-: In this unit
we're gonna go over the impact of trainability,
and how losing that,
or training things that aren't trainable,
can impact us,
and how that you know?
We can compare the trainability of different stimuluses,
and see how that would affect our programming,
and the results that we're going to get.
So if we look at essentially,
why do we care about trainability?
What's it gonna do?
It ultimately is going to determine
how easily we can make progress.
So the more trainable,
the bigger that gap is,
then the easier it is,
because I will be able to recover really fast you know?
Be able to do those workouts more frequently,
get that stimulation more often,
and I'll be able to make more progress,
within that particular stimulus,
from week, to week, to week, to week,
and potentially being able to do it longer,
if I go in with a high amount of trainability.
So it affects how fast I'm gonna progress,
and a lot of it is also going to impact
the metabolic outcome of what I do.
So I'm actually able to get an adaptation.
A lot of these adaptations that we're gonna get,
especially thanks for like muscle growth and whatnot,
are going to cause an increased calorie expenditure,
after the fact,
because carrying out that adaptation process you know?
Some other chemical biochemical processes are going.
Whether I'm synthesizing new proteins,
or enzymes or you know?
Duplicating mitochondria,
all of the things that I could be adapting to,
those tend to all require energy,
and ultimately are going to either result
in a consumption of more fuel,
which could be body fat,
or an improvement in the way
I'm able to utilize certain nutrients,
like carbohydrates or fat for fuel.
So having something be very trainable,
it will have a positive impact on my metabolism.
When it's the opposite,
I could actually be doing the you know?
I could be doing the opposite.
I could be damaging my metabolic function
by stressing my body out,
with a training system
that I'm not getting positive adaptations to it.
And the opposite of getting positive adaptations
is my body actually starts to regress.
Because I'm no longer getting a signal to say,
hey let's improve from this.
I'm getting all of the damage
with none of the stimulus to say,
hey let's come in,
and make this better.
So it's like the equivalent of you know?
You were going to remodel a building right?
You start breaking stuff down.
You send the guys good to go,
and actually rebuild it bigger,
and better.
When this system is no longer trainable,
but you continue doing the training,
it's like you're going in,
and doing in the demo work,
IE, you're knocking down walls,
and ripping stuff apart,
but the guys never come back into you know?
Repair it,
or if they do,
they just take all the broken stuff,
and they like tape it up.
Like okay that's back where it was,
but it's you know?
This really crappy version of much of what it was before.
It's not a better version.
It's not even equal to where it is.
You start to get wear and tear alright?
And from a metabolic function,
that's what we actually start to get,
what we'd call metabolic damage.
We start to see that.
So if something is low,
and untrainable for training,
and untrainable stimulus,
we're gonna have maximum effort,
because we're gonna...
The stimulus that we need is gonna be really high,
and it's gonna be very little reward.
So like just to achieve any sort of benefit,
we'll have to be exhausting ourselves
in that particular stimulus,
and likely with very little reward all right?
We'll get very little results,
very little progress,
as I kind of talked about in the previous lesson,
maybe we can get some maintenance benefits here,
but it puts a tremendous amount of stress on our body,
and from a recovery perspective,
from a health perspective,
especially metabolic health,
we really start to take on that wear and tear.
We really start to see loss of metabolic efficiency,
and we can actually see that carry over into other things.
So one big consequence of training stuff that's untrainable,
is the longer we do it,
the more it can actually damage,
the trainability of other systems,
of other stimuli,
because basically what it's going to do,
as we keep doing this thing,
and we start getting this wear and tear,
we're gonna lose other levels of performance.
We're going to lose our performance in other energy systems.
So we're gonna lose our recoverability,
because we need healthy metabolisms.
We need healthy amounts of enzymes.
We need good levels of micronutrients,
and all that stuff is going to start getting depleted,
if we're basically essentially like overtraining,
and under a covering,
which is what's happening in an untrainable stimulus,
is that wear and tear,
starts to decrease our potential
to recover from other stimulus as well right?
