-: The Assessment and Adjustment Course.
Fortunately we've already gone through
a lot of the things we're gonna discuss in this presentation
when we covered the local metabolic systemic
and neurological modules
as far as the different biomarkers we're looking at.
A lot of the nutrition stuff is gonna be very similar.
So we're gonna focus specifically on just the tweaks
as it relates more to tension based hypertrophy training.
So this is going to be,
because there are so many potential stimuli specific things
we could talk about,
we're gonna be focusing on the overarching principles
that will apply to all of them,
rather than getting into the nitty gritty fine details
of how we might adjust a sarcoplasmic program
versus a volume-based program
versus a intensity based mechanical damage program
versus a metabolic based intensity
mechanical damage program.
All these things will still apply.
So it's important that you focus on the principles
that we're talking about here
and it'll make your lives a lot easier.
So you've seen a lot of this intro stuff force,
so we're just gonna do a quick recap on some of the things
Coach Kassem talked about in the previous lecture.
When we're looking for incorrect stimulus,
if it is written incorrectly
for a hypertrophy based program.
We're gonna be getting a lot of the adaptations
that we would expect to see
on the opposite ends of the extreme.
So more neurological things or metabolic adaptations
but maybe not the tolerance to volume that we're looking for
or the weight gain or the actual hypertrophy
that we're looking for in the particular program.
And of course, excessive or prolonged soreness
that's going to be more related to either mechanical damage
or nervous system stress.
Even if we're programming for mechanical damage
where we would expect some soreness
it should not be to the point where it's like,
oh I can't walk for seven days you overdid it.
So that still applies here.
If we're trying to figure out
if maybe this volume of tension or tension based stuff
is not trainable for them at this time
we're pretty much gonna see an immediate degradation
of all of those biomarkers.
So that might be a person where maybe they just need
to work a little bit on, you know, just getting a little bit
of nutrient partitioning work.
So maybe we put them in a local AMPK,
a low metabolic stress program
just to get some nutrient partitioning,
not causing a lot of nervous system stress,
avoiding mechanical trauma
or maybe someone who can't handle
any like significant degree of metabolic work,
maybe we actually put them in a neurological program.
So basically we're just gonna hop to one end or the other
of kind of the stimulus spectrum, if you will.
So what happens if we overshoot things?
So in this case, rather than the volume
and magnitude metrics that we used before
because the magnitude is gonna be more specific
to the individual stimuli, we're gonna focus more
on too much volume as in just total sets
or too many sets to failure specifically.
So Adam, do you wanna kick us off here
with our first hypertrophy example?
-: Sure thing, okay guys so here we're in hypertrophy.
Guess what the overall goal is? Hypertrophy.
We're trying to make the gains, right?
We're trying to gain some muscle here.
Okay, so somethings that we're gonna take off
our ticker here in our markers, training,
loss of late workout performance here.
And Cody were in agreement too
so like kind of overshooting volume here
the way I kinda think about it
and I think Kassem covered it actually
in his theory lecture too.
It's like the volume, you kind of see the things
kind of going more metabolically wrong, right?
Is that a good way to think about,
kind of the way I kind of little bit?
May not be the best but like you're seeing the loss
of late workout performance,
loss of volume tolerance, right?
Like, hey dude, like we started out doing eight sets
why can we not do eight sets anymore, right?
You're gonna see that kind of drop off there.
They can't tolerate the same amount of volume.
Okay, biomarkers.
They're feeling like they're always tired, right?
Unmotivated to train, pour energy, and mood swings.
So you start to see that.
And you can see like with volume too it kind of like
affects throughout the day a little bit, right Cody?
Like you can kind of see it later in like, even in between.
It's not just actually, post-workout sometimes right.
You're going like, hey the rest of the day or the whole day,
I just kind of feel blah, all right?
They don't feel good.
Definitely unmotivated to train, you can see that too.
Actually I'm prone to that Cody too.
If I hit my progressions to aggressively
late in the hypertrophy phase and I like overdo it
I miss the minimal progressive dose, right?
I over progress, something.
You get that like all of a sudden you feel,
oh man it's like really hard to train the rest of this week.
Oh oh, you did something wrong there.
