Barbell Shrugged - [Hypertrophy] A 12-Month Periodization Model to Maximize Muscle Growth w/ Bryan Boorstein, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #684

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged, Bryan Boorstein lays out a hypothetical model for building muscle over a 12 month period. This model is a comprehensive training approach that systematically varies training variables over a year-long period. The approach involves breaking down the year into specific phases, each with its unique focus and training goals, to ensure optimal muscle development and prevent stagnation.  Typically, the phases involve different training intensities, volumes, and exercises to challenge the body in new ways and promote progressive overload.  Incorporating the latest science and research in hypertrophy, this model lays out the foundation for strength, hypertrophy, metabolic conditioning, aerobic capacity, and peak phases for muscle growth. By following this model, you can optimize your training, enhance strength, and promote long-term muscle growth and development.   Bryan Boorstein Bio: 25 Years Training; 14+ Years Coaching     •    3X CrossFit Regional Athlete     •    CrossFit Games Coach     •    Owner of CrossFit Pacific Beach     •    Former Physique Competitor     •    CrossFit L-1, CrossFit-2, CrossFit Mobility     •    Bachelor of Science     •    OPEX, N1 Training Biomechanics & Programming     •    Featured on ESPN Radio + Numerous Podcasts     •    Training & Nutrition Podcast Host: Eat Train Prosper (http://eattrainprosper.com/)   To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthreport.com   Connect with our guests: Bryan Boorstein on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug. My dear friend, the best man at my wedding, Brian Borstein's coming on the show. What's really cool about this, not only have him and I been good friends for a really, really, really long time, he was really like one of the very first real training partners I had.

Like people when you get in the gym and you're like, we're about to get huge. That's who Brian Borstein was to me when I met him when we were both 21 years old. 20 years old we met on the day that he turned 21, which was a fun day in our lives. Really set this thing off. But since that day, he really has been one of the leading sources for me. One, as a friend. Two, we owned multiple gyms together for about six years. And just when it comes to the whole idea of hypertrophy and building muscle,

Brian Borstein knows what he's talking about. You can go back into many of the shows that we've done over the years with him. Great to have him back on because he's really hit his stride in a lot of the new science that's come out in the world of hypertrophy. And I think you're going to learn a ton about this. As always, friends, you can go over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you can see Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner do an analysis of lifestyle performance and lab analysis. Rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Brian Borstein. Is this time number three on Shrugged? Time number four? It's three or four. I was thinking about it last night. I

can't remember. For everybody that is listening and wondering who Brian Borstein is, dude, this is like the longest standing human being that I've lifted weights with in my entire life. We're on, we don't lift weights together anymore, but I've been watching you. Dude, I feel like you're in the sweet spot right now of where Brian Borstein was supposed to be his entire life of lifting weights. If you go back, we did a show in Vegas kind of talking about your entire life, which we don't need to get into. But the new pieces of hypertrophy, we're going to dig into like a 12 month periodization schedule. But pre-show we were talking about, does any of this actually matter? And how specific do we need to be in our training? And you just did a bunch of

research on figuring out kind of like, does it all matter? Or is it all just, we should just lift weights and have fun and hopefully we get healthier because of it. I'd love to dig in. Does it matter that we need to follow all of the specifics that you're about to lay out to us in this 12 month periodization cycle? Well, funny you should ask. What if we just said no right now? You're like, yeah, I'm going to lay this out. None of it matters. Right. Yeah. Just don't even listen to this show. You can stop right now. Just live with it. You're cool. Where can we find you? What we were talking about right before we hit record was on my podcast, Eat, Train, Prosper. I did a whole deep dive episode into individual

differences in research. And so essentially when you look at a lot of things within the evidence based practice, you see that nothing matters. It's this kind of nihilistic viewpoint, which was the name of my episode, Evidence-Based Nihilism. And specifically I focused on training volume, rep ranges and progression methods, because essentially if you look at population averages, when it comes to volume, it's just like, yeah, everyone should do 10 to 20 sets. And then you look at rep ranges and it's like, eh, anything between five reps and 30 reps is all good for hypertrophy. And you can look at proximity to failure and they can say, you know, working to failure and working five plus reps from failure, it's all good, you know. But essentially

what I did in this episode was I was able to get my hands on a ton of the individual data that went into this research. So looking at each individual research participant and seeing how they responded specifically to the training intervention. And what we found was that on a population level, these research studies all seem to say, hey, it doesn't matter, whatever you do, it's going to work. But individually, there was very distinct differences between what actually works for somebody and what doesn't work for somebody else. And so that whole episode was about that, if anyone's interested in going down that rabbit hole. Did they dig into like timelines? Because this is something that I actually think about a lot. Because I see you and you're the most shredded human literally on this planet at 40 years old. And you've gotten more shredded over

the years, like you were shredded in college college and now you're way more shredded, which is wild. And you're like the same body weight. That's when we went on spring break to Colorado. I remember all that. If you play the game long enough, do the individual specifics matter as much, or is it the cumulative body of work or kind of like how to, what do you feel like is like the, on that spectrum, where do you think the, I'll just use a terrible word, but like, where do you think the truth lies? Yeah, no, I think that's a great question because I think the things that matter the most are training hard over time. And essentially there's

a meta-analysis from 2017 that Schoenfeld did on training volume. And so this same meta analysis that basically suggests that 10 to 20 sets is the optimal number of sets per muscle group. Uh, people look at that and they run with it and they're like, Oh, I have to do 10 to 20 sets then. But within that same meta analysis, they also found that if you do one to four sets per week, that gets you about 65% of the gains that you would get from 10 to 20 sets. And if you do five to nine sets, that gets you about 85% of the volume that they're recommending in this meta and get almost all of the results. And then to your point, when you kind of extrapolate that out over time, over 10 years, 15 years, it's highly likely that we're all going to have this genetic stop where we just can't get any bigger can't get any stronger and it's maybe just a matter of whether you get there in eight years versus 12 years but if you just do it long enough you're pretty much going to end up at the same place we actually did an episode with with rich froning and ben smith and and one or two other like high level crossfitters maybe like eight years ago and uh and rich specifically basically said it doesn't really matter he's like just do whatever

like just just as long as you're training super fucking hard all the time and like you're training multiple times a day like and you're kind of hitting all like the big rocks then it doesn't really matter sets and reps and volume and all that we actually got a lot of pushback after that episode of like of not from mostly from like higher level coaches like saying like like you really should have stepped in and told rich to sit to not say it doesn't matter because it obviously does matter for most people most of the time that they should be on a high quality structured training program. But I feel like a lot of people were missing his point that really training hard and putting 100% effort into your training program really is the most important thing, which was his main point.

