021 Why Counting “Half Sets” for Secondary Muscles Doesn't Make Sense

Welcome back everybody to another episode of high-perturacy, past and present. Chris, I'm not even going to bother asking how you are today because I know you're going to be a lot better in about two minutes' time because I finally am going to share a plan with you today that has pull ups in it. So don't get too excited just yet. I can see you jumping out of your skin this way. So the plan I have today, I'll give you a moment. Do you want to say anything before jumping to this? I think I'm still recovering from the shock of hearing that we've got going with pull ups in it. But I'll let you explain it to us because I think it's going to be pretty interesting to hear that. Okay, here we go. So this is actually a plan from Dick, Dubois, I'm assuming Dubois, I've not heard his net well. I've heard some people say his name, I've heard people say Dubois to me, it looks like it would be Dubois, I'm not sure. He did win a Missy America in 1954, I believe, and then came second the following year in the Missy Universe. Now, he's not someone who's talked about a whole lot, I guess because he never won the Missy Universe, but he does have a very aesthetic physique looking at him. For me, I'd say looking at a lot of the silvery guys, he kind of have those who, like people like Steve Reeves, where there's kind of like more of that athletic kind of look and sort of development across the body, like sort of more balanced development and Niggot Redge, he's a little bit more pushing into that kind of mass sort of zone. Dick Dubois does look very sort of Steve Reeves' esk in his physique, so very well developed all over. But not overly, not talked about a whole lot. Now this plan is a plan that he wrote in a magazine in 1954, so the year that he won the Missy America, so presumably similar to the plan he would have been following for that competition. And as is obviously quite common, it is a full body at that point, almost everyone was using. And something else I find interesting about this plan is it used 12 exercises, which if you guys, if you've listened to some of our episodes, you'll realise that that seems to be not necessarily like the norm for everyone, but it's kind of the standard. Generally about that 12 exercises, yes, there's abbreviated plans and yes, there's some that are using, you know, 20 exercises or whatnot. But the sort of norm for most will be 12 and then there's some variation. So we've got 12 exercises, full body, three times a week and I'll just read out the exercises. So we start with a behind the neck press, which obviously one of the most popular exercises in the silver era. Now what's cool about this in this magazine article, he did provide photos of how he was doing these exercises. So the behind the neck, we can see he actually had a fairly like close grip and narrow grip for the behind the neck. Obviously you can't get too close when you're doing behind the neck, but he did have in that bottom position his hands were stacked over his elbows. He wasn't sort of a white grip at all. So fairly closer grip behind the neck. And then we went into a bench, although they called it a supine press or whatever they called it back then. And then into dips, so normal parallel bar dips into squats. Now the squats or the deep knee bend, they obviously they were performed differently at some points and he was doing it sort of this old school way where he was up on his toes. So his heels are actually suspended in the air. They weren't they weren't elevated on a block or anything like that. They were actually just up on his toes. And then he went into the bent arm pullover. Obviously the squat pullover is a fairly popular combo there. And then into an exercise, I actually haven't seen before in a silver era plan. I think perhaps later on it got used a little bit, but he called it, I think it is called in a modified dip. Now essentially you'll have to use your imagination here for a moment. So imagine you're doing a dip on parallel bars and instead of having your body vertical, you've actually got your feet or your legs, I guess your feet are supported behind you. And so your body is actually horizontal. So it's almost like an inverted bench press type exercise. I guess imagine you're doing a push up in the air on dip bars. So that was his modified dip into a barbell curl into sit ups and then leg raise. But this is lying on the floor leg raise. So it wasn't like hanging leg raise. And then he did alternating dumbbell shoulder press. Now this was done with a closer grip. So we've got the behind the neck, which obviously was in the frontal plane. And then this not full schedule plane, but this kind of halfway sort of overhead press. So alternating dumbbell. And then into this is quite interesting to a standing car phrase and had a very preliminary kind of rudimentary machine here where it was hard to get the full sort of perspective. But it looked like I don't know if he was hanging the weights off his neck or his waist or what, but he sort of had some kind of set up. We was able to have all these weights dangling off him and like not holding them, but they were kind of on his person. And he was doing this standing car phrase. He looked very much like a like the action of a normal standing car phrase machine. And then he concluded with here we go, the wife grip chin behind the neck. What do you make of all that? Well, sorry, before you do, you didn't give us some rep. Yes, some rep. And things like that. Three by 10 for all of it except for the squats. He did go up to 15. Okay. So some chunky volume then for that to work out. Okay. So I was very interested by the first part of that workout. And then I pressed with a relatively narrow grip, followed by the dip. That for me, that three kind of that selection of three pressing exercises. But then if you want to add on them, the kind of the more sagittal plane dumbbell press at the end as well, that that combination is fantastic. I think that's really, really interesting. With the narrower grip on the on the front to play movement, he's going to get obviously really, really low with the start of that shoulder movement. So he's going to get some real emphasis on the middle belt, which is precisely the point of doing that exercise in the first place. That is a really nice touch. I think it shows the intuition that they had for the exercise selection, you know, kind of making sure that they got the target muscle working in the exercise that they were using. It would be