Yep, did something wrong there.
Okay, so you can see that things are going down, yeah,
adjusting volume here.
Okay, so here in our hypertrophy workout
we're gonna start like muscle one here.
we're gonna go lengthened and the shorts
so we have lengthend short super set here.
And we're gonna be hanging to get the same muscle group
in like the mid position here.
Kind of like an output type exercise, right Cody?
You think? -: Yeah.
-: Or something like that.
Okay, good.
And if guys, look here when it comes to tension
and Cody and I talked about this a lot yesterday
specifically that you guys need to be on top of your RPEs
and like your perceived effort, right?
Cause like this is a big thing for tension guys.
Like people do not, people are doing neurological programs
like neurological type stuff
for their attention based programs, right?
Like we're working up to just one, all out big set
and then you're like, you look at the work before that
you're going, that wasn't a lot of work.
Like I know that's a big weight
but that's not a lot of work.
So you guys gotta really make sure when our workouts here
that you're looking at our RPEs and you know what
like a seven, an eight, a nine RPE is
because we play around with those a lot
in our tension based programs here.
-: Yeah and so with these examples to you guys
we're just trying to give
like the most basic middle ground example.
We are not saying that this is the optimal way
to always program volume-based hypertrophy
with short lengthened super sets.
These are just for the sake of example.
Like I mentioned earlier, it's like we could write like 30
different hypertrophy type programs to walk through here.
So principle-based. -: Yes.
-: All right, so lengthened, short and mid.
So our first adjustment here
if we're thinking just too many sets total
but for, I wanted to touch on the RPE thing actually--
-: Yeah please.
-: You hit failure too early, the total amount of work
you can do in the workout drops drastically.
On the other end of the spectrum If you do too many
like easy sets and then one hard set, you're basically
just working to make yourself tired with maybe
not getting actually significant tension stimulus.
So this is where we have to work on
managing that progression.
You're trying to get up to, as almost as high intensity
as you can maintain to create the maximum amount
of volume that you can tolerate
for that stimulus in most cases.
So it is a little bit of a balancing act, so--
-: Right it is-- -: Definitely something
you wanna manage with yourself and your clients.
-: It is because you also hear, oh for hypertrophy
you gotta hit failure, you gotta hit failure.
And we're like, yeah, we agree with you
but how are you doing that? You know?
And Cody and I, we talked about this yesterday too.
For example in competitive lifting.
When I know somebody's one rep max, right?
And I can do some percentage based work
to give them an idea of where to select their loads.
It's not like, oh, we went with sets of 6
or 50, 60, 70, 80%, you know, and ended at 80.
I'd be going like, hey dude
if you're best set of six or whatever is 80%
I'm probably gonna say for hypertrophy, maybe
we're gonna do like 70% for all of those sets almost.
Or like start there and getting work that average up, right?
There's more work there.
Like if you start at 50% and they worked up to 80%,
you're like what did 50% like do?
There's not a lot of tension there, right, you know?
It's gonna take a massive amount of reps to get anything
done with that as far as tension is concerned, right?
So I think when we talk about failure
and that's a confusion a lot
and that, this isn't a presentation about that
but guys RPE is so crucial when it comes to tension.
That's an important thing.
-: So our first option for reducing volume, very simple
we can reduce one of the lower sets.
So we're not doing as much total work.
Now, that's probably not going to be my first one depending
on what, again, what the actual
architecture of the workout looks like, it might be.
But in something like this type of setup
what I might actually opt for
is just cutting out that second that,
actually that third exercise, that mid exercise.
So we can really continue to focus on the work
and the quality and the output and the failure
on those first two exercises, which are still going to train
because you're biasing,
you're getting a lot of work in the mid range.
We're just not adding a ton of additional volume
specifically in the mid range in that second exercise,
especially if that's what we think is contributing
to just too much total volume of work.
I'm gonna spend time probably on this stuff.
-: I really like this adjustment Cody.
I hope people are catching what you're doing here
and get what you're doing by spending more time.
You're already here in A one and A two and why not like?
As far as building tension, like I told you yesterday,
you're gonna get so much more of that out of that fourth set
than just like adding those other, you know,
that other movement there, right?
