Eat Train Prosper

Do Rep Ranges Matter For Building Muscle? | ETP#88

October 04, 2022 Aaron Straker | Bryan Boorstein
Eat Train Prosper
Do Rep Ranges Matter For Building Muscle? | ETP#88
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this episode, we discuss rep ranges for hypertrophy. So long as you are training hard do they even matter? Some people will say they do not matter. However, here on Eat Train Prosper, it’s quite clear that making blanket statements isn’t how we do things. So we cover the commonly bracketed rep ranges, the pros and cons for each and in what circumstances we think the rep ranges matter in pursuit of gains and other common weight lifting situations. 

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[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

what's up guys happy tuesday welcome back to another episode of eat train prosper today brian and myself will be talking around rep ranges and are they all the same for the ultimate goal hypertrophy

[bryan_boorstein]:

m oh

[aaron_straker]:

but before we jump into today's topic as

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

always we have some updates brian want to kick

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

us off

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah buddy glad to be here still hanging out at this six am time slot here even though you're back in the u s so um same for me a little bit different for you cool to have you back here for the next two months and excited about our topic today so yeah rep ranges and stuff like that but quickly some updates so i am i'm in week two actually i'm exactly week to out from my p r p in my knee and i think last week i spent a bunch of the episode talking about how i was worried that i screwed up everything from going on that hike on day four or five or whatever it was and that was certainly weighing on me pretty heavily i had some super instability and pain in the knee for a few days after that hike so definitely not a good idea if you get p r p in your knee i do not recommend going for like a three hour hike on day four um m but on the positive side my knee has continually improved since i went on that tirade last week on the episode and it actually it's feeling like significantly better to the point that yesterday i was able to do my very first quad session i mean i wouldn't even call it like a true quad session but i was able to do more than i expected because the time line they gave me was basically like the first week don't do anything like let your need just chill let the the plate lets attach to the the various issues that are present in the knee so it can kind of begin the repair process type thing and then after that first week where these things have solidified at that point it's kind of a pain tolerance piece so it was as long as you're doing something and in the moment of doing it your pain is less than a three out of ten than you're fine and that was pretty cool to hear because yesterday when i began training the first thing that i did was just kind of like some super light single leg knee extensions and i was surprised that i was able to get up to the same weight i was using before my knee before the p r p on the ne extension so it was seventy pounds per leg for like a single leg like extension and there was zero pain like i can i can honestly that like my knee felt i wouldn't even say unstable but it just felt like it needed to kind of warm up a little bit which is probably typical of being forward y anyways so so i did a couple like really light sets of the leg extension like first starting just straightening my knee with no weight and then straightening it with like thirty five or forty five pounds and then ultimately by set three or four i was up to seventy pounds and no pain in the joint at all then i was able to go over to the hack press machine and just like i was expecting my range of motion was limited i can't get full ne flexion yet but i'm able to get down to about parallel with no pain or unnecessary tugging on the knee so i was able to get through a couple sets of the hack press on that one i was not able to use the same weight i didn't expect to the doctor told me that the knee extension would be the first thing that i could introduce and then over the course of the weeks it would be introducing m neeflexion in the form of squatting and stuff like that so so i was able to use three hundred pounds on the hack press which may sound like a lot but i usually use like five hundred and fifty so three hundred is not actually that much and and it felt really good i felt like i stayed in my quads stayed off my joints and it was as hard as i would want it to be for for the for the day and so so i got a quad session in sort of and my quads are actually like a little bit sore today which is kind of cool because i thought it was going to be more like four weeks until i could get that sensation back into them a little but after two weeks i was able to do that and um i feel great today no no knee soreness no no lingering kind of like oh shit what i do yesterday type feelings and so super positive there and i think that from here forward it's probably going to just be nice even progression up until maybe i get to week six which would be four weeks from now and then hopefully things are back to normal and i'm somewhat super human so that's the update on the knee i got a couple of other thing s to discuss but what is going on in your world you are back in the u s you look a little different over there you got some the light of god coming in behind you

[aaron_straker]:

yeah it's now um eight a m recording the podcast instead of eight p m when we would normally be doing it for me at least i was on central indonesia time

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i would say the biggest kind of updates for me i have a couple funny ones actually my carcadianrhythm so with the really big travel right i am i'm one of the people where i will like sacrifice for like a day or two

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

so that i don't have like weird jet lag and circadian stuff going on for like

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

days down the road

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

so basically what i

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

did is like i just pretty much didn't sleep on any of the plane rides and then

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

we landed here you know back in the states at nine a m in that first day i was like straight up zombi like i had never that tired in my entire life there was a few points in the day where i was just like nodding off and like sitting in a chair

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

is this sort of thing and like i was just like okay the sun's going down i can like socially acceptable for me to go to slow sleep

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

um i slept a bunch that first night and then i've been mostly

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

good still going to bed quite early but i i've been getting up at like four a m and i'm like up ready to go so i've been just getting up and starting starting my day but that will kind of work itself back out over the coming days which i'm excited for that

[bryan_boorstein]:

so you you you aren't a huge coffee guy or i mean you love coffee but you kind

[aaron_straker]:

i

[bryan_boorstein]:

of

[aaron_straker]:

do

[bryan_boorstein]:

move straight away from the caen black coffee thing for a little while and

[aaron_straker]:

the

[bryan_boorstein]:

then i believe i saw a story from jenny that you had like four of them on the flight or something like that

[aaron_straker]:

yeah because one of the tings like i need to stay

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

up it's when you're

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

traveling those big ranges like that like the concept of time and day it just gets all mushed together like we had three flights one to jacardo which is the capital in indonesia so that we could pick up the flight we wanted um then we flew to dub and we landed there like midnight and then we worked for a bit i had a coffee there and then we had like three or four hours there and then we had our big l

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay

[aaron_straker]:

fifteen hour flight to washington d c and i

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

think i had like two coffees on that one

[bryan_boorstein]:

uh

[aaron_straker]:

yeah it's such a strange thing because you're like in the same clothes but especially when you're going from like you know asia back to the u s you gain in twelve hours so it's like we left you know thursday morning and then we got back to the states like friday morning but it was like forty hours of travel

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

so it's

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

like super trippy and yeah but friday was pretty rough and i was just like all all over the place

