-: All right, in this lesson we're going to talk about
periodization with the goal of potentiation.
And this is probably my favorite aspect of periodization
because this is where I can actually, really wow people.
And get them results faster without actually having
to make them do so much more in a program.
'Cause the reason they may be getting more results,
on this program, is because of what we did
in the previous program.
And I think that's really cool
because if you can make somebody get results
faster and easier,
and it's like it's coming from magic,
that's always awesome.
But, so, this whole unit is about, why would I do something
that's outside of the narrow minded goal that I want?
And how is that going to, actually,
help me get to my goal faster?
If my goal is hypertrophy,
how is spending time in neurological phase
or hypertrophy phase,
going to make me get hypertrophy faster?
If my goal is to lose fat, how is doing a low rep,
you know, like power lifting style workout,
how is that going to help me lose fat faster
than just simply doing metabolic work all the time?
And the answer is,
that it's going to potentiate.
It's going to allow us to get or make those metabolic
systems more trainable, right?
So, if we review that trainability equation,
we have recovery minus the stress or stimulus
that it takes to get that adaptation.
And that's how trainable we are.
So our goal is, if we want faster results,
we either have to improve recovery
or we have to decrease the stress or stimulus
needed to get the benefit from that, right?
So that we can have a more trainable program.
More trainable, faster results,
the longer I can get results in that particular program.
So the first thing to do is,
look at whatever type of training
that aligns with your goal.
What's needed for recovery for that?
And you need to consider the fact that your recovery
might not be optimal for that program,
especially, if you've been training
for that particular goal consistently
for a long period of time.
So, you need to look outside of your goal and figure out,
okay, what can I do that will actually make me have
maximal recovery.
So I'm not thinking about training for what my end goal is,
I'm thinking about doing something that's going to make me
recover better for all of the training
that I'm going to be doing, specific for this goal.
Because if I can recover better,
then the trainability for my goal programs
are going to be better.
I'm going to get faster results, right?
Doesn't mean I'll have to do a different program
for a long time,
but just enough to get some recovery adaptations.
The other side of the equation.
The stress or the stimulus.
Consider adaptations that are outside of my goal
that may give me a better opportunity to get the stimulus
easier, with less volume.
With less reps, with fewer workouts.
Because if I can make the stress smaller
and accomplish the stimulus easier,
then this gap between the stress
needed and the recovery improves.
So the trainability's going to go up.
So, I'm going to go through the next slide
and then we'll kind of walk through some specific
examples so that it's not too redundant here.
So, we have the stimulus and then we have the threshold.
So there's a certain threshold that needs to be met.
So there will be programs where it'll de-load that stimulus.
We just talked about the de-load phases, right?
And res-sensitizing.
Sometimes to res-sensitize we don't need to go completely
out of training, we just need to get away
from a particular stimulus to res-sensitize that.
In this instance, right?
So say I was doing a neurological phase,
and my goal is to get stronger.
And I'm really taxing my nervous system,
I could switch over to, maybe, a metabolic,
like, lactic based system and train my energy systems.
And while I'm doing that,
the loads are going to be such low intensity that I'm
essentially going to de-load
from those high intensity contractions.
I'm going to de-load from that neural load.
I'm going to de-load from that demand
on those fast twitch fibers,
you know, type of thing.
So if I will, actually, get res-sensitized to that.
And it flips.
So if I've been focusing on metabolic work forever,
forever, forever, forever
and I've been taxing all of the metabolic systems.
The oxidative stress, the lactic acid,
the ANP based stimulus.
If I switch over to a neurological phase,
and now I'm not really making any lactic acid.
Not making a lot of oxidative stress, you know,
minimal inflammation.
I'm not burning through a lot of glycogen,
that sort of thing.
Well, guess what?
I'm still training and I'm going to be getting stronger
and maybe, that's going to make me feel better about myself.
Instead of just taking time completely off,
I'm going to switch phases.
And then, what's going to happen is,
if say, I do a neurological phase,
and I get stronger,
I get the ability to contract
more muscle tissue simultaneously.
Maybe I get my fast twitch fibers
working a little bit better,
when I go back to metabolic,
then the stimulus is going to come easier.
I'm going to be able to accomplish it with less stress
because I'm going to be able to burn through energy faster
because I can contract my muscles better.
