Train. Eat. Think. Episode 8 - "Best" Training Split

In episode 8 of the Train. Eat. Think Podast Francis and Ben explore the nuances of training splits, emphasizing the importance of exercise selection, recovery, and mindset over rigid frameworks. 

We also discuss how to optimize muscle growth through smart programming, intensity, and consistency.

Something we prioritise and value when working with clients.
Train hard, but also train smart and get rewarded.

Enjoy the show and get in touch. We love all levels of feedback.

For online 121 coaching enquiries/information

Please contact Francis on X/Instagram @coachfhm or email fmeliacoaching@gmail.com 

Contact Ben on X/Instagram @benjaminyeezus or email benyeezus@gmail.com  

Thanks for listening. See you next week :D 

Transcript

Exploring Training Splits

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Train, eat, think. Episode number eight. What's the best training split?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

We're back after uh after last week's uh good old dialogue on the old Keenan flaps where uh we're back in for uh what's the best training split. So yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be a good one, just mate, because again, you you we we have the question online, you probably get it yourself all the time, and uh people are overthinking what's the best split? What about what do you think of a brooch? What do you think of pushbull legs and what you think of a polower? And yeah, you know, we we as much as important as having a good split, there's there's a lot of other stuff that you need to look at as well before even you know the split becomes the most important variable. So yeah, looking forward to uh to getting stuck in, mate.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yep, as always, uh a lot to cover, and we'll see what we can cram into to the next hour. And obviously, coming fresh off, you know, what are the best exercises that we've had some some great feedback from? So um definitely check out those episodes. I know that um a lot of people are messaging saying that they're they're playing catch-up on some of the episodes, so some great content in there. And as you rightly say, Francis, one of the one of the best questions that's probably best um being asked is what framework allows me to stimulate a muscle often enough that I can recover from and progressively improve rather than getting to argue, which you know, Francis, we we just want we won't engage in. Full body, push-pull legs, lower upper, push-pull legs, lower upper. What can you wrap your exercises in that let you hit progressions in your lifts?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

That's what it all comes down to. It's uh what we spoke about in previous podcasts as well. It's uh it's being able to go through your bouts of your stimulus recovery adaptation. It's it's a process of that, and it's finding a way to fit your your exercise choice, your volume numbers into what you can recover with your lifestyle, your training age, uh, what you need as uh in terms of like potency of stimulus to move forward because we're all at different stages. We're all you know, uh a one-year, have you got a one-year training career behind you, and you you know, you you haven't really built a lot of muscle just yet, versus somebody who's 15 years deep, you know, that's that's different mileage, totally different variables that that person is gonna need in terms of stimulus and recovery, totally different process. I think it's a nice sort of starting point to start the conversation off. Is that I think for me, you know, there's there's no best split, there's no right split. And

Understanding Frequency and Recovery

SPEAKER_00 2:51

this is this is the split that you're gonna use for eternity, and this is this trumps every other split. I think all splits can work when with the right dosage, the sort of the right intensity, volume, numbers, and the accuracy of the sets. That's that's the most important thing. All splits can work, ranging from your bro splits, hitting the muscle once a week to your push-pull legs, whatever it is. I think a nice way to start the conversation would be I I I like training spits. I I think they go from a level of maybe more of a beginner style split, something like a full body. Um, and you you go along a continuum. I I think you know, a beginner, I don't think a beginner is going to come in and go right in push-pull legs six days a week. They're not gonna need that. Would they benefit from maybe something like a full body or an upper lower up front? So I think there's a nice sort of sliding scale where you'll start off maybe full body, upper lower, push-pull legs, something along those lines, you'll go along the sliding scale. Uh so I think that that's a sort of nice, uh, a nice place to start, is you know, the the advancements of maybe trailer splits and how you go about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yep, I I mean I totally agree with what you've said there, Francis. And I think one of the most important things to get across right from the get-go is whatever you call it, it's just a way to organise your training. You don't automatically or magically build more muscle from the training split itself. Again, as you've covered, it's how much frequency we can get. We know that that's one of the most important factors. You probably don't be wanting um don't be wanting to wait seven days in between touching muscles unless you're very, very advanced, you know. So that frequency, the volume, the intensity of again, you've you've touched on that that you that you have within your training. One thing that's also important, I guess, is is exercise selection. Um, maybe stay away from the Kenan flaps and get exercises that you can absolutely target the muscle that you want to develop, progression on those lifts. So I think it's a good myth to kill there that rather than saying it's going to be this particular and put a name on it, it comes down to you know what lets you stimulate a muscle, what lets you recover from that, what lets you progress those lifts. Because, as we know, in terms of frequency, that's how often we can send the growth must the growth signal to a muscle. So we want to get in there and we want to be talking about training. So rather than arguing about splits, we want to be instead arguing about how intense we can make things.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

And I when we're touching here about frequency, I think this this governs a lot of the training splits. This is the number one variable to have you have to have what what split are we gonna run with, or what that's that will govern your training frequency and how hot often you're gonna hit a muscle group weekly or every 10 days if that's the way you decide to do it, which we will get on to later because you you can't free yourself from a seven-day week. It's not always about that. We will touch on that later. Um it's a good topic,

The Full Body Approach

SPEAKER_00 5:57

but in terms of you know, if you if you go on across the splits, so I I class the four main splits as probably full body, upper lower, push-pull legs, and then maybe a bro split. You know, something along those lines. Push-pull legs, you can you can turn into a little bit of a hybrid as well. But with a full body split, your frequency is going to be three times a week. Someone might do Monday, Wednesday, Friday, right? So your frequency of hitting every muscle group is three times a week. Now that that's high frequency, that's a very, very high frequency program. That serves a lot of beginners well. Now, that doesn't mean that you if you're advanced, you can't do a full body split because I know you've got an example of a British champion who trained full body. Um, so you know that can that can happen, of course. But the thing with frequency is that you you get frequents, frequent touches of hitting a muscle three times a week. But when you're not as muscularly developed and you haven't got as much strength as somebody who's maybe 10 years deep, frequent bouts of exposure three times a week, that's three opportunities across the week. Now, if you've run a full body split for a year, think how much you could step forward in terms of going for your bouts of your stimulus recovery adaptation. Three times a week for a year. If my math is correct, three times 52, you're talking 156 bouts of stimulus for them for a muscle across a year. If you're a beginner and you're doing that, spot on, you're in a you're in a really good spot. Versus imagine you've done a bro split for your first year of training. You'd have 52 bouts of stimulus for your chest versus 156. I know my money's on first day to grow faster. You know, it's a it's a no-brainer, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

It's one of the real um negative parts of the bro split because you know what can happen. Let's say you've got a weekend warrior out there and they miss Monday. So obviously, Monday, everybody knows that that's international chess day, so you're feeling a bit rough on the Monday. So that 52 opportunities, you've just lost one, and you're not going to get that until next Monday again. So that's you down to 51 opportunities in the year. Adding things like holidays, being generally unwell, you're just picking away at times and opportunities to train. So there's no getting away from frequency as as the key. But what of what you obviously want to do is within that frequency is making sure that you're not doing so, for example, 20 sets and then being ruined for like the next five to six days, that you need to then wait for the seventh day to come round so that you can do it again. You can you can break that down, for example, and do uh eight sets uh on a on a Monday for a given body part, and then within probably 72 hours, you should be pretty much ready to go again. So, again, when we're talking about that frequency, it comes with a reduction in wasted volume, junk volume, if you want to call it that, because what we need to respect is the fact that muscle protein synthesis will rise.

