#20 - A Simple Approach to Advanced Strength Programming

The Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm your host, Andy. Texas and co-author of owner of ScanShare. Welcome back, everybody, to the Baker Barbell Podcast. We are on episode number 20 today. And I think what we're going to do today, we just talked about it a little bit, is we're going to bring everything back to kind of the strength training world today.

So up to this point, we've done kind of a hodgepodge of different stuff. We've done a lot of the hypertrophy stuff. We've done some kind of general fitness stuff. We've done some sports things. all the conjugate stuff even a business episode and

We'll probably do a little bit more of all that over time. But I wanted to kind of throw some stuff out there early on that maybe a lot of my audience had not heard me talk about. Those of you that have, you know, kind of know me and Dan from the starting strength world.

you know, familiar with a lot of the strength stuff. And one of the things I didn't want to do with this podcast was rehash stuff that's been talked about 8 000 times i didn't i've got you know a decade worth of articles and podcasts and such on the texas method and uh heavy light medium and all that kind of stuff and i just

I didn't want to record. And there's also others that talk about it as well that do a good job with the material. So I didn't think it was in, it wasn't in my interest and I don't think it was in the audience's interest.

necessarily to hear us just kind of rehash stuff that we've been over and over again a million times so but today we are going to kind of bring it back home a little bit to the the strength side of things you know training kind of barbell based strength training and what we're going to talk about a little bit today is how I go about progressing some of my advanced lifters and more advanced clients. And I think that'll be an interesting topic. And there is some...

There are some examples of this, of what I'm talking about. Maybe not exactly what I'm talking about, but definitely the concept.

that I'm talking about are illustrated and practical programming. So there's a couple of really good examples in there of some models that can be used for more advanced athletes one of the difficult things about training advanced athletes we were just talking about it is it becomes very hyper individualized so even like a template is very difficult if not impossible to use with an advanced athlete you you really kind of only have like a model And then within that, there's a lot of details.

that change with each lifter and even change not just between lifters, but even with the same lifter over time as they get stronger, as they get older, as their priorities change, that sort of thing. Even the same lifter will change a little bit. So it's very difficult to have like a one size fits all. But you can have a model that you work within. And I very much use a model for a lot of my advanced athletes that I work with.

And then I try to mold that model to fit each person. And there's a feeling out process with this too. One of the things that's difficult about working with more advanced athletes. And they're not always super strong when they come to you. Let me back up a little bit and let's talk about the term advanced a little bit because it has some connotations. that aren't necessarily accurate.

When you talk, what is an advanced lifter? When we think about an advanced athlete or an advanced this or advanced that, we tend to assume better or really good or expert even. And like in the lifting world, it doesn't necessarily mean that. And so it just means that progression has slowed to the point where you're beyond like any sort of weekly model.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a great competitor or that you're a champion or that you're even a competitor necessarily. You know, I think most highly advanced lifters are probably competitors. Or at least dabble in it. But I think that's changing. A lot of people lift and lift seriously. A lot of my clients. Like I said, they lift and they lift seriously and they're dedicated to it and they push themselves and they push their bodies hard and they achieve good numbers.

without ever actually doing competition. They're just not motivated by that. And so it doesn't necessarily mean you're a competitor. It doesn't necessarily even mean that you're exceptionally strong. There's advanced lifters that may not be as strong as certain novices or intermediates in terms of just load on the bar because so much of that is determined by just genetics and age.

you know abilities and whatever but anybody that's been training for you know, I'd say at least a couple of years, maybe in a lot of times, probably shorter than that as they've been training. you know good um you know with good methodologies and high effort and you know pushing themselves hard and making progress you know within within

within a year or two years, you're actually going to probably be an advanced athlete. In other words, you're not going to be capable anymore of regular weekly progress all the time. I think maybe we talked about this a little bit before. If you think about the concept of adding five pounds a week, like a week, I mean, a year is 52 weeks. So let's just say 50 weeks.

That's 250 pounds per year. That's 500 pounds in two years added to your lifts. That's not going to happen. Maybe in the first two years for some people might be able to do that on a... squat or a deadlift or something if they've got you know great genetics but you're not going to add 500 pounds to your bench in two years like ever you know I mean most people will never even sniff 500 pounds

regardless. But so what does that mean? That's not meant to demotivate you and think, oh, I can't get good progress. It just means that Your progress is going to reach a level where it's much slower than five pounds per week, probably faster than you think it's going to. Yep. The way I think of it, it's like it takes... it takes a lot longer to make relatively less progress than you did in the beginning. It's like in the beginning, you can make huge percentages, huge increases in your strength.

like 100 pounds increase in the first year like you could see that but then you might you might train six months and get like a 15 20 pound pr and be like super pumped about it and you make that 100 pound increase on your squat with relatively like lower effort levels and certainly less complexity And so I think that's what makes most people go into like kind of the maintenance mode or whatever is like you get you get a certain point where it.

the amount of work that you have to put in to get a decreasingly small PR, and also the PRs are less meaningful. So when you go from 225 to 315 on your squat, that's significant. Whether you're an athlete or just daily life or whatever, or physique, whatever your goal is, 225 to 315 is going to significantly improve whatever your goal is. You know, you can argue the same as for 305 or 315 to 405, you know, but you get to a certain point where you're going, let's say, you know, you're at 550.

And it's like, you got to work for a year to get to 565. You know what I mean? And that's the reality for a lot of people. And there's a lot of work. to eke out, say, that 15-pound PR. And for some people, it might take even more than that. And so how much does that change you as an athlete how much does it change your physique how much does it change your actual functional strength to go from 550 to 565 well none

But it was a hell of a lot of work and it was, you know, it beat your body up and you reach a certain point, a certain age where you go, I don't want to do that anymore. Like that 15, like the bragging rights or whatever. of having that extra 15 pounds just isn't worth it anymore. And that's where I think people wind up going into maintenance mode because, and even, and you know, unless you're at the top of the food chain competitively,

And, you know, a mid 500 pound squat is not top of the food chain competitively. You know, you've got to be much, much higher than that. So if you're not there, the likelihood that you're going to get into that world of. you know, 600 plus squats, 650 plus squats or whatever it would be.

you know a competitive lifter um you know it's um it's a it's unlikely you know at the highest levels you might win you know you win local meets or whatever if you want to but in terms of like top notch you know competition you're not you're not there and you're likely not going to get there so um you know i think that's where people make that decision but anyway that's an aside so but that's that's basically what we're talking about when we're talking about advanced lifters is people that need

They need longer periods of progress in order to make PRs. And what they need to do, what we're talking about, why they need longer periods of progress is they need a longer period of time for stress to build. And so you're having to accumulate a series of stresses over a long period of time rather than just a singular stress in today's workout.

or a week's worth of stress or whatever, you have to accumulate weeks or months worth of progressively higher increases in stress in order to manifest new performance increase. And what makes it even harder is that those progressively higher increases in stress are not linear. And so you can't just linearly raise the workload over, say, a six-month period. It has to work in cycle.

And so there has to be breaks in there. There has to be deloading periods in there. And that makes things really complex. And it makes it practically hard for people to do because of the interruptions of daily life. And this is one of the reasons why, quote, regular people don't necessarily make it to the top level of, um you know competition or whatever is because if it's not a real a really really fucking big priority in your life um you're not your training is going to get interrupted

by certain things, like whether it's your business or whether it's your family life or your other hobbies that you may be interested in or whatever. They interrupt these long, drawn-out periods of cyclical periods of higher and higher stress. it takes a while you can't afford to have like major disruptions to that on your calendar you can't miss training

You can't miss one week out of every month because you have business trips or you take a family vacation every now and again and you're gone for two weeks and don't train. That kind of screws up this whole thing of what we're talking about. You know, my top flight people, they don't miss training very often, like hardly ever. If they do, it's like a day or two here or there. But in terms of like missing weeks and months at a time, it's basically never.

because it's too disruptive to this process. And you have to plan your PRs, or at least your PR attempts. Does it always happen? Like, no. And sometimes you think you're doing a really good job of planning and you either fail to get a PR when you think you are, when you think you should or hope that you should. And then also the inverse is also true where sometimes you do get like these unexpected PRs.

And so that's like you weren't planning on it. So then that's just the body doing what the body does, which is behaving kind of erratically and unpredictably. And so we can only manage these responses. you know it's it's everything that we're doing is basically our best guess you know um with a little bit of luck and hoping that over time all of the hard work and you know good solid training concepts and all of that are going to outweigh

All of the day-to-day fluctuations or whatever mistakes we might be making or suboptimal things that we have in our training are going to be outweighed by the positive things. I had a football coach. And the one good thing he said was that we had a play. I'm going to talk about this before in another episode. But we had a draw play, and we'd call it Sally.

If you don't want to draw plays, it's like a fake, like the quarterback's going to throw it, but then he'd hand it off last second. The lineman blocked like it's a pass play, so it kind of tries to trick everybody, and then the running back's supposed to find a hole and get up the field or whatever. And he would say, he goes, look.

