 Welcome to Barbell Logic, Rewind. You're listening to Barbell Logic. I'm Matt Reynolds, and I'm here with my sidekick, the Scott Hambrick. We are in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the beautiful studios, Hambrick Studios here. So what are we talking about this week? Oh gosh, so, you know, on Reddit, I get all kinds of foolery on there. 90% of my answer is on there to the people that are asking for help, boil down to you're not eating enough food. Five more percent of those are reach back with your butt and lean over, right? And the other 5% is should I have a D-load man? We didn't talk about D-loads. Okay. What's a D-load man? Well, a D-load, it can also be called an unloading week. I like D-load better, but. Apple doesn't. It tries to auto correct it every time. It makes me furious. I know, I know. And they don't like dead lift either. It likes dead space lift. Yeah, ducking. Yeah, ducking. Yeah, duck those guys. Yeah, right. Yeah, so a D-load is introduced usually in late intermediate programming. We usually don't use it until we get late. What is it? Don't tell me you don't use it. Come on, I'm sorry. So it is a time period when, if we looked at the stress recovery adaptation cycle, we get these periods of stress. And remember, we've talked about in previous episodes, for novices, the stress recovery adaptation cycle is done in two days. The stress occurs, I recover basically the next day and I've adapted and I'm ready to go two days later, 72 days later max, or 72 hours later max. And for a more advanced trainee, that stress recovery adaptation cycle, that one cycle could take significantly longer, it does take significantly longer, like longer than a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, even up to three months. And what we'll often see with advanced lifters is a D-load, which is a period where we allow almost all of the stress to dissipate. Yeah, we take the stress off the guy, so that stress- Not completely. No, we wanna keep the groove greased up, right? We wanna keep practicing our skill and our movements so we let that stress dissipate. And we increase recovery so that we get the desired adaptation. So if you think about it real easy, if we have periods of D-load, then we would also have periods of load, loading. And so during loading periods, there are often multi-week periods where stress is allowed to accumulate. So three days into a loading period, there's just a little bit of stress, but 10 days into a loading period, there's a significant amount of stress still left over that has accumulated. So you go into the gym and you can feel the effects of previous workouts. Still, they're like, my back is still fatigued, my legs hurt, the barb speed is slower, and these can actually be desired effects. Now they're not desired effects, it's novice. So like the mid-week of like Texas Method, that's not really a D-load, it's not a D-load, so by the way, I know I've got somebody's Texas Method dialed in when they come in on Wednesday and they're like, it's gonna be 80% of Friday and it's two sets of five and they're like, that was heavy as hell. Yeah, they come in and they're like, it was gonna be easy and then they say, God, it wasn't easy. I'm like, oh man, I got you where I want you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is gonna be awesome. Yeah, they're like, it was an RP9 on Wednesday and they're like, it was an RP9 on Wednesday, we reduced it to 60 pounds, you know? Yeah, so we get a taste of that in Texas Method with the light day and the light day is really a taste of a D-load but it's not a real D-load because a D-load typically is a week or longer, it's usually a week. Yeah, and I think the real distinction between the light, the middle day, the mid-week day in like ILO medium or in Texas Method is that we still need the stress so we get on Wednesday to hit it on Friday. Right, exactly right. We can't do anything heavier but we still need to do something that day because we still need a little bit of stress there. Yeah, that's exactly right. We often look at D-load week, so I mean, just the way the calendar is set up, we have, we have- So it's like, when do you do it? Yeah. Yeah, so you- When's it appropriate? It's appropriate, certainly after Texas Method, right? So if you look at just a program that everybody's pretty familiar with, you look like a five through one program and certainly Jim Wendler is a, you know, he thinks much in the same way we do, we're buddies, he's a great guy, we've played out before, he's a good dad and a good husband and a good coach. Five through one certainly has some issues, I think it probably doesn't in general have enough volume and of course they've got the permutations, a boring but big that does. But if you look at five through one, you basically week one, you work up to kind of an AMRAP set of five plus. So you're hitting something to see, the first week is 85%, I think 85%, for as many reps as you can possibly hit and then some of the permutations, you may do some down sets from there to get additional volume. Second week, you're gonna do a three plus AMRAP set which is usually more like six to seven reps. And the last week you're either gonna max or you're gonna