Transcript
Speaker: And we're rolling, baby.
Speaker: Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you may be listening to this.
Speaker: I'm joined on the Clever Dummies podcast by one of my dearest, dearest friends, a beloved brother in arms, my good man, Anik.
Speaker: How are you going, brother?
Speaker: I'm good, man.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: It's good to be here.
Speaker: You know, good to be chatting to you on this wonderful Saturday night.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: Recording times that evening.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So, you know, you got to speak of the recording time and it's a beautiful day here today in Sydney, Australia.
Speaker: I don't know how it is in up where you are.
Speaker: Oh, it's beautiful, but you just add about 50% humidity and that's just...
Speaker: That's just how it rolls up here.
Speaker: But no, we've had a good stretch of very warm days.
Speaker: February is the hottest month of the year for us tropical climate battlers.
Speaker: And we're expecting some rain in the next few days.
Speaker: But no, other than that, it's been really good.
Speaker: I was just chatting to my landlord a couple of hours ago and she was like, oh, you know, do you like podcasts at all?
Speaker: I said, do I like podcasts?
Speaker: And so she may be listening to this eventually.
Speaker: So Vanessa, if you are, hello and thank you for tuning in.
Speaker: This is where I start talking about how good of a tenant you are.
Speaker: Ah, that's right.
Speaker: Talk about my terrible history, you mean.
Speaker: It's like a job interview way.
Speaker: It's like, that'd be actually a good way to do it.
Speaker: Like if you applied for, you know, applied for a job where they were like curating you, you know, there's a lot of people and you do mention or you put it on your resume that you're a podcaster and then you just release a podcast.
Speaker: just the worst, like the biggest stitch up of all time.
Speaker: It's probably a smart idea, actually.
Speaker: Well, for sure.
Speaker: You gotta, you gotta, you know, you have to, um,
Speaker: You have to do it.
Speaker: You just got to talk yourself up like how you've helped some kids in Africa and all that kind of fun stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Speaking of all day, I'll tell you what's really cool.
Speaker: It actually has nothing to do with kids in Africa, but anyway, that's a good little segue.
Speaker: We were looking at obviously the podcast we did a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker: That was the one, you know, the first one we'd done for nearly a year.
Speaker: And we had, you know, we had
Speaker: We had a lot of people listen to it, which was really cool.
Speaker: And we had a lot of people listen, you know, a fair way through the whole episode too.
Speaker: And it kind of made me think what's, I know some of the stats on YouTube videos, but I wonder what,
Speaker: you know, and podcasts go for different times.
Speaker: I wonder what like a gold standard or a good podcast average listening time is.
Speaker: You know, I think about something like Joe Rogan that's quite long, like three plus hours.
Speaker: It's probably, you know, a percentage.
Speaker: Another podcast I've sent to is like an hour and a half, an hour.
Speaker: Like, I wonder what a good number is.
Speaker: Do you know?
Speaker: Well, I can Google that and find out right now.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: You should go to the big dog.
Speaker: Chat GPT as well.
Speaker: He will no doubt give you some life as he always does.
Speaker: But, no, it's been a good week anyway.
Speaker: To touch back on what you said before, I'm back into sort of full-time work this week and back into full-time training as well.
Speaker: I can't remember if I mentioned last time, but I had a...
Speaker: I had a rest week coming up, so I took the week off.
Speaker: And like two days before I was due to start the rest week at the gym, I hurt my knees.
Speaker: So it was like perfect timing.
Speaker: And I'm actually getting an MRI next week because it might be some meniscus, but I was a bit worried about it at first because it was quite a sharp pain and I've not too, you know, I haven't had knee injuries before, but I seem to have gotten through the worst of it.
Speaker: So I've just kind of got to be careful.
Speaker: But yeah, it's got to be back, bloody feeling good.
Speaker: Don't hit those endorphins for a few days.
Speaker: Like you just realize how much you miss it.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: Well, I found out the answer.
Speaker: The average missing time is 15 minutes per episode.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And of course, topping off to like 20 minutes and 30 minutes for more like attentive podcasts, like true crimes and stuff.
Speaker: So those podcasts get higher per episode listening time.
Speaker: Yeah, I've got a few friends that like the true crime or some of the, you know, there's even some where they do like cold cases.
Speaker: That would probably be pretty good listening where it's like, you know, they're kind of investigating cases that haven't been solved.
Speaker: But yeah, we've done pretty well.
Speaker: Well, there's a... I know I've said this before.
Speaker: There's this really wonderful podcast by... Oh my God, I can't remember the name now.
Speaker: I've always used to talk about it.
Speaker: It'll come back to me.
Speaker: But there's a really wonderful true crime podcast.
Speaker: That's the only true crime podcast I've ever heard.
Speaker: That was the first and the last one.
Speaker: But it was great.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: It was probably... It was a really good podcast.
Speaker: There's a station in the US called NPR, National Prime Radio, something like that, and they transition most of their business over to podcasting, and they're apparently really popular.
Speaker: I could have been on that.
Speaker: Have you heard of NPR before?
Speaker: Oh, no, National Public Radio.
Speaker: It is, sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of like their ABC, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like that's the value of those, well, shorts as well, but even the clip.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: I remember.
Speaker: It was called Serial.
Speaker: Serial?
Speaker: Serial.
Speaker: It was so good.
Speaker: Also by a podcasting studio.
Speaker: It's in... I'll tell you what, that does actually sound familiar.
Speaker: In Baltimore, I think?
Speaker: Yeah, in the US.
Speaker: Baltimore, Maryland.
Speaker: So it's on the East Coast, if I remember.
Speaker: And they had this...
Speaker: Really good.
Speaker: The first season was just absolutely wonderful.
Speaker: Oh, no, sorry.
Speaker: They're not in Baltimore.
Speaker: The first season was about this kid who was like maybe 16.
Speaker: Don't quote me on the details, okay?
Speaker: So I have no idea, but I'm just making it up.
Speaker: Let's just say maybe he was like, I don't know, like he was young, right?
Speaker: Allegedly, he was arrested and charged for the murder of his classmate.
Speaker: And his ex-girlfriend, his name was Adnan C. That's what it was.
Speaker: And he always said he was innocent.
Speaker: And yeah, it was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful podcast.
Speaker: That's fascinating.
Speaker: That sounds fascinating.
Speaker: I feel like that, yeah, that's obviously a certain genre and it's a certain niche, but that just appeals across the board, like your Netflix shows, your Amazon shows on true crime.
Speaker: Quick, I just Googled something and something really funny came up.
Speaker: You'll enjoy this.
Speaker: So after this podcast, because of this podcast, Adan's actually out of the prison now.
Speaker: Ah, nice.
Speaker: So they actually managed to get him out.
Speaker: So it's the opposite of what happened with the Tiger King.
Speaker: He's in for longer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's actually out.
Speaker: They said police will continue investigation, but for now he's out.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So that's the last episode.
Speaker: So it was an updated episode.
Speaker: This podcast started in 2014.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And 2022, October, he got out of prison.
Speaker: Far out.
Speaker: That's incredible, eh?
Speaker: It's crazy.
Speaker: Pretty hard to get away with crimes nowadays, bro.
Speaker: He was innocent, allegedly.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Far out.
Speaker: Love those alleged release.
Speaker: They're my favorite thing to say.
Speaker: Well, yeah, true.
Speaker: Ongoing.
Speaker: Ongoing type stuff, eh?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like I would wonder how many, you know, good podcasts, particularly ones that are on Spotify or Apple or Google, how much of their revenue comes from obviously not just YouTube but even just the partial videos they post on YouTube.
Speaker: So the best of the highlights are like that.
Speaker: that's kind of its own world in itself.
Speaker: And, you know, I remember for a long time when I used to watch Joe Rogan all the time and I couldn't catch an episode of his, I would just watch like a couple of the 10-minute clips and you kind of feel like you've watched the episode.
Speaker: Like that in itself is pretty cool.
Speaker: Well, that's a good question, actually.
Speaker: I mean, I think a lot of the TikTok stuff or like YouTube short stuff is a lot more to do with driving viewership or driving content
Speaker: what do we call that?
