Weights and Plates Podcast - #65 - Do You Need to Do High Rep Sets for Growth? Gross vs Fine Muscular Development

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

One idea in the fitness community that just won't die is that you need to do high rep sets (10's, 15's, 20's) when the goal is to build muscle. What so many people miss in this conversation, however, is that the context matters. To start with, the lift matters! Squats for sets of 10 or 15 are probably not a productive use or your time, because the fatigue generated from heavy compound lifts usually causes technique breakdown as you approach failure. Lying triceps extensions, on the other hand, can and should be pushed for sets of 10 or more.   Dr. Santana and Coach Trent break down the idea of high rep sets, and discuss when they might be appropriate and how they deploy them. As Santana explains, most of the bodybuilding advice out there about high rep sets is targeted toward fine muscular development -- advanced bodybuilders chasing muscular growth in specfic areas. But most people trying to improve their physique are really looking for gross muscular development, that is, growing the whole body, and that is best accomplished by heavy compound lifts with assistance work peppered in as needed for more advanced trainees.   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 Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Hello, hello. Welcome back, man. I'm back. I'm back. With a vengeance. man. I'm back. I'm back. With a vengeance. With a vengeance. Yeah, I rack pulled 430 the other day for a set of five. So it's coming back. I kind of deloaded myself after I had my whole hearing situation. And I'm slowly working myself back up. So don't call it a comeback. I'm going to squat four plates for the years over. I have a. I have a thing where like every year I have to squat four plates at least once.

You have to, you know, you just have to do it last year. Damn. I better get on it. Yeah. Last year it was like December. It was like almost Christmas. I'm like, I haven't squatted four plates. Better get on that. So, uh, yeah, I'm going to do it. So we, get on that so uh yeah i'm gonna do it so we thanksgiving is coming up very quickly here and uh it's my personal opinion that the day after thanksgiving is the perfect time to go for like some heavy singles because you're just bloated tons of carbs just loaded up probably have some good sleep too as long as you didn't drink too much, then it's a good time to hit some heavy squats and deadlifts. Absolutely. I think I have a rack pull or no, that's this week. Next week I have a deadlift and it's almost a PR, so I'm getting closed.

All right. Excellent. I also just brought back in rack pulls and I don't know if you saw my video, but man, just getting used to heavy weights again after doing all those reps for so long like just understanding that it's not actually heavy and it's gonna move you know I had to like relearn that you know yes yeah and just the sheer notion

and maybe we'll end up going in this direction but the sheer notion that the last rep of a set of 20 is the same as the last rep of a set of 20 is the same as the last rep of a set of five is complete fucking horse shit it's bullshit oh yeah absolutely what the scientists are arguing this and i call bullshit it's they're wrong they're not scientists either right oh my gosh yeah i that's actually the way i like to use rack pulls for an intermediate lifter um i use them I think the rack pulls

are really, it's a very versatile lift because if you've got a hard case, that's a novice, uh, sometimes you have to rack pull them and work it down to the floor. Uh, if you've got a rehab case, you know, if somebody has got a fucked up back and you know, they tweak their back, you know, you can do rack pulls and work them down to the floor you know as a rehab lift really useful for that but but for the for the intermediate lifter that is um you know maybe struggling a little bit with heavy deadlifts off the floor right i think the rack pulling for a while can be great because one of the things it does for you is um yeah it just gets you used to having a ton of weight in your hands and the shock of that when it breaks off the pins it's um you have to learn how to mentally get over that and i think doing a lot

of heavy rack pulls helps you do that so you go back to the floor for your heavy work again and it's just not as big of a deal when you the plates all come off the floor and you feel the full amount of weight in your hands yeah and. And speaking to that more broadly, I think bottom up from the pins works gloriously on all the lifts. That's how I got my press to two plates the first time. I had to, I got to 215. I had tripled 205 or 200, something like that.

And I'm like, I know it's there, but I can't get more than 215 over my head. What the fuck is going on here? You know, I don't, I'm not that inefficient, you know? So I refuse to believe that that was the end of the line. It just didn't make sense to me. So I'm like, I'm going to drop the heavy pressing. I'm going to press from just above the forehead to lock out until I can't anymore.

So I ran that up. Press. Yeah. Yeah. From the bottom up. So it's just like a rack pull. It's stapled to the pins and you've got to overcome the inertia of the rested bar and you also don't have any slack from the plates because they're hanging on the sleeves versus being rested down the floor on a deadlift you know right right

anyways i did that for four weeks got to like 265 and then did that thing where it slides forward doesn't budge you know uh so i'm like okay it's probably time now went for two 25. Got it. You know? Uh, so rack pull and pin press have done worked wonders for me getting over that. Recently, after talking to rip, I added the pin bench press in from the bottom up. And it was just so I was one of those conversations where I like talking to him when I'm stuck because a lot of the information's there. And she's like one of those light bulb moments, right? Where you're like, Oh, wait a minute. That makes sense.

Like I overcame my press with that that why wouldn't i take the same approach with the bench and then i started thinking back i'm like when people have had me do pin bench presses in the past they start from the top down which defeats the purpose you got to start from the bottom up just like a rack pull big breath set your back break it off the pins and so far so good no prs yet but things that were heavy like a month ago aren't anymore. And, you know, some of that is, you know, me regaining what I lost doing all the volume stuff. But, you know, I've worked with others and taken a different approach to accomplishing that that, you know, put frankly, failed miserably. You know, this isn't entirely complicated.

You have to get weight in your hands. And I can't stress that enough. You know, this whole idea of getting tired to find these mystical PRs is bullshit, you know. And it only works on the internet, you know. Yeah, right. And oftentimes the guys that are showing success with it are on a bunch of drugs, you know. So you have a confounder there, like this arbitrary, let's just get tired. Well, if you get tired, you don't have anything actually heavy in your hands.

You're getting tired with lightweights, and that's what was happening to me for the last couple years. You know, did I grow? Of course. There were some novel movements there that I had never trained. You know, there were other movements that I never progressed. there were other movements that I never progressed, but, uh, you know, I got tendonitis and in general, I'm not, I'm better now after, you know, being a month into doing my own thing, I'm better now a month going to low reps again. Uh, but I struggled with feeling the weight again. I'm like, what the hell is going on? You know, like, and, and, uh, you know, at the rack pull,

I warmed up, I probably took too big of a jump, but it was a jump I could have handled before. And I just couldn't take that jump from that last single to the top set. So I think I tried to go from 405, I think to 505 or something like that. I think that sounds about right. Cause that's the one that wouldn't move. Yeah. So I went from, I think 455. Yeah.

455 for a single to 505. I think it did move, but I like was not beat up. I wasn't tired, poorly rested. I'm like, okay, I think it's the weight. Yeah. 455 for a single to 505. I think it didn't move, but I like was not beat up. I wasn't tired, poorly rested. I'm like, okay, I think it's the weight. Right. So, and I went down to quote unquote 475, but forgot to take the fifth plate off the other side. So I got one, one side of the bar came up and then I'm like, well, shit, that wasted energy. Then I put the right weight on, got it. That killed some energy at this point. Then I got four reps with 505 but it probably would have been five my best is 525 for those of you listening so it's not there you go it's not a pr rack pull but now i have to fucking repeat it uh probably what friday yeah friday i got to repeat that it's been two weeks and uh you know get that done so i can go up to 515 um then from there i

have to go up by five i kind of know where my thresholds are but the point is yeah those pins you know starting from the bottom up works wonders because you just can't fucking you have to be in the right position i have people squatting now from the bottom up and i've done that before with my hard cases that won't bend over and it works wonderfully uh now with some of my guys that just struggle with intensity i have them start you know a couple inches above parallel right where the rebound ends and lock out from there, you know? Because I'm like, well, with the bench press and deadlift, you do a partial, you know, this is one situation where a partial squat is appropriate because you're starting from the bottom up, you know? Yeah. It's fucking miserable. Yeah. Oh, it's terrible. I've only, I've only done, yeah, bottoms up pen

squats a couple of times, but terrible. But, you know, one thing I've noticed in my own training the last couple of years is sometimes I think you can get so, if you lift in the way we lift, you know, we try to take advantage of the stretch reflex and, and as many lifts as we can, right? Especially the squat, also in the press. in as many lifts as we can, right? Especially the squat, also in the press. And, um, I think sometimes you can get so locked into, you know, your midfoot balance and like, you know, getting the right position to maximize that stretch reflex and, you know, being in balance and all that stuff that you've just forget to push. Like, it sounds really stupid and simple, but I've definitely been there before where I'm just like, oh, like just push harder. Exactly. Like, it sounds like it's blindingly obvious, but I have caught myself in the past being like, oh, I just, I'm not pushing as hard as I could. I could just push harder here. And I've especially noticed that on the bench, you know, especially if you do a lot of touch and go benching, I think, you know, which I don't mind the touch and go for just general strength training.

