Eat Train Prosper

Arguments For & Against Biomechanics 2 | ETP#91

Aaron Straker | Bryan Boorstein

Today on the podcast we are discussing arguments both FOR and AGAINST placing an emphasis on biomechanics in your training and programming. There are a lot of discussions surrounding biomechanics as it is a super hot topic right now. We found that many of the discussions were one-sided and didn’t quite portray both sides of the arguments equally. So that is exactly what we decided to try and do today for you. 


Keynotes from today's episode:

Biomechanics/Anti-Biomechanics
Biomechanics is the study of the structure, function, and motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems, at any level from whole organisms to organs, cells, and cell organelles, using the methods of mechanics. Biomechanics is a branch of biophysics.

Arguments against biomechanics:

  • People have been getting yoked for decades with free weights 
  • If it worked for Arnold…
  • Barbell basics 
  • Just work hard (feels like biomechanics sort of goes against the way it was “meant to be” or whatever nonsense, of just smashing weight)
  • Pull-ups for back 
  • Biomechanic-optimized movements aren’t as “subjectively taxing”
  • You need to do much fewer movements if you pick the big hitters. Isolating more stuff means you have to do more movements 

Arguments for biomechanics:

  • Everything is biomechanics. Even if you try to optimize a barbell movement 
  • Long muscle lengths = need to find where it is most lengthened 
  • Minimizing joint issues / nonexistent since “switching”
  • Learning/understanding why certain movements produce an incredible stimulus and others don’t
  • Increasing tension on the desired tissues
  • How do you know people wouldn’t have been more jacked with better movements?
  • Improved program design. Less redundancy, better volume distribution.


Thanks for listening! 

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[aaron_straker]:

oh what's up guys happy tuesday welcome back to another episode of eat train prosper today is a sole episode with brian and myself and we are going to talk about some

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

of the arguments for and against the bio mechanics i don't want to say movement but emphasis is a really good term to use emphasis that has been placed on a lot of exercise selection most importantly performance that has been floating around the last couple of years but is really kind of from my standpoint come ahead here in twenty twenty definitely on places like instagram and tiktok we're just going to give our perspectives on some of the arguments for and some of the arguments against given the experiences and money that we have spent ourselves on learning some of it be or we get into that as always

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

brian is going to kick us off with some updates what is going on

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah man you said two thousand twenty so i would say that you probably meant two thousand twenty two but but also maybe it was like a froidian slip because two thousand twenty is kind of when it all started where i think the bio mechanic stuff really began to become more prominent as and one kind of moved into the spot light and stuff like that so

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

um so yeah probably just a bit of a froidiand slipped there but

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

regarding

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

my up dates i was telling you off air i just had like an awful night of sleep last night my wife got back from a four day business trip she's sick my kid woke up in the middle of the night with with a bad dream and i think i was probably up every hour between nine thirty and four thirty when i finally got up out of bed and started preparing for this podcast so took some caffeine and i'm here but one interesting thing about it kind of relates to sleep and body weight and just you know general well being that i think it's interesting or i don't know exactly that i think you're going to have like an opinion on it that i'm not necessarily looking for feedback i just think it's kind of interesting that so we were on dave mcconiy's podcast like last week weekend and we we noted that our body weight was the exact same at one ninety six point two or whatever it was at that point a week ago and then for like the next four or five days i just ate like i just kept eating and eating and eating and my weight went up half a pound to three quarters of a pound every day for a full four or five days and eventually it peaked a few days ago at one ninety nine point six and then that night of one and nine point six i ate just an incredibly massive amount of food like it was inappropriate and and then i woke up the next morning and my body weight had dropped two and a half pounds so i had gone from one ninety nine point six down to one ninety seven flat and i was kind of like man that is so wild because there must be a massive delayed effect happening here where a lot of that cruel of body weight that just kept going going going going it may have been out pacing what my actual weight was so despite the fact that i then put down five thousand calories my body weight actually drops two and a half pounds the next day and it's been dropping every day since then so now as of this morning i'm back down to one ninety five point zero so it just like decided to go up five pounds and then down five pounds which was just like just wild to me how how that happens and so i also obviously as you guys know take my h r v and my heart rate and all that stuff each morning and on one of the days where i just completely overfed myself i ended up sleeping the best that i've slept in in a long time so the complete contrast to the way i slept last night which was just well i slept basically woke up once woke up the next morning feeling great and my h r v was like superduper high and my resting heart weight was forty one and so it's the resting heart rate that i most interested in because it's been since i've been like when i was dieting and in the low one eighties body weight heart rate was always in like the high thirties or low forties when i would wake up in the morning but since i've been adding body weight not surprisingly my morning heart rate has been forty eight forty nine ish range like higher as you would expect right so then for me to eat all that ridiculous amount of food and then wake up in the morning at the heaviest body weight i've been in two or three years and have this complete calm feeling and i could feel it in breathing and then to see a heart rate of forty one was just super surprising to me and kind of adds a level of confusion because i thought that i had this thing figured out like hey higher body weights higher resting heart rate lower body weights lower resting heart rate um all these things so anyway i don't know exactly you have any thoughts on that but i just thought that was all super interesting

[aaron_straker]:

yeah i do have thoughts of course

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

the first thing i

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

will say is with the resting heart rate it's something that i will

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

use with clients when we are trying to figure out because like sometimes with clients and you know this is really helpful for other coaches out there listening re goin to get a client that comes to you and they're like you know a mail let's say five foot ten you know roughly r size a hundred and eighty five pounds he's like well twenty three hundred is my maintenance calories and like this short end of it is like no the fuck it's not you know what i mean and

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

one of the things that i will use is like a resting heart rate and a sometimes often a basal body temperature in the morning and we monitor those to see with her because if they're coming in and like the low forties high like mid forties even high forties and it's someone who doesn't really do much cardioascular stuff like that's almost a dead give away that you are an you know actually in a calory

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

deficit because you that that is an adaptation right same thing with me like when i'm dieting in the mornings my heart rate will be in the forty six is forty seven forty and now that i'm not dieting and i'm eating more i'm in the mid fifties you know sometimes high fifties sort of thing like that is a very very cut and dry sort of thing there y're not cut and dry but a very helpful indicator that is not directly related to like tracking your food you know et cetera et cetera um and then with what you said about like you know feeding up and just being super hungry and your weight climbing i don't think it's a coincidence i think it's probably related to something else you could have been sick you know your body could have been fighting and you could have been having like levated immune response um and then that last night where everything you know calmed down and you dropped the weight you could have been dropping the inflammation related to that and that's why you slept so good there it's a lot more than calories in calories out in acute

