Are you training hard enough? | ETP#57

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happy tuesday guys welcome back to another episode of eat train prosper today is brian and myself and we are going to be exploring the concept around training hard enough are you training hard enough how to know if you're training hard enough and what things subjective kind of perceptions that we follow in our own training and with our own client help to help facilitate this conversation before we get into or i should say after we get into that we are going to answer some of the final q amp a questions we got from last week's coaches q amp a episode that we didn't have time to answer on that episode but before we get into both of these brian what's going on yep

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updates man every week

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every week

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gotta let the people know what's going on so i'm in the home stretch we are leaving for our drive to san diego on friday which is three days from now so in this episode drops we will already

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exciting

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be living in san diego we'll be there for five weeks yeah we're super amped like i said on our last episode we found a nanny since then she has signed our contract which really means nothing except she intends to show up so that's cool we're super excited about that and let's see what else be going on i had the opportunity to train it n one this past weekend with cass and then eye shack i don't know if you guys uh many of you guys follow eye shack on uh on instagram it's i s h a k but um he's a good dude he's in his mid twenty seconds but super knowledgeable really smart and savvy a bodybuilder he competes as well and he came down to colorado i think primarily to come train at n one and get to kind of chat with cass a bit and pick his brain but uh we did upper body and we got to use all of the new equipment that just came in at the n one h q so like when you and i did our practical we were pretty much relegated to the leg machines and then cable movements for upper body we didn't have any like chest presses or pull out machines or row machines or anything like that so it was a really cool experience to be able to go in there and use some of these machines and prime of course the best equipment manufacturer ever just came out with a vertical like a pull down machine that allows you to

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of course they did

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change the resistance curve so prior that resistance curve change had only been available on the the row machine but now they have the vertical pull machine that allows you to do that you can do it unilateral so we of course made it

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of course

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length and overloaded

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yeah

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and naturally right and because you can't train your back lengthened in any other way so that was like such a cool treat to be able to do that and it's so weird like when you feel these movements that are lengthened overloaded it's like you grind through the rep and it still feels hard at the short position but then when you get to the top and you think about initiating another rep like nothing happens you just like go to pull and like your arm moves one inch and you're like oh okay that's the end of the rep you know whereas like any movement that fas short you're inevitably going to get like eighty percent of the range of motion than sixty five percentage of the range of motion etc so it was just a cool fun unique experience um and i think that as i finish up the san diego trip in the end of march and come back hopefully she have the opportunity to do some shadowing with cass and the team and maybe be there for a couple of the practicals down the road as well

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very very cool such a such an awesome i'm jealous to be completely honest i'm thinking like i want to go back and do another practical just so i can one i mean it's it's like i we talk about drinking it from a firehouse one so i'll be able to retain more of it but too just to get i just love those

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yep

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experiences you know that's just things that i want to personally do so it's really really cool and it's sweet that you guys are taking a little trip heading back to san diego skipping out on the last little little bit of winter where are you gonna be training back in san diego

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i think i'm gonna join the gym because so i just found this out it really bummed me out a couple of weeks ago uh one of the members of crossfit pb hit me up and was like hey dude i'm trying to follow your programming but uh we don't have any dumbbells over seventy pounds and i was like whoa whoa whoa on when i was there i bought eighty second ninety seconds hundreds one hundred five hundred ten hundred fifteen hundred twenty one hundred twenty five we had all of them right so i guess jenny went and sold the majority of the heavy dumbbells and now the heaviest thing there is seventy seconds so i literally like couldn't even train there if i wanted to i mean i'm not gonna be using barbells for everything cause that's just not how i really like to train anymore you know so so yeah joining the gym is definitely the right move and then that would also allow me to train with ishak who trains

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very very cool except for the whole selling the dumbbells parts that's sad

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there as well yeah not cool that cool

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good so updates for me the big one i am taking on opportunity to take on two new clients this month we will start end of february so listeners out there if this sounds like you mail i would say at least intermediate resistance train and then the entire goal right the simplest way for me to explain this is your desire to learn how to live between eleven and fifteen percent body fat that is where i feel most extremely confident in dialing in that person taking your physique to the next level understanding and learning the nuances of nutrition i'm speaking to you and i have two spots right now so you can dm me on instagram or head over to my website which is striker nutrition co com and then everything else is is open from there you'll find that information i also weighed one ninety five today this is my first time being over one

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yes

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ninety five cents fuck probably like april of last year when i was dieting down it i feel good and i i always this is something that i'll take like a smaller side on i had kind of realized that this is like a whole this probably a whole larger episode but there's there's always those kind of two camps right there's like the i go through a gaming phase and then like you know okay i'm fifteen percent body fat and i'm speaking like in in generalizations here of like people who are like you know in the body building sphere let's call it that because realistically like we're body builders we just don't compete and we do we do like the exact same thing we train in that you know style we eat mostly in that we just don't compete so yeah like hobbyist is what all kind of um

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lifestyle bodybuilder

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say

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yeah yeah

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in the reason i realize is like i was lean obviously i i've been super lean from like the end of end of july through like december and i realize like it's you just kind of get bored when you don't have any goals when the goal is to just stay where you are like it becomes like it really just muddies the water of like what am i what am i trying to accomplish like you know your training is going to be suboptimal because you're not eating sufficiently to facilitate those adaptations one we're advanced anyway so those the facilitation of those adaptations is incredibly slow to begin with even if we were feeding sufficiently for them and and i realized like i just kind of needed something new to to excite myself you know around training and stuff and it kind of hit me i was like oh i'm just gonna put on weight again like that and they'll find where i feel a really good balance and i know we've