So, my performance, like, the weight I'll be using
will go up and the energy I'll be consuming will go up
so my ability to get that stimulus will happen sooner.
Maybe with lower reps or fewer sets
than it was before.
Because I'm des-sensitizing
and I'm increasing my ability to get there.
So I lower the stress needed and I increase my ability
to get the stress up.
That makes it way more trainable.
Way more trainable.
And then when we look at stress,
just in general,
one thing in terms of the recovery aspect is,
sometimes in a particular program,
while we may have this one stimulus that we're going for,
there are other things that are somewhat being
stimulated or taxed simultaneously.
And that happens most in the hypertrophy phase
because it's higher volume so there's load
and there's some metabolic stress.
And there's a little bit of everything.
So if you're not very well trained metabolically,
or neurologically, what's going to happen is
you're going to be getting a lot of cross stimulation
in that hypertrophy phase.
And so, if you're unconditioned,
if you're doing the hypertrophy workout,
the thing that might be limiting your performance
is your ability to deal with the metabolic demand
of that workout.
Or your ability to deal with the lactic acid,
or the oxidative stress
that is accumulating during that workout.
And so, what that's doing is it's making that stress
now a limiting factor.
So if you were to go and do a metabolic phase
and increase your ability to deal with oxidative stress
or lactic acid,
and increase your ability
to create energy from the mitochondria
or to be able to resynthesis glycogen.
Now, when I do my hypertrophy phase,
I have made myself more resilient to the metabolic stress,
so now, I can perform better.
And I can hit the threshold I need for hypertrophy.
Whether it's for protein synthesis or mechanical damage.
Without metabolic factors being there
and those metabolic things
are going to be less stressed out.
Which means more of my recovery can be focused
on recovering from the hypertrophy stimulus,
and less of it will have to be
dealing with the metabolic portion of that workout.
Because I'll have plenty of adaptations
to make me more efficient at recovering
from that metabolic stuff
and it will be less of a stress overall.
So in that case, we'll be able to get more hypertrophy
stimulus and also recover faster because, well,
the metabolic work is going to increase my recoverability.
But it's also going to decrease the metabolic stress
of each of those workouts.
So recoverability is going to be increased in two ways.
Less unnecessary stress and a better ability to fuel
the recovery system with increased energy production.
So, we want to, that potentiation
can be an extremely powerful tool.
So, let's look at
just some of these phases
and talk about some of these benefits.
You probably, if you needed to, you could think about this
for awhile and put these all together.
'Cause we kinda touched on each of them
and each individual phase.
But we're just going to kind of recap all that stuff.
So, if I do a neurological phase,
why would I do neurological
if my goal was hypertrophy, right?
First thing is, I would increase more high threshold
motor units and muscle fibers.
Well, one, I can get more tension
and we know tension is a great stimulus for hypertrophy.
But I'm also getting more of those fast twitch fibers
which have a greater potential for hypertrophy.
So I'm getting more fibers, more tension,
and more of the fibers
that can hypertrophy the most involved.
So that's going to increase my potential
to stimulate hypertrophy.
I'm going to increase my potential
for mechanical stimuli of hypertrophy.
So if I can make more tension,
and I can contract more tissue,
and I can do it more intensely,
well, not only I have more tension,
but I also have more potential
to do mechanical damage, as well.
Or I can do it across a broader area.
I can control more load on the acentric, right?
So the heavier loads I can use,
the more I can actually start to create
some of those mechanical type stresses.
Whether it be the tension at the zline,
or the microtrauma that's created.
I can get improved motor patterns.
We talked about high intensity stuff
because it taxes the stabilizers and all that stuff more.
Can help me actually get better stabilization.
So when I'm doing high volume workouts,
it's less taxing on my stabilizers now.
Because they're stronger and they're more wired in.
So it's easier for me to make the muscle I'm trying
to grow, continue to work without stability being a factor.
And, like I said, in that module,
neurological training is a really good point
for assessing weak points of stability and intensity.
So you know, like, okay, if I'm going to this
hypertrophy program, right?
I now know that I need to work on
bringing up these other muscles.
So maybe there's going to be some new movements
that you're going to add into that hypertrophy program
based off of what you saw in that neurological program,
in terms of your execution.
