@Paul Farnbach Paul, this is an incredible transformation. From 372 pounds and a 54-inch waist down to 215 and a 34/35 waist. You lost 157 pounds and completely rebuilt your life. The gastric sleeve was a tool, but the discipline and consistency you showed before and after surgery is what made this work. The fact that you’re using this channel to ground your strength training shows you understand the next phase. You’ve lost the weight, now you’re building sustainable strength without destroying your body in the process. That’s the intelligent approach. Keep training smart. Keep posting your progress. This community needs men like you who’ve proven they can make massive life changes and stick with them. Appreciate you being here and leading by example. Built Different™ 💪🏻​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

@Stephen Motta lean into it 💪🏻💪🏻🫵🏻🫵🏻

Welcome 💪🏻recover and come in strong!

Aaron, you’re in the right place. After years of heavy progressive overload, your body is telling you it needs a different approach. Here’s what you need to focus on. Stop chasing heavy weight. Your joints are already compromised, so the risk-reward ratio doesn’t work anymore. You need to shift to volume-based training with lighter loads and perfect control. Think 10 to 15 reps minimum on every set, four to six sets per exercise, and full mind-muscle connection throughout. If you can’t feel the muscle working because you’re just trying to move the weight, it’s too heavy. Train four days per week. Hit chest and triceps one day, back and biceps another, shoulders on the third day, and legs on the fourth. Use dumbbells and cables instead of barbells. Dumbbells let your joints move naturally instead of locking you into fixed positions that create impingement. On chest work, stop when your elbows reach body level, don’t let them travel way behind you. On leg press, stop at ninety degrees if going deeper hurts your knees. Work within the range your body can handle safely. For dropping body fat while maintaining muscle, keep protein high, stay in a slight calorie deficit, and don’t crash diet. Lose one to two pounds per week maximum. The training volume will preserve your muscle as long as you’re eating enough protein and not starving yourself. You’ll notice I’m not giving you barbell bench, heavy squats, or overhead barbell pressing. Those movements are what got you here. Focus on exercises that let you control the weight, feel the muscle work, and finish the workout without pain. If something hurts, modify it or skip it. Pain is your body telling you to stop, not push through. This isn’t complicated. Lighter weight, higher reps, perfect form, full control. Your body will recover and you’ll maintain your muscle mass. You just have to train smarter than you did before. Post your progress in the community. Others are dealing with the same issues and this is how we all get better together.

Stephen, glad you joined the community. Open grip pulldowns can hit either lats or biceps depending on how you execute them. Mike Mentzer used them as a bicep exercise because of how he approached the movement, but most people use them for lats. Here’s the difference. If you’re pulling the bar straight down and focusing on driving your elbows down and back while squeezing your shoulder blades together, you’re working lats. Think of your arms as hooks or hinges. The biceps are just there to hold the weight, but the pulling force comes from your lats and upper back. This is how most people should use open grip pulldowns. If you’re pulling with more supination in your wrist position, keeping your elbows closer to your body, and focusing on curling the weight down rather than driving your elbows back, you shift more emphasis to the biceps. That’s what Mentzer was doing. It becomes more of a hybrid pulldown-curl movement. The key is intention and mind muscle connection. Where are you feeling the work? If you’re not feeling bicep isolation, then you’re probably using it as a lat movement, which is fine. Use your arms like hinges. Don’t pull with your biceps, pull with your back. Elbows drive the movement, not your hands. Most people don’t need open grip pulldowns as a bicep exercise because traditional curls work better for that. Use the pulldown to hit your lats with full range of motion and a strong squeeze at the bottom. 4-6t sets, 12-15 reps, control the negative, feel the lats stretch at the top and contract at the bottom. If you want true bicep isolation, stick with curls. Dumbbells, cables, all variations work. Don’t overthink the pulldown. Use it for what it does best, which is building your back. Appreciate you joining. Keep training smart. Built Different™ 💪🏻​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Jason, welcome to the brotherhood. Glad you found us. You’re in the right place if you want to train smart for longevity instead of chasing numbers. Looking at your lower body workout, you’re doing a lot of glute and posterior chain work but not nearly enough quad focus. Bulgarian split squats hit quads but they’re also heavily glute-dominant. Hip thrusts, glute kickbacks, and back extensions are all posterior. You’ve got one real quad exercise in there with the hack squat, and that’s not enough. Here’s what I’d adjust. Keep the hack squat and add leg press or front-loaded goblet squats. Both hit quads hard with controlled range of motion. If your knees can handle it, add leg extensions at the end with lighter weight and higher reps, focusing on the squeeze at the top. Quads need volume and time under tension, not just one exercise buried in a glute routine. Second issue is exercise selection. Seven different movements is a lot for one workout. You’re spreading your energy too thin. Pick four to five exercises, do four to six sets each, and focus on quality over quantity. Bulgarian split squats, leg press, hack squat, hamstring curls, and calf raises. That’s a complete lower body workout. You don’t need cable kickbacks and hip thrusts in the same session unless you’re training for a physique competition. Focus on ten to fifteen reps per set with weight you can control perfectly. Feel the muscle work throughout the entire range of motion. If you’re just moving weight without the mind-muscle connection, it’s too heavy or you’re doing too many exercises and you’re tired. Post your next leg workout here and let’s see the adjustment. Keep training. Built Different™ 💪🏻​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Good. Finish the program. You’re seven weeks in, give it at least twelve weeks total before you switch. Consistency beats program-hopping every single time. That pattern of jumping to the next thing before finishing what you started is exactly what keeps most guys from making real progress. Here’s what you can do right now without abandoning your current program. Apply Built Different principles to the exercises you’re already doing. Four to six sets per exercise, twelve to sixteen reps minimum, control the weight through full range of motion, and focus on feeling the muscle work throughout every single rep. If you’re in your current program but training with those principles, you’ll get better results than jumping to something new. When you finish your twelve weeks, then we can talk about transitioning to a full Built Different structure. You’ll have proven to yourself that you can stick with something, and you’ll be ready to build on that foundation. Finish strong. Five more weeks. Post your progress as you go. Built Different™ 💪🏻​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Keith, appreciate you being here. At 66 with years of consistent training, you’ve already built the discipline. Now it’s about training smart with your home setup. You’ve got everything you need with adjustable dumbbells, an adjustable bench, the Airdyne, and a rower. That’s a complete home gym for volume-based training. Here’s your basic five-day structure. Day one chest and triceps. Day two back and biceps. Day three shoulders. Day four legs. Day five full body or weak points. Use the Airdyne or rower for ten to fifteen minutes on rest days if you want active recovery. For every exercise, four to six sets of ten to fifteen reps minimum. Focus on controlling the weight through the full range of motion and feeling the muscle work. At 66, your joints have decades of wear. Respect that. If something doesn’t feel right, adjust the angle or switch the exercise. Incline dumbbell press instead of flat if your shoulders feel better. Seated rows instead of bent-over rows if your lower back is an issue. You’ve been training long enough to know what your body can handle. The adjustable bench gives you incline, flat, and decline work. Use all the angles. Chest, shoulders, rows, curls, everything benefits from changing the angle and hitting different parts of the muscle. Keep your training time efficient. Ninety seconds rest between sets, no more. You can get through a complete workout in forty-five to sixty minutes. Then use the rower or Airdyne for conditioning if you want, but the dumbbell work is where you maintain muscle tone and manage your weight. We’re building out complete structured programs that will be available soon with exact exercises, sets, reps, and progression protocols. For now, start with this framework and post your progress. The community will keep you accountable. Built Different™ 💪🏻​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​