August 2025 Instagram Q&A | ETP#197

In ETP197, we dive into a full-spectrum Q&A for August 2025. We catch up with a few personal updates, then tackle a range of topics. Technique, cardio planning, adjusting nutrition from labs, sleep strategies, protein intake, and current theories on intra-week atrophy. We explore the growing popularity of Hyrox and much more this month. 

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Personal Updates

00:05:38 - How deep should we go on a fly-type movement for the chest?

00:09:00 - As an avid runner, I’m having soft tissue issues and plan to switch to bike for a while. How should I go about creating a 3x/week cardio plan?

00:13:26 - Are you guys making any changes to your diet after reviewing your blood work a few weeks ago?

00:15:10 - What are your best tips for improving sleep and how bad would sleep have to be before you go explore alternative approaches, like sleep studies, exogenous hormones etc… 

00:20:53 - I understand the whole 1g of protein per lb of BW thing, but does that change in a cut vs bulk? People say you can’t overeat protein but what actually happens? 

00:25:06 - If I want to construct a program that has different movements for the same muscle group across 3 different sessions, how can I know I am training the same muscle fibers with these varied movements and not cause atrophy? 

00:32:01 - If I wanna do the new Bryan’s program, are there swaps for home gym? 

00:32:58 - How to approach single arm training when there is a strength discrepancy? 

00:36:30 - What’s the obsession with Hyrox these days?

00:41:14 - When it comes to hypertrophy, how useful are really low reps, like sets of 2-3?

00:44:29 - After taking 8 weeks off due to a bad back injury, my strength came back rapidly and ultimately surpassed my prior levels. How?

00:47:11 - Any hypertrophy benefits to doing reverse hypers? 

00:48:33 - 2x vs 3x frequency? Is 3x really worth it? 

00:49:46 - What’s your next experiment? 

00:52:29 - Is Hybrid training just old school strength and conditioning? 

00:54:48 - Can you discuss who might benefit from using a weight vest?

00:57:44 - What could I expect from maingaining?

01:00:57 - What are your opinions on intensifiers like drop sets, rest pause, etc.

01:02:49 - Can you explain the difference between the lateral raises and the Y raise?

01:04:37 - What to adjust in a deficit when you start to lose muscle and gain some body fat according to an InBody?

01:08:35 - Ideal rate of change for a lifestyle client looking to lose fat and knowing when to make the calorie or cardio adjustment?

01:12:26 - Electrolytes for those of us that train in a hot environment?

01:14:25 - Ideal lean building phase rate of gain for an enhanced lifter's first cycle?

