Eat Train Prosper

March 22 Instagram Q&A | ETP#61

March 22, 2022 Aaron Straker | Bryan Boorstein
Eat Train Prosper
March 22 Instagram Q&A | ETP#61
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This week is our March edition of the Instagram Q&A format. This is a popular monthly episode format, so we will continue delivering these. If you ever want to get your question featured on the podcast please reach out to Bryan or Aaron directly on Instagram. This month's questions…

  1. Do you think there is a rationale to limit the number of fats and/or carbohydrates per meal to a certain number?
  2. Do you consider adding a set for an exercise as a way to “increase stimulus?”
  3. What is the difference in stimulus between doing a rear delt pulldown (from high to low) versus a more horizontal line of pull?
  4. Why is the swiss bar (football bar) better for pectoral development?
  5. When cutting and trying to keep muscle, is it better to cut food or add cardio?
  6. What is your warm-up routine?
  7. Carb cycling approach for bodybuilding prep? Useful or necessary?
  8. If you start adjusting and tracking macros on your own with success, when would a coach be worth it? 
  9. If doing upper body, like bench press, should glutes be engaged?
  10. How to convince someone to start resistance training?
  11. Best splits for lifters who also do martial arts?
  12. How to break up with clients?
  13. Is gaining 2 lbs in a month after switching away from paleo too much if the goal is hypertrophy?


Let's dive into it!


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Coaching with Aaron ⬇️
https://strakernutritionco.com/nutrition-coaching-apply-now/

Done For You Client Check-In System for Online Coaches ⬇️
https://strakernutritionco.com/macronutrient-reporting-check-in-template/

Paragon Training Methods Programming ⬇️
https://paragontrainingmethods.com

Follow Bryan's Evolved Training Systems Programming ⬇️
https://evolvedtrainingsystems.com

Find Us on Social Media ⬇️
IG | @Eat.Train.Prosper
IG | @bryanboorstein
IG | @aaron_straker
YT | EAT TRAIN PROSPER PODCAST

[Unknown1]:

maybe that background noises right

[Unknown2]:

so not much of updates for me just that i have two client roster spots i' looking to fill these i'm looking to preferentially give to either experience lifters or especially new aspiring coaches in the space as i want to be able to give a little bit of a low level mentorship and education on top of the nutrition coaching aspect of it so super unique what i'm doing i'm starting to get more inquiries on it specifically from people that i'm really really looking to work with which i'm super super excited about and just a way for me to give back more than to what i normally do other than that enjoying the remote living aspect for the majority had our super productive work weekend probably the most productive work weekend i've had in a very very long time i'm feeling super motivated and creative right now and i'm just that's exactly what i was hoping for with these two months away or in this remote area just to get a lot of you know head down work stuff growth type things going so i'm very very excited about that and looking to continue working on that and that's about that's about it for me

[Unknown1]:

sweet i'm gonna jump in real quick with one more update that i just remember because this podcast will be coming out on three hundred twenty two and then on three hundred twenty eight we start new cycles across all the different paragon programs so physique program will just be finishing up a metabolic phase which means that they'll be jumping into a one two week straight up hypertrophy program which is going to be super cool and two of the things i'm really excited about on this new cycle are we have a glut bridge to hip thrust

[Unknown2]:

s

[Unknown1]:

superset so this is what's kind of

[Unknown2]:

not really

[Unknown1]:

called like a mechanical drop set where you the easiest way to picture this i think is to think of like a dumbbell fly into like a dumbbell bench press so because the fly requires less weight you do that until you basically can't do anymore and then you can still continue accrue reps with a dumbbell bench press so same

[Unknown2]:

see

[Unknown1]:

idea with the glut bridge into to the hip thrust you know glue bridge is much more isolated and acute and then the hip thrust incorporates a little bit of quads uh hams and doctors and stuff like that so that you can continue accrue reps there so i'm excited about that

[Unknown2]:

series

[Unknown1]:

sequence and then another difference for the first time ever on our physique programs at paragon we're going to be having lateral delt on both upper body days as primary repeating movements so on one of the days we're doing a short overloaded lateral delt movement that version that i do where the dumbbells don't actually come all the way down at the bottom so you stop it about like thirty degrees from your body and then back up again so that overloads the short position at the top of the rep and then on the other day we're doing a lengthened overload lateral rays so we're focusing more on the bottom position or using a dual cable cross you like we like to do where that also kind of overloads the length and position and then that's going to be super setted with a front raise so you can do that front rays again either with dumbbells or you can use that awesome cable setup where you go from wide to narrow so that's going to be super fun and a little bit different and those are all dropping on three hundred twenty eight uh so if anyone has any interest in that definitely check those out

[Unknown2]:

that's super fun uh ironically i did those yesterday i did the lengthened overload cable rays raises or lateral raises i could only do single arm with a setup here and then i did the light sorry shortened overload of the dumbbell lateral races and the thing i was thinking about yesterday was it's really funny coz i literally did this at the gym yesterday i've been lifting coming up on like twenty years now and i am just now like really getting really adept at lateral races which is absolutely insane like i hated them for years and it's one of the things that you see people perform like the most poorly like so much body english and like doing weird things with their elbows i mean it's crazy but it's it's funny to me because like that was me for so long i just could not figure it out and now it's like i'm still perfecting it and refining it getting those crazy good stimulus so it's really fun i guess i should say after all those years of performing it poorly and hating it to finally like really enjoy doing them and being able to get the right stimulus and stuff it's really cool

