← Mondays with Matt
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- [00:03]
A
You're listening to Mondays with Matt. I'm Matt Reynolds, the founder and CEO of Barbellogic and Turnkey Coach. Each week I share lessons from decades of lifting, coaching and business to help you get stronger, coach better and take action. Let's dive. Welcome to Mondays with Matt. This is Matt. I'm here you guys. If for those of you who have joined, you've seen Dan here, Dan is actually on the show. Dan, producer Dan executive assistant Dan, head of content of all barbell logic Dan, wearer of many hats military contract Dan. So Dan, welcome to the show. Glad you're here. Dan's here to just kind of give me some back and forth today. So I asked him to be on the show.
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B
Glad you're glad to be here.
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A
Awesome. So we're going to dive in today on intensity versus volume, which is a long. If you've listened to me for a while, this is a long time debate. I can remember getting my proverbial panties in a wad. Obviously I don't wear panties. I go commando all the time. So not really my panties in a wad over the intensity versus volume. How heavy? How much debate years ago when it felt like it mattered and it does matter on some level. And so I want to dive into that a little bit. And so Scott and I talked about this, man, if you want to go back and hear us just get crazy about this sort of thing. We were originally talking about minimum effective dose programming, whatnot. We talked a lot about, about intensity over volume. Right. And simplicity over complexity and that sort of stuff. Economy over excess, those sort of things. And I would, I'll be the first to say, Jordan Feigenbaum, reach out and like just clip this. I probably was wrong a little bit or I just pushed it a little too far. And so I, I will, I want to explain that a little bit today about what, what is important to do, especially in the first six months of training. And then after that first six months of training, what do we do? And so one of my favorite people on Earth is Dr. Sullivan, Dr. Sully, and he wrote an entire book on how this works specifically for people over 40 called the barbell Prescription. It's a fantastic book. And Dan, you have him queued up. Let's hear what he has to say about the volume versus intensity debate. This is like Calvinism and Arminianism in the weightlifting world. Okay, let's hear it. Here we go. In the great Internet debate of volume versus intensity, do you have any strong opinions about the, that topic with respect to training over the decades.
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B
Yeah, it's a, the whole thing's a great big freaking red herring. It's a false dichotomy. Right?
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A
You gotta have both. Right. It's just.
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B
So the real, the real question isn't volume versus intensity. The real question is work volume.
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A
Right.
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B
Or your volume intensity product.
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A
Right.
- [03:19]
B
And the short answer is that needs
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A
to be where it needs to be
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B
for the client in front of you to drive progress and you'll see what that is. Right, so, so I'm supposed to be the.
- [03:29]
A
How do you evaluate that? What, how do you evaluate that performance on the platform and session to se recovery.
- [03:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, and recover, right.
- [03:40]
A
Oh I love, I love Sully and Andrew both. And of course we've talked about this a ton over the years. So, so here's what I would say. So let's, let's clarify terms, right? Volume and intensity. Intensity is wait, on the bar. Dan, you have to mute yourself cause your kid is dying out in over there. Dan. Dan's got a kaggle of children cuz he's Catholic and they have 4,000 children. That's what Dan does. So. No, so volume is the, the total amount of work you do and intensity is the load on the bar. Right. And, and the, the exact definition of intensity is not how hard it feels, which is what most people think it is, but it's actually what, what percentage in relation to your one rep max or you're doing. Right? That's intensity on the bar. And so what Scott and I argued for a long time and I would say this part is right, is that in the beginning you should chase intensity or weight on the bar as long as you can. Right. Now that's sort of ambiguous though when we say as long as you can, like what does that mean? Well, when I started to think about this, this is the problem for those of you guys who have done this for a long time and followed me or starting strength and all this stuff for I mean for let's