 This is my favorite to use. It's my favorite to teach. I still think, and I've said this in the podcast many times that if you walk into a commercial gym, I challenge you to find me more than one person in the entire gym, doing a true controlled four second eccentric motion, which is basic protocol for hypertrophy. That's not even super slow. That's not even super slow mode. So I think it's such a great tool to teach you because I already think that even some of the most advanced lifters do not utilize a four second eccentric motion on most, most exercises. It's also the one of all of these, I would say that I would even still recommend to a beginner, even though we put this very safe, good point, the safer one, even though we put this as advanced techniques. And it is because there's other, you know, basics and fundamentals that even a beginner should be doing before they even need to do this. But I find this as a great tool, even for beginners as a great way to increase intensity without loading the bar more. One of the most challenging things to do in fitness is to continue progressing when you're already advanced. Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about some advanced training techniques that can take your body to the next level. I'm excited for this one because I don't know how often you guys get a chance to look at comments on YouTube. And there's one in particular that we get kind of often that it bothers me. And that is that there's this, this presumption. And it's always somebody that probably doesn't listen to the show consistently, that will comment on YouTube that like, oh, yeah, yeah, they're cool. They're, they're for beginners. You see that one? You see that one? We get that quite a bit. Like, like the, the content that we provide is for beginners. Well, let's be honest. We talk a lot to the everyday average person for shrimp. And that's our mission because those are the people that need the most help, but we're not beginners. Yeah, right. So I think that that's the part of the where I find it a little insulting because by any means, I don't think any of you would consider yourself a beginner lifter. No. And I think that we share a lot of our mistakes along the way and our personal journeys. And I think that there's a lot of people that I would consider advanced, super advanced that could learn a lot from some of the things that we share that we learned along the way. Totally. And also, I think too much emphasis is put on advanced training techniques in the fitness space because the confusion is, well, if that's an advanced technique, then that means it's going to make me progress faster. No, it's, it needs to be appropriate for your body. So what, who are advanced techniques appropriate for? Well, people who are advanced, have you been consistent for multiple years? Are you fit? Do you eat right? Are you kind of hitting all the, you know, all the check points and been doing so consistently? That's when some of the stuff makes sense. This doesn't, what we're about to say, I would never apply to somebody who hasn't been working out for at least a year or two consistent, you know, weekend and week out, who doesn't have a good diet, who doesn't sleep well, I would never apply because not only would they be inappropriate, but they would actually set someone back. But if you are advanced and you are doing those things, then these techniques can become quite valuable. Well, that's why I really like this too, because you've listed 11 of these techniques that I know we have been asked about individually. Oh, what do you think about this? Oh, what do you think about that? And maybe because we haven't dedicated a whole episode to one of these, one of these one techniques. And normally the follow up question is we start, instead of telling them what we think about this one specific technique, we go, well, what have you been doing? How long you've been training? What is your diet? We start asking all the other big rock questions that are going to help that person more than this one advanced technique that they're curious about, because they probably saw some other YouTube person or social media person posting about how beneficial it is when in reality, all of these techniques that we're going to go over, I would still, I would still consider them even as awesome and great, all of them are, is so small in comparison to the big things that we continue to take, talk about. And I think that's where we get this wrap of where for beginners, when it's like, you know how many, like long time lifters need to hear that message? Yes. Because, and by the way, I'm just as guilty, like 10 years into my career, I would consider myself pretty advanced by that time. And I'm still falling into the same trap of doing a lot of these techniques way too much because, because they're advanced and they're different. Well, this is the stuff that we nerd out on every now and then our workouts and we experiment with it and we have fun with it because, you know, the foundation's already been established over the last few decades. And it's like, this is, this is where you get a new stimulus, like, so I haven't maybe made any progress in a while on my own programming. And I want to add something to kind of spice it up. It's great. There's advanced techniques out there that are very valuable. Yeah. Now, now to be clear, these techniques, and you kind of said this a little Adam, these techniques are only going to be effective if you use them judiciously. Yep. These techniques are not effective if you use them regularly, they will quickly tip your body into overtraining very quickly result in your body, not adapting, but rather just trying to heal all the time. The reason why I'm saying that is because if you're, if you're the appropriate person to apply these techniques, when you do, you will see a spike in progress. You will see strength go up all of a sudden faster than it has been or muscle go up all of a sudden better or, you know, more so than