 You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary heart show Welcome to the barbell logic podcast. I am here with my good friends Andrew Jackson and Nikki Sims They have been regulars on the show lately Mostly just because we've been hanging out a bunch together after what appears to have been 20 or 30 years of not seeing another human We've been able to hang out so We got lots of fun stuff to talk about and I thought it'd be fun to do a Q&A with you guys and rather than Scott Asked the questions to me and where I had to field the questions I'm gonna do that to you and we'll see what your answers are and then at the end I'll give my answer, which will be the more correct answer to the cues. So I feel like we're on jeopardy. Yes, what it is And so also so you guys know where we are I'm I am reading emails from this first email is from February 27th Oh, yeah, we basically answer every question that is sent in to the barbell logic podcast unless it is Inappropriate or just ridiculous those we just delete. So we're February. We got a little catching up to do Yeah, so this question comes from dawn DAW in which would which would indicate to me. This is maybe our 29th female listener But it might not be oh it actually says 24th female listener. She says on the podcast. In fact Her question is what is the best approach to maintaining some activity during a sciatica flare-up? I felt some relief immediately after a lifting workout But for the rest of that evening the next day my effective leg was a bit more prone to spasms Etc. And the flare-up continued to intensify Sharply what is what are your experiences with sciatic nerve pain shooting down that leg? Oh No, oh, no You guys you guys Negative you have negative jeopardy money currently You have negative jeopardy money. All right. All right get out of the way big daddy audience for this one for you guys First off, let me tell you I actually we need to make a video about this I might have mentioned this once or twice on the podcast There there is a stretch-ish thing that I learned from a really good physical therapist I had when I first started to have a hip problems years ago It works amazing and so here's what you do I'm gonna try to explain it via audio But it would work much better if we could just have a video for this This needs a when you put this on the list of videos to make so what you do is you take a pretty good size Band like to jump stretch bands or the rogue bands that they sell at rogue I use the green ones at rogue which are the ones that are like what inch and a half wide inch and three quarters Something somewhere in that ballpark, right? Yes about about six inches that's exactly right wide and What you do is you sit on the floor with your feet out in front of you and You push your you sit against the wall so your back is against the wall Your legs are on the floor straight out in front of you and you scoot your butt back against the wall As tight against the wall as you possibly can so your body's making a perfect L and you should feel some hamstring stretch There and in doing that if you've got some sciatic nerve pain, you're gonna feel it right then and there What you do then is you take that band you wrap it around one of your legs Probably you're having sciatic nerve pain just down one leg But I actually do this usually with both legs just because it's a good habit to get in and I wrap The band around the insole mid of my mid foot and I pull on it like now I've got a hold of the band on each side of my foot like it's a and like my foot is a horse and the band is like the reins of a For a horse does that make sense and I'm pulling on the right. I'm so I'm I could pull equally on The mid foot of both right and left side of one of my legs But I don't pull equally instead. I pull really hard on one of the one of with one of my arms So if I pull with if the band is around my right foot and I pull with my left arm That is going to pronate my foot. Is that the right word? It's gonna turn my foot in Yep, I think that's right. Yeah, and while pulling very hard on the inside band I am going to then turn my foot out against the band very slow and very smooth 10 times and Then I'm gonna pull on the outside band and that's gonna turn my foot to the outside and I am then gonna move my foot To the inside against the band. I'm gonna pronate against the band 10 times and that is what The world-famous Kelly Starrett calls flossing the nerve now. I don't know if that's actually what is going on Probably not but I actually have no idea but we can talk to our DPT's about it Here's what I know when you do this It really improves sciatic nerve pain Something is going on there with the nerve and I think allowing the muscles to Move around the nerve and not grab on that nerve that it seems to free that thing up And so if I'm having sciatic nerve pain I will do that both before the workout that might affect it and after the workout that might affect it and And then I'm going to from a volume perspective sort of a heavy and Intensity