[aaron_straker]: 0:25

oh yeah what's up guys happy tuesday welcome back to another episode of eat train prosper today brian and myself are going to

[bryan_boorstein]: 0:36

oh

[aaron_straker]: 0:36

kind of just have an open honest conversation the state of some

[bryan_boorstein]: 0:40

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 0:40

of the rather ambiguity and confusion i could say in the stimulating reps versus non stimulating reps how close should you be training too failure and just a lot of the conflicting opinion i think around it a little bit and then as a end consumer right so people like brian and i and then you know downstream listeners what should or could you really want to focus on to help dissiminate some of the information to make the best kind of just use of your time with your training into not get too confused so brian you want a kind of shape us up a little bit there and then we'll jump into some updates

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:24

yeah yeah i think you did a really good job the notes i had pretty much were yeah the ambiguity of evidence based information the fact that you can have experts that are respected scientists or at least science communicators in the field some saying that all of the evidence and the mechanisms point to you know needing to be somewhat close to failure and then you have others on the other side of the spectrum basically being like no look at these studies and interpreting them maybe some of the same studies differently or referencing different studies all together showing that hey no we we don't even need to be five reps from failure like seven or eight from failure can also produce results um so i think we're just going to kind of have an open discussion about that and then address the question of like if everything does work then why are people spending their wheels in the gym for years if it's so easy to get results and you can be seven or eight webs from failure what's the de why is everybody not jacked um so these are kind of some of the questions we want to discuss today and then prior to that we'll just kind of get into some up dates here do you want to start since i just spoke for a second

[aaron_straker]: 2:38

yeah i'll kick us off with updates

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:40

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 2:41

kind

[bryan_boorstein]: 2:41

oh

[aaron_straker]: 2:41

of the biggest up that i have is if you are someone who has previously purchased my done for you client chicken system i have a brain new feature i released today so it will be well out by the time this episode drops and that is the progress photo time line so i was trying to think of a way that for myself to make it a little bit easier and i plug something and and that in my holy ship this is incredible and what's really sweet about it

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:06

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:06

is now automatically will stack all the check and photos right next to each other and put like what week it is what day in the average week from that the average weight from that week and it's really really cool is like you can back port to existing clients and stuff so part of things as as i build out features now i'm thinking like okay well some of these coaches have been using this with like you know a dozen clients at this point how can i make this like a non breaking change that they can just automatically like bolt on to one of their existing clients sheets and i'm really really pumped this one well completely bolt on a couple clicks and

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:42

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:42

everything just like

[bryan_boorstein]: 3:43

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 3:43

automatically works so i'm really pumped about that i've got some really cool feedback on it already so if you are out there and they're using it there's a new feature for you if you're not i'd recommend looking into it if you do have clients or you just want something to help help you coach yourself with more objective bounds so it's kind of the first one i have decided also that i am going to add in one to two kind of dedicated cardiosessions

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:14

oh

[aaron_straker]: 4:15

per week aiming for some zone two cardio and some of this i would say is out of i'm kind of getting to a point where i feel like i just want to move my body in different planes a little bit sort of thing that's one slightly but then also

[bryan_boorstein]: 4:34

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 4:34

the kind of i guess fear like i'm getting older you know i'm thirty four now and all i really do is just like lift weights and i want to make sure that one of my biggest goals in my life is like aging like you have brian right still getting better you look great and i just want to make sure i'm like crossing my teas and dotting my eyes and i know that like since like the day i quit doing cross i haven't really done anything like athletically like whatsoever so

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:04

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 5:05

that one i want to kind of start pulling in a little bit and i think i'm gonna start like twenty minutes even though zone he's supposed to be like forty minutes but i just know like i'm not gonna fucking do that for forty minutes

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:15

so quick question on zone two because my perception of zone two is is that it's actually pretty low intensity like zone one would be basically you get on an air din bike after a cross work out this is how we used to implement it right you would get on a airdinebike and you would just kind of like casually half asked barely even move the thing as you're just trying to calm down and get a little more parisympathetic after after your training session so i would say that that was even even to be honest like it was like a really slow walk it wasn't even like a purposeful walk type

[aaron_straker]: 5:55

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:55

pace

[aaron_straker]: 5:55

i remember yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 5:56

so i consider zone too to be like brisk walk unless you're in really really good shape and then maybe it's like a slow jog do you kind of perceive it the

[aaron_straker]: 6:06

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:06

same way or are you looking at

[aaron_straker]: 6:07

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:07

zone two more as like it is a jog for for almost anyone at this point

[aaron_straker]: 6:11

i am really just going off the heart rate numbers

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:14

okay

[aaron_straker]: 6:14

um so when as i started looking at him like okay this is zone to i think please do not quote me on this year i believe it's like sixty to seventy percent of what would be like max heart rate and

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:25

hm

[aaron_straker]: 6:25

for me running off some calculation stuff that's like a one

[bryan_boorstein]: 6:28

oh

[aaron_straker]: 6:29

hirtyone to one forty five heart sustained heart rate um that's up there you know sort of thing like i was i tried to do it on on a spin bike the other day and i couldn't get my heart rate that high without like my legs burning out from the i couldn't peddle the bike any more so i think that's just like a bad maybe not the best model to use i'm sure like a star climber or an incline walk would be a little bit better because you're supporting your own body weight sort of thing but it was interesting the first part the second is i do think i may have slightly kind of artificially improved heart rate numbers because i'm in a calory deficit like my resting heart rate is lower than i feel like it actually is in reality and then when i am

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:24

my

[aaron_straker]: 7:24

trying to like when

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:25

oh

[aaron_straker]: 7:25

i feel like kind of fatigued

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:28

my

[aaron_straker]: 7:28

is it's still hovering in the like low like maybe a one ten one twelve sort of thing so i

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:35

m

[aaron_straker]: 7:35

think the diet could be artificially kind of pulling that down so

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:40

m

[aaron_straker]: 7:40

much so that when i was doing my

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:42

m

[aaron_straker]: 7:43

my session the other day on the ice like i don't think my garment my my watch is like accurate like so right when i ended or as i was ending and i slowed my cycling pace i set a time around my phone and i counted tire you know sixty seconds and it was spot on with my garment so i was like

[bryan_boorstein]: 7:59

m

[aaron_straker]: 8:00

well okay simple enough so i'm just going to keep exploring an with it and especially as i kind of like end of my diet which i have a note about now soon and get back into higher calories and that sort of thing it's just something i want to experiment with and seeing like if i stay in like better cardiovascular shape can i get any potential training benefit from just being more

[bryan_boorstein]: 8:24

hm

[aaron_straker]: 8:25

more metabolically fit you know physiology i have a hard time believing that that is actually like a bad thing especially

