¶ Life/episode updates
oh what's up guys happy tuesday welcome back to
ah
another episode of eat train prosper today is our monthly instagram and for
m
the month of november
ah
we have a stacked list of questions
yeah
mostly on the training side of things but we have a couple on the nutrition side as well including a very fun and i think really kind of conversation provoking question directed towards brian and ice coaching style and differences in food choices for the larger part for the most part i should say but before we get into this
ye
as always brian kick us off with some updates
yeah we're back to the q n a episode i love these man they're just so free flowing and fun and i love that we get to kind of jump around hit a bunch of different topics so for me i'll be quick with my updates i started my new messocycle for myself on beds program which is available on the train heroic app through paragon but on eleven fourteen i started my new mess still a push pole eggs and i mentioned on the last episode with adam net that i had four to six different
kind of movement swaps that i was going to put in and i discussed specifically the kind of rear dealt pull around movement where the arm would come across the body and you'd kind of sweep and pull almost like the start of a bow and arrow type thing which lines really well for the rear dealt but i tested that out along with a couple other variations and ultimately for a couple of reasons i decided on doing a by lateral dealt pull down which i didn't actually realize i could do in my set up but
since i bought that hammy strap which acts as like a seat belt essentially i i now do like regular pull downs as if i had those pads that go over the knees so i was super happy to discover that because one of the things i'm trying to do this cycle is slightly less unilateral work like i do have a split squat and a single leg red l and a one arm pull down but i think aside from those three maybe a one arm lateral raise too but okay so for four single arm single limb movements but i'm trying to do
less single in work in general because i find it just exhausting um to have to do double the work and it double the amount of hard sets and all that sort of stuff so decide on the bilateral reared out pull down and in effect what it kind of ends up looking like is your like typical wide grip pull down with the just difference being my grip actually starts a little narrower so i get a little bit of narrow to wide pull as i go which i think is even better for the rear
adults and probably takes the terris just a little bit out by not having that wide to narrow poll it's more of the narrow to wide pull um lines up super well for the rear delt i get myself into thoracic extension so i lean back slight arching spine and and it's it's phenomenal at least in the first kind of de load flow week where i tested it out so excited to progress with that one i was plan in in doing a trap bar b stance r d l but that's just like the back of the trap bar kept hitting my back
leg i couldn't find a comfortable position for the back leg and then i remembered how much i would get out of rear foot elevated r d ls um and so i also realized that i would be fine with my dumb bells up to a hundred pounds doing a rear foot dumb bell i don't think i'll be able to do more than i think that six to twelve rep range is going to be super solid for the entire messocycle for me and and i did one set in my de load week with seventy five pounds per hand for six reps it
was probably like a five r i r and my ass has been sore for like three days so i know for sure that this is going to be effective movement to add and i think i'm just going to continue doing one set until that doesn't seem like enough anymore but that's the updates on the program my knee is in a week eight ter p r p now and i think this is the first week where i actually feel like maybe it's better than it was before p r p i've had this like insane tightness along the inside of my knee
that we just stem prior episodes i think is the pzansarine versa is what was the diagnosis from the doctor in getting some work on it with nicole she's a she's t locally she's awesome snaps if you guys are local to colorado but she's been doing a lot of work on that kind of inner thigh area and there's a lot of things that it could be like the sartor reis and the adductor and the semi tendinosis i think all kind of converge into that same area like just below the medial side of of the
knee um so she she spent a bunch of time grinding it out and deep tissue stuff in there and doing some needling and so i'm going to continue doing that and hopefully i'll have some even more positive updates for you guys we go on the next thing is physique forty five is a new program from paragon that's dropping on december fifth this is our solution to people that don't have seventy five minutes spending the gym um and in doing in preparing this program and writing the
blog for it i stumbled across a two thousand seventeen meta analysis and systematic review from and feld and colleagues and to be completely honest i cherry picked these quotes and they were part of longer sentences but for the sake of argument i think that they demonstrate a point that i'm trying to make with with physique forty five in that the majority of your gains from training come in the first set or two sets and then everything after that is kind of this depreciating almost a sum
total response where the more you do you might get more return on investment but it's going to be depreciating so there's a dose response relationship and then as you guys know it's an upside down you curve as well where you can do too much and then you actually start having worse results um so with those two things in mind these two quotes are from that systematic review and meta analysis clearly substantial hypertrophit gains can be made using low
volume protocols under four weekly sets per muscle group such an approach therefore represents a viable muscle building option and then it went on to say but not as much as you know doing more sets et cetera et cetera i didn't include that part of the quote um then the next quote was when considering a weekly sets as a binary predict or of less than nine sets versus more than nine sets findings did not reach statistical significance between conditions um so i mean that's that's that's crazy
like somewhere between i mean if under four sets can get you substantial hyportrophic benefits and then under nine or over nine is non significant i think you can pretty confidently hang out in that like five to nine sets per mussel group per week rain on a general masses level and achieve the majority of the results that you're going to get so what we did with physique forty five is we kind of harness that we included much more in intensity techniques so we have more rest pause
sets like partial we're gonna do verse drop sets we're going to prioritize more length and movements over all we're eliminating caves and abs so if that's something that you think it's important to do you can find ten minutes on your own to do caves and ab but if you only have forty five minutes of training there's a lot more important stuff you can do there and then the other final piece of physique forty five is there's no special de cycles or strength cycles because you can't
