SHOP TALK - Episode 3: Newbie Gains

Today, Trevin and Tyler talk about the pros and cons of newbie gains. Explaining how the initial boost in strength and adaptation is fantastic, but has drawbacks for long term consistency and enforces poor training habits. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Shop Talk. I'm Tyler. I'm Trevin. And we are here to break down the latest trends in rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, and fitness all through a lens of evidence-based practice. Our goal is simple cut through the noise in the fitness industry and talk about what actually works, why it works, and how you can apply it. On today's podcast, we'll be diving into newbie games. Cool. So now, Trevin, you wanted to kind of break down something for us.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Absolutely. So before we get into our topic today, I wanted to make something extremely clear to our listeners. Tyler and I value creating an uplifting community built on transparency, inspiration, education, and practical advice. But sometimes that means pointing out areas that could be a little bit better. But our goal is always to leave you feeling refreshed, confident, empowered, and really not torn down at all. There's already enough criticism out there. So we're very intentional about how we talk about others and we assume the best in everybody. And when we disagree, it's not about criticism, it's more about collaborating through different perspectives. 100%. So I thought that was important for us to talk about before we dive into the newbie gains because we are going to be talking about some negative side effects to newbie gains that people might not be aware of when it comes to picking the right physical therapist, strength and conditioning coach, personal trainer, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah. And and some listeners might know what like newbie gains and all these definitions that we're going to dive into today. Like some people might know these things, other people might not, but that doesn't mean like we're ever talking bad or we are saying, oh, you're stupid for not knowing this. Like that's another thing too, is like we're just trying to get everyone kind of on the same page and and provide some education so everyone knows what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Yeah, I love this part. I love the education piece because we hope to have listeners that aren't just people trying to improve their quality of life through fitness, right? Maybe even coaches that are listening or personal trainers, young people just getting started. This might just be really good information to them. And they may be doing things wrong, which no fault to their own. They're trying their absolute best. We're just kind of hoping we can help them out exactly with good information. So we don't want it to come across as we're, you know, telling you you suck or anything. We're just trying to give you the tools to be better at your craft.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

For sure. So for sure. And you know, we have we have education to back it and everything like that, but it's not like we're ever looking at these trainers and being like, wow, you really suck for not knowing that. Right. It's like it's like I hope some trainers can listen to this and be like, oh, maybe I should dive deeper into some research on this, or or oh, what does this mean? Like a mesocycle or whatever, right? And like, I don't know, just expanding knowledge is is I think the most important part of this. So yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

I think we're sparking conversation about newbie games. And like we are trying to educate the listeners. You guys also need to understand that Tyler and I spend a great deal of time educating ourselves, also, listening to different podcasts and continuously educating ourselves on the topics that we are extremely passionate about. So we definitely don't have all the answers, but we are here to some spark some good conversation.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

So let's get into it. Okay. So starting off, um, I wanted to break down some super basic terms here. Um, basically all in terms of lifting, um, because all of this plays a role into what we're talking about today with newbie gains. So first one is volume. So volume is the total work completed, okay? Um, typically it's calculated by your sets and reps and how much you're doing. Oftentimes, trainers will include weight in that for like total work, right? But it needs to be calculated usually on a week-to-week basis. Okay. So that's what volume is. That's kind of what we're going to be talking about today when we go over newbie gains. Intensity is also known as load or how much weight is actually being lifted, often determined by a percentage of one rep max, if that is your objective intensity. There's also relative intensity, which is, oh, how hard was that set based on your subjective feeling, right? So, like you finish a set of bench press, how intense was that on a scale of like one to 10? So then that starts getting into like rate of perceived exertion and everything like that. But not a term I wanted to talk about today. Um, moving right along into frequency, this one's super easy. It's number of sessions per week, right? Whether you're talking about specific body parts or a specific movement, how frequent are you doing it? And then the last one is a big fancy word. It's uh it's really funny because when I first started reading into like training and research and everything, this word, you're like, what does this mean? Periodization, right? A lot of people hear that and they're like, I that's a fancy word. I don't know. You can quite literally just change out periodization for planning. Quite literally, like it's planning of training, dividing it into specific phases to maximize performance, manage fatigue, and prevent over-training or overreaching. So periodization is literally just like a schedule or a plan that is well thought out for your training. So if you have any questions on any of those definitions, please reach out to us. But those are just some really basic ones we wanted to get out of the way before we start talking about newbie gains. So Trevin's going to take that away.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Yeah, so I wanted to define the term before we started getting a little bit deeper into our discussion. Newbie gains referred to the accelerated rate of adaptation seen in untrained individuals due to high responsiveness to a new training stimulus. That's a mouthful, right? But anyone who has spent time training through resistance or aerobic training has probably noticed an accelerated increase in one's performance, given that you are spending an appropriate amount of time training for fitness professionals, you may have even noticed this as an immediate increase in performance metrics for younger athletes that you're training. So we'd like to break this down a little bit and discuss some of the negative side effects of newbie gains that you may not be aware of. And I think our take on this may be different than what you were expecting as a listener. For sure. So, Tyler, what are the negative side effects of newbie gains and how can we avoid these or recognize the we'll call it a dumpster fire waiting for people at the end of a poor training cycle?

