What's going on, guys? Welcome back to Eat Train Prosper. Today is episode 218. Brian and myself, and we are talking progression models. So Brian has laid out a fantastic episode for us walking through various progression models that you can use in your training career. But before we dive into that, as always, Brian, what's the latest? Yeah, I got new blood work back. this is the second blood work that I got since starting TRT in December. So I did blood work initially in early February. And for anyone that listened back then, uh my T levels were 1170, my total T at that point. And my free was listed as 35, um, which I think was at the top of the range or slightly above the top of the range. It was close. the new blood work I got uses a different parameter system. So my free came back at I don't know what was it, 1300 or something like that. It was a completely different system, but basically it put me like just above the range. And then interestingly, my SHGB, SHBG was twenty-five, which is relatively low, which I think Aaron explains why I might have higher free testosterone and then to not vary the lead, my total testosterone dropped all the way to six ninety nine or I guess seven hundred. So a huge decline in my total testosterone, but free seems to be acting above the range with low SHBG. What do you think about all that? You're on mute. How many times per week do you administer your testosterone? What day did you get the lab draw done? on both of them. It was two days later. Yeah, that's strange then. I mean that 'cause there's always gonna be a little bit of a of a you know a a sh shuttling. How how close was the first set of lab work to when you started the TRT? It was six weeks after. See, at six weeks, you should be pretty much shut down endogenously. Um, that's that's pretty interesting. I mean, that's effectively like a 45% drop or something like that, right? Um, yeah, that one uh because normally the the reason I would ask that first question is like if lab work one, you you got labs the day after you pin, you're gonna, you know, catch a peak. And then if this other one you're you know catching a bottom, that's an obvious discrepancy. Um, but that's a pretty interesting oh, was the sorry, was the assay method the same? Uh I know you said the the units were different for total or sorry, free, but was it were they both like LCMS or were they both just the the normal assay? Um, and I'm guessing they're different. When I talked to ChatGPT about it, they mentioned that things seem to be um different in whatever assay word you used. Um so I did the second one with Quest and the first one was with Vibrant, which I think goes through Lab Core. So um yeah, I I don't know if they're necessarily like equal comparisons. Yeah, I I would say given that your actions were the same around the time of of testing and and that sort of thing and getting that much of a discrepancy and it's the same and you're not using like underground gear or anything, it's it's from the pharmacy through through that. So I I would say it's probably a a testing thing, but that's it is a it's quite a stark difference. Yeah, seven hundred to almost twelve hundred. So yeah, it's a big difference. I actually like feel I can't notice a difference in the way I feel or function or or anything like that though. Like to me, it still feels like I got that ten percent boop boost across the board that you know I mentioned from TRT in general. So I'll just keep an eye on it. And I think going forward I'll probably end up using the quest because it's super easy and the vibrant one has to like prescribed from my doctor and stuff, whereas quest I just go do it myself. so I think every like six to twelve weeks I'll just go do it at quest myself, and then we'll have kind of tangible comparisons going forward from there. but one thing that was interesting on the blood work too is I was uh I think I mentioned this on the podcast that I was a little bit concerned about my white blood cell count being too low. And uh so the last two times I tested, it was below the range. And then the last time I tested in February, it was like way below the range. Um, so I was like a little bit nervous about that. Like, where was my white blood cell count gonna be now? And it had popped back up into the range. It's on the lower side of the range, but it's at least within the normal range. It's about double where it was in February. So um, so I think that's positive. I'm I'm really happy about that. Um, glucose is good. It was like high 80s for fasting. I didn't get insulin done because it's always low. I'm not too worried about it. interestingly, my ALT and AST liver enzymes. are the lowest they've been in years. I don't know if this has to do with again using a different testing service and stuff, but they were twenty and twenty two, whereas usually I'm like twenty-six, twenty-eight, something like that. and then the only thing really that I estradial was a little high. it was like slightly above the range. It was like forty four or something like that. so that's semi interesting. But the only thing that I'm now semi concerned about is that my uric acid is continuing to climb. And so that was above seven this time, which is the highest I've ever seen uric acid. And so I'm guessing that is a sign that I probably need to slow down on my sugar consumption because while the sugar isn't affecting my glucose or my insulin or any of that stuff, it does seem to be manifesting an inflammation in the uric acid component maybe a little bit. So uh we'll see if I can make some changes there. Did you also get like did you get a C P and in lipid numbers? Yes, yeah, all that stuff is good as it ever is. Uh no no tangible rise in in hemoglobin or hematocrit. you know, the hematocrit's a little higher. It went from forty four to forty eight. That's actually the thing that Chat GPT flagged for me, being that it's closing in on like the top twenty five percent of the range or whatever. Um, so I might consider donating blood, but it said at this point at forty eight, it's not anything that's dire. So, I mean, I I have my own kind of it's not my own opinion, it's things that I've picked up as as from through reading a bunch. Hemoglobin is what you really care about. Hemoglobin is blood viscosity. Your hematocrit can rise for a little bit of like acute dehydration. So one of the things when you're getting labs, like make sure you go in with them to like 40, 60 ounces of water beforehand, and a lot of that stuff will shake out. But in certain individuals, and in my coaching experience, because the the TRT effect, obviously we know it affects everyone a little bit differently. Um, and one of the kind of premier what do I want to call it, like Concerns or worries were that uh because T TRT or exogenous testosterone, as I should really put it, can cause rises in hemoglobin and hematocrit. And in my coaching experience, the the individuals or the males that I see this happen most often to caucasian males, right? At a at a disproportionate higher higher uh amount than everyone else. But hemoglobin is is the real kind of thing to concern yourself uh about there. Um and I've seen it. I've had like a normal, healthy 26-year-old male and like 250 milligrams of testosterone, which is obviously is not TRT, but it's still you know relatively low in in and just hemoglobin just a runaway train. And I'd be like, yeah, steroids aren't for you, my friend. Sorry. Um, but that's the thing I would I would look into most. Yeah, I got sixteen point two this time and it was fifteen point two last time, which is still below the top of the range, but it's in the the the top ish of the range. And it's not uncommon to see a rise, but then it's ch it's not like it continues to rise. It's just like your new baseline on testosterone sort of thing. Um, and then I know historically your lipids have always been like about as as good as they get. Did you notice any change there? It actually looks maybe even better. Um I I have my triglycerides are forty-two. LDL is sixty-three, HDL is fifty-five, and that is all they gave me uh on this one. Yeah. It's pretty good. I mean, I'm I'm not my lipids have always been strong. My