Whenever we run Sally, it's either going to go one of two ways. It's going to be... like chicken salad so it's gonna go really well or it's gonna get blown up and be like chicken shit And I think of training like that. Every day is somewhere in the middle, or most days are somewhere in the middle of those two.

And then some days are like chicken shit, but then some days are like chicken salad. And that's what it reminded me of when like, and I'll tell people, I'm like, if you have one of those days and we're at a point in your training where it's like you're within striking distance, like. take advantage of that chicken salad day because we don't know when the next one's going to be.

Yeah, that's one of the things I like about conjugate training, which is What I'm going to talk about today is not the conjugate system, which is another advanced program that I like that has some similarities with what... I'm going to talk about today, which is that if you go back and listen to some of the earlier episodes that we did on the conjugate method, was I talked about that.

The conjugate method is actually just a small piece of what is a concurrent training methodology. So the periodization model that we're using is like a concurrent model. And that's what I use here too with a lot of my advanced clients that I work with one-on-one. It's also a concurrent model where we're training multiple qualities all at once versus working in phases.

of like you know we've talked about that before too like it's not block training it's basically all all these qualities are going to be kind of trained at once but it doesn't have it doesn't necessarily it's not it does i guess you could say it has a little bit of the conjugate flair to it but it doesn't have the max effort upper lower days like it doesn't have as much variation like with those heavy lifts like it has variation but it comes more with the supplemental and assistance work

whereas I keep the main work more or less the same. So, and I was talking to Dan about this before we got on here. It's like, I... People sometimes ask me, like, you know, what program is, say, Shelly running? Or, you know, some of my more, like, advanced clients, my stronger clients, like, what program are they running? There's nothing I have like this that's in a template format that I could sell on my website or that I could administer in my barbell club because

to a larger group of people because the numbers on this stuff really matter. The devil's in the details on a lot of this. There's a lot of week to week, day to day manipulation that I do on behalf of my lifters for this program to make sure that it works really, really well. and so it would be it would be hard for me to admit it to like give out a template for this for what I do here and say do this because it wouldn't work for so many people because there's a lot of

Even though the template, the model is the same for a lot of the clients, the individual details vary so much. I haven't yet figured out a way to like other than what I'm going to do today in this podcast, which is talk about it. I haven't figured out a way yet to give this program to a lot of people where I can be confident that it would work. And what you've developed. Like, I guess... You had to have done it in person too at first, right? Like in order to...

be able to do a good job with people online because you kind of know what to expect or at least you have a wide repertoire of solutions to common problems that you've seen. So can you talk about that a little bit?

yeah it's like when you when you work when you when you do in-person coaching it feeds what you do online and it's almost like when I'm writing an online program it's like if I put something on paper and I kind of look at it and you know I can if it's like a little too hard like if it's kind of an aggressive program I can almost like see the face of a client in a squat rack like

dreading this next set or looking at me like are you fucking kidding me like another you know another set or whatever you know so you kind of know like it kind of feeds that like okay, this is going to be a little too much for most people or this is not enough, like this really low volume approach. Like I'm kind of thinking of my clients and I've trained all these clients over the years.

how many of them are really going to be able to push hard enough to make, say, this low-volume approach type work. you know there may there be some but not many so that's why If you look at the stuff that I offer on my website, most of the templates and stuff, I always say they're like medium stress. None of them go real high on the volume thing. None of them go real low on the volume thing.

you know they're kind of like everything's kind of like medium in a way because that's what's going to work for most people and then you can like that's a good thing to start in the middle you know if you're not sure like what to do and you're trying to like you don't know how to program for yourself and you want to use like a template to program

for like maybe it's not optimal but it's probably better than just spinning your wheels and just being like erratic and all over the place which is what Most people do. Everybody's obsessed with what's optimal. If you buy a template from me or somebody else, it doesn't have to be from me, from whoever.

and like you've been training in a way that's very erratic and unstructured and just all over the place and not and you're just spinning your wheels and like you get on a good solid like proven structured program it yeah it's probably probably not optimal for you but it might still work

And that's better. At least you're moving in the right direction. And if you do something like that, I always recommend you start with something that's kind of moderate. And then it makes it easier to either add or subtract. Whether if you start on something that's way far on the spectrum, something, some real high volume, high frequency thing, or some really low volume, like most people are not responders at the end of the spectrum. Most people respond pretty well to the middle.

And then you can make adjustments for yourself on the margins, add a little here, take a little away there, you know, whatever, to kind of make it work for you over time. This is what I think is optimal. Train a couple times a week for the next 10 years. Yeah, and all of it does come out in the wash.

you know, if you just do it, if you take a reasonable approach and do it over a long period of time, a lot of the, like I said that just a few minutes ago, like a lot of the suboptimal stuff kind of, gets washed away by just being super, super consistent. I think people, especially when you're in this phase of kind of going from this

I guess intermediate sort of level to like progressing toward that advanced level. Like I think a lot of times at least I got caught up in this looking at programs that I could do like now and okay and like what's going to look like in eight weeks. and then go really, really hard, but then get kind of fried by that sixth, seventh, eighth week, where now I'm just kind of like, all right, I'm going to train every other day.

I'm never going to miss it. If I can't, I'm going to train two days in a row and make sure I get it. And I'm just going to do that for the rest of my life and just kind of let go of like this pressure on these next three months and just know like,

If I keep adhering to these principles of progressive overload, and then when days are chicken salad, take advantage of them, be okay if they're chicken shit sometimes, and just keep chipping away at it. At least maybe it's going hand in hand with my business, with training, like I've just learned.

just chip away. You don't need all that pressure to try and hit a new PR at a certain regular schedule where you might be able to, but other times, like we were saying before, it might be a little more sporadic at times too. I think for most of us, especially once you get out of a competitive phase, then, you know, it's... But... for competitors. or people that just have really ambitious goals, you know, they've got to, you don't want to just rely on life.

you know like oh i hope i hope that if i just be consistent one day i'll hit like this you know let's say a 600 pound squad or whatever like you you're gonna have to work towards that like and be very very deliberate

with everything in your life not just your training your recovery your stress levels like your sleep your nutrition like everything is going to have to work towards that like you look at like shelly like my um for you guys that you know don't know who she is like follow my instagram and see my You know, 71-year-old lifter, she just smoked like 255 the other day. She's going to Worlds in a couple weeks on June 18th.

I don't know when this episode will be released. It may have already happened by the time this episode is released. But on June 18th, she's going to a world qualifying event. And all she has to do is basically not. uh you know not um not zero out on her lifts and she'll she'll make it to worlds you know and she's uh she's set all kinds of records and everything and people like how how the fuck does she do that it's like well she never misses workout

Like, that's one thing. If she does, you know any kind of deviation it's like she at least goes in and gets like her squats and her bench or her deadlift or like whatever the meat and potatoes of the workout is like she finds a way to get it done. And she's rock solid on her nutrition. She works with my nutrition guy that I use, Nathan Payton, who does, I think, three of the five World's Strongest Man finishers.

just recently are also Nathan's clients. The guy knows what he's doing. Shelly spends a lot of money on coaching. She spends a lot of money with me. She spends a lot of money with Nathan. She orients her life towards you know new pr's and if you're not doing that you're only going to get so far you know that's that's the thing and so but like with her and with all like my other advanced athletes that i that i work with that also perform really really well like i use a very very similar model

with all of them the details are very different but the model is similar and so basically i'll start with kind of a big picture thing uh part of it which is and let's let's talk about this because people this is thing that screws everybody up is deloading okay so we just talked about We just talked about that when you're an advanced athlete, your progression towards new PRs is not going to be linear. You're not just going to add stress.

Every week, you know, adding five pounds per week or adding volume every week. Like you are going to have to add stress over time, but it has to, there has to be a cyclical nature to it to where you reach peaks of stress. And then you have to pull back on the stress and then work back up to it. And then each time that you say work back up to it, whether it's volume or weight or whatever the stressor is, like every time you work up to that, it needs to be a little more than last time.

Whereas a novice is adding weight, say, every 48 to 72 hours and a more intermediate guy might be adding a little bit of weight every week. You know, the more advanced athlete might only be hitting the PR once every four to six weeks. Something like that. And by a PR, I don't necessarily mean a one rep mat. I'm programming.

