What is going on guys? Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of each train prosper. This is episode 174 and we have yet to come up with a title for this episode, but it's been a couple of weeks, especially with me being back in the United States. So Brian and I are just going to have a, not a, a little bit of a recap episode. There's been a number of different topics that we kind of wanted to talk about, but nothing that would make for the entirety of an episode. So we're going to put a couple of them together and here we are. We're going to skip updates since we're just going to wrap it into the episode. And I guess I can just kick it off with my USA trip. I was back in my hometown, which is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I grew up saying goodbye to an uncle who passed actually like two, three days after I got home, three days. So I was really, I mean, I can't say I was glad it was obviously awful, but I'm glad I opted to like come home right away. instead of like delaying based off the timeline the doctors gave because it was very, quick. So I got to see a lot of family, which is always good, obviously under crappy circumstances. Weather was nice, which I wasn't really prepared for. was November and it was still 75 degrees in Pennsylvania, which is just absurd from, you know, when I lived there. There was a new gym that opened up that I had seen and it was full of new tech equipment, which is out of Korea. So some of that stuff was was pretty cool. There was a couple of pieces where I was like, this is pretty damn, pretty damn decent. I like this. Others, especially like some of the leg stuff where I was like. This fucking sucks and they probably were like five thousand dollars apiece. But that's what you get when you buy all of your equipment from one single equipment supplier. You get the good. with the bad and I would just you know how home for me has always been super super busy families all over the place trying to see some of my best friends and stuff so a very very hectic trip and sandwiched between 30 hours of travel on either side of it the the funny story that that I'll wrap up with is there's times where enough time passes and you kind of erroneously do things that you learned not to do in the past because enough time has passed and you kind of forgot it was a bad idea. And I opted to fly into JFK. And that was a bad idea. I flew into JFK and then I had about a three hour drive from JFK to my hometown. And I was like, know, the Newark airport's about an hour drive anyway. Like Philadelphia is about an hour drive. It's all pretty much relative. I was wrong. I land. I haven't driven a car in over two years. We drive in the left side of the road over here in Bali. So I haven't driven on the right side of road in two years nor driven a car. I'm in some like brand new Jeep with all the new fucking everything. I can't even figure out how to turn the radio on and stuff like that. it's been like it's been a really, really long time since I've actually like used a car in a. I learned how to use like a car's interface and I was just getting my ass kicked on it. I'm jet lagged as shit because I land it's 11 a.m. in New York, which is literally 12 p.m. Bali time. So I'm like super, super tired. I don't have the tolls. I don't have any cash to pay the tolls. So I have to like do the no toll option on Google Maps. And it takes me through like New York City. And I'm like first time in a car in two years. jet lagged, I'm in this brand new car, don't know. It was a disaster. And I have a three and a half hour drive to my hometown and I'm fucking super tired. So that is how the trip started. But I made it. No, no bad things happened. But that was one of the things where I was like, what were you thinking, Aaron? This was a terrible idea. That's a yeah, that doesn't that doesn't sound ideal. I was just thinking as you were talking about the tolls in Colorado, all of our tolls are are cashless. And so you either have like one of those toll passes and it like, you know, sends you a year, you pay monthly for it or whatever, or else you just drive straight through it. And then like a week later, you receive a bill for whatever the toll was in the mail, which would have been way easier for you than having to like drive through New York. I don't even know if New York does that or not. But yeah, having cash. even know. Like I'm in a rental car. It's the state is in the license plates in Ohio. And I was like. Yeah, so yeah, a lot. But everything worked out. I'm happy I went. I'm happy to be back home for sure, for sure. But it was a it was a nice little trip. For some for some parts. I mean, not really, but when I was younger, yeah, but the hard thing is I realistically left my hometown in 2006, you know, when I moved away from university. I went home two out of my four summers when I was at university. And I mean, that's 18 years ago at this point. You know what I mean? So it's really been 18 years since I spent considerable amount of time around like family and stuff. And then obviously right after university, I moved to Southern California. and I would only go home maybe like every other year, every like three years. So it's just a lot of time has passed and I just it's not that I wouldn't say I'm I'm not close with people, but it's really hard when you've been gone for so long. Yeah, no, I feel that. I read a stat once that you spend all this time with your parents through your developmental years until you leave the house. And then so say 18 years or whatever that is. And then after you leave the house, apparently for the rest of life, you get a total of about one year of time with your family. So 365 days that you would spend over the course of the next 70 years or whatever that is. And that's kind of crazy to think about, especially from the other side coming from it. from the perspective of parent being like, wow, I'm so inundated and almost overwhelmed by all of this childcare that I have at the moment. And yet at the end of the road, it's almost this sad, reflective feeling of, well, I've been so consumed by these kids for 18 years and now they're just like gone and I see them barely ever. So definitely a different perspective, I guess, being the visitor versus the person kind of. losing the child in a sense. But always good to come home. And I'm sure your parents are super happy to see you at that point. Can you talk to me a little bit about what you did gym wise while you were there? You kind of briefly touched on this gym that you found with this equipment, but how well were you able to kind of stick to your overriding plan as you prepare for getting on stage here in the next few months? Yeah, to be completely honest, not well, and it's been weighing on me. I'm just I'm someone I really thrive on progress in, you know, accomplishing things and stuff. And realistically, if I'm like really being honest, I can't confidently say I've made a significant progress since before the hernia, you know, and that was. the first week in June and it's the second week of November now. I had a pretty good, you know, like I started training again. I was back up to speed about middle of September, I think. And I had about like one pretty good month. But I can't confidently say like how much progress was really made in that month. I was about two, three pounds heavier than I was in like May. I had the Malaysia trip. I lost a bunch of weight like I always do. I got back to like a pretty OK spot. I had about a week back and I left for the States. And then with, you know, the Effectively two days of travel