 Welcome back to another podcast. This week we're going to talk about, we're going to get a little bit granular this week. I'd like to use that word, Jacko. Sometimes I hear people say that is a good word because it perfectly describes where we're going. We're going into a little bit of training program detail around reps and sets. Now don't switch off and get bored because there's some juicy stuff within this. Whereas I think a few people in the fitness industry have lost their mind when it comes to thinking about where we should structure and how we should use reps and sets to create specific adaptations or maybe non-specific adaptations that will all be revealed as we dive into this week's conversation. All right, sorry. When you said granular, I was thinking grains and I was wondering if we were discussing my second favorite carbohydrate, obviously the first being the potato and the second being oats. Maybe that can be, that could be for another day but something, if you're not necessarily, this is going to segue into the earth and thanking the podcast sponsors. If you're not trying to fuel yourself sort of ketogenically, then carbohydrates is a great energy source to do something like a big, a big long run. What's more exciting than a big long run or a short, fast run or any number of different distances of runs between five and 21K would be to do some runs with some obstacles in them which sounds very much like an obstacle course but the podcast sponsors Spartan, it's not just any obstacle race. It's like what we would sort of call the real deal or something. I think the French would describe it as the creme brulee or the Pierre de resistance, that's French, isn't it? What's the French for Pierre de resistance? I don't know actually. It's like the Rolls Royce of obstacle course races in my book, this one. That's, that's. The creme brulee, you've still got me there. I don't even, I don't even know what that means. What's going on in my mind is I don't even know if you, I'm wondering is Jaco know that it's not called the creme brulee or the creme de la creme, is that what you meant but you've intentionally ranked the creme brulee? Either way, the mysteries of your mind. All of those, all of those things, all of those things. Now, very excitingly, not only are Spartan re sponsoring the podcast but as part of that, they are very kindly and very generously offering and if you haven't heard, listen to this then wherever you've been, but there's 53 places available to come and join us at a Spartan rate where you can actually join any Spartan race you want but the invitation is to come and join us on the 16th, 17th of July in Midlands and obviously there are a lot of spaces been taken the Wolfpack is growing for that event but there are still some spaces available. You do have to do a couple of things. One is to show that you are actually going to take part and that you've done more training than Tim thinking that Tim has done zero training so don't be scared if you haven't done much but just you can at least mock yourself up and pretending that you're doing some training for it to get one of the free spaces. Worth over 90 pound I think to join the event and it's going to be free. If you do these things, take a picture or a video of you in your training slash getting ready for slash pretending like Tim to train for the event, tag spath at spartan use the hashtag spartanrace and then importantly tag us at schoolgarden and send that picture or video to us on Instagram so that we can validate you have done all those things and then you'll be given the free code to use on the website. Awesome. It is true I have done minimal amounts of training and it's also basic. We did a Tough Mudder before there was a COVID thing and that was I think that was about eight or nine miles wasn't that far was it? It should have been called a Tough Colder because I didn't get that muddy but I got very cold and wet. Yeah and it took us a while to get around so I'm basing my experience of that and going can I do that twice hopefully a little bit faster and the thing where we did went wrong on the Tough Mudder which we spent far too long pissing about on the obstacles so there was one bit where there's big rollers and rollers in the water and ideally you would have got in and got out because spending water time and cold dirty water was only going to be negative for performance and we were there for half an hour just rolling around and these things. Yeah we went to the team environment and said I'm going to help everybody get through and everyone there was a nice element but yes we did probably spend at least half an hour doing that initial obstacle. So for anybody listening to this going there's actually now there is I understand there is a 10k team so like we are kind of by default having to look at the 21k because I can't do the Sunday but there is now a 10k option so you can do that. There's always a 5k option on the Sunday as well so there are a lot of people at both days and my number one rule for or suggestion for your approach to an obstacle course race if you haven't done one before is that of selfishness. Get yourself around. Don't worry about anybody else. That will mean that you get the best out of the experience. Is that the right message in Jacko and where we are going with this one? It's great messaging if that's what the person wants to hear. I don't know that it's necessarily the number one rule because I do believe we had a couple of fairly like one person doing like the European championships or something joined us last time and shout out to FitGeek, OCR, Steve who I believe the number one rule was something to do with around footwear which I think mine was highly inappropriate at the time. You can do this one in your Vivo. It's not put. I ain't got anything else. I've got rid of everything. I'm only Vivo-ing so yes, I'll be in my Vivo's. Big looks on. Right, let's get off this one and into some chats about reps and sets. So sit back and enjoy the tweets podcast where we get a little bit granular. There we go. Twice in one sitting around program design on how to actually get what you want or whatever that might look like. Here's the jingle. Listen. Players. You're listening to the movement, strength and