March 2023 Instagram Q&A | ETP#109

[aaron_straker]: 0:28

What's up guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat Train Prosper. This episode is our monthly Instagram Q&A episode where we answer our Instagram followers questions on the pod and provide tons of nuance and context as we always try to do. We have a big number of questions today, so we are going to try and get through all of them and keep our updates quite short. Brian, can you kick us off with some of our short updates today?

[bryan]: 0:55

Well, the first update is that I have been wearing pajamas all day and I'm still in pajamas because yesterday I went on a three hour bike ride with my buddy out here, covered almost 25 miles and I have been super fucked up since then, mostly since like last night. So essentially, I felt okay going to bed. I started getting a little bit of a headache. little nauseous before bed. And then throughout the entire night, I just felt awful. My heart rate when I looked at it in the morning was between 58 and 72 all night, which is significantly, I mean like 15 or 20 beats higher than or more even than what it usually is while I sleep at night. And then I woke up this morning and the heart rate wouldn't get below like the high 60s morning. My wearables told me I only got 17 minutes of REM sleep last night and I was just like tossing and turning super uncomfortable. And so I came to the conclusion that I think I have some low-grade over training from yesterday. And I've literally just been lazing around all day working from bed. I couldn't eat until just right before the show and I had a perfect bar. That's all I've eaten today. So yeah just kind of in recovery mode over here and yeah I have this 50 mile race through Moab that I'm preparing for the race isn't till October luckily but that's a little unfortunate that 25 miles did this to me so I got a little bit of training to do.

[aaron_straker]: 2:43

Sounds like it.

[bryan]: 2:45

Yeah, let's take it over to you and then we can continue with my updates.

[aaron_straker]: 2:51

I mean, I really don't have much in a new update or a new high average weigh in. I actually did have my highest weigh in since 2018. The other

[bryan]: 3:01

Thanks for watching.

[aaron_straker]: 3:01

day, which was like a 207.6, I believe. Still really surprised at how body composition is holding up, which has been fun. So that's my update there. And then I guess I have like a negative update. My other knee to not the knee that I injured a few weeks ago, like on Sunday, I was just like. And I was like my knee feels kind of weird and my patella is just like super so not super swollen but swollen to the point that like I Like I didn't train legs yesterday, and it's still like a little bit today And I'm like what the fuck like there's like no indication. There's no pain I'm just like why is it swollen and then like the knees like clicking as I'm like walking Kind of what it feels like a not necessarily a clicking But you know when you like Like crack your knuckles or something like that like a popping

[bryan]: 3:48

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 3:49

like it's like that But like you know pain free, but I'm just like, where did this come from? Is like, did I get like a spider bite on my patella? So it's just frustrating, but hopefully at the same time, it's like a 48 hour thing. And then it just kind of goes away. But it was very strange of it just showing up seemingly out of nowhere. And it was a big day of like walking, you know, but like

[bryan]: 4:13

Oh.

[aaron_straker]: 4:13

it was just odd that it that just happened.

[bryan]: 4:17

Yeah, I can actually relate to that. And I think it's just called getting old, because I woke up like four days ago and the heel on my foot was just sore for like no reason. And it's not like I was jumping or doing anything athletic the day before. I just woke up with a sore heel and it's been sore for like four days now. And I'm like, man, what is going on? So yeah, these things just like pop up out of nowhere now.

[aaron_straker]: 4:42

Yeah, it is frustrating for sure. It has had me thinking a little bit more specifically around like my knees because I do still have like really big goals on like training legs and stuff that I may want to incorporate like maybe a day of like playing a pickup basketball or something like that just to move my body in different planes of motion and like make sure I use these things so I don't lose them. But yeah, was, I'm in like the kind of denial stage of like, why the fuck are these weird things happening when like previously, like if I had some injury, like I knew, I smashed something, you know, woke, it was an acute thing, but it's like, all day's normal and then I'm like, whoa, my knee kind of feels so strange and there's, it's, well, where did this come from? But it is what it is.

[bryan]: 5:37

Yeah, yeah, no, I relate, man. My last update is that I had a blood work consult with the guy that Shantae had referred me to. And so that was cool. He had some really interesting stuff to say. First and foremost is that he was immediately concerned with my kidneys, which is really interesting because those were none of my concerns going into it. And it's Back when you first reviewed my blood work, like two years ago when we first started the podcast, one of the things you pointed out was that I seemed dehydrated despite the fact that I drink a ton of water. And so he immediately was like, what is going on with your kidneys? And I'm like, well, the creatinine is high because I take creatine. And GFR is a calculation based off creatinine. So if creatinine is high, then GFR is gonna be low. So it's gonna look of bad on those two panels. And then he pointed out that my bun has been high for a while. And then I was talking to Makoni about it. And Makoni was kind of like, no, you don't need to worry really, like that seems a little bit excessive to worry about that because it's a been high for a while, like it hasn't risen. And B, it's actually gotten lower. I had one reading that was like higher than it is now. And then this is the lowest reading that I've had recently. sure what to make of that, but his biggest suggestion as far as immediate plans of action that I can do to move things along in a more healthy way for myself is he suggested that I chew my food more and don't drink water when I eat. And that is a huge concern of mine that I've known about for a while because I do tend to under chew my food and over gulp water, And so I think the idea is that there's some digestion that isn't occurring as it should be because of the diluting of the food and the water in my stomach acids. And so by chewing more and then separating out the food and the water by like a half hour on either side, the hope would be that digestion improves, hydration improves, even though essentially drinking less water. And anyway, that's kind of like plan of action number one and the thing that I've been trying to integrate into my days since the consult a couple days ago. And it's gotten a little bit easier. The first time I did it, like the food was utterly unenjoyable. Like I could barely even enjoy the food with the fact that I wasn't able to drink water with it. I didn't even like want to take bites. But it's gotten easier and I kind of now like allow myself like a small sip of water so that I'm not like indulgent. sucking water down, but I'm able to at least like keep my palette wet and it doesn't feel like things are Clamping up in there, but it's a new exploration for me. So we'll see how it goes

[aaron_straker]: 8:52

Yeah, I'm interested to hear more about that in the coming weeks. And I'm sure you and I will talk offline about some of that as well.