[Unknown1]:

yeah being proficient in a lateral race took me forever as well like i would even say it's just in this last year that i figured it out too and i think the key was understanding that like even in something like a lateral ray there should be some rep slowing as you fatigue and what would really happen in the past is that you know i would start with super strict form but as it got hard instead of just staying strict and letting the rep slow it would be like you know one degree of body english than two percent or maybe one percent then two percent body english than three percent b's almost like you can continue doing reps forever and never actually have any slowdown because you're just using a little bit more momentum to keep going and i always struggled with that when it came to progression of lateral raises too because i didn't have like this super consistent standardized technique where everything was so stripped i would just you know increase body english so i was able to go from like fourteen reps to twenty reps over the course of a messo cycle but it was just a change in the way i was performing it not exactly like i'm getting six reps stronger type thing things so so i fully agree and it's kind of wild that you know both of us been training like twenty plus years at this point and we're just figuring out a lot of raises

[Unknown2]:

yeah yeah it's really really wild all right are you ready to jump into some of these questions brian

[Unknown1]:

yep yep

[Unknown2]:

cool i know how i want to answer the first one so let's see what you say and then we'll go from there so the context which i love about the guy who asked this question he provided the context so in the context of a lean gaining phase to be precise i'm assuming that we do know that the calorie balance over a period of time is always going to be the most important factor do you think there is rationale to limiting the amounts of fats and or carbohydrate per meal to a certain number so he gives an example instead of having one meal with one hundred fifty grams of carbohydrate and thirty grams of fat would it be preferable to have two meals of seventy five grams of carbohydrate and fifteen grams of fat so you're equating calories in both scenarios and he even adds that he has a quote unquote bro feeling that the two meals in this example would yield a better body composition over the long term brian what are your thoughts

[Unknown1]:

y yeah i agree my thought is that it probably comes down primarily to digestion which may impact nutrient partitioning a little bit so like i think when you're looking at like the hierarchy of importance that this definitely falls lower down on the totem pole than just like overall daily calories and protein carb macros and things like that like he said right but if you are gonna be super nuanced about it then yes i mean one hundred fifty carbs and thirty grams of fat is a lot of food in one meal not to mention that there's also going to be protein attached to that i'm sure so yeah i mean right off the bat like i i think you would probably have better digestion potentially be able to use those nutrients more effectively and and over the course of a day maybe you end up a little more satiated by able to being able to eat two you know pretty substantial meals instead of one just like king size feast

[Unknown2]:

yeah i agree i think the what i wanted to talk about more in this particular context with the example is the carbohydrate over the fat right thirty grams of fat it's not super high um depending on the quality of your day but really the angle i wanted to talk about from is your um blood glucose and glucose and tolerance and insulin sensitivity right so i generally instruct clients to cap around one hundred carbs per meal and that's if they're having you know four five hundred per day because let's face it there's no real way you're gonna get around that for that specific reason right we just don't want you slamming a bunch of carbohydrates for blood glucose reasons and then especially in the context of a gaining phase we know that generally unless you're doing a super short gaining phase but in this context if we're talking about a lean gaining phase it's going to be longer because in order to make any tangible progress if you want to mitigate body fat but still make it worthwhile to go in a gay phase you're talking probably six months you know four maybe minimum bare minimum um your insulin levels will gradually rise as the carbohydrates will gradually rise your blood glucose over time generally will gradually rise as you're feeding up the carbohydrate and if you were in the later phases of that you would want to pay a little bit more attention to that just from an overall health standpoint right so for that reason i generally recommend splitting them into smaller sizes as opposed to like two huge meals of you know one hundred fifty grams of carbohydrate i would rather you do you know four at you know whatever eighty five and change or whatever ends up being that same amount of number so yes i would recommend doing that and just know the farther you go into the surplus the more food you eat the more beneficial it can be to end up going to like four and five meals right if you're only doing two thousand two hundred calories or something like that you can easily split that across three but if you're getting into three thousand four hundred three thousand five hundred four thousand right splitting those into more would be better just from a digestive standpoint as well as the glucose

[Unknown1]:

would you say that if someone's in a surplus right and they're post workout and maybe they didn't even have any like intra workout right they just post workout um would there be rationale at that point you know to to minimize fat but to have potentially over one hundred carbs supposed to work out or would you still say in that case that a hundred would be like a cap for you

[Unknown2]:

i don't want to really put a hard number on it but if someone was doing like one hundred twenty in their post workout i'm gonna say hey let's put thirty or forty in an intra workout and

[Unknown1]:

yes

[Unknown2]:

then we'll bring that down to eighty or something like that

[Unknown1]:

cool now i

[Unknown2]:

yeah

[Unknown1]:

