-: I'm gonna take you guys through some principals
in terms of designing metabolic programs.
We're gonna look at like some sets and reps and what not.
I know you guys want numbers, so we're gonna go through
some specific numbers, you know,
so we're gonna look at things like,
alright if we're focusing on metabolic stress, local,
we're probably gonna be looking at the, you know,
more or equal to 12 rep range,
we're gonna be looking at time under tension
to be in that higher range like 70 seconds
or more even, sometimes.
These type of things, those are just those,
those are general, they're gonna be
extremely individualized.
What one person gets metabolically at 12,
another person may get at six and another person
may get at 20.
What one person is able to achieve in terms of
driving AMPK at 70 seconds of maximum intensity
may be different than what somebody else is
at 40 seconds.
So, as you get more advanced, these numbers get lower.
For a very beginner, the numbers are higher,
because they simply don't have the
contractile intensity and the execution
to be able to burn through energy as fast.
And then when you add muscle tissue on,
like as muscle tissue gets bigger, your liver
shouldn't grow proportionately to the muscle
that you put on your frame.
So, your ability to overload the body systemically
becomes greater as you gain more muscle tissue
in relationship to your frame.
So all these things are extremely subjective
and should be individualized,
but I'm just kinda giving you guys a little bit
of context so that we can compare the metabolic
and the hypertrophy and the neurological
and different stimuluses and things like that.
You have some starting context into how they
relate to one another but, that is,
do not take these as rules, as everything needs to be
applied to the individual.
One thing that will be consistent is if we're
focusing on metabolic, we wanna be concentric dominant.
So the eccentric is where most of the mechanical damage
is going to occur, and obviously if we're trying to
maximize our trainability,
we want as much of our recovery to be focused on
recovering from this stimulus,
not extra mechanical damage that happened
as a consequence of what goes up must come down.
So we're gonna focus more on the concentric phase,
so anything that I can do to get that concentric phase
more dominant.
So, in course one we talked a little bit about
the difference in friction and momentum
and things like that, so we have lots of different
ways that we can make things more concentric dominant.
Rest is gonna be proportionate to the size
of the muscle worked,
and that you know, intensity and time under tension
that you use.
Like I really don't like time under tension
because it just, it's time.
What I really like is time under significant tension
so that's what I would like to say.
If it changes the TUST like time under
significant tension, so it has to be significant enough
that we're actually demanding enough energy,
but then when it's the muscle size and the amount of time
it's under significant tension,
that is important to getting those metabolic sets.
So, constant tension could be very important because,
when you look at energy demand, the second you stop working
the body starts catching up.
So, if I have ATP here and AMP here,
my goal to stimulate AMPK is to get this thing
to shift this way.
The second that I stop, the balance starts going
back this way.
So, if I am pausing you know,
in between my reps and what not,
that's time that I'm shifting away from that stimulus
so I need to look at the context of the exercise of course
and you know, looks at just like the mechanics
and logistics of actually doing the exercise appropriately
but, for the most part, if my goal is purely
trying to get a metabolic stimulus, I wanna be
burning energy all the time which means
constant tension is key, there's no pauses
unless that pause is in a place where I'm
essentially doing like an isometric or isometronic
and I'm still actually burning through fuel.
So there's nothing wrong with pausing at a place
where you still have tension.
Like, so pausing in the bottom of a squat,
not resting like on your legs in the bottom of a squat,
but pausing there is fine.
Like pausing you know, where you're squeezing some muscles,
absolutely fine.
In fact, that's one of the ways to focus a little bit more
on the concentric, even though, like if we say like
we were gonna squeeze the top of a cable curl or something
where it's loaded there, in that case,
I'm acting like I'm still trying to do the concentric.
It's an isometric but if we had to say
well was that more like the concentric or the eccentric,
it's driving things more towards a concentric-like
stimulus because I'm burning through fuel,
but I'm not creating a lot of mechanical damage,
and so using pauses in the terms of squeezes,
is a really good way of keeping constant tension
even though there may not be constant movement.
To be adequate in terms of energy demand,
it has to have adequate load.
So without enough load there can't be enough tension,
so if we're not using enough load, you may only be
working at a particular portion where you're squeezing
and then you're still not working as much as you should,
as if you're squeezing and you had enough resistance.
Obviously, the resistance here is not gonna be the same
as it would be in a neurological phase where were trying to
you know, increase our strength or our power development
or whatever goal that we may happen to have for a sport,
but, it does need to be enough load,
that it's demanding of energy.
And energy at a high rate.
Remember, it's high rate of energy consumption that matters.
We have to burn through energy fast,
so if the weights are too low, we won't burn into the energy
fast enough to get a significant metabolic stimulus.
So you can't just, you can't just say
hey well I'm training high reps so it can be light.