interesting to know really if the dumbbell version was slightly higher up in the range of motion, whether they were pointing too low, because that would then give you the opposite side of it, because there would be more anterior delt focused by the upper part of the range of motion. But fantastic kind of illustration of how they were able to, you know, kind of into it that these muscles were being used are primarily targets by these multi-duant exercises. But yeah, the collection of those exercises, fantastic, because you got the middle delt targeted by the behind the neck over at press, especially with that narrower grip. Obviously bench press, kind of much more chest focus. I guess we should mention we don't always see bench presses in these programs, but maybe this is slightly later on in the kind of the silver era pretty much at the end really. So it makes sense that we might start to see that. But yeah, more of a chest focus. And then you've obviously got the dips, which is much more triceps focused. And then the dumbbell in the size of the plane, which is much more anterior delt focus. So you can kind of see that they've got this selection of exercises, which is doing pretty much all of our pressing muscles. Something that he's still doing three sets of all of that. I think that's probably off the end of what I would say is recoverable, but, you know, I believe he does very clearly specify that, hey, this is pretty advanced and that a lot of people won't be able to do this much volume. I think that's probably fair. You know, I would probably say that if you're going to do all four of those exercises in a single workout, I'd probably do single sets. For me, that would be much more realistic. But anyway, so, but just from a exercise selection of, you know, kind of stunt point, I really like that collection. I think that's a really nice selection. Modified or inverted dip. Well, it's kind of doing a bench press isn't he really? What's interesting the image when you look at that, it looked like his hands were a little bit closer together for starters, which I guess they kind of would be with a dip sort of position anyway. So it would be almost like a close group bench, but not only is it a close group bench, but he was actually getting incredibly deep. So deeper than you would in a bench. Okay. So on the, you know, obviously, you can range of motion on different and so you're going to see different general averages and again. So he's looking for ways to, you know, train movement, similar movements, but in this case, in different ranges of motion. So yeah, no, interesting again, because, you know, he's finding, finding potentially different regional variances in which muscles are being trained. In terms of the other sections of the workout, I'm trying to remember how, whether there was anything else, I don't think there was anything else that was a pulling exercise, literally just the pull up. Is that correct? No, it's just actually the, yeah. And I don't remember you saying any curls either. No, there were curls and I missed that. I missed the curls. I missed the curls. So it's good. Okay. So that makes a little bit more sense. Now obviously with the wide grip pull up, he's going pure frontal plane, he's really trying to maximize that by doing them behind the neck. So very, very big focus on the lower regions of the lat. But again, we're not seeing anything to target the upper part of the lat. I don't think there's any trap work in there. Don't think there's anything else. And actually by doing the wide grip pull up, he's probably missing some re-adult as well, because you're not getting that narrow grip that you would need really to maximize the posterior adult sort of situation. So definitely see some holes in the program, but at the same time you can see some insights into the exercise selections that he's using. It looks to me like he definitely was focusing quite heavily on the pressing muscles. And at this point in his career pulling muscles really just weren't a priority for him. He'd already kind of. done that bit and it wasn't really moving any further forwards. So, you know, it probably reflects what he was working on rather than a really truly balanced program in that particular end up. Yeah, I agree. There's definitely a lot of, a lot of, I mean, the fact that he's got two different types of dips in there. Often we don't see any dips and two different dips, two different either head pressing. He alternating dumbbell shoulder press, I'm not asking about that because obviously, it actually looks like a program that I would need if I wanted to be fixed, fixed my physique deficits. Yeah, it would be like, well, the dips are probably not, but in terms of the pressing stuff, it would be what I would probably have to go towards because probably, you know, no problem at all. But yeah, I think, but that's the point, isn't it? It's like when these guys get to that level, they're looking for those solutions to problems that they maybe have in that version of the group, or within the competition. Exactly. So they're looking to fix deficits, you know, but yes, definitely doesn't look like a purely fully balanced program. The alternating dumbbell shoulder press, so yeah, so obviously he did do this a little bit, you know, more schedule playing. But this is an exercise that you do see quite a lot of in some of these old plans and it's not something that people particularly do today. Do you have any thoughts on it? In more sense, in the sense that it's not used today because there are reasons for it all. Well, the fact that most of the time people were doing this alternating and today obviously everyone's doing whatever you would call not alternating is normal bilateral. And to me, it kind of makes sense to potentially do it alternating. Sometimes they would even do a single arm. So people like Gred should often do a single arm and you would grace himself with his other side and just perform one arm at a time. And it takes a little bit of getting used to it, but once you do it, does feel quite good as an exercise. And to me, it seems like, you know, obviously we do things like alternating dumbbell curls and that's very common. But this is for some reason, people don't do alternating over their press anymore, at least not in the world that I am part of. And I just want to be missing out potentially could this be potentially worthwhile inclusion. I think it depends on what equipment you got available to. I mean, interestingly, in the gyms that I've been going to in the last couple