What is going on guys? Happy Monday or Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today's episode 180 January 2025 Instagram Q &A. So we have a shorter list of questions, which means we can add a little bit of additional context in answering them, which I definitely do not hate. But as always, before we get into the nuts and bolts of today's episode, Brian, do you have any updates for us? Yeah, three quick updates for you guys. Number one, just spent last night with my buddy Greg editing the new episode of the Life Reflected podcast. And Aaron was so nice as to let me know what I'm supposed to do with these crazy timestamps and how to get them into the episode as we send it out to all the different platforms and stuff. So I think we're finally ready to go. And the plan is to publish Life Reflected episode one. on Monday or Tuesday, so February 3rd or 4th. So by the time this episode comes out, hopefully Life Reflected podcast is also out. I'm really excited about the new project, really cool first episode, and I hope you guys listen to it, check it out, let me know what you think, provide some feedback, all that good stuff. Second update, today is my daughter's fifth birthday. Not a big deal for most people, because it's just my daughter and it's her fifth birthday, but to her, Huge deal. She is finishing up preschool, gonna be starting kindergarten next year. She said she already feels like she's six. So you got that. But either way, just excited to celebrate her and looking forward to the day with her. And then let's see, final update here. We had some decent weather after 12 inches of snow last week where it was like 47 and sunny a few days ago. and the snow was still frozen and packed down because it was frozen the night before, but 47 during the day, perfect conditions to get out on my mountain bike and go for a snow ride. So I posted a little clip of that on my story, but these snow rides in the middle of winter on these days that are warmer than expected, they just bring me so much joy. Just being outside in the elements, getting to bike again. The dealing with like the snow is also fun because it changes the dynamic of biking so that it's not just straightforward and backward. You really have to deal with the elements and be a little bit more athletic. I went for a hundred minutes and, that's the longest snow ride I've ever done. So that was great. And then, I lifted the next day and, yesterday I went for a 6.1 mile run, which is the longest run of my life. cardio game is doing all right. Felt good. Body's feeling pretty good. Low back is healing slowly and feeling good about everything, man. We got another like week of forties and fifties here. So hopefully get outside and just looking forward to winter ending. I know that's not a problem you're dealing with over in Bali, but it's been long so far here. So I'm ready to get to some warmer weather and then I'll be heading out to San Diego in the middle of February. So nice little trip to break things up. But that's really all I got, man. What is going on in Aaron's world? So I finally got some got enough of the immediate work things done that needed to be like really hands on for me at the gym and then could get I got a couple good training sessions in which is really really fun. Jackson and I got a really solid push session in on Monday I believe it was either Sunday or Monday and then Kyle Baxter who we had on the podcast who's I think he was our most recent guest back in episode 162. He was in town to him and I trained legs. It was the first day training legs and first time like touching some of the leg equipment and undefeated. And I was quite pleased with some of it. So that was really, really cool. Our gym leco leg extension is super lengthened, like almost too much where it's like kind of hard to get into position. It goes all the way back. It's one of the best leg extensions I've ever used. So that just had me like grinning ear to ear because like when everyone when everyone comes into the gym, they're going to use the leg extension. This is fucking great, you know, and that makes me really happy knowing that like people are going to be really pumped about some of the equipment. So. Does the, so in that it's lengthened, it's not just that it allows you to get more lengthened, but also potentially that it's harder at the bottom and then it gets slightly easier at the top, or is it more of like an even resistance profile? It's pretty even, but there's a counterbalance on it. So as you're nearing the top, it does give you a little bit of a deload at the top. it's not like it's pretty even. But based on how the counterbalance would, I think it is harder in the lengthened. Yeah. Yeah. But like I let it just two sets and my quads were blown up. It was really, really cool. It's so smooth. was. I was like grinning ear to ear from it. So that's the good. The bad is I have Bolly belly really badly. And what that is is just like soft speak for an intestinal infection, which is like incredibly common here. But this one just will not fuck off. So as you were giving your updates, I was literally messaging with like an online pharmacy who's going to deliver me some antibiotics tonight now because I'm on like my fifth day of Man, I feel like you get this at least once a year. Mm It's like incredibly common here in Bali. It's if you make a Bali trip and you don't get it, it's like the gods were on your side. But it's like even like the locals and stuff still get it, which is really why. It's like even more significant than when you go to Mexico and you end up with like, I don't know what they call it, Montezuma's revenge or whatever. Yeah. similar. Yeah. But I mean, same thing like, you know, we can't, we can't drink the water here, like very similar to Mexico or other other countries or places where the water is not safe to drink. And there's just like contamination is So how severe is that in the sense that like, if you're washing vegetables in tap water, is that as big of a problem as drinking the tap water? I would imagine significantly less because you're consuming significantly less volume if you were washing the vegetables. I don't think they're washing the vegetables in the tap water, however, but you can't quote me on that one because I'm not sure. Yeah. interesting. Yeah, hopefully next Tuesday, that will be behind me. That would be great if that was the case, because I can't keep any food in and that is unpleasant. And I'm really hungry. But eating just comes with pain. So yeah, that's it for me, unfortunately. Alright, cool. Well, let's do some Q &A's and then I'll go make french toast for my daughter for breakfast. do it. So I'll kick this one over to you. If you have a weaker side, is it better to do a movement for the weaker side first and then match reps on the stronger side or to use rest pause to achieve reps equal to the stronger side? Yeah, so I actually love I love this question. I've written a blog about this exact issue on the paragon training methods website. So if you search like single limb or something along those lines, that should pop up. But while we're here, I may as well just talk about it. So I think there's actually a number of different ways you can handle this. So this person laid out two of the ways which would be number one. Okay, we'll assume my left arm is weaker. That's my offhand. So do I do to failure with my left arm first and then no matter what number of reps I get, I just match it on the right understanding that the right might be one or two RIR while the left is failure. That's a great approach. I think that's honestly my most