October 2024 Q&A | ETP#172

It’s time for the Monthly Instagram Q&A. October 2024 edition. Notable questions our opinion on the volume and frequency recommendations, whether additional cardiovascular work can be beneficial to hypertrophy, and how to provide nutrition coaching for an entire 30 athlete football team. As always, a big thank you to the ETP community for providing us help on these episodes.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:36 - I haven’t been able to gain strength in a long time. Been training for 15 years. If I want to keep getting Hypertrophy, is my only option to go bonkers on volume? 

00:11:06 - Opinion on Chris b and Paul C vol & frequency recommendations. For example, a 4 day UL split in 7-day period vs PPL over say a 10 day period. Assume that 4 days was the most you could do in a normal week. 

00:17:10 - How did you get into biking? I never learned how to ride growing up but just taught myself and am ready to start getting competitive!

00:24:13 - What’s better…. Overshooting or undershooting RPE?

00:28:12 - Is the periodization model from N1 applicable for competitive Bodybuilders? 

00:33:25 - What is Strakers plan to increase fertility for starting a family next year (or year after?)

00:35:55 - How do you think your training will change in your 60’s and 70’s?

00:41:33 - How to best ensure progress when you are using two different gyms with different types of equipment?

00:44:40 - How to handle machines/benches being taken at commercial gym and exercise sequencing? Substitute, change exercise order, or wait it out?

00:48:55 - What is a minimum and ideal amount of dietary fat to aim for?

00:52:23 - When trying for fat loss, is it important to track 3 macros? I know some coaches only track protein and calories?

00:56:07 - How to balance food diversity while also loving my same meals throughout the week?

00:57:33 - How to target erectors under load with progressive overload?

01:01:22 - Best meal 1-2 hours before cardio? Bryan’s and Aaron’s choice.

01:03:36 - Do you think improving cardiovascular health will help with hypertrophy? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23912805/

01:07:10 - Are you guys taking on 1 on 1 clients? 

01:08:46 - Hobbies outside of lifting? 

01:10:46 - How would you design a program to achieve a Toes to Bar?

01:12:41 - How would you manage the nutrition of a full football team 35 players that really knows nothing about nutrition? There’s a huge room for improvement but how would you install this to this large team roster? Any ideas will be welcomed.

01:18:02 - Thoughts on more aggressive deficits? Get “in and out” mentality versus being more conservative?

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https://strakernutritionco.com/macronutrient-reporting-check-in-template/