It's fine, but it can be, you know, there's a couple of problems that you can run into. One is that some people get in the habit of bouncing the bar off their chest or like where the bar crashes into their chest and they try to like, you know, ricochet off their rib cage. That's not good. I never want to see that. But even if you don't do that, I think you can get in the habit of like trying to get a little bit of that stretch reflex from the touch and go. And you just forget, like, you're just trying to like rebound it up to the point where your triceps can get involved and finish it out. And you forget to just push with your, off the bottom, you know, to get your pecs involved, to just, just push, just push with your off the bottom you know yeah and to get your pecs involved to just just push just push harder off your chest i see this too with the leg drive

problem we sometimes run into where people's uh their butt will come off the bench oh yeah so the the primary thing if your butt's coming off the bench and the like when you're pressing out of the bottom then most of the time that's because your leg drive is in the, like when you're pressing out of the bottom, then most of the time that's because your leg drive is in the wrong direction. Like you're trying to push against the floor and you're trying to raise your hips up towards the ceiling rather than driving them back towards your shoulders. Right. So that's, it's the, it's a problem of a direction, right. Of leg drive. However, I've also noticed that when people are driving up out of the bottom and they're doing, However, I've also noticed that when people are driving up out of the bottom and they're trying to rebound it and leg drive it out of the bottom, they sometimes start running into the same problem, even though their leg drive is pretty good. It's going in the right direction. It's like they're trying to leg drive the bar off the bottom of their chest, and they're just forgetting to push with their arms and their chest.

I've been in that camp. I've done that before. And I noticed now my pecs get lit up more at, you know, let's say 235 or what, I just throw a number out there. Right. So, you know, a decently heavy amount of weight for me. You know, my pecs get lit up a lot more than they did like three or four years ago benching. And I think that was because I've, I've learned how to push more out of the bottom and I'm actually using my chest. Yeah. Interesting phenomenon there. Yeah. For me, it's when you use the stretch reflex or even with a pause bench, I caught myself

doing this because, you know, even with a pause bench, you got some sort of stretch there, the bars in contact with your chest, your chest is not with a pause bench, you've got some sort of stretch there. The bar's in contact with your chest. Double dipping. Yeah, exactly. But my upper back and rotator cuffs, posterior deltoids, triceps, all that shit relaxes, and that's why I have an elbow flare problem. Doing that pin bench press from the bottom up, just three inches off the chest, has fixed a lot of that. Because I can feel the platform now. Yeah, right. When I'm like pushing it three inches off the chest,

off of the pins, while it's stopped, I have to push my back in more actively than I normally would if I were just pausing my chest, right? Right. This is why I never got anything out of slingshot or board presses because I would just find a way to get a stretch reflex out of that. Right. So I'm a huge fan of bottoms up pin pin bench pressing, you know, and treat it like a rack pull or a deadlift. So far, so good. You know, the verdict is not yet, but I'm liking what I see on those. Basically, it's a PR every week. I haven't ever trained that before.

But I think it's going to work. I think it's pretty effective, and I only do one set with that. I think it's pretty effective, and I only do one set with that. Yeah. There's something to be said, like, when you've been training for a while, of working a lift sort of as a cue. It's like the lift becomes the cue. It's a tactile cue.

It's a tactile cue. You know, like, it's just, yeah, if you need to push harder, then just do a pin variant because that's all it is. It's just a big-ass concentric. You'd have no choice but to push hard. Dude, I have a longtime client. And, you know, I'd say she came to me as a gen pop client. And she's been one of the greatest. I hope she listens.

I don't know. She's a very busy lady. I don't know if she listens to this show or not. But we talk a lot. At least once a week we get into some level level of conversation above a couple words or you know form checks uh usually at the end of the week when i'm programming her but she is a sweet lady and she uh came to me basically low bmi high fat percentage wanted to get leaner we did that you know and she was very light to accomplish that she's a short lady um and uh then she you know she i love when this

happened she just got to the point where like i don't want to lose any more weight i'm too too skinny you know and i'm like i'm glad to hear that you know so we trained and you know for a while there uh she was traveling a lot she has a a very demanding travel schedule for her job. And I had a lot of RP in there because it just is unpredictable what was going to happen. Right. Yeah. Then she, then she ended up selling the company. And then of course, you know, she were similar. She kind of found something else to dive into, but the difference now is she's at the same gym most of the time. So the big change this year was I'm like,

I'm going to sign loads to you and you're going to do them, you know? And man, did she, did she fill out from a muscularity standpoint? It was, it was so nice to see that work out because that's what I, that's what I promised her when I met her, you know, and she wasn't, was not somebody familiar with what we do, you know? So there's this extra level of pressure on the coach when you're trying to show and prove something that, you know, is a little bit different than the mainstream or a lot different in this case. Now, you know, I peppered a lot of, and I still pepper accessories in there, you know. But she, you know, I got her into pretty good technique over the internet.

And recently I had her pin squat because a squat, most complex lift we do, and this is a leaner person that's narrow-waisted, so these people tend to have a harder time squatting. It was her Achilles heel. She could not get the squat. Deadlift, there's psychological stuff there because what we just talked about, not used to pushing hard or pulling hard in this case. But with the squat, there's still technical problems after almost a couple of years. Well, we've fixed that now. I started having her do bottoms-up pin squat, and then she's like, what the heck? My 3RM felt like I could have done five.

I forgot how she phrased it, but she started getting close to her 3RM, and she wasn't a train wreck. She wasn't getting stuck at the bottom. She was getting hip-trived. She used to get stuck at the bottom and then try you know, try to muscle it up with her back. There were all these problems. And just that pin forces the lifter into that horizontal back angle that most people want to resist, right? Yep. And it won't, it's just like a rack pull.

It won't come up in any other position other than the right position, you know? Yeah, yeah. And now her squat's cruising, you know? It's pretty cool. She says people come up to her and like, ask her, like, what are you doing? You know,. And now her squat's cruising, you know, it's pretty cool. She says people come up to her and like, ask, what are you doing? You know, like random people in the gym now. That's when you know it's working people. Yeah. But, you know, just learning how to push hard is not something that you're going to get doing a set of 15. No. Okay. No. You're not going to get that. You're going to learn how to do something difficult.

There's a lot of difficult things you can do. Wiping your ass could be difficult for some people, you know. But it doesn't mean that, you know, it doesn't mean that it's a productive use of your time. That's right. That's why they make bidets. Exactly. No, but, yeah. You have to wipe your ass, people, but you but you know what i mean yeah it's got to get

done some some hand you know some way or another i mean okay peasants do it you know with their own hands um kings do it do it with someone you know someone else's hands oh yeah let me reiterate this you know you know trying to you know wipe your ass with your feet is difficult okay yeah but so doesn't mean you got to do it you know right 15s are difficult doesn't mean you have to do them uh well just you know let's let's let's go there for a second because i've been talking about this a lot lately and i haven't really put a lot of content out about it so maybe this is where we're going to go we're going to talk about the back in this episode and it may still come up but uh we kind of led into this right

when is a set of 15 appropriate or set 20. you know that's a you know i'm asking the audience's question and i'm about to answer it um you know i've got one i've got one okay oh yeah before you get there uh banded face pulls yeah you can make those hard, but... Okay, how about cable tricep pushdowns? That's a good one. Hold on, let me qualify that. With shoulder extension or without? Oh, well, you should probably do everything with shoulder extension like that. I agree.

But, you know, I'd say most people are not doing that, though. So if... Just elbow flexion or elbow extension. Yeah, let's just talk about the continuum here. So a squat is a multi-joint exercise, obviously. You are bending at your hips, even though you don't want to. You need to bend at your hips. Gravity will make you do it. And it's not, you know, it's not because your back's not strong enough. It's because you're resisting the correct position.

