Weights and Plates Podcast - #30 - How to Program after Novice LP: Intensity, Periodization, and Nutrition

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

The novice linear progression as detailed in Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training 3rd Edition is attractive to novice lifters for a lot of reasons. It's simple, it's easy to track progress, and most importantly it works extremely well -- every novice has the capacity to add a lot of weight to their lifts in just a few months. Alas, all goods things come to an end, and novice LP is no exception. Many lifters struggle to determine what to do when their novice gains run out, so Coach Santana and Trent discuss the basic concepts of periodization and programming tweaks to keep momentum going after LP.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com [e-mail]

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Good morning, evening, afternoon, whatever it is for you folks. Today, we are going to talk about what you need to do when you get to a point where you can't do three sets of five three times a week every workout anymore, or when you get to a point where your newbie gains are exhausted, right, or it gets hard. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Hold on a minute. Are you telling me that I can't do three sets of five forever? No, you can't do three sets of five forever. I mean, you can. People do it, and it's not a very productive use of your time. But this whole idea that, you know, you have to, you know, end the novice program at the highest weight possible, specifically on the squat, at the expense of the other lifts often enough, is kind of absurd. I've seen guys that will eliminate every lift so they can keep adding

weight to the squat three times a week because their three by five PR done three times a week is the focus of their life. And I know some of those guys are probably listening, but I think a lot of people aren't going to do that because most people end up hating the squat and debating quitting lifting over it. So that is the most more common thing that I see. I still, I still have that argument with myself, uh, you know, years, years and years and years later, like, fuck, I don't want to squat anymore. Fuck this. I'm just going to stop lifting. I'll squat anyway. I was like, I've, I've just squatted. I'm like that. Uh, there's like some Greek, like tragic figure. Is it Sisyphus or someone else? I don't know. I can't remember, but he's like, it basically, it's like, I've just been doing, I've been squatting so long. I just can't

imagine life without squatting, but it's like, it doesn't mean I like it. Yep, exactly. So yeah, let's talk about that for a second. So, and you know, I want to bridge in a separate, a second topic into this too, because the other question is how do I run starting strength for fat loss? And this ties into this topic. So hold that thought. We're going to come back to that too, because it's all part of the same deal. Um, so first things first, if you're a novice, you're going to add weight to the bar more frequently than an intermediate or an advanced lifter. Your level of advancement is defined by your ability to recover, the rate at which you recover specifically, which means that the guy who recovers faster is more novice than the guy who takes longer to recover. And the way that we kind of structure our novice program is based off of the novice linear progression outlined in starting strength basic barbell training and uh you know you squat three times a week that is a linear

purely linear program you're doing three sets of five the only thing that changes changes is load so the squat is probably the lift that stays the most linear for the majority of the program and uh right reason reason for that it uses the most muscle mass. And the deadlift stays linear for the first two to four weeks. And then the press and the bench press alternate, and then you throw in a chin-up in there every other workout, or a pull-down if you can't do a chin-up. And the whole idea is that you're adding weight frequently.

So the squat and the deadlift, you're adding weight every single workout, which is every two days. Every 48 hours you're recovered, you can do a heavier weight than last time. So you may do 135 for three sets of five on the squat and 185 for a set of five on the deadlift on Monday. Then Wednesday, you're going to do 145 and 205. And then Friday, you're going to do 155 and 225, right right this is week one uh not everybody will be able to make those jumps but it's quite often that would be that happen yeah that would be like a younger male um would yeah absolutely would be appropriate to make in that first week some bigger male males under 50 can pull that off you know typically yeah um very often and i find that a lot of males don't because they're afraid of

the deadlift, you know, they think that it's heavier than it is. That's a problem. That's a whole other topic. I will also say that I do run into, yeah, and definitely, especially if you were being coached in person, like if you're actually going to a starting strength gym, that's possible. I often, with people that I'm working with online, will have them make smaller jumps, not because they can't make those jumps, but because the nature of the feedback when you're working with someone online is often such that we can't get things quite right the first session. So it takes three or four workouts to dial something in where it would have taken one, really half a workout in person. That's right. Yeah.

That's right. And it's fine. It's fine. You know, it doesn't, that's beside the point, really. If you go slow, you'll end up in the same point pretty quickly anyway. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, you're adding weight to the bar every workout on the squat. You're adding weight to the bar every workout on the deadlift. And then you're alternating the press and the bench press for the first month or so, two to four, for the first two to four weeks. Then the deadlift alternates with the power clean or some sort of lighter pull. And the chin-up gets introduced every bench press workout, so every other workout.

Later on, as you progress, the program continues to change. You have a squat that's light in between the two heavy squats. You might add a pause. You might do a that's light in between the two heavy squats. You might add a pause. You might do a front squat if you're a weightlifter. There's different things you can do. And the deadlift may drop, you know, to every other press workout, which is every nine days you're deadlifting and you're alternating that with a glute ham device or something on the opposite day, which works out every nine days. Uh, I don't tend to do it that way. A lot of guys don't, I tend to, you know, deadlift once a week, you know, at the end of the

linear progression. So it'd be a deadlift, a chin up and a lighter pull, but there's different ways to, you know, skin that cat. And a light pull can also be, you know, if you're one of these home gym guys, you don't have a lot of equipment. A light pole can be as simple as like a little bit more volume for 80%. So something I very commonly do is alternate the heavy pole with two sets of five. So a little bit more volume than the, than the heavy day. And I'll do those two sets of five at 80% of the previous heavy day. That's just kind of a ballpark number, but it's pretty good, pretty good estimate. It's light enough. It's heavy enough to get you some work, but it's light enough to, to serve as a recovery for your back between those heavy pulls. And that's pretty reasonable. So you've heard me throw out a few things that change in the program. Remember,

the squat is linear pretty much the entire time. Maybe last month or two, you're doing a light one in between, but you're pretty much on a purely linear program. So what does linear mean? So this all comes from, quote, unquote, exercise science literature. The literature. Which really means academic journals that, you know, provide maybe an ounce more evidence than a men's fitness, if that. You know, I've published some abstracts myself, so I'm including myself in this criticism. You know, there's just so much you're not controlling when people are exercising, but scientists like to pretend they're controlling more than they're not. And journalists and fitness publications try to do the same in different ways, using different forms of hyperbole and puffery.

