What's going on guys. Happy Monday or Tuesday. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 208 and this is our February 2026 Instagram Q &A. We have a lot of questions that we want to dive through and give proper time to each. So Brian and I are going to skip updates but some of the questions do ask a few update-esque questions which we will cover then but we're gonna dive right in. So this first one I will kick over to Brian. The question is... Do you like the idea of one main cue for each lift or do you use multiple cues when coaching a lift? My initial response is always to want to cue a thousand different things at once because I'm like, I see what's happening here and this is wrong and this is wrong and that's wrong. Or even if I didn't see anything, I'm like, make sure you focus on, you know, for example, doing a lat pull down, like driving the elbow down and making sure that you're not retracting your scapula and keeping your, uh, your midline sucked down and a neutral grip. And like, there's so many different things that you could say. ah But I actually think that the probably the right move is simply to find the most applicable cue for that athlete with the lift that they're doing. Cue that, let them master that cue and then introduce a second cue, you know, the next week or the next time they perform that lift. I agree with that. think it's context specific, which is like the thing I say every fucking episode, but I want to see what it looks like. So I see it and then I say, where do you feel it? Do feel it where you want to feel it? Do feel it where we want to feel it? And if they like things are great, then I don't really cue anything if there isn't a need to right. I like to kind of observe how people move. because if something's great, they're getting a great stimulus to it or from it, maybe they don't need a cue, right? So I just like to observe, ask some questions, and then if there's things we can improve upon, we will, but I don't try and like needlessly chase perfection in every single exercise because I think it can just rabbit hole some people unnecessarily. Yeah, I think that's probably right. Can you kick this one to me? Because I have some inputs that I think are a little different and then we'll send it back. I'm seeing so many elite natural bodybuilders using unexpectedly light weights for exercises, especially single joint, but really all movements, seemingly to increase mind muscle connection. It seems to have trickled down from Alberto Nunez and his clients, Dirk, but now seems to be so prominent. Lateral raises with 15 pound dumbbells, curls with 25s, bench presses with 80s, when I've previously seen Nunez bench 120s. What do you think about all this? I wouldn't my when I first read this and thought about it. I wouldn't say what was the word unexpectedly light. I would not say curls with 25s are unexpectedly light. It's all relative to your form. Right. I think if I when I remember the last time that I was doing curls in the States I think I was using 30s. Right. And I vividly remember there's a video of C Bum who I was not natural when performing this. C Bum is definitely not natural. I think he was doing curls with 35s maybe and someone like questioned about him and he was like if you're doing them right you're not you're not supposed to use like a ton of load because then you're not training the bicep you're just you're using momentum and things like that. So the I wouldn't necessarily say that some of those loads are unexpectedly light. Lateral raise potentially right. That is something like Brian I know for example you're really strong with lateral raises with really really good form whereas like I'm not. I would even argue Brian would still probably use more load on his lateral raises than I do now and I'm on gear and I have like fucking 40 pounds on Brian. So there's certain things that are a little bit different relative strengths but. If moving a load and using a load to generate the most stimulus net that you can are definitely two different things. But I would say that's probably what it stems from. Just because you can move a load doesn't mean that you're maximally deriving what you want out of it. And I would even argue backing off on certain things. Film yourself. Does this set look on video how you think it looks when you're performing it without a video? And if it doesn't, you potentially do need to back the load off to generate more stimulus out of it. Yeah, it's interesting. feel like things have kind of gone like 180 degrees in this regard because it wasn't so long ago that you had Eric Helms saying things like, you know, you'll have big arms when you can strict curl 40 pounds for sets of 10 or 45 for 10 or whatever it was. And I remember a few years ago being like, yeah, I can totally do that. And I posted a video and it was perfect. And I was doing like 45 for 10 or whatever it was. And and I felt really good about that. I was like, yeah, I have big arms. Like I should be able to do that. And the answer with lateral raises to like, I can do strict lateral raises with 35s for sets of 10 or whatever. And it it looks the same as it would if I was using the 20s or the 25s. But to your point, I think there is a different level of connection that can be made with the muscle when the weights aren't your maximum. with simply trying to move it from point A to point B. Like there's a difference between I can move this weight from point A to point B and it looks the same as when I use the lighter weight versus what you're actually like internally able to kind of manifest into the muscle. And uh I actually think this is a really positive turn in the industry. Like if anyone's questioning this as a negative thing, I actually think this is really positive because it... kind of takes the focus off of progressive overload being the most important thing, which I think is another thing that in the industry has finally begun to maybe begin to take slight a bit of a backseat, at least for people in pursuit purely of hypertrophy, because the pursuit of progressive overload often means that form changes even subtly where what you're manifesting internally gets shifted slightly in the pursuit of progressive overload. And it's really nice and reaffirming to see that there's these guys like Dirk, who's a top level bodybuilder, Nunez top level natural bodybuilder. And these guys are reducing weights from what they used to use. Nunez was pressing the 120s, now he's pressing the 80s. Like there's clearly something that he's getting out of using these lighter weights and an ability to connect with the muscle and perform the movement in a better manner that is oh creating this. is change and load. And so I think it's good long term, it's good to get away from progressive overload is number one, it's good for your joint structures, and it possibly and likely is good for the building of muscle in the tissues that you want to target. very well said. This next one is directly for you. So I'll kick it over your way. Brian with this bro split. How many warm up sets are you performing per exercise? Also, what are your rest periods between sets? I love the fact that you're keeping sessions to under 40 minutes. Yeah, me too, under 40 is like the new standard for me. I don't know that I can train much longer than that. So I generally will warm the first exercise up like I would anyways. um So two to three warmup sets. And then for the subsequent exercises, it really just depends on the movement. If I'm looking at like, yeah, I guess pretty much any chest or back shoulder day, I'm gonna do one warmup set for each subsequent exercise. probably 75 % of the work weight for, you five reps or something like that. And then for arms, actually only warm up the first exercise and then I'm pretty good to go with no warmups for the exercises after that. I'll also add, and there is a question later on about this, that um I've been just recently using the pyramid style, which kind of takes away the need to do warmup sets, because it's like the first exercise will go 15, 12, nine, six, and then the next one will go like, 12, nine, six, and the next one will go 12, nine, six. And so I'm essentially that first exercise for 12 to 15 reps. I wouldn't say it's a warmup set, but it's light enough that if I take it to three or four RIR, which still feels kind of hard, it still burns really a lot. And because it's 12 to 15 reps, the warmup kind of occurs in the first like six to eight reps. So. I almost eliminate warm-up sets completely and I just jump right in, but now it almost looks like the set volumes are higher because it's like 15, 12, nine, six, 12, nine, six, 12, nine, six. And suddenly it's like, I'm doing, you know, 10 or 12 sets. I wouldn't count all of those 10 or 12 sets as work sets. So it gets a little bit ambiguous, but it does. The number of warm-up sets depends on whether I'm using that pyramid approach or whether I'm going, you know, warm up to one or two top sets. And then the warm-up style is different because instead of pyramiding down, it might go like, sixes or something all the way across in the warmups. So a few