February 2025 Instagram Q&A | ETP#183

00:00:23 Who was the better CrossFitter? Bryan or Aaron? 

00:01:47 What are the prime muscle-building years, and how precipitous is the drop off as you age? 

00:05:12 What’s your average maintenance diet look like?  Can you walk through a typical grocery haul for a week.

00:11:32 What do you think about RFK? 

00:16:23 Do you think whey protein powders have merit? Do you think you can build muscle in a low-carb state if you’re eating a ton of protein?

00:18:26 Aaron mentioned using the RP hypertrophy app. Any update? 

00:20:42 What are differences between Paragon 5D physique and how a pro bodybuilder would train? No desire to stand on stage, but wanna optimize muscle mass.

00:26:12 Is behind the back cable lateral raise more anterior delt and the Y-Raise is more rear delt?

00:28:11 When training 4x/week, would you expect a difference in results from an UL split (each muscle 2x/week) versus a rotating PPL split if weekly volumes are equated?

00:32:37 I’ve been listening to your pod for awhile, and finally starting my first official bulk in 10 years lifting at the same BW. Four months in, and I got stretch marks on my chest.

00:33:29 Opinion on Rucking for Zone 2 if an outdoor activity is desired but I don’t want to run?

00:34:52 What are your thoughts on flywheel training for hypertrophy? 

00:36:09 What are some good general fitness milestones to test progress?

00:39:40 For Aaron. Give us a FULL update on your training and how you’re feeling and growing. You wanting more? Have your goals/dreams changed? YOU LITERALLY LOOK LIKE AN ACTION FIGURE! 

00:46:26 I’m lifting 5x per week and running 3x per week preparing for this half marathon. Do you think it’s possible to gain muscle during this period?

00:49:24 If you wanted to have higher calories on training days, how low would you go on the low days?

00:52:51 What is the most common question that you find yourself answering with clients?

00:54:43 Should natty lifters train differently than enhanced?

00:56:59 For building muscle do you think it’s as optimal training in the mornings as in the afternoon or evening?

00:58:54 When lifting is your grip meant to be comfortable or as hard as possible?

01:00:24 Minimum recommendations for fruits/vegetables per meal/day if trying to reduce food volume?

01:02:57 How to design a chest specialization phase?

01:04:07 Potential reasons for high SHBG?

01:06:48 Cardio and lifting. Can they be done on the same day?

01:09:07 If Bryan was training for max hypertrophy, could he get better results in a commercial gym? 

01:10:30 In a deficit, if you are not expecting to gain muscle and the goal is to maintain, should you modify training to be lower volume and/or lower frequency?

