November Instagram Q&A | ETP#135

What's up guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 135, our Instagram Q&A for the month of November 2023. It's pretty wild that I have to start adding the year onto these because we already have like two November Instagram Q&A. So if you're wondering why, that is why. As always, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates please before we jump into the meat and potatoes of today's episode? Yeah, of course, we have 20 plus really good quality questions here. So I'm going to try not to belabor these updates too much. First, I just want to make a correction on last week. So I was talking about the breathing test that Mike Nelson was having me do in the mornings, and I referenced that it was the bolt test potentially. It is not the bolt test. The bolt test is actually quite different. So if anyone went out and was like trying to do the bolt test and wondering why they couldn't get 40 seconds, like I was discussing, it is because the bolt test is quite different. In the bolt test, what you do is you inhale through your nose super deep, and then you let out all of your air, and then you pinch your nose and you wait until the point where you feel like you are feeling intense desire to breathe, whether it's your abdominal muscles or your throat muscles kind of contracting. And that is the bolt test. So you eliminate all of your air, and then you see how long you can last. The one that Mike had me do is you take in a deep inhale through your nose, and then you try to let that inhale out as slowly as you can through your nose until you reach a point where you have no air left to emit. So the scoring difference is extreme. I tried the Bolt Test after I realized what it was, and I could barely get 20 seconds my first time, and then a couple times later, I was able to get up to like 24 or 25 seconds. but 20 is considered like the bare minimum for health there and for not being in like an oxygen debt. So if anyone wants to try that, that test is crazy. It's very uncomfortable and very awkward. So release all your air and then hold your nose and see how long until you start having intense desire to breathe. Anyways, moving on from that, I did finish up Hell Week on the rower this week. I just did my last Hell Week session yesterday. I actually put it off for a day, the final session. because one of the sessions of Hell Week was a 20 minute row for distance, or yeah, for distance for watts, whatever. It's basically 20 minutes for as hard as you can work. And that one put me on my ass. It was so hard. I was reflecting with Mike afterwards that the last 10 minutes, maybe nine minutes of the 20 minute row. my heart rate was between 95 and 98%, which I didn't even know I could maintain a heart rate that high for that long. I always assumed I would have to have a slightly lower heart rate if I was gonna go for, you know, around a 10 minute range. So for the last 10 minutes, I was essentially in the red, the high red zone. And then I finished that thing. I felt like I was gonna puke for a little while. And then my resting heart rate was elevated for... the next two days after that 5K row. And it's a little ambiguous because my resting heart rate is going up anyways, just because I am gaining weight. And so I expected that to happen, but it's going up maybe after that 5K row, a little faster than I would have expected it to based on body weight. So now it's kind of gone back to where I expect it to be given the weight gain. I'm still now in the... the mid to high 40s where when I'm down in the 180s of body weight, my resting heart rate is in the low 40s. So it's definitely a five plus beats higher. That row put my heart rate about 10 beats higher. So I kind of waited until it calmed back down. And then the last test I had to do yesterday was the three minute test all out for highest watt average. So I had a couple tests under a minute, one test that was a minute. I had a three minute test, a 2K raw, which is like a seven minute test. And then I had the 20 minute test. And so looking at that, Mike put together a profile of kind of my results based on expected or projected using this chips formula. And when you look at the graph, it's actually kind of funny. It's exactly as you would expect from me, but I overachieved on all of the power metrics. So all of the ones that were under three minutes, I overachieved based on expectation by a lot. Like the projected was, you know, 464 watts and I was like 601 or something like that. So it was really big overachieving on the power metrics. And then the graph kind of plummets down and you look at my 2K row, which was like as expected. So it was like the seven to eight minute range is where you would expect me to be. And then the 20 minute one was like about as below as the power ones were above. So you saw this like large discrepancy between my numbers and it's what I expected, like I said. So I think the ultimate objective here for the off season is going to be to train those longer time domains and try to get my aerobic work to catch up with my anaerobic work, which I don't think will surprise anybody. Yeah, I have two more quick updates. You wanna jump in and chat real quick? Sure. So, minor pretty quick, mostly just diet updates. I had my first day where I was not fully recovered to train a body part again, and it was legs. So I trained legs yesterday, which was Monday. The last time I trained legs before that was Wednesday. So I had full day of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, like four full days. And I could just feel it around like my VMOs, like they were still a little, like just, I guess like maybe a little sensitive is a really good way to put it. I go into the session and performance just tagged. Like I had to drop like 10, 20 kilos to match reps. And then on the hack squat, I, or sorry, the leg press, I had to reduce load 25%. like pretty substantial. Most of it was quad stuff. My hamstring things were all perfectly fine. Actually, performance was pretty good there. But that one was quite interesting, just the overlapping, or just the, I just was not recovered in time. And the other note that I had here is, I mean, granted, I am getting like decently lean now. I have a full 16 weeks of dieting under my belt. and I've noticed that the acute factors are like more noticeable now. So for example, I have two leg sessions in this training program. The prior time that I performed this leg session, we started swapping to put the hot bath or hot tub after legs as opposed to going in the sauna so that you could like submerge your legs like you know, and increase the blood flow there. I didn't get any DOMs after. that leg training session. I was, holy shit, we're onto something, you know, with this, with this hot bath. I did the same thing, you know, last Wednesday and I was in a world of fucking pain. Like doms, the worst doms I've had in like five or six months. So bad that like my legs were buckled multiple times, like over the coming days. And I almost fell over a couple of times. You feel like a moron when that happens, you know? And I think it just might be like food timing was like slightly different or maybe I didn't get as good of like a night of sleep. And I think I'm in conjecture here, but I think when you reach these kind of acute things where you're already at a diminished capacity to recover because of the calorie deficit and your diet fatigue is kind of caught up to you. Some of those like minor things at the top of the pyramid can be a little bit like make or break. I had to kill a mosquito. Nice work. Yeah. So that was like, just very, very interesting for me because it was the first time I was like, holy shit, you know, I'm, doms are insane. And then I was literally almost five days and I was not recovered yet. This is reminiscent of what I talked about last week. I think I mentioned it on the podcast. If I didn't, then I probably should have, but did I talk about my left leg being more sore than my right? So, I don't know, Aaron says no. So, last week I had a leg session, quads specifically. My hands were fine, just like you, but I had a quad session and three days later... right quad was recovered and my left quad was still like in the middle of the worst doms that I've ever had. And so it was the same thing I'm sitting there like scratching my head trying to