 Welcome to Barbell Logic Rewind. The question isn't when we're making progress on intermediate and advanced programming whether to increase stress or increase recovery. It's that stress always has to increase. No matter what. Will. Right. Over a period of time. That's right. Right. And that I don't think the stress recovery. I think the stress recovery adaptation cycle is correct, but I think it's oversimplified. It's not that you stress an organism, the organism recovers, and then it adapts. Now that is actually what happens if there's only one stress. Right. But when there's multiple bouts of stress four times a week, then there's always some fatigue present, fatigue being the residual effect of the stress, right, Everclean. So that fitness fatigue model, which I think is closer to right. So the fitness fatigue model basically says that when you induce the body to a stress or when you train, right, there are two outcomes to that training. There's an improvement in fitness or for us would be an improvement in strength. And there's also an increase in fatigue. Now the place where I think it kind of gets off the rocker is that the people who have defined the fitness fatigue model have said that fitness lasts three times as long as the fatigue. Well, how could you possibly know that? So basically it says if the increase in strength lasts three days, the fatigue would dissipate in one day. And they even say that's just a guess, but like that's, that's a dumb idea. That's a wrong way of looking at it. The idea to look at it, you can't define because you cannot measure stress or fatigue. You can't measure fitness or fatigue right in units. There's no way to define like how we get those units, though, when you did the Reynolds. Oh my God, like I'm wrecked. I've I've undergone 27. I'll be the stress and you'll be the recovery. I lay to my ass all weekend. I'm at like three. I need three Reynolds and a Hamburg. So yeah, I just think it's one of those deals where it's not stress or recovery. It's always stress and recovery. You're always managing both in order to increase the stress over the course of time. Like stress has to be increased. And then here's the other thing. We argue all the time between intensity and volume or all the. So here's the variables. So you talked about those very hang on just a second because we're going to end up keeping this. Okay. I had recorded a little monologue and sent it to you. And in that little monologue, I said that at the end of LP, LP fails for two reasons typically. Yep. One is the stress isn't enough. Yep. The stress is recovered. And I still think that. Well, I don't. The stress is never enough. I think it's not or I think it's and right. I think what you said is correct as long as you use the word and I think the increase in bouts of stress from Monday to Wednesday going up two pounds is not enough of an increase in stress to drive a strength adaptation anymore. So let me make my case. You're right. But I still want to make the case. Okay. Why I thought that. So for older people, particularly on the squad, let's say at the end of LP, it's almost always clearly recovery. Sure. Okay. Because if I can give them more recovery, then they can do more, have an undertake more stress. Don't disagree. That's true. On the press, it's almost always, it's almost, it's almost always going out. Not enough stress. Yeah. The once every five days isn't enough. So for an older person in LP, we can just space out their squat sessions and they'll just keep on trucking until it becomes not enough stress. Right. Until the detring. A very, very strong guy. He squats 500 for three sets of five, you know, extreme example. Keep it on five pounds. It's a 1% difference in the volume. It's not enough stress. It's not significantly enough and he's not strong enough to do 510 or 515 or 520 in his next session. So LP is done for him. And because he's a good athlete though, under your argument, which I think is right, which is right. He's a good athlete. So recovery actually never came into play for him. Maybe. Maybe. That's true. It's not the right. It's not the limiting factor. Right. So what you're saying, the problem is, how do you make the distinction? What about the guy that's not 60 and the guy that's not 19? Right. What about the guy that's 38? Yeah. And it's not yet where you can't clearly point to the one or the other. It has to be some weird combination of both. Yeah. You're in a devil's cross where the stress has to go up and as the stress goes up, their ability to recover from that decline. Correct. Because you've got to build up fatigue. Right. So if it's where's us to cross, you want to drive that place where they cross up and to the right over time. Sure. So that's when you're thinking about programming, you have to move that cross of those intersections up and to the right over time. Sure. So then what's the first step that we make in the minimum effective dose change to LP? We both do the same thing. We would reduce the stress on Wednesday. Wednesday light day. Right. Now, so what happens is... I've just been throwing it out. Just throwing