You know, I noticed that both academics and fitness journalists or whatever you want to call them or influencers, quote unquote, on social media. They do the same shit. You know, they have different language they use, but they're basically puffing their methods for, you know, identifying what works and what doesn't. You know, you might have the guy say, like, fletcher back in the day oh i'll tell you how to get 22 arms i did arms every motherfucking day you know and arms every day every day every day did motherfucking arms on christmas new year's thanksgiving his motherfucking birthday every damn day he trained arms i used to watch this and crack up while I was lifting, so hence the verbatim quote. But he's basically giving an N of 1 anecdote and inflating it, saying that this is how it's going to work for you because it worked for me, right? Well, you know, we had them in a lab and, you know, we use percentage of 1RM, which, you know, we all know that they're not actually producing a 1RM because these people aren't power lifters and have no experience to do that. Most of them are novices or, you know, lightly trained novices that, you know, did fucked around in the gym for a few months and, you know, kept the same level of strength for three years and then entered a study and said they were experienced.

You know, that was me. Yeah, right. I fucked around the gym and maintained my strength for years you know uh but i considered myself advanced at the time you know i didn't know what the fuck i was talking about but then you know they'll write their conclusions and say oh yeah this 12-week progressive program produced superior hypertrophy with machines versus free weights or isolation versus compounds that's the latest line of shit that I've seen. But at the end of the day, they didn't control for their diet.

There's no report of what technique was used. They'll say, oh, muscles contract and relax. That doesn't matter. There's stupid things like that. But at the end of the day, they're just basically salesmen with extensive vocabularies you know they have a different language than your personal trainer at la fitness but they're doing the same shit they have limited evidence and they're trying to make it sound like they are facts which is the same thing the bro personal trainer the bodybuilder or the influencer is doing so one day we will do an episode on you know know, deciphering the academia speak. But until then, let's go back to

what... I like the, by the way, good vocabulary word, by the way, puffery. I like that you used that word. That's a good one. That's a legal term. Yeah. That's a legal term. Yeah, that's because puffery is, that's legal, right? Because you're not making false claims or misleading claims necessarily. You're just sort of like, you know, your uh your claims to you know your your value proposition if you will yeah i mean my program's the best ever prove it's not yeah right right now if you said that my program will get you 46.8 inch quads you know and then it guaranteed in 90 days then maybe i could sue you over that if i cared to. That's a false claim. Something like that. That's a false claim.

Okay. But, you know, I learned it probably, what, 10 or 15 years ago. And then about 10 years ago, then later we were at SSCA four or five years ago. And Brody used that term, one of our coaches who's now, I believe, a prosecutor up in California, federal prosecutor. But I remember him using that term when he was going over legalese stuff related to this business. And I'm like, I know that word, you know. But anyhow, back to what I was saying about the word linear. So linear progression in academia speak refers to linear periodization. So periodization is a quote unquote exercise science term

that appears in strength and conditioning journals. And some of the articles are pretty useful. And, you know, a lot of the older stuff from the 70s and 80s, the stuff written by Mike Stone and those guys, a lot of it checks out, you know, with things we do out in the field. You know, those guys were weightlifters, so they used it for a different purpose. But it's just a way to say that you're planning your programming towards a goal. And they kind of look at this as, you know, big cycles, right? So if you're an Olympian, you're training over the course of four years. So they would consider that a macro cycle, right? Yeah, in between Olympic events.

Yeah, right. right and then yeah in between olympic events yeah right and then the uh let's say you're doing several 12-week programs between year one and year year uh four right those are meso cycles and then you know your weekly program is your micro cycle right so these are just fancy words for little blocks of training that you do you know yeah i think about uh back to science class you know high school like they're they're like physics, we talk about things that have a period, like, uh, a planet orbiting the sun, you know, would have a period that's, you know, the length of days it takes to fully orbit the sun. Um, so yeah, it's kind of like with training, training cycles, it's, you know, something cycles from one event, you know, around to the next around back to that event again at some point in the future

so that's your that's your period so periodization is kind of waving between one event in another event exactly and you determine you know macro mezzo micro depending on what the end goal is right so if i do one meet a year everything between the meet this year and the meet next year will be a macro cycle the whole thing the one year period right an olympian's a four-year macro cycle then you know then you do typically 12-week programs are popular you know why because in academia there's 16 weeks in a semester one of them's finals weeks so 12 weeks is really all you got between recruiting them testing them getting them started and finishing them you know you've lost those other four weeks

between start and finish you end up with 12 so that's why 12-week cycles are so popular. But in general, you know, how long? I never thought about that. No, that's why. Academic semester is 15 weeks plus finals week. And then you have to recruit, test, enroll, consent. That takes, you know, weeks in the beginning. And then you end up starting a month into the semester, leaving you 12 more weeks you know it makes sense yeah right yeah it makes sense so anyhow um you know but then in practice it works out that way you know 12 weeks isn't going to get you to your end goal it's a mesocycle you know but uh you know how long you're going to stay in a rep range beyond being a novice right you're not

you know typically a novice can be on fives for six to nine months if he's an 18-year-old kid and has never done anything before, right? But, you know, as you advance, you know, you don't want to do fives for fucking nine months, you know, maybe a month at a time is typically pretty good for each rep range once you become advanced enough for that. But that's not what we're talking about today.

The reason I even brought any of this up is because periodization starts the moment you go in the gym. So like I said, the squat is on a linear periodization program because what that means is that the only thing that changes is intensity. So the weight on the bar, right? Intensity is the weight on the bar. So your reps are exactly the same every workout.

Your sets are exactly the same every workout. The exercise is exactly the same every workout. The only thing exactly the same every workout. The exercise is exactly the same every workout. The only thing that changes is load. That's what makes it linear. The deadlift starts out this way. You know, you do deadlift every workout. You add weight to it every workout. You change nothing else.

