 Welcome to Barbell Logic Rewind. This is the Barbell Logic podcast of Scott Hamburg. We've got Matt Reynolds here, of course. If you'd like to show, please tell a friend, it's such a big help to us and it helps us spread the word of barbell training and our philosophy and we'd like to get our message out to new people when we can, so help us do that. You'll leave us a five star review, that's also very helpful and that pushes up in the algal rhythms. If you got any messages or feedback for us or questions, you can email us at barbelllogicpodcast.gmail.com. We respond to all those, by the way. We do, yeah, personally. I've been far and is worth lately, but we do respond to those. Today we're gonna talk about the minimum effective dose and how we apply that idea when we do our programming. Take it, man. Well, the idea behind minimum effective dose, let's get this out of the way first, what is that? Right, so the idea is, what's the least amount of dose I can take to get the desired result? Right, yeah, they talk about this in pharmacology all the time, right? If two ibuprofen work, why would I take four? Only two don't, that's why I work. That's a bad example, bad example. Yeah, terrible example. No, that's the idea, right? And then as you add a higher dose, you get the law of diminishing returns often, right? So as the dose goes up, the results don't match the increase in dose. So if I increase the dose by 100% from two ibuprofen to four ibuprofen, if the pain doesn't go down by a factor of two, then it was not the most effective dose, right? And so there are times that we've got to increase the dose to get the desired result. The smaller dose doesn't get us the result we need, and even when we increase the dose, maybe we don't get quite as great of a percentage of feedback or desired result from the higher dose, but we still need it to get to the spot we have to reach. And so in training, the same applies, right? In training, when we are a novice, the goal is just to be able to add weight every single time. You know, when you're a novice, you're trying to find the happy medium of it's enough stress to drive the adaptation, the strength adaptation. And when you're really like a rank beginner, a one pound jump, it for most people, for the vast majority of people, especially on the lower body lifts, is not enough stress to drive a strength adaptation when they're first starting out, right? We can take a 10 pound jump, especially if you're a male and you're under 30, certainly you can take maybe a 15 pound jump for a few workouts, and then you can go to a 10 pound jump, and then you can go to a five pound jump for a while, and we run that as long as we can. Now I would say that a 10 or a 15 pound jump might be, well it's more than minimal, it may not be a maximal dose, but I can make a guy do five pound jumps, and he'll just get stronger and stronger until he can. So the five might be minimal. That might be the minimum effective dose. And one, ain't enough, unless you're an elderly person or something like that. Sure, sometimes an older female on a press might start out with one pound jumps or whatever, but yeah. The idea is this, I wanna keep training as simple as possible, for as long as possible. Because we just like to be economical with our time, our effort, everything. So there's no reason to make things more complicated if they don't have to be. So the question sometimes is asked in the opposite direction, right? As we get someone towards the end of LP, we start to do things in order to extend that linear progression. We do things like, maybe we go from three sets of five to five sets of three. Maybe we go from five sets of three, then we start making two and a half pound jumps or one pound jumps or one and a half pound jumps or maybe even a half pound jumps for upper body lifts. It's real small. You know, one pound jumps or one and a half pound jumps for lower body lifts. And there are those that question, why not just go ahead and go to more advanced programming? Yeah, like, will it make a difference in five years? Sure. If you get an extra 12 pounds out of LP. Sure. And the simple answer is no. Right. It won't. But I think it's the wrong question. I think the right question is, why would you change if you don't have to? If I can go in the gym three days a week and I can add weight every single time, even if it's just a tiny little bit of weight, and I can just do three primary exercises per workout. Why would I do anything else until I have to? Yeah, well, I think that the argument would be, well, there might be something would be better. But maybe you don't have to change to continue to improve, maybe we do this other thing here and then you get a better result. Sure. And what do you think? Well, one of our bedrock axioms is, let's do it the simplest way possible. And I find when we change the training modality from LP to whatever the intermediate program's gonna be, we lose some time there. Sure. While the guy gets used to doing percentage-based stuff or trying to set one rep PR, basing it on one rep maxes and stuff. So I think it's just more effective. What are you gonna tell me here? Yeah, I think if we're gonna be super honest about things in general across the long-term development of the lifter, if we're looking at lifting as a lifetime sort of thing, this