019 Cluster Sets – How they work and how to use them

Welcome back everyone to another episode. I hope you're doing all doing well good evening good morning Chris. How are you today? I'm doing very well. Thanks Jake. It is actually morning for me this time, which is I think this time. Yeah, it's like it's like a lucky dip every week. I don't know no one knows it's gonna be morning for you evening for me to afternoon for me today I think this is the first afternoon when I've done so We're just we just pick right in time to be weak. It's always a bit of fun. Anyway, I have another ridge park We're having a bit of a joke before we started recording because I suggested another ridge park plan for you guys today And you laughed at me and you guys this is you this is a third one in a row Which it's not it's only the second but this is the third one you have talked about so far However, I do think it is a very interesting plan and I do guarantee you guys the next week I won't talk about ridge park for anyone else was getting a bit sick of it now last week if you guys listened I shared a Half specialization phase and it was quite interesting and I think you should go back and listen if you haven't and it's quite relevant for some of the conversations Happy today and I think we can obviously learn quite a lot from how these guys were doing things and in fact I meant to tell you in the gym today actually saw someone on the standing car phrase machine and they were Banding it and it was very interesting to me because we were talking about this in Gredges planned last week where at the end of his standing car phrase He talked about doing the isometric essentially to fatigue to failure at the the end of the set and It basically achieves the same thing is banning it because obviously with a lot of people will find with a standing car phrase The limitations on the load and if you you can use a full stack and sometimes you might be able to do 20 30 40 repetitions with it So the band allows once you get to failure quicker But obviously it makes the top of that repetition the most challenging part which is not necessarily ideal for the gastron So it was interesting to see kind of same mentality is what red was doing 75 years ago With a band in the modern gym anyway for me it was a bit of a felt like a inception or something like that Anyway, today I have a chest specialization phase and we're not actually talking about chest today But there is something relevant to it and you'll learn what that is shortly So as I mentioned last week with the car specialization the idea of the specialization phases Is that you do them alongside your other work? So this is part of a full body plan you take out the usual chest work or the work that's overlapping and You do this instead and then you do your other stuff now this does have a leg exercise in there Just one leg exercise that's what I'll talk about But you would obviously probably use this as your leg exercise and take out the other leg stuff as well So you can kind of like mix and match a little bit So I'm just going to talk about the chest stuff and the squat exercise So like I said this is going to be incorporated in a full body plan now We start with an incline bench and for each of these exercises actually there's he does three sets of each exercise Okay, so each exercise and mention three sets of each With the exception of the squat and so we start with an incline bench and this is moderate reps He's doing like eight to ten for each of these so incline bench Which I'm not that it particularly matters But the way that they did the incline bench back then was often a little bit different was actually more of a standing incline bench I don't know if you've seen these have you seen the pitches or no you haven't you're shaking head So it was kind of like a I guess like a long board and you would lean against it There's photos of Steve doing these. I am not sure if I've seen any photos of red I don't know at what point they introduced like the standard incline bench bit for all intents and purposes would be very similar So I guess you could call it a standing incline bench and then we move into a dumbbell bent arm pullover and then we go into Squat now you guys gonna pay attention here the way we did not the way Gredged did this squat is he would do 20 repetitions in total and He would use a heavy load now these guys love to just kind of give vague Instructions like heavy load or moderate load so he didn't exactly explain what the heavy load was But obviously it should be a load that'll be challenging for what I'm about to share and every third breath He would do one repetition so he'd read them deeply twice and on the third he would do a repetition And repeat and he says as he got to 10 to 15 repetitions He would then up it to five breaths between each repetition until he get to 20 So there's a few different ways of doing that so people will call this reading squats of 20 reps squat method There's a few names for it a very popular in the silver area sort of into the golden area to popular as well Then it's sort of a little bit But there's a few different sort of loading Structures people use usually people would say you start with a 10 rep max But generally in those scenarios they would say you would start this sort of breathing stuff in the the 10th repetition onwards or eight to 10 repetitions onwards So the fact that Gredge is saying hey from the get go from the first repetition We're doing this that insinuates me that he's using a heavier load So he went from that into dumbbell flyers now He called these breathing dumbbell flyers, which I think basically just meant that you're still kind of out of breath from the squat And this was sort of they had a bit of an idea that doing pullovers or flies some kind of chest exercise after the squat somehow Had like a rib cage expanding effect, which I don't know if you'll comment on that in a moment But I don't imagine there's a whole lot to that bit. They I don't know a lot of people talked about it And then he went back into the dumbbell pullover which again was part of that chest rib cage expansion idea So I don't think he went very heavy with that. I don't think that's kind of the idea That was more like it is a stretching exercise if you will rather than you know max effort and then he went into dips and Then you want to add whatever else you want to add. So there's a fair bit of work there and Some bloody exhausting squats. What do you make of that? So obviously it's difficult to talk about exercise selection because the context of this program is such that it's adding to or Fitting in with something that is already being done What I can't or what we perhaps can't do this time is to say oh well, you know this exercise selection suggests that you know They're missing these or they're benefiting from this because it isn't a complete program So really I think as we were talking about before you know, we got on the podcast the interesting thing for us today is this breathing squat section and what that entails and what's actually happening So you know unless you have any other comments on the other parts of the program I would suggest we just jump in and talk about app. Yeah, I think it's interesting just to note the diversity in the chest exercises that he was doing So obviously we've got an incline bench then we've got a fly not in that order But we've got incline bench. We've got a fly got a pullover the dips obviously that'll depend a little bit on how they're being done But it's just interesting that he has somewhat it shapes or managed to you know, buy different regions within A few different exercises. So I think there's a bit of intuition that's gone into this sure And I think but I would probably also mention that there is a very popular idea that incline ventures are clavicular peck and flat ventures are you know kind of sort of more sternal or More kind of a mix of the of the three regions and while that's not untrue It has a far smaller effect than moving between transverse and sagittal plane pressing so Often when people say to me what's the best exercise for clavicular peck or what's the best exercise for sternal peck and my focus Immediately is on the plane of motion not on the range of motion because really the resistance profile because really when you're moving between Inclined bench and flat bench or any other incline of bench You're just changing the range of motion or the the point of peak effort in the shoulder angle All the shoulder joint angle range of motion whereas plane emotion where he's going from wide grip transverse Into narrow grip sagittal that has an enormous impact and the clavicular is much more involved in sagittal Than it is in the transverse so without that knowledge of which planes of motion is using for his pressing I mean if his incline presses more sagittal than straight away is ticking the locks as far as I'm concerned But if it's just like oh well, we're doing the same grip width But we just happen into the going you know kind of incline in this particular variation and flat in this Variation then I'm like well, honestly. You're not probably maximizing your kind of focus on clavicular versus sternal or anything like that But the information is not there. I just don't know he did so he in this he was actually using dumbbells and The photos I've seen of him doing dumbbells. He's usually using a relatively close grip So I do you think there is going to be a little bit of that that variant there and he does He actually didn't do it in this program, which is interesting because a lot of his programs He's doing a very wide grip bench and he didn't have the bench in this program And I guess maybe because he's got the the fly instead But it would be interesting to contrast or to have that combination of a fairly close grip dumbbell incline bench with the very Like if you see photos of him benching often his grip is as wide as he can get up against colors So that combo I think would be quite effective or even the fly. I mean pair the fly with the narrow grip incline bench and yes, I think you're probably mostly there and then the pullovers will give you some sternal Sorry, coastal peck. So you've got the the fly for the sternal the narrow grip inclined for the clavicular And then you got the pullover for the costal and I think yeah, that would be you know your complete program I think in all tall intents and purposes with the pullover one Way they used to do this. I think Gredged did it as well I think they call it a moon bench. Have you heard of this? So it's kind of like a semi-circle bench and you would lie Over the top so you're arching all the way over it and then perform the pullover like that So I guess you're kind of a little bit more in a in a decline position. What difference would that make? I'm gonna have to try and um think about the resistance profiling my head now So let's just start with a horizontal pullover If you're lying horizontally on a bench and And what it's going to do is going to move the resistance profile away from the stretch position towards the neutral position. So if you're lying horizontally, the most difficult part of the range of motion is when the external moment on is obviously longest. And that is in that stretch position because, you know, gravity goes straight downwards and you're perpendicular to it in that position. So if you then move to a tilted position, so you're now, you know, kind of if you take it to an extreme and imagine that