#4 - Conjugate Programming: Max Effort Day

Welcome to the Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm your host Andy Baker, owner of Baker Personal Training in Kingwood, Texas, and co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training with Mark Ripeto, as well as the Barbell Prescription, training for Life After 40 with Dr. Jonathan Sullivan. My co-host today is Coach Dan Flannick, owner of Scan Strength in Upstate New York. Thanks for listening today, and let's get started.

Alright everyone, welcome back to the Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm Andy Baker with Coach Dan Flannick, and we are starting episode 4. A little recap of last time, episode 3, we kind of introduced some concepts and some terminology, that sort of thing, the Conjugate Method, or a concurrent method, or a West Side Method. We kind of talked about the differences in all those terms, and I'm definitely guilty of kind of using all that shit interchangeably. But if you didn't listen to the previous episode, it's probably a good idea to go back and listen to that before you listen to this one.

We're going to get a little bit more context about what we're talking about, because we're going to get a little bit down into a little bit more specifics today in terms of how to put some of these workouts together. And I'll preface that by saying that as we discussed last time, the Conjugate Method, the West Side Method, whatever we want to call it, is not a real static program. This is not a template necessarily that I could just draw up and hand to a group of people and say, okay, do this. This is the Conjugate Program, or this is the West Side Method.

It's definitely a system. It's an organization of training. It's a group of principles kind of collated together. But the programs are going to be kind of individualized to the person or to the small group of people that you're going to be working with. And even with that, even like the way I do it in my own coaching group, or I am prescribing programming to a group of people, there's an expected amount of individualization within that kind of generic template that I provide them with.

So not everybody is going to do the exact same movements all the time, not everybody's going to do the exact same amount of volume on everything. Not everybody will pick the same assistance type of work, because again, we're looking at this as a program for a more late intermediate advanced athlete that's going to be looking not just to get strong in a general sense, but also to bring up their weak points.

And those are going to vary by the individual. So that we're going to talk a little bit about all that today. And I think what I really wanted to cover today is the max effort days and the max effort movements, how to structure a max effort, upper body day, how to structure a max effort lower body day and try to give you guys some actual real guidance as best we can in this format.

And sometimes a podcast slash verbal format can be difficult when you get to in the weeds of sets and reps and all that sort of thing, but we're going to do our best today. So anything before we get started, Dan. Nope, just excited to talk about maxing out. Yeah, it's a fun day. It's a fun way to train everybody likes the max effort part of it.

It's kind of what makes this style of programming unique. It's that you know, you're constantly going into the gym and maxing out on all these different movements. But we're going to try to simplify it a little bit today and give you some guidance on how to do it correctly. So you know, I would say this before we get before we get into that too, I just as a kind of a brief overview of what does a training week look like.

And I don't remember if we covered this in the last one or not, but I'm going to cover it again because I feel it gets really important. There's in this in this system of training, there's generally going to be for four workouts per week. You're going to have two lower body days and two upper body days. Okay, on the upper body days, we're going to have the max effort upper body day and we're going to have the dynamic effort slash volume upper body day.

And then the same thing for the lower body, we're going to have a max effort lower body day and then a dynamic effort slash volume lower body day. So we're going to cover the max effort days of the upper and lower body today because there's obviously the principles, the similarities are the same. We're just talking about different areas of the body. So it'll flow a little bit better.

And the next thing next episode will get into more of the dynamic effort method and the dynamic effort workouts and that'll that'll help people with that and of it and then that'll be probably wrapping up our conjugate kind of series here. So, you know, first thing with the max effort movements is and we talked about this a little bit last time is everybody stresses a lot about like what movements to pick.

You know, should I pick, you know, should I pick this variation or that variation and when you start looking out there, you know, if you get on the internet, in internet world and you start looking at all the different very potential variations to save a bench press. I mean, there's literally probably hundreds if not thousands when you get into just different types of grips, different, you know, different levels of incline or decline.

The pause links and then you throw in you get even more convoluted when you throw in specialty bars, bands and chains. There's like a million different combinations and you don't need all of them and it doesn't matter that much, you know, what you pick. For most people listening to this, I'm going to venture to say that they are not training in a gym that is specifically set up for this type of training. A lot of gyms are because it's such a popular method.

So you go into a lot of powerlifting gyms, they're going to have tons of bars, they're going to have racks and benches and that thing that are set up for putting on bands and chains easily. So it's very, it's very conducive to this. If you're not in one of those gyms, it can be kind of a pain in the ass to try to do this program because you're trying to work with maybe a lot of equipment that you don't have.

But when I wrote some of these articles that are on my website and I'm drawing a lot of material for this podcast from some of those articles, it a lot of it, I started introducing this about the time that kind of the pandemic hit and a lot of the gym for closing. So I had to kind of give lifters some guidance on how to implement this method in an environment where maybe they didn't have a lot of equipment because they're training in a home gym.

And I think a lot of our listeners are probably listening to this, that train in a home gym or that train in a more kind of bare bones facility or whatever that doesn't have all the equipment to do it. But the thing is is you can still do it. You don't have to, you don't have to have 15 different bars and bands and chains and all that in order to do this method productively.

So the thing is is these movements are there, they're not, you don't have to stress about them because the specificity that we're looking for is just the strain against a heavy load. And so we talked about that a little bit last time and people will, the one of the criticisms of this methodology as well, you know, in order to get it a bench press a squat in a deadlift, you've got to squat bench press and deadlift.

And if you're doing all these variations, you're just practicing, you know, you're just practicing those different variations that are not the squat bench in the deadlift. And so they're maybe not going to carry over. But there's different, when we talk about specificity, there's different levels to that. It's not just the exercise.

You know, I could argue that a set of five or a set of eight on the bench press is also actually not specific to powerlifting because the weight is far lower than what you're going to be training with or testing within the competition. So there's a specificity in that, in that, you know, in the load that's used a maximal load. So a heavy one rep max is highly specific to powerlifting. And you say, well, why not just, why not just, you know, bench press up to a one rep max all the time.

Well, you can't do that. You know, people are you, why not or whatever, but you'll burn your system out and you'll get injured, you know, programs that call for you to max out on the same lift over and over and over again have a very, very high burnout rate.

And yes, I'm familiar with the Bulgarian method and all that stuff. If you want to try it, go ahead and apply that to the power lifts and have fun with that. But the reality is is that most people are not going to do good on that that has a very high attrition rate of people that trying to max out on those on just on the squat bench in the deadlift because they're not they're not Olympic lifts.

And that's those types of programs are generally written around the, you know, the clean and jerk and the snatch was just kind of a different ball game. And so if you want to frequently practice heavy one rep maxing, you can do that, but you have to vary the movements up.

And you can't do the same lift over and over and over again up to a one rep max or you will regress and you'll probably get injured and it worse you won't make any progress. So people stress about well, what movements do I pick if I've got all these movements to to choose from and you're telling me I don't need all of them.

Well, how do I know which ones to do the thing is is the reason you don't need to really worry about that that much is because there these movements are not there necessarily to train weak points. Okay. And I see that talked about a lot of the internet to say, well, if you want to get, you know, you want to develop your triceps or whatever, you know, on your max effort day, do a lot of close grip benching or something like that. Well, here's the problem with that.

We just said that we rotate these movements frequently. So we're not doing the same movement over and over and over again. We may do it once every six weeks or once every 12 weeks or maybe even less. And so the max effort movement is not really there necessarily to build weaknesses because you're not doing it enough for it to have that kind of building effect, but it is a very, very good tool for identifying weaknesses.

And then that helps you structure your training better, your your assistance work to then strengthen those weaknesses and then test them again later. So they're they're a very, very good tool for training the strain of a one rep max, which can be done with basically any lift.

And they're very, very good for identifying and diagnosing weaknesses, but they're not necessarily there to build up your weaknesses. That's what your assistance and kind of supplemental exercise selection is going to be there for. So that being said, you know, just a couple of examples of that. And we may have gone over these last time, you know, if you look at a close grip bench, you know, let's say your close grip bench is, you know, wildly weaker than your regular bench press.

