 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 Welcome to barbell logic podcast. I'm Scott Hamburg That ever there's Matt Reynolds and as always we were saying interesting things before we turn the mic on and we're gonna let you in Mid-conversation and mad conversation as we do because this is how Scott and I talk over zoom By the way count I'm getting tired to zoom aren't you again? I'm ready to like sit down have a cup of coffee with somebody else Oh sure in person. Oh Yeah, we resumed our we have a We have a Monday card game every Monday. We play cards with some friends and we put we we kick that back off By the way, what I played cards with you once what was the name of that game we played? We were playing we playing wizard. No That's it. Yeah, is that what we were playing? Yeah, that's what I played with you Yeah, and we played with Alice and Paula. Do you remember you won that time? So I can't wait the next time I Had never played it. I beat all you guys It was fun. It was a fun like strategy game. No, we I was telling the story of my daughter my 15 year old daughter is She's got mama's genetics, right beautiful and she's 15, of course we home school and But she She loves nerdy Guys, I'm like, thank you Jesus Yeah, and I and I see these guys that You know like like prototypical bad boys like my daughter and she's not interested not interested at all She's 15 pushing 16 and she's my daughter looks like a professional crossfitter like it's again It's Rachel's genetics. Let's go wait Rachel look like in heist. As a matter of fact, Katelyn is more Jacked than Rachel was she just jacked and she's done gymnastics and stuff She never I can't get her to live. She'll screw around a little bit in the gym But for the most part she didn't care But she loves these little like nerdy Redheaded literally redhead Freckly just got a 33 on the ACT Boys, that's what she likes, which is great because they don't have any clue. They're terrified of girls That they you know, they don't have any idea What to do? Here's the weird thing. I've talked about even on this podcast my 15 year old daughter not a great work ethic. I Hate it. I wish it wasn't the case We've modeled good work ethic mama works hard daddy works hard Katelyn doesn't work hard. Here's the interesting thing that's happened over the last couple weeks during kind of the COVID Katelyn's interested in making some money But if I'm like, hey, I'll pay you X amount of money to go out and pick up the dog shit out of the yard She's like, ah, not really interested. Sure. You know, like, well, I don't want to walk through dog shit in the yard So somebody needs to go pick it up. It's a little sister picks that one up. That's a job a nine-year-old can do So we bought a composter a couple months ago beginning of the season And it was it was a pretty in-depth composter You know that you spin and stuff and I was like, you know, I'll pay you to build this I think I told this story So I'll pay you this much to build it and if you have to get help from me I'm going to reduce it by $10 and if I you know, if I actually have to Build some of it. I'm going to reduce the pay even more, but I'll pay you this much. But I said 50 bucks or something But then yeah She put it together great. Mm-hmm. So last week we bought We we've been struggling a little bit within the the garage just our garage We have to clean out our I don't know if you're like, well, you you train in your garage You got your shimmy garage We got to clean out our garage about once every two weeks amazon boxes build up You got just you know, just I don't know just shit builds up And so we bought a nice garage cabinet system Cobalt from Lowe's and I've got already have like the big toolbox and stuff I mean the big full cabinet system I was like, I'll pay you put that together Same deal. Mm-hmm. If you need help It's gonna reduce your pay She went out there and worked Like she was a sharecropper For two for like two and a half hours like not even that long And she's like done I was like done what? And I walked out and the whole system was put together and I was like, hold on Are are you good at manual labor? And I didn't even know and what it is If she has a set of instructions like you could never go kailyn I need you to Mow the lawn or like weed eat or edge and like just generally do this and she's not good enough to figure out initiative and like Oh, here's how to do it But if you give her a step-by-step set of instructions, she can do anything. Well, she needs the mowing instructions Right, so I would need to give her a list to say here's how to mow Do this first then do this then do this but anyway, no one crushed it She's been pretty good and she's good. I mean, you know, she had to use the big dwalt 18 volt drill and all I mean, she's fine. She did good with it. It's kind of interesting So, you know, so here she's upstairs right now working on research paper and I'm just like I'm not literally beating her but it's like I'm having a beater to death or finish a research paper And but she'll go out and build a set of garage cabinets and and and the other thing about kailyn is She is the girliest girl you'd ever meet There's not an ounce of like tomboy tool thing in her. She just but she just so it's it's real weird It just completely caught me by surprise and she was able to do it. That's kind of interesting Yeah, it's almost like they have uh proclivities and things and that doesn't matter really what you want them to do Right. Hmm. Isn't that weird? So we're doing q&a right we got some q&a's yeah On our last q&a you go back to last week's on third Thursday We ended up talking about uh performance enhancing drugs Yes, the difference between those In a prescription from your doctor. Yeah And that made me want to That made I had some thoughts about that that I wasn't that I did not share on that show All right