What is going on guys? Welcome to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode 212, our March Instagram Q &A for 2026. So we have a good grip of questions per usual, but before we dive into these, Brian, do you have any updates for us? He had just a quick one. I alluded to kind of the bro split situation wrapping up and put an official end date on it now. So March 16th, I'm going to flip over to a full body program. It's going to be three sessions over eight to nine calendar days, which is going to be way better than three times a week. I don't think I would be able to, every time I've tried to do full body training in the past, no matter how I try to implement it three times just seems to be too many for me. Maybe it's because it's also tends to be combined with cardio and stuff like that. But regardless, you know, I've found the three full body sessions over eight to nine days to be much more conducive to things. uh Nine days specifically, because I like being able to do one full body session every three days. And then that leaves me like a big cardio day and a small cardio day potentially on the in between days. That structure seems to work out pretty well for me. One of the other things that I'm going to do this year that's different than prior years with this approach is that I'm going to make a very concerted effort to keep all of my highly demanding legwork at like two to three RIR just consistently throughout the entire, call it the next four to six months. ah Simply because I feel like I have had two related issues. with full body training. uh One is that my legs just tend not to recover in the two to three days that it takes to get back to training legs again with the full body split. And second is that I want to make sure I emphasize the importance placed on the cardio endeavors and having really fatigued, tired legs all the time is probably just not conducive to that goal as well. And so I think by My hope is that by keeping two to three RIR, and I'm pretty bad at this, like, I'll honestly say that, you know, I love progression. Go listen to our last episode yesterday about progression. It's a challenging thing, or not yesterday last week about progression. It's a challenging thing to not try to progress, but my nature is to obviously do so. So I'm really going to try to harness some of the information we talked about in episode 211 about making these more like intuitive. ah progressions in hypertrophy and less, you know, dogmatic like add 2.5 pounds or a rep every week type thing. And I think with the convalescence of these different aspects of the modifications to the training, I think I should be able to sustain this throughout March through September, whatever it ends up being where I'm focusing a bit more on cardio during the nicer weather. So that program will be live in the app under Brian's program starting uh it'll March 16th is the start date and I'm looking forward to switching things up. So that's really my big update here. I'll give an update on TRT in the first question of the Q and A here. You're muted. Aaron, you're muted. So I have two updates. One will impact the show. we will. I will not be able to record next Tuesday because I will be on my way to the airport because I am going to Shanghai for five days, which I am very, very excited for to do a little boys training trip with my friend Ben Broughton from. Well, he's in Thailand, but he's Singaporean. So Ben is my nerdy, you know, uh equipment nerd friend and we just go bounce around to different places and train. So I'm very, very excited for that. Actually going to the IWF Shanghai Convention, which is a big equipment manufacturer convention in Shanghai each year, or they have it in multiple parts of China. But And then we're going to train it like three of the really, really big, cool gyms in Shanghai, which I'm very, very excited for going to China has been very high on my list for a while. And it has been not easy to get a visa to go to China as an American these days, to be completely honest, um a little bit more challenging that I had anticipated when I set out to do this, but very excited. And then I have I've recently stumbled upon this productivity hack, guess I can call it. And I thought I would share. I feel almost a bit ashamed and foolish in all honesty that it's taken me seven years, six years, seven years to figure this out. But on my busy days, which are my check in days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I've started getting up at five or five thirty which is about an hour and a half to two hours earlier than I normally get up and I change my morning workflow. So I wake up I brush my teeth I do my TRT I drink. One liter, actually drink two liters of water. One is my electrolytes. I make my coffee. I do my journal. All of that process takes me about 20, 25 minutes. And then I come in and start work. All right, I start my check-ins, start my client responses. And I'm in here by six at the latest. And then I just have my very first work block. And I don't even look, I don't look at my phone. I don't look at Instagram, email, anything like that. My phone is left in the kitchen and then I'll work till about nine or 10 and then I'll get up, have breakfast and do my kind of morning cardio. do a 20 minute walk. And that has completely changed the productivity. I, for some reason, just being up before everyone else is up, when it's still dark out, before I've had any food to eat, and I just, I am insanely productive. And I will be completely caught up on all the check-ins and stuff submitted. And I'm finding that I can finish a work day. Typically with Mondays, if I have all, depending on if I have Australian clients or not, By 1130, I can be done until the night check-ins come in and then I have all this other time to... go to the gym, well, I'm obviously always gonna go to the gym, but I can get ahead on new client programs and stuff. And I've just found by me just shifting when I start my day and not get being distracted or pulled by anything, I can get upwards of like 80 % of my day done in the first four hours of the day, five hours of the day. And I feel so dumb for it taking me so long to realize this. And everything that kickstarted it was about a month ago when I started this new tattoo on my right. because I had to go get tattooed for five days in a row from 9 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. whenever we wrapped up and I had to get up stupid early to get started on my check-in because I was gonna be gone for 10 hours in the middle of the day each day and I realized that I was like incredibly efficient that week and I was like man it's you know 1030 and I'm and everything's done for the day and I'm still able to get the bed at a decent hour I thought I'd be up till 1 in the morning doing check-ins and I was just so much more efficient so the week after I said, I'm going to try that again, even though I didn't have the tattoo session. And lo and behold, I'm incredibly productive and now I'm on week five and it's completely revolutionized my Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So I am so excited about it. I almost get the like, I get like buzzing from being productive and it feels so good. And I feel so silly that I didn't start this two years ago, three years ago. Yeah, I feel like we we touched on this briefly maybe in the prior episode of the one before and the updates as well when you were first kind of implementing this. And I can I can honestly say that for me, the realization of this came when I had kids, because they would be on this like very strict schedule of like this time they wake up this time they go down for their first nap this time the second nap, whatever, whatever. And I started waking up earlier before they wake up knowing that you know, by seven a.m. or whatever it is that first kid is up and I guess the only kid at that time and and I had to get my shit done. And now it's just continued. I now have an eight and a six year old and still, you know, they wake up at seven for school, but I'm up at five thirty