We're going to kind of gear this towards like powerlifting because we need an example to talk about. So we're going to talk about powerlifting because we know the metrics on that. That's one rep max squat, bench, and deadlift. So like, yes, I'm programming for an increase in one rep max.

on the squat bench and deadlift, but that doesn't necessarily, that doesn't mean we're testing a new one rep max on the squat bench and deadlift every four to six weeks. We are, we are trying to get new PRs, but they may be like, they're like, most of the time they're like volume PR. So I'm trying to increase your best three sets of three or your best five sets of five or whatever. Like we want to have an increase there every four to six weeks. And if we accumulate enough of that,

then your one rep max will go up. But I'm not testing lifters out every four to six weeks because, again, it just works slower than that. And there's no point to... And a lot of lifters that self-program do this all the time. They have a few good workouts and it's like, oh, I got to see if it's there. It's not there yet.

you know and you and every time you do that every time you go in there and max out on the squat as opposed to do a training session you're potentially setting yourself back because you're not getting a ton of stimulus in terms of like accumulating enough work to actually cause adaptation and you're digging yourself like a deep recovery deficit by trying to constantly I'm not talking about

training singles necessarily. I'm talking about testing one rep max and doing a mini powerlifting meet every four to six weeks. That's too much. An advanced athlete doesn't need to do that. They need to accumulate PRs. Yes, on their squat, their bench, their deadlift or whatever, but it'll be like what I'm talking about is more like volume-based PRs. If your best three sets of three was at 305, let's get your best three sets of three to 320 or 325, and then maybe test out.

you know depending on how long that takes because that's pretty predictable like if I my best my best on a whatever lift was three sets of three at 305. And now I can do three sets of three at 325. My one RM probably went up, you know, if that was a legit increase. And so that's kind of how you want to do it. It's pretty predictable at certain set and rep combos. So all that being said, I wanted to back up and talk about the deload part of it.

PRs that we're planning for, basically what I do is I try to plan for them at the end of every four weeks. And then on week five, we deload. So I've got everybody. And why did I come up with four weeks versus three versus five versus six? Trial and error.

That's all it was over a long period of time with a lot of people. And what I found was that with most people, really really good window of time was four weeks of loading and then a deload four weeks of loading and then a deload with some people I will shorten or increase that if I find that it needs to be but most people

I can make that four weeks of loading and one week of deloading work really, really well almost for anybody. And you almost need a framework like that to operate off of. As a coach, you have to get good at a system. You have to be adaptable to each individual, but at the same time you can't just apply radically different training approaches. to everybody that you work with. It is helpful to really master a system. And so in order to do that, you have to apply that system to a lot of people.

And I've applied the system to a whole lot of people, and I've just found over time that that's at least where I'll start with, is I'll start with, okay, we're going to load. In other words, we're going to accumulate a whole lot of stress in a four-week period. and then every fifth week we're going to deload. Now, the bigger mistake is that if the person needs a deload more often, say every three weeks,

You know, load three weeks, then take a week off, load three weeks, take a week off. If they need that, then you need to do that. Most of the clients that I work with don't. Most of them can do four and push pretty hard. If you do more often, if you deload more often than that, they tend to kind of detrain. My guess is that

If you look at a guy like Julius Maddox, who Josh Bryant trains, and I know Josh Bryant not real well, but I have worked with him before, and so I kind of know how he trains. He's big on like three weeks of loading and then take a week off. Three weeks of loading, take a week off. but you also have to look at the size and the strength of some of the guys he's working with. I don't have a Julius Maddox. I don't have a guy that's trying for an 800-pound bet.

So, you know what I'm saying? Or some of the guys that he works with that are just, they're really, really, really big and they're putting up really, really, really big numbers. My guess is that the bigger the athlete gets and the bigger their numbers get, the more often they might have to deload because the stress as just

It accumulates really, really, really fast at that level. Even if it's not, even if you're thinking, I don't know, if you're a 300 or 400-pound squatter and you're like, oh, 60%. you shouldn't get that beat up from 60%. But if you're a nine, eight, eight, nine hundred pound squatter, like 60% is still, it's fucking heavy. Like it's absolutely just heavy regardless if it's 60% or not.

yeah and there's just only so much like the joints and the tissues and everything can take and so i think it's less of a sin to deload maybe like a little more often than you should like maybe the person could go five or six weeks or whatever but you don't

I think it's okay to... It's a worse sin to push people further than they should go. Like, if you really want to fuck up their training... give them make them load for two or three weeks more than they should because then they're going to be over trained and they're going to wind up injured fatigue related injuries or or worse and that's for an advanced athlete that's really really what slows down training like Suboptimal programming can be overcome.

But really bad overtraining or injury is difficult, especially injury. That's what really shortens people's careers and really sets them back from achieving numbers that maybe they're otherwise capable of.

is when they have to constantly deal with injuries. And so deloading perhaps a little more frequently than they should, you know, again, it's hard to say what's absolutely optimal all the time. And it may not, it's not like because a deload this you know this time after the fourth week was optimal that who's to say in six months that will still be the same you know what i'm saying the biological system shifts too much to say that oh this is just statically

you know, statically in perpetuity for loading for four weeks and then deloading on the fifth week is the best option for every athlete or even that same athlete for, you don't know that because the body's constantly kind of, but there's no way to measure all this shit. Like there's so many variables going into that. You kind of just have to pick something that is,

pretty good and go with it. You know, something that you've observed because you just can't measure where the athlete is at at all times other than looking at performance. And sometimes if an athlete has a really sharp drop-off something like that earlier than I expect them to and if especially if they're reporting to me man I'm beat up I feel like tired or you know if this you know this last

week beat me down or whatever then we might take the deload early you know that sort of thing um but yeah i found i just found four weeks of loading and then a deload is a is good for most advanced athletes And then so now that you've got that set up, you've got that little block set up, now you can fill that four-week block up with as much as they can handle.

for the most part. You're not trying to overtrain them, but you are trying to accumulate enough stress in those successive four-week blocks to actually cause adaptation. And that's, to me, it's a better... Having a set time frame, let's say whether it's four weeks or three weeks or six weeks of loading followed by the deload week.

To me, that is better than just training the athlete until they run out of steam and then deloading them because you don't want to overtrain them. That's difficult to recover from. And so it's a little tricky, especially if you're training them online. It's a little easier in person because you can watch everything that's happening.

But even if they're sending you videos and all that kind of stuff, it's not the same. Like reviewing a handful of videos from a training session is not the same as witnessing the entire training session. So you can even just things like body language and their personality and all that kind of stuff.

um you can it's easier to tell in person when somebody needs a break so online that's one of the differences between like say in-person coaching versus online would be you know when i'm training somebody online i don't necessarily want to just you know load load load load load until they run out of steam and then and then and then back off um because i may exceed that buy a lot and I don't want to do that.

because to me that's a less forgivable sin than maybe backing them off, say, a week early. And then there's a whole psychological component that goes into this too. Yes. if you're even if they're making progress but every workout they go in and they're just constantly like fucking intimidated and like oh my god my body hurts i'm still getting weight on the bar whatever

but like they're going to end up hating training. So like I always like kind of what you're saying. I always err on the side of like, I guess maybe I'll say like too easy or a little conservative because I'd rather keep momentum and have them be a little annoyed with me that I made them like pull back a little bit. rather than be like beat to the ground and really pissed and tired and not enjoying something that brings a lot of value to their life because

They've just been banging their head into the wall for several weeks at a time, and now they don't look forward to training. It becomes a dread rather than something that they're amped up to go in and hit it hard. I'd rather an athlete be that way. I'm ready to go, excited to go in and train regularly. Well, they also know where the boundaries are. So they know, hey, I just got to push hard for four weeks and then I get a break. And so they can set their mind.

to the the expectations of what you it's like when i was when i was in the marine corps and we used to have to do runs which i hated all runs short long fast slow whatever i just hated running but i will say this There were some runs where you knew what the distance was. In other words, we were going to run the PT course, which was three miles. So you knew, okay, we got to run down the road and hit this little flag or whatever it was and then turn around and come back.

And so you kind of know how to pace yourself. You know how hard you can push or whatever. There were other runs where they'd say, you know, we're going to run up this trail and come back. And so you kind of knew the parameters like, oh, this one's going to fucking suck. But at least I kind of know like where we're going. You didn't know where you were going or how long it was going to go.

So you get the company commander who doesn't normally run with you comes out and goes, hey, I'm leading PT today and takes off. Well, you got to follow him. And you're running and you don't know if this guy wants to run a mile today or if he wants to run 10 miles. And so it made it harder mentally to not know where the end was.

you know or you think oh good look we're turning around we're heading back to base we should be done in the next five minutes and then he takes another left-hand turn and goes back up into the hills and you're like fuck i thought we were done and now we gotta do another mile of hills you know that type of thing and it's like

And that's kind of the same way with programming. Like if you can set the boundaries of like, okay, we got to push hard for four weeks and you get a week off. When these clients hit the third or fourth week and things get really, really hard, the volume gets really high, the weights get really heavy, whatever it is.

they're like, okay, well, I just got to push this hard for one more week, really, you know, square up my nutrition and all that kind of stuff. And then I get to back off a little bit, you know, and that, that helps psychologically. And then of course the back off week.

the deload week has not just psychological advantages but it has physical advantages and that it allows things to heal i mean advanced lifters are going to accumulate overuse type stuff tissues are going to get beat up, joints are going to get inflamed. again, the psychological part of it, but also it just gives the body time to adapt and grow and respond to the stress put on of it, allow that fatigue to dissipate so that the adaptations can kind of come through. Now, how do we deload?