hit like 95% for max reps which usually is like two to three reps. And then the fourth week is a D-load, right? So you kind of reset that. So they look and they say, well, if you think about the, just the very nature of an AMRAP of an as many reps as possible set is pretty stressful. If you really do it to an RPE 10 to where you either fail or absolutely have it. Feel the trough. Yeah, you feel the trough sort of set. And you're done by doing this four times a week, right? So you're going to some sort of AMRAP set on squats like on Monday and you do the same thing for press on Tuesday and then you do the same thing for deadlift on Thursday and then bench on Saturday. So if you do that three weeks in a row, then you're talking about 12 AMRAP all out RPE 10 sort of sets, then a D-load is warranted. And so during that D-load week, let the fatigue dissipate. We let all that stress dissipate and recovery to come in so that we're ready to take on a new program. A guy on linear progression probably isn't doing a max effort set until maybe the last three weeks of linear progression. Like it's the hardest thing they've ever done in their life in their ears ring and like they get tunnel vision but it's still not a max effort set until like the last maybe month of your progression. Give her take a little bit. Yeah, so you're in intermediate programming. You've done something horribly difficult and then it's time to D-load. Yeah, since the nature of a D-load is usually by week then early intermediate program which is programming that is when you make progress weekly, D-load doesn't apply yet. So if you can make progress weekly, if you can make progress every Friday or you can make progress every Monday then you don't really need a D-load because the nature of a D-load is that it's gonna be a D-load week. Tuesday's a D-load when you're in novice. That's exactly right. It's a novice Tuesday's a D-load. And as an early intermediate in Texas, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is a D-load. I train a lot of guys that are in my demographic like 42 year old, 52 year old guys. So when like- Look at John F. Kennedy. Look at John F. Kennedy. Your demographic. They'll wrap up linear regression and they're just exhausted. We've done everything that we can do to get every damn rep bound and every rep out of the thing we could. And I will often set up Texas method or actually, oh man, Texas or some variant or maybe from Laura Split maybe even, but I'll set it up so that they're really repeating their last couple of weeks of linear progression weight. So it's effectively a D-load right there at the end. Usually the beginning of Texas method is actually D-load. Now, some of that is because if you think about it's a D-load from an intensity perspective, right? You reduce the intensity tremendously. You are increasing the volume and the frequency stays relatively highest, right? Or the frequency stays at least the way it's been set along so we're squatting three times a week. And so to move from three sets of five to a five set of five squat on Monday or even just this new sort of programming requires some amount of, it's gonna take some time to get used to it. And so to give them a little bit of an intensity D-load is super smart. So yeah, I do the same thing. So when I move somebody from novice linear progression to Texas method even an old man Texas method which is not a tremendous, not more volume but actually is less volume overall. I'll still do a little bit of a reset on the intensity. And so yes, you're right. That does look very much like a D-load. So the overall stress dissipates. Yeah, so that quasi D-load, pseudo D-load for me typically looks like I ask them to do one set of five as their big time intensity day at the same weight. They just finished up at three fives. Yep. Feels good to them. Sure. Feels good to them. Yeah, then reduce Monday by 10 or 12% and go from there. Yeah, so I introduced concepts of D-load and the concept of the supplemental lift by the way that'll be a discussion in a future podcast. So when we get to supplemental lifts both of those get introduced in late intermediate programming. And so, you know, in the beginning for programming we just need to do the main lifts. There's no reason to do anything but squats for squats. How to get better squats as a novice in an early intermediate you squat. You don't need to do pause squats and box squats and things that are certainly have value later in training. And so we'll both introduce the concept of supplemental movements and we'll introduce D-loads at about the same time. So usually we'll introduce supplemental movements the first three or four weeks of a late intermediate program. And after three or four weeks, by the way, if kind of the next progression of the question would be how often do I D-load? I think at this point we've answered our Reddit guys like 90% of the guys that ask if they need to do it. They don't need to do it. They might need a slight reset and make another run at completing linear progression. They probably need to eat some damn groceries. Yeah, more food, more sleep. They probably need to fix some form. They're probably misgrouping all their squats. Their presses are sloppy and they need some help, which is not, there's not character assassination happens to all of us and they need some help. But so legitimate D-loads really aren't called for except for late intermediates you're saying. So in the Texas method, man, everybody needs whatever Texas method variant you're on, everybody needs a D-load. Sure. So what are you gonna do? Old men Texas, they're gonna do the two pressing motions they're gonna squat in their deadlifting. We're probably not gonna have most of our people power clean. So those are their main movements and it's D-load week. What do you have one of these cats do? Yeah, great question. All the same stuff they're doing anyway with reduced intensity and usually a little bit of reduced volume. So typically, we've talked about this idea of programming, what can you actually mess with from a variable perspective? Well, you can mess with intensity, which is how heavy, volume, which is how much, or frequency, which is how often. I mess with frequency last because usually it's just everybody's used to doing this three times a week. If you take somebody's squat three times a week and they've done it for six or seven or eight months and all of a sudden you only have them squat two times a week, they actually don't like it. They've just gotten used to squatting three times a week. So I usually don't mess with frequency. What I do is I reduce the intensity significantly. So let's say the intensity, what it's gonna be is probably a 10 to 15% reduction of working intensity. So not 10 or 15% reduction of 100% of their one or at max, we're not working at 85%. It's probably gonna be working more in say like the 75% sort of range. So 15% reduction of where they've been working already, and then I usually reduce their volume, usually by set. So maybe if they're doing three sets of five, instead of three sets of five, let's say 85% intensity, they're gonna be doing two sets of five at 75% intensity. So a little bit of reduction in both intensity and volume tends to allow the stress to dissipate. And then what I do is I actually, you've gotta be on a D load. I usually say the first two workouts up on a week and for late intermediates, late intermediates are usually training four times a week instead of three times a week. So I'll get that first upper body day and first lower body day out of the way. And then I've gotta figure out how they're feeling for three and four. So if they feel really, really good halfway through the D load, then they didn't need the D load as much as I thought they did. And I'll ramp up that intensity and volume just a little bit more on those second two workouts to make sure that I still have adequate stress. What I don't wanna do is I don't wanna D train. I don't wanna go backwards. We don't wanna lose our gains, man. Yeah, I wanna come back the following Monday. So if I have a full week of D load, I wanna come back on the following Monday and feel awesome, feel strong, not feel like, man, I feel like I didn't do anything last week. And I kinda went backwards. That's not a D load. Power lifters follow this all the time. They get to a D load week and they just said, I'm just not gonna show up. I'm just not gonna go to the gym. That's not a D load week. That's you skipping, that's you playing hooky. And we don't do that. You still gotta grease the groove. You still gotta do the movements. You still gotta train. You still gotta make the blood move through those torn up tissues and restore that stuff. Here's how I personally start to notice that I need a D load. When my next to the last warm up set feels like my 10 work set, it's probably time. Me personally, my shoulders are barometer. When my shoulders are just- Ake all the time. Just achy and I unrack something heavy and it just feels like it's gonna pull my arm out of socket. It's probably time. For me personally, my shoulders are good barometer for almost everything. As a coach, I'm looking first at bar speed. By the time I've got an athlete or a lifter, whatever you wanna call him, that needs a D load. I have coached them- They're athletes, by the way. No, they're not. If you pick up a barbell, you're a strength athlete. You might be a terrible one. Yeah, no, you're right. You need to eat like one. You need to rest like one. You should consider yourself a lot. Absolutely. Right, sure, I know, I agree. So by the time I have an athlete that has, I've worked with, to the point that they need a D load, I've worked long enough, long enough that I know what their bar speed normally is, right? And so you can't just utilize bar speed as this kind of standard metric because everybody has different bars. You have slow people and fast people and whatever. But I know who might, like, you're slow. Like, you're a slow lifter. And so I can watch your bar speed and when your bar speed is exceptionally slow, then that's my first indication that a D load may be needed. Man, people tell you so much in their responses. Their responses even online will often be, if their response is about a workout, it's just generally positive. Even if it wasn't the best workout of their life, they're fine. But if everything they say is negative, right? And they say, I didn't get, man, I've been struggling