In Favor of the Bro Split? | ETP#206

In ETP #206 we explore some very plausible ways to defend the Bro Split. Whilst highly criticized in the current landscape of the evidence-based fitness scene there are some practical and enjoyable reasons to experiment and even run your training this way over what could be a very long period of time. 

Timestamps:

00:00 Quick Personal Updates

09:58 Exploring the Bro Split vs. Higher Frequency Training

17:46 Long-Term Training Perspectives and Consistency

25:23 Structuring the Bro Split for Optimal Results

25:56 Optimizing the Bro Split

30:45 The Science of Training Frequency

35:58 Genetics and Long-Term Training

39:17 The Bro Split and Enhanced Lifters

42:18 Training Strategies in Bodybuilding

46:19 Personal Reflections on Approaches Over Time

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Transcript

0:25

What is going on? Happy Tuesday guys. Welcome back to Eat, Train, Prosper. Today is episode 206 and we are talking about bro splits. So this is the first episode of the year. Welcome to year six of Eat, Train, Prosper. I believe I keep getting that wrong. I think it's actually year six. So for those of you who've been around for a number of years listening to us, thank you for giving Brian and I an ear. for us to provide opinions and things that we think are important in the realm of health, fitness, and nutrition. That said, Brian, some updates, please. Yeah, gonna be quick so that we have enough time to get to the bulk of the episode here. But uh I just got back yesterday or I guess now it's two days ago from a seven day cruise with the family. uh Mostly a good experience at the end. We give it like a seven, seven point five for anyone that's been on cruises. There's uh a number of things that I don't think vibe as well with me, like, you know, tons of crowds. It felt like the pool deck was constantly overcrowded. One of my biggest peeves was If you didn't show up at the pool deck by like 8 a.m. to claim a lounge chair, you just were shit out of luck and didn't get one for the day, which was a bit frustrating, especially because the kids mostly wanted to just hang out at the pool all day. Food was way better than I expected. So that was nice, except that it also meant that I was overeating extremely. I actually kind of lost weight going into. the cruise because I had taken a week off of consuming marijuana, which meant that I wasn't eating much food. My body weight dropped down into the low one nineties. Then at the end of the cruise, it's actually funny, we got a Hume body scale that didn't arrive until we got back from the cruise. So Kim and I both were on this idea that we would start our Hume body scale at like our very worst body composition and then only move forward from there. so I stepped on the scale, the returning from the cruise and I was 204 pounds, which meant I gained something like 12 pounds of scale weight in a week. and, the huge. Yeah. Well, I think that a lot of it was that I was dieting going into it. So I hadn't been eating a lot. So my body was, you know, depleted of water and glycogen. And then I go to the cruise where I'm eating like insane amounts of food and dessert and bread and butter and two entrees and, and all this stuff. And so anyway, I got back, stand on the Hume scale at 204. And in one of my worst body composition states that I've seen in a while, like one of these things where like I bend over and I'm like, wow, I have a gut. Like what, I have a gut? Like what's going on? The Hume body scale told me I was 11.7 % body fat. And it told Kim she was 16.8 % body fat. And of course, like we know that BIA as a technology is not super reliable. ah I was talking to chat GPT about it and they were like, is your wife a competitive bodybuilder? And I was like, no, this thing is clearly not giving us accurate information. ah But mostly I'm going to use it as trends. But anyway, going back to the crews, ate a ton of food, too much food. They had unlimited soft serve, which meant the kids were eating like a soft serve after every meal. ah was, it was cool. It was nice to be in warm weather, to go to beaches. the other thing I didn't love about it was every time you'd get on and off the boat, they would corral you like an animal where you'd have to like go through customs and immigration, like off the boat, then back on the boat and like just a ton of waiting in lines and stuff like that. And it's not my way, my ideal way to want to spend a vacation. Um, the other kind of update that goes in, uh, coordination with the gain in my body weight and potential water weight that I was accumulating is that I am now a few weeks into doing TRT. Um, I don't think we've updated this on the podcast, but you and I had a back and forth about how I potentially wasn't injecting it right in the beginning. And, uh, one of the things that I just want to elucidate or acknowledge for anyone else that might be starting TRT is that no one ever told me that the way that the testosterone gets into the needle is it's a little misleading when they say you pull the testosterone into the needle. Cause I was basically just like, okay, turn it upside down, pull and boom, it should be there. um I think in reality, what's actually happening is gravity is essentially just doing its job. And it's this very, very slow process of gravity dripping the thick oil into the needle. And I think it takes me about two minutes to pull the testosterone from the vial into the needle and then obviously into the syringe. Um, so once you and I had the back and forth, I officially did my first proper dose on December 22nd and did my fourth proper dose two days ago. So I'm about two weeks in now of doing it properly. And, there've been a few things that I've noticed as far as potentially increased energy focus, uh, libido up. That was that, that's been an interesting one. and, I'm sure that that's also contributing to why my body weight shot up to that 204 is like some of this water retention and fluid retention and stuff like that that comes along with it. ah And yeah, I think that, you I don't have a lot to say beyond that at the moment being that I'm only two weeks in, but I think that it's trending positive. I'm enjoying some of the initial uh aspects of it and just kind of looking forward to seeing where it goes over the next few weeks as I continue to kind of. get more energy in the mornings