 The point is that there has to be some flexibility in programming from week to week, and when there isn't, then it's not optimal. It doesn't mean that it doesn't work. I've had times where a template, a DUP template, or a blockchain template has garnered three or four massive PRs for a lifter, but I still wonder if I had been a little more flexible if I couldn't have even achieved a better result. 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. You're listening to the Barbell Logic podcast. I am here with Nikki Simms and Andrew Jackson yet again. Hello. The library made up of 50% books and 50% whiskey. 30% books and 70% whiskey. Somewhere in that ballpark. A lot of wood in the room, floors and walls. And there's a buffalo for rug. And a buffalo for, yep, that is correct. A pelt or a rug? I don't know. I mean, it is clearly a pelt, but it's made to be a rug. These are the important questions. Smells of rich mahogany. Yeah, it's kind of one of those rooms, which in my defense I have done nothing to since we bought the house. So it's not like I bought the house and then decided to make a room with massive wooden walls and shelves. He actually just, it only came as this room and then he built a house around it. This room was definitely the room that sold the house for us. I was going to say, wasn't this the why you bought it? Yeah, that's really nice. And accidentally, this was the very last room we saw. So we really liked the house. And it wasn't because I had a real estate agent that knew what order to show us the rooms. We got lucky and happened to see the whole house, love the house. And then walked into this room and it was like, oh, this is it. I was like, baby, this is the house. Are my grandchildren come up on my knee in this room? Oh, you saw it. I'll be smoking a pipe and like drinking a whiskey. That's really cute. So we want to talk a little bit today. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about, and I think a thing that makes podcasts, hopefully better pod, when we talk about things that are, we've been thinking about a lot in our own for me in my own coaching to make content sort of podcast. And one of the things that I had, I am moving very much away from is percentage based programs for advanced lifters. And I don't know that that would come as a surprise to people who are hearing this, but I want to talk about why I don't think it works very well. I do think that it works. There is a ton of history. The vast majority of advanced lifters in any of the strength sports utilize or train under those sorts of percentage based programs. And so obviously they've said a lot of PRs and they've worked, but my experience has been that I think there is a better way than that when you're setting up your programming for your for your advanced lifters. So I want to kind of talk through the wise and what I've seen now after three, four or five years almost now of doing exclusive online coaching. And so being able to program for many, many more people than I was ever able to program for back when I ran a gym and could only train 12 people or 13 clients. So we've talked a lot about RPE on the show and I actually want to talk about RPE some on this on this show as well. So the way that I am using it now, our listeners all know for sure that I'm not a big fan of prescription RPEs of RPEs. There's a rating of perceived exertion and you're basically you're prescribing the, the weight on the bar, the intensity on the bar based on an RPE number. So you would say something like, hey, I want you to do a tempo squat for five sets of three at RPE seven, which says I'm going to leave three or four reps in the tank. Leave it up to your lifter to decide how heavy that that is where there's three or four reps left in the tank. And I don't think that works very well because for lots of reasons, but one, because it's incredibly subjective, it's based on feel. Andrew and I, we trained a little while ago, we didn't feel very good at all this morning. We stayed out a little later than normal last night didn't feel good at all and would have said I was going to have a horrendous training day and training went fine. So it wasn't really about what we felt. And then there are just other problems obviously that with if, if using RPE in RPE style programs, if ultimately we're not adding weight to the bar and the goal is strength to accumulate strength or to gain strength, then we're missing the purpose. And the problem that you get a lot of times with people who go by feel is they'll hit this point and they'll get heavy and then they go through a run of several weeks where the weight actually continues to get lighter. Even you could argue quite easily that the stress goes down. There's less tonnage. There's less weight. There's less and all the sort of metrics we use that would indicate that strength should be going up doesn't. And a lot of times it's just because it feels heavy, right? And you get to some, at a point for advanced lifters where the place where you probably make the most progress is the place where you have accumulated enough fatigue that you're actually in that overreaching spot. You're in a place that your body is not used to dealing with a level of stress and fatigue and it must overcome that and adapt. And that's what makes it better. And if we rely on sort of how it feels like, well, it feels like crap because I'm in a three week or four week block or cycle where I'm supposed to feel like crap. So that's kind of the idea. So we have these issues for why we don't think prescriptive RPE works. Here's my question for you guys is what has been your experience with coaching and being coached by percentage based programs? Andrew is actually one of the guys that's finishing up right now because I just went through 12 weeks on a basically a block percentage based program. That's right. So what's been your experience for percentage based stuff? As