Minimalist Training: How Low Can You Go? | ETP#96

[bryan_boorstein]: 0:25

oh

[aaron_straker]: 0:26

m yeah what's up guys happy tuesday welcome

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yeah

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back to another episode of eat train prosper today briant and myself are going to have a little discussion around minimalist training minimum effective volume minimum volume for maintenance and some of the different considerations and aspects around the conversation within that but before we get into today's topic as

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oh

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always brian can kick us off with some updates

[bryan_boorstein]: 0:52

yes absolutely i can totally do that as i was sitting here looking at myself in the screen wearing this hat this this hoys hat this banian i just realized a couple of weeks ago when i was talking to my mom that i've had this hat since i was like eight years old so not only does it still fit me but it's been in my life for thirty two years which is one of the longest things that i currently owned so there's a it's just kind of funny to me but anyways let's talk about more more relevant things here thanksgiving was awesome at a bunch of food at a bunch of desert as i kind of thought i would i was talking to dave maconi on what's up and he was giving me ship because i said i probably only ate about two thousand calories at thanksgiving dinner and he like no you got to get up to like four you know and and i was talking about how just my appetite has been i'm not super strong recently and just specifically during the period of thanksgiving like the few days leading up to and then the day after thanksgiving i kind of had like a distaste for large amounts of meat up animal proteins so i had like a four or five day period in there where i was only eating between a hundred and a hundred and fifty grams approaching to day because i was just kind of like hey you know this is what my body feeling right now i'm just not hungry for it so i'm going to listen to it and just kind of do that thing but i couldn't stomach more than six ounces of protein at a time without feeling like i didn't want any more and it just kind of made me realize or at least correlate that to the discussion we've had in prior weeks of my food and getting a little carried away and potentially now you know pushing up against that upper boundary of where my body is comfortable because i've really just not had a huge appetite until it's come back the last few days but that natural rege ation of appetite that we know is more consistent with people that work out and take care of themselves in general and then it becomes dis regulated with people that don't work out and so i think this is a cool sign and a cool test omit too just the power of that and you know when when i'm getting close to my to my point what is that the upper regulation point is that what it's called upper intervention point yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:14

yeah

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that it just my appetite kind of goes down so it's it's interesting how the body has that natural control mechanism in there

[aaron_straker]: 3:22

before before you

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yeah

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continue i had some this was like one of my kind of updates and i think it makes perfect sense it kind of piggy back on to yours so historically thanksgiving is where aaron has i wouldn't say like a guess technically like a planned hedonistic deviation but it's probably

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:40

oh

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my favorite holiday right it's it's foods you don't ever really normally eat there would be many times in the past i would have eating competitions with friends and stuff like that so it was just

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yeah

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like a it was just

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yeah

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a day that i grew to kind of really enjoy um and then this year what i found really interesting is so i went and i planned i purposely modified my training week so that i could train legs thanksgiving day so that i could like you know move a bunch of gliagin to then shuttle all these now food and nut and in there so i went quite hard i only did

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oh

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three exercises no four exercises i did seated like extensions with some io reps lying like girls with some mio reps i did i've really perfected the smith machine squat with using like the angles ninety m

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yep

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grips to kind of get out in front of the machine a little bit push those really really hard and then did two sets of reverse lunges deficit reverse lunges in the smith machine like literal like a total of like eight sets and then that was done um the interesting thing that happed with thanksgiving so i'm super lactose and tolerant

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oh

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right i've talked about this on the podcast before and they're just by the nature of it there's a lot of cream and you know dairy and some of the different foods what ended up happening is i had two moderately sized plates

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yeah

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like not anything large for myself i got so full and kind of uncomfortable

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yeah

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from i guess he increase in dat those things hitting i was just like really full for the rest of the day but then i got really hungry at night but i was still

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m

[aaron_straker]: 5:24

so full it's like

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a

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the food just like wasn't digesting

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ah

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or digesting so slow that like four it's later i'm like my body is like you we're hungry and i just couldn't bring myself to eat more so ended up like then under consuming what i had really planned to and then because i didn't really eat that much and i trained so hard i got like sickeningly sore

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u

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like my quads and my gluts

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h

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were sucking destroyed and then that really changed like my plan of training because on friday i trained back we went to that sweet jim down in richmond

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hm

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again and then like the day before thanksgiving i trained like chest and delt like there's no other body parts that i could

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yeah

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train saturday

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uh

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and sunday so ended up like

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h

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not really doing anything and i was so sore i didn't want to go for

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oh

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a walk or anything like that and then

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oh

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my desire to just eat normally and healthy was like soup super low and it was very very interestin as it was kind of sitting there observing i think so much of not to get too derailed the your appetite you know regulation and that sort of thing is coupled to like you re exercise in those sorts of things and i think i feel pretty confidently saying for for some of was like when you have a number of days away from like the gym and training in those parts of your routine it's much easier to be like i'm just going to eat some cookies or have some serial or like the sorts of things so it was really like a practical realistic real life use case reminder of me of those things even for me you know which is

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h m

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i have maybe five of those days in the year because i generally don't really enjoy them but it was i can't train i'm super sore and i don't feel like you know eating healthy or types of food sort of thing and then yesterday was the first day back on the swing of things and of course my meals like impeccable and i felt so much bette but it was very kind of eye opening to that just stumble into that situation myself

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:20

yeah i guess any type of exercise works like it doesn't even have to be like weight lifting it can

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yeah

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be like going out for walks or running or biking but like

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kay

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just something to regulate that

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definitely

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so then my sunday is kind of related to actually no it's not my next i went to the world cup game after thanksgiving drank a few beers had some good times with friends that was a super fun game to all and i think it was good for the u s in general for like the future of socker to see us play england super tight in a zero zero game but for those that that are following this world cup thing we now have to beat i ran ran i ran i ran i ran we have to be a ran today to move to the next round so i'm like super invested in this and pretty excited to like jam a workout and some work after this episode and then sit down on the couch at noon or one or whatever it is and and watch that game another update kim and i have been trying to facilitate having dates during the week each week because the kids are in school now so this week we're going to try and go skiing on friday which will be my first time on the slopes this season and also kind of cool that i get to share that with him so all things you know aligning school being in session the kids not sick hopefully she and i can go skein on friday and then my last update is uh relevant to what you were saying about your legs and so what i've been doing this messocycle since it start did i'm just at the end of week two right now so almost entering week three of this mess i've been splitting all of my hams and quad days into hams and then the next day doing quads and this is something that i found myself doing and leaning towards last year as well and i talked about it on the podcast then where i didn't actually program it that way i just kind of ended up now really inherently just splitting them for a variety of reasons and the same thing has kind of happened now this time it started because the kids at least one kid has been home for twenty straight is now between thanksgiving and being sick and snow days and whatever m twenty plus days we've had at least one kid home and so i don't have the mental focus or time to go in there and do hams and qua um but doing just hams or doing just quads i can mentally focus have enough time get it done that sort of thing i have found that i really really really enjoy this that i get so much more out of each leg day each leg part of the leg day that i do trying to combine them together because naturally i always do quads second and i feel like quads suffer because i just don't have the mental focus after doing hams um but now quads are getting just as much focus and it's been it's been really cool the there are prose and cons to it though and i would say the con is that now i have less days off because it's not like i'm doing like hams ods and taking a rest day on either side of it i'm still trying to stick to my schedule of doing what was two on one off two on one off two on one off except now that i have a day that is split into two days it ends up being sometimes like three on or four on or something like that so um that part i don't exactly love but i do love that like yesterday i went in and did three sets of standing leg curls and two sets of seated leg curls and that was it like literally five sets of leg curls was was egg day yesterday and my hams were smashed for like three hours after so then today i go in and do quads and i'm excited about that i like that that they're shorter allows me to focus a little bit better so that is my last update