Transitioning to Upper/Lower Splits

SPEAKER_01 9:01

We we're not gonna go into nutrition and all that, what that does on this particular podcast, but we know that we're getting in, we're getting trained. Ideally, you want to recover so you can get back out again. And just one more fantastic point that you made, Francis, it's getting away from even just thinking about seven days. We're gonna credit the man. Jordan Peters talks about sleeps. It's how many sleeps can you go and then train um a body part again? And if you're doing that with the right intensity, not too much volume, but enough to progress your lifts again, you can get the performance, the output, the recovery, and the growth so that you can go back in and hit the muscle group again with having to wait seven days.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Absolutely, mate. Um, yeah, we've we've got to credit Jordan pieces where a lot of the stuff we we talk about, he's being such a uh an influential figure for a lot of our sort of education as well. So absolutely you've got to play, uh you've got to play props to him, of course. But I like what you're saying there about obviously the the sleeps, um, you know, uh how many sleeps in between each session, that's the you know the the 72 hours, that's three sleeps. Um you're gonna be you've got you've had enough sort of recovery between hitting a muscle grip again, and that is the that is the thing from the transition from a full body split to maybe an upper lower as an example, because where we're saying the importance of frequency, I don't want people to listen to this and think, ah, so more frequency is a weight better. I've got to hit something three times a week because there's a cap with that. There's certain individuals, as we spoke about, maybe a beginner who can handle the frequency of three times a week for certain muscles. Not all of us are going to be able to do that. That's why full-body splits they tend to work really well for beginners for maybe the first one to two years, give or take of training. Because they're not that strong and they're not that muscular, they can recover faster in between sessions, but there will become a point where, okay, these full body sessions, you're getting that strong and you're struggling to recover in between sessions, like you can't have a frequency of three times a week. You have to split those full body sessions now down, you have to chunk them down into upper lowers. So you instead of having a frequency of three times a week, like three full body sessions, you're gonna have an upper lower, rest in the middle, and then another upper lower. So you're gonna start splitting your full bodies down into more separate sessions. Now, the big thing as well with a full body session, now when you get strong, like they can get jam-packed. If you're trying to train your body from head to toe in a full session, as I say, when you're a little bit weaker and not as muscular, it's it's not as bad. You you'll get you can get a good amount of stimulus for one to two sets. Once you start getting bigger, start getting stronger, the needs change. Your stimulus needs change. That's when you make it uh you make a tweak to a uh upper lower, and you just have a more quality volume per session, as you spoke about there, where you're splitting up your frequency. So instead of hitting it three times a week, you drop it down to two. But those

The Push-Pull-Legs Framework

SPEAKER_00 11:59

the frequency of hitting everything twice a week now with these upper lower sessions, that stimulus is more potent. You're going from maybe having two sets of quads on a full body session, but now in a full lower session, you might be having five to six sets of quads. So this is where the stimulus per session goes up, recovery demands go up between sessions, and that's why frequency has to drop. So it's like a it's it's like a you're turning dials all the time between frequency and volume. Frequency will cover volume per session, and then we always want our intensity to be baseline, like we we always want that high. So your volume and your frequency, these are dials that we can turn, and it's just uh it's it's like piecing the jigsaw together when you understand that this is thing you can control all this stuff, nothing is ever set in stone. It it it really is interesting, and that is the that's the art of programme design as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, I I think you you make a great point when we're saying about full body and anyone who's sort of just starting out on their journey, you know, one one plate per side, for example, it it's good to see people progress, and this is not meant to be disparaging, but we we obviously need to talk about the reality of of what it looks like if you've you've just started training. You know, you're just finding one of the best analogies I like is is is using like a toddler, you know, you're just starting to find your feet. You've you've just come from crawling, you're starting to find your feet you're a bit unsteady on your feet, unsteady, for example, in the bench press, you've only got a plate aside to begin with, or that's what you're working towards, and as that comes up, you know, that's what becomes the sort of main driver of there becomes a little bit more fatigue then in your sessions because you are getting stronger by design as you're carrying on through that early part of your journey. And one of the important things, as I say, I think is is worth mentioning, you will get to a point where you're you're able to walk again to use the analogy, to get to the point where you're starting to run and and feel good with that. And that looks like you know, using the bench press as an example, you might be getting closer to two plates per side. And exactly as you've alluded to there, Francis, is that progression comes with that in those sessions, starts to become maybe longer warm-up times, um, greater fatigue because you you are getting stronger, and that's gonna you've only got so much recoverable volume. Everyone has a limited or what's called MRV, your maximum recoverable volume. Now, at the beginning, as we've said, that's gonna look you're not gonna touch it because you're not strong enough yet. You're working on building up the the must the musculature, you're working on building up all your different systems to handle um the different loads. As you quite rightly mentioned, um Rudy, really good friend of mine, um British bodybuilding champion, he would do full body workouts, but his full body would take three hours. And the warm-up that he was doing, I mean, Rudy was a four, five plate a side bencher, shoulder pressing 80, 90 kilo dumbbells per side, so what's that 160, eight plates?