so that I can do my breathwork meditation and be on the computer working from six to seven and just that hour from six to seven. So productive. I can get like, I mean, not all my. workday done in an hour, I get so much more done in that first hour compared to like the four hours that follow. It's just, it is, is definitely a huge hack. And I think as you have kids too, you'll find that that time is even more valuable. And that's been something I've been seeding a little bit with my observation of my schedule and realizing that things are gonna change. Right. So I spoke with Jenny yesterday. It hit me. We very rarely have to monitor each other's schedules and there will be times where she's on a call. I'm on a call for work and I was like that's not gonna we're not gonna be able to do that anymore. We're always going to have to have each other's like calendars blocked so that if she's on a call, I can watch the kid and vice versa. And it hit me. was like, oh, fuck, we have to change how we run day to day. We can't just operate in complete isolation like we normally do because it's just not going to work. So I've been really trying to force that in and get in a groove in those habits now. And man, I said, I just feel silly that it's taken me this long. So those are my updates. add that with the kid coming, their nap schedules are transient, meaning they're constantly changing. And so you can get on a structure with Jenny that might last six weeks or two months or something, but then they drop a nap and then this nap moves longer and this nap shifts later. And the next thing you know, it's like you're having to reinvent that schedule all over again. So the key is to be fluid, always be fluid. Head on a swivel. Easy. It's easier said than I'm Cool. Let's let's jump in if you don't have any other updates. Cool. This first one is directed to you. Why did you hop on TRT? Were you experiencing signs of low test? Yeah, so for all the listeners that regularly listen and not some random question asker that probably hasn't been following long enough, yeah, I would say I was sort of experiencing signs of low test. The reality is that I did have low test. It was not below the physiological range. know, the range is like 300 to a thousand and I was at like 330 or something like that. So I was not necessarily hypo gonadal, uh but it was low. And I think that while I pushed off the idea for a long time that I was experiencing symptoms, and even now I'm not fully sure whether I'm now just experiencing better than normal because of TRT. It's kind of pushed me up a level, or whether I am now normal and I was abnormal before. It's tough to say. uh It's certainly a blurry line, too. But I was pulled by the allure of feeling like I was in my mid-20s again. That was kind of what I was told is like, when you do this, like you will get this increased energy, this increased drive, increased libido, um essentially, you know, better healing of your tissues, better recovery, better sleep, all of these things, right? Pie in the sky. Like this stuff's amazing. You gotta do it. um million dollars in your bank account. All for sure, it's like winning the lottery. And while it isn't quite all of that, right? Like it is an improvement. And so for me, it was not that I was feeling awful and that I thought, man, TRT is coming in to save the day. It was more like, I feel pretty good, but I wonder if I could feel better. And um I think now for the update for everyone that has been following along. I feel like it's really starting to kind of hit its stride. I'm now nine weeks in and yesterday was one of the most like really solid, just smooth, stable energy that I've had throughout a given day. And it came on the heels of actually a really poor night of sleep the prior night because at 11, two hours into my sleep cycle, my daughter came down with the most aggressive bloody nose ever and was like tracking blood through the house. So at like 11, I'm turning lights on, trying to like stop this blood flow, seeing drops like all over the stairs as she like came down and I'm like, oh my God, like ruined my sleep, you So finally I fall back asleep at midnight. Then at 3.30 my son comes down with a bad dream and so two wakeups, both disturbances, had to turn the lights on for one. I woke up in the morning and I felt awful. I was like, what in the fuck? And then like throughout the day, I didn't do anything different. I didn't like take a bunch of. caffeine, just normal amounts. Um, but I went for a walk, had a workout, did some work and just at some point throughout the day I noted and I was like, wow, I feel great. Like this is wild. Um, and then last night I had, I mean, my sleep has just been so good recently. I've talked about this off and on on the podcast, but last night, despite having this podcast in the morning where I have my alarm go off at 5am, I slept like seven and a half hours. I only had one wake up. I got two hours of rem, one hour of deep. Um, just like sleep is great. Energy is good. ah mood is stable. Uh, I feel like I'm accessing like pieces of my brain maybe that like were a bit dormant before, uh, really just starting to kind of see some of these signals come through and it is, it has been, it has been really cool. So, um, maybe I was low T and this is, is normalizing me or maybe it's putting me to supra physiological. states. But either way, it feels great. I'm into it. And I am glad at this point, at least that I hopped on and still curious to kind of see where it goes from here. Quick question before we move on. When do you have your first set of follow-up labs or did you get them and you just haven't come back yet? I did the first labs uh at six weeks. I talked about it on here. Remember my test was at 1170. that's right. And OK, now, sorry, I completely forgot about that. OK. all good. Yeah, the labs came back mostly good. I talked about how the uh DHA had gone down, like my omega-3 index had gone down, which was kind of weird. And my CBC was off in that my white blood cell count was like super low. So I talked to my doctor. He finally got back to me he basically said that it's like low level leukopenia where he says I was probably fighting something but didn't have any symptoms. I was asymptomatic. ah So we're gonna go and do another CBC here in a couple of weeks just to make sure that that's in order. but all the test stuff seems in line. He said if I come back and I'm still like above that thousand threshold, if say it's like similar to 1200, 1300, something like that, maybe we'll dial the dose back a little bit to get me into that like 800 to 1000 range, which I'm totally fine with. Like I don't need to be operating at above physiological ranges. But it is also interesting that at this quote low dose or whatever of 50 milligrams twice a week. that I am at the level that I am at, which I guess speaks to androgen receptor density and all that stuff. Yeah it's I wish I I can't confidently speak on on this. I'm not going to say anything at all but I have my own opinions that aren't solidly formed. So maybe in the future I'll speak about that a bit. But um yeah. Cool. This next one will kick over to you as well. If you train a client in person what kind of movement screen or assessment would you do. I think this question is a bit loaded because if someone's coming in to train me, to train with me generally for like hypertrophy and or like, you I want to use resistance training as a tool to improve longevity through like blood sugar management, cholesterol control, all these various aspects of health that are, you know, downstream of actually training with weights. I don't know that I would really do much. Like I think it would be important to make sure that they have basic levels of like internal external rotation in the shoulder girdle and around the hips. My sense is like this in depth assessment screen thing that we used to do in CrossFit is just probably not necessary for somebody in the latter category of I just want to come in and get my like 30 to 60 minutes a couple of times a week with my in person