And also as you get closer to any specific goal, like using a perfect example would be when you're trying to get super lean and you're dieting, like, no, it doesn't really matter how you diet until you're trying to get from 8% body fat to 5% body fat. And then that shit probably matters. Same thing if you're 98% of the way to your genetic potential, and you're trying to either improve your CrossFit performance, or you're trying to improve the amount of muscle that you can put on your body, the last one or 2%, like it matters more to you. And that's kind of the conversation is like globally, it can say, you know, five reps or 30 reps, you know, it's all good, because it's all going to build muscle. But once you get to the final couple percentage points, you really have

to kind of figure out what for you matters the most and is going to move the needle yeah i remember a long time ago people used to say uh i used to hear the expression the best training program is the one that you're not doing and really like really what that means is like if you're just doing the same thing over and over and over again even if the volume makes sense and even if the exercises make sense like if you're just doing the same thing, just, you know, routinely for many years, like after a while, you know, if you've only been doing like sets of eight to 10, well, then maybe doing sets of 15 to 20 will work really well just because you haven't done that in a long time. And it's just a way to mix it up. But that's part of what made CrossFit, you know, one of the many reasons CrossFit was effective is that there's just a lot of variety. And so within that five to 30 rep range or whatever it is, like, if you're always doing the same thing, then, you know, maybe just do something that you think,

quote unquote, doesn't work and go do sets of 25 for a couple of weeks. And you might actually see a little bit of progress. Periodization, man. I think that's actually what the last time. I want to pluck out that quote, periodization, man. That's going to be my text message. Ding. Ding. Whenever you text. Periodization, man.

Brian is currently in SoCal, if you couldn't care less. The vibe came through him there. Periodization, man. That was a Matthew McConaughey moment there. Yeah, that's a good name for a podcast. I think the last time we had you on was actually kind of like the beginning, maybe not the beginning, but you were like really getting dialed in kind of on really what I want to lay out here. But before we do that, I want to. The phases of when you look back on the phases of the training that you've kind of been through, like CrossFit being almost like a small piece of it at this point over you know 26 27 years or whatever it is um

what do you feel like the uh what you attribute the success at each level of those those periods from teenager to 20s to 30s going into your 40s. If you were kind of just overall, like the big macro block of, well, my teens, this is what I actually developed now that I can see the past. This is what I did in my 20s. And this is what you actually gained because of that period of time. Have you ever thought about those just kind of on like the macro decade long level? Yeah. You know, the first few years, it's kind of difficult to see much change at all. And it's because I started training before I was even really in puberty. And so I have pictures of my journey, you know, the first three years and the first two years, my body literally almost looks no different, but I don't think my training

was bad per se. It was more just like, dude, you weren't a man yet. You had no testosterone flowing through your body type thing. Those kids in the gym are my favorite. Shark family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs.

That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com.

You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. They flex so hard.

But nothing happens. Non-stop, just flexing. I'm like, bro, you haven't even started, but keep going. So when I went to college before I even met you, uh, my first year of college at East Carolina university. And, uh, at that point I jumped on a program called max OT, which is kind of low volume, higher effort, relatively low reps. Like everything's pretty much four to eight reps. It was a bro split. So meaning like one body part per week. And that was for sure the best single year or two of training productively that I've had in my entire life. But I don't think that I can attribute that to say, oh,

it was because I did the max OT program. I think it was this huge confluence of you're turning into a man, you're at college, you're free dining food everywhere. Like the amount of fried chicken sandwiches that I would put away was insane. I mean, I just gained 30 pounds in the first year of college. Yeah. And so, you know, if you lift heavy and you eat a lot of food, then good things happen. So it's tough to say, like, to me, Max OT always feels like this incredible magic bullet. But at the same time, it was just when I was turning into a man. And so I probably could have been training in a number of ways and had an effect there.

The CrossFit years were important because they helped me realize what I'm capable of in regards to maximal strength. Like I never really, really did any one RM type work leading up to it before CrossFit. And then I remember even when we first opened the gym before we even had rings hung, we were doing a one rep max deadlift and I hit 505 or 510 or something like that. And I remember it just being this huge moment where I was like, wow, I'm actually fucking strong. And I've never even tried this before. And then over the years, you know, I started snatching and clean and jerking, and that was all foreign. So the, the, the increase was newbie gains, basically,

like the first time I snatched, I think it was 175. And then within four months, I'm snatching 235. So it's just one of those things that happened really quickly. And to Doug's point, it's maybe just trying something new and getting your body to adapt to like a new stimulus. Yeah. I think about really now the first decade is for me, I just look at him like all that was was like neurological wiring. Like I was getting stronger, but it was really just learning how

to move and hard wiring movement patterns. And then once I became 23 years old in decade two, then it was like, now I get to go use this thing. And then CrossFit showed up and it was like, now we get to work really hard. You're already strong, but now we get to put it to use. And that was, uh, that was like the intent specifically to get large, um, and, and be a monster. And that was just such a mindset piece of now I have this tool in my back pocket. I'm neurologically like wired to be able to do it. Now I get to go play the game. Now I just try and hold on. Yeah. When you turn to 40, you just try not to lose it. But now it's really just, it's gone back to me like mentally of just the neurological component of like,

if I can move perfectly for the rest of my life, I'll always be strong. Cause I think a lot of it, like the reserve of intention and then all of a sudden I'm good. Like I can be strong whenever I want, but most days two 55. Good to go. Feels great. Great on the joints.

Great on the knees. Great on the back. Everything's happy. I don't have to think too hard. Um, but if I needed to, I could get after it a little bit. Yeah, totally. That's cause you kept your body healthy and you have, like you said, those neurological efficiencies kind of built in.

