Weights and Plates Podcast - #60 - The Non-Linear Progression

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

A common frustration for intermediate lifters in their first couple years of training is an inability to maintain their peak strength. Whether it's a 1RM, a 5RM, or even a PR for sets across, for the vast majority of people something will interrupt their strength training progression and knock them off track, and they'll miss lifts they have previously hit. On top of that, attempting new PR's will become more unpredictable, and even if they did everything right, the weight sometimes just won't move. Did they get weaker? Is all their previous work in vain?   Of course not. What these trainees experience is the difference between building strength and expressing strength. Learning to manage your expectations over the long haul is an important part of training for life. You won't always be at your peak (after all that's what makes a peak, a peak), but if you pay attention to moving up your floor over time, then new, higher peaks will eventually come. In the meantime, learn to set reasonable expectations, understand what's happening when you stall out, and set yourself up for success by committing to the process, rather than hanging your enjoyment solely on PR's.   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

thank you for tuning in to the weights and plates podcast i am robert santana i am your host along with trent jones my co-host i'm trying to finish uh chewing over here i'm trying to bulk up man what's going on you're bulking i'm kind of doing the same, man. I ate two protein cookies today. Two protein cookies? Are those better than the protein donuts? I like protein cookies and protein chips. I don't like any other protein shit.

Who makes the cookie? Lenny and Larry's. And I only like the chocolate donut flavor. Okay. Oh, I think I've seen've seen this it come in the white package I always see those on the shelf I've never tried one I had a complete cookie for a while I don't know if they if they kept it up or if it was just like a test thing but quest made like instead of their protein bars like they normally make they made little protein donuts yeah don't recommend they were pretty terrible everything quest sucks except their chips now here's the problem those chips they're pretty fucking salty and you just want to keep eating them oh yeah yeah the chips are

delicious for what they are it's it's like a yeah it's like a protein dorito but they're also they're fucking expensive man i see them do like 250 a bag right or something oh more than, but they're also, they're fucking expensive, man. I see them at 250 a bag, right? Or something like that. No, they're like five bucks a bag. And for like a little ass bag, I mean, maybe they get, I, I, I have bought them on sale. That's the only reason I bought them. I wouldn't pay full price, but when I see them in the store, they're like, yeah, several dollars per bag, which is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure I get four bags for 10 bucks or something like that. Maybe you have to order them in bulk or something, but I see them at Walmart all the time. We have a big bag of four. Yeah, that's, yeah, but they are good. They are good. I will grab them

on a road trip. It's a little guilty pleasure. Yeah. Well, today we have a topic that's near and dear to our hearts. A reality that several years of barbell training will sink into you is that, you know, what we call the linear progression. like not the novice linear progression like we talk about in starting strength but just linear progression in general um it doesn't actually happen that way in real life that's not the way the training goes and so that's what we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk a little bit of programming and uh the the non-linear progression of lifting yeah because i think this is important um you know we even when we talk about the novice linear progression, you know, just like I always say when it comes to research articles, for instance, right? You always hear me say that you should evaluate them on their assumptions. And it's the same thing with a training program, any training program. And one of the things that I've criticized on here many times is that most training programs assume good technique. And we know that that's not the

case most of the time, especially the more complex the lift is, you know, uh, machine tricep extension. Yeah. You'll probably do it mostly right. The first time, you know, I would think low bar squat, probably going to fuck that up. Any squat in general, bar squat probably going to that up any squat in general you're probably going to up but especially the low bar um so the novice linear progression also has assumptions and you know one of those assumptions is good technique but the book that outlines how to perform the exercises prescribed in that program assumes your technique is probably fucked up. So we get kind of a pass here, you know, a pretty hard pass here. You know, technique is emphasized in 90% of starting strength. That's basically the whole book. Yeah, the whole book is technique. You know, there's,

you know, a chapter on programming, a chapter on diet, but most of it is on exercise technique. So the novice linear progression as a templated program kind of gets a pass on that. Yes, the assumption is good technique, but good technique is emphasized throughout the author's body of literature there. So there are other assumptions there too, though, right? Good recovery, age. There's the assumption that you're a young man if you're following that program right wasn't the first edition of starting strength aimed at

like football coaches like kind of youth you know high school sport coaches athletes yeah yeah high school and probably college too i would think but mostly high school yeah i have um i've seen like a framed copy i think i think deaton our friend darren deaton has a framed copy. I think Deaton, our friend Darren Deaton, has a framed copy of the first edition. So I've never flipped through it. And then one of my members had a second edition, the spiral bound copy. And I just kind of flipped through it one day.

I said I didn't have a chance to read through it. But I know that Starting Strength, the perspective of who it was written for changed through each edition. That's what they say at the seminars. I don't know if they say it anymore, but that's what they used to say at the seminars. Yeah, so if you pick up a copy of the third edition,

which is the current one, you'll notice it's written to the lifter. So that lifter could be, yeah, it's not, there's no assumption as to who that lifter is necessarily, but yeah, the origins are in a young male probably playing high school or college sports. That's 100% accurate. Yeah.

So, you know, I don't know how, I don't think that's clearly highlighted in the third edition, is it? I don't recall. Yeah, I don't either. I think part of my problem is it's been a while since I've read it cover to cover. I need to do that again. been a while since I've read it cover to cover. I need to do that again. But I've also, my experience of the book has now been filtered through hundreds of hours of podcast conversations, especially in my background working with Darren Deaton. We had a show that was all about masters lifters, 40-Fit Radio. And, you know, and then our colleague, Jonathan Sullivan, wrote his book,

And then our colleague, Jonathan Sullivan, wrote his book, The Barbell Prescription, about training for masters. So anyway, yeah, I think the point is that there is an assumption that you're a young male, which means that you have high testosterone, good recovery resources. You're probably starting from a higher baseline than other people to begin with. baseline, uh, than other people to begin with. And when you look at someone who runs that, there's some examples in the back of the blue book, as well as in the gray book, uh, practical programming of what a well, quote unquote, a well run linear progression looks like. And it's some guys squatting into the like three hundreds for three sets of five, um, very regularly. And it's, and it shows like, you know, at the very beginning, he starts at whatever he starts out. I'm just making up numbers, 185 for three sets of five. And he makes 10, 20 pound jumps. The first few workouts that slows down to five pound jumps. And then three or four months later, he's squatting, I don't know, 335, 365 for three sets of five. Okay. Right. That,

that is what a linear progression looks like. Uh that is a young college-aged male who really dedicated themselves to A, good technique, like you mentioned, and B, recovering, right? And then also was young and had high testosterone to begin with. So there's a lot of assumptions there, and that's just not reality for most people, right? Unless you fit that demographic and unless you're willing to do what that guy did and recover well, then it's probably not going to be your experience. No. And, you know, that's something that's kind of missed, right? That thing needs to be scaled to the lifter. And I think that the companion books help with that.

