August Q&A | ETP#123

[Aaron Straker]: 0:28

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is our monthly Instagram Q&A episode, which is always a fan favorite or listener favorite, and it's also a fan favorite as well. Before we get into the questions, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please?

[Bryan]: 0:46

Yeah, this should be a fun episode. I do love these AMAs and we have a lot of questions today. So just so everyone knows there will be some that are like very short quick answers and then we'll go deeper on ones that you know need the depth. But regarding updates for me, I actually don't have a ton today. I am actually more excited for Aaron's updates so I will be quick here. I've done interval workouts now twice since we spoke last. on the podcast and that's been kind of one of the goals of my cardio has been to have at least two, like VO2 max threshold style interval workouts each week. And so earlier this week, I did three times 10 minute repeats just along the bike trails here. And what's really cool is that there's, as you head toward the mountains, the trail is constantly about a one degree incline. And then as you head away from the mountains, it's constantly about a one degree decline. And so I have these three routes, one where I go to South Boulder, one where I go to West Boulder, and then one where I go to East Boulder. And in each of these three routes, if I sprint the one degree incline, it takes me almost exactly 10 minutes. So on the way up each direction, I would just go as hard as I possibly could for 10 minutes, which means it wasn't like the hardest I could possibly go. And then I would kind of just coast and recover on the way down, which would take half the time or two thirds of the time that it took to get up. And then I would get to another up section and it would be just about 10 minutes. So it's kind of a cool, I can repeat this route going forward and have comparisons of these kind of inclined segments, how they go, and maybe my 10 minute intervals turn into 8 minute intervals in a few months. So that's cool. And then I did something just absolutely awful yesterday. I did a NCAR hill repeats. And so NCAR is not a one degree incline like I just discussed. NCAR is a seven degree incline. And it is for 1.22 miles. And so I was looking on Strava at the top times and there's fucking savages that do this 1.22 mile seven degree incline in under five minutes. And so I was just like, I have no idea where I'm going to lie on this, but I need to train this, you know, miserable like six to 10 minute time domain. So let's give it a try. And so I did it yesterday. I got about halfway up on the first climb and I was questioning my life. I was like, why did I even think I was going to do repeats on this? Like I'm going to do one of these and go home. Let's be real, you know? So, so I got, I got finally to the top and, and I was like, yeah, that was really awful. And then it took me three minutes to get down, which was actually exhilarating. I got up to 36 miles per hour on the way down, which is, I mean, insane. That's flying. Like if you say that in kilometers, you'd be like, yeah, I was going 60 kilometers an hour or something like that. And so I got to the bottom three minutes later and I was like, fuck it, I'm already here. Like I should probably do a second one. So I did the second one and I questioned my life again about a third of the way through it this time. But when I looked at the scores at the end, I had done the first one in 10.19 and the second one in 10.17. So I was able to negative split them and I was like super, like really, really happy about that. Like I was only double the time of like the top score in Strava and I was able to negative split it. So, yeah, another kind of challenge to see if I can improve on over time. And that is the end of my bike updates. I'm traveling to North Carolina and South Carolina in two days from now, Thursday through Sunday, to visit my brother and to visit Anders from Barbell Shrugged podcast. And yeah, I guess I won't be able to bike while I'm there. So I gotta get it in now, but looking forward to the trip. And yeah, let's kick it over to you and see what's going on.

[Aaron Straker]: 4:51

Nice. That's the I was for some reason I thought when you were gonna say with that NCAR hill sprint in your room, and I was only 60 seconds off like the top

[Bryan]: 5:02

Hehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 5:03

the top time. So I was double house. Oh my god.

[Bryan]: 5:06

Anyway...

[Aaron Straker]: 5:07

And I think that would just like put it in perspective, like how savage those top times are like that. I couldn't

[Bryan]: 5:13

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 5:13

imagine a 10 minute just uphill for it. Anyway.

[Bryan]: 5:19

Yeah

[Aaron Straker]: 5:19

Yeah, I was a I thought you were gonna be like, oh, you know, I was only like a minute off. And I was like, damn dude, that's really good. But you're like, only double. What?

[Bryan]: 5:27

You know, honestly, I thought it was gonna be worse, so.

[Aaron Straker]: 5:31

Yeah, wow, I think that just goes to show how little I understand of that world, but very, very funny. Updates for me, I'm sure from last week's episode people are potentially curious about the cats. Both are still in the hospital. We have the experimental medication ordered for both of them or delivered for both of them. They're receiving the injections. Mostly positive, but still some regressions on the PCV, which is percent blood volume. Will like kind of go up and then dip back down. They seem okay. Jenny goes almost daily to visit Not gonna lie. I haven't been to visit once we kind of Really? We it's all just like really sick animals in there and Jenny was like, yeah, you can't handle it. Okay.

[Bryan]: 6:18

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 6:18

Thank you I'm not going like I have like kids and animals kind of like a sweet spot or not a sweet spot like a soft spot for Look, I can do you know, handle deaths and stuff like that, but certain things I just, I don't handle well, and I, you know, my coping mechanism is by completely avoiding it. So I will continue to do that, and then hopefully they come back. So that's the cat update. Fat Loss Camp has officially started, and I briefly alluded to this last week.

[Bryan]: 6:47

Not fat

[Aaron Straker]: 6:47

I'm excited.

[Bryan]: 6:47

loss camp.

[Aaron Straker]: 6:49

What is it?

[Bryan]: 6:50

You called it fat loss camp.

[Aaron Straker]: 6:52

What did I call it this time?

[Bryan]: 6:54

Oh, it is fat loss camp. I thought you were gonna say training camp. I don't know why I was in my head. I was like, it's not a fat loss camp.

[Aaron Straker]: 7:00

Yeah, it's fat well, it's training camp, but I've started my fat loss phase. So

[Bryan]: 7:04

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 7:05

it's like

[Bryan]: 7:05

I got

[Aaron Straker]: 7:05

fat

[Bryan]: 7:05

you.

[Aaron Straker]: 7:05

loss slash Training camp and what I really like is we have something every day Um, I am someone I just thrive on structure and routine and there's some of the days that you know being completely transparent Towards the towards the later end of the later parts of the week when all my check-ins and stuff are done if I don't Have any like pressing business deliverables do sometimes kind of like What the fuck am I gonna do today? There was something actually that Steve Hall of Revive Stronger put up on his story. It's like an entrepreneur's dilemma of the, I don't wanna waste the day, but I don't have anything that I need to do. I started this journey to have time freedom, and now when I have it, I feel guilty because I'm not spending it wisely sort of thing. So I will say I do like the fact that I have something every day. in that now it forces me to add more routine, which I of course love. So, trained legs today, which is really, really gnarly, but I'm excited for just the challenge and to see what more that I can discover about myself and how much muscle I can hold onto during this fat loss phase. And potentially, you know, how much of the extra added activity will kind of carry over into the fat loss, you know, relative to pulling food. down which is a little bit different than previous approaches that I've used with prior coaches.

