 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 Greetings and welcome to the Barbell Logic podcast coming to you from Gray Steel Strength and Conditioning in Farmington Hills, Michigan I'm Jonathan Sullivan with my co-host Noah Hayden We're a guest host for this Barbell Prescription series of the Barbell Logic podcast and we thank you for joining us today Our guest is the very strong Laura Welcher. She's a Barbell Logic client and sometimes Gray Steel client coming in to join us today to talk about Programming welcome Laura. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today And I'm joined again by my co-host and my associate coach at Gray Steel Noah Hayden Howdy, how are you doing? All right, so let's get this show on the road We got a lot to talk about with programming and and we're going to talk a little bit about Programming for female masters as well. I wanted to talk about this one point in particular in the last episode But we didn't quite get to it John Kloss and yeah Yeah, we talked about this all the way yesterday, so I didn't want to interrupt them But before we start a program we should rule out any contra indications to training That's part of our normal screening process here at Gray Steel Strength and Conditioning Yesterday we talked a little bit about how when we bring somebody in you know The first thing we do is assess their movement patterns and figure out how we're going to load them and get them on a program But that's actually not the first thing to do The first thing we do is we bring people in for an initial assessment a conversation a conversation And we do assess their movement during that initial consultation as well But we basically take a complete medical and social history of the prospective client when they first appear at Gray Steel just like we would for any Patient coming into a new clinic and we rule out any potential contra indications And I suppose you know we could take a couple of minutes to just talk real briefly about what those contra indications would be and They're extremely limited. Mm-hmm my friend and client and and health care colleague Kurt Dahlken once said Yeah, you know basically anybody who has a close relationship with their vascular surgeon like that's a pretty good contra Indication so if you have an abdominal aortic aneurysm or thoracic aneurysm or you have a history of dissection or You know something that means that you have a close personal relationship with your vascular surgeon That's going to be at least a relative if not an absolute contra indication People who have bad problems with say intractable epilepsy. That's pretty uncommon people who have bad problems with recalcitrant Malignant tachy arrhythmias those people are usually not going to present with for training anyway There are a few more like that a lot of things that you would think would be absolute contra indications to training or not congestive heart failure is not an absolute contra indication for training of morbid obesity is an indication for training not a contra indication for training bad arthritis is not a contra indication. It's an indication for training bone-on bone arthritis requires that we fix that problem and then Train right so there are some things that sound like contra indications, but they're really not So the first thing that we do when people present is we do a complete medical and social history and screen them for any potential contraindications and the other thing that we do here at Grace deal This is a little bit of like how the sausage gets made is We basically give them a physician waiver to take to their physician And they have to present that at the commencement of training or they have to present us with a waiver of physicians endorsement but one way or the other right and Actually increasingly what we see in those clients who do bring us a physician endorsement is that physicians are getting You know, they're starting to get a little bit more hip to what it is that we're trying to do here Yeah, and there's increasing acceptance in the medical community. We still get more pushback than we want But yeah, thank you for bringing that up. No, it was something that needed to be presented You're probably more aware of this than I am But I know that when I was very young my dad was moving a safe I think in our house or something like that and he you know slipped a disc in his back whatever yeah, and Was told by a doctor, you know, you've got to land a couch for two weeks and like try not to move as much as Possible and I know that in general that advice has shifted in in modern times. Yeah, so may a culpa I was taught to do that Like as a young intern medical student intern and resident and so I was actually part of that generation of doctors say Yeah, you just need to go lay down for a year or two. It'll be alright. Take a break. Yeah And you know fortunately and I should have known better because I've been active, you know Not necessarily with barbell training my whole life, but yeah, I should have known better And so I was part of the a medical generation that really screwed things up We told people with acute back pain to go lay on their back and not lift anything heavy and Oh, and here's your Vicodin, right, right? So yeah, I'll probably spend some time in purgatory for all of that medical purgatory with a bunch of other doctors from the From the late 80s and early 90s, but you know that that ground to shift it fortunately Did we cover artificial joints? We haven't we can maybe talk about that a little bit here and there You know, that's almost, you know, that's almost a whole podcast in itself, but I is it a contraindication No, it's not a contraindication and That's important artificial hip artificial knee is not a contraindication to barbell training Of course, it requires that we train that client judiciously But here's the important thing to understand about that in my career in emergency medicine over 25 years I saw a fair number of joint prosthetic failures where, you know, the thing basically collapsed But it was never the prosthetic It was never the prosthetic that failed It was always the bone stock that failed because what happened is they got this precious new Artificial hip or this precious new artificial knee and the buggered surgeon would tell them now you have to be careful with that You can't do anything heavy, right? Don't destroy. Don't destroy my beautiful creation Right and so the bone around the bone stock around the prosthetic would continue to like Spongify and eventually it wasn't able to secure the prosthetic and that's where it would fail I right, you know outside of the setting of high velocity high-force trauma I never saw a prosthetic fail So no it has not a contraindication. In fact, it is, you know a very strong Indication for barbell training because if I had an artificial joint I would want to make that bone around that prosthetic as strong and as dense as I possibly could make it I would load that I would load that sucker now