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Transcript

0:25

What is going on guys? Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. This is episode 197 and it is our August 2025 Instagram Q &A. So if it's your first time listening to one of our Instagram Q &A's, we get our listeners from our respective Instagram followings or broadcast channels to submit questions that we can actively provide value for them on to help them along their fitness, nutrition, health and journey of making. gains. Okay, so we'll have a September one usually, but September is going to be a crazy month with some of the things that we'll talk about in our updates, but definitely an October one if we do miss September. So that will be your next opportunity to get some help from Brian and I for free before we jump into the nuts and bolts of today's episode. Brian, what is the latest my man? Yeah, it's been a while. I feel like we've been kind of sporadic with the episodes this summer with all the travel and you you getting your pro card and all that stuff. yeah, things for the most part are just par for the course here. Uh, kids are finally back in school. Uh, they just started end of last week. So that is great. We're back on normal routine and schedule. And now that both kids go to the same school, we have not been driving. We've been walking, running, biking, or whatever. It's a, it's about a half mile away. And so I've actually been running as they bike. And, uh, the first time I did it, I was like, man, this sucks. And I kept like stopping to walk and being like, man, who runs at 7am, like unprepared, unwarmed up. And as I've just done it more now I'm on like day five, I ran the entire half mile, kept up with them the whole way on their bikes and, suddenly seeing improvement in my half mile run at 7am unprepared. so that's been cool, but, uh, on, on more kind of real like business stuff, Paragon just, we kind of reinvented our program offerings. used to have a, home gym, a dumbbell and a full gym for three day, four day and five day physique, which is basically like nine different physique programs. and so we kind of made our menu, if you want to call it that, more digestible. by essentially just having a three day, a four day and a five day physique program where we mix up what the program movement is and then we offer swaps. you know, maybe the movement says barbell bench press, but then there's a full gym swap for machine chest press or a dumbbell swap for dumbbell bench press. So just trying to clean that part of it up. And then we separated all of our programs into either physique programs, performance programs or minimal time programs. And so we have the two minimal time programs are 30 minute quickie and a 45 minute physique. Those can be done obviously in under 45 minutes. And then our performance programs were our, it was always our strength Metcon program, which is kind of like our CrossFit bodybuilding hybrid. And now we have a hybrid program, which is essentially what, what is hybrid lifting weights, doing cardio and kind of putting it all together in a structured manner. But that program doesn't have a lot of the CrossFit stuff like Olympic lifting and like really intense metcons No kipping stuff like that. So reinvention of our program offerings. We now have these like seven main programs that we offer We also have Brian's program, which is my program and on that note Brian's program is changing starting September 1st. I'm going back to an upper lower upper lower four times a week program However, I'm gonna write it for you guys four times a week because that's what people want I'm only going to do it three times a week. So I'm to go like lower, upper, lower. And then the next week's going to go upper, lower, upper, that whole thing. Cause that's just what's going to work better for me. and we're actually going to get into some of these questions. We're going to talk about frequency. We're going to talk about, hybrid training and the combination of all these different cardio elements with training and kind of how to optimize all of this. So, I will relay some of that back to Brian's program and what I'll be doing. starting September 1st as we kind of go through this Q &A here as well. that's really all I got. What's up with you, dude? I'm excited to talk about some of those things because selfishly my program will be changing post show and I think things are going to be pretty similarly aligned with what I will be doing with some of the things that we're going to talk about. So I'm very, very excited about that business front for me. So when this episode releases, it's going to be Monday, August 25th or Tuesday, August 26th. That is going to be my final new client intake. for a handful of weeks until post wedding for me. So if you've been on the fence or contemplating reaching out to me for coaching, that is the time as I'm going to take a little bit of a hiatus so that I can have my team set, be able to manage everyone absolutely wonderfully with the shifting of priority. post show. That being said, I also offer one off consults from my website, which you can find. They are it says 60 minutes. They always push to 90 minutes. So I should obviously just update the verbiage on that. But that I get mostly other coaches who are looking for my help in troubleshooting client cases or getting advice on uh steering certain clients through their goal. So I really, really like doing that. I used to do a mentorship program, but it's just Couldn't find a way to offer it in my current offering. So this is a way that I can give back to coaches, you know, that are looking to upscale that you can just grab off of my website. So now that I'm not going to be taking on as many clients in this time, that is a really good way to get some help from me in a little bit of a one off situation. So can DM me about any of that or just go and book directly from my website at Straker Nutrition Co. Dot com. Let's dive into some questions, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, this first one, let's kick over to you. How deep should we go on a fly type movement for the chest? Yeah, I've actually gotten this question from a few different people in my DMs. So I figured that'd be a good one to put here and kind of discuss it a bit. I'm actually curious for your take too. I, for the longest time, I think, especially in the last few years as the stretch cult has been getting stronger and stronger across social media. And, know, I, I've, I invested super hard into the, lengthened bias training for a long time as well. I would go as deep as humanly possible and that would usually mean, you know, really trying to touch my elbows behind my back at the bottom, sticking the chest up, retracting the scapula and essentially letting the scapula move through thoracic extension at the bottom into a kind of flexion at the top as we kind of rotate into that more scapula depressed position. And I still believe that that is, you know, what we generally want to be doing for our chest training. just because I'm now going to say that maybe you don't need to go to the absolute deepest point where you feel like your chest is about to like rip off the bone at the bottom. I do still think that the thoracic movement needs to align with what I'm saying where, you know, it retracts at the bottom and then kind of depresses at the top. So you're getting more range of motion out of your chest, especially, you know, for training for hypertrophy and not for strength. All of that needs that. kind of designation there. But I think that there is a point where you go so deep that a lot of the tension actually shifts into kind of the AC joint on the shoulder, front of the shoulder. And if you're not resilient and built in a certain way, I think that I've noticed that that can cause some shoulder discomfort that is either acute or even potentially longer term if you do it too often and go too deep and your shoulders aren't prepared for it. So I still go quite deep, maybe not to the point where I could not go even a millimeter deeper, but I also don't go shallow to the point where like Paul Carter will talk about how you should be able to release your hand at that position. know, like if you're in the very deepest part of a chest press, you should still be able to kind of release your hand. So you still have, you know, another inch or so of range of motion there. I don't quite go that shallow, but I also don't go to the point where I'm feeling that like intense stretch across the front delts. So hopefully that helps. What do you do? I mean, pretty much what you said on the ladder there. I try and go as far as where I still get the tension of or the stimulus of stretching in my chest, but not to extremes where I'm now compromising the movement pattern just to get my elbow further behind my body, which I think is. pretty decent statement to like extrapolate to any movement right you see like in a squat pattern movement you see people squat so deep that they actually lose knee flexion and they just get like extra hip flexion and back rounding to chase that final like five to seven percent degree of ROM I mean yeah you have more depth but not where you want the depth per se so Yep. Well said. Cool. This one, let's kick over to you. But I'm actually excited about this one. As an avid runner, I'm having soft tissue issues and plan to switch to the bike for a while. How should I go about creating a three times per week cardio plan that works with lifting? How might this differ from running? Yeah. Uh, I love this question. I've talked to this guy a little bit about this as well in DM as it came through. And, uh, so running is a more efficient way of achieving a stimulus inside of the body for the mitochondrial adaptations for the actual, you know, physical adaptations to the cardiovascular system and all of that. So if you're replacing all the running with biking, then the time domain needs to increase, especially as it pertains to the kind of lower intensity like zone two ride that you'll do during the week. And so with that in mind, the structure that I've really found has been so effective for me and then downstream to my clients. And I'm thinking of two guys specifically in my in my head that have been following this exact prescription of cardio that I'm going to lay out here. And it has just been like they've been making gains across the board, both in their strength and hypertrophy. But really in the cardio too, and a lot of comments about how, how effective and how much easier they're just moving through life following this cardio plan. So what I will say here is, is essentially that these prescriptions