Would you like to discover what weekly training split is right for you and your goals? Listen in to this week’s episode to hear the fellow Rebel Performance coaches, Ryan Patrick, Ryan L’Ecuyer AKA Meat Daddy, Keiran Halton, Lance Goyke and I talk all things training splits and understanding the flow of what a training week should look like to recover. The coaches and I share our tips and secrets behind how we help our athletes experience massive success in such a short period of time.
Too many times, we see people putting in the extra work, but the progress they want to see just isn’t there. This all comes down to stress management and knowing what your body needs in your training. We do a deep dive into the nitty gritty of what it means to appropriately balance your stress load over the course of a training week so that you’re in the best position possible to drive the most adaptation from your efforts. Listen in as we share how exercise selection plays a huge role in distinguishing the right training split for you. Ryan Patrick says, “It’s important to know what to include, but it’s more important to know what to exclude.” You should use your exercise selection on your training day to determine the stressor and how great it’s going to be.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- [03:30] Understanding when to apply stress
- [05:57] Bodybuilding stress management
- [07:45] Differences between bodybuilding and powerlifting stress management
- [09:10] Total body versus upper/lower training splits
- [10:40] Exercise selection
- [13:54] The 3,3 split
- [14:55] Stimulation day versus developmental day
- [18:30] Starting with the outcome
- [31:25] High volume phases followed by low volume phases
- [34:00] Final takeaways
James Cerbie: Let’s jump in today will be a quick one, 30 minutes or so, and I think a good topic, the roundtable one that I do want to come back on a roundtable at some point, but that’s going to be much larger conversation is to discuss the realm of stretching so people can be on standby. So we can kind of come back at some point and hopefully give a different insight onto why sitting around and just stretching your hamstrings and people still do sleep sleeper stretches, which frankly kind of blows my mind.
But today I think it’ll be good. We’ll dive into let’s just think like weekly training splits in terms of how do we think about going about designing a training week, laying out lift gate, conditioning days, et cetera, things in that realm. And as a quick backtrack, the reason I think this is important is it’s really just getting into stress management because that’s essentially what we do for a living. We manage stress. We choose to input and apply stress to organisms at particular times and particular doses so that we can get some type of physiological adaptation and outcome.
And when you think about designing and laying out a training week, I think that’s a perfect example of how we’re choosing and when we’re choosing to apply stress on certain days. And one of the mistakes that I see a lot I think we see when we’re on boarding new athletes and bringing new people in is that’s being very mismanaged in terms of there’s not an actual rhythm and flow or appreciation to the fact that I have a high day, I have a low day of medium days, whatever it’s going to be.
And people are just kind of generally like highish across the board. And I’m just going to train and do something every single day without there being appreciation for kind of a flow of a training week and what that needs to look like so that we can recover. Because I’ve always like the bank account analogy. If you want an adaptation, you have to buy it. If I have a high if I have a hard training day, I’m making a major withdrawal out of that bank account.
Understanding When to Apply Stress
So I’m going to have to figure out a way to put things back in that bank account, surviving and then buying adaptation again. So, for example, if you have a training week and you just go lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, like those last two lift days, potentially three, you’re probably not really getting anything out of those days because we’ve essentially zap the bank account the first few days and now you’ve got nothing left. You’re just training right.
Like this gets into that realm of people who just want to do work for the sake of doing work. So we’ll get into some weekly training splits in terms of how to lay out a training week that I think work quite well for different types of outcomes. But just quickly want to throw that out there in terms of a roundtable, if anybody has thoughts inputs on this concept of like stress management and in particular how we’re deciding to apply a stress load over the course of a week, anybody can just jump right in or should I call on names?
Is that a more appropriate tactic and strategy for this people?
Ryan L’Ecuyer: It’s probably a good idea. Just call names, because otherwise I’m just going to go first every time.
James Cerbie: I think that’s what we should do, because we’ve already talked about how Zoom clearly, preferentially is going to show based off of muscle mass. Yeah. So I think we’ll go with you. Meat Daddy.
Ryan L’Ecuyer: We use this muscle mass. Yeah. So I like this topic because it could go a lot of different ways based on the goal, the training goal I like I live mostly in bodybuilding and some powerlifting as well for bodybuilding. I’ve struggled with this one a lot over the years because I think what I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion of is that bodybuilding isn’t very hard. And I think that bodybuilders need to hear that, like dieting really sucks. Getting ready for a show is a really a bummer and sucks not having a bonus for a while.