recommended approach when it comes to these type of issues or concerns. The other question was maybe, or the other example was maybe I would start with my strong arm go to failure or whatever that is. So say you get 12 reps with your strong arm, but then you go over to your weak arm and now you can only get 10 reps, but you match the 12 by doing rest pause sets or something like that to get to the same number of reps. Also a great solution. the other one that I would consider along the same lines as the rest pause is to match the total number of reps to the strong arm by doing partials with the weak arm. So you do 12 with the strong arm, you go to the weak arm, you do 10, and then you hit two partials. Boom, you're kind of at 12. All of those are great. I think the nuance comes into when you would apply one versus another. So partials are primarily only going to want to be done on a short overloaded movement. If you're doing a single leg squat with one leg, And then you're like, well, I need to do partials and match with my other leg. You're you're in for some shit because once you get to the bottom and fail with your bad leg, you're not getting back up again. You're not doing partials. So the other consideration is. whether where you are in your cycle and whether you want the additional fatigue that might come with taking one of your limbs past failure. So I think those are primarily the considerations. I am glad to go into further detail from there. But what kind of thoughts do you have on the question? I mean, I'll tell Pete, I'll give my answer of what I do. I perform the weaker side first because it's a weaker side. I typically require or like to think I require a little bit more like concentration. And I want to stack the odds in the favor of improving the weaker side. Right. So that's what I do. And then I, I don't stop the stronger side at the at the the reps. But it's it's never a massive difference. If anything, maybe two reps, you know, and in the movements that come to mind, you're like a single arm, unilateral pull down, like supported cable pull down. My left arm is like one to two reps stronger than my right. The other one that comes to mind is any kind of like tricep extension, unilateral tricep extension. My right arm is stronger than my left and it's my non dominant arm, which is very, very strange, but true. It's just, one of those things I think any approach is probably fine. It's not something that I think requires a massive amount of attention. I do really like the perform the strong arm first method so that you know what your baseline is and then you perform like the partials or rest pause to match. I think that's a wonderful approach. But for me personally, I found I like performing the weak side first because I'm fresher in my mind is not yet consumed at all. Yeah, no, I like that a lot. I actually would say that there's a fourth option and this just reminded me that this is actually the way that I usually do it. So, maybe this, you know, helps a little bit. I actually really prefer to do the weak side first, then go to the strong side, let the strong side go to failure. So that might mean I get two reps more than the weak side, but then I go back to the weak side after the strong side. So as an example would be I'm doing one arm tricep extensions, Okay. I use my left arm. I bang out 10 reps. I'm at failure. Go to my right arm, get 12 reps at failure, two rep discrepancy. Come back to the weak side. But now that the weak side has had this more extended break, it's not really like a rest pause per se. It's like I did my whole right arm. So I had 30, 40 seconds of rest. Come back to the left arm. I might get another five or six reps on the left side. So now I feel like I've gotten extra volume and extra stimulus in for the weak side, which is kind of what I want. and it actually achieved more reps than I did on the strong side. And so that's kind of an approach that I will often take when it comes to this type of thing. Quick little follow up on that. Do you find that in that manner that the weaknesses or reps ever get closer from the imbalance or do you find that kind of just perpetually the one arm is like a rep or two stronger? Well, if you guys remember, I did a one arm training experiment about a year ago where I only trained my left arm for six months and didn't train my right arm directly at all for six months. We did a full episode recapping this. If you guys go back and search the podcast a year and a half ago or so. But in that experiment that I did where I literally didn't train my right arm for the entire six months, at the end of the six months, my arms were even in strength. never actually even in size, my right arm still remained larger than my left arm slightly despite the fact that I was only training my left arm, but in strength, which is more a factor of like coordination and skill. I did reach a point at the end of that experiment where both arms were equal in my testing that I did at the end. However, two or three weeks later, after going back to training both arms regularly again, It was right back to the imbalance that was which was my right arm is one to two reps stronger than my left. So all of the six months of spirit experimenting that I did left me with nothing after you actually go back to training both equally. Well, at least you have the information. I wouldn't say nothing, knowledge gained or perspective gained on it. I think ultimately like we all have these inherent imbalances and they're not imbalances in the way that the media likes to scare you that if you're imbalanced, you're gonna get injured and your body's gonna be lopsided and like all of this stuff. It's just not that big of a concern. It's just natural, it's inherent. So like I just wouldn't worry about it too much. And if you wanna do a little bit of extra work for the weak side to... in your brain feel like you're doing a little more and volume is the main driver of hypertrophy and all of that good stuff, then I think it makes sense to do one of the versions that we discussed. Yeah, really well put. Should I kick this one over to you? It's so long. All right. Hoping you can discuss training the same muscle group two days in a row. For context, I lift at home in a much more consistent if I do 25 minutes, five days a week than longer sessions less frequently. That typically means two to three movements per day, although the movements don't repeat two days in a row. The overlapping muscles do. For example, I currently have lat pull down rear delt rows and overhead press on consecutive days. Another example is if I do day one of my program after day five and take a rest day later in the week, then I do hamstring curls followed by RDLs the next day. I feel recovered, no injuries, still making progress after 2.5 years. Any concerns with this type of setup? Thank you. I mean, do I think it's optimal or best? No, but you said it yourself, like I am much more consistent if I do 25 minutes, five days per week than if I take longer sessions more frequently. And what we know when it comes to hypertrophy, nutrition, fat loss, all these things, consistency is the single most important thing. So I think for that reason, if you're, if you, And because since you're only doing two or three exercises per day, your volume is low enough that you should be. I mean, if I think if you let's say you did like pull ups, you know, whatever, like pronated pull ups Monday and then on Tuesday, you're going to do pronated pull ups. I don't think you're going to be making progress on Monday's reps on Tuesday. But as long as there is enough of a variation