Weights and Plates Podcast - #50 - Stress, Fatigue, and the SRA Cycle

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Coach Robert and Coach Trent discuss some recent developments in their own training, which prompts a discussion on how stressors affect the SRA cycle, and why advanced barbell training can be deceptively simple.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Blades podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trenton Jones, my co-host. Hey, what's up? I'm dialing in remotely today. I know, I can tell. You don't sound as crystal clear as you normally do. Yeah, I know. I don't have the big Mondo rig with me. No, I'm on the road. I'm calling in from my in-law's house right now in Texas, in Tejas. Tejas, the country of Texas as I understand it. Yeah, the Republic of Texas as it was once known. Yes.

That's why we can fly. I don't know if any other states do this. I've never bothered to look. But we can fly our flag, the state flag, even with the United States flag. Because we were once a country before we were a state. I did not pay attention to this, but do I see the Arizona flag with the U.S. flag? Probably not, huh? Yeah, so normally the state flags are flown below the U.S. flag. Now, some people elect to still fly the Texas flag below the U.S. flag, but quite a few places around Texas, you'll notice, will fly the Texas flag equal, at equal height with the U.S. flag.

It's the country of Texas. Yes, that's right. But yeah, anyway, so yeah, I'm on the road here, and oh man, I am sore as fuck because I hadn't squatted for like a week and a half, and then I dipped into a local gym here to go squat, and they had these really shitty like CrossFit style bars, you know, like rogue echo bars with no center knurling and they're real whippy and stuff. So all I could really manage to keep on my back without it's just completely sliding off my shirt

was about 315. So I just did that for a bunch of triples. I couldn't even do like five reps because the bar would just slide around so bad. And now I'm super sore. But I think this is maybe a good time to talk about a little bit of programming. Yeah. So we were kicking around this idea of just talking a little bit more about what we've been doing in various iterations, like me for the last, I don't know, 12 months, and you for the last several years, which is like explaining like how our programming works in terms of like the main barbell lifts, and how we've made progress doing what I think

for a lot of people would seem like not very much work at all. Right. And that's, that's broadly what we would call like a rotating linear progression. That's what I would call it, at least. I don't know if you have a different name for it, but a rotating linear progression training the big barbell lifts one day a week. Yeah. And we've mentioned this on the show a little bit before, but we wanted to go into more detail about like, you know, how we actually program that and how we iterate that once it, you know, how we actually program that and how we iterate that once it, you know, stops working like everything does. Well, I think we need to start by talking

about stress recovery adaptation. You know, I always like to start with that because I don't really, you know, when I first started lifting this way, I was very, very much into all the programming stuff. Most novices tend to be, you want to sit there and analyze everything and complicate things because it's fun, right? More interesting. I sucked it up and did the LP, but in the back of my back of my mind, you know, I wish it was more interesting, you know, just like most other people. And I tried some things out once I started kind of doing my own thing because I'd hired a couple guys and did some more commercially available programs, I would say, or commercial methods. I'm trying to find them. How diplomatic of you.

Right, right? Yeah. Just the popular silly bullshit of the time, you know? Yeah, right. D-U-P or R-P-E, you know? Fatigue sets, you know? Rotating supplemental lifts, you know? Did you ever do the 5-3-1 stuff where it's like,

oh, well, like 5-3-1 juggernaut with joker sets and... No, I didn't go that far. I hired coaches. I never tried to apply any of that shit. It was just stuff that was prescribed to me. Okay, yeah. And I accidentally got stronger doing it. First guy worked with, you know, overtrained volume.

Second guy worked with overtrained intensity. And when I went on my own, I went back to what I've been having everybody that hired me do, you know. Right, right. For some reason, I thought that hiring a coach with a competitive background was going to teach me something that I wasn't already learning through reading the books, Baker's content, and training clients and watching my stuff work better on the people I was training than the things I was doing. How ironic, right? And then people kept telling me, why don't you do your own? And then finally Rip got in my head. He's like, your advanced lifter can't do his own programming. He ain't worth a shit as a coach or something like that. Something to that effect, right? You know, you don't need somebody to do your shit. You know, you need to get your back looked at periodically because we all fuck it up from time to time,

which I agree with. But he's like, you should be able to handle your own programming. So basically it turned into, you know, I called him once or twice a year and I still do sometimes if I haven't had to in a while, but I used to call him like maybe once a year, have a quick conversation and just put things to work because at the end of the day, and this leads into why I mentioned stress recovery adaptation, I just started looking at all of my programming through that lens. And, you know, your blank spot pick, your guru will sit there and say that, you know, oh, you're oversimplifying. Well, you know what? For most of us, it doesn't need to be that complicated. So, yeah uh when i first

kind of went on my own i'm like all right i'm gonna do what i wanted to do for a long time i'm gonna rack pull one week i'm gonna pull from the floor one week and i did that for a while and my deadlift went up um you know i've added 15 pounds to it uh what would that be in like a two years two and two and a half years yeah so you know that's for a 500 pound deadlifter that's not too bad you know um yeah so i hit 500 march of 2018 and december of 2020 i got 515 honestly though i think i was stronger i think i just one of those things this is where i had a blind. I think that I was going into my peak still with too much stress, especially on the squat. Oh, yeah.

Right, right. Because, man, I squatted 410 for five, and then my max was like 445, which flies in the face of years of data that I've gathered. If anything, that ratio should widen, not narrow, because it's getting heavier. widen, not narrow, you know, because it's getting heavier. But for me, it narrowed because I think I was just basically too many doubles and singles and heavyweight, you know, my quads were tired. And I got 525 to the top of my thighs. I just couldn't lock it out that day. And I've watched 515 the other day. And I'm like, you know, when I pulled 500, it was a lot slower than 515. I'm like, I just think that I wasn't able to pull the stress back enough to express the full extent of my strength. I also deadlift. I rack pulled 525 for five that training cycle and one other time.

Yeah, right, right. So something was off there in the way I was running up my singles and doubles where I was just, my legs were just tired, you know. But either way, I did that for a couple of years and then, you know, it stopped working because I would get to about 515, 520, something else. I think I hit 525 one more time on the rack pull. And then it would go to zero reps. I'd go from 525 by five to zero. And this happened more than once. So I was like, okay, this approach isn't working because the rack pull is now as stressful or more stressful than the full range of motion deadlift. So I started, you know, I'm like, okay, so what do we got here? We got stress, stress. So I got

to, you know, I got to treat them the same, basically. The rack pull is now an intensity stressor. So I can't use it as an off week, you know, shorter range of motion pull, you know. So I can't use it as an off week, you know, shorter range of motion pull, you know. So I got rid of that. Then I just started ramping up every three weeks. So you see a theme here, right? So in the beginning, when you're a novice, you're deadlifting three times a week. You're adding weight every 48 hours for the most part. And you get the weekends off.

