What is going on, guys? Welcome back to Eat Train Prosper. Today is episode 221 titled How Much Is Enough? A volume dose response. So we have covered volume a few other times on the podcast. This episode is going to be a little bit different. If you would like to go back and revisit any of those, ETP167 is personalizing your training volume. ETP188 is titled Quality Volume. And most recently, in episode 207, we have the training volume model. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different in deciphering how much is enough, how that may change over your training career, or if you are a coach, coaching clients, things that you can potentially look out for, and fundamentally a lot of realizations from myself. And Brian has, of course, his own personal insights that is going to build the backbone of this episode. So As always, Brian, what's going on? Yeah, I'm excited for this episode. I always love talking about training, so regarding me, I really only have one update.~ I did my first Instagram post in a few months yesterday.~ I just I can't anymore. Like, I don't know. I find the whole medium to be such a struggle. And of course, you know, I I understand it's necessary for for running businesses as well. But anyways, I did my first post because ~ I've kind of been employing a rep scheme over the last few months, even. that I've really enjoyed and it's been so good that I've just kind of stuck with it. And ~ it's gone along with kind of some changes in my training as well, where I started with a full body program and quickly realized, man, full body is for the birds. That shit is way too hard. and then briefly went to like an upper lower which was three times a week. And then that kind of got biased out a little bit more into having a day that's a little more chest back focused and then some shoulders and arms tacked on, and then the shoulder and arm day with a little bit of back and chest tacked on. and then having obviously the leg day. In the middle. And so I've actually been running with that for a number of months now. And it hasn't aligned with what's been in Brian's program because I always struggle with this when I write Brian's program, is like it's supposed to be what I'm doing, but I also want to give you guys like a legit full cycle to get through. So if I decide to quit my program after three weeks, I still want you guys to like finish the full six weeks. so that's where we are kind of now is I I committed to having you guys do two mesocycles of this cycle.~ I split off way earlier because full body isn't for me.~ and now I have this new program with the 15105 rep scheme that I wrote about, and it will be in the app under Brian's program because it's what I'm actually doing. ~ starting in a couple weeks once this cycle ends. So if you want if you're curious about the 1510 five or have any questions on that, check out my Instagram post and that's really all I got. I do have I have I have I have a personal update and it actually is a personal one. I know we normally speak about, you know, our lifting or our training and and those different things. Ironically, with Instagram, Jenny and I post our posted our ~ pregnancy. announcement like a week ago, something like that on Instagram. And it was really just a way to let our, you know, o extended friends and and that sort of thing know that we weren't gonna personally message. Of course, in in peak irony, the post goes absolutely viral, which is very interesting because it's You know, I spend so much time trying to create this like really quality content to for you know my personal brand and coaching. And you get mixed. You know, some are successful, most really aren't. And then we went outside on the on the porch and spent all of 12 seconds putting together this little video and posted it, and it just skyrockets. So that was ironic in and of itself, but not not the purpose. Reaches a bunch of strangers. And and what happens there? We get some, you know, positive comments, and then it somehow reaches the depths of Instagram racist people. and then there's a lot of racist comments on there, which of course are obviously all generated ~ towards me. And it was a very full circle moment, and I'm sharing a little bit of obviously back history with myself. When I was younger and I was less sure of myself and didn't have the confidence and stuff that I do now, a lot like those comments would really bother me because it's it's an attack on something about myself, obviously, but it's something that I have no control over.~ and what was very nice this time, it was it realized it's like, this like literally does not bother me anymore. I don't care at all. And in fact, I found a lot of the comments absolutely hysterical. and I was like, did people actually feel this way?~ but it was very nice for me to just like not care. And because younger Aaron, it really would have bothered me. So it was a little bit of maybe a per personal growth, maybe it's maturity, maybe it's confidence, but something that really would upset me when I was younger. I realized, I literally. I literally do not care about this anymore. I've become successful enough in my life that racism is literally something that just does not impact me whatsoever. And it was very, very nice to finally feel that way. Yeah, that's awesome, man. I'm really glad to hear that for you. And in this way that the world is so polarized, I feel like there are microcosms of that experience just happening constantly. And so the ability to be able to have that thicker skin in a way, but also that self confidence ~ could be something that other people in the situation would be able to benefit from as well. Yeah, so that was that's pretty much the the the only one. And then I guess I do have one more, a little other personal one. This is a Los Angeles Raiders coffee mug. This is my oldest possession. This is from like 1989 or 1990. Wow. It's it's original when the Raiders actually did move to ~ LA. And I haven't used it. It's it's been in storage since probably like 2019, and this is the first time I'm using it. So I I get very sentimental about old things. And and I saw it and I was like, yes. And then I was thinking, like, I've had this since I was probably two years old, three years old. ~ and now I I still have it and it's still in pretty decent shape. That's amazing. And it's even older than my Hoyas beanie, which I got when I was eight, that you guys see me wearing on the podcast. I got that when I was eight and still wear it to