[bryan_boorstein]:

that it's got to be weird going the other way too because you probably

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

lose an entire day when you go to

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

asia like you're like where did thursday go it's just gone

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah when we when we when we

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

ent there the first time we left

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

we're actually in mexico we left mexico sunday morning and we got

[bryan_boorstein]:

ye

[aaron_straker]:

to bolly like mid air like one a m wednesday morning

[bryan_boorstein]:

wow

[aaron_straker]:

there

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah you had lost

[aaron_straker]:

so

[bryan_boorstein]:

two days basically

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah it's it's really wild how that works out but kind of my my one funny update i have is when you take the big international flights like that you generally get like two meals per flight so we have like two meals on our dobie flight and then two meals on the do buy to us flight and what they will generally do some of the meal options will be like related to the departing country the arriving country as you have like you know some different options for quasines and stuff when we left nisa we had an option of like me go ring which is like shrimp and like a fried rice and some vegetables like a pretty you know traditional type type meal and then with dub we had like a chicken in chicken and potato kind of curry thing with some you know onions sort of thing pretty again decent quality meal and and then we had another similar

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

one as we left you buy and then as we're approaching the us and they're coming down with the meal car and the like are you hungry and like you know yeah what are the options and she goes slice of pizza or hammond cheese

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

sandwich is like you got to be

[bryan_boorstein]:

uh

[aaron_straker]:

and kidding me

[bryan_boorstein]:

uh

[aaron_straker]:

like we

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

are definitely going to the us like those

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

are the two meal options and i was just

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

like

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

i don't want

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

either

[bryan_boorstein]:

right

[aaron_straker]:

so

[bryan_boorstein]:

it

[aaron_straker]:

i just

[bryan_boorstein]:

no you

[aaron_straker]:

didn't

[bryan_boorstein]:

wouldn't

[aaron_straker]:

eat

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah that's amazing

[aaron_straker]:

but

[bryan_boorstein]:

i'm

[aaron_straker]:

it

[bryan_boorstein]:

sure

[aaron_straker]:

was

[bryan_boorstein]:

you

[aaron_straker]:

so

[bryan_boorstein]:

brought

[aaron_straker]:

funny

[bryan_boorstein]:

your own

[aaron_straker]:

because

[bryan_boorstein]:

some of your own food right

[aaron_straker]:

i had a banana

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay

[aaron_straker]:

um but it was like so wild that like i was like this is literally par for the course of like he

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

environment of food

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

here in the states

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah i was thinking that maybe it was going to be like because it's an international flight

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

and they're like you know you take merits or one of those nice airlines or whatever that it would be like here's your full manon with

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

mashed potato is there something along those lines but

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

ham and cheese i mean that's really just kind of mailing it in it's really

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

funny

[aaron_straker]:

the other ones were

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

like good though i was i was pleasantly surprised except for that one was like oh wow

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

that sucks

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah yeah

[aaron_straker]:

what else

[bryan_boorstein]:

um

[aaron_straker]:

we got from you

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah so i one thing that's interesting is since this p r p thing um like i can bike in the sense that i can turn the petal with my foot but i can't really like press down and go up a hill so i can't really bike like in nature super

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

well especially around boulder where there's a bunch

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

of like hills and mountains and stuff like that so i haven't biked in two weeks which means that i haven't really gotten out of breath in two weeks because i also can't run obviously i wouldn't run um so i haven't done cardio after that being a huge staple of my updates for the last like six to eight weeks you know i started biking i started doing the nasal breathing thing and all this i haven't done any of that in two weeks i've just sort of been walking a little bit and my steps have plummeted so down to like five to seven thousand steps most days just kind of not trying to overdo things with my knee and and so i was expecting that my voto max was going to start kind of descending down again which i was bumped about because it took me a lot of that that work with all this nasal breathing and stuff to get it up from where it was hanging out around like forty point zero and then it kind of has gotten up into like the forty two and a half range so it's been a lot of work to get up even two and a half points and i know that's not even fully accurate to whatever my watch is telling me but it's it's me gainst me um and so i took my watch calculated my vio two for the first time in two weeks yesterday as i was going out for a walk and it was up half a point and so i was super happy about that that it doesn't seem like not doing this cardio seems to have a negative impact although part of me was thinking maybe there's like a delayed effect in like the card of asker deptations take a little while to cement in so i'm not sure on that aspect maybe a listener knows um but i think on the positive side it's possible that maybe it's just that i'm cont using to focus on the nasal breathing thing like while i sleep and like throughout the day and i'm still doing my walks while nasal breathing and stuff like that and so maybe that is having like this improved impact on my vio to max even i'm not actually doing higher intensity training and getting out of breath and stuff like that so i'm just something interesting that i'll keep an eye on but i was really happy to see the voto up into the forty threes now especially because now that i turned forty the range of vio to max for me has dropped so it was like the normal range was forty to forty seven or forty one to forty seven when i was thirty nine years old but now that i'm forty the range is thirty eight to forty three or something like that so so this this extra couple of months of life has given me a different vio to x range and now i'm like securely in the average to above average vio to max which is unique for me as i remember a story from when i used to attend the pax um training back in i think it's two thousand twelve two thousand thirteen and they had one of those hand held vio to things and they took my vio to max and james fitzgerald looked at me and he goes no wonder you hate me con your voto max is awful and and so it's just kind of funny that that now it's like it's like my vote max hasn't changed in ten years i've just gotten older so there for it appears better on the spectrum all right let's see i have two more really quick up dates here so this past week kim was gone longest trip she's ever taken from me and left me with the kids so i had five days by myself wednesday sunday um i did awesome i crushed it super dad over here and i got to work out twice i only had one really bad day of t v and and it really wasn't too bad on the flip side of that my second update is i get to now leave myself so this friday i have a dude's trip with the husbands that kim went with the wives on her trip on so me the dudes are going to san diego this friday we're gonna go to p b we're going to hang out we're gonna drink some beers probably some some liquor to maybe some wine maybe all the different types of alcohol we're goin t go out to the club no not really the club we're just going to go kind of bar hopping a little bit and p b hang out at the beach watch some football um just do normal guy stuff but without having kids and family kind of hanging over the top so m really excited for that but not sure that i'm going to be able to work out i think i'll get one work out in friday to monday but it's definitely going to be a challenge for me to get any fitness in this weekend so i'm just trying to focus this week on getting as many sessions as i can in and then using the weekend over there in sand go to kind of relax a bit i'll be back here monday night just in time to wake up tuesday morning for a train prosper so i'll give you guys a full update on how many beers i consumed and all that good stuff once i get through that week and

[aaron_straker]:

so i forgot this one typing out my updates but i am now two nights

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

in of the mouth taping that the recommendation

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh nice

[aaron_straker]:

i took from you and if i remember correctly you said the first few nights you had horrible sleep correct

[bryan_boorstein]:

yes

[aaron_straker]:

and

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

what was was it horrible sleep and waking up super super early or just horrible sleep in general