Yeah. Um, let's go to, Let's go down that road for a second. Like you're like I said, like you're over 40 and you're still muscular and lean, et cetera. You've been training for many decades now. Like how do you how do you keep your body healthy when you do have aches and pains and nagging little things or actual real injuries? How do you train around those things and keep making progress? Yeah. You know, I think that part of the big win for me was switching away from CrossFit when I did, um, because hypertrophy training is this like super forgiving thing that you can do in so many different ways. And there's so many different movements that you can use to help you train a muscle that, um, you can just line things up. And so, uh, in 2020, 2019, I started following, uh, N1 education, cast some Hanson. You guys had him on your

podcast and, uh, he's here locally in Boulder with me where I usually live. And, uh, he's been a huge influence on me in learning how to kind of the biomechanics of lining up movement with muscle fiber action and things like that. And ever since I switched away from, like for me personally, the barbell wasn't serving me anymore. Doing everything in a pronated grip with this long cylindrical object, it just wasn't great for my body. And so once I started kind of doing a bunch of the stuff that and one promotes like a lot of cable movements for the upper body, and more specific machines for legs. It really I haven't had any injuries at all for a number of years, even small dings aside from

the two that I've had from sprinting that we were laughing about before starting the show. In June, I tore my plantar fascia sprinting. And then as if that starting the show in June, I tore my plantar fascia sprinting. And then as if that wasn't like a lesson enough for me, like eight months later, I popped my hamstring sprinting. So, um, now I've learned the lesson, you know, 40 year olds probably don't need to be doing 100% all output sprints, but, um, weightlifting itself hasn't really caused me any issues. And my body feels better than it did during the years of CrossFit, which I'm sure you guys can probably relate to as well. You're actually on the note of sprinting. Speed, power, et cetera, tend to diminish fast as you age.

You say old man strength and people are like, oh, yeah, that's definitely a thing. And you say old man speed and it's laughable. It's not a thing. And you say old man speed and it's like, it's like laughable. It's not a thing. So to some extent, like keeping speed and explosive power, et cetera, is, uh, is a goal. Like you don't want to end up being the old man that can like, you know, like, like trips on something and you can't catch your own, your, your balance, you fall, you break your hip, like that, that classic type of situation. Uh, how do you think about training for speed and power as you get older? If running just sprints and things that you would just do in high school aren't an option

anymore, what do you do that's more conservative where you can still train speed of movement? Yeah, like agility and dynamic movement and switching directions and stuff like that. Honestly, I haven't been doing much of it. And I think that it's something that is on my agenda to start incorporating more of I've been on this, this cardio kick recently, cause I have basically ignored cardio ever since I left CrossFit for now six years. Um, but I've been on a cardio kick recently and on that cardio kick, I've also been exposed to a lot of kind of what Galpin talks about, uh, regarding the importance of that agility and that dynamic movement as you

age too. So I've been going out and I've been trying to play a little bit more basketball just to get a little bit more of that lateral movement and that explosive stuff back into my life. And then I'm sure at some point in the near future, I'll start doing like some, you know, single leg box jumps and lateral jumps and stuff like that. But for the most part, I've been surprised at how much hypertrophy training when done with intent really does transfer over. And as an example of that, when I was playing basketball the other day, I went to try and touch the rim, which I had no expectations that I'd be able to do. And I was able to like legit get up and grab the rim, which is, which is nuts because I, even at my peak, when I was 20 years old, I could

barely dunk a volleyball. And now at 40, I'm like still being able to grab rim. So it's, it's, it's a small, a small loss for sure, but definitely not as significant as I think it could have been. Did you hang up there? I didn't hang. I just kind of grabbed, pulled, and let go. Yeah, yeah. I hold Anson up on the rim at like the six-foot level, and I'm like, just hang there, bro. You may never do this again. Yeah, I don't want to be like Shaq.

Add genetics for dunking, dude. Yeah, man, let's dig into – I sent you a text kind of like preparing for this you made a post and really I feel like the post of the periodization schedule that you laid out although on Instagram and relegated to like

150 characters or whatever the hell it is on there, 2200 characters like really was like a full encompassing like very macro look at how one should or could lay out a full year of training with each of the individual kind of like mesos laid out in there. And I thought it was really well done.

And I really, I want to just dig into more depth into each thing. So at the highest level, I give you 12 months, a trained person that is, you know, call it 15 plus years of, so we're not, we're not dealing with new people. They know how to work hard. How do we, how do we start to understand maybe the core components that we need to be looking at over a year to start actually building out individual mesocycles and then micro cycles and just putting that whole year together. Yeah. So real quick on the macro perspective, I think there's probably three types of training that you want to delve yourself into, assuming your goal is hypertrophy. And so the majority of your training year, call it

nine months of the year should probably just be spent doing hypertrophy. And so I majority of your training year, call it nine months of the year should probably just be spent doing hypertrophy. And so I'm going to backtrack here in a second and go over that as far as mesocycle design goes. But the other three months are probably a combination of some metabolic type training, which isn't entirely exclusive from hypertrophy. They're kind of, they're correlated for sure. And then, uh, strength training, which again is not completely separate from hypertrophy.

There's certainly some carry over there, but there's subtle differences. Uh, but when we look at that and we kind of dial it back to, okay, if we're going to spend nine months of the year doing hypertrophy training, what, what does that look like? And that was kind of where my post went, was more focusing on one mesocycle within the hypertrophy paradigm. So I think the first thing to understand when we talk about designing a hypertrophy program is something that I kind of came to realization with in about 2020. And that is, um, the binary nature of two different types of movements, uh, short overload movements and lengthened overload movements. We're going to need some, we're going to need some definitions.

Yeah, for sure. I got you. Yeah. So I think the simplest way to describe this is to look at a bicep curl. And I think intuitively many people have probably thought about this, maybe not in terms of short and lengthened, but when you're at the bottom of a bicep curl, your bicep is lengthened. It's long. Yeah. When you're doing 21s, it's the first seven. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which by the way, it was just an awfully designed approach. Like nobody should be doing 21s that way. Um, so, so like you want to do the length and stuff at the end. I'll go, I'll get into that. So, so, so lengthen would be the bottom portion of your bicep where your bicep is long. Um, and then as you curl up, what happens is the, the bicep shortens. And so that would be the short position of the movement.

