What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 164, our August 2024 Instagram Q &A. We are fortunate, we got a lot of good questions that came in, so we want to get to them. But as always, we will jump through some brief updates. Brian, can you kick us off, please? Yeah, be as quick as possible here. So we skipped last week, we didn't have an episode, which means I'm now like three weeks out from my concussion more or less and all good. I commented on the episode two weeks ago that by day three, I felt like I was mostly good. Since that point, I had a few kind of end of day headaches. Like, you you just kind of fatigue at the end of the day, you get a headache. That stuff would happen to me, you know, once or twice a month anyways. and it just seemed to be happening maybe once or twice a week post -concussion. Now I feel like at this point I'm pretty much back to normal. The first two weeks after the concussion, I really just stuck to zone two. As far as cardio goes, I didn't wanna do anything that would increase blood pressure or stress response too much. So lifting was a little bit lighter as after about two weeks of zone two and like some kind of lighter lifting, I did my first like proper hard ride with a buddy of mine last week. And it was a 28 mile mountain bike thing at about 15 miles of mountain biking. And the rest of it was kind of road or gravel. And I ended up beating my time by nine minutes. So we're talking to me at two hours and 20 minutes to two hours 11 minutes, I think is what it was. So not a huge percentage change. I think that's like 4 % increase, something like that. But from three months ago, that's amazing. And I'm super amped about it. Felt really good. Conditioning's on point. We went to Nashville this past weekend, primarily to see some friends and see the Kenny Chesney concert. I can honestly say that downtown Nashville is unique in the sense It reminds me of Mardi Gras like all the time. I don't vibe with that type of environment where people are just drunk off their rockers and there's noise coming at you from every angle. If you haven't been to downtown Nashville before, every country singer has their own bar. like, Carth Brooks has one called Friends in Low Places and it's three levels of just like constant noise blaring at you. And all these bars are on this row on Nashville on either side of the Broadway, the main street. And there's just live music coming from every bar. So you could be walking down the middle and you're just inundated with like seven different sounds and you can't actually make out what you're hearing. It was probably one of the most overstimulated experiences that I've had. I could not fall asleep for like three hours afterwards. So that was a unique and interesting experience. I can't say it was like a hundred percent positive, but it was cool to experience it. And the concert was great. Zach Brown opened. So that was cool too. I'm traveling again this coming week. I'm taking my daughter to visit my brother and his daughter, leaving Bryson at home because Bryson just had a tonsillectomy yesterday. We'll see how that goes. He has a flare for the dramatic and there was a bit of screaming and yelling yesterday. Apparently it gets worse on days two through five. So we'll see what we're in for the rest of this week. But that happened in the long term. It's going to certainly be positive for him. So I'm really glad about that. Glad it's over. But, you know, empathize with the pain that he's that he's feeling right now. And then my last update is that. When I got in my concussion and got the accident, my gravel bike essentially got crushed. I don't quite understand how the the weakest point of the bike was the frame, but. I ran into the back of this car, right? And the frame literally collapsed. Like it broke down the middle and everything converged, making the bike seem smaller. Anyway, so I bought a new frame. The bike shop that's fixing it for me is actually closed for two weeks. They're on summer vacation. And then he also thinks that I may have damaged my fork, even though the fork doesn't actually look damaged. He said that internally it's likely damaged. Which means that even though I bought a new frame, I'm probably going to have to go back and buy a new fork as well. which means I'm probably not going to get on my gravel bike for another month. I've just been driving my mountain biking around and it's been fine, but it's like slow and clunky. So it's not my favorite way to go. it is what it is. I guess I dug my own grave there. So, everything going well, otherwise, training lifting is, great. Biking is as good as it's going to be right now. And just kind of looking forward to my trip to South Carolina and then getting Bryson back in school August 14th. So mid next week when this episode comes out, he'll be starting school again. Vivi will be in school and life will go back to opening up and being free again. So Kim and I are both very much looking forward to that. And yeah, so that's really all I got. What's going on with you? Something that's funny that I had a couple of my clients talk about this and I guess even though I'm obviously not young anymore from my relative perspective, I still think of summer as like great school is out. But like what you said and I've had numerous clients this week and they're like a couple more weeks and school starts again. I can't wait for the kids to go back to school. It's like such a different perspective than what you like grow up with right, which is like, your parents are happy so they can get rid of you for a bit when you go back to school. Yeah, I mean, dude, it's even the same on a microcosm with weekends. Like I find weekdays to be much more relaxing and fulfilling for me. And weekends are just like a stress ball. They're a microcosm of summer where it's just like, kids 24 seven, you know, so yeah, you have that to look forward to. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. For me, I just started my second week back to training, which I have here for real, for real training. I am no longer putting brakes on things. I am trying as hard as I can, working my weights back up. I reduced my volume decently. I'm just doing two sets for every single exercise except like lateral delts. I'll do three on. The only thing I'm holding off on heavy hip hinging and bilateral squat pattern. movements, I will bring these back in at 12 weeks. So I am eight weeks now have like another month of none of those, but I feel confident with like a Bulgarian and, you unilateral patterns there that I'll get what I need out of those movements while I can get my upper body back to 100 % of where I was So you didn't train for four weeks or so, is that right? No training at At four weeks, I started like very, very light, just like touching weights again, seeing what I could get away with. But I mean, I was using like literally 25 percent loads. And then it's been about four weeks since then. So has it been eight weeks total now? Eight weeks total, yeah. So last week. my question I guess is obviously you noticed a backslide of your physique in the four weeks where you didn't train at all. Have you noticed a revamping of your physique in any way in the last four weeks since you've been training again? Significantly. Yeah. Significantly. And it's just. I think it's really just like glycogen filling out again, like things being used, I still have additional body fat, like especially in the midsection, because I mean, you really turn your abs off, you know, effectively for a number of weeks, trying not to use them. So there's definitely like a wash of of definition there and likely just additional body fat as well. even though body weight's been pretty much within three pounds, let's call it. But definitely since just trying harder again, the physique has really come That's cool. Yeah, that's I was expecting. I mean, there's a really cool episode that just came out on data driven strength. It's like 50 minutes about maintenance volume. And I was those guys always man, Zach and Josh at data driven strength. Those guys always think about things in a really cool way and think things through in a manner that I think a lot of other people in the industry don't. And I was thinking about you and me and I mean, anybody who's gone to maintenance or below. at any point in their life. think the episode was really informative and I actually think maybe it would be worth even talking about that at some point on this podcast because I've been kind of toiling with it in my mind as well since listening to it. well worth it if anyone wants to go out there and check that Cool. That's it for me. Ready to dive in? All right, let's do I feel like this first question just got to go to you. it's nutrition based. So it said, I've been in a surplus for about a year now. I started at 165 pounds and hit 180 pounds in January. Since January, I've continued to eat what I think is a surplus of calories. I'm not tracking consistently, but I 4 ,500 calories yesterday. And I think that's close to it daily. I'm not doing any