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so

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talked about like for me at the like when i was in like one eighty eight one eighty nine like i just don't it like psychologically just fucks with me i'm i feel like i'm i'm i know i'm losing muscle mass at that point type of deal so i'm excited i've just been loosening up my approach and just giving myself a little bit more flexibility with my ratio of carbohydrate to fat and knowing that i need to go over them anyway you know it's the the one downside to my philosophy of how i coach my clients of my entire goal for how i've structured my like theory and approach for periodization is when you do want to put on weight you got to eat a load of food and it be can be a little bit discouraging because we've now you know i've a hundred and ninety pounds eating three three thousand to three thousand two hundred calories only training four days per week and hitting six thousand seven thousand steps per day now to put on weight again i'm gonna have to really start pushing those calories that is the one downside it is a one percent problem but when you are in that one percent it's your problem so

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well an like you you try to do that with a lot of really high quality food and i know that that that's obviously like the most prudent approach and it's the only approach really when you're in a deficit because you don't have as many calories to go but like personally i'm much more on the end of being a little more free when i'm in a surplus and allowing myself to eat some calories that aren't like the most high quality calories like bagels and cereals and stuff like that so so i guess depending on how high your calories need to go there are certain sacrifices that

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exactly so one thing i've been finding like middle grounds like there's a cereal

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can be made along the way

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that i've been have having generally i'll do it's like my pre workout it's koala koala crisp i think it's like a rice based cereal um and the it's you're gonna get like significantly less sugar than a lot of the other ones and just things i don't want to i spent years of my life you know sacrificing health for the pursuit of gains and now i'm like i'm just i can't do that

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yeah

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anymore like i spent those years doing that and when once you know like when you know how to read lab work and see these things like i've seen my numbers at the end of like gaining periods and stuff and i'm like fuck these are not good um so

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is this

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it's just kind of like that knowledge is a gift and a curse at the same time a little bit

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yep yep

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and then the last thing is that kind of taken us into the the topic for today is i did five sets of quads the other day and my quads are absolutely destroyed for the second week in a row that i that i did this on this particular day and i even s swapped it so the the prior week i did my uh rear foot elevated front foot wedge split squats first and then went into the pendulum and cut my reps on the pendulum in half so i was like okay can't do that again so i just may try it warmed up like really what really well and did my pendulum first and then did the split squats and i again just i felt like they were i i could have left the gym after the pendulum to be completely honest that's how blown up my quads where i'm like internet's two sets like we're gonna at least or at least do our top and back off on on the split squats and then i did one i one set on the like press and it felt good like you like the post you put out the other week or sorry the other day around like my legs are like a little bit wobbly you know i was like this is a good uh and then the next morning i woke up and my body was like yo what the hell did you do and it really just that's when i i i messaged you about this like it's it's been really really interesting once you can select the the proper exercises perform them to a high enough degree how much your volume can decrease and how much stimulus can increase through proper execution

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yeah for sure so uh i'm super curious about like what things you've done or noticed or changed maybe the way that you execute movements because like you were doing pendulums months ago too so is there like a difference in the way that you're executing this movement something different that you're thinking about as you maybe like begin your ascent or

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i've

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anything along those lines

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there's a there's a sweet spot of repetition i find with certain exercises right and we've talked about this before if you do a pendulum squat for five reps

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is it

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right by like rep two you're like oh this is heavy you know and you're using everything you have when you're in that like eight to twelve rep range like it's it's different like it's not a pure performance it's like a there there's enough reps to really i i can't find the words i'm looking for it's just like a much it's a different form of hard it like requires more of your soul let's put it that way um and go ahead

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yeah so the okay so the way that i kind of perceive this in regards to what you were saying about the pendulum being different at five reps than at ten or whatever which we've discussed is that when it's like a five rep set and it's really heavy is that you get to the bottom and even if range of motion is the same between a ten rep set and a five rep set the way that i would initiate in ascent on a five rep set is by trying to explode or maybe the word is launch myself out of the bottom and when i launch myself out of the bottom there's like glutes getting involved there's like core bracing and you're pushing with your upper body and like it really has this feeling of being this like systemically draining like full body beat down type thing similar to like what i would experience with like a barbell back squat almost i mean definitely more acute than that but but it feels less pendulum and more like just general squad whereas when you're doing like a ten or twelve rep set and you get to the bottom and then you actually ascend in that like the best the best analogy is the gently pushing on the gas pedal instead of gunning the gas pedal right when you approach your rep in that manner that all of that tension can just be pushed into the quad and it's like this awful lactic acid burn filled

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just

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metabolite thing that just like irks your entire quad spectrum from knee to hip and you just don't get that same feeling when you're launching yourself out of the bottom

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exactly it's like a it's like an explosion versus like an applying pressure until things start like incrementally applying pressure

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it is

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to produce like the movement type of deal yeah

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yeah yeah like if you gunned the gass pedal you would like spin out for a second before you finally got going versus that like nice gradual ascent where your passenger is like oh that was a really nice nice pickup of speed you got there

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yeah and it just allows you to target the musculature that you want better so i know like by just g like a

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yeah

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like s like it's not incredibly slowly obviously but like i'm using like full range of motion a brief pause at the bottom and then i apply you

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but

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know pressure i make sure that i'm not like rolling up onto my toes or you know just pushing through my heels i'm like distributing force equally through my foot keeping my knee forward and then applying pressure and it's just like you're able to produce the stimulus like much more locally to where you want and then it's

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is it

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more you know local eye like you get more metabolic like localized damage you're getting more tension through that musculature and it's just like it's like more precise it's like less of a shotgun approach and more of like a you know like a