figure out what happened because I didn't do any bilateral or unilateral movements. Everything was bilateral. And so why is my left leg so much more sore than my right and then we got to five days which was when I was supposed to train legs again and my left quad was still sore, but to the touch and my leg had buckled. you know, four times throughout the day, trying to go for walks and stuff. And so I was like, I need to delay this leg session and I waited until the sixth day and then I had enough recovery in my left quad that I was able to go in and put in a quality session. And that's in a surplus. That's me increasing body weight as I go. So the question for you is, obviously it's difficult to put your finger on exactly what it was that made that session so much. worse than the prior session, given that you tried to do most of the things the same. But in retrospect, do you wish you had taken an extra rest day? Do you think that when this happens again, that will be how you handle it? Or what is kind of where do you go from here? So I do wish I had taken an extra rest day because all the Bali camp boys are back in town from the United States where they were for the Olympia. And I was like one day ahead of everyone else. So I would have been able to train legs like tomorrow with everyone. So I would have been recovered. I wouldn't have had to deal with the very long session like miserably by myself. So like hindsight, it would have been great. The only thing I can think of is I swapped my... I didn't do my due diligence as well on my refeeds last week. Like my sushi night ended up being, we went to get a grilled, like a grilled fish place. So obviously overall calories and stuff were just significantly lower. And I did come up a little bit short on my refeed day, last, my mid-week refeed day. So. again, would be purely conjecture, but I'm just gonna kinda see. I think it might've been a little bit of a fluke. Could've been some sleep stuff. Maybe I had something else going on that was zapping kind of recovery capacity in my body, but we'll see how things progress next week. Cool, cool. Go for it, finish your updates up. Yeah, and then the only other one I have is my carbs have finally dropped under 300 for the first time in this diet, which I feel like is fucking silly to say. I've had to deal with actual hunger, I mean, barely, but for the first time, and I'm four months into this. I'm not going to touch on it too much because we do have a question below that asks about that. Yeah, I don't calories are now going to be averaging under 3000 for the first time. Wow, that's wild. I mean, that's still body weight times 15. So that's still a pretty good place to be. Cool. All right, finishing up my last two updates here. Our buddy, Oli, Alejandro, back in San Diego. He and I have been discussing, getting together this winter, getting me out of Boulder and planning to do a bike race in San Diego. So we were gonna do this one called Dirty 30 Mountain Biking Race, somewhere in San Diego. And I was literally about to get on the horn with Ollie and book my tickets out there for December. And he wrote me two days ago and he was out for a ride. And at the very end, he hit a rock and flew over the handlebars. And he sent me this image of his clavicle and it is completely snapped in two places. Like literally it's disconnected from his deltoid and it snapped like actually on the clavicle connecting the clavicle to the clavicle. It was one of the worst breaks I've ever seen. So he was texting me from the hospital saying he was about to go in for surgery. So it happened that fast. Like he flew over his handlebars, taken to the hospital, surgery like an hour later. I couldn't imagine how painful that must be, but my poor mountain biking race is not gonna happen. So there's that. Final update is that the PPL routine that I'm doing as part of Brian's program is crushing right now. It is going so well. I'm having so much fun with it. Some new movements. Finally getting into week four right now. So I'm getting into like a bunch of the intensity techniques that I enjoy, lengthens sets, partials, all of that stuff. And we've briefly discussed how I've been splitting up my hams and my quads on my PPL split. So it was push, pull legs over five days and then push, pull legs over five days. So you get six sessions over 10 days. I've just been splitting my hams and quads every single time now. I just have such better sessions and they're so much shorter and I can focus so much more of my energy into my leg work. So it's now push, pull, hams, quads, rest or a rest day somewhere in there. Basically I'm training four out of five days and then repeating. And I know everyone doesn't have the leisure of being able to walk downstairs into their home gym and just train for 40 minutes. like that. But for those that do, I am just such a big fan, especially as training age increases of splitting up those hams and quads. I know you are in many cases as well. And it's just, it's just a cleaner experience across the board. You can put in so much more into it. So for anyone that's able to do that, or, you know, considering in program design, I just think that's a lesson that I learned over the past couple years. And it's now, I think something that's going to become pretty consistent across most programs that I write. That's all I got. All right, should we dive in? Yeah, I had a hard time unmuting myself. I had to click it like three times. This first one I'll frame up, right, kick over to you first, and then we'll of course ponder about it. The question is, if I had absolutely no knowledge of short slash long resistance profiles, et cetera, and just use the popular machines in gen pop gyms, but trained close to failure, instead of training with ETP, advice, and optimal principles, what would be the hypothetical impact on gains assuming diet, volume, etc. was the same. Yeah, I love this question. It was cool that this was the first question that came in on my Instagram story yesterday because I looked at it and I was like, wow, I think we're in line for some pretty quality questions today. And so essentially what this person is asking is, because I clarified with them, it wasn't phrased quite like this when the question first came through. But what they're basically asking is if I just ignored all of the resistance profile stuff, didn't worry about training with long muscle lengths, didn't do any of that stuff, didn't have specific exercise selection that I was doing, and I just went into the gym used, whatever chess machine was there, whatever, you know, leg press or squat machine was there, you know, whatever row and pull down machines were there, basically, in my mind, kind of almost just going back to the way I was training 20 years ago in college when you know, hey, there's some machines, there's some dumbbells and a barbell. And those are the exercises most people do. So that's what we're gonna do type thing. And he's asking how different with the with the results be. And You know, my gut reaction here is to say that, depending on where you are in your journey, it's probably likely that the results won't be different at all. There are, the components that go into getting really good progress in the gym, in my opinion, the base components, the base of the pyramid, are eating enough food, training with enough volume, and training hard enough. Boom, three things. You can do all of those things without having to worry about resistance profiles or exercise selection or any of that stuff. And so I think oftentimes this idea of these optimal training concepts, while I do think they have value, their value is potentially more beneficial for those that are further along in their journey. And you may not need the optimal movement with the optimal resistance profile until you do, until you're at a point where you're not making progress the other way. And my advice to most people is to milk the basic shit for as much as you can before you worry about trying to optimize all of that stuff. And so yeah, I guess at the end of the day, unless you're 12, 15, 20, 25 years into your journey and you're at a point where you're stalled and not making progress Like don't worry about it the reason that I love this stuff and the reason that you and I talk about it so much is because we like to intellectualize training it is a way for us to keep