-: Okay. What should we expect in terms of progression
when we have multiple exercises for the same body part
and a workout?
What if the second exercise cannot progress?
Should we be conservative
on the first exercise progressions?
I guess this kind of -
indirectly, we discuss this with the super set.
-: So what do you think is more important?
Progressing in a single exercise
or progressing in the workout as a whole,
or does it matter as long as we're progressing?
Interviewer: (inaudible)
-: Yeah.
So power lifters typically have a primary lift
and then they have accessories,
is one way of looking at it, right.
And in a physique program,
you might prioritize a certain body part
or a certain exercise for that body part at the beginning,
and then other stuff is there.
So if there is an exercise that is like,
this is the main thing, right.
And you're progressing in that,
I wouldn't be as worried about the accessory stuff, right.
So especially if you're progressing
with what met with what variable,
what's gonna cause a little bit more fatigue,
it's gonna impact the rest of the session more.
Reps, right.
So if you're progressing in reps,
you're more likely to see that it's harder to progress
later exercises in the program, right.
Because one, you'll be probably increasing your volume
the fastest, right.
But two, you're increasing the fatigue early, right.
So it could be a sign that
if you're want to progress across the board,
that maybe you should be focusing more on load progressions,
you know, in the early part of the workout, right.
So that you're not creating as much fatigue, right.
So you're trying to keep that rep range constrained.
This is where, like, we've talked about this,
the just thinking like, well, okay.
Anything between six and 30 reps is fine.
But they're not the same, right?
Like a set of 20 does not come
with the same level of fatigue
as a set of 10 or a set of five.
And how many of you guys have ever done a program
where you have to do something high reps
early in the program
and then just the whole rest of the workout,
like feels, just feels like crap, right?
I mean, you never do high rep leg extensions
and then go do your heavy squats
or like, just, right.
So even though like, you know, some people will,
can look at it this like,
well, it shouldn't matter cuz you can atrophy anywhere.
That's not necessarily a good lens to look at it
when we're trying to see
how can we optimize stimulus and recovery,
you know, across our programming.
So one thing yeah.
Use more load progressions, right.
And that can help balance that out.
Okay.
The other thing is,
it can help, let you know kind of how you're,
how well you're utilizing your volume,
say both of those exercises are a priority, right?
Like you're trying to progress in both.
Maybe the solution is
that you have an imbalance number of sets.
Right.
So you're just spending a little too much time
in the first exercise, right.
And you should just let some of that
volume and effort go into the second exercise, right.
One thing that could maybe be a clue.
I don't know if you've noticed this.
So if, when you get to your second exercise,
the RPE seems to be high or the R&R seems to be low,
right at the beginning of that second exercise.
And it just kind of stays the same, the perform,
it doesn't really drop
or like the performance doesn't really drop.
It just, it starts shitty.
And then it just stays there the whole time.
That usually to me says that like, okay, you're just,
you're just now entering that at a state of low performance
that you could just maintain
across a bunch of junk volume, right.
So the issue is that
you need to come into that exercise fresher.
So you need to take some of the volume
from the first exercise to share with it,
or give to the later exercise.
-: Yeah.
I think another consideration is
from the lens of assessing the efficacy
of what you're doing.
Like progressing that first movement is like,
when you don't, you have the least noise, I guess,
in kind of the signal there
and being able to see progression in that first movement
is going to be more insightful
than progressions in later exercises.
And like to use kind of an alternative example,
doing mile reps or, you know,
some type of rest pause protocol
where really the only thing that when I'm doing these,
I don't really care if my clusters of reps,
I care about like my initial send,
like, is that moving up?
If I get a few less reps on my, the drops
or the rest pause sets, it's like,
if I'm matching effort on that first set
and that's trending up,
it could just be a matter of
resting an extra five seconds, you know?
Off-Screen: (inaudible) extended sets of failure.
If you're not progressing there,
it's not as important as long as that first -
-: Yeah.
Off-Screen: (inaudible)
-: Yeah.