You know, if you've read Practical Programming for Strength Sports, third edition, or the Barbell Prescription, which is written for people over 40. And I would say people that are of adult age, over 30, that work a lot. I would say it kind of applies there, too, to an extent. Maybe not quite that extreme, but I've had some young men that recover like old men. Yep, absolutely. Because of lifestyle. So this is a problem that I have is that people read this and they see this example of, you know, the young guy squatting over 300, like you said. You know, you and I, you know, when we were doing it, we didn't see it as that heavy attainable.

We were young men, you know? Right. Yep. And it made sense for us and it worked that way for us. You know, we did what we were supposed to do. But, you know, more and more we're getting people that are 35 plus and don't have that experience for a variety of reasons. And what ends up happening is the novice linear progression that lasts six to nine months with minimal interruptions for an 18-year-old boy living in mom's house, uh, you know, may only last two to four months, you know, especially for guys over 50. Yes. Um, and then there's just this irritation,

aggravation, frustration that kind of comes along with it because, Oh, I'm not strong enough. And it's like, well, you know, I take RIP's perspective. No, no, you're fucking not. But you kind of started this late too, you know? Right. Sorry. Yeah. None of us are strong enough. Right. There's no such thing as too fucking strong. Yeah.

Just like the guy that CT Fletcher. Right. Yeah. CT Fletcher, the guy that squatted 365 at the end of his LP, guess what he's thinking? I'm not strong enough. I need to add more.

Michael Wolfe squatted 500 plus at the end of his, and he didn't think he's strong enough. No. No. Yeah. He keeps getting hurt trying to get stronger, you know? Right. Yeah.

That's another conversation. But yeah. So, you know, yeah. So expectations. The thing is that I find that people consistently misunderstand about starting strength, especially people that have, you know, kind of didn't grow up with starting strength when they were spending more time talking about the model aspect of starting strength. I think this was really kind of maybe five or six years ago when they were really kind of, they were still actively hashing out parts of the curriculum at their seminars. You know, the lectures were evolving a little bit. They've been set in stone for a while now, as far as I can tell. I'm sure there's little tweaks

here and there, but the thing that I find people misunderstand about starting strength is they see it as a exercise program or a template. And that's not, if you, if you read Rip's writings, which includes the books, but also his articles, you will find that the way that Rip is talking about training is as a model. And that includes the programming aspect of it, right? So there's a model for how to perform the lifts, but there's also a model for how to program. And the linear, the novice linear progression is a model for programming, which is that the simplest and most effective way to get a novice strong is to find an appropriate starting weight and then add weight to the bar every single workout, performing the same exercises on an AB schedule,

right? That's the model. Some people take that as a template, like it has to go exactly that way. And that's not the way things work out in reality, right? The model is where you start. And that's how I'm going to start my idea of how I'm going to iterate programming for a novice that walks in the door. I'm going to start with the assumption that we're going to learn, I'm going to teach them the lifts, we're going to find a good starting point for each one of those lifts. And I'm going to add weight to the bar every single time they come in. However, going to add weight to the bar every single time they come in. However, the way it often happens in reality is a month in, maybe there's a little tweak that pops up. Hey, you know, my elbow hurts or like, you know, tweak something, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter what it is. Okay.

And then we can't just cram them. I can't just ram them through continued weight increases. Or maybe we get a little bit down the road, we get a month, six weeks down the road, the squat is now feeling like starting to actually get heavy. And then their form starts to break down. Sometimes we might have to stop or even back up a little bit on the weight on the bar in order to fix that so that they can make progress down the road. That's reality. That's not what the model says. The model says you keep adding weight, right?

So it's just kind of understanding that difference, right? The model just tells you the direction and where to go. Reality means that you're going to have a bumpier road. It's not going to look linear for most people because there are going to be things that come up to disrupt your progress. Mm-hmm. Yeah. most people because there are going to be things that come up to disrupt your progress. Yeah. So, you know, what happens ideally isn't what happens most often, right? You get a range of results. So, you know, whereas the young kid, he might add 200 pounds to a squat in a couple months, you might add maybe a third of that you know um simply because

you got sick you traveled for work you missed a workout right your kid kept you up at night your dog kept you up at night in my case i had three months where i'd made no fucking progress this year first i had a puppy then i moved then uh my air circulation was keeping me up at night. It was fucking hot, cold in my room, you know. Yeah, right. Swings of temperature. So I had a series of bullshit go on from the months of May, June, July, and August. Not so much.

Yeah, was it May? Yeah, so four months. Fuck, I didn't even think of that. Right. I just started performing better at the end of August, you know. at the end of August, you know? And for somebody getting into this older, like I said, man, should you be stronger? Yeah, you should have also started earlier. Can't go back in time. You can't fix those things. You know, these are non-modifiable things. You know, they're built, baked into the cake. You are starting later in life. You are limited compared to your younger

self. There's no going back. You're not going to outperform your 20-year-old self. 50 is not the new 40. 60 is not the new 50. 30 is not the new 20. Your body declines with age. We're staving off that decline, and we're making you better than you otherwise would be at 50, 60, 70, or whatever age you start. But we're not reversing shit. You're not going back in time and getting younger. We're not growing younger. We're not regaining our youth. We're trying to make the best out of what we have. Right. Right. And I'm saying this as a 39 year old, so I get it. I am not 60. Right. But I've worked with a lot of men over 35, a lot of women over 35. This tends to be more of an issue in men. I mostly get men that hire me to get very strong.

Women hire me for different reasons, typically weight loss, but I do get strength athletes as well. I've had some phenomenally strong women that I've had the pleasure of training over the years. But in general, people that want to get strong that hire me tend to be men. If that shifts, great. You're welcome to hire me, ladies, if you want to get strong. But to that point, yeah, you're not going to de-age yourself. You're going to be on old man programming within two to three months, whereas the young kid, it's going to take him six years to even get close to that.

