Eat Train Prosper

Results: 6-Month Single Arm Training Experiment | ETP#111

April 18, 2023 Aaron Straker | Bryan Boorstein
Eat Train Prosper
Results: 6-Month Single Arm Training Experiment | ETP#111
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

After 6 long months of training arms (biceps / triceps) on his left arm ONLY, Bryan shares with us the results of his pre and post testing. A strength test comparing left arm strength (the arm that was trained) to right arm (no training for 6 months), arm circumference measurements, and also DEXA scan results that produced peculiar findings. Then we shift the conversation into methods for quantifying weekly volume, our recommended approaches, how the prevailing volume suggestion research quantified volume, and pose the question whether quantifying volume at all is even necessary.



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[Aaron Straker]:

What is going on guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is Brian and myself, and we are going to talk about Brian's culmination of his six months training experiment where he only trained his left arm and did not do any training on his right arm, and some of the interesting findings that have come out of the back of that. And then we're also going to kind of just have a little bit of a conversation around quantifying volume in some of our recommendations and approaches and how we personally think do that there, and some of the caveats and things to pay attention to with that. But before

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

we jump

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I guess

[Aaron Straker]:

into the topic,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I'll

[Aaron Straker]:

as always,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

start

[Aaron Straker]:

Brian,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

with the

[Aaron Straker]:

can you

[Bryan Boorstein]:

one

[Aaron Straker]:

kick

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that

[Aaron Straker]:

us off

[Bryan Boorstein]:

would

[Aaron Straker]:

with

[Bryan Boorstein]:

be

[Aaron Straker]:

some

[Bryan Boorstein]:

the elephant

[Aaron Straker]:

updates

[Bryan Boorstein]:

in the

[Aaron Straker]:

please?

[Bryan Boorstein]:

room if you're watching on YouTube, which is that Brian is wearing glasses right now. And these are actually blue light blocking glasses. They're not like really smart, intelligent glasses, although they do maybe make me look a little bit smarter. I'm not really sure. But essentially at the beginning of the updates through our updates really quickly because we had a big bulk of show content to get to. But I briefly mentioned that I'd been having headaches. And so I figure this is an opportunity to expand on that. And then I see that you have headaches in your notes as well. So we could just call this episode like headaches and things like that, but we're not going to do that. Anyway, so my headaches basically started the day or two before I left San Diego. been about three weeks of this. And at first, it felt like the kind of headache, you know, in the back of the head where you just sleep wrong and you have a crink in your neck. And like, usually, you know, if you take an ibuprofen or you go through half your day, it kind of dissipates and then everything's good from there. So that's what I assumed it was. And that's how I handled it. And then it just never went away. And it kind of continued Um, and then just continued when I was, was back here as well. And I really had no idea what it could be from. I had a couple ideas, um, but it was really like this constant chronic pain in the back of my head that would switch sides and then kind of like wrap around the head to the front. And everything on the internet said it was tension headache of some sort. Um, and so I just, I really didn't know what to do. I ended up taking ibuprofen for multiple days, probably like seven to 10 days before I was like, you know what, I gotta stop taking ibuprofen because this shit is not good for me. And I just need to deal with these headaches and see if they go away. And just in the last few days, I think I've finally found some clarity on it. So over the weekend, I didn't do much computer work. I was out and about doing things day where I had no headaches at all. And then the next day, yesterday was Monday, I had a big workday and a lot of computer stuff, I had to update Instagram with my one arm training experiment stuff. And as soon like I worked out in the morning and no headache. And then as soon as I got to the computer and started working, the headache came like full force. And so I stopped working, I went for a walk and the That is interesting. So I came back and mentioned the headaches to Laura, our Paragon, you know, director of operations. And she was like, you try wearing blue blight blockers while you work and see if it helps. I had already been thinking for the last few days prior to that, that maybe the issue was a result of some vision things, because it's right around 40 that people in general tend glasses or something like that. And I've had perfect eyes my whole life, but I thought it was probably related to vision. So I started calling optometrists and making appointments and stuff like that. And so the blue light blockers helped yesterday. I don't know if I can give 100% full credit to that. I also started doing something that Kim suggested, which was the 2020 rules. So every 20 minutes you look 20 feet away for 20 seconds while you're working. And I did that and I have the blue light blockers and Overall, the headache was fine yesterday and so far this morning before this podcast. It's been fine So I guess the end result is I still don't know I'm also not wearing a hat because part of me thought that maybe it was the constriction of the hat around my head That was also potentially causing the headaches So I'm taking like this multi-pronged approach of blue blue light blockers being cognizant of my computer work, not wearing a hat, and then ultimately gonna make an optometrist appointment too. But my headaches tend to get better when I work out or move. Obviously if it's related to the computer then that would make sense. Whereas it seems like your headaches are the opposite of that. So before I jump into my rest of my updates, let's stay on the theme of headaches and jump over to you here.

[Aaron Straker]:

It seems so silly because I don't get headaches. The only times that I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yep,

[Aaron Straker]:

can remember

[Bryan Boorstein]:

same. No, same

[Aaron Straker]:

actually

[Bryan Boorstein]:

with

[Aaron Straker]:

having

[Bryan Boorstein]:

me. I

[Aaron Straker]:

headaches

[Bryan Boorstein]:

never get a

[Aaron Straker]:

in

[Bryan Boorstein]:

me there.

[Aaron Straker]:

years have been like, I'm hung over. Literally, that's it. Or something might have been I ended up really dehydrated from a travel day or literally isolated sort of things. Last Monday, so now a week, eight days ago, I'm hitting my top set of the hack squat. Warming up feels perfectly fine. I get like three reps into my top set and like splitting head and head just starts pounding in the middle of it,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]:

which sucks because obviously already feels like shit to begin with. When you're in like the middle of a heavy set. So just like push through and then like with each set they just kept getting worse. So I got through that and then about like 20, 30 minutes into the workout, like they kind of faded away. And I was like, man, that's strange. but maybe it's just like super hard sort of thing. Tuesday come in, I have like, you know, anterior delt press, literally two reps into my, like my top, my first working set headache shows up again. And then it kind of like lingers on, you know, and that happened Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, literally like five days in a row happens. It didn't actually happen on Saturday, which is interesting. And then yesterday, Monday, I come So, it showed up a little bit earlier and just like stayed in the... And then what sucked about yesterday is it didn't go away like throughout the training day and then it didn't go away at all throughout the day. So, I just like tried to manage best like good the rest of the day. And then today, same thing, the very first warmup set of my anterior adult press like headache shows up and then it has not gone away. And I'm just sitting here now recording the podcast with a headache. I feel perfectly fine in the mornings, right? So, when I'm working, that's what I'm thinking. The second I really push myself, it shows up. When I'm riding the bike, nothing. Walking on the treadmill, going through my warmup flow, perfectly fine. The first attempt at exertion, headache. And mine is right here, two spots in the front, right in the middle of my forehead. So that is my headache update, and I don't have a clue, to be completely honest. One of our friends here has home blood pressure cuff. So I'm gonna go check that cause that's one of the first things that like, you know not PubMed, but. I can't think of the health website

[Bryan Boorstein]:

WebMD.