of years, I've actually always had access to a fairly narrow grip over head press as well as a fairly in front of the body as I like a machine, as well as the standard more kind of wanker ones. So I actually been quite lucky in that respect that there's always been a machine available to do both of those types of overhead press. But I think yes, if people don't have access to them, then I think it probably makes sense to consider a dumbbell variation, especially if you've got a bench that you can set up to create a backrest and have us proper seated or sliding to line, perhaps, sort of a very bad press environment. And yeah, I mean, that idea of minimizing the total amount of muscle mass working at any one period of time is pretty cool, because you are going to get high levels of recruitment and dealt, obviously, is pretty chunky muscles. So you're going to have a more intractivation deficit there. So yeah, I mean, if you've got the ability to set up and use a kind of a stable environment, either one arm at a time with a brace or whether you can get a stable situation in a seat position and do those alternating, no, I think that's a really interesting idea. I think, I mean, I went through a period of time when I wanted to really emphasise the benefits and machines because of the stability and the advantages that that gives you equally now, I think it's also valuable to now that we've had that period of time in the fitness industry and people have realised that that's the case and there's reasons for it or a very good reason for it. It's also useful to come back like you were saying, I think, in one of the recent podcasts, as you were joking before the podcast, I can literally not remember anything that happened in any of the prior podcasts at all, but I do remember that you were talking about the benefits of free weights, you know, and I think one of the benefits that you highlight to previously is this idea that, you know, especially in something like a squat, you are putting the entire body under a lot of load and you're going to get muscles growing that you just aren't going to train in any other scenario, which is kind of why people talk about the squatters and mass buildings because it's not just growing your quads, you're actually just loading the entire body, you know, and there's going to be just a lot of stabilizers working in that situation. I think there's an interesting comment to be made here, which is that, you know, if you are working out in a gym almost anywhere in the world, apart from, you know, kind of a really expensive positive, you know, big cities where they've got like a million machines that you can do anything with, you know, if you're living in a normal part of the world, then you're probably going to find that there is a flexibility and a versatility associated with having some dumbbells and a bench that you're not going to get from just the machines that you've got available to you. And I think that's an important recognition. I mean, I think it's useful to just make that observation and say, look, you know, something like a seated dumbbell press alternating in the sagittal plane where you've got, you know, okay, you're losing a bit on the stability side, but you are gaining a lot in terms of the reduced amount of muscle mass and the focus on the anterior adult that you can get by using that plane of motion. So, you know, I think again, it's about, if I'm with had the period of time when we've, you know, kind of pointed at machines and told people why they're great. Now we can kind of like keep that and also recognise the advantages of free weights and certain situations for other reasons that, you know, maybe just practical really, but, you know, still, still important for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And some machines, what I like about some machines is you might be able to say even an overhead press machine, it might have wide handles, might have closer handles, and you might be able to do, you know, several variants on a single machine and for a time standpoint, you can be in this endpoint, that can be amazing. And then other machines you're locked into just, you know, one sort of handle with whatever. And if you want to do some more variations, you have to set up a whole another machine and it sometimes can just be far more efficient to use dumbbells or use a barbell, use a Smith machine and you can, in one station, you can do, you know, three or four different variants quite easily. Totally. And again, that's kind of very according to people's situations. As everyone, who follows me knows, I do tend to travel a bit. And so, you know, I kind of have very different experiences in gyms and different parts of the world. And sometimes I can be in a situation where I can reliably go to a gym at a certain time of day and be reasonably confident that there's not going to be that many people there. So I kind of just kind of wander around to whichever machine I want to, according to my schedule, and do the exercise I want to do. But the opposite is also the case, sometimes I'm in scenarios where I have to kind of even cue to get to a machine. And then, as you point out, you kind of want to just do everything you possibly can on that machine before you get, like, evicted. You know, so it's, again, it's like the pressures or the requirements of the situation, you find yourself in a going to play a role. And again, it comes down to what the circumstances are. And I think, again, recognizing that there are possibilities available to us. So like, yeah, if you can get a bench set up so that you can stabilize yourself in a seated overhead press situation. And you've got the dumbbells. You can just go ahead and do two variations. You can do your wide grip variation for the middle delt. And you can do your massage to plane narrow grip variation for your anterior delt, changing the range of the motion a little bit to maximize those loadings or emphasis. And that's a fantastic opportunity in the situation where you've perhaps got limited access to a company you've had to fight to get your hands on that bit of a group and that you've got. So yeah, I think, again, you know what? You don't even need to change your dumbbells. Like, something I program quite a lot will be if there's two exercise variants that there might be a difference in strength in those exercises, but not significantly so. Then I'll just say, yeah, just pick the strongest size, go first and then just hand wrap on that second set. Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. And again, you know, for people who are listening to this and thinking, oh my word, what are they saying? We're describing practical responses to specific situations, you know, sure, you know, if you've got access to, you know, multimillion dollar gym, you know, in a big city with all these amazing machines, then just feel free to disregard everything that way is saying in the very way. But you know, the point that we're making is that it's about maximizing the equipment that's available to you to get the best possible result with the physiological framework that we describe. Now, for people looking at this plan, they might say, okay, behind the neck. So you said that's pretty good for middle dealt, but obviously you're going to be getting some anterior dealt in the next size as well and, you know, bench. Well, obviously that's, you know, maybe going to be a little bit more chest, but what you might get a little bit of triceps, might get a little bit of anterior dealt. And there's a common, I guess, belief or practice where people would look at something like a bench and say, well, you might say that's going to be, let's say, one set worth for your chest. And maybe it's going to be half a set of his stimulus for your triceps, a half a set for your anterior dealt, so whatever, you know, maybe for one person, maybe the triceps will get one set and the chest will get half a set. And that's something we wanted to talk about today, isn't it? Yeah. So though you've kind of encapsulated everything in one kind of paragraph there. Yeah. So basically the two, the two kind of related ideas that we wanted to address here is like, you know, if you are writing a training program or doing a training program and you've got a multi-joint exercise in it, and you perhaps able to identify that, you know, maybe, you know, this exercise has one muscle as the, as the kind of limiting factor, and then obviously uses a bunch of other muscles. How do you count the stimulus that you're getting for the secondary muscles, the muscles that aren't the limiting factor? So just let me define a couple of terms here and defend the way I'm described in this. So I'm using the word limiting factor. Now the word phrase limiting factor here, what I'm saying is that that's basically the muscle that's going to get maxed out in terms of its recruitment, you know, and it's going to be the one that is kind of ultimately responsible for the amount of weight you can lift in that exercise. Everything else is probably going to be at a sub-maximal level of recruitment in that situation. Now what I'm not doing is using the word It's prime mover. And the reason I'm doing that is because prime mover has meanings in biomechanics, which don't fully overlap with limiting factor. Often they do, but they're not perfect. So I'm just gonna not use that terminology, and I'm just gonna stick with the terminology limiting factor and because ultimately, what I'm saying is that that's the muscle that is maxed out in terms of recruitment. Now you can get other muscles that are maxed out in terms of recruitment if they're a lot smaller. So for example, if you're doing a sagittal plane pulling motion, you're gonna find the posterior delt is probably pretty much maxed out. But generally speaking, we would regard the upper lat as being the prime again, mixing terminologies. Limiting factor, ultimately, you could argue that posterior delt is sitting alongside that, which is totally fine as well. But ultimately, you know, what we're interested in here is what is the muscle that is responsible for the performance of that exercise? And as a result, it's gonna be pretty much maxed out in terms of motine at recruitment in the most difficult reps of that set or the most difficult rep of that set. So if we've identified what our limiting factor is, then we're obviously gonna have a bunch of other muscles that are working, you know, and they're gonna have lower levels of motine at recruitment. And really, that is the framework that, you know, is the one that we're using. And what that means is that some muscles are going to be trained with every single fire that you've got access to, most fires you've got access to, and other muscles are gonna be trained without the maximum number of fires that you've got access to. So you're essentially training some fires, not others. And so straight to where you can see that the idea of saying that, you know, there's a half set worth of stimulus for a secondary muscle is pretty silly. Because ultimately, it's not about the stimulus that's being received by the working fibers. The magnitude of the stimulus being received by the working fibers is identical. It's just that you're not actually training as many muscle fibers. So for example, if you were to have, to look at the bench press example, let's say we're doing a bench press, and the person is using the pet 'cause they're limiting factor. Antiridote is kind of contributing a lot, but it's not maxing out. And the triceps contributing a lot, but they're not maxing out. If you look at the stimulus that the working fibers are receiving in the pet, they exactly the same stimulus as the working fibers are receiving in the triceps, or the working fibers are receiving the anterior edel. Any working fibers are getting at the same stimulus, more or less. But you've got a whole chunk of fibers in the anterior edel, and in the triceps that are just simply not being activated, not getting any kind of stimulus at all. And so they're literally, it's as if they weren't even exercising. And I think the problem is, when people start talking about half set is worth half a set, they think that if you did two sets, you get the same stimulus as doing a triceps exercise, or an anterior edel exercise. And it's just not, because you're not actually working any of the fibers at the top end of the motine pool in those muscles in that multi joint exercise situation. So it's literally impossible to do what people think you can do, which is to say, well, you know, I get, you know, I do three sets of bench, and therefore I'm getting half a set, that's one on half sets worth a stimulus from a triceps, I can now say that that, no, you can't. Doesn't work like that. High-purchase, muscle fibers, Pacific. So if you don't max out recruitment, then there's going to be fibers at the top end of the motine pool, you're not training. And that means you're not going to be capable of continuing to allow those fibers to grow. This is the whole thing that people got really aggravated about. I think it