on both sides. So that's like four days of travel. I was there for eight days So that's eight plus four twelve days. I'm now down This morning. I was 218 pounds when I in like the middle of October. I was 228 So it's it's it's frustrating because I just it's real it's hard for me with this thought with like this travel and seeing people and family stuff to eat literally six times per day like I need to to keep my body weight up. So things were pretty decent in the beginning. And then it just it was hard to stay on top of it when I don't have as much food in and especially training lower bodies like really hard when you're on different hack squats and like presses that don't really line up well and stuff. What I try and do is I just try and replicate movements. So for example My first session in there was it was a back session and I had like a a high to low Bilateral row and I'm like, okay, what machine is most similar to that? Great. I had a unilateral row which was like a unilateral cable row I was able to like rig that up on one of the machines great unilateral, you know lumbar cable row I said the high to low, I had a low to high kind of like trap upper back focused row. just set that angle up on if there was a machine for it, which they actually did have like a chest supported kind of like a replica, not a replica, but like a model similar to like the, you know, a hammer strength. Yeah. Low to high plate loaded row. I was able to perform that rear delt pack, you know, pack rear delt fly. fly. Yeah. Reverse. Thank you. Why can't I get these words? Three sets of biceps, you know, when I was out. So that's what I always try and try and do and not try to get to like nuanced in it even. And I have this question from clients sometimes, even if I have like dumbbell pressing and I find that. Performance isn't, you know, even equal to be like, OK, last week. You know, my home gym, did dumbbell incline press for whatever 100 pounds for like eight reps. I find that I can't just like rock up and do 100 pounds on the incline for eight reps. I might only get like five or six. Like I get a pretty decent performance degradation. And it's just something that I've come to accept, right? The primary trip of the goal was family oriented. And I know training progress and stuff is at a standstill. And I'm pretty much just trying to hold on to what I had. to the best that I can. Yeah, that's definitely tough psychologically coming from the place where you are where you're so performance and goal driven in general. So I think I know the answer to this question, but I find there to be two different kind of avatars of people that travel and work out. And one group is like super motivated and excited about the opportunity to try a new gym and be in a new environment with new people and new equipment and like all this stuff. And then you have the other side, which I think is you, which is kind of like, I'm out of my routine. I don't have my equipment. I don't really like being in this new gym and everything that I'm doing kind of decreases my motivation to train. do you kind of find yourself in that category? It depends on the gym, to be completely honest. Like, for example, when we were when we spent some time in in Virginia with Jenny's family, there's a gym called RVA Iron in Richmond, Virginia. It's sick. It's such a good gym. And even so that like we were we would drive like an hour each way, like once a week to go to the gym, because it's just so, so cool. Yeah. And like that is one. And there's like There's the people who say like, the equipment doesn't really matter. Like those sorts of things that you just train like they're just wrong. They're just wrong. It really, really does. Like they have such good equipment in there. You can get like out of three sets what you like the type of stimulus and, you know, pump whatever you're looking for that it might take you like five or six sets or more. Some somewhere else, because things like the angles are so good. Resistance curves are. money they really invest in really, really well sought after equipment and it really does make a difference in the quality of your training. It can, I should say. Yeah, I agree completely. I think that even if you're not just focusing on the stimulus through the muscle that you're targeting, you also have to account for the burden on your joint structures if that exists. And when you find a machine that lines up so well that it both stimulates your target tissue and causes zero joint structure disruption, that's kind of where where your money is made in. It's tough to find those machines that do both of those. Yeah, it's like the first time I ever used the Nebula 35 degree leg press and I was like, wow, this just, this is literally a leg press gift from like the future aliens or something. It just makes perfect sense. Like you get in it, there's no pressure on your back. You can literally bring your heels right up to your butt cheeks and it's smooth and you're like, this is incredible. the range of motion is incredible. It just makes sense. It's wonderful. And then you use like another one. And then the angle of the foot plate is a little bit like it allows your toes to be farther forward than your heels, which is great for range of motion. And then you use one of the other leg presses like the standard ones where it's the opposite where your heels are farther forward than your toes, which puts you in more. What would that be? position. Yeah. I mean, you're in dorsiflexion. that's not dorsiflexion. It would be a plantar flexion because you're it's like your toes are pulled back. Yeah, that would be dorsiflexion. Planter is where your toes point forward. sorry. But you but you like run out of range of motion faster because of that position that it's in. Yeah, I'm losing my, my original what we want to talk about. But it's one of those things like it doesn't matter until you realize that it does. And then when you try and go back, you're like, this is frustrating, because it can be so much better if they just manufactured this machine for people's biomet biomechanics, you know. well everyone's different too, but yeah. Okay, tell me about overselling the simplicity. What does this mean? Yeah, so. I want to make sure that I try and communicate everything through like a positive light. I've been feeling a little quite frustrated lately and I mean potentially even a little bit negative, but I'm seeing a lot of content that people are producing and then what in turn is it then I get clients coming in or clients asking me things and there's a lot of things out there. And I'm finding it more recently with people entering the space, trying to people are doing their best, right? But making it selling that things are a lot easier than they really are and that you can train two times per week. Two sets per muscle group, four or five reps from failure, do your nutrition 75, 25 and build this like amazing physique. And it's just not how it works. Like someone that works hands on with a lot of people. It just does not work that way. I wish it. I wish it did. And then it does. It leads to frustration because then people think like I'm doing, you know, my nutrition is pretty good. Seventy five percent of the time, another 25 percent. I'm having like, you know, my cheat meals and my free meals, but mostly, you know, pretty accounted for. I train two to three times per week for about, you know, 45 minutes. But why is like my physique not look like I want it to look? And I'm like, because you're being sold a lie, unfortunately, or an oversimplification at best, maybe not in all