[bryan]: 8:58

Yep, for sure. And then the last thing is I did the cast set. I don't think I ever ended up talking about that, but I've now done two weeks of it and it is about as awful as you'd expect. So if anybody wants to hear more about that, we've talked about it a little bit on the last two episodes about our training. I think it was two episodes ago. But

[aaron_straker]: 9:17

Mm-hmm.

[bryan]: 9:18

yeah, it was awful. And I had some training partners to do it with a couple days ago. Rachel Gregory and Breanna Lam came and trained with which was super cool. So all good here, training going well. I have five more days left in San Diego and then we depart to head home. So we meant to say there's no ETP next week.

[aaron_straker]: 9:41

Correct. So glad

[bryan]: 9:43

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:43

that popped up because you and I both forgot even though

[bryan]: 9:46

Yeah. Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:46

we

[bryan]: 9:46

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:46

talked

[bryan]: 9:46

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:46

about

[bryan]: 9:47

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:47

it. Like we have to say there's no

[bryan]: 9:49

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:49

podcast

[bryan]: 9:49

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:49

next

[bryan]: 9:49

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:49

week

[bryan]: 9:50

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:50

and then

[bryan]: 9:50

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:50

promptly

[bryan]: 9:50

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:50

forgot.

[bryan]: 9:51

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 9:55

All right, let's do it. So this first one came into me, obviously we'll get Brian's intake on it as well, but essentially it's calorie cycling between training days and rest days by calorie cycling, meaning essentially higher days, higher calories on training days, lower calories on rest days. The first question is, am I doing this in my current bulk? That answer is no. We are keeping everything isochloric between the days just for simplicity reason, which is different than I, you know, typically, past, but I'm always open to learning new things coach one of the keep things the same, and I happily obliged. Now, how do you manage that with cardio going up? A long and or hard cardio session can be much more energy demanding than a hypertrophy workout. So I will say that yes, a long cardio session could definitely be much more calorically demanding from a minutes long, right? They're hit hit sessions. I'm not doing, you know, hour long bike rides, anything like that. And I would say from an energy demand standpoint, because those hit sessions are shorter, and because pretty much they're purely, you know, kind of concentric contractions, and we're not really doing any muscle damage or anything like that in them, I would argue to say that they are probably equal from a caloric spend, if not less than the hypertrophy workouts. And again, just for simplicity, keeping everything the same. With the bulking periodization, if you were to notice that after your cardio day is consistently your lowest weigh-in of the week, or even worse, this training session after your cardio session you're not really recovered for or your performance is poorest there, I would say look for more clues to see. Is this actually important? impacting the training session that comes post the cardio session and then I would adjust from there But personally, I am not noticing that you know whatsoever The only thing I notice from the cardio session is that it is by far My hardest session of the week in terms of like a life force that it takes for me to perform

[bryan]: 12:15

Thank you.

[aaron_straker]: 12:16

But the day after I am always like, you know rearing to go and the the last thing I will say there how it currently I'll train quads on Monday and then that that cardio session which is you know essentially bike sprints is on Thursday My legs feel noticeably better like an hour or hour and a half after that session as opposed to earlier that day So as crazy as it does may seem That hit sprint session does appear to at least from a subjective standpoint improve my recovery which is probably from a shit ton of blood flow and shuttle back in there.

[bryan]: 12:58

Yeah, I agree with all of that. I also tend to lean towards using calorie cycling when when bulking. Just because it helps me to have some days where I can sort of fast just a little bit in the morning and just a personal preference but keeps my appetite up instead of you know running out of appetite which seems to be a prevalent problem for people. So um that I don't work out, I just tend to like fast the beginning of the morning and then it's pretty good the rest of the day after that. That day ends up just being one meal less of calories and then I kind of load the day that I train with calories and that makes sense too because I train in the morning. But I also don't really bulk right now. So tough to say. Moving on to the next question. Have either of you personally gotten or had clients get blood work at the end of a cut and differences question mark? And yeah, we'll click that to you first.