But you have to bend at your hips, you have to bend at your knees, and your ankles have to dorsiflex as well. So you have three joints moving at the same time, right? And then you have another whole bunch of other joints stabilizing. Note that we're going to come back to that, you know, deadlift, same three joints, right? Yeah. Bench press, your elbows are flexing and extending. Your shoulders are abducting and abducting and abducting. And you have a bunch of isometric stuff going on at the same time, a lot of joint stabilizing, right? So you get the idea here.

You know, movements that incorporate multiple joints can be done with heavier weights, and you typically want to do it with fewer reps because there are more links in the chain that can fail before the lift actually fails. So that's why we like fives. That's why we like triples. You're not going to do fives on a knee extension. You're not going to do a 1RM knee extension. That's stupid. That only happens in academia, and it's not actually a 1RM.

So that's for another episode. But typically, if you're doing a squat, a press, or a deadlift, or a bench press, they tend to work better with five reps or less. Because the more reps you do beyond that, and you know, there's

okay, you could do a perfect set of six. Congratulations, but we're in a ballpark. And you know, there's, okay, you could do a perfect set of six, congratulations, but we're in a ballpark here, you know? Yeah. Or maybe four is better than five, because when you go past four, your form breaks down. We're not talking about the nuances here and the outliers, but in general, five reps or less tends to work well with these big movements because you're removing most of the endurance component and the muscles that are required to stabilize the joints that are not moving, i.e. your back, the muscles from your neck to your spine and around your waist, aren't going to fatigue before the prime movers, your hips and your knees, right? Right. Which is what will happen eventually when you start going into

six, seven, eight, nine, ten reps. Now, you know, I've done it. I don't know that I want to do that again. And I'll kind of elaborate on that as I go into this discussion. But that's the main reason that we like fives, triples, singles. And when we're talking about reps in the context of these big barbell lifts, it makes sense. You can reproduce five reps in a row on a squat. You're not going to reproduce eight most likely, especially if it's an eight rep set to failure, right? So it's generally not productive for most people. You know, if you're a bodybuilder that does that, more power to kudos to you, man. We're not talking to you. You know, you've figured out you want to do, and there's other aspects of that formula that don't apply to most of this audience. But I want to just say it one more time. If you're doing a multi-joint movement, you're probably only going to be able to reproduce one to five reps, depending on how heavy it is. reps, depending on how heavy it is. If you try to go to failure, the further you get away from five, i.e. the higher the reps you do, the more likely you are to risk injury because some of the muscles that are stabilizing the joints are going to fail before the prime movers, i.e. the target muscles,

your hips and knees on a squat, your pecs and shoulders on a bench, um, are, um, before those muscles fail. Right. Now let's go to, go ahead. Well, let me ask you this. Have you ever missed a heavy squat because your legs were not strong enough? Fuck no. Right. I haven't. No. Every single squat that I've missed, it's because my back wasn't strong enough to stabilize, uh, under load. It wasn't strong enough to hold its position under load. And I, you know, and that caused, you know, that caused me to not be able to drive out of the bottom. It was not my legs. It's never, it's never been the case where my back is rock solid and my legs just don't have the strength to push myself out of the hole. Your, your legs hold your big ass up all day, so they can tolerate a lot, you know? Yeah.

Now, let's go down the continuum, right? So you have movements that work a couple of joints with smaller muscles on them, right? Hips and knees have tons of muscles on them, right? Arms don't have as many muscles on them. A whole lot of hip extensors, you know? And the muscles are smaller so we'll take something like a lying tricep extension or a bicep curl we'll use both

examples here we'll do the agonist antagonist you know so on a lying tricep extension, you're lying on a bench, and you are it begins with the arms perpendicular to the body. So over, you know, straight up like the top of a bench. And then you're going to let the bar go behind your head, your elbows are going to flex, your shoulders are also going to flex. So your arms start going behind your head, your upper arm is right beside your ear if you're flexible enough. And that's the bottom position. And then you're going to come back up by extending the shoulder and flexing the elbow. So you have two joints moving the shoulder and the elbow, then you have your legs and back trying to stabilize that becomes very difficult when it's heavy, by the way, but that's a whole other topic. So, you know, that aspect aside, you're using two joints to lift the weight. If you do a set of five or less with that,

you're probably going to engage your lower body to hoist the weight up more as it gets heavier. And we've seen this with machines and other types of, you know, single or, you know, two joint exercises, right? The heavier it gets, the more you have to cheat it. That's what happens. And then you have to decide where you want to draw the line there, right? And then also it's kind of risky on the tendons. The elbows are small joints.

They're not the same as the hip. You don't have as many muscles attached to them, right? So it's very sensitive to tendonitis. So we are not going to do five or less reps on a lying tricep extension, but we might do eight to 12, you know, and that might be fine because you're going to use lighter weight. You're going to be able to stabilize your body while moving that weight, and you have two joints participating in the movement. So that's, you know, number two. Let's flip it around. Look at the biceps curl.

Same thing. Your shoulders are flexing because guess what, people? The biceps attach to the shoulder as well as the elbow. So even though when you show off your guns and you're flexing your arm and bending your elbow, remember, they're also attached to the other side of the humerus, your upper arm. They have another job. They raise the shoulder. So this idea that a curl only counts when your elbow bends ignores human anatomy right right you know and body builders aren't known for being anatomist you know they pretend to be but you know when they say things like medial deltoid that tells you all you need to know you know yeah yeah i didn't know

that i had a deltoid inside my arm but apparently i do according to them you know if they're using that language it got them being such a snob i'm doing the thing that I hate academics. I hate that academics do, but I just, I got to shit on bodybuilders sometimes. Even though some are good friends, you know. It's a fun sport. Yeah, it is. It's a fun sport. Well, yeah. Shitting on them.

They do a contest. They don't do a sport. Yeah. Well, that's right. Contests are not sports, but sports are contests. Just like all bourbon is whiskey whiskey all whiskey's not bourbon right so like you know bodybuilding is like the canadian whiskey of you know whiskey i was i thought you're gonna say irish whiskey i like irish whiskey as long as it has some age to

it you know i'm disappointed with canadian because i like a good rye but this canadian shit i've drank i'm just the last time i had some of those the costco brand which is probably crown and i got a headache and i don't get headaches from alcohol and i didn't drink that much either in case you're wondering i was just about to say is is but are you saying that the bodybuilding is the crown royale of lifting yes yes the base sounds about right it comes in it comes in that uh like little right. The embroidery. That's exactly what it is. It's a pretty bag, pretty purple bag, unique looking bottle, you know. And then it's piss. Nothing inside.

Yeah. That's bodybuilding for you. But anyhow, a biceps curl starts with you flexing the shoulder and then bending the elbow. Not the other way around. I elbow. Not the other way around. I've done it the other way around for years, and guess what? I got tinnitus, and I figured it out. I'm like, if I raise the arm straight just a few inches and then finish off with elbow flexion, I feel it a lot more in my biceps. And guess what?

My elbows don't hurt. So now I've made it a two-joint exercise. Now, I do like to do them against the wall because I don't want to engage the hips. That makes it, you know, a multi-joint exercise, you know, three joint. Right. I mean, a two-joint exercise. They need to come up with a name for a two-joint exercise, you know? A bi-joint. A bi-joint exercise, yeah. That sounds, no. No, that's just stupid. That's stupid. You know, but I like to use just the shoulders and the elbows when I do biceps curls because when I start using the hips, I just don't know that I'm –

it's hard to draw the line there. It could easily turn into a reverse clean. I mean, I don't let it get that bad. But I don't like to do them that way. But guess what? The stability required when you – you wouldn't think this just by looking at it, but when you lean up against the wall, your abs have to, I feel like I did an ab workout afterwards, because when the bar goes down, that weight is trying to pull you forward. And then what do you

think keeps you back against that wall? Your abs, right? So I find that, you know, despite you, just by looking at it at face value, okay, the guy's leaning on the wall, they're taking the stabilizers out of it. No, you're actually making them work harder. Yeah, right. That's what I've noticed. Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, so okay, so you raise the shoulder, you flex the shoulder, and you flex the elbow. So it's a two-joint exercise. You can also do that for eight to 12. You know, I like doing eights on barbell curls, you know, and dumbbell curls. Try to do a set of five or less on a barbell curl, it turns into reverse clean, like I just said, you know, so, you know, eventually, if you're performing a movement that incorporates two joints that have few muscles attached to them,

you're going to have to cheat it to do low reps and heavy weight, and then it becomes a different movement entirely. And there's mixed opinions on that. I worry about tendons because I've experienced tendinitis. It's common in many weight rooms. A lot of clients have it for various reasons. And you want to kind of avoid that because once it's there, it's hard to get rid of. It'll linger for fucking, I'm almost a year on this shit. It's almost gone. It's finally almost gone, but nothing that I did wrong to try and get rid of it.

