Speaker 1: Tivity Ankle, Craig Anthony Harper, Hi, how are you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, look I'm real, I'm real good has.
Speaker 1: How are you bursting out of my fucking flannel shirt?
Speaker 1: It's so excited. Let's hope that this effort lasts longer
Speaker 1: than ninety three seconds, because I'm glad you're I'm glad
Speaker 1: you're you, and I'm glad you're not a high maintenance
Speaker 1: client from a far away or I should say, guess
Speaker 1: from a far away land, because so far we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be impressing. Because my speaker has done a big pooh
Speaker 1: on top of itself.
Speaker 3: And I've been so what happens, folks, is I record
Speaker 3: at home, obviously with an external mike, which is mildly fancy,
Speaker 3: a road mic, and a few other bits and pieces,
Speaker 3: which is good, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, all the good gear, except I'm a more on
Speaker 1: and so when shit breaks, it's just like Banana's in pajamas,
Speaker 1: bunch of bumping into each other, just falling over, or
Speaker 1: picture one of those people and you know those big
Speaker 1: suits that they wear, the big blow up suits when
Speaker 1: they punch each other in like a boxing castle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like that guy, just bumping around Anyway, we're going on.
Speaker 2: For seventeen minutes, everyone, seventeen minutes.
Speaker 1: As we start. It's three eighteen right now. We started
Speaker 1: at three and I couldn't figure shit out for seven
Speaker 1: eight minutes. Anyway, here we are. How are you? Are
Speaker 1: you all right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very very good. Thanks?
Speaker 1: Now today is I should? I should? This is not
Speaker 1: good good potty, but fuck it, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: it live on the potty because some of the other
Speaker 1: days sent us a message which was lovely a week
Speaker 1: or so ago. I did, Fuck, it's not happening today.
Speaker 1: It's not coming up on my phone, so I can't anyway, somebody,
Speaker 1: fucking now, welcome back to you. Anything could go wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm crying, Carper, and everything is going wrong. That's why
Speaker 1: we called it that. Somebody put up a notice in
Speaker 1: the group apologies. There was a lady, I can't my
Speaker 1: thing won't open up, so I can't find you name.
Speaker 1: But she went, hey, love all the fitness ones, but
Speaker 1: they seem to be always more directed at beginners, and
Speaker 1: I went, that is a very good point. That's very observant.
Speaker 1: And so I even said, noted, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: something for people who are a little bit more advanced
Speaker 1: somewhere in the medium too. I'm about to go to
Speaker 1: the Olympics kind of category and we'll have a chat
Speaker 1: about that. So this is really four people who have
Speaker 1: been training for a while. I've got some experience, some fitness,
Speaker 1: some strength, anywhere between. You know, three probably six to
Speaker 1: twelve months of experience where you've really started to change
Speaker 1: and adapt and you're not a beginner anymore. You don't
Speaker 1: have your training wheels on anymore, and you've started to
Speaker 1: get some results, or you could be anyone through to
Speaker 1: somebody who's at the very point end of a sport.
Speaker 1: Remember we're not talking about individual sports. We're talking about
Speaker 1: training bodies. We're talking about conditioning bodies. And that is
Speaker 1: conditioning bodies for life, conditioning bodies for health and wellness
Speaker 1: and function and performance, and also conditioning bodies for sport
Speaker 1: if that's where you're at. And of course, a conditioning
Speaker 1: program for a runner is not going to be the
Speaker 1: same for a powerlifter, is not going to be the
Speaker 1: same for somebody who's got a history of lower back
Speaker 1: injuries and wants to be able to play footy again
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, or just the average punter who's
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty or seventy and says, I've been training
Speaker 1: on and off for quite a while. I've been training
Speaker 1: for the last year or two pretty consistently. I want
Speaker 1: to turn up the volume and the intensity. How do
Speaker 1: I do that? So this show is about that. Also,
Speaker 1: I'll shut up in a moment. It is not a
Speaker 1: personal prescription. So don't say Craig Harper said I should
Speaker 1: do that, and then when I went and did it
Speaker 1: and I busted my back. Don't do that. So what
Speaker 1: I'm doing is I'm talking about how training at a
Speaker 1: high level works. I'm talking about intensity and volume and
Speaker 1: when is probably a good idea to change a program
Speaker 1: or up the intensity or decrease the recovery, or manipulate
Speaker 1: the variables to work harder and to get more out
Speaker 1: of your body. So it is very much just me
Speaker 1: and Tiffany and Cook thinking out loud, not directing you
Speaker 1: to do anything in particular. But also, as you will
Speaker 1: hear through the show, it's like it's a lot of
Speaker 1: it makes sense. I'm not probably not going to say
Speaker 1: anything that blows your head off in terms of wow,
Speaker 1: I never would have imagined that it. Most of it
Speaker 1: makes sense, But I think it's good to hear from
Speaker 1: somebody who's worked with lots and lots of athletes and
Speaker 1: lots and lots of highly conditioned people and not so
Speaker 1: conditioned people over a very long time, So that would
Speaker 1: be me, all right. So I've given Tiff a bunch
Speaker 1: of prompts or questions which I think are good for this.
Speaker 1: But I've also said, ask as many or as few
Speaker 1: as you want, and we'll just see where we go.
Speaker 1: So there's there's probably a little bit of planning for this,
Speaker 1: to be honest, but you know, generally we have a
Speaker 1: plan and then we fuck the plan off and just
Speaker 1: go somewhere else. But I think these are good questions
Speaker 1: to explore because I think they're broadly relevant. So you've
Speaker 1: got all of I think I sent you through like
Speaker 1: twenty or fifteen. Where do you want to start?
Speaker 2: Well, I want to start by a big shout out
Speaker 2: to Kate Weaver, who thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Kate, Thank you Kate, and thank you Tip for finding Kate.
Speaker 1: Good work you, Kate, good work you tif the good
Speaker 1: work you listener. Where do we want to do? We
Speaker 1: just want to start at the top. What do you
Speaker 1: want to do? You take charge.
Speaker 2: Yep, I want to start at top. So at the
Speaker 2: top we've got overall training volume for more advanced people.
Speaker 1: Okay, so typically I'm going to say a lot of
Speaker 1: it depends, right, but it does depend. So if you
Speaker 1: are a more advanced let's say strength trainer, and you're
Speaker 1: all you want to do, and I put an asterisk
Speaker 1: next to that because it's a big deal, you know,
Speaker 1: but your main goals are just to build strength and function,
Speaker 1: have more muscle, have greater bone density, have more accessible
Speaker 1: functional muscle, and power and endurance and all of those things.
Speaker 1: Then your overall training volume for somebody like that would
Speaker 1: probably be in terms of just strength stuff, somewhere between
Speaker 1: three to seven hours a week. Now we're talking someone
Speaker 1: at the more pointy end of the scale. Then if
Speaker 1: you're a super duper advanced it might even be more
Speaker 1: than that. But also remember that, for example, you're a
Speaker 1: power lifter, or you're someone who's training for ultimate power
Speaker 1: and ultimate strength and ultimate muscle gain, there's going to
Speaker 1: be more recovery, there's going to be longer workouts, but
Speaker 1: there may even be less volume in a longer time
Speaker 1: because when we're lifting heavy and we're really trying to
Speaker 1: move the needle on muscle mass for example, or power
Speaker 1: or absolute strength, we tend to have more recovery time
Speaker 1: between sets. Conversely, somebody could come in who's more interested
Speaker 1: in still at the point to your end of the
Speaker 1: scale or the more advanced end of the scale, and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I am a triathlete, and so I
Speaker 1: need to be strong, but I can't carry an extra
Speaker 1: twenty kilos of muscle because that's not functional for my sport.
Speaker 1: So I want to build strength, but I also want
Speaker 1: to build muscular endurance because I tend to do very
Speaker 1: very high rep activities like writing and running and swimming.
Speaker 1: And so for somebody who's an an elite triathlete in
Speaker 1: this example, we want them to have, yes, some strength,
Speaker 1: some power, some speed depending on the distances that they
Speaker 1: run right and swim, but most likely they need to
Speaker 1: have great muscular endurance, so they would they would probably
Speaker 1: have a higher volume. They would definitely have a higher volume,
Speaker 1: more sets and reps and more stuff in the workout,
Speaker 1: but they would also have less recovery time between sets.
Speaker 1: But the overall workout might be forty five to sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: Whereas the power dude or the power girl who's in
Speaker 1: the gym just trying to get jacked and big and
Speaker 1: strong as a fucking house. They're going to do a set.
Speaker 1: It's going to be pretty heavy, it's going to be
Speaker 1: pretty hard, it's going to be pretty maximal, and then
Speaker 1: they may have two, three, even four minutes recovery time
Speaker 1: between sets. But that's what works for hypertrophy and power.