[Aaron Straker]:

like the main health website

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

on the internet says. But other than that, like I don't have a clue. WebMD. Yeah, thank you. I don't have a clue. So I am hoping it just kind of like magically goes away. I'm thinking in the back of my mind, it could be like I might need a deload because I have been swinging for the fences like hard, but like things are going really, really well there. And I'm really, I would love to hold on. until my travel week, which is in like two weeks, so that I can just kind of like naturally deload with my travel schedule. But like, I mean, I'm still hitting PRs, the hack squad is progressing, like I didn't know that it could, and I really don't wanna take like a deload before I feel like I need to, but it could be some of that just like, things are just creeping on me that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

I, and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that's

[Aaron Straker]:

I'm

[Bryan Boorstein]:

interesting

[Aaron Straker]:

just,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and kind of

[Aaron Straker]:

I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

like

[Aaron Straker]:

don't

[Bryan Boorstein]:

the

[Aaron Straker]:

perceive

[Bryan Boorstein]:

complete

[Aaron Straker]:

it

[Bryan Boorstein]:

opposite

[Aaron Straker]:

as much as

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of

[Aaron Straker]:

it

[Bryan Boorstein]:

the

[Aaron Straker]:

actually

[Bryan Boorstein]:

headaches

[Aaron Straker]:

is.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that I'm experiencing. Yeah, I my first thought when you were talking outside

[Aaron Straker]:

cleanups.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of, you know, just a standard exertion headache, is that maybe your body weight increasing has something to do with it, in which case the blood pressure could be kind of like a proxy for that. So that is probably like a prudent move for you to check blood pressure. and every night. And it is variable based on literally like how many readings I do and how quickly I do a reading after sitting down. And so that's something maybe like you just have to do multiple readings because I love to test my blood pressure like right when I sit down just to see like how high it was when I was just like walking around doing life. And then over the course of five minutes where I'll take two or three more readings, 15 or 20 points sometimes. Like it'll be, you know, 127 over 86, right? When I sit down and I'm like, man, that's high. And then five minutes later, it's 112 over 72 or something like that. So yeah, I mean, I would just take multiple readings, make sure that you kind of get a sense of that. And then also time of day matters. Like it's generally lower at night than it is in the morning and it's highest midday. you know, keep those things in mind too. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, I'll probably end up taking a few just to see,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

but yeah, I'm

[Bryan Boorstein]:

it's so frustrating

[Aaron Straker]:

kind of at a loss

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and

[Aaron Straker]:

and I really don't know.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

It is

[Bryan Boorstein]:

it's just frustrating

[Aaron Straker]:

quite

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and

[Aaron Straker]:

interesting

[Bryan Boorstein]:

disconcerting

[Aaron Straker]:

though.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

because

[Aaron Straker]:

By interesting,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you just

[Aaron Straker]:

I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

start

[Aaron Straker]:

mean

[Bryan Boorstein]:

thinking

[Aaron Straker]:

like

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that

[Aaron Straker]:

shitty,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

like something's wrong

[Aaron Straker]:

yeah. Ha

[Bryan Boorstein]:

with

[Aaron Straker]:

ha ha.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you and you don't know where there's an end. You're like, am I just gonna have this for the rest of my life? It's, yeah, it's awful. I completely empathize, man. All right, well, let's talk about fitness.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yes.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

We've been talking about headaches for long enough now. So last week I had the opportunity to go hang out with Cass and Aishak at N1. was I'd been conversing with Cass a bunch over the last month or two as they've kind of thrown out some of their new views on the Iliac pull around thing. And so I got like a cool like hands-on one-on-one with Cass, which was dope. And I don't want to say too much because he hasn't released a lot of content on this publicly on the computer or the computer on the internet yet. But one thing that I thought was really interesting is that the non-pull-around version hasn't really changed much, if at all. It might be like a slightly higher plane of motion than it was before and the lumbar now kind of resembles what maybe we used to call an iliac, where the arms are goes, I thought that was cool that I didn't have to completely shift my mindset on that. The the pull around though, they have some kind of different rotational pieces to what your torso is doing and how much adduction adduction occurs with your arm across the body and then how high in the plane of motion that occurs for the iliac. And it's crazy because like, you know, you could just feel that like you could sometimes feel when you're and reach across your body and you can feel like this deep stretch around your side. Some of that could be like, you know, the lateral obliques and some of those other musculature along the side too. So I think it's a little ambiguous, but doing this and reaching up mostly overhead with still a little bit of in the front kind of setup motion, there really is a significantly deeper stretch that you can feel across there. And so I've been playing around with that a lot this last week, and I'm just excited for him to throw all that information out to the public so that everybody else can kind of experience it too, because it's been a cool experiment. So that's really all I have on that. And then I am, as you guys know, super deep into this cardio game right now. I don't know if I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I signed up for a 50-mile mountain biking race through Moab. It's going to go from Moab, which is kind of the Red Rocks desert area just on the Colorado-Utah border. So it's a race from there to Fruta, which is, I think Fruta is in Colorado. I don't think it's still in Utah. So basically we're going from Moab to like the Colorado border. And this race is actually a 150-mile And so me and my boys just signed up for for one of the legs. Thank God, because my one of my last weeks in San Diego, I went out for a ride with with my buddy, Ollie, and we did 25 miles of mostly trail riding, it had some some paved on there as well. But a lot of trail riding, a lot of vert. And, and I was absolutely destroyed. I mean, like to the point that trick like this before in myself, but my resting heart rate usually sits around, you know, low forties, mid forties, something like that. And for the one and a half days, 36 hours that followed that ride, my resting heart rate was like 63, uh, which is 17 to 20 beats per minute higher than it was the day before. Um, and I couldn't sleep. I was hot. I was restless. I couldn't eat. like the oddest feeling for 36 hours. And so I'm really glad in retrospect that I did that 25 mile ride because I think there was part of me that thought I could just show up to this 50 mile ride and just gut through it and do it. And like, I probably could have, but it would have been excruciating experience in the days that follow. So now I've kind of, I met with a buddy of mine here, Boulder's a massive, you know, nerd out cycling community. So I met with a buddy of mine who's a pro cyclist. we went together the other day and did an 18 mile ride. And it was just kind of chill, nothing too, too crazy. But I was able to talk with him a lot about kind of strategy and training approaches and how to manage this going forward to get the best result and things like that. And so, um, I feel now much more prepared. And I have a plan and, uh, I'm doing a lot of what he suggested already, like he said for these months now, cause the race isn't until October. miles a week over the course of three to four sessions. So something like, you know, 12 to 20 miles a session for three to four sessions. And that's basically what I'm doing right now as part of my zone two work. So I'm just gonna kind of continue doing that. And then as the race gets closer, ramp up and maybe hit like one 35 mile ride a couple weeks out. And then I should be able to handle the 50 from there. So I'm excited, gives me something to focus on. And Yeah, lots of questions from people about cardio and muscle mass and things like that. We touched on it a bit with Brandon on the last episode, but I think we'll have some additional insight here as we get into kind of the bulk of this episode.