A couple other examples here would be looking at a lateral raise. At the bottom, your lateral delt is lengthened. At the top, it is shortened. You could also kind of exchange shortened with contracted. So when you look at a leg extension machine, the bottom is stretching your quad. It's almost like doing one of those, uh, reach things where you reach behind your body and pull your foot up and you can feel your quad lengthen.

That's kind of the bottom lengthen position for your quad. And then as you leg extend and you get to the top, the contracted position, that is where the quad gets short. I'm looking at a row movement or a pull down. The short position is going to be when the arms are closest to the body and the length and position for your lats and your upper back is going to be the point where your arms are extended further away from your body. So essentially when we look at that and why that matters for hypertrophy is that movements that are short overloaded, meaning they're hardest at the short position, they carry significantly less fatigue and they carry significantly less fatigue and they carry significantly less stimulus. But when you look at a lengthened movement that is not only

training the muscle at long muscle lengths, but it is also overloaded there. And I know this is a bit of nuance that complicates things, but think about like an incline dumbbell curl. In an incline dumbbell curl, your arm is behind your body, your shoulder is extended. So not only is that like putting your bicep in the most lengthened position possible, but it's not actually overloaded there because a dumbbell fights gravity, right?

As you're lifting a dumbbell, the point of most resistance is gonna be as your forearm crosses gravity. And so an inclined dumbbell curl trains at long muscle lengths, but it's not overloaded per se at long muscle lengths. Whereas a back squat or an RDL, those are savage movements because they are both training your quads and your hamstrings at long muscle lengths. And the hardest point of the movement is where the muscle is lengthened at the bottom, right? That all makes sense. Any clarification on

that? Anyone that's done like heavy pec flies, where you're getting like a deep stretch with heavy weights, like knows you get super, super, super sore from that stuff. Exactly. Yeah. So there's significantly more stimulus and significantly more fatigue. And so when we look at the design of a hypertrophy mesocycle, I think it's really, really important to understand the difference between those two types of movements. And that's the basis for how I begin to construct a hypertrophy mesocycle. So a movement that's short overloaded, that carries very little fatigue. I'm going to start my mesocycle. So a movement that's short overloaded that carries very little fatigue. I'm going to start my mesocycle at about one to two reps from failure on those short

movements. But on something like an RDL or a back squat, man, if you started a mesocycle at like one rep from failure, where do you go from there? You know, you just kind of end up adding weight and beating your head against the wall and eventually there's no more progression to be had. And so I like to start the more lengthened kind of fatiguing movements at something like three or four reps from failure. And then this builds in the opportunity for you to achieve small wins, which is kind of another principle of the way I design programs is to create an opportunity for people to get these little victories each session, especially when you're 15 years into training, you know, going into the gym and just constantly beating your head against the wall, trying to progress is not a

recipe for, for enjoyment. Um, but if you can kind of create these small wins for yourself, session to session, then now you've created a, an opportunity to enjoy your training more, which is going to help you put more effort into it. And then over time, I think you're going to get better results from that. Yeah. I've really enjoyed doing. And so like I, I've always, uh, we'll just call it for like back training. Um, when you're doing pull downs, I've always been under the assumption that if I don't come all the way down and touch my chest with whatever grips I'm using, I should probably stop. And probably over the last six to eight months, and really because I was just watching your stuff, I was like, maybe failure isn't the full range of motion. And I should start doing some

of these partials at lengthened ranges of motion, just because it's like, I might be strong at call it 100 pounds for 10 through a full range of motion. But what about at half reps, or quarter reps, or half range of motion? Yeah. All of the, uh, ranges of motion inside there. And it's made my training so much, uh, just call it more fun because then I can actually, I'm not like writing workouts down anymore. I'll be clear about that, but I feel like I am, um, able to progress in a way that it's just new and cool to me that I can keep going and not feel like, oh, I'm just wasting my time doing partial reps. Yeah, it really has like added a lot of value to because now I feel like I can go to failure with lighter weights, and not have to beat the crap out

of myself, but and get more benefit out of it because I'm, I'm training literally to failure with, uh, with what lighter weights and still able to and still able to, uh, progress and, and, and get stronger. And I feel like I've actually felt a very tangible difference in how all that's progressed over the last six months. Yeah, that's awesome, man. I'm really glad to hear that. So essentially for the listeners, when you do a short overload movement, like your pull down example, or any sort of like dumbbell row or cable row or anything like that, when you can no longer get the bar all the way to your chest, to use Anders' example, you can still do so much work in the remaining 90% of the range.

And so if any of you guys actually try this, go to failure on when you can get the bar to your chest, and then take note of what happens as your range of motion begins to fall off. And what you'll notice is that you can get 90% of the range of motion and then 80% and then 75% and then 70 and then 65 and then 60. And literally like you could probably do an additional 10 reps after you failed to get the bar all the way to your chest. And so there's just a ton of range of motion in the length and position, which we now know is more beneficial by just continuing to do reps and letting that range of motion fall off. And so there's like literally nine studies now out there and eight of the nine have shown increased benefit to specifically targeting the lengthened position of movements.

And there's even a meta-analysis now out by Wolff and colleagues that goes over all of the studies that compare full range of motion to lengthened range of motion. And that has also found benefit in performing just the lengthened position. So, um, there's, he's actually doing an experiment. Now this guy, Milo Wolf, he's doing an experiment where he's only doing lengthened work for all of his movements. So like at the squat, he's only going down and then halfway up and then down and then halfway up and his RDLs are way too, yeah, exactly. So, but he's staying in the hardest portion of the movement. So the way that these movements fail is also really interesting because looking at how we've just talked about the pull down when that fails and you can still get 90% than 80% than 70%, you can get all this range of

motion. When you fail a back squat, there's no, there's nothing else left to have. You're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so it's very obvious. Like when you're trying to determine if a movement is short overloaded or, or lengthened overloaded, you can really assess that yourself by just what happens when you fail. Um, and if you can keep going, then it's probably a short overloaded movement. Do you feel like the mechanical, uh, piece that is actually creating the change is the total volume by doing an additional four reps or is it specifically the lengthened position and uh like doing it from whatever like a stretched position in the muscle yeah yeah so there's a ton of interaction between titan which is a protein in the muscle, and the calcium ions in there. And essentially, when you stretch the muscle out under significant tension, you could think of it as like this porous thing. And when it's stretched out, it creates all this space for all of this blood and nutrition and stuff to like flood into the muscle. But when the muscle is contracted,

like the top of a leg extension, everything is all like pushed together and it's difficult for all of the different proteins and stuff to get into the muscle. So there is absolutely something to the fact that it's being stretched under load. Now the under load part is really important because going back to the example of the lateral raise that I used in the beginning, if we're at the bottom of a lateral raise, that is in theory the stretched position for the side delt. But is there any tension on the side delt? Not really. You're just kind of letting your arm hang with gravity. But now imagine that you have a cable that's pulling your arm from behind your back as you're doing your lateral raise.