[bryan_boorstein]: 8:33

h

[aaron_straker]: 8:34

within the bounce

[bryan_boorstein]: 8:34

m

[aaron_straker]: 8:35

of like one to two times per week for a

[bryan_boorstein]: 8:38

hm

[aaron_straker]: 8:38

dedicated twenty to thirty minute session like once or twice per week sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 8:46

yeah totally i i totally agree and i actually just googled zone two because i always sixty to seventy per cent is what is what google says as well

[aaron_straker]: 8:55

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 8:56

and i thought it was more like you know fifty five sixty five or fifty to sixty so it's slightly higher than i think my initial interpretation was but i think that that sixty to seventy per cent of max heart rate is still low enough that if somebody he is not conditioned like they're a typical american overweight person

[aaron_straker]: 9:14

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:15

they're probably getting their heart rate up to zone to literally just by getting off the couch and going for a walk so you may find that

[aaron_straker]: 9:23

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:24

um depending on the modality you use that that

[aaron_straker]: 9:28

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:29

you're able to get there a little bit faster or easier than you thought

[aaron_straker]: 9:32

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:33

at first and then as you become more conditioned over time it may you may have to push a little bit harder to reach the same the same level

[aaron_straker]: 9:41

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:42

which is it's all very interesting like as you know i've been instituting viking into into my training

[aaron_straker]: 9:47

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 9:47

now a couple of time the week and if i push hard my heart rate is almost at my max like i don't even understand how the max can be my max if i'm just getting there by by going up a hill on my bike for twenty five thirty seconds you know and then i'm staining it like i can do thirty minutes sustained at like a hundred and fifty beats per minute which is if my estimated heart rate max is one eighty we're looking at like a hundred and fifty out of a hundred and eighty um which is

[aaron_straker]: 10:23

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 10:24

eighty eighty five percent like eighty percent max hartright so i can sustain that for what would be considered like a zone too domain and so it's it's interesting how how it varies

[aaron_straker]: 10:36

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 10:37

so much in the individual and like just going out biking with barely any effort it's still getting to that sixty per cent number like i feel like i could keep the sixty percent the lower end of that zone to almost forever i don't know i mean i guess i would need to drink water

[aaron_straker]: 10:56

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 10:56

and eat food at some point but but i see no reason that i couldn't keep a hundred to a hundred and ten beats per minute which is kind of in that range forever so it doesn't feel hard whereas it quickly begins to feel hard as the heart rate percentage

[aaron_straker]: 11:10

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:11

climbs out of that kind of lower zone

[aaron_straker]: 11:14

i got to see the next one i'm probably going to do like an incline on the tread mill and

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:19

oh

[aaron_straker]: 11:19

then maybe like a star master but like mine felt

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:21

yeah m

[aaron_straker]: 11:22

hard where i'm like

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:23

m

[aaron_straker]: 11:24

dude why is my heart rate not climbing like i literally did not make it

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:27

m

[aaron_straker]: 11:27

into zone two over the entire thirty

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:29

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 11:29

minutes i think like

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:30

i

[aaron_straker]: 11:30

one

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:30

think

[aaron_straker]: 11:30

thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:30

you

[aaron_straker]: 11:31

peaked

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:31

may

[aaron_straker]: 11:31

in

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:31

be it might have been just because you chose something that had like a muscular endurance component to it instead of

[aaron_straker]: 11:39

i

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:39

just

[aaron_straker]: 11:39

think

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:39

a card

[aaron_straker]: 11:39

so

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:39

vasari component endurance and then i also read that these modalities are best done where you're using your upper body and lower body simultaneously so

[aaron_straker]: 11:49

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:49

it's harder to get to where you want to go if you're just doing something that is lower body dominant so like doing a bit where now you're having

[aaron_straker]: 11:59

air done

[bryan_boorstein]: 11:59

to use your arms as well or something like that is going to be more effective

[aaron_straker]: 12:03

that

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:03

oh

[aaron_straker]: 12:03

makes perfect sense um

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:06

um coke continue

[aaron_straker]: 12:07

m so i have i'm nearing the weights where i put an end to my diet because i don't really see any benefit in seeing a hundred and eighty nine pounds on the scale for for myself um so that is probably this week i've had a couple one nine point um sort of thing and it's just kind of like i don't really care to be any leaner um i have realized that my lack of training abs over this year has definitely shown up in my physique

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:42

hm

[aaron_straker]: 12:43

um

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:43

okay

[aaron_straker]: 12:44

i am i'm pretty lean but i still kind of like don't really have great abs but i'll have like veins in my ham strings like all the quad veins and stuff are in and i'm like okay like i

[bryan_boorstein]: 12:55

m

[aaron_straker]: 12:55

didn't really train them i really half asked this this year on the abs and they're straight up like much worse than last year like maybe i'll train them you

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:03

very

[aaron_straker]: 13:03

know

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:04

interesting yeah

[aaron_straker]: 13:05

it is it has been and the last thing there is what i found is really interesting i'm still progressing the big lift like the hardest one for me all

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:15

ah

[aaron_straker]: 13:15

week long is the hack squad had it today and i'm still able to do it but it just like costs me more like i am defeated when i get off that thing and it's my first exercise on the day and then i go into

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:31

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 13:31

like a bent knee d l which i have to push heavy fortunately it's like dumb bells which i feel like systemically or just not as taxing i mean like by the end of my training day like i was like

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:43

m

[aaron_straker]: 13:43

i was supposed to do cabs i was supposed to do abs and i was like hard fucking no like

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:47

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 13:48

not even going to think

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:49

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 13:49

about it i'm out of here sort of thing so it's been

[bryan_boorstein]: 13:53

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 13:53

really really interesting that's like i can still make the progress but it costs me like a lot of just my soul to make the progress

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:04

m

[aaron_straker]: 14:05

which is just interesting because

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:06

m

[aaron_straker]: 14:06

now i'm now that i'm nearing the end i'm getting going to be going into my favorite nutrition periodization which is like the recovery diet where everything just continues to get better for a number of weeks and i'm interested to see like and i really still progress is hack squat like another ten key loads or something like that so

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:24

ah

[aaron_straker]: 14:25

i will report

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:25

well

[aaron_straker]: 14:25

back as we

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:26

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 14:27

as i as i continue that for sure

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:29

it's very interesting i it actually fits perfectly in line with kind of the theory i've

[aaron_straker]: 14:35

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 14:35

discussed on here which is that you know we don't actually physically reach a point of failure it's huge that we we reach psychological fatigue or like a lack of motivation or desire to attack the exercise more than like a physical inability to manifest into the machine and progress type thing um so it's just yeah that's like it's super interesting to me because like you're on this diet you're in a calory deficit there's the argument that it's a new it's new ish like it's it's not like you've been doing this for years the same machine you know you you're on this hack for what now two months or something like that what has it been all right

