What's up guys? Happy Monday or Tuesday, depending on when you are tuning in. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 169, our September 2024 Instagram Q &A. By now, you guys know the deal of how we operate these. So we got a lot of good questions coming in from Brian's Instagram stories. And then I opted to pull my stories out of my Progress Squad broadcast channel this month, which is a lot of fun. So In the future, that's where these will come from if you are ever interested in getting your question onto the podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, we'll have some updates. Brian, can you kick us off, please? Yeah, should I start a broadcast channel? What's like the benefit of that compared to just doing normal Instagram? It's think of it. I like to think of it as like a it's kind of like a big group chat, but only you can post in it and you know, things get delivered. Whereas like stories, like you don't, you can't guarantee that your stories get seen. And I just like to give a little bit more like mine's called the progress squad, right? And I'll post only things that I think are like helpful in there that I think, you know, and, I did some gauging of the demographics of the group and it's like 40 45 percent of it or something like that or 40 percent of his other coaches so I do a lot of like Coaching esque specific things or things that I find valuable with you know My clients the rare kind of research that I think is potentially needle moving I may post into there and that sort of stuff But it's just a little bit more like curated and it's people that you know kind of want to directly hear from you So that Do you ever feel like you should just double up your content and whatever you post there, should just post in other places too? Or is it very specific to that? I mean, potentially. And I don't see any reason that you couldn't. I just kind of use it as something like I try and post like more helpful things in there, things that might be more of like mental notes or something that I'm not going to like type up into like a story per se. But yeah, and that's just how I use it. Right. A lot of people use it as an inside marketing track tool sort of thing. But I do enjoy doing it. More so than just like randomly posting to stories or something And last question is you can you you said you know that it's being delivered. Do you know that it's being seen? Like is everyone in your broadcast channel seeing it or they might like see the notification and then like not even acknowledge it? They could do that, but it shows up as like an Instagram message, like a DM. So that that's how it's delivered. So, I mean, you could be like, hey, there's updates in the progress squad or whatever broadcast channel, and I'm just not going to look at them like you could do that. But you get like that notification and it shows up in your DMs kind of list. That's cool. Okay. So the DM thing actually does kind of give it much more priority as far as people who have seen it. That's interesting. Okay. Enough of that. So as far as updates go, what was I gonna say? I just completed my first full cycle of my full body program. So it takes two weeks for me to get through a cycle given that there's four workouts and I'm only doing it twice a week. And it's been super solid. The first workout was for sure the hardest one. That's the one that I'm coming back to today to start my second rotation through. And it's a RDL weighted pull -up, incline dumbbell bench press, and easy bar tricep extensions. And given that it's all free weight stuff and body weight with the pull -up, that workout for whatever reason, I wanna say was like at least a full point RPE. harder than all my other three workouts. And I have one of the four workouts that's all like machines and cables and that one's, you know, probably an RPE less than the other ones. So it's interesting as I go through it that already I'm starting to have a workout that like I sort of have more anxiety about than other ones. But it's also nice that it's the first workout in rotation. So I just need to kind of set my mind to like get through the really hard one. And then I have three, you know, manageable ones. to finish off the cycle. Really enjoyed the first cycle through though. I noted it in the last episode, but I've been getting sore. I've been getting the stimulus that I seek from extremely low volumes. The most interestingly I've found that there's just another gear that I'm hitting with my focus and execution of movements that even when I'm doing six sets of back, it's like, somehow I'm getting less out of each set than I am when I'm just being told, hey, you have two sets of back to do and you need to get the absolute most out of those sets. And somehow I'm finding the ability to do that across all movements. You know, I only have two sets. They need to be perfect and they are. And so it's been, it's been pretty cool when I actually look back and like assess volume that I'm doing compared to what evidence -based volumes are. it's crazy how low they are. Like even if you take the most generous approach where it's like, okay, an RDL is going to train my hamstrings, my glutes, my adductors, my low back. And even if you give some credit to like a little bit of traps and like maybe some quads, cause there's some knee bend in there. I mean, even if you're, you're being that generous with, with the movements, I I'm still well below the evidence based recommendations of volume per muscle group. And so I love this experiment. Like this is exactly what I wanna be doing right now to see what happens. know, it's possible that I could do this for six months or 12 months and we basically don't see any change that's tangible enough to be like that worked or that didn't work. In which case I would almost argue that it did work because I was training barely at all and yeah, I was still able to maintain where I was. Alternatively, I could see some negative changes, which obviously would mean that they're probably gonna be even more negative long -term. So like if I were to stick with this for two years, three years, four years, I would potentially lose more or it could go the other way and I could gain. My guess is though that it's gonna be the first option and that I'm basically gonna have indistinguishable differences from training twice a week for 45 minutes each session compared to five times a week for 60 to 90 minutes each session. So anyways, I'll just keep you guys updated as we go and you know there'll be an Instagram post or something about that. Aaron, I'll kick it over to you, come back to me, any updates? I mean, I really don't have anything update worthy. One of our cats killed a snake this morning that I tried to stop from happening. And then she saw me trying to come for it and just killed it really fast. So that that's it's about the only thing she's killed like two in the past, like two weeks. It's really wild watching like these. Typically kind of sweet and like cuddly things just have this like murder instinct and they see something like my god. Yes I'm gonna go kill it and you're fucking Yeah, my god. It's it's wild and then they like I've prevented enough of them then now they know like if I'm coming like he's gonna take this kill for me So they'll just like kill it really fast. I'm like dude. Just chill out a little bit on killing things, please What's the kill move? it's just at the neck. Just crush. yeah, completely. Just no, no. With the bike. Yeah, yeah. Just completely crush it. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, I to like fucking clean them up and stuff. Yeah. on video for me? I mean, I probably could, but it would be like, and I'm kind of a and I don't know all of the snakes here yet. So I don't know which ones are venomous and stuff. I mean, because we literally like Bali is wild. It's where it's a place where there's like, you know, venomous snakes and different fucking creatures and stuff. So I just don't like don't know yet. And I don't want to be like, I'm videoing, you know, my cat. And then they get bit and they fucking die from something because I'm digging around my fucking phone. Right, right, right. But yeah, it's, it's just wild. It's really, really wild, but always interesting for sure. But that's really the only update I might have. Cool. I'll throw you a bone on an update and it can be a dual update when we talk about 30 30s. So in the, in the podcast that we did last week on hybrid training, I noted that the 32nd on 32nd off interval is one of my favorites for zone four, zone five for getting that kind of high intensity effect. And I noted that you kind of do them in in groupings. So you would go like 30 seconds on 30 seconds off for eight rounds or 10 rounds. So you essentially are working for half of that period of time. So you'd get four to five minutes of work, but your heart rate stays elevated during the rest period to the point that when you look at the graph, each eight to 10 minute period looks as if you've just stayed with your heart rate elevated that entire eight to 10 minute period. And physiologically, that seems to be the effect as well. When you look at the research comparing 30 30s to straight like eight minute intervals where your heart rate just stays elevated the whole time. The impact on your VO two max and adaptations seem to be similar. So I noted that then you went and did some 