How 'bout, why would I do a lactic program,
if my goal was to build muscle?
Well, I get a de-load from the mechanical stress
which is good because now I can res-sensitize
to that stimulus, right?
And that's on of those, like I said, that takes
the longest to recover from.
Is the inflammatory based stimulus.
Especially, the mechanical damage one.
'Cause you got a lot of immune
and inflammatory stuff going on there.
That takes time to clear and you have systemic
regulation of that
that needs to reset and desensitize, as well.
I'm going to get increased cellular mitochondria
which is going to increase my performance
and my endurance.
But it's also going to give me faster recovery.
So, if I have more fuel, I can make more ATP
to fuel protein synthesis.
If can make more energy systemically,
so that my body has a higher threshold
to any environmental stresses or what not, right?
You know, if you walk up the stairs
and you're out of breath,
guess what?
That now probably put your body into a stress state
instead of a rest and digest state.
So if your muscles or your cardiovascular system
is that out of shape,
where small activities are metabolically taxing you,
guess what?
That's taking you out of recovery, right?
You shouldn't need to be in a coma state to actually
be in recovery mode.
If you're metabolically conditioned,
you can be recovering at a fairly decent degree of
physical activity and lifestyle stuff.
It shouldn't be like, going to the grocery store
takes away from your recovery time.
'Cause you had to walk around pushing the cart.
You need to metabolically conditioned so that stuff
is below your stress threshold.
Say that five times fast.
We're going to get increased performance
so we get improved lactic threshold.
So that lactic acid is going to be less of a limiting factor
so we'll be able to go further in sets.
Create more tension before that lactic system
is one of the things that, kind of, slows us down
in terms of performance.
Really remember, it's not technically, the lactic acid
it's everything associated with that.
But let's not over complicate it.
All right, we're going to improve our high threshold
recruitment in acidic environments.
So when we get to the point where our energy systems
are getting taxed, right?
We tend to lose the ability to contract, as well.
And so, when we do metabolic training,
the nervous system is learning, also, be conditioned
in that environment.
And so, we're getting better transport of calcium
and electrolytes, and hydrogen, and all the things
that the cell needs to be able to maintain
an environment where it can still get good contraction.
So when I do that lactic system,
it makes it so that I'm going to not lose my neurological
ability to contract that muscle.
Not lose that contractibility under as much,
or under as low of metabolic stress.
So, my tolerance of that metabolic stress
while still being able to work goes up.
Which means you can push deeper into failure,
you know, keep continuing tension longer before that muscle
stops cooperating.
Last one on here,
increased glycogen storage.
And fat utilization.
So, both of those are going to increase my ability to
continue to perform in high volume workouts.
So the more glycogen I have,
the more glucose based fuel I have.
But the better fat metabolism I have,
the more I can be using fatty acids
and not need to burn through that glucose as fast.
So those two things are going to be like
a one two punch for being able to tolerate
high volume, longer workouts, longer sets.
And when we talk about hypertrophy,
the main stimulus is volume of tension.
Volume of significant tension, right?
And so, if you don't have the energy capacity
or the fuel capacity,
or just simply the ability to work
after all that stress has accumulated
from all of those sets,
you're not going to get the threshold
you need for hypertrophy.
Especially, as you get older in your training age
and your ability to stimulate hypertrophy gets harder,
and harder, and harder.
Because that threshold becomes higher and higher.
You need to make sure that there's no other limiting factors
that are getting in your way of hitting that.
Now, let's talk about a different goal.
So now our goal aligns somewhere in metabolic.
All right, so say your goal was fat loss,
or something like that.
So why would I do a neurological phase?
Kind of already hinted about this earlier, right?
But I'm going to get increased metabolic demand
because I can contract more, right?
So it decreases the time under tension I need,
because I'm able to increase the significance,
the amount of tension in that time.
So my time under tension is now more tension
in that same amount of time.
So if I was doing 10 reps before,
I do a neurological phase.
What I can do for 10 now,
is going to be heavier
and it's not just about the weight,
it's really that I'm able to contract more muscle
for that 10, so the weight will go up as a by-product.
But because I'm using more muscle tissue
and doing more work,
I'm burning through more energy.
