Another Gym Girl Q&A!

Back today with another chatty Q&A episode for our gym gals!

Looking at...

🏋🏽‍♀️ Do we have to choose between training for performance VS training for aesthetics?

🧘🏼‍♀️ Elite athletes have rest days... So why do other people feel like they have to train hard 365 days a year?

🥙 Should we adjust our calories on training days VS rest days?

🍑 Should I focus on pushing as heavy as I can, even if I stop feeling the exercise in the right muscles?

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DISCLAIMER
The Eat Like Ruby podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or dietary advice.
The advice given in this episode is general in nature and should not be used to treat any medical conditions, health conditions, illnesses, injuries and/or any nutrition related conditions, deficiencies or similar.
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Please consult your health care professional before implementing any of the advice, information or protocols discussed in this episode.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Gida girls, welcome back to the pod. Today I'm going to do an episode that is pretty much like a training QA for our gym girls. So we're specifically gonna look at some gym training, common questions, and just shit that can come up, especially with my clients. I feel like most of these questions or things we're gonna talk about today are things that I've gotten from clients, predominantly in their like startup calls or when they're getting started, they'll ask me things and I'm like, ooh, interesting question. Feel like maybe other people would have that question. Let's talk about it on the pod. So I feel like I've done a few of these this year, but it's obviously a big part of our audience. It's a big part of the work that I do. And I just feel like there's so many cool combos to have here. And I feel like it's one of those things where I forget that some people still go to gym in a really weird mindset and do really weird things. I just feel like everybody knows all this stuff, like it's common knowledge. But then people ask questions and I'm like, wow, you don't know this stuff, which is totally fine. Like you shouldn't know it. But yeah, it just triggers a few things where I'm like, wow, we just gotta keep educating on this. And I feel like we've covered this so much over the years, but then even like I said, so much recently. And I just think it's so awesome to think about all of our gym girls, whether you're an actual client or you're a podcast fan or you're both. I just think it's so cool that we are learning all of this stuff, and then we're just going into the gym with so much more intention, so much more structure, and then therefore getting so much more out of our training. Again, I think it's a cool little thing for gym girls to do. Just stop and think like, how far have you come with your training? Did you used to go into the gym years ago, maybe decades ago, maybe last year? It'll be different for everybody. But did you used to go in and just kind of wander around and do weird stuff? And then you think now, like, wow, I've actually learned so much. I understand training so much better. And now I go in with so much intention, so much structure compared to back then. I think it's one of those things where we learn this stuff over time and we start to really change those old shitty habits. And I don't say shitty in a rude way, but we just didn't know any better. Now we know better. And I think we can forget that it's like, wow, I've actually come so far. So I think it's just a cool little thing to think about for yourself. Like, how far have you come with your knowledge of training and then therefore your actual training itself? And that's why I love to do episodes like this because when I do hear these comments or questions come up, and then I think, yeah, this is something we could educate the masses on, and then people can implement that into their training, they can understand it better, and they can keep progressing. So that's what we're gonna do today. If this stuff interests you, definitely just go back and look through the podcast titles, even over the last three to four months, I would say, because we have done a fair bit of gym girl chat this year, and we're gonna do some more today. So the first thing I want to talk about, this actually wasn't a question from a client. This is something that I've seen posted a few times, especially from one particular coach/slash content creator. And I'm not gonna name and chain this person because I actually really love heaps of the stuff she does. I've just seen her talk about this and I've just been like, I personally don't love your wording of that, and I disagree. And I feel like there'd be a lot of people making this kind of content and making this argument. So I'm not just like outing this one person, but I've seen content that's pretty much worded, like everything changed for me when I stopped training for body composition or aesthetic and started training for performance, or worded really similarly, where it's just like you don't need to train for body composition, you should be training for performance, you shouldn't be training for aesthetic, you should be training for performance. And really the underlying thing, because we see this worded in so many different ways, but the underlying thing is essentially saying you have to pick. Like, do I have to pick between training between body composition and aesthetics versus performance? And I personally don't think we have to. And this is just the thing that I disagree with when I see this content of like everything changed for me when I stopped training for the way I look and started training for my performance, my strength, the way I feel, etc. Why do we have to only train for one? Like, why can't we train for both? Is my mentality, my thought process, and