[Bryan]: 8:35

Did you do the same leg day that you had talked about? I think it was the prior week when you did kind of your first session with them. You guys did legs together and was it like, is it the same kind of structure, routine repeat of movements or is it just kind of, yeah, how does that go?

[Aaron Straker]: 8:52

The leg extension is in again. The hack squat is in again. And the prone hamstring curl is in again.

[Bryan]: 9:03

Are they, is the order the same as well? And like the set rep schemers,

[Aaron Straker]: 9:06

No,

[Bryan]: 9:06

is that stuff change?

[Aaron Straker]: 9:07

no. Order's different. This order's different. The hack squat, two exercises are only a rest pause set and one is the hack squat, which is just disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. But yeah, like similar, the entire program's like a very similar structure, lower volume, but more exercises. But yeah, it's gonna be pretty gnarly. I trained it today by myself, but once we're fully synced up on schedules and stuff, those days, the leg days are gonna be quite brutal. But the silver lining is the leg days are always cushioned with a rest day on either side of them,

[Bryan]: 9:53

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:54

which is nice.

[Bryan]: 9:54

I like that. Yep.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:56

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 9:56

Cool.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:58

Um, yesterday, yesterday I had my first or our first like zone two, like cardio sessions, so 40 minute spin on the bike. And the note I have here, it was so much more enjoyable than the hit session. Like the hit session that I'd been literally doing since the beginning of the year, I felt like dying like every single week. This one was just like heart rate was still, you know, I was surprised at how high heart rate got. Um, but it was chill. It was just like. riding the bike and we did Every like six to eight minutes. We'd have like a two minute like get off the seat You know to up crank up the resistance a little bit and have like a two minute

[Bryan]: 10:38

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 10:38

kind of like hill climb, you know Simulation and it felt The two minutes it was challenging, but I wasn't dying

[Bryan]: 10:48

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 10:48

But I was really surprised that after those two minutes my heart rate would be in the 160s again

[Bryan]: 10:52

Wow. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 10:53

Like which is like I'm like, I don't feel like my heart rate I'm not dying like I normally do when I feel when it's up there, but I think it might have just been like that prolonged like climb and heart rate just kind of slowly

[Bryan]: 11:05

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 11:05

like, you know, considerably built a little bit as we went. But that was fun. I did kind of enjoy that one. It felt like I felt healthy. I feel like it's a really corny way to describe it, but I was like, I don't hate this. And

[Bryan]: 11:19

Mm-hmm. It really

[Aaron Straker]: 11:20

that

[Bryan]: 11:20

does

[Aaron Straker]: 11:20

was

[Bryan]: 11:20

good

[Aaron Straker]: 11:20

cool.

[Bryan]: 11:20

things. Yeah, I feel like the mind and the spirit really benefit from that kind of lower intensity cardio stuff. What was

[Aaron Straker]: 11:27

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 11:27

your heart rate at during the lower periods when you weren't climbing, like 130?

[Aaron Straker]: 11:32

Yeah, it was right around there. And then there, there would have, I would have the spikes and then it would take a little bit to come back down and sit around the like one thirties. And I would kind of use the, the resistance wheel on the spin bike to kind of, you know, if my legs were moving too fast, and I would turn it up a little bit to get me into like a, a cadence that felt very maintainable and sustainable relative.

[Bryan]: 11:55

Mm-hmm. And that was the reason for the Hill Climbs thing was a way to burn more calories.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:01

Just to break it up a little bit, add a little bit of a challenge. That's kind of the overall theme of camp is to like push each other and really, really challenge each other and that sort of thing. And there was just a way to kind of, it was enough like change in stimulus that I wouldn't just like zone out sort of

[Bryan]: 12:20

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:20

thing.

[Bryan]: 12:21

Yeah, no, I dig that. Cool. Sweet. I like that

[Aaron Straker]: 12:27

Do you think we should get into questions?

[Bryan]: 12:29

Yeah, are you done with your updates?

[Aaron Straker]: 12:31

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 12:31

Cool. Awesome. Yeah, let's do it. There's, yeah, I think we have a short one to start.

[Aaron Straker]: 12:36

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 12:37

Hamstring cramps during glute bridges, any advice? First thing

[Aaron Straker]: 12:41

So I

[Bryan]: 12:42

I

[Aaron Straker]: 12:42

mean.

[Bryan]: 12:42

would just say is your feet are very likely too far out. You probably need to move them in so that your shins are either vertical or even could be slightly quad dominant. If your hamstrings are cramping up, you could bring the feet in, you know, even more under your butt slightly. And then also make sure you're not driving through just the very back of your heel That's obviously more likely if your feet are too far forward And you're more likely to drive through your toes if your feet are too far back But if you're in that sweet spot where your shins are about vertical more or less when you get to the top of the movement then just make sure you know you're pressing through your midfoot and not just putting all that pressure through the heel. But I've experienced this too, you just kind of need to fiddle around with the foot pressure and the placement of the legs.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:34

Yeah, I don't have anything to add on to the back of that one. I would check your form there a little bit and make sure that you're not just giving him in like a super long prolonged isometric contraction sort of thing that's just locking them up after a bit.

[Bryan]: 13:48

Yeah, also, yeah, good point. You may not want to just try not pausing at the top. That would probably be where the cramp occurs is in that super short position. So maybe it's more of like a piston type motion where you explode up or accelerate up and then release as soon as you hit lockout.

[Aaron Straker]: 14:10

Next question is, what do you think about low volume, high intensity methods? By using pull, push, rest, legs, rest.

[Bryan]: 14:23

Sounds good to me. I mean, this person may be semi-new listener to our little segment here, but we are relatively or generally proponents of low volume, high intensity model. And I personally love a pull, push, rest, legs, rest cycle. I've used that myself for many years. And I, in fact, love the idea of putting a rest stay on either side of legs. pull push legs into a five day instead of a four day. Like most people do it, like pull push legs, rest, repeat. I like putting that extra rest day in there. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of it. What do you think, Aaron?

[Aaron Straker]: 15:07

Yeah, I mean push pull legs or whatever version of that flavor

[Bryan]: 15:11

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 15:11

was a long time favorite split of mine. I think it just, it works. It's a very good intermediate plus kind of split of programming. It's again a favorite. Now into the first question, low volume, high intensity. I absolutely love it. I think once you reach a certain threshold in your training career, that... will become the predominant approach. However, if you are potentially newer or a beginner, you may not be able to create enough stimulus with the lower amount of reps and sets to provide a significant stimulus for the training session. But once you reach a level of proficiency, it becomes kind of like opportunity cost on. on something, especially compounds, right? If you need four sets to create a stimulus on something, your intensity might not be high enough or proficiency of movement execution may not be high enough. But once it does get there, lower volume is generally probably an approach that you would enjoy.

[Bryan]: 16:25

Yeah, I agree that's good context to regarding kind of like the training age piece because it is true that as you as you're a little earlier in your journey, it's harder to get more out of less.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:36

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 16:38

Cool, well said.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:39

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

[Bryan]: 16:41

Yep.

[Aaron Straker]: 16:42

What is the recommended RPM for zone two riding?