[Aaron Straker]:

Real quick before we move on,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

So it's 40

[Aaron Straker]:

is

[Bryan Boorstein]:

miles

[Aaron Straker]:

the 50 miles

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of gravel

[Aaron Straker]:

all

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and trail

[Aaron Straker]:

on

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and 10 miles

[Aaron Straker]:

trail?

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of pavement.

[Aaron Straker]:

Cool. And then can you look up

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

the course already of like,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

is

[Bryan Boorstein]:

there's

[Aaron Straker]:

there,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

10

[Aaron Straker]:

can

[Bryan Boorstein]:

total

[Aaron Straker]:

you see

[Bryan Boorstein]:

miles

[Aaron Straker]:

where

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of

[Aaron Straker]:

the

[Bryan Boorstein]:

climbing,

[Aaron Straker]:

elevation

[Bryan Boorstein]:

which is

[Aaron Straker]:

climbs

[Bryan Boorstein]:

wild.

[Aaron Straker]:

are

[Bryan Boorstein]:

That's like

[Aaron Straker]:

and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

a

[Aaron Straker]:

those

[Bryan Boorstein]:

fifth

[Aaron Straker]:

sorts

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of the

[Aaron Straker]:

of

[Bryan Boorstein]:

entire

[Aaron Straker]:

things?

[Bryan Boorstein]:

ride is climbing. And it's between 3.5 and 6.5% grades.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

So when I was doing the ride with my buddy, the other day, the pro cyclist, he has like a meter on his bike that tells you how steep the the climb is that you're doing, like he has all the gadgets. And, and there was like a pretty

[Aaron Straker]:

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and it was long. And I was like, what is the grade on this? And he was like 6.5. And I was like, Oh, okay. Good to know. So so there's one climb, I think that's like three miles at 6.5, which is just going to be excruciating. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, I'm glad I asked because those specific segments are the things that I'm going to assume some people don't take into account of never training 6.5% grade for duration, what that does to your legs.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Right, right, right.

[Aaron Straker]:

That's not an adaptation you want forced upon you when the time comes.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]:

week. The worst part is the leg pump, to be completely honest. It is disgustingly painful.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

That's what exactly I thought of that. I was like, oh, I bet that's going to feel like when I'm doing those air bike sprints and there's just so much blood in your legs and you

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

can't get it out. You got to keep

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

going.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

my

[Aaron Straker]:

You just got to keep going. What do

[Bryan Boorstein]:

impression

[Aaron Straker]:

you do? I was like,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

prior

[Aaron Straker]:

I'm going to

[Bryan Boorstein]:

to

[Aaron Straker]:

ask

[Bryan Boorstein]:

speaking

[Aaron Straker]:

him if

[Bryan Boorstein]:

to

[Aaron Straker]:

he's

[Bryan Boorstein]:

him and then

[Aaron Straker]:

been

[Bryan Boorstein]:

he

[Aaron Straker]:

training

[Bryan Boorstein]:

pretty much

[Aaron Straker]:

that.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

confirmed it was that the goal is obviously to keep your heart rate as low as possible for as long as possible and really only let it go up when absolutely necessary. And so my inclination, being a fast twitch muscle fiber person is when I hit an uphill, my inclination is to get out of the saddle, stand up and do it from that position. And I think that the solution is actually to not do that and instead to go super low on the gears and just kind of let my feet continue pedaling at a similar cadence to what they would be doing on flat land and just understand that your pace of movement is gonna slow down significantly during those climbs. And then he talked to me a bit about like nasal breathing for recovery. So like once you get to the top of the climb or like at some point, you know, sitting up tall and nasal breathing and trying to become parasympathetic and stuff like that. So a few different strategies there.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, man, I'm excited to talk more about it in the coming weeks and months. That is something, it's like fun. I'd been able to do some mountain biking when we'd be back in Virginia over some of the past few years and stuff. It's one of those things,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

yes, it's cardio. Your heart rate generally will pick up and stuff, but it's like you feel like a kid again sort of thing. So

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yep.

[Aaron Straker]:

I'm

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yep.

[Aaron Straker]:

really pumped that you're

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Um, I'm

[Aaron Straker]:

getting

[Bryan Boorstein]:

going to let

[Aaron Straker]:

into

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

jump

[Aaron Straker]:

and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

into

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

updates.

[Aaron Straker]:

I'm sure

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I'm going

[Aaron Straker]:

you'll

[Bryan Boorstein]:

to run

[Aaron Straker]:

disclose

[Bryan Boorstein]:

real quick to

[Aaron Straker]:

more

[Bryan Boorstein]:

get

[Aaron Straker]:

in

[Bryan Boorstein]:

some

[Aaron Straker]:

the

[Bryan Boorstein]:

water.

[Aaron Straker]:

coming months on the podcast. Yep, sounds good. So the second update I have is we are again moving the goal posts on my current bulking slash gaining phase. So originally the plan was around between 204 to 208 pounds. I started at about 197, 198. Got to between 204 and 208 and like we're still quite lean. Let's push that to about 210. now for like five days in a row. Still a little bit too lean to cut the gaining phase here. So now kind of leaving it a little bit open-ended, potentially 2.12 maybe upwards of like 2.15, which is crazy. I think it's been about five years, 2018, so five years now since I've been this big. fluctuated between the low 200s and like 190 ever since and I have been quite pleased and surprised at how body composition has held up. So it has made me kind of rethink some of my longer term plans and I'm really just enjoying it for now and just pretty much just accepting some of the extra body fat but all the crazy gains that are coming along with it especially in the hack pushing and making sure that I'm not leaving any stones unturned so that when I do go into the diet Really have a nice comparison of like this, you know here is this and this is what I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

was able

[Bryan Boorstein]:

dude,

[Aaron Straker]:

to

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you

[Aaron Straker]:

do

[Bryan Boorstein]:

look

[Aaron Straker]:

this time So

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you look

[Aaron Straker]:

hopefully

[Bryan Boorstein]:

massive and

[Aaron Straker]:

hoping

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you don't

[Aaron Straker]:

for

[Bryan Boorstein]:

look

[Aaron Straker]:

the best

[Bryan Boorstein]:

like you've put on a ton

[Aaron Straker]:

there

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of body fat like I know pictures can be deceiving but

[Aaron Straker]:

What like the lower, like where the, like where your glute meets your lower back, yes,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I

[Aaron Straker]:

there

[Bryan Boorstein]:

get that

[Aaron Straker]:

is

[Bryan Boorstein]:

too,

[Aaron Straker]:

like

[Bryan Boorstein]:

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

a solid like two, three inches of like pinchable fat there. What I've been really, so there's two things. I've been really surprised about like the subcutaneous fat over the abs. That's been the most surprising. There really isn't much. I've also been training my abs consistently like hard, I would imagine there's probably

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yep.