it fun and interesting and Yeah, keep the pursuit fresh And so if all of those boxes are being checked for you and you're still getting results doing the basics then you know You can keep doing that. What do you think? It's, I agree with what you just said pretty much like wholeheartedly. I think there's some of the parts of the question that I think would lead me down another path. In the example that comes to mind, or that says here, hey, if I was just used to popular machines in gen pop gyms, you know, what would happen to my results? If you're like in a, Golds, like I'm thinking the times that I spent in like golds, gyms and 24s and stuff. I never saw a person do an RDL. I never saw a person do any lengthened hamstring movement. You're going to get some people that may use the prone lying hamstring curl for like three sets and that's it. And in certain contexts, I feel like that that's one where you might be a limit, a little bit limited in things. People are going to do leg extensions, right? Maybe you get some half-ass sort of squats. And though I would say it's the limitations are probably going to be lower body more so than upper body because I feel like unless you're just like a genetic freak from playing whatever athletic sport, you kind of have to go searching, you know, for lower body, you know, very quality development. But upper body, I think I would agree pretty, pretty much you're going to hit the chest press machines, you're going to do your pull downs. Maybe there's like a seated row. You know, you hit arms. If you're training hard. And I think, yeah, you'll still make a good amount of progress, but it's that spark that of wanting more, you know, that sort of thing. Like you said, hey, my progress is stalled. What else is there? I think that's what ends up pushing you deeper in search of more knowledge and that sort of thing. Yeah, good point on the RDL. I guess the perspective I was taking on this question was that this person understood the basic movement patterns and you know, a hip hinge and a squat pattern movement are standard movements that you would include in a program. And so even when I was training at 24 golds or whatever, there was never a point that I didn't have some sort of hip hinge in there and some sort of squat pattern in there. And so I wouldn't necessarily think that it's vital that it's a pendulum or a hack squat or a leg press. Like it could be a back squat. It could be a Smith machine squat if you want to stick with the notion of using machines. It could be a belt squat RDL or a cable RDL if you really want to like stay with machines. But yeah, as long as you're hitting that hip hinge and that squat pattern in there, then yeah, that would be kind of how I was answering the question. Agreed. Yeah, I think that's an important distinction to provide there. Cool, cool. This next question, it's something I haven't even discussed with you yet, because I've literally just recently been ruminating on this, and I've had a couple conversations on DM with a few people about it. Recently just talked about it on Dave McHoney's podcast. We had a roundtable with Abel. This one hasn't dropped yet. So this question came through from somebody that I was talking on DM about this, about the idea of implementing OliLifts back into my program. And so the question was, what are the lifts that you're gonna do and how is the, and how, and then what is the impact on hypertrophy? And so the background of why I wanna do this, it really goes back to the longevity piece and Andy Galpin has talked a lot about. explosiveness, you know, being the number one thing that evades us quickly as we age. And so we see this across the spectrum of athletes where ollie lifters and sprinters tend to peak younger, and then power lifters and bodybuilders tend to peak older because the movements are slow. And the first thing that goes when you get older, you know, you'll see your vertical jump decrease and you'll see your sprint times decrease and broad jump and stuff like that. And so Andy Galpin's suggestion to ensure that you keep this explosive kind of fast twitch 2X muscle fiber type stuff in your system over time is to incorporate some explosive movements. And he was saying it could be as much as you're doing high box jumps or you know, jumping down from a box so that then you're talking about absorbing loads. So you're jumping up, getting explosive, you're jumping down, which is helping your stability and your balance, stuff like that. And then, you know, only lifts also fit into that spectrum of being explosive and keeping that dynamic movement in your program. I was discussing this with Dave and Abel because their thought on it sort of was that, you know, you get most of your fast twitch muscle fiber recruitment by doing bodybuilding lifts explosively. you know, concentric with purpose. So you're not actually lifting the concentric slowly, you're trying to lift it quickly. My argument back was that the difference is that when you're doing bodybuilding training and lifting a movement explosively, you're doing that only specifically for one muscle group. Whereas when you do something like a high box jump, a broad jump, an Olympic lift, that you are engaging your entire body through triple extension, which would be, you know, hips. knees and ankles, and then obviously the glutes being part of the hips there, you get a whole lot of coordination of your body having to work together to create power. And so my goal here is not to go back to ollie lifting like I was doing in CrossFit, nor do I even really want to do the very technical parts of ollie lifting. I don't think I want to do a squat snatch anymore. In fact, my plan is to just start incorporating clean pulls. as the first thing that I'm gonna do. So I'm not even gonna worry about having to catch the bar on my shoulders. I just wanna do that kind of bottom position, clean deadlift type thing, and then get to the middle and explode up into a high pull. And that's where the lift ends. So I've just been debating in my head back and forth with myself mostly about implementing some of these in, mostly as a warmup on training days. So I go in, I do. three or four progressive sets of clean pulls, maybe I get up to 250 for a set or two, and then I move on to my hypertrophy training. And so if implemented in that manner, I don't really see any downside to it. In fact, I could see some positives where you could say the central nervous system is gonna get excited by doing these whole body coordinated movements. It can almost act as this full body warmup before you get into your hypertrophy work, and I wouldn't do it heavy enough for it to be fatiguing. where it would be taking away from what I can give into the hypertrophy work. And so, like I said, my goal is to really start with just clean pulls, maybe twice a week, and do that for a month or two, and then see if I wanna progress things into any of the other kind of more dynamic Olympic lifting movements. I'm interested to see how this unfolds once it does happen. Yeah, for sure, for sure. All right, well, this next question, I know these questions come. So this question says, need an update on only eating weed? And then why do you like amber beers so much? These are actually two separate questions from two separate people, but I'm gonna address them both at the same time. My update on only eating weed is that it comes and goes. I go through periods where sometimes I'm like, man, I really need to cut the smoking out and I'm just gonna eat it and I'll make it for a few weeks. And then I usually end up going back to smoking mostly out of convenience. I don't love the duration of eating weed. I don't love that it's a four to six hour commitment when you decide to ingest it. And I do love that if I just wanna have a little buzz for an hour or less, I can take one teeny hit and then it's gone. So that's the story. I'm still in my head, like I would still love to stop smoking. I just... It just hasn't happened yet. And that's pretty much the reason why. Why do I like Amber beers so much? I don't know. I didn't like Amber beers until about two years ago. And then Amber beers became my favorite. And now that's really my, just my preferred beer. Anytime I go out, I think it might have something to do with the kind of darker body that feels like it has that kind of brown sugary, maple-y type