[Bryan]: 16:47

Yeah, it's a good question and it's not like super straightforward because the general recommendation for riding that you look at is 90 RPMs. That's what most people say like, hey, you should be around 90 RPMs. I know when I first started doing this zone two stuff, I couldn't even get close to 90 because the lactic acid lactate would accumulate so quickly in my legs. So I was pedaling much more like a 70. Problem that I've found as I've gotten better at clearing lactate from my legs is that when you're at a 70 The resistance has to be relatively high For you to be able to get your heart rate high enough at a lower RPM And so then it does kind of now at this point the lower RPMs almost start to feel More burdensome on my legs and makes them feel kind of heavy which was the opposite in the beginning. And now being up in that like 85, 90 RPMs, it almost feels like my legs are just kind of like, almost working on their own. Like they're almost disconnected from my body and they're just kind of like spinning. And so that's been interesting. I have also heard people that do high RPM riding, and this is specifically to work on, you know, clearing lactate better. And they would do that in 110 to 120 RPMs. That just feels frantic to me. And so I can't really do too much of that but any of them are fine like and I think different points of your journey will use different RPMs, but I think anywhere between 70 or 75 and 120 is reasonable and I would probably focus more on just the RPE and heart rate metrics associated with being in zone 2 and just kind of staying calm as you go through it and Finding whatever RPM allows you to accomplish that versus worrying too much about like focus hyper focusing on the RPMs themselves

[Aaron Straker]: 18:49

Yeah, that's well said. I don't really have anything onto the back end of that. And for full transparency, if it matters, I just literally just use my heart rate. I don't have a clue what my RPMs are. And it really comes back to your goal, right? My goal is extra additional expenditure for fat loss and general, you know, cardio metabolic health sort of thing. So I think it being relative to your goal is don't lose the value in that.

[Bryan]: 19:14

Yeah. I think this one is actually one I'm interested to hear your take on. So how to bulk for those of you who used to be overweight and are scared of getting fat again.

[Aaron Straker]: 19:26

I mean, the best answer is hire an outside source of help, hire a coach that will help that. You'll have someone to one point out. I don't wanna say unsubstantiate your fears, but some people have fears that are just baseless. Oh, the scale's up 0.3 pounds, it's all fat or something like that, we're like, no, it's not. You didn't get as good of a night of sleep. There's many other variables that go into play. So help by adding external support into your decision tree, right? That's the first one. The second one is, I would say, change your terminology around it. It is a gain or a build. not necessarily a bulk. I know that's just semantics, but something like a gaining phase or a building phase has a much more kind of softer connotation than a bulk, because you don't need to get bulky. You're just building or gaining. And then the third thing is take it slow. If you want to look up the research, the research that I built my muscle gain models off of is the... Eric Helms and Alan Aragon published paper from like, I believe 2020, 2021 on natural bodybuilders. You could find that on Google Scholar, PubMed. They have rates in there. The suggested rates are much slower than literally 80% of your fitness personalities suggest. Take it slow. Right? And then the final thing I would say. There is going to be some fat gain that some doesn't mean 90% It doesn't mean 80% It's going to be relative to how efficiently you set up your diet in a myriad of other factors But take it slow and you will not just wake up one day and being like I fucked it all off But those would be the four biggest pillars that I would suggest covering

[Bryan]: 21:37

Yeah, I love that. That was very concise. I would say also, don't be scared of throwing a mini cut in. And I say that with a bit tentatively, because I feel like the mindset of somebody in this question askers position is probably going to think that they need a mini cut more often than they actually do. And so that would be another reason to have a coach who can kind of help you with that. But I think there's really no reason that you need to get fat again. Like you shouldn't, it's really unhealthy for you to have all these fat cells and you've already got the makings of them from being fat prior. So you don't want to kind of inspire them to grow again. So I think you do need to manage that. But like, you know, it could be eight or 10 pounds up and then a few pounds down, and then eight or 10 pounds up and a few pounds down. Like it just, it doesn't need to be like you're up 16 to 20 pounds before you make any sort of move to cut again. Would kind of be my practical thought on that. cool. How hard

[Aaron Straker]: 22:40

This

[Bryan]: 22:40

is it

[Aaron Straker]: 22:40

one.

[Bryan]: 22:40

going to be for me to tone down my biking now once my race is over? I love this question because I've actually thought a lot about it and I think it's going to be really hard and I don't know exactly what's going to happen. I know for sure that I'm not going to continue doing five zone two and two zone five interval type sessions a week. I'm not going to be on my bike seven days a week, but I really do enjoy the benefits that I'm getting from the Zone 2 work specifically. And so one nice thing about, maybe not nice, but the weather is going to be changing after my race. So my race is early mid-October and when we get in a boulder here in late October, November, December, the weather is not super conducive to riding. And I don't know that I'm quite hardcore enough to be one of those boulderites that I see biking around in like negative six degree weather. or like snow or rain. Like, I mean, the people are crazy here. Like, I feel like I'm going to wait for a fair weather day and go biking. But my guess would be that I'll probably settle into a four times a week biking where I'll have three zone two sessions and probably one like harder interval type session, and I'll probably end up doing most of them on the peloton. And I won't enjoy it as much. So it'll be much easier for me to do less of it. And depending on how the race goes and off season goes and everything, like there's already a part of me that's thinking I would love to do this same race again if they offer it and kind of train for two or three months again similarly for it and see if I can improve year upon year, which would then give me, you know, like eight or nine months a year to focus more on lifting and hypertrophy and three or four months a year to focus more on biking. And that seems like kind of a reasonable split that I think would work well with things I enjoy. and things that I care about as I get older. So, yeah, that's kind of my initial thought on it and we'll see how it goes from there.

[Aaron Straker]: 24:44

I like that. This

[Bryan]: 24:47

I'll

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

one

[Bryan]: 24:47

kick

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

will

[Bryan]: 24:47

this

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

kick

[Bryan]: 24:47

one

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

over

[Bryan]: 24:47

over

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

the...

[Bryan]: 24:47

to you.

[Aaron Straker]: 24:49

Okay?

[Bryan]: 24:51

Yeah, I'll kick it to you and we can take it from there. Cause I think it's interesting. We'll both have a perspective. At what point does a lifter graduate from an upper lower split? What are signs that you may benefit from something more tailored to your specific goals and recoverability?

[Aaron Straker]: 25:08

Yeah, so a really interesting question. I don't think that you ever necessarily need to graduate from an upper lower split. For instance, if I have a client who's, even an advanced client who's training four debt times per week, we're probably running an upper lower split. Maybe one of the uppers might have a little bit more of a push versus pull. focus, same thing with the lower, we might have a little bit like one day with a little bit more of a hamstring bias, one day with a little bit more of a glute bias, but I don't necessarily think that anyone necessarily graduates from that. Into the second part of the question, signs that you may benefit from something more tailored to your specific goals, or as if you have significant lagging body parts, right? Let's say your arms just fucking suck, right? We might need to start adding some arm volume on leg days if that's important enough to you, if maybe if you have aspirations for competing or something like that where the value is, the benefit would be there to add. additional volume across more days sort of thing. And then inter recoverability. If you have like a specific body part that just takes a very long time to recover, not to pick on Brian, but Brian, you, your hamstrings used to be like noticeably slower than the rest of your

[Bryan]: 26:30

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 26:30

body. In terms of their recovery, uh, proximity of length to recover after training sessions, that is where I think a little bit more nuanced programming specifically for you would be more intelligent because of just limitations in recovery capacity that is a traditional, you know, push pull legs. or something just makes too many assumptions for.