Adapting to Individual Needs

SPEAKER_01 15:14

The level of warm-up that needs that's required to get there, and and that is an extreme example. But what we're saying about full body is you get to a point where there is that trade-off, and you then need to sort of start cutting it down and playing with your dials, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And that's the thing, is it's if someone's got three hours to train, like you know, the example there of you of your mate Rudy, you know, what 99% of people they're not going to be in the gym for three hours.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Um, so I I don't I don't want to be in the gym for three hours if I'm totally on. I love the gym, yeah, I love training. I I I don't want to train, I don't love training enough to train for three hours, just being absolutely honest.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And I think the the other thing with full body is it's not just about the time frame, it's at some point if you're doing let's say two sets for chest three times a week, your frequency is three times a week, and you you that's two two quality sets. At some point, those two sets, it's not enough stimulus. Even if they can be great sets, it's just not enough stimulus. You're gonna you're gonna get to a point where you need a little bit more. You you might you might be creeping towards that sort of four to six range again, hence up a lower if you'll come in now, okay, on upper session. I'm I'm so used to being uh being doing two sets of chest on my four bodies, okay. Well, now we're up to five twice a week. Bang, there you go. And you know, to be honest, I mean a lot of people could stay on that for a long time and obviously progress lifts and progress loads like that. Um, because you know it's not as if you go from oh full body, two sets of chest, then we go up or lower, that's five sets. Oh, we need to go to 15 sets, 20 because you know, we know we can't just keep adding sets that is a sort of minimum baseline, but you'll find your your sort of maximum recoverable volume going from full body, upper lower, and again, it just allows you to have uh more directed quality volume per, you know, you're splitting your upper body up now. You've got your your chest, your delts, triceps, and then your upper back, lats, biceps. You know, you can get a lot more quality working across the board there. So yeah, it's just a uh it's a nice transition, full body, so upper lower. And then would be the uh the transition to I know this is your your split, isn't it? Push pull legs.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Pretty much, yeah. Push pull legs is is one of my favourite. Um I I I love it, I love the frequency that it gives, um controlling the volume, and again, as we spoke about right from the off, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's push-pull legs and you don't do anything else. We we've spoken in the past, Francis, about for example, a weak body part. If you want to bring that uh weak body part up,

Recovery and Frequency Management

SPEAKER_01 17:58

you you prioritise that and in one of your sessions. Now, in a push session, if you've got weak biceps or it's uh you want to progress your biceps and bring them up, you could even look to push pardon the pun, push biceps into your push session at the start, having some in your pull session as well, as your legs, but again, we're reducing the volume down, but there you've got a little bit of frequency that's touching maybe what you've seen to be a weak body part. So it again it just comes back to although the frameworks are fantastic and we talk about them, and and I follow it myself. You know, I I do I do push pull legs um five days out of seven for me. So again, you can make it work. I think it's good for a four or five day trainer because you've got that uh it's happening so many different so many sleeps you get to do your push session, your pull session. The other thing I think is good about it as well is you can kind of hop on and hop off, so you don't need to wait. So if you needed an extra rest day because something happened or you weren't feeling it, you know, it's something that you can just jump in and say, Okay, well, last week or sorry, last session was push, and now we're on to a pull session, and there's so much there's just so much fluidity, and I think that it's one of it's a great marker, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Uh I I I I I've ran past uh push-pull legs in the past myself. I I've done it in a um a slightly different way over a a 10-day rotation, which I will get into in a minute. I promise we will get into that. I just want to touch on going from full body, upper lower, and then why would someone go from maybe upper lower to push-pull legs? Why would you make that transition? And I think one of the big things would be you know, maybe after a good few years of upper lower, and by the way, you could make upper lower, you could run up or lower for 10 years and get fantastic results. So there's like it's it's one of the best splits like all around. But maybe at some point you again you train for long enough, you you're gonna you're gonna have strengths and you're gonna have weaknesses that will develop. So, you you know, as an example, you might have a really, really weak back, and you just it's just just tagging in maybe four to six sets in an upper session. Your back needs a little bit more work because you know you you might be able to front load your back on your upper sessions. That's that's also another session. You could do your back work first, and then your presses, you can do that on upper lower. But maybe you just need to come in and just have your own pull-days and hit the upper back independently with certain movements, your different divisions of your lats, your rear delts. Your your back could be really holding your physique back, and it just needs more focus. So then that's why you again you bring in your pull day and you you can start to you just have more directed focus with push-ball legs, like your push session, it's chest, shoulders, tricep, that's it. You can push a little bit more volume in into those areas if you need it. Again, you might have weak triceps, need more work, more closer grip presses as an example. So it's again, it's not that it's magical, it's just if that's what your physique needs. Again, that's a good point of this. You always have to train to your physique needs that is massive train to what you need. That's it, and that might vary from me to you to the next person. But

Crossover Stimulus in Training

SPEAKER_00 21:12

yeah, that that's a nice way why where someone could feasibly transition from upper lower into push-ball legs if you want a little bit more directed focus.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

I mean, I think those are very, very fantastic points. Maybe maybe one that we can jump on to is recovery between between whatever your split may be. One of the things I know, Francis, we we we work with a lot of different people and a lot of different age brackets and a lot of different circumstances. So, you know, somebody that's 22, sleeping nine hours a day, you know, doesn't have a lot of stress in life. Whereas maybe you're working with somebody that's that's in their forties, maybe even their fifties and beyond, a lot of stress, a lot of years training under the belt, maybe just hammering it, broken. Sleep, maybe some yo-yo dieting in there. So the the the the split would look the same, but there would be different outcomes, and it's just about how then we can help to tweak that about giving them something to recover from, uh making sure that the joints can recover, staying motivated as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Absolutely, like the recovery in between, as we know. Like you can you can't go through your stimulus recovery adaptation if the recovery piece is missing. We can train as hard as we want, but if the recovery is not there, you know, you're not going to allow the adaptive process to take place. And you know, we can touch on freeing yourself now from that seven-day week to a ten-day week, and this is this is how I've run push-pull legs in the past, and I think it works tremendously well because you're not you know you're not trying to go push-pull legs, push-pull legs like six days a week. Now, that's famously the way Ronnie Coleman used to train, right? He used to do push-pull legs, push-pull legs, right? Six days a week, he'd have one rest day. But as we know, now we're not Ronnie Coleman. You know, the minute you know, I think we found that out by now. There's um, you know, he was just an absolute phenomena. And the way he trains, if you're trying to take what he done is gospel, and you're trying to replicate that, you know, it's gonna leave you, you're gonna you're gonna burn yourself into the ground after week one. Now, a good way I like like to run push-pull legs was maybe you could do um two back-to-back days. So it could be push-pull, Monday, Tuesday, rest day in the middle, either side of legs, always a rest day, either side of legs. So you'd say Monday, Tuesday, rest Wednesday, Thursday, legs, Friday off. Saturday could be the push or pull again, Sunday push or pull. So you're just freeing yourself from having to get push, pull, legs, push, pull, legs in seven days. You're just spreading it out across ten days. So you're having an A rotation and a B rotation of a session. So you're getting six sessions in within nine, ten days. So what what why why would we do that? What's the big piece? What's what's so important about that? It frees up more recovery in between your sessions, more recovery in between your bouts of stimulus, so you can actually come into the sessions a little bit fresher, perform better, not beat your joints down, just feel like boiled shike going into the

Innovative Training Approaches

SPEAKER_00 24:13

gym. So it's still a good frequency. You're still hitting everything every sort of four to five days with that, with a push-ball legs over a uh a nine, ten-day rotation. So, yeah, I think that pulls it into you know meeting the client where they're at and making sure whatever program you give someone, they've got enough recovery in between. And that was just the way that I I used to I had to run push-ball legs like that for me to recover.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

