June 2025 Instagram Q&A | ETP#193

In ETP193 we dive into a variety of topics from our Instagram followers for our June 2025 Instagram Q&A episode. We’ve got a 90 minute episode jam packed with 20 questions ranging from nutritional approaches, training specifics, to starting your own coaching brand.

1. Advice if you were a coach working under an existing coach brand, but will be starting your own coaching business?
2. What are the things it actually takes to “stay lean” (approx 12% BF for a male) year round. How much activity per day/week, and what kind of nutritional guidelines and structures need to be in place?
3. How high relative to your shin should the back foot elevation be for Bulgarian Split Squats?
4. Can people still grow muscle mass with an epigastric hernia if lifting heavy isn’t allowed? How?
5. What are the differences between Paragon and Evolved, if any?
6. What are typical BF %’s for male & female when “toned” or “ripped”?
7. Bryan mentioned in his stories that he’s a big fan of pre-exhaust. Could you explain why you like it and how you use it?
8. Are there any instances where you find intermittent fasting useful? It is my preferred way of eating but I don’t know if there are downsides for both a deficit or trying to build muscle?
9. Can you explain why you like to program with RIR decreasing from week to week through the meso? The argument for keeping it consistent (for example 1-2 RIR week to week) is that the progress is more objective and no blurred diagnostics.
10. One week 4 of a 5 day, full body, 1 set to failure program. Weights, reps are going up each week. Feel great, not run down. I have noticed my arms look flatter? Is that just the result of eating less food? I can’t imagine I’m losing muscle if my lifts are getting better.
11. Since there are diminishing returns for additional sets performed of a certain exercise, is it better to perform less sets but a great number of exercises? Or vice versa?
12. I am wanting to see my 6 pack muscles more how do I know if I need to lose more body fat or do more weighted ab exercises to build those muscles?
13. If we can’t build muscle in a cut and are trying to just maintain, how come it isn’t recommended to do lower volume or the least amount needed to maintain?
14. Curious about both your hydration, how many oz do you drink daily on avg?
15. How much does being in Zone 2 really matter? Going above it ruins the purpose?
16. Whatever happened to your Tongkat Ali experiment?
17. Do you think there’s individual variance among people regarding who can go all out to failure and those who cannot?
18. How much time do you spend in a week across all activities? What does the week look like?
19. Best ways to improve running form for lifters?
20. What running workout type moved the needle most for you?

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Transcript

0:25

What's going on guys? Happy Monday or Tuesday depending on where you are tuning in from. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 193, our June 2025 Instagram Q &A. Brian and I have 20 packed questions that we are going to dive into on this episode before we get into it. However, Brian, what's going on with you? Yeah, quick updates here. We have a bunch of good questions to get to. So I'll be in Wisconsin next week. We'll take the week off the show, our annual trip to Wisco to hang out at the lake with Kim's mom. So ah that will be there next week from like Saturday to Saturday. And then I guess the only other update is Paragon is starting. It's every six months we do a hybrid metabolic cycle, which is actually kind of fun and different than What we usually do. So we kind of rotate between a longer hypertrophy cycles and then a short strength cycle, and then a short metabolic hybrid cycle. So just kind of a nice different way to train that actually fits really well with summer, where we include some zone two and zone five cardio into the actual programming. do a little bit of like more supersets and metabolic style kind of, uh, kind of training throughout the six week period. So If anyone's interested in trying something a little bit different, um, getting their heart rate elevated a little bit during the workout and, uh getting shredded for summer, then, this is a good opportunity starting on June 30th. So, jump on it and do that. Aaron, what's going on with you. So I was just actually calculating when you were doing it. I am three weeks and four days out of my pro qualifier, right? One, two, eight, three, three weeks and four days. So that is what's going on with me. Things are getting pretty close in the final kind of home stretch of things. ah I now have twice as much cardio as I did before for everyone listening. I'm using air quotes here because I just have walks. I don't have any kind of hard. cardio, there's no hit cardio, there's no stair master. um There's no long bike rides, I just have a 40 minute walk in the morning and I have a 40 minute walk in the evening. uh I'm starting to like shave corners on food just because I just don't need it all. You know, I thought I'd be hungrier at this point. like I still have like 30 grams of like walnuts in like my final meal, I stopped having those. um I'm just trying to cut these little like, you know, things I stopped, started, I push like half my bananas over to like frozen berries now. So I'm just like trying to like cut corners to make sure, you know, I'm getting as lean as I can for things that I don't really need. And I'm not really just leveraging like training intensity and timing for managing my satiety and of course coffee and stuff in the mornings. There, um people are starting to tell me that my face is getting gaunt. So I think that's a good thing or that like my eyes are starting to seem like it sucked back into my. my skull. um So that's going on. And then the only other kind of wrinkle is the Saturday. Yeah, we discovered my estrogen is like sky high, like really, really high. And I made a funny Instagram story post about it that I have like way more estrogen than my fiance does so that she needs to watch how she watch her tone when she speaks to me, which is a very like thing that the wife usually will say to the husband, but because I wear the estrogen now. she has to watch her tone with me. um So that was a funny revelation because I was like, wow, this is really high. um But fortunately now we can just bring it down and then, know, as high estrogen holds water. So I should get like notably visually leaner as that water begins to dump as we get my estrogen back to more appropriate uh levels. Sweet, well that's crazy and good to know and glad you discovered that. Have you found yourself more emotional in general? No, and that's the crazy thing. Because the hard thing with the PEDs is when you're just running like testosterone, things are pretty straightforward, right? You get higher estrogen. It becomes pretty easily identifiable as other compounds and stuff come in. Like, for example, I'm running Mastron, which was originally developed as a breast cancer medication. So uh or in part with that. it kind of blocks action at the breast tissue. So normally I'd be like fucking gyno central at these levels, but because it blocks the action there, like you lose that signal of like, fuck my estrogen is really high because my nipples are sensitive because they're not. um So it's so complicated and I'm, I really do look forward just to going back to like chill TRT because it's just so much simpler of a puzzle. But no, I'm not emotional. I'm not all of these crazy high estrogen things. I feel really good and normal. The only thing I would notice is like my sex drive is just lower. But I thought that's because I'm three weeks out of show and like under a lot of pressure and stuff, obviously all self created. But I've every anytime I've been this lean, my sex drive has been low lower. So that's pretty normal to me. So, you know, I was really, really surprised and I had two blood tests both verify that it's from two different labs in two different countries, that it's very high. So. Now I can do something about it. Yeah. to know. So we got three weeks and four days till you're on stage and doing the pro qualifier. And then is that like no matter what the end or is there another potential show on the horizon situation dependent? there's another show no matter what. Yeah, September 6 in Hong Kong is another pro qualifier. uh But that show is also a pro show. So if the planets align and I'm able to obtain my pro card in Taiwan, I will compete in a pro show in Hong Kong in September. If you do not make it in three weeks, but you do make it in September, do you then have to do another show to kind of cement your pro status if you make pro status on September 6th? No, no, you do not have to do that. And many people take like a big long off season to like grow and all that stuff. And I'm not even thinking about any of that. After that, after September, it's get married, restore my fertility and move on to the next phase of my life is the priorities. Yep. OK, let's dive in. All right, I'll kick the first one over to you. Advice if you were a coach working under an existing coaching brand but will be starting your own coaching business. Yeah, so there's a couple additional uh cues that they had set up here, kind of like setting expectations from the beginning, attracting the clients you work best with, which is a very, very big one, deciding pricing structure, minimizing overhead costs, and then offering calls and additions to check-in. So I'll walk through how I would kind of set this up. The first thing I would say that I think is the most important is you have to exit your current company gracefully. um Do not burn bridges best you can unless you're being strong armed out or something like that. don't try and steal a chunk of clients or all these shady things that we constantly see happen in the industry. Like you're going off on your own with your own brand. You want it to be as like pristine and clean from the start, from a reputation standpoint as humanly possible. So that I would really, really suggest. Also, you've been working under this existing company. I'm sure there's a number of things, potentially, that you disagree with, that you think, if I ran my own company, I would do differently. There is your first kind of set of operating baselines. These are the things that I had friction with, and I'm going to do differently with my own brand. um Attracting the clients you work best with, be very... not intelligent, what's the word, intentional with the verbiage