[Aaron Straker]: 0:29

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Apologies on the kind of low number of episodes for over like the last kind of month and a half. I had some travel. Brian was just on his yearly vacation with family in Wisconsin. I botched the GVS timing and we've really just had a very low number for us historically. But we're back, Brian's home from vacations. I don't have any more travel hopefully, so we should be able to get another consistent stream of episodes out. In this episode, we're gonna cover some updates since it's been a while, so you guys can know just kind of the latest of what's going on with us, which we're always very transparent and like to share about. And then we have four questions that we're just going to kind of go on a deeper dive in throughout the episode. I'm going to cover them from a very, very high level really quickly, just so you know what's coming for the episode. So first is on a food pyramid graphic posted by Max, I don't, Max

[Bryan]: 1:25

Luga

[Aaron Straker]: 1:25

L,

[Bryan]: 1:25

at

[Aaron Straker]: 1:25

I'm not

[Bryan]: 1:26

Lugavere

[Aaron Straker]: 1:26

even. Okay, Lugavere, thank you. I was like, I'm not even gonna try and botch this, but it's someone that's a bigger social media personality, puts out pretty good information. When we got a question on that, we have a cardio question for improving the recovery period for like a sport in between sport bouts to sport being tennis, which I think is a pretty interesting one, pairing hypertrophy work alongside CrossFit, which is something that Brian and I know very, very well from a personal level. And then lastly... if we ever use pre-fatigue methods with our hypertrophy training, which I'm very excited to talk about because I am a big fan of that actually. But before we get into the questions, Brian, what's going on my friend?

[Bryan]: 2:09

Yeah, there's a lot of updates today. It's been a long time and it feels really good to be back on the regular program here. I think that this section we had of four weeks where we only put out one episode is the biggest break we've taken in, I guess, two and a half years of doing this podcast. So definitely feels good to be back on schedule. Glad I'm home and things are more routine from here. So. One of the things that's been on my update list for a month now and I haven't had a chance to talk about with everyone is my blood work that I did. The blood panel came back and this was the one where I finally took some time off prior. So I had discussed on the podcast how my liver enzymes and my kidney enzymes seemed to be higher than you would want them to be. The liver ones were still in range but they were kind of in the like middle upper part of the range. And then my kidney ones were all just high. And the theory there was that was a result of creatinine, which then affects the EGFR reading, because it's based on creatinine. And we had assumed over the years that it's been high just because I take creatine. And so I stopped taking creatine. I did a washout period for six weeks. And I took the time off heading into it. and still my creatinine was high. And so I think I've realized that that's not that big of a deal because I eat a high protein diet and I have a high level of muscle mass. And so regardless of whether I take creatine or not, my creatinine probably will be elevated anyways. And so this time what we did was we checked a marker called C-statin C, and that is a way to assess kidney function in the absence of the impact of muscle mass or creatine or high protein diet or anything like that. And so my C-stat and C number came back in range, but toward the higher end of that range. However, when it was put into a formula and filtered down to EGFR, which is something filtration rate, what does the EG stand for?

[Aaron Straker]: 4:26

estimated glomerular filtration rate.

[Bryan]: 4:28

That one, yeah. So when you put the C-Stat and C number into the EGFR formula, I came back normal. And so I feel much better about kidney function. Liver function didn't change a whole ton even with the time off. I dug a little deeper into that and I'm wondering if that, like it seems like liver markers might be sensitive up to like a week of time off prior to training and I only took two or three days off. So I'm wondering if you know that's a piece of it, but either way, my liver numbers were in the mid to high 20s and the range is 20 to 40. So I'm like solidly in the middle of the liver enzyme range, not a big deal there. Testosterone was still in the low to mid 300s. So that seems to just be where I am. That's been where it's been for a decade or so. And then on the positive side, one of the other things we were looking at was Blanking out, blanking out, blanking out. It's an oxidative reverse T3. So reverse T3 has been consistently on the higher end for me, sometimes a higher out of range and sometimes just kinda high. This time it was a 15 and I think the top of the range is like 23 or 24. So it was solidly like the lowest reverse T3 I've had in a really long time. And so those are. The main things, as far as like action items or, oh, another one was uric acid was kind of high. It was still within range, but it was higher than I think the guy I'm consulting with wanted it to be. And so that may just be a factor of the fact that I eat a lot of fruit and it could be a little bit of genetic too. He wants to send me to get an MRI to figure out the testosterone thing because he's said there are no signs. that I'm having an issue with the communication from the brain to the testes. So like LH and FSH?

[Aaron Straker]: 6:37

Yeah, luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone,

[Bryan]: 6:39

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 6:40

if those

[Bryan]: 6:40

LH

[Aaron Straker]: 6:40

were like

[Bryan]: 6:40

and FSH

[Aaron Straker]: 6:41

super high.

[Bryan]: 6:42

are okay. They're not like, we're like the best they could be. But they're okay. And so he doesn't think that there's like a communication issue. So he actually wants me to get an MRI on my pituitary. Apparently he experienced the same thing and said until he got that MRI and realized he had a I don't know if it was a Legion on the pituitary or something like that, but until he got that corrected, he said his testosterone was similar to mine, and then as soon as that issue was resolved, testosterone went up into the 600s. So I'm at least gonna entertain getting this MRI and seeing what to do from there. But I don't

[Aaron Straker]: 7:18

I mean...

[Bryan]: 7:18

wanna belabor this topic on blood work too much because I do wanna talk a lot about my metabolic cart testing and VO2 max testing and stuff that I did yesterday. Do you have any final thoughts on blood work?

[Aaron Straker]: 7:32

I mean, the only thing I was going to say is one, what was like free testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin like were those correlative with the lower one or not? And then I was only I was going to make the joke around like, well, you have insurance, like you might as well use it right with the with the MRI sort of thing. That's like the I wouldn't call it a downside, but kind of the thing is like you pay for insurance, but when you live this lifestyle, like you never really use it sort of thing. So it's like, hey, at least go, you know,

[Bryan]: 8:00

Well, this

[Aaron Straker]: 8:00

get

[Bryan]: 8:00

wouldn't

[Aaron Straker]: 8:00

things

[Bryan]: 8:00

be

[Aaron Straker]: 8:00

taken

[Bryan]: 8:00

covered

[Aaron Straker]: 8:00

looked

[Bryan]: 8:01

by

[Aaron Straker]: 8:01

at,

[Bryan]: 8:01

insurance,

[Aaron Straker]: 8:01

right?

[Bryan]: 8:01

unfortunately.

[Aaron Straker]: 8:02

Of course,

[Bryan]: 8:02

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 8:03

of course

[Bryan]: 8:03

of

[Aaron Straker]: 8:03

it wouldn't,

[Bryan]: 8:03

course.

[Aaron Straker]: 8:04

yeah.

[Bryan]: 8:06

And regarding SHBG, I think that was in the normal ranges as well. So he looked at that, FSH and LH, to kind of assess that the communication was OK between brain and testes. And

[Aaron Straker]: 8:17

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 8:17

that's why the pituitary issue popped up. So we will see what the deal is with that. Regarding free testosterone, that's also been consistently about the same for a number of years. It's right about that, like, 6.5 to 7.5 range, which is

[Aaron Straker]: 8:32

lower.