It just, that's what happens. They're avascular tissues. It takes a long time. Well, you know, and I think there's also our, our colleague Andy Baker has laid this out on his podcast very well, that you can easily tip into the zone of when you start using momentum and your hips and your, the non prime movers, uh, in order to make the bar move, you know, so if you're trying to hip drive your barbell curl to get up out of the bottom, well, you're not exactly using the biceps much at that point. Like what, what is, what is the biceps actually doing? Well, it's sort of like the first half of the movement,

you're using the momentum from kicking your hips back and throwing them forward, like a clean, like you're saying, reverse clean. So that, yeah, what are they doing? Well, they're just kind of finishing the lift, but they've already gotten the benefit of the momentum out of the bottom. So they didn't have that hard concentric contraction

from a dead stop. So how hard are they really working? We've seen this. I think the classic example is in the pin lay row, right? A row from the floor. I'm going to touch on that one. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get back to that. But basically, you know, and this is, again, this is something that Andy's laid out. This is not my original thought here, but, you know, it's easy to just leg drive the bar off the floor and get a whole bunch of momentum and then just use the lats to finish the lift by touching. Let's say they carry the last three or four

inches of the lift to touch your belly and back down. Well, if the goal was to build the lats, well, that's a shitty movement. You moved a bunch of weight, but like to what end, uh, it was a, either it's a shitty deadlift because it's too light or it's a shitty row because you didn't really hit your lats. Whereas if you do a bent row where the bar's floating and you can't get the momentum, uh, most people notice when they switch between those, if they've, if they're not been doing pin lay rows correctly, all of a sudden their lats feel like super pumped up after a good set at eight or whatever well you know what which lift is going to be more productive there so that will depend on the goal and we'll exactly i'm going to come back to that i'm going to come back to that yeah um yeah i'm pretty firm on what i'm about to say

i'm gonna i'm on the opposite end of that argument. And I'll elaborate on that in this discussion, because it's relevant. Right now, I'm looking at more, I'm looking at exercises that incorporate smaller muscle groups. I'm starting there. And we're going to go to that because that one's important. So we talked about the curl, we talked about the extension. Now, let's say that we take those two same exercises. And instead, we eliminate shoulder flexion from the bicep curl, and do a preacher

curl, right with a dumbbell, a dumbbell preacher, or barbell, you know, same concept, you've now eliminated the shoulders from the movement. Or you do a tricep extension without a shoulder extension. So a skull crusher, as they call it, right? So you're doing a pre-tricurl or skull crusher. Now you've went to a single joint exercise. Only one joint is moving the weight. This is where I will make a case for 15 to 20 reps. So, you know, context matters here. When people start talking about rep ranges, they tend to speak about them broadly and add no context to them. I don't think 20s are a waste of time. I think 20 rep squats are, you know, as the great Dr. Bradford said, it's an IQ test and you failed if you did it, you know? I have failed the IQ test. Rip has failed the IQ

test. Have you ever done a 20-rep squat? I have not. You're a smarter man than the rest of us. I'll bask in the glory of my... Bro, I mean, that nausea you get from that. But yeah, so 20s on a, well, you said earlier, a rope pushdown with just elbow extension, or I'm using a skull crusher.

Same concept. One joint is moving the weight. push down with just elbow extension or, you know, I'm using a skull crusher, you know, same concept. One joint is moving the weight. Eight to 12 reps on a single joint exercise is still heavy enough to piss off those tendons. And you feel it too. If you're just doing a single joint exercise for a set of eight, that's very different. Like do a skull crusher for a set of eight with enough weight on it and do a lying tricep extension. It's an entirely different experience and you can just feel it getting into your connective tissues. And it's hard to describe that, you know, without experiencing it, but don't go and experience it. Don't do it. It's not worth it. You know, once that tendonitis is there, it doesn't want to go. So if you think about it rationally there, you know, you're doing a single

joint exercise. You don't want to put a bunch of weight on that. So you're using less weight, but then you want to, you know, you want to push the bunch of weight on that. So you're using less weight, but then you want to, you know, you want to push the muscle of failure in a productive way. That's where 15 to 25 reps could be useful, right? I've never done 25s, but some guys do. And, you know, I can see an argument for going that high if you're doing something like that, right? So then that begs the question, the fuck are you doing that for, Right? Bodybuilding aside, I had to think through that question myself. I'm like, where is this stuff productive? You know, what does it help with? Because is it totally useless? And some of it is, but like the exercises I listed out,

I try to think about how they contribute to overall strength and muscular development. I want to first start by saying that, yes, you can get growth out of that type of shit. You know, you can get a p-value in a lab, but is it going to be noticeable in the absence of general broad gross overall strength? Probably not, you know? So, like, when you do these knee extension research studies where 10 sets of 10 knee extensions, progressive overload, you know, for 8 to 12 weeks, and we saw an increase in lean mass on the DEXA, and it was statistically significant. Okay, great. So we know that we can get growth greater than zero, and it can reach a threshold to satisfy a peer reviewer, right? Fantastic. But is anybody going to notice if

you're 155 pounds and ran up your knee extension, and your quads grew 0.5% or whatever, you know? Right, right. And they can't even measure that, by the way. They can't measure that. The closest they do is they biopsy one of the quadriceps, the vastus lateralis, and they'll say, oh, you know, it got thicker, you know. But then, you know, you're taking a piece of muscle out and taking a different piece of muscle out. We're not going to go into research methods here, but you get the idea. Yes, if you progressively overload any exercise, you're going to get muscle growth. But then there's this thing in research that they teach you about in graduate school called practical significance, or if you're a clinician, they call it clinical significance, right? clinician, they call it clinical significance, right? Okay, so what? You know, does it pass the so what test? Is it significant enough to matter as a practical matter? And I think for most people,

it is not, you know, and the people that are spending a bunch of time on isolation exercises, you know, notwithstanding the millions of global gym members that are just wasting a lot of time on them, but the people who actually spend a lot of time trying to train those or get something out of them seriously are bodybuilders with a bunch of confounding variables, you know, that we've talked about on this show many times. And it's not just drugs, you know, it's genetics, you know, you know, skin tightness, muscle insertions, penation angle. I'm not going to go through all that again, but my point is, yes, you can get a bicep to grow doing a preacher curl, but are you going to add several inches to it? Probably not, right? So, you know, context matters here. So, why do we do this and where's the value? You know, back to my original question. What I've noticed from doing that stuff for two years is it indirectly helps a bigger lift by increasing your body awareness of that joint structure and the muscles that move that joint structure. So an aligned tricep extension, you have better stability in the elbow because you've done all this single joint elbow extension stuff, right? So now when you go and bench press,

you are more aware of what your elbow is doing in real time, you know? And some people might achieve that just bench pressing, you know, this really just depends on the person, you know, not everybody needs to do these things and not everybody needs to do all of these things. Like certain exercises might be useful on certain lifts and then other lifts don't need any exercise. Like I don't need to do knee extensions on a squat, you know, like I don't do any assistance work on a squat, but you know, some people have done lunges and they said that it has helped them become more stable when they're squatting. Cause they're more aware of what both their legs are doing for whatever reason. I have not personally had that problem, but I think about this and I'm like,

if you focus on one aspect of the lift, it's not going to get that lift up directly. You know, a hundred pound lunge isn't going to get a 400 pound squat to move. Not directly. You know, it's not going to build bigger glutes to a point where they can produce more than 400 pounds of force. What it's going to do is it's going to help you stabilize your hip if that's a problem. You know, it's kind of like, you know, that's the whole concept of assistance exercises, except assistance exercises simulate the same movement done differently, right? An isolation exercise, you're focusing on one joint action in the kinetic chain. Do you want to spend your entire year doing that? I mean, I guess if you're a bodybuilder and you're

competing in that contest, you know, that's a whole other area. But if your goal is strength and just overall growth and you're not trying to hypertrophy every fine little muscle of your body, which most people are not, you know, if you're just trying to get everything generally bigger and stronger, that's not where you want to spend most of your time. You know, unless you're doing calf raises, you do have to isolate those for whatever reason. They just don't seem to respond to big lifts for most of us, but some of you are blessed with big calves. But even then, these isolation exercises, I mean, those calves are strong. I'm doing 770 pounds on a donkey calf raise right now. So the calves are the exception to this fucking rule is what I'm saying. Just get calf implants. Like that guy on that MTV show.

