N1 Hypertrophy Camp; Spring Training Programs | ETP#150

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 150, aptly titled N1 Hypertrophy Camp that Brian just attended this past weekend. Before we dive into this, and we're also, or Brian is also going to cover his updated spring training program that's going to be run in accordance with the primarily cardio -based modality, correct? That stems from our episode. Let me grab it for you, episode 143, which we picked 10 exercises. If we had to build a training program with only 10 exercises, what would those be? So this is Brian's follow -up to that. As always, some updates please, Brian. Yeah, the first one is we're going to Costa Rica. So all of that stress from the last few weeks of the passport for my son, whether it was gonna arrive and all of that, it did arrive. And I can honestly say that the two plus weeks of dealing with this have possibly been the most stressed out and anxious that I've been in my adult life. And that's weird to say that it would be caused by something as silly. as my son's passport, but I legitimately had two nights over that two week period where I would wake up and be so infuriated by this notion that I was being taken advantage of that I would just sit in bed writhing and sweating and like so angry about it. And it was all for naught. So that's the part that's like even more maniacal is that like, I paid all this money to get this passport expedited, so I had this sense of I'm being taken advantage of, it's not gonna work. And then one day I read these reviews on their website and there's 11 ,000 reviews. And of the 11 ,000, 1 ,400 of them are, I paid for the super expedite, which is called like emergency service, and my passport didn't arrive and I had to cancel my trip. So of course I went down this like deep rabbit hole of. of all these people that were failed by this company. And I was just so angry. I was like, that's so much money to pay like being taken advantage of. And anyway, it ended up arriving two and a half days early and all is good. And we're going to Costa Rica. And I wish that I had just been a little more calm, as is my nature usually. So I think this is a lesson to be learned for myself that you can only control the controllable. and it probably isn't worth investing yourself so much into things that you can't control. So yeah, big life lessons there. Also, don't read the reviews or the comments is another one. Nothing good ever comes from it. I just get more and more angry whenever I find myself looking up reviews and stuff. true story. So I won't do that anymore. This weekend I went to hypertrophy camp. Initially when I wrote my updates, I put hypertrophy camp into my updates and then I had like eight sections of hypertrophy camp. And so I just decided to move it into the bulk of today's discussion as pretty much the primary focus of the episode. So that should be cool. The only thing to mention here is that I got to hang out with Jordan Lips all weekend. He stayed in my basement and he has a baby coming in three weeks. And so it was cool to be able to see him interact mostly with my daughter. My son is a little more prickly, you could say, but my daughter is like this open book of warmth and love. And she just enamors everybody that shows up. And so I think every day Jordan spent like an hour with her, like reading to her and playing games and coloring. And he did such a good job. It was just beautiful to watch. And he's going to be a great dad. So it was really cool being able to hang out with him, have him stay in the basement, get us to be able to connect on many topics related to our job, which we both basically do the exact same thing, you know, running group programs and stuff like that, but also just on other aspects of life. So. Big shout out to Jordan and hyped for him to be a dad to a beautiful baby girl here soon Third update is after hypertrophy camp, which was two straight days of Destroying my body with weightlifting. I was fiending for some cardio And my legs are crushed like right now speaking to you guys. It's Tuesday. My legs are destroyed beyond beyond rationalization. I mean, multiple times yesterday walking my legs buckled and Kim just laughed at me and was like, oh, that's Cass's handiwork. And yes, it was Cass's handiwork. So I'll go over more of that. But I had an incredible cardio session yesterday and I didn't expect to because my legs were sore and because I honestly kind of felt like just tired and lethargic from the weekend. I didn't expect to have a good session. And then I did this loop, this, I did two laps around this local loop that I do and somehow managed to set a PR for 2024. Not a huge win because 2024, I haven't been into the cardio game too much. I have better times on this loop from, you know, last year when I was really training for it, but it is cool to see that my best performance on this loop out of four or five times so far in 2024, I had my best output. This time, where I did it in the fastest time and a lower heart rate. So I maintained 130 heart rate while doing this loop and did it like 16 and a half miles an hour. So really happy about that. I think that's a good sign heading into Costa Rica because one of my big hesitations of Costa Rica is 10 days, 12 days actually with no biking, no rower machine. Basically the only cardio I can do is running in the sand or whatever and. So yeah, I'm gonna do that, but it's not really gonna get me the same cardio stimulus that I'd be getting here on the proper pieces of equipment. So yeah, I mean, it is what it is. Like I have an entire season of cardio coming up where I'm gonna get back whatever I lose in Costa Rica. But yeah, I guess I have 12 days coming up with no cardio and I just have a little bit of apprehension about that. Final update is JMU, which is my alma mater. We are going to March Madness. By the time that this episode comes out, we'll probably have been bounced from March Madness, but we're in it and we're playing Wisconsin in the first round in the vaunted, heralded 12 -5 matchup, where the 12 seeds actually tend to beat the fives quite often. So we will see how that plays out, but I think in my entire life as an adult and maybe even prior, this is the first time JMU has ever made it to March Madness. So... I am gonna try and find a bar in Costa Rica and watch this on Friday and see what happens. And that's all I got. What's going on with you, Aaron? That's very cool. You know what, it's kind of silly. Being away, I mean, I've lived in Asia for a while now. You just forget about all of these things. I would have never known that March Madness was here. You just forget about it. I remember the first time we were here, I remember four or five years ago, we were at the coworking space one day and I was working away on something and then I saw something and I was like, Jenny, it's the 4th of July. And like, it just like completely gone. Never, like never would have, that was like the first time I was like, oh, when you're away from things like you for, like you just, you just miss them. And when they're not like, you know, you're seeing stores and ads and stuff. So it's pretty interesting. What's going on with me? I really only have one update, but it's a big one. The first pieces of the Undefeated Gym Kit showed up on Friday, Saturday, something like that. So I was very, very excited. They are, all stored in my office about 10 feet from me. So I'm very fortunate that we decided to get the big villa and stuff. And I effectively have a master bedroom that's just my office that I work in. Because we decided to use another room as our like where we stay. So fortunately, like for Jim stuff that does show up early, I can fit a good amount in here before. we need to like get actual storage unit or until we can start loading things directly into the gym. So that was very, very cool. And in a very Bolly -esque way, I got a phone call at the gym from one of our local friends here who helps us with like some communication things. And he was like, bro, the truck's at your villa. And I'm like. Okay, thank you. Like, there's no, like the concept of time here is just like different. And no matter how many times you say, hey, just let me know what day or whatever, they never do. And then they're just like, you just get a phone call and they're like, I'm here. And you're like, fucking sweet, I'm not. So I dropped, fortunately I had like just finished training and I was gonna go do some like, you know, walk on the treadmill sort of thing. So I literally like jetted home, unloaded everything. Me and one of the guys unloaded it. They're heavy I was not I was kind of surprised watching him. I'm like, oh yeah cool And I like throw it up on my shoulder. I was like this is fucking heavy and I see the boxes are each 55 kilograms Which is there like 112 pounds or something? It's cool, so I was eight of them now sitting here in In my office and then we are gonna send them off to get customized. You're gonna get them custom up upholstered. So which equipment came first? So the adjustable benches. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, just, yeah, yeah, that's, that was the one that we ordered. We had them brought in first because we need to customize them and that's gonna take a time of its own sort of thing. Nice, very cool man, well congratulations. Yep, thank you. All right, let's dive into hypertrophy camp. All right, sweet. So I have A through G listed out of kind of different things that I just wanted to touch on. So I'll just kind of talk through each one and then toss it over to Aaron, get any questions or thoughts that he has and kind of move on to the next one from there. So I would say there are two main big takeaways from my experience there. Uh, one of them is the result of a lot of what I want to talk about today. So I'm going to save that for the end. Um, but the first one I think is a bit of vindication in a sense. Um, because about two years ago, maybe even a little more when all of this lengthened work really began to come to the precipice and be in the forefront of hypertrophy training. I made an assertion on our podcast and on Instagram basically saying that I didn't think there was much value in doing lengthened partials for movements that are already lengthened. And I remember getting a little bit of flack from that from some people. But basically what this would be in an example would be if you're doing an RDL or you're doing a back squat or a hack squat, to me, it seemed unnecessary. and a bit limiting to try and do a length and partial on those movements because it would require you to use less weight. And I think my big sense there was that not only did you have to use less weight, but the reason you're using less weight is because you never get that moment of reprieve. Like you're constantly in it. So it's... say you're doing an RDL and you go down and then you come halfway up and you go down and you come halfway up and you go down and you come halfway up. There's no moment where you get to kind of unload and release. And so it's really hard to, to brace during it. It's really hard to breathe. And, um, in my thought process, because we don't have evidence showing that constant tension is better. I just couldn't wrap my head around why. would you want to do a lengthen partial on a movement that's already lengthened because the stimulus is lengthened no matter whether you stop at the top or you don't stop at the top, the overload is still lengthened. And I think through this camp, through talking with Cass and kind of hearing his brain confirm a lot of what I was thinking, I end up with renewed confidence in my original assertion about this and... Throughout this process of, you know, the last three years of working through this length and stuff, I literally didn't do these movements. Like I was so strong in my assertion that I didn't do them. I didn't do length and partials on length and movements at all until about six months ago, maybe eight months ago. And then it became so popular, especially through the stuff that Milo is doing. Like Milo would always be doing these bottom partials of everything. And I was like, okay, well. I have to at least try it. Like I don't really think they're gonna work, but I need to try it. And so I did. I spent a cycle doing bottom ROM RDLs. I did some bottom ROM hack squats. I did some bottom ROM like chest pressing. And at the end of it, like, yeah, it was effective. Like I was able to get something out of it, but I never really got as much out of it. I never got more out of it than I did out of doing the full movement. And I thought that it did suck a lot of life out of me through the inability to brace, the inability to have that moment of reprieve, et cetera, et cetera. And so yeah, through talking with Cass, I feel reaffirmed in my belief that I don't think we need to do lengthened partials, un -lengthened movements. And I think that most of the people in my groups would probably agree too, because we did an entire cycle of bottom -rom RDLs. And I would say some people found them productive, but we also had a number of people that really didn't like them. And I think for a lot of the same reasons that I discussed. So yeah, what are your thoughts on that, Aaron? I mean, the only one, and the only one I guess I'll even attempt to play devil's advocate on is the RDL. And I know you and I have talked about this before. And I guess I like to perform my RDLs in a way that I never really lock out at the top and like bring my shoulders in line with my hips. I always kind of, my finish is like with my shoulder still in front of the hips. But I mean, I'm... If you know, if we're talking a full deadlift stand up lockouts like 100%, I probably end mine at like an 80, 85, you know. So I guess that's like a little bit of a technicality there. But yeah, I've, other than how I just happened to perform my RDLs, I've never done any of the lengthened partials. I have, I've talked about this on the podcast before, maybe a year and a half ago, I started feeling just a lot more, especially in what I do with my own training personally. I trust my intuition in 20 years of training more than I trust the research at this point, you know, for my own personal self. So I wasn't just going to do something like the idea of doing hack squats, like just to halfway and then like down again, it just sounds absolutely miserable. to me and like, I just don't, I just don't wanna fucking do that, you know? So I wouldn't do it. So I definitely, it's not something I thought too much about because I just knew I wouldn't wanna do it and just chose not to really. no, it's good. Good feedback as well. I think with the RDL, the bottom ROM RDL is generally from like the floor to like the kneecaps or barely like above the kneecaps. And when you do yours, you almost like look like you're doing a full rep, but you just kind of like hit and release instead of like standing there for a second. Like it almost looks like you get all the way up. it maybe 90 % is the right amount, but you kind of just like squeeze your butt and pop right back down. Whereas I think the bottom ROM RDL in the way that Milo has been doing it or other people in the industry, it really doesn't even have a glute contraction or a glute. It doesn't have the hips coming forward at all. It's mostly about staying with the hips back the whole time and just working through the length and range of the hamstring. Yeah, that sounds like hell to brace for. yeah. Okay, cool. Well, that's one thing that I feel sort of vindicated on and I think I've renewed confidence in going forward in my programming and programming for clients that if a movement is extremely lengthened overloaded already, there just isn't really a point of doing lengthened partials there. But one thing that I do think it has value on those types of movements. are one and one quarter