And for some people, even if they're training high reps,
they might have to devise specialty type sets you know,
of drop sets or they might have to incorporate
some sort of super set, tri set thing in there,
in order to be able to deplete energy,
to go through as much fuel fast enough
to hit their threshold for stimulus if they're
extremely well-trained int his type of,
in terms of metabolic adaptations.
So, when we look at metabolic trainability,
it requires the ability to one, maintain execution
in the working muscle, because we have to be able to
maintain tension, and we have to be able to contract
hard enough to burn through lots of fuel.
It requires enough neurological efficiency,
I should say, to take a muscle to failure.
So, when we look at efficiency, it's our ability
to coordinate movement.
If I can't coordinate a movement, well then I'm gonna fail,
because of my ability to coordinate a movement.
So if I'm doing squats, I'm gonna fail because
I lose the ability to coordinate the squat before I've like
reached total failure in my quad.
So I may need to make sure I pick an exercise
that I can do from an execution standpoint
and a neurological efficiency standpoint.
So overly complex exercises may not be good,
especially if my goal is local stimulus.
Now a squat may be great for a systemic stimulus,
but it might not be very good for a local stimulus
in my quadricep unless I'm a squat pro and I can
know how to set up and execute and I can really work there.
And even then I would say why risk it?
Why risk the fact that something else might
get in the way of the stimulus
that you're trying to achieve?
Pick an exercise, if it's for local stimulus,
that you can make sure you're gonna get
that local stimulus.
Obviously if it's systemic, then things like
squats and dead lifts and what not
can become extremely valuable because we're using
more tissue and so it's more systemically
but not as much of a local stimulus.
It's gonna require the muscles to have sufficient fuel,
and in our case we're gonna say glycogen storage.
If we're going for a metabolic stimulus,
in order for us to get a mostly positive verses
negative responses, we're gonna wanna make sure
that we're able to one, get the lactic acid benefit,
two, that we're able to limit excessive oxidative stress
and three, that we're actually able to perform
at a high level.
That's all gonna be based off my ability to have
glucose to burn right there are the cell,
so glycogen levels are huge.
So if I'm, especially if I'm going for a local adaptation,
I don't wanna do this during a low carb phase.
Doesn't mean I need to have like 90% carbs in my diet.
I need to have a proportionate enough carbohydrate
to allow me to get muscle glycogen and performance
for the workout.
Doesn't mean that I need to have you know,
carbs every meal, but I may need to have carbs
appropriately timed around my workouts.
It requires a high volume tolerance per muscle.
So as you get more adapt, you're gonna need
to spend more time working that particular muscle,
and when we look at systemically, obviously that's
not the case, but if of thinking more about local,
metabolic training, I'm gonna need to be able to tolerate
a certain amount of volume, and in this volume
it's volume of metabolic work that we're really
looking at but because of that, there ends up
being a lot of reps.
Not a lot of sets, but a lot of reps, so there needs to be
some tolerance to that.
But that it's gonna mean a different type of volume
than when you get into like neurological stuff,
so as we kind of talked about in the biomechanics
and execution course, we look at volume as a whole, right?
You can't compare metabolic volume to neurological volume,
because it's like an apples and oranges thing.
Because they just, they're so biochemically and
mechanically different that you can't really compare
one to another, so you have to look at them
in respect to what that individual capacity is
for that individual stimulus.
They have to be adaptable to the metabolic stress.
So, in terms of being able to adapt here,
one big thing is that they have not been doing this
for an extended period of time.
That's gonna go for all of the stimuli,
but metabolic adaptations, tend to shut off
the fastest, because anything that would lock the cell
into doing something with energy inappropriately,
the cell wants to protect itself from.
So, metabolic adaptations happen faster,
but they also stop responding to adaptation
faster than most of the other stimuli.
So, we need to make sure they haven't been doing that.
The other things is we need to make sure there's nothing
in the way.
We need to make sure that they have the
systemic capacity to do it.
We need to make sure that there's not an inflammation
or current oxidative stress that's already there.
So obviously I can't train for oxidative stress
if they already have oxidative stress.
Adding more oxidative stress is not gonna give me
a different adaptation.
They're already likely not adaptable to that
because they're already under that stress.
Same thing from an inflammatory standpoint.
So, have to make sure there's no counter-productive
things that are already going on in terms of a
cellular chemistry standpoint that would prevent me
from being able to get those adaptations.
So, next one here.
It's not a powerful fat loss method,
if we use this for small muscle groups
in a bodybuilding program.
So, we look at is this a trainable system?
Sure, it may be trainable for a body builder,
but when a body builder's looking at getting
shredded for stage, can he say that if I go in
and I do a muscle lactic like AMPK-based workout
for their delts, that they're going to burn
a significant amount of body fat,
or that that's gonna help them get shredded?
Well, it might help their delts get full,
but how much glucose can we put in the delt?
So what we need to look at is the context of
making sure we use an appropriate split,
so that this trainable method actually applies
towards our goal.
