June Instagram Q&A | ETP#160

We are back with our Monthly Instagram Q&A episode for June 2024. Today we cover 13 questions almost exclusively on resistance training. A bit about cardio, and one nutrition question about successfully evaluating plateaus in clients pursuing fat loss. Thanks for listening!

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Life/episode updates
14:42 - Now that you’ve used the Prime Pulldown 2.0 a lot more at N1, is it worth the price tag ($4950.00)?
18:44 - Home gym equipment wish list vs must-haves (Prime Prodigy HLP, REP Fitness Ares 2.0)
25:50 - Can you look at someone and determine if their physique is genetics vs hard work? 
33:17 - Is OHP/Chins superset going to limit strength due to long head triceps fatigue? 
36:23 - Looking to hire a coach for cardio. Know I need to do it for health/longevity, but not doing it. I walk 12-15k steps a day and lift 4x/week. Cardio is solely about health. Do you have any thoughts, or advice on coaches?
41:07 - What’s the next experiment? 
43:00 - A lot of talk now about Full Body and Upper/Lower splits being optimal if done properly (not necessarily volume equated). Paul Carter, Jake Doleschal, and Borge Fagerli being the most vocal. The idea seems to be something like 2 sets 3 times per week or 3 sets 2 times per week is much more effective than 6 sets once per week because of fatigue management and drop in effectiveness of each set during a given session. What are your thoughts on this?
52:37 - If going from training to failure to 2-3 RIR, how much volume to add to equate?
56:58 - Can magnesium combined with sugar (say like chocolate) cause lucid dreams resulting in poor sleep? I've noticed if I have the both together my dreams get really wild.
59:10 - Do you follow a specific protocol when clients in a deficit hit a plateau? I.e lower calories first or increase steps / cardio? Thanks!
1:04:54 - How much growth do you think you’d be leaving on the table by doing myo-reps on all movements for time efficiency? (Obviously not ideal for big compounds, but curious what you think that trade off would be in practice.)
1:07:19 - And relating to that, what would you consider would be an equal stimulus for straight sets vs myo-reps? For example, do you think 1 main/activation set with 2 mini sets would be similar in terms of stimulus compared to 2 straight sets, assuming the same proximity to failure on each set?
1:11:49 -  On a lat cable pulldown with one arm, how important is it for both legs to be on the same side of the bench?
1:13:52 - All of a sudden my forearms hurt when doing any type of bicep curl.

Coaching with Aaron ⬇️
https://strakernutritionco.com/nutrition-coaching-apply-now/

Done For You Client Check-In System for Online Coaches ⬇️
https://strakernutritionco.com/macronutrient-reporting-check-in-template/

Paragon Training Methods Programming ⬇️
https://paragontrainingmethods.com

Follow Bryan's Evolved Training Systems Programming ⬇️
https://evolvedtrainingsystems.com

Find Us on Social Media ⬇️
IG | @Eat.Train.Prosper
IG | @bryanboorstein
IG | @aaron_straker
YT | EAT TRAIN PROSPER PODCAST

Transcript

0:28

What's up guys, happy Monday for everyone watching on YouTube. Happy Tuesday for everyone on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and the other fringe podcast platforms that people may be listening to. Welcome to episode 160, our June Instagram Q &A for 2024. So we have a great list of questions, as always, submit from our followers on Instagram. Before we dive into their questions, Brian, can you kick us off with some updates, please? Yeah, I think probably the most interesting update and the one that I've been pinged about a few times to make sure I cover on DMs is this change in my kind of bike season lifting programming. So I've posted about this twice onto my story and each time I've had a number of people kind of reach out and ask me to expand on it. And so this will now be... the third iteration of my training since bike season started in March. So literally, I guess it's, it's very small changes to the programming. Like exercise selection mostly stays the same. I'm just kind of changing and manipulating the frequency and the volume, that each muscle group is hit with. So initially when I first started bike season, I was gung ho on this two full body days a week. that worked out for a little over a month and then full body just became daunting as it often does. We actually have a question about this in the questions today. So I think it'll be fun to kind of expand and address on that as we get going. so then I changed to, two upper body sessions and one lower body session. And that was over maybe eight days instead of over a calendar week. And that worked out pretty well too. I think the reason that I made the most recent switch away from that style is because it felt a bit monotonous to be doing the same leg day every time it came around. So it was like I had these two upper body days, which were great, but every time that I would do legs, it was the same exact leg routine. And I just kind of started to burn out on doing the same thing. I also think maybe by having that leg day solo, the volume was a little bit high because I was getting sore and fatigued and it was impacting my biking. And so with this new change that I just implemented, I think it's gonna solve the majority of my problems. So it's a five times training over two weeks, which is, you know, an average of two and a half sessions a week. And the split is gonna have two leg days and three upper body days. But the difference is, is that I'm actually throwing arms and delts on two leg days. in full transparency haven't really done much, very little arm and delt work over the last three months since bike season started. On the upper body days, I was finding that I was spending most of my time on chest and back work because I knew that arms and delts would get hit as auxiliary and I wasn't in this stage of life where I'm trying to optimize everything. But I also like, I don't want to not train delts and arms and I'm trying to keep my training sessions for sure under an hour, closer to 45 minutes because I want to save energy for biking. So this new structure basically is going to have a lower body day or we'll start with upper, an upper body day that's focused on chest and back, but obviously some delts and arms get hit auxiliary. Then the lower body day, which we'll have a little bit of delts and arms. And then another upper body day, this chest and back, another lower body day with some delts and arms. And then finally a third upper body day. And so those are my five sessions over two weeks. What this allows me to do is keep leg volume a little bit lower per session. So in the prior iteration of it where I would be doing pendulum and hack and leg curl and RDL and calling it a leg day, now I split those up. So I have like one, I either have hack or pendulum one of the days and I have either RDL or leg curl one of the days. So a little bit lower volume on the leg stuff, still keeping lower reps, really enjoying the sets of three to six on leg work. still progressing everything there. The progression protocol actually is another thing people reached out on. So on the hack machine I'm using, I initially hit four sets of two at 600, and then I backed it off to 580, and I did four sets of three at 580. And then the next week I bumped it back up to 600, and I did four sets of three at 600. So I really like this kind of step back, step forward process of progression where I back some weight off, but add a rep. and then add the weight, but drop the rep and kind of work in that cyclical fashion like that. So anyway, that is the update on the new training program and why I'm doing it that way. The delt and arm work that's gonna be on leg days is gonna be low volume and I'm just gonna fit it in between sets of legs. So while I'm doing a set of hack and I'm resting, I'll just do some delts and arms and then go back to the hack and then kind of fit that in that way. So I don't think I'm gonna see a lot of extra time on the training session. more just kind of a better structure and organization for me as biking season kind of continues to go. So that's the first update. Let's kick it over to you and we can come back to me for the last two. Yeah, my updates are pretty short. I like to be transparent about things, and that's really the only reason I'm speaking about it. If I were really honest, I don't have any updates, right? I did have a lot of people reached out to me about my positivity around the injury and those sorts of things. And the reason that I really focused on being so positive in the beginning is kind of very akin to our roller coaster analogy. Last week, I knew the bad times would come. Right? The poor mindset and stuff would come. And that really hit me on the back half of last week where what I think what it was is I felt fine, right? There was no more pain or discomfort or anything like that, but there was, I still couldn't do anything. You know, and I was, what do I fill my time with? And I really struggled. Like I have my business structured that the first half of the week is very, very, very heavy. And then once I get into Thursday, Friday, Saturday, it's really, you know, maybe some client on boards or something like that. Or if I don't have any, just responding to client messages and those sorts of things. So I had like very little to do and I just kind of moped and wallowed in was missed a lot of the forest for the trees, you know, and it was like even here living in Bali, which is was always a dream and those sorts of things. I just didn't care about it all. And I was maybe I'll go to the beach and I was I don't want to fucking go to the beach, you know, and I just kind of like moped and sat in my pseudo fake created misery in my mind and it sucked. It was like some of the worst days I've had in recent