Speaker 1: So the answer is, which is kind of annoying, but
Speaker 1: it's very true, is training volume depends on what it
Speaker 1: is you're after. Generally, though, the more progressed you are,
Speaker 1: the further down the line you are, the more elite
Speaker 1: you are, the more the volume. But in terms of progression,
Speaker 1: you know, gains, improvement, adaptation, climbing, the kind of performance ladder.
Speaker 1: Remember that while training is crucial, recovery is just as
Speaker 1: crucial as is sleep, as is nutrition. So it's a
Speaker 1: multi dimensional thing. Tiffany and Cook, that's great.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get you to expand because we're going
Speaker 2: to expand on the hypertrophy and strength and power rep ranges.
Speaker 2: But before that, because I asked a question recently to you,
Speaker 2: and I think it's interesting when we are coming from
Speaker 2: an active background that is not in the weight room
Speaker 2: like I did. So I had an extensive history of
Speaker 2: boxing and then doing a lot of hit training, and
Speaker 2: then I came into doing heavy traditional kind of weight training,
Speaker 2: and I remember asking you, like, what how where do
Speaker 2: I sit in the novice, intermediate, elite kind of level
Speaker 2: of truck? What level of training am I at when
Speaker 2: it's a different style? So is there some rules around that?
Speaker 1: That's a really smart question. Actually, yeah, that is. I
Speaker 1: had not thought of that question. And so I would say,
Speaker 1: in general terms, when you started strength training with me,
Speaker 1: you were already fitter than average, stronger than average, probably
Speaker 1: better body composition than the average, you know, more balanced,
Speaker 1: more coordinated. You were already and that's genetics plus work.
Speaker 1: Quite athletic, right, So I would say your overall conditioning
Speaker 1: was this is just you know, craigerfying, but your overall
Speaker 1: conditioning was probably an eight. But then if we put
Speaker 1: you in the gym and we went just tire are
Speaker 1: some functional kind not well, yeah, they're all functional, but
Speaker 1: here are some traditional lifts, you know, bench press, squads,
Speaker 1: dead lifts, gins. Just the fundamentals or your level of
Speaker 1: conditioning for that was probably a three or four. But
Speaker 1: because you have such a training background, you adapted very quickly,
Speaker 1: much more quickly than if Tiffany and Cook had a
Speaker 1: twin sister who had never worked out, Right, you who've
Speaker 1: always worked out, versus your sister with the same body
Speaker 1: and the same genes who'd never worked out, you would
Speaker 1: adapt much more quickly. So there's level of conditioning and
Speaker 1: where we are on the fitness and strength and performance
Speaker 1: scale relative to an individual thing like say triathletes, or
Speaker 1: like bodybuilding, or like tennis, versus what we would call
Speaker 1: just overall conditioning. So yeah, like, for example, my body
Speaker 1: is very very conditioned to strength training and that kind
Speaker 1: of old school bodybuilding lifting shits. And when I say bodybuilding,
Speaker 1: I'm literally talking building your body. I'm not for me
Speaker 1: right now. I Am not talking about getting on stage
Speaker 1: and being stared at and judged and going, oh, how
Speaker 1: well do his delts balance with his lats? And he's
Speaker 1: not that. I'm just talking bodybuilding, which is building all
Speaker 1: round strength. Yeah. So yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: So we find people that come from say a running background,
Speaker 1: who have never done He's a beautiful example. Tammy van Wiss.
Speaker 1: If you had Tam on your show.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she's a superstar. She was for a very
Speaker 1: long time, probably the best female endurance swimmer on the planet.
Speaker 1: I worked with her for quite a long time, and
Speaker 1: she came in and we met and we talked. I
Speaker 1: met her for the first time. I didn't know her.
Speaker 1: I knew of her, I didn't know her though, and
Speaker 1: we chatted and she's like, all, I Doretty much is swim,
Speaker 1: which if you're a swim and that's if you can
Speaker 1: do one thing, that's probably good, right, genius. But what
Speaker 1: she said, I want to do. It was just when
Speaker 1: people were starting to diversify their training program because for
Speaker 1: a very long time, all runners did was run, you know,
Speaker 1: they of course there was a bit of token other stuff,
Speaker 1: but it was really token. It wasn't very scientific. All
Speaker 1: swimmers did were swim. All tennis players did was play tennis.
Speaker 1: But I would think it was around the early eighties,
Speaker 1: mid eighties where people started to get more and obviously
Speaker 1: in the noughties it's really escalated, but where people started
Speaker 1: to get methodical and scientific and strategic about conditioning their
Speaker 1: body and looking at individual sports and saying, okay, let's
Speaker 1: pick for example, netbal, where you go all right, well, netball,
Speaker 1: is it important that you can run five k's at
Speaker 1: a steady state and do a sub twenty sub four
Speaker 1: minute kilometer run. No, not at all. Why because we
Speaker 1: don't do that in netball. What do we do in netball?
Speaker 1: We sprint stop turn, sprints, stop, turn, move laterally, move forward,
Speaker 1: move backwards, run jump, run, jump left, right right. So
Speaker 1: we're doing this interval training, so you need to be
Speaker 1: good at that. So what can we do. We can
Speaker 1: do drills that emulate what you would do on the
Speaker 1: netball court. Because five k's you're not moving explosively, you're
Speaker 1: not changing direction, you're moving in a straight line, You're
Speaker 1: not there's So yes, you're fit, but you're fit for
Speaker 1: running five k's versus fit for netball. And so back
Speaker 1: to Tammy. Tammy came in, we had a chat and
Speaker 1: I went cool. So she came in the next day
Speaker 1: and I went, all right, we're just going to do
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that you normally don't do, which
Speaker 1: is everything other than swimming, right, And so I took
Speaker 1: her for a run and I said, we're not going
Speaker 1: to run far or fast. So the girl who never ran,
Speaker 1: the girl who never had to do weight bearing stuff
Speaker 1: because of body was always in the water. And this
Speaker 1: is a long time ago, but she was while. You know,
Speaker 1: if her and I got in a pool, I'd fucking
Speaker 1: die in three minutes, and she'd be zooming up and
Speaker 1: down the pool like a motor boat. Right. But so
Speaker 1: we went out the front of the gym and there's
Speaker 1: around my gym. At that stage there was a block.
Speaker 1: The block to run around my gym was nine hundred meters.
Speaker 1: And I said, we're just going to do a nine
Speaker 1: hundred meter jog. We're not going to sprint, nothing fancy.
Speaker 1: We're not going to go hard. And she goes, I've
Speaker 1: never run, and I go, well, maybe she's done a bit,
Speaker 1: but she'd never been a runner, right, And let's just
Speaker 1: say that she nearly fucking cackd at doing a nine hundred.
Speaker 1: So the girl who swam five k's the morning before
Speaker 1: or the day that I trained her, I said, what
Speaker 1: have you done today? And she said five k's right,
Speaker 1: which sounds extreme, but for an ultra swimmer it's not.
Speaker 1: So she ran five k's ate, some breakfast swam five
Speaker 1: k's ate, some breakfast, came to the gym, could hardly
Speaker 1: run and not because she was tired or uncoordinated, but
Speaker 1: because she never did that. So she was very unconditioned
Speaker 1: for other things, but an absolute elite weapon at that
Speaker 1: thing that she did. But what we now know is
Speaker 1: when you can maintain that level of elite, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: whether it's tennis or swimming or martial arts or whatever,
Speaker 1: and then on top of that, you can condition your
Speaker 1: body specifically to build strength or power or speed or
Speaker 1: change of direction or coordination or balance or spatial awareness
Speaker 1: or all of these fitness or physiological variables that we
Speaker 1: can manage. Then you take the person who's already real
Speaker 1: good and add this kind of new capacity with their
Speaker 1: body and they become crazy. So there's yeah, so good question, though,
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 2: Can we talk a little bit about the REP range
Speaker 2: for hypertrophy, strength, power, muscular endurance, So what REP range
Speaker 2: is where they sit? But also how do we prioritize
Speaker 2: and do some come at the cost of others?
Speaker 1: So okay, so I'm going to tell you what they
Speaker 1: typically would tell you if you did a VIC FIT
Speaker 1: course or a level for a Level three certificate in fitness,
Speaker 1: whatever state or country in Generally they're going to say
Speaker 1: to you Okay, anything you know less than six reps
Speaker 1: is in the power range, you know four and so
Speaker 1: you'll have powerlifters who obviously a powerlifter and Olympic lifters
Speaker 1: are the same. You know, they walk out, they lie
Speaker 1: on the bench press, or they walk up to the
Speaker 1: squat bar, or they walk up to the you know,
Speaker 1: the barbelle on the floor where they're going to do
Speaker 1: a deadlift, and they will do one lift in competition.