So like the more fatigue you introduce into the equation,
the less reliable that information's gonna be
to inform you of what you're doing is working or not.
-: Yeah. The progressions, when you're fresh,
are the indicator of your adaptation
from the last session, right.
The stuff that's happening later in the workout
gives you also how much fatigue you're developing,
like up to that point, right.
Which may or may not be something
that you need to adjust or worry about.
Like at that point,
if like you're doing a rest-pause or a bio-rep,
like the goal is fatigue at that point, right.
So it's like, well, I got there a little sooner
because I progressed a little bit more,
but the thing you needed to do was get there.
Off-Screen: Right.
-: Right.
So at that point in time,
it might not be something that you
Off-Screen: Right
-: need to evaluate that.
Off-Screen: Evaluate it on your very first movement '
and progressing just that one still,
what you are supposed to do.
-: So.
Off-Screen: Yeah.
-: So.
-: So what if the second exercise cannot progress?
We kind of touched on that.
It's context dependent.
Like usually it's, I don't let it,
if I have like my first exercise, you know,
for a muscle group goes really well.
And my second one's underwhelming,
like I'm not, I don't look too much into that, personally.
-: What, in the context,
if you actually see regressions in the second exercise?
-: I think the,
yeah, that's a good question.
I think a lot of times when that does happen,
I'm overshooting the first exercise
and not being honest with my relative effort there.
-: Yeah.
-: Or like the whole idea of controlling your rest interval.
Like anytime you're looking at performance
is an informative proxy for how you know,
your training is going.
If you're not keeping your rest intervals consistent,
like that can wildly change the narrative
of how your training is going.
And so, and even like, I've noticed,
even an extra, like 15 seconds, you know,
for some movements, it's like, oh,
it's close enough to two minutes.
That can make a pretty profound impact, you know,
depending on the person.
Then you have someone, you know,
with really good work capacity,
that turns around a minute later
and can replicate the same thing.
-: Generally the smaller your rest interval,
the more a few seconds will make a difference, right.
So if you're resting a minute,
10 seconds makes a big difference.
Two minutes, you know,
maybe 10 to 15, 20 seconds makes a big difference.
If you're resting five minutes,
10 seconds probably isn't gonna be
-: True
-: Probably not gonna be the big factor there
at that point in time, right.
So just-
Off-Screen: What about going the other way,
if you increase it or decrease in five seconds.
And you're only at 30.
-: Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Well, and if you were at 15 you're at zero, so yes.
Yes. So the lower it is, the more,
a few seconds will make a difference, right.
So, and then, you know, when it comes to,
when it comes to that sort of like,
the repeated efforts,
that's again where the compound, the more joints,
all exercises that require more stability,
harder to breathe, all of those things.
Because if you come in
and your respiratory rate's just a little bit higher
or your breathing's a little you know,
that plays into the mechanics of things as well, right.
Like being a little bit like under-recovered.
And so like, if you're doing, you know,
60 second rest intervals
and you got one person that like,
they can break their heart rate and their breathing down,
like, you know, in between whatever,
they might be able to get by
without seeing disruption in the mechanics
and the perform performance of the set.
The exercise, it's just the accumulated,
like metabolic and neurological fatigue
that eventually hits the wall.
Whereas another person,
they might literally be to the point where it's like,
they're trying to chest press,
but they're like, you know, they're,
they're still disrupted that way, right.
So as you get really tight on those rest intervals,
more variables come into play
because then you have like the cardiovascular stuff,
not just being a limiter for like,
you know, just recovery of substrate,
but actually on, it becomes a mechanical factor as well.
-: Should we be conservative
on the first exercise progressions?
Guess we kinda,
-: If we're trying to yeah.
If we're trying. Yeah.
I mean, like you said, sometimes it's just,
are you not being honest with yourself
on the RAR of the, of the first exercise, right?
So, or is there an imbalance between the type of exercise
that's first and second, right.
