 What kind of, you said the intensity is going to start to go up a little bit? Yep, the calories are going to go up. Is there like an amount of time? Yeah, calories will be helpful. And those are fun. Let's talk about those for a second. Fun calories, okay. Like, instead of milk, you could drink eggnog, which is delicious. That has like four zillion calories in it. Every time I look at it, I'm just astounded. 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 hardship. Welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast. I'm here with my good friend, Co-Hort, co-worker, partner in crime, Nikki Sims. Welcome to the show. What is the difference between Co-Hort and Co-worker? I don't know. Okay, fellow. I'm just a hillbilly from Springfield, Missouri. I have no idea. I'd like to give you a little update on a couple of life things for me. Oh, goodie. Love this. Okay. So, those of you may remember the story, I don't know, six months ago, maybe, of MediaCom shutting off my cable internet services because we hadn't paid the bill. Because it had been on a debit card that expired, and they never sent us a single notice that said that this is the debit card that expired. So, even though we pay 99% of our bills on a different card, somehow it was on my wife's business debit card that expired, they shut it off. And then they raised your price, right? Doubled my price, then to restart it back up. So, MediaCom, now, I'm not exactly sure how this works. I know that, and for those of you that follow the news know, well, the biggest thing in the news right now, I don't know if you've heard, there's a presidential election. By the time this comes out, it will be tomorrow. I don't know if you've heard of such things, but it seems like it's sort of a big deal. Another big deal, although not nearly as big of a deal, but I think it will still have some sort of ripple effects. I don't know if you'd heard this, but the government, the Department of Justice, is in a federal lawsuit with Google for a monopoly antitrust lawsuit. It's the biggest one since the Microsoft lawsuit that occurred 20 years ago, whatever it was. I'm not exactly sure. Here's what I know. I know it's actually not illegal in the United States to have a monopoly. And most people think it is. The problem is that when you make moves to stifle competition when you have a monopoly or when you're pushing that direction, that's the problem. So, that's what Google's in trouble for. Now, I have no idea how that works with, say, internet companies, like where I live in Springfield, Missouri, where MediaCom in my neighborhood is the only option. Listen, if there were any other option, I would do horrible depraved things in order to get that other option, but there isn't another option. MediaCom's what I'm stuck with. So, what I decided to do was, okay, I'm just going to instead go to a business account on MediaCom. I mean, that's what we're running internet for at the house. That's all day long, as I'm breaking down videos and doing all this stuff and recording videos and editing podcasts and all that sort of stuff. So, the service for the actual internet service for a business account and a residential account is exactly the same. So, I have the one gigabit, so 1000 megabytes per second service, but the difference is, is it the customer service for business? It's supposed to be tremendously better. They're guaranteed to send somebody to your house within two to four hours if you have a problem for business. Whereas, residential, I'm sure MediaCom is not the only horrendous company like this. You call, like, yeah, we'll be there next Thursday. Like, yeah, but I don't have any internet and I'm working from home. So, that's a problem. So, I was like, all right. So, now I'm not paying double what I was paying. I'm now paying quadruple what I was paying because the business account is essentially double what the residential account costs. Not a great financial plan, by the way. By the way, to pay four X what you were paying seven months ago. Yeah, that's fun to budget for. Okay. So, I get the internet up. It's been fine. It's run fine. They brought some bigger, more powerful modem in to set it up. And again, because MediaCom is an archaic company, I still have to call and cancel the residential service because that's, you know, a completely separate business. And so, they say, oh, I see that you've added the business service. Yes, I have. Let's cancel the residential service. No problem. Here we go. We're good to go. Okay. You're good to go. Now, you're not getting double charged, which is what I don't want. I don't want to pay a bill for residential and business. A couple days ago, internet goes out. And it's just out. And it's rainy and gross and the weather is terrible. Okay. Let's give it a shot. So, I call Business MediaCom customer service. They're super kind on the phone, very nice. And they do lots of troubleshooting. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Hey, we're going to send a guy out to your house, you know, in the next four hours. Okay. That comes out. Residential MediaCom has come out to my house and not just cut off my residential internet access, but also the business access. Oh, no, they cut off both of your, oh. Yeah, even though the guy from Business MediaCom came out and said, oh, there's flags all over it that says you have a business account. They still came out and shut off both of them. So, again, I hate you, MediaCom. I hope you burn in hell for all eternity. Go f*** yourself. Okay. Okay. Now, that's story number one. Story number two, completely unrelated. Now, I feel like the MediaCom thing is not at all my fault. This is a MediaCom business problem, right? Story number two, possibly I have something to do with this. This is a Matt Parenting story. Oh, joy. Okay. Now, both of my girls have some significant chores to do every day. And this is not the chores that they are expected to do. Like, get up, take a shower, brush your teeth, make sure your room's clean. That's what normal humans do that don't live like complete homeless people, right? Yeah. This is stuff they do for money. Again, recall back to a previous story. The younger one is currently working off a $1,500 debt, where she charged up on Roblox video game charges on the Apple Store. So, she gets up, she's got all this work