I mean, using myself as an example, I although I say I train push-pull legs, I actually do push twice a week, legs twice a week, but only one pull session. You you I think you mentioned earlier, Francis, about if you've got a strong back, yeah. So my back seems to develop, certainly to develop better than my chest and my shoulders did, and a very, very weak point for me. And I've spent you know quite a while trying to bring my chest and my shoulders up uh triceps as well. And I think that's what's really helped give me that frequency because I've got a strong body part that I know grows. If at any point I was noticing it's not progressing as much as I want, obviously, then that's when you look to change that. But you know, I've I've trained legs twice a week now for like best part of 12-13 years, and I I I'd sort of credit that to the fact that I've got not a bad set of legs, but having recently um moved to push two days a week just with a one pull session, it certainly um certainly seems to work for me, and that that's the frequency that I can recover from. So I do um legs, push, pull, rest, and then it's legs, push, rest.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Again, you've you've only been able to find that out though, because you've developed strengths and weaknesses over years of training. You didn't come out the gate in year one and run that split. Uh what what out of interest, what what what training split did you run for that first couple of years? But what did you run with? I've I've always run push-pull legs.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

For a time I've run push-pull legs lower upper, um, probably two to three years, but mostly mostly push-pull legs.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

That's a good hybrid split, isn't it? Push-pull legs up or lower. That's a great five day split. That if you can recover from that, like I I I I again, I would I put I would put that in that that's a really, really good split. It ticks all the boxes, which is whether you can recover from it. But again, because you noticed that your your back was a strong point, you could sort of you know lay off the gas on your back a touch. And you know, you you I know you've said in previous podcasts as well, you feel as if your you know your chest and shoulders were weaker body parts, so you wanted to put more focus and attention on those and pull away from your strong area, which again that's that's bodybuilding programming. At some point, you will have strengths and weaknesses, and you'll make those smart choices.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I mean, what one thing that's really important to say as well, we were talking about this framework, but there are things in there that help, uh you know, just have that frequency. So, for example, on on pool day, not that everybody would need to have that, but having something like a hip hinge. We've spoken about me and not deadlifting before, but even having that hip hinge is something that touches um my posterior. So I'm I'm working, it's not a direct back exercise, I understand that, but you're working into the glutes, the hamstrings, and even like your lower back by by doing something like that, so it's helping you build up and just touch all those parts. So those are you know perfectly valid ways to to do it. Just because it's got a label on the day, it doesn't mean that you necessarily can only stick to that particular piece if you need to bring something in. Um and and as well, you've got when we talk about doing backwork. I I think a lot now online I don't really see a lot of talking about secondary muscles being worked, it's all just about the focus on on the on the first. We've we've spoken about the the meat and the veg exercises, you know, you you've got to build a foot a full meal. We're not gonna bash on on cable work. I do a lot of cable work, it's fantastic. But what we are saying is when you start to sort of uh graduate or levitate towards only cable work to do something, T-bar row is a fantastic example of that. You're getting to hit you know a right good lot of your back, basically. And who if if you just put it forward as an example, somebody does T-bar row and somebody does cables in isolation as the only exercise, who's going to build a bigger back over time? And and these are the things when we speak about exercise selection as well, and on top of this point, it's about understanding that you can touch different and relevant parts of the body that help you build your physique and your frame, and they don't need to wait until a day that's got or that that's not on that day, so I can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

It's a great point, mate. And it's it's it's I call this um the overlap or like crossover stimulus. Uh and I think whatever program you run, you're gonna run into this at some point, whether you run a an upper lower split or push-bull legs. Now, I'd give a couple of examples because I deal with this myself and with clients, and you you'd always you you can always know when it's gonna happen. It's it's I've it's it's it's you you just get a sense for it. So, you know, as an example, I think the the biggest one for me would be lower back, it's the lower back fatigue and the crossover that can come in. So, you know, as an example, um, let's say let's say an upper lower split, and I know this because this happens myself. The likes of today, I've just done a full leg session, right? So Monday, full leg session, I've just done paused RDLs. Um, so obviously, like my whole post area is just smoke, glutes, hamstrings, lower back, upper back lats, everything from head to toe. I've got an upper session scheduled tomorrow, and I'll have pull-ups in there and chest supported T-bar. But what do you notice about the the back exercises that I've chosen there? They're not bent over that where I'm I'm holding the barbell in my hands because my lower back has already smoked off that today. It's a pull-up, again, no lower back loading at all. It's a chest supported T-bar up, again, no lower back loading. So there's a reason for that. They're not just put in there for the sake of it. That's looking at my programming. So again, it's it's something that you your exercise choice again, you will you will try to monitor and not have as much of an overlap on sort of back-to-back sessions. At some points, you know, as an example, yes, my my traps are gonna be sore tomorrow going into pull-ups and chess sports at T Barrow. I can't it that's unavoidable. It is what it is. I'm just gonna you just have to go in sometimes and crack on like that. But the main thing is that the lower back is gonna remain fresh, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna smug that again tomorrow. So yeah, it's just it's it's an interesting example.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

It's a it's a fantastic point, and you get it as well, and um push pull legs, because if you've got pull as a deadlifting as a pull exercise, some people might argue it's legs or it's full body, whatever. You know, it's it's in most pool days for those that enjoy it, and then you've got legs the next day, and if that was you know, maybe some sort of squat, barbell squat obviously popular, whether you're gonna do whatever that is one of the things that can that can get you is the fatigue, because as you say, the muscles already smoked, you're probably not going to have enough in 24 hours to recover that, so it's just something to to take into consideration. And another point, um, I I've just actually programmed another split that I've actually never done before. Um, one of my clients that I'd worked with previously had come back and said carrying a little bit of an injury. So we had a little conversation about you know what he could do or what he thought he could do and maybe couldn't do. And we came up with a plan to do anterior and posterior, just to give him um the best chance at recovering the exercise. It's a bit of a he's got a couple injuries, one of them is a quad injury at the moment, so even on the interior day, it's it's like volume-based, just trying to push blood in and help a little bit of recovery and just see how he gets on. And then on the posterior day, you know, evidently all the things that we sort of touched on as we go here. But I I thought that was quite interesting, something I've never done before, and that was a real good challenge. I quite enjoyed that actually about thinking that out.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

The posterior answer is put me. It's it's a good one. I I actually I'd done a YouTube video on that months ago. It's very popular in um a lot of the European circles, you know, like people in like the Germans and the Austrians, they loved that for some reason. I don't know why, but they a lot of them, a lot of the top bodybuilders there, they train with an anterior posterior. And it's very similar to upper lower, it's just it's just switched around a touch. And when you think about it, it it ticks all the boxes. Like if you had an Antaria split, you're you know, the whole like quads and chest and all your presses, you can see how it works. It's just again, it's just whether you enjoy training like that, uh, whether you whether you want to come in and you want to train chest and presses with quads, it's a bit of a weird combination, but it ticks the boxes in terms of like your frequency and your stimulus, and then you have you'd have a full a full anterior day, which I think that's a little bit more smoother, that makes more sense, isn't it? A full uh posterior day, like back and hamstrings and glutes because that that ties in together as it is. So, again, a big piece, mate, is it is do you enjoy the finest bit that you're doing as well? Because we've we've spoken on this so many times. If you if you don't enjoy what you're doing, you know, I don't think you're gonna get very far in this game.