There are some, you know some finer points to this like what kind of prosthetic do you get? You know, do you want like one of the ceramic aka glass prosthetics or do you want like for me? It's going to be metal, but that's another discussion But in terms of indications and contraindications, no A prosthetic joint is a very strong indication for heavy resistance training So we're lucky enough to convince you to come today, Laura You've got some experience with fairly advanced programming at least your coach has told me so nurse and bizarre Who is our guest on the first episode that we did is your mother? Did you start training after seeing her results or was it independent of that? I was thinking about that when I was thinking about getting ready for this podcast you know my brother has been doing strength training for years and years and years and You know, he was the one who ended up getting my mom into training with Sally He tried to get me into it several years ago probably well probably a decade ago now But aside from visiting him and trying some of the lists, you know, I was a runner then I was kind of like meh so I didn't really get into it and I just kind of kept on my running and It wasn't until My mom started training with Sally that and she started seeing you know, she started going through the LP and seeing those Pretty amazing changes that you go through with LP. She's like, you know Laura You've got to do this. You have got to figure out a way to to learn how to do this is there somebody in your area where you can go and learn these lifts and I think this was before I don't know when Barba logic got organized, but I don't think that that was really an option then you kind of had to find Somebody who is a practitioner in your area to go and learn list or you know, you know Get the books and try to do it yourself like my brother did So I was lucky enough to have several people in my area who were trained in the method And I went and learned from a coach who knew the method very well Jeremy Tully in Berkeley and you know, I worked with him off and on You know, he had a gym that wasn't really close to where I lived So I would go see him every now and then and I was training at any time fitness for you know You kind of travel a lot this a convenient thing And so I would go to anti-fitness and I would do the workouts there and then every now and then I would go in and you kind of like Tweak the tweak the lifts for me and you have anyone that you worked out with any training partners Most of the time no My husband did start learning the method as well. He wanted to Jeremy and learn the lifts So we would do that sometimes together and sometimes separately and then you know a few years Maybe a year after that actually we built our own gym and then it became more possible to do online training and The gym was still not very close to my home So I mean in terms of the Bay area where it's really hard to get anywhere But you guys you guys were able to put a real nice setup in your home. Yeah, well, it's it's mostly nice It's so it's a little tiny space. Yeah, but a lot of people deal with that, but you guys really It's fine for me. I can press I can press in this space, but my husband I'm mad, you know, he hits the ceiling so it's not ideal, but it's not bad And that is what enabled both of us to be able to and that in and the barbell logic And so how do you like online coaching? How has that worked for you? I really like it I like the flexibility of it, you know If you're kind of a busy person and you've you know got a job and you need that Flexibility it gives you the flexibility to work out whenever you want to or need to work out You know, I I do think that training people in person is far superior It's fun in every way even for a coach You know because I can give people real-time feedback and I absolutely and I can yell at people sometimes Sort of non-stop while they're lifting so that they don't have the chance to interrupt with their own thoughts and throw themselves off Balance and you don't get that opportunity with online coaching But we have set schedules people come in on appointments and if they're two hours late from that because they just had to take care of one Little thing they can't come and that's not good, right? No, that's that's absolutely true Yeah, so there's great advantages with flexibility You know, it really is beneficial to have your own home set up not everybody has that I'm I train and you know these anytime fitness gyms and that works as well But I think what was absolutely critical is I started out Learning the lifts in person and I always had the opportunity to go in and train with somebody who could give me those kind of essential tweaks So, yeah, I mean, maybe it's not ideal, but I think that there's a lot of advantages to it Especially when coupled with an in-person the opportunity for some thing with you because you come back to Michigan very frequently and when you do you're here at gray steel and We have a chance to tune you up and so forth, but you know, let's back up just a second We didn't ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself and you're kind of an interesting person So why don't you give us just a little bit of background before we go on? Let's see where to start. You're probably referring to my work Yes, my background to my work is that I'm trained as a linguist I got my PhD in linguistics from Berkeley in California, which is also where I live but I did my undergraduate here in Michigan and worked on Indigenous languages that are spoken actually right where we're sitting here. And so I did that for for many years and then I did my postdoc actually at Wayne State and Then after my postdoc I ended up at a nonprofit organization called the Long Now Foundation Which is in the Bay Area in San Francisco in California and I started out there working on linguistics projects We're you know, the Long Now Foundation is trying to expand our sense of the here now to be like Civilizational on scale So you're here and you're now is actually much much broader and the scope of your agency and your responsibility is actually a civilizational one and We do these projects and programs that take that concept very seriously So one of the main projects since the founding of the organization is the building of Mechanical a giant mechanical clock that's sighted on the inside of a mountain that can take and keep time for 10,000 years And I myself worked on a project that is building a very long-term archive of the world's languages I'm backing it up for thousands of years. How many languages are in that database? Oh thousands, you know, there's probably about 7,000 extant languages and you know lots more dialects and things like that but that's what we see in terms of the world's linguistic diversity and We've got you know a good number of those in the collection not all of them actually have a significant documentation associated with them but You know about a thousand to half of them do I would say and this database of languages It includes not just like the orthography in the written language and stuff about grammar and syntax and vocabulary But there are samples of the spoken language as well There are some in some cases like I said, we don't have documentation for all of these languages and for any given languages It's not it's not especially deep like, you know all of the work that I did on indigenous languages of this area are not They're in a different kind of an archive. So this is purposely broad Shallow survey of languages so that you can kind of say present a snapshot of the world's linguistic diversity Mm-hmm as you know kind of an important collection about Humanity and you know the human human culture and human language and human intellect I like the idea of a civilizational duty That's going to come back to Honda's a little bit in our last episode when we talk a little bit about When we riff a little bit on philosophy and how it applies to lifting and how you know lifting is a metaphor for life And or life is a metaphor for lifting. Yeah, so it's funny There was a game that was played in ancient Greece and Roman times that we think was called pack of dogs And they found tons of these boards these game boards all through time I think it was played for two or three thousand years and over many many cultures There was different versions of it that it sort of evolved this time went along But it was such a common game and so popular Nobody wrote down the rules for it because it was obvious, right and Now it's not so obvious It's just funny that those kinds of things happen that like the most common Objects of a culture are the ones that are lost most readily right because people take it the the people who live it Take it for granted and sometimes the most mysterious. Yeah, right so Ostensibly our conversation today is about Programming and sort of the life cycle of the lifter I suppose I should say that Laura is not only extremely accomplished intellectually and professionally but also You're pretty accomplished as an athlete as a lifter. You're one of my strongest lifters especially for your your demographic and you know, you've gone through quite a bit of Programming evolution in your time and so we're going to talk about about that and Like all lifters you started with the linear progression Although it sounds like it might have been a little bit off again on again at the start like it was, you know Because you didn't have a coach and you didn't necessarily have a regular lifting time but all that kind of changed when you got into Barbell logic online coaching and I can't remember I should have looked it up this morning When you first started with me at Barbell logic were you were you still in the LP? Or did we morph you into HLM pretty quick? We were still in I was still in LP I say we because I always think about like the coach and the client. I mean in our case I think of it as a partnership. So I'm gonna say we yeah, absolutely. That's the come. Yeah, absolutely That's very penetrating observation. Yeah. Yeah, so so we started in the LP And I think you know, I had a reset because I you know I've been training on my own quite a bit and I you know learn some bad habits and So, you know, you took it back and then we went through a regular LP. I think pretty it was almost from the get-go It sounds like me. Yeah So everybody does that, right? I mean, that's where everybody starts is with the linear progression Which has been called the most basic form of Periodization mm-hmm. So underlying all of this programming stuff is this sort of model that we have in our heads of this Stress recovery adaptation cycle, which is the the driver of this whole progressive overload thing the idea that you impose a training stress and Then you recover from the training stress and then you display a performance improvement And this is all an adaptation of the whole general adaptation syndrome of hand cell. Yeah Now recently some of us have begun to look at this and argue about it a little bit and talk about it a little bit and For example, there's you know, the conference videos were myself and CJ Gocher and Will Morris and John Petrizo Talked about programming and the first two CJ Gocher and I had a kind of a friendly Point counterpoint. We agreed more than we disagreed about these models of training and these models of adaptation like the general adaptation syndrome and the stress recovery adaptation kind of thing and When you actually look at what's going on Biologically, it's a lot more complicated than that. I mean, it's really really hard to map discreet biological biochemical genetic Processes onto the stress recovery adaptation syndrome not that surprising not that surprising But you know, I kind of feel like I'm a little bit different from CJ on this again We agree more than we disagree on it, but like it's a model It's like in the Holy Grail Monty Python and the Holy Grail and they're going Camelot Camelot Camelot And one of them says it's only a model. This is the model of a castle up on a hill It's only a model and that's what it is. It's only a model. So Although The whole stress recovery adaptation model, you know, it's simplified But I think that there's a lot of value in an effective heuristic concept Yeah, I think you get really tripped up if you try to say well that model's not real. Well, yeah, what's real? So like here's a model metabolism, right or Catabolism or something in anaerobic. Yeah. Yeah, exactly systems that are independent supposedly, right So, you know, like I've never seen metabolism, right or here's one Five, right? Like I've never tripped over the number five in my daily life. I've never held it in my hand, right? So it's helpful to have these Models if you will or these concepts and not to get too hung up on like well, what's the underlying physical reality of that? I think that the stress recovery adaptation model works really really well from a program perspective But of course, you know, the devil's in the details and things start to get complicated after a while in The linear progression the stress recovery adaptation cycle is completed from workout to workout You impose a training stress you go home You rest you come back and you both display at performance improvement and take on the next training stress Simultaneously and that works really really well For a period of time, you know in younger athletes, it's going to work I don't know three four months in older athletes. I see a biphasic distribution So in older athletes what I see with the LP is there's a group of them who Basically complete it pretty quick. You're not you're just not and not because they're so strong But because you just can't keep adding weight to their bar for three sets of five you just can't keep doing it and Then there's a group where it like the LP just drags on and on and on Why do you think that is that there is sort of two different responses to the I'm sitting here thinking it's like It's not a clean two different because you know, there's also it's a triphasic or a polyphasic response So we also have a population a large part of the master's population that never gets out of the LP Right. They train with you for years and years and years and maybe you get them to a heavy light sometimes You know or you get them to a highly modified advanced sort of individualized novice program So people that I have that are like that something happens. It's because of vacations and Illnesses grandkids from out of town and right and then they and then we're going back in their ankle Yeah, and then it's back to LP. Yeah, you know, so they're like, you know They're in this perennial linear progression. That's okay. Mm-hmm That's totally okay as long as they keep training and what's kind of interesting is they make progress You never get them to more advanced forms of programming, but they add still inch forward They still inch forward, right? But that's not the you know, the quote-unquote typical progression so So that's the you know, that's the linear progression and what's amazing about it is that you know It works every time that particular application of the stress recovery adaptation cycle. It works every single time As long as somebody does it so then as I recall you completed your LP and You got pretty strong on LP. You're you're strong and and the other thing about you is it's your you know You're very coachable So I don't think we ever wasted any time putting you through Texas No, but we allowed your linear progression to sort of gradually morph into a heavy light medium Program and first it was sets of five, but you know We took that down pretty quick to sets of three at least on the squat Yeah, we changed you to sets of three and now you're in a very Individualized heavy light medium program where you've got like a heavy single or a heavy double on heavy day And the rest of the time it sets of three and sets of five on your upper-body exercises You do lots of sets of eight. Mm-hmm, right? Yeah I'm getting the evil eye here and You've made pretty extraordinary progress and to the point where you you actually went to competition Once no or twice you went to competition twice. I showed up twice and I competed once So my mom was in both competitions, so that was it the Chicago fall classic. Mm-hmm Yeah, did she drag you along or were you a willing participant? You know, we like to travel together and we have fun. We were in Chicago for a while. Mm-hmm like vacationing. Yeah, and you did us proud Yeah, what were your lifts that day if you recall squat was around 200. Well, I'm thinking, you know, it was all in yeah I was that's what I remember as well as around 200 and you pressed around 80. I think I think it was higher Yeah, it was a little closer to 90. Yeah, I'm not remembering And we might have taken it down a little bit for competition because very impressive lady masters press And then you killed it on the deadlift you did something ridiculous on the deadlift. What was it? I'm trying to remember like 250 I think it was 250 260 something like that Yeah, and then what's happened recently with you is you've actually gotten more into conditioning You're doing a pretty advanced rowing program Mm-hmm, and you've made some changes in your nutritional strategy as well And you're looking pretty trim and lean these days and so obviously a little bit of weight has come off the top Mm-hmm on your loading for a heavy-light medium But you're still you're still putting up some pretty heavy weights And I think that we will get you back within striking distance of some of those those old PRs that you put up Because that's what happens, you know people, you know, they'll drop some weight Alan Thrall did a video recently about about he did a big cut and he had dexa scans before and after and What scans a dexa scans a body composition scan dual x-ray emission Absorb geometry right which gives you a pretty exact reading of your of your body composition compartments And he thought you know, he lost a lot of fat. He got pretty jacked But he didn't lose as much muscle as he thought like just a couple of pounds and Retained a pretty fair amount of his strength and that's what we find, you know We used to be like well if you lose all that weight, you're gonna lose all your gains Yeah, you lose some but you know, you can get them back and I've been through the same thing recently Yeah, I don't know. This is a question that's been going through my mind as I've you know taken out It took off like 20 pounds since well, what are we at? We're in September now We're about the last year. I think it's March. Yeah, I took this down. Well, actually it was more than 20 pounds And now I'm lifting in terms of my body weight. I'm lifting at higher percentages than I was then So this is a I think this is my question to the coaches is you know, which is better like absolute Pondage that you can lift even if you know, because if you look at like you're I'm sure I was fatter then But I was also I had more muscle Well, I think that this is a perfect softball question because the answer to that is it depends on your goals Really, I think yeah, so if you're a powerlifter and Unless you change your weight class by losing weight in which case, you know, that's a different question Let's set that aside if you're a powerlifter like you don't care what you look like and you don't care what your body fat is and if someone Doesn't mind their appearance and they're comfortable with their quality of life at a particular weight who cares, right? So again, yeah, I think it depends on your goals But I think it's a mistake in a situation like yours to think that you've lost something other than some body fat, right? And again, I think that you probably haven't lost as much muscle as you might think Your lifts actually look better Than before you lost that body weight. And so yeah, you lost what 10 15% of your tonnage off the top But you're still able to perform in an extremely high level and your conditioning is better So I think if you look at what you're lifting as a function of your body weight, you're still pretty much in the elite range Yeah, your demographic. I mean that has not changed. Sure. So in a way, you're actually Stronger and fitter than you were before. Oh good because this is my hypothesis and I just was looking for confirmation No, I think no, I I think, you know, you're an extraordinary athlete and if anything you're even more extraordinary now So think about it like you're 20 pounds lighter You're a year older and You're lifting better and your weights are still, you know, in that same elite performance range that they were before. So yeah, yeah A successful program. We're proud of you. Yeah so I think what comes out of that is how an LP is a pretty Universal program. I mean you have to make especially with masters you have to make kind of individual Adjustments for that individual master standing in front of you. So for example, John Clausson's LP is going to be rather unlike a vanilla LP, right? But in general, you're you know, you're going to start everybody out more or less the same three sets of five squat press bench dead Right for masters may be a two-day program for most people a three-day program You're going to march them through that LP and you're going to start to make changes for females You might want to start doing five sets of three instead of three sets of five And you're going to start to change the amount of weight that you add to the bar each time as they get stronger and things get heavier And then eventually you're going to you know, you're going to start to make some changes in Anticipation of that program morphing into a more complex structure a heavy-light medium or you know, maybe a Texas Something I think of Texas is a sort of heavy-light medium and it is it's a heavy-light Yeah, and so you're going to and so what's going to happen is that LP is going to morph into Something that's more or less like a vanilla Template heavy-light medium structure, right? Mm-hmm, you know But you're not going to be able to sustain that like what I always like to say is a master's population is pretty heterogeneous Like you take a hundred bros a hundred college-age bros and that is a very homogeneous demographic, you know Yeah, there's variation in it, but there's a lot more variation in a hundred masters than there are in a hundred bros Right there life has just had more of a chance to Bring out the individual differences and impose unique scarring and life events and experience and personality So, you know, it's all accentuated in the master the individualization of programming as it proceeds And so what happens is I always like to say the intermediate program Starts to shrink wrap itself on to that individual athlete It starts to become more of a tailored program that individual athlete and that's even I and you you experienced that Noah working with masters Yeah, absolutely. So it depends. I guess like you said it is polyphasic Some people can really drive small increases in a simple LP Structure for quite a while. Mm-hmm for quite a while other ones sort of burn out quick Especially with women, you've got to go to triples or whatever other women just keep inching forward with five with fives You know, I've got several women that are doing that right now and I was going to change him But they're still doing fine. So I'm leaving it alone, you know, it works and that's what I do with Laura So, you know in your case, you've got a heavy light medium structure. That's productive for you right now I mean when we started your heavy light medium We started with a top set of like fives or triples something like that It morphed out of your LP and we just stayed with that until it didn't work anymore And then we added a little volume here and we took away a little volume there And so right now what's happening on most of your lifts is where I find a lot of heavy light medium programming ends up going with masters and Where that goes it maybe Noah you have something to say about this because I know that this is heresy in some quarters, but Where a lot of my heavy light medium athletes end up going and where I'm going where I am right now on a four-day split block structure is I End up expressing the entire rep range in my program So for example on a heavy day Laura will do a heavy single Right, she'll work up to a heavy single and then she'll you know depending upon the lift She'll back off to a heavy triple and maybe two sets of five from there Right and on an upper body movement She'll do a heavy single and maybe a heavy set of three and then she'll do a couple of sets of eight right, and so she's expressing that entire Rep range across a range of reps and she makes progress on that and I make progress on that and a lot of our athletes at Grace you'll make progress on that which is kind of like a it's not a daily undulating Periodization it's sort of an inter-workout undulating sort of rep range kind of thing And I do find so we actually haven't really talked about this very much not that much No, but I have found that the more advanced certain lifters get I think especially with upper body lifts for men and women We do we tend to have one or two top triples and then back off sets of eight sets of eight are great for upper body And and not fives anymore for quite a while, right, you know and that seems to work really well It does work really well. I think that that's a good approach and the lifter and their performance Tells you when she's ready for that for that change. So again, it's that right minimum effective dose and and when it's time for a change Like I think you'll agree Laura I've never really changed your program wholesale like when we went from LP to heavy-light medium It wasn't like okay, like here's a big singularity and We're gonna change everything and just drop you into the sort of heavy-light medium structure I like for things to sort of gradually morph from one program into another so there's not a lot of lift too, right? Sure, yeah, right, you know I will say also that even when maybe the goal with a certain day is not Necessarily to hit a top single or something that's really pushing the envelope of what you can do Even if it's just kind of a more ho hum volume day I have found some benefit in having people do a heavy-ish single first and then The volume work because it's sort of it sort of wakes their CNS system up a bit and Makes all the volume work feel lighter. Yeah, again, I think that that's probably heresy in some quarters But that's become my modus operandi a great deal. It just works really really well I think especially for masters it works well because they need a little bit of help Waking them up a little bit waking their bodies up a little bit Again, you know to point to Alan Thrall, you know, he did another video a year or two ago about like yeah You should be doing heavy singles heavy singles First of all, they're a they're a pretty discreet metric of where you're at Absolutely, and the other thing is that they're a different experience Than a set of five or a set of eight, right putting up a pretty heavy single is different from putting up a heavy set of five It's a different experience but what I feel like I've learned how to do working with masters is to capture that rep range within a single Program or a single workout, right and the proof is in the pudding. Do people get stronger on that and the answer is yeah I mean, we see that all the time here So, you know, I don't know if that's something that would work as well in younger athletes My deficiency as a coach is that I don't work with younger athletes I you know, so I'm pretty focused on what works in my population But that kind of thing works really well in my population and so what's happening with my intermediate athletes is they're putting up one heavy Single or in some cases one heavy double or triple every week and I like to get them to those heavy singles Pretty quickly. So if somebody stays on a heavy light medium structure long enough with me They're gonna be putting up heavy singles for every lift every week and I find that that works pretty well Don't you have I can't remember if this was in my LP or might have been in my mom's LP where you have athletes chase singles I do so that's a lot of fun That's another thing that we do from time to time and I'll tell you when that works and Noah has seen this in action And I I think he's probably using in his own practice here at Graciel as well So for example Debbie Rotslowski will be in to talk to us on one of these episodes She's one of my athletes and she's going because of the whole COVID situation She's going to be gone from Graciel for about nine months And so she's becoming a barbell logic client of mine but she had her last day of training here on Wednesday and what we did is we did like let's chase singles right and we find that we have the opportunity to do that We're just about every athlete every you know what at least once a quarter We have this opportunity to chase singles because some life event is going to take them out of the gym for a week or two weeks Right and so for their last work as like okay, it's go for broke. Yeah, let's go for broke Let's chase singles and see what kind of you know see what kind of singles you can put up usually it's squat press Deadlift every now and then it'll be bench. I'm not that thrilled about the bench We can talk about that some other time But like I love the bench. What kind of press can you put up? What kind of squat can you put up? What kind of deadlift can you put up? And Usually almost always when we do that when we have a chasing singles day We get at least one PR and sometimes three sure so Debbie PR'd I think she PR'd all three the other day and so Pretty awesome. So and it's fun You know, I think this is a big point is that who said that maybe it's less than ideal programming per se But who said that programming must be boring and awful and a grind every day It's supposed to be a life habit that enriches your life Yeah, exactly and it is going to be kind of boring and grinding and grueling most of the time So why not celebrate? You know what you've been able to build and you know if you have to leave the gym for a week or two weeks Right or you have to go off and turn to online coaching for a while and you know and go to Florida for nine months Like what better way to send you off, right? What better? Yeah, what better accomplishment to take with you like if I'm going to go on a vacation And I put up a bunch of new PRs before I go on vacation. Well that vacation just got off to a good start, right? you know, so it's fun and it's life-affirming and it sort of is this gratification and reward for all this hard grueling work because it is hard and grueling that you've been doing in the gym So, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So that's a real important part of what we do here So we're sort of like as far along in the lifters lifecycle as we usually get for anybody for the mat We're right and particularly for masters. Yeah, a lot of masters never really get out L.P We talked about that but those that go on to some sort of intermediate programming what we find is that that program Shrink wraps on of them. It becomes extremely individualized and then something happens, right? There's a There's a life event. There's an illness. There's an injury. There's a death in the family There's a vacation Something like that happens and then there's a layoff and then they come back and what do we do? Do we put them back on their highly individualized Intermediate programming. Nope. Nope. We put them back on a little light see how it feels, right? And it's an LP, right? It's an LP Maybe a couple of weeks maybe a little bit longer and then what's always surprising to intermediates is we do the same thing We let that LP rather more rapidly Sort of morph into their new intermediate programming and they're always surprised when the contours of that new intermediate program Aren't exactly like the intermediate program that they left when their layoff started. Well, of course, it's not going to be right because Things are different now that was then this is now but gradually it will again morph and shrink wrap onto them and become something That drives their progress. It wouldn't necessarily work for somebody else And you know another thing too is that sometimes there's changes like that because that lifters goals have changed Oh, yeah, and I feel that frequently happens There is a time when I wanted to push my numbers up no matter what I gained 60 pounds on my LP and my LP lasted nine months because of that and when I tell people the opposite when I tell people My LP lasted nine months. They said how did that happen? And I said well, I gained 60 pounds. So it keeps going up, right? But after I push that for a while just to sort of see what I could do because I figured it's The one opportunity in my life to do that and exactly a lot a bit more problematic to gain that kind of weight when you're older then my goals changed and I lost 30 pounds back down and Same thing you were talking about before I didn't really lose that much strength and frankly especially with my deadlift the the additional comfort that I felt To be able to get to the in the bottom position. Well kind of made all the difference and made it more enjoyable Yeah, I'm in the same place I would still like my numbers to move forward but for a 60 year old man at my body weight I'm I'm pretty happy with my numbers. I've done pretty well and like Laura over the last year I lost about 20 pounds and my numbers just are just fine in fact, I've put up some recent PRs and I'm just as strong if not stronger than I was when I was 20 pounds heavier and I have more of an emphasis on conditioning now and I'm less Aggressive about Olympic lifting than I was because I'm 60 still doing it But I know that eventually it'll have to go by the wayside So yeah, your goals change and your priorities change with time But the training is still there you still understand the fundamental importance of what it is that we do what I try to Impress on all of my lifters that come in the gym is that it's not just about Strength training for the sake of strength training that it's supposed to be a tool that you can use no matter What stage of life you're in no matter what goals you have in the short term or the long term for that stage of life It's a tool for managing your physical body Right, so if you get hurt and and you tweak your back you've got to train more not less, right? You've got more important training instead of less It's not this great excuse to do nothing and that and that physiological reserve that strength that Stamina capacity your overall health that muscle tissue that muscle Gland that you require for proper metabolism that strong bone that you require for resistance to injury all that stuff becomes More important absolutely years pile on not less important One of our lifters has been talking a lot lately about Maslow's Hierarchy of needs first what you've got to take care of is your physical well-being You know there has to be like well first of all there has to be internet But on top of that, you know a little less fundamental is your physical security Food air water and your physical health and strength so when you're training you're really addressing the foundation of your physical being and You know somebody once said strength is the most important thing in life And you know people take issue with that But it really is because strength is the ability to move and to be strong and to be healthy and to be fit without which The rest of life can quickly become irrelevant or at least not particularly enjoyable and so Yeah, it gets more important as time goes on and Can I bring up the point that when I first started training with grey steel with you Sally that I thought You know I was in my mid 40s when I started training and I thought I was too young to be Your trainee so I was like, oh, I don't know if he's gonna take me out I'm kind of I'm kind of too young but my mom kept saying that You want to start on this early? Like it's a tool that you're gonna have in your toolbox. You know your banking bone your banking muscle Disgeological 401k. Yeah, I'm thinking about it You know, this is like a my my long-term thinking project about my life and my body, right? So I want to start start younger on this But I think that is a really good point is that you know Even though we have this kind of broad age range of masters, which is not like the ones that aren't like the kids anymore You know, right, but if you're starting in your 40s or your 50s that really kind of gives you a leg up But you can also start like my mom did in her 70s, right and you can make you can go through an LP It's accessible to everyone. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're gonna talk more about this in the final episode that we do, right? Right, but the thing that I love about training is that no matter what setbacks you have no matter what conditions you have You can make your situation better with training, right? No matter what age you are It's accessible to everyone to be in control of their destiny. All other things being equal Being stronger is better. Right. So, yeah, I've been strong and I've been weak and being strong is better, right? So or as we often say you can be old and beat up and weak or you can be old and beat up and strong like I can't fix the old part and You know, there's the old Basque saying every day wounds and the last one kills I can't change that either but what I can do is I can make you strong and It's like being rich, you know, I've been rich and I've been poor and rich is better I've been strong and I've been weak and weak is better and Yeah, it's exactly like a physiological 401k this the earlier you start the better off you're going to be but You know, if you get to be 50 and you realize you haven't saved for retirement, you don't just throw up your hands You start saving right the best time the planet tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today Exactly. So so we've had people start in their late 80s John Clausen and It's done wonders for him. So it's never too late to start But that being said, I did want to get through this entire sort of life cycle So what what happens and what we almost never observe at gray steel and what we almost never observe in the master's population But we have to talk about it for completeness is That eventually even an intermediate heavy light medium structure for the people who are the most committed and The most gifted is not going to be enough to drive progress. Mm-hmm so eventually what we see in those people is a Morphing into a four-day split kind of structure Where you know because the weights that they're moving if they come in and do a heavy day With you know a squat and deadlift and an upper body movement. They're just going to be cooked All right, they're not going to be recovered enough for even a light day And so what we do is we split the heavy the upper body and the lower body and we do a heavy light split And the way we do this at gray steel or the way we would we don't have any Clients on a heavy light split right now except for myself, right is you do something like a heavy press light bench day a heavy squat light dead day a heavy bench light press day and a heavy dead light squat day and Most masters are never going to get to that. So, you know a traditional four-day split is four days a week Mm-hmm. Is that how you would do it? Well, it depends. I did try one of our athletes on a four-day split recently and She's in the late seventh decade Very very strong lady. So in her late 60s She deadlifts 225 and she squats like 170 very strong lady And so what I tried to do was a two-week four-day split, right? So she would work out two days a week and she's also doing some conditioning and spread it out over two weeks She didn't like it. We we kind of went we took some weight off the top and went back to a heavy light medium structure So that kind of didn't work, but I would try somebody on something like that first In the rare event where it actually materializes because frankly most masters never get to that point I'm on a I'm on a four-day split but I You know, I probably actually train a little too much imagine that and you know I would probably be just fine if I went back to something like a three-day You know, I'd probably heard a little bit less, but I like I like to train heavy Mm-hmm, and then you know the ultimate is where you know Somebody's really in the elite range and they're competitive and they're all about how much weight they can lift and they're really really committed and I've you know, I've never seen this in our client population But that you know the heavy light split eventually morphs into the most, you know sort of complex periodized programming of all Which is your block program? So you go from a linear progression to an intermediate program Which is going to have something like a heavy light medium structure and that's going to morph into a four-day split and eventually that four-day split Is going to be periodized over some sort of block programming structure and we talk about all this in the book The barbell prescription, but when we talk about block programming I think you know was something like an accumulation and then an intensification phase and What we talk about it in the very most general terms very abstract terms because a almost nobody in the masters population Is going to get there? Right and they don't need to they don't need to to enjoy the benefits of strength training right and secondly by the time they do get there It's going to have to be so Individualized that only the crudest template can really be presented for that kind of training structure. Absolutely Absolutely, that's you know, that's how I see the lifecycle of any athlete the training evolution of any athlete and Theoretically the masters athlete, but the truth of it is that most masters athletes Never get beyond and never need to get beyond an intermediate training structure I want to add to that that part of the reason why is because you have to kind of also It's not just about missing days or having a setback or not You have to kind of be all in with advanced training that everything you do revolves around how it affects your training and Most masters are not living their lives to lift they're lifting to live their lives Exactly and that's a really really important principle. You don't live the train you train to live Yeah, and so again the very reason that the intermediate structure gets interrupted We have to take people back to LP and there's just these discontinuities because people have Professions and they have dreams and they want to travel and they have grandkids And they want to go out and live their lives and they're able to do all of that better Because of their training because of their training so earlier I said that you know part of the reason why some people stay in LP is because the grandkids come to town That's a good reason to have a reset Absolutely because that's the reason why they're doing it because now they can pick their kids up exactly and I suppose, you know at some point we're gonna have to address this whole issue of you know Programming for masters and the role of intensity and volume. This is a tempest and a teapot. It's been made artificially contentious For those of us who work with masters, you know We know that there is a limit to how much volume you can impose on a master and that limit is going to be lower Then it would be for you know a younger athlete, but it's a hard limit. It's a it's a hard limit Yeah, you can reach that hard limit with proper sleep and proper nutrition and all of that But it's a hard limit. Yeah, and it's not because of muscle That's the thing right so, you know if I'm imposing a lot of volume on you And I'm making you soar like you have Dom's right like a lot of our masters, you know this They're willing to live with the significant amount of muscle soreness because they see what's happening to their bodies and they see What's happening to their lives? But in masters, it's not the muscle soreness It's the tendon soreness and it's the joint soreness and it's the ligaments and it's you know it's the the stiffness and The very very deep sort of metabolic injury That they can get from that kind of thing and they just don't bounce back as quick and what you can't do is Bring a master in and impose a training stress on them that they can't quite recover from before the next episode of training and Now they're not able to pick up their grandkid Right, and they're not able to clean out the garage and they're not able to go dancing with their loved one Because not or they might try to because I'm just a little sore and then they get hurt and then they're out of the gym for two Months. Yeah, so in case any of you were wondering on the whole volume sensitivity thing Not only have I not changed my mind, but the longer I do this them are sure I am that it's a correct principle for training masters So one last thing I wanted to say about that is that obviously Programming is a balance between increasing stress and managing recovery and it's a fine balance It's exactly what it's really dangerous to tip that scale and Overtrain a master it is right it is because they'll they might not ever come back to the gym after that for one They might not be able to come back to the gym again after that It's a great disservice to them and their lives and their loved ones and I think that it's important to know that practically speaking Most masters virtually all masters are not actually moving in absolute terms that much weight And for the same reasons why a weak younger person in their LP is Pushing intensity is really the same reason why a master would push intensity if you can only squat a hundred pounds You need to be squatting a hundred pounds every time you work out Because 70 pounds isn't going to do anything for you five by five at 70 pounds isn't going to do anything Exactly, and I think Laura can speak to that like in her own programming like you have a lot of stamina You're very very fit right especially now with this pretty aggressive rowing program that you're doing and you have a Pretty huge work capacity like when you come back from a layoff You still have a pretty good work capacity you might get a little bit gas but you're able to do a bunch of sets and reps and For a master you're actually on you can attest that I'm not afraid of using volume in the correct dose because I use it on you But I think what you can also tell is that work capacity aside when you come back from a layoff and You haven't been moving a heavy weight like it's gone, right? Like say you're doing a 200 pound squat and then you have a layoff of just a week, right? When you come back, you're not going to get that 200 pound squat again. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and that is not necessarily What we observe in younger athletes so a younger athlete like you have him deadlift 450-475 pounds for a single or a double he goes to Fort Lauderdale for a week He comes back. He's like, yeah, that was great I think I can do 500 a day and he'll do it right and I bet it's just a lot of that has to do with Hormonal profile. It's exactly a hormonal profile and just recovery capacity, right? So a kid can take that week off and use it to like build a bunch of muscle and Recover, but a master is just you know, they're intensity dependent So that's another principle of training masters that the longer I do it the more I believe it because the more I see it It's absolutely true. I certainly feel it in my own lifting Yeah, their their degradation rate has accelerated exactly. So that's a pretty good place to leave it. I think so Laura, do you have anything to add anything that you think our listeners need to hear before we sign off? You've come really far. You're pretty extraordinary. I you know and that's the thing I don't think although I appreciate my coach saying that I'm extraordinary. I don't think that's the case I think you know, I don't think of myself as being a particularly competitive lifter or even that I'm moving large Absolute amounts of weight, but I think for me I am and it's made a tremendous difference in my life And what I'm able to do and it you know, I think it would be great if more people could do it You know, I think it would would improve a great number of lives They've more people like you the world would be a better place in which to live All right, so that's as good a place as any to leave it I'm Jonathan Sullivan your guest host with my co-host Noah Hayden coming to you from great show strength and conditioning and Thank you once again for listening to the latest installment of this barbell prescription guest series on the barbell logic podcast And we'll talk to you again next time. Bye for now