Our Favorite Rep Schemes | ETP#149

What's up, guys? Happy Monday for everyone watching on YouTube. Happy Tuesday for everyone listening on the podcast platforms. This is episode 149 of Eat, Train, Prosper, titled, Our Favorite Rep Schemes. So, Brian put together a wonderful list of all these different rep schemes that we can use in training. He has it further categorized into hypertrophy, and then strength, and then metabolic conditioning. So... We're gonna dive in to the hypertrophy side first and then cover why we may use some of these in certain situations, which ones we both like, which ones maybe only get used in certain contexts, and Brian will provide a lot more in -depth information on this. But before we dive into the topic, Brian, some updates please. Yeah, great intro. I love that. I especially love the what's up to the Monday YouTube viewers. Because that's I actually love that the episode comes out on Mondays on YouTube. And it gets this kind of like a sneak peek for those that want to go on YouTube. And then the comments section is usually pretty good, too. So check it out on YouTube on Mondays regarding my updates. So I kind of referenced it last week, but I'm in this weird three week or so transition period where. I don't have like super structured training. And I always feel weird in these situations. Like part of me loves it because I get to experiment with some of these rep schemes that we're gonna talk about today. Specifically one that I've really been enjoying this last week that I'll get to in the bulk of the episode. But it's also kind of purposeless in a sense. And I don't love that. Even 25 years in, I feel weird. kind of going into the gym and not having explicit direction of what I'm supposed to do and what weights I'm supposed to use and what reps I'm supposed to hit and all that stuff. So it's been sort of fun, but also sort of disconcerting to not have the structure that I'm used to. And the reason that this is for anyone that hasn't been following the updates in the prior episodes is that in a few days, I am going to hypertrophy camp at N1. That's actually this coming weekend. So by the time this episode drops, I will have already finished and one hypertrophy camp. It's a two day kind of seminar hands on experience. I'm really excited. Jordan lips is coming to hang out. He's going to stay in my basement. And so we'll get to hang out and talk shop all weekend and then go train with Cass and Cody and the crew over and one. And then as I kind of briefly mentioned last week, we had this passport debacle with my son. And so we're supposed to be going to Costa Rica next Wednesday, which is like eight days from when we're recording this. I finally got his passport sent off to the expedite agency last Thursday. And they're supposed to have a five day business day turnaround, which means we should have the passport back by the end of this week. I still have like this tentative skepticism that it's all going to work out. Maybe I just like want to set myself up to not go so that I can not be as disappointed if it doesn't work out. But yeah, it feels a bit tenuous. And I'm really hoping we can go to Costa Rica because it's all paid for like the housing that the Airbnb we have a nanny, we have a car we have flights like the whole thing is already booked. And it would just be so crushing to have to cancel this trip after looking forward to it for so long. So, uh, really hoping the passport comes through, but this is all part of the three weeks of unstructured training where I'm going to be in this little town. Uh, they have a, like a jungle gym, you know, maybe some dumbbells up to 50 pounds and a couple barbells. And I actually remember last time being there, they had a pack deck machine, like of all things they had a, really shitty dumbbells, barbell, and then a pack deck machine. One of those really old ones where the elbows come together. So it's just kind of like one of those weird piecemeal gyms and I'm not going to be able to get super high quality sessions there. And then as I've discussed prior episodes, my biking adventures are going to start again on April 1st when we return from Costa Rica. And so that's when I guess structured training will begin again. And I've kind of alluded to how I want to use the basis of the 10 exercises for the rest of your life episode that we did a month or so ago as the basis for my training program when I get back into biking. And since then, I've kind of modified it a little bit. I think it's 12 exercises now with a couple of changes, but I'm actually really excited to talk to you guys about all this. Maybe in the following episode, right before we leave for Costa Rica, we can go over it. more detail kind of what I decided to do with my training for that period of time with these 12 exercises now. And then the only other update I have is that one of the questions in our Instagram Q &A last time was what my misogi is going to be for the year. And misogi is the challenge that you're supposed to do annually where there's a 50-50 chance of success and a 50 -50 chance of failure. So it has to be something quite hard where you don't know if you're going to succeed or not. So it can't just be like, you know, I'm going to go do a 50 mile bike ride because in my mind, I think there's like a 90 % chance I would complete that, you know, even though that's hard. Um, so we had guys night the other night and four of us decided that we're going to do something called skyline traverse, which is a hike in Boulder that has you, uh, summit five peaks in a row. It starts with Bear Peak, which is the hardest one. I think it's I don't know. I don't know all the details, but the entire skyline traverse is about 16 miles. You have five peaks that you summit and there's like 5 ,300 feet of vertical that you're going to climb. And so I don't think that this would be a 50 50 proposition if I were to train for it. The reason that I think it's 50 50 is because none of us are going to train for it. We're just going to show up and try to hike 16 miles with over 5000 feet of vert. And then I also think that there's the possibility that, you know, we have to make sure that we account for sustenance throughout the trip. You know, it's gonna be possibly a 12 hour, 10 to 12 hour experience. You know, we have to have enough water, we have to have enough food. We have to make sure our feet are taken care of. This is actually one of the things I'm the most concerned about is what happens if I get these like death blisters all over my feet and then I have to, you know, fail to finish because. my feet hurt too bad. So, you know, making sure I have the right shoe choice, maybe two pairs of socks, band -aids. There's just kind of a lot of thought that goes into it. And so I still think it's maybe not quite 50 -50. It's maybe like 60 -40, 70 -30 that I think I'm gonna succeed, but it is something that does put some doubt in my mind and it scares me a little bit. And so that is what we decided to do and it's going down on May 19th. So that's coming up here in the next two months. That is really cool. And I think that is a perfect misogy based off of how you've described it. There's a lot of variables there, right? Especially. What do you say? There's five of you guys. For OK, I mean, those are variables in and of themselves. Like what happens if someone what happens if someone chooses poor footwear and it like mile for their feet are in shambles? Is it? Hey, every