the way I approach my own personal training and the training for all of my clients. So obviously, if we just segue for a second, because in Eat Lacraby, we work with a lot of gym girls and then we work with more so like performance athlete girls, people that are playing sport, doing runs, triathons, high rocks, et cetera. So if you're doing that sort of stuff, obviously you are predominantly focused on performance, right? Like if you're going out doing a swim, a ride, a high rock session, et cetera, you're not really thinking about body composition, or you shouldn't be. And I don't think most people are. We're really thinking about performance here. Like I'm doing this swim to get better at swimming. I'm doing this high rock sesh to get better at my burpee broad jumps, etc., right? So that is a big focus on performance. I more so want to look at the gym girls who are doing things like strength training, gym training, hypertrophy training, and similar, this is where we see that content and that narrative of like stop thinking about the way you look, start thinking about performance, strength, the way you feel. And again, just coming back to my point, it doesn't have to be one or the other, in my opinion. So the thing I just want to point out here and just give the example of how I approach this for my girls. If we look at someone who is going into the gym predominantly for lifting, strength training, hypertrophy, building shape, building strength, look at that right there. We can build shape and we can build strength. And educated professionals or anyone who has a really deep understanding of this stuff will straightaway intercept that and go, yeah, but there's a certain style and more so a certain like rep range and similar that we would do for strength versus one that's slightly different that we would do for building shape. Like we do have different protocols when it comes to lifting, if the focus and the goal is to increase strength versus if the focus and the goal is to build shape and build muscle mass. So there are different protocols and different ways we can optimize those things. But coming back to my point, I don't think our whole session has to be designed around doing it all one way or doing it all the other way. So if we look at that for a second, and I'm not gonna really get into the thick of this now because there's heaps of stuff I want to talk about today. But when we look at training for strength, usually we're looking at lower reps. So we're going for almost like max weight or close to max weight, depending on what the actual prescription for that session is. But the reps are a lot lower. If we think about someone lifting close to their max weight, you're not gonna do that for 12 reps because it's like, well, if we brought that down to like six reps, you'd probably be able to lift a lot more. And then if we come over to someone who is doing something like 10, 12 reps or similar, this is the prescription that we use more so for building shape and building muscle and what we call hypertrophy training, which is just growing muscle mass, building muscle. So then coming back to designing, let's say we're designing a leg session for somebody, we can absolutely include both in this session. And we do. If you're an eat like Ruby girl, think about your training. We have exercises where the reps are low, and I literally write things like sometimes I just write heavy in capital letters, or I'll write something like this is the main lift that we want to think about going heavy on anything like that. Like the way we word this and what we actually prescribe will depend on the individual, their strengths, their goals, and all of that. But we then come into other exercises where we will go for something like 10 to 12 reps, and it is more of a focus on building the muscle and building the shape. And if I actually come back to myself and my girls that I work with, usually we have the goal to do both, which is why we factor both into the session. So people will say to me, like, I really want to hit a squat PB or a leg press PB or a hip thrust PB because I want to build my strength. I want to be a strong female, I want the ego hit of hitting PBs, but I also want the physical benefits of gaining strength. And I think that's awesome. I think it's so cool to be pumped and be motivated to hit heavy lifts and then brag about them to your mates or on Instagram or whatever. Like go off. If you're lifting heavy shit, I love this. But then you also do want that actual physical benefit of being a strong female, having strong muscles, having strength overall, having bone strength. We talk about the benefits of all these things so much. So I think it's cool to have exercises in our program that are the lower rep range, and we've put them in there intentionally to be like, let's hit this heavy lift, let's progress with the weight, let's get after this as a heavy lift, and that's going to increase your strength. Then, like I said, people will say to me at the same time, I really want to build my glutes. I want to build my quads, my hammies, my delts, whatever it might be for the individual. And then we can put exercises in there. If we look at something like lat raises, for example, no one's doing lat raises because they're like, I want to hit a max lift on a lat raise, right? Same thing with like abductions for the glutes. We're not doing abductions in the mentality of like, I'm gonna go for a one RM on my abductions, right? So we can have a session. You might have a session where you go, I am gonna go for a 1 RM on a hip thrust, and then I'm gonna go into what we would call accessory work that are like smaller movements that are still gonna work similar muscles to the hip thrust, but they're gonna work them in that little bit of a different way, like higher reps to build muscle. So the reason I wanted to bring this up, and the thing I