 Whoo Mustache Chuck Hi, bro Check a little sweaty check ladies and gentlemen sound my back with another video before we get into it We're gonna be talking about variations when to use them how to use them Maybe when to apply how to apply yourself to get stronger squat bench head overhead almost any exercise these General rules outline some description rather than they answer it depends coming at you right now Give this thing a thumbs up. Sorry. I'm out of breath I just did a little super set set of five squats set of five bench two seventy five three fifteen respectively We're back in this probably live right now Twitch.tv slash salamico two kids if you like video games if you like some entertainment if you like community if you like me If you like you if you like peanut butter if you like water vegetables pizza sushi hamburgers Head over to twitch.tv slash salamico two kids I'm going live every Monday through Thursday some Fridays 3 p.m. Pacific standard time Love to hang out with you. You'll love to chat. It's my best way to build community to communicate with y'all And I think honestly my best form of entertainment value Diving into that so we're creating content left and right some you guys might not even know about Kaizen training calm where I do all my coaching with Omar Esau we do a blog so I've been writing a bunch of articles and Although I'm a decent writer. I haven't done it from like age 20 to 25 since I dropped out of college But recently I've dug in a bunch and we get more specific and more organized with my thoughts YouTube I use to share my journey experiences and teach you guys, but it's all off the top of the cuff I've never done two takes. I've never edited me saying and um Fug I've never done any of that. I have general notes on my head or sometimes I have notes on my phone But they're bullet points. I've never scripted this thing because I think What we've lost the beauty of YouTube why I actually may prefer twitch is that the authenticity The organic and I'm not talking about your Fuji apples is lost through editing and through production Now I understand industries change and everything must elevate higher production content And you guys maybe want more detailed content on YouTube, but you guys know what you get here You know who I am. That's not who I am But go to the Kaizen training blog or whatever. I'm not saying you have to go there But that's kind of where I get my detailed ideas out spend a couple hours a week typing out This week we talked about bench variations When to use them why to use them my favorite bench variation and kind of how to apply those so I figured I'll give you a condensed version here if you want the real one you can head over there And then if you go to you know twitch will just be s about music rap music basketball Sneakers and how good I am I call the duty But basically what we're talking about is how I think people use variations or lack there of there's kind of two groups Right, there's still the group that varies their exercise trying to get muscle confusion Which literally is in a thing and then there's one group that it's slowly changing But there was a group that was uber specific and they're all about specificity right being specific to your goal If your goal is powerlifting the squat bench deadlift have to be number one And all they do is one rap max what bench deadlift right or handle those type of movements Now when it comes to programming depending on the frequency of the lift squat bench or deadlift doesn't really matter Which lift we're talking about It's gonna be very difficult to continue progress not only as you get stronger more age experience under the barbell But doing the same lift the same rep schemes week in and week out Even if we have three squat days and one days doubles one days fives and one days eight Eventually we're gonna run out of gas you're gonna end up doing 12 sets of eight 12 sets of two 12 sets of five and making no progress right We want to do least amount of stimulus least amount of work with the optimal progress If I can do one set of ten and make the same progress that you're doing with ten sets of ten I'm winning because as soon as I plateau I can now do two sets of ten and slowly make that progress, right? Or I'm getting out as if we have those squat days or bench days That are three times a week Oftentimes depending on how far we are from a competition or a test will throw in multiple variations Meaning something that's close to the lift that we're doing but not the exact same lift The most basic example is if you're a conventional polar. There's a blockhole. There's a sumo pole If you're a wide grip bencher, we have a close grip bench We have bench against chains the list goes on you guys probably know a lot of them We can get into them if you'd like but no need to go into those Millions of variations that are possible now talking about they make that progress whether it be with our PE percentage It really just doesn't matter. We always want to be able to save ourselves a little bit of room above Or if you work with a coach or a program you very It's very unlikely that you've seen our PE 10 on a lot of the big barbell movements That's because simply that stimulus isn't needed for strength Potential poor technique Goes down the drain as soon as we're trying to max out higher potential the failure right because we're taking a guess Of what we might be