reps or one and a half reps or something like that, where you still get that momentary reprieve after every one and a half reps or whatever. So you would go down, you would do essentially an RDL halfway up and then you'd go down again and come all the way up. And that seems to still allow you to brace and breathe effectively, but it provides you many more lengthened exposures. And so that was one of the words that we used a lot in N1 this weekend was lengthened exposures. And that kind of leads us into one of the tests that we did to kind of assess which protocol gives you more lengthened exposures comparing three different protocols. I need to move this to part B. But in this test that we did, we chose three movements. Two of them were naturally already lengthened. So think about like that RDL example that I gave. And one of them was more short overloaded. So the movements that we chose for this test were a dumbbell bench press. And so a dumbbell bench press is lengthened. It's literally the chest pressing version of an RDL. So when you get to the top, you're essentially joints are stacked. You're not having any tension on the muscle. And then the second movement was a cable pull down where when you're doing a cable pull down, you're going to be short overloaded. You're going to be limited by that short position, not by the length and position. And then we did a prime pull down, the one where you can manipulate the resistance profile. And... And on that one, we set it to the most lengthened setting. So we put all the plates on the top so that the hardest part of that movement is just trying to get the thing moving. But once you get it moving, that point where your elbow drives down near your side, that part of the movement is the easiest. So we compared three different types of reps across those movements and deter and tried to figure out which one gives us the most lengthened exposures. So anytime you would do a quarter wrap, like if you do one full wrap, that's a lengthened exposure. If you do one full wrap and a quarter wrap at the lengthened position, that's two lengthened exposures. And so we went through and we basically worked up to a top set, full range of motion. Then we worked up to a top set with one and a quarter reps. And then we worked up to a top set of just partials. And basically you didn't have to like work up to the weight. You come one after the first set full range of motion, you're just kind of at the weight and then you do the other two tests. And so what we found was that in full, actually I wish I had, oh, I don't have my phone with me. I do have the data of exactly what I got. I think Cody sent it to me. Let me see if I can just pull this up real quick. It's not safe there. It was airdropped. Okay. I don't have the data in front of me because my phone's upstairs, but I think I remember most of it. So we'll go dumbbell bench press first. So on the dumbbell bench press, I got eight full reps in full range of motion. So that was eight lengthened exposures. On the one and a quarter reps, I got 10 lengthened exposures because I did five. of the one and a quarter reps, which gives me 10 lengthened exposures. And then on the partials, where I just do the bottom portion, I got eight lengthened exposures as well. So the bottom ROM partials compared to the full ROM gave me the exact number of lengthened exposures, but without any of the additional stimulus that comes along with the part of the rep that isn't lengthened. Does that make sense? It does make sense, but what was the rest time between the sets? Because for example, is in I guess let me back up a little bit. Was that the order that they were performed? Full range of motion, then the one and a quarter and then the length and partials. so we did each exercise full range of motion. So I would dumbbell bench, then I would cable pull down, then I would lengthen cable pull down. And also just to clarify another piece of it, the pull downs, one was done with one arm and one was done with the other arm so that there wouldn't be any crossover effect between the lengthened partials or between the prime machine that's lengthened overloaded and the cable machine that's short overloaded. So the cable machine was done with the right arm and the prime lengthened machine was done with the left arm. Yeah. So effectively there was a, let's call it eight to 10 minutes before you return to the bench for the second set, six to eight. Okay. So very, very adequate amount of time. I guess I'm just surprised that with the full range of motion, or that the length and partials, you got eight reps and the full range of motion, you also got eight reps, right? Or eight exposures at the length and position. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not surprised by it because essentially you're getting a little bit of stimulus from the top half of the dumbbell bench. Like it's not like there's no stimulus there. There is no stimulus at the very top. When your elbows lock out, there's no stimulus. But from the point where you're halfway up to the point right before you lock out, there is stimulus. So what that test tells me is that the one and a quarter reps provided me the most lengthened exposures. I got 10, which is two more than the other ones, but that the bottom ROM partials are less effective than the full range of motion because I actually was able to get the same number of lengthened exposures doing full range of motion, but also get the additional stimulus that was able to be accrued at the top half of the rep that you didn't get in the lengthened partials. So I think that that validates kind of what I was saying about the unnecessary nature of doing lengthened partials on a lengthened movement. Um, so then we jump, let's jump over to the lengthened, uh, prime pull down because that is the same, similar to same result as what we got with the dumbbell bench. So on that one, I did, um, eight full range of motion reps. I got 11 lengthened exposures when I did the one and a quarter reps. So I did half of a rep more. lengthened exposure there with the one and a quarter reps that I did on the dumbbell bench. And I also got eight on the length and partials. So it literally emulates what happened on the dumbbell bench almost perfectly, because it was a lengthened version of a pull down. So it would make sense that it would follow the exact same, same result there. But when we look at the, the one arm cable pull down, it was much closer. So I did, 12 full range of motion reps. I got 13 lengthened exposures when I did the one and a quarter reps and I got 13. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, okay, okay, no, no, no, I need to rephrase this. On the cable pull down, we were told to do partials after the full range of motion. So you go to failure full range of motion and then you do partials until you can't get at least a third of a rep. So because we did full range of motion reps plus partials, I got 13 lengthened exposures, but I only got eight full range of motion reps plus five lengthened partials. So 13 lengthened exposures. When I did the one and a quarter reps, I got 13 lengthened exposures as well. And when we did the lengthened only, I also did 13 lengthened exposures. So the lengthened exposures across the board was basically 13 on the cable pull down no matter what. But because it's a short overloaded movement, I had to do five partials after the full range of motion set to get the 13 lengthened exposures. Does that make sense? Yeah. So anyway, I thought that was just an interesting experiment. And like I said, it just kind of validates what I was saying about the unnecessary nature of doing a... partial reps on a movement that's already lengthened, but clearly it shows that doing partial reps are productive on movements that are short overloaded. So what you've probably noticed that I'm like kind of looking at my phone sort of thing here. What I'm what I've been doing is firing up