I hope people are seeing that.
That is a really good adjustment (mumbles)
-: All right, so now our failure example.
So still a hypertrophy person cause usually if we're way
over shooting volume or failure, it's probably
because we're trying to push someone in a hypertrophy phase.
We're typically gonna try and be more conservative
if it's a fat loss goal.
So these are just the more likely scenarios
you're gonna see is gonna be for hypertrophy person.
So we're not seeing any major increases in performance.
Maybe for their top set, loads are decreasing slightly
to be able to hit the same reps or same RPE.
and some non-specific soreness,
maybe loss of motion, range of motion.
So that's typically gonna mean we're starting to get
some compensatory things going in there
which typically means, again, we're hitting too much failure
because you know, stabilizers
neurological coordination stuff is starting to break down
so tension is starting to shift elsewhere.
And then usually biomarkers trouble falling asleep
cause if we start pushing failure too much
it'll start almost mimicking like that
pushing that neurological stimulus too far.
So they're nerves are just gonna be a little over agitated,
which can help or which can prevent them
from falling asleep as easily.
But you're probably not gonna see
many other changes in like digestion and stuff
if we're just exceeding in failure and not volume.
So same set up here.
As far as the workout goes, just to give you the example
and then our adjustment from here
it might just be playing with the RPEs.
So again, managing those RPEs is very important
cause it can be one of the easiest things
for you to manipulate.
And obviously in this case
it's just gonna be a slight reduction in load.
Or maybe if you're in that eight to 10 range
and they're hitting failure on 10, maybe you tell them
to stop at rep eight or nine on that last set.
So like a one RIR
can be sometimes depending on the rep range, you're using
and easy thing for clients to self-regulate
rather than you just telling them
oh, I need you to decrease your RPE by one
and they're like, I don't know quite what that means.
But you tell them, all right stop one or two reps short,
they can probably nail that.
So that's a very simple adjustment here.
And the reason we chose to do that
to the lengthened and the mid ones
is one, the mid one is going to
we're typically choosing a very stable exercise
that you can really push yourself really hard.
So that's a little easier to push deep into failure
depending on the exercise you're choosing.
And then the lengthened one that's usually where
you're gonna start to see kind of that compensatory stuff.
Especially if you're lengthened overloaded lengthened
in some kind of compound movement
like a press or a squat or something like that.
That's where you're most likely to see those compensations
as they get too much failure
and more being neurologically fatiguing.
Whereas if we're choosing something in the short position,
generally, we're not too worried about them, you know,
going outside their active range or something
when it's overloaded in the short position
cause once you can't get any shorter
you just can't get any shorter.
It's not gonna push you more short, if that makes sense.
So the other example we have here is this would just be
if we had two muscle groups on the same day.
And of course, you know, this is just example
for one muscle group,
obviously we're not training one muscle group per day.
This could be a third body or a quarter body split
but we're just focusing on one at a time rather than
taking up the whole page, repeating the same thing.
And typically too, if we were making these adjustments
we're gonna bias them
towards the larger muscle groups first.
Cause if you're overshooting on failure or volume
it's probably not your medial though and calf work
that's pushing you over the edge.
So typically we're gonna focused that on, you know,
quads, chest, back, hamstrings, glutes.
Stuff like that that's gonna have
more of an impact on you systemically.
So this example, again, just playing with RPEs and tempos.
So you notice Adam had in here, he started out, he was using
tempos to bias the positions that he was training
and then shifting that back down to a three zero one zero.
So we're not spending as much time
in those overloaded positions but this also
might allow them to maybe use a little bit more load
but we're still restricting failure.
So it's kind of, it's a little bit of a trade off.
Maybe there'll be a little happier cause like,
oh, I can use more load
but you're saying, okay but I still want you to actually
not quite go all the way to failure on those last sets.
So this is just an example of
if you wanna adjust multiple things at once.
Not acquired but-- -: Yeah and--
and that's, I wanted point (indistinct)
because either (indistinct) those would progress
those restrictions that could be could suffice
like either one of them might be enough, right?
To kind of not put him over the edge a little bit too.
So there are two adjustments there.
So, you know, just to give people an example
if you can do that actually.