But training wise, like it’s not actually that hard. If there was ever a thing that looked like straight across the board, everything being very similar, it’s probably bodybuilding because you’re not training probably the same exact body parts every day. So there is in terms of the structure and like if you’re training like RP, for example, that’s how I tend to program things. The RP may look the same as far as a step by step prescription, but there are definitely high and low days there.
We know inherently lower body training is going to be much harder than upper body training just in general. Right. So within that, you definitely have these higher stress days. And I think it would make a lot of sense. And I think bodybuilders do this intuitively anyway, where you’re probably not going to do like a super heavy squat session followed by a super heavy squat session. That would be kind of stupid, but you might have a lower body session where you squat and it’s a hard session and the next day may be a quote unquote hard upper body session, but it’s not really the same level of stress overall.
Differences Between Bodybuilding and Powerlifting Stress Management
Right. So as far as the prescriptions go, it is a very high approach. But it’s not actually that super stressful, so I think it’s still exists within that, but that’s kind of the conclusion that I come to, at least for Body-building stuff. And I think for powerlifting, it’s definitely a little bit different where it definitely makes sense to have. There’s very big differences in terms of the training and stresses, and it looks a lot different on paper.
Maybe again, step by step, like I think taking a set of zorch or squats to an 8 RP is much, much different than taking a low bar squat to an ARP. So even though that’s the same prescription is a very different outcome and a different stressor. And then, of course, like throwing in the cardio days, I think is really useful from recovery standpoint. And just maintain your overall health and not just being a complete cement block.
That kind of stuff is really useful, but that’s where I’m at with it. I don’t know if anybody else wants to chime in on something that’s a little bit more interesting than being a complete meathead.
James Cerbie: Yeah, one thing, I’ll make a quick distinction here and then pass it off to anyone else, which is, I think the distinction here that’s really important that you mentioned in the bodybuilding realm is what does that individual training day look like? Are we actually doing upper lower splits where we’re saying, OK, on today, I’m having upper days on the day, having lower days, maybe this is like a rear day with biceps, et cetera, versus like the majority of the programs I write where it’s total body every time we lift.
Total Body Versus Upper/Lower Training Splits
I think that distinction is really important because like, yeah, you can have a hard, lower body day and get torched, but you’re probably OK to come in and followed up with some type of an upper body and put in stressor because that shouldn’t be carrying lots of fatigue left over from yesterday. Yeah. So, yeah, I was just going to say, I think if we have this total body approach for fight for my people, it’s like we’re doing upper and lower on pretty much every day versus saying we’re able to have upper lower splits.
I do think that’s a really important distinction here in terms of when we think about laying out these training weeks and how you can stack your days together.
Keiran Halton: What I was going to ask meat daddy, was so how you’re talking about, like sometimes we distinguish like an athlete split as like the high low traditionally from like the nervous system standpoint. But do you think the frequency can be so much higher for a bodybuilders like Liffe days or like I don’t know if like pseudo high days would be like the way to put it because you’re never truly getting like you’re going to have hard, shitty days, right, where you’re like pushing like you’re heavy, low bar squat or whatever.
And obviously your lower body days are going to be a little harder than your upper body days. But do you feel like the frequency can be so much higher for those because you might not necessarily be tapping into like a traditional, like high neuro day or whatever you want to call it?
Ryan Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. I think an upper lower split is just one example. That actually isn’t even something that I traditionally run all the time for. I hypertrophy people or myself, I tend to run more full body splits. And it really to me, it just comes down to it’s the exercise selection in my mind that’s the biggest factor. And I would guess that it’s probably similar with a lot of athletics do like certain things. You just can’t push as hard or there just isn’t as much of a cost to them.
So you could definitely leg press or fucking leg extension the day after you do a really hard squat session and probably have very little negative effect from that. And you’re definitely not going to implode on the leg extension machine. Like, I don’t think anything really bad is going to happen typically. And if and if there was something bad that was going to happen, you probably you probably know. So, yeah, like you can still definitely afford to spread that stuff out more.
But I think it’s just because of the selection and with bodybuilding or particular like you just have so many options that just aren’t so systemically taxing and largely actually loading type of exercises. So you have these all these options where you can do things pretty safely and just dissipate that stress throughout the week.
James Cerbie: Lance, do you want to jump in a year? You’re going to go there?