I'm getting more of that metabolic effect,
for a set of 10 now,
than I was before I actually
got any neurological adaptations.
It increases our ability
to do neurologically complex movements.
Which are often very systemically demanding.
So if you look at, say, a squat or a deadlift,
those movements are complicated in terms of a lot of joints
and a lot of muscles involved.
So we can create a huge energy demand.
So we can get a great, kind of,
systemic or total lactic benefit
from those type of exercises.
However, if we have weaknesses in stability,
or we're not very efficient about those movement patterns,
guess what?
We tend not to be able to get all the benefit out of those.
Or possibly, by doing those we lose the ability
to have good form, or more likely to injure ourselves
if we're not neurologically efficient in those lifts.
So if you got a ugly squat, guess what?
When you do 20 reps of the squat,
a lot of them are going to be ugly.
Because as soon as you get tired,
that squat's going to get uglier, and uglier,
and uglier, and uglier.
But if you have the ability to control all those
stabilizers and control a lot of load,
then you will be able to burn a tremendous amount
of fuel in the squat without your form breaking down.
Until you're actually fatigued.
From a muscular standpoint, right?
Because you'll be able to fatigue the muscles
faster rather than like, oh, it's my form that's breaking
down, or my execution.
Well, I'm going to keep going.
You know I'm not breathing, my veins aren't quite
popping out of my head yet.
But if you're doing these things,
and you do them with bad form,
they can throw off the rest of your workout.
You can get a sore low back.
Like all sorts of bad things can happen.
You can start to create poor compensation
so then when you go to a hypertrophy phase,
basically, you've screwed your form.
So now you can't grow the muscles that you want as easily.
Because you are pushing yourself further in fatigue,
but your execution was getting bad.
So you learned bad habits.
That's not what you want.
You want to be neurologically efficient
and still be able to use those high energy demanding
exercises that recruit multiple muscles
around multiple joints.
Being able to increase the intensity of the metabolic work,
decreases the need to increase the volume.
So not only can I make the metabolic stuff work
faster every set and every rep
when I'm more neurologically intense,
it allows me to back off on volume.
And so, what you'll see in a person's career
of the workout programs that they're doing,
you know they're training years and years and years,
is if you were to think that this was a linear program.
Everything just has to keep
getting greater and greater and greater.
What would happen is your metabolic workouts
in two years from now, would have to be four hour long
marathon workouts, right?
You'd have to be pushing the per hourly for a 5K
or something like that.
That's not feasible, 'kay?
One, and two, the amount of oxidative stress
and inflammation, and what not that you'd get
would be tremendous.
And you just wouldn't be able to perform enough
to actually get a stimulus during that.
So, the benefit of gaining muscle
and being able to use it better,
allows us to really not have to increase the volume
of that metabolic training
because the intensity is always going up
so long as we pay homage to improving
either out neurological efficiency
or doing hypertrophy phases,
and gaining more muscle tissue to be able to use.
Either two ways to come in here, and be able to increase
the intensity of that metabolic work, right?
Rather than having to extend the volume and the duration
of that metabolic work.
'Cause if you, literally,
got no better at contracting the muscles,
the only thing that you could do to get more of a stimulus,
would be to have to go more,
longer, more often, you know.
Just more, more, more, more, more.
Right?
And that's not feasible.
And it's not healthy.
And hopefully, after my little lecture on mental health,
you understand the goal is not to be in the gym
as long as possible.
The goal is to get your stimulus as quick
and as efficiently as possible.
And then enjoy, reap the rewards
of that the rest of your life.
You can hit the threshold with less negative stress.
So when we're talking about metabolic stuff here,
we're talking about getting oxidative stress
and things like that.
But that being said, we still accumulate small things
like a little bit of muscular damage, right?
And a little bit of wear and tear on the joints.
So the more efficiently, the easier we can get that,
is also going to decrease the excessive wear and tear
or any overlap into other things, right?
So if I am not very neurologically efficient,
and I'm doing a metabolic phase
as a break from hypertrophy,
it might not be that there's enough of a stretch
from some of those metabolic phases
to the hypertrophy phases,
that when I go hypertrophy some of that stimulus
might not work so well.
I may need to take a longer de-load
to be able to even get the results
from my hypertrophy phase,
because I've been getting some of that overlapping stress.