their squad out on Wednesday. Oh, well, that's fine. But regardless, it's a lesser stress day. Right. So we actually do the recovery piece first and that allows us to keep going up in stress on Monday and Friday. So Monday and Friday are still a greater stress event. But what happens when you do that on Wednesday is you allow the fatigue to start dissipating. So what's clearly happening at the point that you start failing reps at the end of normal traditional LP is that fatigue is built up to the point that you can't actually fully get recovered for most people. Right. Now, also it may be that the stress is not enough. The bump in stress is not enough. So for people who are listening to this, here's how you know that's true. You can run this experiment on yourself. You get to the end of LP or get towards the end and you're like, man, I squatted on Monday. God, I just don't think I can do it again. I don't think I can put five pounds on to do it Wednesday. So you reduce the load. You reduce it to 80% of Monday and you do three sets of five. You write that in your book. You're like, Wednesday, I'm coming in. That's what I'm going to do. And you unrack it and it feels just as heavy as Monday. Well, that's recovery because it ain't as heavy. Right. And then you come in Friday and you can hit Friday's weight that you couldn't have hit on Wednesday. Right. So that's important. That's right. So the first thing we do is actually increase recovery. Now, I do agree that the steps that we make, the minimum effective dose changes that we make are always going to be to either increase stress or to increase recovery. Right. Yeah. So every change that we make needs to be in the interest of ultimately increasing the stress. Yeah. And the stress event has to increase over time. And what you may have to do is you might have to decrease the stress in for short periods of time in order to increase the stress over longer periods of time. That's what a D load is. Right. That's what more advanced lifters use D loads. And so the first step we make is we go to a Wednesday light day. And then what we do is we start to take sets away from Friday and add sets to Monday. So it starts a transition period that looks more like Texas Method or a heavy light medium. Well, or we might do what Andy Baker recommended is back off in the back off. Of course. And again, that depends on the person, right? The idea with back off sets is if you as a lifter or if you're a coach, one of your clients can go in and always hit that first set of five and then they go set a four on the next set and then three or two on the third set. Well, that's a perfect example of a person that should be doing back offs. Yep. So you keep driving up that top set and then you reduce the stress on the next two sets. Now. So if you calculate the tonnage, which would be the number of sets times the number of reps times the total weight that you moved by doing those back offs, you can keep that tonnage up. It's gonna obviously go down the first couple workouts and then it will go higher. And then this is the thing I keep thinking about. There are people who will argue that the volume itself is the primary stress driver or the primary driver of the stress for the strength adaptation. So is the volume in our conversation, is that the same thing as tonnage? No. Yeah. Let me explain for a second. Yes. You're on the right path. And they would say the same argument in the same circles would say that an intensity day is just basically a performance day. But I disagree with that. Now, also, let me be clear. I don't know. Let's be transparent and honest here. We actually don't know. Nobody's really ever talked about this stuff, man. Not that we can find. I can't find people to talk about this. My experience with thousands and thousands of clients and myself is that as you transition to more of a Texas or heavy light medium sort of day, let's stay with Texas method. The volume day, the primary driver on the volume day is tonnage. Right. Tonnage is the thing that has to keep going up. Why? Well, because we know that there's a major piece of strength increases is hypertrophy is an increase in cross-sectional area of the contractual tissue of the muscle. And so we don't get that with singles and doubles. We certainly don't get very much of it with singles and doubles. But the primary driver on Friday on the intensity day is intensity. An intensity in and of itself is enough stress. Like, don't tell me that if Chase Lindley squats 565 for a set of five, that that's just a performance, that it's not a stressor that drives a strength adaptation. Of course it does. It in and of itself is not enough to drive strength adaptation all by itself. If you only do intensity days, if you only do max effort work, that will only get you stronger for a short period of time and then it will stop working. But if you only do volume work, like bodybuilders do, like sets of ten and sets of eight and lots of volume and you never do the heavy work, it also will not drive the strength increase. So I believe this is total hypothesis that we have started to test