EP 57: Eric Barber on Choosing the Right Reps for Strength, Muscle, and Fat Loss

Are you doing the wrong number of reps for the results you actually want?

In this episode, Cathy Meehan talks with Eric Barber of Barberic Training about one of the most common sources of confusion in fitness: reps, sets, weight, and how they affect the body. Eric brings decades of coaching experience to a practical conversation about strength, muscle growth, endurance, fat loss, and why the “right” workout depends on your goal, your season of life, and the quality of your movement.

Together, Cathy and Eric also discuss the importance of consistency, nutrition, coaching, progressive training, and listening to your body. Whether you are just getting started, returning to fitness, or trying to better understand your current workouts, this conversation offers simple guidance for building strength and health in a sustainable way.

This conversation covers:

• The difference between low, moderate, and high rep ranges
• Why 1–5 reps are typically used for strength and power
• How 6–12 reps support muscle growth and body composition
• What high-rep training actually does for muscle endurance
• Why fat loss depends more on nutrition and cardio than high reps alone
• How to use progressive weight training safely
• Why quality of reps matters more than ego lifting
• The role of consistency, coaching, and lifestyle change in long-term health

If you are a parent, caregiver, or health-conscious adult trying to take better care of your body, this episode is a practical reminder that small, consistent choices can become life-changing habits. Start where you are, move with intention, and give your health the priority it deserves.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Are you doing the wrong number of reps and actually sabotaging your health? Should you go heavyweight and low reps? Or should you go lightweight and high reps? I mean, really, what is the answer? Well, on today's episode of the Mehan Mission Podcast, we're going to talk with Eric Barber from Barbaric Training. He's going to help break down the strategy behind the reps. So, really, how do they impact strength and muscle and endurance? So, if you're ready to find out the right approach for you, let's welcome Eric to the show and let's get started. Well, hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Mehan Mission Podcast. And it is our favorite online trainer, Eric Barber, with Barbaric Training. Eric, so great to see you today. How you been doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I'm good. I'm good. How are you, Kevin?

SPEAKER_03 1:06

I'm doing great. Actually, I I do have to admit, my hamstrings are a little bit sore, but I wanted to get you on today because there is a lot of confusion and discussion on reps. And I know me personally, I have the question. I mean, am I supposed to do heavy weights and low reps? Am I supposed to do, you know, lightweights and high reps? Am I trying to bulk up? Am I trying to lose weight? There are so many questions, and I know you are the guy to answer them all. So let's just start off with that. Um what does a person need to know about reps, especially if, you know, I'm working out and I want to see certain results. Where do I start? What's the strategy?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I love this topic. I know I say that every time, but I do. I geek out on this topic. Um what we're talking about is not just reps, we're talking about sets and reps, okay? Different training modalities. So to break it, you know, there's a lot of noise out there now. A lot of know-it-alls, a lot of people saying you gotta do this, you gotta do that. What I've been doing this for 30, 40 years now. So what I like to do is always go back to the basics, you know. There are there are people, you know, that that paved the way for us a long, long time ago and and did all of this work. And we learn from them and we've been adding to it, adding to it, and then we just get more scientific about it. But then it's sometimes it just gets to a point where it's just so much data and so much science, and everybody's a know-it all, and you're it's getting hard to know the difference between what's real and what's not anymore. So I agree. I like to take people back to the basics, okay? And so the basics are if you keep your repetitions between one to five reps, you are training for extreme strength or you are training for power. So when you look at people like Olympic Olympic weightlifters, what you see in the Olympics, versus power lifters, right? Huge difference between the actual look of each of those kinds of athletes as well as what they're trying to do. Okay, but they're still using the same rep range. So how in the like just starting there alone, like how in the world do you even break into this? So a power lifter um is basically they're training on three events, right? The deadlift, the back squat, and the bench press. And those are known as the slow lifts. Okay, so power lifters are going for extreme strength in that one rep range, a one rep max, right? That's what they train for in three events. And to me, um, it's awesome, but I can't train like that all the time for year after year after year. That would drive me crazy, right? I'm more of a multi-athlete adventure style, you know. Everything I train for is to be able to do cool things out there, right? So uh but powerlifters, they really, they really are trying to prove how strong they are on those three lifts. But they call it the slow lifts because the barbell moves very, very slow. Okay. Now, an Olympic weightlifter, what you see in the in the Olympics, way more complex. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily harder, it's just more complex of a movement because now you're adding speed. Okay. But their three movements are the snatch and the clean and the jerk. The snatch is one movement where you take a barbell from the ground to up and overhead in one fast explosive movement, right? And the clean and jerk is where you break it up into two movements. You clean it up to your chest, you take a deep breath, and then you punch it overhead for a jerk. Okay. So the back squat, the deadlift, and the bench press for the three slow lifts of powerlifting, and the snatch, the clean, and the jerk for the Olympic lifts, the power of the explosive Olympic weightlifting. So those guys train for one rep as well. But two totally different athletes. When you look at a bodybuilder, I mean, I'm sorry, a power lifter, they um they're usually big and husky and and they're going for that maximum weight. When you look at an Olympic weightlifter, they're all lean and muscular and ripped, and it's like, what? Well, when you add that speed in there, you have to train a totally different way. So when they train, they usually train in the one to five rep ranges. Okay. So that's that's the first, that's the that's where we start, right? Those guys are extreme athletes. Extreme, yes, extreme strength and extreme power. Okay. Um the Olympic weightlifters are more power because power is strength plus speed equals power. Okay. Power lifters, it's kind of a they shouldn't really call it power lifting because power indicates that they're using speed.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Yeah, you would think power lifters.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, they the bar moves very, very slow when they're lifting those extreme lifts. So anyway, so that that that's the ability to literally like run through a wall. You know what I mean? That's very short uh energy, and it's it's just boom. I mean, it is power or it is strength. Okay. When you get into reps number six through 12, that's more of the hypertrophy stage. Okay. Hypertrophy meaning muscle growth. Okay. You can change the your physique, you can change the look of your body. Like a sculptor with clay, if you want bigger shoulders, you can literally train in a way within that six to twelve rep range where you can trigger muscle hypertrophy or muscle growth within certain body parts. Okay. Okay. This is where bodybuilders live. Okay. Bodybuilders want to build and sculpt their body. Their reps are in the six to twelve rep range. Okay. We'll come back to this. I'll I'll tell you how to train in these ranges, right? But right now I'm just laying that framework. Laying that framework. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