[aaron_straker]: 13:57

Yeah, so I don't and I don't have clients do that because the end of a cut, especially if it's been at least if there has been noticeable or tangible fat loss or body composition improvements, you're probably going to have some sort of metabolic adaptations, whether that's, you know, hormone or endocrine down regulation, potentially things on like higher, higher cortisol, which again fits in that endocrine. It's just like, like we know that we are putting our body in a in a stress inducing state in order to facilitate the fat loss. If you pull labs right at the end of that, you're going to have some necessarily red flags, but things that probably look off. You might have like low, lower than expected testosterone, you might have elevated liver enzymes, you might have elevated stress hormones, downregulated thyroid hormone, those sorts of things. of a large amount of weight loss or a significant amount of weight loss, which is again, generally needed for body composition change. So I wouldn't really recommend like if you're spending the money, you want like a true representation, you don't want to be like, Hey, I just did a bunch of things that are going to tank things. Let me see how tanked things are. I mean, potentially if you wanted to test that right, get it right at the end. And then once you restore to calories back to like maintenance or whatever. you reverse out of, then maybe six, eight weeks later, get them again. And then you can see the difference if you really wanted to run that test on yourself, but most people don't want to spend, you know, the money twice. And we know that the first set of labs immediately post cut won't be great. So I generally don't have people do it until we are in a better position from a calorie and stress standpoint.

[bryan]: 15:52

Yeah, so my only experience with it is with myself and I did it for that experiment like Aaron said at the end. I got them done at the end of my off season right before my diet started and then I pulled them again right when the diet ended. And for whatever reason, they were mostly the same like reverse T3 was a little bit higher after the diet as you'd expect. But T levels were basically the same and most of the other things were was lower as you would expect insulin was lower and so yeah I don't know for in my end of one case like it didn't really seem to make a huge difference but yeah I guess you'd have to try that experiment out yourself if you so desire

[aaron_straker]: 16:41

Definitely, I generally recommend labs if you want a clear picture Of what things normally are around maintenance if you want to see like the the damage of a bulking season or something like that potential damage I should say around like glucose HPA won't see like you could run them like at a peak weight But just know when you're running labs at like peaks or or that Valleys would be the opposite. Yeah you can expect some shift because of the the environment that you are to facilitate those those highway ends and then low winds.

[bryan]: 17:15

Yeah. Weight is consistently up a few pounds, but measurements are the same. Progress for growth, question mark?

[aaron_straker]: 17:24

I would say

[bryan]: 17:25

Yeah, go

[aaron_straker]: 17:25

so,

[bryan]: 17:25

for

[aaron_straker]: 17:26

yeah,

[bryan]: 17:26

it. Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 17:26

I would say, yeah, that, you know, that's, that's generally indicative of growth or if calories have been a little bit lower, like if you've been kind of playing the like, I'm at maintenance, but I'm really not in, and you're still a little bit under, I would say this is probably the first case scenario of like, you were still not having like full glycogen stores sort of thing. And then from increasing the calories, you know, potentially. pushing into, hey, I'm going to start a gaining phase now. You first, obviously, cross that maintenance threshold and you get those kind of quick wins of, you know, saturated muscle glycogen because we're feeding consistently higher, like full muscle bellies. And then you get those kind of like quick, quick wins of weight goes up a little bit as we fully saturate with the glycogen, but measurements are pretty much the same in terms of like waste and some of the ones that we're generally more concerned with as calories go up. But Even with that, I say that is yes indicative of progress there.

[bryan]: 18:28

Yeah, I was gonna say it depends what measurements they're talking about. Like the first thing I thought of was my arm measurement and I'm like well if I'm up a few pounds but my arm measurement is the same then no I did not make progress. But if you're taking it from the sign of like the hips or the the the waist then yeah I think that makes sense.

[aaron_straker]: 18:46

Yeah. This one I'll kick over to you, Brian.

[bryan]: 18:50

Mm-hmm

[aaron_straker]: 18:51

Since it is safer to take upper body movements to failure, do those movements have more potential for growth than the lower compound movements that are constrained because of that safety metric? For example, like barbell squats and RDLs.

[bryan]: 19:10

That's a good question. I don't really think so. I think it probably comes down to your ability to maintain form while you go close to failure with those big movements. I also don't think you necessarily have to go as close to failure with those movements to maximize the result just because of how demanding they are and how much tissue is stimulated. And then if you were to take barbell squats out and use some sort of hack squat or leg press machine, limitation to being able to train them hard, it's close to failure. So at that point, I don't think there would be any way to say that the potential for growth would be different on those regions. What do you think?

[aaron_straker]: 20:02

When I read this and thought about it, I would kind of say I would think the complete opposite. The rationale behind that is the simple adage of the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.

[bryan]: 20:15

Mm.

[aaron_straker]: 20:17

The question is, hey, this is inherently riskier, so because of that risk, the potential for growth is lower. Where I would say actually quite the opposite. we're talking like an upper body movement, right? Any kind of chest press, any kind of shoulder press, something like that, you can take that to failure. And you'll get like the pump, the burn sort of thing. And obviously those feelings of effort are indicative of progress. But nowhere in your upper body can you create quite the stimulus, the systemic stimulus that you can with the lower body. You take a set of, RDLs you push it really really far The like the light press is a really good example if you take like Like an absolute like in the 12 8 to 12 rep range like if you take it to like a true RIR of like one or Zero or something like that. I mean you get you get the shakes your breath rate is through the roof the risk of Like an injury or something is higher but the portion of your body is also higher. And I really think from an absolute standpoint, the potential for hypertrophy is more because we're talking about larger muscle groups that are crossing more joints, larger joints from a relative standpoint from your quads to your shoulders or chest. The relative amount of growth potential is probably the same. Smaller muscle groups obviously have smaller potential for overall growth, but I think from an absolute, sorry, from an absolute standpoint, I would say quite the opposite, but again, the bigger the risk, the bigger the risk.

[bryan]: 22:10

Interesting. Yeah, I could see that. That's a good question. What do you think of this one? Assume perfect form for an exercise, but one person has mind muscle connection and the other one does not. Does it make a difference?

