What's up guys. Happy Tuesday or Wednesday. Welcome to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is Brian and myself and this is episode at 211 and we are going to be unpacking a recent progression model that Brian has been teasing and using in his own personal training which is leaning towards a little bit more of an intuitive approach which we are going to dive into which Brian will explain and I think there's a lot of nuance that goes into this a lot of training agent stuff but it is something that he's been doing that we are excited to talk about before we dive into that as always updates. Brian, what do you have for us? Yeah, two updates on topics that we've been kind of hovering around and talking a bit about over the last couple of months. So at the same time that I started TRT in mid late December, I also started doing this bro split. And so the timing is interesting in that the bro split has been super effective for me and I've made a bunch of gains doing it. But it coincides with literally the precise timing of when I started TRT. And so I'm in this kind of murky world of trying to determine whether the gains that I'm receiving are because I'm doing a bro split or because I'm doing TRT or mostly TRT and a little bit bro split or all one and not the other. And it's actually been kind of frustrating a little bit. And also this might be a little bit of a hot take. but it's made me sort of realize potentially why people on gear and not just TRT, but like full on gear often will state that their methods are so effective. And being that I am on a lower version of this now with TRT, I can understand why that seems to happen very often. And I can also understand why natural people look at that and they're like, Dude, you're on gear. You can't tell me that the gains you made on that crazy ass split you designed are simply because you're on this crazy ass split that you designed. Like there are way too many factors going into this. And it can kind of blur these lines of are my gains because I'm really good at programming and I'm really smart and savvy and I have all these great ideas or do I have some pretty good ideas that probably work pretty well, but like really the the manifestation of these gains is because I'm on gear or whatever. And it's a very blurry line. And it's something I hadn't really put much thought into until I was in the position where I'm like, dude, the bro split is insane. Like over the last eight weeks, I have, you know, gained 11 pounds of body weight. I'm now like I've shedded most of the glycogen and water stuff. And so I'm sitting here at 206 this morning. And like, I felt etched. I woke up, I looked in the mirror, I was like, damn, like I feel as lean as I was when I was 195, but now I'm 206. Like what is going on? Clearly the bro split must be the reason for all these gains, right? ah And so yeah, it's confusing. uh shit, before I continue, let me just kick that over to you and see what kind of thoughts you have on that as you've been through this for the last couple of years. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. The difference that the only difference I think, right, is we are now old enough. where we're able to kind of look in the rear view mirror and a little bit wiser just because of the years of age, right? Like you trained as a natural for 25, 26 years, whatever it is. And now you change this one thing, right? And now things are, and you're now seeing the other side of the fence. Same thing, I trained for 21 years. 20, whatever, 20, 21 years, right? And, but I think we're both a little bit, you know, old enough and wise enough and introspective enough to be able to make that distinction. Whereas I have full confidence in the statement. If I went on gear at 26, I would not be able to do that because you're, you're just at a different mindset at 37 and 42 or 43 than you are at 26. And I think. I'm just a lot, I'm just much better able to regulate my ego and understand what is, where 10, 11 years ago, I know I could not have done that the same way. Yeah. so anyway, uh, still kind of working through all my thoughts around, uh that interaction between the TRT and the progress and the bro split and all that sort of stuff. And today's episode where we talk about kind of tracking progress or not tracking progress, but seeing progress. I think all of this kind of fits into this piece of the pie a little bit. Um, but before we get all into that, just a quick update on. kind of my sense of mental state around the bro split. So it's been like eight weeks now, and that's about how long I've been on TRT as well. And I very much am finding that I still love doing the bro split once I start my sessions because I've talked about they're so short, they're concise, they're all under 40 minutes. It's really easy for me to put in the necessary intensity and focus into these sessions because they're so short. But I'm having more and more trouble, specifically in the last call it like week to two weeks of the desire to start the session. And I think that part of that is the frequency by which I'm training because this bro split has me training essentially six out of seven days. uh You know, one body part a day, every session is hard because I feel like I'm only training that muscle group with the primary focus once a week. So I'm like, going into it with the sense of you know, most things need to be to zero to one RIR I need to hit my like eight to 10 working sets. There's a relatively high fatigue costs locally. It's interesting because the fatigue cost isn't systemic, like it would be in more of like a full body or upper lower type split. But there certainly is like a fatigue cost locally. And then obviously the quad day and the ham day are just hard overall. uh And so there's like, along with this, I also have been struggling to do cardio. So it's like I'm struggling in some ways to do the weights because there's six days a week. But then I'm also struggling to start cardio. which I think is a two factor problem. One is that so many of my days are dedicated to weights being the primary focus, but because of this, I've been doing less cardio, which then has this like waterfall domino effect of making me not want to do cardio because I don't do cardio. It's getting harder to do cardio and then it hurts more. And then there's more of a recovery cost for it. And so there's like this snowball effect of problems that are occurring. that are just very gradual and they're just starting to like peek their head through the surface right now. uh But most of this to say that I am my plan is essentially in mid March, as I usually do as it gets nicer to go back to a