man for himself. Hopefully you make it back home or is it do we all get off the mountain together sort of thing? I think that's really cool. I think it's 16 miles and it's not an overnight. You're doing it in a day. That is, I'm excited as that time approaches. I think that's gonna be really cool. I think it's going to be very, very challenging. I agree. I'm like, I am slightly nervous about it. So I think that that's good because I wanted to be I wanted to go into it feeling that sense of, you know, will I make it and then the sense of accomplishment when you do make it type thing. Yeah, yeah, I love big hiking trips like that. Like that's something that excites me about like a time in the future where I maybe I'm not training like five days per week anymore, like to go do things like that. That's something that I do really, really enjoy. Okay, I guess that's it for your updates. So I had, I have two. So I finally have some programming I will be doing for myself for a specific goal in mind, which is exciting. And, but over the past like two and a half to three weeks, I have also had a period of A and N, unstructured training. Let's put it that way. I knew I would have, okay, I'm training pull today, but I would be like, okay, what am I? you. What is my base program that had been that same base program since last June? What are things I'm gonna modify a little bit? And I've been doing some of that. I have enjoyed it. I will use the caveat and the reason that I felt okay with it is because I knew as long as I was training hard, taking things close in proximity to failure, like I'd be growing because I have the exogenous testosterone. And now it's like a, it's a cheat code, right? I won't even, you know, try and beat around the bush with that. So it was. it lowered my concerns about that because I knew that I'd be growing regardless. So I did have that, but now I do have programming for a specific goal in mind. I did my physique assessment with Jackson and he's like, these are your lagging body parts for men's physique. So now I have things that are in like direct goals for, you know, hypertrophy in specific areas and I will get the program into that. I was supposed to do it yesterday and then I just kind of completely forgot on my day off and didn't do it. So I will do it likely towards the end of this week or this weekend. So two questions, are you writing this program with Jackson or are you autonomously writing this program? autonomously. Yeah. your nutrition throughout and kind of guiding you with the physique and stuff like that. And then what what are your subjectively weak body parts for men's physique? Because I struggle to see weak body parts for men's physique on you. upper chest or the clavicular chest more appropriately traps shoulders in general the erectors and kind of like mid back development what I think might be more colloquially terms like the lower rhomboids per se or the lower traps I mean yep the iliac lat and triceps, long head of the tricep in the rear pose because we want, you know, kind of want to close that gap in the back shot as much as possible. strong at like the medial lateral tricep stuff with the pressing. Cause you do, you actually do a lot of more medial and lateral tricep type pressing. I don't see you doing a ton of that like stretched overhead tricep movements too often. one of those in the program that's been in there for a while. The hard thing with me is a lot of those are what aggravate my triceps tendon. So it's finding a good way to do that, that I can train it hard without really aggravating my triceps tendons. yeah. Well, that's really cool, because you have like, like even though those things are very subtle weaknesses, if you want to call them that, it does, it is kind of cool that it provides you some direction and structure for your training going forward. Yeah, I'm, and that's what I'm excited for. And it's like, I get to sit down and be like, okay, I want to do, you know, like I'll probably train my back like twice per week, you know, and then because the spinal erectors and those lower traps are like a goal, like I think I might add back in deadlifts on like a back day. Um, and like those things kind of have, have, uh, I'm excited. And one thing I'm actually kind of excited about is I know like back in the CrossFit days, like, both you and I, this was like a staple, we had massive spinal erectors relative to the rest of like our body part. So it's been built before, unfortunately, I believe that like things come back more quickly when they've already been there. So I'm just going to return to some of those things that I know have worked for me in the past. And I'm assuming things will progress in that regard again. Yeah, dude, that's awesome. I when I talked about my 12 exercises that I'm going to include in my program in April, I actually think I'm going to add in back conventional deadlifts. I messed around with them for the first time in two years the other day and worked up to four or five for a double, which actually felt kind of heavy. It was fine. But like I was like, man, that's it's been a while. You know, like welcome back, old friend. But but I do I do kind of have some. some excitement about adding deadlifts back in because like you said, you and I both were quite strong deadlifters and something that was productive for us. I think that when I look at pictures of my back all the way from, you know, the lower back, butt connection, all the way up to the traps at the top, I do think that there's been bits and pieces of it that are, have been lost since I've stopped deadlifting heavy with consistency. And so, I am kind of excited to add those back in as well. Yeah, yeah, so I'll share some of those things with you probably offline once I have a layout and get some of your thoughts and stuff there, but that one I'm excited for, like a cool little personal project. Yesterday was Nyepe, which is arguably the biggest Balinese holiday here, and it's a day of complete silence. You can't go outside, there's no cars on the road, all the lights are off all day long, and it's just like you reflect, meditate, and. and that sort of thing. It's pretty cool in general because how everything really does shut down. But I really struggled yesterday with just like doing nothing all day. In theory, it sounds great, but I really struggle with just like chilling and relaxing and I just don't like it anymore. So now I thought it was interesting. I kind of enjoyed it last year and this year I was really excited about it, but then just did not. Enjoy. What did you do all day? I saw what I had been doing actually is as I plan this little personal project to build like a side computer, like a little like a PC project. And I bought all the parts and you know, had everything set out to like do this on the day. And then of course, within like 10 minutes, I realized like some parts were not the right parts that I bought. And I was basically going to not even get to step one of it. So there went my like day project. Yeah. I took a nap, which I never do. And then I felt horrible after waking up. from my nap, which always happens, and that's why I don't take naps, because I feel like dog shit when I wake up from them, and really just read a little bit and just meandered, watched a little bit of Netflix, that sort of thing. I would say the highlight of it is at night, there's no lights on, so we just have our phone lights on, and then there was a light