[aaron_straker]: 22:24

This is a really good question.

[bryan]: 22:26

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 22:29

because it's, I think the mind muscle connection changes the form, but it's kind of, it might be imperceptible to like an external eye sort of thing, right? Like we can take, let's take, let's take the leg press, right? We were just talking about it. You're lowering it within the same sort of tempo sort of thing, you're taking them both to an appropriate depth, but the person with the mind muscle connection is like thinking about, okay, I have my weight distributed over like these contact points of my feet. I'm contracting the quads first and really like driving through that as opposed to the other persons just like, okay, I lower it slowly and then I press really hard. It may look the same, but I think like, that's an interesting thing, like the stimulus is internal. And, you know, I would, this one's hard, I would say, a difference to it. But I take that with a grain of salt. Let's put it that way.

[bryan]: 23:37

I feel very, very similarly to you on that. The way I think of the mind-muscle connection is in your ability to get a maximal stretch out of the muscle at the turnaround point. Like when you go from eccentric to concentric and you kind of pause down there. If you're using the leg press, like that ability at the very bottom of the rep to almost extra drive your knees forward, even though you can't see it perceptively, you can know that there's that extra desire to just push forward. And there's then that ripping sensation through the quad. And like before I had that, it just felt different doing quad work. And now I do quad work and it just like seems more productive. And so like all things being equal, like I think the person that has that ability to do that, even if it's imperceptible that there's like something to that.

[aaron_straker]: 24:27

Yeah, like, and even man, it's really, really hard to say because even something like that I've very recently gotten much, much better at is performing like a prone lying hamstring curl, right? Like that's a movement that I've done for years. And I think like with more compound movements, right? As it's our body works, our body will like compromise, not necessarily compromise, but like call on other muscles to help us like get a job done, right? moving more than one joint. And this one isn't really moving more than one joint, potentially a little bit with a little bit of extra hip extension at the top. But I've noticed I can hit two sets of the prone line hamstring curl and I have an amazing hamstring stimulus. Whereas four years ago, I just couldn't say that even though if you watched videos, I'm doing the same thing, but I think it does matter. But again, I could be wrong there is Thank you. Thank you.

[bryan]: 25:28

Yeah, no, that's another great example, I agree. What's the next one here? How

[aaron_straker]: 25:34

out.

[bryan]: 25:34

to simplify training during periods of high stress to stay consistent.

[aaron_straker]: 25:39

This is a, again, this is a really, really good question. You have to ask a, and this is something I talk about with clients, right? I just had two clients. I talked about this yesterday when we had our check-ins in. Where is it on your priority list and is it going to be a needle mover? Are we just trying to keep the needle in the same spot or is trying to like over commit because you think you need five days per week of training or even four days per week of training end up being like a net negative. Like. in your life sort of thing. I would say like simplify or reduce volumes, stick to movements that are going to have more than one kind of use case. So like in something like this, if I'm writing a trading program for someone who's like, high stress doesn't have a lot of time, like we're not doing bicep curls. We're not doing like tricep extension sort of things. We're doing like bang for our buck. We might, you know, have three exercise that we do like an A1, B1, one they're each going to be a compound. We just try and we're trying to stay the same. You know, keep muscle mass from like a metabolic health standpoint, right? Get it in and that's about it.

[bryan]: 26:54

Yeah, no, exactly. We always say on our programs, Paragon and Evolved, when people ask these sort of question, the answer is usually just do the repeating movements for whatever program you're on, because there's usually two movements each day that repeat. And so they're always like the big compound movers that give you the most muscle mass, bang for your buck for your time type stuff. And the reason that I do that is because whenever I have had times of stress in my life, and I go to two to three times a week, body program is usually what I do and it's not like I'm doing bicep curls and tricep extensions. It's like a day might be like squat bench row and that's like a day of training. You know, you do three or four sets of each and you're in and out. And that's kind of what you get with the repeating movements in the programs too. So any of that can work as like a maintenance phase and you may even surprise yourself and make progress while you're at it too.

[aaron_straker]: 27:47

Yeah. This one, let's kick over to you, Brian. Instead of specific periodized blocks, can we do different types of training in a session?

[bryan]: 27:59

Yeah, so what this person is asking, I believe, is that instead of having a strength block and a metabolic block and a hypertrophy block, could you just design a workout where you had, like, say, deadlifts, heavy sets of two, and then follow that with some hypertrophy work and then finish with, like, a metabolic circuit of some sort. Kids are crying. But yeah, I mean, of course you can do that. I write tons and tons. of programs like our Paragon Strength Metcon program is designed exactly like that. It probably is not quite as optimal and I'll say that tentatively, like I'm not completely even sure since hypertrophy is so forgiving. But I mean, actually, I'm sure it's not as optimal for hypertrophy to be doing metabolic circuits in a hypertrophy based session. But you will get most of your gains something like that as you would doing it in like a slightly more periodized manner. And if you did that metabolic work in a manner that wasn't like circuits and stuff, but it was just like, hey, you do low reps, then medium reps, and then high reps, then yeah, I mean, I can't make a good argument for why that would be worse per se.