So, you know, what is that, 72? Yeah. But, you know, every 48 hours during the week, and then you get a 72 hour break on the weekend. And then the deadlift goes to deadlift power clean or deadlift and some other deadlift variant. And you're now pulling every what? 90, uh, 96 hours, you know, Monday and Friday, uh, one week. And then the next week you might only pull once. So eventually it goes to every week you know every week you're pulling heavier right then it gets to a point where five goes to zero

because your squat earlier in the workout wears out your back now what so okay well i'm gonna rack pull one week and i'm gonna do you know halting or deficit or you know something else the next week right and now you're you know adding weight to it every other week. Then from there, you're thinking, okay, well, that's gone to shit. Now what? Every three weeks. So now you're doing a heavy light medium over a three-week span, right? And, you know, you kind of keep taking this approach, you know, every three turns into every four, every four turns into every six, you know, etc. And, you know, gets to a point where you're hitting a PR maybe once or twice a year, maybe once a year. And, you know, if you're an Olympian, every four years, you know. But the point is my attempt at a limit set was always planned, right?

I was planning the PR, whether it was a set of eight, a set of five, one RM. And I think a lot of people don't think of it this way. And that's why this RPE shit's just gotten popular. Well, if something went to shit, you know, you just use the RPE and make it lighter, right? And I'm sure I'll be accused of saying the same thing when I explain myself, and I really don't care. You know, I'm not trying to do business with you. You're not going to buy anything. So I'm just going to continue on. care you know i'm not trying to do business with you you're not going to buy anything so i'm just going to continue on um anyhow uh if a lift goes to shit it's going to be one of two things either too much stress not enough recovery right and sometimes the second one is due to the first one

so it's kind of could be an oxymoron but sometimes not enough recovery means you're not eating or sleeping enough too um right yeah you know but in some cases it's not enough recovery because you've applied too much stress. You've done too much volume or you've tried to do too much intensity. So you've either done, you know, five sets when you only needed three, or you're trying to do 92% three days after doing 95%. That was prescribed to me at one point. Right, yeah. So, yeah, I think that's a good point, right? Like, sometimes

when you're talking about novices going into intermediates in that early intermediate territory, I think you could have a situation where the stress is too low to continue driving adaptation. I think you can have that situation happen with upper body lifts, with the press and the bench press sometimes. But I would say beyond that point, when we're talking about a true intermediate, and especially as you get into advanced, yeah, I'd say it's nine times out of 10,

it's a too much stress problem. But you're right, that can also be a under recovery problem. It is important to diagnose what that is. But I will right, that can also be a under-recovery problem. It is important to diagnose what that is. But I will say that that sometimes is true that there's not enough stress, though. Of course. But probably not for the more advanced lifter. Well, let's talk about that. Typically, when I see too much stress, it's often with the squat or the deadlift. When I see not enough stress, it's often with the bench press or the press, right?

Although, as we talk tonight, I'm going to talk about my experience with too much stress on the bench press. Right, right. We'll get to that. I'm actually going through too much stress on my bicep curls. Yeah. Laugh it up, you purists out there. I got golfer's elbow for the first time in my life, and it was from curls, which Rip would say, it's why you don't need fucking curls. Right, right.

But I'm still going to train my arms, but it ties into this. But you do need guns, though. Exactly. Yeah. Well, you know, I'll lead into that, too, because it ties back into this conversation. I got golfer's elbow because too much fucking stress. because it ties back into this conversation. I got golfer's elbow because too much fucking stress. And you're going to run into that when you start training something new because you don't know where your limits are. I don't know where the hell my limits are on a bicep curl.

I never trained it. Well, I'm finding out now. So it's dissipating, but damn, it fucking sucks. Anyhow, yeah, so most of the time, let's start with too much stress. The first place that I see too much stress with most people who are doing the novice linear progression, and for those of you who are new listening to us for the first or second time, that's the starting strength novice linear progression. heavy on the squat. So you're squatting three times a week and adding weight every single time. So you can add 15 pounds a week to your squat for quite some time. You know, the assumption, just like every program, every therapy, every drug has assumptions behind it, everything you use has assumptions behind it. The assumption behind that program is that you've never lifted a weight before in your life, that you are eating at a caloric maintenance or surplus, depending on how heavy or not heavy you are.

If you're light, you're eating at a surplus. If you're heavy, you might be at a small deficit. If you're kind of in between, you're at least at maintenance or a slight surplus, but you're eating enough calories to fuel this, right? This is a program that requires high calories, right? So 15 pounds a week on a squat, remember, assumption number one, you are a novice. You've never lifted before. You know, you could also be someone who's been doing it wrong, and you're learning the movement for the first time, and now you're kind of like a novice, but you're not going to be on it as long as somebody who's a true novice, right? So

me, I came in 315 squat, ended up doing that for five and then some, but I didn't add like 200 pounds in my five rep squat like a novice would, right? Like a true novice would. So, you know, or somebody coming off a bed rest, you know, that's another situation, you know, or off of a layoff or been sick, you know, you can, you know, train like a novice if you've had time off, but a true novice, somebody who's never lifted, that's the person who's going to add 15 pounds to a squat weekly for several months. You know, if somebody recovering from something, you know, you cut that time in half or in thirds. So just for you newbies out there that are just hearing about this.

Anyhow, yeah, it's not unusual to do that, by the way. So it's that 60 pounds in a month on a squat. Not unusual if you've never lifted weights before. We can listen. Yeah, absolutely. We have other episodes where we cover why that is. Anyhow, there's this thing that I've seen with starting strength. And I don't know that I fell victim to it, but I know that the people I was around

when I was running the Novice Linear Progression all fell into this, I don't know if addiction or obsession is the right word, but they were just very fixated on wanting to add five pounds to the squat forever in perpetuity. Like, they want to squat infinity plus one for three sets of five. And then they want to squat infinity plus two 48 hours later for three sets of five.

And I still see it now with the diehard starting strength guys that hire me. They'll be very much fixated on squat heavier at all costs. The most extreme example I saw was another coach. I don't know if he still, I think he let his credential lapse years ago. He was on a CrossFit box and he got into podcasting and just wasn't really coaching in person anymore. But he got his squat up to like 455 or three sets of five, something like that. Squatting three times a week, getting five pounds per workout.