Speaker 1: I mean they will come back, but they do single
Speaker 1: So I'll do a single lift and then they might
Speaker 1: come back five or ten minutes later. But it's literally
Speaker 1: one repetition at a time. So there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of value for an elite level power lifter to be
Speaker 1: doing ten to twenty reps. Right. There'll be times where
Speaker 1: they do that because it's just they're going through a
Speaker 1: phase of their training and everything with most of the lead
Speaker 1: athletes has periodized, and it might be just in that
Speaker 1: phase where they're given their joints and ligaments and ten
Speaker 1: and to a break, but typically they're going to do
Speaker 1: low reps. Then we think about somebody who is really
Speaker 1: just about strength, so power I would say somewhere between
Speaker 1: one and four or maybe five reps, maybe six. Strength
Speaker 1: would be somewhere in the kind of five six up
Speaker 1: to about ten twelve range. This is typically what they
Speaker 1: would tell you. I argue with these and I'll explain why,
Speaker 1: and then they would say that hypertrophy is generally somewhere
Speaker 1: in the ten to fifteen Now hyperch fhe is building
Speaker 1: muscle mass is in the ten to fifteen rep range,
Speaker 1: and then anything above fifteen reps they would call that
Speaker 1: muscular endurance. And in very general terms, that's not the
Speaker 1: worst science. But the problem is that when you look
Speaker 1: at say, cyclists, and some of them do heavy singles
Speaker 1: or heavy two or three rep maxes, some of them do,
Speaker 1: not all of them though, But when you think about
Speaker 1: what they do most of the time, most of the
Speaker 1: time cyclists men and women are essentially doing high rep,
Speaker 1: light to moderate resistance. Like you think about when you're
Speaker 1: pushing a pedal, you are essentially doing a leg press,
Speaker 1: because what you're doing is you are extending your knee
Speaker 1: or ex straightening your knee under load. What do you
Speaker 1: do when you do a leg press or a squat
Speaker 1: or a deadlift, you straighten or extend your knee under load.
Speaker 1: It's the same movement, it's slightly different, but it's done
Speaker 1: a slightly different way, it's done in a seated position,
Speaker 1: and all of those things. So essentially, sprinting around the
Speaker 1: velodrome for say two minutes, is like doing two minutes
Speaker 1: of fucking really hard, moderately light but extremely intense leg
Speaker 1: presses or squats, you know, not the same range of movement.
Speaker 1: And then you look at these people who do what
Speaker 1: we would call muscular endurance training and they've got these
Speaker 1: whopping fucking legs. You go, well, how does that match up?
Speaker 1: Because they don't actually train in terms of what traditionally
Speaker 1: what we would call that's not hypertrophy, you know, that's
Speaker 1: not power, although they do generate ridiculous power, like just
Speaker 1: through this kind of lens of this many reps equals
Speaker 1: muscular endurance, this many reps equals or that it just
Speaker 1: doesn't work out. So there are so many times when
Speaker 1: also another one you think about an elite swimmer, even
Speaker 1: swimmers who swim longer distances, like even say two to
Speaker 1: four hundred meters, So I don't know what's two hundred.
Speaker 1: I guess they're in the water for you know, like
Speaker 1: one forty five or something, right, but it's like one
Speaker 1: forty five of extremely intense Let's say butterfly. Look at butterfly. Fuck,
Speaker 1: how intense is that? Right? They're coming out of the
Speaker 1: water and they're doing reps where they're pulling their body
Speaker 1: through the water, and of course they're kicking and so
Speaker 1: it's a total body movement. But they're basically doing reps
Speaker 1: for a minute and forty five or if it's a
Speaker 1: four hundred meter it's probably like three point thirty or
Speaker 1: something like that. Sorry, I don't have the times off
Speaker 1: the top of my head. But they're essentially doing muscular
Speaker 1: endurance training. But they get out of the pool and
Speaker 1: they've got a back like a fucking house.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They've got a big muscular back and big muscular shoulders.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, if they're only doing endurance training,
Speaker 1: which they mostly are, how the fuck are they so big? Now?
Speaker 1: That's the obvious elephant in the room when it comes
Speaker 1: to this theory. In general terms, it is what I said,
Speaker 1: but it also it doesn't you know, like even the
Speaker 1: crab and I like, I've got a fair bit of
Speaker 1: muscle for my age. The crab's got more. I you know,
Speaker 1: I do. Mostly what I would do is somewhere in
Speaker 1: the ballpark of muscular endurance. I percha fee muscular endurance
Speaker 1: and and but you know, I still hold onto a
Speaker 1: lot of muscle even though I don't train in the
Speaker 1: way that might be recommended for optimal muscle mass. So yeah,
Speaker 1: good question, Tiff.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that doesn't seem to apply to
Speaker 2: marathon runners? So you look at sprinters and they've got
Speaker 2: legs like tree trunks, but marathon runners of very lean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that is a good question too. So marathon runners, obviously,
Speaker 1: it is disadvantageous even if you've got all the muscle,
Speaker 1: like an eighty kilogram endurance athlete or an eighty kilogram
Speaker 1: marathona with say four percent body fat. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: say in this case a male, he is very lean,
Speaker 1: he is very jacked, he's eighty but it's just way
Speaker 1: too heavy, you know, which is why we'll see someone
Speaker 1: my height, which is five ten an elite marathona at
Speaker 1: my height, and I'm a eighty one kilos and I'm lean,
Speaker 1: I'm very lean, But a marathona my height would weigh
Speaker 1: about sixty or somewhere between fifty and sixty kilos fifty five,
Speaker 1: I should say, and sixty kilos because you need a comment.
Speaker 1: You need enough power and speed, but you don't need
Speaker 1: the weight. And so yeah, you just can't be You
Speaker 1: will never see an eighty kilogram will not an elite
Speaker 1: eighty kilogram marathon at the Olympics. And it's not because
Speaker 1: being eighty kilos is bad. It's just that you're probably
Speaker 1: carrying twenty kilograms more. Now you think if you take
Speaker 1: let's say one meter per step, right, well, then you're
Speaker 1: doing forty two thousand steps. In fact, forty two two
Speaker 1: hundred steps in a marathon where you're carrying essentially a
Speaker 1: twenty kilo weakefest. It just doesn't work. So the body
Speaker 1: kind of sorts itself out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how do how do you people who so
Speaker 2: people I guess like myself super enthusiastic at the gym
Speaker 2: now want to know I want to advance in my
Speaker 2: strength training. If people are listening who are kinder at
Speaker 2: that point, but they don't have I'm going to do
Speaker 2: powerlifting or I'm going to do body composition, you know,
Speaker 2: and competitions? How do we decide what to apply and
Speaker 2: how to apply these styles of training?
Speaker 1: So everything is a little bit in their space. This
Speaker 1: is why I said at the start of the show.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not a personal recommendation because you know,
Speaker 1: if thousands of people listen to this, which they do,
Speaker 1: how on earth do I know who's listening, what their
Speaker 1: background is, what their genetic disposition is, what their medical
Speaker 1: issues are, what their injuries are. So it's very much
Speaker 1: an equals one. You know, try something and see how
Speaker 1: your body responds. But if, for example, you came to me,
Speaker 1: which you wouldn't, But let's say you came to me
Speaker 1: and you said, I want to run a marathon or
Speaker 1: you might do that, who knows, But I would say,
Speaker 1: all right, well you're now. When I say this everyone,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking as an exercise scientist and from a physical
Speaker 1: logical point of view, I would go, well, with all
Speaker 1: the muscle you've got and the weight that you've got,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is good weight because it's muscle.
Speaker 1: First thing I would say is, well, think about this.
Speaker 1: You training for a marathon. In my opinion, it's not
Speaker 1: going to make you healthier moving forward. If you don't
Speaker 1: care about that, that's not going to destroy your health obviously,
Speaker 1: But you are sixty what are you sixty sixty two
Speaker 1: kilos yep, and you're lean, like, you're leaner than ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of people, right, your lean and so then
Speaker 1: you go, all right, well, what am I going to
Speaker 1: get rid of? Because if you start running ten fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty k's and then you're doing that for ten or
Speaker 1: eight months as you lead up to the event, well
Speaker 1: you will compromise a lot of muscle. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: cool with that, then that's fine. But everything comes at
Speaker 1: a cost. You know, lower running time come at the
Speaker 1: cost of muscle. You know, building muscle and building absolute
Speaker 1: power and strength often comes at the cost of flexibility
Speaker 1: and range of movement, or it can, right, So everything
Speaker 1: comes at a cost. So what we're trying to do, like,
Speaker 1: I think you from a like you to me, you're
Speaker 1: a hybrid, right because you can run and you can ride,
Speaker 1: and you can box, and you're coordinated and you've got
Speaker 1: muscular endurance and you've got strength and speed and balance
Speaker 1: and coordination. Because you're boxing, like, there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of things that you couldn't do pretty competently. That's not
Speaker 1: say you would be elite, but you'd probably be better
Speaker 1: than average because you're genetically better than average and athletically
Speaker 1: better than average. I'm not I'm worse, right, So for
Speaker 1: me if you and I and again I'm older and
Speaker 1: all of those things. And by the way, none of
Speaker 1: this is elevating tiar four and you know, being critical
Speaker 1: of myself. This is just looking at a body and
Speaker 1: how body works. It's like, and she didn't deserve her body.
