-: This is the start of essentially the thought process
that we are going to repeat over and over and over again
as we go through the different stimuli.
Okay, so essentially, this is what happens.
You get a client, you do their assessment,
you put them on a program,
you put them on a nutrition program,
a training program for specific stimulus,
essentially we have four options, okay?
You're gonna assess them,
and you know, it's either not working
'cause wrong stimulus, okay?
It's not working as well as you would like
because there's maybe too much stress
or the stimulus is like,
you're working at too high levels of stimulus
in relationship to their recovery
so you haven't quite balanced out the trainability
for that stimulus, or you're not doing enough
for what it needs to make them change, right?
You're not stimulating enough for the adaptation or change.
So it might be the right stimulus but just not enough of it.
Or it could be just right.
So depending on which one of those there is,
you're gonna be somewhere on the spectrum
of either they're not working, it's working as expected,
and then maybe, sometimes it's working better than expected
and then everywhere in between.
But basically, these are the four places
that you're gonna look at,
and if it's essentially anything other than just right,
then we're trying to figure out,
okay, what do I need to change?
Do I need to change this stimulus?
Do I need to up the stimulus?
Do I need to up the recovery?
Do I need to decrease the stress?
Do I need to, add food, lower food,
like, what's it gonna take?
So, let's kinda look through the basic
like, basic thought process.
So if it's the wrong stimulus,
we're gonna get little to no, which is spelled wrong here,
little to no progress
with a high amount of unwanted side effects.
So really what we're looking at this is like,
okay, we've violated this person's trainability.
So we added stress
that their body couldn't respond positively to.
So that's why we're gonna see recovery,
like recovery markers go down
and not a lot of positive physique results
or performance results, or whatever they may be.
So then the follow-up question that is like,
okay, what would make the stimulus that I chose untrainable?
I had all this other information before,
I thought this was trainable, what did I miss?
Why is it not on the physiological side
or the practical side,
this is why you gotta know the compliance
because maybe it seems like the wrong stimulus
but they just didn't execute it properly.
Maybe you told them, you know, like only one set to failure
and they did six sets to failure,
so obviously all of that stuff proceeds
any of this evaluation decision-making.
But essentially, you're gonna figure out
is it a physiological or a practical reason
that this is the wrong stimulus, right?
Because if it's a practical one,
maybe there's a solution around it, maybe there's not.
If it's a physiological one,
the solution is go to the stimulus
that is actually gonna be better
at potentiating the stimulus.
So if you put them on something and it's like,
oh, well their conditioning wasn't good enough for this,
or their local conditioning wasn't good enough for this.
It's like, cool, we're gonna go back,
and do something that is going to directly
work on improving that and then come here.
Or maybe it's like, this is already overloaded
it needs a dealer, whatever it may be.
So we're gonna switch to the most appropriate stimulus
with those new considerations.
And then we need to explain to a client
it's not a failure on their part when we switch a stimulus,
it's not like, oh, I thought that we could do, you know,
like I thought we could do the systemic program,
not quite there yet,
what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a strength program
with like some more kind of lower intensity cardio
until we can build your cardiovascular
and your systemic tolerance up enough,
that way, then we can tolerate a full on
like systemic type resistance training program.
But, it's not that it's a failure on your part
it's just that this isn't the right thing
for you at this time.
So it's something we will be able to do,
now it's just not the time to do it.
All right, if there's too much stress/stimulus
in relationship to recovery,
in this case, you're likely making some progress
with some undesirable or undesired side effects.
But it's not enough like
that we need to change the stimulus.
It's like, okay, cool.
Like, it seems like we're getting a mix
of good and bad things,
and what that likely means is just that
okay, maybe our volume is just a little too high, right?
'Cause it's like, we're getting the stimulus
and the adaptation, but we're dipping too much
into the recovery that we need for this.
So either training is too high
or nutrition and recovery is too low.
And so then we gotta investigate
which makes the most sense to adjust.
If it's too little stress stimulus to the homeostatic drive,
that's basically the drive for the body not to change.
In this case, we might not get any side effects
but progress is slower than you would want it to be.
So it's like, we're not getting negative
'cause obviously we're not imposing that much on the body,
but we're not seeing much progress either.
So in this case, either the training is too low,
or the nutrition could be too high, too low,
depending on what the goal is.