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah. Um, so to start out, like the biggest thing that I wanted to talk about with newbie gains, right? So it's like this rapid influx of performance, um, of strength, of um maybe hypertrophy, right? Guys start training body part splits and everything like that, and they're like, oh, my arms are growing, oh my shoulders look better. And it's like that happens quick, right? Within a few months of training. But then it often starts to plateau pretty quick. So that's the first thing is like if you're not periodizing and like planning things out, that plateau can hit a lot harder and stay around a lot longer. But it can also give a false sense of confidence. So, yes, the gains are there. People are getting stronger, people are getting faster, more powerful, all of these things when they first start training, right? Going from zero to a hundred, you're still going to see those gains. You're still at a hundred. It's not like it's false gains, but it's like, is your training actually the reason behind this? Or is it just because you went from nothing to something, right? So it can often be initially inflated due to the new stimulus, right? So then over time, people lose a lot of confidence in themselves, in their training. Oh, the gym's not working for me anymore, so on and so forth, right? So it really does cause a lot of people to stop lifting and stop training because they're like, well, yeah, I got this big or I got this strong, and then it just stopped, right? So I think that's the biggest topic that I wanted to hit on. Um, we can dive more into plateaus for sure throughout this episode, but man, I've seen it time and time again. People, and this is crazy, but some people we talked about like genetic ceilings, right? There are some people that truly believe like after their newbie gains hit and they've gotten this certain size, or like, oh yeah, like I can't get my bench any higher than like 275, right? Something like that. And they've been training for a while. Um, they've hit this plateau and they're like, Yeah, I think that's just genetically like what I can hit. And I'm like, well, no, actually, like that's just more programming. Quite literally, I don't think I've ever met anyone who has met their genetic ceiling, like naturally, right? Of course, we can start talking about peptides, we can start talking about injections, testosterone, growth hormone, all that crap. But in terms of like a natural athlete or lifter, reaching your genetic ceiling or your full potential is damn near impossible, truly. So, um, anyway, yeah, I can dive more into that. I don't know if you have any questions, but or if you want to build on that. But yes, false sense of confidence just from this initial huge upsweep in gains, and then it starts to taper off and you get diminishing returns.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

So yeah, and I totally agree with that. So the biggest problem that I see with newbie gains isn't necessarily the accelerated level of adaptation, but rather the mode, frequency, duration, and intensity at which training is accomplished and how this mishandling of these acute training variables can actually lead to overtraining, injury plateaus, poor relationships with exercise, and what I would like to call an unhealthy attachment to a certain modality of exercise. And we'll get into that here shortly. Yeah. But for the majority, newbie gains are going to be present no matter what you decide to do. This is great news for anyone starting or restarting their fitness journey because that's what we want, right? Adaptation and results. So it's great news for people just getting started. Really, just doing anything is going to improve your quality of life and the results that you're trying to get. But this is where it gets a little bit dicey. Poor training advice hides behind these newbie gains. Bad practice then gets reinforced time and time again, purely because it's hard to argue with the results, especially for the beginners who are motivated and inspired to improve their quality of life through fitness. But the research shows that you know beginners improve from almost anything, but it um adherence is what determines long-term success, not necessarily the intensity or complexity of their training. When programs are overly aggressive or poorly designed, they reduce the enjoyment, uh, they increase injury risk and ultimately lead to dropout. So a bad program could look really good on paper and great early on because of the new gains, but it fails people long term. For example, some findings report roughly 50% dropout rate within six months of training. And that can be due to various different factors, right? Um, but I would say a lot of people get attached to the lifting that got them their first results, not because it's the best approach, but because it's what they did when anything would have worked.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

That's I love that. I so let's dive into that just a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Um, so like I said, going from zero to a hundred, right? It doesn't matter how you got there to a hundred, right? Or whatever number you want to say. Just doing nothing and then doing something leads to these crazy gains early on, whether it's cardio, whether it's strength training or Olympic weightlifting. Like it can be literally anything, and people get pretty drastic changes, right? So yeah, dive into that a little bit more because that's where people get that like false sense of confidence. Um and it's so funny because it's like I want people to be confident. Like I feel like I'm arguing with myself right now. I want people to be confident in the gains that they get initially and have them like catapult that forward, right? And like have that momentum build and continue with their training. But you mentioned the dropout rate is just huge. So it's like, I guess, is coaches and trainers, um, me as a PT, like, what can we do for the listeners or the people that we work with to kind of explain this and then mitigate the effects of it?

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Yeah, going back to what I said previous was a lot of it comes down to adherence. And I think we lose track of the progress somebody can make through their lifetime. And I think we we kind of close those results or progress into a small box of a month, two months, six months, a year, you know, kind of whatever it is the athlete wants in terms of their goals. So, what I did here, so I came up with some simple guidelines that the listener could can use to spot a sustainable training program. And then we can get into a little bit more detail on these here in a second. So my first one is can you recover from the training that you're currently doing? Are you consistently smoked or dreading your sessions? If yes, then you're probably doing way too much. Do you have any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah, I yes. Um, I mean, even from a PT perspective. And I know that's very different than like strength training and stuff like that. Like they they go hand in hand, but there are some pretty um significant differences, um, contrast, I guess. So um making sure that like me checking in with a patient after the first time that I treat them for a full hour, right? And we do a bunch of exercise, mobility work, all of that stuff. I check in and be like, hey, how long were you sore? Right. Or like, hey, was it like painful anywhere? Because I'm also worried about pain levels and everything like that with their joints or whatever, right? But it's like, how many days were you sore, right? Oh, where did you feel this soreness? Because you're right, being able to recover is just as important as the actual training itself, right? Being able to kind of bounce back within a couple days. So then that way you're not sore for a full week, missing out on better training, more training, more frequency that you can do across the week. Rather, people are just like slamming some athletes or or the people that they're coaching and making them sore for a week or two as thinking that that's some sort of like gold star, right? Oh, my trainer made me so sore, I could barely walk for two weeks. And it's like, well, that's not what you want. That that seems like they hit a little too hard then. Like they didn't progress properly, they didn't have a solid, periodized program, at least early on. And and maybe that initial soreness isn't, you know, fully just because the program sucked. Maybe it is because you're just starting out, but your fatigue and recovery needs to be one of the most important things that needs to be managed for sure. So yeah, thanks for pulling me into that because it's very important in PT too.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Yeah, I really want to kind of talk about these as we go through it because I think there's some important stuff that can be covered. You talked about like the gold star that you would receive for being sore. Uh-huh. Something that I have seen over and over again is that making your clients extremely sore or even yourself is some kind of badge of honor. Of like, man, I couldn't even walk today. I crushed it in the gym. Delayed onset muscle soreness is definitely a thing when it comes to resistance training, but extreme levels of that is more of a sign of overreaching rather than adaptation. Right? Like, especially early on, you're gonna you're gonna feel some delayed onset muscle soreness, but to the point where it's inhibiting you from doing your normal daily functions, now we have gone way too far. Yes. And not to get too much in the weeds, but coming from the tactical strength and conditioning world, if I smoke somebody and then they go out back on patrol and I just smoked them, how reliable are they as an operator actually?