Remember that? In 2003? Anyway. Well, yeah, calves are the exception to the isolation rule. You can load them heavy. You can do them high reps, low reps. But think about it.

You walk on them. So, of course, they have every muscle fiber possible in them because they're designed to carry your heavy ass all day long. So we're not going to go into calf training here. Nobody's here for that. But I don't think so. But if, you know, I train my calves because I own a gym, you know, despite the fact that my thighs have grown plenty from squats, I don't wear, well, I guess I train in shorts that are above, well above the knee, but you know, when I'm out

and about, I don't wear those. And I can't be accused of skipping leg day. You know, if I say I'm a gym owner and I got tiny little calves, you know, the perception of that is unfortunately not good. So, you know, I've gotten them up to about 15 inches and that's, that's fine for me. More power to you. If you're the guy who just has 18 inch calves doing nothing, fuck you. Yeah. Fuck those guys. But, you know, we're not here to talk about calf training. So, you. Yeah, fuck those guys. But, you know, we're not here to talk about calf training. So, no, what I'm saying is that, yeah, when you do isolation work and you focus on one joint action,

it doesn't make the muscle significantly bigger from a practical standpoint. Now, you're going to pull out a peer-reviewed paper, you're talking to the wrong guy. As a practical matter, if all you're doing is preacher curls and you don't have naturally big, well-developed biceps, you're probably not going to grow your biceps a significant amount doing that. These lifts also tend to level off a lot faster than the larger lifts because we don't move in isolation. So you got to think of these more isolated, the more isolated the lift, the better it is at helping you stabilize. It's going to help stabilize that joint when you're doing something much bigger. And I've seen this because I've had people that train muscle groups and came to me later and they had good form training muscle groups. They weren't jerk offs with it. Right. And they had good body control

when they were doing the barbell lifts, you know, and it was because, I think it's because of that. But then also a lot of these people also had pretty good genes too, you know, but yeah, you know, I digress. I'm not, you definitely don't want to start there if you can avoid it, but that's what it helps you do. It helps you stabilize those joints better because, okay, you're running an NLP. It's probably not an issue. You're a novice. You're learning how to move. You're learning how to move your body with a lot of weight on it. All these things are getting addressed. But then you get to this point when you're an intermediate, especially way into that, where now you're like, shit, this weight

feels so heavy. I don't know what the fuck's going on. I just feel like I'm getting crushed, you know? And that's where assistance exercises, that's our first line of action. We, you know, put assistance exercises in there to try and address some of this, and we've talked about some earlier. But, you know, someone like me, like, I had a problem benching. And the arm work has indirectly helped my bench because I have better control over my elbows and shoulders to an extent in that range of motion. And the dumbbell work has helped as well. I just feel better bench pressing because I have a better sense of what's going on with those joints. I never had to do this for lower body.

I really didn't. I still don't feel the need to. I'm not going to isolate my legs. I'm not going to do that. But what's interesting is every muscle around my thighs have grown to a significant extent. I keep definition when I'm higher body fat. So obviously this shit's been fucking working. Am I competitive for a bodybuilding show?

No, but I'm also not taking a bunch of drugs. And I'm not competing in bodybuilding. So it doesn't matter. You've got to understand when these guys are talking about building muscle in the context of bodybuilding, they're talking about fine muscle, fine muscular development. And that's not what you're looking for. It really isn't. Most of you listening to this show, because bodybuilders don't listen to this show. If they have, I've turned them off by now. But people listening to this show, you know, you want your muscles to show and you

want to have shape. You want to look like you train. You want to look like you train. And that comes from gross muscular development. Fine muscular development is not necessary for you. It's not a good use of your time unless you can find a practical purpose to it, like I just described. So, you know, to kind of tie this point up, we've got to go back to the rose because I know you're waiting to hear where I'm at with this. Well, yeah, let's hold off on the rows really quick. Okay. Where I have seen some success in incorporating accessory lifts, right, which I'm going to include, my go-tos are those two joint exercises, right?

So I'm always going to go for a lying triceps extension over a cable push down or a skull crusher, right? Or a skull crusher, right? That's always my first line. Now I will sometimes go to a single joint exercise. If somebody's dealing with, if there's, if they're dealing with an issue, right? Like if their shoulder's bugging them on an LTE, we might do a little bit of single joint tricep work just for a little bit, right? But it's really just a strategy to manage sort of the stress that we're putting on tendons, right?

Yeah, exactly. But the main thing is I'm always gonna look for those two joints. So if I'm gonna have them do a curl, it's gonna be a curl up to the chin that's specifically using shoulder flexion as well as elbow flexion. But where I see them being useful for a good majority of people, not everybody, is an intermediate that's spent, you know, let's say there's been training for a couple years, at least. training for a couple years, at least, then they kind of hit this point where, you know, they've done at that point, a lot of presses, they've probably been through some form of like Texas method or HLM, or they're, you know, doing five by fives and, you know, fairly high about what we

would consider high volume training for sets across, right. So they've done a fair amount of that. And they've gotten some growth from that. but they sort of level off. And I see like people that maybe have, uh, like their, their, their biceps and their triceps are just a little bit underdeveloped relative to everything else. This is going to be very individual, right? Some people are going to get great bicep and tricep development, just doing the big four lifts. Awesome. But, but, you know, a lot of people aren't, there's going to be something that's a little bit but, you know, a lot of people aren't, there's going to be something that's a little bit behind, you know, it's a little bit lagging in size. And what I found is that when these people train their arms in particular, it tends to be biceps and triceps.

They fill out a little bit, their shirt sleeves get a little tighter after doing that for several months. And all of a sudden now they have more power coming out of the bottom of let's say the press like they're doing it let's say they're doing a strict press for instance for instance but it counts actually for a rebound press as well when they're driving up out of the bottom well they just have more contractile tissue all around the shoulder joint right everything's more bunched up at the bottom position and they they have you know i think your body awareness uh thing is is definitely uh that's definitely an aspect of this but it's also just having more size you know if your armpits squeezed up tighter because you just got more muscle mass around it that's helpful and

um i think that i think that for certain people it becomes an issue you know people that have real small shoulders by nature they're just not not, not well built up top genetically. Um, women, I see this help a lot because most women that's, that's the case. They don't have, um, big upper body. So just adding a little bit more mass can help. And you, some people hit that point where the barbell work alone is not, it's starting to level off in terms of how much mass they're actually putting on. Oh yeah. And, and so that's where I find it being a useful intervention. Um, you know, I don't see it working at all for people who are, um, who haven't achieved that level of strength. No, I haven't either. With a barbell progression. Well, you know, they can't move heavy enough

weights. It doesn't work. Well, you know why? Because they don't have good back control. And they don't have any control. Yeah. A lot of the time, the back is the weak link, and the best way to strengthen your back is to deadlift if you're a novice. Right, exactly. So where I'm going with this is that, so that's what I see. It seems to work. It seems to work. Now, some people will do a bunch of these bicep curls, you know, lying triceps extensions, et cetera. And they won't see a whole lot from it. And they just go back to doing more barbell work and then they grow again. I've seen that too. So it doesn't work for everybody, but for most people, it seems to

work pretty well. So my, my sort of, you know, caveman working theory of why this, this works is that, you know, it's some sort of novel stimulus where you're essentially getting a little bit of a novice effect from training these new movements. And you're also putting those muscles through longer time under tension. Because again, you're doing sets of 10, 12 on a lying triceps extension. That's a significantly longer time under tension than, let's say, a set of five presses. And if you're doing them correctly, you've got, you know, the triceps are doing the work, right? You know, whereas in a standing press, if you're doing like a press 2.0 style, like we teach in starting strength, the triceps

aren't doing all the work of a press. They're just doing some of the work of the press. Okay. So, so I, that's what I see is like, that's the novel thing that we're introducing when we do these new movements is longer time under tension and a, a putting a lot more, uh, putting that tension under that one muscle group. And so that, that allows for some,

that, that is stress that allows for some novel adaptation in those muscle groups. And it works for a while. Is that fair to say? Would you agree with that? Or do you think that's not it? I'd say that's pretty accurate.

