Nick: 0:13

uh yeah so the the video that we did and this i think that this may have been episode one of the podcast right uh probably it's probably one of the most uh valuable videos for programming um that that i've ever done so i i pass that around to coaches especially a lot uh so everybody if you haven't watched that you should go back and watch it for sure i will link to it yeah because there's a lot of a lot of uh as simple as the novice program is there's a ton of misunderstanding. about how to actually apply it for some reason because everybody wants to make things more complicated than they need to be yep uh but but the main idea is, You are going to start with the simplest and most effective version of things that will get you the most progress and most. out, uh, most benefit in terms of total output, uh, that you can get right. And this is, this is the same for any process, any complicated process that you could embark upon, whether it's physical. or anything else. So, uh, the, the starting strength novice linear progression gives us that it gives us a nice prepackaged, uh, template really is what it is. It's a, it's a, a practice package template that you can apply based on the situation that will get you a lot of strength very, very quickly. It'll progress your variables in a way that makes sense because what we're looking for is a strength adaptation. Therefore you need to apply a force production stress and the novice linear progression uses the five lifts that give you the biggest force production. stress throughout your body in order to make you strong quickly. Right? So, um, so the way we're going to approach this is, is systematically starting with the novice linear progression, uh, and running a process and making changes as they become, necessary. Alright, so one of the most important principles now that we're going to start talking about programming beyond the novice linear progression or beyond the novice phase, and I don't know if we need to cover this again, but a novice is just anybody who's never done it, right? And the term novice is helpful, but it can be misleading depending on who you're talking to and how you're using the term. So I like to think about it, and for the purposes of this discussion, it may be helpful to just think about it as your starting point. It's your entry point into a process of performance improvement. So you're going to start with the most basic program that you can, and then you're going to change things as changes become necessary. So getting back to my point, anytime we talk about programming changes, if you are doing things correctly, And we're making the assumption that you want to continue getting stronger and that efficient use of your time in the gym is important and that efficient movement is important. So if those three things are important to you and they take priority because you want to run an efficient process, then you need to consider things on a deeper level than most people do. Because what most people do is they run a program for a given period of time. Usually the program is templated out for 8 to 12 to 16 weeks or whatever it is. And then after that program's over, they switch programs. Or more commonly for our friends and fans, you'll start with a program that makes sense and you make a whole bunch of progress very quickly. And then when things get hard is when you make a programming change. So all of those things may be true, but the proper approach is to and this is the very important point here is that programming changes are made reluctantly. Programming changes are made because you have to make a programming change, not because you want to make a programming change. All of my assumptions right now are that we're running this this process optimally. So so reluctant programming changes. And I don't remember if we mentioned this the last time we talked programming, but. First thing you have to look at is is your technique efficient, mostly efficient, right? Are you doing things that are affecting the weight on the bar significantly? If that's the case, get it get it tuned up, fix, get a get a form check, go see a coach, do it online, whatever, but get your form tuned up. Second thing, are you training consistently? So I'm making the assumption that you're actually training and not missing three or four workouts a month. If that's the case, don't make a programming change, get your consistency in order, or your consistency, your compliance. In order, and then, and then see what happens. Right. And then the third thing is recovery, or your recovery, all of the things that go into recovery are those in order. If they're not in order, then either get them fixed, or you may need to make a programming change. That's not the optimal deal in terms of continuing to get stronger. All right. So with that kind of groundwork laid, I'm, I'm making the assumption that we're proceeding optimally, that you're recovering. Meaning that you're steadily, gradually gaining weight and getting bigger and stronger. If you're overweight, you're either holding your weight or you're very gradually losing weight, depending on what your goals are. But most people, most of the time, are going to be gaining a little bit of weight on the novice program. That you are making appropriate jumps, all the recovery stuff, and that you are not missing workouts and that your form is pretty good. All right. So with all those things said, for a squat, it's the basic program, squatting every workout three days a week, one rest day in between, adding five pounds to the bar every single workout. Right. So three sets of five, three, yeah, three sets of five. Now that that's the novice linear progression. All right. So as soon as we start messing with that. Program, you're no longer doing the novice linear progression. Now that's not a bad thing. All right, but just understand that the trade offs at this point are that you are slowing down your progress in order to continue making progress longer term. All right, so that's that's the way I'm thinking about it. So we're adding three sets of five, or I'm sorry, we're adding five pounds to the bar, the three sets of five, for four months, five months, six months, depending on where you started in your age and all these different things. So let's say your average 40 year old guy comes into the gym and he squats 85 pounds 90 pounds the first day. I expect this first programming change to happen. Maybe when he's up around the mid 200s with the first squat, mid 200s, it's usually about where it starts happening. And all I'm looking at as a coach is, is bar speed. And then also, you know, just just generally how the how the client or the the lifter is looking and feeling workout to workout, right. So as I'm seeing over time, that the bar speed is that things are happening to the bar speed within within a set, right, because the load is always going to make the bar speed slower. But I'm noticing that things are starting to get much, much harder. Or I'm noticing that the next workout is, is it may result in a failed rep. I'll make, I'll make a programming change again, provided that all of the other parameters are in order. And that first programming changes do a light day, the middle of the week. So you don't take 80% off the bar and then proceed as usual on Monday and Wednesday. So let's, it's important to talk about like, what are the trade-offs there? The trade-off is that I've slowed my progress by. five pounds a week, but consider where you are three, four months, you know, 12 to 16 weeks into this program, you're adding weight every single time. And, um, the moment comes where you are faced with potentially bailing on a rep or. Giving yourself a light day in the middle of the week and then hitting the workout on Friday fresh and excited about that PR rather than just continuing to grind through and potentially failing, failing a rep. And I keep saying, saying failing a rep because for the people in the demographic that I'm typically dealing with, they're risk averse, you know, they, they're something on their body probably hurts. And I don't want to give a new lifter. These are new lifters right three to four months in. I don't want to give a new lifter the idea that it's okay to fail and set the bar down on the pins. So we're not going to do that we're going to keep making progress. So if that means slowing down five pounds a week I'm cool with that because it'll give me another, another month, another six weeks sometimes even another eight weeks of progress, where, where, alternatively, we could have just. beat the shit out of ourselves for the next five workouts and hit a wall a week and a half from now. Right. So that's, that's the way I'm looking at it. So relatively minor change, not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it, I just gave myself another month of runway with this, with this individual by adding a light day. Yeah. So in other words, my, my next big programming change happens at the 300 pound Mark rather than at the two 65 pound Mark. Yep. Does that make. sense how I said that? So absolutely. Yeah, so I could keep pushing on this guy and have him start questioning everything at 265 or we could slow down just a little bit, right? Just back off this throttle back a little bit, keep making progress. And then now when we need to make the next programming change, he's at 300 pounds. For a dude who started at 90 pounds with this squat, this is a significant difference. These 30 pounds matter a lot.