[Aaron Straker]:

some hypertrophy to that there, which can help that. I do feel like some visceral adiposity is being obtained. I am getting a little bit of like power gut kind of feeling. So that one

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]:

obviously you can't do too much about with, unless you get like a Dex or something, which maybe I will do back in the States.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Uh, yeah. How do you feel as far as like,

[Aaron Straker]:

But I have been

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I mean,

[Aaron Straker]:

really,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

obviously

[Aaron Straker]:

really

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you

[Aaron Straker]:

surprised

[Bryan Boorstein]:

haven't had blood work,

[Aaron Straker]:

there.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

which might be a prudent move at a higher body weight just to see like how your body is functioning at this point. But do you notice any signs? Like I guess the blood pressure will also be an interesting.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, I will. The blood pressure will be an

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Oh

[Aaron Straker]:

interesting

[Bryan Boorstein]:

yeah, you did

[Aaron Straker]:

marker.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

recently.

[Aaron Straker]:

I will get labs back in the States. I did get lipids maybe about like six weeks ago. Yeah, and they were very comparable. It's hard to say, cause I've been pushing the cardio really hard as well. And granted it's only one session per week, but I've been taking it like very, very seriously and like really pushing myself there. I do feel pretty good. Granted, I'm really sweaty all the time. Some meals I don't really want, more of a planning of the timing of the day. For instance, like, you know, this podcast,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

we start at eight, I'm gonna be having a meal at 9.45 tonight, you know, after we wrap up sort of thing. But it has been interesting and fun to just like progress again, you know, like, I mean, I put this on my story yesterday, but like when I was, right before I left Bali in September, I had four plates per side on the hack squat for the first time ever. working with that. You know, when we first got here in May, so about a year ago, I was able to do the four plates

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

per side for like five during the strength phase. Like, and I was like, I was pumped about that. I'm like, damn, five reps. Like, this is cool. Like five months later, I was able to do that for 10, like the week we left. I was like, dude, this is sick, dude. It was five reps. Now it's 10. On Monday. So yesterday

[Bryan Boorstein]:

That's insane,

[Aaron Straker]:

I did 11

[Bryan Boorstein]:

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, so like a year ago, I could only do it for four reps or five reps. I did

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]:

it for 11 after I did four and a half for eight just

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

before that. So the progress

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Especially

[Aaron Straker]:

has been,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

because I remember

[Aaron Straker]:

it's been

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you

[Aaron Straker]:

really,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

saying

[Aaron Straker]:

really cool

[Bryan Boorstein]:

lamenting that you

[Aaron Straker]:

with

[Bryan Boorstein]:

had

[Aaron Straker]:

that.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

like a kind of year where you just treaded water and you didn't really actually make any progress, so to speak, on your physique. And so you really committed this year to being like a year that you're going to make significant progress and you're following through. So that's pretty cool.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, I'm pumped about that. And then the last update I have is by the time this episode releases. So when you're listening to it, details for upgrade class two will have been released and the registration will be open within a few days of when this podcast comes out. If that is something that you've been paying attention to or interested in, I would recommend hopping on it quickly. The first class sold out in under 30 hours and we are anticipating the same for the second. to you, make note and get

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Super

[Aaron Straker]:

on the

[Bryan Boorstein]:

cool,

[Aaron Straker]:

email

[Bryan Boorstein]:

love

[Aaron Straker]:

list

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that.

[Aaron Straker]:

which is up at the online coaching upgrade.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

All right, cool, let's talk about some one-arm training here.

[Aaron Straker]:

That's

[Bryan Boorstein]:

So

[Aaron Straker]:

it from updates for me.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

my six-month experiment finally wrapped up yesterday. I made my post on Instagram, and man, I'm elated just to be done, to be honest, but not so elated with the results. So just because I assume everybody that follows me on Instagram probably isn't listening to the podcast and vice versa, I will give you guys the breakdown here. just my left arm with isolated work. We've talked about it on the podcast a bunch, but I still continue to do my rows, my presses and things like that with both arms. So there was still some stimulation for my right arm happening. But any direct bicep or tricep work was done with just my left arm. And I measured three things. At the beginning, I and it's relevance in a bit. I think it is relevant, but it also started, you know, about the DEXA was about a month before I started the one arm training experiment. So I had DEXA from the beginning. I did another DEXA at the end. I also did arm measurements at the beginning and at the end. In the beginning and halfway, I only did one, I only measured on one day. I did one arm training experiment. I did one arm training experiment. I did one I did multiple measurements, but I only measured one specific day. Um, and then via feedback from multiple people, I decided that this final, uh, measurement, I should probably do multiple days just to kind of take away as many variables as possible. So I measured my arms Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Um, and then the other thing that I have is strength testing. So I didn't do any strength testing in the beginning because I felt like it was pretty irrelevant. I was training both arms already. And what I knew from the strength testing was that my left arm was generally about one rep weaker than my right, where I would do a set of say eight curls with 50 pounds and my right arm would make the eighth rep at one RIR and my left arm would make the eighth rep at zero RIR or even maybe with like a little bit of like or something along those lines. So my hypothesis going in was that there would probably be no change. That my right arm wouldn't shrink and my left arm wouldn't grow and that that would be validation for me to essentially decide that maybe I don't need to train arms anymore. The end result was not quite what I predicted. So essentially the DEXA scan showed that my left arm lost.3 pounds of lean body mass and my right arm gained.3 pounds of lean body mass, which is mostly only interesting because there's obviously like, you know, error, there's error in a DEXA, but it's mostly interesting because my entire body as a whole gained.8 pounds of lean body mass Every single region of my body either stayed the same or grew, you know, 0.1 here, 0.1 there, 0.2 here, whatever. Except my left arm, my left arm, the only part of my body that actually did not grow and in fact shrank. And so man, like if you talk about things that cause headaches, this is one of those things that really mind-fucked me for a little bit after I got the Dexa trying to figure it out. And so obviously measurement error is the first thing that most people thought. But I just, I really struggle with that considering that the rest of my body gained and that just that one area seemed to have lost. And then the Dexa also showed that my left arm gained 0.4 pounds of fat, which is also really odd because it lost 0.3 pounds of muscle but gained 0.4 pounds of fat, which means it actually sort of increased in size. It's just, it's just so weird. So then my second thought was that maybe I was in fact over training my left arm Even though I tend to train with lower volumes and higher intensities I guess it's possible that given the additional cardio I was doing My recovery capacity being limited that maybe I did too much work on my left arm But then the other side of that coin would be if I was in fact over training, you know whole. Like there should be signs of that in other parts of my body and not just relegated to the left arm. Like a part of me feels like I should be able to just train my arms endlessly and have the fatigue not be significant enough to actually cause an issue. So that's the initial. I have a lot more to say on it, but I'll jump over to you for some thoughts. Hahaha

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, it's smart. Cause if we would have kept going, I would have forgotten everything I wanted to say. The, I think it's, I didn't see, I know you didn't say it on the podcast and I didn't see it in the post, but it is something

[Bryan Boorstein]:

around.

