Ep 131: Andy Baker on Bodybuilding for Hypertrophy and an Aesthetic, Muscular Physique
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of bodybuilding? Do you know the most effective way to build muscle mass? What is the most common mistake people make when trying to build muscle?
Philip (@witsandweights) is thrilled to have the incredible Andy Baker back with him today. They discussed Andy’s programming philosophy, strength training for the elderly, coaching principles, and lifting techniques during his previous appearance on episode 60.
Andy, a famous strength coach, co-author of Practical Programming and The Barbell Prescription, and Baker Barbell Podcast host, owns Kingwood Strength and Conditioning in Texas. His three programming tracks in the online Baker Barbell Club include a bodybuilding track that Philip is running for the final three months of his building phase and plans to continue into a fat loss phase.
Philip and Andy thought it would be fun today to talk about bodybuilding, not the big B competitive physique sport but the little b method of hypertrophy-oriented bodybuilding-style training for aesthetic muscle development to improve one’s physique.
They talk about bro splits, the top-set/backoff-set approach, intensity and frequency, the interplay between hypertrophy and strength, and some of the techniques and philosophy behind this training style.
Episode Summary:
This episode is a gold mine for This episode is a gold mine for those eager to understand how to incorporate bodybuilding into their fitness routine for aesthetic muscle development.
We delve into the intricacies of bodybuilding, discussing the importance of intensity versus volume in training and how bodybuilding has morphed over the years. Andy shares his personal experience with bodybuilding and how it has influenced his coaching methods. His insights into the techniques and philosophy behind this style of training offer practical tips for everyone, irrespective of their fitness level.
The discussion extends into the world of powerlifting, where we explore the crucial role of muscle mass in strength. Modern powerlifting standards have evolved to emphasize not just the amount of weight an athlete can move but also the importance of maintaining a lean body fat percentage while carrying significant muscle mass.
One of the key points we highlight is the interconnection between muscle mass, motor recruitment, and intermuscular efficiency. These components are critical to an athlete's ability to handle heavier loads. Using John Hack, the current top powerlifter, as an example, we explore how athletes have achieved this fine balance.
As we dissect the rising trend towards lower body fat levels in powerlifting, we address the debate of whether athletes are shedding body fat due to a race in weight classes or if there are advantages to carrying less body fat. This insightful discussion offers a deeper understanding of the integral components affecting an athlete's capacity to lift heavier weights and how these factors can be manipulated to enhance performance.
This episode is invaluable for fitness enthusiasts, bodybuilders, and powerlifters alike. It is a comprehensive guide that covers the key aspects of bodybuilding and powerlifting, shedding light on the evolution of these fitness disciplines and providing practical tips for incorporating them into your fitness routine. It is a must-listen for anyone looking to expand their knowledge and elevate their performance with their lifting.
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Today you’ll learn all about:
(2:30) Why bodybuilding
(10:08) Muscle mass, motor recruitment, and intermuscular efficiency
(13:11) Advantage of having lower body fat
(26:42) Five-day full-body program
(32:56) Why Andy is running this program
(43:08) Tweaks for women or someone with weaker legs
(46:22) How to modify the exercise to focus on body parts
(50:25) The six-day program
(51:45) The split and top-set/backoff-set
(1:09:14) The mind-muscle connection for a new lifter
(1:19:25) Common mistakes
(1:28:50) Six-week progression
(1:45:26) Where to find Andy
(1:46:06) Outro
Episode resources:
Ep 60: Strength and Programming for Maximum Gains at Any Age with Andy Baker
Andy’s website: www.AndyBaker.com
IG - @bakerbarbell
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Transcript
Andy Baker 00:00
I think a lot of these guys have it backwards where if they believe that volume is the most important thing, if you believe that volume is the most important thing that you're going to reduce intensity in order to get more volume. But if you believe that higher effort training and progressive overload is primary, then volume and frequency become subservient to that.
Philip Pape 00:25
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in Wits & Weights community Welcome to another episode of the Wits & Weights podcast. Joining me again is the super knowledgeable Andy Baker. Last time he was on episode 60. We talked about his approach to programming strength training for older adults, his philosophy on coaching and methods in the world of lifting. And he is a highly sought after strength coach, the author of practical programming and the barbell prescription host of the baker barbell podcast, which just came out with some fresh episodes, and the owner of Kingwood strength and conditioning in Texas. We thought it would be fun today to talk about bodybuilding, not the big B competitive physique sport, but the little b method of hypertrophy oriented bodybuilding style training for aesthetic muscle development to improve your physique. And he knows a lot about bodybuilding and training for muscle mass from years of real world experience coaching people in person and online. And in fact, one of his three programming tracks in his online Baker barbell Club, which I'm a member of is a bodybuilding track. And I'm personally running that for the final three months of my own building phase and plan to continue into into a fat loss phase. Next year, we're going to talk about bro splits the top setback, offset approach, intensity versus frequency, maybe the interplay between hypertrophy and strength, and some of the techniques and philosophy behind this training style. And he is great to have you back on again,
Andy Baker 02:09
thank you appreciate you having me.
Philip Pape 02:11
So let's just jump right in and talk about your personal experience with bodybuilding as a primary style of training. Because a lot of us know we know your history with strength and conditioning, we know starting strength, you know, a little bit of the CrossFit world. And then there's this idea, of course, that hypertrophy is sometimes a dirty word and some of those circles and, you know, inquiring minds want to know how and why do you incorporate this training style for yourself?
Andy Baker 02:34
Well, it's what I started with a mean, if you go way back in the day, from the first time that I picked up weights, when I was you know, 1213 years old. That was the I mean, at the time, if you if you want to if you go back through the history kind of of this stuff, you know, at that time in the 90s, that was the only information that was really available. There wasn't the Internet as we know it today. And so there was no there was no social media, which I know it's hard for a lot of maybe our younger listeners to, to understand, but there wasn't the only sources really out there the primary sources in which people got information at that time was through the muscle Max. It was through publications like flex magazine, and muscular development. Ironman, maybe had one powerlifting article, or Bill star article, but it was a bodybuilding back, you know, everything. All of the information that we had was was bodybuilding. You got publications, like maybe powerlifting, USA, or whatever, but it was obscure, and it wasn't on you know, you could go to any newsstand any magazine rack in the country and find flex magazine and muscular development. But powerlifting USA was very hit or miss for the most part, you just had to be subscribed to it through the mail. And that was it. That was really the only source of information. So when you got into lifting, it was just done bodybuilding style. I mean, pretty much everybody did, you know, unless you were maybe in the sports world, but recreationally. It was all bodybuilding. And then, you know, if you look at participation in sports, like powerlifting, with the time when I was growing up, you know, early 90s or 90s, and, you know, early 2000s, you know, powerlifting wasn't what it what it is today, and that there was one there was no social media. And there was just not wide participation in the sport of powerlifting. It was a very, very niche community. It was a very small sport. And the other thing, the biggest thing is it was all done in gear, it was all done in multiply and lifting suits. That's all powerlifting was done that way when you went to a meet in the 90s, there was no raw powerlifting everybody there were single ply and multiply. But everybody competed in gear and if you showed up to a meet and competed raw, they'd be like, What the hell are you doing? It'd been like showing up to a track meet and dress shoes or something like you know, it just, that's the way it was done. So there, there wasn't a lot of interest in that style. It was a much smaller, niche sport because of that and when things kind of converted over to raw powerlifting I attribute namely to the influence of CrossFit into the strength world, it brought more awareness to the barbell lifts than probably anything else. And by extension into raw powerlifting. Now that's flipped. Now that's flipped, where if you go to a meet, there's very little geared lifting, there's very little multiply lifting, it's all raw. And because of that, there's much more participation in the sport, I just think it's naturally more interesting to people to, you know, see what a guy can do and a singlet and maybe some knee sleeves versus multiply suits. That being said, the my point with all that is that my formative years as a teenager and early 20s, really the only information out there unless you just happen to stumble into a powerlifting gym was bodybuilding stuff. So that's how everybody trained, of course, all kids, all teenagers, you know, when you're 12 1315. So, I mean, everybody wants everybody, there's something about the comic book level development that's appealing, it just is, it's a representation, it's an art of, you know, what is possible of potato, you know, if you want to talk about it artistically of, of potential, you know, something like that. And there's just, there's a draw to it, I think that every young person goes through, then everybody trades that way, I happen to respond pretty well to that type of training. When I was a teenager, and in my early 20s, I found it, you know, I was highly responsive to that type of training, I found it fairly easy to get big, actually was people a lot of people don't know this, but I was actually, I had an amateur, probably the only starting strength coach around, it's actually been featured in Flex magazine when I was 19 years old. So I still have the it was the, I think the October issue of 1999, or 2000, something like that. So I put on muscle pretty easily. And that was not what the that was without the use of drugs or anything like that. So I think when you have some success with something you tend to gravitate to, and do more of it, study it more, put it into practice more. So there was just always kind of a fascination with that. I think what happens though, is as you get older, the fascination with becoming, you know, superfluously, enormous, starts to dwindle, and you start to see a little bit more value, or just get more interested in the performance side of things. And so that's where he's got, you know, a lot of guys follow that natural progression of starting with a lot of interest in the physiques side of things. And then there's a period of time where, you know, you you do want to start, you start becoming more interested in what you can do not necessarily what you look like, especially when you realize that there's a cap on how big you can actually get naturally, whereas theoretically, with strength, there's still a cap. But a lot of times, there's a lot of potential left to be developed. And so I kind of gravitated, you know, at some point in my early 20s, away from the physique development stuff, and into more of the powerlifting side of things, to which I've, you know, met Mark Rippetoe, and became more educated and actually, the performance side of things spent a good decade or more doing that, too, I still do a lot of that, but being more involved in powerlifting, and bodybuilding. But now as I've gotten older, again, just kind of a natural swing back to just part of it, it's just the interest of the customer base, potentially, there's more, again, depend on the pendulum kind of swung away from bodybuilding, into powerlifting, CrossFit, all that kind of stuff during the 2000s. And now you're starting to see the pendulum starts to swing back into the physique stuff. And I feel like now in my 40s, I actually have more to offer, maybe my clients than I did in my early 20s. I feel like, now I have a better understanding as a coach, I have a better understanding of how to put this stuff into practice, in a sensible, dare I say, more scientific way that you know, then I would have in my early 20s, when I kind of knew what to do. But I couldn't have articulated very well while I was doing what I was doing or why it worked. I'd kind of knew what to do. But I didn't really I wouldn't have had the ability to explain it, or put it into practice with more people like I do now. Yeah, I
