(deep rumbling)
-: Alright, so when we're doing metabolic work,
we're gonna prime a little bit different
than if we're focusing on doing heavy neurological work.
So the big thing that we're gonna need
for metabolic work is we need to stimulate
this whole systemic nutrient delivery
and we need to start mobilizing fuel
both within the cell and within the body.
So in order to do that, we gotta actually do something
that's gonna get the cardiovascular system going,
to get my brain going, to actually start releasing
some of the hormones that are gonna mobilize
some fat and some glucose into the blood,
so that when I go to that high demand set,
to my first working set, that there's not this lag
between stimulating the release or nutrients
and then the nutrients actually getting there.
You'll see that if you don't get this properly,
a lot of times your first set will
take you a lot longer to recover from
or your performance in it will be, you know, pretty poor.
So what you wanna do is you wanna basically train
to the point where you actually get some blood flow,
you get pump within that muscle,
we have an elevated heart rate,
and we've basically taken not a set to failure
but we've exerted enough effort
that would likely have engaged those energy pathways.
If I'm getting a little blood flow,
then I know I've accomplished that
because one, I've achieved it systemically
and two, locally, I've actually created this stimulus
to open up the portal for those blood vessels
to dilate and start holding more of those nutrients
at the local tissue being worked.
If I have all that, I know I'm likely getting
some increased glucose uptake as well.
So that's something we want to know,
the best way for us to know that
is that we've accomplished an elevated heart rate,
and also some blood flow to the tissue.
Now you don't need to have like a skin ripping pump,
you just need to be able to notice
that that tissue is quote unquote warm.
Like not warm, like the whole like, oh my muscles are warm,
really what we want is blood flow, right?
So that may say that that may provide you
with a warm sensation but really we want,
you know, that sensation that we're actually
getting some nutrients to that tissue.
That let's us know that there's gonna be less of a lag
when we start that working set to be able
to deliver a fuel source to fuel those sets
and to actually make every set high performing,
so we're able to hit the threshold for the stimulus
for either lactic acid or oxidative stress
that we happen to want.
Alright, last one on here I believe.
So when we're looking at the contraction,
so we have volume of contraction
versus density of contractions.
So you know, we wanna make sure in a metabolic phase
that we're doing everything we can
to limit the eccentric damage
or the mechanical damage from the eccentric phase.
And in order to get a metabolic stimulus,
we don't need to focus as much on eccentric,
we need to focus more on the concentric.
So for lactic based or for oxidative based,
the eccentric and the mechanical damage portion
of training have no part, it's the least important time
to really focus on trying to get like maximum tension
or have a strength profile that
perfectly matches what the muscle needs.
Like you don't need the perfect exercise
and you don't need to, you know,
go really slow on the eccentric, you need to be controlled.
We're not trying to like, if it's not,
if you missed the load by a few pounds, it's okay,
because we have a little to cushion
because we're focusing on the energy demand,
not on the first rep did I actually,
you know, work 97.342% of my 1RM?
Like you know, in this we end up working in ranges,
like the goal is we're working towards fatigue
and we're accomplishing a certain level of fatigue
and if that means that we go a few reps over,
a few reps under the program, so be it.
Here we're going for the effect of fatigue
more than we are like X percentage of 1RM
or any of those other things.
So we don't need that perfect loading,
we don't need to focus on the eccentric,
it's all going to be about the density of contraction,
not the intensity of contraction
or even like the, you know, even the volume.
So it's not so much the volume of work,
so it's not did I do 20 sets,
it's that did I accumulate the fatigue
I needed from an energy standpoint in the sets that I did.
Because if I did sets and I didn't hit that threshold
of either AMPK being stimulated
or I didn't hit that threshold of
the amount of oxidative stress,
that set essentially doesn't count towards the stimulus
because as I'm resting, I'm recovering,
okay, like now all that stuff is going down,
I didn't hit the switch to say hey,
these changes need to happen.
