Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
Training to failure, killing your progress? // Ep. 165
We explore the complexities of intertwining fitness with personal growth through our airsoft journey and life updates. By sharing our experiences, we highlight the value of community, the importance of overcoming challenges, and the excitement of launching new fitness programs.
- Ben & Dave reconnect after a brief hiatus
- Life adventures in airsoft and family updates
- Introduction of new fitness programs on the horizon
- Discussion of training methodologies focused on muscle growth
- Emphasis on the significance of failure in fitness journeys
- Encouragement to embrace life challenges and fitness together
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Yo, yo, what's up everybody. It's been a bit, it's been a couple weeks yes, this is going to be my public apology for us just disappearing off the face of the earth. Um, I don't. We don't really have an excuse. It's just we didn't prioritize getting the podcast on um. Life was lifing, we were traveling, we just couldn't coordinate it. But we're back.
Speaker 1:We are back we are back and we're gonna make it a priority.
Speaker 2:So we are. We are um life updates from dave. What's going on, man?
Speaker 1:wow, I'm playing a lot of airsoft lately, that's no way, not like you.
Speaker 1:I know that's surprising, yeah yeah, and I just joined an elite team of airsoft people that do like military simulations and stuff. They're like one of the most elite teams in the country. So I'm a funny story. One of the one of my coworkers here, chris, he, he has a kid, I guess, that plays at MK or soft. And Chris is like oh, my, I think my, you know, he coaches this kid. And he, he asked the kid. He's like do you know my buddy Dave? He's like oh, he's like this big guy. He's like whoa, is he this really big guy? And Chris kind of explained to me oh my God, that guy is insane, he kills everybody.
Speaker 2:He's the best I'm like yep, that's me so making a name for yourself in the Airsoft community.
Speaker 1:Making myself. Yeah, it's, my whole new career is going to be in Airsoft. But no, I mean, things have been going really good. Kids are doing great. Just had a winter formal dance with his girlfriend and you know kids are growing up like crazy and business has been doing great, staying, staying super busy, and everything else has been been really good. I can't complain. It's just same old stuff, just a you know, new duration of it. If you see, I have a little mark here that was from an airsoft hit the other day.
Speaker 2:So I thought you didn't get shot, I got shot.
Speaker 1:I got shot a lot. It's just just, you know, it's a KD ratio, right, so I get shot less than I actually kill people. So that's why I'm good yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, cool, it's a call of duty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:How about you, dude? How have you been Good? Yeah, everything's been really good. I've just well. We had an event in cleveland that we were due to record a podcast in person that we didn't get to do, and stuff yeah, but it was good.
Speaker 2:It was good to number one, uh, sort of, as we sort of mentioned, it was a circle of life month. The first ever event that we did was in cleveland, which was three years ago. Yeah, um, and that was our 13th. So there's a lot of stuff that's happened between then. Um, and I'll say this to you, and I said it many times the deal is, I don't care what people say, I kind of like cleveland. It's a bad rap from a lot of people, but you know, I I like it. So we had that um.
Speaker 2:We're about six weeks into the program which I think we probably spoke about on the last um, on the last call or on the last sorry podcast. Uh, and everybody's fucking loving it, man, everybody's progressing really well. It's good to sort of get a little bit of structure for people. It's good to see them make cool progress. It's good to see people sort of from the Twitter world that their name has been about actually get involved. A lot of people are making some really good progress.
Speaker 2:We have just launched which we're going to talk about today, hopefully what will be the last program that you will ever need to join. So I've been in the depths of building that out, building the landing page, building the email sequences, building out what the coaching is going to look like, sort of. You know what I'm like. I just like sort of taking things apart and putting them back together again.
Speaker 2:Um, so I spent a lot of time on this and we launch on the 24th of march and, honestly, it's the first time I've been excited about like genuinely excited about coaching and the business and like the team at this level in a long fucking time. Um, I have spent many, many, many hours in this room sat at this desk just writing stuff. My laptop sat in the dark 14, 16 hour days, but you know that type of work where you just don't like I don't say nothing else matters, but you just don't want to step away from it because you're short in it. Um, so that's been my life for the past probably four or five weeks. I've been enjoying it that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I recently uh built a application for one of my buddies that that owns the airsoft facilities and uh, it's funny like I I miss all that. So like I was up to like two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning like my sleep scores are going to look horrible but I was up until two, three o'clock in the morning just coding and building applications and stuff like that and it was the first time I actually used for actual development like ChatGPT and AI assistance and stuff like that, and it actually helped a lot on being able to generate prototypes and function types and things like that and I was able to speed up my development process. So I had a lot of fun just learning that new process flow for how I do things versus how I used to do things. And normally this application would have taken me 2 weeks to build it. It took me 2 days to build and then, of course, you got to iterate on it, so it took 4 days because I was adding new cool things and having fun with it.