Adherence vs. Optimization in Training

SPEAKER_01 34:13

That was it's it's ironic. I love it when you do this, Francis. We end up we end up in the same spot, and the thing we're gonna talk about next, which I was gonna put forward, was gonna be how adherence you know sort of beats optimization. I think we need to be real as well, that we need to be a little bit adult. You know, we're not gonna go into the gym, big smile on the face. Oh, today I'm gonna train you know my biceps. Oh some people, I think one of the biggest things I see online is the exact same amount of people hate bicep training, that love bicep training, you know, so it's like a total 50-50 split. Obviously, you get people out there that hate training legs, train your legs, um but you know that we we we should be having some element of enjoyment because it's our spare time, it's our hobby, you know, we we're hobby builders, we're looking to build, but I think as well there needs to be just that little bit, you know, of understanding that there's probably exercises out there that you avoid doing and say I'll do it next time because you just plain don't like them. But having said that, you know, it's important to have something that you can stick to, you know, something that you're not gonna let oh, I've got a wee a wee bit of skin here on my my thumb that's fallen off, not gonna be able to train today because you don't like the lifts that are in whatever it is you have to go and do at the gym. I think that's important to mention.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Uh that's it. I think we spoke about this, I think it might have been two weeks ago, or we spoke about the needs versus wants analysis for exercise selection. And it's the same for your programming as well, like in terms of your training split. Now you you might like to come in and have uh you know chest and arms and big bicep and tricep days, full arm days and shoulder days, and you know, come in and just get a pump and all this stuff. That might be fun, but at some point, you know, you know, you're gonna imagine you're just coming in and training chest and arms twice a week. You've got a nice little uh a nice little uh shoulder day. You're not training any sort of legs, and you know, you're saying three or four days a week, and you your physique is just it's very, very imbalanced, but yet you're enjoying it. But at some point you've got to look at it and go, right, I've got to I've got to do now what my physique needs to step forward, and then you'd have to start balancing that out a touch, you know, actually starting to train your legs, getting something with a little bit more frequency, and then spreading out your volume across your your body as a whole. So, yeah, it is important to go through your needs versus once analysis because uh we don't want to end up looking like Johnny Bravo with no legs.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

And I I think it's so important, you know. You your arms are six percent of your of your body, of your tissue. So if you go in and train them, okay, fair enough, big arms, whatever, fantastic. But I always think, well, if you go in and train only six percent of your body, you've left 94% unaccounted for. So I think that's why you know when we're talking about you know, upper lower or or push-pull legs or whatever the split, whatever the framework is that that we you know we label up as the most important thing, I think, is making sure that you're getting as much bang for your buck in your training session and in relation to the amount of tissue that you touch. You know, it's a lot of time, it's a lot of money, it's a lot of effort. Yeah, absolutely. You want to enjoy your training as we touched on, and that's important because again, you know, it's probably your hobby, but at some point, I and I I know all too well this feeling, Francis, of frustration, of having wasted my time. I I wasted nearly six years not making any progress, and that's when I got fed up, and I was like, there needs to be there needs to be more than this that that helps you get the progress that you want, and then when you start to see that progress, unfortunately that's when the the addiction does begin, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Once you see one once you see the real meaningful changes, but you're addicted for life, as we know. It's the it's the old saying, isn't it? They say once you start in the gym, you're forever small.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

It gets worse. Yeah, it gets worse. I mean, not that I'm the biggest person on the planet, I'm certainly bigger than I was, but the kind of bigger you get, the more muscle you put on your frame, and you're like, I'm I'm even smaller than than when I even started.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

It's just it's it's it's it's just a great journey to go on, mate, isn't it? But I think what would you say is some of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to the programming, and what I would say would be when they're picking a training split, we just touched on it there. Everyone wants to favour like biceps and triceps, like six percent of your physique. You know, they are small muscles. Everyone avoids legs, right? And you know, it's the it's the classic skip leg day, and as we're saying it, if we're trying to the amount of muscle tissue that you've got on your lower half, right? Pick a training split where you're you are going to be able to touch your legs with a good frequency because you grow your legs, it makes everything else easier. The mental components of being able to grow legs, quads, hamstrings, glutes, adductors, calves, these these muscles that are hard to train. And I always remember this lesson I got from the old school gym that

