-: All right.
So, some pros and cons to other,
instead of, like, the staying in the middle.
Right? So linear progressing reps.
So basically just trying to increase reps each cycle,
right?
Over the course of time, this leads to
greater time under tension over the mesocycle.
It's the greatest change in relative physiological demand,
right?
Because we're essentially going into higher time
under tension, more metabolic demand, and greater degrees
of fatigue over the course of the mesocycle, right?
Which is one of the reasons that we,
I typically would say, no, we're gonna cut that off,
and then come back down and stay within a range.
But if you were to try and just titrate up reps
that would be the consequence, right?
It's the lowest average load
over a mesocycle because you're not adding load.
Okay?
But it can also be the easiest to implement. Right?
So the study that Brian referenced, I'm sure
that the people that just added reps every frickin'
week that was really fuckin' easy to do. Right?
"What did you do last week? Seven?
Okay, this week do more than seven."
All right.
You know, you don't have to pick weights or whatever.
It's just more than seven, right?
That's a pretty simple way to progress.
Right? If only everything in life could be that easy.
Right?
So when people are doing that, so when it comes
to driving reps, I don't think physiologically
that this is a very good tool,
but when you're working with beginners and where things
don't matter, whatever, one reason that may say,
"Hey, let's open up the rep range
and allow you to drive reps more"
is because there are some benefits.
It's the easiest to implement,
but also it's very high confidence,
like chances are if you did this many reps this week,
next week you're gonna be able to do at least
that many or more.
But if you go up in load and it was too much
there's a chance that you might do less.
And nobody likes to do less.
Even though they did more weight,
because you have to do mental math to say like,
"Okay, well I went up in weight, but I lost a rep."
So was it really more?
But if more is always just more,
but if you have to, if you have to justify that it was more,
was it really more?
Like, I don't know. Right?
So to a client, like, this can be, you know,
you can have high confidence, it can be easy to apply,
it tends to be very motivating
because essentially people are just, you know,
they're trying to beat that number.
Right?
I think there's a different psychological thing
to saying, "Hey I'm trying to get this specific rep range"
versus like, when you add a little bit more load,
and then trying to see like,
"Well, okay when am I gonna stop at my -" or you know.
I think while the latter is more physiologically beneficial,
I think it's just easier for people to get amped up
to just, like, hit a specific rep goal. Right?
You're just like, "Oh, we're gonna do 10!"
And they're like, "Yeah, 10!" And whatever.
And then you're a trainer,
so at nine you lose count, and they do 12.
Right? That's how that works.
Okay. So it's so easy that we can even cheat, right?
Half the time.
Okay. It's very easy to autoregulate in a session as well.
Right? Like, 'cause you can always, like I said,
you can't change the weight on the bar mid set,
but you can always stop a set early
or extend a set when you're looking at reps.
Okay?
But probably the least applicable to intermediate
and advanced people.
Right?
So once you get to people where your programming
really starts to make a difference,
and it's not just like they're a beginner
so everything works.
Then, yeah.
All of those fun times of just, like,
being able to just like, hey, throw reps at people,
and this is easy and this is fun.
Yep. That's done. No more fun.
Okay. Now you must work.
Okay. Now you must earn.
Right?
Okay, so what if we just, like our main goal is like,
we're just gonna focus on progressing load
as much as possible, right?
So it's the least amount of change in time under tension,
and it's the most consistent physiological stimulus
over the course of the meso.
It keeps the stimulus practically the same
'cause you're doing the same time under tension,
same tempo, same exercise,
your techniques should all be good.
Like, everything it's literally, it's like whatever extra,
you know, myofibrillar contraction
that we can contrake. Contrake?
That we can make or contract.
I think that's what I was trying to say.
Either make or contract. "Contrake?"
Right? New word.
We're just gonna be able to do that based off of,
or we're just gonna be able to express that
by moving a little bit more load
for the exact same variables.
Right? Simple to apply.
Not as easy to autoregulate as reps, right?
And it's applicable to pretty much every population.
So essentially, you know, when we look at the step method
or my stay in the middle method that I like to use,
it's basically a load biased progression with a rep buffer,
is kind of what they are, okay?
Linear progressing reps and load. Right?
So basically this is the step loading thing.
Moving from the bottom of the rep range to the top rep range
over a meso, while sometimes choosing to use load
instead of reps, without losing reps.
So basically say like, all right,
I'm gonna do six and I'm gonna add load, stay at six.
All right.
But then I can add seven, but if I add weight
I'm just gonna try and not ever go down.
This is what I would call
like a conservative loading protocol.
I often use it more for like elongated steps. Right?
So it's basically, it's like, okay,
what this really means is I'm just gonna be using reps
more often than load,
which means I'm just taking bigger steps and step loading.
Okay?
Progression plus regression methods.
This is where we get into the true step loading
where it's like, all right,
I'm going from six reps, seven reps, eight reps,
add load back to six reps, seven reps, eight reps,
add load, back.
That's the traditional.
So you're progressing in load, regressing in reps.
Then you progress in reps, add load, regress in reps.
Another one is that you can drop tempo and add loader reps.
I don't know if you ever use this,
but I find this to be very valuable.
Like you start a meso with a longer tempo.
So maybe you start somebody with pause squats.
So they're doing maybe a 3, 2, 1, 0.
Right? And because they wanna have like,
I want a specific like, you know, progression and load.
What I'm gonna do is at a certain point,
I'm gonna drop one of those seconds out of the pause,
or two seconds outta the pause, knowing that boom,
then there's gonna be this big surge progression
in load at that point in time.
Okay. And then you can also drop load and add reps,
but I put the asterisks there because I think that's shitty.