different ways of approaching it, but but ultimately the idea is that I'm probably getting eight like sets that matter and probably something like four sets that that don't matter would be the way I think about that. think that's well said. I'll get this one to you and see what you think here. I was training overhead tricep extension, single arm and easy bar, high volume, high frequency. Now I have a tear of the rear delt rotator cuff pain and can't do anything overhead without pain. Since then I've switched to push downs and skull crushers. I'm guessing this is fairly common overuse. I mean do I think it's overuse. I would say so. Do I think it's fairly common. Not really. From my understanding of the of this information which could be a little bit limited to me I would say it's potentially a programming issue right or not or programming issue or said differently. and not enough recovery time between performing it because you said high frequency and high volume of effectively what I'm anticipating is a unilateral pattern and then you're replicating that same pattern bilaterally with the easy bar curl so it's you're kind of just doing the same thing with too much volume and or too much frequency combined leading to overuse. So yes, overuse, I agree. Do I think it's fairly common? I do not. And I think there's straightforward ways to mitigate once it's healed. Yeah, I think Aaron nailed that. And then I'll just add that if one is doing a high volume, high frequency specialization type phase for a given muscle group, please select movements that feel great and are relatively easy on the joint structures. uh Like if you're going to use the overhead tricep extension, single arm and the easy bar to do basically the same movement like those are great movements. I would just do them. low volume, lower frequency. And I would stick to the movements that feel good, like maybe push downs. And if skull crushers feel good for you, great, they don't feel great for me. But like a cable push down and maybe like a cable overhead extension or something like that, as those movements tend to feel much better on my joint structures and are something that I could do high volume, high frequency without this overuse injury. So those are my thoughts. Okay, most recent health update, or sorry, most recent update with TRT, please. Impacts on all aspects of life and fitness. Okay, this could be like a full episode on its own. I'm uh on week six right now. I'm actually supposed to get my blood work done today. I don't know if it's gonna happen, because apparently I'm supposed to have a kit and no one ever sent me a kit. So I don't know if I'm getting blood work today, but my plan is to try to figure out how to do that. It's been exactly six weeks and it's been good. I would say the only things I've like... really notice so far or that there seems to be an improvement in sleep? had about five or six days out of seven the prior week where my sleep score was like in the high 90s, which I just I've never even seen that for a long time because they they do it on duration bedtime and interruptions and I would always lose points on interruptions. Yes, question. With those five or six days of very, very high sleep score, would you say that that correlated to you feeling any subjectively better in the morning, like more well rested, anything of that sort? No, I have not. Yeah, I haven't. I wouldn't say that I've noticed anything yet that makes me feel like I'm noticing the like increased drive, motivation, energy or focus. Like those would be the four I'd put in that category. And I wouldn't say that I've gotten to a point yet where I'm noticing a significant bump in that chat. GPT says that it should be like the eight to 12 week point where a lot of that kicks in and where the physical. testosterone levels might be, you know, in the rain range right now, I might be 700 testosterone, but the brain takes a little longer to kind of accept this as the new normal. And that's the way I understand it anyway. So I would say the sleep had the crazy like five or six days that went amazing. uh Other than that, like I mentioned libido that's kind of come and goes, comes and goes. I wouldn't say that it's been like as strong and stallion like as maybe it was in the first few weeks. And so yeah, I just kind of waiting around for things to happen. I wouldn't say that it's been a negative in any way. Like there's been no drawbacks aside from like, I just can't stop gaining weight. this is actually maybe that is like a drawback potentially. I I'm yesterday. I weighed in in the morning at 206 and today it was 204 and change, which are two of the highest AM weigh-ins that I've seen since 2012. Like I got up to 210 in 2012 right before the open and I haven't been in the mid like 205 range. I don't think for a decade. So it's crazy to me that despite eating the same that I've been eating, you know, I've gained essentially 10 pounds. since starting TRT in six weeks, six weeks ago. So that's been not so great, I guess. It hasn't really affected me all that much aside from when I look at myself, I seem like really puffy in the belly area. other than that, yeah, I think it's been good. mean, maybe subtle increases in like energy and focus, but I wouldn't say anything drastic yet. still pretty early. Six weeks is still very, very early for a lot of those like downstream, you know, cascade things. So. Yeah, when did you notice it? I mean, if I'm being really, really honest with everyone, TRT was not the panacea that I had hoped it would be or that people would, you know, market it as on the Internet. Very similar to you. My body weight started rapidly increasing. I got incredibly jacked, like at the speed of light. But if I'm really being honest, the only time I ever really experience that hyper driven hyper focus sort of thing is when I was in prep running 700 milligrams of testosterone per week and 500 milligrams of master on that's it. But that's unsustainable. Like you can't run that or you're just going to cook yourself. But I mean, I got a shit ton of work done and all I wanted to do was work and, you know, get shit done. But it's what produced that is incredibly unsustainable. Yeah, I definitely don't want to do that. So we'll see what a hundred milligrams can can do for me weekly. Okay, this one is also for you. I Dorian, I'm assuming that's going to be Dorian Yates discussing weed on the recent Huberman podcast. Did you listen to it and what are your thoughts? Yeah, it is Dorian Yates. And yes, I did listen to it. He didn't actually talk about weed until like the two hour mark. So it was, it was a lot of listening to him talk about lifting weights and, and, you know, the psycho social aspects of being a professional bodybuilder in those days. It was actually really interesting. And then they got to the weed part and I didn't even know this but uh Huberman said, yeah, so it's pretty much common knowledge that you you know, are a big fan of marijuana and have been consuming it for a long time. Can you like tell me a bit about this? Blah, blah. And so Dorian talked about it. Oh, and also I should mention that Huberman is notoriously very negative on weed. He basically believes that it's causing people all sorts of problems, has a huge problem with getting people failure to launch. that movie with whatever chick from Sex and the City? Anyway, there was a movie, Failure to Launch. about a kid who like couldn't leave his parents home. And so Huberman says that weed basically causes this problem in people. And uh so he was surprised when Doran was like, yes, I've been smoking it basically every day for 30 years. I think it's amazing, like had nothing but positive things to say about it. And Huberman like pushed back a little bit on some of his points. And Doran was like, yeah, like that's probably true for some people, but it isn't for me. And then Dorian referenced a study which I thought was really interesting. It was actually a 25 year uh objective. uh What is it called when it's not an RCT but you actually just uh observational study. That's the one. um And basically this uh scientist out of UCLA ran a 25 year observational study and checked in with people that consumed weed daily or. however often compared to people that didn't consume weed, compared to people that consumed it just a little bit, whatever. And at the end of the 25 years, he went back and tested all their lungs and did all these like assessments of uh whatever, I don't know exactly what the details were. Dorian didn't seem super clear on it either. So I'm probably gonna have to look into that more. But the end result, according to Dorian, was that the people that smoked weed for this 25 year study had no difference in their lung output. or lung damage or any of these characteristics compared to the people that did smoke. There was no, or didn't smoke rather, there was no difference in like their success in life or what they've achieved or their family or like any of these things. And uh so my first thought listening to that was, wow, that's pretty cool. Second thought was there's gotta be a selection bias here where the people that