you're actually, you know, kind of pointing directly downwards, which is obviously not true, but, you know, just take it to an extreme. Your external moment on is still as long as in that perpendicular position, but that's now halfway or, you know, kind of not in the stretch position, it's kind of closer to the mid range of the movement. So you're moving the point of, you know, a peak effort in the exercise range of motion to a more mid range position, which is further away from the position where you're trying to go to this bracket long head and your sort of coastal pecs have the best leverage. You're moving it to a position where the lats are going to be more involved. So, you know, because essentially it's, it's kind of what you're really doing is a lap pull down, but upside down. Well, straight top, straight top pull down, I guess, not a lap pull down. Does it fact that they did bent arm change anything? Because I always is so clear about it has to be bent, I'm not always bent, you know, it has to be bent arm, don't have your arms straight. Well, you would imagine that bending the elbow would change the relative leverage of the triceps bracket long head. Yeah. And there's no data to my knowledge on on exactly what that is, but I would imagine that given the behavior of the long head, it probably reduces its leverage. So the bent arm probably does start to shift things away from the triceps bracket long head and onto the coastal pec. So I would imagine anything with the lats, sir. Not only in relative terms, because if you've got, say, two or three muscles working at a joint and you start disadvantaged in one of them, then you automatically advance to the other one, even if it's not doing anything. This is one of the things that people get confused about. They go, well, this muscle has, for example, people will talk about the changes in the medial lateral and long head of the triceps bracket in accordance with shoulder range of motion. Then they go, how is it possible that medial lateral heads change their relative leverages over the range of motion when they don't have any connection across the shoulder? And they say, well, they're not changing their leverages. It's the long head, it's changing its leverages and that's changing the relative leverages of the medial and lateral heads. Now, you could get the same thing happening here. So, you know, bending the elbow, obviously the peck and the lat, across the elbow, but the triceps bracket long head does. So if you change the leverage of the triceps bracket long head out the shoulder by changing its length, which is well known to change the leverage of muscle, then you could change the relative leverages of the peck and the lat at the shoulder for shoulder extension. So what I would imagine is that if you wanted to construct a, and I'm just going off the basis of, you know, what, what, what these guys are doing at the moment, but I would imagine that a horizontal position pullover with a bent arm, probably, probably has more coastal peck involvement than any other variation. So that would be my guess based on what they're doing and also based on, you know, kind of what I've seen of the triceps bracket long head behavior and other two joint muscle behaviors. But as I say, repeat myself, I don't think there is any date to showing how the long head changes its shoulder extension leverage with elbow position changing. So it's interesting how limited some of the data actually is. Like you think that's a relatively like, I don't know, straightforward thing to have information on. Well, I don't think it's very easy to do moment arm calculations like that. You would probably want to do sort of a separate kind of, you could probably do it using a similar method to the landing studies by using electrical stimulation to measure the torque angle curves. You probably do like that, I would say. But again, you know, does your dynamometer let you do that easily? It depends. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one. That would be a really cool sort of investigation to do, just see how the long head of the triceps changes its behavior in shoulder extension according to what your elbow position is. Now, incidentally, you could do exactly the same thing for, you know, looking, I mean, you could do exactly the same thing for the right fam. So we talk, I mean, obviously, was that study a while back where people did sort of knee extension training either with a standard seated position or with a horizontal reclining position. And everyone was running around talking about stretch media to hypertrophy. But the interesting thing is, is did the rec fam change its knee extension leverage as a result of being put in a stretch position now because the muscles change their shape when you, you know, kind of elongate them or, you know, kind of move them into a more shortened position by changing, you know, sorry, two joint muscles change their leverages and shape because, you know, you're changing the length of the muscle. You know, it should actually change its relative leverage to the, to the three single joint quadriceps. You know, nobody talks about that because they're not really bringing neuro mechanical matching, which is the prevailing model of how the brain controls the muscles and the body. They're not bringing that into, you know, hypertrophy science, which is a bit of a shame. But, you know, that would be my first kind of question. It's like, does changing the length of the muscle have the effect? Because I think it, it clearly does in the case of the hamstrings when we've got data showing that does happen. And I think we've got indirect data suggesting it happens with the elbow flexors as well. And I'm just kind of thinking to myself, well, does it, therefore happen with the triceps bracket long head? Does it happen with the, the, with the right fam? I mean, those will be really interesting studies to, to do. Now, I took a sideage from path. You wanted to talk about squats. Let's jump back to this 20 year old squat method. Yeah. So the, the interesting thing about the 20 year old squat is, I mean, and there's, there's kind of comments here about, you know, practicalities, as always, you know, there's this interesting point about squats where we're kind of saying, you know, we're using a lighter load, perhaps, than we would ideally want to, simply because of the logistics. You just can't get the, you know, the weight in place and all the rest of it. But, you know, just looking at it physiologically, one of the difficult things, one of the challenges with exercises that have a lot of muscle mass like squats deadlift is that you have a large cardiovascular response and the cardiovascular response then starts to reduce your ability to recruit high-facial motor units because it's a sensation and that reduces your maximum central motor command at the point of maximum effort. Now, obviously, introducing breaths between repetitions starts to deal with some of that cardiovascular sensation. So that's, you know, straight away, you know, you're looking at the rationale for doing this is that we're reducing cardiovascular sensations where potentially going to increase the level of the motina equipment that we can achieve. So, you know, that's, that's cool. But also, secondarily, we're going to end up doing more total repetitions than we would do if we had not taken those breaths because we're introducing a period of time in which fatigue is able to dissipate. Now, that's really what I was hoping to talk about today in the physiological section of this podcast because, you know, when you look at clusters as, as this, what is that, what this is, it's a cluster set, essentially. And you're training, you know, perhaps in the context of bodybuilding still to failure, then what's happening is you're ending up doing more repetitions. What are you doing more stimulating repetitions? The answer to that question is we don't know. So, a little digression, let me just kind of fill in some gaps for people who are coming to this kind of concept for the first time. When you're thinking about cluster set training and you're looking at the literature and you're listening to people talking about cluster set training, a lot of people talking about cluster set training on the internet will just start throwing studies at you saying, "Oh, this study shows this and that study shows that and they'll start making all these kind of inferences and claims and building a case for whatever it is they want to build a case for." You've got to look at the studies and you've got to apply physiological frameworks to those studies and think about what's actually happening. So, as we were talking about before we jumped on the podcast today, pretty much to my knowledge, the vast majority of cluster strength training studies have used moderate loads and not all of them have paired the training groups by, you know, kind of both groups training to failure. So, what you might have is one group training to failure with, say, 10 rep maxes, three sets of 10 rep max, something like that. And the other group will train with, say, the same kind of rep max and they'll still do 10 repetitions but they might have some rest in between them. So, they end up training further from failure. Now, you can still use that study if you're interested in stimulating rep theory because you can go, "Well, this group is doing fewer stimulating reps than that group." Okay, well, you'd expect if the difference is big enough and it may not always be big enough to detect an effect but if the difference is in the number of stimulating reps is big enough, then you would expect your cluster set to do slightly the Cypherch within your, you know, kind of standard set to failure. Now, I'll repeat myself, if the difference in stimulating reps per workout is not big enough, you won't see an effect. In the same way, that if you're comparing different volumes and your volume differences are not big enough, you won't see an effect. And that's ultimately why most training to failure versus not to failure studies whether difference is a small like one or two reps per set. You don't really see much of a difference. It's not because there isn't a difference because it's just too small to detect. So, straight to way, now you've got to look and say, "Am I training with my two different groups to failure?" If on the other hand, you find a study where you actually train to failure in both situations, then now you can start, so okay, my cluster set group is now doing more repetitions. Maybe you're getting 12 reps out with a 10-rept max, something like that, depending on how many rest, you know, kind of periods you've taken in introset. Now, you can start to answer the question of maybe am I seeing more stimulating rates being done because of these interest set rest periods that I'm taking? Is this hanging together so far? Cool. Now the thing that I think is really interesting about cluster set structures is to say, well, what happens if I'm using a moderate load, light load, or heavy load? And I think really this is where we're missing an enormous opportunity when it comes to the strength training research, strength training science, is because almost all of the cluster set studies that are done again are done using moderate loads. Well, the problem with moderate loads in the context of stimulating rep theory is that all the reps you do before you get to your stimulating rep zone are not really doing anything. So you do your repetitions and