Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 324: Building a Perfect Workout (How to Design a Session)

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And in this episode, I'm going to be going over how it is I think you can put together, tricks, and tools required to put together a quality session. And if you follow along, you can probably put together a whole program for yourself from sets to reps, to warmups, to exercise selection, to goals, and everything from your pre-workout to post-workout routine. We'll talk about all of it. So hopefully you have a lot more to work with when it comes time for your next workout. This is episode 324 of the podcast. I hope you enjoy. This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT.

LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of electrolytes improves health, performance,

body and brain performance, mind you, helps to reduce cramps and soreness and get you more hydrated. There's no sugar. Elementia is sweetened with stevia. It's perfect for exercise and perfect for the sauna because the flavors are natural, tasty, delicious, and not overpowering. And if you're like me, you'll use them multiple times a day across your training sessions to get hydrated early to replenish after sauna use. And again, it's not just me. LMNT is the official sports drink of Team USA Weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. When I put a box together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus.

And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Elements' amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for dynamic dialogue listeners. Okay. So before we get into building and designing a perfect workout session and program, I do want to go over a few notes of housekeeping. I do this about once a month on the podcast. The first thing that I want you guys to know is it is September 11th. So we are about a third of the way through September, which means we're closing in on the back third of the year, October, November,

and December. And I have found in my time coaching and training and fitness, this is the time of year where most people put on the most weight. They get the most disconnected from their fitness. We have a very challenging time restarting again in the new year. So one thing I always recommend every year around this time towards the kind of transition from summer into fall is to reconnect with your exercise adherence. Really get clear on your why. We'll talk all about this as we go through session design and get into the meat and potatoes of the podcast today. But just as a good general rule of housekeeping, during the last quarter of the year, people have more time off of work, but when they are working, they tend to be working more intensely on projects that might need to be finalized by the end of the

year. Typically, there's more time with family, socializing, holidays. There's a lot more caloric leak and just caloric intake. So as the temperature changes, as the weather gets colder, especially for those of my Northern Hemisphere listeners, I would strongly, strongly suggest that you try to maintain consistency as much as you can September through December, so you don't have to be a quote-unquote resolutioner in the new year. As for the podcast itself, we're going to stick with the two-time-a-week cadence. And I'm also in the works right now, or this is in the works right now, I'm doing the work at the moment, of setting up some high-quality video capture so that you will have video

podcasts as well as audio podcasts. We're still doing Tuesday and Thursday releases. I have some awesome guest episodes dropping. We're booked out about three weeks in advance. So I've got podcasts leading all the way from now up until when I leave for Mexico at the end of September and continuing to just kind of stack these up. Like by the time you guys listen to this, it'll probably be almost October 1st. But again, that's why I'm going over the housekeeping of not falling apart the back third of the year. And the last thing

is if you guys have been wanting to do one-on-one online coaching with me, also with my coaching team, but specifically with me, I do have some openings. Now would be the time to apply. The next six weeks are going to be crazy for me. By the time you hear this, four of those six weeks will have passed. But I am taking on more clients of my own after my wedding halfway through October. So great time to apply, great time to onboard for that. And then in general, guys, when it comes to health, for that. And then in general, guys, when it comes to health, fitness, all of that stuff, try not to be like the 80% of people who are going to fall off in the back part of the year, which I bet you're not because you're listening to an episode about exercise and workout design. And I'll give you some of, I'll give you all the free game you could ever need

in this episode. But when it comes to building a perfect workout routine, and today will be more about individual sessions, but when it comes to building a workout routine, I always start with, well, what can you give me in terms of number of sessions per week? If it's one session, two sessions, or three sessions a week, I would recommend doing a total body workout split where every time you go to the gym, you train muscle groups in the upper body, lower body, anterior chain, posterior chain, you really spread it around. Now, if you can train four or five, six times a week, that's when you can get into some more specialization focused splits. Maybe you have upper lower, maybe you have push pull legs. That's not what this is about. This is about individual session design.