So this is not so much, it's not about total volume,
it's not about, you know, the amount of intensity,
it's about density and actually achieving
that energy space stimulus which is
gonna come from some sort of fatigue,
fatiguing one of those energy systems.
So the safest way to extend work when you're fatigued,
when we're focusing on metabolic,
is to also make sure we finish
with an exercise in the short position
or better yet, add some sort of squeeze.
So starting with the short position is good
and finishing with the short position is good.
So like I've made some brutal, brutal sets
where it's like okay, we are going to do leg extension
and we're going to do like a, you know,
a little bit heavier with a pause at the top.
Maybe it's only six reps, maybe it's something like that
with you know, maybe as much as like a four second squeeze
at the top to make it really hard,
really metabolically demanding.
Throw them into a hack squat or sometimes even like a,
you know, a supported body weight squat if,
you know, they don't have a hack squat.
So it's like I've made the squat stable
and now they're just doing a squat on a wedge body weight.
That maybe all they can do and then throw them
right back into the leg extension
and now instead of like a four second pause,
now we're using like a one second pause or two second pause
and eventually working into reps
where they can't even get it up all the way.
That is a really safe way to take somebody
to an extreme level of fatigue,
without having to worry about getting a lot
of mechanical damage from the eccentric.
So be creative in the sets and the variables
that you apply to the exercises
to be able to focus more on the energy based stuff
because a lot of you guys have been focusing
probably on a few type principles of you know,
trying to destroy the muscle from
a mechanical damage perspective
or from a volume perspective.
Here it's all about expending that energy
as efficiently as possible.
So when we look at the mistakes that people tend to make
when their goal is a metabolic stimulus,
the big one is that they fail neurologically.
So they pick exercises that are either too complex,
too unstable, or they're using loads that are too heavy
or they're just so poor conditioned
that their nervous system actually is the thing
that is preventing them from continuing
to take those mussels to fatigue
rather than the energy systems.
Overlapping exercises of the same quality is another one
because that's gonna make the work out
more neurologically difficult.
So you gotta think back to the stuff
that you learned in the biomechanics course
and understand okay, if I pair two exercises in a super set,
are they actually complimenting each other
and they're not basically training the same position,
they're not so neurologically similar
that the thing that's gonna fatigue
is not gonna be the energy system,
it's going to be the nervous system's ability
to keep working in that resistance profile, that range.
Third one here, not actually pushing the lactic threshold.
So that comes from either too little effort, too much rest,
so remember density, it's work to rest ratio, right?
So we need an intense amount of work
that's long enough with minimal rest, okay?
And not enough load is another big one,
so people assume that when they get to metabolic training
that now is the time to use light weights.
The weights you use in a metabolic phase
will be lighter than what you use in a neurological phase.
Some of them may be the same that
you use in our first few phases,
especially if you're using like a super sets or drop sets,
you might start with a fairly heavy weight
but that will get down.
So it's not that the weights need to be light,
the weights need to be appropriate.
But because we are tending to do longer sets,
the average load will be less
but it still needs to be adequate,
it still needs to be enough because I need
to be able to put in the effort,
I need to be able to create enough tension
so I'm getting enough actual metabolic demand.
And last one on here is loss of execution.
The other thing that people this is like oh,
it's metabolic phase so now I can swing things around
because they think effort, they don't transfer effort
into the actual contractile work.
They're like it's more effort if I'm being more explosive.
In reality when we're focusing on metabolic,
we're not trying to be more explosive,
we're trying to increase the demand
of the energy required from that exercise.
So sometimes being explosive may be bad.
There's definitely ways where you can have
a more explosive intent but you shouldn't
actually end up with a dynamic movement.
So there's not gonna be a ton of
momentum generated in a metabolic phase,
your momentum generation is gonna occur
in a neurological phase.
So here, don't think, don't let people associate effort
with how fast they move the weights
or you know, how aggressive they get,
they get after the contraction for 0.2 nanoseconds,
make them suffer for long periods
of time under high tension.