Then, you know, it may be an indicator that you have, you know, maybe a weaker triceps, you know, if you've got a close grip bench that's right up next to your, like a lot of guys do, they can close grip almost as much as they can with a regular competition bench press grip. Well, that may be an indicator, maybe that you're could be doing more if you had a little bit more peck mass.

Okay, so, you know, your close grip to regular bench ratio is can be a pretty good indicator of where your strengths and weaknesses at. And then you can organize an assistance slash supplemental template around that.

And that may include not using the close grip bench as a max effort movement, but kind of pulling it out of that max effort rotation and using it as a supplemental movement that maybe you do once a week or once every couple of weeks for a higher volume three sets of five or three sets of eight or, you know, what have you.

But kind of using that movement rather than to, you know, if you like, if you like the movement instead of using it just to test strength can use it all then to build the strength by doing it at higher volume and doing it more frequently. You know, on the lower body lifts, you could look at a rack pull, you know, I've been surprised at certain rack heights, you know, you assume, oh, it's a partial lift should be able to weigh out do my deadlift and some guys can't.

Some guys rack pull at a certain height and their rack pull is about even with their deadlift I've even seen cases where it's less, you know, well what's that an indicator of, you know, that's probably an indicator that you you need to do some work on your back.

You know, you've got you've got a week, you know, from that particular position, your your directors or whatever are not up there, you've got way more leg drive off the floor, but you're, you know, that that a vector and lower and mid back strength is just not there.

So again, that can be an indicator that okay, I need to when I look at my assistance template that I want to put together for myself, you know, I really want to do some exercises that start to build my my directors and my mid back and again that may be pulling rack pulls out of the max effort rotation and instead of testing them for singles.

You know, once a month or every couple of months now I'm going to use them every other week for sets of five or sets of eight, you know, to really build that strength, you know, doing reverse hypers or 45 degree back extensions or or whatever. That you like to do to build your to build your low back, but that's again those those are tools that you can use to diagnose weaknesses as well as consistently train that ability to stay, you know, to stay trained against those very, very heavy weights.

Even if even if like, for example, in the bench press example, like if somebody like you're going to be stronger at what you train, so you might you might be exposing a weakness on on some of them, but you might just be exposing that you haven't trained something very much like a wider grip bench versus a close grip.

So, but even if you take that time and you know, do more close grip benching, you get your close grip bench up, I can't imagine that your other benches are going to go up to so even if it's not perfect and you're not perfect at diagnosing your own weaknesses, because sometimes it's hard sometimes easier to have a coach like look or like I know I struggle with that.

Like paralysis by analysis in my own training, so I'll have someone else look at it or guide me or whatever, but even if you choose a different movement that you think might be hitting on a weakness just by getting that movement stronger, even if it wasn't as weak as weak as you have thought you're still going to probably improve your max max lifts anyway.

Yeah, and that's a good point to about and this is a I've often told people one of the one of the things about the conjugate slash west side method that people have got to realize is it's in the short term people get frustrated with it because there's so much to kind of maybe figure out.

And like if you're working with a more of an intermediate lifter who's just getting started on this style of programming a lot of these movements for the exact reason that you just laid out maybe less effective as a diagnostic tool because the lifters never done them before so there's a certain skill component to that of just you know I've never close grip before I've never done you know this thing so so my lips maybe artificially weak just from lack of exposure.

That's why I always tell people you know this is a program you need to spend six month you need to commit on the front end to spend six months to a year of really really working really really working this out in terms of and it's not like you're going to backtrack for six months to a year but getting to where you really really know how to use the tool.

And that may seem like a long time but if you get it right conjugate programming is one of those things that you can really use for lifetime you know you may not need to get that far outside of that box if you get it right so it's worth spending some time on the front end to work that out and get a couple of exposures to all of these lists and the more that you do them the more time you spend within the system the more that you do each of these variations again and again and again and again the more the more valuable that they're going to be you know it's kind of like the argument for like RPE.

Right like a lot of people you know that you'll get a million opinions and RPE I don't you know I don't feel that strongly about it one way or the other but it's like RPE it's you know for a novice it has sometimes limited utility because they just don't know what training to failure is you know they don't know what heavy is so they have a hard time rating how close a lift is to failure if they've never done it before but the longer they use it the more accurate it becomes so you know if I'm working with a more advanced lifter I trust his judge.

It's just his judgment to tell me that something was a you know RPE 8 versus a guy that's been training for six months I don't put almost any weight on that at all because he just doesn't he has been a time necessarily under the bar to know and so some of these things that will use for like the conjugate although I would say you know conjures not a system that I would use with the beginner either and I may or may not even necessarily want to use it with a guy that I didn't feel like what you know a guy that's not super gifted and it's not like you have to be gifted but I don't know what I'm going to say.

I'm not a guy that's not super gifted but you know you work with people a lot of times in the real world setting that are just not athletic you know and they just they struggle with everything and when that if you're if you're still struggling with the basics.

It's conjugate is not something that you should go to because usually your good athletes are going to pick these movements up pretty quick you know if you have a really really good athlete and you put him on a safety squat bar he's going to figure it out within a really a couple of sets you know a maybe a above average athlete might figure it out in a couple of workouts.

You know your bad athletes who you can still train but you just have to use the right system for your bad athletes are never going to figure it out you know or like a front squat you know it's just some movements are just not worth doing with certain people because the learning curve the technical the technical learning curve is too high and so for certain people I would say conjugate is not a useful system because if you're spending it's kind of like using Olympic lifts for for like a maybe like a high school population yeah in theory Olympic lifts are awesome for at the

athletes I mean they've got a lot of advantages for you know training and measuring power production and non eccentric loading and all this kind of stuff but at the same time if you don't if you've got a group of kind of average to below average athletes maybe that you're working with which is you have a large group chances are most from are going to be kind of you know average or below and you have a very limited amount of time it just becomes you know a system that's maybe not the best system you know because the the return on investment that you're going to get out of

having to do a lot of technical practice with this group is just not going to lead to that much of a training adaptation so you know that's that's something I because I have a bunch of high school athletes probably like between

30 to 60 depending on the time of the year and that's something I come into you know like that's a problem for me is like I really want to do more Olympic lifting with them but a lot of them could just benefit from getting their no their squats and dead lifts over 300 pounds in their Olympic lifts even if they're not training them will go up just because of that but what I've been doing is just a part of my warm up

unlike the first 5 10 minutes I just take one motion like maybe have them in the you know the jump position or like mid thigh hang position and then just like jump shrug let's just do three sets of three all right as soon as we're done with that put the bar on the ground that's deadlift it's like a slow cook like the out take six months to be able to implement it in that in that time they build up their strength anyway so

then they'll be ready ready for it at that point right it is not eating up your whole session that's the other thing like you know if you if I've got a if I've got a kid that in the summertime that comes to me for training and it says say you know I've got him three times a week for eight weeks that's 24 workouts it's not a lot you know and I want to get the most