Speaker 1: She was just lucky. I didn't deserve my body. I
Speaker 1: was just lucky. You just get what you're born with.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think you know. So whatever it is.
Speaker 1: If you want to build muscle, a very common thing
Speaker 1: is I want to build muscle lose fat. Well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you it's pretty hard to build muscle and
Speaker 1: lose fat at the same time. It's possible, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard. So you might want to kind of initially
Speaker 1: if your focus is on building muscle and changing shape,
Speaker 1: whether you're a guy or a girl, you might want
Speaker 1: to just try to hold on to whatever your body
Speaker 1: fat level is, keep it at that, depending on what
Speaker 1: it is, or you might want to, you know, like
Speaker 1: be happy to lose a little bit of muscle, or
Speaker 1: just hold on to the muscle and drop some body fat.
Speaker 1: But it's rare that your muscle mass will grow and
Speaker 1: your body fat will reduce at the same time. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty complicated thing, but you know, once you've got
Speaker 1: that muscle, once you then you can try to or
Speaker 1: then you can you know, with quite a bit of
Speaker 1: planning and structure and work, you know, you can reduce
Speaker 1: your body fat and hold on to most of what
Speaker 1: you've got. So you know, it's funny because when I'm
Speaker 1: in a singlet without sounding like a wanka, I'm made
Speaker 1: a kilos, but I look much bigger, and people regularly
Speaker 1: think I'm ninety kilos because I'm lean. But if I'm
Speaker 1: in a flannel shirt like I am now and people
Speaker 1: didn't know me, they probably wouldn't even think I worked out.
Speaker 1: They would just think I'm an old guy that's in
Speaker 1: not terrible shape, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, so there's that. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what you asked me, and I'm far away from home,
Speaker 1: so save me. I don't even know where we start
Speaker 1: out with that.
Speaker 2: Here's where i'd like to go. I would like to go.
Speaker 2: What's the difference between using free weights and pinloaded machines?
Speaker 1: So when we're doing resistance training. Literally we are just
Speaker 1: working against resistance of some kind. And typically in a
Speaker 1: gym you're going to have kettlebells, bar bells, dumb bells,
Speaker 1: and a range of straight bars, z bars or easy
Speaker 1: curl bars, Olympic bars, shorter and longer bars, you know,
Speaker 1: but basically what we would call just free weights. And
Speaker 1: then you use those free weights either just standing or
Speaker 1: you use them quite often on a bench, whether it's
Speaker 1: a shoulder press or a bench press, or sometimes a
Speaker 1: supported row or a prone row where you lie on
Speaker 1: your tummy and you pull up a bar belt to
Speaker 1: hit the bench or touch the bench. So there's a
Speaker 1: myriad of ways that we can use free weights. I
Speaker 1: think the more advanced we become, the more we should
Speaker 1: unless there's a medical or clinical reason not to the
Speaker 1: more we should use free weight. So I'm speaking to
Speaker 1: you who are more advanced. So the difference between saying
Speaker 1: doing a let's say, a shoulder press on a pin
Speaker 1: loaded machine is you sit on the or even a
Speaker 1: plate loaded machine, because that it's pretty much the same
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a fixed Some things on fixed
Speaker 1: basically runners where you don't have to balance it, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be coordinated. You just push it up
Speaker 1: in the air and it goes, you know, as a
Speaker 1: response to your pushing. Versus if I'm sitting on just
Speaker 1: a bench and I've got a couple of dumb bells
Speaker 1: up at my shoulders and I'm activating my core, all
Speaker 1: my muscles, and I'm sitting, I'm not leaning against anything necessarily,
Speaker 1: and I've got these two dumbbells and I've got to
Speaker 1: push them up in the air. And not only do
Speaker 1: I need to push them work against gravity and the
Speaker 1: resistance that comes with the weight, but I've also got
Speaker 1: to balance them. I've also got to control them. I've
Speaker 1: also got to stabilize those weights through that range of movement.
Speaker 1: So the main benefit in using free weights versus pin
Speaker 1: loaded weights is that we're using a bunch more muscles.
Speaker 1: We're using a lot of stabilizers, stabilizing muscles around your
Speaker 1: hips and around you know, your midsection, around your shoulders.
Speaker 1: We're using a lot of those which we don't tend
Speaker 1: to when we're doing something which is particularly something which
Speaker 1: is pinloaded with that comes more risk because it requires
Speaker 1: more technique. It's less safe, but done the right way,
Speaker 1: it is you know, quite safe. And then, as I've
Speaker 1: said a thousand times on here before, you know, pinloaded
Speaker 1: machine is fine. So somebody like me who's got a
Speaker 1: perpetually injured but slowly getting better shoulder, I use what's
Speaker 1: called an upright a chest press when I'm training my chest.
Speaker 1: I don't love that exercise. I don't love that machine,
Speaker 1: but for my shoulder, with my injury, that works for me.
Speaker 1: So that's why I use it. When I try to
Speaker 1: do a normal bench press on lying on a bench
Speaker 1: with a free weight barbell or even dumbbells, I have
Speaker 1: excruciating pain. So and for whatever reason, when I do
Speaker 1: the pinloaded it's easier. But in general terms, we want
Speaker 1: to use free weights and our body will tell us,
Speaker 1: and our results will tell us, and our strength will
Speaker 1: tell us. And the difference between doing something you know,
Speaker 1: like for those of you who have done a forty
Speaker 1: five degree leg press, and let's say you've done a
Speaker 1: one hundred kilo leg press, if you ever tried then
Speaker 1: to step out of that and do one hundred kilo squat,
Speaker 1: you would discover the difference between a machine and a
Speaker 1: free weight movement, you know, one hundred kilo squat, real
Speaker 1: squat parallel to the ground us, you know, down to
Speaker 1: kind of parallel to your knees. It involves so many
Speaker 1: more muscles than just sitting in a leg press, and
Speaker 1: depending on how you do it, more benefits or potentially
Speaker 1: more problems if you don't do it well.
Speaker 2: How should we incorporate or should we incorporate variables in
Speaker 2: time under tension? Pause reps, slow reps, tempo reps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. So time under tension,
Speaker 1: that's good. That's that's a tif question, not a great question, bloody.
Speaker 1: Good question is basically how long we are working against resistance.
Speaker 1: So if I do twenty curls and it takes me
Speaker 1: three seconds of curl, then time undertension is sixty seconds.
Speaker 1: If I'm doing a prone hold and it's a two
Speaker 1: minute and time undertention two minutes. If I do ten
Speaker 1: push ups and each push up takes one second, ten
Speaker 1: seconds time under tension and so on. And this is
Speaker 1: a really good question because people don't factor in time
Speaker 1: under tension enough because they they're more concerned with how
Speaker 1: many they do. And this is a very good way
Speaker 1: to increase Glad you asked this. I didn't think of it.
Speaker 1: This is a very good way to increase intensity without
Speaker 1: greatly increasing risk at all. Right, so let me give
Speaker 1: you an example. So everyone, this is a for you
Speaker 1: more advanced ees. I want you to try this. Whatever
Speaker 1: your If you can do ten push ups, I want
Speaker 1: you to try this. I want you to do ten
Speaker 1: push ups in about ten seconds. So down, up, down,
Speaker 1: up down like that tempo maybe one one a half seconds,
Speaker 1: so your ten reps take you ten to fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: Now I want you to try this, and this is
Speaker 1: at the end of the scale. I want you to
Speaker 1: go down. Count five, and I mean right down, so
Speaker 1: chest down to the ground but not touching the ground.
Speaker 1: Hands and feet not hands and knees. Down to the ground.
Speaker 1: Count to five, don't rush one, two, three, four, five,
Speaker 1: come back up down right. So we're doing ten reps.