that you use. I think that's really, really important, right? In trying not to hop on like trends for social media growth and those sorts of things, because if you have a bunch of followers that are not the people that you would want to work with, they're not really helpful followers, right? So if you notice with me, I speak a lot around like how... my coaching is in the things that I actually do. I'm not the type of person that's like, try these five supplements to make your gains more or something like that. Cause at the end of the day, we know it's not gonna fucking do anything for that, right? So your quick hits typically are not lasting. And I would really, really double down on that pricing structure. You kind of just have to figure out what works for you. I've used paid in full before. I don't do it anymore every once in a while, maybe like once or twice a year, I'll get a client that wants to pay for like three months upfront. I typically will let them, but I just like the simple monthly thing. It's really easy from a revenue to expenses management sort of thing. don't have to extra future proof anything there. And then overhead costs, you should run pretty lean. It's you, your computer, maybe some software that you need. It should be, it's a, that's part of the why coaching is so lucrative because it's like a, your overheads at 3 % or something like that, or 5%. It's incredible relative to other businesses, business models. And then the last thing offering calls in addition to check-ins, everyone's a little bit different here. I know people who they don't, that's all they do. They call every single one of their clients each week. And you have like 40 clients, 50 clients, you're doing 40, 50 phone calls per week. That sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare to me personally. Everyone's different. I'm not saying my way is better, but I don't even want to fucking call my parents, let alone 40 people every single week. So I just know what works best for you in the way that you can effectively communicate, deliver the action items to that need to be action taken upon and for your for your target demographic. And I think that's the best way to approach it. Yeah, those are, that's all really good stuff. I feel like I agree with all of it and we'll just add maybe like two other pieces of kind of personal context here. Um, I really resonate with what you said about kind of being real online with promoting yourself and making the value that you put out, whether it's on Instagram or email marketing or anything, stuff that's like very true to you and meaningful and things that you're passionate about. So if you discover something, you read a study, you have a conversation with somebody and this is really relevant to you, then that's very real. And it's something that you can post that other people will be able to resonate with because it's meaningful to you. And then that will transfer over into the messaging and people will resonate with that a little bit more than like Aaron said, if you're just out there trying to get clicks being like five supplements you must take or five supplements you should never take or, you know, one of those kind of catchy titles. So, yeah, I think that's important. ah I mean, there obviously is an importance of actually being able to reach people and grow yourself as well. And so if you're coming from an existing coaching brand and you already have clients, this, think, becomes a little bit complicated because Aaron was like, make sure you're not stealing clients. But at the same time, like if you're working with all these clients and they really love you, they're with you more than they're with the coaching brand, then. as you leave this company, I think it would be natural for some of those clients to want to come with you. And it would be natural for you to want to take some of those clients with you as well. having that conversation with your current coaching company ahead of time is probably going to be pretty important as well, just to kind of expectation set. And then the other thing I'll mention is I, I have like, I don't know if it's a very like rigid tiered system, but I do tend to tier my coaching costs based on what the client wants. where if someone just wants a relatively general program, it's specific to them in some ways, but it's pretty basic. There's not really a whole ton of check-ins. There's a limit to how much video analysis they can get or whatever. Like someone's on a budget, we might start at one price point. And then on the other side of the spectrum, it's like, I want weekly call, I want weekly check-in, I want to add nutrition macro coaching on top of my training. I want unlimited amount of videos and feedback and access to you. And there's like, you know, the higher end of this, you know, that that price point is going to be significantly higher. So that's the way I tend to do it is I have this conversation with a client before we start talk about what they want, what they're looking for. Then we kind of discuss what the price point will be based on their needs or desires and kind of move forward from there. So I think it can work both ways. You could have like a much more rigid structure where you're like, this is what it is. And like, you know, this is how I plan to handle my things. And uh there isn't really much uh room. for kind of oscillation or changes to the structure. And then there's the way I do it where you kind of can more a la carte choose your things and there's different price points for those. anything else to add there. You did have some really good ones. are, if you're a good coach, you are gonna have clients who want to leave the existing company and go with you. It's all in your approach, right? If you send a message to all of your existing clients, okay, I'm gonna leave the company. So if you guys wanna come with me, message me over here. Like someone's gonna screenshot that and send it to the company. It's gonna fucking blow up in your face. So do not do that. That's like really, really important. Also, there's a couple other ones that I thought of if I could really go back in time, I would not name the company after myself. um I would create something that, you know, something that represents I would just I would just name it as a company, right? Because then you can treat it as a company that is not your left arm sort of thing, right? Where with me, it's Straker Nutrition Company. It and I have a very hard time separating Aaron Straker from the business name. after myself. would definitely change that if I could go back in time. right, cool. Another question for you. What are the things that it actually takes to stay lean? calling that approximately 12 % body fat for a male year round. How much activity per day or week and what kind of nutritional guidelines and structures need to be in place. So this one, I really thought about this one for a while, right? But at 12%, and I'm really curious to get your opinion on this, Brian. At 12%, you're lean, you don't really have abs. You're not, there's not fat there, but you're not like abs unless you have an incredibly well-developed. If you're like a power lifter at 12%, you have abs because your abs are so well-developed because you squat 600, fuck. pounds sort of thing. At 12 % like you just have to be interested in the lifestyle, genuinely interested in that lifestyle. You know what I mean? And when you are genuinely interested in that lifestyle, it limits the decisions that you would otherwise make if you were not interested in the lifestyle. I think once we start talking about like 10 % and under there are specific strategies and stuff that you need to do. But at 12%, you have to train regularly because you enjoy it. You have to be active because you enjoy it. Your circle is active. Maybe you have an active family, something like that. But it really is just a larger part of your life. And I don't think you can strategize your weight there. So if the answer is like, hey, I'm 20 % body fat, what do I need to do? to live my life at 15 % body fat, you need a higher priority on your health. That's ultimately what it is. And you can't like tip and trick and hack your way to that. You need to change your interests and desires if that is the priority. But at the 12%, like you're gonna train regularly because you enjoy it. It's not a means to an end. It's not a summer shred sort of thing. You're gonna be active because it genuinely. helps you enjoy the life that you live. I think at 12%, like 12%, if you're lifting four to five times per week, again, because you enjoy it, you eat healthy because you feel good, you perform at work, life, family duties, better, all of these things, you can still have when you meet up with your college buddies once a month, you can have the burger and beers and stuff like that, but it's, you know, two times per month, four times per month, something like that, because you're otherwise busy living the lifestyle. is I think the best way that I can answer that. Yeah, I'll say that 12 % is kind of that body fat percentage where you do have to be cognizant of the lifestyle. So you need to make sure that you're not just going crazy and eating insane amounts of food and stuffing yourself. You need to make sure that you're getting some consistent form of exercise and basically finding like a homeostasis for yourself. And in contrast to that, I'll say that at 15 % body fat, I kind of feel like at least for me and I know not everyone's the same here, but at 15 % body fat, I can pretty much not pay attention to the quote lifestyle so much. And I'm just like, generally quite active and I'm pretty much eating whatever I want without too many limitations. And I can maintain 15 % body fat at 12 % body fat, I have to be much more dialed in not like I would be at 10 % which seems like you know, it's only 2 % different than 12 huge 2% It's a bigger, it's a bigger 2 % I feel than 15 going to 12, even though they're both 20%. 