I say I got to look at those 24 workouts and go okay what can I do in this time this limited amount of time to really really help this kid you know when he goes back to college or whatever you know to really change him athletically you know I can't burn up two or three workouts teaching him how to power clean and power

snatch if he doesn't get it right now if he comes me and he knows how to do it yeah that's fine I'll throw it in there but you know if he's a mess you know on those I'm not I'm just not going to devote enough time because even if I do get him good at that it's still you have to look at what's the potential you know what's the potential ROI on that versus you know

putting a hundred two hundred pounds on a squat you know you're probably going to get more return on your investment for that so with it so it just it comes down to practical matters but that's you know this is it's the same thing with the conjugate method you have to kind of we talked about that a little bit I want to address that in this in this episode was who should not use the conjugate method and I would say

and it's hard for people to self-diagnose because some people are really hard on themselves and they'll say oh yeah I'm terrible athlete well you may not be the best lifter in the world but you're still a reasonably good athlete you can benefit from the system and you know some people don't realize how bad of an athlete that they might be so

you know if you're the coach you know you definitely want to try to help people guide him into the right style of programming for them and you know so for somebody who's just not gifted you know the kind of like if it took you months to figure out how to low bar back squat you don't necessarily want to get into a program that's now going to introduce five or six more different squatting variations to you you know and then has you work up to a one rat max on because

that's probably you're going to struggle so much with the technical side of it that you just don't get anywhere but if you're a reasonably good athlete you know and you can do the basic lifts there's no reason why you can't do a conjugate program because the movements themselves don't really have to be all that complicated you know you see some you see some goofy shit online with some you know kind of a thousand different ways to rig up you know super complex

variations but you know if you if you think about just the bench press and this is something that I wrote out for the guys during the during the pandemic that that we're doing the conjugate programming and but then got stuck in like their home gym and they're like man I was getting I was getting really good results and I don't want to give this up and I don't really want to go back to just like a real basic intermediate style of programming so like how can I keep this going

and it's like you know if you think it just about the bench press you've got three potential grips maybe I mean more than that but we'll just say three potential grips that you could use on the bench press you've got pinkies on the rings you've got thumbs distance from the smooth and then you've got index finger you know online where where the smooth meets the rough so that's like it's like your

competition grip your medium grip and your close grip you know so that's that's three different variations right there now you do each one with a pause and each one touch and go now you've got six different variations already to work with well now we can implement you know a a pen press where you put the you know put the pins you know one or two inches off the chest and come down and instead of pausing on the

chest you pause on the pins which you've never done those is totally different thing and you've got three variations like that you know three different grips on the paused pin press now you're up to nine different

variations you could do three different incline angles you know you could do a low incline of 30 degrees the 45 degree and a 60 degree you know so if you've got a adjustable bench that might just be setting you know two three and four or whatever on your bench but you know just varying the degree of

incline that's three more different movements you know floor presses are easy you know if those are you don't require a lot of equipment for that you've got three grips you can do knees bent legs straight those will give you three different movements and so there's a reason why we want it we want to have a lot of this variation is we want to vary the load and the exact movement pattern week to week but you know just what I laid out right there I think I just gave people you know

15 or 18 something examples basically not using any equipment other than an adjustable bench the entire training pretty much yeah just and then at a towel under your shirt you know you got a towel under your shirt and now you got a you know board press basically like you know you can buy these the little clip on things that go on the bar that are like a one like a one in a two board press you don't need

you know you know in the old days we needed a partner to hold a board on our chest to do a board press but you don't even need that anymore you know you can do a Spoto press where you you lower the bar down and hold it you know one or two inches above the chest and you know you hold a nice metric hold there for you know you could do it for three to five seconds or however long you want to do it you know and then return it back up that's a totally

different movement so we want to have these movements that are very similar to the bench press and load and performance but not exactly and when if you alter those around enough then you get this variation and loading week to week which is one of the things that we want you know so if you're bench is 315 we want to have some weeks where you're working with loads that are you know 275 to 95 ish you know maybe some weeks where you're above 315 in the practical

programming we talked about variations that are you know under load movements and ones that are overload movements the more predictable way to get progress is to work mainly with movements that under load you know if you if you're bench is 315 and your close grip is 275 move your close grip up to 305 and guess what your bench just did it just went up and maybe you never even trained it so it's a more

predictable whereas movements that give you maybe a leverage advantage where you can get more than your bench maybe those those don't always carry over as much but for you know the bench press we we generally want move like I you can just randomly pick 6 to 12

movements basically and I say random like I still put some thought into the movements that I do for like a max effort bench press cycle so it's not like it's not like I just draw names out of a hat you know and say there you want to have some some

weakness to each movement so you know you may have a you know a touch and go bench and a bench press with a pause a close grip bench press and then something like some sort of partial movement like a pin press or a floor press I throw those in there one or two different incline variations if you have a specialty bar those can be good to use not everybody has those but you know the neutral grip kind of Swiss bars or whatever you want to call them are good if you have

a lot of the actual bar you know whatever you have came bird bars bow bars those can all be worked into the rotation and so you just want to and I also like to put we talked a little bit about this off air of intentionally putting movements into the rotation that act is kind of like a deal load so I like to put even for a guy that's bench press focused let's say we're going to do a 12

week cycle probably 10 of those movements are going to be bench press focused movements but maybe you know week I don't know week 6 and we're going to be a week 5 and we 10 or something are going to maybe be overhead press movements and so what those do one they're going to let you work with a much

much lighter weight because overhead press obviously lighter than the bench that kind of gives you a little bit of that intensity deal load from there it also maybe let's the the the pect issues and the pectin dns rest a little bit they give them a break from that

real heavy strain that particular week and so that's just a way to work some recovery in there to make sure that you don't get yourself or overstress yourself just by you know working those the overhead movements in there so you know that's that's what I tell people is pick pick about 12 movements for the bench press make two of them overhead presses spread those out and then fill in the gaps again I like incline presses I like you know some sort of low

partial movement one of the things I want to talk about was on how to pick these movements for the bench press I don't like real like real high partial movements like rack lockouts things where you're only moving the bar a couple inches floor you could say a floor press is a

partial but usually the bar only sits one or two inches off of the chest for most people unless you've got really long forearms and the floor press still is hard because there's no rebound in there so it's not really it's not really mechanically advantaged it's actually mechanically harder in most cases than the bench press because there's no like you're just pushing from this dead space kind of out of the bottom and and the same thing with the like pen presses like I like to

bench off the pins but I like them low you know just like one or two inches off the chest and people don't realize like yeah it's less range of motion but that's like a dead area that's like you're kind of your sticking point and so when you have to generate when you have to

pause the weights on the pins like that or you can do a dead stop where you climb in with the bar already on the pins that's even harder you know that you have to generate a lot of force to break the bar off the pins from doing that so it's actually not necessarily

easier even though the range of motion is is shorter so kind of partials you have to kind of really define what you're talking about that doesn't just mean a reduced range of motion because reduced range of motion can sometimes be a little bit harder so I like floor presses I like low pin presses I like you know like if you talk about like those little shoulder saver pad things that you can buy they're like little foam deals you can click on the clip on the

bar and they act like a one or two board press you know I think they have ones that are like a three or four board press and I really don't think those have any utility for the raw lifter you know real high pin lockouts where you're only you're taking the bar from the halfway point or above to me those kind of feed the ego more than they're actually all that useful you can load up a lot of weight so there may be some advantages and just holding a weight that's 50 pounds heavier than your

weight and you know I don't know though I don't really know that that I don't think you're taking it through a long enough range of motion to really be specific enough even if you are getting that strain in there well again a lot of these things to like that people might see the conjugate method specifically for geared lifters like if you were in a bench shirt up higher lockout might oh sure more sense for you versus if you're a raw lifter yeah that's

the people got to take it into context of who it was designed for it was designed for lifters originally who were competing in gear and for people that don't know that's bench shirt squats suits and you know a bench press shirt a lot of the work is done by the shirt in the bottom of the lift in the lifter really has to worry about the lockout and so that's where a lot that's where a lot of the band stuff came from even though I do think they still have utility for raw

lifters but a lot of the max effort movements you're going to see a gear guide do is going to be a lot of rack maybe rack lockouts and things like that were a raw lifter is going to want to do things a little bit more full range emotion or at least very close to that and not like a lot of pen presses and things so Andy when when you start let's say like you start people on your conjugate like your style the conjugate training

with like do you have a general idea of like where you like to start like in terms of the exercise of the movements because I know you're like it's not out of a hat to kind of a general idea in your mind for

how you implement the system where where people tend to start in like what movements you would use for for bench for example what I'd say on that is one I want I like to start them with the competition movements because that establishes where we're at on those movements of squat bench and deadlift

and then that also because a lot of the and we'll get into this next time but a lot of the dynamic effort days are kind of percentage based we're going to say take 70% or 80% or whatever we're going to do for the volume work so you need to have the you need to have your max