So like, obviously it's like we're going for hypertrophy
you know, and we're putting in the training,
but the weight's not moving
and everything's kind of like staying the same,
maybe they need to eat more
if it's body composition then likely the inverse of that.
So again, then we would investigate which of these is going.
So to kind of give you guys a visual representation of this
we're gonna use this scale.
It's like this kind of the scale
that balances the two sides, right?
So if we're looking at the too much category,
we have stress and we have recovery.
If those things are balanced, awesome.
That means like the amount of volume
and stuff that we're putting in, we're recovering for that,
it should be pushing us towards our goal
with minimal side effects if things are in balance.
If we have too much stress, then it's gonna tip the scale.
So basically what we're gonna do
is like, well, we're still probably getting a stimulus
but we're not recovering adequately,
and when we're not recovering adequately,
we're gonna see some of those recovery markers
start to decline,
and maybe not be able to sustain the performance
and stuff like that.
But we might still be making some steps towards that goal
'cause we are still getting the stimulus
but we're just not, we may not be getting as much adaptation
in the direction that we want
because we have inadequate recovery
for the amount of stress.
And then it could simply just be like,
well, the program itself was good,
but the recovery is just terrible,
but it's not because like,
if I'm looking at their training history and stuff,
it's like, man, it doesn't seem
like there should be too much volume,
or it doesn't seem like they should be too much stress.
So likely it's not that we've introduced a training program
that's like just massively more
than they can normally handle,
likely what's happening is
for some reason they're recovering less than normal,
there's something going on,
and then that whole investigation has to start.
So your goal with your check-ins and your reassessment
is to discern how to balance the equation,
is it adding more things for recovery
or is it decreasing the imposed stress
that you have control over,
which would be modifying your workout.
So that ends up taking us kinda down this thought tree here.
So too much stress, stimuli recovery,
we got basically two decisions.
We're either gonna decrease training,
or increase nutrition and recovery.
So if you follow me down the left-hand side here,
so if we're gonna make the decision
on which one we need to do,
it's likely gonna be based off of
if there's somebody we've been working with for awhile,
it's kind of like taking a second look at that program
and then kinda looking at their program history
and kinda figuring out is this program,
does it seem disproportionate in terms of the stress
and volume and intensity?
And if not, then let's look at the other side.
And again, this is where the check-ins are important
because it's like, all right, can I look at sleep
and stress and things
and whatever questions I have going on in there
that kind of give me an idea of like, well,
like what if they've been missing meals?
What if they haven't been getting enough hours of sleep?
What if they have extra stress at work?
All those things like that could tell me that like, okay,
maybe it is the recovery side,
but just 'cause it's the recovery side,
if it's things that are out of my control,
I still may need to go back to decrease training.
So I have to look at the training program and the check-in
and all that information I get,
and figure out, okay, what's going on?
And you can get like,
so one of the questions that we'll ask sometimes
for certain programs will be about like, okay,
are they getting a good pump?
And are they keeping it for the whole workout?
Are they losing it?
You know, a lot of different things
that we could look at from a workout to get an idea
how stressful the workout is acutely,
but we need to match that up with the recovery data
because they could be pre-fatiguing the workout
because they came in poorly recovered from before.
So you need to have both of those things together
to help you make that decision
of are we gonna decrease training,
or are we gonna increase recovery?
Which one of those seems to make the most sense
when I kind of look at both of these things
next to each other of like, okay, how's this workout
compared to what I think they should tolerate?
How does their recovery look
compared to what they're normally doing,
and it's one of those way off.
And then take that approach.
It is perfectly possible that it's a bit of both.
And you could take that approach.
But what I would suggest is for simplicity sake,
you at least try and figure out
which one's the highest priority
or which one you have the most control over
and go with that.
So let's say that it is training
that needs to be decreased in this scenario.
I then have basically two things to look at from training.
It's either the volume of stress and stimulus
that I'm putting on them, or it's the magnitude.
So if it's volume I'm looking at, okay, is it too many sets,
or how's their split?
Is it too much muscle tissue per day per week?
Like, is it the frequency?
Because obviously if you spread your frequency out
by one more day, that's less volume per week
or per that like cycle of time.
So there's a lot of different ways
that we could decrease volume
or manipulate how that volume is spread out.