didn't do well with weed probably just stopped doing weed and dropped out of the observational study. and the people that are left are the ones that do really well with weed. uh So that kind of, you know, makes sense on like a larger scale view from it. But um I don't know, as somebody that loves weed and has been using weed myself for 20 plus years, I found that some ways reassuring and um also slightly disconcerting because I've been really trying to just stick to my edibles and not smoking at all. And one of the reasons I don't want to smoke aside from motivation issues, which I think are more impacted by smoking than by edibles, is because of the lungs. And so to hear this, was kind of like, oh, why are you giving me like another reason to continue smoking? So anyway, was interesting. I would say, you know, if you're interested in the topic, it's probably worth listening to the episode and it was entertaining overall. That's a very good overview. Okay, this one also you mentioned you talked about your recent experiments with glucose monitoring on a recent pod as someone in the pre diabetic range. I'm curious what you learned about yourself and if anything will change moving forward as a result. Yeah, so my experience has been that I have been pricking my finger, not getting a CGM. Dave McHoney, our buddy, basically hit me up a month or so ago and was like, hey, you should get one of these little at-home finger prick things and just kind of like see where your levels are at under various conditions. It's really interesting. And I'd be curious, you know, where your numbers are. And as you know, Aaron, we are in a three-person Instagram chat together called the pre-diabetes group or something like that, which is a bit tongue in cheek. uh And uh so it's been really insightful. I've pricked my finger probably like 150 times over the last three weeks and uh done it under various conditions. And I've learned, guess, a few things. One is that I have high glucose readings when there's no insulin present. So like when you eat food. Your glucose goes up, insulin is like, no, gotta shut that shit down. And insulin comes in and hammers the glucose down. So my insulin does exactly what it's supposed to do. When I eat food, insulin comes in and it kaboshes it and it is perfect. My body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. In the morning, when I wake up and I'm fasting until noon, most days, my glucose is not super low. In fact, it mostly hangs out in like the low 100s. I've seen a few readings in the low 90s, mid 90s. I've also seen some in the one teens. So it's kind of between like 90 and 115 when I'm hanging out fasted. And that was first a bit upsetting and disconcerting to me, because I was like, I fast 18 hours a day. Like, is this what's happening to my body? Like 18 hours a day, I'm just like glucose in the hundreds, because that wouldn't be cool. But as it turns out, at least according to my AI psychologist, Chet GPT, ah what's happening in the morning and while I'm fasted is essentially glucose that's being pushed out by the liver because there is no insulin present. The liver is saying you need power, here is glucose and it gives me glucose to use as energy, which is why my glucose is higher in the absence of insulin. uh I'm apparently not supposed to worry about this. So we will see what happens with my new blood work as far as my HbA1c levels and my insulin, just to make sure that everything is as it should be in that regard. um What else can I add on this? I'd also say that when I eat normal food, like even if it's high carbohydrate, for example, my normal lunch is uh white rice, probably like 70 grams of carbs from white rice, eight ounces of chicken. and teriyaki sauce. So add in like 20 grams of sugar from teriyaki sauce or 15 grams or something like that. And then some broccoli. That's like my normal lunch, probably a hundred grams of carbs in there. Within the two hour point where your body is supposed to be shutting that shit down and getting back to normal, I'm pretty much right there. So eating normal amounts of food, totally fine. Eating big cheat meals, not exactly totally fine. Went to BJ's the other day with my family, had about close to 3000 calories of food and then tested my glucose at the two hour mark, three hour mark and four hour mark. And at the two and three hour mark, it was still above 140. And it took until the four hour mark for it to finally drop below 140. So extremely outrageous cheat meals, probably a bad idea for long term health. Don't think that's a shock to anybody. uh But eating normal even relatively high carbohydrate portions seem to be processed just fine. Just to add some context for this person that asked the question as a pre-diabetic, I would say one of the things or the thing that seemed to make the biggest difference to the way my body would handle glucose and how quickly it would dispose of it was movement after meals. Walking, sort of effective. It would help, you know, maybe 10, 15 glucose points down. So if it was going to be like 145, maybe it would be 130, something like that. It's significant. lifting weights or doing sprints like something high uh that requires high glucose disposal basically makes the fact that I ate glucose non-existent. Like I could have my normal lunch and within an hour after a workout or like I would do my workout right after lunch and then an hour after the meal, my glucose would be back into the 90s. So uh insane what muscular contraction can do to glucose disposal. And so my advice, and I've heard other people say the same thing in the space, longevity space, et cetera, is uh move as much as you can after eating high carbohydrate meals because it will make a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah. As I've been, you know, quote unquote, pre diabetic since I first started paying attention to my glucose stuff in 2018. Now, Aaron's just an online fitness coach, right? On Instagram with a podcast sort of thing. If you're lean, if you train hard, if you eat a high quality diet, I would not say that I think it's as big of an issue as certain people with certain platforms make it out to be. I have been shredded 190 pounds. I've been 16, 17 % body fat, 212 pounds. I'm now 235 pounds. I've been on gear. natural. My my glucose doesn't move. My HbA1c barely moves. My insulin barely moves. um I think there's certain genetic factors that some of us have, some of us don't. I think it's a larger rabbit hole than people make out to be. Pay attention to your fasting insulin. If your fasting insulin is climbing into the tens, the teens, the high teens, you are building insulin resistance. But if your fasting insulin on your blood work is sitting at a two, a four, a six, I think you're chasing ghosts with making some of these things an issue that aren't really there. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I essentially just needed to stop worrying about the liver secreting the glucose because once insulin comes in, it just solves everything. So it's just kind of a non-issue. All right, I'll kick this one to you. I have some thoughts as well, but ah do you think there's a possibility of overtraining with cardio as well or just with weights? I think so. Right. I mean I would say if I do think so if you do too much of anything in your caloric intake is insufficient and your other recovery modalities which are effectively the two biggest levers are your caloric intake carbohydrate intake which are two in the same I guess a little bit and sleep. Yeah I do think so. I would say though before you run into over training territory. if you are monitoring your cardiovascular performance, which I would imagine you would be, you would start noticing some decreases in performance or like heart rate running away at what would otherwise be a pretty well regulated pace. I don't think Wednesday, everything's gravy, performance is great, everything's progressing. And then like Thursday, you're just full blown over trained. I think there will be like, know, steam or pressure building and leaking from various aspects that you can identify before that just shows up one day. Yeah, my understanding is actually that it's easier to over train with cardio than with weights. And uh you can see that manifested, I think, in like the Tour de France and these other like really long endurance races, where people are just completely broken by the end of these things. And they didn't lift a single weight during that period of time. They just simply rode their bike for six hours a day for three straight weeks. So. Yeah, my understanding is that cardio is much easier to over train because you can just do more of it. I think there's natural physiological stops with weights, where if you tried to lift weights for six hours a day for three straight weeks, it just wouldn't, it wouldn't work out well for you. I think there would be wear and tear and other things that would stop you before you got to the point that you can get to by simply just doing more cardio. So those are my thoughts there. All right, for Aaron here. Any update on Aaron's move to the States? How does he