-: So let's look at our little diagram
that we've been going through.
Again, pay attention because there'll be some similarities
but also some differences in here.
So we have the basic common sense stuff like,
okay, is workout difficulty high or low?
There's a decision making tree.
Post-workout exhaustion, high or low?
Now I put asterisk on both of those under nutrition
and that's because when it comes to neurological training,
it becomes more difficult to assess
workout difficulty and exhaustion,
because when somebody does a metabolic workout,
at the end of the workout like if it's systemic,
or local metabolic whatever, they may be on the ground,
like just dead exhausted, they're covered in sweat.
In a neurological workout, somebody may be done
and like, "Okay, yep that was heavy,"
but they're fine, they're good.
Like their energy is good,
so they don't feel exhausted per say.
So it may not be ideal for them in this particular phase
to feel exhausted, or they just might not be very good
at gauging the difficulty effort
or exhaustion for this type of session.
So you may have to rely more
on the numbers to tell you what's going on
than their subjective perception
of how difficult to work out is
or how fatigued they are after that.
On the decreasing training side, appetite goes down
and that tends to be when driving too much intensity.
And so we're getting into that anxiousness
and that's what would cause a decrease in appetite.
You'll notice there is not an appetite increase
on the opposite side for this scenario,
because from an under recovering standpoint
in this particular phase,
we aren't gonna see as big of a shift.
I mean, if you're under eating, you're gonna be hungry
but it's not gonna be excessively pushed by the training.
It's gonna be just the fact that
you're under eating a little bit.
So if you're under deficit, it wouldn't feel
particularly more hungry than normal
even in a neurological phase
versus if you're doing very metabolic training
that's when you, like, if you're under eating
and you're doing metabolic training, you're like starving
because you're creating all that demand for glucose.
Whereas here it's not that big of a deal.
Excessive soreness, non-specific soreness.
Those are gonna be signs to decrease the training.
Early workout performance loss.
And then, our typical things volume seems high.
Diet is already maxed out that's our decision making tree.
Finishing up on the nutrition side,
excessive weight loss could be a sign
that we need to increase nutrition.
I mean, that's gonna be dependent on what your goal is here,
but keep in mind that this,
like if you're doing neurological training
we're not depleting as much glycogen
but are also not quite as glycogen sensitive
to the performance and stuff like that.
So we could be slowly depleting ourselves a little bit,
a little bit until,
but essentially basically what will happen is
because we're not creating much of an adaptation
to store more glycogen is is that over time
we could go from like, we finished a systemic workout phase
where we're just constantly
stimulating our muscle cells to be full
of all of this glycogen and hydration
and co-factors and substrates.
And now we're slowly losing that stuff over time.
So not only could we be losing body fat,
but if we're excessively light on the nutrition side,
we could be losing some muscle glycogen, hydration in excess
that's gonna negatively impact our performance
but it comes on slower and more gradual.
So it's kinda harder to detect.
Energy only during training is a key factor here
that you're under recovering from a nutrition standpoint.
So basically once somebody gets amped up for training
they start getting stimulus from their warmup,
whatever they're good, they feel good, they do that.
But then the rest of the day, they're tired.
That could be a sign that,
that nutrition is definitely the component.
And it's not the workout.
And the rest of them pretty much ones that we've seen before
volume seems lower on par,
training at the bottom of the stimulus threshold.
So this is not gonna be the most difficult phase
for you to progress really, I mean, if you coach people
through these types of phases,
you've probably learned by now
that man, I mean, this is the one type
of training stimulus where the spreadsheet,
of like, "Hey, here's the sets and reps and whatever."
And I did and how much load
or whatever can actually be pretty valuable,
on hypertrophy phase
or any sort of more complex training system
where we have more global stress,
metabolic stress, et cetera.
There's a lot of other things
that can go awry physiologically.
Whereas here, if you're only doing three reps,
the odds that you're gonna be stressing
your body mechanically versus physiologically
are much, much higher in terms of like
the mechanical being, the more probable thing.
And so we're looking at both mechanical stuff
like the performance-based stuff as the positive indicator
and also the negative indicator is that's essentially
what's gonna drive the majority of your decision making.
So then we look on the other side,
the two little stress for stimulus
this is essentially reduced down
to the most generic points here
where it's pretty much the common sense variables.