So even if you aren't somebody who's ready for a program yet, or maybe you're not somebody who's ready for one-on-one coaching, you're just trying to get in there a couple times a week when you have time and not totally make a fool of yourself, this one is absolutely for you. So first is let's identify the main goals. I like to use the term physical properties that you would like to cultivate in your training. For the average person, this is going to be some combination of strength, mobility, muscular size. For a lot of people, it's just getting in there, breaking a sweat and making a commitment. I wouldn't pick too many physical properties at once. This is the central problem that people run into. I want to be big. I want to be strong. I want to be lean. I want to be mobile. I'm going

to do something for everything. And while that is definitely better than doing nothing, I think having a session focus is important. So let's use the four time a week protocol for all the examples we're going to do today. We're going to train four times a week, upper body and lower body, two sessions for the upper, two sessions for the lower. Well, when you divide or design these individual sessions, let's pick one to two physical properties. So maybe in sessions one and two, you have more of a strength focus. Session one for the upper is more strength. Session one for the lower or session two is more strength. Then when you train them again in sessions three and four, you'll have more of a focus on hypertrophy. But before you design individual workouts, start picking exercises,

start picking intensifiers, a lot of the stuff we're going to talk about today, it's really important that you have a physical property in mind. You have a goal for that session. I do this for all of the clients we program for. We're either focusing on strength and muscularity. We're focusing on strength and power. We're focusing on muscularity or conditioning. We are probably going to pick one to two central focuses per workout, but also per training block. We don't want to try to focus on too many things at once because it does limit how much we can get out of it. So for the average person listening, if you just want to be healthier and you want to look better, I think training for the physical properties of strength and muscularity are going to be more than enough. You will develop some

mobility and some power from doing this, although not nearly as much as if you focused on those. But for the average deconditioned American adult, gaining a little bit of muscle and a little bit of strength will make the biggest difference. So for the purpose of the exercise, we're going to be talking about building a four-day-a-week strength and muscularity-focused training program to improve overall health and appearance. Okay, the second thing that we need to consider before we get into any of the individual workouts design is where are we going to plot these sessions on our calendar? If we were going to train once a week, does it matter so much? If we were going to train twice a week, the only rule we might have is that these sessions probably shouldn't be back to back. Maybe we need a day

in between. If we're going to train three times a week, probably going to lean into that same rule, just making sure that there is always one day in between. And I suppose if we're going with this four time a week example, we need to make a couple different considerations. So I might train in what's known as a two on one off fashion. So I do session one and session two, then take a day off, a day off from resistance training. Then I would do session three, day off, a day off from resistance training. Then I would do session three, session four, and take two days off or one day off and repeat it on a six day cycle instead of a seven. You could also do a two, two, two days on, two days off, two days on, two days off, and repeat those four sessions on an eight day cycle. You don't have to fit everything neatly

into a seven day week just because that's what we do for our calendar. However, before you plan individual exercises, sets, reps, all of these things, it is a substantially better idea to plot the sessions on your calendar first. Because what we want to avoid is let's say you're going to do heavy back training on the second session of the week. You start with legs. Then on the next session, you do heavy back training. You do upper body, but there's a lot of heavy back training. Then your third session comes around. It's legs again, and your back is sore. It's tight. It's tired. It's not ready to complete the exercises. You didn't notice that because you didn't put them on a calendar and realize, wait, I'm going lower body, upper body, lower body, then resting, then upper body again. I should put that rest day in this position instead of that position.

So first start off, what are the physical properties I want to develop? For most of you, it's going to be muscularity and strength. For average Joes, people wanting to live healthier, look better, that's what I would do. And then plot the number of sessions you can commit to reasonably on a calendar, making sure that you're creating time to actually recover. You probably never want to train seven days in a row. You probably don't want to train six days in a row. If you're training only four days a week, you're probably fine training four in a row, but you're better off sprinkling some time in between sessions to recover. Okay. Now, when it comes to actual session design, I like to start

before we even get to the gym. So let's start with our routines, with our rituals, and really take this from the beginning to the end of what a great session would look like. So we'll start at 90 minutes out. And at 90 minutes out, if you are not training early in the morning, fasted, I would recommend having a meal. In this meal, for men, I'd like 30 to 40 grams of protein for women, 20 to 30. And for carbohydrates for women, I want 40 to 50 grams for men. I'd like 60 to 80 grams. This is going to be your training fuel. The protein, not so much. We'll talk about that in a second, but making sure that at the 90 minute pre-training mark, you're getting water, you're getting carbohydrate, you're getting protein is going