cardio, so I'm pretty sure that my weight must be a surplus, but I have not gained weight. I was 182 pounds this morning. Do you have any thoughts on why I'm not gaining weight with 4 ,500 calories a day? Yes. And this is please take this in the most straightforward, loving, caring way. You're just not accurate. You're not accurate by a mile. Unless you have such an insanely high caloric expenditure through, I mean, I don't know, walking twenty five thousand steps per day or something just outrageous. You're not eating forty five hundred calories per day and forty five hundred calories per day. at 182 pounds would be a exorbitant calorie surplus. I have some other notes here. There is a very simple back of the napkin math way to kind of approximate maintenance calories, and this assumes like a moderately active person lifting a few times per week. It's in it's a body weight multiplier by five. So we take that one. Sorry. Fifteen. Apologies. Fifteen. We take that one eighty two. We multiply by fifteen. That gets us twenty seven hundred calories. Right. That would be an approximate ballpark maintenance. We take that and we multiply it by a factor of 20. That only puts us at 3600 calories, right? And 20 X body weight is a pretty significant caloric surplus. I have never taken a client over 4000 calories, never. And myself, I didn't break 4000 calories until I was 215 pounds, very, very lean and on PEDs, which changes your calorie partitioning. So in a very roundabout way, you're not eating 4 ,500 calories consistently, or you would be stacking on Yeah, I think the part that got me with this question was that it's since January. So like if you've gained two pounds since January, we're talking about like seven months of time and eating at 4500 calories. There's just no way at 182 pounds that you would gain only two pounds over the course of seven months doing that. So yeah, I just agree with Aaron. I don't have a whole ton to add there. Yep. This next one, Brian, I think is good to kick your way. Should we try to bias parts of muscles evenly? The upper lats, lower lats, long head of the tricep, short head of the tricep. Meaning if we do 12 total sets for triceps, should six be focused on the long head and six be focused on the Well, we don't have a short head of our tricep, but I understand the idea of the question in general. So tricep has three heads, lateral, medial, and then long head as this person pointed out. So I think there's a couple reasons why you wouldn't try to do that. One is that you may have needs to train certain areas more than others. When you look at your physique, you may say, this part of the muscle is underdeveloped compared to this part. And in that case, you could buy some of your training. But I think the bigger concern, much more than you trying to bias certain aspects of your physique for your own aesthetic development, I think the real issue here is just that muscles get trained by other exercises. So for example, it's all in my opinion, it's almost It is the most important to train the long head of the tricep directly because the medial and the lateral head get trained through pressing movements. So when you do bench presses and overhead presses and close grip presses and any type of pressing that you do, your medial and lateral head are going to get a ton of stimulus, but your long head isn't. So my view is that the majority of tricep work should probably be biased to the long head for that reason. When it comes to lats, I think we maybe could look back at the way I first answered that by saying which part of your lats need the most attention, but also probably worth considering that the majority of upper back work that you do or rear delt work that you do is likely going to also hit a lot of your upper lats. So you may not need to directly target your upper lats so much. And maybe your time would be better spent targeting your mid and lower lats because they don't really receive any stimulus when you do your upper back and rear delt training. I think the same thing can be kind of extrapolated out to any muscle group. And so my answer would be that, you don't want to try to evenly train all parts of muscles or each part of the muscle. Rather, look at what is trained through many of the compound movements and then fill in the gaps by training, you know, isolated targeting where necessary. Very well put. Alright, sweet. I'll kick this one over to you. I've been in a deficit for more than 12 weeks. I went from 118 pounds to 111 pounds. We'll assume this is a female. also, I am pretty lean but missed my period last month and this month, definitely a female. Do you think it has to do with how lean I am? For additional context, I did a summer shred challenge with a coach training four to five days a week with cardio, which I do five times a week. So training with weights four to five days a week, cardio five times a week. lost seven pounds without knowing this female's height. I would assume that 111 pounds is probably pretty lean, but it's difficult to say that without knowing whether she's five foot or five foot 10. So yeah, I'll let you kind of take that one from Yeah, to add some additional context, I have some female clients in that five foot two, five foot three with an okay amount of muscle mass. They're pretty lean for for female at hundred and eleven pounds. So I feel confident saying that this person is pretty lean. Yes, the the loss of cycle has to do with how lean you are. Is it? Would it be the proper terminology to say that the leanness itself is causatory? Not entirely, but the environment there. So the kind of medical term here uses secondary hypothalamic amenorrhea, and it's the loss of cycle due to environmental conditions. So it's likely a combination of the time in a deficit, the aggressiveness of the deficit, the caloric expenditure between the cardio and the training. and the stress accumulation with this. So is it, it is not, am lean, so cycle loss happens. Some people are, but everyone is individual, but the, is, getting a little bit of air in theory here. I think the people who are least, less, least susceptible to the cycle loss have a much better personal relationship with stress. They are very very positive happy -go -lucky stress just kind of floats off them type of people They can typically live life pretty lean and keep their cycle. There's people who will lose it a little bit Less lean and they are typically people who are more stress -prone. So does the leanness play a role? Yes, is it directly causatory? Probably not but it plays a role in the larger environment of why that happens Yeah, I don't really have anything to add to this one. Seems like you're pretty lean and I would say, yeah, I agree with Aaron and if you eat some more food, you probably get that back, right? Yep, work some, if you're done dieting, you're happy with the leanness, you're ready to transition, work your food up, start reducing the cardio by a significant degree, focus on stress reducing activities, sleep, those sorts of things, and things should return in Cool. We have about three or four here in a row that we're going to kick over to you. So this next one is I'm in a build phase and I play a sport on the side. The sport finishes soon, so I will only be training in the gym moving forward. Should I drop my calories to make up for the fewer calories burned due to the sport being finished? No access to other cardio. I'm assuming I dropped my cows a couple hundred, but hopefully still be in a surplus. In theory, yes, in practice, run your numbers and see what things look like. If your surplus has been effective, you should be heavier than when you started at a heavier body weight. require not only more calories to sustain that heavier body weight, but then also to further that caloric surplus. So I wouldn't make snap changes just because sport ends. Let's sport end, which is your sole changing variable. record your body weight, what is your average, what is your hunger relative to last week, is hunger like super low and you feel bloated and full and disgusting because your caloric expenditure has now dropped. If that answer is yes and body weight is skyrocketing, reduce things, but don't make premature decisions of multiple variables at the same time. One variable, read it, make further decisions. Yeah, that's exactly how I'd approach it too. I would say if you like for me, my brain works pretty systematically. And so my thought would be I would probably try to figure out how many active calories I'm burning via playing the sport. And so, you know, is the sport every day? Because if you're training for an hour on the sport every day, maybe you're burning 600 to 1000 calories potentially per day from the sport. But likely what's happening is you're playing in like an adult rec league and you're playing once maybe twice a week. So maybe you're burning that 600 to 1000 calories once a week. At that point, I think the overall change or Delta in your caloric consumption probably doesn't need to change a whole ton because if you take 1000 calories and extrapolate