you're just accumulating the tablet light related fatigue and if you're unlucky, you're accumulating other types of fatigue as well, which is suppressing either recruitment or a mechanical tension. But of course, the metabolite stuff is what you're chasing and you collect that and then when you get to a certain level, you enter into the stimulating rep zone. Well, in that scenario, if you're comparing say a cluster program and a non-cluster program and they're using 10 rep maxes, then what's going to happen is you're just going to end up in the same place really, more or less. Because you get into the stimulating rep zone and then it's only really those last reps that matter and maybe you can string that out a little bit with your clusters at that point by taking rest periods between sets. Ultimately, you know, it's not really going to be a massive effect. On the other hand, if you're using a heavy load, let's say using a five rep max and you do clusters with a five rep max, now that's really interesting because you're essentially getting a stimulating rep from your very first repetition and your cluster allows you to do say six or seven repetitions. Now we're saying, okay, I did a five rep max here, you know, all the way through and then I did a five rep max here, but I did seven reps with that because I had these intro set rest periods. Now I've got seven stimulating reps here on paper and five over here. Nobody's ever done that study, you know, and that would be really, really fascinating. Would it be big enough? Well, you might have to do multiple sets. You might have to do a longer period of time to see those kind of tiny differences, but I think you would start to get the point where you can maybe construct a study that would tell you the answer to, you know, am I getting more stimulating reps by doing those extra repetitions? And that's what I was saying when I started this little, you know, kind of explanation is that we don't actually know. I don't think anybody knows whether that extra two repetitions in that context would generate more hypertrophy. Are they genuinely stimulating or is there some fatiguing effect that is creating a suppression of that stimulus? Now my gut feel is that there isn't. My gut feel is that you probably genuinely are getting extra stimulus because I can't really see that fatigue mechanisms would create a problem for you in that scenario because the heavy load means that it's just metabolites really. And all you're doing by putting those resp periods in between repetitions is allowing a bit to my tabletite clearance and then you drop back again and then so you basically is kind of going up in terms of fatigue accumulation and drop down a little bit and then up in terms of fatigue accumulation and drop down a little bit and you're just working your way through to failure and it takes a little bit longer than it would do if you were doing a straight set all the way through a tabletite accumulation which is going all the way through to the top. I don't see that that allows same more calcium monoc acid release particularly or more, you know, super spinal or spinal CNS fatigue. Again, spinal CNS fatigue is being completely eradicated. Wow, that's a bit of a strong statement. It is absolutely being managed by those intra-repetition, sorry, into repetition resp periods. So ostensibly it looks better to me than a straight set in that respect. So I think even if there were a little bit of a disadvantage in terms of calcium ions or a disadvantage in terms of super spinal, I can't see that happening. I think again that would be better rather than worse because you've got time to recover from the sensations. I think that the advantage in terms of spinal probably outweigh any disadvantages. So looking at it and again hopefully people are getting the vibe here that I am thinking this through. I'm not saying here is my opinion and then there's a bunch of distributions for it. I'm just kind of talking this through and saying this is what I am seeing when I think about the fatigue kind of mechanisms that are ongoing in this situation. And what I'm seeing suggests to me that very possibly we're actually getting the benefit, the full benefit of all of those stimulating reps when we are using a heavy load to do clusters in that situation. I think for that reason it makes it a very interesting kind of concept, especially if you're looking to volumize a particular exercise or you know kind of for a muscle group or something like that. So you know often in the past when we talked about volumizing something we've talked about using maybe contract positions where possible, using heavier loads, leaving reps and reserve those kind of ideas. I think clusters probably fit into that bracket of you know ideas for you know if you just want to throw a little more volume into particular muscle group for whatever reason. And if those would be and then just that would be implement. Last week we spoke about I figured how I came out but we were talking similar to your common moment ago where you said you're not just trying to justify your kind of end point opinion and we were talking about if you start with this physiological model it kind of opens up opportunities or it sort of you know creates sort of these you know boundary conditions and you can kind of push right up against them and see how things can kind of play out. And in the conversations we've had over the last few years, clusters has been one of those methods for me that has come out where just talking about the physiology I've realized hang on this is a method that really has a lot of legs and it's something I can play with and it's something I can actually utilize and there's not a lot of those kind of advanced methods that people talk about that sort of fit that bill a bit cluster certainly was one and we'll talk a little bit more about some practical ways to use them. But I just want to touch on some of the things you said in case people didn't follow. So you mentioned those lighter rapid load classes and you mentioned say you're doing like a 10 rep max load and you might get 12 repetitions with it and you sort of made this point that you might be getting maybe the same amount of stimulating reps and I'm assuming most people listening to this will be aware of the simulator reps models where I hopefully need to go down that path. But essentially what you're saying there's those first and the straight set of 10 those first five repetitions essentially the purpose of those is to accumulate enough fatigue that you get to the stimulating reps and by having those little clusters those little rest periods in between you're just slowing down the accumulation of that fatigue essentially until you get to the stimulating repetitions. So it might not be that repetition six is now maximum stimulating it might be repetition eight is maximum stimulating you just kind of delayed it. So the point you made is hey that said it 12 it's probably about the same and that makes sense and then you've touched on well if we assume that at about give a take of five repetition max we've got sort of maximal voluntary activation occurring and that's kind of the point where we're seeing this simulator reps sort of take effect well what happens if someone's using a five repetition max for those clusters. So if we go back to Ridge with these squats, mentoring out of the start that a lot of the time the way people use these is they would do sort of that you know 10 repetition max load but the way Ridge has expanded here by using a load that you're actually taking multiple press each repetition from the get go. I'm not sure what that load would be to in my mind I'm thinking that's probably like a six or seven rep max would be my guess. So he hasn't potentially quite hit on that five repetition max which I've experimented with with classes with you know five red max squat and with a squad it is pretty uncomfortable to do classes with the five red max and I can kind of understand why my one might actually go slightly lighter load for that purpose. But the point you've been saying is absolutely a it's absolutely a logistical issue. Yeah. Because if you were to do it with leg presses where you can actually lock out at the end of each you know kind of de-load the end of each repetition because the equipment allows you to take you know kind of in fact if you wanted to you could just literally take your foot off the plate. I mean, it depends on the leg presses set up not every leg press let's you do that. But you know if you can completely de-load between repetitions then it becomes a complete different animal. I think the issue with the squat is that you're standing there with this weight crushing you the whole time and that just makes life miserable. Yeah but when you look at it in the context to say like a totally different exercise where it is possible to take that loading off the body in between reps then I suddenly think five red max cost has become doable. Exactly. Yeah exactly. And if someone gives you to go with a squat what you'll notice is with any other exercise basically where there's not a binding back the longer the interest set dress period the easier it becomes. With a squat it actually has this sort of paradox where you might take a few breaths and it makes it easier but then you stand there for too long and it makes it hard that you just get crushed. So it's almost as mental game of like how many can I take and let some of this you know that the respiratory kind of you know higher heart rate high breathing rate how long can I let that dissipate for until it actually is now working against me whereas you do another exercise. So I do these on a hax squat or I do these on an appendage on a squat and that's much easy you can kind of lock out you're not kind of having gravity crushing you in half as a completely different sensation to a barbell squat. So these these sort of set of you know five red max clusters you mentioned you can't you can't see any reason if you're looking at the fatigue mechanisms as to why they wouldn't allow one to to achieve more stimulating repetitions. Now you sort of touched on it a little bit but if you look at so you mentioned calcium ion type fatigue related fatigue and you mentioned super spinal and spinal you would think certainly spinal and super spinal that a cluster should actually be less it should produce less spinal and super spinal fatigue than a street set because you've got that little rest period they're letting both of those dissipate calcium ion related fatigue you would argue maybe marginally more just by virtue of doing more repetitions. Yeah, so before I answer that question, let me just come back to something that you mentioned two, three minutes ago, which is where we talked about how, where you explained how the stimulating rep model basically requires fatigue to be accumulating in the first few reps of a moderate load set so that you get to a point where you're doing stimulating repetitions in the back half of a moderate load set. So that's you doing a 10 or a max. Your first five reps are just accumulating the tabla light related fatigue. What I want to do is just help people square the circle here because on the one hand, we're saying fatigue needs to accumulate to get to the stimulating rep zone. On the other hand, we're saying that fatigue mechanisms can reduce the stimulus theory experiencing. So some people kind of get really, really, you know, kind of confused by this and they go, how is it