Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Chris Barakat on Advanced Bodybuilding Techniques for Faster Muscle Gain

Episode Date: September 16, 2019

As fun as it can be to geek out on obscure and advanced muscle-building strategies, most people looking for advice on how to gain more muscle and strength just need to double down on the fundamentals instead. You know, compound exercises, heavy weights, progressive overload, and the like. There comes a point, though, where a basic understanding of the basics is no longer enough to keep the needle moving. Then, you should add some more advanced tools to the shed, including programming techniques like periodization, set schemes like drop and rest-pause sets, and exercise variations to address weak points. That last point—exercise variations—is what Chris Barakat and I talk about today, and specifically, how to use different types of exercises and ways of performing those exercises to maximize muscle gain in every major muscle group you train. As you’ll learn, relatively small changes to the exercises you do and how you do them can make quite a big difference in the bottom-line results. If you’re not familiar with Chris, he’s not only a member of Legion’s Scientific Review Board, he’s also a published scientist, educator, coach, and natural bodybuilder, so he’s intimately familiar with the respective needs of beginning, intermediate, and advanced weightlifters and bodybuilders. Let’s get to it! 6:51 - What is the architecture of a muscle? 9:30 - What is an alternate exercise to leg extensions that will help develop the distal part of the quads? 10:16 - Which exercises best target the upper part of the pecs? 12:55 - What are your thoughts on how different exercises impact the development of the biceps and triceps differently? 14:05 - Which exercises best target the biceps and triceps and how would you program it? 15:55 - Which exercises best target the shoulders and how would you program it? 28:06 - Which exercises best target the back and how would you program it? 39:09 - How does an alternate grip on pulls affect the back? 41:54 - Which exercises best target the hamstrings and how would you program it? 45:15 - Which exercises best target the calves and how would you program it? 49:46 - What are your thoughts on improving abs and core? 58:43 - How important is controlling the concentric and eccentric phases? 1:00:42 - Which exercises best target the glutes and how would you program it? 1:02:17 - How can people find you and your work? Mentioned on The Show: Legion VIP one-on-one coaching: https://legionathletics.com/coaching/ Chris's one-on-one coaching: https://www.competitivebreed.com/ Chris's website: https://schoolofgainz.com/ Chris's educational content: https://www.bodybuilding.com/author/christopher-barakat Chris's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopher.barakat/?hl=en Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one-on-one coaching service where we can help you get in the best shape of your life. My team and I have helped people of all ages, circumstances, and needs. So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure it out and we will get you results. Every diet and every training program is 100% custom. We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements and other products, and the list of benefits goes on and on. So to learn more, head over to www.legionathletics.com slash coaching. That's legionathletics.com slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call. I should also mention that there is usually a wait list and new slots do fill up very quickly. So do not wait. If this sounds even remotely interesting to you, go ahead and schedule your call now. Again, that URL is legionathletics.com slash coaching. Hello, Mike here, and welcome to another episode of Muscle

for Life. Now, as fun as it can be to geek out on obscure and advanced muscle building strategies. Most people looking for advice on how to gain more muscle and strength really just need to double down on the fundamentals instead. You know, compound exercises, heavy weights, progressive overload, and so on. There does come a point though in your weightlifting journey where a basic understanding of the basics is no longer enough to keep the needle moving. And at that point, you should add some more advanced tools to your shed, including programming techniques like periodization, set schemes like drop and rest pause sets and exercise variations that help you address various weak points in your physique. Now, that last point, exercise variations, is what Chris Barakat and I talk about today, and specifically how to use different types of exercises and ways of performing those exercises to maximize muscle gain in every major muscle group that you train. And as you will learn in this interview, relatively small changes to the exercises you do and how you do them can

make pretty big differences in the bottom line results. Now, in case you are not familiar with Chris, he is not only a member of Legion's scientific review board, he is also a published scientist, educator, coach, and natural bodybuilder. So he is very familiar with this topic and specifically with the difference between a beginning and intermediate and advanced bodybuilder and their respective needs. All right, let's get to the interview. Hey, Chris, thanks for making your first appearance on my podcast. Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm excited. I'm excited to be a Muscle for Life audience. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm excited to have you on because it occurred to me. So I had reached out to one of the guys that works with me and said, Hey, let's get, let's get Chris scheduled. And then after we're figuring out, okay, what should we talk about? And this, this occurred to me and I'm excited to have the discussion myself because I know I'm actually, I'm probably going to learn some stuff.

not something that I have, I guess maybe I've experienced a bit of it myself just in my training, but I haven't written much about it and I haven't spoken about it. And that is basically the idea and just for people listening of like, what are, what are we talking about here? And in case you skipped the intro, which I understand I do the same thing, uh, is all right. So you start out and you get in the gym and you start lifting weights and it's pretty simple and straightforward. Your primary goals are really just to get strong on the key compound exercises. And maybe you throw in some accessory stuff to add some volume to the smaller muscle groups that tend to lag and just kind of be stubborn, like the biceps and triceps and shoulders and whatever. Even pecs tend to be stubborn, at least in many guys I've found. So it probably makes sense to do some extra work beyond just maybe 10 sets of bench press a

week or something. It might make more sense to do a little bit less bench pressing and then some other exercise variations. But you don't have to get too into the weeds in terms of programming. Again, in the beginning, if you really just make that your priority, you're good to go. Then though, now you take an intermediate or even an advanced weightlifter though, and they're in a different place. And if their goal is to, let's say, achieve as much of their genetic potential for muscle and strength as possible, that beginning approach becomes too simplistic. And you need to go a bit beyond that in terms of your programming. So at this point, you basically, you got to work harder. So we know that you're going to have to do more

hard sets per major muscle group per week as an intermediate or advanced just to get anywhere than when you begin. And then some periodization starts to make more sense. And then there's this point of what we're going to be discussing today. And that is exercise selection, how to do exercises more effectively, how to accomplish, you know, it can be termed in different ways. More of a mind muscle connection is, is one way to put it, which sounds kind of woo woo, but actually isn't. There's a bit of research on that and you can touch on that as well if you'd like. But it's just the point is to make that time in the gym as effective as possible as an intermediate and advanced weightlifter, you do need to be a bit more skilled in your weightlifting and in your bodybuilding. So yeah, that's the setup. And I'm excited to bring you on the show,