15 going to 12 is the same as 12 going to 10. uh But 12, but 15 going to 12 feels like less significant, but they're definitely like I was saying are some things that you do need to focus on. And so if I was looking to try to maintain 12, I would probably either have to continue with the amount of activity that I'm currently doing, which is six to eight hours a week of working out between cardio and lifting. So a little over an hour a day. uh And I would have to be cognizant about what I'm putting in my body. Whereas at 15%, I'm working out that much and I'm not so cognizant about what I'm putting in my body. So I think it's making some of those small sacrifices and like, Ooh, I really want the pizza or the cheesesteak tonight. But instead I'm going to have chicken and a potato and you know, maybe a small dessert or something like that. Like, I don't know, whatever it is, like there's, little sacrifices that need to take place, but 12 % is not prohibitive to having some things in your life that wouldn't be considered, you know, the bodybuilding lifestyle all the time. So it does kind of open up with some freedom there. um Yeah, I don't think I have a whole lot more to add there. Like we could extrapolate this out and do like a full, a full breakdown of everything. But I think that that's pretty good basic background for it. Yeah. This next one, I think is a really good one to kick over to you because I think you might have a very inquisitive answer to it. How high relative to your shin should the back foot elevation be for Bulgarian split squat? Yeah, I actually don't think there's necessarily one specific answer here. And I think that answer actually changes whether you're trying to bias your glute or your quad in that movement. uh With that said, I think the back foot elevation itself does lend itself to be more glute dominant, whereas a front foot elevation allows you to be a little bit more quad dominant through the sending of the knee forward and the way that the the setup of the movement kind of lends itself. to allow you to bias one of those. ah But either way, kind of the way I feel about the back foot elevation is that I don't want my back knee hitting the ground. I don't want it to be so high that I feel like I'm like straining and I'm in this awkward position where I'm like having to arch my back to like do the rep because the back foot is too high. But at the same time, I really despise when the back foot is so low that I'm getting to what. I would want to be the bottom of the rep to get like, you know, maximum stretch in your target muscle, but I'm unable to get there because the back knee is touching the ground. Um, so I really liked that back knee to hover above the ground, just, just barely like half an inch or an inch when I get to the bottom of the rep. And another thing that you get the benefit of with the rear foot elevation is you get the quad stretch on the rec fem. So the, big quad muscle of the back leg. So if you're performing your Bulgarian split squat, and you go to the very bottom, the back leg, the one that's elevated, you should feel this huge stretch along the like front of your hip flexor and down your quad. And if that elevation is too low, then you're actually going to be unable to get to that deep stretch for your rec fem. And that's kind of one of those unique benefits of this movement is that not only do you get to train the larger quad muscles and the glutes on the front leg, the one that's planted, but you also get that stretch. maybe that like 30%, 40 % contribution from the rec fem of the back leg. ah And so if for some reason you wanted to get less rec fem from your back leg, you could use a lower elevation and focus more on the front leg. But if you want to get kind of that dual benefit, then you're going to need a slightly higher elevation on the back leg. So you can get that full stretch of the rec fem at the bottom of the rep. For me, I usually find that to be just below the back of my knee. So when I stand next to like my bench or my elevation, I'll generally feel that bench or elevation hitting me maybe two or three inches below the crevice on the back of my knee. So kind of like the top of my shin. What do you think, Aaron? Yeah, I was going to. I mean, it's one of those things that if it's too low, your back knee hits the ground. That's no bueno, right? And if it's too high, you feel like you kind of run out of range of motion at the hip on your back leg before you're at depth on the front leg so that you have you have a pretty good clear indication of, it's too low because my knees hitting the ground. And there's a pretty clear indication of, it's too high because I can't get to depth. before my back leg, feels like it's trying to, you know, dislocate at the hip. So you have a pretty good sweet spot in there. um And then like everyone's different, you know, eh it's hard to say because if you have like really short femur relative to a really long tib fib, it's going to be a little bit different than someone with the opposite. So just find that sweet spot where you're able to get to depth, but it doesn't feel like you're trying to dislocate your hip and then conversely your knees not hitting the ground. And I think you're pretty good. Yep, I agree as well. All right, next one I'll kick over to you. Can people still grow muscle mass with an epigastric hernia if lifting heavy isn't allowed? I mean, I don't want to see it seems like it's like a it's almost like a double negative absolute question. So like, don't want to say no, you cannot build muscle because I don't think that that's true. But I mean, if you if you can't lift heavy, you can try really high rep stuff. I mean, I if I if I really am being honest, the answer is just get the hernia fixed. All right. It's a pretty like I had a hernia literally a year ago. In eight weeks, I was back training again. Mine was in my belly button. So I think the epigastric is a couple inches above the belly button. But if lifting is important to you and building muscle is important to you, the real answer is you have to get the hernia fixed and you're not and you're actually not able to train because dummy me after I had the hernia surgery, I had like eight people who mess message me or in person. Oh, yeah, I have a hernia in my belly button. It's been there for 10 years. It's not a problem. So. do a little bit more research and see if you actually cannot lift with it. And if that is true, I would strongly encourage you to just go get it fixed. Yeah, I agree. Because I think that the idea of doing higher reps is good in theory. But I think the problem you're going to face is that with the hernia, you don't want to do any really hard bracing or uh internal bracing, where you're really having to push through a really tough rep. And it doesn't matter if that's your 15th rep or your second rep. If you're getting to a point where you're having to really brace hard, and push hard through a sticking point, then that's going to be more or less the same effect. So yeah, I kind of think that there isn't the question is basically asking if I'm training four or five reps from failure all the time, forever for the rest of my life, can I can I still gain muscle? And maybe like if we look at the science, you know, we do see this inverse relationship between intensity and volume. So if you're going to use super low intensity, maybe you could do 20 or 30 sets per muscle group at four or five RIR and still continue to gain muscle with the hernia. um I'm assuming that would be even more limited and further from failure on leg stuff. So maybe your legs would even struggle more to be able to build muscle in that situation. So I kind of align with Aaron and just say, yeah, do what you need to do to get it fixed if it's really limiting you in that Okay, this one for you, Brian. What are the differences between Paragon and Evolved, if any? Yeah. So the backstory is that I started evolved in 2017. It was my personal brand as I was kind of transitioning out of CrossFit into the more bodybuilding scene. The first program I ever created and evolved was the original evolve program, which is basically that hybrid between CrossFit, bodybuilding, strength training, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, basically everything that you would kind of do if you created a baby of bodybuilding aesthetic focus with the functional side of CrossFit. And then from there, I evolved those programs to then uh have the physique program, which is all free weights and the global physique program, which is physique program for a commercial gym. Those were all quite successful. And I had begun coaching Lori, who is my business partner at Paragon as a one-on-one client. And we were using a lot of the techniques and strategies that I used in evolved. And after about six months, she approached me and was like, Hey, we need to take this information and put it into paragon so that we can reach more people. People, you know, she had a huge audience of people coming out of CrossFit. So our first paragon program that we created was also like the original evolved program, where it was that kind of hybrid between CrossFit and bodybuilding. And then from there we've evolved into now having like 15 different paragon programs and we've separated them out into three day, four day or five day. And then for each one of those, have a. a Globo gym, like a commercial gym, a home gym, and a dumbbell only program. So at Paragon, you have, you know, regardless of whether your equipment is, regardless of how many days a week you want to train, there's a program for you. So there's definitely a more robust menu of programs at Paragon. And then beyond that, I would say the other main differences are that Paragon uses the train heroic app and evolved uses true coach. So you could, you know, have a preference on which app you like better. And then Paragon does tend to be about 85 to 90 % female. And what that means is that the majority of the programs are just ever so slightly skewed toward female. So we might have a little bit more glute work, a little bit less chest work, maybe a little bit more like upper back, lateral delt shoulder work uh to kind of compensate for the lack of chest work. But for the most part, you won't notice a ton of variance between the programs. There certainly will be some if you're very nuanced and you know, can really assess what you're looking at and what you're doing. ah But I think for the general person, you probably aren't going to notice much of a difference between the two programs aside from the delivery method and the community and the app and stuff like that. and you do the programming for all of it, which is a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This one, Brian, I kind of want to kick to you first because I mean, I think it's a really hard question to answer. So I'm going to let you take a swing at it first. What are typical body fat percentages for both male and female when I'm using air quotes here, toned or ripped? Do you happen to know if this was a male or female that submitted the question? OK. I mean, usually women are around about 7 to 8 % higher than males for the same level of leanness. And going back to that question we had at question number two about what does it take to maintain 12 % body fat, I don't know that 12 % for a man would be considered ripped. per se, my guess is that toned is being referred to for women and ripped would be, you know, referred to for men. So I think for men to be ripped in most cases, you probably want to be around 10%. That's the point where you're going to have abs even, you know, unflexed in most cases, even if you don't really train your abs, you'll probably still have abs because you're just lean enough. And then for women, that would put you at about 17, 18 % body fat, something like that. And I think that that's about right because For a man to stand on stage and be like uber ripped, like stage level, you need to drop four or 5 % off of that number. So 10 % becomes five or 6%. And then women go from 17 or 18 down to the 12, 13, maybe 14%. And I think that those numbers all kind of resonate with what you would look like on stage. And so yeah, adding four or 5 % to those numbers, I think you still end up looking. toned or ripped, like extremely lean and athletic, but maybe not, uh like Aaron said, you eyes sucked in completely emaciated. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really hard because toned and ripped are literally subjective, right? I've had people message me when I'm like 13 % body fat and they're like, you're ripped. And I'm like, no, not not even close. You know what I mean? So it's very subjective. I think to try and answer the question. Let's you let's let's use both in in in a in a unisex terminology. So let's say as a male, we're toned at 12%. I feel pretty confident with that, right? As a female, I think like the 12 % representation as a male is about 20 % as a female, right? So you're like pretty toned at that point. um The caveat there is women store disproportionately higher amounts of body fat below the waist and men have a more even distribution of body weight, right? So like you can have a woman who's 16 % body fat from the waist up and then like a 22 % from the waist down. Like that is very, very real. um So I would say like about a 12 % for a male, 20 % for a female is about like that toned and then ripped. I think the 10 % figure that Brian used is really, really good for a male as well. And that's going to be around like 17 % for a female is going to be like ripped. um Ripped is not inherently unsustainable, but fitness is one of the top two priorities in your life sort of thing. At 10%, pushing that down to like a 7%, you are like shredded. That is unsustainable. um And then taking that female percentage to like a 17 to like a 15, that is unsustainable. You are probably going to induce... um secondary hypothalamic amenorrhea in the female athlete triad, these sorts of things that you can start to expect bad, irregular things to happen to your hormones and cycles and stuff at that time. So hopefully that helps add some figures there, but it is subjective, right? And different people's body fat distributions will impact that and skew it a little bit, but that's a pretty decent ballpark explanation, I think. Next one for you, Brian. You mentioned in your stories that you are a big fan of pre-exhaust. Could you explain why you like it and how you use it? Yeah, initially, I think it's important to note that the science on pre-exhaust would put it at slightly less productive than doing straight sets. uh And I say slightly because it's very ambiguous. It depends what studies you're looking at, and it depends on the training age of people. It appears as if it is a few percentage points less effective than doing straight sets, all things considered. ah With that said, pre-exhaust has been a staple of bodybuilding training for many decades. And you only need to go back to Mike Menser in the 80s, who in his heavy duty training program essentially used pre-exhaust exclusively. If you look at those heavy duty training programs from Mensa in the eighties, which have been extremely popular and are having kind of a new Renaissance now of people doing them. Literally a typical workout would consist of like three movements for the same muscle group back to back to back where you're starting with an isolation, like short overload movement and then going into like a mid range movement and then going into a length and movement. So, you know, a leg extension to leg press to back squat all without stopping or like know, dumbbell fly to, to bench press to, like four straps with the bench press or something along those lines. mean, it's, it's, it's starting with a single joint movement. It's moving into a compound movement. For me personally, I sort of found a love of pre-exhaust in my early days, um, for two main reasons. One was this was, this was before we, had this knowledge in science that soreness isn't a good indicator of muscle gain, so to speak. But what soreness does tell you is which muscles you're training. And it became very obvious to me when I did pre-exhaust that I was getting extremely sore in the muscles that I was purposefully trying to target. So back in the early days, my favorite superset would always be to go from a dumbbell fly into a pushup. And I've used that one for 20 plus years at this point. pretty regularly and I program it pretty regularly for clients. um From there I would progress into like a kind Mensa-ish one, which is he would use a uh pullover, like you know that the pullover machines with the elbows on the pads, he would go like pullover machine directly to row, directly to, I don't know, another back movement of some sort. So there would be like a kind of triple exhaust there starting with that isolation movement for the lats. And so I've used a lot of that as well. More recently, I've become a huge fan of pre-exhaust with the lateral delts going from a lateral raise variant into an overhead press variant. the question is why I like it and how I use it. So I would say the main reason I like it is because A, it gets you sore in the places that you're intending to get sore. So you know that you're at least at a minimum targeting the muscles that you want to target. B, it's an extremely time effective approach as well. um for the amount of stimulus that I get from something, the amount of time that I spend when I'm doing pre-exhaust is way less. So it's how I use it. I often will use it exclusively when I travel. So if I'm at a gym and they have dumbbells that are only up to 50 pounds, then I'm like, crap, what can I do with 50 pounds? Well, I can't do dumbbell bench presses, so I can do dumbbell flies. And then I can go to failure on those. And then I can drop down and do a set of pushups with my feet elevated on the bench. And if I do two rounds of that with a break in between, you know, fly directly to push up, rest, fly directly to push up, rest that destroys my chest. Like I can literally be sore for four days from just those two pre-exhaust supersets. uh So I enjoy it for that purpose, especially when traveling. I enjoy it as a change of pace. in training. So I'll do like a short, you know, three to five week cycle where I focus more on pre-exhaust work for a short period of time. Um, and yeah, I just, I just think it's an effective way to target the muscle that you want to target in a time efficient manner that gets you sore in the muscles that you're intending. So you know that you're loading what you're intending to load. And, uh, even if it is, you know, marginally less effective than doing straight sets. the time-saving aspect and the ability to really feel as if you're exhausting what you're trying to exhaust, think, make it a useful tool to have in your repertoire. so any thoughts on pre-exhaust? No, I mean, you covered it incredibly comprehensively. Well, I'll kick this one over to you. Are there any instances where you find intermittent fasting useful? It is my preferred way of eating, but I don't know if there are downsides for both the deficit or trying to build muscle. Yeah, so personally, I do not use it professionally. I will use it in times where I have a client who we are in the middle or towards the tail end of a calorie deficit. They do not want to take a diet break over a trip or a family vacation or something like that and want or want to try and mitigate any caloric overages while on the trip. So. I will use intermittent fasting in this approach because if we're on like a family vacation, right, you can I typically have them like a protein fasting in the morning, right? I say, hey, let's have some extra caffeine. It's going to hold you over until lunchtime. We have a lighter lunch and then we typically have a heavier dinner because let's face it, if you're on vacation with family, everyone's you're going out to eat every night. That's like almost a given in the most common kind of social structure there. m That is. pretty much the only time that I use intermittent fasting from a professional standpoint. Yeah, so I actually use intermittent fasting personally, and have been since 2012. I think for the most part between 2012 and now 13 years, I've probably been intermittent fasting for the majority of it like 90 plus percent of it. uh In the last five years, four years, specifically, I don't think I've had a single day where I've eaten before 11am. uh And that's just the way I prefer to eat. So I resonate with this question asker. I have just found over time that I get really hungry at night toward the end of the day, call it like five to 7 PM. And that doesn't seem to be impacted on how much I ate earlier in the day. I'm just always more hungry at night. And so the way that I've found to be able to kind of manage my food intake, my caloric needs, and my body fat percentage is simply to just not eat. in beginning of the day at all. So usually I will wake up around 530 or 6am. I won't eat anything until, you know, 11 at the earliest. Sometimes it's 12 or one. And then I'll eat until 536, maybe seven on a late day. So I'm getting between six and eight hours of food in me and I'm getting about three meals. And so when you look at the science for intermittent fasting, what you generally see is that If you're eating only two meals a day, that seems to have detrimental effects on your ability to build muscle and maintain muscle in a deficit. ah Whereas if you're getting three meals a day in, which I think is pretty reasonable with an eight hour eating window, there seems to not be any mitigating effects from that. Now I know that there's nuance here in context and uh in certain situations, you know, you probably would be advantaged to eat. for longer periods of time. I acknowledge that, but I think like my use of pre-exhaust, that there is a, even if there is a marginal negative effect of doing it, there could be other positive benefits that potentially outweigh the negative associated with it that are likely individual to you, whether that's in the case of pre-exhaust, trying to save time or feel that certain muscles are getting trained. And I think the same thing can be applied to intermittent fasting where even if I'm losing, you know, a few percentage points of muscle gain or putting myself into a catabolic state unnecessarily for a couple hours, the end result of that being able that I'm able to manifest consistency over time, I think is likely the most important variable here. very, very well put, Brian. I do have a follow-up. I know you train in the mornings, so are you still doing, are you not doing like your protein carb when you're training? Yeah, I stopped doing that maybe a year ago. The Gatorade protein mix thing. Yeah, the sludge. Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I have found that uh I now seem to be pushing my training back to about 10 oh AM or 11 AM. So in many cases, I'm not training like right at eight or nine AM anymore, like I was doing. uh So in most cases, I will begin training fasted. and have my meal after I finish training. The only time that I'll change that up is if I'm doing cardio that is not zone two. So if I'm doing like higher intensity cardio where my heart rate is really getting elevated and I'm getting out of breath, I will usually make sure that I have some protein and carbohydrates before doing that workout or during it depending. But for lifting, yeah, I really see no reason to eat. before my lifting at this point, especially because I'm not doing a high volume program. You know, I'm doing this full body three times a week thing where I'm doing one set per muscle group. And, just, don't really find it. makes a difference. I've, I've trained in the afternoon after eating and I've trained in the morning fasted and neither of them really seem to make a noticeable difference. And, I feel fine training fasted, especially because I think in my case, you know, I have that big feeding of food at around 6 PM or 6 30 or whatever it is where I go to bed. quite full ah because I ate so much the night before. And so I'm assuming that a lot of that is, you know, stored glycogen in the liver that's still there for me to use the next day. Yeah, yeah, I think you answered the question like really, really contextually well, right? And you're it there may be some upsides or downsides in either way. But if it allows you if if there is some downsides, but it prevents you from being like a catastrophic failure three nights per week because you're ravenously hungry at eight p.m. then it's a net positive, right? So I think, like I said, you answered it really, really well. It has to fit within the context of the individual. And if it's worth sacrificing a marginal 1 and 1 half percent of optimality so that you can be more consistent, that's obviously a net positive. Yeah. Okay, this also one is for you. Can you explain why you like to program with uh RIR reps and reserve decreasing from week to week throughout the meso? The argument for keeping it consistent, for example, one or two RIR week to week is that the progress is more objective and no blurred diagnostics. Yeah, I understand this argument. I think that the latter part though, uh, as far as, that it's more objective and there's no blur diagnostics is not necessarily accurate because the way that I tend to assess progress and diagnose it in this decreasing RIR structure is I don't look week to week. look messo to messo. So if in week four of one messo, I'm training at one RIR and I get six reps, then the next meso. we're talking six weeks later, maybe I get back to week four and I look at my data and I'm like, okay, I did 500 pounds for six reps at one RIR. Well, now I know that my intent is to throw 505 pounds on the bar and or on the machine or whatever, and go to one RIR. And hopefully that means I get six reps. So I'm looking from week four of meso cycle one to week four of meso cycle two and trying to make that progress. I think this is a relatively advanced way of approaching it because somebody who is a novice or early intermediate is going to notice progress faster than every six weeks. And so maybe this structure wouldn't be like the perfect way for them to do it. Not that it would be wrong per se, like you can still progress in the same manner. You might just progress larger. So when you get to week four of the second mess, so instead of being like, I'm just going to add five pounds and hope that I can, you know, match my performance from the prior mess. So maybe you're up 15 pounds and you're, you know, having more RIR and you're like, wow, that's crazy. Like I made so much progress in that period of time. So I don't think that it necessarily is a, uh, it doesn't necessarily mitigate you being able to diagnose progress. It's just that progress is going to occur in a different capacity in different amounts over time, based on your, training level or training age. As far as why I like to do it. Um, I think that What I've noticed at least with clients less with myself, but with clients is that monotony is, is a really big thing that I like to try to mitigate in training. And a lot of clients just do not enjoy, you know, simply being told, Hey, you're going to just stick with the same weight and you're going to keep doing it until it gets too easy. And then you're going to add some weight over the course of time that gets really monotonous. gets boring. It, um, it can get hard to get psychologically amped up for your sessions when everyone is basically like, all right, I guess we'll see if I progress today. uh The nice thing about decreasing RIR is that it gives you the facade of things. It's not a facade. It gives you the reality of things changing week to week, um which kind of gives you the facade of making, quote, progress. Even if that progress isn't going to be realized until the next meso, you kind of feel like, hey, if I start week one at four RIR, and then I go to three and then two and then one and then zero and then zero and then zero, uh every week up until the zeros, you're doing something that makes you feel as if you're making progress. Maybe you're not really making progress. It's fine, because you're going to find that out six weeks later. uh But it gives you the feeling that you're making progress. It gives you the confidence going into the session that I will be able to progress this because I'm supposed to be working one rep closer to failure. And then you leave the session feeling accomplished. Whereas I feel like in the other example where if you're just trying to hit one to two RIR every week, there's going to be many sessions where you go in there and you don't progress. And then you leave the session and you have negative self-talk and you're like, why didn't I progress? What's wrong with me? And the reality is that you're just not going to progress every week. And so if you're not going to progress every week, then decreasing RIR giving you that kind of false sense of progress, you leave a session feeling more confident and more excited to go into the next session because you're like, I get to add five more pounds to the bar no matter what. And that's more motivating. So for me, that's probably the main backbone for why I prefer to program that think it's a very good answer. Yeah. Do you want to take this next one? All right. So on week four of a five day full body, one set to failure program, weights reps are going up each week. Feel great, not run down. I've noticed my arms look flatter. Is that just the result of eating less food? I can't imagine I'm losing muscle if my lifts are getting better. It can be the result of eating less food if our body weight is also decreasing at a relative portion of us eating less food, right? If we're eating less food, but our body weight's not going down, I can't say that I think that that would be a likely culprit. um I am going to go out on a little bit of a fringe here. But I do think, I think we have a spectrum of performance and volume, right? I do think there is a minimum amount of volume that is required to maintain a certain threshold of muscle mass, right? And that volume is not necessarily below the threshold of what it would take to make progress, right? So if my goal was like, hey, I'm going to train, like I'm going to train leg extensions as my primary leg movement, I'm going to do them like, you know, every fourth day or fifth day or whatever. And as long as I get like one extra rep or I can micro load it, then my legs won't get smaller. I can't confidently say that I think that that statement is true. And I think if you like if you're at like peak, your natural physique or something like that, and you and you are a higher volume trainee to build that physique, I think you're going to have a relatively high volume that's necessary to maintain that peak level of physique. I think the volume to make progress in strength is lower. We often correlate strength and hypertrophy because oftentimes they move in a linear fashion with each other, but they are not locked at the hip per se. I think there's situations where they can deviate is kind of what I'm getting at. Yeah, I think that's well said. I personally can note that when I tend to be in a state of eating less food, my arms tend to be one of the first things that I'm like, oh, why do my arms look so small and deflated right now? And so if you're eating less food, you have less glycogen storage and therefore there's going to be a muscle on your body that deflates as a result of just having less glycogen storage in place. So your sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, that kind of hypertrophy that isn't real hypertrophy, but it like makes you be like a blown up balloon. It looks real. That's the sort of stuff that I think goes as soon as you begin eating less food. And if your arms are the muscle that tends to absorb that impact, then that makes sense. um It may also just mean that you need a little bit more volume for your arms. Like everyone's different. So if you're doing one set to failure for all these different movements and you're doing the same thing for your arms, maybe they just need a little bit more. But my thought is not that. I think it's what I said prior, which is