to help ensure that you get everything you need for a quality session. The carbohydrates are going to promote better training in the gym. The protein will break down and be available in the blood stream for your post-workout window. Believe it or not, having protein 90 minutes before you train will make it so that those amino acids are available immediately after you train. They're already circulating in the bloodstream, which is nice. Kevin Tipton, who I believe is no longer with us, one of the preeminent protein researchers in the nutrition space, studied pre versus post-workout protein on amino acid availability post-workout. And believe it or not, there's more amino acids

available if you have the protein before. So a nice pre-workout meal, 60 to 90 minutes out, 60 at the close end, because what we don't want to do is eat too much, too close to our workout and become lethargic. Another thing to avoid is a lot of fat or a lot of fiber because too much of those will slow digestion and could lead to some GI distress. Now, if you are training fasted, which I do, let's say you wake up early. I'll give myself as an example. I've woken up. It's 4 a.m.

I'm not hungry whatsoever. I'm training from 4.30 to 5.30. I don't have 90 minutes to even let food digest. This is where I lean into water, electrolytes. I like to have an electrolyte supplementation when I train fasted. And then I have the same meal I just recommended for 90 minutes out immediately post-workout. So at some point, you're going to decide, am I training in the morning fasted? Am I training during another time window fed? Either way, you're going to want to make sure you have your protein and your carbohydrate ready to go so that you can fuel your training and your recovery appropriately. And now none of this

matters unless you're doing a good job with your nutrition overall, but it will make a difference. So starting at the 90 minute out mark, you want to start playing with food and making sure that that's right. Around 60 to 30 minutes out, I'm a pretty big fan of using tools like visualization and amplifiers like music or motivational videos. I know that this is very transient. I know that this is not something that you can be entirely dependent on, but I do find it's very, very helpful if you have a gym playlist or if you watch a video that inspires you or if you have a great training partner that you can connect with beforehand and discuss the session, or if you can just sit quietly and visualize yourself having a great session or imagine it as you're driving to the gym. These are all very powerful tools. I don't want to sound woo woo, but they do all show up in pretty strong, robust ways in the sports psychology literature, like visualization is a powerful tool for performance. You know, let's say rewatching or, or re-visualizing previous successes is a very

powerful tool for providing, you know, future successes in athletic endeavors like weight lifting or sticking to a fitness routine. So I'm big on those tools. And those are things that you can deploy before you even get to the gym. Okay. Um, and then the last tip I have, this is like 10 to 20 minutes out or like right before you walk into the gym or right before you're about to train. If there's a text you need to send, if there's an email that needs to get done, if there's a call you need to make, try to get that stuff checked off of your list so that none of that anxiety is lingering or pestering in the back of your mind. Zero the inbox, make the call, empty your plate. Don't allow your focus to diverge too many places. Be where your feet are in the gym, making the most of your session. And in a perfect world,

you'll have your workout written out in a folder and a binder, not on your phone. I know that I have a training app that is phone-based, but for all one-on-one clients, I am constantly recommending print your workout out, throw it on a clipboard with a pen. That's your gym buddy, not your phone. That's something that you're on 23 hours a day. Try to keep it simple. Try to minimize anything that will diverge or pull your thoughts other places. So getting into the actual session design, the first thing, whether you're training one, two, three, four, five, six, seven days a week that you should do is include, and this can be scaled to your fitness level, an aerobic warmup. And I say anywhere from

five to 15 minutes, it could be as much as 20. I oftentimes use eight to 12, but you need to do something aerobic. This is not because you want to do your cardio pre or post. It's because when you do aerobic activity at a low enough intensity, yes, you do get the quote unquote blood flowing, but more importantly, you elevate the tissue temperature in your body and you will do better work in the gym when your tissue temperature is elevated above 98.6 degrees. It's also a great way to sneak in extra steps, extra movement, extra caloric expenditure. And again, it's another period where you can listen to music, visualize success in your training. So the first thing I would like you to do, regardless of whether your results are build muscle, lose fat, gain strength, change composition is a gentle aerobic warmup. I follow the fit principle for this frequency, intensity, time, and type. So we know the frequency of these sessions is going to be before every weight training

session. The intensity needs to be low. The time is somewhere between 5 to 15 minutes. And the type, I would prefer be lower intensity, meaning incline walking, spinning, rowing. Keep it simple. Don't do HIIT. Don't do crazy sprints. Don't do anything that's going to deplete you.