Speaker 1:But when you find something you love doing and obviously you love doing this and building new programs adds a lot to to your passion and that you know, parlays very much into the side of fitness too. It's like you know, when you actually get into and you start doing it and you start getting more regulated with it, you start to see the progress. You start to, you know, really enjoy that as well too, and my training has been going really really well, um, as of late and um, so I'm gonna mention orange theory really quick.
Speaker 2:You have a couple of passes here, because we haven't been talking about it in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like four mentions for this right now. But the Orange Theory that I go to, they closed down, unfortunately. Yeah, they closed down. Literally. It was like last week they didn't give any heads up or anything like hey, we're shutting down, sorry, good luck. Literally, it was like last week. They just they didn't give any heads up or anything like hey, we're shutting down, sorry, good luck. And so I I'm going to this other place that's down the street a little bit longer. It's like an extra 10 minutes or so. It's not too bad. Um and uh, but it's funny because I've gone there a few times and they're like we're glad you're back because I'm you know, I'm the only one there that pushes like the 80 pound, you know dumbbells and you know sprinting at 12 miles an like dusting the dumbbells off for you coming back in.
Speaker 1:So they're like we're glad you're back, so it's good to be at a different location, I guess, and a little bit of change of scenery and that was fun. But you know I really enjoy the. You know doing things that are beneficial and kind of work the brain and work your body and everything else. And you know building programs like you're doing with M Game, and you know being able to like code and do other things Like that's how I get to express my you know. You know creativity and stuff like that. Right, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and I think that my sort of biggest observation over the past few weeks is like the, the iteration and the building and the rebuilding, and you know what I'm like with the details, like going into the details of stuff.
Speaker 2:That's the stuff that I really enjoy and because I hadn't really done that in a while, it was a good reminder as to like I guess we talk about it on a business perspective, like where I see myself in the business is doing that and creating and sort of creating new products and new programs and continue to sort of build and evolve the stuff that we already have. It sort of came off the back of obviously it was about two and a half years ago we launched Hacks initially and I hadn't really done much iteration of it over time and I realized there was, while it was great, there were many flaws within it and it was just a case of looking at it, taking it apart again, looking at the bits that were really good, sitting down with you guys around the pool table whenever we were in Cleveland and sort of getting ideas from everybody and then seeing how we can make it better over time. So I've thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it and it's a good reminder as to why I actually started coaching in the first place.
Speaker 1:Well, I think what's different about this program, too, is you actually have a lot of help behind you too, right? You have an entire support staff behind you in different elements, where these have been folks that have come through your program and have just excelled and done amazing things and are now part of that, which I think is really awesome. So I mean, it's not just you, it's also other folks that are helping out with this as well to make it such a successful program, and I've seen the content. I've seen we've been posting. It's awesome, um and uh. It's just gonna continue to get better. So tell us a little about it, though, like what's, what's?
Speaker 2:well, I think just to your point of um having other people around, and you have maybe told me this many years, but maybe I didn't believe it until I worked it out myself. But turns out you can't do everything by yourself. It it's true. Who knew right? Surprise, spoiler alert. You can't do everything by yourself.
Speaker 2:So obviously over the past few years we've introduced Lorena to the team as a sort of movement and mobility specialist. She will continue to be a part of the team and I think she's a huge part in terms of just people being able to sort of actually use their bodies in a way that they never have before. One of the biggest sort of feedbacks that I get from the majority of people is they want more mobility. So we've established a pretty solid mobility routine within that and a call schedule with her and sort of weekly monthly content that we have with her. We recorded a lot of stuff in the gym here, uh, towards the end of last year and sort of looked at like six major movements and 10 levels of mobility for each of those, which I think the the biggest problem that a lot of people face when there is if they saw her, who is a former olympic gymnast and literally coaches mobility. Like I can't even get into the fucking start position of that movement. So they were put off by their inability to even get started. So how we we've done it this time is lorraine will sort of describe the movement, she'll talk us through it and she'll demonstrate it. Then you get to see, see me try and do the mobility which is hilarious in itself and see sort of where my limitations land and how it would look for a quote unquote normal person, and then they'll also did it. So he was here shooting up day so he got roped in and he has you know a career of like BMX in and and surfing and things like that, skateboarding or whatever else. So there were things that he was better at than me. So it's good to sort of see a different variety of people like that. Plus, the videos are fucking hilarious because Dill's involved in them. So we had a good laugh with that.
