Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Eric Helms on the Science of Autoregulating Your Training

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

If you’re here, you probably care at least a little bit about picking up and putting down heavy things. I’m talking about training, of course. The truth is training isn’t hopelessly complex. Find a decent routine, follow it, and you’ll make gains. Unfortunately, you’ve probably found that life isn’t perfectly predictable and sometimes gets in the way of your training. You can’t always hit the gym exactly when you want and with perfect energy levels. Sometimes you have to work overtime or pick up your friend from the airport. Sometimes you get injured or are more sore than usual. And sometimes your sleep is a bit off and you’re dragging more than normal. Whatever the case, life occasionally gives you lemons, and you have to stay flexible and nimble or you’re going to get demotivated by not being able to follow your perfect little plans. Well, what if there was a training system that could ensure you're working hard enough to progress, but not so hard that you overtrain? And what if it could do this no matter how you were feeling--whether you were fresh and spritely or unmotivated and rundown. In other words, a system that could optimize your progress while managing recovery, all while staying flexible and fluid and adapting to you. That's the promise of something called autoregulation. That may sound like a fancy term, but we’re going to get to the bottom of it in this episode. And luckily, I know someone who has a knack for breaking down nuanced, science-y subjects and making them accessible for everyone. That person is repeat-podcast-guest extraordinaire, Dr. Eric Helms. In case you’re not familiar with Eric, he’s not only an accomplished bodybuilder, powerlifter, coach, author, scientist, and member of Legion’s Scientific Advisory Board, but he’s also one of the guys behind the Monthly Applications in Strength Sport (MASS), which is one of the best research reviews out there. All that is why he’s also one of my favorite guests for offering practical advice you can apply in the gym. In this episode, Eric covers . . . What autoregulation is and who it’s for Implementing RPE and using it to manage both fatigue and load to make faster progress Individualizing training based on feedback instead of following a cookie-cutter program The advantages (and disadvantages) of velocity-based training Autoregulating exercise selection Practical recommendations for adding autoregulation into your current program And more . . . So if you want to learn the ins and outs of autoregulation, and how you can use it to manage fatigue and optimize your progress, this episode is for you. Timestamps: 6:59 - What is autoregulation? 13:52 - Do you think autoregulation is a good technique for elite athletes and more sophisticated workouts? 29:19 - If you are in the middle of a training block and you notice that you aren’t close enough to your one rep max, do you make decisions on the fly or just stay to the program until that training block is over? 33:58 - What is velocity and RPE stops? 44:41 - What are your thoughts on auto regulating exercise selection? 47:19 - What are some other good reasons to change what you are currently doing? 57:35 - How can I implement auto regulation into my existing program? Mentioned on The Show: Eric Helm’s Website: https://3dmusclejourney.com/ MASS Research Review: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/mass/

Hey there, I'm Mike Matthews and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today where we're going to talk about the art and science of picking stuff up and putting it down. And specifically, today's episode is going to be on the topic of auto-regulation, which is a fancy term and it sounds complex, but really what it boils down to is regulating your training based on subjective perceptions that in some cases you can verify and you can hone objectively. And I know that doesn't really make sense right now, but by the end of this episode, you will understand what I mean. Now, why should you care about auto-regulation? Well, when it is used properly, it is a very effective way to ensure

that you train hard enough in your workouts to make progress, but not so hard that you increase the risk of getting hurt or experiencing symptoms related to overtraining. And also when used correctly, progression models that rely on auto-regulation have the additional benefit of being relatively simple, relatively straightforward. There are usually just a handful of moving parts and you just have to understand how to pull the levers and push the buttons. And you usually don't need to fiddle around with spreadsheets or apps or rep max calculations to know how much weight to put on the bar and so forth. Now, that is not to say though, that auto-regulated progression models are the best for everyone for all exercises under all circumstances. That's not the case, but even

where I think it is more appropriate to use a different form of progression, one that does prescribe percentage of one rep max to put on the bar, for example, you are still going to include at least one key element of auto-regulation to make that training effective. And that is the rate of perceived exertion, RPE, or another way of expressing that is reps in reserve, RIR. And those are just a couple of the many things you're gonna learn about in today's podcast. And not only that, but you're gonna learn from someone who knows a lot more

about this stuff than I do, someone whose work I reference often and someone who is one of my favorite repeat guests here on the show, Dr. Eric Helms. And in case you are not familiar with him, he is not only an accomplished bodybuilder, powerlifter, coach, author, scientist, and member of the Legion Scientific Advisory Board, but he's also one of the guys behind my favorite research, well, training research. They did add supplementation

just recently. So I guess you could say training and supplementation research reviews, monthly applications in strength sport, which you can learn about over at strongerbyscience.com. And no, I'm not getting paid to say that. I just genuinely really liked the work that Eric and Greg Knuckles and Eric Trexler and Mike Zordos are doing with mass. And so in this episode, Eric is going to give you a quick and dirty crash course in auto-regulation. He's going to, of course, explain what it is and who it is for and several ways to implement it in your training to make your training more individualized based on how your body responds, based on the feedback you're getting from your body, as opposed to following a cookie cutter program very rigidly i don't think there's anything

wrong with cookie cutter programs per se and especially if you are new but if you're an intermediate weightlifter or you're an advanced weightlifter you probably can benefit from some level of customization you can start with a really good training template but using information like what you're going to learn in today's podcast you can then make it even better for your body and your goals. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example, and everything

is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster. And you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars,

pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. Dr. Helms. What's up, Mike? It's been a while. That's my Bond villain voice. Oh, you nailed it. In case my day job doesn't work out, you know. It's been a bit since we have done a podcast. So I'm looking forward to today's discussion. I always

enjoy our talks. I always learn something, which is cool. And today's topic is something I haven't written much about, at least directly. So in my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which is intended for people who are new to proper weightlifting, it uses double progression. So there obviously is some auto-regulation in there, but I don't think I even use the term in the book because I figured it's not necessary if you're just brand new and there's already a lot of information to digest in the beginning. I remember what that's like. And so beyond that, I don't think I've even written a... This would be something I normally would have a definitive guide on and do a podcast on, but I haven't. So I think that this interview will be well-received because it is

fresh and new content, which I'm always looking for. I like the way you framed that up, actually, that auto-regulation is baked into a lot of the things that we see as part and parcel of weight training. And often you don't necessarily need to invoke the term as that often will have people put it into a schema or a box and maybe be a little too limited in their thinking of what auto-regulation is. Let's just run with that. And let's start with what is it by definition, when people hear that term, what should they think? Yeah, I think if we take out the word auto, it's something that is a little more clear, in my opinion, you know, regulating training.

