044 How to write a fat loss training program

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode. Thank you for joining us. for another episode of Hypertrophy Past and Present. And today we have no technol technological different differences, difficulties. Goodness me, I can't even speak today. No technological difficulties, but I've got some verbal difficulties going on.

Um, Chris, I was listening to your podcast with Rob this week and I th I had a little bit of a giggle because you obviously do this bit, you introduce a podcast when you do your other podcast. And I noticed that you never start the podcast by asking how Grubb is doing. And I always start by asking how you're doing. And it became apparent to me that you probably hate it when I do that. And that's why you don't expose other people to it.

But nonetheless, I'm still gonna do it. So how are you doing today? I'm okay under the circumstances, thank you.

Okay. So before we jump into today's topic We are what are we doing? We're reminding you all about a very exciting announcement that we made last week. If you didn't listen to our episode last week, you won't know what it is. And that is that we are launching a webinar certification course.

So go back to listen last week'cause we did talk about it a little bit more, but we will be announcing more detail soon. It's gonna be a year long webinar series certification course, which is a mouthful, I'm sure is a better way, more c uh succinct processing.

Certification, isn't it? I mean we're we're doing a certification. It's advanced programming certification and it's based on a series of webinars. Well that's how we're delivering the material, isn't it? We're delivering the material using webinars because it's the most uh kind of

efficient way for us to deliver the material and it's also uh the best for the person who's receiving the information because they can receive the information either by attending or they can get the download afterwards. So it works Yeah, and it allows us the opportunity to do more interactive stuff as well. So we're in the certification process, we are offering a between each webinar module, a topic, we're gonna have a tutorial webinar as well.

So it'll be an opportunity for you guys who are doing the certification to come on board, even present us with c with case studies. We'll work through that. Um so yeah, it's a little bit more interactive as well. So Totally. Loads of opportunity to ask questions. I mean that's the key thing. It's enormous amount of access to our brains throughout the process, really.

Yeah. Yeah. And as we talked about last week, the goal here is really to present you guys with the tools to work with the type of clients that you're likely to get as modern day coaches and PTs. You know, it's

Everyone's done the fat loss stuff. Everyone's done the, you know, hypertrophy one oh one stuff. And the goal of this webinar is not to give you the the foundational stuff that hopefully at this point you've picked up elsewhere. The goal is to give you the advanced from From this podcast one would have Yep, from the last weemus? You're the one who tracks you're the one who tracks the numbers. I know it's in the forties, so we haven't hit fifty yet. Wow.

Yeah, forty four maybe, something like that. I mean you guys who listen will know'cause it says it's literally in the corner somewhere. Wow.

Anyway, yeah. So the goal here with these webinars is to present you guys with the tools to work with, you know, people who might be experiencing sleep issues and stress issues and gastrointestinal issues and advanced clientele and athletes and powerlifters and even uh, you know, enhanced lifters and people who might be using peptides or maybe using GLP1s or all commander things that you guys are likely to be dealing with nowadays that maybe you weren't dealing with ten years ago as a coach.

And yeah, to provide you guys I guess of tools to succeed with those clients as well. Anything you wanna add? So we were just gonna add this week that we've had loads of questions about the um project already since our announcement last uh last week. Um, most of the questions kind of come down to two um important things. Firstly, what is gonna be the exact uh kind of content? What's our list of uh planned topics?

And we're going to deliver that this week. And we're going to get a a slide out on probably Instagram this week with all of those details. So if you're curious about the exact nature of the uh course material, that will be going out in the next couple of days.

Um and then obviously the other kind of half the questions we get is people wanting to know how much is it gonna cost and what the kind of early bird discounts are gonna be. Well, we're not gonna give you that this week, we're gonna give you that next week, so keep an eye out for that and that information will be coming out. Very very soon. But yeah, in terms of course content, next couple of days.

Yeah. And we do have an email list on both of our social media profiles, Instagram profiles. Make sure you do if you haven't yet sign up to that list. Just pop your email in there because it is going to be Uh that's where the exclusive early bird discount is going to be. And while we're not announcing what the price is yet, I can confirm that that is going to be We've just been plotting huge discounts, haven't we, before this podcast? Uh

Okay, today's topic we are covering oh what are we even calling today's topic? So um this com this is this topic is because it's the kind of single most common question I'm getting at the moment. Kind of um either people are saying to me,

please do a podcast about how the silver era bodybuilders approached uh their programming during a dieting period. So it's not so much asking about, you know, how they were dieting specifically but just how they were approaching programming during a dieting period. Uh and then obviously.

I also get lots of questions just about that from a physiological perspective. How do we change our programs during a dieting period? And I said, Well, we can do both of those in the same podcast so um you can do the bit on how people used to approach the programming during a a a diet back then and then I can add a bit of physiology and then we can hash out something together.

So programming during dieting. It's it's m I'm making it sound like we came to this unprepared. We're not. We we did talk about it, I just didn't know what the title would be. We've just got a brain full of all kinds of other stuff, including all the course uh structures that we've been plotting. So so Sylvia era time. Story story time. So when we talk about dieting and cutting and and what else do people call it? I don't even know. Definition you told me is what they called it.

Well that's what they called in the Sylvia era, right? So if you're looking for a Silvia era cutting plan or fat loss plan or whatever, you're not really going to find it. what you'll find will be a defining plan, definition plan defining. Um sometimes they will talk about reducing, like if someone is overweight, then there'll be a reducing plan. And I think part of

P when you do look at this silver era stuff, this stuff is very much like a minority. Okay. There's not a lot of content on this. And I think there's two reasons for that. One is most of what they were doing when it came to dieting was in fact their dieting. And so they do talk about the nutrition component there and that kind of gets a spotlight when they're talking about this concrep dieting, cutting side of things. Uh and then the second thing is

And we'll talk about this now, is that the training didn't really change that much. And so I don't think there was a huge emphasis on really talking about the training, because they kind of had the foundations in place that made a lot of sense. So if you look at some of the guys who were talking about what they were doing, Steve Reeves, Reg Park, some of the more well known names and some who, you know, they're writing magazines or writing courses or whatever.

There's a lot of I would say a lot of consistency in how they were doing things. And I do wanna dispel a bit of a myth because it's easy when you look online to make the assumption that the way these guys were dieting or training for when they were dieting was using heaps and heaps of volume. And if you jump online, you look up Sil I'm assuming I haven't tried it, but if you look Google like Silver Era fat loss phase or whatever training, whatever

you're probably going to be hit with some ridiculous volumes. Well it'll say, oh, Steve Reeves was doing, you know, 50 sets per workout and nine sets of biceps and whatever else. Or Reg was doing, you know, 12 sets of biceps. And they were, and they were doing that for the last two to four weeks before competition. That was not their dieting training plan.

Okay, they they're clear about that. They've like Reg talks in his books, hey, for two to four weeks before it come before it got on stage, this is what I would do. And they were using that for fat loss. They were using that literally as their physical activity. But in the lead up to the getting on stage, that's not how they were training to actually achieve definition, fat loss, whatever.

So what we've got today is a Reg Park plan. And this is going to look a little bit different. So what I've done is I have taken Reg Park's specialization definition course. And I've gone through the recommendations he made because he basically gives one a formula on how to write a defining plan.

And so what I've done is I've written the plan using exactly what he spelled out for us. So you're not gonna find this exact workout in a book, in a magazine, whatever, but it's taken directly from the the exercise suggestions he's given and the format that he's given. So buckle in because it is a big one, but it is literally exactly how he has described to do it.