play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jaco. Now I want to break out of what is potentially a little echo chamber today. In terms of we Jaco and I had a conversation around what do we see in the fitness landscape at the moment, what's happening out there in FitWorld and one of the things I see and I don't know if it's just being manipulated by the algorithms that rule more about my life than I probably appreciate, but I tend to see the fitness industry as hell-bent on volume at the moment and I don't see many people structuring programs around three sets of ten or eight reps, four sets. You see a little bit more of kind of like the maximal strength ranges where people might be kind of doing both in type work, five by five, four by five, that sort of stuff. But what I do see a lot of is like 50, 40, 30, 20, 21, 15, 12, 9, these kind of rep ranges. And when I came through strength and conditioning school, those weren't an option. They were not on the reps. That was like 12. Almost blasphemy to put that down at that point. It was typically not in certain sectors around 2008. If you put any more than 12 on a training program, then you effectively were a PT, not a strength and conditioning coach. That was literally what got said to me once. Since proven to be complete enough to garbage. But I do think it's interesting to think about this because people often get pulled into and influenced by what other people are doing. So why do we find ourselves doing these higher rep ranges? Why are people programming them? And there's a real source of where that's come from. But why are we not still using or why might we choose to use a four sets, eight reps type of protocol with a 90 second rest period in between that still has a massive value. And it's actually where the science sits in terms of physical adaptation. So we're going to dig into a little bit of this one. But Jaco, give us a little bit of flavor as your experience as coming through the programming scientific kind of approach to writing training programs for athletes and then what that's looked like in terms of a calisthenics program and anything else you want to wax on this one? You're reminding me of... I didn't mean to do that then. You're reminding me of... I'm thinking... It just took me back to pre-season where we didn't do a lot of high rep stuff typically like when I was playing rugby and we came back to one pre-season and SNC coach Joe Brunski it was like I've got this new... I've got something new and it's been a bit nasty for you. He was basically... he used to think he was the off-season to dream of ways to just torture us when you'd come back. He'd be allowed six weeks to do whatever he wanted with you. And he called it R20 which was like 20 repetitions with good form let's say but like a reasonable pace and we were doing like five, six, eight like a lot of sets but it's like you were doing way over a hundred reps in quite a short space of time and it would be a good three or four days before you could sit on the toilet without sort of going... there was a lot of stress on the body and we weren't used to... we weren't used to those higher rep ranges because you'd be sticking in your typical... either if we were doing power doing like more maximal strength stuff it would be like three years to fives for the max strength stuff and then like your eights, your tens and then maybe dabbling into a 12 but nothing... nothing that high. So sort of like... just reflecting on my own training and that definitely created an awful different stimulus and in terms of like hypertrophy pre-season did like really well on that, interestingly I didn't I didn't respond well to it it was almost like it was... I don't know, it was almost like I was like my body was just like eating itself I was a bit of a hard, classic sort of like your hard gain or anyway and that much volume but from... I was more of the anomaly most guys like packed on were doing sort of like almost like a kilo a week or something like that if you were like getting your nutrition and eating so packing on some decent decent size in pre-season for a bit something we've talked about before is like and I did it yesterday I did sevens just to be completely completely confused about this before but it's in that range of why seven just never gets any love I... at the moment this will be slightly but my training is different at the moment particularly because I'm trying to do like an ultramarathon where it's like you don't count your reps when you're running but then with the strength stuff that I'm doing I incorporate some of the breath work stuff so I'm actually doing a little bit of like I might be counting my reps during a breath hold for example so I'm not trying to do a certain number of them and then I'm trying to be able to be in control of my breathing when I finish that and it might be they end up doing 18 reps or whatever whatever it ends up being but it's I'm not setting out an intention for it but I'm looking for a different purpose to the training I'm not and I'm not doing low rep stuff because I'm not at the moment requiring like a a strength adaptation and I also don't need sort of hypertrophy stuff at the moment because of the thing that I'm trying to do in a couple of months time so as we would I guess always saying a lot of our advice it always depends and one of the and the most important thing is like doing making sure that your training reflects the things that you're trying to improve on so it might be nice potential well you can share any thoughts on that as well as like if someone is wanting to do we've probably talked about this before in terms of those different rep ranges like if you want to do more strength endurance this is where you need to hit and if you want to do more hypertrophy this is some of the stuff that you need to hit it's just my big thing for people and just for myself is like making sure just knowing that like does your training reflect what you want to do and it might be some of the sometimes for me now is simply is like I just want to enjoy my training so does my do I feel good and do I enjoy the session is my is potentially like how I'm evaluating it which is very unscientific but it's just where I'm currently at with my training I think it's