just want people to think about is if you do see content that is kind of one-sided in terms of, like I said before, don't worry about body composition, just focus on building strength or focus on performance. Or then, you know, we see people on the complete flip side that are just doing full bodybuilder style training. It's not to say that any of these are wrong. Some people do just want to do, like I said, bodybuilding style training. They don't really care about building strength, they just want to build the muscle and the shape. That's awesome. Go off. There's far worse shit people could be doing with their lives. Then on the other side, we have people who don't care about actually building shape, building muscle. They want to keep those reps low. They do want to hit those one RMs, they want to hit max lifts, and they really just want to focus on getting stronger. That's awesome as well. Again, go off. I love both of these things. But what I want to point out is we can do both. We can have a program that factors in both. So if you see content or you see people that are just really one-sided, just keep in mind it doesn't have to be a choice. If you do have a goal, like if someone says, I want to do a powerlifting competition, obviously, then you would want to gear this person's training predominantly towards getting stronger so you can do well in your powerlifting competition. On the flip side, again, if someone wants to do a bodybuilding competition, you're gonna gear most of their training towards building their body, believe it or not, right? So if someone's goal is to hone in on one of these things, that's awesome. And if people are making content because they're a coach or they're someone who does hone in on one of those things, again, that's awesome. But I think the thing we just want to catch and call out is if people take it too far as to be like, you don't ever have to think about the other one, or kind of starting to imply that it's wrong to think about the other one, just focus on this one. If that's your goal, awesome, just focus on that one. But if you have a goal to do both, you can. So just keep that in mind when you do see content that's like, stop thinking about body composition, just focus on performance. That's awesome. I do love the theory behind that message of like stop overthinking the way we look and stop just doing everything because of the way we look or for the way we look. But I don't think we have to go as far as to be like, you shouldn't care about that at all. Because if you're like, oh no, I do care about it. I like to go to the gym and I would like to go to the gym for months and then have some physique changes to show for that. That is actually one of my goals. That doesn't have to be a bad goal. I feel like I'm going a little bit off topic, and I've spoken about this on the podcast and on Instagram over the years, but we can see a lot of content that almost starts to shame people who want to do things for the way they look. And we see this with nutrition, we see this with training, where it's just this message of like, don't care about the way you look, just care about the way you feel. Can it be okay that I care about both? I definitely care about both. Personally, and I work with a lot of clients who care about both. And I don't think it has to be a bad thing. I do not think we have to choose between eating and training for the way we look versus eating and training for the way we feel. I think that we can factor in both and we can work towards both with our training and with our nutrition. And if we bring it back to training here, I think if you do have goals to want to build your strength and get stronger, that's awesome. If you would also like to build certain parts of your physique at the same time, that's awesome too. And we can factor in both to a program. Think about how many episodes we've done about like building a program and what that looks like. This is exactly what I go through with myself and my clients. Are there any big lifts, any things that you're really loving and you want to work towards and you're close to hitting a PB and you want to keep that in there so you can hit that PB, that's awesome. Then I literally say to people, any body parts that we want to hone in on and build a little bit more or scale back a little bit more, if you've built the big shoulders, you might want to lay off the shoulder work for a while. But the point I'm trying to make here is that we can definitely program towards both. And if you have goals to want to work on both, I don't think we should be shaming that. I don't think we should be implying that that's wrong. I definitely think when it's approached in the right way, it can be a really positive thing. Okay, moving on to the next thing I had on my list. This is coming back to something we did speak about probably a few months ago now, but I just feel like it's worth touching on again in a little bit of a different way. We spoke a while back on the podcast about people needing to calm down and not stress too much if they miss the odd session here or there. And I want to speak about this in a little bit of a different way today. But if we just recap that previous convo really quickly, I said in that episode, if someone is doing a training program that's like four sessions a week and you're so consistent, you're ticking off your four sessions, and then you just happen to have a day where shit hits the fan, someone gets sick, you get stuck at work, like something really crazy happens, and you're like, wow, I actually just didn't get that session done. If you look back over a 10-week period and you've done four sessions a week and then there's been one odd session that you missed, and in that week you did three instead, you're not going to look back and be like, oh my God, like everything went to shit because they missed one session out of 40.