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Transcript

0:26

What is going on guys? Happy Monday. If you're listening on YouTube, happy Tuesday. If you're catching us on the podcast streaming platforms, welcome to episode 172 of Eat, Train, Prosper. This is our October, 2024 Instagram Q and A. Before we hit record, Brian and I were kind of chatting and we're short on updates and we have a good list of questions. So we're just gonna kind of dive right into things on this episode. Now, Brian, I know this first. Question was kind of a leftover from our last episode that we wanted to move over so Do you want to frame it? Do you want me to frame it? Sure, yeah, this guy wrote me on DM before our prior episode, and it honestly was probably a better question for this episode anyways, but I was trying to find a way that I would tie this into our last episode, which was the 365 days to your best physique. And it just made more sense for it to kind of be part of the Instagram Q &A here. So it is a bit longer of a question. We'll try to get through it as quickly as we can here with our respective inputs. But basically this guy has 15 years of experience training and he feels like he can't gain strength anymore. And so the way that he phrased it to me in the DM was, is my only option to go bonkers on volume. And I had to think about that for a few days because We're always taught that progressive overload is the thing that you strive for and that if you're not getting progressive overload as a natural, then it's highly unlikely that you're gaining muscle as a natural. And then I thought a bit about my own experience anecdotally and thinking about how my strength was significantly higher. five, 10, 15 years ago even, as someone that's been training now 27 years, I peaked on my strength probably in my early to mid 20s and now being in my early 40s, that was quite a while ago. And while we could argue that it's ambiguous as to the state of my body composition at the moment with all the cardio that I've been doing for the last few years, it, it still is, is quite obvious to me that my best physique where I had the most muscle mass was probably three to four years ago when I was doing the diet and photo shoot sequence where every year I would gain weight and then I would do a three month diet and I would do a photo shoot and I had, you know, three or four years in a row of successive photo shoots to compare. And every year it got better and better. And it's important to keep in mind that during those periods of time, I was not at my quote strongest, so to speak, which also introduces the ambiguity of exercise selection into the decision tree where I was, can you hear me okay still, Aaron? I just got a weird alert on my computer. Okay. Where I was certainly stronger with all of these. barbell movements, which are the things that I think a lot of people use to assess strength, like on my deadlift, my bench press, my overhead press, and my back squat. And so those four are kind of the four that people tend to use to be like, I'm getting stronger, I'm not getting stronger. A number of years ago, I ditched all barbell movements and majority of free weight movements. So essentially I had these new movements that I was doing where I had no prior comparison to whether I was in fact getting, whether I was stronger or not relative to where I was prior. All I knew was that I was getting stronger on the new movements that I was doing. And so I have some additional thoughts and kind of context here to add, but before I go ramble some more, I wanna kick it over to you and kind of get some of your initial thoughts on the question. Yeah, I would echo the similar sentiments to you. think while I am probably my strongest right now, if I really applied for obvious reasons, I'm still not even really using certain loads that I used as a natural like like Brian said in my mid 20s, you know, and as you as you get deeper into the game, like the the rules of the game don't change, but they kind of do a bit, you know, like Progressive overload and getting stronger is a proxy, but it's not the end all be all, you know, there's other ways and we see this from look at look at the top physique athletes in your natural federations and in your, you know, body are no untested federations. There's like your really high volume, closer farther away from failure crowd. Like there's a lot of like your intensity crowds and stuff like that. And I think it's it's is It's really just not cut and dry because if it is, everyone would follow the same path and we would just have that linear progression thing and we would be at our strongest, you know, and when we're 42, 43, but there's, different wrinkles that come into play, like injury mitigation and stuff like that. Joint integrity. really, unfortunately is just not super straightforward. It's like, I get stronger. I have more muscle, right? Because there's like the muscle knows tension. but there are, you can use less load and create better tension through like, know, tempo, improved execution of the reps, control, like, et cetera, et cetera. So it really is not unfortunately super cookie cutter, like some people will make it out to be. Yeah, it's a good point. Before I get into kind of practical application, I just want to also reference two people that y'all probably know, Jeff Alberts and Alberto Nunez from 3DMJ. And these two guys used to be hella strong when they were younger. They competed in powerlifting. They both, you know, were working towards 500 pound back squats, you know, 550 plus on the deadlift. Really strong guys. And if you look at the weights that they move now. Man, even three years ago, there were videos of Alberto bench pressing the 130 pound dumbbells. And since the last few years of kind of working a bit closer with Cass and getting a bit more into the strictly hypertrophy space without, you know, the the objective of trying to increase strength on the barbell lifts as well. You'll now see Nunez doing the 85s or the 90s. And it's literally almost for the same amount of reps that he was doing with the 130s, but A, it looks different. B, you can tell there's significantly more muscle tension occurring despite the fact that the load is lower. And C, both of those guys, like Jeff Alberts is 52 or something, both of those guys have basically presented their best physiques ever the last time they stood on stage, which was a year ago or something along those lines. so to kind of practically wrap this thing up a little bit. I do think you need to focus on getting stronger within the movements that you do, but you don't need to be stronger on the, on movements from 15 years ago where you were at your peak strength on. So my back squat where I did 420 for three or whatever that was from 10 years ago has no bearing on the hack squat weight that I use with a three second pause at the bottom. Now, all I'm trying to do now is find a way to somehow get stronger on my hack squat. And to kind of tie a bow on it, this guy said is my only option to go bonkers on volume. And I think absolutely not is the answer there because volume itself is not going to be the sole bearer of your gains. However, in the pursuit of trying to progress and overload, I'll throw out the way that I like to do it, which is a kind of wave loading approach. and the example I'll use on my hack squat is, you know, a few years ago, I built up, I went, you know, five 20 for six for a week, then five 30 for six, then five 40 for six, and then five 50 for five. And I failed. Well, the next mess cycle, I just rinse and repeat. So instead of starting at five 20 for six, this time I'm like, okay, I'm to start at five 30 for six. And I'm like five 30 for six. 40 for six, then 550 for six. Holy shit PR. I I've stopped at 550 for five before. So then I'm like 570. shit. I only got five. Okay. So then back off, rinse, repeat the whole thing. I did all of that, which is essentially like six to eight weeks of building, backing off, repeating and going through to literally gain like 10 pounds and one rep. and then the same process continued for the next year where I was like, okay, now five 60 for six is my all time PR. So now I'm going to go work in the six hundreds and I did like 600 for three, six, 10 for three, six, 20 for three, six, 30 for three. Okay. Back off, do it again. Okay. Now six months later, go back and test five 60. See how I do on five 60. Cause five 65, six times six was my PR last year. Well, now I'm doing five 60 times seven, but I didn't train to do that. I was training in the six hundreds and then drop the weight and hit five 60. So there's a number of kind of these different paths you can take to build up, back off, rebuild, back up, back off, try different rep schemes, back off. And remembering that the process of gaining strength is not linear. You're not going to go on forever adding a rep or adding two pounds or one pound or whatever it is. You have to, especially as a natural, be willing to say, okay, here's my limit right now. Back off, reset, drop fatigue, build back up, try to beat where I was six to eight weeks prior. And so it's very much a process of taking steps forward and steps backwards and ultimately ending up at a higher place than you were. And so it's a very structured and involved plan that I think if you implement, you'll realize you are in fact gaining strength over time on the movements that you're focusing on. And even if that strength is, you know, a rep every few months, that's still progress and it's moving you in the right direction. Yeah, it's a really good additions on the wave loading. The last little bits on this one, I think are important. I find myself having this conversation a lot. Get really clear on what your goals are, right? It sounds like they're strength related, which is wonderful. Is it strength at X body weight? If you're like, no, I just want to be bigger, increase your body weight. Your strength goes up, you know, so I think like getting really clear there can also help you maybe uncover some unturned stones that could be. very simple additions to your arsenal that you're using to help facilitate you along your way. Yep, love that. Okay, let's kick this one over to you. I'm a question asker here. Hi, Brian. Hope you're well. Opinion on Chris B and Paul C volume and frequency recommendations. For example, a four day upper lower split over a seven day period versus push pull legs over a 10 day period. Is there noticeable differences in training a muscle every three days, lower volume, higher frequency compared to five days higher volume, lower frequency? if everything else is equal. Let's assume that four days was the most that you could train in a normal week. Yeah, I feel like we've addressed the Beardsley and Paul Carter stuff a lot in the last few episodes. It seems to be a pretty popular topic in this space right now. And you see a lot of the evidence-based guys or PhDs using a lot of their