Now there's significant tension on the side delt pulling you across your body behind you. So now we have a movement that is both lengthened, overloaded and effectively training the lateral delt at long muscle lengths. So, yeah, I mean, there's definitely something to that. And then to even get a little more nuanced with it, the studies have shown that the short position of movements primarily grows the proximal region of the muscle, which would be the area closest to its insertion. And lengthened movements grow both the distal and the proximal area of the muscle. So you can essentially get complete growth by training at long muscle lengths without even having to get short. But if you get short, you're only training the proximal regions of that muscle.

How would you, if you were doing something like a lateral raise and you still have the cable is, um, how, and I'm kind of going back to this, this guy that's doing the study and just lengthened movement. So he's not getting, he's not breaking gravity at all. Like if he was doing a lateral, I guess lateral raises isn't the best one.

Cause you're not going to be, um, going that high. And he was like, do like a side plank lateral raise with a dumbbell. Yeah. Like if you're lying on the side like a bench or whatever yeah yeah exactly like if you're doing like a powell raise type thing where you're lying sideways on a bench then yeah that changes the point at which the

movement is hardest because when it crosses gravity it's lower within the range of motion but when you have that cable and it's pulling you from behind, so when you're setting up a cable, you can actually make that lateral raise short or lengthened overloaded based on how high the cable is. Because the point of most resistance in a cable isn't gravity. It's when your forearm gets perpendicular to the cable. So if you set that cable up at what we call wrist height, then your forearm is going to get perpendicular to the cable at the bottom of the movement. But say you had that cable set at the bottom of the stack, then your forearm is not going to get perpendicular to the cable until it gets much higher up. So you can actually shift the resistance curve on where the movement is hardest based on how high that cable is set.

Nice. I like that. So circle back to the big picture of how all this plays into your periodization cycle. Straight into the weeds. We went there. Hopefully that made sense. He gave the big picture and then we did go into the weeds and now people have a better understanding of the weeds. Let's cycle back to the big picture. So anyone that didn't fully understand it the first time around will now have a better understanding. Yeah. So like going back to that beginning and you're constructing, you know, say a six week mesocycle for hypertrophy.

And we're talking about how short overload movements progress differently than lengthened overload movements. So very simply, when you have a lengthened overload movement in my program design, we'll start at say four reps from failure on your back squat. And then the next week will be like three to four reps from failure, and then two to three reps from failure, and then one to two our RDLs to the point of technical failure. And that's a super ambiguous term when you're talking about these like, huge, massive compound movements that extend at three different joints. I mean, there's so many little mini compensations that can occur within the body. That that failure, I think is an important thing to understand in that your form doesn't change. Because you know, we've all been there where we're doing an RDL and then we can get eight more reps if we let our background or we let our hips

shoot up or like any other number of compensations that occur. But we don't want to do that, obviously. So, so that's very simply how I would progress lengthened overload movements. But looking at the short overload movements, it gets a little bit more complicated because we're starting them at say one to two reps from failure. And then in week two will be zero to one reps from failure. So basically butting up against technical failure already by week two. And then it's kind of like, OK, where do we go movements into partials, like Anders was saying. So we'll go to the point where you can no longer do your pull down all the way to your chest, and then we'll just keep doing reps, maybe three, four, five partial reps, something along those lines. In week four, I'll usually jump into something that's called a reverse drop set.

And for anyone that knows what a drop set is, you essentially strip weight and keep going. In a reverse drop set, you add weight and keep going. So you're doing your pull down, you already fail your pull down, right? You add 20% load. So let's say you're doing your pull downs with 100 pounds. We're now going to go up to 120 pounds and you're just going to keep doing reps. I call this like a partial rep match. And so say you got eight pull downs, full range of motion. You add 20%. You try to get eight partials with 20% heavier weight. And that's my partial rep match. It's called a reverse drop set. Then the subsequent week after that, we're now in week five. I'll actually take one of my pull down sets. So say I'm doing two work sets. The first one, I just do full range of motion. The second set, I'll add 30% weight. So it's a little bit like the reverse

drop set, except instead of going directly into it, I'm going to take a full rest. So I do my first set of pulldowns to failure, rest for two or three minutes, add 30% weight, and then do a partial rep match. But because you're not completely fatigued, you had your full two to three minute rest. When you add 30% weight, you'll surprise yourself and you'll actually be able to get some full range of motion reps. It won't be like eight or 10 of them, but maybe you'll get three, four, something like that. And then once again, you'll do a partial rep match where you'll make up the remaining reps with partials, but now it's 30% heavier. So there's even more tension on that length and position. Um, yeah, wait, hold on. That's a super cool concept. And for something

like pull downs, it makes like complete sense, easy to do safe, et cetera. What, uh, what other movements do you, do you select for that that are safe? Like bench press wouldn't be the greatest example, et cetera. But what other movements are a good idea? Or how would you do bench press? You wouldn't really because bench press is the lengthened overload movement, much like the squat or the RDL. So it fits into that category of you're fighting gravity. The hardest point is going to be the bottom of the movement.