that I'm giving for biking are about one and a half to two times the length that I would prescribe if it were running because of that efficiency piece that I talked about earlier. so we'll want one zone to ride, which for biking, I think needs to be over 60 minutes. If you're doing it outside, it probably needs to be close to 90 because you have to deal with like the stops and the starts and the people and the Hills and all these different things. Assuming you're on a bike indoors and you can keep your heart rate pretty stable. think about an hour zone two is great. then you're going to want one workout that's more moderate intensity, moderate time. So think of like your zone three zone for range for 20 to 40 minutes. I think on the bike side, you probably want to be more on that, like 30 to 40 minutes side. And that can be steady state, or you can break that up into intervals with really short rest. So I'm talking like, you know, maybe you do four by 10 with two minutes rest between intervals or two by 20 with three minutes rest between intervals or something along those lines. So it's essentially like a 30 to 40 minute steady state. And then you'll want one workout that's just higher intensity and it's more interval based. And it's usually like a one to one work to rest interval, which is what's been proven for VO two max to be the most effective. And that really works one to one all the way from like 20 seconds on 20 seconds off for a long time to like five minutes on five minutes off for fewer intervals. My favorite one is one minute on one minute off. And the idea is to accumulate between 15 to 20 minutes of time in zone and time in zone for this workout is zone four or zone five, it's the higher end of the zone. So if you're doing a minute on minute off for 20 rounds, you're going to get 20 minutes of you know, work time, which probably gives you about 20 minutes of time in zone. And that seems to be a protocol that just works insanely effective and works with lifting. So we've been doing with these clients and with myself, it's these three cardio workouts and it's three lifting sessions that gives you six, six sessions a week. And then for me personally, I usually add in another zone to some weeks, I don't get that in and I just have these six workouts. I love that. And the reason I love it is that was my that is my pretty much base template for what I will do post show post wedding when my priority shifts from professional bodybuilding to fertility and health restoration. Yeah, like lift every other day, upper lower, low volume, and then one high intensity cardio day that I plan on doing on the assault bike. One moderate Intensity day that I plan on doing on the stair climber and then one zone two day that I plan on doing on like the inclined treadmill very low inclined and then the other zone two on the next week on the spin bike so cool Yeah, I'm very excited about it Cool. All right, I'll kick this one over to you. Are you guys making any changes to your diet after reviewing your blood work a few weeks ago? Not yet because I have a higher priority demand immediately in front of me and that is my pro debut in two weeks and five days. So after that once I I'm going to get myself like a two week washout period and then I'll get labs when I'm back home in the States and then I will see what changes need to be made based off of what my labs show there. We're looking forward to hearing about all of that at the time. As far as for me, yeah, I think what the labs elucidated for me is that this high sugar experiment that I've been running for the last six plus months is, while not having massive impacts on a number of my blood markers, it is. trending in a bad direction in that my fasted glucose was a little bit higher and my HbA1c had creeped up another decimal point. And my uric acid is also higher, much higher than I would want it to be. think of all those numbers, the uric acid is probably the one that I would want to bring down the most. And I think all of those are based around the higher volume of sugar that I've been eating. over the last week, Specifically, I have dialed that back. I've already lost like four pounds simply from just eating less sugar after dinner and feeling good. So that's my big change. I'm going to let that run for at least three months so that I can get a good HBA1C reading again and then probably go back and retest all that stuff. Wonderful, excited uh for when we follow up on that as well. Yep. All right, I'll kick this one back over to you. What are your best tips for improving sleep and how bad would sleep have to be before you go explore alternative approaches like a sleep study or exogenous hormones? So I mean, I think before you approach a sleep study, you should work through a lot of your sleep hygiene, caffeine intake, and in testing there before going into like a sleep study. the first place I always like to start with are on habits and actions, right? The first is the first that I like, and I'll kind of rank these in priority of how helpful I find them. Make the room much colder. It's about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, is like, or like 18, 19 degrees Celsius, which is a lot colder than you would actually think. It's decently cold. Lower the room temperature, reduce exposure to external light. So make the room as dark as possible. And if you are a sound sensitive sleeper, like if the birds chirping in the morning, wake you up at like 5 a.m. when you don't want to get up till 630 wear silicone or wax earplugs. These are these are very simple actionable sleep hygiene things that you can do. The next most helpful thing that I have found is higher doses of magnesium glycinate. So I really like using a doctor's best magnesium a lysinate sorry magnesium lysinate glycinate combo. They come in tablets. Why I like that is each tablet is 100 milligrams of elemental magnesium. So it makes it really simple to modulate your dosage. I will go up as high as 10 milligrams per kilogram. So I will run 10 grams of magnesium, elemental magnesium at night. It really, really helps my sleep. I found it with a number of clients as well, especially when you're training really hard, you're under higher amounts of stress and you're sweating a lot. If it's summertime where you are like that can be very, very helpful there. And then the second is reducing your caffeine and increasing or increasing your cutoff time. It's one that sucks because we all love our caffeine. We love our coffees, our energy drinks. But if you've never taken like four days away from caffeine and then actually evaluated your sleep, it's a kick in the gut because I'd always said, man, I just sleep so poorly, but I've done it in the past where I remove caffeine for five days and it sucks, you feel terrible. But by day three, I'm lights out sleeping. And then through genetic testing, I am a very, very slow caffeine metabolizer. So even with me having that caffeine at 11 a.m., it still impacts my adenosine receptors at 10, 11 as I'm going to sleep. even though the half life is six hours, if you're a very slow metabolizer, you're on the outside end of that standard deviation there. So those would be my recommended approaches and steps before doing something like a sleep study or growth hormone or something like that. Yeah, that's all really good advice. I'll also add to that that food in proximity to bedtime and water in proximity to bedtime also play a huge role. I've found that for myself. But I guess to get to the root of this question here, like how bad would sleep have to be? Like using myself as an example, I have been waking up twice a night. probably for the last 20 years for the most part. Like I can't remember a day since college that I slept all the way through the night for like eight straight hours. and I would say that that to me feels like where my edge is. Like if it got much worse than that, where I was starting to wake up three times a night, I'd probably say, okay, you know, what's going on? Like even waking up two times a night that I've been doing, I'm now starting to question it and wonder if there's a way I can improve it because I've taken care of all of those other variables that Aaron mentioned. Like I don't even have caffeine after 6am. I have caffeine once at 6am, boom, don't touch it the rest of the day. Do a good job of not eating after 6.30pm. So I'm about three hours before bedtime. Could probably do a better job with water. But what I've noticed on my recent blood work, per the last question is that my estradiol is really low. And having low estrogen, even as a male, can impact the quality of the sleep that you're getting and your heat regulation and things like that. So I am in a sense exploring some of the effects of hormones on my sleep, but I don't think I would go ahead and do a sleep study quite yet. I am considering TRT as well. This is something I've talked to Aaron and Dave McConnie about in our private chat is... potential impact that TRT may have on the quality of my sleep, which then could have downstream effects on quality of life and energy throughout the day and focus and all that stuff. So nothing immediate, but definitely some things turning in my brain. And I think that that would be the thought process I would take for this question asker as well. Yeah. I anticipate a fair amount of follow-up on that statement that you just made about TRT. So maybe we do a future episode around your potential explorations of that. Because it's significantly different than mine, you know, with me starting TRT. Mine was just like a... bro, I'm over this, I'm gonna start TRT sort of thing, I think yours is actual textbook. So I think it would be worthwhile of us to dive into a little bit because I do anticipate you getting a fair amount of questions about that. Yeah, for sure. Well, like we talked about, I still want to get that MRI in my pituitary first, which will probably be, you know, sometime in late 2025. So if I did any TRT, it probably wouldn't even be until like the new year. Yeah. All right, I'll kick this one over to you. This is our buddy, Piotr. He hit me up and said, I understand the whole one gram of protein per pound of body weight thing, but does that change in a cup versus bulk? Why? Second part, people say you can't overeat protein, but what actually happens? Does it come, does it continue to be beneficial or does it reach a point of diminishing returns where you are basically wasting it? So I'll kind of answer the second part first. People say you can't overeat protein, but what actually happens? You cannot really overeat protein in the way that you can overeat carbohydrate and fat to where