a lifter, I find that it very much depends on what range of percentage you're dealing with. If it's in the 70 percentile range for volume work tends to be reasonably useful. You know, it's giving you something that's typically going to be manageable regardless of how you are on that particular day. But as you get up into some of the higher 80s and 90s, I find that it's less consistent. I guess I would say in terms of being able to actually predict what you can do on that day or put you or select a weight that's going to be the appropriate stress for that day. And underlying that fundamental problem is what percentage of what? Okay, so I think that's the first question that I have to ask. And the first problem with percentage based programs are they're all based on something. What is it that they are based on? Are they based on your previous PR? Andrew, what are your percentages based on? My percentages were based on the one RM that I thought would be neat to hit at the end of the cycle. You're like, I'm going to base this entire program based on the PRs that I wanted. Which is not really the point of doing percentage based programs. Yeah, it worked for my deadlift. Sure. But that's probably because I just hadn't really effectively tested my deadlift in a long time. And so the number that I picked was probably what my actual one RM potential was. The squat was a good 50 pounds more than I had. The squat target one RM percent that I chose was a good 50 pounds more than I had squat in probably three years. It was just the number that I was like, this is what I need. This would be badass. This would be great. Therefore I'm going to set the whole program. Did you look at Harry Fafudis' squat on Instagram? You're like, it needs to be Harry's squat. Yeah, basically. No, there's been multiple times because Harry's running the exact same program I am on the same week. So we're like watching each other's Instagram. He sent me a note about something the other day. And then Matt a couple of weeks ago was like, when I was working on pin presses, he's like, oh, you need to check out Harry's pin press. He really knows how to do it. So I went and watched. And their numbers are exact. I mean, they're right. Not at the time. Harry's was higher than yours. Harry was like 60 pounds more than I was like, oh, hell no. Studied his form. Exactly. I copied it. So then anyway, so that was kind of fun. But yeah, my squat was way too high. My press was a little bit high. That was like probably a reasonable. I picked a 275 press and I had pressed like 264, I think 265. So a 10 pound PR. And the bench was also probably within range. I picked 405 and I had done, I just barely missed 400 a couple of months ago. Did you tell Matt? No, no, this is another problem right out of the game. We never talked about percentage of what it's probably probably an error. Yeah, on me. That's a, that's a, that's a coaching fault. So the interesting thing about the program that you would use is I, I certainly think that there are, there are some really good programs or templates and they're a percentage based out there. And we've talked about this a lot on both the, in the business of barbologic online coaching and on the podcast that, that that's a program that's not coaching. Those aren't the same things, right? But it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with a template for people who can't afford personalized coaching or what I think, I think it's sort of the next best thing. And the, the template based program that you've been on for the past 11 weeks is a block program that, that I have used for many, many years. I mean 15 years and have slowly tweaked it and slowly tweaked it and slowly tweaked it where I believe, and it's not because I wrote it. It's because I've been able to just have the data back from the lifters that, that did it. I think it is one of the best templates that you could have. And I still don't think it works optimally. This is, this is the point, right? So I can look at other template based programs and I can call out the problems of the program itself, the actual programming. But on this one, I think the program is very solid and I think it still often doesn't get us optimal results. And certainly one of those reasons is because we pick the percentages based off the wrong thing for the beginning. That and you, what I noticed was that the lifts that were responding well to it progressed as you would want. That's exactly right. And then they're like the upper body lifts in particular and the squat for me seem to just sort of derail about three weeks ago. Or at least I wasn't getting the performance wasn't what I was expected. Yeah. That's another interesting thing is you end up programming the press like exactly how you program the deadlift. Right. And we know like those need different things. This is great. We haven't talked about this at all, but to me that's the major problem number two, which is that every percentage based program certainly the vast, vast, vast majority of them program all of the lifts of the same percentage at the same week across the board as if that you're making the same progress. Right. So this is my 88% week where I'm doing 88% for four sets of two. Right. And there might be a little bit of difference in the amount of volume. Like one of the things that I do is I usually will do one, have my lifters do one less set on deadlift than they do on the other lifts because I think that lift is just what I found is a little more stressful. And so, so maybe you're doing five sets or four sets on all the other lists and you're doing one set less on the deadlift. Right. When you're doing 88% on squat, you're doing 88% that week on deadlift on a different day and 88%. And one of the things I want to talk to Nikki about is I don't know that I have ever programmed you on a percentage based program. I think you've always had weights assigned