You do one set of five, three if you're a female. But then after week two or three, maybe four, things start to change. Now you're alternating the deadlift with a power clean, right? So you got a couple things going on there, right? The load is getting lighter, right? And the exercise is changing. So there are other terms for that in the periodization world. So if you're alternating the exercise, you can call that conjugating the movement, right?

So that's a form of periodization, the conjugate method, right? Right. If you are doing a smaller percentage of, I guess, max, you don't have a max at that point, but if you're doing a lower intensity to facilitate active recovery, that's why you power clean, so you're still pulling, but you're letting your back recover from the heavy set of five deadlifts you did two days before, right? Yeah. It's naturally lighter. Yeah. So that would be considered undulating. You're undulating the load. So seven years ago, I haven't seen this word float around so much in social media land, but seven years ago, everybody was jerking off to DUP.

DUP. Yeah. 2012 to 2014, 2015. That DUP was the obsession, daily undulated periodization. So all that means is that you're, you know, you're going heavy one day, you're going lighter another day. And then, you know, if you're doing HLM, which I'll segue into, you're doing medium the other day, if that, you know, sometimes people only do a lift twice a week. So it's more, I remember this like DUP that confused the heck out of me for a while, because like, I, I was aware of sort of, uh, more like program templates like HLM or Texas method, you know, for, for early intermediate programs. And, you know, of course they do that, right. They do some version of a heavy day or intensity day, a light day, and then a volume day, which is kind of a medium day,

however you want to think about it. And so I was aware of all these programs and I'd be like, what's DUP? Like, what is that program? Like, I've never seen it. Like, I couldn't figure it out until finally I learned some of the definitions like, oh, okay, well, there you go. They're all DUP of some kind or another. So that's where I was going with this. There's only one type of periodization, if you haven't noticed, because let's go to, you know, the phase two of the novice linear progression where you're alternating deadlifts with power cleans. You're alternating bench press with press. Your squat stays linear, right? So you have a linear program with the squat.

You're undulating loads with the deadlift and the power clean, the bench press and the press, right? You're conjugating when you're alternating the bench press with the press, the deadlift with the power clean. And then those lifts that you're undulating and conjugating, those are moving up linearly every other workout. See what I mean? You're still adding weight every other workout to that lift. It's just happening over a longer timeline, right? So there's aspects of linear. There's aspects of undulation.

And there's aspects of conjugate, right? You're alternating exercises. You're adding weight to the bar every other workout. And then you're adding weight to the bar every workout on the squat. Obviously, that one stays linear the longest. And you're alternating the intensity when you change those exercises the press is a lower intensity load wise and the bench you're doing a standing so you make it harder with a lighter load you're doing a power clean which makes a pull harder with a lighter load you're

still using the hips and knees to pick it up but then you're catching it right it's a little bit longer range of motion too yeah that's right yeah the range of motion is is a big uh role in that in the press too right much longer range of motion than the bench press. Exactly, yeah. So the whole point here is that there's one type of periodization and it starts the moment you get in the gym. So you don't need to think about quote unquote doing periodization. Most of what drives a novice's progress,

it's mostly the linear aspect of it because you're adding weight quite frequently. Even if it's every other workout, let's say you bench Monday, you press Wednesday, you bench Friday. So every four days, you know, or so you're adding weight to the bench press or the press, you know, the squats every two days, you know, the deadlift is maybe every five to seven days once you get to a certain point. So that doesn't mean you're failing. You don't have to add weight every single damn time. And this becomes a problem with the squat

because it stays linear the longest. So people just get this idea in their head because Rip made a comment years ago, and he still makes it, I think, that you want to be a novice as long as you possibly can. Well, there's people that take that literally. What he means is that you should take advantage of the fact that you can progress quickly and maximize all the variables that will support that. Gain weight, eat food, get enough sleep, try to manage your stress levels, right? But when you get to a point where you're squatting three times a week, you're, you know, over double body weight on it, you know, and you're barely finishing the rep, your back's failing before your legs.

Yeah, it looks like dog shit. It looks like dog shit. Your knees are taping in. your legs. Yeah. I mean, it looks like dog shit. It looks like dog shit. But remember the large musculature of the hips and knees combined will keep going much longer than the smaller muscles of the spinal erectors. That's just how it is. You know, you walk on your legs, your quads and your hip extensors are a mix of type one and type two muscle fibers so they're good for endurance they're good for strength and power output too that distribution varies from person to person we're not getting into fiber typing today or ever i don't yeah and even like even

more so than that like they're just big fucking muscles like just look at them you know your spinal erectors are not particularly large compared to your glutes you know you get these big old slabs of muscle on your backside. And yeah, of course, those are going to be able to move more weight and do it longer. What often happens is people allow their form to break down. You'll see their chest caving, their back rounding, and then they're just still finishing the three sets of five quote-unquote squats. They're legal in a meet, but fuck, man, do you want to really fuck your back up?

Just so you can say you've added to your 3x5? So the thing is when you're doing a rep range for so long, six to nine months, it's real easy to get psychologically fixated on it. You want to have the highest 3x5 ever. You want to be a novice forever. They take it quite literally to the point where I've known guys that eliminate the other lifts and just squat just so that they can keep going into the 400s and they're trying to get into the 500s. And meanwhile, they're deadlifting, you know, 315, you know, because their back is so fried, you know, from doing a two-hour, three sets of five squats with 450, you know? I've seen this happen.

And it's silly, you know, and these guys will not move past LP because it becomes about fives. Yeah, right. Ultimately, there comes a point where you're going to level off. And sure, circumstances could be better. But you know what? You have a job. A lot of people are married. A lot of people have kids. A lot of people have lives. You're not an Olympic athlete that could optimize 100% of the variables. And even they can't do that. But as close to 100% of the variables as possible that can't do that but right you know as close to 100 of the variables as possible that contribute to performance you're not you're just not going to do that so they keep trying to like pick at these little micro changes they can make to eke out another

five pounds i say oh but if i change this maybe i could have added another 30 pounds to it or 40 or 100 you know or maybe if i weighed an extra 100 pounds i'll get to 600 on the squat like guys you got to draw the line somewhere. And you have four or five other lifts that you have to deal with, you know, that need to get stronger. Your deadlift needs to get stronger. You know, your bench press needs to get stronger. Like, I've seen 405 for three sets of five squats with a, you know, 335 for five deadlift

and 175 for five bench press. You got a problem there, you know? You've seen it too, Trent. That's why you're laughing. The tauntaun. Yeah. The other thing too is like what I see much more often than that, yeah, I have definitely seen those folks, but much more often than that is I see people that get injured or get so beat up, you know, maybe they're not like injured. Maybe they don't have like an actual, they haven't, you know, torn their adductor or something like that. That was me.