Just do enough to warm up. Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength, as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about

this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's updated every single week, the sets to do, the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me with me and my team. So you'll get my exact coaching expertise as to how to perform the movement, whether you're training at home or you're training in the gym. And again, these teams are somewhat specific. So you'll find other members of those communities looking to pursue similar goals at similar fitness levels. You can chat, ask questions, upload form for form review, ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days.

Just click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the Core Co core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. The next thing you should do, identify the prime movers that you will be training in this session. If you're training three days a week or less, that's going to be total body. So you're going to be doing a lot of different prime movers. You're going to be pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging, hinging, et cetera. So pretty much every muscle or prime mover is going to come to the party. But using that four day a week split as an example, let's say it's workout one in its

legs. This is a more quad dominant leg day. And session three also legs is going to be more hamstring dominant. Both sessions are going to work the quads, calves, glutes, hamstrings, all of them, but one might skew more one way than the other. You do the same example for the upper body. Let's say you're doing an upper body session and you're going to do chest, back, shoulders, arms on both days. But on the first day, you do a little more chest and triceps. And on the second day, you do a little more back and biceps, whatever the prime mover is in that session. And we'll talk about what exercises to select next. So don't freak out, but whatever the prime

movers are in those sessions, prep them a little bit with some activity, getting some blood flow into them. This can be mobilizing them with foam rolling or stretching. This can be warmup sets, any prep work, potentiation work like box jumps, ball slams. If you know like, oh, I have a tight tissue, it's chronically tight. It inhibits my ability to train the prime mover, then do your mobility. If you're like, man, whenever I train my back, I never feel it. I have a hard time developing the sensation. Do some activation work. If you're like, man, I just don't have a lot of power, a lot of explosiveness. When I do this, do some potentiation work after you've done your warmup, before you get into your working sets and your actual workout,

carve out five minutes for a little prep time. If you need it, that can work wonders. minutes for a little prep time. If you need it, that can work wonders. A good example of this would be like, uh, whenever I squat, I have a hard time with my hips opening so that I can drop deep. So I'm going to do some lateral band walks. Okay. Now, uh, when it comes to the actual session itself and selecting exercises for novices, I would recommend compound movements that are complimentary, meaning they're not going to, um, like they're not going to compete too much. So like, if we're talking about an upper body day, complimentary compound movements would be like a push and a pull versus like, I'm going to do an incline bench press and a dumbbell row. Those compliment each other. One's a push, one's a pull. An example of movements that don't really compliment each other

would be like, I'm going to do an incline press and a decline press. Well, yeah, they're different, but they're essentially both presses and there's not a lot of complimentary action between those two. So when it comes to that session design, start off after you've done your aerobic warmup and your prep work. And the prep work can also be addressing deficiencies. If you know you have a weak core, you can do your core work. Then if you know you need to work on shoulder mobility, you can do shoulder mobility. Then it's really just an opportunity to work on what you need to work on. Pick two to four complimentary compound exercises. If you're new, I'd stick for two. If you're advanced, I'd go as high as four. After that, you can pick two to four more isolation

exercises. Again, I would do two if you're new, four if you are advanced. I would not recommend doing more than eight exercises. So let me give you an example of what this looks like for a complete novice. It might be a complementary compound, two complementary compounds. So we're going to go on the low end. So we're going to start our workout with, let's use the analogy we already did, an incline press in a dumbbell row. Then we're going to select two isolation exercises also for the upper body. So we'll pick a lateral raise and a tricep extension. That's four exercises for a novice.

That's going to be more than enough. Let's say you're advanced and you're going to go pick four complimentary compounds. So you'll pick a flat press and a cable row, and then you'll pick a lat pull down and an overhead press. So two horizontal movements, one pushing, one pulling, two vertical movements, one pushing, one pulling, and then we'll select four isolation exercises. And we'll still use the lateral raise and the tricep extension, but we'll add to it a face pull and a hammer curl for the upper back and forearms. Now, if somebody who's completely detrained attempted to do an eight exercise workout, they would probably reach the point of diminishing marginal returns very quickly.