lie. But I think that's that's one thing I'm seeing. And I'm getting people are really. That's the word I want to use here. Kind of like let down when they realize that that's just. You can be. healthy. You can be not overweight or whatever, but you're not going to have this physique that you really want in that capacity, unfortunately. And then I feel like people are just getting sold that a lot recently. So you're seeing this coming towards you where people are both being fed this like low volume, low frequency, but also low effort. Because I think that there's a there's a there's a fine line between like, like, like, low volume and low frequency in itself, I've become to believe is not a problem if high effort is there. High volume. high frequency also fine with lower effort. mean, you have those three variables of volume, frequency, and intensity that you can kind of play with to create this kind of milieu that creates successful training. so, mean, lower effort combined with lower volume, lower frequency, we have a problem because all three of those are now low. But that's, I guess my question is, that's what you're seeing? Like people are coming to you legitimately with information that. training X number of reps from failure with low volume, low frequency seems to be promoted or touted somewhere. Yes. And the hard thing there is the low effort, right? Because it's If you're someone who's realistically training two times per week, right? And you're doing like your full body or something like that. That person and I have found in my corner of the internet and clients and stuff, that person is also not realistically training at a two RIR. They might think they are, but they're at like a eight RIR, something like that. And I think that's. be training to failure. mean, if you're training two times a week, full body, like, like two RIR might not even cut it. So I guess like, I get what you're saying. Like I agree with you. I just, I'm curious where that, that, that approach, that methodology is coming from. Cause I, I mean, I, I'm obviously biased, maybe blinded in some ways by the world that I surround myself with both personally and in social media. But I don't. I don't see a lot of that where all three of those variables are all kind of on that lower spectrum, especially effort. It's in the beauty for you and I, and hopefully the listeners is like we deal in context and nuance, right? And what you said there, like when I painted that picture and you're like, well, well, even a two RAR, like, no, that person needs to be training to failure. And I think like that's, that is the part that's missing when it's the, I don't know what you want to call it. young professional who's now entering their first job and starting to realize they don't have as much time. The work demands are high and they want to move up the ranks. They can only train twice per week and being like, guess what? You have like press sets to failure now. Right. Like that's a tough sell in actually taking like press sets to failure is wretched. You know. But that's the part when people are because what what what I'm seeing, especially on social media, is people saying like If you just want to be healthy and have, know, not have a dad bod, and of course they're using imagery, which is someone that's probably 11 % body fat on a beach who's been training for like six to eight years, and they're saying all you need, you know, is two times per week, three maybe, 45 minutes in the gym, 75 % of your nutrition good, 25 % can be your alcohol, free meals, weekends free sort of thing, and you can have this. It's just not true, you know, and especially with the imagery and stuff they're using, like, yeah, if you were a lifetime athlete, you're 23 years old, you're already 11 % body fat and you just don't want to lose that sufficient. But it's being sold to the person that's like 30, probably 24 % body fat. Already doesn't have the best eating habits and it's like, here's a. Whatever X percent effort and it's going to. all of us, know, it's going to create this physique that you dream of. And it's just, it's a lie, or at best, miscontextually apply like grossly miscontextually applied. And it's I'm I know I get a good amount of my clientele is also coaches themselves. And I'm getting some, and the problem here is like, I'm gonna have some coaches that listen to this that are my clients, thinking I'm talking about them. Some of you, yes, others, no. But the ones who are probably panicking are probably the ones in the no category, but they're coming in with like habits and training and telling me what they want. And I'm like, this isn't gonna cut it. And oftentimes I really want to be like, you should know better at this point because you are in this profession. And I think it's, you know, what it probably comes down to is a lot of the people who are in the like coaching guru stuff and just selling people a pipe dream, unfortunately. So when you have these clients come in that seem to be kind of low on all three of those important variables. What do you find tends to work generally with the majority of them? it trying to increase the effort and keep the volume and frequency relatively low, or are you more keen to let them keep the effort lower and raise the volume and or frequency? No, if if with people who especially have like a pretty good athletic background and have been training for a little bit longer, let's call it like four years or so. I always like to start them lower volume, higher effort because this is my opinion. I'm not saying it's necessarily correct. You learn. Something new when you do it that way, you know, when someone when I give someone like a. I don't. What would we say like a leg press set? Let's let's talk. We already talked about the like press and I'm like, hey, I want this to be like a one R.R. You know, and they're going, going, going like rep speed doesn't slow at all and they racket and and then they send me that form video. My response, what the fuck was that? It's not one R.R. I'm like, that's not even a three R.R. like the rep speed did not slow at all, you know. And then what I'll do is my like my gut, my gut check. for them, as I say, next week, you're gonna take a spotter on your leg press set and you're gonna take it to absolute failure. I'm very clear, like, if you rack that before they help you, I'm gonna be on your ass about it. And last week's nine rep set turns into like a 16 rep set. And I was like, yeah. So 15 reps is a one RAR and you gave me nine last week. And then you put, it's kind of like harsh. from me, but they learn immediately, right? And they realize that they've been sandbagging for how long and how much that they have potentially left on the table because of that sandbag. Yeah. No, I agree. I think that's really well put. And that's the approach I take as well, because I think that there is. When you go about thinking about how you want to calibrate your volume and you can throw frequency in there too as a product of volume, but without taking things to failure at some point, it blurs what your volume tolerance truly is. And I think that by going to failure, you can much more easily calibrate where your volume tolerance is. and make the necessary adjustments in that manner, especially for young professionals or professionals in general, people with families, people that are busy, basically anyone normal person that has a normal life. Most of them are going to be benefited by doing less work really, really well and really hard than doing more work, which is going to take more time, more rest periods, more sets. and