Speaker: Awareness more so than actual revenue generation.
Speaker: I think revenue generation is usually done on long form content anyway because it's more about retention and how much you can place ad placements and whatnot.
Speaker: So I think a lot more of those shorts are always designed to do examples.
Speaker: Just get you over.
Speaker: Yeah, get you over.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, not so much to drive sales.
Speaker: Revenue so much themselves.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: What's really interesting as well, and that's the strategy you'll see with some of those famous TikTokers as well that they became really famous on or went viral on TikTok.
Speaker: They switched over to a YouTube channel.
Speaker: They started pushing their YouTube channel.
Speaker: And also, funny enough, they're also pushing Instagram because
Speaker: It's easier to make money on those two platforms as opposed to it is as to make money on TikTok or YouTube shows because it's, I mean, you can still make money on AdSense and whatnot, like so as in, you know, per views and whatnot, but it's much harder.
Speaker: You get paid a lot less because the retention is a lot less there.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And that is quite high in the views too compared to it.
Speaker: compared to other platforms obviously because people are just watching so many different pieces of content because they're just so short.
Speaker: And what about the big guns that have like your big contracts with a streaming provider or with a platform and then they get their individual ad revenue and then they get obviously, you know, if you enter a code, they get a send to that.
Speaker: Like it's pretty cool how they've got like that,
Speaker: four or five ways to make, you know, then they sell their own merchandise and then, you know, OnlyFans, you know, all that good stuff.
Speaker: Like it just, it's a rabbit hole.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, if you, I mean, if you, when you start talking about the likes of Joe Rogan or Rogan Joe, Joe Brogan, Joe Brogan, right.
Speaker: When you start talking about Joe Rogan, I mean, he, the whole idea of getting Spotify, getting him over to, you know, to, to Spotify was the fact that,
Speaker: a lot more people will start spending time on Spotify.
Speaker: That's all it is.
Speaker: It's like a big, uh, you know, campaign to drive him, drive people to use Spotify.
Speaker: Cause that's all transitioning into their own social platform.
Speaker: You know, you've got your audible books now, which you probably saw over there.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And they've obviously kind of got their real and story function going as well.
Speaker: Like, it's only a matter of time.
Speaker: They keep sort of segueing through it.
Speaker: Is it Facebook owned or they never sold?
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: Never sold.
Speaker: Do you remember what it was like they were nearly going to?
Speaker: Yeah, there was something like that going on.
Speaker: I'll tell you what I don't like about Spotify.
Speaker: I do think Spotify is a bit scum, to be honest.
Speaker: Because they're very expensive for what they do, if you think.
Speaker: Now that there's so many other options.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: I thought about this.
Speaker: So I tried YouTube music.
Speaker: Brilliant.
Speaker: Much better.
Speaker: One thing that you want on a music platform is that predictability, like how well it knows you and it gives you the kind of music that you like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So YouTube is really good at doing that.
Speaker: The benefit of YouTube is you can sign up to YouTube for $16 or $20, whatever it is.
Speaker: I think $16.
Speaker: I don't know what the number is.
Speaker: You get YouTube premium as well as YouTube music for free.
Speaker: Why would I pay for
Speaker: Spotify and especially if you're someone who's already paying for YouTube premium, why would you?
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: I thought that was separate because even some long podcast or sermons or even songs now, you're watching seven or eight different cut-ins of ads and it's starting to get a little bit brutal.
Speaker: So you pay for them because I've only been seeing the music one.
Speaker: They've been pumping it.
Speaker: And I had a premium account once and they say, I'll come back for this or that.
Speaker: So it's actually worth dabbling, you reckon?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So, I mean, you don't want to get a membership of YouTube Music.
Speaker: This is where YouTube is smart because they don't, I mean, they're like, oh, yeah, we'll play the smart game, right?
Speaker: So YouTube said, and I don't know how long they'll keep this going.
Speaker: Maybe they'll separate it at some point.
Speaker: But for now, it sounds like a pretty good deal, right?
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Because they might go, okay, you know,
Speaker: fuck them all, we're going to sell it separately, right?
Speaker: Because Google did that with Google Photos, right?
Speaker: What's the music?
Speaker: Does it look similar to the YouTube regular platform?
Speaker: I've not used it.
Speaker: It's very similar to Spotify.
Speaker: It's not as fancy, but it does have everything.
Speaker: Plus, with the added benefit of having a lot more music that is community created as opposed to just artists.
Speaker: So, for example...
Speaker: our podcast will end up is, has ended up on YouTube music.
Speaker: So like without us doing anything.
Speaker: So like, and you and I could sing a song and many like get ourselves to own YouTube music as well.
Speaker: So there's a lot more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like regular YouTube.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like edits.
Speaker: And like, you could listen to Joe Rogan's podcast there as well.
Speaker: Like all that stuff.
Speaker: Like you could listen to podcasts as YouTube music instead of YouTube.
Speaker: So there's, there's that added benefit, that integration between.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So YouTube premium is,
Speaker: Oh, YouTube and YouTube music together is $16.99.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As opposed to Spotify premium.
Speaker: Well, we have a family account, which I know is like 21 now.
Speaker: So what's an individual cost?
Speaker: We don't talk about that.
Speaker: Spotify could be hearing right now.
Speaker: That's so funny.
Speaker: Sorry, Spotify.
Speaker: Half the people on that list I don't even talk to anymore.
Speaker: They still live at my address.
Speaker: Let me see.
Speaker: What is Spotify Premium cost?
Speaker: So, while you're looking that up, then feel free to cut it now just so we keep the... $12.99.
Speaker: Yeah, okay, for the individual.
Speaker: So, yeah, an extra $5 and you're bloody.
Speaker: You've got all the added benefits.
Speaker: That's so tempting.
Speaker: It is, it is.
Speaker: with your training and we had our challenge last week.
Speaker: That was heaps of fun.
Speaker: That really made me push.
Speaker: It's probably why I got injured, actually, but it really made me push hard.
Speaker: It was quite enjoyable.
Speaker: But how's your training been going anyway, mate?
Speaker: Oh, have a look at my stats.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Look, look.
Speaker: By all means, it's been good.
Speaker: You know, it's good.
Speaker: I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker: I actually...
Speaker: had to cut down my schedule because I thought I was, well, no, I didn't think, I knew that I was overtraining.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know, I know, I know you always used to joke about overtraining, right?
Speaker: But I've trained in the past, like past, last month, I trained basically 28 out of the 30 days.
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: And, and all of those days were like, they weren't like,
Speaker: 30 minute sessions or like 15 minutes.
Speaker: They were like 75 minute sessions.
Speaker: And what happened was.
Speaker: So that's where I'm really wanting to learn about periodization.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and, and so like I'm looking at six days a week now too.
Speaker: And, you know, you can do sort of four weeks hard, one week off, four weeks hard, one week off, and maybe that's a good idea, but keep going.
Speaker: I feel like I cut you off there.
Speaker: No, no, I was just, I mean,
Speaker: My point was, I noticed the recovery.
Speaker: I started hitting a plateau very quickly.
Speaker: I think, as I mentioned in the last episode, I needed to build up strength fast and maybe I needed to do that.
Speaker: I needed to lift pretty much every, not every day, but the way I was doing it, I think I shared my split as well.
Speaker: I was training strength, like heavy lifts, like two days a week.
Speaker: And then three days a week, I was training like heavy strength, like leg day, heavy back, pull, push, followed by
Speaker: and still doing my bodybuilding style training for rest of the days.
Speaker: So I was essentially training seven days a week, sorry, six days a week, right?
Speaker: And that was last week.
Speaker: Last week on, I got to about Tuesday and I felt shit, like by all accord.
Speaker: I almost felt like nauseous.
Speaker: I felt nauseous at the gym.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, well, clearly my body's not coping with this much training.
Speaker: That's an interesting, yeah, like sort of nervous system reaction is feeling sick like that.
Speaker: Like if you just feel tired and a bit flat, it's like, all right, maybe I didn't sleep enough.