and just a general sense of well-being. I keep thinking about that comment you made where you're like, it's almost as if the world seems brighter and the colors are more distinct and stuff like that. And I haven't noticed that specifically, but I can start to see how that would manifest over time. So yeah, that's pretty much my updates at the moment. Yeah, that's definitely one thing I will I pretty confidently say is very rarely are you provided anyone really good instructions with the TRT and it ranges right. Some clinics or doctors ship with like a 25 gauge syringe that's a little bit thicker so the oil will flow faster. Some compounding pharmacies use MCT oil which is the viscosity is much lower. Other ones are going to give you like Cotten seed oil, which is like I think it's like more than double the viscosity. So mileage ranges on needle gauge and viscosity of the oil. So it really is varying. But yeah, the first time I did it, I had the stupid ampules. I think it took me like 45 minutes the first time to actually get it all done. So yeah, a learning curve. Real quick. One thing I forgot to mention is that since doing starting the TRT and who knows how much of this is TRT and how much of this is the excess food and the travel and all this stuff. But for the last like three or four weeks, even before the TRT was done properly, uh my heart rate and HRV and resting heart rate and sleep have all been just like in disarray. Uh, usually I'm like a super high HRV guy and a low resting heart rate. Usually my resting heart rate's 40 and my HRV is 150 on the RMS SD or on 200 on the SDNN. Um, and it's been at least 20 % lower than that for a number of weeks. Now my sleep has been very scattered. I'm waking up constantly in the night. Uh, and one of the things I thought I was going to get with TRT was improved sleep. Apparently the first few weeks of TRT, it's actually the opposite. um And so I'm not super amped on that. I don't love waking up and seeing my HRV kind of plummeting from where I expect it to be. Resting heart rate now is in like the high 40s. Anyway, so I'm gonna keep tracking that and see what happens to it. But uh I definitely don't love seeing some of these health metrics that I've bonded myself to over time kind of deplete a little bit in the last few weeks. Yeah, that is interesting. Any other updates from you? No, no, what you got? So the only update is we had picked our return to the United States date bought flights and all these things. And then we sat down to plan everything and realized that I would get to Utah. Mid about the third week of March have about a 12 to 14 day period in Salt Lake City. I was planning on running a seminar there which I had. I'm glad I didn't announce yet. And then the day the seminar end I would immediately have to fly back to Bali for pro camp and then I would be in Bali for like 11 12 days and then go back and it just looked like hell and very poor planning on my part. So was like this is dumb. We're going to be we won't even be able to move in anywhere properly so we'd have to be in like an Airbnb. Jenny would be there for three weeks effectively by herself and it was just very dumb. So we pushed back the move date. to now immediately after pro camp, which will be the third week of April. So while I was a little bit bummed as I was like once I just have my mindset on something like I was just ready for the next chapter to start. So I'm a little bit like salty. But now things will be much less stressful in terms of like moving pieces and everything there. Yeah, I mean, I get it, but I mean, a month is a month. It's not the end of the world. I understand that singular focus on kind of the next step of plan, but yeah, you'll be there. And then in retrospect, it'll be like, you don't even think about it. So probably makes more sense to do it that way. Yeah. All right, cool. Well, do you want to jump into the episode since we have like 35 minutes or so? Let's do it. Well, basically the idea of this episode comes from my wandering mind. There's so much that we've talked about over the last 10 to 20 episodes that seem to come from the Chris Beardsley camp of, you know, higher frequency training and... how catabolism occurs if you don't train a muscle again within 72 hours. And then they take it even further and they talk about like muscle fiber specific training and that you have to not only do the same muscle group, but you have to do the same exercise to essentially make sure none of your muscle fibers are, are going to fall to catabolism or whatever over the course of, the period of time, if you're not training it again. And uh my nature is to kind of push back a little bit on that as you've heard me discuss over the last, you know, 10 or 20 episodes. And along those lines on the complete opposite side of the spectrum of higher frequency training is the bro split, which is, know, as you guys know, training one muscle group a day or one to two muscle groups a day, splitting the body across the week, essentially only hitting each muscle group once across the calendar week. And, uh, along that there's been a number of influencers that have been also pushing back on the higher frequency stuff and kind of promoting how the bro split could in some ways actually be optimal. And then I start thinking about where my best gains occurred in my life. And you guys have heard me talk about the max OT program, which I did for six plus years in my early twenties. and really got the best results of my life during that period of time. And it was a bro split. was a five or six day a week program where you're doing six to nine sets per body part. and, uh know, sessions are taking 30 to 40 minutes. And one of the things that I really do not like about the higher frequency training stuff is that the sessions are taking longer. They're taking at least an hour in most cases, because, you know, if you're on an upper lower, upper lower, you're having to hit the full lower body or the full upper body. The sessions are just significantly longer and more demanding psychologically, physiologically, all of it. ah And there was just something about going into the gym during my days of max OT and knowing that I only had to train hard for 30 to 40 minutes. And then I was done that just created a better training environment. And it got me thinking about all of the aspects of training that go toward optimizing your