[aaron_straker]: 11:11

i aside from the day that i just subscribed on thanksgiving which was off plan for me by the way that's what i've been doing as well i do really really like it like same like you said it's just when you're training those large muscle groups the

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:24

yeah

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quads and the hams together they're very very

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yeah

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demanding there's some soul sucking that goes into it something what's at the end is going to inherently suffer because there's only so much that you can give that's very very challenging and demanding um every time like as are my favorite they're my priority probably because i can see them right

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m

[aaron_straker]: 11:47

so i inherently will train quad on like today's tuesday right today is my ham day i will do ham you know hams and back one thing that i will change when i do this again in the future is training qua ham's first and then quads especially and the real reason

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:03

m

[aaron_straker]: 12:03

why is

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:04

m

[aaron_straker]: 12:04

after you train quads and

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okay

[aaron_straker]: 12:05

then shove the year quads in the forty five degree hip extension to do they're fucking super tender and it's off every day every time i do it am like damn it i need to switch these days around because it's just uncomfortable but i agree i do really really like that as well

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:22

the other i say the main reason i probably do ham's first is for that old you know john meadows reason of getting blood pumped into the hams really helps the knees feel better when you go to squat and so that's that really for me like i find that to be one hundred percent true and accurate and my knees you know have have no issues in any of the things that i do when i do them in that order but that is i guess another can of splitting these days up is that i go into my quads and i'm kind of warming those up from a base line instead of having

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hm

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the hams first which i don't but definitely some

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oh

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pros and cons to that whole split situation

[aaron_straker]: 13:01

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:01

do you have other updates for us

[aaron_straker]: 13:03

um two quick ones so starting with this episode we have a new team helping us manage the administrative and you know audio

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yeah

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visual side of things of rain prospero for those of you who are viewing this on youtube you'll see we have a fancy new

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:19

oh

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layout in design around as well as

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yeah

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our youtube short and our instagram reels lay out so i excited about that m is excited to have help on managing podcast as brian and i obviously have two full time businesses we run outside of this so it's thank you to the to the team that ell so and then thank you to evan who has helped us since pretty much our start as well and then the last update is i have officially finished my month without caffeine so

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a

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yesterday was

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yeah

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my first day back on the sauce i had one one cup and i think ultimately what i've learned from this is i think i'm just a slow metabolizer brian you and i have been having iscussion with one of our viewers on youtube scott i believe his name is around

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yep

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this and he gave me a specific gen to look

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oh

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into because he has found the same for himself and i actually did get all my genetic testing done uh and back and i'm just waiting to finalized exporting my twenty three and me data into a tool called strateging that is offered by c health i believe is the company i can't remember at the top of my head to get a very much more robust

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m

[aaron_straker]: 14:31

reporting of my actual polymorphysms and those sorts

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m

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of things but i've been waiting until i get all of my revenue generating

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oh

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tasks done this week before i jump into non revenue generating tasks

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h

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such as that but i do think that i am just a slow metabolizer that's

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:49

oh

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one of the things that i had picked up on

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yah

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very

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ah

[aaron_straker]: 14:52

kind of within within three days of maple and caffeine

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oh

[aaron_straker]: 14:55

completely i was sleeping like

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yeah

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noticeably noticeably

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oh

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better and i've never been a high caffeine and take person anyway i might

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yeah

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have

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yeah

[aaron_straker]: 15:04

two two cups so maybe around and those are generally you know long black using shots of a subresso so maybe two hundred milligrams tops may be like two fifty on like a very rare day um and i always caught it by like noon at the latest and that would still be affecting me at ten eleven p m so um as you get as you go you learn new things about yourself and then can hopefully make better decisions to improve your life sort of thing that's what i'm hoping for here

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:35

do you think there is no correlation or maybe some correlation between just

[aaron_straker]: 15:41

yeah

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metabolic rate in general processing

[aaron_straker]: 15:43

yeah

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food and then you're your metabolic processing

[aaron_straker]: 15:45

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:45

of caffheen itself

[aaron_straker]: 15:47

i do not know if that would be correlative specifically because i believe there's this and i'm now for the listeners

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yeah

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out there i am speaking outside my bounds of confidence here so take with a great assault i believe there's a specific

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do

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end zem or maybe it's a group of endzemes that are responsible for the metabolization of caffeine because i have generally a very high you know metabolic rate i've always been able to eat hordes food sort of thing but this has been one where you know when especially when i talk to people have to actual research on caffeine right three to six milligrams per kilogram of body weight is like the number studied in the literature i think upwards of like nine milligrams per kilogram actually for um a orgonomic not orgonomicorggenic

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gogenic

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yeahrgagenic performance

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ah

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effect and i'm like three mile even at the

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hm

[aaron_straker]: 16:45

bottom end of that you know i'm around on ninety ninety kilos times three that's what like two months upwards like three hundred milligrams like i can't take that at a time there's no way

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that's

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i have

[bryan_boorstein]: 16:57

what

[aaron_straker]: 16:57

a

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i take i do three hundred in the morning

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yeah i killed it no way

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yeah

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like

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:02

oh

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i'm doing like i haven't even had my my cup yet after i'm going to have it after the podcast it's gonna be like maybe seventy five but if i

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yeah

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have

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:11

i mean

[aaron_straker]: 17:11

if i

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that's cool

[aaron_straker]: 17:12

if

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that

[aaron_straker]: 17:12

i would

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you're

[aaron_straker]: 17:12

get

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sensitive

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up to

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to it

[aaron_straker]: 17:13

like three hundred for the day i'm not sleeping that night no way in hell yeah

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that conversation

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yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:19

with scott in the outube comments got me thinking a little bit too about this because like like i've talked about my sleep on here before i don't to get derailed but basically i fall asleep so easily that kim can't even keep me awake like i'll fall asleep in the eight hour usually and i sleep a three hour block then i wake up and go p then i sleep another three hour block and i wake up and go p and then the last two hours of the night i'm like tossing and turning constantly and so i don't know if that is going to be something that's related to the caffeine just because i have those two three hour blocks that are super solid to start the night um but it does it does at least interest me to try and figure out why those last two hours i can't to find peace you know

[aaron_straker]: 18:08

yeah i would i

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:08

oh

[aaron_straker]: 18:08

would agree with you from what my understanding and it's probably not the caffeine

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like early cortical release or something

[aaron_straker]: 18:15

a much more

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:16

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 18:16

likely yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:18

okay so before we jump into this topic on minimalist training

[aaron_straker]: 18:24

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:25

we did have a question from a regular listener who is always asking questions and he's super engaged so i wanted to entertain this for him so

