047 How to write the perfect program

Welcome back. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Hypertrophy Pass and Present. Chris, how are you doing today? Yeah, I'm doing well, thanks, Jake. Good, good, good. And we have a new episode, we have a new topic, and I have a new plan for you all. Now Let's jump into it. This is a plan from Arthur Jones. I've had so many questions about Arthur Jones. Arthur Jones, Mike Mensah, these guys are just constantly talked about. And

I'm gonna give you guys an Arthur Jones plan, but it's not the one that you guys are expecting. So Arthur Jones, for those of you who don't know, founded Nautilus, so Nautilus gym equipment, which obviously a lot of people still use today. Uh, and he's particularly well known for being involved in what was called the Colorado experiment. Now I'm not gonna talk about what that was. If you don't know what that was, I am gonna talk about it in another episode because it is quite interesting.

But today I actually want to give you guys a plan of Arthur Jones's, which was, I guess you could call it a silver era plan. So he talked about this plan in the 90 in 1970. I think he wrote a book or a magazine about it in 1970. But he said he was using this plan 20 plus years ago. So we're talking forties. nineteen fifty, so well and truly before anabolics. Now, Arthur Jones, for you guys who've not looked much into him, he does have some pretty interesting stuff to ste to say.

Um his ideas did evolve over time, obviously as he was sort of heavily using machines, that I guess brought with it some particular rhetoric as well. But I do think he's an interesting cat and I think he's one who's worth looking into some of the stuff that he did share. And in fact, Chris, I haven't told you some of this, but like

There was this really interesting thing in his book, which I'm getting sidetracked here, but I was astounded when I saw it, because this is stuff that's talked about over half a century ago. And he was saying that from a warming up perspective. if your goal was maximum performance. So he's like if you're a weightlifter and you're doing singles or you know doing max load on the bar.

then obviously you're gonna do lots of warm-up sets to get to that max effort, right? But he says from a bodybuilding perspective, the goal is different. And he says people make a mistake of thinking that they need to be performing the best. When they're doing the bodybuilding work. And he goes, You're not going to perform as well, not doing these warm up sets, but you're going to get more stimulus because you're not going to be fatigued.

So he's basically explained post activation potentiation and fatigue and then said that actually the post activation potentiation doesn't really seem to affect hypertrophy stimulus just performance.

Yeah, we don't really know. I mean, um I think you could make a case that it does, um, and I think you can make a case that it doesn't. I mean, it really just comes down to what Um whether or not the additional mechanical tension that the'cause Just to be clear, the actual post activation potentiation effect, the PAP effect, not the PAPE effect, which is slightly different, but the PAP effect definitely does increase single fibre mechanical tension.

The question is, does it do that in a way that is um either, you know, kind of um greater over the course of the whole set and that's kind of debatable. Or secondly, does it do it in a way that is meaningful enough to make a difference for the hypertroy stimulus? And again, that's probably pretty debatable. So um I mean ultimately I think the Pap Effect y you can make a case for it having a benefit, but then equally he's absolutely right that if you

uh, you know, kind of add too many repetitions in your warm up sets, you are gonna end up in a in a fatigue state and that's gonna have the opposite effect, especially if it's creating calcium related fatigue mechanisms that reduce mechanical tension. So I mean, we've talked about using warm ups in a different way, of doing like one reps rather than one sets. And I think if you have that mindset shift, you can start to get the pa the PAP effect, the post activation presentiation effect.

uh without that negative uh kind of uh fatigue problem. So I think you can thread the needle a little bit here. So I don't fundamentally accept his explanation as being like all encompassing. I think you can uh kind of work around the fatigue problem to a degree. Um, but equally I accept the fact that it's certainly not a slam dunk whether or not, you know, the Pam Effect does contribute to

a hypertrophy uh stimulus increase. So on balance, you know, for time saving and for getting um more exercises in, which is certainly, you know, what the programme that you sent me to talk about in includes a whole bunch of exercises. So in order to get those exercises in, I think it makes sense to, you know, not work towards that goal of maximizing the exercise performance.

in that same way. Um but I'm just slightly less kind of dogmatic about it. I think that he's probably overstating the case. Well I don't know that he's dogmatic. I don't know that he always recommended like not doing any warm up sets at all. I it just the way he was talking about it was hey, these are gonna be far more important from a performance standpoint and far less important potentially from a hyperetry standpoint. Which It's only more important just to make the space to do the exercises.

Yeah. Yeah. Um but my my overarching point here is it's interesting how often you'll go back and look at stuff written fifty, sixty, seventy years ago and be like, Oh my god, they're explaining this. physiological principle that, you know, we've only sort of understood for the last few years properly. And these guys seem to intuit it half a century ago.

Totally agree. I mean I think uh hypertrophy science especially has been in, you know, kind of um really bad place for at least the last thirty or forty years. I mean I mean it's been in a terrible place. There's been some amazing work been done, but the overarching kind of frameworks that people have been using are just complete nonsense. I mean at least since nineteen early nineteen nineties, if not before. I mean i we've been just

you know, kind of wandering around talking about absolute nonsense for so many years. And it's literally Always because people just refuse to read basic physiology. And they make stuff up. They make stuff up. They go, Hey, look, metabolic stress is a thing and I'm like, there's no physiological reason to suppose that at all.

And they devote decades to pursuing an idea that's just completely nonsense. And I don't know why. Um, but that's just how how it's become. So but yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean go back you know, sort of fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years and you'll find people intuiting more or less what we are talking about today physiologically.

Often explaining it in funny terminology, like you look at what they're saying, you're like, I don't think that's exactly what's happening but they're pointing to something underlying physiologically that's true. Pretty much. Yeah.

So let's stop teasing you guys. This is the plan. So we start off with two sets of 10 of full squats. He was big on full ROM squats, the hamstring getting down to the calf. And then we've got three sets of 20. single leg calf raises. Then we've got two sets of ten standing barbell overhead press, two sets of ten behind the neck pull-up. Two sets of ten uh flat bench, two sets of ten uh standard grip chin ups, so probably more sagittal plane. And then we've got two sets of ten parallel dips.

Two sets of ten barbell curls. Two sets of twelve, what they called a a tr a triceps curl. He did this with a um pulley machine, so the triceps curl was usually more like a what we would call a skull crusher type exercise. And then we've got two sets of 15 wrist curls, one set of 10 regular grip chin-ups again, so we've come back to the chin-ups, one set of 10 parallel dips again, so the second time we've got dip. Two sets of fifteen stiff leg deadlift.

and then concluding with two sets of ten dumbbell lateral grazers. So this is an interesting program in that they've got these the exercises repeating out of order. That was a thing for a little while. There's sort of like a I I wanna say like maybe a 10 year period where that was happening sort of in the forties, maybe early 50s. Um w after they'd started the set system. Obviously prior to that point, people were just using single sets.

And then they started actually doing multiple sets but splitting up the exercise. So they would usually do, you know, one set of whatever overhead press and they do the other work, come back, do another set of overhead press. So here he's actually got the multiple sets and he's repeating a couple of exercises. So that to me would is you know, I would assume he's probably doing this, you know, late forties, early fifties after sets have been made popular.

And obviously he's doing this before Nautilus equipment. So there's uh a pulley on here and that's it as far as, you know, machines or equipment goes. Um and obviously his later plans did look quite different when he was using machines. So fourteen uh well f fourteen series, but I I guess there's uh I think twelve different exercises'cause he's repeated a couple of them. What do you think of this plan?

Yeah, so um is this being done two times a week? Three times a week. Three times a week. Okay, cool. Broadly speaking, he's well within recoverable volumes here, even when he's doing well, I guess yeah. In terms of the uh pull ups, if we assume that the uh behind the neck pull ups are kind of pretty wide gripped,

Um, and then obviously that's gonna be a slightly different thing to the more regular kindergrip chin ups, which are gonna be more sagittal plane. So you know, with that kind of uh being taken into account, assuming that that's then different exercises, he is pretty much within recoverable volumes,'cause he's either doing two sets of ten

Or he's doing three sets of ten if you count the one set of extra chin-ups that he does towards the end and the one set of extra dips he does towards the end. So broadly speaking is within recoverable volumes. Um, which is cool. Again, three times a week. So this is a very classic uh kind of sort of starting template for the silver era that we talked about before, exactly what we would talk about today physiologically.

Um, in terms of exercise, um, obviously in terms of lower body we've got squats, we've got calf raises, uh and we've got stiff leg deadlifts. That's all we've got I think for the lower body. Um, not actually a bad starting point. I mean, really, he's he's got pretty amazing amazing coverage with those three. Um, I mean he's obviously got um a Doctor Magnus, uh a bit of glute, um he's got quads, he's got hamstrings, uh and he's got um

the calf raises, I guess he's got gastro in there. So I mean ultimately, um, yeah, very, very solid. Uh I mean obviously no hip thrust or anything like that glue pit, but, you know, pretty pretty solid kind of lower body uh coverage. I mean without machines it'd be hard to make that a lot better. It would. I mean, yeah, it would just literally be a glute bridge that you would have to kind of do to really make that better.

Um in terms of the upper body then obviously um I'm happy'cause he's got both Oh this is this plan was made for you. Ha ha. Ha ha. Well, I would do single sets, but yeah, I mean it's it's definitely my cut of period. So um but yeah, so he's got um he's got wide grip uh sort of uh pull ups, he's got narrow grip pull ups, so he's got both regions of the lat.