It might just not be both.
-: All right, Adam, you wanna hit this one?
-: Yeah.
Okay, so now we have a fat loss goal and you guys
why are we in hypertrophy?
We're deloading from this metabolic like stimulus here.
We'd probably be trying to achieve some fat loss
maybe coming from something systemic.
Now we're in hypertrophy here, okay?
So we're, deloading all that metabolic stuff, okay?
So now appetite is starting to be low after training.
It's like hypertrophy Cody.
(indistinct) That you're not hungry after training.
You're, no it's hypertrophy.
To me hypertrophy equals hungry
and I don't mind that at all.
Okay, excessive nonspecific muscle soreness.
Once again guys that's a big thing too
when you guys are pushing failure, intensity
or things like that too (mumbles)
And we need to, we get to do
a whole nother thing just on that alone.
Another, a whole nother talk on that.
But it's, non-specific soreness, this lets you know that you
when you were pushing those intensities and that failure,
they're keeping the fatigue.
There's some compensation happening.
Tension is not going where you want it to go, okay?
Loss of early workout performance
and we're not seeing any kind of improvement
in weight, reps lifted, et cetera.
We're not hitting progressions.
We're not seeing improvement, even an improvement
in like a hypertrophy rep range strength.
If we're doing sixes or eights
or eights and tens, whatever it is,
we're not seeing any improvement in strength
something's going on.
-: And if you guys remember back to the neurological module
what happens when we start overdoing it
on neurological stimulus is we start losing
early workout performance.
Which is why we say overdoing it on failure
starts to look similar to overdoing neurological work.
They're losing that performance early in the workout.
Their nervous system is a little overtaxed.
-: Okay, here.
So we have volume program here.
We have muscle one and muscle two.
So we're going to be hitting those muscles
in the lengthened position there.
Notice we're doing some descending rep periods six sets,
10, 10, eight, eight, six, six, to follow those RPEs.
Look at those RPE guys, okay?
And then we're gonna be taking those muscle groups
to the B exercises.
We're gonna hit something in the mid or too short position
in the next super set for these two muscle groups.
So A one is a different muscle group than A two.
Just wanna make sure people catch that
and writings are small there.
So we're doing some descending rep method
into some like straight sets here.
And once again with our progressions,
look at those RPEs there.
We took those two muscle groups that were overloaded
most likely in the lengthened position.
So think something like heel elevated barbell squat,
RDL, dumbbell pressing type stuff, okay?
So that's what we're doing here.
We're taking those RPEs down keeping the reps the same,
nothing else is changing but let's just not hit failure
there on that descending rep.
And we kept failure once again, in those like that mid
to short position exercises in the following exercise.
And Cody, that's just my meat headedness.
You gotta have failure somewhere.
(Cody laughing) I just,
through high pressure from like, we gotta,
let's fail somewhere a little bit somewhere, you know?
So maybe not killing Betty on the leg like half squat
and burying the bottom of the half squat
you say, you know what Betty?
Let's have a rep in the tank at the end of our half squats
which by the way one rep in reserve on a hard half squat set
done wrong, it's still feels like death
but like that's a hard set.
I don't think people understand that like it's all hard set.
And then go into late since you're not gonna be like,
okay now we're good there
we have a little rep in reserve
lets go kill it in the late extension here
we can push failure there and I feel really good about it.
And then again, once again it's trial and error to
sometimes Cody, right?
You make one progression.
She's still really, really sore.
Like, okay, well maybe next time late extension too,
we'll take that.
But I always, I just,
I have to have failure in there somewhere.
There's one in when I answer to that to.
I mean, we need have (indistinct)
We gotta have a little failure somewhere (chuckles).
-: Yeah.
I mean, and on the surface
this may look like a very minor adjustment
but don't underestimate how taxing
one final last rep to true failure really can be.
Stopping one rep short can make a big difference
especially the more muscle mass
and the stronger the person is that you're training.
It has drastically more significant impact.
-: Mh, big time.
-: All right, recovery things, calories, nutrition.
So not enough calories for hypertrophy person
everything looks good, weights not moving up,
and no improvements in performance.
Probably need more food.