was earlier this year, maybe six months ago, people were saying, oh, well, you know, I can do this exercise, which kind of uses this muscle, and it's just going to keep the muscle kind of, you know, ticking over, it's not going to atrophy until my next workout. Let this burst-part idea where you can say, oh, well, I'm going to do a triceps day on Friday. So if I do some bench, and I'm not a triceps bench, I'm like a much more of a peck or a anterior dominant, anterior delt dominant bench. And I say, well, I'm doing do some bench, and that'll keep my triceps ticking over until Friday. So well, yes, for the fibers that work, not for the fibers that don't work. So fundamentally, the idea that you can sort of say that a secondary muscle or muscle, that's not the limiting factor, is kind of either just being ticked over by a exercise, which is not the limiting factor, or it's kind of getting half a set or something like that, is an absolute nonsense. It just doesn't work physiologically, and it's just people who are looking at this from a, yeah, we're training the muscle, therefore if I do this and it gets this stimulant, no, muscles don't receive stimuli, muscle fibers receive stimuli, and you either train the muscle fiber or you don't. So it just kind of, from the very get-go, I'm coming out strong against this and saying, it just doesn't work as a concept. And I know that I guess you didn't have to analysis things, but it's just not valid. So if you were to look at it as, say you took a beginner and you took an advanced lifting, and you've got an exercise like the bench, if you use that as an example. So you might have the beginner where they haven't hyperdified basically anything in the triceps or the delts or the chest, beyond kind of what they would hyperdify to some normal life activities, right? And so they're benching, even if they are, let's say a chest dominant bencher, well, because you've got all these muscle fibers in the triceps and the delts and have not hyperdified, they're still going to get a net gross stimulus from the exercise. Yeah. So if you were to grade this phenomenon across beginners and to me, it's not a month. What you'd find is that the more advanced you are, the more plateau you have in the fibers, higher up the motine pool. So as we, as we've got throughout training career, what happens is that fibers lower down the motine pool starts to hit that plateau because they are, you know, kind of being trapped smaller sizes in accordance with the size principle of straight muscle. So the lower down the motine pool, you are the more oxated fiber, the more they're likely to get trapped smaller size. So as you progress towards, you know, kind of intermediate and then finally advanced, you're going to be in a situation where more of your fibers are essentially plateaued and the only fibers remaining to that can grow are those of the highest threshold motine, it's in the fastest fiber types, the most glycolic and the most capable of growing to the biggest possible sizes. So yeah, absolutely. If you have a beginner who just starts bench pressing, then everything is going to grow because you've got such capacity for growth all the way down the bottom end of the motine pool, right the way to the lowest high threshold motine. As soon as you've got any kind of growth, though, you're going to start to find those fibers the bottom end of the motine pool starts to max out. And then basically, you're going to find that your secondary muscles that are not limiting factors are just going to be kind of hovering around the place where your sort of motine equilibrium levels are maxing out in that exercise for those muscles. So let's say you get your chest to it, like sort of it's 100%, which is not true 100%, but let's see, it might be 95 or something like that. Let's say it's your 100% for the ones you've got access to, but your delts are down at 18 and you try to sit down at 70. What you might find is that gradually as a beginner, if all you're doing for pressing is just bench press, which is actually not an unreasonable situation to imagine for a lot of people, but that's kind of all the pressing that you're doing. What you might find is that you kind of get your triceps to 70% and then that starts to pretty much stop you from growing any further because you're not training anything above that. And then yeah, the delts kind of get stuck at 80%. You don't get any further than that in terms of the growth. If you wanted to take growth forward in that particular intermediate lifter, you would have to turn around and say, "Well, okay, we need to put in that sort of alternating dumbbell press that we were talking about earlier in the stage of the plane for anterior delts." Maybe we have to start putting dips in for the triceps or whatever. And then you'd start to see some progress on top of that kind of progress that the previous doing made. So yeah, absolutely. Training status is going to play a pretty big role in that particular situation. Yeah, so in that example, we just go there. So the beginner would theoretically get good growth in each of those muscles and then the intermediate, most likely in two of those. And then as someone becomes advanced, most likely just one of those is going to get agro stimulus. Now, you gave a couple of options there where they now use it for exercises. But in that example, you could say, "Well, what if they now use say closer grip on the bench?" And if their triceps weren't as involved previously, now they're going to be more involved in the closer grip. So you could actually level out the recruitment across those muscles a bit. Yeah, so you could absolutely start doing what we were talking about earlier, which is where you set up on the exercise station, you do a couple of variations, different variations, while you're in the same location. Like you do a wide grip bench and then you do a narrow grip bench or whatever. Interestingly though, so this segues into just establishing what the person's leverages are. So I think we mentioned recently that if you're thinking about what to do on text sizes, you can kind of classify them into those that, generally speaking, you're going to have the same limiting factor for everybody most of the time, like hip-horses and stuff like that. And then some of the other exercises like bench presses, which are just like the opposite end of the spectrum, which is just complete and not to kind of randomness whether somebody is pecked dominant, well, it's not random, but it can feel random whether somebody pecked