sugar response, H B A one C and glucose stuff has always been strong. Uh the liver was always slightly concerning. Now uric acid is slightly concerning and obviously I'm keeping an eye on hemoglobin, hematocrit, white blood cell count, and all of that stuff too. And then my kidneys it's tough to say with the creatine. All of my kidney markers are showing negative off the board high. Um, but that's get a next time just get us a statin C in an E do on my blood work from my doctor, but this time that wasn't included in the test, so yeah, but overall I think it's all good. Uh gonna get tested again in six to twelve weeks and see where that T levels are and then obviously track the estradiol and stuff like that too. Yep. All right, cool. Um anything else on that? I do actually. I I have an update that's very, very related. So I'm constantly on the lookout for for things, the just you know, better services, those sorts of things. And one of the things, you know, we we talk about on the podcast just semi-regularly is is blood work and ordering your own labs. So there's certain companies that are are better than others, but I've always kind of known and just looked at the discrepancies in pricing. And it's it's always very interesting because I know there's like private MD labs, there's Algo RX, there's any lab tests now. You can buy tests directly from Quest or Lab Core, and the pricing is all over the all over the place. Like for example, one thing just to get like a total testosterone, it might be like $70. You can go with another one where it's like 21. And it it's kind of the wild west. obviously, there's your your TRT clinics and stuff, and obviously everyone has their profit margins, but I always Knew that there was a there was the door was there for someone to do it much better, and finally I have found it. And I've been I I bought labs with this company myself. tomorrow morning I'm going to go get them done. The company is called Good Labs. Goodlabs.com. You can order your own private blood work, and their kind of stake in the ground are the cheapest. Lab work in the United States, anywhere, or that you can find. you can buy a la carte and then they have pre-built packages. They have like a bodybuilder package, which is really, really good. The caveat on the bodybuilder package is they don't include a fasting insulin, but you can add fasting insulin for a whopping four dollars. Okay, so That is what I've been sending clients to. Uh, I posted uh in my little my progress squad broadcast group, but I wanted to get it out to the podcast as well. Uh the best part about it is it's like I said, best the cheapest labs you can find. And on top of that, I also have a 20% discount code for what's already the cheapest. That code is G3Q6G6. Anyone out there, I implore you to pause the podcast, go take a look and see what the pricing actually is. It is finally very, very competitive. I I I can't even call it competitive. It it's better than anything you'll find. Um I'm there right now looking at it and I am also quite floored by the cost of some of these stuff. Like a C B C with differential platelet is four dollars. So yeah. let's say, let's say you're you're not, you know, someone on testosterone or you don't really care about your hormones. You just want to get your your your basics, a CBC, a CMP, a liver enzyme sort of thing. It's probably like $24, $25. It's incredibly inexpensive. So um that I'm very, very excited about. to use. And then what's really cool too is let's say you're someone who you're really strapped for money and you don't have the money to go spend on labs. They have a program where if you go donate your blood, You can get free labs through the donation of your blood because when you're donating blood, they're already taking your blood out. So they take a small subset of that to run the labs with and send it to you. So you you can donate, obviously do good for the blood banks, and then you get some some labs included in that. It's it's a wonderful company. I'm I the day that I found that I I was like just going down the rabbit holes of reading it and I was really pumped about it and excited to share. So a good company offering a good product uh and and I think that uh our listeners can take some some good use of that as well. Sweet. Sounds good, man. my only other update is that this next weekend, not like in three days, but in ten days, um, we have a huge event with uh a bunch of friends. We're bringing in like ten of our friends from the West Coast from our twenties and about twenty of our friends from Boulder and we're renting a house in Denver and throwing a huge party on Saturday with a pool and stuff, and then we're all going to the lane eight show in Denver. that evening. So huge weekend Thursday through Sunday, raging like I'm in college again. And uh I'm actually quite excited for it. Not excited for how I feel the week after, but I'm excited to connect with all my people and introduce some new ones to the experience and uh feel a little bit like I'm back raging again in in Pacific Beach, you know? Yeah. That's exciting. Yeah. What do you got? thing uh in September, September 18th, 19th, and 20th, I have my refining hypertrophy seminar. three days in person here at the refinery gym in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the weekend before the Olympia. So if you are already traveling for the Olympia, Salt Lake City is only a six-hour drive from Vegas and come learn. is myself and Ben Broughton. Three days in person, three full days. Um, very, very excited about that. So you can email me or DM me on Instagram for details and I'll I'll send over the full brochure for you. Sweet. That's awesome. Cool. I'm ready to dive in if you are. Yeah, man. Um, okay, cool. So this topic is called progression models. That is somewhat accurate. I think another way of describing it would simply be like different rep schemes and ways to like organize your training so that you can progress in some manner. And it would be prudent to note that all of these are just essentially like different ways to. to get stronger and build hypertrophy that of ultimately need to still follow the same parameters as the ways that we're all used to, which are linear progression or double progression. And I guess to kind of clarify what those really mean, they're both kind of ways to to just add weight and/or reps to the bar over time. Linear progression could be something as simple as Uh, you know, whenever I can, I add a rep. And when I get to a certain point, I maybe decide that I should add some weight. Uh linear progression might use a same rep target. So you might be like sixes or eights. And you simply just go until you can hit all your sets of eight, and then you add a little weight, and you just stay with it. You get all your sets of eight, and then you add a little weight. And this can take weeks, months, depending on where you are in your journey to add even a rep or to add five pounds or whatever. Um it can be quite monotonous. And then kind of related to linear progression is Double progression, which is essentially linear progression with a rep range. So instead of just choosing a rep target, you would say eight to twelve. And uh you would either, similar to linear progression, you know, keep a same rep target. And, you know, when you can do all your three sets of eight, then you go to three sets of nine, then you go to three sets of ten. And eventually when you get to 12, you're like, okay, I'll add weight, drop back to eight, kind of build my way back up to 12. Um, there's also dynamic double progression. Which essentially double progresses each set individually. So you might have like one set, the first set where you get 12 reps, the next set where you get 10, and the next set where you get eight. And then in that model, you would increase the weight only on the set that hit 12, and you would keep the old weight for the set that was 10 and 8. And you would essentially just keep that old weight until one of those sets worked their way up to 12. And then that set would also add weight. Um so they're basically just different ways to have some sort of pattern or system. To a way in which you can add