is what we're gonna do for decades, not for three months. I don't think it actually probably makes a difference in the long-term development model of what your numbers are three years down the road if you go to advanced programming a month early. Right. The problem is, I still think you're doing something that doesn't have to be done and I can still continue to milk progress for as long as possible. And the next question's this, just because it doesn't change the long-term outcome, doesn't mean a more complicated program is the desired thing that I wanna do. I don't, I wanna do the most simple program. So the only reason that I would wanna move from a simple program to a more advanced program is if the more advanced program gives me a better return on my investment than the simple program. Right, only I don't think it does. I don't think it necessarily gives you worse. Here's what I know. I know that when I'm doing LP and I'm struggling on Wednesday and so I just go up one pound, let's even say on one pound on all the lists just for easy math. And on Friday, I go up one pound on everything two days later, I made progress. And then I do the same thing on Monday, I go up another pound and I still made progress. I know every two days to three days, I have quantifiable evidence that I'm making progress. But on an advanced program, the very nature of an advanced program, call it an intermediate program, it doesn't matter, right? We're not making quantifiable progress on a workout to workout basis. Yeah, I like that. The quantifiability of actually hitting the PR gives us feedback, let's know where we are. Yeah, we're not talking about a PR single, we're talking about a PR three sets of five or five sets of three. Maybe at this point, you're at three sets of three or whatever. I track them for everything, like my overhand grip deadlift PR. Yeah, right, sure. Well, this is a PR squat in knee sleeves. This is a PR squat in no knee sleeves. This is a PR squat at a number four hole in my belt at a number three hole in my belt. Like I've got clients that do that. Well, I just think it's the wrong question, right? We get really, really good in the United States at the how, and we forget often to ask the why. And when we ask the why, it's often the wrong why. The why isn't, why wouldn't you go to more complicated programming? The question is, why would you go to more complicated programming if more simple programming still works? I'm gonna milk it as long as I can. Now look, here's, I wanna also be clear about this. This isn't just the issue in programming, right? Programming is a secondary issue. Oh, it's in my business. Like, can I get a lead in the door for X dollars? Of course. And not X plus 100. That's exactly right. I wanna do it for X every time. You know, here's the crazy thing. Macros work for everybody. Like they will work for everybody. If you understand the simple science behind macronutrient prescriptions and you get a nutrition coach who isn't a complete and utter moron and sets you at macros that are either like just ridiculously too high or ridiculously too low and then just uses it like a science experiments and go, okay, here's what you're gonna do. You're going to, let's say you are going to eat 240 grams of protein a day. You're gonna eat 320 grams of carbs a day. You're gonna eat 80 grams of fat a day. Right. And 40 grams of fiber. Now here's the thing. And the goal for you is to lose 20 pounds. It actually doesn't matter what you do the first week or two, whether you gain or lose as long as you hit your macros. If you hit your macros, it gives me what I need to know how to adjust the macros. It's super, super simple. You want the simplicity clearly because let's us know where we are. As you feedback on how your training is going. You know, if you're on a 16 week block you may not know for a little while how well you're doing it. But we're gonna try to use a minimum effective dose. So when the simple programming like LP can't be simpler than that. When that stops working then we still want to use the minimal effective dose idea to continue to garner improvements for our trainees. That's correct. I'm not gonna take somebody, this is why I wouldn't take somebody from an LP based program, an actual workout by workout linear novice progression to a 12 week DUP, you know, daily undulated periodization sort of program or a block and RPE based block training sort of program. By the way, I use both of those in my programming for my advanced athletes all the time. But at the time I get there it's the only thing that'll work anymore. Yeah, I'm in like, I don't know what year four or whatever. And you looked at your programming, you sent me today. It's like it's RPE. Yeah, so, you know, it's one of those deals where you start to get more advanced, not more advanced, you get really advanced, right? And it's funny because people would look at you probably and be like, well, how's that guy advanced lifter? Well, you've been doing this without fail, not missing workouts for almost five years. At this point you should be advanced. It doesn't mean that you're a world-class lifter. It doesn't mean that you squat 600 pounds. It doesn't mean that you did live 700 pounds. We don't qualify your training advancement based on your PRs. Now there's obviously some caveats there. If you