more even split where I have like three lifting sessions and three or four cardio sessions and kind of alternate cardio day, lift day, cardio day, lift day. And I'm starting to find myself looking forward to getting back to that structure. So all of this passionate excitement I had about the bro split a few weeks ago where I was like, this is amazing. Like everything's so great. It's still great. It's still pretty good. I guess it's maybe not great. and it's, trending toward this point, hurtling toward this point in mid March where I'm excited to get back to a little bit more balance with the training. so that's one thing. And then the other thing, just quick update on the TRT being that I'm eight weeks in now, um, finally in the last week or so, maybe week and a half, my HRV and heart rate stuff. has all finally stabilized. I talked in prior episodes about how everything went haywire for the first six weeks or so, like, you know, my sympathetic preparedness each morning was way higher. So my heart rate was higher. I wasn't uh getting into like these parasympathetic states as much as I was before my HRV was plummeting down all of these kinds of uh different heuristics of readiness seemed kind of just often awry in some ways. In the last week, HRV and heart rate stuff has completely normalized. I'm getting down to like 41 beats per minute while I sleep at night. um I'm getting HRV scores akin to where they were before I started TRT again. And I'm just starting to feel really good overall. Like I still don't know that I would say that there's this big tidal wave of amazing TRT is so incredible. Like it's changed my life type thing, but I'm starting to feel the subtle signs of. daily improved mood, optimism, little increases in motivation slash maybe lack of friction to get started with various things, uh better, more stable energy throughout the day, like very, very subtle stuff. But I'm starting to kind of notice this, which has been really cool and positive and sleep has also been overall improving. Like there's still nights, a couple nights a week where things aren't perfect. But for the most part, I would say the trend line is kind of like the stock market where it's just gradually getting better and better. last night I had one wake up for seven minutes at 3 a.m. Didn't get hot. Oftentimes I get hot, didn't get hot at all. Literally went to the bathroom, went right back to sleep, had an amazing night of sleep and just really looking forward to seeing how it all kind of continues to progress from there. One, there's two things I would love to touch on a little bit. There was a part that you said a reduced a reduction in friction to get things done, right? uh That I always describe as it feels like the fence I have to climb over to start like work. It gets can get like really, really short. Like normally it's whatever a five foot fence, four foot fence. Sometimes it feels like it's a six inches tall. Right. But that that's the exact, you know, what you said, a reduced friction to get things done, which is very, very nice. And to play devil's advocate a little bit, this is something I've wondered for quite some time. I wonder if a lot of these subjective well-being improvements are often just a downstream of improved sleep. overnight and when because I mean we've talked about this for years because you and I historically just are not great sleepers and if you've been not a great sleeper for 20 years of your adult life and then you start sleeping better you know over like seven eight weeks you're gonna notice it right you're gonna have these impacts so I mean I don't think it really matters why it happens but it is always something that I've been you know pondering and curious about if it really is are these indirect impacting for from it allowing me to sleep much better, which I don't think we will ever know. Yeah, I I think that makes a ton of sense. Like I think if one weren't even on TRT and simply were able to just take a magic pill and prove their sleep to like a 97 out of 100 sleep score every single night, I'm sure there would be some massive downstream effects of that. But I wonder if like it almost requires the TRT to like normalize hormone balance in a way to be able to get that sleep to get to that point. If you're somebody that has struggled with sleep in the past. Whereas somebody that just optimizes sleep inherently might, because testosterone is so well linked to sleep, they might simply have higher baseline testosterone levels because their sleep is naturally better anyways. So it's this kind of big circular thing that everything relates to everything else. Definitely. Update for me. I have a big one actually my done a few client check in system which I have not talked about on here in a very very long time. I sat down on Saturday. There's been a number of updates that I have been using in my own personal coaching business that I wanted to make but it was a big time sink and I just didn't really have the time but Saturday it was. It was crappy and raining here and I said, you know what, I'm gonna sit down. I got up super, super early and I just started. I said, I'm gonna get it done today. I'm giving myself like the day to do it and all the updates are in. So what did I put into this? A training program builder, database is already supported in there. training programs, a nutrition plan builder. The sheet was originally built for 12 months of consecutive use. I bumped that out to 36 months, so three full years. I put the fat loss model in there. I put the muscle gain model in there. And there's probably a few other things that I am forgetting, but now there is 19 total sheets inside my Done For You client check-in system. It is an entire. operations management of client side things for a modern day fitness coach in one is 100 US dollars one time payment use it for as many clients as you have for as many years as you want to use it. It is my small gift back to the industry. Yeah, and I know that uh every single person I've talked to that has used it has had nothing but positive things to say about it. So, uh highly recommend getting your hands on this thing. Yeah, I'm excited. I feel like prideful and happy that I get to offer it and the updates were gigantic. So was very, very cool. Which when I was reviewing some of the older things is where I realized my voice changed because I was watching some of these old videos and I was like, why do I sound like that? And then I watched some of other ones and I was like, there's no way this is what I would sound like. And then I remember we talked about this at this, this person said this months ago on the podcast or on YouTube and someone's