weight and get stronger and see that happening over time. Um, while those are both the most proven and utilized methods for 100 years or whatever, since people have been lifting weights, one of the main problems I see with those models is that we often see form compromised because the pursuit is simply the ability to add weight or add reps. And while that is actually correct, like Like that that is the pursuit. No matter which method you use, you have to add weight or add reps eventually. It can be a little bit myopic to always just be focusing on did I add weight and did I add reps? And that can result in compromising a form, or even if it's not compromising a form, like some little subtle minor adjustment. You and I have talked about this a lot on the podcast before, like. You've noted how now in your chest work you're trying not to like arch your back and lift your chest up. Because what you've learned is that when you do that, that is a compensation and it's taking some of the stress off of your chest, but it's allowing you to increase the load or the reps that you're achieving. That is not what we want to do. Like we don't want to go from eight reps to ten reps to 12 reps. And then notice that, oh, we're arching the back a little more, or the chest is elevating slightly, or I'm getting into more scapular retraction, or whatever it is. We need to make sure that form is consistent. And so a lot of these other methods that I'm gonna talk about using are really just ways that I've found to get myself and my clients to focus less on the necessity of always increasing weight or increasing reps, where maybe you can simply do it over a longer time frame. Is is probably probably the best way to say what these what these subsequent methods do is they just allow you to progress over a longer time frame in a way that isn't just every session you're going in being like, did I beat the logbook? so I think that would simply be my intro to this episode. And uh anything else that you want to like kind of spit back or add there? I do have one and you and you touched on it lightly. Something that I've seen a few times from rather, you know, what we would consider notable people in the industry in terms of their physiques, right? The th I wouldn't necessarily call them like thought leaders or anything. Uh and I've seen them say using the same weight in reps as, you know, the previous week, but with better form and better control is progression. And I kind of strongly argue against that because it's You shouldn't be compromising your form in the first place, right? Which is i I I guess I'm I'm kind of putting, you know, the care the the carriage before the horse. But yes, you like if if last week I got eight reps, but I was like wiggling or you know, arching my chest or launching out of the bottom or bouncing and I do it cleaner this week, yes, that is a progression, but you shouldn't be allowing those things to happen in the first place. So uh that I would say don't allow the form compromises. For the reps, just get the honest reps that you have earned thus far. And then when the adaptations happen, you will have more honest reps once those have occurred. Yeah, that's really well said. And I like the clarification of that, like that is in fact progression. We just don't want to actually put ourselves in a position where that needs to become the progression. Yeah. And to Steve Hall does does something which I guess is kind of like what you're saying, uh, where he'll actually let his form get a little carried away and get a little bit compromised in the pursuit of adding weight, and he'll do this for a number of weeks in a row, and then he'll do what's called like a form reset. And he'll go back to like perfect form again, but it will be um with slightly more weight than where he started with perfect form the last time. And so that s fits into my model of thinking, this whole idea of let's make progressions last over a longer period of time. While I still don't think that compromising form is necessarily the best way, it obviously is something that can work as long as you have a structure that gets you back to good where you can ensure that Your progress wasn't simply just because you compromised for Yeah, and I I guess I should also elaborate it's not that I never ever compromise form because something that I I will sometimes do is let's say I have A see a seated upper back cable row, right? And I have three sets. And last week I went 12, 10, 8. And this week again I went 12, 10, 8. So there's no progressions that I've made. On that final set, after I get eight strict ones, and that's where I fail, I might throw two to three cheater reps in there just to add a little bit of extra stimulus in the hopes that there is now a sufficient adaptation. And next week I can get a clean nine. But it's I'm doing that at the end. And not compromising like an entire set of form or anything like that. Yeah, I do the same thing. Um, it's kind of like I've discussed before when I I've I still do partial reps on short overload movements, but I used to be like obsessed with it. And that would be like something I would do is okay, you match your reps from last week, but now this week we're gonna add in three partials, which we didn't do the prior week. Kind of the same ideas using some cheat reps, but you note that in your log. You don't count that as 11 reps, you count that as eight plus three or whatever. Yeah. All right, cool. well, the first method that I want to talk about is waveloading. And the reason I want to start with this one is because this is the way that I pretty much train my clients across the board. Like I would say very rarely do I not take this approach with clients. And it's what I use for myself when I'm doing proper six week or eight week mesocycles, like during my off season where I'm not biking as much in the winter. I usually will follow this model as well. In the summer when I'm only training twice a week or whatever, I tend to just kind of push things a little more consistently week to week because I'm not really focused on progressing so much. but I do love this model. So uh the first way I want to talk about it is for strength. And this is not the way I generally use it, but it's a good way to kind of like think about it and conceptualize it. So a really popular one for strength, which we used to use in the CrossFit days, is the 432 waveloading system, which essentially has you do sets of four in one week. Or uh or one session and then three in the next week or the next session, whatever comes up, and then two in the next one. So you're increasing weight each of those, and then you'll maybe do a D load week or whatever. And when you get back to the fours, the idea is that you're doing your fours with five more pounds than you were the prior session, the prior time you were doing fours. the way that I like to do it to kind of for hypertrophy purposes is instead of manipulating reps like that, I like to manipulate the RIR. And so a typical way that I would set up a messo for a client is depending on the movement, we'll just say it's a big compound like a squat or an RDL, it would go something like four, three, two, one, zero, zero R I R. So that would be a six week messo. In week one, you're doing four R I R. In week six, you're ever week five and six, you're at zero R I R. And you would essentially stick with zero R I R until you can no longer progress for a week. And then you would deload, go back to the four R I R and kind of work your way forward again. Much like with the waveloading example with the strength, the idea is that when you get back to the four RIR week, you're essentially able to do that with more weight than or reps than you were able to do six weeks or eight weeks prior. so again, it's just extrapolating out this progression over six weeks instead of every session getting in being like, I need to beat the logbook and try and move forward. And so it is possible that you get back to that four RIR week and You add five pounds and you're like, crap, that was three R I R. That wasn't four R I R. I think that would be a good sign that maybe that didn't work for you that time, for whatever reason. Your