30 30s and your graph looked exactly like I said, like you had an eight minute spike and then you had your like three or four minute rest or whatever it was in the middle and it dropped and then you had another like eight minute spike at the top. And I did the same workout on Sunday. but I did mine for four rounds of 10 minutes each. So I was able to get 40 minutes of time at elevated heart rate with 20 minutes of work time. But that's kind of as you'd expect given my commitment to cardio and your commitment to cardio. But I think that the point of this is more to state just that the 30 -30 is super effective and I'm glad that you were able to experience that and then kind of reap some of the benefit there. Yeah, and I'll add this, I know you and I briefly corresponded about this in our Instagram DMs. On Sunday, I did my other Sprint 80, sorry, Sprint 8 workout. And what's really wild is the workouts are just about the same amount of time duration. My average heart rate and max heart rate between the two workouts was very, very similar. I'm talking like three or three beats per minute difference on both. However, the subjective perception of how difficult the sprint eight is was equally twice as hard. Like I getting dizzy, feeling like I'm going to pass out sort of thing in the sprint eight or in the 30, 30 felt like a solid, like 80 % effort, but I didn't have that like feeling of impending doom, you know, on me. So that was pretty eye opening to see, but I can get pretty much the same heart rate outputs, but I don't feel. It's nearly as poorly doing it. Yeah, your zones were basically the same too when you looked at the amount of time spent in each zone, which goes in line with what you said about heart rate. But yeah, super cool. I love it. 40 20s are another one that you can do. Again, you're getting a little closer to the longer work time with the 40 20. It's like a reverse Tabata sort of, but double. So you could do 20 tens or something like that as well. But all of those are super good. And then you'll want to take that break in between them to kind of separate the groupings. But anyways, that is that and then my last update is that I am going to London to visit my good childhood friend Simon who happens to live there. I'll be there October 3rd through the 8th. We will do our episode on October 2nd as scheduled but we'll miss the one on the back end of that trip as I come home on the on the 8th or the 9th or I don't know whatever that is. But yeah that is that is the update here and I think we can jump into the episode. do it. So yeah, go ahead. You can frame it. Yeah, I kind of want to, I kind of want to read this one because I think it's important in some of the verbiage and how we may want to answer it. Question being, what are your views on the cost to benefit or cost slash benefit apologies of truly fighting for that final rep face contorting bar speed slows or stops and you have to grind three to five seconds just to complete the rep. Is that beneficial for gains or maybe, maybe too costly on fatigue? Can you use any of the velocity loss research to validate your answer? Yeah, it's a really good question. have these guys in my DMs, these young guys that... maybe neurotic is the wrong word, but they really like to overthink things to like the nth degree. And so it's kind of cool because that type of person also creates some really good questions and conversations for our podcast, which I do appreciate. So. I'll talk about the velocity loss research real quick and then kind of tell you why I think it doesn't really matter in answering this question. So first, the first study I have here, I three of them, is effects of low versus high velocity loss thresholds with similar training volume on maximal strength and hypertrophy in highly trained individuals. This is Meyerholt. I don't have the year. Sorry about that. This study is interesting because they compare higher velocity losses than other studies. So in this one, they went 20 to 30 % velocity loss compared to 40 to 60 % velocity loss. That was the reason there's a range there is because it's different for each movement. I think the bench press was the higher end and the squat was the lower end. And before I even go any further, I think it's important to frame what these velocity losses mean. as far as how it relates to RIR. Because at some level, velocity loss and RIR are just the same thing said differently. It's like RPE and RIR. So when you're looking at a 20 to 30 % velocity loss, think if your rep took you one second and you're losing 20 to 30%, you're talking about your rep taking 1 .2 seconds or 1.3 seconds. So you're barely starting to see any reps slow. Like I would call that for RIR. probably something like that. And then when you have 40 to 60 % velocity loss, you're probably another rep closer to failure. So maybe it's like three, like two to three, but when you're really getting into that, one RIR range, your rep speed is probably going to double. Like you're going to be at least at like a hundred percent velocity loss. And if you're doing one of those reps where you're grinding for three to five seconds, you're probably at like 700 % velocity loss or something like that. I mean, it's a huge difference, a stark difference from where you were talking about at 20 to 30 % or 40 to 60%. Do you have any insight or thoughts on that before I continue? No. you're speaking my language. Please keep going. Okay. So what we're essentially doing is comparing like four RIR to like two to three RIR in this velocity loss study. And the difference was in the high velocity loss had slightly better gains for hypertrophy and there was non -significant difference in strength. Second study, resistance training with different velocity loss thresholds induce similar changes in strength and hypertrophy. This was Anderson. They compared 15 % velocity loss to 30 % velocity loss. So we're literally talking about five RIR to three RIR. I mean, we're not even getting really close to failure at all. There was no significant difference in strength or hypertrophy. And then there's a meta analysis here by Jukic from 2024. I believe Helms was on this paper as well as a final author. the acute and chronic effects of implementing velocity loss thresholds during resistance training, a systematic review meta -analysis and critical evaluation of the literature. And this conclusion basically stated that the choice of velocity loss threshold does not seem to affect strength and muscular endurance gains, whereas higher velocity loss thresholds are superior for enhancing hypertrophy and lower velocity thresholds are superior for jumping, sprinting and velocity against submaximal load. So basically what this means is that if you're training for power, like jumping, sprinting, you want to be really, really far from failure. If you're training for strength and muscular endurance, it doesn't really seem to matter. And if you're training for hypertrophy, you should probably train closer to failure, meaning higher velocity loss. So I have some thoughts and conclusions here, but before I go on another monologue, I'll kick it over to you for any thoughts you may have. Yeah, I love how I love the research that you pulled here. You explained it in a very, very straightforward way that I think, you all the listeners to able to pick up on. And what's what I find, I mean, slightly comical is we have now pretty good research that you pulled up to really just reinforce what we already know. Right. Like those with the definitions in the extrapolations you made of those velocity losses, like we're pretty far kind of from failure. You know, per se, and I really like you said, hey, if we're talking about a three to five second, grind to complete a rep, we're talking like 500 % velocity loss or whatever, like, like orders of magnitude higher than these two 20 % 30 % sort of thing. Now, when it comes to the question, I think it's most, what's really important is like, how are we defining objectively gains? we defining them as strength gains, which is wonderful. Perfect. Let's do it. You want to keep some in the tank because we know training to failure is not as productive for strength purely like very, very cut and dry by this point. Or are we talking about hypertrophy? And like we've spoken about many times, hypertrophy is a more forgiving adaptation. And in certain exercises, it may be, I don't want to say beneficial, but less detrimental grinding for that rep. Thoughts come to mind, unilateral pull down, something short overloaded where it's not going to be a high fatigue cost. But if we're talking like an RDL or something like that, that might end your training session. You know, so it's it's unfortunately not a very cut and dry answer. And I think exercise specificity comes into play where we are in the training session comes into play. How many times per week you are training that muscle comes into play. There's a number of different factors to really provide a thorough answer of this. Yeah, really glad that you pointed out the difference in exercise selection and its impact because I mean, man, we touch on this, I feel like in every episode in some capacity is just like a constant topic. And like it should be pretty well known at this point that different exercises elicit different fatigue and stimulus responses. So so good to bring that up again. As far as my notes here and in