That means that something that you do in lifting affects what you then decide to do. That could be baked into a system. And then adding the term auto just means that it happens automatically and that it potentially puts that power in the hands of the lifter so that it's not something that's mandated by a coach. So I like to frame this sometimes as if we take the perspective of what a good coach does, they might have a plan, you know, hey, we're going to deadlift today. You know, my back's really sore. We know a good coach would probably call an audible. They'd make a different decision about what to do. Like, oh, we can push that back. We can drop load. We can change range of motion. We'll do something because the reality is quote unquote on the ground are different than I

predicted with my program. I think we can all imagine or remember times even where we followed what was on the spreadsheet no matter what, because that's our personality and we had a plan to follow and that can be counterproductive. Absolutely. Especially in that, that's a good example where something just kind of feels off or, I mean, I've run into muscle soreness before where from, I guess, because of how my weeks are usually set up, it'll be, I'll plan to squat on Thursday. I pulled on Tuesday. My hamstrings are still kind of sore and switch it up, right? Yeah, exactly. That's a perfect example of, you know, making a change based on what happens. And I think if we understand some of the underlying philosophies of, you know, how humans are

motivated, if we understand like self-determination theory and how having autonomy and competence are things that not only make people happier, but also make athletes more effective. And there's some interesting multidisciplinary research looking at that. Then we can see the value in giving athletes choices. And we can also, as an athlete gets more and more experience, we can leverage that experience. If you talk to some strength and conditioning coaches and very high level coaches who work with elite performers, a lot of the times their first port of call is, let me make sure I don't mess up what is already working for this athlete. So the kind of the

perspective, instead of having like a top-down coaching philosophy is the idea that the keys to this person's success is in them. They know their own body and they know their own experience better than anyone else possibly can. So I need to leverage that. So auto-regulation is essentially training that is individualized. It's built into it by having some type of system that adapts to your performance on game day. And that's not the only way to view it, but that's kind of your stock standard textbook definition. But essentially, there is something in your training that changes based on what happens. We can go back to that example of double progression, where you decide to increase load once you've sufficiently met a volume target.

And that is a kind of a self-paced adaptation, right? As you've shown that you can accumulate volume with a given load, and you've done what you've deemed a priori is sufficient to increase load, then you do it. So you can set up a poorly auto-regulated plan, or you can set up a pretty solid auto-regulated plan. But the inherent aspect of it is that it's based on some type of biofeedback. And this could also be like psychometric feedback. But essentially, it's training that adapts to you and the realities of your environment. So to contrast that with something else, because some people may kind of have this just ingrained in the way they approach things, people who quote unquote, maybe trained by feel and have been in the game a while,

and then maybe also have a relatively analytical mindset, those people tend to kind of auto regulate automatically someone who is really just kind of auto-regulate automatically. Someone who is really just kind of training by feel and intuition without kind of any systematic approach, that's not auto-regulation, which is an important distinction. There does need to be some type of system. It's just that the system is agile. The system adapts to what is happening. So anyway, to contrast it, if you were to take a spreadsheet-based program online and it had a relatively straightforward but logical progression, and you did 1RM tests and used a percentage of 1RM, and that just literally went up and it manipulated volume and intensity and followed all of the,

let's say, best practices that we've established in periodization literature and strength training literature, that's great. But how do we know that's the appropriate volume for you? How do we know that the repetitions you can do at a given percentage one RM match that of what's in a textbook? Also, how do we know that your fatigue and fitness responses to a given stimulus match the expectations of the person who wrote that program? So I think that's kind of the contrast to it. You might follow some kind of Excel-based program and find that you were never even close to failure and you crushed the program, but didn't make very great gains. It was probably too conservative for you. Likewise, you might find yourself in what's considered a moderate week getting absolutely crushed on certain days,

and that can also happen. So that's kind of the, what we're trying to avoid with taking an auto-regulated approach to programming. In my experience, I'd be curious, and you have a lot more experience with auto-regulated programs, I'm sure with yourself and then with the type of people you've worked with. But in my experience, I've played around with different strategies that I'm sure you'll get into. And maybe I didn't give them enough of a go, or maybe for whatever reason, my physiology just didn't respond, or maybe I didn't do them correctly. Although I think I did. I found that it added quite a bit of complexity, and I can't say I really noticed much of a difference versus something

like what is in my newest book that I released, which I know you looked through, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which has just linear periodization on the primary exercises, double progression on the isolation. And of course, that is not the one size fits all best way to program training. I understand that. But what I like about it is it is a low level of complexity. I think it is in alignment with the best practices that are most responsible for muscle and strength gain. It has not only worked well for me, but I had different beta testers working with me and it seems to be working pretty well, pretty consistently. I'm starting to get feedback now from people because the book actually was out for about

a month before I did the launch. I had to do it that way, publishing agreements with, I'm doing a Simon & Schuster book and they wanted it out by a certain time, whatever. And so I had people already over a month into it and I've been getting good feedback. What are your thoughts on that? Like where does auto-regulation, let's say beyond double progression, which most people listening to this podcast are not only going to be familiar with the term, but they have done it. Anybody who's been in weightlifting long enough has probably done it at one point. But when you

get into more sophisticated strategies, do you think it's most relevant for elite athletes, whether we're talking about strength athletes or otherwise? does it have a place in like a newbies programming or maybe an intermediate or maybe even somebody kind of entering the advanced phase of their muscle and strength journey, so to speak? I think it depends on the strategy, right? So the double progression one is it works for anybody, you know, and that's kind of built on the precept of understanding. Like if someone is, if someone likes the idea of double progression, that means whether they acknowledge it or not, they've bought into the idea that people make progress at different rates in terms of performance. So the question is, is all right,

well, how can we apply that concept to other types of training? You know, you can do double progression on compound lifts, on main lifts, where the goal is to get stronger, but it's not always a great fit because like, if you try to do double progression in like the four to six RM range with a compound movement, you start to really inch up the fatigue a lot. And you may need to take a different approach to where you need to deload every now and again. But a lateral raise or a bicep curl or a calf raise, it's a bit of a different calculus for that reason. Yep. And that's what I found is when I was newer to proper weightlifting, like when I first started deadlifting, which was like seven years into weightlifting. So I hadn't gotten very far for seven years of training. Double progression

worked great for the first while really, until it became very hard to continue making progress because of how hard I had to work in each set and could I have gotten an extra rep how close was I to failure really and so at that point is when I found something like what's in beyond bigger than a more linear approach to at least primary exercises, the big compound lifts, allowed me to ensure that I was making progress over each training block, but in a way that is challenging, but not grueling, you know? Yeah. And so you can apply, we'll talk about RPE now, so rating of perceived exertion. You can apply that to linear progression. And that's, you know, essentially, if you look at my muscle and strength pyramids books, which, you know, they have novice

and intermediate and advanced programs, once you hit the intermediate and advanced programs, they are what you described, they are using a linear progression of load. And just for the listener, when we say when I say linear, I mean that there's typically like a descending rep scheme and an ascending load scheme. So that is linear. Volume is going down in terms of tonnage while actual load is going up. That's what linear typically means in periodization parlance, if you will. And that's mostly applicable to folks who are purposely trying to get their compound lifts up in terms of their strength. Now you can take that same concept and then just modify it with RPE.

So again, rating of perceived exertion, it's a term that's been around in exercise science for 50 years now. And it was initially applied to cardiovascular training. And it was normally given more or less subjective ratings of how you'd rate it. So on a zero to 10 scale, zero might be rest, 10 might be maximal, five might be hard, seven might be very hard, three might be moderate. And that's all fine and good when you're using an exercise modality that everyone understands. You know, it was originally for, hey, let's run on a treadmill. And in the seventies, you know, this was back when we still had like physical education

in the United States, children still played outside. So people knew what it was like to be out of breath and it would correspond really nicely to like heart rate. Now it's like thumb fatigue from Fortnite. Exactly. Exactly. The RP of my thumb. It's been six hours straight. I'm going to give it a nine. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we'd have to modify it for the modern generation. Now that's all fine and good. But when you start to apply it to resistance training, what is more tiring or what is harder is a little more opaque.