to do. The older one, 15, almost 16, is at the point where she wants to go shopping at the mall. And she's actually a pretty good bargain shopper. She likes to go to consignment stores. And as she goes and eats, she wants to eat lunch with her friends. And she, again, she's not racking up. She wants to have fun. She's like, hey, she's just been a money, and so you're going to have to work for that. And so they both have a list of chores. Now, knowing me, I have made a very clean, very clear checklist of items to do each day with an actual box to check off. Do they have like a base camp? Do you have like a family base camp? They're not in base camp, although maybe we should add them to the projects and have them do that. Maybe that would work better. Maybe we're still, we're doing, I'm printing it off on PDF papers and then they're taking each day, the date at the top. And so we have a collection of these things at the end of the week that the younger one is paying off her debt and the older one gets paid for. It's about $20 a day for each of them. So, just to put it in perspective, and that's about the right amount of work. It's a couple hours for the work a day, two and a half hours where it works. It's $10 an hour or so. Like it's a little overpaid for their age, but it's not bad. Okay. So the other day, I'm like, Kaelin, to my older one, have you done all your chores on your cheat? She's like, yes, I have. Perfect. Well, we have had to transition our kids from their summer chores to their winter chores because it's gotten cold. And so Kaelin was doing some stuff around the yard and now it's cold and gross and it's all frosty this morning, literally. And so now she has to do the fireplace just to bring in firewood, just to set up a fire, not actually start the fire, but build it as if we're going to clean out the fire, you know, things like that. And so I look in the fireplace, there's no firewood, there's no fire in the fire storage thing. I'm like, what about the firewood? And she's like, oh, I forgot about that one. And I was like, well, how do you forget about it when you're working off a checklist? And she's like, I don't know, I just guess I didn't look at it. And so then later on an hour or so later, there was another very clear job that she was supposed to do, wasn't done. And I was like, what's going on here? Were you looking at the checklist? Or you did you also have it all in your head? I remember the checklist because I wrote the checklist, right? So I wasn't looking at the checklist. I just knew when I saw a thing, I was like, wait, that's Kaelin's job. You know what's stuff like, hey, did you feed the dog and give it water? And there's no food and no water. And I'm like, did you do your chores? And I'm like, yes. But there's did the dog eat all its food and drink all its water in October when it's cold outside and it shouldn't really need a ton of water. And they're like, oh, I forgot to do that part. Okay. Stop. Quick new story. The younger one, the younger one, same kind of issue would ask her if she's done everything. I would look at her checklist. Everything is checked off in the boxes. And I'd be like, I don't think you did this. And she's like, no, I went ahead and pre-checked it off because I knew I was going to. Now, this creates a situation that people don't understand when I say it's a Ron Reynolds, Danny Reynolds situation, which is my dad and his brother, my uncle, who are literally will blow out a proportion so bad. But I need to have a Uncle Danny Reynolds moment here where I need to have a class for my kids about how to use a damn checklist. Evidently, they don't know. Now they do know, but that's the problem. I need to send them down and be like, let me explain how checklist works. See, there's a box next to this stuff that you do, like feed the dog and there's a box. And once you feed the dog, you check the box. You don't check it before you feed the dog because you intend to feed the dog and you don't forget to feed the dog because that's why you have a checklist. But they have an item, like they're thinking of complete the checklist as an action. They're like, oh, well, I will, like that's my action, not like the steps on each one are actions. What's crazy is that's only the case for the younger one. The younger one thinks that her action item is to complete the checklist. The older one forgets the checklist exists, glances at it for 10 seconds and goes, okay, I got all this. And so then she decides she does her work and I'm like, did you do it? And what she means is, yeah, I'm pretty sure I got it all done. But what I'm asking is, did you work through the checklist and make sure you did all the stuff? And her answer is no. So I'm failing at parenting right now. I'm like, I don't know how to make it any easier. Give the dog food. When it's done, check it off the box. Did you feed the dog? Did you do all your chores? Yes, I did. But the dog wasn't fed. Oh, I forgot about it. Or, oh, I pre-checked it off. Like both my kids don't know how to use a checklist. Yeah. And it's a huge problem. That's your communication tool of it, which they're not really, they don't get that. Like that's how the integrity of the checklist is not there because you can't trust it, that it means that anything was completed. Checklist is a sheet of integrity. Yes. If you don't keep the integrity of the sheet, I don't know where we have integrity at all. There's a whole book on this. I forget what it's called. It's really good. And it made like a huge change in hospitals. I tell Katelyn, how am I supposed to expect you to go out? You're going to have your driver's license in like five months. And I'm going to expect you to go out and not die in a car accident. And you don't know how to do a checklist off your basic chores. Like pilots use checklists. Right. ER nurses use checklists. Like, they're so important. One of the things the pilots in the old, oh, I think it was David and Goliath. One of those, the guy that wrote outliers, the hell's his name. King? Oh, wait, I think it's something different. Anyway, the Koreans. Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell. There we go. Gladwell. Gladwell wrote, but one of Gladwell's book, he tells a story about South Koreans got in more plane crashes for you. This was maybe like in the 50s through the 70s, I think somewhere in there. And more plane crashes than any other sort of westernized, non-third war country in the world. And it was because they have such a code of honor and respect that even when the co-pilot saw that the pilot was about to fly them into the side of a mountain, he wouldn't tell them, hey, you're about to fly us in the side of a mountain killer. He would just basically give these like really sort of like vague. Sir, I think that maybe if you think... Hey, is everything going okay, sir? You know, it was like that. Not like, hey, man, we're about to fly inside a mountain. So yeah, they basically, they realized that Americans were, the Americans specifically, were very clear, you know, very like, this is what's going on. And so they actually adopted like some English terms and those checklists to go. And as soon as they adopted that and sort of changed the language where they weren't using this sort of traditional South Korean steeped-in respect, which was by the way, let me be clear. That's great. I think it's awesome. I've been there. It's awesome. I love their culture. And so it doesn't work great for flying airplanes, evidently. And so they changed it. And I don't think they've had a crash since. Just a hierarchy of importance. Yeah. It's real important to be like, hey, we're about to hit a mountain. Imagine you're like sitting with like, you're sitting in a car, something with someone's driving, you just see them just like, oh, there's a semi truck coming that we are going full speed into and be like, nope, it is disrespectful for me to say anything about it. This person is my boss or my parent or, you know, my senior. Oh my gosh. Therefore, I'm not really allowed to say anything. Yeah, seems like a bad idea. So. Okay. So that's my, there's your math stories. So we want to talk today about it's, by the way, a happy birthday to my little brother, his birthday is on October 29th. Happy birthday. And I have always considered my entire life as my brother's birthday kicking off the holiday season. Whereas most people might think of Halloween, which is, which is tomorrow for us. But by the time he gets to this, it will have already happened. Side note, we're also having our first real legit, large teenage party at my house tomorrow night. Teen party. Yes. Is it a sleepover? No. What? No. Come on. If you not listened to previous podcasts, we don't believe these things. I mean, you had, or you had me and Andrew stay at your house. It's got to be worth the teenager party. That's probably true. There will be obviously no alcohol involved at this teenager party other than for the hosts where there will be plenty of alcohol involved for the hosts, but not for the teenagers. So for the teenagers, it's Frito Chili Dogs and Halloween candy. Do you lock your library door for all your muskies? I lock the library door. We're going to have a talk about it. And remember that I have cameras in the library for like, nobody could, they're like, Hey, listen, if you still alcohol for me, you literally might get away with it tonight, but I'm still going to see it on the camera and then it's all. So yeah, we're having like a legit Halloween party tomorrow night. And our neighborhood is one of these neighborhoods where we have like literally like 2000 people come by for trick-or-treating. It's like one of the most popular neighborhoods in the entire area for trick-or-treating. So I just went to Sam's and had to spend like 400 bucks on candy to give to these randos that show up at my house and give him candy. So anyway, okay, so with the kickoff of the holiday season, it creates a wonderful seasonal time. We have spent lots of podcasts over the last, you know, couple months and even a couple years talking about how strength is not the be all end all and we don't chase strength purely for strength and chasing numbers. If you listen enough and listen most recently, you might think like, Hey, they're not super pro strength and they always want to chase quality of life. And actually, we do want to chase quality of life. That stuff is really important. However, there are times in our life when we do want to chase numbers and we do want to chase PRs and we do want to really get strong and we do want to set PRs. And those things are super, super fun. Right? Yeah. And so because to me, the way my life has tended to work out over the last 20 years, October through December tends to be a great time to do that. So for a lot of our listeners, they're probably thinking like, Oh, it's, you know, it's cold season. I'm wearing hoodies. I'm not going to the beach and we're not telling you to get fat. That's we'll talk through that. But it is fun and can be fun to chase numbers in the same way that it can also sometimes be grueling. Right now is a really great time of year to actually chase numbers and push for some PRs. So what are it like when a client comes to you and you're like, Oh, this person wants to chase numbers. Like how is that communicated to you? How do you know? I really want to push for PRs by the end of the year. A lot of times it starts like that. It usually starts as a talk where they say, Hey, they can see there's two months left in 2020 in the year calendar year. And they say to me, I mean, they've already thought through this on their own of, Hey, I'd really like to set some PRs for the year. And these are some goals for the end of the year. So I think that's a great place to start is with like quantifiable goals, things that you can also attainable goals. Right. So for me, chasing numbers doesn't work very well if it's a 12 month goal. I really like goals in that three month to maybe six month long term goals. Like there's no reason to not have those long term goals as sort of a general ethereal thing out there. But for me, I'm kind of thinking about for this training cycle, if we push really hard and I really dedicated myself to training and hitting numbers, what do we think I could hit? And that's a great discussion to have with your coach. Yeah. And so there need to be some restructuring in the programming and probably a little bit of a restructuring for your lifter too, right? Like might need to approach things but differently or sure maybe rework their schedule. So like what, what do you start with? Yeah. Well, it's a talk. I mean, so we start with a talk. So we