able to lift that day recovery time changes as soon as you get a very big compound movement a lot of weight And you're going to actual failure And then beyond that we want to be able to progress week to week whether that be sets reps or poundage So you always want to kind of keep some in the tank. That's why a lot of these programs will handle our PE 7s 8s and 9s Same thing as if you do percentage depending on what you work with a coach or not that coach would hopefully take you half a step back So that you can continue to make progress Now again, if we're only doing the competition lift two three four times a week Making those progressive strides is going to be much more difficult once you're two three four years into this game Maybe in your first year you might be able to get away with some of that. That's when the variations come in So we're going to use these variations for multiple things one. We're going to use it as You know a mini acute D load in my opinion. I call it an under load. Some people may call it like a self Limiting exercise right so if you're a wide grip venture You kind of arch a little bit doing a close grip with the flat back. You'll be able to handle less weight Now if the RPE could still be high you could still handle a seven eight or nine on that But the overall stimulus to your body to your muscles to your System will be less because you might be able handling 225 for sets at three there Whereas if you went full comp grip, you might be able to do 275 315 365 depending on how efficient you are a technique So we might throw that into the ripple if we're benching three times a week It'll allow you to kind of keep that progress back You'll be a little bit fresher for your comp days and you can slowly progress in that So if you're doing three sets of five with that flat back close grip then two thirty five then two forty five chances Or we can slowly elevate not only our musculature build more muscle But build more strength in different positions as we build Again the further out from a meat. Maybe we have two close grip days in one comp day closer to a meat These are all wild examples and just random But you have two or three comp benches and one close grip right the more specific the more practice with the movement We want and need Couple other reasons to maybe throw in variations getting in positions If you're kind of beat up or have some pain or injury, right? So maybe a full range of motion deadlifts hurting for whatever reason your knee your back I don't really care at this point your trap whether it be acute or long term What we can start to do is use variations cutting down the range of motion or the overall load will use and that'll allow us to handle Still train the type of movement pattern a hip hinge without feeling as bad of pain and still making some progress while maintaining muscle and strength The third reason which I think it's overblown by most people because everyone use these words transfer and carry over which I think lead you to Have a misconception of what the exercise are doing But there is like weak point training and again I don't really like those terms because I think you automatically think All my triceps are weak because I locked my bench out wrong And so I'm gonna do close grip for a year and all of a sudden I'm gonna hit 500 pounds on the bench It doesn't quite work that way But building some strength in some range of motions or in muscles with a variation of the main lift may benefit you long term So I like to use them to self-limit kind of how you're training. That's why I don't talk about deloads a ton We can talk about that in another video and how I use them in programming or my own training But I kind of have those self-limiting days those under load exercises or variations I'm still getting really good work in example today. I did a high bar squat No sleeves no belt, right? So although I got good work in the intensity side. I'm still building some muscle in my quads I'm still getting a motor pattern of a squat. I only handle 315 for fives. Whereas if I belt up, maybe I handle 365 If I sleeve up, maybe I'm handling 405 if I go low bar belt sleeves competition stance Maybe I'm handing 455 to 500 plus, right? So there's ways to get good work in build the motor pattern build the strength and build the muscle While still choosing a different variation that doesn't beat us up over time Now there's a million variations we can do when we're talking bands change range of motion stances grips And some of those are to be explored But another big tip is that we need to give us time ourselves time to progress in those So don't just choose a variation for a day a week choose it for months or blocks I like to throw these in for four six eight twelve week blocks as one of the variation days to really make progress and get Better at the movement We're training to get better at a skill to get muscle and those things don't happen in three reps or one session No, I know that might seem like a ton of info thrown at you I'm just kind of covering variations and why I use them how I use them and some slight examples on when why and for whom But hopefully take away leave some comments below more specific if you want I'll cover them in an upcoming video I appreciate you guys so much with this poor new video every Monday Wednesday. Thanks so much fam I'll see you on twitch catch in the next video. So I'm like I'm out