my training app because what I briefly talked about last week or two weeks ago is building my off season training program. And I kind of on a whim decided to put in a pendulum squat one and one quarter reps. I haven't done one to one quarter reps in probably like two years or something like that. And I'm. thinking like, okay, I know the weights that I was using for my full range of motion reps on the pendulum. And I just did week one of the one -on-one quarter. Like, let's see how many I got. And I have the week one of the one -on-one quarter, right? I got effectively 14 lengthened exposures. And the max I ever did that wait for was also 14. And that's with. a full spot and everything. And I didn't have a spot, so I didn't want to get pinned by the fucking pendulum squat on week one of my program and get stuck under there. So I think I maybe have had like one more. So I just find that interesting because I was like, oh, well, let me check my number of exposures. And it was identical to a full range of motion set. But from a perception, it wasn't nearly as gnarly of a set. And I probably had more in me because I did cut it a little bit early. Yeah. or so lengthened exposures on the dumbbell bench compared to eight full range of motion reps. And I would say that your pendulum kind of follows that same model a little bit too. Yeah. And it's, it's nice that because you can get those lengthened exposures with the one and a quarter reps without having to do as many total reps. So like my dumbbell bench, I did five total one and a quarter reps, which gave me 10 lengthened exposures versus eight lengthened exposures. when I was doing full range of motion reps. But yeah, like to your point, the set didn't feel as gnarly. Yeah, cool. Well, that's a good takeaway. That's a very, very cool experiment. I hope everyone can like pick up on it, you know, through just the conversation in the audio I know is not always the easiest, but it's a very, very cool experiment how that was structured, which I would expect nothing less from CAS, so. For sure, for sure. Okay, cool. The next one we did, and actually this wasn't a test that we did, this was just a discussion as part of the lecture. But I've talked a lot on this podcast and on my Instagram and stuff about how I'm a fan of same muscle group supersets. And there is a lot of pushback on that, especially from like the big voice of Paul Carter, who constantly posts about how same muscle group supersets. have no benefit, the science is like very, very confident as it always is whenever he talks that there is just, you're stupid if you do say muscle group supersets, you're limiting the total amount of stimulus and volume and blah, blah, blah, all the different things. So through this discussion with Cass, I have two examples to provide, which I think kind of explain this a little bit. So one of my favorite supersets that I do, is a fly movement to a chest press. And there seems to be, according to this discussion, a bit of discrepancy between what happens if you go to a stable movement second or you go to a stable or an unstable movement second. And so that seems to be the big, the big caveat that determines whether a same muscle group superset is. going to be for the muscle you intend it to be or whether it's going to be for the unintended muscle. So here's the example, right? If you're doing a leg extension superset to a squat pattern movement, If you're doing a leg extension to a back squat, you are going to compensate by using more hips and glutes because your quads are going to be so fried from the leg extension that it's going to be nearly impossible for you to stay and slay the quads when there's too many degrees of freedom for your body to move about. So therefore that superset, if you're doing a same muscle group superset where you go leg extension to back squat, you're essentially doing that superset for the glutes and the hamstrings, not for the quads. But if you were to leg extension and then go to a very stable machine squat movement where there's very little degrees of freedom, think about, you know, a leg press or a hack squat or a pendulum where you put your feet low and you lock yourself into position and you can't really move from that position. Then now you can essentially decrease the activation of the hip extensors, which would be the thing that you would want to include in a back squat. and you can take your quads to just incredible levels of fatigue. So in that example, the key is going to a stable movement if quads are the goal there, right? In another example, we talked about, which is my favorite superset that I do for upper body, is going from a fly movement to a chest pressing movement. And so if you're going from an isolated fly movement to a stable chest press movement, then you can get more chest out of it. Similarly, you could go from a tricep movement to a stable chest pressing movement and get more tricep out of it because essentially whichever one you pre-fatigue is going to work harder because you're in a stable environment. However, he was saying that if you do a chest pressing movement, or a tricep movement to an unstable chest pressing movement, like a dumbbell bench press, it seems to have a neutral to negative effect on the muscle that you're trying to target because of the degrees of freedom and the fact that the other muscle group can come in and kind of compensate for the weaknesses that are present there in the muscle that you pre -fatigued. Does that make sense? I mean, I think it would another one of those things that you have to really put into practice for it to really connect in the brain. But for like the chest one, the leg, the quad example. Yeah, makes perfect sense. Yeah, I think the quad example is the best one. I think it illustrates it most effectively, for sure. Cool. And then I don't really have much to say beyond that. We didn't do a test for this or anything. It was more just a discussion point. And I thought it was interesting because I just, I'm a huge fan of same muscle group supersets. I do them all the time. And some of them, I go to a stable movement and some of them I go to an unstable. And so this kind of just changed the framework by which I think about how I might organize these same muscle group supersets going forward. based on, you know, do I want to choose a stable movement or an unstable movement depending on which stimulus I want to get out of, you know, the exercise I did first. Cool. So the next one, we kind of did a experiment that was not exactly what I just discussed, but it did involve going from leg extension to hack squat. However, we set it up in, wait, hold on. Where am I looking at my notes here? Oh yeah, I already covered that. Okay, that was all part of the same thing. Okay. I am going to... Go to the quad one next. Okay. So then we did this cool test. It was a quad, a quad test. And this one was less about pre -exhaust, which is kind of what I just talked about, you know, isolated to compound supersets. And it was more about training density. And this is kind of where the conversation is going to go from here is to, is talking about training density in the next few sections. And training density just means fitting in more training into less time. And in this test, what we did is we had one leg, so your right leg, did all four sets of leg extensions, and then all four sets of single leg hack squat. So you did eight total sets for your right leg, four sets of leg extensions, four sets of hack. full rest between all the sets. And we're trying to calculate total reps or total volume load compared to the left leg, which did this. It went leg extension, hack, leg extension, hack, leg extension, hack, leg extension, hack. So the training density essentially was increased in the one going leg extension, hack, leg extension, hack, because you don't have to do all of the sets of one. and all of the sets of the other with like this complete rest between them. So it's a little doing the left leg going leg extension, hack, leg extension, hack was a little bit more time efficient. And my hypothesis going in was that both movements would suffer because you have a little bit of less rest between you're alternating between the two. And I thought that doing all four straight sets of leg extension and then all four straight sets of hack squat would produce more volume load across both movements. That is not actually what we found. What we found as a result of this experiment, and I wonder, do I have my, no, my data again is upstairs. I really should have been more prepared, but I do remember most of it. So the one that went for all four sets of leg extension and then all four sets of hack squat, we had significant decrease in total output on the hack squat. So my volume load on the hack squat, was under 10 ,000 pounds on that example, and it was almost 11 ,000 pounds on the other example. So does that make sense? Any clarification that you want there for the listeners or for yourself? No, no, I have questions on the back end of it, but I think it's clear. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So all four sets of leg extension and then all four sets of hack squat, we had significant decrease in the output on the hack squat and we had slight increase of stimulus on the leg extension. And when I say slight, my total volume load on the leg extension for the right leg, when I did all four sets first, it was 3 ,400 pounds and change. When I did the alternating left leg one that went leg extension, hack, leg extension, hack, the total volume load on the leg extension was like 3 ,200 and change. So it was only like 150 or 180 pounds different across four sets. When I did the alternating one. However, the hack had significant decrease on the right leg. The one that I did all the leg extension sets and then all the hack squat sets. It was like 9 ,800 pounds of volume load on the right leg. but the one that alternated back and forth with the leg extension ended up with like 1200 more pounds of volume load on the hack. And so ultimately, yes, I lost a little bit on the leg extension on that one, but I gained so much more on the hack squat that the total and net result of the experiment is that the training density increase of alternating hack leg extension, hack leg extension was a more productive session for the quads and more time efficient. Okay, this leads me to my first question. Do you think, or I guess, do you have thoughts as to why, before I even ask the question? Because maybe your thoughts gonna answer my question. I do, but let's actually have you answer your - ask your question first. Okay, so it's a question, but more kind of posed as a thought. My initial thought process is, or my initial thought slash question is by alternating, are you increasing the total amount of rest before you repeat the hack squat again? Yes, I would say that. So if I were to put into context kind of what the rest look like, you could assume that maybe there's three minutes of rest in between sets on the one that went all four sets of leg extension, then all four sets of hack squat. But I was probably taking two minutes of rest between leg extension, hack squat, leg extension, hack squat. So maybe it was four minutes between actual sets of the same movement. instead of three minutes between sets of actual same. And do you think that would I mean, plausibly, there has to be a reason right why alternating allows you to perform more on the hack squat. Do you think that there is like any kind of do you think there could be some strange fringe, but potentiation sort of thing? Or do you think it's like, we're just getting more rest by being more time efficient of alternating? Yeah, I'm not really sure because as yes, we are getting more rest between the specific movement. So hack is getting four minutes between hack, but you're really only getting two minutes between training your quad again, because you have the leg extension in between each. So I don't know if potentiation would be the right explanation for that. I think that what it comes down to mostly is that the rec fem is. not being trained so much in the movement with hip extension. So the hack squat, there is, there is less rec fem involvement. And so the other quads, because the, we would assume when doing a leg extension that maybe the rec fem is the one failing before the vastus and the VMO and like these other quad muscles. So maybe the rec fem is taking the majority of the stimulus and going to zero RIR, so to speak, but the vastus and the VMO and the other one, the other quad muscles are actually maybe at two or three RIR on the leg extension. And thus they have more output that they can give when the hack squat comes through. And so that's my justification of it. That was my explanation. I don't know if that's accurate or not. But it's not the only example from the day that training density increases seem to be more productive. So if you don't have any other questions, we can kind of move on to the next one. did and you know what I can't remember. Oh, I remember what it was. And this is more of a question from the from the overall. I know. I mean, we're going way back into early ETP episodes like maybe episode five or six. I remember having the question for you around tonnage, right? On the show. And when how are you guys describing it here? Volume volume load volume load. Yeah. And I remember our conversation being slightly like, it's not a bad kind of proxy, but it's not something you wanna like chase to where you kind of gamify, oh, well, if I go from, you know, eight reps to like four reps, but I can add like 30 more pounds on it, it's not like something you wanna kind of chase. So I guess it's more of a higher level question of like, how do you... gauge when that can be really applicable or when it might be like a slippery slope of a non -worthy proxy to or metric to chase. Yeah. I mean, in this case, I think that you could have just exchanged volume load for total reps achieved because the weights, the weights were the same. And so like, if you look at the total reps achieved on the hack squad, I think I got 38 reps on the one that alternated with the leg extension and 35 reps on the one where the hack squat was second. And that's what made up the difference in volume load. So it's not like I'm trying to compare. Well, like I think what we were talking about before and why it was irrelevant is because If you're doing a bench press, you could throw 135 pounds on the bar and do that 30 times. I don't know, whatever that is, right? And so you're gonna get significantly more volume load doing 135 for 30, then you're gonna get doing 225 for eight or whatever that is, right? That's way more volume load for 135 for 30. But does that mean that 135 for 30 is double as good of a stimulus because you're getting double as much volume load? And the answer there is absolutely not. So I think those are two very different examples. Yep. I'm glad I brought it up and knew you had such a wonderful explanation of that. Cool. All right, cool. So staying on the theme of density, another test that we did was on the arms. And so we had a tricep push down and a standing dumbbell curl. And we tested it where we either took, so these movements were alternating. So you either took 90 seconds rest between each, which meant that you had three minutes of rest between like movements. or you had two minutes of rest between each. Well, it wasn't exactly two minutes. It was on the three minute or it was on the four minute. So the amount of rest between wasn't 90 seconds and two minutes, but you would perform the movement every 90 seconds or every two minutes. So your rest was. probably like two and a quarter on one of them and three minutes on the other. So it was comparing like two minutes and 15 seconds rest to three minutes rest. And which one, you know, would, we did four sets of the one with