just a general overall time commitment, which will then cause more stress and issues within their life. And so, yeah, I'm a huge fan of making sure that effort is dialed in because once we have effort, we can say, wow, two sets of that really screwed me up. And therefore, maybe I don't even need more than two sets or one set or whatever it is. And so if you don't actually go there, you don't actually know. And so, yeah, I think that kind of dovetails into some other kind of thoughts I have. I want to talk about the data-driven volume meta-regression that they did. But before I do that, I want to reflect a little bit on this idea of abbreviated training. And I think that this actually relates to kind of our last conversation that you were talking about, because for most of you guys, you may know if you've listened to this podcast for a while that when I first started training back when I was 15, 16 years old, I legitimately fell into a online. board forum of sorts before Facebook and stuff, the late nineties, where people were training abbreviated, was legitimately that was what it was called was abbreviated training or, or HIT and high intensity training. And the whole idea was that you would basically train two to three times a week, full body, pick primarily compound movements, do something like three by five or two by eight or something along those lines, basically to failure, close to failure. progressive overload week to week and just keep kind of rolling from there. And so that was, that was how I started. basically trained 45 minutes, three times a week, did that for a number of years, fell off of that approach for almost 20 years. As you guys know, I went through the CrossFit thing and then came out of that into like the higher volume hypertrophy world. And then it's, Coinciding with my bike adventures all the cardio that I've been doing I stumbled back into the abbreviated world About six or seven months ago and there's now a the forum that I was part of back in the day is long gone That thing doesn't exist anymore but there's now a Facebook group that has kind of picked up where that forum left and so I've joined this Facebook group and it it honestly has changed a bit of my perspective on training because in the evidence-based training world, we're so inundated with volume. Everything is about getting your volume up, training with more volume. If you hit a plateau, more volume. If you're a hard gainer, do more volume. In fact, doing more sets at two RIR potentially is better than doing less sets to failure because volume. And then I go into this abbreviated training group. And so many of the guys that were there in the late nineties, when I was first in that group are still part of this group. And there are various ages. Like some of those guys were in their early twenties back in the late nineties. And now they're, you know, five or 10 years older than me. Some of the guys are in their sixties or seventies and still doing this thing because they were what? Forty back in the late nineties or thirty five or something like that. And. It's I'm struggling a little bit. to say that these guys need to train this way because they are quote, hard gainers. Like there's this idea that if you're a hard gainer in this abbreviated training model, you need to do less volume and work harder, which is in direct contrast to the research, which says if you're a hard gainer, you need to do more effort or more volume. And so I've been really struggling to piece this back together, but one of the things that I've really enjoyed is seeing that these guys have been training this way now for 30 years. mean, all late nineties to current, these guys have not deviated from this training approach. And these guys are huge and strong and it's, it's extremely impressive. And so I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, are they a specific type of person, Samada type, et cetera, that somehow thrives? with this style of training more than they would with a different style of training? Or is this ubiquitously potentially a training style that if more people embarked on and more people stuck with really big mover compound movements close to failure, consistently do using progressive overload for years and years and years and years, maybe that is like the most simplest streamlined approach for somebody that can't commit their life to training and recovery and all these other elements that go into that. What are your thoughts? I think there is probably a right answer, you know? I think, but I do think it's... probably a person. I think it's like one of those things. I think there is like an object true answer right across a population of people. But I also think it's there are I think that is the best answer right that what I just said. But I also think there's like also correct answers that are probably more fitting to the personality types in those sorts of things that are still right but maybe not as right as you know X. Like, what's a really good example here? Alex or mozi talks a lot about this, right? And I know you had a note in here about morning routines, which I think this is great. And he's like, notorious for like, kind of bashing on people's like morning routines and stuff. And people ask him, what's your morning routine? He's like, get up, I have some coffee, I might have a little bit of nicotine, I put my noise canceling headphones on and I fucking work. And he's like, I don't care about my mood or my mindset or the alignment of the planets or if Mercury's in retrograde, like I have my coffee and I fucking work. Like that's my morning routine. I think that is the best answer. However, for a lot of people, they might find that life is not worth living if that is how they have to do it sort of thing. You know what I mean? So I think that's where like the personality types, there's a best answer, but then there's a. still correct answer, but is more fitting for different people, different enjoyment levels and stuff. Like for example. If let's say full body training is objectively the best way to do it. You pick a back exercise, you pick a leg exercise, you pick a, I think I said back, a chest, know, maybe arm or something like that. Let's say that is best. You do that four days per week. is some new research comes out. It's undeniable. Like that is best. I would struggle transitioning to that because I strongly dislike training in that way. And that beam might be one of those things where I was like, I might try it, you know, like, fuck, dude, this is best. Now everyone's saying it's best. We have great research. Like we know what's best now, but I would just really begin to enjoy my training a lot less, you know? So that's like one of those things where I think there's the best answer, but multiple answers that are still pretty close to the best. I think abbreviated training doesn't have to be perceived as being full body sessions two to three times a week or whatever it is. Like there's guys in the abbreviated group that are using a PPL in an abbreviated fashion. Just doing like lower volumes with that and you know everything to failure. I recently switched to an upper lower. I'm not sure if I've talked about this much on the podcast, but I was doing my two times a week full body throughout the entire bike season and then just About two weeks ago, I redesigned my program to go up or lower, up or lower, up or lower. So six sessions over two weeks with three sessions a week. And part two reasons for that one, because I was kind of burning out on the full body. To your point, I think that that's inevitable at some point