[aaron_straker]: 18:32

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 18:33

the question was i despise arm training as an intermediate i missing out on much by skipping it and so i think the key there and i bolted it in in this question was that he's an intermediate and so my my my first inclination is to say that yeah you you probably are missing out on something by not training it because in the intermediate stage you are still making tangible progress in both strength and size and so you know i think i will have more insight on this after i finish my one arm training experiment that may have some relevance to this question obviously it's different that i'm super super advanced but i feel like if i get even any growth from my left arm in this six months period that i would think that that must extrapolate to even larger gains for an intermediate but if say i my hypothesis is correct and i gain no size in my left arm despite training it only for six months and then assume that my right arm doesn't lose any size i think that puts me into a bit of a nihilistic mindset and that could also be extrapolated out toward intermediate and say like hey if you're intermediate and you're progressing on your compounds and stuff like your arms are going to be getting some stimulus to and then i think about us during cross fit and i would say when we were in cross it we were still be considered advanced like we weren't in mediates per se and the amount of muscle that we had in our cross fit journey um but we didn't train arms for six years eight years something like that and an i don't think i actually had any muscle loss in my arms throughout that cross fit period either so the answer being i don't know but my inclination is to say that as an intermediate you robably should train arms you probably don't need to do a ton of volume if you hate doing it but i think doing one or two bicep movements for two sets to zero r i r is probably a good idea and probably same for trisep

[aaron_straker]: 20:40

yeah i would what you just said at the end i think is the key take away here i'm going to take a little bit of a different position and

[bryan_boorstein]: 20:48

oh

[aaron_straker]: 20:49

say like if you don't really care

[bryan_boorstein]: 20:51

m

[aaron_straker]: 20:51

to grow the sid if your arms more than they are now

[bryan_boorstein]: 20:55

m

[aaron_straker]: 20:56

like

[bryan_boorstein]: 20:56

m

[aaron_straker]: 20:57

you know i personally when when i was younger i trained my arms like super hard and i think that was just like something that was really like popular you know like having big arms was like a really kind of big thing in like the early two thousands and you know maybe before i don't personally think it's as like as popular any more maybe maybe it's just the circles i run and sort of thing but now like

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:23

ah

[aaron_straker]: 21:23

my arms are

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:24

oh

[aaron_straker]: 21:24

kind of bigger than my shoulders you know and

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:26

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 21:27

i kind of don't like that

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:28

uh

[aaron_straker]: 21:28

i shouldn't say kind of like straight up don't

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:29

uh

[aaron_straker]: 21:29

like that so i

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:31

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 21:31

i don't really train them i try to just to check the box but it's by checking the box and if you have like you just don't care for them to grow and in proportionally you know your shoulders are bigger than your arms and you're happy with that proportion and stuff like you fuck don't train them like you're not if you don't

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:49

yah

[aaron_straker]: 21:49

enjoy it don't do it kind of is my my take on it

[bryan_boorstein]: 21:54

ah yeah no i agree i guess my my interpretation was am i missing out on much and the missing out on much i perceived as like physical

[aaron_straker]: 22:01

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 22:02

benefit of arm growth and you perceived it as hey if my life doesn't need this in it and then don't do it type

[aaron_straker]: 22:07

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 22:07

thing so how many sets are you doing a week for each if you're kind of at that point in your journey as well where you don't care

[aaron_straker]: 22:15

right now i have them on two days i do two sets of each one day where i have like a whole full upper day so i do like two sets of biceps two sets of triceps that are a super set and then on my shoulder in arms day i think i do two sets again maybe yeah yeah so

[bryan_boorstein]: 22:41

so four sets biceps and four sets triceps a week

[aaron_straker]: 22:43

but i'll usually do

[bryan_boorstein]: 22:44

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 22:44

like some some drops and in different things like that in there in in length and partials just because i'm

[bryan_boorstein]: 22:50

hm

[aaron_straker]: 22:50

i'm only giving it like five minutes i'm going to give it like a fucking full five minutes sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 22:55

yeah now well that transitions super well into our conversation today about minimal is training because one of the tools that we use in minimal is training a lot to get the most at least are things like that like you know doing rest pause sets my rep job sets whatever type of technique so we'll get into all that as the conversation kind of meanders through um i was actually on jordan lips podcast yesterday and this was the topic so if anyone wants to check it out even in more depth than what we're going to talk about here he and i went for like seventy five minutes on minimuls training which is kind of surprising we got to thirty seven minutes and i was like all right we should be wrapping this thing up soon and then we like

[aaron_straker]: 23:42

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 23:42

doubled that so just the way that goes sometimes but okay as we get into our topic here one of the first things that

[aaron_straker]: 23:51

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 23:51

i want to kind of open with

[aaron_straker]: 23:53

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 23:54

is differentiating between what would be considered maintenance volume and minimum effective volume and so maintenance is exactly as it sounds it is an amount of work that is going to allow you to maintain where you are currently without slipping backwards but you also are necessarily going to progress forwards and then you compare that to m e v minimum effective volume and this is an amount of volume effort because they always work in co ordination where you will make progress that's where it gets ambiguous

[aaron_straker]: 24:34

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 24:35

because defining progress is extremely

[aaron_straker]: 24:39

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 24:40

challenging in a physique pursuit one of the really unfortunate things

[aaron_straker]: 24:45

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 24:46

is the way that the stronger by science guys have recently of debunked dexa as like being super reliable

[aaron_straker]: 24:51

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 24:52

because in the industry it was kind of always believed that the tea is the accurate one you know and it it is it is the most accurate of the technology that we have but there's still like going to be a three to five per cent variance in there and so if you're trying to assess your progress from from one training cycle to the next or one year to the next then an advanced level it becomes very difficult to say the dea told me i gained one pound of muscle and lost one pound of fat when there's like a three to five per cent variance potentially in just that dexareading it and who's interpreting that data so that's a bit niolistic which is unfortunate so then we're kind of left with this idea of using strength as a proxy to assess prog s and i think that this becomes a really slippery

[aaron_straker]: 25:49

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 25:49

slope when you're trying to pursue hypertrophy

[aaron_straker]: 25:51

yah

[bryan_boorstein]: 25:53

because

[aaron_straker]: 25:53

h kay

[bryan_boorstein]: 25:54

strength is going to be enhanced through

[aaron_straker]: 25:58

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 25:59

over recovering

[aaron_straker]: 26:00

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:01

and in hypertrophy pursuit you kind of want this fatigue you need to be pushing

[aaron_straker]: 26:05

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:06

fatigue a little bit more

[aaron_straker]: 26:07

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:08

which then leads to the question of like okay i need to find my upper boundary and how do i walk that back to like what is optimalonce i've found like what is too much and what's optimal for hypertrophy is going to be a lot more volume than what is optimal for strength and so we're going to kind of get into all of this as as we get going but i do wanted to kind of throw that out there as like some initial m thought fodder for you guys maintenance volume studies generally show somewhere between one third and one ninth of the volume you were doing

[aaron_straker]: 26:48

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 26:48

is allowing you to maintain so we have pretty good data on that um those are all short term and the one ninth of training volume study was done on younger clientele and then they found that the older actually was the same stuff one group did one ninth and one group did one third of volume the younger clientele did fine maintaining on one ninth whereas the older clientel needed more like one third and then we also remember that this was short term maintenance um and so i've talked to both eric helms and brian miner about this idea and they've both kind of hedged around fifty percent and said that hey if you're doing fifty percent of the volume it took you to grow you can probably maintain and so already what you're seein is that these numbers are being based on individual volume numbers so it's really difficult to say you can maintain on two sets you general person out there because there's these variables of age but there's also the variables of what your volume was to gain