[aaron_straker]: 15:22

almost four

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:23

almost four yeah

[aaron_straker]: 15:24

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:24

so i actually had this argument with david abel in our what's that group because i was like look i'm still progressing on on my hack from and i've been in my my training for at least a year and dave was like yeah i think a year is like just not quite long enough like you guys really have to do the same exercise like weekly for two years before you've completely exhausted all the neural gains and and

[aaron_straker]: 15:45

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:45

i was like i don't know like two years a really

[aaron_straker]: 15:47

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 15:48

long time on the same exercise you know um but but they do they do continue to happen and you do continue to kind of just figure out little tips and tricks along the way that make you more efficient at the movement so yeah it's very interesting i actually would love to hear stories from from the listeners where they really reached a point on a movement that they literally physically couldn't progress it versus it just being like psychologically they didn't want to do it or they just kind of gave up mid set or something along those and because like i've said i kind of think that that it's usually psychological and of course there's downstream effects of like once your psychology goes like it could manifest itself physically

[aaron_straker]: 16:38

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 16:39

um there could be the question of like why are you psychologically fatigued like is your nutrition bad is your sleep not grey are you stressed out and

[aaron_straker]: 16:47

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 16:47

so these psycholoogal factors are then creating this physical imitation type thing so there's a number of ways you can look at that by assuming that all of those variables like sleep nutrition and stress are taken care of and you're in a surplus et cetera et cetera i do find it interesting to think that that you would physically be unable to continue adding a rep after a number of weeks or whatever

[aaron_straker]: 17:11

agreed

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:11

or two point five pounds or something like that okay cool should i jump into some updates are you

[aaron_straker]: 17:16

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 17:16

good sweet all right cool so for me i am just in the process of finishing up mi week five or microcychle five of my of my training program and i have one session left to complete microcychle five which i will be doing here tomorrow and then i'm ving for four days to go to to for a wedding and this will be the very first trip that kim and i are taking away from both kids bryson is literal a month away from being five years old and we have yet to get away from both of these kids for or any amount of time um so we've it's been it's actually been quite a stressful last week because we have my aunt coming to do at night we have my mom coming to do two nights my dad coming to do a day and two different baby sitters coming to do a day so we literally have like six people to handle four days of us being gone and trying to organize you know gross shopping and putting together activity lists and dues and don'ts and all that stuff has just been a massive undertaking not to mention that all of these people are obviously staying in our house and they can't stay in our basement where i'm podcasting right now because then they can't hear the kids so they have to stay in our bed and then we have to have changes of sheets every time somebody knew is coming to stay at our house each night literally each night we have to have like a change of sheets ready to go for them because people are weird and don't want to sleep on the same sheets as other people so anyway it's been a huge week of getting ship done but we are obviously really excited to get away and have this wedding to go to i'm sure i'm sure i'll be doing some drinking and some palatable food intake and most of all i'm just looking forward to not training so this is my kind of typical frequency de load as i talk about where this is one of preferred ways to drop fatigue in the middle of a training cycle is instead of getting to five weeks and doing a proper de load and then having to basically like build back up to where i am i'm just basically going to take four or five days off and then just keep chugging along for another three weeks or so so i'm essentially going to get like eight or nine weeks out of this this messocycle instead of it being five weeks then a de load than a new a new mesocycle beginning so my intention really is to not even change intensity like one of the things that you have to do when you take de load is you then have to kind of back track and work yourself forward again but i'm not going to do that i'm going to see what happens here i'm already into partial reps and reverse drop sets and rest paws sets and all this stuff um so we'll see if for to five days off has any kind of mitigating effects on my recovery thereafter or my ability to manifest performance m my my theory hypothesis is that i'm going to come back from this trip and probably actually be stronger and be able to perform better because i had these four or five days off but whether that leads to like an excessive level of soreness slash muscle damage i don't exactly know so it will be an interesting experiment to see if like four or five days is long enough that i'm going to come back and just be rashed by stuff because the way it is right now or i'm like here's an example as yesterday i did leg curls and hip extensions for hamstrings leg curls had to reverse drop set and hip extensions had lengthened partials and my hamstrings are lightly sore today and then it was kind of the same idea for quads i did a reverse drop set on on leg extensions but then just did regular straight sets for for b stands glum and my quads are also lightly sore today so that would be kind of as i expect being in week five i wonder if koming back after four to five days off i kind of do that same work out again and maybe i get more sore i don't really know so i'll keep you all updated and let you know as that progresses um so my foot i am now six weeks since my torn planner fatha i think i gave this update last week but just for for those that maybe didn't hear or just to reiterate i did have it assessed by an orthopedic surgeon did ultra sound x ray and found that i completely tore the medial erfasha so that would be the inside the arch the inside arch of my planerfasha and there was a partial tear of the middle planer fash which is the one that runs in the middle the lateral be the one on the outside of my arch and that one is fully intact which is kind of why i've been walking pronated for the last six weeks i've started my rehab i think i mentioned that last week to so i have this cool moboboard and i've been doing these foot drills and stuff on there so it's starting to rebuild some strength i was able to do some really slow calf raises to full range of motion esterday no weight or anything like that i just literally stood on the edge of a star and i would go to dorcyflection and then to plant eflection trying to push through my big toe because that's the part that correlates with the media portion of my arch so i've been doing all that stuff and that seems to be progressing well but like i still i still can't walk long distances i definitely definitely can't run i can't change action i can't jump so i think this is just going to be one of those like slow things it happens and i don't know maybe six months from now i'll report back and be like yep i can run again or something like that but it's kind of frustrating and annoying and then as i've kind of menton and an alluded to in prior episodes there's been a decent amount of compensation occurring where my left knee primarily has taken the brunt of this as i've been compensating for my right foot and my left knee has been bothering me enough that i scheduled in m r i and did i mention on the last episode that but the yeah okay cool so back like two thousand sixteen two thousand seventeen we were doing this cross it work out as i discussed before and it was like a two or three heavy back squats immediately into a hundred meter sprint and i know something to my knee i guessed that it was miniscus at that time just because of the stability component but it got better you know three four or five weeks later i basically didn't notice it any more and so i just kind of continued going through life and now we're five or six years later and i still wasn't really noticed it much aside from on leg curls every now and then it would kind of feel like this little rolling over sensation as i would get to deep neeflextion where it would almost feel like something was rolling over something else and then then it would go away and it wouldn't happen for a few months and so it was kind of this thing like knew something was wrong but it wasn't cumbersome enough do anything about it but since all of this compensation stuff has been occurring the s been hurting a lot more and it's been more aggravated when doing leg curls and other hamstring dominant movements so i went and got an m r i a couple of days ago and as i suspected the result was a torn meniscas in my left knee luckily that's a relatively easy procedure of you know scoping it getting rid of it if that's the route we decided to take and then you know two three weeks later you're pretty much back to normal the other thing that the m r i showed was that i have a all tear in my in my quad it didn't specify or at least the doctor didn't tell me which portion of my quad i'm actually very curious because i guess now that he mentioned it in deep ne flexion it does feel like a little stiff in the very very bottom but i assume that was kind of related to the miniscas so i don't know if what i'm feeling is this little quad tar that he said or if it's the the maniscus itself but it hasn't been super limiting and he said that that should just be a matter of shooting it with some p r p when they do the miniscus uh scope and that that should more or less facilitate healing there but this is interesting because i'm i'm now almost forty years old and i've never had a surgery this will be potentially my first surgery in life at forty and it's a relatively minor one but i am slightly nervous that i feel like my body is beginning to to demonstrate some some breakdown that that maybe i haven't noticed over the year and you know you hear this from people all the time and these stories are in the back of my head of like yeah everything was great until i hit forty and then it's all downhill from there you know like these old guys by the camp fire type thing drinking a beer so i don't know i'm just hoping that that that's not my situation and that this is a outlier and then i'm kind of just back to normal and everything is good from there but but other than that like my body still feels great so i'm not not complaining i just now i have something that i potentially need to take care of