flavor in it. And so I really like that aspect. And I... don't know enough about beer to speak much further beyond that. So we will move on to the next question and I will kick this one over to Aaron to start off here. Aaron, do you think that muscle overlap is a thing? Like in a torso-limbs split, arms get hit more times per week than on an upper-lower split. Does that inhibit gains for the arms potentially? I mean, I would say it could if volume and frequency were at a combination that doesn't allow adequate recovery of them, which would therefore impact the quality of your training of them, kind of like we just talked about with my legs in the beginning of it. The interesting thing with arms is, I mean, yeah, they get hit with a lot of things, but the... they're often not the limiting factor of it. Like when you're doing a chest press, unless you're doing something like very narrow grip, it's likely not your triceps limiting you there. Same thing with pulling motions. And you're typically not taking them through like a full range of motion, right? If we think of like a row or something like that, yeah, the bicep is lengthened, I would say, but you're not getting it nearly all the way contracted. So you're not reaching kind of like peak force outputs in them. And you would know, right, if your arms are getting super sore on like your push day or your torso focus day, you would have kind of like subjective feedback, perceptible feedback cues there. So I would say it's likely not inhibiting your arm gains. Yeah, I tend to agree. The approach I would take would be if you need more volume for your arms, you should probably use the torso-limb split. And if you don't need as much volume for your arms, then you can probably be fine with an upper-lower split or something like that. And so you really just have to look at your own training needs and make an assessment of, hey, how are my arms responding to the current load? Might they respond better to? a higher load. And it's probably just a process of experimentation of doing a six month cycle of an upper lower type split where they're getting trained twice a week. And then doing a split like where they're getting trained a torso limb split where they're getting trained four times a week and see how they respond, see how they recover. And, you know, maybe it's even you have a arm specialization phase. And in the arm specialization phase, you do the torso limb split as a tool as a mechanism to increase volume and frequency of your arm training. And then maybe if you're on more of a leg priority program, you're doing something like an upper lower where you're doing a little bit less volume for your arms. So I don't think that one is necessarily better than the other, they're situationally specific. Oh, this is an interesting question. Yeah. This, let's kick this one over to you first because I have some thoughts on it. How to bias dumbbell pullovers more towards lats. I feel my lats stretch, but I also get a ton of triceps and a bit of chest. Any tips to limit that and get more lats? Yeah, this question made me smile because the dumbbell pullover actually trains all three of those areas. And there really isn't much that you can do to change that. You might be able to slightly shift which areas are getting more or less of the stimulus, but let's talk quick anatomy real quick. So when you extend your arm overhead as you do in a pullover, or even in a lat pulldown, Your long head of your tricep is working. So your lat and your long head both insert into a similar place back here. And so anytime that you're reaching the arm overhead behind you and pulling it down or slightly forward, your lats are gonna work and the long head of your tricep is going to work. There's nothing you can really do about that. You feel it less in a pull down. but that doesn't mean that it's not working. It is working less than it is in the pullover. The pec minor, which is kind of the lower chest area on your pec, pec minor also works quite a bit in the pullover. And again, you just can't really avoid that. When you're saying that you're feeling your triceps in the pullover, my guess is, well, you're gonna feel them anyway, like I said. So it's not that it's a problem that you're feeling them, but if you would like to feel them less, I would think that you can probably focus on not changing your elbow angle at all. So when you descend down into your pullover, whatever bend you have in your elbow should be maintained throughout the entire range of motion. Because imagine if you're going down with your arm a little bit straighter and then your elbow bends, and then it straightens again as you ascend. what you're essentially doing is a lying tricep extension. It's more, you're turning a pullover into a lying tricep extension. And so I'm not gonna tell you to do the movement with completely straight arms, because I think that puts way too much stress onto the various shoulder joint areas. But I do think that maintaining the same amount of elbow bend throughout the entire movement, where you're essentially just using this arm as a pendulum to rotate through the fulcrum. there of the lats and if you're able to maintain that same arm bend, the triceps will then act as a stabilizer muscle, but they're not going to be an active mover like they would be if your arm is straightening and bending throughout the range of motion. So that would be kind of the main thing I would focus on. And it's usually the thing I try to think about when I'm doing the movement. The last thing is, I really try to keep my hand almost bent back on the pullover. So it's pushing through the the lower palm area that connects into the wrist. If you're pushing through that area more, I think that I personally feel that a little bit more in my lats than when I let my hand kind of rotate over into that more like forearm flexed position. I have two small points to add here. If we're talking the dumbbell pullover, I think if you wanted to feel it a little bit less, you could shorten your range of motion in the finishing position and not come all the way to like the dumbbell is, you know, over your chest pretty much. As that arm comes down, you know, closer from where your bicep comes down to your, you know, closely like your rib cage, that's going to be like. That's chest involvement there on that pec minor like Brian had mentioned. So I would be my first. You could just focus more on the length and partials almost per se. The second, and this is kind of a sidestep to the question, don't perform them with a dumbbell. Perform them with a cable. That's how I always do them, standing with a cable. Again, you're not gonna be able to take your tricep and chest completely out of it, but it allows you a grip that you can kind of de-leverage your chest in a little bit because you can use like a... a more pulling grip as opposed to like a, you know, like a thumbs on top sort of grip, which will just inherently allow you to use a little bit more chest. And you can, yeah, you can, it's just, I don't know, I prefer it. I find I can use way less chest and triceps doing it that way. Again, it will still hit some of that, but I think it'll just be a little bit easier for you there using like a standing cable variation. Yep, I like that. Okay, Brian, let's kick this one over to you. What have you learned so far with your coach? Which I believe we're speaking about Dr. Mike T. Nelson here. Yeah, yeah. So I think that this is a little bit too early to tell. So, so far, we've only been really working together for 10 days. I mean, to be completely frank, we had an initial consult call before I left for Bermuda, so in mid October, but the training didn't actually start until October 30th. And so we're literally, yeah, like 10 days in at this point. So far, all I've learned really is that my, basically what I talked about in the updates, that I'm better at power work and worse at aerobic work. And that is something that I probably knew, you know, subconsciously or consciously, even before, you know, working with him. I thought it was really cool how he put together this graph for me of my different outputs on the... the chips scale and it compared it to a couple other scales and was like, Hey, if you're a power athlete, this is your expectation. If you're an endurance athlete, this is your expectation. And it was cool to see where