is established for reference point for that but it gives us a good idea of where we're at on those so that then when we come back around to those movements say 12 to 16 weeks later and maybe retest them we can see what's happened you know have we made any progress on them have we

regressed are we still stuck you know that sort of thing so you got to you want to have kind of a baseline just like you would with any program maybe and then I'll get around to testing the movements that I will use if I have a good idea of what I want to use for the supplemental work

like if maybe this guy I know I want to use like I want a close grip bench him a lot during the session I mean during the during the program like as a supplemental movement I'll have him test that pretty early in the program same with front squats on the lower body day because I use that a lot

as like a supplemental movement so that gives me an idea of where he's at on like the front squat or the the movements that I'm going to use as supplemental movements I may test because a lot of movements I'll use as like a supplemental movement and we're going to I was going to

get into this in a minute but the supplemental movement is usually like your second exercise of the day and it's still like a heavy barbell movement but it's trained with more volume so typically depend on the movement it would be something like three sets of five so you're getting into

like building the strength at that point so I may have some exercises that I want to use for this lifter for that and I may test test him out on those just again for kind of reference point and just to kind of really see where he's at but a lot of it if I'm doing this one on

one with a person like like an individually designed program a lot of it is just based on the equipment that he has I mean that's like the first thing that I do is get a base of what kind of equipment do you have or we are we working in a in a bench and a rack and that's it or are

you training a gym that has specialty bars and bands and all that kind of stuff and then what's your experience level with this or you have you done conjugate training before but you're just kind of stuck and you want some guidance or do you want to try it and this is brand new

to you or maybe you don't really want to try it but I think it's a good option for you so I'm going to have you do it and in that case I'm going to ease you into it because certain lifters again we talked about this a little bit with programming being personality based some

guys love all the wacky shit you know the more bands and chains especially bars and all that you can throw out in the like they have a lot of fun with it some guys get apprehensive about that like kind of your your engineering type brains they don't really like a lot of they don't

typically like a lot of variety so you might have to to get it to get the buy into the program that you want you may want to introduce a little bit less variety and just use more things like you know changes in grip or you know more simple subtle changes to the to the

variations rather than like you know the crazy stuff but you know if a guy has if a guy bought a spec if a guy bought a safety squat bar and he's never used it before I'm obviously going to use that you know you know if his gym has one you know then I like to use different bars

and that so a lot of it just has to do with the equipment that he has I don't have like a magical formula that I use for somebody though you're kind of touching on just thinking invisible bear variable in training to which I think when you coach a lot of like you know a lot

people come from different backgrounds that might be listening to this that are all pretty similar you know like the starting strength world or or whatnot but if you work with people who have no idea about that sort of program or thing or like I guess the little micro world

that we're all kind of involved with there's no real preconceived notions so I think a hidden variable in training is enjoyment is fun so kind of like what you're talking about there being able to mold a program even if it follows the same principles to something that a lifter

or an athlete or a mom whoever it is that you're training it's enjoyable for them compared to west side I don't know if it's fun there but there's an atmosphere there that I think definitely is a variable when it comes to training when you have you know the best

powerlaters in the world all competing every single day in the gym that that adds something to it too but just I digress I just wanted to point that out no that's that's a hundred and good coaches and all sports take advantage of that I mean I think you know we talk

about if you're going to have a competition with gym one versus gym two and each each guy is going to field 10 lifters genetics and all that stuff aside I mean do you want the gym that's like bored and burn out like and with their training or do you

want the do you want the gym that's like always in a competitive environment and always having fun and excited and also more consistent well I mean you talk to people all the time and it's like kind of you know you hear it all the time well what's the number one you know wonder no number one determinant for success is consistency well it's true you know it's it's like but what keeps people consistent I mean yeah there's there's discipline there's you know time management skills there's all kinds

of stuff but also motivation which can come through doing a system of training that you enjoy you know or at least that you don't hate and if you don't want to do I mean I think most good training programs you you have to do a certain number of things that you don't want to do but if you're training in a way that is just completely antithetical to your personality or to the way that you want to train your effort level is going to be lower your consistency levels may be going to be

lower or if you're training in a way that you like and you get a lot of buy into I mean take we talked about this in the first episode I think is like all most great lifters have I would say all great lifters probably have a hundred percent buy-in to the program that they're doing but yet none of their programs are exactly the same so what does that tell you that the magic is maybe in the buy-in effort level consistency and within that there's like there's like a

broad range of potential programming options that can work for somebody that's not necessarily the the one constant the the constant is the consistency in the effort level I mean those for me those are above all else effort and consistency that those are the two most important variables so that those are always there you need to organize programming in a way that maximizes those things and if your effort level is low you're just trying you know it's just drudgery to get through

every workout and you miss you find ways to miss workouts because you'd rather be do another shit you know think about the way that you're programming and don't program that way you know as a whether it's for you yourself as a lifter or if you're a coach you know have different options for people and not not necessarily just pigeonhole everybody into the exact same structure but yeah so that's just kind of a side on that I want to get back to the max effort thing

on picking the movement so I talked some stuff I scribble down here just as notes that I want to go into we were talked about a little bit varying the absolute load is important so picking movements so when you when you randomly pick or you you know whatever kind of semi randomly pick your 12 movements think about how much load you can do on each one okay you've got your like your bench press movements you're like your regular flat bench movements those are probably

going to be the highest loads you've got maybe some if you do like some kind of semi partial movements or whatever those are probably going to be you know even higher than that you know and then you've got your overhead press variations which are going to be at the low end and then you've got a bunch of stuff in between incline press movements close grip pinches and you don't have to don't slave over this like it doesn't have to be exact but just kind of

structure things in a sequence that's going to produce some variation so that you're not doing all of your heavy shit all in a row like on my lower body day for instance the the second week in my little 12 week rotation that I have

scribbled out for a lot of people the second week is dead lifts competition dead lifts that's a heavy fucking lift and very very stressful the week after that's front squats well that's by design okay front squats are light they're less stressful in nervous system so I'm not going to have a guy you

know week two is dead lifts week three is deficit dead lifts and week four is rack pulls like that's stupid spread those things out a little bit more spread your really high stress movements out over this 12 week cycle and interspersed them with lighter movements you know if you do something highly

stressful to the pecs say like a dead stop rack bench press or something like that you move a lot of weight but it's just it's one of those movements that you if you've ever done it before it kind of just leaves you wrecked generating all that force off of the pins you know the next the next week after that I'll probably do an overhead press because the the the pecs and just the system in and of itself went through a lot of stress doing that movement so highly

stressful movement if you've never done them so I would probably just kind of game that system a little bit and throw the overhead press at you know after that I wouldn't do to if you're going to do two different incline presses don't do them two weeks in a row you know put one in week two and the other one in week nine or something you know spread them out a little bit again don't obsess over this because all I know so many of you guys listen to this you guys

stress me the fuck out when I talk to you because you you obsess over this stuff so much you know think about it but don't obsess about it okay and don't get paralysis by analysis so no nobody including me has all the right answers of exactly how to organize this or exactly what movements to pick you know just kind of figured out over time if you feel like man this movement really wrecks my lower back well next week pick a movement that doesn't you know affect your

lower back so that's the other thing I was going to say is and I know you want to jump in here but let at least I want to say this is real important this system is auto regulated okay and that means that means in load so you're you're planning to work up to a bench press today or deadlift the goal is to work up to a one rep max that may be an all-time PR for you it may not be okay but that also is auto regulated in terms of exercise selection okay if you have

planned today that we're going to do a one rep map a rack pull one rep max rack pull from below the knees that's on the schedule but the last session you kind of tweaked your back a little bit and you're coming into the session you still feel that tweak a little bit in your lower back do you think it's a good idea to one rep max on your rack pull just because you're fucking spreadsheet says that be smarter than that you the system take advantage of this system and use it

the way that it's supposed to be used don't become a slave to the make the I always tell guys whatever program you're on the program is designed to serve you you're not there to serve the program so just because it said this week is a one rep max rack pull but if you've got a back tweak do a paused