it becomes stored as excess body fat. What happens when you like significantly overeat protein? One, it takes a hit on your digestion because... protein is so much more of a challenge to digest, especially in large quantities. But what ends up happening and what is currently often spoke about is protein just becomes an expensive carbohydrate. because your body passed a certain threshold. There's different arguments on where that threshold actually is. It's probably relative to how much muscle mass you have, your age, and another number of impacting factors. Your body just converts the protein that it doesn't need. into carbohydrate via gluconeogenesis and then it turns a protein like structure into a carbohydrate like structure. And that's where it is a inexpensive carbohydrate because protein is obviously significantly more expensive per gram right then something like rice or a potato or honey or some other form of glucose. So that's the kind of second part of it. In the first part. Does the one gram of protein per pound of body weight thing change in a cut versus a bulk and why? It can. It does not need to. But there are different contexts in a bulk versus a cut. Like in a bulk, you can push your protein very, very high, but it can come at the opportunity cost of you being so full that you can't get sufficient carbohydrate in to necessitate the surplus that you need to drive performance, muscle hypertrophy, et cetera, et cetera. It's opportunity cost on the capacity of digestion, right? On the flip side of that, you can keep protein just at one gram per pound of body weight and keep your carbohydrate higher in a calorie deficit. However, protein is more satiating and it is not a fuel source like carbohydrate is or are is is. So if you're struggling in a calorie deficit, hunger is high and body weight is slow to come down, fat loss is slow. It is advantageous to push your protein higher, reduce your carbohydrate lower to make the elicitation of the fat loss smoother while getting more satiety because of the thermic effect of food is significantly higher with protein. So it's really, really contextual and it depends on a person's hunger level, how far you've been in a deficit, how active you are. There's a number of situations but it's contextual, unfortunately, highly individualized to the person's specific context. Yeah, I think that's really well answered. And I'll just add that, you know, you don't seem to need as much protein in a bulk because all of the additional food, the fact that you're in a calorie surplus, it's kind of like protective against muscle. But when you're in a deficit, you kind of maybe want more protein because it is protective against muscle loss. So usually the way I will program this for clients is that in a surplus point seven grams per pound of body weight is usually like a floor, but it's a fine floor. Like if you're having plenty of carbs, like 0.7 grams per pound of body weight is fine. In a cut, I usually try to put people to a gram per pound or slightly higher. Okay, this one let's kick over to you. there's three parts to this question. Okay. Do you want to? really only one question at the end though. It's like three different submissions, right? Let me just read it so I can kind of explain it as we go. So much talk in the industry about atrophy, atrophy being the loss of muscle. The new Beardsley content states that a specific muscle fiber must be trained at least twice a week or else atrophy. The simplest way around this is just to do the same movements on all three days as a full body. So imagine a workout that had five movements and you did the same five movements on Monday, the same five movements on Wednesday, the same five movements on Friday. Boom, you're hitting the same muscle fibers three times a week. There's also suggestion that the best split is actually an AB full body where you have two different full body workouts that are alternated every other day. So essentially creating four days between the same workout. now, Brian explaining, as opposed to having those three same workouts that are repeated, now you have one full body workout and another full body workout and you do one on Monday, one on Wednesday, and then on Friday, you go back to the first full body workout. And then on the following Monday or Sunday, you would do the second full body workout. So the question is, If I want to construct a program that has different movements for the same muscle group across three different sessions, how can I know I'm training the same muscle fibers with these varied movements and not causing atrophy? So this question assumes that they must be training the same muscle fibers across the week or else they're causing atrophy. so already we're working on an assumption that if I programmed a workout that had pull-ups on Monday, wide pronated rows on Wednesday, and a neutral grip row on Friday, that that would not be training the same muscle fibers. And thus, even though I was training back three times a week, I would be causing atrophy in the muscle fibers that are not trained across each of those individual sessions. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yes. Your explanation of it makes sense. Yeah. yeah, that's what I'm asking. Yeah. So I'm not 100 % sure I agree with that assumption. I think I'm more willing to accept it as a thing that may maximize hypertrophy. But I don't think I'm willing to accept it as a thing that minimizes hypertrophy so much that it would attenuate results or gains in any fashion. Um, it might be like one of those situations where, know, you go three steps forward and one step back. If you do it the non-optimal way, and maybe in theory, you could go three steps forward with no steps back. If you did it the Beardsley way, and I don't know if that's true or not, but that would be kind of the way I would think about this is like, you can still make gains both ways. Maybe one way allows you to train specific muscle fibers better than another way. The downside to doing the muscle fiber thing is that then you're specifically targeting these specific muscle fibers as saying, I want these muscle fibers to grow. So to answer the question, it's like, how can I be training the same muscle fibers? Well, let's use the lats as an example. If you did three vertical pulls with the same hand grip, so you did a neutral grip pull up on one day, a neutral grip pull down on another day and a one arm pull down. also vertical on the third day, then I think at that point, you'd be pretty confident that you're training the lower to mid lat fibers throughout all of those sessions, or at least you're training the same fibers because the movement pattern of depressing the elbow is similar. So maybe in that case, you're really optimizing your lat development in that way, but are you then failing to train your upper back? because you're optimizing all of these movements for your lats and now you're, now you would have to do the same thing for your upper back. So now you also need, okay, on Monday, I need a wide grip pronated row. On Wednesday, I need a wide grip, like frontal plane pull down. I know Beardsley thinks that trains lower lats. I still think that trains upper back. So we'll agree to disagree there. And then you would need some sort of other kind of AB ducted elbow position row on a Friday. So now you have, you know, six different movements for your back because you have three for the upper back, you have three for the lower lats, and you need to be able to do all of those in the week. And then you have to do the same thing for the chest and then the same thing for the rec fem, right? Like the rec fem is another one here. What if you want your rec fem to develop, then by this theory, you would have to train your rec fem in every single session across the week because, you know, squatting isn't going to train your rec fem. So you would need leg extensions one day, sissy squats one day and reverse Nordics one day. some poor leg extensions every day. So I think the practicality of this approach is the thing that gets me the most. And that's why I made a post about it on my Instagram last week is is I don't necessarily disagree with the the mechanistic theory and approach. I just kind of agree with the practical application of it and the necessity for us to be this nuanced. And so I think that that's summarizes my thoughts on that. What about you? I feel very perplexed about this and I think I should start with that. I like Beardsley. I think he's put out a lot of good information. I do question some of the strong handed statements of like this is best right we this is what should be done for optimality for best and it's not a very scientific answer for me and and i apologize for that but we have had 60 70 years of people chasing the best physique in enhanced in natural all over the world if this was best people would have figured that out by now. But I feel pretty confident in my statement that no one at the top of their respective federations enhanced or not is training in this capacity. it's hard to argue against results in that way. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, they rely a lot on mechanistic data to say it should be this way based on the way that the body works. And so like, get it. Like mechanistically, it makes sense. You're like, yeah, that does make sense. I should have to train those muscle fibers at each session if I want them to grow. But in reality, like you said, what we're actually seeing in the gym and what we're seeing in studies, like when you compare a bro split to a three times a week full body, You're not seeing the three times a week full body blow the bro split away. You're seeing that as long as volume is matched for that they're pretty even uh one to one. And those are the two extremes, right? So something that's more moderate, like a two times a week, upper lower, know, upper lower, upper lower. So four times a week. Even if you're not taking into account muscle fiber stimulus across each of those workouts, that is a proven way of training that has been successful for many. Yeah. Okay, this next one for you. If I want to do the new Brian's program, are there swaps for home gym? Yeah, I do list swaps, but I don't love some of the swaps for like leg extensions, leg curls. I think you can get away with pretty much everything else using dumbbells and barbells as long as you have like a pull-up bar and stuff too. But when it comes to the leg extensions and leg curls, like there just aren't really great options. think sissy squats are actually a pretty solid option for the quads, but. uh leg curls are just tough, man. It's like you can't really ask people to do Nordics. That's a completely different length tension relationship than the leg curl. And banded stuff just isn't great. So maybe if you had like a cable machine and you could kind of rig something up for leg curls. But I do think, you know, for the most part, you can follow the program, but you're not going to be able to get, you know, 100 % of the full benefit from those movements. Okay, this one will kick over to you to start with as well. How to approach single arm training when there is a strength discrepancy between arms. Go to the same RIR on each side or match reps on each side with a different arm. Yeah, I think there's a number of different ways you can approach this actually. My favorite way that I think does the best job of allowing your strong arm to train to where you want it to be RIR wise, but also gives your weak arm like a little bit of something extra to kind of make up that gap is that I will start with the weak arm and go to failure. or whatever it is, and then I'll do the strong arm and I'll also go to failure or whatever the prescription is, and then I'll come back to the weak arm and do almost like what would be a rest pause set after the strong arm. So say I get 10 reps on my left arm, which is my weak arm, and then I go to my right arm and I get 12 reps, then I'll come back to the left arm and I'll do another set of, it would be more than two reps, so three to five reps. ah which then gives my left arm slightly more volume than my right, but still also allows my right arm to train to the proper intensity or whatever. I have some other approaches too that I think work quite well, but that's the main go-to that I use. How about you? I love that approach. love your answer. We've had that question before and you've given that answer, which I really like. My follow up question is have you actually noticed in that approach any subjectively meaningful increase in relative evening out of the strength between the arms? The only thing that ever led to any evening out of strength across my arms was when I did that six month one arm training experiment where I only trained my left arm and the testing at the end of the six months had my arms even. after six months of not training my right arm at all with any direct work, my left arm matched my right arm. And then within two weeks of going back to training both of my arms again, it was the exact same discrepancy that it was. prior. And so I just think that most of that comes down to like neural coordination pieces. And yeah, it looks bigger too. Like I don't really know like it's stronger and it looks bigger. It has a better vein. It actually has a cross vein in my left arm only as a vertical vein. It's like the whole gamut of things is just so unfortunate. But I think that's just reality for most people. Yeah, I think it's very, just don't think any approach you do here I think is perfectly fine. I just don't see it making like a meaningful change because like Brian said, it's probably something from like a mechanics standpoint, maybe your right shoulder has something wonky and you just don't internally rotate it the same or externally rotate it the same. Like if you look at me when I do my, uh back pose if I ever post it. My left tricep is like completely feathered, shredded. My right one, there's no detail in it and it's not the tattoo. My left tricep is weaker than my right, but the connection mentally and how strongly I can contract it is significantly different. and the detail in it in the visible muscle is so much better even though it's weaker than my right and I can't connect mentally good with the right but from an actual visual perspective of the tricep the left is better. That's crazy, dude, that's wild. Yep. Okay, this one, what's the obsession with high rocks these days? I see it all over social media. Yeah, so high rocks is like came on the heels of CrossFit, but it's not quite CrossFit. I think the thing with high rocks, well, actually, so for those that don't know, high rocks uh is a fitness race, much like CrossFit was, except that the workout never changes. It's always the exact same workout and you spend all year training for what you know is this one workout and all of your training is meant to make you better at this workout. Um, and this workout is essentially just a shit ton of running with some other movements thrown in between. so the race is basically four time eight rounds where every round starts with a one K run. So that's, a thousand meters, which is like a little over half a mile. so a one K run, and then you do something else and then you go, that's one round, and then you go back to the one K run and then you do something else. And those something else's are. wall balls in I think high numbers like a hundred wall balls you have like an 80 meter burpee broad jump you have like a 80 meter sled drag an 80 meter sled pull and I can't remember the distance a sandbag lunge with a sandbag on your back and it's not super heavy so it's much more just cardio ish and then another one of the stations is is rowing and skier So like twice you actually do a 1K run, then you go row, then you go run again, then eventually you ski erg and then you run again. So basically Hirox is this big long endurance event framed in this idea that it's like functional fitness with a strength component. And the strength component is like, it's only a strength component if you do no strength work. which is why I just view it as an endurance race because all of the, the resistance training work in there, which is like the wall balls, the lunges and stuff like that. It's just light and it's more just cardiovascular fitness more than anything. There really isn't anything that's going to give you a significant advantage. If you're a strong, powerful athlete, like yes, you're going to row faster. You're going to ski your faster. You may lunge slightly faster. but overall the workout is one or lost by your ability to run. and so I think with the explosion of hybrid training these days with everybody running 10 Ks and half marathons and marathons and all this stuff, it is kind of a complimentary, type of fitness that if you're a good runner, you probably can do well at high rocks with a little bit of practice on some of the other stuff. I mean, I think the part of the reason and I'm speaking very outside my realm of things I feel confident speaking about. So this is a little bit more of just Aaron's personal observation. It's kind of like people who might run a marathon each year and they like train to beat their marathon time. It's like marathon training with like extra events, you know, in it and it's simple. You learn the movements. You don't have to constantly learn new movements, which is like kind of part of the shitty part about CrossFit is there's so much variation. You have to master all these things and then for some reason, let's say, you know, a couple cycles, you're not doing handstand pushups anymore and then it comes back in like all of a sudden you've regressed like 15 % in your capacity to do handstand pushups. And that's not fucking fun. So, I mean, that's the way that I think of it. It's like a lot more of an inclusive crossfit because there's much less technical movement. And they've done a really good job with the race aspect and it just looks kind of fun and it's approachable. So that's kind of my personal observation on it. Yeah, I think that's a great observation. I recently got together with Ryan Fisher and when I was in California and we were talking and just kind of kind of clowning on high rocks a little bit. And we have this shared perspective that a lot of people look at the athletes that are doing well in high rocks, which a lot of them are, you know, ex crossfitters and stuff. And so they have these pretty jacked physiques, even though they are also quite good and efficient at, you know, this cardiovascular stuff. And so people have this impression that if I do high rocks and I train for high rocks that I'm going to look jacked. And we want to push back on that idea in that, you know, most of these guys and girls that have the physiques that you want with the muscle on them are not simply just training for high rocks. They're also doing a lot of other things like lifting heavy weights and training for hypertrophy and stuff. And then also doing this stuff. And so, you know, simply Training for an endurance race is not gonna make you jacked. Yeah. Okay, when it comes to hypertrophy, how useful are really low reps like sets of two to three? Can those still drive muscle growth if you're doing enough total volume or are they better left just for pure strength training? I think it's both. think they absolutely can still drive muscle growth if you're doing enough total volume and they should probably be left for pure strength training. And the reason I say that is because you can build muscle with enough volume, but it's an inefficient way of doing it. So there was a study that I talk about every so often. I can't remember the author, but I heard Zach Robinson from Data Driven reference it at some point. And I think at least I hope. messing that up. But anyway, it was something along the lines of like one person did a typical like five by five or four by six or whatever. was something to get you to that, like 25 to 30 rep range. And, uh, and another person just did one rep every 30 seconds until they got to the same number of reps. So they were using the same load, whatever that load was. It was a six RM and eight RM, something like that. One person does like four or five like really hard sets and another person just does one rep every 30 seconds and never hits failure, but they accumulate the same volume with the same load and the, the strength and hypertrophy outcomes were, were similar enough to say that there wasn't a significant difference between the groups. So in that context, yeah, you, you could do one rep every 30 seconds, which is an extreme of, of that. so by that rationalization, I feel like you could also do you know, 10 or 12 sets of two to three reps with a six RM weight and probably also accumulate enough volume to create muscle growth. It's just a matter of whether the most efficient way of doing that is to do 10 or 12 sets of two to three reps or whether you can simply just do, you know, three sets of eight to 10 or six to eight or whatever it is and achieve the same thing. Yeah, think like Brian said, they can exist together. I think the hard thing is it's important in how you ask the question, right? Can those still drive muscle growth? Yes, they can. Are they probably going to drive the amount of muscle growth that you are looking for? No, you'd be better off using more traditional hypertrophy rep ranges and they are better. for strength training. So I think it's important with, know, there's oftentimes people pose the questions like, can I do this? Like, yes, you can, but it's probably not going to provide you the result that you're actually looking for. But I don't want to say no, because then we're just lying. You know what I mean? Which I don't want to do. is it... a recommended or even reasonably practical approach for what you're probably desiring. Probably not. Alright, I'll kick this one over to you for first thought here. uh I think you, so this is, know, Aaron's opinion here. I think you are taking the wrong conclusion out of what has happened. So you typically are training with higher vol, high volumes and frequency. And then we have a back injury, which is probably something potentially overuse, but probably something fatigue related. And then we took Was it eight weeks off? Eight weeks off, our fatigue reduced drastically. We get back into training. We're probably not accumulating or have accumulated the amount of volume, combined volume and frequency that you were training before and you surpassed your previous results. So it's probably not the three to four week break that boosts the long term progress. It's probably finding a more appropriate combination of volume and frequency that's allowing you to progress better without accumulating as much fatigue as quickly as before. That would be my thoughts on it. You're muted, Brian. Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. That's 100 % how I would interpret that as well. And I think it's important to mention to that strength specifically will increase or is less will not increase faster with higher volumes. The data driven guys have shown that hypertrophy tends to increase with volume strength tends to level out at a point that's significantly lower. And just kind of you can get significant strength gains with significantly lower volumes. And so if strength is that metric you're using to say it came back rapidly and surpassed my prior levels, it's likely because you're like Aaron said, a training within a more appropriate volume and frequency for that goal of getting stronger. If your goal was simply hypertrophy, then maybe over time you in chop that volume a little bit. Maybe not to the levels you were at before because that potentially is why you had that injury, that accumulation injury, if it was that way. But I do think, you you don't need to do high volumes, high frequency. And you guys know where I stand on this issue that once you reach a certain point of development anyways, and I think most of our audience at least is of an age. Like, I don't think we have a ton of young, really young people listening to us. Most of you guys are probably of an age where you've been training relatively intelligently for a decent amount of time. And the difference in your gains from really pushing the limits of volume and frequency versus dialing that back and taking a more prudent approach is probably very small. would agree with that, yeah. Yeah. Aaron, you think there are any hypertrophy benefits to doing reverse hypers? I do. You know, I think you can get spinal erector hypertrophy. I think you can get glute hypertrophy. I might even argue that there could be some hamstring hypertrophy in the lengthened or I should say proximal portion of the hamstring up by the glute. If you perform the movement in a more controlled, less crazy swinging way. You probably are going to get more hypertrophy from that and you might not completely smoke your lower back in the process. But I do think that there are hypertrophy benefits that can be obtained from doing reverse hypers. Yes. Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I'll add that when you do them more controlled, like Aaron alluded to at the end, you emphasize the short position more. And that is potentially something that you want to do. Then using more control is probably best. If you're going to use more of that momentum based approach, your loads are going to be significantly higher. You're going to be causing more fatigue. You will get a little more out of the length and position because it won't be so hard to get short. So I think they're useful and can be used for those two different purposes. I like that question. Two times per week versus three times per week frequency. Is three times per week really worth it? Yeah, assuming this person is asking, I will assume this person is asking about specific muscles. So is it worth training my back three times a week versus two times a week, not simply training three times a week versus two times a week. And I think that the data, I think the data would say that there's, Probably very little if any benefit to going to three times a week I think the Beardsley crew would potentially push back on that a little bit but the data would be so marginal that if three times a week was better, it would be so small that I think it would have to be a practical decision on your part and not one that's meant to help you chase hypertrophy per se. Yeah, my thoughts here are it gets really challenging to intelligently program a body part three times per week. You have to be pretty dialed in with your programming to not overlap fatigue and have fatigue mitigating performances. Like, can it be done? Yes, it is not trivial to do well. Okay, Brian, what is your next experiment? Yeah, I keep getting this question. I feel like people want me to do another experiment. So I just did the one that I talked about earlier with the high sugar diet for the last six months and then doing my blood work. My next experiment, I'm kind of torn between two things. One I've discussed on here before, which is to get really lean and try to hold it. And what I mean by that is not just simply getting down to 180 like I've done in prior cuts and then do a photo shoot and then end up back at 195 a matter of months later. I kind of want to potentially make like 180 my new homeostasis and just find a way to exist there. And what that means is that I would probably have to sacrifice some muscle. I... I don't know, maybe, maybe not. I think that for me to hold 180, I do have to eat significantly less food, which I think will have an impact on my strength and then downstream to my muscle. But it would increase my cardiovascular ability significantly. And since I'm now in my, you know, almost mid forties and cardio seems to be something that's quite important to me. This is something I'm considering. And then an alternative experiment that is completely different from the prior one. would be that once cardio season ends for me here in October or whenever it starts getting cold and I stopped biking so much is really going hard on lifting for this off season and trying the Beardsley approach that we shat on earlier and just seeing if there's anything to this. And I don't think it would make sense to do a DEXA because I'm not going to be gaining or losing enough for it to really show up on that, I don't think. But I think I could see how I feel doing a workout like that. I can use that assessment and then I can use the mirror and the scale and my strength and I can kind of get a sense of whether doing this muscle fiber specific training is something that I think is worthwhile and something that I would consider prescribing to clients and things like that. But if I were to do that, then I probably would not try to get super lean while I was doing that because I think there's a lot of data that gets confounded there. And so those are the two that I'm considering at the moment. As of this moment, I'm approaching my diet in this less sugar intensive way. So I'm kind of on the road to getting leaner. And I think I'm gonna continue on this path for at least the next. month or two until we get into October and I stop doing all my cardio. And then we can decide where I want to take that question on my experiment. All right. This next one I'm gonna kick over to you because I struggle with this one, I think a little bit. Is hybrid training just old school strength and conditioning? I don't think so, but I think that they're cousins. I think that the current iteration of hybrid training in our world right now is kind of born in this pursuit of cardio for a specific performance benefit. Most people doing the hybrid training are likely doing some sort of race, whether that's a high rocks or a marathon or half marathon. a 5k or a bike race or something like that. A lot of people doing hybrid training are doing it with a performance purpose, trying to strictly trying to get better at cardio along with lifting weights. I think old school strength and conditioning. In my mind, it feels more like we're going to lift a bunch of weights, but we should probably do some stuff to like make sure our heart is kind of healthy, too. And so I could see things like, you know, guys doing sprints on a football field, running stairs at the football stadium, basically just doing various things to get their heart rate elevated without necessarily trying to do it for the purpose of tangible improvement in these things, know, tracking data, trying to improve times of distances and things like that. So yeah, I think that's the best distinction that I can make, at least in my mind. I love that answer because what you identified in your kind of description of the old school strength and conditioning is kind of like my exact plan post show. I just kind of want to get in good healthy breathing shape. kind of for some reason thought and prepped that I'd be doing you know the Stairmaster and would get into like good cardiovascular shape that hasn't happened at all and I'm kind of yearning for that a little bit. So I want to be like a jacked dude who could just like kind of breathe and move his body a little bit, right? That I'm not gonna be a hybrid person. I'm not gonna go run or sign up for an event, but I just wanna be able to like breathe a little bit and be healthier. So like, I really like that answer because the old school kind of strength and conditioning is like kind of my MO once the show's done. yeah, exactly. Like if you're not doing cardio with a specific purpose to improve a time or do a race or something like that, I think it's just, it is just strength and conditioning. It's just, you know, I really want to get strong, but I should also probably stay healthy. All right, let's kick this one over to you. See if you have any thoughts on it. Can you discuss who might benefit from using a weight vest? It seems the controversy comes from people thinking it replaces resistance training. I mean, I would say