September Instagram Q&A | ETP#126

[Aaron Straker]: 0:29

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, individuals of all ages, Eat, Train, Prosper proudly presents episode 126, September Instagram Q&A. Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please?

[Bryan]: 0:43

Haha, you never know what you're gonna get here with the intro anymore. It's just anybody's guess. I love it. Um, so yeah, we are here. I woke up at 5 56 this morning and poor Aaron was already sitting here ready waiting for me. So we're running just a teeny bit late. I rushed down here and got all my questions in and we are basically ready to go here. So I'm kicking it off with some quick updates. I just spent last Monday and Tuesday in Breckenridge, which is the mountains around here in Colorado. Actually, there's a lot of mountains, but that's some of the mountains. And that was for my 41st birthday. So I'm officially 41 now, making my way into the 40s, very quickly. Luckily, everyone around me is also getting older, so that keeps things fair. And... No, it was really cool though. I went up to Breck with my buddy. I talked about on the prior episode, I hadn't seen in a while. It's been six years. So we were able to connect, which was awesome. Went for a long hike up in the mountains one of the days and then just kind of kicked it around town, did a hot tub sauna. Didn't bike, which was cool. Actually, that's actually completely false. I woke up hungover the first day and did end up doing an indoor. bike ride to try to sweat it out. So I didn't completely take time away from biking. I got a short bike in, but it actually made a huge difference, which reminded me of how much I used to love sweating things out after hangovers in my past when I used to get hungover and my buddy decided to sleep until nine instead of doing the bike ride. And he was hungover all day. So some benefits there maybe, but overall super cool trip, really nice to get away. The unfortunate thing is my son Bryson ended up with strep throat and it hit him literally the day that I left, so my poor wife was stuck with a kid at home on Monday and Tuesday, which are like the two busiest work days of the week. So she was a champion, she handled that, and I know that could not have been easy. The. Lifting side of my life these days, as many of you guys have heard me discuss on the last two episodes, I made the switch over to a full body program. This is something I like to do every couple years. I think that since the we've now been on Eat, Train, Prosper here for over two and a half years, we're approaching three, and I think there's been one iteration of my full body program that I've done in the two and a half years. We've had ETP. And so I am back now for another iteration of that. I feel like every couple years I get inspired to do this full body approach. It's usually for a couple reasons. One could be that I'm just looking for a change up and I'm kind of burnt out on really hammering muscle groups for whatever reason. Sometimes it's because I'm looking for more of a systemic training effect and. You can't argue with the idea of doing like a lunge and a row and a press all together in a session. It just really creates a kind of the systemic metabolic effect that you can't get by training back and biceps together or something like that. And so in this case, I am obviously prioritizing biking up until at least, you know, early to mid October when I have this bike race. And so, uh, it's, just an opportunity for me to create less muscle damage in a session. And that's really the main rationale for me right now is that I can still get some good quality volume in across a week if I'm hitting three full body sessions, just hitting one exercise per muscle group per day. But if you were to extrapolate that out over the course of a week, you're getting three exercises per muscle group. And this is three for quads and three for hams. So it's not like I'm like three for legs. three for each area, we're getting three or four for back, two or three for chest, two or three for biceps, and two or three for triceps, three for delts, I think. So still a decent amount of volume, it's just laid out differently. And thus far in the two weeks that I've been doing this, it's actually been great because I haven't been sore a single time. Oh, actually backtrack a little. I added in safety bar reverse lunges last week into the program. and I did in fact get sore from one top set of those, but that's sort of the case with any lunge or single leg squat that you introduce to a program. And so I'm expecting repeated bout effect to take care of that for me. I do have that session today as well. So after we get off this podcast and I drop the kids at school, I'll come back and hit that session that has those reverse lunges in it. We'll see how they affect me in week two. But this full body program is not permanent. It's not forever. It literally is just for the next five to eight weeks as I work through the kind of final stages of preparing for the race and also wanting to supply training to the people following Brian's program that I think will be productive and not just productive on its own in that I'd be like, hey, you know, this three times a week full body program is gonna get you to all of your goals. And that's not necessarily true. But what I do think is that this three times a week program sets you up in the year in a periodized manner to potentially get more out of our split routine when we go back to that in five to eight weeks. And so with that said, I hope some of you guys, some of you out there will join me on this full body exploration. I've had a couple people DM me and tell me they're very interested already. So I think that that's pretty cool. If you use the code eat, train, prosper, all one word. When you go to sign up for Brian's program on the Paragon Training Methods app or website, then you can receive 20% off on the program. So it's usually $39 a month. That'll take you down $7.80, so a little over $30. Code Eat, Train, Prosper for the full body program. And then last quick update is biking is continuing to roll. The prior week when we didn't have an ETP because I was in Breckenridge, I had just finished the week out there with my biggest week ever. Prior to this week, it had been 154 miles was my biggest week ever. And then I hit 161 this prior week. I've actually been meaning to make a post on this on kind of how I'm approaching putting together the various cardio sessions as far as intensity and duration and then working them around the weightlifting. But one other piece that I was gonna discuss if and when I do make a post on this is that I've kind of been following this progressive plan of three weeks on where it loads volume and then a down week where there's a lot less volume and then you kind of build back up. So it kind of looks like a pyramid of sorts where we're. climbing, climbing for three weeks, doing more and more volume. So it might look like, you know, 100 miles one week, then 125 another week, and then 150 the week after that. And then I'll have a lower week where I'll take three or four days off and only train half that week. So I might get 60 miles. And so the graph would drop significantly, and then I would slowly build back up over another three weeks. And so this has been really, really good for me. It's a program style I read about number of different biking pros. And this is kind of how they train with this three on one off. In my mind, I look at it kind of like an RP style to hypertrophy from when they used to have their volume ramping approach where their, their paradigm was four weeks on one week off. I think for biking, most people find three weeks on one week off to be the sweet spot. But anyway. I personally really like this approach. It's been great for me. If you look at my graph on Strava of my training, it literally looks like these building peaks and then a drop and then a building peak and then a drop. And so anyway, that's been the approach. I've been working pretty well. And I will at some point make a post about how I've been arranging the intensity of these sessions as well between zone two, zone one, recovery stuff, and then more intense interval style training. So anyway. Those are my updates. What is going on with you, Mr. Straker?