just that having less glycogen storage leads to less sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. And the arms seem to be a muscle that uh tends to have that occur to me. The first piece of my body that I notice look small when I'm on a diet is going to be my arms. Yeah, what I would recommend here is a little test for you. Run like a 48 hour refeed high carb. Do your arm day or the continue your training as is and take measurements from like the day before you start the refeed 48 hours after. Take some photos and see if your arms have like reshape re re grew to their size. They're supposed to be. Then you have a very good objective like, it's just the lower food. Yeah. OK. uh Number 11. Yes, OK. Since there are diminishing returns for additional sets performed of a certain exercise, is it better to perform less sets, but a greater number of exercises or vice versa? Yeah, I think this is a good question, but I think it's a pretty simple answer. If your goal is to improve strength, meaning that it's a skill on a specific movement, you would be much more benefited by performing that same exercise that you wanna get better on for more sets. However, if you're training for hypertrophy, I think the calculation is the complete opposite. Because hypertrophy is muscle fiber specific, if you're just training a bunch of sets of one exercise, like bent over row for your back, then there's gonna be a significant number of muscle fibers in your back. that are not going to be targeted as a result of that. Therefore, if you were to take five sets of bent over rows and make that one set of bent over rows, one set of wide grip pull downs, one set of narrow grip pull downs, one set of one arm rows, and some other back movements. So we have five different movements for one set each. Then I think, yes, you are going to stimulate a greater number of muscle fibers. You're gonna have more well-rounded hypertrophy across your target musculature. And I think ultimately you are going to achieve your goals of hypertrophy better than you would if you were doing five sets of the same movement. Yep. The only small little caveat that I would add there, if you're training at some location that just has like poor equipment availability and you're trying to like jump through hoops to make variations, I would. And there's like one really good back machine that like lights up the spot that you want it to light up. I'm probably going to do more sets on that one back machine and do and not go searching for variation to like the vast depths of trying to make something work. That's not worth it. Yep. Yep. I'll also just add that I think that diminishing returns that was mentioned is actually going to be applicable to any exercises that work similar muscle groups in that if you're doing five different exercises for back, you're still going to have diminishing returns across each exercise that you perform probably less than you would if you were doing five sets of the same exercise, but still regardless, you're still going to get the biggest return from the first set of the first exercise that you do. So as far as priorities go, you know, maybe order those exercises in a way that are specific to you and your needs. Yep, really well put. Cool. All right. I am wanting to see my six pack muscles more. I'm very lean at the end of a deficit. How do I know if I need to lose more body fat or do more weighted ab exercises to build those muscles? We have to make some assumptions here. I'm going to go with the assumption that I think you just have to lose more body fat. um If you've been training consistently and follow a pretty decent programming that has some level of like lower body compounds that requires bracing hip hinges, lunges, deadlifts, like there's going to be app development there. I think. Unfortunately. where the abs show up, especially genetically, right? You can have, like I mentioned the power lifters earlier in the episode, they're gonna have really well-developed abs, so they'll show up when they're fatter because they're just bigger. If you're on the team underdeveloped side, you're just gonna have to be leaner for them to get there. But if we even take, like, think of, what are some athletes that are not overly muscular but really lean? Two that come to mind are swimmers and gymnasts. Not the like male gymnasts who are super fucking jacked. I'm talking like your female typical gymnast who are still. Yeah, endurance really, really good. They have abs because they're just pretty much dick skin lean. You know what I mean? So so I think unfortunately the answer might be I think you just need you're not as lean as you had hoped you were, which sucks. get it. Believe. Yeah, I mean, if you really are like really lean and you have the outline of abs, but there's just no bulk to those abs, then yes, maybe at that point you're talking about maybe doing some more ab exercises to actually build your abs. But until you get to the point that you're lean enough that you legitimately can see your abs, because you could do zero ab work, like literally zero. And if you're lean enough, you will have abs. So until you're at the point where you're lean enough that you have abs and you're just like, I want to have more space between my abs, ah then that would be the situation in which you would add weighted ab exercises. Yeah, another another good way to tell if there's veins in the abs, I get the end of the day after you had a day of eating and stuff like that with some some level of like glycogen and stuff. If you have veins in your abs at night, but still no veins in your stomach, I should say that are clearly visible under the skin, but no abs. Then I would change my answer to the latter part of we need some additional hypertrophy, because that's objectively really lean. Okay, this one I'll kick to you, Brian. If we can't build muscle in a cut and are trying to just maintain, how come it isn't recommended to do lower volume or the least amount needed to maintain? I think that is right. I think that that is more or less the way that I approach it. And I think that for the most part, science supports it. There was a period of time in the late 2000 teens where Mike Isretel was really big voice uh talking about volume and how important volume was. And his operating theory at the time was that when you're in a deficit, you need to do more volume because you need to send a stronger signal to maintain muscle. I think that now we've kind of turned a point in the industry where that recommendation is kind of actually the opposite. It's kind of turned on its head where just like this question asked or asked or said, you know, doing lower volumes is likely more recommended because you have lower energy reserves, lower recovery resources, and we can look at the maintenance volume literature and we know that you can maintain muscle with significantly lower volumes than it takes to build it. uh And so yeah, my general recommendation for people on a cut is to lower volumes, increase intensity. I can also reference Chris Barakat, who recently got his pro card or recently as in like two years ago, but he got his pro card. And one of the things he talked about was that all he did for his like quad work or hack squat, specifically with his hack squat was he would do one set and he started his cut, you know, being able to do call it five plates for six reps. And every single week he would go in and he would just do five plates and he would go to failure and whatever number of reps he would get, he just always kept five plates on the bar. Cause that was a way for him to kind of assess whether he was in fact losing muscle or not. And I think he mentioned by the end of the cut, like right before he got on stage, he was doing four reps with the weight that he was doing six reps with, you know, at the beginning of the cut. And so that's pretty solid. Like if you go through an entire cut and you get stage ready and you only lose two reps, That goes to show that I think that was quite an effect. I feel very perplexed about this question, honestly. um I do think that everything that you said, Brian, is factually correct. And I would never argue the science on that. I do, however, feel it is a very defeatist attitude, right? And it typically doesn't lend itself very well to a cut, a calorie deficit environment where people struggle with so much already, right? So if we were to like rewrite this as. If I'm not going to get a raise in my job this year because there's no money in the company, like, why shouldn't I just do the absolute bare minimum that's necessary to keep my job? And like the answer is like, I mean, yeah, you probably should or could it's probably not going to work out in your best favor. And that's a dangerous attitude to take through life kind of thing. So that's like a little bit of an extrapolation. The other thing that I think might be more applicable For the specific question asker, if you're breezing through your cut and hunger is not an issue, your training still enjoyable, you're finding other positive ways to like fill your time and you're making progress at the rate that you're looking for, wonderful, operate in this way. I feel like it's maybe not the best recommendation to take an energy expending activity and pull it back to purposefully expend less energy, especially doing something that will blunt appetite at a time where people could really use some help with appetite blunting. So I think like I'm taking it. Unfortunately, the question that's true in this container and extrapolating it a little bit more, which is not necessarily what the question asker is asking. But I think it all comes down to like if you're struggling. to make your rates of progress and stuff in your cut, I don't think just going down to the absolute bare minimum of volume is going to help you turn that corner, is kind of what I'm trying to say. I feel like I'll push back in the sense that you can manage caloric expenditure through much more effective ways than trying to do it in the gym. Like for you, walking 40 minutes twice a day is probably a better approach than you just slapping more volume onto your strength training because you want to burn more calories. uh So I think that there's that argument. And then the other side that I'll say is, Like I don't know that I would recommend just going into a cut and being like, okay, drop volume to the lowest amount possible. I think that it's a process of tapering it over time where at the beginning of your cut, you're likely training with similar volumes to what you were