really in fort i mean if you can't work up to a one re max on a back squat something like that like that will take you forty five minutes for some people so um it's basically the best solution we can create given the time here and i would be surprised if people that dedicate super hard to those forty five minutes even notice any differences between the people that are putting in seventy five minutes and doing cabs and abs and doing periodizatio and and all this stuff
so anyway i think that's super cool and i'm excited to implement that program for paragon starting december fifth um and then i have one more update but it kind of transitions us into the first question so why don't we jump over your way get some updates and then we'll come back here
yeah i have a couple follow up to the the physique forty five i think that's really really cool it's solving a it's a solution to people who are like seriously significantly short of time and then that was a follow up question i was going to have is because we're doing less sets is it closer proximity to failure is their intensity techniques and indifferent stuff and i that's really really cool i think personally my training i don't think it will ever go down to forty five minutes
unless there's other weird you know life circumstances but i just prefer to train lower volume now closer to failure more intensity techniques like that's just what i a subjective feedback i just would prefer to do
oh
like two hard sets of like rest pals or something like that is opposed to like four sets to like a two
yeah
or three r or something like that um so i think that's a really really cool solution you guys are putting out there
thanks
oh
man yeah we i did the math in the blog on like what it would be if you did three sets of fifteen with like normal rest periods and you essentially get fifteen effective reps if you're and i use the effective reps model right
hm
but you have to do thirty quote ineffective
m
reps to get the fifteen effective reps and then i compared that to one set of ten uh with three rest pause sets after and in my example i assumed you got ten on the first set and then it went five four three on the rest pause sets and if you do the math on that un with seventeen effective reps and you have only five ineffective res which are the first five reps of the ten rep set so it's a significantly more time efficient approach to get even more active reps it's hard obviously
like three sets of fifteen probably is subjectively easier than doing one hard set with three rest pause afterward but i think that when you have forty five minutes you know if that's the way that you can meet your goals then i think it's a super viable way of doing so
yeah i think
kay
it can also like for people who have a hard time like keeping their head in the game in the gym or like like okay we have three sets of fifteen with like three minutes of rest in between if you're like someone who's just like i'm going to get lost on twitter or instagram or something like that like that helps with that as well because with those rest pause sets you need to be like okay i'm taking my fifteen set keeps your head in it as opposed to like well i have three men
it's to funk around before my next set sort of thing so i think
yep
it's really really
for
cool
sure thanks dude
uh up dates on my end so
yeah
i guess by the time this episode releases it will be the twenty second which is going to be like right heading into the thanksgiving holiday
yeah
you're in north united states
yeah
let's let's put it that way um and with that comes like black friday and stuff and i will have some sales going on on my coaching products none of my coaching services will be on sale but the done for you client checking system which you can find in the episode description i think would be like fifty percent off sale on as well the muscle gain and fat loss models so if you are a coach these tools could be of great utility to you there are thirteen
hundred other coaches worldwide using them serving thousands of clients all over the world so if that interests you take a look at that and get them on the cheap that is the first
m
one
m
and then i wrapped up a big consulting project uh to on board an existing coach with an
oh
existing business into all of my systems
m
and set
oh
up which i was actually just describing and then more so that was like a really really cool experience um m it was it was kind of new for me because there was parts like the dunfieclient check and system the models that i would like sell and other coaches would use but this was the first time that someone with an existing business like i own ordered them onto all of my striker nutrition co tools so that was really really cool to do he's fucking stoked about it
tons of great feedback already so it's cool to just see like i guess my impact of things that i never thought would turn into this like go two other places so that was a cool kind of just like business like check the box sort of thing
very
um
cool
on to some personal stuff i am we talked a little bit off line and i think i ment at last week like very very briefly i am in my inflammation and liver flush like two weeks protocol and it is crushing me brian and i were joking off line beforehand so i'm on day nine i have five days left to go i've lost nine pounds so i'm literally losing like a pound today
wow
today yesterday is the first today yesterday today is the first day that i was the same weight one ninety thre on both days but the day from the day before i was down like one point seven or something
how many calories are you eating on this
i'm doing like twenty seven hundred
how are you going to why you're losing weight on that mon calories
i do not know so
okay
the premise of it is it's like all
yes
whole food um no alcohol no caffeine no dairy no so no grain it's basically i'm doing a lot of fish um very low inflammation low blow vegetables like spinach squash sweet potatoes keen wa a lot of fruit doing like loads of blueberries and strawberries and then like fruit juices as well so like organic on sweetened apple juice pineapple juice all very juice pomegranate juice so i'm doing like a lot jose and it's the thing is like when you and
m
i don't i generally don't talk
yeah
or speak about things like
a
this because i cannot
yeah
explain it in detail but i do firmly believe that like the calories in calories out not that it breaks down under certain circumstances but it's not like always your body doesn't respond equally so like if i was eating these like twenty seven hundred calories but i was doing like i don't know like my typical gate arraid or breads or uh you know like roticorychick in different things like i wouldn't be responding in this manner
hm
and i don't know enough yet around the specifics of that but i have just seen it enough and here i'm on like
hm
literally day nine and i'm doing it with my girl friend jenny and she's down like three and a half pounds she's obviously half the size of me more or less and it's it's wild it's wild how much fat i'm in taking to like i'm
he
being rather gratuitous with my coconut oil my olive oil i'm probably
hm
doing like fifty grams of olive oil a day and like another like
hm
twenty of straight coconut oil and it's just like doesn't fucking matter it's crazy
yeah i think that my guest would be that that has something