Speaker 1: So we're holding at the bottom times five seconds, and
Speaker 1: then we chuck in another one or two seconds for
Speaker 1: the up and down bit. Let's say two seconds. So
Speaker 1: we're doing ten reps now, which is going to take
Speaker 1: somewhere around seventy seconds versus ten to fifteen. So we've
Speaker 1: just done the exact same exercise with the same weight
Speaker 1: your body, the same movement, the same biomechanics. But what
Speaker 1: we've done is we've made it exponentially harder because the
Speaker 1: time under tension doing the exact same thing with the
Speaker 1: same weight and the same body and the same movement
Speaker 1: has gone from ten to fifteen seconds to give or
Speaker 1: take seventy seven zero seconds. And that is the really
Speaker 1: you know, So when you go oh went awhile I
Speaker 1: didn't have any equipment, There's so many ways that you
Speaker 1: can progress. There's so many ways that you can stem
Speaker 1: your body, stimulate your body to adapt, and time underload
Speaker 1: is a really clever way and also range of movement.
Speaker 1: You know, for those of you who for some of you,
Speaker 1: this won't be a revelation, right, but I want you
Speaker 1: to think about doing a regular body weight squat. And
Speaker 1: so you start at the stop at the top, and
Speaker 1: you go down bum to about you know, parallel or
Speaker 1: thigh to about parallel to the ground, so ninety degrees
Speaker 1: at the knees, and you come up and then you
Speaker 1: stand up, then you go back down. So when we
Speaker 1: stand at the top, you'll notice that your quads kind
Speaker 1: of switch off, right, it's almost your skeleton keeping you
Speaker 1: up right. So what I want you to do if
Speaker 1: you want to try this. I want you to do
Speaker 1: ten normal squats bodyweight squats again. If this is if
Speaker 1: you're up to it, if your bodies are right now,
Speaker 1: all that you know, I say that with an asterisk, right,
Speaker 1: So do ten, No, in fact, do twenty squats. Do
Speaker 1: two zero, do twenty squats, and then give yourself a
Speaker 1: minute or two. Now I want you to come back,
Speaker 1: and I want you to do the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: So go down, same body, same weight, exact same movement.
Speaker 1: Go down so your thighs are parallel or maybe even
Speaker 1: a teensy weensy bit lower, But do not straighten up
Speaker 1: at the top. Come up so your knees are still
Speaker 1: flexed at the top, So instead of coming all the
Speaker 1: way back up, you come up about Instead of one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, not one hundred degrees, but one hundred percent up,
Speaker 1: you're ninety percent. So your quad's don't switch off, right,
Speaker 1: So try and do twenty of those where you don't
Speaker 1: let your legs relax, you don't straighten up. Now, when
Speaker 1: you do twenty of option one versus twenty of option two,
Speaker 1: doing the exact same thing with a little bit of
Speaker 1: a tweak, you will go oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: about five times harder. Now, now when you introduce the
Speaker 1: third variable or the next variable, do that exactly the
Speaker 1: same way, but slow it down. So instead of taking
Speaker 1: two seconds per rep, take six. So two seconds per
Speaker 1: rep times twenty reps is forty seconds. Six seconds per
Speaker 1: rep times twenty reps is two minutes, one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty seconds. I doubt you will even make the two minutes.
Speaker 1: You might, but if you do, well done you because
Speaker 1: that's elite. Yeah. So that's a great question, TIF, And
Speaker 1: that's a really good way to manipulate intensity and to
Speaker 1: force adaptation without lifting heavier weights or having to even
Speaker 1: go to the gym.
Speaker 2: I've found it extremely beneficial on the days I'm not
Speaker 2: training with you, harps in doing pause reps at because
Speaker 2: I don't have a spotter, and so doing pause reps
Speaker 2: at the bottom end with things like bench press or
Speaker 2: incliine press or shoulder press, and I've really noticed it
Speaker 2: helped me break through to be able to lift heavier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what, like so many of the
Speaker 1: things that we do, Like, think about this, everyone, how
Speaker 1: many people have you seen in the gym who do
Speaker 1: a bench press that's literally half a bench press right now,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to give you some fundamental science. So
Speaker 1: without going too deep or weird, the easiest part of
Speaker 1: the bench press is the top half of the movement.
Speaker 1: The top half of the movement, you've got the most
Speaker 1: power and the most leverage and the greatest biomechanical advantage.
Speaker 1: Where you are the weakest in terms of strength to
Speaker 1: do that move is at the very bottom of the movement.
Speaker 1: You are at a biomechanical disadvantage, You've got the least leverage,
Speaker 1: and it's the hardest to move the weight. Now, what
Speaker 1: if you did this. What if you went into the
Speaker 1: gym and you got old mate who bench presses one
Speaker 1: hundred kilos for ten top reps and we all know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. One hundred kilos ten reps, but
Speaker 1: they're only half, and it's the top half. If you
Speaker 1: tried to get old mate to do the same weight
Speaker 1: only doing the bottom half, very unlikely that he would
Speaker 1: get five. Right, So, whole range of movement, like we
Speaker 1: want one hundred percent of the movement come down, touch
Speaker 1: the bar on the chest, or if you want to
Speaker 1: increase intensity and like tift off in trains without a
Speaker 1: spotter or a partner. Go down, hold the weight just
Speaker 1: above your chest, like two milimeters, so it's not resting
Speaker 1: on your chest. Count to three or five, and then
Speaker 1: take a back up again, same movement, same weight, much
Speaker 1: different effect.
Speaker 2: And how hard should we train? And how should we
Speaker 2: or should we periodize train? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Cool? So I think, you know, once we get past
Speaker 1: a point. Remember, so, I think there's something else in
Speaker 1: there about intensity, So let's talk about intensity and relative
Speaker 1: intensity and how hard. Let's answer that in the same question. So,
Speaker 1: I mean hard is relative to the individual. So Tiff
Speaker 1: just benched sixty five kilos. Go Tiff. Now Tiff is
Speaker 1: a a drug free she's using a bit of testosterone cream,
Speaker 1: which she spoken about. Are you're still doing that or no?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that's a very small dose.
Speaker 1: But she's doing a therapeutic I mean this respectfully female
Speaker 1: dose that a doctor's prescribed. Right. She's not on the pause,
Speaker 1: not for yeah, yeah, yeah, she's not on the gear,
Speaker 1: she's not taking any performance enhancing in inverted commas. Right.
Speaker 1: So for a forty two year old, you know, regular
Speaker 1: member of society to bench press sixty five kilos is
Speaker 1: fucking amazing, right, But all that tells me is that one.
Speaker 1: You've got pretty good genetics, but do you train in
Speaker 1: a way where you force your body to be somewhere
Speaker 1: near optimal? And that is because you're okay with pain,
Speaker 1: You're okay with dom's post exercise soreness or delayed onset muscles, horness, whatever,
Speaker 1: and you are very consistent and your diet is mostly
Speaker 1: good except for the muffins.
Speaker 2: Their cookies and they're so worth it.
Speaker 1: And your attitude sometimes is fucked. So it's a miracle
Speaker 1: that you get the results you do.
Speaker 2: But no, I'm just saying that's fair, that's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: for those of you who go I want to opt,
Speaker 1: not just like I'm just happy to show up and
Speaker 1: which is fine, by the way, and have some muscle
Speaker 1: and sweat a bit and do work out and gradually
Speaker 1: improve over time, which I think is an absolutely fair
Speaker 1: and reasonable goal, nothing at all bad about that. But
Speaker 1: for those of you, go, fuck it. I want to
Speaker 1: I want to take myself for a bit of a
Speaker 1: test drive and see what's possible. I want to see
Speaker 1: what I can do at my age with my body.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be reckless. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be put myself in harm's way. But what I do
Speaker 1: want to do is what I want to do is
Speaker 1: see how strong I could get, or how fast I
Speaker 1: could run that distance, or how quick I could swim
Speaker 1: that distance, or how wide I could get into side
Speaker 1: splits or front splits or whatever it is, like, whatever
Speaker 1: the fitness variable is, right. So I think the best
Speaker 1: way to do that is to be really methodical and
Speaker 1: to track everything that you do with whatever it is
Speaker 1: the thing that you're trying to become more elite at.
Speaker 1: So if it's strength, track your workouts, sets, reps, volume, weight,
Speaker 1: recovery time, because it's in the tracking, and it's in
Speaker 1: the paying attention, and it's in the doing the work,
Speaker 1: and bring it all together in that way that you
Speaker 1: will figure out what's optimal for you and what's not.
Speaker 1: Because even someone who's trained, you know all the people
Speaker 1: I've trained, if I sat down with you and I
Speaker 1: looked at you, and even if I did an assessment
Speaker 1: on you and you told me about your goals and
Speaker 1: your background, when I write you a program, it's still
Speaker 1: a very educated guess. I don't know exactly what the
Speaker 1: outcome will be because I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: your physiology, I don't know your genetics, I don't know
Speaker 1: your immune system. I don't know your capacity inside out.
Speaker 1: But time will telp so by the time. Like for example,
Speaker 1: when I trained people for years, which I did, I
Speaker 1: knew exactly how their body would respond to pretty much
Speaker 1: any stimuli because I just work with them for so long.