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

standpoint you know over times weeks months calories in calories out works itself out because very infrequently are we like sick for

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

a week at a time two weeks at a time sort of thing but acute shifts in acute rapid increases and decreases and hunger are generally other as related to other pets of your biology

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah i don't think i was even hungry i was just eating out of pleasure it was

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

like i i just saw the food i cooked

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

a batch of brownies and it just happened so um so yeah i don't know it's just weird man because like at a hundred ninety nine pounds my my heart rate is consistently forty eight forty nine every morning and so for me to then eat all this incredible amount of food basically peak my body weight at the highest it's been and see the heart rate drop eight or nine beats per minute in the morning was just just very confusing for me but you know i just saw one of those things it's data and you keep an eye on it and see what happens

[aaron_straker]:

hm

[bryan_boorstein]:

to it in the few your so

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

other quick updates here i have

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

my six week p r p visit with the doctor today to basically assess how it's been how it's going if it's healing proper all that stuff six weeks is kind of the point where i'm supposed to be basically back to where i was before getting p r p or even slightly improved and i would say that i cannot confidently say that i'm better than where i was before p r p at this point i think it's pretty close um so i don't know if it's going to continue to improve and maybe i should expect improvement over the next like six weeks as well or if that hike i did on day four that i talked about a number of weeks ago did in fact have like a detrimental effect on facilitating a productive p r p response so i'm interested to talk to the doctor about that the good news is right now i can lift all of the weights that i lifted prior the same range of motion that i could do prior the thing that's frustrating to me is the palio chair as we call it you know where you go and you sit in the bottom of a squat and you just kind of hang out down there that's always been something that i've been very proud of that i can just do for like five minutes at a time with no issue and for years and years i made this claim of like hey if you just do it two minutes every day for the rest of your life then you'll always be able to do it because it's not likeyou're gonna up at seventy and not be able to do it and you could do it at sixty nine you know you just have to continue to do it daily unfortunately that position at the very bottom where the body is just kind of relaxed in the bottom of a squat chair it doesn't feel great it really tugs on the inside of my knee pretty bad and yeah i'm goin to ask the doctor about that because i certainly would like to get back to doing that every day and continue this idea of doing it into my seventies and eighties and beyond so we will have to see what happens with that let's jump over to you i got two more quick up dates but let's let's mix it up here what you got going on m you're on mute bro

[aaron_straker]:

thank you

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

first big one was that i travelled this weekend to ohio for a little bit of work a little bit of pleasure sort of thing but what was really cool is it reached out to two people adam net being one who's another really really awesome coach in the space

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

side as we will have him on a train prosper in two weeks and he was a little bit north of dayton where i were my first stop was so run out to him and lifted in his lift lab which is a super super

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

sick gara jim built out he had has going on there and that was just awesome it was someone that i'd never met before right just we you know correspondent on instagram about different things a little bit and one thing that really really cool is he is exactly how i anticipated he would be just from things i see that he puts out on you know instagram are a few kind of correspondents and it was really cool just

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

like show up in pretty much meet a stranger and it just be like a very seamless

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

awesome you know like two hours

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

we spent hanging out just talking and lifting weights so that was a lot of fun and then on saturday i reached out to another coach that i from instagram and we trained at his gym in in cincinnati and that was a lot of fun so i was just really really excited that just through the coaching network in an instagram being able to like meet up with people in real life lift some ways talk business talk coaching

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

and just really really enjoy uh you know a lift together wit

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

you know brian you and i talk about we've been training

[bryan_boorstein]:

yah

[aaron_straker]:

you know by ourselves for years and years

[bryan_boorstein]:

h

[aaron_straker]:

now so it's always cool when you get to lift with other people especially other coaches in the industry and talk business a little bit talk coaching it's always a lot of fun so shout out to

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

both of them i really really enjoyed the time there

[bryan_boorstein]:

i'm super envious that you got to do that i mean just looking at adam's gym on instagram if you guys don't follow him it's a adam net and t h and h his gym is insane like i mean he literally took all of best prime equipment and atlantis equipment and hammer strength and basically just combined it into a garage and i don't even know how he fits all of it he must have like the

[aaron_straker]:

yea

[bryan_boorstein]:

largest garage in the world

[aaron_straker]:

it is bigger than a normal two car garage it was like a little bit taller and then maybe like an extra like three or four feet wider than would be like a

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

traditional two car garage

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah i mean he's got plenty of space like i see him even doing dead lifts in there and stuff and like

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

it doesn't even look like the bar bell is getting close to anything

[aaron_straker]:

no plenty it's really cool and then another really quick aside to for some reason i had thought that like the atlantis pendulum was like the original pendulum that came out like a few years ago m or that's at least when i first started seeing it but then when we were in this in the old gym in cincinnati the second gym data had there was an old pendulum this thing had to be at least fifteen years old but there was like no branding on it or anything so i couldn't see who built it but i mean it was like beat up some of the joints were like not rusted but you could tell like there's been a lot of wear and tear on it's definitely not i mean it looked like older than your traditional like um um boy hammer strength you

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

know equipment that's in every single gym

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

across you know the united states i would feel very confident saying it's at least fifteen

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

years old maybe twenty

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

so i was like oh wow that's been

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

around a lot longer than i thought

[bryan_boorstein]:

was it watson do you think have you used

[aaron_straker]:

no

[bryan_boorstein]:

the watson

[aaron_straker]:

i've

[bryan_boorstein]:

one

[aaron_straker]:

used to watts and it's definitely not watson definitely not

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay

[aaron_straker]:

the watson one

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay

[aaron_straker]:

it had a counterbalance that you could

[bryan_boorstein]:

interesting

[aaron_straker]:

add your own weight on to how yours is

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

interesting very

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool well that's sweet i mean i guess

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

the technology has been around a little longer than we thought you know

[aaron_straker]:

definitely oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool anything else