Chris, because you live and breathe this stuff more, more than I do. So I'm very curious to just hear how you go about it and what any, any relevant research that's out there. Obviously there's, there's not that much. So a lot of this is probably going to become, it probably comes from just being in the bodybuilding game for a while, I would assume. For sure. Yeah, there's a few things I definitely am excited to cover and share with your audience. I think a good way to start the conversation, we'll just briefly talk about like muscle

architecture to a certain extent, just to paint a good picture. So like, obviously, we understand that when a when a muscle contracts the entire muscle belly is contracting from a neural standpoint so like you can't do a bench press and really not contract your pec right but we understand that an inclined chest press can can target the clavicular head better than the sternal head. So like, I kind of just want to like start painting a picture as to why that is, you know? So although the entire muscle contracts as a whole unit, it's really important to like realize or understand that muscle fibers don't run from the insertion point to the origin

point. Like one muscle fiber isn't the entire length of the muscle belly, right? So, performing different exercises actually can impact different regions of that muscle a bit differently, if that makes sense, right? So, there's actually a decent amount of data. We'll use the quads, for example, where the compound movements will have more proximal hypertrophy, so the upper thigh, whereas something like the leg extension can lead to more distal hypertrophy, so the teardrop muscle, the VMO of the lower thigh. Does that make sense? That's a good example of something that bodybuilders have been saying for a long time. And it's just interesting that there's some data out there now that supports that,

which of course makes sense. I mean, that's the beginning of science, right? It's observation. People see things, they come up with theories and they begin to test them and investigate them. So you have bodybuilders who were smart guys and they put a lot of time into developing their bodies and they noticed things like that, for example. And just for people listening, proximal means closer to the center, right? So you have the center of the body. So the proximal part of the leg would be the upper part that's closer to the center of the body and distal would be further from. That makes sense. And leg extensions are uncomfortable for me, my knees, like I don't actually have knee problems. But if I load the leg extension to any degree, it actually hurts a little bit. And so I have, I've always had a little bit of crepitus in my knees for anyone listening, it's just popping. And as long as there's no pain with it, it doesn't necessarily mean anything's wrong is at least the understanding that I have. And I've, I've spoken with a PT about it as well. It's just kind of

like some people have it. Some people don't, but I can squat pain-free, leg press pain-free, lunge, blah, blah, blah. But I cannot make the leg extension comfortable just as a random comment. What would be another exercise that you'd recommend for increasing the development in the distal portion? It's tough, right? Because like the leg extension is almost one of the only exercises that overloads the quads and they're fully shortened position. I know. Yeah, when the knee's fully extended. So, consider doing really light leg extensions that won't affect your knee, but perhaps utilize a BFR.

That's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. So, you can use like a super light load, but you're still performing that exercise. That makes sense. That's a good idea. I think that would be a good option, but yeah, if you want, I can maybe talk about a couple of different exercise to, to make that, that idea a bit clearer to the, to the, yeah, yeah. Let's go over any,

any of the, any of the major muscle groups that people are concerned with. So we've touched on chest and it makes sense to do some incline pressing and some flat pressing. Reverse grip pressing is another option, right? That can help develop the upper part of the pec. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Good research there showing that it activates the clavicular head more. I really like low to high flies on a cable machine or low to high flies with dumbbells for the clavicular head because it's easy on the shoulder and yeah, for sure. So like, you know, the primary function of your, your pec majors, generally horizontal adduction, right?

So bringing the upper arm closer to the midline like you do when you do the bench press, but, uh, the primary function of your, your upper chest, the clavicular head is actually shoulder flexion. So that low to high fly move, the low to high fly movement is a great option to target that. That's a good tip. What's the next major muscle group on your list? Yeah, if you want to talk about chest a little bit more, like just looking at the different exercises and how they load the strength curve a bit differently. So,

if you take something like a dumbbell fly, obviously you have the greatest amount of tension when the pec is fully stretched at the bottom of the movement. And then at the top of the movement, it's essentially effortless and there's no tension there. So, you know, there are advantages to using something like a pec deck machine. And it's just kind of important to realize like not all variations are created equal, right? Like you can do so many different fly variations, but whether you're using a pec deck, cables or dumbbells, it is actually providing you with a different stimulus. That makes sense. Yeah.

I also like the pec deck because if, I mean, obviously dumbbell fly is something that generally you're going to use lighter weights on higher reps, but just for safety purposes, if the weights start to get heavy, I wouldn't say the exercise gets dangerous, but you have a higher likelihood of hurting yourself doing that than on the pec deck. Yeah, for sure. start their workout off with those primary compound lifts first, and then maybe utilize those accessory exercises later on rather than doing something like pre-exhaustion, because they're just going to fatigue themselves and then decrease their performance on the major compound lifts. So how you order and organize your exercise structure is pretty important as well. I've spoken a bit about that. Eric Helms was on the show a bit ago to talk about pre-exhaustion. We can talk, we can definitely touch on that though here because people listening may not have heard what I've said about it or what Eric has said about it. Before we do though, I'm curious,

let's take the arms, right? What are your thoughts in terms of how different exercises impact development of the biceps and the triceps differently? Sure. So, I actually conducted an acute study on this on bicep training. And what we found was we did an acute study where we had two separate conditions. So, one week, the subjects came in and they did nine sets of bicep curls, keeping their shoulder at zero degrees. So, just normal standing cable curls, right, with your shoulder by zero degrees. So just normal standing cable curls, right with your shoulder by your side. And then the next week, they came in and they did three sets with their shoulder extended. So their arm was behind their body, and they had a greater

stretch on the long cut of the bicep. They did three sets, neutral at the shoulder at zero degrees. And then they did three sets with their shoulder flexed at 90 degrees as if you're doing like a spider curl. And what we actually found was that total muscle activation was greater when they varied their exercises, even though volume was exactly the same. So, it seems like there is a greater internal stimulus despite the external workload being equal. Interesting. And so how would you translate that into like some practical programming? Yeah. So in regards to programming, I think it's important if you are doing multiple accessory movements in one workout or throughout your program that you actually vary the joint angle. So, for example, let's just say you were