unknown 14:02

Right?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

And we spoke about a similar thing in that episode where if someone's really consistent with their training on an ongoing basis and then they go on a holiday for one week or two weeks or whatever, again, I don't think we need to be doing like hotel workouts and jump squats in the hotel room and sit-ups and all of this shit. Our training should be structured and progressive to move towards our goals, like we just spoke about in that last point. And then if we have a week or two where we do go on a holiday and we're not going to be in our usual gym, we're not going to be doing our usual programming, it's totally fine to have a little breather, just have that week or two off training, pick up where we left off. And again, similar to what I just said, if we step back and we look over a year and you're like, I was really consistent for 48 weeks, and then I had two weeks off in June and two weeks off in November, that's a solid year of training. And I think I said in that previous episode, if you think about your job, if you work your ass off for 48 weeks a year and then you have a couple of two-week holidays throughout that year, all the work that you did doesn't go to shit. It just stops for a second, then you pick up where you left off and you keep moving forward. Training is exactly the same. If we have that really good consistency in place overall, it's not the odd session or the odd week that is going to make anything come undone. So we covered that hugely a while ago. And I wanted to just kind of point out like a different aspect of this today, just to hone in on that point a little bit more. I work with so many athletes in Eat Lacrobi, predominantly working towards running events, triathlon style events, whether it's tries, 70.3s, or similar, or highrocks is obviously huge at the moment, or similar comps like HyROX. And the thing I want to point out here is whenever we work with these people, and if you're someone who's listening who does these events, if you do them well and you have good structured programming in place, you should know. If you are doing these events and you don't know this, there's a bit of a red flag on your training. Because when we're coming into these events, or anyone who does any sort of competition, whether it's a sport, lifting comps, anything at all, if your programming is smart and structured, you should come into what we refer to as either a D load or a taper or something similar as you get close to these events. So if we look at someone who might be doing, let's say, a triathlon at the end of June, as this person goes throughout their triathlon training, they're probably doing a really intentional triathlon block throughout, you know, March, April, May, maybe even longer, depending on their conditioning, how early they need to start this training block. But you're obviously going to have really intentional triathlon training in place throughout the months leading up to that. If we're looking at the actual race day being at the end of June, as you start to come towards middle of June and especially end of June, your training is going to reduce and scale back. The reason we do this is so that when we get to race day, the body is rested, it's recovered, it's ready to rip into that race. If we think about somebody training very hard, like hitting their max volume, max intensity, like training as hard as they can for that triathlon, you don't want to be doing that in the week of the event. Like you don't want to be going out doing ass-kicking sessions on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then doing a triathlon on the weekend. And I think everybody understands this. And what I want to point out here, and the reason I wanted to bring this up, is even if we then come across to, let's say, like professional athletes, I'm a huge fan of NRL. Let's use NRL. If someone's playing in the NRL grand final, right, which is first weekend of October, the week leading into that grand final, again, they're not doing ass kicking sessions Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then playing in the grand final on the weekend. They're probably doing some very loose, very low-key, like shakeout runs, a little bit of a skill sesh, maybe on the Tuesday, maybe a light one again on the Thursday. And that is it. And what I want to point out here is we are looking at elite professional athletes. When these people get to race day or comp day, they are in the best condition and the best position they could possibly be in to perform at their best. They are at like peak performance. They have just had a very chilled week of training, if not a few. If I look at a lot of my triathletes, obviously my husband does Iron Man, triathlon, similar, his taper starts probably three weeks out from that event. So if he's again got an event at the end of June, as we start to come into that second week of June, training volume reduces. In May, in April, he's doing massive eight-hour rides, 40 kilometer runs, etc. And then as he starts to get closer to that event, again, you don't want to send someone out for an eight-hour ride and a 40k run if you then want them to perform at their best on that weekend. So as he starts to come into the middle of June, those runs and those rides start to come down. The next week they come down even more. That week before the event, they come right down to the point where he'll literally do like a 20-minute bike ride or a four kilometer run. And we're talking about a person who runs about 90Ks a week, right? So the thing I want to point out here is, like I said before, when these athletes get to race day and when they get to event day, they are in peak condition. And they've just had a few very chilled weeks of training. So I know most people listening probably aren't professional or elite athletes, but what I want people to take from this is training is not just dependent on like have to do this session, have to go as hard as I can all the time. If I miss a week, if I have a chilled week, everything's gonna go to shit. Training should be structured, it should be intentional, it should have very intentional phases of peaks and trots. Training should not be go as hard as you can all the time, indefinitely, 365 days a year, 52 weeks a year. The way that we get the benefit