along the way. But second, because it's now winter season and I'm going to be doing less biking, I wanted to get one extra lift session in there so that I can get an extra day of fitness that doesn't depend on me having to breathe really heavy and do some sort of cardio adventure. So I do think abbreviated training can be different things. It doesn't have to be full body if that doesn't fit your personality type. But I guess my argument for, if I'm going to just play devil's advocate here for a second and say that, let's say abbreviated training is the best for everybody. Or let's say it's the best for 99 % of people. And if you're in the 1 % where you want to, 100 % optimize your hypertrophy and potentially be a competitive bodybuilder. Maybe you're not in this 99%, but for the sake of argument, let's just say 99 % of people would be best with some sort of abbreviated training program because it primarily focuses in the strength ish rep ranges. So I'm not going to say you're doing sets of one to four, because now we're not even really talking about hypertrophy. So we're staying in that like five to eight, five to 10 rep range. things are going to failure. We're using big compound movements that are stimulating multiple muscle groups. And we're kind of, I don't want to use the word forcing progressive overload over time, but there's a big part of abbreviated training that is obsessed with the concept of micro loading, taking, you know, one pound or 1 % of your, of your lift. If it's a hundred pounds on the bar, maybe you add one pound. If it's 300 pounds on the bar, maybe you add three pounds or whatever, but keeping it 1 % or less. and progressing with that over time over and over and over and over and just keep showing up. And so in theory, if you had somebody that just put their head down, stopped routine hopping, just committed to eight basic movements, six to 10 basic movements that they just did over and over and added weight, you look at this person when they first start, and then you look at this person 10 years later, and all they've done is focus on these movements, trying to add load. and they look entirely different than they did 10 years earlier because they've gotten stronger. And I think that that's one of the pieces of abbreviated training that I love is noting that, if you're not adding weight to the bar over time and doing something to demonstrate progression, then you're likely not. progressing. mean, if you're not gaining strength in some capacity, you're likely also not adding muscle. And this is even more true in the earlier stages of training when you're like at our stage, I you know, we can get better at performing movements, we can create a better stimulus, we can, there's a number of things we can do to potentially build muscle without continuing to gain strength. But I guess my argument would just be that if 99 % of people committed to six to 10 compound lifts and progressively overloaded those for years, that person would likely end up at a really solid place that they're really happy with at that point, five, 10, 15 years down. I would agree with that. Now here is where I think we run into issues. And this is one of the other notes I had down there. There's a lot of noise in this space, right? And especially now more than ever with social media and everyone trying to make a name for themselves and produce content and that sort of thing. That approach, I would say in this day and age takes conviction because you're like, hey, I know this is the right way. I'm going to do it for 10 years. and I'm going to work this system and get get get what I need out of it. 30 years ago, you might have one muscle magazine, right? Or you might just have that like uncle that's like, no, this is how you do it in your uncle's six foot two, 250 pounds. You're like, yeah, I'm going to fucking listen. But now we have all these like different birds and all these different opinions and stuff. And there's so much noise and it would be significantly harder to just block out. all of that noise for a decade and just be convicted in your approach. I think that is very, very challenged, even so much like myself, you know. For example, this is a really, really good example. I just yesterday started testing the RP hypertrophy app. I. And I wouldn't say that, like, I think it's revolutionary or whatever, but sometimes I like to, like, you know, eat the dog food a little bit. There's things like, for example, I don't think it's the best way. That is my current opinion. I'm going to spend some of my own money to hopefully prove myself right. Win-win. I lose 35 bucks and I have a further reinforcement of my own existing beliefs. That's, I guess, worst case scenario. Best case scenario is like, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm making incredible progress or something like that. And I'm like, holy shit, I've been wrong this whole time? there is a better way. It's a win regardless. It's a winner learn sort of thing. So like I'm in that right now. What I did was just took my existing program into it and then I'm going to let it, know, auto adjust the volumes and however it progresses. I don't even really know to be completely honest. Interesting, that was actually going to be my question. That's cool that you enter your own program and then it kind of AIs you from there. I don't think it's necessarily an AI. think they have like in what we could call it like an algorithm that they built into it. Because after you after you complete a body part, after you complete each exercise, actually, it asks you joint pain, no joint pain, minor, moderate, like bad problem after each exercise. After each section, let's say I have like three back exercises, it's going to say, what was your back stimulus like or back pump? I think it asked for None minor moderate like what massive pump and then it also asks about like how do you perceive the amount of work that you did barely you know easy day moderate pushed my limits a little bit or like way too much and then I think based off of your ratings and I think you'll give a little like a pre training assessment of how your soreness is and stuff and certain things it will regulate things based off the algorithm that they have. But I'm interested to see. I've heard it might just like to keep throwing sets at you, which we know is probably not the best way. I, from an overarching thing, I think if you want my personal opinion, which again, this is only my opinion, I think that you can use that. contextually to potentially break through plateaus, but then you have to pull it back and probably deload and then, you know, sort of thing. it's like, then that's literally definition of auto regulation, right? Yeah, yeah. No, that's cool that you're experimenting with that. think the myself and the listeners are going to be keen on kind of hearing how that progresses as it goes. But I also relate to the the noise piece and program hopping was a major problem of mine back in my early days. Like I say, my first five to six years training, I would commit to something and think this was the way for, I don't know, three to six months. And then I'd be like, new shiny object, new movement I want to try, new split routine that's supposed to be better, like whatever, whatever. It's just like, there's so much out there and there's so many people with great physiques that are promoting these things, which takes you back to this idea that like in many ways, like a lot of things work. And basing it on your personality type is important, basing it on your individual stress recovery ability, all the life