it out over the course of a week, seven days, you're looking at like 130, 140 calories a day. So I just, yeah, like Aaron said, I wouldn't make any sweeping changes. I'd just kind of keep your eye on your hunger, on the body weight, on the scale, on the way that you and appear and feel and kind of make adjustments from there. All right. Thoughts on intra -week calorie cycling, two to three days in a surplus and the rest in a deficit. I feel like we covered this in an episode maybe a while ago, but I wouldn't be able to say which one specifically. I think it can work. I think it require, if you're someone who likes to tinker and run experiments, yes, I think this is wonderful. If you want to do like a gain -tain phase where you're not really ready to commit to a build for, you know, maybe because it's summer, assuming you're you know, north of the Northern continents, Northern hemisphere. I think that that is fine. Things are going to be slower. Again, it's something that you need to monitor. Take your weekly weigh -ins, take the averages. Shameless kind of self -promotion here. I sell a template that allows you to do all of this very, very easily. I've literally built a backbone of my career off this thing. Thousands of coaches use it across the world. It's very, very appropriately priced for that. That can help you as it extrapolates some of that math for you. it can again, it can be a worthwhile effort. It's just slower. But if you want to stay leaner while just sprinkling a little bit of extra calories in the days that you train from a recovery standpoint to further the muscle protein synthesis signaling of those days, it's not unwise, but it's not going to be groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination. Yep, also agree there. I know that I personally actually tend to do this almost subconsciously. So on a day that I'm really hungry, I just kind of follow my intuitive signals and I eat a bunch of food. And then usually the next day after eating a lot, I'm less hungry. And so I eat less. Not everyone has the ability to intuitively follow signals in that manner. So I do think for the majority of people, structure is important. But the general concept of three days high, three days low, one day at maintenance type thing, I've found quite effective. And I think it also makes things more interesting to be able to have days where you can indulge in some of the more calorically dense foods and then other days where maybe you just don't even want them as much because you're a little more full. So I think it can definitely work. But like Aaron said, it's not going to be groundbreaking. At the end of the week, it's going to come down to All right, do you intentionally add fat to meals? What are the go -to quantities and grams? the age old, it depends. It depends on what your goals are. If we are in a calorie deficit, unless we are just starting out, I would not recommend intentionally adding fats to your meals unless you plan to take a lower carb, higher fat calorie deficit approach. That being said, if I'm at maintenance or have a client at maintenance or even in a surplus and we want to just Bring in some additional foods because you know fats are great for the fat soluble vitamins We can bring in some anti -inflammatory fats. We have some antioxidants polyphenols things that we can bring into the diet from those there there there does warrant times for in a purposeful increase However, if you're in a calorie deficit, I typically advice against that unless you're taking a higher fat approach. Now, that being said, some of my favorite fat sources, whole eggs, really straightforward there, avocado, walnuts, Brazil nuts, and almonds in no particular order. I guess maybe Brazil nuts first because they're really high in selenium. They're one of the few foods that you can get a really good amount of selenium in from. Extra virgin olive oil is probably my absolute favorite. And first top choice, chia seeds or ground flax seed where we can get a little bit of extra ALA and Omega -3 typically, I can't even say typically, not as desirable as the DHA and EPA, but still in Omega -3, dark chocolate and feta cheese, right? So those are the go -tos that I use most often myself and with clients. You're muted, Brian. really purposefully add any, any fats to my meals, but I do take a large copious amount of fish oil EPA DHA. So I try to take between six and eight grams of EPA DHA a day, which is pretty good, pretty good amount. And that's really just me trying to work up my omega -3 index, which is the three month snapshot of how much EPA and DHA omega -3 you have in your blood. So that's really the only fat I add. And then I do tend to lean on slightly higher meat, fatty meats. So I enjoy, you know, 90, 10 ground beef and chicken thighs over chicken breasts or 96 for ground beef. So I do tend to get a little bit more fat in my diet that way as All right, one more to you or is this me? Yeah, one more to you. How long is too long to be in a cut, a caloric deficit? When I say when you no longer have any desire to be leaner, that's a really notable one. Once the calorie deficit starts to significantly impede other important facets of your life, being a marriage, potentially a relationship, your job performance, et cetera, et cetera. If it's for a health reason and you're starting very, very far away from your goal, This would be one of those places where you would argue that a calorie deficit would actually be healthy up to a point because we are improving health in the body, lowering inflammation, et cetera, et cetera. But you may need to kind of take a one month, two month, three month, four month kind of maintenance pause in the middle and then get the rest of what you came for. It's going to be different for everyone. And I think the most important part of that is of the weeks. spent in this calorie deficit, how many of those weeks were fat loss productive? That's really, really important. A lot of people will say like, I've been in a calorie deficit for 12 weeks, right? Let's use this example. They start at, let's say, I don't want to use 100 pounds because that's really small. They start at 200 pounds, right? A really good target is was 1 % body mass loss per week. So at 200 pounds, that's two pounds per week. So if we were doing a 12 week calorie deficit from 200 pounds at 12 weeks at 1 % rate of loss per week, we'd be down effectively 24 pounds, right? That would be the target there. Like that's a perfect world pie in the sky kind of goal thing. If you're 12 weeks in and of that 24 pounds, you're down like six and a half and you're like, you know, is it too long? No, it's not too long because those weeks have not been productive. There's been a lot of like fucking around and unproductive fat loss. So it's not too long. If in that 20, 12 weeks you're down, let's call it like 30 pounds and you've outpaced it, it's probably enough in time to cut it. But you were started at 200 pounds, you're now 170 pounds, you're probably achieved what you set out to achieve. Yeah, no good points. The just to clean up one thing, the the 1 % weight loss will actually decrease as you lose weight. So 1 % of 200 pounds is two pounds, but 1 % of 180 pounds is not two pounds. So just semantics there, of course. But I agree. I think for me, the point is usually when I have two weeks period of time, where I feel like the feedback that my body's receiving is just good. Like energy is low, focus is bad, sleep has gone down, all that stuff. And so if I have two weeks in a row of that, and I'm not trying to stand on stage or compete or have like a photo shoot some goal that I'm really striving for, it's usually going to be about that point where I kind of reverse direction and go back to maintenance or maintenance plus. Important, what approximate body fat percentage, Brian, does this start to present itself at for I'd say under 10. We talked about that actually in last week's episode with a getting really lean episode. think under 10 is where things really start to manifest. And I think that it's important for that context because you'll get people who they're like, you know, my sleep's off. I think the deficit's getting to me and I'm like, bro, we are at 16 % body fat. That's just, that's just not, it's not, it's not how lean you are. guarantee you. So I think that is an important context to Okay, this one is for you. Let's go. Is the cast glute bridge better for upper glutes or stick with full range of motion? Yeah. And by full range of motion, I assume they mean a hip thrust. and so my, my thought on this is that I wouldn't look at the hip thrust or the cast glute bridge as targeting different part of the glute because they're actually the same movement. Just one has more range of motion than the other. I instead would look at it as what are you trying to achieve? If you are trying to really acutely target hypertrophy of the glutes and isolate the glutes, then you're going to want to go with the glute bridge. And if you're looking for more power development, which might be more applicable to sport or