from training is through what we call progressive overload. We've spoken about this a million times, where the body gradually gets pushed to new limits over time, and then it gets good at hitting those limits. They no longer become its limits, and then we can start to push it to new ones. The way we do that is by going through phases where we actually do that and we push and we push and we push, and then we step back and we say to the body, hey, you know how you've just pushed and pushed and pushed. Now it's time to step back, have some rest, have some recovery. Let's not forget that another thing we've spoken about on the podcast a lot is that adaptation and growth happens in the rest and the recovery period. So we go into those sessions and we push and push and push, and then we step away from the session and the body starts to go through the recovery process, and this is where it adapts. As it recovers, it rebuilds and repairs a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little bit better, so that next time you push it in that session, it's better equipped to do so. That is the point of training. That's the point of training at anything in life. Gradual pushes and then step back, let the body respond to those pushes and then go again. Step back, go again, step back, go again. And this is why we talk about training in peaks and troths and cycles and pushing hard at times, scaling back at times, etc. And whenever I work with athletes, because we work with a lot of athletes who do go into those events and they taper into those events, and then we obviously look at like what are we doing with nutrition when we're tapering and stuff. And anytime I have these conversations with people, it just kept clocking in my mind, like this is such a cool thing for other people to realize because I think we do have people out there stuck in that mentality of thinking, I just have to go as hard as possible, as often as possible. I just have to push and push and push and push and push. There are definitely times we want to go hard and we want to push. That is where we push the body to the new limits, right? So we absolutely want that in place at times. But then understanding that the way the body responds and adapts to those new limits is when we cut back a little bit. And then, like I said before, then we go again, then we go again, then we go again. And this is why training is such a big ongoing process. But it's just so important to clock that. If you're someone who just thinks, like, I have to bust my ass 24, 7, 52 weeks a year with no D load, no downtime, no taper, can't have a week off, can't have a day off, anything like that. Come back and think, well, elite professional athletes are having tapers and time off and rest days. So if they're the best in the beers, why would we not look at them and go, well, surely it makes sense to do shit similar to what they're doing? An elite athlete tapers and has rest days, but I need to go to the gym every single day. I can't miss a single session. I need to go as hard as possible. Are you saying you need to train harder than an elite athlete? Or do you need to train as smart? As an elite athlete, because going as hard as we can as often as we can with no structure isn't smart training. And again, come back to the best in the biz. They're training in a smart way. They're understanding there are times to really push and send it. And then they go, okay, well, I've done that. I've pushed. I've sent it. I've really pushed my body to the limit. I've gotten the most out of my training. And now it's time to step back and let my body actually recover and adapt to that to then be at peak performance when I want it to be. So I just think that is a cool little thing to think about. If you are someone just stuck in that mentality of like go, go, go, the best in the world aren't just go, go, going. They're training a lot smarter. So really tap in and go like, do I have smart training in place? Or am I just stuck in this mentality of pushing hard training? But it's actually not structured in the best way that it could be. All right, moving on. Next question. We are going to look at should we be eating more on training days versus rest days? First thing you want to say here is this one is going to be very circumstantial. I think that's the word. It depends a lot on the individual and more so the circumstances and more so the training volume. So if we look at someone, for example, I'm going to segue into like endurance athletes or someone who has a really big training volume. When we work with endurance athletes, sometimes their training volume is 20 plus hours a week. And then usually what we can see here is their weekday training or most days of their training, for most people it is weekdays, might be like one to two hour sessions or two one-hour sessions, one in the morning, one in the Avo, give or take. But it's a fairly similar volume day to day. And then they might have one or two big days in the week where they do something, like I said before, an eight-hour black ride, or for a lot of people, very common to have a long run day on a weekend where runs during the week might be 45 minutes to an hour, and then the run on the weekend is two hours, two and a half, three, five hours, depending on what you're training for. So when we work with athletes like this, straight away we look and go, okay, cool. Well, if day-to-day training is fairly similar, but then we've clearly got these big outlier sessions, we definitely start to look at doing higher days to support those sessions. Obviously, if someone is typically training for an hour a day and then they have a day where they train for four hours, we're gonna want to account for that, right? So I'm not gonna get into that too much today because this is different depending on the individual, what they're training for, what that volume looks like. But obviously, if you're in that position, you definitely want to think about that. If we come back over to the point of the episode being more so gym girls, so we're in the gym and we're probably doing hour sessions, give or take, most days of the week, or let's say three to five days a week. Again, give or take. I definitely don't think we need to eat more on training days, but I think we can if we want to. And this is usually just something that I will discuss with the