versus volume perspective in the lifts. I'm still going to lift relatively heavy But we're gonna do the old our favorite five sets of two ish With a weight that we can handle pretty well with absolutely perfect form So the weight might be 80% of what you were gonna use might only be 60 But it's probably more like 80 and you're gonna do five sets of two across with absolutely perfect form on both the squat and the deadlift Do that little sciatic nerve stretch with the bands while sitting on the floor and usually feel pretty good at the end of that Thing you guys ever heard about doing that. No, I haven't No, there you go. You guys came to be on the podcast and then you yeah Learned nothing Question to From our good friend Colin you guys would know I know we know several Collins So I won't I won't say his last name, but it's a good Colin. We like this guy Joe and he talks a little bit about The weight he's gained and he's put on some thigh girth And he says the problem is is that his thighs are now so big that every pair of jeans He owns are now skinny jeans and his thighs rubbed together all the time. Is this a cross? I must bear for my newfound beautiful body. I've sculpted with my barbells If so totally worth it But do you have any tips or suggestions for me and my thighs? It's amazing how much we're talking about fashion on the podcast lately and Matt you have some suggestions this this comes up all the time. I'm like our family slack channel You know eating to get new clothes to make their new bodies look good And it's important to do that or else you just live in this you live in like your old snakeskin when you're like a new and better snake so What brand was it you were wearing this week Matt bonobos? I love bonobos shorts, and I love their chinos their Their khakis what am I supposed to say hashtag not sponsored? Is that what it is? Not sponsored by bonobos And I really love barbell apparel jeans and as of last week hashtag sponsored So they are actually a sponsor of the show. We haven't recorded ads for them yet We don't let people advertise on the show unless we really like their product So this will be a little free shout-out to them I love barbell apparel jeans because they are number one They're good-looking jeans and they come in all the different colors. So they come in like What do you what do you call like what's the casual is it indigo or like kind of sort of like It's not stonewash because that's 1986 But whatever that sort of like more casual color of blue is that that but they also have like the really dark nice dressy jeans They're all the same price the one thing about barbell apparel And this will be this is also I think an important note for style is that I think they mostly come in the same length and then It's just known you go to a tailor and you get the things you get them you get them hemmed Getting a pair of jeans hemmed pretty much anywhere in the country is like ten bucks So you go get them to the exact right length and they fit really really well the denim is really stretchy It's got I don't know some it's got like 17 direction stretches Yeah, so I really like those jeans and I yeah, I like bonobos for the for the khakis And I love Lulu's Lulu makes them really nice like all of Lulu's dress pants khaki pants lululemon Also, not sponsored make really nice stretchy comfortable pants that are that are made to now the downside is for all of those if your thighs really rub together Eventually, you're gonna rub all the denim away and you'll get the little hole Right at the crotch and then one day and you won't really notice it because it's it'll be paper thin one day And you'll sit back on a park bench and cross your leg and it'll rip and then all your goods are hanging out Yeah, some of it some of it is just that it is the cross you have to bear the crotch the crotch you have to bear That's that's where all of my pants wear out now Since gaining weight and about the only thing I can recommend that you not do is what I've been doing Which is you buy the the pants that fit, you know, like a shirt or pants that fit one Aspect of your size. It's not gonna fit everything else. You got to get them tailored. Otherwise, it's just gonna look like you're wearing parachute Yeah shirts or clothes Yeah, it's amazing how cheap a good tailor is I mean, we're not talking about somebody who makes custom suits Which are nice to have it's nice to have to are you drinking a jar of pickles Andrew? Today's lemons slice. Oh, it's a jar of lemons at other times pickles. It was so quick I thought sometimes it is pickles is so hot. He is so dehydrated Nikki's doing the podcast. She doesn't have a shirt on but she's she's pointed the camera way up like Way up at her like upper lip and above so you can't see anything below her chin Because she's so hot in in her house and Andrew's drinking pickle juice. So yeah, that's how we know Oh, it's how we know it's so it's how we know it's summer Custom suits and I'm like, I don't have air conditioning like I'm taking my shirt off. It's