it has been. And the tendency is to be like, oh my god, keep doing this. Yeah, it gets addictive. Yeah, no, it'll work in a short period of time. And then not only stop working, but you'll actually start going backwards. So be very careful with using these or should I say judiciously, I think is the best term I can use. So the first one, I, this is an advanced technique. Now you can program it into workouts where somebody's intermediate and do it very, very intelligently, but it's, it's somewhat an advanced technique. And I'd say of all the ones we're going to talk about, this one probably could be used more on a regular, not regular basis, but more in a regular basis than a lot of the other ones. And that's super setting. Super setting refers to just to make it real basic, combining two exercises together in one set. Okay. But there's different ways to use super sets. One way to use a super set is to do what's called a pre exhaust super set. And a pre exhaust is where you're trying to exhaust the target muscle with an isolation exercise before moving on to a compound exercise that hits that same muscle. So remember isolation exercises use a single joint compound lifts use more than one joint. So a good example of a pre exhaust would be a pack deck or cable flies to pre exhaust the chest and then you go straight to bench press. The bench press uses now the shoulders and triceps. So you can squeeze out more reps, but you pre exhausted the chest with the flies first. Another one would be a compound super set. This is a very basic one where you're just doing two compound lifts. And then the third one is antagonist. You're working opposing muscle groups in a super set. Now the way I personally like to use this is and how do I how do I integrate it into my training, but then also don't overuse it is I like this type of a technique for time. When you're pairing exercise together typically the workout is going to be shorter. You don't need the full 50 minutes because you're not getting these because you're getting to some and I would categorize triceps in here, even though I know you didn't list that off, but three extra that that's right. Super sets and triceps are techniques that I love to intermittently put into my routine. And instead of like programming like oh I haven't done triceps in a long time or supersets, I'm going to put it in tomorrow. I go oh today and here's a great example. Like by the time we finish this podcast and I have calls, you have calls, I'm not going to get a full 50 minute workout and I'll probably get like more like a 30 I will utilize probably supersets and or triceps in that workout. So I feel like I get a good full workout in a compressed amount of time. Yeah. So to me, I like doing it like that. Although I know some people program it and it's in them there's nothing wrong with that. If you're super consistent and you always get an hour in the gym that never gets right. I know you're probably the most consistent with always having an hour. I'm kind of not like that. I'm a little more free flowing with my my workout time and inconsistent when it lands. And I'm like, OK, today's going to be a shorter day. So that's how I'm going to utilize that technique. Will you talk about like kind of being married to something? This is one of those I believe you introduced me to this and I didn't even really utilize this in my training because I was also focused on just pure strength, you know, almost five type of a protocol where I was like training back in the day. And so I started to get more into hypertrophy. But then like using super setting was just like, man, it would it would just pump up my muscles like I had never felt before. So even just feeling the pump was new to me. And so that just became one of those things where I found myself using that for like every workout for like the next like two years. And it was just too much and it just lost its effect. But yeah, it's just one of those. It's a new stimulus. It's something that you could totally apply if you're in that kind of situation where you've just been stuck with strength training for a long time. Yeah, phase three of maps that Ebola uses a lot of super sets, mainly pre exhaust super sets. One of my favorites is like a straight arm pull down or a pullover to a pull up or a pull down crazy lat pump. And then a super set that I use regularly for time is buys and tries by the end of my workout. Typically I'll work my arms and I'm not really I'm not trying to get my arms any bigger. I like the way my arms look whatever. So I'm not always focused on, you know, new ways to make them bigger. It's really it's a time thing like you said. So I'll go buys tries and that just makes the time go by much faster. What's up guys and girls and everyone else in between? Here's the giveaway for today's episode maps aesthetic. This is the bodybuilder inspired high volume maps workout program. We're going to give it away for free. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode subscribe to this channel. Turn on notifications do all those things if we like your comment will notify you in the comment section and then you can claim your prize which is free access to maps aesthetic also we're running a sale right now. The RGB bundle is 50% off that's maps aesthetic maps metabolic maps performance all in that particular bundle plus some more free stuff. So that's 50% off. We also have maps suspension on sale for 50% off. This is a suspension trainer program so you don't need dumbbells barbells machines cables bands nothing else just a pair of suspension trainers and you can train your whole body so if you're interested in that 50% off sale of the RGB bundle or map suspension go to maps fitness products calm and then use the code July 50 that's July 50 with no space for that discount. All right here comes a show. All right the next advanced training technique which a lot of people do right out the gates either because they think the harder they work out the better or because they