Like if you just look at load, things are clear, or if you just look at volume, things are clear, but the interaction is not. So it also depends on what you're anchored to. So because resistance training is less common, even than aerobic training, if you're to give someone with a background of endurance training and you have them do a three rep max, the research would suggest using the old RPE scale, but they might rate that as a seven or an eight. Now, if you come from a resistance training background, you're like, well, how could that be? That's the hardest the 3RM set could be. And that is someone speaking through the lens of anchoring 3RM to that load and that volume. I went to failure. I couldn't have done more. But someone without any anchoring

or anchoring to cardiovascular training is like, yeah, it was the most I could have done for three reps, but it wasn't hard. I wouldn't describe that as hard. I've ran marathons. So the solution that came around from Mike Tushir, who's a powerlifting coach, thought leader in that space, and then some of the peer-reviewed literature myself and Dr. Zerdos has done, is to base the RPE scale on proximity to failure. So now a nine RPE means I could have done one more rep, an eight RPE means I could have done two more reps, a seven, three, on and on. And just to clarify, are you talking about absolute failure here or technical failure? Those should be pretty close to the same thing for anyone who's using the scale. So one thing I was

going to get to is that, you know, to have that ability to gauge repetitions to failure, you have to have some training experience under your belt and you have to push yourself pretty hard. So this is an appropriate scale for intermediates and advanced lifters. And if you're truly an intermediate and advanced lifter, not just in terms of time spent under the bar, but also in terms of, I would say, technical expertise with the lifts, when you do a hard set, your form shouldn't break down that much, maybe a little. So in general, I like to use technical failure. And if that is wholly different than absolute failure, it may mean that you need to keep working on your technique. That's a good piece of information for you, I guess you could say. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fair point because I guess as you

get better, those things should converge really. So essentially what you can do is you can take that same linear program. And if the idea, like if you've programmed it in such a way where you're always training to failure, well, you don't need an RPE scale. Should you be doing that for an advanced lifter who's trying to get stronger and bigger? I would probably argue not. That kind of puts you into, it's not a huge issue. Some people are probably a little too anti-failure for my taste, but it does put you into a certain corner where you can't use a higher volume, you can't use a higher frequency, and you better have a squat cage, you better have spotters, especially if

you apply this to compound lifts, and you need to get very comfortable with being uncomfortable. So that's certainly a way of training you can use and it wouldn't require RPE, but it may require, you know, like I said, less exposure to the lift you're trying to gain expertise with, a disproportionate amount of fatigue, the necessity to either use lower volume or use more frequent deloads, etc, etc. So it kind of backs you into a corner, it gives you less options. Now, if you were to take an approach where probably both the way our books are written, you know, there are submaximal training that you progress over time, and maybe you get closer to failure as you're, you know, pushing

progressive overload. But let's say you go with a scheme where you're doing a set of six, a set of five, a set of four and three successive weeks, and you're making a small measured increase in load and you have multiple sets. Typically people like to train or tend to train with straight sets, the same load across those sets. And that means that you'll see fatigue accumulate. You'll need to start sub maximally and you'll get close to something that's challenging on your last set of the day. And you keep trying to push that until you find, oh man, I'm really beat up. I need to take a deload. That's the typical pattern. You can do that by programming percentages that should align with being submaximal, but still challenging. You know, I'm going to do five by five at 80%. Then I'm going to do five by four at 82%. And

then I'm going to do five by three at 85%. That would be an example. However, given there's going to be fluctuations in your fatigue for numerous reasons, from what we understand about the biopsychosocial model and just the demands of every day and unpredictable elements that impact fatigue and the rate you adapt, we could also say, all right, I want you to do three by six, three by five, and then three by four. And I want your sets to fall between a seven to nine RPE. So that's an example where, okay, I'm going to choose a load for that first set. Okay, I'm doing five reps. It's supposed to be around a seven RPE to start. Okay, I'm going to choose what I think I can do for eight today. And then I'm going to keep that across my sets. And if I start to fall short of that or overshoot it, if I'm outside of a seven to nine RPE,

if I find like that was nearly a failure or man, that barbell barely even slowed down, I could have done five more reps, then you would just load on subsequent sets. And this is an excellent tool to essentially take one of those well-written plans that may or may not fit your physiology and your time course of adaptation and recovery, and then automatically make it a little more appropriate for you and kind of your pace of adaptation and your pace of fatigue. That makes sense. And it could go the other way too. If something feels disproportionately hard, the spreadsheet calls for sets of six with 80%, for example, and on your first set, you're like grinding out the last rep then for the same reasons, right? Then you could adjust accordingly. Absolutely.

Where you know, okay, well, I'm going for six, but it's not quite going to be 80%. out the last rep then for the same reasons, right? Then you could adjust accordingly. Absolutely. Where you know, okay, well, I'm going for six, but it's not quite going to be 80% today. Exactly. And I think a good way to view this for someone who is really kind of steeped in like the percentage 1RM perspective is that, hey, do you really think your 1RM is the same every day? And do we really think we have a predictable pace of increasing our 1RM from that 1RM test we did say four or five weeks ago? And that's a good point because I run into that in my training. So I have like 16 week macro cycles and I'm calculating 1RMs at the end of each macro cycle before I start another. And so as I get further, I'm also experiencing that now because of the lockdown. I was able to work out at home, but I just have some dumbbells and I was able to preserve muscle, but I don't have a barbell. So I was actually surprised at how much I lost on my squat in particular, even though I was doing a lot of dumbbell front squats and dumbbell lunges and ham raises and just things I could do. Again, preserve. It doesn't look like I lost any muscle,

but I would guess I lost 40 to 50 pounds off of my 1RM on my back squat. It was bizarre, actually. And maybe it's because I also added in cardio. I started doing 30 minutes of just low slash moderate intensity biking in the morning. And so that extra quad volume, I don't know. I was just a little bit surprised. But now that I'm back in the gym, what I'm noticing is I'm having to make some of these adjustments you're talking about because although the spreadsheet is calling for certain amounts and I do those 1RMs I put in the beginning were pretty accurate, I'm getting a little bit of the muscle memory quote unquote effect where now I'm a little bit stronger than I should be just given what would normally be occurring in a training cycle.

And I saved my spreadsheet from pre-RONA occurring in a training cycle. And I saved my spreadsheet from pre-Rona and I'm comparing it. And that's what I'm seeing. Cause I was pre-Rona, that was not the case. I wouldn't get halfway through a macro cycle and be like, you know, I put 80% on the bar and I'm supposed to do sets of six and I probably could have done nine or 10, you know? Yeah. And what you're describing is can be an outcome of, you know, the realities of the world we're living currently in, or there's a lot of other things that can impact that. We have data showing that college athletes during around the time of exams are more likely to get injured. We have data showing that people who report more negative perceived life events gain rate at a slower pace. We have data on

successive nights of undersleeping, reducing the rate of muscle gain and strength gain. There's a ton of stuff out there. If we were in the 1980s being paid a stipend in a country with a sports, but it was coach-induced regulation. So I think we have some idea of some hard data that kind of backs what you're talking about. So there's a pretty cool study that Dr. Zerdos did out of his lab where they took three pretty high-level weightlifters. Actually, one was a weightlifter, two were powerlifters. Definitely would categorize these folks as advanced. Two of them were squatting over 500 pounds. And they basically had them, not even basically, they had them train up to a close to a 1RM every day for, I think, a little over a month. Now, this tells you basically what is your 1RM every day. Now, of course, by doing a 1RM every day, you're introducing more noise into that. But essentially at any given time point, they were at plus or minus 5%. And you know, when you're squatting 500 pounds,

that means you could be down 25 pounds, you could be up 25 pounds in any given time point. Now, you know, you reduce the difficulty of that training program and the stress of it, that number comes down a little bit, but it's still not the same every day. Another way of looking at it is that the further you get away from a 1RM load, the less predictable the number of reps you're going to get. So while your NSCA textbook might say you're going to get 12 reps at 70%, 10 reps at 75%, 8 reps at 80%, when you actually test that and you study it, it can be dependent on the population, prior training, the exercise.