that fatigue is a good thing for stimulating reps, but it's also a bad thing for stimulating reps. Well, it's because fatigue isn't a single thing. What it's talking about here is fatigue mechanisms. So strictly speaking, stimulating rep model says that it's the metabolite related fatigue that's building that aids you in getting to a point where you can produce high levels of mechanical tension and high levels of motion, it couldn't at the same time at the end of a set. Any other fatigue mechanism is negative. That's it. That's that simple. So if you've got four main fatigue mechanism categories, you've got supospinal, sinus teak, spinal sinus teak, metabolite related fatigue and calcium, I'm related to fatigue. And they're all kind of groups of mechanisms now. Essentially, the metabolite related fatigue is the only one that's innocuous. That's the one that helps us get to the point where we're stimulating the hypertrophy that we're looking for. Anything else is either going to reduce recruitment to the case of the spinal and supospinal sinus teak, or it's going to reduce mechanical tension in the case of the calcium, I'm related to the mechanisms. So that's the background. So as you rightly point out, we've then got to analyze each of these fatigue mechanisms when we're looking at cluster and say, well, you know, what's happening? Now again, when we look at the cluster situation, spinal is absolutely going to be less because it literally just depends on the total duration of time that's elapsed without taking a break off the muscle. So if you're like an isometric holding that for long periods of time, you're just getting spinal sinus teak, just going crazy. I mean, that's that's what we want to try and avoid. And that's why whenever we talk about isometric, you've got to break them up to make it work properly. Dynamics, you do get a break because of the eccentric phase between repetitions, but again, you're still getting some of it there because you're still not taking complete deactivate instant. With the breaks that you get with clusters, that's fantastic. We now started to see spinal sinus teak probably be pretty minimal. And that's really, really good outcome, as you pointed out. Super spinal. Well, there's a bit of interplay here and it depends on the logistics of the exercise, but yeah, if you've got the ability to just take all kind of activation of the muscle and not have any kind of feelings in that space of time between reps, then really super spinal is going to be very low as well because you're just taking all the sensation out of the equation most of the time. And the very least with super spinal, it's going to kick in obviously the tail end of that set. So at that point, you should have achieved as many stimulant reps you would have got with a straight set. And now you're still getting those extra bonus ones. And that's where the super spinal fatigue is going to be present. Yeah, but I would always just say to people, you know, kind of be aware of it because, you know, like we were describing with the squat situation, the fact that you got this barbell on your back just kind of creates this miserable sensation. So just be aware that super spinal, so you just produce by negative feelings and sensations. So if in the particular instance, like, because I can guarantee that somebody else ate to me, well, I don't agree with you because, you know, I do clusters and I feel miserable. And what would they go? That's the answer. It's like, you know, it's like, doesn't matter how the theory pans out. If I can say to you, you know, just just be aware of how you're feeling. And if you're feeling a really strong sensation of discomfort because of some reason, then that's telling you you've got super spinal C and FT presence. So don't overthink it. But in theory, it shouldn't be too bad because you are allowing these things to dissipate between repetitions and therefore, yeah, it should be better. So as you just mentioned, obviously spinal fatigue going to be less. Yeah. So we need to look at super spinal. We need to look at calcium biode, but you're going to talk that in a second. Now from a super spinal standpoint, I always tell my clients when we're doing clusters, they really wear how you set up this exercise. So I'm going to be careful with which exercise I'm telling you something to do with clusters. I want it to be an exercise like if you've got a squak age and you can only set it up where, you know, you can't easily put the barbell back the hook. So it's hard to do a lift off or, you know, what a bit of an exercise is. It's actually a lot of effort for you to do the cluster, do the repetitions. You have to hold the weight. It's fatiguing. That is actually going to work against you from a super spinal scene as fatigue standpoint. Right? So I set up standpoint, any time you're picking an exercise with clusters, how can we modify this setup? So it's reducing super spinal scene as fatigue. And then we can do the same with calcium ion fatigue in some ways, but I'll let you talk about it first. Before I jump into that, let me just kind of expand on something you just said, which is that, you know, we're trying to reduce all of these elements of discomfort. We're trying to get rid of this complication of rewracking the bar and, you know, kind of for anything annoying, frustrating, you know, kind of anything like that. We're trying to get rid of it. Sometimes when I talk about that stuff and we talk about that stuff and other people, you know, kind of address those kind of ideas in the context of bodybuilding, you know, the rebuttal, the pushback that we get from other areas of the industry is like, you know, just just suck it up and do the difficult thing. Right? Okay. Now just let me work through that because what they are not understanding is that we are sucking up. We are doing the difficult thing, but what we're doing is we're directing all of our energy to doing the difficult thing, which is purely producing motineo-crument rather than, you know, allowing some of our energy to be siphoned off and used to deal with this difficult thing instead. It's all it is. So it's like, which difficult thing do you want to use all of your energy to withstand thing, producing motineo-crument, the central magic band, or dealing with all this other rubbish that, you know, is extraneous and doesn't actually help us produce motineo-crument? Because ultimately you've got a maximum tolerable possession of effort, you can either devote all of it to producing motineo-crument, or you can devote a portion of it to sucking it up and dealing with these aggravations, and the rest of it to motineo-crument. Pick one. That's it. I mean, and so when people don't understand when they push back and go, you know, kind of just deal with it and do the difficult thing, like, well, yeah, we are. It's just that we're limiting the difficult thing to the thing that actually produces an effect rather than, you know, all this other extraneous rubbish that you're dealing with because you think it makes you, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Whatever self-image you've got of yourself, that means you do difficult things. Okay, fine. But the point is that it's a choice of where you devote that effort rather than, you know, kind of whether you are, in fact, lifting the effort. One's, you know, training hard. Yeah, both scenarios where reaching a maximum tolerable possession of it. It's just how you get there. Are you devoting all of it to recruitment, which is getting either result you want, or you're devoting part of it to these other extraneous things because that makes you feel good about yourself. Yeah, it is. It is certainly an odd argument. I agree with you. Well, it just fundamentally misunderstands what's happening. You know, I think a lot of people say, are you not training hard because you're not dealing with these issues and like, well, those issues don't get you way you want to go. I think it's because you can externally see that effort, right? So if you're doing, if you're having a puffing and doing 30 repetitions and dropsets and whatever else and you're, you know, sweating, battling to re-write the bar, you're taking it. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, I can, everyone can see that effort. So it's performative. It's performative. Yeah, exactly. But it's demonstrating. It's signaling something, which is, you know, that's it. Yes. That's terrible. That's really terrible. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, yeah. I'm not sure what the terminology is, but it's the opposite of virtue as far as the story would be concerned. You know, it's not inherently valuable. It's just showing other people that you're doing something, which is, yeah, not, not good. So no, the point I just want to address before I can move on to calcium I'm a lativity is just to say that, you know, struggling with stuff that doesn't get you close to high levels of recruitment is not inherently valuable, at least as far as hypertrophy is concerned. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't get you close to the goal. Cool. So in terms of calcium I'm a lativity, this is, this is a little bit of a tricky one. So let me just walk through what I see when I think about this. Before I talk about clusters, let me just talk about calcium I'm versus metabolite lativity more generally in general terms when we're looking at the strength training set broadly speaking, if you increase metabolite lativity for whatever reason or by whatever mechanism you tend to decrease the amount of calcium I'm a fatigue at Tuscalia, let me give an example. So if you're doing a strength training set and maybe there's just one kind of muscle group working imaginary kind of situation here for a moment, and you start changing the resistance profile. So you either got contract to position or stretch position. So you might say, well, let's do, you know, kind of lying leg girls, something like that. And let's have a machine that allows us to change the, the point of peak resistance. So you kind of move it from stretch to contracted. What you're going to find is that the, or even back extensions, like we were talking about earlier, you know, back extensions really nice example because you've pretty much got the same leverages for all three to joint hamstrings muscles across the whole range of motion. So you could like have either bands or no bands and you could have maybe some kind of resistance that allows you to change all of dynamometer. And you can move resistance to point to peak effort to stretch position or the contract of position. And we're like, well, okay, so do we then start to see a difference in terms of the teacum relation? Well, we do because as you have a stretch position that kind of exercise, you'll get more calcium amelote, but as a result, you'll get less metabolite lativity. The two things tend to kind of be like you kind of one or the other. because you're getting to the same level of muscle force or kind of. of getting into the same level of capacity to produce, to do the exercise, but ultimately buy one mechanism or the other locally. Now, so essentially we've got this balance. Now you can do the same thing with say a tempo. If you were to do max effort repetitions from the first repetition, you're going to get more metabolite later T, then you are calcium amount later T. If you go more slowly, you'll get the opposite way around. You get more calcium amount later T, unless metabolite later