[Bryan]: 26:55

Yeah, no, I mean, those are really, really good points. You kind of said exactly what I was going to say. So I will just expand on that a little bit. I don't believe that you ever need to split off an upper lower split either. I think the context there and provide it was perfect. And then as far as signs that you would want to move off, I think it really comes down to looking at each one of your specific muscle groups and how quickly it recovers from the volume that you're giving it. And so if you determine that one recovers faster or slower than the others. For example, lateral delts. Like, can you only train your lateral delts twice a week on upper body days? Highly likely not. Like, you probably could train your lateral delts if you wanted to prioritize them. You could train them on all four days. You could put them on lower body days too. I think depending on exercise selection, you could do the same with some back movements. You know, if you had one back day that was a little bit more lengthened, if you're lucky enough to have an ability to bias lengthened in your back work, and you could have three days that are more short overloaded back, and you could literally be training back in delts on all four of your training days. Currently, I have two one-on-one clients and I only have three total. So two of them, uh, happened to have much more developed legs than upper bodies. And so we are just on a perpetual upper body specialization program. And if I were to have them on an upper lower split twice a week, there would their legs would just continue to grow and their upper body would get nowhere. So we have them on either one of them is on a one times a week leg program and the other one is on two times a week, but the volume is so low that it's mostly an upper body day with like legs as an afterthought. And so there's a number of different ways that you can be creative and design programming so that, you know, Like in this case, leg days become essentially full body days and then upper body days are upper body days. So we're training upper body four days a week with legs twice a week, but it started as an upper lower split. It just kind of morphed and molded into this thing. So, yeah, I mean, you know, the signs of when you would need to do it would just be based on how quickly your muscles are recovering, which muscles can handle more volume, which muscles maybe can handle less volume or need less volume. And then you kind of manipulate and move stuff around from there. In program design, if you just start with an upper lower split and then you're like, okay, well, Delts could do more. So we'll move some there and back and do more. We'll move some there. Ooh, hamstrings, they can't handle as much. So we'll take away some here. And then you just kind of look at what you create and it might not look at all like an upper lower split anymore, but that's kind of how it started, you know? So.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:43

Yeah, really good additional context there. This one will kick over to you first. I'm sure our answers might differ a little bit here. Is there any benefit to eating a higher protein, which they have denoted here as greater than 0.7 grams per pound of body weight, especially in a cut or surplus?

[Bryan]: 30:10

Yeah, you skipped question seven, but we'll come back to that one in a second. Yeah, I think there is a benefit in eating more protein. My general default here is to say that 0.7 seems like a lower end number for if you're in a surplus. Like if you're eating a ton of carbs and you have all that protection from insulin and all of that. I think you can get away with eating 0.7 or 0.8 grams per pound and probably be okay. It might not be optimal, but I think that it gets you most of the way to optimal. I tend to veer more towards having one gram per pound of body weight in a deficit just to protect muscle catabolism. And so yeah, those are kind of my quick thoughts on that one.

[Aaron Straker]: 30:54

Yeah, I would say the benefit, especially in a cut or surplus, is there. If someone is at maintenance, and the goal is like, hey, I just want to maintain what I have and continue to train and that sort of thing, that is the... That is the circumstance that I think eating, you know, let's just say at 0.7, which I would honestly consider kind of low for the population that I speak most with, a resistance-trained population or people interested in that, is the safest. Your benefits of going higher protein out of maintenance. Kind of. They circumvent some of the purpose of being at maintenance, which is added lifestyle flexibility sort of thing. But yes, I would say there is, I would even consider saying significant benefit to going higher than that, especially in a calorie deficit 100%, but likely also warranted in a surplus as well.

[Bryan]: 31:59

Yep. All right. Backtracking to question seven. Do any lifters need five days of rest between body parts? Maybe only if you're older and really beat up.

[Aaron Straker]: 32:16

Potentially yes. I mean

[Bryan]: 32:18

Yeah

[Aaron Straker]: 32:18

it up when I was training my last My last split I would train quads on Monday I Could maybe get away with training quads on Saturday again, they were that disrupted Knee so that one is about five days right there and So I would say depending on the split there could be there could warrant that now I, it depends on, now mine was pure muscle, right? That was like a muscle soreness. If you're older and your joints just have more miles on them and you're thrashing your joints in the way that you're training, that could warrant potentially longer recovery time. But that I would say is just kind of being... maybe a little bit stubborn in your training techniques and those sorts of things because that joint integrity is only going to continue to kind of wear there. But there's been times, I remember one time, Brian, you and I did that really stupid workout where we did walking lunges for like four minutes straight or something like that at the old CFPB.

[Bryan]: 33:31

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 33:32

I

[Bryan]: 33:32

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 33:32

mean, my legs were in shambles for probably like seven days. I mean, it was

[Bryan]: 33:35

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 33:35

absurd.

[Bryan]: 33:36

I mean, CrossFit stuff is another story completely. I don't know if this person's asking about that. But yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 33:41

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 33:42

you can definitely have like awful metabolic kind of type workouts that leave you in shambles for a really long time. I feel like the answer to this is yeah, and it depends. I've I guess life stress is also one that can play into it or like outside stress aside from lifting. And so if you look at like my life right now where I'm biking seven days a week and doing two hard bike sessions, I'm finding that it's difficult for me to do good quality quad work more than once a week. And so that seems to be sufficient for me. I mean, I am hitting two sets of sissy squats on another day. So I guess in that sense, I'm getting like one really big quad day that actually makes me sore and then one like touch up day. But I could see a reason for me to design a program in this case where I don't even do the sissy squats on the other day and I just do the quad work once every seven days and. that could be reasonable based on where you are in your journey, what other priorities you have, what other stresses you have and stuff like that. I also think it's probably worth noting that the bro split received a lot of hate over the 2010s decade via the obsession with frequency in the evidence-based community. It seems like the bro split has been redeemed now with some of this new research coming out. see any reason that you need to force yourself to train a muscle twice a week per se. I think every five days is great. That's actually the sweet spot where I find when I'm not biking a lot, when I'm prioritizing hypertrophy, I find once every five days is the sweet spot for me for big damaging muscle groups like legs and chest in most cases. For back and delts, yeah, I think five days is almost excessive. even when I'm biking, I find myself doing back and delts every three days. And so I do think it comes down to kind of, it relates to that prior question of when do you graduate from an upper lower split or from a push pull legs or whatever, and it's hey, when your body parts need it and they're recovering in time. And so I think five days is a pretty good general starting point, but some are gonna be less and some are gonna be more, and it's gonna depend on a number of factors as well.