on the stove. and the cats were like going, ate shit at something. And we were like, you know, what is that? So finally it go over or Jenny went over with her phone. Like there was a snake in the house. Yeah. And then Jenny, I don't even know. It was so small. I mean, like so small that it's like, where does a worm end and where does a snake start sort of thing? But it was like, it was a snake and had the head and everything of it. And so then I had to go off like, how do get this? I was like, Do I just stomp on it and kill it? And I was like, all right, no, I'm not gonna do that. And like, let me just get something and like, go put it out in the garden. So I had to do that. That was a little bit of the excitement of Nepi, but other than that, pretty slow and an uneventful day. Mm hmm. Do you, you know who Dave Driscoll is? He's in Bali. Yeah, I just saw his post on Yuppie this morning and they did a whole like 36 hours, no phones. Obviously didn't leave the house and you know, drank a bunch of coffee, watched a bunch of movies, stuff like that. To me, it sounds awesome. Like I know you struggle with the chilling side of things, but I think I would love to have that forced separation piece. I think I'd really enjoy it as well. So. Yeah, I guess different perspectives. Yeah. My last thing, not an update for me. This is an update for everyone listening. If you have, um, goals to be lean and shredded by summer, this is my PSA. You want to be starting now, right? By the time this episode releases, it's going to be the middle of March. That's going to give you approximately like 16 weeks or so until summertime hits. You're not going to get it done in six weeks. I don't care what all the summer shredding challenges say. The odds are you are not going to get it done in eight weeks. You may be able to do it in 12 if you are very, very diligent. It's more likely going to be closer to that 16. You want to be starting now. Yep, totally cosign that. Cool, that's all for me. Should we dive in? Yeah, let's do it. Who I could have to sneeze. Okay, didn't happen. So we're gonna start with hypertrophy. And like he said, I broke it down into hypertrophy, strength slash strength, endurance and metabolic. So starting with hypertrophy, I think we'd be remiss to not mention the GOAT, the one that's the most effective all the time, which is just straight sets, same rep range. So in this case, I'm thinking eight to 12, six to 12. maybe six to 15, something along those lines, kind of that lower mid range of the hypertrophy rep range. And I guess there's a few ways you can approach straight sets. The nuance here would be, do you try to target the same number of reps each set, like 10, 10, 10, and therefore understand that your RIR is going to get closer to failure each set. So maybe if you go 10, 10, 10, it ends up being two, one, zero. something along those lines versus trying to maintain the same RIR across sets. And therefore maybe it ends up being 10, nine, eight, because you're like, okay, I'm going to hit one RIR each set. So you end up getting 10 and then you get nine and then you get eight or something along those lines. So both of those fall into the category of straight sets in the same rep range. Where, where do you stand on that? Do you prefer to let the RIR drop each set or do you let the reps drop and keep the same? I prefer to keep the same RAR and let the reps drop. I love that people have different stances on this, but this is one that I do honestly feel pretty strongly about. I don't, once, assuming you're warm, right? And I always have my clients ensure that they're properly warmed up. I don't want you to sandbag set one's performance for like a theoretical performance on set three. Like if we're fresh, it's the first rep of, or. the first set of that exercise. I don't want you stopping at 10 if you can do 13 just so that we can try and get like nine or 10 on set three. I feel like it, again, everyone's different, but I feel like it adds layers of like mental decision making and load selection and those sorts of things as opposed to like, you're fresh, here's the load, give me a maximal performance. Cool. Yeah, no, I agree. I think for the most part, I tend to use that as well. What I have found is with the group programs, sometimes because you have varying levels of experience, it's easier to just say, hey, hit 10 reps every set. And you know, if you rest a minute to two minutes between sets, you'll naturally expect the sets to get harder. And that kind of allows people that maybe aren't. quite as familiar with RIR to still get high quality sets in. Whereas if you tell them to drop the reps each set and let the RIR stay the same, oftentimes they end up just sandbagging every set instead of, you know, you end up at least with one really good quality hard set if you say, hey, hit the same number of reps every time. So I do think both have utility, but I do agree in general that I prefer to kind of let the reps drop as well. Yeah, that was a very good explanation of the context with the group program. Yeah. And then the next two that I would throw in here are pyramid and reverse pyramid. And I tend to use these context dependent reverse pyramids I like to use with compound movements or more damaging kind of big hitting movements. And I like to use pyramid more with isolation movements. And so the difference is for any, just an explanation for anybody is. Pyramid is something like old bodybuilding bro magazines would have you do like 15, 12, 10, eight or 12, 10, eight, six or something along those lines where you start with the highest rep set. And then your final set is the one that I guess is hardest closest to failure lowest rep range. And the reverse pyramid would be the opposite. So in the reverse pyramid, you have to kind of warm up. And then you start with the lowest rep set. So you might go six. nine, 12, 15 or something along those lines. And so I think that the drawback to using the standard pyramid is that you're so fatigued by the time you get to your heavier sets that your performance is diminished. So imagine if you're doing like a 12, 10, eight, six, by the time you do your 12, 10 and eight, and then you get to your six, you've already done three sets, your six, your performance is going to be much lower. Whereas in the reverse pyramid, starting with the set of six, obviously you have to do a couple warm -up sets to get there, but you're going in there with the most fresh CNS and the most optimal effort that you can put toward that set. The other thing I really love about reverse pyramid specifically for compound movements is that with the research we now have on proximity to failure, we know that the... lower rep ranges don't require you to be as close to failure to consider it a productive set. And so if you, what I, what I love is being able to say, okay, we're going to go six, eight, 10, 12, but we're going to start at three RIR. We're going to go three, two, one, zero. So that final set of 12 to 15 reps or whatever it is, because it's in a higher rep range, we know we need to be closer to failure, but it also helps that because it's at the end, you've already, exhausted yourself with the earlier sets. And so it's easier for you to kind of get to failure effectively on that set. Whereas when you're looking at the pyramid itself going safe, 12, 10, eight, six, what you would want is that set of 12 to be a failure set because it's the higher rep range. And you would want