out as theory that we always in strength training have two drivers of the strength adaptation of the stresses. And it's both the volume, which a better word for that is tonnage, because we could do 10 sets of 10 at 50% and not get any stronger. The tonnage matters, like total work weight lifted matters and the intensity matters. So that's why it's OK on that Friday to not even sometimes do fives to sometimes do threes or even sometimes do doubles or singles. Because having that heavy weight on your back or that heavy weight on your hand actually matters as long as you're still getting the tonnage on the other day. And I think as you become more advanced, you tend to actually get both in the same workout. You'll see as you get to a transition to more of a block or DUP sort of training, a lot of times you'll end up hitting that heavy single or that heavy double first and then do a bunch of back off sets to get the tonnage in as well. Because why? Because the total stress has to go up. So as an early intermediate, I can get the tonnage on one day and the intensity on the other day. Right. If advanced lifted to Texas method, like a truly advanced lifted to Texas method, right? And the goal was to keep increasing the tonnage, which means eventually you've got to increase the volume. At some point, you're doing six sets of five and seven sets of five and eight sets of five and nine sets of five on Monday. And that becomes ridiculous. So when you're talking about about this stress in the Texas method here for this example. So in LP, I've come to start thinking about the training session and the following day is one thing. Okay. Right. Because, you know, you hear people, there's a cliche or not a cliche. There's a saying that says you get stronger, you know, when you're sleeping and when you're eating, you know, you don't actually get stronger in the gym. You get stronger when you recover. Correct. So I've come to think about the session and then the recovery day in LP as a single event. Which I think is correct. And it's also the cleanest way to look at the SRA cycle. That's right. You stress, you recover, you adapt. So stress, you recover, you adapt. If you hold that event in your head, it gives you a way to think about the programming as you program the next event. So for the Texas method, how long is the event? It's certainly not, for example, the Monday and the Tuesday after. Sure. Because if a person could get stronger with the Monday and the Tuesday after, that's strong lifts. That's right. So that's five by fives. The day after and then you do five by fives again. That was the event you would actually plateau at a lower weight than you do with LP. That's our strategy. Yeah. That's a novice. That's a beginner novice, early novice. So programming. So in Texas method, the event ain't Monday and Tuesday. So what is it? It seems like it's Monday, minimally Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, with the Friday as a performance. Yes, I know what you're saying. That's one argument. Sure. That's a theory. That it's Monday, volume day, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, some sort of a back off Thursday, Friday for intensity. Saturday and Sunday for recovery and Saturday and Sunday. Yeah, I think it's Monday through Sunday. It's Monday through Sunday. By the way, I don't like the term events. And it's not... Hey, man. No, no, it's not wrong. And there's nothing wrong with that. I would rather call it a period. Here's the problem with thinking about it that way. There's nothing wrong with it. There's a cruel horizon. Correct. But we have to accrue the stress and then recover both. Correct. So how many stressors are there in the Texas method during the period? Let's call it a period. For just the squat, there's going to be three. Right. Well, or we could just say three in general. Right? So there's three workouts. So there's three primary stressors to the organism, to the body in the entire period of Monday through Sunday. Right? Monday is a stressor. Wednesday is a stressor. Friday is a stressor. And there are recovery days as well. There are four recovery days, right? In order to make progress. You set PRs. Now, here's an actual interesting thing. You often set PRs. How often do you set PRs in Texas method? What's the traditional answer? It's supposed to be weekly. It's actually, I would argue, it's often twice a week because you're often making a five by five PR on Monday, actually three times a week because you're making a five by five PR on Monday. You're making a one by five PR on Friday on the squats, but you're also making PRs on the press and the bench press every day. Right? So you're either making a five by five PR on Monday. You're making often a three by five PR, not always. Maybe the three by five is also a little bit of a back off and you're making a one by five or one by three, you know, heavy rep max set on the press slash bench press day on Friday as well. A similar thing on the deadlift. You might make two deadlift PRs in the same week or you're at least making one deadlift PR. So certainly if we just look at what the