[aaron_straker]: 29:20

Yeah, that's the way you wrapped up the end is what I kind of read the question as is, hey, we can do some exercises with lower reps, some with more, you know, moderate reps in a day, and then some with like higher reps. And that's something that I will even like program a little bit to certain exercises, right? So like the one that comes to mind is like the leg extension. Okay, we're going to work up to like a heavy set of eight. That is set one. We're going to do a back off around like 12. Great. then we're gonna finish with like two really high rep sets between like 15 or 20 where we're pushing, you know, like we want metabolite accumulation sort of thing. That is like a use case of that within. Obviously it works better with some exercises than others like, do you think so? With like a bench press or something, probably isn't gonna work the greatest. But I would say relative to your goals is the big thing. If your goals are like, hey, I really wanna get stronger, that I would probably recommend doing that, but I wouldn't say for hypertrophy like Brian says since it is very very forgiving depending on where you are on your maximum gains to be made kind of progression. It could be a very viable and or fun type of training for you.

[bryan]: 30:39

Yeah, for sure. The more, the closer you are to any goal, the more specific you have to be.

[aaron_straker]: 30:44

Exactly.

[bryan]: 30:45

So yeah, I guess at some point maybe you learn like what rep range you tend to respond best to. And as you get closer to your genetic potential, you kind of hone in and spend a little bit more time in that rep zone.

[aaron_straker]: 30:56

Yeah. This one will kick over to you as well.

[bryan]: 31:01

Mm-hmm.

[aaron_straker]: 31:01

Can you provide heart rate ranges for zone two and zone five on the Apple watch?

[bryan]: 31:08

Yeah, so I think the first thing is that you need to understand that you can manually adjust those ranges in the settings. And you may want to do that based on if you know what your maximum heart rate is. So if you just look at like your last year on your watch, see what your highest number is, and that doesn't mean that that's necessarily your max heart rate, but it gives you like a decent starting point. And then if you really wanna know your max heart rate, just do like six, 20 second all out intervals on the assault bike. But once you know that, then you can kind of input the data and get like a little bit more accurate on the zones. So the way that the zones are set right now for me, like my max heart rate is 180 according to the formula. And it's also 182 or ish something like that as far as what I've actually experienced. So they're very close. It has my zone to add 126 to 139. 138 beats per minute. And I think that that is a great starting point for me, but I think I'm slightly higher than that now. I think I'm more in like the 132 to 142 range. And so I'm probably going to go in and adjust that. And then it has the zone five is basically anything that is 12 or so beats underneath your max heart rate. So that's again, where it really helps if you know what your max heart rate is. So I think it thinks I'm in zone five when I'm at like 167 or above or 168, which is probably pretty spot on. It's probably more like 170 and above, but it's close enough. So they did a pretty good job with me, but that would be the basic information on heart rate zones. And then once you kind of know your max heart rate, you'd be able to figure out your zones a little easier.

[aaron_straker]: 33:03

I forgot to bring this up. I think potentially I did. After the cardio episode, one of my clients who was like a big, big time cyclist said, hey, and this was something you brought up on the cardio podcast, Brian, was the FTP functional

[bryan]: 33:19

Threshold

[aaron_straker]: 33:19

threshold power.

[bryan]: 33:19

power, yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 33:21

He said, if you do that, you should be able to, then there's a calculation from the two guys that made the FTP, you can build your zones off of that FTP test.

[bryan]: 33:32

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's just an awful test. But yes, it's it also, I believe, requires you to know wattage. And so

[aaron_straker]: 33:41

Yes.

[bryan]: 33:41

you then have to be using a type of cardio equipment that gives you watts. And I have been in search of this. And there's only like, like rowers do it, like the C2 will do it. But only certain treadmills have it. And

[aaron_straker]: 33:55

What about

[bryan]: 33:55

only certain bikes have it as well.

[aaron_straker]: 33:57

the air? I think the air most I think the most of like the assault

[bryan]: 34:00

The

[aaron_straker]: 34:00

bikes

[bryan]: 34:00

airbikes

[aaron_straker]: 34:00

do.

[bryan]: 34:01

do, yeah, the

[aaron_straker]: 34:01

Yeah.

[bryan]: 34:01

airbikes do.

[aaron_straker]: 34:02

Yeah. But yeah, good question. Where are

[bryan]: 34:10

This

[aaron_straker]: 34:10

we here?

[bryan]: 34:10

one asks if I would keep lengthened partials and reverse drop sets in during a cut or just go to zero RIR and does body fat percentage matter? And I do think body fat percentage matters. That was a really good caveat that

[aaron_straker]: 34:24

Yeah.

[bryan]: 34:25

they added there. My general inclination on this, and I actually have a client just starting a cut right now, he's in like week two or three. And we are continuing to use partials sets and stuff like that on the short overload movements like our spider curls and our rows and our pull downs and stuff like that. Understanding that maybe at some point as he gets leaner, if we need to, we can stop doing that and just go basically to failure. But he and I both agree that the short overload movements just aren't super fatiguing in general. And whether you go to failure on a cable row or you go to failure plush, you can do that plus a couple more attempted reps. It really doesn't seem to make huge inroads into fatigue or recovery or anything like that. And so our plan is to keep them in on those types of movements for the majority of the cut. And then we're going to more be cautious on the really heavy lengthened compound movements like our RDLs and our back squats and bench presses and stuff like that. And rather spend like three to four, two to three, I am on those types of movements and save a little bit more of that energy to go toward the partials on the short overload movements since we know that you get so much benefit even further from failure on the length and stuff.