Philip Pape 09:05
think a lot of us gravitate to your work because of that you're able to articulate it. We were talking before we recorded about how just with all that experience in the gym, talking with people doing this stuff, it comes together. That goal of getting so purposely enormous, a lot of us probably still want to beat the want to get there as a goal. But you mentioned a few things. First of all, the history of all this is fascinating how even the things we dump on like CrossFit had a critical part to play right in introducing barbells to folks that introduced me to barbells and then I came to starting strength and I never I never had had the bodybuilding stuff. Or if I ever did, like a lot of us we were just doing it wrong or you know, doing ineffectively. Yeah, so it's just interesting how it comes together. And you have this kind of open minded approach to, you know, incorporating all these styles, which is why I wanted to focus more on bodybuilding today, you know, instead of just the straight side, but you did mention strength and hypertrophy, and there's always this confusion about how do these Interplay what is the overlap I know sometimes you might get a little annoyed when somebody's like, well, I want to focus on this not strength, you know? Yeah. But it's all strength, right? Like, there's strength everywhere. You mentioned on I think two podcast episodes ago on Baker barbell podcast, three factors, you said muscle mass motor recruitment and inter muscular efficiency, implying that there's this overlap between them on they contribute to each other. Can you just summarize that here? I mean, people can listen to the whole detail episode, but just kind of summarize that. So that
Andy Baker 10:27
was, when you look at strength. I mean, strength is force production, right? It's the ability to, to displace a load or to you know, however you want to define it, but strength is force production, and it's in its you cannot divorce strength from load, you know, the, the person who squats 500 is stronger than the person who squats 400. So what are the elements that affect your ability to move greater and greater loads? What is What are the elements in place that are going to make you go from a 300 pound squat to a 400 pound squat to a 500 pound squat? And really, there's, there's three, and we're gonna we're gonna skip over things like mindset and consistency and determinate, like, yes, those are important, but they're not, we're going to just focus on the more physical side of things. The the primary way in which somebody is able to, well, it's hard to say what's primary and what secondary and all that because I think it changes with the development of the athlete. But by and large, the most important determining factor as to how much weight you're going to be able to move on a given lift, let's just say for one rep max, is the amount of muscle mass that you carry. I mean, in powerlifting, nine times out of 10, the guy with more muscle mass is going to win. You know, it's just you don't see people that walk into the gym or to a meet, you see some enormous big jacked guy with his, you know, traps are coming out of his ears and a big wide back and huge shoulders and big legs, he's going to be stronger, nine times out of 10 than the guy that doesn't look like that. So muscle mass matters. And I think for years, we always assumed it was just the heavier athlete would win. I mean, that was the say on mass moves mass. I mean, in general, the heavier weight classes outperformed the lower weight classes in terms of absolute load, maybe not based on a percentage of body weight, or whatever. But in general, the heavier the, you know, the three weights and the 270, fives are going to move more weight than the 220s and the 190, eights. That's just the way that it is now, is that just weight? Or is that because of the fact that the heavier guys have more muscle. And I think what modern powerlifting has shown us is actually it's not just the mass moves mass or whatever, it's just that when you're 308 pounds, you have the potential to carry a lot more muscle than the guy that's 198 pounds. But what we're seeing now is that if you look at the physiques and the body fat level of modern day raw powerlifting, they're far leaner, I think, and more muscular than what you saw maybe 20 years ago, with some exceptions. You know, there was obviously there's always been big Jack, guys, kirker, loskis, and all that kind of stuff. But there's a realization, it's not just about how heavy you are, but how much muscle you carry. I mean, you the best lifter in the world right now is John hack, in my opinion. And he's the guy is absolutely loaded with muscle mass, but he doesn't care. He's very little body fat, almost, you know, does
Philip Pape 13:11
that? And is was that a race to the bottom with hitting the lower weight classes that led to that? Or is there an advantage of actually carrying the lower body fat?
Andy Baker 13:19
Well, I think that there is I mean, I think that, I mean, I think more and more research has shown that excessive amounts of body fat is can be detrimental to, you know, the ability to build new muscle mass, I mean, things like if you're obese, you know, things like testosterone, and things like that tend to suffer. insulin sensitivity is poor, you know, all those sorts of things. And I think, you know, higher testosterone levels, better insulin sensitivity, those are all things that are good for being able to build muscle mass, you know, just being healthier overall, but it is harder. Most people know just, if they have any experience with this stuff, it's if you're trying to bulk without putting on any body fat, or really trying to minimize the amount of body fat, you know, this is a nutrition guide, if you're trying to gain muscle mass, and you say, Well, I'm gonna gain muscle, but I don't want to put on any fat, it's almost an impossible task. Or it'll take you seven years, yeah, it'll take you forever. But if you want to, like if you're wanting to move up in weight class or just get bigger, there has to be an acceptable level of body fat increase most of the time, unless you're there are a few cases, I think of just genetic outliers, that, you know, most IFBB pros would fit under this category where they just they are able to put on tons of fat free mass. But that's not most of us most, if you're going to want to put on 20 pounds of muscle mass. And you don't want to take 20 years to do it. You're going to put on a little bit of body fat, you know, in order to do so I think and if you're don't care about that at all, if you're willing to put on even more body fat, you can potentially gain muscle even faster. You know, it kind of just depends. It's I don't think that it's a good idea to and I think recent experience has taught most of us this is that, you know, just the seafood diet of I'm just going to pound as many calories as possible. And you know, fast food and pizza and just, yeah, you'll you are going to put on more muscle mass if you're in a massive caloric surplus like that. But even even in a massive caloric surplus, you could still only put on muscle mass so fast. And so you're still going to be accumulating more body fat than is necessary. So there's about it. I mean, you know, you can probably speak to this better than I can, there's a balance there, right? There's, there's a cut off point, where if you say, if you're not willing to put on any body fat whatsoever, you're going to struggle to build muscle mass. If you're doing the seafood diet, where you just eat everything in sight, yes, you're gonna put on muscle mass, but probably at the expense of putting on more body fat than you really want. So yeah, that
Philip Pape 15:45
that was my big turning point after running starting strength of like, needing to learn about nutrition and the folks in your barbell club. That's usually when they come to me, it's like, okay, I got a little bit too much do crazy than on the dreamer bulk. Yeah.
Andy Baker 15:56
Yeah. And so I don't know where I was going with that. Originally,
Philip Pape 15:59
we were talking about the strength versus hypertrophy and the factors you were talking about muscle mass,
Andy Baker 16:04
so So muscle mass, so yeah, okay, I know morale is going out. So item number one is, if you want to dramatically increase the amount of weight you can move, you probably need to get bigger, you need to add more muscle mass, that's going to be the primary determining factor. It's also the most long term solution to getting stronger, because the other two that I'm going to talk about are a little bit more transient adaptations. They are, you're talking about more of the efficiency of a system, which comes and goes, the building of muscle mass, but also the loss of muscle mass is a slower process than the development and or loss of neurological efficiency, neurological efficiency can be enhanced in a pretty short period of time, it can also be lost in a pretty short period of time. And so what were the when we talk about neurological efficiency, I kind of look at it in two different ways. One would be what we call the the, I always get these two confused, but the inch intramuscular coordination, or what we would call motor unit recruitment. So if we look at an individual muscle, like the quads, or whatever, on a squat and their role in the squat, training your ability over time for your body to recruit more of the muscle mass that it already possesses. Okay, so for an untrained lifter, and I don't know what these percentages are, but let's say for an untrained lifter, they're capable of this is a very, very simplified an exercise, fifth guy would rip me apart from my explanation of this, but I'm gonna keep it very, very simple all the time. All right, I think the simplistic version still works as as a way to understand this. So even if some of the nuanced details are wrong, or whatever, it's still, it still works. But let's just say a new lifter, that is, you know, has never been exposed to heavy weight, or whatever, let me say his quads are capable of motor unit recruitment at 30%. In other words, he's capable of recruiting 30 40% of the muscle mass that he has with training, the more that he trains, and in particular, the more heavy training that he does, say with reps, five and below, so the very heavy training especially, that becomes a trainable quality and that he his body will learn to recruit more of the muscle mass that he currently possesses, say in his quads from heavy squatting or whatever. So now, instead of recruiting 30% of the available muscle mass that he has, he's recruiting 40% and 50. And then 60 and 70%. So he's that's a trainable quality. So that's increasing his ability to to produce force without getting bigger in, you know, kind of the muscle mass, you're recruiting the amount of muscle that you have. And then with with motor unit recruitment, you're recruiting more of what you have, so you can increase
Philip Pape 18:45
the tap yes, like untapped capacity that you're gonna finally tapping into. And
Andy Baker 18:50