to sleep lately, really lethargic. I'm totally unmotivated to train right now. That's motivation is a huge piece of this. Now, again, we train whether motivated to train or not. That's something we do. We're disciplined enough to train. But we've all been there where you're just like, the last thing you want to do is go put on your squash shoes and train. That's another good indicator that a D load is needed. So when I look at several of those workouts in a row, not just one, but several of those workouts in a row where bar speed is slow, motivation is low, sleep is low. They talk about appetite loss, libido loss. What? Libido loss. I need a D load. You got to have a D load. It's a preventative. I don't want anybody after thinking that I've already lost any libido. No, no, no. It's just a preventative. Yeah, right. Well, D loads increase my libido. Yeah, of course. I need a D load. You D load all the time? Yeah. I'm gonna forever D load now. Law of diminishing returns, right? So, yeah, you know, it's, listen, I have clients that I'm close to that will tell me their libido's gone down. And I'll ask females about their menstrual cycle all the time, right? Right. I want to know the same sort of thing. So same sort of issue. And you get to learn your females, right? Some females have menstrual cycles that are really, really, really intense. And they experience an enormous kind of emotional swing. And so if they're telling me these same sort of issues, and I generally know, you know, once my females come to me, I kind of keep a relative track of where that is. And so they're, say, they're every 28 days, and they are a week out from their period, five days out from their period. And they're experiencing the same sort of thing that doesn't necessarily mean there's a D load, right? Listen, it's gonna be a tough week. We get this question every time at the seminar. How do you change programming for menstrual cycles? The answer is you don't. That's the difference between training and exercise, right? How would you change exercise for menstrual cycle? Well, you would change exercise, like because exercise is about making you feel good. And if you feel like crap and you're bloated and you're two days before starting your period or you're on your period, then you gotta change training. But for us, it doesn't necessarily change. However, you're looking at the feedback loop that you're getting from your clients. And so, you know, I've got a lot of female clients that I've noticed that they feel really good when they ovulate. And so like a week after their period, they feel really strong. And I just feel strong. I've noticed that I feel really good. When you ovulate? I don't know what my wife does. Oh, yeah. When your wife ovulates, you hit PRs when your wife is ovulating. Absorbs. Yeah, right. So, and for the guys, same sort of thing, you know, with a telltale sign for a guy's libido, deload's coming. Right? So, you know who you are. You're out there. So, let me put a bow on it. Yeah. If you're in L.P., you don't need to deload. You might need a reset. You might need some nutrition. You might need some more recovery. So, we deload typically when we've accumulated too much fatigue. And we know we've accumulated too much fatigue when we see that bar speed's slowing down. When you're overtraining depression. Yeah. You know, that's what you're talking about. Sure. You know, if somebody's libido's down, there's probably some aspects of depression there. Sure. So, there are a number of things that give us a clue that it's time for a deload. We often can anticipate it too, because we know that they're nearing the end of a certain program. We know that they've accumulated a lot of fatigue. We can see the numbers on the page. And then you give them the deload, which could consist of, you know, 75% intensity sets, perhaps, maybe trimming off a set, depending on who that person is. And we keep a close eye on them towards the end of that deload week to see if we need to go ahead and up that intensity and they can start getting back in the saddle or maybe that fatigue hasn't dissipated and they need to take that complete week for deload. So, it comes at the end of those programs. We also will give some people a deload before a competition, right? Yep. Always. It's a peak. Yeah, I say sometimes, that's not true yet. It is always. Every time. Because the goal is to dissipate stress. I want no stress going into a meet. And they need to deload after the meet too. Always as well. Always. Because they were crushed. Man, that's deloads. Yeah, that's deloads. And the one thing I think that's important is people say, well, I think I'm on the verge of overtraining. The answer is probably no. You're probably not. Man, I just don't see gen pop people ever get into overtraining. So there is certainly, it's hard to fully define the difference between kind of overreaching or what the fitness industry and the strength conditioning industry have defined as overreaching versus overtraining. But overreaching means we have accumulated fatigue from workout to workout. So the stress has been allowed to accumulate from workout to workout. It's not dissipating completely between workouts. So over time, over a