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Transcript

0:25

What is going on guys? Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today's episode 183 and this is our February 2025 Instagram Q &A. We have a very big list of questions and we are going to do our best to be time efficient and get through all of them with the context and nuance that Eat, Train, Prosper likes to lend itself to. So with that, we're going to skip updates and jump right in. So first question, who was the better CrossFitter, Brian or Aaron? I think I will take this one. And in my mind, Brian was much better than myself at CrossFit. Yeah, I think I was definitely better in the early years as you struggled with some of the more technical stuff. I think as the latter years came in, 2015, 16, maybe it evened out a bit. I can't remember exactly how we performed in the open and stuff like that. I'd still probably agree that I was probably slightly better and just a little more well-rounded. But you came on strong. So, know, mad props there. There were certain things I was pretty good at, on average I would do poorly. Like I was the person who would do poorly during the open, but then there was like regionals workouts that I would be pretty good at, but I would never qualify because I sucked at the open workouts. So yeah. no, I was similar. Actually, like, it was always the open workout that had the heaviest weight or the most technical gymnastics that I would crush. Like there was a two, a snatch ladder that went up through 225 and I got like three reps there, which was quite good. Um, there was muscle up workouts that I did really well on and then all the stuff that was just, you know, go for 15 minutes and do a bunch of toes to bar and double unders. did not do so well on Yeah, agreed. Yeah. All right, Aaron. So question two, what are the prime muscle building years and how precipitous is the drop off as you age? I do as much as I hate to say it. think the prime muscle building years are going to be like let's call it like 17 through 25 ish. I just think from a not so much a pure biological standpoint, but more of the societal impacts that also go into that right because if someone is not being very if someone's like not continuing to play a sport through like 25 or something like that. Odds are they are falling by the wayside of less healthy adult lifestyle, high stress, lower sleep, alcohol, maybe some drugs, poor food. it being younger, you don't have access to any of that. You're pretty much being like child adolescent, maybe adolescent playing sport right into that. So you haven't really treated your body poorly yet. And you're still so young. You can bounce back from everything. And I think you can. Make a lot. You can do a lot of things really dumb and wrong. At that 17, 18, 19, 20 and still make incredible progress, but also still like being an 18 year old, you know, like that was me. I was not very smart at that time. I made incredible progress. I was pretty fucking stupid. I don't think you can apply that same logic to 28, 29, 35, 40. Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree. I was going to say the late teenage years into the mid twenties. Um, the reality is it's probably actually the first couple of years that you lift. And so if those first few years you lift are 35, then those are going to be better muscle building years than 18 because you didn't lift. But I think this question is more getting at like what age would you want to be at to optimize training? And, yeah, I do think, uh, late teenage years to mid twenties is Yeah. And then the latter part on how precipitous is the drop off as you age. I truly think it depends on how those years are spent. Right. If you from 18 to let's call it 40 year just live in the modern nine to five life, drinking beers, watching football at 30 percent body fat, unhealthy, not really into it. That's a couple of decades of your life that you are sabotaging, if I may, certain things. And I think there is a period of getting your body back to a even state or even slate before you can really reap the benefits of that. And it's obviously much easier to not ever have to go through that getting back to that even slate period at 18 and then just starting from there. Yeah, I guess the drop off would also be. relevant to, to how long you were training. So like, if you're, if you got those prime muscle building years from 18 to 25, say, like, that's, that's seven or eight years of really prime muscle building, you could be an advanced trainee at that point. And so yeah, it would be hard to gain muscle at that point. But if you like, if you start at 35, that becomes like, that's when you started lifting, you're going to have plenty of great, fantastic, amazing results from 35 to 42. because you hadn't been training before. So the prime muscle building years really are when you train, but if you are going to put an age to it, it would be best to be training in your late teenage years forward. Yeah. So these next two questions, I almost kind of feel like we can combine into one. The first is what's your average maintenance diet look like? And then the second one is, can you walk through a typical grocery haul for a week? Where do you shop? What are the essentials? And how much do you spend? Mostly just curious how much meat, rice, and veggies, fruit you go through in a week. So I think those two can both go together. Yeah, I'll answer the first one. The second one's kind of hard. Like I only make my breakfasts right now. Everything else comes from a meal prep company and that's been I'm coming up on three years of that. So I would be a very poor ask on that one. But what my average maintenance diet looks like and I've answered this, you know, numerous times. I have my average baseline of how I live my life from a nutritional standpoint. When I'm in a caloric surplus. Some of those things rise when I'm in a deficit. Some of those things come down, but I'm really four meals per day with like one kind of snack-esque post-workout looking thing, which is going to be like weigh some form of like a powdered rice or a rice puffed cereal, something like that. Very, very easy digestion and some fruit, right? If I'm in a deficit, that's going to be like berries, strawberry, blueberry. If I'm in a deep in a caloric surplus, I'm not going to go with a berry. That's going to be a banana date, something that's much more dense for its relative quantity in gram. My breakfast, berries changes, right? I do one to three eggs, depending on dietary. If we're talking maintenance, let's call that two eggs. I add additional egg whites to get me additional protein in there. About 100 to 150 grams of like a sourdough and then one or two pieces of fruit. Like that's breakfast and some spinach mix in my egg scramble. That's maintenance. I'm going to have two meals that are going to be some form of a lean protein, a rice, a potato, a starch, something like that. And anywhere from like 50 to 150 grams of vegetables. Um, the post-workout I already covered and that's effectively like my four meals. I'll have an intro workout, liquid carbohydrate, orange juice, coconut water, a dextrose, something like that. And that is effectively like maintenance. and what I eat pretty much year round. Cool. Well, that's easy. For me, I think it's a little bit more complicated and nuanced because I'm also shopping for the family. So I'll try to separate that out here. So I never eat breakfast like ever, ever, ever. I can't even remember the last time that I had food before at the earliest 10 a.m. Usually it's noon or one. So I just don't eat in the earlier part of the day. As far as what it looks like from there. I usually have two like really big meals. The first meal is usually 10 or more ounces of chicken with rice and veggies and fruit. I try to have 400 grams of fruit and veggies at that first meal. And then I'll have a snack a couple hours later. So say that first meal is at noon, say at 230 or 3pm, I'll have a snack that's usually a David bar or a quest bar or one of those protein bars with 20 to 30 grams of protein in it. I'll have another piece of fruit and usually a piece of like whole grain toast or something along those lines. And then in the evening, it's some version of a repeat of lunch. It's usually not chicken and rice. It's probably going to be beef and potatoes or beef and a bun. Something along those lines with generally fruit. only have veggies once a day. have about 200 grams of veggies in that first meal. And then the rest of my meals, I usually have fruit. I try to get seven to 800 grams total of fruit and veggie throughout the day, but only about 200 grams of that is veggie. And that's more or less my diet. Like it's three meals, it's the two big meals, and then the kind of snackish meal in the middle. As far as what the grocery haul looks like. Man, so every week we buy a dozen bagels for the family. I probably only have one of those each week and the kids for breakfast every day have a bagel and then they have a choice of an egg, a yogurt or half of a whey protein shake. So I'll legitimately take like half of a scoop of 25 grams of protein whey and make them drink that if they don't want an egg or yogurt. always got to make sure they have some protein with their breakfast. Then the kids eat lunch and stuff at school. They usually have snacks at school too. So their dinner is some version of what I eat, whether it's like they like burgers and chicken tenders and shit like that. so we'll do that. My grocery haul is is I would say I get about five pounds of chicken a week. I probably personally eat three and a half or four pounds of that. I usually get about two pounds of ground beef and I usually end up eating a pound and a half of that maybe. bunch of rice. Like I would say rice is really my primary starchy carbohydrate. And I do eat like, you know, bread like a burger bun, or like I said, I'll have a bagel every now and then. potatoes, stuff like that. It's really hard to just dial it in exclusively and say this is like my grocery haul every week just because of the family dynamic. But we do spend a decent amount of money on groceries. It's it's weird, like somehow