then you have the third element of it, which is the intramuscular coordination, which is the coordination between muscle groups. So this is why training, leg extensions, leg curls, the adductor machine, the glute machine, set ups and back raises, while doing all of those things individually don't necessarily lead to as big of a squat, as does squatting. Because it's not just each of those, yes, all of those individual muscles play a role in the squat, but they have to be trained to work together in order to optimize the efficiency. So you could have a guy theoretically, that could get that can increase muscle mass in his lower body through through a series of isolation movements, he could leg curl leg extension, adductor machine, you know, glute, whatever those called hip thrusts, or whatever. And, you know, he could take all he could train all of the constituent muscle masses used in a squat individually, would not have the same impact as just training the squat because not only is he working those muscles, but he's working them together and so that they become better at working in a coordinated Fashion, in order to do that movement, if you look at, and again, this is a trainable quality, the more squatting that you do theoretically, there's an upper limit for sure. But the more squatting that you do the more volume and frequency or whatever that you do, potentially, the better you get at it. movements that are highly demanding in terms of coordination and timing, and that sort of thing needs to be practiced more often. This is why Olympic weightlifters tend to clean and jerk and snatch daily. Why do they do that? Because they're they that's what why are they doing that? Why don't they just clean and jerk twice a week, or snatch because that's not enough to really fine tune that coordinate. Because that's those are very complex movement patterns that require its practice. It there's, I think practice could be looked at in two different ways. There's practice in you intellectually understanding what you need to do. So that's me teaching you how to do a clean and jerk, like, okay, you don't know that you need to, you know, brush your thighs with the barbell, or the jump and a certain like, I'm intellectual, like, you're intellectually learning how to do that, and then you're practicing that. But there's a deeper level of quote, practice. At the neurological level, it's your nervous system, learning how to do that. It's why professional baseball players take batting practice every day, even during the season. That's why they because at that level, when those guys develop their swing, it is so nuanced, and so individualized, and so timing oriented and coordinated, it needs to be practiced, almost daily, in order to be for those pathways to be maintained. Where, you know, I think a squat, you know, you could argue that's less, a little less technical, technical, but there's also some there's also some fears, physiological realities, and that there's muscle damage created in a squat that's maybe not as present, say, on a on a snatch or a baseball swing. So that's those are three elements, that if you want to maximize strength, those three things need to be addressed. Now what needs to be prioritized, kind of depends on the lifter, a guy that's been squatting for 20 years, may not need that much quote, practice, like though that movement is kind of ingrained in his body to where he doesn't need but a newer lifter, that's part of why they may only benefit from squatting three days per week, because that pattern is not yet embedded in their neurological system. It's like, you know, to a degree, it's like riding a bike, right? I mean, if you've spent a lot of time as a kid riding a bike, you can take 10 years, and often, you know, that's the same, it's just like riding a bike, you jump back on, and maybe you're a little wobbly at first. But, you know, within an hour, you're back to being able to ride a bike and not feel like you're gonna fall off. So
Philip Pape 22:46
yeah, and I know you see it all the time with the new lifters doing the squat, they're wobbling, they're unstable, and some people are more athletic than others that have kind of have that precision, ability to do it. And some are solid, but it doesn't take long to get at least that first step jump I think in in these elements, you definitely see
Andy Baker 23:03
it in the the effective programming that is used for power lifters at different levels. And guys that tend to focus if you look at the training programming for especially modern day, the guys that tend to benefit the most from high, very high volume, high frequency programming. So these are the guys that are benching four days a week, I've seen some guys that bench five or six days a week, but guys that bench four days a week, maybe squat in some form or another, you know, four days per week, deadlift here. So these higher frequency programs tend to be present much, much more in the lower weight class athletes, your your guys that compete at 165 181 98. You don't see it as much on the big heavyweights. And I think part of that is because if those lower weight classes, they're not building any more muscle. They're not getting bigger. And so what are so what, what lever do they pull will they pull the neurological efficiency lever? Because they are they have the amount of muscle mass that they have is more or less set, they're not getting they're not gaining any weight, they're staying at 165 or whatever. So the only way for them to increase their their total is by the goosing that are pulling that neurological efficiency lever. If that makes sense. They have to get better with the amount of muscle mass that they currently have. Guys that are moving up the weight classes over time, they're going from, you know, 165 to 181 to 198 to 220. As their their obviously as they're climbing up the weight class, they're building muscle. And they may not have to, they may not have to pull that neurological efficiency lever as hard as a lower weight class guy. Does that make sense? Yep, for sure. Right for so. Does that make sense? No. Yeah,
Philip Pape 24:49
it makes sense. No, it makes sense. And so now we're talking about we're for today I want to focus on intermediate lifters. gent general population, right, we're going to assume that the stuff about strength holds for rank beginner, just get stronger, do something like starting strength. You're good. Now the question is,
Andy Baker 25:05
let me let me give you real quick, I want to give it I want to give one more example of this, that this, this, this audience might be more familiar with. This is something that I've meant to point out in a couple of different places that I have it. But guys will notice, often, if they've been, let's say they're squatting twice a week or once a week, and you give them a new plug in a light squat day, somewhere in the middle, they will immediately start to see improvements on their heavy day. So let's just say they've been they've been squatting heavy on Mondays, and that's it. And they've maybe they're having a hard time progressing on their squat. And then you stick a light squat day, so something like three sets of five at 60%. It's not very heavy to medium amount of volume, you stick that in on say, Thursday, within two to three weeks, a lot of times they're heavy day squat starts to improve. Why is that? Well, they didn't get bigger by adding in three sets of light squats later in the week. That's not a very hypertrophy oriented protocol. But what did it do it immediately, that's why I'm saying this adaptation is transient, it immediately increased neurological efficiency. By having that added day, that increased frequency now they're squatting every two or three days instead of once, once every seven days, that that adaptation occurs pretty quickly, the system gets more efficient, really, really quick. And so that's why that, that even that added light squat day. That's why it improves performance almost immediately, because that neurological efficiency thing can be can be manipulated in pretty short order, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Philip Pape 26:39
it makes sense and actually brings up another question because you address this toward the end of your last show. You were talking about bro splits versus high frequency programs for intermediate lifters. And it kind of brings that question to mind of this is getting more popular now. Andy, right. You've probably heard it. Jeff Nipper made it popular three years ago when he was experimenting with it. And now I see it coming up. Again, my own community is asking about it, why not do a five day Full Body program. And you kind of addressed it on your show. But one of the reasons I hear the science guys saying it could be more effective is there's a diminishing point of return with heavy the number of sets. So like if you did, if you do a typical bro split, you're hitting say 15 to 20 Hard sets across that muscle group in one session. Whereas if you do high frequency, you might hit six to eight and eight is kind of that point of diminishing returns. And so therefore, you're able to get more effective reps across the week. What are your thoughts on that?
Andy Baker 27:32
Well, first of all, I don't think that some of it depends on how you define like a heart set, I kind of reject the idea that anybody responds well to say 20 sets per week, 20 hard sets per week, on any muscle group, somebody that, in my opinion, somebody that feels like they need 20 sets, the exception might be back, like back training, but you're also talking about, you're actually talking about different muscle groups. That's that's actually not one muscle group, it gets lumped in. But that would be the only case where I would say that somewhere close to 20 sets could potentially be effective. But say for like the quads, anybody that needs 20 sets of direct quad work in order to grow their quads, is simply not training. Okay, and, and so there's an assumption that you have to either accept or reject it when you talk about volume. And that is relative intensity, how close to failure is optimal. If you accept as I do, it's going to change your opinion on this. So some of it just depends on if we agree or disagree on this, we'll you'll have a different, you're going to have a different opinion on volume and frequency. But if you accept that higher RPE training, if we want to use that term, or training closer to failure is more effective for muscle growth than you then that is going to reduce the amount of volume that you're capable that you either can do or should do. And by extension frequency. So I operate under the premise that, and a lot of the the current research supports this. And I think, you know, most bodybuilders have always kind of known this or accepted this, that training closer to failure is the superior stimulus for hypertrophy versus training very far away from failure. So taking your sets right up to the point where you can't do another one is another rep is more effective than leaving three or four reps in the tank. And so it kind of depends on where you fall on that. But if you accept that, if you say well, training closer to failure is superior. Then you're going to have a different calculation for how much volume is optimal. You cannot like on the quads, you cannot take your sets to failure and also do 20 sets per week when Do you do it all in one workout or spread loaded out? It's just not going to work. And so that, that that's going to impact the volume calculation. So what was your question? I
Philip Pape 30:12
don't know. That was the I kind of wanted to get that out of the way, just because I know we I've had some questions on it as well. And you basically dress it. There's two other things you mentioned on that show I wanted to bring up one is it leaves no room for error, like you have to get everything perfect, right.
Andy Baker 30:26
Like, like when I say, Well, if you're doing 20 sets per week, you're just not training hard. And I'm not saying that because it's like, well, you're not you're just a policy. And it's like, it's not, it's actually because I believe that that that that harder training, taking your steps closer to failure is actually more effective. And I to the degree where I think that that should be primary, and then the amount of volume that you do is subservient to that. And so I think a lot of these guys have it backwards, where if they believe that volume, is the most important thing. If you believe that volume is the most important thing, then you're going to reduce intensity in order to get more volume. But if you believe that higher effort training and progressive overload is primary, than volume and frequency become subservient
Philip Pape 31:18
to that, does that make sense? To intensity training to failure? Yeah, yeah.
Andy Baker 31:22
So there can be a fundamental disagreement, depending on which side of the line that you fall on. But you know, one of the most fundamental rules of programming is that intensity, both absolute intensity, so load, or, or you could as expressed as a percentage of one RM, or relative intensity, which is more effort level. So your RPE, or our IR, however you want to do it, intensity is inversely related to volume. So as intensity goes up, volume goes down, and vice versa. So I tend to believe that progressive overload, and higher effort training is more important than the total, I do think there's a minimum threshold of volume that has to be met. But it's that but that I think, the volume and the frequency of some is subservient to the other factors.
Philip Pape 32:14
And you know, it's interesting, I believe, there, there have been a lot of studies, we want to talk about science and look at Fat Loss phases. And which ones hold on to the most muscle and it tends to be the ones with the higher intensity, right? Sure, it kind of gives you it gives you a good look of what's important when you're especially in an energy starved environment, if that's the thing that kind of keeps it going. Okay, so, go, I want to talk about goals for a second because I want to get into your bodybuilding style programming, some of the details of it, and the bro splits and backoff, top set back off and all that. But I was just talking to my friend, Tony on the way over here, and he's like, What are your goals for next year? And I'm like, you know, my goals are just to progress as much as I can on this bodybuilding program. Like I don't have PRs that I'm trying to hit necessarily having had surgery not long ago. But that does raise the question, Who wants your intermediate advanced? Why would you run this bodybuilding program? Right? What are the goals that you see from your clients? So people don't run the wrong thing for their goals?