It's just a body's ability to recover from that is really limited. Another thing you could do if you are newer is just do four compound exercises. If you're training three days a week, two days a week, one day a week, I would just select three to five compound movements, meaning it's like, okay, I'm pressing a dead lifting and I'm lunging. And then the next day I'm pulling, I'm pushing it. I mean, like if you're training total body every day, little bit different, but for the rules we have, let's assume that we're going to pick a couple of complimentary compounds, things that don't compete too much and sprinkle

in some isolation exercises. Then we have to talk about how many sets we're going to do for each exercise. So I like to set some set volume thresholds for novices, anywhere from four to 12 sets is going to work. Like, let's say you did four sets. You did four exercises, one set each. If you've never trained before, you guys would be shocked how many people I'm like, Hey, let's do some lying hamstring curls. And we do one set and they're like, Oh my gosh, that cooked my hamstrings. Can we do something else? And I'm like, yeah, sure. No problem. Let's try this. That client comes back a few days later. My hamstrings are still sore. Oh my gosh. Really? From that one set? Yeah. I don't know why. Well, why is because you're really weak in your hamstrings. So for novices, anywhere from four to 12 sets in a

session. So if you did four exercises, that's basically one to three sets. If you're advanced, four exercises, that's basically one to three sets. If you're advanced, you can push a lot higher than that. I would recommend if you're, let's say you're doing between 20 and 30 sets, you allocate more of those sets towards the compounds than the isolation. You're going to know your body and your recoverability better than I would. The only thing I would caution you from doing is like doing eight exercises for like four sets each and just pushing that set volume north of like 30. If you're working really, really hard, it's hard to have eight exercises, four sets each be productive. It's really, really hard. Eventually a lot of that work will kind of just become junk.

So my recommendation is somewhere between four to 12 sets total. Uh, you can do much more if you're advanced, just try to keep it South of like 30. Um, you know, I think for most people, 15 to 20 is probably going to be the money zone, especially for well-trained adults. But a set is not the number of reps. It's an opportunity to do a certain number of reps. So three sets of X, like, okay, I'm going to do, let's say 15. I would do 15 reps three times. For novices, I think, you know, the number of sets you do isn't as important as how many sets are done well. as how many sets are done well. And the same thing is true for good experienced lifters.

Pick a number of sets that you can do to completion. And by the end of the workout, you will feel sufficiently taxed. Okay. When it comes to picking rep ranges for the goals I outlined, like general fitness, muscularity, and strength increases, I think you're probably just looking at like five to 15. Um, you know, five, anything like less than five is going to be optimal for strength growth development. Anything North of 15 is still going to be beneficial for muscle growth. Um, but it's, you know, you're going to be making some concessions on the amount of weight you use. I like five to 15 as a general rule of thumb, because you can still build strength doing sets of five, sets of six, it's seven,

it's eight, and you'll build plenty of muscle, but it is hard if you're newer to truly get the most out of a set of three or a set of five. Um, and so I would say just, you're probably looking at five to 15 reps on every exercise, sometimes less, sometimes more, but you know, the exercise itself is going to, going to be a huge determinant of which rep range you use. So a side raise or a lateral raise where you're, you know, lifting the dumbbells out to the side. Typically people do this with very lightweight, not a great exercise to do for sets of three. Um, not a great exercise to do for sets of three, not a great exercise for building strength. Typically, those compound movements are going to be better for lower rep ranges, squats, deadlifts, presses, rows. And a lot of those isolation exercises, raises, extensions,

machine work, cable work, those can be pushed into that 10, 12, 15, even 20 repetition ranges per set. I would say, given the example that we have, we're training four days a week. We're going to train three compound exercises and two isolation exercises. And we're going to do the compounds for three sets of six. We're going to do the isolations for three sets of 10. That can work very, very simply. You'll know your body better than I do. The one thing I would avoid is doing heavy isolation movements and super, super high rep compounds. So don't be doing sets of 20 deadlifts and sets of three lateral raises. Okay. When picking a rest period, this is another really important part. Just as a general rule of thumb, I think two minutes is kind of the sweet spot.