your set of six to not necessarily be a failure set. Like it could be, but it doesn't have to be because it's a lower rep range. But then you kind of are like, well, if I'm, what I tend to do is use that first set as a warmup almost. So I tend to program pyramids like for isolation movements where it might go 20, 15, 12, 10. And so the 20, I'm just kind of grab, say I'm doing lateral raises. I'm grabbing like the 20 pound dumbbells and I'm just doing 20 reps. And that 20th rep is nowhere near failure. Like it burns, it warms me up, but it's not near failure, which kind of makes it an ineffective set. looking at the research, you know, the higher rep sets need to be closer to failure. So that 20 rep buy -in set is almost just like, yeah, it's a warmup set more than anything. And then by the time that you add weight and drop reps, it works really well for isolation movements. But I think it would leave some gains on the table for the compound movements. Where do you stand on all that? You know what's really funny and I think things are going to kind of come out as this episode goes along. I've been when I'm doing my own programming or even with some clients like I've been building things in a way in it. It didn't click until we're on this episode. I use a lot of the reverse pyramid but I'm not in my mind thinking about it as like reverse pyramid. I was how I approach it mentally is kind of like the daily undulating periodization sort of thing or even an intra exercise period is rep periodization. Um, where I'll typically in, I like to use rep ranges, but like a, a six to nine and then a 10 to 12 and then like a 12 plus, you know, like that's a very common one that I will use. Um, but it's really the reverse pyramid and the reasons why I use it or is like everything that you just laid out as you described it. Cool. That's awesome. Yeah. I tend to do it with rep ranges too. I don't love the idea of programming six, eight, 10, 12, cause I think it's too specific and it ends up not allowing you to hit your RIR cause people get focused on the actual rep. But if you go like you said, six to eight or six to nine, then nine to 12, then 12 to 15, that's exactly the way that, that I program it as well. So yeah, same page there. When we go to the next one, it's top set plus back offset. And this is literally just like reverse pyramid, but without the third set in the reverse pyramid. So it's just having two of them. You have your top set, you warm up to it, and then you have a back offset with lighter weight. So it's like doing the first two sets in the reverse pyramid, so to speak. Yeah, I really, really like using this more so in like intermediate plus to advanced. I especially once you get into like advanced on compounds, I am rarely using like straight sets for someone on compounds unless it's maybe, for example, if we have like a squat pattern movement and a leg press or something like that in a session, I might go like lower rep with the leg press, but then we're not. taking each one to like failure or something like that. But I love the top set back off because I find that once your strength is at, once you're like proficient enough, multiple repeated top weight attempts is just like centrally shattering per se, you know, to be like, okay, here the a hundred and you know, hunt hunt 365 on like your, your RDL or something like that for like three sets just ruins you. But instead of being okay, you have one set. you like get like your six to 10, and then we're going to back down to like 315. And that's like much more manageable just from like a central fatigue accumulation sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fully on board with that too. The next one is one that probably could go into metabolic, but I think that it's hypertrophy enough and we have enough things already listed in metabolic that I'm going to throw this one into hypertrophy. It is essentially a rest pause set, but it's a John Meadows approach that I believe is called the 1025 method. I think that there was another name that I used to use back in the day and now I literally cannot for the life of me. I spent like 20 minutes trying to find out what I used to call this, but all I could find on the internet was the 1025 method. So that's what we're going to call it. But basically what you do is you do a 10 to 12 rep set and well, there's two ways to approach it. You can do a 10 to 12 rep set to kind of establish your weight. And that would be like a one to two RIR set. And then you would rest like three minutes, four minutes, whatever. And then with that same weight, you try and accumulate 25 reps in as few sets as possible with the caveat that you only rest 15 seconds between sets. So if you have that 10 to 12 rep weight, you would think, okay, the first set I'm going to get about 10. And then I chip away and four, three, three, three, two, or whatever those numbers do to equal 25. And so you get a ton of effective reps. It's essentially like a rest pause set or a myorep set. The other way that it can be done, and I actually use the second way more often if it's like a part CDE movement and less often if it's a part A or B movement, but you would just not do the first 10 to 12 rep set to establish your weight. You would just choose a weight that's like, hey, choose a 10 to 12 rep weight and then do 25 reps with it. And so that keeps you from having to do one full really fatiguing set before you then go do 25 reps. it ends up becoming a 25 rep set instead of a 35 rep set. And so yeah, I use both of those. I think it's an extremely effective protocol. And it pretty much works for any movement you want to do other than maybe an RDL or like some sort of hip hinge. But it can be done on like a hack squat, a leg press, or of course, any like isolation movements or anything like that. Yeah, I really like that approach. I admittedly haven't used something like that in quite some time, but what I do like about it as opposed to like a rel, a regular rest pause or you have that rep target, you know, and it's like the, the harder I work or whatever, like the sooner it's over when I achieve X goal, or as opposed to like the typical rest pause, it's like, Hey, you have five rounds. Go to you die pretty much. And there's no, There's no, there's no true incentive to get six on the second one as opposed to like four with this one. It's like, there's an end goal that the harder you push, the faster you get it over with kind of thing. And it seems just like the perfect ratio to where you have like 40 % of the work done in the first set, and then you have to achieve 60 % more work throughout the remainder of the set. I really like it. I've used them quite often myself, especially on leg extensions. It's just so awful on leg extensions. Yeah. Okay. So then my next one is similar to the 1025 method, but it's a 40 rep set instead of a 25 rep set. And just as a result of that, you start with a higher rep buy -in set. So the initial buy -in set would be 15 to 20 reps instead of 10 to 12. And then you chip away, same idea, 15 second rest until you get to 40. So we probably don't need to expand on that too much more. I would just say that I would usually use the 40 rep version on like lower fatiguing isolation movements because you're starting with 15 to 20. And I would use the John Meadows 1025 method more probably for compounds or movements that are better suited to the 10 to 12 rep range. And then the last one hidden hypertrophy is the one that I alluded to in the updates when I said that I've been experimenting with a new rep scheme that I really like. And I'm just going to call it the Brian's six by six. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever do a six by six. So it's completely inaccurate, but I don't I haven't seen it out on the Internet before, especially performed in the way that I do it. So what I do with my six by six is. I take a 10 rep max for two antagonistic movements. So I did it a few days ago with leg curls and chest press. And then I did it the yesterday with a lumbar lat rows and lateral raises, cable lateral raises. So it would be more susceptible, more feasible to use lower rep ranges when you have a cable for a lateral raise. But basically what you do is you take a 10 RM weight, for each and you just do six sets of six, but you alternate. So I do one set of leg curls for six, one set of chest press for six, leg curls for six, chest press for six, back and forth until you've done six sets of six. And this has pretty standard rest in between, I'd say one to two minutes between movements. So you're getting three to four minutes before you go back to the same movement again. So what ends up happening is, you the first set you do is about four RIR because it's a six rep set with a 10 rep weight. But as you get, through the sets by set four, you feel like you're maybe at like two or three RIR. And by the time you get to the final set, it's one or two RIR. And so you're not necessarily hitting failure. It feels like extremely productive hypertrophy work. And because of what I referenced earlier with the lower rep ranges, not needing to necessarily go to failure to be considered a productive set. I really do think that you're getting productive work in on all of these sets. And it's much less fatiguing than I think most people would think when you say I'm doing six sets of a movement. Most people would think you're really taking that movement to the house and you're causing a ton of fatigue. But because each set is sub failure, you're protecting your CNS a little bit and still getting like a quality hypertrophy stimulus. And so that's just something I've been messing around with and I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, I don't have anything or any real experience doing anything like that in quite some time. Like by the last time I probably did anything like that was when you were doing my programming. So it has been quite some time since I've had anything like that. Yeah, it's something that I almost feel like I would put into a neural phase, which maybe would make it better suited to be in the like strength category. But I think because you're still accumulating 36 reps, it seems to be also suitable for hypertrophy. Whereas as we'll get into the strength section next, a lot of these protocols tend to either be further from failure or. less accumulated total reps. So, yeah, any other ones you want to add to hypertrophy before we move on? I don't think so. I'm sure like, I'll think of one that I use all the time that I feel dumb that I couldn't think about, but like the rest pause is the one that we kind of alluded to is very similar to the John Meadows 1025 is probably the one I use most common. Maybe like a myo rep match. I do use that one fairly common and that's very similar to like a rest pause, but again, performance delineated. Yeah, I actually maybe do have two more to add real quick now that we're now that you mentioned that. So we didn't touch it all on drop sets. So drop sets would drop sets would just be, you know, decreasing the weight. So doing a top set of whatever eight to 12 reps, it doesn't really matter. Going close to failure and then dropping the weight immediately. So in a rest pause set, you have a 15 to 30 second rest before you go again with the same weight in a drop set. You would just not rest and you would reduce the weight. and keep going. And so I really enjoy drop sets. I've actually been using them quite a bit in my own training and in the training that I program since we've had some recent research on this in the last year that have sort of shown that drop sets can be equivalent to doing straight sets. You just have to do a couple more of them. So most of the research will show that if you do a top set plus three or four drops, so you end up getting four to five total sets in. That's about equivalent to doing three straight sets, but it's much more time efficient because you do one top set and then you just drop, drop, drop, drop, boom, you're done with the three straight sets. You have to do a set rest, do a set rest, do another set. So in theory, there's also some wasted reps. Like if you're doing a 12 rep set, the first five or six reps feel really easy. It's moving fast. You don't really get into the grindy reps until later in the set. with the drop set protocol, I think this is why it's considered almost as effective is because you skip those reps that are maybe less effective and you kind of get right into the harder stuff. Same as the myoreps or the rest pause sets. And then one more that I've recently started using more with clients than myself is a partial rep match. And so in this case, it'll say like, hey, do three sets of 12, but I want the first set of 12 to be a failure. And then on the remaining two sets, I also want you to hit 12, but we're going to understand that you're not going to get 12 full reps because the first set was to failure. So maybe the second set you do 10 plus two partials and then the third set you do nine plus three partials. So you're still getting the 12, 12, 12. Um, but you're doing it by using partial reps to get there. And this would obviously be most applicable to like a short overload movement, like a row or a pull down or a lateral raise or something. Yeah, that's a really good one. Very similar approach to the Myo rep match, but with the partials instead of the rest pause. Yep. cool. Well, moving on to strength slash strength endurance, this one's gonna be pretty fast because you or I don't really spend a whole ton of our time and energy doing strength work. But I do think it's cool to reference it and add it to the protocol. So I think the most standard one that I've used in the past throughout my strength training history and the last like true strength cycle I did was, I've done a few. in the last seven years, but in 2017, I did a six month strength cycle, which was the first time in my life I ever squatted 420. I did 405 for a triple. My deadlift did 500 for a double. I think it was just crazy, crazy numbers that I never thought I would ever hit. And it was the six month strength cycle that I did. So a lot of the stuff that I would do in there are these rep schemes, starting with five, four, three, two, one. And so this is just a pyramid. It's a standard pyramid. Um, the nice thing about this, when it's talking about strength work is that you actually really do use that five rep set to start kind of as a warmup. So I would almost say that five rep set is like a seven or eight RIR, something along those lines. Like it's with a weight you could do 12 reps with, but you just do five and then you add weight each set working up five, four, three, two, one, two, essentially a single. And I would call that at a weight where you could do a double or maybe a triple. So that one rep is, it's a no doubt rep, like you know you can make it, but you can't fuck up. You have to mentally be there, you