So what I'm saying is you can grow from these, but it's on the back of having already built a large amount of muscle mass doing barbell lifts. Yeah. And I do think that a lot of people don't get to that point. So this, this kind of, right, this kind of segues in. So like, if that's not doing it, but the main lift isn't doing it, then what the fuck are you talking about, Santana? And that's why we have assistance exercises. We didn't even talk about that, right? I touched on it briefly, but like, I did a bunch of tricep work and, you know, I got that novel stimulus effect,

but by the end of the year of doing that, you know, I was even doing dips too. It became abundantly clear, and this is no surprise to me, it shouldn't be to you, that most of the tricep growth was coming from those close grip bench presses, you know, that's where it was coming from. So basically I used an assistance exercise. I removed the pec and shoulder engagement to make it more tricep dominant. And guess what? My triceps fucking grew. And it made me rethink the bench press as a whole. When you're benching with a barbell, you don't get much horizontal abduction adduction because your hands are in a fixed

position. You can't come in and out. And that's the job of the pecs, right? So, you know, if I want to use bench press to maximize pec growth, I'm going to do it with dumbbells. But if I want to grow my triceps, I'm going to bench a lot and definitely bench a lot with a closer grip. And so far that's working wonderfully. So I've taken a kind of a Texas method approach, pretty much doing Texas method on my bench, not to run it back up, you know, kind of like starting an LP all over again. Right. And, you know, Monday I'm doing five sets of five close grip bench press. Wednesday, I'm doing a set of five off the pins from the bottom up. And I'm also.

That's your heavy day? Yeah. No, that's my middle day. Then my heavy day, my third day, I do a full range of motion bench press for a heavy set of five followed by three sets of five on a dumbbell incline bench because I discovered at that angle, I fill out the proximal insertions

or I fill out the pecs on the proximal end. So that's what I've been doing in addition to pressing twice a week, right? And I do a couple of, you know, tricep exercises in there too, but the big thing is that close grip bench press, that is your stimulus to grow the majority of your triceps, to get the majority of your tricep growth. On the other end of it, we have the row, you know, another horizontal pull. So I was very, I shat on rows for years because

I used to be that guy that did every variation of row every variation of lateral raise and uh had flat arms when viewed from the side because my lateral delt would not grow in response to that bullshit and uh my back would be wide because i was strong at pull-ups but be flat in the middle because i couldn't grow traps and upper back thickness as they call it because i wasn't dead lifting right right? So I'm just like, once I started deadlifting, all that shit filled out. Once I started pressing, all that shit filled out. I started pressing, I got lateral delts. I started doing deadlifts and pushing them heavy. I got traps and a thicker upper back. So I boycotted rows for years. Then last year when I was doing my arm focus program, I did a lot of

rowing and a lot of pull-downs and slash chin-ups, right? But mostly a lot arm focus program, I did a lot of rowing and a lot of pull downs and slash chin-ups, right? But mostly a lot of rowing. I did a lot of rowing, more than I ever have. And it became abundantly clear to me that most of my bicep growth was coming from the rows, even though you think of it as a back exercise, right? Now, I was also curling a lot, and then I ended up getting tendonitis when those got heavy. And by the end of this, I started figuring out, I'm like, okay, these exercises are useful. These aren't. So the barbell curl, the dumbbell curl were pretty useful. Do I need to do hammer curls or reverse curls and try to target the brachialis? Probably not if I'm doing a bunch of rows, right? Probably not. So

the whole argument as to whether should rows be super strict where the only thing moving are your arms and shoulders and the rest of your body stays completely still. Sure, if you want to, you know, target that range of motion, but it ain't never going to get heavy. You know, when you do it that way, it's going to be light because those muscles can't, when you're moving those two joints, shoulders and arms, it's not going to be heavy. And then there's this whole thing about, well, you know, your lats, the thing you mentioned. And I thought about that for a long time, right? And obviously you can get lat engagement because you're extending the shoulders. But think about what a row actually is. A full range of motion lat exercise would be a lat pulldown or a chin-up because your arms are overhead, your lats are fully stretched, and your shoulders are fully

flexed, right? So you have vertical arm overhead with your torso under it, right? And then you pull down and then you extend the shoulder at the end when you touch the chest. So those are you people who are just stopping below your chin. You're leaving muscle mass on the table in terms of the triceps, the rear delts, and all those other shoulder extensors that finish the pull. in terms of the triceps, the rear delts, and all those other shoulder extensors that finish the pull. But, you know, that's a whole other story. Yeah, an interesting thing about a pull-down or a pull-up is that you work your biceps and your triceps

because your elbows flex, obviously, and then your long head of the tricep extends the shoulder because it attaches to, wait for it, your shoulder blade, right? But anyhow, I was always strong at doing chins because I swam and we had to do them from a young age since the age of 15 it's the lift that along with the bench press or the two lifts i've done since i was 15 and uh you know i did a 300 pound combined chin me plus the weight 300 pounds and i was able to do that for a single no tendonitis no problem you know my lats are

strong i've only trained them full range of motion. Now, when you're doing a row of any kind, you are reducing the range of motion around the lats because you are now putting the shoulders into a partial extension, right? Your arms are perpendicular to your torso, so you're not starting at the top with them fully stretched. Now they're shortened, which means other muscles are going to work harder. And this is why I think that I get more of a bicep and forearm stimulus when I'm doing rowing exercises versus pull-ups and pull-downs, because the lats aren't moving through as great of a range of motion. They're still working, obviously, but if I want to maximize lat engagement, I'm going to start overhead,

you know. But anyhow, the reason that I like to do rows is because it became abundantly clear to me, obviously, when I press my lateral delts grow, right? When I did lateral raises, that didn't happen, right? So there's an equivalent for each and every muscle, and we can go through that, but we're not going to. I noticed that with the biceps, the rowing is what was making them grow. However, I wasn't rowing super strict. I let it get heavy. I engage my hips. I engage my knees. And a few things happened. Number one, my deadlift got faster off the floor because when you're hoisting up 300 plus pounds, they got to 340 doing it that way. It basically turned into a halting deadlift where you just drop into it to make sure your belly touches. Right. Yeah Right. Yeah. So, so again, to be, to be clear, so you're doing these from the floor,

pin lay rows as they are sometimes called. Yeah. You know, sure. You can call them that. Yeah. Whatever you want to call them. Yeah. Basically you start from the floor over the middle of the foot, you know, Andy likes to start at the toes so that you get more range of motion on your lats. Um, again, I just don't understand why that's supposed to be better than starting overhead, but that's just, you know, that's my nuance with it. But, yeah, I get it. If you start at the toes, your shoulders are more flexed and you get more of a lat stretch at the bottom, but it's at the tradeoff of mechanical efficiency because the bar's out of balance, right? Right. So, I know I intentionally started as deadlift especially when it gets heavy you know i might start strict but eventually if

you want to keep putting weight on that range of motion it's going to become less strict and it turns into basically a halting where i'm dropping into it you know and that's what happens you know once i can't touch my belly that's when i stop but i did that and then the same thing with dumbbell rows you know i'm i'm rotating a little bit you, but I'm using my hips to move the weight up. I'm not using my quads as much because I'm leaned up on a bench, but I'm using my hips to help hoist up the weight. And oddly enough, I got growth out of that. So obviously something is happening there. Look at Olympic weightlifters.