We would like to see that weight
at least creeping up a little bit
and performance and their tolerance to volume improving.
So I think Kassem actually mentioned in the theory lecture
that one of the limitations to performance recovery
or performance in this type of a program
is actually not having enough nutrition.
So you have to make sure you have that stuff covered.
And then not enough calories for a fat loss person.
So their weight dropped initially and is now maintaining
but so you might think, oh well they're weight drops
so they definitely don't have enough calories.
Hold your horses because if we're deloading
from a metabolic program there's a chance that if they
were pushed a little far in that metabolic program
they might have been holding some extra water
had some inflammation.
So that one bullet point alone would not signal to me
that they weren't having enough calories
because I would actually expect the weight drop Initially
if we were dropping some inflammation
and some bloat and things like that.
But what I would be looking at are these next ones.
So circumferences are about the same, fine
but they're starting to look less defined.
So this is where maybe they're not looking as toned as much,
I hate that word,
or they're looking, you know, fluffy or washed out
or, you know, whatever term you wanna use.
They're not looking as good but they're not getting fatter.
If that makes sense.
-: Yeah, actually Cody, I, whether, what the other guys
use this term or not,
I just steal a term from bodybuilding here.
Sometimes like you're looking stream,
like yes you're kind of leaning out
but nothing's really full and defined.
Like we're flat and like that's not the look that like,
this is hypertrophy we should have lots of good food
whether we're in maintenance or surplus
we have plenty of carbs.
We're getting good contractions.
So I'm like there's even nutrient partitioning
going in there like with the training
and we have plenty of food.
The look should still be like full
not full like busting at the seams
but metabolic, right?
But that look, I tell you what guys
if anybody has done anything that pandemic
the look that a lot of people have from home training,
like bands and stuff and then they went back to the gym
and started picking up weights and their first check
and they're like, boom, like hey.
Like yeah, there's something to picking up loads
appropriate loads for what we're trying to do
instead of bands and sandbags and crap (chuckles).
That's the best way I can define that look (chuckles).
-: Yeah, and if you have someone who's more overweight
where it's harder to actually see muscle definition
on them at all.
One thing you can sometimes look at is the face.
So you may sometimes -: Yes.
-: see their face actually
starts to look a little puffier
if you can't tell on the rest of their body
but that's also where we want those circumference
measurements can be helpful for you.
Now obviously-- -: And Cody, sorry, go ahead.
Sorry, go ahead.
-: I would say, and obviously we're making sure
that this volume isn't at the upper end
of what you would normally be writing for this person.
And then the final thing that would kind of, you know
complete this, not enough calories assessment
is they start having some sleep disruption issues
even though the volume is not crazy.
-: And Cody, that's the thing too
for a lot of people in our industry
and a lot of guys out there watching this.
That you work with clients from face to face
and you have a lot of Bettys and Bobs out there
that don't know what N one is
and they have a lot of body fat on them.
In hypertrophy phase, these guys they should feel good.
They should feel good.
They should have good amount of food, you know?
And they should, you shouldn't see sleep issues occurring
and that's a big, big thing.
Maybe, you know, sometimes it's hard to get
the circumference measurements but that's a little bit
about those types of clients,
talking to them about their life a little bit.
When people have food
and they're hitting their training well, life is good.
Like it is good, it is good.
You don't have sleep issues when you are in a, yeah,
like a good amount of food in your system,
you don't, you know.
Like what I say one time is what I say
nobody out on Thanksgiving dinner, eats a big dinner
and then like, like they're all pretty healed.
They go and watch a horrible football game
with the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions
and pass out asleep.
Like nobody eats that much food,
like on the surplus, you feel like (groans) you know
like they have that meal and they're, I'm tired, right.
Sleep is good in a surplus, it should be at least.
-: All right, and so if we're looking at
just redistributing the macros
we're just gonna tell you we've covered that
on the previous three ones.
Pretty much all the different guidelines
you're going to wanna look at.
Most often, if something's lacking
usually people just tend to undercut on carbs,
very very rarely protein.
But if you're staying in the safe range for fats
you're probably not gonna have to worry about that.
So there is also an article on the training site going
through all of this, but here are the general, you know
minimum safe ranges and that is a lean body mass.