c recovery metrics were not in place. You weren't sleeping, you weren't eating, maybe you're in a deficit, you have a lot of stress. Like a number of different reasons you could look at. But what I've found with clients almost across the board is that that progression over those six weeks, as long as you're not in like a serious caloric deficit. Everyone gets back to that first week again at four R IR and they're then able to use more weight. And then they get to three RIR and they're using more weight. I often will think of it as like the four RIR week will use the weight that the three IR R IR week used the the meso before, and then the three R I R week will use the weight that the that we used for the two RIR, the meso before. And so if you're able to do those and see week to week that the RIRs are lining up where they should, then that's a sign that things were working and you were progressing. So That's the way I like to do it. I just think it's very simple. It works really well for my clients. It builds in while while it's not building in progression week to week. It's building in novelty in a way that people seem to enjoy, in that I'm going in and and I'm adding five pounds to the bar. And even though I'm working harder potentially, it's still enough of a change that it keeps them engaged week to week. So uh I don't know. What do you think of those models? One thing that I and I remember, of course, using that. Would you say that that approach typically lends itself a little bit more favorably to strength versus a a pure hypertrophy pursuit? The 432, the one that's based on the rep scheme, is for sure better for strength. But when you're talking about the 43210 RIR thing, I think that that's just as good for hypertrophy. You just need to do it in hypertrophy rep ranges because ultimately what you're looking at across the board with a 432100 RIR thing is you're averaging two R I R or one to two R I R across the six week period. And so you're right in the range. You're just having a couple weeks in the beginning that are easier, which I personally, from like a mental standpoint and from a physiological standpoint, like my body and mind just do really well with knowing that I'm not pushing up and grinding against failure every single week. Um, and so having those kind of easier weeks in the beginning are both refreshing physically and mentally, and then allow you to put a little bit more in on the latter weeks as you're pushing up against failure. Yeah, makes sense. I I have one more follow-up question. How do you find with your clientele that this model or or approach lends itself better towards lower reps or higher reps in the hypertrophy rep range, or are you kind of see it being the same across all Well, it's simply just because it's harder to detect RIR, the higher rep ranges that you use. I think for accuracy purposes, it probably works best in that like five to ten rep range for most things. And that's tends to be how I program most things for my clients. when we use higher reps, I tend not to use higher RIRs because we know that you need to be closer to failure and we know that the lactic. acid accumulation and the burn is going to deceive you a little bit. Um so if I'm doing something in that like 10 to 15 plus rep range, I'll usually never program anything under call it like two or three RIR for bigger lifts and one R I R for smaller lifts. But I also almost will never program a big compound like lower body movement for that rep range anyways. Um So it kind of becomes a non issue and then you just assume that if it's a higher rep range, it's gonna be closer to failure. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, thank you. cool. another one I wanted to throw in, and I don't really think of this so much as progression model as just different ways that you can organize your set structure. And so we have eight by three or three by eight. We have five by five, we have four by six or six by four, we have two by ten or ten by two. Um the nice thing about all of these is that they pretty much all get you within that twenty to what is the highest one? Twenty to twenty-five rep range. And I've always found over my life that 20 to 25 reps of like working reps seems to be the right number for a muscle group. Um, I mean, you can certainly push it higher if you're using higher rep ranges. Most of these, as you see, are like three by eight or lower, ten by two, ten, two by ten. Like in most cases, twenty to thirty reps is about the right number for a given muscle group. And then you'll have people like Brian who are doing 200 reps for a muscle group and it throws my my whole theory off. Um but and obviously it depends how you organize the structure of your training. Like if you're doing upper lower split, this might work because you're hitting each muscle group twice a week. If you're hitting each muscle group once a week you might need more reps for that session. Obviously sets of 20 are different than sets of five. So take all of that into account. But what I've found is that somewhere in that like 20 to 30 rep range for a given exercise seems to be a sweet spot for me. Um and that is just something that uh seems to play out across time too. Like like five by five is a popular rep scheme. You see that a lot. You see three by eight a lot, you see two or three by ten a lot. Um so anyway, just throwing that out there as different kind of ways you can structure that and then If you're implementing this into your training, one way that I really like to go about it is that you want to hit the final set of your sequence with whatever RIR in store. So if I'm doing eight by three, I might say I want the final set to have one to two RIR. Well, that would mean that the first set probably has like four RIR, and then you're working set to set, working as fatigue builds, getting a little bit closer to failure, and the final set has whatever your RIR cap is. And then the progression would be that once you can hit the final set with said RIR cap, that's a sign that you can increase weight across the board for all the exercises the following week. So not really a progression model, just something I wanted throw out there. Um, okay, my current favorite model, and this is what I use a lot in this time of year that I'm in now, where I'm biking a little bit more, but I think it can be effective in in any state of your training journey. you just might manipulate volume a little bit or or extra because the volume is kind of dictated here, maybe you would add a dis a second exercise or something like that. And so what I do with this one is I use two-week microcycles. And in the first microcycle, in week one, an exercise would be done for two sets of five to eight reps, basically butting up against failure. so for an example, I might use 140 pounds. And I would get seven reps and then six reps. Both sets are pretty much close to failure. Boom, that's set aside now. In week two, which is the second week of the microcycle, that weight that was used in week one would be reduced by 10 to 15%. And you would do four to five sets of five to six reps. So if I take 10 to 15% off of 140 pounds, we'll say that takes me to 120 pounds. And I would do five sets of five there. Those sets obviously have some RIR because I could do seven with 140. So doing five is not going to push me up against failure. But what it is doing is it's creating a lot of really good quality volume for me that are all within the range of effective, call them effective reps where you're close enough to failure. I'll also generally slightly reduce the rest periods. So, where I might take three minutes between my sets on that week one where things are going to failure, I might just take 90 seconds or two minutes on these sets of five when I'm doing the higher volume week. And um the higher volume week essentially would just progress as the week one progresses. So once week one goes up to 145 pounds, I would then need to increase the week two to 125 pounds. and what I really love about this model is. Is again variation, a longer parameter for by which you're expected to progress. So you can lock in form a little better. The the second week with the higher