feel about it overall? Excited for the move and the new start or anxious about missing out on everything he's built in Bali? What a great question. That is a good question. So uh April 23rd or 24th is the day. Flights have been booked. We are going straight to Utah where we have nothing, no cars, no house as of yet. Literally nothing. So we'll pop up, maybe get off the plane, rent a car for a week, and then figure it out. We will have a place to stay, right? ah Or live that we're going to sort this month. But. I feel about it overall, I'm very, very excited. um The way that I and my wife have been speaking about it, I'm just ready for the next phase of my life. If you think back to what you did in university, let's talk, maybe you got high and drank with your friends all the time. That was great for that period of your life. But now as a 40 year old, do you just wanna get high and drink with your friends day in and day out? Probably not so much, right? And that's just how I kinda feel like I'm just ready for the next phase. in my life. I'm ready to have a family. I'm ready to have a little bit more of like pressure to provide in ways that I have not needed to be able to because it's just been me. I have plenty of finances for myself. I've done a lot of things that I want to but I'm looking for a larger more the next kind of fulfilling role in my life. My wife is as well and that's what we're doing now. How do I feel about it overall? mean, it's interesting times in the United States right now with all the uh ice stuff going on and finding out that apparently everyone under the sun is a pedophile these days. So that makes me feel sticky and gross, which is unfortunate. um I'm It's not unfortunate that I feel that way. It's unfortunate that the things are the way that they are. But I just happen. Yeah. But. um Yeah, I'm just uh there's a reason why we're moving to where I'm moving to. Right. I'm moving to place where it's generally pretty nice, you know, quiet, not a lot of issues going on and that sort of thing. And I'm fortunate that I've been able to design my life to have the opportunity to make that kind of choice. um Anxious about missing out everything I've built in Bali. No, it's here. And that's one of the things that I've had a lot of continued ah experience with in my life is there's been numerous times where I've made this big kind of leap into the unknown and the safety thought that I've had was if it doesn't work out, I can just come back. Right. And that's like when I went to university about four hours from home and I didn't know if I would get like homesick and all these things. I'm like, if I do, just call my mom like she will speed there to come get me because I'm sure she would miss the fuck out of me. And I get to say, come home. And then immediately after university, I moved to Southern California, you know, not knowing anyone there and my worst case scenario is like I run out of money in eight weeks and I'm like, Mom, can you buy me a plane ticket? And I come home, right? And then same thing when we left to go travel to Asia, like if I don't like it, we just come back and You know, so far I've never needed to come back and everything's just worked out and life has only gotten better. So we'll be still be back in Bali, right? Have business here and there'll be different events and stuff that I'll come back for things that undefeated or growing like crazy, which is cool. We have tons of like really cool big name pros like Brianne Ainsley's coming in April, which is a massive, massive thing for us. So it's only a very short, you know, 27 hour plane ride back. Yeah, exactly. All right, cool, man. Well, that's great to hear. I'm excited for that for you guys. All right. What do you think of having a calorie range with minimums for each macro? I believe Helms has said 3DMJ uses this approach even up until right before contest. really think it depends on the goal, right? If we're, I love the additional context they provided because believe Helm says that 3DMJ uses this approach right up until before contest prep. Environmentally, what are we sitting at before contest prep? Really high calories, right? Probably a very low food focus. You're probably a little bit more full than you would even like to be. This is a great time to have a range with minimums because your operating capacity is quite flexible. Your margin of error is quite large to have success in that environment. Would I encourage this in a caloric deficit? If calorie deficits are really, really easy for you and you have a lot of success with them historically in the past and you pretty much breeze through them, sure. For the average person, I would say you're making your life harder than is needed there. Yeah, I don't really have too much to add on that. I think the only thing maybe would just be that I think 3DMJ also does the diet before the diet. So I think they're like coming into contest prep actually already like kind of pre-prepped if that makes sense. uh So I think that the ability to do that probably just depends on the advancement of the client and whether they're capable of being able to get to that goal of the diet before the diet without. having to track it specifically. Yeah. All right. results dependent. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Aaron, what are some other content creators or people in the fitness space that you really like? So one immediately came to mind. The first is Nicholas Weir. He is an Australian Australian bodybuilder and bodybuilding coach. um He makes really, really good content um from my. perspective. I he just speaks in a way that I really, really resonate with. He speaks clearly. He explained things well. uh I really, really like him. He's someone that I'm always surprised doesn't have like a bigger platform and those sorts of things. So I really like him. And then one of my favorite people, this is in this is a friend and I'm hoping that once we move to Utah, we can see them a little more. Her name is Michaela North. Her Instagram is Hungry Fitness and she is someone in her her family they have built like what I would consider just like the pie in the sky family situation her and her husband are both self-employed they run their own businesses and stuff I believe they might even like homeschool some of their children is like they just do it all but she still finds time to like train all the time make content make meals like she they just get shit done across the board and it's very, very admirable. um And it's kind of like a, I hope that I can operate at the level that their family operates at one day. That's awesome. I actually don't know either of these people, so I will definitely check them out as well. For me, I feel like first off, I don't consume that much content online. I really try to stay away from it as much as I can. So I'll probably just be lazy and give you the people that I really like, which are my buddy Jordan Lips, uh Jeffrey Verity Schofield, I think does a great job. And then a new guy that I've been... GVS is great. And then a new guy that I've been watching that I mentioned on this podcast the other day was Jonathan Warren. He has a relatively small YouTube channel, like maybe 20,000 followers, but the content he puts out is super good. He's really biomechanics focused. And he's the one that's got me thinking a lot more, more exclusive. What's word I'm looking for? It's got me more uh focused more on the range of motion being used for various movements, which I've talked about in the squat pattern movements and the pressing movements. slightly using less range of motion, not being part of the stretch cult so much on all that stuff, being a little bit more muscle specific. I think there's a lot of value in Jonathan Warren's channel. I mean, Brian has the bigger delt, I will kick this one his way. Can you provide some good cues to take the traps out of delt movements? And then part B, do you like high or low reps with shoulder movements for clients? Because I know you like low reps for yourself specifically. Yeah. Do I have better delts than you? don't know. Maybe if we had like same body weight. um But either way. So to take the traps out of delt movements, I think the key is to focus on the abduction component, which is essentially pushing your arms away from your body. If you push your arm away from your body far enough, it eventually raises up. You don't have to actively try to raise your arm up in any lateral raise or Y raise movement. simply focus on moving the arm away from the body. And by pushing the arm away from the body, abduction, the arm will eventually rise. But through that focus on just simply pushing away, it will keep the traps out of it for a longer period of time. It's also important to note that the traps are just simply part of the same biomechanical structure that moves your shoulder. like you can't actually... push your arm out or raise your arm in any way without the traps helping in some manner. So it's really maybe even going back to that first question about why bodybuilders are using such light ass weights. Like maybe part of this is because when you use