like, did Aaron's voice change? And I was like, no, no, I don't think my voice changed. Oh no, they were right. It 100 % has changed. So I am interested to see if yours will in three, six, 12, 24 months as we continue on the podcast. Yeah, man, I hope I get that deep baritone and just like sound so domineering and wise with my depth. I truly think it has to do mostly with the amount of body weight that I've put on. But the TRT and the gear is like the gateway to allowing all that body weight to be put on. So. Okay. Intuitively tracking and not actually chasing or trying to force progressive overload. Do you want to unpack it for us a bit, Brian? Yeah, so this has been a topic that I've been kind of curious about for a long time, but I don't think it was until the last month or two that I really actually started kind of implementing this more and trying to like kind of stop chasing the log book, so to speak. And it's something that I still feel like very torn on and I don't exactly know that I stand fully on the side of simply intuitive tracking. think it probably is going to be specific to the stage of training that you're at in some way as well. ah And I know that I'm very aware that at any stage of training, you could become easily complacent where if you're not trying to beat the log book, that you simply go through a set and when it gets hard, you stop doing the set and you could go months and years and not actually progress at all. so, and I also know that trying to beat the log book was a huge part of the motivation and excitement and energy that would come from going to the gym, especially in the early years was being able to. analyze my log book before going and know what weights I needed to hit, how many reps I was going to target. And there was something really raw and animalistic and exciting about that pursuit of progress. uh But now, and I think lots of this has to do with just where the stage of training that I am is. I think that there is an inevitable very, very slight adjustment in the way that things are performed when the logbook is being chased and Man, how do I even? So. If I go into the gym and I know that I did the 100 pound dumbbells for eight reps on incline bench the prior week, and I go into the gym and I'm like, man, it's been like two weeks of hitting the same reps with the same weight. Like this week, I've got to get that ninth rep or whatever. Like I have to do it, you know? um I can go in with the full intention of. You know, my range of motion isn't going to change. The dumbbells are going to touch my chest each rep. I'm going to pause at the bottom. All of these specific range of motion aspects could be identical week to week, but there's very, very subtle shifts in the way that one might initiate the rep. So, you know, you get to the bottom, you're in the same position you were the prior week. But now as you begin to initiate the rep, there's just a little bit more oomph and momentum from the bottom. Maybe you slightly pop your chest up and flare your rib cage, arching your back just a teeny, teeny little bit. Call it even 1 % or 2 % more than you did the prior week. Maybe as you're completing that final rep, just to beat the log book, there's like a very slight like left arm rises like a millimeter before the right arm rises. and there's just these extremely subtle shifts in the way that one might go about implementing the rep overall. And then at the end you mark down in the log book and you're like, hell yeah, I got my nine dude. I did it. It is amazing. I am a fucking savage, right? I beat the log book. Cool, awesome. You beat the log book. Did you actually create more stimulus and tension in the muscle that you're trying to train when you beat the log book? Or did you simply beat the log book and the tension in the muscle was the same? Or maybe you beat the log book and the tension in the muscle was actually a little bit less than it was the prior week. And these are these really ambiguous, like super nuanced and dorky things that I think about that most people probably don't, but that I think are extremely relevant to progress. at certain, well, progress at any point of your journey, but specifically at the point of your journey where progress doesn't occur as rapidly uh and seamlessly as it did in the past. And so I'll just frame it up that way and we can take the discussion from there. No, I... I struggle with these conversations a bit because sometimes I wonder if we're, you and I just get too deep into the weeds, right? So that's like one side of it, right? Which would be the, I guess, of like someone playing devil's advocate on it. But at the same time, I know I've been there, right? And it's hard to really self-autoregulate. and keep yourself as honest as you possibly can when you want that ninth rep, because that's that victory, right? I got this victory, I got meaning out of this training session, I'm doing things right. It's uh a reward. that you are doing things properly, right? Because things are improving and getting better. And then you tell yourself, I'm making gains. That's more muscle, right? That's a better physique. And of course, those are all things that are correlated with what you want. So you might be telling yourself a little bit of a story that you want to believe, and it might not actually be happening. And yeah, sometimes, many times, one would argue that that final rep quality is probably lower than the fine like the three before it because of those compensations to check the box and it is ambiguous and it's hard and I don't honestly have a this is the right answer um but yes I definitely agree with that. Yeah, and we've kind of been circling around this idea a little bit over the last few weeks as well. We had a question on our Q &A a few weeks ago, and I think we touched on it another time as well about how a lot of these big guys, whether they're on gear or natural, seem to be lifting these like absurdly light weights for some movements. And so we talked about this regarding, like you put up a reel the other day about C-Bomb lifting. was it 35 pound dumbbells for his curls or something like that? And he's like, what a massive like geared up bodybuilder who like you'd think should be lifting like the fifties or the sixties or something like that. And I'm sure at some point in his career, he was curling the fifties or the sixties for probably the same amount of reps that he's doing the 35s for. And so in the world of chasing progressive overload, it becomes difficult to justify someone like him or anyone else, know, top level bodybuilder taking loads that they were using and resetting them to 60 or 70 % of the total weight they