Speaker: But when you start dabbling in that like proper repeated under recovery and your muscles don't have all the time and,
Speaker: your even like your your energy systems that creatine phosphate system that that short burst system that two three seconds of energy when that's like that's probably what that is it's just going now not today buddy boy for sure so that's what it was i mean you best believe i still benched 120 kilos for three drugs but i didn't stop i didn't stop but so i i came back same day i came back
Speaker: Well, you're already at the gym.
Speaker: You might as well do it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You're not going to go.
Speaker: You've already had three skips.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, I went to the gym that day.
Speaker: I came back.
Speaker: I said, okay, I need to rejig my training system.
Speaker: So, I really want to keep one day like push and pull.
Speaker: I really love the idea of that.
Speaker: Like doing some deadlifts in that day and like bench press.
Speaker: Like just some heavy lifts.
Speaker: So, I said, well, what can I do?
Speaker: So, I dropped my training down to five days now from six days.
Speaker: And like six days.
Speaker: When I said six days, seven days, I was doing some cardio as well.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: It was like zero non-active days.
Speaker: So I've dropped it under five days.
Speaker: And the idea is that Friday will be, so I train Monday through to Friday, Monday through to Thursday, Friday with like zero training, apart from just walking around the house.
Speaker: Yeah, so Friday is a day off.
Speaker: And then Sunday I'll do like active recovery.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's kind of the idea.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: It sort of gives you that bulk of work in the week.
Speaker: You feel like you're hooking in for three or four days straight.
Speaker: So you're sort of got that solid and then you just sort of finish the week kind of nice.
Speaker: Is that Saturday session you're probably hooking in?
Speaker: Saturday session is my leg day.
Speaker: And my leg day is like, well, like heavy.
Speaker: The leg day, I have to say one leg day.
Speaker: But my one leg day is like usually go for like 75 minutes.
Speaker: And it's like a really good leg day.
Speaker: So I don't really feel like I need to do two leg days.
Speaker: But the...
Speaker: the reason I did it this way and I took Sunday and Friday off was feeling that, that nauseous feeling made me realize I wasn't just physically tired as a, as I was, was mentally tired as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So with like work, like of course everything going on.
Speaker: And then like, you can imagine like, you know, I'm sure I, I'm not sure.
Speaker: I know the fact that like going to a gym also plague, you need like mental fortitude as well to like continue doing that.
Speaker: Like, and then,
Speaker: I think I felt nauseous out of like burnt out, but not more so than, so I was like, okay, well, I can cut that down.
Speaker: That's easy.
Speaker: Keep going.
Speaker: I was going to say, and then Sunday, I was like, instead of taking a weekday off because I worked,
Speaker: I thought it'd be really smart to take a day off from everything where I can like, just mentally recover and like physically recover as well.
Speaker: And work is better when you have trains or like if you aren't going to train, like I feel like they can go hand in hand.
Speaker: So that's, and then yeah, you can have a full mental, like spiritual, physical day off, right?
Speaker: Like that's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's kind of the idea at the moment.
Speaker: So, but like going, like thinking thoughts behind it, like I haven't been,
Speaker: And as I shared, like, last, when I was talking about last episode, like, I was going into planning as well.
Speaker: And, like, I sat down start of this month, like, which is three days over, right?
Speaker: And I did, like, a full review of, like, how I was doing.
Speaker: And, like, I was checking for all the things that I said I would do.
Speaker: And then one of the items that I listed was, like, I'll train five to six days a week.
Speaker: And I said, well, I'll be training seven days, and we're going to have to cut it back down to back.
Speaker: it's just the game of averages yeah so I thought it was really good and you know it was it was brilliant so being able to and that's what it's all about like the whole having a check-in like month-end check-in what's worked this month this hasn't worked I mean my thought was like this is all instinct there's no like I don't know what the science is maybe science thinks I should take train one day train one day off but
Speaker: For me, I just thought that sounded like having a one full day off from work and just training might be really good for me.
Speaker: Yeah, it's so multifaceted and your own lifestyle and your own personal stresses are gonna contribute to it massively.
Speaker: Like, you know, when I got sort of, I'd say just over six months ago when I was like, had committed myself to doing it again and getting back on a schedule.
Speaker: Before then I was still training, but it was like some days, you know, I'd be four days one week and then one day the next kind of thing.
Speaker: So I came back with like wanting to do pretty much full body nearly every day just to kind of, because I was like, all right, if I'm only going to train three or four days a week, full body is really efficient.
Speaker: And you can kind of break it up where you're still wanting to hit, you know, hemis and quads on separate days.
Speaker: You're hitting chest and back on separate days.
Speaker: So you've got enough time to recover and,
Speaker: um i've been really interested in like shoulder stabilization and hip strength as well so like having a chance to do all those things but then it sort of dawned on me and it's just funny how long it took but after a few months of doing that i realized i was doing five or six days a week and i was still sticking with the full body split i'm like okay i'm definitely like not giving my body chance enough to um to um
Speaker: to recover.
Speaker: And so my initial results really good because I was getting back into it and then there was definitely a long plateau phase.
Speaker: So leading into this shift now, which was my week off, I've readjusted and it was also largely for a
Speaker: just to keep it fun and interesting like um it was important i changed it up again and i thought what i was going to do was i was going to structure my entire training schedule around the three big lifts the the bench press the deadlift and the squat and i did one of each and it was quite good but i thought no and it's too similar to what i was doing because you still do accessory work
Speaker: It's too similar to what I was doing with the full body splits.
Speaker: And so I've decided to go back to the classic to do your sort of chest and triceps, your back and biceps, your shoulders, your legs, and then your cardio.
Speaker: But I'm going to do it in a way that I feel like I'll do my heavy, strong hypertrophy training, but then I'll still do my endurance, muscular endurance training, which I'm looking like I really enjoy as well.
Speaker: So I'm probably going to do like back and biceps, chest and triceps, and then I'll have a cardio exercise
Speaker: mobility, accessory stuff type day where I'm not doing a lot of heavy lifting, but I'm doing a lot of like zone four high intensity work, cardiovascular, so bike riding and sprints and stuff like that, a bit of kickboxing.
Speaker: And then I'll do my shoulders and then I'll do my legs and then I'll do another cardio day.
Speaker: So if I'm going to do six days a week,
Speaker: Then I've got sort of two heavy lifting days.
Speaker: I've got the cardio, not break, but I've got the hypertrophy break and then it's much more endurance.
Speaker: And then I have the hypertrophy, then the break again.
Speaker: Like if your strength training, this is the periodization thing.
Speaker: If your strength training, they're saying it's like three to four days is optimal.
Speaker: And if your hypertrophy is like two to three days, particularly if you go hard and then with endurance, you can kind of,
Speaker: It's less about that.
Speaker: So if you, you know, you still want to, in a perfect world, you still like to train a body part once or even twice a week to get maximal growth.
Speaker: But then you also need time to recover.
Speaker: And as you know, something like chest and then shoulders, you're kind of doing the same movement patterns.
Speaker: So if you can put like three days between chest and shoulders, then you're doing pretty good.
Speaker: If you can try to put, you know, three days between like deadlifts and squats, if you're going to do them on separate days, then that's a pretty good idea.
Speaker: So it's all about figuring out, you know, how to do that.
Speaker: So I think if I put, if I do it that way, then I should be coming pretty close.
Speaker: But it's definitely a new thing.
Speaker: Like thinking about doing it six days a week.
Speaker: Like normally you just have enough days off, three, four or five days a week that you'd be all right.
Speaker: But you definitely have to be a lot more, a lot more serious when it comes to six days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, oh, a hundred percent.
Speaker: I mean, that was my, my initial thought was, I mean,
Speaker: you tell me what you think of this split.
Speaker: And I thought about that as well, like in terms of periodization, periodization, whatever the word is, right?
Speaker: The idea was train chest, like at the crunch schedule.
Speaker: It's like train chest and tries, followed by back, so Monday, chest and tries, the old bro day with chest and tries, Monday, chest Mondays, followed by back and vice on Tuesday.
Speaker: then Thursday's shoulder.
Speaker: So I had one day off, which is completely off push.