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yes it

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whatever like a standard rifle that is in a shotgun or something like that

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so when we talk about this in the context of training hard enough i think it's a little bit ambiguous because you could look at the shotgun approach and at the end of that set you actually may feel like you trained harder because you got your whole body into it versus maybe that more acute thing of like it's hard in a specific area which is actually super relevant to the post i made yesterday that kind of discussed the same idea of trying to get that more targeted stimulus instead of the systemic stimulus from a movement

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one hundred percent like that is the best way to describe it in this entire thing it's incredibly subjective and i think that's what makes the conversation so hard because when we talk about like i only you know like the amount of sets right it in it's i couldn't imagine how hard it is for the people doing this like you know um research and because it's it's one it's incredibly subjective and how hard something is there it's like there's a massive distance that's open for interpretation of something right and it's one of those things it's like it's on you as it like the trainee to understand what that hard is in how like the proximity of failure to that set and how true that proximity to failure is because as things specifically like legg movements and maybe like you know bench pressing movements there is that when we've talked about this before like that fear of failure and that fear generally sets in before the failure will so i know like and what had helped me was when i started recording more of my sets because i would be like man that was a really hard set and then i watch it i'm like no it wasn't like that that weight is not really slowing down and i'm just like okay eight reps and stopped and i'm like realistically if i was really gunning for it and i have like a spotter i probably could have done twelve but those last four reps like are highly effective and are highly uncomfortable

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mmm hm yeah for sure one of the things i pointed out to you yesterday when you posted that video of your stiff legged dead lifts was that it looks like you've gotten so much more comfortable with the ability to perform a slow concentric and grind without losing form on like big compound movements such as a hip hinge and so i want to relay like a personal experience of mine too because it wasn't until maybe the last year or two that i also kind of figured out how to grind through these types of movements an example being like in a pull down i i think up until maybe a year and a half ago i performed pull downs like you would see mike israel perform pull down so when he does them on the grammar on his youtube videos or whatever right where he's like you know he's going going going there's no rep slow speed like you can tell he's working harder but it's still the same explosive pull to the chest and then he's just done and and you're like okay well where like there the rep never slowed it's the lyon mcdonald argument thing that was going on you know around the internet of like if you're approaching failure your rep speed should slow but israels doesn't so this is always that like weird nuanced area where if you actually are performing movements without momentum to get you through that initial poll of the movement then you should actually feel rep speed slow down and the fact that you've figured out how to incorporate slow concentric on something like a hipping it's huge because like to be able to maintain posture and not just cave over and turn it into a rounded back question mark type lift it's hugely impressive and i think that that speaks to kind of digging deeper into the how hard are you training piece

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yeah and to be completely you know transparent i think a big part of that is the proper load selection you know like on that that that stiff like a deadlift i did i did it now granted it's still brand new into my training i mean this is the first time i've been doing stiff legged uh dead lifts in about a year right so it's i'm still in that like neural you know adaptation phase but two seventy five the bar for a set of ten and that tenth rep was like it was hard like my my knees were all wobbling you know where you get like the what is it's like your your muscles recruiting like any motor units it has left to come help so they're not like firing incredibly

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yeah yeah

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smoothly and you get that like almost like jerky style like movement

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yeah yeah

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yeah

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they like stop and start it's like you kind

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yeah

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of pause and then you go again and like yeah you just have to keep from losing

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exactly and i think if i had another twenty

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form during that pause yeah

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pounds on the bar like i wouldn't have been able to want my obviously my rep number would have gone down but i think it would have been too heavy for me to be able to maintain that form and get that like really quality like last one to three reps with that so your load selection is incredibly important there in my opinion

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yeah no i fully agree with that it's man i keep thinking about the pull down example because it's like it's kind of like a lateral race too in that if you even use like half of a percent of momentum it makes like such a big difference in the ability of the bar to keep moving so being able to standardize whether you're using any like bit of even like a small bit of torso flinging with a lateral rays or if you're doing a pull down and you just kind of like just slightly go into thoracic extension and kind of get that thing jerked to begin the rep it really just gives it speed that progresses it through the whole thing and it makes that point of failure like super ambiguous like i'm sure when mike isorel is doing his sets and his rep speed never slows like he probably does feel in his brain like hey i gave a hundred percent effort and if i were to give one hundred percent effort again it wouldn't wouldn't i wouldn't be

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church

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able to do the rep right it's a lengthed overload movement like a pendulum or a stiff like a dead lift like if it doesn't get up it doesn't get up type thing but i really think that if form isn't compromised at all like you at least have to to the bottom and see if you can get another one because if your rep speed doesn't t slow you can't be sure that that really is zero rr like i want to see rep speed slow i want to see something happening where you're struggling to maintain technique but the but the bar keeps moving and then eventually you get to the top of that rep and grind it out and that's going to look a little different on a lengthened overload movement than it will on a short overload movement right like a short overload movement are more easier to grind maybe in some ways because the failure point is at the top but if you use momentum you can just get to the top i guess you thinking of a lateral rays here is in my brain but you can get to the top without a whole lot of grind along the way but if you don't use that momentum from the bottom then as you get three quarters of the way up you're going to reach like this sticking point that you have to fight through on the stiff legged deadlift that point is going to be at the bottom so once you can get that bar moving and get halfway up like once you get to the knees you're basically kind of just hips forward lock it out type thing so those failures are gonna look a little bit a little bit different but but either way you should see some sort of like slowing of the rep speed through the point of maximum resistance

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yeah and for for you guys who are like listening who are newer to exploring this start with your