T, because from the first rep, if you go max out, you're going to have first which five activation from rep one. You don't get that if you kind of view a self selected or slow tempo. So any scenario where you're thinking about strength training sets to failure, pushing one variable in one direction tends to either increase metabolite or calcium amount later T proportionally to the other one. Now the question is does that happen with cluster sets? And I'm not sure, because I suspect it probably does. I suspect that you probably do get a little bit more calcium amount later T, because when you look at reps over time, as you do a repetition and let's say you do a repetition, let's see you doing 10 rep max and you do all the way through to failure with no clusters. So you just go bang all the way through. What's going to happen is metabolites are going to accumulate and yeah, there's going to be some calcium amount accumulation at the same time and you get to the end of the set and the rates of accumulation have been kind of constant for both types of fatigue mechanism or groups of fatigue mechanism rather. So you end up with muscular failure and you kind of measure the relative amounts of when you say constant, do you do mean linear as well? Yeah, or yeah, well, it's not that not linear linear because calcium amount of T tends to be very non-linear and tends to kind of zoom up at the end of the set, which I imagine would be important in this context. Yes, I'm a metabolite related to you, non-linear in the opposite direction. It tends to jump up at the beginning and then starts to take tail off towards the end. If you're doing, if you're doing reps with rests between them or some kind of intracet rest period structure, what's going to happen is that you're going to have a period of time in which your two accumulating lines have a chance to go back down again before they accumulate again. And the difference here is that metabolites will drop precipitously as soon as you give them a chance to dissipate. Calcium ions do not. So you have a very different kind of recovery profile. So your metabolites are going to go up and then drop and then up and then drop and then drop. Your calcium ions are going to go up and drop a little bit depending on what's capable of happening in that scenario and there's not a massive amount of data. But the thing about calcium ions is that once they're there and they're producing their calcium ion-related T mechanisms, those for T mechanisms can't be unpicked until much, much later on, they take hours or even days to completely deal with them. Yes, the calcium ions themselves will dissipate, but the effects of those will not dissipate if that makes sense. So metabolite related to mechanisms only exist when metabolites are present. It's like the presence of the metabolites produces the effect. That's not true about calcium ions. The calcium ions come in and they precipitate a set of mechanisms and those mechanisms are now independent of the presence of the calcium ions. It's like dropping a way tougher cliff. Once you've dropped it, you can't influence the fact that it's now dropped. That's what happens with calcium ion-related T. The metabolites are not like that. If they're present, they're creating the effects. Clouds produce rain. Once you take the clouds of weather in their rain. So it's like the fundamentally different kind of approaches to creating the problem. So what I think we'd see with clusters is you would actually get a little bit more calcium ion-related T accumulating simply because you can't get rid of it really once you've kind of started creating the problem. But as you point out, mitigating that is that these calcium ion-related feeding mechanisms tend to really only become very noticeable in the last couple of reps of a set anyway. So you not really got a chance of producing a large impact of calcium ion-related T until you get towards the back end of the workout. That's why clusters are so much less problematic for calcium ion-related T than something like drop sets. Because when we're talking about clusters, people will be saying, "Oh yeah, okay, well, clusters sounds exciting, but what about drop sets? What about rest pause?" And all these other ideas that are kind of similar. Well, with drop sets, when you train to failure and then immediately banging out another couple of reps and then immediately banging out another couple of reps, that's calcium ion-related T. Kevin, really. I mean, they're running around having a party at that point. That's really going to create issues because you are in that zone where you've taken all the way to failure you've got to the steep end of the graph with calcium ion accumulation and calcium ion-related T mechanisms. And then you're doing it again. That's like, well, no, that's not what we want. That's a really bad idea. So just in terms of clusters, I would say, on balance, I think you probably are going to get a little bit more calcium ion-related T with the cluster, but I don't think it's going to be a lot more and I don't think it's going to be problematic. And I think so on balance, if you look at all of the T mechanisms, I would say that because of the reduced spinal, reduced supra-spinal slightly great to calcium ion-related T, overall, I would say that's a positive impact. And that's why I think we're probably going to end up getting an extra couple of stimulating reps from doing clusters compared to a street set. And like you mentioned, the calcium ion accumulation is exponential at the end of that set. So with that cluster set, even if you are using a five-rept max, then you're still like, let's say you get eight repetitions out with our five-reptition max. Well, because of the T has dissipated, you know, you've got whatever. We'll talk about actually how long one might do between reps and stuff, but presumably, let's say in a normal straight set, obviously with the five-rept max, calcium ion accumulation is going to be less of an issue than 10-rept max or whatever. But let's say the real, I don't want to say damaging, but the real impactful repetitions in a straight set might be the last two repetitions. Would you say for the calcium ion? Yeah, give a take. And so with that cluster, what we might be getting maybe a third, like just by virtue of extending out, essentially that stimulating kind of period. So it feels to me like, well, that's kind of the sort of the price of admission. If you're going to get more stimulant repetitions, you're kind of going to get more calcium ion accumulation. That's sort of. It's kind of proportional to what you're expecting if you were to do another set. I mean, it's like, you know, you've done another half set and you've got another repetition worth of calcium ion accumulations. Yeah, as you say, it's the price of admission. So, and of course, if you wished, you could just not. You could just not do that last step or so. And you could just volumize as if you were leaving reps and reserve. You know, and that then just brings you two kind of programming issues around saying, well, okay, but how do I make clusters work for me? You know, can I see progressive overload and those kind of questions? And it becomes more of a practical consideration, which I think, you know, again, there's ways around that. But ultimately, in terms of sort of what we're expecting to see just in terms of stimulating repetitions, if you're using heavy loads, and you're getting an extra couple of reps in the cluster set compared to what you would get in a straight set, I think they're probably are stimulating. And I mentioned a moment ago, so I would always look at ways we can mitigate some of these negative forms of fatigue, you need a cluster set. And if you're looking at cast iron fatigue mechanisms, then probably the most important part from the reserve, which you mentioned, would be exercise selection. And so if I'm programming clusters, I'm not going to program an exercise where ideally, not where there's a huge kind of stretch component of that exercise, and especially not one where between repetitions are left in a stretched position. So for example, one exercise that I hate doing clusters on and I never program it would be something like a seated lake girl, unless one had a machine where they could very easily take the legs out of that machine. Otherwise, you stuck in this essentially lengthened position, this stretch between each repetition. And that's going to, that's going to be your worst nightmare from a cast iron accumulation standpoint. So it's actually relevant to what we were talking about last year. I was going to say you actually connecting this to what we described last time where people are pausing in a stretched position. It's the same thing isn't it? Straight. But in a relaxed state, it's like you're relaxing into that stretched position between repetitions. You're basically doing a static stretch between each repetition of your strength training set, which makes absolutely no sense because you could just do the static stretch afterwards and get all the benefits, all of the benefits, if not more, of the benefits, and not interfere with the strength training set that you're doing. It was such a strange thing to talk about because people are literally arguing that you could do these static stretches between repetitions and claiming that that was helpful. I'm like, just do it afterwards. It makes so much more sense. I mean, go experiment with a seated leaky or cluster and see how that static stretch goes for you. You don't find how much your performance drops. Now, we haven't actually really identified or defined what a cluster actually is, especially when, because if you compare it to something like rest pause, obviously drop sets are a little bit different. We don't really need a contrasted to that. But a lot of people do get confused between how does a cluster differ from a rest pause. And I'm not sure if you've got a different definition to me, but for me, when I look at that, and again, maybe there might be different definitions out there, but I would take rest pause generally will involve that first set taken to failure and then each mini set after it, generally taken to failure as well. So that would be my instinctive definition, I think, but technically really is a, if you're thinking then diagrams, rest pause really should sit within clusters. And it's sort of in the middle ground between a drop set as well, because a drop set effectively is a rest pause, but you're reducing the load. No. So this is where I would say this is fundamentally different, because when we talk about a cluster, the word cluster means that we are grouping Repetitions together within a set. So what you're saying is that you're putting rest periods somewhere into your set that allows you to sort of Make the set sort of longer really so with clusters. We've got okay We do this number of repetitions that we take a rest and we do this number of repetitions that we take a rest You can go as far as single repetitions and rest between those repetitions. Okay, fine rest pause You do the repetitions to failure and then you take a break and then you do another few repetitions And technically you could say well is that therefore a single set with you know kind of rests and therefore you've got these three clusters of repetitions now if you wanted to and say well no failure for me represents the end of that set You could say well actually no it's just three sets with very short rest periods So you could