and there is some flex built into yours sometimes. I want to talk about that too, but one of the things that I think you can speak about better than anybody, maybe I've ever coached is that you seem to always have one lift or two lifts that are just wham, bang, awesome. You're crushing it. And then one or two lifts that are not just not crushing it, but are a deep struggle. And a lot of it is because it's, well, a lot of it is because of, you know, at this point, you've done this for a long time and you've got some, you've got some old injuries and some beat up stuff. And so, so what is that like to be able to be one, just to be able to handle it emotionally to say like, it's going, this thing's going really well, which is great. And this one is not. And we're trying to work on it. Oh man. I guess it really depends on the day. You're right. There's typically one lift that's going well that like keeps training fun. I've noticed that when my bench starts to peak, it doesn't seem to peak well. Whereas my deadlift will peak really well. Yeah. So it seems like it goes well until we enter the peaking phase and that's when I enter the deep struggle with a couple of my list. So it's, it's kind of similar to what you said, Andrew is like when you get over that higher percentage range, that's where it's a little more unpredictable. So, so think about the, one of the things we're trying to do in coaching specifically on the programming side with each lift is we're really pushing for little wins all the time. Right. You want little wins, little PRs or close to PRs or progress. Right. And I think one of the problems there with that, all the percentages of all the lifts being the same is that you, you sort of feel like my experience, even for me as a lifter is that I feel like when I hit my numbers and it goes well, then that was a win. But there are always a couple lifts going on during that same program that always feel like a loss. And then I'm in it's more discouraging because in a percentage based program, you're always numbers chasing the whole time. Your numbers chasing and if you get sick or get a little injury or something happens and you know, like anything or like just life stress happens and all of a sudden you're behind in a hurry and it becomes very discouraging. And I think more often than not, you get the situation where one or two of the lifts is struggling. And so that day becomes sort of the depressing day. You get up and you're like, oh, I have to bench press right now. And I'm, I don't want to bench press because it's a struggle and it's, I never know if I'm going to be able to hit my numbers and but I'm trying to pursue and chase the same numbers at 88% or 90% or 92% that I'm able to hit easily on my deadlift. But for some reason I can't hit it on the other way. And it's not that the deadlift works on these and that the bench doesn't. Sure. You could, you know, that's just an example. Yeah. On the flip side of that, there were a couple of lifts that on the squad in particular like three weeks ago that I would not have even attempted. If you had given me the out with RPE or, you know, a little bit of subjectivity, I probably wouldn't have done either of the last two lifts that I ended up making. Yes. And one of them was a proximal PR, you know, like it was the heaviest I've lifted in probably three years. The second to last single was if you were to show that to anyone on Earth, they would say that was RPE 10. And then I added 25 pounds and did another single. That's right. That's right. At what was probably also perceived as RPE 10. I had an RPE 10 watching that. I think there's some, there is some upside, you know, to occasionally going into a type of program where you're being assigned something that you just don't know if you're going to actually be able to. Sure. And then you never actually will know what an RPE 10 is if you never have that assignment. Sure. You know, and I find that's true particularly the higher the rep range goes. Like eights. Yep. I've hit some eight sets of eight that I'd never thought it would physically be possible when your legs at RPE 5 start to shake. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people could actually hit a set of eight with their five RPE max. Right. If their life really depended on it. Exactly. Or if they don't know how much weight is on the bar. Right. Right. You know for five, like you could probably hit it for three more. Right. And I know that a lot of people will listen to that and be like there's no way, but I have to do that for my clients who say that was it. That was all I had. Right. And so the primary problem that I see with the setup of these percentage based programs or really any template at all, any template, whether it's really any template is that it doesn't allow for any reactionary programming. An RPE based program does allow for some reaction changes. But those reaction changes are being made by the lifter under the bar and not by the coach. Right. Right. So there is some, there is some and the problem with a template based program from the coach's perspective is that it is sort of predetermined what all the things are going to be for the entire 12 week cycle when there are times, not just times, but I think with just about everybody who ever does it. There are, there are going to be lifts and days that need to be changed, not just even specific days, but sort of multiple weeks. Like, okay, I can't increase two and a half percent every week on this lift. I need to increase what would maybe equate to two percent or one and a half percent. But rather than calling it that, you can just increase the weight on the bar with a prescription of exactly how much weight they can do on the bar. And you can, you can, you can fix the thing that you just talked about or the thing that you said that you think was important about that percentage-based program, which is, which is to