[Aaron Straker]: 9:31

I'll try and keep mine short so we can get into the questions. First one, I have coaching roster spots available. So I have some long-term clients that have recently and will be wrapping up and kind of graduating, moving on that we've had great success with. Hopefully some of those will be making it into my social channels as I like to obviously share case studies. So I do have coaching roster spots. I guess this is the first time I am officially saying like I'm accepting female clients like openly again. I had run a limited number, kind of the people who had reached out to me and I'd be like, you know, okay, let's talk and we'll see. They've all gone very, very well. And I might even add that some have become quickly become some of my favorite clients, like some of my favorite check-ins to do each week. So, I'm going to officially kind of open that. I know we have a pretty decent sized female listenership. So if you're interested, all of my coaching details are on my website. You can find from our YouTube links or anywhere if you Google Straker Nutrition Co. All of my pricing and everything. I'm very transparent all up front there. So if that is interesting to you, reach out, submit an application, DM me on Instagram, something like that, and we will go from there. A quick fat loss camp update, I am down 8.3 pounds in six weeks. Interestingly enough, I am getting a little impatient with it where I'm like, I'm ready to be leaner. Like let's fucking go. Why is it not moving faster? Because typically, you know, my last two diets have both been 20 week long diets, like five months and I'm like six weeks in and I'm kind of like, I'm just like itching already for it to be like, I guess just like moving along. But I thought that was just kind of interesting there. And then kind of like leading into that, the reason I'm like, I'm okay with it is because the training volume and duration and intensity has dramatically ramped up. And the note that I have here is I found myself in this very interesting period of my life where I'm challenging everything that I, you know... quote unquote, no to be true with training. And I am really enjoying the thrill in that uncertainty of what if. So I'm essentially following programming from for someone who's at a much higher level than myself, let's call it that. And this is from someone who puts people on the Olympia stage, like consistently. And it's a lot. they're long, but I've already found how quickly I have adapted to it. I'm not getting crazy sore, anything more like that. I mean, I'll be honest, our leg days are three and a half hours long, and I'm still pushing hard in capable three hours into it sort of thing, and weights are up. So I do think some of it is environment. You put— similar males together, it brings out a little bit of, I would say, the good side of ego of wanting to challenge yourself and kind of push in that way. But it has been very interesting. And I'm kind of like in this period where I'm in what ifs, right? At the worst cases, it doesn't do anything. I still need to be 190 pounds to be lean. And I don't have any new muscle or anything like that. And I'm like, okay. You know, I've kind of found the proverbial ceiling. But that's my worst case scenario. Best case is I learn new things and potentially find something new that I didn't know about.

[Bryan]: 13:18

I would love to do an episode, maybe even next week, on your training and this experience for you in Fatloss Camp and just kind of explore some of that stuff.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:32

Yeah, we could do that.

[Bryan]: 13:33

I think that'd be fun.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:35

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 13:35

And I think the listeners would enjoy that as well. Cool, are you done? Do you have another one?

[Aaron Straker]: 13:41

Nah, I just had a little note about the sauna, but it sounds like we might talk about it next week, so we'll push.

[Bryan]: 13:46

All right, cool. And then I have one really quick fix that I need to make here. So a number of episodes ago, I made a comment about a study that I randomly came across. It was actually on the news. So it was one of those like overblown publicized things where it's like this, you know, the study's like, like weightlifting is better than cardio or cardio is better than weightlifting. Like it was this huge exclamatory title. This one specifically was about the drinking water in the US. And I noted that they found these trace chemicals in something like 50% of our water supply in the US that are called forever chemicals or whatever. And so one of the esteemed members of Paragon actually works in water quality and felt the need to kind of reach out to me and correct me or at least clarify some things, provide a little bit of clarity on the topic. And so as it turns out... I probably misspoke or overhyped that, so I don't wanna get people completely scared on drinking tap water. As it seems, it appears as if the stuff found in this water in the most cases was so trace that if it was in larger amounts, it could be carcinogenic, but on its own in these small doses, it is likely not. And so I think the way that I would analogize this would be like, hey, an apple has cyanide in it. And you could die if you get too much cyanide. But you know, everyone eats apples and they're very healthy because in small doses, it has no effect. And so I don't know if that's a perfect analogy for the drinking water. But I just wanted to make sure that I put that out there and didn't have this fear mongering around drinking tap water necessarily.

[Aaron Straker]: 15:40

Rightfully so.

[Bryan]: 15:41

because I've been drinking it my whole life, so hopefully I'm not dying of fraction chemical exposure. Okay, so that is all I have now on the update. Should we jump into questions? All

[Aaron Straker]: 15:53

Let's do it.

[Bryan]: 15:55

right, here. I'll send this one over to you first. Can the muscle memory theory applied to muscle loss from a prolonged... Can the muscle... Can the muscle memory theory be applied to muscle loss from a prolonged calorie deficit? If so, how would you tailor nutrition and training to encourage regain of lost tissue?

[Aaron Straker]: 16:18

So how I would answer this is yes, I do believe the theory can be applied to muscle loss from a prolonged caloric deficit. The same way it, I mean, atrophy is pretty much atrophy, right? Whether that might be injury related, pushing to extreme low levels of body fat and the I'm sure the mechanisms may be slightly different, but at the end of the day, from a practicality standpoint, you're effectively looking at the same thing. And then, how would I tailor nutrition and training to encourage the regain of lost tissue? Like, I wouldn't tailor it any differently than I would tailor a, like, a leaning, a lean gain approach or a build approach or anything like that. Once you... tip the scales north in an actual caloric deficit, assuming that your recovery and sleep and nutrient intake is adequate, you will appear to put on muscle more quickly, but you're really just regaining some of that lost tissue. And then you're going to have this really kind of this golden phase where like weight's increasing but your physique looks better, your lifts are going up, energy is great, like all this kind of golden phase. And then the fat comes on. and you're now just in a build sort of thing.

[Bryan]: 17:44

Yeah, I think it just happens naturally. So if you're in a deficit and then you get out of the deficit and just start training normal again, you should regain back all of that tissue quite quickly. We had a similar question actually yesterday in the Paragon Facebook group where somebody was saying, hey, in theory, if I took a week off thinking it was going to be my deload week, And then right when I got back from that, I got COVID and I was out for another week. How much of my weight loss is muscle loss and how much could I have potentially lost in fat? And our very esteemed and knowledgeable coaches chimed in and were like, hey, probably very little or none of the weight that you've lost has been muscle. And I chimed in and was like, but it's probably also not fat. And so then there's this beautiful little thing called like inter muscle fluid, you know, this can be fluid inside the muscle or fluid just outside the muscle. It can be that like inter muscle glycogen, it could be just water balance in the body. There's a number of different fluid shifts that occur when you go from being in a surplus or maintenance down into a deficit. And especially when you're getting COVID. there's going to be even more shifting of fluids and things like that in your body. And so if you're down a couple of pounds, that's likely just fluid. It's probably not much fat and it's probably not much muscle. And as soon as you get back to training and nutrition, as you usually would at maintenance or a slight surplus, that all should kind of correct itself.

[Aaron Straker]: 19:30

Yeah, pretty much there.