Speaker 2:We will have Sean back on board and he's still currently off in recovery but he's doing well. So hopefully we'll have him back in the next couple of months to manage the breath work and the sort of mindset side of stuff. So that will remain the same. He will be there on a on a monthly basis with the calls and again providing weekly and monthly content for the team and sort of breathwork, journaling, meditation and sort of looking I guess looking at the, the software side of things.
Speaker 2:Um, and then we are introducing jen and thomas as a coach. They've helped me out with the, the program, and coaching the team and doing check-ins. Um, as you said, they've been a part of the team and they've come through the, the whole process. Um, they've just finished up their, their personal training qualifications, and I've actually just signed them up to do a little bit further education, which will be good for me because I'm going to go through it with them and so I'll sort of hone my skills a little bit and I'll give us some monthly content to go through.
Speaker 2:But I think, truthfully, the biggest benefit of having them is, like you said, they've been through the process, like each of them have been through their own journey of losing up to 85, 90 pounds each, and now they're on the journey of being in a surplus and sort of chasing those big numbers when it comes to powerlifting and compound movements and they're moving into more of a surplus phase. So even having them about and just them sort of reminding themselves is the things that they have learned over time, that they potentially forgot and they see, you know them maybe two years ago, in the people that they're speaking to you and the advice that they're giving out. So having them as a team as the whole um is going to be very cool. Um, I'm excited to sort of bring them on the on the journey of sort of looking at the, the bigger picture, for we hack health and us being able to establish this as a pretty solid name within the industry as people who are trying to make change in that narrative of the unhealthiness and the burnout and the fatigue.
Speaker 1:I'll just tell you, seeing the progress of some of these folks has been absolutely amazing. So I saw Tom and I was like so I used to call him quads because he had these massive quads, but now he's like arms too. I'm like well, shoot, I got some catching up to do to you, bro, like your arms got bigger than me. I need to work on this a bit more.
Speaker 2:geez, you know, like my uh, my observation whenever we were in cleveland was that whenever we were training, you're doing like fucking out, like and I know that you and I sort of matched in terms of level across the board with with strength or whatever I'm like there's a couple people that are coming up, thomas included, that are like approaching that. I'm like, fuck, I really need to send it with my own training to make sure that I still stay. You know, that's what I was, that's what I was saying. You know, I really need to start sending a little bit because, man, oh man, they're catching up.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you know, I think, tom tom, I got me in the arms. Now I'm like just geez, we'll see after this cut how I look in this cut. But, um, you know, and that's actually going really well, uh, I will say I'm logging all my food, doing everything I'm supposed to do, um, down to two, 35 from two, 50. So you know, right, right, where we want to be at. And, uh, you know, starting to see the abs again, which is great, uh, and it's funny because it's, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:So, when I'm in my surplus phase of things, I love it because I can eat whatever I want to, and you know I feel big and everything else. But then when you start to skinny down, you're like, oh man, like my muscles are popping, like I look big. You know, like I look bigger. You know, and it's just a, it's just a different, you know, set of feeling and everything that goes along with it, that you start to see all that work that you've really been, you know, pushing out and trying to, trying to get to, and I'm starting'm dropping the weight. I've actually gone up in some. So you know, that's, that's the the best of both worlds right there, doing it slow, steady, make sure you know those muscle mass and staying up the protein.
Speaker 2:It's been great for sure, and I think that you know I think I mentioned this on the last time I recorded, but I started working with james again. I think I'm maybe six or seven weeks in and you know my goal initially with him. Yes, okay, there is a sort of background thought of physique development and want to be bigger and want to be leaner and all the stuff that we usually talk about. But I remember the last time that I worked with james, the sort of number one capacity that I had for work. Number two, the, the sort of mental clarity and just ability to just handle fucking life at a higher level. Um, and I already feel through the back to that and it's it's worked out quite well going through that with the guys and girls in the program as well, cause I'm sort of reminding myself of what that feeling is whenever you get started back into it and like, like I said, I don't know whether it was the work specifically that I was doing or just a combination of everything, but since food has been better, I've really been focused on sleep.
Speaker 2:Um, I was here at the gym at 4 30 this morning, um, so get it before. Just come work the entire day once I get wrapped up with this. I'm home and I'll be trying to be in bed for for nine o'clock, so even having that sort of structure of uh, wake up time and bedtime has been good. Having the nutrition really dialed in like actually a lot of whole foods, like just really good quality ingredients, and one of the things that I like about being in a slight deficit is I I quite like feeling lighter if that makes sense and it might not make the sense to a lot of people, but whenever you're in a surplus you need a lot of food. You just feel like heavy all the time because you're full of food, but I quite like the feeling of like well, there's like a tightness in your stomach too, like your.