squat 155, you can't be advanced, right? So then we go back and we go, okay, we gotta, there's a problem, there's a disconnect here. But you know, you're squatting over 400 pounds, you're deadlifting right at 500 pounds, right? You're an old guy with terrible genetics. And so you're an advanced lifter and so it's time to move on. You've done DUP, you've done block training. You tend to do better with block training style programs. You tend to do better with four-day splits rather than super high frequency. And this is just you, what we've learned. And now you just came out of a block program training that worked pretty well for you. You did very well while starting to lose some fat. Yeah, I would have smashed it if I hadn't gotten rid of 11 pounds of me. Right. The best 11 pounds apparently. And so you did still do pretty well. And so RPE becomes a little more important because now I need to have optimal training stress every single day. By the way, we'll do an upcoming episode pretty soon on RPE because it's, I know it's the source of more arguments, but I wanna be clear. I think RPE, especially in online coaching, you live in Tulsa, I live in Springfield, I'm not in the room to watch you squat. If I was, I'd probably never use RPE because I have RPE built into my brain and I can watch you do it. If I watch you squat three times a week, I get an idea of bar speed and how hard you're grinding. And that's different for everybody. Some guys are faster, some guys are slower, you're slow. My mom squatted 80 for five triples. She'll be 71 here in about a week. Yeah. You know, bionic hip replacement and all that stuff. But Charity trains her. If somebody's changed your diaper, you can train them. So my wife trains her and Charity will write out her programming ahead of time, but it's really RPE. Like she's watching her and then calling audibles on the fly, you know. What you can't do in online coaching, right? It's one of the downsides of online coaching. We always try to be real clear about those things. So RPE becomes a feedback mechanism between the coach and the client. And we start to use RPE in the beginning. So yeah, let's go right to that. So a guy comes out of LPE. What is one thing that might give us a minimum effective dose of either stress or relief so we can facilitate recovery that would allow a person to make improvement? Well, let's talk about the squat and then let's talk about the press. Because I think there's two different problems coming out of LPE there. So we need two different doses for those things. So on the squat, I think the frequency is probably correct. I wouldn't change the frequency. The frequency is still probably for the vast majority of people, it's three times a week. But what we're gonna do is now we have to wave the volume and the intensity. So I need the volume to get the work in to be able to build the work capacity, which I do on Monday, which for old man texts method might be three sets of five, but for most people it's gonna be four sets of five or five sets of five. That creates an enormous amount of stress, a five sets of five. It's not brutally heavy, but it's still a lot of stress. We've been doing 15 reps. Maybe we've been doing five sets of three, 15 reps. Maybe we've been doing three sets of three, only nine reps. And so now we're talking about five sets of five, it's 25 reps. It's a lot more stress, right? Wednesday for most people, again, becomes a day that they need to do form work. They don't wanna detrain, but another big bolus of training stress on the squad will be too much to recover from. After all this, you still have some fatigue present on Wednesday from the squat workout that you just did on Monday of five sets of five or four sets of five. And then on Friday, what we do is we're, because the goal of Friday is an intensity day is to be able to continue to drive the weight up. The weight is the thing that drives up and the volume drops to the floor. So we only do one set of five, but we're able to keep driving the weight up. So on squat, the frequency stays the same from LP to an intermediate-based program. By the way, it's basically very, very similar with like HLM or other sort of weekly programs. Any of these work in the same sort of template. But so we have to drive the volume up on one day. We drive the intensity up on the other day, but we can't drive them both up at the same time. And so that's the way it works on squat. Yeah, so in squat, I think the first thing we do to provide a minimum effective dose that provides, that facilitates improvement in the trainee, I think the first thing we do is facilitate recovery. So we normally will drop the midweek. Well, we don't drop it out. We reduce the load in the midweek. So I have been messing with some of my guys, right? And playing with and experimenting with this minimum effective dose idea. So the first thing we do to extend the LP a little bit is we'll go to an 80% on Wednesday often, right? And so then what I've been doing. So still LP is still three sets of five on Monday, three sets of five on Wednesday, three sets of five on Friday. The difference is that Wednesday's lighter. And Friday's a little heavier than Monday was. That's right. So the following Monday's a little heavier than Friday was. So last week, he got 15 pounds on the squat, five on Monday, five