[Bryan]: 19:31

Yep. Um, this next question, the way it's written confuses me because it says recommendation for pre and post workout training if training at 4 30 AM. So I'm guessing if they're saying pre and post, they're referring to nutrition, but it says recommendation for pre and post workout if training at 4 30 AM.

[Aaron Straker]: 19:49

Yeah, I think

[Bryan]: 19:49

Um,

[Aaron Straker]: 19:49

it means meal.

[Bryan]: 19:50

got it. Okay. Cool. Do you want to hit that?

[Aaron Straker]: 19:56

Yes. So, what I... So, here's the thing. If you're super, super lean, let's say sub 12% body fat, I'm giving you dextrose in EAAs or something like that. Assuming that... Because basically, what I'm getting at is if you're already quite lean, we have really good nutrition practices and habits in so we can get away with immediately digesting things. It typically also means if you're already pretty lean... our training intensity is probably higher and more demanding in these sorts of things. So I'm going to take a little bit more of like a bleeding edge kind of use case. If you're more like gym pop sort of thing, or let's say north of 12% body fat, that's for a male. For a female, we'd be talking like 18% more than that. So someone who's quite lean. One of my favorites, I'm like, hey, we're going to do... you know, 30 or 40 grams away and a banana, we're gonna have half of it before, we're gonna have half of it after. You know, on the end, what I say, have that half in the kitchen, drive to the gym sort of thing, have the other half on the way home from the gym, and then let's eat our first meal or our post-workout meal, like real meal immediately upon returning home before showering and stuff. That's typically how I handle it.

[Bryan]: 21:20

Yeah, I think so as well. I like the context of how lean you are mattering. And then I'll also add that what you ate the night before going to sleep probably matters as well in that if you loaded up on a whole bunch of food and went to bed relatively full, then you may have a lot of that food still kind of toiling around inside your belly at 430 AM. And you can probably just use some of that food for energy. Man, I might be wrong on this. Something like 500 grams of glycogen inside our liver. So is that right? I'm not

[Aaron Straker]: 21:59

If

[Bryan]: 21:59

sure.

[Aaron Straker]: 22:00

you're a big person, you can probably get to 500 grams. Like

[Bryan]: 22:04

Well, even

[Aaron Straker]: 22:05

people,

[Bryan]: 22:05

if it's 250 or whatever, like,

[Aaron Straker]: 22:06

yeah, like

[Bryan]: 22:07

it-

[Aaron Straker]: 22:07

it's like 250 to 400 is like for your abs, like, you know, me, you and I might be like closer to like that 400, someone who's like, you know, a big, big human being might get to 500, but it's a lot pretty much.

[Bryan]: 22:20

Yeah. But either way, like it's very unlikely that anybody, even someone training hard for an hour. And I'm guessing you're not training much longer than that. If you're getting up at 430, you're probably, you know, trying to hit it, fit it in before work, something like that. I would find it very unlikely that you're going to go through all of the glycogen that you have stored in that 45 to 60 minute training session that you're doing. So I, I do think, you know, Aaron's point about body size matters and you definitely have to take into consideration the pre-bed meal, but overall, I think in most cases, most people will probably be fine, whether they fast or eat some food. My personal preference is always to make a Gatorade and Whey Shake the night before. And so I even do this and I train at 8 a.m., but I'll make one, put it in the fridge, and then when it's time for me to train. I get back from dropping the kids off at school and it's just ready to go. I just grab it out of the fridge and walk downstairs and go train. And so, whey and Gatorade, same idea as what he said with whey and banana. It's literally like the exact same. It's just all liquid instead of food plus liquid. So any sort of kind of quick protein and carbohydrate like that would work quite well.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:39

Yeah. Okay, this next one, so I believe this one is in the context of a cardiovascular or cardio modality, so let's just take that into this. Is leg fatigue a sign of overtraining or is it good to train on fatigued legs to prepare them for endurance?

[Bryan]: 24:01

It's an interesting question. I've certainly trained over the last year in my endurance work. I've certainly trained on fatigued legs at times. But I don't love it. And I also don't really think that there's a need to prepare them to train on fatigued legs. Because if you're preparing for a race or some sort of event, you're not going to be doing them on fatigued legs. You're going to taper or take some sort endurance based deload week, uh, kind of leading up to whatever event you're talking about. And so there isn't actually a great reason to train on fatigued legs unless somehow you're involved in a sport that you, you have to be good at training on fatigued legs. Um, and I just don't see too many events where that is the case. I mean, maybe if you're doing like a multi-day stage race, which I know a lot of people do in these like ultra endurance events where it's like, Hey, we're going for five straight days and we're going to do 50 miles a day for five days or something along those lines. Then yeah, you probably need to prepare yourself to train on fatigued legs. If you're just doing one event that's on one day, then you're going to have a proper taper and you're not going to have fatigued legs going into that. I also think it's important to note like where your primary goal lies. And as I've gotten involved in this whole endurance thing more in this last year, that's been a really important thing to think about is like, Hey, is this in a microcosm, is this week more of a focus on endurance or more of a focus on weights and overall is my next six months, more of a focus on weights or more of a focus on endurance. And then that impacts how I organize my training or should impact how you organize your training. so that you can get the most benefit for the thing that you're focusing the most on. And a great example of this is, like Dave McHoney and I often would talk a couple of years ago and be like, man, these people like that, like on Peter Atiyah's podcast, he'll have people on and say, oh yeah, you just go out and you do your endurance work first, and then you make sure you hit your weights afterward. And McHoney and I would always laugh about that and be like, wait, endurance first? Like what in the world? And, and, you know, as somebody pursuing hypertrophy or strength, you know, that being your goal, you don't go do endurance first because it uses, you know, your stored glycogen that you need. It uses your mental focus and your energy reserves and all that stuff. So you end up getting less out of your weight training. If you do your endurance first, it also works vice versa. If you do your weights first to protect your, your muscle building capabilities, then you're going to get less adaptation in your end. endurance. And so the organization and the way you prepare this throughout the course of a week, a month, a mesocycle or a macro cycle certainly has an impact. But I think when you do this in a somewhat intelligent manner, you can avoid a lot of this overlap and not have to train your endurance work on fatigued legs. And so yeah, unless you're doing a long stage race where you have to train on fatigued legs, I would try and organize things in a manner that mitigates that as much as possible.

[Aaron Straker]: 27:18

I don't have anything to add on the back end of that one.

[Bryan]: 27:22

Alright, cool. Um, do you like rack chin ups, Aaron?