look at this you could look at rest pause from two total different spectives You could say it's a single set of clusters because you've got three clusters But you are trained to failure so arguably it's not one set It's actually three sets but with short rest periods and I think you could argue that from two different perspectives and depending on which way you come with it I think either is probably okay drops us different because you don't have any rest So technically a drop set is not a cluster because it doesn't have Separate segments to it. It's all one thing all the way through. Yeah, that's an interesting idea I guess I would look at a drop set and I would think about it as actually having a bit of a rest because if he's Think about let's say you're doing always one do a drop set on let's say you're doing some of the dumbbells I only do a set of ten That raises whatever you put the dumbbells back See that's an interesting point with the drop set because I actually intuitively wouldn't have thought about that as Not having a rest period So the way I've always sort of been conditioned to think about drop sets is from a program He's at that point you need to specify how long you're taking between the drop So you might one might write in ten seconds twenty seconds thirty seconds So in my mind I'd be thinking of a drop set as 20 seconds pick the light of load go again. So it's interesting Okay, if it's no for me that would be rest pause but changing the load I mean load and that's what I thought in my head a my could rest pause is basically a drop set We don't change the load and drop set is we change loads so Okay, yeah terminologies so one of the things that I always emphasize especially in the mentorship program when I'm trying to get people to think about stuff Logically and in kind of a segment or and kind of philosophical way sometimes It's say just because we give some words or we apply some words to a thing doesn't mean that we've you know kind of Change the thing it's like we use words to describe a situation But those words that the map is not the territory that the way we describe something is not perfect We overlapping a template on top of a reality We've always got to be aware that we're doing that my favorite example is anatomy So just because we give a muscle group a name or we call it the hamstrings Doesn't mean that the brain sees that muscle as a single thing or a group as a single thing You know and so when people say does this exercise train the hamstrings does this exercise train that you know And I'm like you can't think like that. That's not how the brain works with respect to the body You know, and I think the same thing is here is true here just because we give something a name and we say oh this is cluster This is rest pause. This is drop-sare doesn't mean that you know we've we've fully described it It's nature and we know exactly what's happening You know it's like we're just giving words as conventions to try and give a shorthand to what's happening ultimately What's what matters is you know what fatigue mechanisms are occurring and how the rest periods that we take and the loading repetition ranges that we manipulate How do those things affect these estimulating rep kind of model? Are they changing the recruitment? Are they changing the tension and how does that then relate to the overall stimulus of the work out that we're doing? So you know, yeah, we can talk about rest pause and we can talk about drops out and we can talk about clusters And we can change the definitions a little bit here and there and try and understand what they all mean But the end of the day it just comes back to what is the physiological reality in each of these situations? Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, like basically all these words are is a tool to help locate us somewhere And then when we find where we are we can start to talk about well physiologically what's happening Yeah, they're just their shorthands. They're not supposed to be like this is better than that which is better than that It's like no understand what is actually happening because if like we've just found out your concept of drops out was slightly different from mine I mean, that's that's fine I mean just now we know that that is the case When I say drop set I always mean that we're not taking a rest between the the individual drops But you were thinking that there was a bit of a rest mean practice the role is is but that then changes how we would then expect the the training program to work and the actual specific physiological responses because you would actually expect a better result from your drop sets than I would because you're getting that little bit of Arrest to allow some of the spinal and supospinal to dissipate So to go back to clusters I think it's important to define not define but give some Program it is as to the the rest periods between them how that might actually look in practice and What I guess similar to what you've just said there what I find interesting with classes is it's almost like It's kind of like putting putting the the cart before the horse where it's like we're doing clusters the clusters have to be done with 30 seconds rest and therefore I can't do more than 30 seconds rest as I will hang on Ultimately all clusters doing is providing some period of time for those fatigue mechanisms to dissipate and the longer the better So really you could do Five minutes between each repetition if you wanted that 30 seconds is not magic It's really it's a practical thing. It's just there so you can essentially get the workout done So it's not that in if you do a 20 second rest between each single repetition and you're still halfing and puffing between those singles To me that's probably not the best way of actually programming that cluster like the purpose of the classes to let fatigue dissipate You've got more time up you sleeve give yourself more time to let more fatigue dissipate Well, this is exactly the same as the rest period conversation in general terms there and people say to me How many minutes should I rest between sets and I'm like well how long's a piece of string you need to look at this situation and go Am I doing I don't know sort of single joint single limb exercises in a machine and I probably actually only need a minute or so You know, am I doing you know squats or deadlift so I might need five minutes It's depends on the situation and again repeating what I've just said before these concepts like rest periods these concepts like definitions of terminologies It's all just mapping on to physiological reality You know if if as you say you're doing a set and 20 second rest periods between repetitions or between clusters of repetitions isn't getting you a meaningful reduction in The fatigue mechanisms that were trying to reduce then as you say bump it up to 30 seconds and that the purpose is to get rid of those And just kind of digress very briefly This is this is why physiology matters when you're trying to understand how string training works This is where you can't just go these physiology people who just focus on mechanisms they need to be kind of you know Side-lined and told to shut up well, we're gonna focus on evidence-based you know string training unlike you do evidence-based training rather than physiology based Modeling and you're not gonna understand any of this stuff you literally just gonna be like oh well clusters We don't know what happens with clusters. You're gonna be one of these people who sits there. Oh, we don't know what happens I'm like well, yeah, we do you know you just have to read the fatigue list you and then understand exactly what's going on Um because ultimately everything you know has a A way of working Teague is really what is happening during these cluster situations or it's being manipulated Steve mechanisms are being manipulated while we're changing these respiration durations and changing cluster structures and things like that And if you just work through how those deep mechanisms work It'll bring you to an answer of what you're expected to see in terms of the effects of different cluster structures And so if you're using a heavy load just to repeat that key point if you're using a heavy load five-ret max Load then you're getting a stimulus from rep one and you can literally take as much rest I mean you let you joke you have five minutes whatever between reps if you want to But you know, it's like you probably don't need to you know If you try to be efficient in your workout time then you would take the rest period that allows you to You know kind of stack up the repetitions that you want to stack up without having useless time in your workout where you don't really have any sensations going on and you're like just wasting time before you do the next rep I think there's an efficiency thing there definitely um Ultimately, you know, if you're getting a stimulus from that one repetition and fantastic Then we can just you know kind of structure the workout in the way who wants structure it Have 30 seconds whatever if that works 20 seconds of it works 15 seconds of it works. It doesn't really matter You know, I think again people get really hung up on these numbers like do I do 10 to do 15 to do 20 You know tell me what the right number is I'm like well, that's not the right way of thinking about it because your physiology your tolerance to these de-mechisms is going to be very slightly different to other people's But find the number that is working for you and then just stick with it I mean, but we're now starting to getting into practicalities and it's like well, you know How do people manage this in the context of a strengthening program? How do they see progressive overload? How do they you know kind of manage those things? You could even argue it might even be exercise opinion even muscle-dependent as well Sometimes what I do with clients is I say hey if we're using a five-year max load and we're doing singles I dilly I want to get eight to ten singles out and I might say look let's start on 20 seconds or 25 to 30 whatever And if you find your own you're getting six or seven out with 20 seconds next workout Let's up into 32 what did I say 20 let's up into 30 okay? So I need to get seven out okay? Let's go to 40 whatever you need, because I think that's a really good approach. I think that's a really good approach. Start with a target number of repetitions and then figure out what you need in terms of interest set or into repetition rest boots to make that happen. I think that's really important because that gives a fixed point for people to work towards. It's like you can iterate now, you can iterate with your respiration until you get to that target. And you may find an institution between muscles. I find it is. So, for example, if I was going to do like a biceps cluster, I'd probably need a little bit longer. If I'm doing a calf cluster, something like that, I tend to find a little bit shorter. So, and what I would normally say, clients is what you've identified for that muscle, we're just going to keep that now. At least for that phase, we're keeping that. But ideally, just ongoing, that's probably going to be a good sort of rest period for you. With the calcium ion related fatigue, one practical point I wanted to make there. If I've got an exercise for that muscle later in that workout, ideally you want to sort of mitigate some of the calcium ion related fatigue. You talked about Grapes and Reserves. That's where