So another bonus unit for you, just to give you some kind
of outlines and general principles on what we'd be looking
for when we're kind of outlining a program
or our overall transformation plan.
So if you're doing this yourself, just a couple
of guardrails, um, or if someone else writing this for you.
Again, things to watch out for
or consider when you're evaluating how things are going.
So set volume
or the number of sets that you are doing
for a given workout is going to be influenced
by your training frequency, your exer exercise selection
and your rep ranges.
So looking at training frequency, when we're going
for a transformation, be prepared to commit
to at least three times a week.
Four times a week is probably ideal for most people, um,
but five can certainly work as well.
Obviously just a little bit less volume per session,
but you're getting more workouts in.
If we get at least to four times a week,
it really opens up our possibilities of different types
of splits, whether that's upper, lower push pull,
push pull legs and more creative options.
If you do have body parts specialization goals,
if we're looking at our kind of average effort,
the higher our average effort is, the fewer sets we need
or can get away with for a given stimulus, whether
that's muscle pressure preservation
or one of our metabolic goals.
The more sets you do at a lower average effort gives you
more potential for energy expenditure
and potentially a higher frequency.
As we get closer and closer to failure,
the fatigue factor kind of ramps up a little bit faster.
So rather than going to failure on every set,
maybe we on average
are like three reps in reserve from failure.
We can handle or tolerate more sets
and that allows us to accumulate more total volume,
which might work in our favor.
When we look at exercise selection,
we touched on this earlier, 60
to 80 ish percent are on the short side or shorter length.
Shorter challenge can allow us to get more sets
and higher frequency in our program.
So more opportunities for nutrient partitioning.
For example, when it comes to rep ranges, higher rep ranges,
so like 12 plus we can require fewer sets,
but also requires a higher average effort
to get the same kind of tension stimulus
for muscle preservation or muscle growth.
If we're kind of in a recomp type phase,
they are also a little meta more metabolically challenging.
So we need to consider that
with our complimentary nutrition.
So don't drop the cards too low if we're going higher on the
rep range side and higher on the average intensity side.
If we're pushing into an extreme deficit
or if we're getting close to that base metabolic rate kind
of number of calories, it may be tough
to fit in enough carbs to actually support training
with the higher rep ranges.
So the more aggressive the deficit goes,
typically the less likely we are
to do a very metabolic type of program.
Now this is a big one, efficiency.
If you look on social media, they'll talk a lot about,
you know, longer rest periods being more favorable
for hypertrophy, et cetera.
But that's for people. If you have unlimited time in the
gym, by all means take as much rest as you need to be close
to fully recovered and as much volume as you want.
However, time limitation is a very real concern
for most of us.
So if we're trying to fit these workouts into your schedule
and you're not planning on being like actually
training more than four hours per week
and I'm not talking just being in the gym
and warming up, I'm talking first work set to last work set,
you're probably, it's probably gonna be in your best
interest to get as much done
as you can in the time you have available.
So that means using different strategies, whether
that's utilizing super sets to get, you know,
more done in less time
or rest period adjustments, set rep methods.
So using three plus minutes
of rest in straight sets is probably one of the least
efficient ways that you're going
to train in a transformation, uh, type
of program or any program.
Super sets can still get you adequate rest between
repeating the same exercise while
shortening the overall session time.
Shortening rest but adding more sets is gonna outperform
longer rest periods
and fewer sets if we equate for the same amount of time.
So if you have 30 or 45 minutes to train
and you shorten your rest period, it's between,
let's say we get 12, 12 good sets in that time, let's say,
or we shorten the rest period and get 15
or 16 sets in.
Even if we're getting fewer reps per set,
you will get more total work done in most
cases in that scenario.
So we have to kind of walk that line
of what's gonna get us the most
done in the least amount of time.
Methods like rest pauses
and drop sets can allow you
to get the same stimulus in the same time
or same, sorry, same stimulus in less time
or more stimulus in the same time.
So again, if you're training under four hours per week
or even five, you're very unlikely to overtrain
even utilizing these methods when they're
appropriately applied.
Now obviously we're not gonna do a drop set on
every single set that we do.
We're not gonna do two
or three rest pauses on, you know, 10 sets for a body part.
These have to be applied appropriately,
but more likely you're not going to overdo it
with these if you're time limited.
Anyway. So here's our kind
of overall outline.
We start with our prep period, somewhere
between four and eight weeks.
We assess that maintenance window to get an idea of
where we need to move our calories.
When we start the transformation process, we're gonna assess
and improve our recoverability markers, sleep digestion,
conditioning with our training, get all of that dialed in
and then move into our transformation process anywhere
between eight and 20 weeks depending on
where you're starting and where you want to end up.
So we'll decrease our calories
to start creating a big chunk of that deficit.
We can go more on the aggressive side if we're just focusing
on muscle preservation
and max fat loss on the more moderate end.
If we're going for a recomposition
or maybe we alternate between aggressive
and you know, maintenance ish calories
and alternate that way to achieve an average
moderate deficit for recomposition, that tends
to work quite well and we're not necessarily going
to massively ramp up training volume right off the bat.
You might start with a program in your prep phase,
get things dialed in, keep the same program
through the start of your transformation
and just drop the calories.
Start with that. Then we have more levers we can pull if we
need to increase the deficit into
the transformation process.
It also lets us assess how well
that deficit is working for us.
If we, you know, overdid it on the deficit, we went too low,
we cut the carbs too much
because we have our kind of backlog of
how we were responding to that program
when we make that change.
So just like a scientific experiment,
you can't change too many variables at once
or it's hard to tell what is dictating changes that you see.
So I'd start keeping the volume the same
or training the same, just move the calories
and then we can increase the deficit
through energy expenditure, either adding steps
or cardio if the calories already too low
or moving the training volume up if we have the
ability to do so.
Once we get to our kind of end goal
or a happy place that we're satisfied with,
basically going back through what we talked about,
don't neglect the habits that got you there.
Um, so we'll talk about habits in the next module
using your program stimulus
and nutrition to being bring your calories
up as quickly as possible.
Making sure we're not going, you know, all the way into, uh,
what our previous, uh, maintenance was,
which the maintenance window might be lower now,
not quitting cardio all the way, just like we talked about
kind of alternating between adjusting nutrition, training,
cardio to kind of slowly bring us back up so
that we don't overshoot
and regain that fat, uh, quicker than we should.
Some fat gain is likely going to happen,
but it should be very minimal if we're kind
of manipulating these things the right way
and that will lead us into establishing
that new body fat set point.
Now, previously I talked about that body fat set point,
taking a couple of months to establish this eight
to 12 weeks, is that time that it's gonna cover some of
that, keeping your body fat relatively the same,
but getting you prepared to be able to kind
of work at a maintenance calorie for
Another one to maybe even three months to really make sure
that your body is kind of adjusted to that kind of body,
new body fat set point level.
And then you could do another cut if you wanted
to get even leaner depending on where you ended up
or start switching into more of a build
or growth focused plan from there.
Okay.