[Aaron Straker]: 27:25

So basically the question is like, hey, I'm training in a home gym. I can't, I think it's in the context of I cannot yet do pull ups. Are rack chins a good way to include vertical pulling in a home workout? I think they're wonderful, right? I am a big fan of rack chins. I haven't actually done them in quite a while. And when I was reading this question, it kind of took me back to like, there was a period where I just loved them. They... It is a vertical pull. It is going to be like slightly different because your hips are essentially in front of your upper body with your feet up on something. It's a slightly different like, you know, vector of pulling. It's a wonderful exercise. You can load it, you know, you can micro load it with adding some things, plates into your lap, that sort of thing. But it is a very, very good way to build strength and then continue to progress until you can accomplish, you know, a... traditional bodyweight pull-up, but even then I don't necessarily think even when you can do pull-ups that rack chins lose their utility. I wouldn't say that.

[Bryan]: 28:33

Yeah, I agree 100%. We had this question as well yesterday in the Facebook group. We have new cycles starting and so there's a lot of these kind of questions coming through. But I, I personally love rack chins. Most people do look at them as a, a regression from vertical pulling or from a standard pull up. So they're like, Oh, I can't do pull ups yet. Are rack chins good? And, and I'm like, yes, rack chins are amazing. If you do If you want to get better at pull ups, rack chins are probably the best thing you can do to get better at pull ups along with doing negatives like lowers on pull ups. So you would jump to the top and then lower yourself down. But, you know, even for people that can do pull ups, I think that there's probably more benefit for a lot of people in doing rack chins regardless. And the reason is that, say you get to a point where you can do six, maybe eight. strict pull ups, which is extremely respectable number. In most cases, you getting those six to eight reps is gonna require you to use a bunch of different muscles. And there's nothing wrong with using a bunch of different muscles. It's like doing a low bar squat instead of doing like a heels elevated high bar squat with a vertical torso. Like one of them is just gonna slay a whole bunch of muscles at the same time, but not be very specific. And then the heels elevated version with the vertical torso is going to just bias the quads a little bit more. And so when you're doing a rack chin, you can execute the movement in the precise manner by which you want to, uh, target specific musculature and So until you get to a point where you can do like 20 pull ups, like even I can do 20 plus pull ups, the last eight that I do are just like, what do I need to use to get up there? It's my rear delts, it's my terries, it's a little bit of lats, it's a little bit of kind of kicking with my knees. Like there's a number of different kind of compensations going on there. When I get into rack chins and prop my feet up and drop my hips under, so that's one thing Aaron noted, the hips are in front. but I try to get people to push their hips back underneath you as much as possible, because if your hips are very far in front of you, it almost turns into like an inverted row and less like a pull-up. And so if you can set yourself up in a manner where the hips drop directly under the torso, and then that emulates the pull-up a lot better, um, you can actually kind of then perform that pull-up either overhand. You can still execute it more effectively than you would if your hips were further in front of you because you have that more vertical orientation But you can also do cool things with rack pull-ups like you could slide some D handles or some rings Over the barbell in the rack and you can use a neutral grip and now you can perform that movement more with your elbows traveling directly into your side and make it look more like a kind of lower or mid-lat based pull-down type movement and so The rack pull-up is a great movement to build strength for your pull-ups, and also just a great movement to help you train the musculature of your back a little more targeted than you would when you're just trying to kind of slay that dragon and use as many muscles as you can to get up. So I'm a huge fan of them. I program them even for people that can do regular pull-ups. I just think they have a ton of utility and they're a really great. to incorporate into your programming.

[Aaron Straker]: 32:12

Yeah, definitely a fan of Raktions for both of us.

[Bryan]: 32:16

Cool. Protein overfeeding and fat gain while in a deficit versus a surplus.

[Aaron Straker]: 32:25

So the context of this one is really, really important. And just to, I guess, provide a little bit of context. And IFBB Pro asked this question, right? So we are going to handle that with that probably the more advanced kind of athlete sort of case, and then stray from what probably your gen pop recommendations are. Because context, it's just really, really important, right? And then I think. Hopefully as listeners of Eat, Train, Prosper, Brian and I do a good job of reinforcing and emphasizing on that. So fortunately we have those two protein overfeeding studies, which, you know, Brian and I covered on the podcast, man, like maybe in the fall of 2021 or something like that. But it was, it's staggering what you can do with protein overfeeding and the fat gain is pretty much negligent. if any. There does come into question though, when does protein just become an expensive carbohydrate, right? When does your body just going to kick that through gluconeogenesis to convert a non-glucose like structure into a glucose like structure for, you know, energy utilization, you know, fuel substrate, etc., etc. personally and coaching with people who are in both a fat, sorry, not a fat surplus, a calorie surplus and a calorie deficit and going with a higher protein approach. In my justification for there is like, I mean, we get three macronutrients, right? There isn't many... Oh. From the last time I looked, which was probably about six months ago, so let's call it the beginning of 2023, I could only find two carbohydrate versus fat overfeeding studies that were performed on a resistance-trained population. All the rest are on untrained sedentary populations. However, even with those, overfeeding on carbohydrate is more advantageous than overfeeding on dietary fat. And if we're in the context of chasing optimality, which I do believe we are with, you know, the person who asked this question, going within a disproportionately high protein and carbohydrate ratio to a fat ratio is likely advantageous in both caloric surplus and in caloric deficit. From there, I would recommend and generally take the approach of we know we get... muscle protein synthesis, spiking or increases, right? Essentially spikes from protein ingestion. We get a bit with like the protein and carbohydrate, but the best muscle protein synthesis, you know, increases we get is from a training stimulus, right? And when we have that, what do we know pairs well with that? If you're doing intense training, if chasing optimality, the best physique you can possibly build, these sorts of things are our primary context, our training is going to be very... We might have intensity techniques increased durations these sorts of things and we know that type of training is glycolytic in nature So again, it would make much more sense for the higher carbohydrate The higher protein potentially intro workout these sorts of things because we are essentially swinging for the fences So I mean yes in both contexts. I'm going with a higher protein approach from as my next check down, a higher carbohydrate approach, and then basically settling fats in where we need to cover essentials and necessities, but understanding that the role of fat in both fat loss and caloric surplus for the sole purpose of hypertrophy has the least beneficial lever, I would say, to pull in both situations.

[Bryan]: 36:36

Yeah, that was super well said. I really don't have a whole lot to add just to more kind of reiterate that those studies were on the protein overfeeding were wild. I don't even know. I'd love to see it replicated because I think in one of the studies, it was something along the lines of 800 calories of overfeeding all from protein. So they were eating like an additional 200 grams of protein over whatever period of time. and they literally just gained muscle and didn't gain any fat, like no fat. And so via what Aaron said about the fact that, protein can be converted to carb through gluconeogenesis. And then if that carb isn't being used, it can essentially be stored as excess energy or fat in your body. It just, it blows my mind to be honest, but it's like we see this in real world application too. Like Aaron is a huge fan of high protein diets and he'll generally eat something like 270 grams of protein,

[Aaron Straker]: 37:37

250.