were using as a way of achieving more stimulus. Like how does one make sense of this in the world of progressive over? quality So which I show which I feel may be pertinent to share I got crucified in the comments on that post by the way by numerous people who just completely missing the forest for the trees where they're like He just did that for the video see Bob and can curl the 50s and I'm like, of course he can But you the regular motherfucker in middle America in a gym who thinks they can curl the 50s at 175 pounds cannot. That is the point of the video. The point of the video is not that Seabub can't curl 50 fucking pounds. I'm not out here trying to tell Seabub what he can or can't do. Which is like, it's frustrating, but it is what it is. That's what happens when you put your opinion on the internet. The other thing is you cannot refer to weight as load on Instagram or. Everyone's an eighth grade boy. That's the other point that I that I figured out Yeah, man, you got to shoot that load. um so I think, you know, the the real truth of it is that the internal queuing what's happening internally, and the stimulus that you're able to create within the muscle is actually the thing that's going to determine hypertrophy much more than whether you're adding a rep or adding five pounds week to week. It's how much pressure and tension can you create in the specific muscle that you're trying to train? And so in the pursuit of progressive overload, like that bench press example, or like, you know, going from the 35s to the 40s in a curl or something like that, it's not as if you can't do the weight. And it's even not as if it won't look the same on camera. Like I have, I'm sure you have as well filmed yourself doing sets where you then progress by one rep and on the camera, it might look the exact same to the point that even a coach watching the set might say, wow, nice work. You progressed by a rep that was rad, but internally to you, it might feel a little bit different in that you feel that you flared that rib cage an extra degree or two that you used a little bit of teeny more momentum from the bottom that maybe you're doing that curl and it looks the same on the screen, but there's a little bit of more like hip hop or butt squeeze that kind of allows you to get that momentum to take you through the sticking point, but might not actually look any different on camera. But these are the things that you know, as an athlete, as an advanced athlete, that you know, and that you can feel that there's something that went a little bit different. in that set than the prior set. And so this is all part of that same downstream problem of trying to chase progressive overload and chase the log book and all of that stuff. And so the simple solution is to do as Brian Miner suggested back in 2019, when he came up with the the philosophical approach to progressive overload, which is essentially that you just train and then eventually you realize you notice that the way you're using is too easy. And then you increase weight, which is still progressive overload, but taking that completely different approach to it sort of minimizes the the passive. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a passive approach to progressive overload instead of actively trying to covet it or chase it week to week. be as helpful as we can for the listeners, one of the immediate things that stands out to me is this conversation falling on the wrong training age, right? uh I think the conversation we're having is much more advanced because it requires a much more introspective and intellectual understanding of how you contract your muscles and how you use your... body to generate stimulus, right? I would say if you even if someone tried to have this conversation with me five years into training, I be like, what the fuck are you talking about? You know, that's just, my training trajectory. Someone else's might be different. But I think if you're still newish to the gym, if you're still under what would be considered like general, generally accepted strength numbers, I still think the the just getting strong. is going to be the best, know, words of encouragement because you just need those reps accumulated over months and years so that you can create the connection mentally, physically with your muscles were to where this conversation actually has much more value because you understand how to contract them to a higher degree. Yeah, I think that's right. And I still like I opened with I do think that especially in like the beginner or earlier stages, that there is something that teaches you about like hard work and there's an inherent benefit to trying to get stronger. ah But with that said, I think there was just a study that came out very recently. It was a 2026. and it compared uh beginners, I think it was women who had never trained before and they were doing, I think, elbow flexion. So bicep curls and, uh maybe it was triceps. It was one of the two arm muscles and they separated them into two groups and one group specifically tried to use progressive overload. was double progression, eight to 12 rep range. And when they would hit the top of the rep range, they would add weight and kind of work their way back up to 12, et cetera. So over the course of the study, I seven to 10 weeks, whatever it was, there was a progressive overload group. And then there was another group, but this group didn't progressive overload at all. Whatever they started with, which was failure in week one, they just kept the exact same way in the exact same reps throughout the entire study and never increased. At the end of the study, they then measured the RIR of that group that didn't progressive overload. And obviously their RIR was, there was tons of it. because they never added weight or added reps, but they're beginners. So of course they were getting stronger. And then there was the group that progressive overloaded to match their adaptations. The group that used the progressive overload and stayed close to failure throughout the cycle ended up getting way more gains than the other group. I think it was like 60 % to 25 % or something like that. But the point being that the group that didn't even add a rep or weight the entire time granted their beginners. They still made like 25 % or whatever the number is cross-sectional area progress in hypertrophy over the course of cycle. Now, just to take a step back, what if that group that hadn't added reps or load at all and simply did the same thing the whole time, what if they didn't actually covet or chase progressive overload, but they got to a point in their training where they simply noticed and they