results that are far from what science might say is accurate, such as like internal motivation and desire to train and focus and uh an execution and some of these things that maybe fall off if you're taking these longer, more daunting sessions along with you. And then in the max OT days, I literally would train at lunch from my corporate job. This was before I even had, you know, a fitness job. So I would literally leave my work at noon and I'd go to the gym, which was 10 minutes away and I would do my session. And then I would return back to my work, which was 10 minutes away and I'd be back by 1pm. So literally I'd be at the gym. I trained muscle, one muscle group, 40 minutes, boom, crushed it back to work and didn't even sweat. Like not to say it was an easy session by any means, but it was just more dialed. You're focusing on one specific part of the body. There's less systemic fatigue associated with it. And uh it worked so well. And so I just find myself kind of romanticizing some of that. And given the nature of the industry right now and how deep they are into this higher frequency thing, I figured we should do an episode and just kind of discuss some of these aspects. Yeah one thing that I will say that I don't want to say will you know T-bone this episode but I think one of the things when you and I were discussing off air about this specific episode and our planning for it we wanted to talk about more of like a longer term approach right like like a let's call it a decade or something like that which is I would say. A decade is probably like you and I are the outliers, right? We love training. It's a very, very large part of our identity and you know what we've a cornerstone of our life, careers, et cetera, et cetera. But I would say like your average interested lifter person, a 10 years is probably a pretty good run where it's a decently high priority. And throughout that 10 years, you're gonna work your way through the different splits. You're gonna run. At least at the very very least a bro split and a PPL right upper lower I do kind of find is a little bit more of the intellectuals kind of approach to training. um But I do think that that plays a role into it and you run a program long enough right. The mind starts to wander you start to romanticize these things that you haven't done or that you did do and you look back fondly on it. So I do think it is more of a. a wavering road of testing different approaches. And then we all have our personal biases or things, genetic favorabilities and things like that, where certain things will work better or worse. But I do think that that is part of it, right? There is part of that self discovery and finding out maybe you love the bro split and it really helps with your training motivation or maybe at past 40 minutes. Your mind really starts to wander in the quality of the session really drops off. So I would really encourage everyone you have to go through these paces to find what you have a personality preference for. Because at the end of the day, like I said this in I think maybe two episodes ago, optimal has to be through the lens of your life. Right. Because it might be optimal to train like the Beardsley way. But for me, like I love training. But if you told me Aaron, that's how you have to train. I'm like, yeah, fuck this. I'm going to go do something else. OK, so I do think that it has to be cannot be understated. The importance of. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And as we were discussing this episode off air, know, initially you were like, what if we did it from a, like a two year standpoint and we did, we dissected whether, you know, one might be more optimal than the other in that regard. And I was like, no, no, no, it has to be 10 years because I think that if we're going to talk about two years and we're talking about somebody simply going from couch to wanting to be as jacked as possible in two years, my senses. that you likely would be more benefited by having a higher frequency and training muscles more often and all of these things. But I think that when you extrapolate that out to 10 years or 15 years or a training career, that there's likely a number of factors that get minimized or negligible to the point that you're probably going to end up more or less at the same place. And therefore you come back to. motivation to train and consistency and these other things that seem to be the most paramount. Like consistency is gonna be the bottom of the pyramid. It's the most vast important piece of training is it doesn't matter how you're training. You just have to fucking do it for 10 years, 15 years or whatever it is to get to your optimized physique. Yeah, I mean you hit the nail on the head there. Yeah, so if we talk about it from like a 10 year out where that's long enough for somebody to get through the intermediate stage to be advanced and to be relatively close to where they might end up for their optimal physique over the course of a training career, that's I think the perspective that we're gonna take. Yeah. So we discussed motivation to train and consistency being the most important variables. That was the number one at the top of my kind of quote argument for the bro split is that if you just simply enjoy training in that manner, then that's probably going to be best for you. Then somebody who maybe is like, well, the most optimal according to Beardsley would be to train three full body sessions a week with the exact same movements, because then every muscle fiber is attacked every 48 hours and there's no catabolism. And we're always in this like anabolic state. And that is, you know, obviously one way of approaching it. But over the course of time, maybe, maybe it doesn't matter. So for me, I kind of alluded to earlier, the shorter, more focused sessions really speak to me that that that story of leaving work and training really hard on one muscle group and then going back to work. Like, for example, when I was doing max OT, I remember specifically my pole session. was three sets of weighted pull-ups, three sets of wide grip pull-downs, because the pull-ups were neutral grip. So neutral grip pull-ups, wide grip pull-downs, and then three sets of rows. And then boom, I was out of the gym. That was it. Nine total working sets. it had one or two warm-up sets for the pull-ups and maybe one warm-up set for the pull-downs, one warm-up