But, but, you know, but they're certainly beat up, like everything, you know, things are hurting, their backs hurting, you know, because they've, they've been squatting with their lower back inflection because it gives out and it gets fatigued or their knees are caving in or just some crazy form thing has been going on and they've just, you know, let it go and let it go and let it go. And, um, you know, yeah, you know yeah they're just they're just fucked up and if they're not injured yet they're going to be right if they continue on that pace um so yeah that's that's no good that's no good you know it just it what are you going to do like you're going to you're going to bust ass like that for what three four five six months and then and then what you know uh

that's not it's not that long no they'll keep they'll keep this bullshit going for years sometimes by the time they hire me yeah exactly i'm convinced some guys have hired me simply so i can get them off lp because they can't psychologically do it themselves yeah so i think yeah there's definitely the folks that have like a psychological sort of like addiction to fives and i've definitely seen so all right we got, we got to put a caveat out here. When Rip is talking on YouTube or on a podcast, he's talking to the guy that's never actually done the strength program he's never just sat down and done the damn program that's right he didn't dt dtfp right he didn't do the fucking program that's who he's talking to and rip has he's made it very clear if you've listened to everything he's put out there that he's doubled and tripled down on, on novices, because that's most people out there. But if you're the guy who has actually done a no shit LP

for three plus months, he's probably not talking to you. Probably not. So when he says, so, cause I run into guys that are like, Oh man, you know, they're afraid to move on from the vanilla novice program, the phase one and phase two part of the program, because they're like, well, I'm a pussy if I just can't add five pounds. That's my problem. I'm just too much of a pussy to do it. And it's like, no, dude, you're not strong enough. Like your technique's falling apart. Like you just, you hit the limit. You hit your limit. Yes. Things could, circumstances could always be better. You could always gain a few more pounds, but it's like, it's over. So let's, let's move on. So there's definitely that crowd and then finally i

think there's a lot of people who realize when they've hit a limit at some point and they just don't know what to do they're like okay i like three by five was really easy i know how to iterate that but what do i do now yeah um when it stops working you know there's a few things you can do and again it comes down to manipulating those variables right you could undulate the load which we've talked about you can squat heavy one day 80 one day or you can drop the squat the middle squat entirely i've done that for some people i do that a lot especially with older folks yeah so you're either heavy light heavy or two heavy days or you drop the second heavy day and you do heavy, light, which is what I do for older folks before I eventually move them to one squat a week. You could move the deadlift.

Deadlift basically goes to intermediate first because it's the most taxing. You're basically doing a heavy, light, medium. You're deadlifting heavy one day. You're doing a chin-up one day. And then you're doing a power clean or some sort of lighter pull the third day. Yeah. Depending on the person up as a pole, by the way,

that we would consider that a pole, a light pole, but I would consider that a pole. I just, I don't like, there's not enough isometric work in it for me, for me to consider that a medium pole, you know?

No, no, no, definitely. No, it's, it's definitely a very light pole when, yeah,

I like that as a light day pole. I don't like that as a all turn turn like a direct alternative to the deadlift i'd rather use a variant where there's some isometrics involved i like the rdl because there's no stress off the floor but you still have to maintain spinal position with a heavy enough weight love rdls yeah me too oh god they're fucking hard but um anyways so yeah you can undulate the load you can conjugate like i just said with the deadlift heavy light medium that's basically a combination of dup daily undulated periodization you're doing a heavy day a light day a medium day and you're conjugating because you're alternating the

exercises you're dead lifting one day you're uh doing a chin up one day and then you're doing a power clean or a you know pulling variant one day right A deadlift variant, because a pull up is a pull, a chin up is a pull. And you could, you know, drop the reps as your intensity goes up to keep it, you know, keep the linear going, right? So some people do three by three, you know, women go to five by three after about eight weeks, instead of three by five, they go to five by three, right? So it's still, you're keeping it linear, but you're keeping it linear to lower rep range, right? While continuing to increase the intensity incrementally. So. Yeah. And I think, I think that's an important point that that's for now, I will make an exception for older folks. And by older, I'm really talking about the 60 plus crowd because often the squat involves, it taxes the soft tissues in a way that may be hard for them to keep, hard for the soft tissue to keep up with.

So, for instance, if the low bar position for a 64-year-old guy really taxes the flexibility of his shoulders and his chest, then sometimes he needs to go to three by three because that's all he can tolerate with the grip, even if his back and his legs could tolerate a little bit more volume. But for everyone else, I like to hold the volume the same as long as possible. So you just said it, but I just wanted to underline that point, right? If you're going from three sets of five

and you stall out on that, if you flip it to five sets of three, it's the same volume, right? You're still doing 15 total work reps. You've just changed the set and rep scheme. And I see that approach work really well with female lifters, older lifters, where the weight's lighter. But what I've noticed with strong male lifters, the volume has to go down when they're getting to limit triples because they just start to kick the shit out of you, you know? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so, yeah, that's a great point, especially on the heavy lifts, yeah, like the squat. Yeah, I'm talking about squatting the deadlift.