volume, the 120 week, it really is a week to extremely focus on execution. Like, what do I need to do to execute this movement so perfectly? And then translate that into the heavier week on week one. So that when I go back to that week, the form feels like it did when I was doing the slightly reduced weight week. and then I also simply like the physiological and mental fact of not having to push to failure and try to beat the logbook every single week. So by alternating these weeks, it's a way of keeping things interesting and still getting a hypertrophic effect via volume instead of via intensity. And it just kind of alternates like week focused on intensity, weak focused on volume back. Question here. Actually, I have a couple questions. For the week two, the volume week, do you find it's most helpful to choose a a number of reps that you're going to do ahead of time? Like in the example of the fives? Yeah, yeah, I do. The I wrote four to five sets of five to six reps because I think that also sort of depends on what you achieve in the week one. So if I had achieved eight reps in week one instead of seven, then that might have pushed me to want to do six reps on my sets in week two. Um because the weight's lower, you know, so it's already making it easier because I'm dropping reps and then you're also dropping weight. So uh that I kind of go by feel. Like I don't always have a set structure of like, well, if I achieve this, then I'm gonna do this. Um, a lot of it is based off feel, but but generally when I go into it, I will have a set idea. I just don't necessarily determine what that's gonna be ahead of time. Yeah, that that's that's super helpful. The reason I was asking is week two is a little bit more of turn my brain off in real time because I what I can what I could foresee happening is pushing the because week two is the volume week, intensity needs to be down. But if I don't go into the set saying I'm gonna do five reps, I might end up getting, you know, getting a little bit too antsy and doing like seven reps or six reps to go completely d D defeating the point of doing more volume and less intensity. Yeah, that's what I was asking. And I mean, like, even worst case scenario, if I did do seven with 120, it's like the prior week I did 140 for seven. So that 120 for seven is still a significant decline. And yeah, I I would say that like my target is probably to hit about four RIR on the first set of the volume week. And then by the last set, that might be to like, you know, one or two RIR or something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that. I like it because it's it's like hedging your bets, right? Because you have like your intensity people, you have your volume people, and then you might find yourself a little bit more of a moderate in between, and then that you can take effectively both approaches and you, you know, s uh sl s what's that word? Spread it out yeah, over over two weeks. I uh I actually find that on the volume week, even though I'm like obviously way further from failure, I get a much stronger subjective hypertrophy stimulus, if you want to call it that. Like a a better pump, uh, more blood flow to the muscle, more like burning of the tissues, etc. Uh, and so even though the other ones are to failure, because the volume's lower and the rest periods are longer, it feels more like a strength thing. Whereas the volume week feels a little bit more like a hypertrophy thing. Yeah, yeah. I l I like this. Yeah. All right. next one is rep goal progression. This is essentially just a more fun way of doing double progression. So you can throw it into that bucket. But you might say something like, I have three sets and I want to achieve 30 reps across these three sets. So in week one, you might go like 10, 9, 7. So you get 26 total reps. And then week two, you might go like eleven, nine, seven, and you get twenty-seven. And then eleven, nine, eight, you get twenty-eight. And then the final week you might go twelve, ten, eight, you get thirty reps. That would be a sign to, you know, maybe you deload, maybe you increase load and restart back over, something along those lines. I don't need to spend a lot of time on this one. I personally don't use it a lot. Um, but I do think it's an interesting way of approaching progression with just a kind of different focus than the normal way of like I mean, it's still adding it's still adding reps, but I guess it like gamifies it in a little bit different of a way. I like to use this at later parts of the training day when my focus is waning a little bit because it's it's a little bit more rudimentary and it it it's simple. Right. It can be, okay, last week I got 27. Now I need to get 28 across this. So like something that I'd like to do is if I'm putting sometimes I'll put just push-ups as like a final exercise. Works really, really good dips. It works really, really good, pull-ups, things like that, where it's I will use a little bit more basic, kind of like body weight esque stuff. And I and I like to program in that for that because it's you can't fuck it up really. yeah, totally. Um, okay, the next one is a a favorite of mine and I think yours as well. this would be like top set back off set or reverse pyramid. Rever top set back off set is essentially if you're doing a reverse pyramid but only with two sets. Reverse pyramid generally entails having three or more sets. So an example of reverse pyramid might be top set six to eight reps, then you reduce the load ten or twenty percent and you do eight to twelve reps. And then you would reverse reduce the load another 10 to 20% and do 12 to 15 reps. These would all be with full rest in between them, so they're not drop sets or anything like that. ah and then a top set back off set would probably just eliminate that third set. It would just be like, hey, top set six to eight reps, drop the load 20%, then eight to twelve reps on the second set. And I love this approach. I think it's probably actually maybe the most popular approach that I see among trainees on. The internet on Instagram, tough to say. It guess it depends what kind of culture you're part of. But this is certainly a very popular method. Um, I love it. I love the fact that the top set becomes the main focus of your progression. So it's almost like you're using the top set on a linear progression or a double progression model where it's just like, hey, if I can increase reper load here, great. But I only have to do it one time because the second set that I'm doing is obviously going to be impacted by the first set. And oftentimes when I'm Doing this structure, I won't even really record or if I record it, I won't put much uh thought into whether or focus into whether I'm increasing the second set or not. It's like the first set is the one I'm focusing on for progression, and the second set is the one I'm focusing on for stimulus and really refining like execution, et cetera, et cetera. I know you love this model. What do you think of that approach? Do you track both sets equally? What is your approach there? I mean, I definitely track track them both, but one thing that I found in in my own uh personal use of the top set back off, my back off is severely always impacted by the top set. Uh and and I and I've kind of known this about my I'm not a repeated performance type of person. And oftentimes, like let's let's use an example. I do 200 pounds and I get Eight reps, right? And then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna reduce load 10%. And that's uh what 180 pounds, right? Is that right? My math is not good. Okay. I still get eight pounds, I still get eight reps. So uh I've I've found that it it it I have to really reduce the back offset if I wanna move to like a higher rep range and Yeah, I it's just it all very oftentimes I might get like one extra rep above it or and I and then I kinda find that I might just do better just two top sets. It really feels like I have a very large range of of a of a decrease in r weight of where I'm effectively kinda gonna get the same amount of reps. Yeah, that's interesting. Do you do you find that that changes based on like the type of exercise? Cause I could see on like