something along those lines, then maybe you would use the hip thrust. The hip thrust is also gonna incorporate more of your musculature in general, your hamstrings and quads and stuff like that because of the thrusting nature of the movement. And like I said in the beginning, the glute bridge is just gonna be much more isolated specifically to the glutes because of the smaller range of motion. Yeah, that's a really good answer there. you got anything to add? I would say if you're doing like a glutes specialty program with a large, large emphasis on the glutes, like the cast glute bridge, I'd say has a pretty good utility in it being included. But if you're doing like a general, let's call it like four day per week program, it's probably a smaller, it's probably a bit of a trade off to include that exercise relative to the other exercises from a total availability standpoint, kind of specialized. yeah, I mean, I even go as far as to say that, like, I don't even think that the glute bridge and the hip thrust are necessarily like the best exercises for the glutes. They're like a great way to add some additional stimulus to the glutes. But your your basic glute repertoire needs to consist of, you know, like bent knee RDLs and other hip hinges, along with split squats and lunges and stuff like that. I think the short overload, glute bridge stuff or hip thrust either way is going to be just icing on Exactly. Yeah. All right, Aaron, do you think since cortisol is highest in the morning that it's easiest to train at that I think this is a really good question because it's taking some observations of things and extrapolating them. That being said, no, it's not easiest to train at that time. And in fact, most people would find it's hardest to train at that time. And fortunately, we have pretty good research that shows that from a performance standpoint, we as humans do not perform sport very well very early in the morning. I remember If I can remember correctly, kind of early afternoon was where the timing seemed to be most favorable to sport performance. I think it was around the like one PM ish time frame. I could be wrong there by a couple of hours. And that corroborates my own experience as well. I did. This is kind of a funny story that I'll make it really fast. There was a period back in Brian and I's CrossFit days where I decided that I was going to start training in the mornings at, I believe, the six a class. And I had done it for probably about a month and I was kind of into my groove. And then a friend was visiting and I decided to train in the afternoon with him. And just by training, like in the afternoon or after work, I was able to perform like I want to say it was like 25 pounds more on one of my lifts just by not lifting in the morning. And I was like, OK, we're not going to train in the morning anymore. It was just very, very noticeably. different in my capabilities between first thing in the morning versus literally like 4 PM. Yeah, I thought it was an interesting question too. I... I actually prefer to train in the morning and part of the reason may be cortisol, part of the reason may be that I'm a morning person. Part of it may just be that I have trained myself to be good in the morning. And so I think that that's one often overlooked component of this is that you kind of adapt to whatever you do. And so if you're a religious afternoon work outer, and then you try to go to the mornings, you're going to feel awful, but the same thing would occur in the opposite. If someone's habitual morning workout or and then they try to work out in the evening, it could be the same situation. I do think that fitting it to your lifestyle is the most important thing. And I wouldn't worry about where your testosterone is highest or your growth hormone or your cortisol or any of that stuff. I would just focus on optimizing your training for where it fits best into your life and then making that habitual. Yeah, last thing there, think I kind of made a gross assumption that we were talking like 5 .30, six in the morning and not like a nine or something like that. Like I think, I do think there's a pretty significant Delta between like 5 .30 in the morning and like a nine. But if, if 9 a like you can make work, I think you'll, you'll get a better, noticeable better out of that few hour difference. Yeah, I'm a big 9 a guy and I'm up, you know, before 6 a So we're talking three hours after I wake up. But you still will see the cortisol curve higher at that point of the day than you will later in the day. So I think it's still. Yep. All right, what do we got here? Go -to foods when eating out, traveling, breakfast, lunch, et cetera, at a cafe Yeah, this is a really good one. And it actually kind of made me stop and think about how I approach things. And I'm a little bit, I may be biased or maybe I could even say fortunate that nutrition is, I mean, it's a massive part of my life and my livelihood. Same thing with my partner. I forgot an important update, I guess. I got engaged last weekend for anyone who didn't see. It's the biggest news of my life in a very long time. And I just like skipped over. I like, I'm back to fucking training. So that happened. It was great. Thank you. So my bad, my bad as a friend too, because I saw that and Kim goes, make sure you congratulate Straker and Jenny. And then I was like, yeah, of course. And then I never did. congratulations. honestly like, I think the reason I didn't is because I just assumed you guys had been engaged forever, which I know isn't true, but you've been together so long and I know you like picked the ring out like a year ago or something. And so yeah, I just assumed that it had already happened. Nope, definitely did not. Yeah, so that was big and sweet there. So thank you, Brian. Now where was I? yeah, so I'm fortunate in that I'm only gonna go to places that are gonna have the foods that I want to eat. So like when we are looking, we're big Google Maps user. So we'll like fire it up, we'll look through the photos to see if they have like omelets, fresh fruit, those sorts of things. So I'm not just gonna like rock up to a restaurant and then be like, let's just see what happens. I make this joke that I don't play a game that I can't win and I'm not going to go to a restaurant that's not going to have food that I want to eat. So I tailor the places that I go to the types of foods that I want to eat. So that I would say is the most important one. But with breakfast, I'm typically getting eggs. I'm going to get some sort of fruit, maybe some sourdough or something like that. Or in the event that I don't have something or they don't have it, I might just get like some oats. maybe a couple of scrambled eggs and keep it smaller there. But I try to recreate a very similar structure to what I almost always do with lunch and dinner. I'm looking for a primary protein source, which is going to be a chicken breast, maybe some fish, something like that, a side salad or steamed grilled vegetables and rice, potato, maybe some pita if we're doing like Mediterranean or something like that. But I basically tailor the places that I go. to the type of foods that I want to eat, not the opposite way Yeah, I agree with that. I go a step further and I often will just not eat breakfast out because I feel like breakfast is generally waffles, pancakes and French toast and that sort of crap at most cafes that you go to. And like if it's available, I'd super be down with some sort of relatively lean meat. Like I'd even take like a burger patty and add in some like home fried potatoes douse them in peppers and onions or something like that. Like I could get away with doing something like that. But in most cases, I just avoid eating breakfast out and I would just skip breakfast and fast before I would eat a lot of the crap that's at most breakfast places. For lunch, I find these questions so interesting because like the way I think about food is literally just give me a protein, give me a starch and give me a fruit or a vegetable. And it doesn't really matter like where I go. You can give me any and I can certainly get an a la carte chicken breast or some sort of like carne asada, breakfast steak or something like that. And then I can add rice or potato or some sort of starch to it and I can get a side of vegetables or fruit. I'm never like, I'm never concerned about it really. I'm just like, okay, either I can create my own sort of a la carte Brian meal here if I can't find a meal that already. fits my goals or I'll just fast and not eat it. So I guess I just like don't overthink that sort of stuff. And when I'm in that situation, I just try to make the best decision that I can with having a protein starch and a fruit or vegetable. I mean, you really hit the nail on the head there. That is the basic recipe for having complete success in almost all contexts right there. Yep, yep. All right, what's a great slash clean whey protein powder? Yeah, so I think the most important thing here in this context is clean. Great is, I mean, we have great tasting, great ingredients. I'm