Speaker: And then this is where it, this is where I run out of day and run out of options, right?
Speaker: Is that after shoulders, I have to put push and pull again, push and pull day.
Speaker: Otherwise, where do I put it, right?
Speaker: This kind of question.
Speaker: It's the weird, what do I do with it?
Speaker: So, and my thought was, and like,
Speaker: Here's the problem.
Speaker: I want to hit shoulders twice as well.
Speaker: But how am I going to do that is the real question.
Speaker: Maybe do I just sneak in a couple of exercises with chest?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And just do push instead of doing chest.
Speaker: Push it.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And that's what I just call it.
Speaker: And then I just do push, push, pull, push, pull.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think like what, what is it about your shoulders that you want to be training that frequent?
Speaker: Um, not in a bad way, but in a good way, like, is it, is it size?
Speaker: Is it, do you have like, for me, I have imbalances, so I want to train a bit more so I can even that out.
Speaker: Is it, is it just for pure size?
Speaker: Like you want to grow the shoulders?
Speaker: I mean, I think it's size and strength.
Speaker: But I would, when it comes to your shoulder day, I would definitely just put like, as you do, you're so good with your volume, like put big volume on.
Speaker: So you're doing 10, 15.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: sets at least of each you know part of the shoulder but then i would do at the end of your chest day uh or um yeah at the end of your chest day i would do like supersets and then make it shoulders so if you're doing like pec flies do some lateral raises or um or some shrugs or something like that sorry i'd probably superset them in yeah so it's not take away from your core chest work but um
Speaker: um and then and then just with your big lifts of the chest which is probably dumbbell press and bench press just do like six six sets so you're getting heaps of work there so by the time you'll throw your shoulders in your chest is pretty cooked anyway so that might be the way to do it yeah that's a good point so i think sneaking some shoulders on monday with dry chest yeah and then go back and back and by normal and then go normal so shoulders
Speaker: as per normal, lots of volume.
Speaker: And then when I tried to do strength training on like push and pull, don't do anything with shoulders, just do, but then still falls after shoulders.
Speaker: So that's the, that's what I think.
Speaker: You could, you could switch, you could switch your Wednesday and Thursday.
Speaker: So you could do three day off, two day off.
Speaker: That would be another way to do it as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll have to – well, I'll trial this next week and see how that goes.
Speaker: And the following week, like, you know, might have to rejig it again.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker: No, that's always good.
Speaker: And, you know, like, you can always do them in that close order.
Speaker: But if you're going to do a really powerful – like, if you're doing a strong shoulder day, like, you shouldn't necessarily need to go again.
Speaker: And when you do go again, you're kind of like, I don't need to right now because you know what it feels like when your muscles are recovering and you try to work and they're like –
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I think that's what I'll do.
Speaker: I'll go by feel.
Speaker: I mean, this is what I was doing previously.
Speaker: But you've always had pretty good shoulders.
Speaker: You've always had strong shoulders and that probably means that you can recover quite well too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Previously, this was my previous schedule, was back and by is Monday, Tuesday, shoulders and arms, Wednesday, strength training.
Speaker: I'm talking about heavy pull, like heavy deadlift, heavy weighted pull-ups, like that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I don't repeat any of the exercises that I did on like back day.
Speaker: So it'd be completely different.
Speaker: So no, no repeat.
Speaker: So I wouldn't do weighted pull.
Speaker: I do pull ups just for stretches, but I wouldn't do pull ups like weighted pull ups on like normal back day.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: On pull day, I'll do like weighted pull ups.
Speaker: I'll do weighted, weighted pull ups, deadlifts, barbell row, which I wouldn't do on a normal back day.
Speaker: It will just to keep it machine and like very bodybuilding, you know.
Speaker: And same thing with push.
Speaker: Push, I do bench press, dumbbell press, followed by shoulder press, dumbbell shoulder press, which I stopped doing on my normal shoulder days.
Speaker: That's why.
Speaker: That was another thing.
Speaker: I stopped doing shoulder press.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I do light barbell press.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: In fact, I should probably switch it again and go light shoulder press on shoulders.
Speaker: Yeah, or even like a standing military or something.
Speaker: And it's kind of like, and I feel, you know, like you do, there's a guy I started following, his name's Mike Israel Till.
Speaker: He's a big boofhead fellow and he makes him quite crude and makes a lot of jokes.
Speaker: He's funny, but he's a PhD in sports science and stuff, so he's very clever.
Speaker: And he's a competitive bodybuilder, so when it comes to the way he structures his training, it's very deliberate, it's very serious.
Speaker: Like he's the ultimate professional.
Speaker: And, you know, it's good to learn off that.
Speaker: It's not good to just go in and do the opposite of that.
Speaker: But we're just looking, we just want to look good.
Speaker: We want to have a bit of muscle.
Speaker: We want to be strong because it's fun.
Speaker: I like the muscular endurance because I feel I like the output, kickboxing and just kind of the high rep just keeps it fun for me.
Speaker: but we can do a bit of everything and sure we might not get as big as we could or we might get as strong as we could or our conditioning might not be as good as we can but it's that sort of all-round element to it um i really like like it definitely i feel like that's what keeps me coming back um and there are seasons like i'm i'm already thinking about april and may when it starts to cool down go on a bit of a bulk and like order a bit more food to have during the day and stuff like that but
Speaker: I still feel like the good old-fashioned all-rounder is bloody, there's nothing wrong with it too, eh?
Speaker: Well, I'm not trying, we're not trying to compete, I think.
Speaker: I think that's the key.
Speaker: I'm not trying to compete in any of those activities.
Speaker: I just want, I just want my body to be fit enough to keep up with my mind.
Speaker: That's kind of the idea.
Speaker: Like, I want my body to be, body to be strong and, you know, flexible.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: That's kind of the idea and not give up, like, you know, because I'm,
Speaker: body's too tired and I'm like, oh, I could do this.
Speaker: And your stretching and your mobility training, quote unquote, is very good.
Speaker: But if you're, like, if you focus enough on form and you are doing full range of motion, like a full stretch press, and like you are going to be mobile, like there is some benefits to
Speaker: But it's also funny too because you could wake up in the morning and feel like you're unflexible as heck, but then you're warm at the gym and your flexibility is good.
Speaker: So the whole flexibility thing, and I've been caught into it before where I've been so inconsistent, all that is a little bit subjective to how you are on the day and stuff like that.
Speaker: If you're training smart and you're using full range and you're performing the exercise well, you're going to be flexible as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There was a time that
Speaker: I was really into like each session, there's a session I do like a five minute stay master followed by like proper stretches, like sit there for like five minutes stretches.
Speaker: And then I'd get into my lifts and like, then I'd go to my lifts and then like, I'll build up, I'll go like, if I was doing squats, I'll do like the bar, the 10 kilos and 20 kilos, like, you know, then 40, 60 kilos and 80 kilos.
Speaker: Like I was very slow.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: I think I just caught baby lazy is probably the word to do.
Speaker: And then I just gave up.
Speaker: And then now I just broke up to the gym, slapped one couple of two plates on the barbell and start scoring.
Speaker: Well, what I have heard about a good warmup is, and there is the psychological part of it of feeling like, okay, I'm ready to go.
Speaker: And obviously if you've had injuries, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: If you are lifting heavy or if you, even if actually if your form is not the best, if you warm up, then you kind of get away with it.
Speaker: But like, all you really need for a warmup is a couple of the, say if you're doing bench press, just do one or two light sets and then you're good to go.
Speaker: Obviously, if you slap on two plates, you're probably asking for trouble.
Speaker: No, no, I mean, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I still do that.
Speaker: I've never gone reverse pyramid training.
Speaker: I always go with the pyramid training.
Speaker: So like, oh, sorry, reverse pyramid.
Speaker: So I'll go like bar 10 kilos.
Speaker: Like if I'm doing bench press, I'll do the bar for like two sets and then followed by two sets of like
Speaker: 10 kilos each side, so like 40 kilo bench press, and then I'll start, like even then I'll go like 15, then 20 each play side too, then I'll double by 10 kilos instead of going 20s.