take that yeah cool this next question is interesting and slightly confusing so um i'm going to frame it up real quick the initial question was do you consider adding a set for an exercise as a way to increase stimulus and i saw that and i was like huh interesting discussion yes probably and then he continued and he said you know adding as little sets as needed over the course of a messo cycle kind of like what kriss beard ley put together chris beardsley put together in this infographic and then he linked to an infographic on instagram which we'll put in the show notes below and the infographic confused me because in the infographic he's actually saying you know you have nine sets of curls and there are three different exercises so nine total sets three sets of each and then his improved result was actually only eight sets so it was two different exercises for four sets each so first of all that's less sets there were other variables that he included in the infographic for example he increased rest between sets he increased time under tension by manipulating tempo so it went from like a two second negative to a four second negative in the second example so in some ways like the stimulus is increasing via the increased eccentric time as well as potentially increasing the rest between sets allows you to put more into your sets get more out of them things like that but per his initial question about do you consider adding a set of an exercise as a way to increase stimulus like chris spurs said in this infographic i i don't necessarily feel like i'm seeing the same thing in the infographic that this person is seeing um so you guys can check that infographic out but to answer his initial question as far as whether adding in a set is a way to increase stimulus yes absolutely we talked a bit about the idea of increasing stimulus two episodes ago on the one that we did about mechanical tension i had a kind of monologue in the beginning where i talked about how i personally like to increase stimulus and adding sets is certainly a way that you can do that and it's actually something that i use in my training as well however i think that when you add the set and how often you add sets is is certainly something that is important to consider and probably very individual adding one set of you know a length and overload movement like a back squat an r dl a pendulum squat type thing is going to be a significantly higher dose of increased stimulus than going from three sets of cable preacher curls to to four sets of cable preacher crows so so i think that you had just have to be careful with that and i do think that that's a very reasonable way for you to look to increase stimulus throughout a messo cycle i just wouldn't get super carried away with it like maybe the the way that rp does it where they tend to have you go from something along the lines of ten sets to twenty sets over the course of a messo or eight to sixteen or whatever it is i'm not really a huge fan of you doubling the amount of work sets that you're doing in a meso cycle per muscle group so i think maybe there's reason over the course of a messo to add one to three sets as long as you're doing them on like short overload movements that aren't super fatiguing et cetera but i definitely would be careful not to get carried away with that

[Unknown2]:

yeah i would agree with that completely one thing that this is stemming from i was listening to an iron culture episode yesterday the mo well it's the one i'm like training to failure and it has something about advanced as well i can't remember the exact

[Unknown1]:

yep

[Unknown2]:

episode number but one thing that was really interesting is there is this larger discussion around how training to failure is incredibly subjective and they even brought in things as much as like if there was like exercise like one of the research assistants saying easy keep going you got two more that will change your perception of failure because you might think like i'm dying but then when someone says two more you will perform two more because it's like an an external input and that was really that helps shape the a the way i'm gonna answer this and the fact that like achieving stimulus is like a an an acqui for example when i was transitioning from like my cross fit days and olympic weight lifting days back into like hypertrophy training i achieving a good quad stimulus was incredibly difficult for me the only way i could do it was doing like a tons of like drop sets in metabolite increasing sets on a leg extension that was the only way i knew how to do it so for me then to increase you know stimulus that's what i had to do because that's the only way i knew how now because i've spent however many hours of my life on practicing this and creating a better connection with my quads i don't need to do that anymore i can do like two sets on a hack squat and my legs are blown up so it can be but it's only one tool of many available tools to be able to do that and i really in aabout way my answer is it's subjective in certain contexts yes when you only know one tool but there are more tools that you should take the time to explore

[Unknown1]:

yeah i agree that um that iron culture episode was the most recent one and um i i remember what they were talking about with that and i think that one thing that we do probably need to consider when we're talking about somebody yelling at you or like a research assistant telling you' got two more or whatever is that there's also evidence that i think was also from work that eric helms did that as you become an advanced trainee you're actually very very good at ri r to the point that like if you call out at five reps when you think you have five left and then you call out at three when you have three left and then you call it at one when you think you have one left that most advanced trainees are like accurate to that within one rep so personally like i am almost a hundred percent confident that if i'm you know to rr and so or if i'm at zero r r and someone's like you got two more like i'm not getting two more reps there's there's absolutely no chance of that right so i just think that it also you know plays into your advancement level and then that also plays into whether you add sets or not to because as an advanced trainee who's potentially stronger and can create more damage through these movements adding a set could be like this massive sledgehammer where you know you're if you're going from two sets of hacks to three sets of hacks then suddenly you're increasing your hack squat output by fifty percent which is a ridiculously large amount of hack squat increase so just kind of another thing to consider there

[Unknown2]:

yeah and what that does to any other training you have left for that day right if i was to maybe like hack it was just like my first exercise i'm doing three quad exercises if i add a third set you know take to like a a one i one rr or something what i might be doing afterwards maybe i'm doing split squats or something they are going to get severely impacted performance wise and really just output and everything there so it's yeah

[Unknown1]:

yeah

[Unknown2]:

it what you said it super spot on

[Unknown1]:

cool

[Unknown2]:

i'm gonna kick this next one to you so it's a two part question first part is

[Unknown1]:

can i actually let let me actually just frame this up real quick

[Unknown2]:

yeah

[Unknown1]:

because i so this question came through from a guy who who follows me and he's actually um an intellectual i think like we've had really good discussions about a lot of this n one stuff so when this question came through i i honestly like i had an intuition on it but i i didn't know the answer so i actually posed both of these questions to cass but i told him that i think this is an over ask and that he can feel free to ignore my question he decided to ignore my question so because he doesn't need to be answering my questions on my podcast for me

[Unknown2]:

yeah

[Unknown1]:

so what i did is i then consulted two other guys that i work with in respect in the field jordan lipps who we've talked about on here before and adam neff who's another guy who's been through the n one practical

[Unknown2]:

yeah

[Unknown1]:

and so the three of us had some good discussions on these questions so anything that i say in regards to this is kind of a a cumulative sense of understanding that we've created through the three of