[aaron_straker]:

yeah and then i kind of the last one is i have been enjoying being like a little bit looser with my gaining structure and just having a little bit more like faith in my intuition now before i you know go into that that being said my intuition has been formatted from meticulously tracking my food for the last five plus years so i don't want that to be taken out context but under the assumption that like one there's not like a massive amount of gains that i'm going to be able to be making at this point i just have to make sure that like i'm training you know really really hard and keeping the needle kind of moving forward

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

it's all going kind of work out a little bit i have been a little bit more flexible in that um and the thing that's really cool there but also at the same time like kind of frustrating a little bit is when you're always super super miticulous with your food selection it does get kind of like difficult for weight just go on because you your metabolism in biology will resist it to a degree um and it has been cool just you know like all the time invested in foods election in really being you know health first and health prioritized your body does kind of have your back after you spend the months and months and years i guess conditioning it with those

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

you know food selection choices

[bryan_boorstein]:

do you have any interest in taking like the

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

bird approach to

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

dieting and just trying to do it without tracking or

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

weighing anything now

[aaron_straker]:

no way no way

[bryan_boorstein]:

i

[aaron_straker]:

i

[bryan_boorstein]:

kind

[aaron_straker]:

just

[bryan_boorstein]:

of do kind of do i think it would be a really cool personal challenge

[aaron_straker]:

yeah from that side of it i could see it you know but i just the not knowing would drive me bankers you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

i mean

[aaron_straker]:

like

[bryan_boorstein]:

i

[aaron_straker]:

that

[bryan_boorstein]:

guess you just use subjective pictures and then the data from the scale you know because he weighs himself every day and then he takes

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

pictures every day and i think

[aaron_straker]:

hm

[bryan_boorstein]:

his acute trained eye is able to use those as the data points

[aaron_straker]:

yeah one thing that

[bryan_boorstein]:

a

[aaron_straker]:

i will say that i would i feel very confidencing is it is

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

a downside of me tracking my food for so long as i have lost connection to like reading my hunger and satiety signals well unless i'm like starving starving or grossly full i kind of just feel like this indifference in the middle sort of thing so that would be really really hard to tell because even when i'm dieting like

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

there's been times like this summer where i could have staight up not had my last meal and been like perfectly fine m not really that

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

hungry but i'm like well i'm only at twenty four hundred calories on the day like i got another four hundred to go like i'm not just going to not eat them but i could have been fine

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

without it

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah interesting i think

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

that so last last diet i did last spring i did the first four or five weeks without any sort of tracking or recording of anything um and then i hit a point where i was like okay i'm not able to do this so i think it would be it would be cool for me each year that i diet to try and

[aaron_straker]:

ye

[bryan_boorstein]:

add like a week or two on to that for i begin tracking and then maybe in a couple of years i'm able to do the whole like twelve to fourteen weeks and get to my goal potentially without having to track out anyway just kind of one of those like long term things that i think would be kind of cool to do eventually

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

um anyways

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

real quick final updates for me week three now of the left arm experiment and

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

i skipped biceps the other day because i just didn't have time

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

on sunday so yesterday

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i had to do triceps and biceps at the end of my of my push day and that was such like that was even more of an odd feeling like it's odd enough to just do one either triceps or biceps on only my left arm but then to have this like alternating sequence of tricepbicept tricept bicepttricep bicep type thing my whole left side of my body was just like this pumped up swollen thing and then my right side just felt you know completely normal and chill so that was that was a really odd feeling and i actually like okay so the other thing that i'm thinking about with this ex men is that i've had this kind of low level pervasive tightness along i guess it kind of runs along my seratis potentially into my lads and underneath my shoulder blade and it's just kind of been there for three years out at like a point five out of ten annoyance but it is like something that i notice and so i'm like grinding it out i'll put like a cross ball in there like i'll find like the edge of a counter and kind of like jam my back in it type thing and so it is a little bit unfortunate that i'm training only my left arm and that it's also my left side that has this tightness because after i do this left arm training each time i feel like that tightness is a little bit exist baited for a little a little while afterwards and so i'm just going to keep an eye on that i don't plan on stopping the experiment or anything like that like the tightness isn't getting worse just something that i think is interesting note m so yeah there's that and then the final update here is that my personal program bees program is finishing up microcychle five right now and i am approaching that point of psychological fatigue as usually happens around this point so my intention is to do micropychle six basically push my limit on every and then do one of my kind of de load flush the fatigue methods and as we've discussed on here i'm not a huge fan of going through the motions for a week and just doing like low effort typical de load style so you know probably take a frequency de load some sort of small reset of sorts change out a few movements i like the phrase flow week which is a week where you just do things at lower for it's not officially a deload it's just kind of hey trying new movements figuring out positions and set ups and and stuff like that and then you can kind of have fun in the gym so it's not just going in and going through the motions it actually has a per sum so that tends to work with my psyche a little bit and so yeah we have one more micropcychle to go it is slightly misleading when i say that i'm only that i'm doing sick micro cycles before de load because each microcycle is nine to ten days long so it's not like a typical one week microcycle like most people do so when i finished six microcycles were looking at almost two months of time before kind of flushing fatigue and taking a de load soup a lot of times when people ask me about this there they're surprised how much i go to failure how i go beyond failure how i do these lengthened only sets and all this stuff but what they don't always realize is that i don't do anything that's even remotely challenging in the first like two or three weeks of each ummessocycle so like when you're starting a lateral rays at two or three r i r and you're starting a pendulum schule at like five r r and you're barely increasing that week to week like nothing actually challenging happens until week three so it's really just kind of building momentum in the beginning which which i think is ran like a lot of people i think jumping way too quickly and heavily into their micro and messocycles and i think most people would be benefited long term more by having some maybe slower build up weeks before into the really hard stuff

[aaron_straker]:

just a quick question there for you what benefits would you say or what what do you think that people would

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

have by doing that

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah i mean so when i was younger beginning to train early on that was always the kind of pervasive message from from the people i was learning from and so i think there's there's a ton of kind of tangible and intangible benefits but one is getting a grasp on how quickly fatigue is accumulating um so if you just were to jump right into like

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

the hardest heaviest sets you can do in

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

week one i think you would have a misleading representation of the stimulus to fatigue for each movement second i think that it is