Speaker: Remember when we were young and we just would walk in and just pick up the 100 deadlift straight away, just give it an action.
Speaker: I am still paying for that to date.
Speaker: My back, my back, I have... Say no more.
Speaker: I'll tell you what though,
Speaker: The discipline I have learned because of my back pains.
Speaker: So true.
Speaker: With my squat and my deadlifts.
Speaker: I am so careful.
Speaker: I'm feeling warm.
Speaker: I'm feeling warm.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: I can make sure my foam doesn't even go the slightest bit.
Speaker: I'm really disciplined now because I know the moment I slip up, I'm just going to be back in square one.
Speaker: I can't do deadlifts again for at least another three months.
Speaker: So then I have to.
Speaker: Yep, nothing worse.
Speaker: I did, um, I actually did a Smith machine, like a inclined bench today.
Speaker: That was, it was really quite fun.
Speaker: Like this is purely for hypertrophy, but it was like slow tempo and I was doing like half reps.
Speaker: There's this, there's this research that I was looking, got shown about was like the half rep, what it's really about, like the one and a half rep is really about spending as much time on that length and position as possible to induce growth.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I actually rated it a nice little pump and good for the shoulder too.
Speaker: Like I started off with it, sort of did five or six sets.
Speaker: Like there's nothing like the free weight, but it was actually all right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mixing it up is the best way to go.
Speaker: I'll tell you, I'll tell you a little, little hint on something, getting a really good shoulders workout.
Speaker: Oh, sorry.
Speaker: A tricep workout.
Speaker: And this is what I've like, like one of the best exercises I've found.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: anyone who disagrees, come fight me because I really love this.
Speaker: Come fight this.
Speaker: It's actually doing... There's actually... My gym has these hooks where you can put your hands through it.
Speaker: It's like a rope, but it's like you can put your... It's like lifting... Lifting straps, like those number eights, those figure eights.
Speaker: You can put it in the cable, right?
Speaker: And you put it above your waist high, the cable pulley,
Speaker: and you do it behind the head standing the the stretch that has given like this yeah the full range of motion and like how well the mind muscle connection feels there it's probably like yeah because you're you're not starting in this neutral position you're starting like there flex yeah yeah so you're already you're already stretching and you want to make sure you give it enough room that you already stretched like and so you
Speaker: So it's like complete time under tension.
Speaker: So even when you're going back, you're still under tension.
Speaker: And you go up to the top and you flex.
Speaker: And then you don't even actually go heavy on that.
Speaker: It'll break you out after a few sets.
Speaker: No, 100%.
Speaker: Three weeks of doing that, I've actually noticed difference in my triceps.
Speaker: Big time.
Speaker: Especially my inner part.
Speaker: Especially my inner tricep, which always lacked before.
Speaker: And all the, the, it was always like the concentric, like if you can get that pump up the middle, that's what's going to make your muscles big.
Speaker: But they, all the research points to strength and hypertrophy, the eccentric is, is three or four times where the results come in.
Speaker: Even though to show off your muscles or to show your size, you contract it, all the research strength and growth is all eccentric.
Speaker: Like this is not, it's not that the shortening is not important, but that's the important part.
Speaker: And that's why they will say like, don't rush it, don't rush it.
Speaker: Like that's, it's, yeah.
Speaker: But it makes a mix of my sense, right?
Speaker: Because I started thinking about it like this way, right?
Speaker: I imagine my muscle fibers to be these tiny rubber bands, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like that are all slapped together, right?
Speaker: And it actually came to me because I watched a video of this guy trying to stand on rubber bands and see how many rubber bands could hold him up.
Speaker: I mean, this is a guy who did the coat hanger.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker: That's the same guy doing the rubber bands, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So it got me thinking, right?
Speaker: So imagine if you would stretch a rubber band
Speaker: And you're trying to snap the rubber band, right?
Speaker: You'll snap at essentially when it's stretched out.
Speaker: So wouldn't it make sense that your muscle fiber would break?
Speaker: Because that's what you want to do, right?
Speaker: You want to break your muscle fibers when they're stretched.
Speaker: So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: A lot of sense, yeah.
Speaker: And there's also like the amount of force that you can generate.
Speaker: You can carry a bigger load on the eccentric because you're not having to pick it back up again.
Speaker: So you can just get more, you can do more damage, as you said, and you can get higher force into the muscle.
Speaker: And you're also increasing the surface area by stretching anything out, like a blanket or something, you stretch it, the surface area is bigger.
Speaker: So then you're exposing more of the muscle to that.
Speaker: So it's really cool.
Speaker: yeah for sure because that's one thing that i definitely we didn't do and i definitely didn't do it was all about like and the concentric you didn't realize but it's actually the easier part a lot of the time um and it just a little bit of discipline to control on the way down but yeah i was never uh essential i was always like this that short bit yeah well it's it's the over the years i've gotten so many different training advices and it's like well uh it's you just build your own training style i mean
Speaker: This reminds me, this one time, this guy came up to us and he said, oh, you want to do, when you do leg press, you want to put your feet right at the top.
Speaker: All right?
Speaker: And you were there.
Speaker: We were together, right?
Speaker: Yeah, his hamstrings more.
Speaker: His hamstrings more.
Speaker: And I listened to him and I did it for about five years doing what he taught me, right?
Speaker: It wasn't still like maybe, well, now five years ago, like five, six years ago, I realized,
Speaker: hold on a minute, I'm ruining my, ruining the complete hyperinfliction, what's it called, the knee flexion.
Speaker: Yeah, knee flexion.
Speaker: By doing that, and because I'm in a position, my back rolls, so I actually lift.
Speaker: And you're not strong in that position either, so you're not doing as much weight as you can.
Speaker: Yeah, so your back is rolling back and actually damaging my spine.
Speaker: I was like, what is it?
Speaker: That was the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker: It was, yeah, because they say you're up higher, so the force is going to go at the back of the leg, but it doesn't work that way.
Speaker: It goes along the joints, and then your back's like... So your back actually essentially arches the other way around, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker: I'm going to go beat the shit out of that guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I remember who it was, too.
Speaker: I can picture his face.
Speaker: But it made sense, because I remember the first time, and this is where it got us, the first time...
Speaker: we ever did it.
Speaker: We felt it in the hamstrings, maybe because of that position, but, uh, it was probably isometric more than anything else.
Speaker: Our hamstrings were probably underdeveloped as well.
Speaker: So it was probably like a bit of that too, but yeah, like I did set, yeah, I reckon it was years, years.
Speaker: I, I did the same thing for sure.
Speaker: And then similar sort of thing, uh, similar sort of thing that came to be with the deadlift, like straight leg, someone said to me, Oh, it's like, Oh, you're going to grow.
Speaker: If you want to grow your, um,
Speaker: hamstrings, you do straight leg deadlifts, do straight leg deadlifts, they won't work.
Speaker: I mean, unless you're really focused and really good with your form, I don't think anyone is that good.
Speaker: I think they do more back damage than trying to do... What I found works really well is doing cable straight leg deadlifts.
Speaker: Because you take a bit of that balancing off.
Speaker: Because you don't need your battling.
Speaker: All the split stance.
Speaker: All the split stance.
Speaker: One, the single leg, they're pretty good.
Speaker: But yeah, the double was difficult, yeah.
Speaker: Because you're putting so much pressure on your back.
Speaker: For me, then I found out I just do cables and I stand on like something.
Speaker: You could stand on a couple of plates and then you could stretch it out lightweight.
Speaker: Keep it keep that tension going so you don't go up and then you know where you take all the tension of the bar I've seen him do and this is not going to work for the people listening because it's not going to happen, but do you know the laying down?
Speaker: Leg press leg curl machines right so you're like your tummy and you pick your knees up like that Well, do you know how it's sort of got like a little bit of an arch to it?
Speaker: That's to promote a little bit more hip flexion.
Speaker: It's so just to create a little bit more room in the hamstrings and
Speaker: What I've seen people do is you've got the bench there where you lay your sort of tummy on is they put thick padding on that and so you create more hip flexion so you're even more tucked in.