Yeah, and what I find is, like, when I do that, so if I flip a guy, and I don't often do 5x3 on the squat. Sometimes I do. But if I do that, that might be, like, a week. five by three on the squat. Sometimes I do. But if I do that, that might be like a week. So if this, the guy's squatting twice a week, um, he might go to five by threes for like one week. And then after that, he's probably going to three by three or top sets and back offsets. That's right. Because yeah, for the same reason. Yeah. It's at that point when you get strong enough, it's not so much about the total volume. It's actually about the, the dose of stress that you're getting from the set. So three sets, even if it's only nine total reps can be the same dose of stress as

15 reps in five sets for a weaker lifter. Yep. Yeah. So yeah, there definitely is a, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a threshold there. Yeah. So then once you have exhausted all those various options you can do i mean another option before i kind of move on to the next topic another option is you could do a single set and lighter sets you know quote unquote back off sets right right right yes you know rip doesn't like them and uh I think for a novice, it kind of makes sense. But he just generally says, well, if it's heavy enough, why do you need all that, you know? And that's kind of what I was getting at earlier with the triples.

If you're doing a heavy triple, you're well over 90% of max, you know, whether you measured a max or not. That's a pretty good, safe, conservative estimate. You're over 90% of max. It's heavy. It's going to take some recovery. conservative estimate. You're over 90% of max. It's heavy. It's going to take some recovery. But what I will say is that I find it effective because you get more reps with the exercise, you get more practice, and some people just need that volume, especially if the weight's lighter.

Now, I think where Rip's coming from are the training loads he was using, you know, four to 500, you know, low fours to mid fives probably, you know, when he was competing. Yeah. And absolute load matters. This doesn't get enough attention when people are discussing this stuff. Beyond a certain point, if you're squatting, you know, in the fours and deadlifting in the fives, you don't need a lot of sets. My programming now is so lazy and I'm still making PRs. Lazy in the sense that I don't need to do that much volume because the intensity is so damn high, you know? Right, right. Yeah. It's about, yeah. Yeah. It's about, yeah. And I think the better way to think about it, especially at a certain level is, is that it's about the, the, you know, like I just said, dose of stress that you're getting,

not the total, it's not just, uh, what's, what's the tonnage, you know, that, that was, that was popular a couple of years ago. Tonnage, right. You know, the sets times the reps times the weight, right. Yeah. I think it was called once. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So right you know the sets times the reps times the weight yeah volume load i think it was called once yeah yeah exactly so you know yes that that can matter but honest frankly i'd never look at tonnage you know it's just a byproduct of the other things i'm looking at but yeah let's put some let's fucking tonnage yeah you're you're fucking nerd if you track your tonnage i'm sorry that's an academic argument these guys these academics will argue for 15s and 20s and lightweights because they'll say, oh, the tonnage is equal. But the tonnage.

Match the tonnage. That's a mathematical expression. I know some coaches right now that. Well, let's put some hard numbers on it, though, just to illustrate that point you just made, because I agree with you. It doesn't get enough attention. I find the top sets and back off thing. I agree with you. It doesn't get enough attention. I find the top sets and back off thing. That's pretty useful for a guy, let's say in the high two hundreds with his squat,

let's say he's squatting two 75 and he ran into a wall somewhere around two 50, two 60. So we start doing top sets and back off sets. We might do, let's say he runs into a wall at two 60 for three sets of five and he's starting to miss reps on, he's starting to fail on that last set of five at 260. So we might go the next time at 265 for one set of five, because remember he's been hitting his first two sets. Okay. It's the last set. That's the problem. So then we might go 265 for one set of five and then two sets of five at like 90% of that, um um which would be 240 right just round up to 240 okay and we when we run that the top set and back off up to like 275 280 i find that's pretty that's pretty good because when the guys he's strong enough that his back offsets are still appreciably heavy right he's still squatting in the mid twos on his back offsets but um generally i find a lot of guys run into like

some mental hurdles as well when they're in that range and it's sort of they can get up from one good set i'm missing reps really fucks with people's head oh it's brutal yeah it's brutal especially if you've missed more than once yes definitely and so yeah it allows them to sort of mentally just sort of get up and get hyped for one heavy set. And then the other two are sort of, because you've had that feeling of the heavy set on your back, the 275 on your back, when you go to do 250, it doesn't feel as heavy, right? So there's a psychological kind of thing going on there. there. Now, to your point, though, if you've got a guy who can do 405 for a set of five, or a set of three, having that guy do a back offset at like 90%, you're talking about 365. It just doesn't work. It's way too much. When I was doing that, and that kind of weight, so I was hitting 405 for five, that would typically be it. And then a week later I'd do 365 for four sets of five. Yeah, sure. Exactly. That's yeah. It's appropriate as a volume stimulus, but not,

not as a, um, you know, trying to hit just a bunch of back offsets, um, to get the, to get the total volume of 15 reps in. Exactly. So yeah, to bring this to the next level here, you've ran out LP, you've exhausted all these options. Now you have to decide what you're going to do next. Well, that really depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to chase the limits of your strength or chase the limits of your muscle mass, then you're going to have to tailor your training that way. You're going to do more permutations of DUP, cycling through through exercises you know weekly progression bi-weekly

progression tri-weekly progressions you know monthly progression quarterly progression depending on how long you do this most of you listening will never get to that point because you're going to get sick your kids are going to get sick you're going to go out of town you're going to get fired your boss is going to be an for a week and make it work 18 hour days Your boss is going to be an asshole for a week and make you work 18-hour days. You might get a divorce. Somebody might die. All this shit will get in the way, and all that shit is more important than training for many people, even our best clients.

This is a secondary thing or even a tertiary thing or a quaternary thing. It's not at the top of people's priorities. We're not strength athletes. Yeah, sure. Most people will recycle variations of, you know, late novice, early intermediate programming just for years because they just have to start over a lot, you know. Yeah, things happen. You take 10%, 15% off the bar, maybe 20%. It depends on how long it's been. And you do a knot. You start back at that weight, you know, whatever that is.

And you do a linear progression again. You go back to the basic novice program. And over a long enough timeline, the trend line is still up, you know, that is and you do a linear progression again you go back to the basic novice program and over a long enough timeline the tread line trend line is still up you know yeah which is nice but let's say that you are an enthusiast like myself or like trent here uh and you keep going right um well my goal is i want to add as much weight to the bar as i can and not get hurt so i'm pretty conservative with it you know i may eventually get hurt you know it's not completely avoidable if you keep chasing numbers. But, you know, it's what I do. I got so used to adding that I'm like, well, I'm going to try and add.