This could be a whole nother episode. This is very individual. I can say I really haven't cracked the nut yet that is like deloading. Because again, I think that's also something where the athlete... It's not like they're in the same state every single time they hit the deload week. Sometimes they're really overreached. Sometimes they may even be a little overtrained. Sometimes they're not fatigued hardly at all because things like sleep, nutrition, stress.

or even just the training stress is not necessarily always the same every four weeks. And so they arrive at that deload week in a little bit different place. And so I try to adapt it to a degree that I can to fit the athlete. If I know the feedback I've been getting from the athlete,

is that they're really, really, really tired and they feel really, really overtrained. And I also know that I've been programming really high volumes or really heavy weights or whatever. I've been pushing them really, really hard. then I may deload them a little more aggressively.

This time than I may the next time like if I feel like the next time maybe this time They just really needed the deload. So I may back off a lot I may pull back on frequency volume and intensity a lot and like really give them a break

Whereas maybe the next time we deload or in a couple of cycles, they get to it and I feel like, man, they're rocking and rolling. And I'm almost like, man, should I even deload them? Maybe I should just extend their workload for a week. I can usually say that winds up being kind of a mistake. so but in that but in that case the deload will be not nearly as significant i may keep the intensity

I may barely drop the intensity, barely drop the volume, not reduce the frequency at all. So it may be like minor changes, just barely letting off the gap. just making sure that we don't overtrain them, but deloading them enough to where they're set up and they're ready to go for another hard four-week loading block. You know, so it kind of depends on how much...

how to deload people. And then you just have to go with individual response on deloading because Some people get, I call it a deload hangover. which is where when they deload, they come back that first week of loading back, they feel weaker. And maybe they are, because they may have detrained a little bit.

during that one week off if that happens significantly then you know you probably deloaded that athlete too much you probably backed off intensity volume and or frequency a little bit too much and so you just have to make a note of that as a coach

and know that the next time through, like if that, if they get like a bad, what I call a deload hangover, you know that you need to back that athlete off, not quite as aggressively, maybe keep the weight on the bar a little higher, but just back off the volume, you know, that sort of thing.

And so that, again, it just goes, it all occurs on an individual level. What's interesting about that too, I'm going to butcher, this is in my... like near but distant memory like maybe like a couple months ago i read this thing um it was on it was on athletes and like field and sport athletes and basically

there was an increased risk for injury if there was a significant drop in workload. I don't know if it's like leading up to a game or something like that, but either way, the thought that popped out in my mind was it was interesting because It was interesting in terms of a deload sort of thing, like the whole idea of train, train, train, then take a week off from training and then hit your powerlifting meet, for example. I think that's a good extreme example of what popped into my mind.

Yeah, just like a full complete week off. Yeah, because they basically... It's generally not a good idea. Yeah, and there's a spectrum of it. That would be the most extreme example in this field and sport. case basically it was like when their their workload dropped significantly they were had an increased risk for injury basically their body was less prepared to handle what was going on um in their like within that short time frame even so like keeping the workload high

what was fine actually kept them at lower risks for injury and so that's how I think of a deload too it's like obviously not high to the sense where you're going to over train them but high enough to where they can still get pretty good work in but not be crushed for the next cycle that's coming up Yeah, and I think... Again, because if you drop the workload too much,

and then you pick up right back where you were. You allow the fatigue to dissipate, yes, so they're rested and more recovered, which is necessary. You have to do that. You have to find a way to let... fatigue, you know, I just call it letting off the gas a little bit. You have to come off the gas pedal a little bit. But if you do it too much and then you go right back into that uber high workload, they detrain some too. And so it's hard to decouple the dissipation of fatigue with the detraining.

There's like a little bit of both. So you want to minimize the detraining and maximize the fatigue dissipation. And that's not that easy to do. Like these things are very tightly wound. And so I think with any deload, there's probably a little bit of detraining that goes on. So it's like fitness and fatigue in reverse, right? When you're training and you're making positive adaptations,

You don't get those positive adaptations without a little bit of negative, we'll call it adaptation, although that doesn't make sense. It's disruption. Right. You're getting the fitness or the progress, the positive adaptations with the fatigue. And you can only accumulate the fitness, let's say, for so long. before the fatigue matches or overtakes it, and now you're stuck, stagnated, going backwards, whatever.

The same is also true. Like when you're trying to dissipate that fatigue, you may be losing some of your fitness, like a little bit of detraining. So the goal with both of those is to... is to amplify the positive that you want and minimize the negative. And again, it's not that easy to do because if you just take a week off, then yes, you're going to get less fatigued, but you're also going to detrain a lot.

And if you back off the volume too much, you lose too much of your adaptation of volume. If you back off the weight too much, it's not good. And this differs also by the lift. I don't deload, say, press intensity nearly as much as I deload deadlift intensity, especially for a strong lifter. I really, really deload to deadlift. And sometimes I even skip it completely. Like that might be a lift I just completely drop from the deload week if he's still like say squatting.

because the squat will more or less hold that over. And by dropping the deadlift, I can dissipate a lot of fatigue. And deadlifts, it's just one of those anecdotal things, don't tend to detrain as fast as other lifts. So if you miss a week of deadlifts, it's not like missing a week or two of, say, squats or presses. To me, those two lifts... detrain a lot faster and so like with the press

Again, some of it's just kind of anecdotal observation. I don't back off the intensity all that much on the press, but it's also not as fatiguing as the deadline. So if I err on that, it's not really that big of a sin. So a lot of the deload stuff, again, it varies by the lift, it varies by the lifter. And within that same lifter, it can vary from one deload to another.

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And get one bottle free when you buy three. That's coxsaucebbqsauce.com. And get one bottle free when you buy three. But that kind of brings me into, okay, so after the deload week, we start another four-week loading block. Like where do we start off on that four-week loading block? And I realize this is difficult to do without like...

This is easier to do in, say, an article format than it is this verbal format. So just kind of listen to the concepts. Don't get hung up on numbers or whatever. But when you... let's say when you end one four-week block. Let's say you ended with a PR squat for five sets of five at 405. Let's just say that's what your numbers were. Do you start week one of the next block? At 5 sets of 5 with 4.10. The answer is no. You're going to start below your old PR.

work your way back up so you're coming out of that deload and you're gonna ramp back up to new PRs at the end of that fourth week block. There's a really, really good example of this in practical programming. where it lays out, it has a side, I can't remember, I wish I, I don't have a copy of the book with me.

Right now, but it's in the advanced chapter and it lays out the difference between what does an intermediate progression look like and what is an advanced progression look like. And it shows you what it looks like to plan out PRs. basically like at the end of every four to six weeks and what it looks like to like hit a peak back off ramp up hit a peak back off ramp back up

So you're going to ramp, every four-week block, you're going to try to ramp back up to a new PR, let's say at a given rep range. So you don't end one block at 405. take a deload week, and then start the new block at 410. You might start the new block at 375 and work back up adding you know 10 or 20 pound increments each week until you end at like 410.

And that also kind of somewhat solves the problem of the deload hangover. Because if you just... took the week off and came back and started a new weight. It gives you time to kind of re-acclimate to everything. It gives you time to re-acclimate to the volume.

It gives you time to reacclimate to the heavier loads, and then you ramp up over a four-week block, hit a new PR, push really, really hard to hit that new PR, hit the new PR, which is in and of itself a very, very taxing event, and then you take the week off. That's kind of the model that I use. Now, when we talk about working up to new PRs or we're increasing the training stress over this four-week block, what does that look like? What do we mean? Does that mean weight? Does that mean volume?

Yes, yes, and yes. So again, it can get very complicated, like what do the numbers actually look like on paper? But I have two different methods that I use. And let me say now that I do have an article about this on my website at andybaker.com. It's called Building Training Volume for the Advanced Strength Athlete.

So if you want to see like some of the numbers on this, like what it would actually look like on paper, it might make more sense. I have illustrations of what I'm about to talk about in that article. So when you're done listening to this, you can go to andybaker.com and look up that article. Method number one would be basically to hold the volume steady. and increase the load.

Okay, and basically what that means let's just say let's just pick one left um let's just say your uh your bench press okay so we're going to hold the volume steady and increase the load of our four-week block what does that mean that just means for our volume work on the bench press let's just say we're going to do five sets of five And we're going to do that every week.

OK, and we're going to do four weeks of five by fives, but we're going to increase the load each week so that every fourth week we hit a new PR. So let's say we we ended a block with 315 for five sets of five. And that was our new PR. So we start a new block after a deload week. Do we start at 320? No, we don't, but that's going to be our goal. So we're going to put 320 into week four of the new block.

And then we're going to work backwards from there. So we might do 5 or 10 pound increments. Again, it kind of depends on the person. But we would go like 320, 315, 310, 305. So we would start the new block at 305. or maybe it would be 295, you know, whatever. Again, this is where the devil's in the details for each lifter, so...