going to lean on great ingredients. My personal favorite is the Muscle Feast Whey Isolate. They are a smaller company out of Ohio. Every time I check, they have the best priced whey isolate that is very few ingredient on the market. Their chocolate is four ingredients. They have a whey isolate. It is a cocoa powder. There is stevia and there is an emulsifier. I believe it's sunflower lecithin. And same thing with their vanilla, except it's going to be a vanilla extract. I could be incorrect on the emulsifier. It might be like a guar gum, but only four ingredients. So to date, I've only had one client who could not handle it. And I think he has... the the less than he can't handle the less than but that's been the sole one so that's my pick I know Brian has a Yeah, so I go Legion. I'm sponsored by them. So go figure. If you use code Brian, B -R -Y -A -N at checkout, you get some additional bonus points and cash back and stuff that you can use on future orders. But I love the Legion, the Legion protein. I use it almost exclusively. Sometimes I go with the dimetize fruity pebbles, which is very much not clean. but I love the flavor of it. So most of the time I'm eating Legion because it is very simple, GMO free, third party tested, all natural, cetera, et cetera, grass fed, I believe as well. So Legion is awesome. I like the cookies and cream flavor, the vanilla, the cinnamon cereal. I mean, they're all there for the most part, pretty good. And then yeah, sometimes the fruity pebbles from Dymatize if I'm in the mood for something sweeter and a little trashier. definitely not clean per se if that's what this person is looking Yeah, the Legion is very, good. I've evaluated this for clients numerous times. It's a very, very good product. The one thing I will say in this, this applies to pretty much all the protein powders. The more exotic flavoring you go with, the higher the likelihood of you might run into digestive issues with the things that are required to create those exotic flavors. That's not the protein. It's not the salt. It's not the stevia or the sucralose. Well, technically. It could be the sucralose in times, but if you have dodgy digestion, stick to the basic vanilla chocolate protein powder or sorry, peanut butter sort of flavors. Yep. Okay, let's kick this one over to you, Brian. Why does it seem like some muscles don't respond to the repeated bout effect and constantly get sore, like the adductors? So I actually don't agree that they don't respond to the repeated bout effect. I'm of the belief that every muscle responds to the repeated bout effect, but maybe at varying levels. The adductors are a decent example. Like they do tend to get really sore when you haven't trained them for a while and then you do train them. They're insanely sore. Like anyone can relate to this. If you haven't done a barbell back squat and you've just been doing like pendulum or hack squats or leg press or something like that. And then you go and you do a barbell back squat. The thing that rips you apart the most is your doctors through that supporting role that they're playing there. that feeling, which is just awful, the first session, I would say is like 50 or 60 percent diminished the second session. And then by the third or fourth session, I don't even feel the adductors anymore at all in the in the post -session fatigue, soreness category. Same thing like I think the glutes are another example where if you're doing a heavily lengthened overload movement like a split squat or a walking lunge The first time you do that they get insanely sore but by a month into doing them every week It's like there's a little bit of mild soreness, but it just dissipates really quickly I honestly can't think of a single muscle that doesn't respond to the repeated bout effect So I'm curious on this like this question asker is a regular asker. I think he's asked three questions on on this current 27 question episode that we're doing. And they're always good questions. I just can't say that I agree with that per se. How do you feel about Yeah, I I can't think I can't think of any muscle that I am like consistently training that is always like insanely sore or even, you know, notably sore. Maybe chest, I could say, is one that gets decently sensitive consistently. But definitely I would not say adductors. And in my experience, I do have one client who his adductors are like smashed all the time, but he's the only one I can think of. Yeah, chest is a decent example. again, mean, like I've had really intense soreness in my chest in week one of a cycle. But by the time I'm in week three, doing the same movements for similar rep schemes, et cetera, without drastic changes, the soreness is, one day and then basically gone. So pretty mild. So, yeah, I just I just can't really All right, the next one is just a big up for us. So they said, just discovered your pod. And I'm like binge watching every episode. It's so good. Thank you. That's awesome. We should probably have you actually write that as a review for us and give us five stars and all that good stuff on Apple or Spotify, because you guys giving us stars and writing comments like this are going to help us reach more people. So a big plug to try and go out and do some more of This one let's kick over to you, Brian. How to estimate optimal volume sets per week for an individual. Yeah, mean, if this question couldn't be an entire episode, I actually think... we should extrapolate this to an episode. Yeah, should we do like an abridged answer right now or just kind of save it and do a full episode on I think you can cover it like really, you know, briefly and then we can extrapolate it into a full episode. Cool. Well, I think ultimately the thing you need to focus on is progression. So your optimal amount of volume is going to be a level of volume where you're seeing progress over the course of weeks, months, many months, years, et cetera. But I'm a fan of using the subjective measures. Mike Isretel popularized these years ago and I still think they're valuable in many ways. So when you talk about like soreness, post -session fatigue, things like that. I think that if you are starting a new training cycle and you're never getting sore, you likely need more volume. If you're getting a pump and then your pump is dissipating in your session, you're probably doing too much volume. If you're not feeling any fatigue in any of your muscles post -workout, like if you go to walk up the stairs or down the stairs after a leg day and it just feels like a normal day of walking up and down the stairs, You probably need more volume, but if you're completely crippled at the end of a workout and your heart rate is staying at like 150 beats a minute for the next hour and you can't walk up and down the stairs at all, you're probably doing too much volume. I think it's a very complicated question with a number of individually dependent answers. And so I really struggle to try to answer this question in a matter of like two to five minutes. but, I, do think, you being starting at something like 10 sets a week per muscle group and splitting that over two sessions is probably like a pretty good starting place because that gives you five sets, one session, five sets, another session, or maybe it's six and four or seven and three or something like that. But I do think that's like a pretty prudent place to start. And then you can assess those metrics that I mentioned, those subjective ones like pump, fatigue, soreness. kind of see where that lands you. It's likely that some of your muscles are going to respond subjectively to 10 sets quite well, and some of them may not. So maybe some of your muscle groups need a little less than 10 sets. Some of your muscle groups need a little more than 10 sets. But it's certainly a process of experimentation over time and kind of dialing that in. that's my short kind of Instagram Q &A answer. Yeah, that's good. For the question asked around this one, we'll follow up with a full length. I think that'll be really good. Sweet. How to approach when someone needs coaching but doesn't want coaching. Is this possible? I don't really know how to answer this question. I will tell you from a coach, I'm never gonna try and convince someone to buy coaching and by any stretch of the imagination. If this is like sounds like maybe a significant other, something like that, again, I think you're in, it depends on the nature of your relationship, right? But you may be floating salty waters, let's call it that way. I honestly, I don't really know how to answer this. You can maybe talk them through things that are important to them and maybe suggest someone that could help if that's what they want. But I think that if that's what they want is really important and I wouldn't, like many people effectively need. coaching, right? I am a coach that financially benefits from people who need coaching, but by no means am I going around trying to say that people like, you know, need coaching and they should come to me sort of thing. I just I think you're just going to turn