content to kind of push back on some of the ideas that you see from Chris and Paul. In fact, I was... I was on Jeff Haynes podcast and a roundtable with with Jordan the other day. It hasn't released yet. But we were talking about a little bit about some of this stuff. Actually, we're talking about the new study from Milo and Pac, where they were doing the length and stuff. the study that they did, we actually should talk about this more in more depth at some point. But the study they did basically showed that it compared full range of motion training to length and partials. And it found that full range of motion training and length and partials were basically the same, but it had like a very slight leaning edge to full range of motion. And there's a number of issues with that study. So I won't go into that too much right now. But it's like they to me, it seems like they did that study almost as a FU to Paul and Chris to be like, look, length and partials do work in advanced trainees. See, it's the same as full range of motion. And then Paul and Chris look at the exact same study and their interpretation is you guys are fucking doofuses because look, full range of motion is just as good or slightly better than length and partial. So why would you ever do length and partials? And it just seems like, you know, in some ways that study was done as a way to tell them like length and partials do work in advance. Like that was kind of what they were trying to achieve in that study. But of course it's interpreted the other way from those guys. And so there would, I'm I'm mostly just pointing that out as a way of showing how polarizing and dogmatic sometimes their content can be. And it creates these, these camps in our industry. And so the way that this question was phrased is like, is it better to do a four day upper lower split where you're hitting each muscle group three times or every three days or a PPL over 10 days where it goes like PPL rest. somewhere in there and then PPL again rest. So you're getting slightly lower frequency with the PPL. You're able to get more targeted volume, et cetera, et cetera. And then the argument from Chris and Paul is essentially that one set of a movement done three times a week. So as like a full body program, if you do one set of back three times a week, that's better than doing three sets of back one time a week. And it probably is, you know, if we're We're in a game of optimization here and every little bit matters when you're that hypertrophy pursuer who wants to check every box and get every drop out of it, right? And so if really put like gun to my head, I would probably say that, yeah, if you can avoid fatigue later in sessions by doing a little bit less more often than... Yes, my thought would be that that is probably slightly better than training a muscle with higher volume once every five to seven days. I don't think that that's newer novel information though. I think that this, like even a year or two ago, you had Paul promoting the bro split as you you could do a chest one day and back one day and shoulders and arms one day and legs one day and boom, you have a perfect routine and you're only hitting each muscle group once a week because volume is what matters. And then you see him switch completely 180 change to the actually the complete opposite, which is that that is the worst idea that, you know, after 48 hours, we go into catabolism and we're no longer in a muscle protein synthetic state. And therefore, if you're not training the muscle every 48 hours, then you're leaving gains on the table. And I honestly feel like the reality of the situation is that both ways work. And it probably comes down to what works best for you in the construct of your life and your needs in your training paradigm. And I've had success with both ways. I've trained three times a week, full body and done awesome, had great results. I've also trained bro splits where I train every body part once every seven days and also had great results. enjoyed one for a while and then it became dry and I didn't want to do it anymore. So I did the other one and that was productive until I didn't want to do that anymore. I mean, it's the best part about hypertrophy training is how forgiving it is and how you can take so many of these different approaches and still find success and still make gains. And so I don't love having to put myself on a stand here and say, this is definitely better than that way. I think it really needs to be calibrated within the structure of your life and kind of what fits best for you at that time. Such a well put answer, Brian. I don't have anything I could really add onto that. Everything that I was thinking, you took the words right out of my mouth, literally. Yep. on from there. Okay, this one is for you. Brian, how did you get into biking? I've never learned how to ride growing up, but just taught myself and I'm ready to get competitive. Yeah. I added some, I got some context from this guy as well, because I was curious in trying to give him advice here, if he had a background in cardiovascular exercise, or if he's literally just like, I'm a lifter and now I'm getting into biking and I want to, I want to go from there. So he responded and said that he was a college football player. He just recently graduated. And so he has the cardio background from all of the activities that kind of go into, to football. I don't know what position he played. but he at least had some cardiovascular background and, he never learned to bike. So he, he's basically wants to exchange the conditioning work that he was doing in football for conditioning work that's specific on the bike. And so he asked me how I got into biking and he asked if we had any podcasts on it. And my first response was, yeah, go back and just listen to the update section of the last two years of our podcasts. Like everyone just download it and listen to the updates. And then I was like, you know what, there's probably like a better way to do this. And the other side of that is that those updates from the last two years are what I did, but that doesn't mean that what I did was right. Because as we know, last year, I didn't do such a great job combining in the hybrid manner of taking lifting and cardio and doing them super effectively because I was overtraining on both. I was doing too much lifting and too much cardio last year. Whereas this year, I feel like I got it right. It'll be interesting in retrospect to look back and think if I still got it right this year. But I think I'm getting much, much, much closer by lifting less and being able to get more out of both in that manner. But to answer this guy's question specifically, how do I get into biking? The first step is that you learn to bike, which is great. That's important. Next, I think that you need to kind of decide where your priorities lie with biking and with lifting. Because I do think that you have about six sessions a week that you can probably do realistically. And so for me, that's turned into two lifting and four cardio with maybe one like recovery cardio day. So basically six days or six sessions that you can fit throughout the week. Do you want that to be two and four? Or do you want it to be three and three or maybe it's four and two, maybe it's four lifting sessions and two cardio sessions. But as from the lessons that I've learned is that doing too much of both just leads to decrement in both over time. Like initially you're gonna get great results because volume is king in kind of both endeavors it seems, but over time recovery is king. And if you're not recovering, then you're not able to progress. So, I would say that first you have to decide how many days you're lifting, how many days you're biking. Let's assume three and three, cause that's a pretty nice even split that allows for both to kind of be prioritized in some manner. And so with that in mind, I would say that your bike sessions, let's assume that time isn't an issue here. You're three times a week. You can go as long as hard as you need to. I would take one of those sessions and I would do a really long zone one zone two. call it like, 65 % of your max heart rate somewhere in there as a goal. And you do that for the goal being 90 minutes to two hours at some point in the journey, but probably building up to there. So I remember for me starting at 45 minutes of that zone one zone two was sufficient in the beginning. And then maybe every week I would add five to 15 minutes. And over the course of a month or two, I was up to that 90 to 120 minute mark. So that's your cardio session that's not physically challenging other than the sense that it's long. It's gonna help you adapt the PGC-1 alpha system. It is also going to, man, I'm gonna mess this up, calcium comodulin. Someone correct me on that. But this is a system that helps you clear, it basically uses calcium to... neutralize lactate or like the lactic acid, would like the acid the wrong way of saying that, but the lactate that accumulates that essentially makes your muscles burn and makes you want to stop the calcium chlamodulin system essentially buffers against that and neutralizes it. And so by going on these really long, low intensity rides, you're able to get better at that process of buffering against lactate, which you'll see transfer into your other workouts. So we have one like 90 to 120 minutes slower ride. I think we need one that's kind of on the higher end of the spectrum. So you could call that like VO two max or threshold intervals, something between three and eight minutes each at 88 to 93 % of your max heart rate somewhere in there. So these are really hard efforts. They're not sustainable. I would say you want to accumulate about 20 to 30 minutes of total time in zone. So that's why if you did like four by six, you'd end up with 24 minutes. I think that that's kind of right in that sweet spot of where you would want to be. And then for the third workout, I would make it something that's kind of between the two extremes. So we're not going long and slow and we're not going short, hard intervals, but maybe something in between that's like sub threshold. It's that zone three, zone four range. So think of your heart rate being around 80. 