this day, which is also kind of wild, but the coffee mug, the coffee mug is older, so Yeah. Okay. Cool. All right, let's talk fitness. So I I guess what I will start with is is what prompted this episode for myself. So I want to have a a conversation around the volume dose dependence like per muscle group. ~ And not not per muscle group as a whole. There's some I should not say some. There's often correlations with that, for example, the lateral delts. can take a lot of of volume. We all pretty much know that. But more importantly, can this change over time for you as as a lifter? And specifically, I want to speak about through as your skill set as a lifter improves and you are able to Produce stimulus for a a desired muscle group through a variation of exercises. Obviously, some exercises you are going to have a better connection with than others. Can you change your volume needs through your precision of performance? And a couple things. First of all, we're obviously speaking through the lens of hypertrophy, we're not getting into strength, which has ~ typically lower volume needs if I were to make a blanketed statement. A range of weekly set volume, direct versus fractional sets, which does play into role because it's it's a technicality of how are we app how are we actually defining you know seven where where it could be~ a few different approaches to defining that, and then frequency, of course. So what I've noticed recently since really settling in here. My quads, which have always been I've always been a little bit maybe ashamed or or underwhelmed at at how small they were relative to other muscle groups. That has changed. They are now on par.~ And because of my personal physique and development goals with competing, I'm in men's physique. I have board shorts on. My my quads, my hamstrings, my glutes are not evaluated at all. So I've reduced to only once per week, which would be typically, you know, pretty suboptimal, but it's it's a trade-off that I am happy to make. But what I have noticed is through intelligent exercise pairing, but really spending so long yearning to to create that desired stimulus and trying to improve my performance with my quads, I finally landed there. And the amount of volume that I need for my quads to be absolutely in wrecked in shambles for five, six days is so low that it's really started to have me question things around lagging body parts, for example. What does make a lagging body part? Is it purely genetic? Is it performance? Is it an ability to mentally connect with the desired musculature that you want to connect? And it's really opened my eyes a bit and had me start questioning things a little bit, a little bit more than I previously have in the past. So obviously with Brian's incredible training mind, I want to have a conversation with this about him and for all of you guys to listen in as well.~ muted. You're you're muted. Yeah, I think it's gonna be awesome. And I am very much looking forward to it. I also agree with your kind of introduction there, specific to the quads, in that the amount of volume that it seems that I need to create the stimulus does seem to be going down and down and down over time. And that in itself is very interesting. But I also wonder. Like I can't separate out that from the fact that all the movements that are done for the quads primarily, aside from a leg extension, are going to be significantly lengthened, overloaded. And so As your precision increases and your ability to actually lean into the stimulus that's at the length and position. Because in the early years of training, your natural inclination is going to be to move away from accepting that pain in the bottom of the the rep because that's the dangerous spot. That's where you are susceptible to ~ yes, the the the the pain in the muscle, you're susceptible to getting crushed down there and not being able to get back up.~ the amount of force that you have to exert is extremely high. And then that doesn't even add in the element of, you know, if you're going all the way to rock bottom and using your glutes and adductors to help you get out of the bottom, that's also a different stimulus than you would get if you were taking a more refined approach to your quad training and staying more in the active range of motion for the quads. Not that the quads get less stimulus when you go to rock bottom. But they are ~ it's going to bring in the glutes and the adductors, which are going to ~ make the movement significantly more fatiguing. So the so there's that aspect too.~ but there's just so many elements that go into this, and my brain is already kind of like, okay, lengthened, shortened. ~ you know, looking at back training, like while volume needs might change over time there for sure as precision increases. There's going to be a limit to that based on the fact that most of those movements are going to be short overloaded. And so you can only generate so much stimulus from one set. So anyway, those are just kind of initial kind of thoughts coming at you, but take the conversation wherever you want. Yeah, let's let's start with the quads, because I think we're we're already decently settled into this part of the conversation. And I will share some some things that I've accepted ~ of recent because there's been times where people have told me things and and I've listened, but it never really, really landed. And I would say with the quads specifically, or let's say a squat pattern movement. There's a lot of variables that go in, right? So there's think about like stance width is one of them, okay? And then you have the ~ internal versus, I mean, I don't really want to say internal rotation of the foot, more neutral to external rotation is is pretty much what what the conversation really would be. How much of that is there? Where are your knees actually tracking? Are you sending your knees wider? Do you send your knees more straight out over the toes, like knee heading, you know, right above the the big toe and whatever the the second toe is, I'm not sure the name of that one. And like you said, when the knees go out wider, we tend to recruit more more adductor. ankle flexibility, right? There comes into it. And whether we're elevating a heel, whether we're not. And then the thing that's been most productive for me is of the last eight-ish months, foot pressure and really paying attention to where I have pressure in my feet. And I'm a little bit ashamed to to admit, probably two or three years ago, my my good friend Kyle Baxter, who we've had on the podcast, We were tr we he did a very simple evaluation of me. And he's You don't you can't pronate. And I was like, What what you mean? He's like, you you have no pressure on the inside of your foot and your big toe. It's all on the outside. And then he's like, Let me see your shoe. Right? I take off my shoe. My shoe is not worn on the inside at all. The complete outside of the soles of my shoe are are are worn. And he's like, See, you you do not put pressure on the inside of your foot. It's all on the outside of your foot. And I think it was my knees started bothering me.