And he just cut all the other lifts out to the point where he was just squatting three sets of five. It was taking him two hours to work out to do those three sets. And that's all he did, you know? And that's kind of amazing. I admire that commitment. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh yeah. I mean, he had a weightlifting and CrossFit background. So it doesn't entirely surprise me that he did that because weightlifters love to squat. And at the same time that I was talking to him, I met another guy that horn trained who was a semi-pro tennis player who was too injured for tennis but can strength train. I don't know. I forgot what his injury was, but he was clearly able to strength train because he did the same thing. He got his squat into the mid 400s and, you know, he gained weight and he just started letting everything else, all the other lifts fall by the wayside.

Like his deadlift was like, his squat was like 435 for three sets of five. Then his deadlift was like 380 because his back was fried, you know? His press was like 150, not even, no, his press was like, I don't know, 125. His press was not impressive, and his bench was under 200, I think. Wow. But he kept adding to the squat, so it was like, how do I even put this?

It was a compulsive squatting disorder. You know, like. Is that in the DSM? It's in the DSM-6. That hasn't been released yet, but, you know... It will be, yeah. That's going to be in the new DSM. We'll have an episode with Dr. Peter again when that comes up.

Yeah, we'll talk about compulsive squatting syndrome, or compulsive squatting disorder, where they just... The patient wants to add five pounds to his squat every 48 hours in perpetuity until the day he dies. Every other workout. At the expense of everything. 25-minute rest breaks.

No other lifts. Just got to get my squat. I know these people have hired you too, Trent, right? I've never had anyone go that far. I've not had anyone go that far. I have definitely had some people that really, really struggle to move on from three sets of five. And the fact that it's like, hey, if we do anything that is not those four lifts, it's just kind of like, what the hell are we doing with this program?

We're going off the rails. He put in some chin-ups. And I see this obsession manifest the most with the squat that's where i see it the most yeah it's true it's true this yeah this is almost some of this like sadistic sort of quality to the squat and it's first it for most of us it's uh you know it it the squat is it i mean for me it is the most uncomfortable lift i fucking hate it uh in when i'm doing a heavy yeah absolutely uh you know heavy deadlifts are not it's not that bad even though i can grind in a heavy deadlift a lot longer than i can a heavy squat yeah so yeah i don't know if it's

like some sort of sadism where they're just you know it's like oh well give me the hardest one i'm just gonna keep going i don't find it incredibly hard to get these guys to go intermediate on press and bench press, but squat, they don't want to let that one go. Yeah, yeah. Press and bench press, I have issues with. I want to add five pounds forever, you know? Right, yes, yeah. That's the more common issue up top. But lower body, they'll skip the deadlift, or they will just, you know, they'll bitch that it's not going up but whatever my squat needs

to go up like i run into this not as much lately but early on when i first started coaching and i and i and i get these guys that read starting strength saw me on the boards or whatever they hire me and uh they wanted that or people not so much in person i don't get that so much but they would yeah there's this fixation what they want to stay on that. They took Rip's words so literally, because one of Rip's quotes are, you want to be a novice as long as you can. Okay, I get that. So if you've never lifted before and you're skinny, gain the weight. You're going to get a little fluffy. I'm not going to lie. You're going to put on some body fat. If you, if you have a problem with that, then, you know, it might not be the right program and that's fine. There's other things you can do, but, uh, you know, leverage

the body fat, leverage the body mass, the total body mass, cause you're getting muscle too, and get as strong as possible because it's never going to be this fast again. I understand that. Um, the problem is, you know, when you're squatting, you know, let's say the upper threes or lower fours, if you're a bigger guy, that's a lot of weight, you know, and three times a week, you know, like, okay, you're going to keep resetting. How much do you think you're going to put on? You think you're just going to get that first spark of linear progression that you got on month one after a year you know and it's like well i lost sleep those few days maybe if i just sleep better it'll go up more then they'll run

another lp they'll put five pounds on it maybe and then they'll crash you know yeah yeah and it's like dude like yeah all that stuff matters you need to sleep you need to eat better like all those things matter but you're talking about what what, 2% improvement at this point? And you're going to spend a bunch of months, you're going to spend several months working back up to where you got stuck to add five pounds. Yeah, that's the thing that I see more commonly is guys that run themselves into an absolute brick wall and then they get hurt or they just get so burnt out. They end up stripping a bunch of weight off the bar because they just get so burnt out, they end up stripping a bunch of weight off the bar because they're just so burnt out. Too much stress.

That is too much stress. Too much stress. Too much stress. But then what I see more often is these guys will tell me about this and I'll be like, okay, so what did you do after that? And they're like, well, you know, and then eventually, usually it's some sort of like, well, I laid off for a while and then I put 225 on the bar and i started lp'ing again you know that's the that's the more common story that i'll see yeah um if you're you know if you're squatting double

your body weight for three sets of five on an lp and you know you start bottoming out, sure, you had a few days of bad sleep and maybe you under eight one day. If you reset that, I don't know that you're going to put a whole lot on. No, no. More likely, you might reset. And if we're talking about reset, so in the starting strength, I don't know if this is in the blue book, but it is common when we say reset to pull the weight back about 10% and then try to drive it back up again. It's sort of this move that we do for novices that usually when they're getting to the point where they're starting to miss lifts, there's some technique breakdown that creeps in. And, you know, and also maybe it's just some mental stuff

where it's just mentally taxing to tackle heavier and heavier weights every time. So that little reset can sometimes help because we take the weight back to something that's manageable. We can clean up any little technique issues. And also mentally, when they get back to that spot where they were before, where they might've struggled,

they're sort of a little bit more ready for it. But I bet with these guys that are going just absolute bonkers ham on the squat uh they reset and they don't get back to where they were no they don't because they're over trained and they probably slept like shit because of their over trained yeah and uh that is yeah that that is the prime example of too much stress and i will always see it where the deadlift suffers real bad from this and yeah get on people all the time their dead lifts not going anywhere and their squat goes up and then it gets to a point where their squat keeps getting stuck in the same place and their deadlift is going nowhere and the only way around that is to pull back some fatigue and move on to the next phase, right? So let's talk about that.

You're squatting three times a week. You're adding 15 pounds a week to your squat. It's great. Enjoy it. It won't, that won't happen again. All right. So now your, your back's getting bonked out, but you don't just watch the squat. You know, this is, this is where I kind of diverge a little bit, a little bit, not much. When you start, when your deadlift doesn't come watch the squat. You know, this is where I kind of diverge a little bit. A little bit. Not much. When your deadlift doesn't come off the floor and you're still squatting three times a week and making progress, your deadlift's not coming off the floor because the squat's wearing it out. So the first thing I do is I drop the middle day all together.