say, okay, so what that will probably look like. So first off, let's, let's just, let's go ahead and hone in on because we're a strength coaching company that the goals are chasing numbers. Therefore, the goal is chasing strength. It's not, Hey, I'm chasing a 225 bench press for 50 reps, which would also theoretically be chasing numbers. We're really talking about hitting like one rep max is probably maybe three rep or five rep max is what we're talking about. A single set, five reps or less PR. And so, so the first thing we do is we say, I don't say, well, okay, what can the goals be? What could we hit if we did everything right? And we lay out. Okay. And do we want to hit PRs on say all four of the big lifts or is it a focus? Just one that's more important. Yeah. Yeah. One or two or whatever. I like it when it's that way. When someone's like, you know what, I just want to deadlift this by the end of year and be like, cool, I don't need to worry as much about all the other ones. Like I do need to worry about them, but it's like easy. It's almost easier on our side just to have this one focus that we can super duper, duper clearly prioritize. Yeah. You actually become a little more specialized, right? So I think that's kind of the next big picture idea that when you start to think about, we very much do want to bring up all facets and all aspects of fitness. We want to make sure that people are healthy. These things are important always on a long-term scale, but it doesn't mean that in a short-term spot that it's not okay to occasionally sort of just allow those things to kind of go on the back burner, not health necessarily. We don't need anybody to have heart attacks and run their body fat percentage up to 30 or anything. Well, you're going to get a special package. That's right. That's right. We don't have to condition three or four days a week. We may back some of that stuff off. We're probably going to back off the volume significantly and drive up the intensity. We're going to get heavier. There's going to be lots more sets of one and two and three and less of the five sets of five, five sets of four, four sets of five. There's going to be less of that because the goal is to drive toward a top number. That's the next thing we'll talk about is the goals. What are the goals and how are we going to get there? Then you probably have to have a pretty good talk about you can't miss training now. That's right. This is the holidays, which makes there's travel. People tend to get more sick. More times where you might be drinking and less likely that you want to train. But if you're going to chase numbers, it's not that time. It's not the summertime where it's a little more relaxed. You got to make your training sessions. Can you do that? Because you must. Again, so for most of our clients, strength training and the training itself is not the be all end all. They're not professional power lifters, which is a little different. That is literally strength at all costs. Not every professional power lifter, but the top line is I don't care what I have to eat. I don't care what drugs I have to take. I'm not going to do any work outside of the lifting in the weight room. I'm going to try to find somebody to load my plates for me. I'm not going to go get a mail because that's too much cardio to walk out. We're not talking about that. But the consistency when you're chasing numbers, you will fall behind immediately if you miss a single workout. Yeah, I really can throw things, really puts a wrench in it when you miss a training day, because you have every workout before it is leading up to that one day. When you chase numbers, I think of it as when you took math in school, every lesson sort of preceded the next lesson. It was a prerequisite for. So if you ever went on vacation on holiday of some sort in school and you left for a week or 10 days and came back and tried to pick up the math where you left off, you're like, whoa, I don't know how to do this. Now, well, yeah, it's because you missed the previous 10 lessons, and they all build on each other. Well, chasing numbers is the same way. We're trying to be just generally strong and generally healthy and generally in condition. Like missing a workout is not that big of a deal. Consistency is still super important. But when you're chasing numbers and you're chasing PRs, you can't miss. And then number two, I had a talk with my client. My client will hear this and you'll know who you are. I won't call you by name. But he is in an occupation where he has to socialize in business case scenarios. So there's a lot of business parties, especially this time where they'll smoke a cigar and have a few drinks. And then he had his first one of those sort of didn't overdo it. He smoked a cigar and had two drinks that got up at 5.30 the next morning and literally lifted like dog shit. Like his lifts were horrendous. And so I was like, okay. So, but it's a good lesson learned in October when you say, okay, if you know, those days are coming. And also this guy is sort of in that sort of mid to late 30s age where you're transitioning from being like young and can recover from anything like you were in college. It's like, I'll just get a hand. I'll wake up hung over and then go hit PRs when I'm 22. And when you're 40, you're like, I can't have two drinks the night before and get up and train. You're just a disaster. So I said, Hey, here's what we're going to do. He's on a four day split. I said, remember, and by the way, he's as strong as he's ever been. He's hitting PRs across the board. So it's very disappointing when he goes in and he has this like really down session and great client and a great guy. And I just said, look, the goal right now is you have to hit your four workouts a week. Yeah. But you know when those social kind of events are occurring. So if a social event is occurring on a Thursday night, then what we need to do is shift your training around and lift Thursday morning before the social event, not Friday morning and then again on Saturday morning. So or whatever that is, right? So yeah, so we never want to lift after one of those social events where you might have a little more alcohol than you would or and that has very little impact on your training as long as you can still get it in. So if you're normally