Ray: 9:53

Sure. And just to reiterate your point, Nick, keep in mind, these are illustrative numbers. A lot of people get fixated on numbers and think when I hit number X, I need to make a change. That's not what we're saying here. We're saying it's individual dependent and it's dependent on your bar speed. And the worst thing you can do for your training is get some number in your mind and you have to make some change when you hit some certain number. That is not how this works.

Nick: 10:18

Yeah. Well, and here's another good point. Because it's such a small change, what if you made the change too early? Yeah. doesn't matter not a big deal right because it'll get hard soon it'll get harder soon enough so, um you know you can assign whatever values you want to continuing to grind yourself into the uh into the end of the pavement workout after workout i i'd much rather see you continuing to lift and progress for the next two years than uh then then uh you know start drinking a gallon of. milk and gain 30 pounds to put 15 pounds on the bar uh it's not that's not a good idea so um, so yeah so again using using just the general example here the guy's now up around 300 pounds for his squat um and he uh is on a on a, progression where every Wednesday is a light day. So we got some runway out of that small change. So, you know, let's say high 200s, low 300s, I'm going to make the next programming change, again, based on how the lifter is responding to things in general. You know, you have to remember. that like, you've got recovery, and you've got strength, and you've got stress, and you've got recovery, just kind of moving up at the same time. And there's just these points where they meet. And, you know, you got to, you got to just kind of back off a little bit to keep things moving in the in the proper direction. So the next change that I'll make is that I will only go up on the first set of five for the squad, because that's usually even though it usually doesn't feel the greatest that first set, but you're fresh, you know, first set of five, maybe feels the hardest. And then after that, the rest of the workout almost feels like like cake after you take a. volume and everything pretty much the same. And the only thing we're, we're messing with is, is intensity. So let's say the first set of five on that Monday is 300 pounds. Then we'll do two sets of five at 90% of that. So, uh, two 70, right? So, uh, and then the middle, middle day of the week, Wednesday is still 80%. So that's going to be a two 40 or so, right? Two 40 for the three sets of five. And then on Friday we go up to three Oh five for the first set and two 75 for the two back offsets. And again, that's another change that gives me another another six to eight weeks of, of runway. So now, you know, we're not making the next programming change until, um, and I know, I know like some people are like doing the math and checking my numbers. It doesn't fucking matter. Right. But the next programming change is not going to happen until we're at like three 40, you know, three 30, three 40. So we start getting into weekly increases, um, at three at the mid 300 pound mark, rather than at the, at the high two hundreds or, or. mid 200s, which, you know, a lot of guys doing this on their own are looking to make programming changes into weekly increases in the in the high 200s and low 200s. It's not it's not that's you, as Rip would say, you're not doing the program, right? So, yeah. And just to back up a little bit, anything that is not three sets of five, squatting three days a week, adding five, adding more weight to the bar every single time is no longer the novice linear progression, right? And that's okay. So we're moving beyond it. And we're advancing our programming variables, progressing our programming variables into a little bit more complexity, in order to account for, for the increased weight and recovery and to be able to continue driving progress without tapping yourself out in terms of recovery, right.

Ray: 14:00

All right, so the squat summary. As Nick just outlined and is in more detail in the podcast episode he referenced is three sets of five, go up five pounds of workout, do that three days a week. And then when the bar speed starts to slow down and you're concerned that you might miss a rep, add a light day. Three sets of five at 80% and that's on Wednesday. And then when you have the same thing happen and it's time for another change, then you do drop sets. So you go up on the first set and then you do 90% for the last two sets. And you do that twice a week. So now, so at that point you're still going up twice a week. So you're technically still a novice. And when you move to weekly jumps, you're then an intermediate on that particular lift. So Nick, if you're thinking about a standard member at a starting strength gym who's training three days a week. 40-year-old guy in this scenario, how would you then transition him from that last stage, so drop sets and a light day, to a more intermediate program with weekly progression.

Nick: 15:06

I'm just going to decide which day is going to be the heavy day. So it's either going to be Monday or Friday. And usually it's Monday. because, you know, you've got the weekend and stuff, but that that's personal preference. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. You pick one day of the week to be the heavy day. And then you only go up on that first set for that one day. So let's, let's just say we're at three 40 for the squat. Now three 40 for a set of five is the guy's PR. So next Monday, he goes to. three 45 and then 90% for the other two sets, 80% on Wednesday. And then on Friday, it's three sets of five at 90% of three 45. So that's, that's you know, a weekly increase on the squat. So that's what you would consider intermediate programming for, for the squat at that point. Now remember what I said about the stress and recovery parameters kind of meeting and having this inflection point. When you get to that point, you know, honestly, that, that single set of five. Uh, isn't going to, isn't going to give you much progress. Uh, we're talking about a month tops, maybe, maybe less. Um, so that's, that's how I initially set it up. And I try to try to squeeze as much out of that. Just one, one time a week, heavy set of five, as much as I can. Usually other things in the program are going to help that. Like how, how hard are they, are they working on their, like how high is their deadlift? If the deadlift is real high, they can, they'll probably keep making progress on that squat for a while. If their deadlift and their squat are real close, that, that their, their overall stress is going down. So, um, or, or staying about the same. So you, you kind of are going to get stuck. Um, so this is where, this is what we're kind of the, the, the whole program needs to be taken into account. But, um, My point is that that's not going to last long. So you have to be thinking ahead to what the next change is going to be that I'm going to make. But you've got the template now, right? You've got heavy, light, medium. You've got a heavy, light, medium setup. It doesn't matter if heavy is on Monday or Friday. Now you just decide, okay, so my heavy day is going to be heavy. Now what do I do next? And probably the simplest thing to do is, well, let's go to triples and we'll do some triples. We'll do three sets of three and start driving PRs on three sets of three for that Monday and then leave everything else the same, right? And then eventually it's going to be like, not working. And then you just run it out. Like it's typically what people say when they run it out. So I'm going to do singles now. Now, when you get to singles, you got to be careful because you're, you're potentially dropping a whole bunch of stress by doing that. So, you know, cause you went from, from five reps to 10 reps with your triples to now, you know, maybe five singles. It's usually not enough. So usually I'm having someone do singles. I'm having them do, some, some back off work on that same day, or again, depending on the rest of the, the program, something else may be going on with a deadlift or something to keep the stress fairly.

Ray: 18:04

high. And just to clarify, Nick, you were talking about having the deadlift pretty far ahead of the squat. And based on our previous conversations, in my experience, I think what you're talking about is roughly 50 pounds plus ahead of the squat for your deadlift number. Is that about right.

