 I work out just at home. For squats, I just use a rack with adjustable safeties. I bench inside of the rack so that rather than use a traditional Olympic bench where once you unrack it, it's all on you. The way I've got it set up is once I unrack it, I also have pins that are set to just above the height of my neck. If I get stuck, I roll it up, it sets on the pins, I can turn my head and slide out from underneath it. If you work out at a gym that has a power rack, if they let you move the benches around, you can safely bench press inside a power rack if you can adjust. Now, you want to test it first to make sure that it's at the right height, but you can adjust that so that you have a safety there. For pretty much any other free-wet exercise, I wouldn't worry too much about it, but definitely use a power rack if you're doing any kind of benching or overhead movement. I'll just let him pass. What are your opinions on the CrossFit methodology as far as their general recommendation of a three-on, one-day off pattern for workouts? It's excessive for most people. The majority of people, if they're really training hard enough, don't need very much exercise. And doing too much, and especially with some of the type of movements that CrossFit involves, it can lead to joint problems and other injuries over time. They recommend a lot of very fast, a lot of quick movements. I know that they recommend a kipping version of pull-ups, a lot of Olympic lifts. These things, if done infrequently, are still a recipe for injury for some people. Done on that kind of a schedule, they'll tear somebody up. So I definitely would not recommend that kind of frequency, especially not with that level of demanding activity. I just wanted to ask, because I know a lot of us are going out, so with sleep, what's your recommendation on how many hours, and also on a regular sleep schedule, because I know that's hard for a lot of us. It's difficult for a lot of people. It varies from person to person. Some people can get by, and they're fine. They function well in very little sleep, and some people need a little bit more. What I would recommend is on a weekend or sometime when you don't have to be up, if you know that you're not already somewhat sleep deprived, go to sleep a little bit after it starts getting dark, 9, 10. See when you wake up naturally. And try that a couple of times and average it out. And seeing how long you sleep just naturally when you wake up without having an alarm will give you a rough idea of how much you actually need on a regular basis and allow you a plan for that. But the sleep is absolutely important. If you don't get adequate sleep, it starts messing with a bunch of different hormones. You have an increase in cortisol. You have a decrease in growth hormone, and Doug can probably explain better than I do, but both of those switching that way are going to negatively affect both muscle gain and fat loss. What is usually the amount of hours of like a range? Average, I think again it does vary just like pretty much everything else, but about 7-8 hours for most people. More sometime if for younger people though. Also I was wondering if you recommend doing any like scab work, rotator cuff work, calves, wrists and neck. And if that correlates with those five exercises you said? Well as supplemental work, as far as rotator cuff it depends. If a person is performing their exercises correctly and in proper form, those muscles are going to be strengthened as well. If a person has an injury, sometimes doing additional rotator cuff work will help. I trained somebody who had some issues with that, and we would do some additional stuff at the end of the workout. And he did function a little bit better after a while. For most people if they don't develop a problem with it in the first place, they're not going to require any additional exercise for it. Now as far as grip, if a person is doing heavy pulling movements, chin ups, pull downs, rows, if you do deadlift as your multi-joint leg movement, you're going to find over time that your grip, if you don't use any straps or hooks, is going to get pretty strong. If you get to a point where you're able to deadlift 315-something pounds for reps or you're doing chin ups with an additional 50 pounds, you're going to have increased your grip significantly. Now the only time that I would recommend supplemental grip work is if there's an issue where you might be involved in a sport or something where grip strength might be a limiting factor for wrestling. It's tremendous. As far as the neck, I generally don't recommend doing direct neck work unless you have really good equipment for it. If you've got a properly designed neck machine, it's incredibly valuable. And adding that neck work does not, your neck is a very small muscle group. No matter how hard you're working your neck, you don't have so much muscle that the effect on the rest of the body is going to have that much of an effect as far as overturning. But without proper instruction, a person, if they're doing things incorrectly with the neck training can easily mess something up. If you have access to a nautilus four-way neck machine, a med-ex neck machine or there's a company, it's a Pendulum Strength Systems which makes a neck machine. They're sold by one of the football equipment companies. Other than that, most of the neck machines that I've seen have been really, really poor and you'd be more likely to do some damage than good. Another option is doing manually resisted neck extension, flexion, lateral flexion. But if you do that, you need to have somebody who's providing the resistance that really knows what they're doing or they can screw up your neck. Cavs, if you're doing leg press or squat, you're actually going to be getting a pretty good of calf involvement. If you're squatting down the movement of the ankles, your ankles are actually going to be flexing considerably too. And on the way up, everything that you're doing in a squat stacks down. All of the weight on your shoulders is being supported by your back. The weight of the barbell and your entire upper torso is being supported by the muscles from the hips down. All of the weight of your entire body plus the barbell from the knees up is on the calves. So if you're doing that kind of a movement, you're actually going to have a significant amount of calf work involved. As far as the isolation exercises, they have their place. They're just not necessary. And where I would recommend including isolation exercises is after a person has already been training for a long time on basic heavy multi-joint movements, if they find that a particular muscle group proportionally does not seem to be up to par or balanced with the rest of the body, occasionally doing an isolation exercise might help. Again, it depends on the individual. And this is something that I wouldn't even recommend a person try until after they've been doing very basic heavy movements for a while because, again, just those heavy pulling and pushing movements are going to hit all the muscles pretty effectively. Just to go back to the topic of spotters, let's say I'm on my last repetition, and should he kind of help me to go slowly or should he just move it when it's done? The spotter should not provide any assistance until you get to the point where you're incapable of performing any movement. For example, if you were doing a bench press, suppose that you got to a particular point in a repetition, usually a sticking point for most people is when the upper arms are roughly parallel to the ground and the bar is not moving. He should have his hands in position. He should be ready. In fact, the spotter should be in a position at any time to where they're able to assist. They should constantly be in position to assist, but he shouldn't actually begin to assist until you tell them to and that point should be when you're absolutely positive there is no way if your life depended on it that you could get another repetition. If they start to help you before then, what tends to happen is people start to back off a little bit saying, okay, now I've got some help and not push as hard. If you go to the point where you absolutely, positively cannot move in any further and you continue to push and it's not going, then have them help, but they should provide only just barely enough assistance for you to be able to re-rack the bar at that point. Okay, and if I'm alone, how many seconds should I stay in that stuck position? Well, hopefully you'll be using something to catch the bar if you're alone. What I recommend is a couple seconds, maybe four or five at the most. If you get to a point where the bar has come to a complete stop or the handle or the pedal depending on if you're using pulling or pushing or a leg exercise, when you get to a point where you cannot move anymore, you want to keep trying for at least a few seconds because a lot of times what people will find or what I find with clients is, you know, personally get to a point where they stop but they're not stopping because they are physically incapable of movement. They're stopping because they've gotten to the point where they think they're contracting as hard as they can. But if when you get to that point, you continue to gradually attempt to contract harder and harder, focusing on squeezing the muscles you're using as hard as possible. Occasionally, you'll surprise yourself. You'll think there's absolutely no way I'm going to get this rep. This bar is not moving. And after a couple seconds, you manage to get an inch. Another couple seconds, it starts going further and eventually you're able to get that particular rep. Now, after that rep, chances are you're not going to get a second one. You should still try. You probably won't but you should still try. But when you get to that point, you want to keep contracting and try to gradually ramp it up until you're giving it everything that you've got before you set it back down. Now, the word gradually there is important. Often, when a person starts getting to this point, if they haven't been goached properly, what you'll see especially on curls.