[aaron_straker]: 27:55

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:55

so somebody that needed potentially fifteen

[aaron_straker]: 27:57

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:57

sets to progress

[aaron_straker]: 27:59

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:00

may need five to eight sets to maintain

[aaron_straker]: 28:01

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:02

somebody that needed eight sets to progress may only need two to four sets to maintain so so these are all just caveats that i think are important

[aaron_straker]: 28:11

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:11

to put out there to begin with as we begin the conversation

[aaron_straker]: 28:15

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:15

around this what what do you have to say on any of that

[aaron_straker]: 28:18

but one thing i think that stood out to me a little bit more was the the younger crowd needing less of a volume

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:28

m

[aaron_straker]: 28:28

to maintain than

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:29

m

[aaron_straker]: 28:29

the older

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:29

oh

[aaron_straker]: 28:30

crowd needing and the kind of my thought process and i believe we covered this on the adam episode so for any listeners going back as you kind of get older for many of us kind of generalizing at a population level which everyone knows i don't like to do your volume kind of overtime comes down so think that is where when like brian when you were younger you did a ton of well not you might be the exception to the rule here

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:00

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 29:00

but it's just much more common because when you're younger i want to so much you just you're throwing everything you can at the wall to see what sticks and then as you get

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:08

m

[aaron_straker]: 29:08

older you find okay this stuck a little bit better your volume generally kind of comes down

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:12

m

[aaron_straker]: 29:12

as you're become

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:13

oh

[aaron_straker]: 29:13

more adept at performing sizes and those sorts of things so that was i thought was rather interesting

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:19

oh

[aaron_straker]: 29:19

that the younger people needed one ninth

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:21

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 29:21

of the volume whereas the older gen the older people generally in the study needed approximately what was it one for one third

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:29

one third yeah

[aaron_straker]: 29:30

one

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:30

that's

[aaron_straker]: 29:30

third

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:30

that's interesting and interesting view point because my just my my thought on the thing was that it was the m p s got so much worse as you

[aaron_straker]: 29:39

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:39

got older and so

[aaron_straker]: 29:41

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:41

you needed to continually train more spike more m p s et cetera et cetera may be a combination of both of those as well

[aaron_straker]: 29:50

yeah it would be interesting to see the actual age groups what was young what was old that sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:56

i think it was over forty

[aaron_straker]: 29:57

okay

[bryan_boorstein]: 29:59

fifty i can't remember what i

[aaron_straker]: 30:00

if

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:00

want

[aaron_straker]: 30:00

it

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:00

to

[aaron_straker]: 30:00

was

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:00

say

[aaron_straker]: 30:00

over

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:00

forty

[aaron_straker]: 30:00

fifty

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:01

of those

[aaron_straker]: 30:01

i would say

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:02

oh

[aaron_straker]: 30:02

that that m p s from from the kind of research and stuff and again not to derail

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:06

oh

[aaron_straker]: 30:06

the conversation that i've really looked at it's like that mid fifties when things mid

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:12

oh

[aaron_straker]: 30:12

the late fifties when things start kind of getting worse from a from a hormone standpoint for males obviously

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:19

hm

[aaron_straker]: 30:20

for women that changes a little bit earlier things start

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:25

m

[aaron_straker]: 30:25

shifting quite to to the downside

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:28

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 30:28

we're so much before that is going to be very very lifestyle mediated whereas to like you'regetting into your late fifties at syce that whole age thing is

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:38

biology

[aaron_straker]: 30:38

coming around

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:38

is happening

[aaron_straker]: 30:39

a biologies happening really good term

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:44

so you have anything else to add to that we're good to go

[aaron_straker]: 30:47

no let's let's

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:48

a cool

[aaron_straker]: 30:48

let's

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:48

all

[aaron_straker]: 30:48

move

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:48

right

[aaron_straker]: 30:48

forward

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:48

sweet so so the last kind of piece i have on the maintenance volume and minimum effective volume thing is that actually let me tell you another term so we'll use another term

[aaron_straker]: 30:58

i

[bryan_boorstein]: 30:59

m a v which would be maximum or maximum adaptive volume and usually what we'll find is that maximum adaptive volume is somewhere between minimum effective volume and maxible recoverable volume so there's like going to be a point where you're doing so much volume and so much effort that you can't recover and then there's the minimum effective volume which means hey we're doing the minimum but east where we're moving forward and then there's max from an

[aaron_straker]: 31:22

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 31:22

adaptive volume somewhere in the middle so the gap between these landmarks

[aaron_straker]: 31:30

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 31:30

it shrinks as your training age increases so using myself as an example if i'm making any progress at all that's good

[aaron_straker]: 31:42

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 31:43

um there there there is no like maximum adaptive volume for me and minimum effective volume it's like i'm either doing too much and i'm not recovering or doing just the right amount and i'm barely able to make any progress at all and so distinguishing between those for your level of training is very important because somebody just starting out they might have these numbers where minimum effective volume is like five and maximum adaptive volume is twelve and then they can't recover from twenty or something like that so they have this big range between like six or eight and eighteen sets that they can kind of train in and find that range that that is their ideal optimal adaptive range for me i'm either over training or i'm not making progress and then there's a sweet spot in the middle

[aaron_straker]: 32:34

yet

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:34

somewhere and that's it so keeping all of these things in perspective as we go into this conversation i think is really important and then the next point here is to kind of discuss this theoretical idea of eventually just reaching your genetic potential no matter how you get there and this being more of a question of how quickly do you want to get there right um so we have these two avatars say they're twins just to make this even cooler

[aaron_straker]: 33:10

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 33:10

um one person trains at what would be theoretically the the maximum adaptive volume so in this ample will say it's twelve to fifteen

[aaron_straker]: 33:19

h

[bryan_boorstein]: 33:19

sets per body part per week with a nominal amount of effort that

[aaron_straker]: 33:23

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 33:23

is relevant and this person trains fifteen sets a week and maybe they are able to get to their genetic peak in eight to ten years we'll say and then you have the other twin who is like you know this is a lifetime pursuit i'm not in a rush to get there i'll get there eventually and you know i want to enjoy life do other things pursue business all these things so i don't really want to be a slave to the gym so i think you know five or six sets a week that's kind of probably a minimum number where i'm make some progress in ball blah over the course of time he assesses he realizes this is the right number he continues doing five or six sets a week for also group and over eight to ten years he doesn't quite get to where his twin was but he's probably ninety five percent of the way there and then by the time he its fifteen years or twenty years or whatever his point is he will have reached his genetic potential and both he and his twin will be living fifteen or twenty years later both reaching their genetic potential one of them possibly with less injuries because he's done a third of the volume over the course of his life possibly with a better business a better relationship p all of these things may or may not be true it's not to

[aaron_straker]: 34:44

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 34:44

say that you can't maximumly optimally train and still have a wife and a family and a good job and all these things but in my hope edical example you can kind of see what i'm trying to relay here bats

[aaron_straker]: 35:02

i do to be when

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:05

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 35:05

as you were speaking through it i was like am i going to

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:07

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 35:07

bring this up am i not going bring this up um

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:10

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 35:10

i will bring it up very shortly not to derail conversation yeah my kind of playing