memory and it was like all just mentally created by myself and couldn't really escape them, which I hated. Fortunately, I knew come Monday I could not wallow in my misery anymore because I have a lot of clients that need me. And Monday was a lot better. I also went to the gym yesterday for the first time to get some movement in. I walked on the treadmill for 20 minutes and then rent rode a bike for 20 minutes and was like conservative because I was going to see if I got sore or anything didn't get sore at all, which is wonderful. Did it again today. And I thought it would like really make me excited going to the gym, but it's actually kind of not fun because it's like having this. It's like it's like your parents buying you a brand new car like three months out from your 16th birthday and you can't fucking touch it. So I what I. But I decided today is I like walk in, I keep my head straight. I don't look at anyone in the gym. I don't look at any of the gym equipment. I just like walk to the treadmill. I do that. Fortunately, the bike is like right next to the treadmill and I turn around and leave. And it was like, we're not looking at anything. We're not seeing who's in there. And it helps because like Monday was painful of like, fuck, I want to do these things and I can't, you know, and that that really was not fun. So those are my kind of not great updates. Any questions on that before I jump into my only other one? No, I mean, I resonate. Like, I'm not surprised by that. That was kind of what I was getting at last week when we were going over these updates and you were talking about your hernia and kind of your plan moving forward. And you had this air of optimism kind of in the way that you believed you would react to it. And I remember saying something along the lines of like, man, my whole day and my whole life is structured by these exercise breaks that I'm able to take and like, It provides the structure for my day. It gives me, you know, like all the things we've discussed, the catecholamines, the endorphins, whatever you want to, whatever you want to call it. Like I would severely lack those things. And so it doesn't surprise me that you're finding the same situation. four to six weeks, right. Six to 12 was what the surgeon said. I can all but guarantee I will be back in there requiring a second surgery before I wait 12 weeks to go back to training. totally. Totally. Yeah, or like, maybe just like start at six weeks and start with lighter weights where you don't have to brace so hard or anything, you know, like at least to get some lifting in. thought process is was to start it at the after four of like starting to test some waters and stuff a little bit and even today Like I pushed on the bike not super hard But a little bit and then I like I stretch I try and discover some discomfort and I can't which is good But yeah after four I will start with like some some very you know minor upper body stuff and then I'll kind of progress from there, but Cool. Yeah, I mean, that's all you can really ask for. And you just focus on like what you can control. And so control the controllables and try not to have anxiety or get lost in the notion of the things you can't control. So like, yeah, I, I, I empathize with you, man. It's super tough. I know at some point in my life, I'm going to be hit with something like that, but knock on wood, 26 years of training or whatever it is at this point, I've never been forced to take more than 10 days off. So, yeah, just kind of treading water until that moment comes. And then I only have another one. I've oddly had a lot of hunger, you know, and on Monday I started last Monday, really, I started tracking my food again. I'm averaging like 3600 calories and that's keeping me to 14 to 216 like floating floating in there. But I mean, like I am hungry and I'm really surprised at that because my activity is very, very low. Yeah. Well, there's studies showing that activity regulates appetite, right? And so like you literally, you see these studies of people that are sedentary and what was the study that I just heard about this somewhere. It was really interesting. They compared sedentary people to moderately active to very active and The sedentary people actually ate more calories than the moderately active people intuitively. And the really active people only ate slightly more calories than the sedentary people. So it's like the activity level helps you regulate your appetite to your needs, but being sedentary completely dysregulates it. It uncouples or decouples your appetite from your satiety. So yeah, I mean, that doesn't surprise me. It's very interesting to hear though. Yeah. pretty wild to like experience. Like I have no reason to be hungry again. I've done nothing but sit at my desk and do check ins and it's like 1 p and I'm like reaching for my third meal and I'm like, this is absurd. a, yeah, it's a boredom structure regulation, hormone signaling cascade of things. Cool. All right, sweet. My final two updates, I'll be quick. Biking is continuing to crush. I just like, I can't believe that I'm two years into this and still making gains at the rate that I am at the moment. So just really amped on that. The other day, I have this course that I do around my house. It's three laps on the local loop is what I call it. Each loop is seven and a half miles. And I'll do this loop, this thing, sometimes zone two, cause it's very flat. And sometimes I'll just go out and like hammer it and see how fast I can do it with like my heart rate fucking sky high. But I did zone two the other day and the fastest I've ever done the three laps, which is like 22 and a half miles. is was 919. And that was for zone two with like my heart rate around 130. And the other day I did it in 116. So I knocked three whole minutes off of my time and my heart rate was 128. I just like I it's insane to me. Three minutes might not sound like a lot. But when you're talking about 79 minutes for 76, that's like a four or four and a half percent increase from literally like weeks prior. And so these things just kind of keep happening. And I, I'm just amped about it. Like it makes training so fun to go out there and put in the work on these rides to be able to see the results manifested. So just really amped about that. Not sure how long that's going to continue. but just kind of loving it at the moment. And this leads into my next update, which is we're going to Wisconsin, on Friday. So by the time this episode's released, we'll actually be in Wisconsin. and I'm not bringing my bike in prior years. I have borrowed a bike from a neighbor and still gotten out and done biking that way. I think this year I'm not going to do that because biking is such a, a time suck. Like for me to go out and get a quality ride in, I need 90 to 120 minutes. And I just don't feel like it's fair for me to, to do that to the family while we're here for only, you know, six or seven days in Wisconsin. so I'm just not going to bike at all. I'm going to run, I guess. I do that sometimes when I'm in Wisconsin. And so we'll see how that goes. I really don't enjoy running, but I do love that I can get a really solid running session in, in 20 to 30 minutes where it takes, like I said, 90 minutes to two hours to get a quality bike session in. So yeah, I'm gonna do some of that. I'll do some sprints up hills, do some zone five work that way, but it's just for one week. And maybe at the end of the day, that'll actually be a positive. But anyway, we have the Wisconsin trip coming up on Friday. And so we may not be doing an ETP the next week. I think that's even like the July 4th week and stuff like that. So we'll be in touch and I'll let you know, but I think likely we probably won't podcast next week. So yeah, I think that's my final update and we can kind of jump into questions on the Instagram Q &A. Okay, let's do this. I love this first question. And while you were giving a final update, I went and looked up the price just so that we could make sure that we are speaking accurately to it. So this one is geared towards you, Brian, because unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity yet to use this. Now that you have used the Prime Pulldown 2 .0 because they have a 1 .0 option, the main difference between the 1 .0 and the 2.0 is bilateral versus unilateral. You cannot use the first one bilaterally. I mean, I guess technically, could, but there's two arms to it. A lot more. And one, do you think it's worth the price tag? And I guess I will add the price tag on the Prime website is just under $5 ,000 US. Yeah, if I would have guessed what the price tag would have been, I probably would have guessed a little bit higher, like six to eight range. So five actually sort of changes my answer. So the guy that asked this question, Joseph, is the guy that's always responding to our YouTube comments like about his incredible home gym that he has. You know who I'm talking about? Joseph Earhart or something like that. Yeah, his home gym is insane. And so like, I'm trying to look at it from his perspective because his home gym is so much sicker than my home gym that I know he, he puts a lot of pride and value in having like the nicest piece of equipment for each muscle group, et cetera. And for me, I feel like maybe it's like, I will accept a piece that's good enough that does the job good enough for me. So man, would I love to have the Prime pull down 2 .0 in my gym? Absolutely, yes, 100%. Do I think that paying $5 ,000 for a one trick pony machine that primarily just does upper body pulling? I would personally struggle with paying $5,000 for a one -trick pony like that. I felt bad paying 2 ,000 for my pendulum, which is a one -trick pony. So paying two and a half times that for a back machine seems crazy to me, but if I had the space and I had the money, that would certainly be at the top of my want list. What do you