So the only thing that you can do.
So I'm just going to say, like
you've seen this before, you can pause it, read it whatever
these are the things it's all the logistical
nothing really specific to the stimulus.
The thing that is specific is this slide here
that I'm just throwing back out for you guys again
which is not improving performance in the absence
of any negative biomarkers or performance bio markers.
So that's when like, okay
that's the sign that we are under stimulating.
The only other one that I would say is it would be
in the sense that like, if we're focusing on a deload
or performance vector, or we're doing this as a deload
during a fat loss phase, so where it's like
we're coming out of a systemic phase
and we're gonna do like,
we're gonna do a neurological phase,
which for that person probably was closer to like
low rep hypertrophy.
We'd be looking at using the diet and maybe some,
needs to be the main drivers for the fat loss.
And then this is more so about like improving some strength
and muscle maintenance, in that scenario,
that's where it's like, you could look at the diet
as a stimulator of the fat loss.
But you're looking at the diet,
and then you're looking at the combination
of whether you're doing
controlled aerobic activity or steps, neat,
and stuff like that,
you're balancing those two out to get it.
And you're essentially trying to
you shouldn't be over-training from a neurological.
You shouldn't have to worry about
your neurological stepping over training.
'Cause you should be basically neurological training
at maintenance to slight like performance-based stuff.
You shouldn't be pushing the thresholds
of volume tolerance in that individual.
That's in the calorie deficit going into this phase
for body composition purposes.
So for incorrectly stimulating or stressing
what you're gonna get is excessive local soreness.
And that's usually gonna become from either
poor tempo, exercise selection things
could also be just too much volume,
but definitely make sure you check
the exercise selection thing there
especially 'cause we're using high loads.
So if we're using high loads
and we're getting down into those stretch positions
and we're using pauses, et cetera,
man that stuff adds up really fast to make people sore.
Even if they're only doing a few reps.
Fatiguing in reps instead of strength,
fatiguing aerobically, or metabolically.
I mean, essentially the goal is we want the neurological
like the neural drive to be the limiter here.
So we shouldn't be fatiguing aerobically or metabolically
or in most cases we shouldn't be getting
relatively much stress or exhaustion fatigue
in those particular variables throughout the session.
Obviously, if you do set a heavy squats
you're gonna be breathing heavy.
It's a systemic demand but it's not the same as
if you were to do a set of 12 squats,
to the same RPR degree of failure.
So if we're breathing hard, not recovering aerobically
between sets into like getting too much
of like a lactic based fatigue over the course,
the workout, whatever it may be.
Those might be signs that were incorrectly stimulating.
So something needs to be changed in your program
whether it be rest intervals, rep ranges,
tempos, exercise, selection.
Signs of systemic or local metabolic stress
kinda gets rubbed into the same thing there.
But I mean, we're looking at that.
I'm talking about, if we look back
at the biomarkers that we were looking at
for systemic and local metabolic stress
and you start to see those things coming on
then I would say, wait, is there a chance that,
with the amount of volume that I'm doing on top
of this stuff et cetera, how big that person is,
that I thought I was writing a neuro program
but they actually need twice as much rest
between sets as I gave them.
And so this is actually, somewhat systemic
or local metabolic, and you will get that
in some big strong individuals where you might
write a program that seems like,
that's adequate rest, but because they have,
they can exhibit so much strength
and they can recruit so much muscle mass at once
that even at these, low rep ranges or whatever
they're able to actually, impose a decent systemic
or local metabolic demand.
Increased sleep need, so tired even in the a.m.
after sufficient quality, quantity of sleep.
So that's usually a volume issue.
And that means like you probably,
if you're doing a neuro phase,
you shouldn't be getting to that level of volume stress.
Like you just working with like the fact that
you need to be working at the intensities that you do.
The only way that you're gonna get that much volume,
is either you're in the gym for like,
twice a day for two hours each or something like that.
Or you're simply allowing yourself
to do too much lower intensity work that shouldn't belong
in this particular phase.
And then performance dropping later in the workout.
Usually for neurological workout, you should see
like you're gonna use more things
like the ascending rep method, ascending load, I'm sorry,
descending rep method, where you're trying
to reach like a peak performance.