unknown 16:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

If they've got to go clear a three-story building, can they actually do that because I smoked them in the gym early? Yeah, probably not, right? So maybe change that perspective a little bit that just because you're sore, I promise you it's not a badge of honor. It doesn't make you look cooler as a trainer if you wrecked your athletes, clients, patients, whatever. Because anybody can write some pardon my language, some shitty program on a whiteboard and wreck you, and it can come across as good training because somebody is sore. If I took some random guy off the street and said, Hey, I just want you to do 100 burpees for time, probably gonna wreck them, right? That doesn't necessarily mean that was good training, an effective, you know, use of their time.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

No, I I love that. I seriously, I think this is one of my favorite topics so far. I get excited talking about this because I'm like, uh I see it so, so often. And and it happens in PT too, regardless of how educated we are about rehab and injuries and like healing times and everything like that, in terms of like exercise prescription, dude, it it's crazy to me. Some people just want to absolutely flip so okay, everyone can benefit from like lateral hip strengthening, quite literally everyone in the world, right? There will be PTs that I have seen firsthand and like even online social media stuff, that will do like 12 exercises in a row in an hour just to target lateral hips. And I'm like, are you kidding me right now? Of course, that's gonna make somebody sore and feel like their hips are on fire and everything like that. That's not good training, though. That's not good, like periodized principles, right? Of like slowly increasing volume, slowly increasing intensity, and like building up in a way that it's more manageable for the patient or the client or anything.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

So yeah, and there's a point of diminishing return, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

To where you get to the point where additional volume isn't doing anything more than fatigue.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Fatigue. Yep. It's called junk volume. Yeah. Junk volume. Like um, lots of power lifters are bad at this too, right? Like they will absolutely gas themselves like on bench press, right? And then they'll go do four different accessories for their chest and triceps. And it's like, dude, that the last two exercises you're doing, I guarantee, is just junk volume that's just making you more fatigued. Once again, not trying to talk shit here. It's just what I've seen personally and with a lot of people that I've coached and trained and everything. And it's like, we need to cut out some of this junk so you can actually recover with the with the goals that you have set in place, like, oh, you want to increase your bench press? Cool. Let's focus on your bench press and a few accessories, but then make sure you can actually recover to get back to benching.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

So yeah, more often than not, less is more. And a good program manages fatigue. It doesn't induce like extreme levels of it, right? There are times for functional overreaching, right? When you're trying to peak athletes and such. But when we're talking about general population or recreational athletes, there isn't a need for this junk volume. Although it might seem productive, it may actually be hurting your progress because you're not able to recover from that fatigue and at like adapt to later sessions in the week. Correct. You know, you wreck yourself on Monday and then come back Wednesday and you're still feeling extreme late on to muscle soreness and you're fatigued and your recovery is kind of in the toilet, you're not really doing much that day. So nothing, yeah, nothing positive.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Yeah. And then before we move too far, like I love that you mentioned that if you are training a tactical athlete and then they have to go perform, right, to actually do their job. Because that is a very important role with physical therapy too. Making sure that like we are healing people, getting them feeling better, out of pain, all of that stuff. But people still need to go to work, people still need to be able to drive their car, people still need to be able to squat down and pick up their kids, like super basic things like that. So when uh we start talking about this overreaching and overtraining, uh, managing fatigue and like this crazy amount of soreness, it's like I really hope if there are any other PTs or listening um trainers to that uh they will do a service to themselves and also their patients on educating how to gently uh build, I guess, volume, intensity, frequency, all of that stuff, instead of just slamming somebody. Um because it's never our goal as a physical therapist to put somebody out of work for like a week. You know what I mean? Like that that should be a huge red flag if anyone's listening who's been to PT and they were sore for two weeks or whatever. It's like, okay, that's uh that's A little excessive, right? So I don't know. I could talk about that for a while, but I want to ask you a question now about overreaching. So we keep saying this term overreaching. Can you kind of explain to the listeners, anyone else who might not know what is overreaching? Why do we sometimes use it? Why is it sometimes a bad thing? Like, can it be overused? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

So try to make this as simple as I can, right? So how people typically progress with an exercise stimulus, right? We call it the general adaptation syndrome, right? So where you get uh a stimulus, you get it's an alarm phase, right? So you're sore, you get a small decrease in performance, then a resistance phase where your body adapts to the stimulus. So, and then at that point, you either accommodate, meaning you don't progress or decrease performance, or you supercompensate, which has to a lot more to do with functional overreaching, or then you can overtrain, right? And before you overtrain, we call it non-functional overreaching. Um and we can get into the side effects of overtraining in another episode. But when we're talking about overreaching, you're almost pushing that line towards overtraining, right? Where you're not getting adaptation and you're not recovering enough from your exercise to actually see an adaptation. You're not giving your body enough time to adapt to that stimulus before hitting it hard again. And a lot of this has to do with your capacity to manage fatigue. That has to do with your training age, how long have you been in the game? Because prescription for volume and intensity is going to be different depending on where you are at in your fitness journey, and everybody is going to be different, right? For a good example, people that are just getting started, there's plenty of research indicating that you can get better by training once a week, as long as you're doing two to four sets of an exercise per muscle group. So that's a frequency of one time a week, and you're seeing progress, right? That is for most people, kind of blows their mind a little bit because it isn't a lot of volume. As we progress and we get more to like an intermediate or advanced level, the need for higher amounts of volume and intensity go up because you've progressed, you've adapted to that stimulus. And in order to continue to progress, you have to progressively overload. But if you're doing that to an extreme level, you get overreaching or you actually get a decrement of performance rather than progress.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Yeah. And then they can't recover from it. And and a good training program limits the amount of times that you are overreaching. Right. Um, it totally depends on the program and the patient's goals and everything like that, on if you are supposed to be overreaching slightly in a certain phase of programming and then letting that recovery come back slowly, or there's entire training blocks sometimes where that's not the goal. Like me personally, I can speak on this, and maybe you can talk about your training as well. But to avoid any overreaching, overtraining, anything like that, I've been consistently hitting all my lifts in RPE seven. So we talked earlier about like relative intensity, right? So RPE seven is a seven out of ten difficulty on my sets and reps for squat and bench and everything like that. And I'm rarely sore. I'm not like sore for days, for weeks, days. Well, I don't know. Like it feels like you're not doing enough. And it's a really hard thing, like being an ex-athlete or uh ex-competitor. And then all of a sudden you do these training phases where you're like RPE seven or or six, and you're like, dude, like I feel like I'm not really getting enough stimulus here. But it's the fact that you're building up that that capacity and that volume without overreaching. So, like this entire training block for for four weeks now has just been RPE seven. So it's been, it's been kind of a trip for sure. I mean, I don't know how many people have ever um programmed like that or have been coached like that with something that it will still give gains, right? Like my bench has continued to go up, that's fantastic, but I'm not sore. So it's it's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