people off. I wouldn't try to encourage them. I sorry. Encourage. Do not try to push. Yeah, that's kind of the way I was going to answer it too. My guess is that if you have somebody in your life that you want to have coaching and they don't seem to want coaching, it's probably a close friend or a significant other is likely my assumption of this question. And so yeah, I really like what you said about insinuatively convincing them that maybe that is something important. Or maybe it's just a matter of having a conversation about what your goals really are. And then are you capable of reaching those goals yourself? Do you have the intrinsic motivation to do what you need to do to get to those goals without a coach? And maybe through that conversation, this person would understand that a coach could actually be beneficial as a third party kind of non -related person that can help you do these things. Because I know like you and I both with our significant others, like it's really hard to coach your significant other, but a lot of times we feel like we know more than them. And so it's, it's, the record, I do know more than Jenny. And that's why. She presses me on everything and I get pissed. Right, right, right. And they don't want to listen. So generally it's better to have somebody that's not related or as close to the situation who can then help them kind of conceptualize and implement some of these tools. And so like I empathize with the plight, like I understand the significant other or the close friend that isn't doing what they need to do to help themselves. But I think the only way to actually make that happen is to have conversations with them elicit a response that somehow makes them understand that for them to reach their goals, they're going to need to hire outside help at Yeah, that's a really hard question there. Hopefully we provided some help on it. Okay, this one is for you, Brian. How many drinks are you gonna have on Thursday? guys night. Probably two. I think two is probably the right number. So that's me not raging, but going out and being social and making some connections with my friends. I think that I really like this next question. So I think we'll both have something to say on this. know, I think I know what your response is going to be already, but do you ever not want to travel because it throws off your fitness routine? Yeah, yeah. mean, and honestly, yes, I would say it's contextually dependent upon the type of travel and what I can do there. But I would say yes. And in many cases, I won't travel because it removes me from the things that I would rather do than travel. Simple as Yeah, no, I agree as well. I mean, I have a traveling bug. I, one of my missions in life is to travel. And especially as the kids go off to college in 15 years or whatever it is, I really want to be able to go off and explore the world. And I'm not going to have a lot of the accommodations that I'm used to having when I do that. But I relate. to what you're saying. And this summer has been a huge summer of travel for me. And there's certainly been times where I'm like, fuck another four days where I'm not going to have access to my normal stuff, whether it's my bike or my weights or whatever. I've had a lot of these weekends this summer. think this one that I just did in Nashville was my fourth. And then next week I'm going to South Carolina, which will be my fifth. And these are all four days, like either a Thursday to Sunday or Friday to Monday type thing. And so what I've like, what I, what I've done to prepare for it is sort of overreach leading up to it. So in like, if I, if I know I'm going somewhere on Thursday or Friday, I'll go Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, hard in the paint and I'll lift twice and I'll do cardio every single day. And then I'll assume that the first travel day is a recovery day where I'm super compensating. Then the next day I'll usually just kind of walk and explore the town that I'm So that's essentially two days off. And then by the next day, like I did this past week in Nashville, I'm having this bug, this itch to exercise. And I feel super recovered because I just had two days completely off. So like in Nashville this past week, I went for a six mile run on Saturday morning. I didn't do anything Thursday or Friday. Saturday I was itching. I woke up at 7 a I went for a six mile run, which is insanely long for me. It took an hour And it felt amazing. And I got in, kind of got that itch in to exercise, but I didn't get to bike. I didn't get to lift weights. And then this coming weekend in South Carolina, it's going to be similar where I'm not going to have my bike. So I'm probably going to end up going for one run. I'm probably going to bring my rings so that I can at least do like an upper body workout. And then I'll plan to do a lower body workout before I go. So I'll likely do like lower body on Wednesday, Thursday. Friday off, try and use my rings on Saturday and maybe do a run or something like that. So I just try to plan for like mild or less rigid activity while I'm there, but still making sure that I'm doing some activity because my mental capacity and just me as a person is better when I exercise and you can exercise anywhere. And that's the thing I've realized is that you can, you can run anywhere. You can walk anywhere. I can find a hill and, and you know, run up the hill. I can do pushups and I can find a tree branch and do pull -ups. Like it's not my routine, but at least it keeps me exercising. And at this point in my life, exercise for me is much more about the pursuit of wellness and longevity and being my best self than it is necessarily about hitting all of these rigid goals that maybe I have established. And so through that, I've been able to kind of pull back and not become so neurotic about these situations. I love how you wrap that up because something that I wanted to say is it depends on your goals, right? Like right now I'm very much in a, especially on the back end of this hernias, you know, the detour, I'm very, very goal oriented and more travel just takes me away. It's just time that I can't spend working on my goals, but when certain goals are committed or achieved and I have new goals, which are to like be a family man and those sorts of things like that, my answer will be But in my current phase of life, yeah, I don't want anything to do with it if it takes me away from the progress that I want to make. That's acute, not Yeah, for sure. Good point. Okay, I feel like I lose tension when pausing at the bottom of the hack or pendulum. Is this normal? Yeah, I actually completely relate to this question. And I think that it's completely normal. And I think you can avoid it. So what I would actually do is stop right before you get to the bottom. And I think that there's this almost is similar in like a way you can relate it to the cast loop bridge versus hip thrust question that came earlier, because the the The pausing at the bottom, you're very much at the very bottom of your squat where your ass is on your calves, then you're going to lose a little bit of tension in the quads. But by doing so, you're going to recruit more musculature from your hips and your glutes to help you get out of the bottom. Whereas if you're doing like a hack or a pendulum or something and you stop before you very bottom out, maybe you stop at the point where your knees stop going forward. I actually find that more challenging where I have to use less weight because I'm using less range of motion. So it's weird. It's very similar to the cast glute bridge. In a lot of ways you would look at that and you'd be like, well, you're doing less range of motion. You should be able to use more weight because it's a smaller range of motion. But that's actually not the case because by going deeper, like in the hip thrust, you're recruiting more musculature. You're able to use more weight. Same thing on the pendulum or the hack. If you go all the way to the bottom, you're recruiting more musculature to help you get up. You can use more weight. If you keep your knees forward, maybe you keep your feet together. You don't allow your knees to splay out to the side and really recruit the adductors as much. And you're stopping literally at the point where your knees don't go forward anymore. So it's maybe, it's not even as if the knees are starting to move backwards, but it's like they just stop going forward. I would stop your rep where your knees stop going forward if you're looking to target the quads specifically. If you're looking to just create power and move as much load as possible, then going all the way to the bottom and using more musculature is probably It's a great answer by Brian. think unfortunately it's kind of hard to conceptualize some of the things he said, unless you understand it. I also think machine design really comes into play. Like there's certain hack squats that just have a shit angle and at the bottom your knees start to travel backwards. Same thing with some pendulums. The relationship of the position of the pendulum