that squat pro you did earlier that you posted on your story, like I could see that being an example where you could reduce it ten percent and get the same number of reps, whereas like something like a pull down or a bicep curl, like maybe you reduce it and you're able to actually get a few more reps out of there. Yeah, and what I've actually been doing because the I'm just in a really s stressful period of my life. It's very positive, right? Which I should also put out there, but stress is stress, right? We just moved. We we literally after we bought two cars within 24 hours both after trying to find them and couldn't and stuff, and then they both popped up. And that was like a whole day. It was one of my check-in days. So that day I found myself at the gym at literally nine PM at night to get it in. So like I said, life is good. I'm happy. It's high stress, positive stress. What I've actually been doing is A little bit of the opposite, especially with with some new movement. So that squat pro that I put on my on my story, I'll I'll I'll get to a a weight that I can do for maybe a little bit more reps, like a like a 10 to 15-ish, and then I'll go up from there. And like, okay, I want to get like seven or eight now. Whereas if I kind of go into that seven or eight first, it really kind of smokes me because it's a lot uh lot more absolute weight on the bar or on the machine. Whereas if I kind of do the opposite approach, kind of like a back off then a top set, I'm exposed to less total weight on my system when I'm in periods of like higher stress or just a little bit run down. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And I actually didn't even put regular pyramid training on here, but I totally probably should have because it's something that I actually use a lot these days. And uh Berto, our our buddy Rib Alberto Nunez actually made a post about this like a month or two ago that really resonated with me. And he was talking about how the normal pyramid system has lost a lot of allure in in recent years, especially with natural bodybuilders. And regular pyramid would be like 15, 12, 9, 6 or something like that, 12, 10, 8, 6, whatever. Basically starting with an easier higher rep set and then adding weight and getting closer to failure each set that you go. And and it's lost favor for a number of reasons. I actually did a post on this uh on my own Instagram a couple of years ago where I was staunchly uh writing vehemently writing against the pyramid system because by doing those earlier sets and fatiguing yourself with this higher rep work. You're essentially creating an environment where you're not able to use as much weight on your top set. Now, a few years ago when I wrote that post, the whole focus in training uh research seemed to be mechanical tension is the thing. And if you're using less load on your top set, you're compromising hypertrophy. The reality is that the muscle is a dumb piece of meat and it only knows tension. So if you're more tired on your set of six because you did 12, 10, 8 prior and you can use less weight on your set of six. That has no bearing or impact on the amount of hypertrophy that you're actually able to create, but it has the incredible benefit of actually warming your body up and warming your joints up, warming your mind up so that you're able to create more intensity on that top set. and so for me personally, like I use these higher rep pyramid style sets almost every session now. Uh, and I I've found them like invaluable. So While that's not a progression model, I do think it's something worth noting. I I I agree. And unfortunately there it takes it takes time to learn your body because it I've I have found it's not the same across the board. It really, really is not for me. And then there's other things. Like I I don't want like I want my knees to stay as as healthy as they possibly can. And I can't do sets of like six anymore on a on a on a first set, even with slow control. Like my knees will just ache for days. But I find if I do a set of 15 And that they're super warm and stuff, and then I can do a set of seven at a reduced capacity. Then if that seven was first, I get the stimulus and I f and my and my knees don't bother me. They'll be a little tender for like they're a little tender right now, but that's to be expected. And then tomorrow they're good again. And I've also found different parts of my body just don't handle volume the same. Like I can train my back for hours, literally, and I'm fine. I can only get away with like five sets of quads in a session, technically six. I did three sets on the leg extension, two sets on that Roger Squat Pro, and then I did one set of body weight split squats after that. And I was holding on to the machines to walk out of the gym because they were so blown up and I had to make Jenny drive home. And Yeah, it it just it I but if I did five sets or sorry six for my back, I'd be like, I'm wasting my fucking time. Nothing's gonna happen. But after those quads, I'm like, I can't do anything else. Yeah, interesting. How many reps did you do on the body weight split squat? I wanted to do twenty five, but I only got eight eighteen. And I assume those are like no paws at the top, like piston style reps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I would fail and then I had to get on my hands and knees and grab the machine to climb back up and go do the next thing. Yeah. I love that. All right. well, moving on, we have the volume progression model. This is kind of like taken from the old Mike Isratel approach. Now, I think there's a lot of negatives to this approach and and some positives. To break it down, week one would essentially be say you do six sets for a muscle group. Week two, you do eight sets for a muscle group. Week three, ten sets, week four, twelve sets, week five, maybe fourteen sets, D load. restart over again, something along those lines. Really depends on what your volume landmarks are. Like for me, this would be a pretty aggressive uh ramp for some muscle groups and would be like totally fine for others. Kind of to echo Aaron's point that if this was my progression for quads, I don't think I would survive. Um whereas if this was my progression for like back or lateral delts, it would be fine and maybe even a little bit underwhelming. So That's one thing with volume landmarks is you kind of have to assess the volumes that you need for each muscle group. You can't just use a blatant, an arbitrary like six, eight, ten, twelve type thing across the board. one big thing that people always point out about this to criticize it is that progressing in volume isn't actually progression. And they're 100% right. Like if I go from six sets to eight sets to ten to twelve of say, standing cable curls and inclined dumbbell curls or something along those lines. Like if I'm keeping the same weight and the same reps, but simply increasing the amount of sets that I'm doing, that is not in itself a hypertrophic progression. However, if you get back to week one, which is your six sets, and then you're able to do those six sets at a slightly heavier load than you did the six sets in week one, the prior mesocycle, and then you're able to work that forward and Every comparable week increases from the other comparable week, then that is a hypertrophy progression. And so I don't want to sit here and foo-foo this volume progression idea at its basis. It just has some drawbacks in that primarily that fatigue builds really, really fast. Because if you're progressing volume across all body parts, even if you're having different volume progress. Landmarks for each body part. Like even if my quad progression went two, four, six, eight and my back progression went 10, 12, 14, 16, it's still an overall total systemic increase that is increasing linearly, like largely week to week. And you're almost doing double the amount of volume by the end as you would be in the beginning. So I think that there's a lot of things that can kind of halt your progress here and uh the fatigue monster being being the big one. And that was the thing that I always experienced when I would try to train this way back in the twenty seventeen timeframe. How