So looking at that program,
that's kind of where we could look
'cause it could be like, man, you know,
this person is just trashed for like three days after legs,
but then they're fine the other days.
So they have like three days of poor sleep
and then they're back on, but then they train leg
then again they have three days of that,
so it's like, man, maybe I need to spread
that leg volume out a little bit more
instead of having all the legs on one day,
maybe I need when you have a quad dominant day
and hip dominant day
and kinda put some small muscles with that
or something like that,
because it's just more volume
than they can tolerate in a single session.
Or I could just lower the sets on leg day.
Or I could adjust the frequency somehow.
This is like, okay, well maybe like our leg days
are too close to each other
and we need to spread them apart, et cetera.
So then the other option is the magnitude.
And when we say magnitude,
that's like, okay, a set, can be a set of six,
it can be a set of 12,
there can be long or short rest between those sets,
so it's looking at how the variables
are affecting essentially the intensity of those sessions,
the intensity of the stimulus.
So same thing for architect type, right?
I mean, you could be doing triceps
and you might only need it to be doing super sets.
You could be doing an incomplete rest method
of eight by eight, when really for this person
they should probably be doing six reps
or they should only be doing six sets.
There should be a six by six instead of eight by eight,
or maybe they should be doing six by four,
whatever it may be, you know, four by 10.
Lots of different things, but like, okay,
maybe I just need to tweak my variables
because it's not the amount of volume,
it's the intensity of that volume that is too much for them.
And so when you're looking at that,
you're gonna kinda look at that program,
and if you have the history of them
then you're kinda looking at how they would respond
to similar programs or to similar stresses.
Like, so if it's like, okay,
I have a program with similar volume,
or I have a program with similar stimulus before,
how to respond to that.
As we get into the specific stimuluses,
we'll be able to put more rules,
but as a general thing, we're trying to kinda figure out
like as much from history, as well as what we'll look at
in terms of check-in measures and data points.
So then the other option
is we go down the right side here, the green side,
and we say, all right, likely I think our best option
is we need to increase nutrition or recovery.
And I've divided that into two sections as well
because either it's gonna be like a global,
just we need more calories, we need more energy,
or we need more nutrients,
like they're not getting enough micronutrients
or they're not getting enough calories.
So it's likely gonna be those.
Or the other side is it's like, it's less about total
and it's more about I need to improve
the macronutrient ratio a little bit.
Maybe I'm over giving them protein
and they're not getting enough carbs,
or something like that.
Or maybe they're on a high carb thing,
but they're trying to get it with like all whole foods
and they have to increase
their caloric density of their meals.
So, depending on what's going on,
when we look at the questionnaire
and we look at the feedback and whatnot,
we'd likely be able to say like,
okay, is it a pure energy balance issue,
or is it a macro nutrient density issue?
Or is it a combination of both?
And which one of those interventions
is likely going to be the most successful for them?
All right, let's go to the flip side now.
So too little stimulus
versus the body's desire to stay the same, homeostasis.
So, now instead of stress,
we're saying, well, we got stimulus
and then we got changes and adaptation.
So if we're doing enough stimulus
to get the changes and adaptation we want,
we're balanced, we should be making progress
with minimal undesirable effects throughout that stimulus.
But we can still get in that same scenario
where all right, for some reason or another,
we're either not getting enough stimulus,
or something's going on on the other side.
Like, I mean, there's not as many options on this side
because one, we're not seeing any negatives
usually in terms of like bad side effects
from the training or whatever,
minimum like if it was a scale flipped over
it's like that, it'd be like,
okay, are they actually gaining fat
when they should be losing it
'cause we massively overestimated their calories, et cetera.
Those are the kinds of situations we're looking at here.
So it's essentially gonna be the same thought process,
is it too much or too little,
and then was it a training thing or is it a recovery thing?
So in most cases, in this instance,
it's likely going to be increased training
because if you're not making that much progress,
that means we're not getting the stimulus
to push those adaptations.
Now, if the main adaptation we're looking for
is body composition change, like fat loss,
and if everything else is like,
well, their performance is improving
maybe their conditioning markers are improving, et cetera
but they're just not losing like the actual body fat,
then we're probably gonna be over on this side,
where it's like, okay, we just need to decrease calories.
And as we decrease calories,
we may need to change our macro nutrient ratios
to continue supporting the training stimulus
as we decrease those calories.
So where you take those calories come from may matter.