I mean, fuck, when did I start doing that? 2020, I want to say. young kid it's going to take him six years you know to even get close to that i mean fuck when did i start doing that 2020 i want to say that was seven years of serious strength training with 15 years before that of fucking around in the gym doing some sort of squat bench and pull up you know right yep yep uh so you know i was in the gym for a long time before i had to train like an old man and i trained like an old man for different reasons. I'm not recovering fast enough because the weight's fucking heavy and I've been doing this a long time. You aren't recovering fast enough because you're 55. Baseline is you're not recovering as fast as a 25-year-old.

You're just not. There's no fixing that. There's no fixing that. Some guys get on drugs, but guess what? The 25-year-old on drugs is going to outperform you. There is no going that. You know, you can, there's no fixing that. You know, some guys get on drugs, but guess what? The 25-year-old on drugs is going to outperform you. There is no going back in time. I cannot stress this enough. So you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that, A, you're not going to add 15 pounds a week to your squat forever and ever and ever.

Right. You know, that's pretty clear. You know, and I think a lot of guys do understand that part of it where we run into problems is guess what buddy you know it's great you're going to progress real well month one month two but you're going to you know dramatic music here miss a lift not fail a lift you're going to miss a lift. Not fail a lift. You're going to miss a lift. I was just told the difference between the two right before this episode. This was kind of just halfway through the conversation. I'm like, well, fuck it. Let's just make an episode on this.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah, so this has been on the brain lately. Something we've been dealing with. And ladies, you're going to miss too. That's right. And you also are not failing. But you are going to miss. I've noticed differences in how people react within

the sexes and between the sexes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, we're not saying all this to bum you out, right? You know, like, look, you can, there's always, it's that thing. There's always somebody stronger than you. You can always be stronger than you are. You could have always started earlier, all that, right? It doesn't matter when you started, you would still feel that way. So we're not, we're not trying to bum you out. We're just really here to doing this episode to set expectations. And I think when you have realistic expectations of what you can achieve in the short term, then it's easier to hang with the programming and stay in it for the long term. And that's where you're going to see the big progress is over a

much longer scale than you're thinking of. It's not months, it's years. And if you have realistic expectations of what the day-to-day training is going to look like, then you'll find yourself two, three, four, five years down the road of doing this and a lot stronger than you ever thought you could be. But you can't go, what I find is people that run themselves into a brick wall, trying to run the novice linear progression, or sort of the advanced novice phase, as we call it, right after the novice linear progression. They try to run it way too long, they start missing lifts, they reset. So they take 10% or so off the bar and they run it back up using linear progression again. They run into a wall again. They start

missing lifts. They do it again. They do it again. Something gets hurt. So they have to take a lot of weight off the bar. They take some time off because they're pissed about that. They come back. They do it again. They run into a brick wall. I've met a lot of guys that are like this and that's when they seek coaching and help. And one of the first things I tell them is, look, if we can get momentum established in your programming, where we can just keep you on a progression of some rep range, right? If I can't get you three sets of five, maybe I can get you one set of five for a PR. If we can't get one set of five anymore, can we get a set of four? Can we get a set of three? Can we get a double? Right. And just try to achieve momentum so that you're not running straight into a brick wall

for workout after workout. And then, um, you know, opening yourself up to injuries. Then if we can achieve that, you're going to make some progress. It's going to take longer than you think, but we're going to make some progress and you're not gonna feel beat up and trashed and then you know bummed out every workout because you you've set yourself up to failure trying to do something that's not realistic anymore all right so that's that's what we want to talk about is just setting expectations so that you can you can have a better roadmap in your head of what programming looks like over a long period of time, over the lifetime of your lifting career.

And there's a couple of concepts in there that I think we should talk about. So, you know, we kind of mentioned already that there's going to be some technique issues and then lifestyle factors, which will throw you off your game from time to time, especially as a novice. That's the technique. But you'll get to a point where technique becomes less and less of an issue for you. You might have little things pop up here and there that you have to fix, but you're not going to have huge errors anymore if you've been coached and you have been dedicated to perfecting your technique in your one to two years down the road, right? So technique becomes less of an issue over time. However, one thing that starts to become a bigger issue as you get more advanced

and you're into intermediate phases of lifting is, you know, in an intermediate style program, intermediate style program, the space between high intensity bouts of training expands, right? So you might hit your heaviest lift going for a PR, you know, weight on the bar more than you've ever done lift goes to every week, then every two weeks, every three weeks and so on, right? So the space between your heaviest lift starts to expand. And that means that every sort of time that that heavy lift pops up in your training, uh, there's a little bit more pressure, if you will, to achieve that lift, to hit all the reps. And you know, the reality is sometimes you just don't have it in you for whatever reason.

Right. You know, when you're lifting heavy every day, you have fluctuations up and down, but it's, you just, you're always there, right? You're, it's not so heavy yet that it becomes unpredictable. But when you get to be, when you get to where you're on a two, three week plus micro cycle and you have to hit a heavy squat, whatever that rep range is for you at the time, you know, you just, it's a kind of relying on the fact that that day that the heavy squat is programmed, you've eaten well, you slept well the night before, you haven't had too much stress to throw you off and guess what it doesn't always work out

that way and sometimes you miss it you know over a long enough period of time you know just you showing up you're going to improve you're going to have a linear progression over a long enough period of time you know until you get older and you have a linear regression right uh depending on when you start you know if you're 70 and you start at linear regression, right? Depending on when you start. You know, if you're 70 and you start at 70, you're going to have linear progression. You know, if you're 70 and you've been lifting since you were 30, you're going to have a linear regression at that point, you know? So let's just be clear on that. But in general, if you're starting out and you're going to do this for a while, you're generally going to see linear progression.

while, you're generally going to see linear progression. And the thing is, if you kind of zoom in to individual weeks or months, or even an individual year, right, just zoom into the short term, right, you're going to see a very nonlinear progression, right, that generally trends up if you're, you of it right. Yes, yeah. And years ago, I think it was Rekulia, he analyzed all the data and the training logs, and this is self-reported bullshit, but the takeaway we got from that was that everybody was reporting bullshit and still improving. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And we don't think you know we don't think the improvement was a lie because that's not what they were trying to report they were trying to report what the hell they were doing in the weight room and then improved ups and downs and missed reps and all sorts of shit right you know so uh they didn't know that you know that was ever going to be analyzed it was just a training log for people to you know post on a board and connect with others and uh you know i don't a board and connect with others. And, you know, I don't have any reason to believe people were lying, but people lie for a variety of reasons. So let's say an unknown percentage of those were dishonest training logs. It's probably not 100%,

but it's probably greater than 0%. You know, I just don't know. I don't care enough to think about that. You know, we don't know if these squats were high. There's a lot of things we don't know. But what we do know is people just simply reporting their training log for no other reason other than sharing it showed an improvement, even though most of them were actually reporting that they weren't doing the program too. Right. Yep. Yes. That's the letter. Yeah, 3% actually said they followed it to the letter.