yeah
to do with the individuality of the response in the gut
oh
and i even remember it was recently i want to say it was stronger by science but it may have been an article or study i was reviewing but they were talking about how you can take an equal dose of fiber between two people and you have some people that can break down that fiber and turn it into energy and other people that cannot
right
and just excreete it
yeah
and so that's that that in itself
to
is a a breakdown to the calories in calories out piece because
oh
we naturally just assume that fiber is indigestible and therefore doesn't count as calories but
yeah
it does some people
you re right is that that is
yeah
a recent stronger by science episode i want to say it's the one i can't remember i was literally just listening to it the other day on the drive to the gym and they were having that exact conversation
yeah
m maybe
okay
i really don't remember which one it was unfortunately but yeah it's it is something i will just discover more about as i go and then something that i'm going to do is get labs right after or probably the week after wrapping it up to see some things because there's always like some anomalies in my labor um that i'm always looking for
oh
but yeah it's been definitely pretty interesting and just now a tool to use with like clients who are kind of like either
hm
non responding or coming in with like glaring kind of functional health issues sort of thing and i'm like
m
okay we're going to start here get inflammation down dump some water weight sort of thing
oh
and then get them some quick winds
oh
as well
yep
so it's been fun learning more the most interesting piece that i think is important as i have been exhausted on
yeah
this absolutely exhausted like and you know it's how i know it's bad is like i don't even want to go to the gym like
m
when i don't want to go to the gym i'm either i know that's when like stress is
yeah
peaked the funk out
oh
and i need to pull back in my commitment life or something is like energy levels are just bad i did i pulled caffeine the week before so i'm on like what would be whatever like day like eighteen or something like that without any coffee um but even i'm noticeably more tired just throughout the day i'm just like
m
like yawning and i feel like i just want to take naps and stuff excuse me and then the kickers i'm sleeping incredibly
ah
well which was another kind of like dagger in my caffeine thing because after five or six days pulling the caffe and i started sleeping like a king so i might but i do want to go back to having coffee because i just like it so much
m
i'm going
hm
to
yeah
pull up that supplement that that jeremiah um noted on when we had him on in touch on that i can't remember what it was called like rudi pin or something like that which helps
yep
you metabolize it faster so that's been the upside as i'm sleeping like really really well and i have a garment watch that tracks it i'm sure it's not as good as like the whoop or anything like that but it's like the ration read deep sleep it's all like i'm i'm not talking like a five person in difference i'm talking like fifty fold increases
wow
and stuff
that's
like that
insane yeah
and i just feel it you know like i'm typically someone when i wake up to p in the middle of the night like it could be two thirty and i like wake up i'm immediately thinking about work and i could start my day you know whereas now i wake up to p and i'm like a zombi holding on to the
m
walls and stuff like that because i'm like so tired
okay
so it is nice to be sleeping good and then hopefully i do get the the energy slumps will start to fade as wrapping up the last few days here ah
yeah
then i guess
yeah
the last thing i have i discovered one of my long time clients man he's been with me for like a year and a half now we realize we're like forty minutes from each other so we're going to go lift some it's this weekend i'm super super pumped about that just to meet
oh
in real life and
m
lift some weight maybe eat a little
where
bit
are you
of
guys
food
meeting
i don't really know yet so he's
okay
like down close richmond which richmond's about like but maybe like seventy five minutes from where i am now
yeah
um so yeah we're going to meet up and go do that
sweet sounds awesome man love
yeah
that you get to meet up with clients and train
yeah that's it for
okay
me
cool well so we have twenty questions and we only have forty five minutes
cool
i doubt we're going to spend two minutes of question so this is probably going
oh
to have to bleed over into the net episode but starting us off so my update real quick is my final update was that throughout my heatinistic excess of nutrition over last few
a
a few weeks you could say maybe months i finally
i
peaked at the high one nineties in body weight one eight ninety eight in change ight have seen one
oh
ninety nine one day but i basically went back to things being satisfied in my my nutrition protocol instead of feeling like i'm overfed it's it's more of like hey that was pretty maitnanctype day and the body weight already back down into the one ninety five so it kind of like went up came back down lost some glikagin the way things go but i think this transitions us well into the first question which basically is a asking about the different eating styles that we have and i
kind of expected this question probably sooner than we got it in what episode were on like ninety something in each training prospect because
yeah
we talk about this a lot and we you have very distinct styles of eating the question goes on to basically say palatable foods with more freedom for brian and more rigid structure for aaron how have these approaches in acted how we thrive and
¶ Different eating style Bryan vs Aaron
how we coach how has it impacted your physique do you want to start off with that one at any context that you want to add i know that
h
one of the things we discussed
h
off air was that i don't tend to coach people on nutrition so many of my like i have coached people as part of their training package but a lot of my perspective on this is going to be anecdotal through talking with people over twenty five years in the industry but also my own personal experience so if you want to start with any of that and then we can i can take
ye
it from there
yeah so what what i'll do is kind of frame the conversation that brian had off line and i think i think the root of the approaches is like first and foremost like i am a nutrition coach that is my specialty while i do training first or for some of my clients and we talk training with a lot
yeah
like at the root of it i am a nutrition coach and then with brian kind of the opposite he does some nutrition or yeah he does some nutrition with some clients but the majority of his training with clients is on the training side of things and i think that in end of itself leads us to our style a little bit more i
yeah
personally um and anecdotally
ah
have found
yeah
with clients like the more muscle mass that you have the kind of more you can get away with thinks brian is someone who has considerably you know large amount of muscle mass a lot of what i found as like clients who try and m and are not like intuitively eat things or do like the satiated kind of fed things a lot of people will not be able to handle that without the weight the scale kind of creeping and creeping and like a briant said hey i wrote things in a little bit subjectively