think? So, yeah, so my argument was going to be space. It's just large because it has the three loading horns that articulate. It's very, very big because it needs to be because of how it's designed. I think that's the biggest thing is like, unless you have like a pole barn on your property or something like that, it's very, very big. Like it's arguably bigger than like a pendulum squat or something like that. Yeah. a pendulum, yeah. So, I mean, that would be the biggest thing. I think it's worth the price tag for what you're getting, right? The other one on the market that I've seen, which is out of a company in Australia, Citadel makes another one. They claim that theirs is better. I have heard from people that have used both. They prefer the Prime. The Citadel one, I remember, we almost did some business with them for Undefeated, and their stuff was very, very expensive. They anchored their prices to to Atlantis. And I was like, OK, dude, Atlantis has been around for however many years. They're arguably the top tier in the business. As a startup company, I don't think anchoring your prices to Atlantis is probably the correct move. But I'm not the business you are. So kind of do your thing. But if I'm spending that money, I'm going with Prime is pretty much what I told them, not an unproven company. But I would say. one right now and there's no pricing on the website. It's contact us for pricing. He told me directly it was significantly more expensive than the Prime. Even so much the ride I had to looked and did some conversions from Australia to USD and I was like, wait, is this right? They were pricey. But who knows what their supply and price of metal is in Australia and all these different things that I don't know. Okay, good to move on. Yeah, I'll kick this over to you since you did the last one to me and you actually have some answers here already. So home gym equipment wish lists versus must haves. It has to come down to what sort of space you have available, right? If we're putting this in a garage or, you know, in a basement with a high ceiling or something like that, like assuming that we're not. We don't have an entire two car garage that you're just that you're, you know, significant other is completely letting you dedicate towards lifting. I think what makes the most sense for a first choice must have is one of the very recent new age super racers. two that I have here is the rep fitness Aries 2 .0 in the prime Prodigy HLP and what's really wild with these things is you get you get your traditional You know squat rack, but they also like the Aries I was actually recently going down a rabbit hole for some reason we have Adjustable high to low pulley on both sides with I want to see was a 300 pound stack So like really heavy we have a dual high cable in the top in the back a dual high a dual low cable in the back for like seated rows, pull downs, a lot of attachments, a lot pull down attachment, dip bar attachment. So you get so much, you get like a functional trainer, squat rack, like you get so much and some of them even have like a Smith machine built into it. And this is all in like one kind of purchase. They're pricier, like I would imagine, I remember seeing the... The rep was like 5K it started at or something like that. I believe the Prime Prodigy wrap starts around like 6K or something. So you're probably going to end up spending 7 to 8K, but you get a lot out of it. You know, cables, you're able to do your rows, some pressing like it's, it's just rather really, really robust. I, for me must have, if I were putting one together, that would by far be my first purchase. Yeah, I think that the development of these super racks has changed what a must have is versus a wishlist item. And like five years ago, even, I feel like must haves would have been you will get a squat rack, you get adjustable dumbbells up to 100 pounds, you make sure you have a barbell, and you probably have like some sort of cable machine, maybe a leg extension leg curl kind of dual. machine. Because if you have a barbell, you can squat, you can deadlift, you can RDL dumbbells. You can do a lot of the same stuff. the cables obviously allow you to hit all the upper body from the different angles. And then the leg extension, leg curl allow you to isolate the short head biceps femoris and the rectus femoris. So, yeah, I think that my answer changed from five years ago to now. And I do think one of these super racks would be basis. Number one, because that literally handles almost all it handles all of your upper body work and even kind of handle some of your leg your leg work as well. They have attachments now that you can put into power racks. It's not as good as getting like one of those dual leg curl, leg extension machines. But you can use kind of this. It takes a pin and it sticks it into the hole in the power rack. And then you have a of free weight loaded leg curl and leg extension machine that is literally attached or unattached to your super rack, so to speak. So yeah, I think a super rack and then probably some form of leg extension leg curl. And I would say once you have the super rack, the next up for me would be some sort of machine squat movement. because the super rack handles all of the upper body and then you would get a leg extension, leg curl attachment. Like you're the only, you could back squat off of it. Like you said, like you could have a barbell. It can act as a power rack. You can squat, but squatting has its limitations when it comes to quad development. And so using, something like a hack press machine, a pendulum, like press, any of those types of options would probably be my next best after the super rack. And, Then from there, I think it's more specific machines that you would want that probably are individual to you. Like I know for me, beyond the super rack and a leg press machine, I would want, man, I would love to have a chest press machine. Like that's still one of my wishlist items for my gym. And I have, you know, a full cable machine with adjustable arms. I have a T -bar row, I have a pendulum, I have a hack press, I have a 45 degree hip extension. Like I have all these things. The thing that I really want. is a chest press machine. And I think that that wouldn't change if I had one of those super racks, because you're just limited when cables are the only chest pressing you could do. I mean, you can do free weights too, but I don't love any free weight pressing at the moment. So I would love to have a chest press machine that just fits right, has a like semi pronated grip. So that depends on your goals. Like a girl, a female may not opt as a chest machine as their next up item. Maybe it's a 45 degree hip extension, which I also think would have tremendous value if you have the super rack, a 45 degree hip extension would probably be up there in like the top two or three next things that I would want to get. So yeah, I mean, I think beyond the super rack, it really comes down to what you want in your gym for your goals. And so starting with the super rack is certainly like a base level item that I would get unless you have decided to go the five year old route of barbell dumbbells squat rack. And then from there, it's like, eh, probably next up is a cable machine of some sort. And then from there, you can kind of expand. Yeah, yeah, I think past it's really space. Space is how you go there. I think the limiting factor, but yeah, Brian answered that well. for sure. No, and you brought up a good point there. For anyone that's wondering, the rep fitness Aries is showing at 4 ,500 from the rep fitness site. This is Aries 1, so it could be different. I noticed you put in Aries 2 .0, so they could be different. I remember the Aries II had these little adjustments that made it more practical. They moved their pulleys from the center of the crossbar to the corner so that you could also have a barbell or the J hooks in and have. So all these little just kind of optimizations. But if you're in that market, obviously do your due diligence to see what the improvements and stuff are. But they were pretty cool, intelligent upgrades to the version one from what I had seen. Mmmmm it better. Cause I mean, looking at this one on the website, the Aries one looks way better than the Aries two. Yeah, I'm sure there's gotta be a reason. Yeah, anyways, okay, we'll move on. We don't need to belabor that too much. This is an interesting question. My buddy, Greg always drops drops the dimes here. But do you think you can look at someone and determine if their physique is built by genetics or hard? I think so when you know what you're looking for, because I think what people think about in terms of when people think genetics, they think, it's easy for them to build muscle or they are naturally lean. But what genetics really is is like bone structure, like your clavicles as a male are your clavicles at a down angle or like, for example, that's probably one of my best genetic features. My clavicles go straight the fuck out. Right. Which makes me look really, really broad. So things like that for women, right? If you have like very wide set childbearing hips, like that is a positive from a physique standpoint, corollary genetic feature of women. It's a bone structure sort of thing. What are other ones that we'll look at like higher insertions on the lats. So you get that really big easy like V taper sort of thing. So like you could be like you could be male. 20 % fucking body fat, plus who's lifted for like six months and does not realize that you have won the genetic lottery because you haven't really put the time in to build the physique for those genetics to really shine. Same thing with a woman, right? You could be walking around at 30 plus percent body fat. Maybe you're not even into health and fitness. And you could have the dream genetics, but. You haven't uncovered them yet because it's