Yeah, and that's self-reported, obviously. Yeah, and we haven't seen their squat either. We haven't seen their squat. So, that's at 3%. How many of it, you know? But yeah, even then, yeah, a lot of people, for various reasons, you know, deviated from the model. Yeah, but that's the thing, you know, so I don't think I would not go so far as to say that programming doesn't matter, but consistency absolutely matters more than programming. If you're consistent, you will make progress even with dog shit programming. Now, the problem with dog shit programming is you can lead to a lot of frustration and burnout. And if you're unlucky injury that didn't have to happen, that's a

problem with dog shit programming. But you know, if you keep sticking with it, you'll, you will get stronger. It's just a lot more fun and smooth to, uh, have decent programming. It doesn't even have to be great programming, just decent. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, so, you know, I think the thing we really wanted to hammer on is that you better really like doing this. If you want to get the most you can out of it, You better really like doing this if you want to get the most you can out of it. You better really like doing this because you are going to be pissed off quite frequently, especially once the novice phase is over. Once you are no longer a novice, you are going to get pissed off and you need to learn how to manage that.

Right. It doesn't mean that, oh, it's hard. It's time to quit and go, you know, do ballet, you know, or CrossFit to keep it more relevant, I guess, not be a total jerk off. But, you know, it doesn't mean you're done. You know, and I've seen this time and time again not just in lifting just in lots of things you know people love the honeymoon phase we call it the linear progression here the novice phase right uh you know people love the honeymoon phase and when that's over and the work begins they bail you know like just quit because it's hard you know you know you're signing up for a lot of different things you're not signing up for

lifelong linear progression if that's what you think you're signing up for a lot of different things. You're not signing up for lifelong linear progression. If that's what you think you're signing up for, you better think long and hard about this. The further down this rabbit hole that you get, the more bullshit you're going to have to deal with. Things are going to hurt. Let's put hurting aside, you know, because I went a long time without shit hurting. But let's put that aside because aches are normal. And we're not normalizing abnormal either. You're gonna ache no matter what you know you're gonna ache if you don't lift by the way you know ask any 55 year old untrained man or woman shit my mom had aches you know she you know my point is

number one you are going to go in the weight room and you're going to hit a lift and you're going to feel like a million bucks. You're going to hit, you know, let's say 315 on the deadlift. I'll be modest. I've seen bigger numbers of people get excited over 315 on the deadlift. You're a man, you know, 220, 205 if you're a woman. And then next week, 320 is going to be stapled. Right. It's not going to move.

It's just not going to move. But your squat went up that week. So you're going to feel great about your squat than pissed to be stapled. Right. It's not going to move. It's just not going to move. But your squat went up that week. So you're going to feel great about your squat, then pissed about your deadlift. Right. Then the week after that, your squat might go up again. And then your deadlift will be stapled. 320 will be stapled again. Right.

You missed it twice, right? Then you've got to troubleshoot that, right? And if you have a coach, then that makes things easier because you have somebody else that's unemotional about it, thinking about it. But it doesn't necessarily make it his fault either. Everybody recovers differently. That's what you start doing. When you're coaching a client, you're troubleshooting, you're individualizing over time. Nothing starts individualized.

Everything is templated from the beginning because I don't know who the fuck you are or your physiology. So I hate the word custom training program. It becomes custom. It never starts custom, no matter who the hell you're hiring. And that's anything, by the way. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone has a general roadmap of where they're going to take you. And I don't have too much of a problem with an audience that is familiar with starting strength because they're all following some variation of the same template. But in the Globo Gym world, there's this expectation that custom means I'm going to do something you can't buy on your own. And chances are, probably not. And chances are, the thing you buy on your own, you're not doing right.

Just like we just explained. People have the book. They have websites that have stolen content from the book and shared it. There are many websites that have the templated program from the book, and they still didn't do the program. You're not exempt. I'm not exempt. I wasn't doing the fucking program when I originally DIY'd it. Yep, same here.

So, you know, go open a book and learn guitar and come back, and I'll give give you three months and tell me that you did everything exactly as intended, following all the assumptions on that book. I bet you'll fuck it up. I bet you'll fuck it up. Piano, pick it. You know, pick it. Drawing, art, pick a skill and pick up a book and teach yourself how to do it and tell me that you did the program. Chances are you didn't you know if you go in there and start painting then you hire a painter or somebody who teaches painting you know usually that's a mediocre painter who's good at it was good at teaching painting you know i'm just picking a

skill here uh he's gonna deconstruct everything and take you back to the beginning and have you start all over most likely unless you're a gifted painter and he's gonna say well you could do whatever the you want you're already better than me you know but gifted painters don't hire people to teach them how to paint it's usually us mediocre types that want to learn things we suck at you know um so understand that you know like when you hire somebody there's a process that happens where you you know you get to know the person's style and that person gets to know how you respond to stress, recover to stress, adapt to stress. And that is a process that takes months, if not years, depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Right, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this a little bit. Let's kind of talk about that. I see this the most in the early intermediate phase. I should say like early to mid intermediate phase, if we want to get, give it a name. So just for those of you who aren't familiar, if you're, let's say a novice

and you're not really sure what the next steps look like, um, we have the novice linear progression. It's pretty simple. Uh, there is a phase when you can't do three sets of five on the squat, press, and bench, and you can't do one set of five in the deadlift, heavy every time. There's a phase we call the advanced novice phase where we start to get a little fancy with that and we start to play with the rep ranges

so that you can continue to progress linearly, adding weight to the bar every time, but with a different rep range so a common one is for especially for females if you can't press three sets of five overhead then we'll try and see if you can do five sets of three adding weight okay so that's that's an example that's one example of many and that is how we modify the novice linear progression. And when you're in that phase of modification, we call that the advanced novice phase. Then when you run out of steam on that with all those modifications,

more or less you fall into some sort of weekly progression where every week you have a heavy lift for the given lift. So for the press, you'll have a heavy press and then you'll also have a second press in that week. That's a volume press. That's a, some lighter percentage of the heavy press for more sets and reps. Okay. A common way to do this would be like one set of five, uh, heavy, and then five sets of five at 80 to 90% of that one set of five heavy and then five sets of five at 80 to 90% of that one set of five. Okay. All right. So that's, so you got that right. And then eventually you can't do that anymore.