and i dropped four pounds i do not find that to be a very common thing with an overwhelming majority of the clients that that come to you or come to me the one thing i last thing i'll kind of point out there before kicking it back over brian is it's rare that people reach out for nutrition coaching when things are going great when they feel in control of
yeah
their body composition and body weight and stuff are usually getting problems so that's
ah
i think a big part of it as well but brian let's let's see what you have to say here
yeah so i think the first thing to note is that
oh
i have had very rigid strict stages
oh
of my journey over twenty
a
five years i have not just eaten at well for my entire
ah
twenty five year training journey um when i first started the first few years i was the most rigid like over to the point where i should have been eating more food like i six meals a day with like turkey and a fruit or vegetable and um a carbohydrate source and that was like six meals a day that's more or less what i ate or it was like the the protein shake between meals type thing and then your meals are the same thing that i basically said so
oh
i would have been benefited by actually probably eating more crap in my earlier days just to put wait on but i was i was naturally
oh
going through a chunky stage when i started training and so i always associated this idea of being lean as kind of my objective instead of this idea of being big and that changes the way i think you eat in general to um so over time i think the most important factor is kind of what aron said like i just have enough muscle mass that i can get away with a lot things and combine that with the fact that i value my social interactions
yeah
with my friends and i like to have friends that aren't necessarily deep into the fitness scene like i am because i think it expands me it forces me of my shell and provides perspective on aspects of life that um that that aren't you know what i deal with on a day to day basis with work and stuff like that so so i really like that and i like the food and the drink that comes with it like that adds value to my life and at this point where we've discussed that i'm twenty
five years in whether i'm making progress or not is i mean yes maybe i'm making progress whether i optimize things and it goes at point two five percent progress or i maybe do the way i'm doing it and it's point one five percent progress like at the end of the day the amount of progress i'm making is so small at this point that i'm just not willing to sacrifice things that i enjoy like like i don't want to be eighty years old looking back and being like man i spent twenty five years eating
like these perfect foods and not having social experiences and now i'm dying with no friends and i don't even know like what my favorite food is i mean not like that's
oh
obviously a very extreme
oh
example and not realistic but but it kind of is more or less the perspective that i take into this question and so i always make sure that i hit my protein there's never a day where i have less than
oh
point seven five grams per pound of body weight so a hundred and fifty might be like the lowest number that i would
ah
have in a day and on top of that i fill it in with the things i enjoy that provide some nutritional value and it's also important to note two other things that when i have these hedonistic excesses that might be three to five days a week of this and then i'll have two to three or four days where i'm eating in a deficit eating much cleaner and offsetting uh these higher days that i'm having so it's kind of this up and down oscillating thing and then on a grander more expanded level i
actually cleaned up a lot three months a year i go into my spring dieting phase so i have these nine months of access that build me from the low one eighties to the high one nineties and then it all gets cut off in a super healthy manner over the course of yeah three months and i've even discussed how sometimes i feel better in the first few months of my diet not at the end but in the first couple of months because i'm eating healthier i'm cleaning
oh
up my habits and putting better foods into my body and stuff like that so i'm not trying to sit here and say that everybody should be able to go out and eat whatever foods they want if it's important to them i think that there is something that it's almost like i've earned that right via the muscle mass that i've put on and my glucose disposal and like all of these responses that are supposed to be inherently positive in your body in your hormonial profile they all work for me like even when eat
like this and i do my blood work before my diet my peak off season body wit or whatever my blood work doesn't look any worse than it does at the end of my diet like they're all pretty similar so my body just is pretty efficient i think at disposing of this stuff and that may not be the as for for everybody at this point
you really really did an incredible job of phrasing the different parts here's a couple of things that i want to touch on that you really really said they add value to your life right so like the social outings
yeah
with friends maybe that's pizen and beer you know once a month or twice a month or something like that or however much you periodize
yeah
your flexibility and freedom and planned hedonistic
yeah
deviations throughout the course of your year with like you're gaining and then when you decide to go through it very deficit to get lean for summer for because you find that it
yeah
adds value to your life you clean things up and the thing that i thought was really really interesting and i
ah
find to one hundred percent is inherently like dieting is unhealthy i'm using air quotes here but for myself for you and i know a lot of clients like when you really clean up your diet and you're prioritizing like super lean cuts of meat you know lot more fruits tables like you feel really good until the calory
oh
deficit catches up to you and that's more so just the total amount of fuel you're giving yourself not the food choices in and of itself but that that's always a really kind of trippy thing like dan i feel pretty fucking good you know you know fruits and vegetables and really quality food and then you've just spent you've you've been over rigid over
ye
flexible spent twenty five years doing it you found auto regulation that works like really really well for you and then the last thing i think that's important to wrap up on is even at the end of your plan hedonistic d v so when your body weight is peeking in the off season you're still only at like sixteen maybe seventeen per cent body fat max max
yep
and that's the big thing there like if you pushed it into like the twenty two twenty four
yah
is like your health markers are pro ably not going to look like they do but you do you do auto regulate really really well and i think that's where intuition is like really really big and that's the part that i think so many people lose it of like if you only get to fifteen percent body fat during your calory deficit and then your hedonistic videviations take you up to like twenty five per cent that's a different story than what brian and is saying specifically because of