[Bryan]: 37:37

especially in what? 250.

[Aaron Straker]: 37:39

250, it's been, it's been at, I wanna say it might've went to like 260 or something at some point during the build, it's at 250. I've been essentially

[Bryan]: 37:47

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 37:47

250 for, since the beginning of the year.

[Bryan]: 37:49

So you stay high protein, like super high protein, whether it's a deficit or a surplus, it doesn't really seem to matter. And so my inclination is generally to lean on higher protein during a deficit, just because it's protective of catabolism. And then I tend to use a little bit less protein in the building phases, because I feel like if you're spiking insulin through carbohydrate intake, that it's a bit protective against muscle loss as well. or it's anabolic if you want to say it that way. And then, you know, it's, you look at people like Jeff Alberts and Bill Campbell, who are both pretty prominent figures in the natural bodybuilding space. And both of those guys have now discussed in depth in the last couple of years about how they're using significantly lower protein. Eric Trexler, actually same thing. they're down now to kind of this, the science basically showing that 1.6 grams per kilo, which is a little under 0.8 grams per pound. That seems to be the lower end of where it's like, hey, that is sufficient. And then there might be these like marginal gains by getting more protein after that. But there does seem to be very marginal gains after you get to that, like, hey, 0.8 times, times body weight number. And so Jeff Alberts is now like 180 pounds as he's preparing for competition. And he said most days he's eating like 140 or 150 in protein. And Bill Campbell will regularly say that he's down to like 120, 130. John Meadows used to say the same thing while he was here, rest in peace. He used to say that in the last decade or so, he's significantly reduced his protein and not noticed any negative effects from that either. And so I'm not sitting here trying to argue that everyone should reduce their protein, but I do find it interesting. when we see these like relatively prominent figures, whether they're bodybuilders themselves or scientists in the community kind of backtracking on the protein thing just a little bit. And so I do co-sign everything Aaron said. I just think, you know, playing devil's advocate is an interesting approach here as well.

[Aaron Straker]: 39:57

Yeah, yeah, that one. It's a hard one because you have one side, some of the researchers coming out and people like Jeff Alberts and that sort of thing versus the other side of the bodybuilding world, which is still, you know, engulfed in a lot of bro science. However, they do produce the best physiques in the world. So you run that, not even the risk. It's hard to argue with the results. And oftentimes they go off, I mean, the deep end of 400 plus grams per day and like five of, you know, way shakes per day sort of thing. So you don't find yourself in either end of the extremes is what I generally try and recommend across all things.

[Bryan]: 40:40

Yeah. And I think if you're, if in doubt, higher protein is probably a safer move than higher of any other macronutrient.

[Aaron Straker]: 40:46

Exactly. Okay, so this next one I'll kind of frame up because I was DMing with this person to get a little bit more context on it. So basically the frame here is going on a build or, going on a build or gain phase for six months and then six months into a intense race prep for an ultra marathon. So, this intense race prep is inherently going to bring fat loss with it of logging all these miles, these sorts of things. So if this individual were to put your body or their body under this intense building phase and then go straight into the intense strict six-month race prep, is it wise to take a month off or have a largely reduced training load for a month or an extended training or extended period of time? in between those two goals to allow the body to quote unquote work.

[Bryan]: 41:50

So I don't see the in between those goals. I see it insinuated, but the question doesn't seem to specifically specify that. So they're saying, hey, I'm gonna accumulate all this fatigue through this building growing period. And so maybe I should take a month off or a month of recovery based approach before then going into this six month intense race prep.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:16

Yeah, or should I just, you know, cut

[Bryan]: 42:18

Go straight

[Aaron Straker]: 42:18

this?

[Bryan]: 42:18

into it.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:19

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 42:20

Yeah, so I don't think like my thought would be that if you're in a build grow phase, then you're giving your body all of the nutrients and recovery assets that it needs. So you should be at almost like prime recovery at that point before you begin your six month race prep. So I don't necessarily think you need to take a month for the purpose of recovery per se. The one thing that And this, I don't know if this is, this is not really backed up by science. I would call it conjecture, uh, is the idea that you could cement your gains by having that sort of month of maintenance before moving into intense race prep. So we know that there's a little bit of a delayed effect of super compensation. So of those six months where you're building, growing and working out really intensely, it's unlikely that at the moment you finish your six months that you've maxed out. your growth and build, it's more likely that a few weeks after you finish your build and grow is when you would be at maximum, maximum gains from that experience. And so that would fit into this idea that you might want to cement those gains, so to speak, by doing, you know, a period of maintenance or something like that before going directly into the cut, I could see if you go directly into it, that your body is still trying to send signals for anabolism because of this delayed super compensation response. And if you're already going immediately into a deficit with all this intense cardio, you could be risking, um, not manifesting all of the gains that you should have from that six month build. Um, hopefully that makes sense, but I don't think that the month off would be necessary for as much as it would be to cement the gains from the prior period. And then my sense would be that your recovery period would probably come after the race, after those six months of building and then the race. And then now your body needs recovery before it can kind of get back into a growing phase again. Although I do think you need to get back into surplus relatively quickly after the race. I think there would be rationale for having a recovery period there as well.

[Aaron Straker]: 44:42

Yeah, that's where my thought process was. The rationale for a recovery, you know, period post-race before embarking upon, I'm gonna get huge jacked and strong again, has a much more probably practical implementation. But I did like what you said of instead of, hey, peak body weight tomorrow, I start ramping up my running volume and stuff, having a period of, I mean, maybe it's just three weeks or something like that where you reduce training intensities. Maybe you're not training to failure. Maybe you just reduce your food to what would be an estimated maintenance at this new highest body weight and you kind of, you know, quote unquote, lock in those gains a little bit and allow that super compensation to occur before, you know, ripping the calories down and ramping up the intensity of the cardiovascular training modality.

[Bryan]: 45:33

Yep. Cool. All right, we have a few more questions to get through here. Snatch grip deadlift for hypertrophy on back pull day for upper back. Personally, not a huge fan of the snatch grip deadlift for hypertrophy. I don't really think that any form of kind of conventional deadlifting for back hypertrophy is a great idea. I do tend to use the snatch grip RDL at times for hypertrophy. When it come, and that's for more hamstring glute hypertrophy more than back. The snatch grip does challenge the upper back more isometrically than a standard RDL, but we know the gains from isometric training aren't going to be huge in most cases. And so I think that if you're looking for hypertrophy on upper back or on pulling muscles, there's just probably better choices than using a snatch grip deadlift. And, and yeah, I don't know that I have much to add up beyond that. How about you, Aaron?

[Aaron Straker]: 46:46

Yeah, it's an opportunity cost on what you could choose instead. I can't say I think it's a good exercise for that,

[Bryan]: 46:55

it just so

[Aaron Straker]: 46:56

for

[Bryan]: 46:56

fatiguing.