Speaker 1:Your stomach tightens up. Like your your your skin tightens up, like you don't have all that food sitting in your stomach you feel right now.
Speaker 2:I feel a lot leaner than I actually am and I think it's just like that sort of I'll say in the best way possible like emptiness, like you just get up the the stairs like at 1.5 speed, like you just have a little bit more spring in your step, and I've enjoyed that, that feeling as well and even just reintroducing cardio and just feeling better day to day.
Speaker 2:So for me, I mean I know I'm biased, but I would highly highly recommend having a coach, because even just that change over the past six or seven weeks working with him and having a second set of eyes and ears on everything and him sort of calling me out and sort of going in a little bit more depth as to what he's seeing on his side as a coaching perspective, versus what I see is just submitting the check-in sheet has been really, really good, um, and it's given me a a lot more capacity in terms of work but what I like, what I like to do, though, one thing I'll say is that the first like three weeks of like deficit wise, you know, we we did a pretty big calorie drop because we're used to it.
Speaker 1:Um, in the first few weeks I was like man. I'm still man. I'm still kind of hungry. I'm still kind of hungry. Now I'm like man. I don't even know I could make 2,800 calories. You know like I'm. I'm like, I'm full. You know like your body just adjusts so differently. You know, just by going into a system and knowing like, hey, this is all I can eat for the day, you get used to it. And then, like your body's like, I'm sitting at 117 grams of carbs, 47 grams of fat, 140 grams of protein, and it's 2.30 pm. I have 1,400 calories still to go. In the mornings.
Speaker 1:I've actually changed my routine up quite a bit and I found this to work really well for me. I always felt like I always had to have carbs after I had a big, intense workout, and I agree with that. I understand the principles behind that, because you're popping glycogen into your muscle stores and everything else, but I'd always feel like crap afterwards. I feel sluggish and tired and things like that. So what I started doing is I just have a really large protein shake right after my workout. So, and I and I use hacking your health, but I, by the way, I've, I've, I've, completely, completely switched over vanilla. Like I am a vanilla fan, yeah I'm, I'm a hundred percent. This is big news. Like I was, I was against vanilla in every capacity.
Speaker 2:I even remember at the start, like they were even really need vanilla, like neither of us actually really liked vanilla.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am a hundred percent converted to vanilla in our protein because it one. It mixes so easy. Like I can just put like if you take a full shake, shaker right, and I fill it a little bit less than half of water and I put eight scoops of protein in, which is 87 grams of protein, it mixes. There's no chunks, not one chunk whatsoever. It's completely lightweight and I can chug the whole thing. It tastes great and I'm not full. I'm not like, oh, my stomach's all gurgly, things like that. It feels perfectly fine and that ties me over until lunch.
Speaker 1:And then today I just had some rice with steak and Mongolian beef and it was 550 calories and like that to me was like I was. It was just a smaller size portion. 550 calories really isn't that much. Completely full, I'm completely full from an hour ago. I'm doing great on the calories and I was going to figure out how to get another 100 grams of protein and so, like this is like breeze for me right now, and I know we're going to go lower in calories and things like that, but fully able to do that.
Speaker 1:Um, because it's just that system right. It's like, hey, I'm supposed to eat, let's just say, 3,500 calories right now. I will go and do it and I feel like crap the first two weeks, but then after that my body adjusts, I'm able to eat 3,500 calories, no problem. You know, again, this is over time. You know 3,200, 3,300, 3,500, um, over time, but now it's like 2,800. I'm like I'm, I'm, I'm cooking, and, and because I'm not eating that big breakfast, I feel energetic and great and and fine in the mornings and then I get my good carb load, you know, for lunch, which you know catapults me for energy levels for the rest of the day. It's just I feel great, like and and, and it's really weird because I could never figure out like why I was like feeling tired and kind of like sluggish in the mornings. And it's because I was eating carbs, like lots of carbs in the morning, and I know that works for a lot of people but it doesn't work for me. So new, new things that I'm learning Right.