And even when you have a relatively homogenous population, another study that we did out of Dr. Zerdos' lab is we had a group of college days males who could squat 1.5 times body weight at least. They worked up to a max. We chucked trash bags on the plates. They didn't know it was on there. And they did as many reps as they could at 70%. And we had a range between six to 29 reps.

Now there's only one person who did six. There's only one person who did 29, but it would not be unreasonable to say that a pretty normal distribution of these participants were squatting between eight to 20 reps with 70%. So you might prescribe as a stock standard kind of quote unquote volume day for a squat day, three by eight at 70%. But for someone who's on the low end of that distribution, who's bad at reps, quote unquote, that first set will be at a 10 RPE and they're going to have to drop load, reduce reps, or just get crushed. And the person who's on the upper end, who's really good at reps, quote unquote, who can do 20, they're going to feel like they just did three warmup sets and went home.

And we can probably guess that the adaptations would be divergent in those two individuals. So the last piece of information, I think some people, they look at this and they see RPE as a way of dealing with fatigue. But I liked how you framed it that, hey, I could have done a lot more. I needed to actually increase my load. I came back from being detrained on the skill of the squat and with all my muscles still around, and I was making this rapid progress as I readapted that motor pattern. And that's actually what we saw in my PhD study, final study, where we had two groups compared and I created a percentage-based progression for one group. And then I created the exact same set reps, exercise selection, everything, except I gave the equivalent RPE to what I expected it would be based on that

pre-test 1RM in the percentage group. And one of the interesting findings was through the course of the study, the rate of load increases in the RPE group were higher than the percentage-based increases. So the program that I gave them held them back at the group level. Some people responded differently. So just as much as RPE can be used to deal with fatigue, it also might allow you to make faster progress. And that's exactly what we saw in my study. That's interesting. And from a programming perspective, I'm curious what you do in your programming and with clients of yours and people you work with where appropriate or where relevant. So if you are, let's say getting, you're kind of where I'm at, right?

I'm in the middle of this training block and I'm finding that what the spreadsheet is calling for is not as difficult as it should be based on my RP or my reps and reserve, however you want to look at it, expectations where I would like to be ending one or two reps shy of failure. And I'm finding that on some exercises, not all, but on some, it's probably more like three or maybe even four in the first set, not the final set, but in the first set. I may not have given you enough information to even answer this question, but I'm just curious, generally, if you find yourself in a situation like that, will you just make that adjustment on the fly or will you just carry through the training block knowing that the weights are going

to get heavier? And I mean, in my case, it's going to end with some AMRAP. So I'll get to some more difficult training, but if I don't make those adjustments, it may, none of it may actually, until I get to the AMRAP, none of it may feel as difficult as it should, you know? So that's a great question. And I think because I'll give the answer for someone who is not you, but I'll also say what I would do in your case, because your context is specific that you're coming back from what I would say, skill detraining. It's like you said, you're able to keep training.

You didn't lose, you know, quadriceps muscle mass or anything like that. You're going to make these rapid improvements that aren't really requiring massive physiological changes. They're probably occurring due to, you know, some neuromuscular changes and some deepening of slightly dusted over pathways in your brain, right? So for you, I would just, I'd be okay with not necessarily making sure the load was heavy enough. I'd kind of let you do it at a, maybe a suboptimal RPE, you know, according to textbooks or what I might recommend normally.

However, if I was dealing with an advanced lifter who had been training and it wasn't dealing with, you know, coming back from a layoff, that process might not occur. Like with you, like if you did all 315, fuck, it felt like it was 300. Then next week, 325 felt like it was 315. That's okay. I would just let that go until it stopped, you know, and then you had to actually start working a little harder. But for someone who was not regaining a certain skill with a movement, if you were to hold them back on that RPE, they might not make that adaptation. They might not, it might not feel like that. You know, you spend too much time mucking around with four or five RPEs and then you'll find that you don't make any progress. You know, when you go to heavier weights, now they feel heavy. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So I think in that case, I think a lot of people sometimes when they read research, especially when they hear me talk about research, research typically will position two things and compare them because that's the way it works. So in my PhD study, like I was saying, you know, I had one group doing, let's say, three by eight at 70%. And the other group was doing, say, threex8 at a 6-8 RPE, just as a random example. But they don't have to be either or. So one of the things I like to do when I program for people when I first work with them is I give them a set times reps times percentage of 1RM, and then I give them in parentheses an RPE target. So the instruction is, hey, let's do that first set at that percentage. And if you are outside of the RPE bounds, then we modify that next set. And then you put on the bar what you think will fall in that RPE range. And there can even be more nuance

to that. Like if I tell you, like, let's say you are the person who can do 20 reps at 70% and you register like a three RPE, I'd be like, okay, that was a warmup set. Now you're going to go up substantially and load and do it again. A really obnoxious warmup set. Yeah, exactly. Why did I do eight reps? Damn it. I should have done heavier and done like three. So anyway, but for someone who registers say a nine RPE or a five RPE, I absolutely count that set and then we adjust it up or down. And most people, if you know how to program, if you understand those relationships are going to be close to the target you gave them. And also, this allows them to experiment, to see what happens when their personality interacts with programming.

If you're the person who you get that 8 RPE with the load I assigned on the first set, I can maintain it. You're going to learn real quick, oh, that second set was probably 8.5 or 9, and I had to drop load. And then you know next time, all right, so I should probably start around a six or a seven RPE. You get to learn about the rate at which you fatigue. You get to learn about what does your personality push you towards and how that can be, you know, a pro or a con, you know, it's kind of built in some of that philosophy I talked about earlier that underlies auto-regulation. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world.

Talk to us about velocity and RP stops. I think while you're on the topic of RPE, it would be relevant. And this is something that I know that you and the mass crew have been talking more about. I'm hearing more and more people talk about it and ask about it. And what I mean by that is that if you were to do a set to failure, your first rep would move pretty quick, and that last rep would be a massive grinder. And that is represented if we were to put a accelerometer on the bar, or if we were to use what's called a linear encoder or a linear position transducer, which is basically just a tether that measures displacement and the rate of displacement on the bar and corrects for any changes in angles and tells us the average velocity of the concentric movement. And what does displacement mean in this context? Absolutely. Where the bar starts and where it goes to and the rate at which that occurs. So that is essentially what velocity is. And it just tells us how fast that bar move when you tried to move it. And if it moves really slow, that means that we know you're close to failure. And that's a way of measuring fatigue. So for example, if your velocity decayed from your first rep to your last rep by 40%, we know you'd be pretty close to failure in most cases, or maybe failing, depending on how low you can get your velocity, how good at quote unquote grinding you are. RPE does the same thing. And in trained lifters, they have a pretty damn strong correlation, an inverse one. So meaning when we looked at powerlifters who were doing a set to failure or doing 1RMs, or if we plotted a whole bunch of

sets at different RPEs just for singles, we saw over a 0.8 negative correlation, which means essentially there's a very strong relationship that as RPE goes up, velocity goes down. So they're telling you the same thing. And that's actually how we validated velocity as a tool that tells us what we think it's telling us. So you can do the same thing with velocity. And some researchers would argue that that is actually a superior, more objective way of doing it. And I think that's not false. It is more objective. But at the same time, velocity has some barriers. If you want to use Velocity in a commercial setting, you're probably going to want to buy something like a pushband or other commercial devices or use an app like the PowerLift app. And all of these Velocity devices are, at this stage of the game, where