We start to just decrease our recoverability as a whole,
decrease our performance as a whole,
disregulate our hormones,
mess up our micronutrients,
mess up our nutrient partitioning,
and our overall metabolism, the longer that we do that.
So we want to make sure that we do everything possible,
to always be in a trainable stimulus.
The worst program that we can be in,
is something that we're not trainable in,
because if we do that for a long time,
because we're stubborn you know?
Because we're addicted to a certain type of training,
or it was working,
and now even though it's not working,
we're just gonna you know?
Continue to grind,
just need to work harder,
or whatever,
you may need to be smarter,
and adjust your training to something that's trainable,
before you screw up your long term results.
So when we look at trainability,
it's very important
that we find something that we are trainable in,
and it's gonna be specific right?
So what we what we are able to do,
is going to be very specific to the type of stress.
So there's all different kinds of stresses
that we can put on the body,
all kinds of different stimulus.
Some of them are going to be extremely trainable,
and some of them are going to be not trainable,
depending on the person,
and what they've been doing,
and whatnot,
and again, the course after this,
we're gonna go deep dive into assessing you know?
The starting point,
but in this course,
we're really going to be talking about
the effects that the programs have on people,
and then we'll start to get into
actually breaking down an individual,
and figuring out what they're able to adapt to,
and what they are not.
Moving on so if we are able to isolate the stimulus,
which is what I would like you guys to be able to do,
at the end of this course,
is to figure out
if I'm doing this particular training method alright?
I'm writing the sets, the reps, the rest, the tempo,
all of the training variables,
I'm writing them in a way where,
this is extremely specific.
So that means,
my trainability gap is simply the difference
between the stimulus that I'm getting,
and my recoverability.
If I'm not specific,
if I have some other stimulus in here,
so I need to achieve the threshold with stimulus one.
That's my goal stimulus.
I'm trying to get this,
because I want the adaptation to stimulus one,
but my programming is not specific.
So I kind of have some other things going on there.
Maybe I am not quite doing the right rep range,
or I'm not quite doing the right rest intervals,
or something.
I've somehow misaligned my training,
with what I need to do,
just to achieve the stimulus.
There's going to be this extra stress in here,
from whatever overlapping things
that I happen to be doing okay?
But that's not going to stay down here.
What it's actually going to do,
is that's gonna impact my trainability,
because just because that didn't align with
what I was trying to accomplish,
doesn't mean I don't have to recover
from that additional stress, that I you know?
Imposed in the body.
This takes calories.
This takes nutrients.
It may damage the cell.
It may produce oxidative stress.
It may damage proteins,
like depending on what that was,
it's some sort of stress in the body.
I still have to recover from it,
which means it's going to dig
into how trainable the system is,
unless I can get my programming
a little bit more fine-tuned,
so that there's less of this,
more of this,
and then that system becomes more trainable,
because now I have a bigger gap.
So we look at if I try really bad programming right?
I have this other stimulus in there,
that's way way overlapping.
I could get to the point
where what was previously trainable is no longer trainable.
I could essentially negate the fact
that I was able to achieve this,
by having so much other crap,
and that you know?
That could actually be not training.
It could also be life stress.
It could be something else in there,
but regardless of what it is,
whether it's bad programming,
or bad lifestyle you know?
Bad foods whatever it may be,
that will completely blunt this gap right?
So now this exceeds my recoverability.
I'm overtraining,
and I'm overtraining with something
that's not even the thing that I'm training for right?
I'm overtraining with garbage.
Not overtraining with the training I want.
The other stuff in my life
is what's driving me into overtraining,
and that's what most people exist in,
that are in over trainer,
or under a recovering state.
It's not their actual training that they should be doing,
or it's not the stimulus that they're going after
that's pushing them over the edge.
It's all the extra garbage,
whether it be bad programming,
or lifestyle stress.
So what we want to do is avoid that okay?
So we've talked about beginners,
and they can adapt to a lot of things,
and that's because if we look at the stimulus
that's needed for them,
it tends to be very low right?