doing standing cable curls and standing dumbbell curls on the same day. I feel like you're not really being efficient with your time where you should utilize two different exercises that actually have a different joint angle. How would you, like, how do you go about it? Do you just mix them up equally or have you found that you prefer some variations over others? For sure. Yeah. The way I typically go about it is I start with an exercise that kind of overloads the

muscle and it's shortened position. And then I do a secondary exercise that your muscle is strongest at, and it basically overloads the muscle in the mid range. And then I will finish with an exercise that stretches the muscle and potentially creates more damage, right? So, like if let's just take biceps for example, I might start with spider curls or a preacher curl where the shoulders flexed a bit and then I might, my second exercise might be something where my shoulder is neutral. So, at zero degrees like a normal standing dumbbell curl. And then my last exercise will put it under stretch. So, something like an incline dumbbell curl where your back is on the bench and your arm is extended behind you

and you're getting a deep stretch on the bicep, I'd finish with something like that. Yeah, that makes sense. So, we actually want to conduct a chronic study on that and run it for like 8 to 10 weeks and then compare the actual hypertrophy effects. So, just because we saw greater muscle activation, you know, we can't necessarily say that it's going to lead to greater gains, but we do want to study that and see what would happen. Yeah, it's a good sign. Let's talk about the shoulders. That's another muscle group that is often stubborn. I mean, I've dealt with that and you have a lot of different exercises to choose from. You have the, you know, three different deltoids and

what are the best ways to target each of them? What are your thoughts on that? Obviously, sticking with your compounds first and foremost is definitely going to be key. But I think something with the shoulders to consider is it seems like they recover pretty quickly and a lot of people struggle to actually get them sore. So, potentially like increasing your frequency on shoulder training can be a good way to kind of cause a growth spurt if you feel like it's been lagging behind. And just to clarify there, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not probably just the frequency, but it's using that to get more volume in the week, right?

Yeah. Yeah, because let's say you're not seeing a great response from six sets, let's just say it's nine sets of direct shoulder work per week, splitting those up into three different, let's say you just do that in one workout, doing the same amount of volume in two or three workouts, I wouldn't expect that to make any difference. You might need to do 15 hard sets for your shoulders per week, and doing that in one workout is not a great idea. So, of course, you split that up, right? Yeah, for sure. There's some research showing

that increased frequency with similar volume can be potentially advantageous just because you're like stimulating muscle protein synthesis more frequently, but it's very contradicting. So, yeah, I think you have to increase your volume, but by doing it more frequently, you can do more sets within a workout and still perform at a high level. So let's just say you did five sets in three different sessions for 15 total sets. You're probably going to get greater growth than doing nine total sets and breaking it up as three, three, and three. Right, right. And that's true of any major muscle group, right?

And that's true of any major muscle group, right? I mean, there is a point where whatever volume, especially when you're new, kind of moving into your intermediate phase, there's a point where what you're doing is no longer going to cut it anymore and you just got to work harder. And of course, that has its limits too. I mean, Lyle McDonald would say 10 to 20 hard sets per major muscle group per week. There you go. If you're new, you can be closer to 10 and you're going to do just fine. And how you split it up in terms of frequency probably doesn't matter that much, but you just make sure you get in your volume. But as an advanced, you're probably going to have to do closer to 20. And going above that is probably not going to make much of a difference beyond that. And I understand that's controversial, but it's workable. And what I like about it also is it's simple and it's practical for the everyday person. So even if I know the Schoenfeld study, and even if let's say you could do, if doing 40 hard sets per major muscle group per week was going to result in quite a bit more muscle growth

and strength gain than 20. And that sounds cool. Go ahead and try to program that and let's see how far you get. Even if you were just doing it with your, let's say your top three muscle groups that you want to grow the most, and then you're going to, you're going to use maintenance volume on the rest. Go ahead and program that and see what happens. But anyways, I just wanted to point out for people listening that that, and it's just on, it's on the top of my mind too, because I'm working through this, a new second edition to my sequel to the, to, to bigger, leaner, stronger, which is intended, the sequels intended for intermediates. And there's a whole chapter on this point and going into some of the research of a lot of it is you're just going to have to work harder.

Just how when you're new to weightlifting and you go, oh, progressive overload, like, cool, you can take that to the bank. Progressive overload, no matter what you do, you have to make sure you're achieving progressive overload. And there are different ways of doing it, but you got to make sure you're adding weight to the bar over time that's like an aha moment right when you're new at least i remember that and then when you're intermediate the aha is like yes progressive overload but you're also just gonna have to work a lot harder like for a lot less a hundred percent a hundred percent i think um a lot of people that look at the research, they don't understand sets per muscle group in these research studies, those 10 to 15 sets aren't necessarily at the same intensity as your average gym goer. And

it's really important to notate that working harder is super, super important. And that can definitely be enough to move the needle. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point of, even if we're looking at it from the perspective of reps and reserve, right? How many reps do you actually have left? And I've been there myself where, you know, I've realized that I've kind of slipped in my, I've gotten a little bit lazy in terms of reps and reserve in that when in certain exercises, in certain situations, I would have thought that it started to feel like, oh, you know, maybe I only have two reps left. But if I really go and really push myself to muscle failure, just to see, and I find out like, I actually had four reps left, and I would have stopped that set there. And so even that can make a difference, right in the volume, because there's a there's

a qualitative aspect to volume and there are different elements to it, of course, but this would be one of them as far as muscle gain goes, right? It's like, how hard are these sets really? Yeah, a hundred percent. And like taking into consideration what loads you're working with is important, right? So, you'll see a lot of people in the gym, let's just say they're running any random program and it calls for three sets of 15 reps. They might just select any load that they're getting 15 reps with, but like they literally can do 25 reps. And it's like that set is almost like pointless because it's almost just like a warmup. Yeah. Yeah. It's very unproductive. And when you're working with those lighter loads

it's more important to get closer to failure compared to when you're working with heavier loads closer to your 1rm you know because you're not activating as many muscle fibers until you get closer to that failure point when you're using those lighter loads so it's really important that people just train hard and they're they're not, you know, 15 reps because that's what their program's calling for. And they're selecting the appropriate load for that appropriate intensity. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So, back to the shoulders, the point of doing more volume, working harder on the shoulders, I totally agree. I think that's a common, the calves are probably another example of that, right? What about exercise selection and starting with the