So on this side of it, these two boxes under nutrition
the energy and nutrition balance and macros
will kind of blur
because obviously if we're taking stuff away,
it becomes very important where that stuff comes from
'cause we have minimum thresholds that we wanna hit
for protein and fat,
and for certain stimuli is that may be like,
well we need a certain amount of carbohydrates.
And then how long are we gonna do this?
'Cause you know, maybe fat can be lower
if only doing this for a couple of weeks,
but if we're doing it for six weeks,
then the minimum fat threshold is higher.
So these things kinda get blurred
when we're talking about
like getting into those calorie deficits
because it matters more from a performance perspective
where the deficit comes from.
And when we get into a hypertrophy range,
then these things can kinda separate a little bit more.
'Cause we're talking about adding more, adding surplus,
obviously, the macros will still matter
and they'll still be blurred,
but you know, we'll say, you could be a little less neurotic
when you're adding calories
than you can when you're taking them away.
In terms of like somebody's performance and stuff like that.
Now, if you're pushing the boundaries
on both training and recovery
and just like trying to squeeze the onset of somebody,
then I don't wanna de-value how important it is
to have everything in line.
But for the average transformation client
when they're in a surplus,
like there's a lot more flexibility with macros
being like, it's like, okay, 20 more grams of fat
and less carbs or something like that
isn't necessarily gonna be the thing
that like makes them have a bunch of bad side effects
or whatnot per se.
But at a deficit, not having adequate
of a certain macro nutrient
definitely can have profound negative impacts
on performance and wellbeing.
Even though they may still achieve similar weight loss
in like a research environment
where they're forced to do these activities,
in the real world, people are not confined
and constrained to having to do this.
And so when things don't line up compliance goes down,
IT goes down, lots of things change,
and it doesn't always work out like it does in the lab
or if it's just like, hey calories
and that's all that matters is the calorie deficit.
And like, eh, the way you get that calorie deficit
has a lot to do with how somebody feels, performs,
and how compliant they are in the real world.
And I think probably most of you guys have realized that,
and that's another big thing with the way we do things here
with matching training and nutritionists.
Compliance should be much better for you guys
after implementing that system
than what you're doing before.
Being able to say like,
okay, for training like this we should have carbs,
for training like this, we can get away with less.
But you know, the majority of people in the industry
we're putting people
on metabolic, giant set things, whatever, and zero carbs,
and wondering why people just had all sorts of problems
and didn't stick with it, you know?
It's 'cause it sucked, right?
Yeah, if you force people to do it,
will they lose weight?
Yes, but how many people
will actually want to live like that or do that?
Anyway, not too much to expand on here
as one, we're getting close to the time,
but also that we're gonna go
into this stuff in greater detail with each team.
So basically that whole thought process
that we just went through,
that's the process that the coaches
will be kind of walking you through for each stimuli
so I'm gonna cover the physiological side
and the principles,
and then they're gonna go through
like actual case study questions and stuff like that
that you guys have on that
and give you guys exact walk-throughs
of here's the scenario where I added volume,
here's a scenario where I changed the magnitude,
here a scenario where I decreased calories,
and kinda walk you through that thought process
so you guys have a lot of application here, okay?
All right, cool.
All right, so I'm gonna go through the questions
that you guys have here now.
All right, drops expectations,
a question I get often
is how fast I can lose weight fat percentage
or how much muscle can I gain in X amount of time?
Do I have a measure for this?
So when you get that question,
one, it's an impossible thing to answer
especially at the beginning, right?
So you can choose to give them
like the ranges of what's average.
But you have to remember that,
that then sets an expectation for them
of like, okay, if I'm not losing the average amount
or maybe they're like, I'm gonna work harder
so I'm gonna make sure I get that top amount.
Then if they don't get that, then you run into issues
because here, so here's what I started doing
towards the end of my coaching career
is I asked them before, I was like, "Well,
have you tried doing this before?"
And you know, usually that's the case
is they've tried to lose weight before, whatever.
And you can ask them like, okay, tell me a bit
about how things worked out for you before
so maybe I can answer that closer to,
or give you expectations that are closer
to what your body's responded to the past
and how it might compare to what we're gonna do now.
Then maybe that's a safe bet or whatever,
but you have to be careful
'cause you have to one, to make sure
that like you don't compare
like the weight loss that they got on a crash diet
to say what you're gonna be able to sustain over six months.