Okay, I'll do one set this week, you know, a few sets next week, you know, one squat a week, one deadlift a week, you know, et cetera. And all these different variations of what we've discussed here, periodization, right? But then I get questions about other things that can be done, right? So I might have somebody complain that they feel like their cardio is shit, that they're not conditioned, you know? What about cardio? I'll answer that. The more popular question that I get, given my secondary line of work, you know, my other skill set over there, you know, that we talk about here is, oh, well, you know, I got kind of fat doing linear progression, or I put a little bit of a belly on, you know, when can I lose that,

you know? And, you know, the same rules apply. You got to periodize your nutrition too. And this is where it gets a little complicated, you know, when you're on starting strength. So the most common question I get is how do I lose the belly on starting strength? And I say, well, you can lose some of it, but in general, it's not a cutting program. It's not a weight loss program. It is a strength program. One of the assumptions to the novice linear progression is that you are in caloric surplus or caloric maintenance at best, assuming you are overweight enough to pull additional calories from your fat stores, you know? Right, right.

Maintenance is kind of bullshit. You're probably actually in a deficit, but, you know, a small, Right, right. his deadlifts feeling better, all those things. Not the freaking 5'10", 190-pound guy that's complaining about his man boobs and a little bit of a – he's chubby, not really fat, but chubby. Being a little bit chubby gives you leverage, and that's useful for a novice, right? But let's say you don't want to stay chubby. I'm not here to decide what you should look like. this, right? But let's say you don't want to stay chubby. I'm not here to decide what you should look like. Let's say you ran LP, you put enough weight on to satisfy your needs, and you want to change your body composition and lose the chub, and you're willing to have Rip make fun of you at that seminar next year because you just don't care, right? Well, at that point, you have to

plan your training around your diet versus before you're planning your diet around your training when you're a novice. You have to eat a lot of food to facilitate those increases in weight on the bar. And you have to be willing to gain as much weight as necessary to optimize your leverage and to put on the muscle mass that comes with that, right? Now you're trying to change your body composition in a way that requires you to pull resources away from strength training. That's what's happening, essentially. And pay close attention here because the same principle applies to other physical activities and other things, right? So we are now pulling calories away. So if we're pulling calories away, we can't push ourselves like a competitive strength athlete anymore. Not that we're necessarily doing that on LP.

It becomes that at the very end. You're grinding out reps workout after workout. However you slice it, it's really hard at the very end. Yeah. At the very end, it's not for everybody. Some guys in the business won't even take their clients there because you get attrition. When you're grinding out three sets of five squats three times a week, people quit over it. And it's not just about losing money.

You lose a trainee in general. That's one less person under the bar, and we don't want that. You know, if somebody wants to, you know, discontinue my service and do it on their own, I'm fine with that. What I don't want is them leaving because I've grinded them to the freaking ground and they hate even looking at a barbell. And I saw that happen when I was a rookie coach because I was willing to do it. So I assumed, oh, well, everybody wants results. That's what you got to do, right? And I've had people hate lifting. Actually, one girl wanted to test herself once a long time ago. I'm like, well, by the time you finish this, you're going to hate it. Texas method, that really gets people weeded out if they try to run out. If you try to run out Texas method, you will stop lifting by the end of it or fuck around at the gym at best. And I had one girl basically went out of her mind. I think my cousin tried it. He

went out of his mind and they both kept going to the gym. My cousin kept fucking around. The other girl, I'm actually talking about Jules, one of my dieticians on my website, she hated it and wanted to just fuck around in the gym and still do the barbell lifts, and she did. It took her seven years to compete again after that. Oh, man. She ran it out. She never actually got to the singles.

She was doing doubles. She's like, fuck this. I'm done. I'm fucking done. I told somebody else about that. girl was trained like i'm gonna run it out to the end well she did and then she also stopped training very seriously i'm like i told you you're gonna hate lifting you know all of them still do barbells but you know my point is lp's not it doesn't it becomes like competitive lifting at the very end, you know? Yeah, sure.

And, you know, at this point, so, you know, back to my point, when you're deciding that you want to lose body fat, you're restricting calories. You can't do that. You can't grind high intensities to freaking basically failure on low calories. It doesn't work, you know? It doesn't work, you know? So the most popular thing that has been done throughout history is bodybuilders do reps and spend time on machines to not have to rely on so much spinal stability while they're losing weight. Because remember, the back is the thing that fails. I'm not suggesting that. I don't like machines, right? But I'll do some light tens, you know, 60% or so and start there and add because that's what I do. I don't do many sets of them,

one to two tops. As soon as the first one gets hard enough to finish, I don't do a second one or I do a back off. And you could do the other stuff, the machines to add volume in, but you still got to do your basics. But the whole point is, or you can do more sets. If you want to spend the time in the gym, you can do more sets, right? Six sets of five or whatever, you know, with a lighter weight, you know. It's silly, but again, you are tailoring your training to your diet now versus on LP, you are tailoring your diet to your training, right? Right. Yeah. Your diet, you know, there's still certain things you have to do. Your protein has to stay high, you know, but your energy macros, your carbs and fat, those got to come down. It's the fat first, then carbs for obvious reasons. You want to minimize the damage that you're doing to your performance by trying to spare the carbs to the maximum extent that you

can. But at the end of the day, both of those macros are coming down and the protein, and the protein staying the same to hold on to the muscle mass. Yeah. And I just want to avoid some confusion here, right? Because I think sometimes people think, oh man, if I do tens, I'm going to get bigger. Like, like it's that's hypertrophy range, right? And it's like, well, yeah, but again, like hypertrophy, if you're trying to add muscle mass and do like bodybuilding type stuff that also relies on you being in somewhat of a caloric surplus, right? You have to eat more food to grow the extra muscle mass. So that's not what we're talking about in this case. In this case, we're just trying to preserve as much muscle mass as we can. And like you said, because we are tailoring now the training to the diet, it's just the best