[Unknown2]:

it's just nice

[Unknown1]:

us discussing this and then i'll just kind of give you my thoughts from there so the question was basically what is the difference in stimulus between doing a rear dealt pull down where the cable is coming from high to low like you would see in a standard pull down versus a more horizontal line of pull that we might consider like a row type movement and then in this question he also wanted us to assume that all points of performance are the same meaning that the elbow abduction is the same the amount of distance that the elbows travel away from your body that the hand position or width of your grip is the same and that the arc of motion is the same and that's important because it's very obvious that if you're going from like a narrow grip and then you're pulling out that that's going to be different than if you're just having a sagal plane movement that's going in and out and then same thing if you're wide and come narrow that's also going to be different than if you have that like sagal plane forward and backward type motion so all he's asking is if you're doing the exact same movement but one is coming up from up high and one is coming from more horizontal is there a difference in stimulus to to your rear doubts and so my initial thought on this is that it's it's probably minimal if it exists at all um because i think the elbow position the hand position and the arc of motion are going to be the primary things that change that one thing we do know from the n one practical is that there are three regions of the rear dels there's a medial region which is going to be closest to your spine essentially there's going to be a lateral region which is going to be furthest away from your spine so basically out to the side as far as possible and then there's the middle region which is just the middle between those two but the thing to keep in mind about those three regions is that those three regions are they move horizontally so it goes from the middle of your body to slightly outside of that and then slightly outside of that they don't necessarily align vertically so it's not like you have a high rear delt and a low rear delt right you just have a inside and the outside in the middle i hope that makes sense do that make sense yeah so you know if we had a low rear del and a high rear dell then i would say that pulling from high to low probably trains your lower rear delt a little bit more whereas pulling horizontal might train your like higher or mid rear doubts a little bit more um but because i don't really think that we have a low rear dealt my answer is basically that i think they're pretty much all the same one to one i i i do intend on asking this question to cass next time that i see him in person where he can't ignore me but um but for the meantime that is is my stance on that and then we can jump to the second part of the question in a second but do you have any any thoughts on that

[Unknown2]:

i honestly don't and that's why i wanted to kick it to you i for something like that it's such a i don't want to call it like a small muscle but it is a small muscle right it's i mean for your average person asking them to like target their rear dealt to begin with is like and hey what's the word i'm looking for like a a hard thing to do in general right and my experience with this i would just say perform whichever one you feel you get a better stimulus from with the amount of knowledge that you already have of the performance of it it's potentially a wash in in my opinion if you want what i would prefer i i do mostly the row version i think it's just easier to perform and removes complexity so i'm gonna obviously jump on that

[Unknown1]:

yeah yeah i wonder if one of them like potentially the pull down variation may allow you to get further back so maybe you can get like a little bit more range of motion and potentially get it a little bit shorter going from high to low but i don't feel super confident with that either so i'll update you guys if and when i get cast to answer this for me and then jumping into part b is another question about stimulus and this time it's on the cable curl so that the guy is asking is there a difference or what is the difference between a c a cable curl that's coming from low to high so essentially the arm is going to be angled down at the start of the movement versus a cable curl where the humerus like essentially the tricep is parallel to the ground at the start so imagine your arm is parallel to the ground and then you're curling up versus the arm being down and then curling up and i feel pretty confident that the answer to that is that one where the arm starts parallel to the ground is going to be more of a short overload um just because there isn't going to be a stretch at the length and position there as much so it's a really fantastic way to overload short if that's your goal it puts the elbow even further in front of the body than you would if your elbow was down like your elbow can still be in front of the body if it's down but it's certainly going to be going to be more in front of the body if that arm is coming out horizontal so so that would be my thoughts on that one

[Unknown2]:

i would agree with that completely

[Unknown1]:

cool alright next question here i wonder if you have any thoughts on this i'll kick it over to you and then we can kick back to me but why and if it even is is the swiss bar or football bar is another name better for pectoral development

[Unknown2]:

my initial thought would be for joint comfort type thing i mean so many people have really poor pressing mechanics because we just learned potentially poorly with flared elbows out which isn't essentially very natural paths of pressing in the football bar or the swiss bar which is basically going to have your palms facing each other is just a little bit more of a natural pressing movement and probably allows for better joint comfort over time that's going to be my answer there

[Unknown1]:

yeah i agree as well um i think that ultimately though like so so one cool thing about the swiss bar is that it has both a fully neutral grip on it but it also has that like semi protonated grip and so i think for chest pressing the semi protonated grip is probably where it's at because it it aligns a little bit better with that elbow line of travel that we're looking for so i would say neutral grip is better than pronator grip but semi protonated grip is potentially better than either of the other two

[Unknown2]:

i would agree one hundred percent with that

[Unknown1]:

yeah so so maybe there's that um but the thing with the swiss football bar is that it still doesn't give you any additional deduction as compared to like a barbell or anything like that so with a dumbbell you can get some eduction because you can kind of come across your body with a bar bell you don't get any of that with the dumbbell you get some of it with a swiss bar you also don't get any of it so i think it kind of goes back again then to to grip position potentially as well as your statement on like joint integrity and health and stuff like that so i i still don't think the swiss bar is like i i i wouldn't say it's better than dumbbells i think you know dumbbells are going to be preferable and then if you really want to get the peck short um then you have to do some sort of induction across the body like a press around or a cable a dual cable press of some sort where you can come to center a little bit more

[Unknown2]:

yeah specifically because the an the question is for pectoral development right if we were talking about like power output or strength or something like that might changed the answer but that's where it's important for context

[Unknown1]:

yeah good this next question i know exactly how i'm going to answer and i think i know how you're going to answer it too so we'll kick it over to you and then and then i can give it a shot when cutting and trying to keep muscle is it better to cut food or add cardio

[Unknown2]:

unfortunately it depends and the real answer there is how much food have you already cut and how much cardio are you currently doing personally i like to leverage the food part first and then layer in cardio as necessary one because let's face it an overwhelming majority of people do not really enjoy the cardio in the first place and two if you use all of your tools at once and then things stop working you don't have any more tools to use or you have to get into where you're doing an hour of cardio per day you're super hungry and all of these other things to that point which i say unless you're getting on stage it's not worth it by any stretch of the imagination and you took a poor approach so with that i'm going to say cut food first and then layer in cardio as necessary to further facilitate your floss