I fall on those different spectrums. But, but ultimately I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot. The time just hasn't been sufficient enough at this point for me to learn a ton. And so I'll leave it there and you guys know that I will continue to update you on what I learned as I learn it. So Just stay tuned in specifically to the updates section of the podcast and Aaron I need to run up and grab my power cord. So I'm going to let you run on this question and I'll be right back So, what we will do is kind of jump ahead a little bit and then we'll back up. So, the next question that is not Brian specific is how to gauge RIR. I find it so difficult, so I just take every set to failure. So, there's a couple of YouTube links that Brian has here that we will put in the kind of show notes here. Honestly, the most important thing that I find is knowing where a... exercise will fail, right? For example, when we are doing a, like a single arm tricep, you know, push down or kick back, something like that, you're not going to fail that in the lengthened position, right? You're going to fail that near the shortened end range, right? Which is that terminal kind of elbow extension. So that can kind of help you gauge a little bit. Something like a... most squat pattern motions, let's say not the pendulum squat, you're gonna fail in that mid-range. You have a lot of really good leverage in the length and position. It kind of falls off once you get into that mid-range. And then that's where you kind of understanding whereabouts you will fail is really, really important. So typically the best thing, once you understand that, film yourself, right? When you're filming yourself, you are going to know where... your rep speed really starts to slow down. And there's some exercises, like think of like a seated row or something like that. You're gonna be able, like a seated cable row. You're gonna be able to grind through like anywhere from like one to three reps, depending on who you are. And once the reps really start to slow down, you can kind of gauge. Something like a, like an overhead tricep extension, right? Like where you're maybe leaning away from the cable stack and in your arms, you're up over your head. You're you're gonna have like one rep that you make and the next one you fail. So those ones are a little bit more ambiguous but something like that, when it's arms or a smaller muscle group, I'd say that the relative safety risk is quite good there as opposed to something that's more like a compound movement. So kind of to wrap up my instructions here, nowhere the exercise is going to fail as it's going to help you gauge, film it. So you can see, okay, this was all the way to failure. This was what two reps in reserve looked like in terms of rep speed. And then knowing which exercises you can probably grind some out, which ones were like, hey, rep nine, not that, not, you know, challenging, but moved well. Rep 10, I couldn't get off the bottom sort of thing is really, really helpful. So Brian, what I did here is jumped ahead to question 10, which is on gauging R. Cool. So I think you answered that really well. Great synopsis there. Very similar to what I would have said to you. I think it really does depend on the exercise. I linked two videos, which we'll put into the show notes. Both are from Jeff Nippard. The first one is how to gauge RIR basically. and he takes you through a number of different movements and what it looks like when you're getting close to failure with a rep speed timer, so you can actually see the rep speed slow as you go. And then the second video is just another kind of, it's an addendum to that video, where he shows himself going through a number of different movements and what that looks like. And so, assuming that technique is unchanged, rep speed is for sure the number one thing that you can look at. Uh, but as Aaron was saying, it's very movement dependent. And so his example of, you know, a length and movement with the overhead tricep extension, it really is like, you're going fine. And then you get to the bottom and there's one where you like struggle to get out of the bottom and you barely make it. And then the next one, you're not going anywhere. And it's kind of the same for like a squat pattern movement or, um, any of these more like lengthened demanding movements like that. Uh, the short movements like your Rose and you know, some, some spider curls and dumbbell lateral raises and stuff like that. That failure looks a lot different because you can actually grind a bunch of reps and you'll see rep speed slow down a lot more than you may on one of those more lengthened movements. Uh, just to provide a little context on this question, this question actually came through because this guy commented on my RDL, that video from yesterday. And he was like, how do you know how close you are to failure? And I think that brings up a larger question specific to the RDL or it could be to the back squat, but any of these movements where you have some degrees of freedom in your movement. And so, you know, how do you tell how close you are to failure on an RDL? I mean, is it the moment that your back angle changes at all? So you start with like a completely flat back and then if there's any flexion, then now you're suddenly past failure. Cause I think that probably is not how I approach it. I set a minimum level of flexion that I consider to be too much. And I don't consider flexion at all to be too much, but there's a certain level where it becomes too much. And for me, that's usually the point where my hips rise faster than my torso. So anytime you're doing a hip hinge movement, you're going to want your hips and your torso to rise together or to see your torso rise and your hips stay stable even. But when you see that, you guys have all seen the question mark deadlift where you go to set up for your deadlift and then the first thing that happens is your ass flies up and your background's over. And so that's obviously way too much. That's way past failure on any sort of hip hinge. But there certainly is a point where you can still have some back flexion, meaning, very slight rounding of your back, but your hips are still moving in coordination with your torso. And so I do not consider that to be past failure. I consider that to be acceptable ranges of form degradation if you want to look at it like that, especially because when you're into the heavier weights on RDLs, your upper back is just going to round over a little bit, protract the scapula essentially, because you just can't. maintain scapular retraction, nor should you be expected to, but that's gonna fail significantly before your hips and glutes are. And so if you ended a set the moment that you begin to see your upper background over, you've missed out on a ton of potential progress. So I think with a movement like an RDL or a squat where there's tons of degrees of freedom, you do have to set kind of an expectation of what is too much form degradation, because some. is expected, especially if you're starting the rep with a perfectly flat back, and you're not gonna end the set the exact same way. So I'd encourage you to watch those two Jeff Nip, Jeff Nippard videos. My group programs have found them extremely helpful and really help engaging RIR on the different movements. And then when it comes to something like an RDL, just understand that there will be some degradation, but as long as everything's moving together in coordination, it's all still good. Wonderful. We'll work back to some of these earlier questions. Brian, what do you envision your 2024 split to be between hypertrophy and biking? Yeah, I think it's probably going to be pretty similar to what we experienced this year, except that I'm going to learn my lesson a lot sooner. So it took me a long time this past season to make the switch to a full body training program. I don't think I did that until I was six or seven weeks out from the bike race. And I was trying to do too much. I was trying to train four to five days a week on a split hypertrophy program and also bike eight to 11 hours a week. and that just wasn't working. So I foresee it being similar to the end of last year where I'm probably training two to three full body sessions a week. What it probably will be in reality is probably two full body sessions and one upper body