~ Maybe close to the end of prep or right after prep, something like that. They they were just like pretty achy in in in cracking and stuff. And through my observation of, hey, I'm gonna try and squat a little bit different, just to make my knees stop cracking as much, because I was getting a little bit worried. I realized if I kind of internally rotate my knees just a little bit, but which really is pronating harder, pushing down my big toe really well, that my knees felt a lot better. And that kept my knees more narrow and not out so wide. And I started noticing my quad stimulus would go way up. And eventually I I was I got curious. I was like, hmm, like that's That had a crazy leg day. Like I my legs were like locking up by the end of it. So I like repeated it again and I was like, I'm on to something here. And now, all these months later, it was the the cue was really just what Baxter told me years ago. It's like, you need to learn how to pronate properly, distribute your foot pressure. More evenly, and lo and behold, like that was the final thing for my quads. And now, which prompted this episode, in my one training session of legs per week, I do three sets of a leg extension. I'm fortunate that I have the prime plate-loaded leg extension. I load it mid-range and short. specifically to to target that that lockout position because my VMOs are underdeveloped relative to the rest of my quads. That change has really I I mean first set there, my legs are completely my my VMOs are completely blown up. And the beauty in that is when you have, when I I should say, have a really nice pump in blood flow to my VMO, my squatting patterns feel a lot more powerful and natural per se. And then I have two sets of a bilateral squat pattern. It is. It will vary between the Rogers or not, it wasn't Rogers at the time, pendulum strength training systems, the original hip press, the arcing hip press, or the Rogers power squat, maybe the the pendulum. I I just I just swap it. It gives some variation and because Quads are really all bonus on my physique. It allows me to provide a little bit of fun and variation into my training. I do two sets there, and then I will do one set of bodyweight split squats and incomplete rest bodyweight split squats minus the final set of my bilateral squat pattern. So I do three short overload, mid-short on the leg extension, two lengthened, and then a incomplete rest of bodyweight split squat. That's it, six sets. And my quads are in shambles for days. Usually five, six. And they're only recovered right to train them again. Do you think there's any possibility that because you're changing, rotating between those last three exercises or the last three sets of the It's it it's the last it's really the last it's really the middle two sets. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. So so the middle two sets. But I you're still giving I'm I assume you're taking those to failure or zero to one RIR. You're you're you're obviously more precise at the way that you can perform You're able to generate an insane stimulus. I wonder if by simply changing that exercise out and rotating it week to week, your repeated bout effect is not happening, and that's why you're getting crushed for five days. Not to say that that's a bad thing in the pursuit of hypertrophy, but more That maybe that sort of explains why you're getting crushed for as many days as you are. I think there's obviously some role into that. Like we know the novelty aspect. But over the last I've done the pendulum hip press four times. I've done the Rogers squat three times. And then I did the nebula once. So it's at over eight weeks. I've done three and half of those have been all in the same one. And it yeah, it in and I would say the the nebula p yielded the the least s soreness, which which was the most novel. if I'm if I'm really honest, 'cause I've only done it once.~ so I I definitely do think that there is some some to that. But even before that, just if I'm really being honest, those three sets of leg extension, the way that I've performing my quads are shattered already. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I that used to be my favorite combo would be Okay. to start with leg extension as like a mostly short overload movement and then go into a squat pattern. And I would just feel like the stimulus to the quads was like out of this world. Like you just can't beat that.~ the reason I brought up the repeated bout effect thing 'cause like I only alternate between two machines. I have the pendulum and then I have my little like hack press thing and I'll do leg extensions just like you. And ~ I alternate week to week, pendulum one week, hack press the next, and kind of go back and forth that way. But there was a and I get sore. I just like you, I get sore for like three or four days after my leg sessions. And I'm only doing, I guess you'd call it like four or five working sets too. So I'm kind of in the similar range to you. But there was a period of time where I wasn't using the hack press and I was just using the pendulum every week.~ For whatever reason, Kim was in the gym with me, she was using it, or a kid was in there, whatever. ~ and I stopped getting a sore. So that's the the main the rain rationale I was using for that question was just kind of like, Hey, if I just simply did leg extension and pendulum every week, my soreness was significantly less. And I actually felt like it was kind of weird because I would be like, I'm not getting sore. That means my accession was less effective in some way. So there's kind of like an association that we make between how crushed we feel subsequently and And the effectiveness of the session, which you and I have debunked, of course, many times. Like we're both well aware that that's not actually true. But it is also interesting that in the pursuit of hypertrophy there is almost something like valiant about wearing that armor of, you know, I crushed myself and I'm sore for like this many days from this. This is crazy. I think more so than how sore I am after, I will judge it based off of okay, the session is ending, I'm in the parking lot walking to my car, how do I feel? 