top weight you've ever put on a barbell is, what's the highest magnitude of poundage, that's just once a week per lift. As people get advanced, you've got to start watching other PRs. One, for your psychology, but two, for your programming purposes, like we said earlier, if those two crosses, the recovery and the stress thing have to cross and that cross has to go up into the right. Tracking all those PRs helps you keep track of the fact that your stress is either going up or down because it always has to go up if you want to get strong. Yeah. That's right. So yeah, so it's really interesting to think about. I thought about writing a paper about this and I think we should write a paper for this. So as we record this, I've just finished, we've been talking about minimum effective dose. Do you know I looked at it, I think it was like episode 28 or something was the first time we mentioned it on the podcast. And so that's you. You're the one that really came up with that original idea of, hey, what we say is going on in programming is not really what I'm watching you do talking to me and what you were experimenting with. You start talking about minimum effective dose. And so I wrote this article. It'll be out, but I didn't get into the weeds of the SRA cycle yet, but I think we should. And the reason I didn't is because I don't think that the weeds of the SRA cycle make a huge difference to the immediate idea. And the reason why is because with minimum effective dose changes, because you're changing the smallest thing you can. I don't like the word single variable because we often have to change two variables. As you get more advanced, if you increase intensity, volume is going to decrease. And if you increase volume, intensity is going to decrease in the beginning in linear progression. The volume stays the same and the intensity increases. So we actually don't need any quantifiable metrics to know whether stress is increasing. We know stress is increasing because the frequency stayed the same and the volume stayed the same. And then since he went up, right? And so good, but it doesn't that doesn't work forever. And so then we have to start needing quantifiable. So because of the approach we take with minimum effective dose changes, because we take that approach when we make the smallest change we can, then what is actually occurring in the weeds of the SRA cycle or the fitness fatigue model or whatever you know this relationship between stress and recovery and the adaptation and try to manage all those things is actually not as important as you think it is because since we're only changing a one variable or two small directly inversely related variables, then we get data pretty quick on whether it worked or not. The reason that this becomes really complicated is when you change multiple variables all at once like more than two, right? Or more than just intensity and volume. If you change intensity and volume and frequency and exercise selection all at the same time, you can't get good data even if it works. And by the way, of course it works sometimes. Like we've done it lots of times where I just changed a program and got great results. The problem is I don't really know what it was. And so if we look at programming, not as... And there's a pretty good argument by the way this is, who cares? You know, if you can change the program and you're like, okay, here's my old trusty program, you know, my trusty 13 week block, right? Why? I think we have a whole episode on this because programming is secondary. Right. To consistency and training. Why do high school kids make tons of progress on Bigger, Faster, Stronger, which is a pathetically horrible program? Because they got a football coach yelling out. And they do it, and by the way, their form sucks and their program sucks. Why do they make progress? Because they're 17-year-old walking bottles of steroids and they train and they often train in a really good environment. As much as we make fun of it and it's stupid. If you're 40 and there's 40 guys and you're all screaming and jumping up and down. I would be so angry. So when you're 17, you know, then you pull that max effort deadlift with your rounded cat back and you accidentally get stronger because of the consistency. So you're exactly right. There is a part of this that's in the grand scheme of things is a, hey, man, if you're consistent and you've got good form, you've got a coach, it probably doesn't matter that much. But I also think it's important as time goes on to continue to flesh this out. We've talked about this before. I don't think that the moment model is exactly right. But it's the first time anybody ever talked about it. And so there's two ways to look at it. Yeah, I would like to introduce a word. Well, I've said this word on the podcast before and a lot of people know it, but if you don't know it, you should. Heuristic, A-G-U-R-I-S-T-I-C. And heuristics are models that we use. We talk about Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger uses what he calls some models. And he uses lots of checklists. And his models and his checklist, his