not an interest of yours Similarly, you can see people with terrible genetics, you know You see the guys who's very like they their hips and shoulders are like the same width So it's very hard for them to create that kind of V taper But they can still have an amazing physique through you know what they know and their dedication and those sorts of things So it's when people say the word genetics people oftentimes kind of get it wrong of what they think that is It's a lot of like bone structure insertions of tendon insertion locations and those sorts of things. Yeah, I just want to pull out one of the things you said just to clarify. It sounded like you were saying that high lat attachments is a good thing. let me make sure I'm. For, now I'm not sure if it would be higher or lower. Would be better. would be that you want them to attach lower because that makes the whole appearance of your back wider and larger and makes a more significant change to what your waist would look like if the lat is inserting in closer to the waist. If the lat is inserting in high, you have less muscle that you could actually build. So there's less lat there to build and then they insert high and then you're just left with this like straight line of waist going down. So I would say like from my understanding of bodybuilding, the lower the lats insert, the more prominent the lats are. That could be I could have easily just misspoken there. One I do feel more confident saying is that calf's high calf insertions are typically more positively correlated because you get that big fat calf at the top as opposed to like the long calf. yeah, maybe, but again, I think the argument is like you have less muscle you can build. So like, It's that while that may be true, it's typically I mean, let's let's be real. Physique is the appearance of it, right? It's not that person has eight pounds, you know, in their calf. That person has four. You could have four pounds, but it may look much better from a physique standpoint. Mm hmm. Yeah, I really don't know where I stand on this actually, like I know I'm not like a physique doctor of sorts. I don't take people to stage. But for anyone that's listening, insertions are obviously a huge deal and a huge like they're 100 % genetically determined. I always was under the impression that having insertions closer to the joint where the muscle belly is larger is better than having insertions further from the joint. that allow them that are basically creating a smaller muscle that maybe looks appearance wise could potentially look bigger, but there's such a gap that I think you're physically, you're missing out on some of those elements. I don't know. We, we've taken the question into a different, a different direction. Now, something I'm curious about, I think Alberto Nunez would be someone really interesting to talk to you about that. Cause I think he actually has high calf insure insertions as well. And, and high lat insertions, I think. So to answer the question, like I think you, I love the way you attacked it because bone structure and muscle insertions are genetically determined. I wasn't thinking about the question at all like this. I was more thinking of like, Hey, you have this dude he's jacked. Like, did he get jacked because he's just naturally got like high testosterone levels comes from a physically active family. Maybe they did some farming, physical labor, like whatever, whatever. And he lifts hard in the gym. versus guy that like, you know. has to work even harder. And all his gains are because he optimizes nutrition and training and sleep and all of these things. And like, he looks great because of these things versus this other guy who like doesn't do any of that, but like still looks great, you know. And so so that then goes beyond bone and joint insertions. And now it talks about like body fat distribution and and things like that, because I think body fat distribution is a huge piece of it. Like when you look at me genetically, I hold the majority of my fat. below my waist. And so even at a higher body weight, I still have abs and I still look pretty lean, my back is still pretty shredded from above the love handles. And so a lot of that is also genetically determined. And it's, it's, I think as you are in this sport longer, and you're around it more, you get to develop more of an acute eye, like I would bet Alberto Nunez can look at people and be able to be like, yes, that's genetics, that's hard work, blah, blah, blah. and maybe more on the insertions and bone density or bone structure piece, but also body fat distribution. I mean, there's so many elements that go into it. If I were to be put on the spot and two guys are next to each other and I'm like, that guy looks good because of hard work and that guy looks good because of genetics. I don't know that I would feel super confident making that statement. I do think there are ways that you can kind of pull that out and decipher it a little bit, but I don't feel super confident doing that. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's really structure related is the biggest thing there. Because I mean, like, like to do with training so much. If it's structure related, it's like, if you're both trained, one of you looks better than the other, like, you could both be training really hard. So it's unfair to be like, you did it because of genetics and you did it because of hard work. Like you could both be training really hard, but one guy just looks better and that's because of genetics. Yeah, I've never seen people who have like great genetics. And I mean, it really would be the threshold of what you would consider like, you know, a great physique, but you can have like the best genetics in the world. But like, if you don't learn how to diet and all those things, like you're still going to be a 16 % body fat and all those sorts of things. And very few people look wonderful from a physique standpoint at 16 % body fat. where everyone's wow, you know, look at his genetics. So there is a bit of a blend, but it needs that you need to be on the kind of leaner spectrum for it really to even be much of a display. Okay, I think this next one makes the most sense to kick over to you. Is overhead press slash chins superset going to limit strength due to long head tricep fatigue? Yeah, this is a little bit of an advanced nuanced question. So just to explain for the listeners, essentially what this person is asking is during vertical pulling movements, like chin ups or pull downs, the long head of the tricep, which is the tricep that you get from doing overhead tricep extensions, it's the one that connects actually underneath the shoulder. And so It actually gets trained when you're doing upper body pulling movements, even though the tricep is generally a pushing muscle. And I've thought about this in depth a lot. I have in over the course of the last two years of my training, I've had a number of alternating sequences where I go from a vertical pull into a pressing movement. I've done this with chest pressing. I've done this with, I don't really do much overhead pressing, but I've done it with some like interior dumbbell delt pressing. And I've done it legitimately with long head tricep. So imagine going from like a pull down to a long head tricep movement and then back to a pull down. And I was that, that was my test because I didn't notice any, any performance decrement going with chest pressing or overhead pressing to the pull down. But I was like, if there's going to be any limitation, it's going to happen alternating with a long head tricep movement. So then I did a whole cycle where I alternated between pull downs and long head tricep back and forth. And even with that, I didn't really notice much decrement. I would say it was, if anything, I noticed it more on the tricep movement being more challenging and less on a limitation of the upper body pulling movement being more challenging. Could be because there's more joints of freedom, degrees of freedom. So there are more muscles that can contribute to kind of help alleviate the burden on the long head of the tricep. It's also possible that that actually could be advantageous to your upper body pulling. Because if you look at the literature, When you pre -exhaust a muscle like a tricep and then you go into a pulldown, instead of the tricep now being a limiting factor in your pulldown, what the research seems to show is that because the tricep is so fatigued that the other bigger muscles are going to take over the job so that the long head of the tricep doesn't have to work. So it's possible that that's what's happening too. But to answer this question specifically, the pressing movements are primarily dominated by the medial and the lumbar. of the tricep. So if you are alternating between an upper body pulling movement that may have a little bit of long head tricep in there, and your other movement is a pressing movement that likely involves very little long head of the tricep, I think you don't really have much to worry about at all. And I think that that's a beautiful superset or alternating sequence that I think is probably a staple in the many quality training programs. Wonderful answer. Cool. Yeah. mean we could but I wouldn't have a good answer so I will kick it over to you. Looking to hire a coach for cardio. I know I need to do it for health and longevity but I'm just not doing it. I walk 12 -15 ,000 steps per day and lift 4 times per week. Cardio is solely about health. Do you have any thoughts or advice on coaches? So my first thought when I read this is that by walking 12 to 15 K steps a day and lifting four times a week, you're checking a lot of really big boxes for health. Like I struggle to believe that you doing structured cardio beyond that is going to make significant changes in your health. My advice in this situation would actually be to not