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:20

oh

[aaron_straker]: 35:20

devil's advocate here right and in this

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:22

please

[aaron_straker]: 35:22

is just

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:22

heah

[aaron_straker]: 35:22

the way that i look at things from like i hate to use the term helhilistic i really do not like using the term helistic but like a ten thousand foot view i find it hard to believe the statement that someone anyone will reach their genetic potential without like a burning desire end border linn i don't want to use the term obsession but like a very very high value placed on this so if you're like well i'll get there when i'm thirty five and i'm going to like prioritize business and having a real life which you know in modern day society means alcohol meals

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:59

m

[aaron_straker]: 36:00

out you know modern i don't want to say hard but you are probably not going to reach your genetic potential because you don't place that much value

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:10

m

[aaron_straker]: 36:10

on the gym and training sort of things so like this is where one of those things like

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:14

ah

[aaron_straker]: 36:15

think the theory of like hey i'm going to take it slower and longer i think that theory makes perfect sense i do think it does break down a

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:23

yes

[aaron_straker]: 36:23

little bit when you integrated into

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:25

ah

[aaron_straker]: 36:25

real life because that person's priority on training and stuff isn't high like someone like yourself or me or something like that and i think other desires would kind of get in the way in that you're not going to put in the raps to learn how to train optimally because it's not as important to you you're not going to be taking those pendulums quat sets to a one r r because it feels terrible and this is like a twenty year hobby for you not like a burning desire sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:55

hm

[aaron_straker]: 36:55

so again just playing a little bit of devil's advocate

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:58

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 36:58

but i do think that's where the theory into practicality does become quite important

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:05

yeah i think that's probably my fault in the way

[aaron_straker]: 37:07

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:07

that i tried to make this into like a story of two people and then use these these you know one guy is pursuing business

[aaron_straker]: 37:14

a

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:14

in blahblah because what we really need to do in looking at this this this argument between the two different paces that you take is to assume that all life style variables are consistent and it's just one person saying i'm going to get there in fifteen twenty years and i'm okay with that and the other person being like i want to get there as quickly as humanly possible

[aaron_straker]: 37:34

yep

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:34

and then ignore all the rest of the stuff that i used to try and build intrigue into the story

[aaron_straker]: 37:39

yeah so it's really like the the like the

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:41

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 37:41

like you said one twin is running out of an m v and the other twin is running like an m v and we're tough

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:48

but but they're both making progress and then

[aaron_straker]: 37:49

exactly

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:50

eventually they're just going to butt up against hey i'm i can't make any more progress you know one person

[aaron_straker]: 37:55

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:55

just potentially gets there faster and so so with that in mind um i think this kind of feeds well into the next section of trying to trying to tease out like what those those numbers might be and

[aaron_straker]: 38:13

yah

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:13

so a couple episodes ago i talked about how at paragon just launched physique forty five which is our our

[aaron_straker]: 38:21

as

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:21

attempt at minimalist type training for the masses where you can train for forty five minutes four times a week on an upper lower split and essentially get to more or less the same place that you would training seventy five minutes four times a week um so one of the i'm gonna cherry pick two quotes i talked about these in that episode but i'm gonna go over them again for the sake of this episode there was a meta analysis in two thousand seventeen by showin felden colleagues

[aaron_straker]: 38:55

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:55

and

[aaron_straker]: 38:56

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:56

essentially these are our two quotes from

[aaron_straker]: 38:59

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 38:59

that meta analysis clearly substantial hyper

[aaron_straker]: 39:02

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 39:03

trophic gains can be made using low volume protocols less than or equal to four weekly sets per muscle group

[aaron_straker]: 39:11

i think

[bryan_boorstein]: 39:12

such an approach therefore represents a viable muscle building option under four sets a second quote when considering weekly sets

[aaron_straker]: 39:24

is

[bryan_boorstein]: 39:24

as a binary predictor less than nine sets versus more than nine sets finding did not reach statistical significance between conditions so what we kind of see between these two quotes in this meta analysis are that somewhere between four and nine set is probably going to get you the majority of the gains up to a point of it not being statistically significant to do more now the most interesting thing about this study is this is in fact the meta lysis that

[aaron_straker]: 40:02

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:02

breaded the notion that ten to twenty

[aaron_straker]: 40:04

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:04

sets per muscle group is optimal the same exact meta analysis with these two quotes that i pulled from it

[aaron_straker]: 40:11

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:12

one saying that under four sets is a viable muscle building option and another saying that less than nine sets is not at tilly significant than more than nine sets is the meta analysis where we have taken for the last five years this notion that ten to twenty sets per muscle group is the optimal

[aaron_straker]: 40:28

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:29

number to use so i mean god

[aaron_straker]: 40:35

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:35

damn guys like like we have to dig a little deeper sometimes into these things so so to be perfectly fair

[aaron_straker]: 40:41

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:41

i wasn't intellectually in a position to read this study with that level of critique

[aaron_straker]: 40:46

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:47

back in two thousand seventeen or two thousand eighteen so it really is just in the last few months that i actually delved into this thing

[aaron_straker]: 40:54

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:54

and read the bulk of them analysis to the point where i was

[aaron_straker]: 40:58

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:58

able to find these little pieces these nuggets of information so

[aaron_straker]: 41:03

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:04

in this meta analysis they essentially

[aaron_straker]: 41:06

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:07

compared one

[aaron_straker]: 41:07

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:07

to four sets of muscle groups per week to five to nine sets two ten plus sets and one to four sets got you sixty four per cent of the benefit five to nine sets got you eighty five per cent i believe and then nine or ten plus sets got you the whole shebang so to speak so man like god

[aaron_straker]: 41:37

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:37

you don't really have to do ten

[aaron_straker]: 41:39

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:39

to twenty sets to get eighty five percent of the benefits here what do you think about all that

[aaron_straker]: 41:46

so well one thing that i really like that you said here is when you know you said i think that's the note you have here is a twenty seventeen meta yeah twenty seventeen

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:56

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 41:57

so that's five years ago and you said at the time i didn't have like i believe the term you use was like the intellectual capac city

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:04

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 42:04

to understand the study is that you said something around those phrases that

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:08

something

[aaron_straker]: 42:08

terminology

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:08

long that yeah

[aaron_straker]: 42:10

yeah reading research is quite difficult it's very arduous they're very long and i think with the popularity of evidence based no coaching and those sorts of things a lot of people like red abstracts

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:26

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 42:26

red titles and it's like really uhumtrendy to like put research in your instagram post and stuff like that but a lot of times like people don't actually read it and it's something that i will look back and see people like finding like people will post something like oh this study found that like this supplement increase testostrone by twenty per cent you know you should use the supplement then you dig into the study and it's like

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:52

oh

[aaron_straker]: 42:53

it was done in like men who were over sixty

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:55

m

[aaron_straker]: 42:55

and had like primary

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:56

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 42:57

you know hypoganatisms of thing and it's like if you're not over sixty

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:01

ah

[aaron_straker]: 43:01

and

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:02

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 43:02

have primary hypogonatism

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:02

m

[aaron_straker]: 43:03

it's probably not going to increase your test ostrom by

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:05

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 43:06

twenty percent but it's like people don't dig into the details and

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:09

ah

[aaron_straker]: 43:09

because it's a i'm sink and the verbage for it to be rather objective and in science you know type type literature it's difficult for people who are not in that war two you know one passover understand it takes a lot of reps understand that and yeah i think it is really interesting that now we're finding ourselves in kind of backing backing that up in i think this so much of this conversation i think does eventually roll back into that like proximity s a failure how efficient i think you are with your training and by effishant i mean like you know okay