heavy ass weights, the traps engage more. And when you're using lighter weights, you're able to focus a little bit more on that AB induction component and simply just pushing out with the load. So I'm not opposed to that. And then to the second part of the question about whether I prefer high reps or low reps for clients for shoulder movements. uh I actually think high reps or shoulder movements are probably the way to go. Like if I'm going to choose a muscle group that likely is going to have higher reps than other similar structures, it's probably going to be the shoulders. I think they're a much slower twitch muscle group across the structures, which means that they can respond to higher volumes and thus higher rep ranges as well. uh I actually don't use low reps on shoulders except for my like dual cable lateral raise or the behind the back cable lateral raise. And that's just simply because I lengthen bias them so hard. And I feel like when you lengthen bias a movement, you can get away with using lower reps on it because of where it's hard and where it's easy. If I'm doing dumbbell lateral raises or any sort of raise that's harder at the top, I'm always gonna opt for higher reps there like 12, 15, even 20 rep sets of dumbbell lateral raises can be super effective. using higher rep ranges for shoulders makes sense. How about you, Aaron? Yeah, the one, the only thing I'll say is what if you watch a lot of people, I don't think there's an exercise. It's more butchered in the gym more than lateral raises like across the board. Don't think about lifting up, right? That's where you're getting to the traps where people are thinking about lifting up. Like Brian said, push out and away, right? And then eventually, as your arm gets, as you move around that arc, eventually you get that elevation, but don't think lift up. Think like push out, and that will help. Okay. Do you track calories? What are the pros and cons of tracking? I just want to be jacked, feels like track, but I feel like tracking is so neurotic. Yeah, me too, buddy. ah No, I don't track calories. I haven't tracked calories for a long time since I was uh dieting in 2022, I think, so like four years ago almost. However, we did an entire episode where Aaron and I got to argue with each other about whether tracking is important or not. It was four episodes ago, episode 204. uh I highly recommend just going back and listening to that because... We could rehash all of the arguments that we had then for you right now, but then we'd basically just repeat the episode. So honestly, just go back. We argue a little bit. We agree on a lot of things and I think that there'll be value. Yeah, that's the best way to get the most out of that one. We have a full episode on it for you. What do think about this, Aaron? How important are warm-up sets? There seems to be a big push from some influencers saying they aren't necessary and just a waste of time. I don't know at this point. think like certain things, like Brian said, if we're talking about dumbbell lateral raise and you're using the 15s, I think you just go into it. But for example, you're doing five plates per side on the leg press. Are you just going to load all five plates and just go into it raw and hope for the best? I mean, you can. And then in our March Q &A, you're going to be asking about injuries and stuff like that. I feel like some of these, some of these, again, context specific lateral raises, you probably don't need to. Are we talking about top sets, RDLs, leg press, hack squat? Yes, you need to warm up. It's preparation, right? I think with anything, if you watch... m Let's talk about the Olympics or something like that. You watch Olympic sprinters Do they just hang out all day and then this like walk to the blocks and fucking take off like no There's a preparation phase for it so that you're in a position to perform and not blow yourself apart So I would say it warm-up sets do serve their purpose now that being said How many do you need? I think is relative to the lift and how heavy it is. Right. If you're still relatively new to training or maybe only have a couple years of training and let's use that leg press example. If you're only doing maybe one and a half plates per side you might need one warm up set you know because it's not necessarily the load that's limiting you it's just your strength kind of because you haven't spent as much time in the gym yet and built that strength. But if you're one of these dudes it's and 12 plates per side on the leg press, you need those progressive warm-up sets to prepare your CNS in your body to handle the load that is necessary to provide the stimulus that you need to continue to grow at that point in your career. Yeah, now I think that's all really well said. I am not sure which influencers you're talking about here. My only experience with influencers talking about warmup sets recently has been that Jake Doleishaw guy that is partnered with Beardsley these days. And it was in regards to a program he programmed that had 23 exercises in it, because it was a full body program. And he's just doing one set for each exercise for 23 different movements. And the person in the comment section said something like, I can't get that workout done in any reasonable amount of time with warm up sets and everything. And his response was something like, I just do a warm up set on the first exercise for each muscle group and then just jump right in for the subsequent ones. And again, I think your point really trumps that which is like, what is the exercise? Like if your second exercise for quads is a hack squat or a leg press, you're probably still going to need to do some warm up sets. But if your second exercise for quads is a leg extension and you just came off a leg press, I'd probably still do a warmup set, but like maybe it's not the end of the world if you don't. um So that's my only experience with it. And I guess in that case, like you just kind of have to take it, know, exercise by exercise. Yeah. All right, Aaron, I'll kick it to you. I feel like you've got more thought on it than me, at least for the moment. I'll take in a second to think of my menu choice. What's the biggest thing each of you have changed your mind on in the last year? The biggest is a really, really hard one. um I would say in my coaching, I have really spent much more time speaking and coaching more to a client psychology as opposed to like X's and O's type of things because I find that like similar to the tracking question that we just had. people will hyperfixate on things like tracking. But tracking is kind of like the end of the train. The beginning of the train is like having a uh structure and a framework that you operate within. Like Brian said, he's like, haven't tracked in years, but Brian just doesn't eat random whatever at various points throughout the day. There's like things that he eats at similar times, that similar uh plate combinations and things like that. It's not like Brian wakes up and is like, all right, well today I'm having ice cream for breakfast and then Mountain Dew for lunch, right? people try and like piece their day together with zero structure and then like I get to the end of the day and my macros don't add up. Like yeah because you have no bounds through which you're operating. You're just like blindly meandering around food and then plugging it in at the end of the day. So that's one where I've really changed my mind more so on. we need to have like, work top down now and at the bottom is effectively like tracking our food. But the top is like, how many times are you gonna eat on training days and on non-training days? And then I work that through there and I've had a lot more success with that because then people aren't feeling like tracking is this, you Pandora's box sort of thing. It's more of a we're swapping different foods in and you know finishing the polishing bits But not like okay your carbs are 300 but somehow today I had 600 and have no idea how Sort of thing Yeah, now that makes sense. I think for me... This is gonna sound weird at first, but I think the main thing is that I've fallen into a little bit of nihilism, meaning that I just don't know that it matters that much what you do. And you've probably heard some of this come through in my discussions about like, in 10 to 15 years, you're mostly gonna get to the same place if you just train hard and eat enough food and recover. uh But I think that with this kind of nihilistic approach to things just like not mattering as much. it's kind of given me a freedom to experiment a little bit more with things. And so I think that's been valuable. You know, a few years ago, call it the start of 2020, when I really got into the lengthened bias everything, um I was convinced that biasing everything lengthened was gonna be like this golden ticket that was gonna take my gains to the next level after I'd been training for 22 years or whatever it had been. And I think in some ways the... The uh intellectual curiosity part of it was really beneficial. I learned so much about biomechanics and the human body and the lengthened stuff was kind