on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday schedule and instead you do Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday because the week is weird and you got weird stuff going on, that's fine. That's totally okay. Yeah. It's actually better than hitting the workout. The 5 30 in the morning after you were up to 11 30 the night before having a few drinks and smoking a cigar, I would rather you push the workout back a day. Yeah. Get your sleep. What we can't do is miss the workout and what we can't do is have a workout where our strength is depleted by 25 or 30%. That's not helpful. Those two things can't happen when we chase numbers. Yeah, totally. So what kind of, you said the intensity is going to start to go up a little bit. Yep. The calories are going to go up. Is there like an amount of time? Yeah, calories will be helpful. And those are fun. Let's talk about those first time. Fun calories, okay. Like instead of milk, you could drink eggnog which is delicious. That has like four zillion calories on it. Every time I look at it, I'm just astounded. I do not like eggnog with alcohol in it. I think it's disgusting. No, it makes it really like more sour or something. That is so gross. And by the way, if you ever get sick on it, that is not a pretty, that's not, it's not pretty. Don't put alcohol in your eggnog. Just drink your eggnog, right? Want to have a little alcohol afterwards? Have a little alcohol afterwards separate. I'm the same one with coffee. You know, when people make like coffee cocktails and I'm listening, if you like coffee cocktails, more power. My wife loves them. Do it. But I like coffee and I like whiskey, but I don't like whiskey in my coffee. They're better separate. Yeah, same thing with eggnog. Eggnog. You've got Andy's pumpkin pie concrete frozen custards for those of you who live around it. Those are so good. McDonald's has. Right now through Thanksgiving they have pumpkin pie pies. I'm not suggesting going to Donald's. And after Thanksgiving, they have Christmas cookie pie, which made it. Oh my God, look at the kids. You guys tell how much Matt is excited about it. No, I'm not excited about it because now I'm old and fat and I don't get to have these times anymore. So I was like, am I passionate enough about talking about this that I can remember what it was like a few years ago when I actually got to chase numbers and eat a bunch of calories and have fun. But I never felt with a thing like Thanksgiving. And for so many people in the United States, especially if you're married and you live close to family, you often don't have a Thanksgiving. You have three Thanksgiving's to go to. I feel like I could do Thanksgiving relatively quote unquote healthy air quotes. It was still going to be very high calorie that day, but it was going to be real high calorie. It's all whole foods. Like that's the thing of these meals. That's right. I wasn't picking at the turkey and then eating four pieces of pecan pie. I was eating so much turkey that I almost wanted to die. And then I ate a half a piece of pecan pie. I was like, all right, I don't feel good. That was good enough. Right. And if you can stay hydrated when you do all that, that's clutch. Yeah. That's right. Not hammer the alcohol during Thanksgiving dinner is probably. Hammer the water. Yeah. Hammer the water. So fun calories. And really like it's nice to squat and have a little bit of a bloat. Like you just feel so much stronger under the bar. It feels really good. Yeah. I don't know how much science there is behind this. I know, you know, stand efforting is all like very pro salt. And I don't think it hurts. And so certainly don't think it hurts pre-workout to have some salt put on a little bloat, a little water, little cars, a little salt. Yeah, it up. Yeah. Squinty eyed, puppy cheeks. You're like, man, it feels good for strong. Like really filling out like the, I call it my fat hole on my belt. They're just like, wow, I'm getting in there. Okay, here we go. Let's squat. The fat hole is tight today. You're like, yeah, it's good, strong. Let's use it. I can remember back when I was coaching Gillian Ward in powerlifting, I can remember texting her, her husband at the time and being like, you know, how she feels. He's like, she feels great, super tight. She's having a hard time hitting parallel like on her warm ups. And they knew because she was so advanced that that's a good thing. Like as it gets heavier, she's just like, she's bloated and tight and feels strong. Like it's, it's the complete opposite. You're bouncing off of the bloat, not. Yeah, it's complete opposite of being ready for like the CrossFit Games or stepping on stage as a bodybuilder or other things that she's done. It's like, yeah, a little bloat feels good, feels strong right now. And as much as I say that now, don't go too far with it because it's really less fun in February where you're like digging yourself out of this hole. That's right, that's right. Yeah. You know, it's crazy how much a little water, a little salt, a little creatine can do. And there are no calories in any of those things. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things to remember is, is that you can get a pretty good bloat on three things that don't have calories. Yeah. And then add enough carbs to make sure that your glycogen stores are full, but you're not spilling over and putting on a lot of fat. Yeah. And so that's one way that I look at it. So we always want to make sure whether we are eating more calories than we need to get strong or we're eating subcaloric and we're actually losing weight, we always want to keep our protein high. It's pretty rare that our protein wouldn't be high. Like we need enough protein to continue to build muscle and to repair. And really what you're doing is you're playing the fat and carb game, the some combination of those to make sure that your energy needs are met. And what we found is that you just don't need fat that much to be able to perform well. And so you can still in a time of the holidays, you can still eat quite a few carbs and really make sure your muscle cells, your glycogen is very full that sarcoplasm in the muscle is very full of carbs and water and salt, you know, electrolytes, creatine and get that wonderful bloat and feel full and feel strong without going overboard on the calories. So