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:52

a

[aaron_straker]: 43:52

we really want to hammer attention in the lat like how mean how few sense can you do that really really well you know someone like yourself brian years and years training history of a great mind muscle connection for for better or worse use of that term whatever that means to different p well you know brian of let's say twenty thirteen maybe needed six sets to do that you know modern day brian can do that in two sort of thing and

[bryan_boorstein]: 44:20

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 44:20

i think like that is it really really big factor that gets over stated because so much of things are equated to as you know to two sets of volume is two sets of volume and it's

[bryan_boorstein]: 44:37

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 44:38

a little bit more ambiguous than that personally i think unfortunately

[bryan_boorstein]: 44:42

yeah yeah no you're a hundred per cent right and what you did was you kind of alluded to some of the conversation that we're going to take this a little bit later on when we talk about kind of some of the concerns and the necessary pieces that need to be in place to get the most from animal is training um but before we get into that i want to kind of just dive into this meta analysis a little bit more

[aaron_straker]: 45:02

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 45:02

because

[aaron_straker]: 45:02

let's

[bryan_boorstein]: 45:03

jordan

[aaron_straker]: 45:03

do it

[bryan_boorstein]: 45:03

brought up a really good point on the podcast yesterday actually two really good points that we that we discussed

[aaron_straker]: 45:11

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 45:12

but one being when you count volume they're counting leg extension the same as a back squat

[aaron_straker]: 45:20

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 45:20

and so this is one of the things we're going to get into in the concerns and how to get the most out of your training but if we're trying to do four to six weekly sets of something a muscle group were probably going to skew less of that volume to leg extensions and skew more of that volume to hacks and pendulums and split squats lunges other movements that can give you more bang for your book so so when you're looking at that study and you see ten to twenty sets as optimal that's counting that volume equal the other thing that is even more amazing about the way they count volume in that study and in research in general is that every squat and every lunch every leg press that they did was counted as both quad and hamstring and glut volume when they do a pull up or a row that's considered a a weekly set a full weekly set for the back as well as for the biceps so if you're saying you have to do ten to twenty weekly sets for biceps but every single backset you do counts as a biceps set in theory you don't actually have to do any bicebsets in the way that they're counting volume

[aaron_straker]: 46:33

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:35

you also you're you're seeing you're seeing ten to twenty sets for back so is that saying that if i'm doing like an upper back row and i'm doing an iliac pull down and i'm doing some like rear dealt flies like all of that stuff is considered back it really now when we look at the way that they're counting volume for these and they say ten to twenty sets the way that i count volume that's more like five to ten sets so already we're seeing this like skew

[aaron_straker]: 47:04

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:05

of what is recommended being significantly less depending on the way that you count your volume right

[aaron_straker]: 47:13

yeah so you know what i think deeds to be done there needs to be someone

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:18

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 47:18

come through and like standardize had account volume right we put all these nuance things in it okay we have a multi joan exercise like these five that's going to get one point five acts like we need some robust calculator thing of in putting an out putting volume like this is a conversation i've had with clients or like it's very ambiguous and it's there's

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:40

hm

[aaron_straker]: 47:40

no from what i've seen there's no like very very robust solution it's subjective person to person some people might count this as up or back someone might put that as like a rear it is unfortunately

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:54

ah

[aaron_straker]: 47:54

quite ambiguous

[bryan_boorstein]: 47:55

yeah yeah it's like so ambiguous to the point that it almost makes it silly to try to take ten to twenty sets and have it mean anything because say you're a high respondor to volume or a low respondor to volume but your counting vol you differently than the way they're counting volume it has no relation to that study at all i just

[aaron_straker]: 48:20

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:20

it blows my mind honestly

[aaron_straker]: 48:22

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:22

and so like fun man you do a bench press and they count it as front delts you do a row and it counts as rear delt are you even training delts like you just throw like a couple o side lateral raises in and you're like yep i've done three all

[aaron_straker]: 48:37

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 48:37

ray sets but that's twenty sets a week for deltsum so it just i just think we need to begin to take things like that with a grain of salt and you don't even have to read the study is in depth as i did to find those quotes about four sets and nine sets and and stuff like that you just need to look at the way they're counting volume and realize that that doesn't necessarily apply to you in the way that you count volume um so most people already before we even begin the conversation most people can do less then we think we do right so if they're saying four sets is a viable muscle building option and under nine sets gets you eighty five percent of the benefit but they're counting volume the way they count volume man an back squat set is so a ham string set and a row is a lap and an upper back and it just yeah it's just it can get carried away and when you get these low numbers like four to nine sets it makes you wonder how much volume do you actually need to do and so oh going going to the next thing from there the one thing i want to do before we get into some of these potential holes in the in the thing or the concerns that we need to keep in mind is just differentiating real quick between strength and hypertrophy because i talked earlier about it being difficult to use strength as a proxy for hypertrophy because lower volumes of strength are re inherently going to produce better strength adaptations than higher volume because you have the fatigue component

[aaron_straker]: 50:11

yep

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:11

um so like dr pack he's awesome he did a study for his for his ph d i believe where he looked at the minimum effective dose strength work that's needed to elicit strength adaptations and so what he found was that doing one weekly rep of back squat like one at maxbaksqat once a week it was enough to gain to gain strength week to week consistently over the course of months um and then there was another group that did one top single a week plus two back offsets and they got slightly better results than the group that did just one at max but we're talking about minimum effective dose something that is a an amount that's big enough to get you progress literally one rep a week of back squat is enough to get you progress so we we know from what we know about hypertrophy that

[aaron_straker]: 51:13

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:14

one at max's a aren't going to get you

[aaron_straker]: 51:15

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:15

big and b you have to be working in at least the five

[aaron_straker]: 51:19

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:19

to eight rep range on most stuff for it to have a significant hyportrophic benefit but that's just what

[aaron_straker]: 51:26

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:26

what i'm just trying to say is that it can get really blurry if you're using strength as the proxy for your pro s not to say that we have a better one because i think strength in the five to ten rep range like that's as good of a proxy as we're going to get for hypertrophy but we just have to be careful with how low we take vol ums if we're going to use that proxy because the lower volume you go the more the strength adaptation is going to shine um which which is difficult it's difficult for you as a listener now to t hear that and be like well then what the fuck am i supposed to do if i

[aaron_straker]: 52:01

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:02

can't even likeviably look at strength

[aaron_straker]: 52:04

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:04

as as reason for as rational for

[aaron_straker]: 52:07

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:07

my progress how do i even make sense of this right um and it is difficult it is difficult what i proposed on jordan's podcast was that at some point in your training journey you have to progress volume and effort up to a point where you kind of are over reached and then once you know where that point is where you're you're kind of overreached assuming lifestyle factors are consistent then you can kind of work it back from there and so i kind of did that same thing over

[aaron_straker]: 52:34

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:34

the course the last few years were a couple of times i would work myself up to a point where i'm like funk like i'm dying i really need to de load right now and then i would kind of work back find these optimal points take mental note be super aware of where these responses are and then eventually i've kind of found this point where it seems to be the right dose for me and that may change over time um but yeah i mean that's because that's kind of my thoughts on that what do you think about this kind of dichotomy between strength and hyper and the volume needed et cetera

[aaron_straker]: 53:09

i mean i agree you know

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:10

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:10

with everything you said i do think it is very natural in an lifters

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:16

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:18

you know time spent lifting to have times where you're a little bit more interested in gaining strength