the technology is at currently, not as good as some of the lab-based measures that are more expensive, where we have that linear position transducer or linear encoder, where you actually strap something to the bar that has a tether attached to a device. And those are more expensive, where we have that linear position transducer, linear encoder, where you actually strap something to the bar that has a tether attached to a device. And those are highly accurate. They're very good. But when we start to use an accelerometer in space, which is just something that you'd strap onto you or the bar, when we start to try to use motion capture on a camera and then use equations and stuff like that, there are technical issues which limit the reliability and the validity of those velocity metrics. So you might save some money and you might think you're being more objective, but it actually might be less accurate than someone who is

well-trained with gauging proximity to failure. Now, I think it's important to mention that in trained lifters, RPE is actually pretty damn accurate, especially if they've had practice with it because it's a skill. It gets better. Your push band is only going to be better when the software or the hardware gets updated. But the beauty of being a living organic thinking creature is that you can learn the skill of gauging proximity to failure. You can look at videos, you can confer with a coach, you can train with a training partner. You can do a set, stop mid set and say, okay, I think I can do two more and then go to failure and see if that was accurate. You can do a set, stop mid-set and say, okay, I think I can do two more and then go to failure and see if that was accurate.

You can do AMRAPs and rate the RPE at some point. You can do a set of eight and then keep going. There's a lot of ways to assess that skill and build it over time. You can go through blocks of training to failure. And also just generally keep in mind, what I like to do is I still do it now is just I'm thinking with how many reps do I think I can still do once I get deeper in the set, obviously not from rep one, but you know, if I'm doing a set of eight by probably four or five, I'm starting to pay attention to what is my intuition on how many reps could I still do, even if it's, you know,

off the spreadsheet 80% for six, and I'm hoping to end a couple short, but with isolation exercises, I'm able to come closer to, or I generally, I'm going to come a couple short, but with isolation exercises, I'm able to come closer to, or I generally, I'm going to come a little bit closer to failure. And then like you were saying with some AMRAP work as well, it just seems to be the, if you work on it just consistently by just asking yourself, how many more reps do I think I could do? And then if you do occasionally push yourself to that point, like you're saying, it does get pretty dialed in. Yeah. I think there are some tacit benefits that aren't quite as obvious depending on what your goals are. So I'm always surprised when I get pushback from a power lifter or a strength athlete

who doesn't like this idea. They often come from a very quantitative perspective and they like objective data. And then I look at them and I say, okay, so what are you going to do on game day? You're going to choose the heaviest weight that you think you can do as close to a 10 RPE as possible so that you can not leave that many kilos on the platform. And you're telling me that you don't want to do that in training because that's kind of flies in the face of specificity, right? You know, a power lifter or an Olympic weightlifter lives and dies by their ability to gauge how much do I think I can do? So learning that skill through training with RPE, I think, has value in and of itself inherently for a strength athlete. Now, for everyone else, I think it's just a useful awareness for training. But absolutely, you can use velocity. There's a rep

one, which makes probably, you know, highly reliable, valid, probably the most affordable LPT, linear position transducer on the market, I'm aware of. I can get it for about 300 USD. Don't quote me on that. Don't write them and say, hey, our account said I should get this for 300 if it costs more. But... You're covering the difference, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess I'm going to be bankrupt by next week. I'm a good man like that. Yeah. But to give that kind of like a comparison, like gym aware, one of the more popular ones that costs like two grand, you know? So this is like anything else. Anytime we get into tech, we know that it's going to get smaller and cheaper and more accurate over time.

So you can be an early adopter of velocity, but at this stage, it probably only makes sense to use it in SNC, sports science, team sports settings, or maybe if you are a strength athlete and you're like, you know what, I would love to invest in something like this. You know, I spend that much on freaking protein. I spend three, $400 on getting something that can accurately tell me my velocity. And then I know, you know, when I'm really close to failure, you can use velocity to also confirm or bolster your

ability to gauge RPE and proximity to failure. So you said RPE stops, and that comes from the same idea as a velocity stop. I mentioned, hey, if you have seen your velocity decay by 40%, you're probably near failure. That's a way of training. You know, you can decide to start a set at a given velocity target that should and that does correspond to a given percentage of 1RM. And that's the magic of velocity. This is something I should mention, I should have mentioned earlier, is that while your 1RM will change on a day-to-day basis, the velocity at which a trained lifter completes a 1RM doesn't, which is why it's a valuable tool. So if you complete a squat 1RM at 0.22 meters per second,

you're probably going to be right around like 0.2 to 0.24 meters per second all the time, which means that your 80%, your 85%, your 90, and your 95% of 1RM will always be in that same, in specific velocity brackets with some margin of error. And even if the load changes, that will still be the same velocity at that percentage. So you can know on any given day what your 1RM roughly is and what velocity you should be training at to be at the equivalent percentage of 1RM. So that's the value in velocity-based training. You can start at a velocity bracket. So instead of saying three by six at 80%, you might say, I'm going to do three by six with my first rep velocity between a 0.48 to a 0.52 meters per second. That's a made up number. Don't say that's not exactly 80% for everyone on every movement. And then you can say, okay, I know that when I hit failure, I'm at a 0.3 meters per second, and I want to stop a couple reps shy, and I've done a velocity profile on myself, that's going to be around 0.36. So you do reps starting around 0.5, and you go to hit 0.36.

And that auto regulates the number of reps in that set, it auto regulates the load, and it ensures a consistent amount of fatigue within that set at the very least. And how will you know where your velocity is? I'm assuming these devices allow you to is it in front of you? Yes, you see, okay. And it shows you the number. They're all built so they can display it on a device that's Bluetooth linked or on the actual LPT itself, the device you have now, probably not a lot of people are going to go out and get a velocity tracker based on this podcast, but you can do the same thing with RPE. You're not a very good LPT salesperson. No, just wait until I invest in it. And my tone will change because I am completely

not the kind of person that just wants money. Next week, it'll be like, hey, guess what? You must buy to get gains. Yeah. You can do the same thing with RPE. You can have an RPE stop, which you mentioned, Mike. So you start with a load maybe, and then you stop when you hit a certain RPE. That's one option.

So you can just start with a given percentage of 1RM and then just do reps until you hit a certain RPE. Or you can try to accumulate a certain number of reps with a given load and then stop each one of those sets at a given RPE so you can control the fatigue. So for example, let's say you choose 80% of one RM, but you don't want to get too close to failure in any given set. So you have an open-ended number of sets, but you stop each one at a seven or eight RPE. Let's say you're a strength athlete who cares about velocity. Like let's say you're a sprinter or a thrower and you don't want to get grindy. You don't want to get slow because there is something to training at higher velocities for making you faster. So you want to lift heavy.

So you put 80% of one RM on the bar. You don't know if that's your 80% of one RM today, but you know, it's still reasonably heavy. And you stop each set at a 6RPE until you get your target volume. Now you've maintained a high velocity of training because you stayed away from failure and also lifted a heavy weight, which might be more appropriate for you. But you know, let's say you're training for hypertrophy. You might start with a lower load. So it's easier to accumulate more reps per set. And then you go to a higher RPE, train to an eight because you don't want to go all the way to failure. So it takes you a week to recover because you want to train again, say in 72 hours, that same muscle group. But then you can get a target amount of volume while controlling for fatigue and all of this at the very low price of knowing how to count to 10.