heard that they have to train this way in order to get muscles to respond which is both false is training to failure. Okay. Training to failure means that you lift the weight until you can no longer lift it again with good form or some people think it means you literally fail during the set where you have to drop the weight. That is a that's a very, very high intensity technique. If you never train to failure and you're consistent in advanced you throw in some failure sets here and there and you will see this really rapid spike in strength but you continue training to failure and you see that drop way off. So this is one that I abused for a really long time. Yeah same. And I think it's because of what we've talked about before where you change something up and then all of a sudden you see great results when I remember when I first started to introduce failure training and I was working out with a work out partner and I did. I saw big strength gains and so I quickly became married to that technique and it became a staple. It became for years after that that like every exercise I trained to failure and there's a lot of studies that you've seen out there that support how valuable like the how increasing the intensity and training to failure for muscle growth. And so I remember I had read that and seen that and so all it did was confirm my bias. I already had this bias of like oh it works so good my body changed and then you see these studies that come out that say like oh failure training will help boost your gains and I was like oh I'm sold this is how I'm training all the time. But that wasn't the the complete picture and I didn't get the complete picture till I was older and realized like oh my God I had been overtraining myself for so long and that's why I'd been stuck at this plateau for so many years and simply scaling back and then going to a technique of two in the tank actually catapulted my gains again when I do that. And then now when I failure train it's really rare. It's maybe you know the occasional like maybe I've been training really consistently through one of our programs and I'm like in maps in a bulk or something and I just want to see where my squat strength is or my deadlift strength because I haven't tested a PR out of a while. Yeah and I'll and I'll interrupt my training like that just to a day I just feel good right. I've been consistently seeing this progress and I'm like oh I'm getting stronger I feel good. It's like let's get after it this day and let's train to failure in this workout coming up. But it's so rare now that I train that way because I find that I see more negative effects from me pushing to failure than I saw see the positive benefits. I feel like most avid lifters like athletes especially fall into this trap of you know really going for that failure mentality when they go into the workouts. I mean this is really why a lot of you know gym partners are like you know your your gym buddy like you needed to let you need a spotter at that point because you're going to feel it all the time and like this I got in that trap where I was always like I needed a spotter for especially the big compound lifts because it was like I had to just exert as much effort as possible and really literally couldn't get the last rep up because that's how I thought you know I was going to be successful with it and it you know you hit a ceiling with that. Yes you're going to get some great progress and gains but not only that like you're just going to put so much stress on the joints and at a certain inevitable point you're going to set yourself back because of an injury or a hiccup. I'm convinced those are the guys that are leaving those comments too that are still stuck in that face because that's what I would have thought about us when I was still stuck in that phase of training because I thought like I was sold at that point in my career that like the importance of intensity every workout needs to be that way and that's the type of people I was listening to. Also if you train consistently and then you go to failure you see fast gains in a short period of time. Yeah. So you're sold. That happened to me as a kid I first started working out high volume you know classic Arnold Schwarzenegger style workouts then a book I well didn't come I had come out before but I have found a book called heavy duty which was written by Mike Mencer and he was coached by Arthur Jones the inventor of Nautilus equipment and he made the argument he was it was very compelling argument that the intensity is what turns on the muscle building switch. Okay. And we don't know exactly what intensity is required. We know it's high intensity so go to failure because you're for sure going to hit it if you fail. Right. And then he said but you know it stresses the body so let's cut the volume way down and so he advocated for one set to failure. That's it once a week one set to failure per body part. Well I went from 20 sets per body part to one set to failure and I saw crazy gains in like five or six weeks. Right. Right. And that was it I was sold. Now my body stopped responding after five or six weeks but of course like a like a hard headed you know teenage kid. I just stuck to it. Maybe I'm not doing it hard enough. Yeah exactly exactly what happened but if you utilize this properly a short period of time you do get very very quick gains another value of training to failure if you'd never do it or you haven't a long time is we it gives you a good basis of judging your two reps left in the tank. I noticed this with myself I almost never trained a failure but then when I do I'll do like a rep and I'll be like oh my god two more and I'm going to fail and then I'll do this to and be like oh I think I have more and then I'll keep going and be like oh my god it was so much further than I thought but once I hit that now I have a better gauge of the right and so great point and this is something I had to like remind myself of just especially for young lifters or