Yeah, and there is a lot of research, and you and I talked about this off podcast actually yesterday about training to failure and training with reps in reserve. And there's plenty of literature indicating that you can get just as much progress training with two to three reps in reserve at the end of a set, and opposed to always training to failure, right? The big difference there is you're managing a lot less fatigue when you're training with reps in reserve so you can get more training volume throughout the week because you're recovering quicker. Because we're only going to progress as quickly as our ability to recover from fatigue and manage fatigue. Yep. I love looking at strength and conditioning coaches or personal trainers and defining it as like you are your job is fatigue management. Like that is, I think, the biggest goal of a coach is being a good fatigue manager because that's really all it is, right? Like you can only adapt as quickly as your ability to recover from these training sessions. And if we're putting people on the ground, training to failure all the time, training at an RPE 10 four or five days a week, they're not gonna recover. They're not giving themselves enough time to get those adaptations, and then they start, you know, non-functional overreaching, and then they lead into overtraining, which takes months to potentially even a year to recover from overtraining syndrome, right? Yep. And most people don't get there, right? Most people, I think, naturally stop themselves when they get into that non-functional overreaching side of things, but signs of that, like you know, are burnout for one, um, injury. Injury is huge. Injury is a big one. I mean, you know that so decrease in performance, like past the delayed onset muscle soreness that you had from the day before that might be causing a couple issues. When I'm saying decreases in performance, this is something that's pretty chronic week to week, is another good sign of that. But yeah, overuse injuries is a huge one.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

It's a huge one. And I love that you said like our main job as PTs, coaches, anything like that is like managing fatigue. That is such an important part of program design. Because like you said, anyone can just slap up any sort of workout doing five sets at 12 on bench at 85 for like crazy numbers that you would never even imagine. Anyone can do that. Literally anyone can do that. But it's like, how do you manage fatigue week to week and training block to training block, right? Or phase to phase. It's like that's super important when you're transitioning from like a hypertrophy phase into a strength phase. Like, where's your fatigue level at? So um, yeah. I wanted to bring up because let me make sure. Um okay, so we got you know down in the weeds a little bit there. So little little recall. Apologies. No, no, no, no. I mean, I think it's so great. Um but uh, and it was both of us, like we can continue to dig into this like program design and like everything like that. But I want to go through plateaus.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Right. And when people hit a plateau, oftentimes what I've seen in the gym, um, because I've been just a normal gym goer, I've been a trainer, I've been a PT, whatever. And I continue to hear, like, oh, okay, I've hit a plateau on bench, right? That's a really, really common one because everyone wants to bench a lot of weight, um, at least all the guys that I know. So um when they hit this plateau, oftentimes they're like, Yeah, so I just need to lift heavier. What do you what do you think about that? Like, what are your initial reactions to when you hear somebody say, like, oh, I just need to increase the weight?

SPEAKER_03 30:30

I think there's a little bit of truth to increasing the weight if we're referencing progressive overload, intensity and everything. So when we hit plateaus, that is when we need to start manipulating the acute training variables, right? So volume, intensity, reps, recovery periods between exercises, exercise selection, exercise order. There's so many different variables that you can manipulate. But when it comes to just increasing weight, that might not necessarily be the right answer. Maybe it's an increase in training volume because they're not getting enough training volume in that week. Maybe they've been doing the same exercise over and over and over again without variation in grip, right? Or tempo, for example. And we can definitely get into the weeds of how to manipulate all these training variables. But to avoid plateaus, most people don't need drastic changes. They just need small, consistent progression, a gradual increase, either the weight, reps, or total volume over time while staying within a level you can recover from. When progress slows, make a slight adjustment, not a complete overhaul, and keep building from there. Consistency with small increases is what drives the long-term results. And I believe most people overcomplicate progression. Progression is extremely necessary, but oftentimes is overcomplicated. So you're talking about an athlete that's like, well, I just need to throw more weight on the bar. Yeah, like micro doses, right? So increasing five to 10% in volume or intensity week to week. But people should really only be adjusting one acute training variable week to week, whether that's a small increase in training volume, whether that's a small increase in the resistance that you're lifting, or increasing the number of sets, the number of repetitions, potentially decreasing the rest time. More specifically, if we're discussing muscular endurance or hypertrophy, because we both know the importance of flower recovery times for building strength and power. So, yeah, I think adding weight is a great place to start. But if that's all you've been doing since you were 16 years old is small increments in weight every single week, you're gonna hit the ceiling pretty fast, right? Like you can only increase the weight by two and a half pounds, you know, every week, every other week for so long before you kind of hit the ceiling, right? And then you might want to start manipulating the training volume or throwing in some eccentric training or changing the velocity of the movement, you know, backing off the strength and maybe working on some power or velocity-based training or doing some muscular endurance or hypertrophy work.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:28

So we can get into the weeds, just understand that there's a lot of different ways that you can avoid a plateau, and most of the time, just a small variation or change in what you were previously doing will probably do the trick for most people. As we start getting into more advanced athletes that actually are closer to that genetic ceiling, the manipulating becomes a little bit more important and a little bit more tricky.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