say, you're going to squat this today, and the lifter says to themselves, boy, I don't know that I have it in me. And as a coach, you can say, no, you've got, you do have it in you. I've seen it, you know, you can still do that. I actually think it's more effective in that sort of reactionary. So I think with a lot of programs that I'm, that I'm moving into, I still have some of those template-based programs deeply ingrained in my brain that I know that in general, they're going to sort of work out this way. But rather than just pre-planning them 12 weeks out and say, here's the entire thing, I just go off where the lifter is today or where the lifter has been in the previous week or two. So not any one specific day because you could, anybody has a really great day or a crappy day. So you kind of have the program as a framework structure within that you can. That's right. So I think the next, so the next cycle for some of my lifters who have done, say, a percentage-based block program, they might go into another block program after this where the first three, four, five weeks is an accumulation phase, whether it's a higher volume, it's five sets of five, it's that ballpark, it's a lot of volume, it's a lot of tonnage. And I know in general where those percentages, quote-unquote percentages should be, but instead of me letting my lifter choose what the percentages are based on or being like real, a real hard-ass about what that percentage is, I can actually then look at their previous week's squat and say, okay, you squatted five sets of five at 335 and it, it was as a communication tool I would say and that was about an RPE-7 and so you're clearly able to make a 10 or 15 or pound jump this week, whereas I could look at maybe what if that same week, five sets of five, you did that same weight but it was an RPE-9.5, like well I can't make a 15 pound jump this next week and that's not only that, there's not supposed to be RPE-9.5 in an accumulation phase, right, so instead what I'm doing is I'm programming you've seen this, Andrew's seen this like I went from programming 12 weeks at a time to programming a week at a time to for my lifters, often a day or two at a time, now it creates, you've got to really always stay on top of the schedule and it certainly creates some risk if I get sick or something happens all of a sudden people aren't getting their programs but I think I'm actually able to hone in and what I would guess is I would guess you get about probably a three to five percent improvement in the performance by the end of the and not literally a three to five percent PR but I just think there's a small amount of clear improvement where it works better if I'm able to look at the lifter and what they did this in the the past workout or the past five to ten workouts and continue to program off of that rather than here's the template the template said we were 86% last week we're 88% this week and on all four the lifts. I have a lot of my clients or I think several of my clients on 531 right now and it's interesting because some of them are newer some of them are actually quite advanced and I start off with being you know the template 531 percentage but then it makes I don't just go up by a spreadsheet like it's all make a higher jump for the squad of the dead left will make a smaller jump for the press or the bench and then I manipulate the stress a lot with the supplemental lifts that I have. So not everybody's doing the same supplemental lifts like the press gets something special the dead let's get something different but that's I found that's a good vehicle for utilizing something that's percentage based and it really is just a cookie cutter template but still making it very individualized. Do you let your clients do the amrap set at the end of the fight like the way it was typically written originally by when they're where yeah I have them do like a leave two reps in the tank and wrap but leave two reps in the tank so so that also gets to work in a little bit auto regulatory right so what you're doing what what you just explained was there is a reactionary based amount of tweaks and changes that you can make to the program for the client but because there's that amrap set and there's also sort of really kind of an RPE based a little bit of auto regulation that the client can make for themselves because they can go and I've done 531 before and sometimes you know that the rule was let me be clear I haven't read any 531 anything since it originally came out so maybe this is not what Wendler says but what it was originally was on the 5 week your last your last set you have to at least hit it for 5 you hit it for 5 plus yeah right now if you can hit it for 9 you hit it for 9 but there will be times if you do 531 especially if you do it several several times around you'll have some workouts where you'll just hit it for the minimum number of acceptable reps you're like I just felt like crap and I probably could have hit it for 7 but I hit it for 5 because 5 is what I know I was supposed to hit it for and like if you can't hit it for 5 now we've screwed something up or whatever so that's kind of interesting that you've got some of that reactionary and flexibility in the way you're programming right now both by the coach and by the client which I think is good how much do you think the percentage or even the weight assigned how precisely does that actually matter meaning like if you're in the 70s and you're doing volume right I think it depends on the strength of the lifter right yeah because there's I mean there's going to be more margin of error I guess or there's going to be more variation or range of ability at the lower percentage just just by if a 500 pound squatter does 70% there's going to be more if you make a 5 pound change one way or another and you're a 500 pound lifter you made a 1% change one way or the other but if you're a female who