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

really easy to get stuck and not

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

progress if you don't give your body

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

a little bit of lower effort time to kind of grease the grove so to speak with the movements like find your groove and make sure that that you're creating an ability to add reps or weight week to week which increases your body's response but also increases your confidence in your ability to increase

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

so i think there's that aspect and then there's the aspect

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

of just doing a longer messocycle so like if i were to jump into the hardest heaviest stuff immediately i might make it three or four weeks before i would need to de load again and in this way you we know that science has shown in so many different ways that you can get gains further from failure than we think so it kind of why not take advantage of that like why not get two or three weeks kind of early gains that set you up for success before you begin kind of pushing yourself to the brink on things

[aaron_straker]:

yeah i just thought it would be a really good edition

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

for you to add that for the listeners

[bryan_boorstein]:

i appreciate that that's awesome do you have anything else to aid

[aaron_straker]:

let's jump into

[bryan_boorstein]:

all right

[aaron_straker]:

it

[bryan_boorstein]:

um

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

so this is like a super polarizing topic the reason that i think we wanted to

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

talk about this

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

is i have been seeing a lot

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

of anti bio mechanics rhetoric um across instagram and youtube and stuff like that and i can relate to some of the anti bio mechanics rhetoric and i think that a lot of that comes from the fact that some of these bio mechanics people are like purposefully trying to be polarizing it maybe is like a way of increasing engagement in their content

[aaron_straker]:

ah oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

but when you say things like

[aaron_straker]:

ye

[bryan_boorstein]:

this is not late or uh you know all you need for quads is pendulum and leg extension like when you make really polarizing statements like that it's go ing to piss a bunch of people off and so you have people like paul carter that have really swung around a lot like he used to be one of those super polarizing bio mechanics people that he was the first one that he came out with the wide grip pull down is not lets you know and like very very polarizing statements now he's more like hey the lads act in the frontal plane the lads also act in the sagitalplane they do at shin and they do shoulder extension and like shoulder depression like all these different things and so um m if you want to avoid the anti bio mechanics people coming down hard on you then i think it's really important that you take account of the way that you relay your message to people

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

along the way what do you think about that

[aaron_straker]:

yeah i think it's i mean we're talking about it in the form of you know bio mechanics and antibiomechanics but i think it's it's like a micro representation of a larger thing if you're going to make if you're a person that makes a lot of absolute type statements

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

be prepared for push back on a lot of the statements that you make like one of my big prevailing goals

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

i would say with the podcast in my messaging is to try and not me absolute statements because in

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

many many cases there is some context that you are not considering that your absolute statement falls apart

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah for sure um so i think when when we just kind of look at some of the different arguments against bio mechanics there's a few of them that all kind of basically mean the same thing but are kind of said differently and so like it all kind of boils down to hey people have been getting yoked for decades with just free weights so what's like the first thing when when you hear that like what is your kind of response to that

[aaron_straker]:

it's true you know it is true people have been getting super jacked for decades with three weights with that i think it is a valid statement right and i wouldn't use that as a you know a jumping off point to say but you know bio mechanics does this i think that is a very valid standpoint i mean that's that's that's the end of it i think it's a valid argument because people

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

have

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

been there are things that you know like in some of our points for the listener out there are interrelated so i don't want to like use the point here we will have like not a rebuttal but an argument for that addresses

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

my potential issue with this argument but i think it's valid because people have

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

been you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

if you like we've all seen that dude who's you know like when we were younger i feel like not to not to be

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

thought to be like dad's used to be more jacked back then sort of thing but i remember seeing you know when i was growing up in high school and stuff like that that dude in his forties who was like a blue collar dude who just had like a bar bell in a squat rack in his garage and was like you know six foot two fifty probably like twenty per cent twenty two per cent body fat but pretty fucking jacked and all he did was like overhead press row squats you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

bench press sort of thing so it is valid

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

some degree

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah you know the bar bell is really like the first real piece of equipment that was built manufactured for the purpose of actually lifting it so it's not it's not like this

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

innovative piece of science that is built to give you the best results possible or whatever it's literally just a straight bar that you add ship to so i mean it's not i laugh about it because like technologically we are so far beyond the bar bell um it just is this archaic piece of of metal that yeah it works if you want to just pick it up and put it down and put your body in different positions so that you can get really strong and add muscle yeah a bar bell works but that on't think anybody back in like the nineteen hundreds or whenever that was created would have chosen the bar bell over something else should they have had the selection of things to use that we have today and so a lot of that argument of it's like got to stick to the

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

bar bell basics you know like the dead lift squat and bench and all that like that

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

comes out of power lifting for sure but it also comes out of kind of this

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

emotional attach maybe to like the way things were um and it's interesting ease it's not just old people in their like fifty sixty seventies that are like barbel it's got to be the bar bell like you have a lot of that from these new younger people coming in and that doesn't actually surprise me because i found my roots in the late nineties in a group of people on the internet that were touting hit high intensity training not high intensity interval training

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

so this is methodology for lifting weights it was basically the idea of warming up and taking one set to absolute failure on big barbel basic movements it was kind of not spear headed by but one the big proponents of it was a guy named dr ken lester l e i s t n e r and just because i was intrigued about it and you know wanted to have some of that nostalgia of my early days so a couple months ago i got on youtubenand just typed in dr ken lisner

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

training and just wanted to kind of see like what this dude was dog that i was so infatuated with twenty years ago when i first started and there's an hour long video of going through like an entire work out of his and you know it starts with a twenty rep squats basically

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

to failure breathing squats where you get to ten reps and you look like you're gonna die and then your back starts rounding over but you're like still standing up and doing thing and then it's like twenty dead lift was just like

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh my god like i remember doing this stuff when i was when i was coming up there was a book that was like the bible of hit training that was called brawn and then there was a second one called b and brawn and u and that was what they advised like it was like choose two or three big compound basic movements and you basically do a set of ten to twenty reps to absolute failure until you cannot move any more you rest five or ten minutes because that's what it takes to even begin to recover from something like that and then from there you know you move into your next movement whatever that movement is and so there's something about that idea of just like getting under the iron throwing that bar on your back putting your hoodie on cranking up the heavy metal or whatever it is and there's something that people really romanticize about and so i think there's a bit of the antibibiomechanics

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

people that are attached

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

to that feeling

[aaron_straker]:

you are one hundred percent accurate it's it's like it's i want to feel like this isn't the best choice of word here but i feel like it's it's a it's a pass down through it generational thing of like your traditional toxic male ego sort of thing um so many of us flirt with it at different times