of the catalyst that propelled me into learning so much more about these aspects of training. But similarly, the nihilism has sort of been the ticket or the catalyst that's now allowed me to experiment outside of the lengthened world. where instead of maximum range of motion on all my squat movements because stretch is the best or full depth on my chest presses because you got to get that deep stretch in the chest at the bottom every time. Like those things in the past would have been something where I'm like, no, no, no, if it's not the deepest stretch, like I can't be doing it, you know, cause clearly the stretch is what matters. And the reality is that everything works if you just train hard enough on it. So that should be like a nice free, freeing experience to go out and experiment with different things and find what feels best and what produces the best stimulus for you. And while that probably won't make a huge difference in the grand scheme of you getting to your physique goals, it might make a really big difference in the way that you enjoy your training or how good you feel while you're doing your training. And so all of that I think is extremely valuable. I think you nailed that and I think that's what you said I think has started to show up in our podcast a bit more where. One of the things that kind of, sure, I could say it frustrates me, but I think people really miss the mark on in the space is like hyper fixating on theoretical things, right? Which is like, well, if you stop this range of motion here, know, it's going to this electrical model showed that like this happened and that happened and like people hyper fixate on that. And they'll like ask me a question about it. And I say, are your calories right now? And they're like, I'm not really sure. I'm like, it doesn't fucking matter. Because if you don't know how much you're eating that like where you stop your leg your your leg press is not the limiting factor in what your growth is going to be right and and That maybe I'm at kind of an asshole for that, but that's that's not my intention But that but that it is true right people hyper fixate on things that aren't there their rate limiting factor, right? Once you've once you've cleaned up all your rate limiting factors Then let's hyper fixate on where you're stopping your leg press or something like that, but many people just put the carriage before the horse. I feel like I'm not qualified to answer this one, so it's going to go to Brian. Any upper back specific training principles? Lats seem to take over the majority of the time. Well, I would say that you're certainly qualified to answer this question as well, but uh it's also an interesting dilemma that this person has their lats taking over because I feel like the majority of people fall into the opposite side of the spectrum, which is that the upper back takes over and they struggle to develop lats. uh So I mean, the cues for upper back are... Like we talk about a lot, you know, you want to take a slightly pronated grip. It can be fully pronated or it can be slightly pronated. uh I call it semi pronated where it's between neutral and pronated. Any of those hand positions that are, you know, knuckles facing out and palm down are going to create a pattern where the elbows drive out as you pull. There's literally no way that you can keep the elbows in as you're pulling. if your hands are uh pronated, it naturally drives the elbows out. And so you want to be doing the majority of your back training with that pronated ish hand position. As you're initiating your movement, don't initiate the movement by, you know, yanking with the arms, initiate the movement by, you know, from that deep stretch position where you're getting a rounded upper back, stretching everything out across the bench or the chest support, whatever you're using. And then as you begin your pulling portion, initiate that pulling portion by scapular retraction. uh A cue I used 20 years ago that I still use with people for upper back training is think about you have a pencil in between your shoulder blades and as you stretch it out, that pencil could easily fall. But as you begin to pull back, you're trying to pinch that pencil into place so that it doesn't go anywhere. in between your shoulder blades. so thinking about that framework of stretching it out where the pencil could fall easily and then pulling back where the pencil becomes pinched in between the shoulder blades creates a movement pattern in which the upper back is being biased there. So I would say all of your back movements with a slightly pronated grip and a slightly wider hand position too. You don't want to necessarily be doing like a super narrow type row. uh and focus on that kind of scapula uh extension and retraction or flexion and yeah, guess it's flex, protraction and retraction exactly. Yeah, that's I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brian Brian nailed that. That's my upper back was uh my worst body part in my season, which I kind of didn't know about until it was too late. And apparently everyone else knew it and just no one ever fucking told me. So um And that's something like in my incense. I've really focused on exactly that Brian said like trying to get the scapula together, retract them as hard as I can pinch that pencil in there. And then I do that over a few different uh varying angles. I'll do like a kind of low to high hand position or rowing position, which gets a little bit, you know, easily easier to shrug. I'll kind of do a high to low again, still trying to find that position and then a more linear one. um for this, you know, question asker, I would encourage putting in an upper back dominant day where you're training a few different movement vectors and really just trying to generate and feel the stimulus in that area. And focusing on that, you should probably be able to figure it out. I'll kick this one to you because you have some notes already down. So ah how would you guys design a power building program? So from my standpoint, if we're doing power building, we want to get stronger as a primary, and we're going to train the big three squat bench dead and potentially an overhead barbell press in there. One of the things that I would. personally do with programming this is lower volume because if the goal is strength we know that strength we tend to respond to general lower volumes than typical hypertrophy programs so I'm always going to start you know it's either going to probably going to be four days per week start the each of the sessions with our primary lift so we have like a squat a bench a dead, maybe the fourth day is an overhead press if we care about that. I'm going to have two additional exercises to support the primary in the low rep range, six to 10, and then potentially one final or probably one final exercise in the 10 to 15 rep range that might be like anterior delts, lateral delts, biceps, triceps, something like that, but probably four max five exercises per session, uh lower volume. And that's how I would go about that. oh Yeah, my thoughts are not so different. I'm actually running a power building program right now in the Evolved Training app. We're in the middle of the cycle, but if you wanna join, it can start over from the beginning for you. But it's a, Yeah, exactly. ah I do, like you, I start each day with one of the big movements. I consider there to be six big movements, so some of the days we'll have two of them. I also add a weighted pull-up and a pen lay row into the big four, you have the big four listed. I'll add those two in, get you some more back work in there. And then uh those movements are usually done for like that one to six rep range. Obviously you're not doing bent over rows for singles, um but a lot of those movements in the one to six rep range, then after the main movements done. The next two exercises, like he said, are kind of in that like hypertrophy range, call it eight to 12, six to 10, whatever. And then the end is more of like a metabolic, I don't want to call it a circuit, but like maybe an alternating movement sequence or some sort of an alternate movement sequence or some sort of like a small circuit with three movements. Like you might go like biceps, triceps, lateral delts, and you just kind of do them over like a 15 minute EMOM or something like that where you're getting a bunch of stimulus with higher rep ranges and slightly lighter loads. And I think that that actually works quite well. I still don't think power building is the best way to be strong or to be jacked. I kind of think that periodizing the year is probably better or spending just the majority of your time on hypertrophy if that's your goal. But I think power building can be fun. And I think that's a pretty good way of going about it. Great. I have an idea for this one, we'll kick it over to you and see if our ideas are the same. What's a good swap for seated or lying leg curl to hit the short head of the hams? The leg machines suck at my gym. Yeah, that's a bummer. My first thought is, I wonder if there's like any way that you can change the orientation of your body in