So what he has suggested is when you are defining, it is important to not just jump up the volume. He says a lot of people make this mistake. They go heaps of sets. Heaps of repetitions. He goes, no, no, no. Definition comes from the variety of exercises one's doing, not from just doing more repetitions, not from doing more sets, using a heavy load for a single set. For high variety of exercises.

So we we've got a restless bridge as our first exercise, which I don't know if we've talked about before, maybe with some of the drones era stuff we talked about. I think we actually mentioned it last week, incidentally. Um, but this was a neck exercise. Now in in Reg's later work, he didn't really do this, but at this point when he wrote this book, he did suggest it. So restless bridge for single set. Then we've got a standing dumbbell lateral raise for single set.

A standing front raise with a dumbbell for single set. A barbell curl. Now he did say you can do this either strict or cheating. He did use both. And then dumbbell concentration curls. Dumbbell incline curls. He did do quite a lot of curling. So he did suggest sort of usually about three different curling exercises in these routines.

Then an easy bar s skull crusher. He called it a triceps curl, but basically it's what we would call a skull crusher today. And then a standing dumbbell triceps extension. Dips, which he did say you could either do on the parallel bars or you could do on the bench. Then a flat dumbbell fly, a pullover, which usually he would do after the squat, but I've ordered it in the uh the muscle groups, but you could move this after the squat.

And then a wide grip barbell bench, a bent over barbell row. He didn't specify hand position. He normally did fairly close grip when he was doing that, sagittal plan. A barbell shrug, a lap pull down, once again he didn't specify hand position there. Stiff leg deadlift. These are all single sets. A deep knee bend, which is a squat. Iron boot leg extensions.

A standing calf raise with the barbell, but obviously you could do that with a machine nowadays. And then concluding with abs, well he called it waist, which was sit-ups, and leg raises.

Now, once again, all of this was done for single sets. We've got 21 exercises here. So 21 sets in total. And he did talk about sort of moderate repetitions, you know, somewhere around that 10 repetitions per set mark. Uh and Short, like somewhat incomplete rest periods, but he wasn't suggesting just going, you know, flat out one exercise to the next, but he did use shorter rest periods.

It's a bit of a mammoth plan. What do you think of that? So um Yeah, I mean there's uh lots of important things here to to emphasise, aren't there? I mean, um first of all, um there's an enormous emphasis here on exercise variety. and very little emphasis on volume per exercise. So uh clearly um there's a uh kind of a an interest here in um reducing the amount of uh fatigue that each um kind of set of muscle fibers are experiencing.

Similarly, there's also a kind of emphasis on targeting as many muscle fibers as possible. So um really, really interesting kind of uh viewpoint here or approach here because it's um Essentially saying and and this is presumably done uh kind of three times a week, I'm guessing. Yes, which is a very important point'cause he's and that's why I think they don't talk so much about these cutting plans that much because their default is using high priority three times a week. Yeah.

So basically it's making sure that there's very, very little chance of any muscle fibre that's being trained at any point in the program from experiencing atrophy because it's getting hit pretty much at the end of every sim every stimulus period that's going on. Um, so yeah, uh high chance of avoiding atrophy. Um, obviously

less stimulus per session, um, but you know, that's probably a good thing if you're not really able to achieve an enormous amount of kind of growth in that period of time anyway. So very, very cool kind of basic structure straight away.

Um, in terms of exercise selection, I mean kind this is kind of half you, half Reg, isn't it? I mean, it's like your kind of So what I did, just for c um context for people listening, so he split it up into muscle groups and he gave around maybe five exercise suggestions perfectly. So they're they're his they're his exercises but you've picked them. So it's kinda like Pick the first two to three per master group that he recommended.

Really? Okay. So this isn't you like kind of deliberately picking the best ones? No, it's not. No, literally this is the first one to recommend. That's that in in which case that's actually a lot better than I thought. I th I thought you'd have to go hunting for these. No, I was tempted, but no, I did not configure this.

Okay, wow. No, this is actually then a lot better than I expected it to be. And that also explains one or two of the slightly odd choices, but okay, cool. Um What do you th just just for clarity then, starting at the top, what do you think the restless bridge is actually training or is he just kinda doing it as a bit of a warm up there?

Yeah, I mean look, obviously they they talk about this as a neck exercise and he gave other alternatives as a neck exercise. There is gonna be some hip involvement in it'cause they are using a a barbell usually. I've never experimented with it myself, um, to see kind of what kind of neck stimulus one does seem to get. I'm certainly not gonna try at my age, so yeah. Leave that one for somebody else who's a lot braver than I am. Um, okay, cool. Understood. So basically we've got um

We've got some single uh joint stuff for the uh shoulders. Actually whether the front raise is more of a uh clavicular pec is a separate question, but Um curls, we've got three variations of curls, um, a little bit of um variety there in terms of the regions. Obviously, incline is going to get a little bit maybe more of the biceps, maybe um

The if it's a cheating curl, you might get a little bit more brachyradialis. Not sure what the concentration curl is gonna do. Um I just wanted to curls,'cause that's been a a topical conversation this week. Sure. And people have been arguing a lot about do you need different curls, just one curl gonna do it? And and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna go back and look at what the silvery guy said. I had a bit of a suspicion, but I thought, hmm let's just get some good data here.

And I went back to r all like all of Reggie's advanced plans. I went back to Steve's plans. I went back to to John Grimmick and what he was talking about. And there was actually consistency in each and these are the the first, second, third Mr. Universes, right? And literally all of them said to do a curl that had essentially a uh a flexed shoulder position. They all had either a neutral shoulder position or extended shoulder position curl, and they all had a unilateral curl.

And all of them are saying they're doing three different curls. was their preferred way of of training an ad advanced arm. So th they're actually definitely coming down hard on the side of variety then for elbow flexor training. That's that's a really important data point because Um, like you've been saying, um, there is a trend for the moment people to react against our uh kind of biggest arms ever kind of episode. Um

And saying basically you just need to do curls and you forget about any kind of variety. Now, sure, I mean like I am just gonna do a c single curl variation. I mean I'm not interested in kind of maximizing my kind of arm size at this point in my life, but Yeah, I think if you're aiming for high level bodybuilding success, I don't see how one curl variation is gonna do it. Um, if you want to stay natural at least.

Um, so yeah. Um but just kind of like a a very quick rabbit hole on that particular issue. Ultimately, let's just kind of start by saying, Okay, where where are these opinions coming from? I mean Everybody has obviously their own opinion about um kind of what good exercises are for each muscle group, but ultimately there are only really two valid ways of um justifying an a set of opinions or an opinion.

Either you can have a physiological model that says, This is how I think the brain allocates motor unit recruitment and activates muscle fibers so that they are exposed to active and passive mechanical tension. So please don't tell me that

you can just use passive tension and you don't need to have activation of the fibers because unless you're doing a static stretch, you do. So how are you applying that motor signal and and exposing the fibers to active and passive mechanical tension? And then you can start to basically make arguments about

how these muscles are going to experience growth depending on the exercise selection that you are um kind of arguing for. So I'm going, okay, I think that the biceps back you're going to be activated most in this position. I think that the Brachialis in this position and the brachioridialis in the other position. And here is the kind of protocol or the framework that I'm arguing for that justifies that. It is a physiology based framework. I'm arguing from the basis of neuromechanical matching um

And here are the kind of momentum data uh kind of points that I've collected and the um long term training studies that fit in with that uh kind of model. So you can either do that, you can either say this is a physiological model that I'm arguing for and to my knowledge there is only one available physiological model that has any kind of legs right now and it's the neuromechanical matching model. Everybody else is arguing against it, but they don't have their own arguing for it.