on Wednesday, five on Friday. It grounding the powder. I'm watching his sets. The bar's slowing down. He's sweating bullets Friday. You could tell it's just in the road, right? So then he gets to rest Saturday and Sunday comes in Monday, he's got three sets of five. I do load him a little bit on Wednesday and then sure enough, he can get five more pounds on Friday. Well, that'll work a little while. Minimum effective dose. I just facility recovery. You didn't actually have to move him to from LP to Old Man, Texas. This is a middle-aged guy, right? Right. Well, heck, you can do it for a young man. Yeah, sure. It's the same thing. The idea is we kind of have these ideas of programs. Like you have to go from, what do you do after LP? Well, you go to like a Texas method or heavy light medium. And what you're, if I understand you right, what your argument is, you can actually transition into that. Oh, four or five steps. So you can drop that Wednesday. And then the next thing I've been doing is taking a set off of Friday. Yep. And then we still goes up five pounds, but I take a set off Friday. Those two sets of five, instead of three sets of five. Right. And then that'll work for a little bit. And then I'll take another set off Friday. Now, boy, now it's looking like Texas. Yep. And then we go a little while. It starts to slow down again. And then I'll put another set back on Monday. Yep. So now you're going to four sets. Now you have four sets on Monday, one set on Friday, lighter on Wednesday. Yep. And then we keep fooling around. And then you got big heavy on Friday and then a back off set. And you just keep adding these minimally effective doses that get us another six weeks of improvement. 18 months later, this thing looks like DUP. That's exactly right. Isn't it weird? It's, well, DUP is a high frequency program. You know, the idea is you're continued to increase the total stress, right? Like what do I do? Well, so in the beginning, if the stress recovery adaptation cycle is this combination of stress and recovery in order to get the adaptation. At the end of LP, the stress is a lot and they're not able to start recovering. And then the first thing you do, well, let's introduce more recovery. When the recovery gets introduced and they adapt to that, now it's no problem. Now how do I continue to drive enough stress to get the adaptation? Well, now the stress has to start going up. I can only recover so much, right? I sleep, I eat, I drop my weights a little bit on Wednesday. Before I started training, all I did was recover. That's right, I was recovering all the time. I didn't get stronger at all. Yeah, for a decade. Yeah, so then you start bringing the stress in. Well, how can you bring the stress in? Well, you can bring it in from volume in some places, intensity in other places, frequency in other places. But with the squat, we haven't changed anything yet. We just stayed three times a week. When we started this, you know, eight minutes ago, I said, let's talk about the squat and then talk about the press. At the end of LPs, nobody's press isn't petered out. So let's say they were doing five, six weeks. I know where you're going with this. We did three sets of five on Monday. What's the thing that has to change? Frequency. It's got to be frequency. It's the frequency. And actually, the frequency is not enough because on some weeks, you're only pressing once. Yep. And that's not enough. Yep. So I am finding that I will have guys press and bench three times a week. So you'll do six presses a week. That's one more than I use. Yeah. So what I found, we talked about this a minute ago. They press and bench on Monday. They bench and press on, you know, or depending on who they are, right? And then the first pressing motion of the day is the emphasis for that day. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And of course it depends on recovery and how much they press. Again, some of the heavier weight guys, if you got some guy that's like benching 400 and pressing 285. No, these are guys that would crush him. No, these are guys at the end of LPs at 160. Right. And so I have found over the years, by the time my lifters are advanced and they're doing an advanced program. So they're doing a block style program or a DUP style program. Again, we'll do those episodes soon. They almost always are pressing, meaning press or bench five times a week. If their goal is powerlifting, they'll bench press three times a week and press twice. If their goal is strength lifting, they'll press three times and bench twice. If they don't know, then we'll just alternate each cycle that they do. We'll do one cycle or they do one, three and the other two. I am alternating for my guys at the end of LP. They don't have a meet on the schedule, you know. Yep, and it works really well. Yeah, so it appears, sounds like to you and I, that we agree on this that at the end of LP, the thing that's needed to drive the adaptation at a press and bench press. Deadlift too. Yeah, it depends on how you do deadlift. So, well, let's start. So the thing that has to drive bench and press for sure is that the frequency is too low. So I need more stress. It's not that there's too much stress. If there's not enough stress, at least in the frequency. Yeah, right. It's all heavy, but there's probably not enough