Whole Foods and Trader Joe's is cheaper than Safeway. which is just odd to me because Safeway's quality of food is so much lower, but I can go to Safeway and spend $500 for the week, or I can go to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and spend 350, which I just, I still can't figure out how and why that's the case because the food is so much better at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. but yeah, that's more or less the story. And then usually at some point midweek, there's like a second like touch up grocery trip where like we need more yogurt. My wife drinks a lot, eats a lot of yogurt. So we need like more yogurt, we need more fruit. Those are usually the two things that we have to re up on mid week. And everything else is pretty solid. Very, very cool. I'll yeah, in about a year I might have an update to that that answer there as I'll be doing my own grocery shopping for the first time in quite some time. Next one, Brian, I think we'll kick off with you to start as this question came into you, but I do have some of my own thoughts on it as well. What do you think about RFK? Yeah, so we've gotten this question a few times and we skipped it the first few times we got it, because we try not to politicize, you know, our stance here on this episode. So I am going to try and be as succinct as I can here. Basically, I believe that getting food dyes and preservatives and stuff out of our food and increasing the quality of our food supply is a good thing. I think the problem is that it's being done almost as this cloak that's distracting from the things that actually really matter. so like, RFK has been tough on sugar, but you don't extract sugar from food. Like how do you get sugar out of food? You inform people and you educate people that they need to eat less sugar. That's still not even the biggest problem, even though it is a problem. The problem is obesity and lack of exercise. And so I don't know how you prescribe the solution to that problem without being some sort of like socialist communist type society where I like I heard back in the day, I remember in the late 90s hearing that Russia mandated that everybody do X amount of exercise every day and you had to like scan your card and like it would then go back to the government or whatever and they would see if you weren't meeting your exercise requirements. I obviously don't agree with that type of governance, but I mean, As far as a solution to our obesity problem, that is one way to at least begin to move the needle. We spent a lot of time in the last episode talking about all the benefits of exercise beyond just the physical appearance of your body, all the health ramifications through the cardiovascular disease and cognitive function and mental health as far as depression, anxiety, all of these things. Go check that episode out last week if you haven't But These are the things like the obesity and the lack of exercise are really the things that I think are the detriment to the society. And so it's great, get food dyes out, get preservatives out, minimize sugar, improve the food quality, but let's not forget about the things that are like really moving the needle here. beyond that, I'm just not gonna touch the vaccine part of Yeah, I'm, I will focus on what I feel the most strongly about and what I know the most professionally about and that's nutrition. And I do feel as though it is a It's not like it's I felt like for years, it's like kind of swept under the rug. Like everyone knows that as a whole, the country is just from I'm talking from from a pure individual standpoint, like a statistical average falling the fuck apart, right? Obesity rates are just climbing. Body weights are climbing. The food quality is absolutely horrendous for the average person who's uninformed about nutrition. Right. That's very, very cut and dry. I feel positive that the narrative is at least starting to shift around. This is a problem that we need to fix. I do think the demonization of certain things like seed oils, like I, for anyone who's not super into it, you're probably not listening to this podcast, but like, I guarantee you if like seed oils tomorrow were gone, right across the, across the country, no one has access to them anymore. The people who are obese are still going to be obese, you know, in like three months time or something like that. It's not a one simple hack. to change everything. The food dyes are not going to make everyone's body fat disappear. It's a cultural thing. But at least the problem is being largely talked about and addressed at a high level. And he speaks about how there's incentives for poor quality food get subsidized and things like that. So it's at least spoken about. Do I think things are going to change drastically in the next two years? No. Maybe in the next like 10 potentially. So I'm at least hopeful for that is what I'll say. Yeah. The last thing I want to add that I forgot is that when you look at the preponderance of studies that are showing the kind of negative effect of these food additives, and you can throw seed oils in there and sugar, like all of these things, throw them all in there. The a lot of those effects are mitigated by simply exercising and not being obese. So so all of these things are exacerbated. If you are obese and don't exercise, it's like, seed oils are bad. These dyes are bad. The preserves are bad. The food quality is terrible. In the studies that show people exercising and consuming these things, it almost makes them negligible. like exercise really is the thing that we need to be focusing on. Next. Do you think whey protein powders have merit? Do you think you can build muscle in a low carb state if you're eating a ton of protein? And then in parentheses, this is necessary for motility issues. Do I think whey protein powders have merit? Yes, I use one every day. I believe Brian uses one every day. Brian just off hand mentioned that they're fed to his children periodically. So I would say, what's really funny is what people are like, I have a 17 year old. Do you think protein powders are safe? Brian's like, I give protein powder to my six year old. So yes, I do think they have merit. Think that you can build muscle in a low carb state if you're eating a ton of protein. I wouldn't say it's impossible. Everything comes down to your energy balance. If you're taking, if you have motility issues and digestive issues and you're eating like massive influxes of protein, would eventually will probably begin to exacerbate those digestive issues because protein is the hardest. of the macronutrients to digest and assimilate. But if you're just drinking like a lot, a lot of whey, you can probably circumvent it, but you may run into other issues with it just due to the sheer volume of that single food you're intaking. If you do not have issues with increasing fats, that can be another approach. Is it as good as the carbohydrate approach? No, but because we have limited options, I think it is possible. Do I think it will be optimal? No. But do I think it is possible? Yes. Yeah, I'll just add that if you're eating a ton, like Aaron said, if you're in a surplus, like you can gain muscle, your body can convert protein to carbohydrates through gluconeogenesis. So like if your body needs carbohydrates, it will find a way to create them. And it's really just about being in a caloric surplus and yeah, sure. You can gain muscle. Question for Aaron. I don't even think this is true, he mentioned using the RP hypertrophy app in a prior update. Any update on that? Yeah, so I used it for, it was more than a month because I paid for it twice. So probably about like six weeks in total. And I ran through like one of their like meso cycles on it. I don't love it. You know, if I'm being honest, I really do not love the RP world of progression of just stacking volume until you can't stack any more volume and then you deload. I think the app is really well done. You know, there's, kind of two ways. have a general fondness and appreciation for, what they built from a, from a usability standpoint. I think it's pretty. novel and some of the approaches in that sort of thing, but I don't how it's like if you were recovered last session and you didn't get crushed, here's two more sets for like shoulder press. So by the final week, I was doing like up to six sets of a single exercise. And my end, what really happens is as, as the, as the six weeks go by, your training sessions just get longer and longer and longer and longer and longer and longer. unless like you can't recover but it will ask it like is it too much and I'm like well mentally yeah I don't want to do six fucking sets of shoulder press but I'm recovered from it like I can handle it and then it's like okay here's seven you know so I just I won't use it again I would if you're interested I would encourage you to formulate your own opinion about it I didn't hate it necessarily but I am just not a fan of that style of progression Yeah, I'm actually really surprised that they're still using that type of aggressive volume progression, because I think that even all the people that were huge supporters of that style, like, you know, Steve Hall being the perfect example of that a number of years ago, he doesn't do that anymore. And and nobody like I don't really know anybody in the actual application space like anybody I network with in this industry. Nobody adds volume that aggressively across a messo cycle. So I don't know. Yeah. I forgot that you even use the app. So that's interesting. Yep. Okay, this one will take over you. What are the differences between a paragon five day physique and how a I'm assuming this is pro and how a pro bodybuilder would train? I have no desire to stand on stage, but want to optimize muscle mass. And then in parentheses, I understand most pros are on steroids. Yeah, I struggle with this question because there are so many variations of ways in which a pro bodybuilder could train. There's an entire sect of pro bodybuilders out in the UK that train in more of like the HIIT high intensity training, like one or two sets to failure, low volume type approach. think AJ Morris, Jordan Peters, that