circumstances that go into that whole pie. but there are a lot of things that work. so fitting it into your life is potentially one of the most important, which again, I think takes me back to that abbreviated training model, which is that unless you're pushing the limits of trying to be the top 1 % working out for 45 to 60 minutes, two to three times a week and forcing progressive overload is a really kind of removed way, maybe somewhat removed way of having to go about your training. Like you don't have to sit there and think about it and overanalyze it and scroll Instagram looking for new workout programs and like all of the stuff. I mean, if you're a busy professional with, with a family and kids and, all of that, and you just want to show up to the gym and work out, like don't get distracted by all the shiny objects. Don't worry about the noise out there because you can just have blinders on and just focus on your training and getting stronger over time. like, shit's going to work out. for you. And so, man, that's a lesson reflecting, you know, 25 years in the past, looking at my earlier self. But I do think that there's a lot of value in that approach, especially for people that are part of that 99 % and not part of the 1%. Yeah, I think that the key that you alluded to, but I think I think it's worth us driving home is I don't want to say forcing the progressions because I think people get a little bit greedy, but like progressive overload and what that means like you're going to have to work hard at that. But like you said, you typically have like choosing exercises that you like and work well. Typically, people don't have a hard time like. really challenging and pushing themselves at exercises that fit you well and you like to use, but exactly. Yeah. for me to want to push close to failure or work hard on something where I'm like, yeah, like I'm getting a stimulus, but like my elbow or my shoulder feels weird while I'm doing this. And like, I don't know, that exercise just doesn't fit me and etc, etc. So yeah, all of that's good stuff. So let's transition to briefly discuss this data driven meta regression on volume. Have you seen any of this? Have you looked into it at all? No, the shitty thing with being over here in Asia is Instagram really does tailor my algorithm to like my Australian friends, people and also like, there's so much of things I just don't see anymore. Yeah. So this meta regression is in preprint right now. So it's officially out there as like a document yet. mean, people look at the preprint stuff and assume that it's reality when likely it's going to go back, have a few edits, come back out and overall probably look similar, but maybe not exactly the same. these guys, man, Zach and Josh and that team over there are just so nuanced and contextual. And I have so much love for, for their involvement in the space. because like is just an overriding example. This, this meta regression they put out, it, it analyzed volume and frequency for hypertrophy and strength. And they spent five hours on a podcast, five hours, one episode of a podcast discussing the volume ramifications of this study. And then they put out another one that was like three hours discussing the frequency. ramifications of the study. And so, you know, not to bury the lead here, the result of the volume meta regression was that there is no cap to volume. Essentially, they found that the the best fit line, we always assumed it was an upside down U shaped curve, meaning that you get more results as the volume increases. But then at some point, the volume is too much. And you start getting worse results because you're doing too much and you're not recovering. their best fit line was a linear model, meaning the more volume you did, you just kept getting better results. And I obviously don't agree with that, but I listened to the majority of their five hour podcast and the first four hours of the five hours was them essentially casing all of their concerns with the meta and why it potentially. isn't representing exactly what the line is shown to represent. So literally they spent four hours trying to talk us out of why their model is the right model, which I love. It's amazing. And then they went into like the practical applications of implementation and all of that. And then when you talk about all of the real life concerns that we've been discussing, as far as the practical considerations, how it fits around your life, the various aspects of recovery, including like nutrition, sleep, stress, all of that buckets. training motivation, ability to do this long term over time. I mean, there were so many points that they made that by the end of the podcast, you really would have thought that they were advocating for like a moderate volume training approach, you know? And so I just like, I just going back, I just love that they do that because so many people look at the, you talk about the noise. So many people look at the main graphic and it says something like volume never never peaks the best fit line is linear growth and blah, blah. And you look at that and you're like, yeah, I need to be doing 50 sets or whatever. But really, in reality, that's not that's not the case. And so I just I just appreciate what they do. And I think that for anybody that sees these really blasphemous headlines that seem outrageous, I encourage you to, to dig in potentially listen to the podcast or at least read some of the content they put out on Instagram or on YouTube and, and get like a potentially better understanding of exactly what you're seeing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're that I like when I do see stuff from them. I'm like, wow, it's like what are they up to? And it's always just so damn good. You know, like it's it's just it's just and I don't know, as a professional, you can just appreciate quality work. But like what they do is so so. Yeah. And then just to wrap a bow on that, they, they basically found that for, for, frequency, as far as it relates to frequency, that frequency didn't seem to make a huge difference in hypertrophy, which I don't think is, is novel information. And they did find that frequency had quite an impact on strength, which again, I think fits the bill because strength is a skill and the more that you practice it, the better you're going to get at it. which also like, man, it just makes me bring back to this abbreviated training thing one more time because the the abbreviated training model focuses so much on this strength progression and this progressive overload over time. And there's definitely some blurry lines between like in the abbreviated world in that manner, because their idea, and I'm putting not to put words in everyone's mouth here, but I guess my perception of the methodology is that if you get stronger over time, you get bigger and therefore you achieve hypertrophy. So they're using strength as the proxy there. And I think that oftentimes outside of the abbreviated training world, progress isn't measured by how much strength you make over time, but sometimes in how much volume you're doing over time and how sore you're getting over time, which is then being used as like a proxy for stimulus. so yeah, I just, at some level you have to get stronger, but I, I'm still, have trepidation as far as how much the focus should be purely on strength. Because if the focus was to be put squarely on strength, there's probably better ways to go about it than doing three by five to failure, which leads me to another point, which is that if strength is best accrued with higher frequencies further