compound? So let's say it's an overhead press or some sort of variation of that, or maybe it's a bench press or an incline press. Those are not obviously primarily shoulder exercises, but if you're going to, they are going to fatigue the shoulders. So you have to take that into account. But then going beyond that, what do you like to do in terms of, because I've seen and I experienced it myself before I made changes to my programming and started training more intelligently, where if you do, if you just do a bunch of compound pressing, you'll definitely get some shoulder development, but you're probably not going to have that really round kind of capped shoulders that it just requires isolation work. Similar to the arms. It's hard to get great arms without doing a lot of work on the biceps and triceps. Very rarely are there people who just do heavy pulling and have impressing and have impressive arms, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it's important, like depending on your training split, it's important that you have one day where your vertical press movement is like your primary

movement of the day. Because a lot of people, let's just say they're doing a push day, just because that's popular, right? Like when people define push day, they say chest, shoulders, triceps, like chest always comes first, right? So they typically perform like a bench press movement first. And that's totally fine. But you can set up your training program, where either if you have two push days per week, maybe your first push day is going to be more chest focused, where you're going to start with like horizontal pressing. And then your second push day is going to be more shoulder focused. So you're going to start with a vertical press or an overhead press, right? Because if you start off with that bench press, you're not going to be able to perform the overhead press with nearly as much load as if you did that first when you were fresh. So I think that's important to consider. And even if you're only training like one push session per week, maybe you run one mesocycle. So like four to eight weeks where you're focusing on your horizontal push, and then your next mesocycle, you're more focused on shoulder. So you're doing

more vertical pressing. Besides that, you know, I think it's really important to do a decent amount of volume on your lateral raises. I'm a big fan of machine lateral raises where like your chest supported and you have your upper arm against the pad. Just because I feel like it's really hard to cheat on those machines. Whereas I see a lot of people doing dumbbell lateral raises and they're using a lot of momentum. people doing dumbbell lateral raises and they're using a lot of momentum and not to mention like the disadvantage of the dumbbell lateral raises where there's no tension for like the first 30 degrees of movement, right? So I'm a big fan of machine lateral raises. It's just kind of like a fail-proof way to train that lateral head. Whereas if you're doing the dumbbell, you're going to use a lot of upper trap. You're not getting tension at the beginning of the movement and so on and so forth. Yeah, that makes sense. What about any form of

rear raise? Yeah, I'm a big fan of the reverse pec deck. And this is kind of, this is random, but I'm a big fan of super setting rear delt flies with resistance band pull apart. So, with a small muscle group like the rear delts i like getting a sick pump in them and where you actually you can feel them you're like oh that's a real yeah you can palpate it and be like all right there's actually a lot of blood in there like i could see the change so yeah give that a shot like try a dumbbell swing so like a rear delt fly and then right when you're done just grab a resistance band do like resistance band pull give that a shot. Mike, try a dumbbell swing. So like a rear delt fly. And then right when you're done,

just grab a resistance band and do like resistance band pull aparts. Just a little super fit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll try that. But I don't do a lot of front raising at all. I used to in the past and my training volume as a whole is a bit lower right now.

I'm not necessarily like against doing any sort of front raising, but your front delts get pretty well stimulated through just bench pressing and OHPing. That's not necessary. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even you have bench pressing and then any other form of pressing, right? A lot of, especially guys in particular, it's rare to find a guy who's not doing about as much chest pressing of one kind of another as he

possibly can. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life fitness twitter at muscle for life and facebook at muscle for life fitness what about the back uh i love training back man same so many things to talk about with back i think i almost think like that's that's the problem in itself just like calling it back

is uh it like doesn't do it justice right because you can call the chest chest and like you're accurate there but your back is so complex right you have your rear delts upper traps mid traps lower traps terries and lats so like i think a lot of people potentially oversimplify back training because there's so many different angles to hit your back from and so many different functions of those muscles that I think it actually needs a decent amount of variation to appropriately stimulate like every region, you know? Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. So, a lot of people just typically do like a vertical pull and a horizontal pull, right? But let's look at the lat pull down, for example. If you take like a

pronated grip, like a pronated Y grip, like a normal lat pulldown, the joint function or the muscle action that you're training is, you know, shoulder adduction. So, your upper arm is becoming closer to your midline as you're performing the concentric. And that's one primary function of the lat. And it's a great way to target the lat. But another primary function of the lat is shoulder extension. So if you were to do a neutral grip lat pull down, a lot of people just consider it like equal because they're both vertical pulls. But I don't really like... And just so people understand, so neutral would be the palms facing each other. Pronated would be the normal palms facing away and then neutral palms facing each other, right? Yeah, exactly. So, I don't like considering them like the same thing. Like

they're both vertical poles, but they're actually very different exercises because you're training a different muscle action. And I feel like if you pay attention, you can feel that difference. You can feel it working the back differently just by switching the grip. Yeah, absolutely. So, like if you did just three sets of pronated pull downs forever and you never did neutral grip, like you're missing a piece of the puzzle in my opinion, right? So, again, maybe one pull day, you do your pronated pull downs and your next pull day. And what is the key difference, physiologically speaking, of that muscle action? What is the key difference between those two? Again, it's just because the lat is a very,

I guess, complex muscle and because it has multiple functions, it would almost be like saying the flat bench press is equal to the incline bench press, but we kind of know it's not. However, like when it comes to vertical pulling, like a lot of people just like labeling them as equals. But like you said, you can feel it in different regions of your lat. And yeah, it's going to stimulate different regions of the actual muscle. And like I said, because your muscle fibers don't run from insertion point to

origin point, like you need to utilize multiple exercises to train each portion or each region of that muscle. Yeah. Yeah. And is there anything to the idea of training the upper part versus the lower part? That's one of those things that it just popped into my head. And it's a question I never really set out to answer, but I'm just thinking of it now. I remember hearing about that many a long time ago. It's like, oh, if your lats don't extend far enough down, here are some things you can do. Is that bullshit? Or is that just genetics? Some people, they have that and some people don't regardless of what they do yeah like from an aesthetic standpoint obviously we can't change our insertion and origins but i will say like you can program different exercises to stimulate or create more strain on certain areas of the muscle right so like just for example let's take pullover variations. So straight arm pullovers.