Yeah, you just get hit. When I said said that you had to look on your face, like, like I thought you had, I thought you had a better idea. You look at me like, well, and I was like, Oh, no way. Like, give me a, give me a cool example here. Okay. No. So bench press any movement that's lengthened overloaded. You can't do partials on because once you fail, you just get pinned. So to your question, like the whole reason I use this protocol on short overloaded, you can't do partials on because once you fail, you just get pinned. Um, so to your question, like the whole reason I use this protocol on short overload movements is because it's completely safe. Um, so other examples of movements that are going to be overloaded at the short position would be, uh, most bicep curls, unless you're doing a bicep curl where you're in a cable and your arm is being pulled from behind you. Um, that one would be more lengthened overloaded, but almost any bicep curl where your arms start at neutral

or like a, uh, a spider curl where your elbows start in front of your body flexed. Um, those are all going to be short overloaded. So there's no reason you can't take like a spider, a dumbbell spider curl, uh, something like, and continue banging out reps there. Push downs are another example. If you do push downs, you can hit partial reps there. A dumbbell lateral raise is a great example because it is so significantly hard when you get to this like T position at the top and it's so easy at the bottom. You can do that. You can do leg extensions.

You can do leg extensions. You can do leg curls, any row or pull down movement are all going to be short overloaded just because the mechanical disadvantage when your arms get close to your body, it's just that much harder. Um, and we're just so much stronger with the arms extended. Um, let's see, what else can we do with that? Uh, those are probably the, for the primary examples, but yeah, any movement that's hardest at the contracted position is going to be one that you could do that sort of length and sets with. Yeah. How long for some of these things? really any like leg extension machine, I really start to find that the way that the machine sets up is not advantageous to the way that my body wants to actually do this. Like I'm 5'8",

188 pounds and my body and my limbs are built this way. And that machine is supposed to be built for everyone. And a lot of times I find that I'm going to do these things, but as I fatigue, the machine stops working for my body. Like rep one through eight, I'm strong. It doesn't matter the mechanics of the machine. Um, where like I get, I can push through, uh, on the leg extension just because I'm strong enough to move it. But as I go into partials or as I go into higher levels of fatigue, I will notice that because the machine is not properly aligned with my body or whatever's going, then all of a sudden it's, it's not that I can't do it. It's that it's so awkward that it starts to, um, like actually create the, the, a response that it doesn't feel good. Do you, I know you

have your own gym, but how do you kind of think about that with other people? Is there a, a, a level to this where it's like, just stop, um, or pushing through that? that like how do you kind of use the subjective feel of each thing to program one for yourself and then kind of more importantly other people because you have everything that you need in your garage like right to the exact pin that you need in the perfect place with the exact equipment that you specifically wanted, but I'm at a lifetime fitness trying to get my pump on. And all of a sudden that machine just doesn't work for me when I'm, when I'm in these like fatigue states. Yeah, no, I get that. So most leg extension and leg curl machines are going to be set up and calibrated in a manner that does make them short overloaded, which makes them relatively conducive to that protocol that I discussed.

But certainly there are thousands of brands out there now, right? Like there are certainly leg extension machines that I've been on where the top of the movement, the tension drops off, which is super unexpected. You like really have to work to get the thing going. I think they make them for like, they like weight sometimes the top of it so that it's easier where it feels like it's like flying up. Yeah. Like I don't want that. Yeah. I don't know why they do it, but I know, yeah, that's, that's kind of like the, what I'm getting at, like it doesn't feel

right. Yeah. So in that case, you're probably using a leg extension machine that is a little bit more lengthened or mid range overloaded. And so if you find a movement is acting like a lengthened or mid range overload movement, and it's not acting short, like it's not hardest at the contracted position, then I think you need to treat your progression with that machine more similar to you would a back squat or an RDL or a bench press where you're kind of like, eh, maybe this isn't like the best machine for partials. The other thing you could do with it is you could just increase the weight and go into your set, avoiding the top range of motion completely.

So you could just say, hey, I'm going to target 60% of the range of motion and call that a complete rep in my brain. And then you just keep% of the range of motion and call that a complete rep in my brain. And then you just keep hitting 60% range of motion on all your reps. And when you can no longer hit 60% range of motion, then that's the end of your set type thing. Uh, another thing you could do is you could try single leg because oftentimes you can kind of twist your hips and move your body into like a different position. And if you can do single leg, leg extensions or single leg, leg curls, maybe that changes the resistance curve just a little bit by changing your body's orientation to the machine. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause almost like I would say like 90% of the things that I love about, um, what we're talking about is done

through back training, lower body stuff doesn't really like align well because of the machines or there's just something that's different about it. But upper body training, especially back, I love doing this way. Yeah. I mean, that's a great point because the thing is like inherently, what are the movements that train your legs the best? They're squat patterns and their split squats and their lunges and their RDLs and all of those movements, what do they have in common? They're all lengthened overloaded. So we have this huge body of research now that's basically like, hey, if it's lengthened overloaded, that's the best bang for your buck movement. So we probably don't need to leverage a lot of this stuff because our legs are already

receiving a ton of lengthened overload stimulus. But to your point, back movements, there is literally no back movement that you can do that is lengthened, overloaded or hardest at long muscle lengths. And so we, we kind of have to leverage a lot of these techniques to get the most out of our back training. The only one I really can think of is like pullovers. Yeah. And that's not even really putting the lats in like the most biomechanically optimal position, because essentially what the lats do is they use the rib cage to stretch around. And so the fully

stretched position for your lat is going to be with your arm adducted across your body. And when you adduct that arm across and you get that big stretch in your lat, you can actually feel that happening. Whereas if you stay in a completely sagittal plane with the arm directly in front of you, you can feel how you don't get as deep of a stretch in that lat. And then when you get into that deep pullover position that you're talking about, the studies seem to show that the lats actually lose leverage above 120 degrees. And so when you're getting into that full pullover position, I think a lot of that tension is going into like our pec minor and into our tricep and things like that. So I think the lats don't actually have full leverage there.