'Cause that Yeah, totally. The stimulus po yeah. Like there's a a post workout window where you still feel a certain level of stimulus as you just go about life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And and the days where I know it was really produ I mean my legs are so blown up. I'm literally like holding on to things walking out of the Yeah. I feel silly. But I don't f there's not a single other muscle group that feels like that. By the time like all for example, chest, which which I I said is one that I really want to improve, I do my chest, I do some lateral delts, I do Triceps. I've really been trying to cut down my training, total training time to about like an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes. By the time I'm leaving, my chest isn't really pumped anymore. And it's maybe been maybe 25 minutes of la of lateral delts Mm-hmm. and triceps, probably closer to 20, if I'm really honest or less. whereas I get home from the drive, we're now talking fifty minutes later, sixty minutes later, and my quads are still completely blown up. So it's it's the immediate post training stimulus just really lingers there. ~ go ahead. So is is your argument then that that that then the chest might just need more volume to get to that same point? Or is it simply that maybe other muscle groups just can't get to that point at all? That's the entire conversation that I want to have because my chest volume is probably more than ~ no, it's more than double. Because I train it two times per week. I do I have a dedicated push session. I have, let me count, three, two,~ so it'll be sorry, three, five, seven. I think I have seven on one day. Maybe eight if I'm missing something off the top of my head. And then on the other day I have six. So I have double. And I would say the stimulus is maybe sixty five to seventy percent of what I get out of my quads. Yeah, I I think that's right. I mean, I I resonate with that experience. I actually I don't know if there's a single other muscle group that I've ever call it the post session stimulus for as long as I feel it for quads. and that's just been like persistent throughout the training career.~ in my check-in forms with my athletes that I coach, one of the questions is How long after training X muscle group did you still feel the stimulus or like the post workout effect? And almost never do people say that they feel it much aside from in their quads. So it seems to be a universal normal, right? ~ one of the examples I use is like after a tough delt day, when you go to wash your hair in the shower, you know, two hours later, do you still feel it like? slightly more difficult or noticeable to lift your arm up overhead and and you know wash your hair. ~ and I have certainly felt that at times maybe in my early days, but not really so much anymore. And it doesn't really matter how much dealt work I do within twenty minutes or so it's kind of gone. And so even if you were to take your situation and you know, you do chest and then you do your delts and your triceps. So maybe like, what if it was just a chest day and you just went in and you blasted chest with like 20 sets and you didn't split it over two days? You just like the way that you do legs, you do all your all your volume for your legs in one day. You could do three and three. Like you could do three leg leg extensions one day and three sets of squatting another day and now you have split that and maybe you aren't as crushed. So maybe the comparison would be like, what if you were doing all of your chest sets that you need for the week in one day and then you were leaving the gym? maybe there's a little bit of an increase there, but it's not exactly maybe comparing apples to apples. I think I will try it because the the whole reason I'm only training my quads once per week is because they're a body part that I don't need to improve, and I want to put more days and dedicated volume to the body parts that I want to improve. But then what I'm noticing is the body part that I don't Right, right. to improve is yielding the most stimulus out of all of them. The what I what I also like that you brought up is the the question with, you know, post adult day when you're washing your hair. Never. Never have I felt that. And that it's it's been very I've been going through a lot of ~ of a mental journey around a lot of these things. Specifically what which I briefly mentioned earlier in the podcast is these lagging body parts. Why are they lagging body parts? And what I what I am happy to kind of share, and and I may be wrong with this, and it's perfectly fine, but I'm developing this theory or belief, I think is a better term to use, that our lagging body parts are lagging because we have not yet figured out how to actually contract the muscles really, really well for ourselves. ~ and I think Because we talk about things like volume, right? We say, ~ you know, whatever, six sets versus ten sets versus fifteen sets, but it's under this assumption that the performance in precision of set is at one. But that's not how it is. Right? Like if you wal if you just go to a gym and watch people do lateral raises, right? Dumbbell lateral raises, cable lateral raises, how poor. Is your average execution of a lateral raise? Very poor, right? You get a lot of people that kind of flap the wings, right? A very big bend in the elbow, and they're just kind of like doing a wing flapping thing. That's really poor. So when someone's like, well, just your delts need more volume, maybe. Or what is probably more appropriate is you really need to learn how to perform the movement in a way that's Helpful for what you really want to do. And that is that's the answer that I have for for right now. And for example, I I spoke about it a few weeks back that I'm really doubling down on the ribcage positioning for my rows and my chest. And it has been improving. I would say I have about a 25% improvement, ~ which has been great because it's been the the thing that has been most productive for me of let's call it the post-PED starts, because obviously that is is is way over and I don't want to make it sound like that's not. But where else can I really improve the performance? Right. And I will use an example, lateral delts. What I have found to be the most Productive lateral delt exercise is actually a very suboptimal lateral delt exercise. And I think I mentioned this on the podcast a few weeks ago. I am doing a leaning dumbbell lateral delt raise, where I'm leaning away, right? Effectively taking away the lengthened portion of the movement, Mm-hmm. and that generates much better of a stimulus than anything I do with a cable ~ or a machine lateral. And the reason that I think it does is because I have a proclivity to kind of right? And when you're here, you can't really shrug because you're shrugging kind of away from the direction that the arm moves. So by me basically just putting my body in a position where I am disadvantaging my natural inclination to do something poorly, I'm able to get a better stimulus now. Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean the delts are going to be a relatively short overloaded ~ muscle that you train anyway, regardless of how you ~ any of the lateral raise variations at least. I guess pressing would be would be lengthened. But any of the lateral raise variations, even if so we have the strength curve and the resistance curve. Strength curve being what the muscle naturally would do without any resistance. And so when you look at a lateral raise, when your arm moves away from your body, it gets weaker. So the strength curve of this movement is such that even with no weight, you're weaker as you get to the short position. And then when you add weight, you can manipulate that in the resistance profile a little bit, but you're always at the peril of the strength profile, which is going to be that as your arm raises, you get weaker. So even if you go and manipulate the cable and set it up you're still at that peril, right?~ so by U training with this focus on the short position, I don't think A is that big of a detriment. And B, ~ we know that short positions allow people to connect with their muscles better. ~ this is why most people that start training suck at training legs there is no short position. They can't actually feel like in squats. We'll call it squats, sorry. legs. Yeah, yeah. ~ squat patterns. But you can they can't actually like really feel a contraction occurring or their leg working. They're just going through this range of motion, like sitting down and standing back up and they're not really sure. What exactly is working. And as you go through training career, you become better at refining that movement, like Aaron has. And now it's not just elevating my heels and sending my knees forward. It's in slightly internal rotation. It's pressure in the big toe. It's all of these other, it's it's shorting range of motion. I mean manipulating range of motion. So there's all of these different aspects that then go into the bucket that change how we train and how we receive stimulus from these movements. So so I think all of that is super interesting, very relevant. ~ one other thing that's back on a prior thing we were talking was the the way that you walk out of the gym with your quads crushed. A lot of that has to do with even though there is fatigue mechanisms mechanisms in there, a lot of that is blood flow. It's like your legs are walking funny because they're pumped up with blood bad. ~ and I'll just point out that when you're training upper body, like doing a push day or a pull day or something like that. You're spreading blood flow across a larger area into multiple muscle groups. And so that might also explain why doing multiple muscle groups at a time across the body can disperse that blood in a manner that makes that individual muscle you're talking about feel less stimulated. Whereas if you were to be doing a bro split with only focus on one muscle group in a given day, all of the blood flow is being supplied to that area. And as someone that just came off doing a bro split from December through February or November through February or whatever, I can definitely say that I have not had my muscles feel as fatigued for as long post session as I did when I was doing the bro split. And now that I'm doing more of this kind of mixed training,~ those sensations do tend to dissipate quicker post session. Yeah, that makes sense. I I think what I will do to play devil's advocate is do a literal chest stay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm really honest, I I train my triceps because you should train your body parts, but I I could probably literally not train my triceps until I started a prep and everything would be virtually just as just as good.~ a couple other questions I had Yeah. ~ About this. So if you were to ~ I I guess let me back up. I think for for the listener out there to to To decipher where you may be on this spectrum, right? Get curious with some of the body parts that you want to improve more than others, and have a hard evaluation of your execution of them, right? Because then that is something that you actively have control over, which is positive. And then look at Devalu deprioritizing the other muscle groups that are not in that priority to then see what you can squeeze out of a simple reduced time. Right? Like the reason I'm training my legs once per week is because there's only seven days in a week. I want to go hiking one day. I need a day off in the middle of the week, and the other days need to go to higher priorities, right? Which is what effectively unfolded all of this. And then because I know my hey, I get one I get six sets at quads. That's it. And I have to, you know, take it to the house per se. So it's a little bit of necessity driving that I know that~ you know, it's Tuesday, I had a crappy kind of chess session, but I hit it again on Friday and I can get it again. It's it's we when you remove that, it's necessity or you know, it's a potentially a completely wasted week of a or maybe not wasted is a strong term to use, a a a completely unproductive week for X muscle group. Mm-hmm. One other Yeah, An interesting real sorry, real quick, just an interesting idea I go ahead. just had would be like in the case of you or anyone that has, you know, strong muscle groups and weaker muscle groups, it might be an interesting experiment to write a program in which you have like three of the days of the week where each day is just one of your areas that you really want to bring up. So it might be like you have a quad day, a chest day, and for you like an upper back day. And then your fourth and fifth days, if those are relevant, you know, could