5 % of max 83 to 85%. So we're above zone two, but we're certainly below that zone four zone five. And that should be done in 15 to 20 minute intervals with short rest in between. So think 15 to 20 minutes rest two to five minutes and then another 15 to 20 minutes. And you could work that up to three intervals over time. But I think that two intervals of that should be fine to start. And if you just kind of rotate through those three, I think you're going to be in great shape. You know, I do a good job of making sure that you put your zone to work as close or prior to the leg day, as opposed to one of the higher intensity bike rides. And yeah, that's a good starting point. Come back to me at a point later on down the road and, and we can totally adjust that protocol after you've gone through it for a few months. I think Aaron just bounced out, somehow got booted. So the next question was for him, but I'll skip that one and we'll come back to it. And we will go with the following question, which is what's better, overshooting RPE or undershooting RPE? And so what this question is essentially asking is, If I do a set and the prescription is two RIR, would it be better for me to work too hard and do one or zero RIR? Or would it be better for me to accidentally not work as hard and do three or four RIR on this two RIR prescription set? And so I think the answer is it depends as it usually is. And it depends on the rest of the stuff that you have going on on that day. You know, how many sets are you planning on doing? If it's one or two sets and you're on a low volume program, then I think you're likely better off overshooting it and working too hard. Whereas if you're on a program that has six to 10 sets for that muscle group in that session. I would probably err on the side of undershooting it and accidentally working a little bit too easy in that case. So let me see. Yeah, I don't know if I have a whole lot there to add it. So I mean, there's life contextual aspects as well. Like how are you feeling that day? How is your recovery? How was your sleep? How's your nutrition? Are you in a caloric surplus or a caloric deficit? Where do you sit in that regard? And so I think all of those factors need to also kind of play in to the question. I mean, there's certainly been cases in my training where I've gone into the gym with expectations of hitting zero to one RIR on a lower volume program. And when I get to the gym and I start warming up, I realized that I just don't have that, that oomph, that extra push in me on that specific day. And so. I will often, and this is like, have these two rep schemes that I do. I love two times five to eight to failure. Like those are, I love that approach. If I'm feeling good and up for it, two times five to eight is pretty much my go-to on my routine. However, the other thing I'll do, and I'll audible to this maybe once a month on movements is doing a five by five with an eight to 10 RM. So take a weight, could do eight or 10 times, probably closer to that 10 number. And I'll do five by five there. And so the first set is like a five RIR. But by the time I get to the final set of the fifth set there, it's no longer five RIR. I have fatigue. So it might go like five, four, three, two, two, or something like that. And so the final set that I do a five is much harder than the first set of five, but none of them are to failure. so mentally, psychologically, that often feels better to me to be able to get good quality volume within the effective range, right? We've talked about how when you do lower reps, like below eight or 10, that they're kind of effective just from the very beginning because it's heavy initially. Whereas when you're doing a 15 or 20 rep set, you don't really get any effect until you pass, you know, 10 reps or something like that. So with these heavier loads using an eight to 10 RM weight, doing 2 to 5 RIR on those sets is still very effective training. And psychologically, it's just easier to kind of grapple with some days. So those are the two approaches that I usually take. And it kind of is within the realm of this question, which is it better to work too hard or not work hard enough? I'll just say that when I do opt to work less hard, I will usually compensate that by adding a little bit of extra volume in that case. Thanks And Aaron is still out. So the next question is, is the periodization model from N1 applicable for competitive bodybuilders? And first, I think it would be prudent for us to go over what the N1. what the N1 periodization model is. And so the way that they do things that's slightly different than maybe, I don't know what you would say, typical hypertrophy science that you see out there is that instead of just always living in hypertrophy, which I think is a fine approach as well, they jump out of hypertrophy for specific purposes. And it's not like they're just jumping out of hypertrophy for the sake of, it's time, you it's been 12 weeks. We need to now go do this strength phase or this metabolic phase. They're literally jumping out of the hypertrophy phases based on signals that they receive from the training of the client and the feedback and the check-ins and all that stuff to basically determine that their adaptations aren't occurring at the rate as fast as they would like them to occur. And so you'll jump out of hypertrophy to create better adaptations over time. So for example, if you're in a hypertrophy phase and you're realizing that this person is very sluggish, they're starting to gain a bunch of body weight, they're taking longer rest between sets, which is making their sessions a little bit less efficient. This person might be a perfect candidate to jump out and go into like a metabolic metabolite type phase where you do more short overload movements, you take shorter rest between sets, and it's about volume accumulation at the short position more so than it is about the typical things that you would focus on in hypertrophy. So Aaron, we are, Aaron's back, we're talking about the N1 periodization question. I answered the prior one before that. So we'll kick it back to you for question number four after we finish N1 here. So basically that would be a reason to drop out of hypertrophy and go into the metabolic phase. Alternatively, you might find that somebody is lacking neural drive. They're just kind of like going through the motions, the movements aren't feeling super crisp. they're just not able to manifest strength progress in the same manner that they were prior during their hypertrophy phase. And so this might be a great reason to jump out and do just a very, very short phase of lower reps, longer rest periods, focusing on really exploding on reps and getting the most muscle tension that you can on these kind of lower rep sets. And so in either case, you... are jumping out of hypertrophy just for a very brief amount of time to create or elicit an adaptation so that you can get back in hypertrophy really quickly. And so when you ask whether this question, whether this type of periodization is pertinent to competitive bodybuilders, I would say that it's, it's pertinent to anybody who's doing hypertrophy training and realizing that maybe the hypertrophy training isn't as effective as it was a month or two prior. Like, what do you do, dear listener, when you are doing a hypertrophy phase and you're butting up against a wall and things aren't progressing or feeling as crisp as they were a couple months prior. Maybe you take a deload week and you start to rebuild back up. I mean, there's a number of different options you could do, but another option, another viable option is going into a short metabolic phase or going into a short neural strength phase. So it's just different ways to achieve the same thing. periodization model is super effective, very well thought out. And honestly, they don't spend tons and tons of time in these other phases. It's just a matter of getting out long enough so that you can create some new adaptations that then help the hypertrophy cause. So keeping in mind that, you know, of their year, 45 weeks of it are probably still hypertrophy. And then you have, you know, seven weeks of different neural metabolic stuff thrown in there. I think it's important to remember that and that hypertrophy is the goal in their training as well. And why you jump out of hypertrophy really is just so that you can then get better hypertrophy. So anything to add to that, Aaron? No, mean, the only thing I would say is only because it uses the term competitive bodybuilders, right? I don't think anything that you said is untrue in that context, but a lot of those motivations are probably, I wouldn't even call them motivations. What would we call it? Like the things where you're you're finding you don't have neural drive or you don't have, you're just not really feeling your training that much anymore, something like that. I think they're all valid. I'm not saying I don't think any of it is valid. I think in those competitive bodybuilders, things like that, when those things show up, people just push through anyway. And that's where I think it might be one of those. Again, I don't think it's untrue. I think they probably just wouldn't get to that because of competitive reasons. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting, interesting perspective. Okay. we'll drop it back to question number four here. what is Straker's plan to increase fertility for starting a family next year or the year after? So the plan is next year. I'm very excited about it. Thank you for the great question. And the answer is there are hormones that you use to get your fertility back because the other hormones that you were using took your fertility away pretty much. So I have here some things, my plan. currently, I've done a very fair amount of research on this because it was a very, very large personal concern of mine. Recombinant follicle stimulating hormone is going to be likely the base of that protocol with the addition of HCG, which is human chorionic gonadotropin. Let me continue on. Sometimes HMG, human menopausal gonadotropin, is used instead of FSH. And then also sometimes a CIRM like tamoxifen or clomid is also used. But my plan personally will be the recombinant follicle stimulating hormone and HCG. If this is something that you might be interested in or something like that, there is so much published research on this. And it's very, how would I even call it funny? It's concerning to me because it's still like a very common thought to go, if you do this, you can't have kids. And like people really think that. It's not the truth. It's not the truth. We it's just I just don't think some things are maybe approved in certain countries and it's very like a gray area, but we have top level competitive bodybuilders who are at the peak of their career having children using incredible amounts of steroids. It's just requires further interventions of other things. And I'll wrap up with this. Ironically, a lot of these medications are the same medications that women use for fertility. right, which I learned in the hospital when we went to do fertility things in Bangkok a few months ago, I was like, I know all about these things actually, as we were sitting in the meetings, which was unexpected. That's cool. mean, you're like basically a female pregnancy doctor at this point. terms of the research I've potentially. Alright, cool. I obviously have nothing to add to that. So we'll move on to the next question, which is I love this question. I don't know if you've put much thought into this, Aaron, but how do you think your training will change in your 60s and 70s? I'm probably just gonna be one of those old dudes in the gym doing just absolutely bonkers things that don't make any sense like we see right now, unfortunately. 