[Unknown1]:

yeah i i mean you literally answer that the exact same way as me so i have a really popular post that i put on the gram maybe a year ago that's called an equation for fat loss or something along those lines and in that post essentially i discussed that that food should probably be the first thing to go because there's so many extenuating circumstances that you have to account for when you start adding cardio in like like additional caloric consumption additional increased hunger potential fatigue that can impact your weight training which can then impact your ability to to maintain muscle in your cut things like that and then the biggest reason just being what you said about having another tool to pull in your toolbox so just as a very very general guideline what i like to do is cut food until it's somewhere around like ten calories per pound and that's like a super super general number but i don't often like to take people below ten ten calories per pound of food and at that point i would usually leverage cardio and even then the cardio that i would leverage would be steps so in that post an equation for fat lost i discussed you know starting at some nominal amount of steps that's pretty low something like you know seven thousand eight thousand something along those lines and then uh over the course of your cut you can cut food and or you can add steps and maybe it's something along the lines of like you know you can cut two hundred calories or you can add two thousand steps or whatever the equivalent is i think that that's pretty close actually it would probably be a hundred calories to two thousand steps but those are both tools that you can pull and at different points of your diet you could potentially say okay my food's pretty low right now you know it would be a lot easier for me to go for a twenty minute walk than to cut another hundred calories or in the beginning of the diet you might say hey those twenty minutes are really valuable for me um it would be a lot easier for me to just cut a hundred calories instead of adding another twenty minutes of steps so so i would say in general you know cutting food until you're uh at about ten calories per pound as a general number depending on so many factors and then potentially leveraging cardio from there

[Unknown2]:

sorry i was muted i really like how you added the um the time basis into it because that can further help facilitate your decision as well like if you do not have the time to add additional cardio maybe making just planning spending like planning one time for five minutes on how to maneuver another hundred calories out that gets you your end result but also saves you you know that twenty minutes over the next seven days which is a considerable amount of time back into

[Unknown1]:

yeah

[Unknown2]:

your life

[Unknown1]:

one thing that i do like about doing steps though is that it's time where i'm out of the house and i'm not thinking about food so like as you get deeper and deeper into a diet there's certainly like more food focus and stuff like that and so a lot of times in my diets i would find myself purposefully just going out for a walk because i'm hungry and i don't have calories to eat at that moment and by going for a walk it kind of takes my mind out of thinking about food and and puts it in a different place so for me that's that's been pretty effective

[Unknown2]:

oh there is a lot i mean i i didn't plan to really open the can of worms here but there's a lot of reasons why you'd want to add you know walking into a calorie deficit's parasympathetic activity and you know calorie deficits going to be stressful right so we're already spending more time sympathetic nervous system dominant by training right being in catabolism basically two four seven so doing things like more parasympathetic activity will help from a hormonal profile which will help influence the easiness i guess i should say of your decision making skills and desires to stay in that calorie deficit so i mean it it cascades for sure but you know alright um moving into this one let's kick this over to you i think we're pretty similar here though what is your warm up routine i've been doing banded plus lax ball forever

[Unknown1]:

oh man now i'm on mute okay so yeah uh my warm up routine is about as simple as it gets man it it's just out of necessity it's whatever i have to do to make sure that i can do the movements that i need to do for that day and to be honest like i'm i'm over thirty nine and a half now i'm closer to forty than than the beginning of thirty nine and i still don't really need to do much um most days i would say ninety percentage of my workouts are me walking into the gym and if it's a leg day i might sit in a squat for two minutes while i play on my phone and then crack my back do a jefferson curl he know jefferson curl those ones where you round your back over and kind of go down and back up so maybe it's like i sit in a squat for two minutes like just with body weight just sit down there play on my phone and then do a jefferson curl and that takes all of three minutes and then i'm into my first movement whatever that is doing super light sets for upper body days it's even less than that like upper body days i just walk in and maybe like do some arm circles or like a couple white lateral raises um maybe like five push ups uh something along those lines and then just kind of jump into the first set that's really light on things like i i like i relate to this question because when i was doing my strength cycle in the fall i i had to do a lot more prep um because i was low bar back squatting and like my shoulders just didn't want to get in that position so yes i would have to like do some bandit kind of stuff to to get some movement in there and then i'd take a cross ball and i'd jam that into my terries and into my traps and you know try to create a little more mobility and movement in my upper back um stuff like that um but i i really really truly believe that people over wararm up and waste time and energy warming up so it's always an as needed basis like i just i just don't think we need to go in there and like warm up for the sake of warming up we should warm up because it helps us prepare to perform more optimally in the movement that we're doing that day and um that's about as far as i usually take my warm ups

[Unknown3]:

yeah for me i don't do a lot i i basically do what brian says i if it's an upper body day i'm walking five minutes on a treadmill while i'm like you know get my my program ready and stuff like that if it's a lower body day i'm riding some form of bicycle just to get blood flow into my quads hamstrings i move through end range of motion a few times just to make sure i have those end ranges there i am moving through them pretty well and then i just jump in and start slowly adding weight on that first exercise and i try to have whatever body part is going first moving decently before i go in that's about it