[aaron_straker]: 26:59

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:00

any thoughts

[aaron_straker]: 27:00

i'm

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:00

on

[aaron_straker]: 27:00

feeling

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:01

any of that

[aaron_straker]: 27:02

you're going to be perfectly fine after the procedure and you

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:05

he

[aaron_straker]: 27:05

will not be one of those guys at the camp fire

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:07

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 27:08

talking about how their bodies broke down at forty you probably one of the

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:10

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 27:11

one of those dudes on instagram like fifty five who's still sucking

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:15

m

[aaron_straker]: 27:15

shredded and looks great that's that's it putting my money

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:18

yeah i hope so man i follow you know jeff albert's

[aaron_straker]: 27:21

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 27:22

three d m j godfather and he's fifty one now and he and i have followed a similar journey like we started training at this same time so he's now thirty six years into training and i'm now twenty five years into training or whatever and he has said that you know his late forties into where he is now has really been like a change for him where he feels like he has to you know warm up a lot before each session and like he'll wake up and his shoulder will be bothering him or like any other number of little things and so i'm just hoping to to make it to my late four days and not be that that old guy on instagram being like my late forties man my lot back every day type thing so so we'll see i appreciate i appreciate the the support there um

[aaron_straker]: 28:06

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 28:07

cool so the last up date i have here before we jump into the topic is the cardio stuff and because i mentioned it earlier in relation to your cardio stuff i'm not going to go crazy on it but have been continuing to see adaptations occur which has just been so fun it's something that you just don't get to experience twenty five years into training is seeing rapid improvements in things and so i have been been really cool like even like my long courses i'm seeing minutes improvement so like my my ten mile course i improved by like three and a half minutes last time i did it and then my two mile course which is obviously much faster about but it went from seven thirty nine two weeks ago was my my top time and i just did it in six forty nine so i dropped fifty seconds off of a off of a base under eight minute about um and it was miserable the two mile course oh my god like that that seven minute time domain is just so awful it's like that one mile running you know all out for type thing or seven minute and rap cross it work out it's so bad that i only do that two mile loop if i'm literally just so crushed with work and life that i don't have time for anything else but i would much rather go out and do like a zone to bout for four or fifty minutes then have to go push myself that hard for for six or seven minutes so i thought that's interesting because that's kind of the opposite of what i used to be it was kind of just you know work hard rest were card rest recover type thing i guess maybe i would still prefer that because seven minutes isn't exactly like a work rest interval it's kind of just a work like i just go type thing um but but yeah i got my heart rate up to my max heart um with my bike on its hardest gear and so that was like the craziest thing to me because you always talk about how to get your heart raged up you need this super fast turnover and i was going up this hill that i was doing and i had my bike on the twenty fourth gear or whatever the hardest gear is and still hit basically max heart rate so i'm sure my max harvey is actually higher than then what the formula says that it is and i noticed that there's there's two formulas there's like the two twenty minus age and then there's a new one that they came out with that's supposed to be more accurate and it's one thing like two o five point eight minus in parentheses point six eight five times age i believe um so that one basically gave me the exact same number it was actually lower so two twenty minus age puts me at one eighty and then the other new formula put me at one seven eight point five or something along those lines and i was hitting one seventy eight on my bike ride so for whatever that's worth i thought that was pretty interesting i'm sure that there's some some cardio nuts out there that can explain to me how when i put this pole on my story like sixty five percent of people said they regularly exceed their max heart rate as depicted by formulas which is kind of a lot of people to be exceeding what is supposed to be a max heart rate very interesting how those formulas are not completely accurate and then potential variables that might play into how or why someone might be exceeding that heart rate and then the last thing about my cardio that i've always been a staunch proponent of avoiding cardio around leg days whether it's before or after within a matter of a few hours up to twenty four hours type thing and i've been breaking that rule almost purposefully because i think that it's kind of a fun experiment to see like hey if i do a really hard bike ride a few hours before leg training does it affect it or if i do a hard bike after a leg training does that impact recovery and thus far i've seen no detriment in performance or recovery objectively or subjectively so i think that key there being that i am in a surplus and this i still am a staunch proponent of avoiding cardio almost ubiquitously if in a diet until you need to do it to facilitate to facilitate caloric deficit um but i think in a surplus we're realizing and science has kind of solidified this that in a surplus you're able to implement concurrent training with little drawback

[aaron_straker]: 32:38

yeah i would agree with that as well and in that just more adequate resources for recovery and your signalling is going to be much like

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:47

m

[aaron_straker]: 32:47

the signal is gonna be much more heavily broadcast in in a surplus

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:51

a

[aaron_straker]: 32:51

because of again all the adequate calories to support those yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:57

yep

[aaron_straker]: 32:57

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 32:58

cool well do you want to drop some initial thoughts on this conversation here and then i can color the commentary a little bit

[aaron_straker]: 33:04

yeah let's try and do it that way so kind of this episode comes from a couple weeks back i picked up

[bryan_boorstein]: 33:11

oh

[aaron_straker]: 33:12

chris beardsley's hypertrafee

[bryan_boorstein]: 33:14

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 33:14

book it is literally just and i think hypertrophy by chris beardsley and as i was reading through it which it's a dense read by the way um what i do really like about is he repeats himself like multiple multiple times so that as he repeats himself like it's kind of like lidifying the things in your head because if he covers it like once or twice like you'll just never remember it because it's very quite heavy like scientific jargon of the the mediums for m cascades and stuff how hypertrophy works so it was really interesting you know with me as i'm reading through and then i would send some like screen shots of things to brian there was some profound part that i've like shared on my instagram stories and stuff that a lot of things that i had like kind of thought to be generally accepted he was kind of saying like no not really right so we kind of have like three kind of mechanisms for hypertrophy right we have mechanical tension metabolic stress and muscle damage in the case i am only still fifty percent of the way through the book so not going to come to any concrete things here but chris basically broke down