conclusions. You know, given that RIR and velocity loss are essentially the same thing, speaking the same language, then I think you could actually, instead of looking at velocity loss research, we can just look at RIR research and glean some insight from that as well. And so we don't really need to look much further than the two recent ones, Meta-Regression by Robinson from 2023, I think it might've been published in 24. And then the more recent study on RIR by Reflow. from 2024. And what essentially the meta regression showed was that there's more stimulus as you get closer to failure for hypertrophy, but not for strength. That's as Aaron said, just reiterating that. And then what Ruffalo showed was he was comparing like two RIR to failure. And he found very insignificant differences between like one to two RIR and going to actual failure, as far as the actual gains on hypertrophy. and What that says to me, if I'm gonna kinda just pull back and look at that question that was posed about grinding for three to five seconds, is that if two RIR or one to two RIR is pretty damn close to failure, but you have to do one less like really hard rep, there's inevitably gonna be some fatigue in doing that final hard rep. Trying to do another one where you're gonna lose so much velocity that your bar is gonna get stuck. and you're gonna have to literally contort your face and grind through that, to me, seems like an exponential increase in fatigue for what is likely just a very marginal increase in stimulus. And so my proposal would be that on short overload movements, like Aaron mentioned, where maybe the fatigue cost would be less for you to grind through that, maybe instead of grinding through that, you do what CAS kind of promotes, which is, I call it like the hit and release technique. So you just like literally pull as hard as you can, but where you reach that point where you would begin to grind, you just don't. You just hit that point and release. And then you do a bunch of partials and you hit and release and you hit and release and you hit and release. And by doing that, you're continuing to accrue stimulus with likely less fatigue associated because you're not sitting there grinding and contorting and doing all of that crazy stuff. So that would be my proposal for those types of movements. And then I think for the more... challenging movements like RDLs and pendulum squats or hack squats or whatever. I just think there's probably no need that you ever need to go like to failure on that. Unless you're trying to train yourself psychologically to work through something or I mean, there's a number of reasons where you might do that for reasons outside of maximizing hypertrophy. But my guess would be that doing a grinding rep of RDL or squat where it takes three to five seconds to get up is probably more detrimental. than beneficial. I would agree with that. The the only kind of playing slight devil's advocate. Sometimes, let's say if you have like when you're working with rep targets, rep ranges and it's like, I've been I'm on the hack squat and I'm working in a six to 10 rep range or, you know, an eight to 12 rep range, whatever that rep range may be. If you're like, I just completed rep 11. And if I get one more rep, I can increase load next week. And I really want to increase load like I will gamble. per se on that 12th rep and see if I can bet on myself sometimes. like, sometimes you have it, sometimes you don't, but I mean, I'm not going, you get to a point like, you know, if you're making a rep pretty much or not, and it's okay. I pull the pins, I pin it or I'm making it. But if I know I'm not making a rep, I'm not gonna sit in it for seven seconds, seeing if some second wind magically appears and just gonna. Yeah. dig myself a grave on the third set of my session or something like that. But that would be one time where I will bet on myself proverbially if I really want X reps so that I can increase load the next session. Yeah, I don't even have that in my mind of I need to hit 12 reps so that I can increase load. I could hit 11 and just be like, yep, 11 was cool. I'll increase next week and drop down to eight or nine, and we'll go from there. So I get that too. I get that mindset of I have to hit this number before I increase. I'm following this double progression model. But I also think that when it comes to stimulus for hypertrophy, that's arbitrary. Yes, yeah, I would agree arbitrary for stimulus for hypertrophy, just guidelines for me to operate within of knowing when things go up and et cetera, et cetera. yeah. Okay, I'm gonna kick this next one over to you because I know what your answer is gonna be. But a fun experiment would be for Aaron to follow Brian's program and Brian to follow Aaron's program for a couple months. Thoughts? So the first question that comes to mind is, we talking like current programs? But for the listeners, I followed Brian's programming for years, for at least four years. Brian's programming built me a lot of muscle and strength in my mid to late 20s. It was wonderful. Now, I think if it was in our current context, I think Brian could do me a much better service than I could do of him. I also think Brian's just objectively a far better programmer than I am. But I, there's another question on here that I would, bring this up in a similar sentiment, but I know, I know enough to be dangerous with programming for like cardio and stuff, but I would just do a worse job at it than you. And I think it would be a. poor spend of your months of me trying to do what you could just do better than I can. So it seems kind of silly in that regard. But if it was something like maybe in four years, you decide you want to go on like TRT or something like that and you want to be able to like make the best use case of it. Like I think I could be helpful in a current and in that specific context. But I think contextually dependent, I don't really see how I can help much for your program. Well, I appreciate those words. That wasn't exactly the direction I was expecting you to go with that, but always, always great to hear. I think my expectation was that you were going to say, look, I've spent the last five years becoming extremely self -aware and extremely goal -oriented. And it would be crazy for me to follow a program that someone else is doing for them. when I have these specific goals to stand on stage for Men's Physique and I'm on TRT and I know what movements and what frequency and volume are going to be stimulative for me. And so it would be asinine for me to try to follow Brian's program right now when my goals are so specific. So that was where I thought you were gonna go with that. And I think that's completely reasonable. So yeah, I mean, think this question was, I don't know how serious it was or if it was more of just like a thought experiment, like what would happen to Aaron's physique if he went and just trained like Brian does for a few months? You you drop down to say a two times a week full body program, which is a huge change from what you're currently doing. And Brian decides to ramp up and go in this like super optimal, like crazy focused. biomechanically blah blah blah, drop set, rest, pause set, kill yourself on the leg extension every week type program, which also would not be something that I would enjoy at this point in my life. I think both ways kind of just end up with us being like, we'll just keep doing what we're doing. Yeah, definitely. And I think I'll I'll hijack the question a little bit. I also think this that specific thing that that use case that Brian just explained is why we don't see more research done on like really high level trainees is because they're not going to give the ropes of a season or something like that or an entire prep to someone that could just. You know, I don't want to say fuck it up, but it could have a negative outcome. It's a very big gamble. And I think that's the reason why is because people are, they're selfish with their season of gains or season of opportunity. And they're not just going to give the ropes to someone they probably don't even know for what could be potentially the betterment of the exercise science. Yeah, I mean, they just have to assume that by X amount of years in that they've learned something about themselves and that there's a reason that they're training the way that they do. Okay, this next one I will kick over to you. How would you design a leg day for an intermediate hypertrophy client who only wants to train legs once per week and upper three times per week? Yeah, it doesn't really change too much. think what the main change would be that if I had two leg days, I think that I would have. one day where there was a single leg squat and one day where there was probably just like a hip hinge and a regular squat. And then this is having a second day also allows you to have both leg curls and leg extensions and a single leg squat. it kind of like, gives you more variety of programming to fit into the day. And if you're training legs once a week, you could have the same variety, but you would be doing essentially like one top set of everything. So you could say, You know, I have them to do one set of RDL, one set of hack squat, one set of leg extension, one set of leg curl, and one set of split squats per leg plus caps and abs. And like that would be a pretty solid leg day. Maybe you could even do two sets on the