because the leg stuff really is the thing that gets hit a ton with biking. But. But yeah, I mean, having these seasons where I have this period of time focusing more on hypertrophy now in the colder months and a much less cardio, I mean, the amount of rowing I'm doing is between three and 20 minutes most days, and it's not even more than four days a week. And compare that to 60 to 120 minutes of biking seven days a week, it's a way, way lower dose of cardio. And so I love this split and I... I'm so much looking forward to all the hypertrophy training this winter and I had lost some of that love, I think. And then I'm also gonna be very much looking forward to the biking and decreasing the hypertrophy work in the spring and summer. So I'm really happy about the way that this periodization is coming into play for me going forward. And yeah, I'll keep you all updated on what I ended up deciding to do with the training as that time comes. The next question is very similar on any bike races in the future that you have planned. Yeah, I think I've alluded to this, but what I'm really looking for is something that's a similar length to what I did last time. So in that 45 to 65 mile range, and then I'd like to do more climbing. So my last race only had 2500 feet of climbing and I'd like to target one that has about double that. So call it 4500 to 6000 feet of climbing. And the reason I want to do that is because we have all these beautiful mountains around Boulder that are literally less than five miles from my house. and it's a great warm up to get to the mountains and then I can just spend time climbing. And I didn't do a lot of that this last off season or this last bike season, mostly because I suck at it and it's really, really hard. And the bike race that I was doing didn't require me to do a lot of it. So I think if I sign up for a bike race that has much more climbing, then I'm gonna be forced to do more climbing. And that's, I think the next challenge that I'm ready for. So I've been talking with my buddy, Greg. about potentially doing SBT, which is Steamboat Springs. And they have the standard race that's 100 miles and I wanna say 9,000 feet of climbing, something like that, maybe 10,000. And then they have a smaller one that's 50 or 60 miles and has 4,500 or 5,000 feet of climbing. So I think that that's the one that I'm looking at right now with a small consideration for the Lake Tahoe one, is 60 some miles loop around Lake Tahoe and it has 4,200 feet of climbing. So that one would be a little less climbing than I'm looking for, but still a lot more climbing than I did last year or this year rather. So yeah, those two are the number ones on the agenda. And the next question is, is Boulder the best 100K person town in the country? I don't know. Maybe. Probably. I guess it depends what you want to get out of out of your town. I think Boulder has a lot to offer if you're an outdoorsy person, for sure. I mean, it's incredible proximity to the ski slopes. It has all of the amenities that you would get in a big city almost like you. I don't really have to go to Denver for anything. I can if I want more nightlife, but. Boulder has everything you could want plus all of the access to nature and ski slopes are 45 minutes away So yeah, sure boulders the best hundred k person town in the country All right, this one I think is interesting. Okay, yeah. yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do you think there are any benefits to rucking while walking the dog? And so rucking would just be walking with weight, basically. Yeah, I mean, we have that study from, I think it's maybe three years old at this point, maybe a little bit older, that showed that you could basically stave off the negative effects of metabolic adaptation as you were going through a diet if you basically wore a weighted vest, and when you walked and stuff, carried a weighted vest. So I think there are benefits there. I think especially if you're dieting, if you're consistent with it, I don't think it's going to be anything magical, but I don't think that I could say no, excuse me, that there are no benefits. Yeah, I think there's benefits, but they're probably dependent upon what your goals are and where you are with your goals. And so I look at it more from the aspect of if you go for a walk without the weight vest, your heart rate is gonna be X. So say your heart rate is 45% of maximum heart rate if you're going out for a casual walk with your dogs. And if you throw a vest on, it's likely that your heart rate is gonna go up to 55, 60, 65% depending on how fast you're walking. And so, and how much weight you're carrying, I guess. And so if your goal of those sessions with your dog is to get a cardiovascular effect, then yes, you should absolutely rock. If your goal is just to go out and get some kind of cathartic parasympathetic recovery and just enjoy some time with your dogs. Probably not a benefit. You might be better off keeping your heart rate low and not stressing your body out. And so I think it's situationally dependent. And like Aaron said, if you're in a deficit, it might be a way to burn a few extra calories or stave off some metabolic adaptation. I think those studies actually had you wearing the vest for like 10 or 12 hours a day. So I don't know if going out for like one hour with a vest is necessarily gonna move that needle too much. So yeah, I would look at it more from the cardiovascular impact and what it's doing to your heart rate. Great additions there, Brian. Now this next question is on, is there an episode where you provide a breakdown of your race prep? Yeah, I actually talked with this person a little on DM. So their context is that they're following the 4D physique program at Paragon, and they signed up for their first gravel race in April, and they're looking for how to best combine lifting with cardio. And so I referenced episode 127, which is training and fat loss camp, where we've spent the first 45 minutes talking about your training, and then the last 15 or 20 minutes, I went into kind of what I've been doing in preparation for the race. So that would be, you know, when I would check out. And then in the three months or four months of episodes leading up to my race, which was early October, I pretty much updated what I was doing with my cardio every single podcast episode in the updates section. So it's not part of the timestamps because it's in that first 20 minute period that just says updates. But if you go through and kind of listen to those in chronological order, you'll get a decent sense. Ultimately, at the end of the day, because I'm not gonna cover it in a ton of detail right now, I would just say that the big thing is monitoring leg training, monitoring the proximity of leg training to your cardio, and then monitoring total volume of your weight training. Because as you get closer to this race, which I believe is, she said, is 45 miles and 4,500 feet of climbing or something like that, which makes it slightly more intense than the race I did, I think. she's going to need to be doing a ton of biking leading up to it. And so yeah, something like two full body sessions or even one full body session and one upper body session might be the ticket to kind of keep things in a decent place as the volume is ramping up for the cardio. So yeah, I hope that helps and feel free to hit me up on DM if you have additional questions there. Aaron, I will kick this next one over to you. I think it's an interesting question. Do you think that extra calories in a surplus can make up for poor sleep. I do not. And while there are some, I should say, physiological aspects that calories and sleep do similar things, the effects of poor sleep will make the calories and their partitioning less advantageous. So poor sleep worsens your insulin sensitivity and your anabolic hormone profile, right? Very very... clear research on that. The worse sleep you get, the worse your insulin sensitivity and glucose responses, and the worse your, you know, anabolic hormones are. The increased calories that you are trying to, you know, combat your poor sleep with will get increasingly worsening partitioning, right? Because we have the worst insulin response, insulin and glucose response. We also know that you cannot force feed hypertrophy. So let's say, you know, optimally, you need 100 extra calories per day to