[bryan_boorstein]: 34:28

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 34:29

the metabolic stress aspects and the mechanical are sorry muscle damage aspects and saying that like the really underlying you know cascades of these is just mechanical tension so at the end of the day like we just want mechanical tension sort of thing and even going as to four is saying that things like muscle damage is actually worse for hypertrophy because that muscle protein synthesis on the back end of it first has to repair the damage

[bryan_boorstein]: 34:59

oh

[aaron_straker]: 34:59

tissues before any can be used for creating

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:02

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 35:03

new issue are increasing the size of the existing tissue so it's kind of really like eye opening for me in that and then as i just continue to read more and have conversations with brian there's been different conversations that come out and we've been talking about how it's just kind of like kind of frustrating to have like we said earlier in the episode like multiple experts looking at the same data set and coming to like different can clusions and how it can be just kind of confusing for your

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:33

hm

[aaron_straker]: 35:33

lifters in the gym deciding what is the best or most appropriate approaches for them so we kind of just with using these so we just wanted to have like a little bit of an open conversation about it then hopefully be able to come up with like a t l d r at the end of take aways for it's probably best to look and consider you know these large aspects so

[bryan_boorstein]: 35:59

hm did as far as you've been in the book thus far has he mentioned anything about stretch media stretch mediated hypertrophy

[aaron_straker]: 36:10

yep

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:11

and did he did he specify kind of like along the lines of you know the most common argument i'm seeing right now at least amongst my followers is the idea that some muscles responding to it and some muscles not and paul carter being very close with chris beardsley and him putting out all this information about how the biceps the triceps do not respond to stretch meted hypertrophy were as many other muscles dude has chris touched on that

[aaron_straker]: 36:36

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:36

at all

[aaron_straker]: 36:38

i haven't seen it yet in the book however the book is now i think over two years old it came out in twenty nineteen

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:44

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 36:44

so i think some of these new this researches is just newer so i haven't any kind of his standpoints

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:52

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 36:52

on that stuff with like the biceps or the triceps specifically

[bryan_boorstein]: 36:55

cool yeah i think a lot of the stretch meade hypertrophy studies have actually been in the last three years so that would make sense that maybe that's not included in there but like we had cast on and he was kind of talking about how all muscles do at some level and then paul is kind of

[aaron_straker]: 37:14

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:14

on the other side of the spectrum of saying that the biceps and triceps do not so that would be one example of you're saying how the experts tend to disagree on something like you can literally look at the same study and have these differing views on it and like chester coco being on the other side of that and being like yes every freaking soul responds to to stretch mediate hypertrophy and the mechanisms don't change type of thing um but yeah the beardsley stuff is really interesting especially as it pertains

[aaron_straker]: 37:44

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:44

to effective reps and i think that that's the kind of basis

[aaron_straker]: 37:48

okay

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:49

of this conversation the main disagreement that we're

[aaron_straker]: 37:52

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 37:52

going to focus on within the evidence pace space right now and so there's a few studies that we can reference and i've made some notes here um and the main kind of big one that i always think about is the carston and colleagues i believe it was from two thous nineteen and this one is a volume equated study where they took either five sets of no no it was four sets of ten or eight sets of five and they used the exact same weight so the group that did four sets of ten essentially used there n r m and i don't exactly know whether they dropped we each set to maintain ten reps or if they just let the reps fall and it was like around ten reps but they basically did four sets of ten with to failure and then the other group used the same weight their ten r m but they did eight sets of five so you can assume that the first set was at least you know five r r and then the subsequent sets were maybe three or something like that this study doesn't fully take you to the spectrum of like what happens at seven or eight reps from failure but this study did show that the group that trained further from failure had better strength gains across the board which doesn't surprise me strength is a skill going to failure and having slow grinding webs is probably not great for for neural adaptations and then they found that the group that trained to failure heads lightly better hypertrophy than the group that that wasn't training to failure so this is one that the failure proponents or the effective reps proponents will often sit and say look the group that trained to failure clearly had more hypertrophy and no one argues the strength side because that just kind of ubiquitously across the evidence space space we realize now that training first from failure is better for strength gains and so do you have any thoughts on that

[aaron_straker]: 40:00

no the one thing i mean

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:01

oh

[aaron_straker]: 40:02

i say no and then i start talking

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:03

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 40:04

the one thing i will say

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:05

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 40:05

is with studies it's really really hard right especially because there's

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:11

ah

[aaron_straker]: 40:11

the and in them is very complex but if you actually look in if you are like a trained person listening to the episode and reading some of the studies

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:21

m

[aaron_straker]: 40:21

if

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:21

m

[aaron_straker]: 40:21

you look at some of the prescriptions done in them and actually think about it

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:28

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 40:28

you start to question something so there was one that chester who just uhcheschester chester soko

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:36

so go yep

[aaron_straker]: 40:37

who we were just talking about earlier he posted one recently and it said it was comparing i'm going down a slight aside here comparing one minute rest times to a three minute rest time and i'm like reading it the prescription was five sets of ten eighty five per cent of a

[bryan_boorstein]: 40:55

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 40:55

ten max using a leg press and a bench press so like lengthened to mid range overloaded exercise

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:03

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 41:04

it five percent of that five sets of ten one minute rest in between there's no way in fucking hell you can complete that no way

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:12

yeah so did the rebs drop off or did

[aaron_straker]: 41:15

no

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:15

they

[aaron_straker]: 41:15

they said

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:15

lower

[aaron_straker]: 41:15

that

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:15

the

[aaron_straker]: 41:15

was

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:15

weight

[aaron_straker]: 41:15

completed

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:16

each set

[aaron_straker]: 41:16

that's what they said it was completed volume

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:18

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 41:18

was equated between the groups there's no that's not an eighty five percent of a tenet max

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:24

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 41:24

i

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:24

so

[aaron_straker]: 41:24

mean

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:24

you're basically doing like a one or one to two r r and then you're expecting

[aaron_straker]: 41:29

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:29

that that doesn't actually depreciate or deteriorate from there

[aaron_straker]: 41:33

sixty seconds on a leg press

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:36

yeah there's

[aaron_straker]: 41:36

like

[bryan_boorstein]: 41:36

no way

[aaron_straker]: 41:37

so when you look at some of these things like you just have to you just start to question some of the things of like is this volitional failure that that can't really be ten et max so i think it's it's hard because these are the best information we have but by no means is it always perfect and that's like the caveat sometimes

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:00

yeah no that's it's really well said it's just just to put an overriding kind of big