about your thoughts, Aaron? Yeah, I I very much echo your your sentiments. Like, will it work? Yes. I believe it does work. Is there a lot of collateral damage that comes along with that? Yes. Your training durations ramp to be kind of un unreasonably long. And if you think about that model over like let's say you run this RP or volume progression model over like six months. It it impacts your schedule because day week one, your your training sessions might be 45 minutes long, but then every fifth week, they're now ramping to an hour and a half and onward. And then over each you know six weeks of your life, that amount of time you have available and that that adds up. Uh one thing that you said that I think we we should echo or s or die dive into a little bit more, progression. What we mean by progression is as effectively performance increases. And we're not necessarily getting performance increases. You're just doing more work, which generally will correlate with hypertrophy if if we're, you know, speaking very uh rudimentary, but your your performances aren't increasing. If anything, they'll actually, like you said, start to decrease because of that ramping fatigue that will just mask your performance as you get into you know weeks four every four weeks. So again, will it work? Yeah, I I I I don't like it. Um personally, I I won't give this to clients or anything. Sometimes like if I if I want to get us to three sets of an exercise and that's what I think is a good volume, but they are coming from A completely different training style. Maybe they were on a on a hybrid th thing where we were running and doing, you know, minimal work. I might ramp over a few weeks to get us up to volume and then I want to keep that volume for ten weeks or or something like that. But yeah, I I don't love it. I think it's really fallen out of favor and I think that's for good reason. Yeah, totally. okay, the next one is density progression. And this is one that I've seen written about for many years. There was an author on T Nation back in the early two thousands that used to write about density progression, and I can't remember who exactly that was. But essentially the idea is that you decrease the amount of rest that you're taking between sets, but you don't increase the actual like weight and rep target numbers. So I have two examples here. First one would be say you're doing 30 reps with 225 pounds. In week one, it takes you 10 minutes to do that. So in theory, you could say that you're doing three reps as an em. So three reps takes you 10 or 12 seconds, then you rest forty eight to fifty seconds, and you're able to hit 10 sets of three in that manner, and you get 30 reps done. It takes you 10 minutes. Well, the next week, instead of Doing it at the top of each minute, maybe you're doing it at the 55 second mark. So you're knocking five seconds off of each one. So now it's taking you around nine minutes to do your 30 reps. And then in week three, you would knock another five seconds off. And now you're doing those uh in 50 seconds or so, around eight minutes of time. And then you can obviously progress further from there. You could Go back to week one and do it over 10 minutes, but do it a little bit heavier. Uh, obviously a number of different ways you could approach that. and then similarly, another way that you could approach the same idea that I just said is instead of having set rest periods where it's like, I'm gonna do three reps and then wait till the top of the minute and then do three reps and wait till the top of the minute, you could just say, Hey, I'm gonna do 30 reps as quickly as humanly possible. And so maybe you knock out like six on the first set. And then you rest a little bit and you get like four, and then you rest a little and you get three, and then you rest a little and you get two, and then you rest a and you get one, one, one, one, one, one, one. And eventually you get to 30 reps. Like that's another way of doing it. I think that's a little bit less organized and has a little bit more like disarray and kind of randomness to it, make it a little bit harder to potentially progress that week to week. but that would be another option. And uh while I do think that this is a very viable method of essentially. getting stronger and increasing the hypertrophy stimulus. Um I I don't love it and it very much reminds me of the CrossFit days. Like I keep thinking 30 reps 225. It's like that is a a uh grace, heavy, clean and jerk workout. Like take 225, pick it up off the ground, put it over your head, do that 30 times, do it as fast as you can. Three months later, do it again, try and do it faster. Like it really has like a lot of CrossFit vibes to me. and I don't know if uh that is exactly the way that I want to trade. Yeah, I I've seen this. I was well as the entire time you were speaking, I was thinking there's someone who popularized this and a very, very old school guy, and I was thinking, I was thinking, I think it's Vince Gironda who who started with this sort of thing. by eight. His thing was eight by eight and I I don't know that it was But they I thought they tried to condense the workout down over time. Um, anyway, I I've seen this a lot. I tried it once and really just disliked it. Um, and the reason why, and I'm playing devil's advocate here a little bit, the efficiency improvement it implies strength or hypertrophy progression, but it's not actually like tested or evaluated, right? which I think is it's more of a a novelty thing that I think can make sense for certain things. Like let's let's say, for example, the example I think of is you're you're training in a garage, right? You're like the the garage warrior sort of thing, and and you don't have a lot of equipment and you want to keep your baseline strength and then you want to do some, you know, maybe accessories at the end sort of thing. This is just kind of a shotgun way to to get some accessories in without um drastically increasing your gym time about. maybe muscle groups, you don't really care that much about the the overall progression of them. But my main Piece that I I don't love is it lends itself, you're almost encouraged to compromise form because of the time density constraint. Right. And and that's kind of what she said to the CrossFit style. Rep thirty of that 30 reps from ground to overhead does not look like rep one and two did. And there's it it almost encourages form compromise because you're trying to beat that that clock. No. No, I think that's a really good point. And kind of goes against all of the things we were talking about about like, you know, keeping form identical to ensure that the gains are et cetera. Um, so it looks like this density stuff, at least on T Nation, from my memory, was a number of different authors. Uh, primarily Charles Staley and Christian Thibodeau, but it looks like this guy, Jeff Gervitz, also wrote about it. And then there's a couple other authors that also wrote about it. So it seemed to have a Tayday kind of in the early two thousands. Alright, cool. Um load cycling. Now, this one is actually I it's kind of how I used to think about linear progression, but it's done session to session a little bit. It's like it's kind of like a pyramid. So week one, you would do 12 reps, week two, you would do 10 reps, week three, you would do eight reps, week four you would do six reps, and then you delo or restart back at week one again. And this again is the same idea I've been talking about, which is just extrapolating out your progression over longer periods of time. So when you're at week one and you're doing 12 reps, when you get back to week one again, you want to be doing your 12 reps at a slightly heavier weight than you were doing 12 reps the prior four week period or whatever, the prior period you're at. That whatever you guys know what I'm saying. and so you would just continue that week to week across the board where each week when your rep target lowers, you would increase that load compared to the four or five week period prior. So I think that's a super reasonable way to train of program cycles like this for clients and For my general programs over time. One of the things I really love