Especially, if I've been doing, say like,
a tricep method where I was using a heavy set,
followed by a medium and a light.
So I was doing a 6, 12, 25
or an 8, 8, 15.
Or a 4, 4, 12, or whatever it may be.
One of those type of sets.
If I have to do a ton of that
and that's the only way I can get a stimulus,
is to do those very advanced set methods,
well, that may overlap into some of the same stress
for hypertrophy type stuff.
So that now, it's like, well, I gotta take a longer break.
Or I gotta jump all the way down
to really low range hypertrophy.
And that might end up being neurological
so now my stimuluses are not as fresh as they should be.
Because I'm getting too much, kind of, indirect
stress from having to do,
really advanced metabolic protocols.
So I should say, more advanced for what I should need
at this given point in my training age.
Okay, so, last one on the metabolic.
Why would I do hypertrophy if my goal is fat loss?
Or some sort of metabolic,
it could be perform based and not a metabolic thing.
I don't want to tie metabolic just to fat loss.
All right, there's plenty of people that need performance
enhancement stuff from the metabolic type training.
So if I get increased amount of myonuclei and ribosomes
it increases my ability to recover.
'Kay?
Because I can make protein, I can do protein synthesis
to repair every part of the cell.
Not just to build muscle,
but for everything, right?
So that's to make the enzymes
that are going to run my metabolism.
That's to make new AnPKS.
That's to make anything that my nucleus needs,
that my mitochondria needs.
I can make all of that stuff.
So again, it improves protein synthesis
for all of the cell's needs.
I'll have more DNA, more enzymes.
So I'll get more adaptation.
So the more myonuclei I have, the more instructions it has.
The more ribosomes, the more builders I have, right?
But remember these are the instructions for everything.
These are the builders for everything
that's made of protein.
So it allows me to adapt faster
because when there is a signal
that works on a genetic level.
That's turning on some genes,
I have more genes to turn on
and I have more things to be able to read
and, actually, construct with those genes are created for.
It decreases the likely hood that I'm going to get a lot of
mechanical trauma during my metabolic work.
Or at the very least, it's going to increase my tolerance
and ability to recover from what metabolic damage there is.
So if I have a lot of hypertrophy adaptations
and I get a little bit of mechanical damage,
or a little bit of damage from oxidative stress
in my metabolic system, guess what?
I'm going to be able to repair that really efficiently
'cause I got a lot of nuclei and a lot of ribosomes.
I got a lot of instructions and I got a lot of workers.
So as long as I provide the appropriate fuel source,
to pay those guys, 'cause they don't work free remember.
They need fuel and they need ATP.
So as long as I have that, I'm going to be way more tolerant
to higher volume stuff
because I'm going to be able to overcome any type of tissue
trauma or any cellular degradation that occurs
during my metabolic training.
Because I'm simply able to run that recovery process
to a greater degree.
All right, now let's talk about why we would do things
outside of neurological,
for neurological benefits.
If I've improved metabolic function
from doing a metabolic phase,
it's going to lower the non-training stress.
So we talked about if you go up the stairs
and you're out of breath,
well, you just kicked yourself out of recovery state
with that little amount of stress.
But if I want my nervous system to recover,
I need to spend as much time outside of the workout,
in a non-agitated state.
So the more metabolically conditioned I am,
the faster my nervous system can recover.
And it also tends to really improve sleep.
Because metabolic systems tend to make me better at
running off of fat,
and utilizing glucose and transporting glucose properly.
And one of the main things that screws with people's sleep
is their management of glucose.
And their ability to sustain energy overnight
when they're not being fed.
So a lot of these increases in cortisol and catacholamines
and dysregulated blood sugar,
a lot of those things can be improved by doing
a metabolic phase and incorporating proper nutrition
and lifestyle changes.
So if I get better sleep,
we talked about sleep quality, right?
As the most important factor for recovering
from a neurological workout.
And if I'm getting disrupted sleep
because of poor blood sugar management,
well, it doesn't matter if I sleep for an extra two hours,
that poor quality sleep is still going to affect
my recovery from the neurological work.
'Cause for this, basically, I need a lot of deep sleep
to recover in a neurological phase.
And if you're getting constantly interrupted sleep,
you're not getting a lot of deep sleep.