[aaron_straker]: 42:09

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:09

gray cloud on any of these discussions is it issues like that and it's issues of does the population being studied even represent me like does even a recreational mail that's trained with two to three years experience represent somebody with twenty years experience that's close to their genetic potential and then when you see a study like on untrained females and you're like a super trained male you're kind of like i just don't know and like the argument from the from the researchers is always well you're going to see the most dramatic changes and untrained people because they're going from nothing to something but and like i get that like that makes

[aaron_straker]: 42:51

ye

[bryan_boorstein]: 42:51

sense it's just it's just it's not applicable necessarily to those there already have that base of training experience so so always just take it with a green

[aaron_straker]: 43:02

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 43:02

assault as we talk about this stuff but one of the coolest things that i stumbled upon in my search for this topic today was a mass discussion between the four authors of mass gregg eric eric and do sortes and maybe i should just call them all doctors except for for greg because he's not a doctor so anyways basically what they did is the in two thousand twenty they had a discussion within it was a written i like it this way they wrote out their points so they can each have time to kind of think about it and then they would respond and it would have the authors aim and then their point and then then the authors rebuttal to that et cetera et cetera and so the overriding precedent of this discussion was that greg knuckles and and eric trexler tend to feel oh you need to be a bit closer to failure and they reference two to four r i r here as kind of the lower end of the range for hypertrophy and then you have eric helms on and dctrzordos on the other side of the equation basically saying that no you can get hypertrophy at five six seven even eight reps from failure and so they kind of you know sited studies and the specific points of each study that they thought were most relevant to their arguments here and and gregg's take was anything lower than five r i gets a bit if in the research and he reference the martorelli study um that had people training with approximately seven r r and the failure group grew twice as much as a volume matched non failure group and so that a really solid one to lean on if you're looking at that where you're like man seven r i r that's exactly in the realm of argument that zordos and helms take um but there finding that the fail our group grow twice as much and the fact that its volume matched is also a huge feather in the cap of training to failure because oftentimes what you see in these studies is like well failure wins because you know they're both doing four sets but one group is going to failure in one group is leaving five or six or whatever r r well of course not a fair comparison um but then kind of the devil's add argument to even like assuming so so say you had a study where it showed okay where volume equated and then now you have the non failure group growing as much as the failure group then you have the question of okay practically does this make sense for me to have to do even using the carston study example do i want to do eight sets of five when i could do four sets of ten um and so you kind of see similar things like that across a lot of studies what do you think about that

[aaron_straker]: 46:02

so

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:02

m

[aaron_straker]: 46:02

that's kind of like a note that i was actually just just putting down into my wrap up point is like if if time is a consideration for you which for many people it is you can get

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:17

oh

[aaron_straker]: 46:17

potentially

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:18

m

[aaron_straker]: 46:19

as effective of hypertrophy with fewer sets if you take them closer to failure and then you can obviously subtract all the extra minutes of rest periods and stuff of doing like four sets or whatever i mean that's a very practical way to look at some of it for you know someone who's considerate of their time for sure

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:43

one of the really quality arguments that dr helms made here aside from basically

[aaron_straker]: 46:49

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:49

talking about how

[aaron_straker]: 46:50

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 46:51

volume equated changes the parameters of the discussion a bit and the time commitment for potentially the person looking to train non failure one of his kind of caveats to his dance that you can get hyperthrefy at these low r rs or high r r s i guess like further away from failure is that he he likes to say that you need to be at least at at eighty percent of one r m and so the interesting thing of of this statement is that most people at eighty per cent of one r m are going to be plus minus eight et max like i would say for me six to eight reps is going to be pretty standard there's certainly people like females out there that i've seen that could do eighty percent for twelve or fifteen reps so now we're looking at a bit higher of a rep range but i think for most people you're looking at about eight reps when you talk about eighty per cent and so his argument was basically like you could get this hypertrophy further from failure with this volume equated match as long as you're using these heavy weights so therefore the first rep that you do is effective because it's still hard whereas if you're looking at low load training and they actually had some studies in matt that show that you need to be close to failure with low load training so if you're talking about taking a set of like twenty reps twenty five reps thirty reps i don't know maybe even fifteen something like that then seven to eight r might not be enough even if you did tons and tons of volume because the weight isn't just heavy enough initially but to eric's eric's point about eight per cent of one r m being sufficient amount from the first rep this kind of goes into something that i mentioned a few episodes ago where zach from data driven strength was saying you know you could do thirty singles at at seventy five or eighty percent something like that where it's heavy and none of those singles are even close to failure but you're getting thirty singles at eighty per cent so it's the same amount of volume as doing like three sets of four sets of failure at eighty per cent say you go like eight seven seven six or something you get thirty reps so basically you're doing the same amount of reps at eighty per cent one you're doing thirty singles which potentially takes you forty five minutes or something like that and on the other side you're doing four sets that with a two to three minute rest in between takes you twelve minutes or something like that so we have this like opportunity cost of practicality that i think kind of just makes it not worth it like even eric wrote that in his thing as he's like you know if you're going to work at an r p e four this is his quote it's not quote worth it in the grand scheme to do a bunch of sets at p e four as you have to do around twice as many sets compared to being a bit closer to failure so i think that like when you look at this argument on a practical basis that makes the most sense and i think extrapelating that out to that question that i asked in the beginning of the episode of like if it's so easy to get hypertrophy and you can train at eight r r and get hypertrophy then why do we see these people in the gym spending their wheels and making no progress over years and years and year and it's because they're not doing thirty sets or twenty sets or however many sets they're goin to have to do if they're going to train at these further proximities from failure they're basically being like okay the prescription on the program is or sets of eight to twelve so i'm going to do four sets of eight to twelve but they're just using the weigh where they probably could do twenty raps and they're just stopping at eight to twelve and that just is going to be ineffective

[aaron_straker]: 50:35

yeah i think you covered that like really really well and

[bryan_boorstein]: 50:38

m

[aaron_straker]: 50:38

covered like the different points but then how as much as i kind of hate to say it like that when you you did a really really good job of presenting how what they're saying like isn't that we're not at polar opposites which is what it makes it sound like so with that with r eric helm about that you can potentially even get you could get hypertrophy i think maybe using some nomenclature there is important because how much is it maximizing i think those are things i'm not leading to one way or another but when people speak about these things words are important is what i'm getting at but add an

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:17

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 51:17

eighty percent and let's say eighty percent of a one r m we're prob we're talking about more compound type stuff

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:24

oh

[aaron_straker]: 51:25

some of the take aways that i

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:26

oh

[aaron_straker]: 51:26

guess we can start getting to now is for your compounds like a barbel back squat a r d l

[bryan_boorstein]: 51:34

m

[aaron_straker]: 51:35

overhead press dead lift probably don't want to take those to a n r r really because i mean the risk of injury goes up there the fatigue per set performed goes up dramatically and for things like that i think it generally would make sense to stop a little bit shyer but then you're not generally not doing dead lifts for sets of fifteen or twenty or something like that so the what sounds like the differences and opinions get a little bit closer once we start bringing into specific exercises and those sorts of things so i think kind of now brian if you're up for it we can start pivoting to some of those of like transitioning