support the hypertrophic adaptations of your current training volume, you know, training frequency, et cetera. If you jump to 500 calories per day over that, like you don't make more gains, you just get fatter faster. So while there are like sleep, both sleep and adequate calories are both. different or two important fast factors in your recovery capacity and in hypertrophy, they're not like interchangeable. And once, okay, calories are already in a surplus environment, if sleep comes down, you can't just ramp up calories and hope that it makes up for the lack of sleep because they're not interchangeable in that. Yeah, dude, I agree with all of that. I was gonna go with the direction of the nutrient partitioning as well, where if you're eating all this extra food, but you've had poor sleep, then you're actually gonna get less muscle building benefit from the food than you would otherwise. So if you're already in a surplus, you're doing everything you can to help yourself achieve hypertrophy and doing extra calories just because you got poor sleep, I don't think is gonna help that process. All right. So Aaron, what do you think? This is actually, I think this is my favorite question that came through today because it really made me think and I still don't know where I stand on it, but I have some thoughts. Do you switch out exercises before they get stale or do you milk them all the way to the end and risk some not so great sessions before realizing that they've stalled? I was so going to kind of play devil's advocate here a little bit and say, why would the sessions be not so great until you've realized that they've stalled? Right? I mean, you because you're it's in unless you reach that really sweet spot where your body fat level is getting a little bit more than you would really like it to be. And you're in this like numbers go up phase where You know, food's high, body fat's increasing, like, and your gains are just stacking, right? It's not like you're always going to have every single, you know, week where there's progressions and stuff. And you might have a couple weeks where things look, you know, maybe like two, I'm using, let's remove the word couple and put back in like two. You might have like two sessions where you don't make, you know, progress on an exercise, but that could be because you made a shit ton of progress on the exercise before. or something like that, I'm very much in the camp of don't fix things until they're broken. And I believe that you need more of an evaluation period of just one session before things are like broken and in need of fixing. I think the risk with swapping out exercises is you're prematurely making a decision, right? And then you're going to go through the first like... the first three weeks or so of a new exercise, you're not really making any progress yet. It's neurological adaptations, realizing that if you put the seat on setting four instead of setting two, it lines up better. You're not wasting time, but you have to figure things out. And I think the more time you spend in weeks like one through three, and the less times you spend in weeks like seven, eight, nine, 10, you're just prematurely... taking gains off the table sort of thing. But that's just my standpoint. That's how I generally coach clients and stuff. That's what I do. But let's see what Brian has to say. Yeah, my gut response is to agree with you. And that's specific to this kind of neurotic, natural bodybuilder mindset of needing to have data and diagnostics. And so given that we're these, we're trying to milk out every little bit of gain that we can get, it's important for us to know for sure. that an exercise is no longer productive for us before we eliminate it and bring in something else because of what you said, that there's that learning curve, that you could be having this facade of progress, adding reps and load week to week just because the exercise is new and thinking you're making progress. To play devil's advocate on that point, which isn't, I don't actually believe this, but I do think it is relevant to at least discuss. is that hypertrophy is super forgiving, and that if you go back to my answer to the very first question, which is sufficient food, sufficient volume, and sufficient intensity of work, training hard enough, if you're hitting those three things, it may not actually matter if you're doing a new movement or seeing a movement all the way through until the end. Um... it may just be that you could change, shit, we just did an episode on this. I mean, we literally did an entire episode called Variety or Repeat Everything. It was like two episodes ago. And we talked about this in depth. And so I think that that's a piece of this conversation is, do you do that movement until the end or do you change it out? And so, yeah, my gut reaction is to say, data is important. You wanna know, it's when you have to work really hard for that rep and it might not. happen in one week or even in two weeks, but by the third week, damn it, I got that extra rep and, and you can be pretty confident that extra rep means that there was a milligram of extra muscle added or something along those lines. And it just helps you be more confident in your data and in your progress. Whereas if you're changing things all the time, you may end up at the same place eventually, but you might just not know it until you get there. So if you're somebody that really likes data and likes to kind of have those diagnostics in place, then I do think you want to milk that movement all the way until the end. And I don't really, like Aaron said, I don't really think that it necessarily means you're having a not so great training session. Like just because you're not progressing doesn't mean it wasn't productive. The last little thing I'll add onto the back of that is the movement that you will be swapping it for. Like, is that as quality of a movement? Are there limitations to your equipment availability and things like that? For example, like in the gym I'm in, I have for legs, I have a very, and actually a pretty damn decent hack squat. It's going to be my favorite. I have a really shitty pendulum, a stupid leg press that I hate, a Smith machine that's like really, really shaky. And those are my like squat pattern movements and like a barbell back squat, which I know is garbage for myself. For me to swap, bring something else in as opposed to that, that hack squat, like the hacks, the stimulus on the hack squad is easily 50, 60% better on any of those other ones. So that's another thing too, is like, if, if you are swapping it in, is it as quality, is it going to feel as intuitive and can you produce this quality of force in it? That's another kind of smaller but still important consideration there. Yep, yep, good point. We have seven or eight questions left in only 10 minutes. So we'll get through what we can and then start the next episode with the remaining questions, I guess, because we have a few good ones in here. But what are your thoughts on power building, essentially combining low reps and high reps in the same session? I think if you don't want to decide on, if you're like, hey, I want to train with like, a lot of barbell-esque movements, a little bit more simpler of a training style, maybe you're in your garage and you actually have limited equipment, I think it's wonderful, right? You get to pretty much pursue strength primarily and then add in some accessories for some physique stuff, lateral delt, some biceps, triceps, maybe some more less. hardcore, let's call them like back exercises per se. I think it's wonderful. There's been times in my life, you know, where I'd say like power building was really how I eventually, you know, swayed back into pure hypertrophy training. I think it's wonderful. As long as you have pure interests in both, but don't wanna like commit to just. hey, you go do your deadlifts off the ground and then some like your halt deadlifts and that's your Wednesday training sort of thing. But I think it could be a good bridge for people who are like not quite ready to let go of the powerlifting movements per se. Yeah, I do think you have to, you know, have those dual goals. So you have to have some identity tied to your strength and specifically the strength movements that you're incorporating into that power building program. Because at the end of the day, while