And so one of them tends to be something that you underrate
and the other one tends to be something that you,
that you overrate,
cuz you could just be sandbagging it on the second exercise
because it just perceptively feels a little harder
'cause you're going into it
with a little bit more fatigue, right?
So that's where, you know,
this is one of the reasons
that I like a lot of protocols where, you know,
I started a little bit higher RER and work to, you know,
very close to zero.
Because then I just kind of have always that,
that one very honest set in there.
So it's just a ongoing calibration
throughout the mesocycle.
Off-Screen: Are you using that as like
your fresh set every time?
-: No, usually it's like,
that's my top set is always, right? So.
Off-Screen: But is that the first in your workout?
So that it's the most fresh part of training?
-: First exercise?
Off-Screen: Yeah.
-: No, I would, I do this pretty much,
for the most part I do this for all exercises,
unless it's an exercise that I'm only gonna dedicate
a small amount of volume to
then I'm just gonna just go after it
for whatever I want to like right away.
But if I'm gonna do like four to six sets of something,
I will tend to use and like a descending RER
right over the course of that,
rather than a linear RER more.
That's my preference.
It's by far not the only way to do it.
Other than it being something that I personally like
and something that I find really valuable
from an ongoing evaluation assessment tool,
I don't know that
it would get you any better results, right.
Versus doing something average the same RER across, so.
-: I'm kind of the opposite.
Like I tend to gravitate more towards maintaining something
that's a high enough RER that I know,
it's like the higher or the low enough RER.
The higher an RER is,
the less accurate we're gonna be engaging it.
So, you know, going back to what I mentioned
about like using that first set
as sort of your diagnostic tool.
I would rather have that first set be low enough RER
where I know it's like,
I can get an honest evaluation of performance on that day.
-: Yeah.
So we're like polar opposite in that
you take the most of your information from that first set.
And I tend to take the,
I tend to focus on the top set,
based like,
so I'm always making my decision off of my top set, right.
And it's, I think as long as you're being consistent,
then you, you have.
-: So you're ascending load then?
-: Yeah.
-: Okay. So yeah, in my case it would be, well,
there's a lot of ways to go about this.
Like that, that I agreed with.
Like, if you're, it's like,
if you're a power lifter working up to a top set,
it's like, you're, you know,
your warmups aren't gonna count for anything.
Like the, the load is gonna increase
and they're not gonna be fatiguing.
Like those early sets that are lighter and lower RER.
But like, if you're keeping load the same, like.
-: Yeah. Cause then you'd have to do like ascending reps.
-: Yeah.
-: And yeah, they -
-: Don't do that.
-: Yeah. Ascending.
Off-Screen: So, are you mixing
ascend load signals with other ones?
Most of the time then by doing that?
-: Well ascending load is just a, it's just a, it's just,
it's not a stimulus in itself.
Right.
It's just, it's just a loading practical, right?
Like, I mean, so cuz
how fast and how big of jumps you make
are what's gonna lead to like, you know,
and the total rep range or whatever
is gonna impact the, the stimulus and whatnot, right.
You know, so I mean,
so generally like
an RP six or RER of like five or whatever is like,
that's gonna be the start,
but depending on how many sets I'm gonna do or whatever,
I may climb, like by one per set right.
Or I might jump two
or I might climb by like halves et cetera, right.
Depending on like, cause I'm gonna,
I'm gonna do eight sets, right.
If that first set's gonna be at all productive,
well, I can't increase by or decrease by one RER
every time if I only have five, you know,
to work with or whatnot, right.
So my jumps will have to be smaller.
But if I, if I'm only doing four sets, you know,
there might be 4, 3, 2, 1, you know, or 3, 2, 1, 0.
Right.
So, and then, you know,
depending on your rest intervals and stuff like that,
you know, if you're jumping fast, right.
But you might like the fatigue might make the,
the one and the zero the same, the same load.
So it might be an ascending crown.
Off-Screen: Sure.
-: If that makes sense, right.
Like basically it's like your last two sets
are the same load, but you, you know,
but the RER drops, right.