60s, I don't know. I would imagine it's going to be a lot more cardiovascular focused. I feel like into the 60s and 70s, there's some weight training still going on just to try and maintain bone density. you know, from a quality of life standpoint, but trying to stay active, I would say, and keep all of my normal day-to-day mobility and those sorts of things and just enjoy it, really. I would say that would be my goal, I think, at that time in my life. Yeah, it's an interesting question because if you would have asked me this question two years ago, I probably would have told you that I'd be doing basically what I'm doing right now, which is that I'd be doing two times a week full body training and that I'd be doing a bunch of cardio. Upon further thought, now that I am doing that and I'm thinking about what does this look like 20 to 30 years from now, I think it's highly likely that I am not training everything to failure like I am now or within like one RIR and like RDLs and hack squats. While Aaron was gone, I used the example of saying that oftentimes when I'm in the gym or I go into the gym and my intent is to do two sets of five to eight to failure, even now, I'll often audible to doing a five by five at a 10 RM. And there's something very effective still about doing a five by five at a 10 RM because the weight is heavy and those sets are still effective. But mentally, psychologically, it feels, I don't want to say easier because you're having to do more sets. You're having to get under the load more times, but there's something less stressful about not having to go to failure on every one of those sets. And so I think. Given what we know at this point in the research that there's still very effective training at two or three RIR compared to going all the way to failure, I think I probably end up taking a bit more advantage of that and training a bit further from failure. I probably become a bit less neurotic about my exercise selection and I tend to focus more on, I will tend to focus more on just big compound movements that train a lot of musculature at once. not worrying so much about isolating every single muscle group at the short position and the length and position and all of that stuff. It's likely that I will probably start including a bit more mobility and stability training. And so I don't really do much mobility at all at this point because I naturally born with decent mobility in the majority of my joint structures. And then training under load, like weighted stretching, for example, sitting at the bottom of a squat, the bottom of an RDL, bottom of a chest press, these things stretch out the musculature as well and the tendons. So I think there's value there. But I do think stability training is something that would be good. For example, like right now, I try to put my sock on every morning by doing a single leg RDL to grab the sock off the ground and then staying perched on one leg. you know, bending down and putting the sock on and then switching legs, doing a single leg RDL to the ground, grabbing the other sock, doing the same thing, things like that. I think I'm going to become more focused on as I get older in making sure that I have the balance and stability on one leg, possibly some more lateral movement, possibly some more like dynamic work, like stepping up and stepping down off of objects, stuff like that. I don't think it's going to change a ton, though, like Looking at my parents, one of the things there in their early seventies, one of the things I noticed with older people in my life at the moment is that so much of their life is consumed by the different appointments that they have every day to keep themselves functioning in the way that they want to function. And it's almost like you have to be retired to live that life because if you're 70 and you're working a full-time job, my parents wouldn't be able to physically take care of what they believe are all of their individual needs. I want to avoid being in that position. I don't want my life at 70 to be driving to this appointment and that appointment and this body work session and that whatever, whatever. Like my goal is to get to a point where my strength and muscle mass and my cardiovascular ability keep my health in a position where that covers the majority of the bases and then filling in the gaps with like mobility, stability, farmers carries things along those lines. And yeah, like I said, working a bit less close to failure with bigger compound movements, et cetera. a really, really good answer. I hope I care as much as I do now. Yeah, that's another another good point. Like you see those people as they get older and they just like don't give a fuck about anything. And they're just like, they're just like the most confident person just you know, hey, I'm going to die in the next decade or two. So what does it matter at this point, you know, and there's something like awesome about that too. Like I love I love that attitude. And I look forward to being there someday as well. Yeah. All right. What is this one? How to best ensure progress when you are using two different gyms with different types of equipment. Exercises are the same, but I imagine you just have to be really honest with RIR on each exercise if it's being done on different equipment. What are your thoughts, Aaron? I think this is actually probably pretty applicable to you in that you train in commercial gyms more than I do. I would progress each piece of equipment independently. That's exactly what I do. I'll have like, I'm doing, let's use the example, leg extensions and I'll put in like, gym I'm at, brand of leg extension, leg extension. If I'm training at another gym, gym I'm at, brand leg extension or brand leg extension. You're not gonna be able to, like 100 pounds on an arsenal leg extension is going to be vast. I maybe not vastly significant of enough of a difference than a leg extension by Watson or prime or something like that. You just it will be hell trying to do the calculations and wondering why you're why this one was harder this week. Just progress them independently is I think the only really good answer to that question there. Yeah, I think that ultimately that makes the most sense. The piece I'll add here is that this person is following my programming. And the way that I program is with that kind of descending RIR into partials and then into rest pause sets and then into like reverse drop sets and lengthen sets. And there's a kind of natural progression where we go from starting at say two RIR on a leg extension. And then by week six, it's not two RIR on the leg extension anymore. It's a completely different looking protocol that was progressed over that six week period. And so if you're following a program where every week is, you know, pretty much rinse and repeat, same exercise to failure, I think Aaron's approach is a hundred percent spot on. You're just like, Hey, I went to failure and got 10 reps at 200 this week on this machine, but it was one 60 and this machine, like whatever, doesn't matter. You track those independently. As far as my programming goes with the descending RIR and the partials and all that stuff and the progression model that's built in there. Yeah, I think this person is exactly right in saying that you just have to be really honest with your RIR. And remember that, like going back to that very first question in our podcast today about progressive overload, that you don't have to neurotically see progress every week that you're adding a rep or adding 2.5 pounds or whatever it is to elicit progress. adaptation that's occurring is almost like a callus on the muscle, right? It's the tension that's creating this callus. Eventually it heals, it grows, et cetera, et cetera. I know that's not exactly how it goes. I'm just, you know, for the layman, just kind of putting it out there that way. And, and as long as you're honest with your RIRs and you're hitting the progression with the partials or the reverse drop sets or whatever it is, it shouldn't matter so much what equipment you're using. Yeah, okay, that's a good one. one over to you too, because another commercial gym question. How to handle machines or benches being taken at a commercial gym and then exercise sequencing. like basically if the workout has leg extension, hack squat, Bulgarian split squat, and that's the normal order you do them in. But one day you go in and say the leg extension, there's a line a mile long for the leg extension. What do you do? Do you substitute? you change exercise order or wait it out? Yeah, I like the practical example. So what I encourage, if it is a pin loaded exercise, go up and ask the person if you can work in with them, right? It's, it will save you so much time. If that person is doing any remotely training, that's worth anything. They're going to perform their set. They're going to have two minutes rest, something like that. You do yours, you do your weight, you push the pin back to their weight. Like it's very, very easy to share a machine. Personally, if I'm on a machine, someone's like, how many sets do have left? like, hey, maybe three or two or whatever. But do you want to work in with me? And I encourage them, right? I have downtime. You can use it. That is my recommendation. Something like a hack squat, it's plate loaded. Maybe people don't want to be changing that many plates, et cetera, et cetera. It would force you to warm up faster, which I wouldn't recommend. That I would wait for. For something like using the same exact example Brian said, leg extension, hack squat, Bulgarian split squat. I think if you change that order you are going to, it would be a. I don't want to say significant, but I don't want to say insignificant. I think it will impact your performance, and then it will cloud things. I don't think it will be insignificant. That's what I mean by changing that exercise order. I personally do not. I will wait for something, because those progressions are worth everything to me. Yeah, I agree. think that last sentence is exactly the way I feel about it. During my times where I would be on spring break and we'd be in San Diego for six weeks or the very rare times that I do go to commercial gyms, I will almost always wait it out. And I'm very obvious about it too. Like I'll walk up and I'll put my bag down next to the machine and be like, hey, how much you got left? Okay, I'm next. You know, or whatever it is. The first attempt would be like Aaron said, to try to work in and see if we can do that. But if that's not an option, like I'm thinking specifically about the there was one functional trainer at the gym in San Diego, which is nuts that on this made three levels, there were more functional trainers upstairs, whatever. But in this one room that I like to be in for shoulders and