, it's a good chance you're looking at somebody who has some extraordinary genetics,
[07:16] and extraordinary things are not ordinary. All else being equal, the only thing that you can rationally expect is the ordinary. But you can and should expect an extraordinary sleeping surface,
[07:31] and you can get one from Helix, sponsor of this video. Good Lord, sleep is so important to your exercise recovery, and I'd get such better sleep on my Helix mattress. If you're heavy and or lumpy, it can be so hard to get comfortable on a bad mattress
[07:47] or just one that's not made for your body. I took the Helix quiz online. They matched me up with a very high-quality spring and foam hybrid mattress that lets my glutes sink in while raising up to support my spine,
[08:00] and it came to the house rolled up in a box, shit-free in the U.S. The Helix Midnight Luxe has been ranked best overall mattress by both Forbes and Wired. But they're all good, and you should get the one that is best for your big and tall body
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[08:33] There's one of my bed buddies now. Check out Helix's Labor Day sale. Up to 30% off select mattresses with my link. helixfleek.com slash Ragusea, or you can hit that QR code. Thank you, Helix. Anyway, if you see
[08:47] somebody who works out and they look a whole lot better than me, there's a chance they might just have unusually good genetics. Or it might be factor number two. That person may dedicate way more time
[08:59] and effort to their health and fitness and physique than you are going to do. I'm not saying they're dedicating more time and effort than you should do or that you shouldn't do. I'm making a value-neutral statement.
[09:12] I'm just saying they probably do it a whole lot more than you are going to do, manifestly, because if you were going to do more, you would do it. And look at everybody in the developed world. Like, most of us aren't doing it.
[09:25] Working out does not have to take very long, but it does take a lot of effort that goes beyond the workout, right? It takes sort of brain space. It takes emotional effort. It takes discipline.
[09:39] It takes inner resources that you really just may need to dedicate toward more pressing things, like taking care of children, or doing a really hard job, or taking care of a family member who is disabled or old or sick,
[09:53] or maybe dealing with your own health disadvantages or disabilities. There's all kinds of effort that's going to be demanded of you outside of the gym. You going to be sore and you going to have to deal with that You gonna have to shower a lot and possibly at odd times of the day You going to have to mind your diet and if you want to mind your diet then that can take a lot of effort because there all kinds of garbage food around you and to eat the
[10:17] good stuff, you might have to really, really go out of your way, which requires you to go out of your way. You might also have to decline food in social situations, which can be surprisingly hard. So yeah, if you see somebody who looks way more lean and jacked
[10:31] them this, there's a really good chance that they are just dedicating way more time and effort to it than is realistic for you living a real life with real world constraints and real world problems.
[10:43] Now that said, I do want to emphasize that two workouts a week is probably like 90% better than one workout a week, and one workout a week is about infinity times better than zero workouts a week.
[10:57] Anything you do is good. If you are regularly moving your body with any effort at all, you are winning. You are ahead of the pack, and you deserve praise. Then there is the third thing that tends to make people look more impressive than this,
[11:12] and that is performance or physique-enhancing drugs, which are probably more prevalent than you may even realize, especially now with the Internet offering all kinds of legal-ish ways of getting them
[11:25] and with all of these unscrupulous hormone replacement clinics popping up. Oh, real quick, not all hormone replacement clinics are unscrupulous. Hormone replacement is a really, really valuable thing for men and women
[11:37] and should be taken seriously. Just make sure that you're going to a real doctor and not some greasy guy in South Florida. I'm sure there are real doctors in South Florida who are greasy, but I'm not talking about them. Anyway, the drugs. The drugs really, really work.
[11:51] Good Lord, do they work. but they don't work that well for everyone. In fact, if you see, like, a really successful bodybuilder, that person probably has extraordinary genetics,
[12:05] they're dedicating a huge amount of their time and effort toward their physique, and they're on a whole pharmacy's worth of drugs. Generally takes all three of those to get that kind of look. Oh, and of course, those drugs do come at a physical, emotional, and financial cost.
[12:21] Good lord, those guys pay. Plus, they may benefit from the fourth factor that I have yet to mention, and that is dirty tricks. Right now, my light box is hitting me mostly from the side,
[12:35] which is causing whatever muscle definition I have to cast a shadow over on this side, and that makes the muscles a whole lot more prominent, especially on camera. But if I were to move my light box directly in front of me,
[12:49] or as close or directly in front of me as I can get without covering up the camera lens through which you're seeing me right now, check it out. Like, I look way more washed out, right? And if I kind of swap my shoulders forward and if I stick my abdomen out as far as it can possibly go,
[13:03] well, there you go. This is the frame that somebody is going to pull and use in their thumbnail for their Adam Ragusea doesn't know anything about fitness video. Go ahead. Do your worst. Anyway, if you see an actor in a movie who looks really big and ripped,
[13:16] Here is an example, a realistic example, of how they may have gotten that body. That actor may have worked with a personal trainer for six to twelve months before shooting the movie, several hours a day, almost every day of the week, because it was their job.
[13:31] They had no other more pressing professional obligations over that period than to work on their body, and they probably had a nutritionist, or better yet, a dietician planning their meals. Registered dietician, that's a more real thing than nutritionist, generally speaking.