[Aaron Straker]: 36:09

Yeah, really, really good there. This next one, Brian, I will kind of frame up and we will kick over to you. So this question we modified a little bit just to make it fit into the podcast structure a little bit more. So here we go. Stretch mediated hypertrophy over long periods of time. Some people online say that the stretch mediated hypertrophy gains are short lived. Others say that longer muscle lengths are best. Do the short. stretch mediated hypertrophy gains last only months, not years.

[Bryan]: 36:44

Yeah, we had to rewrite this question because it made no sense. It was like all over the place and we were both like scratching our heads and then we kind of came up with this. So, um, so I think this is what the person is asking. And, uh, and I don't believe that there is actually any science to specifically say that stretch-mediated hypertrophy lasts either only a short time or potentially long time. I also think the clarification is important to make here in that. the gains don't necessarily go away. It just like once you make the gains and you cement them in and you have this like new hypertrophy, you have that hypertrophy. It's not like in a number of months, your body's like, Oh, that was from stretch media, media hypertrophy. So we're going to dump those gains. And and now you'll have to like kind of start back over again. It's more just like the exponential or dramatic increase. in hypertrophy that you achieve initially, it may level off. So you don't lose the hypertrophy you gain, but it may reach a point where it's not doing any more for you than training through a full range of motion, where it did do something for you more than that initially. Hopefully I said that in a clear manner, but I believe this is possible. Like I think, you know, if you look at our adaptation to anything over time, like walking lunges you brought up in the last one is a great example because you do walking lunges for the first time in a long time and you're sore for a week and you're like, what the fuck? And then every week you do them and then you're sore for five days and then you're sore for four days and then two. So repeated bout effect happens and we adapt to stimuli. It's seen all across adaptations in our species or. pretty much any animal species. And so, yeah, it would make sense to me that you get this dramatic increase in the beginning, and then it kind of levels off, and maybe it's the same as it was before, and you probably could maintain it going back to full range of motion. I think that makes sense to me, but I could also see it being the other way where, hey, training at long muscle lengths is just universally better, and you will continue to get these kind of micro benefits over the course of time. by continuing to prioritize some work at long muscle lengths.

[Aaron Straker]: 39:16

Yeah, that's really, really well summarized by you. I think the thing that I ultimately come back to with this is your training should eventually evolve into reps that are performed a little bit more, I wanna say like civil. and less like a savage beast who's just trying to use as much load and throw, you know, as much load around as possible. And that kind of brings you into like a somewhat controlled, eccentric, a brief pause at the lower bottom of the movement, which just takes some of that rebound tension off of your, you know, connective tissue and then applying, you know, like Brian says, applying, you know, pressure onto the gas pedal. through the concentric. Like that, for most people, is where hopefully, I would say, your technique kind of evolves too. And that is essentially covering all of your bases. You're gonna get some of the stretch-mediated hypertrophy. You're gonna spend more time at longer muscle lengths. And eventually, everything kind of works itself out in your favor. And then I think that is the ultimate takeaway from this, is finding that for yourself.

[Bryan]: 40:36

Yeah, no, that's super well said. I really love that idea of just almost every rep is performed in that kind of piston like mechanism where it comes down, it pauses at the stretch, it kind of pops up like in the confident press on the gas pedal. And then you don't spend a ton of time up at the top. Like there's no reason to like lock out and like be like, look, I got it coach. I'm there. Um, like just hit and release. That's kind of the, the piston like piece that I picture in my brain is you hit the top and you release and you just kind of slowly descend back down into that bottom position. And when you perform movements like that, you are going to be spending more time in the length and position, you're going to probably save your joints a little bit. And, you know, whether you hit the short position or you don't, the like if you hit it in the piston like mechanism, you're still hitting the short position. You're just not spending an unnecessary amount of time there when the growth seems to not be significant there anyway. So you can hit it. You can reach that kind of orthopedic benefit of getting there, but you don't need to like then struggle to hold that position and waste energy. So anyway, uh, well said and good context there. Uh, next question asks me if I'm using a power meter on my bike and if I have any cost effective recommendations. I don't use a power meter. I am looking into getting one now that I have clip-on pedals. I haven't actually installed them yet, so I'm still using flats. But once I do get clip-on pedals installed, I have my shoes and get those linked up. I am probably going to get a power meter. In all reality, that may happen next spring because I'm gonna be done with this season in October and I kinda just wanna ride on flats for now. Uh, that's a longer discussion as to why we can talk about that another time. Um, but I will probably eventually we're looking to a power meter in next spring at the latest and I will update you guys when I do. Um, okay. Question over to Aaron. Any advice on managing nutrition as a college student? Goal is maintenance.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:35

So honestly, I really thought about this one a little bit of like what could actually land in now I understand college maybe has changed in the fuck 15 years, 17 years since I was there. Jesus, that's getting far. Drinking lower calorie alcohol. I think it's probably the best conscious use there. I mean, trying to eat a breakfast and getting some decent nutrients in relative to your budget and those sorts of things. But when it comes to it, like on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, if your drink, if you're like any alcoholic drink, bare minimum is essentially a hundred calories. I know some of the like Trulies and Seltzer's might be like a 93 or something like that, but it's essentially a hundred calories. However, there are drinks for a single drink that will be like 400 calories. And I think if the goal is simply staying the same, right, and from a nutrition standpoint, I think that the biggest, the lowest hanging fruit that stands to make the best, the biggest kind of impact is intelligently selecting alcoholic drinks to reduce your overall caloric load. Probably not the answer you're looking for, but I think that is probably the least like. Effort, best answer

[Bryan]: 44:04

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 44:04

there.

[Bryan]: 44:06

Yeah, that's a good one as well. Or like straight liquor, I guess works too.

[Aaron Straker]: 44:11

Yeah, even

[Bryan]: 44:12

But

[Aaron Straker]: 44:12

better.

[Bryan]: 44:12

I would just say prioritize protein in most meals because the way that I would always track alcohol and it always just made the most intuitive sense to me, even though alcohol does have seven calories per gram and it can be tracked independently that way. I used to always just track it by... combining calories from fat and carbs to equal the total calorie number. So if you had like a hundred calorie drink, I might call it six grams of fat, which would be 54 calories, and 11 grams of carbs. So six fat, 11 carbs. And then I would just put it into my tracking sheet that way because I know that fat and carbs are not protein and alcohol is not protein. And so therefore I ensure that I'm getting enough protein and I'm still tracking all the calories. And so that really worked well for me back in college when I did that. And that's kind of my recommendation for people now when they're trying to do this similar thing there.

[Aaron Straker]: 45:14

Yeah, actually good input there. Okay, this one I'll kick over to you because there's some important context here. How to progress lower body when upper body strength, but not grip, is limiting how much you can get up. So to add additional context here, landmine squats and goblet squats, but cannot get the dumbbell or the landmine into position because it's too heavy.