[bryan_boorstein]:

ye

[aaron_straker]:

of our lives but i think that's pretty much exactly what it is like there is a romantic side about it of like

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

this is what you do when you're a real man and lifting weights sort of ship and i think there is definitely people that that appeals to for sure especially

[bryan_boorstein]:

h

[aaron_straker]:

when you're in the beginning

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah for sure and it's kind of like establishing that base line of hard work is super important and like you and i have discussed this before like i don't think i would take like a brand new pers into lifting and start giving them like a one arm pull down braced against a bench like i just don't think that they're going to be able to get enough out of that to be able to to uly benefit in like the long term from that like maybe if you're there in person with them and you're acutely

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

like really hands

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

on helping them manufacture like great

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

technique with that and and all that but just i think this kind of leads me into the into the next argument that we get a lot from the anti bio mechanics people which is that

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

you just don't need to do so many movements when you do these like barbell basics or whatever whatever the argument is but but you just don't need to do as many movements because each movement that you do is in theory like a compound movements that training multiple muscle groups and part of the argument you get from the anti bio mechanics people is man if i were to do all of these like super nuance specific movements i would be in the gym for hours and hours trying

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

to isolate every single area of my body and so maybe there's a little bit of of something there as well

[aaron_straker]:

ah yeah i agree

[bryan_boorstein]:

um yeah and then

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

you wrote a note that bio mechanics optimized movements aren't as subjectively

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

taxing you want to expand on that at all

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah yeah and that's what it was like i was listening to to podcast i wish i could remember what it what it was but they were talking about this exact notes we're having the exact conversation that we're having right now and they're saying like yeah but like something like a cable row just doesn't fry you like a set of like heavy bent

[bryan_boorstein]:

ye

[aaron_straker]:

over bar bell rose and i agree with that

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

that's because something like a bent heavy bent

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

over bar bell row like you're going to have your gluts activated there's probably even a little bit of you know obviously much more bracing in the core because you're in a anically just an advantageous position your erectors and different things like that but are you doing my kind of argument against that is ill what's the purpose of the bar bell or sorry what's the purpose of movement right so for doing that kind of like hollow lean forward you know lat cable row i don't want my fucking lower back in my gluts and stuff all fried because

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

i want the tension in my or in my in my lot and maybe like how my current program is maybe the day before i did gluts in ham strings in that sort of thing i don't want to hit them again because they're not recovered yet so i think it's the subjectivity of how fried you feel ma that's not inherently indicative of hypertrophy especially potential erection potentially in the target tissues that you want so don't love that argument because feeling you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

mhm

[aaron_straker]:

subjective perception isn't necessarily indicative of hypertrophy stimulus in whatever target tissue that you thought you were

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

training

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah now that's a really really good point and well said and i would actually say that you could go as far as to say that that

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

feeling of actually being fatigued

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

potentially has negative

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

ramifications

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

on you ability to produce hypertrophy like like the goal of training is not to feel fatigued you don't want to walk away from your session being like oh man my entire body is smashed and it was a whole day

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

like like you

[aaron_straker]:

hm

[bryan_boorstein]:

you should feel the tension and the stimulus in the target tissue because in doing

[aaron_straker]:

ay

[bryan_boorstein]:

so you're potentially limiting the amount of total fatigue and then when your body has all of this excess fatigue it actually has to prioritize flushing that fatigue first repairing the dam age before it can actually build muscle and so that kind of goes back to the soreness piece it's like like i don't it doesn't necessarily mean that because you're like a barbel basic person that you also think soreness is important those are not necessarily the same thing however they're also not mutually exclusive and so yeah you just don't you don't want a ton of fatigue in your training confusing that message to your body and making it have to prioritize that especially that fatigue that's central through the spinal column yeah like ben over roads give you a hell of a stimulus but they come with a ton of fatigue cost and m going back to my other point if you have a short amount of time to train and you need to get work done in forty five minutes three days a week then yes one hundred percent you should probably stick to the movements that are going to be heavy hitters because you're not going to actually be able to cause enough fatigue that your body is going to struggle to recover from that but if you're in the gym for seventy five ninety minutes four days a week or five days a week or whatever

[aaron_straker]:

no

[bryan_boorstein]:

it is then i think at that point you shift the benefit to being more advantageous with some of these may be more bio mechanically advantageous movements

[aaron_straker]:

exactly

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool well as we move kind of into some of the

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

arguments for bio mechanics we sort

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

of began to touch on that but i think overriding like the main thing that i thought when we

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

first start having this conversation is

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

everything is by mechanics there's literally

[aaron_straker]:

h

[bryan_boorstein]:

like like like

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

you can be using a bar bell and doing a bent over row but if you're thinking about what you're doing as you're doing that bent over row and where you body should be in space and where your elbows should be traveling and any of those thoughts go through your head you

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

are essentially using vio mechanics i mean the definition on wicopedia the first thing that comes as bota mechanics is the study of the structure function and motion of the mechanical aspects of biological systems

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

so i mean literally it's everything it's everything what do you think about that

[aaron_straker]:

it is and and i think there's there's obviously so much you could

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

go down the rabbit hole like crazy crazy deep m which i feel like you know you and i have done and then we've kind of settled into our respective middle ground of what we think makes the most sense for for us personally in our journeys especially as coach

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

is what makes the most sense for the population that we coach in just balancing all the different aspects of it to what ends up being practical for you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

the audience and that audience might

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

be you as the you know the lifter who's listening or as the coach listening for the majority were the poprdemographic is the word i'm

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

looking for of the person that you that you coach and train most often

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah no that's super super good point like i feel very lucky that we are able

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

to have the perspective from both sides

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

of this like when i look at the people that are superbioming an ex proponents that are basically like parroting what cast says and then being polarizing about it

[aaron_straker]:

hm

[bryan_boorstein]:

i'm kind of like like i don't know how much like does that really appeal to people like if you had a client would you automatically um push them to do these superoptimized bio mechanic movements regardless of who the client is because you

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

know this is your stance and you believe in this whereas you look at us and we're like hey we trained with bar bells and dumb bells only for the first two thirds of our training career and so we understand that there is inherent benefit in a lot of this stuff and so we're able to kind of disseminate that down a little bit and use each of these different approaches as like a tool in our tool box