[Aaron Straker]:

that I know happened. Your Dexa was at the exact same location in both times. Correct. So that's like another, like kind of, you're like, Oh, well, if this Dex was in one machine, like they can be differently calibrated, that sort of thing, different models, like,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Same

[Aaron Straker]:

no,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

tech

[Aaron Straker]:

you're

[Bryan Boorstein]:

as

[Aaron Straker]:

at, you

[Bryan Boorstein]:

well.

[Aaron Straker]:

went to the same exact Dex machine, you know, apart,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

same exact place. It is very, okay. Same tech as well. So that is, I think is, that's a big kind of drop in the bucket of like, okay, we have some decent consistency there. I'm very hard pressed to think that the arm that you were over training that because you would have perceptible feedback on that. If was it super sore all the time and where you're overlapping soreness, like you would know and knowing you, you would have auto regulated that a long time ago. I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]:

really don't think it was over trained. This is a puzzle. This like, this is a puzzle. in the Dexa, I would be more kind of akin to the margin of error thing,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

but the fact that everything got bigger, except the left arm. I, my hypothesis, which I mean, it's purely conjecture, is that the, the period of acute kind of D training, yes, you're still doing rowing. Yes, you're still doing, you know, pressing and stuff, but it's like, you're not really fully shortening the tricep or probably fully lengthening it in different things. Same with the bicep is probably the way that the dex of calculates some of the tissue got that that like I want to say translation but that's not the proper terminology like some muscle mass could have been picked up as fat because of something with that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

and but I mean I that even feels like a stretch to me it could be potentially the glycogen thing you know that the period of of when when it was most recently trained to the period of the dexa

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah. Cass

[Aaron Straker]:

and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

wrote

[Aaron Straker]:

those sort

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and suggested

[Aaron Straker]:

and but

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that

[Aaron Straker]:

I don't

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I

[Aaron Straker]:

know

[Bryan Boorstein]:

wait two

[Aaron Straker]:

I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

weeks

[Aaron Straker]:

really really don't

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and re test everything because he's like, you know, if there was any semblance of overtraining, you know, you wait two weeks, you don't train your arms, you go back, you do it again, potentially that is all flushed out. And maybe there's even some like super compensation that occurs from that. In reality, man, what I wish is that I just had a Dexa in house If I could do a DEXA the next day, like do the one and be like, oh, well, there's 0.3 muscle loss in your left arm. And then you do one the next day. And if it tells you the same thing, then you're like, okay, well, now that's two in a row type thing. And then I could do one again, two weeks later, like Cass suggested, um, and really get like kind of a fuller picture there. Um, but I'm not going to do that. Like it's a, a huge annoyance on my life to have to go drive somewhere and sit there and do a DEXA and all that plus the cost associated. So, uh, Yeah, it just is what it is. I mean, I think at the end of the day, actually, I'll save my conclusion for a second because I do have measurements and strength testing to talk about. So as far as measurements go, when I measured in the beginning, it was pretty confidently 16 and three quarters inches on my left arm and 17 inches on my right arm. I took three or four measurements that day. And then now over the course of the measurements that I took across three days leading up to this culmination, the measurements varied between 16 and three quarters and 17 for the left arm, meaning that there seemed to be some sort of growth there. And then the right arm varied between 17 and 17 and a quarter. So there seemed to be some growth there as well, just looking at the measurements, it doesn't account for muscle and fat. So if I really did in fact gain a little fat in my left arm, it may have offset the muscle that I lost. And then the right arm, according to the Dexa did actually get bigger. So, so that makes sense. Um, as far as the strength testing piece, my hypothesis was that the left arm would get more coordinated and potentially even out the, the strength between the two Um, what I found was that on the day of testing yesterday, that did in fact seem to be true. Uh, my left arm felt more coordinated than my right and my strength was equal right to left. Um, however, the confounding variable there is that I literally haven't done those moves with my right arm for six months. fuck. I mean, I like, like, I'm so tuned into doing my left arm. Now, like, I know how my arm slides in, I know how I position my body, I like rotate my hips, like, everything just happens sequentially without any thought. And when I go to do my right arm, I'm like, wait, where do I put my leg? How does my elbow rest here? Like, how do I position my body? Like, the whole thing just felt of that, I think that in a matter of a week, two weeks, three weeks training my right arm again, I almost have no doubt that my right arm is just gonna take back over again and its coordination is gonna improve. The strength is gonna go back to being a rep higher than the left arm. I mean, the fact that I hadn't done a single bicep curl or tricep extension in six months, and yet my right arm still matched performance on my left arm in every movement Like, I don't know, you just can't get away from right arm dominance or dominant arm dominance, I guess would be the way of saying that. So at the end of the day, I think my conclusion of this whole experiment is that the biggest factor or the biggest lesson from the whole thing is that nothing significant happened. And I don't know, like if I should have expected anything to happen of years of training just my left arm, but even then I don't really know. But I think the fact that nothing significant happened outside of potential DEXA error or whatever that is, I just think that that more or less supports my initial hypothesis of nothing happening and that that probably provides me some level of freedom with the amount of arm training that I do going forward. And so my conclusion is like people have asked, you know, what are you going to do with your arm training? And I think that what I'm going to basically do is, is continue to do it, but I'm just not going to stress it. Like if I want to do it, I'll do it. If I want to do a different movement one day, I'll just do a different movement. If I want to do one set instead of two or three sets, I'll just do one set. And just not really put a ton of like focus onto arm training and let it just kind of be fun type thing. Um, maybe take a little bit of extra volume if I feel up for it and skew it to like back, chest and shoulders, um, legs, but, um, not really too concerned about it. I just think, you know, more freedom on arm training is probably the end result of this whole thing.

[Aaron Straker]:

I mean, not coincidentally, my takeaways from your experiment were pretty much identical to that. And even so much as like, I've talked about this before, like I don't really enjoy training arms that much. I did it a lot when I was younger because like who the fuck doesn't? And I mean, I would say like my arms relative to like my shoulder size, I wish my shoulders were bigger and my arms were smaller. of like principle just to not, you know, skip things. But that was the kind of

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

takeaway too. I was like, I might just, hey, I might program like one set, you know, just to like check the box and make sure I'm not creating any like imbalances by not like not using anything. But I would probably like, I know I have pretty much like a time limit on the gym before my mind starts to wander and I kind of get hungry and I want to leave. of like back or add maybe a second or third back exercise that I would enjoy doing more. And then I'm like, Hey, I'm going to hit

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

one set of like cable bicep curls, take it to the house amount sort of thing. The prioritization of that, that time in, you know, potential recovery capacity,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

just something

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and you

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

still

[Aaron Straker]:

you might

[Bryan Boorstein]:

get some

[Aaron Straker]:

enjoy

[Bryan Boorstein]:

arm stimulation

[Aaron Straker]:

doing more.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

from that back

[Aaron Straker]:

That's

[Bryan Boorstein]:

set.

[Aaron Straker]:

kind of what, what, what I landed at as well.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

How many arm sets are you doing per week right now in your program?

[Aaron Straker]:

Exactly. Um, so biceps I have five, I want to say. And then triceps, we're at six, but I had been getting some gnarly tricep tendonitis back here. So I stopped doing like the, the like, like unilateral kind of positioning in the overhead. And I've actually swapped in a close grip bench press, which is

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]:

kind of ironically always very good tricep movement for me. I think it just like things line up really well. It doesn't bother me and I can overload it, you know, well. So I've been swapping that in and then taking out both of those two tricep exercises. I've been toying with the idea of getting a PRP injection in it right before we leave here and go back to the States. PRP here is so cheap. It's

[Bryan Boorstein]:

There

[Aaron Straker]:

insane.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

is recovery

[Aaron Straker]:

It's like

[Bryan Boorstein]:

though, I mean

[Aaron Straker]:

I feel

[Bryan Boorstein]:

relatively

[Aaron Straker]:

like criminal

[Bryan Boorstein]:

significant

[Aaron Straker]:

not to get

[Bryan Boorstein]:

recovery

[Aaron Straker]:

it done.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

associated.

[Aaron Straker]:

I'd have to talk to the purse because I've had... five PRP injections, I believe now over the years. And it was always like, use it, give it like three or four days, don't load it up with weight, but then like get a lot of blood flow

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Thanks for watching!

[Aaron Straker]:

in there, start using it sort of thing. And that would really line up with like traveling back to the States. And I don't really train triceps that hard anyway. Yeah,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Interesting. I really, I just remember

[Aaron Straker]:

so

[Bryan Boorstein]:

my knee experience

[Aaron Straker]:

I might pull

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and

[Aaron Straker]:

the

[Bryan Boorstein]:

it

[Aaron Straker]:

trigger

[Bryan Boorstein]:

was like

[Aaron Straker]:

on that.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

significantly longer recovery

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, not high

[Bryan Boorstein]:

than a few days

[Aaron Straker]:

at

[Bryan Boorstein]:

here

[Aaron Straker]:

all.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and there, but interesting, maybe elbows are not quite as bad.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Um, well, I think that's pretty much all I have on the Dexa regarding the one arm experiment. But I think the last piece of the Dexa that is relevant to our conversations here on the podcast is, um, the concern that all this additional cardio would create muscle loss. And I think that the confidence instilled by that Dexa reading for me. I mean, I've stated on the podcast in pretty absolute terms that I believe, you know, if your body weight is the same more or less, and you're continuing to train with weights, where would the muscle go? Like, it's not like it's just going to turn to fat because you're doing cardio now. So I'm not surprised by that at all. But you know, it actually was kind of neat I added 0.8 pounds of lean body mass according to this potentially error Dexa With you know, just around under two pounds of body fat added and so that's like a pretty solid ratio for somebody With my level of training experience With everything else that I had going on, you know with all the cardio I was doing and all the life stresses and all that stuff it really does kind of that the training I was doing in the weight room was working and that for the most part, aside from maybe my left arm, I've kind of hit the right dose of frequency and volume and intensity and, and stuff like that. So, um, really just a cool feather in the cap of like, hey, you can do cardio, you can do concurrent training, um, shit, you can even do the shit on the same day sometimes. opened up the playbook a lot and created a ton of freedom for people that want to incorporate cardio and do it in a manner that, you know, isn't going to hurt their their strength or strength might be the wrong way of saying that their muscle mass on their body, I don't know how much impact it may or may not have on strength because that's so far

[Aaron Straker]:

Thanks for watching.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

from my objective. But as far as like the amount of muscle that you hold on your body, it seems like as long as you're fueling that cardio and providing your body with like a maintenance or maintenance plus of calories. The muscle shouldn't go anywhere. So that's cool.

[Aaron Straker]:

Thanks for watching!

[Bryan Boorstein]:

And then I guess the next piece, our next

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

topic

[Aaron Straker]:

definitely.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

here is these musings on counting volume. So I had this question come in from a long time listener. And so I'm just going to read the question and then we can, I'll kick it over to you and you can kind of start with it. So, Hey Brian, I was wondering if during any of your ETP episodes, you and Aaron have discussed how you like to calculate sets per muscle group across the week. More so from the perspective biceps, triceps that get hit indirectly when training other muscle groups, but also are trained directly themselves. Also quads, glutes, and hams and their interaction during hinging and squatting patterns that most of us incorporate across the week.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, this is like the million dollar question. I really don't think there is a one size fits all answer to this. I think everyone's going to quantify it differently. I've quantified it differently over the years. What I've kind of settled into now is what is my intent for including this exercise? When I perform that exercise or when I'm prescribing this exercise for a client or something, what what is our, like what target musculature are we performing this movement for? Because when you're like, think about, I'm going to use the classic like hack squad example. Like when I'm performing the hack squat and I'm like, you know, essentially lowering myself, finding my bottom position, like I'm not thinking about my glutes. I'm thinking about my quads, right? I put that in there as a quad movement. Yes, I know my glutes are getting, you know, I shouldn't even say additional, a good amount volume, but I am not putting that exercise in my program thinking about my glutes. I'm putting it in there for the quads. Now, when I'm doing like a 45 degree hip extension, I am putting that in there because I'm thinking about my glutes, right? And so I count that and like, this is my glute volume. There's always going to be a good amount of overlap, but I think I at least personally come from the standpoint of like, what is the reason Intended tissue for us to provide

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

the stimulus

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I

[Aaron Straker]:

to

[Bryan Boorstein]:

fully agree

[Aaron Straker]:

and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

with all

[Aaron Straker]:

I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of

[Aaron Straker]:

will

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that,

[Aaron Straker]:

quantify

[Bryan Boorstein]:

but I'm

[Aaron Straker]:

it

[Bryan Boorstein]:

going to take

[Aaron Straker]:

in

[Bryan Boorstein]:

a

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

step

[Aaron Straker]:

manner

[Bryan Boorstein]:

back real quick and touch on the meta from Brad Schoenfeld, which we've discussed on this podcast before. But 10 to 20 sets a week, man, that's apparently the number. That's what keeps being tossed around the internet. And when you actually delve into that study and you realize that 10 to 20 sets is being groups, I think that that really changes the conversation around how much volume people actually need. And so like the craziest one on the way they count volume, and this just doesn't make any sense, but every squatting movement is counted as hamstring volume, which man, like that's just so so nuts. Like I get that you count an RDL as glutes and hamstrings. That makes sense to me or that you kind of squat as glutes and quads. Like that makes sense to me. sense at all. And then they're also counting, you know, when you do a bench press, that's an entire set for your chest. It's also an entire set for your triceps. When you do a row, same deal. It's a set for your back. It's a set for your, uh, for your biceps. And I don't think that the stimulus is equal across those movements. Um, but when you do look at that, like 10 to 20 set thing, it's crazy that, you know, if you're doing indirect and triceps, but you're also doing 10 to 20 sets for your back and your chest and your shoulders or whatever, then your arms are in theory, according to this way of tracking, your arms must be doing 30 sets a week or 20 or whatever the number is, right? Which is really, really, really kind of wild to me. a couple weeks ago when it was first posed to me before, obviously, we talked about it on the podcast. And I asked people how they count volume. And I would say the most common response was people saying that they count the indirect muscle group as half of a set. So bench press might be one set for your chest and half a set for your triceps. And then if you really want to get nuanced about it, maybe like half a set for your anterior delts or something along those lines, whereas a row or might be one set for your back or lats. set or half a set for your rear delts and half a set for your biceps, something along those lines. I think it's even more ambiguous with pulling movements because like all the data I did with CAS when I was there, the EMG stuff, it seemed like the rear delts were the dominant on every pulling movement. Like it was almost impossible to not make the rear delts the dominant, at least a lat movement or you can call it an upper back movement or whatever, but it seems like the rear delts are actually kind of the thing receiving the most stimulus there, which fits in line with, you know, common bro science that the rear delts can just be hammered and handle shit tons of volume. Also kind of potentially why maybe we don't need to do like direct rear delt work. And I don't really know anybody in my circle at least that does like isolated rear delt raises. some sort of, you know, abduction movement with a straight arm type thing. I don't really know too many people that do that. You do it. You're muted. I'm going to go ahead and turn this off. Okay, what piece of equipment are you

[Aaron Straker]:

What happened

[Bryan Boorstein]:

using?

[Aaron Straker]:

to my program right now? Dumbbells, dumbbells, or I was, because the previous gym that I was at here, Body Factory, I have to give them credit. The dumbbells increment in two kilogram increments up to like

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I mean, that's four and a half

[Aaron Straker]:

32

[Bryan Boorstein]:

pounds, so it's not so different

[Aaron Straker]:

kilograms,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

than a US one going five

[Aaron Straker]:

pretty gangster

[Bryan Boorstein]:

pounds.

[Aaron Straker]:

for things like, you know. That is true, I guess. Yeah. But

[Bryan Boorstein]:

That's

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

nice.

[Aaron Straker]:

was nice

[Bryan Boorstein]:

That's

[Aaron Straker]:

because

[Bryan Boorstein]:

really

[Aaron Straker]:

then there was

[Bryan Boorstein]:

nice.

[Aaron Straker]:

a lot like,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

or sorry,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

in the smaller ones, they increment by one. So there'd be like a two kilogram, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, like all the way up through, I think 14, it incremented in a single one. So things like that, it was nice. Now I've been kind of doing like a, like a high to low pull across sort of thing that I'm like positioning to make it like really tough in the length. I don't love it, but I was just wanted to add in a different rear delt movement because I really only have like, it's not like two I love in the PEC deck here. I couldn't get my arms straight on it.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

It wasn't like the bars didn't go long enough for me to like

[Bryan Boorstein]:

That

[Aaron Straker]:

get

[Bryan Boorstein]:

movement

[Aaron Straker]:

my arms

[Bryan Boorstein]:

kind

[Aaron Straker]:

straight.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

of sucks

[Aaron Straker]:

Like I

[Bryan Boorstein]:

anyway.

[Aaron Straker]:

had to keep

[Bryan Boorstein]:

I

[Aaron Straker]:

my

[Bryan Boorstein]:

feel like

[Aaron Straker]:

arms

[Bryan Boorstein]:

it

[Aaron Straker]:

in

[Bryan Boorstein]:

doesn't

[Aaron Straker]:

like a

[Bryan Boorstein]:

line

[Aaron Straker]:

good

[Bryan Boorstein]:

up

[Aaron Straker]:

bend

[Bryan Boorstein]:

properly.

[Aaron Straker]:

and I'm like,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Like

[Aaron Straker]:

well,

[Bryan Boorstein]:

when

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

you

[Aaron Straker]:

defeats the purpose.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

A-B ducked at a horizontal angle, it never feels quite as rear delt-y as when it comes at like that high to low angle a little bit more. So yeah, anyway, as we kind of continue

[Aaron Straker]:

Agreed.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

this conversation

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

around counting volume, the truth is like, I had a number of people say this on the Instagram post too, but I literally don't count volume. Like I just don't. I train to a point where I feel like the stimulus is sufficient and I choose exercises that targeting one. And so I'll give you a couple examples. Like I have a day that's more lap focused than, than rear delt or upper back focused. And so all of my movements on that day are going to be driven by like humoral depression and shoulder extension. And so those movements are all done with my elbows staying in tight to the body and I'm calling that a lat day. Understanding that there's still going to be a ton of volume for my rear delts and my teres and my upper back and all that stuff and I'm just not counting it, I'm not worrying about it. And then on my other back day, it's much more movements with ab ducted elbow positions, whether the elbows are a little higher, a little lower, they're not neutral grip. So I'm letting my hands be in like a more semi pronated position, which I certainly feel more in like my rear delts and upper back. But I also understand that there's, you know, some lat work that comes along with that too. And so then you can look at something like an RDL or a 45 degree hip extension. And it's interesting that you said, you know, you look at your 45 degree hip extension, you're like, that is my glute work. Because that hip flexion happens, the glutes are the primary mover as best as I can understand it. So even if you're doing a 45 degree hip extension where your legs are straight, or you're doing an RDL, say you're doing an RDL to bias the hamstrings and you're doing them with straighter legs, I still believe that the glutes are the primary mover in that movement because at the hip. And so I, if you were to ask me how many direct sets of glutes I have in my program, I would tell you zero. But I know by full account that every time that I'm hinging at the hip or that I'm doing a hack squat or a pendulum squat or a split squat or anything like that, that the glutes are getting stimulus. I'm just doing those movements for my quads for the ride. Um, so that's the way I tend to think about it. And I go more for, you know, I am getting sufficient stimulus within this session for the intended muscle group. And I'm not really worried about whether I'm doing four sets or six sets or eight sets or how many sets I'm doing across the week or anything like that. And in fact, part of day cycles like I like I do is because I don't have to think about it in terms of a week. I don't have to say I'm doing X amount of weekly volume for this muscle group or whatnot. So so I love that. And then as far as arm work goes, I only count direct work as arm work. And you know, maybe after my Dexa and my experiment, maybe I should change that. Like I'm not going to go to the extent of being like, well, I'm doing a bench press. So this then becomes a tricep set or half a tricep set or anything like that. But it is interesting when you throw in close grip bench instead of a tricep extension, you are now doing this specifically for the triceps. So I'm guessing in your head, you're not really thinking that this is a set for triceps and half a set for chest or, or anything like that. You're just like, Hey, I need a tricep exercise. this close grip bench.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what I think. It's almost like a cop-out answer, but my chest just grows. I don't really do that much chest volume because it's just a stronger body part. So I know like, hey, by nature, I follow lower chest volume anyway. This is just some extra volume there. And I do like more anterior delt personally anyway, because again, I think I just don't have as great of development relative to chest. tricep exercise, it's kind of just additional drops in the volume