And then it gets even more complex because now you're probably going to start hitting heavy presses every 10 days to 14 days. Okay. So that's just the general sort of progression. I'm not going to go beyond that because it gets too complicated to talk about. But everyone's going to be in some sort of schedule like that after the novice linear progression. Okay. And this is when I see the lifts. This is when I start to see missed lifts.

And this is where people start to get frustrated. So especially I see this in the upper body in particular. Right. uh so especially i see this in the upper body in particular right so with the overhead press that's probably the biggest one you're going to miss when it gets heavy most likely because of technique the press is so sensitive to technique when you're trying to do it heavy, that you're going to have a phase where you're missing heavy lifts, probably not because you're not strong enough. That's probably not the reason. It's probably just because you cannot execute the technique with that heavy amount of weight in your hands because it's hard. You throw the bar forward one or two inches forward of your

midline because your elbows dropped when you, when you drove out of the bottom and you'll miss that lift. It's not a strength problem. It's a technique problem. So, you know, when we talk about like working through that phase, one of the things you're gonna have to learn how to do is, um, back up a little bit on the heavy days when you're doing those heavy presses, learn how to execute with a heavy load, and then slowly move that heavy set on the intensity day up, right? So maybe this starts to happen. You did one set of five, then you progress that for a little while, then you get two sets of three, you progress that for a little while, then you get to doubles, and all of a sudden you can't fucking do any of

the doubles, right? Nothing's moving. Okay. Well, because you've had some technique breakdown, you might have to back up a little bit, take some weight off the bar, go back to fives and then run it up again on that heavy day in order to poke through. And then next time you get to heavy doubles, all of a sudden now you've got a little bit better technique. You can execute better. They start to move again. And that process right there that I just outlined, that could take three months. Yeah. You know, and you, you know, there's a skill component here. There's a big skill component that I mentioned the press, cause that's a very common one, especially for women. There's a couple of different things going

on. Technique is a big one. It's a big one. Uh, but then there's another thing going on too, which is, um, muscle mass is a big one too. I find this, uh, in particular with women, if you're just small up top and you just got small shoulders, um, a lot of times you're going to run into, uh, you're going to run into a point where you're, you're, you just don't have enough muscle mass around your shoulder joint when you're in that bottom position of the press to get the leverage to drive that bar overhead. And, um, when you come back to that, those heavy presses and you're five pounds heavier, 10 pounds heavier, all of a sudden you've got more muscle mass and fat mass jammed up together around that joint when you're in the bottom of a press and it moves right so leverage matters too um but yeah we could apply that to any of the other lifts too

i just picked the press because that's a very common one for people to stall out on but we could we could say the same thing for the squat deadlift or bench yeah and uh yeah i see i would agree with that it's the upper lifts, it starts to happen first. I see it a lot in the deadlift, especially in people that have been timid about progressing their deadlift, something I've bitched about extensively in writing and on here. You know, get to 225 and go up by five, and then their squat will quickly pass it. get to 225 and go up by five and then their squat will quickly pass it and now you got tired quads you know fatigued back and you're trying to deadlift a pr and it's not moving you know right right you have to consider the impact of the squat on the deadlift you can argue that

the same goes the other way but not so much because you're you know when you're squatting the bar's not stapled you know what i mean right if you were squatting off pins from the bottom position, being your start position, maybe you'd feel some of that. I wouldn't recommend doing that. I don't do that. No, but it's a good way to fatigue yourself enormously. Yeah, exactly. But my point is you're not going to overcome the inertia of the bar rest on the floor. If you've done a whole bunch of squatting leading into that, you know, it's going to be a lot harder, right? And this is why, as you become more advanced, you have to spread out your deadlifts from the floor and time them in such a way where you're optimally recovered. And that's different. You know, like at this point, I could, like I deadlifted Monday.

I'm going to squat today. So it's Tuesday, Wednesday off. So 72 hours, right? And it's going to suck and I'll get it most likely. I hope I don't jinx myself. However, if I try to deadlift Monday after this, it probably won't move. I'm probably at the deadlift Tuesday. It just seems that after I squat, I have to have, what is it? Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I have to have four days in between.

It's just turning into a situation where I might as well just squat twice a month, deadlift twice a month. I think it's all trending in that direction when the volume is high. Now, if I'm peaking, I can do both together because the volume is low. But when I'm building up work capacity, I am not doing both of those on the same day. It's just not happening. And that's an advanced lifter right there. I am not doing both of those on the same day. It's just not happening, you know, and that's an advanced lifter right there. But, you know, two weeks ago, here's an example for you guys that are in intermediate hell right now because that's where this bullshit starts. It's usually once you're well into intermediate, year two most likely.

I squatted on Monday. I tried a deadlift on Friday, and a weight that I had done for eight in the past didn't move. Now, I understand what's happening as a coach and experienced lifter. However, I have worked with hundreds, if not thousands of clients on this. And the response that I get when someone else has this happen is, I got weaker. What the fuck? I'm just backsliding you've heard it too trent right i just had this conversation with uh one of my lifters yesterday um because he's been in a intermediate style program made some good progress and i don't know what about six months into this program? It's been going great. And all of a sudden, it's starting to stall out a little bit.

And I saw the signs of it. And I made some changes to his programming about 12 weeks ago on his squat and deadlift, his volume on his volume days. I made a tweak to that program. And I knew at the time it was going to take probably six to 12 weeks for all that volume to accumulate to the point where it actually caused an adaptation for him. He got a little bit more muscular, better work capacity, et cetera, so that his heavy lists would move better. And, uh, but you know, yeah, but that was 12 weeks where his heavy squat did not go up. So, yeah, so it's, it so it freaked him out a little bit.

That's exactly what was one of his concerns is like, am I like, I'm stalling out, you know, am I? So I would agree. He was stalling out. But he's like, am I going backwards? Am I getting weaker? I'm like, no, I don't think so. I'm seeing the signs of progress. Yeah.