[aaron_straker]:

yeah normally the latter some of that i can

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

think of though is like let's say i have a client who's you know has my levers in frame and he's like an i really want to my quads but he just keeps putting in like a bar bell back squat i'm gonna be like yeah this isn't going to go how you think it's going to go and and here's like six years of my life of why the sort

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

of thing so in certain ones where i know that you're making your life harder than it needs to be and it's not going to go the way you want um i would kind of put that down but the thing that

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

i would say the thing that i this is like a personal kind of thing but i like formulating my own opinions right i feel like that keeps me honest um and from to kind of back up a little bit or not even to support argument for if you find yourself being someone who's like super against it but you've never spent the money to go to a seminar of you know cast and one or someone else that i think does it really really good job i feel like cats might crucify me for saying this is joe bennett the hypertrophy

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

coach because i know they don't really get along but they

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

have similar there are things that they say not everything but some things that it align decently spend the money go to one of their now practicals

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

courses weekend seminars whatever and formulate your an opinion because it's really easy to sit there from your being one of those fucking arm chair people it's like oh that's bullshit but then you're like not going to go you know actually see what there coaching you're just going to disseminate whatever you want from like a thirty second you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

instagram real or whatever and it's those people that i have a hard time not not taking seriously but like you you're formulating a one sided opinion and you're you know like if you really want to are you against something like go see what they're actually doing and then make that argument as opposed to

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

not

[bryan_boorstein]:

no also well said

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

uh you're your girlfriend jenny

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

she attended the one with you about a year ago

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

and i know you guys came over to my house and you guys were both like superamped on what you were learning and really excited about it so now like looking at her as an avatar somebody that you know came from across fitty type background did some body

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

building went to end one kind of has her own thing going on what's like her perspective on all that stuff now

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

like a year out

[aaron_straker]:

ay she has i mean let's face it jenny's jenny's goal is like gluts that's what she cares about

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

um and i think for

[bryan_boorstein]:

h

[aaron_straker]:

her a little bit of like a middle ground you know in in rain of like some of it around the understanding different parts of the gluts and stuff like that were like super super helpful but her perspective what i think is really interesting with her is um like jenny

[bryan_boorstein]:

yah

[aaron_straker]:

trained with brett contraiers for a while when he had his gimanpbyouknow right down the street from where we

[bryan_boorstein]:

yah

[aaron_straker]:

lived and then obviously like him and cats have very polarizing as

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

approaches on things

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

and she it was a really interesting you know scenario for her because she was in the middle she trained you know with bret and then attended the end one thing and i think that or some of it it gets hard because at the end of the day what are we here for results right and it's often times like you can get the results through different paths and in a lot of the times what are you what people are arguing

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

is purely from like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

a scientific correctness sort of thing even though both are probably going to get you where you want to go so often times unfortunately it does kind of come down to semantics and that's what she's kind of found like some of the movements were just really really hard for her to perform and she wouldn't like feel them well

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

she's like very quad dominant so in some of the like leg press with the feet high or whatever once she hits like a cur low threshold she's not getting that same glut stimulus and she just feels it a lot more in her quads and

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

she had a hard time like really believing because she's like everything my body is telling is like my my quads are sore right i can feel

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

the stimulus of my quads i'm not feeling it in my gluts how much more do i want to invest of going down this

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

root to try and get it done where i know if i'm doing like a heavy hip thrust i am feeling it in my my gluts and my glues

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

have been growing and

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

i think that's where that like you know individual spect comes in but i still think like getting the knowledge and experience on both sides helps you find your own personal middle ground

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah that's a great perspective i'm glad i asked that question about her because it kind of brings me to another point which is in our paragon group were doing like we did a glut specialization

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

cycle last and now we're doing quad shoulder

[aaron_straker]:

yes

[bryan_boorstein]:

specialization cycle and so the difference between the way that you would perform a movement with a quad focus versus a glue focus like you can take the leg press or the split squat or basically any number of movements and it's a subtle shifting of your body in space so that you know you're trying to facilitate a vertical shin when you want more glue and you're getting more knee flexion where the knee is pushed over the tow for more quad but the interesting thing and how it relates back to jenny is that i in the cycle i had tons

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

of people being like you know here's my video how does it look i'm only feeling this in my quads and i'm like yeah it looks great like your doing it exactly as you should for gluts but they're feeling in their quads and then conversely in this cycle i have a lot of people doing like really good knee flexion needs going forward and they're like i'm only feeling it in my gluts and i'm like hey that's okay because the thing is both are both

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and so all we're trying to do is shift the emphasis slightly so if you're a person that's doing it with a vertical shin for the gluts but you're feeling it in your quads just imagine how much quads you'd feel if you actually did it for the quads and then conversely if you're the person doing it for quads where your knee is going forward and you're feeling it in your gluts well hey at least you're getting more quads this way than you would be the other way and so we're always going to have these natural tendencies to feel things more in certain areas and other areas but by executing a movement with a slight shift in the emphasis of that movement that emphasis on the body part can also shift slightly but when people think that hey we're doing a quad dominant split squad so i should only feel this in my quads i mean that's i think where a lot of the message gets a little blurred with people

[aaron_straker]:

yeah because it's it's an emphasis

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

not in like only thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

exclusivity sort of thing like it's just

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

more than it would be if you performed it

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

in a nonoptimized

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

mechanical

[bryan_boorstein]:

correct

[aaron_straker]:

advantage sort of thing you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah so like if you were going to be like sixty forty

[aaron_straker]:

and

[bryan_boorstein]:

one way

[aaron_straker]:

a good

[bryan_boorstein]:

maybe

[aaron_straker]:

way

[bryan_boorstein]:

it's

[aaron_straker]:

to

[bryan_boorstein]:

sixty

[aaron_straker]:

really

[bryan_boorstein]:

forty

[aaron_straker]:

think about

[bryan_boorstein]:

the other

[aaron_straker]:

it

[bryan_boorstein]:

way

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

cool i actually you froze on me there so i missed whatever you said

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

at the end but

[aaron_straker]:

yeah i just started i started talking but

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i just let you go with it sorry