That's gonna be the main thing.
Like you shouldn't be, even if you're doing a linear
like thing where you're using the same load same reps over
is that we shouldn't be working to the point where
we're getting big performance drops in the workout.
Because going back to what we were talking about,
the opening slides is you're looking to train
in a specific quality or a specific manner that is
in representation of the quality of what that performance is
and how it needs to be expressed.
So you don't wanna be continuing doing sets
and reps that are lower quality,
or they're either too low intensity,
too low in speed, too poor in coordination or technique.
If you're doing that stuff,
you're likely working in different stimulus,
or at least you're working,
we'll say outside of the specificity, that you should be.
So some tips and tricks of the trade here.
And I'm gonna try and let Adam come on
and see if there's anything that he has to add
or questions he has on what we had,
since he is our resident power lifter as well.
So you guys can start putting in your questions now
I don't see a whole lot of them.
So get them in there.
If you are deloading, everything should be recovering.
If not less training more food, like don't get greedy.
If you're doing a neuro deload, don't be greedy.
Like the whole purpose of the deload
is to make sure you recover.
But if you try and be too greedy and include too much volume
or you're trying to be too strict with the diet
during the deload, all it does is cost you time.
That's literally the only thing it does,
because then guess what you're gonna need
to deload another week.
So if you're gonna deload, deload hard
error on the side of making sure that you get that recovery
and neurological phases are one of the most common ones
that we use for a deload.
And I see too many people try and be too aggressive
during the deload and then
they don't get what they needed out of it.
All they did essentially was have a week
of like non stimulatory programming.
So maybe it's a week where they didn't do anything bad
or they didn't regress,
but they're also not really progressing if you will.
So I mean, there's Miller's microphone,
Miller mute yourself for just a second,
when I finished this slide, please, there we go.
So for coordination programs, you should have
almost zero negative biomarkers because basically
the technique should be such a limiting factor
that you are not pushing too close enough to failure
or to enough volume
that you would negatively impact those biomarkers.
So if they do exist, it's probably a food thing.
And there's almost no chance
that if you're working in coordination,
that you're over-training by intensity,
it's possible by volume, but still very unlikely.
'Cause you'd probably be including
too many low quality reps.
When we look at proper progression,
proper progression is needed
for accurate assessments of performance markers,
because if we're using the performance markers as our gauge
and we try and progress too fast, you can interpret that
as over-training, but it could also just be
that your expectations were way too high.
So you progressed in two weeks
what should have happened over four weeks?
And the problem was your expectation of the progression
not the person's actual recovery
or the way that you designed the program.
Other than you just asked for too much weight too fast
or too much volume too fast.
And then on the opposite side, if you progressed too low
you could be masking poor recovery and you just think,
Oh everything's going fine,
because we get like one pound stronger every week.
And it's like, well, that's somebody could actually be
like performing relatively crappy, but the fact
that they were just very detrained in the stimulus
they're making minimal progress.
So in order to use the performance metrics
and markers properly, you have to have good expectations
of how you want to progress and progress appropriately.
And that's where kind of having some experience
to the individual will really help.
If you are using grindy reps,
you will have a much harder time assessing progression.
Because the grindy reps there's a lot of shit
that's gonna go on, that's gonna move that
performance marker one or two reps in the other direction.
So you have to maintain the same kind of standard across
the reps that you're considering an improvement or not.
So did somebody really gain five pounds
of strength in a week?
If the lift looks like shit on the second week
versus if it looked crisp and clean on the first week.
So if you include, if they're grinding out
their last reps all the time
like from the beginning of the program,
you're gonna have a really hard time of knowing
when you should have stopped counting the reps that count,
because there's certain like with grindy reps
it's a lot harder to decide like,
well which was the last and what was that of one RIR,
two RIR like, so the best thing to do for these things
and this is probably where Miller can really chime in
after we're done here, is when the appropriate time
to use that would or wouldn't be,
and I would say for the most part
you're gonna avoid grindy reps other than like,
the very last week or two of a blocker program
where you're trying to maybe like
you're trying to get to,
they'll say like a meet specific thing of like, "Yeah, okay.