now that you've all ruminated on this for seven days Yeah, because you were talking about people taking four five six grams of exogenous testosterone a week And I mean, whoo So bruce Jenner Famously ain't bruce no more Sure Matt croc is jenay or jenna croc or whatever now jenay. Yep. And there there are several examples of this And I have often wondered If they had if these if these kinds of people these kinds of athletes had so disrupted Their hormonal milieu sure that everything's a mess from then on that's interesting to like obviously We'll tread lightly here, but here's what I know. I've met matt croc jenay, I apologize I met Matt. Well, that's not true. I met matt croc when he was matt when he was matt croc right and Great guy super nice. He's a he was maybe still is a pharmacist I don't think he's ever hid this was on a ton of drugs performance hands drugs as a matter of fact The guy I was talking about last week that suggested that everyone at strong jim used six grams plus of the professional powerlifters Train was matt croc's training partner for some time. Hmm. They were actually at the they would Compete for a couple years on who was the best 220 slash 242 powerlifter in the world. There you go So I so I don't have any idea what what bruce jenner's Yeah, I mean if he has any history of performance hands and drugs, but oh he's shitting me if you won the olympics in the 70s Come on. It's everything Of course, that's that's probably the case, but we need to say allegedly just for sure We don't know right. We don't actually know but I I do know about about croc was that is the case and You know, it's listen hormone people people think hormones are black magic man They see frat boys They see jerseys shore guys that like are jacked and pretty lean and like man. I'm just gonna take some testosterone like listen Hormones aren't something to be screwed with. Mm-hmm It's listen. It's the same and by the way, it doesn't make you wear a dress, right? Like we're seeing this like how many females struggle with birth control, which is a combination of hormones, right or um You know, they're perimenopausal or premenopausal or postmenopausal and they've got all this like there's there's always trade-offs There's trade-offs to make an ibuprofen. Yeah, right. There's trade-offs to all that kind of stuff And um, you know, I think that sometimes people think like, ah, it's fine I'll just buy it out of the back of the trunk of the guy's cart gold gym and everything will be fine like listen, let's just Drugs like that are like guns right there to be respected There is a correct way to use firearms and there's a correct way to use testosterone under the watch fly Of a doctor if you own firearms, you should be trained in how to use a firearm Like you don't buy a firearm having no idea how to use the thing. That's it's dangerous You know and hormones are the same thing. And so you've got to be very careful. That's why we suggest strongly people Making sure that they they have the The watch fly of their doctor now you're gonna have to find a good doctor But as time goes on those doctors who are who were 60 and 70 and 80 years old and think that Everything testosterone is bad Are being replaced with the 30 and 40 year olds who understand that listen. We're just trying to replace Hormone, that's it. Yeah, they replace it. Yeah, it's again. It's it's easier now to find one that um That understands that stuff than it was when I got when I first started needing it Yeah, same for me and let me be clear. There are doctors out there that are that are They're drug pushers. They're charlatans. Oh, yeah They're the same people that will prescribe, you know Opioids to people who don't really need it. There are people who will give you a whole bunch There are doctors out there who will give you a bunch of testosterone and a bunch of growth hormone And a bunch of drugs you don't need and we're not talking about don't don't find that just so it's legal And sure enough, I guess it's legal if they prescribe it to you we're talking about Find a doctor who tests test your testosterone. He tests. This is it Tests is it you test your testosterone And then he brings it up to par with what you should have been or just like you said last week at You know at 30 years old somewhere in there And just ride that out. It's awesome being 50 years old and having the testosterone of a 30 year old Right. It's dangerous to be 50 years old and have the testosterone That's 5x of a 17 year old. That's not the same thing or being 17 and not even a fully formed adult of the species and taken Triple what you need like it's that's right. It may confuse you about which bathroom to use at some point Apparently that's my theory. It certainly could sure sure. Well, the the point is that hormones are powerful and you know You know getting even out of the male hormones versus female hormones Thyroid hormones are powerful and you all sorts of stuff insulin is extra insulin. Maybe the most powerful hormone we have very Very dangerous drug, but a very powerful drug that can be used right not for although it can be used for performance enhancing But like primarily used for You know for people who have problems with their pancreas and whatnot like we got to be careful with hormones And I think that sometimes people are I actually think the female population is less careful about it than males because everybody, you know She's just kind of the culture like well, I'll just get on These hormones for birth control. Oh, I just want to and a lot of you know women that are like I don't use it for birth control I just use it to regulate my period or my menstrual cycle or whatever like okay And that's actually fine. And I'm not judging it as a matter of fact people in my family have done that before But there is always a trade-off. There's a trade-off with ibuprofen. There's a trade-off