Don't get hung up on the num the exact numbers. I'm talking about trying to see the concept that I'm trying to illustrate Which is that if we ended a block at 315? The goal is not to start the new block at 320 the goal is to end the next block at 320. So you're making five pounds of progress like every four to five weeks.

you know or every four to six weeks and that's as an advanced lifter that's about all you can do but if you string together several of those and like i said you get from five by five at 315 to and over time you push that up to 330 or 335 your 1rm is going to have gone up like if you if you string together some of those so that's that and and we'll say every week so that's a that's a very simple way is the volume or the volume is steady

and the load increases each time. One of the benefits of that particular method is that you can keep the volume higher. You can keep the volume high across the entire block. versus the second method that I use, which is to keep the intensity steady. and increase the volume so let's say this is your volume work let's use bench press again same example and let's say We're going to do our volume work with 315. And week one, we do like four doubles.

So we're doing like cat type work, like kind of with speed or whatever. So week one, we do four doubles at 315. And then week two, we do four triples at 315. And then week three, we do five triples with 315. And then in week four, we try to do maybe six triples or five sets of four. So we started with like eight reps, four sets of two or whatever at 315. And we ended with maybe 18 reps. We ended with maybe six sets of three. But each week was at 3.15.

And then what you can do on the next cycle is you can keep that same load again if you want and work with a progressively higher volume. so maybe you start this time at four sets of three and then you go to five sets of three six sets of three and then five sets of four so each each block

Each four-week block, you did a lot more work with 315 as your volume load than you did in the previous one. And so it's getting increasingly more stressful. And then when you hit a certain goal, let's say your goal on a given lift is whenever I can hit. you know five sets of five with a given lift or it could it doesn't have to be that a lot of times it's much lower it might be five triples whenever i can hit five triples

with a given load, then I up the weight and kind of start that whole process again. And again, this is very much easier to understand. This method is very much easier to understand if you read the article. But that's kind of the gist of it is you either can...

On the volume work, you're either keeping the volume steady and increasing the load or you keep the intensity steady and increase the volume with a given amount of weight. And so, like, if you start... and it's the same concept if you start you know being able to do uh you know four doubles at 315 and over a period of you know multiple blocks you get up to where you can do five sets of four or five sets of five with that you're going to have increased your one rm like quite a bit

So either method works. Now that's not the entirety of the thing. That's how I increase one. aspect of the overall program. That's the volume work that I do on each of the main lifts. And what's kind of like to remember too is like...

It's kind of what I was thinking about before. The PRs are obvious objective measurements, but all those, even those uh first four weeks let's say using the example of like you finish a block at 305 and then the next block you're trying to finish at five by five at 315 or whatever Even the training sessions that you're doing when you're trying to get up to 305, those are all aiding in you getting to 315 as well.

oh yeah it all it all builds over time and and so like the way that i lay the sessions out i'm gonna back up a little bit maybe i should have done this first because it would make like what i just kind of went over It might make more sense if people understood the way that I lay the week out. so let's just take let's start with the bench press day and i'll kind of go over like usually what i start with is on like the the main bench day so let's say that's monday

Again, this is going to be for a power lifter. So you can increase their one rep max. I always start with a high intensity single top work set for each of the lifts. So this would be for bench press. We're going to work up to a top. It's not necessarily a PR. If it is, that's great. But most of the weeks, it's not. But it's going to be a single heavy set between one and three reps. Now, how I choose those weights kind of gets very complex. I'm actually not going to go into it on this because

It varies so much with each individual, like whether I use singles or doubles or triples or whether they're maximal or submaximal. That varies so much with each individual person that I'm really not going to bother with it because I think I would just confuse people spitting out numbers.

And it probably wouldn't be relevant to half the people anyway. So, but just know, like I start with it like a top set of like, uh anywhere from like one to three reps and then i back off and do the volume work okay so it'd be like we're going to work up to a single on the bench at 335 and then we're going to back off to 305 and do five sets of five or whatever.

That's just an example, but that's the way that it looks like. One high-intensity work set that we work up to, and then we back off and do volume. And the volume work is done in the way that I just described it. Either over a course of a four-week block, we either hold the volume steady and we increase the workload trying to hit new PRs every fourth week or I'll hold the weight steady.

I want you to work with 315 for four weeks in a row, but we want to increase the volume that we do with 315 for each of those four weeks. So either... It depends on the person and some of it's arbitrary. I start with one and then if I like the way it's going, I stick with it. And if I don't like it, then I switch to the other way. i change it over time kind of depends on a lot of factors so

I don't really have like a rule, like a golden rule, like you should do it this way and this guy should do it this way. It's kind of like a little trial and error. Do you see, do you see like just like categories that kind of organically pop out as you use this sort of system where like, Alright, well this person responds extremely well to keeping the weight the same and just upping the volume with that weight. Do you see different women and older people do better with the...

Shelly's a little bit of an exception, but most women, she's an exception at every level, though. People that would do better with higher intensity overall tend to do better with keeping the weight the same.

and adding volume to it versus keeping the volume the same. Because you're going to do a lot of work with some maximal volume. If you keep the volume high, and and increase the weight over each four-week block there's going to be a lot of weeks where you're doing a lot of submaximal volume um and that certain like big like I've got like big guys I've got a couple of big guys that do well with higher volume, like on bench press, not so much on squat, but like on bench.

it'll work really well and that's that's the other thing that might differ by the lift yeah like what like on the upper body stuff some guys are going to do better with like keeping the press or the bench volume depending on what they're training for like really high throughout so they might do five sets of five or something like that every single workout but we just try to get it heavier over time whereas on like

I don't typically use volume that high on, say, deadlifts. And so it kind of... and i don't really typically typically like big guys big strong guys who are generally at more risk of overtraining On lower body stuff, I generally keep the volume fairly low with them. I'm trying to think like what you said, but every time I think of something, I think of an exception. This is advanced training. I'm like, Jeremy does good with this, but then when I, like on this lift, he does it like, so it's like.

There's too many exceptions, I think, to have a rule. I think that's one of the things about becoming a good coach with more advanced athletes is learning where and when to spot the need to individualize. You know, and not being like...

Knowing how to do it, but not necessarily being like beholden to anyone's I just going with the flow and seeing like Okay, this lifters responding really well to this on this lift, but not here So let's change it and like not being afraid to constantly manipulate the variables like that in order to get just the right amount of training stress for that individual and it takes

Again, if you're a coach, there's no substitute for trial. That's why I'm struggling to give you this is the rule. If you have women or older people do this, or if you have big guys do this.

because every time i think of it i think of an exception yeah that's that's that's the thing with working with advanced athletes well that's why i asked they're all different yeah i asked in the beginning i'm like well before you were doing this online you were doing it in person and the reason is because i The more advanced you get in coaching, it's like the more of a repertoire you have of like this, the if. thens so like alright well if that happens then I'm going to do

I'm going to do something like this. And so that's why I understand what you're saying. Like having a general template, it's like almost something for you to fall back on to know that you're using progression. Like you know you're using it. But within that, even the same template might look wildly different for me than it does for Shelly, than it does for Jeremy or whoever you just mentioned. But it's all the same system. that's exactly right because That's a good way to put it.

what did you say if this then yeah like yeah if then it's like why you can't like because if you try and put a template out there that's all for advanced athletes right like the amount of if thens that you need to have like well if this then that and if this

where earlier on in training, you don't need as many of that. That's what I'm saying. It's impossible. The rules are not that cut and dry because, like you said, there would be so many caveats and so many if-thens that it makes some sort of like...

All you can really have is a model, you know, but anything that gets much more specific than that is so riddled with the if-thens and the caveats and the well if this happens then you know and it's like you know it would make it hard to put out and I just don't like putting stuff out for people that requires that where they have no guidance.

like that and and honestly you know most advanced lifters are either self-programming or working with a coach more hands-on you know they kind of they kind of need that objective part of it but one of the things i wanted to also go on like um like the bench uh i just kind of went over like kind of the bench system right like top top Top work set. Heavy. One to three reps.

and then hit a bunch of volume, right? That makes sense. And I kind of do that with all... the lifts like um usually the way i structure things is like bench on monday this again this is for a power lifter uh the head the squat session would be structured the same way on tuesday um heavy top set of squats and then squat volume And then on Friday is we do the same thing with deadlifts. I usually do a light squat or a variation of a squat first.

And then we do a top deadlift set and then some deadlift volume, which usually is not as high as the squat volume. And again, I've talked about this before, which is like, You can't necessarily untangle deadlift volume from squat volume. It's just lower body barbell volume.

And so like if your squat volume is really, really high, you may not need as much deadlift volume or vice versa. So you have to kind of look at that like you don't then. So typically my deadlift volume is going to be the lowest of any of them. So then that's Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Thursday. That's like a supplemental bench day.