[Bryan]: 8:32

low end slash slightly lower than the range, which kind of falls right in line with my free testosterone as well, so, or

[Aaron Straker]: 8:40

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 8:41

rather with my total testosterone. Do you want to jump into an update real quick before I get into cardio things?

[Aaron Straker]: 8:46

Now let's talk cardio and then we'll all cover mine.

[Bryan]: 8:48

All right, cool. So I did this metabolic cart testing yesterday and there was some good and some bad from it. Some things that I'm kind of working through. Basically the way that the test worked was that I went into the lab here in Boulder. They hooked me up to the whole machine, the VO2 max thing, there's the big tube and the mask and all that stuff. And they use power in watts, which is great because that's kind of how I've been. training more or less. I mean, I've been using heart rate, but it kind of correlates to a general watt number. And so they start me at 100 watts, which is a super easy pedal. It was like an RPE of 1 or 1.5, something like that. And every four minutes, they add 27 watts to the power output. And I keep my cadence the same, so I'm just working harder. So it went from like, it was around 27, 27 to 30 each jump. So the first one was easy, the second one took me to 130 watts, that was still pretty easy, I think I gave it like an RPE of two or three. And then it jumped up to 157 watts. And 157 watts is where I would tend to call the lower end of my zone two. So in my brain, and I'll talk about this model here in a second of cardio training, but. In my brain, I would look at 160 was the number I would use for watts for kind of like my lower end of zone two. And that's on the five zone system. And then there's a higher end of zone two as well. The thing with both with all of zone two in this five zone model is that all of it is supposed to be under what would be considered two millimole of lactate. So every time that I would do one of these four minute intervals where they would add 30 watts. in the last 10 seconds of that interval, they would prick my ear and take my lactate. And the point of that was to see at what point does the lactate start to become a runaway train. So if you're at rest and you're just sitting here talking, as I am on this podcast, my lactate should be plus or minus about 1 millimole. And then as you begin training, it might go up to 1.3. It'll go up to 1.8, whatever. And eventually it'll kind of stabilize if you don't increase effort. So 160 watts, which correlated to about 125 beats per minute or so on my heart rate, that was a point where I was hanging out at 1.3, 1.5 millimole. So it was very, very sustainable. The curve didn't start ascending off. I wasn't like on a runaway train or anything like that. Then they did the jump to 180 watts, which took my heart rate up into the mid-130s, which is what I usually would call kind of my high-end zone 2. And at that point, the lactate jumped to 1.8. So we're still not on like a runaway train, but we're approaching the point where things are starting to get tough, and I gave that an RPE 5. So that's right around where I would consider the top end of zone 2. And the positive side of this was that I was spot on with these assessments. So as I've been training subjectively over the last number of months, I've been just kind of assuming that 160 watts is my bottom, 180 to 190 watts is my top. And this test seemed to validate that. And so that's really cool that the subjective assessments of the talk test and feelings of RPE, sustainability, any sort of these subjective metrics that we use to assess whether we're in zone two, I had pretty much nailed those. And so that's at least reassuring that I'm training in the right zones. I'm not overcooking the chicken, so to speak. And so that was cool. Then I got up to 208 watts, I think was the next jump. And that one, my lactate jumped up over two. So I knew I could feel in the moment. I was like, yeah, this is certainly not sustainable. Then it jumped up to like 235 or 240 watts. That was very not sustainable. That was where my lactate reached 3.8, which is the upper end of... Man, I should have talked about polarized training first because this would all make more sense. But essentially, for zone two in the five zone system, we wanna be under two millimole, which I assessed and was accurately there. And then there's a range between two and four millimole that they call like tempo or sweet spot. And it's like a range where you're working hard and you can do it steady state, but it's hard. Like you're breathing hard, it's challenging, but you're not dying. And then there's a point where you hit four millimole of lactate, and that's when I hit around this 235 watt number, where my heart rate shot up to about 157 beats a minute. And that's where the train really starts running away. Like the slope of the line that was going up, it turned steep. So at that point, it like started going like this. And that's what they consider my FTP. So then I did one more four-minute bow after that and my lactate went up to seven and I was basically dead. So I wanna talk about the model of polarized training a little bit because there's a guy named Steven Seiler and he would be what I consider like, or what is widely considered like the godfather of this polarized training model. And the polarized training model basically states that you spend 80% of your time below that first lactate turn point, so where your lactate is under two, you spend 80% of your time there. That's like your typical zone two. And then you spend almost no time training between two and four millimoles of lactate, which is that like sweet spot or tempo period of training. And you spend most of your other time, that other 20% is spent above the second lactate threshold. So that would be like your interval work and where you're working really hard, lactate's accumulating, it's unsustainable. In this model of polarized training that Steven Seiler created, there's actually only three zones. And physiologically, this makes way more sense. There's zone one, which is all of that easy training below the first lactate threshold. Then there's zone two, which is the kind of don't go there zone. It's like the middle tempo sweet spot zone. And then there's zone three, which is all the unsustainable interval work that happens above four millimoles of lactate. And so when he created this polarized system, he did it based on these physiological levels that we see. And so you guys have heard me talk a lot about zone two and zone five, and how mostly we wanna be in zone two, and we wanna be in zone five, but we don't really wanna be in zone three and zone four. This is like an extrapolation of the polarized training model. It's just... doing it over a five zone system instead of a three zone system. But the three zone system is much more intuitive because there really are these three kind of physiological zones. And so anyways, with that in mind, the negative side of this whole test was that my VO2 max came out to be 34.6, which is really, really low. And it's so low to the point that I actually struggle to believe that that's actually what my VO2 max is. Because like Peter Attia has talked about how if you're 80 years old and you wanna live the best longevity life that you can, you need to make sure that your VO2 max never drops below 30. Because in his words, when your VO2 max drops below 30, you can no longer do a lot of the tasks of daily life that you wanna do. One of them being you apparently can't even walk three miles in an hour. if your VO2 max is under 30. Three miles in an hour is a 20 minute walking pace. And you need to be able to do that for three miles with a VO2 max of 30. I have a VO2 max of 34.6 apparently. And yet I am able to, man, I don't even run, but I am very confident I could run three miles in 30 minutes if I had to. I go out and I do. 90 to 120 minute bike rides with my heart rate at 140 beats per minute in, you know, zone two or whatever. Like it, it is very unbelievable to me. And it, it really threw me for a loop yesterday emotionally as I, as I got that number and I was looking at all of the data of like, what can people at 34.6 VO two max do? And I was like, I do so much more than that. So I don't know if I'm being powered by like anaerobic power and I'm using my muscle mass as like a compensatory mechanism. if the test just mislabeled my VO2 max. But the other thing is 34.6 is on the lower end of average for someone my age. So there's like average, and then there's the range of average, and I'm like at the very bottom of average. And so in my mind, I'm thinking, I'm like, wait, if I'm below average or like slightly lower than average, does that mean there's like 50 or 60% of people out there that have better car? than me in the world that are my age. So like some random dude that I just pick out from like the middle of the middle America can just hop on a bike and like keep up with me. The whole thing just, it really threw me for a loop and I've been working through a lot of thoughts on it, but that's the number that came back. So.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:26

That that so with that number you would be the bottom tier of like the bottom average tier of like gen pop or like 30 or 40 year old athletes that

[Bryan]: 18:37

No, these

[Aaron Straker]: 18:37

would.