total volume. And rather than going to five sets of five on a bench press, it's easier to add more bench presses in that week. Add more bench press slots or press, same thing. So that tends to work well. Now, again, if you follow kind of prototypical style, then we're already squatting three times a week. We don't squat four times a week, usually. And so the frequency doesn't change. We have to manipulate the intensity and the volume. The deadlift is a little bit different because it depends on the strategy used to get to the end of LP. I'll tell you, for me, now it's completely changes for people. It is really, really rare that I get somebody at the end of LP that they're not deadlifting twice a week still. But I know lots of people at the end of LP only deadlift once a week. And they're doing like chins one day, rows one day, and deadlifts one day. Or they're doing a light deadlift and a heavy deadlift and then another day of rows or chins or both. I don't do, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing light deadlifts, by the way. I just don't do them that much. I have found, I'll do a lot of times, I'll do by the time they get towards the end of LP, they're probably doing an intensity day and a volume day for deadlifts. So they're doing like three sets of three or two sets of three on the intensity day. And they're doing like two sets of five on the volume day. And that could vary by a set. Maybe it's three sets of five, maybe it's two sets of five, maybe it's three sets of four, something like that. But there's somewhere in that ballpark. And so if they do that, then it's not frequency, then I have to bring in right away. I just start playing with the intensity and volume as well. If you're only deadlifting once by the end of LP a week, you've got to bring in another deadlift. Just never, I just never do that anymore. Everybody deadlifts at least twice. Everybody deadlifts twice. So if you do the ABA workout, and then you work in the power clean, or for older people, you drop it out, you end up deadlifting once this week and twice next week, or vice versa. Yeah, sure. And I don't do that. The deadlift Monday and Friday. Me too, period. Almost every time. Yeah, same thing. Yeah, once a week. Yeah, the Wednesday is just not enough. After old, I just do like barbell rows and stuff, right? Or light deadlifts. I know Delgadillo uses that all the time. It's like just 80% deadlift for two sets of five, instead of one set of five. Right, so that's pretty easy. Yeah, so all of these make up this idea of minimum effective dose. Minimum effective dose isn't necessarily what is the minimum effective program I can do. It often means what's the smallest step I can make for the biggest return on investment? That's all there is to it. I believe it's somewhat irresponsible of us to go otherwise. If we're gonna preach, minimum effective dose is important, not just in training, by the way, but in life, in diet, in nutrition, in investing in our, you know, like I'm a big Charlie Munger fan, and it's that hands-off, it's a sit-on-your-ass investing, right? You find a good deal, you do your research, and you find the company, and you put your money in it, and then you don't mess with it, right? Minimum effective dose, right? I'm not gonna day trade, I'm not throwing stuff in and out here, and so anytime I can do that, that's what I wanna do. Yeah, no, I have guys that come for in-person training, and I'll see them once a month, once every other month. I've got one I'm thinking of in particular, Jason, you know who you are out there. I'll write a program for him, and he runs that thing until he comes back and sees me. Yep. I can't really do minimum effective dose for him, because a minimally effective tweak may not last him until I see him in his fiscal quarter, right? So we have to go, maybe not thermonuclear, but we have to go high tonnage. I mean, we have to go, we gotta throw more tools at his training so he continues to do well when I see him next time. By the way, this is why we don't introduce things like supplemental lifts early. Do I think there's anything wrong with supplemental lifts? Of course not, I use supplemental lifts all the time. I just don't wanna use them as long as possible. And then once I have to, fine, we'll use them. It's not a big deal. And even then when I start to introduce supplemental lifts, I have a very select few that I'll introduce first. You know, like on deadlifts, I'm gonna introduce deficit deadlifts and rack pulls. That's it. Are there other deadlifts that I use for supplemental lifts? Of course, I use all kinds of stuff, right? I do deadlifts with chains, we do pause deadlifts and haltings and things like that. But in the beginning, like once I need to introduce a supplemental deadlift, I introduce the top end and the bottom end. That's what we do. I've got a guy and he's like, why are you having me doing curls? Like he's been training hard for two years. Sure. And why are you having me doing curls? I'm like supplement to your chins. Yeah. You know, there's no way I can get more chin volume on the guy. And his lats aren't strong enough to keep the bar on his shins when he's doing his pulls. You know, so we add those in there. And that's the only way I could give him more chin volume. He doesn't have a lat pull down machine. Yep. No, I say