But his heavy squat didn't go up. And you know what? It might not go up the next cycle either. Again, one of the things that I explained to him is that at his level of progression, those heavy lifts, those intensity days, whether it's a single or one set of five or three or whatever, if it's very high intensity, those become less predictable over time. And because of all the reasons we mentioned before, right? You just, you can't control for all the variables. Every time you work out, there's a lot that are just out of your hands. And if the deck stacked against you, when you're going in for a really heavy set of five or single or whatever, it may not move. However, what we have seen over the last 12 weeks of his programming

is that he's upped his volume on the squat and he's moving his volume loads, which fluctuate between 60% of his 1RM and 80% of his 1RM. We've seen those move faster and the 80% days have moved up a little bit. So they got heavier from week one to week 12 over that time span that I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay. There's other indicators. Right. So there's other indicators of progress, right?

The other thing is in his particular program, he's also, he's not just doing low bar back squats for a 1RM. He's also doing variants of the lift, pin squats, pause squats, high bar squats, that kind of stuff. And we've seen those go up, and he's hit some PRs on those in the interim. So that tells me he's making progress and we're trending in the right direction, even if his low bar back squat does not PR. That's right. does not PR. That's right. And to finish my story up, like I said, I attempted to pull a deadlift that I had done for eight reps before. It was 10 pounds shy of my eight rep max. So it wasn't even an eight RM. Right. Right. I attempted to pull it. It didn't even move for a single rep. So I knew

what was happening. I just left it, didn't finish the workout, and I was going to go back the next day. Then I talked to somebody about it, and I decided to give it two days. I'm like, all right, well, you know, the next day is kind of close, so let's do it Sunday for good measure. So I went in Sunday. I slept better throughout the weekend, got a couple days off, and I tripled it. You know, I'm probably could have done five or six, you know, and that was that. Then I finished the rest of the workout just fine, went on with the week. By Wednesday, I was squatting again. Then Sunday rolled around and I'm like, eh, still feeling in my hamstrings and adductors. I'm going to give it another day. Monday, I added 10 pounds to it. Got a triple. Of course I did. You know, these are loads I've done for eight before, you know?

I did, you know, these are loads I've done for eight before, you know, but the point is that it's not like I got insanely weaker because I can't pick up a weight that's quote unquote light that I can do for eight. You know, I didn't just get weaker and lose all my strength, which is what most of these guys tend to think, right? Yep. You know, it's like, oh, I've detrained back to baseline, all this progress lost, you know, and it's all based upon this assumption that you're always your strongest and you're not always your strongest. When you're training for strength, it's very different than expressing strength. And sometimes you don't really see that expression of strength for a long time because recovery is not there, which is why I laugh at these people that try to say, oh, you know, high-intensity lifting, well, they don't even call it that. They say, oh, low volume is, you know, it's just not that

much work, so you don't need to eat a lot, you know. Well, have you ever tried to go to a power lifting meet and max out on low calories? You know, what tends to happen? I think we all know the answer. So just because, you know, the problem with those stupid arguments is that they are operating on the assumptions that indirect calorimetry tells us something about energy expenditure in the weight room, and it does not. So, you know, I get a lot of people, non-academics, you know, typically commercial gym members that, you know, started reading things and, commercial gym members that, you know, started reading things and, you know, gravitate towards bodybuilding and, or quasi bodybuilding workouts, you know, and they think that lifting should feel like a conditioning workout. They have this belief that when you lift heavy, do you do triples or

singles or fives or fours, that is quote unquote, low volume, therefore, you're not burning that many calories. Well, that's bullshit, you know, because you're assuming that the lifting activity operates in the same realm as the aerobic activity, and it doesn't. You can't measure. The only way you're going to measure how many calories are expended during a lifting workout is to put somebody in a whole room direct calorimeter that measures how much heat your body's giving off. Then you'll know how many calories are burnt. But nobody's doing that either.

It's expensive and unnecessary, and, you know, there's a bunch of reasons not to do that. What we do know is that we have to eat more food if we want to express strength, right? And we have to sleep more if we want to express strength. There's a lot that goes into it. We can't be stressed out if we're going to try and produce a true expression of strength, a 1RM. And not a bullshit baseline one RM when you've never lifted before. I'm talking about an experienced train lifter, right? You have to recover. You have to eat, you have to sleep. You have to let the bullshit roll off your shoulders to the best of your ability. You know, there's a lot of things you have to do, right? Yep.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's one reason why those, those lifts, sometimes they don't move when you have done all the programming things required to prepare yourself to do that weight. Right. You know, sometimes you hit a set of three when you should have hit a set of eight or, or you're, you know, you would set yourself up to hit a set of eight, but you hit a set of three. Um, and it's hard to know that the other thing too, is that it, you can't really know to a precise degree what factor is affecting you at any given time. Like there's obvious stuff. Like I didn't sleep well for like three days or I got sick or I haven't been eating much cause I've been traveling and it's

a bunch of stress or whatever. Okay. Well that's obvious, right? That's if, if your performance declines, that's an easy one. Okay. I can fix that. Those are controllable things, but it's not always that obvious, right? Uh, especially when you get older, the older the person, the more that these factors, there's still factors, but you don't always know what exactly it was. Right. So there's not always like a hard answer for like, Oh, well, if you would have just eaten a hundred more grams of rice last night, then you would have gotten five reps instead of three. You know, it's just, unfortunately it's not that simple. We're just, our human beings are too complex. Our physiology is too dynamic to control things to that degree.

Our physiology is too dynamic to control things to that degree. So just remember the idea, this is what I tell people when they're in intermediate hell. I like that term, by the way, I'm going to, I'm going to use that. I always tell people, I'm like, Hey, listen, remember, we have a goal for each workout now, right? When you were a novice, the goal of every workout was to get stronger. Um, and we did that by combining intensity and volume in the same workout, right? You just do three sets of five and that's it. And you're going to recover from that. And it's an entire micro cycle of training in one workout. Okay. When you're an intermediate and you're on a one to two week micro cycle, each workout now has different goals. We split up those Each workout now has different goals.

We split up those intensity and volume components of producing more strength or getting more strength adaptation. We split them over multiple workouts. So keep in mind the goal of the workout. So if you're in there and you're like, okay, I programmed myself to hit a heavy set of five on my squat today at 365. Okay. And you only hit a double. Okay. Well, but did you achieve the goal of the day, which was to lift something fucking heavy, hopefully for PR kind of depends on where you're at. If you're very, if you're fairly advanced, it may not be a PR, but it will be heavy, right? If you are more of an early intermediate, it's going to be a PR.