whole crew. And then you have the pro bodybuilders that still tend to follow the bro splits that are like 20 to 30 sets a week where all of the sets are allocated in one day. So it's like chest on Monday, back on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday type thing. And so you have those extremes on either end. And then I guess somewhere in the middle, you have people that are even doing like upper lower splits and full body training and stuff like that. So you know, when you you look at the 5d program at Paragon, I I I know there are pro bodybuilders that train in a similar manner. It's a, uh, it's a push. It's a, it's a lower push, pull lower upper split. So five days a week, you have three upper body days, two lower body days. Uh, the volume per muscle group per week is somewhere between 10 and 20 sets per muscle group based on what muscle group it is. And if you're counting fractional sets, like does that pull up count as a bicep and a back or just a back. But it's somewhere in that like 10 to 20 set range. I would say it's as indicative of the way a pro bodybuilder would train as any of the other programs I write, like I couldn't tell you that, like I'm writing it with the intention of optimizing or maximizing muscle mass via proper hypertrophy training with evidence based practices. So if you're a pro bodybuilder that follows evidence-based practices, then that's probably relatively similar to how you train. And if you're somebody that doesn't, then it wouldn't be so much. The only thing I will add to that. If someone is a pro bodybuilder, right, that is a very, large, probably aspect of their identity and something that they put a lot of time into. They are probably willing to spend more time in the gym than the person that the five day physique is written for. And they may likely and probably do a little bit more volume only because it is something that is such a higher of an importance sort of thing. And if someone's a pro competing on a pro circuit, they are probably going to opt to do a little bit more volume just to not leave any kind of stone unturned. That has been my experience in interacting with some of the pro bodybuilders, but it's again because they are, know, some of them it's their job. It's an identity sort of thing. They have the time to dedicate to it. So they will spend a little bit more time doing more volume, but that's about what Brian said is pretty right. Like once you're good at programming and like Brian's very good at programming, you tend to do a pretty damn decent job. What, like you really feel as if the group of bodybuilders that you talk to is doing more than 20 sets per body part, or is it just that they're taking those same 10 to 20 sets and they're resting longer between the sets, which is making the workout longer? Yeah, I like just making the workout longer or if we're like, for example, again, in a in one of the like the pull session, right? With five days physique and please correct me if I'm wrong, we might do like a vertical pull a horizontal pull. Are you also adding like a unilateral or redoing them like a rear delt and a bicep? Like how many exercises? one of the days that I just programmed that's coming up, it has three sets of single arm lat pull down. It has three sets of seated cable rows with a semi pronated grip. has three sets of a one arm cable rear delt fly. It has three sets of cable face pulls, and then it has four or five sets of biceps at the end. So you're looking at 12 sets of back and five sets of biceps. on a training day, 17 total working sets for a pull day. In my experience, we would probably only see someone doing one rear delt exercise. like where you had like the unilateral rear delt kind of pull across or I can't remember exactly what you called it. And then also the face pull. In what I have seen, we might only do like one of those and then we would probably have a third back exercise. It's like a different, you back angle. So You know what? It wasn't actually a face pull. And even though I will, I will say, I do consider a face pulled, not a rear dealt, but more of a, of a trap exercise, like a mid lower trap. but the movement wasn't actually a cable face pull. was a Kelso shrug. So, similar, similar, but different, hitting it from a, from a slightly different angle. But yeah, I mean, 12 sets of back and five sets of biceps on a standard full day. Yeah, so I wouldn't think much different unless someone has like a lagging body part that they really want to improve. They'll probably do a considerable increase in volume because it's the simplest equation, you know, for something that needs improvement. OK, this one I think is really good to kick over to you. Is the behind the back cable lateral raise more anterior delt and the Y raise more rear delt? You simply, yes. So there are seven heads to the dealt three of them on the posterior dealt three of them on the anterior dealt and then the middle dealt. I often will think of the most medial, guess would be the way of saying that or the most middle versions of the rear dealt and the anterior dealt. I still consider kind of portions of the middle dealt if that makes sense, cause they're coming in from the outside. So when you look at the most middle delt portion of the anterior delt and the most middle delt portion of the rear delt, they all kind of converge around where the middle delt is. But yeah, mean, 100 % if you're pulling from front to back, you're going to get a little bit more of those rear delt heads with some middle delt. And if you're pulling from back to front, you're going to get a little bit more of the front delt heads with some middle delt. Yeah, the only small addition I would say is when I perform the Y-rays, which I do love, by the way, I also get a bit of like what I would believe would be like carries in there as well. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I like it's, it's a, I've had conversations with other people about this and we tend to agree that if the Y-rays is going more AB ducted. if you're coming out more to the side and less straight up overhead, then it's going to be a little bit more of the, the middle delt. and a little bit less of the rear delt and trap area. And the more that you come directly overhead where the arms are more vertical at the top in that Y raise, the more you're going to get the mid lower trap region and more rear delt. Yeah, really good addition. Okay, I have some thoughts on this next one. I can take it first. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. four times a week, would you expect a difference in results from an upper lower split each muscle twice a week versus a rotating PPL split if we keep weekly volumes are equated. So they're saying the rotating PPL split would hit each muscle two times over 10 to 11 days. Whereas the upper lower split hits two times every seven days. but the volumes would be equated across the same period of time. I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction. Assuming that recovery capacity of the upper lower split was not an issue and performance could be similar, one could theorize that because you're completing a given volume in a much shorter time frame, so call it seven days versus 10 or 11, over multiple, multiple iterations, let's call it four, five, six months, you get a lot more work done in a smaller amount of time. So you're able to get more work done, if that makes sense, over that amount of time. That could theoretically contribute to more results. However, the caveat is performance dependent. And with the additional recovery times of that 10 to 11 day split, I would theorize that performance would be better. over the PPL split. it would, again, I think it comes down to performance. If you could match performance in the upper lower, I think the time would benefit you. However, that is a big caveat of being able to match performance with that much more volume on a given day. Yeah, I love I love the performance piece. Just to clarify and to make sure we're on the same page, I feel as if what they're saying is that over the 10 to 11 days of the one rotation of PPL, they're getting the same amount of volume in the upper lower split over 10 to 11 days. So they're not saying in in two sessions of upper and two sessions of lower, they're saying in three sessions of upper and three sessions of lower, because that would be 10 to 11 days would be like a week and a half. So you're talking about a week and a half of the upper lower split is equivalent in volume. to the week and a half of PPL split. Okay, yeah, I was assuming that the upper lower volume would be done in seven days. Yeah, because they're saying volume equated. So I'm thinking over the 10 to 11 days, the volume would be the same even though PPL is only hitting is hit I don't know you're hitting the muscle essentially three times in the upper lower split and only twice in the PPL split over that same period of time. it does say if weekly volumes are equated. So I think you're right. Yeah, so I take back my answer then. I kind of think it comes out in the wash and you just do the one that like you enjoy the most and fits your lifestyle best. And I would find it hard to say that one would be significantly better than the other. Yeah. All right. Let's see what's next year. All right. a fully unilateral program for Paragon? No, absolutely not. mean, that's the amount of time commitment that would go into that and the amount of sets to failure. So one of the biggest hindrances in using unilateral training is that mentally you have to go do a hard set. We'll just call it a failure set, even though they're not all to failure. You essentially have to do a failure set twice to get the same hypertrophy benefit as one set. So it's not just the time commitment, which I think you could mitigate by just taking shorter rest between limbs or whatever. But the psychological side of having to do those hard sets double as many times. like imagine if instead of a leg day being three sets of hack squat, three sets of RDL, three sets of leg extensions and three sets of leg curls or something like that. So you have 12 total sets, six for quads, six for hamstrings. Imagine that workout instead being Bulgarian split squats. single leg RDLs, single leg leg extensions and single leg leg curls. Now you're having to do 24 sets to get the same stimulus that you would get from 12 sets of bilateral work. And so it just doesn't make sense practically. And I would never do that. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it someone gave me that program. A big hard no on this. Hard no, yeah exactly. Alright, I've been listening to your pod for a while and I finally started my first official bulk in 10 years of lifting at the same body weight. Four months in and I have stretch marks on my chest. Isn't that dope? I remember being excited about my first stretch marks because it really means that you're growing. Now I'm fearful. like, so far no new stretch marks with all this new weight and stuff I've put on. And I'm glad. I don't want them at this point, to be completely honest. But I was really excited about them when I first got them because it was evident that the training and growing was actually happening. Yeah, I mean, is dope for you. That's awesome, dude. I can't believe you lifted for 10 years at the same body weight and never try to bulk, but, I guess it just goes to show that at some point, everyone needs to increase the calories and, see what kind of impact that has on the amount of muscle you can gain. Yep. Opinion on using rucking for zone two if an outdoor activity is desired, but I don't want to run. Yeah, I think it's fine if you can get into zone two. During the rocking hype that Peter Attia and was it Michael Easter dropped a number of years ago, I went out and bought all the rocking equipment and thought I was going to be a huge rocker. And I just realized that walking around my neighborhood, I can't even get into zone two. I can walk as fast as I can possibly walk with 45 to 60 pounds. And my heart rate is still in like you know, 105 110, something like that. So the only times that I could actually get into zone two rucking would be if I'm going up a slight incline or shuffling slash jogging. And jogging with a 45 pound pack on is just an awful experience. And I don't have an extended long hill around my neighborhood. So it would just be a bunch of, you know, a little bit of zone two and then dropping back into zone one and then a little zone two and dropping back into zone one. So Yeah, like if you're not in great cardiovascular shape and you can just walk with weight on your back. That's an amazing way to do zone two. I just don't know too many people that over time can still be in zone two while rocking on flat ground. Yep, I don't have anything to add on the back end of that one. Cool. Do you have any experience with flywheel training, Aaron? Personally, no, I think I touched it once at N1 like very very briefly and that is my only actual experience with it. Yeah, so this next question asks, what are your thoughts on flywheel training and using it for hypertrophy? And just like you, my only experience with it is once at N1. And I know Cass has used it as an accompaniment to his general hypertrophy training. So I'm sure there's value there. I just personally don't really have enough experience to talk on that. Yeah, I think some of the newer developments on like the Vultra is getting like really cool what you can actually do. But I, you know, in full transparency don't have any, any more experience other than like seeing a couple really cool videos of some of the settings and configurability. So I guess in flywheel training, the harder you work, the more resistance it provides. And so, um, that's kind of an interesting feature. And then with the Vultra, which is not flywheel training, but it's the kind of electronic aid that Cass has been using that he's able to add resistance to different portions of the movement where he can make a movement harder at the bottom or harder at the top or whatever. So, um, I think there's value in all that stuff. I just don't have enough experience to talk about it. Yep. All right. I'll kick this one to you. If you have any thoughts on this water. some good general fitness milestones to test progress against, for example, mile run pushups in 60 seconds, et cetera. This is such a hard question for me. I would say it really should be goal dependent. For example, like my entire life, quote unquote is like fitness. If you made me go run a mile, my God, it would be an abomination. It might be like a let it probably like 12 minutes, something like that. Assuming something bad didn't happen, like a hamstring tear or something cramp up horribly and I go down, you know? So it's really hard, but I don't like value being able to run a mile right now. So it's, it's really hard to say. I think body weight pushups and pull ups can be a really, really good one because it's scalable to your relative size. someone who's really, really short, maybe the mile run isn't the best for them. Someone with a longer stride can probably take advantage of it a little bit better and be in less quality shape. I would being able to say maybe doing six, eight body weight pull ups, I think is a good one. Push-ups, especially for like females who typically don't have as much like pressing strength upper body Ten something like that Like I just got in a I just lost a very big bet to Jenny this past week because I was trying to ask her How many push-ups she could do and I didn't think she could do 15 and she got very mad at me and then did like 23 So I I ate my words on that one. This one's really hard for me because I just I just don't it makes it a large assumption that may be of things that you don't care about Yeah, I loved what you said in the beginning, which was that it needs to be specific to your goals. And so I guess in this one, it did it did it state general fitness? Yeah, what are some good general fitness milestones? So it's not like this person is like trying to chase hypertrophy or trying to trace cardio or anything like that. They just want to be generally, you know, So, yeah, I mean, push ups are fine. I think the problem you get with tests like those is standardization of movement. And so like your pushups could turn into worms. you could do them faster. You could do them slower. Your pull-ups could have body English. They could not have body English, running a mile. You can't really cheat. Like that's pretty much like, Hey, move, go from there to there and like, see how fast you can do it. so I like that one. If, if, that's important to you, that's a good, it's actually a really good test of like VO two max because VO two max is that range between like, you know, four and eight minutes or something like that. Three and eight minutes. So most people going all out can hopefully run a mile in eight minutes. I would say I'm probably just under that. And I've been running now for like four straight months just to get under eight minutes for a mile. It's a good one. General fitness, mean, burpees in a minute, burpees in five minutes. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. can standardize burpees by doing like we did in the open where you have to touch something six inches above your head. So you're making sure you're extending all the way. Yeah. And then, mean, just general progressions in the gym. Like what are your dumbbell rows? Are they going up over time? Like, are your squats getting stronger? Stuff like that. So, yeah, I think all of those are good. I think you just need to choose the ones that speak to you. All right, this one's for you, Aaron. For Aaron, give us a full, in caps, update on your training and how you're feeling and growing. You wanting more? Have your goals and dreams changed? You stay hitting with us with these 30 second updates. You literally look like an action figure. Update us. So I feel really tired and really full and I'm sick of eating. I can't think of the last time I was remotely interested in eating one of my meals, like even breakfast. Like I love my breakfast and I just don't want it. Like today I didn't eat my breakfast till 10 a.m. and I was just like, I just don't fucking want it. I'm so full. I think I mentioned on the last week's episode, I'm drinking 1.5 liters of orange juice per day and intra workout. carbs that are another 50 grams of carbs. Like my body's just like over it effectively. Am I wanting more? No, not at all. It's a very like be careful what you wish for thing. I was 234 pounds this morning fasted, still have abs, which is I'm honestly having a hard time wrapping my head around it honestly believing it. But I just have a favorable response to the PEDs. Like I wish there was like I'm this crazy hard worker, that sort of thing. Like I work no harder and I'm no more disciplined than the 190 pound Natty Aaron, if I'm being completely honest with everyone. My goals and dreams have not changed. I will start prep in about a month, which I cannot wait for, honestly, because I just want to like, I just want to like feel a little bit better. I'm just like really lethargic and full all the time. And I just want that to go away. I have three shows picked out through the summer months, a little bit into the fall. And then immediately after that, I'll be getting married back on the East Coast, which I'm very much looking forward to. And as long as things go decently to plan as of the end of November, sorry, the end of September, bodybuilder Aaron goes away and I will just let my body weight reduce back down to like the 210 to 215 range, which I honestly very much so look forward to. That's awesome and thorough, but I think you missed one portion of that, which was the very beginning, which said, tell us about your training. yes, so my bad. Training right now is push pull legs off, push pull off. So I'm training legs once per week. They've kind of gone on the back burner because I will be in board shorts and my legs do not need to be any bigger than they are. And so it's opportunity cost on time of training the muscle groups that will get judged there. So I'm training five days per week. I'm training with Jackson, who's my coach. multiple days per week again, which is it's good, but there's a lot of like doing business stuff with the gym in between of