[aaron_straker]: 35:55

Yeah, really good points that Brian brought up. But the one thing that I wanted to add on this is like, you have to understand that like during a calorie deficit, we are in a hypochloric state and our recovery capacity is reduced. And what you don't want is to be providing so much stimulus that we are not able to get muscle protein synthesis out of the hole that we kind of create from the muscle damage And that's like the really most important thing. Like if you're creating so much damage that you can't recover from, you're essentially just like continuously digging your hole deeper and you don't want that. Like in a calorie deficit, let's assume we're going like sub 12% or something like that. Like you're getting lean enough. Like we're probably not adding any muscle. If anything, we are net losing muscle as we deficit and just trying to keep we did have is the goal and you don't need every intensity technique and everything under the planet to facilitate that. In some cases it might actually you know further facilitate the muscle breakdown. So just don't try not to kind of lose sight of that.

[bryan]: 37:15

It's a good point, really good point.

[aaron_straker]: 37:19

Okay, this next one, Brian, I'll read over to you. I think we have a little bit of a typo in it. So I'll read it as is

[bryan]: 37:25

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 37:25

and then maybe we'll fix it and then go into it. If cables are concentric bias, how can we make cable lat training more lengthened bias?

[bryan]: 37:37

Yeah, and so it's obviously a short bias instead of a concentric bias.

[aaron_straker]: 37:41

Okay.

[bryan]: 37:43

And so it's a lot of the things that we've kind of talked about on here as far as, you know, Kassim has coined the exercise the pull around where you kind of use your rib cage to stretch your arm across your body as you pull. And you can do that at varying angles from like high to low, more medium horizontal, and then you can do it low to high as well regions of the lat, slightly more biased. But reaching across the body really seems to be the only major way that we can... Hey, can you guys go please? Go, go, go. Go. Go get toothpaste, go. But reaching across the body seems to be really the only to lengthen the lat in that way.

[aaron_straker]: 38:44

Yeah, I'll take it from him. Such a I I mean obviously I get the the interruption but such like a child thing. He's like I just dude It's midday. I need the toothpaste like what do you want me to do dad? I need the fuck toothpaste Okay So back to the question right yes the the lats are one of the hard things where Almost every you know, lat exercise is generally going to be short and overload the pullarounds are one of the best ways that you can just modify your body positioning to kind of facilitate that. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There are machines out there that have like the Prime or machines that are basically have the cam shift or some that are even I've used ones that just inherently are more lengthened bias. But yeah, it's really going to be modifying body position and through the modification of that body position, the finish finishing portion of the isn't normally like as shortened as you would otherwise be so that you're spending more time or more of the movement in the lengthened position there. Anything else you want to add on the back end of that one?

[bryan]: 39:58

Yeah, I mean the other thing would just be using all those techniques that we just talked about in the question right before this Like partials reverse drop sets length and sets stuff like that And so my favorite now is the length and set I pretty much use that all the time For back work by the time I get to week three in a mess So I'm doing length and sets where I'll do the first set is full range of motion and I'll say try to get eight reps and then I will add 20 to 25 percent weight to that eight rep set and then for my second set I match the reps that I get to the first set but it usually will end up being something like three full reps and then five like really gnarly hard lengthened partials to equal the eight reps that I got on the prior set and so that's that's really my favorite way to do it and it's been great for for my lats I think.

[aaron_straker]: 40:48

Yeah, that was a great additional point to bring up. I do have that in one of my back day too, and the length and partials, and it's, I do really, really like it.

[bryan]: 40:59

What's the next one? What do you think? Should you use more free weight and plate-loaded machines instead of cables for hypertrophy?

[aaron_straker]: 41:11

I feel like it's way too open-ended of a question, depending on what you have access to. Yeah, it's a really, really open-ended question. I think the free weight or plate-loaded machines are probably simpler because there is less nuance in the setup. Um, gym experience years grow just through spending more time doing you learn little bits and pieces of things. Like, Oh, if I put my shoulder in this position, it, I get a better, you know, stimulus, those sorts of things. I would say like as you progress as the years go by, um, cables will probably have a larger capacity for utility, but that is in correspondence with the knowledge that you have. accumulated over the years of lifting. Now, if you, let's say, you're you've been lifting for like a year and you, I don't know, you meet a gym friend who's like much more experienced or you hire a coach that's like super, super experienced like Brian or something like that, that could further facilitate you sooner because you have a really good resource. But I would say if I was answering this question to the largest motorist general gym population, I yes, you should use more free weight or plate loaded machines earlier on simply due to the simplicity of setting them up.

[bryan]: 42:52

Yeah, I mean, that's probably well said. I can't say I argue with that. And I think most people's journey resonates with that. Like most people don't get super deep into cable training until after they've spent plenty of years with free weights or I guess, plate loaded machines. And then this actually was a same question asked by one that I just skipped over. And it's a similar question too, because the guy asked hammer strength press versus dumbbell press for the sternal region. And then should I use cables for the short position? And I actually think that that question sort of answers the other question too. They're kind of like tied together very similarly in that, yeah, you should probably use cables more for the short position and use pressing for the, for the length and position. So I think that's a great approach. And then if you want to know what's better, the hammer strength press or a dumbbell press, I think that very much depends on you. And I can't, I can't give you that answer.

[aaron_straker]: 43:52

Yeah, I concur there the cables in the short position, especially like obviously a fly or even just like a seated upright like cable chest press, you know, is another one, you're still going to get the stretch, but it's very, very shortened overload.