say 10 years plus the early days of practical programming, volume two, now it's in volume three, I believe there were actually strength standards, right. And if you compare yourself as a man and you have to paint with a broad brush and they pulled these out of the book by the, the third edition, I believe. But, but if you look at the strength standards and you say okay, someone who is strong, let's say a 200 pound male, middle age, let's paint with a super broad brush, somebody that's in there like 28 to 52. So we got three decades here going on and they're around 200 pounds. Maybe you're 180, maybe you're 220. But somewhere in that ballpark your goal should be to, to absolutely chase a 200 pound press, a 300 pound bench press, a 400 pound squat, a 500 pound deadlift. And maybe you don't get there on all four of the lists, but you get close. Maybe you go over those on some, that's fine, but that's, let's say that's generally strong for a male. For a female, like you can back it off, I don't know, 33%, 50% somewhere in there, if you're a female, I don't know, let's say a 115 to 135 overhead press, right? A 185 back bench press, 175 bench press, probably a 225 squat. I'm literally pulling this out of my head right now. A 300, 315 pound deadlift. At that point between male, female, you're strong. Okay, before you get to that, your goal in programming should be just add weight to the bar. I, I don't care if you even have to reduce the volume. Three sets of five, three sets of four to three sets of three to five sets of three to one set of five, or one set of three and back offsets of five. The goal should be to add weight to the bar every single workout or certainly every single week until you hit those baseline strength standards. And there's an argument for why to do that. Because ultimately hypertrophy, you think about, we can do this like if you're a 14 year old kid, which there are no 14 year old kids listening to this today. But if you're a dad of a 14 year old kid and your 14 year old kid bench presses 115, does he need to bench press 115 for 8 and then say let's take him up to 115 for 12, or does that kid just need to get his bench press up to 135, 150, 185, 200, like that's the thing. And it's the same thing for us as well. In our middle age, once we hit a certain standard 200 pound press, 300 pound bench press, 400 pound squat, 500 pound deadlift, then we can start to look at what are the other variables we can change in this minimum effective dose world. Because maybe I don't want to go to a 500 pound squat and a 600 pound deadlift. Maybe I just want to get bigger. Maybe I want to get healthier. You know, maybe I want to add hypertrophy. And so this concept of the volume versus intensity, I think can be. Can literally be distilled down to intensity first, volume second. And if you want to be a competitive powerlifter or competitive strongman or competitive strength lifter, weightlifter, whatever, for years, it may be intensity for a long time, but for most of you, it's probably intensity for a while. Meaning the load on the bar has to go up until you get to a point that you're like, I'm pretty strong. I would still like the load on the bar to go up. But the only way I feel like I know to do that is to get bigger and to pursue hypertrophy. At that point, you start to have some transition, not to, like, drop the weight by 40%, but to maintain the weight and start to add volume. And we add volume because the work. As Sully. Dr. Sullivan said, Its work. Volume goes up. Right. So we're taking in the beginning. Linear progression is the same volume, the same frequency. Three sets of five, and. And we just add weight a little bit at a little bit at a time. Every workout, we add £5 or whatever. The thing is, at some point, the weight gets heavy enough that we can't add £5 or two and a half pounds every single time. And so we start to add volume. Well, I did three sets of five. What. What if I did three sets of six? What if I did one set of six and two sets of five? Well, that's one more rep than I did last week. That's still progressive overload. That's still linear progression. Linear progression via volume, not just via intensity. And so, um, that is. That is the direction that we want to go. Intensity first hit the standard, then bring in the volume. Right. I don't. Dan. Any questions for me there? I'm gonna. I'm gonna dive deep on the next step after that.
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B
Yeah, well, I. I think it's related to the voluntarily hardship piece. I think most people don't push themself. And that's. The tensity is partly a measurement of how hard it is. And I know you. There's an absolute way to measure that. But most people don't push themselves to RPE 8.5 plus territory, and they need to know what that. That feels like.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. And then they can come back and
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B
do and increase the volume.