[Bryan]: 45:44

Yeah, I mean, diff choose different exercises. This is really the simple answer. Like I mean, in a if you're following like an at home program and these are your best options, there is a trick that you can do with the landmine. There's nothing you can do with the goblet squat. You just have to work on being better at cleans, because that's kind of what it is, is like picking it up, cleaning it to your to your goblet and getting underneath it. But like shit, I do goblet squats with 100 pounds, but that's clearly not enough weight since I can squat 300 plus. And so yeah, the goblet is, it's just really poor movement. If I were doing a goblet squat, I only would do it as the second part of a superset after like a leg extension. So I'd be like, oh, leg extension till I'm about to die or lunge, like walking lunge until you're about to die and then pop one of the dumbbells up into a goblet and start goblet squatting. At that point as a second part of a superset, then you don't need much weight in the goblet squat. For the landmine, you can get the thing into position much easier. There's two little tricks that I use, or I've had people use. One is to prop the landmine barbell up on a bench. And so obviously the closer you move the bench to the landmine base, the steeper the bar is gonna be. So the less you'll have to struggle to get underneath it. However, the best compromise of those two, because you don't want it to be so steep because then you're not going to be able to actually squat with it, is to set it up so that you can get under it, but you have to start at the bottom of your squat. So the bench would be like a little further out and the bar would be not quite as steep of an angle, but you can get under it into the bottom of your squat. And then that's just kind of where you start. And then the bench becomes your resting point. So when you finish the set, you just kind of like set it right back down on the bench again. You can also set your landmine up so that the barbell comes and rests on the J clip of your squat rack. And so there you can kind of just pick it up off the J clip and put it on your shoulder there as well. So for landmine, those are two pretty decent solutions where you don't have to pick the barbell up. The goblet squat is just a poor movement unless you're using it as a second movement in a superset. And you should probably try to find better exercises that don't require your upper body to stabilize your. party.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:08

Yeah, very, very well said. Once, that's one of the things with some of those movements where you're limited by your upper body or your core with like the front squat or a goblet squat or something like that. They're not going to be the best and not to go off on a little bit of a tangent, but when you see people doing like lunge, bicep curl, overhead press, like multi-movements.

[Bryan]: 48:33

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:33

your whatever body part is the weakest, which is going to be your bicep or your delt, probably your bicep, your quads are doing and glutes are getting very little stimulus in those sort of compound. If I can even call them compound, like

[Bryan]: 48:47

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 48:48

multi-purpose, I guess, exercises.

[Bryan]: 48:51

Yeah, those are like circuit based like body weight class movements. Like how can we just like get people burning calories and not worry about actually training a muscle at all? Aaron, what is the biggest thing you have changed your mind on in the last two to three years?

[Aaron Straker]: 49:09

Man, this one is hard. Two to three years is a big time and I'm sure I've changed my mind many times over the two to three years. I would say the one that has been the most recent and one that I kind of really battled with, with there's like your textbook nutrition around Hey, person is X kilos, they are this age. Pretty much you have like your Ketcham McCardles, your Mifflin St. George, these like BMR formulas that help you calculate macros and these sorts of things for people. It's a good starting point, but it is not an end-all be-all. And if just because you are bigger than someone and weigh more does not mean that you need more calories to maintain your body weight or grow relative to someone else, right? I've just, I've seen it too many times in people that I... know are tracking their food accurately. And I've just, I've seen it and it's the, the at gen pop person, yes. But when you get into like athletes, especially physique athletes and stuff, things change. And those kind of formulas and stuff break down. So that's the first one. The second one is with gaining or building phases that you can leverage training. as a really great stimulus for the muscle protein synthesis signaling which will facilitate the body weight increases so long that adequate calories are in place. something that I've personally used in the past and that I know that so many people have is since I'm in a gaining phase, like food needs to keep going up as weight goes up and I've just seen it that that's not the case. For example, with my most recent gaining phase, the last caloric adjustment I believe we made was in late March. and I was maybe 206 pounds around that time. And I went all the way up to 216 with not a single adjustment in that timeframe. It was just balls to the wall training and really trying to put a good stimulus to grow in.

[Bryan]: 51:41

That's awesome. What would the peak calories get up to?

[Aaron Straker]: 51:44

$34.50 and I had

[Bryan]: 51:46

Wow.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:46

one free meal per week which was sushi and then those would probably get up closer to like maybe $3900 on that sushi

[Bryan]: 51:53

Wow,

[Aaron Straker]: 51:53

day

[Bryan]: 51:54

so 3,500 or so average, that's crazy. All right, yeah, my thought on this one is very, very obvious probably. It's that I believe in cardio now. I mean, two to three years ago, I was lifting and I was doing steps, and I thought that was completely sufficient for anything you would need in life. And there's still a large part of me that believes that for most health benefits, you can get... the big rocks out of the way by lifting and walking. I just have found, you know, A, I guess, A, that there's more benefit beyond just health long-term. Like, it really has helped, you know, my mindset and my sleep and just my quality of life to do more zone two cardio stuff. But also I've realized, you know, that the interference effect is significantly less than originally thought. I mean, two or three years ago, I would have said like, yeah, if you start doing cardio a bunch of days a week, you are for sure going to lose hypertrophy and I would not recommend it. And now I realize that I've been doing cardio seven days a week and I'm barely losing hypertrophy if I am. I'm not, I'm not sure at this point, but I'm, I'm a hundred percent confident that I could be doing it four or five days a week and have no mitigating impact. So I think that's been pretty interesting. Okay,

[Aaron Straker]: 53:15

That's another good

[Bryan]: 53:16

yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 53:16

one.

[Bryan]: 53:16

do you want to kick this one over to me here?

[Aaron Straker]: 53:19

Yeah, this is a really cool one. So this is a home gym question. I have a prime leg extension slash prime lying leg curl combination in my home gym. The significance there with the prime equipment is that you can load them in either the short mid-range or length position. So what are your thoughts on loading them in the mid slash short position versus loading them more lengthened, biased? Also, for the context, I also have a Cybex Seated Leg Curl that I use a lot as well that is lengthened to overload.

[Bryan]: 53:53

I mean, this is like the most savage home gym that I've ever heard. You have two different leg curls. You have two

[Aaron Straker]: 53:59

It's sick,

[Bryan]: 54:00

that

[Aaron Straker]: 54:00

he

[Bryan]: 54:00

you.

[Aaron Straker]: 54:00

sent

[Bryan]: 54:00

I

[Aaron Straker]: 54:01

me photos. It's a sick home gym, yeah.