The Importance of Leg Training

SPEAKER_00 39:49

we touched on a few weeks ago, that air stunk is shite. That we've touched on one of the lessons that I always got off one of the the old school fellas there. I think we you we call them the gym das, you know. One of the one of the old school fellas, he said to me, I remember him saying, Fran, listen, you learn to say your legs are hard, everything else is easy, and it always stuck with me, always stuck with me. I was always in there squatting and deadlifting early on, and he was right, you know, because once you can once you do all that stuff, everything else is easy. Go and doing a chest press and a shoulder press, it's easy. You don't have the same dread or the anxiety going into a push session or an upper body session as you do for legs. There's a reason for that. So training your legs hard, touching them, you know. I I think most people need twice a week on legs, unless you've got you know absolutely mammoth legs after a couple of years of training, like you've just monstrous legs, you know, you might be able to drop your frequency down to one. I know there is some people who do that because their legs are that big, and that makes sense, but that's not 95% of people, you know, people are just not training legs because it's hard, and we know that. So, yeah, I think that would be uh one of the biggest mistakes I see, mate, is people just avoiding legs, and I'm sure you'd agree.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they properly put hairs on your chest, if uh we're still allowed to say to say that um particular statement. But yeah, there's I mean, obviously, when when we're talking about any exercises, we're talking about people failing safely, you know. Put put the right mechanisms in place. If you're in doing any sort of squatting, um, make sure that your pins are set up, that you've got a spotter. Don't do anything. We'll we'll get into one rep maxis, probably not in this episode, but we'll all get to one rep maxis very soon. Stay away from one rep maxis, don't use common sense, train hard, train smart, but train that you can get yourself back into the gym and you're not lying on the couch for a few months. So, you know, it's it is about finding those difficult exercises and like that, you know, the smaller stuff, even chest, Francis is a small muscle overall, and that's why when you see people battering it with like 30 and 40 sets, it it just doesn't need that amount of like pummeling basically. Um, but like you say, there's nothing you know more challenging than being pinned under you know the the barbell squat, Smith squat, a nice good, controlled set of leg press, you know. And one of the hidden variables that we probably haven't touched yet is execution in an exercise. You know, what what we've tried to make clear in in this episode is that the framework doesn't matter, the label that you stick on, it doesn't matter, it's what you do with the sets that you have. If you can make those sets effective, get the tension on the target muscle, doesn't matter what the split is, get that focus on your muscle, control the tempo, push yourself and find where your safe failure is. And even if you've got a spotter or a good training partner, get them to push and show you what your true failure is. Because again, I think that's something that I learned. We talk about the gym does, these guys, you know, shouting at us one more, one more, let's go. Now, again, I'll be honest and transparent. Were they the best reps in the world? Probably not. And we do talk about, you know, I'm talking here and about being fantastic and controlled and stuff like that. But those are the little things and the little risks that make you a better lifter. But as long as you're doing it fairly safely, if you've got a spot on either side, take advantage of it and and push and put those hells on your chest, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Yeah, they're they're the times where you find out about yourself, and that that's what was saying about building that the foundation of being able to push hard. Because the training split doesn't matter if you can't train hard and you don't have good execution and you we're putting the tension where we want it. Because you can train on the most scientifically proven, have your frequency and have all your numbers dialed in, you're managing your sleep and your nutrition, you can manage all this perfectly. But if you go in the gym and you train like a fanny, you know, it doesn't matter what split you've run. The person who does things suboptimally who runs a bro split, but if he trains like an absolute animal, and I mean an absolute savage, he gets in the gym, and like he's just people think he's a lunatic. But he's easy, but he trains hard, they had the tension where he wants it, and he's only hitting each muscle group once a week. He's gonna make substantial progress versus someone who's doing the full body split with the frequency and they're up or lower, the push-pull legs, you've got all your exercise choices and your volume numbers, it's all in your spreadsheet nice and neat. If you're training like a fanny with that, it doesn't matter. So, where what are we getting out of here? You've got to bridge the two together. If you can train, you don't need to be a lunatic, but if you can train, if you can train like an animal and you can summon that okay, that intensity that you need with your smart programming, you bridge that together as a framework. There you go. There's that's the winning ticket, and that that'll be a big message to get across for people. Train like an animal on a good split, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 45:28

It's

Intensity and Focus in Workouts

SPEAKER_01 45:29

why the the gym's so good because you can use it, you know, as that point where when you're getting to the end of a set and you need to dig deep. You know, one of the things I like to sort of summon up is you know something that's been said to you in the past, or you know, there's a situation where you know somebody in your family's gonna get hurt if you don't get the 10 reps, for example. There's different ways that you can approach it, but definitely you know, making that focus, or even as well, you know, look around the gym at these guys that are you know maybe a bit. I'm trying to be I'm trying to be kind here. I'm I'm I don't want to say anything that's too inflammatory, but look at look at guys with the good physiques, you know, the guys with the good physiques aren't in touching the the two kilogram you know dumbbells or for a hundred reps, you know, they're in there and they'll they're doing the work. You know, have a look at them and and learn from from what they do. Um again, you know, but we're talking, we're having a joke here about the gym dads, but these are the guys that you know showed us how to train. There wasn't as much social media in in 2012-ish. It wasn't as you know, maybe as readily available as it is today. But you you were watching these guys and thinking I would have stopped there, and that was four reps from him stopping. You know, there might be a little bit of noise towards the last couple of reps, there's nothing wrong with that. You know, that's where you want to dig deep and find where your true failure is rather than one of I'm gonna end this sort of um segue, Francis, and ask you a question. How many minutes do you rest between your like top leg set right now?

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Top leg set um between seven to nine minutes, easily seven to nine minutes.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

So let me ask you if I said to you go back in after three minutes, what what would happen to your subsequent set and what would the set before it look like when you know you've got to go again in three minutes?

SPEAKER_00 47:43

After three minutes, mate, like it's genuinely, and I'm not just saying this, that I'm I'm genuinely just sort of getting ready to even think about the set. Like, because I I I I don't know, let's say we'll talk about I'll give you a great example. Done a pendulum squad today, done the first set, set of ten, and you get off that, and you you know, you you you're sort of seeing stars, and you have to start. I'm standing next to the machine, like just sort of slumped over, getting my breath back, like fucking hell. And I sit down and you know, you're probably talking genuinely six to seven minutes before I even start changing the plates for to back off for the back off set. Because the those sets that that are that intense, they're that stimulative. If you if you if you can take a pendulum squat to all-out failure and be ready to go within two, three minutes, that's nothing to do with conditioning, heart and lungs. That is your nervous system output. When you've when you've pushed all the way there, you need your time. If I went in after two or three minutes on the next set, mate, uh, as an example today, I've done 10 reps on the first set, took off a little bit of weight, and I've done a nice 14 repper just to work in the two different rep ranges. That I like to do that. If I would have gone in that second set after just maybe two or three minutes reps, I I'd probably only get maybe six, seven reps versus fourteen. That's just a poor set. What's the point of that? I I done two sets of pendulums today. And from the time of warming up to finishing with them, you were probably talking that they they took me 30 minutes to do two sets but with the proper warm-ups and get myself ready for it. And they were two all-out sets. I I only done three sets for quads today. I've done two sets of pendulum and one set of leg press, but every set there, every one of those was a ball buster. I didn't have another rep in the tank. That's three high quality sets for quads in a session, and I'll be back going again on Thursday for more quads. But that's that's what we're going at. Those those three sets today, they were life's on the life on the line. Someone's got a gun to my baby's head. Like, I'm not I can't do another rep. I cannot do another rep. That's that's the sort of intensity that you're getting so.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