so damn hot Yeah, no a tailor's cheap and a good tailor should be able to do simple things like taking shirts and him So when I when I when you buy a shirt you buy a shirt with the right size shoulders and chest and you get you can Get the arms and waist taken in that's the idea and typically the arms are gonna be a little bit too long And especially a lot of button-up shirts. They're gonna need to be shortened just a little bit as well. They get real Poofy, you know what to be like the memory the old pirate shirt that Seinfeld wore remember that episode the real poofy white shirt That's you don't want your but actually like that. All right next question Luke We get this question a lot So so without reading the entire thing Luke is a guy who is naturally I would say naturally He has become he's worked really hard to get strong and he's got his deadlift up to 430 for a set of five His squad is 365 for a set of five, but his but he's his bench and press lag behind So his bench is 190 for five and his presses 135 for five is on a typical four-day split everything looks like he's doing things Right. He's doing some LTE's at the end and some chins on upper body days He's like, what do I do to improve my upper body lifts? Lower body is just so much stronger and ahead of the upper body How do you address that with your clients when your clients have and maybe it's the other way around How to help for people who have this they just seem to be gifted in certain lifts and struggle with the others Does Luke have really long arms? I wonder His deadlift is really good and his upper body lifts are that far behind or it could be he's got really wide hips Yeah, and he's got you know, he's just kind of built to squat and pull But that's kind of you know the answer is to keep doing them and more of them You need to do your accessory work because you want to put more mass onto your Onto your bones of your upper body. So chin-ups for sure Good job on the LTE's get your curls in and you're probably gonna need to add a third slot for bench or press I would bench because you can just get more weight on the bar What do you think Andrew? Yeah, I think that they tend to take longer to develop So if he's I don't know how long he's been lifting but sometimes it's just because you've got to put on more muscle mass to see the Gains and proof there. You just might need more time and and more food I don't know what the diet looks like and whether he's you know Eating enough to also support that muscle growth, but yeah more volume more time and For most people if you think about for most people most of us have lifts that come easier than others, right? And yeah, he's such an easy example because Nicky's built a deadlift so well And she's an excellent deadlifter, but that also the trade-off there is so it really long legs And she's got really long arms and the trade-off is that makes squatting really hard And so does that mean for me is just don't squat So typically typically the answer is you do the thing you just do the thing that you're good at But you also do the thing you're bad at because yeah These four main lifts make us better regardless and so that and that's really I think what makes some of those great powerlifters people like an ed Cone who seemed to be just like cut from stone to be exactly like the best powerlifter of all time Makes that's what makes them that way and they're just built where they don't really have any major deficiencies there So it's kind of welcome to the club man. It's part of the deal. Yeah I think that most guys from an aesthetics perspective would rather be really really strong in the upper body And not as strong in the lower body, but I think that most of our people that understand what we do Would rather be strong at the squatting deadlift. So there's a there's a trade-off, right? Like you can either be a pear shaped man, but really really strong at squatting deadlifts But your bench and press probably aren't that great You know or you can have the or you can have the chicken legs But have the big upper body and show off at the beach, but you know squat deadlifts suck. So All right question from jim Jim asks if it is cheating if it's okay to stand up to catch his breath while doing deadlift worksets Is that considered a failure? So if he you know does a setup he does his first two Let's go with the bar stands up catches his breath goes back down and gets the third And so on and so forth. What is that still a good lift? Is it still a pr? What do you think? I don't know if it's cheating, but I really don't think it's doing you any favors either The longer you take to do a set The more kind of accumulated. I don't know if this is the way to say it But like the more very acute accumulated fatigue you have by rep five Right. So every time you stand up, it's like things are getting more and more tired over that amount of time So by the last one you've really just been doing the thing for too long It could be that you're taking your breath at the wrong time Maybe you're a