[Bryan]: 54:03

mean, how awesome. So so my thought is that, yeah, I mean, the leg extension, the leg curl are inherently meant to train the muscle short. We have plenty of movements to train. the quads and the hamstrings lengthened, such as like RDLs and different squat variations, single leg squats, stuff like that. And so, yeah, I mean, the leg extension for the longest amount of time was to train the quad short, the lying leg curl was to train the hamstring short too. And so what we find with these two movements is that the resistance curve of the movement can be adjusted, but the strength curve, which is... how the muscle itself reacts to the movement pattern you're putting it under. Both are short. Like when you straighten your leg, the hardest point is going to be when your leg is straight. And when you curl your leg to your butt, the hardest point is going to be when your heel gets to your butt. And this is without weight. It's because the strength curve is short. So when you set it short, you're essentially going short short. Um, and when you said it lengthened, it's overloaded for the resistance profile, but the strength curve of the movement is still short. So I mean, there's benefits to both essentially is what I'm saying here. And the way that I program this, because I have an adjustable machine as well, it's not as cool as Prime, but I am able to adjust the resistance profile on my leg curl leg extension machine. I have one day. I found this on the web. Really, Siri? I have one day. where I do most of my quad work. And on that day, I set my leg extension short because I know that I'm also doing like hack squats and other lengthened movements. And then I have my main hamstring day and I set my leg curl short mid as well. So that leg extension was short mid as well. I set that short mid because I also have RDLs and other hamstring movements on that day. On my second day, I only have one movement for hamstring and then on my other... So on my hamstring day, I have one movement for quads, and on my quad day, I have one movement for hamstrings. On the day where I only do one movement, I set it lengthened, because I'm like, hey, I'm only getting two sets in, I'm only doing one exercise, it would make more sense for me to get more out of that. And I also, like you and I have discussed, we like the idea of kind of going short movement before going into like our heavy compound lengthened movements, so it makes sense on the day where we're doing like a full quad or a full ham day to put... The shorter version of that movement first and so that's the way I would go about it I think there's benefits to doing both Unless you're doing a sissy squat you probably don't train your rec fem Lengthened so while the squat does train like general squats or split squats or pendulum squats, whatever they train Your quads lengthened, but they don't train the rec fem itself lengthened So there probably is unique benefit to training the rec fem lengthened with your prime leg extension unless you're doing sissy squats, at which point I think that probably mitigates the benefit there.

[Aaron Straker]: 57:26

very well set. This one, I will kick over to you as we go. Preferences on mini cuts versus traditional cuts and why.

[Bryan]: 57:40

I'll kick it back to you.

[Aaron Straker]: 57:44

I honestly I think for the utility in mini cuts I think is it sounds great on paper very rarely does it does it work effectively I think I can count on like one hand the times I've used it in my coaching career I think the population of people that it uses in is in hey I'm on this extended gaining phase I'm getting a little bit fatter than maybe I feel comfortable with I'm gonna go on a Heavily, you know a heavy deficit for a period of like two to five weeks To clean myself up a little bit so I can get back to gaining without feeling fatter than I really need to I think for people in life who think I'm going to just slash calories for six weeks and it's going to work out the way I think it is, I just haven't actually seen it. The level of adherence in that sort of thing with the massive deficit that needs to occur to facilitate the progress in that timeframe. Is it doable? 100%. I've just seen so many people fail, and I think people just think that you can get the job done in six weeks when realistically, most people need 12 to 16, if not 20.

[Bryan]: 59:04

Yeah. Yeah, I, um, I agree. I mean, I'm glad I kicked that over to you because you said that way better than I would have. But but I do like personally, just anecdotally. I do personally love like a one to two week mini cut. And so it's not even like in the standard, like you said, two to five weeks, which is kind of how I perceive mini cuts to be too. But I love like, hey, I've been eating too much food. I really just don't feel hungry right now. I'm gonna just kind of lean into this and eat less for a week or two. And then I usually feel great and I'm hungry again, and then I get back to eating. So there's, I guess, personal anecdote there as well. This one, man, how much time do we have? Like 10 minutes, okay. Let's get through these kind of quickly here. I think I can get through these next two. Why don't I use wrist cuffs for Y-rays and lateral raises? Are there any drawbacks to using cuffs? I do use wrist. cuffs for Y-Razes and lateral razes actually. And I think there's significant benefit. What I don't do is I don't put them on my wrist. Cass has kind of discussed how there's benefit to the tactile sense and the activation in the forearm extensors of actually gripping something. So instead of holding the wrist cuff on my wrist and letting my hand be limp, I actually hold the wrist cuff in my hand. And I really like how it's like a loop. And so it's thick and soft and I hold it in my hand and I feel like I get as much benefit from that way. If I were to hold it on my wrist, like a wrist cuff is meant to be worn, I would hold a handle in my hand, which you see people do sometimes because then you have that tactile piece as well. But I just prefer to grip the cuff in my hand. Any additional thoughts on that, Aaron?

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:54

Yeah, I mean, I do exactly what you do. Anytime I'm using a wrist cuff, I put it around my palm.

[Bryan]: 1:00:59

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:59

You know,

[Bryan]: 1:01:00

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:00

and then depending on if I'm using like a Y-Rays, you know, with my, where I'm facing the cables, I end up putting like the cable kind of in between that, my index and ring finger sort of thing, but

[Bryan]: 1:01:12

Mmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:12

that, it's always just felt. It felt intuitively better to me that way. You do get a little bit of extra longer moment arm which is going

[Bryan]: 1:01:21

Yep.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:21

to increase tension at the delt there anyway. The only thing I will say here on this question is if you are going to use a wrist cuff, don't put it on your forearm like at the elbow where people do because you feel stronger. You're stronger because you're drastically shortening the moment arm. drastically reducing tension at the at the delt so Keep it on your wrist or palm for you know for the for the longer moment arm there

[Bryan]: 1:01:50

Cool, agreed. Why do I like spider curls instead of preacher curls? They both work the mid-short, right? So this actually kind of goes back similarly to that conversation we were having prior about the prime extension, the prime machine with the leg extension and the leg curl. So both movements, the strength profile is short because the elbows are in front of the body. So the arm is going to get weaker, or rather the, because the elbow's in front of the body. the strength curve of the movement is short. However, the resistance profile of these movements is opposite. Because the spider curl has the humerus tricep unsupported, it is going to be hardest at the short position. Because the preacher curl has the humerus supported on the bench, the most resistance is actually gonna be at the bottom. So while it's not. a lengthened bicep in the sense that like a face away curl or an incline curl would be because your arm is behind your body, the preacher curl is actually overloading the lengthened portion of the range of motion of the movement that it is working within. So, the reason I don't like preacher curls though, honestly, is because I'm scared like shit of them. I've seen too many biceps pop on the internet and it is always from a preacher curl. And I just don't feel like at this point that the ROI is good enough for me to continue doing preacher curls when I feel this like really uncomfortable nerve wracking stretch at the bottom that kind of just yeah it makes me uncomfortable.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:30

Yeah, I can't, if there's a decent preacher curl machine in a gym, I will use that, but with like a dumbbell, I can't tell you the last time I've actually used one. Same thing, that almost like hyperextension stretch at the bottom, in the pressure, in the elbow pit, hard pass,

[Bryan]: 1:03:48

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:48

not worth it. There's

[Bryan]: 1:03:50

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:50

much better

[Bryan]: 1:03:50

I'm right

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:50

exercises

[Bryan]: 1:03:50

with you.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:03:51

with a better safety profile.