If you do a cable straight arm pullover, at the bottom of the range, you're going to feel a pretty good contraction in the lower part of your lat. When your shoulder is fully extended, you'll actually feel your lat contracted at the lower region. you'll actually feel your lat contracted at the lower region. Whereas if you were to do like a dumbbell pullover, where your arm is going behind your head, and you're getting a full stretch on the lat, and you're fully flexing the shoulder joint, you'll feel a stretch on the upper portion of your lat, and you really won't feel anything on the lower portion, right? So I think there is some truth there. And that's more of like the art of bodybuilding that the science isn't necessarily fully up to date with, or just requires more time to actually connect all of those dots and kind of finalize the puzzle to it. But I do think there's some

truth to it. Interesting. What about standing push downs? Standing push downs for a triathlon? Is that, or? No, is that, you know, maybe it's a, it would be a, what's it? I have to actually Google the name. Okay. So you're standing up, you do, you do it on the lat pull down machine. And so you have your arms straight out. It's just like a common lat exercise. Oh, sure. Yeah. The straight arm pull over. The straight arm pull down or straight arm pull over. Okay. I never called it a pull. I always thought of pull over as something you did on the bench where you're literally pulling something over you so i

always called it pull down makes at least more sense because it doesn't mix it up with the triceps but yeah what about that what about that exercise yeah like again that's um training the lats in a very isolated manner where you're just training extension of the shoulder joint but i'm a big fan of it you know it, it's to me, it's like comparable to a cable fly where you're isolating your chest. You're isolating your lat when you're doing those straight arm lat pull downs. And like I said, when you do those, you'll feel it in the lower portion of your lat or the mid portion of your lat compared to the dumbbell pullover, where you're going to feel it in that upper lat region.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a fan of them either to start the exercise session as like a warmup just to get a little bit of blood in there or just to develop like a little bit of a mind muscle connection so you can actually feel your lat work or at the end of the session just to get more isolation volume in and maybe finish off with like some pump work, some cell swelling and kind of accumulate more metabolites at the end of your session. Yeah, that makes sense. Programming wise for the back, what are your thoughts on that? Same type of approach, start with a heavy compound, like a heavy pull of some kind, maybe a deadlift or barbell or dumbbell row, and then move on to like how does that what are your

thoughts on that yeah for sure i think i typically either start off with a a heavy vertical pull again it can be either neutral or pronated and then i would do a heavy horizontal pull and that can flip vice versa so maybe one, I'm doing the vertical pull first. And then one session, I'm doing a row variation first. But similar to the differences in pull downs, there's so many variations of rows, right? So if you're doing like a row for your upper back, you're going to have to have your your elbows kind of flaring out while you're pulling, right? So if you look at the muscles of the upper back, you have your rear delt, you have your elbows kind of flaring out while you're pulling, right? So, if you look at the muscles of the upper back, you have your rear delt, you have your rhomboids, and you have your mid

traps. You know, the functions of the rhomboids and mid traps are to pinch your shoulder blades together, right? So, scapular retraction. And then the function of the rear delt is to horizontally AB duct. So, bring that upper arm further away from your midline. Doing a row with your elbows flaring out is totally different than doing a horizontal row with your elbows tucked close to your body. So, I think it's just important that people pay attention to that because it's going to significantly impact what muscles are working. You know, if I do a horizontal pull with my elbows flaring out, I'm not training my lats like at all, like literally nothing because they don't help with

horizontal abduction. They don't help with scapular retraction. You know, if I want to train my lats while performing a horizontal pull, I would have to depress my scapula down. So, trying to pull the shoulder blade like into your back pocket is the cue I like to use, trying to put that shoulder blade in your back pocket to start the movement. And then you're extending at the shoulder as your elbow and your upper arm is close to the midline of your body. So, just very, very different movements. And I think it's important that you program them appropriately so you can develop your back the way you want, or at least target every area of the back.

Yeah. And anybody listening, I mean, you can experience this right now. If you're sitting, you know, as if you were doing a seated row, if you have your elbow up and you start your elbows up and you start bringing them back and retracting your shoulder blades and you start your elbows up and you start bringing them back and and retracting your your shoulder blades and you feel the upper the muscles in your upper back starting to contract you don't feel much at all really in your lats your lats almost just feel relaxed and then if you bring your elbows down to to your side and and put your shoulders down it's a good cue of like as if you're trying to tuck your shoulder blades in your back pockets and then do the same motion you feel your lats fully engaged and the muscles in your upper back, not nearly much as so. Yeah. I think a lot of people have a hard time connecting with their

lats when they're doing rows. So, besides that cue of, you know, pulling the shoulder blade down into your back pocket, I also tell people to picture themselves scraping the floor with their elbow as they're pulling. So like, you're constantly keeping that downward intention as you're pulling back. And every time I like tell people to do that, they feel their lats fire and they're like, I've never felt that in my life. So it's like, it's like one of those things. It's like, if you've been training for three years and you've never felt your lats contract like that, I can guarantee you that when you start executing a movement with that intention, it's going to make a very big difference. Absolutely. And it can make a big difference in terms of development because of

course, if, if you, there's, there could be programming mistake of, you know, maybe they're just doing mostly exercises that are targeting other muscles in the back, or it could just be how they're doing certain exercises. And again, if they're going about it incorrectly, and I've heard from people, many people over the years who lats were a very common one, very common way. Like I've never felt my lats really working chest. Some guys have that seem to have that issue with chest as well. But I wanted to ask regarding back, what about also at first, I actually want to make a quick comment on that

for me, what has helped with just really feeling my lats fire on a seated row is a neutral grip. I've always liked that. It just is more comfortable to me to keep my elbows down and down throughout the pull. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. And what about grip with your palms facing in like a, you know, a chin up type of grip? Oh, like supinated forearm? Yeah. During rows or doing pull downs? Any sort of pull.