week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, we accumulate fatigue. But when you overtrain, which really I think only occurs from the most part for sort of international level power lifters and weight lifters and bodybuilders are probably more subject to that. But that's not who we train. They've done so much volume and so much work and so much intensity and so much stress that if you overtrain, even with a deload, you will detrain. You're gonna come back weaker, right? With overreaching, we actually push ourselves into a stress place that we've never been before, but that we can still fully recover from and then adapt. So overtraining actually wrecks or throws a kink in the stress recovery adaptation cycle so that stress is so high that even when recovery is adequate, you come back and you do not adapt better, you adapt worse. That's the difference between overtraining and overreaching. And so for us, we're always watching this, okay, I have to know how hard to push. This is one of the reasons that people need a good coach, especially as they get into their intermediate and advanced sort of programming times, programming years of their life. You've got to have a coach that can have a feel for when is the deload necessary. And by the way, if it's left to you, if it's left to me in my own training, I take deloads way too often. Yeah, yeah, an objective person, you know, of course it's heavy to you. You just did the work. You need somebody objective watching that and let you know. And I think we beat the hell out of this. Yeah, it's great. Any grocery tips? Yeah, let's talk about eating. So man, one of my favorite things we were talking about the other day. So for those of you guys who are trying to do some additional calories, for those of you guys that have a membership to Sam's or Costco, by the way, you can also buy most of this stuff on Amazon Prime. At this point at Sam's, I have been buying those giant containers of planners' cashews and their jumbo cashews, the size of your thumb, man, these cashews. And I'm telling you, and they're delicious. Oh, they're so good. As a matter of fact, we do this all the time. I'm such a foodie weirdo and I'm just, I do dumb stuff all the time. We do a lot of blind taste tests at the Reynolds household. And so we, I'm telling you, we did, we did a, so we did a blind taste test between Aldi's whole cashews and Sam's whole cashews, and Sam's crushed Aldi's. And I love Aldi's. Listen, I spend a ton of money at Aldi's. Aldi's is a great place. We don't have Trader Joe's in our town. We just have Aldi's, so. So cashews, nuts in general are a great way to get additional calories. If you can't eat a couple handfuls of cashews for those of you guys that are trying to get additional calories in, even when you're full, they're delicious, they're buttery, macadamia nuts are another great one. Boy, I'll buy those, the Costco brand, which is Kirkland's, which you can buy directly from Amazon. We'll buy a ton of those when I was doing ketogenic sort of eating. I would eat macadamia nuts like crazy, like they're going out of style, so. I like them. Making that shake with whole milk, just squeeze honey in there. Ooh. What's your favorite protein shake? Well, just cellucor, just cellucor vanilla, it's just delicious. And what do you put in it? Just milk or? I just, no, well, I'll get fat because I'm old and I'm unathletic. So no, I make it with, you know, I just one scoop of the cellucor vanilla, two scoops of unflavored now brand stuff that comes in like that cotton bale size thing. I just make it with water. Yeah. And I just chug it like medicine. No, no, no. I like the cellucor too, it's my favorite for you guys that need to diet and lose some weight. I like the cinnamon, I don't know, cinnamon. Cinnamon swirl? Cinnamon swirl, I think that's what I call it. Cinnamon swirl. I'll put some ice in it and I'll make it with almond milk without sugar added to almond milk. Yeah, that's perfect. It's better, almond milk's better. Listen, I'm not gonna spend almond milk on, if I'm gonna try to gain weight, if you guys need to gain weight, don't be drinking your protein shakes with almond milk, or you guys need to lose it and you don't want to put water in it. Almond milk and the cinnamon protein works great for guys that want to lose. For gaining, I love that, gosh, the chocolate cellucor, or peanut butter marshmallow, peanut butter marshmallow. Peanut butter marshmallow with a scoop of peanut butter and a banana in it. Mama's Sita. So good. And you can throw some vanilla ice cream in there. Yeah, put the ice cream in there. Don't just, not just milk. Yeah. A cup of milk, maybe a full cup of ice cream. Yeah. Get the calories in there. Bluebell homemade ice cream. Made in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Yeah, Bluebell is. That's right. Right here, 10 minutes from here. That's right. You can go out there and take a tour. That's cool. Yeah. I'll feed your kids. They give you a fresh ice cream. Yeah. That's pretty cool. That's D-Loads, man. You can hear everything about D-Loads and eating tips. So again, you've been listening to Barbell Logic. I'm Matt Reynolds. That's Scott Hamburg. And thanks for listening. Love y'all. Bye.