So that's like an upper body kind of accessory type day. I do usually a bench variation in there. So that's usually a four-day split. That's usually what I do. Again, Monday is your main bench day. Tuesday is your main squat day.

thursday is like a bench accessory day and then friday is a light squat heavy deadlift day and then i can go over if people if we have time and people want i can go over like kind of each session a little bit well it's interesting too that you put because like what you're talking about like specifically powerlifting like the top sets it's it's essentially sport practice yeah you have to well what i like about friday is that

Because someone, you know, right off the top of my mind, it's like, oh, you do some squat first, then deadlift. It's like, well, in a powerlifting meet, like... Are you fresh when you're deadlifting? Right. Yeah. No, you have to, I think it's a good, and I think there's two things in that. One, you do need to get used to deadlifting after squatting. And I think from, if you're going to power lift, I also think that I'm actually.

In a workout, unless I kill myself on the squats, I actually feel better deadlifting after squatting than I do just deadlifting cold. I hate deadlifting. Well, I hate doing anything cold, but I hate deadlifting cold. When I just start the session with it, I do it.

But I always feel better if I've done some squats and then go deadlift. It always feels so much smoother when I don't have to warm up as much. Now in a meet, it's a little different because in a meet, you wind up doing a couple of really heavy attempts. And then you don't like go into deadlifting. You wait like four hours. And so like you're already like starting to get stiff and kind of like stove up.

And then you go have to like rewarm up for that. So it's like a little different environment for me, but you still, it's a good idea. But yeah, like to what you're saying about being very sports specific with the top set is that the. When I started doing this program with people, I did a lot of singles doubles and triples like all three of them

Lately, I've been experimenting with a lot of my clients a lot more of doing just nothing but singles. Not maximal, but every workout is just working up to a single, and it may be light, medium, or heavy. really like you said focusing on that Like you said, that sport-specific practice of just getting in that really good solid single and then backing off and doing the volume work. But yeah, whether it's singles, doubles, or triples, it's got to be something.

you know, it's probably typically going to be 90, you know, 90%, 80, 85% for your other guy, 85% or more. To do that, you don't need to do a lot of it. but you need to do some of it regularly if your sport is going to be powerlifting, so you stay regularly trained, but then you also need the volume work. And the volume work would be also, in general, it would be the same mechanics that you would compete with.

So you would do your volume work in whatever, you know, you do your volume work, you bench the way that you would bench in competition.

squat deadlift all that and then then what i do is i do a like i'll just take each day one by one so like monday bench intensity then bench volume and then i do a supplemental bench movement after that that varies What I'll do is a lot of times when I'm starting, if I have a client that I'm working with that's going to do a meet, if we're a long way from the meet, then I'll do a lot of dumbbell work.

right there i'll do a lot of flat dumbbell pressing um like a lot of 8 to 12 rep range and really try to build like some pec mass with that and then what i do is as we get closer to the meat say two blocks out from the meat which would be

you know like six uh eight eight to twelve weeks something like that like when we're basically like two blocks out from the meet then i will change instead of doing like a dumbbell movement there i'll do a like a barbell based movement And that can be a close grip bench, like a Larson bench.

a floor press it's a mechanically similar movement to the to the bench but I switch it so it gets a little bit more specific to the bench press and so so we'll do a supplemental movement there and that would be like For those, it would be like a medium rep range, like three sets of five. Something like that is what I would do. The other thing I'll do with that supplemental movement...

is I'll use it to balance out the volume. So if I'm using an approach where the bench volume stays, the weight stays static, but I'm raising the volume over the course of a four-week block, So what that means is I might start the block with, say, benching four sets of two. Well, that's not that much. So I'll do the supplemental lift for a higher volume, maybe three or four sets. And then as I...

As I progress and I start raising the bench volume, I'll decrease the supplemental volume. So it evens out, right? So let's just say, does that make sense? total of you know seven sets of let's say let's say I'm doing bench presses and floor presses right I may get seven sets total in week one but it would be like two Four sets of bench and three sets of floor press.

And then by the end, it's five sets of bench and two sets of floor press. Like the volume is the same, but as the block progresses, I'm doing more benching, less of the supplemental work, but the supplemental work might... it would get a little bit higher in intensity. So let's say we start out with floor presses. Maybe this person hasn't done that very much. It can be useful to do like four sets of five, but not super heavy.

right because they need to acclimate to the movement build some volume with the movement learn how to do it and then we add load to it real fast but bring the volume down a little bit so maybe even by the end i only work them up to like hit a top set of five on the floor press you know where we started the block at four sets of five and so but that's that works good because the supplemental volume is going down

as the bench volume is going up. And so you're not running both of them up over the block. And that can be an important thing. And I will rotate those supplemental movements out. um every block or maybe every two or three blocks or sometimes just as the lifter stalls out on them so like let's say i put a floor press in there for a particular person and they get you know they get progress on that for like three or four blocks in a row and then they kind of hit a stall

Okay, done. Switch it out. I'd rather get a fresh movement in there. And, you know, it might be a switch to a different bar or a close grip bench or put bands on the bar or whatever. But I'll do a supplemental movement there. And I'll usually finish with like a little bit of accessory work. It's usually like on the bench day. It's like lats and triceps. so it might be pull downs and cable press downs or whatever kind of like some bodybuilding work and then on tuesday

is the squat day, so squat intensity, squat volume, and then I'll do a supplemental squat movement. I really like hip belt squats if people have them. Not everybody has them, but it also would be like a paused high bar squat.

uh works really well there sometimes a front squat sometimes i don't do the supplemental squat movement if i don't feel like they need a ton of squat volume right there so it kind of just depends but it's usually not a ton of volume on that if it's a barbell movement like if it's a high bar squat it just be usually one or two sets just to get some additional quad work in if they're a low bar squatter

It could be as simple as a pause squat, you know, and I use the same thing that I would use, the same concept if the competition squat volume is low at the beginning of the block. the supplemental volume would be high, and then they would change over the course of the four weeks. the competition squat volume would go up and the supplemental volume would go down a little bit and the intensity would rise on that. So we might start, the supplemental squat movement might be.

three sets of five for a pause squat at the beginning of the block and it's you know one set of five at the end if that makes sense it does it's i do the same things like i'll do like if i run for example with the i'll run like five three one cycles or like some sort of higher volume, lower intensity to lower volume, higher intensity, sort of like three, four week, whatever cycle. And I'll do the same thing on like the supplemental lifts.

It'll be like a little bit lower volume for the supplements when the volume is high and the intensity is high for the main stuff. And then as the volume drops for the main stuff, then I'll up the volume a little bit for the supplemental things. It's like a balancing act, basically. Yeah, it equates everything. So if you want to do 10 sets of, let's just say, chest pressing, it doesn't all have to be benching, so you can kind of arrange it however you want.

But that's kind of, and it just keeps the stress from accumulating too much.

or or you dropping things too low like if you want to not only do like on back squats if you only want to do like your volume work that day may only be like i may have somebody only do like three doubles that's not that much but if i finish that if i balance that out with like a couple sets of five of pod squats well now we're back to now we're back to a good amount of volume um but if but if i do i don't want to have them do five sets of five

of a back squat and then do three sets of five of a pause squat like that to me that's a little much you know what i mean now we're at eight sets of five of a squat which is you know if they're hard sets that's that's a lot so you you as one goes up bring the other one down and vice versa and so you still get good quality work in with both and then i finish that day usually

This day is really dedicated to squatting. It's the heavy squat, the volume squat, supplemental squat and then I'll do some light posterior chain work. and abs. I used to do like a deadlift variation sometimes in here, like a light deadlift, but I don't do that anymore with my advanced lifters. I've learned to consolidate all my deadlift work generally into one day. Again, I feel like for most people it works better. So I...

So the light posterior chain work would be like if they can do glute ham raises or if they have access to a leg curl machine, I'll use that a lot. If they have a reverse hyper, I use that a lot. Again, it's low stress. It's not barbell based. posterior chain work. I don't do RDLs most of the time. I don't do RDLs or light deadlifts or things like that. It's low stress.

posterior chain work, hamstring work, and then sometimes abdominal work. I'll have them do weighted abs or something like that with that. I'm going to skip to Friday, which is the deadlift, and then I'll go back to Thursday. Friday is the, I start with either the light squats or the supplemental squat.

supplemental squats would be like a light like a variation like safety bar squats camber bar squats Maybe a pause squat if there's something I want him to work on, but a lot of times it's just a lighter squat.