Okay. Yeah. A lot of people are stronger with the supinated grip. And I think that's why they prefer it. But what ends up happening is usually the biceps do a little bit more work. So I don't recommend it unless you have a really good mind muscle connection with your lat. And you can kind of ensure that you're not going to cheat and use a lot more bicep and take away from the lat. And then another thing to consider is like what's happening at the shoulder joint, right? So, when you're taking that underhand grip and you're supinating the forearm, more likely than not, it's going to kind of lead to a little bit of external rotation of the shoulder. And the lats, one of the secondary

functions of the lat is to actually internally rotate the shoulder. So, I don't think it's optimal by any means, but it's another option, but I'm not a huge fan of it. Okay. So, its best use would be if you actually are trying to target your biceps a little bit more because of, you know, there could be, it could just even be how much time do you have to be in the gym every week? And, you know, you want to kind of double up maybe after you've done your, your heavy rowing and you've done your, your work that is specifically targeting the upper muscles in the back, the lats, and you want to do a little bit more pulling. You also want it to kind of double as some bicep work. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a good way to utilize it. If there's one

exercise I can recommend for people that struggle with their lat mind muscle connection, I like doing a low cable row and I like doing it unilaterally. So, just one arm at a time. And what I do is with the setup, I take a slightly staggered stance and I actually side crunch at my torso. So I laterally flex the spine to the side I'm rowing on. And that's another secondary function of the lat. So that makes sense. Yeah. It's going to just enable you to really feel that one side at a time. So I laterally flex the spine. So I do a little side crunch. I intentionally just drop my shoulder blade down before I bend at my elbow or do anything. And like you feel your lat contracted already and you still haven't moved the weight

like you just got in your starting position. And then as I pull back, I think about getting my elbow down as I'm driving back. And I just feel the lat really, really fire up. It almost feels like it cramps, but it's just a really good way to teach people to connect with that muscle. Yeah, that makes sense. I realized that on the legs, we didn't talk about hamstrings. We talked about quads and everybody knows they need to squat.

You can then get specific with how you are addressing the quads. What about the hamstrings? Sure. With the hamstrings, again, I think it's important to think about the two primary functions. So obviously you have knee flexion. So any sort of hamstring curl is going to stimulate the hamstrings very well. And then the secondary function is hip extension. So any sort of hip hinge like RDL or 45 degree hip extension are going to be like your bread and butters. But there are some differences too between hamstring variations. So like, if you take a prone hamstring curl, and you're doing a lying hamstring exercise, your hip is in a more extended position, right? So when you perform the hamstring

curl, I feel that there's a deeper contraction at like my upper hamstring closer to my glute, right? And then if I were to do a seated hamstring curl, your hips are flexed. So your hamstrings kind of start off in a stretched position. And when I perform those, I feel the exercise targeting. Seated, it really depends on the setup. Some machines have been comfortable, some have not, whereas the prone are generally comfortable. And I'm not trying to wiggle around just to get into a position where I feel like I use enough weight comfortably. You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. And the prone gives you an opportunity to get the hamstring in the shortest position possible. So that's what the hips extended and the knees flex at the same time. So I think if you have to choose one, I would do a lying before I chose a seated. And then if you're someone that is more advanced, and you have like a lot of volume and a decent amount of exercise selection, I see the reasoning to do both. And then I think it's important to notate with hamstring training is I wouldn't do something like an RDL to start off my workout. And the reason for that is because it creates a lot of muscle damage because you're overloading the hamstrings when they're stretched, right? It's one of those lengthening exercises and it's very eccentric focused. So, if you started off your workout with that, you're most likely going to like inhibit your performance with the rest of your compound movement. So, I like doing RDLs after one of my other primary compound lifts.

Yeah, that's the way I've always done it. It would be after some form of squatting usually. And sometimes it would be some back squats and some front squats. Usually it would be one or the other though, and then move into an RDL and then move into, it could be again, a leg extension has been, I haven't, I haven't done it in a while. Cause it just, it doesn't feel good on my knees, but it might be, it might be a walking lunge followed by some hamstring curls is like a very common leg workout, um, that, that I've done over the years. Nice. Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess the last thing that, uh, well, there are two things that we might as well be as thorough as possible. There there's, if we're on the leg, so let's talk about calves. Is there any hope for someone like me? The calves are, calves are interesting. I, I think the most important thing is don't save

it for the last exercise of your workout. If it is a weak point, just because you're like, like you're, you're not motivated at the end of the session, right? Like you just want to get out of there. So everyone kind of like gets to their gastroc exercise, the last exercise, they like kind of fly through it or they just skip it as a whole because they just want to go home. So if it truly is a weak point that you care to bring up, just do it first, you know? That's a good tip. Because it's something that you can easily superset with whatever you're doing. Like, so, you know, that that's probably

how I would, I don't know if you, you would not do it that way. That'd be my first thought though, is let's say I'm even bench pressing, do it, do a set of bench, uh, maybe rest a minute, go do a set of calves, rest a minute or two and get back to the bench. Yeah, absolutely. And like, even on a leg day, one of the benefits of doing calves first would be a lot of people have like limited ankle dorsiflexion, right? So, they can't pull their toes to their nose and that like negatively impacts their ability to squat to depth or their squat just feels a little bit uncomfortable. So, if you start with calves first, you'll actually like acutely increase your ankle mobility and

your ankle range of motion. And then when you squat, it might feel more comfortable. So, yeah, it's just, you know, you're gonna hit your weak point. And then you're also probably going to squat better. So, you got to look at the bright side of doing calves first. And then, all right's so that's in terms of just like a programming tip and then what about exercises and volume sure frequency kind of goes along with that but yeah so the calves are simple which is a good thing obviously primary function is just plantar flexion so going up on your toes but they do assist with a knee flexion. So any sort of hamstring curl is going to hit your calves, your gas shock a little bit. If you want to be really specific, you know, make sure you do a seated calf exercise to

target the soleus a little bit more. And then a standing or like donkey calf variation where the knee is extended. That's, that's really as complex as it gets with that. And then leg press is another good option for that, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like press, as long as you're not like using 600 pounds, like a lot of people do. And just to be clear for you, like leg press calf raise, not, I mean, a leg press is fine, but you can, it's a, it's a good,

it's a good machine to use for your legs straight and, you know, just targeting your calves. Yeah. It's funny like if someone has really poor development of their calves and they're doing leg press calf raises of like 600 pounds you can almost guarantee they're just like using their their achilles and like a lot of momentum and like spring energy and stuff like that so yeah yeah a lot of people bounce obviously out of the hole. So, making sure you pause in the fully stretched position just so you're not using momentum because the Achilles tendon does store a lot of energy and it's very easy to cheat. So, yeah, just definitely pausing at the bottom and pausing at the top.