No, that's good because you know, I'm very selfishly doing this interview with you because I'm thinking to myself, where do I need to be? And I'm sure that members of our community, if they're either, you know, they're working out, it they've been working out or they're starting to work out or whatever, they need to know, you know, what they need to know about reps themselves. So when they're conditioning and training their own body. So so I'm listening and thinking in my head. So keep going.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

Keep going. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

So we've established the one to five rep range. This is where those type of athletes live. Okay. The bodybuilder or people just looking to change their appearance, they'll use bodybuilding techniques to change their appearance. So whether they're a bodybuilder or not, that six to twelve rep range is the magic rep range. Okay. When you get into 15 reps and more, it could be 15 reps all the way in up to 100 reps. Okay. Let's say.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Or more. Or more. Um, now you're getting into muscle endurance. You're not going to be very strong when you pick a weight that you do 30 times. You're going to be using a pretty light weight. But what you're training your body to do is muscle endurance, muscle endurance, muscle endurance. So when you look at endurance athletes like cyclists and people like that, they tend to lean more towards the higher rep ranges. You're not going to see a lot of uh top-tier cyclists doing one to five rep ranges.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Okay, and that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Just like you're not going to see a power lifter hop on a bike and ride for three hours, right? Like it the different rep ranges do different things to your body. Do different things to your body. So uh that 15 rep range and up can go up and up and up and up. So CrossFit is very, very interesting. CrossFit, you know, it's changed a lot since I I was in on the ground floor with all of that. I got started in 2006. Um, I think I was the first official CrossFit gym in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was the 150th cross um affiliate worldwide. Okay, so now there's over 15,000. So I was back in the very early days, back before we had all the cool equipment and everything. We had to build a lot of our own equipment. It was crazy. I had to bull, I had to build my own pull-up rig. It was it was crazy. Oh gosh. Yeah, it was it was crazy. So um, but CrossFitters, at least back in the early days, very, very interesting because our rep ranges were anywhere between one rep, like a power lifter or an Olympic weightlifter, all the way in up to hundreds of reps for one exercise. So, what I loved about CrossFit was I got to be good at all things. Now, over the years, CrossFit has changed, and now it's become well, I don't know. It's it's it's just very heavily focused on competing. Whereas in the beginning, it used to be a lot about it, it was all fresh and new, and we were trying different things, and we were guinea pigging ourselves on everything, and it was just a wonderful golden era learning stage of of CrossFit. Now it's it's very, very different. It's much, much more professional and much sleeker and um quite frankly, very competition-based, you know, even within local gyms. So um, yeah. Now I'm not saying anything bad about CrossFit. I just I got out right before COVID. I sold my CrossFit gym. And so that was my last time coaching CrossFit. Although, funny thing, I just recently started at a CrossFit here in Charlotte, North Carolina as just a substitute coach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Oh, fun.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