with aspirin Oh people are nuts. All right, my 14 year olds got a acne trouble So I'm going to just like arrest puberty and put her on these pills. That's right. It's gonna be great It's gonna be great Then she then they're like then you go read and you're like Half of women don't have an orgasm until they're like 35. Hmm Hmm It's not all the guys fault. Maybe it's because they've been on maybe it's because they never completed puberty property properly, you know, yeah Yeah, good times question and answers with barbell logic Christopher says episode on body dysmorphia He said in one of your question answer shows Scott was talking about a young client who whiffed french fries for dinner I remember that I think I just had sniffed Whiffing is when you like swing at a ball and miss and miss it. That's right But he says I really feel for this kid because his struggle with body dysmorphia is something that a lot of us struggle with I think it's probably a big reason a lot of us fail to get really strong If you think it would make a good show I'm wondering if this is a topic you and dr. Pewter would be interested in covering You know, I've talked to pewter about this several times He's very very interested in what he calls. I don't think this is actually his term But I've only heard it from him because I don't I'm not steeped in this. He calls it orthorexia Yeah, so we know what anorexia is that's the absence of eating and he orthorexia is this is this The way pewter describes it to me. It's a It's an obsession With orthodox eating right eating right Sure, so it can be it could be people that take veganism Too far Keto too far That's right Like they just have an idea of what is correct orthodox eating and then they focus on that to the point well to their detriment and He's he's very interested in that we've talked specifically about doing a show about that we should And then and then male male body dysmorphia, you know, I get just fed up, you know men don't matter I don't know if you notice that I don't know if you notice that Well, they don't they don't ever talk about the thing that men struggle with which is Fucking everything Well, it's it's it's prevalent. Hey, I think it's midnight 2 a.m. Hey, I think somebody broke into the house Who gets up and goes on risk getting shot and killed that's the guy. It's fine. It's fine. Nobody cares. It's fine Uh, hey, uh, there's some level out by the way. I think that that's I think that's part of our calling Well, I do too, but nobody cares No, no, no, you're you know, the point is that body image issues Don't don't necessarily affect a specific demographic or a specific sex more than the other Oh, well, they talk about in our culture these body image issues We focus so much more on the female and listen, they they've got massive struggles, but they've got it I'm not denying that but the men struggle. Well, they just struggle in a different way Right. They watch superhero movies people buy their kid a gi joe figure and he in real life He would be six seven way three 15 with a 29 inch ways like and and then and you know Yeah, so people really struggle the same problem that we have with barbies with little girls We have the same problem with with boys. Yeah, but nobody played with gi joes that know You know like nobody's actually built that way man. They're they're all built like mr. Olympia contestants man up matt Yes, okay. So what's the question? So he's asking about eating disorder. He just wants to do a show on it Yeah, yeah, I think I think peter'd be great for that peter's actually I was you were talking about in the last episode about peter and I've been arguing about elan musk by the way it's about the uh About the infamous like 40 inch if you're over 40 inches waste as a guy You're gonna die and if you're under 40 inches, you're gonna be fine and we're like obviously there's not, you know I've been I coached peter now. So peter I coach him uh in online coaching. That is a huge man Yeah, he's six huge He's I think he's six seven six six six six seven And but here's the interesting thing about peter peter's built Like a guy that's five ten He's got the same proportions, right Just he's just 30 bigger or 40 bigger than everybody So he's got like a how often you see a guy that's like six foot six six foot seven It's got huge a huge squatting ass and hips right peter does right He's just built that way So it'd be interesting to kind of get his feedback because he is he's built a little different You know, you you see him on Instagram or tiktok or whatever like, you know, the guy's talking to the camera and he looks totally normal And you're like no, you don't understand tiktok that guy is six and a half feet tall And he's got a massive frame on him So it would be interesting to talk to peter about his thoughts about orthorexia and he's 36 inches from shoulder to shoulder I bet Yeah, he's yeah, he's super wide. He's a huge dude. Yeah, that would be a good show. Yeah, we've been arguing about elon musk You you and peter. Yeah Well, it's gonna be two against one against you because I love teslas So everybody's like everybody's like, oh, did you hear him on rogan? Oh, he's such a genius And i'm like well all the things he says are confusing and maybe it's he's a genius But another explanation is that he's like crazy mentally handicapped Well, you know, listen, but like not everybody that's not fair Many many many people who are uber creative and do something that's sort of an he's never done anything but paypal He's never done anything. Oh, that's not your craze. He's never done anything. You do paypal. He invested in paypal I don't even think he had anything to do it. He's never did. Yeah, his mom had like an emerald mind That guy that guy shoots rockets off all day and they land standing straight up He's an autistic Figurehead he literally doesn't see a front. He's never