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

into these

[Bryan Boorstein]:

no, I totally agree with that.

[Aaron Straker]:

other muscle

[Bryan Boorstein]:

And so then

[Aaron Straker]:

groups

[Bryan Boorstein]:

we can like look,

[Aaron Straker]:

that

[Bryan Boorstein]:

look

[Aaron Straker]:

could

[Bryan Boorstein]:

at

[Aaron Straker]:

be

[Bryan Boorstein]:

anterior

[Aaron Straker]:

benefited

[Bryan Boorstein]:

delts

[Aaron Straker]:

anyway.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

and it's really the same deal. Like I would never, I would never go to the extent to count anterior delt volume when I'm pressing unless I'm doing a movement that is directly targeting the anterior delts. And so I have an anterior delt press in my program. And so I count that in my head, I guess, if I'm counting volume, I'd say that is an anterior delt exercise. And I understand in the back of my mind clavicular pack that's probably going to come along with that, but I'm not really counting that as chest volume. And so really, when when we look at my program, like if I were to actually analyze it and count volume, I would say I have volume for my back. Maybe I would split that into lats and an upper back, I might get nuanced enough to do that. I would clavicular volume and sternal volume and costal volume for my chest. It's just chest. And then I have bicep and tricep and I have quad and I have hams. And that's literally like seven different body parts, not 20 different body parts. And then I just understand that everything else is going to come along with it because in the nature of doing compound movements, all these things work in ridiculous and absurd to try to quantify things as different amounts, because we really have no tangible way of even assessing. Like if I'm doing a anterior delt press, how much of that volume is anterior delt? How much is clavicular pack? How much is tricep? Like it's just a pressing movement for your pressing structure and everything is going to get some stimulus. And so that's pretty much the way that I think about volume.

[Aaron Straker]:

Yeah, I definitely don't disagree. I think there's, not to open up a new can of worms, but even like your own individual like proclivity for how well you can provide a stimulus to a target tissue changes that would end, like what the stimulus ends up being. Like I used to do But since I've gotten better at actually providing the stimulus, I do literally like 30% of the volume, maybe 25, that I used

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

to do, but my stimulus is through the roof compared to what it used to be. So volume isn't one-to-one, and you will generally find that some body parts will need more volume because you kind of suck at contracting them well enough to provide the stimulus you're looking for.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]:

time as you learn your body and learn biomechanics and things like that a little bit more. So it's, yeah, I think it's a good way to start the sentence in terms of like what exercises go and where and stuff. But I think the importance gets very

[Bryan Boorstein]:

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]:

heavily

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that

[Aaron Straker]:

kind

[Bryan Boorstein]:

actually

[Aaron Straker]:

of overplayed

[Bryan Boorstein]:

brings me

[Aaron Straker]:

and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

one

[Aaron Straker]:

don't

[Bryan Boorstein]:

additional

[Aaron Straker]:

try and

[Bryan Boorstein]:

thought

[Aaron Straker]:

micromanage

[Bryan Boorstein]:

that.

[Aaron Straker]:

it too much.

[Bryan Boorstein]:

going back to that like 10 to 20 sets per muscle group thing. This is something we've touched on a bunch in the, in the podcast, but I think it's relevant to this discussion is the idea of just sets being different, which you alluded to in that, you know, one set of, of a, of a hack squat isn't the same as one set of a lay extension. And even to break that down further, one set of a, of an exercise to three RIR isn't the same as, and set of an exercise to zero RIR. And so, That's where maybe things like effective reps become a potentially better way of counting volume than just total sets or hard sets or whatever. And so you have like the different levels to the thing. And it just really, there's a point where you're advanced enough where you just like, know you're doing enough, which I think is what Aaron and I more or less do is like, Hey, we can just feel that this is enough. Like, some days you do two sets of hack squat and two my split squats right now, like they're on the agenda, but you know, four sets was enough. And old Aaron from two years ago would have done like three sets of hack and three sets of leg extension and three sets of split squats and three sets of this and 15 sets total for your quads or something like that. And that would have felt like enough. And so the amount that feels like enough for you varies as your ability to do quality work increases. That also applies then to the auxiliary muscle groups. And in one sense, maybe it does make it more relevant to count it. Like I know Cass counts his clavicular, his costal and his sternal volume. Like he legitimately splits those out. And he's like, when I'm asking him what he's training today, he's like, well, I have, you know, four work sets of clavicular and four work sets of costal and four work sets of iliac lat and four work sets of thoracic lat, you know, and I'm like, I'm like, cool. that that, you know, he's created this entire modality and business around segregating these areas through very specific exercise selection and execution. And that's dope. And I think that, you know, that probably is applicable to a certain audience and a certain number of people across the intellectual curiosity perspective that stuff gets me. But at the end of the day, I'm going to call it lat volume and not thoracic iliac and lumbar lat volume. Because it just keeps it simpler in my mind. And, and at this stage, I think there's something to be said for just knowing you did enough, having a quality session and kind of being a cool. That's really all I got.

[Aaron Straker]:

Very well said there, Brian. Same. So we will wrap this one up. As always, guys, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week.

Life/Episode Updates
Results Breakdown of Bryan’s Single Arm Training Experiment
Bryan’s Conclusion Regarding the Experiment and Aaron’s Thoughts About it
The Concern that Additional Cardio Would Create Muscle Loss
Calculating Sets per Muscle Group Weekly
Bryan and Aaron Personal Takes on Counting Volume