[Bryan]: 18:37

are just everybody in the world that's my age. I would be below average.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:45

Feel like I would bet on that sort of thing. Or bet against that, I mean.

[Bryan]: 18:49

I know I know I agree. So I just like yeah

[Aaron Straker]: 18:55

The place you did the testing, was it like university or like a place where you go to, like one of those newer, like new age places where you go pay, like a Dexascan place where you go pay to get a Dexascan. Like what type of place did it?

[Bryan]: 19:10

It was more, it wasn't a university, but the guys that ran the lab are exercise physiologists. I found them through a podcast called Fast Talk, which is a,

[Aaron Straker]: 19:21

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 19:23

it's an evidence-based cycling podcast where all the people that hosted have PhDs, the guy running the test for me had a master's in exercise phys.

[Aaron Straker]: 19:32

Okay.

[Bryan]: 19:33

Yeah, these guys are, they learned and they are in partnership with UC Boulder. So.

[Aaron Straker]: 19:39

Understood.

[Bryan]: 19:39

So you would think it's accurate. I talked to Dave McHoney for a while about this afterwards And he thinks that the low result was a factor of me doing it cycling instead of running And he thinks that if I would have done a running test that I would have elicited a much higher vo2 max

[Aaron Straker]: 19:58

For some reason, I thought VO2 max tests were always administered cycling.

[Bryan]: 20:03

No, no, I would say that I've actually heard most of them being done running as well. You definitely can do them cycling, so I don't know, the other interesting factor is VO2 max and max heart rate are supposed to occur more or less simultaneously. But my heart rate on this test never got above 173, which is about 10 beats below my predicted maximum.

[Aaron Straker]: 20:26

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 20:26

And so when you look at VO2 max, I think there's a factor of max heart rate and kind of the... the discrepancy between resting heart rate and max heart rate has an impact and the way that is all kind of put together in some way. But either way, he said, you know, my oxygen and CO2 consumption, you know, leveled off and it leveled off at 34.6. And so, yeah, that has led to a lot of thoughts in my mind and they're very dichotomous thoughts. On one hand, I have this thought of like, man, if I'm just like so bad at cardio and I can work this hard at cardio and I'm still just so awful at it, like, should I just stop pursuing this and just go back to being like a hypertrophy guy because that seems to be genetically where I'm most predisposed.

[Aaron Straker]: 21:19

Yes.

[Bryan]: 21:19

Second, what? Second thought is because I'm so bad at this cardio and I wanna live a long, healthy life. should I change my perspective and put cardio as like my primary tool and see if maybe some of my cardio results are being mitigated by recovery resources being allocated to training hypertrophy. So I don't know where I stand on that. I find myself leaning towards maybe prioritizing cardio at this point, at least until I. when I have this bike race that I'm doing in Moab and making cardio like my number one and just seeing if by doing less training or less focus on lifting that maybe that can elicit some improvements. But then on the other hand, I feel like if I just look at my performance over the last year, since I started doing cardio to where I am now, it's incredibly enhanced. Like I... I can do so much more now than I could do then. Like if I look at my data from back in August when I first started this cardio, I was riding the same routes I do now at 13 miles per hour with the same heart rate. And now I'm doing the same route at 16 miles per hour with the same heart rate. And that's not just, you know, one random time where maybe the wind was in my favor or something like that. Like this is... Repeat times over and over I'm able to do this thing three miles per hour faster Which then also makes me think like man What would my vo2 max have been back in August before I actually got better at cardio if it's 34.6 now I must have been like half dead. How did I even like walk upstairs without keeling over back in August? you know, so there just seems to be like a lot of holes in a lot of these stories and Yeah, that's basically the synopsis of it, and I'm still working through a lot of that.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:25

If you're curious to my vote, I would vote for a second opinion of taking the test somewhere else.

[Bryan]: 23:31

Yeah, and probably doing it on a treadmill.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:33

Yeah, I find, and let me bet on it too.

[Bryan]: 23:39

Let you bet on it.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:40

I will

[Bryan]: 23:40

Okay.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:40

bet not against you, whatever, however that goes, because I have a hard time believing that your average 40-year-old dad can show up to the metabolic cart. test it just best your score.

[Bryan]: 23:55

I know, no, I agree, man, I agree. So if anybody out there listening, you know, has experience with these VO2 tests, maybe you're even an exercise physiologist yourself, or you've run tests like this on other people, drop some comments below, send me a DM, something like that. Let me know your thoughts on this ridiculously low VO2 max based on, you know, my output and things like that. And yeah, the last thing I wanted to talk about on cardio is to quickly go over my, I have a four day rotation that I've been using for a number of weeks now with my cardio, actually a number of months. And so a couple people have asked me, what is my rotation, how do I work it in with lifting and stuff like that. And so I have essentially a four day rotation that consists of, the first day is usually a high end zone two ride. So as I was talking about, it would be that kind of pushing the boundary of that 2.0 millimole lactate. So about 180 watts, about 140 beats per minute on my heart rate, that's my first ride of the week. Then my second ride of the week is a low end zone two ride. So that would be more of like that 160 watts, about 125 beats per minute on my heart rate. So I have a harder zone two session, an easier zone two session. Then day three is usually some sort of interval or multi-zonal work where I'll be in and out of zone four and zone five a little bit. and then the fourth day is a rest day. And so usually I'll make sure that there's no leg work on the day that's the interval work. I'll try to put my leg work on one of the two zone two days. And then the upper body stuff will usually either be on the interval day, or because the interval day is very mentally taxing, I might put the upper body day on. another of the zone two days or one of the rest days and leave the interval day just to be an interval day. And so that's kind of my four-way rotation where there's one moderately hard workout, one easy workout, and one interval workout that takes my soul and then a rest day. And so that four-day rotation kind of works over an eight-day period. I go through it twice and that correlates pretty well with my... my lifting week as well. So anyways, that is all I have on that. That was a bit long-winded, but I really needed to get that out. So thank you all for listening and I will pass it over to Straker.

[Aaron Straker]: 26:17

Yeah, so the biggest one for me is I am in the home stretch of my seven month gaining phase. Either this week, which is it's Tuesday, July 11th or next week, which would be obviously the week after that, will be my final week. 2.16.1 has been my peak weight so far and last week I missed my 2.15 average by only like three-tenths of a pound. So it is likely that this week once my post-quad doms set in, I'll have my weight spikes because I'll have three high weight spikes once I have my leg doms, which generally start Wednesday bad and that will carry me through. So it's been this week, I should say last week, it kind of hit me to the point where I'm like, I'm kind of reaching a body fat percentage and I'm desire to continue pushing sort of thing like once I get a few meals in me throughout the day Especially in the evening like and my stomachs like really full Mike I kind of feel a little fat for myself, you know, obviously that's always relative. But coupled with that, my shorts are all like maxed the fuck out and my clothes fit kind of weird. Not kind of weird, like weird. I'm kind of ready