So an easy way to say that.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

So let's say we're still talking about bench press and the dudes in the gym that just want to bench a lot of weight, right? Because I've seen it time and time again, it can lead to injuries because you're right. What and this ties back into newbie gains, right? Because what they've done from the very beginning when they first started lifting was just adding weight and adding weight and adding weight. And because of newbie gains, they were able to do that because they just kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger. They didn't have to worry about volume, intensity, like not much else besides just adding more weight, right? That was the biggest thing going up like two and a half to five pounds a week, right? And it continued to work. And then once again, this is where that false sense of confidence and and bad training gets kind of solidified because then all of a sudden they hit this plateau and they're like, well, I just I guess I just need to add more weight. I need to ask for a spotter so then we can do some like crazy weight, and I can hit one and a half reps. And it's like, that's not progression at that point, like right. Like you've hit this plateau, start messing with your volume and then frequency. So I'm glad you touched on all of that because it ties right back into our main topic, which is just newbie games. And you know, um, not a lot of people maybe have experience kind of messing with their frequency, right? Or their volume on a week-to-week basis. They more so just show up to the gym and they're like, okay, I'll do a four by twelve on bench press today.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Oh, next week I'm gonna do a four by ten, right? But then up the weight. And it's like, okay, I get that. Like, you know, you're adjusting a little bit of volume, but I'm talking about like week to week or block to block volume too, because that's a that's a huge thing to manage as a coach from you know a hypertrophy standpoint into a strength phase, power phase, everything like that.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Yeah. In regards to consistently increasing weight week to week to week, like you talked about, the same is true for volume. If you were to increase, here's a good example. So if you're trying to get good at running and you started at, hey, I'm just gonna run, let's say 800 meter repeats, I'll do a couple 800 meter repeats at a zone two pace, and then from that point you increase five to ten percent volume week to week. If I never stopped doing that, how much volume would I be at by now if I've been running for years? A lot, right? Like there is a diminishing return in terms of volume, training frequency, training intensity, and that is really where you need to start manipulating different variables, right? And again, not to get into the weeds, but for endurance training, adding resistance training to a program to improve running economy and rate of force development. Or, you know, instead of doing zone two work all the time, we start doing some pace tempo work or interval training and to get different adaptations to improve performance that aren't necessarily volume related, they're more intensity related. But everything really works together, it's like a well-oiled machine. There's a lot of things to manipulate. But for the listener that's probably confused at this point, if you can just get yourself in with a good coach that knows how to manipulate these variables and manage your fatigue, you're probably gonna break through the majority of your plateaus. And it's also important to understand that the further along you go on your fitness journey journey, the harder it is to see progress. It isn't necessarily that you're doing anything wrong. You're you're better, you've progressed. Those gains are gonna come a lot slower as you get better. Yep. And a lot of people think they are gonna continue to make these huge gains in performance because of what they received in their newbie gain period, where they're like, well, shoot, I gained 50 pounds in my my back squat over a couple months. How come I'm not seeing the same level of progression moving forward? Well, that's just because I I mean, physiologically, you just cannot continue to adapt to that level. It's slower increments, adaptation takes time, and with that comes more training intensity, training volume, fatigue management, and things like that.

unknown 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Yeah. Um, so hopefully people aren't too confused, right? Like, I like we're trying to keep this uh surface level and dive into this the parts where we feel like we can um kind of tackle a few more topics, like and give more information. But what would you do to I guess I'm I'm a brand new lifter here, I'm brand new. Um, I'm working with you, and I said, Hey, you know, I've been working with a trainer for three months, right? Um they're really good. I liked them. I got really good gains, right? But I feel like I need to switch it up now, right? I I need something different. Um, I'm not seeing the the gains anymore. So do you think that's for you as a trainer? Would you be like, okay, come work with me? Come work with me, we'll we'll get this going, or would you kind of help explain these diminishing returns over time, newbie gains, things like that?

SPEAKER_03 39:07

So Yeah, I think it all comes down to being honest with your clients or patients or athletes and helping them understand that there is there's a certain speed of what at which adaptation happens and it's going to be different for everybody. And it doesn't necessarily mean you had a good coach or even a bad coach. We honestly just have to understand, like, hey, if we're plateaued, here are some things that we can adjust. And a lot of this we're basing off of research on appropriate training, intensity, volume, frequency, based on where you're at, right, with your training. So if I'm getting a new client, obviously the first thing I'm gonna do is an evaluation to kind of see where they're at, asking them questions, how long have you been in the gym? Have you been consistent? And getting a more basic understanding of where they're at so I can meet them there and progress from that point. And this might be a good time to plug in the importance of individualization, right? Because everybody is so different. What's gonna work for this client that came in might not work for another, you know, client that I'm training over here, different training ages, different levels of experience, different rates of adaptation. Everyone's different. I mean, we're all kind of the same, but also very different.

unknown 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

So getting somebody through the door, me personally, I know the majority of people just getting started can get adaptation through a multi-step program twice a week with maybe two or three times a week of zone two cardiovascular training for 20 to 30 minutes. It doesn't take a lot, but I know that's a good baseline to start from, and I can make adjustments from there, and then I'm testing consistently these patients to see if we're making progress or not.

unknown 40:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:54

Which again, another topic we could get lost in is testing and evaluation, right? If you want to know if your methodologies work, if your training program is working, you have to continually test these clients, athletes, patients to see if they're actually progressing. Because if they're not, it's a sign of one or two things, right? It's either accommodation, so we need to increase intensity, increase volume, or we could potentially be over-training this athlete and they're not actually recovering, recovering from the training that we are giving them. Right. And a good trainer is going to be able to recognize a difference between the two of those.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

I love it. I love it. Um, education's a huge part of what we do, right? Um, because like I've had that specific question before where they're like, oh, I've been working with this trainer for so long. Like, how are you different? Or how can you get me through this plateau, or anything like that? And oftentimes I just ask them questions, just like, what does your training split look like? How consistent are you? Right. You brought those things up. But then I like to send people home with like questions to ask their trainers, right? So being like, okay, um, what kind of tests are you guys measuring like block to block? Right. And then if the person's like, well, I don't know, we've just been kind of training so on and so forth for this long. It's like, okay, I would ask your trainer like when you can go through a testing phase, right? Whether it's for strength, whether it's for speed, whatever. Um I think that's super important, right? Testing, not guessing. Um but then it's not like we're ever trying to, like you said at the beginning, we're not like assholes. We're not trying to talk crap on all these different trainers and stuff or PTs or anything like that. It's just like we, I want to give education to somebody who might ask me about training or recovery or PT. It's like, take this back to your trainer and ask them these important questions, right? And like, what is it aligning with your goals, right? And what does your recovery look like? Like all these really, I don't know best way to say it. It feels like questions that you can pull out of the air in all these different directions, but they're important questions to ask your trainer to make sure you're actually on track and that you are getting the training that you deserve, and you're not just relying on newbie gains for however long you've been working with a with a trainer. So um, yeah, I like that because education's huge.