[bryan_boorstein]:

just horrible sleep i think i would i slept the normal like i would still wake up at five thirty or six normal time but i just found myself waking up multiple times throughout the night i think because my normal process of getting air was compromised to like changing positions

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

just just different things kind of would

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

spark me to wake up

[aaron_straker]:

understood understood yeah so mine hasn't changed really at all and apparently maybe just didn't breath through my mouth when sleeping in the first place um

[bryan_boorstein]:

awesome

[aaron_straker]:

i

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

do want to one of my goals whim here is to pay

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

a little bit closer attention

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

to my sleep so one thing that i don't know if i've really talked about on the podcast before i am like not a dreamer or in the event that i do dream i never remember them maybe one or two per year and

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

it's only if like something happens that next morning that happened in the dream and everything comes like rushing back to me now in kind of alizing my sleep so i've like a garment venue to kind of like what you say take it at face value comparing you know day to day i have very little rem in deep sleep so like an eight hour night of sleep i might have like this past night there was like twenty one minutes of em sleep and then like

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

forty five minutes

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

of deep sleep and then it's literally like seven hours and four minutes of light sleep um

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i did some digging and it's apparently supposed to be i can't remember which but rem in in little deep sleep should be about like fifteen one is fifteen percent there's like twenty per cent and then obviously threats i am con ably under those targets so that is something that i will kind of continue to

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

mander and see if i can do

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

and bringing that rim sleep

[bryan_boorstein]:

eh

[aaron_straker]:

up and seeing if that will actually have me remi bring more dreaming or doing more dreaming but that is like a kind of a personal project for the next couple

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

months

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah i'm super intrigued by this too because my version of apple watch is two years old and i just saw a commercial like literally last night during football there was a commercial for the new apple watch and it talked specifically about how it calculates your rem sleep for you and my watch does

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

not do that so all it does is tell me the total time that i asleep versus the total time i was in bed and then it has little dash marks to tell me when i woke up so like i can look at it and be like oh i guess i woke up four times but i thought i only woke up once type thing which i think is also inter and data um but i'm very curious about rem sleep

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

because i do remember

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

dreams and i do have dreams but i always thought it was the

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

opposite and that if you were in like super deep rem sleep you wouldn't remember

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

them and it's only one's right before you wake up that you actually remember so your sleep is lighter at that point that's the way i always perceived it but i could be wrong on that

[aaron_straker]:

yeah i don't i don't have a clue to be completely honest

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah interesting um but i think that is pretty much it for my

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

updates for today

[aaron_straker]:

i have one last one that that i'll touch

[bryan_boorstein]:

yep

[aaron_straker]:

on i guess actually to so one of the things that i love about the united states is no one does

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

grocery stores like the us right like i mean just

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

everything under the fucking sun is at the grocery store so we get back i'm super pumped to go we go there like there's like a whole bunch of shelves empty there was like no sparkling water like what ever and that's one thing i was like pump to just get cans of like a chitty flavored sparkling water like a

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

lime or something like that because they're just

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

it's just easier to drink for me like throughout the day and i haven't had one in months there weren't any there were zero egg whites in the entire grocery store and there's ull four or five brands and i even and i'm like man i'm gonna go ask this guy because like maybe they're just and he's like he was sane like now they're out at the supplier and i was like what the fuck is happening and then we go to get gas after and there was no gas at the gas station

[bryan_boorstein]:

wow

[aaron_straker]:

i was like what the fuck is going on it was so just strange and it was like this isn't the united states

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

that i remember

[bryan_boorstein]:

i wonder if that's a product

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

of you being in roanoke or whatever because like i haven't felt any of that in boulder

[aaron_straker]:

yeah it could be like we are in like a smaller area but i mean even evolved like i don't know nine times that i've been here before in the months we spent it's never that's like never happened

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

but it's probably why like a smaller rural area and not he just get de prioritized i would imagine when push comes to shove on who's getting stock and who's not

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah and also prices have gone super high up like they keep posting things like chicken breast now up another like seventy two per cent or something like that you know

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

and so um like i noticed it when i go the store i don't really tend to look at prices too often but when i do i'm just like whoa things didn't use to be that expensive so i mean that is super representative of their just being a supply demand issue

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah um

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

and then the last thing so so i'm back

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

at the smaller gym which is very

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

kind

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

of reminiscent of a high school

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

weight room sort of thing which brings back some nostalgia but then also some just frustrations of like i just want

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

a functional trainer you know but i was like okay i need a squat pattern movement on this day i'm going a put back in like a traditional barbell you know back squad it's been over two years

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

my legs have gotten

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

a lot stronger i

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

have

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

significant better leg development than i used to i'm going to put

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

it back and so yesterday i was like you know week one

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

where i'm testing everything and it felt absolutely horrible and i was like there's no fucking way i'm going to do this

[bryan_boorstein]:

i saw the video it didn't look that bad

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i mean i saw your comment was like more hipflexion than neflxion or whatever

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

it really looked pretty even to me it didn't look terrible

[aaron_straker]:

it's like the moment arm and that's kind of like what i now that i just know more like than i used to around like squat mechanics and different things like that it's just like how for me to bow and based like my femerlengthrog whatever like the bar is basically almost stacked right over the knee joint and then i just have that big moment arm at the hip and that's why i've always been a hip dominant squat or like at that position kind of don't really have a choice um

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

and it just did not feel good and same thing like always i was like my lower back i could feel the fatigue and my quads didn't even have that kind of like subjective

[bryan_boorstein]:

i

[aaron_straker]:

you know pump like i would out of a hack squad

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

or something and i was like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

this is i was like i'm glad i closed the loop because there was always this thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

in the back of my head like oh i know more now maybe i can perform it better but it was pretty much like more the same it felt like a super hard effort in my i didn't get that

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

stimulus that i wanted my knees kind of already feeling a little little bit and i was like there's no way like i'm not there's

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

no way i'm doing this

[bryan_boorstein]:

and you didn't try like a heel wedge set up or anything like that

[aaron_straker]:

i mean i had my only shoes on but it was i didn't and then also the how the squat rack is is the safety bars are like kind of high so i had to use like a really more o grip and i would prefer um and i was like this is i'm just going to use the smith machine like um like the heel elevated smith machine squat and

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

it is what it is but at least i know but that kind of funny or i was like excited about it and then i was like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

this no way in hell no

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

way in hell

[bryan_boorstein]:

we talked about this like a

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

over a year ago when i did my last strength cycle and i threw like back squats and dead lift back in and stuff like that kind of wild that that was actually like last september october so we're literally a