If I increase energy production,
I can shorten my rest intervals
as needed, to a degree.
The fast twitch stuff, still is going to be a little bit
slower and then there's the neurological fatigue.
But what usually happens when you're doing big lifts
and stuff, is that there's a systemic level of fatigue,
as well.
And so, if you do squats, you do really heavy squats.
You do a set of two or a set of three,
you get up and you're breathing hard.
Well, it was still really heavy and maybe you're holding
your breath a little bit, and stuff like, too.
But a lot of stuff was working, but not everything
was being maximally neurologically taxed.
But the faster I can replenish energy
and all of that tissue,
then the less work it is overall, for my body between sets.
The faster that will recover
and the easier it is for my nervous system
to focus on just the few muscles
that are working maximally, in that case.
Because everything else was running
at a very easy level, energetically.
It allows for more dietary flexibility.
Which, I don't know if you guys know any power lifters,
but they tend to like to eat.
And they tend to like to eat carbohydrates.
And if you're not every doing any type of training
that's going to make you utilize those carbohydrates
efficiently, and transport them efficiently,
they're going to become increasingly inflammatory.
And inflammation inhibits the nervous system
and makes your contractions not as strong.
And so, you see these guys and they're big bloated
water balls because they're not ever doing anything
to improve their ability to utilize all of that junk food.
And their training isn't, currently,
really doing anything about it either.
They're not burning through that much.
So, if we do some metabolic work,
we're going to get more dietary flexibility
and it's not going to affect their performance
if they decide to switch over to more fats, as well.
Because they use fats better.
So I can use more carbs because I,
kind of, deserve to use them.
Or I can switch to more fats
because I'm able to use them efficiently enough
that I'll still have plenty of energy,
so long as I'm metabolically conditioned
on a cellular level to really use fuel efficiently.
Last one on here.
Increased tolerance to oxidative stress, all right,
which decreases the impact of inflammation
on neuro drive.
So I just said that inflammation inhibits the nervous system
a bit so when muscles are inflamed,
they don't respond to contraction as well.
You get, kind of, a lack luster contraction
out of inflamed muscles.
So, when you're really tolerant to oxidative stress, right?
You're really good a that,
we tend to be managing inflammation.
It tends to lower the inflammation in those cells,
'cause oxidative stress is a big part of that.
The other thing is mechanical damage
which we may get some in neurological training.
But if you can eliminate how much damage
you're going to be getting for the oxidative stress,
you can decrease the inflammatory response.
If you're doing a neurological phase,
we're not trying to create so much mechanical damage
that we're creating inflammation.
That's more for hypertrophy phase.
So this, kind of, helps keep that inflammation
low when you're doing the neurological phase.
All right, I think this is the last one today.
So hypertrophy for neurological.
So why would building muscle be beneficial,
or why would training like a bodybuilder be good
if I was a power lifter?
I'll get faster recovery
from the mechanical damage that occurs.
Because I have more nuclei and more ribosomes,
so I can repair that protein faster.
I'm gonna have increased tolerance to volume.
Because I'm going to be better
at, one, like, using nutrients.
But now my workout is, actually, probably going to be
at a lower volume than what I'm used to.
So the volume threshold that I can tolerate
is actually much higher, probably, than what my
neurological phase will get.
So now the volume should seem relatively low.
I'll get increased strength potential with any new
contractile fibers.
So any new protein I build.
Any new muscle that I have is now new muscle
that I can learn how to use and contract intensely.
And add to, the either, the explosiveness I'm producing
or the poundages that I'm moving.
So, strength is a combination of neurological efficiency
and the tissue I have available to use it.
So one way to get stronger is simply to have more tissue.
The other thing is, when I'm doing hypertrophy phase
it allows me to focus on weak body parts in isolation.
So if I did an neurological phase
and I realize that, oh, I need to work on my lower traps
a little bit more.
Or maybe my triceps are more of a limiting factor
in my bench press, than my pecs, or whatever.
When you do hypertrophy phases
you tend to do more isolation exercises.
You do more exercises period.
So that gives you an opportunity
to really bring up some of those weaknesses.
Maybe add some more tissue to those areas, as well,
so that when you switch over to the neurological phase
there's more potential for strength improvement
in those areas that were otherwise lagging behind.