high bar squat do a front squat do something that doesn't stress your lower back you know so you want to auto regulate load and you want to also auto regulate exercise selection if needed you know you don't want to be just random all over the place guy with like training 80 D but be intelligent

about it and use the built-in variation and auto regulation in the system to help help you avoid injury and to have better training sessions and that same vein on the safety part of it you know we are maxing out let's talk about this a little bit last time that I feel like the safety

concerns that I had at the beginning were more or less unfounded that I have found just anecdotally this to be a very safe system to use in avoiding both a kind of acute and chronic type injuries but you do have to think about

this a little bit in that we are maxing out you know every week and I think part of the reason we've avoided the injuries is because we've done some intelligent design to the programming and one of the things that I do one is kind of auto regulate the load in the movements but also is I avoid

max effort movements that I feel like would be dangerous to do for a one rep max most of those are going to be things that put you in an extreme stretch position so I've never been a fan of I know guys use like good mornings and

stuff for you know one rep max is and if you you know if you do that you like it that's fine you know good mornings stiff leg dead lifts Romanian dead lifts those types of movements that put an extreme stretch on the hamstring I keep those as supplemental movements they make fantastic supplemental

movements for building up the back and the posterior chain the hamstrings so those are movements that I use a lot for supplemental work doing things like you know three sets of five or three sets of eight you know it's really you're building exercises but less so on your testing exercises just

because of the mechanical position that they put certain muscles in I feel like it's a bit risky things on the upper body like for on the bench press I mentioned earlier things like a camber bar or bow bars and I don't know if everybody knows what those are but like there's a popular bar it's like I

think they have one that's a two inch and one that's a four inch camber bar so it's just it's a very extreme range of motion so when you're at the bottom of that thing your your pecs are very deeply stretched like almost like it would be at the bottom of a fly or something like that I don't like using those types of movements for one rep max is because I just feel like you're just opening yourself up to a muscle belly tear or worse attending like a tendon rupture so

if you're going to use those movements you can use them for max effort but I keep them to like three to five rep max instead of one rep max is I just feel like that's a safer way to do things or if you want to use those as like a supplemental movement to build up the pecs I feel like that's a really really good a really good thing to do that's that's a little bit safer so think about that a little bit when you're doing these about your movements of what is what

makes a good max effort movement in terms of safety and what maybe doesn't the other piece you probably we kind of talked a bit at last time I think about quite a bit about like gpp that's probably another reason why you're seeing you you're healthy like healthy progression lack of injuries yeah you're probably doing enough to prepare them to tolerate all the heavy weight that they're doing that's true and that's where yeah if you're if you're not well conditioned

then you you won't do as well in this program and and doing the you know doing the movements this frequently for max effort requires some ability to recover well between sessions and the better shape that you're in the better recovery you're going to have not just like between sets but also between

sessions and so you're doing because even like the dynamic effort day you know whether it's earlier later in the week to come out you look at it you're really about 72 hours 96 hours in between it's not necessarily that easy so you've got to be able to recover well in order to do this so you know but if you know if you feel under recovered from my some movements will fuck you up you know sometimes if you have a really good workout like you have to like like a really

like if you go nuts on the rack pull and you have you set like a massive PR or whatever your low backs going to be fatigued for a while so you got to sometimes you got to take that into account you know about how you want to do it so so that's kind of some stuff on just kind of choosing the max effort movements you know on the lower body I didn't touch on that very much I talked about it a little bit last time the easiest way to do that is just switching

back and forth every week between squats and deadlifts a squat variation one week a deadlift variation the next that that changes the movement pattern it changes the loading which again that's what we want we want we don't want just tiny subtle changes necessarily week to week we want we don't need

massive change but we need some variation in kind of the movement pattern and the load week to week so that that just is very very easy to do is setting that up like that and then in terms of switching those up whatever I do for the max effort movement I do the opposite movement pattern for the supplemental movement so when we talk about you'll hear me say a lot supplemental or assistance work the I they're basically the same thing but the way that I

I tend to think about it is the supplemental movement is generally it's the second high stress movement in the session so we have the max effort movement which comes first and then I have a supplemental movement which again is usually barbell base not always but it's often barbell based but it's somewhat high stress movement it's generally trained a heavy-ish like sets of five sometimes like triples and things like that but usually like sets of five is very very

much in that kind of strength building zone that's a very good a very good zone for people to train in and so a lot of times what I'll do for that is like on the max effort squat day the supplemental movement is always a deadlift variation a lot of times it's a stiff like a deadlift a Romanian deadlift or a good morning one I like those a lot for for dry for if you get strong on those they they really help the deadlift but I also I don't use those for max effort

movement so and I but I like the movement so I throw those in you know as much as every other week we're doing a stiff leg or a Romanian deadlift or a good morning kind of based on your preference on a max effort deadlift week so we may we may start with the max effort deadlift movement then we do a squat variation for like three triples or three sets of five or something like that a lot of guys like to do that before they deadlift so they may do their supplemental

they there may be that's front squats they may start with front squats and then go to deadlift and and pull their max single then so it's more of a matter of preference a lot of guys just don't like doing any sort of squatting after deadlifting especially on shit like rack pulls that just really really fatigue your low back it's hard to climb under the bar even on something like a front squat or high bar squat it's not like the low back is uninvolved so a lot of

guys will just feel like the fatigue on the back and the ability to like kind of brace and hold the movement pattern is not good after deadlifting so they'll always squat prior to deadlifting but it's some guys don't some guys will deadlift and then they feel fine they can go do a high bar squat or you know usually it's not a good idea to do us type of squat like a low bar or a low bar box squat it's generally not a good idea to do something that's very low back

intensive you want to do something that maybe keeps you a little bit more vertical a little bit less stress on the back and that that tends to work good if you blow your low back out I don't mean injured but just you know it's done for the session you can even do things like leg presses or whatever but that's generally the way that I do it is I kind of alternate that one for a power lifter that might actually be a like a benefit if you're doing some squatting

even if it's not like one rep max squatting because that of me you're going to be you're going to be a little fatigued well that's yeah that's and that's a lot of reason why we do it is because it's like well you might as well get used to pulling your there's not really you might as well get used to pulling your deadlift singles in a state of fatigue because that's if you're powerlifting like said that's specific to the sport you're always going to be one rep maxing after

squatting so you might as well always training that environment I mean a lot of guys that did the old traditional you know 80s and 90s powerlifting where they it was always Monday with squat day Wednesday was bench day Friday was dead lift day I mean those programs you know that that worked for a lot of people but that part of the problem was those guys got very used to always pulling in a fresh state so they were always starting on Friday fully recovered from their

squat session on Monday and not squatting prior to and so then when they got to a meet they found out wow I'm not quite as strong went after I've already you know done three heavy singles on my squat so it's where a lot of guys went into kind of more of a you know kind of a four day split where you're always kind of deadlifting after you do at least some light squatting and sometimes it's guys feel stronger you know after after doing as long as they're not it's not totally maximal necessarily

you'll feel stronger after doing some light squats I think it's just a really good warm up you know you feel good when you go to start pulling those deadlift singles even though maybe you have just a little bit of fatigue one of the other things I'll do with

that supplemental movement on the on the lower body day is all kind of I use a it's kind of a like a prepping type thing and this is really good especially for guys that don't have a ton of experience with all these variations I will kind of gain things so that

whatever and it doesn't work out like this it doesn't work out smoothly every week but on certain with certain movements that say lifters may not be all that familiar with I will try to make a certain movement the supplemental exercise on the week prior to it being used as a max effort exercise so I hope that made sense for everybody but let's say in week six I have planned the max effort movements going to be a snatch grip deadlift and I know that there's a whole

bunch of new people in the group and a bunch of them have never done a snatch grip deadlift before then what I'll do is the week prior to that so in week five the supplemental movement will be snatch grip deadlifts for like three sets of five or five sets of three and that gets if nothing else it's not necessarily going to like make them stronger in that one week timeframe but it does it does give them plenty of exposure to the movement prior to going and pulling it

for a one rat max so that that's not necessarily their very first time doing it and that has helped a ton with my my new lifters is them having having just that one kind of practice training session with the new movement prior to them doing it for the first time or even if it's not the first time even if it's like the third time that's still not very many exposures to doing it so with a lot of my guys where this system of training is a little bit newer and they do

better they do better with repetition that's that's helped a lot you know or if you know if I'm saying week four the max effort variation is going to be a paused box squat you know and maybe they don't have a whole ton of practice with that then in week three the week prior to that we start the session with three sets of five of pause box quads so they get again they get an opportunity to train and practice that lift the week prior to going and doing that and then sometimes