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but

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obviously safer movements like like a single arm pull down or or like brian like a lateral rays like there's no there's very minimal risk for something bad to happen taking that to failure obviously like a pendulum a hack squat an r dl or a stiff like a deadlift something like that like anything with your axial loaded and like it's just that exponentially kind of increases and you want to like um is it tr like s okay

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yeah he of trepidation yeah

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step into exploring that but like a bicep curl you know lap pull down these sorts of things because it's you will find it that last rep it will slow down considerably but if you're never exploring that i mean that could be you that's the difference between doing like four sets on a movement in two or something like that

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yeah

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which is really what has sparked me because historically i've have been a high volume person it always worked for me but it

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yep

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wasn't there was the the difference for me was one when i went to the n one practical and we were really training to failure because you had i i trained by myself for years now and when you have someone it's like no you still have like four reps left and internally you're like no i'm done you know this is where i stop and they're like no keep going and they like will spot you and guide you through it and they're like holy shit you reach like levels that you haven't really pushed yourself to because they like one you're not video you maybe don't in yourself you're training by yourself or fear there's a big fear of injury people think like when you train closer to failure your injury risk goes up there is is truth too of course but there are simply much safer ways to do it and then when i had found that like hey if i'm really really pushing myself on that first you know set that top set where i want to get ten reps and if i'm giving it my all i can't do a fourth set at that weight and get ten reps like it will get cut in half if not less in one thing that i've been finding that i with with this new program that i'm really really liking is i will do back off set like a twenty percent decrease in weight and i'm still not even able to match my reps that i did on that top set because i like literally gave it everything i have and i'm like this is wild because like that the

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yeah

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the stiff like a dead i literally took fifty pounds off the bar and couldn't even match reps again and that's like that that's saying a lot you know for yeah that's saying a lot you know for yeah

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especially on yet especially on hip pie

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yeah

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movements sorry

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so i think like for for for this i just want to really just put that out there it was like really explore your effort in each set and something i know historically when i would either like write a program based on like i would start from volume and like back into that or following something else i'm like well i got to do four sets of ten on the hack squat i can't do every i can't i can't blow my load on set one cause then i'll fall apart on set four but there's a different approach in in uh avenue i guess i should say is like if you blow your load on set one you don't need a set for from like a stimulus perspective so it's there are different avenues and i just want to have the conversation around exploring these personally for you because you might find your eyes opened a little bit as i have

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yeah for sure i uh i have a question for you maybe

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yeah

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to play devil's advocate a little bit because you mentioned that you know you started videoing yourself relatively recently like you know six months ago whatever it was you started really seeing that like you know you weren't training as hard as you thought you were that it was the n one thing in november that you know really had a drastic change for you right you had been training for almost twenty years or whatever it is prior to these last six months and you know you have been in your own word sort of sandbagging effort compared to what you do now but yet you've gotten great results so so what are your thoughts on whether like is it better to do it this way like i personally align right i like the top set back offset approach i think it works for a number of reasons beyond just physical adaptations but you know mental reasons as well life reasons but like you got great results training with four sets of ten to twelve at two to three rr or whatever it was so what is it about maybe this new style and training slightly harder that you feel is beneficial to your training and also maybe it's something that's beneficial to you psychologically or to your lifestyle or something along those lines

[Unknown1]: 28:22

yeah so i really really like that and i thank you for bringing that up because i definitely didn't want to put off like that this is better and the other way isn't like systems work when you work them for the most part right and and the research does seem to to exhibit that like if you if you train a little bit further from failure you're able to do a little bit more volume and then you know vice versa historically i feel like i've always trained hard except in this like this whole like purely hot like hobbyist bodybuilder style of training is still relatively new for me and then particularly like the leg movements they're just harder on on your cn s on on everything right i mean there's a lot of people you go to a you know any gym there's a lot of guys who have like good shoulder development you know good back development be but like the people who have like great legs they're either one like genetic freaks are there people that train like pretty fucking hard and it's because it's it's just harder to do so from for me i feel like i you know i'm top heavy in terms of muscular development like overwhelmingly top heavy so i feel this is a new avenue where i stand to gain a lot more because i just historically of my training career have sandbagged some of my leg training in terms of just effort or knowledge or in proximity to failure in certain things specifically because a lot of my past training was like you know dead lifts back squad it's we weren't doing sets of twelve on the back squat you know and even when we were based on how i back squat it was my glutes and low back that would get a lot of that like you know fatiguing volume just based on my form and in levers the mental aspect i really am identifying with firmly now i really really like knowing that i gave it like my all it it is and this could be because i'm in this just large period of personal growth with being an entrepreneur and growing a business and i mean so much of it is purely just personal growth in breaking through limiting beliefs and that sort of thing so i feel like it this is a physical aspect that i tie into that as well like i like knowing that i gave that you know set of ten on on the pendulum like damn near everything i had you know besides like a a true failure and that's just me being a little bit smart you don't want to take everything to true failures but i do identify more with that and it's new for me right i said i i took the high volume approach for so many years i'm now like you know the pendulum swing to the other side and i'm exploring something that i kind of stubbornly avoided because i didn't believe in it because i had always look like no i volumes why like why would i wanna try this other thing it's already working but i guess people who i respect and want to learn from like you being one have i'm like well if these people are doing it and i really respect them like it i i at least have to formulate my own opinion based on trying type of thing see yeah a little bit long winded but i think i did i answer did i cover those parts okay

[Unknown2]: 31:52

yeah yeah for sure no and i love that i think that was a great answer um i i also like i i find it an interesting question just on like a philosophical level too because like we know so much about the fact that you could do more sets and be further from failure and it potentially creates hypertrophy versus you know taking fewer sets to failure and that also tends to create hypertrophy and so so a there's like the personality type like kind of like the mike millner stuff with the