at the bottom, it deloads because there's just the tension drops off, not because of how you're performing it, how the machine is set up. So it's a very kind of complicated answer and know that machine design does come into some of that reason Yep, yep, good point. All right, we have like nine or eight more questions. So let's get through these quick as we can. Do more plates equal more dates? Jeff Nipper just did a whole video. you're gay and then that maybe is probably a bell -shaped curve if you're gay and then that would be sweet. If you're not, I would say the answer straight up no. So I think that this question is getting at like, do people that work out get more dates? And it's not just like, if you're stronger and you have like four plates per side, are you gonna get more dates? The way I answered this question is that I think in college, it mattered. Legitimately, I felt like I had better success with women in college because I was more jacked than my friends. And I think that that legitimately like, it mattered. After college, as an Zero, like absolutely zero, no impact. Don't even think about it. Train for your own benefit and don't try to do it for dates. I think there is a point where you have to train enough to be healthy and be physically attractive, but you certainly don't have to pursue optimal hypertrophy or be a power lifter or anything along those lines to do well with the opposite sex. Yeah. The past taken care of yourself. Okay, this one I'll kick to you because I know my answer on this. Thoughts on the Lane -Norton -slash -Dr. Mike Isretel approach that cold plunge blunts hypertrophy. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's an approach or anything. I mean, it's science. Like, it's just true. I linked two studies from Pummed that one from 2015, one from 2020. The one from 2015 shows that cold plunge blunts hypertrophy and strength gains. The second one in 2020 showed that it primarily blunted the anabolic signaling of hypertrophy, but not as much for strength. The mechanism is that it literally blunts protein synthesis. just does that. And if you blunt protein synthesis, then anabolism can't occur. I don't think this is not some sort of thing that people just believe, but isn't true. Like there's legitimately science over the last five to 10 years that back this up. And so it's not Lane and Isretel's approach. It's just fact. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Max total sets per session, not per muscle group. Is there a point of diminishing returns? Yeah, I love this question. This is another one from the same guy that I said asked like three questions on this one. And he also asked the hack squat pendulum one about the quads and the stuff like that. So I think there's some really good questions from him here. Max total sets per session. I do think there is a point of diminishing returns. And for me, that point is generally about 12 total work sets. If I'm taking long breaks and working things mostly close to I find 12 total works that's in the session to be about the point where I feel like I'm no longer producing quality work. I think that changes when I'm in some sort of like metabolic type cycle. For example, the other day when I got back from my trip to Nashville, I did a metabolic type training because I didn't feel like wasting a bunch of time resting. So I just did a 10 minute EMOM alternating a chest in the back movement. then another 10 minute EMOM alternating a chest and a back movement, and then a five minute EMOM of lateral raises. So literally I worked out for like 25 minutes and I did, it was 35 minutes with resting, but 35 minutes of working out and I did 25 sets. And that was fine because those sets weren't to failure. They were under the short rest. So it was much more metabolic accumulation than it was straight up muscle fatigue or mechanical tension. so I think if I'm training straight up, like going for gains, doing straight hypertrophy or powerlifting style training, 12 sets is about my point. If I'm doing more metabolic work, I'll usually just set the timer at an hour and whatever I get in, get in. but I've done 30 sets, 35 sets in an hour, if it's short rest shy of failure. So I do think you need to take into account that aspect when, when determining this. But I think for the sake of this question, 12 sets is my answer because that's typical hypertrophy training with long rest periods, et cetera, et cetera. What do you I think there is eventually a point of diminishing returns. think environment, the, the, the ambitiousness of your goals in those sorts of things. Very, very much skew that, for your average person who just wants to look good, feel good, attract the opposite sex, you know, jokes on you. It's probably not going to work. what Brian said, I think is, a wonderful answer. If your goal is to have the best physique that you could ever have, and you're willing to significant amounts of time for it, I think it's significantly higher. You look at even, I always forget this guy's name. Who just won the WNBF Worlds last year? Brian DaCosta, is that who it was? Look at him's training. His leg training is disgusting. It's disgustingly long. It's disgustingly high volume. He's the best natural physique in the world. Right. So I think it needs to come down to what are you willing to sacrifice for that goal? And I think the max total sets per session has different answers depending on different importances of this in your life sort of Yeah, no, that's a good point. How I know you have really long training sessions that can get up to like two, two and a half hours during those sessions. How many total work sets are you doing? It's I'm kind of going back now because I really haven't done it in over eight weeks. About seven exercises per session, two to three sets per exercise session. So yeah, Yeah, and that's over two to two and a half hours. So like when I'm talking about 12 sets, that's for me about 60 to 75 minutes. like you're literally for the amount of time you're doing less volume than I am actually per time period. So that's interesting to think of as well. Okay. What's your favorite part of your job and least favorite? I would say the favorite part of my job is it's very, very fulfilling. This matters to those who I get to help, right? I've had many unfulfilling jobs that paid me well that were just, did not matter in the grand scheme of the world and were very empty. I've had numerous people say, Erin, thank you. You've changed my life, like for the better. That means something to me. You know, I'd say that's the best part of it, especially as I get older, working with moms, dads who are then changing how the family approaches nutrition, you know, and like that will generate through generations of those families. And for me, that's incredibly rewarding. I would say that is my favorite part of my job. My least favorite is my inability to turn off. I don't have a line between work and life. Everything is kind of intertwined by one. And I found myself having to take kind of silly approaches to be able to turn off from work. Like in the gym, I have to turn focus mode on where the only apps I can use are my training program app, Google and Spotify. No messages can come in, no emails because I can't like not look. Same thing going to bed at night, I'll lay in bed checking something and I'll see my little telegram notification. And I know I have client messages and it's like very hard for to not look at those messages, even though it's 1030 at night and I'm literally going to bed. I would say that's currently my least favorite and I make no point the finger. It's 100 % created by my own fault, but I would say that's my least favorite right I agree that my favorite is the impact, the ability to impact people's lives and to get that feedback that what we're doing is helping them is insanely rewarding. I also quite enjoy the creative aspect of writing programming and exercise selection and all that whole process. I love putting my headphones on, listening to music and just zoning out or zoning in, I guess, and really. creating something that I think is cool and unique. My least favorite is admin work. Just awful admin work where I have to go in and do things that don't require any creativity and are literally just a matter of taking a spreadsheet for business or finance purposes and kind of having to fill in things there. It's just, yeah, I just don't look forward to that at all. So that would be my answer there. All right, let's move through these last five here. How do you track partial reps in your training logger app? I typically set it. So it's like, hey, on this, we're doing three partials and I stick to that. There's times I freestyle if I'm like having a really killer set and I just want to try and like prolong it as much as I want and squeeze everything out of it. I might just like go to the wheels fall off proverbially, but I don't track that or anything like that. That was just like a one off kind of auto regulatory thing that I'll do. It's not something that spend a lot of energy into is