worry about doing structured cardio or wasting the money on a coach too much. unless your health markers are showing concern. Because 12 to 15, 15 K steps a day is a lot of walking to average, you know, daily, annually, whatever. And lifting four times a week is great for you. Like you're hitting all of the, like your cholesterol should be fine, it should help your glucose. Like there's, the lifting is a glucose disposal. Like there's so many positives from what he's doing currently. that unless his blood work is coming back and showing issues, I just wouldn't be concerned with doing cardio. Now, I don't want to completely write his question off and be like, you don't need to do cardio because he wants to do cardio and he's looking for a coach. And so I guess it's an accountability piece more than anything. It's like, hey, I want to do cardio. I'm not doing the cardio because I have this busy lifestyle. I'm walking a lot. How can I fit my cardio in? One thing I would think before hiring a coach would be like, what if you just walk less? Like what if you're walking eight to 12,000 steps a day instead of 12 to 15? And then that frees up 30 to 40 minutes where you could go out and do cardio outside of just walking. You could turn some of that walking into cardio. Like instead of walking 3000 of those steps, you could run 3000 of those steps. So that would be maybe advice number one there is lower the walking down so that you can fit in the cardio. If that's not possible, maybe you have to walk to work, you're in a city, you walk bus stops and metros and whatever it is, and you just have to get 12 to 15 K steps a day, you still want to do cardio. You could fit in 20 minutes of cardio post-lift. So I don't know how that works with your lifestyle. You could take off days and do some cardio. Maybe on off days you try to walk less and do actual structured cardio. And if it comes down to you really wanting a coach to prescribe cardio for you, this listener wrote in and suggested Mike T. Nelson or Alec Blenis. I think both of those guys are incredible resources. Mike obviously coached me during my rowing time and I really liked that. What I really liked about Mike's stuff was that he had a very structured plan to get you to the goal, but he was able to program strictly cardio. I feel like a lot of coaches aren't going to just be like, yes, I will program your cardio. You handle your weights and your nutrition and I will just do cardio. I think for a coach to do that, you would really need to trust the client that they have a lot of their ducks in a row. Otherwise you could be prescribing cardio and not seeing adaptations that you expect to see because other things are out of order in your life. I don't know if Alec Blenis does just cardio. I know he has his. Sex and Zombies group programs that I believe include cardio and that's what it's called, that include cardio and yeah, it includes cardio and lifting because it's like a hybrid program. I don't think this guy wants to do that because I think he wants to lift hypertrophy, but he wants to do cardio. And so maybe Mike would be like a really good resource for that. I think Mike's a good guy to reach out to. I would do it too. Like I very much am finding my passion. in the fitness space trending more towards hybrid training at this point and away from just straight up optimization of hypertrophy. And that could be the stage that I'm in where I'm in bike season. It could also just be that I'm 26 years into training and optimizing hypertrophy doesn't move the needle a whole ton for me. But my excitement level, I was just talking to Kim about this yesterday on a walk. She's like, you know, where, what are you excited about? And the thing I'm excited about is figuring out ways to work. cardio and hypertrophy training together into one so that both of them can get the best results possible. And this is what I've personally been experimenting with myself over the last two or three years. So I would love to help you as well. If that's something you're interested in, you can reach out to me. But yeah, I mean, I think ultimately, your most ear ducts are in a row with the walking and the lifting. And if you want to add a little bit of structured cardio into, I don't think that Great answer. The next question is again for me. It's what's the next experiment? I've been asked this question by a number of people and I don't have an answer yet. Nothing has really inspired me like the one arm training experiment did. And so there will be one coming up at some point. At the moment, I'm writing my lifters life story Instagram page after dropping seven straight posts in seven days. I found myself getting a little frustrated with the fact that I forgot some posts and I felt like I would need to backtrack and I really wanted it to be in chronological order and then it wasn't going to be in chronological order. So I took five weeks off. I just dropped my next post yesterday. So I'm going to try and get back into doing those at the moment. Like I know that's not an experiment, but it's like the project that I'm trying to focus on is kind of documenting my journey through the early years. And so that's where my focus is right now. And I think Because I'm focusing on that, I don't have the desire to do the experiment thing. If I was experimenting, like in some ways, I could almost argue that by pushing my body weight up into the low 200s right now during bike season, this is an experiment because it's completely different than last year where my body weight just plummeted from the beginning. This time I was pushing body weight up and as so far, so good. I mean, bike performance is insane. Lifting performance is PRing stuff. So that's been a very positive. And I'll continue that experiment as I'm going to try not to drop body weight too quickly over the next few months. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's where I'm at right now. As soon as I have another great idea, you guys know that I will, I will let you guys know. Excellent. I guess my experiment is on healing my hernia and getting back into the gym as quickly as possible. Yeah. All right, let me frame this next question up just because, so this is, I think he's a client of yours, Giovanni Fern. Is he a client of yours? Yeah. So this question comes from him and it's a great question. We actually had some back and forth after he wrote this in, because I wanted to clarify something. So the question basically reads, there's a lot of talk now about full body and upper lower splits being more optimal if done properly, not even volume -equated. Paul Carter, Jake. Dole -ish -all and Borg -foggerly being the most vocal. The idea seems to be something like two sets three times a week or three sets two times a week is much more effective than six sets once per week because of fatigue management and drop in effectiveness of each set during a session. What are your thoughts on this? So the first thing I clarified with Mr. Giovanni here was, wait a minute, Paul Carter is now on the the full body train because literally three or four months ago, I was checking out his page and everything was frequency doesn't matter. All that matters is volume equated. Bro Split is the way to go. And all of his group programs were Bro Splits that were four days a week. So when he wrote me this, the first thing I had to say was, wait, Paul Carter is now changing his tune here. And I obviously know Borgfager Lee, Mr. Myoreps, do you know? Jake Dollishall. I've never heard of this guy. I think so if it's someone that I think, I think he, if this is the person that I'm thinking of, I think he's Australian, but I don't feel confident in that. so anyway, when I asked Giovanni about this, he wrote back and so it's Paul Carter and Chris Beardley apparently are on this kick calling it weekly net stimulus. And it's just, I know I'm cracking up and you guys don't know the inside joke yet, but essentially what I told Giovanni is that I feel like this was the argument of everybody that was a big fan of upper lower splits and full body training, like in the last five years. The argument literally was depreciating stimulus across a session. So if you did two sets, you can be assured that each set is optimizing the stimulus versus doing six or eight sets where inevitably there's gonna be some depreciation of stimulus as you get into the later sets. Like we've talked about this, you know. could do 10 sets once a week or you could do five sets twice a week. Like this has been a topic on our podcast before. And it is and was the argument of every full body or upper lower split enthusiast over the years. So for Paul and Chris to come in now in like 2024 and be like weekly net stimulus, more quality sets. Like to me, it's laughable because I feel like this is the message. Like that is and was the message over the years. that Paul was always pushing back on and being like, no, that's wrong. Like volume equated is all that matters. So I just, I find it just almost nauseating in the way that like, they're just like looking for these little tools to keep people inspired and to keep engagement high. And I just don't know how much of it to believe and how much of it is just a tool to. to get clicks and follows and comments. And like the truth is I actually think that that makes sense. Like it took me a while to accept that maybe the bro split could be as good as higher frequency because of all those reasons that were listed. So I don't argue with that. Like I actually agree. Like I do think that if you have eight sets to split across the week, it's better to do four one day. and for the other than to hit all eight one day. I mean, it just makes logical sense that the quality of your sets would be higher for those last four sets if you took three days off and then did those four sets versus doing them directly after the prior four sets. So none of this