So say there's more than five stimuluses,
but just for the illustration purposes,
like all right.
We have these five stimuluses,
and as you can see they have a random you know?
Assortment of how much stimulus is needed,
to achieve each of those.
So if I trained,
and I hit all of those within a given workout right?
You know or I hit several of them.
Well we can see in a beginner it's like alright,
so say I happen to overlap my programming
a little bit of a shotgun approach.
Maybe I can do all of that,
and still somehow recover from it.
So I can...
In a beginner, a crappy program works,
which is why you know?
Everything works for beginners,
but that doesn't last forever,
because what happens to each of these stimuluses
as we train them?
They get bigger,
or the threshold to achieve them goes up.
So if we compare that then,
to a more advanced trainee,
and now look at the stimuluses right?
Like there's not going to be room
to stack these on top of each other.
I'm gonna need to be specific with the way I train.
I'm either gonna need to do this one,
this one, you know?
One of the five.
No overlapping,
because anything that's overlapped
is going to exceed my ability to recover.
It's gonna recede my recoverability.
So it would no longer be trainable,
if I happen to try and double dip,
which is one of the reasons that things like you know?
Concurrent training,
and like just the shotgun approach,
to like I'm gonna have
a little bit of everything in training,
works for beginners,
but when you get to advanced people,
it just simply doesn't work.
A lot of times they actually feel like dog crap
after doing those programs for a while,
and this is why right?
They're getting to a point
where they're not able to recover.
If we look at the different stimulus
that a person could you know?
Go for right?
The discrepancies,
and the threshold for those,
can affect basically the results
that a person's going to get,
from a particular program.
So you can have things that are extremely you know?
Trainable and things that require very high stimulus.
So in this illustration,
like these things would be extremely trainable.
These would be probably harder right?
If we had the relative same recoverability,
from all of them.
So taking a break from stimulus three for instance,
and switching to stimulus four,
may potentially start lowering that,
as you're staying away from it,
and stimulus four would start to go up.
So depending on where a person is right now,
how they respond to a certain rep range,
or a certain program,
may be dependent on what this looks like in their system.
Like what is really trainable?
Where do they have adaptations,
and where do they not?
So let's look at you know?
The same program kind of prescribed to different people,
and how that would give varying,
or different results.
So we have obviously,
just recap the training.
Isn't going to affect the amount of results we get,
but what adaptations we have,
may affect what results we get from a specific program.
In terms of like if we gave,
if we gave three people the exact same workout,
and that's what we'll do in this case right?
How could the trainability across different systems in them,
affect the results
that they're going to get from that workout?
So one person.
So first we workout.
So we'll say like you know?
They're doing you know?
Sets of eight to 12 or whatever,
is another guy's metabolic workout.
So somebody is extremely deconditioned in terms of you know?
The energy production of their muscles,
or whatnot.
12 reps maybe like fricken endurance to them okay?
Where as another guy that's extremely conditioned,
that's been doing like you know?
Really high reps and stuff.
Like well 12 reps might be nothing for them.
So it's all hypertrophy,
or it might be so much that it's neurological.
So while one person
could be getting an increased metabolic you know?
Adaptation, you know?
They're getting better glucose management,
insulin management,
another could become extremely inflamed,
or metabolically damaged.
If there were at a point
where they can't recover from that particular stress.
So let's kind of look at this as an illustration.
So if we take a program here,
our an approach based program,
and we're going to three participants.
The first one is basically
coming out of a lower rep program.
So this is someone that's been doing strength stuff.
So let's say they've been do you know?
No more than four or five reps per set.
Long rest period.
So not very metabolically demanding.
The second person we're going to have you know?
Is coming out of a higher rep program.
They've been like super setting you know?
Like you know?
So they've been doing like bodybuilding
with like super sets with the same body part type of thing,
and then we're gonna have another person,
that basically hasn't been training.
Like maybe they trained before,
but it's been a long time off.
They're just getting back to the gym,
after a long layoff.