an interesting conversation to reflect on because if I recognize my own biases in this like I come from a place of strengthening conditioning working with athletes where we specifically need adaptations for performance improvements whereas a lot of people might come at this conversation from a more generalist approach and go I just want general really want to be quite fit able general like moderate levels of strength like it and that's what I kind of seeing a little bit of just going what are you getting what is it with training is always like what is a physical adaptation that you are seeking and because we've probably come from a background where it is quite specific I want to do a hypertrophy block because that's what I need in order to get a bigger muscle which can produce more force and therefore give me better power outputs in six to 12 months time potentially whereas for lots of people going and just getting work done is actually the most important thing but I kind of like still look at my own training go well I'm still interested in and that's where you're going to utilise those rep ranges which will be in every kind of personal training and strengthening conditioning book of what happens if you do one rep or what's adaptation and what's the intensity that you should be targeting at that one repetition range of maximal strength type work and what happens if you get 10 or 12 repetitions because of physical logical adaptation through that spectrum will be different so max strength will typically between one and five and there's grey areas in between let's not think it's exclusive to load maximal strength you can work between the one to five rep range and those are going to be off percentages of your one repetition max of 100% of your one rep max the most amount of weight you can lift for one repetition you can do no more than one through to let's say 85% of your one rep max at your five rep ranges so you can go five reps 85% you're probably not going to get six or seven out you then start to move into what's typically hypertrophy ranges from six through to 10 to 12 but research is now suggesting that you can get hypertrophy all the way to 20 reps to your point Jaco from before because what we're doing then is high gain hypertrophy of type one muscle fibers and type two muscle fibers because they both will respond differently to different sort of loading schemes I think the thing for me is where I'm looking at it and going when I see people going into workouts where they've got large kind of rep ranges where we might be going 21s 10s all this kind of stuff throwing together 50 of that or whatever it might be mixing with some work on like a ski or something like that the fitness combined piece I think this is kind of like a self reflective piece of going since the crossfit and functional fitness has influenced the fitness market so much it wasn't there when I first started in the industry so what's happened I think now and the way that I look at it like to your something that you were done with training before but your strength work was done in the gym you kind of 1 to 10 rep range kind of work and your conditioning work was done on the pitch whereas conditioning I think has now very much become part of the standard gym environment as we've got skiers, assault bikes all that sort of all of that kind of fitness stuff has been brought inside so we've now got this kind of like combined environment where you can get away with doing a more general conditioning type program but I was actually at the gym this morning and looked at him and was like what I see group classes doing is it's conditioning because I don't think and people might argue if I'm wrong about this one but you're not going to get stronger from doing like high volume like kettlebell snatchers or even like high volume kind of pull up work if you're mixing it in with conditioning work because you're just going to get tired so your body's ability or your muscles ability to continue to produce the amount of force which is going to create a strength adaptation is going to be compromised so you get some strength endurance or you get maybe some conditioning or fitness type elements but if you want to get better at pull ups or you want to get better at muscle ups then you need to go and train strength based adaptations and respect that that needs a rest period my last point Jack I'm going to bounce it back over to you so maximal strength type work because of the energy system that you're utilizing we typically need between three and five minutes of rest in between sets to allow you to go and train at that intensity to get that strength based adaptation given your the desired objective or the target adaptation you're looking for if you go and try and lift heavy and you don't give yourself the rest period what you're going to find is that load just drops down you're just never going to get anywhere near because you're not getting a recovery in so it comes down to the specificity and I guess the challenge here is like I see a lot of volume based mixed model kind of conditioning work with some strength work in there I think my message to people really is understand what for me at least and here's my bias what is strength work and what is conditioning work and if you're doing a lot of conditioning work thinking you're going to get strong and that's going to improve your performance in calisthenics or whatever it is you're looking for there's probably a disconnect there like the last one I look at CrossFit classes and you don't get better at CrossFit by doing CrossFit classes you get better at doing CrossFit by training your strength variables and then taking it into a class environment where you can then execute and utilize the strength that you've gained as a result of doing the five by five deadlifts with a three to five minute rest period that just doesn't get programmed really in group settings very regularly yeah yeah now that there's one the point that you make around like the disconnect I think is something that I feel is important that me training or a person training in a way that is helping create everything from like they want to do something very specific around like learning a skill or they want to do something specific in terms of