Speaker 1: But yeah, high level trial and error we call it.
Speaker 1: And you know if you can if I wanted to
Speaker 1: quantify it a little bit, let's say you can do
Speaker 1: a movement really well with good form safely, any movement
Speaker 1: in the gym. Now we're talking about strength. If you
Speaker 1: can do fifteen of those with good form, reduce the reps,
Speaker 1: increase the weight. If that's what you want, if you're
Speaker 1: in this, I want to get more muscle and stronger
Speaker 1: and more powerful, then lower the reps, increase the weight.
Speaker 1: And it's sometimes that workout is not as fulfilling in
Speaker 1: the moment because you almost feel like you're cheating because
Speaker 1: you're having more recovery time and you're not doing as
Speaker 1: much volume. But all we're trying to do, especially when
Speaker 1: we talk about strength, all we're trying to do when
Speaker 1: we exercise is literally just stimulate our body to respond
Speaker 1: a certain way, and all increased strength is adaptation, increased
Speaker 1: hyperch free muscle mass, adaptation, better range of movement around
Speaker 1: the joint, adaptation, lower heart rate, adaptation, being able to
Speaker 1: improve your VO two max, your lung capacity, your performance
Speaker 1: capacity aerobically, adaptation, you know, losing body fat adaptation. What
Speaker 1: do we do. We increase expenditure, we decrease calories perhaps
Speaker 1: or both of those, or one of those, and we
Speaker 1: see our body composition changes. We lose fat, we build muscle.
Speaker 1: What's that? It's adaptation to a stimulus or stimuli. It's
Speaker 1: all the same thing, express differently. Let's do Oh wow,
Speaker 1: we've been. Let's do three more. Unless you want to
Speaker 1: do more, Let's.
Speaker 2: Do three Okay, I'd like to talk about recovery there,
Speaker 2: So how many days a week should we can we
Speaker 2: and if we're going to do more rather than less,
Speaker 2: how do we manage our recovery?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good. So I'm going to just I feel
Speaker 1: like most people listening to this will be more about
Speaker 1: gym stuff rather than general stuff, and I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: but so let me talk about gym stuff to start.
Speaker 1: So now there's a thing in thing in strength training
Speaker 1: called split routine or a split workout where we train
Speaker 1: different muscle groups over day different days. So I'm writing
Speaker 1: this in front of me. So let's say, let's say Monday,
Speaker 1: I do all pushing movements. So I do bench press.
Speaker 1: Some Monday's pushing. I do bench press, I do shoulder press,
Speaker 1: I do dips, I do incline press. I might do
Speaker 1: some flies in there which are not a pressing movement,
Speaker 1: a pushing movement, but they're not a pulling movement. All
Speaker 1: upper body pushing. And then day two I might do
Speaker 1: all upper body.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Day two, I'm going to do legs. Day two, I'm
Speaker 1: going to do legs and lower back. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give my upper body a complete day of rest. Day
Speaker 1: two is lower body. Day three, I'm now back to
Speaker 1: upper body and I'm doing but instead of pushing movements,
Speaker 1: I'm doing pulling and or elbow flexion movements. So all
Speaker 1: pushing movements is elbow extension where we're straightening the elbow,
Speaker 1: and all pulling movements is elbow flexion, just like doing
Speaker 1: a barbell curl is flexing is narrowing the gap at
Speaker 1: the elbow or reducing the angle. All pulling movements are
Speaker 1: unless we're talking about straight arm pulling a weight from
Speaker 1: the floor. But as we understand, generally pulling is biceps
Speaker 1: and bracalis and back, so nearly all back exercises are
Speaker 1: pulling movements, and we can alternate that. So what we're
Speaker 1: doing is day one pushing stuff, Day two lower body,
Speaker 1: so no upper body. Day three back to upper body,
Speaker 1: but now we're pulling stuff. Day four we might have
Speaker 1: a day off, so we would call this three on
Speaker 1: one off as a split routine, and then day five
Speaker 1: we come back to pushing stuff with our upper body.
Speaker 1: Day six we're back to pushing stuff for lifting stuff
Speaker 1: with our lower body, and then day seven in this
Speaker 1: routine we would be back to upper body pulling, and
Speaker 1: then day eight, So it's a four day cycle of
Speaker 1: three days on one day off. It's a four day rotation.
Speaker 1: But I mean I just gave you an example. You
Speaker 1: could break that up a million ways. So what that
Speaker 1: means is we're actually training a lot, but we're still
Speaker 1: allowing For example, my upper body pushing muscles are getting
Speaker 1: three days rest, my legs are getting three days rest.
Speaker 1: My legs and lower body, my upper body pulling muscles
Speaker 1: are getting you know, we could break this up differently.
Speaker 1: We could go, I'm doing all the muscles on the
Speaker 1: front of my lower body and the muscles on the
Speaker 1: back of my lower body. So day one is you know,
Speaker 1: squats and leg press and leg extension, which is not
Speaker 1: only but primarily quads, and day two I could be
Speaker 1: doing calf raises and hip thrusts and leg curls and
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's working my ars and hamstrings and calves.
Speaker 1: So we can break it up really however we want,
Speaker 1: And there's a way to be pretty consistent with training
Speaker 1: where we're not overloading. Failing that, if you go, fuck that,
Speaker 1: I don't have that time, then I would suggest that
Speaker 1: you do maybe a full body workout and you do
Speaker 1: it every second or third day. But if you are
Speaker 1: to all the more advanced end of the scale, I'll
Speaker 1: be training hard. I'd be picking five or six multi
Speaker 1: joint that is, compound movements that pretty much encompass my
Speaker 1: whole body. Going in on Monday, I'd be smashing myself
Speaker 1: in a smart way. I'd be having Tuesday, maybe Wednesday
Speaker 1: off and then hitting the repeat button. So there's a
Speaker 1: myriad of ways and then back to your question about
Speaker 1: periodization over over time. So you asked, I don't know
Speaker 1: if in this question or earlier, but periodization basically just
Speaker 1: means that we have phases where we train differently. It
Speaker 1: might be higher reps, lower weight, lower reps higher weight.
Speaker 1: It might be working at like a loading phase where
Speaker 1: I'm just building and building and building, and a tapering phase.
Speaker 1: In the loading phase, I'm really going balls to the wall,
Speaker 1: so to speak. I'm lifting heavy, I'm lifting often, I'm
Speaker 1: getting myself pretty fatigued, but I'm building overall strength and
Speaker 1: power and speed, whatever it is. And then I realized, let's,
Speaker 1: for example, say, for example, a sprinter who's got an
Speaker 1: event in six weeks, he or she would start to
Speaker 1: taper it six weeks or four weeks to pen on
Speaker 1: the program and the coach, and then they would still
Speaker 1: be training, but they're winding back the intensity. They're keeping
Speaker 1: what they've got while they're allowing their body to refresh somewhat.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of science and a lot of
Speaker 1: logic that goes into that as well, and we can
Speaker 1: also do that as general trainers. And there are days
Speaker 1: where it's not periodization, but there are days where I
Speaker 1: go into the gym, I feel great and I smash
Speaker 1: myself because my body's Remember, biofeedback is your body telling
Speaker 1: you what's up, for good or bad. Sometimes I go
Speaker 1: into the gym, I'm pumped, I'm excited, I'm full of energy.
Speaker 1: Other days I go in I'm not feeling it. It's
Speaker 1: not emotionally psychologically, it's just that you know, my body's
Speaker 1: not ten out of ten today, my body's six or seven.
Speaker 1: So I'll train accordingly. I'll still train, but I'll pay
Speaker 1: attention to the data.
Speaker 2: How often should we be attempting one rep max for
Speaker 2: our large compound movements and training to failure reps.
Speaker 1: I think most people probably don't ever need to do
Speaker 1: one rms, but I think people who want to. I'm
Speaker 1: going to say, and this is just bro science with
Speaker 1: power athletes and strength athletes, and by that I mean
Speaker 1: you know people who compete in strength events per se
Speaker 1: or power events per se. But then also you know runners, sprinters,
Speaker 1: that's their power athletes, footballers are even netballers who they
Speaker 1: need to be strong and powerful and have great speed
Speaker 1: and lateral movement and acceleration. One rms are great, but
Speaker 1: they are the highest risk thing you can do in
Speaker 1: a gym other than training badly. So I wouldn't do
Speaker 1: a one RM these days for obvious reasons. But I
Speaker 1: think if you're fit and strong and relatively injury free,
Speaker 1: and you warm up and everything's done well, the actual
Speaker 1: answer is anyone can do one RMS if they're in
Speaker 1: you know, good nick. But as an athlete who just
Speaker 1: wants to check where they're at, I would maybe do
Speaker 1: one RM, one RM or a more. I'm more likely
Speaker 1: to do two or three rms than one because it
Speaker 1: still gives us a real insight into absolute strength. But
Speaker 1: what it does is it just gives us a baseline.