surprises me. It makes total sense. I, I co -sign all of it. and I'm mostly just surprised that Paul and Chris are now going this direction after all of the staunch pushing of bro splits over the last. years. I very, very strongly resonate with what you said around, you know, I don't think you can use the term relevance, but creating conversation clicks, et cetera, et cetera. I despise it because I feel like we have the top people in the industry, you know, and you can categorize that however you want, who do a lot of these things and create that conversation. Then it like filters down to the you and I, and we are the people like you and I, right? Obviously everything doesn't filter down to you and I. But then we're having a lot of these conversations and it just fucking confuses people, you know? And there's people that it pisses me off because I feel like people abuse their position and trust. And the person that I feel does this the most, and I might catch some flack for this and I'm perfectly okay with that, is Menno Henselman. He posts all the crazy click -baity, new research says X, Y, and Z, like when we know that's not fucking true. But like just because it came out in a study and could be extrapolated that way, it's like very click baiting. There's tons of people arguing in the comments and stuff. And yes, it probably creates, you know, business for him and all these things, but it just fucking confuses people, you know? And like that shit pisses me off. So to answer the question, I, this is my position. I do not think a full body split can be optimal. if the goal is, you know, maximal physique development or something like that. If you only have three days per week to train, yes, we train full body. If we only have four days per week to train, I could see some argument of training full body. But if you're like, hey, I can train as many days as I want. I have really good dedicated time. I want the best physique that I can get. What split are we doing? I have never seen a true practical argument for full body. Yeah, it's anecdotally, there's a lot of success with full body. I mean, you can look at the extremes of it. And there's so many different variations of full body like Menno, as we touch on Menno here is the fan of seven days a week full body. Like that's literally the way he trains as he puts two sets for each muscle group every single day. And so by the end of the week, he gets 14 sets for each muscle group basically. And his frequency is high. I would struggle with that setup. recovery wouldn't be great. I don't think optimal performance would occur across similar muscle groups day to day. Even if you're alternating short and lengthened movements, like you're going to have a lot of fatigue from the lengthened and less from the shortened. I think that's not an optimal setup at all. Back in the day, 30s, 40s, 50s, pre-steroid era, everybody trained two to three times a week, full body. That was just like the way you trained. If you look at all the old routines of like Reg Park, John Grimick, Steve Reeves, all the big bodybuilders from pre -steroid era, I guess Steve Reeves transitioned into steroid era, but those were all full body training programs. And I do think that you reach a point likely where that's probably suboptimal as your training loads increase and maybe your training volume needs increase across the intermediate stage. I don't know. Those guys obviously got great results with three full body training programs. I agree with you that I don't think it's probably the most optimal use of your of your time and split. The upper lower is an interesting one because upper lower allows you to train four times a week, which is a pretty I would say that's the most common amount of days that people will train per week when they're looking to optimize hypertrophy is probably four. And the upper lower split allows you to hit all of those things that apparently Paul and Chris are arguing now where you're hitting each muscle group, you know, every three to four days, you're able to split your sets across two sessions instead of one. So I do think the upper lower split is probably the goat. Like when it comes to just general splitting of body parts, ensuring your training before you know, atrophy begins to set in or whatever. Like Beardsley has done some research apparently showing that atrophy begins occurring like within 24 hours for advanced athletes. Like once your protein synthesis synthetic response stops, which is earlier for people that are advanced. I believe it's like 72 hours or more for somebody that's new, but for someone who's really advanced after you train, it's 24 hours or less, I think is what Beardsley was showing. I could be wrong on that. But it does kind of allow you to not have to wait six days where you know that the protein synthetic response is definitely dipped off at that point. So yeah, like I just, I agree for the most part that higher frequency as long as recoverability is there is probably best. But again, to like echo your point of confusing people, I don't want to get lost in the woods and have people forget that the three main things that matter are sufficient volume, sufficient effort, and sufficient recovery. And like, there might be nuance and very marginal gains in splitting things up differently or uniquely for you, but at the end of the day, those three things trump and get you 98 plus percent of your gains. Yep. Excellent point there, Brian. Very. Man, I would love to take this one, but I think we have to kick it to you. If I'm being completely honest, and the reason is I just, I don't think I can really answer this. This one is, I remember reading through this, preparing, be like, fuck dude, I don't know the answer to this. So yeah, it really is. If I'm going from training to failure and then moving instead of training to failure, I'm gonna start stopping my rep, my sets at two to three RIR. How much volume do I need to add to equate for the, let's call it less effective rep? per each set. Yeah. Even though the effective reps model has plenty of holes in it, as a number of practitioners have pointed out over the years, I do think that when you look at equating volume in this manner, the thing that makes the most sense to me is looking at how many effective reps you're achieving. And so if you are going to failure, you're going to get five effective reps. And if you're going to three RIR, you're going to get two effective reps. And so my thought would be that you likely need to do two and a half or three sets of RIR training at that level to equate to one set to failure. I don't think it's fully three sets. If you're at that two to three RIR number, my intuition tells me it's not three sets to one. It's probably two and a half sets to one. Probably depends on the movement too and your rep range. So... Like now we're really going down the rabbit hole of nuance, but we know that, you know, you have to get closer to failure if you're training in higher rep ranges. And so my guess would be that if you're doing sets of 15 reps that you probably need to do more sets of two to three RIR, like maybe it's three or four sets to equate to one set to failure. Whereas if you're doing sets of five to eight reps where things are effective almost from the get go, my guess would be that maybe it's two sets to one set. And that's obviously just kind of conjecture here. Through the years, I've trained both styles and I've always felt like I needed to do three to four sets, four sets in most cases of RIR training to equate two sets of failure training or zero to one RIR training, I would say. Cause when I do two sets, it's usually the first set is one RIR and then the second set is failure. So they're not both necessarily to failure. But yeah, I do think at least doubling is probably a good starting point and then kind of using auto regulation from there to assess your stimulus that you're achieving. I think that's a wonderful answer. I don't, I'm kind of mad at myself that I added the effect of reps in the question because it's not worded that way. And I kind of loaded the question a little bit. So I do apologize for fucking that up a little bit there. Something that I will add that I do use this as a little bit of an auto regulation at times when I do add, increase my volumes a little bit. If I find like a stark performance drop off from like, let's say set two to set three. or set three to set four, that's an indicator that like, I don't need that final set. So like, let's use that same example. We're training 12 to 15 reps, maybe set one, I get, you know, 15, set two, I get 13, set three, I get like, you know, 12, and then my set four, I get like eight. I don't need that fourth set because there's such a large performance degradation there. It's just not productive. Yeah, no, I agree. And then the only other thing I'll add is that I think it's probably exercise dependent too. So I used rep ranges with five to eight compared to 15, but I think we also need to compare like a bicep curl to a squat or an RDL. And to think that, you know, those would be the same RIRs I think is also different. Like, I don't see a reason that you would need to necessarily go to failure on an RDL per se. A technical failure is such a... a difficult thing to assess anyways when you're doing a hip hinge that I think the majority of your benefit there, especially because most of those movements are done in lower rep ranges is probably going to be with a little bit of RIR. Whereas like if you're doing a bicep curl or a lateral raise, it's like, dude, why are you not going to failure? Like the fatigue cost is so low, like, just stop trying to save RIRs there, you know? Yep, exactly. Yeah. All right. I'll kick this one over to you. Can magnesium combined with sugar, say like chocolate, cause lucid dreams resulting in poor sleep? I've noticed if I have the both together, my