from failure, but hypertrophy is best accrued closer to failure, then how do we kind of square that circle of the abbreviated approach being three by five or two by eight to failure? with strength being the primary objective. Like I wonder if you're basing this whole thing on strength progression, would that person not be better off doing three, five by five at an eight RM or three by five and an eight RM and doing that two or three times a week so that now you're getting more frequency and you're getting more practice in the movements. You're not hitting failure. Maybe your strength goes up faster. What's the downstream effect then on the accruement of lean body mass? by taking that approach first by going to failure. So I just, I'm talking in circles here, but these are kind of the things going through my brain, trying to square the circle of failure and volume and frequency and all of these things. Yeah. It's like the disheartening. I don't want to say fact because that makes it sound like what I'm going to say is absolute. And that's not it. It seems like the more information that we get on this. It helps, but we still don't have like definitive right or what what we get. is in this context is like information that is probably pretty accurate, but practically not unacceptable, but like practically in unimplementable sort of thing. Like, like the volume, like, whoa, that like more volumes better, but like where, where does it stop? You know, can you train four hours every single day? You know, The hard thing is like at the end of last year, I was training for three hours a day, four to five times per week. I was natural in the end of my calorie deficit. At the end of it, I wasn't getting sore anymore. And my performance really didn't drop off to the end. But, know, the time commitment, it did become too much. It was not fun anymore. Right. But it's like, where do you stop and put that line and then how do you kind of ramp that up? It's convoluted. I do think it's quite convoluted. Yeah, I agree. And just to one last thing to reference a study on this on this topic, I'm trying to But essentially what they did is they took, was a while ago, it was a few years ago. They took two groups and one group did four sets of 10 to failure. So we're talking hypertrophy type programming, hypertrophy rep range sets to failure. The other group also used their 10 rep max, but they did eight sets of five. So both groups got 40 total reps in. One went four sets of 10 to failure. The other one went eight sets of five, assuming and five RIR on each set for RIR or something like that. And at the end of the study, they found that the four by 10 group got better hypertrophy and the eight by five group built better strength, which it continues to just blur this discussion of like, well, if building strength ultimately leads to more hypertrophy, like, would we have seen that if this study continued in this manner over years, would we have seen the eight by five approach actually outpace the four by 10? in hypertrophy as well? Or is there something really specific about going to failure that seems to be unique and beneficial for hypertrophy? And so I just thought that was an interesting representation of that. I think, if you want my honest answer, I think it probably lies somewhere in... better definement of the terms strength and hypertrophy, right? And what I think might be like a really, a decent example is like increasing strength at a, I hate to say this because there is no like hypertrophy rep range, but like over time strength at eight reps, something like that. Something that's not, that's a little bit. more asterisks in its definition. But again, it gets convoluted. Yeah, it's very complicated. so we probably have one or two more things we can talk about here. Do you want to quickly go into morning routines? I'm actually curious what you do when you wake up in the morning. I would say I err a little bit more on the side of the Alex Hermosy approach. Mine really depends on like motivation. In full transparency, I am in a lower motivation cycle of my life. There are things that I want to do from a creative standpoint that I know are not the most monetarily rewarding. For example, I've had numerous people ask me like Aaron, when is no man's land to gonna release? Like I've run, I've literally had someone tell me they've run the program like four times like, and like, believe me, I really want to get you guys a second program, right? But realistically, I'll make maybe 600 bucks off the program, something like that, you know? So for me, I'm like, it's a lot of work. And I like to do things like in a very good way. I'm going to pay a designer to design it and all of these things. But to make like 600 bucks, like I'll just sign another client, you know, and it's it's a lot easier. It's a lot less time investment, you know, so it's that's where I'm finding myself. But there's times where I'm super motivated and I just want to get these things out. And I'm just in like a low motivation cycle. I think a lot of the gym stuff has me a little bit burned out, just like getting my ass kicked on things and My pure joy is, I would say, is not there in certain aspects. So it depends on the day. For example, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I don't care how crappy I feel. I'm up coffee. I put my smile on and I show up for my clients. Right. But then there's sometimes we're like Friday rolls around. I might not have anything that needs to get done. And I might just kind of fuck around and waste the day if I'm really being honest. And I hate it. I hate myself for that. but that does happen sometimes. And I've just found that like, know, sometimes what I will do is I'll try and have some coffee in the sunshine. That's like a little thing, but it's raining a lot now in the mornings and stuff and kind of overcast, but I've used some, but nothing that's ever like really, really stuck. And sometimes in those mornings, like I kind of just want to work, you know, and Mm-hmm. for example, there was two days, like Monday, Tuesday last week when I was in Pennsylvania, I was waking up before 5am. So I was like, I'm like, all right, I'm up. The Starbucks was already open. It was like right around the corner. So I just like got in the car, went to Starbucks at 5am, got my coffee and like came home and started check ins. But yeah, I can't really say I have one. I wish I had more there, but I've never found anything that truly stuck over. Mm Yeah. No, I feel that. think mine's pretty simple as well. I mean, when you look at the whole slew of different things you could be doing in the morning, when you look at Huberman or those guys and learn about, you know, all the plethora of things that you should be doing. I've kind of narrowed it down to the things that I think fit my life and move the needle the most without causing me to have like, I don't want to say anxiety in the morning, but like, if I had to wake up and do cold dunk in the morning. I don't think that that would be the best way for me to begin my day. I prefer to begin it maybe with a little bit more calm and a little less adrenaline. And so I wake up never to an alarm except potentially on this morning when we do podcasts. My alarm goes off at 5-11 on these days. And usually today, like I was up before my alarm, I woke up at 5-02. And so that's the best when you're able to wake up before an alarm. wake up naturally, lay in bed for a couple minutes, kind of just let the mind wake up slowly. I love doing that, kind of focusing on my breathing a little bit in bed for a few minutes. And then