Okay. You didn't hit the five, but you hit the two. You still achieve the goal of the day, which was to hit something heavy. And then on your volume days, you got to get through the volume. You've got to accumulate the four or five sets of five or whatever you're doing. Right? So if you, if you achieve both of those things, then over time, you're going to get the strength adaptations you want. It just may not manifest on a given day. So that's what I always tell people is keep, keep is keep your eyes on like what the goal of today is and understand that. You need to understand how the programming works at at least a basic level, even if you're being coached so that you can know kind of what's supposed to happen on this day. You know, I'm going to program that set of five. I don't always know that you're going to get it though. And it's okay. I'm not freaking out if you don't get it. Right. So that's one thing I'd say.

The last thing I wanted to talk about quickly, you kind of brought this up with your deadlift example, is I think once you get fairly advanced, you've been doing this for several years, I think it's important to keep in mind an idea of like a ceiling and a floor. And for me, one of the things I look for in terms of like, am I trending in the right direction? Am I getting stronger? Am I getting weaker? Am I kind of just hanging on? Is I look at, you know, I have certain markers. So for me on the deadlift, I want to be able to pull 405 for some reps. That's a floor for me, right? So my PR deadlift for 405 is a set of six.

My, uh, my, but I might hit a set of one, you know, just a single one day. That's okay. I'm there. Now, if I can't move 405 for anything and it's not a recovery issue, then I know that I'm getting weaker, right? I don't know that I'm getting weaker if I went for, if I go from 405 for six one day to 405 for two, just like in your example. But I have, I have that certain marker, right? And I've got, I've got other numbers in my head for other lifts that are sort of floors for me. And, uh, so I do all of my programming iterations and, you know, I kind of, I mark my progress on my heavy days against those floors to see if I'm trending in the right direction.

Do you do something like this? Sort of. Yeah. Like I of know. I have numbers in my head where I'm like, I'm trying to think. On some lifts, yeah. Like, the press most recently, 135. If I can't do that for 10, something's gotten fucked up. Yeah, sure, sure. And that's what was happening. First, it was like, well, my shoulders are tired, my triceps are tired because I'm benching and doing all this arm work. Right.

I mean, I was still getting like 145 for 10, you know, barely. But, you know, my best was 160 when I was heavier, 150, one when I was lighter. So I was close, you know, I was close to where I was with more fatigue. But then all of a sudden, you know, I was barely getting 140 for 10. I was barely getting 137 and a half for 10. Then before I knew it, I could not get 135 for 10. And that's when I knew something was wrong. And, you know, I started changing my approach to that.

But, you know, that's the only time in recent history where I've legitimately detrained and got weaker. And part of that was because I shifted my focus in terms of how I wanted to train those muscle groups because I want a bigger bench press right now. Yeah. I don't think I had to quite – I mean, it remains to be seen. I don't know that the press had to detrain that much. You know, I think that, you know, we'll see how the next year goes. Because that was the first year of hypertrophy. Now I'm trying to express some of that strength, see where my bench is.

And I might go back to hypertrophy again, you know? And that's a good point, though, that you bring up, is sometimes that's what has to happen. Or high rep. First of all, high rep, not hypert. I'm not going to play into the bullshit. I did a high rep with more accessories, a.k.a. bodybuilding program.

That's a fair name for it. Uh, I've always been training for hypertrophy people. Um, if you're adding weight to the bar, you're going to get hypertrophy. Uh, but I did body building style workouts for a year. Yeah. And now it's to a point where I'm like, I need to see where the fuck my bench is. You know, I've grown my pecs. I've grown my shoulders. I've grown my arms. Now let's see where the my bench is because my training weights were not good right so yes it's always hypertrophy if you are getting stronger it's always about strength people yes i totally agreed um but you bring up a good point there that uh that you know sometimes one thing has to take a step back for a period of time in order for another lift to move forward.

Right. And we see this on the press and the bench in particular, you know, they're not always going to move up, uh, in lockstep, you know, sometimes one just stalls out for a while while the other one keeps moving. Sometimes one goes down a little bit while the other one goes up, right. It's kind of, you, sometimes your programming will demand that you emphasize one over the other in order to make progress um and you know so there you go over time those floors move up you know there was a time a few years ago where 365 was kind of my floor on the deadlift okay and that's crept up over the years and i hope that in the future i get to where it's 415 is my new floor right so you know it's not like a it's, it's just sort of something that sort of happens.

You notice this as you run programming year after year, and you've got, you know, various changes and interruptions and stuff, and you have to start over, you start to see these little patterns emerge and those floors become kind of obvious to you. And this is, so this is just long-term trends. And that's what, that's what this episode is about today. Long-term trends, the life cycle of lifting. You better really like doing this. Yeah, you gotta fall in love with the process. I said that on a previous episode.

You gotta love the process of training and improving from where you are today. You gotta love improving yourself two, three months from now. If you get hung up on the biggest numbers you've ever lifted, and if you can't constantly improve on those, you're not happy. It's going to be a hard time. It's going to be a hard time. You know, I got a Facebook memory. It threw me a video yesterday that six years ago in my garage in Dallas, Texas, which is probably 115 degrees at the time. I squatted three 64,

three sets of five. And I can't do that today. Now I'm 25 pounds lighter today than I was at the time. Uh, that's part of it, but I can't do that today. Okay. I could let that eat me up and it kind of sucks. I'm not going to lie. It sucks. I wish I could do that today. I could let that eat me up or I could focus on, okay, well, am I stronger today than I was three months ago? Absolutely I am. And I'm still progressing. So that's my goal right now is I want to look back in December and look back now. Did I make progress from the end of August? Hell yeah, I did. And I'll be happy with that.

That's what you got to do, you know. And most of you listening are going to be in similar situations. You know, I've basically put a lot of my focus on this. You know, I own a gym. This is what I do for a living. So I've had fairly linear progress over the last 10 years. Many of my colleagues have not, you know, they have more stuff, more and I wouldn't say more, but different things going on that interrupts their recovery. I've managed to keep my recovery in a good place most of the time. When I opened the gym,

that fucked me up. This year, I told you I got fucked up, but I haven't had small humans keeping me up at night, which will fuck up your recovery. So yeah, arguably, time-wise and resource-wise, I'm pretty stretched. I'm stretched pretty thin work-wise, but I'm going to sleep through the night. I'm not going to lose sleep for two, three years. You know, I don't know how long it is. You would know better than me, Kent. Yeah, it's ongoing. I'm a year in. It's at least 12 months, right, if you have a child? Yeah. I mean, I'm one year in and still going. Yeah. So I've not had that problem. I get puppies and that lasts about a month or two, you know, and probably a month actually at night. Yeah. The night crying, that's like a month with a puppy. With a human, it's ongoing, like Trent said. So many of my clients have had to deal with