- [10:01]
A
That's absolutely right. So that. That voluntary hardship piece is. We've talked a lot on this podcast about how that helps you, like big like 30,000 foot view. How that helps you in your life or, you know, pushing involuntary hardship, voluntary hardship in the gym, how that would help you if you get involuntary hardship or when you get involuntary hardship in life. But the reality is, is that that voluntary hardship actually makes you significantly better in the gym itself, right? And so pushing yourself. I had a guy today that I've trained. Great client, won't call him out. Great client has gotten way, way, way stronger. He did a. He did a 4:55 deadlift and missed it yesterday. He pulled on it for about second and a half, 1.5 seconds. I was like, hey, man, not enough time. If, even if you don't get it, I just want you to pull on it because, like, give me five seconds on that deadlift, give me three, three and a half seconds on that press. That's really important because that voluntary. You will adapt. Like you're the voluntary hardship. What occurs mentally, emotionally, all of those things I. We talked about just a couple weeks ago. But there's actually a physical adaptation that actually occurs in that stress recovery adaptation cycle. If you strain on, you know, for. For most people, I think the squat, the bench press, the press, about three seconds on the deadlift, it often takes five of grinding. And remember, your body doesn't know if you got it or not. So he had that. He had that 4:55. He. The guy's pulled 4:50. It wasn't much of a PR. And he pulled on it for like a second and a half. And you could tell his brain wasn't in it. He set it down. I was like, all right, so this is why we strain on it. Longer strain, body adapts. Next time we do it, you'll be fine, right? And so we're still pushing his intensity up the. So that intensity is the weight on the bar, the load. But there is a day where you can't push intensity up anymore and you have to push. You have to push the volume. Now here is something fun I've been experimenting with as we. By the way, this is Mondays with Matt. You guys can ask your questions at any point. We've had a few questions come in already. I'll answer questions about anything, not just intensity versus volume, but anything in the world about strength or coaching or nutrition or Dan is hammering that aggressively. That keyboard over there, you guys can hear. So you can ask your questions and I'll answer those. So here's the thing. So one of the things that I have been toying with lately Is as you get to the point that you're, say, let's say, strong enough. And a lot of you might probably aren't there yet, but the point that you're like, hey, I'm strong enough for anything that life could throw at me. If you're listening to this and you're a man and you're squatting 185 for reps, you're not strong enough. Even if you think you are, you're not. So you want to get close to that. That's why I give that standard, which is, again, a broad blanket. But if you're not. If you're not pressing 200 or close, benching 300 or close, squatting 400 or close, deadlifting 500 or close. And by the way, my wife has done close to those numbers. She's a female and in her 40s, but close. Like, come on, you gotta get stronger in my wife before you start to do volume. So let's push the intensity. Let's get stronger. Now you get to the point that you're strong enough. Now what? How. How do I push the volume? Matt, I'm a busy business professional. I can only train three days a week, four days a week, and not that much time. How do I do it? Let me tell you, one of the things I'm doing over the last several months with me and my clients that I love is that concept of myo. Myo reps. So at the point that you are strong enough, but you need to drive the volume up, one of the things I love is like the. So volume, back in the old argument days of us and starting strength and barbell medicine and renaissance, all that sort of stuff, right? Was it felt a lot like how many reps per set? It's the wrong question. The, The. The volume, obviously, intensity is simple. Like, how much weight can I keep pushing weight up on the bar? So our argument was simple, but the other side, I think this is where they got it wrong, was like, oh, like it's totally fine to do sets of 6 or 10 or 12 or. And it is. But that's actually not the argument. The argument for volume, or three sets to four sets, working sets to five, working sets to six or whatever. It's actually how many sets per week are within five reps in reserve? Five. Within five reps to failure with, like, inside five reps of failure. That's your volume right now. Where do I start?
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B
That would be a effective reps idea.
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A