[Unknown1]:

yeah and then to kind of add to like my statement about like sitting in a squat like i i'm just a huge fan of sitting in a squat in general like i do this constantly throughout the day and i think that it keeps my hips and back you know pretty healthy overall and then i'm also a big fan of sitting in a loaded squat so a lot of times i'll take whether it's a pendulum or a hack or something like that and i'll just load it up with some lightweight and then just sit at the bottom of it like you'll see me sitting at the bottom of a pendulum just sitting there with two forty fives on there for thirty seconds sixty seconds something like that and just kind of sitting down there you can feel your mobility begin to open up so i think like to wrap it up on this question the most applicable thing you can do for your warm up is the application of the first movement that you're doing in your routine because that is ultimately the thing that's going to warm you up the most and once you've gotten through your first movement you're warm like your body's warm your mind is warm you're focused if you can do a pendulum squat then you can do whatever other squats come after that in your program or whatever so you know warm upsets of the specific movement you're doing are the key and then whatever sort of banded lax ball foam rolling uh movement type stuff that you need to do to to get your body to hit the positions you need would be kind of the next step after that

[Unknown3]:

yeah i agree a hundred percent

[Unknown1]:

cool next question carb cycling for body building prep useful or necessary

[Unknown3]:

necessary i don't think i would say it is always necessary useful one hundred percent especially considering a bodybuilding prep in just by nature of that you are getting leaner significantly leaner than your average you know calorie deficit um for gym pop type of person useful one hundred percent i would say i use it i use it with clients who have the magnitude to have varying macro nutrient targets on different days and are able to perform consistently enough for it to matter so when i have that option i will use it myself i will use it with clients one hundred percent brian what are your thoughts

[Unknown1]:

yeah i mean so i kind of think that like it's inevitable like i i just i kind of don't really feel that anybody's just gonna like eat the same thing every day regardless of what they're doing in their day like on days you work out you're more active uh maybe on days you don't work out you take more walks like there's just certain life circumstances that almost dictate a need for more or less carbs so i guess the alternative to not cycling carbs is like every day i eat two hundred and fifty carbs boom two fifty that's it every single day you know and so i just don't really think that's realistic and i do think it's useful as aaron said in that you know you do want to feed the uh the needs you want you want to feed your your energy outputs and so on days you're more active it would probably make sense to have more carbs

[Unknown3]:

yep moving along if you start adjusting and tracking macros on your own with success when would a coach be worth it

[Unknown1]:

it's a bit of a loaded question um so i i i guess that really becomes a a you question not not you like aaron but you as in the person asking the question because if you're having success then then that's great is it the most success like if you're achieving eighty percentage of what you could achieve and then maybe with a coach you can achieve that last twenty percent like i would still consider your eighty percent success like you're still having success you're still making progress but could you be making more progress and so i guess that just is a factor of of of how much it's worth it to you and um how important your goals are like the cost of a coach whether it's you know two hundred to three hundred four hundred dollars a month whatever it is that's a pretty significant cost so you know if you're if you're able to get the majority of your way without a coach then maybe a coach can come in and kind of help you finish up whatever your objective is whether it's you know i'm stuck and i can't seem to gain weight anymore or i'm trying to lose weight and you know i'm hungry all the time where i feel like i'm losing muscle or performance is suffering or all these things like essentially when your success begins to decline maybe that's the time you consider the coach what do you think

[Unknown3]:

yeah that's definitely a really really good way to answer it also proximity so proximity to go into how long you want to invest into getting there right so it's one of those things like you can probably do it on your own in three years do you want to do it in three years or do you want to do it in one year or a year and a half or something like that i mean that's generally when it's you outsource your decision making and guidance when you want to learn more than what you currently know how to do and then it's you invest usually dollars right for a closer proximity to that finish line or when you don't want to invest dollars you invest time in that proximity to finish line extends so that's generally what i would say or if you want to learn things that are more than just simply tracking and adjusting macros which is where i've you know usually started to take the majority of my client are interested in now as well

[Unknown1]:

yeah you provide a ton of value beyond just like getting people to their goals like it's a full education system so i think that it just becomes a matter of like you know do you just want to achieve your goal or do you want to kind of like learn and have a better way of going forward the next time you do it as well all right so i'll jam this next one real quick if doing upper body like bench press should the glutes be engaged and my answer to that is is pretty much that it depends on your goal so if this person said should glutes be engaged for power lifting or for gaining strength then i would say yes you should probably brace through the floor you should arch your back you should squeeze your glutes you should do all of the important things to make sure that

[Unknown4]:

i

[Unknown1]:

you can lift the most weight possible on your bench press however if your goal is hypertrophy then you probably want to include less of the other musculature and more focus on your chest so if you are engaging your glutes and pushing through the floor and doing the things that you usually do in a power lifting setting then you're probably going to be potentially lifting more weight but maybe getting less stimulus to your pecks so this is why you see bodybuilders a lot of times doing things like legs up bench presses and power lifters actually do this too as a way to increase the strength of their pressing muscles and not including their whole body and the movement so as far as you know hypertrophy goes you probably want to engage less of the other musculature and more focus on the chest and triceps and the movements doing the bench press

[Unknown4]:

i agree a hundred percent i don't think there's anything else i can really add on that one

[Unknown1]:

cool

[Unknown4]:

i will kick this one over to you

[Unknown1]:

yep

[Unknown4]:

this next one how to convince someone to start resistance training

[Unknown1]:

so the first thing that i thought of when i saw this was a post that was on facebook a few days ago and it kind of it made me think a little bit because it's an interesting perspective on the whole paradigm but essentially there's there's two people there's one person that pays two hundred and fifty dollars a month to go to this really expensive gym and and they have like a you know an online training program they follow maybe like paragon something like that so they're spending say three hundred dollars a month on their training but they're getting great results and they're killing it right and so this facebook post i i saw it was this person saying you know i spend two hundred fifty plus this program so i spend a bunch of money and then my friend who is overweight and out of shape was giving me shit the other day and saying i can't believe you spend two hundred fifty to three hundred dollars on your fitness that seems so ridiculous and the response back to that friend who slightly overweight was i can't believe you're willing to pay two hundred fifty dollars a month to continue being fat or that you won't pay fifty two hundred fifty dollars a month to to stop being fat or whatever you guys know what i'm saying there basically is is it worth three hundred dollars a month to you to to be in shape and be healthy or would you rather save that three hundred dollars a month and not so so i think that that's actually an interesting way of phrasing it but of course that depends on how far down the lower side of the health spectrum that person is that you're trying to convince to start resistance training like if someone is overall pretty healthy and you know they're just like happy living their life and maybe they're skinny but they're just not strong or whatever then the the general impact on like their quality of life and like their longevity and stuff may not be super impacted so i think that the key to the question is answering it in a manner that's specific to the person that you want to start resistance training so if it is that person that's overweight then it's like hey you know for two hundred fifty to three thousand dollars a month you can really work you can achieve a better lifestyle a a better future for yourself in a healthier future or maybe it's somebody that's skinny and you know they're just generally healthy but they're they're not strong or whatever well then you need to speak to them on a level that would potentially give them a reason to begin pursuing this so you know if it's a seventeen year male who who just is you're trying to convince to start training then i mean man there's a number of different avenues you can take with that like don't you want to be better at sports don't you want to impress girls like don't you want to be able to eat more food and not get fat like i mean there's there's like a number of different avenues you could take but i really think that the the question is is best or the answer is best stated in based on your audience

[Unknown4]:

yeah this one is this one's hard for me to answer kind of i wanna kind of piggy back on to what brian had originally said it's a value based system if someone doesn't value it i don't think there's any way you're going to convince them to start um and i don't think you should try if it's not something they value and i think it's it's generally for me personally in where i stand you know morally i generally don't like like trying to convince people to do things that they don't have interest in doing because i don't like it when people do it to me so that's what i would try and say or maybe just explore what they're like why do you think they need it potentially could be a really really good start right is it maybe it's like a friend who wants to get in shape and they're just doing like tons of cardio that would be like hey come in with examples of like maybe some research studies there's a million of them right or something like that but if they already value what resistance training will provide them then i think it's maybe worth trying to convince them if they don't value what's on the other side of it i don't think it's probably worth trying to convince them from my standpoint

[Unknown1]:

no that's super well said i really like that the context that you added there and then i think practically maybe one way that you could take this with with your friend or the person that you're trying to start resistance training is you know letting them know that when you start something new like this the adaptations happened so quickly and you don't need to spend a ton of time or energy even doing it like if you went into the gym and train for forty five minutes twice a week or something like that you would see significant improvements to the point that your whole physique might look differently two three months later from literally an hour and a half a week of being in the gym so um so maybe you know mentioning that the buy in is so low when you're when you're novice to this that that person might be looking at you the question asker and saying you know dude will you spend four hours a week and you know you're basically spitting fumes every time you work out like you're you're crushed and like it looks like you're working so hard and it's like hey if you're new like you don't need to do any of that you can spend a quarter of the time and work a quarter is hard and still get results and then once they've done that then maybe they catch the bug and the itch and they want to continue kind of progressing it from there or they don't and then it's just not for them

[Unknown4]:

you hit the nail on the head there

[Unknown1]:

cool i feel like we've had this next question before but basically they're asking what's the best split for a lifter who also does martial arts

[Unknown4]:

as always it depends i would say probably the most you are realistically going to be able to do is a three time per week full body approach and that's with assuming you' doing let's say martial arts minimum of twice per week if

[Unknown1]:

yeah

[Unknown4]:

you're in and more it just becomes a how to what you fuel and optimally recover for both and it's too many people try and stack too much and then impede progression of both avenues so

[Unknown1]:

yep

[Unknown4]:

you do not wanna fall um down that route

[Unknown1]:

yeah yeah i agree um i think full body is the way to go as well because the last thing you want to do is have like one area of your body that's like super sore and fatigued and have that be like a limiting factor when you're trying to grapple with somebody so i think that doing full body two maybe three times a week is probably a good idea and then just to throw in the recent research that's been coming out pretty prominently on concurrent training which basically just means lifting along with some other pursuit they've found that lifting shy of failure is better for the development of both so when you lift a failure you take these deeper inroads into your fatigue and it potentially impacts your coordination and your performance on your other pursuit so if you're lifting at three to four reps from failure for the most part then you'll probably get more out of the the martial arts than you would by trying to lift a failure and that seems a little counterintuitive because you're like oh well i'm only lifting two maybe three times a week now i should take everything to the house but you have to remember that you have a second pursuit that you're also going after

[Unknown4]:

yep spot on

[Unknown1]:

cool hey aaron how do you break up with clients

[Unknown4]:

oh man this one it's you wanna approach it very honestly and transparently and what kind of sucks is it's the most uncomfortable way to do it however it is the most like let's say honorable way to do it so before you even sometimes i find that you you have prematurely decided that you're going to break up with them and it really could just be a lack of communication generally on both sides of this and how do i know this because i have done this before i have made this mistake as a coach and i'm not too proud to share it to all of the you know thousands of people that listen to the podcast managing expectations or meeting expectations right you may have a higher set of expectations than the client does for their ambition of their goals i literally just last week had a conversation with a client and was in being transparent saying hey the level of commitment and performance you are giving me is not adequate to achieve your goal at the end of our contract just being super strict and he was like he kind of took it a little bit hard but then he was like i understand that thank you for sharing that with me even just the conscious decisions i'm making even though i'm not performing you know to the level that you and i would hope i am i'm learning a lot and this is still very very valuable for me so in that little bit of like um vulnerability of me like opening myself up to be hey i i don't want to be a dick but i'm gonna kind of tell you dick type stuff we had a new level of expectations of each other and that really removed the friction there so there's that part open up just be honest if there is a difference if their client is being super rude super demeaning to you and it is really being a massive negative on your life you need to guard your positive energy and the energy around you if if i have a client who's being very demeaning to me speaking down to me um in making me feel like poor about myself i will gladly refund that client and say here's your money back never speak to me again right you can take that bitch as energy somewhere else oh i would never say that but that's what i'd be saying to myself the second i send that email so first make sure that is not you right and that can be hard to do open up be vulnerable be honest try and match expectations and if it's just they're being super rude or something refund them your money right at the end of the day think about in two years when your business is you know two years down the road are you going to be hurting for however much that monthly income was like just make sure that you want to be happy with that decision two years from now and that's exactly how i approach it