or not and carried out dominant or triceps dominant. It can really vary a lot. Now, the important thing is though that whatever dominance you start out with is going to start getting worse or more impactful over time. And that's because of the way Neurometanical Matting works. So if you pick the bench press example and the person is literally, say, they're just doing like a powerlifting type program, they're doing sort of squat bench deadlift and they start to do their bench press in the same way every time and they get stronger and as we were talking about earlier, maybe they're at 100% of their maximum sort of recruitment, volunteer recruitment for the packs. Maybe something like 80% for the delts and 70% for the triceps or whatever the numbers work. I can't remember. I can't remember what we said in this podcast now. It's like my memory is deteriorating to the point where I can't remember what I said five minutes ago. The issue then is if that person has been lifting with that proportion to start with, what's going to happen is that the pack will grow to a greater extent than the triceps and the anterior delts. Even though we're getting growth across all three muscles, in that beginner, you are still going to see more growth in the peck because more fibers are being used. So it's just a number of fibers question. And so more fibers grow and that means that the peck now increases its internal moment to our anterior to extend the other muscles. And that means that gradually the brain starts to recognize that it has better leverage in the peck than it does in the other muscles and it starts to give you an even more skewed balance towards the peck and away from the other muscles. So your wigric bench that was originally peck dominant becomes more peck dominant over time simply because of the way neuro mechanical matching works and the fact that a bigger muscle has a bigger leverage. So you become more peck dominant and then you're going to take that with you into other exercise variations. So if you leave it too long you can find actually that you trap you in trap yourself in a situation where single joint exercises are probably going to be your best way of fixing the problem because if you kind of get to a point where you've been doing wigric bench for like a year and a half and then you decide you're going to start doing other bench pressing variations. You're probably still going to find that your peck has so much better leverage than everything else that it probably carries over into some of those other like narrow grip, a benching and other situations as well. So either if you're going to use the exercise variation variety way within within a single exercise category I will probably start earlier rather than later. Otherwise no problem at all you just go and do single joint stuff so you do or different exercise variation like you just take the peck out completely by doing no ad-press. So there's ways and means of doing that I think just recognizing that time actually does influence what your options are for messing around with that kind of. Well there's two ways of looking at that as well. So you know the example I gave from moving into like a close grip bench to prioritize a little bit more triceps since that's what's getting the least activation in that version for that person. Well the other ways you could say well if this is more chest dominant for me anyway I can actually lean into using it as a chest exercise and so we'll actually use it as a wide grip bench. And then and that's probably what I do more of when I'm programming is how do I turn this compound left of this multi jointness into a variation where I know we're just going to smash one particular muscle or region. And I think that's definitely a good strategy for advanced lifters. I would definitely lean into that because it gives you so many more options you know you can like I mean you use that for that purpose and then I'm going to lean that direction for this purpose and you start to polarise exercises quite a lot by the variation that you've chosen to use. And I think that's really really strong strategy in that advanced lifter category. I think for beginners you know it depending on whether obviously this kind of raises another question which is to say when is this a problem when is this not a problem. And that's kind of the point that I raised a minute to go and I said you know you can kind of categorise exercises into being those that are going to have the same limiting factor for most people most of the time and those that are just not you know in the best examples I would say you know something like a hip thrust is is never going to be anything other than a glute exercise and probably never going to be anything other than a lower glute exercise for the vast vast vast majority of people. And the number of people who are not going to have the low glute being the limiting factors you can be vanishingly tiny and I think I met one or two of them but you know I think they do exist but it's like you know most people most of the time it's not going to be even a question. In contrast to bench press I think is absolutely a free-for-all. It's just one of those exercises that has such similar contributions between the prime movers that you know different people's leverages can nudge you in different directions and I've said before that I'm one of the extreme examples of being extremely dominant in any pressing motion but the bench press is particularly obvious. I mean it's actually funny how much my bench press weight changes when I start changing grip with. It just drops off the you know it just drops off ridiculously as I start to go wider. So you know I think those those things can be very very noticeable you know and so you kind of have to start by saying you know which exercises are going to fall into which category. Now in the category of exercises that is always going to have the same limiting factor you can kind of just program those however for anybody in any scenario. I mean I think I've said before that great exercises to identify to use in group programs if you're writing a program for group people. Absolutely amazing because you just know now that doesn't mean that you can't do the same thing with the exercises that are more kind of variable but you do what you pointed out a minute ago which is can we steer them so that we can mostly guarantee the result we're getting that way you know as I like if I go for a really wide grip bench press then I can start to really be confident that I'm not going to