trainer. I think the movements that you select are not going to test their limitations nearly as much as obviously doing snatches and clean and jerks and keeping pull ups and things like that would. uh So my feeling is that I probably wouldn't even do anything super structured in any way. for this person. Like, I don't know if that's like a hot take and if people are going to grill me for this, but I kind of feel like, uh you know, if I construct a routine where they're doing a two to three times a week full body program and we're moving from chest press machine to pull down to overhead press machine to seated cable row to bicep curl, tricep extension, uh hack squat, leg curl. Like, I don't know. To me, that doesn't really feel like it. requires me to do some sort of big assessment screen for them, especially if they're not feeling any limitation to begin with. Like if they come into me and they're like, oh, I want to do this training, but you know, my shoulder doesn't move super well and my hip doesn't rotate this way and all this stuff, then yeah, sure. Like obviously it makes sense to do the due diligence there. But if someone comes in, you know, pretty healthy, no complaints physically, and they're able to go through and do the movements that are in the program without limitation. I don't think we need to waste the time and energy to do that. What is your take? Yeah, so I don't do in-person training. I plan on doing a little bit of one-off, opportunistic stuff once I'm back stateside, but... I will not be doing any kind of in-person movement screener assessment. That's outside my wheelhouse. I don't have an interest in learning it in full transparency. And like I said, my situation would be a lot more circumstantial, one-off things if a client's in town and wants to train that sort of thing. But I'm gonna ask, uh like let's say we're training push. Do you, is there any problems with the shoulders? yeah, you know, I, this, my right shoulder bothers me when I press overhead. Okay, we're not gonna press overhead. Here's how we're gonna train around that. So I would just use creativity to work around issues, but I'm not going to act or pretend like I'm some qualified PT or something because I'm not, and nor do I have any desire to really become one. So it's just not something that I would do. Yeah, I agree with that. And I like what you said about, you know, if the overhead press doesn't feel good, like we just swap to like a cable lateral razor or something. And that should be totally fine. You can also modify ranges of motion. So like if someone isn't good past 90 degrees, then you just stop them at 90 degrees and you say, cool, we're getting the stimulus from the length and range. Like it's just not that big of a deal. All right, let me kick this one over to you. So this question comes in saying, uh I am at the end of a long diet. I am down eight kilograms and approximately 10 % body fat so far. My fats are at 0.6 per kilogram. Do you prefer to increase carbs for a reverse diet? So this question, we're missing a little bit of additional context, which I will try and backfill slightly to help us get to the best answer. So fats are at zero point six per kg. So what I did is I extrapolated out some body weights so that we can get a get a grams per fat and put that relative to body weight. So on the low end lower and a 55 kilogram person about 120 pounds that's about 33 fats grams of fat per day which I would say is quite low potentially teetering on the dangerously low range. At 75 kgs we are now 165 pounds about 45 grams of fat which I would say is Appropriately low for a diet. I wouldn't consider that dangerously low if we are now starting to have some free meals and sorts of things there and then if we jump to the high end of the spectrum 95 kgs about 209 pounds 57 grams of fat that is not dangerous. I would say whatsoever at that body weight. Okay, it's a little bit of a shifting scale. So based off the size, right? What I tend to do first is close the gap on fats to where gets us out of the quote unquote danger zone. Right. Depending like if I have a small woman right we may have to take fats down to the 30 to 35 grams range. That is unsustainable. So I'm going to push those up to it might only have to go up to 45 or 50 immediately because as a smaller person you just don't have the the ability to make these. absolute large jumps in in calories because they're unfortunately a smaller person. So I like to close that gap out of the danger zone. That's going to be let's call it 45 plus for almost anyone from there. I'm typically going to increase carbs in a reverse diet. And then I might bump fats from 45 to maybe 60 once we're at a more comfortable level. But one of the things with a reverse diet, especially if this client has been successful, they're down eight kilograms, which is about 17, 18, 19 pounds, something like that. They said 10 % body fat, but it depends what the body fat percentage was. If we're starting at 30 % and we're down to 20 % there's no risk of hormones being insufficient sort of thing because we still have enough body fat. If we're starting at 18 % body fat and now we're at 8 % body fat or 7 % body fat and we're shredded, yes that risk is present. So the context really does matter. But if we're going to be having more free meals now that we're into a reverse, anytime we have a free meal, it's going to be higher in fat. That's the nature of eating out. Right. So the more free meals and meals eaten out, the higher the fats will go over baseline. So the less concerned I am about them. And yes, I'm going to put a higher preference on increasing carbohydrate because of the benefit that we stand to gain from cortisol modulation, training performance, and the improved filling out of the physical Zeke for those three primary reasons. So yeah, that's what I would do in this situation. Cool. So just so you can clarify for the people that are listening, why is it that the ratio of fat to body weight seems to not matter, but that total fat matters? Like if that 55 kilogram person is eating 33 grams of fat and that is the same ratio as the 95 kilogram person eating 57 grams of fat and the latter one is okay, but the former one is not okay, why is it not relative to the size of the human? because there's kind of basements for things like uh providing the rigid structure for our cells and the absorption of fat soluble vitamins. Now, once you get into the size of the person matters a little bit more because for your smaller females, they're more hormone sensitive. So if fats are bottomed out, we might start to lose cycle in those sorts of things. Whereas, Let's call, I'm just being honest everyone, if we're 85 kgs as a male at 50 grams of fat, you're gonna be perfectly fine hormonally. At 85 kg as a woman, you're gonna have a pretty decent amount of body fat on you. So that risk of the amenorrhea is significantly lower because we're at a much higher body fat. So it's kind of like the size of the person. Like when you're a small 50 kg female where hormones are just more sensitive to the environment that we've put you in and the amount of body fat and stuff. But if you're, you know, 25 kgs heavier as a woman, we're in a different environment now. That makes sense. All right. uh Cool, this one I have to kick to you, because I think you mentioned it, not me, unless I don't remember. You mentioned Scott Stevenson discussing mind muscle connection versus failure. Can you elaborate your takeaways? Yeah, this was uh something I put on my story the other day as I was musing about the Revive Stronger podcast that he did with Scott Stevenson a few months ago. And uh they started the podcast talking about the two avatars, Nick Walker, who's a huge IFBB bodybuilder, and Jordan Peters, who I don't know if Jordan actually currently competes in bodybuilding or not, but he's a massive man as well. Both of these guys are enhanced. So take from that what you will. I don't think it changes this this question or this answer too much though. And so what he did in comparison comparing these two bodybuilders