Yeah, it's. It's effective reps. Right. So the idea Here is. And, and, and it's hard to calculate. Calculate a little bit because let's say there are times that you'll do. Let's say if I'm doing bench press, I'm. If I'm counting my set, my volume sets on my pecs, let's say I'm doing bench press. Well, that's direct. What about overhead press? Well, overhead press is kind of like a. It's like a 50%. It's like your pecs are being. So you count your. For your pecs, you're counting the sets as maybe like every set is a half set. Dips. Maybe that's direct, maybe it's indirect. You know, whatever. Like there's. So the goal here is over the course of a week, we want to drive up our sets, our working sets, within five reps of failure. And I like to go three, two, somewhere in that ballpark, looking two to three reps of failure, like reps in reserve, which is similar to RPE. So say RPE, 8 or 9. Or reps in reserve, 3, 2, 1, somewhere in there, you can drive those up from any baseline of 5 sets per week, or 6 sets per week, or 10 sets per week up to about 30 is the top line. 30 sets per week per muscle group. So if you're training three times a week, or squats. So think about this like squats. If you're doing squats, let's say you're doing squats two times a week and you're doing three sets, one day and four, that's seven sets. But then you're also doing deadlifts. Well, deadlifts is a leg exercise. Let's call it a 50% exercise. You're doing that. So you've got, let's say eight sets per week. But we cut that. Cause it's not a direct leg exercise. So we count it as four. But then we do some accessory stuff like some Bulgarians and some leg press. You can start to add those up. And so 30 sets is kind of the max. And that's what bodybuilders do at the max level, that it's hard to recover. It's maximum recoverable volume mrv. But it actually doesn't matter what the. Rarely do you get to the max. It's more like, hey, I'm doing five, six, seven sets per week on my legs. Five, six, seven sets per week on my chest or triceps. And you want to start to drive that volume up. So if it's that you go to eight sets or nine sets or 10, you don't go from five, six, seven to 15. You go five, six, seven, to eight, right? And you can still stay heavy. And one of the things I love to do is myoreps. So how about. Dan, have I talked about this on the show? I can't remember yet. Is, is that. I don't think so for me. So maybe I'll do. Let's say I'm doing incline dumbbell bench press. So I, I, I don't do my MYO reps, which I'll explain in a minute. I don't tend to do on the barbell movements because of the sort of, like, danger factor, or it's just like, it's a pain in the butt to do. So you do them. You do the main lifts like you would always do them. Squat, deadlift, bench press, press. Now what do we do? Okay, so for bench press, I'm gonna do incline, low incline dumbbell bench press. Okay. That's a good supplemental accessory movement. I'm gonna take something like the 70s or 75s, which is not super heavy for me, but it's decently heavy. Right? So it's £150, let's say, on the incline dumbbell bench press. And I'm gonna knock it out for, for an activation set of about 15 reps. And let's say I could probably get maybe I could get 20, maybe 18. It's within a few reps of failure. And so I knock that out. It's. And I'm focusing on the hypertrophy side. It's slow and smooth on the way down. It's fast on the way up. It's slow and smooth on the way down, fast on the way up. After I do 15, I sit up on the bench, I put the dumbbells on my, on my thighs. I count to 15, nice and slow. 1, 2, 3. When I get to 15, I lay back down and do another set, as many as I can do, and I go within one rep of failure with that same weight. And this time, instead of 15, I only get seven or eight. And I'm cranking. That last one is barely locking out. Okay, I got it. Boom. Back down to the thighs, sit up, count to 15. One, two, three. To 15. Then I'll lay back down again. And I do another set essentially to failure, not to absolute mechanical failure, but within one or two reps of failure. This time, maybe I get six, five. Lay back down. Sit, you know, sit up, put on the thighs, lay back down. Now I get four. When I do a set that's less than five reps. I call it good. What will happen is in a period of about two minutes, I'll get four sets within two or three reps of failure. And so that volume is not about the reps per set, it's about the number of sets I'm doing within a couple reps of failure to drive that volume up. It's the volume is that, that's the thing, right? So I can still do the heavy as the first movement and the accessory stuff in a myorep and and it's awesome. I don't have to do five sets with rest on the dumbbell bench press or on the dumbbe overhead press or the lat pull down or whatever. The thing is, I can literally do one long set. 15 reps, 8 reps, 7 reps, 5 reps, 4 reps. Call it good. I got four working sets in a two in two minutes. And the whole, that whole exercise is done and I'm smoked. And I can get the best of both worlds. I can get the intensity on the barbells and the volume on the accessory. So that's how I'm doing that now. And I think that's a great way to do it. And by the way, I wouldn't go to that until you're, until you've gotten close to the standards that we're talking about here. That 200 pound press, 300 pound bench press again, 400 pound squat, 500 pound deadlift. Dan. Makes sense.
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B
Yeah, totally makes sense. Um, do you have any other. How else are you getting volume for your clients? I actually cover for your clients and I can vouch that they're not just doing high intensity, low volume.
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A