done anything. Oh, I like the guy Elan if you listen to this, I love you, sir. Hey elan fuck you I want the I want I like that ludicrous mode. He's like, oh, we're gonna put a we're gonna put a wire in your brain And then language will be language will be obsolete. I know I saw you talking about the telepathy And then meanwhile the government listen first of all, that's not even right because he denies the the Any divinity or any soul in the human in that whole experiment just denies anything unique or interesting about people But if it is possible, he's just going to sell your thoughts to whoever buys them. It's like the guy's fucking evil Luciferian he doesn't even know he's evil The opinions of scott hamberk are not necessarily opinions of barba logic or the ceo, but they are correct Well, they might be but uh But I love those teslas and I get it I certainly understand that elan has got some crazy ideas that stupid tunnel project He's like, oh, we got this boring company and we're gonna bore This bank teller vacuum tube thing, but okay, but Is that is that crazier or less crazy than people have been talking for 70 years about flying cars? Oh, well, it's all it's all stupid, but everybody's enamored with him and they're like, oh, listen That's how he originally is so they've now pivoted off of this original idea and they're just gonna dig a tunnel And put a road in it and then you'll get in a driverless car Like there's nothing innovative about it I thought that was always the idea. What was the original idea? Oh, you were going to put people in this capsule and it was going to be like vacuum Actuated like the thing you put your money in at the bank teller and like suck you to vegas or suck you back to la or whatever I don't know exactly what it was, but there's nothing innovative in it. It's just a his whole company is just a scam to It's a way to suck up government money southern california is the big deal But and and then he'll have like some some foreign Interest program all that and then we'll go to war with whoever that was And they'll just shut it off because they have backdoors and all the software and stuff. It's great That's crazy Rock is his name Oh, Dwight. He says I followed you for a long time. I'm a huge fan Love the way you dress He says, um Love the way he dressed. Oh my god. Dwight johnson dresses like listen that guy knows how to wear a suit Doesn't matter what he wears if you got a if you got a frame like that. He's a big. You know, he's got he can wear a toga He could he look great in anything, but He dresses a little bit juvenile for me when he trains. I'm not into like big logo like under armor logos He's a little old and a little rich to have shirts that say like, you know giant under armor logo Of course, he's sponsored. They're paying millions of millions. Of course Actually, in fact, I'm gonna take that back under armor if you would like to pay me millions of dollars I'll wear big under armor logos all day long Rock says, sorry. He says my press is maxed out Three by five at 135 Is this can I just push press? No, your press isn't maxed out No, it's not. Yeah 135 is not that is a low That's a press that we have a handful of women that out press And I don't say that to make you feel bad. It's probably time for a programming change. It's just a fact It's time to change your programming a little bit. Yep Minimum effective dose change, right? Switch from three sets of five to five sets of three is the first thing I do See if you hit 137 and a half for five sets of three, you'll be fine And then start the rotation of like the heavy days versus the volume days every other time you press One day you'll go really heavy the next day. You'll go lots of volume lots of tonnage. Yep, you'll be fine He says I hate to press which starts with the swinging the hips forward. It feels bad my lower back You know Carl Shield was having some lower back tweaks and we deter and he and his coach I think it was stan at the time decided that it was this press 2.0 thing that was hurting it Don't do it just strict press dude. I think most of my clients don't press 2.0 at this point. Yeah It's let's do a normal press Just press just just stand there and press that like we don't actually need to contribute to the press with the lower body Why not because we're trying to train The muscles of the upper body of the pressing muscles And if I take some of that off of the pressing muscles and I put it on the hips But I'm not really training what I'm trying to train I'm training the hips with the squat and the deadlift Yeah, and you may throw your hips when it comes to a meat or a one-wrapped max attempt or something like that But day in day out. That's right. It's a pretty tough different issue. I want to be clear like How to press the most weight? Certainly, I think you should help contribute as much as you can with your lower body if you're if you're competing In ussf or you know some overhead press competition like yeah, man Do whatever is inside the rules to throw the bar as hard as you can But if we're training for general strength if we if we press 135 for three sets of five, I'm not gonna Say any names, but specifically the guy that you see him out then we don't need to worry about using the hips We just need to worry about getting stronger the guy just needs to get generally stronger and so if Number one if his consistency is great and we're just going to assume it is but it might not be And if his form is great, which it probably isn't but let's assume it is right The next thing has to change is minor changes to the programming your press hasn't You haven't hit your genetic limit at the press as a guy who presses 135. That's impossible He says he's a 5 foot 11 185. That's a little light And I would expect an lp to end about where you are right now on a guy your size And your age so you've got a long you got a