isolation stuff. Whereas if you have two leg days, you can do two or three sets of two or three movements on one of the days and then two or three sets of two or three movements on the other day. So you kind of, if with one leg day, you just have to make a decision of, you want to choose two or three movements and spend more time on those, or do you want to pick more movements and spend less time on each? And I don't really think there's a wrong answer. I guess my intuition would say that for well -roundedness and given the research that we see on uniform hypertrophy across muscle groups, doing more variety of exercises is probably better than less variety. For example, the study I think that showed that they did, was it Smith squat lunges, some sort of hamstring movement and a leg press, think was the, I don't remember exactly what it was, that, that, though doing those four movements outperformed the group that just did squats, whatever, whatever that was as far as leg growth. And so I do think if I was to organize a leg day where I was only doing legs once a week and I wanted to optimize my hypertrophy stimulus, I would probably opt for the one where there's five different exercises and you have a squat, a hinge, a leg curl, a leg extension and a single leg squat and then fitting in volume around those five movements to whatever allows you to progress and. Yep. I think just to reiterate, you kind of glossed over, I think, the best part of that answer at the end. And it was a squat pattern, a hip hinge pattern, a leg extension, a leg curl, and then a unilateral squat or lunge pattern. And that would be the kind of shotgun approach of covering pretty much every lower body pattern for that single leg day. Yep, yep, exactly. Thank you for reiterating that. feel like this one needs to go to you as well. Is there any interest in the new Vultra cable attachment that Cas has showed, especially if they update resistance profiles? If you take a trip to N1, can you compare it to the Prime Smart Cam Torque Arm In -Feel? I don't know what the prime smart cam torque arm is. I don't know that I've done that. I'm pretty sure I have not. I've done the regular cams that change resistance profiles on the prime machines, but I don't think you're referring to the same thing because that's not super similar to this Vultra attachment. so in complete transparency, I have been more focused on my hybrid training in the last few weeks and have not been as keen on on assessing all of Cass's posts in the same level of discernibility that I have in the past. And so I had to go back and look at his feed and really kind of delve into what this Vulture cable actually is. And so it seems like it's kind of like a tonal, which is a electric weight stack where you can adjust the resistance profile so that it Essentially, like the example cash showed was that he made it so it was super duper hard in the length and position, and then the tension drops off in the short position. So I guess you can manipulate it and determine in what part of the range of motion you want it to be hardest. And then I think there's also a mode, or at least I know there is on the tonal that the data driven guys have talked about, where it's like a burnout mode or something. So you have you basically go to failure at whatever resistance you set, and then the machine automatically decreases like a nominal amount, say 5%, 10%. each rep thereafter so that you can just keep doing reps. It's almost like an internally built drop set, which is kind of sweet. So I know those two things about these electric stack models. I don't know a whole lot more. so this dude asking the question, think, I forget, I think his name is Joseph. But he's the guy that has that super dope home gym that would comment on our YouTube and be like, I have the prime thing and I have this other like Atlantis thing coming and like, you know, he's shipping Predator strength pendulums and whatever. mean, dude, his dude's home gym is insane. And so, yeah, like he's probably more insightful at the moment on these these things than I am. And I haven't yet to experience them. So I'm sorry that I can't provide more information. But if and when I go back to end one here in the next period of time, I will give it a try and report back. Yeah, I think it can be promising. I think it's people who are, you know, intelligently applying some of the more, I wouldn't say it's modern knowledge. It's more modernly accepted and talked about with the resistance profiles and stuff like that. And it could be pretty cool, especially in a home gym setup where you may not have room for prime machines and that sort of stuff. And we could have like a a unilateral arm pull down where we can bias the length and or something like that. Like it could get pretty cool if the companies do it well and let's hope that they do. Yeah, no, I agree completely. All right, I'm gonna send this one over to you. How do you combat overwhelm with all of the new content constantly coming out from the evidence -based community, specifically podcast and YouTube? It's impossible to keep up. My answer might be a little bit different. And I think that's perfectly fine. A lot of it is noise, right? And, part of, think being really successful in any kind of modality or medium is being able to separate signal from noise. And I think the longer time you spend in a career or a hobby, anything you're the kind of, if we think about like a a pendulum per se, when that pendulum first starts swinging, right? And let's say the start of the pendulum is representative of you early in your career or something like that. You're getting these massive swings, right? Because you're very impressionable and you haven't spent enough time swinging to feel, or to kind of know where you're really gonna settle in. And then once that pendulum has swung for X amount of time, it's oscillating pretty much, you know, pretty... Hard in the middle without swaying too far in either direction and it will take a pretty profound Impact to really sway that pendulum far enough away and I would say that's where I find myself personally And a lot of the new Things that come out are not Not only are they not earth -shattering. They're not even significant enough to change anything that most of us are already doing And most of the podcasts and YouTube and stuff, it's people creating content, right? Like what Brian and I are doing right now, a lot of it's creating content, but we're being, we're not sensationalizing anything or saying, this new supplement is going to completely change the game for you making gains and stuff like that. Because the only thing that will is literally steroids and prescription medications, right? That is the brutal, honest reality of it. And I think really understanding that is you're gonna have the creators and stuff whose content that you enjoy and you can learn things that are maybe new avenues for you. Wonderful, but you'll lose your mind trying to stay on top of everything. Yeah. I look at it from the perspective of all the content creators and podcasts out there are taking the same study and just refreshing it across each of their channels and interpreting it in their own manner. So like even on, I'll just zero in on, on Eric Helms because he has his iron culture podcast and he has this three DMJ pod. podcast. And he'll cross post topics like we'll analyze the 52 week study on the 3dmj podcast with Nunez and Brian Miner or 3dmj Godfather. And we'll have a group of 3dmj people talking about that study. but then we're also going to bring Trexler on and we're going to have Omar and we're going to do the same analysis on the iron culture podcast. And then they'll repurpose that into Instagram posts, and that will be on Eric Helms's page and on 3dmj's page. And then you see the same thing with nipper, like he'll post a YouTube video that covers a study that was done by like Milo Wolf slab. And Milo Wolf will cover that same study on his channel. And then he'll do seven more videos extrapolating out how you can practically apply that study into programming. And so it's all the same information just being rehashed out over and over by different content creators with slightly different interpretations of what that might mean. And so I also can relate to this question asker, because this is how I felt like two years ago. And I was trying to digest everything and feeling like there's no way I can get it all. And eventually, I just realized that this is what was happening. And I was like, Okay, look, here are like one or two people that I really trust, and I find entertaining and enjoy them when they talk. So when Eric Helms puts out a thing, I'll either listen to it on 3d MJ, or I'll listen to it on iron culture, I'll choose one of the two. And that is my investment into that. from that creator. And that's just the way I approach it now. So I spend significantly less time worrying about it because I feel like I'm getting the 99 % by choosing the creator that I like and trust and just kind of listening to their interpretation of these different studies that come out. Yep, wonderful answer. I'll kick this one over to you as well. How to assess training and nutrition when entering a new and more stressful stage of life. I started school again and weight shot up despite not changing training or food. So I think when we are assessing. entering a new more stressful period