have to brace properly, you have to do all the things that you have to do to set up for a proper effort. And I think just getting that many un-racks, if you wanna call it that, five, four, three, two, one, gives you five un-racks with increasing loads and intensities. It prepares you for the top single. And it gives you just practice under the bar to kind of be ready for that optimal effort at the end. Yeah, it's funny, like I'm really scratching my brain to think back to these times, but it's been so long since I've done one of those. But yeah, that one, I think you described it very, very well of that first five is almost like a warm up and it's not, I would say on a surface level, someone sees that and it looks like it's insanely daunting, but it's that one RM isn't like a true one RM. It's everything's a little bit shifted because of the. the repeated loads and that sort of thing. Yep, exactly. And then the next three rep schemes are all kind of interchangeable. And so they all get you to between 20, four and 25 reps. Literally that seems to be the sweet spot from everything I learned in my early days when I actually cared about strength training. It seems like 25 reps is about the sweet spot of volume. And so the three rep schemes I listed were five by five, eight by three and six by four. And so what you see with the strength work is you see a lot of these really high numbers of sets. Five by five is the lowest one. Eight by three, eight sets of three reps and six sets of four reps. The key with strength training really is neural, right? It's that you're creating this practice around the movement and you have to be able to do a high number of sets to get more practice. And so I really, I really love these types of rep schemes. because of the way that it instills perfect movement patterns into your protocol. And the one thing I will caution against in either of those three protocols is going too heavy. Because like we've talked about, the point of strength work is neural adaptation. It's perfecting a skill. And it's like the equivalent analogy or metaphor might be if you're a basketball player and you're trying to get better at free throws, Like, yes, you absolutely need to practice free throws under duress because that emulates game condition. But if you're trying to fix a flaw in your mechanics of your free throw shot, you're not going to do that when you're breathing 180 beats a minute and you just did like six fast breaks. The time that you're gonna manufacture better technique is gonna be when you're just sitting there completely chill in like 70 beats per minute, just having someone feed you balls and practicing your free throws. And so I equate the same thing to strength training where these large number of sets should all be a few reps shy of failure so that you can ensure that the movement patterns are perfectly in line with what you want to be doing. Yeah, I think that's a very under, something that's not understood enough. And I was very, very guilty of that for a very long time when I was concerned with strength. It is not specifically doing that. Smolov. small love, but I don't know if you were supposed to take all your sets to the house or not, but I know that you just got ruined by basically every day you went in and you just went to the house. I think there, when you start small off, it's like, Hey, you test, you give an approximate test of your one rep max. And then it says like, take 80 % of that as you're like one rep max or whatever. And I was just like, no, I'm going to use one of my one rep max, right? Because for some reason, 25 year old Aaron knows more than. the fucking squat master from, you know, Bulgaria, Russia, Germany, wherever small walls from probably probably Russia, right? Who wrote this program? Of course, that was completely wrong. And I was literally just talking about this the other day with Alex Bush. It ruined me. It absolutely ruined me. I only made it through it. It's like 10 weeks. I made it to week six. And then I was an absolute shambles shambles. Yep. and so when you're doing something like an eight by three, I would usually assign an eight to 10 RM as your weight and you're still resting between the sets. It's not like you're doing eight by three with short rest periods or anything like that. You're using an eight to 10 RM, which means your first set is five to seven reps from failure. And your final set is still probably. four to five, three to five reps from failure, something along those lines. And so there's really no doubt of, of, of technique error. It's really focusing on manufacturing perfect optimal technique on every single rep, which will transfer eventually to, to one rep max tests. And this was something I struggled with too. Like when I used to do my strength cycles, I would think I have to be closer to failure because that then teaches my body how to lift these heavy weights under fatigue. but that actually is the opposite of what we want to be doing with strength work. And so I kind of wish that 30 year old Brian would have understood that as well, specifically with Olympic lifting. I wish I would have had much more, many more made reps in Olympic lifting and many fewer missed reps because it almost felt like when I would go into the gym, I had to snatch 225 every day or else it was a failed day, which is so silly because 225 is like 90 % of my all time max. if if if if So yeah, I just think, I wish I would have spent more time at 185 and less time at 225 plus. Okay. So the last part of strength that I have are strength endurance. And so I always used to love programming singles EMOM. So one rep EMOM every minute on the minute. And this would be with like a six to eight RM load. So that first single is, you know, five to seven RIR. And then as you go and the EMOM continues, they do get slightly harder, but you're literally working for five seconds and resting for 55 seconds. So it's quite a rest to work ratio there. And then similarly, I'll do doubles. So two reps every 90 seconds. And now you're working about. 10 seconds every 90 seconds. So it's similar ratio to what you'd be getting with the one rep EMOM. And then these doubles, I would do it in eight to 10 RM load. So slightly lighter than what you would use for the singles. And that's really it. Like I'm sure there's tons of many more creative strength and strength endurance rep schemes out there that many people that are more deep into the strength world probably could come on here and talk about with much more detail. But for somebody that focuses mostly on hypertrophy, This is my kind of basic strength and strength endurance handbook. I think those are, it brought me back and I did enjoy kind of mentally reminiscing a little bit, but I'm glad that we don't do those things anymore if I'm being completely transparent. Yeah, me too, me too. All right, cool. Well, if we move on to metabolic now, we're really getting through this quickly, which is nice. So I'll start off with same muscle group supersets, specifically going, well, specifically having a short movement second. And so this is in contrast to how I usually would program same muscle group supersets, which I've discussed in a number of different places. how much I love same muscle group supersets going short then lengthened when we're talking about hypertrophy work. So short lengthened for hypertrophy would be dumbbell lateral raise to overhead press. You could just reverse that if you're trying to