Training principles for mass and strength, changing views on nutrition, creatine supplementation, and more | Layne Norton, Ph.D.

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. My guest this week is Layne Norton. Layne was a previous guest on episode 163 back in May of 2021, and then 205 back in May of 2022
In both of those discussions, we were never able to fully get through the content we wanted, and we knew we were gonna have to sit down and do this again. So here we are onto round three. In this episode, we talk about Layne's training and work as a powerlifter. This is in large part because at the time we recorded this, Layne was in the final weeks of training for the World Masters Powerlifting Championship. We focused the conversation around what non-powerlifters can learn about muscle, strength, and the principles to get stronger in the weight room, even if they, of course, have no desire to ever compete in a powerlifting meet themselves.
We also get into a much deeper dive around creatine, which we only lightly touched on in a previous podcast. We talk about fitness and nutrition experts on social media and the importance of being able to change your mind. Talk a lot about nutrition, and this includes the three areas of nutrition that Layne has changed his mind about over time. We also discuss some nuances around time-restricted feeding, tracking calories, and more. Now, just a way of quick background, Layne is a bodybuilding figure and physique coach, and in addition to being a natural pro bodybuilder and professional powerlifter. And though we didn't know it at the time of this recording, we now know it as I make this intro, Layne has very recently won the 2022 Masters World Powerlifting Championship in October in a drug-free, tested division. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Layne Norton.
Well, Layne, we're back for another round of this, but this time we finally get to do it in person.

**Layne Norton** (2:30)
I'm looking forward to this. This will be, I said it would be a little bit different.

**Peter Attia** (2:33)
So let's talk about your training, cause right now you are training for worlds in powerlifting. We had a great chance to kind of catch up on some of your training yesterday. I probably won't get into as much detail as you and I got into last night, cause that might be more detailed than the average non-nerd is interested in.
But maybe just briefly kind of explain the sport of powerlifting. There are three lifts, how it works. And then I want to talk about kind of how you're training for that and some of the challenges of that.

**Layne Norton** (2:57)
Powerlifting is a very basic sport. Like you mentioned, there's three lifts, the squat, the bench press, the deadlift, and they go in that order. You get three attempts on each and they're progressive. So for example, once you put in an attempt, like let's say you put in a squat attempt of 550 pounds for your opener.
If you miss it, you can't go down. So usually the way people do it is, first attempt is a pretty conservative weight, kind of like a last warmup.
Second attempt is getting close to something that's pretty reasonable, like RPE 9, nine and a half. And then your last one, you're hoping to get kind of your true maximum. I mean, basically highest total wins.

**Peter Attia** (3:38)
Between the three different lifts.

**Layne Norton** (3:40)
Correct. So at Worlds, they will give medals for individual lifts. There'll be a gold, silver and bronze for squat, gold, silver, bronze for bench press and gold, silver, bronze for deadlift.
And then there'll be those medals also for the overall. And the overall is just the summation of the total of the number of lifts you hit.

**Peter Attia** (3:56)
And when you do your three squats, three bench, three dead, are you doing them in that order or are you going?

**Layne Norton** (4:01)
So it's you do all three squats go, then all three bench press, then all three deadlift.