relation to the machine in some manner to make them not suck so much. uh Specifically, I'm thinking about like a seated leg curl where if I take like the back and push it forward and take the leg thing and raise it up all the way and then I lean forward and brace over the thing like. Maybe I can actually get like a pretty good stimulus from it, but if I'm seated back and holding the handles, then the whole thing falls apart. There's different ways you can kind of manipulate your body positioning to get more out of shitty machines. ah But with that said, think aside from going with the home gym options, which I think just unfortunately also suck. And I'm thinking about like, you know, banded leg curls, uh slider leg curls, BOSU ball leg curls. uh ring leg curls, like gliding ring leg curls. Those might be my favorite one, but again, like really hard to uh Dumbbell leg curls are almost impossible to get into position. So those ones all suck too. I think the only real alternative here that you could consider would be a cable leg curl, where you get like a cuff of some sort and you can do it either like standing, bracing against the machine one leg at a time, or if you have two cuffs and some daisy chains. You could probably set it up where you're like lying down and you're doing both legs at the same time. The setup obviously sucks. my first, my best bet is to simply figure out how to use the machines at your gym by manipulating your torso position in some way, doing them single leg maybe, a number of different ways to do that. But if that doesn't work, I think the cable might be the next best bet. Yeah, it's really challenging. Like Brian said, I think Brian's the first thing he said around manipulating your body or using pads or whatever you need to do to try and make the machine fit better for you is going to be your best bet. The only thing that I thought of that Brian didn't mention, but if your gym has a crappy prone and seated ham curl, they probably also do not have a glute ham raise. But if they did glute ham raises, that's about like the only other way where you're going to that knee flexion under load um but those are quite challenging and also unless you're turbo strong require some modification to reduce your torso's weight. Yeah. Okay, when I do low rep work, I sometimes don't feel my muscles at all. People say the pump doesn't matter if weight is being moved from A to B. What's your take on this? Sometimes I feel better stimulus going down in weight. Yeah, I feel the same way. uh I think that's pretty normal. When I train in the like four to six, seven, eight rep range, I can't say that I'm feeling my muscles doing the work so much. Like I'm using the muscles to do the work, but they don't... The fatigue that you feel at the end is not always that the muscle is so pumped up that you just can't continue or that it burns so bad. It's not the metabolic stress. It's just simply your inability to move the weight anymore. And I think that that's fine. the studies seem to show that like it doesn't really matter. You you find the rep range that you like to train in and you train in it. uh With that said, I think this also goes back to the very early question that we had about why are these bodybuilders using these light ass weights? And uh there could certainly be something to that. Look, if Nunez was benching the 120s and now he's doing the 80s, the best I ever did was bench the 110s for, I don't know, eight or 10, something like that. I was never even as strong as Nunez, but I'm still sitting over here battling my like 95s and my hundreds as if like I'm still in my prime trying to get super jacked. And maybe I would be better off simply going down to the 80s or the 70s and doing 10 to 12 reps and just ripping my chest. And these are things that I certainly consider. I don't think it's wrong either way. I think, you know, the best route might be to do something like a backoff set where you're doing a heavy set where you maybe you don't feel the muscles as well for your first set. And then you drop the weight 30 % and you do your second set for 12 to 15 reps and everything is like super dialed in. So that's certainly one option that I think would be reasonable given. question. Yeah, I ultimately agree. I think there's... I like Brian said, top set back off works or very exercises, some in lower rep ranges, some in higher rep ranges. Um, one of the things that, that I would also again, encourage film some of these low rep sets just to play devil's advocate on yourself or accountability on yourself, making sure that your pauses are honest. Your range of motion is what you think it is because that is something where as we put a progressive overload like pie in the sky, we start to bend some corners, cut some corners a little bit because we want that progression so badly that some of our execution uh starts to slip a bit. And typically if execution is slipping, stimulus generally does as well. So even though the numbers may be going up, the stimulus that you derive from those may not. Yeah, it's well said. You talked about this a little bit, but maybe you have some additional add-ons. How do you go about progressing a pyramid set strategy? Yeah, so I took this question as asking, like, how do I use progressive overload in this, not about, like, how I implement it, per se. So if we use an example of a 15, 12, 9, 6 pyramid, then what I would essentially do is only try to progress the heaviest set first. So for example, make numbers easy. Let's say that my rates were 100, 125, 150, 175, going up 25 pounds each time. I might simply just raise that final set from 175 to 180 and keep all the other sets the same. And then once I can get the reps that I need to get with the 180, then I might progress the set prior to that. So I might take that second set that was 150 and I'd make that 155 while keeping the first set at 180. I likely won't worry so much about progressing the 15 and the 12 because I consider those to be more like just primer warmup sets. Like they're not actually really contributing to the stimulus so much. I mean, they are contributing to the stimulus. They're not contributing to the effective reps, so to speak. um And like, eventually I would increase those sets. Like if I was in my early days of training and I was still progressing at a rapid rate, I would reach a point where I would be like, okay, fine. Like I need to probably progress that first set too. um But really I'm just focusing on the last two sets and I kind of just oscillate between like five pounds up on one, then add reps, then five pounds up on the other, then add reps. So it's almost like a double progression model within those final two sets. And when I reach a point where I feel like it's time to add more weight, I'll add a little bit more weight and move forward from there. So I think that's probably the most reasonable way of progressing it. Do you have any additional thoughts? Now I've used a pyramid strategy in quite some time, so I don't think I've had anything that would be helpful for anyone. Cool. I'll just add that I really have been enjoying the pyramid. It's something I haven't used for many, many years either. And I started doing it again around the exact same time Nunez posted something on Instagram that was talking about why the pyramid strategy is so great. And it was about giving an advanced trainee the ability to assess their readiness on a given day and that those earlier sets give you a sense of what you're capable of that day before you get to the heavier sets kind of in a way that a normal warmup set wouldn't be able to do. Like if I'm doing six, four, two as my warmup sets to prepare for a top set of six, it's not giving me that sense of readiness like it would if I was doing 15, 12, nine to the top set of six. uh So I've really enjoyed that. I felt like it primes my body really well for the work ahead. It's kind of nice to have a little bit of a pump going into the heavier sets instead of just being sufficiently warmed up going into the heavier sets. And it's also kind of decreased the amount of weight that I have to do on the heavier set, which in the past I would have looked at and said, you know, that's a bad thing because you're decreasing mechanical tension on that final set. You're not doing the same amount of weight that you would do if you simply just did a couple warmup sets and then jumped into the top set. ah But the stimulus feels higher. So again, I think when you're talking about hypertrophy, it's not always about the total load that you're lifting at the end. It's about what is the total amount of stimulus that that muscle is receiving. Yep, yep, very well put. Cool, I'll kick this one over to you. See what you think. I've plateaued on leg extensions at eight reps. I've tried more sets, I've tried less sets, and I can't seem to break through. Should I try a higher rep range? I've progressed on everything else. So what think is the most important part of this question is the last part that he added. I'm progressing on everything else so that because of that we can assume that recovery is sufficiently adequate calories and