told the proctor or whatever of the study like. hey, these curls are feeling very easy today. I know it's been a few weeks of doing the same thing. Like what if just we make like one weight increase like halfway through the study because it's just too easy. And then they go through the rest of the study and they have this increased weight and blah, whatever. My guess would be that simply by making one or maybe two weight adjustments reactively throughout the study instead of proactively, my hypothesis is that they probably would have more or less gotten to a similar place. which then gives me the thought that even for a beginner, there could be something to just simply noticing that the weight is too easy. So start working hard, work hard, go close to failure. Don't force it. Just kind of keep that weight for a couple of weeks. And then as a beginner, your adaptations are going to happen pretty quickly. And eventually you're going to realize that the weight is too easy and you're going to react to the weight being too easy by adding weight. And then eventually you're going to be close to failure again. So The same principle can apply to both. ah I think the subtlety here and the nuance is going to come down to the individual and whether this is somebody that has that intrinsic motivation to want to go up and increase versus somebody that is pretty happy just showing up at the gym, lifting weights, going home and calling it a productive session. And I think that that's where the avatar kind of splits. and you have somebody that could benefit from the intuitive approach versus somebody that needs more of that stringent kind of hardcore progressive overload focus. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I agree. the reason I do is because I think when you're newer, you need more structure to keep you. Generally progressing so that you have a continued interest in it, right? Like imagine if every time you went to the gym when we were young It was just awful. We never got any stronger and we were just like bouncing around like I probably wouldn't have I probably wouldn't be talking about lifting weights, know 22 years later whatever it is because it wasn't fruitful, right? Like I again, what's something I went to one Brazilian jiu-jitsu class and it was like yeah, this is not for me and I haven't been back and it was pretty obvious that it's super popular and stuff right now and I see why but I realize like this is not for me. um So I think it's... One of the things at a philosophical level, yes, I agree. But I think in practice, when you don't know what you're doing, you need more rigidity so that you can progress, which will then further, you know, re-reinforce the pattern of this is something worth putting my time into. Yeah. And I mean, to also mention that it's also motivating intrinsically to see progress or to be able to go into the gym and notice progress week to week. uh if you are in the beginning stages, it will be often probably, it would be hard for me to put myself back in the beginner phase, but my sense is that it would be a little more difficult to assess when something is too easy versus uh you're an advanced trainee and you're used to, you know, know what one RIR or zero RIR feels like, then when you go into the gym and you notice that that was a two RIR, you're like, cool. Let's add some weight next week where that distinction would be uh much more ambiguous for somebody in the earlier stages of the journey. Certainly. um One thing that I think could be pertinent to talk about and you kind of alluded to it with your updates. The idea of seasons for me comes into play here and I think that that would be pertinent speaking about and in full transparency myself. I've been in kind of the same season since September ish. Right. Which is no body buildings over for right now. I'm coming down to just my TRT starting my fertility protocol with that being the primary and I'm just going to kind of maintain which body weight did climb but that was largely you know nutrition mediated. But I'm I'm starting to get a little bit itchy. Right. Whereas I don't do well without goals. And the goal had been kind of to not let the wheels fall off and lose all my gains and don't get fat and stuff. That's been attained for September, October, November, December, January, February seven, six months now. And I'm starting to be like, I want to do something. I want to work on something. Right. So I think with with this, the the intuitively tracking it makes a lot of sense. It can be a season, right, of your your training. Maybe there's a priority, a shifting in your priorities where maybe it's a higher work priority thing and the training wants to be a lot more of a creative and fun outlet and where you're not hyper fixated on trying to beat the log book where you don't have a goal of X amount of more muscle mass or necessarily acutely changing or improving your physique and it can serve a much more It can play a different role that is that we less commonly speak about. What are your thoughts on that with it fitting into a season? Yeah, I think that makes sense. mean, I'm a big fan of periodizing in some sense, maybe not even periodizing for the purpose of maximizing strength or hypertrophy, but maybe even periodizing for simply the way that it fits into your lifestyle and your structure at that time. And obviously this is going to be a different conversation if somebody is a competitive bodybuilder, where I think then the periodization does have to kind of be toward that one specific goal. But for somebody like me who does want to maximize hypertrophy and strength in a sense, but really I want to maximize the inputs for health and longevity across a year. That's why I have these periods, these seasons, as you said, where, you know, from call it late October, early November through mid March, I tend to focus more of my energy into training with weights because it's colder out and I don't have the motivation to go out and do the cardio and all that stuff. And then come the warmer months, I do want to do more cardio and I put the weights on the back burner. And that is actually sort of my intention now as we kind of have this discussion around, uh, around progressive overload and whether we should chase it or not. And this intuitive tracking piece is like, even though I'm flirting with and playing with this concept a bit, these last few months with the bro split, um, I am still aware and I am tracking in a sense, uh but I think I'm going to do less of that once I get back into cardio season. so I think that that is where the value does come in in this seasonal approach and it gives you an opportunity