No, for sure. I mean, the other thing I love to do is c is if they're not doing that myorep, they're doing circuit work. For me, the circuit work is on a lower body day, it's something like a, it's often a two leg lift first. So let's say a leg press, if they have access to that. So leg press, it might be a good morning. It might be like a front, even a front squat, something like that as a, you know, first accessory movement, a single leg movement, like a Bulgarian split squat or a lunge, it could be then a kettlebell swing or a weighted sit up, something like that. And they, and they go in circuit. So it's like, you know, leg press for 10 reps or 12 reps, within a, a rep or two of failure, no rest, go right into the next movement of whatever that Bulgarian Split squats, same thing, go right in the next movement, like weighted sit ups, and then do that for three rounds. And what I found is that takes about one minute per set. So if I do three exercises for three rounds, it's about nine minutes. So at the end of your workout, you get about nine minutes, let's say 10 minutes, and you get nine sets. In 10 minutes of really good volume, your heart rate gets like 155. You're breathing super heavy. You're super. But that's what I want because I'm getting the benefit of the cardiovascular work, the HRV work, the accessory work, the hypertrophy work, the volume work, all those things at the end after I've done the strength work. So it's strength first, where Scott and I certainly weren't wrong. Strength and intensity first, volume second. But I don't want to make volume the enemy. Right? It's intensity first, volumes and volume over time. As you get older and as you're strong, volume is your friend. Now as you get older, as Dr. Sullivan has talked about, older clients, they struggle with high volume. But high volume, for me, pushing 50 might be 15 work sets per week of a muscle group, per week of a muscle group. And for a 22 year old might be 30 sets per week. But that's okay. The goal is we. It's not, it's not actually that question of like, where's the end? It's where's the beginning? Well, if I'm doing four sets or five sets or seven sets of work on that muscle group, next week I'm gonna do one more set of work. And the next week I'm gonna do one more. And when I get to the point that I can't recover, which is what Soli was talking about, when I can't, like when I recover, as long as the weight on the bar goes up or the reps go up or the progressive overload goes up, I can keep going up. And at the point it doesn't, I know I've hit a wall and then I back off, Right? So that's the difference between intensity and volume. So there we go. There's the argument for intensity. Volume, intensity first, volume second. Both are awesome. Both are good. I love intensity more. It doesn't take a lot of time. You can go really heavy, really quick. Volume takes some time. But at the same time, if you do things like myo reps and you explore what you can do, you can also do those in a, in a fairly effe efficient manner. So it doesn't add a ton of time to your workout. So. Okay, open for questions. Had one come in here and then, Dan, I'll let you throw stuff to me. So I want to ask a question. Two times squat a week or three times is better? Um, I don't know because I don't know who you are, but I'll, I'll. Because it's a, it's a live stream. I'll answer. I think in the beginning, three times is better probably, because here's the answer. If you can recover from the thing, if you recover from two times squats a week, you should do that. If you can recover from 3 times squat a week, if you can recover from 5 times squats a week, which most of you can't do, you should do that. Like do what you can do and recover and keep making progress. But for most people, they're going to start three times squatting three times per week for a couple months, say two months, and then they're gonna back off their squats. They're gonna go from a full body workout from like squats and some version of press or bench press and deadlifts to two times a week squats and deadlifts, and two times a week bench press and press, or press and bench press and chin ups, things like that. And they'll continue to make progress. That's, that's the way you wanna do it. And think about this, like, if you're squatting 135, 155, 185, three times a week, it's not super stressful on your. It may feel very heavy to you, but it's not super stressful. But imagine somebody is squatting 455 for reps, that three times a week would almost kill that person. Right? And so that's where you have to start waving it. Like, even if they squat three times a week, which I would not, I would argue they shouldn't do, they may do that 4,55 for reps one time a week, back way off to 275 front squats, box squat, safety, squat bar squats, and then something else on like Friday. And then it's, it's much more difficult. So you do what you can do and still recover. Feel good. If you wake up and you've got, you've got doms, you, you've got that delayed onset muscle soreness and you're like, like, you should back, back it off. That's a great way to do it. Okay. Yeah. Taking questions. Dan, what do you got for me
- [25:35]
B
before we go to. Before we go to questions, would you let the audience know about the new pricing?
- [25:41]
A
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
- [25:42]
B
Just released.
- [25:42]
A