Like the only reason you would do that
is if for whatever reason
you're trying to change up the stimulus.
And you know,
it's not a really good progression at that point in time,
'cause you end up changing the stimulus a lot
if you're dropping load and then adding a bunch of reps.
So I mean, some people use it.
I'm not those people.
Okay.
So what are the benefits of step loading?
Right. It's using that combination.
Okay. Basically it allows for more flexibility, right?
And psychological benefits of rep progression.
So you get that, "Hey, last week we did seven,
we're going for eight," and that's very easy
to get psyched up for. Okay?
And then when you get to eight,
and you're gonna drop to six,
you just flip the psychological motivation.
It's like, "Hey, last week we did a hundred,
today we're gonna do 110."
And don't think about that rep thing, reps don't exist.
We're just doing 110 pounds, 10 pound progression.
Like, so you play that game and it allows you to, you know,
have more flexibility, but also motivate the person as well.
Right? You just focus on whatever's moving
in the right direction, right?
And so when you do the regression
you don't focus on like, "Yeah, but you only did six today."
Right? Okay.
Unless they piss you off.
Right?
And then at the end of the sessions, like
"Yeah, but he only did six, bitch."
So whatever it may be.
Okay?
Progressive loading with tempo.
Progressive loading with tempo regressions.
Sorry, lemme say that right.
So we're basically progressing from a longer tempo
to a shorter tempo over a mesocycle.
That's gonna allow for greater load progressions, right?
Because basically by having a long tempo at the beginning,
you're essentially starting with a artificially lower load
than what they would've had at a shorter tempo.
Okay?
So it allows you to progress and load more aggressively
over a mesocycle by sacrificing tempo
throughout that mesocycle.
And I'll typically do that, like, if it's gonna be like,
eight week or 10 week meso, whatever,
I'll go from like a two second pause to a one second pause
to no pause, like, over the course of that period.
Okay?
So I think this is one, really good for people
that need to learn technique and learn control.
Right?
But then you also want to be adding load to them, right?
So essentially at a slower tempo,
we can teach people technique.
We can teach them to use less bouncing
and less passive tissue to come out
of the hole of something. Right?
And then start to express more of that strength
and actually work on utilizing the skill of actually
using the passive tension towards the end of the meso
when they aren't moving like a complete jackass.
So sometimes you gotta slow people way down
so that you can actually get their technique respectable,
and then let them speed back up in an appropriate way
that isn't jackassery.
Okay?
That's the scientific term that I use for
flinging technique is the jackassery, right?
It's psychologically rewarding because of the
performance improvements with tempo regressions.
Right? So especially in advanced people
where the load progressions may be really small
and really slow, like having these periods in there,
and you can do the same thing with rep drops
over periods of time,
which I think you're gonna talk about
with the power lifting stuff.
Like anytime that you can have like a planned thing
that's like, look because of this thing we're doing,
they're gonna get a big progression and load.
And that just makes people feel good.
You know, when it's like,
"Yeah, at this point we're using this,
and now I'm using these loads."
Like, even if it was, you know,
even if it was just all spreadsheet like hackery,
it still feels good to be like, using heavy loads.
Right?
I would say when it comes to athletes, like,
there's just something about like,
"Hey, there's more plates on the bar now." Right?
Like it's just more satisfying, right?
You know.
'Cause nobody ever asks like,
"Hey, how much do you bench for 15?"
Like, nobody does, right?
It's like, how much do you bench?
1, 1, 1 time, like one.
Okay. Or how much do you squat one time, right?
So, okay.
And this can be combined with rep manipulation as well.
So basically you can have like,
the stay in the middle or the step method for so many weeks,
then you do a tempo regression, bump up the load,
and then you do the like, the stay in the middle
or step load for so many weeks,
and then you have another tempo drop,
and it gives you a big load increase.
Right?
All right.
Progressing reps with load regressions.
Right. Very rarely used,
only programmed it a couple of times in my whole career.
Typically, basically, the only time that I've used this
is when I've taken somebody that really just was addicted
to like, the loads that they were using in training,
but we needed to get like, build some work capacity
and like, some tolerance to that stuff,
so essentially, I just had to kind of "frog in the pot" them
into like, using slightly higher reps.
So yeah, I think like I've used it maybe like, two times,
and it was, both times were be to overcome the challenge
of the individual, not necessarily to serve a
physiological process. Right?
So it's usually done with somebody when your goal is like,
I need to build like some aerobic brace or whatever.
And so like I'm trying to bridge them from like, you know,
doing threes to eights without them just being like,
"Fuck this." Right?
So it's like, all right,
so we're gonna go from threes to fours,
and then to fives and like, you know, whatever that way.
Right? 'Cause the other thing is,
is that as you're doing that,
their loads are not falling as fast. Right?
So they're not going through like, this deep seated
depression about how light the weight on the bar is
and how they also feel like they're dying from, you know,
'cause like, if you take someone who's really strong,
they've been using huge weights,
but they just get totally outta shape,
you can give them practically nothing
and just have them do it for 30 seconds,
and they're just fucking smashed. Right?
That's you know, that person does not feel good
when they're using like, the same weight that like,
you know, your grandma that you've been training for like,
12 weeks is.
And they're like, the grandma's just over there, like
you know, moving along, and they're sitting
in like three liters of fucking sweat, like,
"Oh, what the hell?" Right?
So mostly because half of the stuff that they're lifting
is just them actually moving in the ranges of motion
that they haven't been in for six months.
So anyway, that's the, you know,
if you get one of those people, go ahead.
You can throw this really crappy strategy
at them just to like, sneak them into higher reps
over a short period of time.
Okay.