I did that because now that I'm an online trainer, I literally sit in my room in my office all the time working. And I don't, I go I go from being an in-person coach, yelling, screaming, cheering, hugging, you know, scolding, all you know, very, very, uh, very people oriented to now I'm just by myself. And so I was just praying about it, and I was like, I was like, I need to get back in front of people. I need to have that that balance again.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

So yeah, that's very healthy. Yeah, it's very healthy, and people need to realize that themselves too. So I went to a really be so isolated.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah. I went to a really cool uh local CrossFit gym here. It's huge. And I told them who I was and how long I'd been doing it, and all of my experience and all my credentials and all my certifications, and they were like, come on, it was awesome. So I love those guys. Yeah, more more on that in the future. I just started this week, it was great. I'm uh I'm just coaching one one night a week, and it's it's a blast. I love it. Um, so anyway, so those cross footers are very interesting because we we do all rep ranges and it confuses the body a lot, which is really cool. Um, the body has an amazing ability to adapt. The human body has an amazing ability to adapt. And so when you're training with all rep ranges, your body is just like, man, we got to get in shape because who knows what this guy's gonna do to us again. You know what I mean? So um, so yeah, so so those are the basics of the rep ranges. You've got your one to five, you've got your six to twelve, and then you've got anything past 15.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Okay, well, that's interesting. And just I just want to kind of hit back on the high reps because just something that I've heard is that if people are looking for fat loss, and I'm sure you've heard this before, that you have to do high reps. So what is what is your take on that? Is that a myth or is that true?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

It's old school. It is okay, it's old school way of thinking. Um, to say, oh, I'm gonna lift light weights because I want to lose fat, it's kind of like saying, I I don't want to get all big and muscular overnight. Like I don't want to be like these muscle dudes. So I'm just gonna go lightweight and do a thousand reps on something, and I'm just gonna lose fat. That that's kind of not the way it works. Yeah, I think we talked about it before, but um, you know, when you want to lose body fat, you need to look number one at your nutrition. Nutrition Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

I just had that, I I had that discussion less than an hour ago with someone talking about, you know, my weight loss came from yes, working out, but I mean, I think 80% of it was because of my tweaking my nutrition. Yeah, and and that was it.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

So nutrition is king. There's no disnutrition is king. When you're in your 20s, it doesn't seem like that because you have unlimited energy and you're bulletproof and your body, you know, can bounce back from anything the next day, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Um, but in your 20s, your body is still progressing up. It's when we get in our 30s that it starts to to kind of plateau and then starts the age of decline, right? Um so young people are all over Instagram and they look amazing and this and that, and they're giving all kinds of advice, but they don't really know because their body is still just on the they're still living the life.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

So yeah. So I you just wait.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

You just wait. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

So so it's better to always start with your nutrition first. That's what I do with all my clients, right? And the trick is with my clients to get them leaned out and eating well is to make it fun because people will not follow a meal plan that is an absolute drag, or it's too complex, or it's too hard. People just won't do it. Not over time. They might be able to keep it up for a couple weeks, but over time, no way. No way. You've got to make it fun. So I always start with nutrition. And then after that, you get into cardio and you've got your zone one, zone two, zone three, zone four, and zone five, right? And zone two is that perfect heart rate range to maximize losing body fat. If you go too high, your body will start to use uh muscle glycogen, muscle energy, right? We don't want that when we want to lean out. We want to tap into our stored body fat. So you want your heart rate a little bit higher than just going out for a walk, and you want it a little bit lower than being out of breath. That's your zone to. If people want to check out, I did a cool video on that on um on my Instagram and Facebook. Um, if anybody wants to go that, I've literally labeled it zone. So zone training.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Great, that'll be a good resource.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