that it's not the exact, you know, same movement pattern, same exercise, I don't see it being an issue. The interesting part into here was the hamstring curls followed by RDLs the next day. That I think may have some inhibitory effect. It depends on what recovery is like. But because it's a hamstring curl first and then an RDL, I think it would have, and that's because it's a short overload on day one followed by a lengthened overload on day two. The short overload is going to be less fatiguing, so your recovery timeline is typically less. But if you're continuing to progress, I just don't again, is it is it the best way things could be absolutely designed? No, but what's most important is you're consistent. And I think that is what is going to be the most predictable predicting factor for you. Yeah, really well answered. You took pretty much everything I was going to say out of my brain. So, um, thank you for that. But also I do want to just take a moment and reflect on my experience with full body training because I did this in 2019, 2020 for just a few months. And I think I actually talked about it. We did an episode on, on full body training on the podcast in the first year at some point. And I went over kind of all of the reasons why I don't love this approach. And I think most of it for me, at least was psychological in that, you know, every day felt like leg day because every day had a leg movement on it. So I felt like I was training legs, you know, five days a week, which I didn't enjoy. and I also really struggled with the design of the program in a manner that would allow me to train more or less every muscle group over like five days. I know, I know that he's saying there's a, three movements a day. So it's not like every muscle group is getting trained, but you know, if you're doing an RDL, you're getting your glutes, your hamstrings, you're getting a teeny bit of quad, like you're getting some low back, like it's not just isolated to just the hamstrings, right? And the thing I struggled with was trying to make sure that every time that there were two muscle groups in a row, that it would have a short overload movement on the first day and a lengthened over movement on the second day. And then like a day off from that muscle group. So in his example, the fact that he's going leg curl on one day and then turning around and going RDL the next day, I think that's the only way this works. Like if you try to do RDL first, as Aaron said, you're going to be sore, fatigued, CNS, et cetera, et cetera, all these things, then trying to go to leg curl will be a less effective leg curl session, but the leg curl itself likely causes less muscle damage, less fatigue. You can probably recover from that through repeated bout effect and stuff over time. Go into the RDLs the next day, no big deal. trying to extrapolate that out to every muscle group gets complicated. Like for chest, know, dumbbell flies tend to make me really, really sore. So where do you put dumbbell flies in? Well, they have to be a lengthened movement. So they kind of have to be on that second day of the chest, but then there aren't very many chest movements that are short overloaded unless you're doing like a cable chest press type thing. Like most machines are going to be mid or lengthened. They're also going to provide you a decent amount of fatigue. So, My struggle was really in trying to organize the week in a manner where that overlapping didn't have any kind of residual negative effects. It sounds like this guy's got it figured out because he says he's still progressing after 2.5 years of doing this. That's the number one sign that what you're doing is working. So at the end of the day, I wouldn't like spend too much time questioning it. Like if you're enjoying the training, it's working with your lifestyle and you're getting results, it's probably working for you. And then maybe just to take into consideration some of those pieces about organizing the muscle groups in such a manner that we're going short and lengthened, then maybe a day off from that muscle group. Not to say you can't train still that day, but maybe, you you do two days in a row of chest, the third day is a rest day for chest. You do two days in a row of hamstrings, the third day is a rest day for hamstrings type thing. And that's just how I would think about trying to organize it. Yeah, really, really well put this one kick over to you. I have my own thoughts on it, but we'll get to it. My chest is my weakest body part despite training it two times as much as any other. My main movement has been bench press where I am decently strong to 25 by six to 25, 225 pounds for six reps, but my chest is still lagging. Any ideas? Yeah, my first idea is that the barbell bench press is just not a great chest exercise. mean, listen to the episode we did last week on the big five, and you can hear some of the reasons why we think the barbell bench press is not a great, great chest exercise. For one primary reason is that the natural function of the pecs is to adduct, adduct the arm across the body. What does a barbell bench press do? It pushes you straight up in a wider grip. where there is no adduction. The arm does not come across the body at all. Second, most people, or maybe most is the wrong word, but a high number of people in the bench press tend to get really good development in their front delts and their triceps from the bench press, but seem to lack the ability to properly connect to the actual chest. I can reflect on my experience here because when I first started training at 15 years old, and granted it was like, puberty, I didn't have a ton of development to have. But I bench pressed as my primary movement for the first year or year and a half. And my brother, my little brother would always make fun of me that I had this little chest fat on the side of my chest. And he's like, why does it look like you lift everywhere except your chest? And I just I hated it because the chest is like the main muscle group I wanted, right? Everybody when they're a teenager wants to be able to bench press and have a great chest and blah, blah, blah. So I took that to heart. I was quite saddened by it. And I reflected on what I needed to do differently. And so I changed out my primary chess movements at maybe year one and a half year two and eliminated the barbell bench press completely. And instead focused on the incline dumbbell bench press and the flat dumbbell fly. And, I honestly, like I pump this all the time to people when they asked me about chest development, my chest exploded in development when I started including the heavy dumbbell fly. And I don't mean just like light dumbbell flies where your arms are mostly pretty wide and you're doing this like hugging motion type thing. I'm talking about like a slight bend in the elbow so you can still use some massive weights and you're starting out wide, you're getting the elbows back and down. So there's a huge stretch in the chest and then you're coming back up and you're not spending too much time pausing at the top where the dumbbells are just like resting without much tension on the chest, right? Like when your arms are locked out, you're stacking your skeletal system. So you're not actually really allowing tension to remain on your chest. It's the same as at the top of a barbell bench press. Like there's just no tension on the chest at the top. Same with the top of a dumbbell fly. So these heavy dumbbell flies at the bottom, big stretch in the chest, inclined dumbbell bench presses. There's just better movements I think. you're like, if you're getting great