presses 32.5 pounds a 5 pound change is a tremendous amount right yeah that's been a bit of conversation we have a lot with the interns where people stall out on the press and we're like okay well let's look at how much you were adding each session and they're adding 5 pounds or even just 2.5 pounds but do the math on what 2.5 pounds is is still like a 7% jump for some people but I guess where I'm going is whether if you are doing volume work and it's for this week it's 77% even for anybody any amount of weight on the bar how much does the stress actually change is the stress change significant whether it's 74 or 78 or 75 I don't believe so for an advanced lifter I think the further away you get from 100% the less that percentage the actual exact 72.5% as opposed to 74% I don't think it really matters but I think once you get into the 90s I think the difference between 92 and 94 or 94 and 97 we're sorry just like you were saying that you can and so that's why I think that in the beginning those percentage based programs actually those templates might be perfectly fine as long as they're in the 70s and 80s because you can go in and hit 4 sets of 5 that's 74% and it feels about the same as hitting 4 sets of 5 at 78% but it's all doable and nothing's too ridiculous and it's just how would you maybe describe that it's heavy but doable heavy but doable which we need a new motto from our beloved heavy but doable but if your program for 5 singles across at 92% or 5 singles across at 95% that's a big difference so I think as you get closer to 100 I think really being in the and again we're still talking this is one of the other problems or challenges of programming is when you talk through programming you think about programming books that have been written how else could you possibly describe the program without using percentages because you can't use weight on the bar because everyone is so different but percentages create a real challenge to say well you know this is if we're going to do this program and it's basically lifting it 74% this week and then 77 that's true but it just everybody's so different that so we found that the more we can individualize people's programs the better I think we use those minimum effective dose principles I think we start as simply as we possibly can I think we add a step or two of complexity at a time and I think what you'll find is that works better and then what you'll see is when I've done that and like when I've done that if I look at Nikki's programming or we haven't used template based percentage based programs she might be working at 85% on the deadlift this week and she might be working at 72% of bench press and that's okay because the goal then is she's still able to get little wins on every lift every single week even the ones that don't feel very strong or that maybe have oh my shoulder hurts a little bit we can still get those little wins instead of a god you know like that 76% hurt my shoulder last week and the 78% hold my shoulder this week you run into a lot of those issues with those percentage based programs and I would definitely as a unless I'm competing on a specific day I would way rather that be how I lift week after week absolutely have those small wins I don't need to you know blow it out and have the absolute best peak ever if I just want to keep training for the next 5-10 years one of the things you and I were talking about earlier this week is the old stories of Vasily Alexeyev who would get paid by the records that he set by the world records and so Vasily is a great Soviet lifter in the late 60s and early 70s and he's setting world records super heavyweight lifter and the Russian Federation of the USSR would pay him I think it was $5000 for every world record he would set in like one kilo world records that's like $1000 that's right did you hear they got asked afterwards how come you didn't lift more and he was like what's the point I set the world record what's weird about that is what's interesting about that and I could be wrong is that I wonder so the story has always been that Vasily really didn't ever have anybody to push him you had Redding and he had Pateria but he was just on another level when it came to the totals the guy was just amazing and they said well if someone had been there to push him a little harder maybe like maybe the world records right now would still be standing and that very well may be true but I'd like to offer a counter argument which is the fact that he just kept taking the little wins allowed him to never get Uber injured Uber overtrained you get to a point where you can go back and think of the old Kirk Karwaski $1000 for a double and that's the best squad of his entire career and he took it and it wasn't programmed it was programmed for a single and I think it was two weeks out from a meet and he went for broke and hit it and probably is thankful that he did I don't know but after that it was like he never was able to I think it was at the meet he only squatted $970 at the meet I think there is an advantage similar story that he took a rep PR because he had it in his training but he kind of looks back at a couple of those and wished he hadn't or he had saved it for the meet and obviously this is almost you could get into a deep philosophical conversation about this which is not the point but when I think through if you're generally healthy things aren't really broken and hurting especially for the younger population that's listening so if you're in your 20s and 30s I think there is a real advantage it's almost like holding some cards still in your back pocket or up your sleeve to go like hey I still have something left to play if you go for broke shoot your wad at the big PR on Wednesday like what are you doing next week when the next Wednesday comes around there needs to be some runway it's more of a training mindset now certainly at a meet we don't go for