So ultimately what I'm seeing at the moment is like you've got literally one available physiological model. If you haven't got that, the only thing you've then got is outcome study. So all you can then do is say, these are the outcome studies and I'm going to kind of analyze all of them and tell you what I think um, you know each exercise is likely to do um based on those long term studies. Well, we're not very far away from having AI do that for you.

So the reality is that either you can kind of go down the uh neuromechanical m matching uh model uh argument and say, This is what I think uh exercises are gonna do.

um and that will kind of give you an answer. Or you can go down the route of saying, I'm just gonna be an outcome kind of devotee and I'm just gonna tell you what the outcome studies say. Now to be honest, if you just go down the outcome studies route as a kind of to find the best uh exercises for the elbow flexors, you are gonna be swimming in a lot of very, very murky water because they are very, very uh kind of contradictory in general.

Um, but I think you can kind of figure out a way through it if you apply the neuromagomatine lens and it kind of steers you towards saying, well, those studies probably aren't like in line with it, so therefore they're probably not right, but these studies are in line with it and they do support it and that kind of gives you a reasonably confident output as long as you kind of have other reasons to accept that neuromechanical matching is likely correct.

Um, you just have to be a little bit kind of uh have a filter to start with, which is kind of the model that you've uh decided to work with. Um but basically those are the only two options. So

When people are saying, Oh, no, no, no, I think that the these exercises are best for the elbow flexors, I'm like, Yeah, but which approach are you taking? Are you taking a physiological model approach and saying this is how I think things work and therefore these are the exercises that I think will work best?

Um, or are you saying, I'm just pausing the outcome studies and I'm kind of navigating a route through those based on what we call evidence? So ultimately you've either got a science based approach or you've got an evidence based approach, as I've said many, many times before, Science based is basically trying to figure out how things work and then going from there. Evidence based is just saying what the outcome studies say. Um

And then trying to figure out what the what the uh kind of appropriate exercises would be based on those. And I don't think that you can actually do it based on outcome studies. So I guess really For all the people who are making a lot of noise about this at the moment, I would say tell me which of those two approaches you're taking and justify um what your answers are because I don't see anybody who is giving an alternative physiological explanation.

Yeah, I think that's true. And I think what's interesting with the outcome based approach is And you know, we've talked about this when we talk about things like splits, when we talk about volume, is so much of the details get missed entirely in the outcomes. Right. And you know, whether that's because of duration, whether that's because of sample size or whatever.

And so what you see with people who are then aligning themselves purely with outcomes is everything becomes diminished and suddenly kind of nothing really matters. Like it it just defaults back to lowest common denominator. Treatancy doesn't matter that much, split doesn't matter that much, exercise variety doesn't matter that much. Nothing really matters that much.

There's a number of problems and that's that's and and that's an interesting kind of umbrella that sits across all of them. Really the problem is that if you want to do this uh Job that we do, I guess. If you want to do this kind of like um kind of analysis that we do, then if you want to do it purely based on outcome studies, you actually have to include every single one.

You can't do it without including every single one because the whole point of relying on outcome studies is that your entire uh evidence base is not how things work but what data says

um from a long term perspective. So if somebody is posting a like an Instagram post and they're saying, Oh look, these two studies show this outcome based information I'm like, just swipe away because Ultimately every s every single kind of analysis like that has to include every single study, otherwise it's it's garbage.

Um whereas if we're going from a uh a model, then we say, Look, this is what the model says. If you have an outcome study that slightly disagrees with that, it's more likely that the outcome study is wrong. than that every single study showing that this model works, w of which there are dozens, you know, is i is wrong. So if you start with a a kind of a understanding of what the model is and the physiological reality

then yeah, you've got a bunch of outcome studies that largely sit with that. Fine, okay. Um if a couple of them don't, well, you know, they're probably wrong. Um whereas if you're just literally doing it from an evidence based point of view, you can't do that. You have to include every single study. So straight away it's actually

um misleading to post a couple of outcome studies and say, Oh look, these couple of outcome studies show this thing that I believe therefore it's right. I'm like, no dude, you have to show every single one if you want to do it from an outcomes perspective. Otherwise it's a garbage analysis. Um And then as you say, what happens is if you literally just do it from an outcome perspective, you end up with an incredibly murky situation because

You don't know which of these studies is more likely to be correct and which one is more likely to be um true. You literally just have to base it on statistical kind of factors and go, well this study had these statistical features so it's more likely to be you know and that's what we do when we do meta analysis. We have a process called weighting.

Basically you weight studies according to their kind of what you perceive to be their statistical validity and you give those studies h heavier weights because you think they're more likely to be true. It doesn't mean actually that they are more likely to be true, but that's a separate question. So but anyway, you end up with a kind of very, very murky picture which, as you say, flattens out

the kind of um subtleties and and wrinkles um that actually might be very informative for you to understand how things work. So you just end up with this very, very muddy picture which is like, yeah, strength training works. I'm like, yes, we know that strength training works.

I've said this many, many times. Number of times people come on my uh kind of uh social media and say, Oh, so you're saying that, you know, kind of this kind of works or that works and I'm like, Yeah, strength training works. Like but what we're trying to get at here is what works slightly better. Um

And you can't do it with outcome studies for the reasons that you're just saying. It just it's too murky, it's too flat as a as a data set. You just end up squeezing out all of the all of the uh subtleties and all of the interesting bits. I think that's a really good framework to be working off when you're looking online at what you're seeing educators post is thinking to yourself, what lens are they coming at this from? Is it a physiology base or is it just outcome based?

Are you trying to understand how it works and then go from there? Or are you just saying, um, you know, it's evidence. It's just a list of outcome studies. Um if you're going down the list of outcome studies, you need all of them. You can't do it with just three. And that's what m most science based uh kind of oh evidence based uh kind of

um social media posting is at the moment in in in in in the area that we're we're in. It's just people posting a couple of studies and saying, look, this is what these studies say. I'm like, Yeah, well what about the other seventeen that you didn't talk about? Mm. You can't do evidence based without having every single study.

Yeah. Whereas if you've got a physiological model, then you know, you've started from a position of of of having some knowledge about the way things work, and then yeah, you can be a little bit more relaxed about your outcome studies because they're not as important.

Where were we? So we were going through the list of exercises um that you uh identified uh as the first couple in each uh section. We got to curls. That's that's it. It is conversation. And I was kind of having a rant about how um there is a a lot of pushback on the episode that we did about how to get the biggest arms ever. And um I pointed out that most of the pushback is is rubbish because it just starts from either people trying to argue that physiology works

without actually having a validated model. They just go, Oh, well, we think that, you know, the active link tension relationship governs where the brain sends activation. I'm like, okay, have you got a study that like demonstrates that model happening. I'm like, oh no, no, no, we just think it. I'm like, okay, well, it's probably not happening then.

You know, you've got tons of studies showing that the neuromechanical matching principle is validated and that's what I'm working with. I'm not working with a oh I thought that. I'm working with a this is a validated model. So there isn't another validated model. So physiology has a new mechanical magic model, and that's it. It doesn't have another one.