people like coming up and really trying to figure out their gauge of what their their capacity is like you have to be able to stretch a bit first so you know that line is you know to be able to get maximize your potential and so yeah it is you have to kind of know what that line is in order to back off just a bit to keep progressing. I found it really valuable with my female clients. So it was it was more common for me that when I had a male client I had to pull weight off the bar and say hey we're not ready for that we don't need to do that yet let's work on technique and it was more common with my female clients right like I think you can do more like you look you look really controlled and good there let's add more and so getting my female clients to push to actual failure not a lot of my female clients had done that before and they saw huge change in gains from that where a lot of guys I just think that it's a macho thing like it's you're by 17 going in the gym I was already like you just want to add more yeah I already had a buddy spotting four reps in the bench press you know I'm saying like I already was doing that because I wanted to show how much weight I could move right at that age where you know women don't tend they don't care about that as much and they're there they care more about taking care of themselves not getting hurt and so they kind of lean on the more cautious plus there was a whole myth that you know lifting heavy would make you right okay that's right so they're afraid totally so there's a combination of both those things going on so I saw great results of getting my female clients actually pushed them and encouraged them to like hey let's try and do some singles or doubles like you've never pushed your body before I've seen like how much can you really do like have you ever tried to squat and then actually failed at it like not a lot of my female clients who'd say yes they had done that before and so getting them to do that it would really catapult their results now the next one are is called partial reps a partial reps are just like they sound you do your traditional full range of motion then you get to the point where you know you're not going to be able to do another full range of motion rep so then you do like a partial rep either a quarter rep or a half rep to be able to continue to stress the muscle so to give an example would be like if I did a bench press and I had you know let's say 200 pounds in the bar and I did 10 reps and the 10th rep was a struggle and I'm like there's no way I could do another rep well then what I would do is maybe three or four of these little short reps just to squeeze out more this is a very advanced high intensity technique and you sparingly it does tend to lead to some pretty crazy gains be careful with this one because people tend to overestimate their ability with partial reps thinking oh I'll just do a half squat next and I should be able to do five more reps now she's like two more or maybe one more of these well it fatigues the shit out of the muscle so this technique I like to use in like a hypertrophy block right so far in a hypertrophy phase and the mindset is now kind of chasing the pump I'm not really concerned about how heavy of weight I'm moving I'm trying to I'm trying to get it as much of a pump as I can that's what I like to do things like a partial rep like that where I don't really care I'm not trying to get so much stronger per se in that block I'm trying just to pump as much blood and fluid into the muscle and I think that partial reps do an incredible job of that now would you count like so say powerlifters have like a technique where they work on certain sticking points in in the rep would you count that as a partial what a great question technically it is a partial rep but not this technique not that technique yeah well powerlifters I'm so glad you asked that even think of that what powerlifters are doing is something totally different they're trying to train a particular portion of a rep that may be a sticking point like let's say the bottom part of a squat or lockout in a bench press this is not that this is literally I can't do another full rep yeah so I'm going to do items for more volume for more volume and higher intensive you know there was a book that came out in the I want to say early to mid 90s called positions of flexion I think it was called Paul de Mayo was on the covers now since to see spotty builder and the argument in the book was that you don't need to do full reps it's all about the load and since you could load the weight much more with the partial rep let's just load as much as possible do partial reps and that's gonna lead to all this muscle growth doesn't work that way full range of motion reps are superior even when the weight is lighter than partial reps so this is not an excuse to lift more do partial reps because now you're lifting more weight therefore I'm going to get better results now it is good that Justin brought that up though because they both are different techniques totally but are similar right because you are doing a partial rep in both cases yes but one of them you are loading close to a max load and trying to move the weight with the other one you're probably using a weight that you're working out with and then you're just like you're getting more reps yeah getting more reps not even a sticking point it's it's more like you're what you're doing is your seat so power lifters will typically do a partial rep with the hardest part of the rep the way this is and they'll load it and it won't be like a pumping extra like a bunch of reps it's like trying to get it out of that yes no this is more like I can't do any more reps let me do partials with the easiest part because that's what I can do yeah right so like if the bottom of the squad is the hardest your partial rep at the end of your set is not going to be at the bottom it's going to be a quarter squat at the top because you're just trying to squeeze out more reps