Oh yeah, yeah. Thank you. Let me, let me. So. All right, so guys, we just released new pricing for Barbell Logic, which has been a long time. I mean it's been 10 years in the making. So I'm going to read a script and I'm going to talk to you like humans. If it feels like everything keeps getting more expensive while the quality keeps getting worse, which it does, you pay more, you get less, and somehow the service is harder to trust, we're changing that. That's why Barbalogic is launching new pricing, which we launched last week or 10 days ago. Somewhere there with more options, you can get real high quality coaching, a lower price point without sacrificing the things that actually matter for $199 a month, which is absolutely. I'm not supposed to. It's 2026. It's that you can get great coaching for 199. We're retard maxing that you can do that. You can get a real coach, real programming, real accountability. 2 check ins every week from me, from Matt Reynolds, from Nikki Sims, from Andrew Jackson, from those. How that's, that's retarded that you can get that. So if you want even more, like if you want me to hold your hand every day, which I'm happy to do for 319amonth, you get unlimited access. You can work out four times a week, five times a week. I'll break down every one of your videos. Full coaching support whenever you need it, as many workout reviews as your training requires, plus 12 weeks of guided nutrition, which is also retarded, is ridiculous. Um, to help you align your training and nutrition habits. Because when everything else is getting more expensive and less reliable, we think coaching should be different. We're trying to provide a great service. And by the way, on a side note, it's not just what you can afford, it's what, what support you want. So for $199 a month, and I'm not gonna say this very often, and I get in trouble every time I do. I'm, I'm taking clients right now. Cause I wanna test this service out. I've taken a few new ones and look, you know how people do this online. They're like, I've got three openings. I don. I don't know how many openings I have. Maybe five, maybe I don't. We'll see, we'll see. But I'm not going to put like this, hey, if you don't sign up today, you're not going to get in. If you have, I probably have five or six openings. Nikki, Andrew, the, the, my, my best of my best solely. I mean like people have some openings here. You can do this. And so you can go to barbelllogic.com online coaching. You can see the new pricing structure. And in the checkout if you say like, hey, I like just put in the notes, I want Matt Reynolds, I want Andrew Jackson, I want Nicky Sims. Do that. And I want Dr. Sullivan. And you can get these great coaches for $199 a month, two check ins per week, 319amonth, unlimited check ins per week, unlimited access to your coach plus nutrition is pretty sweet. That's the new Barbell logic pricing model. For a long time we had this pricing model that was like, oh, it's like, you know, how good's your coach or what? It's like, okay, two check ins per week is standard. Unlimited check ins per week is unlimited. And that's the way we're doing it. So go to barbalogic.com coaching and you can check that out. And again, I've got a few openings. And by the way, if you're watching this and you're a current client of Barbalogic, no, I will not take you new clients only. I'm not going to take my take clients from my amazing coaches. Sometimes people are like, I've been waiting for Matt for a million years. No, no, you heard me. So new clients only for, for the new service. Okay, Dan, what do you got for me?
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B
Okay, so this question gets asked on YouTube all the time. Okay, we're doing three by five. Why not five by five? And why is the deadlift only one by five?
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A
That's, yeah, that's a. Okay, that's a great question. So it's just, it's about optimal volume and, and to be honest guys, it's painting with a broad brush. You're, you're just painting with broad brush. Most people do better with squatting. Three sets of five in the beginning. We've done this for thousands and thousands of clients for 20, 30 years. And we realize that three sets of five tends to be better than four sets of five or two sets of five on the squat. Once you've warmed up on the squat. The squat and the deadlift use the same muscle groups. The deadlift uses more back and less legs. But it's the same muscle groups as the squat. You're already warmed up on the, on the deadlift, on those, on those muscles. So we can do one top set of five. That top set of five on the deadlift tends to wear you out more. Again, we want to do it often, you know, 48 hours to 72 hours later. And so it's, it's just a broad brush. So the question is, if that's the best, why is it the best? Well, it's, it's the best because it's the, it's the bell curve. It's the thing that works for most people. Will it absolutely guarantee be the best for you? No. Maybe you need to do more, maybe you need to do less. But for most people, when we don't know you at all, the middle of the, like, the middle of the bell curve, the middle of the, of the, like the broad blanket is three sets of five on squat across one top set of deadlift. And we can make progress for a long time on that. And it works really, really well. There you go.
- [30:42]
B
Okay, so you're the Wunder531 article you mentioned. Feigenbaum, he wrote an article, I don't know, probably almost 10 years ago about that program. And I actually, and I've talked to CJ about this, had pretty good success, I will say, before I had a coach. I'll put that caveat on it with Wendler531 as a template. Like in Afghanistan, not knowing what I was doing. What's the. It seems like there's a delta between, like, theoretically there's not enough volume with it versus it's super popular and lots of people use it. And it seems to work for people, especially people without a coach.