So they're like, "Oh yeah, I did this, you know,
I did this juice cleanse thing or whatever,
and I lost like 10 pounds, you know, blah, blah, blah."
And you know, this is like, don't be like,
"Well, yeah of course we could lose 10 pounds a week.
Like I'm better than a juice fast," no.
So, you know, for the average person
we're talking about weight loss, right?
So for somebody to lose a half a percent
of body weight a week consistently
is like, we'll say that's like,
that's what people maybe average consistently
is between half a percent and a percent of body weight.
And then when we're looking at hypertrophy,
that number is about a quarter to half that.
So maybe somebody can, in terms of muscle gain,
they can actually add
between 0.15 and a quarter percent of body weight.
Now, the thing is, is that
this is why I like giving the expectations
based off of the phase.
And so what I would say is
you'll probably be better off saying like,
this is what you give for a week is more so it's like okay,
it's gonna change depending on what we're doing,
like we're gonna go through phases
where you'll lose weight really fast
and other ones where you'll lose very little
or maybe stay the same,
but what's happening is the ones
where we're not losing as much
are actually the thing that are causing us to lose more
in the other phases.
So it'll go up and down, and so then I can say like,
"All right, based off of where we're gonna start,
this is what I think we can expect to happen
over these couple of weeks,"
but not set the expectation long term.
So, it's an impossible question to answer Jep,
you know, other than giving like the general ranges
but I don't necessarily know that that's a good idea.
I like the idea of saying like, you know,
it's gonna go up and down,
and that it doesn't necessarily matter
if we have phases that are higher or lower,
it's getting to the end destination that's matter
because you can't expect to lose weight at your fastest rate
or your slowest rate consistently over the 12 weeks
or whatever it may be, right, okay.
Clients often have expectations
based off of what they see on social media.
How do you manage if those expectations are still existing
after weeks, months of followup,
despite your education on the subject
or education is less sexy
than what they see every day on Instagram?
Well, I mean, if somebody comes in
and their expectation is you know,
like I wanna be the person, you know, whatever
so and so coaches or websites thing,
and what you have to like kinda disclose to them
it's like, look, this is an outlier in this scenario.
So it's like, you don't realize
like a person might be training 150 clients,
and what you're only seeing is like maybe the three
or five best results over that period of time.
You know, I know a lot of places
where they pump out transformations,
but they also pump out like exponentially more volume
of clientele that don't actually,
don't actually make those transformation posters.
So that would be one thing.
And what I would say is that for them,
is to try and focus their expectations
on actually follow through with the tasks
and stuff like that
and see if you can get them to make a correlation
with how compliant they are,
and how good they do with their results.
So basically, what you should try and do
is to get their attention diverted
to focusing on making the correlation
between, you know what, when I get my hydration
and my nutrition good and my training good
and I'm managing my stress, and I'm doing all the things
I notice better results consistently
than when I don't do those things.
And so therefore, what my expectations need to be
if I wanna set, like, what's my best expectation,
I need to look at what kinda results do I get
when I do things the best,
and then that's what I wanna strive for
and use that as a tool to reinforce compliance.
Now, if somebody is just simply
just not getting results fast enough,
and you just can't get them out of that,
this is the hard place to comment on
because it could be
that they should be getting results faster.
I don't know that, right?
I don't know, could you be getting them results faster?
Like, are you doing-
Like, that's something I don't know,
but let's say you're doing everything
that you possibly could,
or whatever is realistic to them or whatnot,
that's where sometimes we've gotta put it into perspective
of like, "Hey, do you have any reason to believe
that your body would change faster than this
like that day," or whatever,
this is a great time to introduce a personal story
especially about your journey of like,
'cause look, if you're on this call,
you're probably not a top 10 at the Mr. Olympia,
but maybe you wanna be.
And you could be like, "Look,
I've been training longer than like whatever kid
that's on the Olympia stage or whatever and whatnot,
but that's just, my body just doesn't respond like that
even though maybe I have been training longer, better,
doing all of these things."
And explain how you have managed to hone your focus
on progress rather than just whether or not
you've hit the end result yet.
Okay, it looks like that is it for the day.
Thank you guys that made the live
and those of you guys that are watching this recording,
glad to have you, and I will see you all next week.