So you are gonna have to estimate their lean tissue
for males and females.
All right, stimulus and homeostatic drive.
Same story different verse.
Volume.
So hypertrophy person, everything looks fine
but nothing's improving.
Then we need more volume, most likely.
So this would be if we have obviously
two straight set examples, fairly straightforward here.
So doing some heavier stuff in the mid lengthened position,
a little bit more sets
and then finishing off with some mid short work
just to make sure we're training the whole range
and getting as much tension as possible.
Very simple increase, add a working set to each.
So notice, I didn't just add a set to failure.
We added a working set.
So we added an extra set
at about an eight RPE on the first one
and we actually added another set
though failure on the second one.
So the reason being obviously the more volume
and failure we do towards the mid lengthened position
the more likelihood we have of creating
more mechanical trauma than we necessarily want
depending on the frequency we're going for.
So if I'm gonna add a set to failure
most likely I will try and possibly add that
to a mid short type exercise
where we're not any lengthened muscle position.
Also that tends to be an exercise that is going to be
more stable when I'm moving onto the Bs anyway.
So there's less likelihood of them trying to compensate
or cheat or fling or anything like that.
So that is one option.
The other option we have if we were doing
like the short lengthened super set example,
rather than just adding a set those
because we're kind of already at the top of the range
that we would use for a short lengthened super set,
like five sets is probably the cap.
Trying to add another set you're just going to end up
having probably some junk volume maybe down here
or maybe your performance starts to drop off.
We've kind of want to get up and peak on that
and then be done with it.
So we would add a actual second exercise,
something, you know, probably mid range
to just train that rest of,
the remainder of the range of motion
that wasn't getting, you know, super hammered.
These two something stable that they can work in
and then we just give them.
You only get two sets but they're both to failure.
Very simple.
That is of course going to be volume and failure obviously
but they kind of go hand in hand
when we're trying to push the upper limits of things.
All right, Mr. Miller, failure.
-: Okay, so fat loss client here.
Once again deloading that metabolic stuff, guys.
Okay, we're having no change in biomarkers.
No increase in workout performance.
Post-workout exertion is low, they don't feel tired, right?
Once again, guys monitor the workouts,
know your RPEs, know what's difficult.
All right, so here we are
with the A one here mid to lengthened here and with,
let me think about this one too here,
sorry Cody my screen froze up,
sorry guys. -: That's fine.
There we go.
My internet, now then.
All right, so with this here
we're doing same muscle group here A one,
and we've got five sets, six to eight
and then B one we're in
that mid to short position there again an eight, a 10 there.
Rest periods, good.
And once again, pay attention to the RPEs here.
And we'll adjust the, there it is, bring it up.
So we now we're adding some sets to failure there
with that moles, right Cody?
(mumbles) One time.
Yeah, with grid, nines and tens,
we added the failure set there, is that, yeah.
We add on a second exercise there,
we add the second failure set there.
So you can see there guys,
they're reasonably decent rep and hitting failure.
If you look at the RPEs in B one
are hitting that failure twice in that exercise.
Once again to, and Cody already hit on it,
we're kind of choosing that, a position to
where we can go and get some work done.
So that's probably stable exercise there.
And guys, when I actually teach this
and somebody asks about this,
I actually usually use quads
cause it's easiest to think about.
I think of like that is my leg press thing, right there
maybe quads or something like that.
If there's gonna add in, well not mid to short
I'm sorry to go by extension there too.
So you gotta think about like the stability
that you have there
and the ability to take that thing to failure
and really actually take two sets to failure.
That's a really applicable place to do it right there.
-: All right and this'll be a very quick one for,
if you have too much nutrition
you're getting too much fat too quickly.
-: Yeah. -: Less calories, very easy.
-: Yes. -: Macros,
we've covered all those before.
If you've got too many carbs
you'll probably see some energy fluctuations after meals.
Maybe you start to see some disruption in sleep,
even though their recovery and everything is great.
Too much fat, you might see greasy or loose stools.
all that kind of stuff.
So, again you can just go back
and review the other lectures for those.
And after all of that, hopefully we are somewhere
in the green zone for a correct program.
And you get your nice crisp high five.