[13:45] No, I think always. Anyway, then there's probably a good chance that they had somebody cooking each and every one of those meals for them and just handing them those meals over the course of the day. Real easy. There's a good chance that actor was on some kind of physique-enhancing drug.
[13:58] Possibly a whole elaborate and dangerous protocol of drugs provided to them by a guru, is what it's called. Then that actor probably starved himself for about two months leading up to the shoot. And the day before his big shirtless scene, he probably stopped drinking water.
[14:15] Stop drinking water entirely, because when you do that, you get dehydrated, and the skin kind of hugs the muscle a little bit more, assuming that you're already very lean, which, of course, this guy probably already is. They had even taken some dangerous diuretic drugs to get out all of the excess subcutaneous water.
[14:30] They probably ate a whole bunch of carbs at exactly the right moment to temporarily inflate the muscles with a bunch of glycogen. And then he got to the set where a makeup artist painted his abs with shaving
[14:43] to make them look even more prominent. That is absolutely a thing that happened. You think they didn't do that when they shot the movie 300? They absolutely did that when they shot the movie 300. Those guys probably had real abs,
[14:56] but they also got massively enhanced with makeup. And then they got this actor in front of the camera, they arranged the lights and everything to cast exactly the right shadows, they used the right lens on the camera to enhance the kind of perception of depth of the muscle bellies And then what happened next Guy takes off his shirt Sucks in his stomach as much as he can
[15:19] He clenches and flexes his muscles as much as he possibly can for the two seconds in which they're getting the shot. And that is what you see in the movie. That's not real.
[15:31] Especially because they might CGI it even more in post-production. That's not real. this is real now some people will say Adam you could look a lot better
[15:43] if you just did your exercises better better form a better program oh yeah and if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon but she doesn't so she's not odds are your form and program
[15:56] are going to be imperfect as mine are perfect things are unusual most of us are usual But, gang, there's a whole lot of legitimate, informed debate over what the perfect form actually is.
[16:12] Everybody's skeleton is different. This is my skeleton. This is how it squats, okay? This is just what it does. And it's, of course, limited by my joint mobility, which is not perfect. I've gotten it better through the years.
[16:25] But it's not probably going to get much better than this. This is the best I can do, and that's fine. assuming we're talking about a civilian, a normal person, I don't think that any of us should ever comment negatively on someone else's exercise form,
[16:41] unless they are doing it catastrophically wrong, like to the point where they are in danger, immediate severe danger to themselves or others, or they've asked you for input.
[16:54] But if those things aren't true and you're talking about a civilian, I don't think any of us should ever say anything about their form. for a lot of reasons, but certainly among them, is that you don't know very much about their body. You don't know about their injury history.
[17:06] You don't know about their particular biomechanical dynamics. You don't know about any particular mobility issues they may have. You don't know what feels good and secure to them and what doesn't feel good and secure to them. And generally speaking, you should just do what feels good and secure to you,
[17:20] even if that might not be, like, optimal, because if it feels good and secure to you, you're far more likely to, like, do it. If you are going to well actually somebody in the comments about their exercise, boy, you had better be reading books and scientific literature.
[17:35] If you're only getting information from, like, YouTube videos and podcasts, you need to hush up, unless you have something positive to say. If you see somebody who's going after it, and it doesn't look like their form is going to literally kill them that day, and if they haven't asked you for your input, then you
[17:51] either need to shut up, or you need to say, hey, great job, killing it, even if you don't fully believe that's true. compliments don't need to be 100% true in most contexts.
[18:03] And definitely do not police other people's compliments of other people. If you see a stranger telling another stranger that they look fit, do not stick your nose into the situation and say,
[18:16] Really? I mean, think that all you want. Your mind is free and it is all your own. You can even snark about it to your friend in private if you must. But good God, people, basic manners when interacting with strangers in a public place, which the comments are an example of.
[18:35] Do those kinds of remarks really, really hurt me? You know, amazingly, way less than they used to. It's amazing how much your brain continues to change, even well into midlife and beyond.
[18:48] Like, those things cut me way more just a few years ago than they do now, and I'm really grateful for that. I mean, they hurt a little bit, but, like, not much. I'm mostly worried about you, because it's my job to care about you, and I'm responsible for the effect that my content has on you.
[19:04] And again, odds are, you're younger than me, which makes me feel all the more responsible. And if I let people talk shit about my body on my channel, how is that going to make everybody feel whose body is this good or worse?
[19:20] Which is probably most of you. If you talk shit about me, you're talking shit about so many other people who are watching and listening, and they may be young and or vulnerable in some other way,
[19:34] and they're trying to work out their place in the order of things, and they're using what you say as a cue to position themselves in the order of things. Ask yourself if you really want to put all of those people down.
[19:47] Ask yourself what is to be gained from putting all of those people down. Anybody moving their body regularly deserves praise. And anybody who's not doing that deserves encouragement, not shame.
[20:00] They probably have plenty of shame already from themselves. They do not need more from you. So do the best you can, because that's all you can do. And I'll talk to you next time.
[20:13] Probably with more clothes on.