I guess it's lucky, but the moment that I step out of bed, like the moment my foot hits the ground, my body is like, time to go to the toilet. And so immediately upon stepping out of bed, I go and I do my morning toilet thing. wash my face, do all that stuff. And then the first thing I do is walk into my office, put my heart rate monitor strap on, get in this outfit that I'm wearing right now, which is like a double hoodie with a beanie. Cause it's really cold in the morning and sit down on my couch with the heart rate monitor on. And I do a, two and a half minute guided. I don't want to call it guided. It's a elite HRV app. So basically it's, it's kind of breathe in, breathe out. keep the breathing slow and controlled. try to maintain four breaths a minute. So one breath every 15 seconds, usually about five seconds in 10 seconds out. Do that for two and half minutes. Then take a minute or two break, do a little bit more breathing and then do a longer, more focused session where my eyes are closed. I'm trying to not think about anything, but just kind of let my mind be at the same time focusing on, you know, what the sound of the breathe in the breathe out, trying to breathe as, as deeply as I can, but also as shallow is the wrong word. But this, this idea of this idea that if you had a candle flame underneath your nose, that you wouldn't blow the candle flame out. So being able to breathe deeply, but also, shallow is the wrong word. I, I, I can't think of the word that I want, but basically breathing in a manner to not put that hypothetical flame out. And then I just feel this sense of calm rush over me after I've done that, say 10 minutes of breathing there. And that is more or less the end of like the routine as it happens from bed to couch. The second part of the routine would just be that once it gets light out, I like to go outside and try to get some light movement in while looking up at the sky. So if I have the opportunity to go for a walk for 10 minutes, I'll do that. sometimes I'll go outside if it's nice out and I'll stretch in the sunlight. maybe do like some air squats or something along those lines just to kind of get the body loose. And, yeah, some of that might need to change as the weather changes as well, but, it's pretty simple. It's not super involved. I just think it's important to, for me, the two main things are focusing on my breathing, to bring me to kind of a center calm place to start the day. and then just to get some sunlight in the morning or some light in general. And those are kind of the two big, big movers for me. And then at some point in the morning, I do like to get more structured movement, whether that's my cardio for the day or my lifting or a longer walk or something along those lines. I do like the breathing idea. That's something that I should probably incorporate. There was a point where I was doing like, I wouldn't really call it like, like, I guess like maybe like a mental kind of journal, I would just like sit down, do some simple breathing, like completely unstructured, and just kind of think about like the things that I wanted to get done, like who I wanted to be that day, like how I wanted to approach my situations in the day. And that really helped because it was like, being intentional around getting into the day as opposed to just like getting up and letting the day come to me. was kind of like finding myself first. And what probably happened is I traveled or something like that and was off my schedule and then never started it again, right? That's probably realistically what happened. Yeah. ever do any journaling or written self reflection when you have moments of struggle like moments of anxiety, of pressure, of clients annoying you, of I don't know, struggles with Jenny, like whatever it is that could be bothering you for the day. Do you ever put those into words or do you just kind of reflect on them in your mind? There are times I go through little like batches of journaling, know, and I would say the main thing I hate about journaling is I write so infrequently with like a pen or a paper. It's like it's kind of challenging to do. I like my writings awful. And it's like I, you know, I mess it up a lot. Like, I just don't like writing anymore because we just never do it, you know. But no, I do find that beneficial as well. But it's really just if I'm actually going to like commit to it. But I do like, it's kind of just like centering thoughts, like finding a way to like center thoughts in the morning and give myself a little bit more intention or to really just spend a little bit of time with myself thinking around the things that are important or that I want to make important for that day. I do find really positively improves the trajectory of my day and what I can say with absolute confidence and conviction. Like, let's call it maybe a Friday or a Saturday, a Sunday, the days that I don't have like any real work in the morning. If I like just get lay in bed and like and I'm on my phone or like I get up and I like go out under the couch or whatever and I just like open up my phone, see what's on like Twitter or Instagram. Those days are by far my worst days. Worst mood, worst motivation. Like it is staggering. The difference. Yeah, I've actually been considering moving my phone out of my bedroom because Kim and I both like our first inclination upon waking up is pick the phone up and like even if I'm not looking at it in a way where it would cause stress like pulling up an Instagram or looking at my email or something like that, like usually what I do is I just open it and I look at my sleep and then I look at what podcasts were there for me to download. So those are kind of like non stressful things but still. I don't love the idea of just like being in bed and immediately reaching for my phone and looking at it to be like, how did I sleep? Like, I think I slept well, what did my app say, you know? So yeah, I think there's certainly value in potentially leaving the phone outside of the room. I personally would love to go through 45 minutes in the morning and not look at my phone, but everything is fucking tied to my phone. Like, if I wanna do my HRV breathing in the morning, it's on my phone. And so like, I... I haven't quite figured out the way around that without suddenly just abolishing my data. And I have 265 days of a streak right now on my HRV. So I can't not do a day of HRV. I gotta keep the streak going. Okay, well, that's pretty much all I have for today. We had a couple other meandering topics to discuss that we didn't get to, which is totally fine. But I love... this structure of episode. love that we can just kind of free flow and take the conversation where we want. can dig in a bit to your training. I can talk about some of the aspects on my mind about my training and the training of our clients and stuff like that. So I personally love this episode. I think, I think there's value in it. like we talked about, I don't know if this is going to be the most popular episode with our, with our subscribers. But I, but I think it's got value and I think next week we'll come back with a November Q and a. Yeah, sounds good for any listeners out there. Leave your thoughts on the episode for Brian and I. A little bit of feedback always helps us tailor things. If you liked it, if you didn't like it, that's perfectly fine. As long as you use. Non. Awful terminology that's perfectly fine to be critical as well. It's all in how you say things and let us know. So as always, thank you. And like Brian said, we'll be back next week with the November. Instagram Q &A.