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

year

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

from when i did

[aaron_straker]:

crazy

[bryan_boorstein]:

that which doesn't feel like a year ago

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

um but but i remember

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

you saying at that time like yeah i'm sure one day i'll like do another back squat cycle and like see if i can still as strong as i was and like all that stuff and now it's just like a

[aaron_straker]:

no

[bryan_boorstein]:

year later you're like no that that should ain't happening

[aaron_straker]:

no it's not worth it the dead lift

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i could i have always enjoyed debt lifting in my proportions

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

or just better set up for that but

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

yeah no fucking way

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

cool ready to jump into today's episode

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah so before we talk

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

about rep

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

ranges which i know we're

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

super excited about that we did have a question from a long time listener hit me up on d m and he was asking about fly movements versus press movements and so his question was basically was kind of long but i'll just read it real quick what do you think of the hyper tr fix potential is of a peck fly versus press any opinion on what ratio of fly to press

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

volume would make the most sense in a hypertrophy program i feel like flies

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

give a better stretch and cause

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

less systemic fate again potential shoulder joint stress so you might be able to do more effective volume on the flies and then he wrote like a day later and said now that i re think it could a deeper stretch cause more muscle damage and more soreness so maybe i didn't think that one through but hey curious what

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

you guys think um so yeah

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i have a few different thoughts but how about you you want to jump in with anything

[aaron_straker]:

yeah i mean

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

i can i can also just kind of play you know back seat to and add my thoughts

[bryan_boorstein]:

sure

[aaron_straker]:

after you break it down in parts for sure

[bryan_boorstein]:

sure yeah so i am i think there's a few different ways you can look at this like

[aaron_straker]:

kay

[bryan_boorstein]:

the first reaction is or maybe i should say not my first reaction now but maybe what i think people think my reaction should be would be more based off of like the end one philosophy of you know you want to use your rib cage to press around and leverage your rib cage so that you know you wouldn't want to do a movement that's super abducted away from the body because then you're not leveraging your ribkidge and you so anyway that would be that would be what i think people would expect me to say

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

and i think that a year ago going through that one stuff

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

that probably would be what i would say um

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i

[aaron_straker]:

uh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i went and did a quick search on

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

research pub met to see if there've been studies that have looked at this and there've been three that that i found two of them compared the peck deck machine two uh some sort of press i'm not exactly sure if it was a bench press or dumbbell press or whatever it was and then one actually compared a dumb bell fly to a bar bell bench press um and from the quick kind of review that i did it seemed like the pressing movement out performed the fly movement in the majority of the cases or all of them i literally looked at this for five minutes quickly before the show so i can't very confidently say what i saw but i wanted to at least have something to kind of begin this discussion with and so the that was really like the conclusion that was found was that the bar bell pressing just seemed to be more effective for the pectorals major pressing structures there was i believe a study that found that the dumb bell fly had a little bit

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

more m g activity on the front dealt which also doesn't surprise me as you know a common sentiment is that as you stretch back and down that the stretch actually occurs more the delt than it does on the

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

chest and we tend to know that whatever muscles being stretched at the bottom of the rep is probably the muscle that's receiving the majority of the stimulus um so none

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

of that really prizes me

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i know that at least one of these studies was m g based and if you're compared i think it was probably the dumb bell fly study because if you're comparing a dumb bell fly to a bench press the m g activity is going to be at the contracted position primarily we know that through m g research

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

so like maybe you would see higher m g potentially on a peck deck because actually having tension at the contracted position where as at a dumbbell fly you're basically doing the dumbbell fly for the stretch mediated higperturfee potentially and so you're not going to get a huge m g reading at the stretch position whereas a bench press is also a lengthened overload movement but it does have more tension through the contracted portions of the wrap then than a fly does where you essentially get to the top the weapon nothing is happening so that's kind of like the research side of it i think practically or maybe anecdotally would be the better way of saying that from my experience i love fly movements i went through a period of time where i didn't use them when i was super in inundated with the n one stuff and i was trying to use the rib cage for everything and i was doing primarily press arounds and different press variations that a duck the arm across the body using the rib cage

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

for leverage etcetera and man i know soreness just isn't something that we want to put too much credence in like you you don't want to be like i had a poor session because i didn't get sore but i also like to look

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

at soreness as a sign of like hey at least you're stimulating the muscle that you want to stimulate type thing and when i am doing straight up pressing movements

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i don't get sore in my chest like i just don't um but it takes a very very sma old dose of a fly type movement to get me sore and not just as like a novel thing like

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

hey i haven't done flies for six months let me do one set of flies and see what happens like yes of course i would get sore there um but over the last six plus months i've had the dumb bell fly press in my program for a really long time and i definitely can't take credit for creating this movement as i'm sure many well have done it in the past but to me it just made sense and i instituted it a number of years ago and it the last six months have just been consistently that movement very week in my program and every week my chest just receives an incredible stimulus from that um it's always something that i do second so i always do my likes press style movements first

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

in this in my life now it's mostly a cable press if i had a machine press i would do that too and then i moved to the dumb bell fly press and

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

it creates that stretch at at the bottom that you just

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

cannot get from from like a standard pressing movement and feel like it also uses the rib cage more obviously than a super abducted fly would be because the elbow is still traveling

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

down and back if

[aaron_straker]:

down

[bryan_boorstein]:

you can see my elbow on youtube it's more like here than it is like out here like this like a fly would be so i'm still in here it's just going deeper and getting more of a stretch in the chest there so so anecdotally i'm a huge flat fan including some of that in my days usually look like he asked about volume so my days usually look like three sets of oppress and then two sets of a fly and that's one of my days the other day

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i usually just do like three sets of oppress so that's eight sets of chest a week and that seems to work pretty well for me and that's the way i prefer to go up so a little mix of science and anecdote i guess how about you

[aaron_straker]:

so i think

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

you have to take what i'm about to say with a grain of salt something that i have personal i can't say vendetta it's just my skip my skeptic kind of sense goes off with some of the research on things like this i am very skeptical of the performance quality of the people doing it like if we were to

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

go gym to gym not even if we were to pop in like random gyms across the united states and just observe people performing a fly and let's say a dumbbell bench press i would if we were to rent you know a b c d you know fucking f thing i would say on average we'd probably be at like a c o c plus yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i think if you with

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

that understanding if you took that and then improve people's performance

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

of it it would potentially change the outcomes of the research so as you know brian and aron speaking to listener of this what i would first recommend doing is if you are someone who has a c you know performance execution in either of these movements bring

[bryan_boorstein]:

yea

[aaron_straker]:

it up to an a because you can change your stimulus that you provide by changing your performance execution like i was someone who used to press you know i would only bring my elbow down to about ninety and the dumb bells would be eight inches away from my chest