Andy Baker 33:07
Yeah, so I mean, the thing is, with when you're trying to talk about like, and again, I'm talking bodybuilding with a small beats are not necessarily competitive. But But still, if you're, it doesn't do any good to talk about this. If somebody says, Well, you know, I don't really want to be that big or that strong, I just want to be fit or whatever, then none of this stuff really matters. Because the, you know, you can basically do anything with any modicum of effort. And it's that's going to satisfy those goals. But if you're talking about I want to be as big as possible, and have as well developed a physique as poss. Even if I'm not, obviously, if you're competing than that, that kind of goes without saying you want to be as big and as well developed as possible. Even if you're not competing, though, and you say, Oh, I just want to have the best possible physique out there. Then one of the fundamental differences between that type of training, bodybuilding training and powerlifting is that there's really no with powerlifting there's only three exercises that you have to do. Right, you have to but with bodybuilding, you have to train everything. Everything has to be trained, you can as a power lifter, you could go in your whole career, never do any work for your side. delts never do any work for your calves never do work for your biceps, there's a whole lot of stuff you could ignore completely, and still be a really good powerlifter as a bodybuilder, you can't really do that, like the and that's why like, there's really the whole concept of say assistance exercises, doesn't exist in bodybuilding. It's all important. Like your side delt work is potentially just as important as your chest work. If you've got it like if you want to be as big as possible and you you have like underdeveloped shoulders, like especially if you're going to step on stage, like you can't have underdeveloped side delts right. You can't have underdeveloped cows or no biceps or what so there's no body part or no area of your body that can be be ignored, which means everything has to be trained hard, and with, you know, with adequate volume. And it's really hard to do that in the context of a full body split. So training your full body, three days per week, or even like an upper lower split. It's so energy intensive to do the type of bodybuilding training that you have to necessarily just, from a practical standpoint, even have just time management, that those things have to be split up into their own, let's say their own days, or at least they have to be given adequate amount of time and energy. In the workout, if you're doing a full body split. And you do, you know, you do squats, and then you do bench presses, and then you do bent over rows on Monday, you're kind of at the end of the I mean, by the time you do all three of those lifts, and you do all three of them with, you know, the amount of volume that they need and the amount of effort and intensity, the amount of effort that they require. The progressive overloading over time, like it doesn't leave a whole lot else in the workout, there's not a whole lot of room for other stuff. And to the extent that you will do other things, they're going to be half assed, like for most people, if you do it, especially as you get stronger, squatting, benching, and bent over rows, all in the same workout, I mean, you're probably pushing an hour and a half, right. And so whatever you do after that is, even if you're trying to push hard, you're just not going to be able to devote the amount of energy and effort level into those sessions in a in a practical way. So it makes some sense to at least split things up, say, into upper body, lower body. But even then, again, as you get stronger, and you develop, as you get stronger and more advanced, you also develop the ability to fatigue yourself a lot more. And so it may be difficult to bench, then over row, shoulder press, dips, you know, five or six different movements, all with the all for different muscle groups, those workouts become both very long, because you have to say warm up new new movements. So you have to move from benching to rowing, there's a whole warmup process for moving to that completely different muscle group. And that just the time and the energy spent just on an upper body workout may not allow you to give adequate attention to all the areas of your body that need development. And so there's a natural progression, I kind of went over this in my last podcast episode of, you know, what that progression might look like if a guy Yeah, even if he wants to be a bodybuilder, let's just say we take some kid who wants to be a bodybuilder on day one, but he's never been in the weight room, I'd still probably start them out with like a three day or week full body program, because he doesn't necessarily need at the beginning to have a dedicated arm day, or whatever he can, he can just kind of hit those big rocks and get stronger on those. And he's going to see progression in his physique. But then as he gets stronger, and he wants to continue to put on even more muscle, he's probably going to have to split things up into like an upper body, upper body, lower body. And then at a certain point, he may have to split that up into like a legs push pole. And then at a certain point, he may have to split up, you know, it's It didn't used to be common, but it's becoming more common now to say split up quads and hamstrings. You know, if you've got a squat, leg press and leg extension, it's hard for to move from that into stiff legged deadlifts, and be able to put in the you know what I'm saying. So a lot of guys will wind up splitting up their lower body work, you know, and then you get to the point where, okay, my arm development sucks, well, you're doing triceps after chest and shoulders, and you just don't have the time or the energy to devote enough volume and intensity to those movements. And I think if you're going to be if you're going to really maximize physique development, you have to treat all of your movements, even the little movements, the tricep extensions, the curls, the side delt work, those have to, those have to be trained with an adequate amount of again, volume and effort level, and progressive overload. And it just, it becomes a matter of resources of time and energy. How do you do that without splitting it up? And so I think that that's where bodybuilders naturally over a course of a couple of years are going to evolve into some sort of body parts split by by necessity. Yeah,
Philip Pape 39:18
it makes total sense. And your your specific program of six days when I first saw it, I was thinking, Man, that sounds like a lot. And then once you run it, you realize makes a lot of sense, especially for us older guys who have less recovery. It actually worked out really well for time management as well. So I'll give you an example for me. My rest day is Wednesday. Right? Your program is a six day program. For me that's four days a week training just like I was always doing on something like a conjugate or upper lower, and then I can work on the weekends and many of us have flexibility to do that on the weekends. You also only have three or four movements so like this morning doing flat bench, incline bench, cable fly, and then I think I threw an ABS or something. You know, you're over in 4560 minutes. It doesn't feel crazy, but you're able to be fresh. for each of those movements, or even the cable flies, you
Andy Baker 40:02
know, I was able to be fresh for those. So yeah, it's, it's a great strategy, the workouts are shorter. And they're also less systemically stressful because you're all of the stress is being directed at one, one area of the body. I mean, when you do a squat, a bench press and deadlift or a squat a bench and a barbell row or something like that, there, you're working way more of your body, the workouts take longer. And I think there's a trade off there between the you know, the the length of the workouts, and your ability to recover that even if you're training more often say five or six days per week, if the workouts are shorter, and less energy intensive, it's actually quite sustainable. And I get like that, that's why I have like in my primer, like, Okay, I know, there's going to be a good portion of you guys that can't do six days per week. But here's an option for five, here's an option for four, that still kind of holds to the same principles, I mean, you don't necessarily have to do six, I lay that out, it's here's the, here's the way to split it up, you know, maximally, and then you can kind of condense that down as needed. And some of that's going to be based on you, and certainly with advanced bodybuilders, all of those guys will train based on weaknesses, you know, most guys and weaknesses and strengths. So certainly, it's like at the higher levels, like guys that are going to compete in bodybuilding, they're going to have a certain, you know, there's going to have a certain amount of genetics that predisposes them to be good in that, and part of that is, most guys will have one or two body parts that are pretty well developed with a minimal amount of work. And so they and, and certain, one or two body parts that don't develop as well that require more work. So to some degree, you're the split that you derive is going to be based on your own individual weaknesses, or just areas that you want to prioritize. So your your movements, if you've got an awesome lower body, than maybe you'll have to split up quads and hams, like if that's if you if you you know, or you just don't care that much about it. Or if you've got, if you've got kids like me, I've I've got, I still train my arms directly. But I've got genetically, probably a fairly gifted set of arms, that if I didn't, I wouldn't necessarily have to train them by themselves, I could tack on triceps at the end of chest and biceps at the end of back and still have reasonably good develops at arms were but somebody that doesn't have that, that really, you know, especially if they're going to compete and they've got very small arms, they're going to need the weight, they're not going to be able to get as good a result to do and triceps. After they do chest and shoulders and doing biceps after back. Like they're going to benefit from having their own day dedicated to just direct bicep and tricep work where again, an adequate amount of volume, effort and load can be dedicated to those muscle groups.
Philip Pape 42:44
So let's continue on that with a specialization, then if you if someone were to run your 60 program, which is I'll call it a balanced program, right. And I know women, I don't know if it's geared toward men or women, but women tend to like more lower body work in their program, and yours has to, you know, to lower body days for upper body, which I kind of like about it, because as a percentage of the week, the dreaded days are smaller. Yeah. But if somebody had weaker legs, or women or whatever, how would How would you make a tweak to this? Well,
Andy Baker 43:13
part of that is part of that is women tend to recover better than men, you know, men, and that's not that they have some superhuman ability to recover. Women are not as good as men at generating the same amount of stress men, generally, because of that higher level, we have higher levels of motor unit recruitment, we have more ability to fatigue ourselves then do women. So it's not that they recover better. They create stress, not as well as we do, if you want to express it like that. They don't, they don't, they don't create as much stress. So they tend to recover like women can operate at a far higher like on strength work, they can they will do their volume work on a strength based program and a far higher percentage of one our end, like women can do volume work at 90% of one RM men can't do that. And it's not that they recover better. It's just that they're their one RM it's not as because they lack the neurological efficiency, that same thing happens, honestly, and this is this is one thing I've and I know like your audience here in mind, too, is not into the drug use and all that kind of stuff. But the same thing happens with guys that are taking a lot of anabolic steroids. Steroids actually don't make you recover faster. They make your output in the workout that much more like your neurological efficiency goes through the roof. So you actually generate a ton more stress during the workout. And I think that's part of the reason why you don't see IFBB pros, training their legs three days per week, or training their chest three days a week. People say well, they recover better, they can do much higher workloads, that's actually not true and they don't actually do more volume. They generate more stress, they create a more significant stress with their training and their adaptation to that stress. It's more profound. Does that make sense? But But But, but their recovery is not is not bad. If you take a steroid user and have them trained legs heavy three days per week, you won't be able to recover from that. So actually someone who's less neurologically efficient could get away with training their legs three days per week. Does that make sense? Yeah, I see. If you have that spectrum, if you want to, you know, if you like, if you wanted to have like a three part spectrum, at one end of the spectrum, you would have this is a very oversimplified version. But on one end of the spectrum, you would have, you know, women on the middle, you would have non enhanced males. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you would have enhanced males. In terms of neurological efficiency, the closer you are, to the female side of that spectrum, the more volume and frequency you tend to be able to do because you're generating less stress in every workout. Does that make sense? Yep, for sure. Yeah. And so that's, I don't know where I was going with that. Oh, for women. Yeah. So women, you might be able to put in, you know, three leg days or, or instead of splitting up, say, if they kept two leg days in there, which I would probably do, I would probably keep two leg days in there. But you might hit quads and hams hard on both of those days, like they might, they might, instead of splitting up quads and like you could maybe they could get away with a higher volume leg workout twice per week as opposed to splitting things up.
Philip Pape 46:19
Got it? That's, that's good to know. So
Andy Baker 46:22
that if somebody like let's say, a guy wanted to specialize in any particular body part, is that a similar approach where they would take the day that's focused on that part and just add, are they adding intensity? Are they adding another movement in there? So I the way that I do, it is like the way that I have my I have two specialization programs. On my website, I have an arm specialization program, and a shoulder specialization program, I'll probably write some other ones. But those are just the two that I started with. Because I have a little bit more familiarity with designing those. So I've got some, I've got more feedback from customers and clients and stuff with those. But what the first thing that I do is I don't look, I don't look at saying, Okay, how can we just blow up the amount of volume and frequency that we do? I don't, that's not again, that's not my primary. My primary, actually, let's say with the arm specialization program is with the training stimulus itself, how can we optimize the amount of stress that this person can put onto their biceps and triceps, so I prioritize that during the week. One is I proceed that day with rest. So I might, so I may give them those Saturday and Sunday off, right, what I do is I bracket the area of the body that we want to prioritize, I bracket that on both ends with rest. So let's say Saturday and Sunday, I'm gonna give them an off day. And then Monday, we're going to hit their arm training. And we're going to do it so that way, they're they are fresh, they're not coming to that workout sore, tired, they're fresh, so that they can maximize loading, effort, level enthusiasm, even volume into that workout. And then the next day, I would do legs, followed by another rest day. So they actually get to two rest days on either side of that workout. And then later in the week, let's say Thursday, we would do like chest and shoulders, and maybe one other tricep movement in there. So I do I goose that frequency a little bit by giving them one really, really hard day of tricep training, say on Monday, and then touch it again later in the week. And then the same thing like we do like a back day on Friday with a little bit of bicep work.