Speaker 1: And you know, if I did it today, I would
Speaker 1: go along the thirtieth of August twenty twenty five, I
Speaker 1: did this, and then moving forward, I've got I've got
Speaker 1: something to compare myself to, which is the only person
Speaker 1: I should compare myself to.
Speaker 2: I've got a couple more. How do you suggest integrating
Speaker 2: cardio for those who want to implement cardio into that training?
Speaker 2: How do we do cardio and rest? And is there
Speaker 2: a preferred style of cardio?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So, I mean you and I have spoken before
Speaker 1: about you know, slow steady, you know, more kind of
Speaker 1: aerobic endurancy stuff versus interval training. But for people, remember
Speaker 1: we're talking about people are at the pointerier end of
Speaker 1: the scale. I prefer this is just my preference. But
Speaker 1: and again it depends on what you're training for. But
Speaker 1: if you're doing cardio just because you kind of have
Speaker 1: to do cardio from cardiovascular VO two max absolute fitness perspective,
Speaker 1: we know that that you can get more aerobic benefit
Speaker 1: in a way shorter amount of time than going for
Speaker 1: a thirty minute plot every day of the week. Nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with thirty minute plods right by the way, I
Speaker 1: walk for the best part of an hour and a
Speaker 1: half a day, which is definitely not intense. But if
Speaker 1: we're talking about I want the best bang for buck,
Speaker 1: the best bang for buck is going to be interval
Speaker 1: training where you are doing Let me give you an
Speaker 1: example of what I'm talking about. This is again just
Speaker 1: an example. Let me give you a fifteen minute program.
Speaker 1: So fifteen minutes. I'm figuring this out as I go.
Speaker 1: All right, so you jump on the bike, you warm
Speaker 1: up for three minutes, and you're just steady state you're
Speaker 1: warming up. This protocol could be used for a stepper,
Speaker 1: for a grinder, for an air walker, for a ski erg,
Speaker 1: you know, cross trainer, whatever. This this protocol so for
Speaker 1: three minutes. Also it could be used on a treadmill,
Speaker 1: and also it could be used running outdoors. So three
Speaker 1: minutes is just steady state, getting blood moving, getting your breath,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of warming into it. So then at
Speaker 1: the four minute mark, remember this is just an example,
Speaker 1: and you need to be at a reasonably advanced level.
Speaker 1: Let's go with twenty seconds hard hard, not hard ish,
Speaker 1: not kind of hard hard. And when you finish that
Speaker 1: twenty seconds, if I offered you fifty bucks to be
Speaker 1: able to stretch it to thirty, you couldn't. Right, if
Speaker 1: you could have done another hard ten seconds, it's not
Speaker 1: hard enough. At the end of the twenty you should
Speaker 1: be pretty fucked. Again, this is not a personal recommendation,
Speaker 1: but I'm talking for people in this space. Then you'd
Speaker 1: so we go what we do is three minutes warm up,
Speaker 1: and then we would go from minute three up two
Speaker 1: minutes thirteen. So that gives us ten minutes. We're going
Speaker 1: to do twenty on flat knacker, forty off slow, slow
Speaker 1: pedaling or whatever it is. We're still moving we're not
Speaker 1: doing nothing, but we've gone from flat out to one
Speaker 1: hundred percent to twenty or thirty percent. We're just moving.
Speaker 1: So the works ratio is once two, so twenty seconds working,
Speaker 1: forty seconds recovering. Now your time's that by ten minutes, well,
Speaker 1: ten minutes times twenty seconds flat out as two hundred seconds,
Speaker 1: so two hundred second is three minutes and twenty seconds. Now,
Speaker 1: So in a fifteen minute program, by the way, we
Speaker 1: finished that at thirteen minutes, and the last two minutes
Speaker 1: it takes us up to fifteen is just a steady
Speaker 1: state pedal or run or ski or row or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you're doing. But what that means is
Speaker 1: in a fifteen minute program, you have worked somewhere near
Speaker 1: max for three minutes and twenty seconds and you have
Speaker 1: not worked near max for eleven minutes and forty seconds.
Speaker 1: So of the fifteen minute program, you're working hard for
Speaker 1: three to twenty. Now, that seems like an easy PSY
Speaker 1: program until you do it. And if you do that
Speaker 1: program and you find it easy, you're not doing the
Speaker 1: program right. Because I could take an AFL footballer put
Speaker 1: them through that, or a National League netball player, somebody
Speaker 1: who is a paid athlete and an elite athlete who
Speaker 1: is aerobically good. Put them through what I would call
Speaker 1: the right version of that, and they might have an
Speaker 1: uncle buck at the end of it.
Speaker 2: They're my favorite outcomes.
Speaker 1: Yeah for me. For Michael, I used to do this
Speaker 1: with back in the day. I had a training partner,
Speaker 1: not the crab, another one. We used to smash ourselves.
Speaker 1: And this is not glamorous everybody, but one of us,
Speaker 1: what Nelly, Every session one of us would spew and
Speaker 1: all the other one would do is stand there laughing
Speaker 1: and pointing hysterically like absolutely fucking zero empathy or care.
Speaker 2: That's a good effort for a conditioned, trained athlete to
Speaker 2: repeatedly be able to oh, yeah, spew.
Speaker 1: Terrory, yeah, well me and.
Speaker 2: And when I say good effort, that's fucking ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Well, we used to do this again. I'm not recommending
Speaker 1: this anyone this in fact, do not do this. But
Speaker 1: we used to do one hundred pound leg press, so
Speaker 1: fifty pound plates so not heavy, but we used to
Speaker 1: do ten sets of one hundred people.
Speaker 2: That aren't eighty two Can you convert that to kilograms?
Speaker 1: Oh, forty five kilos, So we do forty five give
Speaker 1: or take kilos one hundred reps, no rest, alternating times ten.
Speaker 1: So i'd do one hundred to head, do one hundred.
Speaker 1: I'd do one hundred of head, do one hundred. And
Speaker 1: we used to do this at my gym, so we weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, but we would literally, if you've got a
Speaker 1: queasy stomach, turn off now and you decide to stay,
Speaker 1: it's on you. We would take a bin with a
Speaker 1: bin liner brand new, and nearly every time that would
Speaker 1: not be brand new by the time.
Speaker 2: We finished psychopaths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that that's true. That's not me trying
Speaker 1: to sound like, yeah, we just did that, and we
Speaker 1: just and before you send me an email and go, well,
Speaker 1: that's just stupid. Yes, yes it is. That's why I'm saying,
Speaker 1: don't do it. But the dumb shit that I did
Speaker 1: when I was young in kind of an endeavor to
Speaker 1: see what my fucking outer limits were, you know, but
Speaker 1: it was fun. Like I would never recommend that, but
Speaker 1: I love that shit. I would never recommend it personally
Speaker 1: or professionally, but yeah, I just love that. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not going to die. But the most I'm going
Speaker 1: to digress for sixty seconds and tell you a funny story.
Speaker 1: My ex, one of my business partners, Mike Salisbury, good dude,
Speaker 1: shout out to Sulzi. He we were talking about running
Speaker 1: a marathon and it came up in the this is
Speaker 1: you're going to fucking cack at this. It came up
Speaker 1: in the conversation. We're talking about hydration and I don't
Speaker 1: know if he suggested or I suggest or as a
Speaker 1: hypothetical might have been me where I said, imagine if
Speaker 1: all you drank when you were doing your marathon was booze, right,
Speaker 1: because as you sweat, your blood volume decreases and you're
Speaker 1: putting all this booze on board. I'm like, I wonder
Speaker 1: what would happen. And he's like, oh, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it. I'm like, no, I don't. I don't think that.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm going to do it. So he did it.
Speaker 1: So we mapped out a seven k distance along Beach Road,
Speaker 1: the bike track, and he had a stubby I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is, three hundred and seventy five mil
Speaker 1: a beer at the start. Then he had one at seven, one,
Speaker 1: at fourteen, one, at twenty one, one, at twenty eight, one,
Speaker 1: at thirty five and one at forty two. So he
Speaker 1: whatever that is seven stubbies and drank no water. Now, also,
Speaker 1: everyone do not do this. And you're right, boys are
Speaker 1: fucked in the head. And I know all you mums
Speaker 1: who listen, who are loving mums, you're going, what the
Speaker 1: fuck is wrong with you? I agree?
Speaker 2: Wrong, we think you're this straighty one eighty no angel,
Speaker 2: that's never drank. But then you're pumping that into people
Speaker 2: that do a marathons. You.