bigger guy and have a big belly. So it's really tough to stand to stay down there But what would be better is actually rolling the bar away from you So you have enough room to get a big breath and then roll it back to you instead of Coming back up and going back down every time So it's not cheating. Well, I don't know if I would let someone count that as A rep max to be honest depend on to me. It would be how long did you Take before you went back down there. Yeah, I stood there for 11 minutes and I went down for rep three Obviously I think that's the catch 22 is that if it's short enough that you can actually get the rep It's probably not actually helping you. Yeah, that's right And if it's long enough that you actually recover that it helps you and it probably doesn't count So to me the issue is that You know, you need to be training To develop the conditioning to be able to do the work set that you're you're trying to do because you're training you know that it If you get your five rm and you have to take three breaths in between to get it done that's I don't know, but I wouldn't get I wouldn't be as fired up about that I don't think personally I wouldn't count it for my own training I guess and put it that way if a client needed to take a breath in between I might say Count it but sure in the long run. I'd rather have clients get it done without standing up And the the bigger issue here that we see more often is Just resting too long while staying down on the bar and holding on to the bar, right? Right, she said that they set the rep down and then they take Five breaths, but they but they don't stand up to catch their breath They stay down on the bar because they think the standing up is cheating But the taking five breaths instead of one isn't and is okay And again, it's the same answer That's right. It's the same answer that niki just it never gets easier Yeah, so how long should a set of five heavy deadlifts? Not not absolute ridiculous bone-on-bone grinder, but like a just a good solid heavy set of five. How long should that last? Gosh, I have no idea all the videos. That's amazing that you guys haven't paid attention to that I'm like, hey, I've been watching you deadlift five reps for one minute and yeah, right So you know if it's a minute. It's too long, right? Yeah So I was gonna say less than 30 seconds Yeah, I think 20 seconds is like the is in the ballpark of If it takes 30 seconds to a set of five on your deadlifts, then it's you You took too long all for the lifts. There's a cadence too Especially with a with sets that have multiple reps There's a cadence I think the deadlift is the hardest one because it starts from a dead stop Yeah, and especially the way we teach the press now We teach the press with a rebound in the bottom where we take the break at the top Take our you know, breathe out breathe in down and right back up And so it actually makes to me it makes the cadence on the press much easier the way we teach it But the deadlift is difficult to get that cadence. You set the bar down, right? You breathe out Shins chest breathe pull set it down or maybe it's breathe chest pull But there's that there's it's that gotta have that cadence The weight shouldn't be on the floor longer than three or four seconds max Probably three seconds between reps So there's a cadence to that. That's a good question. Lots of people get give me that question Yeah, you need a little bit of a sense of urgency for sure So the advanced question would be why what is it what's physiologically going on that we want What do you think I think it has to do with oxygen the oxygen piece Yeah, I think the the energy systems that you're using are changing over the course of that minute As well and you you know, you start going over 45 seconds and you're you're going into You know, you're you're losing the ability to tap into all of your energy systems And leaning over is tiring right you're smooshing For things that you need to breathe and you're you actually are contracting some muscles But you don't need those muscles to you know, you shouldn't be using those muscles to stop you from falling over You should be using those muscles to do the deadlift You're making certain things tired in the wrong way Yeah, I was thinking if you think about like when you do a really heavy set Of deadlifts or squats set of five and you get to really breathe in heavy Which I mean if it's a really heavy set of five It really doesn't matter how good a shape conditioning you're in You breathe heavy at the end for a while, right? You sit there and like you as a matter of fact your your oxygen consumption And how hard you breathe actually seems to increase at the end of the set For another 20 or 30 seconds and then sort of peaks and then finally starts coming back down And so I think there's a delayed response there in in oxygen consumption So just like Andrew said in the beginning you're you're using you've got all this stored ATP and creatine You know that runs out You're it's not a heavy Aerobic with oxygen sort of