I'll put even I'll put it again even the third the week after that so they get like three exposures to that lift so within a 12 week cycle maybe three out of those 12 weeks they did the like a pause so it might be like week three is three sets of five of a pause box squat you know week four they one rep max it and then the week after that they do another three sets of five on that same movement and try to beat it from the week prior so they get like they get these little blocks

of training within the whole cycle where they get to they get some focus on these movements that they're not as familiar with so I've engineered that a few times with my coaching group with with movements and I feel like people struggle on snatch grip deadlift people struggle with if they've never pulled sumo before because I use I like sumo deadlifts as just an easy variation for people to do but it kind of screws people up and I don't like a super wide stance sumo but

like a medium stance sumo I feel like it's a good easy variation for most people to do but things that are unfamiliar to them like that I'll have them front squats I'll definitely try to give them practice with that movement at least for one

week prior to pulling it for the max effort by putting that into the into the rotation as a supplemental movement the week before so that's do you find that like people that have been training for quite some time like I experience this with myself like I'll start feeling like if I'm doing you

know low bar squats for a period of time I just start randomly having these like little aches like my knee bothers me my groin like my hip this on the left side for whatever reason that's what always happens but then I change it up and I do front squats last week for example and then I pull sumo deadlifts and like all of a sudden that those aches and tweaks start they start going away that might be another reason that like people are feeling pretty good

throughout the course of it because there's enough variation that you almost don't give your tissue enough time to like be bothered by it.

No most of the I think most of the I mean look at the the I get every time somebody you know comes me and they say I've got they've like you know they've got a strained adductor you know or a pull or a torn adductor or something I mean almost always that's from high frequency low bar squatting I mean it just is it just puts a ton of stretch and a ton of strain on that movement and so once you get beyond kind of then when you start to develop some strength on that

movement and some you know the the ability to really fatigue yourself you know doing that movement too often trying to still do it three days a week or whatever when you're a more advanced lifter that's where those types of movements come from you know same thing with benching you know guys if you just if you're going to be a high frequency bench or you know these guys that bench three and four days a week a lot of them wind up with you know with with problem

especially in the you know the peck tissue and that sort of thing you know so just varying it up the even just varying up the grips or the angle a little bit is very helpful so that you're not because there's going to be with any movement there's going to be areas of the of the tissue that are experiencing the most amount of stress you know so whether it's in a low bar squat where it's where your adductor attaches to your pelvis or something like that you know

you don't really know because I think it it varies on the build of the lifter you know but I've heard what's his name who's the bald headed westside guy Matt winning you know and I there's some of the stuff that he says I think is not

all that great some of that I agree with it but I but I've you know with anybody that's been around the game as long as he has and has reached the levels that he has competitively I I will at least listen because there's going to be something there you know I don't I don't believe I have to

agree with somebody a hundred percent but I there's if you can't learn something you know it's kind of like your your mind's probably too closed off but you know the terminology that I've heard him use and I I from a physics standpoint I really don't know if this is correct but he will refer to thing as pressure gradients in your in the in the system of the lifter in other words you know when you're doing a certain movement a low bar squat or whatever

there's going to be certain places in your in in that system that are experiencing the most stress and if every squat session you're just pounding away again and again again and again and again on that area it's going to eventually fatigue and

then you get those what we call kind of those fatigue related strains it's not necessary and that's where you know when you get a strain on like a sub maximal movement a lot of times it's a in other words it's not that you loaded it too heavy necessarily it's just that you know it sometimes a

lifter will feel that that pull or that kind of the straw that broke the camel's back it might be on a warm-up set you know or on a lift that was not really maximal but it was just it was one set too many you know over the course of the last several weeks and those are what we call this kind of fatigue related strains it happens to me when I try to bench too often I really get I get it in the the peck in the shoulder and it's just you avoid a lot of that by changing

the movement up a little bit if you switch from a low bar squat to a high bar squat you know if you want to call them the pressure those pressure points or whatever you want to call them are different in a high bar squat versus a low bar and they're different in a box squat versus a front squat they're different in a deficit deadlift versus a deadlift it's not the stress is not distributed exactly the same every single workout and so you're not you're not beating up

those same area it's just like if you go you know if you go hit the heavy bag in the same spot every single time well what area gets the most worn out what area has the big dent in it what area is the is the the fabric starting to wear well it's the area that you punch the thing in if you punch it in the same spot every single time at you know versus hitting and all over this maybe not the best analogy but that's basically you know kind of what happens so you know it's like it's

like anything else it's just all that stress is being distributed in one area over and over again so that's I think that's where the the lack of injury has come on this even though we're doing things more maximally than other

programs where you're doing things less maximally but more repetitive in nature so you know that's just been my experience with it is that the injury rates have been better not just the acute stuff but just the day-to-day chronic inflammation stuff which is you know 99% of what you deal with yep yep

like I a guy come in and he's been he's just in the area for a couple weeks and he's like my back is just fried like I don't it hurts all the time every and like what's your program look like and he's doing like five sets of eight of squat bench and deadlift three times a week and I'm like dude yeah I'm and he's not weak I'm like I'm like I don't think he's saying wrong I think this is fatigue I said you know I'm not it's not my lane turns of injury but I'm

I'm real confident that this is just fatigue let's take some of that that volume out and change some exercises and adjust that load a little bit yeah volume volume and volume and frequency are usually the killers you know in turn on that on that type of stuff you know unless the load is low enough this is a whole another debate well it's like well if you can't handle the volume just lower the load well okay but you start doing that and you're just kind of infinitely

adding volume and then infinitely reducing load to the point where you're just it's not a strength program at that point anymore a very good one it's just a volume tolerance program so you're just doing you know you I mean there's a certain threshold where you could squat and deadlift every day you

know with if the weight is low enough and and have a volume you know or you're not going off the charts but you're working with loads that are so low is to not really be a strength program so this I like the other way better so

I like kind of going in the other direction that's a whole another debate so going back to the the actual workouts themselves so we have the max effort upper body day so this is the starting out with the max effort movement so we're already talked about that working up to a one rep max and

then potentially doing some back offs especially for a newer lifter that's not generating a ton of stress or that needs to practice on the movement a lot of times I'll have them work up to a one rep max and then back off to like 85% is

maybe is a good range it do like three sets of three or sometimes 90% and do like maybe two sets of two kind of depends on the lift usually with the squat and the deadlift it won't be as quite as much volume with the bench it might be a little bit higher it kind of just depends on how stressful the

movement is it could be I'll usually never do more than three back offsets like three triples or something like that I'll a lot of times on the squat and the deadlift it might only be one I might just back off and do like one triple at 90% or something like that to been on how stressful the movement is but so you have the tops the top single plus the back offset or two or three and then you know then we have our supplemental movement and we already talked about that on

the squats and the dead lifts a little bit which is usually just if you started with a squat then do a deadlift variation and it could be R.D.L's stiff legs good mornings are really good or if you want if you've got say a snatch grip deadlift coming up in your program the next week and you want to kind of game the game a little bit practice for that then snatch grip deadlift for like three sets of five something like that for raw lifters on the bench press this is one

place where I do actually like a dumbbell work I like to I feel like you know if you read the old the lot of the old west side articles is triceps triceps triceps and I am also a believer in that but a raw lifter has to be strong off the chest and they've got to have pet mass to be strong off the chest and that's what you know that the the adduction of the humorous coming into the body is that's what explodes the bar off the chest and so you've got to have