the longer rest compared to five sets of the one with the shorter rest. So the total time domain was exactly the same. And the question was, do you, as an N of one of yourself, because people may differ, But do you get more total reps doing one fewer set with longer rest or doing one more set with shorter rest? And I surprised myself because I pretty much across the board got more total reps doing the shorter rest with the one extra set. There wasn't the, actually it was, it wasn't completely across the board. My shorter rest total reps was higher than my longer rest total reps with one less set. And so that surprised me because I've always veered toward the side of longer rest with fewer sets. I've always been like, I'm a two set guy and I take four minutes of rest between sets. And at least as it applies to arms, I don't know that we could extrapolate this out across legs and back and like these other really big muscle groups. But at least as it applies to arms, I am now pretty confident that for myself and the same played out across many of the other people. that you get more work density in by training one more set with less rest than you would training one fewer set with more rest. And I'm glad you brought up that it happened for other, much more people at hypertrophy camp also found that because I would, I could see a counter argument being made that because you're in such good like cardiovascular shape, that's why you would be able to do that. But I'm really glad that you said that, you know, for a lot of other people there as well. Yeah, I think the premise of the experiment when it was laid out to us was that you probably will end up getting similar results on both. Like that was kind of the expectation that the majority, the average would be that people would get the same training density, the same result total reps achieved across both experiments. And for me, I was definitely one way. And I think your explanation of me being in good cardiovascular shape was actually my first initial thought too. And it's also what Cass and Cody said when we were there. Um, but, uh, and, and Adam, Adam was a huge part of that as well. But, uh, but yeah, I did see it across other people, not quite as significantly as, as I noted on myself and the other kind of extenuating circumstance or confounding variable was that these were done single arm. And so I did have an impact of my right arm being stronger than my left arm. And so on the first experiment where we had higher training density, my right arm was curling and my left arm was tricep extending. And then we reversed it with the other rest period so that my left arm was curling and my right arm was tricep extending. And I did see more of a change based on my right arm being the arm performing the movement. Like I saw a rep increase based on that, that I think almost outperformed the fact that I was doing an extra set. So it was close. But when I looked at the data overall, it's still veered to the side of the training density approach with more sets being more productive. So I think this experiment would have been interesting if it was done bilateral instead of doing it unilaterally. Mm -hmm. Okay, and then my last example before we get to takeaways and stuff is just the general construction of training in a manner that has either antagonistic or non-competing protocols to the program design. And I struggle with how applicable this is to the masses when I'm writing a group program because... of equipment in a commercial gym and being able to hold that down for X amount of time. But I still think that it's kind of a cool idea to discuss. So at the end of the camp, the final day, we continued on this notion of training density and Cass has come up with, he calls it supersets of supersets. And then we just kind of shortened that to super duper sets, which. We all got a laugh out of it. We think that that's a way better name than supersets of supersets. So we're just going to call them super duper sets. And what CAS did was construct a delta sequence that had four different delta movements in it, where you basically alternate movement to movement to movement, where because the delta has these three regions of front delta, side delta, and posterior delta, that you're able to train. these movements pretty much back to back with call it 60 seconds of rest between in a circuit fashion and really be able to put maximum output into each with very little ramification from the prior delt movement that you did. And this has like a huge impact on being able to increase training density. And so the example we did was we had a middle delt behind the back lateral raise. And because it's behind the back, it, is middle, slight posterior. And then we had an anterior delt raise. So now we're basically doing fully anterior delt where there's basically no very small middle delt or lateral delt and no posterior delt. So we would go to that movement. And then the next one, we would go to posterior delt or rather to Y -rays and Y-rays is middle, slight posterior. And then from there we would go to posterior delt raise. And so there was maybe slight crossover going from the Y raise to the posterior delt raise. I would say that was the one that had even a slight level of confliction to it. But overall that sequence was able to roll through super easy and you're able to get three, four rounds of that sequence in significantly less time than it would be if you were trying to fit four delt movements in doing straight sets and very little. conflicting crossover effect. I mean, some for sure, but for the amount of training density and volume that you can get, it was significantly less crossover impact or competing impact than I would have expected. And you say something real quick and then I have one more thing to add. No, go ahead. Okay, so the other thing, the example that was used in this situation, and we also created another sequence just like this was for the back or the lats and the chest. And so we were able to go clavicular pack press around. So it was a pretty isolated clavicular pack motion. And then go to iliac lat pull down and then go to costal cable press. So that would be lower chest cable press. So it's the different region. You have clavicular cable, which is upper chest, and then you had lower chest, and then you went to thoracic lat. So that would be upper lat. So we went upper chest, lower lat, lower chest, upper lat. And so we were able to work through this sequence of four movements similarly to what we did in the delt sequence, where we're moving across these different movements where... By the time you get back to clavicular pack or the time you get back to iliac lat or whatever, you've had three movements of rest that don't target that specific region of the lat. So we weren't seeing performance decrement cycle to cycle. Like you're literally getting, you know, six to eight minutes of rest before you get back to the same muscle group area again. So that's just another example of kind of increasing training density. I was gonna say, I should've went first. I'm sorry. No, you're cool. So anyway, that's the final kind of experiment that we did there. And that just leads me into my big takeaway from all these tests, which is that increasing workout density is likely a positive. This includes alternating movements, taking slightly shorter rests. It seems that the loss in performance is made up for plus some by the saved time. which is essentially the ability to do more work in the same amount of time. So, or the same work in less time, depending on how efficient you wanna be with your training. Yeah, when I came through and read the outline before we did the episode, I was really kind of, I wouldn't say hung up in a negative way, but I was really curious about that part G that you just read. And I'm like, ah, how does that make sense? But I mean, you have a lot of the experiments that with less time, like your performance was