like tracking partials or anything. might pick exercise where I say we're doing three or we're doing five. That's typically what I either choose three or five, or I may freestyle it sometimes, but that's those are pretty much the two sets. Yeah, in my app I track them with a decimal, so if I did eight reps plus three partials it would be 8 .3. And then if I need to, I'll use the notes section to actually kind of expand on I think the bigger, more interesting question is how do you progress with partial reps? And I don't want to answer that right now, but I do think that that is maybe something that we can answer in the future or can be posed as a question in our next Q &A. Because I do think the way in which you progress using partial reps and turn them into full reps, et cetera, over time, I think is super interesting and a discussing at some This next one will kick to you, Brian. I have so much trouble staying in zone two. It seems to be always zone one or zone four. Advice. Yeah. So it seems like you're likely choosing a modality of cardio that is probably susceptible to undulations in intensity. And one of the things that was listed by this question asker was rucking. And so when you look at rucking or anything outdoors, really, you're going to be subject to these undulations of intensity because anytime that you approach a hill, going up, you're going to be working harder. And anytime you approach a hill going down, you're going to be working less hard. So that would make sense that you're either in Z1 or Z4. I've experienced the same thing. The key to doing any sort of cardiovascular training outdoors is that you have to make sure that you are on flat ground for the most part. If you're not on flat ground, you need to change the way that you go about moving through space, given incline. So if you're, if you're going running or rocking, and you approach a hill, maybe if you're running, you need to start walking that hill to stay in zone two. If you're rocking, you may need to slow down significantly to go up that hill. And then on the counter, if you're going downhill, I find that I need to run downhill. So if I'm trying to stay in zone two, and I'm doing a run outside, I will be walking any steep hill because that will keep me in zone two, and then I will be running any downhill or decline because that will also help keep me in zone two. So I think it's likely that you're doing this outdoors. If you're doing it indoors and you're struggling to stay in zone two, then I think you just honestly need to work on consistent output and be a little bit more specific about looking at your monitor on your your bike or your treadmill or whatever it is that you're doing. And more curating the optimal intensity level. So for many people, you you can't run in zone two because it's just too hard for people who are inefficient at running. But if you put the treadmill at a 15 incline and a 2 .7 speed, it's likely that that would keep you in zone two or some version of that. You know, maybe the speed is higher and the incline is lower or whatever it is. But it definitely takes a little bit of time, a little bit of practice. and choosing the right modality is super important as well. So I'll just leave it at that for right Do you have anything to add there? No, I don't. That is not the question for me. But thank you for thinking I might. Thoughts on digestive enzymes or bio -optimizers? I'm not sure if BioOptimizers is like a brand name or if this is some new classification of supplement that I don't even know about, right? it's that, I think it's the latter. If it is the latter, am going to, the name just screams snake oil to me, bio -optimizers. Like if this is some new classification of something, I would say my first inclination is number one, I'm not familiar with it. My second very close inclination is probably save your money. Now thoughts on digestive enzymes, they do have their place. I wouldn't just wantonfully recommend you take them. There are certain. nutritional situations where they can have greater utility like the two that come to the top of mind. If you are very, very deep into a caloric surplus, you have already gained a sufficient or a significant amount of weight. Food intake is very, very high in digestive capacity is having a hard time keeping up with the required food volume that is necessary to further illicit the gains on the surplus. Digestive enzymes can assist in the chemical part of the digestive process. These are also typically paired with a B -tain hydrochloric, which helps to bolster your endogenous stomach production, stomach acid production, That is the one thing that comes to mind. Others is if you had, for example, like a stool testing done, like a GI map or something like that, and you are just at a pretty diminished digestive. capacity to digest food and you're getting a lot of undigested food symptoms, lots of bloating, gas, these sorts of things that you can bring them in as an assistance to the chemical digestive process because your own chemical digestive process is not currently at a capacity sufficient to digest the food that you are eating. So those are the two that I kind of see what I recommend just getting digestive enzymes, no. Most cases, if you're having a hard time with the foods that you're digesting, you're probably consistently eating foods that do not disagree with you, have a food audit. The first I typically have people remove is a way concentrate. Cool. I have nothing to add. know nothing about digestive enzymes. Yep. This one I think is best for you, Brian. How many days of training in a row is Yeah, and then two days on, one day off, every other day, et cetera, et I think it's very individually dependent. It's a great question. And I don't think it can just be answered very succinctly without a ton of information on you and kind of the process of you learning the way that you respond to things over time. It almost kind of bleeds into that question we had earlier that we were going to make a whole episode about, which is how to estimate optimal volume sets per week as an individual. It's similar. I know from my personal experience, every time that I do a training program, that's every other day, I feel like I have the best quality training sessions. Every time I train, feel psychologically motivated to train. I never like go into the sessions feeling tired or like I unmotivated. And I have just really, really good quality workouts. And it seems like I'm able to progress consistently. And yet, despite the fact that I've realized this 10 plus years now, I still tend to train four to five days a week when I'm not in bike season. And maybe I need to question myself on that and be like, hey, maybe I would be better off training with less frequency and having these higher quality training sessions. But yeah, it's a tough question. It's tough to make sense of kind of the difference you know, every training session being of highest quality, but maybe your total volume is lower because you're training less frequently versus training more frequently. Maybe your sessions aren't quite as high quality, but you're getting a higher dose of volume per muscle group per week. And thus maybe just that itself leads to more hypertrophy. And, I don't have a super confident opinion on which one is, is better or. optimal. think that there's probably value in both and probably value in periodizing your year and doing both and then kind of assessing, you know, which one keeps you more motivated, which one gets you a better response, etc., etc. Yeah, there's, it's hard to define optimal without the additional context of the life, right? Because what is optimal for the dad whose priority is his family's well -being, financial future and time spent with kids, et cetera, et cetera, is a lot different than what might be optimal for the 21 year old who thinks that more plates, more dates is a real thing. So it's hard to answer this question well without the context of the other. parts of your life and it is really important. I hate that that is the answer. I do hate that because it seems unhelpful but that is unfortunately the answer. And this last one, Brian. Yeah, when am I signing up for Leadville, you coward? I wanna sign up for Leadville for real. So the dude, my buddy Greg, who sent this one over, he's been trying to get me to sign up for Leadville with him. And so my answer is I'll sign up for Leadville when you sign up for Leadville and commit yourself to actually do the training necessary to do it because I am super in on doing Leadville. I absolutely want to do it. but I don't want to do it alone. I don't want to do the training alone. I don't want to do the race alone. I don't want to travel and stay in an Airbnb alone. I want to have a compatriot to do it with. And so when you sign up for Leadville, you coward, I will sign. I like that answer. All right, guys, so thank you for everyone who asked questions. We had a lot of really good questions. I enjoyed this episode. I'm sure Brian did as well. So that was us signing off. We will talk to you next week.