physialphysiology and what's going on inside at those levels of body fat
yeah that's a really good point i think most people probably couldn't eat like meat and maintain like high teens body fat like most people eating like me for nine months or whatever minit period of time it is until my next diet would end like ballooned up and like in relatively poor health so so that is that is important and i think he put a bow on it the thing that you mentioned about the periodization is not just that three months at the end of the year but it's even in the week like
three or four
oh
days of eating crap and then two
oh
or three days of kind of raining it in and like um i think that that is huge and just maintaining things where my weight is travelling slowly whereas if i just ate this way every day my weight would clearly be like twenty pounds heavier than it is without those two or three deficit days along the way
exactly
anything else ad on that
um i guess the only thing i would add is oh what i had found
yeah
personally because i guess we never really touched on mine
yeah
i had lived a life previously where i had a lot of planned deviation a lot more social typical social outings sort of thing or where i was within like groups of friends and influence there and it wasn't until that you know when i took striker nutrition co time had kind of moved away from all of my family and friends and spent a lot more time by myself that i found like what i actually valued outside of all my social influences and stuff like and that's when i realized like oh yeah i don't
really care about drinking alcohol anymore and so i quit drinking i don't really care about eating peas or cheap meals and stuff any more so i just stopped doing it in that i found it like eating and living this way adds value to my life like the other things take value away from my life
m
i really value how good i feel and when i do those things i feel terrible and i don't want to
yeah
terrible and i think think what what brian and i are really getting to is like you have to decide what adds value to your life and then what doesn't and find that balance for yourself personally
yeah at's really well said cool all right so the second question is session volume per body part literature suggests eight to ten sets as a max this prescription seems to like nuance example being back if you did three sets of iliac lower lap pull down three sets of thoracic upper lap pull downs three sets of upper back rows and three sets of rear delt flies it seems like maybe that's okay given
¶ Session volume per bodypart
how big the back is in the different regions question mark and i agree yeah i think that that certainly
oh
lacks nuance like that to me like the back like
yeah
i would at least separate the back into like upper back and lots that's kind of dndnduhand
this
low back like i think low back would be a third region of the back
oh
and
yeah
i don't think you train low back as part of back like it's usually late and upper
oh
back so so yeah i think like if you did
oh
i just i agree that that it does like nuance but i also think that you would still probably be benefited by splitting those twelve sets into like six one and six another day um unless you're somebody that needs twenty four sets a week for your back and then maybe ye it's twelve one session twelve in the next or if it recovers that quickly maybe it's nine nine and six or you know nine eight seven or whatever that math comes out to to get to you to twenty four sets so i think there's
a number of ways you can split that up but i think you know overriding the literature seems to show that as long as weekly volume is matched it doesn't exactly matter too much how you split it up if you're dealing with like the very end extremes of optimality yeah you'll probably have more energy for that work and be able to put more focus into it if it's on a different day but i think that this example you put out is totally fine as well
yeah i think
yeah
it's important to realize that literature is going to report like population means and averages across
ah
body you know i think if we had like metas on like late training versus like you know chest training and different things like that there would probably be variations in it but you have to take what you find
yeah
is going to be best for yourself after experimenting
yes
like at this point in my training career i'm going to take my intuition for myself over what any of the research says personally that's just how i'm going to take my training
yeah
um but i think the one thing i will say is brand i think you can you will probably attest to this too how good you are or how efficient you are at making each set really targeted for a stimulus is important
hm
like the really go examples like the unilateral pull down you know supported pull down or whatever if you gave me that when i was like twenty years old i just would have sat there and just yanked on it and i could be like do four sets with like two hundred pounds right i'm like oh yeah i kind of feel it whatever i probably need like more volume as a post like today i guarantee you like i could get much more stimulus and hypertrofic stimulus typertrofic stimulus out of two really targeted
yeah
sets with probably eighty to seventy five per cent of the load that i would have used fourteen years ago for more volume and and
yeah
and it's hard to quantify that like individuality into the literature
ah no i fully agree and i'm actually at a point now where i can't even really do more than two sets for a lift like any lift whatever that lift is um two sets is about as much as i get and then it almost feels like it's kind of having a i'm on the other side of that u curve like it's like two sets gives me the stimulus that i want and like peaks it and then that third set almost takes me down the other side of the u curve and it feels like i'm you know losing pump lus in
yeah
connection with the muscle
yeah
etcetera etcetera so with that in mind like i've actually found now that the most i can do in a session for a muscle group is about five or six sets so i have like my ham
yeah
dominant day is five sets for hams three for quads and then the reverse for my quad dominant day it's five for quads and three for hams and when i do back back as this big collective thing
yeah
it's like two sets for one of the late regions two sets for one of the upper backreradelt regions and then one set of of one of those regions so it's made a different lat region or like a rear delt focus move or something like that but five sets for my entire back and then that will happen twice a week so yeah to erin's point i just think if you can be super accurate and get a ton out of your training you shouldn't need to do that much volume in a session m
yep agreed
cool next question is on the our thoughts around using cuffs which we've kind of touched on somewhat
oh
often in the last few episodes
yes
the question is benefits and drawbacks is it vital to have something to grip with in the cuff or can the cuff function effectively on the wrist without any gripping in the hand the asker also referenced a time where he had biceptendenitis and used the cuffs for all pulling movements and whether that's okay um and my thought is
¶ Thoughts on using cuffs. Benefits and drawbacks?