is essentially compare two different training styles. And Jordan Peters is known for doing these high intensity everything to the house like every exercise to zero RIR. uh And Nick Walker is known for, I don't know if he's known for stopping two to three RIR, but I think he's known maybe for using slightly lighter loads comparably, where the focus is a bit more on connecting with his musculature and creating like optimal pull and push patterns to target specific areas, where Jordan is simply just taking things to the house and maybe, I guess the way of explaining this or clarifying it might be like the difference between, it actually kind of goes back to the conversation we had last week, honestly. Like if you go listen to episode 211, I think this uh sort of nails that out or parses that out where, uh where Nick is able to connect so well with his musculature that it, the mind muscle connection and the stimulus that he's creating to the body part is so strong that he might not need to go all the way to failure the same way that Jordan does. Whereas it's not that Jordan doesn't have a mind muscle connection. It's that any time that you're taking any heavy weight to failure, you're going to lose some of that mind muscle connection. And so the example I used last week in the episode was I'm doing a pull down and I can do 160 pounds for 10 or 12 reps. And every single rep is like, oh my God, my lats are cramping up. The stretch is insane. Like there's such a strong mind muscle connection that even like a set to two to three RIR cramps my lats and creates a sensation there that is actually more significant and more profound than what I would create by using 220 pounds and doing a set of six or something like that. The set of six is absolutely to failure. It's failure of my ability to move that pull down from the top to the bottom. But the 160 that I would be using for 12 reps say everything is rigid and controlled and the mind muscle connection is so strong. And so Scott was essentially comparing these two guys and saying like, hey, both ways can work. Um, which is interesting cause Scott's usually a guy from like the high intensity camp of like, if you're not going to failure, especially as you're a seasoned veteran with a high training age, like you're just leaving gains on the table. And so I thought this was just a nice kind of mental thought experiment in which we were comparing these two bodybuilders and demonstrating that there are multiple roads to Rome and that there might be something to simply connecting with the muscle using slightly lighter weights. and aligning everything perfectly versus just having to go in and take every thing of six to eight reps to failure. And that both ways can be effective. Yeah. I mean, I would love the conversation we had last week. got I got some good feedback on it. I think like we talked about last week, it's still just an unknown. And I honestly don't think we're ever going to get an answer because I don't ever think we're going to get some large study on a bunch of people that are on drugs at and pro bodybuilders doing this thing because everyone's egos get too big and no one's going to give their training for an entire year seasonal. I just I think we'll forever go around and have this conversation because I think what's ever going to get known unfortunately. Yeah, but it also like, doesn't so much matter because we've seen it work so many different ways. Like we've seen the Jay Cutler come through and do 20 sets with, know, as soon as his range, as soon as the concentric speed begins to slow down, you would see Jay Cutler set the loads down. So if we're noting concentric speed slowing down, that's what, three or four RIR in most cases, depending on the movement. So he's just doing a shit ton of sets where he's obviously connecting with his muscle really well, but he's stopping these sets early. so that he can, you know, do more sets uh versus training like Jordan Peters, which is kind of what I've done for the majority of my career. uh It leaves you in a state where you're just so systemically wrecked that you need those three minutes, four minutes between set to be able to go ahead and implement a second set uh versus like a Jay Cutler or a Nick Walker approach. You could probably do a set. have an insane pump in your muscle, rest one minute, one and a half minutes, maybe two minutes, something like that, and go right back at it and hit another set to three to four RIR. So it's the difference in like volume load accumulation, proximity to failure, systemic stress, like the interaction of all of these different variables coming together. that you hit the nail on the head, the interaction of all these different variables coming together. Yeah. Here, I'll kick this one over to you and just let you do a little train and talk here. When doing same muscle group supersets, ISO to compound, should you take the first movement to failure or stop at one to three RIR? I think it depends on what load sorry weight that you would like to use for the compound. If you take an isolation for example let's use a let's use a good example a chest fly we're doing a cable chest fly or a machine fly into a machine press or a dumbbell press. If you take that machine fly to failure and then you go into a chest press you're to get four or five reps unless the weight selected is really low, but maybe that's part of your goal, but just know that that isolation to failure will carry over a decent amount of fatigue into your compound and your performance is going to be rather low relative to your baseline unless you cut weight by a pretty serious degree. I would say maybe 20 % or more or something like that. What do you think, Brian? just don't know that it matters whether you have to cut weight or not. Because if we think of the muscle as just a dumb piece of meat that only knows tension, like it shouldn't really matter if you normally bench press the hundreds, but because you're doing it after a fly, you're now doing the sixties, which is probably like a realistic example for me. Like if I took a set of Peck fly cable flies to failure and then tried to do a dumbbell bench, yeah, I'd probably be using the sixties, sixties fives, maybe the seventies, something like that. But I just don't see that that really matters because the point is that you're driving tension to a specific area. um I'll also add that when I do these ISO to compound supersets, I tend to do them in lieu of having to do a high rep set. So instead of doing one 15 rep set, where say the first 10 reps are just buy-in so that you can do five hard reps, I like to these ISO to compound supersets with six to eight reps of each. So I'll do six to eight reps for the fly say. and then immediately jump into a six to eight rep set for the compound. And now I'm getting that 15 rep range that I would be getting otherwise, but instead of only one failure point with a bunch of reps that kind of don't matter, you're getting two failure points with a bunch of reps that do matter. uh And so I don't really think it matters so much whether that first exercise is to failure or not to failure, uh simply because you're just trying to create tension into the muscle. Maybe I could see an argument for leaving like one RIR. I don't think I'd ever leave three on that ISO movement to start, but I could see a reason to leave one so that maybe your muscle is like a little bit less ah destroyed as you go into the compound movement. But I just don't think it really matters. And I also think it depends what the combo is. Like one of my favorite combos is to go dumbbell lateral raise into cable lateral raise. And I know those are both ISOs. uh So maybe not the perfect example, but it's like a short overload into a lengthened overload idea. And I just, I just don't see a reason not to take the dumbbell lateral raise to failure and beyond simply because of where the limitation is and that it's so short. uh Whereas if you're doing a cable fly and you set up that cable fly, as most people do where it's a little bit more biased to the lengthened