maximum strength for the ones who are specific in terms of high portrayal or they want to do something less specific they just want to move better or they want to enjoy or be more flexible whatever it is if the training reflects that then there is no disconnect and like we're all good like do the thing that you're trying to do if you are trying to do X but have got a bit there's a disconnect or we've got confused or we've got misled or whatever it's caused to do it but your training doesn't actually reflect what you're trying to achieve then that disconnect is I sort of for some reason I don't want to use the word problem but I've said it so because I don't feel like it feels like it fits but it's almost like like yeah that's just where someone that's where you want to if you feel like that's maybe you like connect with someone a coach or get some advice for some people and try to maybe do a bit of learning yourself to understand these are the things I want to do how does my training need to reflect to make this happen that's sort of my my personal take away from this and just like reflecting on my training going like okay is what I'm doing now currently setting me up for what I think I hope I'm getting out of it if that makes sense not getting out and particularly if you're not getting if you're not getting out of your training what you're hoping to then maybe there is a disconnect that's probably one thing to reflect on I think for most people that in our community most people with doing kind of things are going to want to get stronger like that's going to be an objective and I think a lot of people are also wanting to make sure they maintain some level of kind of metabolic conditioning or fitness and I think that's for me where there's just a differentiate between the two of how do you get more specific about getting the strength gains that you want to get you closer to your goals and then also building that conditioning components and not kind of mushing them together so that you end up with something which is kind of to be fair if you mush it together like you'll get fitter, like you'll get fitness is the easiest one it's the most simple one to get just do more work and do less rest and change the intensities around that it's not difficult to do that if it's a non-specific adaptation but where the strength side of things is it takes more time go just to say like I'm trying to get good at running along distance but I'd also still want to be strong I still want to have some strength so what I could do in theory would be or put a weighted vest on and go and run a lot that's ticking both those two boxes isn't it? you laugh because you know that it isn't ticking those boxes it's just like mushing mushing the things together so do I do some training focus on some strength and then on a different day or a different thing is then I'm going to do the run so then I'm getting different doses but try not to mush them together too much the other thing I was going to say actually which is about you were talking about like respecting the rest period you need in between some maximum strength work any strength rate ratio is if you're trying to achieve something in calisthenics something that feels impossible that you've never done before there's going to be yes probably a skill element to it but there's going to massively be a strength and a strong you are we said this loads times a strong you are the easier the thing is to do and we've had this question a few times before where we find it difficult to just not to do anything for three to four to five minutes because we feel like we're unproductive so it's like can I can I do a bit of stretching or can I do a bit of this or can I do a bit of this in that rest period it's like you can but just understand that you're potentially diluting what it is that you're then going to go and do the more effort and energy that you're using up during that rest period it's going to influence then your actual force output for the strength gains you're going to get and that so if you know that you're doing that then that's fine and you might be trying to juggle a couple of things at once but know that you are diluting it rather than almost if you find it very difficult to sit and just wait for those three minutes then maybe that's a good challenge for you of just like maybe you do a tiny bit of mindfulness then maybe we talked a little bit around can you can you do something with your breathing to just down regulate a little bit for those three four five minutes so that you come back into the session back into your then work a little bit more facilitating that recovery so rather than diluting and diminishing but in that rest period can you maximize that rest period would be something that I would be considering to do but it that takes that's going to then take a little bit of discipline what it might look like from if you're going to try and help recovery for breathing which I think we probably talked about last time but just a very very simplest one of like have you breathing under control in and out through the nose and extending the exhale is more parasympathetic promoting for that for that recovery response so doing some longer nasal exiles for a few minutes is going to be beneficial for that recovery period so there's something you can drop in straight away or have a go at dropping in straight away and you feel like you're doing something which is often one of the big things for people I think it's like the challenge around that about rest periods particularly is where people want to be productive then go I've got a limited amount of time so if I go into the gym and I'm trying to get this maximum strength adaptation and I've got to do three minutes minimum between sets you look at how much you can actually get done in a workout and think that's not great like I've not I don't think I've achieved a lot and oftentimes when we're talking to athletes about maximum strength training and said you're going to leave the gym feeling like you've not done that much work today you're not going to be covered in sweat you're probably not going to be that sore like it's going to feel like you've just lifted some heavy weights and gone home and that's the thing that I think I want to get