yes and more intensity this one again is super intense and this is beyond failure so typically it's like I fail now let me squeeze out a few partial reps again using it sparingly it's got some pretty cool benefit the next one is called rest pause which is really interesting this is an interesting one I didn't learn until much later rest pause is like this so let's say you're doing your your your rows and you do your set of rows and then you typically rest two minutes before you do another set that's a standard you know amount of rest period in between sets or whatever well rest pause is I do X amount of reps and then I put the weight down and rest like 15 seconds and then try and squeeze one or two more reps out that's a rest pause it's literally another way to squeeze out one or two more repetitions past failure so originally when you put this on there I wasn't sure where you were going with rest pause and I if I would have known that I actually would have put cluster sets right next to that because that's a very similar technique yes it is right cluster sets are a form of rest pause it is so those are it's basically the same thing it's just a its own protocol of how many reps that you're you're doing is which is you're basically only giving yourself four second rest between those reps yes you have you do a couple reps then you set the bar down for literally one thousand two one thousand three one thousand four boom pick it back up again what you'll find is you'll take a weight right what's really fascinating with cluster sets is let's say just hypothetically that 80 pound curl bar right is is heavy for me to do say 12 reps well straight 12 reps right just regular 12 reps with that would be hard could doing cluster sets I could probably get 25 to 30 reps of that because like every every fourth rep I set it down give myself four seconds then I pick it back up do four more because those little bit of those short rest pauses that I get right there is enough to give me a little bit more juice and then all of a sudden a set that I can normally only get about 12 reps now becomes I get like 20 plus reps out of that so you get these incredible pumps you're able to lift heavier weight for more reps it's a great technique to I think interrupt like your rate regular training and this is kind of where I use the same place that you would probably use these rest pause type of training I would use I would do I do cluster sets now once every couple months just give people an example of how seldom lay I use it and it's only when I feel really good and I'm really rested and I'm feeling strong and I'm feeling healthy and then I'll throw one in and I usually don't do a rest pause or cluster set for a big gross motor movement it just fries me I don't typically do this with a great arm or shoulder yeah like isolation all the time right arm shoulder laterals curls calf raises that kind of stuff is how I typically will use it all right this next one it is an advanced technique although you could practice and play with this a little bit if you're not advanced I now I will warn you it is advanced because it can cause some issues with muscle recruitment patterns it can cause some issues with technique and form because of its effect on the central nervous system so this next one is intracet stretching so what is an intracet stretch well it would be when I do a set of an exercise and I go really really hard right after I'm done with the set I get into like a weighted stretch of that muscle this is very painful this does not feel like your typical stretch that well it's kind of relieving or it hurts a little bit this is nasty so it's like if I did flies or let's say I did bench press and I went to failure racked it up then I grab a pair of dumbbells and I sit in this kind of stretched position for 30 seconds and range sort of isometric pose yes at that point yes and the fire you feel from this sucks it's really one of the most painful things you'll feel now what do you get from it crazy pumps I have never felt a pump well I don't want to say never there's other techniques like BFR that will do it but this gives you the nastiest pump when you hold a stretch right after a hard set I think I just saw you do that about a couple of weeks ago yes you're doing that over here didn't we do a series with Ben Pekolsky where we did this on the YouTube he's big on them yeah make sure that Andrew throws that video up now you can see what it looks like this was new to me I had never messed with this oh really even with calves wow yeah calves people tend to do with calves without realizing yeah maybe unintentionally I was doing on a seated calf machine but not really thinking thinking about it though like that I had never done it intentionally like I did after we had met with Ben and talked about it so that was when I started doing it it's gnarly it hurts really bad and here's the stuff that you want to watch out for a stretch a long held stretch tends to get the CNS to relax in that muscle so if you're trying to like max load your lift or you're trying to hit like a PR in squats you probably don't want to do this this is more of a bodybuilding thing right I don't want to hold a quad stretch really long the squats if I'm trying to go for a PR I'm a next set it's all about feel it's all about the pump the last thing you want to do is hold a long stretch before doing a max lift it just turns things off and it can make things a little precarious which is why this is in the kind of advanced category alright this next one this one's a lot of fun which is why people do it all the time but it is advanced and it's a drop set and a drop set literally is I do X amount of reps with the weight put the weights down and grab 10 pound lighter or 5 pound lighter do more reps can't do any more put those down grab another one that's 5 or 10 pound lighter and some people call it running the rack I love doing that especially for arms like any kind of shoulders or biceps and taking it from heavy and