Nick: 18:22

At least. Yeah, at least that's where it should be. And it might not be at this point in your program, but this is the opportunity now to run your deadlift up. Right. Cause you're only squatting one heavy set of five. So whatever. And at this point, you know, I guess if you want to go through each lift, we will, but the, but at this point you're probably only deadlifting once a week. So that deadlift has to be a set of five and it has to be super heavy and it has to be going up. So, you know, if, if, um, if I've got a, a, a lifter, who's let's say squatting three 45 for one set of five on Monday and deadlifting three 40 or three 50, we're going to start making 10 pound jumps on the, on the deadlift, uh, just to, just to bring it up because they can, right. As long as all the, the positioning and mechanics and everything's right, we're going to start running up the deadlift, um, as quick as we can.

Ray: 19:11

Got it. I do want to do this for each lift, Nick, but before we get into the other three lifts. Um, I want to, I want to ask you to shed some light on the principles that are at play here. So we've, we've, uh, we're moving away from a very templatized approach in the novice phase where you just do this, then do that, then do that. Absolutely. And then we're moving into intermediate and then things become a little bit more murky. And this is where people get tripped up. So can you talk to us about what the considerations are in your mind when you're making programming changes at.

Nick: 19:43

this level? Yeah, that's a good question. And this is why I keep saying like anytime you deviate from the basic novice linear progression, you are no longer doing the novice linear progression. And that's okay because we have other considerations. Now we're still really close, right? So you can call it whatever you want. We're still really close because we're still going up twice a week. We only have one light day in the middle, but we're modifying the program. But it's necessary to modify the program. So with that said, you can approach this however you want. The way I approach it is going to be different from maybe the way you approach it or the way, you know, another more experienced coach like some guys like to use triples at the end of the novice, you know, call it advanced novice or whatever, like to use triples, it doesn't matter. Like the point is that the weight on the bar needs to keep going. I prefer this approach because it keeps me on keeps keeps us on sets of five. It's simpler, right, it's simple, simpler to deal with because all we're messing with is just intensity and that's it just intensity over the course of the week. So it's easier for me to explain and it's easier for me to to program for people. So, it doesn't matter how you do it just make sure that the weight on the bars, going up and the further you deviate from fives. at this stage in someone's training, um, the more likely you are to fuck things up, right? So threes are still okay. One's a single start to become a problem. And then the other direction going into seven, seven, eights, tens, that just, it just doesn't work at all. So you're not, you're no longer strength training at this point. So, um, so, so I always try to keep fives as the, as the main thing. And this is like, this isn't anything I, I, this is all just the way it is. And the way we've always talked about this, you want to keep fives in the, in the program as long as possible. So this is the way I do it. Um, let me just pause you there real quick, Nick.

Ray: 21:34

cause, cause isn't there, isn't there a caveat that fives applies to, uh, slightly below average males and above? In other words, you, you probably want to end this process doing threes for your typical female client or for your, your significantly below average male client. Is that.

Nick: 21:52

right? For sure. Women, women are going to be doing threes fairly early. So, uh, and that's, that's a pretty, uh, you know, That's a pretty universal change that when women need to train heavier, the bar needs to get heavier because of the neuromuscular efficiency situation being different from males, right? So they recruit muscle mass at a slower rate is probably the way to think about it than males. So the way you get more muscle mass recruited is by increasing load, right? And more time, more time and more load. So what you'll see with women is that they can grind through reps heavier at sets of three and they need to in order to continue driving a strength adaptation. So, yeah, everything I just said in terms of fives, make that threes for women. That's typically that's typically what you see. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. So when we're, yeah, since we're super sexist, when I talk about this stuff, it's generally with like a typical male, um, a typical male trainee. Uh, but it's not that complicated. for women. It's just three sets of five becomes five sets of three. Right. And by the time this.

Ray: 23:01

episode goes live, I will have a video up, uh, going through the novice linear progression specific to, uh, um, to the female population. So Brie, please link to that as well. Um, and Nick, before we move into the other lifts, I wanted to clarify one more big picture concept with you. When, when a trainee has a problem with intermediate programming, so they start missing reps or whatever other problem might occur, how do they, how do they understand what's causing that problem? How do they think about that problem so they can figure out how. to solve it? Does that question make sense.

Nick: 23:38

i think so so when when somebody starts failing reps so the program's not working why how do i.

Ray: 23:44

figure out what how do i figure out what i did wrong here gotcha gotcha okay so provided that.