pet mass built up dumbbell pressing at a flat angle at a decline or at a slight incline are all very very good and I use all three so you can rotate those week to week you can do them every three weeks however you want to do it but I like a lot of dumbbell pressing anywhere from three to five sets of eight to twelve reps and just get really really strong on those you know so if you're at if you're at the sixties for sets of eight your job is to get to the

hundreds for sets of eight you know and get and and do that and build up build up that chest mass and that and that will help tremendously as a as a raw bencher so it basically return at this point you kind of turn things into that repetition effort slash body building is basically what you're doing from here on out after the barbell work is done following that chest exercise generally go to back slash rear dealt work dependent on if we've got like squats and dead

lifts coming up within the next day or two I'll try to avoid like barbell rows or type or rowing variations that really stress the low back you know if you've got the equipment things like chest supported T bar rows a lot of different your hammer strength stuff single arm dumbbell rows cable rows I

like rowing variations you don't have to do that you could do pull ups or chin ups you know kind of that work but I like stuff to really hit the back with a rowing variation you know a lot of that is just kind of anecdotal of me looking at a

lot of the bit the biggest best benchers in the world have an absolute incredible incredible amount of rowing strength you know people argue oh that doesn't matter the push first pull look I look at the guys intervention you know 7800 pounds and most of those guys you look at what they can do on a

seal row you know where they're laying flat on a bench and pulling up it's incredible the amount of strength that they have on there so that's just one of them it's almost like bro science in a way it's it's not necessarily you know you can't really say well getting your row up to this is going to equal that there's no real model or method to prove it other than looking at what the best guys do and and see and you know see in that they've all got incredible amounts

of rowing strength like that so I'm a believer in that you can't go wrong with rows they carry over everything I mean a bigger stronger back it's going to help you with your bench it's going to help it's going to help you just look bigger you know it's going to help you with your squats in your dead list so I do a lot of stuff there but I'm careful about lower back fatigue on that so I like to chest supported versions I like going into some rear dealt work maybe after

that it's quick rear delts already warmed up you know been over rear delt flies face pulls there's a million different ways just something that gets a good pump in the rear delts kind of finish with there and then I like to move I like to finish with triceps and the reason I structure it this way is

you do your max effort movement you do your chest movement triceps are a little fatigued by this point so that's where I go into the back work to give the triceps a break I let them recover a little bit so you know you're spinning 10 15 20

minutes doing your rows and your rear delts and all that shit and then your triceps have recovered a little bit and now I rotate out some sort of extension base movement lying tricep extensions French presses cable tricep press downs you know whatever there's literally like a thousand different

tricep extension movements I do like to rotate those out pretty pretty regularly because if you do them hard and you do them heavy and you do a lot of volume on those they will eat up the elbows and that's just one of those things like the fastest way to elbow tendonitis is to do heavy line tricep

extensions every single week so you want to vary that up that's another it's just like with the max effort stuff just slight angle changes make all the difference in the world one one day is laying with the easy curl bar the next times lying with dumbbells the next times overhead the next times with cables it really doesn't matter but you want to keep track of all that stuff and you want to make sure that's progressing week to week but you want to really

try such hard you can do want just pick a movement and do a bunch of sets on it or whatever or you can pick you know a couple of movements and kind of split the volume up like that it doesn't really matter and that's that's basically the max effort that's the structure of the max effort upper body day and we'll go over next time the structure the dynamic effort day which fills in some of the holes from this one so you'll see how they kind of pair together on

the on the max effort lower body day you got to remember squats and deadlifts and different animals in the bench so you don't necessarily have the same amount of energy or ability to do as much assistance work on the lower body especially if you're older recovery can be tough you know you do the max effort squat movement you do you know let's say two or three back offsets and then you do three sets of five heavy stiff legs or something like that you're going to have

built up a lot of fatigue there's a couple of different strategies that I use for my group this is an area where if you're going to train you know kind of that bodybuilder is style doing the kind of hypertrophy based training things like leg curls and leg extensions are really good here the reason I like them is because they lay off the back entirely there's no more loading on the back with the max effort day and the supplemental movement you've already done a

lot of loading on the back so I don't I like to kind of let it rest because for most people that accumulated low back fatigue is what really that's kind of what really can get you in almost any program so further assistance work on this

day I really like to take take the low back out of it so you know opinions vary on things like leg extensions leg curls I'm not going to get into that if you don't like them don't do them I don't give I really don't give two shits I like them I especially like leg curls or glute ham raises I think

there's some benefit from doing the kind of the knee flexion movements this you know from what I understand from the experts there's some musculature that's only trained in knee flexion that is not trained in hip extension so you know the short head of the biceps so I do Louis Simmons is huge on

reverse hypers west side in general and I think it's that that exact reason you're talking about because how much the low back takes so they'll do like hundreds of reps so they're kind of preparing the low back to handle more training

basically yeah they and I do I do those on the dynamic effort day is where I have people do now he I think Louis would tell you do him like four days a week yeah you know I don't know about that like I mean there's that just hasn't been my experience that any sort of you know low back movement

four days a week is going to be recoverable for most people I mean even if it's very light and all that kind of stuff I'm skeptical of that so I generally leave all that high volume low back training to just the one day a week on this on this particular day on the max effort day I like doing

hypertrophy specific work for the quads and hamstrings but I like to find ways to do it that don't involve the back leg extensions leg curls like Nordic leg curls if you're strong enough to do those are like like a glue ham raise type of apparatus can be very good it's not super stressful in the

low back you know leg extensions are good there they say what you want about leg extensions will build the fuck out of the quads it's the simplest hardest exercises in the gym you will quit this is a complete aside that has nothing to do with what we're talking about you will quit on a high rep leg

extension way before you will quit on a high rep squad out of sheer pain I will make people quit on that thing it is it is what people joke about that like how like but the leg extension is humbling as fuck if you do them right so anyway that has nothing to do with anything I'll probably get blasted

for even saying that but it's a lot of people if you don't have access to that train at home gym say well I don't have a leg extension leg curl or I have that one of those rickety pieces of shit that doesn't the ergonomics are

terrible single leg stuff can be really good here single leg stuff you can get a lot of quality work in on the lower body and again it's very non low back intensive things like split squats Bulgarian split squats you know again it's you get back into the whole crowd of like oh unilateral

bullshit unilateral in place of bilateral is bullshit unilateral in addition to bilateral I think has some utility both for athletes and for people looking for a hypertrophy stimulus where they again you not everything can be with a bar on your back you can only recover from

so much but even just using body weight you know you can reach your approach failure on things like split squats Bulgarian split squats things like reverse lunges walking lunges those are all viable to me for somebody who's trying to build muscle mass those things are are they going to

in and of themselves blow up your squat no but they it's an avenue it builds muscle mass and then you take that muscle mass and you train it fast on the dynamic effort day you train it heavy on the max effort day and you make it more useful so it's not just a cosmetic bodybuilder look you're actually taking that muscle and training it to be very strong and very explosive so those types of things can be good the other thing that you can do especially this is fantastic if you're

a sport athlete it's don't do any of that type of stuff because if you're a sport athlete that's training a lot on your legs with running and spreading and practicing all that stuff you have to be very careful about too much muscle damage on the legs through lower body assistance work because that shit will eat you up you know i can afford to do leg extensions the leg curls and be sore for a week if i'm uh and uh mma athlete i can't afford to be

crippled sore for a week um so what i may have him do is go out and push the prowler you know or push drag the sled because it's non eccentric loading but it still has a it still has some some benefits in terms of muscle building and that sort of thing or even active recovery but again no stress on the no eccentric damage so that's also a very good even for a non a non athlete if you just would would rather not you know be sore

because a lot of that lower body assistance work especially if you're older you know it does do a good job of building muscle mass but it can eat you up recovery wise and so just you know max effort squat supplemental deadlift go push the prowler you know next week max effort deadlift supplemental squat go push the prowler you know it doesn't it does not have to be complicated or drag the sled or whatever so again not something that you really need to stress about but the idea here is i

really like to train the legs without the low back um involved you can do things like leg presses and all that but i'll show you like i like to do those those types of movements on the dynamic effort day we'll talk about that a little bit next time of

i kind of divide things up between higher stress and lower stress assistance movements you know just kind of based on what day that it falls on not everything it's like everything can't be you know not everything can be a barbell on your back not everything can be heavy you know all the time your

body can only recover for so much so you have to look at ways to manipulate the exercises to get the stimulus that you want without maximum loading all the time and things like leg press, hack squat, a love them they're awesome but they're fucking brutal hard to recover from so you can only put

so much of that stuff in one session well that's kind of the to me like the whole theme of training is like going as hard as you can within the confines of stringing together workouts so you can consistently go as hard as you can within those limitations so like that doesn't mean literally like

you know go like go all out every session like i think most training weeks weeks should be like somewhere in like the medium stress like total stress like you can do heavy stuff you can do light stuff you can do actual medium like stuff but overall it's medium because if you over