doing before you started your cut. And then over the course of the deficit, you begin to kind of take some volume away over time as your recovery resources deplete and your motivation depletes. Because I think the risk of doing too much volume in a cut. is that you begin to kind of burn out psychologically. And that's what I've noticed with myself and with clients is as the cut goes on, it's like, fuck man, those three sets of hack squats that I was doing before, just can't do them now. Like I would much rather psychologically go in and do one really hard set and feel like I'm doing good quality work that has an impact than to go in and just kind of go through the motions for three sets and then to also feel so depleted from that. that I can't imagine going in the next week and doing my three sets all over again. Those are very, very good counter arguments. And I agree. It's as recovery as long as you can no longer recover from your current volume, like you need to reduce your current volume. But I wouldn't just say, all right, well, deficit starts tomorrow. I'm not going to build any muscles. Let me do the absolute bare minimum. I would not do that either. Yeah, cool. right. Curious about both of your hydration. How many ounces do you drink for the day on average? Mine's getting high because I'm getting quite lean now. So you start peeing all the time and stuff. So it's not a great, a great thing. I would say this is my typical bottle. I think it's what? Twenty four. Twenty. It's twenty four ounces. I'm probably doing like eight of these per day, maybe 10. All things considered with two electrolyte packs per day. Yeah. So yeah, you're at like 200 plus ounces, which is, you know, well over a gallon and a half. And even like right now, like I'm not, well, I'm talking on the podcast. It's a little bit different, but I do feel like I could drink a lot. Like I want water right now. Yeah, I'm also, uh, Uber hydrated all the time. I, uh, I don't know the exact amount of, of liquid that I'm consuming, but I usually have two element packs per day in, you know, 18 to 24 ounces of water in each one. And then this is my bottle. Um, I think it's 24 ounces as well. I'm not entirely sure. And I would say I have six plus of those per day on top of my elements. maybe even more. Like I would say I'm also above, you know, 200 ounces likely per day. It's a lot. Like I, peeing a lot. I have a lot of clear peas every day. And I actually have noticed on my blood work in the past that there seems to be not that I, not that the markers are showing me dehydrated, but they're showing me less hydrated than I probably should be given how much hydration I consume. And so, It's possible that in my specific situation, I am not properly absorbing all of the liquid that I'm consuming. So maybe that's a piece of why I'm drinking so much as well. Like I don't think most people need to drink 200 ounces in a day. I think, know, 120 is plenty for, you know, the majority of people, but I find myself thirsty a lot. And so I drink and that's just the way it goes. Yeah, good answer. How much does being in zone two really matter? Going above it ruins the purpose? Question mark. I love this question because zone two has been so prominently featured in social media space for the last few years. And there is a lot of kind of scare tactic fear mongering around it in that like you must stay in zone two or else you're causing all of this runaway fatigue or whatever. uh And so it's context dependent like anything else. And the reality is that being in zone two doesn't matter at all until you're doing a sufficient amount of cardio that fatigue becomes a factor. And so the example I usually use when I'm programming cardio for clients is if we're training three times a week for cardio, we'll usually have one like higher intensity hit session and we'll have one call it zone three, maybe low zone four kind of steady state, but like harder effort kind of session. And then we'll have one zone two session. And I'm not so concerned on that zone two session, whether people are in the middle of zone two, like stuck there and not, you know, oscillating into zone three at all or whatever, because the amount of cardio that they're doing is just not that high. It's not that significant. The little bit of fatigue that you might get from going into zone three, zone four for a brief second, isn't going to have a huge impact on your recovery. As the amount of cardio that you're doing ramps up, I think it becomes. exponentially more important to make sure that your zone two sessions stay in zone two. uh Because if you're training cardio five days a week, maybe even six, if you're an elite endurance athlete, something like that, then now you're talking about three or four of those weekly sessions being zone two. And those own two sessions are really there as a way to contribute to getting a training stimulus without the fatigue that comes with that. And if you are causing fatigue because you're you know, attacking hills on your zone two ride, and you're doing that for each of your zone two sessions, then now you're talking about having like five or six harder cardio sessions a week. And I think that there is negative impact to that on recovery ability. And, you know, as far as the training impact on your mitochondrial function and stuff like that, which is kind of the main goal of zone two, it doesn't matter whether you're above zone two because the training impact and the effect on your mitochondria is actually going to increase as your intensity increases. So that's not the concern. It's not like you're going to get less results because you got out of zone two. It really is a matter of managing fatigue and that fatigue only needs to be managed if you're doing a high dose of cardio. very well answered. This next one also for you, Brian, whatever happened to your Tongkat Ali experiment? Yeah, so the experiment was that about a year ago, I started taking Tonka Ali and I was gonna do a blood work after three or four months and see if it improved my testosterone at all, like Huberman says it will. And uh I have not gotten blood work done for over a year. The uh doctor, my doctor ordered my blood work last February. So I'm literally talking not like February 2025. He ordered it in like February, 2024. And so I was gonna go in the spring and do my blood work. The blood workplace that I go to closed down, like literally I drove out there and they were closed. So I had to go find a new place and the new place is like a half hour away from my house. And so just out of pure laziness and not having actually have any reason to go to where the blood workplace is, I just have not done it. And so it's now been over a year since I've done blood work. I'm continuing to take my Tonka Ali. So, um, the, the blood work place is actually right near where I dropped the kids off at camp this week. So my intention is a very, very, uh, timely question. My intention is literally tomorrow, Wednesday to drop the kids off at camp and then go get my blood work done at this place over by where their camp is. So hopefully if I do that tomorrow, I should have the results within a week or 10 days and I'll be able to report back on our next episode after I get back from Wisconsin with whatever the results are. There we go. So we have like a week instead of like an eight or 12 week tongue, cattle, the experience experiment. We have a year in four month tongue, cattle, the experiment. Do you think there's individual variance among people regarding who can go all out to failure and those who can't? I do think there is, right? Just with anything, there's genetic variance among all of us that predisposes us to certain things versus others. So I do think there is genetic variance or individual variance in that. I also think there is like an accumulation or uh not in, how do I want to put it, a condition of being exposed to things gradually. which changes your ability or not. Right. If you're. I don't know, you've been training for a couple months and then you like meet some new friends and they're like, come train with us and they just train like psychopaths and are taking everything to failure like you're going to fall the fuck apart. Right. But if it was like a as a genuine as I generally get a little bit more into the gym and I start training harder because I enjoy it and then I find out about this like high intensity stuff like as you as you inch toward that way, I think anyone can become more accustomed. or not. um And then I think also within your own genetic individual variants, like you can do that. For example, at the end of my at the tail end of when I was natural, we were training like psychopaths. We had three and a half hour leg days twice per week. I recovered perfectly fine. I handled all the volume perfectly fine. I was OK, right, because I adapted to it. Adapt. That was the word I was looking for. I trained with one of our friends who we use to train with all the time last year. He's still doing like really high volume leg days and stuff. I am not. I fell the fuck apart. Even though I have all these PEDs and stuff in me now and I'm way so much more and I'm stronger in all of these things. Natural Aaron could handle it because he was adapted to it. Aaron of current day could not because he is not adapted to it. And even with the same obviously genetic response and stuff. I think. There's just a number of confounding variables that lend themselves in both directions contextually. Yeah, I think that's super well said. uh I do think there's individual variance. And I think that all you need to do is look at the literature and see that across all the studies, there's just certain people that respond better to doing more volume with RIR. And there's people that respond better to doing less volume to failure. uh And then I don't know that there's a lot of people that can do a lot of volume to failure. I'm sure those people also exist out there, but I think that as a general spectrum, you have to choose whether you want volume at lower intensity or less volume at higher intensity. um, and yeah, I mean, maybe there's even people out there that can't even do lower volumes at high intensity. Like just the fact that they're going to failure on these big compound movements is just too much for their system to recover from. And I think that that's, that's real as well. And so it's all a process of experimentation and kind of figuring out. What is the path that works best for you? And maybe that's even different across different muscle groups. Like for what