Most people will be fully recovered inside of two minutes unless they're doing true maximal strength work, in which case you might need even more. But a good rule of thumb is to wait until you feel like you're ready to perform a set at a high level again. If you feel you are ready to perform at a high level, then you're probably good to go. If you're still breathing hard or you can't, you know, do what you did before in the previous set, you might need a little bit more time. Okay. Now, another question I get a lot when it comes to designing workout routines is how long should I follow a given routine before I switch it up? So like we're on this four day routine, we're doing three sets of compounds

and three sets or three compound movements, three isolation movements, four days a week, two for the upper, two for the lower. We're going between five, 15 reps. We'll probably rest in about two minutes. How long should I do that? Well, you know, my answer is as long as you fucking can before you start to see a reduction in results. For the training app that I run, we do updates every month. For the coaches I work or for the clients I coach one-on-one, we're doing updates every four to six weeks. And honestly, I do that for my clients' sanity.

Like they want it. They like the variety. But the truth is, if I can get these people to follow the same program for like 12 weeks, even though it'd be boring as hell, probably get amazing results. Like the results are made from improving on the basics, improving on the movements, progressing the movements. And it's like, oh, I can only go up five pounds a week on my squat. Well, if you did the squat for 12 weeks, that's 60 pounds. But what if you only did the squat for four? And that's what a lot of people do. They don't want to do anything for longer than four weeks. And I think four weeks is the bam, the bare ass minimum. That's why I kind of walk that line with the app. We go four

with one-on-one clients. It's four to six. With clients I work with in person, it can be six to 12 weeks that we're working on the same patterns. Now, a lot of the clients that I work with in person are super new, super deconditioned. So we really need to just practice, practice, rehearse, rehearse the basics. But the truth is most people don't see results because they're switching too frequently, more than it is that we see people missing out on results because they're not switching frequently enough. As for how I would handle the post-workout window, you've made it through the workout. We've kind of discussed what movement types you should do, when you should do them, how many sessions you should do, how many sets, how many reps, how long your rest periods should be, how long the programs themselves should be.

Um, what about how to handle after the workout? Well, I do like stretching post-workout. I think that's a great opportunity to work on increasing your mobility because your tissues have already been stretched a little bit and they're already warm. Um, another thing that's really cool to try to do post-workout, uh, especially post weights is do your more intense cardio then instead of before that's where you want to put your higher output stuff. So if you want to get in shape for something aerobically, or just burn some extra calories or go for a run, or you like that, I would do that there. Um, and then I think the last thing you could really talk about here is like getting out of a sympathetic state and into a parasympathetic

state. So working out is a very arousing thing. Well, a lot of times we caffeinate before we do it. We get pumped, we're sweaty, and then, you know, we want to give our body the opportunity to recover. So we need to get into a parasympathetic state. So post-workout, I like to have a meal. I like to just chill. I like to cut off the intense music. That's a really great way to handle things. Just trying to focus on getting into a parasympathetic state. And I like to just have a whole ritual from the 90-minute out mark all the way to the time I'm done. And you know what? It's never going to be perfect. So there's going to be days where you have to just kind of abandon the ritual. But I'm of the impression that this will work pretty well for most people in terms of building, designing, and executing

a workout program. The cliff notes here, folks, start 90 minutes out. You want to have some fuel and start to visualize success. Listen to music. If you're not going to be giving yourself 90 minutes because you're training fasted and early, you want to hydrate with some electrolytes. Makes a big, big difference. When you get to the gym, make sure you identify the physical properties that you'd like to accomplish and select movements that are aligned with that. Make sure that you've spread your training sessions across a calendar at least a week in advance so there isn't an opportunity for a ton of

recovery inhibition from crossover or just not being thoughtful there. Then depending on your fitness level, we're going to pick some compound movements, some isolation exercises, train anywhere from four to 20 sets, depending on fitness level, usually between five to 15 reps and exercise being thoughtful about which ones we go high rep, which ones we go low rep, taking our rest periods to feel fully recovered, and then saving that cardio, intense cardio at the end, intense stretching at the end, but allowing time for cardio warmup in a prep block before we actually start training. That's about as simple as it can get folks, but you know, that's how you can go about designing

your own workouts and your own sessions. And you want to select exercises that don't cause pain, that feel good. And you're confident doing, um, there's a million good exercises, but the basics truly are the basics. And I've got a full YouTube video library full of exercises over on my YouTube. If you're looking for good selections and you want a little bit of help with optimizing your technique, you should head over there. All right, folks, thanks for tuning in. I want to make sure to remind you, share this to your Instagram story and tag me if you listen to it so I can say thank you and leave me a five-star rating and review. I guess I'm waiting for you to leave a review on Apple or

Spotify. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.