working your way down it's one of those you don't want to repeat too many times that's for sure because it's pretty demanding and it fries you but it's great one to interrupt your regular training sessions well this is another one that would fall in the category of for me when I'm training for hypertrophy it lends itself well so instead of doing like four sets of shoulder raises you're going to go you can't get it all done at once that's right so it's kind of like and also good for limited time so it's like okay maybe because we're talking about this right now I talked about how I might maybe I'll do today because I have 20, 30 minutes to work out I'll do one triset and then one run the rack or one drop set of something like that that's got a pretty good workout in a short period of time and super effective but that to me that's how I think it lends itself really well when you're chasing a pump it's not the best thing for building lots of strength doesn't mean it can't build strength because if you never do it and then you do it you might see strength gains from it but I think it lends itself well in a hypertrophy type of phase where you're already doing higher reps and kind of chasing the pump this is where I would try to intermittently throw that into the routine more for isolation exercises than compound not saying you can't do with compound lifts but if you do a compound lift drop set you better have some spotters I learned this the hard way I remember as a kid when I left the YMCA the first time and signed up at 24 Fitness when I was a kid I did a drop set with bench press and I had a bunch of small plates on the sides of the bar so I could do as many as I could and then push one off push one off do more push one off push one off well you fatigued really fast and I didn't have so what happens is I started losing stability oh yeah and I broke the window I actually think this is the single best usage of the Smith machine we I mean I know an older podcast what a great point we've talked about the Smith machine being like one of the more useless machines and I know that caused a lot of controversy back then and because we used to say like how much better free weights was and I still believe that but here's a great example of where I think that's a great tool because if I can do a dropset on a bench press I can do a dropset on a barbell press and you can do it quick right because it's you rack it real quick and you roll your wrist and then you can slide off slide off and then you're right back into it again and so I think it lends itself very very well for that and in a situation like that I am chasing more of a pump I know that a standing barbell press is more beneficial overall for me strength and functionality but hey I'm in a pump I want to do drop sets today here's where I would use the Smith machine you would find me yeah that's a good point drop sets are great with dumbbells because they're easy to put down and machines machines are great because I can literally take the pin and put it lighter put it lighter put it lighter each time now that we know what I used to do with drop sets this was actually a lot of fun not very valuable in terms of gains but just fun when I'd work out with one of my buddies or my cousin I don't want to and we go back and forth back and forth until we would be down to like 10 pounds great for partner work yeah and this is of course you got a 10 pound you know trying to curl 10 pounds at the very end that's exactly when the attractive girl would walk in and you try and tell her no no I could curl more 99 100 exactly exactly alright so this next one is really interesting because this one got invented out of necessity it's super slow motion training and this became a thing in gyms in the US before too now of course gyms were not very commercial back in those days but there were gyms but they would ration iron because of the war effort and so it was hard to get or almost impossible to get big heavy weights so what did the strength athletes do they said well like if I only have 50 pounds here what if I do the rep really slow so instead of you know two or three seconds up and down I'll do 30 seconds up and 30 seconds down well it turns out it actually has got some value so I'll do more try a super slow motion exercise and it'll definitely it can definitely set things in motion that's the cool part about the weight training there's a lot of variables you can apply that will make things harder this is definitely one of those where if you're just concerned about the tempo now if we slow everything down and you have to control the weight and you're still struggling but for a longer period of time so you have that mental tension that's just firing throughout the entire rep it's going to be pretty challenging this is my favorite to use it's my favorite to teach it's also the one of all of these I would say that I would even still recommend to a beginner very safe very safe even though we put this as advanced techniques and it is because there's other you know basics and fundamentals that even a beginner should be doing before they even need to do this but I find this as a great tool even for beginners without loading the bar more it's like super slow motion control that's right not to mention I still think and I've said this in the podcast many times that if you walk into a commercial gym I challenge you to find me more than one person in the entire gym doing a true controlled four second eccentric motion which is basic protocol for hypertrophy that's not even super slow mode so I think it's such a great tool to teach advanced lifters do not utilize a four second eccentric motion on most exercises so getting a client comfortable with a 10 second eccentric is and getting to know that hey this is a way we can train we can really slow it down and get great strength gains and build lots of muscle from training with this lighter weight and increasing the intensity through slowing down the repetition and it's super safe because