Um, in terms of pressing stuff, he's got flat bench and he's got overhead press. Again, pretty good coverage. Um In terms of uh arms he's got one only one uh biceps exercise, uh, but it's a kind of uh generic one, somewhere in the middle for everything. And he's got dips, which obviously is um, you know, kind of slightly contentious what it's actually doing, but okay.

Um, and then that he's got a uh triceps extension as well. So pretty solid coverage. I would say slightly too much triceps volume actually on balance. Um, and then he's got a little extra um kind of middle dealt. So I'd maybe that barbell overhead press is not completely in the frontal plane. It might be a kind of a bit of a scapula plane kind of uh press. But okay, fine. Um no traps really. So that would probably be the thing that

obviously missing that he could have done there. Um, not would it wouldn't have been that difficult to back off a little bit on the volume of some of those other things that he's pushing a bit too far and do and do a shrug. Um Yeah. I mean I guess like he's probably relying a bit there on the stiff leg deadlift. Like he's not because he doesn't even have a bent over row. You know, usually these plans will have a bent over row, you're gonna get some trap work there at least. Yeah. Yeah.

So really, yeah, I mean, it's just the machine uh kind of knee extension that we're missing. Um

And yeah, I mean that would be the yeah, that would kind of get you towards a sort of bare minimum bodybuilding style program programme, I think. But that's really, really good. I mean, I don't like the kind of silliness towards the end where he's going back and doing an extra set of the exercises he's already done. Well, uh especially because he's doing two sets earlier. Yeah, yeah. I can understand if you were doing single set.

Yeah. If it you know, if it's a little bit more like a circuit and you're going from one exercise, doing one set, going to the next like it that's motivating. I often do train like that myself. I enjoy it. But to do two sets, what are you getting out of it? Unless he's using that first set a little bit like a warm-up. Uh. Yeah. It doesn't really make any sense. So you could just take those out, um and I again I would strip it back to single sets um and you'd have, you know, sort of

twelve exercises plus you'd probably want to put like a knee extension in, um, and maybe a hip thrust, and you'd be back to fourteen. And that would be Yeah. Oh yes, of course. Yeah, you would. Yeah. So yeah, so we'd be at at fifteen exercises we'd have everything pretty nicely covered. including, you know, a couple of You could take the dips out, given that you've got 감사합니다.

You could yeah, you could take the dips out. I mean I mean like there's there's a couple of things you could do there, but yeah basically st as a starting point it's really, really, really good. It's really good. I mean what I like about it is like you said, the volumes are bang on. You know, in terms of what's recoverable, like this is exactly what we would expect. And we're talking, what's this, twenty five, twenty twenty seven sets, I think, in total?

Which, you know, obviously is quite a lot. Like a a lot of people would say, you know, they're doing half that. But I think there's no reason you can't, you know, I'm not saying people need to, but there's no reason you can't potentially There are plenty of reasons why you might not want to. Exactly. Yeah.

But yeah, I know. I mean, it's just like I you know, sometimes I kind of look at this podcast project that we do and I think, How many times can we like show people this information? I mean, how many times can we just kind of go back and say, Hey, look, you know

Before anabolics arrived, people were doing, you know, exactly the same strength training that physiologically makes sense and what we talk about today. It just fits perfectly. Exactly the same thing. It's like if you can't see the fact that anabolics have completely ruined all strength training knowledge, you are completely missing the point here. I mean it's just s so overwhelmingly obvious.

Well, y you know what actually? Um I posted this this quote uh that Arthur Jones mentioned and he said that he was talking to a a bodybuilder at a a nineteen seventies London show. And uh the he was the bodybuilder was being interviewed and the interviewer asked him, What protein do you use? Which protein supplement do you use? And the bodybuilder replied, Why do I need a protein supplement? Have you not heard of of Danabolt? Yeah, I'm not surprised, but...

Absolutely bad. You know, I think sometimes, yeah, they kind of the the curtain slips and you kind of see what's what's behind it. Yeah. No, I mean what what I guess makes me aggravated, uh, is that the hypertro researchers to an extent are bought into that nonsense.

Yeah. You know, so when they talk about strength training programs, their brains are referencing bodybuilding programs from the eighties, nineties and two thousands. And I'm like, guys, if you think that is normal strength training, you are absolutely, you know, kind of away with the fairies. I mean, it's just nonsense.

You know, that is not what um what is going on here. But no, I think it's really cool. We just keep seeing these examples of how, you know, even names that you wouldn't necessarily associate with the kind of routines that we talk about are actually pretty much bang on. Yeah. You know, very cool. Very

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And with no equipment, you know, this is a really solid plan. Which is kind of where we want to go with the second half of this podcast is We want to talk about for different goals, what would a different plan look like? At what point, you know, obviously this is a body composition, body building focused plan.

And we want to talk about what on that continuum of bodybuilding plans, and we've talked a little bit about this in the past, we've got maximalist style plans which are really aiming to train everything possible and get you know, the highest ceiling of potential growth possible. And then we've got more minimalist style plans, which is still looking at, well, developing kind of every muscle, but not trying to necessarily maximize one's gains.

And then there's some other plans that might fall maybe in between those or even potentially have, you know, less of a bodybuilding focus. And I guess we want to talk about, well, what are those different categories and what would it look like for one to structure or construct a plan that would satisfy those different needs? Yeah, exactly. I mean we had a an absolutely uh Uh

humdinging argument before we got on the podcast today because we're trying to establish what the um what the criteria would be for each category. Um now where I where I got to, um and I think I managed to beat Jake down into agreeing with it. Eventually. But we're not going to be able to do that. Yeah.

Maybe not quite that bad. Um, but yeah, basically where I kinda started was that we've already done an entire podcast about what a like bare minimum strength training programme would look like to get you maximum kind of sort of coverage with the minimum amount of uh effort. So the kind of thing that you could like do if you were literally right up against it for time. Um, you know, you obviously n this is not a bodybuilding competitive uh kind of competition style training programme.

is literally just like, you know, somebody wanting to do a couple of exercises and get a maximum benefit from it. So you could call it an old person programme is certainly s sort of the style of training that I'm very attracted to from time to time.

But basically we've done a podcast on that already, so we'll cover that off relatively quickly. But yeah, it's the absolute bare minimum strength training but not bodybuilding competitive. The next category up would then be like a minimalist bodybuilding competitive programme. So it would be like what could you actually do in an at least get some degree of growth in all the kind of regions of the body. It's not again, not missing anything. So like

This is kind of one of the areas we argued about. It's like, can you actually sort of miss something? I'm like, No, I don't think you can do that. So you have to have a

You have to have a rectus femoris exercise. You know, you have to have a uh gastroc exercise. You can't just say, Oh, well, I'm training the soleus, therefore the calves are covered. I'm like, No, no, no, that doesn't count. We've got to actually have something for everything, even if it's not perfect. So they um the the um The program that we were just looking at um had a biceps curl in it, so it had a standing barbell curl.

So you are going to get all the elbow flexor uh kind of uh being used in that, but they're absolutely not gonna get maxed out, but you are at least covering all of them. So that would be kind of a perfect example of an exercise that would fit into this kind of programme where you're calling it a bodybuilding minimalist. Uh but it's not going to max anything out. Um I think a lot of fitness influencers at the moment are promoting programmes in this category.

You know? I think they're going these are the kind of people who are saying, Oh no, no, no, if you if you're if you're training a muscle with an exercise, all the muscle fibers are getting trained. I mean like

categorically nonsense and we can show it in a number of different ways and we talked about that before. But the point is that that that is kind of where they are fitting. They're fitting into a a minimalist bodybuilding standard program where everything is getting trained just not very well. And then maximalist would then be like, okay, what can we do to actually try and get some growth in muscle fibers that are not quite getting activated?

uh in the other kind of scenarios because they are not being preferentially targeted by the Civic Exercise. So for me, I think there are three really obvious categories. Now, when we were talking about this before the podcast, Jake was drawing my attention to the fact that a lot of people actually will potentially not recognize those kind of three locations as being attractive to them. I like this.

As a and we were kind of going through this because I was going like, Yeah, but as a systems thinker, these for me are the kind of clearly defined segments. They're like th you can really be very clear about what goes into these three And you were like Yeah but from a practical perspective they're not gonna be Interesting.

And I'm like, fine, but start with where I'm starting from and then kind of go from there because at least you'll have a very clear starting point. And I think that's kind of where our disagreement was. It was ba because there's a difference between systems and and actual practicalities. And ironically, when you did say that, I realised, Oh, that's actually how I answered my question today when someone asked me this exact question.

you answer the question, yeah. Because you need a starting point. You have to have something that's clearly defined as your starting point. Yeah. So we're gonna give you guys some examples of those. So so we're gonna stick to those categories that you've identified. And then afterwards we can Yeah, exactly right. So the first ones are easy to knock off. Like you said, we've talked about this before. Yeah. So this would be the kind of plan if my mum came to me and she was like

Hey, I just wanna like maintain a little bit of muscle mass while I'm aging. You know, I don't wanna look like I d I don't even care if I look like I lift, like I just wanna maintain a bit of muscle. This would be the real basic plan that one could do. Right. So we're talking training each major muscle group, but really that's it. We're not trying this is not an aesthetic plan. Yeah.