- [31:17]
A
Yeah. There's so many variations of 531. So if you haven't looked it up, I mean, Windler's a good friend, has been a friend since, good grief, late 90s. And the 5:3:1 is a great book. It's a great program. Ultimately, what you do is week one, you do a top set of five and often back and then back offsets, which is the art. In the beginning, I think it was like a top set of five, and it was actually a top set to failure. Get at least five if you get seven, eight, whatever. Next week was get at least three if you get four, five, six. So now it's, it's sort of transitioned to the way I do it is the first week is a top set of five, a new five rep max and a couple back offsets. The next week is a new 3 rep max and a couple Back offsets. The next week is a one rep max or a top single and a couple back offsets. And it works pretty well. But if you don't have the back offsets, it's probably not enough volume. And if you only do one lift per day, the way I tend to do that is I'll do the five. So it's almost always a four day split. So it's like a squat five three one. It's a deadlift supplemental. The deadlift might be four sets of four. It might be a deficit deadlift or a rack pull or RDL or something like that. And then it's a circuit of three, typically three accessory movements for the lower body. It might be just. If you have a gym at a Globo gym, it might be leg leg extension, leg curl, leg press. It might be Bulgarian squats, right? Kettlebell swings, weighted sit ups. On upper body day. It, it's, you know, it's press five, three one, bench press, four sets of four and then accessory movements which might be chin ups, you know, four sets amrap with body weight dips and barbell curls on a circuit. And so when the argument is, is it enough volume? It's not the, is 531 enough volume? And is if the whole thing is enough volume. And so I think the basic programming is fantastic. The question is, how much volume do you need? Well, again, if you're doing 531 and you're 60 years old and you've trained for a while, you might not need any more than the 5:3:1 and the second lift. You might not need to do accessory movements at all. But for those of you who have built up and you've got the intensity there and you've got to build up your volume, you're going to have to keep increasing. And that's a, that's why I increase that. For some guys. Guys, listen, for some guys, I just put them on like, I'm like, do the rower do a thousand meter row for time. It's Vol. It's volume. I'm just trying to get more work in. That's the goal. The goal, like just understand progressive overload. Not at a deep, ridiculous scientific level, just at a top line. Just do more each week than you did last week. So if you did this thing, you went up in weight a little bit on a few of the reps. On a few of the lifts you did, you, you did a few more reps than you did on the other lifts and you added another a hundred meters on the row or the Air bike or you walked a little more around the neighborhood. Like, that's for. That's fine. That's great. That's all. I just wanna do a little more this week than I did last week.
- [34:23]
B
Last question is on Bulgarian method. And that's obviously a high frequency. And frequency is related to volume. But how does that work? And also for whom does it work? Because that was not just that it wasn't being used on everyday people. Obviously.
- [34:38]
A
Yeah. The difference between what the Germans did, which was German volume. So they went super high volume. Sometimes you hear stuff like 10 sets of 10. So stop. Think about that for a minute. Like, I don't care what the weight is. I don't care if it's 135. Do you want to do 10 sets of 10 at 135 on squats? That sounds terrible. That's what the Germans did. It was just this idea coming post, out of Post World War II, what can we do? And so, and then Bulgaria, and there's some history lesson here. I apologize. We're over time. Bulgaria was, was an Eastern Bloc country. Right. So post, like actually between World War I and World War II, we get the rise of communism. Bulgaria was a. Was a Soviet run. What they were trying to do was break people. And the ones that didn't break were the ones they would send to the Olympics. And so Bulgaria was very high intensity, very high frequency. So Bulgarians max effort, snatch, Max Everett, Klingen, jerk, Max, Everett squat every day, six days a week, sometimes two times a day. Germans were, post World War II, extremely high volume. Ten sets of ten, you know, and so what? What? Well, that, that is just a winnowing factor. They're just putting people in a sieve and seeing who comes out and doesn't die. And that's. Which works, by the way. That works awesome. In communism, when you can, if you don't hit your maxes or you don't hit your reps, we'll just, we'll kill your family and put you back and we'll put you in a, you know, throw you in a ditch and take you out of government housing. But in, in the Western world, that doesn't work very well. So the question is, what works the best for the, for the vastest amount of people? And ultimately what we're trying to do is. That's the thing. So again, I, I want to be clear. Like, are there people that could do more volume than I prescribe? Absolutely. Are there people that should do less? Absolutely. But what I'm trying to do As a coach and a business owner, for those of you guys listening is I'm trying to hit the middle. And for most people that don't know what they need, we start at the middle and we just test it. That's what minimum effective dose is like. We're testing is the volume right? If the volume's not right, we just add a little volume. We don't add a little volume and intensity and frequency at the same time. We just add a little, we add a little X, whatever. The thing is, we add a little variable German volume. Training, just 10 sets of 10. I'm going to throw all the volume at you. Bulgarian training, six days a week, max effort. Three different lifts every single day, all the time. That is a great way to win a wow and figure out who the absolute freaks are. Only people who are paying you 400, 500, $6 a month. $600 a month. That's not, that's not a winnowing factory. I'm trying to get all my clients stronger, all my clients better and improve their quality of life over time. Not just their, not just their longevity, not just their lifespan, but their quality of lifespan. Right. Their health span. And so that's why I'm not a huge fan of either of German or Bulgarian type training. Listen, I love, I, let me just be clear. I love Bulgarian, what these guys do. I love watching the Olympic weightlifters and the Olympics and I know, I know what they're doing. The Bulgarian training hall from Iron Mind, if you haven't seen it from 1992 or 93, is amazing. But that's not me and I'm a pretty good athlete and that's not you. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to take my 47 year old males, you know, soccer moms, whatever. I'm going to try to get them stronger, healthier quality of life, improvement over the course of time. Because they're not Bulgarian Olympic weightlifters in an Eastern bloc communist country who, if they don't hit their max snatch, gets thrown out into the ditch and their family loses their government housing. So that works really well if that's the process. But if it's not, and it's not for almost all of us, then we have to figure out what makes what is. Yes. Hey, here's the, here's the trick. If you're a coach and you're listening to this, a TKC coach or thinking about tkc, you give your clients a lot of what they need and a Little of what they want, and you appease them and you make them happy and you keep them happy and you keep them motivated so they keep coming back. How many of your clients would be happy with 10 sets of 10 German volume training or six days a week, max effort every single day? Doesn't work very well. So. Yeah, so that's how I do it.