we're not talking about eating for you middle-aged listeners, most of you are. We're not talking about eating 5,000 calories a day. We're talking about going from 2,500 calories to maybe 3,300 calories. Maybe it's an 800 calorie a day increase. That's mostly probably for guys. You know, to be able to get that and then just being smart about the other stuff that you take, things like the water and the creatine and the salt and the right supplementation, those things were really important. So you can get a lot of benefit there. So is there an amount of time that you like to have before like the time between someone says, I want to chase numbers and the time that they want to actually do their maybe a mock meat or they want to test it? That's a great question. That's actually why I felt compelled to do the podcast this week is that I think six to eight weeks is perfect. I think that longer than eight weeks, like certainly for people who want to or who are very advanced, they will often have a 12 week type program. So maybe it's a 12 week type program, but this time of year where this is coming out on like the 1st of November or somewhere in their 1st, 2nd of November, you have two full months before the end of the year and most people there just have this sort of paradigm shift that occurs the first week of January where the like, hey, spring is coming. Winter is going to be over. I'm going to need to pull off that bloat, right? Like a lot of times in the summertime, you don't want the bloat just because like you're wearing less clothes, you're going to the beach, you're going to the pool and you don't want the bloat because you just feel like the aesthetics, it's not great when you have a bloat, even if you have the exact same body fat percentage. If you have a healthy body fat percentage, if you're a guy and you have a body fat percentage at like 13, 14, 15, 16, perfectly healthy, you're a female, it's 5% or so higher, it's 20, 21, 22, somewhere in there, someone who has bloated versus someone who's not even the same person, you look very different, right? Yeah. My 15 year old calls it morning skinny. You get up in the morning, she's like, yeah, but we got the morning skinny going on right now, right? So you get up in the morning. Those are nice. That's right, you get up and I look great and then you start to add the, you know, you add the oatmeal and have the eggs. Yeah, and even when you eat really clean, even when you eat like it's oatmeal and eggs, but if you, you know, and you salt both and have water and have your creatine in the morning, a couple hours later, you've put on maybe four or five pounds of like just liquid and food and bloat that you're holding and you just look a lot different. Yeah, which is okay. So wintertime it just doesn't seem to matter as much. Because we have our nice hoodies on. Eight weeks is great. Eight weeks is great and I push towards setting PRs like the week after Christmas. I love the week after Christmas. The week between Christmas and New Year's is awesome. I love setting PRs if you're already pretty strong. I love setting PRs the week, like the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, after Thanksgiving is awesome too because you just hammered it on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Yeah. So those are fun times to do it. And I think they're short enough that you can, I think if you chase numbers longer than 12 weeks, it starts to become a grind. That's like a job. You'll start getting tired. So when you're really advanced and you're doing a 12-week program or even a 16-week program, you'll get to those last six to seven weeks. And you'll be like, okay, I'm starting to get real tired of chasing numbers. That makes me think of something. So I've been in those periods where it's like the two weeks before a taper, the next week being the meat week, you feel horrible. It's like you feel like your joints are just going to crumble and you're really not sure if you're hitting numbers. You hit a number that used to be a warm-up and it goes really slowly or maybe you miss it. And you're just like, you have all this doubt about trying to actually attempt something heavier. Does that happen as much on a shorter six to eight-week thing? Should people anticipate that? Probably not. And also probably depends on if the PRs they're shooting for are home PRs that they can do over the course of a week or if they're a legitimate meat that they have to go hit on the same day. I think the amount of pressure for the PRs themselves actually sometimes make a difference when you can take it easy and just do it in a COVID world where there's online meets and we can video ourselves and we can do it over the course of the week. I think there's less pressure there. And also when it's shorter, there's less pressure. But I will say for those of you who are on longer programs that have a taper, a significant taper, I don't mean significant like a two to three-week taper, but I mean like at least that week before the PR attempts, there is a significant decrease in stress. Big time. Then you just have to ask yourself, why is there a significant decrease in stress? Well, because you've had so much fatigue built up over the previous four weeks. Right? So what you've done is you've driven yourself into this place where your coach has driven you into the place of sort of a, you're not over-trained, but you definitely have accumulated fatigue enough that things are a feel harder than they should be. Right. And so it's very important for those of you who have a coach that the coach at that time is very encouraging with you and says, hey, you're exactly where you need to be. Yeah. This should be hard right now. You're not recovered. You're full of fatigue. Right? We've taken you into it. We've kind of overreached a little bit with the goal that when we taper, your body is going to recover and adapt to all that stress and become stronger than it ever was. There's this sort of, we don't really, I don't say believe, but we don't really accept super compensation as is defined by some of those original kind of physiology books, but it is sort of that, right? Like it's this kind of like I'm kind of withering and I'm hurting and everything feels crunchy and then you take this week or 10 days or so of lots of recovery. You still lift kind of heavy, but