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

still the thing with like a pressing movement like that we get that stretch mediated hypertrophy it's a lengthened overload kind of movement if you avoid the fully lengthened position you don't get to tap into any of that you know stretch

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

mediated hypertrophy sort of thing so if you're someone that's doing

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

that stop fucking doing that and perform the movements where you can get your elbows you know down closer to your rib cage and you can get that full stretch and you get better hypertrofic stimulus out of better execution of that movement so

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

the first thing it s like just be honest with yourself record a couple of your sets um and go from there and then second with the fly type of movement in brian you really like that like fly press kind of hybrid thing personally i hate it it's just like it doesn't feel good i have a right shoulder that i had surgically repaired that i just didn't rehab well when i was younger and it just bothers it so i personally don't like that but like a traditional seated like peck you know fly machine i can get that similar positioning not as much low there because my my arm is straight as opposed to bent but i can get a good like shortened stimulus then right and more kind of like

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

a metabolic fatigue of the chest and really hammer that kind of shortened position where with like the dumb bell press because of how the dumb bells are know especially when you're once you get decently strong you're pressing eighties nineties one hundreds like these are big fucking dumb bells and you can't get your arms you can't really reach a fully shortened position because the dumb bells are in the way so understanding like these different parts help you with kind of your decision making

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

an un standing a little bit there um i would say of the hypertropic potential probably like what brian said more of the the pressing movement just because it's more length and overloaded to what we know and one thing i think that i kind of well kind of wrap up here on something that i think we as a as a space are unfortunately losing sight of a little bit is like the basic concept of like adaptation to get stronger to to something in the load ability the stability of something is like so much more of a pressing movement as opposed to like a peck fly

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

a cable i sort of thing and you're just much better leverage to like produce force and move load to create an adaptation there in those things that i feel like it's important to never kind of fully loose o that because we can get lost in the complexities and you know chasing optimality but kind of miss the forest for the trees a little bit of like what

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

is the goal to get stronger at a

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

movement to produce to put put force put tension through a muscle what is the best way that we can do that

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah no that's a really good point and i like what you started with talking

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

about improving your execution first because i think that that's like just a sweeping

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

good general recommendation and then the last thing on this that i just thought of is it's

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

interesting how not surprising but hypertrophy coach joe bennet and cass both started you know in the same place at the m i forty and had similar they have similar philosophies like if you look at both

[aaron_straker]:

ye

[bryan_boorstein]:

of their instagrams you see a lot of cross over between the types of movements that they suggest

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and like the rational that they use for suggesting them you know you can tell that they kind of from the same background but one thing that you see joe bennet do a lot is you actually see him doing a lot of that wider adduction type movement i think one of his favorite ones that i've seen a couple times on there is he'll put wrist cuffs on and he'll have like a wide cable crossed over type set up and he'll be sit seated in a bench and it's kind of like a sternal cross over type where it almost emulates the peck deck machine with the handles not the one where the old school one where you're like elbows

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

are on it that thing

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

is absolutely awful

[aaron_straker]:

awful

[bryan_boorstein]:

but it's the

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

worst but new ones where you have the handles that you can bring together at the front he kind of emulates that with the cables and the cuffs on and and i really like that like i think that fits into the mentality of like something i would program and want to do as well and i know it doesn't use the rib cage like casts would want you to do but i think that you know definitely varying ways of effective in putting effective chest training into your program

[aaron_straker]:

agreed

[bryan_boorstein]:

hum and something i actually may try that at some point that actually i was now that we're

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

talking about it that little wrist cuffed cross over thing could could be a kind of cool addition to my program at some point so maybe i'll do that an experiment all right you want a jump into the topic

[aaron_straker]:

yeah one last thing i was

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i guess we had some internet kind of connecting thing one of the best cues i ever got for

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

doing any kind of like individual pressing this isn't obviously going to work with like a barbell bench press but dumbbell bench or peck fly is squeezing your

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

elbows together at the top right so many people

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

just like touch their knuckles and stuff like that and that's not like the actual a good que because you can kind of round your shoulders cave your chest in and then take stimulus away from there but like if you if if on a fly you're trying to squeeze your elbows together like that is a very very good man q for helping that kind of very short into position of that exercise

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah like the inner elbow so we want to

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

be thinking

[aaron_straker]:

the elbow

[bryan_boorstein]:

about like the

[aaron_straker]:

pit

[bryan_boorstein]:

elbow crease and another way of thinking about it is bringing

[aaron_straker]:

but

[bryan_boorstein]:

your bicep across your chest so i think

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

either of those of those ces work really well

[aaron_straker]:

yep yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

yeah let's jump in

[bryan_boorstein]:

m oh m

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

so

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

i think we're having some internet connectivity issues here a little

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

bit

[aaron_straker]:

oh i'm good to start the rep angers of fire

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay okay i just had a bunch of internet issue over here can you hear me okay

[aaron_straker]:

yep

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay okay do you want to jump us off here

[aaron_straker]:

yeah so

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

kind of the thought we have here is we have different rep ranges right that we can use for hypertrophy and kind of the the what's that i'm looking for the the gap gap is not the right term but range i guess i should even say is about five five to thirty so five raps on the lower side of things and then up to upwards of like thirty raps on the higher side of things and we want to be you know considered are all these rep ranges equal

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

for producing hypertrophy

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah oh

[aaron_straker]:

obviously for things like

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

strength obviously we would be on the lower end of that but that's outside the context of today's conversation it's important provide that distinction

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

but all things kind of considered why would you or should you aim for the lower end of the rep range why would you or should you aim for the higher end of the rep range could there be differences between them what fact tors and influences can go into your decision making process for those et cetera cetera

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah totally good introduction there so i think a lot of this topic has gained traction for two reasons recently um one is that there was a meta analysis

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

systematic

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

review something like that by show and feld and gurgik and some

[aaron_straker]:

m yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

others called loading

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

recommendations for muscle strength hypertrophy and local endurance or re examining and of the repetition continuum and in this review they basically establish that per the plethera of studies that are out there it seems like set for set you know you can do a set of five reps and you can do a set a third rason as long as you're going to failure or close

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

to failure on both those sets that they are reasonably the same as far as building muscle and then you had paul carter who's been a big voice in

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

the space a lot has a bunch

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

of followers that you know i think are in our network people

[aaron_straker]:

ye

[bryan_boorstein]:

as well and he's been putting out all this information being like the effect of reps model is all that matters so it's the last five reps a really matter if you take eighty five per cent of your one r m and do

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

a et of five or six reps then you're getting effective reps from the beginning and then there's his art and there's a ton of extenuating circumstances that end up having a negative impact