across to people is just to understand that that specificity and it might not seem like you've done a lot but in terms of getting the fastest way to always getting your goals if that's a must look for example you need to build that maximal strength in the pulling movement to then be able to get the power output that you're going to need the fastest way to do that is to do really high quality work and you hit the nail on the head jacket when it comes down to discipline of actually coming in and going I'm just going to hit these reps that's the target for the session today that's what I'm going to focus on and you can look at the rest of your training week like I don't tend to mash together into one session fitness and conditioning and strength I'll have a strength based sessions most of the time and I'll put a conditioning based session in there because the focus then for me means that I don't have if I've got like lifting based movements within it I don't have to worry about that being that hard I can I can just hit that an intensity which is just going to get the conditioning output rather than going in there and going I need to go and do some heavy weights and then compromising on technique and form because that's not the focus of that work out I can do that work and I can get better shoulder pressing or whatever it might be in my strength based work the conditioning is then like just get heart rate up do a moderate amount of work make it difficult but move well and then just see those two different things that flies in the face where a lot of people are at but that's kind of where my thoughts and opinion are about structuring a workout at the moment because I'm chasing specificity of adaptation effective in and not trying to just kind of blur it because I think in your time this is kind of going to look back to my first point when your time poor I want to know that what I'm doing is getting me what I need or what I want rather than just kind of like it's that classic shotgun versus a sniper project I can do all of this work some of it might be getting me stronger, some of it might be getting me fitter some of it might be negating each other I'm just going to do my my solution to what I want is just to do a lot I'm like I actually want to do less that's not lazy it's just like I want to be specific I know what I'm getting in therefore I can be confident that my training program is going in the right direction yeah and then and also then like when you efficiently the time means you can go and do more of the other thing you might love training but there'll be other things in your life hopefully that you love also and it's like you've got more time to go and do those other things that you love doing like going and running a Spartan race or hopefully you have some things that you love that are non-training based as well perfect well that's just a bit of a download something that was running around that has this week around sort of just what we're seeing out there people doing and just some clarity on there because we know that training program design is complicated and difficult and can be confusing and you can often just go get pulled into seeing what's happening on Instagram and also remember like so what you see on social media is going to be a snapshot of a workout so people will probably typically post the hardest thing that they're doing or the bit that's like the most Insta worthy but that kind of that one minute that they show you doesn't necessarily represent everything that they're doing so just bear in mind what a whole session might look like and just get some clarity and go what I'm actually doing and understand a little bit more about the reps and sets if that is if you are chasing specific physiological adaptations in terms of maximum strength or hypertrophy or strength endurance, whatever it might be get clearly rep ranges, respect those because they're proven in the science to work and tried and tested through generations of elite athletes bodybuilders all that sort of stuff and then look at how what does it mean when or what does it look like when you're doing this other elements of your training program I might do this because I always want to encourage people to go I want to see more people sharing the catch me like here's the worst thing I did today in my training session or here's the thing I'm all the things that I do here's the thing I'm worst at like let's start let's I'm thinking of the opposite of a highlight reel rather than sharing your things I'm really well things I'm rubbish at rather than sharing the crème brûlée let's share the eaten mess I like eating mess I was going to say just like something a bit something that I was like it surprises me you don't like eating mess meringue and cream mate too sweet I'm not a big meringue fan it's basically sugar I've got also my experience of Catherine makes things and when it just looks a bit messy she might call it an eating mess okay and maybe it's actually nothing to do with that because when you said eating mess I think I had more of a picture of Rocky Road in my head and that's not the same thing okay now eating mess is like cream meringue I think I've got some kind of fruity sort of stuff in it but right it's a similar to Rocky Road Rocky Road chocolate with marshmallows in and biscuit and all the things I'm not quite sure how we ended up here I think we're going to be talking about that oh that's right right so if you've got any questions that you would like us to answer guys please send them to us you can get us on our email address it's tim at or david at schoolofcalisthenics.com or you can Instagram them to us if that is also a preferred medium we're not on TikTok are we Jaco I don't know if you can send DM on TikTok I don't know if you can there is a school cast on TikTok you need to go to the program Tim you're not in TikTok I've shared a few things on TikTok for us we are on TikTok there we go I didn't even know that so if you want to get in touch with us you can do that and we would love to answer your questions so send them in and we'll do that next time we have an available slot in our busy podcast schedule until next time keep exploring your physical potential through movement, strength and play Class dismissed