So, so nutrition and then fat burning cardio. Okay. When you're training with light weights and doing tons of reps, it I wouldn't say that it's a true fat burning. You know what I mean? I think it's more muscle endurance. You're teaching you're teaching that body how to handle low-grade muscular pain, giving you muscle endurance. Okay.

unknown 16:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

So there's there's more to that. There's more than that. Yeah. So um, so yeah, so let's let's talk about people's goals. You mentioned fat loss. So the person that wants to build muscles, let's say we've started working out and then now we just want to continue to build muscles. My guess is that for me personally, I need to move into the moderate reps.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Right. And maybe a little bit heavier weights. Right. And um, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

So the the data is coming out now, finally. Well, the data's been out for a long time, but the general and and the bodybuilders and a lot of us have already known all this, but the general public is finally starting to listen now. Um, because guys like Dr. Andrew Huberman and all these, all these guys are coming out and they're proving that as we age, strength training with heavy weights, with good form, not sloppy form, but with good form, training heavy weights is really gonna help um extend your lifespan. It's gonna give you a better quality of life. And people are like, oh, I need to start living heavy. And it's like, that's what we've been telling you for all these years, right? So literally, when you think of elderly people, um, they lose the ability to function, you know, to get up out of a chair. It's the loss of strength that really you know, so and and then your bones get more brittle and that kind of thing. So, yes, that six to twelve rep range, I guess you could say six to fourteen, because I said 15 plus, right? But if you think about it, when you and I started working out together, I put you on a 15, 12, 10, 8 workout.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

15 was a good warm-up weight. It's your first set on an exercise, right? And it's just meant to just kind of wake your muscles up, wake up those those movement patterns, right? And just and just get your body kind of clicked on to okay, we're doing we're doing a leg extension now, or we're doing a bench press now, or something like that. It just kind of wakes your body up, and it's like saying, This is what we're doing now, and it's with a light enough weight that you flood the body with um uh circulation and you're starting to lubricate the joints, better, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

So then I have just get used to the movement, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Then I had you go a little bit heavier for a set of 12, then a little bit heavier for a set of uh 10, and then a little bit set heavier for a set of eight.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Now in your third month of training with me, that the last month of my 12-week challenge, we bumped it up to a 15, 12, 10, 8, and then a burnout set of 15. Do you remember that? I had to go back to a lighter weight. I remember that shoot that burn, right? With my guys that want to put on a lot of muscle, I'll have them do a 15, 12, 10, 8, 6. That way they can hit that heavy set of eight and six. Okay. Yep. So that to me is muscle strengthening, you know. But you've got higher reps in there and you've got lower reps in there. So it's like a to me, it's like the perfect range for building strength, building power, um hyper. Endurance is in there, building muscle endurance and and changing the way that you look. Like I said, I love this stuff. I geek out on it. I think beginners should start with three sets of everything. And I think as you get in better shape, as the months go by, you bump it up to four sets on everything, you bump it up to five sets on everything. When you start getting into, you know, because we talked about reps. So if we can just take a second and talk about sets, how many of these sets do we have? Yeah, explain that.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

Sets and reps, three sets.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah, beginners three sets. You're just you just need a good solid month of not training hard, but training consistent. In the beginning, consistency will always be better than intensity. Always.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Getting those workouts in in the first month is way more important than somebody who's like, dang it, I'm gonna lose weight and I'm gonna get back in shape, and they go in and they hit it too hard, and they either burn out from fatigue or adrenal fatigue or muscle fatigue, whatever, or joint, they start having joint issues right off the bat. They just haven't given it enough time to be consistent with three sets of everything and making it a habit. Okay. Second month you can bump it up to four sets, third month, you can bump it up to five sets. When you start getting into more sets per exercise of five sets, that's where it's getting kind of extreme. You're either training for something in particular, okay? Like training for a certain sport or training for a certain lift or something. Like, I just think it's a little bit unnecessary. Okay. Now I've done workouts where I'll get to the fifth set and I'm like, man, I feel like I misjudged my numbers. I'm feeling a lot like I want to keep going. So every once in a while I'll I'll be instinctive and I'll do like a sixth or seventh set on something. Um, every once in a while, I'm kind of crazy. Every once in a while I'll do 10 sets of 10 on something, but it is not a fun way to train.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

So what about um if rather than increasing The number of sets, increasing the weight. You see what I'm saying? And so, like rather than doing four sets of something, I do three sets, but increase the weight that I was doing before. Yeah, so that's what I meant.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