So, a lot of times when we're switching over
to this type of training, getting away from the
bro split, if you will call it, like with a
typical body building split, is ideal and actually
start looking at programming based off of how much tissue
is working per day and kind of spreading out
so it's like,
it's about a equal amount of tissue per day so that
metabolically and systemically,
we're getting somewhat of an equal stimulus
on all of these days and that's having a equal effect
on the live and the adrenals and the blood sugar
and all of the other factors that get taxed
when I'm producing lactic acid and you know,
requiring those stress hormones to get my
blood glucose moving and all of those things.
If I look at a systemic-based approach
instead of a local, I need to make sure,
same kind of things, that I can get enough tension
and enough reps to create lactic acid,
but I don't need to take it to fatigue.
I could superset multiple body parts now,
in this case, so that's actually the best thing to do,
is to superset multiple body parts with minimal rest,
because then the muscles themselves aren't getting fatigued,
but I'm extending more work to my liver and
to the blood sugar regulation.
Still want it to be concentric dominant.
Rest needs to be proportionate to the size of muscle.
Work that's gonna be staying consistent.
Constant tension is still key, and then same thing,
we have to use the adequate load, we have to have
adequate tension, have to maintain a
certain density of work.
So, very similar in terms of the things that are
required down here.
The big difference is we just need to make sure
we're distributing along multiple muscles.
When we look at the trainability for systemic
metabolic training, okay, we need a certain degree
of cardiovascular health, because we're gonna,
like this acts one of the things that's gonna be taxed,
so if their cardiovascular conditioning is very poor,
that's really gonna cut into the performance
and then we may not be able to get where we need to
or we might be over stressing their cardiovascular system
in an attempt to actually get to the systemic fatigue
from a lactic acid standpoint that we're going for.
So we may need to bring up their cardiovascular conditioning
first, with a more, with a less aggressive
method of training and then work into this.
They have to have a healthy liver, okay?
If the liver is not healthy, either because it's inflamed
or they've had poor nutrition, it's missing micronutrients,
it's glycogen levels are depleted or it's got
poor mitochondria or high oxidative stress already,
well then we need to make sure we don't do a program that's
gonna directly stress the liver, and that's essentially
what systemic metabolic training is all about,
is about taxing the liver to get adaptations there
and then also to use the growth hormone response.
So, liver, the kidneys and the nervous system
all need to be healthy and have a decent tolerance
to stress, in order to be able to do systemic
metabolic training.
Obviously they still need to be adaptable here.
Here we're not looking so much as what are the local
adaptations, we're looking at what is going to be
the adaptations from a cardiovascular standpoint
and the liver standpoint.
So again, it's removing the, is the liver probably
already stressed?
Is it already inflamed?
Does it have enough glycogen or have we not been
getting that in the diet?
So even though I said you could do a systemic model
under less carbohydrates, I would not do this under
zero carbohydrates.
I would just do this under a more conservative
amount of carbohydrates than I would the local stimulus.
The local stimulus, I would make sure you have a higher
amount of carbohydrates so all of the training systems,
from a performance perspective, you can argue
that maybe that like, local, lactic-based stuff is
when you should have the highest carbohydrates.
Hypertrophy would, for the right person that has
really high tolerance to carbohydrates,
you could argue that they could go a little bit more,
because they're going for performance and then some,
where here it's like performance and replacement.
Okay, this type of method will not stimulate hypertrophy
in advanced clients, not even a little bit.
It'll be way too low volume per muscle but,
in somebody that's never trained before,
one rep is more stimulus than what they've been getting.
So don't take into the context that you know,
because somebody can walk off the couch and
jump into like you know, a circuit training thing,
and they can put on some muscle and what not,
that that means that this is, you can get
hypertrophy in this program.
Only, like, you can get beginner gains doing everything
but don't expect anything but beginner gains
in terms of hypertrophy from this and we're talking like
beginner, beginner.
Not even like moderate beginner but like, just
beginner, beginner.
The last thing I'll have on here is that this provides
for what we'll say is like geographical hurdles,
not like across the world but across the gym.
So because you're working multiple muscles,
you have to now incorporate that into your program design.
The layout of the gym is how quickly and efficiently
can I get from point a to exercise b, c, d you know,
in that circuit?
And, am I able to actually do it in the gym
that I'm training at, or you know,
will I be you know, kicked out and poked
with pitchforks and stuff because I was you know,
hogging too much of the equipment or will people be
stealing it in between my sets whatever it may be?
You need to look at that context of that to figure out if
well, is this actually a possible stimulus or,
you know, maybe I can't pick the most perfect exercise
but there is a possible way for me to do this
if I'm a little creative with my programming.
Sometimes you have to make exceptions just simply because
of the way a facility is designed like you have to
pick your exercises based off of your location,
but luckily for this, the exercises are a little less
important because it's not about the local,
it's about the systemic stimulus, so as long as the
exercise is good enough to create enough lactic acid
to work the live, then it's okay if it wasn't
the best exercise for the individual muscles being trained.