Speaker 2:But that I mean that's what the whole process is just continuing to learn. I will say I I still have oats that do remain uncooked, but I have moved to vanilla if I'm having a shake or if I'm having it with like greek yogurt. So I would agree, um, having both is is absolutely ideal. And while we're on the topic, I've shifted how I do things. I've been pretty much just having my calories over two meals throughout the day, so like not eating until probably about uh, 90 minutes before I train, having a big bowl of oats training, then having a shake or something like that, and then eating a large dinner, and that's worked out really well just in terms of like mental clarity and ability to get stuff done throughout the day I will say I still eat my gushers before my workout, right they?
Speaker 1:will remain they will remain, but it's only, it's only 90 calories, but it's all carbs, all simple carbs, easy digest. Um, gives me a little bit nice, nice little boost and that's what I use for my carb intake, you know, for the beginning simple carbs that digest in like 30 minutes, if not less, and then I'm ready to start cooking at the gym. So it's been working out really good, and the training blocks that you put me through have been also working out really good because, time wise, I'm only spending 45 minutes in the gym and I'm getting in, I'm getting a massive pump, I'm feeling great, I'm getting stronger. And that leads us into the discussion of today, which is failure or not to failure. That is the question, right, and there's a lot of debate on whether or not you take yourself to failure. Now, first of all, I would say that 90% of people that work out don't actually take themselves to failure, because failure is like you can't even move your arms at all. The muscles have just completely shit the bed and they're checked out okay, um, have you ever seen some of those people the gym that do legs and they someone has to carry them on a stretcher like the leg press? Yeah, well, you see they're like their legs are like going like this. You can actually see the muscles switching like this. That's failure. Okay, yeah, you know 90, 98 of people don't take themselves to failure. So what I?
Speaker 1:I was listening to Dr Mike the other day and he's great, he's, he's frigging hilarious. I I've grown on, he's grown on me quite a bit. He's got a lot of great stuff and he's from RP, rp fitness and nutrition. But he's grown on me a little bit. And he was talking about why drop sets are so important in a lot of people that are training and why failure is is why why it's beneficial for people that are trying to get that muscle stimulus and to maximize muscle growth. And so, you know, the question is do you take yourself to failure? And if you do, how do you do that the most effective and efficient way?
Speaker 1:And I was also looking at some some posts with, like Sam Sulik and a few others, you know, sam, you know is very different than how Jay Cutler lifts, for example, famous IFBB bodybuilder, you know Mr Olympia, et cetera, et cetera. And so I was looking at all of these. But the ways that they do things are pretty much the exact same. It's just different in how they get to that point, right? And so you look at, like Sam Sulik Sam Sam had a video that he was talking about where he's like okay, if you have, if you're just starting off in your lifting, and you start off with 60 pounds and you do 12 reps of 60 pounds, and then you do, you know, 12 reps of 70 pounds and you do 12 reps of 80 pounds, why wouldn't you just start off with the 80 pounds and then gradually go down?
Speaker 1:Okay, and that's one way of looking at it. For sure, you can definitely do that, and that's, that's more what I attest to. So I do my warmup set and then I go as heavy as I possibly can in the eight to 10 rep range and then from there I start to slowly go down in weight, because you know, I've already fatigued my muscles to the point to where I'm not able to handle that same type of load, and usually I'll do the same set twice. So like, let's just say it's, it's a bench and I'm doing 300. Okay, um, and I get, you know, five to eight in that rep range. Well, let's just say I get eight, my next set is probably only be five, and then I go down, uh, and wait to get to that eight to 10 rep range again, so that I'm still taxing my muscles as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Now what? What Mike? Dr Mike was talking about was incorporating drop sets or run the racks. Same thing where, basically, you're going down in weight but you're only giving yourself a very minimum time of rest. For example, let's just say I'm doing leg extensions and I'm at 200 pounds on leg extensions. Then I do 12 of those and that's the max I can go on 12. I'm fatigued at 12. I can't get another one in. Okay, you give yourself maybe 10 to 20 seconds for that burn to go away and you drop the weight stack by two and then you knock out as many as you can then and then you drop the weight stack again. You know, again taking 10 or 20 seconds in between and then hitting that weight stack again.
Speaker 1:I do that almost every single one of my workouts now, as my last exercise, my last essentially set. That I do because it creates an environment that keeps you in that failure zone for longer. And what Dr Mike was explaining is, the longer that you can be in that failure zone, the more that you're going to get as far as benefits for muscle hypertrophy and growing muscle. So you're drastically accelerating your ability to build muscle because you're telling your body that you don't have enough weight to be able to do this. You don't have enough endurance, strength, power, etc. With those fast twitch and slow twitch fibers, that it needs to build more muscle to go and do that. And when you're in that period of time where you're in a large failure set, it sends that signal tenfold to have you grow those muscles. So for me, I can't do drop sets every single time. It's going to be an absolute disaster.