[bryan_boorstein]:

okay all right cool

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

and then so as we kind of continue down the

[aaron_straker]:

um

[bryan_boorstein]:

rabbit hole here of the arguments

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

for by

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

mechanics

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i think one thing we can do is kind look at all of the research that we constantly discuss about now long muscle lengths and lengthened overload and all this stuff and if you aren't at least aware of some of the principles of training with bio mechanics then you will have difficulty actually finding where the muscle is most lengthened and so perfect ample of this being like like a lot of the anti bio mechanics people are like pull ups for back that's all you need just do pull

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

ups for back and you're good and i think in many ways

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

like yeah if you just do it pull up with different variations you know supernated neutral overhand you know you manipulate your chest position in relation to the bar and you become like super proficient doing pull ups you probably can get relatively decent development across your back doing pull ups but just the idea of shifting your chest position in relation to the bar or changing your grip or your elbow

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

position that is

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

bio

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

mechanics and so

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

if we have this i don't know how how how far i want to take this but we have this idea that the lads aren't as active as you get above a hundred and twenty degrees of reflection so m so if we're ninety degrees here if you're watching you tube you're in luck if not o l but like my arm is basically parallel

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

to the ground here and then as it comes up if it gets directly over my head it would be at the bottom of a pull up that stretch that's occurring isn't actually stretching the lads as much as it's stretching like the tares and like some reardelts in mid apps and stuff like that and so if we then to go back to my point if we want to prioritize the length and position and stretch the lads as much as possible regardless of whether that's going to give you one per cent or two percent improvement in your results or no improvement it might just be a good idea to know these things for your own body and to understand that hey when you reach your arm across your body you can actually legitimately feel the stretching of that kind of lumbar iliac lat region um and you just don't necessarily make that same connection to your body

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

if you were to just do like hey pull ups all the time bro like builds backs of the navy seals like

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

why do we need to do more than that type thing

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah and in that in it itself so there was

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

one i'm trying to check the list we have here that specific thing that you just talked about was the biggest take away from me in okay so i seem to know her improved program design so before and one you know this was my personal not seeing like they're the only ones doing i do believe they do it well for what it's worth i didn't understand the lengthened and shortened stuff quite to the level that i really should have and that was reflected in my program design as well so for instance something like when i was putting together back at backs a bad example but let's say like a bycet or something like that it may have been a day that had only like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

short overloaded movements because i just didn't know alnl i knew was exercises and i didn't under and how some exercises are overloaded in the length and position mid range short range but if you and with that if you don't understand it and let's say you programme like i don't know like a spider you know a spider curl and then you do like what do people call like the cable curls where you're in the rack and you're you know it's another shortened overload movement

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah

[aaron_straker]:

i don't know the name of it sorry it's like your arms are out at a t and you're standing in the middle of the cable rack and your you know curling up sort of thing

[bryan_boorstein]:

you your tricepts are humorous is parallel to the ground so triceps are parallel on you're basically doing the flex position like if you were doing

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

like

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

bicep flex

[aaron_straker]:

yeah like a high cable curl or whatever

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

so

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

like

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

you do that and then you do like what's another shortened overload um by set movement

[bryan_boorstein]:

like a spider curl or concentration curl or something

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

like that

[aaron_straker]:

and then you do like a concentration curl right those are your three by

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

set movements like the three movements all training the same exact position you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

and let's say you do i don't know three sets of each which is a lot but nine total sets you could probably get the same if not a better stimulus out of half yeah of the volume by incorporating like a you know incline cable dumb bell curl or

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

a face away cable curl or something like that just by knowing like hey these are going train more at the length and position it's harder right and it provides a more like robust overall stimulus so like the biggest take

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

away for me it was just program design and

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

one thing you know just

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

kind of taking it back to previous years of my own personal training here'd be days where i'd have incredible incredible pumps incredible stimulus and then there'd be other days where i'm like funk why isn't it like you know those other days and it's just like i would just chalk it up to like it's just in the ether i don't know it just wasn't meant to be today like no there's a reason why there's a science behind

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

these sorts of things and you know and it just helps you eradicate that um not random ness but oh like the plan that's aligned and i had this incredible like day like that would happen to me would that i'd never be i wouldn't see it for like four months again like now i know why and i can recreate that twice a week when i go train and like lo and behold my worst body part is now finally growing now that i'm in my mid thirties you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

better than it ever

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

has um coincidence no it's not a coincidence so i

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

think like that has been the biggest argument for is just improved program design and understanding better exercise selection in their place inside a program

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah yeah totally well said and i want to kind of just go back to something

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

you said in there which kind of you alluded to about you know your total volume needs based on exercise election and so this sort of the idea of training at short and long muscle lengths is certainly like a principle of bio mechanics like the length tenth tension relationship and the force velocity curve and all that stuff like that all has in bio mechanics but the practical application for somebody listening is that hey instead of doing nine sets of biceps of like like you said we'll go concentration curl spider curl and high cable curl right like instead of doing those three movements for three sets each you could probably get away with doing half to two thirds of the total volume if you shift some of that emphasis to lengthen so now we're back to that argument that the anti bio mechanics people had

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

which was uh you don't have to do

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

as many exercises

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

because all of these movements are like so taxing right you know if you just do your bent over roads and your bench presses and your squats and your dead lifts and whatever then then your to go and it's kind of a similar argument for the bio mechanics because at the end of the day we're just trying to not waste energy on ship that we don't have to do like we don't have to nine sets of these bicep curls when we could do three

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

sets short overload and two sets lengthened overload and probably get similar or the same around the same benefit that you would get say doing nine sets of short overloading i'm just making these numbers up but but you don't have to do as much when you're putting the muscle under more tension at those long muscle angs and so um yeah like like we've discussed before free weight movements tend to have a lengthened bias which i think is part of why they've been so effective for so many decades like we

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

we reference another episode but other than bicep curls with the free weight which are

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

probably more like a mid range movement short short mid range

[aaron_straker]:

ye

[bryan_boorstein]:

but other than that and back

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

movements every other free weight basic barbell movement you would do is basically a lengthened movement and so i think the antibiomechanics argument oftentimes doesn't think about it from that perspective