dreams get really wild. I think it's more the magnesium itself. This is very, very common. I think using the example, I don't think it's so much the sugar per se, but since you gave the example of chocolate, like dark chocolate, for example, is pretty magnesium rich and it could just be therefore, again, increasing the total amount of magnesium that you're taking in and magnesium is pretty commonly correlated with like very lucid dreaming in many people, unfortunately, not in me. Yeah, I get lucid dreams from magnesium too, to the point that I actually have kind of stopped taking it because they were just wild. So yeah, I wonder if that has anything to do with the type of magnesium you take too. Like I know I've heard Huberman talk about how there's four or five different types and one of them is specifically the best one to take before bed. Yeah, I mean, there in the past few years, there was a lot of movement towards like magnesium glycinate and bisglycinate. There's another one. There's one that's in like mag, magteen. That's one I forget potentially or rotate. But like I remember, like the old ZMA supplements, which aren't as common anymore. I believe that was aspartate in that. remember that's like some of the first rememberings I have of like friends having like really wild dreams and stuff taking the ZMA. And I don't think that was, I don't think glycinate was as popular or largely around like it is now back then. So I think it's, it potentially could be more efficacious with certain chelations. And that's probably due to the overall bioavailability in the amount of magnesium that's being uptaken through that chelation method. Gotcha. Yeah, I was just looking at the ZMO supplement that I was taking from Transparent Labs a few months ago. And so it's ZMO meaning oyster instead of just zinc and magnesium. So it's zinc, magnesium and oyster. And it's magnesium glycinate, chelate buffered. So it's got like a lot of different things going on there. Okay, cool. Next question again to you here. Do you follow a specific protocol when clients in a deficit hit a plateau, i .e. lower calories first or increased steps in cardio? Thanks. Yeah, so I guess I don't have a protocol as so much as to reading into more than just plateau. So some of the things that I consider is do I feel really confident in this client's adherence to the protocol? Right. So that's the kind of the first thing. Many people over or sorry, underplay that where someone's like, you know, I think I'm plateaued and I'm like, whoa. Like, let's say, for example, our calorie level is like 22. And if we have more than like one to two deviations by more than like 7 % of the calories in a day or in a sorry, more than one or two days in that week that have more than like a 7 % deviation in calories, I don't consider that adherent or consistent enough. for us to be considered at a plateau because the adherence just isn't high enough. So I, with my clients like to use a prove it to me model, right? I wanna see the logs. I wanna know what things look like. Are we truly at a plateau or are you just being impatient and had alcohol or something like that? So that's kind of the first thing you always have to drill in on the adherence. If food is really high or we're early on, I'm gonna pull food, right? If we're still at, let's say, maybe like a 13X calories body weight, that's in pounds, I'm gonna pull food down until we might get to like an 11 or a 12 or something like that, because we can remove calories, but increase volume, and we're able to keep satiety more aligned at a baseline. And we're not really running into adaptations that happen quickly, like if we were to increase cardio or something like that. So I will get food down to a point that still supports Training, you know, I'll remove a lot of the the low -hanging fruit like fats and things like that into a lower level and Then from there I will escalate either cardio or steps kind of in a linear manner. I Don't like to Pull that too hard too fast because like I like we talked about earlier in the episode It's a time commitment to that like as that goes up. You need to spend more time whereas like we can just improve your food selection and keep volume the same and get calories lower. And that takes you, you know, six minutes of doing math one time sort of thing. So that's what I like. And then I start looking into the more indirect impacting factors. What does stress look like? What does sleep look like? What does hunger look like and how we can modulate those. So typically calories first because it's more time efficient and then steps and then also look into the indirect impacting factors as well. Yeah. I love all of that. Especially like that you pointed out that are you really plateaued? Because I think that oftentimes depending on where you are in your deficit, the scale does weird things. Like it waits for the whoosh. And I know I've had lots of times where I'm like, I am in a deficit. I'm doing my cardio. My stress is fine. And the scale hasn't moved in 10 days. Like what is going on? I'm so hungry, you know? And then you just kind of keep chugging along and you think you're plateaued. but within like two or three days, the scale dropped two and a half pounds and you're like, sweet, there it is. And then it'll get stuck again for another like 10 to 14 days. And so that's kind of just like the way these things go sometimes as you get deeper into diets. It's like the body's really trying to hold on and it doesn't want to let go. And then eventually it's just forced to, it doesn't have a choice. I almost picture it as if like you're like a penguin sliding on the edge of a glacier and you're like approaching the edge and you're like almost there. And then eventually you just fall off and you're like, fuck, I'm on the next glacier. And then you kind of sit on that glacier for a while until you slide off that one. So anyway, I hope that visualization made sense. So, and then the last thing I'll say on this is I have an old post in my feed probably from like two years ago, maybe even more at this point called an equation for fat loss. And it was basically this idea that you start a diet at X number of calories and X number of steps. Hopefully the calories are somewhat high and the steps are somewhat low. And if you are actually plateaued, then you either take some food away or add steps, or you could take a little food away and add a little bit of steps and kind of do both. But over time, as you're plateaued each time, if you take a little bit of food away and or add a little bit of steps, then you are moving gently toward that direction. And then I'll just say they could. Shraker brought up a great point that adding steps adds time. And so While I'm not a huge fan of increasing intensity of cardio, because that would be a time saver, it is much easier to just take food away than to do more cardio. But the intensity of cardio is a lever that you could pull where you could say, okay, I'm walking 10K steps a day and that's burning me. we'll say 500 calories. I think that's relatively standard for about 10K steps. So if you're burning 500 calories in 10K steps, you could walk 7K steps and then run 3K steps. And now you're getting more calorie burn for the same amount of steps with actually less time because the running is gonna take less time than walking would. So a number of different levers you can kind of pull there and play with. But first thing is just making sure that you're actually. Okay, this one is a really, really good question. This comes from Kate, who's one of my clients and is a wonderful coach as well. How much growth do you think you'd be leaving on the table by doing my O reps on all movements for time efficiency? Obviously not ideal for things like RDLs or, you know, deadlifts, but curious what you think the trade off would be in practice. That's the first part of the question. And then there's a second part, but let's answer the first part first. So I don't think there's a huge drop off to be honest. I think it's mostly a time efficiency piece for you like straight sets or the goat, but you may not have time for straight sets. So doing my reps is a super effective way of getting plenty of effective reps in close to failure and getting the stimulus. It almost is analogous to the way I answered that prior question with, hey, if you're doing steps and you want to increase calorie burn without having to increase time commitment of doing more steps, then you increase the intensity. And in some ways, that's actually what's happening here with my O reps. so yeah, I think, you know, it's just another tool in the toolbox. And my guess would be that if you equate the volume here, which I think is part of this next question, that you probably should see very little, if any. deterioration of your results, so to speak. I'll add my answer and then we'll kind of move on. So I think you, I agree with you, Brian. I don't think there would be a large trade off. The thing that I think is in where this breaks down in terms of potentially practicality is what it costs you to do nothing but my O reps, right? Cause we're just talking about, you save time, you know, that sort of thing. But when it comes to straight sets, like you're performing that straight set you get. You know, let's maybe six, eight seconds at the end where it's really hard. You're straining a lot. Your muscles might burn a little bit. And then you sub in my reps and that six seconds turns into like effectively like two minutes. You know what I mean? In that kind of psychological stress and stuff does build up. And imagine if like every, I mean, you've done those, you know, hard mile rep sets Brian. Imagine if that's all you did. It's a pretty large like, yeah, it's mentally exhausting. So that's one thing I think is not. taken into consideration when we're just talking about swapping reps or sets. And then part