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:25

yah

[aaron_straker]: 53:25

and then times where you're a little bit more interested in gaining hypertrophy so i think

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:29

ah

[aaron_straker]: 53:29

with allowing yourself to hey i'm going to explore getting really strong for the next nine months and understanding that you are not optimally training for muscles while you are more

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:43

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 53:44

preferentially pursuing strength i think that's very reasonable i can think of numerous times in my years spent lifting that i have kind of transition

[bryan_boorstein]: 53:53

m

[aaron_straker]: 53:53

back and forth with those desires and i think that's a little bit that's that's that's quite natural

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:00

hm

[aaron_straker]: 54:00

and then yeah i think finding that upper threshold of hey i'm really kind of overreached and i'm not recovering between sessions or or things that i find a little bit subjective to help or like your desires to go train or our glow and those sorts of things that

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:20

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 54:21

i again i think are going to be i think the your other life style factors will play a bigger role in where that upper threshold is

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:30

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 54:31

more

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:32

hm

[aaron_straker]: 54:32

so than people would like to admit or believe but again finding that threshold is going to be different

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:39

oh

[aaron_straker]: 54:39

for everyone because there is a

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:41

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 54:41

myriad of factors that go

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:42

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 54:42

into that but i think finding that is quite beneficial and as you were you were just saying

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:48

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 54:49

it i was thinking to myself like it's been quite a

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:51

m

[aaron_straker]: 54:51

long time since i've really pushed

[bryan_boorstein]: 54:53

m

[aaron_straker]: 54:54

up against finding that upper threshold where i'm like funk dude i need to de load i'm really up um

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:00

hm

[aaron_straker]: 55:00

and it kind of made me think that it would be kind of fun to go find that again because it has been

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:05

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 55:05

quite a long time

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:07

yeah and so this your you're actually a perfect example of this because your upper threshold now with the way that you train with higher levels of effort with more intensity techniques better exercise selection and things like that your upper limit now is going to be much lower than it was in the past

[aaron_straker]: 55:28

very

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:28

and that's okay it's good

[aaron_straker]: 55:29

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:29

to reassess these

[aaron_straker]: 55:30

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:30

things

[aaron_straker]: 55:31

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:31

as your training age

[aaron_straker]: 55:33

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:33

changes

[aaron_straker]: 55:33

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:34

over the years and you become more adept at these s because you kind of need to constantly refine where that point is you know

[aaron_straker]: 55:41

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:42

oh

[aaron_straker]: 55:42

yeah i mean it's such a such a good point you're not comparing apples to apples is really the best way to put it as your exercise selection improves as your performance and proximity to failure n being able to push yourself you know for some of those movements that are inherently more i want to say damaging but like damning soul crushing to push yourself right the pendule on the hack squat those sorts of things like that it's a moving target relative to these other factors that have mass if influence on what that upper threshold is it's very very true

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:22

cool so let's just kind of wrap this up by going into the things that are probably a good idea to have in your program if you're going to take a minimalistic approach

[aaron_straker]: 56:32

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:33

um so the first one i have listed is is effort that you just have to work hard i mean if you're going to do four sets for a muscle group or six sets for a muscle group instead of twelve sets or whatever then probably should work pretty damn hard on those sets probably a good time to discuss the effect of reps model to which most of our listeners are probably familiar with but it essentially

[aaron_straker]: 56:55

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:55

states that the final five but before failure are the key reps and each rep as you get closer to failure gives you more stimulus and obviously more fatigue but and it's also not to say that reps six seven and eight from failure give you nothing but just as a way of making sense of effort we can look at the final five reps as like the stimulative reps and so if you're doing a program where you're doing twelve to fifteen sets per body part it's very likely that you're leaving at least some reps in reserve so

[aaron_straker]: 57:31

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 57:31

say you twelve sets a week and you're doing them to an average of two reps from failure so you're getting three effective reps every set then your twelve sets are getting you six effective reps for the week in a minimalist training approach you could kind of screw some of the ways in which you're designing your programming so that you can get more of these effective reps

[aaron_straker]: 58:00

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:01

such as like one really easy example is if you take like a leg extension and you do three sets of twelve to fifteen reps to failure that will give you fifteen

[aaron_straker]: 58:13

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:14

effective reps becase you're goin to go to

[aaron_straker]: 58:15

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:15

you're going to get five effective reps

[aaron_straker]: 58:16

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:17

for each one of your leg extension sets so you get fifteen effective reps over three sets boom a minimilistic training approach where you're trying to save time m something like using mio reps or rest pause sets there the same thing for anyone asking m you could do one set of leg extensions to failure for ten reps and so on that first set of ten reps you get five effective reps and then say you do three miorepsets afterwards resiplaussets and say on those recipes sets you get five then four then three because your rest was short right so now you have the initial five effective reps plus the five plus the four plus the three that gets you seventeen effective so you essentially did that in depending on how you look at it it could be one set with some extended techniques or you could look at it and say that was four sets which is fine either those four sets that you did were significantly less time consuming than the three straight sets you had to do with regular rest in between to get fifteen effective reps so so already we've kind of found a technique where if you're willing to really push it into the pain

[aaron_straker]: 59:25

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:25

cave over and over and over again that you can essentially do this blagescention with miorebsets and be done with your leg extensions in two minutes two and a

[aaron_straker]: 59:39

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:39

half minutes something like that

[aaron_straker]: 59:40

yes

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:42

any thoughts on effort

[aaron_straker]: 59:43

yeah yeah i mean

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:46

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:48

i agree with everything you said there and i for what it's worth i am finding myself more and more leaning towards the ladder of hey i can do you know one set and really just push

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:03

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:03

the mio reps sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:04

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:04

and get a ton of effective reps i've been leaning towards that more personally myself just from what the time commitment stand sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:15

yep yep

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:15

certain

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:16

totally

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:16

exercises right obviously i'm not doing

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:17

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:18

that

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:18

for

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:18

on

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:18

sure

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:18

like a hack squat or something like that

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:20

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:20

but yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:22

no for

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:23

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:23

sure but even on the hack or the pendulum and this is a good point that you brought that up because even on those movements you do have to work a little bit closer to failure than you maybe would if you were doing twelve sets of quads a week or something along

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:34

exactly

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:34

those lines

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:36

yep

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:36

yeah okay next is that your your execution and your exercise selection and i'm putting those into the same category

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:44

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:44

but those need to be to be higher and i think that that is kind of an inevitable piece of doing less is that

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:51

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:52

you're going to have more focus and more energy to put into each individual movement but i just think that that's something super important to be aware

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:00

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:00

of that if you're going to be doing for it a success instead of twelve to fifteen that you just need to get the most out of that volume that you're doing and so not just selecting you know bent over barbell row and then that's my back but being a little more thoughtful about it i think it is pretty important as well

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:20

huge

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:21

yeah uh next i have a the thing i alluded to in the beginning which is individually specific higher volume needs and so what is minimalist is different for each person and it depends on those above factors so if you're somebody that cannot choose the best exercises say you're you're you're you're relegated

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:48

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:48

to doing barbell only work then you might just need a little bit more volume because you can't specifically target these muscles as acutely as you want to you may be somebody that is relatively newer to lifting and you just can't go there you you're when you get close to failure you don't exactly know like you you feel a hard rap and to you