[Bryan]: 27:41

Hehehehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 27:41

to be done per se. And I'm ready for a new challenge, like, which kind of leads me into my second point. I've really have enjoyed the numbers go up aspect of training. Every week I can set PRs. I've even hit a few lifetime PRs on certain things. We weren't necessarily tracking back in the day because you're tracking your snatch, your clean and jerk, back squat, deadlift and stuff. You're not tracking your overhead shoulder press. But I ran like... the kilo to pound conversion today, or last week on the shoulder press, and I was like, that's a big number. I know I have not used that number before, like shoulder pressing sort of thing. And then what else did I hit? Chest supported incline dumbbell rows. I ran that, I was like, that's never been this high either. So that has been cool. And RDLs are another one that have been like, I'm excited to hit PRs, but the cost of what it takes to perform that, it crushes me. I am like central fatigue, like red lines after that RDL set. And I believe I posted this week's one. It might have been on my stories, but there's one from like two weeks ago that's up as a reel, and you can kind of see, but those ones like that and my... Pendulum squat set like they take my soul But it has been very fun to know like I can beat it week in and week out So that there

[Bryan]: 29:20

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:20

has been that kind of silver lining of the gaining phase, but I am Reaching the end of like I don't want to keep Taking my soul each week to continue to beat these numbers per se like I'm ready to not be a little bit as fat, too

[Bryan]: 29:34

Yeah, I have a few questions on this. So

[Aaron Straker]: 29:36

Of course.

[Bryan]: 29:36

the shoulder press got up to 38 kilos, is that right?

[Aaron Straker]: 29:40

I did

[Bryan]: 29:40

36.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:41

38 kilos for nine reps

[Bryan]: 29:44

Yeah, that's strong.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:45

last week, and I'm supposed to do it tomorrow.

[Bryan]: 29:48

Yeah. Do you

[Aaron Straker]: 29:49

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 29:49

do that first as your first pressing movement?

[Aaron Straker]: 29:52

first pressing movement.

[Bryan]: 29:53

Yeah. I was doing them the other day and I was trying to convert my numbers to kilos. So usually I do more of a laid back anterior delt press because with my rib cage structure, Cass kind of informed me that, you know, I need to be more at like a 45 degree angle, but I've noticed

[Aaron Straker]: 30:10

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 30:10

you're at more of like a 60 to 75 degree angle when you do yours.

[Aaron Straker]: 30:14

Yeah, the one with like the notch lower would be a little bit too much like closer to an inclined press

[Bryan]: 30:20

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 30:20

for me. Yeah.

[Bryan]: 30:21

but yours does look quite vertical when you do it. And so I raised the back of my seat about my last session to do it just to kind of see, because I was like, man, 38 kilos, I saw you doing that. I was like, that is a hefty dumbbell. You're over 80 pounds basically at that point.

[Aaron Straker]: 30:36

Yeah,

[Bryan]: 30:36

And

[Aaron Straker]: 30:36

I think

[Bryan]: 30:36

so,

[Aaron Straker]: 30:37

it's like

[Bryan]: 30:37

yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 30:37

83 or 84 or something.

[Bryan]: 30:39

yeah. So I was doing it, granted it was my second exercise. It was after a horizontal chest press. So I was a little fatigued. but I was using essentially 30 kilo dumbbells and I was getting about the same reps that you were. So I was just a solid, a solid like 20 pounds or 18 pounds behind what you were doing. And I was just realizing that like, you are getting really fucking strong at that movement.

[Aaron Straker]: 31:06

Yeah, that one's been fun. I do enjoy that. Like once I,

[Bryan]: 31:12

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 31:12

once that was like one of the things like going to end one, learning that, it like completely changed that movement for me. It feels really strong. It doesn't hurt my shoulders. You know, I have like a good range of motion. That was like a light bulb sort of, you know, weekend for that movement for me.

[Bryan]: 31:29

much better than doing it completely vertical like we used to do back in the day where it really is like a legit shoulder press.

[Aaron Straker]: 31:35

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 31:37

Second question, I noticed you changed your RDLs from going to the ground to stopping just above the ground and changing direction, so what was the impetus for that?

[Aaron Straker]: 31:47

So when I came back from the States, my back was quite tight from all the flying, presumably. And I personally, I know everyone is a little bit different and it is a bit of like a blurry, a blurred line. I do really kind of. personally view the like stiff-legged deadlift off the ground to be like a different kind of movement than the RDL. There's some people that say it's like the same thing. I would say it's like 90% the same thing. And because the SLDL off the ground requires like a little bit extra mobility and peak range of motion when my back's a little like tight or not feeling like 100%, I always kick over to the RDL and then it had been a very long time since I like progressed the RDL. So I was like, I did like two weeks at it and I'm like, I'm just going to keep it in and progress this now. So that was the real reason.

[Bryan]: 32:52

Do you feel a difference in stimulus, hovering and changing direction versus letting it settle on the ground?

[Aaron Straker]: 32:58

Yeah, it's kind of almost like for me, the S, the stiff leg of deadlift is more like a, it's a bottom up movement, right? I'm like resetting on the bottom. I set my hips and hamstrings. It feels more hamstring dominant to me or biased, I should say. That is I'm at a further end range of motion where the RDL is, it ends up being a little bit more like glute for me. That being said, I am performing this third in the rotation in my...and I basically have a seated hamstring curl and a lying hamstring curl, so I'm trying to purposely, like, fatigue my hamstrings going into this movement so that I can use less load on it.

[Bryan]: 33:41

Interesting. And then my last question on all of this is as you transition out of this massing phase, are you going to spend some time at maintenance to cement in quotes the gains or do you transition immediately into a deficit and go from there?

[Aaron Straker]: 33:58

I don't know what we're gonna do. And I'm really just gonna let Jackson steer the ship. But in my most recent check-in, he's like, we'll hang out here for a week or two weeks. You know, and then can say what he kind of likes to see. And I don't wanna speak too much for him is not big ranges in weigh-ins, right? So this was a week where I had like, I had like a 213.6 weigh-in, but I also had like a 216.1. And so that's a pretty big swing. in a day or two period, especially for me, like I'm eating a meal plan day in and day out, identical foods, identical quantities. So he wanted to see things like a little bit closer together before, but I don't know too much around what we will do in terms of like how aggressive the food cut might be or anything off the start. I'm not sure yet.

[Bryan]: 34:45

Are you looking forward to kind of eating less and being a little hungry maybe even?

[Aaron Straker]: 34:51

I kind of am. And I was talking to Jenny about this earlier. I'm at this very, I'm at this interesting position in my life where I feel like I'm never going to have this opportunity again. And mostly it's because of my age, the next phases of my life. But I have this phase where like money, I'm like, of course there's always like, I want bigger coaching business, like, you know, obviously new clients and that sort of thing. But like, I can pay all my bills. Like I'm good there. I have, you know, housing, relationships, security. Like a lot of these other big facets of life are like pretty good. I want to treat this like dieting phase almost like a training camp sort of thing. So I want to purposefully dedicate more time to it because I'm in this interesting sweet spot in my life where I'm never going to really have this opportunity again. And I never have, right? I've never like competed, been on stage or anything like that, nor do I ever kind of really plan to. But I want to almost treat it as such. So I'd like to have like morning cardio sessions, right? And I really just wanna kind of treat it as this, you know, I'm chasing my best physique ever and it's probably my last go at it. And I want to just have a lot of fun with it per se. And part of that fun is the challenge, which kind of leads me into my second, you know, update sort of thing.

[Bryan]: 36:13

Cool. Yeah, I dig

[Aaron Straker]: 36:14

Any

[Bryan]: 36:14

it.