[bryan]: 44:07

Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 44:08

And then the first part of it, the hammer, hammer strength press versus DB press, it really depends, right? The interesting or the potentially hard thing with certain machines is it they make, they make assumptions around. the arch, the arc of the movement arc there. And if you're maybe someone who's quite large or someone who's, you know, much smaller, those positions might be a little bit outside of what feels natural for you. But like Brian said, it's going to have to be a personal preference. And I would recommend swapping through both because it's, let's say you run the hammer strength press for 16 weeks and you can't get any more progress out of it. Maybe it's time to bring in, you know, the dumbbell press at a slightly different um, articulation of your like incline slash decline sort of thing.

[bryan]: 45:00

Yep. Yep. I know you've probably thought about this next one, Aaron. With the introduction of AI and increasing speed of development, how are you thinking about your business and do you plan to pivot to anything?

[aaron_straker]: 45:13

I wonder if this means like a coach, is it like from a coaching question standpoint,

[bryan]: 45:19

I think

[aaron_straker]: 45:19

or

[bryan]: 45:19

so. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

[aaron_straker]: 45:21

yeah, to be completely honest, I'm not concerned. And this is, I mean, you could do an entire podcast, I think, on this. So many people think of coaching as just like setting macros and that sort of thing. Like you can, any AI can do that, but I guarantee you, The the benefit in coaching is someone who understands the game and where that fits into your life accountability is a huge part of it and saving you from yourself and your habits and in the pressure and that sort of thing and We've talked about this on the podcast before when you spend money on something right us as humans have a just a very Interesting relationship with our own money. It changes your commitment to something, right? You can put Hey, give me a meal plan for 2000 calories and a training program into like chat GPT for, you might follow it for like five days. If you sign up with me for coaching and we have that like communication and I give you like active directions on week one because of the money that you spent and you don't want to waste it, it will bring out a different level of accountability ended here and said overall progression towards the goal from you. So yeah, I think AI can do a lot of like your entry level, um, sort of information, but the, what it cannot replace is the human aspect of the problem. And that's where like good coaching will always be there.

[bryan]: 47:07

Yeah, that was super well said. I agree. It just like it can't replace the human element. Like you said being there, it can write a fine program like I'm sure AI can write good programming and stuff like that but it definitely can't create the community that that's created as well and that kind of personal touch of coming in and like you know having that group in Facebook and you're getting responses from the owner of the company who's doing the programming and so things like that you can't replace. And I'm sure it's going to hurt some businesses. Like,

[aaron_straker]: 47:42

Oh yeah.

[bryan]: 47:42

I'm sure it will. But the cream of the crop will rise to the top type thing, right?

[aaron_straker]: 47:49

Always, always. I love that statement, yeah.

[bryan]: 47:54

Given you both work in an aesthetic field, do you plan on retiring? If so, what does retirement look like for you?

[aaron_straker]: 48:05

I think, again, this is another great question. I would imagine at some point my life will look different than it does right now in terms of my business and in the, um, the ways that I make money and especially the, the percentages of the, the income and stuff that comes in. But I think like any kind of entrepreneur, like everyone's entrepreneurial journey transitions over time. And I have aspirations that are outside of just a full coaching roster. sort of thing. And the last question, or the last thing that I will touch on there, this is something that I picked up about midway through last year. And if you kind of go back through my social media, you'll pick up on this. I wanted to learn how to sell without relying on my physique. Right, and if you've noticed, there's not a lot of, you know, shirtless photos or anything like that of me anymore. Even though from a physique standpoint, I'm not very lean right now, but I will have the best physique I've ever had in a few months. There's not a doubt in my mind there, but I don't want to have to rely on my physique and how I look to sell coaching and to have a full roster. I want to do that through my brain and my information and the way I communicate sort of thing because what's going to happen is people will look at that and they're like, oh man, this guy, I hope. I hope people will look at it and they'll say, yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about and stuff like, but what does he look like? Then it's the cherry on top. Oh yeah, I walk the walk, I practice what I preach, but I don't wanna be required to sell that because there's a sea of people that do that and then you get in and you realize it, you get subpar coaching or AI generated trading programs and shit like that because the industry is full of sharks, but again, the cream always rise to the top sort of thing.

[bryan]: 50:07

Yeah, dude, you were on fire with your answers today. You've been smashing it. There's a lot of times I'm just like, yeah, you basically said everything. I think it's funny that the aesthetic was thrown in there, though, like it's insinuating like, yo, you're about to be old one day, dude. What are you gonna do? Which is true, but I do think about retiring. I think it doesn't mean that I'm gonna completely separate from the things that I love in the fitness industry, it would be like a financial freedom that then allows me to kind of work on whatever I want to work on, whatever that is at that time. And so there's like a part of me that's always wanted to write a book of some sort. I've talked about this on one of our episodes maybe a year ago, the influence that the John McCollum stories had on me where he kind of told them in a manner that was teaching I guess semi-fictional characters. But something like that would be really cool and something I would like to do, but I don't have the time to do that in the foreseeable future with everything else going on, you know, like family and job and all that sort of thing. So yeah, and I hope to always be aesthetic as fuck. I mean, that is the ultimate goal. Hopefully if I can stay healthy and disease free, that there's really no reason that I can't continue to have a high level of muscle mass and be relatively lean and keep taking care of myself. And so even if I'm 70, I'm gonna be selling programs to the 70 year olds at the nursing home who wanna look just like this dude who's not at the nursing home. So whatever it is, there's a solution to the problem. But yeah, that's my kind of answer that I'm gonna give you. And I'll see you next time.