individual. First of all, do you like the idea of higher and lower days? For some people, that's just a pain in the ass. Like we're already monitoring food and we're monitoring training, and most people are working and running around after partners, family, all of these things. It's like, it's just another thing to think about. Like, shit, am I on a high day or a low day? I have to drop my cows, up my cows, and then when you're planning your week, you can't just repeat the same days because you're like, oh no, that's a high day, but that's a low day. Like it can just literally become another pain in the arse. So this is a perfect example where I talk about finding the sweet spot of understanding the science and the facts of nutrition, but then coming over and just going, as a real life human being that has to carry out this shit on an ongoing basis, does that suit you or does it seem like it would be more trouble than it's worth? Again, if we come over to endurance athletes for a second, sometimes you just have to have the conversation with that person of like, you have chosen to be an endurance athlete. You're doing these massive sessions. With that is gonna come you having to navigate some high and low days. There's no way we're sending you out for a four-hour session on the same intake that you're eating on days that you're not training or you're training really low volume. So sometimes we just have to have that convo of like, this just comes with the sport and the activity you've chosen. But we still always want to come back to anytime we can make this as practical and sustainable and enjoyable as possible, we want to do that. So if we come back to gym girls, we're definitely not in that position where it's like you have to eat more on these training days because we're not doing big outlier sessions that are gonna kick your ass if you haven't eaten extra food. If we look at setting someone's nutrition up, when we set it up, we set it up to support the overall training that they're doing and like the average of training that they're doing. So again, if we're looking at a gym girl who goes to gym for an hour give or take a few times a week, when we've set the original nutrition plan up, we've factored that into the plan. And then because we don't have any outlier sessions or anything big or crazy happening, we don't have to adjust that plan. So we can roll with the same intake every day. We don't have to start looking at high and low dates. So anytime I approach this with someone whose training volume is similar to that, usually I just go through the process of first of all asking, like, is that something you actually want to do? If it's not, we don't even really have to have a conversation about it. If they're thinking like, oh, maybe I do, or they start to communicate, like, wow, I really feel the difference between like my hunger on training days. I feel like I don't have energy for my sessions. If they're indicating any red flags like that, or just anything that it would make sense to then dig a little deeper on high and low days to support that, then we will. So I would say if I look at my clients and everyone that I work with, it is a really even split or it's a big mix of people who are adjusting nutrition for training days versus ones who aren't. So I think it's just important to go through that process of just asking, is it something that needs to be done? Like, can we see a big obvious reason this needs to be done? Like you have a massive session one day. If it's not, then we just come back and go, for this individual personally, are there any red flags or any indicators that it might be something we need to dig deeper into? If there's not, then we can just ask the question of like, well, is it something that you would want to do, or does it seem like more trouble than it's worth? We haven't detected any reason that you need to do it. So if you also don't want to do it, then we don't have to. If you do want to, or you even just want to experiment with it and see how you like it, then it's something you can look at. And sometimes it's as simple as, you know, somebody might be on 2200 calories a day, for example. And then they go, okay, cool. Well, on training days, I'm gonna hit 23 and on rest days I'm gonna hit 21. So it's not really that big of a deal. It's pretty crazy. And like I said, sometimes people just experiment with it. And I'll just say to someone, let's just run with it for a week or two. If you do feel like it's more trouble than it's worth, let's piss it off. If you're loving it, awesome, we'll keep doing it. So that's just what I'd be thinking about. If you have ever wondered that or if you're questioning that, I'd kind of just go through that process. Is there an obvious reason to do so? Is there any indicators that you would might benefit from doing so? And is it something that you would want to do? And then this brings us to our last question. So I'm gonna read it out. I've got it written here, but I haven't written it very well. So obviously we'll explain it better. But it says, if going heavier takes the work out of the muscles that are supposed to be doing the lift, should I go heavier or stay at the lighter weight where I can feel the right muscles? It's actually not worded that badly. But basically, this is something that people commonly ask, and it's just a cool thing to dig into, I think. If we use an exercise as an example, let's use a hip thrust, because I think it's a common one where we see this happen. If we know that the glutes should be like the big driving force behind the hip thrust, it can be common for people to hit a point where they're like, I think I could go heavier, but when I do, I don't feel it too much in my glutes. It more so becomes like my whole body starting to really get behind this weight to really thrust it up with a lot of momentum. I don't feel like my glutes are doing much of that lift anymore. It's more my whole body and the momentum from my body getting that thrust up. And we can see this with a lot of other exercises as well. I think a good example can even be like row variations. So any sort of cable row, bar bar row, dumbar row, where we can have really good technique, we can feel all the right muscles in the back working. And then as we start to get too heavy, people pretty much just start yanking the weights in. And again, it's