training. So it's not like we just get straight dedicated to training. It's a little bit of a high stress situation right now, but I'm excited to be training at Undefeated. It's pretty cool. have effectively empty gym, private gym, all the equipment that I picked that I'm really pumped on and, you know, putting those through the paces and really getting to use them. And that's been very, very exciting for me. So I had a really rough like November, December of just high stress, mood was poor, not really enjoying it, wanted to get out of the gym that I was training in, really couldn't those sorts of things, but feeling much better stringing together consistent weeks. My body weight has been steady and now climbing over the past week. know, yesterday I think was an all time high. And then today was like just under that at two thirty four point three, I think. So things are going good. I'll probably end up tapping out, you know, before prep starts around like 236 maybe something like that, which 235 was my like goal that I kind of said I wanted to get to that size. Now that I'm that big, I thought that I would look like some superhuman freak and I'd have the physique I always wanted, but I definitely do not. And I don't want to be any bigger. So I think it's one of those things where you're just never really satisfied. Like there's times where I'm like, that's it. That's all we got. Right. This is what we look like. 235 pounds and I thought we would be bigger but I think that's one of those like just being overly self-critical sort of things and I know that it'll never go away and I definitely do not want to get any bigger. I don't like being as big as I am right now. Cool, especially with such a small fiance. So just because I know the listeners will want to know, do you have any idea of how much volume per muscle group you're doing? I know leg volume is lower. You're only training them once a week. How about on those push and pull muscles? No, when I like Jackson likes high volume. so when I trained with him, it's we'll train for well over two hours. like I think today. So yeah, I'll run us through today really quickly. did unilateral pull down top, top set back off, unilateral compound row, pop set back off. Then we did, two sets top set back off on the T bar. So that's six sets right there. Then we did a top set back off of a close grip pull down. So that's eight sets right there. And then we did three sets of pull overs, like lap prayers. So that's what? 11. We did two straight sets of face pulls. So that's 13. We did two sets of shrugs on the Smith machine, top set back off. and then three sets of bicep curls. 15 sets for back three sets for biceps. And that's mostly cause your biceps are a strong body part and you just don't need to train them. Plus they're getting fractional sets for all the back work. So not all of those back sets trained your biceps, like the lap prayers don't train your biceps at all. They train more of the long head tricep, but, but yeah, you're getting basically five fractional sets of biceps in through the back work and then three direct sets. So you're getting eight sets of biceps with 15 sets of back. that's a pretty robust day. And then I guess all of those sets are to failure or one RIR. yeah, everything's failure plus at least one to three assisted reps. Yeah. a lot. That's a lot of volume. it's yeah. I mean, that's a solid day training. All right. I have it here. I'm lifting five times per week and running three times per week preparing for this half marathon. Do you think it's possible to gain muscle during this period? what are your calories doing? Like, are you in a caloric surplus? Like, I think it really comes down. These types of questions come down to like, are you gaining weight or are you losing weight or are you just maintaining weight? So if we take this and say you're probably maintaining weight, cause that would be the most ambiguous of the answers. it's probably not likely that you're gaining muscle. I also kind of wonder why you need to lift five times a week when you're training for a half marathon. Like my thought would be, we actually have a question later on in here about being in a deficit and anyway, we'll get to that question later. But I do think it's probably unnecessary for you to lift five times a week and run three times a week in preparation for the half marathon. It's if you're not gonna be gaining muscle anyways, I would probably dial back some of that lifting volume and allow yourself to have a little bit more recovery currency to put into your half marathon training. Yeah, I mean, I think you the nail on the head there. I think it's like the fear of. I wouldn't even say it's the fear, it's just like the innate desire to like one all the things right. I want I want this like and I want this and I want this and I want that and it's just. I don't want to stomp on anyone's dreams because like is it possible? Yes, it is possible, but the requirement of the record of what that requires in the management of it is probably not worth it to put on. maybe a pound, you know, sort of thing. So yeah, I think like Brian said, put your training on maintenance and understand like your, the prioritization is this half marathon. It's probably not, you're probably not training for it for like four or five months. It might be like 12 weeks or something like that. Put your training on maintenance, keep your body weight stable, ensure that you're fueling yourself sufficiently to, to amply recover and to produce quality training runs for this preparation and then chip back into the hypertrophy focus. Yeah, I made this mistake when I first started my cardio journey three plus years ago. And I've talked about it, you know, ad nauseam here on the podcast, but I was trying to train five times a week and do all of my cardio and biking and stuff. And I thought I was cool for the first few months. I even came on here and was like, yeah, it's great. I'm like hitting all my numbers and cardio is going great. I'm loving this. And then literally like three or four months in, I was like, I'm fucked. Like I really made a mistake here. I cannot do all of these things and do them. over time at a high level. So dialing back lifting to now two days a week and doing my cardio, I haven't had any noticeable decrement in my lifting performance or in my body comp that I can tell. And so I just think, you know, people go overkill on the lifting when they're combining it with cardio and the dose that you really need is probably a lot lower than you think. All right, Aaron, if you wanted to have higher calories on training days, how would you how low could you go on the low days? Is it detrimental to go too low? depends on the goal, right? If the goal is like a build, I probably wouldn't do that because then it just adds a needless variable in there. If I was at maintenance and I wanted to, I don't know, maybe have like a super flexible like date night day in there or an untracked day where you have considerably larger calories, like you could do that. If the goal was a calorie deficit, I do like this approach. And that's just to try and stack as much resources as we can around the training window to preserve training performance for as long as possible. How would, how low would I go on the low days? It depends. What's your rate of progress? How sticky is your resistance to your fat loss phase? Are you just breezing through it, hitting, you know, half a percent to 1 % rate of loss week over week without fail? You probably don't need to go that low. I might drop about Maybe 30 carbs, maybe 50 carbs, you know, especially if hunger is not an issue yet. How low would I go? Is it detrimental to go too low? If it impedes your adherence, I would consider that detrimental. If you want it to have like one day of, I don't know, like 1400 calories, is that overly detrimental? No. It just kind of adds extra calories, drops of calories in your calorie deficit bucket. but it all depends on your rate of loss and results. Everything with these type of questions always needs to be results dependent. What is your primary goal? What is your current rate of loss or gain? And how is that outfitting into your overarching goal and timeline for that goal? And then you back yourself into these sorts of questions from there. Yeah, I think ultimately you need to look at your weekly caloric intake and where that fits in your goal, like Aaron said. So on an extreme, you could even have like day on day off where you're not eating and then eating and then not eating and then eating where you've like for whole 24 hour periods. That would be an extreme example, obviously. But at the end of the day, most of what happens to your body is going to be determined by your weekly caloric balance. So if you're having 6,000 calories on the days you eat and zero calories on the days you don't eat and it averages out to 3000 calories, and 3000 calories is your maintenance, then you're at maintenance. Yeah, I just like Kyle Baxter who we had on the show a couple months ago. He wrapped up a bodybuilding prep in like November and that's what he did. He fasted on his non training days so that he could still eat like 3500 calories on his training days like through the entirety of his prep. He made it to stage. He was shredded. It looked a little bit hard to fast for that long like two. I it was two days per week. He completely fasted for like six months straight or something like that. Would I want to do that? Fuck no. Do I think it will work? Yes, it's evident that it does work. Do you know if that was a 24 hour fast, like from night to night, or was it a 36 hour fast where he skips eating the entire day? Mmm. I don't remember. We'll have to bring him back on and ask him about it. Yeah, but he did have a specific thing I just don't remember which one it was Gotcha. What are the most common question? What is the most common question you find yourself answering for clients? You know, I was really, I thought about this one kind of all day and it was really hard to pick one. The one that I found myself answering like really recently is like, Aaron, we're starting the calorie deficit, so I should pull out my