I would do Grapes and Reserves. And so, what I would do then is pick a five-grapes mat load. I would do singles. For me personally, I'll normally do 10 singles. But that's why I'll give myself a good 50 seconds minute, whatever I feel I can need. And I don't want any one of those singles to feel more than, like a closer to, than two reps to failure. And so, I find if I do that, really that, and you know, get those 10 singles out. I feel like there's very little fatigue that's accumulated. And then I'm still able to go do another exercise for that muscle. And I find my performances in jeopardised at all. No, that makes sense. I mean, I think again, that's just looking at the context of the rest of the workout in which you're doing the particular, you know, close to technique. So, everything always impacts on everything else. So, the limitations, what do we need? What should one be concerned about or where, or if they're wanting to use clusters? Well, I would say the single because limitation is the progressive overload. I would say, if you're just doing clusters for a particular exercise, you're always going to be little uncertain about whether or not you're still using a heavy load. Because this is the problem with clusters. If you drift into the moderate load zone, your value of your cluster starts to drop precipitously because now you're any repetitions you do at the start of the set, you're just delaying the point at which you end to the stimulating repzone. So, a lot of your extra repetitions that you're gathering by doing the cluster technique, you're not benefiting from. You know, you really want to be hitting sort of rep one with a stimulating rep and then suddenly your cluster set starts to change. And just to reiterate that point, this is why I think the literature doesn't tell us very much about clusters because it's all done with almost all done with the moderate loads. So, not really benefiting from the early reps of that cluster set and the extra reps you get by doing clusters aren't helping you. So, I would always kind of try and program clusters with heavy loads. And as a result, you need a way of making sure that you're still using a heavy load when you get half with the training program. And I think that's why we've talked before about maybe with a training program, maybe if you're doing full body AB split, only do clusters for one of those two workouts, not both. And maybe have another workout, the other workout in the week, you do the same exercise, but straight sets or a straight set. And you can keep, you know, kind of monitoring your what your five rep max or at least be able to, I mean, if you're not doing actual five rep max, you might do it like a seven rep max or something. But have a formula that allows you to just work backwards to that five rep max and know roughly what to do. Well, it should be and that will be perfect. But working within that close proximity seven to five or eight to five, you probably aren't going to be miles away. And then you can keep on making sure that you're using a five rep max in your in your work. And I think that was something that you can with initially. And I think it's a brilliant idea. I get make sure that you're always moving forwards and showing that you've got your your appropriate load, your cluster. Because repeating what I said earlier, this is critical. You do use heavy load if you want to make clusters work because moderate loads are just going to waste time. Think over the years or to how to track previous to go overloading clusters has possibly been the topic we've talked about by this. I don't know if you remember this or realize this. Yeah, there might be one of the other topics we've talked about more. But I like even four years ago, whenever we started talking, I remember the first plan I draw to you was a cluster plan. And you may not remember this, but it was a full body plan. And the word looked at doing it was doing essentially a circuit and doing eight sets of clusters for each exercise. And I remember that point you like a bit patty track progressive overload over the years. I've changed the way I track progressive overload with clusters multiple times. And there's multiple different methods I use. And at that point in time, what I was using was each phase. What I would do is I would start the phase with a testing the five rep max. And then I would conclude that phase by testing the five rep max. And we're using that same load actually that they started and then taking that the failure and tracking how much is the five rep max progressed. And even if there were some drifting away that had happened over those few weeks, they're still getting at least a set worth of stimulating repetitions. But you know, that's relying on, you know, you've got a month of having many weeks between these testing periods. And I think ideally what maybe we settled on over time is having some way that you can anchor that cluster to a three five rep max in a short duration, not waiting till the next phase or the end of the phase or few weeks or whatever. And so as you've identified there, one option that I really like doing is having an AB and one on an A you might be doing clusters and on the B you're doing that same exercise, be doing it for maybe a single set of five or two sets of five or whatever. And normally I'll do a single set of five because actually I find if someone's doing a single set, they tend to actually lift a heavier load than if they're doing two sets. So normally what I would do is a single set of five and I'd say, Hey, next time you do clusters, you're just going to use the same load using that workout. I don't care if it's high or low, whatever you did, but you just need that same load. And I find that works quite well. Another method I've used is changing the cluster over each successive workout. So I start, for example, with a set of five, okay, that's our anchor point. And then next workout, we might do five sets of two without load. And then the next workout, we may actually now do triples, maybe four sets of three. And then next workout, we might do three sets of four. And then next workout, we'll do one set of five again. And so even if there is a bit of drifting up in terms of strength, adaption by adding repetitions to that cluster, we're still achieving a similar amount of maximum simulator repetitions. So there's different ways. What I love about clusters is you can actually get quite creative here. Like this, not a one way you need to do this. If you start thinking about the physiology, like you said, you can start to come up with cool ways. You can play with them. You can look good on the eyes and you can track for a guess of overload in some of these creative ways. And you know, a lot of people talk about nothing beats straight sets. Well, well, program cluster, I don't know, getting more stimulative repetitions in a straight set, fatigue wise, it's pretty good to turn on investment. I don't know, I think it's a lot of utility. I agree. And I think this is a perfect example of something I mentioned a week or so ago when I said, you know, you're starting to program in a way that has some variety and kind of sort of interesting features associated with it that actually I'd value you. I think so many of the programs that I've seen over the years, just our variety for the sake of variety and don't actually beat just hammering away at the same set of exercises, you know, kind of all the time with the same kind of fruition models. I think this kind of cluster technique, when done, you know, alternating kind of a B style, you know, is genuinely adding value. And also hits the requirement of many clients. And we have to be honest about this, I think many clients expect some complexity in their routines. If they want to see that because that for them is perceived value. Now we can argue that that's just not true. And I don't think it is true. But for them, it is a perceived element of value that they have a complicated routine because that is seen to be better than a more simple one. But in this case that you're describing, I think it actually is adding value, which is actually not only looking better for them, but also is in fact slightly better for, you know, the reasons you've described. A lot better, probably not. You know, but it does have that value element that I think is missing, missing in so many other more complicated routines. I look at a periodized routine and there's things moving around all over the place and it's impossible to know whether progressive overload is happening and people are changing exercises and the atrophies are going to be happening and you're going to be missing benefits all over the place from things that you've done and then not carried on with. And it's just, you know, kind of absolute nightmare when you're trying to figure out whether there's anything going on there that's worth with having. And you compare that with just a super simple, you know, list of 10 exercises done three times a week for body-starring, like, well, clearly that's going to be way better. You know, people, people look at you and go, oh, no, that's a really basic, you know, kind of an interesting routine and it can't possibly work for me and I'm like, seriously, it's very little on the internet. There's better than this for the for the goal that you have. But what you're doing is you're simultaneously making a routine that looks like it has perceived value from the point of view of many clients, you know, but, spontaneously, actually does add a little bit to value on top of what a sort of really basic routine might have. And I think that sweet spot is extraordinarily interesting for us as we kind of move forward in the industry as people start to, you know, kind of use these physiologically aligned methods of training. This kind of sort of training is very, very interesting to sort of talk about because it hits the required of many clients simultaneously because just kind of very, very quick digression. You know, a lot of the time when we're talking about this stuff, when we're talking about physiology-based strength training, you know, the people that are interested in this are, you know, a tiny fraction of the fitness industry and they already know how strength training works more or less. And so they're not sort of switched off by a routine that looks simple, you know, it's like they're just interested in getting results and they just want whatever routine gets in there. But many of the people who are then programming for the wider fitness industry or even the general population, they're working with a different situation, they're working with people who have different preconceptions, different ideas of what strength training program should look like, and they want a different service, they want to see something that's slightly different because they have these, you know, ideas. And everyone, we've got to meet everybody where they are, you can't just expect to go to somebody and say, well, I'm telling you that this is right for you and you've just got to do. And sometimes those relationships can't work, but you know, generally speaking, people have preconceptions and they want to, you know, kind of see some of those met when they receive a training program. And I think this, that's why this is really interesting because it actually does fit those. Yeah, definitely there's a big sort of psychological component to that. And I think in my experience as a coach, what I've identified is when