lift. So then I'm tapping into to glycogen, but like that's not nearly as As efficient as utilizing the stored energy and Creatine like the ATP CP pathway that I've had And if I have to start getting into endurance level oxygen for my Which some people do because I take a minute 20 seconds to to do their their deadlift set like no, it's not So you end up getting hypoxic. You don't have enough oxygen. You don't have enough energy And you think the more breaths you take you'll eventually catch up But you just can't ever get caught up So just get the thing over with it's way way better Uh question from sherry sherry tells some story. It looks like she's done very well in lifting and just taking a bunch of our master classes and but she has the the Struggle that many have of elbow tendonitis. She's got elbow pain And specifically the squat seems to be the thing that's causing it Their questions are What steps do you go through for adjusting the squat grip to something non-standard? And how do you tell if it's right? She said it seems logical that if it doesn't hurt when you squat It's a good grip But even with the grip that doesn't give me pain when I squat I still experience increased aching in my elbows throughout the rest of the day It's a tough question and probably something that a lot of people struggle with Mm-hmm. Yeah, and not uncommon for tendonitis to You know to be a delayed effect like that I think sometimes it can be confusing because uh, you're not sure what's causing it or you know, what you think is causing it so Sometimes it can be the thing that you don't feel during the lift but sometimes you have to experiment to see which one uh, you don't feel after the lift and Until that symptom goes away And sometimes it may not even be the lift that's causing it. Maybe there's something else that you're doing From one of the other lifts So you suspect that it's the squat or maybe you originally started on the squat but now it's something else that's Tested off after you've made some adjustment. So it's kind of a Troubleshooting process where you've got to go through and try to find the thing that In theory is causing it and try to treat the symptoms as best you can but Sometimes you can never sometimes it just goes away and that's that's sometimes one of the most frustrating things about that type of Symptoms you never actually know exactly what was that caused it So you kind of work around it until it until it moves on There's different things you can do. You know, I think for the elbow tendonitis in particular Surprisingly, I think a lot of times bringing in the narrower in a narrower grip Can make the elbow tendonitis Go away But other times the wider grip helps because the narrower tends to put the forearm more in compression And it doesn't have any It gets most of that moment out of the way or why why do you think a narrower grip would help? You get your meat shelf to better so that it's tighter shelf Pull the bar. It's actually on a shelf, right? Which is what I was gonna say like her question of like, how do you know if it's right? Well, like that's a hard question to answer on a podcast on an audio podcast where we can't see her grip or anybody's grip But the the the first going back to the one rule the easy one rule of Squat grip is you should feel the weight of the bar on your meat shelf your back Yeah Not in your hands in your wrist in your elbows in your forearms So if you feel the weight of the bar in your arms, it's not right We know that a correct squat is gonna you're gonna feel the bulk of the weight On your back on that meat shelf of muscle And whether your thumbs are on top of the bar or thumbs are wrapped around the bar Or whether you've got a wide grip or a narrow grip. It's so it's weird I've been playing around just because i'm old and beat up with the buffalo bar slash duffalo bar a lot lately And today for the first time in a while, I squatted with a straight bar And it took some time to get in position with the straight bar Bro so much better with the straight bar. Yeah, because it was so much tighter But you can be you can be so loose on a buffalo bar, you know, you're squatting with kind of like semi Your thoracics and semi flexion it feels it feels great And it doesn't bother your elbows at all and I don't have any pain with it But I thought the reason I did it is I'm I'm gonna go I'm we're gonna travel here in a few weeks And I'm gonna go to a gym that I know doesn't have it I'm gonna need to squat with the straight bar and I thought you know I better start practicing with that right now and stop screwing around with this buffalo bar for a few weeks And get used to it and it was crazy because then I noticed like oh, man, this thing's way more seated On our back it feels way tighter. So so here's an easier question from her Her follow-up question is I know I'm gonna throw this one at sims At what point do you take time off from the lift and go to something else and for and for how long like when Do we take time off for tendonitis? man If it