carbohydrate are probably sufficiently adequate. And this is just a single exercise specific limitation. What I would encourage here you've tried increasing volume decreasing volume change to a variant. So we'll Depending on what your leg extension design is, where are you failing? Are we failing to reach lockout on the on the ninth rep potentially? Let's let's go with that example. Maybe we incorporate a variation where you are holding the fully locked out extended position for like a two count. We have to drop back weight, but then you're going to be getting much more short overload bias, more directive, uh more direct stimulus into the VMO, which may be the limiting factor in your leg extension. performance. If we are failing in the bottom half or something like that maybe we bring in something like uh sets of partials there so I think assess where your failure point is and then you can uh program a variation that would be a little bit more targeted to where your failure point seems to be. Yeah, I love that. actually hadn't thought of that as my first initial response, so that's really great that you brought that up. My thought was uh when I get stuck in positions like this, especially on movement like leg extension, I don't know why a lower fatiguing movement like that, it always seems to elicit this strategy from me, but it's been quite effective where, you know, say I'm at eight reps and that's failure and I can't do nine. So maybe I'm doing one or two top sets there and He said he's tried raising volume, decreasing volume, et cetera. My approach is going to have you raise volume, but with the raising of volume, it's going to pull back your effort. So if eight reps is your max, I might have you use that eight rep weight, but do four sets of six reps. So now you're getting more volume, but you're not actually pushing yourself to failure on each of those sets. Like I wonder if when you said you tried more volume, you just tried more volume of sets doing eight reps to failure or whatever. Like maybe that. the fact that you're still going to failure on everything was just too much for your body to handle with the increase in volume. For me, when I'm pulling back and I'm doing four sets of six at a weight that I could do eight or nine reps with, I'm greasing the groove, I'm priming the movement pattern, so the volume is actually able to kind of put itself into good use and allow me to manifest that increased uh strength over time. So I don't know, my first thought is just reduce the reps slightly, keep the same weight, get comfortable, hammering sets just shy of failure. And then over the course of time, you know, if you're continuing to be able to do four sets of six reps and then maybe you can go up a few pounds and still do four sets of six reps. And then eventually after, you know, a few weeks, maybe two months, something like that, you back the weight back off to your eight rep weight and you're just like, okay, one set to failure. Usually I'll see you exceed eight reps there. So I don't know that's my approach. That's perfect, I love that too, like very practical different approaches and I would encourage try both, right? But I think one or a combination of both should be sufficient in breaking through that plateau. Yeah, yeah. All right, final question here. I find this question a little bit confusing, so I'll let you be confused first here. uh Getting pregnant, pregnancy, post kids with children. What fitness and nutrition advice do you have for both men and women? Any thoughts or research to share? Research to share nothing in this specific context. I would say things are a little bit different. I am not a father yet, but I would imagine post kids with children, your fitness and nutrition advice would be kind of like hang on, do the best that you can with your reduced time that you have to dedicate to it. Getting pregnant, assuming that we do not have any children yet, you take the time that you will not have once the children are here and dedicate that time to your fitness and nutrition so that you are in a better spot on the back end. um But in all seriousness, like what my wife and I are in the getting pregnant. phase right now and we're just putting like a really really high priority on health recoverability micronutrients. So I would be doing a lot I'm honestly doing like a lot of like probably even over supplementation but just to try and make sure that there's no you know gaps obviously things are a little bit different because of my you know TRT and steroid use in the past makes me a little bit different of a candidate as I have to like restart my fertility from the ground up but proven quite effective in that being a really really healthy spot like something that again this is just my opinion so take it for for what it's worth but the way that i conceptualize this in my own mind is i'm passing on like my dna to what will become a child of mine And I want to do my best to give them the very best DNA that I can, you know, produce. So I am in a point where I'm trying to be, I'm trying to like health max across the board, get oxidative stress as low as possible. So like really, really high antioxidant intake. Not that I do any drinking anyway, but there's like no drinking, no other, you know, nefarious sort of related things. could be damaging in that regard. So that's, that's what I'm doing. That's what my wife and I are doing. Again, we're also older, right? While attempting this, if you're like 25, you probably don't have that much like oxidative stress or oxidative DNA damage or anything like that, just because time is more kind on your side. I would just encourage to build your, you know, ideal pie in the sky routines now while you have the time to be a little bit more selfish with it. So things that are are are very, very ingrained so that you're not trying to like work on your willpower and motivation when you have babies that require 99 % of your time. Yeah, yeah, it's complicated. The getting pregnant and pregnancy part, I don't have a ton of personal experience. I only can look through my wife's eyes here. uh But I would just say from my understanding here, the most important thing is that whatever physical activity you were doing before getting pregnant and being pregnant, you can continue to do through pregnancy. So I've noticed a big disparity between women I know that didn't really have a fitness routine before. and then they're pregnant and they're just like sedentary the whole time because they're like, well, I can't start exercising now because I wasn't exercising before. And it becomes this like snowball effect almost of sedentarism. So I think, you know, being physically fit and active before getting pregnant, huge help in actually being pregnant, helping you feel good, giving you something to do each day, physically active, it's good for the baby, it's all that good stuff, it's good for your brain. uh Post-kids. This is where I do have experience. uh I could speak about it from my perspective or from my wife's perspective. It's obviously different as well because the wife has about that six week period post-birth where you can't really do too much physically active. You can like get some walks in and stuff like that. So obviously do that. For me, I've found, with both my kids, I did a completely different fitness routine. The first time I did three times a week full body where I simply just I would tell my wife, I need this 90 minute period and I would go and do a full body, like kill myself workout, do that two or three days a week. That worked great. The first kid, second kid, it was COVID, we had a home gym. Instead of three times a week or twice a week for these really long sessions, I simply just went down in my basement and trained 20 minutes twice a day. And that worked out even better, I think, because while the kid was napping, I would just get a 20 minute workout in, maybe 30. And then sometime later in the day, while the kid is napping, I get another 20 or 30 minute workout in and I never have to leave the house and everybody's super happy. Um, so I think finding the way that you can make fitness work for you is, important. And if that means like, because of how easy I found it to do it at home, like you don't have to have a home gym to do fitness at home. There's a number of different ways that you can go about doing that with body weight and, you know, stairs and various things in the house that you can do. So finding ways to move while the kids are down. I know it's hard because you're so beat when the kid takes a nap, you're just like, oh my God, I need to nap. Like I need some personal time. I totally get that too. But the kid naps a lot in the beginning. They sleep like, you know, 18 or 20 hours a day in the beginning. So like you'll, you'll have some time. Like you just gotta find little pockets of time that work for you. So that's been my experience. I could probably have a lot more to say on this, but I really do have to get my kids to school now. So that's all I got. All right, there you have it. So episode 208, February, 2026 Instagram Q &A. Brian and I will talk to you guys next week.