So, like when we did three, when I had you in your first month, three sets, we did a 15, 12, 10, and progressively increasing the weight a little bit. Okay. Um, okay, yes. When you when you see some people's programming, I see some trainers programming, and it'll be uh something like three sets of 10 or three sets of 12. I I think that we should progressively get heavier each set. That's how we get stronger, though.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Be the variable.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah, you kind of learn your way around the gym, you kind of learn your way around each exercise and learning what different plates feel like and that kind of thing. Uh for me going in the gym, if I had let's say my workout had five exercises, and each of those five exercises was five sets of those five exercises, right? And it was like five sets of ten. So, like five sets of five sets of ten, five sets of ten, all the way down. That would to me that would be very boring.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

I like I like progressive.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

Easier to keep track of in your head, though, but it is, yep, it is for sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Um, but I like the progressively heavier. Plus, that helps us reach our goals of getting stronger. Okay. Now, the best part of training like that, well, assuming, I'm assuming that they're taking notes somehow, whether it's on an app or whether like I'm old school, I write all my workouts on paper, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Keep them in a little notebook. I have a little notebook.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

I'm still old school. I have a stack of them chest high in my storage unit. Um, I love it. I like the apps too because the apps will give you graphs and stuff. It's really cool, you know. You can find things instantly, but I've also had apps crash on me before, and and I don't like that. I don't like them when all my hard work disappears. So, anyways, so whatever works for you, right? But when you when you train like that for a month, and by the end of the month, you're like, holy crap, sorry, holy moly. Um my set of 15, 12, and 10 was so weak compared to what I'm doing now. Like you can see the progress over that one month. I love that. I love seeing progress. I'm always trying to make myself better, always trying to look for progress. And then when life hits you, you know, below the belt, and you have to drop a knee, and all of a sudden you you can't work out for two months, and you got to kind of start back over from zero. You've got all your numbers, you've got what you started at before, and you get back, you know what I mean? And you just it just builds and builds and builds, and then you just become really good at going to the gym and knowing how to work out and what weights to use and stuff. Is this helping at all?

SPEAKER_03 24:43

Yeah, yeah, it does, it does. It and and you know, I really love the point. The very beginning is consistency. Because once you establish that consistency, you change your entire lifestyle and you make priorities for it. And and you know, people ask me about, you know, how do I stay oh, what is the word, motivated and how do I stay, um, you know, just consistent. And it's like, because I started with consistency. And I just tell people, you know, you have number one, you've got it, it's the mindset. You have to dedicate. I dedicated 90 days. I was like, 90 days, I can do anything for 90 days. You started me out on consistency. So I started with consistency, you know, just developed a whole new lifestyle and my pattern and maintained that. And, you know, you you get all those benefits of, you know, uh cognitively, physically, I mean, there's just the energy, all of those things that I don't it was worth the risk of changing my life to the reward that I got. And I just, you know, I can't emphasize that enough to people that if you've been thinking about working out, or it's, you know, it's like, oh, I don't have time, I don't have money, I don't, you know, stop because you can do it. I mean, and and we talked about, you know, the the financial aspects of it and one of the other ones. You even start in a home gym. I mean, there's just so many things, or you know, there's$10 gyms, right? They're all over the place. So finances should not be a barrier for anyone.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

We should do we should do a podcast on that sometime because the cost of not training, right? Yeah, that's the cost of not hiring the cost of not hiring a personal trainer or an online coach or the cost of um, you know, building your own home or whatever, right? Anything put into your fitness, if you're consistent with it, it's gonna pay you back baits.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

You know, yeah. And also the the the point of hiring a coach, whether it's a you know in-person or online, because you even talked about it on form. You know, if you're not doing the correct form, then that's gonna cause injury. Right. And that's you know, you definitely don't want to cause injury, and especially if it's been a while since you've worked out or you're just new to the whole idea of working out. Um, it really, really would be like so beneficial to make sure you've got a coach and someone, you know, directing you along the way so that you can, you know, do it the right way. Because the last thing you want to do is injure yourself or get burned out on that.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Yeah, especially as we get older, right? So yeah, that's but we should I'm not getting older.