that you can do given the circumstances. So, you know, some people think they're like, oh man, I'm going to get like really jacked while I'm cutting. It's like, no, no, that's not just because you're doing tens doesn't mean you're doing hypertrophy. I mean, it's a novel stimulus. So you might see something happen. You might get a little bump. Yeah, sure. But you're not, you know, even if you're, again, if you're training tens, because you want to, you know, get hypertrophy, you run into the same situation. You have to add weight to the bar incrementally over a long enough timeline. And eventually it gets hard and it gets grindy and you have to set new PRs at that rep range. Or you have to do so many sets that that's exhausting. You eventually

require more resources. But if you're just a chubby guy that wants to look like you train and you don't care that you're going to weigh nothing at the end, not literally nothing, but you're going to be lighter, then you have to basically hold on to the protein, spare the carbs to the maximum extent that you can, and lower the fat as much as you can lower that, and keep your volume higher, your intensity lower, because that's what you're able to do at that time. You're able to do lighter weights, either for more reps or more sets or throw a bunch of assistance exercises in there, whatever you decide to do. That's not what this episode's about, but the point is your nutrition is also periodized and your training is also

periodized in accordance to how you're eating if you have body composition goals that you're playing around with. You know what i mean yeah right right yeah that's a good way to think about it so yeah in contrast if you decide well yeah fuck this cutting shit i want to get strong then now you're flipping the script your intensity can go up your calories can go up your carbs can go up you know your fat can go up and the weight on the bar is going to go up any power lifter will tell you that if you train at high intensities, you're not even power lifters. Anybody in our circle too, you know, none of us are power lifters, you know, strength lifters, you know, just casual gym trainees are trying to add weight to the bar.

They will all tell you that if they try to train at a high intensity with low calories, it doesn't happen. Us coaches have watched this. When somebody bonks, you can tell when they haven't eaten, you know, or when they haven't slept. that when when the reps are high there's an endurance component so and less of a you know maximal strength component so they you can push through that on less resources because it's fucking lighter you know it's tiresome you feel like shit you know and i do a limit set of eight with you know close to 200 kilos on the deadlift i mean mean, I need to hit that, by the way. 197.5 for eight. Anyways. Yeah, you're pretty close. Okay.

Then I got sick the week after, so I'm working back up. But, yeah, that beat the piss out of me, you know? But I was hungry. I was tired. Every week I would come in, I'd be like, man, I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm doing 400 plus for eight to ten reps. I don't want to fucking do this.

I don't know if I got it. Then I do them, you know, you get through them because it's fucking lighter, right? You know, doing 70 to 80% of max, you know, it's not 90 to 100% of max. So intensity matters here. Going back to the cardio thing that you mentioned, because that's another thing that I run into

is people get, you know, two, three, four months into the novice LP and now they are diverting most of their resources, most of those extra calories and all of their recovery resources that they have available toward the goal of getting stronger. And then something happens. They're like, oh man, I'm going to go try out, like I'm going to go mountain biking or just some activity they enjoy that they haven't done in a little while. Because it's, you know, they've been gaining this, they've been starting this new program and they're getting used to, like, hitting the gym three days a week and actually, you know, lifting with a barbell. And so they go back to some activity that they've done in the past and then they suck at it.

Like, they're just like, they have no gas. They're like, what's going on? They're like, what's the point of all this gym stuff, right? I thought it'd be stronger. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I've had that several times. The mountain biking in particular, there's one guy I can, I can think of that was really upset that he, you know, his mountain biking was worse. And it's, and it's like, okay, first of all, it's been three months

since you've been on the bike. Like, I don't know about you, but when I get on a bike and it's been three plus months, then it, yeah, I'm just, I'm not particularly good at it because there's like some acclimation, you know, to being on the bike, you gotta be able to handle like sitting on the saddle. That's half the problem for me. But the other more important thing here is that you are in a, a recovery hole towards the end of novice linear progression, right? That's part of the reason that we have to do this periodization is that you cannot, you can't recover anymore and be fresh 48 hours between workouts, right? You're past that point. Now it takes, now you have to do a light squat or a light pull or, you know, have to do all these tricks that we talked about earlier to, to get enough

recovery between your heavy lifts. Yeah. Well, this same thing applies to outside activities in life is that you're going to have to let this period play out because if you try to go add something else that's a vigorous activity, then what's going to happen is you're going to suck at it. And it's not that your cardio sucks, quote unquote. It's really that you're going out there and you are already very fatigued. You're carrying it from the lifting that you're doing. So yeah, you're

going to feel like you have dead legs and you've got no gas. That will go away because eventually you get to a longer periodization, a longer micro cycle, right? Where you're only lifting heavy once a week or once every once every other week and then when that happens all of a sudden on your lighter lifting days you have a little bit more gas because you've recovered and you've also improved your ability to recover your work capacity is improving so as those things go up all of a sudden it becomes much easier to go you know mountain biking or whatever on the weekend and not feel dead. So I just wanted to cover that because that's a very common complaint. So that was the next and last point that I wanted to hit is when you, you know, in the strength and conditioning literature, they talk about how

these meso and macro cycles pertaining to strength and conditioning for athletes that participate in other sports, you know, football, basketball, you know, mountain biking, whatever, how it's planned around the sport, right? So when you're playing football or you have a biking race coming up, that is considered season, right, in season. So you're doing a lot, you're spending a lot of time on that activity. You're spending a lot of time on the bike. You're spending a lot of time in the field.

That's the more general term that we'll use. You're spending more time in the field for your sport of choice, right? So in this situation, strength training is not for the purpose of competing in a strength sport like weightlifting, powerlifting, strengthlifting, right? Or bodybuilding, right? You're strength training to improve these other sports that's kind of what these guys are talking about well what the hell what's with all this strength shit i can't even ride a bike right so the same thing kind of happens you know lp is something that you want to do in your quote-unquote off season so these are things you have to think about recreational athletes don't think about this as much as professional athletes or you know collegiate

athletes or even youth high school athletes you You know, these people that do things recreationally don't really have any of this in mind. They just want to bike all year. They want to lift all year. They want to play basketball all year, right? So typically, let me see if I remember my jargon correctly. You have your preparatory phase, you know, and that's typically when you do these hypertrophy type mesocycles that have, you know, more of an endurance component for the lifting. And by endurance, I mean like eight to 12 reps, you know, so it's more like more like bodybuilding, you're doing more rehab stuff, more, more general strength training type activities, it's not very specific, and the intensity is not high, the volume is high, the intensity is lower. And then as you move along through the curve, you move towards higher intensity, lower volume, and fewer assistance exercises, right?