little get every freaking thing that you can except for there are times when I've had lifters who are either brand new and never competed or have very little competition experience and for them and it depends on the lifter 9 for 9 is the goal I would rather them leave some weight on the platform and go 9 for 9 because they need the confidence builder or I've had a couple lifters I can think of that are advanced lifters and competed quite a bit but their previous 3 or 4 competitions had been poor they had done poorly maybe that was with me as a coach maybe it was not with me as a coach and I knew that it was important for them to have a good experience there and somebody like me once I got to the point where I really never cared about who won in Paralympic Meats even from the earliest Paralympic Meats I did I don't know what it was about I think it was maybe because I was reading Paralympic USA and I was seeing how strong the really strong guys were and I knew I was so far from that I didn't actually care about showing up and winning a trophy I cared about showing up and hitting a PR so for me I'm one of those guys that if I went 5 for 9 at a meet but had 3 PR's I'm great we're 5 for 9 and 2 PR's like that's a pretty good day too doesn't bother me at all I don't need to go 9 for 9 because I want to go for bro but yeah I've learned in training it is very helpful to go after those little PR's we can use those metrics like the metric that we want to use to look at if our training is successful if our coaching is successful if our programming is successful is consistent little PR's all the time unless your charity and you misload your deadlift 40 pounds and set a lifetime accidentally pull a huge PR because you accidentally misloaded the bar and everybody I think has had stories like that and then there's probably times where also everybody has days and I actually think maybe it changes a little bit as you get older as now that I'm in my 40's and as if I think about when I was strong over the past say 5 years or so those times where training was going well for a period of time I think as you get older when you have one of those days where nothing hurts and everything feels awesome I do think you go for the PR because now we're at a point where every time I hit a PR now which has been a while I literally think to myself that might have been the last PR I ever hit at that lift and that's kind of sad to think about but it's true you and I were talking about this about the bench press this thought popped into my head of the bench press and the press can be so fickle I almost feel like if you're having a good bench press day and you're in that phase of training where you're supposed to be hitting heavy things like if bench press feels good I feel like you should just go for your PR because I think that that can be easily missed in a peak but don't do that for a dead lift it's not as great from a stress standpoint especially like the press if you miss a heavy press you're going to be alright you're not going to be set back for two weeks of training or whatever like you can with a dead lift or a squat it's a big opportunity cost for taking that giant PR on those lists but yeah you're exactly right we think about a press too isn't a press the most the one that deals with the groove it's more like an Olympic lift like a clean or a snatch than the other lifts are you can sort of misgroove especially a bench press or a squat you can misgroove it a little bit and still get a PR in a misgroove you're not getting a PR on a press on a misgroove unless you just got a lot stronger than you thought you were like you don't misgroove a press and finish it it's got a groove right or if it's a for some reason a USSF meet first time lifter grinding out a helicopter press with calibrated keel plates overhead it's like inevitable it's like every single USSF meet I've run there's always at least one it scares me just not worth it but for most people pressing it's either going to be you're going to know immediately whether it's going to be a make or pretty quickly at least so let's give the listener some actual items that they can take rather than just so we've set up here's the arguments for why percentage based programs probably aren't the best option so if you're a lifter and it's probably a little harder question to answer for a lifter than it is for a coach I think for our coaches not just speaking for barba logic coaches but I think coaches out there who are listening I think you should be aware of and think about as you're programming for your lifters if you give them a thing pre-determined the next 12 weeks of programs period to be the same thing if the weights were percentages and weights and honestly at this point RPE scales they've got all these charts right that say well RPE 7.5 for this many reps is this percentage I think if you've pre-programmed all 12 weeks or 10 weeks or 6 weeks or even 4 weeks of your program and there isn't any flexibility built in for the coach first but also probably a little bit for the client and I think that you are leaving some pounds on the table and some performance increases on the table is that fair I think it's fair and a big part of that is the psychology as well like the motivation you talked about it's not just technically that the stress may not be as precise or as effective as it could be but that your risk of getting a client that's not as motivated as higher I think using that because when you fall behind when you're chasing numbers it feels like you're failing and we don't want people to go into the gym and feel like they're failing and actually this is something I experienced and again I talked about how it did kind of push me to a result that I probably wouldn't have done on my own but there's something about getting handed a percentage based program where it feels like this is what you should be doing because it's a design it's