do a metabolic stimulus because the second movement in the sequence is the one that's going to take more of the stimulus. And so one of my favorite ones, just to reverse what I just said, is you start with an overhead press and you go immediately to a dumbbell lateral raise. And so that takes you from lengthened to short. And there's a ton of other variations and options you can use there. A classic would be hack squat to leg extension or walking lunge to leg extension. Whereas for hypertrophy, you would reverse that and you would probably go leg extension to hack squat or lunge. Leg curl. to RDL would be the hypertrophy version. And then RDL to leg curl would be more of the metabolic version. And as I've discussed prior times, one of the things I love so much about same muscle group supersets, whether for hypertrophy or for metabolic, is that it keeps you from having to do a 15 to 20 plus rep set. So we know in research that there is value in doing 15 plus rep sets. for sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and other reasons. But I just don't really find much value in those because you just have so many reps where you're just moving air until you get to the point where you're so fatigued and you've accumulated enough lactate that you actually have these really hard challenging reps that burn. What if instead of doing one set with one failure point, so if you did a set of 15 to 20 reps, you have one failure point at the end. If you do a same muscle group superset, you can do eight reps per set. So you get 16 total reps, but you get two failure points and you get to stimulate the muscle with two different movement patterns. And so in my mind, you'll almost never see me program a 20 rep set for somebody. Instead, you'll just see me program two back to back kind of same muscle group superset sequences like that. What do you think? agree. I will say the only time I do program a 20 rep set is the Widowmakers on the leg press. And that one just like a little bit. I think it's like an exercise that is I'm trying to rack my brain really quickly as I'm speaking. I think that may be like a soul. use case where things are a little bit different because of you can load the leg press like heavier in in because it's a compound you can generally dig more but like you couldn't do that on an upper body pressing or something like that because you would you just start failing so so early. Yeah. Correct. But you can typically load it heavy enough that like the first reps they're not super challenging but you're not. moving air. Like you can load it up enough and then once you get to like 12, 13, you start turning into like kind of individual grinders at that point. Yeah. I won't for clients. I mean, if I'm being honest, like a lot of a lot of the things that we'll do in camp, I am not having clients do because I just, I don't want my clients to hate me, you know? And I don't think that oftentimes people sign up for that. So I typically won't, but no, we in a camp will do assisted reps there. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Okay. Next one I have here is, uh, circuits with rest after each circuit. So think of taking three or four antagonistic movements. And an example might be, uh, walking lunge chest press bent over row and lateral raise. So you have four movements that one lower body, three upper body ones, none of them contradict each other. And you basically go through it with minimal rest between movements, knowing that you're going to get rest at the end. So you do that sequence. It takes you two or three minutes. Your heart rate is really amped up. There's a lot of metabolic fatigue and metabolites kind of flowing through your system. And then you rest, recover and do it again for two to four rounds, something along those lines. Do you ever do anything like that? mean, I haven't in quite some time. I really like this for like the dad who has a garage gym who wants to get back into shape. I think that is like the, I mean, it could be a mom as well. It doesn't have to be the dad, but I think like that is like the really good use case. It occupies your mind enough, especially for like the, kind of recovering CrossFit -esque person. It's still similar enough, but you can program more body compositions, emphasis movements, but in that circuit, it's challenging enough, your heart rate's still high. I think that's a very wonderful use case there. For sure, very time efficient. And then, so the next one is almost the same as the circuits, but there's rest between each movement. You just don't take the rest at the end of the round. So take those same four movements. You have walking lunge, chest press, bent over row and lateral raise. And you would do them as an EMOM. So you do lunge on the first minute, then you rest 30 seconds till the next minute. Then chest press, then you basically rest till the next minute. Then bent over row, rest till the next minute. lateral raise rest till the next minute, and then you go right back to lunge again. And so it's literally the same exact idea as the prior circuit. It's just instead of taking all that rest bulk at the end, you get little mini rests in between each. And because the movements are antagonistic with each other, you don't have any crossover fatigue movement to movement, but you do get a ton of systemic fatigue, which is kind of one of the goals of metabolic training. Like in metabolic training, you have local fatigue. So you're trying to specifically fatigue the muscle locally, which we'll get to on the next one that I'm going to talk about. And then you have systemic fatigue where you're trying to basically increase endurance across the body as a whole systemically. And so that would be kind of the circuit and the EMOM version. Anything to add there? Nope. No, I mean, I don't use it that often. I mean, the last time I did that was with you. If I were to use any one, I would take the former. In the real reason, I feel like people just get confused with it, you know, and then people, you end up explaining it multiple times. I'm like, here we go, we rest at the end sort of thing. Interesting. Yeah, I use both in the Paragon and Evolved programs. I'll use both versions. I just explain it in the notes kind of above the actual circuit that's listed or whatever, and it seems to be fine. Maybe people mess it up and I don't know about it. So then the next one is kind of moving into local muscle fatigue, which I just referenced earlier, and this would be the Vince Garanda 8x8. This is a common one that's used at N1. This is actually from what I understand, like the way that Garanda kind of used to train, like he almost used to just do this as his primary training protocol. And I'm sure that's not entirely true. Like I'm sure it was phasic and stuff like that. But from everything you read about his training back 50 years ago, this seems to be a staple. And so basically what you do is you take a 15 to 20 rep max weight and you do eight sets of eight with that weight. So in theory, that first set of eight is seven to 10 RIR. It feels super easy, but you're only resting 30 seconds between sets. And thus, by the time you get to set five, six, seven, eight, it not only burns like hell, but it's also really taking you right up against failure, if not beyond it. The one thing I learned about this approach and I learned it the hard way is that you can only do this on short overload movements. So. The first time I ever tried to do it, I