lot of running room left here Matt I didn't read all this chunk, but he talks about torn labrum and spinal injuries and t7 t8 has crushed cartilage And he's an extra kyphotic. Listen. We're we're all a wreck dude By the time you're 41 and you've wrecked a motorcycle bit in a fist five fell of a tree house and got in a car wreck You're everybody's a mess. You're going to be able to get much much stronger As far as throwing those hips. I've got an in person. I've got a I've got a female client I can't get her to quit doing it and quit laying back Want every single set even volume work. So she's just gonna have to sit on the bench She's that's what I do. I force them to sit. I'm like, all right. You're not gonna do it You're gonna sit on a bench. You can't throw your hips if you're sitting on your butt. Yep Let's I do this exact same thing rock. You can do it in In yacht too all these all these things for barba logic, man I'd love to I've loved to coach Dwayne the rock johnson. Yeah, I'll fix I'll fix you fan big fan I'll fix you man. You can you can request me Let's see here. Matthew says he struggled with the bench press in lp He found us through a garage gym reviews, which is nice right shout out to coop. Yeah He's six foot one two thirty five and uh, about the right size Yeah, and his bench is at 150 pounds That is not at the right size. He says is it times that I should move to five sets of three Oh god, dude. That's that's pretty line. That's pretty long Something's wrong. So this is not quite this is a very similar question the previous question if you think about it Six foot one two thirty five should not be pressing should not be bench pressing 150 for three sets of five That's too low and that's almost I mean man. I would bet significant amounts of money The problem is not the programming The problem is The calories the problem is the consistency the problem is the form the problem like One of those Primary issues the problem is you're not resting enough Between sets the problem like whatever that is maybe the guys putting on, you know How many times have you had a client at barba logic signs up? They don't realize that they're supposed to warm up and they're just like, oh, yeah I just did my first set at 150, but we'll wait. What you didn't do your first set with empty bar No, no, I just I just felt I was warmed up for the squat So I just went ahead my work sets was 150 for three sets of five sets But I've had I've had that conversation like 10 times And I'm like, uh, you know most of my guys will bench press ahead of their squat for a while in LP And he's on day 12 of LP and I would normally expect a guy To be benching about when he's squatting at that point and then it stretches out and gets weird It could be all those things that Matt talked about older guys I'm thinking testosterone if it's if I if I prove to myself It's none of the things that you just mentioned Matt and nothing else is working Testosterone can really really sap at those questions. Hey, here's what you should do like one get some help Just yeah, get either sign up for barba lodging and some help or email experience at barbell-logic.com and get some free help, which is also getting help Yeah, the bench press is a much more technical lift than people think it is It's not as technical as the squat But there's a lot more going on there and I bet I bet 10 minutes in person I could put 10 pounds on that three by five It's the only lift of the four main lifts that we teach where the bar path is not truly vertical Right The bar path has some angle to it and if you don't do it right Then you're you're leaving pounds on the on the platform Oh my gosh, here's Chad again. We talked about Chad last time 63305 is PR squats 385. He's going onward and upward He says that he is experiencing severe ankle pain mostly in the left ankle since the squat go over 345 It's to the point I could barely walk a few hours after doing my squats I have high arches and bad foot supination. I used to squat barefoot but purchased a pair of power lift fours Um He says I'm wondering if they might be causing the pain or could it be my form Could it be that I'm not kicking my knees out wide enough or if my foot width isn't wide enough any suggestions I'll eventually hire a coach, but I'm going to wait until I know that my schedule will be more open to coaching Yeah, it could be any of those things could be I'll probably go get some orthotics I could probably go see a good dot like if you're No, nobody's got a higher arches than charity Mine are really high too. It's it's probably not your arches Your stance is probably fucked up your knees position it in the holes probably not right. It's probably form The ankle doesn't flex or rotate or it's not enough doesn't do much at all It's really common in the strength world to say, oh, they don't have enough ankle mobility So we got to work that is actually my experience is I have never had a person Who did not have the ankle mobility squat? That's actually not true I actually had one guy who had who had broken his foot in a car accident and had And had literally plates put into his ankle and so his ankle didn't bend at all It was stuck at 90 degrees no matter what and just on one ankle And so in the bottom his heel would come off the ground off that foot that could not flex more than 90 degrees That's all you could get That's the only guy in 20 years of coaching that I've ever had who had ankle mobility problems in the bottom of the squat If you can sprint even badly Yeah You've got enough. That's right. You're having more ankle flexion than you're going to have in the bottom of a correct squat Yep But if your knees are way far forward and your shins are too horizontal and then you know too much flexion in your ankle and all that kind of stuff Like certainly that can so it's probably form issue. Hey, so here's the same answer Just email experience at barbellhighflexion.com send them a video of your squat. Let's Let's figure out what's going on. Yeah, and the adidas power lift for it's a pretty good shoe, man It'll give you good service. Yeah. Yeah, I think that shoes fine. It's probably just for Clifford Says stealing from peter legs to pay paul upper body He says, uh, I hope you all are well. I'm a recreational lifter I am an intermediate and I train full body mainly compounds movements three days a week So, you know matt we've been doing this show for july will be The beginning of our fourth year. Yeah We'll complete three years. Yeah And our audience has changed significantly. Sure I've trained full body mainly compound lifts. No, hold on. Hold on. That's let's there's two This is the glass half full versus glass half empty Our audience used to be people who were pre educated in the right way to do things Just two way to look at it or not at all or not at all. We never we didn't get these emails about Uh, why use compound lifts six days a week? We never got that But I I don't ever I'm not ever worried about a guy that reaches in that's that's And I don't mean this to to like put the person down But who's ignorant about the right things what right way to do things like they're they're reaching out for help because they're ignorant I get it. So that's fine. Okay. So I get it. So what is so what is I I know where this is going Full body lifts my upper my lower body is too strong. I want to get my upper body a little bit bigger Should it can can I? Oh, well, everything's odd. It's it's not the way I think so I'm just going to read the whole thing Okay, my training for the last nine months or so has not been progressing I've tried concurrent waves of linear periodization and a couple of other methods without much success You need to write that in bold circle it with a highlighter Laminate it and read that every day The things that you've done have not worked. That is that's right You you acknowledge it here in writing and you need to really I mean own that It says reading watching more of your content where I've realized I need more training volume Maybe not you don't fucking know that right You you might be right But there's nothing that we said you don't know that's the point. That's right He says I currently do about 10 hard sets per muscle group per week Max squat 165 kilos. That's great deadlift 190. That's heavy. That's good bench press 120. Okay Um, you're you're talking about how many sets that you do in terms of a week your training cycle horizon Is probably not a week. No, it's probably a month at this point. Oh, I bet it's not You think it's more I think I bet it's less. He probably needs to do LP Oh, right, right, right. I'm sorry yet. No, you're right. You're right. It's probably it's Well, there here's what we know There is a right way to train and there are certainly things that like there's there are actually multiple ways to skin the cat But the thing that we can't get away from there are some like orthodoxy closed-handed issues One is is that we start with LP no matter what until it stops working and then we make a change Yep, and it sounds to me like this guy has never done that. He started with concurrent concurrent Waves of LP, you know, yeah, right. That's right. And that's a better style Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that for an advanced lifter who's paid their dues And that's better than coming to a gym with no training. I'll get just doing something that day But he says I'm not able to train more frequently. My sessions are already quite taxing So I do not want my sessions to become any longer. Here's my question Can I reduce my direct length training from 10 sets a week to twice per week two sets at the end of my workout? I'm mostly happy with my legs, but I need more upper body. Do you think I can maintain my leg size? Do you think at listen I have a friend named Carl who's not Carl shoot. This is a guy from elementary school Yeah, that guy has enormous legs always will there's nothing he can do. He would have to bench press He doesn't squat. No, he's just a dude. But all he just has huge legs his giant muscular legs. He always has And um his upper body is normal But for it to be in proportion, he'd have to he'd have to bench 600 for a double I'm not kidding you. He's got just enormous legs in a butt and he doesn't have a big belly He's just built that way. I have no idea what you're built like. You're worried about aesthetics The truth of it is the main problem is that most of us look like shit Yep I ain't horrible, but not very many of us are 9s and 10s. But most of us Can't be physique models. Most of us can't even get 50 000 instagram followers for what we look like in our clothes And you need to stop worrying about that. You need to train to get as strong as you can And then when that happens you will look better than you do now. Yeah No, I want to go back wrong with wanting to look better. No as the primary goal of training That's your listen man. You're listening to the wrong show. You're you're going to the wrong people like we train for performance strength and health first always And aesthetics, we know if you train and you perform better you get stronger and you're healthier You will look better period. Yeah, that's it, right? You will look better. So if the goal is like, hey I'm pretty happy with the way my legs look when you say that that is a term. I have never said in my life Hey, I'm pretty happy with how x looks Because that's I'm actually not happy with the way anything It's everything's undersized now I just it's just you've you've missed the point like we have a value system here And we're not telling you that you have to have our value system But if you're going to ask us the question the question the answer is going to be That's how we train. I will speak for myself and not you I share that value system But it's not a negative judgment about people who are concerned about aesthetics It is from my experience that chasing the strength gets you the aesthetics chasing the aesthetics often gets you neither That's right. It is my dogma Because it's rational and I've seen it work I've seen young men who aren't strong chase aesthetics in the gym and look the same every time I saw them for years on end The guy who tries to get strong looks better And then if he wants to specialize after being a later intermediate on bodybuilding and aesthetics He can look really good That's right And then one other point I picked up on here is you're doing full body compound lifts three days a week If you listen to our show, you will know that once somebody ends LP we almost Categorically universally every single time almost Put them on a four-day split. That's right two up or two lower two up or two lower Each week if you can't train more than three times a week And it looks like you can't from what I'm reading here Then you can spread out that four-day split over nine days and still get three sessions in per calendar week Your programming is probably not helping you And if you want to look better hire me, I'll make you look better and I'll make you look better by making your numbers all go up Well, the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna fix this form and you're gonna you're gonna give him accountability for his consistency And then while obviously programming correctly the combination of those three things are gonna that's what works That's all there is to it. That's what works So, you know, I used to think about a lot back when I used to train in the old olden days of the 90s Back at the university gym, you know, I trained at Missouri what Missouri State University's gym And every guy in there that was in college was trying to get bigger and stronger 10 every year every year over and over I see the same guys are still 155 160 That's what they were And the few guys who were in the squat cage, which at the time there was one of those tiered, you know Trying, you know, sort of things that suck But they were in their squatting their balls off and they were deadly Those guys were they look like full backs and linebackers for the football team Yep And they probably they were probably trained in high school and got pretty decently strong before they even left high school And then they're at Missouri State or whatever and they're just building on this base They already got that's exactly right and and now by the way when these guys do four sets of eight curls It's 82 pounds. It's 90 pounds. It's not the 35 pounds, you know, that's right Let's get strong Gavin says something clever He says I have a quick quick question. I hear y'all especially when I talk about your parents training with barbells How do you convince them to begin training and going to the gym? Um My parents are in their late fifties have been unhealthy and sedentary your whole life They have started getting more and more bad reports from doctors and express the interest in getting healthier Mom is especially concerned about doing anything too strenuous because she had polio as a child It's a messed up musculature tendons and ligaments in her legs I think a lot of our problems revolve around a general lack of strength to have our time convincing her that If you have if someone has changed your diaper, they will not listen to you. Yeah If you get really strong, um, this gentleman says he's 28 and you have a wife and then she trains with you and she gets strong and you demonstrate it then An invitation to your mom to come over and drink coffee while you guys train in the morning because you're too busy to meet her another time Yeah And a few sessions of that might interest her but again if somebody has changed your diaper They pretty much ain't gonna listen to you. Well, you can't convince anybody to do anything Especially some of this guy doing hard is just that much more difficult, right? Like it is really hard to train your kids And it's even harder to train your spouse and it's basically impossible to train your parents And for some parents they understand the value of this thing and you can you know You can kind of teach them what you need to teach them and sometimes they will accept that But it just you can't control The soil that the seed falls on if your parent, you know, that's the deal Some of them they're just some of them just aren't gonna listen This is sucks because you'll stress over it and you shouldn't stress over it's not your responsibility To heal your parents like if you want to if you want to talk to them about what you do And you want to show them what you do and then they jump on great, but if they don't that's not on you Yeah, there is there is a sort of American cult of management Like the everything get what you measure gets better and whatever you focus on gets better And we can manage this and we can improve it and that there's just kind of idea of positivism And if you spend time on anything it's going to get better and it's just it's just not true Right people can't you can't manage people. No, you know the human condition We've got antibiotics and I'm thankful for that But the human condition and the drives that motivate people And the amount of joy in their lives or the amount of introspection in their lives and stuff is As best I can tell unchanged What an entirely intrinsic Yeah, I mean external extrinsic Motivation lasts very very short amounts of time Outside of that like it's you can't convince anybody to do anything So quit quit don't worry about managing your mom. I want good for her and I know you do too and that's very kind um but Probably can't do much But you know you and your old lady get strong and write her over for a cup of coffee and tell her hey You know, this is when