It becomes more specific. You're trying to get overall strength and power, right? Well, those phases are timed around the sport. And the frequency at which in the weight room is also timed around the sport. So in the off season, they might go and try to get their squats up. You know, they're not going to max out because they don't compete in powerlifting, but they might hit some heavy triples and fives. And, you know, let's say that, you know, you're in a winter sport, say in the summer, they're hitting the weights heavy. By the fall, now they're in their preseason. So that means less time in the weight room. Now they're not going three, four days a week. They're going two days a week or one day a week. And then when their season starts and they're playing games

and competing, they may not even be squatting or one day a week. And then when their season starts and they're playing games and competing, they may not even be squatting or leg pressing or doing any big compounds. They might just be fucking around in the weight room doing rehab type stuff and trying to maintain, right? Or doing lower intensities. So more endurance related stuff and nothing to failure, right? Because everything is centered around competing in that sport. So let's say that most recreational people I talk to, they're runners, cyclists, they

do stuff like that. You know, there's no real recreational football at our age, you know, because our joints can't take that kind of shit. You know, people might play basketball or other things. And I'll say, if you want to get stronger and build muscle over a long enough timeline and maintain the performance in your sport, then you have to plan points of the year where you're spending less time playing the sport and more time training, which means that, yeah, your performance is going to drop, but then there's other times of the year where you're going to be playing more basketball, riding the bike more,

running more, and you're never doing zero, by the way, because that is your primary sport. You're always doing something, right, for that. And the same rule applies to diet. If you want to lose weight, you have to plan that at a certain time of year so that you can drop your strength training performance so that you can lose whatever body fat you want to lose, right? So that's really what it is. It kind of comes back to that, right? The more time you have to spend on an alternative activity or losing body fat, the less time you can spend at high intensity strength training, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've said it before on the show and it's just, it, you'll keep running into this over and over. It's like, you can't be maximal at everything, right? You can't be,

you can't pursue everything to the max. Yeah, exactly. So, um, yeah, but the idea is that year over year with some sort of, you know, macro cycle, like you're talking about, if you, if you have a season that you train around the year over year, do actually improve from season to season you come into each season a little bit stronger than you did last time and um and those those those incremental gains stack up over a period of years and it happens over a long enough timeline um exactly just remember you're not a power lifter you're not a strength lifter and if're not a strength lifter. And if you have another sport, that's more important to you, if you're a biker, a runner, a hiker, et cetera, and that's your thing, that means weight on the bar beyond that initial novice phase is going to go up even slower than somebody who's a power lifter, right? Or a strength lifter,

or a weight lifter. It's going to go up slower. You're going to add a little bit each year, because you're only going to be able to spend three to six months on it, seriously. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep. And, and you know what, you might not even do, you may not even do some of the basic movements, right. And you may have, you may find things that are a little bit more, like you said, uh, more rehab oriented or, you know, maybe just something that facilitates your sport better. Right. So like if you're a, you're an MMA fighter or something like that, like you, you may not do low bar squats. Um, if you can, you fighter or something like that, like you may not do low bar squats. If you can, you should, but you may end up doing like a box squats or something.

I don't know, you know, some variation of that. And it's fine. But yeah, that's the whole point is you're thinking about this conceptually of like, what is my goal? And, you know, the training suits that goal. So if the goal is to get stronger, then you do the low bar squat, the deadlift.

If the goal is to be prepared for your sport, then you do what you need to do to be prepared for that sport. And it's just time and place. We lift weights to get stronger. So, you know, in your off season, you're going to do the main lifts. You know, once you're in season,

you might want to spare some of those joints so that you can move around fast and not pull something, you know, because you squatted or deadlifted that week, you know? Yeah, exactly. So you may only deadlift, you know, once a month. You may only squat once a month and throw some leg presses in there. I mean, I don't know. It just depends on the person. But I know I get, I look at myself after a heavy deadlift and how tight I get. I'm like,

if I had to like do rapid movements and agility type shit, I'd probably tweak my back all the time, you know? Yeah. No 40-yard dashes for you. Yeah, exactly. So there's a time and place where you have to plan these things right if your other activities are more important than lifting then you have to block out three to six months where you're just going to lift and barely do the other thing right and you're going to do it very light you know so that you can lift and then it's going to flip and you're going to lift less and really focus on the thing that it is you want to do so uh that's really i think we hammered that you know we beat that to death. So, that's really, I think we hammered that, you know, we beat that to death.

So, you know, that's a good stopping point for me. I hope you have a good understanding now of, like, sort of the big picture of post-novice programming. It's hard, it's so hard to talk about this stuff because it becomes so individual beyond that immediate phase after the novice program. It becomes so individual to the person that, you know, we could just talk about a million different iterations. So what you end up having to do is you end up having to talk about the philosophy of this stuff rather than, you know, just hard sets and reps and percentages. Yeah. There's not enough data points, you know.

Yeah, exactly. But I will say, you know, one thing that if you are, because, you know, most people are novices, and if you're in that spot and you're wondering about like all those little tweaks and parlor tricks that we talked about in extending your novice gains through the quote unquote advanced novice period. Just remember, the important thing for you is to get stronger at that phase of your training. Your goal is strength. So just do whatever you have to do to keep the bar, the weight on the bar going up. That's the most important thing. Keep your goal on that. That's right. And, um, and you'll be fine. Excellent. All right, let's sign off. Thank you for tuning into the weights and plates podcast. Uh, you can find me at weights and

plates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. The gym is found at weights, double underscore and double underscore plates. Very good. Very good. You can find me at Jones barbell club.com or you can find me on Instagram marmalade underscore cream. Thank you.