arms, there was one functional trainer and there would always be people waiting to use it. So I would just literally like go in, set my bag down, squat down next to the machine and just perch there. until the person was done and just kind of play on my phone, set up my training, enter my weights that I plan on using, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the way that I would usually handle it. Now, especially in that example of leg extension, hack squat, Bulgarian. I think changing the order makes a huge difference. If it's a different day and say that the workout is lateral raise, tricep extension, bicep curl, I have absolutely no problem with you switching that order up because there's no conflict between the movements. And I don't think that that affects your performance at all in any way. So I think you do have to kind of base it contextually on like what your workout looks like and whether changing that up would have an impact. very good answer. How did you become an online coach? Can you explain how you started and progressed? feel like this is one we might want to maybe extrapolate into like a bigger. I mean, I feel like this I cannot give a decent answer in five minutes, you know. Yeah, we've covered this, feel like in two or three prior episodes in more detail, but it has been a while. And so I wouldn't be opposed to extrapolating this one out and making an episode out of it at some point. I think that would be really good to do. I have lot of like bigger opinions about it now. I think being a little bit older and deeper into the game and stuff because it's... Yeah, OK, so we'll do this. We'll put a full episode out with this one. This next one should be pretty easy for you. What is a minimum and ideal amount of dietary fat to aim for? So I'll start with minimum that there is a basement on dietary fat intake because it's required for the answer that people most commonly understand is the production of a part, right? It's two part production of cholesterol from that produces our sterol hormones, right? So hormone production is a necessity or sorry, dietary fat is a necessity for hormone production, right? our body will also synthesize cholesterol in the liver. So it's only like one part of that. So it's one part. The part that people often forget about is the absorption of fat soluble vitamins. So if dietary fats are too low for too long, things like your absorption of dietary vitamin, or sorry, fat soluble vitamins will be lower, which we do not want. Now that basement is actually a lot lower than people will think. Now, I don't remember there's a specific milligram per kilogram. I have it stored in like my documents I use with my clients. So I don't remember off the top of my hand, but I know some baselines for females. Let's just use an average size for my male. It's low, it's like 35, something like that. Maybe even lower, like 30. And then for males, it's a little bit higher, about let's call that 10 % higher, 40 to like 42, something like that. Now that is the minimum. What is ideal? It really depends on things. Are we in a calorie deficit? About as close to the bottom as probably possible. If you're like a high activity, highly glycolytic activity type of person, if we are in it maintenance a little bit, I would say maintenance makes the most sense to have the highest dietary fat because the goal is just maintaining. We use auto regulation to maintain our body weight, that sort of thing. And then in caloric surpluses, I actually like to bring it down. because of the overfeeding studies and we get less fat overfeeding on carbohydrate as opposed to overfeeding on dietary fats. But ideal amount, it's really hard to say. There are some recommendations around a percentage of total daily caloric intake. I like to keep my female clients around 25%. I don't really go under 25 % unless Total calories are very, very high, like in a surplus, for example. And then for my males, I will go lower 18 to 20 % if we're like low in a calorie deficit or something like that. But again, that's at a middle midline of total caloric intake. As you get into the higher caloric intakes, just, don't need just because your calories at 3,500 does not mean you need 115 grams of fat, right? Because we have our bases covered in terms of total caloric. intake. that is what I like to do again, but it's very dependent upon the contextual, the of the client, what their goal is, if they're on, if they're natural, if they are on exogenous hormones and all sorts of things. there's numerous facets that come into play. Yeah, I'll just add anecdotally that for me, I tend to find 50 or 60 grams to be like the low end for me. And if left to my own volition and I'm not tracking or anything, I'll end up way above that. So, I mean, everyone's different, but that's, that's how it is for me. All right. When trying for fat loss, is it important to track three macros? I know some coaches only track protein and calories. would say my answer to this depends on the ambition of your goals. If you are what we would consider overweight and unhealthy, I do not think that tracking all three matters nearly as much. If you get your protein in, you control for total calories, and you are working on improving your lifestyle so that you are not overweight and unhealthy, I think that is sufficiently adequate. If you have more objective body composition goals, let's say you're already at a healthy body weight, you know, which is completely subjective, of course. And you want to, I don't know, you're looking for the bikini body or the summer body or something like that. I do strongly believe that tracking all three, having ranges at least for the other two, if we're not going to be as strict as a set target, does have inherent benefit, yes. What are your thoughts, Brian? Yeah, I, I've kind of, such a tough question. I do think that it's probably a good idea to track them for at least a period of time in your life so that you become self-aware of what you're putting in your body. I tracked them for so long that I actually haven't tracked anything, like nothing, for probably two years at this point. And my body does what I want it to do because I understand it well enough. Now, if I were on like a dedicated fat loss phase and I was trying to get on stage, do a photo shoot, something along those lines, I think the closer you get to that goal, the margins for error are smaller and you probably need to track a little bit more closely. And so I do think it just depends where you are in the phase of your life as far as how close you are to your goals, how hard it is to continue making progress towards your goals and then kind of assessing at that point. But if you're like, you hanging around maintenance, you're like, a little deficit, little surplus, you know, maintenance, whatever. I'm just kind of like living life, going through things, not super stressed about it. Then protein and calories gets you 99 % of the way. And I don't really advise too many people to track beyond that until they're like, you know, butting up against a goal and really strong. Yeah, I'd say if you're yeah, like Brian said, if you're really new to things, it matters if it's kind of like the bell curve. If you're really new to things, it matters because you need to learn. If you're in the extreme ends of things, it matters because your goals are really object. Once you get into that middle part of the bell curve, I think it matters less. The times where I think it does benefit you is learning a little bit more applied principles of nutrition. For example, I've had instances where someone It's like, man, I'm just I'm getting my ass kicked in training. I can't progress, you know, all these things in their tracking. But their carbs, they're eating no fucking carbohydrate because so and so told them that like the high fat diet was better. So they're not eating carbs. They're doing CrossFit, wondering why their performance sucks and they're getting their ass kicked. And I'm like, this is this like that's an example where those sorts of things break down. So again, it I think there's there's merit in learning, understanding how your body. feels and functions with fueling and stuff. again, it's kind of like an increased learning curve or sorry, not an increased learning curve, the bell curve. And then in the middle, probably doesn't matter so much in the beginning so that you can learn at the extreme max and of big goals. It's very beneficial. We have 10 minutes left and eight more questions. So we'll get through what we can here. how to balance food diversity while also loving the same meals throughout the week. There is benefit from the increase in diversity just through exposing your gut microbiome to different nutrient sources and a wider array of beneficial bacteria, right? We have pretty good research on this. The parts of the world that eat the most varied diet have the best balance of, sorry, the largest proliferation of a diverse gut microbiome. So this is pretty correlative. If you're someone, you have great digestion. You don't have any digestive issues and you just love the simplicity of Groundhog Day. I wouldn't make your life harder just to eat more diverse things. What I like to use in this context, when you're eating out, order vegetables you wouldn't normally eat. Maybe order a meat you wouldn't normally eat, although there's obviously much fewer types of meats. Times that you're already going to be off of your schedule, do some exploring, buy mixed fruits instead of. one fruit by mixed vegetables instead of one vegetable. But I wouldn't make your life harder just for something as long, just for the searching for this, if your digestion is already pretty solid. Cool. Yeah, I dig that. I agree with all of that. don't really have anything to add there. Next question. one is great for you, Brian. How to target a rector's under load with progressive overload. Yeah, so I think the first thing here is to note that what the rectors do, what is their function? And they are the antagonist to the abs, to the rectus abdominis. And so you guys have probably seen this big push recently in movements doing abs, where all you're doing is extending and flexing the abs. So you're not doing these big, long ranges of motion where you're doing like a full sit up from the ground all the way up. Those types of movements tend to involve the hip flexors more than the abs because all the abs really do is they extend the spine and flex the spine. And the exact opposite is what's happening here with the erectors. So you're doing the exact same movement. You're flexing and extending the spine, but you're trying to do it under load. And so it would be like the reverse of doing a cable crunch or something like that. But how can we do that? the most effective ways that I've found are going to the 45 degree hip extension machine and going from a rounded back position into a overextended hyper extended type position and so if you