I'm moving that's most effective with super slow mo is about 10 to 15 seconds of negative and positive so that means it would take 10 seconds or 15 seconds to go down 10 or 50 seconds on the way up however super slow motion training can call for as much as 30 seconds up and down now my experience when you go that long it's turned now into an endurance exercise and much less of a strain it's just too long of a retz a one minute to do one rep you know there's a whole chain of gyms that are going to the advanced age that it's I think it's called super slow motion I think it's called super slow it's a gym chain it's fairly popular or it was I don't know if it still is around that much but and it caters to the advanced and it's all that it's like basically strength training and again I think it's a great tool for even beginners because it doesn't have high risk because you're moving a lot lower of a load and again I think more people can slow down and as a coach to kind of critique the movement while they're in there each little piece absolutely alright this next one is kind of cool because I messed with this as a kid not really knowing what it was but rather because I would just copy the bodybuilders that I would read about and these are isometric holds there's a couple ways to do this and they're always at the end of a set so you do your set it's real intense you're done there's two ways to do this one is to simply flex the target muscle as hard as you can put the bar down I flex my biceps as hard as I can and I hold that for 10 or 15 seconds and now the intensity of the squeeze is important when you're doing this without resistance the second way that people will do this uses resistance where at the end of a set for example at the end of bench press when it's my last rep I just hold it at the top and stabilize it and squeeze my muscle so now I'm using resistance outside of my body not intrinsic personally I prefer the intrinsic version because the other factors much higher but they're both pretty valuable well this is actually almost the same as your interest at stretching right just focused on the other correction of the squeeze right yeah this is the squeeze instead of the stretch but the same concept is what's happening right I think we're just you're trying to recruit more neurons to that area in that moment of where that muscle is at right so is it the elongated position or is it in the fully contracted position fully contracted would be this one right that's the squeeze right if you know how to pose properly you do a set and then squeeze the shit out of a muscle so I've done some in two Bruce Lee was big about this too he's like doing bench and then going into like a chest squeeze and a fly he's holding it and contracting and in terms of like holding like kind of like an interest set one where I'm doing a bench but then I'm also holding at the bottom of depth and I'm like holding it for an extra long amount of time this is a more of and now it's not going to sound high intensity because you don't go to failure with this but believe me it is this is 10 by 10 it's called so what do you do with this you pick an exercise usually it's a compound lift and the goal is to do 10 sets of 10 reps of that exercise and the goal is to use the same weight the whole time okay so why is this so hard because you use what you well you'll find when you do this is that you need way less weight when you get to the fifth or sixth set those 10 reps I'm always off I'm always off on this one I mean this is GVT right here so I think that it's awesome but every time I do it I am always miscalculate right I totally miscalculate I think like okay I work out with like 225 on the bench for like a normal four set type of thing so yeah I'll drop it down to 185 you know that'll be fine it's like I'm doing like 115 because I had no idea like how much I totally underestimated how hard it would be now the Bulgarians used to do versions of this with weight lifting obviously it's German volume training so the Germans would do this as well East Germans this is all during the time of the Soviet Union now their protocol correct me if I'm wrong is that you're only doing like one muscle group in the workout right like that's a one it's one exercise now remember it came from Olympic lifts and strength athletes so they even think about muscles they would just do squats or presses pushing the lift over and over again so now you should at the end of this ten set extra workout you should be able to perform all ten reps but don't let that fool you it is gnarly doing ten sets of ten of any exercise is so much volume of one movement that it really it's an advanced technique because it fries the shadow what's some of the value of it though is your CNS adaptation is amazing because it's the same exercise for ten sets so you get really whatever exercise you practice when you do this you're right you get really really good at that lift and it's a great way to boost strength so I made the mistake of for many years of doing this as my first day back always so I know it sounds really obvious and stupid now right because of the way we talk about things but my thought process was this like so I would be the first day back and let's say I'd been like a month off of training with that and I'm getting back to it and I would go do squats and so what I thought was I would do a week because I hadn't done it so I had to do a super lightweight so I just do ten reps to ten ten sets of ten I would just I'd put a really lightweight it was normally 135 that's what I would do and I just do ten reps and I could do that and then I'd re-rack and wait but boy I was so sore just way too much volume and that's why this is a even though you're moving a lot lighter weight it's a tremendous amount of volume for a muscle in advance you want to have been lifting for a while before you do it and then the way I love to use it now is I might do like a week where I interrupt my training and do exactly kind of what you