to play with it. So if you're somebody like me that's been hardcore tracking and chasing progressive overload for decades, it can be a pretty rough. transition to simply be like, Oh, well, I'm suddenly going to go from like tracking everything to not tracking and just hope everything works out like who knows like, guess we'll figure that one out as we go. So I actually, this kind of pushes me into a next idea and it away from your kind of seasonal thing just a little bit. But I wonder if maybe the transition phase from tracking everything and chasing progressive overload to chasing stimulus intention and being reactive with progressive overload. Maybe this happens in a little bit more of a gradual manner in the sense that like what I've been doing now is simply tracking my first exercise for each muscle group each day. So on my chest day, it's like an incline press and boom, I'm gonna track that. I'm gonna do my best not to chase progressive overload, but you know, if I do, It's a transition. I'm going from tracking everything to just tracking one thing. I'm cool with pulling back, but I do want to make sure that at least, you know, the first exercise is potentially moving in the right direction. And so I will do that with every movement. And then in the subsequent movements, I give myself much more freedom to more like chase stimulus, chase tension, uh and less focus on is this heavier weight than I did last week? Is this more reps than I did last week? And so that's been kind of a gentle way of transitioning into this new model potentially. I really like that idea and I would say that kind of hybrid middle ground is probably where most people would get the most benefit because I do think there is a bit of the grounding, right? Of this is the work that I need to get done, right? This is my anchor. and then I get to go have fun, right? Then I go get some of my variation in. I can try some things that I saw on Instagram of maybe a new way to perform this seated chest fly or something like that. And it allows a little bit of creativity, exploration, sharpening your tools out of... different rep schemes and things, but as long as we're really challenging ourselves, pushing close to failure, and generating stimulus, it's likely still contributory to the greater goal. Yeah, exactly. A hundred percent. And, the idea for this podcast in general, and I think the thing that kind of got my wheels turning on this whole topic was actually the podcast that I sent you from 3dmj, uh, called intuitively tracking your training or something like that. was from a few months ago. It's not new, but you guys can kind of go back through the 3dmj podcast archive and check that one out. But I found it really interesting. that they were talking about that specifically because I feel like they come from this world where I've always followed 3DMJ and really respected what they've been doing since the early days, like the muscle and strength pyramids and all of that stuff. It's been almost a decade now, probably, actually at least a decade of me following 3DMJ's work. uh And they've always been forefront of these various kind of... high in the sky ideas around training like Brian Miner before he was even part of 3DMJ came up with this, you know, philosophical approach to progressive overload thing that we talk about. And so I've always respected their insights on these various topics, but I always kind of assumed that they were all like dedicated trackers. Cause I was like, that's how you get to be a professional bodybuilder, which they all are. uh And so this episode was really interesting to me. because it had all of the 3DMJ guys except Helms. So it had Brad, Jeff, Berto, and Brian all on the pod together. And they all kind of aligned and agreed that tracking is really not necessary for a bodybuilder chasing hypertrophy. They all kind of aligned around this idea of... Yeah, I barely even track anymore at all. Like a couple of them were saying, yeah, I'll track the first exercise or the first set of the first exercise. But then I'm really just like going by feel and, working on stimulus and tension and in all of these various things. And like Jeff was even saying, and he's obviously the most experienced of all of them. He's in his mid fifties now he's been training 40 years or something like that. ah He was saying he's like, He's like, yeah, I don't even track anything anymore. He's like, I'll write down the movement I did and the sets that I did. But he's like, I don't write the weights or the reps that I achieved because I just know that when I go into the gym, I don't want to have this mindset of I need to beat what I did the prior week. I want to go in and know that the way I perform the movement is going to create the most possible tension on my muscle. And I know that when I do that at my level of training, that that is the most effective way that I can stimulate the muscle, not by trying to get an extra rep or add five pounds to my exercise. And so hearing those guys go through that kind of thought experiment and hear them with all this experience and all of these clients that they have and everything, to hear them kind of state that in that manner was, it at least made me enter this state of kind of mental masturbation around the topic. I have around a party that you said there that I know that personally I struggle with and I'm curious yours If I don't know my weight that I used for an exercise I will really struggle with where I with what what weight I choose and I might Grossly undershoot it and then I'm doing sets of like 22 or something and then My set my sessions end up way longer because I'm like, well, that was not a working set. was 22 reps. I don't need to be doing that many. So I end up doing way more warm ups than I need because I don't have a clue what load what weight I should use and that I do know I struggle with. For example. Over this past month, I've gotten tattooed a number of days and it's really big and dark because it was a cover up. I have days where I can't use multiple, multiple days in a row after where I can't go to the gym. My arm is so badly swollen and worthless and all scabbed up and stuff. So once I finally can, I'm like, all right, well, I can't just pull up my log book from last time. All right. Got 11 reps, I need to get 12. I'm so far out of my training groove. These would be pathetic performances and only upset me. But I to still look up approximately what sort of weight I'm putting on or I just, I don't have a clue. So maybe some people can just remember better, but I know if, unless it's my bread and butter machines that I'm using every single week, I don't, I could be off by