Speaker: You have to allow yourself time to adjust because
Speaker: the back it's a different position for the back but you get way more uh angle of hip flexion like 20 or 30 degrees so it's actually really good i'll try to find the video for you but yeah you put and you put like that much padding on there and then you just at the bottom in particular your hamstrings just go so much further and it's like all that because that thing's the most brutal for the hamstrings that one like it doesn't like lunges are tough but nothing nothing makes you stand up again oh
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The straight-legged one is good.
Speaker: But then this is another little nugget.
Speaker: If you want to grow your squats, if you want to grow your deadlift, strengthen your hamstrings.
Speaker: This is so dumb, so obvious for me to realize, but it took me 10 years of training to realize that.
Speaker: And really glutes as well, because that extension motion is such an important part of it.
Speaker: It just...
Speaker: We didn't.
Speaker: It's not something we really focused on.
Speaker: Do you train your glutes?
Speaker: Not as much as I should.
Speaker: But I'll tell you what I struggle with my squat is, and then you tell me what's the best way to fix it.
Speaker: It's not so much.
Speaker: So I'll go full range of motion and that is the first 20% is that I struggle with the most of going up.
Speaker: It's the first 20% after that.
Speaker: And then I keep thinking to myself, it's a combination of my back being, putting like, you know, my back spat that I think is partially mental as well.
Speaker: And then back, and then the last one being, my cords are probably just not strong enough.
Speaker: That's the only way.
Speaker: It's the only way I can...
Speaker: there's a fib like in those muscles are in their weakest position in that bottom position.
Speaker: So it does make sense that that's the hardest one.
Speaker: And that's obviously the reason why we all naturally don't go heaps of depth because we just, our nervous system realize it's difficult.
Speaker: Um, and so your hip flexors can play a really important role in stabilizing the hips to allow the quads to move.
Speaker: So if you do your isolation, hip flexors, um,
Speaker: with like if you've got a cable around your ankle and then you just lengthen and shorten your hip flexor just by bringing your knee back that's a good way to strengthen the hip flexor or the booty builder especially yeah i've got that strap in my bag bro it's changed the game it is so good uh and because you can even do that one for shoulders everything it's such a good little bit of material yeah so hip flexors um even like what i found out is doing the isometric so doing like
Speaker: squats where you're not worried about anything else but holding that position and then so much so many of us our core is not strong enough and i think that's that might be the uh the answer to the remaining deadlift question as well um and that's why the back is having to do a lot of the work particularly that rear that lumbar back is because the core is not strong enough to maintain that position so your heart or your your you'll just move some way and so
Speaker: What I've found is really good for the core, apart from squatting and deadlifting is actually really good for your core, but it's destabilizing
Speaker: um or so single side uh kettlebell deadlift so you do a deadlift on just one side and you've got to keep your hips and your shoulders in alignment that just forces your your spine to work really hard to stay still um as well as having like um do a squat and you've got one down by your side and one overhead and that's just like an unevenness you've got to keep your knees your hips and your shoulders in alignment and you do that for a few weeks and you don't necessarily feel like a burn in your core like it's it's not like
Speaker: the way that we would do another muscle because there's not it's isometric because there's not a lot of forward and back but when you get used to just keeping it still you do find
Speaker: And with your breathing as well, you do find that you can get a little bit stronger in that position, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Might give it a go.
Speaker: There's a bit of a training there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So hip flexor, which I think is, since I've started doing that on my leg days, like I just felt so much better.
Speaker: Hip flexor and then a little bit of that sort of uneven core exercise.
Speaker: They knew a few videos.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some good examples.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Another one is, I don't know if your gym has this, my gym has a pendulum squat.
Speaker: Have you seen those ones?
Speaker: Oh, bro, they're epic.
Speaker: They are so brutal.
Speaker: They're so challenging.
Speaker: They're so challenging, yeah.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: It takes everything off the back.
Speaker: It's back-loaded still.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's not equally as brutal as squats or whatever.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Loading straight leg in turd leaves and whatnot, right?
Speaker: On the back, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You just feel it all go down to your legs, eh?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I thought if I get really good at the pendulum squat and the bottom position, because you can go really deep in that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: So if I get really good at that, I think I might be able to build my cords.
Speaker: But you're right.
Speaker: It's probably not my cords as much as it is my core and my stabilizing muscles.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's what the pendulum obviously does.
Speaker: It stabilizes the weight for you so your core doesn't have to work hard to do it.
Speaker: But yeah, that's likely what it is from just all the – because I've had those – like the questions I've been looking at is, yeah, how to get strength in that position.
Speaker: And then so much of it is, yeah, so much of it is keeping that spine nice and straight.
Speaker: I just have a vision of my lower back muscles just cursing me.
Speaker: Every time I walk into the gym, they're like, fuck you.
Speaker: You've already inflicted enough damage to just get back.
Speaker: What are they called?
Speaker: Those muscles that join to your hip, to your upper muscles?
Speaker: upper back so your latissimus locius and stuff what's those muscles so you've got your quadratus lumborum so that goes from the outside of the hip to the inside yeah you've got your erector spinae so they're the ones that run up along the spine and then you've actually got your abdominis at the back you've got your obliques that wrap around the back of the body yeah so it's those two long muscles that that that suffer the most
Speaker: Definitely that one.
Speaker: This one is like, that's the one that has a lot of, um, a lot of like your, um,
Speaker: Cyclic pain is a lot of that.
Speaker: And then, yeah, the core, because that's the biggest one.
Speaker: It's actually that core muscle that goes all the way around, keeping it all tight.
Speaker: That's the bit.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: Man, my back.
Speaker: I feel sorry for my back.
Speaker: I wish you could get a new back.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But I'm good.
Speaker: I'm good right now.
Speaker: And I'm like deadlifting heavy, squatting heavy at the moment.
Speaker: So far, so good.
Speaker: But it's so much discipline to make sure not even the slightest mess up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Otherwise, it's like every time I do it, three months off, like off any of backloading stuff.
Speaker: And the thing about like all the core exercises, if I think about core, I think about trunk flexion, which is basically like crunches and stuff like that.
Speaker: But all that's doing is training the front rectus abdominis, the six-pack muscles, which are all good in that.
Speaker: But the ones that actually are attached to the spine, because that attaches to the rib cage, the one that's actually attached to the spine that's helping your back is the obliques and the deeper ones that are around the side there.
Speaker: And so those are the ones that you can hit through isometric exercises.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, it, uh, I think again, because the mind muscle connection is more difficult to make because you don't feel it as much, uh, cause there's not as much movement.
Speaker: It can take time, but I find like after a few weeks, I'll go back and do the exercise again.
Speaker: I'm like, Oh, this is easier.
Speaker: Like I don't, yeah, but it's like, it's, yeah, it's a different sort of feeling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It might just less all right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It might be worth giving it a go.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: By the way, just a very side note, and then I have another point to make around that.
Speaker: I just realized this is completely random and it doesn't mean anything to anyone who's listening.
Speaker: You and I are wearing the same color shirt.
Speaker: We actually are.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: I think this is all, no, that's Muscle Nation, yeah.
Speaker: This is my bed shirt now.
Speaker: It's just so light and fluffy.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I was going to say in terms of, again, talking about injury prevention, right,
Speaker: Another thing I learned was, again, this is, I mean, I'm a training, you know, I've achieved the master level because I've been training for almost 10, 12 years, right?
Speaker: So, so have you.
Speaker: So many years of training.
Speaker: I've made all the mistakes that they were to make, the kids would make.
Speaker: Another thing I learned was to injury prevention because I've been good apart from hurting my back over and over again.
Speaker: And like a couple of times I've hurt my, have my,
Speaker: lats as well but actually I have heard pretty much everything but everything is not as like I didn't get an injury apart from my back just a minus yeah all that yeah totally one other thing I learned was recently that stop don't do heavy lifts not necessarily heavy lifts those huge compound movements were not necessary where you can get the same sort of result
Speaker: from something else.
Speaker: As in, again, if you're a powerlifter and you compete, maybe, I suppose, go do 100 kilo freaking low rows, right?