range. So when you're in the length and position of that cable fly, the line of the cable would be perpendicular to your forearm. If you're setting your cable fly up that way, it's going to be more lengthened biased. And I think in that case, maybe you do leave an RIR. You leave one rep in the tank or something before you go to the bench press. uh Whereas if you had set it up in a much more short overloaded manner where the forearm is not perpendicular to the load, maybe the forearm doesn't get perpendicular to the load until you're in the contracted position, which would make it more short overloaded. Then maybe you take that one to failure because of the resistance profile. Yeah, so lots of lots of different variables depending on your uh understanding of the options you have there. But I would say what I think is the most important takeaway is probably intelligently choosing your reps. And one of the things that I really like that you said, Brian is about the six to eight rep range on both would be a very good use of time and those reps. Yeah, man, two failure points, that's where it's at. Alright, what do we got here? is your perspective on rep tempo, specifically the negative? I feel like slow negatives are super fatiguing. Yeah, this was a convo I had this week in DMs. So I figured this question would be helpful for us to discuss here as well. And what I would say, what I told this guy first off is that the negative is more fatiguing. That is accurate. Doing a slow negative is more fatiguing than doing a fast negative. There's no argument about that. I think there's also an increase in stimulus. And so whether that increase in stimulus is equal to the speed at which you do your negative, I don't exactly know what those ratios are. My sense is that there is an increase in stimulus as we decrease the speed of the negative, but whether that matches, it depends how slow the negative is. There have been studies in the past, there used to be a type of training in the late 90s, early 2000s called super slow training. And the way that this was done was an eight second negative and an eight second positive. And I think people would do sets of like four reps or something like that. This was then proven to not be a good way of training. My sense though, from the results of these studies are that the reason it's not a good way of training isn't because the negative is too slow, although that might be partially related, but it's more because the concentric was not explosive. And we know that for hypertrophy and strength training that we wanna always be moving the concentric, the lifting portion of the rep as fast as we can. And so purposefully trying to slow that down to eight seconds doesn't make sense. Whether the problem with this Approach is the negative I'm not as confident about. I feel like if the study were to be done where you did your eight second negatives, but then you exploded up on the concentric, we might have some slightly different results. Either way, nobody's doing eight second negatives. I think in these days, a three to four second negative would be considered slow, but I think it's still on the verge of being. fast enough that you're not losing stimulus to the muscle or causing extreme levels of fatigue that a two or three second negative wouldn't cause. My view of it is that I think the most value of the negative is likely in the range of the negative that is in the last 15 or 20 % before you get to the length and position. So imagine you're doing like a one arm pull down. and the contracted position is when your arm is at your chest and then you release and you lower back out to that overhead stretched position. What I generally will do and advise is that the first 80 % of the lowering where you go from the chest to arm extended can be relatively quick. But as you get close to that point where the muscle stretches fully, if you slow the negative down a little bit more, you can gently settle into the stretched position and increase the tension and mind muscle connection that you have in the muscle via the way that you slowed it down into that transition point. um So I think that's probably the most effective way of going about rep tempo, where you're able to get the most benefit from the negative at the most important part of the negative while not creating extra fatigue by trying to do the entire negative super slowly. I think you answered that wonderfully. The best analogy that I have ever been told, and this analogy may have come from you, I know it's not of my own, someone definitely told me this, to think of it like pulling back on a bow and arrow, right? If you just rip a bow and arrow really fast, right, and obviously the pulling back is the eccentric, if you just rip it really fast and let it go, your precision on that concentric is going to be thrown off because you're out of position. but you can start the pull pretty quick, but then as you get towards that lengthened range, you wanna increase the precision on it so you slow down and make sure you're starting that next rep from the exact position you wanna be. Your foot pressure is where you want it to be. Your scapula is where you want it to be and all these things, but the faster that you move in the concentric, sorry, eccentric, the faster that you move, the more likely you are going to be out of position when starting. your next concentric rep. So it only as slow as it needs to be to put you in a very very good position for your next concentric rep. Yeah, that was not my analogy, but I love that. think that that exemplifies it perfectly. So I'm glad that you shared that. Cool. Now I have to know who said that. All right, Aaron, keep exercises the same or change them frequently. I have a high preference on keeping exercises the same so that we can measure, we can monitor, and we can properly evaluate progress. Yeah, I would say that I agree slash agreed with you. um up until maybe even the last few months. I think this question almost in some ways fits into our conversation from last week about uh intuitive progression for hypertrophy. And uh my sense is that there are certain stages of your training journey where it's probably better to keep them the same and be able to monitor and diagnose progress more effectively, be able to determine when things are not progressing. why they're not progressing and doing the same exercises each week gives you much more insight into that. As I get further into my training age and maybe there's a bit of nihilism that plays into this, but I find myself indexing more on enjoyment of training at this point and I feel like this is a similar arc. that other people take in their training journey as they get to the 15, 20, 25 year mark, where they take a bit more of an intuitive approach to exercise selection as well. And uh it really does feel to me like it fits into that same category of intuitive hypertrophy progression because obviously you're not able to progress uh per the log book if you're changing exercise frequently, but you are progressing in a manner that potentially could amplify and induce hypertrophy. And then I'll also add that as you get further into your training age, there are often exercises that feel better or worse on a given day. And I'll use the dumbbell fly or the fly press as an example. I know you don't even really like that movement at all. And I love it. But there are certainly days where I come into the gym And I am like, I don't think I want to do heavy dumbbell fly presses today. Like my shoulders are a little cranky or whatever, whatever. And I think I'm gonna swap that to a cable fly press today or something along those lines. And that is more or less the way that I personally have been going about my training now for a little while. uh I do think that there is. in having like a Northern light of guidance for your training. And so I've mentioned before the benefit of, maybe keeping the first exercise the same. If I have a chest day and there's four chest exercises, I will almost always start with my incline press of whatever, you know, is the