48:30
My name is Tony from a strength lifter in my 40s Thank you to Phil in his Wits, & Weights community for helping me learn more about nutrition and how to implement better ideas into my strength training. Phil has a very, very good understanding of macros, and chemical compounds and hormones and all that and he's continuously learning. That's what I like about Phil, he's got a great sense of humor. He's very relaxed, very easy to talk to. One of the greatest things about Phil, in my view is that he practices what he preaches, he also works out with barbells, he trains heavy, not as heavy as me, but he trains heavy. So if you talk with him about getting in better shape, eating better, he's probably going to give you some good advice. And I would strongly recommend you talk with him. And he'll help you out. Thanks.
Andy Baker 49:14
And I think where a lot of guys go wrong, as they say, Well, I want to develop my arms. So I'm going to, I'm going to have three dedicated or I'm going to train my arms heavy and hard and high volume Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So I'm just going to go apeshit with volume and frequency effort like and I'm going to just going to annihilate my arms. One, it doesn't work that well, because recovery is not going to be good, too. There's going to be interference effects on the other the other upper body work that you do. So when you do chest shoulder, work backward. Where are you going to put that in? If you're training you're it's like you're going to be now instead of like letting your arms rest and recover after you bomb the shit out of them. You got to go right into like a chest day or a back day or whatever. So you're training alarms. Yeah, yeah, you're training those damaged muscles and I think Like in order for a muscle to grow it, it needs adequate stimulus and it needs adequate rest. You don't the way to do it is to is to maximize the, what I was saying before maximize the stimulus, but not necessarily through just bombarding that muscle with more volume and more frequency. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Philip Pape 50:20
makes sense. Yeah, I was wondering the context, even though of the Six Day Program, is it already? Are you already maxed out effectively? And you're talking about now substitutions for specialization? Or do you take take the day where you're focusing on that one body part, now you have two days around it that don't have that body part. And you can still apply the same approach?
Andy Baker 50:40
Well, if you do this, like if you do the six day, like you said, the six day program that I laid out, it's very well balanced. Like if you just take it, if you just look at it, you know, on paper, it pretty well balances everything. But if you want it to maintain that six day program that you want it to prioritize, say your arms, what I would do, you've got the arm day on Friday, on Monday, on your chest day, I would just add a tricep movement after you do your chest work, and then a bicep, one bicep movement after your back day, and then just keep your arm day in there. So I do I do move that frequency lever a little bit, but not a ton. Does that make? Does that make sense? I
Philip Pape 51:20
guess no, you're not interfering with the body parts day itself. And you're putting it far enough away from that day to kind of just hit it a little bit more. And that's
Andy Baker 51:27
the way that that six day program is laid out. It allows you to do that with just about any muscle group. I mean, you could do I think it might be a good idea to let some people know what we're talking about is to actually lay out the six day split. Yeah,
Philip Pape 51:41
let's try to I'm jumping all over the place to the split. And then I want to get into things like top setback offset, which I think is pretty cool. So that's
Andy Baker 51:48
the split. And you know, it kind of the joke is Monday is chest day, like Yeah, you know, like everybody, but yeah, Monday is chest. Tuesday is back. Wednesday is quads and calves. Thursday is shoulders and traps, Friday, biceps, and triceps, and Saturday hamstrings and then calves again, and then Sunday is an off day. So there is that's pretty well balanced, like every major muscle group has its own day. But again, the idea though, that like the criticism of a split like that is well you're only hitting muscle group, once per week. Well, there's two reasons why that's the well, there's a main reason why that's not true. And that's because the effect of overlap, like overlap is a real thing. Like there's a natural overlap of and this is influenced mainly by your exercise selection. So let me let me lay that out a little bit. So people can see that, even at if you're worried about frequency of oh, I'm only you said I'm doing shoulders on Thursday, like I'm only hitting my shoulders. Once per week. Well, that's not really true. If you look at your chest day, I always have a move an incline movement. On your chest day, it may be the first movement, it may be the second movement, but there's always an incline press on your chest day. All your EMG studies will show that inclines hit the front delts just as well as overhead pressing does. So right there. If your overhead pressing on Thursday with a machine or dumbbells or a barbell, whatever and then hitting inclines on Monday as part of your chest stay right there, you've got two direct stimulus stimuli for the front and the side delts. On your back day, any rowing movement that you do, especially rows where you've got, you know, elbows high, you're pulling in line with the chest, if you're, that's gonna, that's a tremendous rear delt movement, like you're going to get a lot of rear delt stimulus from basically all of your rowing movement, and then you're hitting them again, in isolation on your shoulder day. So rear delts are getting hit twice per week, traps might get hit three days per week, because I would generally have people do like, say a shrug on Thursday. But most of your rowing exercises that you might do on your back day are going to incorporate traps. And then on your hamstring day, I usually have some sort of deadlift variation, the stiff leg deadlift and RDL, or even a conventional deadlift, all of which are also going to hit the traps. So even though we've got quote, one on paper, we've got one day for doing traps, they're actually getting stimulated three days per week, triceps are going to hit Get hit as many as four days per week. You have a direct tricep, you know, workout on Friday, but when you do overhead pressing on your shoulder day, when you do all of your chest pressing movement on Monday, those are those are hitting your triceps. And if you do, certainly things like pullovers but even things like chins where there's a lot of shoulder extension work that actually hits your triceps. So your triceps are actually getting hit four days per week only once really hard and really directly but that whatever need there is for more frequency is more than covered. Yeah, with something like this, you know, and then the leg days the same thing like if you lost if you know if you do a quad workout that has squats and leg presses and things like that there's going to be some hamstring and adductor overlap in there and Then you know, and again, you can be intentional with this by through your exercise selection, if you say, Well, I really want to hit my chest a little bit more, alright? Well, when you do your, on your tricep day, make sure you're incorporating things like close grip, bench pressing, and dense, like you're gonna, those are effective tricep movements, but there's a ton of overlap on the chest. And so you can very, very easily create a scenario where every muscle group is getting hit a minimum of two times per week, even if on paper, it's really only one day. And I actually think that's a better way to do frequency than is trying to annihilate every muscle group two to three days a week, actually think recovery is better. And the idea that you're somehow going to atrophy, or lose muscle mass by, you know, only hitting it hard once per week is not true, like your your triceps are not going to atrophy, when they're getting stimulated four days per week, even if, on three of those four days. It's quote, indirect,
Philip Pape 55:59
for sure. And I'm feeling it. I mean, I'm walking in right now, where as soon as something gets hit, maybe two, three days later, I feel it again, you know, I feel it again. So it's kind of coming back, but not so frequently that you're training through soreness. And for those of us guys who have like the low back fatigue, I've found this program extremely great for that kind of recovery, even during fat loss, like and we can talk about that. But just it which is counterintuitive to a lot of people, because we're thinking six days a week. So part of part of the movements, let's talk about the top setback offset approach they incorporate because I think that's pretty cool. And the fact that not everything is you know, three sets of eight to 12. Right, right. What's what's behind that?
Andy Baker 56:36
Well, it is six days a week still. So you do run the risk is if even even though like I said the workouts tend to be shorter, they're less systemically fatiguing, it's still you're still in the gym six days a week. And if you overdo things on the volume side of things, it is going to wind up being a whole shitload of work that's going to be hard to recover from. And so you really can't bombard you really can't do, you know, 15 or 20, even if it was more effective, which I don't think it is, but even if it was, it still would be very hard to do say 15 to 20 sets per muscle group, like you will wind up still overtraining to do that. And so, again, you have to look at, you know, if you're gonna be in the gym six days per week, the idea is, yes, you're in the gym six days per week, but basically, all of your workouts are under an hour. You know, I mean, it is possible to run them up a little longer, especially if you take more rest time, or you just bullshitting around or whatever. But it's the main reason around that Sunday Ticket is it is. But if you're really focused, and you really get in there, you get to the warmup sets, you time, your rest periods, and you don't have to rush and rest periods, but you keep track of your rest periods, you stay off your phone, you know, all that kind of stuff, you can get all of these workouts done in under an hour, you know. And so that's really the only way that that six day a week program is sustainable over a long period of time, is to keep that volume minimal. And again, if you operate under the notion, like as I do, that your effort level, taking more of your exercises to failure is an important component of muscle growth, then it limits the amount of volume that you can do in a given workout. You can't, you can't do you know, 20 sets of quads and push you're going to be having way too many of your sets be just submaximal junk volume is what I would consider so. So it winds up being, you know, what I have found, as I've gotten both older, but also stronger, and also better at delivering a stress to a given muscle. And that comes through a lot of different things when it comes through just mindset like Do you have the mental toughness and the grit to really push hard and not rack the bar, as soon as it gets hard? Or do you have the grit to really push through that. But I also think that there's a, you know, as you get stronger, and the load increases on all of these exercises, that influences the amount of volume that you can do. But also things like mind muscle connection, and really understanding how you know how muscles work, and how things are supposed to feel and really getting good at like all of those lend themselves to being able to generate a high high level of stress with less work. And the analogy that I always use and also exercise selection. Also pick picking and choosing the exercises that deliver the optimal amount of stress to that muscle group through taking it through a full range of motion. Having a longer eccentric component, limiting the amount of limiting the amount of work that other muscles like this is where you might consider you can make the argument that a hack squat is actually a better quad developer than say like a low bar squat because of the fact that you did it. Other quads are doing all of your taking the quads through a full range of motion and it's really only the quads that are doing the work. So when you take that to failure, let's say or right up to failure, it is your quads that are failing verse is when you take a deadlift, this is the I've made this. I've played devil's advocate on this for a couple of years now. And just to try to get people to think when you take a deadlift to failure, what is failing? You don't know. Right? You could be any number of things. Could when you take the Romanian bottleneck, when you take a Romanian deadlift to failure? What's failing? Yeah, probably. So you take a leg curl to failure, what's failing, you definitely it's the hamstrings, right? When you take a hack squat to failure, what's failing the quads. So that starts to get into that the whole Mike is retail concept of the stimulus to fatigue ratio, the stimulus is increasing on that muscle group. But the overall amount of systemic fatigue is less. So by choosing better exercises, doing the exercises in the right manner, from a from a mechanical standpoint, you know, when you do a hack squat, having your feet low and narrow on the platform versus high and wide on the platform, makes it harder on the quads. So doing when you when you start to manipulate your exercise selection to be more stressful on the muscle that you're trying to target, you're going to need less volume. Make sense? Does that make sense? Yeah, and excited. And then you couple that with extremely high effort level, you know, you can you can do one all out set Hack Squats, is potentially more. here's the, here's the even better comparison, a hack squat versus a front squat, a Barbell Front squat, like people love to point at front squats is like the preeminent quad movement. I don't think that it necessarily is because most people fail the front squat because of their inability to hold the bar on their, like, it's not their quads that fail, it's usually their abs or their low back or their upper back, like you're so limited by something that doesn't have anything to do with the movement, that it makes it not not as good of not as good of an exercise. So you, you probably can't do just one all out set of front squats and get the same stimulus as you would to one all outside of Hack Squats. If that makes sense.