the only way. I don't know, we could do some bands. They could do a bunch of reverses. But hey, why not curl? Like we're already T-Rex's after doing a year of LP and Texas Method and stuff. So, you know, put those in there. So, yeah, we're always looking for just one little thing that we can add on. Yeah. And so what I like even better than that is taking something off and throwing it out. Yeah, all the time. That's the best thing. That's the first thing I do. And somebody, again, we've taken some flak maybe for some of our advanced lifters. One of the things I'll do when advanced lifter comes in, I'll almost always put them on LP for a short period of time. Why? Because it works. Why wouldn't you? It works because they all have form problems. They've had form creep come in. These power-thrusers are advanced or squatting a half-inch high and inch high. Well, listen, you think that you're gonna get that better just continuing what they're doing. You're not. It's easier to take a little bit of weight off the bar. Not very much, right? 10%, 8% deload. And have them start hammered it again. We're gonna fix your form. We're gonna go right past where you were. And the LP passed where they were when they started to slow down. Okay, now we can move into more intermediate programming. We could do it probably a little quicker than we would. Not probably. We would definitely move into more solid intermediate program than you would with somebody who's never been an intermediate before, where I completely agree with your style choices where you make this tiny little step and get this change and then a tiny little step and make this change. When I've got a guy that already squats 500 pounds. Yeah, that guy. And I've worked with him for a few weeks and okay, perfect, we get your form dialed in. You've LP'd this for the last four or five weeks. Boom, it's time to move into this program and use one Monday morning they get up and this is the program we're starting in. And so it works pretty well. Nutrition's the same. You know, what I was about to get into was that following macros is as simple as it gets. And if you want to lose a bunch of weight, if somebody wants to lose a bunch of weight or even if you're somebody who wants to gain a bunch of weight but will focus on weight loss, there are tons of things you could do, right? Like you can follow your math, to develop an eating disorder, not a healthy way. You can do drugs, right? You can do a Fedran and Clint Burell and T3 and all these other GPS drugs. Tell me more, doctor. You can do hit cardio. You can do steady state, you know, long slow distance sort of cardio. You can, and so you can talk about food quality is a big piece of like to argue all the time, right? You know, just do nothing but like organic stuff or paleo stuff or this sort of stuff. And the reality is that all of those things could theoretically make up a very tiny percentage change. Supplements is another one like everybody else. What supplements should I be on? You know, all of those things are the tiny little tip of the iceberg, which ultimately comes down to energy balance, right? And macros set your calories. And so if you follow your macros, so if your macros are basically in the ballpark where they should be here, you have a coach that knows how to set those and they're not difficult to do. And you're able to follow those for 99 probably, certainly 95% of the population, that will work just fine. Yeah, it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. It works really, really nice. That's why it's called flexible dieting is if you wanna go eat a Krispy Kreme donut, you're like, I'm really, really craving a Krispy Kreme donut. Look, man, you got some carbs and some fat to play with. Eat your Krispy Kreme donut, just means you're gonna have to cut it out. It's just a budget, you just don't get to go over. That's so simple. If the problem is, it's too simple for most people. And they're not, they're like, well, but what about, you know, what about all the, you know, micronutrients that I know? Man, do you take the same approach towards like affection for your kids? Like just enough to keep them off the pole? Just enough to let them know that they love me? Just enough. That's a good, that's actually a great, no. In fact, I don't. Yeah, there's these things that we do that bring us value and all the things that bring us value, I think you should overdo it. Right? So, you know, you're an intellectual linear progression. Like do I want to read just enough of the classics? Like, could I read the Cliff's Notes version of the classics and get all the benefit of reading the classics? No, I can't read, like, can I get some benefit from those? Yeah, probably, sure. I can get the general idea. So, by the way, reading those things is just like the barbell thing. It's really not necessarily ideas. It's what it does to you in the getting. Right, the refinement process. Yes, of course. Yeah, of course. This thing's going long, man. I think this is interesting. At least it is to me. I hope it is to the listeners out there. Let us know if we can do anything to help you if you have any questions about this. We're gonna do some further episodes, in fact, in this very session that are kind of related to this. So, we'll cut this one off. Tune in and let us know how we're doing.