Yeah, that's a good tip. And then it's just a matter of doing as much as you possibly can, I guess, right? I mean, it seems to be a muscle group that is almost impossible to make sore. At least I've found that over the years. I mean, I'm trying to think. I mean, I've done quite a bit of volume and I've gone back and forth on it where I'm like, all right, I'm going amount of something happened. And then, and then, and then not do anything calf specific, just do standard, you know, leg training. But it seems like they can probably just because they're a smaller muscle group, right? They can take quite a bit of a beating similar to the shoulders. You had mentioned that earlier. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

If you're someone that trains with like really good form and appropriate frequency and you're still not getting calf growth, potentially utilize like an advanced technique, maybe like intraset stretching or even BFR just to like give yourself a different stimulus that you're not used to. That would be like the last option on the menu, right? And then it's just accept your fate. Yeah. Or say a prayer. So yeah. Yeah. Right. All right. So last is would be core, right? So abs core, what are your thoughts on improving ab and core development? It's actually a huge weak point of mine.

So I can be a huge hypocrite for the next minute. But again, I think not to get too off topic, but a lot of people say just get lean and you're going to have a great midsection. And I've been there. That's rarely the case. Rarely. Yeah. Rarely the case. Like I've been 5% body fat for the shows for bodybuilding competitions and my midsection, like it looked good, but it wasn't what I wanted. And like, I definitely wasn't happy with it. Like there, it was clear that there was a lack of muscular development. And the reason for that was because there was a lack of training and prioritizing that muscle group. So, and that's, and that's common because a lot of people,

I think that's still a thing. It definitely has been a thing over the years. And it probably still is that like, uh, there's the leanness and then there's the, oh, and if you're, if you're doing your heavy compounds, that'll take care of it. Those heavily engaged core and don't worry about it. Just do your squatting and your dead lifting and your bench pressing, overhead pressing, get lean and you'll have a killer six pack. Sure. Yeah, I just, I totally disagree with that, you know, and it's like what you kind of said before. If someone wants big biceps, you're not going to tell them to just do pull-ups in rows. Like you're going to go tell them to do a bicep curl. If someone wants like

really impressive abs, I think it's important that you train them. So, from a function standpoint, obviously like the rectus abdominis, the main six-pack muscle primary function is just spinal flexion. So, doing things that brings your rib cage closer to your hips. So, any sort of crunch or sit-up variations are going to be good and then vice versa, any sort of exercises that brings your pelvis closer to your rib cage. So, things like hanging leg raises or reverse crunches and stuff like that. I think that needs to be the bread and butter for the six-pack muscles. But then it's also important to not neglect the external obliques. So,

doing some sort of rotational exercise or some sort of lateral flexion exercise is definitely important as well. Do you have kind of go-to's for those? Yeah. For the rotational exercise. Yeah. Or lateral flexion. Sure. A lot of new gyms have the lower trunk rotation machine. I'm not sure if you've seen it. You put your knees on this pad. Yeah. Yeah. I have. Yeah. Your shoulders stay square, right? And you just like twist your hips i freaking love that exercise for for trunk rotation and then for lateral flexion i keep it really simple i do um side lying crunches where i like i bring my leg up as the same time i'm

bringing my rib cage to my hip right so i'm just connecting the dots and getting those those two points closer together kind of like a bicycle am i am i envisioning that properly or no so yeah lie on your like if you're lying on your side one knee is bent and the other leg is straight and i have like one arm um behind my head like by my ear and i'm literally just raising one leg up like abducting at one leg and then crunching at the same time yeah so i do those and that's pretty much it um for like core stabilization and for injury prevention i think it's really important to do exercises like dead bugs that's probably my favorite core stabilization exercise. I've never even heard of this. I'm Googling right now. The dead bug. I like it.

It's super important, man. I've literally seen people that can squat 500 pounds for reps and they're somehow always getting hurt even though they still have an insane amount of strength. They're somehow always getting hurt even though they still have like an insane amount of strength. And then I have them do dead bugs and they can't even do 10 reps without shaking like crazy. And it's actually a fairly like simple and basic exercise. But I think it really shows how weak their core actually is. This is a super cute exercise. I'm doing right when we're done. I do my little daily.

I have like a little stretching, just some yoga, some yoga stretches that I do every day. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to do this and see, see where I'm at. You're going to feel it, man. You might have a little bit of a wobbly, you know, shakiness to it, but you'll, yeah, definitely include it and let me know what you think. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to do it. Question, weighted versus unweighted with any of this ab core stuff? definitely include it and let me know what you think yeah yeah i'm gonna do it um question weighted versus unweighted with any of this ab core stuff yeah um so just like any any muscle group i think it's important to start with minimal load so we can say unweighted or body weight right like if someone can't do a push-up we're not going to tell them to go like bench press a ton of weight kind of thing so i think it's important to like get the exercises down with your body weight first, and then you can progressively overload. I don't think it's as necessary, but if you really want to get stronger abs and thicker abs, then over time, it just makes sense that you're going to

have to use some load. Yeah. That's a staple for me has been just a weighted cable crunch. Like I've always, I've, I've done that for, and I, and I noticed doing that Steli. So I was doing a weighted cable crunches. I was doing leg raises. I was doing bicycles. I might be forgetting a couple of those. Those were like core exercise I would go to. And I noticed, I definitely noticed that my abs, my rectus abdominis, for people listening, those are the muscles that you most associate as abs, right? So those, I definitely looking at pictures when, so I have a picture of when I first got pretty lean, maybe somewhere around seven, 8% or so, where you can

clearly see all your abs and you look pretty good. And then a couple of years later of doing a lot of just the stuff that I, that I preach, including this ab training, and then got, and then got down to a bit leaner, actually the, that next time. And I was impressed to see how see how much i mean of course it's not like night and day but if you really look you're like oh yeah there's there's quite a bit more muscle there now than there was previously and um then though i actually was like happy with i know some people like the look of really big really blocky abs i personally don't i like i think there's a balance umically. And so I was happy with where I was at there. And so then I dropped out the weighted stuff and I still do some,