I used to do a light squat in the middle. That's what's in the book. And I still do that, you know, depending on the loads, you know, some people get the absolute load pretty high. So I just skip that step for those people. Right. Right. But, uh, you know, for most of my novices, I do 80% in the middle. So I'll do that. I'll be like, okay, light squat in the middle. And then the deadlift tends to move again. And then I see that suffer. And then I'm like, all right, well, he could probably still make these jumps on the squat, but how about I just drop the middle of the all together, put the deadlift in between the two heavy squats and, uh, just have him deadlift once a week on Wednesday, you know? Right. And, uh, now his

deadlift's going up every week, his squats going up twice a week. Well, then later on you start to see problems again, then, okay, now you're an intermediate, you know, light squat on Monday or heavy squat on Monday, light squat on Wednesday, you know, on Friday. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, you can do that. You know, you could squat twice a week and be fine deadlifting twice a week. You could do that as well as an early, early intermediate. I don't think it's as necessary. Um, it's not as technical as the squat. Um, so I find that the once a week, just packing it all into one day seems to work well. The squat I find because of the level of skill required the second day tends to be helpful you know yeah and and uh you get a stretch

reflex on it you start with a eccentric lowering phase followed by a stretch reflex versus a dead lift you're having to overcome the inertia of the bar on the floor which is real taxing on your back you know yes so uh that's kind of how I've approached it lately. But as you can see, you know, I just extend the recovery time, right? So the recovery time was 48 hours, then it was, you know, 96 hours. Now it's a full week, right? Between heavy squat attempts, that means the heaviest squat you could do for a set of five, you're gonna do it Monday, then next Monday, then next Monday. Then eventually that stops working, right?

So then I've done something. I've done a few things. I'll just take the second day out. Now you're squatting once a week, right? And then it keeps going, right, because the intensity is high. As intensity gets higher, you don't have to do these things as frequently. The reason, I think, for frequenting these real big lifts is practice, you know't have to do these things as frequently. It's the reason I think for frequenting these real big lifts is practice, you know, for early intermediates. I was about to say, yeah, right, right. That is important. Yeah. The reason I'm able to get away with it is because

I've done the movement thousands of times at this point. So I squat once a week. I'm an advanced lifter. I don't need to squat more than once a week. So yeah, so I either drop the second day altogether or, you know, I make it a light week instead of a light day. So I have a light day and a slightly heavier day, right? But it's still, you know, heavier than the light day, but not an RM, right? Right, right. So I have two days where one's like, you know, modest and one's light. And then the next week, we'll go for a 5RM, right? And then I'll alternate, you know, heavy week, light week, heavy week, light week, heavy week, light week. I'll kind of ramp up, right? Yeah. Then that gets stuck, right? Then you go heavy, light, medium, heavy

week, light week, medium week, right? So, you know, if you kind of see the patterns here, you know, with all these different programming styles and nomenclature and forms of periodization, there's really only one type if you think about it. You know, if you're adding weight every time and the exercise is the same, it's a purely linear program. But guess what? If you're adding weight weekly, that's also linear, right? And if you're alternating the intensities, you know, you're undulating it.

That's your DUP, daily undulated periodization. I haven't seen that word very much lately, but it was a hot buzzword eight years ago. Right, right. But, you know, if you're, you know, doing daily undulated periodization where, let's say, you do a heavy day, a light day, a medium day, right? So each day is a different intensity. But then you're adding weight to those three days the following week. So it's linear and it's undulated, right? And let's say you're doing a squat, a front squat, and a box squat, right, for your heavy, your light, your front squat, your medium, your box squat, right?

Well, now you've used a form of the conjugate method, right, because you've alternated the exercises, right? And you've added weekly, so it's linear. So they're all there, right? There's only really one type of periodization when you really get down and look at it, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. So that's kind of how I always approach it. And then as the stress gets greater, the recovery time gets longer. So then you've still got to think, when am I going to try that five rep PR? Am I going to try it next week? No, last time I did that, it went from five to two, you know? Well, I'll try it in two weeks, and then you make it right. And that works for a while, then later, that doesn't work, you know, typically, I'll just go to the next rep range and run up a single and max out and then get

some new data. But let's assume that, you know, new training cycle, you've learned from the last training cycle that every two weeks is no longer working. Now you're going to go up every three, that every two weeks is no longer working. Now you're going to go up every three, right? Heavy, light, medium. Then from there, you'll go up every four, et cetera, because what's happening is as you are getting stronger and lifting heavier weights, that stress takes longer to recover from.

So you're applying that stress. You're doing your 500 for five squat, whoever is out there that can do that, right? Let's just use an extreme example here. Most people will not get to that in my experience. And, you know, I get it if you're in a powerlifting gym where that's pretty routine. Most people in that gym might be doing that. But in the grand scheme of things, you know, you people doing that, you're in a small percentage of people.

Absolutely. Even you and I, Trent, we're in a small percentage of people when you look at the aggregate. So anyways, but let's say you got somebody who's squatting 500 for five. He's probably not going to do 505 next week or two weeks later, you know? No. But he might, you know, go 500 one week, and then the next three weeks, he might take it down the next week, go light, ramp back up, then a month from now he'll go 505, you know?

And this works pretty well, you know, when all factors are consistent, right? However, all factors are really consistent. That's why it doesn't work this cleanly in practice. Yeah, I was about to say, the real confounding variable. So the one thing that you can, they can observe, and I think you're about to say this, is that when you're talking about the big lifts and the barbell, the stress is very knowable in this situation. It's very, very controllable because we're using, you know, especially if you're lifting at home, right? Or you're lifting in your own gym, you're using standardized bars, plates, you know, standard rack format. You know, the conditions under which

you perform the lifts are pretty much always the same. And the load is changing by very controllable increments. So the stress part of the equation is very easy to figure out when we're just talking about the strength work in the program. Yeah. But yeah, the clear, the clear variable here is the uh is the recovery yeah yeah exactly and uh that brings me to my next point you have buckets right i always say we have buckets you have a bucket for stress right a stress bucket and uh you have let's take your super strong guy you know we wish we all were you can imagine the person's really fucking tired afterwards i mean if said 135 for five, I know somebody listening is having trouble with that right now, but you're not going too much longer. And if you keep having trouble with that, please call one of us.

I'll cut you a deal. I mean, 135 for five, if you're stuck on that and you're a man under 35, not even that, a man 60 yeah uh you know call one of us we'll help you out um but it just it doesn't really hit the point like 400 500 for five right just imagine all that weight on your back and you did it five times you're gonna be pretty fucked afterwards right yeah uh it's safe to say i've never done it. I probably never will do it. I think I'll squat 500 for a single, but I don't think I'm squatting that for five in my lifetime, but I've squatted four 10 for five and I know what that felt like. And I can't imagine another 90 pounds on that. Right. And, uh, you know, you've got to imagine this guy's really

fucking tired. So he's going to need some time to add to that. But then guess what? His wife wakes him up screaming in the middle of the night about some random shit. And then they get into a fight for a week. And the guy can't sleep well, right? And then his neighbor starts bitching at him because he can hear it, you know? And then his boss is an asshole, too, because his work's not getting done on time. And then he skips a few meals, right?