See, I think that's a that's a great point, you know. And one of the things that I've learned over the years, and and maybe as well because I'm I'm maturing a little bit, you know, I'm 46, but it's like don't miss a rep, don't miss a single rep. You know, when you step onto the machine or the platform or whatever it is that you do, you know, I think for me the set even starts, or the session even starts, or has done before. You know, I'm not just rocking up at the gym. Some of my best performances come from I know I'm getting into the gym tomorrow and I'm gonna do whatever it is. So I'm I'm already visualising it, I'm already sort of thinking about the success. I've got my logbook, I'm looking at what's gonna be what's been done, and I'm looking at what's gonna be done in in this session, and I'm not gonna miss a single rep. If I do miss a single rep, that's when I get unhappy at myself because I wanted it. Now, don't get me wrong, there are days in the gym where you go in, it just feels heavy, and and these days happen. There's other days when you get in and you get there and you start and you've done your warm-up and you get yourself primed, and it becomes the best gym session that you've ever done, and you maybe even wanted to can off the gym session. But the point I'm really trying to make there is you know, make every single rep that you're going for count. Another thing I see is some people talking about I go and do like 3,000 steps between my sets. That to me, I I just don't understand the thinking because if if you got that recovery ability, for me it shows the lack of intensity in your sets. Now we've spoken about time in the gym, 50 minutes to an hour. Maybe if you're doing legs, maybe just slightly over for a leg session. Put your put everything to the side for for 50 minutes. All you're in there to do is the reps that you've got, the sets in your book. Do you're walking before or after, and you're talking. You know, I I had a a gent one of the OGs that took me under his wing. The minute we stepped onto that gym for no talking to you. The only talking was do you want a plate off that what pin do you want that on? How many kilograms do you want on that? There was no if you tried to talk to him just pretended like you weren't there. And that's the kind of intensity that you need to take for 50 minutes, for 60 minutes, whatever. You can do that, it can be done, and what you'll see as a result of that, just try it. Yeah, honestly, just try it and see how much more effectively you train as a result.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

I love this conversation, mate, because this is the nuts and bolts of the success inside the gym that people need to be thinking of more so with training split. They need to be thinking of this. So people are probably thinking, Well, we're doing a podcast on what's the best split. Why are they talking about this? Because this comes first, this is important. As we said, the split doesn't matter if this isn't on point. If you're coming in the gym and you're fucking around and your focus is not there, it doesn't matter what split you're on. You every set that you're you're doing is shite because your focus and intensity is not there, and you're correct in saying, like the set starts the night before. Like today for me, I I was thinking yesterday, all night, about my paused RDLs that I had coming up today. I was thinking about it. I had my higher refeed day yesterday because obviously we're in prep. Uh, I was just I was just thinking about it. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and you know, I kept telling myself, I'm gonna go in tomorrow. I'm gonna fucking nail that. I'm gonna fucking nail it. I'm gonna it it's on. Like it's it's these sort of words I'm saying to myself the night before. I'm not I'm not sitting there the the morning of and I'm just walking in and go, Oh, I've got post nobody else today. Yeah, that's this is gonna be fun. No, I'm sitting there the night before, I'm I'm I'm revved up, I'm good to go, and I'm I'm feeding myself positive messages going into a session. I'm not telling myself, oh, 10 weeks into prep, yeah. I feel a little bit tired, I'm losing a little bit of body fat around my hips, and it's gonna feel heavy. This none of that. I'm going in, I'm I'm gonna fucking dominate that. Let's go. And but this this is the sort of switch that you you will get better at being able to summon this the more that you train. This comes from experience. I might not have had this in year one, but now after 15, 16 years, it's like you can summon it, but this is what you need. The more the more experience you get, the more advanced you get. You need to be able to pull out the fire because you have to it has to stay like that session after session, session after session. You can't come in when you feel like it, pull it out the fire. The next week, uh, it's an off day today. I'm gonna take a couple of plates off. Bollocks to that. You know, you're in a scrap, you're in a fight with it, and you've got to you've got to be mentally ready for it. And that's where the focus elements inside the gym where you're saying walking in between sets, what a load of bollocks. Like, you know, just I just think today at the like session I've just done. If I'm walking in between sets there, you you're not pushing hard enough. It's just bollocks, total bollocks. So you know you I I could only see myself being able to walk in between sets if I'd done some maybe medial delt raises or some bicep curls, you might get away with it there. Anything else, no chance. So, yeah, as you're saying there, if you're gonna do any sort of steps, don't be doing them in between sets, save them for before your training session or after your training session, but just focus on the task at hand, getting stuck in with your sets, driving the best stimulus that you can, and it all starts up here in the edge, as we say, so important.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

I mean, the whole reason, in essence, we we are going to train, you know. A lot of the people we work with, Francis, are looking for a combination of more muscle, less body fat, and as I say, combination of them both, less body fat with more muscle. What you want to be doing is getting those stimulating reps, and those stimulating reps are coming from what did you do last time? You need to force your body

Mindset and Mental Resilience in Training

SPEAKER_01 56:11

to want to adapt. It doesn't it doesn't just adapt because you you chucked a little bit of weight at it. Francis is absolutely right, uh it is a skill that you get back better at with more experience, but it doesn't mean that you can't begin to experience it now because if you're pushing every one of your sets and you're getting those stimulating reps, you're getting your your reps in the logbook, which aren't just I did nine reps, you know, the little bit of data that you could put in there that that tells you some um context about where you're at and stuff like that, it's it's fine, it's it's okay to to do that. It's not just uh get the reps for reps' sake. We we're talking about doing them with very good forum, with good quality, because as I say, the the whole bottom line of training is those stimulating reps, and if you're not getting them in your session, of which there might only be what 20 to 30 of them, Francis. You know, you're doing all of that work, all of that eating, all of that recovery, all of that training to come out, and those are the ones that are going to say when you look back and one year, five years, ten years at your physique, what's changed about your physique? Have you got the progress and the rewards? Because that's what it comes from. It comes from that looking not just five minutes before you go in, you know. I understand that everybody is busy and stuff like that, and I get that, but if you really want to maximise and get the most from it, these are the little things that'll really help you as a as a person and and as a trainer to help push the boundaries because muscle doesn't just fly on your frame for 95% of people, you know. As mere mortals, you know, we've had to you know die under the bar, so to speak, probably a really shitty term there, apologies, but you know, literally, you know, feel as if where are we here? I'm really struggling, and you've got to summon everything to get to get to where you need to be.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

But this is the conversation that I I love to have with clients, and when they when they grasp it and they understand it even more, it's like a penny drop moment because I I say to them all the time is that you you make a choice every session that you walk into, you make a choice, you can sit there and you can play the victim saying that you're tired or whatever, or you can make the choice to I'm gonna attack every set with everything that I've got. That's all you can ever do. You can't do much more than that. You take every set for what it's worth. Those stimulating reps that you mentioned in there towards the end of a set, it's hard to get to that point. You know, coming in and pushing leg presses, hack spots, whatever it is, RDLs, hip hinges, it's tough, it's mentally tough. It's not easy. If it was easy, then obviously everyone would do it. It's not easy, it takes a certain level of focus and attention to get yourself to that zone to get to those last couple of reps. And there is going to be days where you walk in and you are tired, you you might not have slept well, whatever's going on. That's happened, that's in the past. All you control now is what happens over the next hour. You control your response, full attitude, take what's there for the session. That's it. And then you can sleep easy at night knowing look, I've I've come in on this hack squat here. I might be tired, I might have got these reps last week. This is the weight I used last week. I'm gonna put the same weight on and I'm gonna go for it. And lo and behold, you probably end up getting similar reps. You might even get a plus one, but your your attitude and effort has led you to do that because it would have been so easy to come in and go, I'm gonna take a little bit of weight off this. I'm not feeling it today, going through the motions, but just by having that sheer uh mental resilience and that that positive mental framework in your brain where you're going, right? I choose now. No one tells me what to do here. I choose this response. This is on me, and you can summon, you summon the fire from within and you go, right, let's go. And I I have this, I love these conversations when I have them with clients because they always come back to me. Like sometimes I've had I've had messages where I'm not feeling too good going into the gym today, Francis. What do you think I should do? And I said, I might send them a voice note or whatever and go, look, it is what it is. Take it for what take every step for what it's worth, attack everything like you mean business, that's all you can do. And I always get a message at the end of it, that was a great session now. I made up that I've done that every time. So it just goes to show uh the message that you tell yourself up in your up in your head, your body will follow what goes on up here every single time. It's the most powerful piece of the puzzle. I I truly believed that a hundred percent mate.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