equal or best or better, which is really, really interesting. So. Now to do one of my favorite things and play devil's advocate. I have a circle back question going up to the chest exercise where you did the straight sets, the one and one quarter sets, and then the length and partials. So because if I remember correctly, the straight sets, you got eight reps on the length and partials. You also got eight reps. Could there be an argument made that the length and partials, since we're still getting the eight reps could have a density benefit of some sort. Well, I'm not sure if that is density increasing because the total time under tension was less. Like if you look at the total time that I spent doing eight length and partials, I think my set was 17 seconds long because you're only like coming up halfway and back down and halfway and back down. There's no other portion of the movement. But when you looked at my eight full ROM reps, it was like 38 seconds. So I think that it was more than double. the amount of time that I spent. And I also had to obviously fight through the portion of the rep that was above halfway. And so, yeah, I kinda understand what you're saying, but I think at the end of the day, you're getting significantly less time under tension, which I guess, yeah, like the point of training density isn't to have less time under tension, it's to have the same time under tension in less total time. Yeah, no, again, it's I don't have any real angle from it. It's just me playing playing devil's advocate. But I agree, like so much of those with the length and partials, you're not really you hit you hit the point of the rep where it would get sticky and then you like back off, you know, where that sticking point, like especially like two are one are especially like a chest pressing movement. You're in that for seconds. Mm -hmm. I mean, fighting through those positions, like those reps slow down, and that is, that's about as good of tension as you get, you know what I mean, in those there. So I agree, again, it was like I said, just playing devil's advocate, because I know, that's where I anticipated a competing theory would come from. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I love the devil's advocate approach. I tried to play that with Cass a bit throughout the weekend as well. Yeah, I usually got put in my place. So yeah, that's really all I have on hypertrophy camp. That took a little longer than I anticipated. So I'll be quick here going through kind of my spring training program. And I've just had a few people reach out to me and say that they would like me to kind of expand on this a little bit. So. Starting in April, when I get back from Costa Rica, I get back on April 1st. And actually just as a teaser, we have, hopefully, he's confirmed, we're supposed to have Lyle McDonald come on our podcast when I get back from Costa Rica. But he did say in his email that he's probably going to forget and we're going to have to remind him. So typical Cromudgy Lyle McDonald. I was telling Jordan when we were out that we were getting Lyle McDonald on our podcast. And his email that, so I wrote him two years ago and I was like, hey dude, like really looking forward to getting you on our podcast. Like I hope you can make it. You know, we'd love to have you. He never responded. And then two years later he writes back and his only response really is, I guess I need to get back out there. When can I come on your podcast? And I was like, oh, out of the blue two years later, like this dude is just like, I guess I should get back out there again. And it was just. It was so typical Lyle MacDonald that Jordan and I are just like cracking up about it, you know? Okay. So we have Lyle MacDonald coming on hopefully when I get back from Costa Rica, as long as he remembers. But I don't know why I got sidetracked there. My spring training program basically is a focus on cardio. And my intention is to cardio five, probably six times a week. And the way that the cardio is going to be organized is that there is going to be two higher intensity sessions. One will be VO2 max style intervals. So something between three and eight minutes for repeated bouts. You know, if I'm doing a three minute interval, it's probably going to have eight or 10 intervals in there. And if I'm doing an eight minute interval, it probably has four intervals in there. So my goal is going to be to achieve about. 25 to 35 minutes of time in zone so to speak in whichever vo2 max protocol I choose Another day. I'm gonna do a more steady state higher intensity effort So I'm gonna pick a hill like a mountain and I'm gonna bike to the mountain as my warm -up and I'm just gonna go and I'm probably gonna climb for 60 to 90 minutes of just Climbing hills and so it's not gonna be interval so much. There's not gonna be a lot of like down and up and down. It's literally going to be like, yo, put your head down and just go. When I say 60 to 90 minutes, that might actually be too long. I don't think I'm actually going to climb a hill for that long. It's probably more like 45 minutes, but the total workout will end up being 90 minutes because I have to like bike to there and then I have to do the hill and then I have to bike home. So those are my two kind of higher intensity days. And then I'm going to have three to four lower intensity days. And so the plan is to have two to three zone two sessions that are between 50 and 90 minutes. And this is gonna be like proper zone two, like kind of right in the middle of zone two, heart rate around 135, 140, something like that. And just try to hold that for quite a while. And then I wanna have one day that's on the lower end of zone two or maybe even high zone one. And I try to do that for two plus hours. And so this, that I think is going to really help some some of these aerobic adaptations even more than the zone two stuff is just being there and having to pedal consistently for that long. The effort needs to be lower. So instead of sitting at a heart rate of 135 to 140, it's probably going to be more like 120 to 130. And I'm just going to sit in there and go for two plus hours. And that is, you know, five or six days of cardio. And because the cardio output is going to be so high as far as frequency and volume, which I think the cardio ends up being eight to 10 hours a week, which is kind of what I was doing last year that was really effective for me. The training, the weightlifting can only be two days a week. And this was the biggest issue I had last year in my training was that I tried to lift four to five days a week and do cardio five to six days a week for way too long. I did this, I started training again, I think last year around March or April, and it wasn't until August that I finally succumbed to the fact that I couldn't continue doing this type of volume on both ends. And this year I'm gonna make this decision immediately, like literally starting in April, I am cutting the weightlifting to two times a week. And initially I discussed how the weightlifting was gonna be based around our 10 exercises for life program. It still is in the global perspective of the program, but I did change a few things out because one of the things about the 10 exercises for life episode is that we were choosing exercises that were the best exercise. And in many cases that meant choosing a very fatiguing compound movement because it's the best. When I went through and actually reflected on... do I see myself actually getting excited to go into the gym and do five hard compound movements on each of my training days? I had to be honest with myself and be like, no, I don't think with all the biking that I'm doing that I want to go in there and just destroy myself with all these multi -joint movements each time that I go into the gym. And so I rewrote a little bit of this program, still kept a lot of the core basics, but added in a few more isolation movements and stuff like that that