that whole body getting behind it. It's a big yank, it's a big movement of momentum. And then it starts to be like, well, are the right muscles lifting this now, or is it just any and every muscle kicking in to try and help me lift it because it's so heavy. So then coming back to the question of like, should I go heavier if I then start to take the work out of the muscles that are supposed to be doing the lift? In my opinion, no. I am very strict on technique and mind muscle connection, making sure we're using the right muscles, making sure we're doing everything correctly and progressing with that correct technique. So if we think about something like the hip thrust, people are doing these because they want to have stronger glutes. If you go to such a heavy weight that you take a lot of the work out of the glutes because it's so heavy, you're just getting your whole body behind it. It starts to defeat the purpose. And I think if we look at what happens here, if we do just go up and up and up in weight and we do start to get into this shitty technique and a lot of momentum, a lot of swinging, then again, we just start to take the work out of all the muscles that we're trying to work and the whole point of doing the lift. And then once we do that, we get pretty stuck there. Like when people do this, they get really stuck there because it's like, you know, maybe I could do a hundred kilo hip thrust really well, but I've pushed myself up to 120, 130. Now I want to go to 140, 150. The glutes have been left for dead back in 100, and now you're going up to 140, 150, all of these things. So what tends to happen is we never fix it. And that's why I said, in my opinion, no, we don't get to this point because once we get there, it's very hard to come back. I think it is so beneficial to spend time on lifts, get things working the right way. And this is why I'm such a big fan of technique checks and getting your coach to look at your technique, work out why you might not be feeling it in certain muscles when we should be. Why do we lose the technique at certain points? There's so many things that we want to look at and refine because when we do, then we can progress. If we come back to that example of the hip thrust, then we can progress through 110, 120, 130 with the right technique, using the right muscles, and actually getting the benefit out of the exercise that we want to get out of it. I think it's really shitty to think about how many people bust their ass to get to the gym, but then when they're there, it's like, how much benefit are you actually getting from your training if you've let it go in this direction? And that kind of ties back to even the very first thing I said at the start of the podcast. So many people go to the gym and they faff around and they do weird shit because they don't know any better. This is just another way we can see that happen where people have lost the point of the training. They've lost the technique, therefore they've lost the benefit. So I think if we look at like tangibly what to do here, because I'm mindful not to just tell everybody to scale all their weights back all the time, because obviously we know we need heavy weights, progressive overload, pushing close to failure to actually benefit from our training. But even if we tap into that for a second, we want heavy weights. Like if we use the hip thrust example, we want heavy weights that are heavy for the glutes. We want progressive overload where the glutes are being progressively overloaded. We want to push close to failure where the glutes are failing, not where the whole body is failing. Because, like I said before, the glutes could have been left for dead long before that. So coming back to what I think we should tangibly do if we're in this position is I think first thing is you want to get technique checked because sometimes it's just simple. Like so many of my girls will send things like a hip thrust or an RDL, and overall they're doing it really well. Like there's no major red flags, we're not doing anything wrong, but so many little things that we just want to point out, like, oh, the position of the feet, position of the hips, we went too high into the lockout, we didn't go high enough. With the hip thrust, really common to be like, we're too high up on the shoulder blades, we're not high enough on the shoulder blades. There's so many little things that we look at where if we see that and we tell the person, like, hey, try it this way, so often people are like, Yeah, wow, I can feel that so much better. And it can be as simple a fix as that, and then they can start progressing with that refined technique and building up through the weights and actually getting the benefit of working the muscles we want to work because the technique is really solid. At the same time, sometimes we have exercises programmed for people and they do start to say this, like, yeah, I can sometimes feel it, but sometimes I can't. If I go really heavy, I can't really feel it. And I think it's cool to point out here, not everybody is gonna do every exercise really well. If we think about so many different human bodies and the anatomy and the structure of someone's body, there's so many differences. Obviously, we've got like really tall, lanky people, we've got people with wide hips, narrow hips, wide shoulders, narrow shoulders, and then different injuries and strengths and weaknesses and everything on top of that as well. And when we factor in all of those things, like I just said, there are certain movements that some people can do really well and certain movements that some people can't. If I use myself as an example, I think I've said this on the podcast before, but I have very narrow hips, very narrow hips for a female. And it's that's not bad, it's not wrong, but it's something that I know I would never do a heavy barbell squat for this reason. Because when I go down into a squat, I don't have much movement, I don't have much range, I get very locked up. If anyone knows what a butt wink is, if you don't, you can Google it. I don't know what might come up if you Google butt wink, but it's a common term in the fitness industry where essentially the pelvis just kind of gets stuck and the hips and the bum and everything have no choice but to tuck under the deeper they get in the squat. And usually this is just