Lance Goykei: I don’t have a whole lot to talk about there, but I mean, I just want a second. I mean, I don’t work with bodybuilders, but I work with high performance professionals in their careers. And it’s the same idea. It’s just like a party is like, do I even need to wave this micro cycle? Because you’re going to miss next workout anyway, at least when I’m training people in person. But the exercise selection is a big deal.
Charlie Francis talked about that forever ago just with his high and low days. It’s like and he he put a number and I can’t remember the numbers, but he was just like a max sprint day is basically one hundredth out of one hundred and a max and clean and jerk is a ninety five snatches, ninety four your squats and eighty five. And we look at squat and we’re like, God, that’s tough. And I. Feel worn out after that, but relative to max speed sprinting workouts from people who can squat 600 pounds like nothing.
James Cerbie: Yeah, it’s second; I think the Charlie Frances is the background of this concept for me.
Just right. If people haven’t read Charlie Francis, go out of your way to do it, I would highly recommend it’s like 20 bucks, whatever it is worth I buy it. But he talks about the split with sprinter’s essentially going along the lines of if you’re going to try to get faster, you need to be running at least over 90 percent at a minimum, like you’ve got to be over 90 percent effort. And the problem he saw was that you had a lot of people doing work between 70 and 90 percent output, which for a sprinter is frankly a waste of time because the concept is pretty simple.
To get faster, I need to be over 90%. If I’m doing work between 70% to 90%, I’m not getting faster, but I am doing enough work to make sure I’m not recovering. So the idea was just, hey, we’re either working over 90% or we’re going to do tempo’s and we’re going to be 70%. So that I’m getting some type of improvement in work capacity, I’m able to recover and then I can go back into my next sprint day.
The 3,3 Split
And so you can kind of take that and extrapolate it out to the weight room. The percentages don’t carry over, obviously, but we can have a similar concept when we train in a weight room to say, OK, maybe the one that I like the most would be like a three, three split where I left on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Those going to be high days on Tuesday and Thursday are my low days. I’m doing tempos and doing cardiac output.
I’m doing low intensity circuits. And then Saturday is going to be another high day where I’m chasing some type of high conditioning, but I’m chasing power or capacity, but doing it in a very intense way. And then I have sun as an off day. So I don’t mind the Friday Saturday back to back high days is knowing that Sunday is a complete day off the chill and rest before I come back again on Monday. Again, this kind of depends on the outcome you’re chasing.
I tend to get people who want this hybrid total approach. So we’re chasing like a lot of different outcomes simultaneously. And I found that out to be the most successful. Ryan Patrick, what are your thoughts here? Because I know that you seem like a pretty wide range of gen pop out to pro guys out like strong man powerlifting. You’ve seen a large realm as well.
Stimulation Day Versus Developmental Day
Ryan Patrick: Yeah. So I kind of want to dig into some of the stuff that that meat daddy that is said to. But to your point, James, we follow a three, three split quite a bit Friday, Saturday or definitely two high days. Some of the different terminology is like the stimulation day versus the developmental day where Friday is highish. At least we’re going to use relatively high intensity, maybe not as high a volume as the other lifting days, because we know Saturday we’re going to be doing our Amax Sprint stuff.
So it’s more of a primer in the sense that I just want them kind of stimulated going into that Saturday session. So that’s where we fall with most of our stuff. But, you know, I can remember even going back to Silver back and talking about you’ve got that main lift on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I had no troubles with that. It was that other block of doing a trio of exercises that were more metabolic, like fatiguing, or at least in that rep range, the tens, the Twelve’s that I really struggled with.
And so since I don’t work with a lot of bodybuilders, usually the guys that I’m trying to get to put size on or at least athletes. So there’s still a priority there have strength, power, speed. But I may use something like a two kettle bell, rear foot elevated split squat, because from a perception standpoint, it’s incredibly difficult. But the actual loading that they’re using is nothing. So I hate to say functional exercises, but what role or how do you even make space for that stuff?
Because I would assume you’re trying to get accumulate as much tonnage as possible without any negative consequences. So do those exercises even have a place in terms of how you allocate some of that training stress?
Keiran Halton: Yeah, I think so. As long as they can do them without so much cognitive burden that it takes away from their ability to produce some output, because the output, to your point, is not going to be super high. But as long as the on the local level they’re getting it, as long as they’re getting mechanical testing at the local tissue, like it really doesn’t matter how much load is on their back. And ideally, the less load, the better.