There's videos of this movement on YouTube, but essentially as you get to the bottom of the rep you flex the you stretch the spine which flexes the abs And then as you ascend out of that and you get to the top of the 45 degree hip extension, you stretch the abs, which flexes the spine. And so you're able to maneuver the erectors through dynamic ranges of motion in that manner. Similarly, you can do things like Jefferson curls, which is kind of like an RDL with a rounded back. I love that one too. I would be careful doing them heavy until you really kind of. get the technique down there so that you don't end up injuring something. It really is a matter of coiling and uncoiling your spine like one vertebrae at a time is the way to say that where you're not just going from rounded back to standing up. You're trying to go super slow and feel every vertebrae of your back go from rounding to straightening as you as you stand up. So those would be my two my two number one go tos and then also understanding that they get hit. auxiliary through like your RDLs, your back squats, and a lot of the other stuff that you do anyways. So a very, very comprehensive answer by Brian. was going to take a little bit more of the like Neanderthal caveman answer. You get really strong at RDLs or like a stiff legged deadlift. Like you're going to have big spinal erectors, big strong spinal erectors. But it depends if you if there's like injury instability type stuff. Brian's answer is 100 % best. But if you're like, no, I just I have weak erectors relative to the rest of my back muscles or something like that. I would encourage just a lot more RDL progression. Yeah, I mean, the negative to that though is just that you're because your back is so weak, you're not going to be able to work your hamstrings and glutes to sufficient fatigue because you're going to be limited by your your erectors. And so yes, that will get better over time, as Aaron said, but if you need to expedite that process and you want to sort of isolate your erectors without having to also be training the glutes and the hamstrings, I mean, you're going to train them in my examples as well. But you're through going from rounding to straightening. You're going to get more acute erector work in there. Yep, very good. Add on. Best meal one to two hours before cardio, Brian and Aaron's choice. So all good mine, I. Because of cardio, it's higher heart rate, I'm breathing harder, those sorts of things. I don't like to have a full meal like Ali, maybe like some some puffed rice cereal, maybe a banana away shake, but not really. I kind of like to give myself maybe like two hours or something like that. I do treat it differently than what I would eat pre-training because, again, high heart rate for a long sustained period, high amounts of breathing. and I get really thirsty and I'm like pounding water too. And I don't want that sitting in there. So I do fuel differently. So I would say I fuel less for cardio than I would for like a big training session, personally. Yeah, my personal approach is that if it's a zone two zone one, like easy steady state session, I pretty much always go fasted. Or I try to make sure there's like a really long distance between eating and training. It feels better for me that way. I don't feel limited. I usually bring a big thing of element mixed with creatine with me. So I'll have like one and a half scoops of element and creatine because my zone two rides can get kind of long. And so I just want to make sure that I'm keeping the electrolytes coming in. The creatine obviously is not acute, but that's just how I mix it. So mostly fasted for easier steady state work. And then for higher intensity work, it's one of two things. It's either. I pack my hydropack filled with that glob mixture that I've talked about on here before, which is whey protein, Gatorade, element, and water and ice. I'll either pack my backpack with that and I'll just sip on that throughout the ride, or I'll have my typical meal of chicken, rice, and broccoli like an hour and a half to two hours before. and then I'll go attack whatever interval workout I'm doing once the food has digested at that point. really kind of depends, but definitely having a significant amount of carbs and protein in my system for the higher intensity work seems to be better than doing that fasted for sure. 100%. This one, Brian, I'll kick over to you first, at least. Do you think improving cardiovascular health will help with hypertrophy? Yes, 100%. So I actually covered this exact topic twice in the last not so long, most recently on the Boost Camp podcast. So if you go check out Boost Camp, I did an entire episode on hybrid training and this was literally like one of the questions that came up. Prior to that, I was on wits and weights podcast and we discussed that as well. So either of those two would be good to check out. The wits and weights one I've been on twice and the most recent one was about parenting and fatherhood. go back to the first one. But basically there are three avenues by which this helps. The most important one in my opinion is that you get parasympathetic faster post workout. And there's actually a pub med link that validates that. So we can include that in the show notes here. It's ID 23912805. And that does in fact demonstrate that we do get parasympathetic faster post-session. So think of when you finish a workout, that feeling of like fight or flight just dissipates faster when you have higher cardiovascular conditioning, which then has the downstream effect of speedier and enhanced recovery between sessions. So that means that if it would take you four days to fully recover from one session to the next, maybe you can do that in three. which then leads to the next benefit, which is that you can potentially fit more volume in for the same fatigue cost. And so that would be relevant both session to session, like you can recover faster between each session, but you can also recover faster between each set. whereas before you might have needed to rest three minutes between sets of dumbbell bench press, maybe now you can rest two minutes or two and a half minutes and achieve the same number of reps. Therefore allowing yourself to get maybe an extra set of volume in for the same amount of time and or fatigue cost. tons and tons of benefits there. As far as the getting parasympathetic piece, that even extrapolates out to like, while you're sleeping, you're gonna have better sleep, which is gonna enhance recovery and improve your ability to manifest performance in your weight training sessions. So all, all positives, like the only negative of including cardio with weight training is overdoing it and. reaching a point where it's mitigating your progress. Yeah, really, really good answers. The only thing I will add there is an additional benefit is if your cardiovascular system is the limiting factor in some of your like longer sets, think like a high rep leg press set, high rep hack squat set, something like that, which I have seen this happen in people where they rack it because they can't breathe. And I'm like, Wow, okay, yeah, you are not in shape. Please get better shape. So I have seen that actually. So that's one that is not as obvious, does have benefit there. There's typically a reason that people recommend doing your cardio in your off season as well. Yep, yep. All right, I have like one minute left and we have two really quick questions. So let's hit these two and then I think you can probably handle the last two or three here. Because they're nutrition based. So the first one is, yo, are you guys taking on one on one clients? To be honest, I think this question came from one of those like marketer copywriter guys who was just trying to get me to respond. But but we're going to answer it anyway, because I take on three to five one-on-one clients at any given time because I think that's the right number for me to be able to give 100 % focus while also handling all the other business stuff I have going on. so I'm currently at three. Three is a great sweet spot for me. But I would be open to taking on a fourth or a fifth if that client really kind of inspires me, intrigues me, and is pursuing something interesting to me. And those two things would be pure hypertrophy training. or some sort of hybrid training model. And so if you're interested in either of those two things, hit me up. Aaron, how about you? Yes, have spots right now. And for any of the podcast listeners, honestly, at any time, just reach out with me and in my, I guess, primary role. it's, I don't want to call it a revolving door because then it makes you sound like I'm a shitty coach. But people are typically leaving every handful of months for finishing up something. Someone gets laid off or something like that. So worst case scenario is you get put on the top of my wait list if I am full. So. Or it's like a good thing they leave because they're graduating and they're going off on their own autonomously. Yeah, like I just had my most recent one was that. I mean, he's super pumped and he was like, thank you for everything. I have all the tools that I need. Maybe if I want to get super shredded next time, I'll reach back out. Those are always wonderful for me. Yeah. The next one asks about our hobbies outside of lifting. And I can say that biking is certainly like the number one that comes to the top of the charts for me, which is obvious, obviously. But beyond biking, you know, I've been in pursuit of other things. I'm reaching a point in my life where I love fitness. It's been the staple of my life for 25 years at this point. But I am finding this desire to kind of expand be outside of that. We've had a similar question on the podcast before where I've talked about like, maybe I'll get into archery or like Nordic skiing, or I mean, so many other different avenues that I could pursue a musical instrument. I mean, I don't know, there's no musical instrument I'm super interested in, but like I used to play saxophone as a kid. So things like that. But honestly, the thing that I am pursuing the most at the moment is trying to get together this second podcast that I'm starting and I'll have more details on that. next week or the week after in the update section. I'll talk a bit more about it as I'm kind of closing in on some artwork that's been created for it for the little thumbnail. I've been laying out questions for my first guest and trying to get my kind of ducks in a row in setting up this second podcast that I'm doing, which is tangentially fitness related, but not exactly focused on fitness like this one is. So that's kind of where my focus is at the moment. How about you? Right now I have none. No other hobbies. Because there's things are just business related, right? I mean, we're, you know, however many weeks out of opening a gym, the cream of rice stuff like there's just a lot of business that there is no room in my life for hobbies