Nick: 23:49

it's not a technique error all right so we always have to consider the efficiency of the technique, provided it's not a technique error and it's a programming issue, then there are two ways that you should look at uh you should look at um, Overall progress. And so this kind of goes into a larger point here. So how you determine what kind of programming change you need to make. So when we're talking about the squat, you can think about it in terms of stress and recovery, not aligning in terms of recovery, not being able to keep up with the amount of stress that you're applying. Right. So in other words, I hate to say like under under recovered. It's just too much, too much stress or not enough stress. It's probably the way to think about it. Right. Because, again, we're assuming that you're that you're doing things properly and you're recovering properly. If you're not, then it's kind of a separate conversation about what we need to do, because now you're considering tradeoffs. You're considering like, all right, well, I know that I can only sleep four hours continuously a night because I have an infinite home. So I'm making this program. Knowing that it's not the best thing to do, and I'm just kind of holding on. But assuming that everything is in line. You can simplify it in terms of too much stress or not enough stress. So when you have too much stress, which is typically what occurs when you get to the end of your novice linear progression with the squat and the deadlift, what you'll see is a decline in performance that's gradual, right? So, if you kind of imagine your performance curve on the squat, let's just look at the squat. It's going up like this, right? When you first start the program, it goes like this and it shoots straight up and then it starts to flatten out a little bit, right? And then let's say that you're starting to have, that your recovery. The capacity is not keeping up with the with the regular increases on the way to the bar, what you'll see is a is a slight, you know, a steady decline in performance meaning, meaning that the like let's just look at the bar speed you'll see the bar speed just getting slower and slower and slower every rep every workout the bar speed gets slower and slower and slower right so that's an indicator to me that you're not adapting that you're not adapting for whatever reason so the bar speed will always be slow on rep for and definitely, rep five if you're doing things correctly, but it shouldn't be the same speed on rep, it shouldn't, it shouldn't like rep one of the next workout first set rep one of the first, first rep of the first set of the next workout shouldn't look like. the fourth rep of the third set of the last workout. So I hope I'm being clear there, right? So that's what I'm, that's what I mean by reduction because it's only five pounds more. So I shouldn't see like, I shouldn't see a bar speed that looks like it's 30 pounds heavier. So that's, that's what I'm looking at. And if, and if that's what I'm starting to see, then I'm making a programming change because I'm starting to see a decline in performance or aches and pains, right? Like this hurts. This other thing hurts. I'm having trouble sleeping. Um, I, uh, i have trouble getting getting to sleep um i feel like i can't eat after you know all these different things that weren't a problem three weeks ago like all of a sudden are a problem um and it may not actually be like a a physical recovery issue it may be all up here but either way the solution is the same for me right if i add a light day i might solve all those problems right now um so i'm looking at all those things bar speed primarily because that's my mostly objective based on my experience um indicator of what's going on could i tell the lifter move the. bar faster maybe right but um i could do that and see what happens and uh it's gonna depend on on the lifter uh how much how how hard they want to push against the bar but um you know i'm not i'm not looking at this guy for the first time today i've been watching him lift for the next for the last four to six months so i know what things look like i know what uh i know what to expect, Um, and then I'm, I'm hearing things from the lifter about, uh, about, you know, aches and pains, things, things that are, that are starting to happen that are weird. Uh, so that's what I mean by that. If that's what I mean by too much stress under stressed. So not enough stress looks like this. Here's your performance curve. And this is what you see on the press or what you see if you try to keep women on sets of five for too long. Right? So in other words, you detrain, it's not enough stress. So you see your performance curve go like this. It moves up quickly. And then you have a sharp drop. Like you just have a sharp drop in performance. Nothing hurts. Um, everything looks good. Bar speed on rep. one of set one of the of today's workout looks the same as rep one of set one of the last workout like the same bar speed like bar speeds going great you're thinking you're about to have a fantastic workout and all of a sudden bam you start failing and this is what everybody on the. on the face of the earth has experienced with their press um and this is what uh women have experienced when they try to do sets of five for too long um and that's what that looks like right so those are the those are the kind of the cleanest ways to look at these two things so, Yeah. So people will say something like, and I still see this on the internet, people responding in the Facebook group and stuff. A guy starts failing his press for the first time and people. will say, well, you're not recovered. You need to go to threes or you need to eat more and then try it again. You're pressing 145 pounds. Eating more is not your problem. You're just not getting.

Ray: 29:44

enough stress. One caveat I think that needs to be added to this is if you are an intermediate, trainee and you're doing your own programming and you're trying to make sense of how to adjust variables and you just understood the concepts that Nick has shared with you in terms of, whether your problem is too much stress or not enough stress. If you make a change, make a small change. Nick, can you expand on that concept.

Nick: 30:09

Yeah. Your, your original question was an intermediate trainee who starts failing reps. How do they determine what the problem is? Um, so, so yeah, first question to ask yourself, other than am I recovering all the, all the other things, right. Am I training? Am I actually training? Am I missing workouts? Is my form good? So actual programming questions, because you've covered all of the low hanging fruit in other words. Um, so it's time to decide if you need to make a programming change or why you need to make a programming change. So the first thing is, am I getting too much stress or not enough stress? Um, and, um, really the, the answer is. In looking over your, I mean, everything I just said, right, in terms of what your performance looks like, but also you look at the last two to three weeks of your training log, like, as, as coming out of the novice phase, late novice phase, intermediate, you should still be seeing a continual increase in stress. So overall, your stress should continue to continue to go up. If you've done something like go from three sets of five to three sets of three, you've, you've reduced your stress, right, so you've reduced your stress. If you haven't at the same time bumped the weight up significant, right, because the volume and the intensity are, are two things that that you know they're like, if like think of a soundboard right and you have the overall, you have the overall level of whatever you're listening to and then you have two knobs over here that you can manipulate to mess with that overall level. So you can crank the intensity all the way up to make that level overall level go up, but you're going to start clipping you're going to start cutting things off if you don't reduce the, the, the volume lever right and vice versa. So, so your overall stress has to has to be has to be continually going up. And if all of a sudden you've done something to your program. Over the last couple weeks, you're going to see it on this week's program with a failed rep. So an example of that would be in something like the press, like you're doing the press, and you're doing three sets, three sets of five, and then you start failing. So you you did three sets of five on Monday, and then you did a set of five, a set of four, a set of two on Friday. And then you said, Well, fuck, I failed. So I'm going to try it again. But, you know, you've only done 11 reps or whatever it is that day, you were supposed to do 30 reps for the week, and you only did 21 reps for the week, right? At, at a point where you're, you're, you're needing every bit of stress for the press. And not only that, you need every bit of practice for the press. So what happens on next Monday, you try it again, and now you don't get any sets of five, like you get three, three, two, you're like, what the hell's going on? And then you go like, eat a double cheeseburger. and drink a bunch of milk thinking that's going to help, but you've reduced the stress. You've, dumped a bunch of stress. So yeah, look at your training log over the last two weeks. What did I do? What did I do that caused this? If you haven't done anything, like everything's been going fine and then all of a sudden you're having a problem, then you need to figure out, okay, where do I need to add more stress? Like the example there would be one set of five with backoffs on Monday, like how we started the intermediate program, one set of five with backups on Monday, light day on. Wednesday. I'm sorry. Yeah. Light day Wednesday and then medium day Friday. So if that's the program you're running and it's going smoothly, it's going fine. You're adding five pounds to that first set every Monday. And then all of a sudden you come in and like, It's tough. Rep number four, rep number five is really, really slow. Then you come in the following Monday and rep one is moving at the same speed as rep four was last Friday. You've got a problem, right? You don't have enough stress. So that's a situation where your recovery is now, bam, right in line with the amount of stress and you're not disrupting homeostasis enough to make another adaptation. So what you need to do then is add more stress. So probably the safest way to do that is, okay, so I'm going to go to threes and I'm going to make a 10-pound jump and I'm going to do three sets of three. So you've gone from one set of five heavyweight to three sets of three at a heavyweight. So you've got nine heavy reps now rather than five heavy reps. So ask yourself, is that more stress or less stress? It's more stress, right? So I've got 10 more pounds on the bar and I'm doing nine reps. Okay. You've been doing a set of five for the last eight months. Um, sets of three, even at a 10 pound increase, it's like a vacation feels awesome. Right. Um, and then, well, for a little bit, right. Until you add 40 pounds to the bar and then it sucks again.

Ray: 35:19

Yeah.

Nick: 35:20

Right.

Ray: 35:21

That's super clear enough. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. I think that, uh, I think I hear a lot of confusion and questions about exactly this topic and I think that sums it up nicely. So we've got, we've got the squad out of the way. We've got the principles out of the way. I want to spend the rest of this time just going through the rest of the lifts quickly. And then if we have time at the end, we could do some more discussion. Um, let's talk about the deadlift cause that's kind of an easy one. So, so Nick, why don't you walk us through the standard progression from day one on the deadlift up until kind of early, mid intermediate.