[aaron_straker]:

yeah and that was something that i figured

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

we would kind of rope that up at at the end of it but that i do think ends up being a little bit more coincidence for the argument against it's like all u it is you know the bar gall movement and it's like well incidentally an overwhelming majority of the bar bell movements are all lengthened overload which happens to be like why they are so effective but yeah like i think that is like a fair fantastic full circle description right there and i do think it ends up when people say that it's kind of funny because it's like they're making an argument against but it's also the reason you can make that argument

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

is because of you know actual science and it is rooted in the by mica because they are lengthened overloaded sort of things so

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

it's funny but it is a bit of a coincidence there

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah absolutely no that was that was well said so i have like three more interesting points here to make on the topic and then we can kind of wrap this thing up as it's it's been going on a little bit but um

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

you know when it comes to these bio mechanic movements one of the questions i like to ask is what

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

is the opportunity cost of doing that movement and so what i mean by that is like a lot of times you get the bio mechanic people that are like you know they'll say

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

the iliac lap pull down isn't just working the iliac lads it's working everything and so then the response is like okay cool so let's say i am going into this and i assume that i'm working my iliac lads mostly because i'm doing this like high to low one arm

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

pull down or whatever against a bench let's assume that it doesn't just work my iliac lads let's assume that worst case scenario

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

it's just a pull down okay cool it's just a pull down then it's basically the same as doing a pull up or a pull down or whatever it is like if it's not specific to my iliac lads then worst case scenario it's the same as what you would do anyways so i think that in many cases if people were to just try stuff maybe it ends up actually having some of these really cool long term benefits on the productivity of their training and that leads me into my next point which is minimizing

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

joint issues which have

[aaron_straker]:

m yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

been non existence since

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

adapting adopting more of

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

these bio mechanic my mechanically style ad what am i even trying

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

to say right now and advantaged

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

by a mechanic move um so as we've discussed many times

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

on the podcast

[aaron_straker]:

m

[bryan_boorstein]:

you know when we were doing these barbel basic movements we constantly had joint pain in the knees elbows shoulders things like that and and now we just don't and so it makes me think in some ways that more people should adopt bio mechanically advantaged movements as their training journey goes on because the majority of people that i see and most of this comes from power lifting so it's maybe not like a fully fair comparison because they are lifting for performance instead of aesthetics but they are you know perfect epitomized example of what happens when you do barbel movements only most power lifters are pretty ragged and torn

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

up by the time they reach their forties and fifties

[aaron_straker]:

ah

[bryan_boorstein]:

and you don't always see the same thing with body builders especially ones that are intelligent body builders and know their bodies and adapt their movements along as their age increases and i just happened to see this a lot you know with the an i bi mechanics

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

people they tend to be people in their twenties late twenties may be early thirties but they're

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

young people whose

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

bodies haven't may be given them that signal yet and i think it would be interesting to follow of these like really outspoken anti bio mechanics people in ten years and see if their views are still the same as they are now

[aaron_straker]:

yeah that's a t's a really good point to bring up like the longevity aspect is its huge um and like you said it's kind of a when so i feel fortunate because before like i was one of these people it was an anti by mechanics i just didn't know anything about it to be completely honest and i trained all the heavy bar mill movement and stuff and i was really beat up and the thing that's really

[bryan_boorstein]:

oh

[aaron_straker]:

interesting is when you have a lot of like joint pain and

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

inflammation and stuff it's really daunting to come in and get warmed up to be like all right i got heavy triples on the squat today and your knees just hurting you with an empty bar bell on your back you

[bryan_boorstein]:

m

[aaron_straker]:

know it's a very big climb psychologically and just from a straight desire standpoint when you feel like dog ship to try and go in and move near maxima loads um and then at the same time you're still you're only digging the hole deeper it's not like the day after you wake up oh man my knees feel great now like now they fucking feel worse

[bryan_boorstein]:

hm

[aaron_straker]:

and as i switched with some of these things that i learned like i'm thirty four now and i've talked about this one pocasbfore i feel much better than i did at twenty four from a you know

[bryan_boorstein]:

yeah

[aaron_straker]:

joint standpoint at it reduces

[bryan_boorstein]:

ah

[aaron_straker]:

the barrier for the enjoyment and desire to get into training your training sessions when you don't feel really beat up in that as you age like brian it is big just keeping you in the game is a really really big part of it

[bryan_boorstein]:

exactly and so i think that when it really comes down like like

[aaron_straker]:

oh

[bryan_boorstein]:

i saved that for last because all of the arguments that exist that we've covered over the last hour the way that my body feels performing these movements and the longevity that i foresee as a result of utilizing these movements is it makes the entire thing worth it um and so yeah that's that's that's really the way i feel about it and then just to kind of wrap up to one final point you know the the anti bio mechanics people we started this conversation saying that their main argument is people have been getting yoked for decades with just a bar bell and so my question is just just a food for thought question but how do you know they wouldn't have been more jacked with with different movements and you can't actually know that because they only have this experience and ultimately at the end of the day the best route is probably a combo of both you know you got to work hard you got to do the stuff that teaches you that that work ethic how to get close to failure how to

[aaron_straker]:

okay

[bryan_boorstein]:

push through barriers and and what it feels like to lift heavy weight off the ground or sit down with heavy weight on your back but but once you've kind of learned those lessons you just don't know whether your body would have been better a long term should you have adopted those movements earlier on and something we'll never know it's just kind of like a thought experiment

[aaron_straker]:

yeah yeah i don't unfortunately think we ever will know and like you said to kind of wrap this one up at for you listening this podcast the answer is going to lie somewhere in the middle and that is going to be different for every single person and it will probably you say probably very very likely move along that spectrum depending on where you are in your lifting career when you're younger and your joints don't have as many miles on them you can put miles on them fast and you're not going to run into any issue until you do um and then you will probably slide more towards the arguments for by mechanic side for purely longevity and to keep you in the game which is the ultimate goal

[bryan_boorstein]:

well said

[aaron_straker]:

anything else you want to add on to the end of this one brian

[bryan_boorstein]:

and we're good yeah i think

[aaron_straker]:

yeah

[bryan_boorstein]:

that that actually went super well

[aaron_straker]:

i agree i think it was a really really good episode as always guys

[bryan_boorstein]:

ye

[aaron_straker]:

thank you for listening any flops or anything you can feel free to ping brian or i on instagram and we will

[bryan_boorstein]:

yes

[aaron_straker]:

talk to you next week

[bryan_boorstein]:

m