Yeah, but what about expanding your rib cage that was a joke uh torn out back squats super squats loves mccullum would disagree with you old school um talk to me a little bit about uh when kind of the um i know it's not metabolic conditioning but like higher rep lower weight conditioning side of this thing, um, comes in and what role it plays in, in like a year long model. So I think that the best case use or use case for metabolic training is actually going to be after a strength cycle, because essentially when you're, when you're jumping into a strength cycle, we're, we're dropping reps, we're taking longer rest periods. And we're using primarily lengthened overload movements, because if you're trying to do

a short overload movement for sets of like three to five reps, we just know that it just doesn't feel good, right? Like nobody does leg extensions for three to five reps. No one does lateral raises for three to five reps, uh, bicep curls. Like you just kind of know inherently that those aren't great movements to use. And so when we get into a strength cycle, almost everything we're doing are these big compound length and movements for squatting. We're dead lifting. We're bench pressing. We're overhead pressing. Um, we're doing some row variations, which as we discussed, they're all short overloaded, but you know,

Hey, what are you going to do about that? Um, but essentially you're, you're taking long rest periods, you're dropping reps and your conditioning suffers. So you end up getting really strong because you're kind of becoming a specialist for six weeks, which is usually how long I'll run a strength cycle for. Um, and you're eating a lot of food usually too, cause, cause you want to get strong and you want to see those strength gains manifest. And so as we a lot of food usually too, because you want to get strong and you want to see those strength gains manifest. And so as we jump out of a strength cycle, like you could go right back into hypertrophy, but in the programming model that I use, I think it more beneficial to do a four to six

week metabolic cycle following a strength cycle, because then it increases the function of our mitochondria. It increases our ability of our mitochondria. It increases our ability of our body to kind of utilize oxygen effectively. We start kind of training some of these energy systems that have been ignored during the strength cycle. We start taking shorter rest periods. Maybe we have some same muscle group supersets, or as you said, we use high rep sequences. And essentially it's just this entirely different stimulus coming out of the strength cycle. So to Doug's point that he made in the beginning, sometimes you just need to do what

you're not doing to get results. And so going from strength into metabolic is a completely different stimulus. And then coming out the backend of metabolic, that sets you up really well to have the conditioning intact so that now you're getting into hypertrophy and you don't have to rest three to four minutes to exert maximal effort into your sets. You've now kind of gotten this conditioning, this aerobic adaptation from the metabolic cycle. And then when you get back into hypertrophy, you can be more efficient with your performance. Yeah, we've actually been doing that. We're having a contest that ends on my birthday, June 2nd of this year when I turn 40.

Internally for the Rapid team, we're having a transformation contest and Dan wrote some programming and we've been alternating back and forth between giant sets where it's like, you know, five sets of 10 light with like a 10 second break between five different movements.

So I do 10 of one exercise, 10 second break, 10 of another exercise in the same movement pattern, same muscle groups for five different movements for 50 total reps. Then you take like a two minute break. And we were doing that type of cycle for like a three week block. And then, and then we did a three week block of like heavier stuff or movements, total nine, seven, five, um, actually heavy to failure. And then now we're cycling back onto another round of, of not quite as many reps, but giant sets again, where it's like, instead of five movements, we're doing three movements. So we're kind of cycling back and forth between that, like higher rep, um, higher volume stuff, and then into the strength stuff every, every three or so weeks. Yeah, totally. It's create that adaptation there um you guys are familiar with the effective reps

model i assume sort of maybe talk about it you don't need to talk to me you gotta talk right before failure how they know the reps that matter that type of thing yeah yeah yeah so imagine yeah imagine if i said yes and then we didn't talk about it right we're just like cool everybody knows everybody's got it no big deal so yeah what what doug said is kind of for everyone here yeah so what doug said is kind of the idea there um and this this model isn't entirely accurate because did you guys hear me okay yeah you're good okay um it's not entirely accurate because we now know that it's not just the final five reps before failure that are effective. Like the reps,

six, seven, eight, nine, like they, they are somewhat effective. It's, it's more of the idea that,

that you get exponentially more stimulus, the closer you get to failure. And so when you're doing this, this, these higher rep sets, like 15 to 20 rep sets, in theory, there's a ton of reps that you have to do that are much less effective just to get to the effective reps. And so one of the things that I really like to do in my metabolic cycles is use same muscle

group supersets, but keep the reps like six to eight. So if I can do like six to eight reps of a dumbbell lateral raise, and then I can jump immediately into six to eight reps of like a lengthened overload cable lateral raise, then now I'm essentially exposing the side delts to 15 reps of tension but instead of having to do all these ineffective reps to get one failure point i'm able to get two failure points out of it and i find that just to be more mentally engaging too than to sit there and have to like monotonously do 12 reps just to start feeling that there's something happening there um so that's something i use pretty ubiquitously across most of my programs when we're doing metabolic phases.

What, let's talk peak phases. Do you do like a yearly photo shoot to get yourself all jacked? And obviously there's a big nutrition component that we're likely just not going to get into today. What are you, what does it look like when you're in your peak phase, specifically towards the end of the year? How long is it? What are you focusing on? How do you kind of wrap up a full year? Yeah, I mean, the most conducive way of training to dieting is just going to be again, strictly hypertrophy. I mean, it sounds like so boring and just like, yeah, just do hypertrophy. But, but like, if you're going to diet, then you want to train in the manner that's

going to help you maintain the most muscle mass. And when you're doing a strength cycle, you're just not getting enough stimulus because the reps are so low. And when you're doing a metabolic phase, you're creating a ton of cortisol and like, you know, it's just more catabolic in general. And so yeah, when when I'm dieting the last three months, it's really just straight up hypertrophy. The the main changes are probably that I'm going to stay a little bit further from failure on my really demanding lengthened movements, my squats and my hip hinges and stuff like that may not actually go to failure, um, because you just don't need to, and it's risky and you're dieting and you

don't have a ton of energy and focus. And then, um, volume might be like just a tad bit lower. I wouldn't say an excessive amount, but when you don't have the fuel coming in to facilitate recovery, you just want to be a little bit more prudent in the way that you approach your training. And so the whole model doesn't change from that kind of first week mesocycle that I laid out. It's just going to be, yeah, a little bit more of like a prudent approach and understanding that, hey, the goal here is to maintain muscle. And then we have a, we have a ton of research showing that maintenance volume for, for muscle is somewhere between 33 and 50% of what it takes to build it. Um, and granted, if you're in a caloric deficit, you're already in a catabolic state. And so maybe you could argue that you