set for the rows. So I'm looking at a total of 12, 13 total sets. Really easy to get that done in 40 minutes. and back to work. And like I said, no sweating. Uh, the physical exertion was there for sure, but the systemic fatigue was not there. And that's actually another element that I think is on the side of the bro split is simply limiting systemic fatigue across a session. And maybe more arguable, whether it's limiting systemic fatigue across a week because of the, higher frequency training and all of this stuff, but at least in an individual session, you're not leaving that session being completely crushed. In some ways, I actually think, you know, that feeling that we talk about in CrossFit, where you would finish a really hard Metcon, and then you would just have to like lay on the ground spasming for a few minutes. And then, you know, what are the chances you're going to be able to get up and go to your computer and start doing work again anytime soon. It's like, that's so unrealistic in the CrossFit days. And I actually feel when I do full body workouts, or even like a full lower body workout, it's not nearly as gnarly as that. But there is a sense of that systemic fatigue that sits there where I wouldn't want to go and sit down at a computer and have to focus and do work immediately after that, I would need some sort of like grace period, which doesn't seem to be the case when you're just isolating one muscle group and kind of moving on with your day. I do have a question for you that I think could potentially help the listener. So I think in defining the bro split, obviously we have chest day, right? We have back day. How else would you would we separate quads and hamstrings? What do you think there? Yeah. So I didn't do that when I was training max O T I put them both on the same day, but I was also in a period of time where I didn't care about my legs at all. In fact, I would say that my legs were lagging on me for the majority of my lifting career until maybe the end of the CrossFit days when I was like, Oh, I actually need strong legs to be able to clean and snatch and, do these important things that are needed for CrossFit. And then I went on like a proper strength training program and really squatted and deadlifted and all that stuff. But during the max OT days, my leg day was, I remember, you know, two or three sets of back squats, two sets of stiff legged deadlifts, maybe a set of leg extensions and a set of leg curls. And that was kind of just my leg day, which, uh which was fine. Like, I don't think that that's necessarily a bad leg day, but I also don't think I was bringing the intensity and the focus to that day. Like I would in my current state of being. so, uh to answer your question, my current iteration in my brain of how I would want to go about structuring my bro split would be chest, then back, then quads, then shoulders, then arms, and then hams. And so a couple reasons that I really like that six out of seven day uh approach is one, it keeps the sessions really short. It allows me to still hammer the quads in 30 to 40 minutes and also the hams in 30 to 40 minutes instead of trying to combine them together and do both. in 30 to 40 minutes. On top of that, one of the other things I really wanted to discuss as far as why the bro split is maybe not as suboptimal as people would think it is, is via crossover stimulus. And so I've talked about this in the past last year, when I had this same, I think it was around the same time of year, I was getting into like the winter and bike season was over. And I was like, I don't want to be outside doing cardio in the cold. So let me think of a way that I can train more in the gym. And I came up with that concept of the intelligent bro split, which we actually talked about on this podcast. And one of the things that made it intelligent was purposeful crossover stimulus for the different muscle groups. And so think about it like this. have chest on day one. Okay, cool. Chest. You're getting some triceps, you're getting some shoulders in there, but it's mostly chest. Day two is back. That includes lats. So you're getting, again, you're getting some back, you're getting some lats, you're getting some biceps from the pulling, and you're getting rear delts because that's what you get from back training. the chest day gives you front delts, the back day gives you rear delts, and then you're getting the triceps on one day, the biceps on the other day. So in theory, between chest and back day, you're sort of hitting the whole upper body. Then you go to quads. All right, quads are kind of just quads. You're not really gonna say, I'm gonna get a little hamstring stimulus there, it's just quads. Then you go on to shoulder day. And shoulder day is gonna be mostly shoulders, but there's probably gonna be a little bit of triceps in there. And depending on what you choose for your shoulder movement, like if you did some sort of like high pole or upright row or something like that, then you're gonna get a little bit of biceps in there too. And then you go to arm day. And one of the things that I always did on arm day, even in my max OT days, and I would carry it forward, would be that I always would include either dips or tricep pushups. on arm day. And then I would also include some sort of narrow supinated grip pull-up there as well. So once again, not only are we training arms, but we're getting a little bit of delts and we're getting back and chest. So again, back and chest now getting hit twice, delts are getting hit three or four times across the week. And then you have hamstrings on the next day. So the only muscle groups that are not getting hit at least two to three times a week are the quads and the hamstrings. And given where I am in my training career, how I, you know, have kind of decided that I don't really want to get onto stage. I've also decided that, uh or not decided, but I've noticed over the course of training that my legs just don't seem to recover quite as quickly. And I've discussed how I think every five days seems to be like the optimal frequency for my legs to progress. Changing it to every seven days, I don't think is a huge drawback. Like even if I'm not optimizing my leg development, at least for me personally, that seems to put me in a place where it's sufficient leg stimulus to continue to progress in strength and at least maintain uh leg size