about it is that it keeps it interesting. Every week you get to get stronger. Even if you're not actually getting stronger, you get to have the sense that you're getting stronger. And so I think that helps increase motivation. and yeah, variety is just interesting. Yeah, I think I think these styles lend themselves very well to your people who are more new to training where they're not necessarily in love with it yet. They're trying to to build that that love and it it's injecting novelty to where things are changing and stuff. Because when you're new to something, if it's really monotonous and you don't really know if you love it, i if it the monotony will probably lend you to not uh put as much time into it or find it as enjoyable. Yeah. It's also probably worth noting that, you know, we had Mike Milner on here a couple of years ago to talk about neurotyping. And he noted that which it's obvious it's obvious when you think about it, that people just have different psyches or neurotypes and will respond slightly differently to structure in their training. And so some people like legitimately need constant variety or they get bored and they want to quit. And other people are just like Variety makes me crazy. I need to do the same thing every single week and make sure that, you know, things are consistent. And then other people fall somewhere in between. And so at least through running these group programs online that I've been doing since 2017 now, I've seen all these spectrums. And when you're trying to write a group program for the masses, you realize that the majority of people are somewhere in the middle. And so even if potentially the best thing maybe is to just do the same thing every week and just when you get stronger, you add weight, you know, like a lot of people just can't do that. And so they end up quitting training or hating training or moving to a different program. And given that we know that consistency is the number one thing that's going to elicit progress, more than any of the, you know, choosing the perfect rep progression model or whatever, um, I've found that using a lot of these different approaches. Simply allows people to stay more engaged while also having some like tangible landmarks every five to six weeks to allow them to see that progress is. Yeah. I've I've a lot of reservations around that, but I think maybe that's an episode we can unpack at di a different time. Not necessarily around the rep ranges, but around the I should say. Not not the specifics of it, but because we all have our defaults, right? But like let's say, like I know I have defaults that do not serve me for things that I want, right? And it's easy for me to say, like, well, my default's this way, so that thing must just not be for me. But if I wanted it bad enough, I would change my defaults because of the importance of said goal. But that also then assumes that doing it in the the way that you're doing it or that you believe is is it that it should be done is somehow subst substantially better or notably better than doing it a different way. And and I don't know if that's necessarily accurate either. Like I I I don't know if you take someone over a multi year period and one person is following one of these like slightly more interesting progression models and another person is simply just putting their head down and showing up and doing the same thing every day. I don't know if you end up at a different place years later. So I don't know. It's it's an interesting discussion. agree with you there because one of my favorite things I think that you've ever said on on the podcast is there's a lot to be said for volume and effort, right? Over a long enough time period, if you just try really, really, really hard consistently over years and do enough, you're pretty you're gonna get pretty jacked. Right. I I I guess I I should have uh maybe use I think resistance training is a poor example of of what I was trying to say. I think like diet would be another would be a different one. Like bit more relevant, I would say. Yeah, that's probably true. Um, and I think it extrapolates out to a lot of other things in life too. So I yeah. Okay, cool. the last one I have here is simply just to talk about bio reps or rest pause training. And this is something that I probably don't use in programming a whole ton, at least in a as a progression model. Um, it's like, okay, I'll just explain what it is. So assume that you have a a set where 11 reps is what you get on your first set, and then you rest 20 seconds and you use the same weight and you get four more reps, and then you rest another 20 seconds, you use the same weight, you get three more reps. You've done a total of 18 reps. The idea would be that the next time you do this pro this myo rep or rest pause setup, that now you try to get 19 reps or 20 reps or whatever across these different sets. I I think the use of rest pause or my rep is Extremely valuable for people that are time crunched and need to get a high stimulus in a in a small amount of time. I just personally haven't really used this as a way where every single week we're hitting the same rest pause progression and we're simply saying, okay, you did 18 reps next week. Now we're gonna get 19. Okay, we're gonna do the same thing again, and now we're gonna get 20. I just don't really use it in that manner, but I think for somebody that is uh consistently time crunched and their sessions are generally made up of these type of rest pause or my rep setups across all of their movements, th this would be a reasonable way to try to instill progression across the the week to week pr cycle. Yeah, I like that. I do use this fit fairly often, but usually only on certain exercises and again in that time crunch. For example, I have an up I have a a basically a chest and back day on on Fridays. It is o because my back I'm very, I'm very, very much focused on on improving my back. I only have two chest exercises at the end of it. One of it's a fly and one of it is a is an incline press. So on my I do one straight set on the fly and I try and beat that, right? And then I do a a three-sequence rest boss as as my kind of second set, and that gets me a lot of stimulus in a short period of time. And then I move on to my press. But it's mostly time constraint driven. And then are you because you're doing it every week, are you looking to try to progress like one rep in like are are you trying to see that progression within your rest pause set sequence? Yeah, that's what I consider. If I can get an extra rep over the three, I'm happy with that. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So I think this is super valuable and that's a really good use case of of how one might implement it. cool. Well that's really all I have. I've kind of said this over and over throughout the episode, so I'll just be really quick and just state that all of these methods are essentially ways to keep things more interesting and progress over longer time frames. So instead of a week to week beat the logbook, it's just really a way to progress over like a four to eight week period without having to try to beat the logbook. Um Every single time. So I love that for that reason. And I find that it is a bit more engaging for myself and clients. I really love that that example from the beginning where uh I have the two-week microcycle with the one week focused on intensity and then the one week focused on volume with lower loads. And that really seems to be super effective for me because it really instills all of the principles of hey, just simply show up and beat the logbook, but then every other week you kind of get that that. back off deload slash hypertrophy stimulus thing. Um and that I find really valuable. So uh a number of different things you can kind of pick and choose from here. And if you guys have any questions, drop them into the comments of YouTube or shoot us a DM. Sweet, all sounds good. Uh thank you, Brian, for for organizing this one. It was a very, very well done episode. I think it was val valuable. As always, guys, any questions for Brian or myself, you can leave them underneath in the comments. And we'll talk to you next week.