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:21

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 52:21

from okay we have a lot of these differing i don't want to cal them opinions takes on ther research interpretations of the research and now we can kind of spin into some like practical take aways potential cis is a good word to use i guess

[bryan_boorstein]: 52:38

yeah no i think that that's a really really good point and i'm glad that that you brought that up just now because compound movements especially like big full body compounds that extend at three joints like this makes a huge difference so so like a dead lift in a squat you're extending at the knees ankles and hips all at the same time and so one argument that i always see from the non failure training proponents is like okay say you even took a dead lift or a squat to failure yah what muscle is failing and and when you actually think about that and you're like okay the failing muscle is probably something along your midline like your your low back and your rectors are going to be the muscles are failing so then how far from failure are your quads your hamstrings your gluts and the other muscles that you're actually trying to target by doing this movement and so i think when you start thinking about it that way it just it makes almost no sense to take those movements to failure because no one wants to have their low back vail that is literally like like you you're just going to cause so much systemic fatigue through your spinal column um and not actually stimulate the muscles that you're trying to stimulate and so if you're even at failure then you could just throw out there that maybe your quads are at four r r and your gluts are at six r r something along those lines right so not going to failure could keep your low back significantly fresh or like every rap that you get closer to failure is going to tax your low back that much more but the stimulus to your quads and gluts may not diminish that much at all like going from what would be a four r for your quads to like five or six r i r protects your low back significantly but doesn't change the stimulus to your quads all that much and then anecdotally we've had centuries at least a century of experience of people training with bar bells doing squats and dead lifts and growing their body so clearly we know that the quads and the gluts and these other muscles that we're trying to target with the squads and the dead lifts will grow under the conditions of a compound movement that isn't taken to failure

[aaron_straker]: 55:07

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:07

um whereas looking at something like like to your point is something extending at two joints then becomes a little bit less fatiguing and a little bit more specific so if you look at something like a like a bench press where you're extending at two joints elbows and shoulders than then that is significantly less fatiguing than than the squat in the dead lift with you extending at three

[aaron_straker]: 55:31

ah

[bryan_boorstein]: 55:31

joints and you look at like an r d l which extends at two joints is also going to be less fatiguing than a dead lift extending at three joints and then you can go into what would be considered is tion movements and now because the stimulus is so localized that it would make a lot more sense for you to actually take that target muscle within the realms of failure because you don't have to worry about the fatigue cost system ically of the low back and and things like that

[aaron_straker]: 56:05

yeah i mean you crushed that one there i think that was such a such a really good way too present the information the one i'll kind of just kind of fill some gaps of things that

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:17

oh

[aaron_straker]: 56:17

i was thinking as you were talking generally the size

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:20

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:20

of the muscle is also something to take into consideration your larger muscles that across more area can generally be more fat gang right so like taking a set of quads to

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:33

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 56:33

failure is going to be orders of magnitude more fatiguing than taking a rear dealt exercise to failure sort of thing so think in terms of the fatigue and where your recovery capacity is

[bryan_boorstein]: 56:48

oh

[aaron_straker]: 56:48

in your current nutritional periodization in your current phase of life can all really really come into play if you are in a caloric surplus you are now into the early stages of advance late intermediate and you're just really enjoying training and you're trying to maximize the gains that you're making yeah i would say take a lot of shouldn't say a lot take a majority of your sets like very close to failure and then on certain things like yeah bring in some intensity modifiers drop sets lengthen partials and see what your recovery it is right one of the beauties is like you can kind of push up against that upper threshold and find it if i were to make a blanketed statement which i generally try not to do but this in this case i feel pretty decent about it if you were to go in any gym and you just stood in the corner and watched people people aren't really training too hard there's not a lot of people taking taking things close to failure and i would bet if you looked at the people who had pretty impressive physiques in the gym they are early training pretty hard this is a slippery slope one because there's going to be people in your gym that are on gear who can really pretty much go in there and throw sit around and have fun and they're going to grow right so that could be misleading but then also the fallacy of an argument that gets made a lot is like well look what ronny coldman did j cutler did in these things an probably not best to

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:20

ah

[aaron_straker]: 58:20

use genetic fenoms as a basis for what ninety nine percent

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:24

oh

[aaron_straker]: 58:24

of the population should do it's also

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:26

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 58:27

probably not a good dea to extrapolate points from people who are using every amount of gear disposable to them because they are professional body builders to a sub set of population ninety nine percent which who will never use starts so i think if you really wanted to to kind of

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:46

oh

[aaron_straker]: 58:46

use that argument take a look at some of your top natural body building competitors right

[bryan_boorstein]: 58:51

hm

[aaron_straker]: 58:52

like your alberto nunez i'm going to now blank on all the names of people but like i would start there and go down that list brian you can probably jump in and help me out there but i think

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:04

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:04

that's something that's really really good because there are some people have like credibly impressive physiques you know and it's something that like as i go down the rabbit hole and just finding more people on instagram and stuff i'm like why are people not talking about this dude like he has he has this incredible physique but he's got seven thousand instagram followers you know what i mean and he's his professional

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:23

yeah yeah

[aaron_straker]: 59:24

natural

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:25

oh

[aaron_straker]: 59:25

body builder who has an incredible physique but no one knows about him sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:31

yeah the there's a lot of natural body builders out there that don't train in what i think would be considered evidence based practice although evidence as practice is now extremely broad

[aaron_straker]: 59:44

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 59:44

with the idea that you can just do more volume further from failure type thing but but like a perfect example i'm thinking about right now is this guy kendall on an instagram i think he has you know twelve thirteen thousand followers kind of like what you said coach kendall i think is his name but he's won like a w n b f world championship two times and he trains with a super brow split like really far from failure he does you know twenty

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:08

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:08

to thirty sets per body part he has a chess day and a back day and whatever and and he basically made a post the other day talking about how he never trains to failure and you watch his training

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:18

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:18

videos and like you can tell he's training hard and

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:20

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:20

he's targeting his muscles and in stuff but but he is further from failure um and then on the other side of the spectrum you have is in the u k and like the u k thing is its own beast like a j morris

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:33

exactly

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:34

and those guys because they are heavy on dead lifts like conventional dead lift big into conventional dead lifts um they move a lot of weight and they put a lot of importance on training to failure no matter the movement we're going to failure it can be a dead lift it can be a hack

[aaron_straker]: 1:00:51

m

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:00:51

squad or back sat or whatever it is and we're going to failure we're doing rest pause sets and stuff like that and they train pretty consistently with lower volumes because of this

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:02

yah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:02

approach which is literally the con as to what this coach kendall guy or dug miller are doing so again many ways to skin the cat but when you one thing i was thinking about when you talked about like looking at the way people train and then questioning it is we only know