B, relating to that, what would you consider to be an equal stimulus for straight sets versus myoreps? For example, do you think one myorep set with too many sets would be similar to in terms of stimulus compared to two straight sets, assuming the same proximity to failure on each? So I think the question should not say, do you think one my O rep set with too many sets, it should say one main set or one one buy in set or something like that, right? set and then like the the myorep sets. Yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, I think that that's probably pretty close. So he's asking two straight sets versus one main activation set with two mini sets. My response would likely say that just to be safe, I'd probably do three mini sets. And so I think that we can look at the drop set research to kind of get information on this. And I wish I had seen this question ahead of time, because I would have gotten the actual paper that I know I'm thinking of in my head, but, but I can't think of the title or the author at the moment. But basically they did drop set research and I believe that they found that three straight sets was equivalent to one straight set plus five drops. And that's a lot of drops. That's kind of like the that's kind of like the run the rack of the lateral raises like you start at 40 pounds and then you do a bunch of drops and suddenly your last set of laterals is with like the 15s or the 10s or something like that. But I think it was what are the fifteens. With five drops? I'm using the fucking smallest dumbbells they make at that point. I might be using my hands. feel like I'd go 40s, 30s, 25s, 20s, 15s, 10s. I feel like I'd go down five pounds every time after the first one would be 10 pounds. 40 to 30 to start. I want everyone on YouTube to comment how practical they think that is. I would be doing, I would do like four reps at the 40s and then everything else would be like one partial effort and down to the next dumbbell. Interesting. Yeah, maybe I'll try it and film it and put it on the internet for people. But I believe, so I could be mistaken on that study, but I think that it was one main buy -in and five drops to equal three straight sets. So we're talking about six approaches of failure to three approaches of failure, but doing it significantly faster by doing one main set with five drops. My O -Rep sets get you to the failure point sooner than drops do. because you're using the same weight as you were before, whereas drops, you're lowering the weight. So in theory, you should be able to get more reps. But again, you're resting less with the drop. So maybe that has some factors as well. My best guess would be that one straight set is probably equivalent to, or two straight sets is probably equivalent to one straight set with three myorep sets. So you get. four failure points instead of two failure points, but you're getting a lot less of that kind of buy -in volume. It's somewhere in there. It's close. Like, like Kate is, is on the right track with one, then two. I think one, then three might be, might be a little better. I don't know. It's, it's tough to say. I think there's definitely some individual variation there. How sore are you getting? What kind of pumps are you getting? How are you recovering? How's your progression? All of these things. I would agree one activation plus three myoreps is probably equal to about two straight sets. I think trying to take that experiment further, the proverbial damage done of the myoreps really starts to cloud being able to assess stimulus. Yeah. Yeah. Borg Borg Fogger Lee just wrote a book that was just released last week or the week before called my O reps or something like that. And I haven't read it yet, but I've heard from a number of people across the space that it's an extremely comprehensive, well put together book about training with my O reps. And so if that's something that you're actually considering either Kate or any listener out there, I would probably just buy that book, throw Borg some money and, and see if that you know, provide some insight and is helpful for you. He has a ton of experience in the industry and he's gone through a lot of different training paradigms over his life. And so it's something I'm considering buying as well just as a resource to have. Okay, on the lat cable pull down with one arm, how important is it for both legs to be on the same side of the bench? So I don't think it's important at all. If you're new to the N1 Kassim style of doing lat pull downs, this idea of putting both legs on the same side of the bench is actually relatively new in the last year. For the first number of years of this kind of iliac lat pull around movement, it was always done with one leg on one side, one leg on the other, and then twisting the torso. And so I've experimented with both. And I still very much prefer the one leg on either side because I feel like with the twist of the torso, having the leg on the opposite side allows you to brace kind of your thigh and knee into the bench as you rotate, which provides me more stability than when I have both legs on one side and I'm just strictly like leaning over to the side. I feel like a lot more of the stability has to go into my offhand that's kind of pushing against the bench or leaning against the bench versus when I have one leg on either side and I'm just twisting my torso, I feel like the stability is significantly better there with bracing with the bench. So I would just experiment with both styles and see what feels best for you. See if you feel like you're lacking stability in the way with both legs on one side. If you're not, like it is possible that both legs on one side could allow you to line up with the iliac motion a little bit better or rather with the pull around motion a little better. So you'd be coming over and around instead of just straight up. So there might be some like, I know Cass is a proponent of the two feet on one side now, as long as you can find stability. I just think stability is the most important component. And so if that diminishes your stability at all, then I would go to the way that allows you maximum stability. I agree 100 % chase maximum stability. I'll just kick this one to you because it's our last question. All of a sudden my forearms hurt when doing any type of bicep curl. Period. I mean, the initial thought is like your biceps in the connective tissue between the forearms and the bicep might be too hot and you got to let them cool off a little bit, take a week off of training all biceps or something like that. Or it could be, are you like death gripping things? And that's when I first started using the like VersaGrips is for some reason I just. went through this period where I was just death gripping things and like my wrists and hands and forearms are killing me. But I like for whatever reason, couldn't couldn't get myself to stop doing it. So I started using the straps and all my problems went away. So it could be potentially like death gripping things for no reason. Or it's like you've just started to aggravate some of those tissues. And is it actually your forearms themselves, like the extensors and the flexors? Or is it the actual connective tissue that connects the extensors and flexors into the elbow joint, which is much more common. If it is the latter, yeah, I would start with just like taking a week off of training them and see if it's enough to cool them down. Or if it is not, then you probably have to start changing either some exercises to ones that are a little bit more joint friendly or including some rehabilitation protocol things for those tendons that are probably a little pissed off. Interesting. Yeah. The way I was going to answer this was pretty simple in just if you're curling with an extremely flexed forearm. So think of like, if you're almost doing it like a wrist curl where you're grabbing your weight and then you're curling your, your wrist up and then you're doing your curl, then you're pre -activating those forearm flexors already. So that makes a ton of sense that your forearms would burn out first. I used to experience that a lot when I used to curl that way. And now the way that I curl is I curl with forearm extended or wrist extended. So I almost kind of pull my wrist back. So if neutral is straight, I would pull my wrist back a little bit. If anyone sees on YouTube, the wrist goes back. And then as you curl with your wrist back, it actually takes the forearm out of it. And you're able to just focus on elbow flexion. I kind of analogize this to the seated leg curl where imagine how it would feel if you tried to seated leg curl with your toes pointed. So what we do when we seated leg curls, we dorsiflex, we point our toes towards our knees and that takes the calves out of the movement and allows you to more effectively train the hamstring. But imagine if you pointed your toes, which actually would activate the calves. So you're putting your calves into a flexed position and now you're going to try to leg curl. You would have significantly less force output and you would feel your calves cramping up. before your hamstrings do. So I think it's the same idea with curls. You don't want to be curling from this flexed position of the forearm. You want to let your wrist either be neutral or slightly unflexed, extended. And then that should allow you to train the bicep more effectively. Wonderful answer. I think it's a very good one -two punch for that one of different approaches. sure. Well, that's all we got, man. Big day of questions. We're done hour and 20 minutes in. That's it. So as always, guys, thank you for listening. We'll be back in July with the next Instagram Q &A. It sounds like we will be taking next week away as Brian is on his family vacation in Wisconsin. And then we will connect in July, guys. So as always, thank you for listening. Talk to you soon.