be used to like double up if you need to on some of the the muscle groups you want. Or they could simply be like touch up days where you're handling your biceps, triceps, hamstrings, glutes,~ and and lateral delts or whatever other muscle groups aren't part of your priority. ~ and that way you can kind of have that same like soul focus experience on the muscle group you want to bring up similarly to what you've experienced with quads. Yeah, in full transparency, that's what I've done with my back days. My back days are by far the most volume and longest days, and I only have one lat-focused exercise on each day. So on the first session I have a it's effectively an old flex fitness machine emulates a one-arm dumbbell row. It's actually very cool. And then on the other day I have the prime plate loaded unilateral pull down. That's it. So I do two sets, Mm-hmm. I do four sets for lats per the on the week. Yeah. Yeah. So so even when you're Everything else is upper back specific. spending that much time and volume on your back, you don't walk out of the gym with any of those kind of similar sensations that you were talking about. And what it's it's frustrating because it's I know it's something that I'm And it's if some I I try to video at least one set per per ~ per week or per session on upper back, and oftentimes I can I can see it, but I can't feel it in the moment. And then I'm usually able to correct it for set two, but it's something that I just can't fully grasp it yet. Some exercises are better than others, but ironically, the chest supported ones are some of the worst because that I think it's that extra rigidity. I just can't move how I really want to or need to with it's really this the how how I'm doing scapular retraction. Mm-hmm. That's really what it is that I just don't get. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I honestly like it's just it's tough to get to that deep sense of like post workout fatigue without doing some highly movements. And so ~ back suffers from the same problem that lateral delts do, which is that the strength curve is short. It doesn't matter if you have a prime machine that you can set to like a lengthened profile, which is great. Like it certainly helps the cause to fail more in the length and position. But the fact that the strength curve is that you're just weaker as your arm pulls closer to your body in back movements. It just becomes that much harder for you to go into those like deep inroads of fatigue. And that's why you kind of need to compensate with volume. Like if you were to do even near the volume for quads that you're doing for you wouldn't survive. ~ and so back has its own kind of issues there, but I think that that at least at some level explains why you can't get that post-workout sensation similar to what you're getting with the quads. I think that's a a very, very good point. And I actually have a c a follow-up question for you there. Do you think that it could be actually productive? Because I'm fortunate, the refinery gym here is it's absolutely incredible. And I I should point out Numerous people have asked me, are you gonna open a gym in Utah? And the answer is like, no, there's so many good ones. Right, this gym's great. Yeah. I I I found another one yesterday. I think there's six like bodybuilding, private bodybuilding gyms within a 20-minute drive of my house, which is absurd, right? And so the question being. That's awesome. Do you think that it would be worth an an experiment potentially to set everything short overload, like the prime stuff really short overload? Where then in the lengthened positions I'm moving slower until Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I feel that resistance start to catch and then really focusing on that shortened position. Yeah, I think there's probably value in that, but I wouldn't do that at the exclusion of also doing it more lengthened. So the way I would probably approach that if it was me would be that my earlier sets, I would probably do like one or two short overloaded sets, but then I would make sure to finish with a set that's more lengthened, which kind of like really like stretches out all of that fascia. And ~ I don't know, to me, to me that that setup seems more effective. Like with my rep scheme that I use now, that 15105 that I love, you know, the 15 is around five R I R. So it's I mean, it's it it burns. Like you're it's not like I couldn't do five more reps, but like the 15th rep still burns pretty bad. There's a lot of real intense focus on what my scapula is doing because the weight is light. ~ so that set I would certainly set short. Mm-hmm. And then the 10 rep set as I add weight could be ~ short as well or it could be kind of like a mid range type thing. And then when I get to that five rep set where I add more weight, I would go lengthened ~ to get the benefits of the low rep work close to kind of like the powerlifting idea where you don't need to necessarily hit failure because the weight is already so heavy and it's lengthened. Like I think if you're doing a five rep set that's shortened, short overloaded, it almost doesn't work. Because like you just you just can't you can't get there. but when you're doing a five rep set that's lengthened, it's different and you can get you can get an effective set ~ at one R I R or failure or whatever and it just is a is a bit of a different fatigue mechanism. So that would be kind of the way that I would approach that in your case. Yeah, 'cause y what you said kind of sparked an idea where I have this unique situation where I'm pretty sure there's enough prime strive or lengthened ~ for example, a magnum biangular row, which is lengthened overload by nature, I could probably put together an entire day where I could manipulate the resistance profile on every exercise because there's just that much equipment. Yeah. Yeah. So do your high rep yeah, high rep sets short and then low rep sets lengthened and I then you get the best of all worlds there. Yeah, I might give that a go tomorrow and and write it down after the podcast so I remember. So Okay, let me make sure there's nothing else that I wanted to talk about. And one of the things that I a note that I did have here With ~ I forget which which paper it was ~ that came out ~ a few years back now and we we typically have a for hypertrophy, right? The hypertrophy correlated curve more is more volume is better until it isn't, and until it isn't is pretty much a factor of time, right? ~ tr number of