of life, what our priorities, identifying what our priorities are, and then understanding that some of the things that are lower on the priority list will need to get deprioritized, right? And I think breaking things down into the definitions of what they actually mean are is like, hey, you're starting school again, which means that is a higher priority for you. If you do not have the same time and can't train six days per week, let's just say that for example, anymore, then you can't train six days per week. And you need to modify your training down, fortunately, from things that we've talked about, you on the podcast, you're not going to regress if things are decently intelligently designed, but you may not progress at the rate that you once had. So I think that's really important is like when we talk about priorities, actually prioritize them and understand what gets pushed, reduced, et cetera. Now to answer the second part of things, I started school again and weight shot up despite not changing training or food. The only thing that I can think of if our training is identical and our food is identical is that our sleep is significantly less and I would say maybe to the tune of eight hours to five and a half hours. So a significant reduction. Outside of that variable, I cannot see any. reason that weight would shoot up despite those other two variables not changing, what I think is actually much more likely is you think food has not changed, but it has. And that is what is often the most obvious and truthful answer. Yeah, I was going to say that if weight is shooting up, then something is changing. Like you can't just blame an increasing cortisol for weight gain. So yeah, like either you're eating more food and not realizing it or you're moving less and not realizing it. I was going to give you the credit and say that you're probably eating the same food if you're tracking it, which if you're not tracking it, tough to say. But I was going to say that, you you could be doing less movement and not realizing that because movement isn't just steps. Like steps are easy to track because your watch or wearable or whatever will track that for you. But as far as the other forms of neat that aren't step related could also change. It's tough to say. I'm guessing it's some combination of actually increasing food intake, not realizing it or increasing the palatability of foods and probably moving slightly less. If there is an increase in weight, from cortisol, would be short term. And so you might see that over the course of a few days and then that should kind of turn around. So that is why I'm saying if you've been noticing this as a trend, it's likely not stress related. All right, where are we? Number seven, how many hours of cardio per day hits the threshold for endurance training? I kind of wish I would have asked, I was thinking I should ask for more details as to what this person means with this question, because I feel like it's just a little bit too ambiguous to answer super specifically, because it's like enough for endurance training for what? Like for health, for a 10 mile run, for an ultra marathon? Like I don't know really what the context is as far as how we're defining sufficient endurance training. so I'll just render a couple guesses given situational context. So, if you are training for a race that is an hour long, then probably doing four hours of endurance training a week is plenty because an hour is not like an extremely long race. mean, the more, the better, but that's probably sufficient. If you're training for a three hour race, I think you need to really significantly increase the amount of time that you're committing to endurance training. Because, you know, you have to think that you want to do at least two thirds of that distance in prep before you actually do your three hour race. So you need to be doing training rides that are upwards of hour and a half, two hours. And you need to be doing that, you know, a couple of times a week, at least towards the end. And then if you're training for like something like dude, when I was in Fruto mountain biking, there was this chick there that was training for a 200 mile run, if you want to call it that 200 miles on feet, we'll say. And her training day, like this is just a training day. She woke up at 6 a and didn't come home till 6 p So that's 12 hours of running, walking, moving. And she did something like 58 miles in that period of time. So you're like, I mean, dude, she has to go 200 miles for her race. She just did a 58 mile training day and it was 12 hours. so, I mean, there's levels to this thing and like, is sufficient endurance training is, is really tough to say because it's dependent on how long you're trying to actually go for whatever test you're doing. If we're just going to say endurance training for health, then sure. Three or four hours a week of zone two is probably plenty. And If you fit in one intensity day, then you are checking all the boxes for optimizing endurance adaptations in mitochondria for health purposes and all that good stuff. Yeah, I unfortunately don't really have much I can add on to that one. Yep. This one though, think you might have some thoughts on. thoughts on influencers feeling healthier when eating food in Europe. I have two parts of the way that I want to answer it. I talk about this a lot and I think, but I do think it's important. It's not just me being a Dick. How you for the words you use are important, right? And things in I was actually recently on a podcast and the host was talking about these things that he picked up from Jeff Bezos and they're called weasel words. And it's when we speak about things without actually saying what we want to say or what we mean to say in this question. Feeling healthier. Like how do we define that? It's completely subjective especially in if we're talking about maybe just like a food influencer Because it doesn't define the type of influencer. It could be I'm consuming less calories I'm assuming I'm consuming less inflammatory foods because the culture I'm in Uses less inflammatory foods in its cuisine That could be feeling healthier But if we're talking like fitness influencers, which judged on, you know, the podcast, it's answered that sort of thing. Like, Brian, if you go on vacation, how would you feel healthier? I wouldn't. Exactly. It's it's it's very, like said, it's a weasel word per se. there it's it's very, very difficult to quantify. So I think that's the first part of it. Now, what I think is what I'm inferring that I think the question is people going on trips to Europe and they're losing weight or not gaining weight on on their trip to Europe, which is very kind of unexpected. from a traditional thing of going on vacation, right? When we go on vacation, people come back up weight from the eating, the drinking, the et cetera. I have had this happen with two clients this summer. One went to Paris Olympics and we were in a fat loss phase and I was like, hey, best case scenario, we come back flat. came back like three pounds down, which was pretty significant. And the weight never ticked back up after and we were just like three pounds down now. Second was a client who just got back from a week in Greece. and dropped like four pounds also. These are clients who are not tracking their food. I just had them just, you know, eat intentionally is the verbiage that I use with them. I have two more in next month going as well. I think what it is is this is from, I'm going to give you my opinion. I've never been to Europe, so I don't have any direct experience. I think Europe has a more conducive culture for fewer calories and higher activity, as in we're potentially walking around more, the portions are smaller, and the food is not as inherently bastardized as it is largely in the United States. So I think those are the two facets why they're probably a little bit more active in the standards of food in caloric calories consumed by inherent smaller portion sizes are likely both contributing to that. That would be my thoughts on it. Yeah, I think those are all really good points and ones I would have mentioned as well, but I was also gonna take a slightly different angle, which you kind of alluded to, but didn't exactly nail in on, which is that there's just a series of ingredients that are illegal to use in food in Europe, but are legal in the United States. And a lot of those types of things that are in that food are things that some of the fringe influencers in the US tend to bastardize and say are things that are making you feel bad and are really bad for your health long term and stuff like that. And it may be like, it's it's tough. It's like, it's like seed oils, you you don't have a lot of evidence that actually shows that seed oils are bad, like compared to saturated fat, it seems like seed oils are likely better than saturated fat is And yet you have this whole population of people that demonize seed oils and basically state that they're causing this problem and that problem and they're making you feel lethargic and brain fog. And I mean, all, all the way down the line. And I don't know if seed oils, I don't think seed oils are one of those things that are illegal in Europe, but I'm using that as an example of other types of very specific ingredients that go into the food that I know aren't allowed there. For example, I think certain dyes. I feel like red dye 40 and things like that are not allowed in food over there. And those seem to be things here where you have these fringe influencers talking about how that's like autism in kids or like learning disabilities or ADHD or whatever it is. think it's actually ADHD. I don't think it's autism because that's not caused by a food dye. But either way, there are things that are causing these issues in our food in the United States that is not present in Europe. And so part of it could... Even if you went to Europe, I don't think you would feel the difference in a matter of a week or two weeks of being in Europe from eliminating those things that have been in your diet and infiltrated your system for months and years. So my guess is that it's more likely what Aaron is saying and that they're losing weight, they're eating potentially smaller portions or portions of food that they're just burning off because they're going to move and go walk afterwards. So tough to say, I think it's an interesting topic and Curious if anyone else has any insights, drop comments below on YouTube. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely, it's from my, I guess, professional standpoint. It seems to be profound enough to pay attention to from a high level perspective. And that's what I say I do. If for what it's worth, I have, I consume olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil. I'm not saying that you can't have the other ones. I'm saying I'm kind of hedging my bet and going with things that are probably not going to have any kind of negative consequence, but by no means will I ever. bastardize the seed oils, but I indulge trepidatiously per se. Yeah, makes sense. All right, the next question is if downhill running or walking have any benefits. And I think it's a quick, pretty quick answer is that if you want to get better at running or walking downhill for whatever reason, like you're doing a race that has ups and downs, like rolling hills, then the benefit of training downhill running walking would be that you need to be specific to that to get better at doing that. Beyond that, I don't think that there is any significant benefit in improving your fitness, improving your gait, any of those types of things. I think there's probably more detriment to your joints through the pounding of going downhill. And there's also higher eccentric loading. So you're going to be causing more muscle damage, which will have a mitigating impact on your hypertrophy work. And so I don't really see much use in purposefully trying to go downhill. Agreed. This one I think we'll have to kick over to you as well, Brian. Thoughts on Peter Atiyah's David protein bars. Yeah, I just ordered some. I'm gonna give them a shot and see what happens. Literally like a day before this question came in, I just ordered my first box because the website was checked back on whatever date and I checked back and they were open for business. So the story behind David protein is Peter Attia is the chief science officer and a large investor in this company. Andrew Huberman is also on the panel or investor of some sort. Andy Galpin also promotes them. I don't know if he's part of the investment team or not, but he's a big promoter of them since he is, you they're the only protein bar he eats, et cetera, et cetera. I only know that. So I ordered my first box. should be arriving in a week. The macronutrients are great. It's 28 grams of protein, 14 grams of carbs and two grams of fat. There's no sugar at all. And the pictures make them look like they're at least edible. So we will see. I got a variety pack and a box of chocolate chip cookie dough. So we will see and I will report back. I just fired up the page while you were talking because I, anytime the word protein bar comes up, my immediate flag is insanely skeptical. I will say, however, this protein bar has more protein by gram and calories than both the carbohydrate and fat, which is virtually unheard of. Most protein bars, like 88 to 90%, if not higher, will have either more fat per calorie or more carbs. per calorie than the protein. So massive victory here. In terms of, I have the chocolate chip cookie dough up. Ingredients, we have a milk protein isolate. So first ingredient is a whey, or sorry, not a whey, a milk protein isolate, which is a high quality protein. Second is collagen. We then have a whey protein concentrate and egg white. Like Brian said, there is no sugar in them. It is flavored with monk fruit. in stevia glycosides, is the technical term for stevia, cocoa powder, and we have allulose, polydextrose, glycerin, tapioca starch, and the soy lecithin as emulsifiers. I have to say I'm impressed. This is like the single time I've been impressed by a protein bar. So from a purely, mean, who knows what it tastes like, but from an ingredients and macronutrient standpoint, it's pretty damn decent, pretty damn decent, really. I'm excited to try them, because I've been on the Quest bar train and kind of growing tired of them and looking to try something new. All right, Aaron, do you think that combining step ups, Bulgarians, lunges and single leg press are too similar to put more than one of them in a single lifting session? If there were some contexts to where, like, for example, if someone had lower back issues that were exacerbated by bilateral squat patterns or something like that, and we still had a lower body goal or maybe we had some issue with like axial loading or something like that, I would do something that like I would use like a Bulgarian with a with an emphasis on really driving the knee forward to make it a little bit more. quad biased and we might use a dumbbell instead of a Smith machine or something like loaded on the back. And then I might use like a more glute specific unilateral leg press or something like that. It could also be like program programming specific, right? Let's say you don't have a leg press or a hack squad or a pendulum or something like that. And you literally have like barbells or dumbbells we might use too. Assuming that we're in a traditionally outfitted gym I I probably would not put to in a program but I don't think it would be detrimental or superfluous to use to if variation was higher on a priority list or something like that yeah what are your thoughts Brian I agree. Yeah, I don't think that I would write a program. I can't, I can't remember the last program I wrote that had two single leg movements in the same day. I mean, that just sounds so time consuming and so awful and effortful. Like you have to think about the psychological and physiological impact of going to failure or close to failure on a single leg movement. You end up having to do that twice. accomplish the same stimulus in theory that you would get from doing one set of bilateral. And so your, your autonomic nervous system is being stressed out twice instead of once. You could argue the stimulus is slightly higher for higher motor unit recruitment on single leg work, whatever, but the it's marginal compared to the fatigue that you're going to, that you're going to receive. So unless there's extenuating circumstances like Aaron mentioned, I just probably wouldn't do it. Aaron, if you stopped tracking macros, what would your diet framework be? Yeah, so I think again, it's most important to decipher what is the goal. If the goal is just maintenance calories and you we don't have any body fat reduction or muscle building goals. Wonderful. Let's just keep the same framework that fits our current season of life really, really well. And I think that can really be three to five meals per day. if you're truly like health focused. Now, if I were to stop tracking macros, what would my diet framework be? For example, I just came off my hernia repair. I didn't attract my food pretty much all of the last three weeks of June at all through July until like the end of August. And what I really did was once I settled back in, I was like, okay, I picked a weight. that I wanted to not let my weight drop under, which was 215 pounds. I ran through some of my tools that I use with clients to see, okay, this is what I estimate I'll need to keep my calories at to stay around 215 pounds. And I just chose that. And I kept the same eating structure that I typically keep, which is breakfast, a pre-workout, a post -workout, and then like a lunch and dinner. like for me, and the real reason is like that calorie intake was like 3 ,400 calories. That's a lot of food to do in like three meals or something like that. So I broke it up into smaller meals that would be more easily digestible for myself. And that was my framework. I'd say like, let's talk six, seven, eight years in the future or something like that, where I have no more body composition related goals. It'll probably look very similar. Maybe I don't have a pre and a post workout. Maybe it just looks like. Intra and posts depending on what time of the day that I might train at. but I think just. Eating at a schedule that fits, or sorry, at a frequency that fits your schedule and your kind of natural hunger patterning and activities works really, really well. What are your thoughts, Brian? Yeah, I don't really change much. mean, I haven't tracked since 2022. And that was only for like a few weeks at the end of my diet. And before that, it was like, I would only really track if I was in the very end of a diet, like I can get to 185, 187 without