low rep ranges are not the opposite of hypertrophy, they are a less efficient means of achieving hypertrophy. and they have a higher fatigue cost on your central nervous system for all the heavy load, the psychological aspect of, like the data-driven guys call it, un-racks. It can be an un-rack on a deadlift too. It doesn't have to actually be a squat to call it an un-rack. But the idea of having to set up for, mentally focus for, and then implement the heavy load is, it takes it out of you. There's a tax for that. And if your goal is purely hypertrophy, then power building is not the most direct route to that goal. So yeah, you need to kind of assess where your goals are. And if your goals are dual, then yeah, it's a great approach. If your goals are hypertrophy, I would probably stick with hypertrophy. Yeah, well said. Okay, this first one I'm gonna kick over to you, Brian. I have some thoughts on it, so I'm interested for yours. Should we protract the shoulders slash scapula on a lat pull down to increase the stretch? Yeah, so as this question came in, I was thinking about it. And so protraction is actually, I believe, going to happen in the horizontal plane. So that would be more like what would happen if we were reaching forward for something like a row. And that would allow you to kind of round out your entire upper back as you reach forward and stretch. And so I don't believe that protraction is necessarily the right way of phrasing that for a lat pulldown. I think instead it would be scapular elevation and scapular depression being the opposite of that. Whereas protraction would be the opposite of retraction. So if you think about retracting your shoulder blades almost like you're trying to pinch a pencil between them, protraction would be the opposite of that. And so if we're talking about a lat pulldown, we're talking about scapular elevation and scapular depression. And... I do think in fact that there is some benefit to scapular elevation when doing a lat pulldown. I believe that the lats will achieve a deeper stretch, especially through the lower iliac lat regions when we do that. And even more so when it's done as a pull around where instead of being directly overhead and reaching to stretch, which I think can put more of that. tension into the upper back and the trap musculature, like the mid lower traps and upper traps. When you're doing it more as like a reach around, a pull around, shout out coach Kassim and one. I do think that by elevating the scapula more, stretching across the body, you are going to get a deeper stretch through that lat region. So yeah, what are your thoughts? Yeah, pretty much my exact thoughts there. What I was going to say is defining what lat pull down you're doing could be a little bit more helpful if you're doing something that is like more. like a unilateral sort of neutral grip pull down. Like, yes, if you're doing something more like the traditional lap pull down, which we kind of colloquially may call an upper back pull down, there may just be less of that because of the range of motion is typically a little bit less in those sort of things. But to wrap up my point on it, I don't see any benefit to really limiting that. uh the scapula into like a depression or a retraction to use kind of both frames there from my standpoint. Yep, yep. All right, I'm gonna get through these two questions real quick. Would you rather be hungover on a weekday or a weekend? I will say weekday because the kids are in school and I don't have to parent. So definitely hungover on a weekday for this guy. How much would you pay for a Philly from your favorite spot in PB right now? So there's this little spot that Aaron knows that used to be next to our gym in Pacific Beach, our CrossFit gym. And I would go there a few days a week and get these. amazing fillies. This guy is from Philly and he um cooks he buys the meat fresh and chops it up there every single day. So a Philly goes for about 18 bucks for a 12 inch. I would probably pay 36 dollars. I would double it. I paid 36 bucks. That's all I got on that one. Anything to add, Aaron? Not really, what's really, Jenny was asking me this today since I have like some hunger now with the diet. So I'm from Pennsylvania, you know, and we would go down and get a lot of those and stuff. And I just have zero cravings for any of that food anymore. It's kind of wild. So much so like, I wouldn't even take one if I was out somewhere. I'm like, that's gonna fuck my stomach up. It's gonna ruin my day. I don't want it, sort of thing. So. heh. That's funny. I would pay nothing for it, unfortunately, because that part of my life is just over, I guess. and you don't want to be hung over on any days, weekday or weekend. All right, Aaron, volume question. If straight set reps are 15, 11 and nine, is the third set a waste since it's more than five reps less than set one? I'm thinking of the effective reps model. So this is a question I really like. So this actually came from one of my clients. And the thought process is the wheels are turning, right? So they're thinking, well, why would I, is the third set a waste? Because yeah, like you said, it's less than, or more than five reps less than set one. However, what we're not taking into context is it's not like you're setting, hey, 100 pounds, I'm doing 100 pounds for 15 reps. then I'm doing a hundred pounds for 11 reps, and then I'm doing like a hundred pounds for nine reps. The load selected in the proximity to failure is really what will determine the amount of reps that you achieve. Or if, hey, we're sticking to a 15, 11, nine, you need to modulate your load for that. So what you would be able to do for 15 reps on set one, It's not like you can do that for 15 reps on set three, which is at nine. So that's the really important distinction here is making sure that your load matches the number of reps. Now, even if we did say, hey, let's say to change the example here a little bit, you have 15, you have three sets at a hundred pounds. The rep range is nine to 15. And I want you to train to failure. If we're taking, if we get 15 reps at a hundred pounds at failure on set one, on set three, you might be at like 11 reps realistically. I think that's a realistic drop off, unless your rest time is like, you know, four or five minutes there. So it's not so much that I think it's, I don't think it's a waste at all. I think, you know, maybe you don't have all the pieces of the equation of the, How do I want to frame this? The instructions for whoever kind of set up the rep scheme there. What are your thoughts, Brian? hmm. My thoughts are that it, it really shouldn't matter at all. If the fatigue is what's causing your reps to drop. So if you're at one RIR for the set of 15 and say you rest two minutes and then you get 11 and you're at one RIR and then you rest a couple minutes and you get nine and you're at one RIR, then your effective reps are fine. Like effective reps basically says it's the five reps before failure. So if that nine rep set is still within five reps of failure, then you're fine on the effective reps model and you're still getting plenty of stimulus. If this was the case, this question, if that was the case, then rest pause sets would be useless because you'd say I got 10 reps and then I rested 20 seconds and I only got three. Well, that's seven reps less than 10. So fuck, they're not effective, but we know they are effective because they're fucking hard and you're getting three effective reps because they're all close to failure. So when I saw the question, that was just the way I looked at it. Yeah, that's such a good way to put it. Um, and I will say I, in my opinion, right. The rest pause slash my reps or however you want to, um, phrase them are very, very effective. Yep, yep. So we have a. What do we have? One, five more. So four of them are for you, more or less, and the last one was to me. If you want, I can answer the last one and then bounce, or we can save these for next week. Let's save them for next week. They're really good questions and I think it'll be a good way to open up the episode for next week because they are pretty decent. Cool, I like it. Well, let's cut it here then, we got four to go. All right, guys, so as always, thank you for listening. We will chop off these last four and put them into next week's episode. And we'll talk to you next week.