So let's look at how this type of program would feel.
So we got our low rep guy.
He's gonna do that.
So he's going from like four or five reps,
to a 12 rep program.
So obviously the big changes,
that's gonna be way more metabolically demanding.
So he's gonna get largely metabolic adaptations
to them right?
We're not gonna get into the specifics yet,
because we haven't gone through that yet,
but he's gonna be basically getting metabolic adaptations.
So then we have this other guy.
This guy that's been doing
really high rep bodybuilding stuff.
So he's been doing you know?
Sets of 15, sets of 20,
and like super sets.
Just you know?
Go go go go go stuff.
So he's the pump guy.
Chasing the pump all the time right?
And now all the sudden we're gonna break him down,
and we're gonna have him do like okay,
we're doing eight to 10 reps here.
Well eight to 10 reps is metabolic for the guy,
that's only been doing four to five.
For this guy eight to 10 is heavier right?
It's more neurologically demanding,
less metabolically demanding.
So he might be getting some neurological,
or some hypertrophy even benefits from this program.
Same program but people coming in it
with different trainability right?
Different results.
And our newbie okay?
As long as we adjust the volume appropriately to these guys.
So obviously these guys might be able to handle
this eight to 10 reps range for a larger number of sets,
when our newbie does that,
because he's gonna be extremely trainable in everything,
he might get metabolic neurologic hypertrophy,
all sorts of adaptations,
because he's very trainable in all of them.
So three people coming in,
they do the same program,
but what may be a metabolic program for one person,
is a neurological,
or a hypertrophy program for another,
because of what their previously trained in,
with the adaptations that they have,
affected which stimulises
are actually going to be hit first right?
So what the stimulus is of a certain training protocol,
depends on the adaptations I have right?
So when I look at trainability,
it's very important for us
to assess what a person's coming in with.
Understanding what you know?
What type of training program are they coming out of,
so that we can see,
or what's going to currently be adaptable.
Like for instance in this guy,
those metabolic adaptations may no longer even be adaptable.
They might not even be an option
in terms of the result that they're going to get,
the adaptations that they're going to get.
So if we do another example,
and we say okay
this one's going to be a superset style workout,
with four participants right?
We got one person that's very metabolically efficient.
We got one person that's not really metabolically trained,
but they have good overall nutritional status.
So they're healthy,
but they just haven't been doing a lot of metabolic work.
So maybe they've been doing
more strength based work, whatnot.
We got another person that's got poor energy metabolism,
because they basically have a poor diet,
poor lifestyle, excessive stress,
and then we got another person that has poor energy status,
but it's not because they haven't been eating clean,
it's because they basically
been training an untrainable system.
So they're in that state of overtraining under recovery.
So if we look at these guys right?
The results are gonna obviously be based on trainability.
So we've got our guy that's extremely metabolic efficient.
He's doing this,
and we put him into a superset protocol right?
So because he's been doing
a lot of metabolically demanding stuff,
this is probably actually gonna not hit.
It's not gonna be metabolic.
It's gonna be almost like drop off,
from the amount of metabolic work that he's been doing,
and now he's gonna get some hypertrophy,
or some neurological benefits from that.
My healthy guy that's untrained,
well he's going to just be like
the newbie from the last model.
He's gonna get all those benefits right?
So he might get benefits across the board,
depending if all those systems are kind of deconditioned.
My unhealthy guy.
From a, that's coming up with the bad diet right?
He's not able to respond to metabolic stress,
because he doesn't have the micronutrients.
He doesn't have the resiliency
to deal with oxidative stress,
or the energy demand.
So what's likely gonna happen in that case,
is he's not going to get any positive adaptations.
It's not the training for him.
That type of training stimulus is just,
this is not trainable.
He doesn't have the recovery for it.
So regardless of how good the workout is programmed,
if he doesn't have the recovery for it,
he's not going to get any positive adaptations.
For my guy that's over trained,
from already doing this type of training,
also not going to get any adaptations,
because this is just simply going to be taxing
something that's no longer adaptable right?