training days per week, recovery capacity, and and and and and but like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, there's an asterisk there. With the assumption that each set and your performance of set is contributory to the stimulus and performed at a high enough degree. And you may find yourself, right? Like I've been training for whatever, I'm 38, 15 is when it was like taken seriously enough. And I'm really still learning things that a row isn't necessarily a row. It's not just row equals 1.0 stimulus. You can do a row where you get a a 0.6 stimulus. And if that is your historical case, as is mine. Your back's probably not a strong point, right? Or or particular parts of your back. Let me let me clarify because lats I connect to really well. I could probably do unweighted pulldowns with my hands and just contract my lats and generate a pump, right? Mm-hmm. I can't even get within the realm or the stratosphere of trying to do that with my upper back or traps or something like that. So ~ it's not necessarily back. There there's regions, different various parts that that correlate there. And I would encourage you for your weaker body parts, instead of trying to just do more, more, more, break them down, re-evaluate. Watch some videos of yourself performing it. Where do you really feel it? Warm up really, really slowly, incrementally add weight. Find out w at what approximate rep range or weight does just moving a weight take over, right? That's another thing that I forgot to bring Mm-hmm. up with my quads. I've found that working like nine reps up is generally much better because it's still light enough where I'm not just Fuck, let me just move this weight, right? And then it becomes pressing through my heels really hard and and just getting it moved where I can still focus on the positions, toes down, a little bit of internal rotation. So there's probably a rep range that may work better as you're really working through learning how to produce the force in the best case for the muscle that you're trying to yield the stimulus in. Yeah, I actually ~ with that fifteen ten five and kind of that example we used of you going short and then finishing with the length and set, like even though I don't have the ability to manipulate resistance profiles similarly to you do, ~ in my training, the I essentially do it my version of that, which I think would extrapolate out to what you're suggesting for people to do, which is that on my fifteen rep set of a movement, if there's a short position. I will pause for one or two seconds in the short position and make sure that I really feel the muscles contracting that I want to be contracting. And then the 10 rep set will be no pause in the short position, but still really focusing on what all of the mechanisms of movement entail. And then when I get to the five rep set, it's like you said, like you you're not gonna be able to feel all of the things happening because the weight's just too heavy. So at this point, I'm now focusing a bit more on moving things from A to B with keeping form consistent. but you can't actually have that sensation based approach that you might be able to at higher reps. And so to your point, I think there's extreme value in doing that and holding the short positions on movements where you can, but you just have to make sure that those are higher rep sets. And that's also just another reason that the fifteen ten five works so well because it allows you to include all these various elements into each exercise that you perform. Yeah, I love that. And that that really, really is true. Just by using like an an undulating ~ rep range across every Yeah. Yeah. exercise, you you're really exposing yourself to, hey, you can focus a little bit more on on the squeeze, the short position here, and then by the time you get to the five, Yeah. it's you you just can't, or you're using you're doing five reps with Yeah. a weight that you probably would be using for like ten or something like that. Yeah, and it sort of by doing it the right way, so to speak, for the higher rep sets, is it sort of ingrains like a muscle memory and a motor pattern in so that even you get to that five rep set, even though you're you are just kind of moving the weight and you're not feeling the muscles per se, like there is still a motor pattern involvement that is productive more because of what you did prior leading up to it. Yeah, it i it would be really obvious if you were completely changing your if the weight was too heavy because you just had two other prior sets that were Yeah. more by the book. Cool. ~ I believe that is everything that Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I wanted to cover in this episode. Brian, did you have anything else you wanted to add? No, I mean I guess like we we covered mm s the legs for sure, the quads. We ~ touched on the back. We very briefly touched on your chest training, we touched on the lateral delts. We didn't really mention like any other muscle group specifically. I mean I know globally like the the ideas we were talking about, the concepts kind of apply to everything, but more just like If you feel there's any value in discussing anything around any of those other muscle groups, if ~ like I I feel like the hamstrings are one of these weird ones where like I mean they can get pumped through leg but through hip extension movements, it's not really like they're pumped. They just kind of get like achy. they're just like some muscles are different. Like some muscles just don't follow the same kind of pattern, so to speak. But but the hamstrings also can get really sore from like a super low volume, much like the quads can. Yeah, I think it's a very good point to bring up. The hamstrings are kind of I I like to to use this analogy, even though it's probably not the best. The hamstrings are kind of akin to the bicep, and then the quads are a little bit more akin to the the tricep. Like a tricep pump kind of feels pretty good and and you can feel it, you know, but you're not like fuck something bad's gonna happen with the The the bicep generally f is positive but they can they can cramp kind of out of nowhere which is very very unpleasant and the same thing with the hamstring you're never like man I have a great hamstring pump it's they feel kind of ~ fatigue and then if you push them too much they're gonna cramp up on you and you're gonna have a bad time. It's it's like a very the sweet spot is very short before Yeah. it turns into disaster with the