Yeah. And then his tire blows out and he's pissed off about that. He's got to tow the truck to the mechanic and then he finds out he doesn't have rental coverage and has to pay for it. So these are all common problems, right? I've ran into some of them. I don't have a wife right now. She's woken me up.

My girlfriend's woken me up, my girlfriend's woken me up in the middle of the night screaming over a nightmare. I was about to say, that's an awful specific example there. Yeah, well, she's woken me up having nightmares, you know, and I'm like, hey, I'm right here.

You know? That's not actually happening, you know? But, you know, you could take that a step further and it could turn into a real fucking problem. I didn't fuck up my training over that but i'm like just thinking about a collection of things that have happened to me yeah sure sure uh not all of them you know some of them are things

people told me um anyhow but let's say you know you're just having problems having lots of personal problems all at once right it's been you know, Murphy's Law is kicking in. And then that month has passed and you've gotten through the lighter workouts. And then that last one before the PR day, you're like, shit, man, why was that so hard? I should have fucking worked out better than that. Well, let's see. Next week I'll go for the PR. Then you go down and you only get one. Well, is it because your programming was fucked up or is it because you lost sleep, were pissed off all the time, your blood pressure's high, and you're stressed out? You know, like those things start to matter. In contrast, when it's 135 for five and you're a novice, so long as you're eating enough, you could probably overcome all that and do 140, right?

Yes, absolutely. Um, so the, the further along you get on this adaptation curve, the, uh, more of these other stressors that go in the stress bucket start to compete with the stress of lifting the weight. Remember that it's just one form of stress, but your body doesn't know. I mean, it knows the difference from some standpoint, you know, but in terms of like your body systems to regulate all this shit, you know, it's going to react to stress, whatever stress you put on it, right? Yeah, for sure. We're not talking about your joints, muscles, and connective tissues. That's very specific. But your body's response to stress is going to kick in, whether it's physical stress, mental stress, emotional stress, et cetera. stress, et cetera. And if you start piling these up, the reason I laid out like 10 specific things there is because when you pile all these things up and you're lifting weights, you're going to

adapt, you're going to lose your ability to adapt to that strength stressor because all these other stressors need to be recovered from as well. Right. Yeah. And that's, you know, I've run into that quite a bit, you know, the last few months. We went through a couple of months where our son did not sleep very well. He went through a normal sleep regression. And so, you know, our schedule that we had sort of adapted to over the previous couple months had either got flipped on its head. And then after that, he started teething. And after that, he got a cold. You know, so yeah. And then you got fucking sandbags under your eyes. Yeah, exactly, right?

So, you know, so the, but, and that's the thing is that I had not appreciated as much before is like, obviously, yeah, my sleep is going to impact your training quite a bit if you're not getting enough. But it's more than that. A lot of times, you know, in a way, I have adapted to sleeping a little bit less on average than I did before we had a kid. Now, if I get four hours of sleep, obviously, that's going to have an acute effect on my ability to lift. But if my average goes down, I've actually kind of adapted to that somewhat since, you know, since it's been several months. to that somewhat since it's been several months. But what has impacted my training the most is my desire to train with super heavy weights. And I think it's truly a mental thing when there's a

lot of stuff going on in life. And it's not just the sleep situation. It's just other personal things, other family things get stacked on top of that. all of a sudden, my desire to go in the gym and strap on the heaviest weight I've done in a while, or ever. It just it's not there. I want to train still, I enjoy training and going into the gym. But I, I just cannot get I cannot kick myself mentally into gear to prepare to lift that weight. And that's the problem when you're trying to squat a PR set of five or even just something that's a pretty heavy set of five. You have to have a level of mental commitment to execute the lift. And I found myself missing lifts because of commitment.

And I'm not so sure that that's entirely all connective tissue, you know, physiological stress that I'm dealing with, right? I think some of that is mental, and that's an aspect of this recovery game I had not really thought a whole lot about in the past. Yeah. Yeah, and basically, what we're trying to say is all stress that you impose on yourself has to be recovered from. Right, yeah. Rip talks about that. And what you're describing is a constant state of stress. It's hard to progress with that.

Right. I don't have a constant state of stress like that, but there are periods where I do, short periods. And when that has happened, my training goes to shit. Like, you know, I started traveling. I was doing my PhD and traveling and trying to graduate and doing all this stuff at the same time. I didn't have a very good stretch of training there. When I opened the gym, I actually mitigated some of that stress by training less. I was just going twice a week.

And then I accidentally got stronger. But I think the other thing that was going on there was I was overtrained on intensity leading up to that. So as a result, I was adding more stress here but pulling stress here, and it ended up working out. You know, like I'd pulled back the tonnage in the program I was doing, but then I'd added more psychological stress. What's the word? Yeah, probably psychological life stress, I guess. Having a business, you know, having to run this extra business. Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, it kind of was, you know, cancel each other out, and I ended up getting a little bit stronger there. But the point is, you have to acknowledge that stuff is real. And the most interesting example was a client that I trained recently. He may or may not be listening. I'm still training him now. But he came to me and he was as stressed as can be. And he was one of these guys that lost a ton of body weight, and was lifting, but probably overtraining on volume. Not probably he was, you know He was over-training on volume. He didn't know how to program, self-regulate his lifts. And he's diabetic, and he wears a pump. So he has all this glucose data. So the first week, I took him down from where he

was, and then he was still like stiff joints, achy joints, stressed out, like, you know, anxiety around training, you know. And just beat up, you know. So I'm like, okay, dude, chill out. We'll, you know, anxiety around training, you know, and just beat up, you know, so I'm like, okay, dude, chill out, we'll, you know, pull out a couple sets of deadlifts, you know, pull out a squat, you know, and just kept dialing down, basically, mainly the squat and the deadlift, the upper body stuff was fine, but I knew where the stress was coming from,

and we got him to a point where then he was moving along right and the interesting thing about it i bring this guy up because he is a data guy he was keeping so many records with his insulin usage his glucose values and how those were moving around when he was doing things in the weight room right yeah um the other thing too was his body weight. You know, we always hear about this stuff, hormones and fat gain and body weight. You know, I got to see this kind of play out because the guy kept so much damn data. But, you know, he was also, he had this fear of food because he lost so much weight and then he couldn't lose any more.