[Aaron Straker]: 36:14

questions?

[Bryan]: 36:14

Well,

[Aaron Straker]: 36:15

Okay.

[Bryan]: 36:16

no, I think that makes sense. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 36:18

And then, kind of, the past three weeks, I have been experiencing what I am perceiving as some dopamine deficiency issues, and it's been kind of the first time in my life with it, and kind of to explain that motivation has been down. Fulfillment and joy, I would say across the board, is down hard. And there's times where I know like, for example, client check-ins, that's like my biggest weekly work deliverable. I can conceptualize that as like these people, they need me and I can easily turn that on. And I do very, very well with client check-ins. I do actually like that. But outside of that, it's been really hard to work on those other parts of entrepreneurship, the things where you... you know, invest the time now and you see the return in two years, which is literally like the definition of it. And then the things that would generally just give me a lot of joy, they haven't been. And like a big one that I can tell for me is the gym. You know, I have not been enjoying training. It's like the getting me up to get there has been really, really hard. And then the times where I'm like, I don't have things I need to do, it's been really kind of draining for me to try and force myself to do it. And that's just a very like new experience for me.

[Bryan]: 37:43

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 37:46

The interesting part that I wanted to touch on this, because I was thinking, you know, trying to self-assess like so many things, is this may be an adrenal insufficiency thing. I've been pushing really hard with training for six months straight. However, I'm not having any performance issues. If anything, performance is the best it's been in, like years and years and years. So it has me really kind of questioning some things. And I would say, like, if you were to type in, like, dopamine deficiency symptoms, I have every single one except the like depression sort of thing because none of it feels like dark. It's just like a lack of joy. It's like the colors

[Bryan]: 38:24

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 38:25

aren't bright. They're just like barely a color, but they're not like popping, you know? And that's been a new one for me that's been frustrating to be honest.

[Bryan]: 38:37

I feel like I've experienced similar things and it kind of makes me think about the thing we talk about on the podcast a lot in regards to psychological fatigue hitting before physiological fatigue. And... I know your training is being managed. Your recovery is being managed. You're in a surplus, all these things. But usually for me, when that begins happening, that's a telltale sign for me that the gym is I'm pushing too hard in the gym. And part of that might just be because you don't exactly take the approach. to training that I do where you gradually ramp up efforts week to week until you get to a week at the end where you're just like, oh, that was the hardest week I've done. Now I need to like have a reset or a deload or something like that. You just kind of keep pushing all the time. You're always like at zero to one RIR, one RIR or whatever it is. Like you're every week you're going in and you're hitting that same intensity. And I know for me that would take a huge beat down on me too. And so my first thought is that maybe it's just some psychological fatigue and that you just need to flush some of that and backtrack your training a bit, go back to like some three, four RIR type stuff, gradually build back up. Given you're at the end of your massing phase, I think that probably is inevitable anyways at this point coming up. But that's my first thought is maybe you just went like a week too far. and or two weeks too far or whatever it is because you had so many weeks of zero to one RIR for these really heavy hitting compound movements. That's my thought anyways. I don't know if that resonates with you at all.

[Aaron Straker]: 40:25

Yeah, it does. And it was something I was thinking about. Like maybe next week I just hit a deload, you know, even though performance is literally at an all time high, maybe I'm, you know, proverbially flying too close to the sun and just haven't like really, really hit the burnout, but it is some of the cracks are beginning to show per se. Um, but it has been like interesting cause it's not like two weeks ago, it hit hard. And then last week. not so bad.

[Bryan]: 40:55

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 40:56

And then towards the end of last week and through the weekend, rough. And

[Bryan]: 41:00

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 41:00

what I really find is it's the days where I don't have like a schedule of the things that I need to get done. Because so much of like, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, a lot of client check-ins, you know, we do the podcast stuff, there's other things. Then as my week, you know, kind of goes into the weekend, it's like, okay, I'm working on prepping some new upgrade stuff. There's, you know... reels to record and those sorts of things, the not very transactional X and O in and out work duties that are more like, hey, building an audience per se, those things I find I'm like, fuck, I can't get anything done today and my desire's like damn near zero. So I was thinking I might test the D-load next week

[Bryan]: 41:45

Yep.

[Aaron Straker]: 41:45

because it might be the kind of the peak before the diet anyway.

[Bryan]: 41:49

In the literature, so Steven Seiler, that guy I was talking about with the three zone cardio model, he had an episode I listened to on fast talk about burnout, over-reaching and over-training, and distinguishing between the three. And so burnout is psychological. Burnout is what I guess I would talk about before I need a deload, is just like, hey, I don't really want to go to the gym and hit the numbers that I'm supposed to hit anymore. And that would be burnout. And then after burnout comes overreaching, which still could have some physiological benefits potentially if you if you were to stop it there. But then if you're not careful, overreaching turns into overtraining and then you're pretty much fucked at that point for the next few months. And so what it sounds like to me is that you're at burnout. You're at like that point where it's psychological and physiologically you're still performing fine. So you're not overreached or overtrained, but I would definitely kind of, you know, take note of that. And, and yeah, I thought it was interesting.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:54

Yeah, so hopefully next week. Well, next week might be a little bit early because I've already commit to the rest of this training week because I still have like a couple more PRs. I need

[Bryan]: 43:05

Yeah. Heh

[Aaron Straker]: 43:06

to loop into my belt, but

[Bryan]: 43:07

heh.

[Aaron Straker]: 43:08

then I'll have maybe a brief update next week. But I think that will be like my first non-lifestyle mediated deload since. Probably the last time I was following your programming very strictly. So like 20, 2015, 2016, something

[Bryan]: 43:23

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 43:23

like

[Bryan]: 43:23

you don't

[Aaron Straker]: 43:24

that.

[Bryan]: 43:24

really deload, that's hilarious. You just let life deload for you, and if life

[Aaron Straker]: 43:28

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 43:28

doesn't show up to deload for you, then you don't deload.

[Aaron Straker]: 43:31

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 43:34

Sweet, well, so the next thing I was going to talk about on updates was the glute squat study, the hip thrust squat study. But I feel like maybe pushing that off to next week, because there was also another recent a glute study that was done with hip flexion, which seemed to counteract a little bit of the information from the first glute squat study. So I think maybe we look into that a little bit further and we push that episode off to next week. I also wanna touch a little bit more on the failure. stuff from Zach Robinson and the data driven guys, because I think there's been a lot more discussion around that on the web the last few weeks. So maybe next week we just kind of make it into like a very kind of research based thing. And we just jump into these four questions and get through what we can over the next 20 minutes or so.

[Aaron Straker]: 44:25

Let's do it.

[Bryan]: 44:26

All right, cool. Well, the first one is as Aaron alluded to in the beginning is a kind of food pyramid that was put out by Max Lugavere. And the food pyramid, the interesting thing about it is that it put meats and proteins on the bottom as the base. And then it put fruits and veggies as the second level, right above meats and proteins. And then the third level was cheeses and starches. And that's just like a huge category. I mean, there's so many different starches and stuff like that. And then I think maybe it was tongue in cheek, but he just put coffee at the top. And so I got a few funny comments from people being like, why is coffee at the top? Shouldn't it be at the bottom? But I really think the point of this discussion here is more about those first three levels. It's about the meat and the protein on the bottom, the fruit and veggies second, and then the starches and cheese as the third level. And so when I look at that, that actually aligns really well with the way that I eat and the way that I think about eating. And so, I don't know, man, what are your thoughts on that as a general guideline for food?