Nick: 35:50

Yeah, sure. And this is, this is part of the problem of, of categorizing yourself as a novice, intermediate or advanced lifter, right? So it's, it's helpful in terms of thinking about where you're, where you are in terms of your overall, like lifelong training experience. Um, but at any given moment, if you're making decisions based on where you think you are for, um, it's, it's just not useful because you're, you, you could be doing novice programming on your squat and be doing intermediate style programming for your deadlift. And that's totally common, but nobody gets, nobody gets all weird in the head about it.

Ray: 36:33

That's the way it should be. You should, you're not, you're not, and that we should have mentioned at the outset. You're not just an intermediate. One day you progress individually.

Nick: 36:41

That's exactly right. Yeah. So I will, um, I'll talk about myself or trainees in terms of these categories of training advancement, just so you have a reference of how long this person's been training and how strong they are, and also what kind of programming generally they're doing, but it ultimately, it doesn't matter. First of all, so don't assign any kind of importance to, so don't make it like an achievement that you're unlocking because you don't want the next achievement, like you want to stay where you're at as long as possible. So it's just the way, it's just kind of a very macro view of where you are in terms of your programming and your training history, but beyond that, like on this detailed level, I try to avoid those categorizations because it gets, it's not useful because people latch on to the category and not the information that I'm trying to present, right? For sure, for sure. If you can just say a word, and then everything falls under that word, it's way easier to think about things. And it's way easier to sell somebody like, here is an intermediate program. So you say, okay, me, intermediate, I buy intermediate program, I do. And that's super simple, right? But that's not an intelligent approach. I think like last time we talked about the smooth brain approach to doing programming, which is like novice LP, fail, reset, novice LP, fail, reset, Texas method. And that's like, you know, that's dumb as hell. I feel like you're personally attacking me right now. But I, but, you know, let's do that. This is all from personal experience. And it's not only me, like you see people doing it all over the place. Like we, everybody, everybody did it this way, right? Yeah. Because that's, that's how we interpreted it. And by the way, you know, if you and I would have picked up practical programming and actually read it, we wouldn't have fucked up like that, right? Because after the novice chapter, or in the novice. chapter, there is a thing called a late novice program or advanced novice or something. I don't even remember. Right. But I mean, it specifically talks about how to progress through the end of the novice phase into the intermediate phase of things. Um, but you know, we didn't do that because you're thinking about all this cool shit in the Texas method that, that doesn't work for us because we're not strong enough to take advantage of it. Right. Right. Yeah. And quite.

Ray: 39:04

honestly, I had trouble synthesizing all of Ripito's advice in the blue book, let alone the gray book. And this is kind of the point of this channel in this particular episode, we're just trying to simplify things for you guys. So if you're doing this on your own, you can go do it with fewer issues than what we had. And if you're a coach, you can conceptualize this stuff in a much simpler way.

Nick: 39:22

Yep, yep. Yeah, let me just say one more time like this is the way I do it. This is not like there's, there is no, let me be really clear about this, there is no like approved starting strength progression for how to go from novice to intermediate to advanced, because that would be silly. Yep, that'd be stupid, right? Because people are people are different, people respond differently. And you have to approach things from simple, general and basic moving towards complex, specific and individual, right. And that's, that's the way it works. So you have to figure it out for yourself, or you hire a coach to help you figure it out. And you progress variables along that, that progression or that spectrum, or that continuum is probably the best way to say you progress your variables along that continuum based on what's happening. In your specific process. Now, for almost every, well, everybody, the beginning looks the same. six months eight months in it mostly looks the same for almost everybody a year two years in it looks kind of the same but but mostly like the bulk of the program is going to be individualized to the person you're dealing with all right so at the at the somebody who's been training for two years I can hand you guys like um like if I'm talking to the coaches at the gyms I can. hand them a template that is very general like it says you know a squat you, an upper body lift a pull an upper body lift using this protocol and some some percentages, um and then it's up to them to fill in all of the specifics based on the person they're dealing with but i we can also hand every coach at a gym the novice linear progression and say squat press bench deadlift power clean three sets of five and five sets of three um and everybody's gonna do this because that's the way it works right so um so yeah let's speak let's be clear because people. always ask the question of like how um or or they have asked the question with the intent or with the uh wanting to understand what is what is the approved like what is the way that that rip is, stamp and say, yes, that's the way to do it correctly. There isn't one, right? There are best practices. And again, this is the way you do with any complicated process. There are best practices as long as you understand what the goal is and you keep things as basic and simple as you. can throughout the whole thing, right? Because there's always going to be the tendency to add more and distract you from. simple, basic in general. Right. So, um, so I'm saying all that because everything that I'm going to say on, on the press and the deadlift is just, again, just the way I do it. Um, you can do other things and that's fine as long as you're getting stronger. Um, and as long as you're not deviating too much from the, from the, the, the parent movements, because when you do that, you don't get as strong as quickly, right? You, you, you, and you, you risk wasting time. and convincing yourself that things that are happening are happening for reasons that they're not right. So that's, that's the danger. So, um, again, trying to keep things as simple as possible for the deadlift. Um, and this is pretty, pretty standard, you know, you're deadlifting every workout initially, and then you, you're gonna, you're gonna, uh, alternate with some other pulling movement, right? The, we, we like the power clean because to the extent that you can train timing, coordination, and power, uh, and by train using, using RIP's definition of, um, of physiologic, physiologic adaptation. If you can train those things, the best way to do it is with the load. And the best way to do it measurably is with the power clean, right? Because you get a long range of motion, you have a definite start and end point, you're using all of the muscles in your body. So as you know, most muscle mass, all that stuff. And, and it's, it's, it's objective, it gives you an objective start point endpoint. So did you rack the bar or not, right? So you can dream up all kinds of different ways to train timing, coordination and power. So so athleticism, in other words, but you're going to have a hard time quantifying how you're training those. right? You're going to have a hard time quantifying how you're progressing those. So the power clean is nice that it gives you a number that's on the bar. Did you rack it or did you not rack it, right? So if you're not interested in those things or you can't do that lift because, of orthopedic issues, you know, you've got a herniated disc in your back or your knees are all torn up or you can't rack the bar, you'll do a different lift, right? So you'll do either a. lighter deadlift or you can do something else. But you start alternating the lift. So you start alternating the deadlift with something else and one set of five. One set of five deadlift, alternating with something else, and then eventually you start deadlifting once a week.