Speaker 1:But for your last set, let's just say you're doing legs and you start off with hack squats Cool. You do heavy hack squats and you go down a weight. Or you start off at a lower weight and you build yourself up with hack squats cool. You do heavy hack squats and you go down and wait. Or you start off at a lower weight and you you build yourself up. Then you do some regular squats. Or you know bulgarian split squats, unfortunately, which would have been as programmed in mind which, by the way, are phenomenal for for growing quads. Um, I hate them though.
Speaker 2:Uh, whoever invented those needs needs to I will say this I uh, I programmed the other boys like give an updated program recently and he sent me a message being like I'm sorry that I have offended you or pissed you off on someone. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like you programmed the Bulgarian split squats after hack squats. And I just sent him a screenshot of my training program that says hack squats and Bulgarian split squats and I wrote I would never get you to do anything that I wouldn't do.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. That's a good point. The range of motion that you get from those isolated quad movements is honestly superior to almost anything else that's out there. So Bulgarian split squats are honestly one of the best for growing quads period, like they are, I'd say, leg extensions being being probably right up there as well. And then you know.
Speaker 1:So let's just say I do, you know leg extensions and I throw in some glutes and hammies, I do some leg curls, I do maybe some power squats or something like that that hit those, or deadlifts, whatever. And then my last set is going to be leg extensions and I'll typically do four sets of those and my fourth one. I start off as heavy as I can go and maybe I only get again eight, nine of those. Then I drop down two stacks, two weight stacks in that weight stack thing, and then I do as many sets as I possibly can. Maybe I only get, you know, eight or 10 again of those. Then I drop down again again, give myself 10 to 20 seconds and then do those again, do those again until I get to like literally I'm only doing 30 pounds, you know, and I'm dying Like I'm dripping in sweat, you know, and my legs are shaking, but during that period of time I'm keeping my legs in a failure state as long as I possibly can.
Speaker 1:Now you can still do the same thing, probably with heavier weights, but it's very difficult to get to that point if you're not doing something like drop sets to actually get to the failure part, and so for me it's been a staple in anything I'm doing, whether it's shoulders, whether it's chest, whether it's glutes and hammies or quads back. I do them all now as part of those, as my last set is always a failure set, and I've had a lot of great benefit with that on being able to do having some great growth, and noticeable growth, not just in size but also strength and everything else that goes along with it. To me, it's one of the best things you could probably do.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree with the caveat of it's a learned skill and I will always remind you of this because not everybody can go in first day in the gym and absolutely just train to feel it. And I think that the biggest thing overall and I was in London at the weekend and Matt hosted a seminar in Callum, who you've heard me speak about many times, who was one of my original coaches. He coaches AFU pro bodybuilders athletes at like olympia stage level and he was delivering just about like how he sets up clients and not necessarily just at that elite level, but how the sort of fundamental things say the same. And we were talking about going into rep range and there's a lot of case studies that we talked about and it's it's reminding people coaches probably specifically because they're the ones in the program that like being able to execute on the movement first, is the the ones in the program that like being able to execute on the movement first is the priority. Oh, you can do that, like like you saying even there about you can do it at a heavier weight. Yes, you can do it at a heavier weight, but you can't get the same quality of reps then. So that's why you benefit from dropping down in the weight, um, so, yeah, I would absolutely agree, and mine is my training slightly backwards, um, in some aspects. So that hack squat I have one set of nine to twelve and then one set of six to nine, and there's nothing worse than like giving it absolutely all on that first set of nine to twelve and then going. I actually have to increase the weight here and then go again, and then I have to do fucking bulgarians with squats.
Speaker 2:Um, but yes, to your point of failure, like I think. Number one is to learn skill. Number two yes, I wouldn't do it absolutely every single exercise, every single session, because you, you will not have an inability to move, but if you know that there's something that you can isolate, as example, you said, like extension, that you can just go down the rack. Essentially, you're, essentially what you're doing is you run the rack and you've just framed it differently and made your, made it your idea, um, but I think with that, it gives you, like, the confidence that you can actually execute on the movement. You know what the cues are, you know how it should feel and you know the sort of range of motion that you should be putting within it and I do think it's something that will will allow you to make better progress, as you said, in a quicker period of time, like, yes, can you go into the gym and just do a regular set of eight to twelve and make sure you progress in terms of either reps or weight over time and make progress?