[Aaron Straker]: 45:35

Yeah, I was, so I will preface it by saying generally when I receive questions like this, and I know this one came to you, my first initial thought was like, oh boy, let's take a look at this. Because so many things that people send me, like it's rubbish, you know, it really, really is. And I was quite pleased. This was a really, granted it was like emojis and supposed to be funny, but if you read, like I recommend you as the listener, go find this post, read his caption on it. It's full of context and nuance and like the more I read, like I just was like smiling more and more because it felt like, now I'm not saying that like I could put out something of this caliber, but it felt very true to like how I personally feel and approach things. So I think it is really well done. And the second part I wanted to say is when you have these larger, you know, profiles like this, this Max guy, I think he had like 980,000 Instagram followers. Unless you're like a specific like fitfluencer, you're speaking to like gen pop people, right? So you generally have less nuance and it's more of how can I help the largest amount of people at once and it's going to be make assumptions off of like a gen pop, you know, American or Western civilization citizen sort of thing. With the context of what Brian and I often talk about, we're talking about like hypertrophy in these sorts of things. I think it's wonderful. I think the infographics great. I think for nine out of 10 people looking at it, it's wonderful that one out of 10 person is going to be like that. 22 year old dude who's 140 pounds and wants to get to 185 like yeah you're gonna need to probably flip pyramids sections two and three but for the majority of people I think it's wonderful and more people followed it the world would be a much better place

[Bryan]: 47:36

Yeah, no, I agree with all of that. And I actually really like what you said at the end, because that was a point I was going to bring up too, is that for general health and longevity, I think that really makes sense to have the fruit and the veggies and the proteins being like the base, like those are the things that matter the most. But like you said, for that person that wants to add a ton of muscle as quickly as possible, they're going to struggle with the idea of filling that second pyramid with fruits and veggies, because they're just going to be so full. they're not going to be able to get enough calories in from the starches section. And so, yeah, if you flip those two or even like, I mean, I guess it depends on your metabolism and your activity level and your age and stuff like that. But for that person trying to gain weight quickly, you may just need to put starches almost on the same level as protein. Like, they just kind of like go hand in hand at some level. Like, when I look at your plate, Straker, it's almost equal protein, starch, and veggie. Like, it's kind of like a three-way split, so it's less of like a pyramid, and it's more of like a plate that's just evenly distributed between the three, right?

[Aaron Straker]: 48:48

Yeah, I mean, even so, not really. Like my protein is higher, but I have many feedings. Like I'm only eating, I eat chicken twice per day, 130 grams a meal, you know, which is like barely over four ounces. And then I have a salmon at dinner that's 150 grams. So that's, I think like maybe about five ounces, but historically, like my... Animal meat consumption is quite low, but I just have like two protein shakes per day I have eggs in the morning, you know, and then I guess I'm a little bit of EAAs But I would say like right now carbohydrate is the base of my diet. It's the highest macronutrient I eat by far the most volume of it And I've even had to reduce my vegetables a little bit just because it's too much volume and I was having I would be super full at the end of the day, so

[Bryan]: 49:42

Yeah, and then throughout nutritional periodization, as you shift gears and go into your diet, then the whole thing switches and it becomes more dominated by vegetable and meat and less dominated by starches. And so

[Aaron Straker]: 49:53

precisely.

[Bryan]: 49:53

time of year certainly impacts that pyramid. But yeah, I agree that overall, that was one of the best influencer pyramids that I've ever seen. And so I thought it was definitely worth bringing up and addressing.

[Aaron Straker]: 50:05

Yeah, it was really

[Bryan]: 50:05

Cool.

[Aaron Straker]: 50:05

good.

[Bryan]: 50:07

This next question is the one about tennis. And so... Basically, to kind of do the abridged version of this question, because it was quite long, is this person plays tennis quite a bit. It's his primary cardio source. And he seems to do fine for the first 30 minutes of tennis, but then in the latter half, he cannot seem to recover between points. And he said it often takes him two to three minutes to get his breath back after a tough point. He goes on to say that he's 213 pounds and around 15 to 20% body fat. And he's asking, what type of cardio do you think can improve my cardio recovery? Is air bike a good choice? And so yeah, that's more or less the basis of the question. Do you wanna jump in with any thoughts to begin with? All

[Aaron Straker]: 51:06

Oh yes, I have plenty.

[Bryan]: 51:08

right.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:10

So the first one, I would say yeah, the air bike I think would be a great choice. And my second thought there is, personally, and of course you're the, I mean you are the hypertrophy and the cardio expert on the podcast, but I would say like interval, sprint intervals, because that's, you have a, like that, what is it, is the proper term like the refractory period? Is that term when you're

[Bryan]: 51:34

the

[Aaron Straker]: 51:34

like in

[Bryan]: 51:34

when

[Aaron Straker]: 51:34

between?

[Bryan]: 51:35

your heart rate decrease cardiac recovery or cardiac,

[Aaron Straker]: 51:38

Yeah,

[Bryan]: 51:38

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:39

cardiac recovery, that's

[Bryan]: 51:40

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:40

literally built into it before you need another bout of performance. So that one I think could be probably have a better maybe carryover than a more steady state or a low intensity kind of cardio there. Second point being when people say like, oh, I'm about 15 to 20% body fat, that's a big range. Like it isn't, but it is. Because someone at 15% body fat is like... on the cusp of starting to develop some abs and develop, right? Not actually having really good abs. Someone on the cusp of 20% body fat is like you're starting to have your stomach hang over your belt a little bit sort of thing. So it is a little bit of a distinction there. And then that would really kind of lead me into my next point. If we're at 20% body fat, we need to reduce some body fat and a lot of things will improve for you there. At 20%... You start coming down, you're gonna lower inflammation, you're gonna improve cardiovascular performance and those sorts of things just by decreasing some of the body fat. And then my third point, which is highly dependent upon point two, is because he said, he's like, hey, after about 30 minutes, my exercise performance starts to dip, my thought was like, are we having, how long are we eating prior to training? Are we in a low carbohydrate diet? Because that is... to me seems potentially representative of like someone who's potentially running low in some glycogen or glucose and that will obviously take a hit to your performance there as well.