a program design so somebody had spent time and energy trying to figure out what you should be able to hit if the program is quote unquote working and there's sort of I felt sometimes like I internalized not hitting when I stopped hitting some of the numbers I screwed up I'm failing because I should be able to hit this but there's no real reason I should be able to hit it on that particular day I mean in theory I suppose so then I also want to be clear that I don't think there's anything wrong with template based programs as long as there is some daily and weekly abilities to make those changes and I think if we're honest with ourselves as coaches a lot of times because training and programming complexity has for the advanced lifters far more complex it has to be then programming is harder and so there is a thing I don't think most coaches would say it's laziness but I think and I've been guilty of it myself we're like listen I know this advanced program works it's very easy for me to just assign that program to a lifter the best thing to do is I could still assign that program to the lifter I need to make the daily or weekly changes for them based on how the training is going the past week or two or three have been going it needs to be adjusted because one size fits all can't work optimally it works optimally for the one person that it's optimal for in the whole world who probably isn't actually even a power lifter or whatever right now I think the templates are okay as long as you figure out a way to make those changes there are a lot of coaches they want to just sort of set it and forget it and take into account also a lot of the things that are happening outside the gym too that's right I wish I was living in at times the Russian training halls have you seen some of those videos you've got 118 to 22 year old guys that are living in a dorm and their schedule is set every single day they get up, they train in the morning they eat, they get the massage they dress bass and they nap and they train and they eat and it's just seven days a week of perfectly controlled variables of course their supplementation also comes in midday midday Ivan Drago he's like yeah that sounds awesome not many people get that life I bet it's not actually awesome I bet it's only awesome for six months at what point every single minute of every single day was scheduled even if it was the thing that you were really passionate about and loved how long would it take before you're like okay I'd really like to have a day where I didn't have to go to contrast showers and lift twice and get so we got to experience that at the Korean training hall and the Korean team is they're a good weightlifting team they're ranked higher than we are significantly so it was interesting to watch that with the lifters oh man you're talking about the most amazing cafeteria food you've ever seen in your life it's this giant cafeteria set up and it's really wild too because you had the super heavyweight female Olympic weightlifters that were in that room and then you had the gymnasts and you had the I don't know if it's Greco-Roman wrestling or some kind of wrestler so there's little guys with cauliflower ear and they're all in the same room so it was interesting to I would sort of sneak and look at what was on their plates obviously like what the what the female Olympic weightlifter that weighed 330 pounds was eating was not the same thing as the gymnast and of course then I didn't know what kind of the gymnast just got to sit and watch her eat that's right the gymnast smelled her food and then the lifter got to eat it and you don't know what kind of rules were built around it either the point is that there has to be some flexibility in programming from week to week and when there isn't then it's not optimal and it doesn't mean that it doesn't work I've had times where a template a DUP template or a block training template has garnered three or four massive PRs for a lifter but I still wonder if I had been a little more flexible I'm talking about little tiny changes little 5 pound or 10 pound changes for the lifter if I couldn't even achieved a better result and I certainly think it would have made me a better coach because I think one of the problems you get with the templates and one of the problems we can fall into is once you find a template that you like or a template that was made by a coach you trust and so you assign it to the lifter how much do you actually learn about programming then when they're just following a template that you lay out since I started doing MED I don't think I could look at any two of my clients and see the same program it's just they have bar speed and kind of response to variables that I'm used to watching for and I make course corrections for each lift each week based on how the client's responding and they all end up going different directions at different times and I think that's been a huge improvement in my programming since three years ago when before we were really using MED just going from program to program or template to template there's just an infinite number of variables you can now plan for and work around yeah so you were saying bar speed is big so I was going to ask to kind of wrap the show up what are the primary things we're looking at that tell us that we need to make a little tweak a little heavier a little lighter bar speed is obviously one of them again that's a great and interesting discussion because it's not bar speed for humanity it's bar speed for only that person and so you have to have coached that person long enough to really know what their bar speed is on each lift even right so if you think about like I've always been a very fast bench presser I think it's why I've torn my pecs multiple times because I'm super explosive as a bench presser and painfully slow squatter yeah Nikki and I were talking about that two podcasts ago that the