Why do they have delts when they jerk and do push presses? A lot of them don't press. If they did, they'd have bigger delts, but when you do a push, for those of you not familiar, when you're doing a jerk, you're dropping under the bar and you're basically landing under it

with your arms extended overhead. You're not actually pressing the weight up. When you do a push press, you're hoisting it up with your quads and your hips. With your hips and knees, you're hoisting the weight up and then you're just doing the last bit of range of motion for the lockout. Crossfitters do it, weightlifters do it,

and they have pretty well-developed shoulders. So there's something to be said about, you know, using momentum and still getting growth out of that. Are you maximizing it? Not necessarily. I'm not saying strict rows are pointless. I'm not saying strict curls are pointless. I'm saying that there is something about, and I think it has to do with the central nervous system response, making the lift more compound to throw the weight up in a controlled manner. So when I'm doing a row like that, my back is set. So that's why I'm not worried about injury there. My back is set. Everything's set.

My joints are stable, and I'm hoisting the weight up so that I can get more intensity there. Can we measure this? We definitely cannot in the gym, and they most certainly cannot in the lab. And surface EMG is not going to answer that question either. And neither is needle EMG for lots of different reasons. This is one of those things that we've observed time and time again. And we can't measure it and give you an exact scientific mechanism for that. We can get jobs in academia and pretend to though, but we're not going to do that either. The whole point is when you're hoisting up, here's a funny thing too,

and I'm going to let Trent has thoughts on this. So we're going to, I'm going to pass the mic in a second. I think rowing like a pen lay row is actually functional. I'll tell you why. I did that shit for about a year. I didn't do it the entire time, but there was a barbell row and two out of the three mesocycles that I was recycling, right? And when I had to move my three-bedroom house to, you know, my current residence, I had to store everything overhead and, you know, use a ladder to put everything over there. And there were some awkward heavy boxes and items that I literally had to hoist up and drop under to catch them and then basically extend my hips and stand up. Like there were just things that I could not pick up in a strict row because they were heavy. But if I did it like a

pen lay row, I'd get it into a position where I can stand up with it. So there's something to be said about that momentum also being functional. yes i'll pass the mic well yeah so i'm i'm sitting here i'm trying to make sense of like you know what i've just seen practically what i've seen work when i've programmed for people and what hasn't worked and um yeah i'm actually i'm not all against the the row from the floor but where i've seen them have the most success is with people who are sort of in the late novice and early intermediate these people are not me yeah and and well and what i find it helps is um i find it help people it helps people set their back and and hold the back position uh so it's you know it's almost like

a hamstrings and back developer because if they're going to do a set of eight with a barbell row and it gets decently heavy, um, it's not as heavy as their deadlift. So it serves as a nice light day movement, um, when they need a little bit of a break for their back, but it, but the fact that if they have to do a set of eight, it requires them to stabilize their back in that, in that deadlift position at the bottom, which I think that carries over sometimes that, that, uh, kinesthetic awareness from doing that carries over sometimes that that uh kinesthetic awareness from doing that carries over to the deadlift so that where they can work really well for it for someone who's in that sort of late novice phase and things get heavy on the deadlift and they get

you know kind of they're not totally locked in sometimes so yeah so that's back to your point that you made earlier about uh you know you know, proprioception, kinesthetic awareness, all that stuff that you get from, from doing assistance and accessory work. Uh, yeah, I think that when I, when I think about the people that I use bent rows with, and when I say bent row, I mean a row that's floating. It's not, it's, it's floating below the knees. You're holding your, you know, your back is anchored in position, like it would be in a deadlift, but you're higher up, right? You're not starting from the floor. When I have people do those, that's usually in the context of them already having deadlifted.

So they've done the heavy work already. And then the back off work instead of more deadlifts now becomes bent rows. So that's when we're, again, trying to build, trying to reinforce that back position and to hit the lats a little bit more, right? So I want them doing heavier work than they could with a lat pulldown, or in a lot of cases, these people don't have access to a lat pulldown. So the bent row is all we got. But some people are just very limited

in the amount of weight they can use. But when I'm thinking about this, I'm like, I don't ever, I very rarely prescribe a bent row just by itself as like the only back work for the day. It's always almost coming after a deadlift. I've noticed I can do a lot of them. Yeah. Which, which makes sense to me because, um, in this, in this case, we're really looking at that as, uh, the dead deadlift is is providing that heavy stimulus

that you're talking about that's that's leading to growth the bent row is just sort of extending that time under tension by dropping the weight but still forcing them to do it in an awkward position that requires a lot more stabilization so you know if you pull a set of five at 405 and then you do some bent rows at 22 25 or two 45 or whatever, then, um, you know, I think that's pretty,

that's pretty productive for your back. And it's also a way to manage the total amount of stress you're going to put on your back. Of course. Cause if you did, cause if you did four Oh five for a set of five and you did like three sets of five back offs at three 15, you may be so,

your back might be so smoked from that session that the next week is fucked up. Now, your next squat that comes up is fucked up because your back is still torched. So that's where I've seen them be successful as a way to manage stress more than anything. And for that person, that's a fairly advanced trainee I'm talking about in that situation. So yeah, I think that's part of the equation here is that you have to think about, you have to, part of the context you have to add is where does it fit into the program as a whole? And for people who are fairly advanced, fatigue and stress is an issue you've got to manage. And I think that's where these assistive lifts, assistance lifts and accessory lifts can be helpful

in getting some more work in, getting some more volume in without bringing all of the stress that comes along with that. Is that fair to say? I know, I would 100% agree with that. I also think, and this was the point I was trying to hammer home with that,

like, you know, why do you, why do I make it so much of a compound? You know, why don't I just stop when my hips start moving, right? Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Back to that point. And I don't think I addressed that because you made some pretty good points there and I agree with all of that. I think there is a lot we don't understand about how the central nervous system recruits muscle in such a way that it grows.

And the instruments we have aren't that sophisticated. And I think that when you allow the weight to get heavier and you incorporate more muscles, i.e. make it more compound. Now it's not just your shoulders and arms moving. Now your hips and knees are also moving. I think there is something that happens that we don't completely understand. I'm not going to sit here and just pull something out of my ass and say that this is what is happening. Where all the muscles that are participating in the lift get a growth response from it. And it's pretty pronounced, I've noticed.

Yeah. And I'd say that my problem with strict rows, for the reasons I want to use them, I never use them for the reason you're describing. I've done other things for that but the reason i've used them is because i wanted to build upper back muscle and which really is traps you know external rotators uh you know rhomboids and those mostly traps though when you kind of look at somebody's upper back it's mostly traps and you know excluding the lats obviously it's the biggest but yeah your traps are huge right um but i've noticed that most of that growth comes from deadlifts you know i mean deadlifts drive upper back growth i've also you know i thought about them as you know

a heavier more compound bicep stimulus you know because you're using two joints while stabilizing you know but uh what i find is if you keep them ultra strict, the forearms become the limiting factor. The brachioradialis becomes the limiting factor. And you can't keep rowing, you know. First, the grip goes, I think. Yeah, the grip goes when you use straps, but then that brachioradialis doesn't allow you to pull it up to your belly. So then what the fuck are you supposed to do? So it accomplishes Trent's goal of keeping your back rigid with more time under tension, building some endurance there, which is useful if that's what you're trying to address. But if you're trying to use it as a growth stimulus, eventually you got to let it get heavier, which means you're going to use other muscles.

And I think it operates similar to a jerk, right? People that jerk tend to have delts. They tend to have triceps too. Are they as big as they could be for that person? Probably not. They probably still need to press and bench press, but they're getting growth out of that. They're getting additional growth out of that. What I will say is that when I started rowing, especially dumbbell rows, I see it more than barbell because I think with those, I think, you know, there's probably an argument to be made that, you know, getting my knees into it probably is a bit much, you know, but there's just no way not to in that position unless you just keep it so strict that your arms fail before everything else, right? But when I do it with a dumbbell, I'm leaned up on a bench, so I'm using my hips, but I'm not using my knees, right?