It depends a lot on equipment selection as well. A lot of the people that I work with have very minimal equipment, so we have to do a lot of the same stuff over and over again. But if they have a safety squat bar, especially if people have elbow problems or something like that, or elbow shoulder things,

safety squat bar that second day of the week it's close enough it does not have to be the exact thing if you want if you're worried about specificity then like the block before the meet then make both days a low bar back squat but not necessarily all year round

You're going to get a lot of low bar, barbell, squat volume on Tuesday. You don't necessarily need to repeat it on Friday. In fact, it's probably beneficial to do a slight variation, both from an injury prevention standpoint and also from a... um just training other other muscles a little better standpoint but then i do the deadlift intensity work top single top triple top double whatever then i do some deadlift volume

It's usually not a ton, but I do some deadlift volume there, and then I do a supplemental deadlift movement. And I rotate that one out pretty fairly often, and that could be deficit deadlifts, it could be rack pulls, it could be... stiff leg deadlifts or rdls it could be deadlifts against bands so i kind of just whatever the whatever the lifter needs sometimes i do

The deadlift volume also has a variation, so I may have him pull a, let's say I have him, okay, I want you to deadlift up to a top triple, and then I want you to do three sets of five of a deficit deadlift. Because it's close enough. That's your deadlift volume. And then your supplemental deadlift would be two or three sets of RDLs or something like that. So it may be quite a bit of variation there. Again, it just depends on the lifter. And then I usually finish off there with...

A lot of times I'll have them do heavy rows off the floor, pendlay rows, if they can do them right. I'll have them do pendlay rows or something like that or some sort of back movement, and that's Friday. Thursday is the supplemental bench day. So again, I usually, sometimes it'll be, I'll start that off with, sometimes it's a regular bench press.

But most of the time it's a slight variation. It might be a Larson press, which I've really grown to like, which is just a Larson press is just a bench with your feet straight out in front of you. So you have no leg drive. It could be a floor press, could be a close grip bench press. It could be a bench with bands. Again, I prefer a slight variation, but it doesn't have to be. It could be long paused bench presses.

that sort of thing. But I usually do something, and that's pretty high volume. I usually do something like five sets of five or something like that right there just to up the bench volume because they usually, most people usually need it. And then I go into shoulder work. And again, it might be, again, for if you're a powerlifter, you don't necessarily have to worry that much about your strict standing overhead press. If that was a big focus for you as a novice and intermediate.

As an advanced power lifter, it doesn't necessarily have to be, and you may find that, you know, seated presses with dumbbells are better for you, for your shoulders, or standing strict overhead presses, that's fine. If you like them, you could do machine presses even on a hammer strength machine or whatever. Like all that's good. I usually just, it's hypertrophy work. This is kind of the bodybuilding work.

After the supplemental bench movement, I can do some shoulder stuff and then usually more lat work, pulldowns, chins, whatever the guy can do. And then usually like some triceps and rear delts and maybe some dips here, maybe more tricep extensions, whatever. A lot of it depends on equipment. access what the guy has. So the first thing I do when I work with a new lifter is figure out what Where are you training at? You're training in your garage with nothing?

Or are you at a big globo gym? Are you at Westside Barbell? Where are you training at? And then build a program around that. So a lot of these exercises just depends on what this particular client has. Yeah, so I finish off that was something like triceps or dips or whatever and then like some usually some rear delt work face pulls Rear delt flies, whatever something for the upper back and the rear delt

And that's pretty much it. That's kind of the four day split that I use for the lifters. And it's kind of all arranged in that.

top set followed by volume followed by supplemental followed by some assistance and you know you're gonna find i didn't invent that for sure um and i think you're gonna find that a good portion of coaches A lot of coaches program in that same that same thing like that's what I just laid out there is pretty pretty common There's a lot of coaches that do almost that exact same thing So there's definitely other ways to do it. That's just the way that I have chosen to do it for my lifters.

For you guys that follow Shelly on my Instagram, that's basically... the the exercises the sets and reps all that stuff are unique to her but that's more or less her training split yeah right there that's basically how i train her it's like i just because i said my background is so much in um like before coaching weightlifting was in like sports just

And it just makes so much sense when you take a bird's eye view. It's like, yeah, work on the thing that's most important, which in this case, it's being able to express a one rep max. So you do a lot of heavy work in the beginning because that's the priority. And then after that.

do shit that is going to help make you better at that. And the things that you have to do are going to be, that's where the individualization really comes into play at that level. Because different, like, Shelby might respond.

like she might do really well with stiff-legged deadlifts but like rack pulls don't do it for her whatever so where someone else might be the other way around so that's kind of where you know do something that's the priority and then afterwards you can kind of start to tease out individually, what lifts, what protocols, how the schemes you use, how often you should deload, like that's where kind of the, I don't know, I think that's the art of it all in terms of coaching.

It is, it's definitely an art. And the longer that you work with the client and the longer the client works with you, as long, you know, as long as you've got a good working relationship and that you've had some success, If you have a system like this, it tends to just get better and better and better. If you start with somebody and you work with them for a long time and you don't get anywhere with them, then maybe you're a way of doing things or whatever. It's just not a match.

you know and that happens from time to time but it's um you know most people if you if you develop a long relationship with them and you work with them over a long period of time and they're consistent and you're consistent And you pay attention. That's the biggest thing. You have to pay attention to this. And you start to really notice, like you said, the if-then. And the if-then becomes very individualized to that person. And you start to learn.

you know what lifts like you're talking about shelly like she actually doesn't do well with like stiff leg deadlifts and stuff like it She's done them in the past and had some success with them, but it causes, they really irritate like kind of her SI and kind of glute area and everything. So it's like, it's an exercise that causes more problems than it solves.

We've had some really, really good success with block pulls, like higher volume, like three sets of five block pulls. We've had really good success with deficit deadlifts. But the next guy or the next girl may... Do really really well with stiff legs like that maybe there so it's not there's no really rules with any of this kind of stuff You just have to pay attention to trends and then realize if it is a trend or if it was just a one-off thing or whatever.

start to kind of write the rule book for each client rather than, you know, these are Shelly's rules and these are Jeremy's rules. Like I can't do this and can't do that. And this hasn't worked in the past, but this has. You know, and sometimes you forget about if you work with somebody long enough.

sometimes you do stuff that works and this is like I can tell you it happens to every coach, but if you work with somebody a really long time, you'll do stuff that worked for a while, and then for whatever reason, there's forces in the universe, that cause you to like drift away from that. And like, you're doing other things and you forget, you almost forget about that thing that worked. Then you're like, you know,

You know, back six months ago when we were doing this, your deadlift was off the charts. Like, why aren't we doing that anymore? Like, let's get back to that. Like, let's get those high volume block pulls back in here because we were doing those six months ago.

and you were killing it and then for whatever reason we phased them out and never went back to them and you've been kind of stuck so like let's get back to those sometimes you you forget so you have to have like you want to review your records and talk to your clients and that sort of thing and then also but then also remember We were doing this thing that worked.

And then we stopped doing it. Why did we quit doing it? Because you've got to remember that too. Because there was maybe a reason that you quit doing it. But again, if you work with a lot of clients, you work with them a long time, sometimes this stuff, it all becomes a little bit of a blur. So you have to kind of... You have to take notes and keep records on people and everything and try to remember what worked when and to go back to it and all that sort of thing.

I think he's written about, too, in the books. Like, at a certain point, you become less of... And I think of the word coach as a guide. more so than anything you're a guide but you become more of a consultant with people like you're you're you're lifting someone's been lifting five six years with you their techniques great they're dialed in they understand programming really well now you're kind of going back and forth you might even debate a little bit

And then, you know, figure out like, all right, well, let's give this a try. And so I think that's really fun too, is getting to have the lifters input on that stuff. Yeah, and some people are different personality-wise on that. Some people want more ownership and more license to be creative or do whatever they want.

Some people prefer to really be like they just want to turn their brain off and be coached. Tell me what to do. Tell me what to do, and I'm just going to do it. And to me, that's the best. If you're good as a coach at what you do, and they're good at what they do in terms of the lifting part of it, but as the lifter progresses, you do become more of an advisor or at least...

At the very least, you may be more than a consultant or an advisor, but the lifter kind of has earned the right we'll say to have more input on things uh to say you know i don't i don't really want to do that this block like i'm feeling that maybe we should do this and their their opinion is more valuable like as they've gotten themselves stronger

they've, let's say, earned the right to have much more of an input on what their training is. It's like if you were a baseball coach. It's like anything else. If you're down in AA, you're the pitching coach.

It's like, hey, kid, shut the fuck up and just do what I tell you to do. If I tell you to grab the ball this way, grab the ball this way. You know what I mean? If I tell you I want a higher leg kick, then kick your leg higher. You don't get a say in this because you're a 19-year-old double-A player. But if you're, say, working with the Astros and you're working with 39-year-old Justin Verlander, well, Verlander gets a lot more of a... He still has a coach.

But Justin Verlander gets a lot more say in what pitches he throws, how he throws the pitches, his scheduling, all that kind of stuff. Because he's proven it. He's proven that he knows enough of what he's doing to have that say. And so that relationship... evolves over time between the coach and the lifter, also based on coach and lifter personalities. Some coaches are more domineering.