"This is I'm gonna attempt the lift
"in the conditions that I would actually perform it
"in the meet, which means that if my technique moves 5%,
"but that's what gets me the PR."
That's kind of what we're trying to see what happens.
The last bullet point on this one is
technique can be an assessment tool as well.
So when someone's technique breaks down
they use more compensation for that same or similar loading.
This can be a sign the nervous system is under recovering.
Because people don't want to not hit their weight targets
and people definitely don't want to regress.
So rather than stopping when they should
at the relative RPE or RIR, or the technique
is that they will be like, "Oh yeah, coach
"I got all of my weights."
But again, it goes back to that, like
are they using grindy reps, are they compensating?
Did all of a sudden that squat become,
that quad squat became a hip squat
for the last two reps, but then like, "Oh yeah,
"I hit my target," and it's like,
well they hit their target, but they,
instead of an arrow they hit it with an axe.
So does it still count?
So we wanna make sure that we're hitting the target
with the right technique.
And you can actually use that if you like.
'Cause if somebody is gradually shifting their technique
there's a reason they're doing that.
And that likely means it's a fatigue thing
and that means that, okay, these are we need to improve
the recovery or adjust the program.
Last slide here.
And this is just some caveats based off of what's
going on in the evidence-based research community.
Beware the research right now that's being interpreted
as low reps contribute to more CNS fatigue.
That's misleading, all right I'm sorry.
I've actually said that this should be ignore
the research that says higher reps contribute
to more CNS fatigue.
'Cause that's what you're kinda seeing right now.
Sorry for the typo there.
My brain just didn't want, right, apparently
that's how much I'm irritated with it.
And I'm not saying that the research is incorrect.
What I'm saying is that the interpretation
is being stated is that if you do a higher rep set,
that that's more CNS fatiguing
and what you really need to look at it
as is it's actually the volume and degree of failure
on top of the neurological complexity, the exercise,
because if you do a three RM of squat,
you stop when you can no longer do that load
which is gonna be significantly higher than
if you were to do a set of 20 of squats.
So you're taking your body to physiologically
like physiological failure.
You're going much deeper on a set of 20
but because the weight is lighter,
you're also able to compensate a lot more
and use a lot more stuff.
So from a neurological perspective
it's that degree of failure and neurological complexity.
So if you were to do like 20 reps on a leg extension
it might not be the CNS fatiguing
because your ability to compensate is very low.
But if we're looking at this as just big compound movements,
that's the issue.
And so the other thing is understanding how they're equating
and qualifying volume between,
it's like, "Okay three sets of 10 versus 10 sets of three
"or whatever it may be."
You have to kinda look at how they're equating that
to really get a good picture.
So what I would say is listen to what has been tried
and true forever, and that, going closer to failure,
compensating more, loading more joints.
Those are all the things that are gonna be
giving you more CNS fatigue, but don't look at as like,
well the research says that
like higher reps is more CNS fatiguing.
So I should be able to do singles forever
and never get CNS fatigue.
I don't think anybody that actually trains like that
will tell you that's how that works.
That you can just do an infinite number
of sets between three or less.
That's the quick way to go potato right there.
And then the last one here is just a caveat
on the anxiety marker.
And this is anecdote from observations over time.
I can give you guys some hypothetical mechanisms
but anxiety from metabolic work tends to have
a little bit more of an emotional component,
and I'll use the example of like crying
while watching commercials.
Like just like a random time, just like, "Ooh."
And you're like, "Where the hell did that come from?"
Like, okay, that tends to be more from like
when we're, over-training in a metabolic version.
Whereas from a neurological perspective, it tends to be more
of the restless racing mind, type of anxiety
a little less emotional.
Now you might have people that are like, they're agitated
and they're short tempered on the neurological side.
And then, we'll say more weepiness,
sadness type, anxiety on the metabolic side.
So that might just give you guys another caveat
in terms of how somebody is being stressed,
especially like keep that in mind when we talk about
hypertrophy programming
'Cause that might give you an idea
of which direction you need to shift.
Whether it's like we should focus,
maybe move the rep range down a little bit,
or increase the reps and make this a little bit more
higher intensity hypertrophy,
or maybe move it the other direction, cut down some of that.
And you know, up the reps a little bit
and may move a little bit more in the metabolic direction.
All right.
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