- [39:07]
B
Carl, real quick, Carl, just put a comment on Instagram. A Bulgarian told him that Bulgaria was the Alabama of Eastern Europe. He's not sure what that means.
- [39:19]
A
So if you want to know the Bulgarians, their last names all end in ov, right? Ivanov, like ov. So if you see some freak lifting and they're. And the last two letters of their name are ov, They're Bulgarian. And they're just. They're just. They're crazy. And again, as a. As a very religious creationist, I still think there's some evolution. Like, you know, if your name didn't in an ov, you got murdered in 1940s. In the 1940s. And so it's amazing how many of those guys made it. Well, yeah, because they. They were. They were the cream of the crop genetically. So my. My good buddy Sam Russell says, and I'm canceled. Now talking. Talking about these guys. No, look, here's the deal. Intensity, volume. Let's. Let's tie it up while I'm 10 minutes over. You should be pursuing intensity first until you hit the basics, until you have the basic standard of what you need to hit. Once you hit the basic standard. This is why it's important to have a coach. Should have a coach. Go to barbalogic. Use the thing. $198. You can hire me, you can hire Andrew, you can hire Nikki. You can hire, like, our amazing coaches. You can hire these guys. You hire Dan, hire Carl. They're awesome. What do you do once you hit the standard? And by the way, hitting the standard is not easy. I'm assuming that you can just hit the standard on your own, and you probably can't. Once you hit the standard, then what do you keep driving the weight up and get injured and like, how you can't do that forever. Do you drive the. That's what a coach is for. You do that thing. So it's intensity first, volume second. Volume doesn't mean reps per set. I go from 5 reps to 6 reps to 10 reps to 12 reps per set. It's actually the number of sets within 5 reps in reserve of failure that I do per week. That's the best way I know to calculate volume. And I look at that and I go, well, how many sets of squats or lower body or legs or whatever did I do for that week? Within five reps of failure, I have five. Well, I need to start taking that up. And the top line max is 30 sets per week. And I think that's way too much for most people. So if you're there, that's, that's the top line. We can't get any better. And also the reps are the same thing. So reps we know we get that myofibrillar hypertrophy from 5 reps, ish. You start to get in sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. 1012 reps per set. You can be like, I don't know what that is. It's okay, we'll talk about it on another show. But, but at some point at you don't want to do more than 30 reps. So if you're also the person who does air squats and you do like I can do 30 air squats, 40 air squats, a hundred air. A hundred air squats doesn't make your legs any bigger than 30. A hundred pushups doesn't make your pe, your pecs, your shoulders, your, your triceps any more than at 30 reps. It's just it at over that, it's just muscular endurance. Right. And so there is a window. There is like anything else, a ditch on both sides. Can I go too heavy and too low volume ditch on the left, too light, too high volume ditch on the right. Absolutely. We want to stay in the middle. In the beginning I would say you want to stay closer to the intensity side. As you get more trained, you want to be probably add more to the volume side and that's it. That's the 30,000 foot view. That's how we do intensity and volume. And we can all be friends. Feigenbaum, Baracki, all you guys. Renaissance Mike is retell. We can all be friends on this. It works fine. So come on in the pool. The water's warm, 70 degrees. Come on into the pool. There you go. There's another Mondays with Matt. Glad you guys are here again. Go to barbalogic. Com Online coaching. You guys can see it. We've got a great new pricing structure. Come get me as your coach. Andrew, Nikki, Dan, Carl, some of our incredible coach, Nikki Berman. We have two Nikki's. If you don't, don't know. We got great coaches. Come and get them. $199 a month for standard for two check ins per week, 319 for unlimited. Come, come get us. We'd love to coach you. And we'll see you next week. And happy Monday. Happy week. I hope you guys have a. Sam. It.