It doesn't mean the reps have to be overly slow,
it just means that the momentum should be minimal
because my fatigue should keep me
and the load should keep me from creating too much momentum
if I've picked the appropriate exercises.
So sometimes we have to use accommodating resistance
so somebody can work hard without
generating a ton of momentum,
so using things like bands and chains.
You can use them in a metabolic phase,
not just like neurological and strength based training.
If somebody is in balance,
so their systemic lactic tolerance
or their muscle lactic tolerance is very,
one is very conditioned and one is very deconditioned,
then you can have issues programming for that person.
So we talked a little bit on the super set chart
about okay, if somebody systemically
is very conditioned because they've been doing
some aerobic activities, some hit activity or whatnot
but haven't been doing a lot of other stuff muscularly,
their other muscles could be very poor
at producing metabolites because they can't get contractions
or they could actually have a very poor tolerance
to lactic acid and fatigue, like they fatigue really easy
because they just simply haven't been training them at all,
they've only like been training
like three muscles like in their body.
So you got somebody that runs, well okay,
they've been training their lower body,
but what has their upper body been doing?
So its threshold for lactic work is gonna be
very different than the lower body's threshold.
So when you have disparities in that,
it can complicate the programming.
And then a big one is actually when you have the inverse,
when you have somebody that has been
doing a lot of contractile work,
so maybe they've been doing bodybuilding programs
with super sets and tri sets, you know,
but they get on, you know, Facebook and Instagram
for 10 minutes in between sets.
So systemically they don't really challenge themselves.
So then when you try to pick up that density a little bit,
they don't have the systemic tolerance
to deal with all of the byproduct
and the glucose demand at those local tissues,
so now all of a sudden you're not able
to get as much output out of the local stimulus
because systemically they're fatiguing.
So you know, if you've got people that are getting nauseous
during a chest and back workout,
that's a sign there's a huge disparity
between what their muscles can do locally
versus what systemically they can handle
in terms of blood sugar regulation
and waste clearance, lactic acid recycling.
The next one on here, not controlling the eccentric.
We need to keep tension because if we have tension
and we're expending energy.
So we're trying to bias the concentric.
That doesn't mean we ignore the eccentric
or we go flaccid or we just balance or whatever,
we need control, we just don't need
to exaggerate the eccentric, so that's a big difference.
So it doesn't have to be super slow
but it does need to be controlled
so that we maintain tension.
Next one down here, attempting to train
a muscle lactic, right?
So that AMP or AMPK response locally
without enough actual carbohydrates
either stored as glycogen or within the diet.
I highly recommend that if that's your focus,
you need to focus on arranging your nutrition
so that you have good glycogen levels
going into the workout, your performance is gonna be better,
it's gonna be less inflammatory.
Ultimately, we're gonna talk about nutrition
in the next unit here but ultimately,
that's much better than just trying
to rely on intra workout nutrition
because you just can't simply deliver it to the muscle
as efficiently as you need it.
And last one on here is like being metabolically acidic
while also trying to do a lact phase.
So if from a general health perspective,
because somebody's been eating very poor diet,
they might not be in a position
to handle anymore oxidative or lactic stress
because they're already chronically inflamed
and acidic and stressed out internally.
So their metabolic system is actually already stressed,
they actually need to do things to destress it
before it will become adaptable again.
So you actually need to get as far away
from this type of stress in their training as possible,
they may need to train like a power lifter
for a short period and correct their nutrition
and then they could come back and do this type of stuff
and see some positive adaptations.
But if they've been in a situation
where they're from poor mitochondrial health,
poor cellular health, poor energy metabolism,
poor liver function, they're in this state
where basically it's like they've been getting
this stimulus all the time anyway,
well obviously they're not gonna adapt to it in training,
instead you're actually just gonna stress out their system,
disrupt their mitochondria even more.
So you won't need to deload, make that system trainable
through the appropriate nutrition and recovery things
and then this be comes an option.