Um whereas, you know, evidence base again, people are just throwing a couple of studies out there and going, Oh, I think this because of that study I'm like, Well, yeah, cool, but what about the other seventeen? So anyway. In terms of tricep stuff, um he's kind of doing a uh he's doing two different shoulder positions, but he's not doing a standing one, is he? Unless you argue really that the dips is kind of doing that job.

So his skull skull crusher is skull crusher is gonna be at ninety degrees shoulder angle. Mm-hmm. His triceps extensions are probably gonna be um kind of with a hand behind the head. And then his dips, I guess, is probably doing the role of the shoulder position in the uh sort of anatomical or slightly behind the anatomical. So you could argue that dips is doing that, but again, dips has got um some shoulder movement in there. Um but yeah. Again, solid solid exercise variety really.

I mean, all of this is really good. I mean like look look at the peck stuff. I mean he's got um kind of dumbbell fly pullovers, um, you know, uh sort of definitely uh costal peck really. Um and then why grip bench is really duplicating the dumbbell fly, I would say there's not really much uh kind of difference between those. Um, lats, sagittal plus, um kind of maybe frontal if it's a lap pull down, and then he's got shrugs in there for the trap.

Nice to see uh hamstrings work in the programme, but there's only really the one exercise, stiff like deadlift. I mean obviously if He he he basically just gave deadlift variations there as options, so I just selected one'cause I don't I've never seen Reg program multiple deadlifts in the same plan, so I don't I don't think that would have been But I'm not even sure multiple deadlifts would make a lot of sense anyway. I mean uh it all c they all kind of do very similar things.

Um squats and knee extensions obviously really solid, uh kind of good coverage for the quad. Presumably that is a standing one, but again, um

Probably my selection if you've only got one calf raise. And then I don't tend to comment on ab work, but again, you know, sort of interesting um the fact that he's got two exercises rather than one. I mean, yeah, this is really kind of This is really kind of very, very similar to many of the things we talked about before, where we look at a program and go, given the constraints of the equipment that they had available to them.

And, you know, given the constraints of what ac what knowledge they had access to, this is absolutely fantastic. You know, I mean it really is absolutely fantastic. If you were to do I mean, obviously you might strip out the rest of his bridge'cause it's probably quite dangerous.

You might you might strip out like um you might strip out uh kind of the dumbbell fly'cause you're kind of duplicating it with the bench. You might strip out one of the biceps curls in this list'cause it probably is duplicating. Um, you might strip out the ab work um and get it down to maybe sort of eighteen or so exercises, uh single set. Moderately heavy load. Yeah.

Probably well, yeah, we can kind of hash that out in a minute when we do our perfect version. But um you know, honestly, this would be better than almost anything else you're gonna see online. Or so much better. Just so much better. Yeah. Um ridiculously good. Doing this three times a week, uh moderately heavy loads, um Singleshot Um really, really, really, really solid uh kind of routine. I'm just it's just so impressive when you kind of look at this and you see how good

it was at that time and then you look at what's going on today and you go, What we're doing today is absolute nonsense. I mean not what we're doing, but what the v vast majority of the industry is doing right now is absolute nonsense compared to what these guys were doing Yeah. And you know, this is so similar to what Steve Reags was doing as well. Like the plan itself is

Steve had a few additional exercises, but the format is obviously almost identical. You know, he was doing single sets, he was doing usually three exercises per muscle group. This is sort of two to three exercises. Uh and, you know, obviously he had more total exercises in the workout plan, but very, very similar. Mm. Now really, really solid. I mean, like, almost always when we do one of these pro program reviews, I'm like, it's

Not bad, at least. I mean it's at least not bad. I mean you could do worse. And then sometimes you come across something like this and it's just like, wow, this is just really good. you know, really, really good. Like I would literally just be arguing details around specific exercises. I wouldn't really be changing anything else.

Yeah. Yeah. So What do you think? 'Cause I look at a plan like this and I think Yeah, you could run this all the time. This is great. You could actually run this all the time. So that really kind of is is then asking the question, Well, what is changing um about being in a calorie deficit that means that we might want to change a training programme? So

I mean that's that's kind of like the question that we need to answer. And yeah um you know, when people have been asking us to do this uh topic on the podcast, I was kind of a lit at first I was a little bit Like kind of well, we've done this already. You know, we've done two kind of I think we've done two full episodes on what calorie deficits do in terms of affecting your recovery rate.

And also in terms of affecting, you know, uh the baseline level of muscle growth that's gonna happen, so the atrophy, hypertrophy balance. Um but, you know, again, people want a more practical conversation. So um let me just whiz through uh what's happening in a a kind of calorie deficit and then we'll come back to building our own programme, I think. I think that would probably be cool. So very, very quickly, um

When we go into a calorie deficit, we are going to experience a drop in the baseline levels of muscle protein synthesis. And that is going to negatively affect our rates of repair and also our uh kind of sort of net uh kind of anabolic status. So we're gonna experience a reduction in the uh kind of ability to maintain the mass fibres we've got and also obviously therefore in the r uh amount of uh benefit that we're gonna get from individual workouts.

So essentially we are going to see a slowdown in growth and potentially uh to the point where it starts to uh produce atrophy. And we're going to see uh this is assuming we're doing strength training by the way. So assuming we're doing a strength training program, we're gonna start to see a reduction in growth uh from the workouts we're doing.

And that's gonna be because both of the suppression of the baseline in the area around the workout, so the stimulus period, and also obviously in the uh kind of periods outside that, which we would call dissipation or atrophy periods. So um essentially the entirety of our muscle protein synthesis uh kind of level is gonna just go downwards. And that is again also then going to affect our recovery ability uh from previous uh from each individual workout.

So we're gonna find that we can't do as much volume, we can't do as uh, you know, kind of many uh sort of reps close to failure as we were doing previously or yeah, any of the other kind of variables, uh eccentric stuff and uh kind of um higher repetitions or anything like that. So uh we're gonna see uh those two uh negative things happening. Um

And the reality is it's fairly dose responsive. Um so uh I said before that if you put if your body perceives the calorie deficit as a stressor, you are going to push into a state um where you are going to be losing muscle mass pretty much no matter what you're doing. because you will have a very large glucocortical response from that stressor

And then everything is just gonna go in the opposite direction. So you're gonna see a big increase in muscle protein breakdown rates and you're gonna see a big suppression of muscle protein synthesis. And then like what we've got with the meta-analyses of chlorate restriction during strength training programs, You're gonna get over a and they kinda saw on average around about sort of five hundred calorie deficits a day.

you kinda tip over into a state where you're probably losing muscle mass even though you're conducting a strength training programme. Um so I would argue that that number probably varies between people depending on how their body perceives the stress or And it also probably varies a little bit depending on the strength training program because many of the strength training programmes done in research aren't ideal. They tend not to have a high enough frequency, they tend to have too much volume.