right now. In the future, the next home location will be Salt Lake City, Utah. And I plan on getting back into snowboarding, mountain biking. and hiking, which I look forward to very fondly. Nice. Love that. Okay. There are three questions left. I forgot that one of them is training related, so we'll handle this one and then leave the last two to you. How would you design a program to achieve a toes to bar? So a toes to bar is both a movement based on coordination and timing as well as strength of your abs and hip flexors. And so the progression model would look something along the lines of reverse crunches where you're laying on the ground and you're just bringing your knees into your chest. Then from there, you would switch to lying leg raises, which would be the same movement where you're lying on your back, but you're lifting your legs up completely straight. Then you might go to a V up, which would be like a lying leg raise where you also reach your hands to touch your toes at the top. And once you can do the V up properly, that is essentially a toes to bar that's just on the ground. And so then when you jump up to do toes to bar, you might start that progression over where you start with hanging knee raises. Then you start with hanging leg raises, and then you get hanging toes all the way to the bar. The best piece of advice I can give you when you're in that transition stage from hanging leg raise to toes to bar is that you're not just trying to bring your toes to the bar. You also want to think about pulling the bar to your toes. And obviously that bar isn't going to move. So you're not really pulling the bar to your toes, but the notion of thinking about pulling the bar to your toes is going to create a movement in your torso where it pulls your torso back behind the bar and gives you better leverage to get your toes up to the bar. And so that would be the kind of six step progression that I would take in getting there. Anything to add, Aaron? Absolutely not. was really hoping that you were going to take that question because I was like, I can do about a C minus explaining this. And I know Brian's taught countless people that exact progression. Awesome. All right, well, I'm super late. So I'm gonna let you handle the last two nutrition questions and see you guys next week. See Brian. Okay, so question one, how would you manage the nutrition of a full football team? I believe this is going to be international football, as in soccer, is what we Americans would call it. Team of 35 players that really knows nothing about nutrition. There's a huge room for improvement, but how would you install this to this large team roster? Any ideas are welcomed. So. I hate to start it with this, it depends on what your. direct involvement is for you as a business, how you are being compensated and where you stand to benefit from this, right? If this is going to be like a pro bono sort of thing, you have to be respective of your own time. And I would not encourage you to try and take on 35 individual clients for free from a pure return on investment time. From there, I would step back and kind of assess the situation from a higher level. have what I'm assuming is soccer. So we have athletes that are typically pretty lean already, not like we're dealing with what would be like a lineman of an American football team, right? Where, let's face it, your job is to be quite overweight. So. We know from a nutrition standpoint, it's not like we're trying to reduce body composite, or sorry, improve body composition, reduce body fat. We're fueling for performance. So we know that we're going to want a higher carbohydrate intake for a sport that is pretty glycolytic in nature. We have people that need pre, probably some intra, post workout. and then we want to get in higher micronutrient dense foods. So what I would recommend is lists, right? For breakfast, pick one from this list, one from this list, one from this list. And like one's gonna be obviously carbohydrate. One is probably like maybe like starches. Another one's going to be fruits, some proteins. And then use very subjective serving sizes that are kind of foolproof, right? So like this is where the hand portions come into play, right? That are very popularized in a lot of the beginning nutrition certification and education. We're gonna do two handfuls of berries with each breakfast, something like that. Pre-workout is, or pre-training is arguably one of the... biggest improvement areas to make where, choose foods from this group, choose foods from this group, choose foods from this group. We'll probably want moderate to lower fat here. An example, a large serving of rice. And use photos or something like that with a plate, right? So they can see we might want three handfuls. Three handfuls is probably a little bit aggressive, but you get what I'm saying. Something like rice, intro workout, nutrition, find a local. local to your country liquid carbohydrate for intra training. And maybe we add some salt to that or something like that. We instruct them to salt their post workout meal, sorry, their pre workout meal, their post workout meal. And then for dinner, again, principles that probably has less of a reliance on the carbohydrate. Focus on things like getting the certain minerals in, especially if it is a team. that is playing in an area that is very, humid. have a high sweat rate, so we know that we are depleting a lot of sodium. We're also depleting at a high rate magnesium, incorporating either supplement or magnesium rich foods to bring these things back in. again, what I think makes the most sense, if I'm assuming we're not being paid individually for the team, we make an assumption about the average player, what their. Probably doing and where they stand to gain the most immediate benefit and that's going to be intra workout nutrition Replenishing minerals that are probably depleted at high rates because of the high rate of sweating Pre-workout fueling post workout fueling and making sure that food quality is pretty decent and that we have moderate fat intake and a higher carbohydrate intake and make sure that no one is few under fueling themselves because it's obviously a performance-based sport. So that is what I would do in an approach like this. Again, give them short lists of foods. I would say like breakfast, here are your four starch options. Here are your six fruits, something like that. Make it pretty foolproof for people and make things not super, super open to interpretation. Because let's face it, these are athletes, right? Athletes typically just want to be told what to do so that they can perform better. at their sport. If you have maybe you're giving a presentation or something and you say, hey, if you eat whatever X quantity of rice two hours prior to your game, like you will perform better athlete. Here's the term perform better in their ears, kind of in their in their eyes, you know, light up, speak to what their goal is, which is improved performance. Hopefully that helps. And finally, my thoughts on aggressive deficits, using the get in and get out mentality versus being more conservative. So the hardest thing here is we need to define aggressive. Aggressive is directional, but unfortunately, it's subjective, right? Are we talking a 20 % deficit? I wouldn't consider that aggressive. I would consider aggressive once we start getting to like a 30 % or greater. 30 to 35 40s, probably in very, aggressive. And that's like very short, mini cut sprint kind of territory. I think it depends on the context of your client. And I know that's always my default answer and I apologize, but that's really, really true. Let's say you have a client who's newer and they really just want to like clean things up a little bit. And this is why it's important to really, really understand what your client's goal is. Maybe they've lived their entire adult life at 165 pounds and now they're 175 pounds and they're uncomfortable. and they want to be 165 pounds again. That's only 10 pounds of weight loss, right? It's not very, very hard to achieve that. You could probably do three weeks of aggressive dieting, right? At a 30 % calorie deficit. And they're there three weeks and they're done. That's a very good get in and get out. Or you could use a more conservative approach. Now, if we have someone who is very overweight, Let's call it 20, let's call it 25 % plus body fat as a male for a female that'll be around like 30, 33, 34%. And they really hell bent on improving their health starting with an aggressive calorie deficit will benefit them because it gets us closer to health faster. And then we can decrease the depth of that deficit to something that is closer towards the spectrum of sustainability, but it is not still sustainable. but it is just closer than what is very unsustainable, right? Which is the more aggressive deficit. Again, it all depends on the context of the client. I am very much more in favor of using stricter guidelines and a results-based approach in providing numbers for that. Something that I do with all of my clients is I say, hey, we have our rate of loss that we are looking for. Maybe that is a half a percent of total body mass loss per week. That is on the more slow conservative end. If we have the 1 % total body mass loss per week, that is a more, I wouldn't call that aggressive. I would call that a very good rate. An ambitious rate, but we can move faster. I find that the more focused you can have people, the better results you can get. then, but it comes into how you frame it. If you say, Hey, we're gonna work really, really hard for eight weeks and get 80 % of our job done. And then we can incorporate more flexibility while we finish up the final 20%. You're probably gonna get a lot further with that client at the 12 week mark than if you just to take a conservative approach for 12 weeks and the rate of loss is painstakingly slow and then you end up dieting for 12 months to get off what could be done in realistically 12 weeks. everything comes back to results dependent and the ambition of the client, right? If the client's goals are lofty and we have a total amount of body fat or total body mass that is desired to being used, starting more aggressive and then making things easier as the depth of the total duration of the deficit goes on is beneficial. And if you have someone that has like a sprint for something, a wedding, something like that, we can do it, but phrase it as such that this is unsustainable. and you're probably gonna put some on on the back end. But if I don't care about that, I'll care about it later. We can fix it. But I just need this for X date. Sure. But just make your piece around the unsustainability of it. So if there's a further further questions on this one, just just DM me and I can help you out there. So that wraps up episode 172, guys. October 20, 24 Instagram Q &A. As always, thank you for listening. Brian and I will talk to you next week.