as well. So in this design of the bro split, it's not nearly as suboptimal as it would be if you were simply just targeting one muscle group a day. Yeah, and that's I'm glad I brought that up because that's the direction that I was hoping you would take it where. uh At a high level, we simplify it as like one muscle group per day, but it isn't inherently only that one. You do still have a few that get hit multiple times per week. It's really the legs that suffer the most. But usually if you're doing a bro split, legs are probably not a priority of it. So it's a general accepted uh deprioritization. Yeah. Well, one thing that would even fix that, like if you really wanted to, I have a section at the end of this in my outline that says how to fix the bro split. And so how to fix it a lot was like what I just went over with all the upper body stuff and the crossover stimulus. But another way that you could fix it would simply be to add one to two sets of another muscle group onto a given day. So if like shoulders were a priority, maybe you put a couple sets of lateral delts onto your chest day or A better example here would be legs. Like maybe you have your quad day, but you put two sets of leg curls in there. And then on your hamstring day, you put two sets of leg extensions. And now we're still doing like a bro split, so to speak, but we're still getting that little bit of stimulus for the other muscle group, which fits into that, you know, every 72 hours thing that Chris Beardsley is big on. question here for you and not really playing devil's advocate but kind of playing the maybe advanced or older lifter um role. Do you find that let's use that example of hey on my hamstring day I'm going to add some two sets of leg extensions. Would you then remove. I'm assuming but please correct me if I'm wrong. We would remove the leg extensions from the quad day. Yeah. Maybe, I mean you could or you could not. uh I think there would be, given the current state of science, maybe a reason that on the quad day, maybe you do your leg extensions with a short overload and a pause at the top because you're getting a lot of lengthened overload stuff through the squatting patterns and the split squats and stuff like that. And then maybe on the hamstring day, you do your leg extensions a little more lengthened. You don't pause at the top. know, obviously you would need a prime machine or some sort of way to adjust the resistance profile, but uh I don't think that you necessarily need to eliminate the leg extensions from the other day. uh But you could. The other thing you could do is maybe one of the days is like sissy squats or, you know, reverse Nordics. And then the other day is like a proper leg extension. So you're still getting the rec fam on both days. That's a really good reason. I'm really, glad you said that. in my current, so I guess what I'm getting at is I have found pretty much at my age now in, you know, cumulative damage over the years, I need to have that leg extension or sissy squats before doing any bilateral squatting or like heavy lunging or else my knees are just very unhappy with me. So it's almost like I need to program in that way to get my knees through deep flexion, under load, lots, lots of reps, but you know, I'm using air quotes here, sufficient amount of reps to really kind of grease that groove to where I can go in and squat or pendulum or hack squat or belt squat without my, without my body kind of getting angry at me. Yeah, for sure. I think that makes total sense. And you might even find the same thing across some upper body muscle groups too, where you're like, man, if I just jump right into weighted pull ups on back day, like my shoulders get cranky on me. So maybe you do a couple light sets of like, you know, banded lateral raises or something like that to get blood flow, some cable, some cable face pulls or something along those lines. So simply as part of like your warmup and preparation process, maybe you're getting a little bit of stimulus to those other muscle groups there as well. Yeah, and the one thing that I, let me make, check that we're not gonna get into this. One of the beauties with the bro split is a crossover of preparedness, right? Which is, hey, you take your three warmup sets on the first set, but then at each subsequent exercise, you require less and less, which is quite nice. And that's one of the downsides that I'm finding right now with my, not so much on lower body, because I feel that, The preparedness from hamstring to quad is a little bit more contributory. Like, you know, the thing that we always talk about, a ham curl before a squat pattern motion is very contributory to preparedness for the squat pattern motion. But for right now, like I have my, I do like three back exercises on my upper day before I go into chest. I need like literally four warmup sets. before I get to my top set of the chest. And it's just a, you're just burning so much time rewarming up for this muscle now, 40 minutes into my training session. Yeah, dude, I think that's like such a really good point. And m I'm glad you brought that up, because I didn't actually put that into the outline, but that just fits into the whole time saving mechanism of, really being dialed and focused and being able to get in and out in under 40 minutes. em Cool. So one of the other things I wanted to talk about is the studies. And I'm not going to quote any specific studies, but it's important to remember that all studies are done in you know, an eight to 12, maybe a 16 week period, but we don't have any of these RCTs that are following people over multiple years of training. And so when we look at the studies showing that higher frequency is better, this goes back to that first argument, that first discussion point where it was like, do we talk about this from a two year timeframe or do we talk about this from a 10 year timeframe? Because if we're just talking about a short period of time, like eight to 16 weeks, I am a hundred percent confident. that higher frequency training would be better. There's like no reason that stimulating your muscle twice as many times as you could otherwise wouldn't be better on a short-term basis. One of the questions or two of the things that I think potentially are drawbacks of higher frequency training, uh one would simply be joint wear and tear. So if you're always training the muscle twice a week