He hit a wall because he was, so basically he was over dieting, over exercising, right? Yeah, yeah. So we dialed the training down, moved the calories up, kept his weight right around where he was at, which isn't where he wanted to be ideally, but he understood he's a very smart man. So he understood logically, I have to stay here because I'm out of my mind right now. I'm beat up and I can't eat fewer calories than this. You know, this is what I'm doing right now is not sustainable.

I know that what the answer is, I just don't like it, you know? calories than this. You know, this is what I'm doing right now is not sustainable. I know that what the answer is, I just don't like it, you know? So, you know, major kudos to him for overcoming his brain and his emotions at that point in time, because everything was very high strung at that point, right? Yeah, yeah. And then we just got to a point where he was just chilling out more, you know? And he was finding that, you know, he didn't have to use as much insulin. And then he was still, we were starting to see correlations between when we'd really hammer the stress in the weight room, we'd see those blood sugar spikes, he'd have to use more insulin. And then when we'd pull it back, it would kind of normalize back down.

And this went all the way up until when we maxed him out. And it was interesting. Yeah, when he maxed out, it went up, then it kind of went back down. So everything they say about that, we read about this. Reading about it's one thing, kind of watching it play out's another. You know, and when we're in the hospital, we get stressed people from burns and other things, you know, as dieticians, you know, we have to work with burn victims. And when the body's in a state of stress from that, glucose shoots through the roof, you know, you start releasing a lot of blood sugar, and your body can't pump out enough insulin to bring it down. So I was starting to see that kind

of play out because this person obviously is diabetic, so he can't regulate his blood sugar without drugs. And when the training stress was very high, he was just having to use a lot of insulin, the sugar was real high. And then when we just pulled back, so yes, he was doing less exercise, people. He started seeing more stable responses there. So that really, it's not that I ever doubted this stuff. I just never saw it like that. Yeah, sure, sure. And I was like, yeah, all that stuff they're saying about stress is very real. And I'm seeing some objective data here.

It's very real. If you're really stressed out, that's going to affect your ability to, you know, hold your body weight, your body composition, your ability to train, your ability to recover. And that was the other thing, too. When he had those higher blood sugar levels, his weight would swing up three pounds. And he just, three or four pounds. And in the beginning, you know, when he was at his highest point of stress, that, like, bothered him. And later he's like, nope, I know why this is. You know, I need to, you know, when he was at his highest point of stress that like bothered him. And later, he's like, Nope, I know why this is, you know, I need, you know, more insulin resistant right now, I'm having to use more insulin, my blood sugar is up. So my weight's going up,

and then it's probably gonna go down in a few days, then he got really good at predicting it. Guy's super smart, you know, I enjoy working with him. So at the end, you know, he just kind of figured out what his individual stress recovery adaptation cycle was that, you know, in a nutshell. And, you know, now we're mostly working on his technique. He wants to run an LP and he's like, I'm not going to go to the late LP because I know, you know, what will happen there. Right. Yeah. But I want to see what I got here, you know? So I'm like, all right, we'll do that. You know, that's pretty cool. So yeah. So in a nutshell, you know, when your body is stressed, you know,

it will be harder to lose weight. It will be harder to train. It will be harder to set PRs. And if it's in a constant state of it, you know, you have to recover from that too. And, you know, and your body will just put the strength adaptations on the back burner so that you could deal with the other stress that you're piling on. So the more stressors you have in that bucket, the harder it's going to be to progress, you know? Yeah, exactly. You have to understand that. Exactly. And I think that psychological stress too, you know, as you were talking about that example, that's a cool example, by the way. One of the things about psychological stress is that

it alters behavior, right? You know, people tend to get erratic with their day-to-day habits when the stress gets too high. You start doing things you don't normally do. You start snacking on foods that you may not normally eat. You start, you know, picking up weird habits, you know? You start chain smoking outside. Oh, yeah. But, you know, everybody has these, right? You know, there's sort of little coping mechanisms that we have that just sort of keep us going, you know, Oh, yeah. fitness. It's the daily habits that help you lose weight or gain weight, right? Well, by the same token, it's those daily habits that can pop out under chronic psychological stress that end up affecting the sort of, you know, what we think of as the main drivers of recovery and training, which is your food and sleep. And so they're kind of, it's kind of a double whammy, right? Because they have,

because psychological stress, as you just laid out, has an actual physical impact in the body, but it's also going to alter your habits, which will also have an effect on the body, right? Yeah, it's hard to, that's one of the hardest things I have to deal with, with older clients, you know, because I have a lot of folks that I coach that are in their 40s and, you know, or maybe even early 50s. And a lot of them tend to be, life is very full for them. They're at peak career, stress is high in their jobs. Their families are, you know, they have their full families. Their families are, you know, they have their full families. The kids are older and have lots of activities.

And there's just a lot going on. And it's hard sometimes to just, you know, I'll see it because I'm looking at this from an objective standpoint from a distance. But it's hard for them to help people realize sometimes like, hey man, you're just burning the candle at both ends and we've got to take a step back in the training if you want to get further ahead in the future. Because if we go at the same pace we're doing now, we're just going to run you into the ground. And then we got a real problem. But yeah, that's a great example.

I like that you've laid that's a great example. I like that you've laid that out. So what I'm, what I'm kind of picking up from this conversation here is that if you are into, if you want to be a serious lifter and you want to do this for a long period of time, you know, you want to be, you want to lift for years and not just do this for a couple of years. Um, you have to understand the stress recovery adaptation cycle, and you're going to have to be able to come up with your individual SRA cycle and apply that to your training because yes, you can hire a coach and coaches can help you to learn that and,

and learn some ways to navigate stretching out your stress recovery cycle as you run into roadblocks. But as coaches, we can't understand all of the unique aspects of the stress that you encounter in your life outside the gym, right? And you're going to have to develop your own intuition around that. And you're going to have to develop your own intuition around that. And, you know, and so you have to learn, you have to learn how this, how the stress recovery adaptation cycle works, and then what you would do with the programming. And I think this is goes back to like our RPE discussion from the last episode, right? The advanced lifters, whether you use RPE or not, at some point, you're going to have to introduce some auto regulation.

And you're going to have to, as a coach, you have to give some leeway to lifters to make some training decisions on their own, right? Like whether it's, you know, perform this within a range of weights, or, you know, I want you to do this lift for a max effort single, or, you know, however you define it. There's got to be some sort of auto-regulation. And that's just a recognition of this fact that we've been talking about, which is they're going to have very individual, unique stressors that we can't fully understand as coaches. And we have to account for that. 100%. And yeah, it's something that you got to be honest with yourself about, ultimately.