tracking. And then, you know, I'll track for the last five pounds or something like that. It doesn't really change. Like, I don't know, my framework is just always, I need a protein, a starch and like, try and have a fruit or a vegetable with each meal. And I don't... I don't really like overthink it beyond that. it just, that's just the way I eat. Like I can't imagine having a meal that was just carbs. Like I look at sometimes people they're like, this pasta was amazing for lunch. And I'm like, wait, you just ate like pasta. You didn't put like any meat in there or anything. It was just like pasta. And they're like, yeah, it was great. I'm like, fucking crazy, man. So, so yeah, I don't know. Like it just, for me, meals are just complete when they have a protein, a starch and some sort of nutrient dense fruit or vegetable. Yeah, very helpful addition on that is like eating actual meals really helps simplify. Yeah, we have like only, I have nine more minutes, so let's work through this real quick. Do spikes in blood sugar in non -diabetics cause skin or health issues? So I'm going to answer this from a very kind of top of the line thing. Like your body, when it's operating in at a healthy as expected level is built to handle things like blood sugar spikes, right? If you're a person who prioritizes their health in does cardio periodically resistance trains and eats a healthy diet, healthy, obviously being subjective, things like blood sugar spikes are a non issue. Even with genetic predisposition, that sort of thing. They're not gonna cause health issues unless you are not eating and approaching things as health, which again is a little bit subjective and contextual, but if you're male, sub 15% body fat, you eat a way that Brian just described with whole meals containing complete proteins and those sorts of things. It really is a non -issue. Yeah, I would say all the research points to this being a non issue as well, like all the CGM hype has people like worrying about what naturally occurs anyways in healthy people. And so there's a reason that like CGM are primarily a tool for a diabetic because they're the ones that really need to worry about what's happening with their blood glucose. You get Peter Atiyah and some of these other health influencers saying that you never want your glucose to go above 140. I haven't seen the research to show that that actually is a problem. think a lot of peer T is inferring on, you know, if, if this, then that, which, which I get, like, I understand he's trying to be preventative and like the population that he's speaking to are generally people that probably are bordering more on the unhealthy side. But if you're a healthy person with muscle mass, and you work out and exercise, like there's absolutely no issue that I'm aware of in your blood sugar spiking. This one I think I'll kick to you, Brian, because I have my own answer on it. How would you approach workout design for an elite swimmer? I would just honestly, I don't know. I've never worked with an elite swimmer before. So I couldn't, I couldn't say for sure. But my assumption would just be that you would treat it like any other sort of hybrid athlete approach. I mean, it's a form of cardio, like running or biking or anything else like that is or rowing. It's probably some more similar to like rowing and biking given that there's no impact. So I think in that sense, you could do slightly higher volumes of strength training, but it is more upper body dominant. than those other pursuits. And so maybe you need to tailor down a little bit of the upper body work slightly or be more cognizant of where it's placed in the rotation of the week alongside, you know, your harder swims or whatever. But I don't know, my initial gut reaction is two times a week full body probably works pretty well as something to accommodate a high level of swimming volume. What do you think? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I would imagine an elite swimmer probably has a higher volume of sport -specific practice. The kind of less common things that I thought of is you want to be very cognizant around programming exercises that are inherently prone to shoulder injury, like a barbell bench press or something like that, and save that client from themselves with some things that are commonly poorly patterned so that they don't injure themselves in a very common way that people do, knowing that obviously shoulders are incredibly important for the swimming. Yeah, I'll also say that the motion of doing a pitching for a baseball player and then doing the freestyle for swimming seem to be similar motions. And I know that baseball players generally don't do a lot of heavy overhead work. So just another kind of potential caveat. All right. I like this question. Do you think there's a point where DOMS can be too extreme and only have negative impacts? For example, I train legs once a week and they will remain sore for at least five to six days. And on the second or third day post -session, I'll literally be unable to. Yes, I would say I think there is a point where doms can be too extreme and only have negative impacts. And I would say question asker, you are probably pretty close to that. If you are in like week one or two of a program and you get some pretty bad doms, that could just be the novelty of it and a compensatory effect as your body adjusts to the new volume or slash intensity or slash both demands of the program. But if you're four, five, six weeks in and you're still getting that, it's, you do not have sufficient recovery capacity for the amount of volume and or intensity that you're doing. And you can either increase your recovery capacity. What is probably more realistic is to decrease some of the volume and or intensity because you are, every time we have bad doms like that, we're digging a hole that we then have to compensate out of. And if you're barely getting out of the hole just to get right back in it. It's probably not overly productive because we have Dom's force. Yeah, I was going to say essentially that the process of building muscle through muscle protein synthesis is the balance between being in a catabolic state and being in an anabolic state. And when you work out and you're breaking down muscle tissue, you're in an extremely catabolic state. Initially, as your muscles are torn down and need to repair, if that soreness and that catabolic effect last extremely long durations like five to six days, then you're likely not getting into a positive nitrogen balance for muscle protein synthesis until the last day before you train again. And I also am not convinced that just because you're not sore means that you're fully recovered. It can like sometimes but when you've done that much damage that it's taken that long, something tells me that one day of not being sore is just insufficient amount of time before training again. So yeah, I think that that's crazy and I would not be doing so much volume and or intensity that that elicits that type of response for you. Can the buffs make a bowl game this year? Sure, they're two in one. They just need to get to six. I think that's completely reasonable. This question I think should be the last one for me, Aaron. I'm gonna bounce and then I'll leave you to answer the last two if you don't mind. But this question is, what would the 2021 version of you guys say to the 2024 version about hybrid training? Man, I'm finding the year, finding the year, 2021. I was not doing any cardio that year. think if you were just gonna say, in three years, are you gonna start running? I would say, not a fucking chance, inhale. And I think that would be pretty accurate. I think if you were to say, frame it as, Aaron, the year is 2024, you are now solidly on the back half of your 30s and health has become a grander concern in your life. What do you think about adding cardio into your training? You'd probably be like, yeah, you know what? That's probably pretty wise for myself to be doing in three years. Which again, and I think I've alluded to this on the podcast, but it's mostly health for me. It's because I'm doing other things that are inherently unhealthy. I'm trying to reduce the unhealthiness of those other things, which is let's be completely transparent with the audiences, PEDs. and, and weight gain, me being pretty sick, larger than I ever have been in my life. those two things. And that's the reason I'm doing it as a pure health mitigation. Yeah, great answer. The 2021 version of myself, was 39. And I've talked about this on this podcast and others, but that was a period of time where I didn't really look to the future so much as far as my health and longevity. I've discussed this, it was when I turned 40 that I went on this trip by myself to the mountains. And I just had this revelation of that being the middle point, the pinnacle of my life. that, you know, heading downhill now or uphill, depending on how you want to look at it. But something in that moment really just inspired me to be like, this is something that I need to do. And so that didn't happen until August of 2022, when I really made the commitment, like I had kind of dipped my toes into cardio a bit, but I wouldn't say that I was hybrid training, so to speak. In 2021, I was of the mindset that you just need to walk and lift and that that gives you 95 plus percent of the benefits. In reality, I still believe that. Like, I