read about Vince Garanda's training back in 2014, maybe it was when I was preparing for the bodybuilding competition when we were doing CrossFit still. And I was like, oh, this sounds like a nice mix on straight sets. Let's do this eight by eight. Let's take my incline dumbbell bench. Okay, 20 rep max, 60 pound dumbbells. Boom, got it. I literally got to set four and I could no longer do eight reps anymore. And so years later, I was talking to Cass about this. And I told him this story and he goes, oh yeah, you can only do it on short overload movements. And I was like, huh, all right, it makes sense. So, you know, word of warning for those out there, but if you do have like a leg extension, a lateral raise, a leg curl, a cable fly, something along those lines, this would be a really cool approach to use for metabolic stimulus there. Yeah, this is the one that I will use most often. I also learned a kind of a variant of it from CAS six by six. And that's typically with people who are a little bit more better conditioned, higher training age. But this one, I will bring this in with clients who's, for lack of a better term, like their work capacity just sucks. And you're like, hey, send me a video of you on the like press. And they're just dying. and like quitting, you know, early or something like that. And I'm like, okay, we have a terrible work capacity. And I just want to put them like a stair master or something. So we're gonna, we're gonna bring in these things to work on your conditioning as we work on the other hypertrophy type stuff. Yeah, I love the six by six approach as well. So it would be like, instead of with a 15 to 20 rep max weight that you would use for the eight by eight, it might be like a 12 to 15 rep max weight. And so I love that too, because I feel like I can get there faster. So the eight reps, you know, you don't feel like there's a lot happening until you get through a few of the reps with the six rep approach. After the first set or two, you feel like you're in it after one or two reps. And so I feel like there's just a lot more effective work that's done that way. All right, cool. I have two more and then we're basically done. So here's one that I use that I think is just kind of fun and effective, but also just fun and nice way to mix it up. And so what I do is I take a 12 rep max weight and choose antagonistic movements. I tend to do this a lot with arms. So I'll do like an incline dumbbell curl with an incline. you or a face away cable curl with a tricep push down or something along those lines. So take a 12 rep max weight and you just do sets of six back and forth with no rest until you can't do six anymore. And so I usually find that I'll get somewhere between five and six sets of six because you're kind of getting a little bit of rest for the local muscle while the antagonistic muscle works. but it's not a ton of rest because you're moving back and forth between the movements super quickly. And you're also not getting a ton of metabolic or systemic fatigue because you're doing it on a super small muscle group. Like I would never do this on RDL to hack squat or something along those lines. I mean, could you imagine? But doing it on like a curl and a tricep movement, I think is a really great use case for this. And if you ever want to try it out, it kind of gives you a good sense of how good your muscular endurance is. because I'll get, like I said, my average is about five sets. Sometimes I'll get four, sometimes I'll get six, but I've had people get eight or nine sets and I've had people do three. So it really kind of gives you a good insight into your makeup there. Yeah, that's another good one. A lot of these things are like jogging my memory of like, there are things that I just have completely forgot about. So I will definitely be taking some of these and keeping notes on them, which I'm excited about. Cool, cool. And then the last one is another version of my O reps or rest pause, but I'll do this on a short overload isolation movement. My favorite is to do it on dumbbell lateral raises. And so I'll just do a 20 rep buy -in set and then immediately drop into sets of five until I can't do five anymore. And so what this usually looks like, I'm talking about 10 to 15 seconds between sets. So you'll do 20. It burns really bad. You're basically close to failure. You drop those dumbbells down for 10 seconds. You pick them back up. You do five, you drop them down for 10 seconds. You do five more and you basically keep resting 10 seconds and doing fives until literally you can't do fives anymore. Um, and I actually have used this one in programming progressively week to week as well, because you can basically keep the same weight and you just try to add volume load by doing an additional set of five. So in week one, I might get, five, four sets of five, and then the next week try for five sets of five and then six sets of five. And basically just going until you literally can't do fives anymore. And it also is a super easy transition into saying, okay, I want you to continue doing fives, adding a set of five each week, but it's okay if you can't get five full reps. We're just going to go, you know, four full reps plus one partial, then three full reps plus two partials or two full reps plus three partials. And eventually you're, you're still getting sets of five. You're still progressing volume load. but you're doing it with like this kind of partial rep match approach. And so yeah, I've been a huge fan of that one as well. that one's really cool, especially in the use case you outlined at the end of how you can progress it and just volume load. Yep, yep. And that's it, man. The one thing I mentioned to you that I didn't mention on air, I mentioned to you off air was that some of these rep schemes are just ways that I like to use to get effective training for people, but keep it interesting. And I think that that's really important to keep in mind too, is that there are a number of roads to Rome, ways to skin the cat, whatever metaphor you want to use there. And if you're going to be doing this training thing for life, and especially if you're training, general population people, they tend to get really bored quickly of straight sets or consistent same protocols week to week to week to week. But if you can still provide them effective science -based training while providing more interesting and fun rep schemes for them to do, I think that you just have a client that's happier and still getting good results. And I think it's been cool that I've been able to use some of these concepts that we had from CrossFit and then be able to apply them in a strategic manner to hypertrophy training. So yeah, it's just, it's been, it's been kind of cool to reflect on that and see how that transition occurred and how you can train effectively in many different ways. I love it. I think you summed that up brilliantly. Big, big props to Brian for outlining and setting up this episode. I think it's wonderful. I think it's going to really help people think outside the box a little bit. I know it has kind of jogged my memory on some things that I had completely forgotten, you know, that we used to do. So really cool that you remember all that stuff. I mean, fuck Brian, we're a decade ago at this point, plus, you know, which is pretty crazy. But again, props to you. This was a really cool episode. man, yeah it was fun. Cool, as always guys, we will talk to you next week.