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

as your reps climb from there and so the first thing that i really want to point out here is that i think the aspect of individual differences is extremely important and potentially very relevant

[aaron_straker]:

yes

[bryan_boorstein]:

and this comes on the heels of greg knuckles doing a review of this kind of similar idea on the stronger by science podcast yesterday and he reference to study that randomly they had two groups and one group was performing i want to say eight to twelve reps or eight to ten something like that and the other group was performing twenty seven to thirty one reps um which is just a weird refrain like man you're doing your thirty ones out there so there were extremes on either end so as like an average like the end result of that study was as you would expect from the show in feld analysis where it was like hey on average it didn't matter if did you know eight to ten or twenty seven to thirty one raps you know the trend was pretty similar along the way but when you look at the individual data points i think his reference was there was one person that lost five pounds of muscle or five percent doing high reps and gained thirteen percent doing the mode at reps like the eight to twelve and then there was another person that was the complete opposite who you know had no negligible effect training in the moderate rep ranges but gained ten or fifteen per cent in the twenty seven to thirty one rep ranges and so if these people just use their individual experience kind of like paul carter is doing and maybe he's that person that just responds really well to those five to eight rep sets and has numerous issues that we're going to discuss along the way of potential pitfalls of doing higher reps maybe he just really is sensitive to those pitfalls of the higher reps and so his bias is that it's now lower reps are better whereas somebody else may be that study that knuckles referenced who the person got fifteen percent more gains in the twenty seven to thirty one rep range their experience is totally different an they're like man i hate that eight rep range like that's awful i gain no muscle there like you got to do your twenty seven if you really want to gain muscle type things so so i think realizing that individual differences exist is super important piece to take into this um and then i have a question for you because i think a lot of this did come from paul and i know he obviously is getting a lot of his information from beardsley and u just finished beardsley's book or you're working on it i'm not sure if you're done yet what have you learned from the beardsley book about the different rep ranges

[aaron_straker]:

yeah so i have like i think like twenty percent left of the book the hardest thing about that book is it so dense and it requires requires like such focus it's almost like a text books and the it's just you you can't just like read

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

like for an hour because like your brain is going to be sucking soup

[bryan_boorstein]:

to

[aaron_straker]:

afterwards

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

um pretty much

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

in first of all i would recommend going and just buying it and reading it it's three dollars for the kindle version i don't even know if they have a hard

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

copy version there might be but it's lilly like three dollars

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

like the value to cost is probably

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay

[aaron_straker]:

the value to cost win of the century to be completely

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

honest

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah yeah

[aaron_straker]:

essentially the

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

the higher rep ranges all he's using he calls it the effective reps model or sorry the stimulating reps model but it's it's been also use as the effective reps model and it's basically like the fifteen to twenty rep range or the twenty to thirty rep range

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

like all those first twenty reps are doing is getting you tigued enough to the point where on those last five reps it's approximately five it's not like a hard five you have to try really really really really sucking hard so that you recruit all your large motor units that control the most muscle fibers and those are the motor units that actually produce hypertrophy when you are let's say you're doing a set of third on the leg extension those first ten reps you're not really trying that hard because if you were trying really hard you can't do thirty reps you would only be doing like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

twelve reps or nine reps or something like that so the again i'm pretty much you know boiling this down in summary when you hypertrophy comes from trying really really fucking hard

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

and if you're trying really ard at

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

reps you know twenty eight twenty nine and thirty reps twenty one sorry reps like one through like twenty you're literally going through the motion and the whole goal of rep you know one through twenty one or whatever twenty two are just to produce enough fatigue in the local musculature and signal sending

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

from your c n s so that those final reps are really really hard and chris's kind of standpoint and relative suggestions are

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

well in out of

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

spending

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

the forty seconds or whatever

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

just getting to the point where it's really really hard let's just increase load

[bryan_boorstein]:

ye

[aaron_straker]:

so that after two or three you're already working like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

really really hard and if i remember correctly which i think i do because my new program is

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

built off of this he kind of suggests like the seven to nine approximate

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

rep range

[bryan_boorstein]:

interesting and i know one thing i do want to talk about maybe at the end of this i don't want to forget about is the idea of different movements having different rep ranges

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and paul has an argument that he believes it doesn't really matter what the movement is it should all be in the five to eight or five to ten range or whatever but something else to kind of discuss down the line and then one other thing kind of on the point of what you're saying is kind of the old archaic belief around this was that if you do higher up you get slow twitch muscle fibers and if you do lower ups you get fast twitch muscle fibers and the new research is pretty much showing

[aaron_straker]:

he

[bryan_boorstein]:

that the reason that that five to thirty rep range all works is because the fast twitch muscle fibers which are the ones that you really want to fatigue if you want to grow they fatigue in those last five reps or six or seven or whatever it is like they progressively fatigue more as you get closer to failure so so it's not that they're not going to fatigue like it's not like oh you do it of thirty it's just slow twitch muscle fibers it's like you're

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

still going to get the fast twitched muscle fibers but you have to do all this other stuff before

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

you get there it's like the analogy that just popped in my head is like if you want to go sprint a hundred meters yeah you can either you know warm up and go sprint that hundred meters or you can walk for like an hour and then sprint your hundred meters and like which would be more effective like warming up and then sprinting or like wasting an hour energy and then trying to sprint you know um and so maybe that's not like a perfect analogy but it makes sense to me and i think that it makes sense in the general scheme of kind of this repetition spectrum as well so i just i want to go through a few of the points that i made pros and cons of different rep ranges and then if you want to jump in and discuss any of them along the way just raise your hand and that's cool too

[aaron_straker]:

let's do it

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool so the first thing on on higher reps is that they just literally take longer

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

so i mean it sounds

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

really simple but if you're going to do a set of twenty five reps instead of a set of sex wraps you're literally going to be working out for like an extra minute and ten seconds per set than

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

you would be otherwise

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

there's going to be a higher amount

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

of metabolic stress and metabolic accumulation

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and science is still sort of little bit ambiguous or undetermined maybe when it comes to the contribution of metabolic stress in the development of hypertrophy so

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah we have some blood

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

flow restriction studies that show that that it seems to be somewhat effective but that's under like certain conditions and like who knows compared to

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

not doing that like is that actually even better or is it just kind of effective as a substitute but metabolic

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

stress is going to a crew fatigue

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

there there's like these different types of fatigue

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

that you can acre right there is our central nervous system there's the poriferal fatigue which is like the fatigue to the actual specific

[aaron_straker]:

yes

[bryan_boorstein]:

local muscle itself and then

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

there's like these other energy concerns

[aaron_straker]:

ay

[bryan_boorstein]:

like metabolic stress and metabolic accumulation and so these are a fatigue that you need to recover from and so if metabolic stress doesn't like it will just theorize and say hey metabolxtress does not contribute