one is working one-on-one with a client, and especially if that client has sought you out as a coach, and if you're working in a gym, the gyms are just assigned to a client, it's different. But if a client's sought you out, either sort of have that trans process there, they sort of, you know, believe you to be an expert, anyway, and being a one-on-one context, you're able to spend a little bit more time educating. And like for me, I know when I was doing my one-on-ones in person, I don't do in person anymore. Most of that session between sets, like we're just talking, we're just educating, we're just talking about like actually, hey, how does this work? How is programming work? What's the physiology? And in that context, you might be able to give that client, you know, that sort of basic program you'd explain. But where you struggle to do that as a coach is if you're doing one to many, and you're coaching a group or you've got an online group or whatever that might be, and you don't have that opportunity to really educate each individual client, that's where I've found people might jump in to one of my groups from another group, and I'm like, hand it hard, I know my program is a lot better than what they came from, and they'll be like, oh, but that we're doing, you know, three different rotations and like six, six, if we work out through a training every two weeks, and this and the other, and like, man, that was so cool, I'm going to go back to that. It's like, man, there's, you know, there's a disconnect here, and it's hard to bridge that, and you know, you can always direct people to more information and podcasts and what about us. Like you said, there, if we can, if we can deal with that issue before it even arises by actually having a value add that is what they expect, it's not even an issue in the first place. So I do find that there's a lot of value in this. For what it's worth classes, I'm not like the cluster guy. So I'll program classes probably maybe 30 to 50% of my programs will have classes. So with my groups, I'd say maybe every second or third phase will have some classes in there, certainly not every exercise, usually one, maybe two exercises in a workout. So like you said, you know, do they spend, and actually more valuables and straights, that's well, no, but there's creative ways we can use them to actually be beneficial. And I know that we're getting a little bit long here, so I don't want to sort of divert us too much, but one way I do also use them, and we've touched on this in the past, is when I program a class, I say, hey, I want you to be as explosive as possible. I want you to have as much, you know, sort of intent in that repetition as you can. And I might even instruct clients use an internal focus in that actual set as well, rather than an external focus. And I'll actually utilize the clusters of wave increasing mode unit recruitment in that phase. And then we might go away from classes next phase, but we'll have some of that carry over adaption from hopefully increasing mode unit recruitment as well. So we can actually use it to achieve different goals or different adaptions that we might not be able to get just with the normal straights. I'm absolutely. I think the interesting thing there, when you first came to me and suggested that that was an interesting strategy, and I kind of sat there and did what I did, which is where I think through all of the ramifications. And I was like, that's a really interesting idea because you're already losing progressive overload capacity with plus or more or less anyway. And that's the single biggest problem within internal focus is that you lose progressive overload visibility, because you can't really do, you know, kind of progressive overload and have an internal focus for multiple reasons. I mean, obviously, firstly, it just disconnects your expectation for how many repetitions you're going to get with your capacity to do repetitions because you're focusing on screening the muscle instead of getting the repetitions out. And but secondly, if you do try and get back out to that mentality and start seeking a sort of a target, like say, for example, you look at your logbook and you go, all right, the date reps last time with an internal focus attention, I need to get nine reps. And this time your brain immediately starts to lose the ability to do the internal focus because trying to hit the target is an external focus really is an external focus kind of drive. It is not itself an external focus attention, but it is going to push you to use an external focus attention because that's the best way of making sure that you get additional repetitions. So, so you can't you actually can't really do kind of internal focus and progressive overload focus at the same time, not focus. You can't seek progressive overload at the same time as using an internal focus. They're actually completely disparate ideas. But because clusters are not focusing on progressive overload anyway, they're just giving you the repetitions and saying go ahead and do these repetitions. You know, I think it means that you're not losing very much when you do that. So again, a fantastic example of how when you understand what physiology is doing in each of these different scenarios, when you understand what physiology is, how physiology is working in the context of focus of attention and in terms of clusters. And what a progressive overload actually is when you understand the meaning of these things and what's actually happening, you can play around with this stuff and start to connect dots and do things where you previously could I never program an internal focus attention just never, and I never really thought about ever doing that because I just wanted to make sure progressive overload was always happening. But then when you have a reason to do a cluster and you now kind of are sort of pegging it with an alternate an alternate workout where progressive overload is happening. So you know you've always got that sort of structure in place and suddenly, suddenly the internal focus attention becomes interesting again. But you only knew that because of the physiology telling you how things work. It's just it's so so fascinating the way that we can start to make connections and introduce concepts and play around with stuff. So again, you know, sometimes people will try and pigeonhole you and go, you know, oh, you've always said that internal focus is not a good idea, but now suddenly you're saying it's okay. Well, you were trying to pigeonhole me or the person who was saying that was trying to pigeonhole me by saying that these are your opinions and you must always stand by them. And I like the theology is what matters how you play around with that physiology in the constant training, just training program is is up to you, but it's the physiology that is the important bit how you connect those dots and structure those programs is entirely up to you within the context. And if you find a way to make that work and physiologically it makes sense, that's fantastic. Just because I didn't think of it doesn't matter. I think for one who's who's programming, even if someone's programming for themselves, I thought this about exercise selection and and rotating workouts and AB versus AA and stuff like that. And I've always thought if you're not that I don't want to say knowledgeable, but really that's kind of what I'm getting at. If you don't know this stuff super well, it's a lot easier just to keep it really simple and just do you know AA or just sort of programming in a sort of not lowest common denominator, but there's the simplest way possible and it's really hard to mess start up. Like when your programming just you know AA full body straight search, you can't really mess it up as long as you've got your following some pretty basic parameters. And as you said there once you start to unsan the physiology more, that's where I think you can start to you know expand out and start to get more creative and play some of these things. And I don't think one's better than the other. Like I think if that's where you're at, I would encourage coaches who are listening to this. If you're not comfortable with the physiology, program in a simple way, because your simple program is going to be better than you attempting to program in a complex way. Yeah, absolutely. I would say that and I would say that 90% of the time I'm just programming either full body AA or full body AB even for me. I don't go more complicated than that. I just don't see the value of that. It doesn't need to be. I think you're going to get 95% of the possible benefits that you could possibly get from either full body A or full body AB. Maybe you can squeak out an extra 5% here and there with some clever programming. But you know, when I see how much effort you put in to these programs and now much time you spend trying to figure out how to add these complexities, I think probably the return on investment for a single person probably isn't there. You know, you're programming for a group of people, a large group of people. I can see the ROI makes sense in that situation because you've got large number of people all benefitted from these. But if you're really just looking at a single person like I am most of the time just isn't I just don't see the value in that complexity. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's not necessary. I just like trouble solving like this is how I get to sleep at night. I'll just be playing with the physiology thing. What if I did it like this? What if I programed it this way? And then hopefully remember in the mornings I can talk to you about it. But if it's not something that someone's you know, super passionate about interested in, keep it simple. Yeah, I think there's there's so much value in the simple programs that we've talked about on this podcast either just literally the programs that were being done in the silver era or physiology programs which are incredibly similar to those programs with some tweaks around mainly exercise selection or also repetition range. We tend to go for heavier loading protocols but again that's logistical most of the time. I don't think it's sort of a fundamental difference I think it's just logistical one and but really there's an incredible overlap between those two things which is really the purpose of this podcast as it always has. Hopefully those clear up everyone's questions and classes it's it's a hot topic. I know I certainly get a stack of questions and classes and I'm sure you do no doubt. And it's something I feel like maybe we've sat on a little while like we haven't really talked about it much. I know people have wanted us to talk about it so you know hopefully that sort of empowered you guys to think about it and know how to program it and what the benefits are and what maybe some of the shortcomings are and and how you can utilize it for yourself or clients or whatever else. I'm excited to actually see what you guys come up with with you know out of this and and you know obviously I've just given some examples of how I program it but there's if you understand the physiology there's a whole stack of different ways you could use it. So hopefully we'll see some examples popping up on TikTok and instant seeing how you guys are running with this but that's our goal here is to discuss the physiology so you guys can play with it and actually know how does this stuff actually work in real life and how do you get the most out of it?