Speaker 1: I didn't encourage him a lot, Yeah I did. I
Speaker 1: was curious about what would happen. And let's just say
Speaker 1: he was not very good having drunk seven beers and
Speaker 1: run forty two kilometers. He wasn't great. He was not
Speaker 1: in a great way for a day or two. But
Speaker 1: science tif science, you know, I mean, it's all for
Speaker 1: the greater good.
Speaker 2: All right, One last question I reckon for people rest
Speaker 2: and deconditioning. Do you think that it is beneficial for
Speaker 2: people to have a bit of a break at times
Speaker 2: completely and or when they do, how long before we
Speaker 2: start to decondition.
Speaker 1: We start? Well, okay, here's a really good example. An
Speaker 1: athlete breaks their their leg gets put in a plaster.
Speaker 1: When they put on the plaster that it's tight, within
Speaker 1: a few days it's loose. Maybe let's exclude swelling. But
Speaker 1: from the moment that you make something immobilized, it starts
Speaker 1: losing muscle, like within twenty four hours. So that's the
Speaker 1: extreme end of the case or the scale. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the answer is quite quickly. So if you say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I want to have four weeks off the gym,
Speaker 1: I would say, great, just don't do nothing like be active,
Speaker 1: walk more, stretch a bit. Just don't go from high
Speaker 1: activity to zero activity because that is literally bad for
Speaker 1: your health. Right, So yeah, but definitely, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you train, if you've trained for a long time
Speaker 1: and you go, I just want to give my joints
Speaker 1: and muscles and ligaments and tendons of break, of course,
Speaker 1: or if you've been running for fucking twenty years. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you've been running for twenty years, the chances of
Speaker 1: you having a week or two off of minimal because
Speaker 1: you're a weirdo and like most people who run every
Speaker 1: day something of an addict, you're not really a wido.
Speaker 1: But like this is the thing. In fact, for many
Speaker 1: people tip who have trained for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Me included, it would probably be good for my body
Speaker 1: to have two weeks of no lifting weights. Chances of
Speaker 1: that happening as zero. What it was, I'm emotional.
Speaker 2: One of my early fights, I had a trip to Kakadu,
Speaker 2: so we went away, so I couldn't train and I
Speaker 2: was coming back ten days before the fight. Actually no,
Speaker 2: Also another one of my last fights as well, I
Speaker 2: went to Bali and came back ten days before the fight,
Speaker 2: and I didn't do any boxing over there, and I
Speaker 2: felt fresh out. And that was just showing me how
Speaker 2: my which I had pushed for so long with adequate
Speaker 2: recovery because that was back when I had gyms and
Speaker 2: businesses and I wasn't. It was very overstimulated in other
Speaker 2: areas of my life. Ye, so that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean that is just information. Like for you,
Speaker 1: I would go okay, because the biggest challenge for people
Speaker 1: who train a lot, me included, it's not biology, it's psychology.
Speaker 1: It's emotion. It's like, oh no, I'm not not training.
Speaker 1: I'm not not because it's we're addicted. Am I addicted? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm not crazy. You know. Yesterday I was away, I
Speaker 1: was in mil Jura. I was busy all day. I
Speaker 1: did not even look at a dumb belt, right, so
Speaker 1: can I not go? Of course I can, and but
Speaker 1: you know, I would probably do that five days a year,
Speaker 1: But if I had to do it twenty I would.
Speaker 1: You know, if something happened in my life and I
Speaker 1: could only get to the gym every other day, I'd
Speaker 1: be fine. But I don't need to do that. But
Speaker 1: if you said you've got to have two weeks of
Speaker 1: not lifting a weight for a medical reason, I would
Speaker 1: do that, but I would not enjoy that. I would
Speaker 1: not just do it. But that's again I'm not saying
Speaker 1: be like me, But that's why I mean, Like, this
Speaker 1: is why I love building habits that, for the most
Speaker 1: part work for you. Like if one of your habits
Speaker 1: is that you lift weights most days of your life,
Speaker 1: well it's not a terrible habits have as long as
Speaker 1: there's intelligence thrown into the process. Like, there are way
Speaker 1: worse habits than lifting heavy shit. There are way worse
Speaker 1: habits than going for a walk every day or a
Speaker 1: run or stretching every day, or you know. I think
Speaker 1: when people go, oh, you're obsessed or you're this, or
Speaker 1: you're that, and I'm like well, I'm not. But from
Speaker 1: where you stand by your you know, your fucking gauge, well,
Speaker 1: of course, but no disrespect, you know, Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't say what I want to say, But you know what,
Speaker 1: some of the people that are critical of that have
Speaker 1: been critical of me over the years because I don't
Speaker 1: eat this and I don't do that, like despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it clearly works, right, you know, in that
Speaker 1: I'm touchwood, relatively healthy and functional, operational, and I'm in
Speaker 1: my sixties and you know, and I but but then
Speaker 1: when people criticize you for doing the thing that works
Speaker 1: while living in a body that clearly isn't working optimally,
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff you go, no, I just I'll
Speaker 1: just take it, you know. I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 1: why people feel compelled. Well I do because it makes
Speaker 1: them feel better about what they're not doing. So if
Speaker 1: you're the one that's the idiot, then they're not the idiot,
Speaker 1: and that's more comfortable. Yeah, it's been great.
Speaker 2: Do you think we covered everything that I think that
Speaker 2: was pretty good.
Speaker 1: I think we did a recently good job. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to admit that halfway through the episode my left
Speaker 1: ear blocked. I have this thing everybody, some of you
Speaker 1: have heard but called I think it's called ustation tube
Speaker 1: dysfunction and I'm going that. I tell you, Tiff, people
Speaker 1: don't need to know this, but fuck it, I'm going
Speaker 1: to the urologist on Monday.
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of you.
Speaker 1: Well, it's very big for me to go to a
Speaker 1: doctor because I'm a little bit of a baby boo.
Speaker 1: And it's all right, it'll sort itself out. I'll just
Speaker 1: fucking jog it out. Well. Yes, I made the booking
Speaker 1: last week, which was good, with a specialist with an
Speaker 1: e NT in those throats specialists, which is great. And
Speaker 1: I had one of the biggest challenges. I know we're finished,
Speaker 1: but fuck it, this is for free everyone.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I did, as you know. I went to Mildura yesterday.
Speaker 1: I spoke all day or most of the day, by
Speaker 1: the way, shout out to the folks in Mildura. Fucking
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how much I love Mildura and
Speaker 1: how much I love the people. And they know this.
Speaker 1: I'm going to because I said this, it's like stepping
Speaker 1: it's like visiting nineteen eighty five, and it was. It
Speaker 1: was great. They were great. But anyway, I spoke. I
Speaker 1: started speaking at nine and spoke through most of the day,
Speaker 1: and my left ear blocked, total blockage, like it just blocks,
Speaker 1: like with air. It's not wax, it's not water, and
Speaker 1: so I could only hear out of my right ear.
Speaker 1: But what happens with this blockage is and now your
Speaker 1: voice starts to echo in your head right. And it's
Speaker 1: to say it's hard as an understatement, but you just
Speaker 1: you know, I can't magically unblock it. And then at
Speaker 1: about I would say eleven thirty, and I spoke up
Speaker 1: until three or four. At eleven thirty, both years blocked.
Speaker 1: So now I've got my voice echoing in my head.
Speaker 1: I've got a room full of people looking at me.
Speaker 1: I've got to be interesting. I've got to be fully present.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that yesterday was while it was great and
Speaker 1: they enjoyed it and beyond the block DearS, I loved it.
Speaker 1: But it was one of the most challenging presentations I've
Speaker 1: ever done in my life because it's literally like just
Speaker 1: shoving I don't know, like almost those heavy duty headphones
Speaker 1: where you wear on an industrial site and it's just
Speaker 1: you can't hear anything. You know you're talking, but you
Speaker 1: can't even really hear your own voice in the room.
Speaker 1: You can hear it reverberating in your head, but you
Speaker 1: can't hear it in space in front of you. And
Speaker 1: then when people are asking me questions, I'm just constantly saying,
Speaker 1: could you repeat that? And they're literally ten feet away
Speaker 1: and they're like, how fucking old is this guy? I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I told him, I told him what
Speaker 1: was going on. Yeah, they were great, But so I
Speaker 1: hope by I think it's Monday too. I hope by
Speaker 1: Monday three I have at least a solution or a plan.
Speaker 1: So I'm very excited. I'm very excited. All Right, it's
Speaker 1: been great. I know you've got a date tonight. Enjoy
Speaker 1: your date, and you know, I hope you and he
Speaker 1: just dance up in a storm because I know you
Speaker 1: love dancing. And yeah, report back in next time. We chat.
Speaker 1: We we