And, you know, a lot of people aren't. You know, they want to think it's a programming problem. It's a diet problem. They'll program hop. They'll coach hop. They'll try this diet, that diet. And at the end of the day, all these stressors are very real. They're very real.

And you have to take them seriously, you know. And when I, you know, I go in sometimes and I didn't sleep enough and then I'm shy a few reps on my squat. You know, I go in managing expectations, but then I, you know, I try to do as much as I can. You know, I always go for it. Right. Yeah. But then when it doesn't go well, I'm like, well, I slept four hours yesterday, you know, or five hours. Right.

And then two weeks later, I'll get three more reps, you know, and I've just gotten used to that. Just the fact that I go in there with that and just let it roll off my shoulders, I think that has made it a lot easier. Yes. So, yeah. So, we've talked about too much stress and what that looks like. And too much stress could be in the form of trying to squat three times a week forever or in the form of you had some shit happen to you outside of the gym. You know, you had a bad day at work, you know, having problems at home, you know, your car broke down, all these things, you know, you're sick, you're, we didn't even mention illness, right?

Yeah, right, yeah. Like, all these things, you know, so that's, you know, that's how too much stress typically manifests. Then, you know,, uh, not enough recovery, the most classic case, you're not eating enough, you're not sleeping enough, you know, or, uh, you're not giving yourself enough time between those limited attempts, which is, let's go back to, you know, what we were talking about earlier with upper body. That's a problem I was running into that I said I'd come back to. Yeah, yeah. I had compulsive bench syndrome, which I think there's probably more popular broadly than compulsive squat syndrome. Right, right. Most people bench. Not a lot of people squat, you know, relatively speaking.

And, you know, I did an absolute linear progression years ago. Then, you know, I just got in this habit of, okay, I'm going to start a program. I'm going to bench, you know, whatever weight. Then I'm going to add five pounds, and I'm going to keep doing that every week, you know, maybe two and a half pounds, you know, I just got in this habit of, okay, I'm going to start a program. I'm going to bench, you know, whatever weight. Then I'm going to add five pounds and I'm going to keep doing that every week, you know, maybe two and a half pounds, you know. And then eventually I'd like misrep, I'm like, all right, well, I'm going to max out. And then, you know, with the exception of this little period of time in 2020, where I just got fat and the bench went up from better leverage, I really haven't went up on my bench Well, recently, I'd started this arm program, there's, you know, doing 10s on bench, and I'm doing dumbbell bench and incline and a lot of isolation stuff for triceps. And, you know,

we can talk about that more specifically in a different episode, but basically doing a lot of volume. And the first I ran this similar similar program i'm on my third time now first time i ran it you know everything went up pretty fast as you would expect because i haven't done these movements and i'm like yeah you know like novice effect right right yep second time i ran it uh my back work kept going up so all my rows and stuff kept going up my arm work kept going up no problem like the biceps and triceps because i just don't train this stuff you know but then the bench just fell off a cliff i got proximal biceps tendonitis so you know you're not non-anatomical people out there that's where you're you get tendonitis right where the shoulder connects to the pec that's your bicep you know where your

bicep connects to your shoulder yeah right on that like coracoid process yeah yeah right there yeah right there in the corner so i got that so i got biceps tendonitis up there and uh then i just could not progress my freaking bench my incline a little bit kept going up at my like my flat dumbbell bench and then later on when i put the barbell back in they just were not moving and like i ran into this problem where you know I benched dumbbell benched 90s, I did 10 reps, barely got it, then it fell off a cliff for the second and third set. This happened the first time I ran the second time. So that's where I finished the first program, I finished at 90 for 10, right. And I didn't get three sets with it. Then the second run at it, I'm like, well,

I got stronger from the first time. So I'm going to start there, which I was able to do with other exercises that were newer to me and progress from there, right? Well, with that one, I got stronger from the first time, so I'm going to start there, which I was able to do with other exercises that were newer to me and progressed from there, right? Well, with that one, I just did 90 the entire program because I can only get one set of like nine or 10 and maybe 10 one week, nine one week. And after that, I finished. I was going to run another variation of the program the third time. But at this time, I'm like, I have to change something because I got tendonitis and it's not going up. I'm getting stuck in the same place. So not enough stress or too much stress, right? Or not enough recovery or too much stress. So I'm like, okay, with the squat and the deadlift, I've basically gotten it to every two to four weeks, depending on where

the intensity is. Right. You know, with the higher intensity sets being once a month, right? If I'm trying to hit a five rep PR or three rep PR, uh so i'm like i've never done this with bench i just try to go up weekly forever never never you know so i guess i'm better than the three time a week squat situation but i've always just wanted to add weight every week so i'm like all right let's just do exactly what i did for the squat the deadlift except with more volume because it's upper body, right? So you can recover a little bit faster, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, I'm going to do 90% one week and then 100% the next week.

So, you know, when I got to the dumbbells, I did, I think, 80, what, 81, I think? Or no, no, I started with 92.5. It was my intensity. So the first week, I didn't even go heavy because I think the last week of the first phase was heavy. So I'd already been alternating. I didn't do any dumbbell flat bench. I did. Oh, no, I did do it. I did do it. And I was doing it every other week. Sorry. It was, I was, I was doing it after the incline. So the, the weight was lower because I was going into it tired. So then I flipped that for the second phase where I'm flat benching with the dumbbells first and then incline second. So I'm fresh now, right? So I can do more weight. So that first week I did like 82 pounds, I think, for three sets of 10. And I got

them all. And you know, I was tired because the week before was heavy. And then I kept my tricep work heavier that week. So heavy triceps, light bench. Following week, loaded up 92 and a half, got three sets of 10. So remember, the previous phase, I did 90 for one set of 10 and could not get more than eight or nine for the subsequent sets, right? Yeah, right, right. But then the first time I put 92 and a half on, I got three sets of 10, all three, no problem.

I wouldn't say no problem. You know, the last rep was a bit of a grinder on the second and third set. The first set, I could have done 11 or 12. Yeah, right, right. So it works, you know. So then that week, I'm like, okay, well, I'll dial the tricep work down this week since the bench work is heavy. And then the following week, which is this week, so I'm on week three of this, I did 83 or 84 for my bench. And then I made the tricep work all heavy.