SPEAKER_03 43:18

Yeah, and as a coach, personal trainer, physical therapist, it's also important to understand your individual's lifestyle and adapting to them without putting necessarily your biases on how they should be training, right? Because we're talking of we've talked about training frequency, correct? But really the driving factor of improving training frequency is to improve training volume. So as you improve your training frequency, right? I'm going now from training three days a week instead of two, that would be an increase. And training frequency, really, all I've done is increase my total weekly training volume because we talked about that. But that doesn't necessarily need to be the case for somebody that only has the availability to train twice a week. So instead of me saying, okay, well, I'm going to train you three times a week now, well, maybe I just am adding a little bit more volume twice a week, and you're going to get relatively the same results training two times a week or three times a week, as long as the volume is equal across the board.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

And I was looking at some research the other day. It talked about micro-dosing exercise. So for people that are extremely busy, don't have the time, that micro-dosing 15-minute workouts three, four times throughout the week was just as effective as training once or twice a week, as long as the volume was equal. So it has a lot more to do with training volume than necessarily the frequency. So if we're talking about a coach that's telling you, no, you need to be in the gym this set amount of times per week, honestly, that's that might not be the case. Really, it's just accumulative volume over the entire week. And obviously, as we get more fit and more active, we need more volume. And sometimes we have to increase the training frequency because now we can't fit that amount of volume in one training session. Now we have to split that up so we can keep the intensity of training high, but also keep the volume going up as well. So sort of go off on a little bit of tangent there. But it is important to understand that I mean you define volume at the beginning of this podcast, and that's an extremely important factor when we talk about progress, right? Just understand as a listener, if you're extremely busy and you only have time for one or two training days a week, that's okay. Even if somebody's telling you you need to train four or five, six days a week. That's not necessarily the case. As long as the volume is equal based off of where you're at and what you need to progress, you're totally fine. Do your two training sessions a week, get after it, and move on. It doesn't need to be five, six days a week of a suffer fest to see progress. It's a lot less than you think.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Yeah. Yeah. So 100%, dude. I love it. No, I I like diving into these little crevices every so often because yeah, overarching topic for today's newbie gains. But then we can talk about program design, we can talk about volume, we can talk about adaptations. Um the big thing for me is is when I see coaches or trainers throw people in to like a group session, and that group's been training and progressing for let's say a few months, six months, what whatever. And this new person wants to come along and train with them and they just get thrown into the mix, like that person isn't isn't really prepared for that volume, for that frequency or anything like that. Sometimes they are, right? If the person's already been training and doing stuff, great. Like, yep, go ahead and add them in, maybe it goes really well. But the reason I bring this up is just because of injury risk, right? When things aren't managed well or people aren't um um I guess periodized or planned out well for building that capacity for volume, frequency, and intensity, it can lead to injuries really, really quick, which you know, another topic that we'll talk about is load management in a future episode. Um because load management is usually the biggest reason for injury. Um, especially if you take an athlete and you throw them into the mix of something and they start doing crazy volume of like plyometrics and speed work and um just overreaching really, really quick because they wanted to join in on something, and then all of a sudden injuries happen out on the field because the athlete isn't recovering properly.

SPEAKER_03 47:50

So yeah, and the negative side effects to that psychologically of well, I just can't hang, or my body's not built for this, or being terrified to come back to a training session because it did make you it hurt. You got this DOM that's extreme, you're having some patellar tendinitis, you know, um, whatever it is, because you maybe inserted yourself into a training program that you didn't have the capacity yet to join. And we've talked about this many times of you know, young athletes being thrown into an advanced training program that they're not ready for, or joining a group fitness class or a box gym where you're doing a high volume of Olympic weightlifting movements when you're just not ready for that, which again is gonna cause injury and maladaptation, right? And overreaching.

unknown 48:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:46

And on the opposite side of that, if you're a super advanced athlete and you've adapted quite well to the training, if you're in a group setting, you may be just sitting at accommodation. You might not be making any progress at that point. You're doing enough training volume to maintain the adaptations that you have currently, but nobody's individualizing necessarily you either. So it kind of hurts the the bottom performer, but it also hurts the top performance just as well because nobody's individualizing for the increase in intensity and volume that they may need to continue to adapt. So if you're doing group training or box training, um, that's just that's fine, that's great. But just have to understand from an individual side of things, you need to start paying attention to is your poor performance increasing or decreasing? Am I actually getting better? What's the practical rate of adaptation that I should be seeing based off the amount of training that I'm doing? Yeah. So just maybe some questions to ask yourself. I love that you brought that up in the group training, you know, world of like, hey, you throw somebody into a high-intensity interval training class and they're not ready for it, they're they're screwed and they're not gonna last long. And they're gonna be part of that 50% dropout rate in that six-week time frame when they would have been better off joining a maybe less intense, less frequent training program that got them results quicker by doing less.