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big one

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and yeah so like you know there the time thing i'm not sure is like even that much more efficient to do the top set back offset only because i feel like i put in so many specific ramp up sets to optimize my performance on that top set that maybe if i was just doing like four sets of ten and they were at two to three rr i probably wouldn't need as many of those ramp up sets so time wise i'm not i'm not one hundred percent sure i also think that there's potentially longer rest periods between sets when you go closer to failure than what you would need if you were like three reps from failure you could probably knock out those four sets in the same time that it takes you to do like ramp up sets plus two sets of top set back off so so a little i'm a little torn on that one but i think psychologically for me it's uh it's really hard to do a set to two to three rr like a lot of times people see a two to three rr set and they're like oh dude you weren't even close to failure like your bar speed didn't really slow down like you know you had so many more in you blah blah and they just think that because you were three r r and your resee didn't slow that somehow like that effort wasn't there that effort sucks man and like the data driven guys use the term the number of un racks and and that is like a real concern in my brain psychologically is that every time i go to get under a pendulum or a back squat or what whatever the hell it is even a leg extension there's like a mental toll that goes into the focus the preparation the execution and all of these things and it takes it it it is almost as much of a toll psychologically to do a set to two to three rr as it is for me to do a set to failure so to have to get on there and do four sets instead of two sets become so daunting for me that i actually begin not enjoying my workouts anymore so so that's very much like a me problem but that's one of the primary reasons that i kind of think this slightly lower volume approach vibes a little better with me

[Unknown1]: 34:28

that psychological thing you you said it it does really resonate with me as well especially if we want to consider the effective reps model right so when you're doing that like three rr set you're let's say it's let's say you know it's a like let's say failure would be at like ten for for simple number sake and you're doing like a three rr we're stopping at you know seven you're doing five like buying reps to get to that like six and seven and then when you have like four sets you're doing those buy in reps set after set after set

[Unknown2]: 35:01

right

[Unknown1]: 35:01

and if you're only doing like those two hard sets like you buy in and then you just take it to the house type of thing and then you don't really have to buy in as many times so that's another like psychological part that

[Unknown2]: 35:13

yeah

[Unknown1]: 35:13

it does come through because when you're going through those you're like okay that was set three sorry rep three that's rep four you know it's going to start getting hard and then you know that like just like that kind of feeling of impending doom is like just encroaching on you as you're going through that and when you only have to like do it once and then just take it to the house it like i kind of do prefer that as well as opposed to like knowing you know if that feeling's going to

[Unknown2]: 35:37

yeah

[Unknown1]: 35:38

come in on on sets three and four again

[Unknown2]: 35:43

yeah it's kind of like what you and i have talked about where in hypertrophy training you can almost like get mentally excited in the set like it's not like in strength training where you like have to get mentally excited before you're set because just unwrap in the bar is like really really strenuous right in hypertrophy you just kind of un rack it and then you're like okay i'm in this and like each rep you do you get like further in it and you get more mentally focused and then to have to like stop that before you actually really really put the effort in and then do it again again and again it just it's like this crazy game of with my head that really just doesn't work when i'm putting in that type of effort so this is like talking you know as if you're at like a true two to three rr i think that when a lot of people see or hear two to three rr they just think of it as an easy set because it's not failure and as we know you know that is that is not the case i also think that another piece of training hard enough is part of where you and i both have ended up in splitting quads and hamstrings in that if you are training like super duper hard really putting in focus energy and getting relatively close to failure on these these complex movements that it really is almost impossible to put in any reasonable effective effort on the second part of your lower body so if you're doing quads first you know your hamstring work after would really suffer or if you're doing hamstring's first your quad work after would really suffer and in the follow my program program we just had hams on monday and quads on tuesday and then there was some upper body stuff on the quad day but i've already had two people report back and be like man like i haven't had leg sessions this productive in in so long because of this split and like just trying to like even if you don't think about it you know you're almost kind of preserving something in your brain because you know that after you stiff like a deadlift you have to a leg curl and after that after you have to pendulum squat and then you have to leg extension and like all of that's going through your head constantly but if you just know that you go in and you leg curl and rd l and then your hams strings are smashed and then you can you know do some abs or calves or upper body or whatever it is it's a much more effective way to allow you to put effort in so maybe some in some ways people are subconsciously pulling back on effort because of what they know that they have

[Unknown1]: 38:01

that was me hundred percent cause i'd be like well there's there's no way i can't

[Unknown2]: 38:02

pending

[Unknown1]: 38:06

i can't do this i can't give it my all and then go give get it my all like they're already used up eighty percentage of my all there's very little left type of deal but like for instance like i have

[Unknown2]: 38:15

yeah

[Unknown1]: 38:17

i do triceps after quads right so i had this that day where i smashed my my my quads and i'm like okay yeah i can go do triceps really hard now because like it's not my legs you know it was easy type of thing and then one thing that i've found really interesting and funny i have i've have to change my order of my days because my quads are getting so sore by the time i do hamstrings that i can't put my quads in the hamstring machines because it hurts so bad so like doing like a seated leg curl the pad hurt so bad i like i tried and i was like i can't i had to do like forty

[Unknown2]: 38:51

oh no the pad down on the thighs yeah

[Unknown1]: 38:57

fifty pounds less cause the the weight that it just hurts so bad and then like yesterday i swapped my lying leg curls for the like standing le girl because i couldn't put i just couldn't put the weight on my hurt so bad so it's just like it yeah it's it's a same it's shortened overload so i was fortunate that the gym had that

