 when I'm explaining how hard exercise needs to be to be effective, is that throughout most of human history, you know, we didn't have nautilus machines, we didn't have barbells or any of that, if a person encountered some sort of a demanding physical stress, it was usually because they were either desperately trying to kill something for food or they were trying desperately to avoid becoming something else's food. Now, if they happened to survive it, if they got the food and didn't starve or if they managed to avoid becoming lunch for something else, then their body would respond to that stress by producing an improvement in strength so that the next time the same stress doesn't produce as much of an in-road and leave them unable to move afterwards. Now, so what we are doing in exercise is trying to replicate the general physical demands that would have stimulated improvements in our ancestors in the past, but without, you know, the same risks involved. What we are trying to do in a nutshell is to send a message to your body that its current capabilities are inadequate to meet some demand that the environment is placing on it and that if it is going to survive another similar encounter it has to get stronger, it has to improve its conditioning, all the other aspects of fitness that contribute to your ability to move. Again, training in this manner, focusing on making it that hard, runs completely counter to the way most people think going into the gym. One of the biggest hurdles is in getting people to train to momentary muscle failure, teaching them how hard they are capable of pushing themselves and also teaching them that they are capable of working through discomfort. A lot of people assume, and this depends on the background, if you get somebody who spent their life in athletics or somebody who grew up on a farm or something where they are regularly performing hard physical work, they have a more realistic understanding of their capabilities than somebody who hasn't, but taking most people and starting them out, most people stop when exercise becomes uncomfortable because they assume it's becoming uncomfortable, the muscles are burning, I'm close to the end. They stop at that point. Or because they're not familiar with how hard they're capable of contracting, which is just a matter of an experience. And an example of this, a lot of times with new clients, they'll get to a point where they don't think they can move the weight anymore. And two points on this. First off, a lot of times they quit when they get to that point, not just because of the discomfort, but because it doesn't go. And again, they're thinking about making the weight go. It doesn't matter if the weight goes or not. They can still contract against it. They might not be able to move it, but they can still contract against it. And you want to do that. And the reason for that is, when a lot of these people think they've reached momentary muscle failure, when they think they cannot continue the exercise in good form, I'll tell them, I'm going to assist you in performing another repetition or two. And then I pretend to, but I don't actually do it. I go through the motions of pretending to assist the movement of the barbell or pretending to apply force to the movement arm. And a lot of times, these people are capable of getting one, two, three more repetitions than they thought they could because they believed that they were getting help. And because also somebody pushing them through that discomfort. Now, to be able to get the best possible results from exercise. And again, I think James talked about this. It is necessary to work with a very high intensity of effort. Working with a high intensity of effort requires that you push yourself through significant discomfort, not just muscular burning, but elevated heart rate, heavy breathing. And part of a mental block some people have about this is the fear that they are going to injure themselves or that they are going to pass out or something as a result of this. It's important to keep in mind that the injury during exercise has nothing to do with how hard you're training. And it doesn't even have anything to do with how much weight you're using, but rather the forces that are involved. And those forces are affected by a couple of things. Again, I'm sure Bill touched on this, the levers and things like acceleration. As an example, if we were to go out in the parking lot right now and attempt to pick up somebody's truck. Now, it's a ridiculous amount of weight. I don't think any of us are going to be able to stand out of the bumper and deadlift it. But despite the fact that it's incredibly heavy, if you were to attempt to do so in a controlled manner, unless you had some sort of a pre-existing issue with your back or shoulders or hips, if you grabbed it and you pulled lightly and then gradually pulled a little harder until you're pulling as hard as you could and then you gradually eased off, you wouldn't injure yourself. You'd tire yourself out, you'd fatigue the muscles involved, but you would not be hurting the process. On the other hand, if you grabbed the bumper and you yanked as hard and fast as you could, same weight, but the difference, the risk of injury, is that you're attempting to move in a very rapid manner. This comes back to, again, the idea of an exercise being about doing something to your muscles with the weight rather than about doing something to the weight with your muscles. If you are thinking of moving the truck or even if it's just like a heavy barbell during the deadlift and your focus is on making that weight go up, you're going to tend to do so in a manner that makes it easier to do that, which makes it less effective for the muscles. And, again, if you focus instead on just trying to fatigue the muscles efficiently, you're going to tend to move in a way that does that. And that fatigue, now, counter to what most people assume, makes the exercise safer as it gets harder. Now, Elle talked about in-road. When you start an exercise, you have a certain number of units of strength. Suppose it's 100 units, and if you were to use 80% of that, it would require 80 units of that strength to be able to move that weight. Now, with every repetition, you're going to fatigue a little bit so that the amount of force you can produce gradually goes down until it's 80 units, at which point you're contracting as hard as you possibly can. A lot of people believe that going to this point causes an injury. The exact opposite is true if you maintain correct body positioning and movement. And if you're not trying to, again, if you're focusing on efficiently loading the muscles and not just trying to move the weight, and here's why. Now, suppose that you're using 80% of your one repetition maximum. If you get 80%, oh, make sure this thing doesn't tip here, you already have a 20% difference between that and what your maximum is. Now, your one repetition maximum is considerably lower than what you are capable of lowering under control. Most people, about 30%, 40% more weight, that you can lower to 40% more weight under control than you can lift. So we get another 140% here. So the total safety margin between these, about 60%. So at the beginning of an exercise, when you're capable of producing 100 pounds of force, you're capable of producing more force. You're more capable of causing an injury if you attempt to accelerate rapidly, if you're bouncing, jerking, yanking the weight. But as you fatigue and as the amount of force that you can produce goes down, the difference, oh, and the amount of force required to cause an injury to be a little higher than that, the difference between the force that you are capable of producing and the force required to produce an injury goes down as you fatigue. So as discomfort increases, as your muscles start to burn, your heart's pounding, your breathing heavy, and every fiber's just screaming at you to stop the exercise, as you are getting it deep into that territory, rather than increasing your risk of injury during exercise, as long as you maintain strict form, you are actually making it safer. Now, how do you do that, though? How do you get to that? And his philosophies of life. Now, you can check him out at bay.com, that's B-A-Y-E. Let's bring on Drew Bae. All right. Thanks. Nice to be here. The aspect of thinking about exercise that's important is differentiating between exercise as a stimulus rather than a producer of improvements. Exercise does not directly produce any improvements in the body. All of the improvements that happen as a result of exercise happen because your body is trying to respond to what it perceives as a negative thing, an extreme stress, that strength to be able to move that weight. Now, with every repetition, you're gonna fatigue a little bit so that the amount of force you can produce gradually will attempt to move it again. If you were to take a very heavy weight and lower it slowly, and as you approach the bottom, gradually slow to a stop, and then very gradually begin to lift it, was what I had previously thought of as a 10, on a scale of one to 10 with intensity of effort, became about a two or a three.