So you probably could do a little bit better if your program was um, you know, kind of more like the one we've just been talking about. So ultimately and and I guess just in terms of small details, I'm not gonna do a full on physiological review right now, I'm just giving the headlines, but in terms of small details, I just want to add that um

Yes, um protein content will make a little bit of a difference. We do see that if people are um kind of not I can or in animal models as well, if the protein levels are low and you add a little bit of protein back in, you do start to see um both faster recovery after uh muscle damage, whether it's exercise or non exercise injury. Um and you also um see a little bit of a uh kind of protective effect in terms of uh kind of muscle growth. But that isn't an absolute kind of um

you know, kind of universal effect across the entire spectrum of deficits. So if you get towards the t uh sort of higher deficit and it starts to be perceived as a stressor, then it really doesn't matter what the protein content of the diet is, you are going to experience a drop in um kind of muscle protein synthesis regardless. The the sensitivity of the body to that uh dietary protein reduces dramatically and you just don't get the benefit of that. So

You can't kinda say, Well, I'm just gonna eat, you know, nothing but tins of tuna and hope for the I mean, I know that some of these guys did, but you know you can't just eat tins of tuna and hope for the best. It isn't gonna work like that because the the at a certain calorie deficit uh the body starts perceiving as a stressor and you're just gonna it's just gonna ignore the fact that it's uh kind of protein and you're not gonna get that um kind of uh protective effect on muscle size. So

And there's some really good human data in that, and there's some really good animal data in that. It's fairly universal. So um can't really kind of um sort of uh tuner our way out of the problem. So that's it. I don't I don't wanna do a whole kind of review on uh the physiology today. We've done two episodes, if you wanna look back and uh we've done the calorie

uh deficit one on recovery. I think we'd definitely done the calorie deficit one on atrophy. Uh full on kind of physiological reviews and that I don't want to do that. Let's talk about um how we might structure a train a strength training uh kind of program based on on that those those effects.

So um if we look at this pro program that we've got in front of us from Reg, uh I think that's an amazing starting point. Um but um And and the reason I think it's an amazing starting point is because what I would always want to do is train as frequently as possible with the minimum amount of fatigue and hit as many muscle fibers as I possibly can. So I'd want to do um a full body AA A rather than a full body A B because I want to have that really, really high frequency.

Um and I'd want to try and get um as much variety in as in as I can. So I'd need to be doing single sets to get that high variety. Now you've already pointed out you might program like that anyway. And there's no reason you couldn't.

Yeah. So I I wonder why did they identify that this was more important when they were cutting than when they were bulking or when they weren't Sure. Sure. Sure. Um Do you have any'cause I I I suspect part of it would simply be You're not gonna get more motor unit recruitment per se in doing those same exercises for multiple sets, but what you are gonna get when you're not cutting

Is potentially higher baseline level of motor unit recruitment. Yeah. There's gonna be higher levels of motivation, there's gonna be less fatigue, et cetera. So is it more important to choose higher variety? because you're at a bit of a there's a detriment there anyway in terms of motor unit recruitment. And so you need to have tools to enhance motor unit recruitment that you don't maybe need

as much when you're not dieting. I wonder if that's maybe the mentality there. Obviously they're not thinking about it in those terms. But I'm trying to work out why else would they think this was more important when they were dieting. I think one of the things that you told me in the past, which kind of stuck in my head, was that um they definitely saw exercise variety as something that created shape and kind of appearance rather than just bulk.

So um I think what and I think what's happening is as they lose body fat they are kind of then seeing um better obviously uh kind of definition. And as a result uh exercise variety starts to become much more interesting because You can see the differences. Yeah, I mean, like if if you've got a level of body fat that's a bit high, you can't really see necessarily the shape and the difference that happens from two different uh elbow flexor exercises.

you know, um, or a couple of different uh back exercises or a coup you know, kind of delta exercise. You can't see what's changing. It's just like So I wonder whether actually it's just kind of that because they were in a period of time when they were able to see the kind of shapes uh that the muscles were forming underneath the skin. um, the y you kind of become attracted to doing exercises that make different parts of the uh kind of muscle become more visible. It could be that simple.

Yeah, potentially. It sounds viable, yeah. And you know, it's worth noting as well that like I mentioned with Steve Reeves, his plan which was almost identical to this, was not just a dieting plan. So obviously there were bodybuilders who were training in this way. I mean, you know, Grimick obviously did very similar. Mosa Hoffman stuff was very similar, single sets, many exercises.

So it's not like they were saying, you know, you only do this when you're dieting. It just so happened that Reg tended to do multi sets and when he was dieting he did say, Hey, I I y recommend these single sets. Yeah, I mean really kind of when you look at sort of the Reg programmes which have uh that are designed more for kind of um

uh you know, kind of uh non dieting periods I guess. Uh they tend to have fewer exercises, they tend to be multi joint stuff. Um and he's kind of training more like a power builder. Um so he's almost Bulk and power. That's Very clearly you would use those terms, yeah. Yeah. But it's almost like you're saying this part of the year he's training for strength and maybe even thinking about his numbers more than here's kind of what he looks like. Which is fair.

'Cause he was obviously working towards you know. Sure, exactly. So it like it's almost like his goals change. And so then he kind of goes into this period of time when so maybe the as they call it, the word definition uh kind of period. is not really kind of perfectly lined up or continuous with um a cutting period. It's just that this is what period of time when he's thinking more like a bodybuilder and less like a strength athlete.

So the reality is that definition and diet may not be perfectly coterminous um terminologies. Um they may just kind of be s slightly kind of coterminous. They're just uh or simultaneous. They're just kind of like yeah, the definition period starts here as he starts training like a body order and then at some point in that period of time he switches over to dieting because it that's obviously the purpose of the sport. Um

to end up with a low body fat level. Um so that that mean that may be the the the way to see it. So in the reality then this wouldn't necessarily be a true kind of dieting plan, it would literally just be a bodybuilding plan. Yeah, essentially it's See how developing plan. But that's actually true because the reality is um i there isn't really a kind of I mean

Honestly, there isn't really a way to avoid I mean yeah, there isn't really a way to avoid um doing all the exercises that you need to do. I mean if you are dieting, you need to make sure that um you're not experiencing atrophy very much and you need to make sure that you are targeting therefore all the muscle fibers that you are uh trying to develop.

And that means you need a full list of exercises. You need to do those three times a week. And you want to do them without creating a large amount of fatigue. So you need to keep the loads heavy or moderately heavy. I mean, really Like we were saying, um, apart from adjusting some of the exercises, like I mean, if we were kind of rewriting this, we would probably have I mean, do you wanna just follow this through in terms of the muscle groups as they're listed?

So if you're starting out then with um side delt, nothing wrong with a a lateral raise, although I would probably prefer a machine just for the stability, but I don't have a problem with lateral raise. Yeah, yeah. I'm programming a lot of cable battery raises at the moment. Yeah. Um, in terms of that front raise, I'm not sure that that would be my uh kind of preference. I'd rather have an overhead press, uh partial range of motion for the front delt.

Yeah, I know you're not a fan of that exercise. It's one I've actually been playing with myself lately, and I do quite like it, especially if you're doing it in a seated position, alternating or single arm at a time. But it's not one I've programmed a lot in the past. So I would normally do like a sagittal plane overhead there. Yeah. No, I think that and if it's partial then you're definitely guaranteeing some really solid anterior adult involvement.

In terms of curls, we literally did the episode on this, you know, kind of um a couple of weeks ago. So obviously uh incline cable curl, uh incline bench cable curl, um preach curl and um uh kind of something for the brachi radialis, whatever that might be. I like easy One thing I would point out that a lot of these silvery guys did not they talked about doing reverse grip curls, but I never see them program them very often.