Philip Pape 1:02:09
Yeah, it makes sense. And as you're saying, as I'm thinking of all the different techniques you have programmed in, I was looking at just the last week alone, on squat day, after some sort of front squat or safety bar squat, you had a single all outset of I don't know, it was programmed in there. I did a Platts squat, but it was the same intent it was to hit your quads really hard just for one set. You also have almost every day, the the top setback offset was just two sets, but you're doing it in a heavy range and the more of a hypertrophy, like you know, higher rep range. So then there's the DC method, there's all these things that you incorporate that Keep it keep the session short, but really let you hit the the muscles.
Andy Baker 1:02:46
Yeah, that's so that's, and that's part of the reason that that works, when coupled with the right exercise selection. So when you're, when you're doing movements that really allow you to target the muscles that you're trying to work, you take the muscles to a full eight range of motion, they can be loaded progressively over time, they have a longer eccentric component, all of those sorts of things that put a ton of, they're not limited by other muscle groups, all of those things are going to reduce the amount of volume that you're going to need. Because it's a better tool, it's a more stimulative tool. And so that's, I think that's a part of where, you know, that comes from, is, is and I found that with those types of movements, you can generate more than enough stress with to all outsets. And I typically will do, that's just one of those things that it just comes through trial and error of, you know, you do one kind of heavy, you know, one set to kind of maximize loading that like four to eight rep range, and then strip some weight off and do a second set like maybe an eight to 12 rep range. And you put push both of those sets maximally, you're pretty well done with that movement. After that. It's
Philip Pape 1:03:54
you It's It's hard man, you know, it's hard, you think it's easy on paper, or some people do, but it's if you're pushing the right load, it's it's tough.
Andy Baker 1:04:02
And part and part of that is you look at I look at this, and this is something that you kind of I borrowed kind of from the sprinting world, is, when you're looking at how much how many sets to do on an exercise, it's how much performance drop off is there from one set to the next to the next. And if you're losing a significant amount of performance ability from one set to the next, you're really pissing in the wind or just piling up fatigue with less stimulus. So like if you put on three plates on a hack, squat machine, the four plates, whatever it is, and you push, you know, one all out set of, say 12 reps and it's just you know, that 12th rep you could just barely get it, you know, you took that you could not have gotten a 13 throughout. If you do if you rest say three to five minutes and do another set at that same load. What's going to happen to your reps, well, they're going to drop down to like six or seven like you're going to have a massive so I look at that As I'm not really creating any new significant stress without additional set, all I'm doing is compiling fatigue. And it's the same way sprint coaches tend to look at track workouts is that what speed drops off at a certain amount of repetitions, let's say you're training a guy for 100 meter sprint or whatever, once the speed drops below a certain threshold, they're not training speed anymore. So they have they're going to cut they're going to cut the workout off. Does that make sense? So that's it's not an exact, perfect analogy. But it's something I feel like carries over to the bodybuilding or strength world or whatever is like a certain amount of performance drop off is a good a good way to learn what your cut offs should be volume wise. So I like like to, that's why I like the one heavy top set, followed by the one lighter back offset, take both of them maximally. And then that's it like you've you've pretty much it's time to move on to a different exercise like I've, I've extracted everything that I'm going to get from that particular movement. And I'm going to get more benefit from just moving on to a different exercise.
Philip Pape 1:06:04
Yeah, and just how much more time do you have? By the way? I got? I got plenty of time. Good. Yeah. And it's not like everything is like that, because you'll have pre exhaustion, I guess is what you're going for. When you start with a lighter movement, let's say lateral raises on shoulder to you might start with that. And it's it might be three, four sets. And then you might even have, say pull ups or chin ups on backdate, you might have five sets, it's some places it makes sense right to have.
Andy Baker 1:06:30
Yeah, because their volume. And that's just like the pull up thing like that's just that comes directly from my own kind of training experience is this funny thing happens to me on pull ups is like, let's say the first set that I do, I get like 10 or whatever. And then I do a second set. And I might get like seven. But then I can do a third a fourth offense of a six. Yeah, it's never drops off. And I think again, that's not that the back has some superhuman ability to recover better, it's that certain, it's harder, it's harder to generate the same level of stress on say, a pull up, like you're not actually taking that muscle to absolute and complete failure in the same way that say a half squat does to the quads. Does that does that make sense?
Philip Pape 1:07:16
Like it doesn't, I've always wondered that too. It's like, am I not training hard enough and previous sets? Or is it just recovering that that much, it's
Andy Baker 1:07:23
the same like with a lateral raise or something like that, like you, you can't one you can't load those things up very much less. So there's like an inability to just progress and load. And there's also because they're so mechanically disadvantaged, is that it's actually hard to really create a ton of stress where that where that, that that muscle group is just done like it's exhausted, like you can do, like on the pecs, the quads, even the hamstrings to some extent like, like, not all muscle groups are the same, like it's not that the muscle groups are different, it's just that the movements themselves are harder to generate the same amount of fatigue or like, even like with back like a barbell row or something like that, like, like you don't actually really hit like true failure becomes like technical failure, like they just get really really sloppy, whereas like on a bench, you know, your chest pressure go in, and then like all of a sudden boom, like, it just stops, like no force can be generated from that like and part of that's just your positioning, like the way that you're locked in, you can truly take that muscle to failure. So like pecs, quads, things like that tend to be easier to actually take to like true failure. Whereas other exercises, pull ups, lateral raises certain other things, you just can't, you can't generate enough stress with a low volume. So I tend to operate at a little bit higher volume there to get this equipped, same equivalent amount of work in.
Philip Pape 1:08:45
And let me ask you about that for a newer a newer lifter, newer lifter, but a lifter new to this style of training. There's the mind muscle connection, there's the temple, there's things like that when I think of a lateral raise. Sometimes I have to remind myself just to slow down, take it easy and really pull with adult like Don't you know, don't get too much of the traps involved. Don't like use too much momentum. And then you realize you don't have to go as heavy, either. Like what are your thoughts on helping someone get to that point through their training, so they're really lifting want, it
Andy Baker 1:09:16
takes time? Like mind muscle connection takes time. I do think that it matters. Like a lot of people say well, that doesn't really matter. It absolutely matters. Like, like you're gonna get like if you come off of a set of lateral raises, and your side delts are just blown up and they're, they're pumped and they're burnt, like you're gonna get better growth than the guy who comes off a set a lateral raises that's like, what is this work? Like? I don't know, like, you know what I mean? And that's how most like beginners are especially like backward, they'll come off of a pulldown machine. They have no sensation whatsoever that their lats were worked it's all forearms or biceps or anything other than the her laughs Yeah, right. And it but a more advanced guy. He's going to come off of a pulldown machine or Whatever he's gonna come off of that and his lats are going to be burning and blown up like, it's, it's easier on certain muscle groups like you don't have to teach mind muscle connection on a leg extension, like you put somebody on a leg extension machine and have them beg out 10 or 15 reps, whether they're more gifted athlete or not, their quads are going to be burning, right, they're going to be pumped, they're going to be burning, like, there's no doubt, like what muscle group is doing that work. But that's just because of the mechanical nature of that lift, it locks you in to the point where there is no other muscle group that can contribute to that movement other than the quads. And so it's easy to establish that mind muscle connection on that when it's something that's really, really formed dependent, like a lateral raise, or most of you like most of your rowing exercises, or pull downs, guys do those for years and never really feel their back. And it takes time to do that. And then once, once you start to develop that mind muscle connection, and then you you pair that up with loading and effort level, and all that sort of thing, then it becomes even more effective, because you're really, really aware of like, what you're targeting, and how to how to slightly manipulate your grip, or your back angle or the touch point of the bar, so that you can really, really feel the muscle that you're trying to work. And that is I don't think that's an unimportant thing. Because if you're trying to do a movement, like, are we just trying to row or are we trying to hit the lats or the upper back or whatever like, and you need to learn those types of one is just time. But two, I think, like machine exercises can be really helpful on this, like, you're going to learn like on a like a chest supported seated row machine, you're going to learn how to feel your back on that, more so than you will on a barbell row like you're going to, and then you can take the lesson that you like how to really squeeze the scapula and like really feel all the musculature of your back and your lats and stuff working on that chest supported machine row, which is a more simple movement. Now you take that mind muscle connection that you've developed there and try to translate that into a more complex movement like a barbell row. So sometimes, like just stepping back and going to we think of like a barbell row was like a basic movement. But really like a, like a chest supported, machine row would actually be more basic in that regard in terms of it will really teach you the proper mechanics of rowing. Like you'll develop that mind connection faster on that. And actually like on like lateral raises or something like that, like one of the better like the one of the best ways to kind of learn it's like on one of those seated lateral raise machine, where it teaches you to hear Yeah, like your your, because most guys like on a lateral raise, if you watch them, they're focused on the dumbbell. So they're focused on the dumbbell getting up high, but not their humerus, and the job of the side delts is to actually elevate the humerus up. So like learning how to do that, but with a dumbbell held out in your hand. So you're not just swinging the weight around, you're actually using the side delt to abduct the humerus, like that's like so just like they learned some some of it is just intellectual understanding of anatomy and muscle function. Like what, what is this muscle? What is it actually trying to do like on a like, like on a chest, like your chest, like, the role of the PEC is not to press the bar out. It's to add up to the humerus, it's actually sort of like a fly is actually technically a more direct pectoral stimulus than, say, a benchpress. But if you understand that, what the pecs role in the benchpress is to I don't know if people can see but like, if your arm is, you know, abducted out here, and you're trying to draw it closer to the midline of your body, like that's the role of the PEC. So if you can think about that, while you're bench pressing, it's going to enhance that mind muscle connection and in your chest pressing movements, if that makes sense. Yeah, like
Philip Pape 1:13:48
probably better for the shoulders too, because you're not trying to like fooling the shoulders forward.