as with a dedicated focused session, then you're doing double the amount of wear and tear on your joints. And we know one of the big things that happens to older lifters, like if you've ever seen the guy in the gym who's been training for 30 years, he's got like wraps on his elbows and wraps on his knees and he has to warm up for like 30 minutes before doing anything. um And so maybe the bro split allows you to be a little bit more sustainable over the course of your lifting career by essentially cutting in half the amount of times that you're having to have that joint wear and tear on a muscle group. The other one, is that maybe there's a resensitization that occurs when you train a muscle more frequently. like, you know, go back to the old Mike Isra-Tel days where he talks about how every four weeks you need a deload because it resensitizes you to the stimulus. And I think that in a lot of ways that's kind of been hogwash and not really something that people are too worried about these days. But maybe on like a microcosm or a smaller level, there is something to, hey, thrash a muscle, really destroy it and then give it a full week to recover so that maybe even there is a little bit of uh resensitization that occurs so that when you get back to training it again, you're almost amplifying the gains that you would be getting as opposed to if you did it every like three days or something along those lines. So those two aspects, joint wear and tear and then the sensitization piece. I would say... I don't think it really matters what the actual mechanism is, but because I was going to say I would think it's more of the fatigue is fully evaporated or has left the room per se. But that's one thing that I have noticed that when I finally dedicated to that lower volume approach and my volume did go very, very low, my fatigue was very, very low. So I was able to perform really, really well. And I've recently started titrating up my volumes a little bit. So let's say, for example, I did what? Five lower body exercises on two of those. I added two sets. I lied on three of them. One was calves. I added two sets instead of one set. Even just that very modest increase in volume is now impeding my performance between sessions. So I've stopped. progressing every single one of those top sets because I'm not incredibly fresh like I was. So I do think the reduced frequency does elucidate a much better uh fatigue mitigation because there's just six, seven days again, which is contributory to a performance standpoint. Yeah, for sure. And I think that if you look at a lot of the recommendations around the higher frequency training, you'll hear like Chris or Jake, the two kind of high frequency guys right now, they'll talk about how, you know, if you're training this three times a week full body program, your goal is only to progress once a week. So on Monday, you try to progress and then Wednesday and Friday, you match your performance from Monday and then you get back to Monday and you try to progress again. Well, if that's what's happening, then Would it really be worse if you just train that once a week and you were still able to progress once a week? I mean, this is all hypothetical because maybe training it multiple times is the catalyst that allows you to progress the following week. And maybe if you don't train it three times a week or twice a week or whatever, then maybe you don't actually get the progression that you want at the one week point. So I'm open to that being the case. But I also think that if you are able to progress once a week, then you're essentially getting the same level of progression that you would be by. maintaining performance across the week and then trying to progress only on Mondays or whatever the situation might be. agreed. It's just a little bit ambiguous and unfortunate. I don't think we'll ever truly know. So, yeah. Well, those are mostly my points. I guess the final one would simply be the genetic limit, which we've kind of alluded to in that if you're training for 10, 15, 20, 30 years, like the most important things are the consistency and the motivation to train over time. And so whether you're training three times a week, two times a week per muscle group, or simply once a week per muscle group, it probably should all wash out in the end. And eventually your body's like, hey, this is where I'm going to be. I could see an argument where you're at a super advanced training and you've been training for 15, 20 years, all on a bro split. And you're like, man, I am jacked. I'm so happy with my physique. This has been great. I love the bro split. And then someone's like, hey, have you thought about, you know, trying a higher frequency and maybe it'll get you a couple more gains. And so maybe if you've been training your whole career with the bro split and then you increase frequency at the very end, maybe you can. seek out just a little bit more progress than you would have otherwise. It's like a tool or a lever that you can pull. I'm not fully sold on that, but just in the name of playing Devil's Advocate, I think it's at least worth bringing that up as a possibility for like an advanced trainee. What do you think about that? I mean, I agree. I think everything that you said, I think it's these are those challenging situations where it's plausible on paper, but I don't think anyone is going to train bro split for 30 years straight, who's also maximized their sleep. is dialed in with their nutrition, has maintained appropriate levels of body fat to produce the best endogenous levels of sex hormones that they can, and never deviate and explore a push-pull legs or an upper lower or something like that. So that's where it's really challenging um there in an actual practical scenario. It's the same way, like, I can't say I think the genetic limit exists. Granted, we've talked about this, the asymptomatic curve, your rate of progression slows down dramatically. But I think it's other things as we age, other things yield a greater importance in your, much, the more gains you get, not only are there less gains to be had, the cost to produce new gains. exponentially increases, right? You have to train insanely fucking hard to the point where you have to really decide if you even like this that much anymore. um The recovery capacity, the sleep and the the Detriments to the other facets of your life as you age, know And as