Off-Screen: You effectively got as much RER
as you possibly could
-: Yeah.
Interviewer: So can we talk about that a little bit more?
Just like the differences
with keeping load the same versus that.
Cause I usually do that.
That's, I'm more on the second load,
which is naturally,
I found that maybe when I was first lifting,
keeping the load the same is fine,
but now I'm lifting heavier.
I figured I'd do that.
But do you know,
a lot of people, advanced people, try to keep it the same.
-: I have found that,
especially on the stuff that I've gotten stronger with,
I much prefer the ascending load.
I feel like it saves time
and psychologically, I just like having the,
I like having that top set where you know,
and it kind of gives me that buffer
where if it's like this, you know,
if it's just that one set, you know,
this is my place where if the last one was a little,
my RER wasn't low enough or whatever,
I can hit here.
Or if I go over a little bit,
it's just the last set.
And because my other sets were essentially on average lower,
it's not like,
it's not like I'm a little too high across the board.
It's like, you know, only one set.
And I look at like,
when I'm using an ascending load protocol,
I look at what I get on that top set
is also a performance assessment
of like the totality of that exercise, right.
And so I kind of like having it,
I evaluate it by how I finish at the end,
taking into account
the volume and fatigue that improved there.
So I feel like it gives me a better representation
of the stimulus across all of the sets
versus just look, just one set.
So, but like I said, I don't have any,
I don't have as any strong evidence
to say that you'll hypertrophy more.
-: There's,
-: Yeah.
-: There's not any,
that hasn't really been looked at in the research.
There was a, I'll find the author's name and link it,
but there was an exploratory analysis.
I forget the author,
but they took two studies
and they had one group in one of the studies,
they were just progressing reps.
Like they kept the load the same
and just continued to progress reps.
And they had another group
that stayed within like a rep loading zone.
So like eight to 12 RM.
As soon as they, you know, eclipse 12,
they would increase load.
And so they,
theirs was more load driven than rep driven.
And what they found,
the study that did the load progression
versus just the rep progression,
even though they were matched in terms of effort,
the groups in that study
made significantly better relative progress
than groups that just progressed reps.
So that seems sort of conflicting
with some of the other research that there is.
And there's,
first all it wasn't a study in and of itself.
Like it was comparing progress from two different studies,
you know, two groups against each other.
But if I had to lean one way or another,
increasing load at some point,
even like you said earlier,
that's gonna keep things equal for, you know,
eventually if you just progress reps, you're,
it's gonna become more of like an aerobic movement.
Like eventually you wanna stay within,
What's that?
Interviewer: (inaudible)
-: Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, one point I think in this,
this is less from like the, you know,
optimal sense in terms of muscle growth.
But one of the reasons I like kind of keeping things static
is just the logistical aspects of it.
Not having to change weights very much.
It's like you work up to your set,
you can just keep things the same.
Like you're not constantly having to adjust.
So I think there's practical benefits to it,
which I don't think,
depending on the individual,
may carry more weight than others,
but, and then, you know,
it's just having a relative effort
that you can confidently gauge
rather than like, you know,
four to five to four to three to two to one.
You know, it's like, it's just,
I think they both probably work equally well,
because even in the example of keeping RER static,
you're still gonna be progressing load.
In fact, that that would be an example of
what they were doing in that study.
Like you have a rep range,
it's double progression,
you increase load once you get to the top end of that range.
So I get, yeah, it comes down to preference,
I think, more than anything.
-: Yeah.
I think you're asking more about
like ascending load set to set
versus just using load versus versus reps.
Interviewer: Yeah.
-: Yeah.
-: What do you think about, for more advanced people,
where the progressions become harder and harder to come by?
Cuz I mean, at this stage, in my career, you know,
there's not a lot of things that move really fast
unless I haven't done them for a while
and I enter them in like a more de-conditioned point, right.
But like for example, you know,
today I'm doing the dumbbell presses and like,
if I tried to progress statically, you know,
even it's like the increments that I have,
it ends up being very stagnant.