[Bryan]: 53:16

Yeah, I think that's all good stuff. The 15 to 20% body fat is definitely something I wanted to focus on too, because the difference at 213 pounds between being 15% body fat and being 20% body fat is 11 or 12 pounds of fat. And it's hard enough to fuel muscle. And this is one of the reasons I think why my VO2 max is so low, or even if it's not as low as the number that came across, it's lower than it would be if I weighed less, right, and I had less muscle on me. Because muscle requires oxygen to fuel it, and the more you have of that, the more difficult it is to properly fuel. Now fat is an even bigger problem, because fat doesn't actually provide you any benefit. Muscle gives you a lot of benefit, both cardiovascularly and anaerobically, to kind of help you work through these... different bouts of endurance that you're doing. Fat doesn't give you any of that. Fat is just an extra thing that you're holding on your body that now you need to deal with. So you need to use the muscle you have to work through the extra fat you have. And then you also have to fuel the muscle and work through the fat that's there to get the oxygen into the body that can then become usable. And so. Yeah, I think that being 15% body fat instead of 20% body fat, being able to see some abs peek through, that would probably benefit you significantly. If you even look at the calculations of VO2 max, merely by losing those 12 pounds of fat, your VO2 max per kilogram, just by losing fat and doing nothing else, not even training or anything like that. And so there you have a bunch of recovery as well. The thing we said in the beginning, cardiac recovery or heart rate recovery, would be when you stop exercising and you stand still, how quickly does your heart rate, in one minute, what does your heart rate drop? And so this is a very important metric for health, but also just for sports performance, of course. And so a general good goal for heart rate recovery is to see about 40 beats in the first minute. So if your heart rate after a tough point is 160, then you would wanna see that heart rate down to about 120 within one minute, within 60 seconds. And so it... Mine is right around that. I'm between 40 and 50 now, which is another sign why I'm like, wow, how can my VO2 max be that bad when my heart rate recovery is so good? But I would take note of that when you're doing your like, obviously not in the middle of a tennis point, like don't just stop and look at your watch and see where your heart rate is. But as you're doing your training for this, whether it's the assault bike or whatever running, whatever sort of method you decide to use, stop yourself right when you're at the end of your workout. hit stop on your watch or whatever it is, or take your pulse and do that at the very specific end point, like right as you stop training, and then again, 60 seconds later, and see how much that heart rate has dropped from that point. And that's something that's trainable too. So you can do intervals on the assault bike that will help you train your cardiac recovery too. And so I think for you, you know, there's certainly an element of specificity where if tennis points last 20 to 40 seconds. And then you're saying it takes you two to three minutes to recover between these tough points. I would be doing intervals that probably emulate what a tennis game is, but using less rest in between so that you train your body to recover quicker between those intervals. So I think maybe like a one-to-one would be good, like a 30 second on, 30 seconds off. That's like a really, really popular protocol. And you wouldn't be doing that at. you know, an unsustainable pace. We're talking, I'm talking like, I think a good workout would be 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off for six to eight sets. So we're talking six to eight minutes, basically, where three to four minutes of that are work time and three to four minutes of that are rest time. And then you would rest five minutes and do another set of those six to eight intervals. And the whole, each 30 second interval should be sustainable. So it's not, it's not your aerobic pace. because we're trying to push the anaerobic a little bit here, but it's also not to the point where you do 30 seconds and then 30 seconds later, you're like, oh my God, I can't go again, I'm dying. Like, you wanna keep a pace in those 30 second intervals that you can keep for each 30 second interval. And then over the course of time, as your cardiac recovery improves, then the pace that you use on each 30 second interval can also increase accordingly. So that would be kind of my base advice for that question.

[Aaron Straker]: 58:29

What I took out of that, your response is, my heart rate recovery period is insanely poor. Insanely

[Bryan]: 58:39

Hehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 58:40

poor. Because after my bike sprints, I'm doing my cool down and my heart rate's still like the 140s and 150s.

[Bryan]: 58:48

Well, that's cause you're moving too. So I think there's definitely

[Aaron Straker]: 58:51

Okay.

[Bryan]: 58:51

a bit of a confounding factor there. Yeah, I mean, mine still goes down pretty quickly. Like after my VO2 max yesterday, it went from 173 to 131 in the first minute and I was still pedaling. So I got 42 beats while still pedaling as a cardiac recovery. But for most people, you're gonna wanna do that without continuing to pedal. So you'll basically do your sprint. stop and then just sit still and focus on your breathing and at least initially see what you can get from that.

[Aaron Straker]: 59:23

Okay.

[Bryan]: 59:23

And then after that minute is over, then go back to pedaling and you'll see it kind of like maybe level off or whatever. But yeah, I mean, there's a, I would definitely like have the data. And then from there, you can kind of assess how you wanna do things, move forward.

[Aaron Straker]: 59:38

I'll test that on Thursday when I do mine.

[Bryan]: 59:40

Cool. So I don't know if I have time for both of these last two questions.

[Aaron Straker]: 59:46

I will, let's cover three, you can bounce, and I'll cover four, because I feel pretty good talking about that one.

[Bryan]: 59:53

Yep, when we're talking about number four with the pre-fatigue, just understand I don't think the question is pre-exhaust superset, so they're not trying to go from leg extensions to squats immediately. I think

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:03

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 1:00:03

it's more about using a isolation movement or a short movement before a compound or lengthen movement. Okay,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:09

Yep. Cool.

[Bryan]: 1:00:11

cool. So question number three is, if I want to do hypertrophy work along with my CrossFit classes, should I do it before or after? Also, Should I be doing a bro split or a full body approach when I do hypertrophy? And then I added the context of, is the bro split back into the grace of evidence-based practice? And we've touched on this before, but I think that based on a lot of the research we're seeing come out with frequency being less important and the increase. stimulus from failure training via the recent meta regression. It does seem to be that the bro split is coming back into grace. And I know Aaron has been operating on a pseudo bro split with great results over the last number of months. So do you want to attack this first? And then I'll take on the tail after that.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:07

Yeah, let's do that. So the first question in this really is a great way to extrapolate across, you know, many different facets. What is your priority? Right. Because if hypertrophy work and you're like, hey, I want to, you know, improving my body composition or improving specific, you know, hypertrophy on specific muscle groups is my priority. Then you want to do that before CrossFit. However, if it's going to then bother you that the person that you always stomp in CrossFit workouts is starting to beat you in the workouts because you just did 10 sets or six sets or whatever of like chest work and now you have, you know, hand release pushups and you're falling apart,

[Bryan]: 1:01:50

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:51

you have to, one has to take priority, right? And you have to decide which is most important for you. So that's the first part. Second part, which should or should you be doing a bro split or a full body approach? Because CrossFit by nature is a little bit more full body in and of itself, kind of by its, you know, constantly varied design. I wouldn't necessarily recommend like a hardcore bro split because this is the challenge with pairing hypertrophy work with CrossFit because of CrossFit's constantly varied nature is you may end up with a day of CrossFit that's like an insane amount of like overhead pressing and your shoulders are smoked and then you don't want to go into like, okay, it's my shoulder day. I have to do that sort of thing. So there is likely going to be a need of a dynamic approach. What I do with my clientele that have I still want to participate in like two to three CrossFit classes per day. What I generally program them is three sessions, a push-focused session, a pull-focused session, and a leg-focused session. And they place those throughout the week depending upon their recovery capacity and that sort of thing of the CrossFit classes. And then I would say one to two weeks per month. they only make it to two of the three sessions that I give them because they just wanna be recovered enough from one of the CrossFit sessions. So it does need to be a little bit dynamic, most likely.