like so cass is really big on the idea of hey
oh
if you're going to use a cuff make sure you have something in your hand to grip tactile um it helps with a nervous system response i believe i've personally
oh
found that that's beneficial
oh
as well that
oh
when i do my lateral raises
oh
now with cuffs i really like to hold the cast handle at the end of my cuff
oh
and when i do my try set movements with the cuff i put it all the way down so it's essentially along my pinky and then i kind of grip it like a bird would grip a
my
tree branch with the outer part of my hand as as i'm pushing away for the
oh
triceps stuff and so i find that all to be better than if the cuff was directly on the hand or rather on the wrist um and then the last thing i'll say about this is if it is on the wrist i don't like about that the most and this is beyond the tactile piece is that it shortens the moment arm and i
yeah
i feel like it actually feels less effective when that moment arm is whole hands length shorter like that's like you know six to nine inches or i don't know however big a hand is
m
six inches maybe but that's a that to me makes a huge difference so any time i eve using cuffs i always pull the cuff down so it's essentially over like the top of my hand instead of on my wrist and then i kind of curve my hand over so the cuff doesn't move back as i'm doing the
yeah
movement um and that at least keeps the moment arm at a similar length how it was and i like that aspect of it
i ahundrepercent agree with everything you said there any time i'm using cuffs i put like an empty d handle in my hand it just feels more natural to me every time i've tried to do it with i just like what do i
ah
what i do do i hook
yeah
grip it just doesn't feel right to me and
yah
then i always go back
h
to it any time and i like try not to i always end up grabbing one there
yeah
i think what you said
m
around the
m
moment arm
m
is it's as silly
m
as it might sound because
yeah
it is literally inches it does change it i feel like whenever i'm doing lateral raises with the cuff and maybe i have like a
oh
loose cuff and it kind of goes up my forearm so
okay
slightly i feel like i'm like doing more of like a like a lift up as opposed to
yeah
the lateral rays you know and that's because the moment arm is it's enough to make a significant difference in how i per form the movement i think it's a worse performance of the movement um and then with having like the biceptendenitis and using a cuff for pulling movements like if that's how you're working around jury you know it's not going to be optimal right you're just trying to do what you can to keep some tension on the target tissues you want to
m
and something like that i am someone who will get a lot of elbow flexor
my
and extensor
m
tendon itis on
m
either side of elbow on my left arm
oh
and that is why i really moved
yeah
to using the verse grips for so much of things and especially like almost any any back movement or
m
anything i'm holding something heavy i'm pretty much using those and that's really really helped with that because i'm not death gripping things anymore
yeah and doing more cables in general i think helps with that
yeah
but but i agree fully with you that if you have biseptemdernitis and this is going to help you get humorol depression so you can work your back like absolutely i would a hundred percent do that
yeah
okay next question could you go more in depth about how you might take intuitive training how you might make intuitive training a successful approach so this
i
may be on
yeah
the heels of our conversation with maconi um which we had on his channel brains and gains um a couple of weeks ago but one of the things we were talking about is he proposed this question to us of what do you guys think
¶ How is intuitive training a successful approach?
about that idea of just kind of going into the gym and just doing what you want the day and so we addressed it a little more in depth on there i don't want to rehash everything but i know your response was basically that you need a plan that you don't feel right going in and not having like something on the edge no to do right
yeah
yea
because i feel like it just leads you it leaves you open to like some of your worst personal habits you know what i mean
hm
um and i know like if i do that i'm gonna train back a lot quads and i'm probably never going to do arms
uh
and i won't do abs and it will just lead to a worse version of myself because i'm i'll just like succumb to my bad habits and tendencies
yeah i think if i were to implement this i would have the same problem not in the sense that i think i would go to bad habits and tendencies but i think i would feel purposeless
yeah
like i would kind of go into the gym and and just be like almost like a nihilistic like what's the point like if i can just go in and do whatever want and not even try to beat the log book or anything like what the fuck is the point why am i even here so what i think would be the best implementation of intuitive training for for an advanced person would probably be that you have one movement per day where you go in and you know that that's your like defining metric movement
where you try to progress and you put in your effort and you follow some sort of predetermined progression plan for that movement and then your other movements that follow while they're intuitive they support that main movement so that might be like you have a back in bicep day and so everything that follows your wide grip pull down which may be is your metric movement everything is meant to support that movement and
oh
so whatever order you do it in or how hard you work or whether you use rest pause sets or whatever like
yeah
at least you have an objective of hey these movements are meant to improve my performance ex ation response on the said first movement um and it would be the same way across all muscle groups like hey this is my day for quads i'm going to do a pendulum squad and then i can do leg extension sissy squads dumballsplitsq it's whatever it is it's going to help support my pendulum squat and so for me i think that that would be the way it would have to be implemented and i think that that could
actually work because it gives me direction but it also gives me freedom and so i like that aspect of it
yeah the one thing i
m
one
oh
to add that you brought up is i think if you're having if you're going like maybe you're like right now i'm doing this flush thing my body weights down and my energy levels are down last week i tried to stick to my programming just got crushed i was dropping like i'm working low rep ranges like seven to nine reps
oh
i was losing like two to three raps over the week before on like a set of eight like that's
ye
bad
wow
that's a notable notable drop off and for me like that just sucks
yeah
with me i'm like i'm just getting my ass kicked and i don't want to be here sort of thing so this week i have been at the end of last week too just a more intuitive approach and like hey i'm not making progress this week i know that i just want to not take a straight up two week ghost from the gym d i'm going to go in
oh
i'm going to do a couple of rest pause sets
m
get a pump and just check the box that i'm in here and working sort of thing and i think if you're ever going through a period where maybe you're maybe in between rograms or you like i don't know you're moving coming up or you're in some like very typical period and you just want to get in and get things going like i think a more intuitive approach to that of like i'm just going to get in maybe used some intensity techniques because i don't have as much time and i just want to
get a pump and keep some tension on the muscular ture so i don't atrophy sure
yeah i don't think i would do well like the there used to be old body builders that would write articles for tee nation and even before that in the muscle magazines that would say things like i don't have a plan just like whatever muscles not sore right train it
yah
and and that sort of thing is like like i would just
yah
not do well with that at all like i'd be training back every back and lateral delt
yeah
like every day and it's just like i don't
ah
know it just it just doesn't sense to me
yeah agreed
okay so next question hey brian love your youtube shorts hey that's awesome because i just post shorts of me working out
oh
can you discuss whether shrugs are a good choice for the upper traps some say it isn't optimal so paul carter i think is the big voice right now that's saying that that upper traps
m
don't respond to h to vertical shrugs and what's interesting is that paul carter also has been on like a tirade recently to correct what he believes was an incorrect
¶ What is a good choice for upper traps?