But it can be taken too far. Like, I think a decent example is just some of the squatting stuff that has come up in the in our sphere over the last couple of years. And I think I can go a little bit too far where you’re so limited by the position and trying to maintain this stacking. And if you’re doing that, if that’s your I think it’s super beneficial. I think it’s going to lead to longevity in the end.
And it is a different stimulus. But I think it’s there’s so much cognitive burden associated with it that there’s so much work just holding the position, especially for so. He already has a significant amount of muscle that I don’t know that that’s going to be your huge bang for your buck exercise, but I like something like, yeah, like a like a double front rack, split squat. Like, I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t be able to produce a lot of mechanical tension at the local level.
We’re talking about the quads probably without exercise. I don’t see why that couldn’t be a great exercise. And they’re also getting this different input that isn’t just trying to survive under a heavy load for once, I think. Yeah, I don’t see why they couldn’t work. And I try to utilize that stuff as much as I can, assuming that they can actually get into, like, can they maintain some semblance of a stack and they get into a hip shift with that exercise, are they able to actually state send it over that femur?
And typically they can they can figure that out over time.
James Cerbie: So, yeah, I think an important distinction here is I’m glad this got brought up. Right, because if we think about choosing an exercise. There’s realistically five outcomes I could be chasing from that exercise selection, like I’m either trying to get strength, hypertrophy, power, endurance and or capacity, or I’m trying to create a movement based change. And I think people need to. I just put something out on Instagram today about this. Actually, you need to start the outcome first.
I think this is why this is so important. Like what outcome do I want out of this movement and then work your way back to what exercise can deliver on that outcome. Right. It’s like a wall supported one leg. RDL is a great example. Not going to really build strength, not going to get hypertrophy, definitely not building power. I’m giving that as an exercise, as I’m trying to get a movement based change. I’m trying to improve movement competency in some realm and a hip hinge pattern.
Maybe you get some capacity changes depending on how well trained or trained this individual is. But like I put like the two kettle bell front rack split squat in a similar realm because you’re so capped in terms of your total load. It’s like that’s where I’m thinking maybe more movement in some capacity based changes. Right. But what we do know and we’ve talked about this before, like this nice flywheel effect, when we use that more sensorimotor work, like when we get those movement based changes, it just flywheel feeds into your big lifts where I am chasing strength, hypertrophy and power.
And it allows you to get more out of those movements. But I think, like, you have to ask that question first of what’s the outcome? I want to get really clear on that and then choose the exercise that best can deliver on that outcome.
Keiran Halton: I’m going to jump on that, James, because I think some of the better programs, or at least in terms of the structure of the entire thing, is not trying to do it all in a single program. And I think anybody who writes their own program has a tendency to kind of overestimate. I write shitty programs for myself.
James Cerbie: I save myself up, like I’ll write it out like, oh, I totally got this. You got to half a yes session. You’re like, oh, this is a terrible idea.
Keiran Halton: Yeah. And there’s times where guys have written programs and this is much more difficult than I thought. But I mean, I’m just I’m ridiculous. I’m just out of this world. So I think I’m really sitting down and looking at not just what to include, but what to exclude has been one of the more beneficial things that actually makes the program, I think, very succinct and in delivering, because one of the things that I try to do on some level is a bit of redundancy, like if there is a certain adaptation that I’m trying to drive, I want a little bit of integration of that concept throughout the session.
So specific to an athlete, the warm up may have certain movements that let’s just say open the hips for some lateral or change of direction stuff. There may be a med ball throw that integrates and further pretz that there may be movement based work that looks like that. And then we may even do something strength oriented, like a lateral lunge or split squat, where I’m just really trying to drive that specific adaptation. So on some level, I want that.
And it just, you know, when I decide what I don’t want, it’s a lot easier to get those changes.
James Cerbie: Yeah, one hundred percent. I think one thing I do want to circle back to is Lance brushed over this. But I do think it’s really important because I think a lot of people end up like way overthinking this sometimes. Right. So depending on the population that you’re working with, depending on you and your goals, whether if you’re a really busy professional who’s not training four or five, six days a week. Right. Like. This conversation is probably less important for you, right, because it’s like, all right, if my concern is like getting in two to three good days or maybe three to four, we’re not trying to juggle the stuff as much.