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:16

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:16

that's that's the hardest you can go versus realizing that if

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:21

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:22

morbidly you had a gun to your head and you had to get more wraps

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:24

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:24

without sacrificing form that

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:25

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:25

you could so until you can get to the point in your training

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:28

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:29

where

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:29

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:29

you can go there you probably also are going to need higher volume um there's just a number of factors like that and i don't need to list all through them but there are certainly factors that are going to make certain people need more volume than other people um women women would be another one so the literature on women is that they need more volume i think people often get carried away

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:51

my

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:51

with that and they think like oh well i'm a woman so i need double the volume

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:55

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:56

or something ridiculous like which is just insane i

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:59

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:59

mean so if you if you literally think about this and look at what the literature says

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:03

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:04

it's something like ten to twenty percent more volume so if you're following a minimalistic training gram and a male needs five working sets per muscle group a female might need six like

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:15

six

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:15

that is that is literally the difference on a population level of course there are outliers and there's wom and that are going to need less than men or the same as the men there's going to be women that probably do need double but there's also men that need double so um so that they just fall into the when you look at the general full size of populations ten to twenty per cent more volume for a woman is generally accepted that is one more set or two more sets if you're doing a high volume training program so it's not like where we're moving needles over here with doubling

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:46

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:46

volume or anything crazy like that

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:49

that's

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:49

um

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:49

a good good point

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:50

m yeah the next one i had a potential hole in this is the strength m v verse hyper v which i expanded on above so my my my because we can't use strength strictly as a proxy or else we would just do one retmaxis all the time i think that the best we can do is to train in that five to twelve to fifteen rep range um ah kind of unrelated but i think that sewing your rep range slightly lower makes more sense in a minimalistic training program because we know as you do more reps that you have to do more kind of in effect reps to get to the effect of reps um and that causes fatigue and on top of that most importantly is that it takes time like if we know that if we if we assume that you could do a set of six reps and you could do a set of teen raps to failure and they're equally stimulative for hypertrophy by your doing fifteen reps instead of

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:52

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:52

six you're literally working out for two and a half times as long on each set so if you can choose movements that are conducive to lower rep ranges

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:00

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:01

and you feel comfortable you can target your muscle properly you don't feel a ton of joint stress using lower reps like the six to eight rep range that's probably a better approach for your minimalistic training because we know that we can't use strength just as the soul proxy if using super super low rep ranges being above six raps at least kind of keeps you in that

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:23

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:24

range of hey now maybe i can kind of use strength as a proxy so um so yeah just keep that in mind over there

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:31

kay

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:32

um and the final concern here think is that

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:35

a

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:38

i know some people are going to have this inclination that if i just have to do four sets per muscle group per week that i could just cram it into one day and just train one

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:50

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:50

session a week and hit four sets per body part and

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:54

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:54

i'll just caution you against that in that whatever you're doing after you've done eight or twelve sets it's just not going to get much benefit i would highly recommend you splitting that over at least two sessions so in that way you're able to at least target muscle groups a little more fresh in one session than the other muscle it's a little more fresh in the other

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:20

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:20

session

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:21

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:23

so it is not equal in this sense like it is not equal to do twenty five sets in one work out vers splitting those into two workouts with twelve sets each so

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:34

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:34

just my last kind of caviator thing to keep in mind there anything else that you have to

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:38

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:39

add to all that

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:40

i do have one and i'm very proud of myself for not forgetting this as i've been waiting to add it um this relates to your effort which i believe was

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:50

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:51

number one

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:52

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:53

something that i think

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:54

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:54

is really really simple to do that can really kind of help this

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:57

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:58

is moving to rep ranges so one thing and i think which largely has led to from my standpoint a lot of the higher volume approaches is saying like we're going to do a set of eight here or three sets of eight or something like that it by because i let's say you could have done ten let's say you could have done eleven it said eight so you stop at eight

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:21

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:22

and that inherently will lead to higher r rs because of that number of eight if i say hey i want you to do like seven to twelve and you but i want it to be seven to twelve with like a one r i r you're like okay eight i think i'll fail the next one like

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:40

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:40

that's appropriate um over time

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:42

h

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:43

you know even throughout a

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:44

h

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:44

session that prop simidy to

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:46

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:46

failure through just kind of switching that hey do eight to like a rep range allows like the deciding factor to be your but it's still subjective perceived or i are instead of the hey do eight and i think that

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:05

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:05

is a very very simple switch that can really help there

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:12

yeah no that's a good point

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:14

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:14

i think that

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:15

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:16

ultimately

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:16

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:17

if you take a mind set of progressive overload and say it even is three sets of eight and you leave a ton of r i r because you just stop at eight if your objective is to say if the coach is like hey if you hit eight reps i want you to add weight next week type thing then eventually over the course of weeks you're going to butt up against failure an you're going to realize you were a sandbagging mother ker in the first

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:37

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:37

few weeks but

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:40

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:40

but yeah now i fully agree i mean at least that gets you in the range of getting closer to failure earlier on which is which is definitely beneficial and that actually made me think of another one that i missed here um which i kind of alluded to we said earlier you know choosing movements that are a little more lengthened or a little more damaging slash stimulative and so that's one that i think is super important when you're talking about a minimalistic approach is skewing more of that volume to these movements um and then the other one is getting into things like partials and reverse drop sets and lengthened only sets for the short overload movements getting into those sooner so like in my progression in my training and in the way i write the longer programs the higher volume programs we don't get into partials and stuff like that until like week three or four on roads and curls and lateral raises and things like that but in a animal minimal in a

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:40

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:40

minimalistic approach

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:43

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:44

i think that it would it would benefit you to use these techniques sooner in your mess

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:50

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:50

cycles if not straight from the get go because i mean if you're if you're training in low volumes where recovery probably isn't going to be a concern then there's really no reason that you can't do partial on your rose doer verse drop set on your dumbbell lateral rays is like that sort of stuff isn't going to have any appreciable fatigue that's really going to compromise your progress or anything it's just going to give you more you listen less time much kind of like what i said earlier with the with the mioreperrest pas sets so using things like that super important and then another one man i just keep coming up with these but

[aaron_straker]: 1:10:28

a

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:10:28

another one is same muscle group super sets or or antagonist super sets either way i love the same muscle group super set going from short to lengthen so taking like a dumb bell lateral rays and then going into a cable lateral rays or doing like a spider curl on cables and then going into like an incline dumbbell curl and so you can get a ton of stimulus in a short amount of time by doing like six to eight reps of one and six to eight reps of the other and never have to go like twelve to fifteen res on a single movement but literally in like the same amount of time that it would take you to do fifteen reps on one you can hit these two sets of six to eight back to back so

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:06

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:06

a lot of kind of different ways you can be creative and increase stimulus with the time

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:11

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:11

component in mind

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:13

it's a perfect way to wrap it

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:15

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:15

up like tons of ways to be creative to increase

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:18

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:18

stimulus within the time component

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:19

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:20

on hand

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:21

yep

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:21

and mind whatever

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:22

okay

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:22

but yeah perfect very well said brian

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:25

sweet dude awesome that was a great conversation

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:28

it was it was so anything else

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:29

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:29

you want to ad on the back end of this one

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:11:32

now let's get the kids to school

[aaron_straker]: 1:11:33

all right let's get the kids to school as always guys thank you for listening brian and i will talk to you next week