And the the worst workout is the one that never happened, and that I I truly believe that as well. You know, there will be days when you're up and days when you're up like a bit a bit down in terms of like your performance or whatever, and that's when you've just got to you've just got to knuckle down. I I had a great example. I can't remember if we spoke about it, maybe I'm repeating myself here, but um we'll blame um my cup for that. Um it was it was one Tuesday, and it was like I just didn't want to train, which is very, very rare, but it does happen, you know. Obviously, I was quite low in body fat, um, definitely sub 10%. And it happens at points when when you get under there, that sometimes you know I'm not replenishing the glycogen, I I'm doing um more steps than normal to try and bring my body fat down. And I was like, just go and and do biceps and then do my cardio. And I got there and I started off with biceps. Normally, biceps for me are the second exercise in. I normally do something for back, then move on to biceps for a couple because I'm I am trying to prioritize them, but I like to have a little bit of blood in the the back, and then the the biceps so that I'm not doing, for example, dumbbell preachers absolutely cold. Um I I completed my biceps and then went on and I was like, Do you know what I'm here? I actually feel good. I've got my my my first few exercises in and I completed my whole pool session, and it wasn't it wasn't bad, it wasn't bad at all. There was actually a little bit of progression, only a rep or two, it wasn't anything you know fantastic to write about. But even at that point, you know, I've had to sort of dig and be like, well, at least I'm here, and then you know, at least I got something done. That's it's an it's an extreme example. It happens really at the end of what I was doing in terms of the cut, but it just goes to show that it does happen, you know. And hopefully in in this podcast, we've sort of covered, you know, instead of asking what the best split is, we've showed that it's nutrition that supports the recovery. We've spoken about quality training to create the stimulus. Francis, you mentioned about recovery for the adaptation. And the split is really just a framework. So rather than us obsessing over labels, you know, it's just a container. We've tried to sort of talk about frequency, volume, recoverability, and and how we progress.

Effort and Application Over Time

SPEAKER_00 1:03:32

Yeah, I think we've we've touched on a a lot of great like sort of details here, mate. And I love the mindset conversation at the end as well, because that's the that's dealing with the untangibles, isn't it? That can't be measured. You know, everyone thinks us as coaches, we just talk about macros and uh exercises and and again the psychology of performance. Uh we we definitely do need a good full podcast on that because um we could talk for hours on that, mate. But it's it's it's you're dealing with the untangibles. There's no number or figure that can deal with someone's attitude and your your your response to you know a curveball or shit, it's the fan, a little bit of tiredness. There's there's no there's no number that deals with that. You know, it's not oh I'd done X amount of reps for this, or it's you're dealing with the untangibles, so there's a lot of uh there's a lot of sort of uh grey matter with that one, isn't it? Definitely, definitely a good conversation to have.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

It's one of those things in this game. There's a great quote I saw by a gent called Dave Crossland, and it says, Don't set limits, find them. And I think that's one of the great things about you know hobby building, like you don't know what you're capable of, and and I'm such a believer of that, and and I've lived that because if someone would have said to me at the start of my journey, you know, this is what you'd be able to do, lift slash look like, I'd have been like, not a chance. You know, I'm not gonna paint myself as you know the best person that's ever trained, but I'd like to think that you know I've trained with some really intense guys, really, really intense trainers. I'm talking about Jonathan here. Um, and if anybody can survive a session with him, you know, we we spoke earlier about maniacs in the gym, you know, he he's one, and it's about learning from people and and showing what then you can take on board so that then you can take it into your training. Because as we've said all along, you know, this is a you know it's a life, lifelong thing. Training finds you, and you just want to get good at it. And the sort of sooner and the more practice that you get at that, then the more progress you just make.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:48

Absolutely, you mate. And I think to to tie it off, like what whatever training is that you put, it's the effort and application over time. Like that is that is the most important thing, like you know. Someone can do a a bro split for 20 years. But if you, as I said, if you train like an animal for 20 years, you're gonna build a a fantastic physique. Like there's no two ways about it. So again, I I wouldn't sort of set limitations on yourself for what you what you think, what you can do, what you can't do. You know, as we said, you uh from your own mindset, you shape your own reality, pick a split that you enjoy, and just get after it over the sort of next 10 years consistently, and you genuinely are gonna be good to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:32

Superb mate. We've uh we've we've done it again, and you know, as we come to the end of podcast number eight, you know, we're gonna be recording each week, um, so we'll get those episodes out to everyone. I I we always say it, but we we honestly mean it. Francis and I talk um during the week, the support and and the outpouring that we've got and some of the ideas that we get as well from some of the messages that we get sent, um we really appreciate it, and we just want to say thank you. We'll probably repeat that because it really is well received. Um, thanks to everyone that's tuning in. If you want to get in contact, as always, with either myself or Francis. Um, I'm on Twitter and Instagram, and it's Benjamin Yeezus. Francis is on there as Coach FHM. Yeah, coach FHM. It's also in the show notes as well. So there's a little um link at the bottom if if you want to get in touch with any questions and and any feedback at all. Um everything is is greatly received and and thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:34

Yeah, as we say, we appreciate the support. If anybody wants to reach out, please just give us a message, DM us. We don't bite. I've said that before. People people are always scared, don't worry. Uh we think we don't bite. But yeah, we appreciate the support. And uh I I know we're we're thinking to do some maybe QA style uh uh podcast in the in the coming weeks where we'll grab some questions off Twitter or X, whatever. We're gonna grab a couple of questions and then go through something. So I know we're planning to do that over the next couple of weeks, which will that'll be a good one. But yeah, um, as always, mate, enjoyed it and uh look forward to the next one.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:10

Loved it, mate. Thank you very much, honestly. Thank you, Francis, really appreciate it. Thank you, mate.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:15

See you later, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:16

See you later.