movement that is part A in my program for that time. And I will always do it even if I don't really want to, I will warm up and I will do it simply because I want to know that there's some Northern light guiding me. and that I have some diagnostic piece in there, but I am much more apt to change the subsequent movements that follow than I would have been in the past. And I don't think this is necessarily advisable for other people. I have clients and most of them are not changing exercises as frequently as I do because of where they are in their training journey, et cetera. But I certainly would be much more apt to allowing a client to do that if they had 20 or 25 years experience. as I think there's just a number of things that come to play that uh make it a more challenging question than simply focusing on diagnostics or not having diagnostics. I really like your answer. I think ultimately it is a very very good the best answer um I think you have to graduate to it effectively, right? yeah. Which is the same with the intuitive hypertrophy progression from last week. Like we wouldn't advise any beginner to simply go in and just, it's cool. I'll intuitively progress my hypertrophy. It's like, that would probably work because you're a beginner, but then you don't learn anything. And so you're setting yourself up for failure in the intermediate stage. And so, yeah, I do think you have to like earn or graduate your way to these more intuitive ways of approaching hypertrophy training. Yeah, agreed. Okay this one let's we'll kick we'll kick to you. What do you think of taking a heavy weight like an approximate five to six rep max and doing a bunch of sets at two to three reps. Is this good for hypertrophy. Yeah, I actually love this approach. I used this a lot last year with my pendulum squat during bike season. So I was actually just talking earlier how I always tend to take my leg training to failure and it screws up my cardio pursuits. This was actually one uh of the changes I made last year that I thought was really, effective, but I only did it for pendulum. And I think it's more of the type of approach that I want to take for most of my lower body leg work in this season. uh I think the question here isn't whether it's good for hypertrophy. It's more about whether, or it's more about how many sets do you have to do to make it good for hypertrophy. And so we'll often talk about. effective reps and things like that. And so if we just split the difference here and we say we're taking a six RM and we're going to do three reps, you're going to get about two effective reps, so to speak on each one of those sets. I think you could argue that all three are effective simply because the load is so heavy. You might say you're getting some stimulus from, all three of those reps. I'm open to that argument as well. But if we say two, two to three, you're getting two to three effective reps, each one of those sets. I do think you would have to probably do like, five to eight sets or something along those lines to induce like a really solid hypertrophy stimulus where you could probably just take two sets to failure and do your six RM six times. And that would probably be sufficient for hypertrophy. So taking this approach where you're doing, where you're leaving a bunch of reps in the tank, but you're still using what would be at base, like a heavy load, it's certainly effective. You just have to do more. You have to do more sets. which means that you're in the gym for longer, uh probably less systemic fatigue. So there's certainly a balancing act going here. But one thing I think we have learned about hypertrophy is that if you're using a heavy weight, which is usually considered under eight RM, I kind of think it's like six RM, but whatever. uh If you're using a heavy weight, all the reps are kind of effective, which means they're all sort of effective for hypertrophy. And I will reference a, I don't know if this was a study or where. I wear Zach Robinson got this, I remember listening to it with a data-driven strength podcast a year or two ago where he was talking about, I thought it was a study. Maybe it was just an N of one, but it was 30 singles at a five RM versus doing a. 30 reps that were, it was like four or five sets or six sets, whatever it takes you to get to 30 reps where everything is like within a rep or two of failure versus doing just one single with the same weight for 30 reps. And obviously it's going to take you longer to do the 30 singles than it would to simply do like four or five sets to the house. um But the hypertrophy response was, was relatively similar between those two. And so I think that speaks to this question quite well. in that yeah, it's probably pretty good fry perch for you, you just are gonna have to do more sets. Yeah, I would agree. I would I want to train that way personally, no. But do I think it's a it can be effective? Yes, I wouldn't argue against that at all. Okay, Mr. Brian, you are definitely looking bigger and more jacked since TRT. What do you think? Yeah, this, I've gotten this comment a few times from some of the training videos that I'm posting on the gram. I do think I've gotten bigger and more jacked since starting TRT. I don't really think I could argue that. I mean, you just need to look at my body weight and it's up, you know, now at this point, I'm actually so update for everybody. I did initially gain 13 pounds on the TRT. And that was without really changing my dietary habits at all. And I just don't want to be that big. Like I just don't want to be 208. That's just as large for me. And so I just, I've had to make some changes and I've had to stop eating as much as specifically at dinner. Like I've been really making a concerted effort to stop eating at 5.30 or 6 PM and also trying to make my dinner not my biggest meal of the day. In the past, before TRT, it was always, you know, carb backloading, like saving my carbs, eating huge meals at night. And my body weight was unaffected by I just kept chugging along at 195 forever. Now I do the same thing and suddenly my weight just keeps going up. It's like, can't stop it. It was like a runaway train. And so I have to essentially dial my food back, which maybe would be like a negative of TRT. Like it's kind of weird that now I almost feel like I have to eat fewer calories than I had to eat before TRT, which I'm a little bit surprised about, honestly, especially because my body weight is higher. I thought I would need more calories. But uh ever since I stopped eating so much food at night and making that a smaller meal, I've been able to rein in my body weight. And so today I was 204, which means that I'm up nine pounds from before TRT and I'm down four pounds from the peak of my TRT. uh But yeah, I'm having to eat less and uh that sucked. But I do think that because I'm eating less and I'm finally leaning out and I've dropped some of that water weight uh that was inside of me. I do think I'm looking more jacked and it's super cool. enjoy looking at myself and seeing that I am making progress 27 years into training. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, I noticed that with you posted the stories of you doing some training outside and I immediately noticed it. was like, I mean, I've been obviously watching you train and videos and stuff for years and years and years and I was like, yeah, Brian's definitely bigger. It was immediately stood out to me. kind of wild, but I mean, you're still like 20 pounds on me, so like, you must be just massive these days. Dude, I get it. would, it's... I don't know. Like I said, I have these opinions. They're not fully vetted and formed, but I think... It does a lot more than people will say. People will say like, you can't just go on TRT and it's gonna make you larger. mean, yeah, if you just sit on the couch and do nothing. But if you've been a man or even a woman, right? And you've trained for a long time and your nutrition's pretty diod and your habits are diod and stuff, you go on TRT, it is a not insignificant change. It is significant. ah And I've had done it with multiple clients. It does change things. And I, when people say it doesn't, I just don't, I think they're just lying for whatever reason. anyway. I also think it probably depends on where you're going from, like how low you were and then where you go. Like somebody who gets on TRT and goes from 400 to 700 or 800, probably not going to see huge changes, whereas me going from 300 to 1100 seems like a bigger Delta. don't know. Potentially, but so for example, I know I have uh a guy he was my highest natural testosterone ever. of a client. was over 900 as a natural. He had to be. He was maybe 38 39 years old right a very unassuming dude 160 pounds at 6 foot like not big whatsoever. He's now on TRT uh on 150 which is you know a little bit higher of a dose not necessarily TRT. uh and he is notably larger, easily 15, 20 pounds bigger. It's just it. Yeah. And he was the highest I've ever seen as a natural over 900 on labs. Well, I mean, that also like sort of makes it challenging as somebody who's like a social media viewer of your content. And it brings in the same problem that I think being enhanced brings in, which is that, like I said last week, if it is that responsible for that much muscle gain, it kind of blurs the line between whether it's my training that's effective and I'm able to give out like this great advice. I'm like, this training program is like, the reason for these gains versus, maybe it's not the training program. Maybe it's not all these amazing muscle insights you have, and maybe you're just simply on TRT. Like, I don't know, it blurs the lines a bit to the point where like, these were the type of things that would bother me when I was a natural is hearing people on gear or on TRT exclaiming that their methods are the reason for their results. I completely agree. And we talked about this last week. I'm very grateful that I waited so long to start because I was able to formulate opinions and spend a lot more time in maturing and sorts of things that I think if I started when I was 25 or 26, I wouldn't have had the wherewithal to be able to do that. Yeah. Okay. This one. This is a really cool question. I like this order these in terms of systemic stress and I think we'll add maybe highest stress to lowest stress. We'll rank it in that regard. Upper body lift lower body lift zone to cardio hit cardio. Yeah, I think it's really good because I find myself torn in what is more fatiguing, HIIT cardio or lower body training, and what's more fatiguing, upper body training or zone two cardio. I think that my inclination goes lower body training, the most fatiguing, then HIIT cardio, then upper body training, then zone two cardio. I think that's my answer that I'm sticking with, but I've had a bit of oscillation back and forth. What do you think? That that's my exact answer. Yeah, I think about and how I ranked it is the perception of how I feel lower body training. I'm I'm I'm pretty systemically shaken. I have to hold on to the to the what's that fucking thing on the side of the stairs. The hand hold rail railing. Yes. Thank you. On the way down my legs might give out on me a bit that my heart rate is I can feel that kind of I'm just like buzzing kind of you can feel you. I'm just like worn down the Hit cardio if I do the bike sprints on the fan bike. If I push it as hard as I can, it's equally as bad. But I don't. But that's the equivalent of doing, I don't know, four hack squat sets to failure, which I just purposefully don't do because I know it's nothing but awful for me. um Upper body training. Depending push day is more systemically fatiguing. I would say pull because most exercises are short overloaded are not as much. And then I don't really feel any systemic stress after zone 2. I would say I feel even a slight elevated sort of mood. I feel healthy after doing my zone 2. I don't feel healthy after doing my upper body lift. So I would say for me that's definitely the least systemically fatiguing. Yeah, I agree. I think that when you talk about the cardio pieces here, both hit and zone two, I think you have to add a duration component because I think that changes the calculation just a little bit. Maybe not enough to change the order, but I think it might change the magnitude of each one. Like going out and doing like a 20 minute hit cardio session, like, yeah, that sucks. And like, it's hard, but it's 20 minutes. I often go out on my bike and I'm like, I'm gonna go ride for an hour and a half. And the first hour, I'm just gonna go as hard as I can for that hour. And in that hour, I usually end up spending. 45 minutes between zone four, zone five, and maybe like a little bit of zone three. And so when you're talking about spending like 45 minutes at those heart rate zones, that's very different than I'm doing a 20 minute HIIT workout where maybe only 12 of those minutes are in the really high zones. uh So that changes the dynamic. There's also a huge difference between like, I'm just doing zone two cardio for my health and I'm gonna do like a 30 to 40 minute like chill bike ride while I read a book. versus like when I go out during bike season and I do two hour zone two rides, I don't necessarily come back and be like, my God, I'm so systemically fatigued. But there's like almost a fatigue like psychologically where you're just like sitting on the bike churning for that long that you're just like so glad to be done with it. And so I, like I said, I don't think that changes the order, but I do think that you have to include duration to quantify the magnitude. some ways. If we're talking about an hour long hit session, it is way worse than a lower body session for me. It would immediately go to the top of the list immediately. know, dude. I feel like doing eight to 10 sets of lower body to failure still to me feels harder than doing an hour long HIIT cardio session. All right, well, have our answers finally diverge a little bit. I love that. That's great. All right, cool. Let me kick this one over to you. If you miss a rep or RIR target, do you prefer to drop weight or rest longer for the next set? Really good question. So if we read through the lines here a little bit, if we're missing a rep or our RIR target, meaning we're end up ultimately training closer to failure than we would like, do we drop the weight or do we just extend rest longer? I'm always gonna drop the weight. Let's put a practical example. Rep target is... 6 to 10, sure, right? 6 to 10 and we want to do an RIR of 3 and I get 6 reps but it's a 1 or a 0. Adding, going from 2 minutes rest to 4 minutes rest, I'm not going to get 5 or 2 extra reps and increase my RIR. I'm gonna drop even more performance. I just know that about my body. So I'm definitely going to reduce the weight for the second set. That's what I would personally do. Just to be a little bit pedantic here, I feel like this question is starting to verge into the question about intuitive hypertrophy progression, because rest periods are one of those things that change the whole outcome of your diagnostics. Like, if someone's following a log book and they're doing every exercise and they're trying to progress and they're trying to beat the log book every single week, and one week you're taking two and a half minutes of rest and then the next week you're like, that was really hard. I think I'm gonna take four minutes. You are not doing the same thing. You are not able to say I progressed because I did the same exercise for the same rep range. That is a different response. You are intuitively progressing your hypertrophy. uh And so I don't mean to sound so angry about this, but I think that like when people get so stuck in the log book that everything has to be identical for diagnostics and all these things. And then you take different rest periods, you're just changing that whole dynamic completely. And so this isn't to shoo shoo foo foo the question or anything, I'm going to answer it. But I just wanted to put that out there initially, because those are things that need to remain consistent if you're going to be a log book guy that