Speaker: Take low rows, for example.
Speaker: I actually think low rows is actually a very, the barbell low row is actually think it's quite a silly exercise because you're completely backloaded.
Speaker: Lower backload, it's backloaded, but, and you don't actually get that much, that much benefit from doing a barbell
Speaker: versus if you could do it just on a cable.
Speaker: Yeah, you don't get as much range.
Speaker: And it is a good exercise in this, again, is looking at like when they test the amount of force that's being applied per muscle, very scientifically, they have all those pads on and checking all that out.
Speaker: Like I feel like we, because we can sort of use our arms and move a little bit, we just tend to go too heavy.
Speaker: And we think because it's sort of like a deadlift, we can handle it.
Speaker: But I think the mistake is that you just, you go too heavy to what your body can actually handle.
Speaker: Then that's how you get that increased sawness or you get that next day sort of tightness because you've just gone a bit too much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think, again, another replacement for that is single arm.
Speaker: If you want to go heavy, single arm dumbbell.
Speaker: as opposed to doing barbell.
Speaker: Yeah, it's so hard to hurt yourself doing those.
Speaker: Because you just can't pick it up.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So if it's heavy, you can't pick it up.
Speaker: So it's much better.
Speaker: Still, again, it's compound, it's heavy, but something about that barbell doing it there or doing another one that you can use the barbell for is you don't need to use the barbell for.
Speaker: It's like doing skull crushes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I found another, I think that's a fairly...
Speaker: I know historically people would argue with, I think it's much, you could get much more bang for your buck, if you will, right?
Speaker: From doing, from doing, from maybe doing an easy bar or doing a cable, a cable laying, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The easy bars, oh, the easy bar was also the biceps, but that's kind of what it was invented for, just so you can flex your wrists a bit more and just get a little bit more stretch.
Speaker: Yeah, because start thinking about like the wrist as well, right?
Speaker: If you think about the wrist on a barbell and skull crushes, you're in a position where it's not a natural position for your wrist as well.
Speaker: So, I mean, I don't... Because your arms will go out, spread out.
Speaker: No matter how good you are, they'll go out.
Speaker: Especially because everyone will lift heavy.
Speaker: They'll go out and then your wrist will compensate and they'll be slightly bent outwards or inwards.
Speaker: Yeah, allowing you to lift the weight because you're compromising and I've never had like bad wrist injuries where I know people have and it's just so debilitating but I've had enough pain or enough like overuse
Speaker: I've had enough wrist soreness there.
Speaker: If you have a bad wrist injury like that, that's debilitating, eh?
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: You just can't grip.
Speaker: You can't, yeah.
Speaker: That's one thing I actually want to do is improve my grip, eh?
Speaker: Because that's definitely starting to become a limiting factor.
Speaker: Like, you can use straps and stuff, but I definitely want to work on my grip because I'm starting to, like, lose it in my hands before my muscles barely even fatigue when I start to go heavy.
Speaker: So that'll probably be my next little goal.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: weirdly enough, one of the things I found was I had obsession with growing a stronger upper back because I could never do pull-ups before.
Speaker: Now I have a really strong upper back.
Speaker: Like insane.
Speaker: Like I, I think like I could probably most of the time I can, it takes a very long time to start getting muscle fatigue, reaching muscle fatigue.
Speaker: And like, I can, I can, can't do pull-ups without, there's no point doing pull-ups without weighted pull-ups if I want muscle fatigue and back, upper back.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Oh, of course I can do 25.
Speaker: Then yes.
Speaker: But, you know, it's like still to get that, you know, long, that like lasting muscle fatigue in upper back.
Speaker: I have to like lift lots of heavyweights.
Speaker: I only wish I just had paid the same level of attention to my lower back.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: My lower back, just waiting in the corner.
Speaker: Is it my turn yet?
Speaker: And then, yeah, it doesn't contract the same way.
Speaker: But, yeah, once you get a few of these exercises in your belt, and I actually found squat university is really good because he just breaks down.
Speaker: It does so many reels.
Speaker: He breaks down so many nuggets of wisdom.
Speaker: There's this, I can't remember the guy's name, but he figured out a way to load up
Speaker: the pull-up and then activate and then do the pull-up and it just helps fatigue a little bit quicker.
Speaker: I'll send you those because those are pretty interesting as well.
Speaker: But, yeah, that's kind of the thing.
Speaker: Like, you know, you can do your weighted pull-ups but then you just look for your lat pull-downs and your straight arm, your straight arm lat exercises and your rows.
Speaker: And, you know, you can change the angle of rows.
Speaker: Like, you can row like that or you can row like that.
Speaker: Like, you can do a lot with rows, even seated rows.
Speaker: Like, you can do that too.
Speaker: And that's what I like about dumbbells or cables is you can get the elbows nice behind the back where a bar is a bit difficult because it stops you kind of there.
Speaker: Another unpopular opinion, which goes against what we've believed for such a long time.
Speaker: I don't think leg press is a good exercise anymore.
Speaker: At least the normal leg press that every gym has, that standard, like the grey one that goes straight up and down.
Speaker: What's it called?
Speaker: The 90 degree one?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The vertical, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that one's rubbish.
Speaker: Because your back gets rounded when the legs go down.
Speaker: There's another one which is slightly more... It has more of a free-range movement.
Speaker: So it's kind of a swing as opposed to straight sliding up and down.
Speaker: Yeah, fixed.
Speaker: I think it's a fix that messes it up because it goes...
Speaker: I think back loads for, like, there's no way your back should be better.
Speaker: I mean, if you're really disciplined, again, you could keep, like, you make sure you wouldn't go heavy weights, but everyone will go heavier weights than the body needs on leg press, and then ending up, ending up going to, you know, getting your back involved.
Speaker: There's no reason to have the back involved in that exercise at all.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the, you know, and, and like, you can get, you can get strong in those quite quickly, and you can tolerate a lot, but,
Speaker: obviously as you get a bit heavier your range of motion particularly bringing the knees back which is the hardest part you tend to go further and further and further away and so even though you're able to do the first part of it because that's just knee extension when the hips get involved and the quads have to take a back seat to your glutes and your hemis
Speaker: We tend to not do that because it's harder.
Speaker: And so you just do it like that.
Speaker: And then I think that's when the force comes through.
Speaker: And it's weird because it's sort of – it's like it pins you to the bench and then you're stuck on the bench and then there's like all this force in the back and then you're trying to push it out.
Speaker: Like it definitely like – Yeah, because – so that lower part of the thing, your hips don't stay on that lower part.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: They come off, right?
Speaker: They come off.
Speaker: So the only thing that's pinning you to the, is almost just like, it's where your pants or like your shorts will sit, like just above them, right?
Speaker: So it's not actually.
Speaker: There's a little curve there, right?
Speaker: Yeah, there's a little curve.
Speaker: It's like the seat could be designed a bit better, right?
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I think it's the seat could be designed better.
Speaker: But there's that aspect to it.
Speaker: I realized, again, another, it's not a very,
Speaker: Like, it's a good exercise because you can load your cords and, like, it's a full leg exercise almost, right?
Speaker: Because you can, everything is at play.
Speaker: But it just feels slightly unproductive.
Speaker: Like, it's, like, lots of work for not enough result.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With a lot of risk.
Speaker: Lots of risk as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, so, again, like, maybe you could do, oh, good idea.
Speaker: It's, like, same thing.
Speaker: If you want to do that, imagine doing the same thing.
Speaker: Do a one-legged.
Speaker: It's a whole different game.
Speaker: Like, then you start to, like,
Speaker: Because then one leg is down and then you try to do like, you can't go heavy at all.
Speaker: Like you can't do the half the weight with a single leg.
Speaker: You can do it double.
Speaker: So true.
Speaker: So you probably do like maybe 10% of the weight that you would do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then it actually starts becoming really productive.