I still do maybe a few sets per week. But obviously that's probably not necessary. I would think, I don't know if you agree, but doing, I mean, this would be my experience at least, doing heavy compounds has been enough to maintain the development that I achieved through the focused work. And, you know, it doesn't, and then maybe a, maybe a few sets of direct ab work per week, just to kind of keep things where they're at. And as far as obliques go, I was doing lateral flexion types of me, whether it was a side raise or sometimes there was some twisting exercises, but I found that I, my obliques got to a point where I, I actually didn't want them to grow anymore because yeah, it looks cool when you're, when you're really lean, but you know, if it makes you just look fatter, unless you're really, unless you're

really lean, right. You can even be lean. You could be at 10% body fat and the 10% is great. I mean, it's a, it's, it's a great place to be. You're going to look good. You feel good. It's, you can train hard, but then if, if, if you have really developed obliques, it almost looks like kind of like a muffin top. Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, I totally hear you there. But it's motivating to hear that you saw a significant difference after you gave it a lot of attention and focus, you know, and you can definitely maintain it with less volume than was required to build it. So like, like you said, you're doing your, your, your heavy compounds, and you're just doing some direct ab work, but not nearly as much as you were when you were really trying to bring them up. some direct ab work, but not nearly as much as you were when you were really trying to bring them up. Another thing with me in regards to ab training, one thing I want to add is, besides like body fat distribution, I stay like I stay at 10%, like pretty much effortlessly. But my midsection is terrible, even though I'm 10%. So like, some of that is due to body fat distribution, and just the fact that I store more body fat there. But a huge component to it is because I don't have good development. So sometimes I'll

notice like if I focus on abs for like four to six weeks, my midsection will look better even though my body fat isn't changing. Right. So yeah, I think it's really important that people don't neglect that. Yeah, that makes sense. One other thing that I think it's worth you touching on is making sure that you're I see. Uh, and there are many ways to certain exercises make it easier to mess it up, but, uh, what are your, what are your thoughts on that? Oh, a hundred percent. I think, um, one thing I commonly say is like, if you can't pause the movement, basically at the snap of a finger, you're not in control of the movement. And like, you're kind of just letting the weight move your limbs through a range of motion rather than like concentrically contracting the muscle and like eccentrically lengthening and lowering it under control. I think it's really important that

you're actually moving the load rather than the load is moving you. Yeah. So, like a good example of that, obviously a common mistake is bicep curls, right? So, paying attention to the raising of the weight, flexing the biceps and then just kind of letting it fall down. Yeah. I see people do bicep curls and like I feel like they train their front delt more than they do their bicep because their elbow joint isn't actually moving through a full range of motion. And their shoulder joint is moving through a huge range of motion, right? So yeah, being in control of the movement for both the concentric and eccentrics really important. From like a scientific standpoint, you get a lot more muscle activation during the concentric phase,

but you create a lot more muscle damage during the eccentric phase. So, they're both important for stimulating hypertrophy and stimulating muscle growth. So, you're kind of just shooting yourself in the foot if you're missing out on one of the phases or kind of just not doing a good job of controlling both of them. Yep. Makes sense. All right. One last, before we wrap up, I realized, and this is, it's topical, it's, it's, it's popular and that's, that's glutes. Might as well touch on it. So for people that, let's just say, let's say for the person who's doing, doing a good job on their leg training and they just want more glute development.

Especially females, right? Yes. Yeah. I would say if your goal is to build big glutes, juicy aesthetic glutes, I would definitely start one of your leg workouts with a hip thrust movement or something that overloads the glutes when they're fully extended. So like if you're squatting and leg pressing or doing a different leg compound movement every time, it's like you're not prioritizing your glutes, right? So I think the hip thrust is like the best exercise, so to speak, for glute development. I don't like using

that term, but it's just so efficient. It trains it through a full range of, for glute development. I don't like using that term, but it's just so efficient. It trains it through a full range of motion for the most part. And it overloads it when the glutes are fully contracted and fully shortened at the top of the lift. So it's a great lift that you can overload heavily. You can get strong on pretty quickly. Yeah, it needs to be in your programming if you want big glutes, in my opinion. Yep. Yep. Makes sense. Awesome, man. Well, those were all the things that I wanted to pick your yeah it needs to be in your programming if you want big glutes in my opinion yep yep makes sense awesome man well uh those were all the things that i wanted to pick your brain on and i really enjoyed the the conversation actually you're giving me some ideas for for my programming i've taken a few notes so this was fun that's awesome yeah for for people listening who want to find you on the interwebs and check out what else you have to offer in the

way of information. And you mean you also have you have programming as well, right? You have training products, tell us where can people find you? And if they've liked what you've had to say here, what else of yours should they check out? So for my, my one-to-one coaching is done through competitivebreed.com. That's my, my coaching brand. And then my online training programs and my educational content is on schoolofgains.com. So that's coming out very, very soon within the next week. Not exactly sure when this is dropping, but stay tuned for that. If it's not out yet, it'll be out very soon. And I'm also working on a collaboration project with Jeff Nippard covering everything you need to know on body recomposition. So, I'm really excited about that and that's coming out in late September. So, um, yeah, you can find everything on competitivebreed.com.

And then my social media handle is just at Christopher.Barracat. Cool. And that's B-A-R-A-K-A-T in case people are wondering on the spending. Correct. Cool, man. Well, again, thanks for taking the time to do this. This is a great information and we'll all, you have to, you have to come back and do this again. We can figure something, figure out something else interesting to talk about. For sure. Thanks so much for having me on Mike. And next time you're in the Tampa area, I would love to have you in the lab and I'll just connect in person again. Yeah, absolutely. You gotta, you gotta run me through some training. I'll be your,

I'll be your, your, your coaching client. You can just tell me what to do. That'll be fun, man. Sounds like a plan. Yeah, I look forward to it. Yes, likewise. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives,

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