How Eric Janicki Packed On 85 Pounds of Muscle #386
Muscle Intelligence
Ben Pakulski
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 10 August 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Podcasts are better with visuals! → Watch On YouTube
Join 50,000+ men getting weekly strategies to build muscle, boost energy, and extend performance, delivered straight to your inbox. → Join the Newsletter
We're here to help you build muscle. Download our FREE body part specializations below.
Show Notes/Description
What happens when you combine obsessive consistency, pain-free movement, and training intensity with surgical precision? Eric Janicki joins Ben Pakulski on the Muscle Intelligence Podcast, for a powerful deep dive into the evolution of his training philosophy, from early football grit and aesthetic modeling to intelligent bodybuilding and elite physique coaching. Eric shares the personal journey that shaped his mindset, why full range of motion changed his physique, and how intentional training helped him eliminate chronic joint pain. They explore nuanced programming, the psychology of progression, and the future of fitness tech and coaching. Whether you're an aging athlete, bodybuilder, or everyday lifter, this episode will change how you train forever.
Points To Watch Out For
- How deep-range training fixed chronic knee and back pain
- Why most lifters never fully activate their muscles
- The truth about joint health and full range of motion
- How Eric gained 85 lbs of muscle post-30
- Building a business around passion and purpose
Connect with Eric
About Ben
Ben Pakulski is the Chief Performance Officer to elite executives, successful entrepreneurs, and top athletes. With over 25 years of experience, he coaches high achievers to build the physical, psychological, and metabolic resilience required to lead at the highest level.
As the creator of the Muscle Intelligence framework, Ben specializes in aligning biology and behavior to drive sustained peak performance. His mission is to redefine what’s possible for people in their prime and push the boundaries of human potential.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I knew I didn't want to be a personal trainer forever, |
| 0:02.0 | but I knew it was the route I wanted to go was fitness or fitness adjacent. I don't tend to have like the tiniest waist. I was playing the size game, like a lot of people trying to get bigger. My weights started got out of control. My last year of competing, I brought it down, I think, seven inches or something like that on stage. What was training like then as compared to where you landed now? The thing that remained the same is always across time has been intensity. |
| 0:03.0 | At the time, seven inches or something like that on stage. What was training like then as compared to where you landed now? |
| 0:20.9 | The thing that remained the same is always across time has been intensity. |
| 0:24.0 | At the time, what made the most sense to me was let me make this hurt as badly as possible. |
| 0:31.3 | It wasn't until I was around 30 that I actually was like, I could train exactly like I am right now until I'm 60, 70, 78 years old. You look like a rhinoceros. 10 second 40. He had a heart attack right after he finished that sprint. One hundred eighty heart rate after sprinting. If you think that you have a goal and you're gonna get happy when you get there, you're not. You're seeing the progress you made. It's just like, what is that? It is a culmination of every |
| 0:54.4 | single moment, every single one of those hard reps. I just absolutely love it. |
| 1:07.5 | One of the things that fascinated about me when you and I had our first conversation a couple days ago |
| 1:13.6 | was generally when I speak to bodybuilders, there's not a huge amount of thought and intentionality behind what they do. |
| 1:20.6 | It's just this like, hey man, this is, they sort of fell into it and it works for them. |
| 1:26.6 | And most bodybuilders are very, very blessed. And there's not a lot of, um, yeah, not a lot of intentionality. It seems like you've landed on something that's unique to you that works seemingly universally. But there's obviously nuance to that. But I love to to just kind of reverse into you know as i said |
| 1:45.6 | prior to our chat um i jumped online i was like searching some of your stuff and like you were |
| 1:50.1 | fucking yoked even before you got into this you you're obviously very very um fit athletic um i'd love to |
| 1:57.4 | know where that started for you like one of this bug of bodybuilding kind of catching your mind. Yeah, no, it's, first of all, thanks for having me. I really appreciate, you know, huge fan of you and all your work. And a lot of, I think you're definitely a thought leader in the space, but you live in the nuance, which I think is so important. So many people live in the absolutes, which I think could be dangerous, especially in the training |
| 2:19.1 | game. |
| 2:19.5 | Everybody's different. |
| 2:20.2 | Everybody has different goals. |
| 2:21.5 | They're at different levels, different ages. |
| 2:22.8 | So I think nuances everything when it comes to fitness specifically. |
| 2:27.3 | And how it got started for me, I actually started very young with falling in love with training. |
| 2:37.0 | I had a little bit of unfortunate, you know, circumstances in my childhood, and I always, you know, caveat that with, I had amazing parts of my childhood. |
| 2:45.5 | But my mom, who I was very close with, struggle with mental health issues. She was bipolar and she unfortunately took |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 26 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ben Pakulski, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Ben Pakulski and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.