checklist doesn't have everything on it that he needs to do. And his model isn't exactly right, but it gives him a quick and easy way to think about things. So heuristic is just a good mental model that you hold in your head. It's a quick and easy way to think about complex ideas. Yep, that's exactly right. Moment model is that glorious, elegant heuristic. Absolutely. And the way I look at it is, is that as time goes on and we bring more engineers and physicists and mathematicians into the fold, that that will continue to get fleshed out and cleaned up and become tighter and tighter and tighter. And so I think talking about the stress recovery adaptation model in the way that it actually affects training and minimum effective dose changes is important. We're not going to be 100% right. We might not even be 80% right. Again, we're trying to develop another more complete, more useful heuristic. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think as we talk about it, when we start to have this conversation, it forces us to think about it more. Man, our competitors are forces to think about it more, right? Like we've gotten better at programming because other people have said, no, that's wrong. And I'm kind of thankful for that because it's made me think about it in ways that I've never had to think about it before. And so I hope that when we present these ideas, they do the same thing. I hope iron sharpens iron and we all get better at this. And as we talk about it with the staff, coaches and all that stuff that we'll eventually refine this out and have a better idea of what's going on. And so I think that as you go back to this idea of an event or a period, I don't think that you can correctly compare one day of LP to one week of Texas method in terms of stress. That's right. We can't compare one week of LP to one week of Texas method either. I actually think you can. Why? Well, because we know that the tonnage on your first week of Texas method is going to be lower than your last week. Okay, so that's fair. So you certainly cannot compare the last week of LP to the first week of Texas method. That's right. Because we know the first week of Texas method really, I was talking to Andrew Jackson about this, it's a deload. It is a deload. No, that sounds crazy. Because most people are like, well, Texas method will kill you. But listen, if Texas method kills you on week one, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. Let me say this. I have one of my clients, his name starts with a J, and I programmed him to pull 362.5 for five. Okay. And I want to put him on a kind of a Texas method four-day split thing next week. And he's an older guy and 362.5, that's a good number for him. It's not a PR. Sure. And so he's like, I'm going on a four-day split next week. I want a PR. He put 390 on the bar and pulled it for four. All right. And I don't want him to be ground to powder at the end of this as we're going into that. Sure. Yep. No, you're exactly right. So, but if you take six weeks in on Texas method and you compare it to the last week of LP or the second to last week of LP and you compare tonnage and total stress event across the board, Texas method's going to be higher. Yes. But now it's not percentage of one rep max. When we talk about intensity in general programming circles, intensity has come to mean percentage of one rep max. And for organizing programming, you have to do it that way. There's really no way around it. But the weight on the bar matters. We know the magnitude matters because somebody who's really strong, somebody who squats 600 pounds can make clear progress. So if you have a 600 pound one rep max, so you're real strong, can you make progress at 66 and a half percent, 67% in squat 405 for sets across? Of course you can. That's heavy. That's a big stress event for that person. But if you squat 175, 67% what about 117, 118 somewhere in there? So can you make progress squatting 120 pounds, 115 pounds? No, right? And so that's what the problem with considering intensity is percentage of one rep max is, right? You have to think about the intensity first as magnitude of weight on the bar matters. And so as the weight on the bar goes up from the last couple of weeks of novice linear progression, to say six weeks in on Texas method. And then you look at the differences in the stress events going on in Texas method where Monday is a major stressor six weeks in of tonnage. It's the most tonnage you've ever done in one workout. That's right. And Friday is a major stressor with intensity. It's the most weight you've ever done with one workout. And Wednesday is not a recovery day. Wednesday is a stress day as well, but it's a low stress day in order to allow fatigue to dissipate some to keep you from detraining. Often people that go from squatting three times a week to only two times a week feel like they detrain a little bit. It's there to get some work in and we also need to still get that additional press and we got it right. So there's all this stuff is there. Then we can comparatively look at total cumulative stress of the overload or