chest development from a barbell bench, keep doing it. But if you're this guy and you're not getting great development from a barbell bench, then get rid of it. Like 225 by six is not weak. it's not super strong, but it's not weak. You should have some decent chest development if you're benching 225 for six. If you don't, I would reconsider your exercise selection and maybe choose movements more that ad duct that arm across the body. Yeah, my only add to that is look at how you're performing your chest movements. If you see people who have like a lot of anterior development relative to chest development, they're typically like performing chest stuff with a little bit of like the rounded shoulder and instead stick your chest like like think about like arching through your thoracic spine. So like sticking the chest out, kind of bringing the shoulder blades like back a little bit is a typically a more favorable pressing posture. to elicit a little bit more of a stimulus out of the chest and make sure, like Brian said, you are going through some form of adduction as you are doing your pressing. But yeah, I would stop using a barbell bench press, at least temporarily while you find some other movements that are able to provide you a better chest stimulus. When you're having a pressing day or a chest day and you're getting a really good stimulus, you have a very good direct feedback from those movements and you know. So I would go searching for that. Yeah, I'll just add that, you you mentioned the retraction and the sticking of the chest up. And I'll just say that, you know, that's a common sentiment that I think comes from the powerlifting community, which is to kind of hold this retraction in the, in the scapula and really protrude that chest up, which essentially decreases the total range of motion of your chest movement because you're sticking that chest up and retracting. So I think, you know, for the goal of hypertrophy, we likely want to stick the chest up and retract as the bar descends or as the weights descend, kind of like this inverted row where you're almost thinking of like rowing the bar into your chest. So you're retracting as the bar comes back to the chest. But then as you begin to press up, letting your scapula naturally rotate into protraction allows you a bit more range of motion. So I just want to encourage you not to remain fully locked in scap retraction throughout the entire rep. but allowing the scapula to move freely through retraction at the bottom and then protraction at the top. Very good addition. Yeah. I kind of skimmed over that not to keep it in retraction throughout the pushing phase. exactly. All right, cool. Let me pass this one over to you. Do you you use any metrics to figure out if an individual has enough muscle mass to maintain a solid lean physique, like a certain body weight for their height, certain strength standards? I've seen numbers in the past, for example, height in centimeters minus 100 equals upper limit of weight in kilograms for being very lean from Martin Birkham. So to provide a little bit of a backstory, Brian, do you remember Martin Burkhan is the I believe it was called lean gains guy from like 2014, 2015, 2016 time frame. And I think if I remember seeing this kind of formula he had before, but it was really like a kind of like a Natty or not sort of indicator. Like if you're at 10 % body fat. with these numbers, this is what you're pretty much looking looking like as like an upper limit of body weight, which I remember running the numbers in. It seems pretty you're in the ballpark, right? There's obviously going to be outliers. Those are like your NFL players, your Brandon Kempters. Like these are, you know, these sort of people. But it is pretty good. I also think like the FMI works. decently as a proxy. Yes, there are natural bodybuilders above it in that sort of thing, but it's a pretty decent proxy for, you know, 90 % of the population or significantly higher than 90%. Now back to the question. I don't think there are certain metrics because what what is a it depends on how you define a solid lean physique. You know what I mean? And yes, having more muscle. because muscle is more metabolically active tissue, therefore it consumes more calories just to substantiate itself helps. However, you do not need a certain amount of muscle for a lean physique. Like think about like your surfers, right? Like they're not lifting weights. Granted, they're doing like the paddling and that sort of thing, but like they have really solid lean physiques and they're not lifting. I have a friend that I grew up with. He's never lifted a day in his life and he's been effectively shredded for as long as I can remember. He's like 130 pounds at like five foot nine and he's been that way for literally 20 some years because we're in our late thirties now and I've known him since he was like since we were like 14. He doesn't lift. He just doesn't eat like he just barely eat whenever we eat meals. He would eat like half of it and that's what he's done for 20 some years and he's been shredded for literally 20 years. Not even it's like not even part of his like value system. It's like he's into like music and drinking beer and stuff, but he's just been super lean forever. So it's I just I don't I don't think it matters. You know, if I like look at swimmers. They don't have a lot. They have enough muscle to support their sport, you know, to be be performing in their sport, but they're lean. It really just comes down to what is important to you. And one thing I can almost guarantee you. Once you get really, really lean, let's call it sub 10 % body fat, you're probably not going to be as happy. You're probably not going to be happy with as much muscle that you have in that, because that just goes across the board, right? For all of us. So I don't think there is a certain metric that defines it. It there's probably a metric for you in how you want to look. And that would be individual for all of us. But if a client came to me and they can't want to get shredded, I'm not going to be like, well, wait. you bench body weight for 10 reps, so you don't classify to get lean enough or anything like that. Yeah, the question asks about, you know, when do you have enough muscle to maintain a solid lean physique? And it's just, yeah, it's like Aaron said, it's, it's when you have enough for you, like, do you want that like lean shredded look, because you could probably get that at 160 pounds, or do you want to be a little more filled out with more muscle, because then you might need to be 180 pounds or whatever it is. So I think it just depends on you and what your vision of solid lean physique is. Just out of curiosity, while you were talking, I went and punched in my numbers into this simple formula that he put on there, which is height in centimeters minus 100 equals your top weight in kilograms. that formula, I'm 178 centimeters tall minus 100 is 78 kilograms times 2.2 is 171 pounds. So that formula would tell me that my lean solid physique is around 171 pounds. I don't. I would have to be quite lean to be 171 pounds. When I was flirting with the idea of competing in bodybuilding a couple of years ago, and I met with Alberto Nunez and Brian Miner up in Fort Collins, at the time I was, think, 184, 185, and Berto theorized that I would have to get down to about 170 or 169 to stand on stage and be shredded. That would be... you know, 5 % body fat or something along those lines. So this formula is giving me my weight at 5 % body fat. I personally would feel like I have a strong solid lean physique at 183, 184 pounds, which