SPEAKER_03 27:37

What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 27:38

We should do a uh we should do a podcast on the the cost, you know, of not working out versus the cost of working out. That would that would be really cool.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

Okay. Um we'll do that on our next month since we are doing these monthly. So sometimes I work on that.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

I get people that are are like, oh, I could never afford you. Just their knee-jerk reaction is, oh, I could never afford a trainer, right? And I challenge that. I challenge that because going out to eat at restaurants all the time or ordering food in all the time. I mean, if you think about the drive to a restaurant, having to sit there, having to wait, get everybody situated, you've got to wait for your waiter. And then uh they get there, you order your food. Uh, there's the temptation to always eat uh appetizers and eat desserts and then have drinks with that. And, you know, God forbid, I mean, not God forbid, but I mean, if you're having to pay for not just yourself and your and your partner, you know, let's say you've got kids thrown in, when that's your lifestyle, you know, that's an easy thousand or two thousand dollars a month. You know what I mean? So I try to help my clients fall back in love with the kitchen again. Or if they've never done that before or fall in love with it for the first time. Cooking in your own kitchen is fun. Like you can make it fun.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

Absolutely. Own spices. I love meal prepping.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Yeah, meal prepping is fun. You get to make the foods taste the way that you want them to. You get to choose the ingredients, right? You don't have to worry about somebody who might be sick in the back, but needs the money and they don't want to risk giving up that shift because maybe they need money so they come into work.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

I never even thought of that until now, but thank you.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

You've got two, three, four different hands handling your food in the back of a restaurant. And right now, you know, restaurant eating and foodies and all that, it's it's sexy now, you know, like the the foodie thing and just restaurant. I I just I'm like, man, you're wasting so much money. And then you have to tip on top of that, right? And so what should cost you, you know, you know, maybe 25% or less to cook at home. You're you're spending three quarters more money on to eat it out at a restaurant, plus all the drive time, plus every once in a while you get bad food. You know, I just to me, it's just I don't know. I've been living like this for a long, long time, and I think I I love my kitchen, you know, and I love feeding people when they come over. I love it. I love I love the looks on their faces when they're like, this is really healthy and it takes tastes good. And I'm like, yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_03 30:17

Simple ingredients and simple ingredients. Well, you know, I also I make note to people that say that they can't afford to eat organic or healthy foods. When you actually look at what people are purchasing, so stop purchasing the soda pop and the you know pre-packaged food items and you know, whether it's Twinkies or, you know, whatever, whatever that, and instead get whole foods, you know, shop the outside of the grocery store and prepare your own meals. Right. Um the it's not gonna cost if more, not that much more. So it's just you know, you you just have to be wise and prior planning really is what it is. So so um okay, let's get back on reps. So question I just have a couple of quick ones. I think we kind of talked about it, but what is more important, weight or the number of reps for people?

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Well strict question. When you're when you're training, you want to choose weights, and this is hard in the beginning. You know, if you remember when you when I give you your workout program, your first week going into the gym, I was like, now everything doesn't have to be perfect, right? Because you're sitting there and you're like, okay, Eric's got me going to a seated leg curl. And what's this for? This is for hamstrings. You watch the video in the correct form, you're like, okay, got it. There's the machine. You set it all up and everything, and you start, you know, okay, I need to start with a lightweight, 15 reps. A lot of times you're just guessing in the beginning, and you put yes, and right off the bat it's too heavy, or right off the bat it's way too light. You get to 15 and you're like, I could keep going for another 15, right? So that in the beginning, there's a lot of trial and error, a lot of hit or miss, right? But if you're taking notes and you're writing it down, then you can build upon that from week to week to week, right? So I would say I would say that it's not necessarily the amount of weight that you can lift. Because some days I go to the gym and I feel like crap and I can't lift heavy. Other days I go to the gym and I'm like, what is what am I feeling? Like, I feel like a horse right now. Like, I feel like I can handle anything. You know what I mean? Like, so it's not necessarily about the weight, I don't think. And it's not necessarily about the number of reps. We just use that as a guide. What I care about, what I think about all the time, I've been training for 35 years, and every time I go to the gym, I am thinking about quality of reps.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Good point. Good point.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