I'm finding right now is that my three times a week full body program is working great for my upper body, but it hasn't been working so great for my lower body. And so I've made some changes where now I still do my three times a week upper body with the super low volume with the higher frequency, but I'm now just sprinkling in leg sessions with more volume every five days. So I'm not actually doing a three times a week full body program. I'm doing a three times a week upper body program. with a leg session every five days. And that's just kind of what I've realized is working for me at the moment. And so this is just a process that you need to figure Definitely. How much time do you spend in a week across all activities? What does the week look like? That's a good question. I like that. uh So if we count walking, I spend about two to three hours a day on activities. If we don't count walking, I think it's quite a bit less because walking is slow and it's time deficient, time inefficient. Yeah, okay. So I lift 30 to 45 minutes. call it four days a week with my current structure. So we would say about two hours, two and a half hours of lifting a week. And then I do about five to six hours of cardio a week. So that's call it eight hours of, of training between lifting and cardio. And then, yeah, I probably walk about an hour a day. So seven, 15, I'd say 15 ish hours a week of movement, counting walking and eight hours a week if you don't count walking. feel like my answer is not really overly helpful because again, just to provide the context, am four-ish weeks out of a pro qualifier context. It is the most time consuming part of my life. I would not call it my highest priority, but it's very, I need to provide that context, right? I don't do this when I'm not doing this. I have 40 minutes of walking in the morning, 40 minutes of walking in the evening. So that's what about. hour and a half almost and I do I do an extra like at least 10 minutes warm up cool down at the gym. So let's call that an hour and a half there. I train from 90 minutes to two hours per day, although it's not 100 % training time. There's always like little things that I'm fixing at the gym or putting things back or different things like that. I have my posing. So I'm at the gym for about two, two and a half hours per day. Add that to the hour and a half. That's what that's at four hours per day. yeah. And I would say that is that is pretty spot on. And I'm going to the gym seven days per week. I have five training days. do mobility cardio. I ride a bike for 15 minutes on my non-lift days and I do eight sets of abs. So not sustainable at all. Would not recommend it. But I'm trying to speed run a little bodybuilding career. So that's why it looks that way. And if I was not doing that, it would be less than 50 percent of that. So Yeah, yeah. And 50 % of that is about more or less what I'm doing. So I would say we're kind of around the same. In reality, I might walk more than an hour a day on average, because yeah, I would say I probably walk like an hour, 20 minutes a day on average. So maybe my thing is actually more like 16, 17 hours, something like that. But really only eight hours a week of stuff that I would consider zone two effort or higher, where lifting would be considered higher than zone two effort. And then the other. 10 hours are walking and stuff. So really only eight hours of actual training. Final two questions are for you, Brian. Best ways to improve running form for lifters. Improved cadence and GCT already. ground contact time. So in running, this is something I learned only like two or three years ago. The goal is to run at a cadence of approximately 180 steps a minute. So to provide context, I'm a bad runner. When I first started running, I have this like tracker on my watch that tells me what my cadence is. And so I did a run and I went out, this is maybe a year ago and I ran it 149 steps a minute. So 31 steps lower than what you're supposed to do. And as I continued running, I got up to a point where now about a year later I can run at 165 cadence, which is way better than 149. And it feels so much better on my body. Like when you have a slower running cadence, what that means is that you're reaching too far out with your front foot. So you're essentially like putting a break on yourself every time you take a step that's too long, you're having to break to kind of do the next step. And so if you watch people that are really good at running, it almost looks like they're just like Peter Pan, like pitter pattering as they run. And uh that's how you get to the point where you have improved cadence, where you're getting up to like 180 steps a minute. And by association, you're going to decrease your ground contact time as you increase your cadence. They kind of work in that way. Um, so I've, I've recently gone out a few times and I've had a metronome in my ears at 180 a minute and trying to keep my feet at 180 as I run. I literally cannot do it. It is just so fast. And it's so many steps that I'm just not a good enough runner to actually do that. So, um, so I'm maybe not the right person to ask this question to, because I've been trying to work on my running and I'm still not good at running, but I have improved it. And so yeah, to answer the question, I do think that improved cadence is, is probably the number one thing that people can do to improve their running. I have a client right now who's been doing awesome with his cardio. And, he was also like me. He was kind of like a no cardio guy. And when he started running, he was also around the same cadence. I was at like one 50 and I've talked to him about this. And he's now at the point where he's running in the high one sixties. And he's like, it is an insane change in the productivity of my runs. He's like, not only are my runs. more effective, I'm getting like better results, I'm improving rapidly, but he's like, I just feel good running. Like it's not a burden on my joints. It doesn't hurt because all these steps are like these little small teeny little things that are directly under your center of mass every time you step. And so, yeah, I just, I think improving cadence is probably the best thing that you can do to try and improve your running form. That's really cool. I definitely learned something new because you watch any of those like elite marathoners, like the crazy people that set the world records and stuff. That's how they run. And I never really thought much of it. But the second you explain that, I was like, oh, I know what that is. Like I watched those people run like that, but I never knew that like that there was a reason why. So that was cool to learn. OK, final question for you, Brian, what running workout type move the needle most for you? Zone two threshold Hill, etc. Yeah, mean all of them, but the reality is that until you're a decent runner, you can't even run in zone two. uh Like I consider myself to be a like. intermediate runner, like I'm definitely not a good runner, but I, I can run in zone two, but it doesn't feel natural. Like my natural gate of what would be looked at and be like, wow, you, you actually look like you run relatively well. I can't do that in zone two zone two uh ends up becoming like a shuffle almost because I have to be running so slow to stay in zone two. uh these numbers might not mean anything to people, but like I can run my first mile in zone two at about 10, 10 and a half minutes. But then with cardiac drift, by the time I get to mile three or mile four, I'm running an 11 and a half or 12 minute mile just to stay in zone two. And so what I've realized is that that, that slow speed of 11 and a half or 12 minute miles is so slow that my running form just falls apart. And if you film it, just doesn't even look like I'm running. looks like I'm shuffling along. And so I don't really think running in zone two is a great idea for people until you are a good runner. Like you have to at least be good enough to be able to run. I don't know, maybe like a 10 minute mile is probably like a good estimate for being able to keep decent running form while still running. And I just can't do that and stay in zone two. uh I think Hills. are probably the best tool you can use to improve your running because it forces you to run quote properly in that being on the hill forces your feet to end up being underneath your center of mass on each step and you end up staying in the forefoot as you run because of the the grade of the hill. So running hills is absolutely 100 % can be the best way to improve your running form. As far as moving the needle on like your fitness from running. I think it's more of those threshold workouts where you're in that like zone three, zone four, where you're able to implement quality running form because it's not too slow like zone two. But the caution that you need to have when you're running in threshold is that you can fatigue out pretty quickly and then your running form just turns into like a hot trash sandwich. So I find when doing threshold work that it's best done as intervals. So I find about a minute is the most that I can really go and really maintain what I consider to be really quality running form. And then I take a minute off where I'm just walking to recover. And then that allows me to kind of recuperate enough that I can do another minute with really good running form. So I think you need to just kind of experiment with each of those and figure out which ones you can keep good running form. So think about the prior question. What is your cadence at these different, um different. types of cardio that you're pursuing and what does your running form look like on each one and then kind of being able to formulate some sort of, like I said, interval plan if you're doing threshold, like minute on, minute off or something like that, where you can maintain really good quality technique while continuing to work on your fitness through those protocols. Wonderful. Obviously there's nothing I can add helpful on either of those, so I won't even pretend. Yeah, that's all we got. That was a great episode. Yeah, so it sounds like we'll be back in two weeks. I think we have an idea for that, but we'll solidify it when those weeks happen. And then I think we'll only get maybe two episodes recorded in July because then I leave for Taiwan um and I'll be there for a little bit over a week. So um as always, guys, questions, concerns, those sorts of things, you can ping Brian or I on Instagram. As always, thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon.