 Our first caller is John from California. What's up, John? How can we help you? Hey, guys. So I have a couple of questions centered around the central nervous system and kind of still making progress in terms of strength and aesthetics without overtaxing the CNS. Okay. I don't know if that's actually possible, especially in terms of maintaining compound lifts, but in terms of context, I lifted bodybuilder style pretty consistently since high school. I picked up rock climbing about a year ago, and I'm in my mid-30s now, so I'm really finding it difficult trying to balance training for climbing and kind of maintaining that physique and that volume and still pushing like the bigger lifts, like at least the big three. I've been pulling back resistance training for the last year, trying to find a better balance between climbing, training for climbing, and actual lifting. My theory is it's CNS rather than muscular fatigue or tendon or ligament fatigue. So the question or the biggest question I have for you is, is there a way to improve strength or aesthetics without overtaxing the CNS? And I'm thinking of maybe doing a big foundation day with the big three and then trigger sessions the other six days. I don't know. I'm kind of just trying to figure out how to program around four days of climbing. Okay, it's four days of climbing. I was going to ask, how often? That's a good question. So four days and I'm assuming at least an hour or longer you're climbing for? Probably 90 minutes and then I'm calling it climbing, but there's also training for climbing, things like that. I'm calling those four days climbing days, but some of it is just like pull-ups, I mean, heavy weight pull-ups on Olympic rings, stuff like that. So those are my pull days. I like his idea. Yeah. So here's the thing. You asked if you can make aesthetic progress without hammering your central nervous system. That's the only way you can make progress is without taxing this. So it doesn't matter what you're doing, if your CNS is fried, which by the way is important, your CNS gets affected by much more than just exercise. Any stress will affect your central nervous system. So lack of sleep, a too restrictive diet, stress in your life. Crazy girlfriend. Yeah, that'll kill your CNS, especially the crazy girlfriend part. But no, all joking aside, the only way you'll make progress is if the CNS is recovered and you feel good. So here's what I would do with you if you were my client. First off, on your climbing days, I'm assuming you're doing a lot of volume, a lot of frequency, but not going to failure, which is a good thing, right? You're not treating it like a bodybuilding workout. You're practicing your climbing skills. So it's just lots and lots and lots of repetition and movement, which is good for what we're talking about. I think one day a week of resistance training and I would focus entirely on three exercises or four exercises, compound lifts. Here's the other thing, to improve your climbing ability, I don't know how important it is for you to be a good rock climber. You might want to limit the amount of size you put on your legs. One thing you'll notice with really, really good rock climbers, they don't have huge legs. Huge legs tend to be a detriment because obviously you have to pull that weight up. But aside from that, literally three or four exercises, compound lifts on one day a week, don't go to failure. You're doing the climbing. And then instead of trigger sessions, we'll probably bring in more values, mobility. I think that'll help the most. I would do shoulder mobility, wrist and hand mobility because those areas tend to get hammered a lot with the climbing. Well, it makes the most sense for climbing, right? But for aesthetics, I like your strategy. I mean, I think it's a good place to start and then there's nothing wrong with molding that as you go along. Let's say, for example, you're running the one foundational day and then you're doing the six trigger days and you find the trigger days are actually impeding on your climbing skills and then I would switch over to more mobility work like Sal is saying or maybe you split half mobility, half trigger days and play with that a little bit. But I think overall your strategy and the direction you're going with just one main foundational day with scattered trigger or mobility days to replace the rest of your training. I mean, when you say aesthetics, aesthetics is a lot of times too, just being lean, right? So you don't necessarily need to get much bigger. You'll be, if you lean out, what you will do if you're rock climbing and you're eating healthy because you're exercising that much, you'll look good. So it's really about how much muscle you want to allow yourself to build to not hinder your rock climbing. Yeah. And one more thing, because I know you're doing a lot of pulling, right? So you may think that you're, you want to avoid a compound back exercise for your lifting day. I would definitely avoid any weighted pull down or pull up movements because you're doing that so much, but don't neglect rowing. One of the imbalances that I've seen in my experience with rock climbers is they get very, very strong lats, but sometimes they get forward shoulder because of the lack of rhomboid and mid trapezius strength that matches it. So rows, really focusing on pulling the shoulder blades back would help balance that out a little bit and maybe prevent shoulder problems that tend to plague rock climbers. Okay. So stick to the big five for that foundation day and then mobility or trigger sessions the other six days. Have you guys ever talked about a trigger session for abs specifically? I haven't seen that anywhere. I mean, you can do it for anybody part, but if you want to do it for abs, I mean, I would go crunches, active planks. You could do rotation with a band, get some obliques, some chops. I mean, really any exercise that's low to moderate intensity. Yeah, trigger sessions should be recuperative. So that's really where I would figure out how many of these to structure in if it is providing that type of rest recovery element to it. Otherwise, I would then shift it a little bit more towards mobility if it is impeding on that at all. But for what you're describing, I think that it all sounds pretty. It's a great place to start. Yeah, I think it sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, no, it's a great, I think it's a great strategy where to start. And then you just, and I don't care how experienced all three of us are, I would still have to probably change this based off of the feedback you give me. So I would be looking, I'd say, Hey, this is what we're going to start with this based off your goals. Would you tell me, I think you're going to modify it as you go. That's right. Yeah. If I try to be greedy hypothetically, because I used to be like a five day, six day a week kind of guy, if I try to bump two foundation days and just hold those, ideally like an anabolic style, ideally you would space those out as much as possible. Correct? Yeah. That signal loud. I would, but more isn't better. So keep that in mind. Just because you can do more and tolerate more does not mean you're going to get faster and better results. In fact, you might actually get slower results. So sometimes we confuse how much we can tolerate with ideal amount because there's like a bell curve, right? The right dose will give you the best results. You might be able to tolerate more, which is fine if you're trying to increase your work capacity and maybe stamina and that kind of stuff. But if you're looking for aesthetics, doing more is not going to get you better, get you there faster. If you were going to do that, this is what I would do. So before I went and like mirrored that first, so I'd have like the foundational day first, like your strategy is perfect, right? And then let's say you want to get greedy and you want to push a second. My second like quote unquote foundational day would look more like a focus session day. So I would pick more isolation exercises. Here's where things like the leg press and leg extensions and leg curl machines, this where they would have a lot of value here. So I would actually, you'd have your one big day, which is your compound lifting, which is going to be the deadlifts, the squats, the overhead press, bench press, rows, those are the big movements you're going to do on that one day. And then if you're feeling good and you're like, okay, let me try and add another day. You do like a pump day, right? Yeah. Do more of like a focus type session from like aesthetic, which is more like your isolation exercises, machine exercises, and first see how that handles your body handles that before trying to emulate another, you know, compound lifting day, like your first foundational day. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. What I've been programming right now is I've been programming a Monday, Wednesday, the big five, well, the big four, because Sal's right, actually, I've been neglecting pull because by default, I'm technically hitting four pull days. So I was trying to push and leg on my foundation day. So I'm glad Sal actually said that. I'll include that fifth, I'll include the fifth big lift, the pull movement. Awesome. Thanks for that. Thanks for calling, John. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. No problem. Have you guys ever worked with the rock climbers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And I mean, obviously smart guy, and I think he's on the right track. I mean, and again, one person, this may be too much volume. Another person, they can handle adding another day in their edge. And we wouldn't know that until we start testing our theory. It's amazing when your intensity is moderate. The amount of volume you can eventually work up to is tremendous. But when your intensity is high, boy, do you get limited. But yeah, with rock climbers, what I would notice, the issues I would have to focus on were forward shoulder, because it'd be so many pull downs or pull ups, I should say. They get these really powerful lats, and then they'd get, they kind of have this imbalance with the mid-back. And so you see this forward shoulder quite a bit. And you know, that's okay for rock climbing, but it's not when you start to notice shoulder problems or shoulder pain. So I would have them do stuff to kind of retract the scapula. And then hand and wrist mobility, because obviously they're using the hand so much. Oh yeah, lots of mobility needs to be attached to that. It was interesting with rock climbers, like how strong, like how loud a signal they can get from their CNS, because it's so demanding on the body. People don't understand like how demanding that is. Like all the way to your fingertips, you know, in terms of like being able to shuttle, you know, that type of recruitment and strength. So I love rock climbers because they're easy to kind of mold into a good strength program. Yeah, their isometric strength was always impressive. It's crazy.