I think are going to help me get stimulus. but also keep fatigue at bay. And so the way that it's organized now is that I have six movements on one day and six movements on the other day. I'll just quickly walk through these for you guys. So the first day has an, they're all alternating, I don't wanna call them antagonistic pairings, I would call them non -competing pairings. So the first day is a hang snatch high pull. Alternated with a dumbbell fly press or a dumbbell press. I haven't decided whether I want that to be a fly press or a press yet and the hang snatch high pull is going to act as both a cool explosive movement to include which I have been trying to do more of in my training but also to warm up the hips for part B which is going to alternate between a deadlift and a cross cable tricep pushdown and After much rumination, I did decide to put a conventional deadlift into my program. So this replaces where I would have had an RDL. And I'm gonna have the conventional deadlift. And the main reason I decided on that, well, two reasons. One, I haven't done it for a really long time. And I wanted to do low reps. So with the conventional deadlift, my plan is to stick between sets of one and three, but use plenty of RIR. you you but I'm not going to put my body through that. And then the other reason for the conventional deadlift is that I think it'll be cool to have some sort of metric of how much my strength is slipping from all the biking. Because what I didn't notice last year was a ton of hypertrophy slippage. Like I didn't see my weights on the six to 12 rep range fall so much. but I'm wondering if I will see one to three reps become a lot harder. Like if 405 for a double feels a certain way in April, how does it feel in August after I've been biking for four months, five months, and really putting in a lot of volume on biking, am I still able to pull a 405 double and have it feel the same or not? And so I'm curious about that. So that's gonna be alternating with cross-cable tri -set pushdowns because that's about the most non -competing movement you can do with a deadlift. And then the third pairing on that day is a lumbar lat row. I'll probably be doing it one arm because I really enjoy that. And I'll alternate that with leg extensions. So another non -competing pairing there. Moving on to day two, I have non-competing pairing part A is seated leg curl with a pendulum squat or a hack squat. And so since I took RDL out of the program and put in conventional deadlift, I wanted to make sure I had a very specific hamstring exercise in there. And I think especially with biking being a quad dominant pursuit, it's gonna be very helpful to have some isolated knee flexion work in there. And then part B is a rear delt pull down supersetted with, or not supersetted, alternated with a cable fly to a deficit pushup. So this is that. sequence we discussed earlier of going from isolated fly movement to a stable chest pressing movement. I consider a deficit pushup on parallettes to be a stable chest pressing movement, certainly more stable than a dumbbell bench press would. It's probably not as stable as a machine chest press would be. So it's going to give me some tricep stimulus and some chest stimulus, which I am totally fine with, especially. since I'm trying to kill multiple birds with one stone here. And then the final pairing on day two is a dual cable lateral raise, alternated with a face -away cable curl. So I think that across both days, I have some somewhat fatiguing and psychologically movements that require psychological preparation. And then I also have some pairings. where I can kind of just kind of turn my mind off and just do it like a lateral raise and a face away curl don't require a ton of focus. You know, you do have to execute, but they're not going to fatigue you a ton. So I think I have a nice mix of fatiguing movements with a lot of psychological prep like the conventional deadlift and the pendulum squat or hack squat on different days. And then I also have some stuff that's more stimulus based, a little more isolated that isn't going to cause as much fatigue. And that's pretty much the plan. like it. I had this, I thought that we should place bets on what's going to happen with your deadlift. And I will cast my bet first. And I don't think you are going to notice a strength decline as you get into like August or the deeper and higher cardio. Yeah, I'm not, I'm still not entirely sure. Um, I think it may depend on what happens with my body weight because last year, you know, I'm at one 94 right now. And last year at the end of my biking in, before my race, I hit one 80 and I held one 80 for a week or two. And once I got down to one 80 and was kind of holding that, that He did my biking like i was became super fast i biking cuz i weighed fourteen pounds less. I didn't feel great i didn't feel very strong and i felt brittle is kind of the way to say that like when i would go into the gym i felt a little brittle going into my sets i had a lot of extra warm up and activation stuff i needed to do like i would always have to do my group need kickbacks before i would do any squatting. And that sort of stuff i didn't need to do when my body was in the one nineties so. I think that's a very good point. All all body weight specific and stuff. I mean, you lose enough mass. Yeah, maximal or an entrance a maximal. No heavy loads are obviously going to feel heavier. Cool. well that's all I got. We're heading to Costa Rica. So we are going to take off next week and we won't have an episode and then we'll come back and hopefully have Lyle McDonald on. wonderful. All right, guys. So as always, thank you for listening. Brian, thank you for sharing your spring program and all of the really cool things from hypertrophy camp at N1. I believe for any of the listeners listening, there will be a second hypertrophy camp somewhere later in the year. I believe like Q4. Have a look at it. This stuff is really, really cool. You can really, really learn a lot, especially if you are a coach in the industry. I will say that. It had, it, the attending the practical really opened up my mind to just thinking about how structuring like training and stuff. And for that, I feel immensely grateful in that regard. So there's my plug. We have, you know, no affiliation other than being, Brian gets to go train with cast sometimes, but it's, they're good people who do good work. And I love to support people in that, in that regard. Yep, exactly. And I actually, two things on that I recommend doing the biomechanics practical before you do the hypertrophy camp. Because that I think was it wasn't stated specifically, but it was sort of a assumed prerequisite. Like when he was in hypertrophy camp, he was talking a lot about the things that you learned in the biomechanics practical. And there was one guy that was in there that hadn't done the practical. And he was very much behind and he had a lot of extra questions that other people didn't have. So I definitely recommend doing the practical first. And the second thing is I just dropped my referral code into the show notes. So if you guys want to do any of the courses from N1, whether it's nutrition, biomechanics, hypertrophy camp, glute camp, anything like that, check out the episode description. And there is a referral code that gives me bit of kickback. So if you enjoyed this episode and you want to help me out, definitely use that referral code and I'd be super appreciative. Okay, so I lied. We are loosely affiliated. So there's that. but I love these guys. I mean, they're amazing. Brian is loosely affiliated. Aaron just has love for the process. let's put it that way. All right, guys, as always, thank you for listening. Brian, please enjoy Costa Rica. And if all goes well, our next episode will be featuring like the evil villain of the fitness industry, Lyle MacDonald, which I'm very excited for. I hope he doesn't berate us too much.