a male you tend to want to be more family and provide and those sorts of things It's just not as a high of a priority. So I think Eventually, right if you're just that perpetual bro, no wife. No children You're some like crypto millionaire billionaire and you're just gonna train your life away and stay natural I do think ultimately it would be your age that limits the genetic factor once you hit like your mid 50s and father time really starts working against you. But again, that's one of those I'm being a theorist, whereas I don't think anyone would ever actually be in that situation. Yeah, yeah. uh One question I do have for you as somebody that's been on gear and you associate with a number of people on gear through your network and through Undefeated Gym and all that stuff. One of the things that you're hearing that I hear uh Jake and Chris talk about a lot now, it's like just come to the forefront, is this idea that maybe the bro split is better for people that are enhanced because they're stronger and they have uh their statement is something like they have worse connective tissue resilience or something along those lines and that the bro split may be resulted out of that. they're there, they're their timeline is, know, pre steroid era, everybody trained full body. And then as steroids became more prominent in the training realm in the 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond that we saw the transition more to bro splits. And their argument is that maybe it's the result of this kind of connective tissue resilience piece. they even quote studies talking about like higher injury rates for people on TRT or gear and stuff like that. Just curious what you're seeing in your realm and if any of that has been a discussion point. No, I mean, I think the... the strength, rate of strength will outpace the resilience of the connective tissues, right? And that's especially true for like new people. like you, right? You're gonna hit a point where, okay, last week I got six reps and you're gonna come in and you're gonna get like nine and you're gonna go, holy fuck, is my log book right? and you're gonna double check it and it's right. Like you will, but the muscular strength outpaces the rate at which the connective tissue can keep up with the strength increases. So I do think that that part is pretty real. However, if we were to really apply that to... Sport performance. Like what are some sports where there is rampant exogenous hormone use Olympic weightlifting is the one that comes to mind. They effectively train full body every single day and they don't really have that that problem. um I would say it's probably the systemic fatigue. Right. Because I mean imagine if you're doing everyday RDL. leg press, know, heavy rows, something like that. I mean, I don't think I would last a couple of weeks from a, a, it's just the CNS overload side of it. But no, I would say what I see most often is a, a uh genetic difference needs based analysis for training, right? Because The unfortunate reality is we all have these different androgen receptor density things. Some muscle groups grow much faster than others. You know, for me right now, I think as much as I'm kind of enjoying it, I have to stop training my legs twice per week because it's opportunity cost on my weight cap. My legs have exploded. And my upper body hasn't. And given my goal as men's physique, I'm effectively working against what could be beneficial for me right now in full transparency. So if you are serious about competing in that sort of thing, your lagging body parts need to take preference and training full body. It just doesn't lend itself to trying to create the most balanced physique because not all muscle groups will grow at an equal rate. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What are you seeing from the other people in your network that compete in bodybuilding, whether on gear or not on gear? Like, someone like Brandon Kempter who's super jacked and not on gear. ah Like, is he training on more of this, like, upper lower full body type thing, or is he on a split? What about Jackson and some of these other guys in your network? Like, how are these guys training? Brandon trains I believe a push-pull legs variation potentially upper lower but I know on his lower sessions he will have um quads and hamstrings but Brandon trains calves every day he's in the gym he's at a four times per week quad or sorry calf training frequency I know that right now Jackson is heavy emphasis on arms because his were like a really his arms relative to the rest of his physique where the biceps and triceps, I should say specifically the obvious lagging body part um there. And then I let me think of other people. I know a couple men's physique guys who I'm pretty sure are not training legs at all because I never see them training legs. I only ever see them training push or pull. um I would say what I think I feel confident saying I see the most is push pull legs. ah is that done like six times a week or four or like how many sessions of push-pull legs are being done in a week? Yeah, I don't know anyone doing six. I just don't think, I don't even think from a motivation standpoint because you string enough of them together in a day, especially as these, the bigger people get the stronger that they are. So the more that CNS like fatigue hits you um and a couple days of that in a row, mostly after like a leg session or something like that, your desire, you just need that reset to actually want to be there. um is what I would say. I would say most common is a variation of push-pull legs with specific needs analysis uh contributions or reductions. Yeah. This actually makes me think about another potential avenue for utility for the bro split, which I didn't even like think about and put on the outline, but a bro split is also really conducive to being able to use a specialization phase for muscle groups that you really want to bring up. So, you know, you're just training each muscle group once a week, so to speak, aside from like the crossover stimulus. And then you can easily throw in additional work onto each day. So say you want an arm specialization, you have a chest day, you throw in some arms. or maybe you throw in some triceps or biceps. Then on back day, you throw in one of the triceps or biceps and then, know, shoulder day, maybe there's a couple sets and then you