[Bryan]: 1:03:24

Yeah, I think the first thing you said about which one is the priority is obviously the trump card. Like that for sure is the most important. I think in this case that this guy that posed the question is more or less using CrossFit as his like cardio conditioning. And so I don't think that he's super tied into whether he's like beating people in wads and stuff like that. He's more just like, hey, I would prefer to do this instead of going out and doing like a 45 minute zone two workout or whatever. And so in that case, I told him, you should probably be doing the hyper tree first. And then he was like, why, you know, can you go into detail on this? And I was like, let's add this to the podcast list and we'll talk about it there. And so I do think hypertrophy first in this case, but like you said, if someone's goal is CrossFit or someone's goal is conditioning, then maybe that flips. For exactly a lot of the same reasons that you said, I kind of think that a full body approach might even be better, or at least an approach where you're training similar muscles to what you're doing in the CrossFit class. And especially this works because you don't necessarily care about your results in the CrossFit class. So like, if we know that the Bro Split potentially could work, then, and you say you have a WOD that is box jumps, pull-ups, and rowing. So we know that that's a pole-dominated workout. My intuition would say to do a workout beforehand that's mostly pole-based. so that you're kind of training those same muscle groups and then you have a number of days potentially of recovery to let your pole muscles recover. Of course, the alternative argument would be, well, if I did less volume for pole, then I would need less recovery and therefore I'd be able to train pole again in two days if it were to come up again in my CrossFit class. And so there's the two arguments to that, which kind of leads me to that idea of maybe just doing a full body one to two sets per muscle group before your CrossFit class could work really, really well, because then it sort of doesn't really matter what your CrossFit class is doing. You can do like, you know, two sets of chest, two sets of some back work, throw in a little bit of arms, throw in a squat, throw in a hip hinge or a leg curl, and just kind of do enough to stimulate the body and get some volume without actually causing a ton of fatigue. And then that may actually have less impact on your performance in the CrossFit class too. So I think both ways can work, and I don't even necessarily think one way is better than the other. I do think that if hypertrophy were my main goal, I would probably lean more on looking at the CrossFit workout and being like, okay, it's a pole-based CrossFit workout, I'll do pole work first, and then I'm gonna try to take three days or four days off of pole movements. So hopefully, the next CrossFit workout is maybe like push-ups, front squats, and... double unders, and now you have a workout that's more push-based, so you can do some chest work, maybe some quad work, do that before that workout, and then you rest your push muscles for three or four days, and you can kind of rotate back into the pull muscles. And so, long-winded way of basically saying that both ways can work, not sure one is better than the other, the most overriding important part is managing fatigue. And so, you don't wanna be doing a hypertrophy workout. in muscles that are still sore from CrossFit. So you wouldn't wanna do 100 butterfly pull-ups and then a day later come in and do a bunch of bent over dumbbell rows for back work. You would wanna separate those out, make sure you're managing your fatigue, trying to eliminate overlapping soreness as much as possible. And ultimately at the end of the day, I think that is probably the larger concern more than whether you're doing a bro split or full body.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:07:29

Yeah, to make the most optimal out of it, you're going to need a little bit of a dynamic approach.

[Bryan]: 1:07:36

Correct, yeah, that's a great way of saying it. Cool, well let's let you address this last one. I will jump off and we'll come back next week and talk about some glute and hip thrust study and some failure training.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:07:49

Wonderful. Let it be. Okay. So, question four here we have is, do you ever purposefully use pre-fatigue methods in order to need less weight on a big lift later in the workout? Then they go on to say, we've heard of us kind of allude to this briefly before. How often and why do you do this? And are there situations where you wouldn't want to do this? Really good question. And something with this that I think this is something that will make more sense and have more utility the further you are into your training career. Because in the beginning, you generally are going to be much more rounded and we're each gonna have some of those movements that we're just a little bit more innately stronger at or maybe that carried over from sports we played or something. But as your training career, you know, continues to progress, you can...you end up with more muscular imbalances. Some of this is going to be, you know, injury specific. Other is some of it's just our own personal biases. For instance, I have always just really disliked training abs. So I've never really done that much ab training. Coincidentally, when I have a larger compound lifts, generally ones that are either actually loading like, you know, heavy RDLs, squats or something like that, my core will break down and stop those sets. earlier than like my quads or my glutes if you know I'm talking on a squat pattern versus a hip hinge. So that right there is my primary use of using pre-fatigue methods because I want in let's say in a squat pattern or let me back up here let's use it let's use a hip hinge like an RDL or a stiff-legged deadlift because we talked about that earlier in the episode. That's a obviously a hip hinge but you're holding that load. in your hands, right? So then you have to stabilize that load through your core, through your pelvis and that sort of thing. And it requires a bracing there. And we all know what a really shitty RDL looks like when your back's rounded and your core is compromised. And that's where the movement safety, you know, our safety concern pretty much hockey sticks. So if you're someone who's has a weak core, something like that, and you... still want to get a good stimulus out of like your glutes and hamstrings, that would be a really good opportunity or use case for pre fatiguing the hamstrings or the glutes. So in this case, personally in my program, I do all of my knee flexion before any hip hinging. So I'm hitting my seated hamstring curls or my prone lying hamstring curls and pushing them really, really hard before I go into my hip hinging. Because I want when I'm then hip hinging for my glutes or hamstrings to be the limiting factor, not my grip strength or my ability to brace my core or something like that. Backing up a little bit, when you are earlier, let's say novice or early intermediate, it's unlikely that you are strong enough yet to where that, you know, the strength of the that it will overpower your core and those sorts of things. But generally, again, like I said, as your training age continues to grow, the more of those imbalances grow. So it's probably not something you have to worry about or there's probably not too much of a benefit early on. I'd even go as far as to say there may be more of a risk to splitting off or purposefully pre fatiguing early on. Because when you're new or let's say novice or still early intermediate, your movement proficiency isn't quite that high yet. And you don't want to purposefully go fatigued into a highly technical movement like an RDL, a deadlift, or let's say a squat because you don't want to compromise form since you're already under a pre-fatigued state. But something like I've been hip hinging for literally 20 years. I can do it in my sleep whether I'm one rep shy of failure or 20 rep shy of failure. That's a different use case there. So the main situations I wouldn't do it is if you're still newer to training or if you do not have your movement proficiency like really, really locked down and you want to practice those movements fresh because you have the best control over your muscular system before it's fatigued. So that's the times that I wouldn't recommend using it. Or second time I wouldn't recommend using it is if you are in a very, very performance-oriented training program, right? Let's say you're chasing a number on a hack squat, right? You really wanna get to three plates per side or something like that on the hack squat, and that holds up quite high importance to you. In that case, I wouldn't recommend pre-fatiguing your... know, primary knee extensors with a leg extension because then the odds of you hitting that three plates per side or whatever is obviously going to be lower. But as your use case, or sorry, as your training career grows and the longer you've been training, the utility is there more and oftentimes also because you can use lesser of a load and lesser load. generally is going to come with a less systemically fatiguing, let's put it that way. If I can only use 315 pounds for my RDLs and get the same stimulus into my glutes and hamstrings by doing it third in the rotation, as I would need to use 405 if I was doing it first, I'm going to take that because that 405 is going to be much, much more centrally fatiguing. than that 315. So it's one of those things, the utility is there, it's definitely there, but the utility is probably, doesn't hold quite as much water until you are pretty far along in your training career. One, and your movement execution and proficiency for those highly technical movements is very, very well cemented and you can perform them at a high. high degree of accuracy whether you're on rep one or the final rep before failure of a set. So hopefully I covered that one well, maybe a little bit long-winded there, but this is my first question without Brian to kind of give me feedback there. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. Like Brian said, we'll come back with a little bit more of a research-supported episode for next week, which will always be very, very enjoyable to put together for you guys. As always... Thank you for listening and we will talk to you next week.