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:22

oh

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:23

the results they got by

[aaron_straker]: 1:01:24

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:01:24

training the way that they trained we don't know what would happen to these genetic freaks if they trained slightly differently so the argument of like well arnold did it so it must be cool or whatever it's like well could rnold have had better results if he did this instead and that's obviously something never know because he's an n of one and then the other argument that i'll say is like the longevity piece and maybe some people don't care about longevity at this point like a j morris is in his early twenties a lot of these top body builders that we're talking about coach kendall i think also in his early twenties yeah they are resilient they recover from everything and so they're probably not super concerned with the potentially degenerative pieces of taking dead liftin it's the failure over time um which may be something that ten years from now they change their messaging and they're like hey i mean my mid thirties now like can't be taking dead lift to failure any more so it is all relative to the period of time that you are in your training journey as well and i think that that's an important piece but that's kind of i guess deviating a bit from this conversation a little bit

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:40

ever so slightly but i think it's valid and here is why as you progress along your training trajectory and you become more advanced the amount of fatigue that you can

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:02:52

oh yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:02:53

impose in the training session increases as your ability to produce force because you're getting stronger and becoming

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:02

hm m

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:03

let's say more more finally in tune with how to use your muscles i guess i should say um and that's an important consideration as well because if you're late stage beginner early stage intermediate like your training to failure or very close like a one or two shy you're not going to be able to create as much fatigue because you're not that like proficient ped ing force like you would be

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:03:31

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:03:32

you do the same thing you've been doing for like another seven or eight years down the line so like taking the hack squad is such a great example i'm even going to back up i have a client who's a very high quality power lifting client and we are moving into a fat loss phase and he's like i just i just had this great total i'm going to step away from power lifting for a little bit i'm gonna just follow hypertrophy training and i want to get really lean right that's what he told me and we were like deciding which exercises he's going to keep in and the bar bell back squad is one he's going to keep in i'm going to have to communicate with him regularly on modulating how intensely he pushes that back squat because he's so strong at it in the amount of fatigue he can create with that exercise where it might be like

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:17

hm

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:18

you you're gonna you're going to end up you're going to end up upside down in your fatigue to stimulus if we push the back squat really really hard as opposed to taking it to like a five r r

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:30

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:30

then adding more volume

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:31

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:31

of a leg leg press or a leg extension or something

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:34

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:34

like that so that's like another wrinkle in the equation for sure

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:40

yeah and then i'm going to just deviate this conversation a little bit further away from the main point and just say that like a really good argument that that i like is you know if you take a really strong power lifter potential your client because this dude squatted like six hundred pounds or something right are we talking about the same guy

[aaron_straker]: 1:04:56

i want t say it was like five seventy four

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:04:59

sucking stupid whatever

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:00

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:00

it

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:00

very

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:00

is

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:01

high

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:01

it's an

[aaron_straker]: 1:05:01

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:05:01

absurd amount of weight so so if you talk to someone who's a really strong power lifter and you're like all right we're going to get your legs bigger bro i think we're going to have to increase your at like that's kind of like the antithesis of the actual approach that you would take right like because because for us normal people it's like yeah if you get stronger that would correlate to increased muscle mass but there's certainly a point in everyone's journey where it's like man getting that power lifter to squat six ten instead of five seventy four like i just don't know that that's going to increase his thigh size all that much you know whereas taking him down and doing these more specific acute exercises that re going to target the muscles a little bit more accurately are probably going to be more effective and actually increasing this person's thigh mass so that would be kind of one off there tough example there of

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:02

but it's relevant

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:02

yeah yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:04

so

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:05

so i'll go ahead

[aaron_straker]: 1:06:06

i was going to say do you want to get to kind of our wrap up take away points now or

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:06:10

yeah i was just going to say i'm going to let you wrap this up here in one second and i'm going to wrap up with one thought from me as well there was a systematic review with a meta analysis done on training to lure verse non failure training and what they basically found was that training to failure was better when volume is not equated and when volume was equated there a very little there was no significant difference observed it was slightly leaning towards the failure group but but not enough to be considered significant within the like point of i've range or whatever um so it kind of just you know the meta analysis validates the points that we were making that practically you could equal the hypertrophy by matching volume with a non failure group to a failure group but practically does that make sense in the confines of how you would want to program for yourself for your clients and the amount of time commitment and number of sets that you would have to do to facilitate that

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:18

very great points there so i mean

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:19

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:19

kind of to play under the back of that take time into account if you really do not have that much time to train and you want to maximize the amount of parts and things you can hit fewer sets taking closer to failure is a very very viable approach there are certain compound movements that we would recommend not taking to an are of death like your barbel

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:07:43

yeah

[aaron_straker]: 1:07:43

back squat dead lift rd maybe even like an overhead press i know personally myself i have i wouldn't say injured in terms of like i've like tweaked muscles multiple multiple times pushing overhead press too close to failure um and generally like you're generally using that for

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:00

oh

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:00

a strength adaptation anyway and what we know about strength is generally further away from failure is better this will begin to matter more the further along you get in your training career as your margins for success of continue to hypertrophy become smaller so if you're very green still you just need to go in and be consistent and eat quality food adequate and just put some effort in things um will work and then the last kind of point that i want to make and granted this is purely mostly a personal preference so i don't definitely want to speak for brian on this one but what i do want to close it out is putting forth more effort rarely works out to be less beneficial in almost any aspect of your life if you look at other sports right think about like a cob briant esk mentality

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:08:57

m

[aaron_straker]: 1:08:57

doing less sometimes but i would say not as much as the majority generally works out is in your favor as opposed

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:05

ah

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:05

to doing more training harder or especially finding what your thresholds might be cause if you've never trained to failure you don't really know where it is and generally you find that it's much further like deep into that effort zone than you had originally thought

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:27

no i like that point and i'll also say that if you're using compound movements and the more compound it is the more likely that compensations are going to occur because your body is put into positions where it can use multiple joints to do the task so say you're doing like a dead lift for for your gluts or your ham strings or whatever you can easily

[aaron_straker]: 1:09:52

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]: 1:09:52

use more quad or you can use more low back or a number of different conversations the same thing when you're back squatting like you know if you're targeting your quads well it would be really easy to be like well my quads fail but i still have four or i've more reps in me if i just kind of very gradually let my gluts and low back take a little bit more of this load off of my quads for me and so where failure is can be very ambiguous so it would be i guess another another feather in the cap of staying further from failure on these big compound movements whereas when you're doing the isolation movements you can be more confident that the muscle you're trying to fatigue is the one fatigue in and so so yeah i think that's a good way of wrapping it up

[aaron_straker]: 1:10:35

perfect as always guys thank you for listening to eat train prosper brian and i will talk to you next week