But again, if you are you're using barbells and dumbbells, you're getting a lot of drackery out of Yalis anyway. In terms of triceps, um yeah, I mean um I would if if I'm programming, you know, more than one exercise of triceps, it's probably gonna be a standing triceps push down and dips if if people are happy with those but not Yeah, I mean you think we could just get rid of one of these because well maybe the the skull crusher I mean that we would change for a cable pushdown. and then

Uh really you maybe keep the dips in. I don't know. But again, oh we certainly don't need another one. Um but again, it really depends on what uh people uh feel comfortable with. Not everybody's comfortable doing dips, but yeah, for me In mind if you've got a sagittal plane overhead, obviously you're getting decent triceps. Getting some that is totally. Totally. So it definitely doesn't need three. Um in terms of uh chest, um

I mean, wide grip bench is gonna be a really, really solid option, as is dumbbell fly, uh or machine uh kind of uh fly. I'm not sure I really need um anything else, um, to be honest, unless um You know, unless it's a particular personal weakness that somebody has. I mean that's kind of why I like the front raise, to be honest, because you are getting at least a little bit there too, like both delts and chest. The pullover is an interesting addition here. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, um...

Again, I think this is kind of one of those uh areas where you have to kind of look at the person and see what their their weaknesses are and what kind of physique they want to develop. You know, I I actually kinda really like better that sort of bronze silver era kind of physique over the kind of later golden era physique where kind of people look like they're walking around with cushions shoved up their T shirts. I mean it looks a little bit kind of weird to me. But Um Um

Kind of into back. Um, really I wouldn't have a barbell row, but then that this is limit a an equipment limitation, I think. You know, I think really, um y we would program kind of a size to playing road probably, uh, with a machine. I mean, but Or if you can't use a machine you would at least do that maybe with a dumbbell, uh bent over one arm dumbbell.

Yeah, probably. L barbell road is just horrid for kind of stability. It just moves you around all over the place. Um Then yeah, I would probably then just do a Kelso'cause I'd be sitting in the machine that would allow me to do a Kelso. Um that pulled down obviously, fine. Um probably wouldn't program deadlift.

Um honestly I'd probably just because they take uh a lot of uh setting up and energy to do, especially in a dieting period, I'd probably program the two hamstring variations, leg curl, um in a uh seated position, leg curl in a lying position, honestly, just because they're so easy in a a calorie deficit. I would only do that if I knew I had a squat in as well. Otherwise, like we've talked about in the past, I want some kind of Or leg press? Or do you specifically want to score?

like weighted exercise. Okay. to get maybe some of the, you know, rectars or just some of that musculature that you may not be getting with these isolated exercises. In which case stiff leg would be my favourite to do that because I think it is quickest to set up. So I would normally program that as a stiff leg dragpool. Sure. Um and honestly that is probably the fastest one to get through and the least offensive from a energy point of view, I would guess.

Um I certainly would not do a squat in preference to that. But again, you know, whatever is easier. But yeah, I w I think we're on the same wavelength there really. Um, so then yeah, I would probably have a leg if you're doing that stiff leg, then obviously your alternative will be in the lying leg curl,'cause your stiff leg and your lying leg curl are gonna give you kind of good uh kind of carryover. Um

Or not carryover, um complementary synergy muscle groups. Yeah, synergy, that's the one. Um and then obviously leg press I would probably have, um, and then knee extensions, and then standing calf raise. I mean again we're not changing this massively. I mean it's

Of course. Obviously you'd need you'd need something for glutes. He's not got any glute in there, we should have said that, shouldn't we? Um But just with one or two a hip thrust and a seated abduction, you'd have that yeah, well and truly covered. You would have basically everything at that point. Um yeah. Yeah.

One thing that he did say that I didn't mention, which I think is a really interesting point. is he said you can add more exercises to this. But he said if you well get this. He goes, but if you add more, what you may want to do then is split it up. And train six days a week instead of three days a week. Which is probably one of our most popular podcast episodes ever. Number three that we did, I think. And I think that becomes more interesting in the con in the context of dieting.

Because motivation levels are probably gonna drop. Your ability to do twenty, twenty-five different exercises in a session is probably gonna be more limited than when you're well fed. And so it probably does make sense at that point to maybe split it up. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Um And and to be honest, it's still a question that I get. And um I think we covered this really, really well in that um podcast episode that we did. Oh is it Clancy Ross? I think we described his his approach to it.

Um, but yeah, I mean totally. You could split this up into two two uh kind of workouts of ten exercises, single set. you know um however you really wanted to do it, honestly. I mean, um I wouldn't kind of have anything that was overlapping too much, so I wouldn't have No, he Reg talked I think he said suggested from memory, I think he suggested starting with having your ab work on the other day and then I forget what he suggested adding onto it.

Yeah. I mean, for me, when I split stuff like this, I and I don't do it often, but if someone has access to a home gym or something like that and just works better for them I'd often actually take out the quads and I would put the quads on as a own little mini workout on those alternate days. I find generally there's not going to be a whole stack of overlap maybe with glutes, but that's about it. But I find most other muscles are gonna be a little bit difficult to have no overlap.

If you're doing six consecutive days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially if you're doing the kind of the stiff like deadlift variation, then you kind of are gonna end up feeling everything the following day. So the I guess the framework we're working here with is single sets, high variety. We're saying Low to moderate repetitions.

And I I like that he's talked about these moderate reps because obviously I've made this well known in the past. I like that idea of not having to do heaps and heaps of warm up sets. If someone can get away with doing five or six repetitions without warm up sets, go for gold. I struggle. Last time we talked about this it was exercise specific, wasn't it? I mean, that's that's what it comes down to. I mean like I can literally sit down in a number of machines and do

Two or three warm up reps and then I can do a set of six. No problem at all. But not on every machine, it's just a couple of machines. Like So I think everybody's gonna have their own kind of specific set of machines that that is doable on and then the rest you maybe have to drift up to eight to ten. And I think you just have to kind of work with what what you're comfortable with.

Which I think is an important point because if you were to write out this plan, if I was to write this plan out as it is with the twenty twenty exercises or whatever, I would

Either I would do one or two things. If I was giving it to a client, I would actually say I want you to do I I would probably say five to twelve repetitions, which is a huge range. And I would communicate that and say Basically I want you to do as few as possible that you feel good doing, that doesn't take heaps of setup and heaps of walking.

Exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And for me, if I was doing this plan, some of those exercises I'd be doing five or six repetitions and some of them I'd be doing ten to twelve. I can almost always make it work with eight to ten, but yeah, I see what you're doing there. Ha ha ha. I mean... Yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean that's it. It's just it there's gonna be some exercises when it's totally possible and some where it just feels utterly miserable. And I mean but this is actually a really good uh a really important point, a really good opportunity to make a very important point. So You know, physiologically, from a recovery point of view, um, kind of four to six repetitions is always going to be the best zone to be working in. I mean, it just that's just physiologically how it is.

But practically there are quite meaningful implications of doing that, which you've pointed out, which is that you some exercises you were gonna need to really stack in an extra um substantial number of warm up reps and faff around with um, you know, kind of setting the machine up the way you want it, um, even fetching plates and carrying them across the room. You are gonna end up putting more energy in than you are saving by focusing on that really tight.

repetition. I've had people talk to me and say Oh, I'm always trying to stay in that four to six or even they've even said to me, I'm I'm always trying to stay around five and I'm using micro plates to load. And I'm like, Okay, this is taking things a little bit far and also neglecting that really important practical implication side, which is that

If it's costing you more to do that, then it's not worth doing it. Um you know, kind of like t take this as an overall kind of um investment of your energy. And go, um, you know, uh, is it easier for me to just do a set of eight reps or nine reps or ten reps? and then move on to the next thing or you know, um, than it is kind of trying to really finesse things to make sure that I land on the five, six

kind of reps zone. But I it's cost me extra warm up reps, it's cost me walking around the gym fetching plates. It's cost me setting the machine up and getting the w the situation the way I want it and all that kind of thing. Let's not like forget that those are all costs as well. Yes. Um we have to take all those around.