would be more like 10, 11 ish percent. so I just, again, I think it comes down to like what your value is in there and like what your ideal physique looks like and you know what that body fat percentage number is. Okay, this next one I'll kick over to you, Brian. Can I mix protein powder and creatine in the same shake? Absolutely, I do it all the time. the creatine can be taken anytime with anything. It doesn't absorb better with grape juice like we used to think in the 90s. It just doesn't matter. Yeah, just as long as it just take it daily pretty much doesn't matter what shake you put it in if you want to mix it with water by all means just get it in. Yeah, my preferred way to do it is I usually take it in the morning with a pack of element. So it has zero calories in it at all, which would have been blasphemous back in the day. Like when phosphagen came out, do you remember the product phosphagen? So this was the very first creatine monohydrate product from EAS, which was Bill Phillips company back in the day. so phosphagen was like this patented creatine product and they always said on the pack, like obviously you had to load it, which you now know you don't have to load it. But it also said, make sure you mix it with a high sugar beverage. And I think the recommended was grape juice, because they're like, it will attach to the glucose and it'll get into your body more effectively. And that's just been like fully debunked and just get your creatine in. It doesn't really matter how or when you take it. All right, this one's for you. Ways to achieve fat loss with insulin resistance. Do you want to talk about what insulin resistance is first, just for anyone real quick? yeah, so insulin resistance is when. So insulin is a storage hormone, right? So insulin kind of works as a key to allow glucose to be shuttled into muscle and liver cells to be stored as glycogen, right? So it's like an enabler of this. When you follow kind of like a standard American diet, super, super high in refined carbohydrates, activity is low. These storage sites for glucose become full. And when you continue eating, the high carbohydrate diet, the body needs to get the glucose out of the bloodstream because glucose in the bloodstream needs to operate within a certain threshold, right? For literally like absolute health situations. The body, and then the body, the pancreas will continue to produce more and more insulin to try and shove this glucose into the cells. The body becomes resistant. to the presence of insulin over time. And this is then what leads to adult onset diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and these sorts of things. So insulin resistance can be monitored via fasting glucose on a blood test, HbA1c, hemoglobin A1c, and then also fasting insulin, which is monitoring the circulating levels of insulin in the bloodstream at the capture time of the blood draw. As insulin resistance is progressing, that fasting insulin marker on your blood work will continue to climb and climb and climb. Once it gets into like the teens, upper teens, low 20s, you are, you know, in into insulin resistance. Normally it's quite low, like for people like myself and Brian, three, four, six, something like that. So quite a bit a ways from like those teens and into the low 20. So that is insulin resistance. Now, what does that need to do with fat loss? Well, it kind of shifts how your body will handle carbohydrate. So if someone has insulin resistance, it can also lead to some other complications of things like PCOS in these sorts of downstream negative effects. But this would be a case where I would, this is pretty much the only case, honestly, minus bad, like really, really bad digestion issues where I would run some of a higher fat diet. This is a really good context. It puts someone on a low carbohydrate diet because they do not handle carbohydrate and glucose really well right now. Obviously, as the fat loss happens, we get them into a healthier state. Their insulin sensitivity will improve and then you can bring more carbohydrate in. But ways to achieve fat loss with insulin resistance, one of the biggest is get like pretty, pretty hardcore caloric restriction. to get things working better. Cardiovascular activity is going to be absolutely wonderful and a higher fat diet, right? In not pushing like saturated fats. talking like the mono, the The Mufas, the Mufas in the Pufas. Getting those in there and a lot of the Omega-3s, lots of fiber to slow the release of the insulin from the pancreas because there's gonna be some inherent, you carbohydrate and things. That would be my approach to achieve that. Yeah, I actually I mean, I fully agree. I think you nailed that. I, personally feel like when clients demonstrate the even first signs of insulin resistance, where that number is starting to climb up, the first thing we do is go into a phallus phase, because that literally solves that problem, like the majority of the time. So they're like, like, I have a client right now, who's been, you know, steadily, main gaining, so slightly bulking. for the last nine months, year, something like that. And he's just reaching a point where it's like, hey, do I consider potentially going, cutting down and being able to start from a lower place so that potentially I have, you know, a better insulin response and maybe shuttle more of these nutrients into where they want to be. And I was like, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Like if you're at a point where you've been bulking for this long. and your body's clearly not sensitive to the food that you're taking in anymore. Going into a fat loss phase allows you to resensitize to that and probably be more effective going forward. Second, there's actually studies on insulin resistance in diabetics. I believe it's been studied in both diabetic type one and type two, but for sure type two, where they take people after a meal and just exercise them. So I think the key point is like, you know, 15 minutes after the meal, once the digestion process has kind of begun to work its work its way through. And if you just go and you go for like a walk or you do a run or you do, you know, two minutes of air squats or like any sort of anything that shuttles that provides a way to kind of shuttle glucose into the muscles that then counteracts the insulin response and actually really helps not completely mitigate the problem. But it's been able to drastically decrease the insulin that diabetic patients need to take simply by exercising after big meals. yes, definitely, cutting carbohydrates out, huge, huge tool that you can use to mitigate insulin resistance and begin your fat loss phase, adding in exercise after meals, one more step in the right direction. The last one that I forgot is sleep. People with worse sleep have poor glucose control and higher fasting blood glucose levels. That's another really, really simple one. And wait, did I say sleep or did I say stress? Okay, so sleepy, that does make sense, but what I wanted to say was stress, right? I have seen stress-induced insulin resistance before, like in real life. Very, very high stress situations, but that's another one like. One of the best things to help with the stress is the sleep, right? So like to make sure you're sleeping really good. But yeah, that's that's how I wanted to take that. And I just said the exact wrong word that I wanted to. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say they're totally interrelated in that if you have poor sleep, your stress will be higher. And if you have high stress, your sleep will likely be worse. So it's certainly like a chicken and the egg thing. Okay, this next one, the age old question. If your goal is to get as muscular as possible, what would your split be? God, these questions like crack me up so much. Everyone loves the split and like I can relate to it because when I was first coming up, I thought that the magic was in the split. Like, if I just find the perfect split where there's the perfect recovery between each muscle group and the perfect stimulus that like it's just going to make everything I'm going to be so swole. And so, man, even, even in like the last five years, this, this still infiltrates my mind in some ways because Last year, even last year, I think on the podcast, I was talking about how I developed the intelligent bro split and the intelligent bro split was a split that allowed you to have one day where the primary muscle group was like the main focus. And you know, you did the majority of your sets there. And then a second day where you hit that same muscle group, auxiliary, and it still receives some stimulus. So for example, say chest was on Monday and I did eight sets of chest. That's my primary chest day. And then on Thursday or Friday, I have an arm day, but on that arm day, I make sure I'm doing dips or pushups or something like that. Boom, train chest twice a week, perfect split. The reality is that the perfect split does not exist. There is no perfect split. I mean, we can just reflect back on that question from that dude earlier who is like, I am getting great results after 2.5 years of training full body five days a week, and this is what's working for me. Great, that split is awesome. There is zero part of me that would say, you know, you should really try a bro split because you're clearly not getting enough recovery in for your muscle groups. And the dude's like, well, I've been progressing for two and a half years. Like, what do you mean? I'm not getting enough recovery. And I'm like, yeah, it's a really good point. Like, cool, you win. So yeah, I I just, think this idea of looking at a split as the key to your muscle gain completely ignores the factors that are a thousand times more important than that. Like effort. volume, intensity, recovery. And those things can be manufactured via the split and they should be in some regards, but the actual split itself, it just doesn't matter. I'll kick it over to you and then I'll come back and just for the sake of entertainment, just maybe provide like a split that I think is really cool. I'll take it two different ways. So someone that I do enjoy listening to, think they're very, very well respected in the larger community, Jordan Peters in the UK. He loves an upper lower off, upper lower off, and just rotating it that way. So that one I think can work really, really well. He's one of the largest people, you know, and he's been around for a really, really long time. Like I do enjoy him. I think he he he handles things in a very, very in a way that I would would like to think that I would handle them and answer questions and stuff myself. So I have a lot of respect for him. I think training sessions can get a little bit long with that. If you're training, like trying to train your upper body to a meaningful stimulus on each of the muscles that can get long. But if you have a lot of time, it can work. I always seem to find myself gravitating back towards push pull legs. You know, I try and do these different things and I really like something just pulls me back to it all the time. The thing that I find hardest to balance is The leg days get really brutal and I would love to split them off into hamstrings and quads. But by the time I do that, my push muscles are so recovered that I would really like to train them again. So that's the kind of, you know, mental dilemma that I have there. But when training legs, all of it on the same day, it's such a high CNS day. I like dread it all the time because of how heavy the day is. And you have. heavy leg press, heavy hack squat, you know, one or the other. And then it's like, guess what's next? Like fucking three and a half plate, four plate RDL, which are like just like just as soul sucking, you know. So that's I I love push pull legs. I think that's I've run that probably two to three times as long as I've run any any other split. It works for me. It avoids it allows me to avoid having something like an arm day, which I really just dislike training. So I think that's what works best for me, but I think that's largely due to a psychological preference. Yeah, I think that you what you demonstrated there is that there's a personal preference component and then there's also a training age component and As your training age increases and your ability your ability to go deeper into the reservoirs of pain and fatigue for the given muscle groups in some ways that has to have an effect on the way that you split your muscle groups up and I like at this point, like I've never had a problem with push pull legs or upper lowers until maybe the last like five years. And as I've gotten stronger and more able to go there on leg days, it does feel like splitting up quads and hams would be a really nice thing to do. And I've had cycles where I do that. And I love it, because I can go in and literally my whole workout is like five to seven work sets. And then it's like, great, like I was, you know, a really freaking hard day. But like five to seven sets is mentally manageable. Imagine if that's a full leg day and that becomes 10 to 12 sets, huge, much more daunting day like doing the RDL and the leg press on the same day. Very, very daunting. So I think that when you think about what split is optimal for muscular gain, you can't ignore preference for sure. But the training age and the impact that that has on the fatigue that you're able to create. So yeah, I would just say that, you know, upper lower is probably the goat. Like I think for most people, the majority of the population doing upper lower rest, upper lower rest, rest, or something like that. Really solid approach that you kind of can't go wrong with. one that I'll just throw out there because I've personally enjoyed this one quite a bit for a number of reasons is, chest and biceps on the first day. And then as part of biceps, I would do some sort of like supinated pull up so that, I'm able to get a little bit of back in there as well. So I'm hitting like a lot of the upper body in that one session. And then I'd have a day that was quads or hamstrings, not both. And that would then have like abs or calves. So maybe on the quad day is abs and on the hamstring day is calves or something along those lines. Those would be separated throughout the week. So maybe Tuesday is the hamstring day. Wednesday becomes shoulders. because that's a super simple day that, I think a lot of people need to spend more volume on their shoulders anyways, especially lateral raises, which aren't extremely fatiguing. So you have a day that's like shoulders there. Then you can come back the next day and do your other leg day. So maybe that's your quad and ab day and then finishing up the week with back and triceps. And what I love about that is that that then allows you to put dips or pushups on with your triceps. So you're getting a little bit of that chest stimulus on your back day. So you're kind of hitting back twice a week because of the first day, you're kind of hitting chest twice a week because of the second day, your shoulders are kind of getting hit three times a week because they're getting hit front delts on chest day, rear delts on back day, and then a full shoulder day in the middle of the week. And then that also allows you to split up the leg days. So it's a five day a week training program. Yeah, that's, that's been one of my favorites over time and probably something that I'll find myself going back to at some point in the future. Really good. All right, this next one is definitely for you. What is a good relative intensity for cardio that won't hurt hypertrophy gains as much? Yeah, the first thing I'd say is to go back and listen to the episode we did on hybrid training, which I want to say was in the last five or 10 episodes. 