[Bryan]: 1:03:53

Yep, that's for sure. Since I'm biking a lot more, what's my step goal? I've gotten this question from a number of people actually. So it's interesting, people are interested, which is cool. I don't have a step goal, but I do still try to walk once pretty much every day. And sometimes it's a mile, sometimes it's two miles, but I do try to get out at least once. Some days I get out twice. But my step- have honestly been between about eight and 10,000 most days. Um, I find that just by living life, uh, like literally having two kids and being on my feet a lot, I tend to get 6,000 steps without going for any walks. So if I do one, one mile walk, that would take me up to 8,000 for the day. And if I do a two mile walk or if I get two, one mile walks in, then that takes me to 10,000. Um, so yeah, eight to 10,000 just sounds kind of seems to be where I land. and it doesn't feel like a lot of movement. Like one mile walk is 20 minutes of purposeful walking for the day to get me there. So yeah, that's been pretty easy. Next question. I don't know if we have a ton to say on this. So the question is, would be great to hear you and Erin discuss the way that you're now wasting away, losing body weight, but you're still stuffed with food, AKA you don't have the traditional diet biofeedback. when that hasn't been the trend over the last year that I've been focusing on cardio. So essentially what they're asking is like, why in the last few months does it seem like I'm losing body weight, even though I'm eating so much food that I go to bed full every night when this biofeedback didn't seem to have this discorrelation, discordance with like, with my body weight. earlier in my cardio adventures. And so my thought is just that I'm doing so much more cardio. And I think it's just a short period of time that my body is in, like you could call it a honeymoon phase maybe. But I think it's just a matter of a number of weeks before things catch up and like I start feeling hungry if I'm losing weight and I start not being hungry if I'm gaining weight. So anyway, that's my initial thought. Do you have anything to add on that?

[Aaron Straker]: 1:06:14

I mean very minimally that's regulation, your body adapting to a new environment and it's not like it happens immediately. I do think you're in a honeymoon phase. I'm eating a lot, my cardio volume has gone up, I'm getting leaner, my body weight's dropping and the kind of auto-regulating systems of the body just haven't connected all the dots yet.

[Bryan]: 1:06:42

When doing heavy barbell squats, where do you put the safety arms so that the bar, so the barbell barely touches at the bottom or just below that? Um,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:06:52

you

[Bryan]: 1:06:53

just below.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:06:54

want me to

[Bryan]: 1:06:54

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:06:54

get just below

[Bryan]: 1:06:55

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:06:55

just below

[Bryan]: 1:06:56

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:06:56

because if the bar is touching at the bottom of your squat you are effectively unloading your quads glutes and body at the best possible position to have them loaded which is that bottom length into position so put it just below and honestly Practice failing a squat, right? And that could be with an empty bar and squat down and just feel what it feels like when you dump it off your back. I don't wanna bring this up, but there is some poor dude that fucking died here in Bali like a week ago squatting because he didn't know how to bail and literally killed himself. Learn how to bail a back squat. Like if that's probably, I would say like the single biggest like redeeming. Skill learned through CrossFit is like you learn how to bail a back squat safely You know without a spotter and all these things set them low Learn how to bail and just get it off your back and get forward. It's very simple Practice it a couple times and you'll be perfectly fine

[Bryan]: 1:08:08

Two more questions to go here. How do you calculate your zone two? I'm 31 years old and using 60 to 70% of my max heart rate seems a bit low, puts me at 113 to 132 beats per minute. Yeah, so we did an entire episode on this. It was episode 106, I think. It was the zone two and zone five cardio episode. I would definitely go back and listen to that episode, but I do have some updated thoughts on it that I'll address real quick. And so I think 60 to 70% is a good starting point for somebody that is coming off the couch or has just been a lifter, but has done zero aerobic activity. But I think that you'll generally find that number climbs based on RPE metrics that I'll discuss here in a second. So. Um, I like now my, my primary way of prescribing zone two is to say a 15 word sentence that you've memorized when you're in the middle of doing your zone two. And if you can say that 15 word sentence at normal cadence with one breath, so you're not having to breathe in the middle of it. And most importantly, you don't feel like you've gone into a breathing deficit by saying it. So if you're breathing at a normal cadence, you say this 15 word sentence, and then you can immediately just go back to breathing at your normal cadence, and you're not like, oh, where'd my air go type thing, then you're probably in zone two. And so what I find that correlates to for heart rate for most people is that if you take 170 minus your age, that's where I usually start people. and that puts you between about 65 and 72% of your maximum heart rate. And then as you get better at it, you can probably work up close to 180 minus age, and that will put you closer to 75ish% of max heart rate. Depending on the person, there's obviously variation in there. But anything above 75% of max heart rate, you're definitely starting to trend into. more zone three type realm. Phil Maffetone came up with the formula 180 minus age, but when he came up with that, it wasn't for people to say, hey, you should do 180 minus age and that is your zone two heart rate. That was the peak of the zone. So he was like, hey, take

[Aaron Straker]: 1:10:52

Mmm.

[Bryan]: 1:10:52

180 minus your age and you should not go above that. So all of your work in zone two should be below that. And you can vary whether it's like way below it, as like an easier kind of more parasympathetic ride, or maybe you're like pushing up against that boundary and you want like to work on a little bit higher in zone two threshold work, but essentially using that 180 minus age as a boundary, not as an objective. And so I think a lot of people misinterpret that, which I think they did from my first podcast on this. where I said 180 minus age, and I didn't specify that that's the top boundary. That was more of like, I think people perceived it as that's kind of like the middle goal, and you could be a little above or a little below. But I think when you look at that as a top boundary, that's a pretty good place to be. And then you kind of use the RPE method to stay below 180 minus age in whatever capacity makes sense for you. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:11:48

set.

[Bryan]: 1:11:49

Cool. And then the last question is thoughts on training five times a week, all in a row, and then two days off versus two to three days on with one day off and then repeat.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:11:59

If you're following the traditional bro split, I think that works. Any kind of split off of that, I think you will be sacrificing recovery time between repeated training bouts. I would say nine times out of 10, I don't have people go five days straight.

[Bryan]: 1:12:20

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, if you're like heading out on a vacation and you can get five days in like do five in a row and then you know, take vacation and recover. But if you're in a repeating week sequence of micro cycles and you're like, Hey, I could train Monday through Friday, but it's like upper lower, upper lower, upper or something. Like, I don't know, to me that seems like you'd be much more benefited by having like some rest day in there somewhere. But yeah, great point by Aaron that if you're doing a bro split type program, it probably doesn't matter. If you're going on a vacation for a week and you do it once, it probably doesn't matter. But you know, if you're writing a program long term, you probably want to have a mid day rest day in there unless it's a bro split.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:13:02

Yep, very, very well said.

[Bryan]: 1:13:04

Cool, cry got them all.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:13:06

All right, guys, yep, we got through them all. As always, thank you guys for submitting questions. I feel like we're getting some really, really cool ones, which is always really, really fun. The last thing, next week on Eat, Train, and Prosper, we will have Brandon Kempter as a guest, and that will be a very, very cool episode. And we will talk to you next week.