need to do a little bit more to maintain than you would if you were in a properly fueled state. But I leverage a lot of that research and I say, Hey, I can probably do less. And as long as I'm still working hard and putting the effort in, then I'm probably going to maintain muscle. Yeah, that was actually, I'll ask a better question because the maintenance side of it, I feel like is actually the really tricky part of being in that big of a deficit towards the end of it, but still trying to maintain muscle. Do you feel like that is a, like the actual physical tissue? Because so much of just like, muscle is just this like water sloshing around in there and filling cells. Um, is, is the focus, uh, and maybe this is just like a four week cycle or a three month cycle. And it just is what it is that you're just

going to lose a lot of water. You're going to try and maintain as much tissue, um, and doing it with fewer calories and probably just hormonally not as,, but when it comes to the volume, are you pushing to failure? And what does failure mean to you in that phase? And context to that of, if lat pulldown, easiest one. Failure to me no longer is do I touch my chest with the bar? It's how many total reps can I do, partials included? Are you pushing the energy or your energy expenditure that high? Or is it literally like I'm pressing the button

or I'm checking the box, I'm doing the work, but I'm not actually going to like the extreme failure that you would be while you're in a muscle building phase? Yeah, I mean, I think you have to be a little bit more cognizant of that, but you also have to remember that what built Rome is going to be the same thing that maintains Rome. And so, um, I don't change a lot when it comes to short overload movements, just because the fatigue cost is so low on something like a lap pull down lateral raise. Um, the change is more seen uh obviously in the

length and movements um yeah i just the short overload stuff man it just especially with back work it just at this point now it feels ineffective if i just go to concentric failure it feels like oh i can't get my arms to my waist anymore. Okay. Stop the set. It's just, there's so much of that big back that's left untrained or under trained in that approach. Um, that I don't change any of that as I go into the dieting phase, I actually tend to pull the card of cardio and I'll take cardio out when I'm dieting, um, which has been a huge revelation for me in the last couple of years, because it's always this idea in the nineties and two thousands was you do cardio when you diet, cause you burn more calories and whatever,

whatever. But when you look at all the research from Ponser, um, I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but it's basically about energy compensation in the Hadza, which is a hunter and gatherer tribe from the Amazon. Um, and they basically found that when you're dieting, if you're in a caloric deficit, your body compensates in such a dramatic manner that you're only burning something like 50 to 70% of the calories that you think you're burning. So you go out and do cardio when you're dieting and you think you're like, oh great, I burned 400 calories. Nope. You really burned like 250. So it's this like super inefficient way of trying to facilitate a caloric deficit. Um, so usually I use cardio now when I'm

at maintenance or in a surplus because I'm trying to do it for health. I'm not trying to use it to lose body weight, um, and keep the nutrition that's coming in during the diet to help repair and maintain muscle tissue more. And so I don't actually feel like I'm in a huge deficit when I'm dieting as much just because I'm not using cardio, which tends to just make you feel like shit and hungry all the time and tired. Yeah. We're going to wrap the show, but I have to tell you, just because this is like the friend part, dude, training back is so much more fun doing it the way you do it than the way that I used to do it. I don't use, like I was kind of talking about the leg extensions and leg curls and things like that. I don't enjoy it as much with the leg stuff. I feel like still just heavy grinding out eight to 10, 12 on squats.

It's just like the only way my body really wants to do lower body training. Um, and it's much lighter weights, but back training is like the most fun thing when you're not focused on the full range of motion and just going to as much failure as possible. If you are a human being like me that has three days a week and is trying to get it in while dance class is happening and you've got 45 minutes, go and take a seated rose till the end for four or five sets. And it's the best. I like, I feel like it's a tool that I, I feel like I knew the tool existed from watching Pumping Iron so many times

where you're like, they're not even doing full reps. Like why is Arnold doing that? But I've been trying it a lot more specifically because of you and it has like made training so much more fun. Just being able to push hard again without having like just total, uh, intensity be the only metric that I'm, I'm tracking. That's awesome, dude.

I'm really amped about that. Have you tried the length and sets yet where you just start super heavy and you can't even get a full rep to begin with baby steps? I haven't, um, I haven't the biggest problem with right now is like, I, I literally, uh, go to a lifetime fitness while gymnastics is happening. And then I have another globo gym. That's I'm not going to say their name. It's awful. It's awful. They don't even have a seated row machine. Um, but they do have some of the stuff. And this is kind of where I get into, like, this is the dance class gym that I go to.

Both the gyms that I go to not in my garage are share a wall with wherever Adelaide is doing her gymnastics or dance, which is genius parenting. The machines just don't line up well. Like I don't feel that great on. I know that they work. And there's also like a piece of me specifically with like leg curls. It just puts a weird tension on my knees that I know the machine itself, or maybe I don't have a belt or there's just, I'm pulling from places that don't, that shouldn't be pulled

from, especially in the lengthened position. And it just, it fits weird on my body. It may be a machine. It may be my limbs. It may be the combination of the two, but it just doesn't fits weird on my body. It may be a machine. It may be my limbs. It may be the combination of the two, but it just doesn't align as well where the back stuff is just like, it's so much fun now.

And the way that they've, I don't know if this is like a real thing, but the advancements in the grips that you can use so much cooler than just that like long bar Like I love the narrow grip pull downs. Um, the prime rotate handles are savage. I had, I don't, we don't have any of those at the, at the lifetime, but, um, I, I see you using them and they look super awesome. And the ability to like move the position with your hands to be able to actually align what you want to be doing something. We just like not

not like we missed it as kids because we're just trying to get strong but like um to be able to have something there that you can like really focus on the details of that it's just super rad yeah no i'm really glad that that's been uh useful for you super cool man yeah um dude where can the people find you yeah at brian borstein on instagram um my two companies are evolved training systems and paragon training methods i offer my personal programming on the paragon training methods app and then i podcast uh eat train prosper with my co-host aaron straker and we talk about hypertrophy and things like that so um yeah that's pretty much it. Doug Larson. Dig it. You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson, Ryan, dig having you on the show, man. Always fun. Uh,

and I'm totally going to try one of these training programs at one point or another. Uh, I like these concepts, so I'm, I'm, I'm stoked to try it out. Very cool. Yeah. I'm always honored to be here. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We are Barbell Shrugged, Barbell underscore underscore shrugged. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreort.com where you can see Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner. Read through labs, lifestyle, and performance goals over at RapidHealthReport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.