Ray: 44:25

Actually, Nick, can I stop you there real quick? Go ahead, yeah. So everyone does this differently, right? But typically I... instead of going straight to alternating the deadlift with another lift, I'll actually just alternate on a Wednesday. So I've got the trainee still deadlifting twice a week and then I'll move to every other workout. Um, what's your, what's your take on that? Worth, worth doing that or.

Nick: 44:45

doesn't matter. Perfectly fine. Yeah. Perfectly fine. Yeah. Yeah. It's perfectly fine. Um, if, if I've got somebody who's learning the power clean, um, I want them to practice it fairly often. So I'll, uh, you know, I don't, I don't think, especially if their squat is still going up every workout, I'm not too worried about, about it right now. Um, and remember that you, you started the deadlift much heavier than you did the squat. So there's a little bit of room there. Um, but, Uh, yeah, I think that's, that's perfectly fine. Just go, just, just sub in a different lift on. Wednesday. So you're kind of staying with that heavy, heavy, light, heavy situation that we did on the squat. That's cool. It gives you a shorter workout on, on Wednesdays. Yeah. And the reason I.

Ray: 45:28

like doing that is to, is to give a little bit of psychological reprieve and also because I want to drive the deadlift up as high as possible, especially in front of the squat, because I'm, I'm all about, um, you know, number on the bar performance. That's what we're here for. But I also realized that I'm being paid by that 40 year old guy to make him look awesome. And a huge deadlift makes you look great. So I want your deadlift as high as possible.

Nick: 45:50

No question. People, people, uh, don't, don't appreciate the amount of, uh, of aesthetic change that you get from, from deadlifting often and deadlifting from pulling heavy and pulling off. So, so absolutely. I'm on board with that. Yeah. Uh, For sure. So, uh, but this is one of those things. It's like, uh, that that's totally cool. Does it, how much does it really matter? Cause I, I don't know how, how quickly after that you're going to once a week deadlift pretty quickly. Yeah. Pretty quickly. Right. So, uh, exactly, exactly. Maybe three weeks, maybe let's say a month even. So, um, long and a long, long term kind of like you and I are not going to have a, a, a falling out over this particular issue. Cause it's not a big deal. Right. Right. Um, so by the way, you're the guy that gives the programming lecture at the seminar. So, so, uh, so yeah, man, um, the one cool thing about, and I don't know why people, people, uh, struggle to understand this or don't figure it out, but if, if you've got a light squat on Wednesday and you're going to once a week pulling. Move the heavy pull to Wednesday. Yeah, and now you've got a fresh lifter pulling a heavy PR deadlift every Wednesday. so you're not dealing with all of the fatigue from the squat and, And then you can continue to drive the deadlift up. So I really want, the lifter to continue doing heavy sets of five on the deadlift off the floor for as long as possible. Way too many people switch to rack pulls way too early. You've got to keep pulling off the floor for as long as possible, four sets of five. The problem is that the deadlift allows you to trick yourself into thinking that it's time to move on to something else way, way, way. before you actually need to. If you didn't pull on the bar for five seconds, six seconds, or what feels like five to six seconds, or what feels like 10 seconds, you didn't give it a full effort. If your deadlift isn't, and this is where that 50 pound number comes from, if your deadlift isn't 50 pounds ahead of your squat, you can do a set of five at that weight. You're squatting 270 pounds. You're squatting 270 pounds. You're deadlifting 280. You can do, 280 for five on the deadlift. Like right now, today, you can do it, you can actually probably do 330 or more than that. It's just, you know, you're not you haven't practiced that you're not used to it. You're it's just not there today. But you have the strength, in other words, to be able to pull that bar off the floor five times. And at a point you've you've made many.

Ray: 48:36

times in the past is the trainee may not actually have any idea what it means to to work hard against something. And so that's exactly right. They just may not. And this is this is where the coach comes in, because I can look at someone that goes to set up for a deadlift. They kind of I can tell they put in about 70% effort tugged on it for a second. Oh, it's not budging. Like, no, right. Take 60 seconds, take a breath. And let me tell you what you need to do in this next in this next. Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Nick: 49:04

Yep. So, so yeah, that's the deadlift. I mean, pretty, pretty early on, you're, you're only deadlifting once a week. And, and the determining factor in when you progress the deadlift, the deadlift isn't a lift that you're going to forget how to do. It's, it's a really simple movement. So, It doesn't require a bunch of frequency. It's really heavy. As long as you're doing it correctly, meaning that you're completing your sets of five, it's probably giving you enough stress because you're also squatting a bunch, right? You're doing all this squatting as well. So if you only need to deadlift one set of five because things are heavy enough and you can continue to do that, then great. Just deadlift one heavy set of five and just make sure the weight keeps going up and make sure you don't fail reps. It's got to be a set of five because that's your only pulling stress for the entire week, right? I mean, you're doing lighter pulls for the rest of the week, but in terms of the adaptation that we're looking for, which is a strength adaptation, the bulk of your stress is coming from that single set of five and you have to make sure you get it done. So it's really super important.

Ray: 50:11

Last question on the deadlift for you is this whole idea of... Going back to 10-pound jumps on the deadlift once the guy is, let's say, early intermediate on the squat is something that was new to me before you introduced me to it. I have yet to test it. Can you walk me through that scenario? The thing I'm thinking is, okay, let's say the guy is an early intermediate and he's low 300s on a squat for his heavy set of five, and then his deadlift is mid to high 300s. Is that a situation where you'd have the guy start doing 10-pound jumps.

Nick: 50:45

No, no. Well, maybe. It depends what's happened along the way. Usually when you're in that situation, what's happened is that, because remember, you started the deadlift, or you should have started the deadlift way ahead of the squat. Things shouldn't start to, the numbers shouldn't start to meet until you're much further along in the process. What's probably happened along the line is that they failed a couple times. They may have had issues setting their back, so their deadlift was artificially held back. They may have just given up a bunch on it. They may have missed workouts on the deadlift because that always happens. You got to squat first, so people always squat. But if they're going to skip something, they're going to skip the deadlift.

Ray: 51:34

That's a way to play catch up is what you're saying.

Nick: 51:37

Exactly right. So if they need to catch up, that's when we're going to do it.

Ray: 51:40

Okay.

Nick: 51:42

If everything's been running fine and normally, then no, that's not somebody you would do that with.

Ray: 51:47

Okay. In that case, I have one more question for you on the deadlift. So if their program is dialed in and they're doing the one set of five and it's going up and they're getting to the point where rep five is a two, three-second rep and their recovery is great and you're going to make a change, what's your next change, Nick, on the deadlift.