creatine, right? And I'm like, no, why do not do that? Like I think for some reason, like people get it in their mind that like creatine is like, yes, when you put it in, can rise your, increase your body weight. from a decently significant portion. You might be up like a pound, pound and a half, something like that. But then that's like your new baseline and that's water in mostly inside the cell. It's not a bad thing. that, now that you're in a calorie deficit because creatine impacts weight, that it needs to be like pulled out or something like that. That's what I do get kind of frequently and people just like to manipulate it where I'm like, do not do that. Put it in, put it in part of your daily, you know, structure. into the perpetual future and forget about it sort of thing. Yeah, I would say the most common questions that I get, one is about combining lifting and cardio, so call it hybrid training. And then the other one that's just never gonna die right now is the messaging that's put out by Paul Carter and Beardsley and this idea of one set is all you need three times a week to optimize gains and whether that's true, so. so yeah, when we talk about how pro bodybuilders train, there's the extreme of do all the volume. And then there's the, all you need is one set three times a week to optimize gain. So I don't know. I'm sure it's somewhere in the middle there, but that question just will not die. All right. we have nine questions left and 15 minutes, so we gotta be kind of quick here. Should Natty lifters train differently than enhanced? No, and I think the real question is, should enhanced lifters train the way that the best natty lifters do? And that answer, in my perspective, should be yes. Because mechanical tension is the primary driver of hypertrophy. We know that. When someone becomes enhanced, there is additional pathways that drive hypertrophy. that are removed from mechanical tension, right? So there's like three additional pathways. Kurt Havens talked about this. I'm not gonna try and repeat it, because I'll bastardize it. Go hear it from him. He does a very, very good job. So there's effectively, if you take the hypertrophy, the muscle protein synthesis driven from training stimulus is like one pathway. Using PEDs adds three additional pathways. So those pathways are kind of not your, that's what I'm looking for here, Brian, outside of the training, right? So the training stimulus should stay the same stimulus because it will work the same way, Natty or not. But with the additional drugs, there are other additional pathways that you do not have the opportunity to leverage as a Natty. So you look at someone like Jordan Peters, he's very, very strong and is using like absurd loads, but he's not doing like crazy triple drop sets and all these like intensity techniques and a lot of this like pump work, he trains heavy in a five to nine rep range, just like a natty would, you know, just at much less loads because obviously much less strength. I agree. I don't know this topic like super well, given that I don't work with enhanced people and I'm not enhanced. My understanding is that it improves your ability to recover as like the main thing. That's like the primary pathway by which being enhanced helps you is just in recovery, meaning you could in theory do more volume, train closer to failure, train more often, like I don't know a number of these different things. But ultimately, I think it really the basis of your training shouldn't be so different. In my experience, it really hasn't. For building muscle, do you think it's as optimal to train in the mornings as the afternoon or evening? I don't, I think, I think if I had to, if I had to draw a line in the sand, I don't think training like at 6 a.m. would be optimal. But I think anything that we would consider like a respectably normal hour, let's call it like 9 a.m. to maybe like 7 p.m. I think anywhere in that window, it would not produce a statistically significant difference in outcomes, assuming that calories are controlled for, sleep is controlled for, and the other variables would remain the same. What do think, Brian? I believe that I've seen some research that training later in the afternoon around like four or 5pm is most optimal because testosterone is higher or something like that, which now that I'm saying that out loud, yeah, that's I was going to say. Now that I'm saying that out loud, I don't actually know that that's true. I'll have to go look back on that and I'll try to update you guys in the next episode once I get a better sense of that. But I agree with Aaron. I think it's mostly mitigated by the amount of food that you have in your body. And so yeah, training at 6am where you're just rushing, you know, a protein shake and an apple to before the gym, probably not as good as having like a full meal in your body and being able to, to have food bracketed around the workout better. So I don't know. That would be my thought. Yeah, I think that's another one where. I think the like societal impacts in your your personal like, know, like I think things would be best if you could train after like three meals. But if you have some like job where you're tired now at like 2 p.m. because of like you're just mentally exhausted from work, you're better off training at 9 a.m. before that. That that sort of sets in. So I think there's other aspects that would provide a bigger detriment than opposed to just purely timing. Yep, yep. All right. When lifting is your grip meant to be comfortable or grip as hard as possible? honestly don't know. think I tend to err on the ladder. I think I just grab things as tightly as I can when I'm pulling, right? When I'm pressing, you don't really have to, but I do think when I actually thinking about it because I just trained pull today, I do grab things as hard as I can. And you don't use VersaGrips anymore, right? Cause you were getting elbow tendonitis. Yeah, that's interesting. So I think this question, my, my guess is that this question came from the recent four hour podcast that Pavel did with Huberman. because in that podcast, one of the things he says is that you should be gripping things with a death grip as hard as you possibly can on every single exercise, to improve grip strength. So I'm guessing that's where it came from. I, I do use VersaGrips for pulling movements. for the most part and if I'm not using VersaGrips like if I'm using one of those rotate handles from Prime that's kind of similar to the grip that you would get in the Mag grips. I tend to go thumb over instead of thumb around, because you can't really go around on one of those grips. And so when the thumb's over, I feel like it's much less about gripping hard and it's more about creating leverage to pull down and depress the scapula. So yeah, I don't know. I do think gripping hard is probably the right solution if the alternative is not gripping hard. Yeah. All right, minimum recommendations for fruit and vegetables per meal or per day in grams if trying to reduce food volume. I mean, I feel like it's the question is going one way and then at the very end it's like, I'm trying to reduce the volume. Admittedly, minor, minor, very low right now. And again, like everything we always say, it comes back to the goal. Like what is your goal? If you're in a calorie deficit, I probably wouldn't try to be reducing my food volume because then you're going to run into hunger. If the goal is the opposite, like right now I'm in my build. I'm so full. I'm down to. maybe about a hundred and one hundred and thirty grams of vegetables per day. So I have like about fifty and two meals and like thirty grams, maybe twenty grams of spinach in another meal. Fruit. Let's not count fruit juice. I'm doing maybe two hundred grams of fruit in total. No, I lied because I've been in is maybe about three hundred ish. So I'm only doing about four fifty, you know, fruits and vegetables per day. But that's because I'm so disgustingly full. Um, I just, I don't really know, trying, you know, minimum, the issue with the minimum is, yeah, that's where you're getting your micronutrients and stuff from. But if it's like a digestive thing where we only have a small digestive capacity and we can't really get a lot of food in because our digestive capacity is diminished, that's where you might want to leverage like a multi-mineral or maybe some like powders of certain, um, fruits and vegetables to try and still get those nutrients in at a reduced capacity. But it's really hard because it's what's the goal? What's the limitation? Why are why are we specifically reducing the food volume? I feel like there's just more information that I would really need to give a thoroughly nuanced answer in this one. What do think, Brian? Yeah, I mean, my guess is that you could probably completely eliminate fruits and vegetables for a period of time and be completely fine. Like I don't. Yeah, that would just be that would be my answer. Like I think that, you know, I've gone through periods of time where I haven't eaten fruits and vegetables in my younger years. And I know that the carnivore diet doesn't have fruits and vegetables and actually, you know, demonstrates improved blood work in the short term. So My guess would be that you can, in fact, just completely eliminate them in the short term and kind of revisit that when things change. Yep, good answer. Now, I'll ask the question, but I'm kind of thinking this next one we might want to break out into a full episode. How to design a chest specialization phase. Yeah, so as I knew this question was coming up, so I was trying to Google specialization because I feel like we've done an entire podcast on designing a specialization phase. I couldn't find it on a quick Google search right now. So I'll have to look a little more in depth. I do believe we've done that episode, but maybe it's time, you know, a couple of years later to revisit that. But either way, you know, there are number of levers you can pull when designing a specialization phase. You can increase volume, you can increase proximity to failure, you can change where you put the exercise. instead of having it second, third, fourth, fifth, maybe