gets to the point that it's hurting in Most of your lifts and if it's hurting outside of the gym And you've tried exploring a lot of different variations of the lift or different frequencies and different weights And there's no indication of it improving Then that might be the right time to just eliminate it But I think there needs to be Time when you like what you've done You found a grip that doesn't hurt and then tendonitis takes a long time to go away Like I don't know how long you've made that correction or still feeling it in your other lifts But it might just need a few more weeks So if it starts really if you really start feeling it outside the gym That's usually when I start to take um more significant Approaches and by eliminating the lift, but it's very uh last case kind of thing. Yep Uh, all right last question for today. This is from thomas. This is an interesting kind of similar question But now we're not talking about tendonitis. We're talking about back pain So thomas has continued to try to go through linear progression. He continues to feel a tight achy feeling in my low back near my spine Feel it all the time with training. It's you know, there's this pain and it doesn't seem like it's a It's a nine out of ten pain or a ten out of ten pain. It's just kind of constant all the time Seems like he struggles with this tight achy back Uh, my question is whether you would recommend trying to resolve the pain issues in my back before attempting to take up the squat and deadlift again If not, what are the common mistakes that I could be making and then here's an important stat In case it's pertinent to your answer and it is Um, he is 5 11 and 165 There you go Are the same There you go Yeah, I mean the Clear answer in my opinion would be he needs to eat more And there may be some movement Errors that are occurring. Maybe overextending is back in the at the top of the squat Um, that one I see a lot lately. It's just possible when you're 5 11 and 165 quite right Again, it would help with that potentially So, yeah, uh, that would that would be the first two areas that I would probably look is to see what What's happening with his back during the squat and can we put some weight on? Yeah Yeah, we need to see what's going on with your form that would be causing that Yep, agreed. So thomas one thing you can do is you can email experience At barbell hyphen logic.com and have one of our coaches look at your lifts Specifically your squat and deadlift. Let's see what we can find but I would bet if you gain 15 pounds It would help tremendously 15 pounds is 180 is 5 11 and with it So I'm not talking about making you a big giant fat guy. We're talking about 15 pounds of body weight Probably will make a significant difference and then the obviously we're not doctors and we don't know every situation but for a blanketed answer dealing with back pain, especially when you're talking about not sharp back pain not sharp sciatic nerve spasms But tight achy sore back pain is not the same thing as dealing with really bad elbow tendonitis Because sometimes elbow tendonitis gets so bad that we have to change something But our experience in general is Is that squats and deadlifts are the movements that will help fix the back pain When the primary back pain you have is tight and a tight achy back It's not to take a break from squat and deadlifts get weaker You know lose muscle mass and then come back and hope that the back pain will have Have resolved itself almost always when when you do that by the way Almost always going to do that with tendonitis The most frustrating thing ever is to take a month off of something let it feel like you're letting it heal And then come back and one or two workouts in wamo. There it is again You know, I've literally just wasted a month and the answer is yep. You literally just wasted a month So, you know, you've got some free coaching options there with experience Always you can always get yourself a good coach whether in person or online Gain a little weight eat a little more protein put on 15 pounds And I will almost guarantee you that that back pain will go away. So That is another q&a addition of the barba logic podcast with my good friends co-workers vp's partners in crime and everything else Uh andrew and andrew jackson and nicky sims. Thank you for listening You can always send your questions to questions at barba-loget.com and we will get to them eventually We got through february. We're pushing into the questions that came in in march We are now now answering uh in mid june. So we're not horribly behind but they come in fast and furious So we need to do some rapid fire on these at some point So we knock out like 23 questions or something in a single Like five in five words or less. We could do it. They could be that could be fun Uh, so thank you for listening. We'd love a five star review at itunes or anywhere that you listen to this podcast Tell a friend and it's let's see it's thursday. So we will see you on sunday for the principle series. See you soon