So realistically, we're talking maybe what two upper body exercises, two lower body exercises, four exercises in total. Do it two or three times a week. Right. Totally. Yeah. So So I mean we've t we've talked about this before, but I mean like where we got to last time was that we would probably have some kind of incline press and some kind of um some kind of pull down probably.

And then probably a leg press and a s uh a seated leg curl. Now, I think if you if you wanted to push that a little bit further and you didn't have the old person limitation then you could do kind of a stiff leg deadlift and a squat and you'd probably get slightly better benefits in terms of the purpose of the programme which is to get

as much coverage as possible because you would get some supporting muscle growth from the squat and you get some erectus and stuff like that from your stiff leg. Uh and it would be just a little bit kind of more holistic if you like. So it would give you a a lot across um a very, very large number of muscles. Nothing really being maxed out, but you get a really, really side coverage. So I I really, really like that way of training. I think that's got enormous mileage.

I think a huge number of people on the planet could benefit massively from that kind of program. Um, but it's not a bodybuilding competitive programme.

Yeah. And you know, I made a comment that like you may not even look like you lift. I mean to be fair, you will just doing that, you will look like you lift. Yeah. Um but, you know, it's obviously not gonna you know, y you might look at someone's arms and and maybe you won't necessarily, depending on a person, notice a huge amount of growth or, you know, calves or whatever.

Um I just want to clarify there. So you've given an example. You could do a leg curl. You could do a leg press. If you didn't have machines, then you could do a a stiff leg deadlift or even a Romanian deadlift. You could do a squat.

And then for upper body, if you have machines, you could either do a lap pull down and you could do a a chest press machine or you could do an overhead machine. Or if you didn't have machines, you could do an incline barbell press, you could do an overhead barbell press, you could do a flat bench. Any of those would theoretically work. If I was fine tuning it for my females, I would usually give them an overhead press there. For my males, I'd usually give them a bench.

Easy. Done. I don't think we need to say much more about that. You could do single set, you could do two sets. You could you could swap out you could swap out of the leg press for a for a hip thrust if you really wanted to, if you wanted to go down the kind of female specific route. Or if even if you just wanted to do a exercise that was Slightly uh kind of more comfortable. I mean, I think there's there's options there, definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. Easy. And like I said, single sets, two sets, we could do three sets, it doesn't particularly matter. You could do Two times a week, two times a week doesn't matter. Absolutely. There's a lot of variation there. But we've done that before. So moving on. So now we've got our we've got our minimalist. Bodybuilding programme. So you have to actually you have to at least activate some fibers in each of the relevant muscles. That's my criteria.

Yes. that's our criterion for this particular uh kind of category. Yeah, so this is a So e each muscle actually so for example you you gave the example of the recfem. So we're not just saying, oh, as long as s there's some quad involvement, then that's covered. We're actually saying no, because the recfem obviously is going to be ex excluded completely We need an exercise even for the rec femme. Right. You do. Yeah. So if we were to take that that basic plan we just gave a moment ago.

And then h turning that into this bodybuilding minimalist. You you want to go a different direction? Well, you could do it that way, but the problem is that you're starting with some assumptions that may not necessarily be valid because the the thing is that

Let's say for example you start with the the home gym example. So you start with your kind of weight to pull up or pull up or whatever. You've got maybe some uh dumbbell pressing in there, um, maybe it's standing um or whatever, because you haven't got a bench. Um and then you've got like a a sort of a a squat and a stiff leg deadlift. Um those aren't necessarily exercises that I would have anywhere near a kind of standard minimalist bodybuilding competitive programme.

Um even if you start with the um uh kind of machine versions again, like I'm not necessarily gonna have those exercises I mean I'm probably

So let's just build it from the ground up. I would actually build it from the ground up. I mean, I think there is gonna be crossover, but I just don't think you would necessarily start from that same particular point. I think you just go through the the muscles of the body and say what what what what what have we got? So if you do lower body'cause it's easier, you know, you've got

You know, you've got glute seductors, hamstrings, quads, calves to worry about really. So you could you could say, Okay, well I'm gonna keep my leg press or squat variation and that's gonna give me some glute

and some adductor magnus and some single joint quad. Fantastic. Okay. Done. And then you go, okay, well what else do I need? Well I need some hamstrings in there. So you could have your C to leg curve, which you've already got. So we have actually got two exercises that we've already talked about. And then you go, Okay, well I'm gonna need a knee extension. I can't really do without that. So you're gonna have a knee extension in there and then you're gonna have some kind of calf raise.

So you've ended up adding in a calf raise and a and a knee extension and you've built up from what that was previously. But you could do it a different way. Because you could say, Well, instead of having the leg press, I'm gonna get my glute from a hip thrust variation.

And then I'm gonna put a knee extension in and that's gonna give me solid rec firm and then the other single joint quad that I maybe if I maybe if I did a glute bridge instead of a hammer instead of a hip thrust. So I'm not really getting very much quad at all. And then you're actually then gonna need to find some adductors from somewhere. Or you could have an adductor machine instead. You know, so you could go down that route. Um In a number of different ways.

At that point it's starting to look a little bit more maximalist because you've added in sort of one or two more exercises than you needed, right? So I guess You actually are definitely better going down the squat or leg pressure because that captures your kind of your glute adductor magnus and quad really, really quickly. Yeah. So you actually get a lot very, very quickly from doing that. So that's where I think uh going down the hip thrust route is is is is disadvantageous. Yes. Um but

You could have paired your hip thrust with a stiff leg deadlift which will give you uh hamstrings and a duct magnet at the same time. So you have a hip thrust and a stiff leg deadlift and that keeps it pretty pretty low. And then you got the ladies.

Exercise number. Um, and then you just need your knee extension to give you your rec Femme and your calf rate. So you've actually done that still in a relatively small number of exercises. So hip thrust, stiff leg, um, knee extension and um car phrase is actually getting you to the same place as starting with a leg press. They are getting to the same place and I think one of those is gonna be a little bit more, I guess, classic like female physique. Yeah.

women focus and the other one's gonna be a little bit more potentially male focused. So I I quite like that as a foundation there for the lower body and and then both would have some kind of, you know, standing calf raise or whatever to get the gastro. Yeah. You you're gonna need knee extension and calf raising both'cause they you can't do you can't get around those two joint muscle problems. Yeah. Yeah, so what's that give us? Four exercises?

I think you're doing that in four in both cases. So stiff leg, hip thrust, um And then obviously the two, the knee extension and the calf raise. Yep. And then in the other one you've got leg press and uh seated leg curl and then knee extension and calf raise. So I mean I think you're getting to the same place more or less, just with an emphasis being whether you're getting more glute kind of

You're getting more You're getting I actually like that second one better, you know. That's really interesting. So Yeah. Hip yeah, I do like it better because I think that yeah, I do. I do. I think you're l you're probably losing a little bit on the hamstrings. I think that's probably what you're losing. Yeah. So with the hip thrust stiff leg, you're getting a little bit less hamstrings because the adductor magnus is kind of getting priority on the stiff leg.

Um, that's where you're losing on that. That's why I was perceiving that as being better. It's not, it's because the hamstrings are losing out. In the case of the leg press, you're actually getting um Yeah, you're getting less glute. Okay. Understood. Right, yeah, cool. So it's either less glute or less hamstring. Yes. That's the that's the way it works. Yeah. Yeah. Now you could with a stiff leg you could also do reduced range of motion, you could do a like a stiff leg rack pull.

Yeah, you could shift the balance back the other way. Well you'd be losing the adductor magnets. I mean you th that's the problem with the minimalist pro programme for bodybuilding is that you're always going to be emphasizing one direction. Well that's it, isn't it? That's no point.

That's the whole point, exactly. Okay. Okay. So we've got four exercises so far and we've got the whole lower body covered, you know, relatively well. Yes, we're not biasing anything and and maximizing anything, but we've got every every muscle covered. Yeah.

Now if we go upper body. Where should we start? Start top down? So yeah, I mean basically um You've kind of got a you've kind of um got some very, very difficult decisions to make here, really. I mean um Uh Ultimately, if you want to get um complete chest development, you're gonna need a flat bench or a very slight incline bench. And that really is kind of your starting point. Um

Now you are going to get obviously triceps development there, you are going to get anterior adult development there. Um you know, so that you can Yeah, so that would make more sense than using a pec deck, because you could use a pec deck, but then you've lost some of triceps, you've lost some of the anterior. Yeah. So you could start there and then you could then add in a lateral raise if you wanted to. To get the middle dealt in.

To get the middle deal. And then you probably have reasonable coverage there. Now you could do it a different way. Um you could do instead overhead press. Yeah. And you could add a poke fly. Uh the pec deck, exactly right. Yeah. So in the same situation. Yeah. The same thing we saw with the lower body basically. Yeah.

Yeah, I am most people I think are gonna go with the bench press and add in the lateral raise. I probably would do the opposite. You know, I'd but that's just again, it's preferences and what feels most comfortable. My preference would actually be the opposite as well, I think. I'd prefer an overhead and then a pec deck. So so there that would probably be kind of uh two different ways of doing the same thing. Um and then in terms of um back, then obviously uh

I I think you probably do need two pulling exercises. I think you probably need a wide grip and a and a narrow grip. I don't think you can really get around that. Um I know. Some people uh disagree. I d I just don't think it's possible. So I think you're gonna need a a pull down and you're probably gonna need an arrogant row. Yeah. Um and then um and then you're gonna need something for traps. Um now if you're already doing the narrow Yeah, you finish that thought.