like 40, 30 % easily. Yeah, I don't actually have that problem. em And I would say that even like, so when I travel and I go to various gyms that aren't my home gym, and I'm at the peril of whatever machines they have there, I don't track anything. I just go in and I take that approach and I chase stimulus and I try new machines and whatever. But to your question, I would never end up doing a set that was 22 reps because The way that I would warm this up would be that I would do something pretty easy for 10 reps where I could probably do 20 or 30 reps, but I'd just do like 10 or 12. And then I'm like, okay, cool. That felt like pretty easy. Let me add another 25 % weight and I'll do that. And I'll get, say I'll do five or six, but I could have done 10 or 15, something along those lines. And then I'll add more weight from there to my work set. And once I know that there's a weight that I could do 10 or 15 times, I'm like, okay, if I add another 25, 30 % to that, that's going to knock me down into the like six to 10, six to 12 range. And that's the weight that I just go with. And I take that to failure or whatever, you know, my designation for the day is. And so I kind of use those earlier sets as a tone setters or determinants for where I'm going to be on my working set. And then I'll also say that the other thing that I do is I tend to err on the side of going too heavy. So like I'll much more likely, you know, hope that I'm choosing a weight that gets me to six to 10, but maybe I only get four or five than the opposite where I'm trying to choose a weight where I get six to 10, but I actually get 15 to 20. That's probably never going to happen. And so maybe part of that is simply just choosing weights that are going to align more on the heavier side. Gotcha, yeah, I think that's the difference. I tend to air more conservatively under weight select and then over shoot and reps and you kind of air towards the opposite. Yeah, but why not just when you get to that weight where you could do 22 or you do end up doing 22, why not just stop that set at 10 and be like, that's clearly way too easy. Like, I'll add weight from here, you know? Yeah, I honestly probably should. But yeah, that's something where I just can never. And this is a really good part because you said something about this that I wanted to bring up. And I think this is perfectly correlated. It never feels easy for me. Right. When I'm obtaining progressive overload, I'm feels like, wow, that eight felt really, really easy. It always feels Equally as hard but the but the weight the reps will just keep going and that's the surprising part Like I could get a set of 12. I might think I'm gonna fail it like nine But they just keep going Right, and it feels just as hard, but the rep speed is still moving. And that's where personally, you know, I would struggle with the very passive progressive overload because it never feels easy to me. It always feels like a 10 out of 10 effort. But one week I get nine reps and next week I get 12. And then I'm like, holy shit, where did those three reps come from? Yeah, so this is actually a point where I actually wonder whether like the reps even matter. so like maybe the stimulus just matters more. And maybe when you get those extra three reps, maybe there's something that's like kind of slightly changing in the way that you're doing it. Like if it feels really fucking hard at nine, maybe getting to 12 actually required you to compensate in like these very subtle ways. Like I'm talking about with the slight arch of the chest in the bench press or using a little bit momentum from the bottom or something like that. So I'm thinking specifically about like a pull down. And when I'm doing my like neutral grip lat pull downs, usually my, uh my set before my top set is 150 or 160 pounds. And when I do that set, there's just some sense of tension in my lats that is insane. Like it is so strong. that I might do eight or nine reps and to your point, feel like the rep speed slowed down. I'm at one RIR. That was a really hard set. And then I go up to 200 pounds and I also get eight or nine reps. And it's kind of like, what's going on? I was at failure at 160 for eight or nine. How did I get eight or nine at 200 pounds as well? And the answer is that I just am not connected as well. with my lats and with the target musculature at 200 pounds as I was at 160. So when I failed that 160, it was legit failure of inability to do more uh depression of the humerus to drive the elbow down. It was more tension in the lat, et cetera. But when I go to 200 pounds and I get the same amount of reps, it might look the exact same on camera, which I talked about earlier, but maybe I'm initiating it a little bit more with like, some rear delt involvement or other aspects of movement compromise where I'm still doing the set, I'm still hitting the points of performance and the range of motion, but the internal sense of what's happening is just slightly different. And so that then makes me wonder like, maybe the 160 to failure with the perfect lat engagement is actually a better set than the 200 pounds with. slightly less lat engagement. I love that you just brought that up. And if I'm being honest with everyone, I do not know. I've pondered this so much and I honestly do not know. And I would hope that the once I believe you said the term was it one you said I think you said 160 and 200 but if it was 180 and 200 okay 160 and 200. 200, yeah. My hope is that the 160 that has a very high perceivable tension and stimulus that you can feel and connect with, I would hope that that is an increased tension, an increased hypertrophy signaling. That's my, the direction that my heart would go, but I can't confidently say. I'm not saying confidently otherwise. I'm being honest and saying, I honestly do not fucking know, but that is something that I've pondered so much. Yeah, and so that, I mean, I have as well. that's, that example is like the perfect example of this entire situation because I did 200 pounds for eight or nine and I could go up to 205 next week and probably get eight or nine again. But the sense of tension and stimulus that I feel like I'm getting from 160 is actually bigger than that progressive overload jump that I made to get to 205. And so. think it just further fits into that model of why are these bodybuilders using these light ass weights? Like why is Dirk Emerich, who's a savage, you know, lightweight, bantam weight bodybuilder doing his lateral raises with a 12 pound dumbbell? Like what is going on there? Because the dude is creating so much internal tension there. It's not like he couldn't do it with a 20 or a 25 and it probably