168. And so 12 episodes ago, I've had this question in some form in my DMS a number of times over the last couple of weeks. And I always find myself just sending them to that episode because I really think it's a thorough breakdown of to mitigate your concerns with this question. Ultimately, if we're really going to nitpick and I had this on a consult the other day, the talking about cardio and The guy was like, look, I'm to go into a diet. Like, what should I do with my cardio? I'm going to go into a deficit. And I was like, yeah, I mean, you know, don't really need to overthink this, but if you're really trying to mitigate fatigue, then avoiding like really high intensity hit intervals is probably a good idea just because it's going to conflict with the amount of glycogen that you have available in your system. if you're trying to maintain muscle in a deficit, you likely want to put the majority of your time effort. energy and resources into the lifting so that you don't lose muscle in a caloric deficit and not spend those resources on on HIIT training. So I tend to gravitate people more towards walking and zone two. like lower intensity cardio and during a fat loss phase. But that isn't to say that you can't have one HIIT session every seven days, every 10 days, something like that, just to maintain cardiovascular adaptations. And I don't think that you would notice any real negatively from from doing that on your lifting. So I think this whole idea of there being that if the first the idea of cardio somehow hurting hypertrophy, I think we completely debunked in the hybrid episode. So definitely go back and listen to that. And then as far as the actual intensity for the cardio, probably doesn't matter a ton. But if you want to be really nuanced about it, maybe you avoid the super high intensity stuff and focus more on the slightly longer duration, lower intensity. Yeah, the only thing I have to add is I think this is one of those extremes situations getting extrapolated to the average. And that's really just not the case. So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just like if you're really worried about it around your cardio, just make sure that you're putting food into your body, like have a little bit of pre-workout, maybe even some intro if it's a long cardio session, and then make sure you're getting some protein and carbs in afterwards. And that shouldn't really, I can't imagine that hurts your hypertrophy gains at all. Yeah, agreed. frequency for arm training. This is kind of like the split question. It's just so much involves in like your training age and what your goals are. Like I assume by you asking this question that arms are probably a priority for you. So I just it's just tough, man. Like it depends on exercise selection, too. So like you could probably train arms five days a week if you did all short overload movements, like if you were doing cable tricep pushdowns and you know, standing cable curls facing the machine or standing dumbbell curls or something that is just not a lot of like soreness and damage that's going to come from that, especially in slightly lower volume doses. So when you talk about frequency for arm training, there's all those factors to consider. And then there's also like, what is your exercise selection? Cause if I'm doing exercises that are lengthened overloaded, they're going to cause a bunch of soreness. The number of frequency, the amount of frequency I can have in a week is going to be significantly less. than if I'm able to train arms with much more short overload movements and then I can hit them more often. So it's always that delicate balance no matter what muscle group you're talking about of how much volume am I doing? How damaging are the movements that I'm choosing? And then let that kind of dictate what your frequency is. Yeah, what do you think? I'm going to try and give a little bit. I don't want to say more practical, but like a more digestible answer that someone could potentially incorporate, but that by no means does that not mean that everything that Brian said is not absolute factual because it is. I think practically maybe three times per week, right? And in that way, like like like Brian said, you could do five days per week if you somehow manipulate a way to do like all short overload movements. You'd probably be. on the fringe cases of some extra, some like, it could be a bicep exercise. It's probably not the best if you're on like, hey, this is going to be my fifth, you know, short overload movement. you probably have better exercises that you could choose at that point and get better results by reducing your frequency. So I'm like from like five to three, but now incorporating some, some lengthened or mid range exercises. So I think three is probably practical. But again, it still requires exercise selection. Like if you put a lengthened tricep exercise on each of those three days, I don't think you're gonna be able to recover in a day and a half to hit them again. So it might need to be like, I put, I don't know, maybe like mid-range stuff on day one, short overload, short range on my second day. And then on the final day I put lengthened because then maybe that's. Thursday or Friday and I'm not going to train them again until Monday. But so I think three, you know, and I have this conversation a lot with like I've had some like female clients who want to train glutes like four days per week. And I'm like, I can't really find a way that we can meaningfully do in a sufficient amount of volume that you're able to recover in a day and a half to hit them again, you know, with that with that kind of frequency. I find it. I think three is really the maximal amount that that doesn't require a trade off of exercise selection so that you will be recovered enough to train them again productively. Like you could train them again, but if they're still sore, I don't know how productive that training may really be. Yeah, no, that's really well said. I'm glad you added some practical application there. I was going to do that when it came back to me. So I also agree on glutes. I think four days is too many. I think three is the max there. And one of those days has to be strictly short overloaded for glutes. So I think you could probably take a similar approach with the arms. And I love what you said about mid range being the first day, short overload stuff on the second day and then lengthened on the third day. That seems like a really good setup. I think one other consideration is that we. know that back movements are going to train the elbow flexors in some capacity. So you're to get a little bit of bicep work there. know that any pressing movements are going to train the lateral and medial heads of the tricep quite well. And they're just not going to train the long head super well. And then the long head tends to be trained in lengthened capacity. you know, I, get much more sore from training lengthened tricep work than I do from training lengthened bicep work. seems like the biceps can just handle more volume than the triceps