Speaker 2:Yes, but if you're willing to embrace a suck and lean into it and actually go to failure or learn at least learn what that feels like, you can massively fast forward your your progress within that and I think, yes, there is the physiological benefits of it. But I think failure or feeling or being afraid of failure is something that a lot of people deal with in everyday life, and I think it's almost the opposite that we're trying to teach here within the gym. It's like we're trying to seek out failure and get to it as quickly as possible or get to it in any way, shape or form that we can. So I think that reframing failure as a good thing when we do it in the gym will benefit you in other aspects of life and understanding that failure is going to be part of the process and everything that you yeah, I think the technical term that is used in the industry is what are called mile reps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's essentially the true term for that right. So, essentially, drop sets, run the racks are all mile reps, right. And, dr Mike, also, there's another technique you can incorporate too, which are partial sets or partial reps, and there's some benefits to those, especially in things like hack squats. For hack squats, you know, if you're not fully coming up to your full extent, obviously you leave a bend in your knee, but let's just say you come up halfway to that, you're keeping the maximum load on your quads and you're not giving your quads any time for a breather. So partial reps can also be incorporated in those types of sets to get you to muscle failure much faster.
Speaker 1:And I do enjoy those on hack squats. They're killer, they're horrible, but they can be very good. I'm not advocating for full range of motion. Full range of motion, getting the stretch uh squats, things like that Um, those can be really beneficial for maximizing maximizing gains on those big, large muscle groups by doing partial uh reps as part of that. So I'm a big fan of those as well, um, as part of my, my exercises for my last uh.
Speaker 1:So, like, usually, I start off either with a leg press or a hack squat and those specific cases on my last set of my hack squat I'll do partial reps on those, just to get that, that, you know, initial burn on my, on my quads, full, full, full burn on those quads, you know, versus like giving myself a couple seconds now, don't be wrong. Like once I get to, like you know, my, my, my sixth or seventh rep, I I'm not doing partials anymore. I'm like going to full, like I need a break, I need to breathe, you know like I'm dying here. So like, okay, okay, okay, let's go. All right then I do, you know, but uh, but I mean you can, you can definitely incorporate different techniques, um, in your lifting that give you some some pretty awesome uh results yeah for sure, and I think the thing about it is is getting more bang for your buck in the movement.
Speaker 2:So I mean, if you can embrace a suck and do a partial rep on insert, whatever the movement is like, you'll get more time spent under tension in that movement, and there's a whole other conversation about tempo and whatever else. But, like you're doing more work from the same amount of total reps or total amount of sets or exercises, um, which is cool, and split squats, by the way, fucking bulgarians, but squats can give a fuck. Make me more open. Apology to anybody in bulgaria and whatever ever the rest of the world did to is cool. Fucking Bulgarian split squats. Can you give a fuck? Open apology to anybody on Bulgaria, um, whatever, whatever the rest of the world did to piss you off that you gave us the Bulgarian split squats. I apologize on behalf of everybody.
Speaker 1:That in the squats those two can go go to hell in a handbasket. So, yeah, I uh uh, was it uh one of the guys I was? I was uh showing uh pendulum squats too, and he's like he had no weight on the back and he couldn't get back up off it.
Speaker 2:I'm like, yep, welcome to pendulum squats, man like I remember the first time because it was, uh, it must have been an old-school iron that we did it and you were looking at me and I had like a 10 pound plate or something on. You looked like I was a crazy person. Trust me, trust me, bro. Like this, this machine is from a different world.
Speaker 1:Like this is not something like anything you've ever experienced before I think the max I've ever gone on a pendulum squat is like 55 pounds you know like that's it, but yeah, yeah, yeah, that was hell. So you know the pendulum squats. If there's a pendulum squat machine in your gym, give it a shot and and let us know what you, with the max, you could do on it, because it's it's humbling, like you know I got my tweet us.
Speaker 1:Tweet us from the bottom of it, because you'll be stuck in like sos, send help, send location pin, I think me you know me squatting 500 on a you know squat bar and then I get on this thing and I'm putting 55 pounds on there. I'm like what is what is this? What is this?
Speaker 2:health like this is ridiculous, so yeah yeah, there's something in m10 where calum used to coach out of and sort of that, that era of like physique development where I sort of learned to train some of the big big boys in there. They used to have maybe four or five plates on the back of it. I'm like that's a whole different level of strength and you're a whole different level of psychopath to want to take that on um, because those machines are no joke.