[Unknown2]: 39:14

same movement though hip extended

[Unknown1]: 39:18

piece of

[Unknown2]: 39:19

yeah

[Unknown1]: 39:19

equipment that i could you know make a pretty seemingly lateral change in it but um yeah it's that is what you said is such a good way to put it where it's by splitting those big muscle groups up you were able to put more into them and then you can be like oh i have biceps now or some

[Unknown2]: 39:36

yes yes

[Unknown1]: 39:36

lateral races like i can still give those aa good go

[Unknown2]: 39:39

right yeah for sure i mean that's makes a huge difference for me like people always look at my split and they're like well how did you end up with this like ridiculously weird split and i'm just like you know i want to train legs they're my priority and then i fill in the gaps with upper body volume that

[Unknown1]: 39:56

yeah

[Unknown2]: 39:57

needs to be done so that's how we ended up with it

[Unknown1]: 39:58

yeah i like it i i like i said i recently we talked about like two weeks ago i'm a big fan of it so far it's been very eye opening for me and that's what i think is cool

[Unknown2]: 40:07

yeah

[Unknown1]: 40:07

after being

[Unknown2]: 40:08

yep

[Unknown1]: 40:08

and i will be fully transparent i've i in my previous years of of training had been very dogmatic with certain approaches and i like that now that i'm a little bit older and care less around the fragile male ego i've become much more pragmatic in things and i'm very open to being wrong because just through the facilitation of learning really it's my goal

[Unknown2]: 40:31

yeah no i mean being wrong is great cause then you get to learn and do it better

[Unknown1]: 40:35

exactly yeah cool anything else you wanted to add on the training hard part

[Unknown2]: 40:42

so i feel like we just wrap it up by saying that if you are performing movements and you can keep good form and you've never really gotten to a point where you feel rep speed slow in the last one to three reps then you probably need to push yourself there you also probably can focus on the way that you're initiating from the bottom of your reps so if you think about that like slow press on the gas pedal instead of you know that hard press on the accelerator and launching into the movement then you can keep the stimulus much more acute to the area that you want it to target and then ultimately the goal of all of this is kind of like what my post said yesterday on instagram which was that we want to feel pretty taxed like we did a really good job of working a specific area of the body specific muscle tissue but we don't want to feel completely systemically trashed and that pendulum example is perfect where if you launch out of the bottom and use your whole body you finish that set and you're just like what in the world but your quads you know they feel it but they're not just like completely wrecked it's just your body and your system that's wrecked and then you know alternatively if you do that slow press and you really get the quads doing the full movement for you even if it means slightly lighter loads and higher rep ranges then at that point you finish a set and it's literally like your quads that are immovable not allowing you to like walk properly and it's it's not your system that feels like you know you just got hit by a car type thing so you know find those limits for yourself within the constraints of good technique and i think that you'll will find that you get a lot more out of your training

[Unknown1]: 42:17

yeah the last thing i will say there if you've never videoed these sets video you will probably find a

[Unknown2]: 42:23

it is

[Unknown1]: 42:24

a dichotomy between your subjective perception of how hard it was and then when you watched the video of yourself and then secondly if you have a training partner or maybe schedule a a gym bro date with someone um and then planned to like hey we're gonna test failure here a little bit and then what i think you will find interesting is like let's say using like i don't know like just a hack squat right so you were doing one hundred pounds for like sevens and that was your like you know that's my one riart you in this one hundred pound on this week turns into like a set of twelve you now know that those sevens were really like a five rr so it can be a little humbling

[Unknown2]: 43:03

yeah

[Unknown1]: 43:04

in that but it lets you know how much room you have for like immediate progression just by knowing where that kind of seemingly limit truly is

[Unknown2]: 43:18

yep totally no i love that

[Unknown1]: 43:18

cool let's jump into some of the questions we had from following up from last week i'm gonna kick this first one over to you brian see what you have thoughts around because i think we'll have some different ones here so the question is my

[Unknown2]: 43:31

yep

[Unknown1]: 43:31

bicep pumps are gone i have done more and less volume used both dumbbells and cables and my carbohydrates are up i did confirm with him he is eating i think like four hundred grams of carbs i think he said

[Unknown2]: 43:45

okay this is tough i mean i read this question and my very first thought and the one that i'm still kind of stuck on is that you probably need like a serious de load week like i feel like you've been accumulating volume like especially if you get to a point where your pumps are gone the first thing you think is not you know i should probably take a week off and not do any bicep volume your first gut reaction is probably oh i need to increase volume more so that would be my first thought like every time that i've ever reached a point like this it's it's usually because fatigue or volume have caught up with me and there's anabolic resistance is the word where basically your body just has kind of adapted to the volume that you're doing you try more and it just doesn't have a a significant effect so at that point you know if i usually just take a week off of doing biceps which could be in the confines of like a de load week two um then you usually come back and your body should respond to significantly less volume so an example there would be like back training like my back you know as we've talked about can handle so much volume i remember at points when i would follow the rp style of training a number of years ago that i would get up to like twenty twenty five sets for back for the week and still kind of be like okay like you know i worked it everything was cool but like it doesn't really feel like anything and then you know you do the rp prescribe de load week where you basically do almost nothing or you kind of go into the gym and wave pink dumbbells around type thing and come back and fifteen sets a back seven one session eight the next session type thing blew my back up so you know that's less volume and it was just a matter of taking a week off from any stimulus at all to kind of let some of that anabolic resistance flush out so now given that carbs are up that would be kind of my first thought on this