have an arm day by itself. So now you're hitting arms essentially like direct four times a week or something along those lines. So it does allow you the ability to put some muscle groups on maintenance almost via frequency and then amplify up other muscle groups. Yeah, I would say that that ultimately I think is the when the goal is like physique pursuit and specificity of for Zeke right for example like me, my back sucks my upper back specifically relative to a lot of my other parts of my physique. So it doing back once per week is effectively a giant disservice to my lagging body part. So uh What will come next for me when I feel like I can actually start really progressing again is probably back. I might try back three times per week. That might be something that I could. I think if there's a muscle group that I think you could train three times per week aside from like, you know, biceps and lateral delts back plausibly because so much of it is short overloaded. So the disruption can only be so so great. So that may be in my in my future. Yeah, 100%. I think that that's a great way of implementing that. And like you said, the short overload being like the main factor there. uh Okay, cool. Well, the way I just wanna kind of wrap up is to bring it back to me because this is something that I'm obviously considering. And the two main drawbacks that I see for why I wouldn't want to do the bro split right now would be one, the necessity to train basically daily. So the split that I outlined would be six out of seven days. uh I wouldn't need to be necessarily married to the calendar week where I'm like, Monday is chest day and Tuesday is back day. Like at the end of the day, if I end up doing it over eight days instead of seven days, like I'm totally fine with that, especially because the way I would design it would be with that kind of crossover stimulus in there. So I think that's a bit less of a concern for me, but still slightly a concern. ah Cause one of the things I do love is the freedom of being able to. take a day or two off if I'm traveling and not stress about it because you know, upper lower or full body is you're still getting the frequency that you need. uh One of the ways that I could fix this that I was thinking about too, is that because of the way I organized the split where it's chest back, then quad shoulders and then arms, hams is that if I did have a week where I was traveling and wasn't able to get that many sessions in, I could easily smash chest and back together. Boom, take a day, then take a day off. then I could smash quads and shoulders together, take a day off, and I could smash arms and hands together and take a day off. So this split would be conducive to being able to do it three times a week if I was in a pinch or something along those lines. But obviously then I'm 75 minute sessions or something, which is what I'm trying to avoid. And then the other negative or the other potential drawback of doing this for me is that I really have kind of fallen in love with this one hard thing each day structure. And this means, know, weights, this means weights, then cardio, then weights, then cardio, then weights, then cardio. If I did this six day a week approach, it would inevitably require me to have to have some days where I was doing weights and cardio. I'm still like, that would be, I think the main thing that's kind of deterring me from just jumping in and doing it because mentally it's been so great for me to just know when I wake up that I have one hard thing that I have to do this day physically. And even though the lifting sessions would now be much easier in that like I could bang out chest in 30 to 40 minutes and not be totally exhausted. I still don't know if I would be like fresh enough to then want to attack another hard physical exertion thing. So that is for sure the thing that I'm ruminating on now in my decision of whether I wanna do this, but I am leaning towards it because Like I said in the beginning, it's really cold. It's starting to get cold. We're gonna have snow this Thursday. I don't mind running in the cold, but I don't love running in general. I can't bike in the cold because I'm a pansy. ah And so I don't know, like this probably would mean that I just cut back cardio to like twice a week and I do it on like chest day and shoulder day or something like that because those are relatively easy days compared to some of the other days. But that's definitely the thing that I'm thinking about the most at the Yeah, I think well, I'm sure you will give us a continued updates as you uh factor through those and then whenever I land on I'm sure I will disclose as well, but I'm kind of just in like no man's land kind of training for fun that that's not the priority. I even had notes in my pendulum squat set and say hey one RIR on this, please because we don't need the extra oxidative stress because the goal is fertility and like when I read that each week, I'm like. It's just not fun. I love just like mentally psyching myself up and just swinging for the fences and I'm just like, okay, put the go put the rate limiter on there. And are you really going to be selfish at the cost of you know what the bigger goal is like? No lever up in the tank. Eventually, you can get back to training how you want to but it is a I'm kind of just a no man's land, right? Just enjoying what I can but not having any really concrete physique related goals right now. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think for me, I think I'm leaning towards doing this. And I think the main reason that I am is because of those shorter, like sub 40 minute, like really dialed sessions where I don't know what it is, but after, you know, 45 minutes, as I approach an hour, get to like 70 minutes, whatever, I just, I just don't want to be in the gym training anymore. And, and I think about how much I used to enjoy those sessions, leaving work and just going in and nailing nine sets of back and then getting back. and I just kind of miss the simplicity of that approach. And so I do think I'm gonna do that. Today would be day one, which would be my chest day. So I'll likely do that and then just try to kind of fit cardio in where I can. ah I will of course keep everyone updated over the course of the weeks here. Sounds good. So as always guys, thank you for listening. Happy New Year. Brian and I will talk to you next week.