statement years ago that the lads should be trained in the sagital plane so he just made a post yesterday being like wide grip pull downs are just as much late as you know one arm iliac pull downs or whatever the comparison was and so i feel like this is really just representative of the way that things change in the industry and like mechanistically dude if you if you lift your shoulders up like our your upper traps are working i don't really understand like like it's all
going to come back around in like two years now everyone is going to be like yeah yeah upper traps like that you just you shrug up and you know the upper traps work and just to me i think if you want big traps you should probably train them vertically you should probably do some at like a forty five degree angle whether it's like prone over a bench or you know bent over or whatever you should probably do some of those two and then you should do a whole bunch of rowing movements instead
for like your lower and mid traps
ah
so um i believe that that raising your
uh
shoulders to your ears works your upper traps and i don't think that i can really be convinced that that not the case
yeah
m
i don't really have anything to say on the it is an
oh
optimal sort of thing but i think if like if traps or something that you really desire like pull heavy off the floor and maybe change your
hm
training style like show me a decently lean power lifter who doesn't have massive traps and rhomboids like absolutely
h
massive
m
they're not doing power shrugs like that like they're just dead lifting heavy off the floor sort of thing so that what i would say is like if that is your goal just run like a power building cycle for four months or something like that and you're probably get much more out of that than you would
yeah
adding shrugs once per week
yeah totally agree okay better to always
m
run mechanical tension messa cycles with de loads or implement different stimuli
yeah
so this kind of comes back to the way that an one
a
generally
yeah
does things where they tend to not have like a typical de load where you just decrease effort and volume instead they generally will jump you out to a difference simili so um if you're doing hypertrophy hypertrophy hypertrophy for four to eight weeks whatever it is instead of reloading they basically ould be like okay we're going to do
¶ The benifits of mechanical tension mesos with deloads
a strength phase for two weeks or we're going to do metabolic phase for two weeks and then we're just going to jump right back into hypertrophy there was an entire podcast on the revived stronger where cass and der mike talked about the benefits and drawbacks to these different approaches personally i don't believe that the literature is super confident at this point that there's benefits to periodizing in that manner but i think that like anything the psychological side is
just as important as the physiological and so for certain people with specific o types like you probably can't just go into the gym and do hypertrophy all the time and you may find that doing short strength phases and short metabolic phases to kind
oh
of switch things up something that is really good for you mentally and the opportunity cost of doing so is basically nill like it may help you move forward and it might help you either increase neural adaptations via strength cycle or increase metabolic processing and work capacity through the
m
metabolic phase or it might not but it's not like you're going to have worse hypertrophy because you did a two weeks strength phase or a two week metabolic phase instead of a de load and then right back into hypertrophy i think over time screwing to the one that fits your personality best probably is going to be the best one for you
i don't think i could add anything better on to the back of when i think what you said around the psychology
m
is perfect
m
there
oh
kay
the next question i think you are going to be the one that has to respond
yeah
to this but do you do you have a vegetarian recipe book that you'd recommend to increase protein intake
i do not
okay
i do not i do not work with vegetarian or vegan clients i've had very few in the past one was very very successful the other or not it's if you're coming to brian and i for vegan
oh
or vegetarian stuff you're coming to to
ye
not great people what
yeah
i what i would say there is gonna
yeah
your best bets here are obviously like okay i will i do have some things for you nutrikey is a company that makes a protein powder called v pro vhyfanpro that is probably one of the best vegan protein powders on the market is a very very high protein content it's a a p blend amran thrice protein different ones there very very limited ingredient setter you really like that i will actually order that
ye
protein and split about fifty fifty with way with that i do really like that one your best bets for higher protein sources are going to be like your legumes beans chick peas lentils i think are going to be one of the best some of the other like sprouts and different
oh
things like that that being said these are carbo hydrate sources
oh
that are traditionally higher in protein than other
a
non higher protein carbohydrate sources but these are not primary protein sources and that's the hardest thing here is any time that you are increasing your protein and take as a veganorty vegetarian you are doing so at the expense of also increasing your carbohydrate intake if you're trying to gain that's fantastic when you're trying to go through a calory deficit it does provide a litt bit of a complicated situation
yeah i would just suggest possibly contacting eric tresler from the stronger by science group because he just recently switched to a vegetarian diet for moral reasons because it's funny he actually had an entire tirade and a whole episode against what was the movie on netflix that everyone was
game
as
changers
big a couple of game changers yeah he did like an entire like two hour
oh
episode breaking down game changers and how it's wrong but now he's essentially become vegetarian for
oh
for moral reasons not for physiological reasons but i would contact him because i'm sure he's figured out ways to make it you know the most productive
yeah i mean there's
okay
people who do it
yep
too it's just i'm
yeah
just not versed well versed in it
for sure so we're going to do three more questions and then we'll save the next ten for next week
yep
cool all right this question was for me why did i drop
yah
r d l's from my programming originally and so i've touched on this back in i want to say july i cut r d ls out of my program
oh
for the first time pretty much ever like i've either dead lifted or had ardlsfor eternity um and there's a couple of reasons one i think the main impetus was that i tore my plan or fash in june and when i was doing or l's after tearing the planrfasha i couldn't put the proper amount of pressure through my
¶ Why RDL was dropped from the program
big toe on my right foot and so i was kind
oh
of externally rotating my feet or my
oh
my one foot my right foot and i would get these like minor tweaks in my back almost every second or third time i would do rdl's um and it wasn't huge or completely debilitating but it was enough where i'm like why am i doing a movement that kind of creates aggravation