[Unknown1]: 45:37

yeah so i'm i'm glad to kick that over because i was i am going to answer in a different approach it could be that you have kind of temporarily reached near the end of your progression for this certain like model or periodization you're in you could be losing insulin sensitivity right i this could be like this could be like a tw two month game that this person's on has just been pushing food right maybe you need to diet it for a little bit pull back carbs reestablish insulin sensitivity and glucose sensitivity and then reintroduce things from that so i would look into some health markers and see what body fat percentage levels are at have you crossed over that like fifteen sixteen seventeen per cent maybe it's timed back off mini cut a little bit start with the delo thing that brian said and then reapplying order like an h ba one c fasted insulin fasted glucose see where those levels are at as well that's pretty inexpensive i think you can get all three for like thirty forty bucks and i would use a combination of what i just said and what brian said but generally there's a reason why and it's generally doing a little bit less is the solution to be completely honest

[Unknown2]: 46:59

yep

[Unknown1]: 46:59

cool this next one i will kick over to you because i don't feel adequate in cool this next one i will kick over to you because i don't feel adequate in answering it comparing brian's personal program to the general physique template answering it comparing brian's personal program to the general physique template at paragon at paragon

[Unknown2]: 47:12

yeah we had this question literally covered in an entire episode forty five minutes of talking about this exact question

[Unknown1]: 47:19

yep

[Unknown2]: 47:19

if you go back a couple episodes but just to give you a couple general basics it is slightly lower volume than the physique template it is not in a upper lower split it's like we kind of said earlier it's split with quads one day hams one day and then there's some upper body work on some of those days it is generally going to be a little bit closer to failure kind of like this are you training hard enough thing that aaron and i have been discussing for the last thirty minutes we try to incorporate bits and pieces of that mindset into it so it's less about accumulating volume and more about doing a little bit harder effort volume less of it it's gonna be primarily and almost entirely actually require a commercial gym there's going to be needs for functional trainers which are those dual pulle stations where you have two cables it's going to have the need for machines chess press machines back machines things like that we're gonna have squat machines pendulums things like that and it also isn't on a calendar week so i try to train six out of every nine days i like to try to stick to two days on one day off two days on one day off rotation sometimes that doesn't work i hate being stuck on the calendar so my program is you can work out on whatever days work for you if you're somebody that loves training on monday tuesday thursday friday then you can just do my program on those days and you know the next two days get rolled over to the next week and that's i train on average i guess four and a half sessions a week right if it's six out of nine then it's four and a half out of seven so so yeah it really just train on whatever days you feel comfortable who i think that that covers the main basics of it but i encourage you to go check out the podcast i encourage you to read the blog paragon training methods backslash brine's program and you can read all about the programming there and then if you join you can see all of it in waif i place it all on mondays so you can see the full week of training on one day

[Unknown1]: 49:19

perfect that's cool i like that that uh seeing the full week on one day i've always been a fan of that

[Unknown2]: 49:25

yeah buddy all right this one i'll pop over to you uh is the element for or an electrolyte sodium drink a good idea for everyone

[Unknown1]: 49:35

everyone specifically the term everyone is a little bit uh blanketed right and absolute probably not for the person asking this question and ninety nine percentage of everyone listening to this i would say it probably is yes um it you stand very little to it it's what i like is it's you get like the flavor of something that's basically just stevia which is one of the safest and most widely tolerated artificial sweeteners but you get like a lot of these like you get a ton of sodium and electrolytes a lot of these the things that many of us are in some capacity not getting enough of anyway and i i i think it tastes great too which is fun i mean i we it's something that we have started

[Unknown2]: 50:24

it is

[Unknown1]: 50:25

consistently buying like you know month after month and yeah i think pretty much yes but not in an absolute standpoint is my take on it

[Unknown2]: 50:38

what's your favorite flavor now

[Unknown1]: 50:39

citrus the the lime one yeah

[Unknown2]: 50:42

yeah the one

[Unknown1]: 50:43

yeah pretty much

[Unknown2]: 50:43

that tastes like lemon lime gate red

[Unknown1]: 50:46

yeah

[Unknown2]: 50:46

yeah no i like that one too and also i have a question do you feel like it is as important somebody that doesn't sweat when they train because like i work out you know six out of every nine days i go for walks but i almost never sweat

[Unknown1]: 51:03

yeah so this is something that's been really interesting jenny and i were just talking about this the other day like i haven't been getting sweaty really like here probably because you know in in in the in the scottsdale temp area where we are probably like nine months out of the year it's disgustingly hot

[Unknown2]: 51:19

yeah

[Unknown1]: 51:20

so the gym just like pump ac all the time the gyms are like kind of cold and i really haven't yeah

[Unknown2]: 51:26

and it dry heat

[Unknown1]: 51:26

yeah and i really haven't been sweating much i still find myself like periods where i'm like like a little kind of like dehydrated in i would say yes you might only i mean it might be like you take one every other day or only training days it could it could be like a great intra workout thing where you add it to your water while you're at the gym if you're only if you're currently like just doing water but i would say yeah um personally i do think it is a pretty decent option

[Unknown2]: 51:57

gotcha well yeah i mean i i take it as well two or two to four packs a day and so uh so that's good i like hearing that all right what is a good starting recommendation for vitamin d is six k i u a good

[Unknown1]: 52:11

so this is incredibly difficult to answer within the context of how i have it here

[Unknown2]: 52:11

starting point

[Unknown1]: 52:16

first being vitamin d is a fat soluble vitamin you can take too much of them so even though it's you know it's february right now in the continental united states plus alaska an