[Aaron Straker]: 46:56

hypertrophy.

[Bryan]: 46:56

I mean, you're, you're doing a conventional deadlift and it works your entire body, including your like glutes, hamstrings, quads, like low back, everything. And you're getting like a little bit of upper back, but it would be like, I don't know. To me, it sounds like, Hey, should I do back squats for hamstrings? And you're like, eh, like the hamstrings get worked, but I don't know, probably better choices out there. Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 47:19

Exactly.

[Bryan]: 47:20

All right.

[Aaron Straker]: 47:23

This next one I will kick over to you. So I'm running one to two times per week. What would be a good approach to build to five or six times per week?

[Bryan]: 47:32

Yeah, this was basically me last year in my biking adventure, you know, starting out with, Hey, I'll do two zone two sessions a week. And then now I'm doing six or seven sessions a week and it's not even all zone two. And so the first thing I would say to this, or two, two first things, one is running is not biking, uh, running as we've discussed many a time is an eccentric, uh, it has eccentric loading. So basically what that means is you're creating impact with the ground on the down stroke each time. This has impact on your joint structure, but also has muscle damage components. So where biking is concentric only, you're basically just pushing. There's no lowering of the weight. Running has the opposite. You do have to resist for impact. You will get sore. You will cause joint fatigue and things like that. So you do have to be very, very careful about how you incorporate increased running mileage. First thing I would say is it needs to be extremely gradual. Um, even on my biking, I went gradual. It was two times a week. Then it was three times a week for a couple of weeks and then four times a week for a couple of weeks and then five times a week for a couple of months. And then just recently in the last couple of months, I've gone up to six times a week. And even in those six sessions, it's very, very important to have a plan about how you're going to approach these runs. So it's not just like, Hey, I'm going to run six times a week and every time I'm just going to go out and. run 20 minutes as hard as I can or 40 minutes as hard as I can or whatever. I mean, there needs to be serious planning going on here to make sure that you're not over training. I mean, even if you're somebody that's not lifting weights, and you're just running, you still need to take these considerations. Somebody that's lifting weights as well, you have even more considerations to take. And so, you know, what does this look like across a week? Probably Like I ascribe to the polarized training model, which basically says that you spend 80% of your time in zone two or below, and then you spend 20% of your time in zone four, zone five. I actually really like the pyramidal model, which is similar to the polarized model, which allows you to spend a little bit more time at what would be called race pace. So the polarized model essentially has you either going really easy or really hard. pure middle is, hey, you still spend most of your time going really easy, but of that hard time, you get some of it really, really hard and you get some of it like kinda hard. And so I like that approach because I think the kinda hard stuff emulates race pace much more and specifically for a runner. Most runners are going to race pace right in that middle zone where it's not really, really hard and it's not really, really easy. So maybe you're running weak. Looks like four. zone two or easier sessions. So these could be heart rate at 70% or easier. And then you have one session that's really, really hard, interval style, and then you have one session that's more moderately hard, but for duration. And so I think taking an approach like that could work. You may also wanna consider of those five to six times a week of cardio, maybe they're not all running. Like maybe you can do some cross training so that you don't get a ton of joint fatigue. And so maybe you can do like some of your more specific runs, like the two easier runs, one or two harder runs, and then three biking or rowing sessions, where you don't get any impact. And so a number of ways to kind of go about that. But the number one thing would just be to do it gradually. And make sure that most of your training still falls on that like easy or zone two style, or the side of the spectrum.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:21

Yeah, I don't have anything I could add to that one, unfortunately.

[Bryan]: 51:26

Cool. Any tips for getting deeper sleep, supplements, strategies, or nutrition timing?

[Aaron Straker]: 51:32

Yeah, so this one I actually do. Like this has been, I haven't talked about this. I am in this golden phase of sleep in my life and I'm not gonna lie to you guys, it feels fucking amazing. I have been sleeping through the night literally for the first time in my adult life. So it's hard in, I mean, potentially you can ascribe to this too, Brian. I can't really remember back to like high school or, I mean, college days are hard because you're obviously like drinking and that sort of thing. But what I really consider like where I can remember back to the beginning of my adult life, the summer of, you know, I'm 23 at this point, you know, out on my own, my first time in San Diego. I have been up peeing in the middle of the night. very light sleeper literally for 12 years. What it's been for me, and it's kind of ridiculous that I need to do all these things, but I need to stop caffeine by like 1 p.m. at the absolute latest. And that needs to be on a training day where I am increasing my, you know, I'm beating myself up training hard, which makes me obviously more fatigued and tired. I need a night mask on because I am a very light sensitive sleeper. And unless I'm literally in the woods or something like that, there's going to be peripheral light. I need silicone or wax earplugs because I'm a very, very sound sensitive sleeper. Those help. The last thing that's really been the kicker for me is the sauna. and I have literally been for like three weeks now sleeping through the night, not peeing in the middle of the night, which I literally have done for 12 years or longer, because that's as far as I can remember back, and I'm sleeping through the night. And I've done multiple supplements and different things. I don't handle melatonin well. I'm insanely groggy for the next day if I have even the slightest amount of melatonin. I would start before you go down the supplement routes and that sort of thing. Look at habits, look at your caffeine cutoff time, look at, you know, and the earplugs are dirt cheap. The sauna is potentially not accessible for everyone, but start with the basic things. But that is what has helped me the most.

[Bryan]: 53:43

That's awesome, dude. I have heard so much good stuff about sauna. And I find myself very intrigued by it. Like, there's even a part of me that wants to like buy and build my own one at my house, kind of like, you know, a number of other people have done Danny Matronga, etc. But I am like you in your history, I wake up every night, one to two times to go pee, it just is the way it is. The things that seem to help me the most with my sleeping seem to be nutrition timing. The more and more that I focus on stopping food consumption at three hours before I lay down to go to bed, that seems to be the magic for me. If I even go two or one and a half hours, I don't sleep as well. And I tend to wake up in the middle of the night pretty hot and bothered sometime between, you know, two and four a.m. And so nutrition, avoiding food close to bedtime is huge. Obviously alcohol close to bed, huge alcohol in general, probably not good. The sauna would be a great thing to add in as well. And I never have caffeine after 7 a.m. I just have one dose in the morning. So that doesn't seem to be an impact, but I know everybody is a different speed metabolizer of caffeine, like Aaron, I think you're a slow metabolizer. The fact that you can even do caffeine up until one is kind of nuts to me. Whereas, you know, I must be a really slow metabolizer because if I have caffeine after this seven, eight, nine AM time where I usually have it, um, I seem to, to have some negative impacts from that too. And so, uh, sauna, maybe a great idea to do, uh, there's a ton of really good research on how sauna can help sleep. Most of these studies are done with it being specifically before bedtime. So there's something about raising your body temperature. super high and then letting it come down and that Helping you fall asleep better. So that would be more sleep latency as far as getting to sleep I have no problem ever getting to sleep My problem is more staying asleep. And so that's interesting that that's had that positive impact on there as well

[Aaron Straker]: 55:59

The last thing I will say there, room temperature, making it colder,

[Bryan]: 56:05

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 56:05

that's another one. As crazy as it potentially may seem, the research that I saw or most recently read was about 65 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal sleep temperature, which is quite chilly.