hamstrings. Yep. And that's largely leg curl related, especially short biased leg curl stuff. If you're really trying to squeeze at the end of a leg the the likelihood of of a cramp, I I say pretty rapidly in increases. and yeah you're you're not gonna do a ton of direct hamstring work unless they're really lagging and you have access to a lot of different hamstring curls because there's kind of two patterns. You have your hip hinge variation, you have your knee flexion, and then if you're lucky, you have a glute ham raise where you can kind of do a hybrid motion that incorporates both a slight hip hinge at the same time of of knee flexion. And that's kind of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'll ~ just quickly emphasize and double down on the analogy you made there because both the hamstrings and the biceps are are like pullers and involve flexion and the triceps and quads both push away and involve So they are they are more related. And then also one of the muscle groups in the hamstrings is called the biceps femoris. so anyways Biceps. Yeah. I thought that was interesting and an astute observation there. But yeah, yeah, the hamstrings are an interesting one. The biceps, the biceps though, do get like a really big pump. Like I would say the biceps actually pump for me even easier than triceps. and very quickly too. Like one or two warm up sets, even. And I'm like, my God, like there's so much blood in my bicep right now. but they also don't feel any post workout fatigue similar to kind of what you were talking about. Like it's it dissipates very quickly. Yeah.~ so yeah, I I I the conversation globally can be applied to like all the various muscle groups in their own unique way. but there does seem to be something about the quads that just are different in the the post workout fatigue piece. Yeah. And I'm sure it probably has, like you said, something to do with the release of blood flow and that sort of thing. And I think the challenge and the unpleasantness has to do with how most quad movements are are loaded, actually bracing through through the midsection, right? They're more ~ full body-esque or or larger contributions from other body parts that that are required for just performing the exercises there.~ and then that was one thing that I briefly mentioned about direct versus fractional sets. There's and quads and and glutes have have a little Mm. bit of carryover, but with upper body stuff it's gen you have a lot more fractional sets, Fractional sets going on. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. I also wonder whether there's some piece of the fact that we walk on our legs that makes it more tangible that we're feeling post workout fatigue. Like imagine if we walked on our hands and you finished like a chest and shoulder and tricep workout, and then you were like, all right, time to leave the gym, and you like started doing handstand walks to like get out of the gym. I think you'd be like,~ shit, like I'm really screwed up right now, you know? ~ so I think there's like absolutely a piece there that maybe we don't really think about because The way that we use our upper body isn't to push away from gravity. It's to like grab things and pick up things and lift things and like it's it's a very different ~ use case than literally like walking down or upstairs and having to to brace against the ground in that manner. Yeah, I I think recovery or not recovery capacity but just recovery. Right? Like as your legs need that recovery, we we use them a lot. Whereas if you're when your chest's really fatigued, like it's getting a lot of rest and not repeated use through that recovery period where the legs don't, right? Like you're using them immediately and almost always after. Yeah. Yeah. So you would think that they would actually be more resilient and should be able to handle more volume because of how they're constantly being used, but it seems to be the opposite in that maybe they're conditioned for these like extremely slow twitch activities like walking throughout the world and walking upstairs and stuff like that.~ and thus when they're trained in a more fast twitch manner with these heavier weights and lower reps, they are unable to kind of process and recover similarly. Yeah. Could be. Sure. Okay. was there anything else from you on this one, Brian? No, I think that was good. I love that we stayed under an hour. Yeah, I really, really liked this episode.~ I think it was a little bit we had to step through the paces t to really get going, but it was a lot of obviously per personal anecdote and things that man, I just even at ten years training I I did not have nearly the the amount of like introspection into my own understanding of of my body and being curious enough. It was a lot still just more by the book.~ maybe I need 10 sets instead of seven sets or something like that. So looking for answers kind of more externally as opposed to now I I do Mm-hmm. a lot of internal feeling, which I know it can be really subjective, but searching for not w is the answer where wherein lies the answer outside that I need to go fine, but in the answers in a way that I'm not doing something the way that I can do it or to the capacity that I could in order to yield more out of each rep, if that makes sense. Yeah, and I think this just follows the natural trajectory of human nature and curiosity and knowledge in that when you first start something, you are just trying to like hang on and barely understand the basics. And as you go through the journey and learn more and more, it's able to be broken down into little parts and you're able to apply more of your aptitude to better understand the more intricate details of the thing. Like I equate it like listening to music or something, or maybe even like composing music. And when you first start, you're like trying to get sounds out there. And then as you become more experienced, you're like, those aren't just sounds. Now I can add in this element. And then there's a new element and I can add in this element. And suddenly you're left with like this beautiful, complex masterpiece at the end, you know? And I think in many ways there's parallels to weightlifting and understanding your body and things like that too. Yeah, very, very well put. So all right, Cool. QA next week. guys. Yep, we're doing a QA next week, so be on the lookout for that. As always, ping Brian and I on Instagram. Any comments you have, please leave them on YouTube underneath. We'll talk to you next week.