[Unknown1]:

yeah i don't really have much to add i feel like this has only happened maybe once twice in my life and one time was because the client wanted to completely change the style of programming that we were doing like from from one modality to basically another and i was like no i don't really have any interest in programming that for you so it's kind of mutual at that point i guess and then yeah if anyone's like man i've had people like badger me for my time sometimes like you know hey i sent you a dm like eighteen hours ago and you still haven't responded or something like that and you know that's fine once or twice but as a coach like you have to be able to have you know twenty four to forty eight hours to respond to people unless it's urgent like if something is urgent and a one on one client needs something like yes i'll jump on that as soon as i see it but in most cases if it's just like a general question you know that gets marked as on red and i'll get to it when i can type thing

[Unknown4]:

yeah so hopefully we answered that one

[Unknown1]:

yep

[Unknown4]:

sufficiently this next one brian will kick over to you first do you go to that

[Unknown1]:

uh sure it's our last question right

[Unknown4]:

yeah last question

[Unknown1]:

got

[Unknown4]:

uh is gaining two pounds a month or two pounds in a month after switching away from paleo too much if the goal is hypertrophy

[Unknown1]:

to be honest i would think that if you switched off paleo you'd probably gain five pounds and i think that this is probably because of the the glycogen and the fluid retention right so like we've mentioned before every gram of carbohydrates that you eat carries two to three grams of water is that right

[Unknown4]:

two point seven

[Unknown1]:

two point seven so two to three boom right on the money two point seven so if you are eating zero carbs with paleo or call it thirty carbs or fifty carbs or whatever it is and then you jump up to non paleo style carbohydrate intake call it two hundred or three hundred grams of carbs there is going to be a ton of weight that comes with that like that's like three pounds um just from that one day of adding in that extra food and then that'll kind of compound a little bit over the course of the month so i'd be really surprised if you stopped paleo that you didn't have five pounds in the first week and then that would probably you know just stay because as long as you're eating more carbs there's going to be more water that comes with it so the only way that would go away is if you went back to eating paleo again

[Unknown4]:

yeah so how specifically the context of the question in a month after switching i think you're writing the money there especially with brian said you're gonna have up or you're going to have an increase in in glycogen storage you're going to have increase in water accompanying that if you're doing anything with like creatine as well introducing that by switching to your hypertrophy goal you will have that first month you will have more a larger delta of weight increase notice i said weight not necessarily fat not necessarily um um skeletal muscle mass right and then it should drop off after that first month depending right if basically the more green you are to hypertrophy in putting on muscle the more muscle you have to gain in a shorter period of time and then as you become intermediate how much muscle you can actually attain month a month is going to start to slide and then as you get into advance it will continue to slide so the greener you are the more forgiving putting weight on faster is the less greener you are the slower you will need to take slower you should go to mitigate unwanted body fat accumulation

[Unknown1]:

nothing to add to that one

[Unknown4]:

okay great so uh anything else you want to add to this episode brian before we wrap it up

[Unknown1]:

no i don't think so i guess tomorrow or next week will be my final podcast from san diego will be leaving wednesday the uh twenty third to head back to to boulder so so yeah that's that's my story

[Unknown4]:

i feel like that went fast

[Unknown1]:

really fast you know it was really crazy as i had planned ahead of time to go up to orange county twice at least once to go film with laurie and like see ryan fisher and stuff like that i made it up to orange county zero times

[Unknown4]:

this is generally how that goes when things are in the future you're like oh i went all the time in the world and then

[Unknown1]:

yeah

[Unknown4]:

you blink four times and you're like fuck i got a pack

[Unknown1]:

i know i know but yeah good stuff and then we will catch you all next week for the next episode

[Unknown4]:

yep as always thanks for listening guys later

Episode introduction/life updates
Nutrients that are more effective over the course of a day
Don't get carried away with increasing stimulus throughout a messo cycle
Transitioning from Olympic weight lifting days, back into hypertrophy training, achieving a good quad stimulus was incredibly difficult
Somebody yelling at you or like a research assistant telling you' got two more. VS. understanding what you have left in you at each rr
When it comes to the difference between a rear delt pulldown (from high to low) versus a more horizontal line of pull, perform whichever one you feel you get a better stimulus from with the amount of knowledge that you already have of the performance
Why is the swiss bar (football bar) better for pectoral development
Is it better to cut food or add cardio? It really depends on how much food have you already cut and how much cardio are you currently doing
Keeping the warm-up simple: I've been doing banded + Lax ball forever
Carb cycling approach for bodybuilding prep - on days you're more active it would probably make sense to have more carbs
Tracking macros on your own with success and why it's valuable to continue working with a coach
Teaming up with a coach - it's a value-based system, if someone doesn't value it, there's any way we're going to convince them to start
Switching between non-paleo carbs and strict paleo to see results in a week