Right. And so I would love to turn that over to Lance, because you work with way more of these, like high performing professionals, people that are super busy, the major type A like the CEO types who are already probably working outrageous hours, don’t sleep well, and then they just want to go mash and train hard all the time. And so you’re kind of having to play a balancing act there. But like with these people where we are on a time crunch, it’s like I think the weekly split, the stress management conversation shifts a little bit from a lot of people.
We get where it’s like the gym is the priority. I’m going to get there all the time. I’m going to train six days a week. So we have like a spectrum to play with here. Yeah.
Lance Goyke: Where to start so that I don’t work with a lot of the ubiquitously type A professionals. I work with the people who do their job and their family are their priorities and they want to be healthy. And that’s the end of that thought. So there’s a weird balance because they don’t have the physical stress of like a three, three kind of weekly programing, but they do have the physical stress of their eyes are always converged on something 16 inches away from their face or twelve inches from their faces.
They’re on the phone and their mind is always going. So you have I’m sure we’ve talked about this at some point, but stress is general. All stress is just stress. But those stresses react differently. I think one thing on the topic of this conversation that people overvalue is the local stress, like your tissue’s, oh, no, I shouldn’t squat today because I squatted yesterday. It’s not that. It’s that your body just can’t handle it. It’s not like your legs are tired and they feel sore and they don’t want to do it.
And so it’s a little overvalued, I think. But what we’re talking about is a general overload of CNS, the brain and nervous system. So with these professionals. Right. So I can give I got one guy who’s been at Google for fifteen years and you can imagine he’s pretty busy. Right. And he’s super smart and he can’t stop thinking about stuff. And his job is like he’s a designer. He says this is how we are going to make things, because I’ve thought about everybody who’s going to use this and they need it to be this way.
There’s a lot to consider there. Right. So he doesn’t have the stress of work in the three week, but he does have the tension, the descending CNS drive that is stress and stress is general. So I want to give him something hard, something that’s going to stress the local tissues. Right. Get those adaptations. But with his bulging disk nerve issues that he’s got with his sensitivities in his back and just with the neck stiffness that comes from looking at something really close to your face all day or the back stiffness that comes with it, or the back stiffness that comes from standing in one spot or sitting in one spot all day.
I have to consider that. And I have to consider that training, though important, and I want it to be as efficient as possible. It’s not always a priority for this person. So with someone like that, I could have somebody that I train twice a week and I could still give them an easy day just because I don’t want them to break down. I’m trying to support what they are trying to do, which isn’t necessarily to squat for hundred pounds or whatever.
James Cerbie: And it’s a long term game. Yeah. Yeah, like that’s one the people need to come back to that. We’re always playing a long term game. You’re never going to get better from one day or one week of training. There’s not. You can get a whole lot worse from one day or one week of training. You get better because of the fact that you’ve been consistent for twelve weeks, 16 weeks, six months, one year. That’s where the progress takes place.
People will just become so short sighted and narrow, they try to pack as much as they can into a single training week sometimes. And I’m like, well, yeah, no, no wonder you’re not going anywhere. You’re not seeing progress because like you literally you have nothing in the gas tank, you have nothing in your bank account. You’re just running on empty. And that’s where I think a lot of times people get frustrated because like, well, I thought I just had to work hard and that would give me what I want, like just go to the gym and work hard and sweat and suffer and I’m going to get the changes I want.
And it’s this weird dichotomy also of when you first start to train, you get rewarded for that behavior because you’re new and everything you do makes you better. But then it’s like the longer you train, the more we really need to be thoughtful about what day goes when. Why is that day there? How does that fit into this week? How is that? At end of this month, how that month fit into these 12 to 16 weeks, et cetera, et cetera, if the template that I always have in my mind, because I’m thinking about these five outcomes, strength, approach, purchasing power, endurance or movement, it’s like, OK, if I’m I’m trying to create more of a movement based change.
And Lance actually got this from you because this is the very first program you ever wrote me when I was super broken and Internet. I fast write it. It’s a two one split, but it’s a repeating two one split. So you have a day b’day lift. So you’d like lift Monday, lift Tuesday, condition Wednesday, lift Thursday, lift Friday and then maybe condition again on Saturday. But you’re repeating that a day by day lift. And I think that’s super important when we’re trying to chase primarily a movement outcome because you need the increased exposure, you need more reps, you need more learning opportunities.