uses the log book as a way of diagnosing progress. uh With that said, I think it depends on the where you are in your training cycle and what your goals are. What your time constraints might be things along those lines. Either way though, I would make some sort of note in your log book that either the interval changed or the weight had to drop because of prior performance or something along those lines. So whichever one you choose, make a note of it. If you're a log book guy, make sure your diagnostics are transparent. And uh yeah, I think that's probably my answer. Yep, good one. What is more important for body recomp, macros or calories? I want to make sure I answer this question really, really robustly because this is one of those conversations that gets a little bastardized and people camps on the internet sort of Macros fits into calories. So if we are implying that the macros are more important, we are also agreeing that the calories are accounted for. You can't have macros without calories. It's You can't have, I don't know, a kitchen without having a house. just doesn't work that way. calories are responsible for body weight maintenance or body weight surplus, body weight decreasing, increasing, right? But the macronutrients... then are responsible for where those calories kind of go and how their role is in the body. For example, let's say you are 150 pounds and we want to improve our body composition by way of reducing body fat and at 150 pounds you require 2500 calories for maintenance. I could give you 2300 calories of olive oil per day and assuming that you are a robot and could actually stick to that from a psychologics and hunger standpoint, you would reduce body weight. Your body composition is not going to look how you want it to look eating nothing but a polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat as a caloric intake source. for body recomposition. Assuming that we are decently insulin sensitive, resistance training, and have an active lifestyle, a uh moderate to high protein intake, a moderate to high carbohydrate intake, and a moderate to low dietary fat intake is what is most successful across the widest ranges of population consistently. There's a reason why most almost everyone settles into this. Okay. And let's call protein high within your respective dietary preferences. Right. A high protein diet for someone who's vegan or vegetarian based is going to be mean a little bit different than high protein for Brian or myself. Right. Because of available food options and sourcing. But macronutrients do matter for body composition, but that implies that the calories are already properly accounted for. So um if maintenance again is 2,500 calories and you have the perfect macronutrient ratio, but those macronutrients put you at 2,700 calories, your body weight's gonna go up and your body fat is gonna go up, not down. And now unless you do some things like some absurdly high protein intake of over 50 % of 60 % of your diets, just protein, but we're not talking about these silly uh edge use cases. Thoughts there, Brian? Yeah, I love your answer. I especially love the kitchen inside the house analogy, because that's exactly how I was thinking about it. uh I will just add on top of that, that something I heard a long time ago that I think makes sense here is that calories are for body size, macros are for body comp, and micros, micronutrients are for health. So if you think about it from that perspective, this question kind of answers itself. Like if you're going for body recomp, it's macros. So that's all I have to say there. And then I'll kick this one over to you and then I need to bounce. So I'll just let you answer this and I will go be a parent. uh How to tighten abdominal area. 39 year old female, five to 112 pounds, 13 % body fat, but soft abs. No definition, no kids. Lifts five times a week, cardio three to four times a week. This woman is lean. I'm, it's an interesting question, but I have to bounce. So. uh Good luck and catch you guys in two weeks. So I tried to get a little bit more information to answer this question so that I could be as most help to everyone but just the time differences, time zone differences didn't work out. So just to recap a little bit, 39 years old, female, 39 years old is effectively irrelevant. Five foot two, 112 pounds, which is. I mean, that's literally the size of my wife. So I'm very, very well aware of what those numbers look like. 13 % body fat, but soft abs. No definition, no kids. So we know it's not loose skin, anything of that sort. We lift five times a week, cardio three or four times a week. Other additional infer details she provided eats whole foods, clean, rarely eats out maybe a little bit on the weekends, but is eating at home most of the time. So a couple of things that are helpful for disseminating this top level information in terms of body fat distribution from male to female with males. Right. And if you can think about if you are a male think about yourself you know your dad uncles whatever friends. For a male body fat pattern distribution, we store much more body fat in the Android region around our stomach midsection lower back. Our legs are typically much leaner. comparatively to a female body fat storage pattern, the opposite is largely true. Women tend to be much more leaner through the midsection, through the waist with a disproportionately higher amount of body fat below the waist, in the thighs, in the hips, in the glutes. That's why women have on average much bigger butts than men, because of just how body fat is differently distributed based off of hormone profile. So with that information, we take into account that on average women are leaner in the midsection. Okay. Now the next part in here, 13 % body fat. Immediately when I am getting this information, what stands out to me is about depending on the source of information. About 11 to 12 % body fat for women is considered essential. Essential for normal hormone process, monthly cycle, et cetera, et cetera. Women on stage, on stage in bodybuilding competitions temporarily dip below this, right? Now, if you know where I'm heading, what that means is that 13 % body fat for a female, you are fucking shredded. Okay, so this lady is not 13 % body fat, right? And that's no shade or anything at her. Who knows where that information comes from? Maybe it's one of those scales that you hold onto the things, If I had a dime for every time someone told me they were, you know, sub 10 % body fat and they're easily double it, I would have... A lot more money than I do now. Let's put it that way. We're just not 13 percent body fat. Right. It's simple as that. The only other potential implicating factors could be very, very poor digestion. eating continuously eating trigger foods that have us bloated water attentive gassy in digestion in disarray because if you've also ever seen someone come in really watery and soft looking in a bodybuilding show it's because their digestion got all fucked up the night before and it completely washes everything out and makes them look like they're 15 % body fat when they're really six or seven with a disastrous GI situation going on. on. So now to answer the question how to tighten abdominal area you're just not as lean as you think you are unfortunately. So like I said I asked uh this person for more information. I will follow up and provide her a little bit of extra uh purposeful context. But yeah at 13 percent body fat as a woman that is unsustainably lean unsustainably lean. which means abs are very, very well defined unless there is some sort of gastrointestinal issue going on, which is blurring all of that detail because of the gastrointestinal distress. So really, really cool question that you have to kind of dig through the information a little bit, but. As always, thank you for listening to Eat, Train, Prosper. Brian and I will be back in two weeks time. As always, any comments or questions about anything from this episode, please leave us a comment below in the YouTube comment section and we'll talk to you soon.