So my eight-year-old, maybe even now my three-year-old doesn't count yet, but my eight-year-old, he can do it. He can do the RPE stop. Not only that, but you would actually be about as qualified for me as doing a PhD. So that's the complex math I needed for my PhD. You see that? Anybody can get a PhD. All you got to do is count to 10. Absolutely. That's the state of education now. That's where we're at here.

No, that's great information. One other thing I wanted to ask you, just my own personal question list here regarding auto-regulation is, what are your thoughts on auto-regulating exercise selection? Yeah. So I'm glad you brought that up. And it's something like wholly outside of the kind of the framework of adjusting load, which is where velocity and RP largely sit with some, as I discussed, ability to change volume based on rate of fatigue.

But there's pretty much any variable is a potential target of auto-regulation. You know, for a bodybuilder, for example, or someone interested in hypertrophy, you can have a collection of exercises that you might consider on the day if you have your days organized in some kind of body part framework. That could be upper, lower. That could be, you know, chest and back, legs, shoulders, arms, repeat. However you want to do it, so long as you probably follow an appropriate frequency, you can come up with a list of exercises and then select them based on how you feel. Like if you've got a little bit of lower back pain, I don't feel like

doing squats today. I'm going to do leg press. And the data would suggest, although it's only a single study by Rausch and colleagues that came out a couple of years back, that trained lifters are quite good at doing this. And it might actually result in a faster rate of hypertrophy and better strength gain. The strength gain, I think we take with a grain of salt because the lifters in that study, they did their strength testing on a number of movements and the auto-regulated group did them more often. So is that a function of auto-regulation or is that just a side effect of them choosing those movements more often? But I think ultimately it tells you something about leveraging decisions that experts can make because you are an expert

on you. And if you've been lifting in your body and thinking about it, and you're not just a total meathead like me for the last 10 years, you probably know something and you might be able to leverage that. So a good coach or a good system would be able to tap into that instead of it being something that is a holy cookie cutter and wouldn't change at all. So you can absolutely auto-regulate exercise selection. I think for someone who is really interested in getting strong in a specific movement, this is something you'd probably just relegate to accessory movements. But for a bodybuilder, I think unless you have concurrent goals of being really good

specific movements, you can have a little more freewheeling with that. I think it's probably applied with the least potential for downsides to low skill movements, single joint movements, movements for hypertrophy, cables, machines, et cetera. While you might have a little more stability in movements that require a certain exposure to develop that skill, but it's absolutely something that you can apply in specific contexts with great success. What are some of those contexts? You mentioned pain. So if a movement is uncomfortable, it doesn't even have to be painful for me. I mean, I'll tell people if you feel pain or strange, because sometimes something feeling weird can turn into

pain. What are some other reasons why you might want to switch it up? I guess, aside from like, okay, the equipment is in use, so you don't want to stand around, but. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it does a couple of things for you. If you're even just exposure to this data that switching it up a little more doesn't negatively impact hypertrophy, you might be like, why am I waiting around for the cable road? Just because I have it written down that way. You know, the downside is that maybe you don't know how to progress from last time. But, you know, the more trained you get, and the less skilled a movement is, the more you can kind of jump in and know that you're doing some good work. And the data would suggest that doesn't impede hypertrophy. So it

might save you some time, you know, for accessory movements in that specific example, you said. But I think more importantly, let's say you just don't get a great mind muscle connection on certain movements. Speaking from a bodybuilding perspective, you got this program, it says to do cable rows, but you just don't feel it as much as this specific hammer strength row. So you swap it out. I think we do that all the time. Most people would just swap that for the length of the mesocycle. They'd be like, right, it says cable row, I'm just going to do hammer strength. And everyone would be like, yeah, that's reasonable. That's kosher. No one would say that's a bad idea. But another way to look at it is, okay, now I've been doing hammer strength rows for six weeks. I got two weeks left

in this program. The program is mostly hypertrophy, but I'm going to test my bench and my squat at the end. Those are the movements I really care about, but I'm just sick and tired of hammer strength rows now. I've been doing them for six weeks and I find I just rush through it and I just try to get it done. I don't place a lot of effort or at the very least, I'm not very intentful when doing it. Changing to something that actually gets you to focus, put intent and be a little more motivated and a little more present while training, I think that might have some benefits that might accumulate over time. So I think, of course, with any kind of proposition like that, you could take it down the slippery slope and be

like, well, what if you changed it every single time? And I think, of course, you could turn auto-regulated exercise selection into the equivalent of within-program exercise hopping. Yeah. Yeah. Or it just becomes chaos. Exactly. But that's not what the trained lifters did in this study. They stuck with a few movements they really liked and milked them. So understanding that kind of lets us know like, all right, well, if we believe that well-trained lifters make good choices most of the time, or if we can create a framework that maximizes their opportunity to make good choices and limits the exposure to bad choices, like, okay, here are the movements where you can do whatever you want. Like you might write it as a, like, for example, I'll put bicep curl of choice

sometimes on programs or horizontal row of choice or chest support of horizontal row of choice. If they've got deadlifts the next day or something like that. That's how I think about it. I've been doing more of this than I normally would. And I'm ashamed to say that it's because of Instagram. It's because I need to get training footage. I'm the person who will just eat the same thing every meal, every day for literally years on end. And if a training program says do this for two months, I don't care. I'll do it for two months. But it doesn't make for good footage because it's the same thing over and over and over.

So I've been switching up accessory work and I've been thinking about it though like that where I'm like, all right, let me think about the basic movement pattern here. And then that gives me some options so we can get some different pictures and some different video footage while not being completely random about my accessory or isolation work, you know? Absolutely. And I think there's nothing wrong if your personality is someone who likes to stick to some core movements and just hammer away and milk them. That's great. But I think at the same time, we don't need to rationalize our personality into being optimal post hoc, which is what humans do with most things. So I think instead we can go, well, that's not me or that is me and that's fine.

But if it's not me and I don't like rigidly sticking to a program, but I've been told that switching between hammer strength rows and cable rows is somehow going to hurt me. Maybe that's not the case. switching between hammer strength rows and cable rows is somehow going to hurt me. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe I can have a little more variety, which will increase my enjoyment, increase my intentionality, and over the long run, accumulate actually better outcomes. If you are the type of person who just can't stomach doing the same type of curl for two mesocycles in a row, then don't.

And there's probably no downside to that. I think the only choice we want to limit is if someone is trying to get really good at squatting. And if someone is trying to get really good at deadlifting or bench or snatch or whatever, we probably don't want to take it so far that those movements are gone for multiple weeks at a time. And when we're trying to build skill with them, there's absolutely something to be said for, you know, switching up a motor pattern so that you have to complete it under different conditions. And there are theories of motor learning. So kind of like maybe Westside would be an example of this where you're always squatting, you're always deadlifting, always benching, but in different variations and forms. But absolutely, it's not like the Westside lifters did squats once a year. It would be rotated in and out and it would always be something similar to it.

But I think it's easy to operate within the schema of powerlifting and see that as a high variation and then see a Bulgarian-esque program as a low variation. But the reality is, is they're all low variations. You're squatting, benching, and deadlifting once a week, at least all the time. So that would be probably some type of limiter you'd put on the number of choices they can make. Like you wouldn't want a power lifter who had the option of three weeks out selecting leg press for an entire week instead of squatting. That's not a good idea, right? So I think you need to have some kind of guide rails on the track that serve to prevent bad choices, but also open up choices to lifters that will be neutral to positive.