said one movement I'll do squats on one day then I'll do like overhead press and then I'll do deadlift and then I'll do like a bench press and that is my workout it's like ten sets of ten and I'll do a week of training like that and I find I feel amazing and it's a great interruption of one exercise for the entire time and that's all you do when you're out of there one of the worst times I ever felt after a workout where I knew I way overdid it and it actually took me a few weeks just to recover from this one particular workout was I did ten by ten with deadlifts and the weight I showed now this is back when I was real heavy to deadlifting so I could probably max out pull at the time 575, 585 so I'm like 315 at the time was easy for me I could do ten reps so let me do ten by ten with 315 I was I couldn't deadlift properly for three weeks afterwards it fried my body so much so I'm communicating that because it's a lot harder than it may even seem in the workout itself because it's the same thing it's the same movement pattern over and over again it just really fries the body alright this last one for me is the one that not only did I abuse the most when I was a kid but it's also the one that I don't I almost never do now I almost never do this one now when I was a kid I did it almost all the time and that's four straps what's the four strap well it's when you lift a weight you go to failure and then your friend helps you do two or three or four that's what I used to do four four straps at the end of every single set now why do I never do this anymore I work out alone I can't do a four strap by myself I have to have not only that but I even think that I'm with you I don't ever do this anymore because even if you have somebody spotting you if you really it's really tough once you've completely fatigued the muscle and gone to failure like that it's hard to not go to shit isn't it it's so hard you're going to this is when you're going to see what side's a little bit stronger than the other because the one that has a fraction of energy or strength left will try to take over the load and then you just create a bad recruitment pattern it's like here you got this great bit and then I'm out and it's like oh my left has got a little bit more gas and then you feel that you'll feel that shoulder come off and then the other comes so I just I think force reps are incredibly overrated you can train a failure without it you can increase intensity by so many different ways of manipulating we are just listed off 10 different advanced techniques that you can incorporate into your training I'm glad you left this as like the last one because it is the one of all of these that I can't even tell you the last time that I utilized I just remember doing this with the rap they're literally helping you through the majority of that rap the following like two days after that was the source of ever been it was almost like I was completely worthless at that point so it's like if you if you want to look at that in terms of like your progress leading into the next workouts it's you know you got to be really judicious about how you apply this yeah and the goal with the first off the workout partner is to make the rep hard for you your goal is to continue to move the bar or the dumbbell or the weight or whatever it's so easy for your form to go out the window so if you do do force wraps yes push the weight but do not compromise your form so it's not get the reps out at all costs no it's get the reps out good meaning push it and push a little less hard so the way and that's hard to do I used to do it all time and the way I would coach this is I I used to have to coach the trainers that were that were spotting me for this and I would say don't let me break my tempo so if I'm doing let's say eight reps right and I know or I'm going to do 10 reps and I know eight I can get on my own with the last two are probably going to be forced I tell them that pay to feel the tempo that I'm moving the bar and I never want to break tempo so you need to be able to spot me to where I still move the bar at that tempo that way I don't do that because where everybody goes wrong with this and where spotters or it's tough to spot is they wait until the guy hits failure and he's already struggling with the weight and then they get in and then they try and pull and help out and then you get this you know left to right bullshit going on and then it's just that's terrible and then you're going to release tempo but then you're also trying to squeeze out two, three or four more reps that you're technically not doing that's a good point like the reason why I made this one last is it also requires good spotter a good spotter somebody who knows how to make sure your form is good and knows the right tempo and how to help because usually what they do is exactly what you said they'll leave the bar on you you can do it you can do it you got this like bro make it move or I'm lifting this is right anyway there you have it 10 advanced training techniques that can spark new growth new strength and new progress look if you like our content head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides we have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal you can also find all of us on social media so Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin you can find Adam on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal how do I incorporate cardio and not lose muscle I've seen people do this before where they'll start to lose the sharpness of their muscles where they'll start to lose the sculpt a little bit and that's disheartening but if you do it right then you minimize that muscle loss or that metabolism slow down in fact if you do it right you can actually speed up your metabolism at the same time that you build stamina and endurance you just have to be able to kind of program it properly and the way to program it improperly is just go do it as much cardio as you can for as long as you can right