SPEAKER_00 50:16

And and of course they can progress over time. Like that's the whole goal is like to eventually increase their frequency and everything like that. But dude, starting out to make sure people are actually bought in and they don't feel like crap after the training session and they can actually manage fatigue and do what they need to do on a day-to-day basis. It's like, yeah, what you said, let's start with something nice and easy, honestly. Like, that's a great place to start for most people because we know most people aren't getting even the recommended, you know, daily activity levels. So it's like start with something and it does not need to be balls to the walls, you know what I mean? Like, you don't need to go to these group sessions or these training classes or whatever and feel like you almost died, right? It's like, let's work up to that. Let's work up to it, and then you'll you'll feel much more confident. Your gains will be more well adjusted over time without this massive spike and then a plateau and then maybe a drop, right? Because once again, overreaching and everything. So, no, I think that's that's super important.

SPEAKER_03 51:16

Yeah, I think something to add here is you need to find something that you can actually adhere to. So if you can't actually adhere to the amount of training volume that's being prescribed to you, it's more like a burnout plan than anything else. And you really just need to be honest with yourself and try your best not to get sucked into the, you know, no pain, no gain, who's gonna carry the ships, you know, all of these things that we see again on social media or from your friends. That's all great and it's motivating, but the way I like to look at this is when you're starting your journey of fitness or athletic performance, it is a lifestyle change. This isn't necessarily a six-month ride, one-year ride that as soon as I get these adaptations, I can hop off the train and I'm chilling. There's a little bit of that, right? You can get to a certain level and you can maintain that with less volume than what it took to get there. And we can discuss that later. But if you are showing up to the gym four or five, six days a week and it's not something that you can continue long term, it's not going to be the plan for you because we need to look at health and fitness and performance as a long-term thing, not necessarily a short term. And it really is a lifestyle change. So you have to be honest with yourself. If you can't maintain this amount of volume, take a couple steps back. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't get there later in the future. But in order for you to be successful now and long term, just take it slow and don't buy into the pressure that you have to do this absurd amount of training volume or intensity to get the goals that you need. Because oftentimes, again, less is actually more.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Yeah. So I love this analogy really quick. Um, this ties in directly to what you're saying. So imagine there's a train coming at, let's say, 75 miles an hour. Okay. There's a train coming at 75. You're off the track, you're safe, right? But you want to hop on this train of fitness and health and performance, right? You see all these other athletes and stuff on social media. So let's say the train is like that social media highlight reel, people doing crazy workouts, whatever. That train's going 75 miles an hour, it's hauling. Are you just gonna try to jump onto that train while it's moving at 75 miles an hour? No. No, no. With you, when you are starting your journey and you want good adherence and it is like a lifestyle change, that train needs to be going 10, 5 miles an hour for some people, right? That way you can get on it and then slowly build up to that speed of 75 miles an hour. Not that you'll not get there at that same, um, that same speed that the original train was going, but it's like that buildup phase is so, so, so important. And it happens quick, right? We've been talking about newbie gains, right? All of a sudden you pick up that first little bit of speed up to 25, 35 miles an hour, and that happens really, really fast. But then can you maintain everything that you've been doing so far and push past those initial plateaus? So it's like that's that's what I like to think about is like you're not jumping onto a train at 75 miles an hour. It's like start slow.

SPEAKER_03 54:40

So yeah, and stop comparing yourself to people that have been in the game for a really long time. And we don't mean to talk shit on the high performers. You and I both would probably consider ourselves high performers. We have really high training age in some areas. I do train six days a week. I do have a fairly high training volume throughout the week because I have to maintain this level of fitness that I'm at that I enjoy. But to compare yourself to me or even yourself or people that are even more fit than us, it's not productive, right? You really have to meet yourself where you're at. And you can have aspirations to get to that level where you're training five, six days a week and you're competing in high rocks events and cycling and doing powerlifting competitions. That is all great. And we support anybody that's trying to get to that point, but there is a level of progression that you need to take in order to get there. You just need to find the right program and approach to get there safely without a plateau or overreaching, right? Because we want you to be on the right side of that 50% of adherence where you are showing up to the gym consistently over time, and that's going to get you where you want to go, and opposed to comparing yourself to an influencer or somebody that's been in the game for a really long time. Yeah. Because you and I have both started from the beginning, and we probably got sucked into the train every single day. And, you know, go harder go home. But that's trust us when we tell you that that is not the answer and the right way to approach fitness from a beginner's side of things. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

For sure. So well, I mean, I I talked about most things um on my list here. Got to ask some good questions. Is there anything else on the top of your mind in terms of newbie gains or what training um variables should look like or the things that people should be keeping in mind with their training, right? So then that way they can stick with their fitness journey. But is there anything else on your mind?

SPEAKER_03 56:37

Yeah, the biggest point that I like to get across and one that is most important to me is do I actually enjoy what I'm doing in the gym? I encourage you to find your preference, focus more on ways to maintain adherence and have fun with your training. Unless you are a competitive or recreational athlete, training doesn't need to be extremely specific. You are allowed to participate in the form of exercise that you find most enjoyable, and don't let anybody else tell you different. Hell yeah. Find your preference in exercise. You enjoy powerlifting. I hate powerlifting because my bench press sucks. Long arms. Right. So, no, but for real, like I really enjoy Olympic weightlifting. I've recently adopted more of an endurance athlete type training protocol, which I love, which is funny because I never thought that I'll actually enjoy endurance training. But I enjoy and I get excited to show up to the gym every day. I'm competing in cycling events and training for high rocks races and Spartans, and it's kind of ignited this excitement and competitive edge inside of me that keeps me going and excited to be in the gym. So I actually enjoy the process of being here, just like you enjoy seeing improvements in your PRs and your lifts, right? And everybody's different. There's bodybuilders that really like training their aesthetics, there's aerobic athletes that enjoy running marathons and ultra marathons, and you have people that like yoga or people that enjoy walking or hiking or just recreational activity. It doesn't really matter what you decide to do as long as your adherence is high and you enjoy it. You're much more likely to stick to it if you're doing something that you enjoy. You don't have to buy into the, you know, all you have to do is squat, or people that tell you that you need to run or do whatever. There's some truth in a lot of that, but find what you enjoy and helps you keep showing up, whether that's a dance class, whether that's a hike, whether it's Zumba, it doesn't really matter. A lot of people talk a lot of shit on different modes of exercise. We're not gonna do that here. We're definitely gonna promote different modalities and different types of exercises and programs based off of what your goals are. But for general health, find something that you enjoy doing that gets you excited and out of bed.