Speaker 1:No but yeah, that was the main main purpose of today's podcast was just to get a little bit of understanding around one what's going on with Endgame and how you can kind of take your fitness to the next level. Huge fan, what you've been able to release is awesome. I can't wait to see once that launches in March. And then, obviously, talking a little bit about failure, because when we're training I've always said this before and it's funny because Sam Sillick said the same thing he's like if you're going to the gym all the time and you're the same that you were last year, then the training that you're doing is not working. And so what do you need to do a little bit differently to get the results? You can? And incorporating just some minor tweaks to your training program can give you some substantial gains. So if you just throw in drop sets or mile reps into your workout routine and you're comfortable with the movements and everything else, it may give you that added boost that you need to get that growth that you're looking for to get past plateaus and things like that. And if you think about it too, let's just say I was doing four sets of leg extensions, right, and I do the 200 for 12 and I'm fatigued and I'm done right and I don't do the mile reps. That's less volume that I've just done there versus if I was doing the mile reps themselves. So it's like you're adding more volume onto your legs which is then giving that more of that muscle stiffness, but also you're taking it to that sweet spot of failure to say, hey, I really need you to grow muscles. I'm telling you to grow. You need to do this or else we're going to continue to feel this pain. Your muscles will adapt and they will grow the way that you want them to. By incorporating some small tweaks that can help that out a lot.
Speaker 1:And you know, if you're in the bandwagon of, you know starting off with lighter weights and going up, cool. You know why don't you try going heavy first and then going down and see if that gives you any desired results? I've been really a big fan of that no-transcript. I need to go down a little bit and wait to get those eight to 10 reps in and then really get that fuel in my bicep, for example, when you get that burn in your bicep and you know that you've worked that muscle out really good.
Speaker 1:I wasn't experiencing that as much going lower to higher, and maybe that's just a mental thing with me, maybe I wasn't pushing myself hard enough with that, and that's that's easy to do if you're just going up incrementally in weights. Now, if you're doing, you know, 50 pound weights and you're doing 12 of those, well, you probably could have did 60 with 10 of those and hit. The next set was 65, you know, and so it's just an easier way to kind of calculate. Hey, I was able to get, you know, I went too heavy and I was only able to get six, so I need to go down a bit, but you still put your muscles through a pretty intense, insane thing because you're not at that point yet, you know. So it's just a good way of for me to measure success is by going heavier first and then going down and wait and then doing drop sets on top of that to hit that volume.
Speaker 2:So For sure, and I think I actually put together a document for both Thomas and Jen on I think there's maybe 27 different types of rep ranges. So what we could do is we could pull that up one day and we'll go through them and sort of when they're applicable, when they're not drop sets, cluster sets, rest, pause sets, all that sort of thing. One of them is called the Widowmaker, so stay tuned for that. But I think that that would be a good way to sort of see when you fit these in and what they're actually useful for. So tune in for that in a, in a future episode and spoiler alert I'll tell you, um, because I'm going to get you to test it out before anybody else. In the just you mentioned total overall volume, um. So I'm completely redoing the check-in sheet for endgame um and the. There will be a section in that in terms of what the like a logbook, um, so you'll be able to go in and log your lifts, sets, reps and everything that you do within that. And. But it's quite good because it'll give you the total volume per exercise. It'll give you the total volume per session and I'll give you a total volume across the week per muscle group. Um, so we can play a bit. I'll, we can play, I'll load your training block into it. We can play about with that as well.
Speaker 2:Because for me, I've been using it on this side and the cool thing is I'm like, right, okay, I just got 10 reps at 150 kilos, I need to get, I need to up the weight. So I put the 160 kilos in and I'm like, right, if I get six reps, that's not going to be enough. I get seven reps, that's not gonna be enough. I'm like, oh fuck, I need to get eight reps. So I know before in the set what I need to do to beat it, because I can see it on the sheet and it gives me the green light if it's above and I've increased in terms of volume, or the dread if it's below.
Speaker 1:So just something additional for us to play about with that's so important, by the way, like moving up in weight and moving up in volume is really important.
Speaker 1:Um and and if you're not, if you're not calculating those, like I have a whiteboard and I just erase it and I put my you know, or I keep the what the previous week up there and I put my new week and then I erase the old one, just so I know that I'm going up in some sort of volume each week, whether it's five pounds or 10 pounds or whatever. I know that I'm going up in volume, that I need to hit that specific number. You know, each time, as I'm going and doing it and that's going to ensure that you're continuously progressing and you're pushing yourself a little, just a little bit further, where there's one more rep that you can get in, there, you know to get that number, or hell I, today was a total shit day. I'm gonna have to do two more sets of something to get to that. You know I'm going to hit that number no matter what I do, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, something else for us to play away with, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, thanks so much for listening for this week's podcast, amazing podcast and we'll catch you.
Speaker 2:Same time, same place see you in a bit.