Yeah. So then next week, I'll dial down the tricep work, and I'll ramp up the bench work, and I'll go for 95, right? And now my bench is finally moving. But see what I mean? On the bicep stuff, same thing. moving but see what i mean on the bicep stuff same thing uh i did six months straight basically weekly linear progression on all sorts of curls you know yeah right and i never had to deload when starting a new cycle and then when i redid the program the second time i started where i ended and added to that well this third time around remember now i'm getting close to nine

months and typically novices getting close to nine months, and typically novices don't last nine months, you know, when we're talking about just, you know, for the big barbell lifts. Well, it's the same kind of thing with, you know, any lift. Now, I finished up the second run at this. So at the six-month phase, I started getting some golfer's elbow on my right, and then I kind of ignored it, and part of it was technique. Like, I was, I think I was, you know, you see these guys not lock out. I used to make fun of them, these bodybuilders that don't lock out on their curls. There's a reason for that. When you extend your elbow completely, like do a tricep extension at the bottom of a curl,

your tendon is going to bear a lot of that load and you will feel it when it's heavy. And that's where, so I was doing this on a preacher curl and I was locking out my elbow. And then eventually the weight got heavy enough, and I started getting tendonitis. Then the other side started probably compensating. I got on the other side. So I just looked at it the same way. I'm like, okay, well, I got to curl light one week.

I'm going to curl heavy one week, and that's what I've been doing. It's been healing slow because I'm still doing stuff, so it tends to be slower when you keep training. And I'm not training through it, you know. But it's going away. It should be gone soon. And I'm not worried about it. But once I switched to that split, the tendonitis started calming down.

And the curling variant that I can still do, I can do a regular curl. I can't supinate because I think it was actually the brachioradialis tendon probably that was aggravated at first. Now it's mostly in the forearm, brachioradialis. Yeah. But, uh, but I can curl with a supine grip just fine and push it to failure as

long as it's, as long as it's 12 reps. If I'm doing less than 10, it will hurt, you know, and, uh, it's getting better. But yeah, again, you know, now my curls are more intermediate than before. So every other week, you know, and then when that starts to be a problem every three weeks, so but the way I look at it now is I'm not pulling up templates online or trying to use all this over complicated strength and conditioning bullshit. Simply looking at it as, okay, probably need more

recovery because the stress has now gotten greater than it used to be. Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that's what we're trying to outline here is that, you know, if you start looking at this systematically and diagnosing what's going on, you can learn a lot about programming just by following the way that you're responding. And, and you have to, and I think what's important, too, is just to kind of take where you're at, it sounds really obvious. But if it when you're running into the issue, try to take a systematic logical approach to it, and diagnose what's going on, and then apply the fix. Don't worry about what other people are doing or what you've seen in other programs.

Because, again, remember, by definition, when you're doing this stuff, you are intermediate or advanced. And one of the things that comes along with that is it becomes very individual. comes along with that is it becomes very individual and programs can in in real life in real practice can be you know very different from lifter to lifter and it can be very different with the same lifter over a period of time right uh so you know you kind of i know i'm preaching the choir here sometimes i think my programming needs to look a certain way because that's what other people are doing. And I have to pinch myself sometimes and be like, oh, hey, dude, like just, you know what you need to do. You've already seen the problem and you know what the fix is. Just apply it, do it. And, but I, you know, I know I've run into that. I'm sure some, some of you out there have run into

that same problem. Okay. And the last thing I will say, I wanted to point out here that I thought was just kind of a helpful thing. So I think it was Dan Flanick on Andy Baker's show on the Baker Barbell podcast. I think he said this originally, and I forget which episode it was on. So sorry about that. But he said simply that he has started to think about stress in the stress recovery adaptation cycle as a dose rather than, you know, tonnage or intensity or anything like that. Right. dose and you develop a sense, an intuition of how much stress is in a dose in a workout over time, right? And again, this is going to be individual. For me, rack pulls may not tax me that much, but for you, a rack pull might constitute a very high dose of stress. Oh yeah, for me it is definitely. Yeah. Interestingly, I tend to recover from those better than pulls from the floor.

Interesting. You know, but that's the thing, right? It can be very individual. So the point being is that when you become advanced and you're thinking about iterating your training and spreading out your recovery cycle, you can think of the stress not as much in terms of sets and reps, but simply as how much dose am I getting here? And it can work, I think, with a wide rep range, right? You can think of a set of 10 on the squat as being a heavy dose. A set of five can be a heavy dose, right?

Three sets of 10 on a dumbbell could be a heavy dose. Oh, yeah. Right? And so I found that more helpful when I'm thinking about planning the big picture of my program is think about, okay, I want a high dose of stress on this workout. And then the following week, I want a light dose. Okay, then I can start to think about my set and rep range that I want to use. Right now, okay, I've been working fives for a long time. And you know, I'm kind of in a reset kind of part of my cycle. Okay, let me think about doing

eights and 10s. But I still want a heavy dose here, or a high dose, however you want to think about it. And so yeah, I found that to be really helpful too because the sets and reps are going to change for a number of reasons we've talked about in the past. Once you're no longer a novice, fives can sometimes, fives are still a very useful rep range for strength building,

but sometimes you got to get away from them for a while to get things moving. Yeah, fives forever is a problem. It is, right? Eights and tens can be a great stimulus if you just haven't done them, either in a long time or never done them. So, you know, but you can apply a high dose of stress, whether you're doing tens, eights, fives, triples, singles, whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the big takeaway here is that when you are programming yourself, you know, you want to consider, you know, stress,

the mechanical stress you're applying through lifting, the amount of recovery you're allowing yourself between stressors, you know, in terms of the lifting program. And then you want to think about the stress that is being applied to you. Sometimes you're not applying this actively. Sometimes you are, you know, if you're in another sport, we didn't even talk about that. But, you know, you want to think about the stress that is being applied to you in life, as well as additional stress that you're applying to yourself. Let's say you're another sport, you know, just throw that in there. I think we kind of get the general idea now. So we don't have to dive into that. That could be another episode. But you want to think about that, and then as well as the recovery outside of the weight room, not just the time between PR attempts,

but how much you're eating, how much you're sleeping, and those things. And keep that in the back of your mind when you're planning your program, when you're executing it. When things go wrong, don't narrow it down to, oh, I need a new diet or I need this supplement or I need a new program. It's not that simple, right? You have competing stressors always. The extent of it can vary, but you always have competing stressors because lifting is the only thing that's stressing you out. Yeah, right. So that's what you want to think about. So yeah, those are my two cents on it. I think we really dug a lot deeper into this than

we planned to, which I think is cool. It's a positive. Sometimes that happens, and I'm happy when it does. Hopefully the listeners are just as happy. And yeah, do you have anything else you want to add, Trent? Yeah, no i i think that's good i think that's good let's sign off man all right well thank you for tuning in to 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 at weights double underscore and double underscore plate. All right. Excellent. You can find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream. Or if you want to send me an email about training programming, if you want some help with this stuff, I can do that. Email me jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right. We'll talk to you again

in a couple of weeks.