because we don't have much mobility and much range in the hips. And for me, I see it clear as day. Once I go down into a squat, that butt wink kicks in, and you can literally just see my hips have nowhere to go because they don't have much space because they're so narrow. So it's a little bit random, it's a little bit off topic, but it's just a perfect example of understanding, like, yeah, there's definitely little things I could do to have a better squat technique, but then in terms of getting the most bang for my butt from my training, I would look and go, well, I look, I do look and go, a heavy barbell squat is just a heavy lower body push exercise. What other ways can I push weight and go heavy where this particular problem or this particular thing that I have going on isn't going to be a factor? So I look at things like leg press, hack squat, or single leg variations like Bulgarians. I've been doing really heavy, hard Bulgarians at the moment. So it's just another way that my legs can push weight without that thing becoming a problem. If I was to continuously try and progress with a back squat, I wouldn't get a lot of benefit from it the same way someone who has a really good squat would, and the same way I would from something like a hack squat or a Bulgarian. Because there are just going to be certain movements that are a little bit more suited to different body types. And I think it's a sweet spot. And I like to approach my own training this way and approach my clients' training this way. I think there's a sweet spot of being like, okay, cool. Well, if there's things that you're not as good at or are a little bit weaker for you, we can absolutely work on those things. We don't just have to go like, oh, I'm shit at this thing, so I'll never do it, right? Because it kind of defeats the purpose of training. But it's that sweet spot of understanding there are things that I would benefit from working on the technique and the range and my control, my tempo, all of these things. And then there are things that I would benefit from absolutely sending it on. Because my technique is good. My range, my tempo, my control, my mobility, none of those things are compromised on that exercise because those exercises just suit me and my structure really well. So I can focus on just getting after heavy weights, progressive overload, like absolutely sending it with those things while also just practicing some of the other things that I'm not as good at. I think training can absolutely be a sweet spot of those things. So coming back to the question, I don't think we should push to a heavier weight if we know that doing so just takes all the work out of the muscles that we want to be working and takes away our technique, et cetera. And again, I think even this is a sweet spot in a fine line. You might be at a point where, like we said before, your 100 kilo hip thrust is really good. The glutes work really well, it's awesome, very beneficial. And then you notice that, like, when you go to 110, it really starts to go. So you might spend your time at 100 and then occasionally push that 105, see if you feel any different. You might be like, oh yeah, it's starting to get a bit better, but it wasn't perfect. Gonna stay at the 100 for a while, work on the technique. This is where, a bit of a side note, but it's worth mentioning. This is where we can then have phases where we go, let's step away from the hip thrust for a bit and work on maybe a single leg hip thrust or a different variation. Try and work on some of those weaknesses, some of those things we've got going on, and then return to the hip thrust at a later date. And if we fix some of those things, maybe we can hit the 105 or the 110 with the good technique and feel the glutes. So I think if we just ignore all of that and be like heavier, heavier, heavier as heavier as I can go with momentum and my technique's pretty much gone, but I'm just going for heavy weights now. Then we've got to look and go, how much benefit are we actually getting from that training? Is it working the things we want to work? Are we progressing with the things we want to progress with? Or are we just stuck in this push for heavy, heavy, heavy, even though we're not doing it that well? So I think it's cool to have a good understanding of the exercises that you do well and you would benefit and should be pushing heavy with, and then have an understanding of the things that you need to just cap a little bit to work on the technique and just know that we can rotate through so many different things. I've said this on the podcast before. We can have certain lifts in our program that we're going really heavy with, others that we're working on. Then we can come into a new program, work on something else, step away from that heavy lift, work on individual aspects of it, return to that heavy lift, see if we can push it harder. This is why training is such an ongoing, structured, intentional process. See how we've gone full circle in the episode. So I think that's probably a good place to wrap up. The fact that we've gone full circle, we're back where we started. But I think just some cool things to think about in there. I have said recently, obviously, in recent episodes, I've been talking about my own muscle gain phase, and training is a huge component of the muscle gain phase. Obviously, I'm not gonna gain muscle without wicked training. So I am planning on doing an episode about my own training um probably next week or maybe the week after. And we'll probably even visit some of this stuff. I'll look at my own individual exercises that I'm working on right now, and we can talk about whether I've got them in there to go heavy or what I'm working on, what I'm thinking about when I do those exercises, why I've programmed them the way that I have, in the order that I have, and included certain things and left out certain things, etc. So, like always, she's got plenty more to say, but that is all from me today. Like always, guys, if you've got something out of the episode, please chuck it on your Instagram story, tag eat underscore like underscore Ruby. This is literally how we get the podcast out there to help more people and help motivate me to keep recording the pods. So if you're getting something out of it, help me, help you, help everyone. That is all for me today. I'll be back very soon.