[Bryan]: 56:21

We keep ours at 68 and I find that it's great in the first half and the last quarter of the night, but something about the middle period between that like two and four a.m. time, I still wake up hot most nights at 68. And so I would love to be able to reduce that, but maybe it's time to invest in one of those like eight sleep mattresses or something, because Kim definitely doesn't want it quite that cold.

[Aaron Straker]: 56:47

Yeah, yeah.

[Bryan]: 56:48

All right. So the next question asks me if I'm gonna change any of my deload programming based on new research. And I actually think this is a great question and part of me kind of wants to do a deeper dive into this when we have more time because we are just slightly rushed today. What I will say is that I think that a lot of people are misperceiving this deload study or maybe the better way of saying it is that it could be perceived two different ways. And so essentially what they did is they had two groups, one group trained for nine weeks with no deload and the other group trained for nine weeks and they took a week off in the middle. So they trained for four, took a week off and then trained for another four. And it seems that the general view of this study outcome in the evidence-based space is like, why would you deload? Because you can get the same results without deloading so you don't need to. And the way I look at that is, well, you can get the same results and take a week off. So why wouldn't you? And if you look deeper into the study, I think one of the reasons people took the perspective they do on it is because in the post study questionnaire, most in the post exercise or the post study questionnaire, most people that took the deload said that they struggled with training motivation after the deload. So it was like they had this great momentum going and then they took a week off and then they were like the last four weeks kind of felt like this big grind. Because maybe mentally, you know, they got that time and it was hard for them to reengage or whatever. But when you look at the actual physical results of muscle gain associated with the study, like you can get the same gains training eight weeks, as you can training nine weeks more or less. And so I just don't see this as a big win for, hey, you don't need to deload at all anymore. I don't think my deload programming changes at all because the way that I use deload programming is more as a reset. So it's not like I'm sitting there and I'm like, hey, I trained four weeks, now I get this week off and then I'm gonna do another meso and train another four weeks. This study was a bit confounded in the sense that. Uh, most people don't take a full week off every four weeks anyways. Like that's not the way people deload in practice. Uh, if I was training nine weeks or any of my clients are training nine weeks, there might be a three or four day period where we either reduce intensity or take time off, but we definitely would not take an entire week off of training after four weeks of training. When I reach a point in my training or in my client's training where we take a week off, that's usually because we did a seven or eight week build. Then we did a slight deload, not a full week off. And then we did another seven to eight week build. And then we're like, hey, we just trained for 15 or 16 weeks. Let's shift focus. So we'll take a few days off, maybe not even a full week. And then we'll kind of build back up again. So that's one use case where I would use a deload. And I don't think that would change it all. And then the second use case would be, it's like a reset for a new meso cycle. So, hey, you know, we've been training X number of weeks on these specific movements with these specific rep schemes in this exercise order. And now we're going to shift things up. Maybe we change the split. Maybe we're changing our exercise selection, introducing some new movements, stuff like that. So now we'll do load as a introduction to the new movements. It's a way to establish working loads on these new movements, um, use a little bit less intensity, but still kind of go through the motions and, and get your body comfortable with, with the new exercises. And so, so no, my, my D-Load programming will not change at all based off of this study, because I don't think I was ever instituting D-Load programming like this study did. And I don't think most people really will in general across the board.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:54

Brian I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I don't I don't have anything else to say and that's pretty much Yeah, I don't D load or have clients to load in the manner that the study was I'm very Reactionary with D loads I would say as opposed to being proactive And that is when I will use them and that is what I will continue to do

[Bryan]: 1:01:13

Cool. The next question is on flywheel training and hypertrophy. This person's considering buying one for a home gym. And I personally don't have a lot of experience with flywheel training. I don't know a ton about it. I tried it at N1 when I was there with Cass a few months ago. It seems to be a very effective tool in that the more you put into it, the more resistance it provides you. And so it could be a great tool to work. lengthened range of movements. Like I've seen it being used very effectively for things like lateral raises, where you're literally just pushing out in maybe 20 degrees, like you're not even going all the way up to like a full lateral raise, you're just kind of pushing out and coming back and pushing out and coming back. And so it probably has some cool use case for working the lengthened range of movements and things like that. I think if you got to understand it and learn about it really well, you probably could have a ton of great use cases for it. I just don't have the knowledge base to discuss it much further.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:02:17

Yeah, the only things I will say, completely in line with Brian, I'm very, I'm not unaware, I know they're out there, but just unexperienced. My initial thought, and I could be wrong in here, so take this with a grain of salt, tracking progressions, I feel like would be very difficult because it's reactionary to the force that you put in, how you quantify that, how you overload that could be potentially difficult. The other thing that comes to mind is like price. I remember seeing one maybe about a year ago now, and I was kind of taken aback at how expensive it was in my thought process. And this is obviously relative to size and space in your garage. But if you're gonna buy two flywheels to do lateral raises and they're like. $600 each, like I would be on Facebook Marketplace looking for like a used free motion or something like that. That's going to be have a better utility, but obviously requires more space. Okay, how many minutes should I train in zone four and zone five intervals? I can only last one minute.