can. So you can kind of consider that in the way that you make up this as well. But yeah, I think three days a week is probably the right number and splitting it up like Aaron said makes a ton of sense. All right, I'll kick this one to you, because you haven't had one in a while. I've been listening to your podcast nonstop since I discovered it a few weeks ago. Thanks dude, that's awesome. I am a decade plus lifter, but just getting seriously into hypertrophy training. Anyways, I know you're a pro on home gym builds and equipment to value ratio. I can buy this hammer strength bilateral bench for like $650. Is this a good machine? I would say I'm running through the hammer strength things that I know in my head. If it depends if we're are we sitting upright or are we in the flat bench like laying down like you would on a bench press? Because I know hammer strength makes both of those. If it is an upright hammer strength press, almost a guaranteed yes. There is like the wide one that is not my favorite. I think it has limited applicability. especially in like a garage gym where it's going to take up a pretty good amount of space. There's also like a decline one that I don't think they make anymore. Maybe they do. But if it's like the straight up like hammer strength chest press that's upright or an incline that's upright or even the flat bench that's that's pretty much the same pressing angle as the original upright for $650. That's very, very good. I see them regularly in the secondhand market still in the 2000s. So Yeah, I agree. I think, you you didn't mention whether it converges. So I would just say that's potentially a consideration. Like for example, my bench that I just bought from Titan does not converge. And that's a feature that I don't love about it. As far as home gyms go to, I'd probably prefer one that's upright. So I bought the one that was lying down flat that adjusts to incline, which is cool. But being upright, is a much smaller footprint. So mine not being upright takes up way more space in my already small home gym. So there's a consideration there. What I would actually do if I were you dude is go listen to the episode that I just did with Jordan Lips. His podcast is called where optimal meets practical or WOMP. W O P. We did an entire episode that just dropped last week where we broke down 35 different upper body machines. And we did a tier list for them from S through ABCD. And that machine was actually one of the ones that we discussed on the pod. So, you know, if you want some context around your selection, I'd go check that Yeah, well, I don't know any hammer strength pressing machines that do not converge. But if I mean, who knows, it could be like 20 years old or even older. Like I remember hammer strength is all in our my high school gym. And like that's literally 20 years ago now at this point. So, yeah. All right, last question over to you. How long should one bulk for maintenance after the bulk or is cutting immediately okay? So let's I'll answer the second part first. Cutting immediately is OK. And typically that's what most people prefer because you typically bulk to a body fat percentage you don't love and then spending an unnecessary amount of time there while you're at a body fat percentage you're not typically thrilled about. I don't really see much more merit in that. Now back to how long should one bulk for? Until the job is done, really, know, what is the goal of the bulk? What do you want to get out of it? I think that is the most important factor there. Or until we run into, you know, potentially health mitigating things like are we now just getting fat? You know, let's call it above 20 to 22 % body fat, something like that to where, you know. Insulin like fasting insulin is rising. Maybe appetites just gone. You're so sick of eating that sort of thing like that could be one or Life related things if it's like summer and it's so hot and you're so sweaty like I know what that feels like and it's not fun that might be one but I think Probably a lot longer than you're thinking when people talk about like a six-week bulk or an eight-week bulk you're really scratching the surface of the appreciable amount of tissue that you could even put on during something with such a short duration. So that would be my answer. Yeah, I love that. And it's actually, I just had a consult the other day and the guy was asking me, you know, should I do these longer bulk and cut cycles or could I get more or less the same effect by doing like six week bulk, three week cut, six week bulk, three week cut and just doing that like endlessly forever. You know, aside, so one of the things you said was that you can go directly from bulk to cut. And one of the things that I said to kind of deter from that six three cycle was that there seems to be a delayed effect of anabolism that occurs when you're bulking. So like if you were to do that six, three, six, three, you could potentially be leaving some of your bulking gains on the table by immediately switching back to cutting and then. not allowing those gains to sort of manifest or cement or whatever from the six week ball, because it was just too short. Do you think there's any truth to that? Or like, what would be your rationale for why someone wouldn't want to do the six three and would rather be better off doing longer cycles of each? I don't think you're going to go anywhere. You're going to do these six threes and then you're going to be in the exact same spot because there's not that you have to move like you're shifting because you're shifting around the same few pounds back and forth. Right. Yeah, so then there would be something to cementing it as in like, you're just shifting back and forth, then maybe the longer bulk allows you in some way to cement those gains so that you're actually able to achieve an appreciable change. That's in the end of what you said is everything in appreciable change like in six weeks you might put on have like actual Tensile contract or contractile tissue. Let's call it Six tenths of a pound maybe maybe five tenths five tenths of a pound you diet you lose 20 % of that 30 % of that and now we're talking about three tenths of a pound distributed over your entire body in this 6-3 cycle like it The whole purpose of like the bulk or the cut is like you want to see an appreciable change in your physique. And that requires you moving your body weight significantly enough so that when you go through that cycle, there's a significant enough. There's a significant amount enough of contractile muscle tissue still present for it to be displayed. And when you're in, if you just, hey, I'm going on the six week, you know, build, it's just not long enough. You know, I think it really needs to be three months. You know, maybe if you're if you're if you're someone who's like maybe a woman who's scared about, you know, putting on body fat or looking away that you may not want like dip your toes in trepidatiously with like 12 weeks or something like that. But for example, I'm I'm over a year now on my build, literally over a year now. Granted, I've had some setbacks with like the hernia and, you know, getting sick and stuff like that. But it takes a long time for appreciable change. And I watch people just oscillate. in the same, four pounds and you're, unfortunately you're going in circles and in, that's really what's happening, unfortunately. Cool, well that's all I got. Alright, so shorter episode, but hopefully the value is there as always. As always, guys, if have any follow up questions, ping Brian or I and we will talk to you next week for episode 181.