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

to hipertrepy on that ground then why would you want to do higher ep and accumulate a stress that isn't contributing to hypertrophy it's just something else you have to recover from now so there's that potential idea um then there's the

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

idea of the central nervous system fatigue and i think that this has kind of swung a little bit in the last couple of years like it used to just be common knowledge feel like five or ten years ago that doing low reps with heavy weight is going to crush your central nervous system is that something that you've heard as well

[aaron_straker]:

i mean yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

and the thing that to play devil's advocate here is i'm curious if it's really the c n s fatigue perspective or if it's the axle loading perspective

[bryan_boorstein]:

m m no and i think that's a huge huge huge point as well like that's kind of how i would see it as well

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

um because i'm not like a scientist i don't know like the intricacies of central nervous system fatigue super well but

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

i do know what i feel in the moment and so we're going to take sets of one to four raps out of here because those are strength rep ranges so

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i think there's there's a cost

[aaron_straker]:

yes

[bryan_boorstein]:

of doing those that we've discussed on here before that is a combination of psychological arousal and anxiety

[aaron_straker]:

ye

[bryan_boorstein]:

and like other kind of mental pieces

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

i think that contribute to fatigue in

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

those repranges so we can leave that out um but a lot of those same psychological anxiety fatigue costs aren't something that i notice in the like six to ten range it's very prominent in that one to four range but maybe not as much for me in

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

the like six to ten like i wouldn't have to ant myself up to do

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

a set of six to ten on like a hack or a pendulum the same way that i would if i was going to get under hack or a pendulum even and do two raps like i'm going to do the heaviest two raps on the pendulum that i can

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

well that's still a different level of psychological arousal than it is to do like eight to ten six to ten whatever it is the axial loading piece is huge too because regardless of whether i'm doing a back squat for two raps or for six to ten i feel like there is a more taxing tol fatigue cost

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

to do that movement

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

then there would be to do the

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

pendulum or the hack in that same rep range

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

so actio loading i think that that's

[aaron_straker]:

right

[bryan_boorstein]:

actually in the sciences been contributed to central nervous system fatigue like that is literally like the definition of it your central nervous system runs through your spinal cord so if you're

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

loading your racially on your back then yes you're going to be causing fatigue there but i think that in the newer age of science it seems that there's a lot of central nervous system fatigue costs that comes with with doing these higher reps more so than doing the moderate rep ranges and um some of that could be just total time under underload like i

[aaron_straker]:

yes

[bryan_boorstein]:

saying you just do longer sets you're doing this out of twenty five your body is literally under load and you're having to resist that for longer periods of time there's more metabolic stress which again we do no could contribute to c n s fatigue without like a hypohypertrophic stimulus as a result of

[aaron_straker]:

yah

[bryan_boorstein]:

it or at least probably not a increasing level of hyportrophic stimulus for the amount of fatigue that you're getting from those so anyway those would be like initial thoughts for me and then i have a couple

[aaron_straker]:

yah

[bryan_boorstein]:

other points any thoughts on any of that stuff though

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

so i mean i guess one thing that i will will do here is kind of take like a devil's advocate kind of approach to some of this um to put my cards on the table i am not someone who there are very few things i'm going to do for like a fucking thirty raps or something like that it might be like one burn out set of like okay i'm goin a do one set of max push ups at the end of my push session something like that but that's pretty much like i'm talking it up going home sort of thing i really do think the getting stronger in the lower rep ranges is probably the best bang for your book that's what generally personally do and have gravitated towards as i've learned more you know obviously from spending time with you and the more i read and learn

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

um the one time will say

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

that i think the higher reps has

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

utility is fat loss because what we are trying to do or fat loss or if you have someone with some metabolic resistance sort of thing like a cump where

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

we have high trigliscrides right when we want to do lots of high reps we're not talking about hypertrophy there we're talking about doing work to get the triglyscerides out of the blood right so that we can get into a more metabolically efficient physiology or our environment is is a better use of that term so that we can get fat down a little bit sort of thing so

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

like those are cases but that outside of hypertrophy hypertrophy isn't the direct goal here it's you know fat loss or or improving health sort of

[bryan_boorstein]:

glucose

[aaron_straker]:

thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

management yeah

[aaron_straker]:

exactly

[bryan_boorstein]:

like higher reps would

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

help with disposal of glucose

[aaron_straker]:

exactly because we're doing more work right and at that point going through the motions you know under a load enough to support you know having to produce effort but with that if we're doing thirty reps at and we're you know gas on rep thirty we're doing like six raps were we're trying really hard but we're obviously going to to piss through a lot more like you and glucose on that thirty reprane

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

so that is

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

probably the time there where i will use that with clients

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

especially when we have some kind of resistance

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

to things but yeah terms of talking about hypertrophy sort of thing i just the time commitment in and of itself is huge huge

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm yeah i am i kind of feel like even in the state of dieting or fat loss i would still veer and i do still veer towards the lower eran is because i just am a believer in doing what helped you build the muscle to retain the muscle

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

and i'd be scared that you know

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

changing what has gotten me there as i'm losing fat and i'm now like lifting lighter

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

loads in higher up ranges and like i would be fearful that that would kind of have a negative effect my process and i would like to kind

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

of be able to compare apples apples and like hey i was this strong at this point when i was in a surplus and now that i'm in a deficit i want to know like hey am i am i actually losing strength here or not

[aaron_straker]:

hundred percent and i would agree with that

[bryan_boorstein]:

m m

[aaron_straker]:

you and i don't have

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

met camp or anything like that

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

and it's not that's not like a step one that would be like okay things aren't working let's you know we're going i'm going down the check list and i'm like okay we now need to get get glucose

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

down get triglisrides

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

down but yeah that that as a good

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

distinction

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah so one like super practical thing that i want to say that i think is a huge a feather in the cap of the lower rep ranges is specifically the ability to be accurate with your reps from failure and this is something that like i even struggle with higher ranges so i know that people with less experience than me a hundred per

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

cent would struggle with this and so what i love about the six to eight reprange is that as soon as that first rep slows it's almost ubiquitously at around four reps five reps something like that and then i can get two to three more reps after that and

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

it's very very obvious when you're one rep from field or two raps from failure like i can almost get that with a hundred percent accuracy every set regardless of the movement it seems

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and in higher rep ranges you just can't do that i mean you get to