[Bryan]: 1:03:26

Yeah, this is a bit ambiguous of a question because it depends how hard you're actually going. Zone four is quite different than zone five. And so when you're in zone five on a five zone system, you're more or less entirely anaerobic and you're sprinting. And so it doesn't surprise me that you can only last one minute and a zone five interval. Like that's more or less 90. 3% of your heart rate or higher or something along those lines. As far as interval training in general, the intervals that you use can span so many different approaches. And so like somebody who is an explosive anaerobic athlete probably should be spending more time at that super high intensity doing these 30 to 60 second, like all out intervals. where you're going to get a ton of rest in between. So you might work for a minute and rest for three minutes or two and a half or whatever. So you're having more rest time than work time. And that's pretty typical of these all out efforts. On the other side of the spectrum, you have high intensity intervals that mostly reside in zone four. And so for those ones, you should be able to go a lot longer. There's a classic study. that was done, I think, by Steven Seiler, who I still really want to get on the podcast because he's a he's an endurance guy, but he has a weightlifting strength training background. And so he I think he'd be a great scientist to bring on and discuss kind of the convergence of these two worlds. But through listening to him and reading some of the studies that he's done, he did a really classic study where they compared four by four, so four rounds of four minute intervals. four by eight, so you do four rounds of eight minute intervals, and four by 16, where you do four rounds of 16 minute intervals. The longer the interval goes, the less rest time you would get between it, because in theory, you're not working as hard. So like on these 16 minute intervals, you're probably in zone three, zone four most of the time. On the eight minute interval, you're probably steadfast in zone four most of the time. And then for the four minute interval, you're probably starting in zone four and finishing in zone five. But what you have to remember about training any intervals is that the length in which you can go is dependent upon the intensity that you're using. If you're going out and you're sprinting as hard as you can, then you won't even last a minute. But if you go out and you're like, I'm gonna go at 85 to 90% of my all out pace, then you can probably last six to eight, 10 minutes, something along those lines. And so when you say this thing that you can only last one minute, it just tells me that your intensity is too high. And so you need to lower your intensity a little bit. I look at intervals as ramping. So you'll want to start like, like if I'm doing a eight minute interval, say I start at zone four, low end zone four. And then over the course of the interval, my heart rate climbs and I usually finish the interval at low zone five. So it'll climb from, say. 5% of my max heart rate to 93% of my max heart rate over the course of eight minutes. And so you don't need to start the interval already at the hardest possible pace. You can kind of ramp into these and build up and you're still spending that time in zone. And so when they talk about interval training for aerobic pursuits, and this would be this more like this eight four by eight type range, something like that. Um, you generally want to accumulate between 30 and 40 minutes of interval time. Of course, that would be crazy if you're doing all out sprints where you're going as hard as you can for 30 seconds and resting three minutes, you're not going to be able to accumulate 30 to 40 minutes of interval time. In those cases, you might only accumulate 10 minutes of interval time, because you might do 20 rounds of like 30 seconds on with two or three minutes off in between. And so just keep in mind that as you're constructing intervals, the length by which you go is dependent upon the intensity by which you use. And so anywhere between 30 seconds and 10 plus minutes are acceptable intervals to use. You just need to kind of be cognizant of how hard you're pushing depending on the length of that interval.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:00

Very comprehensive answer there, Brian. Nicely done.

[Bryan]: 1:08:04

Cool. So I, Aaron, I actually need to bounce. Do you want to take this last one? And I, I'll leave the screen open. All right. Yep. All

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:10

Yeah, let's do that.

[Bryan]: 1:08:11

right.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:11

Read it out to me and I'll take it home.

[Bryan]: 1:08:14

How does training change for a client in a deficit? If at all.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:08:19

Really good question. So I'm going to answer this from a very, very high level perspective first and then give a context of where I do or will actually change training. So from a first like high level, I'm going to say that training just because a client is in a deficit shouldn't really change, right? You're still chasing overload, you know, training close in proximity to failure. The when it may in that is when because we're in a deficit, our food is coming down, therefore our recovery capacity is diminishing if we're unable to recover at a rate that the structure of the program, you know, asks for, right? Let's say we were on like a PPL, a push pull legs or something like that, six days per week. quite demanding your training legs on essentially like Monday and then again on like what would be essentially Thursday or Friday. If your legs are not recovered again before training, then we need to change training or reduce the number of probably lengthened sets first like these sorts of things. But from a just because someone starts a deficit, it does not warrant a change in training. This is a time where I with, you know, clients, I'm going to be more reactionary because something that you're going to find. Clients recover at different rates. There's other aspect of a client's life that impact their recovery, a capacity sort of thing. What are the stressors like in their life? Where are you starting a calorie deficit from? What is their metabolic flexibility like? That is an impactful factor there. Changing into the context of where I may change it, if I have a client who comes to me, I and is, let's say, overweight, right? Male 23, 22% plus body fat for a female, that's maybe about 30, 31, sort of, and up, doesn't have a great history of great food sources, those sorts of things. For these types of clients, sometimes things can be a little bit more, like, sticky while you're working through... What's largely years of poor food planning and just choices and that sort of thing, with these clients, I find that fat loss can be a little bit slower and to help kind of encourage that along with basically trying to preference higher glucose uptake and those sorts of things, I will use more of a metabolic style training. So from things, from us having like. podcasts on the podcast and stuff from N1, more of what they call like an incomplete rest method where it's essentially shorter rest intervals, lower loads, and we're just basically turning it into not really like a CrossFit style workout, but like eight by eight, six by eight, five sets of 10 with only 30, 40, maybe max 60 seconds of rest in between just to promote much more. glucose uptake into the muscles and get the heart rate consistently higher sort of thing. So it's a strategy that I will use with some of these clients where things are a little bit like stickier and where I do feel that things should move faster than they currently are. But you obviously want to cross your T's and dot your I's on. food sourcing, adherence, checking alcohol intake, right? That's one that people just seem to kind of leave out. So cross all your big blocks first before moving someone into like a needless metabolic style phase just because you think things are sticky but really they're not reporting any alcohol intake or something like that. So that's like the one context I generally will. Or If someone has, let's say we've run the same training program for an entire build phase and they've made great stretches of progressions, it's highly unlikely that they are going to continue to make great stretches of progressions now into the fat loss phase, maybe minus the first three or four weeks because we've had such a long runway on this training block anyway. That would be a time where we're changing because... we were nearing the end of those adaptations on that program anyway, and now we've just slashed 20% of our recovery capabilities or something like that. In that context, I will change it as well, but if someone's maybe just a few months in or whatever, I don't think that just because someone is in a calorie deficit warrants a change in training. If anything, I find that it more often than not is like a... it kind of mentally takes them out of the game per se, where still for four, five, six, eight weeks, someone can continue to progress in, you know, a caloric deficit if we're intelligent with the placement of their carbohydrate and those sorts of things. So instead of distributing evenly throughout the day, we can, you know, very heavily load pre-workout, post-workout. Maybe we take steel, the final meal of the days. carbohydrate in its entirety and move that to pre-workout. That's what mine looks like. My final meal's a protein and a green vegetable so that I can train really, really hardly and still make progress, but I just have that trade-off in the final meal of the night. So to kind of sum this one up, I don't think it needs to change. There are contexts that warrant it. It's knowing when to kind of pull those levers. And I would say do your check downs first. and don't kind of jump the gun there. Because if a client was progressing well through their build or maintenance or whatever previous phase you were at, I wouldn't change things just because the nutritional periodization is changing because you may be shortchanging some of those training adaptations that could take place on that existing training. So hope that one is helpful there. As always, guys, thank you for submitting questions for the podcast. Thank you for just listening and supporting Brian and myself and Eat, Train, Prosper for these approximate two and a half years or two and a half years plus. And with that, we will be back next week.