unknown 59:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:01

So that's my biggest takeaway is yeah, enjoy the journey because it is a lifestyle change. So might as well find something you enjoy doing while you're in the gym. You don't have to suffer, it doesn't have to suck. Yeah, might suck a little bit, but in the best of ways.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

For sure. Um adherence is so much better when you enjoy it, right? Um you talked about that 50%, um, dropping off really, really quick, right? And being on the right side of that and and being able to change your lifestyle. Another important uh metric is 90% of people actually quit the gym or quit their training within about three months. That is a huge staggering number, and most of the time it's because they hate it. So I'm with you 100% that find something you enjoy, start nice and easy. You don't have to kill yourself with this crazy training or anything like that. Like if you enjoy CrossFit, awesome, right? As long as you're recovering, your coaches know what they're doing, awesome. Love it. Um, if you're an endurance athlete, same thing. Like just find something that you're passionate about and that you can stick with for the long term. Sometimes it takes a while to find what you really like, too. So don't give up so quick, I think is the biggest thing. Keep showing up, trying different things, um, variations, mixing up your training a little bit here and there to truly find what you enjoy.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:26

So yeah, I think that actually goes back to the whole newbie newbie gains thing and discussing that you're gonna get adaptation and progress no matter what you do. When you are just getting started, this is a great opportunity to explore different modalities of exercise. Do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that, try different gyms, different communities, kind of test out how different things make you feel. That's a great place to start. Don't necessarily get glued to one thing just because it works initially. Yeah, exactly. Right away. And be open to a lot of different things. I know me personally, I've been closed off to a lot of different training modalities because I was a an anaerobic athlete and it was like, oh, I can't do I can't do cardiovascular fitness because that's gonna kill my gains. Well, I was extremely wrong, and I've like opened up this door to cycling and running and things that like I just am in love with now. And when I show up to lift, I honestly don't even want to lift anymore. I'm just like, can I just get on the treadmill and run today?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

Which is so funny as an ex uh football player, college football player. It's hilarious, it's hilarious. But yeah, I think that's so so important during that time of newbie fake uh newbie gains. It's like, yeah, take that time to find out what you really enjoy. I think that's awesome because you're gonna get good adaptations regardless.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:44

Man, I do have one little bit of beef I want to talk about though. I think you'll find this is this is pretty funny. Okay. When you walk into like global gyms, and the first thing that you see is like 60 treadmills and a bunch of ellipticals and stair climbers. And if you actually look at the people that are on these pieces of equipment, they look miserable. Yeah, they hate it. Have you ever seen somebody just suffering through a run? Yeah, or even walking the green belt, like Haley and I will walk, and this isn't in a bad way. So if you see me at the river, I'm not judging you, but people will will they're running, right? And if you I look at their running form and their gait and everything, but I also like look at their faces and see if they actually enjoy it. I would tell you 90% of the people I see that are outside running, whether it's at the river or just you drive by them and they're running by you, they look absolutely miserable and it honestly looks painful. Maybe it's not, but the point I'm trying to get across is a lot of time the fitness industry will push trends on people that aren't necessarily for you. And if you're getting to the point where you're doing something and it takes every little bit of willpower for you to do that, whether it's getting on the treadmill and running for an hour, which again shouldn't be doing that if you don't have a good base of robotic capacity and running endurance, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:08

But my biggest beef with that is don't like don't buy into that. And if at all you're feeling like, I don't think I can continue to do this, or this is crappy and this sucks. I guarantee you there's a mode of exercise that you can do that is more enjoyable. Right. I used to talk a lot of shit on the Zumba classes and the yoga and the dance classes, like the high fitness type stuff, um, or even just walking in general. I used to be like, nope, you need to be in the gym, you need to be doing Olympic lifting, you need to be squatting, benching, you need to sprint, you need to do all these other things. I was so wrong because not everybody loves those things. Right. So that's the end of my rant. No, I think it's great. Yeah. Figure out, take some time to decide what you really like, and don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. Because if you do CrossFit and people are talking bad shit, just don't listen to them. Same thing if you're doing yoga or you know, high fitness or powerlifting or high rocks training. Don't listen to everybody else. Like fitness is great, it's all inclusive, it's for everybody. Find what works for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

100%. 100%. Um love that you brought up the treadmill thing and cardio and just running. Right. Um, so we'll leave it at that, but let's make that either our next topic or the following week's topic because that's a huge, huge thing. And multiple gym members actually here that have signed up at the physio shop have come in and they're like, Yep, I want to lose weight. I'm like, okay, perfect. Get you signed up. Like, do you want any training? Blah, blah, blah. But then I see them on the cardio equipment and that's all they want to do. And you know what? If they enjoy it, absolutely just do it. But once again, there's a lot of people that absolutely hate it. They feel like it's it's work, it's it's something that they have to suffer through. Um, so I yeah, next time I want to talk about uh or the time after, talk about cardio, right? And how that has kind of I don't want to say negative side effects or anything like that, because it's really healthy, but in terms of like weight loss and things like that, people think that they're trying to run super far on the treadmill to outwork their bad diet or to burn more calories throughout the day so then they can actually function throughout their day and still live a normal life. Like, there's there's just a lot that I have about the, like you said, the gyms that just have hundreds of treadmills. And it's like, well, why? Like, is that the best thing for everyone? Absolutely not. So I would love to talk about that next time because that's huge. That's a good topic. Cool. I love that. Cool, dude. Well, hour and five minutes. I think we'll call it there. Newbie Gains. And of course, a lot of other training principles we went over. But yeah, if you don't have anything else to say, we'll call it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:44

Yeah, I would say we went over a lot of topics today, and we did get a little bit in the weeds on some things. If you have questions about anything that we're talking about, feel free to send a DN to our Instagram page. Like we would love to interact with anybody that's listening or answer any questions for sure. Um, because we can Can talk for hours on this stuff. So you want to stop by the physio shop, we can sit down and talk, like that'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

Yep. So perfect. Cool. Well, everyone, thanks for listening, and we will see you next week. Please do.