12 weeks if you get every week where you're training medium you're going to accumulate more stimulating training sessions versus if you go too hard week one and have to recover all of week two yeah that's where we look at what is

people like recovery is one of those things that like i don't think we as a like like we have it we don't have a good grip on what actually that means when we talk about well i can't recover from that like we kind of know what it means but what does that really remain because i i mean

does it just mean i cannot die like i cannot get rabdo like i mean that's that like i can squat i could squat you know if i squat it today and get you know crazy as doms i can still squat tomorrow i mean i i can make myself i

won't get anything out of it you know but i can still potentially so what does it mean to recover and i think you have to look at that is you have to look at what is what is your potential for progress you know what how fast can you potentially progress and anything you're doing to

unnecessarily slow that down with your workload it's potentially exceeding your ability to recover you know so if you're like a novice this is very easy like if you're a novice and you squat on Monday you know we know that you can come back and squat again on Wednesday

and you know more or less than a PR unless you go too crazy on the volume on Monday or the load but if you go too crazy on any one thing you can't come back again on Wednesday and and progress at the rate you're capable of you know most people like on the conjugate method at least you're

going to kind of almost be like an intermediate status where you'll set a lot of PRs like on a weekly basis but if you're beating yourself up so much that you can never express PRs on either the max effort on either of the max effort days because you're always so sore and beat up from the amount of

volume that you're doing per session you're probably exceeding your ability to recover because you could be progressing faster but you're progressing slower because of the the the load that you're putting on your body I think it I don't think that that's like an exact

explanation but that's that's kind of like that's kind of somewhere in the ballpark you know where you you need to you need to train with a volume and intensity that allows you to train at a at a rate that you're capable of training at yeah I'd rather people almost under do it a little bit more so

than like go over the top like I'd rather leave room in the tank you know with progress no I agree it's better to be slightly under stimulated I don't think any of us are ever going to be optimally stimulated like because we don't know what that is and that's a

moving target anyways what's optimal for me this week may not be optimal next week is we have zero ability to measure what optimal is day to day week to week so stressing about it is pointless so I think it is better to be slightly under stimulated than over stimulated and that's why I don't like

super high volume programs because you have to get everything right in order for that the super high threshold of volume to work doesn't leave any wiggle room for kind of mistakes with lower volumes you far less far less chance to over-training and over-training is a bigger sin than

under-training a little bit because one you have to dig out of the hole that you put yourself in the other one you just kind of have to push it a little bit more you know it's easier just kind of add a set you know add a set or add up

the intensity or or whatever it is add an exercise here there it's easier to kind of get closer to optimal by kind of you know edging things forward then it is to way over do it and then try to pull it back you know all of us that's kids that my gym a lot of the kids at my gym are athletes or even

newer people to I'll joke around and I'll tell them like look especially the first couple weeks like if you leave here and you're a little pissed like man I could have done a little bit more I'm like I feel like I'm doing a good job like I want you to leave a little bit of fuck you Dan because in that way because then I can ease you into everything and then over time it'll get tougher but progress doesn't come from a workout it comes from string together

hundreds of workouts and so it's a way of teasing them like you're gonna leave here pissed and I'm good with that yeah I mean you know for more than especially with regular people you know if you leave that's that's the mistake that CrossFit gyms made for years was they just burned all their

people out you know you know you're saying okay come in five days a week or six days a week and you know every time you train it's not it doesn't count unless you're you know outside puking in the grass or you know you're so sore

you can't walk then like it regular people will quit in the face of that or they'll get injured you know you're kind of neurotic people will not quit on there but they won't make any progress but they but they've got kind of a mental hang up that you know it's not effective training unless I'm

you know unless I'm dying at the end of every session so there are people that prefer that you have to kind of hold them back from that but you got to be somewhere in the middle you know you got to be somewhere in the middle of that where it's like I like as a coach I like to have when I'm training

clients especially kind of your your your average people were like I tell clients all this my job is to kind of push you a little harder than you would push yourself but not so hard you won't come back you know because part of my job is to keep you consistent like you're paying me

for accountability and to be more consistent so part of my job is to arrange a program that will get you the adaptations that you want but not drive you out of the gym because on your own you'll either work too hard or not work hard

enough so my job is try to find that balance where you're feeling like man I really don't want to do this but coach told me to do it so I'm going to but not like walking out of the gym being like fuck I don't know how I'm gonna come back tomorrow and train again like that guy

just killed me like and that's what a lot of trainers that's a mistake that they make you know a lot of CrossFit gyms almost killed their killed their businesses doing that and they find the smart ones figured it out that like we need to build in some we need to build in like some

some brake lights here like some some ways to regulate this because we're just we're burden our members up their strength and conditioning coaches now they go across yeah that's like that my buddy who's a mentor of mine he was like

part of rips like basic barbell sir I told you about him like back in the day before it is even starting strength or anything like that he worked out at CrossFit Omaha and he started coaching there and uh one of the bigger names that came out of there was a woman named Stacy Tovar and uh she

she was like an elite level games athlete I don't know if she ever won it but she was up there and I asked her about I asked about her training I was like what's her training like and he's like it's strength and conditioning he's like she has things like she's not great like handstands or whatever it's sort of workouts but she'll work on those but it's it's actually like more strength and conditioning than it is like what she's not going to the wads and and she's

training specifically like in a more progressed strength and conditioning manner which I thought was funny yeah I mean that became pretty evident early on like none of the top athletes were actually doing the wads from CrossFit.com yeah like there was a

completely completely separate way to get there which is fine I mean most people don't have the expectation that they're going to be you know those top top level athletes they just you know they want it they want to exercise not necessarily trained exactly um you know

that's okay but it's yeah it's it's definitely you know people found out what worked and what wasn't you know what were the main drivers of progress on those programs in terms of a lot of it was the barbell stuff you know and in less so the handstands and the rope climbing and all that kind

of stuff so anyway um so that I think I think we basically covered everything that I wanted to cover today with a few but it wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't have a few tangents and the sides so yeah I guess that's what it's called today no that's good but that's uh if I

didn't have you here I'd I'd be all over the place I would never make back to my original point so it's um you know the whole thing would be a tangent in an aside so that's the difference between a podcast and an article I'm finding out is that a podcast really is is is an article with all of

the stuff that you have in your brain that you don't actually put down on paper so um you know don't have the same inhibitions when I'm when I'm doing these podcasts that I do when I'm writing so well there's like 50 things that popped out today then I'm like oh there could be an entire

series on that there could be an episode on this so it's kind of fun going through it because more and more topics will pop out oh yeah no I said we're only going to do a handful of these shows but I think I think it'll want to be in more so I also said that we were going to keep these

things to like 15 minutes and that's never going to happen so we could have tried cut them up so yeah maybe so maybe so we have a hundred episodes so yeah all 10 minutes in length all right dude we'll see you guys next time