like it's really low volume and you eat a lot of calories and you rest a lot. And then all of a sudden what you'll find is by like Thursday or Friday of that taper week, you can start getting antsy. Right. You can't help it, but just get really excited. You're like, I want to go do the thing and I'm worried. Am I getting weaker because I'm so antsy and I want to lift? Like that's also exactly where it should be. Like the training stress that you had those two weeks is replaced by mental stress in that last week of like, you don't have that, like you literally have hours and hours more in your schedule where you're just like, what should I be doing? Should I have a part-time job now? Like I'm not training this much. Should I be training? Well, and no feedback, but you're getting stronger, right? Right. Because you're not doing enough really to give you true feedback that you're getting stronger. That's where it takes an experienced coach or experienced lifter who's done enough to go like, yep, I can see that your speeds at 70% or 75% of what you've been used to lifting. I can see that they're exactly where they should be and then everything's coming back and then you look at other things. You look at the other like, you look at your mood and you look at libido and you look at like, kind of ideas of like the sort of typical side effects of high cortisol stress, right? So like a little bit of depression, a little bit of like, I just want to sleep in. I don't have a lot of libido. You'll have that at the beginning of that taper and those things will start to go away and you'll be like, I'm sleeping better. I'm waking up at six in the morning by Thursday or Friday. I'm kind of horny again. Like whoop, whoop. And then like you feel like, all right, so those are all good signs and you don't necessarily have the signs that say like, hey, I'm moving the bar really heavy because you're not yet because you're going to do it when you try the PRs. That's supposed to yet. And so a lot of it is just being able to keep the mental toughness and to go like, hey, I put in the work, I did the thing, I chased the numbers that were doing the taper. Now here we go. Yeah. So if you had it your way, would you have your lifters do a mock meet where they do everything on one day or would you, if there, maybe they're on a four-day split, would you spread it out? Spread it out. And what would you do it in? Unless somebody is a very competitive powerlifter. So again, there are probably more needed mock meets in 2020 where there's a lot less meets. So if you're really, really used to competing three or four times a year in powerlifting or strengthlifting, then I think a one-day mock meet is probably the right move because you want to try to mimic what you would deal with at a regular meet. But for most of our clients and most of our listeners, I think it's way more fun to have sort of PR week. And you come in, you're like, okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to set the PR on the press today. And I'm going to do a little bit of volume bench, but that volume bench is still going to be pretty heavy, but not enough to like tire me out for when I try to set my bench PR here in three more days. And then do kind of the same thing, like set your squat PR and then like do enough deadlifts to be able to prep for the deadlift PR in a few more days and then come in, you know, and then do your bench and your deadlift or whatever. It doesn't matter what order they're in. It's just, I really like to focus on that singular lift that day. Yeah, I think that's fun too. And it's like, those mock meets, it looks like when you look at your program, you get, cool, I have nine lifts to do, but man, they turn into a long day. And if you lift on your own, you end up being in this like kind of vacuum of emotions in the same space and you just like ramp yourself up for squat, and then you just like have to chill and warm up your bench. Then you like ramp yourself up and calm yourself down. It's like, it might work great for some people to do the mock meets at their garages, but I actually really like spreading it out for that reason. Me too. Me too. If I'm, if I'm going to lift by myself, I'm definitely going to spread it out or finish this with Rachel and I, if I were going to do a mock meet at home, I would almost always try to coordinate it with three or four other friends to come over. And hopefully three or four other friends who are also doing the mock meet. Yeah. But at worst, three or four other friends to just kind of hang out and chill with between the lifts. Help you load the bar. And cheer you, that's right. And cheer you on when it's time to go because atmosphere makes a difference. There's many of you have been to an actual meet before and sometimes those meets go eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours in a long days, and they're long and you're tired and you're exhausted. And then you feel like you get hit by a Mack truck afterwards. But when there's an audience, it's a little easier to get up for the next lift. That's really hard. If you do a mock meet is by the time you get to the deadlift, which was almost always last, just like, tired, you know, I don't have any Fs to give left. And so I don't care. Whereas if you're standing in front of 200 people, you're like, now I have to care because there's a bunch of people sitting down here yelling at me. So yeah, that's right. So if I have a mock meet, I would still try to put as much of an audience, even if it's family, if it's calling your wife and your kids or whoever out there to just kind of watch and yell and cheer you on. I live better when my kids yell at me. Oh, cool. Every once in a while, I get ready to set a PR and when you guys, everybody come in here, you know, my sister would be over here working and I'm like, hey, come in here and just watch me do this. That's cool. And these are people who you don't have to impress. But the fact that they're just in there cheering you on, you're like, hey, I'm not just doing this for me. I'm doing this for them too. And it's, you know, it's not the same thing as doing it out of meat. But yeah, it gets you out of your head all by yourself. Yeah, sure. That's cool. So awesome. So we've talked a lot over the last several months about there have been times in my life when I