have a triceps involvement in that exercise to the same extent as I would do. I'm not never going to have that as limiting factor for example. Yes. If I then change the range of motion I can push it towards being either a peck or an anterior doubt dominant. So if I use top kind of contract position partial that's going to be an anterior doubt if I use a length and push it's going to be a peck variation. So you can start with an exercise that on paper initially will be a variable one and you can convert it into a not variable one or a mostly non variable one by the the various the precise variation that you use. So that would be like just thinking about things from a group level. Then secondly you can also if you have a particular person a lifter in mind you can actually know what their leverages are and then you know kind of what you did. I mean that's ultimately having all the information that you need. Now how you figure out other leverages are as a separate question but you know useful ways to just look at ratios of lifts. So like I was describing a moment ago I know what my leverages are in pressing motions because you can literally just look at my lifts and see that my triceps dominant lifts are ridiculous anything else that doesn't devolve triceps so much are actually pretty funny how bad they are. So you know really really big differences are very very noticeable. So you know you can kind of figure out more or less what someone's leverages are. And then to be you know also you can look at how people perform lifts like most people know that if they're watching someone do a squat and there's a lot more hip dominance you can see that and similarly if someone's doing a squat in this morning you know and you can see that same thing with deadlifts and things like that you know you can often see those to somethings there but that's where you've got much more much more information operating without information but we're kind of saying well you know we either have a group of exercises which is already pretty fixed in terms of limiting back to it and then we've got a group of exercises that is not fixed but maybe we can steer it according to the range of motion that we use or the plane of motion we use or anything else that we might do to kind of push it in a particular direction. Yeah yeah I can't remember the last time for a non beginner that I programmed just like a standard bench always standard overhead press like I would always say I want this to be wide group want this to be close trips schedule playing whatever so I can guarantee and that's because I'm predominantly working with groups and it's so I can guarantee fairly safely what that individual is actually going to get out of that exercise and for beginner I don't mind so much and I'm happy just to say okay bench because like we established before kind of everything is going to grow at least a some extent to begin with but it's an interesting point in that so often I do see plans and I'm sure you were two where someone just says the exercise they just say bench they just say overhead and it's like well okay but you go tell two people to do an overhead press and one of them is going to do a close group of mid group and one of them does a wide group and that's really actually significantly different what they're getting out of that exercise. Absolutely so if you've got the variation at the individual level in terms of their leverages and then you've also got the variation in terms of the way that they've elected to do the exercise those two sources of variability straight to way up you know pushing you into two totally different training programs really so you know you've got you know just simply the way the exercise is being done and secondly the response of that individual to the exercise and you just in a world of like you two different two different scenarios two different worlds according to the results of those training programs and it's on paper the same program but the results are going to be completely different according to the variability inherent in the exercise way of being performed and the variability of that individual in terms of their leverages and I think you know it's I mean this brings us to another point which is that I think there is a tendency because what we've just explained there is a strategy as someone becomes more advanced we probably want to be being much more specific about what the exercise is trying to achieve and then trying to make the exercise do that thing according to now what we know about the leverages now they change with range of motion and playing a motion and all that kind of thing positions are proximal and distal rejoins things like that grip positions those are having now some people have started to kind of try and avoid the problem one of the questions I get often is like you've talked about how the upper lat is involved mainly in subject to plane and the lower lat is mainly involved in front of plane and so you would always want two different pulling variations one front or one sagittal you know can I just do scapular plane and does that cover me for everything and it's like well yes and no so you need to understand that volantirectivation deficits are the reason that we talk about this stuff volantirectivation deficit is that you've got a limit on a number of muscle fibers or motines rather that you can recruit in a muscle according to the maximum tolerable perception of effort so you produce a certain amount centric band and goes to the muscles that you're using for the exercise and at a certain point you stop increasing the centric band because you can't tolerate any more effort perception and that effort perception maximum does not correspond to every single muscle fiber in the lat being activated simultaneously it does not so you're going to have a bunch of muscle fibers that are not being used which ones do you want them to be pick which muscle fibers you don't want to activate now if you use a front of plane the muscle fibers that are not going to be activated they're going to be in the upper lat if you do a such to plane the muscle fibers that are going to not be used motine it so they're not going to be recruited okay going to be located in the lower light. If you do a scapula plane, it's going to be a mix of both. It's going to be something from some place and something. The other, don't know. We don't have good leverage data for scapula plane that we do for frontal and sideage tool. But it is probably going to be a mixture of both. So you're going to have some