think if you just walk a lot and you lift, you still are at 95 % of the benefit. Like, just, I can't see someone dying early because they didn't do enough zone two cardio, but they were walking 12 ,000 steps a day. Like, I just, to me, that just doesn't, it doesn't click. So, while I do think that there's a ton of benefit in being the hybrid athlete and that there's so many benefits beyond just health in that it gives you an alternative pursuit. a different way to exert yourself, a different impact on your cognitive state. I mean, there's so many extenuating circumstances and benefits to doing cardio structured with your weight training. But I still think that, you know, looking from 2021 to 2024, It's not like I think that what I'm doing now is better. It's not like in my 2021 self would feel inferior or like in any way that I was sending myself to an early grave or something along those lines. It's really just that there's now this new thing that interests me and it might provide some marginal additional benefits towards my health and longevity. Wonderful answer. All right, I'm gonna go take kids to school. are two questions left. I'll leave this thing up. Yep, all good. Question number one, ideal weight gain rate during a build phase. Is there any typical expected percentage of fat versus muscle gain? So I have. I have a very, very comprehensive tool that I call my muscle gain model that I have built based off of the research for multiple PhDs on this topic. It is part of my online coaching, my online coaching upgrade business that I have with Jackson Piaz. If you're a coach looking for things like that has all of this in it. I do not provide that outside of that business offering. So apologies. for anyone there. It is very contextual and nuanced, right? Which is like my answer to everything. And I do apologize, but the answer is that that is the true answer. The earlier you are in your. muscle. What's the word I'm looking for potential muscle gain potential. So if you're like a novice, you can be significantly more aggressive with your build phases because you have not accrued that much tissue yet in your propensity is higher. As you move higher up that mountain of how much muscle that you have built relative to your theoretical genetic potential, right, which is more of an asymptote type curve. It is not you never will reach that peak, but you will things will become much more approaching marginality per se. It gets harder to accrue new tissue and the aggressiveness in which your calories are increased needs to be reduced because the favorability of the calories getting partitioned to muscle versus fat gain start to work against you. So to back up a little bit, the more beginner you are, the more aggressive you can be with your calorie deficit, or sorry, calorie surplus. As we move into an intermediate, it needs to be a little bit more restrained. And as you move into an advanced stage, it needs to be restrained even further. Now, in terms of rates, it's really hard to give a percentage because one, I don't have the memorized because I built this tool so I can just plug figures in it for any client and it spits it back to me. Now, are there any typical expected percentage of fat versus muscle gain? That depends on the rate of surplus. The higher your rate of surplus, the fatter you will get, right? And again, as you move from beginner to towards advanced, the more that seems to work against us. Now, what I will say here, I've talked about this on the podcast in previous episodes, you are getting Aaron's opinion. There does not, this has not seemed to be, has not seemed to yet permeated into commonly accepted research. Your macronutrient profile comes into play. The higher percentage of your diet that is dietary fat, the fatter you will get because we have good overfeeding research that concludes this. The overfeeding research in obese populations points to the higher the intake of dietary fats, the higher the rate of fat gain. So we can extrapolate that to people who are even more insulin sensitive and will more beneficially partition their glucose or carbohydrate to put it more straightforward, we can extrapolate that those people will stand to even better have a higher carbohydrate intake rate. So if you are trying to grow as lean as possible, you want to use a disproportionately higher amount of carbohydrate as opposed to fat to drive those calories up. Now there's obviously things in circumstances that can be a little bit more complicated with digestive tolerance, food volume, et cetera, et cetera, but from a high level standpoint. Unfortunately, to kind of wrap this one up, slower is better when it comes to muscle gain up to a certain point. You will often hear people talk about their like eight week gain challenges and those sorts of things. At an eight week surplus, you are only beginning to scratch the surface. And if you try and put on, let's for example, eight pounds in eight weeks. it's likely that half or more will be body fat because that is a very, very large rate of gain. So when we think about build phases, it's not six weeks, it's not eight weeks, it's 10 weeks. It's like 12 at a minimum. And for myself and clients, they are significantly longer, six months, eight months, 12 months, those sorts of things to actually have a true. appreciable increase in muscle tissue accrued during that period. hopefully that was a good answer there. And then into this last question for this episode, any recommendations or readings you suggest on mindset or processes? At this point in my career, I don't really have any for right now. Processes with business, most of my processes are around my client check -in processes and how I stay organized there because that's my bread and butter. Other than that, I have just like to -do lists and I place them on what days that I think they can get realistically done. I prioritize on... hierarchy, right? Client work obviously goes first and then things get pushed down the list from there. Now in terms of mindset, I think it really matters most of where you are in your life and your priorities. I am currently in a very high business and entrepreneurial -esque period of my life, so I am ranking things around my mindset in terms of... the return that this can have on my family's financial future. And I understand that in the next 18 months, you know, with some luck on our side, I guess I could say I will have a family and then a lot of my mindset needs to shift. I am a hundred percent under the, what's the word I want to use here? Acceptance and realization that my current mindset and processes will not work for when I have a family of my own. and that I will have to then do the work again so that my mindset works for my new current set of circumstances. That I think is the most, that has been the most impactful for me around a mindset is knowing what mindset do I want or do I need for my current circumstances to move towards what I want. When I was earlier in my coaching career and things were not sustainable and I didn't have a lot of client leads and stuff, What worked a lot for me was distancing my hobbies and The thing that people talk about with balance, with like work -life balance, getting rid of those because I need, I don't deserve to watch movies at 6 p if I'm not landing enough clients to sustain my bills in that short of shift. So it's like, you don't get to do these things, these niceties of life until you have the things accounted for. So I removed a lot of those things. And then kind of unfortunately, what I have evolved into now is I guess let me back up and answer this in a little bit of a different way. Alex Hermosy. One thing that I learned from him years ago was that as you kind of go throughout your life, you learn skills or you learn things and then you need to unlearn those things in order to make it to the next level. Right. So a lot of the things that I learned or removed were the extra parts of life, meeting up with friends, watching a show at the end of the day or something like that, or taking a day off and not taking any days off. Now I'm at a point where things are pretty self -sustaining and I can take Fridays off, but I feel guilty for not working on Fridays because I have honed that kind of knife and it's sharp now to work all of the time and working is a skill. And I now have that skill. but I also now have the freedom where I don't need to, but I feel guilty because I've, I have unlearned that pattern. So that's kind of where I'm at a bit on mindset right now, but I think I see this a lot with certain friends or, know, maybe some, previous clients and stuff as people just, they keep reading new books and you know, now they're on the next personal development book and in that, but you just have to take the fucking action. to the point now where like I'm not reading self -development books and stuff, because I'm just busy taking action. And that's what actually moves the needle. You're already prepared enough, right? You just have to actually move forward. And then with the processes, what I'll wrap up with is know where your weaknesses are and then put processes in place for your weaknesses. And that's the best way I found for that. So. Hopefully that was helpful. I will wrap this podcast up here. As always, thank you guys for listening. Next week we will come back with episode 170. always, Brian and I will talk to you later.