looks the exact same. but he's feeling as if that 12 or 15 pound dumbbell or whatever it is, is sufficient to get him the stimulus that he's looking for. And his physique has changed, man. Like that dude looks way different now than he did two years ago. And he's part of the Alberto Nunez tree of athletes that are all doing the exact same thing with these light ass weights. Yeah, yeah, good. I really hope that at some point in our lives, you know, we'll probably be old men at that point that we have some really conclusive things like this conversation has kind of meandered into like the the unknown questions of my life and usually people come to the podcast for us to be like you do this and then you do this right? This is how you do these things. And in this episode, we're really like, I don't fucking know, you know, I don't think anyone does there will there will be people that tell you no This is the way it is I think they're just a little bit overconfident in their opinion because I feel very confident in the statement that it is not at a population level with the best physique kind of goal in mind It's not known it just isn't unfortunately yet Yeah, yeah. And I mean, to even further exemplify this point a bit, like Steve Hall is like another example of this, another person that has made incredible progress over the last year or two since his last bodybuilding show to his turning pro season and like his physique has just changed so dramatically. And you see a lot of the same stuff with him too, where like he's prioritizing the sense and the way the muscle feels over the loads that he's using. and he was just on with Alberto Nunez. They did a podcast on Revive Stronger last week. And uh on that pod, they talked a lot about this specifically in that Steve is constantly doing these like form resets where he'll escalate weight, progressive overload, get up to a load and then be like, oh, I'm actually not achieving the same level of connection and stimulus with this new weight. that I was with this lighter weight. And so then he, you know, goes back six weeks, 12 weeks, reduces the weight way down, focuses on simply making a better connection with the target musculature, and then, you know, gradually builds back up over time again. So it's this kind of hybrid world of like progressive overload plus backing off to achieve better connection and then building back up again and like, If progressive overload was simply the only thing that mattered and you had to add weight to the bar and get stronger every session, then dude wouldn't be making progress in his physique by doing these like form resets. But there's clearly something advantageous about doing that. Yeah, I've been really enjoying Steve's stuff lately. His physique is looking so for for being off season. He's in incredible shape and I mean he stayed what many people would argue is too lean, but he's making really good. It's visual. It's obvious visual progress. It's been very very cool that that one I've been quite impressed with in all honesty. Yeah, and so when we just look at the preponderance of all of these elite level bodybuilders, whether enhanced or natural, over the last couple of years, we're just seeing more and more and more of this like, focus on the connection with the muscle and doing things in a manner that optimizes tension in this specific target area and people not. sitting there and trying to do the Dante Trudell thing from the late 90s, early 2000s of just like every day go in, beat the log, bro, like whatever, you know? And so beyond just simply creating more tension in the muscle, I think there's a large piece of longevity and sustainability that plays into this too. Like if you can get really good results and add muscle to your frame by using lighter weights and just simply connecting harder with that muscle. then you're just gonna be able to do it longer with less joint wear and tear. Yeah, I think that's a really good kind of closing point. One thing I think is important to Brian said lighter weights, not light weights, right? Not fucking about weights, not just not peak maximum weight that you can use for a rep. You could move in a rep range. There's a difference. Yeah, for sure. And I think one final point to kind of wrap this up is that, we kind of alluded to it in the beginning, is that when you're advanced and you know what one RIR and zero RIR feels like, you're a much better candidate for this reactive form of progressive overload because you're not going to go into the gym and simply sandbag something because you don't have a rep target. Like you're going to go into the gym and you're going to work as hard as you can and stimulate that muscle as best as you can. And I think that if you're just not focusing on trying to beat the log book, that maybe you end up implementing these movements in a manner that sends more tension to your target muscle. And sure, you are risking potentially not making progress as quickly, but if the thing you're coveting is noticing that weights are getting too easy, then over time, if you just keep targeting the muscle and creating tons of tension where you want it to go, eventually you get to a point where you might notice that you were doing eight reps three months ago and now you're doing nine or 10 reps. And you didn't have to chase that to get there. You just simply chased internal queuing and tension and eventually hypertrophy occurred. And as a result of hypertrophy occurring, the weights then felt slightly too light and you realized that you made some progress. Yeah. One final piece of encouragement that I will add to wrap this one up a very safe way of of implementing this that I that I would encourage is on let's say you're not going to do it across all body parts. Your most lagging body parts right. You're lagging body parts you obviously do not have a good connection with or they would not be the lagging body part. which typically means that your execution of exercises for that body part are not the best. So that when you're just chasing the log book, stacking reps, there is a lot of compensatory muscle groups assisting moving that uh weight through space and time. So this would be a place where you can slow down, check the ego and only one muscle group, really focus on the tension building, finding it like Brian said. and then you can evaluate eight weeks later or something like that. Cool. So this one I think was pretty decent a little bit more of a cerebral type conversation but important nonetheless. Brian and I will be back next Tuesday. As always any questions or anything for us drop it below in the comments. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Yep.