And then I think if you want this total package approach, I don’t think there’s anything better than the three three split we’ve already talked about. If you’re more interested in strength and hypertrophy like this is where I think we live in the realm of a four to four lift days, you’re going to have to easier conditioning days and spread them out, right? Maybe lift Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday condition on Tuesday and Thursday. That’s pretty simple. Louis Simmons made that popular way back in the day with his West Side splits, and then if he really wanted to push it in that realm, I think this gets more into that power building concept.
Right. You can go a five one have five lift is one conditioning day. But as we start getting more into that realm, that’s where we need to get into more of the specialization that you talked about earlier, Ryan, in terms of like we really need to start getting good about upper lower splits, appreciating local fatigue in that realm. And then if you really want endurance, like I think a two four split makes the most sense, you have to lift days for conditioning days, right in your conditioning days are going to be high or low.
Right. So in my mind, when I’m laying out these weeks and you can do it on a graph, I think it really helps. I just write stress on the Y axis. Put your days of the week on the X axis and then just categorize the day as a higher elo and you should see a natural up and down rhythm to the week. If your line is just going straight across the graph, probably time to reflect and maybe make some changes.
Generally speaking, my base recommendation is I found it’s really hard to have more than two high days in a row. My own personal experience for myself and the athletes I’ve coached. Right. But I also am not in the bodybuilding hyperspeed realm where I think you can probably break that rule and still be really successful. But generally speaking, if we’re doing more this total body athlete approach, if you’re doing more than two high days in a row, I think you’re playing with fire.
Just my two cents there. Don’t know if you guys have any thoughts there in that realm in terms of, like the layout of the weeks, the splits, because he has like you want to pick the right split to match your goals against me.
Keiran Halton: I think we all agree. That’s fine right here hanging out and everyone’s just hanging out.
James Cerbie: And so, like Ryan, I’ve done some of your eye surgery programs and you tend to live more in that for more in that four to realm. And even like Flexner’s living with us now, he’s right through that wall over here. Right. So he’s very heavy, entrenched in the bodybuilding realm right now. And he’s on more of that four days a week.
And he even gets a little bit more spaced out than that sometimes. Like I was talking to him recently. And he said that’s one of the biggest adjustments that has been made over the last six months. He’s like, yeah, I’m actually training less, but like I’m getting far better results. And I think people are generally blown away how that works.
Ryan Patrick: Yeah, I think it has to be. What’s that word where things come before it? I don’t know. There’s a fancy word for subsequent. Yes. Thank you.
Therefore, you know. Well, we’ll explain what’s before that subsequent whatever. OK, so before you do that lower frequency thing, it’s going to drive me fucking nuts. I hate when this happens before you do that, that the lower frequency thing. I think it helps to start preceding with a there it is with a higher frequency or higher volume training cycle. And I remember hearing, like, just bodybuilders talk about that, like when they like old school guys, like they switch to like the one set like Mike Metzer stuff where he just does one step.
High Volume Phases Followed By Low Volume Phases
But he came from like a super high volume training phase. I think it makes a lot of sense to have these cyclical type of programing structures where there are really high volume phases, followed by some lower volume phases where you can actually realize this. It’s just super comp. They get been around in every sport forever. So I think it does apply to the hypertrophy as well. It does seem to be like there is some evidence to like this delayed hypertrophied response or from training as well.
And I think sometimes you do need to pull back. But I see that because I think people can hear that and they’re like, shit, I just need to train less and like, mother fucker, you only train once a week anyway. So that’s where I think I think it needs to come with some context. L
James Cerbie: He’s a very he’s very advanced.
Ryan Patrick: Yeah. Yeah.
James Cerbie: You still get more advanced than ninety nine point nine percent of people listening to this. Let’s keep that in conversation.
Ryan Patrick: That’s important for sure. For sure. But there definitely is something to be gained by pulling back every now and then, at the very least, psychologically, just knowing, like our I’ve been training six days a week for a few months and now I’m going to pull back to four or three or something like just you’re just going to feel you feel like a rock star.
Yeah, you’re going to feel great. And I think that at the very least, that’s really nice to walk in the gym feeling like that just in life in general, just feeling not as fed up.
James Cerbie: There’s a phenomenal one liner from the movie. The Other Guys have ever seen that movie. And I’m trying to remember what it is, but it’s just like phenomenal, like sitting in this little support group talking about if people haven’t seen that movie got right. Watch. It’s hilarious. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. But they’re talking to these people about recovering from the trauma of like shooting their gun in the line of fire. But all the cops and there are these like super macho dudes.