yeah
and so that was the main reason and then i had p r p in my knee eight weeks ago and that was another reason why i didn't want to do r d ls because it was going to essentially again create an instability and a compensation mechanism and things like that and my low back i would say of all the areas of my body that tend to be aggravated by training my low back is probably the most sensitive um so i just have to be a little bit careful and cautious of that and so like now i'm adding ardis back in
but i'm doing it with a bee dance because that allows me focus on each or rather with a rear foot elevation because that allows me to focus on each leg individually and i think that that's going to be better for the long term stability of my low back i'm sure that i will be back to doing r d ls with a bar bell or a trap bar at some point in the future i just like at this point you know my my back feels great i haven't had any flare ups or anything since i took the ardls out and that's
been really
oh
cool um so i just kind of want to ride that wave a little longer um anything to add to that
i would just say like if you're if you're feeling like beat up in training and you
oh
kind of don't want to do like the full due diligence of like going to c p t or getting worked on regularly or not rolling out but like doing your soft tissue knowmobilizations and sort of things like that's probably one of the easiest things that you can pull that will stop or not stop but relieve pressure on your body i mean it's it's it's not technically actually loaded but you're loading through the spine it's a lot on the hips the bracing like oh for me personally
like today's a day i'm supposed to do already else like when i woke up looked at my gym thing and i'm like there's no fucking way i'm doing my articles today
uh
like it's just taxing you know it's
yeah
like taxing like back squat is
oh
taxing sort of thing and i think if you're just
a
kind of beat up it's a really simple like hey i'm going to swap this right i'm adding the best dance ones into you're effectively training the same thing but you can use significantly less load you don't have to rely on such a like comprehensive core brace to perform the movement
hm
you get half the load um so that's something that i would say
yeah
they're great but there
yeah
is like a cost two performing them and sometimes it
yeah
can be beneficial to just pull that for a little bit
yeah they caused me a ton of fatigue like i can even feel it over the next couple of days to like just that that whole
ah
c n s thing if you want to say that like you're just system feels kind of beat down for a
yeah
couple of days after and so i've been feeling great without them and i think i'm going to keep it that way for a little bit okay next question for lengthened partials only sets do you use a percentage of weight and for how many raps i love this question because this is something i incorporate into my rating a lot so what i've been doing with my lengthened only sets is first i'll do a full range of motion set so say my rep range is six to ten i'll do a full
yeah
range emotion set to whatever the as for the week if it's a short overload movement it's going to be somewhere
m
between zero and two
oh
and
yeah
after
oh
i do that full range emotion set say i get hundred and sixty pounds for for eight reps hundrandsixty for eight short overload movement i'll rest normal two to three minutes and then i'll usually add twenty to thirty per cent weight to that it depend on the movement and exactly where the overload takes place because some movements are like short mid bias and some are just really
yeah
really short bias and for the
oh
ones that are really really short bias increase the weight
oh
probably thirty per cent but for something that's like short mid bias i usually air more on the side of twenty per cent and an example there is like a cable row i feel like i always had thirty per cent like i can just i can still get short for a rep
oh
with thirty per cent more but on a t bar row i always add twenty percent because if
oh
i do thirty per cent i can't even get a full rep with that weight ter after my
yeah
short set so basically say i'm doing a hundred and sixty for eight
ye
and say i add twenty per cent than now that's thirty two pounds that i'm adding to one sixty so it would be one ninety two um and i would basically try to match the reps that i achieved on the full range emotion set and that length and set might have one or two full reps say i get two then i would do six max effort partial reps to get me to that eight rep number and then something else that i'm considering adding in after i d me eric helms not to name drop or anything but
oh
m helms after he was on the revived
yeah
stronger episode to
uh
ask him about what he was saying about essentially choosing a range of motion that is not full range of motion and then making that your full range of motion so essentially you'd look at like something like a row and be like hey sixty percent range emotion
a
is my full range of emotion
a
and then you're just going to basically your desired r r of that range of motion so i wouldn't necessarily u s range of motion drop off it would be as if like hey i'm targeting one r i r of sixty percent of range of motion so as soon as i could no longer get the range of motion that was established as the range of motion than that set is over and so that's a different way of implementing it that i haven't done yet i really like my way so i've been hesitant to implement that
oh
but i do think that to his
yeah
point what he said in his response to me was basically that that way that he's talking about allows you to still use r i r with your lengthened sets where as my way is essentially everything's failure because you're
failure
like okay i'm pulling as hard as i can that i'm pulling as hard as i can again that i'm pulling as hard as i
yeah
can again and that range tion is falling off because you can't
yeah
pull as hard any more so you're essentially at our past failure
yeah
and eric helms being the the guy that he is you know really really enjoys his r i r and so i think in his mind the way he's talking about it makes more sense and maybe something worth experimenting with
yeah it's a really it's like my initial thought is like it's it's almost silly it's like we're taking this we're taking a past failure set right and now
yeah
we're like adding all right um
right right
but yeah i mean i get it
it's just a different range of motion essentially
yeah
it's like how if you
yeah
do an iliac lap pull down you don't pull your elbow all the way behind your body
yeah
like that in itself is kind of a partial range of motion movement even at the art and so it's kind of implementing that same idea into like other movements which
yeah
i
exactly
think makes sense
yeah
um all right final question actually ship
right
man we're already
yah
on time and this question is going to take a little while so let's
let's
let's save this one for next episode and we'll have eleven questions
oh
next week
perfect yeah let's do it as always guys thank you for listening brian
m
i will be back next week answering the rest of these questions for the november q and