who might benefit. I would say someone that probably could benefit the most is someone who is in a calorie deficit and is looking to mitigate some of the metabolic adaptation that comes along with that by wearing the weighted vest while doing some of your cardio and walking. There was a published... study published a few years ago about that it seemed to mitigate some of that metabolic adaptation. I mean if you want to go like rocking with it just to make something harder to challenge yourself more to put 40 pounds on your back and climb a mountain like that's just kind of OG tough guy shit. I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I don't think it's going to be anything earth shattering in your progress but. It's something that just makes things more challenging. And oftentimes it's just fun to do hard physical things. And if that just checks the box for you, I think it's wonderful. And then I don't think there really needs to be controversy around it. Yeah, that's definitely one perspective of it. I'm gonna guess, because I'm in this world right now with my wife and we're in our 40s, that this question probably is coming from a woman who probably follows Stacey Sims or somebody else who is talking about how it is very important to load your joints and your skeletal structure as you go into the later ages as a female. Um, this was an anonymous Q and a, so I don't know, but my, my based on the phrasing of this and the way it comes across, I think that that's what this person is getting at. and so yes, loading your skeletal structure and having resistance on your bones is very important. Do I think that wearing a weight vest and going for a walk is a good way to do that? If you have had zero resistance training and all you've done is walk, then yes, adding a weight vest to your walking is probably going to be beneficial and it's going to load your joints and bones more than you were doing before and that's great. But probably less than walking up some hills. Walking up some hills with a weight vest, even better. doing resistance training with weights or even body weight movements like air squats and pushups and things like that, probably even better. And so the benefit to the weight vest is very subtle compared to the benefits that you can get through other modalities. Yeah, really good answer. The context there I completely missed. So it was a little bit outside the bounds of our normal question asker. Yeah, no, no, no, for sure. And I think that it's good that you addressed it the way that you did because for people looking to cut calories or use it as a way to make their training harder and get more cardiovascular benefit, blah, blah, blah, I think you answered that perfectly. So, all right, I'll kick this one over to Aaron since it's about your client. ah I've had the most success I've ever had both physically and mentally working with Aaron as my coach for two years. But as discussed with him, I need a mental break from tracking and would like to lower optimality for a little more flexibility as a husband and a new father along with stress from business. I've seen more people promoting or talking about body recomp, Chris Bearcat, Jeff Hain, Eric Helms. While I'm convinced a small surplus or deficit depending on goals is likely better for physique improvements for someone like me who has an okay physique is likely 12 to 15 % body fat going forward, is it okay? and is okay with very slow progress improvement. What could I expect from main gaining or gain taining, which I'm definitely, which I'm defining as staying in my maintenance range plus or minus two pounds during weekly fluctuations, very slowly losing some fat while building some muscle. I would say the question, what could I expect? You can expect slow small changes over a prolonged time period, given that you stay in that 12 to 15 percent body fat and your maintenance range of two to three pounds. The way that I like to compare this is the to the form of small compound interest that applies to like a standard yielding savings account, right? If you have, you know, $40,000 in a savings account, each month you get like a hundred bucks or something like that. And you're like, dude, it's not bad. It's, you know, it's a hundred bucks for just letting it sit there. It's nothing great, but you need to have a good chunk of money for it. to actually produce anything of meaning. And what I mean by that is you already have to have a pretty decent amount of muscle and keep your body fat in check to notice anything over like a significant period of time. I'm still... ah I like to think of it more of is like I'm at a maintenance period where I'm prioritizing prioritizing other aspects of my life, fatherhood, marriage, new business, but I'm still going to eat healthy because that's the type of lifestyle that I like to live. I'm still going to train hard because that's the type of lifestyle that I like to live. And you get these mini improvements over six, eight, 10, 12 months, but I don't think you're to be producing like tangible change in six weeks in eight weeks it's a lot slower of a compound change. Yeah, I, depending on where you are in your development and you mentioned you have a pretty good base of muscle already, it might just be slow no matter what approach you take. And, uh, so I, I really think this approach is totally fine as you kind of balance life and all the other things that are going on. Yeah. okay. I have to go in three minutes. and so I moved some questions around. put two training questions here and then I'll let you finish, I think with the other. ones if that's cool. All right. What are your opinions on intensifiers like drop sets, rest pause, et cetera, overrated, good, bad for hypertrophy or just for fun? I wouldn't say that they're overrated. They are context specific. Right. If you have three hours to train and you want to run a specific volume per week for what you have set straight sets are probably going to be the most straightforward and best approach. If you do not have that type of time and you would still like to get in a certain amount of volume. Drop sets, rest, pause sets would not be considered overrated or bad in this context. They would be time appropriate for the constraints that you have. I think they can be fun for adding intensity to a workout. is something to be said for like working really hard and being at close proximity to failure and like just grinding and being out of breath and like trying really hard. The exercise that comes to mind would be like a tricep push down or something like that of sorts. A short overload movement for a smaller muscle group is probably going to lend itself to be a little bit more appropriate. rest pause sets on a leg press, probably not the most appropriate under most contexts unless you're doing like one set on a very, very low volume, low time commitment program or something like that. So it's really contextual based off of constraints of your training, but I wouldn't say that they are better than straight sets unless you're under a specific time constraint. Yeah, I think it's primarily time-based as well. I think they're fun and I think that they can be a nice tool to increase stimulus, but ultimately it comes down to, you know, why are you using them? Because you can get more stimulus and less time. And otherwise I think you just pretty much do straight sets. Yep. All right. This one will kick over to you. Can you explain the difference between the lateral raise raises and the why raise in terms of range of motion and arm path. Yeah, so a lateral raise will generally start in tight proximity to the body, whether that's like a cable coming like behind and along the body, or they can be done, you know, in front, there's a different regions of the lateral delt. So by coming from behind and going forward, you're going to get a little bit more front delt and by starting in the front and going slightly behind, you're going to get a little bit more rear delt. But the cables or the dumbbells will generally start like pretty tight into the body and the movement is driven by abduction, which is essentially the movement of your arms away from your body. So it's like spreading your wings. When you're doing a wire is the arms will start in front of the body. Usually I even cue people to have their arms totally straight. The cable can be at various heights. You know, if they want it to be at wrist height or whatever, it can be a little bit more lengthened. If you want it to be closer to the ground, can be a little bit more shortened, but the arm path starts with your arms straight in front of your body and essentially comes up and out so that the finished position is going to be more with your arms at like a 45 degree angle, kind of making that Y at the top, like Y MCA. And because of that arm path that goes both up and out instead of simply just out, You're going to get a lot of rear delt, different regions of the traps, rhomboids, and stuff like that, along with some lateral delt. Whereas when you're doing lateral raises, you are more trying to bias the lateral delt as much as you can. Wonderful answer. I don't think there's anything I can add onto that one. Cool, I'm gonna bounce. We will see you guys next week or I will. All right. OK. So what to adjust in a deficit when you start to lose muscle and gain some body fat according to an in-body scan. Should I increase carbs or increase protein. OK. So this is a good question just rooted in some. misleading information. Okay. First and foremost in body scans are I'm just going to use a little bit straightforward of a language shit, right? They are very easily skewable time of day proximity to training fluid intake carbohydrate intake. They are not reliable to gauge small changes in body fat. Now. Here's the thing. Let's say your gym has and you were on like a health journey. And let's say you're starting from pretty overweight. Let's call it a male at 30 % body fat. So you're like your standard average American male in his 30s. Doing a monthly in body can help over periods of months, five, six, seven months to give you some decent objective leaning data towards the trends that you already see. But you need enough delta from month to month in body weight change to make up for the margin of error and how simple these machines are to skew. Okay. Now that's the first and foremost part. What to adjust in a deficit when you start to lose muscle and gain some body fat. So if you are in a deficit, how are we gaining body fat? If we are in the deficit by definition, this cannot happen unless we are getting into very, very, very, very lean levels. I'm talking like natural bodybuilder