So he’s telling the story about how he comes in, like blasts doing the shots of the shotgun. And the therapy is like, well, how does that make you feel, guys? Like maybe feel like my cock was made out of concrete or something along those lines. So let’s wrap this here. So let’s wrap it up. Let’s just go one by one. If there’s going to be one thing that you want someone to walk away with, what’s the one take away?
What’s the one action item that they can actually go use? Let’s go reverse order with how people are on my screen. So we’ll go Ryan Patrick first, Lance, Meat Daddy.
Final Takeaways
Ryan Patrick: Yeah, for me it is definitely just have intense prioritization of what you are trying to accomplish within the context of a training program and training block. We spent a lot of time just talking about the layout of a week, but the training stress fluctuates over a period of time of sessions and how your body responds. I know for me very few things that I’ve ever written have gone to script. I mean, we’re trying to basically plan how your body’s going to respond weeks out.
And I have kids and my wife owns a business, too. And I mean, there’s just an immense amount of variables that can impact how I’m going to recover for any given session. So, you know, understanding really what you’re trying to accomplish and make sure that you get the big rocks in the training program, I think is. One of the most valuable things.
Lance Goyke: Yeah, I’m totally with you there, I want to say pick the thing that is the single priority, but that’s kind of what Ryan’s saying.
So I’ll offer a a different kind of piece of advice for those of you who think that you need to take it easy that day. Warm up before you decide.
James Cerbie: I like that.
Keiran Halton: Yeah, I love that.
James Cerbie: Yeah, don’t be so tied to your HRV in the morning. That’s probably actually not that accurate to begin with.
Lance Goyke: I hate this.
Yeah, I went I went the exact opposite with that. I’m like, you know, I’d get a red, red reading. I’d be like, let’s see about it’s going to be always the best days.
Keiran Halton: The Reds a bad ass color. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That’s great, James. Actually, I love the charting it out thing. I don’t care which is the X and which is the Y on the axis, but having this dress looked like this and I think I’ll just speak mostly to the Body-building side of things, but use your exercise selection to determine the stressor and how great it’s going to be that day when you start hearing about hi, look, just remember you’re not all that sophisticated as a bodybuilder or gay like you’re not you’re not an Olympic sprinter.
So you can definitely use high, low concepts. But that doesn’t mean that you have a day where you go in or multiple days in the week where you’re training out of 15 rep reserve. So like your exercise selection is really going to be the thing that determines the stress overall.
James Cerbie: Yeah, I think when you start getting more and more specific, I approach bodybuilding realm. If we’re going to start drawing this graph, you need to add another layer onto what you’re writing in, because I’m always thinking what Lance mentioned. More of this is general total fatigue, general total stress, because that’s more in the realm of how I’m applying stress. But in your realm, I would imagine on that graph it’d be helpful to say this was a high day and it was a high day for these body parts, frankly.
And then I can go to another table. Maybe it’s high again, but now it’s a high day for different body parts. And if you’re going to do a total approach, you say, OK, well, these body parts were high on this day, so they should be low on the low on the following day. Right. It’s like I’m going to do a knee extension instead of a squat, etc. So I think that would be a helpful layer to bring for people who are more interested in the body building approach.
Let’s see, my one takeaway, I think, would be a combo of everything that you guys said, like I need to get super clear on what your goal is and then pick the right weekly training split for that goal or that outcome. That’s kind of step one in the process, like don’t just wing it. There should be a natural flow to how you experience stress over the course of a week. And then the same concept can be pulled out and talked about in terms of full training cycles, phases, blocks, etc.
You can use a similar graph approach to see how it all comes together, but. Sit down, take the time, like draw it out and ride it out. It’ll be, I think, really helpful for the people listening that are more and to that total package, hybrid approach. If you haven’t been doing the three, three split, I would switch to that immediately. Just from my experience, I’ve found nothing that works better and it works all the time.
Thanks for hanging with me today, guys, have a beautiful week, everybody. Technological issues aside, I hope that you enjoyed the episode will be back next Monday.
Links:
- Follow Ryan Patrick here: https://www.instagram.com/coachryanpatrick/
- Follow Ryan L’Ecuyer here: https://www.instagram.com/lacurefit/
- Follow Lance Goyke here: https://www.instagram.com/lancegoyke/
- Follow Keiran Halton here: https://www.instagram.com/halton_performance/
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