we can hang out love to hang out with you and uh, you know, maybe she'll get in there Yeah, here's what we know like that you talk about the human condition Pressuring people who do anything almost always results in the opposite of what you want it to be And so that's why what you're saying works. Well, like the hey mom you want to come over for a cup of coffee Isn't hey mom you need to squat. Let me teach you how to squat. Those are two different things Yeah, so mom comes over for cup of coffee you squat and you hang out talk to mom between your sets One of those days she might be like you'd be like, hey, let me show you how to do this and she might be say, okay But the more you pressure her to do it It's every single person is why and some people are worse than others But everybody is sort of wired towards if you pressure me to do a thing. I want to do the opposite So you can't pressure them if she come over show if she comes on over on monday's and drinks a cup of coffee for six weeks She has an a hobby or a habit at that point of showing up on monday That's a big chunk of it And then if she ever does anything at all, you know, it's it's a win But you know, you're not responsible for her happiness. You're not responsible for her health You're not responsible for her whatsoever Um good for you for trying but uh, don't worry about it, man Just love her and uh, and if one day you throw dirt on her and you think it was too early It's okay. It wasn't your fault No, I'm serious. No, you're right. You're exactly right. It's people eat themselves to death smoke themselves to death All these people we love and care about you know, what are you gonna do? Well, the problem is I you know, I thought about this a long time ago with my dad When he when he got parkinsons and got bad and decided to stop training when He needed more than anything else to continue to train was when he got diagnosed with parkinsons And I thought well, I can spend the rest of my dad's life being mad at him that he's not training and working harder Or I can just value the time that I get with him And so he he knew what I believed about training and trying to you know Be tough and voluntary hardship and all that sort of stuff to make you better And he decided that's not what he wanted to do and I can I could have been You know had an animosity for my dad or I chose to spend the best time I could with my dad You know for the remainder of his life and so and I'm thankful that I was able to do that Try you know now dad has no You know, he's basically a vegetable at this point. I don't get to spend any of that time with him So I'm thankful that I got to spend the good stuff with him and I wasn't pissed off at him because he wasn't squatting at that point so I don't hear very many people talk about this, you know, we clearly think that That this stuff is good for us and leads to an improvement in your quality of life and maybe even longevity But you know, if you hate it, does it really improve your quality of life? You know like I You know charity, I haven't been training as much as her But I'm still out there. Let's say five hours a week That's 250 hours a year. You do that for 20 years. It's significant amount It's a significant amount of time. That's right. And if it makes you utterly miserable, you know, did it leave your life better? Did it increase your aggregate happiness? You know, maybe not and um I think that's important or that's important to remember because Sometimes I'll talk about this as being medicine But the truth of it is if the medicine tastes bad It's you slug it down and you chase it with a bunch of water and the taste is gone pretty pretty soon But if you're in a four-day split and it takes two and a half hours every single session It's 10 hours a week and then you have to eat like a, you know, like a crazy specialist Every minute that you're not in the gym Um, and you don't enjoy that Maybe it didn't make your life any better. That's right. Maybe it ain't for you. So I think it does make your life better But only Only if you enjoy it. Yeah So if you get a Parkinson's diagnosis, you're like, godly man. I've got 18 months left How much of that 18 months that I want to spend in a squat rack if I hate it Sure I don't know people have their own calculus, you know People have their own math that they do to figure out if things are worth it in good form or not and um I don't presume Well, sometimes I do But I try not to presume that I know Sure, my dad hates it. Yeah, my dad worked his ass off his whole life picking up heavy shit carrying around You know manual labor. He hates it. He's like, I don't want to do that. Yeah, he hates it. Yeah Yeah, I get it. I get it That's good Well, there's another uplifting episode of the barbell logic podcast You know, best of luck. I hope you all can get all of your loved ones to to do the right thing But you know, sometimes you can't Yep Has a consequence for parenting, doesn't it? Absolutely Yeah, learn and hurry Well, send your questions to questions at barbell hyphen logic dot com And if you need some help like most of the folks that send in questions and a bunch of you that don't send questions Y'all need help too You can email experience at barbell hyphen logic dot com And I think it's the nicky burman will come run into your aid Sign you up as a as a coaching light client You'll get to see the software we use should do a video conference with you and give you a little video review of your of your Lifts and uh, set you up some programming and get you moving along your way and if that ain't enough help Well, we can convert you to nothing. Yeah, that cost you nothing It cost you nothing Yeah, if you want to keep experiencing that then you can sign up and get it every day. That's the cool part So that's why we do it. Well, thanks for listening so much. I'm going to talk to you guys in a few days