So he's gonna continue being in a state of overtraining,
and under recovering.
So four different people right?
But if you take somebody who has been doing something
that's way more metabolic than this,
it's not going to be metabolic,
because the stimulus needed for more metabolic adaptations,
and the guy that's extremely metabolically efficient,
would have to supersede what he'd been doing right?
This is much less than that.
So his adaptations are gonna be along neurological,
or hypertrophy right?
The healthy, but untrained guy,
he's got the nutrients to you know, respond.
So his recoverability might be good.
So as long as the volume,
and stuff in the frequency are appropriate for him
to be able to recover,
he could get benefits likely across the board,
but eventually those will have to be trimmed down,
and become more specific,
and then obviously my people that can't recover,
that don't have the recoverability either
from a nutrition perspective,
or because it's no longer adaptable,
are not really going to see any results
from that particular program.
Right so, if we do one more example here.
So we got superset style workout again.
Three participants.
One is on excessively high carbs,
one that is taking a balance...
We'll say they're you know?
We'll say that they're maybe on something like you know?
30% carbs or something like that.
40% protein 30 fat.
Some balanced type diet.
Then we got one person
on an extremely low carbohydrate diet.
So without getting too much ahead.
So a superset style workout,
it's gonna be something
that's gonna require a lot of glucose,
both for the training performance,
and for the recovery aspect,
from that particular type of training.
So if we look at the results
that these people are going to get.
So we got our high carb guy.
The high carb guy is going to be able
to perform extremely well,
because he's going to have the glucose,
and glycogen to fuel that type of training right?
That type of training,
glycogen is the best fuel.
It's much better than intra workout, carbohydrates,
or anything like that.
It's gonna be the most trainable for him okay?
So the moderate carb guy,
it might still be somewhat trainable,
but it's not gonna be as trainable,
because his glycogen levels are going to start
to drop off over the course of the program,
and whatnot.
He's not going to quite be able to recover as well.
His recoverability overall will be lower.
So it's not as trainable for him.
My low-carb guy okay?
If we put him in a system where basically,
glucose, glycogen is the most important thing to do
this particular type of program,
and we put him in that,
that actually becomes more inflammatory for the body,
because there's a lot more oxidative stress.
So what happens is,
that system tends not to be trainable,
because the negative stress that happens from doing that,
negates the positive benefits,
because it just eats away all the recoverability right?
So you need to have the appropriate nutrition,
to make something trainable,
and obviously, we want it to be as trainable as possible.
So for this type of program,
we would say okay.
The more carbs the better.
The better glycogen level better right?
Maybe this is acceptable
if we have someone that has dietary limitations,
but also then if we see like okay.
We're not able to like really get
that trainability where we want,
maybe this isn't the best type of program
for this particular person.
If for some reason
they're limited to the amount of carbohydrates.
If it's somebody that's like,
can't handle any carbohydrates from a GI perspective,
or whatever it may be,
this obviously is not a trainable system for them.
So this would not be the program that we choose for them.
Regardless of how much this program
aligns with their long-term goals,
it's not the appropriate program for this particular time,
until we get them to a point where it's like,
okay now we can actually start to fuel this workout,
and actually get the benefits
from that particular style of training.
So if there's one thing we want to accomplish,
with the way we design programs in nutrition,
it's that we maximize trainability right?
So we want to make sure we choose a stimulus,
that has a pretty...
A fairly low threshold,
which is usually going to be something
that you haven't already been training.
We want to make sure
it's something that we have good recoverability in it,
and then we do everything
that we can to maximize that recoverability.
So remember stress affects recoverability across the board.
Malnutrition in terms of a micronutrient perspective,
will affect it across the board,
but the right macronutrients will drastically improve that.
So what may be an acceptable macronutrient profile
for one training program,
may not be an acceptable macronutrient profile
for another program,
depending on what's needed to fuel the training performance,
and to fuel of the recovery.
So the type of macros that we give a person,
can drastically impact
how trainable a particular program is.