benefit of watching every single session providing feedback on every single session is that I'm constantly calibrating my eye to the lifters that lifters movement and how it changes at different percentages or even through the set because different people will lift three reps of a five and have fast and smooth and everything's fine moving patterns fine and then it falls apart if you watch Caleb Krieg is really interesting he's a hard one to watch bar speed on because especially on squat it's fast fast fast bomb like adding five pounds like you would see you don't see any degradation up to the failure it's just like a light switch that goes out whereas other people you can start to see there's they start to grind a little bit they're a little bit slower a little bit slower as you get closer to their one RM so you have to know each lifter and be able to know what to look for or have a means of getting their feedback right so I was going to say so the other thing that I would say is we I can look at really all of this is sort of subjective the only thing that's not subjective is if they're hitting the if if they hit their numbers they're hitting their numbers right outside of that the subjectivity is I'm still looking at the bar speed if you've got a good coach you can who has a good eye we're looking at bar speed and movement patterns and whatnot but I this is where I really do like the RPE as a communication tool from the client back to the coach so the client says this is how hard I felt like it was and I feel like that's great because it just it helps align the coach and the lifter with how hard it actually was right yeah and I was thinking about that when you mentioned it because there were definitely some times last summer for example you you had me doing a bunch of box squats yeah and I was dying like and I was like please God make this look hard enough that he doesn't add more weight and then you just kept adding more weight it was like I'm going to make this an RPE 9 no matter what because I don't want it to go up and I was trying to make noises and then I realized like oh shit he turns the volume off that's right you had me doing box squats at the same time and I think I have been messaging you I was like and we were going through it was a stressful summer and I was like that stuff doesn't make me want to not train box squats make me want to not train because they were still there week after week it would have been nice to have the option to say RPE 20 or give you that feedback alright anything else percentage based programs I think that's the deal right so they're okay there are ones out there that have been proven to work there's nothing wrong with using them but I think that when you have all of the weights or all of the percentages pre-planned multiple weeks in advance with no opportunity to make tweaks that's when we run into a problem and I think the tweak those little changes that you're going to make to the program is first and foremost the responsibility of the coach not the lifter and I think with RPE based programs it puts the responsibility or the onus on the lifter not the coach but I do think it's actually advantageous as you get to know your client more and more and as they become more and more advanced to have a little bit of leeway with both the lifter and the coach so I think the coach gets to prescribe with a little bit of flexibility and I think the lifter giving the lifter an opportunity to make a little bit of change in the moment especially for online coaches who are not there to see what their lifter is doing I would never let the lifter choose if I coach them all in person in real time and I think should add one thing there that it's flexibility but it's not any knee-jerk reactions so I think the more experience you are coaching the more you're just like okay that's worth making a change or nope that's supposed to be hard keep going that's right and you're walking a fine line there as a coach we all struggle with it the coaches those of us who have done it the longest still figuring out should I make the tweak or should I just tell them to grow a set and hit it a little harder you know like it's just you're walking a fine line there and figuring out where that line is where you push your lifter a little too hard is so individual by the lifter too like what lifters you can what lifters are motivated by that sort of hey like it's time to get a little tougher and do this and they're motivated by that versus if their communication is not great I've had other lifters who weren't telling me they were already in a bad emotional place with the lifting they were already struggling they were already not looking forward to lifting and then I'm like hey you just need to get a little tougher like that's not the right message that's the wrong message for that person it's a this I think the show provides hopefully another good example of why those minimum effective dose concepts work so well in programming make that little change one step at a time and take care of your lifter all right you've been listening to a Barbara Lodge podcast thanks for tuning in we'll see you in a couple days if you get a chance we'd love to have a five-star review on iTunes or any of the other places that you pick up the podcast we are on Stitcher and Spotify and again we're still we're working hard with Spotify for that hundred million dollar buyout that they did with Joe Rogan we were also on the table we were negotiating at the same time our offer hasn't come yet but so that any support you can give us on Spotify is helpful because Spotify pays for those reviews I think for they eventually drive up the value of the podcast there's no chance that Spotify this is for it's a complete and utter joke Spotify will never buy this podcast but we still love your five-star reviews it means a lot to us and so thank you for listening we'll see you in a couple days