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

fifteen it burns so bad that who knows if you want to stop at eighteen because

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

it's burning really bad

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

or if you literally like

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

can have any more force production because if it's just like hey the leg extension is the perfect example i cannot even at this stage of my training i cannot go to failure on leg extensions on a fifteen plus reset i just i just can't do it i stop because it burns so bad and i know that it's not actually failure i just like psychologically fail but when i leg extension in seven to eleven rep range seven to ten that's kind of i preferred for that movement

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i know exactly where failure is it's it's the rep slows and then i have

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

two or three more and that's that's produces a lot of confidence for me in in

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

the output that i'm putting in and in the progressions that i make and knowing that i wasn't sandbagging the week before and that's why i have another rap it just seems like

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

part of the argument for higher ps is it's a lot easier to add a rep okay great but is it easier to add a p because you know that's a smaller percentage of your total

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

or is it just that you were being a pansy and now because you want to progress you can find a little more psychological arousal to get annitional wrap and then the next week you're like okay a little

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

more psychological arousal and i got an additional rap i just really like the confidence in the lower rep ranges knowing that progress is progress what do you tink of that

[aaron_straker]:

i literally could not agree more the there's inherently going to be

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

some margin of air

[bryan_boorstein]:

m oh

[aaron_straker]:

with r r r r p e

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

sort of thing your reps get larger that margin of air

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

like grows that gap grows

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

and like you were saying like if you're doing a set of eight pretty clear whether you could do another report because you're trying really hard and the way it's not fucking moving at nineteen twenty twenty four their legs are going to be on fire

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

psychologically your mind is going to be telling you to stop it like set sixteen now you're at twenty four realistically

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

from a pure physiologic standpoint you can probably push to rep thirty

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

four but it's really when are you going when is your mind going to quit

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

and say that burns is enough and it's that's hard and i'm not saying that i would do a good job either like for those that know me like when when things get uncomfortable you know i'm the first one to fuck this i'm done at sixteen raps i'm done

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i can't do any more when i could

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

probably do thirty and it's by not putting myself in that environment i am able to train more accurately by just avoiding

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

you know those hard mental situation sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

a totally i have two more points

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

so let's try and finish this up in five minutes or so we're

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

running a little bit behind but one thing

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i want to talk about is rep speed and tempo and so like you guys if you if you watch me

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

train you know that i like to train in a very diligent

[aaron_straker]:

thank you

[bryan_boorstein]:

purposeful manner and all my reps try to get the most out of every

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

single rap that i do so as an example you know i can do a set of eight reps and i look at my video afterwards edited from beginning to end and it's a sixty second video for like eight reps or something like that and if i were to do a set of

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

fifteen or twenty i wouldn't put the same

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

focus into each rep that i do it would just kind of i would go into the set being like well i have fifteen to twenty of these may as well just keep this like two o x o tempo and then suddenly that like set of fifteen turns into like forty seconds which is actually even shorter than my set of eight was when

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i was really doing these like diligent purposeful

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

reps um and

[aaron_straker]:

eh

[bryan_boorstein]:

so i just feel like in that case you know

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i want to get i want to milk the most out of every rep i do i don't want to just go through the

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

motions doing reps to say i didn't set fifteen to twenty like time under tension is ultimately

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

the thing that probably controls most

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

of the response that we get and so if you're doing a forty five second set that's fifteen reps for forty five second set that six raps or something like that your muscles under tension for the same amount of time but in the sixth rep set

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

you can probably pause at the length and position you can control the eccentric a little bit more so you can get more out of the parts of the rep we know are the most effective portions of that reb

[aaron_straker]:

and if we broke up a little bit so just to make sure you were you were comparing like a eight rep set to like a sixteen rep set both taking forty seconds correct

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah something along

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

those lines yeah

[aaron_straker]:

yeah okay that's what i thought the only thing i wanted to add there is like because you said time under tension is probably like an important factor there the benefit of the eight rep set is the load is so much significantly higher with the eight raps as opposed to the sixteen raps with that same amount of time under tension

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah that's that's a really good point to um cool and then the last thing i have and this is going to be something

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i guess not for low raps but joint stress is something consider as well and

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

so this kind of gets into them the conversation exercise selection and whether that matters for rep ranges and so um like i don't like when someone says you can't do lateral raises in the six to eight reprange because you have to talk about what type of lateral rays like no i'm not going to do a dumb bell lateral raise for six to eight reps because it's a short overload movement and you just there's a higher joint stress it's a free weight movement it's extremely overloaded at one part of the movement but if you take something like a cable

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

lateral rays at wrist height and you do that for six to eight reps there's literally no reason you can't do that that has a similar resistance curve

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

as like your typical length and overload pound movement

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

so there's really no reason you can't get a ton out of a set of six to eight cable lateral raises but maybe you wouldn't do six to eight dumb bell lateral raises so it is movement dependent also equipment dependent

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and joint angle dependent

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and moment arm dependent and all of these factors as well and so

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

um m like yes if you're going to do a dumbbell lateral raise paul carter would argue you can do that in the five to eight rep range i would say that personally i would probably

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

prefer to go to like the ten to fifteen rep range for that one but like my overhead trisep extension with a cable i do that for sets of six to eight and i'm

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

happy just like i am with the dual cable lateral rays so i do think it's important to think about those distinctions of the equipment you're using and the strength slash resistance curve of that movement and how that might play into to the rep range as well

[aaron_straker]:

the last thing i will add on there that will be a large impacting factor there is your load

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

increments that is another big thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

why going to a twelve to fifteen may make sense because if you can only go from ten pounds to fifteen pounds that's a fifty percent load increase and your rips are going to drop off can or ably

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah in that case i'm a huge fan of like if you have two or three work sets i'm a huge fan of like say okay so you're at ten pounds and you get

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

fifteen fourteen thirteen or something like that yeah just jump your first set up to fifteen pounds so now you can go like okay instead of fifteen reps with ten pounds i'm going to get six to eight reps with fifteen pounds but then instead of trying to beat that fifteen pound weight for all the sets i'll drop it back down to ten pounds for like the second or third set and still be able to continue the progressions there while slowly beginning to become comfortable with the heavier weight in the lower reprange

[aaron_straker]:

really good point

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool i think that's pretty much all i've got on the topic

[aaron_straker]:

i togerwth that

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah you're good

[aaron_straker]:

i think we covered it well

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool sweet well thats gonna be ran a little long but things is solid

[aaron_straker]:

cool so guys as always thank you for listening

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

to train prosper brian and i will talk to you next week

[bryan_boorstein]:

m oh

Episode intro/life updates
Fly movements versus press movements
Focus on performing movements that get your elbows closer to your rib cage
Higher reps mean more metabolic stress and metabolic accumulation
Exploring the central nervous system fatigue costs that come with doing higher reps
Bryan explains his ideal rep speed and tempo