Nick: 52:05

For the deadlift? Yeah. Um, provided that they're doing everything correctly, and the deadlifts getting super heavy, I prefer to keep people doing a set of five, rather than messing with the rep scheme on the on the deadlift and pulling off the floor. So I'll move them to a low rack pull, and keep doing sets of five. So like mid shin, mid shin, exactly. So so not all the way up to below the knee, but just mid shin, get it off the floor a little bit just just to just to shorten the amount of time that they're pulling on the bar, and then just keep running with it. sets of five that that works the best. The problem when I say that, is that people, people do that way too early. So you like you've got you've got dudes pulling 275 off the pins. It's that's totally inappropriate, like they shouldn't be pulling off or still, right? Unless he's 80. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Ray: 52:58

Okay, got it. So let's move on to the bench press. Walk us through your simple summary of the early stages of training on the bench and then what sort of changes you'll make when it's time to move to intermediate programming.

Nick: 53:11

Yeah, so the upper body lifts are started a different point right because you're alternating them so you're only seeing them three times every two weeks, where the deadlift and the squat you're, you're, you have a lot higher frequency so, you know, you start three sets of five alternating alternating lifts week one you bench press bench we to you press bench press so three sets of five keep adding weight to the bar. Usually the bench keeps progressing far beyond. The, where the, the press keeps progressing. So, with the bench. And again, this is this is my prep my preference because most of the people I deal with want to want to press. uh more weight than they're pressing so they're so they're a lot of people are coming to me because they want they want me to help them with their press so uh or they they know that i can help them with their press so uh and again this is my preference because i like the press i enjoy coaching and teaching our coaching and doing the press much more than i do the bench press so. i always just in my head and prioritizing the press because it's harder to do and it it's it's more complicated in terms of programming so i typically deal with the the bench the same way that i do with the the squat so um three sets of five keep running it when it starts to become a problem one set of five back off sets uh still alternating i don't uh i don't mess with it further until the press needs modification and then the programming on the press determines what.

Ray: 54:42

the programming for the bench looks like got it in that case can you walk us through the programming on the press.

Nick: 54:48

Yeah, yeah. Well, just one more thing with that said, if I've got if I've got a lifter, who has a very shitty bench. And this is pretty common, right? It's like you get, you get fairly active guys. And, and, and this is this is true for almost all women, if fairly active guys who like maybe were runners or cyclists, and they'll have a pretty good deadlift and squat, but just an atrocious bench and press. So if that's the case, and their bench is super behind, then I'll treat their bench the same way as I do their press, which just means doing it more often, and keeping it really, really heavy. So the press starts at three sets of five, alternating every workout. And then the first thing that starts to happen on the press is you start failing, you start missing reps. I'm not as concerned about failing reps on the press initially, as I am with the squat. So the squat, the squat is kind of my overall gauge for how the the lifter is doing. And it's also the toughest. mentally in terms of getting in the gym and starting it right in terms of actually sort of in terms of actually executing and getting the five reps, the deadlift is definitely the hardest. But if you can get somebody to come in and do the do the three sets of five squat, that's that's your best gauge for how things are going overall. So that's the one I don't want to mess with in terms of in terms of people failing, I don't want them to fail squat in training, ever, if possible, I want you to fail reps in at your meet, but not not in training. And for the so point is that for the press, you start failing, I don't see it as much of a big deal, we got to figure out what's going on. So you start failing the press. The first thing that I'm going to do is tell you to get all 15 reps so that we keep the volume, the same so that we don't, so that so that what what doesn't happen is that you don't get that reduction in stress that we were talking about earlier, because as soon as you start missing. If you pack it up for the day. Now you're dumping a whole bunch of practice and stress for the upper body so two things that you you need critically at this point because your upper body is weak, right. So, get all 15 reps doesn't matter how you get it done and usually that shakes out as like five, four, three, one, one or something like that or five, four, three, two, so it doesn't matter how many sets it takes you get all 15. So that's the first change we'll just run that as long as, as long as it's not taking too long to do so. Don't take your belt off rack the bar, shake it out, rest for 30 seconds and then hit it again see how many you can get type thing so that that doesn't that doesn't get us very far because what happens is that. When you start getting down to like. uh a bunch of sets of two and one it just takes it just takes too long so um when when that's the case when you're getting down to like really low reps that you can complete um then we'll add a second press day so that's pretty much it so uh once the the 15 total reps thing isn't working very well um then just add a second press day and when you add a second press day what. it looks like is i want a day that's all sets of five so three to five sets of five um. at a weight that you will hit. Like you're not allowed to fail reps on that day. You have to hit sets of five and you cannot fail on your reps. So I want to see sets of five on day one. And then I want to see a bunch of singles on day two. So that can be anywhere from five to 10 singles, depending on how shitty your presses. And then the bench press gets fit in somewhere in there. So let's just say, for example, um, I have a typical, typical member, typical client on Monday, they're going to be doing their three by five bench, or maybe it's like a one by five and some back offsets. Then on Wednesday, they're doing three to five sets of five press. And then on Friday, since remember we're, we're squatting light on Wednesday and we're deadlifting heavy on Wednesday, then Friday, that leaves us some room. I can have them squat on Friday and then I can have them press like seven singles. And then I can have them do a heavy set of five of bench. So now you're doing both upper body lifts twice a week and just increasing the frequency from. twice a week to twice a week. And then you can have them do a heavy set of five of bench. And then you can have them do a heavy set of five of bench. a week to alter from alternating to twice a week that usually just kickstart another round of.

Ray: 59:13

increases on the upper body lifts makes a big difference yeah and and you mentioned uh there's a couple things we should we should add when you're running your upper body lifts up you'll need to move to two and a half pound jumps we mentioned that in the in the first podcast so just want to reiterate that and then nick also mentioned that um on the upper body stuff when you're doing the the uh the volume day or the medium day whatever we want to call it um three, to five sets of five and nick just confirm my understanding here so so um the the fewer amount. of the the least amount of work you can do to accomplish the goal is what you're after so if you have a choice between three sets of five four sets of five and five sets of five, three sets of five and then if that stops working, four sets of five and then if that stops working five sets of five right yep okay yeah yeah um on.

Nick: 1:00:05

the on the upper body another factor is how how strong you already are right so if somebody has a fairly big bench press um and uh and a fairly big press, uh, they can do three sets of five. If they've got a really, um, underdeveloped bench and press, um, it's a nice way of saying like really shitty bench and press. They're going to do five sets of five. So, yeah. And by the way, those, those five sets of five and those singles are happening with a very short rest because they're not stressful. You know, you're squatting in the high twos, maybe low threes, and you're pressing 130 pounds. Uh, that, that 130 pounds, um, is not stressful. And if you're doing five sets of five off of 130 pounds single, you're doing them at like 120. So you can knock out five sets of five at 120 pounds in, in, uh, shit, man, under 20 minutes.

Ray: 1:00:58

Yeah. Yeah. Just knock them out. You know, Brie, you got to add Ben's video of him doing his 175 pound press last week, uh, under Nick's guidance. Cause Nick's gotten Nick, uh, Ben is my brother is one of these, uh, slow responders on the upper body stuff. And Nick has managed to get his, his press a hundred. 75 pounds. And I want to show that video one, cause I'm proud. I mean, he looks awesome. And secondly, because it was probably a five-second rep, and it might have even dipped down a little bit above his forehead, but he didn't give up, and the thing locked out at the top. So that was pretty impressive to watch.

Nick: 1:01:30

Yeah, Ben's bar speed is about equal to, like, my 58-year-old women.

Ray: 1:01:37

But he doesn't give up, and he's still making progress.

Nick: 1:01:39

He doesn't give up, man.

Ray: 1:01:40

Hey, you know what.

Nick: 1:01:41

Yeah, it's not a knock on Ben. Steve Ross is the same way. Steve, I always tell Steve that, like, I've got a client. You know Delise? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've seen her grind on a press for nine seconds. Jesus. And Steve Ross does the same thing.

Ray: 1:01:59

I just get worried people are going to pass out, you know.

Nick: 1:02:01

Yeah.

Ray: 1:02:05

Um, we're, we're running up at about the time. I'd like to probably wrap things up. Um, I think we, you did a really good job of explaining the principles here, um, explaining a sample of how to run through each lift and covering all the key points. Is there anything that you missed that you.

Nick: 1:02:19

want to cover before we wrap up here? Uh, just the, just the larger point that when, when you get to a quote unquote intermediate programming. So let's just say, let's just say, um, when you are, um, post novice, so you're beyond novice training. Uh, you, you're the, the stress level has to be continually increasing. That's an easy thing to do. Uh, it happens automatically in the novice program, right? Cause you're just adding five pounds every time. It's easy to screw things up really bad on the, uh, once you've gone to weekly increases and then biweekly increases and so on, uh, because people tend to dump stress. So things, things cannot get easier. If they get easier, if you're excited about the programming change that you just made, it's, uh, it's, it wasn't a good programming change. Like you're about to run into some problems. So, um, when you look at the next programming change that you should make, you may be excited about it initially cause it may be mean some more PRS. It may mean doing sets of three rather than sets of five. Uh, it may mean doing singles for the first time, but, um, those need to suck pretty bad, pretty, pretty quick. And if they don't, um, if they don't, you're doing something wrong. And, and honestly for, for people who are doing, who start out with the, with starting with the, with the, strength, you're kind of always excited for the PR. So that may even be the wrong approach or the. wrong way to think about it because the PRs are kind of what you're driving. So you can kind of psych yourself up for those. You got to look at the rest of the week too and make sure that you're not dumping stress on the other days of the week. Like the number one mistake when people ask me to look at their programming and tell me what they're doing wrong or why they're failing is not because they're doing something wrong on the heavy days, intensity days, whatever you want to call it, on the PR days, because they're doing something wrong on the other days. They're using a protocol that doesn't work. They're trying to do either too much work or not enough work. So figure out. how to like try to look at your program from a big picture perspective and just try to imagine what the overall stress is compared to last week and the week before and the week before that. And if you can kind of zoom out and look at the rest of the week, you're going to be able to get your program at that level. You'll be, much more successful so you should be looking at your stress just kind of continually going up somewhere and it doesn't and you got to move beyond just thinking individually on the lifts you also have to consider the overall stress of your program um because it's definitely a factor right so you have to um it's probably the most important thing as you go uh through you know. your your six to six month to one year um and then definitely after you're you've been training for two years you have to always be considering the overall stress that you're applying to yourself um so with that said the stress needs to be a force production stress as soon as it stops being a force production stress you're going to stop hitting prs and you may think you're doing things like hypertrophy or getting jacked or whatever but you're not getting stronger, And whatever you're trying to accomplish with your hypertrophy work or whatever other shit you're trying to do, that is best accomplished by continuing to get stronger, right? So that's the time to look at your program, make sure you're still actually strength training. And then, you know, at the intermediate phase, quote unquote, is when people start thinking about other things to do, which is great, right? Right. Other other hobbies. People pick up jujitsu. The the the guys who are just in their garage and don't don't have other hobbies. This is when they start talking about going on a cut or some shit, regardless of what you're doing. Doesn't matter if you're like going on a cut or doing jujitsu or starting to play tennis or whatever it is, you should continue to be trying to get stronger. Everything else needs to fit into that, you know, if it's a cut, you need to clean up your diet, if it's jujitsu, you're going to have to back up or another sport, you're going to have to figure out where to back off on on the overall stress so that you can continue working on the on the force production stress in the gym. So, that's kind of a complicated topic but you have to, you know, you're in this because you want to keep you want to keep getting stronger you want to maintain your strength or continue gaining strength, and that should always be the goal, regardless of what else is going on your performance improvements on in your hobbies and in your life, your aesthetic improvements, and all the other things that come with barbell training that you enjoyed during the novice linear progression, you need to stay. still be continuing to drive towards those things in advance in more advanced programming, just because more complicated and that's, you know, honestly that's a good time to hire a coach to help you manage all that stuff.

Ray: 1:07:10

Yeah, you're no longer going to get stronger by accident. I mean, You can screw things up and meander your way to a 300 pound squat with shitty programming and take six months or take several years. Most people can do that. But once you get to that point, it's really hard to freestyle and just figure things out and hopefully make some progress. You really need to become your own coach and learn this stuff or hire someone that can help you.

Nick: 1:07:34

Exactly. That's a great point, man. Yeah. If you're not going to hire a coach and that's kind of self-serving for us to say you need to hire a coach, but it's the truth. But look, we talk about this all the time in our self-sufficient lifter camps and stuff like that. You can do this yourself, but it's going to take some effort. You're going to have to experiment. You're going to have to read some stuff. Read practical programming for sure. Read the barbell prescription. Don't convince yourself that you are an old person. Because you're over 40, but read the barbell prescription and get to work applying this to yourself. Just make small changes so that you don't screw everything up. But if that's you, if you want to, if you like to tinker, if you like to learn about the process yourself, then apply it to yourself carefully and apply it to other people. You can definitely gain a lot from doing it that way. If you're not going to spend the time like learning how to program yourself and program other people, then hire a coach and outsource it, right?

Ray: 1:08:38

Right. Or do it wrong, hurt yourself, and then start doing hypertrophy. Nick, this was super helpful. Thank you for your time, man. Good, good. Anything you want to add before we go? I think everybody knows where to find me. Cool. Thank you, Nick. Until next time. All right. Thank you. See you guys.