the overload period of the Texas method week versus a weekend LP and clearly the Texas method is more stress. Yeah. The length of that period, we can't nail down what is the length of a programming period. Sure. Now we might be able to nail it down in Texas method. Like at some point we might be able to say, okay, it is definitively, you know, six day, whatever. But when you get into a block that's like 12 weeks long, we don't really know what it is. But I don't think that it matters that much. If you make a guess, as somebody that's doing programming, you're like, you know, I think you could argue that the Texas method on a four day split is a four day period. Or you could say it's seven. Sure. And I don't think it matters that much as long as you pick one. And then that is consistently what you use to calculate your tonnage and your overall stress. And that's also, that period is also what you use to determine when and how to help your athlete get some sort of recovery. That's right. Because again, their ability to recover has to increase and the tonnage has to increase. And those have an inverse relationship. That's right. And we have to move the intersection of those two things up and to the right. That's right. So open to the right during what period? You have to pick something. And I think nitpicking about whether it's 72 hours longer or shorter than whatever. Yes, probably doesn't really matter. Because we need a model that we can use to consistently program for our people. Yeah. So I've got a client, Tim, who's had some shoulder pathology and he's doing okay. And I got him a press PR four, five, six weeks ago, something like that. And I went back and looked, it took him 36,000 pounds to get a press PR. You should do the math. Yeah. Well, because I'm like, okay. Well, because I was thinking about this issue. I'm like, what is it going to take for Tim to get another press PR? Sure. Do you think we could do it in 35,000 pounds? I mean, if we change the mix of intensity to the volume, do you think we could do it in 35,000 pounds by driving intensity as a primary stressor in the next cycle? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. You know how long did it take him? Do you remember? Oh, he did that 36,000 pounds. Yeah, he did it about five weeks. Yeah. That's about where he's at. You've coached him for how long now? It's been a while. Gosh, I don't know. Maybe two years now. Yeah, so I mean, I'd take a PR after five weeks. No, absolutely. I'd take any PR at all. But, you know. And here's how you know it works. And so I think it's really important to talk about this, that what quantifiable metrics do we use? Well, number one, the most important one we use is the PR. The PR. If you continually hit PRs, and I'm not talking about one rep maxes specifically, all those certainly count. I'm talking about any PRs, one rep max, five rep max, three rep max, five sets of five PR, three sets of five PR, five sets of three PR, like have all those written down so you can quantifiably see am I making progress? As a matter of fact, it's not like in the world of metrics, the PR is in its own universe. And then everything else that's quantifiable, and there are other quantifiable metrics, right? Like we can use volume, which sets times reps. So, you know, the volume is three times five is 15. We use tonnage, right? Which is probably better than volume even. You know, we can use calculator one rep max, which is certainly less important than an actual PR. There are lots of quantifiable metrics that we can use to make sure that those changes that we're making are working. And so, but the PR is the thing that matters. And so if over the course of time, you're not setting PRs, then you go back to the drawing board and go, okay, well, where was the change that I made? If you're, the nice thing about that minimum effective dose programming is that you can go back and go, well, one step ago or two steps ago, I was making PRs and now I'm not. So you go back to that and you make a different minimum effective dose change. That's right. If you're not making PRs, the answer isn't the next program. The answer lies in what you had been doing. That's right. It's always based on your future training, should always be based on your previous training, not throw your previous training in the trash and just pick a new program. That's the wrong way to think about the thing. Yeah. Poor old Tim. Like 36,000 pounds. That's essentially like a semi tractor load of like sacks of concrete above his head. Yeah. He's gonna have to do what, you know, 38,000 to get that next. Yeah, maybe. It may happen. Well, there's us thinking out loud and talking about this thing. Yeah, we're just shooting from the cuff there. Yeah, we actually started just talking about the issue. And I'm like, man, we might as well go ahead and record it. I think it's good enough to sit out to the masses and let people poke holes at it. Yeah, I think so too. There's another Barbell Logic podcast. Go to Gmail and send us a little email where BarbellLogicPodcast at gmail.com and we'll talk to you guys in a few days. Thanks.