Speaker: And then it's not, it reduces that risk of injury as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely the older, the older,
Speaker: uh unilateral they call it or just the single side exercises might they they're very good what are you oh go for it bro no no i was i was i was gonna change change to a next exercise but let me let me hear what you're going to say no i was gonna say even like um even like your overhead presses and your shoulders when you use them in real life you're doing stuff at the same time you're really just doing one but even i feel like
Speaker: with dumbbells are a lot better than barbells where you've got to strengthen both sides of the body when you are doing them at the same time there's still like this propensity to really focus that strong side to take over and this other one sort of keeping up where sometimes I feel like that old bloody single side it doesn't look as pretty but it's the way to go yeah it's a good little change up for sure I mean to be honest if
Speaker: If I wasn't obsessed with strength training, I just cared about muscle building.
Speaker: I don't think I would do... I would never do barbell overhead presses.
Speaker: I would just do dumbbell.
Speaker: Actually, I'll do probably single arm dumbbells.
Speaker: And if anything, you could probably even not do dumbbells because I only just realized this again not so long ago that the only thing that you're training with your overhead presses...
Speaker: is your front delts, right?
Speaker: It's not so much, you're not training and everyone has stronger front delts anyway.
Speaker: You don't, like, it's not like the sides that are not at play, but majority of the loading is on the front delts, right?
Speaker: So, does it make sense to just do some, you know,
Speaker: It's the front raises, right?
Speaker: Just do front raises instead of doing heavy loading on the, you know, risking injury.
Speaker: So like, I'd imagine if I was the bodybuilder, I wouldn't even bother with any sort of pressing on that.
Speaker: I just do front raises and do lots of, lots of side lateral raises because that's where all that shape, that's where all that size lives.
Speaker: Yeah, looking at it now, like, I wonder if this has changed.
Speaker: I feel like it used to be a lot of exercises, but now they do, like, four or five, and they just do six or seven sets, and then they just do to fatigue, and then they'll do drop sets at the end, and your three-quarter stuff and that.
Speaker: But, yeah, there's no more than five per body group, but you just, you're doing the full body, like, you're doing all the shoulders, but, and then you're just burning the crap out.
Speaker: Yeah, because that'd be the point.
Speaker: Like, if you're a bodybuilder, you just have to do really smart exercise.
Speaker: You wouldn't bother with, like,
Speaker: To be honest, I wouldn't even bother.
Speaker: Like, bench is another one.
Speaker: Like, would you even bother with bench?
Speaker: Like, maybe.
Speaker: Yeah, like, if you're bulking, then you get to do it to build some of that, like, volume and some strength.
Speaker: But really, like, if you just want to fatigue the muscle, you might have better off doing, you know, dumbbell and then lots of machine.
Speaker: Because dumbbell is much... Like, dumbbell is just superior to barbell bench press in every way.
Speaker: Like, it does the same thing.
Speaker: This is the barbell bench press is cool and something you can talk about to people.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: There's a little bit more shoulder stabilization in the free weight compared to the free weight compared to like machine.
Speaker: But that's what I'm saying.
Speaker: Dumbbell is probably even better in that though.
Speaker: Yeah, if you're going free weights.
Speaker: So you do, instead of if you're a bodybuilder, I wouldn't, I would imagine you wouldn't even need to do, you wouldn't do or you shouldn't do barbell bench press
Speaker: pressing you just do dumbbell presses like I've seen yeah I've seen some of them do like incline a nice heavy incline to really develop just below the collarbone that area for whatever reason it just works really well but yeah not like you're not doing flat bench or you're not doing your majority of your work and you're doing a lot of this motion too because your chest for example the fibers go that way so the best way to train that is to I mean you do short you bring them together like this too but a lot of that stuff as well
Speaker: There's actually not that many chest exercises they do.
Speaker: Chest is probably the most limited one.
Speaker: There's three or four and they just do a heap of sets on them.
Speaker: Like do lots of sets.
Speaker: Same thing.
Speaker: Same thing.
Speaker: I mean, I find shoulders really boring to train to be honest.
Speaker: Like I just feel like Yeah.
Speaker: This is so like
Speaker: Yeah, that's why I've always liked, you know, I think we used to do legs and shoulders.
Speaker: That's why I always liked like a shoulder.
Speaker: You know, I do my external rotation and some of my stabilization now.
Speaker: But yeah, it's just purely trained shoulders.
Speaker: That'll be the one I'm thinking about.
Speaker: What am I not looking forward to?
Speaker: When I get to that one, I'll probably have to make sure.
Speaker: Shoulders and arms is probably the way to go because then you can get biceps and triceps as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It just makes it a little bit more fun because everyone likes arms.
Speaker: there, there's a little bit of a space from there too.
Speaker: There's two or three days because my rest day is after that one.
Speaker: So yeah, I think that's not a bad idea.
Speaker: Because then you can, like, you can, it's like much easier to keep the focus or like the mind muscle connection going and you do train a bit of triceps and shoulders as well.
Speaker: So nice, easy transition.
Speaker: Oh, bravo.
Speaker: I found this another epic re-deal, which is so hard to train this re-deal one.
Speaker: Do you know the cable machines, not the wide one that they put in front of the big mirrors, but the smaller one, it's like half the size.
Speaker: So you put a bench right in the middle of that and then you lay down on the bench incline.
Speaker: This guy's name is Johnny Shreves.
Speaker: He's this black bodybuilder.
Speaker: You probably recognize him because he's all over the socials.
Speaker: And so you lay with your head above it on incline and you grab the cables and you drive it up, really elbows close to the body, and you drive it up there.
Speaker: You get this mad...
Speaker: shortened length and of the rear delt it's pretty good yeah oh i have to give it yeah it's just interesting stuff i've never seen before so i i yeah it's a good way still to imagine what imagine imagine what it looks like but yeah yeah we need to see a video totally but i i found that like same thing on the machines pull the cables back and the cables crossovers yeah they're really good as opposed to uh yeah they i found them good i'm
Speaker: never ever been able to build mind muscle connection with doing dumbbell rear.
Speaker: Have you ever tried those?
Speaker: Like those people
Speaker: bend over and then just do like reverse flies on them?
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like you've got to start light.
Speaker: But I just tend to use a lot of traps.
Speaker: So when I do that, my traps always feel fatigued and it's hard for me to hit that shoulder.
Speaker: And I've got a bad habit of shrugging when I do my shoulder exercises as well.
Speaker: So I need to learn.
Speaker: And the best way to learn for me is to watch myself in the mirror, which I normally am anyway, so that's fine.
Speaker: But I do so much shrugging, bro.
Speaker: Like that's what's led me to like –
Speaker: have my shoulder issues is because like all those muscles haven't been built up the external rotators it's all just it's all just traps bro it's all just traps traps and lats traps and lats oh yeah for sure yeah let's go baby I don't actually have strong traps didn't build them which is weird because when we were training you would train traps a lot I just I think I hated them yeah well that's where I went wrong I started shrugging and the rest is history now but
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like I'm definitely doing a massage and I'm doing a trap release, right?
Speaker: It's going to kill me, but... Because my traps, if you look, are still fairly... Well, they're getting there, but compared to your traps, they're half the size.
Speaker: Because you've got the shoulder development.
Speaker: We've had the... Yeah, we've had the thick neck kind of thing, right?
Speaker: Yeah, so it's not as... Well, actually, they're not that bad.
Speaker: They're getting better.
Speaker: For those who can't see, we're doing a quick flex in there.
Speaker: Just checking each other out.
Speaker: That's exactly right.
Speaker: All right, brother.
Speaker: Well, that's definitely been one for the bros, I feel like.
Speaker: One session for the bros.
Speaker: Did you have anything else you want to talk about?
Speaker: Or we've had a one-hour mark, which is nice.
Speaker: We've had a one-hour mark.
Speaker: So I think this episode is called... The Bro Split.
Speaker: The Bro Split.
Speaker: Training Days is the way to go.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: talk conversation about how to prevent injuries and maximize training yeah and how to get injured how to get injured love you brother how you do well it's been a wonderful podcast yeah 100% all that's made it through we really appreciate it write us a comment let us know what you think or just say hello but no this has been good fun it's always good to catch up with you my brother too easy you want to wrap up yeah I feel like I just did we're good to go well thanks for listening catch you guys see ya bye