[aaron_straker]: 52:05

The I'll have one last little part here and then then we'll kind of move on This was something that did it used to concern me more so and I would imagine this question is probably coming from someone who's a little bit younger I Have I have and have had some clients who have really Extended my understanding of what is possible, you know, I have a client my longest running client His name is Jeremy He is 46, I believe. He might be getting close to 47 soon in amazing shape. Very high athletic ability, plays flag football, like competitive flag football in his stud. That one has been really, really cool for me. We're about to get him in the best shape he's ever been in for this upcoming season sort of thing, which is always really, really fun. I have another client who is 51, maybe 52. Jacked and lean and he's uh, yeah, that was another one. I was like I'm almost excited For the aging because I I've seen what's possible. You know, this guy's six foot five eleven six foot two hundred and five pounds Pretty much looks like me and you Brian at like 51 and I'm like Okay,

[bryan]: 53:25

That's goals right there

[aaron_straker]: 53:26

like

[bryan]: 53:26

man.

[aaron_straker]: 53:26

yeah, like it's it's doable sort of thing So I know like that that gives me 15 16 years still of this still looking more or less exactly the same. I am excited for that and I think I'm much less concerned about it than I used to

[bryan]: 53:42

Yep,

[aaron_straker]: 53:43

be.

[bryan]: 53:43

cool.

[aaron_straker]: 53:46

Okay, this one is for you, Brian. What have you enjoyed training in a commercial gym now that you're back in San Diego for a little bit versus things you miss at the home gym?

[bryan]: 53:57

Yeah, I think there is really only one or maybe two things that I really am happy and love about being out here at the commercial gym. One is the hammer strength leg curl that I talked about on a prior episode. It's super good. My leg curl is solid, but I really don't like it's really hard to grip onto as I'm prone forward with my body to pre-stretch the hamstrings. I don't really have to hold on to and this thing has the little handles that I can use and it has another bar that comes over the top so I can reach like handles with one hand and kind of drape my arm over the other bar. So I really like that. And then I feel like there was some, oh yeah, the other one is the unilateral chest supported T-bar row thing. Actually, it's not, yeah, it's not even a T-bar. It's a unilateral chest supported row machine. And so you basically like stand and drape your chest over this thing. And then the handles are D handles. So they rotate and you can just line it up so perfect for the rear delts with so much stability. It's, um, it's savage. I'm actually, uh, really going to miss it. But I think that I can emulate it pretty close by using a, uh, similar draped position and either using a cable or if not, definitely a dumbbell. So I may be trying to do some home creation. with that one. But for the most part, I really miss my equipment at home. Like I think both of my quad machines, my pendulum and my leg press hack thing are both preferable to the arsenal hack that I've been using here. And the cables are cables, like I guess it's cool having a functional trainer with arms that move. I guess I like the grabbing of the other arm for stability when I'm doing a single arm But yeah, nothing really like Supermajor, mostly excited to get back to the home gym. Best program of mine for hypertrophy in a CrossFit style gym. That would be the physique program. If you're doing Evolved, Global Physique would be for commercial gyms, just standard physique. And if you're doing Paragon, it would be the Home Gym Physique Program, which is part of our new menu that drops on April 10th. We're going to have a physique program just made for the Home Gym Either one of those would be good. Next one, I will kick over to you because I do not have an answer to this one at all. I love egg whites. Some people say they are a poor protein source. Is it bad to get over 50% of my daily protein from egg whites?

[aaron_straker]: 56:54

So I'm not sure where people saying they're a poor protein source comes from Egg whites are a complete protein source. They have you know, leucine isoleucine And all of the other Amino acids to make them a complete protein source. I wouldn't say they are a poor protein source The large caveat with egg whites is you need to cook them If you are putting them in like a smoothie or adding them to your protein shake or whatever the bioavailability of uncooked egg whites is quite poor, about 50%. And there's also some, I can't remember, it's called like at, there's something with an A, I can't remember, there's a blog post on the Strait and Nutrition Co website all about it, but it can block like biotin, it will compete for biotin absorption, which could be not necessarily positive, and then it's essentially only 50% bioavailable. So make sure you cook your egg whites. If you're getting over 50% of your daily protein from egg whites, I maybe you are having like three omots per day Maybe you're not that may change That there is it bad potentially not optimal, but there's probably some things that would be simpler, like can we swap in whey, you know, 30 grams of whey instead of potentially the second serving. Varying your sources is probably going to be beneficial, especially because there's more to protein than simply protein, right? We get different micronutrients of different things. I wouldn't say it's inherently bad if you are cooking all of them. However, if you're having 50% of your daily protein from egg whites, I'm thinking there might be some just restrictions on food sourcing in those sorts of things. So it's not that the egg whites are necessarily bad at that level. It's the opportunity cost of what you could be adding into your diet, which will probably be a net benefit to you overall. Thank you.

[bryan]: 59:11

Yeah, you kind of cut off at the end there, so I think I had a little connectivity issue. But can we kick these next three down the road to the start of the episode after we take a week off?

[aaron_straker]: 59:22

Yep, let's do that.

[bryan]: 59:24

Cool, three more questions to go guys. We'll hit them in two weeks. Remember, no ETP next week.

[aaron_straker]: 59:29

No ATP next week. Alright guys, as always, thank you for listening. Brian and I will catch you in two weeks from now.