you always put chest work first in your program. You can give it its own day of training. You can use more length and movements. You can use partials. You can do supersets. Like there's a number of different levers you can kind of pull here to design it. And so, yeah, I I like this as a general topic. Maybe it's not just a chest specialization phase, but it's a specialization phase in general. Maybe we pull that out and make a full episode out of it. Yeah, I'm going to make a note really quick. Alright, cool. And then, so this next question is 100 % for you because I don't even know how to answer it, but potential reasons for someone having high SHBG. So SHBG is sex hormone binding globulin, right? And it right there in the name. It is a binding globulin to sex hormones. there are, I have the two most common ones that are of our kind of listenership per se are going to be like prolonged caloric restriction or excessive endurance exercise, right? They both create a similar scenario. increased cortisol production over a period of time, oxidative stress increases, which drives down the endogenous production of like your testosterone, those sorts of things. And we typically get a higher increase in sex hormone binding globulin from that. The second one is basically a similar flavor of the first is we get elevated estradiol or relatively lower free testosterone. also is typically correlated with an increase in sex hormone binding globulin. Again, caused typically by, or sorry, not again, but caused by excessive aromatization of testosterone into estrogen. This is typically in males with higher body fat levels because there's more estrogen receptors in body fat tissue. And then again, influenced by body fat levels. So typically if someone's been dieting for a very, very long time or doing like crazy ultra marathon training to our body weight has really, really dropped as a result of that. You'll see it and that's because of a high oxidative stress, high cortisol kind of scenario. You can see a higher SHBG but also typically characterized by lower free testosterone. There's other ways where that like a hyperthyroid can also influence this but it's much, much more uncommon to see hyperthyroid. in that sort of situation. Every time I've ever seen this on client lab work, it's someone's a male, kind of just over fat, unhealthy, has lower testosterone, higher estrogen, a higher SHBG, or someone's been dieting for a really long time and a lot of things are tanked as a result of that and you get an elevated SHBG. I would not be concerned unless it's like very, very high. you're 3 % above the reference range or something like that, 5%. Still consider that decently normal, especially if you have other things, I said, low free testosterone, but if it's very, very high, that's where you want to go get things looked at. Okay, cardio and lifting, can they be done on the same day and when should they be separate? you're muted, Brian. Yep, so we did a full episode on hybrid training episode 168. So you can go back and check that one out a couple months ago. But as far as a quick answer here, yeah, they can definitely be done on the same day. I think the key things to keep in mind are, was it a leg day and does the cardio that you're doing use your legs? And most cardio does. It's very rare to find cardio that's upper body dominant. You can do like those little ski things or whatever. But in most cases, if the cardio is a lower intensity cardio, like a zone two, then it can definitely be done on the same day. In fact, yesterday I did my training session in the morning in the gym and then ate some food. And a few hours later, I went out and did a zone two. That was totally fine. I do tend to try to separate out higher intensity cardio from lifting, especially if that lifting is a leg. focused day. But yeah, I think in general, you know, just separate them by a few hours if you can. And if you can't, then it's better to smush them together and just do them together than not do them at all. So like on an extreme example, you know, if you only have three days a week to train and you want to do both, you could lift and then do cardio on all three days. And that's better than being like, well, I have to keep them together, or I have to keep them separate. So I guess I can't do cardio because I only have three days to train. No, it's way better to do the cardio. So in a perfect world, they would be separated out. Like the way that I perform best and feel best is alternating. So I have a day of lifting, a day of cardio, a day of lifting, a day of cardio. Like that is the best for me psychologically to know that I have this one objective for the day that's one workout to focus on. And when I have them both on the same day, I think subconsciously there is a little bit of sandbagging just because I know I have to do both. So for that reason, think separate days is best. But like I said, if you have the option of if you the option is either do them together or don't do one of them, then do them together. it makes sense. This next one is specifically for you. If Brian was training for max hypertrophy, could he get better results in a commercial gym? maybe I would say it would probably be undetectable. It would be very, very difficult because my home gym is super well set up in that I have all of the equipment that I would want in the commercial gym. So if I were to say that there's a benefit to being in the commercial gym, it would primarily just be the bit of adrenaline and focus that comes from other people being around. And that is a thing. Like that's tangible. There is. you know, the hot girl over there is totally going to care that I'm squatting 315 instead of 305. Like that really matters. She totally notices that, right? so I don't, I don't know. Like, like, I guess it depends how being in that setting affects you. Yeah, I think that would be the only, unless it's like somewhere that just has like the most crazy, cool, specialized equipment. I don't think you would really get better results. You could probably get an equal stimulus with less total work. But again, I don't think that's necessarily better results. But the environment I think is the true potential benefit, right? You also get the awful commercial gym environments where you're like, God, I wish I had a home gym so I don't have to deal with this bullshit. So it really could go either way. Yeah, for sure, for sure. All right, final question. In a deficit, if you are not expecting to gain muscle and the goal is to maintain, should you modify training to be lower volume and or lower frequency? So I think the basis of this question is stemming from the fact that we know that maintaining muscle can be done on much lower frequencies. However, the caveat to that is an isocaloric food intake. When you reduce the food intake, your susceptibility and risk of muscle loss increases. And the leaner you get, the more that that starts to hockey stick. So it really depends on how lean are you getting. And in that, you are someone who's let's say you're trying to get pretty lean, let's call that 10 % as a male, let's call it 17, 18 % as a female. I would not modify training to be lower volume and or lower frequency because you want to send as strong of a signal to your physiology that you need to retain as much muscle mass as humanly possible. during this period. It's also a great benchmark for performance. So if we're reducing volumes, changing frequency, and maybe you add, let's call it two days to recover before your next like pull session, now you have like four days. It's not a great one-to-one comparison. And we know the biggest change in a A true physique transformation is how much muscle mass you can retain whilst reducing the body fat. So I wouldn't reduce the amount of signal that's a direct input for a predictor of that. Yeah, I think I'll take the opposite stance and say that I think lowering training volume and or frequency in a deficit is probably a good idea because you have less recovery currency. So you're eating less food. Your body is not going to be in as optimized of a state to create an anabolism. You're also going to have less energy going into your workouts. And so if you were doing three sets to failure on a hack squat, When you're in a caloric deficit, that can be hard to manufacture the focus and energy and output to get the most of those three sets, but you can probably go in there and do one set or maybe two sets and still bring it. given that we know that maintenance volumes are going to be significantly lower than building volumes, then I would harness the power of that research and yes, decrease volume and or frequency in a deficit. So that you're really bringing the intensity and the focus to the movements that you're doing during that period of time. even the meta regression recently by the data driven guys showed that you can even gain muscle in advanced trainees. This was five plus years of training, I believe, at three to four sets per week per muscle group. And so, as long as you're not dropping below those numbers and you're able to really bring it and, and have the intensity and bring sets to failure and work hard. for those select few sets that you're doing. I think that's better than doing more, but having those be kind of like half-ass sets where you're really going into your recovery currency and possibly coming out of it worse off. It's a good addition that you added about the recovery, right? If recovery is dog shit, and you're not recovering, and therefore your training performance is dog shit, you would have to reduce. It has to come down to training performance, which it usually does. So if you can keep volumes higher and maintain your performance and you're psychologically still in it, then that's possibly better. But when it comes down to performance being this indicator for me and clients, I've found over time, the majority of us do reduce volumes to allow performance to stay high. And that seems to be effective. There you go, two different approaches, two different answers. Yep. Cool. That's all we got. Cool, that's what we got. So as always guys, thank you for listening. We'll talk to you next week.