But when I do the ascending load,
what I could do, like,
what I typically do is,
I just work on like progressing the top set for a while
until it gets a point,
and then I will bring up the underlying sets.
-: Yeah.
-: Right, so it's like,
I basically am doing the same sets and reps
on the first couple sets.
And then it's the last set that, okay,
last week I got this many reps or I, whatever,
maybe I move it like a couple pounds or whatever.
But instead of trying to progress all of the sets,
I find it very easy to micro-progress.
Just like, just the last like set or two
rather than the other stuff.
-: Yeah.
-: Because I mean,
we're in rare positions where we've been training
for a really, really long time, right.
So, you know, making five pound progressions
in dumbbell press every week is not gonna be logistical
unless we stop dumbbell pressing for-
-: That's the key, you know, be trained.
-: Just be trained!
(laughter)
-: That's the best way to make the best progress.
-: Yeah.
So because it's like, you know,
the beginning stuff isn't difficult.
But if I do it,
if I do a little bit more volume
or a little bit more effort, it will very well.
Like it seems like it's harder to progress in the back end
versus if I have that opportunity where it's like, look,
I only did one more rep today than I did last week,
but it was with a,
but it was a rep with the heaviest weight
and the hardest set.
So I look at that as like, cool,
that's a progression
that I may not have been able to eek out
if I was trying to get a percent across.
-: Right.
-: All of the stuff
-: That makes sense.
Right. Makes sense.
-: So yes.
Interviewer: Like, as you could
even decide the neurologic,
you want to keep more strength progressing
that heavier load, probably better results that way.
Whereas if like fat loss was the goal,
progressing those first sets
may be a better option for doing that.
-: Potentially. I mean, it just, I mean,
remember that when it comes to fat loss that it's like,
it's like,
lifting the amount of load that you're lifting and stuff
is more about retaining muscle mass, right.
And so basically you just need to do
a certain amount of work above a threshold
to maintain that muscle mass.
So really it would be about which one of those
are you able to get that stimulus more efficiently.
Interviewer: Sure.
-: Right, is kind of the way I would look at it.
And so if you have to do,
this is where actually looking at like the,
like how much volume load it would take across.
So, so if to get like the same relative stimulus,
like linearly,
I had to do more than if I had some stuff low.
And then I just had like a couple really good, you know,
high tension sets or whatever.
I would look at, for the number of sets that I was gonna do,
and whatever,
which one of those might be more efficient
in that manner, right.
Because if it's, if I'm designing a program that's like,
that's just pure for fat loss
and then it's not gonna, you know,
I'm not really focusing on mechanical tension per se, right.
Then I would probably just,
my volume would be so much lower than like,
I don't think an ascending rep protocol
is not something you would do
if you're only doing three sets of an exercise, right.
That's just like that, you know,
I mean maybe, but not like,
that's kind of where I draw the line.
If it's three sets or less,
I pretty much just do the same reps and, you know,
load across all three, all three sets.
But four plus then I may introduce
an ascending rep protocol, right.
But you're kind of looking at it efficiency.
And then also a lot of times in body composition training,
you're working a little bit more dense.
So that could play into a factor too.
Cause I find that like, if I do a sending load,
I can get the same volume done in less time
because I can get by without resting as much
on the earlier sets.
And then, and then like,
so I will rest less than five minutes for sure
on my early sets
and then give myself full recovery.
Like as I start working up into the lower RERs
I find I can just save some minutes
off of the training session that way, right.
So.
Interviewer: It's 4:30.
-: 4:30?
No, that's good.
Are we done with this one?
-: Yeah.
-: Any questions on the question?
Any other questions on the day?
Interviewer: No.
-: All right.
So tomorrow morning, training legs, hard.
Interviewer: What's in your to-do list?
-: Right? Yeah.
So hydrate, eat,
all that recovery stuff
that you guys were just asking about.
Tomorrow is RER duty at 12.
Interviewer: Okay.
Did you say they...
-: Yes, cause we are going beyond failure.
(general chatter, inaudible)