[Unknown2]: 52:31

man

[Unknown1]: 52:32

overwhelming majority of the population is clinically deficient meaning levels are less than thirty on lab work i see this routinely with my client he which is like kind of baffling so six thousand can be a good starting point however just go get go get your levels checked it is a very inexpensive test i think it's like forty dollars go tell your doctor you want it if you have oh boy what's it called health insurance right tell them like just push back and say like yes i want it it's winner pull some numbers from any statistic it's something like seventy percent of the north american population is deficient in the winter months and then if you do get push back just know you can order it on life live extension dot com yourself it's literally like forty bucks and then you can start from there just no kind of like i said it is a fat soluble vitamin meaning you should take it with a meal containing a fat source could be avocado a fatty like eggs fatty or cut of meat you know nuts seeds something like that because it needs to be transported via a fat source

[Unknown2]: 53:42

yeah i know that it's very individual how people respond to it as well like six thousand six thousand i use could be really productive for one person and it could do nothing for another and it could be too much

[Unknown1]: 53:53

exactly

[Unknown2]: 53:53

it could be too much for somebody as well so uh you really have to kind of play with it and unfortunately you would have to get tested multiple times to really know for me personally when i'm in the summer i don't take it 'cause i get outside and get vitamin d a lot and in the summer my numbers are almost always in the high forty seconds for vitamin d and in the winter i take between six thousand and twelve thousand i between four and five times a week usually which is a pretty high dose and my lab work always has me at the same point at high forties by doing that much so i guess i need a decently large dose of it and then i would also say that the quality of the vitamin d you take is really important i think there have been studies showing that only the liquid form actually absorbs well and i think taking pills of it doesn't absorb well i'll have to look into that and confirm that i could be wrong but but i know that there is something to having like a high quality liquid like d three vitamin d that i think is more effective than trying to take a pill or something

[Unknown1]: 55:00

there is it's often offered in in uh in addition to or in combination with vitamin

[Unknown2]: 55:01

like that

[Unknown1]: 55:07

k two do have like synergies in i don't know if it's necessarily know if it's absorption but there are different things that can like compete for resources and through taking those together they generally get i believe it's absorbed better but do not quote me on that one but that's a simple google you can find out the actual terminology behind it

[Unknown2]: 55:26

yep

[Unknown1]: 55:26

specifically really brian said yeah it's it will vary

[Unknown2]: 55:29

it

[Unknown1]: 55:30

so that's why i recommend getting the test it's important

[Unknown2]: 55:34

yep how long do you think that someone needs to be taking it consistently before they can go test like for it to saturate in their body or whatever

[Unknown1]: 55:40

i would say six weeks and i mean it's highly

[Unknown2]: 55:44

okay cool

[Unknown1]: 55:44

individual and people with so not to make this like a a complete detour but people with darker skin more melanin like myself we will not synthesize vitamin d as easily in the sun so like let's say with what brian said for me to do that i would need to spend considerably more time in the sun then than him so i'm someone i take it year round in my numbers i've never seen them like over sixty and that's like with taking it and being in the sun you know i haven't spent i literally have not spent a winter in over a decade in my my numbers are not like high um as in like high abnormal high things so it's just test test

[Unknown2]: 56:23

gosh yep cool last question i'll kick over to you to start and then i probably have something to say to but on rest days weekends i find that i am not nearly as hungry would it be okay to prioritize mostly protein and just let the carbs fat fall wherever even if it means a lower calorie intake overall

[Unknown1]: 56:43

so it depends i'm sor it depends on the

[Unknown2]: 56:47

she

[Unknown1]: 56:47

context right so i agree i find my rest days my my appetite isn't nearly what it is on my training days and i do follow this approach i generally will take a higher fat approach on my rest days just because i generally push so many carbohydrate on my non training days and from a pure volume standpoint it's easier to eat fats than it is to eat carbohydrate unless you're drinking like like liquid carbohydrate so i would say yes it is okay um just know that if you are if you're if you're currently in like a gaining periodization and let's say you're only training four days per week and then your rest day macros are considerably smaller than your training days you may need to then like really push those training day numbers higher it' iss all relative to like what your goal is how far you are in proximity to that goal your rate of progress against that goal but yes if i were to answer this from a high level standpoint i agree it is common what you're experiencing and yes it is it is a viable approach in a lot of contexts

[Unknown2]: 58:03

yeah that's pretty much what i was going to say to kind of expand on what you said about what your goal is like if you if you're trying to lose weight or gain weight then i think you need to potentially be more aware of those variables and like if you're gonna eat less on rest days then you need to make sure you're i guess potentially eating more if you're trying to gain weight like i would be a harder one it like hey i now have fewer days that i can actually gain weight because i know i'm going to be eating less on these other days so then you would need to prioritize more food on the days that you are training and then conversely if you're dieting then now you really need to dial it in because you don't want to go so low on the rest day that you're not actually like giving your body what it needs so that it can function and perform on the next workout day so when you're in a deficit you're literally in a deficit of energy and so you need to make sure that you have those timed specifically and also placed in a manner that allows you to have the energy you need for the

[Unknown1]: 59:01

yeah that's what you said at the end is is very important let's say you are a

[Unknown2]: 59:02

workouts

[Unknown1]: 59:05

morning training person and you are coming off of like a let's say train monday morning and you take saturday sunday off and you have obviously much lower food intake on saturday sunday you're coming into a monday mornings training session like you're you put you are potentially setting yourself up for a port training session because you just do not have adequate fuel to facilitate the demands of the training session so context like without anything is important and that was a really good point brian

[Unknown2]: 59:35

sweet yep that's that's all the questions we got man

[Unknown1]: 59:37

cool so as always guys thank you for tuning in listening if there's any ever topics you would like us to uh cover at length feel free to send them over to brian or myself and we will talk to you guys next week