Makes sense. Yeah. In my own training, I'm benching, squatting, and deadlifting every week. Some variation, whether it be on the benching, it could be barbell. I mean, I'm actually, I'm always doing some barbell, but sometimes I'm splitting between barbell and dumbbell. And then on the deadlift, it'll either be the conventional or the trap. I don't like sumo. It's uncomfortable. I just find conventional better for the barbell. And on squatting, it'll be the back squat or front squats. And actually, there's the gym I'm going to now, I believe they call it the pit shark. Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay, good. Yeah, I'm remembering it correctly. Interesting machine. I wouldn't necessarily replace barbell squats with it, but I've done that after my barbell squat. But I've found that by focusing on trying to increase my one RMs on the big exercises,

I would throw OHP in there as well, making that the primary emphasis in my training that has produced the best overall results and partly because I enjoy it. If I weren't doing those movements, particularly the barbell squat or a barbell squat of some kind and a barbell deadlift of some kind, I would miss it. I like those lifts. I look forward to them, you know? time because like the relative gains in muscle size are one fourth to one fifth of what you can see in one RM strength. So it's very difficult to get that feed forward, motivating feedback, you know, like the way video game designers or social media designers plan things is so you can get that. I got the achievement, achievement unlocked and being able to add a one and a quarter kilo plate or a, you know, a two and a half pound plate to the bar is that because especially at like our stage of the game, seeing noticeable

physique changes can take months at the very least, if not longer. Yeah. If not longer. Yeah. For me, I have to like the last time I really was confident that I saw physique changes, I had to diet down to single-digit body fat. However, I am still seeing not necessarily linear or even predictable or large increases in performance. And while I am a strength athlete, let's say I was a pure bodybuilder, I wouldn't make that equivalent in my mind to getting bigger. But I would absolutely tell me, like, you know what? That probably means I'm doing enough work to be overloaded because it's showing up on the bar. And at that point, right, you're going to gain strength almost certainly by gaining at least a little bit of muscle because your skill is already probably maxed out or close to it. I would guess on the exercises, it's going to be hard to just

gain strength without gaining muscle or am I wrong? You're not wrong. And it's probably, that's the calculus I use. And that's kind of the paradigm I operate in. I'm also aware that, you know, some people go, well, like, how could you be getting better at the skill? Like, aren't you done with neuromuscular adaptations? And if you really wanted to drill down, I'd say like, hey, it's just because you got stronger, but didn't see yourself being bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's neuromuscular. What's so subjective. I mean, we look in the mirror and we all have our favorite, we look at our pecs and we look at our, maybe our ass. Like there's a subjective element to, did I gain muscle? And we're talking about a little amount. And even for people who take measurements, I mean, at least that's a little bit more objective, but most people are not, at least the people I've spoken with, the lifestyle bodybuilders, as you call them. and I would consider myself one of them, are not taking measurements. It's more just how do my clothes feel? What do I see in the mirror?

And even if you were to get objective, there are some, I would say a minority of researchers in the S&C field who are skeptics as to how closely related changes in strength and hypertrophy are. I think a lot of this is an artifact of just having two short studies. And like I said, the magnitude of change being four or five times greater than one than the other. So seeing strong relationships is going to be hit or miss. There are other things that are happening. Like you can see morphological changes that aren't changes in muscle size, you know, better lateral force transmission, you know, just getting more efficient in terms of the structure of your muscles can be something that is not related to neuromuscular

adaptations. But I don't want to do it like a deep dive on muscle physiology. But the point is, you would think that because muscle size is so closely related to strength and cross-sectional data, and if you're pretty much training the same and you're just trying to increase load over time, that at least some contribution of that is going to be muscle size. If it discriminates between elite level powerlifters at different strength levels, elite level weight lifters, strong men and women, and if in general, we understand that a larger muscle has more contractile tissue, it's very difficult to create a scenario where your strength isn't at least related to increased muscle size over time. So yes, is the very simple answer to what you said.

I would agree with that kind of paradigm. Yes. Okay, good. All right. Last question, and then we'll wrap up. So what advice would you have to people who have listened to now and who are like, okay, how can I incorporate some auto-regulation into my existing training program? And you have already answered this to some degree by just explaining, for example, how RPE works and using RPE stops. But the reason why I wanted kind of reiterating a question, because again, you have shared a fair amount of information, is just for people wondering, okay, this is where I'm at and what specifically would Eric recommend if I want to put a little bit more of this into my

training or do it a little bit differently. I think we can assume, let's say that you have people, you're going to have a fair amount of people who are doing, who are using double progression, whether it's with all of their exercises or some of their exercises. And then, and then some people with maybe some form of linear progression, probably mostly with their, with their primary exercises. And if you've basically already answered this and there's not much more to say on it, that's fine. But I thought I would wrap up with it just in case you have any like kind of simple guidelines that you like to give people who want to work in auto-regulation or more auto-regulation. Like

for example, velocity, it sounds like you'd be like, eh, probably don't go that route because unless you have a lot of money and you really want to commit to it, but here, do these things. Absolutely. No, I can connect some dots and make some very practical recommendations for sure. Like you said, I'm not going to stop anyone from getting an LPT if they want to start tracking velocity. That can be pretty cool and fun. But speaking to probably the plurality of your listeners, I would say the easiest thing to do is start looking through the lens of, okay, how close to failure am I trying to be and am I expecting to be to reach my target progressions? And then you can take the existing framework you have that might be a percentage

based either of a 1RM or a 5RM or whatever your programming style is, and you can assign an RPE basically kind of like as a side note with each one of your lifts. Now, I would say before you start adjusting and changing load or even prescribing load primarily or purely based on RPE, just start rating it. So if you've kind of just been a logbook warrior previously, and you just do whatever the Excel sheet says, and when it doesn't work, you just get mad or think I need to eat more or rest more or take creatine. That's normal. I get it. I've been there. Or maybe you just think the program's not quote unquote right for me. Instead of doing that, just rate your RPE. So just train and then see how far from failure you are. Look at video. You can kind of assess

barbell velocity and how difficult it looked. And just start writing down without actually changing a load, keeping that program you're on, just writing down your proximity to failure. And do it until you're more confident in those ratings, until you're starting to feel like, yeah, now that I'm thinking about this every single time I train, I'm probably pretty good at rating it. And I would do that for a few weeks, even if you're an experienced lifter. Then you can actually start modifying your program to assign an RPE instead of, or in addition to, like I talked about, those percentage or those target loads based on where you think you need to be to complete that progression. So if you know you got three by five and you're supposed to get all 15 reps,

that means the highest RPE you should see is a 10 on your last set. If you get a 10 on your first set, you're going to have to drop your load. So you can kind of work backwards. What am I intending to do? Okay. I'm going to just basically explicitly state that in terms of proximity to failure. And then that'll allow you to get the opportunity on days when you're feeling really fresh and you're crushing those numbers to go a little heavier or days when you're feeling really crappy and you're not quite reaching those numbers to not get all 15 of those reps, you know, to drop the load a little bit and get the target volume so that you're actually in line with the intended stimulus and stress that program is supposed to provide. And what's great about that is it just, it lets you ensure that you're working hard enough in each hard set, right? And that's just a very important fundamental. That's one of the big

levers that you need to pull to get more jacked is got to make sure you're working hard enough in your workouts and working hard enough in each individual set, right? Absolutely. One of the key components to hypertrophy is having some kind of reasonable proximity to failure. And if you're overdoing that, you're going to extend the time course of recovery, like AKA training to failure all the time. Or if you're underdoing that severely, you might see actually less hypertrophy over time. And there's data to back both of those things up. And probably the sweet spot is somewhere where you're underdoing that severely, you might see actually less hypertrophy over time. And there's data to back both of those things up. And probably the sweet spot is somewhere where you're close to failure. It's hard.