Well, you know, sometimes people will send me plans, or send me, you know, screenshots of other plans or whatever and I'll see it and I'll and it's it'll be like, you know, standing car fairy sets of five. And I'm like, okay, for some people, fine, that'll work. For m like God, I would have to use two different gym pins and go steal, you know, eight different twenty killer plates to make that work. And to give that to a if you know the client, fine. She's collecting white.

And holding weights at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean I d you look at these silver area guys and sometimes you know they jump on people's back Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And to indiscriminately just give that out and say, Look, everyone should do sets of five It's like, well

Should they? Like is that is that really gonna work for everyone? I don't know that it's going to be. I mean s you do a seated seated deduction. It doesn't matter how many weights you strip on that. Uh like for me I wouldn't be able to make that heavy enough for a set of five, maybe single leg.

Well that's what yeah, I mean that's what I've ended up doing with a lot of stuff is just to avoid uh but again so again this is actually another important point, the same vein, which is that a lot of people say to me, Oh, I can't do the single limb stuff because um, you know, again it's taking up too much time and I But again, if you get to a point where you're quite strong, then actually single limb starts to make a lot more sense.

Alternative is again stealing every single plate in the gym and aggravating people and you know, kind of having set ups that aren't, you know, one hundred percent safe in certain circumstances. And actually having single limb stuff then becomes the least worst option. So this is all about trying to exercise a little bit of intelligence and going, Yes you know, what is the best

path through this scenario. Um and yeah, I mean like um in some situations where the gym's sort of uh the machine stack goes up quite a long way. Um and I'm feeling comfortable, I can literally just sit down and do a bilateral exercise and it's four to six reps and fantastic, great. That is absolutely not gonna apply to most people um all of the time and it's not even gonna apply to me all of the time. Yep. so we've got to have these up

Yeah. So my my hierarchy there is what you said, the bilateral exercise for lower repetitions. Perfect. And then I say if that's not an option Add repetitions as long as you're getting to what the rep in reserve target is. So if you're going to zero reps in reserve or one rep in reserve or whatever, I just want you to add repetitions until you get there. If I've told you to do a set of five and it's not feasible, do a set of eight, do a set of ten.

And then I tell my clients, once I I'm maybe a little bit more liberal here, but if that if we're doing single sets, I say if you're doing a single set and you get to fifteen repetitions We're not getting... Alexa. That's a hard cap. And I say we're now doing that as a unilateral. Yeah. And then if the unilateral still takes you up to fifteen, we're now changing the exercise. Yeah. If we're doing multi-sets, my cap is ten to twelve. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's pretty solid, I think.

But again, it's I mean like a lot of this is gonna come down to uh kind of what equipment is available. I mean like um I even even within the same gym, I mean like I there's a gym that I go to near where I'm staying at the moment and there's two separate rooms.

And one of the rooms, generally speaking, uh the kind of gym stack uh of each uh machine, the stacker weights on each machine tends to cap out quite low and I I would have to kind of use pretty much the entire stack uh bilaterally and I can kind of make it work unilaterally. But if I go next door, then suddenly I've got a lot more scope and the machines are really, really heavy duty. I can stack kind of uh twenty kilo plates on

And I can really get it to a point where I can I could probably do one max testing if I wanted to. I mean that would be e very easy for me in that scenario. So um but again that's gonna vary across uh different gyms in different parts of the world and everyone's gonna have a different set of challenges.

So we can't kind of give these sort of hard and fast rules about this machine you need to do this and this machine you need to do that'cause everybody's gonna have different scenarios in the circumstances that they're in. And that's why I think this kind of hierarchy that you presented is really important. Uh Yeah, people have a uh an algorithm that they can work through.

So are there any other considerations? So we're saying single sets, high variety, high frequency. Statistically you could if you felt that so again this is now looking at things from a purpose from the point of view of troubleshooting

Um, if you if we've got a list of exercises, we've we've already identified one troubleshooting uh kind of thing, which is you could split the workout in two and you could do kind of up a lower six days a week. Um so you could be doing basically every other day, but with a day off once a week and then kind of you're switching between upper and lower or between any other muscle groups you want to do. I mean it doesn't have to be upper lower. Um you could also leave a rep in reserve.

So if you were feeling like um you were not recovering, then leaving one rip in reserve is probably going to be the single well, actually it's the only way you can really manage it at that point,'cause we're already down single set. and we don't want to have a lower training frequency. So the only place you've got is Reps in Reserve. You c if you've got if you've got on certain machines the option

to and this is going to be a very small list of machines where this applies to. And maybe it doesn't apply to any of the machines that you're currently using. But there may be certain scenarios where you can drop the weight and not have an eccentric phase. Um but other than that, really the only thing you can do is leave a rep and reserve. So that would be the only other thing I would have. Not want to do necessarily on every muscle.

Not necessarily. No, you could just pick the ones where you feel like uh that it's not recovering. So um, you know, the classic ones might be chest, um, biceps, triceps, maybe hamstrings. Um, really the rest of it should be right. Would you do that with chesso, if you're losing that passive tension, would that be an issue there? Are we talking about dropping away or are we talking about um representing? To get rid of the eccentric. Talking about dropping the dropping the weight. Um

Yeah, I mean ultimately that is that is gonna be a uh consideration. So if you feel like there's a muscle that's developed a decent chunk of sarcomerogenesis, then obviously you don't wanna drop the weight. Um but that is gonna apply to Yeah. Upper body muscles to a degree. Um, not really the chest, probably the only one. Um lower body muscles, yeah, it will apply to, so probably can't do that. Or you could do it for if you had multiple exercises, you could do it for

Sure. I mean again, looking at the uh kind of because soccer means is really I mean, this is an interesting point actually. Um From the new data that's coming out on Nordics and maintenance, it looks like with uh maintenance for sarcomogenesis is a lot lower than it is for hypertrophy. So it looks like we can get away with um training psychomogenesis um either less frequently or with um kind of fewer repetitions. So yeah, you could drop it for one of the um exercises. I mean you

It's highly unlikely that you're gonna have two exercises with the same muscle where it's possible to drop the weight. I mean, come on. How many exercises are it even going to be possible for? Yeah, I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, I don't really know. Very, very small number. Very, very small number. Um realistically. Um so so anyway. Um but yeah, I mean like it it that kind of comes back to Let me give what let me give a very very very interesting example. So last time, um

When we talked about glutes, I mentioned that we would probably have a leg press for the sarcomogenesis adaption in the glute. Now the interesting thing here is that In terms of hypertrophy, which is fiber uh cross section area increases, um what you're getting then is overlap between leg press and the hip thrust that you're already programming. So you program your hip thrust, you add in the leg press to get the psychomogenesis.

But the leg press is also duplicating some of the motin accrument and hypertrophy uh kind of adaptation that you're getting in the um sorry. It's duplicating some of the hypertrophy adaptation that you're getting in the hip thrust, but only up to a certain level of recruitment.

So the reality is in the context I'm gonna repeat that in the context of a glute training programme where you're doing a hip thrust um and you add in a leg press to get sarcomyogenesis, you actually don't need that leg press um kind of every session. If the goal is to trade. Just for the sacramentes, yeah.

Right. Of the glute. Obviously if you're doing it for quads and you're doing it for adductor magnus hypertrophy then this is completely irrelevant. But if the glute is in that con I'm I'm doing this to kind of outline a scenario here, then you are literally just doing the glute for the doing the leg press for the glute psychomogenesis. You could actually just do that once a week in the context of a training programme like this. You don't actually need to do it every single time.

But if you're doing that egg press also for quad, also for reductive magnets, then you do need to do it every single time. So it's again, it's like a very, very small detail uh that you can kind of see happening literally just because of the way the sarcomyogenesis physiology works. Yeah, it's an interesting point. I actually programmed that with squats and leg extensions. So often what I'll do is leg extensions each uh l quad day.

Same idea. Yeah, you absolutely could do that. Yes, you could. Yeah, totally. And I I find that would be my default in full body sessions that are getting too long, is to take out that exercise that you're using for stretching medi mediated hypertrophy and do that on alternate sessions. Yep. Um so yeah, so um I think there's there's some very, very kind of tiny little bits of finessing. I mean that's what we're talking about right now.

Yeah. There's some tiny little bits of finessing that we could do, but honestly, um really there's not a lot that you can play with other than that single rep in reserve um to try and reduce some of the fatigue that you're experiencing. There's one other thing I do sometimes and this is arguably a little bit more difficult to to program across the board, but when I have someone who

Mm some people are gonna be more susceptible to strength loss and a deficit than others. And that's often gonna come down to even just how much weight they've got to lose. And if you are seeing like a fair bit of of mass change and obviously there's gonna be changes in leverages and some people are gonna get weaker and that doesn't necessarily mean muscle loss, but there's just been changes that have occurred.

And that can be quite demotivating for some people to be doing the same lifts and getting weaker. And so sometimes I will look at programming differences in terms of repetitions that maybe we don't normally use, just to get someone out of the head of comparing to the numbers they're used to.

And that can be challenging if they know what their numbers are for, you know, five to twelve repetitions. So in some of those exercises where one is more susceptible to strength loss, let's say, uh, you know, maybe some barbell exercises, multi joint exercises, whatever.

I might give them clusters on those exercises. And so even if there is some strength loss and we're using a five rep max, it doesn't really matter. If that five rep max is now a four rep max and you're doing clusters with it, it doesn't particularly matter. And so they don't notice that strength loss.

Yeah, that's yeah. No, that's an interesting again finessing point, um, that's kinda helpful to just keep the keep the motivation in the right place. Uh which, you know, is super important because, you know, we're always trying to keep recruitment as high as we can.

Is there anything anything else, any other tidbits for people who are programming when they're dieting or is it that sort of No, I think with that. I mean I'm just I'm I I guess I'm I've I've been kind of really just impressed with the um the routine that you you kind of unearthed uh or created, I guess, from Reggie's guidelines.

Uh you know, I mean it's just really close to what we'd end up with physiologically. So just again emphasizing um how close physiologically directed programming is to kind of silver era programming before before anabolic steroids made it impossible to see what was going on.

And this really this entire message of this podcast that we do together is just literally that um the message that the mainstream bodybuilding community is has been pushing the last couple of decades, which is that, you know, oh, we know what we're doing because we're big. is is garbage. It's complete nonsense. It's like, no, y that's absolutely not true. You don't know what you're doing'cause you're big.

You know, those guys kind of in the silver era knew what they were doing, uh, because they had to know what they were doing to get big. You know, mainstream bodybuilding today doesn't need to know what they're doing to get big at all. And as a result, they're just talking absolute nonsense all the time. Um, but you know, randomly, I guess.

ended up with a physiological model that then when we started talking together about civil era bodybuilding it became clear that, you know, there were actually enormous overlap between what physiology uh implies is probably the best way of training and what those guys were already doing. So, you know, I think it's just s it's been such a

It's been such an enormous amount of propaganda that's gone out in the last couple of decades in in mainstream bodybuilding, which is that, you know, oh no, no, no. We're the guys who are doing it all the time, we know what we're talking about. Well, no, you don't. Very, very very, very interesting. This wouldn't work if we were looking at the Sylvia and what they were saying didn't make sense physiologically. Like Right.

This is not just an appeal to the past and us saying, Oh, well they used to do this like that and therefore it's best. This is literally us saying they had no other option of getting big. What they did had to work because there was no anabolic. And if our physiology doesn't match up with that, then the physiological model is probably right. The physiology does, it's the evidence base that doesn't.

Well, exactly. Well that's my point. Is no, that's exactly my point. Is that the phys like we had a model, you had a model looking at this stuff and be like, Yeah, well obviously that all makes sense. Because, you know, if if your model didn't match up with that, then the model probably didn't make sense, right? That's the point we're calling. We've basically got a barbell strategy to figuring out how the world works. On the one hand, you take a group of people whose practical experience

had to work because they had no other option. Yes. And then at the other end of the spectrum you take physiological analysis, which is from ground up from things like size principle, mechanical tension, you know, and fundamental um understanding of how moti how how emotion uh recruitment is allocated through the new mechanical matching principle. And you take those uh kind of um uh two like uh completely different approaches to solving the problem and you end up in exactly the same place.

that's a pretty big hint from the universe that you are onto something. Really. I mean, like if you get the same answer with two completely different I actually do this when I when I talk about

sprinting biomechanics and I explain to people how s how I think sprinting biomechanics works. I take them through one analysis which is using one set of kind of data points and I get to an answer and then I switch and I a I actually teach them in a completely different way and we build it up looking at things completely differently and we get to exactly the same answer.

And I think that's an extraordinarily powerful approach because if you can get to the same answer in multiple different ways, then you can be pretty confident that ultimately you're getting the right answer. Um if all of your analyses come to different answers then There's something underneath all of that that you're not understanding. Yeah. Okay, well, thank you guys for listening.

I guess we're kind of concluding with the best plan for dieting is kind of the best plan all the time. But Yeah, but you've got less margin for error, I guess, when you're dieting because of things like motivation and

Recoverability and whatever else. So you just need to be more aware, but you could certainly take one of these plans that would be a good dining plan and just follow that. I mean, this is my games matching group basically. Like what we've just talked about today, that's it. That's what I'm doing with guys who want to get as big as possible. Which is why I said I genuinely think that this idea of definition that the Soviet era had doesn't line up perfectly with our idea of

um a kind of a dieting phase or a cutting phase. I actually think that their idea of definition probably was closer to just bodybuilding. Maximizing every every muscle. Think it was necessarily the same as what we would see. So I think that's the problem. They just didn't really see much of a difference. That's that's my gut feel on this. Yeah. Because as you say, the same program would be applicable in all situations.

I think what you've you've suggested there with Reg makes a lot of sense as well with some of those performance strength targets at sometimes, yeah. Anyway, thank you guys for joining us for this uh this unfolding conversation as we went. Hopefully it is valuable and interesting to you as well. If not, well I've had fun. So join us next week. And don't forget to uh put your email on the email list for a launch offer that'll be coming your way in the next couple of weeks.