Andy Baker 1:13:51
Yeah. Or like even even certain things like, like, I've made the argument before, like, I actually think bench pressing is a good PAC developer, but not in the same way that a power lifter might benchpress like power lifters guard Yeah, power lifters are focused on moving the most amount of weight from point A to point B not not to try to stimulate the packs. And so a powerlifter might take a really wide grip, have a big arch, and lower the bar down low onto the torso and hit even like in the upper abs, like if they've got a little belly like actually hitting in the upper abs, or like far below, you know, the the, like the sternum like might actually be a stronger bench. But if you look at what is the peck doing in that movement, sometimes it's not doing that much as if you were if you lowered your arch a little bit, touch the bar up a little bit higher and focus more on the actual function of the chest like that actually makes for a better that's the argument that like a hammer strength chest press machine is better than a barbell bench press. That would be the argument because it actually takes the PEC through, it's more a fuller and more natural range of motion then does a barbell, but if you're aware of muscle function, you can kind of manipulate those movements a little bit to get better contractions out of them. And so that's, that's, that's a part of that as well. So I
Philip Pape 1:15:08
think it's very important all of this because you know, people listening, I think a lot of people treat accessory and are no, we're not calling them that. But these isolation movements as easy, right? It's just, you just go through the motions, treat them as technical as as low bar back squat, and really learn the anatomy, what
Andy Baker 1:15:25
actually almost almost even more so like, I tell my guys that, like, when I have an online client, you know, that's more interested in hypertrophy, I'll be like, alright, this is our first week together first couple of weeks, like, I want you to send me videos. And it's like, what the videos that they send me are like the squat, the bench and the deadlift, right, like the big movements, but I don't see videos of their lateral raises, and their curls and their triceps stuff. But I'm like, No, I want to see that too. Because actually, the technical execution of those movements is just as important, if not more important than the big lifts, like, like on a squat, I don't teach my muscle connection on a squat, like I teach mechanics, right? Like, but on, you know, you know, some other movement, I'm going to be more focused on like, learning, like making sure that guy is really, really technically executing that movement well, and feeling that movement, where he's supposed to be feeling it. So it's, it is like mechanically, the little, the quote, the little stuff, it's just as important, if not more important than the big stuff. And that's where, again, yeah, the idea that, and even for a powerlifter. Like, if you're going to be doing these bodybuilding style accessory movements, to support your squat bench and deadlift, you still need to do them almost with the same mindset that a bodybuilder does. Like, it's not less important for them, because the idea is still you're doing tricep extensions to what to build muscle in your triceps. It's the same reason a bodybuilder would do it. So like the technical execution definitely matters. And I think the better you get at the technical execution, and the more mind muscle connection you can develop. And again, you couple that with increased strength, more mental toughness, or crit or whatever you want to call it, more of a comfort level pushing to failure and beyond, then that starts to cut down on the amount of volume that you would need to do.
Philip Pape 1:17:12
Here's more for the work. Yeah, yeah, here's
Andy Baker 1:17:14
a great analogy that I love to use, okay. In terms of, if you have a guy, like, let's say we have a board, we have a two by four, and the object is to hammer the nail into this two by four. And I give you a nail, and I give you a big ol heavy crescent wrench. And I say, alright, hammer that nail into that. Can you do that? Yeah. And how many times do you need to hit the nail to drive it all the way into the board? Maybe 70 times, right? And so if you're using a bad tool, for this task, you may come to the conclusion, well, it takes 70 strikes to drive a nail into this board. But what if I take the crescent wrench away and I give you a hammer? Well, now you just drove it in and 15 hits, right, maybe you're not a good craftsman, right? So you still have to hit this nail at times, but you have a now you have a better tool, right? Just in this is exercise selection you're taking you're have a better tool, it takes less volume, less number of strikes to accomplish the same exact task, because you'd have a more efficient tool. Now, give that good hammer to some guy that's been a carpenter for 20 years. You ever see those guys driving nail? It's like my dad, like, yeah, it always pissed me off, because like, we would do be doing fencing or something and heat, my dad would take it and Bobo, you know, two hits, and the nail is driven. And it took me eight times, you know, to drive that same nail, because of the skill. He's and that's the same thing if he's using a better tool, but he has more skill. And so in the hand, the the right tool in the hands of a more skilled person, it's going to take less strikes or less volume, if you want to call it that to accomplish the same task. And I think it's exact same thing with trading is that a stronger, more efficient user of a good tool can do the same, it can get the same benefit from a hell of a lot less work.
Philip Pape 1:19:08
Yeah, and this is training like that's the point even the bodybuilding stuff is training. So treat it like that skill. And it's good reminder to me to you know, get up and go to go to in tomorrow really make the most out of my time. But So besides that, what are what are some of the other mistakes you see people making on this style program?
Andy Baker 1:19:27
I think I think, like, I don't, I don't want to call it a mistake. But learning opportunities. Well, it's a mindset shift. In a way I think it's very it can be very difficult for guys who they, they maybe they're they're coming from a strength background, or whatever they've put a certain amount of time into their say their squat bench and their deadlift, their one of their one RMS and these lifts and they don't when they make a shift, they say okay, well now I want to do hypertrophy or bodybuilding or whatever You Your one Rm is not a get because of the things that we talked about in the beginning of this episode, which was the neurological efficiency, your one Rm is very much going to be influenced not just by the amount of muscle mass that you have, but also the amount of volume and frequency that you do on that particular lift. So you're, if you reduce that, if you already and you switch to a slightly different style of training, like, it is possible that your one rep max is going to go down, because you're not training in a way that prioritizes that because you're not focused on that that neurological development of, of just a given lift. And so there's sometimes can be a mindset shift of it. It's not that strength doesn't matter in a bodybuilding site, it does. It's just one RM strength and the squat bench. And deadlift is not the key component for developing more muscle mass like and so when I talk, like when I say strength is still a part of muscle building, like you have to get bigger to get stronger. But you also have to get stronger to get bigger. Like it's a it's a loop that feeds itself. And so, but what we're what we're now talking about is that maybe your five to eight rep max, in a hack squat is actually more important to quad development than your one rep max low bar squat is. Yeah, does that make sense? So it's the focus
Philip Pape 1:21:28
on these new lists. And we're missing.
Andy Baker 1:21:31
It's Yeah, so there's still the progressive overload is still there. It's just, it's in a different manner. Like if you start on day one of it, you do eight reps on the hack squat with two plates on each side, like that still has to go up, like you still need to be able to progress to eight reps with three plates and eight reps with four plates or, you know, like, you're still have to focus on progressive overload and trying to add weight to these movements as often as possible. But that is different than saying, I need to work on my one rep max, on squat bench and deadlift, because there's an element to one rep. Maxine, that's purely neurological right, does it factor into bodybuilding, just like 20 rep sets. On squats, there's a cardiovascular or component and a muscular endurance component to getting good at 20 rep sets, that has very little to do with muscle growth. So that you you don't need to worry about that. So that's why I like that middle range is the bodybuilding rep range. Like you talked to most bodybuilding coaches, the guys that I respect the Dante true Dells and Matt Janssen, Justin Harris's, all these guys that coach bodybuilders. So I'll tell you the same thing. Like if you had to sum up bodybuilding, it's progressive overload on those middle rep ranges, that five, five to eight, five to 12. Some of its exercise dependent, like certain mood, like you're not going to do five reps on lateral raises, but like, it's your let's just say, five to 15. You know, again, that depends somewhat on, but it's really about building strength in that rep range. Because you get below the five rep range you get into, especially with singles and things like that there's a neurological component there that is enhanced with methodologies that don't really have that much to do with building muscle. Right?
Philip Pape 1:23:24
If that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Right. Like you don't
Andy Baker 1:23:27
need to have like, you don't need to enhance muscle mass, you don't need to have light and medium squat days. Right? Like that's a strength product that those light and medium days are there to enhance neurological efficiency, but aren't going to do that for the singles. Yeah, yeah, they're not, they're not going to do all that much in terms of building muscle mass. So the the way that you're going to train for more muscle mass is that progressive overload in those medium rep ranges pushing to failure and then exercise selection just divorcing yourself from the idea that you that you have to low bar squat bench press, and deadlift and that even if you are you may be performing those movements in a way that actually is like, like bench pressing, you're going to be able to benchpress more weight in a powerlifting style bench laying arch, wider grip, lower touch point, you're probably gonna bench more like that, but you're gonna have less stimulus on the pecs. You know, it's, it's progressive overload but done in a certain manner.