that. And the thing about it is, that's maybe even worse than if it was just like constant, I could adapt to that, you know, but the thing about it is it's unpredictable. It changes and it's unpredictable. So you have like, you get like a few weeks where everything's great and baby's sleeping through the night and you're like, okay, yeah, this isn't so bad. I made it through the bad part. And then something changes. Yeah. Uh, you know, other, there's other things too. You know, if you have a traditional, traditional job that has you location at a certain time until a certain time, that's going to affect things, especially if you end up staying up late. I end up staying up late. I try to, I try to schedule hard appointments later in the day,

because I can do that. You know, I do a lot of my in-person coaching later in the day. I don't run classes. I, you know. I do offer nutrition coaching. There's things that I'm able to do in my lifestyle that allow me to recover most of the time. And I'm going to acknowledge that because I can't sit here and say that most of you should expect to be able to do what I'm doing. And my numbers aren't that impressive. I'm not saying that, but my progression has been probably much more linear than a lot of the people I work with for that reason. You know, I can structure my day in such a way where I sleep well most of the time. What I find is that most people do not sleep well most of the time because

of the demands of their life. You know, the example that we just gave with Trent, ongoing, unpredictable, you know, child keeping you up at night. Or stayed up late, have to be at work early, you know? You can't really, these things are a little bit more fixed, baked into the cake, so to speak, than it is for me. So that's why, you know, I'm very patient with people I work with. But you also got to understand that those things matter, you know?

If you had a freaking, you know, got a power outage in the middle of the fucking night, you know, and, uh, it's affecting things, your AC turns off and you're in Arizona and it's hot, you know, and you sleep two hours and then have to go to work the next morning, your training ain't going to go well that day. And guess what? Your training ain't going to go well the next day or possibly the day after, you know? So, you know, for me, I might get the tech out, sleep through the whole day, train late at night, you know, after I, you know, work and then eventually get back on my schedule and have a halfway decent training session, you know, maybe, maybe. I think that something like that would fuck me up too, actually. But, you know, that's just one example, right?

Something that keeps you up, but you still have to go to work, you know? You know, I still have to go to work, but I don't have to quote unquote go to work. You know, I'm self-employed. There's other problems with that, by the way. This does not mean my life is easier. You know, it's harder in a lot of different ways. It's just, that's. It's just different, right?

Different factors. We operate in trade-offs, people. Yeah. There are trade-offs, you know, with everything, you know. What I used to love about being an employee at a dialysis center, one of the few things I liked about being an employee, was that my work didn't come home with me. That part was cool. Now it's with me all the time, including in my fucking sleep. So just because this one area is easier doesn't erase the fact that other areas really fucking suck.

Exactly. It's the trade-offs I've signed up. We all, yeah, we all have the deck and, uh, you know, yeah, some people do have it easier from it purely from a training perspective. Um, some people do have it easier than others and they're going to make, you know, faster progress, better progress, whatever. But, um, you know, you can't really control that. So don't get wrapped up into it. Yeah. I don't, you know, a chiropractor once told me, and you know, I don't, I have mixed feelings about chiropractors. I me and you know i don't i have mixed feelings about chiropractors i happen to like this guy this is back in l.a he told me i said something about some exercise and he's like well that's gonna you know piss off your shoulders and i think his

argument actually was valid at that time it might have been like wide grip pull-ups or something chest to bar some weird thing that i thought i needed to be strong at and i'm like well you know this guy did it at the gym, you know, I said something of that effect where I was comparing a dude to like what I was able to do or not able to do. And he's like, don't compare yourself. Don't, don't make, no, he said, don't make assumptions about somebody else's body. You have no idea what that person's feeling, you know? Absolutely. And as I've worked with people and, you know, I watch people lift weights and I've watched people lift weights when things are hurting, you know.

If I'm just watching with no context, looks like that guy's fine. But then he's like, dude, this tendonitis is unbearable. I need to fucking take weight off, you know. Right. But I don't want to. And then I have to sit there and say, well, you're going to, motherfucker, you know. Yeah. Right.

You know, but if I just saw that dude squatting at the gym and did not know anything else, I would assume, oh, man, that guy's doing it. I should be able to do it. Don't make those assumptions, people. Yeah, you have no idea. A guy squatting 500 all fucked up might have a lot of pain that you're not aware of or other things. Yep, absolutely. And, yeah, I've been there myself. When I hit a PR of 405 for three sets of three on the squat. And at the time I developed some knee slide that kept getting worse, kept getting worse. I wasn't willing to take weight off the bar. And I developed patellar tendonitis in the course of that. And it fucking sucked. And I had to take a lot of weight off the bar. But if you saw me squat 405 for three sets of three, you might've been like, fuck, you know, what's that guy doing? I don't

know. Probably not. That's not, that's not that impressive, but for a lot of guys at the Globo gym, right. But, but, you know, at the time that was impressive for me, it was a big, it was a big deal. Uh, but yeah, I paid a price for that and, uh, you know, I had, it took a while. So yeah, you never know. You never know. So like I said, I think you, at the end of the day, if you want to stay in this for long, long-term, find part of the process to fall in love with and compare yourself to like three months ago, you know, that's, that's a much better, more realistic place to be. So, well, I hope, I hope you all found that helpful. You know, I think we don't talk about the lifetime of training and what programming looks like over a macro cycle. Uh, we tend to get lost in the weeds of micro cycles and templates and this and that. And, um, you know, there's something to say about that,

but, uh, the longterm is important too. And you, you know, you setting expectations is important. Um, so that absolutely, yeah. Don't set yourself up to fail, set yourself up to, to win, you know, setting expectations is important. So that, yeah, don't set yourself up to fail. Set yourself up to win, you know? And having the right expectations really helps with that. That's the most important thing in all this. Hopefully you've all taken that from this episode. So let's close out. All right, let's do it. Thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at weightsandplates.com or here in Phoenix at Weights and Plates Gym, just 10 minutes south of Sky Harbor Airport in the South Mountain Village. I offer online coaching as well for those of you who are not in Phoenix,

and you can find that on my website, weightsandplates.com, or you can reach out to me on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. Or you can reach out to me on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. You can view the gym's page at weights double underscore and double underscore plate. Very good. You know where to find me. I am on Instagrams at marmalade underscore cream. And if you want to ask me any questions about coaching, jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right.

Talk to you again in a couple of weeks.