It's challenging. But it's not way short of or always to it. And that's kind of the RPE component. To bring in what you talked about, auto-regulated exercise selection, you can take your low skill, low complexity movements, and just give yourself the option of choosing something else if you want to. And just kind of taking some of your accessory movements off the pedestal, because they are that, they're accessory movements. This does require some amount of understanding kind of exercise classifications. So I generally put things into categories based

on whether they're like a horizontal push or pull, a vertical push or pull, you know, a hip hinge or a squat pattern. And some of those movements are going to be more skilled than others, like free weight pushes or pulls or free weight hip hinges or squat patterns, you probably wouldn't want to change a lot if those are going to be the ways that you're expressing and testing strength. But for accessory movements, pure hypertrophy movements, single joint movements, absolutely, I think give someone the free give yourself the freedom, I should say, to select those. And one final thing I'd say, Mike, and I'll try not to go down too deep of a rabbit hole,

is there are other forms of auto-regulation. Like we've talked about exercise selection, we've talked a little bit about volume, we've talked a lot about load selection, but there are frequency manipulations that you can use auto-regulation. You can assess how your warm-up sets RPER, and if they're way higher than you'd expect them to be, you can make the session easier. You can swap it out with something else. You can delay it. One of the things that I really like to implement that is really easy is to simply, instead of having like a program that attaches to certain days, just to have an order.

You know, most of the time a good program is constructed so that there's not overlapping fatigue that prevents you from doing the next session. You know, if you've got two days in close proximity, they're training different muscle groups or one's easier and the other one's harder. That's typically the way it works. So that means that if so long as they're done in order, it doesn't really matter. So like if you come in and you're supposed to deadlift and you feel like trash and it's a Friday and you're not busy on Saturday, just wait until tomorrow. Nobody cares if you complete a four-week program in four and a half weeks, unless you're actively prepping for a meet. I do that sometimes if I'm traveling, just because if it's a long day and I've been sitting

in a plane for hours and I'm like, eh, I could go do this workout, but it's probably going to suck. I'd rather just do it tomorrow. Yeah. And that's a really, really easy way to do training. It doesn't work great for people that have really strict schedules and not a lot of free time, but for people who work from home, for people who have some flexibility in their schedules for whatever reason, that's a great way to just kind of basically strike when the iron's hot and not go in when you're under-motivated or feel like crap. And so long as you're not like completing a four-week program in like eight weeks, it's not going to be that different. I think you just need to have some kind of level of common sense with what's appropriate. So delaying a workout by a day, or if you feel real fresh and you got an easy day coming up,

why not? You can train two days in a row, no big deal. So I think that kind of perspective, that's one of the thing, a way of auto-regulating your frequency. What I would say though, is when you assess how you feel, I do think it's valuable to actually go through some kind of like a dynamic warmup. And this can be done at home, you know, do some bodyweight squats, swing your arms around, get ready, get yourself, you know, ready to move because how you feel sitting in front of your computer after three hours or being on a plane, like you said, might be a little different once you warm up. We've actually got data that shows subjective ratings of recovery and readiness are more accurate after warming up and taking caffeine than they are before those things. When you're rolling out of bed, like a log off of a truck, maybe let yourself get going first before you decide.

Absolutely. So I think that needs to be said, or someone who's in a rough spot can basically never feel ready to train. And you do kind of have to train sometimes and you don't feel great, or you'll be always kicking the can down the road and just getting in worse and worse shape and not having readiness. Makes sense. That's great. That's very practical, very helpful information. And as always, I really enjoy our discussions, always learn stuff.

So thanks again for taking the time to do this. And let's wrap up with, I think that you should definitely tell people about monthly applications in strength, sport, and anything else. You mentioned that you have some books. So if you want to let people know a little bit about that and anything else that you have coming, do you have any seminars? People who are still listening are going to want to know. That means they like you and they want to know more. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for that. So the first one is my huge partnership with this new velocity tracker that is an absolute must for anyone who wants to get in. I'm just kidding. But yeah.

That everybody must get. You must get or you won't make gains. But no, in all seriousness, not a lot of whole seminars or anything like that coming up for obvious reasons. The borders are closed here in New Zealand because we're free from the zombie apocalypse and we're not letting anyone in. So if I leave and I come back, I've got to like- Except for the billionaires. I keep on reading about all of the massive estates that- Well, they can do whatever they want. And whoever they want, no matter how young. Absolutely. These aren't problems. That's just the way our society values people.

Yeah. That's capitalism. What do you mean? Yeah, exactly. No, but in all seriousness, probably not going to have any seminars or anything like- Yeah, I didn't know because now it's all Yeah, exactly. No, but in all seriousness, probably not going to have any seminars or anything like that. I didn't know because now it's all over Zoom, but some organizations that do a lot of seminars have made that transition. I just didn't know if you had anything like that. Yeah, there's definitely webinars and stuff, but nothing on the recent horizon. But if you do want to see me giving video lectures and also read stuff I write about more recent science, monthly applications and strength support, that's myself, Dr. Eric Trexler, Greg Knuckles, and Dr. Mike Zerdos. And we touch into anything

related to hypertrophy, strength, or improving performance with lifting. That's a monthly research review. Subscribers get access to videos, audio roundtables, and written articles discussing the latest research kind of through our lens and trying to help you better be able to interpret it. So always a fan of anyone checking that out. It is for the uber nerds. If you're a little less nerdy and mostly want to just have a logical approach to your own training, then the Muscle and Strength Pyramids are my books on training and nutrition for recreational or competitive strength and physique athletes. And all of this gets my fullest endorsement. I would say actually with mass, I would say it's applicable to more than just the Uber nerds. And that's something that I have always really appreciated about the work you guys do is you make it very accessible to laymen.

than a layman about research, but I'm not on your level. And I'm able to follow along. I'm able to understand how these studies are conducted. And I love all the additional kind of connective tissue that you put in there to give context to this individual study, which of course is extremely important. And if you're wanting to learn about the quote unquote science of something, just looking at one study is rarely like that tells you a little bit. And if that's the only study on the matter, I guess you could say, well, that's all we know for now. But your encyclopedic understanding of this topic and also your partners and your co-writers is evident. And I really appreciate that as well. So, you know, I would say it's applicable to anybody who has enjoyed this discussion, I think will enjoy mass and will find practical value in it. Like I myself have gotten a lot, I've learned a lot from mass and I've been able to

improve my programming and just understand better what I'm doing. So, you know, I credit you and Greg and Mike a lot for my progression of understanding how all this stuff works. If it weren't for mass, I would know less than I do. That's for sure. Well, that's a really appreciative endorsement. And we absolutely write it. So it's not applicable just to Uber nerd.

So I don't know if we're doing a great job at that, but it sounds like my fears should be alleviated to some degree. So I really appreciate that endorsement, man. And I should also mention Eric Trexler too. I know he's a newer addition, but when you started it, it was you, Greg and Mike, and then now Eric's on board too. And he also, I think his contributions are great. Yeah, no, it's also brought more balance to it because now we have two bodybuilders. I don't get made fun of as much. So it's good. You have someone to, he's got your back. Absolutely. He's got my back to the bicep. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking

the time to do this, Eric. I look forward to the next one as always. My pleasure, man. Thank you for having me. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility

and thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself

and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism, I'm open to it. And of course you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. positive feedback as well. Or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmusclelife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope

to hear from you soon.