So it's my hips and then my shoulders and arms. And, you know, I saw some pretty good arm growth from that. shoulders and arms. And, you know, I saw some pretty good arm growth from that. But up until last year, the only back work I did was deadlifts and overhead pulling, you know, so like lat pull downs, and not even those I do those now because of the tendonitis, but chins, I did chins for 20 years, you know. So chin ups, were pretty much the extent of my back work and deadlifts. Then I started adding rowing motions, seated rows, seated cable rows, dumbbell rows, and barbell rows, or some variation of them, you know, on top of the vertical pulling. And I found that it did help. So like a strict row also can help with stabilizing your bench because of that body awareness, you're stabilizing the shoulder girdle

better if you're doing them strict, but, you know, letting them get heavy and getting some body English into it, you know, also does that, you know. My kind of approach to this is I start strict and then if I want to use that as an intensity stimulus to try and get some more growth out of it, I do. Bodybuilders will shit on me and say, you're only working that last part of the range of motion and you're not going to get anything out of it and da-da-da-da-da. In practice, it tends to work. You know, I don't know why, but it tends to work. Just like a jerk tends to work. of mine dorian yates where you see those guys let's say let's say jay's doing a lat pull down yeah well i've seen him basically completely relaxed and he's not completely relaxed at the top of the lift but he lets that he lets the stack pull him up yep into full extension as he should and then and then you know yank that motherfucker down down to his chest and then he so he's like

actually trying to find ways to extend the range of motion of that his chest and then he so he's like actually trying to find ways to extend the range of motion of that of that lift and he and he's and it becomes dynamic when you watch him do this right uh same thing with the the seated rows you know i've seen those guys like let their upper back go into flexion round forward and then come through so they're adding range of motion they're making it more dynamic they're they're uh it's becoming more compound yeah just like you're saying and i've seen topple body bulls do that right and so yeah so one of the thing that i'm glad you mentioned that that you you sort of start stricter and get allow more english to come into play that's pretty much what i do when i program

for people is like i i want it to be strict so they know like what the movement should feel like, especially if it's new to them. And then, yeah, I let them go until it starts to get, you know, sort of unacceptable body English, right? Which is usually that it's getting so, like they're hip driving a barbell curl so much that we're just, you know, we're just reverse cleaning it, like you said. Okay. At that point. And then what I'll do oftentimes is like, Hey, let's, um, let's, uh, let's say you went from 85 on us, you know, with a barbell on your curls. Let's say you went from 85 to one 15. Yeah. Okay. And now we've got a lot of body English coming into play. Okay. Well, let's take it down to like 95 to a hundred and let's put a pause at the bottom, right? Let's pause at the bottom just to enforce no English, and we'll go back to strict. And guess what? We'll just write it back up. But

the thing is, when they go back to strict, it's always heavier than it was the first time. And that seems to work pretty decent. But yeah, I do allow that body English for the exact reason that you're talking about. Yeah. You know, so yeah, I agree. When I say strict, that's not strict forever and always. No, no. I mean, you got to, you know, I find that when you do a more compound variant of it and you go back to strict, you can handle more. Yeah. And so if it's not doing anything, why does that happen? You know what I mean?

Like, there's just, I just don't, I think that we don't fully understand why muscles grow and what they respond to. But I think that there are things that happen when you're lifting a big heavy weight using lots of your body that we don't fully understand, you know. Right. And, you know, if it works, why not do it, you know. But I do think, I've got sold on the rows for arm growth. I've seen it work better than pull downs. And I've explained this to people before, you know, yeah, your elbows are bending, but your lats start completely stretched.

So they can pretty much do most of the work in that range of motion. When you shorten the lats and have to row it, you have to use your arms more by design, you know, cause you're using your lats less, right? So it's more range of motion. It's more range of motion on the biceps and you're also in a position where you have to oppose gravity with your arms a lot more. Yeah, I was about to say, it's kind of like, I mean, you think about a deadlift, right? When the arm's in tension, the biceps have worked pretty hard. So yeah, a set of 10 or 12 rows is uh it's a lot of tension on those biceps exactly so yeah i think we've i don't know what the hell we're gonna title this but we hammered this to hell should you do sets of 15 maybe maybe probably not probably follow the continuum on a

squat no you know on a you know it's preacher curl yeah probably i think i think what this episode was is its context around how to apply how to apply these different lifts in the context of a whole program and that's where a lot of people i find a lot of confusion comes up when i talk to people and granted i, I'm mainly talking to people who are, who have some familiarity with starting strength and novice linear progression. Um, but I still see a lot of confusion over how to implement these other lifts that they see in intermediate programs and advanced programs in the context of the whole thing. And, um, there's several factors, right? There's what are we trying to accomplish here? Um, then there's the, the stress and fatigue problem as well. That

becomes a real issue when you get to be pretty damn strong and you've got to work around that. And so, um, yeah, so hopefully, hopefully we've added some context and you understand kind of have our thought process applies to each situation, but it matters. You know, if you're a novice, you don't need to worry about this shit. No. It's just, it's just not, it's not important and it's not going to do anything for you. And, you know, I will say this too. I think when you get to a certain level of advancement, it also doesn't matter very much. No. You know, like you've described, like you go through, you go through some phases in your training after years and years where you'll find some things here and there that are productive but it's like one or two

things it's not 10 things yeah and you just throw out the other eight that didn't work you keep the two things that did and you're back to you know after several years of training you're back to just meat and potatoes again yeah you narrow it down to what's important yeah that's pretty much what's happened with me so yeah so it shouldn't be a i don't think it should be a goal to expand your exercise selection you do it because you have to yeah and you got and you got to try at some level you just got to try some shit and see what works um but you know once you figure that out it's it's not i don't think it's like it's a good thing or it's not a uh it's not a good in and of itself to just like do a bunch of exercises.

And sometimes things are pointless. Like, okay, you know, I did dumbbell shrugs, got up to 200 pound dumbbells last year. And my traps grew, but I don't want to shrug. I don't see a point. I don't see a point of shrugging dumbbells. You know, power shrugs are like the penalty row, you know, like power shrugs, you can be useful, you put a bunch of weight in your hands and shrug it up. And, but I'm not going to get into all that. What I'm saying is some exercises are just pointless, but you might

want to do them for whatever reason. It might be effective, but you know, they might be pointless in the larger scheme of things. I don't need a big giant shrug because I'm perfectly fine with, you know, the trap development I have. Iug because i'm perfectly fine with you know the trap development i have um i was just experimenting at the time you know i do i do calves but some of you listening would never do calves it's pointless you know um right for me i you know i can't have stick legs and shorts i'm a gym owner damn it let's get you some self some car heart pants and now you know funny thing is i have the insertions but if i don't train those fucking things they're they're just small in size and defined you know just deflate yeah my dad you know that they're his family are endomorphs so they have big giant strong calves

and i got it's funny i've gotten all the muscle shape of my dad with a fraction of the size same insertions, smaller size. So maybe what you need to do is you just need to bulk to like 275 or 250. 275. 275. You'd be a hell of a 275. Well, I mean. Just get really fat for a little while, walk around with that,

and then drop back down and you have big calves. Probably, but I'm not going to do that. Simple, right? I mean, 5' five eight two seventy five that's about right I'm five nine hey remember uh uh Serge Redding he was uh the the great Belgian lifter the that never that never won gold he should have had gold he got robbed he got. Lexi the thief. Anyway, but Serge Redding, he was 5'8", like three, he was at least 300 pounds. He was like maybe 305 or something. He's 5'8". Yeah. And he pressed 500, 502, 502, and then he jumped.

502. Then he jumped, I don't know how high afterwards, man. That was crazy looking. 33 inches. Yeah. All right, kiddos. We're going to close out. We're tired.

You know, it's what, 8 o'clock over there? Yep. You know, so thank you for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at WeightsandPlates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana or weights double underscore and double underscore plates. And we, you know, we do online coaching. We do consults, et cetera. So if you, you know, aren't in the area in Metro Phoenix and need my help, you can hire me online. Or if you are in the area, come check out the gym.

We're just south of Sky Harbor, about five to ten minutes near where the I-10 meets the 143. Very good. I have a question. Do you sell gift cards? Should I? Is that a thing? Well, I was going to say, so Christmas is coming up fast. We'll be there in,

you know, before we know it, six weeks. And yeah, if you've been thinking about what to get your significant other that trains, or maybe they want to start training, they've never done this before, call Santana. Call Santana. Sign them up for a session at Weights and Plates in person, or if not, sign them up for a package online. It could be a really good Christmas present. If you want to find me, you can find me at marmalade underscore cream on Instagram. That's where I post everything that I do,

lifting and otherwise. And if you want to ask me a question about coaching in particular, email me jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right, we'll talk to you all again in a couple weeks. Thank you.