Philip Pape 1:24:25
And there's still plenty of big lifts on this program. I mean, compound lifts every day regardless, and
Andy Baker 1:24:30
I put them in there because partly I put them in there because one of the equipment selection for the mean, most guys are not not necessarily trading in Gold's Gym Venice, so they don't have a pendulum squat and Sunday guys do. But I'm trying to set the program up that is in line with most people's equipment situations. I mean, most people that are doing this program and I say, like don't do this, if all you have is a as a barbell and a rack, you're gonna struggle with this program. It's hard to shoehorn all that stuff in like you You need but most of the guys that are doing this program have a pretty well equipped home gym, or are training in a commercial facility where they have access to machines and cables. And things like that. Because it does, it does make it easier because the systemic stress is lower with machine type stuff, but the local stimulus can be higher. And so you need to have access to some of these tools that allow you to really, really highly stress the individual muscle groups but don't create the same level of systemic fatigue. An interesting observation I talked about this with Dave Tate, actually, a couple days ago when I was at Elite FTS, was that when you saw during the pandemic, when everybody was kind of all at once all these body builders were forced out of their commercial gyms and like, into their home gym, like maybe they had something set up in their garage like just their old barbell and rack that they haven't used in 20 years. Like they were kind of forced into using, like a more basic setup. And they tried to recreate their training program with just barbells. Like a lot of them got injured, or overtrained like, like even Matt Janssen, who's like the top bodybuilding coach in the world, like towards PEC, you know, and I think part of that is they're trying to recreate these, these, these bodybuilding type splits using nothing but a bar with a barbell, and it's not the same thing. Like it's, it's more highly stressful to try to do everything with a barbell, and it's going to be difficult to do, you know, six days a week with all the different exercises and everything trying to recreate it on a barbell. So you need some of these movements in order to do that. And I think so, part of it is if you want to do talking about mistakes guys make is if is if you really want to get into bodybuilding, or you know, maximal physique development, whatever you want to call it, you're gonna have to invest in the appropriate equipment, like you can't just like so either, you're gonna have to get a gym membership, or you're going to have to spend some money on developing a really good home gym, or whatever. But you can't just say, Well, all I have is a bar, how can I do this program like, that doesn't work. And then the other thing you're gonna have to do is divorce yourself from the idea that one rep, Maxine, and squat bench and deadlift is still the primary goal of the program. Because it's not like there may be there's going to be like you've seen it, like, there's going to be periods like I do the six week blocks, where we don't squat bench or deadlift, in any on any of the days like that, usually, we'll put them in there partly because I know guys want to do it. And if I go, if I go too long without letting a bench or squat or deadlift, like they're gonna wind up, go into something else. But part of that is I'm trying to show guys that yes, you can actually build muscle, and maybe even build muscle better. Getting away from these lifts. Like I'm still a fan of, like, I make a lot of arguments that I make about not squatting, benching, and dead lifting. Some of that is Devil's Advocate, stuff, as I'm trying to get people to think about why you might not do that. Like, I still think those are good movements, like I still think deadlifts are probably need to be in the program, at least part of the year. You know, for maximal development of the back, like it's just too good of a, like the loading and everything that you get from deadlifting is hard to replicate with other things. But it's getting guys to think about why we might not deadlift because I think once you kind of understand that you're going to have, you're going to understand the program that you're doing better. And that's better. Yeah,
Philip Pape 1:28:24
I like the variety. It's funny, it took me about three years of telling my wife what to get me for Christmas to get my home gym to where I could easily do a body but because you know, you need some sort of leg develop or some sort of hack, Squat leg press something or other, all the extra bars, you know, the dumbbells and it's quite a bit, you know, but but, uh, yeah, so the last, the last thing I want to talk about, because you alluded to it is the progression. And I'm kind of going to switch two or three topics in one here, but you've got your six week progression with the pretty much the same movements on, you know, you got the six days, and then those movements are repeated over six weeks, maybe a little bit of shift in rep range, but you're progressing them, then you have the week D load and then you go into a new cycle with new movements. Just talk about that a little bit in terms of autoregulation and also why it works well on a cut because this is like usually say this is your number one program recommended on a cut? Well,
Andy Baker 1:29:12
it is auto regulated in that, you know, one of the things I think you can make a mistake on a cut is that you alluded to it earlier in the podcast, which was that, you know, the studies have shown that like the higher IR or higher RPE training, lower volume is actually better at preserving muscle mass than doing like a bunch of like low weight volume or whatever. And I think you know, during the cut that one of the big mistakes that you can make is trying to do a bunch of volume you don't have you don't have the energy reserves to do that for one. So doing a ton of volume. You know if you're if your calories are low, your carbohydrates are lower. Like you have to make the most out of what you have like, like neither one of us believe in like no carb diets but But But typically, in a caloric deficit, your carbs are still going just because you have to cut calories, the cart, and you have to keep the protein up, right. So that doesn't, it doesn't leave a huge budget for a lot of carbohydrates. So you're going to have a limited supply of carbohydrates. And you need to utilize the gas in the tank that you have, right. And you don't want to burn that up. That's why I don't like, like hit protocols, necessarily, because I think it burns up too much glycogen. And the same thing happens with with like really high volume training, you're burning up too much energy without actually doing the real stimulative work on the muscle mass. So I think there's that one, it's just a question of energy resources and trying to be efficient with that. But then also, one of the mistakes that guys make during a cut is you, it's very difficult to preserve maximal strength on a cut. And that's not really the goal, you're trying to preserve muscle mass, not top in strength, top end strength is I mean, even there's, you could probably speak to this better than me. But being topped off on carbohydrates has an effect on the nervous system, like you're going to, you're going to have better nervous system activity in the presence of more carbohydrates, like your nervous system is not going to operate as well in a caloric deficit. So trying to focus too much on preserving maximal squat bench and deadlift, strength, let's say for one rep maxes is kind of a fool's errand. One, it's very hard to do. So you're going to wind up getting overly fatigued, overly frustrated, and worse, potentially opening yourself up to injury. You know, especially if you're late stages in a diet where like in bodybuilding, where you're really low in carbohydrates, because you're trying to pull water out and that sort of thing, you like you're more susceptible to injury, like that tissue is not as pliable. And so you don't. And that's typically where the injuries come from is maximal loading, especially on things like a squat or something like that. So you want to be careful about trying to get too wrapped up in a diet about preserving top end, like top end strengths. Because it's one, it's just not possible and the risk is high. So you want to say, I want to preserve the maximum amount of muscle mass that I have. And that's easier to do with a program like this, because it doesn't take as much to preserve muscle mass, like if you're working the muscle, hard, even at a low volume, you're not going to lose muscle mass like you're going to you may not gain a lot. And you certainly aren't, may not gain as much top end strength. And you may even lose a little bit of strength, but you want to you want to fight to to keep as much strength as possible. But on in those medium to higher rep ranges. You know what I'm saying? And so this a program like this tends to allow you to push as hard as you can at any given workout, but kind of allow whatever happens to happen in terms of I don't know if that makes sense. So, yeah, yeah, no, no, it does. And it's just working within a range. Like I may just say, I want you to perform one all outset in the four to eight rep range on a pitch. Like that's like as long as you if you do that, regardless of what the load is, but you take as much load as you can, and push hard in that four to eight rep range. And then you take a little off the bar, and you want additional set as hard as you can right up to failure in the eight to 12 rep range, you're not going to lose muscle mass with that type of approach, it may not gain that much strength, but you're not going to lose. And that's when you're dieting, the idea is to trim as much fat off as possible, but preserve as much muscle as possible. And so a protocol like this helps with that. Also, there's some some evidence, I think both in the literature as well as just anecdotal. And this, this is really into whether you're dieting or bulking or maintaining or whatever, the harder you're pushing on your exercises. So the more the more you're pushing your sets to failure, and that sort of thing, the quicker you're going to plateau on those movements, like you're, you're going to hit a wall faster on those. And so there's a need to rotate out to different movements. Whereas if you're training more powerlifting style, and you're doing much more of your your work sub maximally like you can because a lot of like my powerlifting programs, and it seems counterintuitive, but a lot of the work is submaximal work, more sets and that sort of thing so maximally and you can actually sustain that's that's actually the only way if you want to train squat bench and deadlift year round, like most of your work is going to actually wind up being submaximal that's the only way to sustain it. But if you're pushing your your exercise, if you're pushing to failure on these movements or right up to failure, you'll actually find that you hit plateaus and burn out those movement patterns faster. And so that you need to rotate out to new exercises. Body builders have been doing that for decades. Some guys will do it physically. So they'll do it in phases they'll do they're going to You know, start their chest day with an incline press and they're going to do that as long as possible until it kind of burns out, they're not making any more progress and then they'll switch over to a flat bench or to incline with dumbbells or something like that. Or, you know, what is more common in bodybuilding programs traditionally, is guys switch out all the time. And sometimes it's just completely auto regulated. So this week I went, I started within client the next week, I started with bench the next week, I started with dumbbell inclines, or whatever. And that looks if you're familiar with like the conjugate method, that's, that's the same exact principle, like most like the most bodybuilding programs are the is the conjugate method. I talked with Dave Tate about this last week, it's going to be on the podcast, but they don't call it that in bodybuilding. But it's the same principle. And when you do the conjugate method, you're what we're, this is a powerlifting program. But what we asked you to do is say every week, you're going to max out for a one rep max on a benchpress variation. Okay, now, why do we use variation? Why don't we say every Monday, we're just going to max out on the benchpress. Because if you max out on the bench press every week, you're going to regress, like you cannot do the same movement pattern. Yeah, you can't do the same movement pattern every single week for a max. But if you slightly alter it, and one week is bench the next week is close grip, the next week is incline the next week is pin presses, you actually can max out every single week, just by that slight alteration in exercise selection. And the same thing happens in a bodybuilding program, because you're pushing, you're not pushing to one rep max, but you are pushing to failure, you can't stay with those movements that long before they need to be rotated out for something else. And so it's because there's similar things that happen, say in a one rep max versus a five rep max or an eight rep max, and that it's very demanding. And you basically burn that movement out. So there has whether it's six weeks, or every other week, or however you're going to do it, there has to be some mechanism in there to rotate the exercises out. Because if you do the same exercises, to failure, or for one rep maxes, or whatever, every week, you're going to wind up actually going backwards. So that's even more true. Again, the more advanced that you are, the more this is going to be true. And so for like a brand new guy that's doing this program, if after six weeks, he still feels like he's progressing on the six week block that he's in, I would actually tell it Yeah, you could actually keep going with that six week block, and then just extended out to eight weeks or 12 weeks or whatever, until you start to see diminishing returns and then switch. So you don't necessarily have to switch every six weeks. I encourage people to push hard enough and load aggressively enough so that in six weeks, you're ready to switch movements. Yeah, yeah, where you've probably reset once during that time, maybe it's really hard when you start at the top of the rep range move down maybe have to set well that's that would be ideal. Like it's like in the program, it might say, okay, you know, first set on Quad Day as a safety squat bar for four to eight rep, you know, one set one all out set of four to eight, like it I don't always say but it is implied that all of those sets are basically max effort, not nuts, like on squats, I'm not necessarily saying you have to fail, like you have to wind up like on the floor, like failure. But basically, you're going to push those sets as hard as you can so that at the beginning of the six weeks, let's say you start off at eight reps at 315. You know, by the end of the six weeks, you want to be down, you've you've wanted to load aggressively enough so that you're safe, barely getting four, you know, so and then you can either reset the way or switch to a different exercise. And that's the thing with hypertrophy is that there's a much much wider range of movements that are available to you like as long as you're pushing maximally whether you're doing a safety squat bar, or a cambered bar or a hack squat or a leg press like exercise selection is as long as they're all kind of check all the boxes, there's there's nothing that you have to do. And lots of movements can be equally effective. And that's one of the big differences between bodybuilding and powerlifting is in powerlifting, you have to squat bench and deadlift.