Some coaches are more laid back. Some lifters want to be way more hands-on. Some lifters want to be way more hands-off. So it kind of just depends. And over time, there are certain things that I'll do with people. I'm trying to think of a client right now that I... that i work with and like you know at the beginning i i handle every detail like when like when i was working with him like i switched him to he was doing a very very basic program and i kind of

I kind of opened it up a little bit in terms of exercise selection and had him doing some things that like he wasn't used to doing. So I'm just going to use like the leg curl, for example. So I do remember with this guy, like working with him and like, for the first few weeks i was telling he'd be like okay i did leg curls and i did like 90 pounds on the stack for three sets of 12 and i'm like okay next week go up to this and do this many sets and reps and so like

i'm like even for minor exercises because he really wasn't used to like how to progress them and that sort of thing like for even like bicep curls and leg curls and that sort of thing you know i would handle like even with that like sets reps load But then over time, like even within a few weeks, because he was a smart lifter, I'm like, okay. Now you kind of know how I progress these. Like you kind of know my system. I'm not going to deal with your bicep curls and your leg curls now.

week to week like i want you to work i want you to do like three or four sets of about eight to twelve reps yep and i want you to just make sure that over time you're progressing on those like either you're like not necessarily every workout but like over time like set like reps or load or something is going up and just give me like three or four really good hard sets but i'm not going to necessarily handle all that

like that level of detail. I will on the main lifts, but like on the minor accessory stuff,

So that's just a small example of kind of like how you just hand off a little bit more responsibility to the client of their own program. And then when he comes to you and goes, hey, I've been doing these leg curls now for... two weeks and i haven't made any three weeks i haven't made any progress i'm like okay let's switch it up like let's let's let's uh let's do a different exercise now or whatever a different technique or something like that so

But that's kind of the way I handle that is on a lot of the more minor stuff over time, I hand off some of that responsibility to the client. And I think that's good for them.

As much as you want to keep clients for a long period of time, you also want to empower them to Become someone independent where they can train on their own and they don't if you handle every single detail for them all the time they they don't develop that same this is true whether it's in person or online they never develop any independence from you at all and they're dependent on you it's just like working with clients in the gym when i work with clients in the gym

When they first come in, they don't know anything. I do a lot in terms of hands-on. I'm helping them put plates on the bar. I'm putting clips on the bar for them. I'm setting the pins on the rack for them. Because they don't know anything. You know what I mean? They don't know how to lift. But they also don't know all these little minor logistical stuff that more advanced lifters take for granted, like how to set the pins up on the rack. So you do that kind of stuff for them for a while.

And then over time, you wean them off of you doing that. And you have them, okay, I'm going to load this side of the bar. You load that side of the bar. And then you do that for a few weeks. And then over time, you go, okay, I want you to put 165 on the bar. And you don't do anything. You tell them.

And I don't even tell them that's what we're doing. I just have it. It's just kind of built into the process. One day they come into the gym and they get told, go set your squat rack up and put 170 on the bar or whatever.

i kind of i kind of wean them off as they're ready for me and i'll have like okay this is the week that we that we start loading by ourselves it's just kind of over time like you know as i see that like okay this person's not making constant you know bar loading mistakes and some clients will work with you a long time and they're still

They're still putting the wrong weight on or can't put the clips on or whatever. My new gym members think I am a genius because of the any weight that they have on the bar they're like how much is this and within like three seconds I know exactly what's on the bar but just because you've seen you know you see a 45 and a 25 like a billion times like oh it's 185

while they're trying to calculate it. I try to teach them about that. Like when I see people, because you're always seeing people, they always want to know how much weight they're doing. And you'll see them and they're going, okay, like with 185, they're like, okay, 25. plus 45 plus 45 pound bar you know like they're kind of linearly going like from left to right like trying to calculate the load

And so you got to try to teach them like little things like that, like how to just like bar math. Like you just, you look at a barbell and you know what it is. Like, even if it's like me, you know, you're doing it long enough. It's like, even if it's all like. you know, all the loose change plates and everything.

I don't add anything up. I just look at a barbell and I know what it weighs. I know that's, I know that's 215 on the bar. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't have to count everything up. I just know it by looking at it. So, and that just comes with time. Like a lot of this stuff. Yup. Yup. Alright, so that's episode 20.

I liked that episode. I think that was good. I hope it made sense to people. I know it was kind of in the weeds on the numbers and everything, but I think it may have given some people some ideas about kind of just bigger picture concepts about how to structure their training. kind of beyond the novice and intermediate level for more of a purely strength.

adaptation so it's stimulating it's stimulating what you put out there about like the kind of the two ways that you'll tend to progress people like the keeping the weight the same up in the volume with that weight trying to hit almost like volume prs with a given weight Or if the other way around, we're sticking with the same volume but trying to increase the intensity each week.

it's like it just for me at least it's stimulating thoughts on doing it that way but also it kind of opened your minds like like what other what other ways like one thing that came to mind was like i wonder if he ever does like

For example, maybe a lifter who needs to drop some body fat, but their main goal is to like really get like very strong. So they might be on a program like this. I wonder if he ever does something like, all right, we're going to do five by fives at this weight, but you have to do it in less time each week. or something like that. It's just interesting. It started simulating thoughts in my mind about what other ways you can maybe do this.

Well, and to go back and I don't want to rehash all like go back in time too much, but to go back to like the the idea of adding training volume in a way where you where the volume stays static.

but the load increases every time like we talked about that like let's say so for four weeks in a row you're going to do five sets of five and every fourth week you're going to hit a new number well what does that mean it means that the first three weeks are going to be submaximal by definition and the first two weeks will probably be don't know if they'd be conceived as easy but not necessarily hard so why do you just

How do you do that? Well, there's a couple. Do you do anything different with that? You can. You don't have to necessarily. You can just have an easy week or a medium week and kind of ease back into it. But you can do things like if your PR was 315 for three sets of five and we start you back over at 295 for five sets of five.

You know, that 295 may feel a little light in your hands. So can we do anything to make it more effective? Well, we could potentially do what you said. Maybe we could do it in less rest time. so instead of doing if we did it before we were taking four or five minutes of rest now let's take two or three minutes of rest so let's increase the training density to the degree that that matters i don't know but it's harder if nothing else you saved a little bit of time um you know you could

Move your grip in a little bit, maybe, and do it with a little closer grip. You could pause it or pause some of the rest. Maybe you can't pause all of them, but maybe a certain percentage of those reps at 295 are paused. You can always focus on bar speed. So you say, okay, this 295 for five sets of five, man, this feels pretty light.

Well, move it fast. Like, don't just, you know what I mean? Like kind of the dynamic effort slash cat thing that we talked about, the old Fred Hatfield compensatory acceleration training. Take that some maximal weight and move it fast. That increases motor unit recruitment. and combine that with shorter rest periods and some pauses. And so now you took that moderate. It still keeps the load down, which is good, but it took that more lighter, more moderate.

weight and made it maybe a little bit more effective um and that may better and again you don't have to do that necessarily but it may make the training more effective it may make you feel better about the workout if you're not just ho-hum pushing lightweights um you know that you actually made that lightweight maybe a little bit more stimulative so that's that's an option as well yeah and it's all like ways to progressively overload and like i think that's where

People from our communities get caught up in the weight on the bar, only that in terms of being the gauge for progress, where when you get to being advanced like that. If that's your gauge, you're going to be pissed most of the time. Yeah, you're going to be pissed most of the time. And intensity is only one form of stress. It's a very important one, but volume is a source of stress. Intensity is a source of stress.

You know, even exercise selection, you know, you're training, you know, muscles at different angles or different muscle groups altogether. You know, that's, that's a source of stress. Like, and, and even within that adding volume, again, we talked about it does like adding volume can be done by. It can be done through the addition of supplemental assistance work. Adding volume doesn't necessarily mean you need more squat days or more squat days. It can be adding supplemental.

variations it can be uh we talked a little bit on the hypertrophy stuff about increasing range of motion um you know even as a means as a deficit deadlift is a set of five deficit deadlifts is more volume than a set of five deadlines. because the muscles are working more. The bar is traversing more distance.

doing that so we talked about that a little bit on a previous episode so there's different ways about of increasing the training stress over time but it does have to go up over time it just can't go up linearly that's the big thing you have to wrap your mind around it's not there's no after the first

maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe two years, there's no more linear increases. It doesn't go up linearly workout to workout, and it doesn't even go up linearly week to week. Everything becomes cyclical. And that gets... Harder and harder to do it makes everything more complex, but you know, it's just the way that it is So I didn't make the rules. I just try to interpret them as best as I can Anyway, we'll leave it there. That was episode 20, guys. I appreciate everybody listening.

Yeah, like I said, we're going to do some more episodes, but so far so good. This has been a lot of fun and the numbers are good for the podcast. So I really, really appreciate. Each and every one of you taking time out of your day to listen to me and Dan ramble on and on and on. Mostly me ramble. But listen to us ramble on and on about all this programming and training stuff. So anyways, guys, have a great day.