in close proximity to stage lean, where we start to run into like significant hormonal disruption and sleep and all these other things, right? If you have to ask, no, this is not the context that the question asker or you the listener is probably in the realm of. Okay, so If you start to lose muscle in a deficit, one, there's always going to be some level of muscle loss in a caloric deficit. I wish it was not the case, but unfortunately we do not lose 100 % fat mass. Fat free mass is also lost. If we are losing at a disproportionate rate, there are typically a few offending actions. Protein is too low. where the amino acid pool does not have sufficient amino acids to supply the pool. So the body catabolizes its lean tissue to provide additional amino acids for that necessary pull of the empty amino acid pool. This typically happens when people are doing like crossfit fasted first thing in the morning and stuff like that. We're doing high intensity exercise past the lactate threshold level in a fasted state. It's like the first rule of dieting. Don't fucking do that. Okay. So if we are in a deficit and we're gaining body fat, which should not really happen outside that context, increasing carbs is not going to help you magically start losing less body fat, start start losing more body fat. But it's again, I think your input sources from the in body are crappy and I would not recommend using it. Great. Average, weigh yourself daily, take your weekly averages, trend the averages over time, use photos. These are going to be the most, I should not say the most objective, the most practical, realistic and cost efficient. If you wanted to do something monthly, a DEXA scan is pretty much the gold standard there, but they get pricey, okay? Okay, let's answer this next one that's very similar to that question. What is an ideal rate of change for a lifestyle client looking to lose fat and knowing when to make the calorie or cardio adjustment? So the simplest way to approach this, right, is we have a low weekly rate of loss target of 0.5 % total body mass per week. Okay, we have an upper higher threshold rate of loss of 1%. total body mass per week. Let's use a really, really simple example. A 200 pound person, right? Half a percent total body mass per week is going to be one pound. That's the low rate of loss threshold that we're targeting, that we could target. That same person, 200 pound, the high rate of loss threshold, 1%, would be two pounds. So we're looking at one to two pounds, okay, per week, on average, week over week, without fail. Now the next question to ask is how much weight do you want to lose for this lifestyle client? Here is the kicker. Everyone always thinks that they have less fat to lose than in practicality. It's just human nature. Right. So what I say to people to prospective clients take the number in your head. So let's say you're you're a 200 pound person. You're like I think I have about like 15 pounds to lose and then I'm going to be like in great shape. Double it. That's 30 pounds. OK. Now let's operate under that new assumption that we are assuming we have 30 pounds to lose. Right. If we take that one percent rate of loss. Okay, apparently my headphones died and the recording had to start over. So we're under the assumption we're at 30 pounds that we need to lose, right? At 1 % total body mass loss per week. That is total body mass. That's not fat mass. That's just your scale number. We're looking at 15 weeks. Okay, so that is about four months at the higher rate of loss per week, 1 % week over week without fail. If we go to that half a percent, We're now looking at 30 weeks, which is approximately six and a half months, something like that. split the difference set somewhere in the middle. We're looking at five ish months, something like that. Okay, now knowing when to make calorie or cardio adjustment, the fatter that we are, the more aggressively we can diet. We, the fatter that we are, the more Fatigue resilience we have built in Specifically because we have not been dieting as long I am much more akin of using cardio more aggressively in the beginning of the diet when we have more fat to lose when motivation is still a little bit higher and when we get that really tangible fulfillment from seeing the scale move, so I would start with cardio more in the beginning, but under the assumption and understanding that the body adapts to cardiovascular mediated caloric expenditure decently quickly and not get hungrier than we need to because once that hunger really starts to build, you can't really pull it back. It only continues to accumulate. So food, that's what's necessary to make the upper or lower or mid rate of loss that you would like those thresholds leverage more cardio. in beginning and then we can reduce cardio as fatigue builds and leverage food more in later parts. So if that sounds very, very confusing, you can just hire me and I will do it for you. Okay. So a little shameless plug there, but that's pretty much how I structure things. Okay. We'll answer the electrolytes and then we have one kind of an enhanced lifter question that we'll wrap up with. Electrolytes for those of us that train in a hot environment, one to one point five hours after waking up recommended. Probably right, especially if there's any. Manifestations of potential dehydration presenting themselves in your life, cramping, decreased performance, high amounts of thirst, these sorts of things. If so, which minerals and how much of each? So there's pretty much a standard. array of the electrolytes. have obviously sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium. There's probably like one or two more that I can't remember off the top of my head that are in pretty much any electrolyte solution. How much of each? It's kind of up in the air. Different companies have different formulations. You have your really high sodium based electrolytes like the element that the element made that popular. If you want like an old school kind of buy the book one, there's Dr. Berg's electrolyte solution, but there's so many good ones now like Ghost makes a pretty good electrolyte product. There's Waterboy is another one that's pretty popular now. Element is perfectly fine. It's just pretty pricey for what it is. There's Element clones on Amazon that are effectively just the same thing at a lower price point. What's another one? Redmond's relight is another one. I would pick one, buy a couple sample sachets, see what flavor you like, see some of might be too salty or something like that. Or if you want to run an old school on that Dr. Berg's electrolyte solution, it's much more potassium based. Or you could do something like coconut water as well. It's really, really high in minerals, very, very high in potassium, but also has a large amount of accompanying carbohydrate in it. as well that you would need to be cognizant of. So you could experiment with mixing your own electrolytes and stuff. It's not something that I think is worthwhile the effort based off of the price point of many in the space now. And our final question, ideal lean building phase rate of gain target for an enhanced lifters first cycle, right? So this is going to be someone who is using uh testosterone for the first time. I would recommend only using testosterone for the first cycle, not adding in any other derivatives or other exogenous hormones. Now here's my answer. Unfortunately, there are too many individual variables relating to genetic response to exogenous testosterone to provide a relatively helpful answer. This, I understand, is not a very helpful answer, but it is the correct answer. When we are, when we, like, for example, I just gave the ideal ideal rate of change for fat loss, right? Half a percent to one percent. because the genetic response to exogenous hormones drastically changes what may happen or what may not happen. And I will provide you an example from my first exposure to exogenous testosterone, which was 150 milligrams per week, right, for 13 weeks, right? And that 150 milligrams is right in the middle of what you can actually get prescribed. TRT from like clinics in the United States. It was not high. It was not low. It's literally middle of the ground. Okay, so my first day of my first exogenous testosterone exposure was January 16th 2024. I went back and grabbed all these numbers out of my tracking sheet. I was 191.5 pounds when I started. Okay by February 16th one month later, I was 202.8. So I am up 11 pounds in four weeks. Four weeks later, March 16th, I am 210.7. So I am up another eight pounds in four weeks. Okay. And then April 16th, which is that final three months, the final of the three months, or if it was really 13 weeks, the typical first. cycle for someone. Historically is about 12 weeks long. That final for me, was on April 16th. So that would be like 90 days to a T. I was 217 pounds. Okay. So over that three months or 13 weeks, I gained 25.5 pounds or 1.96 pounds per week. This is a pretty blistering pace. And if I have the time and technical understanding. I'll see if I can put photos up in the YouTube edit for this of those. That was my experience. I would say that that is probably too fast for a typical recommendation of a lean building phase. But I was still very lean at that 217, maybe 11 % body fat, maybe 11.5. OK, so I hate that that is the answer, but you just do not know how someone will respond and you get your hyper responders. You get your hypo responders. I've had certain clients on again TRT. They get crazy responses. I have a guy, Jeff, who I'm going to share soon. We just wrapped up our second diet together where he started TRT. We are 16 or 17 pounds heavier. wrapping up this diet than the first diet at a leaner body composition. He has a really good response. I have other people who get pretty crappy responses, right? So it's too, there's just simply too much genetic variation to provide a, this is what you should shoot for. Keep your food high. See if your body weight is climbing. Great. Is the amount of muscle that you're gaining outpacing to a high proportion Apportionate rate the amount of body fat you're accumulating great keep going. Are you getting fatter? Yes, you're going you're gaining too fast, right? So you have to just push and pull and step through it You're not going to be able to follow a guideline here because there's too much individual response Unfortunately, I wish that wasn't the case. So That is my answer. That is a wrap on our episode 196 August Instagram Q &A August 2025. Thanks as always for the questions. Brian and I will talk to you guys either next week or the week after and we'll be back in September.