You're gonna do the narrow group row, I would just go straight to London Kelsey afterwards.

Okay, so you don't think the the sagittal plane row because we're gonna get some trap work in that, that for you is not satisfying this. I don't think it is. I think that people have made a really I think okay, so let me be clear on this. Um I think that um When fitness influencers are arguing that their rowing variations are training the trap, I think they have made a case that is so far away from reality that it's caused people to shift their like

baseline point of how something works. What I'm what I'm saying here is like I think that's What you've got is you've got people who are making the case that their own variations completely train the traps and the traps are completely maxed out. And I'm like that is so far from reality that you've actually kind of

You've you've you've you've treated that as uh like an exaggeration and it's not an exaggeration, it's hyperbole, it's off the other opposite end. It's like so far away from reality, it's not funny.

you kinda looked at them and goes, Oh yeah, okay, well maybe they're just being a bit exaggerated. Maybe it doesn't quite train all of the traps and it's like maybe it's training them and just uh you know, kind of well but not not kinda and I know it's not really training them very well at all. So you're saying Just move the baseline opinion just that little step closer towards this hyperbolic statement. It has and I'm like, No no no guys, you are way off the end of the of the

of the framework here. It's not doing that at all. You need it fundamentally traps are not getting trained in the way that you think they are in a rowing situation. They're just not. You know, so um we need to have a shrugging exercise. I mean like Anybody who's done Kelso's knows that they can literally just kinda put

like the pin down, multiple notches on the machine from what they're rowing at. They can, you know and anybody who's done kind of vertical shrugs knows the monstrous amounts of weight that they can move in a vertical shrug compared to, you know, kind of anything else.

Um it it's like i you're dealing with something that is not really getting trained very effectively by a a rowing motion. So I absolutely would have a shrug in that. I just don't think it's viable to say that they're being trained effectively by row. So this is how I program in this situation, if I'm doing minimalist and I want trap work, what I actually do is If I had, say, someone who let's say a a female client and I was like Pretty happy to de emphasise traps, but I wanted something.

I you're gonna disagree with me, but I would program bent over one um dumbbell row. And that would be my row of choice. I feel like no other row is going to come close to getting trap decent trap involvement, but I feel like just if you do

a bent over one arm double row with like a a bit of body English, I feel like you get a decent bit of trap at the top there. If I had a guy and I wanted a bit more trap involvement, I would be programming the stiff leg rack pull that we talked about for lower body. And for the first like for the the set what I do is stiff leg, rack pull with a shrub, a vertical shrug at the top of each repetition. And then what I would get them to do is do that one set to failure.

Put the bar down, adjust the grip, and then continue going, doing a stiff leg without the shrug at the top. You're still programming shrugs. I mean exercise selection point of view, you're still programming shrugs. I mean it's like that's the point I'm making. It's like you can't leave it out of a program uh and expect to get full back development. It just doesn't work like that.

I think that um I think that again this is one of those areas where anabolics are causing issues because you know, the trapezius probably does grow better in response to anabolic stimulus, um, pharmaceutical anabolic stimulus than other muscles do. So I think a lot of people just go, Well, no, no, no, these guys are growing, you know, traps without, you know, kind of doing the shrug exercise. I'm like, Yeah, but, you know, have you asked them what pharmaceuticals they're taking? I'm sorry.

It doesn't matter. It'd be awesome. We all know what the answer will be. Yeah, I know. I'm being polite. So but yeah, I think genuinely I think the debate over this exercise selection debate where people are trying to as I said at the beginning, fitness influencers at the moment they're making they're trying to make a big case that you literally just need to

you know, have a muscle active in an exercise and somehow it's magically gonna grow. I mean no, it's not. You know, not to the extent that you want it to. You know, and I just don't think the traps are really getting any kind of meaningful stimulus from um Rose in the way that they're claiming they do. Okay, so well how many exercises are we up to now in the upper body? So we've got one

got two on the pressing side and you've got three on the back side. So you've got five. So front and back, you've got uh two pressing wires and three on the back. So you've got the two different planes of motion for the lats and you've got the We had an additional one for chess or deltzo, didn't we? If we were doing

Yeah, so you've got your two. So you've got your pressing uh the vertical or horizontal and then you've got your uh supplemental. So you're either going to pay with your two or three. Yeah. And then you've got the uh kind of uh lateral raises. And then I say on the on the back

side of the body you've then got um you've got the three probably two different planes for the uh pulling and then the and then the shrug. And then um obviously uh rear adults are getting covered by your um kind of pulling exercises so you need to worry about that.

And uh then after that is then obviously arms. So you've got um as we said already, the a programme that we talked about at the beginning had a very kind of general biceps exercise, so standing um mid range uh peak effort point uh is going to be pretty okay for covering the entire elbow flexor group.

And then again, you could do a standing pushdown and get, you know, some long head if you wanted to kind of um sort of do that. Um ultimately you could pretty much do any single joint trize if you really wanted to, but I think the standing pushdown is probably the easiest and it probably is the best. So that would probably be uh where I would go for that. So where d where does that get us to? Um Uh eleven. Oh, yeah, past the fall already, yeah.

So eleven, yeah. So you absolutely could do that in a single session. So you could do four body three times a week and you'd do that every single time. Yeah. So the terminology I'm working off here is I would call that if we were to do that with say single set, so you're doing eleven sets, doing that two or three times a week, I would call that minimalist. And then

Bodybuilding minimalist, isn't it? So like just to differentiate it from like health or you know, kind of entry level strength training kind of minimalist, minimalist, or bare minimum is kinda how I keep thinking about it. Yeah.

Now I would say that it also satisfies the second category that I think people are talking a lot about at the moment and and don't have a name for, which I which well some people are calling it this. is consolidated, right? So the idea of doing, you know, that one exercise per muscle group, but doing multiple sets instead of spreading those sets out across additional exercises, that would be a consolidated plan. So so this is the Who don't don't understand how physiology works.

I I'm not arguing about why, I'm arguing about the the what. So So the I so this same workout structure of these 11 exercises could be minimalist, I would say, if you're doing one set two or three times a week, or could be a consolidated plan if you're doing each with multi-sets. And then you're doing your twenty two, thirty three sets, whatever, two or three times a week. That's the language I'm working with. I think it makes sense for me.

So and then who is that plan good for? I mean that plan is really like that plan is good. Good for anyone who wants good results and doesn't want to be committing to doing ninety minutes in the gym or

It's a it's a really solid it's a really solid plan. So it covers kind of a multitude of bases. It covers people who uh whose ambition for their physique goes above and beyond bare minimum. So Like if if if you've got an ambition for your physique which is a little bit beyond just kind of adding some muscle and feeling better and being able to move better and all those things, if you want to just kinda take the next step and just look much, much better

then, you know, that's gonna do that job for you. It also kind of puts you on the road towards bodybuilding kind of as a sport. So natural bodybuilding, sorry, is a sport. So if you want to go down that route, then this is putting you on that road and you can carry on moving down that road.

for a period of time and at some point you m you know, you can make a decision whether to take the next step and go to banks my list or, you know, whether to just say, actually maybe this isn't for me, I'm just gonna kind of

you know, call this a day and be happy with my kind of physique and do other things. I mean, like there's options open to you. So you can put yourself on the road towards bodybuilding and like go down that road and see how you feel about it without, you know, necessarily as you say, going mad about you know, hundreds of different exercises. So I think it's an interesting place to go. I mean, it's not if you do it

you know, as a full body uh kind of two or three times a week, it's not hugely demanding. It is demanding. I mean it's gonna you're gonna feel it and it's gonna take time out of your day, but it's not going to be completely mad. So I think it's an interesting kind of metal ground. And especially if you're doing single sets, like you could get this done in under an hour. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, totally doable. Yeah.

Now, just before we move on to maximalist, so this minimalist bodybuilding plan, this is kind of the conversation we were having before we hit Record where I was saying, Well, you'd have people who would benefit from taking that And then adjusting that slightly. Because you might have like a common question I'd have would be someone might come to me and say, I wanna build muscle. I wanna look like I lift, but I don't care about insert muscle.

Right. I don't care about glutes or I don't care about traps or I don't care about calves or there's generally going to be one, two, maybe three different muscles. So that mu that individual will say, I just don't care about that. I just want to build kind of everything else. For guys, often it's gonna be, you know, a little bit more upper body focused. G girls often it's gonna be a little bit lower body focused. There's still gonna be some

upper or lower, depending on the person muscles they want. But there may well be, you know, two muscles that they decide, I just don't care. You know, I've got plenty of advanced females who don't want triceps long hair don't even want additional elbow flex work beyond what they're getting in their back work. Exactly. So all we would do in that situation. What was that? Probably don't need the traps either. No, no, exactly. And

I mean, you know, how much rec femme do some girls want? You know, it's it makes fitting into certain clothes harder. So it's it's gonna be up to that individual what they decide they don't need. And all you're gonna do is take that bodybuilding mentalness plan and you're just gonna identify which exercise that I have for that muscle, which I don't want anymore, and you just drop it off. As a general kind of I guess like how that's looking for me and my clients.

My dudes, my guys are usually doing almost all of those exercises. So of those, what we have 11, there's probably gonna be 10, maybe all 11 they're gonna do. And my females, they tend to usually do about eight. And I find that just across the board females tend to need fewer exercises'cause there's usually gonna be a couple more uh muscles they just don't particularly feel like they need.

Pretty straightforward, fairly easy to to adjust. And that's individual. You know, people can decide for themselves what that muscle is they do or don't want. And maybe you want all of them and you do all eleven exercises.

So, what is our step up from there? Okay, so this is where it gets really crazy. Yeah. So at this point really the sky is kind of the limit. I mean like there isn't really a like uh th the the issue here is gonna be um more about the availability of information uh to help us make decisions. It's not so much gonna be about the um the existence of different areas so much as our knowledge of how to train them. So what you'll find is that there can be some large muscles

And I'm gonna be like, just don't have enough data to know how to train different parts of these muscles. There's gonna be smaller areas like the elbow flexors where I can literally give you four or five exercises and they'll all train different parts of the elbow flexor complex. And that's not because You know,

magically the elbow flexor somehow is kind of you know, got more divisions in. It's just simply because that's where all the data is. So you just gotta be aware that when I say like there's probably only really two exercises that I would use to train different parts of the glute.

it's not because you can't segment it more, you can. It's just that we don't know how to go about training the different parts of the glue in a way that is meaningful. So future data hopefully will help us do that and there'll be other possibilities. But Right now, it's really, really difficult to start segmenting that. In sorry, to start targeting those segments with specific exercises. You can segment it anatomically, just don't know how to train those different parts.

So with the information we do have. What would we give people?

So if we start working our way down the body, you've got glute. You can obviously train the upper and the lower glute separately. So you can train the lower glute with your hip thrust or your glute bridge. Um and you could train the upper glute with your seated hip abduction. I mean that

pretty much going to give you maximum courage. If you want to get sogomogenesis in the glute, then you're going to add on your kind of um you're probably your leg press, um, honestly, because you get better range of motion for the hip than you do in a squat. And we did a whole podcast on that, so if you guys want to know more about it, go check out. Yeah, I mean we literally talked for an hour on that before, so So so that would be then that would then then then be glue. Um

Similarly, with hamstrings, there's quite a lot going on there. You could um probably get a quite a long way with a seated leg curl, uh, which would give you the three two-joint hamstrings, m more so in the lower part of the muscle, less so in the upper part. And it would give you some sulcamogenesis. Um it wouldn't really do very much for the uh kind of biceps morris shorthead. So you'd have to add an align leg curl to do that. And that would get you a very long way if you did those two.

If you wanted to push further, you could get the upper parts of the two joint muscles by doing um forty five degree back extensions. And that would probably be the absolute kind of maximum at the moment that we've got in terms of data availability. Or once again you could do the top, like the stiff leg rack pull instead of the back extension. तो, absolutely. Um in terms of

Um adductor stuff, you would need an adductor magnus and you would need the other adductors. So you'd need your I mean your leg press would do it for you. So you'd have that already baked in from the uh glutework you were doing, stretch position glutework. Um, and you would have then seated hip adduction, which would give you everything else. So that for me and again, there's data suggesting you can mess around with maybe resistance profiles.

But honestly, at the moment I think it's a little bit on the sketchy side, so I would kind of just go with those two and say that's giving you ninety nine percent of what you're gonna get. Um, quads is really annoying to me because um on the face of it, it looks like a knee extension should give you everything. I'm not convinced it does. I think that you get a little bit more single joint with um a leg press. Um but

I'm not prepared to argue that. I don't I don't want to try and have to make a case for that. I just that is my gut feel. So We'll see what happens in the future, but that's kind of my my kind of starting point. Honestly in this context doesn't matter because you've already got the leg press because you're

Yeah. And the adducted magnus. So you you've got it baked into your programme already. You can't really do without it. So honestly, really doesn't make sense. If you want to argue with recfem that you've got distinct upper and lower regions, you're going to need a hip flexion exercise for the top half of the rec of the rec femme. Okay. W it's just crazy already, isn't it?

I think we're eight without the second direct fem exercise. So if you wanted to do like a hanging knee raise or something like that, then we'll be a Well I a lot of a lot of European gyms that I've spent time going to have a four way a four way hip um machine, you know, which allows you to train hip flexion relatively well. Uh, I don't see them so much in other parts of the world. Um, but they do exist. I mean, it's just not as common as many other exercises.

And then obviously for calves, um, you're gonna need some kind of gastric exercise, which is gonna be probably a toe press and a leg press. Um I think that the Soleus probably does get trained pretty well in a leg press, but you know, you could add in your kind of seated uh calf raise as well. Potentially you could do toes in, toes out with a standing car for

Yeah, you could apply that to the hamstring stuff as well. I mean, again, it th th th th this is what I said, the sky is the limit. You can really kind of go in all kinds of directions here. But yeah, and there is data suggesting you can move things uh activation wise across those muscles. So broadly speaking Generally each of those muscle groups we're talking about three sets or three different exercises per muscle group for most of them really. Hamstrings, doctors is two, quads is two, um

Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. See for in my head, I I look at thigh. Like in this situation, I'd say, well, we've got the two quad and then we've got the adductor. So we'll kind of talk like three exercises for that part of the the leg. Well yeah. I guess so. It's broadly speaking it i I think it averages uh around about two two to two and a half. I mean I don't think it's quite three for everything. I mean, even with the glute you could argue it's only really two.

'Cause there's an overlap. I guess it's it's kinda like two dedicated exercises and there's kinda like this third exercise which is often doing two. Floating around in the background. Yeah. But yeah, I mean it is definitely two. I mean that's really kind of you're going from bodybuilding minimalist, um, or consolidated to bodybuilding maximalist, you're definitely going from at le from one exercise to at least two. Potentially three.

Uh it really depends on on kind of how far you want to go with it and what you're trying to do. But yeah, that's that's gonna be lower body stuff. I mean it's gonna get a bit crazy when we go to the upper body, but yeah. Yeah, the the lower body part was the easy part. Ha ha ha. I always say that to people when I'm doing a mentorship. I like, Okay, the lower body's the easy stuff and the upper body it's much more complicated. Yeah.

So um Regarding the upper body, we actually kind of had a fairly maximalist back program already, because we had both regions of the lat and we had traps. And the rear delt does get trained pretty well with a narrow grip pull. So honestly, backwise I think we're in a pretty good place already from the minimalist bodybuilding programme on the uh kind of maximalist side.

Um, does that mean you can't train other parts of the back? No, it doesn't, you absolutely can. It's just data wise are a little bit limited in terms of how we might be able to do that. Would you not suggest a pull over there? Well, exactly. So like, you know, are we getting a slightly different region of the lap by doing a pullover, you know, or is it just gonna be so much more

you know, kind of peck and triceps long head, that it makes it kind of less relevant as a as a as a latte size. Honestly, I'm kind of in the zone where I think of it as more of a peck and a triceps brachy long head, really. And then in the minimalist plan we had a sagittal plane row. Now I I feel like there's a a bit of a push online at the moment. really move towards a transverse plane row. Yeah.

Posterior posterior del which you're already getting very effectively from your narrow group anyway. So posterior delt doesn't really care whether you're going horizontal extension or sagittal plane, you know, kind of shoulder extension. Um you're getting pretty good leverage in both cases. Mm. So is there any anything that the transverse row is giving us that we're not getting elsewhere? Uh I'm transverse plain row.

uh is probably my least favorite biomechanical variation of a pulling exercise. I I really don't think it does anything n unique that the other um plane um planes aren't doing. Um, and I I and I don't think it does the traps in the way that people think it does either. Um, I I really don't like it as an exercise. I don't think it had very much. Mm-hmm. If anything it would belong more in a minimalist plan, because it it kind of does a few things badly.

Yeah, well that's true,'cause in a minimalist plane you well, yeah, I guess you're not too concerned about sagittal plane. But even then I even then I don't really like it. You know. Um so so but yeah. So back um is pretty much the same, I think, maximalist and minimalist. You could chuck in a great if you like I know you you're saying you're satisfied. really obsessed. You could do a read out fly. I mean like then that would be a much, much better choice than a um than a transverse plane row.

And do you think there's any yeah, so like any other back muscles one could be Well that's what I'm saying. I think that there probably are, well they definitely are. But the point I'm making is it's very difficult to know precisely how to um kind of target them. I mean like even within the lat, I mean we talk about the three major divisions of the lat, uh kind of upper, middle and lower. Um, but the reality is you can actually segment it medially and laterally.

You know, there are definitely activation tendencies for medial and lateral regions of the lat. Um, but how we would go about making that work in an exercise setting is a little bit more difficult to identify. You know? Yeah. In my head I I like I I think we've had this conversation before about Delta. And if I had someone who just wanted more back development, I would probably just throw in a row that was like a a slightly different plane of of motion. So

Well this is where yeah, this is where we get to with delts as well. It's like, you know, delt wise we talk about three major divisions, but there's probably a good seven or so. So And they're all showing distinct activations with different planes of motion and directions and that kind of thing. So this is where the bodybuilding kind of idea of hitting the muscle from different angles makes a lot of sense. But precisely how you would do that. Good night.

difficult part. That's what I'm saying. Like the sky's the limit really, but you know, the data availability isn't as good as as as we might want it to be. Yeah. So then moving on to Doug. Yeah, I mean like we've done we've done kind of rear delts, um but in terms of uh anterior and middle, or however many regions you want to kind of look at.

then you're gonna need um, you know, a lateral raise which talked about, or a a wide grip, uh kind of behind the neck type press. Um and then for anterior you're gonna need really anything that has uh peak effort above um above the horizontal. So this is the bit that people struggle with. They kind of think about anterior adults and they start thinking about, you know, kind of front raisers which is

Clavicular pec exercise. They start thinking about overhead pressing, but they end up hitting the peak effort somewhere below the horizontal or at the horizontal. I'm like, guys, you've got to hit peak effort above the horizontal, otherwise it's not working. So It's really a range of motion thing rather than a plane of motion thing when it comes to the anterior dot. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so what you might program a a partial

Yeah, just drop seats all the way down in a in a seated overhead press and just try and get the effort to be, you know, higher up when it when it peaks. Um and it's just a matter of finding that that range of motion. I think that's the key thing. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I would do. Just put the seat all the way down the bottom and just do some kind of over overhead dress machine. Yeah. Chest.

Again, the minimalist version works okay. You could do a wide grip press, uh you could do a peck fly, I mean, um totally fine. You can start to uh kind of get activation of different regions to a greater or lesser extent. But honestly, I think that you know, really pushing into sort of um individual territory where you've identified a a weakness.'Cause genuinely I think a wide grip uh kind of um

either as I say, chest fly or or white grip bench is gonna do the job. But, you know, you could you could use um, you know, kind of some narrow grip uh kind of bench for curricula. You could use um, you know, sort of some standing um cable crossovers in the frontal plane if you wanted to get the uh lower two regions, you could work uh with that the the pullover that we talked about as well for the the the cost of

I mean there's there's stuff you can add in. Um it just comes down to what you think is is needed at that point. Typically I would be programming a white usually a white group bench, but it could be a tech deck. And then I'll do a cable crossover, like more in that frontal plane. I don't know if you've seen them. Some gyms actually have machines where it's imagine imagine a a lateral raised machine, but it's the opposite. So you're actually pulling into the midline.

Um they're quite good if if someone has access to one of them. Totally. Yeah. Otherwise I'd just do a cable um sort of partial crossover and then I would normally do at the moment I'm I'm using a lot of cable single arm front rays, which I find is can be programmed quite stable. You talked to me about a a lying front race, didn't you? A while back. Limiting... under front phrase is that you kind of more

you know, kind of y you're limited to only training the clavicular peck, you can't train the anterior delta with it. So you were like, Well can we kind of change the range of motion we're working in and start to have one that one variation that trains the clavicular pec and another variation that trains the anterior delta. I mean that's I mean that's a really interesting idea. Yeah, but in this context, if I was looking at upper chest... Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So th yeah, um I mean

Basically here we've just got um a monstrous number of elbow flexion exercises according to what you want to target. I mean, again, this is just because there's the availability of data, but you know, we've got um, you know, you train biceps bracky. Um with uh kind of incline bench cable curls, so peak effort in extended shoulder and extended elbow positions. train brachialis with preacher curls, you can train uh brachialis with um kind of uh cable curl with peak effort in the

uh kind of contract position. You can use supination and pronation to move things more between biceps brachi and brachialis, brachioridialis, sorry, as well. And you can probably get different parts of the biceps brachi by doing a supination exercise versus doing a standard curl. Now I'm just gonna repeat myself. So there's a hundred times. People keep asking the same question.

No, you can't just do a supination of the dumbbell while you're doing curls because your supination strength is way, way stronger than the ability to rotate a dumbbell. So unless you've got offset dumbbells Uh, it isn't gonna work. So you're gonna need something that actually challenges supernation, which is gonna be a kind of supernation. Arnold actually talked about that. I don't know if you've seen that interview with Arnold. Not there. He talked about loading the dumbbells unequally.

For that purpose. Yeah. I mean you'd have to'cause people don't realise how strong they are in supernation. I mean it's it's really, really quite m m marked uh kind of level of strength. So you can't just kinda oh, I'm just gonna rotate the dumbbell and it's not doing anything. So but yeah, so that would be kind of as I say, lots of different possibilities, not very uh kind of

Um it's not reflective of the like capacity of benefit you're gonna get out of doing that. It's just that is just the availability of data. So if you were to give people like some I guess actual concrete examples there, I mean what I would normally program would be a behind the back cable curl with a in a supernated position, so for more biceps brackie. Um, I would do a uh machine preacher curl and thinking about that more as a Drachialis exercise.

And then in that cable station after I've done the behind the back cable curl I would I would normally just do like a top partial reverse grip cable curl for a bit more brachioradialis. I th I think really I would focus on rec recchi radialis is one option plus a either the preacher curl or the incline bench cable curl. I don't think you need three as like a starting point here.

Um, I think probably two is okay. Um, but as I say, I mean there's the sky really is the limit when it comes to Oberflexa data, it's just enormous what we've got. So, yeah. people can use that information as they want to. But I would definitely have two. But that's what we're saying all the way along. It's like two probably is a good number to target for a maximalist programme to make it worth kind of calling a maximalist programme.

Yeah. And then in terms of uh triceps, really, you've kind of got three things going on here because you've got you know, you've got your long head is gonna be sort of your um pushdown, you're gonna have um your pullover probably. for the other part of the triceps bracky, um uh long head, and then you've got your pressing is already Doc probably. Yeah.

Um, so yeah, again two probably is gonna go there. So yeah, I mean I think you can I'm I haven't been counting, but I think you're gonna end up with with Just over double the number of exercises that you'd have in a minimalist.

Yeah, I lost count as well. I think one thing'cause when we're talking about the minimalists, I made the point about like a consolidated versus true minimalist. And then when we're talking about maximalist, we've kinda got those two categories as well,'cause you could do maximalist mini where you're doing just a single set and you're just doing those sort of, you know, two exercises or whatever that you've you've suggested there.

Or you could have a maximalist where you're trying to achieve the fastest rate of growth as well and not just the highest sort of ceiling of potential for growth. And, you know, based on recovery data we'd say, well Maybe that's going to be about, let's say, three sets per muscle, right? So in some of those those muscle groups where you've identified two exercises.

You've got the option now if you could do two sets for one of those and one set for another, or you could do a a unilateral version or whatever. My preference just as a framework that I work off is just to add a third exercise. And even if, you know, as you've identified, maybe we don't have the information to know exactly how to pick that third exercise to necessarily, you know, be as different as possible from treatment, yeah, I think we're still getting

A at least a motivation boost from having a single set of a new exercise. And obviously in this context the goal is is you know that rate of growth as well. And you know, incidentally, when we then plot out that plan, it looks essentially identical to Steve Reeves' nineteen fifties plan.

Sure, yeah. And I think you'd probably unless you are um you know unless you have a really high tolerance for kind of pain and discomfort, you're probably gonna gravitate towards doing A B A, B A B in this kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so you could just then I mean we've done a podcast on this, you could then take that plan and then you can split it up.

I would I would absolutely do that. I mean otherwise I think you you you're either gonna be a bit obsessed or you're gonna be a bit un unhappy. I think um yeah, I wouldn't do this as full body A. Um I do this as full body A B A B A B. I do I do have a group which is bas exactly this. It's my my gains maximum group and that's essentially the format is, you know, three exercises per muscle single sets. And I've got, I don't know, maybe twenty five, thirty people who are

That way in mind in that group. Um and you know, some people like you know, some people do have the energy and the motivation. And I think a a big part of it comes down to motivation. You know, I think people can do this. Are you motivated to do it? I mean that's the thing. I mean people run marathons, don't they? I mean, so they can do this. I mean it's it's it's doable. It's just um a bit miserable towards the end. It does get that way. That's how I feel sometimes.

Just as a starting point,'cause again we're trying to kind of talk about, you know, what's what's the starting point sensibly for these three categories? A starting point sensibly for this category would be doing alternating workouts and dividing the uh exercises into two categories and just covering the whole body each time but with slightly different emphases on each day.

Um, you know, and that's you know, as you say, slower rate of progress, but uh ultimately a higher ceiling for growth. So but yeah, I think just in terms of where people are at, like you pointed out at the beginning, um people are going to have maximalist tendencies for specific muscle groups and minimalist for others. So most people are going to take the minimalist bodybuilding as a starting point and then look at the maximalist and go

Well, okay, I'm happy with most stuff, but I do want bigger arms. Or, you know, I do want to like you know, girls are gonna be like, Okay, well I want both glute exercises in. Cool. I mean that's just one extra exercise, it's not a big deal. Yeah. So literally what you could do if you want to construct the perfect workout for yourself is write out all the muscles we've just talked about and then next to it put a little note, do you want minimalist or do you want maximalist?

Or are there some that you just... at all. And then you go, you re-listen to our minimalist or our maximalist segment of this episode and you can write out those exercises that correspond with that. And then there's your plan. And if it's too much to do in a single workout, split it A B and if it fits, then just do it A A A. Absolutely. So and just always remembering that the the only three frequency options that you really have

are full body A twice a week, full body A three times a week, or full body A B A B A B three times a week. Those are the only options. You can't do full body A, B twice a week. It doesn't work. You have to do it in one of those three possibilities. So um obviously most people are doing full body A twice a week are gonna be just in the first category, the bare bear minimum sort of four exercises.

Um everybody else is probably either going to be doing full body A or full body um A B A B A B. Or, you know, as we've talked in a previous episode, you can take this and then cut it up into Yeah, I mean if you want to do upper lower, I mean split out. But again the same rules apply. So if you're doing up and lower you still and it's only four times a week that you go into the gym.

you're treating that as full body A twice a week, split into t two halves. So you can't do different workouts on each of your two kind of upper sessions, each of your two lower sessions. That doesn't work. And again, that's one of the big errors that the consolidated guys keep falling into. Yes. Yes, exactly.

Sets, I think we've covered that along the way. Repetitions, there's nothing magic, we need to talk about that. Um just don't do anything don't do anything silly and you should find true cover. Don't do anything silly. It's like people people doing kind of like, you know, twenty, thirty uh kind of rep maxes. Yeah, okay, that would be silly. Um Yeah, I I think that's Probably it really.

I I'm I'm trying to think how else can someone stuff this up? Mess this up. And you know, rest between your exercises, I think hopefully. I mean like y you have no choice'cause you have to set it up. If you're doing single sets, you know Well, some some people get a little bit obsessive about their warmups. I've had some people write to me saying, Oh, I tried to do this twelve exercise full body programme three times a week but it took me like an hour and a half each time and I'm like Yeah.

Precisely are you doing um that isn't the actual exercises? And it turns out that they're You know, some people have really hooked into this idea of doing, you know, kind of always doing only five stimulating reps and so they have to warm up quite a lot because they're doing really heavy loads.

And they end up their warm-up then isn't correct because they're not doing warm up reps, they're doing warm-up sets. So when you look at their warm up, they're like doing s multiple sets of ten with increasing load until they finally get to their work set of five and they're just Yeah.

absolutely exhausted by the time they actually do this at five and you're like, don't do this at five, do a set of eight to ten and just do a couple of warm up reps on your way up to doing that load. I mean I'm not talking about technical liftsy, I'm not talking about squat bench, deadlift things like that.

literally doing my machine exercises in the gym for bodybuilding purposes, you can literally do war reps, not warm up sets and you shouldn't be spending more than a couple of minutes getting ready to do your work set. It shouldn't be a thing. Really warm-up sets make more sense for consolidated plans where you're doing multiple sets, like you might be doing, you know, Reg Park three by five. Okay, great. You might have your two warm-up sets.

But if we're doing these single sets, three different two or three different exercises per muscle group, sets of eight to ten, you don't you don't need your you're too warm. You just need a couple of Walmart reps to make sure that your body still works in the way that you're expecting it to, and that nothing hurts, and that you've got your post activation potentiation effect.

And you're good. I mean So again, excessive warm ups. And again, you know, people doing, you know, crazy amounts of cardio before they start a strength training uh program like, you know, just don't. Um trying to think of anything else that people are doing that's not right. Um

I mean the only other point I would make is people will look at that Maximus plan and think, How could I possibly do that? That's gonna take me two and a half. But but another point I want to make is there's plenty of options we ran through. Like even when we were talking about elbow flexes, right? And I was like, hey, I would do behind the back cable curls and I would do a a partial top reverse grip cable curl. Fantastic.

it in the same station. Just get a little bit creative with it. You know, so often I'll talk to people, they'll be like, I can't fit all this and it takes me too long. And I'll be like, you know, what exercise are you doing? Oh, you know, in this station I'm doing you know, I'm doing a a I'm using a back machine and I'm doing a a lap pull down on a back machine and then I'm moving over to the cable station and I'm doing a a c sagittal plane row, cable row, whatever.

S some people get really tied up in needing to do the same muscle group exercises back to back. So they're like, Oh, because I've just done this back exercise I now need to do another back back exercise. It's like, Well, not really, you don't. You can move One mistake, spot on.

But then the other mistake as well is not realizing a lot of machines you can do multiple exercises at You know, if you're at an o you're doing a shoulder press machine, like you said, put the seat all the way down, do your close grip, do your your top partial anterior delt exercise. do your you know, c wide grip frontal plane, behind the neck style exercise. Like this Absolutely. If I'm programming a maximist plan, almost always I'm gonna

I'm gonna be getting people to do more than one exercise at a section. Unless it's like a leg extension where this is like nothing else they can do there or a leg curl. Exactly. Narrow g row straight into your Kelso. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean there's a whole bunch of these that you can just kinda double up. And even if you're not using machines, when I program this stuff for people, this are home gym.

Yes, okay, there's some stuff we can't do, but just using dumbbells and barbells, you can really creatively do a decent maximus plan at a bench. You can do ten different exercises at a single bench just with different dumbbells. You know, you just need to be creative. If you want this to fit and sort of be, you know, accessible and convenient, you can do it. You just need to think about it.

And if you've done it once and you've written down the loads that you're using, then you can actually do it in a way I mean we talked about this in the silver era context before. You can do it in a way where your your loading is going always in the same direction. Yeah. Either you start with your heaviest load for whatever exercise you've got best leverage on and you work downward and you're taking stuff off.

Or you're the opposite direction. You start with the lightest and you add stuff on as you go through. Um and it means that you're not constantly going backwards and forth between a light load and a heavy load and you constantly change I'm assuming that you're using adjustable dumbbells, by the way. I'm not assuming that you've got a whole dumbbell.

Yeah, in that context. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing on that that you would do as well is have give yourself a wider repetition range. Don't like if I've got someone doing home gym stuff, I'm not going to say do eight to ten. I'll be like, do five to twelve or five to fifteen. Because again, in the example we gave. You can use the same weight from the same weight.

Exactly. And if you're doing it behind the back and behind the neck and you get twelve reps and then you get six reps with your fr in front of the neck, I don't care. Like just use the same load. Again, this uh as I say, this comes back to people getting very, very kind of um

kind of tunnel vision on specific things that we've said in the past, which is I yeah, technically aiming for five stimulating routes probably is kind of physiologically the right answer. But practically if you want to kind of capture this exercise selection

you know, kind of availability that we've got here, then you are going to need to make some compromises, small ones, you know, around some of the other stuff. Um and like These are probably some of the I mean, the exercise station stuff is probably the best compromise'cause it really doesn't

It's not even a compromise. Um rep ranges is a very, very small compromise. If you're having to push up to eight, uh ten repetitions, that's a small compromise. It's it's there, but it is really not that big a deal. Um, you know, um So yeah, I mean I think yeah, everything else is just kind of structuring. I mean it's it's Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But it's You what you don't want to do is allow something that doesn't matter to then impede on the stuff that does matter.

uh give you tunnel vision and stop you thinking about other decisions that you can make that will help you. Yeah. I mean I think ultimately I keep coming back to this concept, which is that Um Focus of attention. I mean we talk about focus of attention in a physiological sense, like you know, what you're actually looking at and thinking about when you're doing an exercise, and that's a separate thing. What I mean is

When you're planning something, focus of attention is really, really dangerous if you get it wrong. So like if your focus of attention is so directed on um like the rep range. So you're like, I have to do five repetition. And your brain like starts to just remove all other information around it.

and you start to get really kind of trapped in optimizing for that variable. Yeah. But you lose the ability to actually see ways to make your life easier with other things. You have to widen your perspective and go What am I really trying to do? I'm trying to get really good coverage across multiple exercises in a sensible period of time so I don't lose motivation by the end of my session. Yeah.

And I can capture all of this benefit every single time I go in the gym. If your obsession with hitting five repetitions every single time is causing you to spend ninety minutes in the gym with all these warm ups and like and you're forgetting that you can structure your workout in a way that has these exercises in this order and, you know, do these things to make the flow quicker, you're missing all of that because of your tunnel vision on the one thing. You know I think

If anything, that is probably the root of the problems that I see when people are asking me questions. The single thing that so like, I get a lot of questions on Instagram and when I read them People write me paragraphs about their problems in the gym and what they're trying to struggling with and what and often I really struggle to answer the question because immediately I can see that the problem isn't the problem. No. No, no, no.

The problem goes way further back. The problem is actually, uh and so if you if if somebody's listening to this and they are actually one of these people who writes me these essays. Um, then the problem is not the problem you think it is. The problem is that you are obsessing about one thing that is not

big enough to obliterate all the other things that you've got to worry about. You've got to look at it holistically and make compromises and decisions about everything. And what we're trying to do here is give you a framework to do that and then troubleshoot what we've just been doing the last ten, twenty minutes. troubleshoot the times when you're struggling, it will be because you are over obsessing about one thing that in the context is not as important as you think it is.

Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And if that reduces the number of essays that I get sent on Instagram I'd be happy. Well the difficulty is it's hard to answer those questions. Like a lot of time I I don't answer them'cause

Exactly. You have to answer the thing that's that's not even spoken. Like you do have to go further back to answer it. And they don't realise what it is that they're asking because some Then you're trying to explain to and it's like it would just take, you know, kind of far too long for us to to get through that process.

Um and then maybe even a complete different time zone. So they you're then kind of sharing messages like every twelve hours or whatever. So it it just doesn't work for us. So, you know, like If you feel like you've written me a long essay on Instagram and I've ignored you it's not because I don't want to help, it's because I feel like I write you long essays and you ignore me all the time. Okay, okay.

Uh but yeah, so um but yeah, it's not uh a a kind of uh desire to actually ignore you, it's it's just because I don't feel like I can actually help in a meaningful way. I mean really what we're pointing to here is the importance of of knowing how to think about the thing, right? Like in this whole thing we're saying, Hey, how we want you to be thinking about this is

what muscles are you wanting to develop? How does it look like to develop that satisfactorily for your goal? You know, they're like really, you know, what variables then are going to to help you move towards that and what's going to hold you back and not actually contribute to that in any meaningful way. Like really I think we're always going to be asking why we're asking what we're asking. We need to be going to the question behind the question.

The goal is to keep the goal the goal. So that's the thing that people forget. They they like they they assume that they know what they're doing, that they know that what they're doing matters and that they you know, the thing in front of them is the thing that is causing the problem and it's not. What you've got to do is am I keeping the goal the goal? That's the first question. Or am I getting distracted by thinking about one small component of my journey towards the goal, like rep range.

Am I getting so obsessed with rep range that I'm forgetting about the impact on the uh other things in my program that my obsession is creating? If I'm obsessing about rep range so much that uh having to do tons and tons of warm ups and it's chewing into my ability to, you know, kind of get my work done in an hour. That is now becoming a problem because I'm over obsessing about this one thing and it's causing a negative

side effects on other stuff. So am I keeping the goal a goal? Am I keeping my purpose of, you know, maximising hypertrophy for the whole body in every session, uh or am I getting sidetracked into obsessing about hitting five reps in every single exercise?

Um, because that's obviously a negative. So I'm not keeping the goal to goal. So I'm I'm violating rule number one. Rule number two, am I actually aware of all the things that matter? Yeah. Am I am I aware of all the things that matter or am I again just focusing on one? So both of these questions are two ways of asking the same question.

Am I keeping the goal a goal? Am I actually doing the things that matter? Secondly, am I doing all the things that matter? Or am I like getting laser focused on one thing? And the reality is that When other uh fitness influencers talk about people who are uh suffering paralysis by analysis, it's often not paralysis by analysis. Paralysis by analysis um would actually technically would actually work because if you just kept going you'd get the answer. Um

The problem is they get stuck because they are analysing one variable and assuming that they need to optimise that one variable. Um if they just carry on and look for the optimization that is um the best solution across multiple variables, they'll get the right answer. The problem is they get stuck at one variable. Let's let's conclude with that rant. Okay.

Can you just I want you to expand on that a little bit. Cause I I think there's something really valuable in that and I don't know that people are realizing it. Because that is obviously that's like the number one critique of the science based lifting world, right? Is that people are getting too fixated, they're getting too detailed, looking at the minutiae too much and you know, it's leading to these silly experimentations and people are wasting their time and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And what you said there I think is really astute is you're saying No. The problem is that they're not doing that enough. They're not identifying all of the variables that that they need to go down the rabbit hole in. They're stopping at just one of those, maximizing one of those at the expense. of all these other ones potentially. And that's why it's not working. Not because they're maximizing one thing, but they're forgetting or excluding these other ones.

Correct. So um before before I do that, let me just uh kinda mention that um I am a big fan of experimentation. I think that it's one of the best things about humanity is our ability to experiment and try stuff and and do interesting things. And I think that people who object to experimentation and, you know, kind of the whole

idea of science is experimentation really. And discovering new things have you know, um I I just don't like the attitude. I think it's a bad a bad thing. So I'm a big supporter of the people who do the experimentation. I think uh it's great when they do that. Um I'm yeah.

I'm delighted that they experiment with ideas that I've created. Um and I don't I don't I really don't like uh the kind of the the push against that. I think it's it's it's a bad attitude. Anyway, so uh in terms of this idea, um What I'm saying is that if you imagine you've got a a surface, okay? You've got a surface like a piece of cloth. Now

For a single variable, you could put a like a marble on the cloth and it would create a local minimum for that variable. And you're going around looking for local minim minim minim minimi. I don't know what the flural is. A a minimum point. You're looking for multiple minimum points. You're looking for all these. And they're all just these marbles in the kind of cloth and they're creating a indentation in the cloth.

And you go and find one of those uh minimum points and you go, Okay, I've found my minimum point for rep range, it's five. I n I n I'm gonna try and optimise everything for five repetitions. And then you realise that that local minimum for that particular point is nowhere near the local minimum points for everything else. And you get stuck.

Because you're like, well I've I've got my I've got my local minimum point here and now you're trying to carry it with you as you go and experiment and try and find all not experiment, sorry, research and find all the other minimum points that you want. So you want minimum point for You know, the duration of the workout. You wanna be like, Oh, I wanna keep my workout as short as possible. I don't want a ninety minute workout. And you realise that local minimum point is like four miles away.

It's nowhere near where you are. And you're like, Oh, well I'm stuck. And so you sit there holding your local minimum for five repetitions and you're looking around going How do I move forward? And you're like, I can't. There's nowhere to go. And that's the paralysis point because it's not paralysis by analysis. It's paralysis because you're emotionally attached to the thing that you've just grabbed and you can't let go of it.

Move o over there and try and find a way to minimize your workout duration. If what you'll find is that your actual optimum point probably doesn't have any of your local minimums. Yeah. It will be somewhere else that is not visible to you. And what you've got to do is you've got to go through

And you've got to look and you've got to understand every single local minimum point, which is literally how the physiology works, and that's what we've been talking about forever. You've got to understand where all those local minimum points are, and then you've got to go, okay Now, how do I balance all of these local minimum points in a way that gets me to an optimum uh kind of location? You're gonna have to prioritize.

And you're gonna have to go, how much do I lose by moving from five to seven? Yeah. Or five to eight reps. How much do I move by moving from three times a week to two times a week? Oh wow, no, that's a really big one. I shouldn't do that.

Okay. So you make decisions very quickly by seeing how much of a magnitude you lose. How much do I lose by m uh chopping out a whole bunch of exercises? Oh wow, that's quite a big difference. If I do that, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna keep my exercise selection. So

What you have to do is go through all of these points. So the problem isn't paralysis by analysis. The problem is that you're not doing the analysis for all of the things, emotionally detaching from the specific components of your program that you've got overly emotionally attached to and then finding what your optimum point is by um combining all of that information to get to a program that actually works.

Um so the problem a this is paradoxical, but the problem isn't that you're being overly cognitive. Paralysis by analysis suggests you're being overly cognitive. It's not. The problem is you're being overly emotional. Mm. Okay.

Basically the problem is you're overly emotional. If you take all the emotion out of it, which what I did a very long time ago, then actually get to a point where the joy of discovery becomes the interesting thing and you can Take a concept like five repetitions being the uh optimal for a fatiguing point, uh minute m as in stimulus to fatigue ratio.

And hold that in your mind as being something good and then continue on your journey and continue learning about all the other things because you're not emotionally attached to trying to keep that benefit that you've obtained. You just let it go and you move on. And ultimately the problem isn't As I say, paralysis by analysis, it's um paralysis by emotional attachment to a particular training variable that you've become overly obsessed with.

And you said something in that where you said that the like the plan you finish up with ultimately is probably g not gonna have any of the No, it's not. It's really not. No. That's so interesting'cause like you literally it it'd be such a funny skit to do like, you know, have all these variables listed out and be like what's the optimal for each of these variables, what's the optimal rep range, what's the optimal rest period, what's the optimal exercise number per ex per muscle, whatever.

And you almost never end up with any. of those. Exactly. Then what's the optimal program? None of those probably or very few of those. I mean y you could even argue that three and a half times a week is better for than than three times a week for frequency. I mean by and how many people do three and a half times a week? Well, how many?

So again, you could f I mean like I think frequency and exercise selection probably are you kind of the ones that you're gonna end up closest to those two local minimums. Um you know, but ultimately a lot of the other stuff you're gonna have to make compromises on. And it's it's just to try and find your overall optimum uh kind of point for the entirety of your uh kind of training variable selection. But as I say the

Not a cognitive problem. It's an emotional problem. But almost all human problems are. I went through this same program uh problem with my own programming where I enjoyed. I wanted to stick to five repetitions'cause I enjoyed it. You didn't have to like there was no wasted work. It knew recovery was good. And it was holding me back just in terms of

how many exercises I could do and um, you know, what like all these other variables that we've discussed that ultimately probably gonna take me further than just doing those five repetitions. The exact example we're giving. And I resisted it for like a year and then eventually I was like, Oh crap, I I can't be the guy that's just doing five repetitions if I want my workouts to be better.

these higher repetitions, which I've been emotionally, you know, sort of um yeah, opposed to for so long, actually they've got a place here. And higher. I mean like eight to ten, I mean it's not that much higher. Well, for me now I'm basically trying not to use a gym pin.'Cause the the effort involved in using Up as high as twelve to fifteen in some cases.

Something like a calf raise or or yeah, some of those exercises the calf raise I'll do fifteen. Yeah, it's just if I and you know, obviously I'll try to pick unilateral or whatever, I've got a good calf machine

at one gym that I'm going to I can do that unilaterally really nicely and I'll do that. But otherwise It's just I would prefer now to I I like I think I'm I wouldn't prefer, but I feel like I can get any more out of not having to waste time and effort and load up all, you know, gym pins, whatever else. And just do that single set with with you know more direct repetitions, even though ideologically I like the idea of just doing five repetitions.

So people you can get you can emotionally detach. I've I've managed to make it from hating full body to now it's almost all I do, from hating high repetitions to now doing these single moderate reps, you can you can get there.

Alrighty. I feel like we covered multiple topics in one, but um it was it was a fun chat. Is there anything you want to leave everyone with? Nope. No, I think I've probably talked enough for today. Okay, well thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you for everyone who signed up to our Transcend Coaching certification. I'm super excited to be uh journeying with you guys for a year, starting in just a couple of weeks.

There is still a couple of weeks to sign up, so if you are interested in that, then we've still got info on our pages. Otherwise, can't wait for the year ahead. Thank you, everyone, and we'll be back next week with another episode.