really hated chasing numbers. And it usually comes from a long period, a long competitive period, that 12 week, 16 week, 24 week competitive period where you're chasing numbers for three to six months. It can get really long and really old. But for those of you who have been training for general strength, it's late October, early November, you feel really good right now. Right now is a great time to chase numbers from now to the end of the year, set some PRs for 2020. And if you're listening to this in subsequent years, set it for whatever 2021, 2022, whenever you're listening to this, it's a good time to do that and set it up on that six to eight week cycle, have a blast, chase some numbers, eat more calories than you normally would. Don't make yourself fat, don't make yourself unhealthy. But just enjoy it. You're probably not going to have to go walk onto the beach, you know, jacked and tan over the next several months. And so you can throw on the hoodie, throw on that Barba Logic hoodie. So soft, by the way. It is really cozy. They're awesome. Throw that thing on, put on the sweatpants, put on the Metallica and like chase some numbers because it can actually be fun. So I don't want to give the implication that chasing numbers is always not fun. There's actually times when it's really fun. You don't have to put your blinders on it and ignore your family. That's right. That's right. I like it sometimes, just like it gives you something, a different reason to train for things and you stop worrying as much about everything and be like, oh, well, I'm worried that I'm so far away from my bench five rep max. You're like, you know what, it's okay right now. That's not important right now. So you worry about less, which is kind of refreshing. Yeah, it very focuses you on the goal right there. I actually think it's way more difficult for my clients when we're trying to just train for training sake. You know, we're such goal oriented people and so to have the goal, the nice thing about chasing numbers is there's a goal we're chasing and so the focus of the training. Like sometimes when we only trace numbers, it's just like everything comes down to that day. But with this, just like, you know what, there's more after this that we're going to work with. So it's okay. And that's the difference between I think a general population, a person who's just trying to be generally strong and still having fun, chasing numbers still maybe super strong and the super sort of professional power lifter who trains all year for nationals, who trains all year for worlds and there isn't necessarily, in their mind, there isn't necessarily anything after that day. Their whole life sort of come is like their life is culminates in that day. The president didn't have to be that way. So we can chase numbers, have fun, enjoy the holidays, have some fun at the parties, drink some eggnog without the alcohol, get a good sleep like it's fun. So chasing numbers, I would encourage you all to chase some numbers here over the next eight weeks, set some PRs. And then the other nice thing that does it set some great numbers for you to set as the goal to beat in 2021. Now I have some numbers to beat as I get into January, I start stripping off some of that fat, I start stripping off some of that bloat, I feel a little bit better, I feel a little healthier, I bring the conditioning back in and now I'm a healthier, more conditioned version of myself in February and March. And now I'm going to start pursuing beating my previous year's PRs. When I did it with the bloat in the holidays, now I'm going to try to beat some of those PRs without the bloat in the spring and it gives you numbers to chase then for next year as well. So it kind of sets a nice standard for the following year. Cool. So there you go. Chasing numbers, not always bad, sometimes fun, sometimes good. And you don't actually have to run. Clearly, McDonald's Pies. There's a swanky donut place next door to me that I can just smell the donuts getting made all the time. And apparently they have a delicious pumpkin pie donut. So I feel like I need to go have one of those. We discovered last week when I was in SoCal with you, Sanchez Tacos, which is right on the road. Those are some of the best tacos I've ever had in my life. And so that would be great. Yeah. Find a place like that. Well, there's another thing, right? Like you can go eat that OG tri-tip carne asada taco. Yeah. That's not that unhealthy. No. I mean, it's like kind of dripping with grease, but. I think that was more sour cream. Actually, some of the sour cream grease. Some of the lifters that we met at our Camp Last Week and we're going to lift together tomorrow, which will be in the past. Yeah. So maybe we'll have to. Anyway, good to Sanchez afterwards. Yeah. Little post workout Sanchez. So thank you guys for listening to another episode of BarbiLogic Podcast. We'll keep coming at you with these new episodes on Mondays as well as series, both from the past and from the future. I've had quite a few questions actually this week about the principal's episodes. We have not let those go. We will bring those back as series, probably little four-part series, five-part series with my brother. Great. Those are awfully fun to do. So we'll bring those back as well. But rather than trying to chase the sort of monotony for us of three podcasts a week, it makes it easier for us to knock out that either a podcast on Monday or a series on Monday. And so you can always look forward to you know that Monday you've got fun stuff coming out. And then sometimes if those series are nice and long, we'll spread them out over the course of the week for you. So keep tuning in. We love to see those five-star reviews. Again, very, very close to a thousand five-star reviews on Apple iTunes and you can find us anywhere obviously on Apple's podcast, on Overcast, on Stitcher, on Spotify, Google Play, wherever you listen to podcasts. And I think what was it you said when we hit a thousand, you're going to do like a Bench 1RM in your Speedo, was that right? Is that what I said? Something like that. Okay, maybe I should. Bench 1RM, okay, I'll do it. I'll chase numbers the rest of the year. And Bench 1RM in the Speedo when we hit a thousand five-star reviews. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. Thanks everybody.