I don't automate there's a lot of my buddies still to this day that they only care about the amount of weight that they lift every single workout. And I'm like, man, my body changes from day to day. Like I didn't get good sleep the night before. Maybe I drank too much coffee. I don't know, whatever, but I'm just not feeling super strong that day. It's better to just get that workout in with lighter weights, right? Instead of having to such a good point fuel my ego and have to use what I'm what I'm used to lifting. So I I love training, I keep it very fluid, I go with what my body's telling me, you know. Someday my that's very important. Body's telling me I can go heavier. Other days it tells me no, let's scale back a bit. So I wouldn't say it's the weight, and I wouldn't say that it's necessarily 15, 12, 10, 8. It's it's not necessarily the reps. To me, we use those as guides, the strength and or the amount of weight and the rep scheme, right? And we worry about the quality of the reps, the actual workout itself. You want to stimulate the muscle, not annihilate it. Okay. So if there is one of the things that I struggle with sometimes with CrossFit, is you know, the workout will be up there on the board, and it will say something like, and I used to program this stuff because I was crazy back then, but it would be like, here's the workout. 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Dang.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Okay, that's all right. That's pretty salty. Like, and so when you get towards rep number 78 and 79 on pull-ups, at that point you're like, I just want to be done with these. I my back was thrashed by rep number 50, and then you start getting into sloppy reps. Okay. Now there's a whole argument about do we have to train perfect all the time, or is it okay to have um a little bit of slop in your training because your body will adapt to real life whenever you get, you know, when because life is not perfect movement patterns, right? So there is truth to that, that it doesn't have to be perfect all the time. So it's like the body is so complex. Like everybody tries to sound like an expert and say, you gotta do this, you gotta do that, but there's a little bit of truth in everything, you know? And so I try to I try to shoot for quality reps all the time, but when I'm training high rep training with with tough workouts and tough weights, I allow a little bit of not slop, I don't get sloppy, I just a little bit of cheating or or something like that to help keep the weight moving or keep my body moving. But that's pretty rare. That's pretty rare. For the most part, I'm thinking about really stimulating the muscle, not annihilating it. Okay. And the more you annihilate, so on those workouts, like what I just mentioned, you're annihilating the muscle. A hundred pull-ups, you're smoking your lats and your back muscles, 200 push-ups, so you're annihilating it. Now you need more rest after that. You're gonna need two, three, four days more rest. Whereas if you just go into the gym and you stimulate the muscle, you'll be able to get more workouts in without it so much afterwards pain.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

That that makes sense. Well, and what you said is just you know, really, you just need to read your body. Yeah. Because, you know, so many things. I mean, if you're tired, I I went yesterday and I hardly had sleep the night before because I had a lot of work to do, and um, I didn't feel like going to the gym. So I just basically went through the motions. Yeah, you know, I went in, went through the motions, and got out of there. And then, but some days I'm my body's feeling great and I don't ever want to leave the gym and I just keep working. I know, I know, yeah. So that's the way that goes. So well, Eric, have we covered a lot of things between low, moderate, high reps, and weights and everything that um I think so. Anything you need to add to that?

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Probably a little overkill for the average listener, for the average um, you know, person listening to this, but it's kind of fun to geek out on it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

And uh I don't know. I I just sometimes I think a lot of people out there are making it so confusing and they try to sound super technical or super scientific or super smart. I like to always take it back to the basics and just learn, you know, learn from the basics and then apply to our own lives what we learn from from the that have gone before us. You know what I mean? And I I love that what I said about three to five sets per exercise, you know, building up to that over time, starting with three, building up to five, is a pretty good safe way to train. I think training in that six rep to 14 rep range is pretty much what 80%, 90% of the people out there need to be doing. You know, you've got your 10%, your your 20%, your outliers that are training for a certain something or a certain event or a certain lifestyle, you know. But I found at 56 now, I think I'm 56, um, I train low reps all the way up to high reps so that I'm able to go out and spend the day, you know, surfing with my kids or rock climbing out at the Whitewater Center or or Whitewater Rafting, or you know what I mean? Like I like training with all rep schemes so I can go out and live uh a pretty adventurous life even in my 50s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

I think that's great. Yeah, so Eric, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to find you?

SPEAKER_00 38:53

So barbarictraining.com. Uh, but I post two, three posts a week on my Instagram, which is um barbaric underscore training, and my Facebook is simply Eric Barber.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

Great, great. It is always fun to have you on. I look forward to next month's uh podcast with you. And until then, everybody out there, just please share, like, um, get working out if you haven't started yet. And I would love to hear anybody else's success story because I know I personally, Eric changed my life. I live to work out, and it has made such a difference. And so everybody, I want you to have the same blessing that I got. So everyone, take care, have a very blessed day, and Eric will catch you next month. Thanks so much for having me. Bye bye.