motifs there. Now, the point I'm making here is that whichever one of these three examples that you pick, sorry, strategies that you pick, whether you pick a, you know, Y-grip pull down or a narrow grip pull down or, you know, scapula plane pull down, whichever one of those you pick, you are always suffering the same issue. You're always suffering a lack of some motifs be recruited and some must-files being actuated and those will not grow. Whichever one of them you pick, you end up in the same place in terms of the total amount of muscle mass that you're not training. The point that I'm saying is, if you just do a Y-grip and a narrow grip, you are going to basically get really nice overlap and you're going to capture pretty much the whole of the muscle. You can't do that with scapula. scapula falls into the same category as just doing either Y-grip or just doing narrow grip. You still do that. It's just you're losing out different fibers. So for people who think that they can go, "Oh, well, we just made the exercise kind of a hybrid of the two variations that you've argued are useful." You're still suffering the same problem as just doing one or the other. You're not fixing the problem. Yeah, I hope people follow that when you said, forget the words exactly, you said, but essentially what you're saying is both the options of the narrow grip and the Y-grip, they're doing one thing really well. Yeah, and their scaffolding is doing two things not that well. The total number of muscle fibers that you're going to probably activate in each of those three exercises is probably going to be similar. So you're always going to have the same number of fibers that you're not training. So the reality is, and this is interesting because the reality is, you could argue then that the scapula is not even very useful in a beginner situation. You might as well just pick one or the other of the Y-grip or the narrow grip because it's going to get you to the same kind of place eventually in terms of total muscle mass. Then later on, you just add in the other one that you weren't doing. Or as a scapula, if you do scapula as a beginner, I'm doing the generic one that's going to get, no, not really because it's going to get you to the same place more or less as the Y-grip or the narrow grip in terms of total muscle mass. It's just that you're then going to have to learn two totally different exercises later on to replace that one that you were doing previously. I mean, that's a little bit of an oversimplification. More or less, the problem is similar, but the deficit is going to be similar across the three exercises. Now, one question which is similar bit different, but people can probably ensure that the answer is, if you can't say, if it doesn't make sense to say one set of benches is one set for chest and half a set for triceps or whatever, then the question becomes, well, how do I count it for for damage or for fatigue or whatever? And that's often the exact same thing that people give as well as all, well, you count it as half a set worth of damage for the triceps or whatever muscle. Now, in the example or in the way you've explained it, where obviously we're talking about the number of muscle fibres in that particular muscle that's experiencing a stimulus, well, based on the fact of where it's going to be the high threshold millions that are going to be left off, then if you have a muscle that has not low activation per se, but relatively low compared to whatever muscle is being used in that exercise, well, that muscle ultimately is going to experience very minimal damage, then. Yeah, so the issue with damage is that it's very skewed towards the top end of the motine at pull. So you've got an exponentially greater problem with muscle damage. The higher up you go because you've got more glycolic fibres, so much more susceptible to calcium and accumulation. So, ultimately, I would say that, you know, the problem of muscle damage is probably smaller when you're working with secondary muscles. Ultimately, you're not getting to really high levels of recruitment. You're not going to get that high calcium and accumulation in susceptible fibres. So, you know, ultimately, I think having a. And this is really where you could push that further by the strategy that you've been describing, which is where you really nudge an exercise in the direction of which muscle that you want to target, because if you've got something like a, you know, sort of a really wide grip bench press or, you know, like we were talking about earlier, the narrow grip behind the neck over head press, and you're really trying to push the exercise to be very good at one particular muscle, kind of being the limiting factor, and a lot of the other muscles really downgrading their motine at recruitment levels. That's going to really limit the amount of damage you get from the exercise on those other muscles. And that then allows you to do what was being done in this program that you described today. So I can remember the beginning of this podcast. That's quite impressive. My memory is coming back to the study. So I actually remember that you, you know, we had this collection of pressing exercises. And, you know, if you can make these exercises very, very kind of focused on one particular muscle, then you can start to increase the amount of volume. And that's what we saw in this program where you're getting three sets per exercise. And it's like looking at that. It's like, wow, that's so much because, you know, you're training these pressing muscles with like, you know, sort of four exercises and three sets. That's like 12 sets in a workout. That's monstrous. But if you've managed to really steer the exercise variation to focus almost exclusively on one particular muscle, where you're not getting high enough recruitment levels to see damage in those other muscles, then it starts to make a little bit more sense. So yeah, I mean, exactly. If you look at that workout plan, if we're talking behind the neck over head press and then say a wide grip bench and then the dips, like it's feasible that even that bench, the triad steps might not be experiencing much damage. No, at all. And the behind the neck, obviously, you're going to get my middle doubt. So yeah, that's what I find looking at a lot of these old plans. I do get a lot of criticism from people being like, oh, there's so much pressing in some of these these plans. How could one possibly recover? And I'm thinking, well, presumably the person who's training this plan, they know whether they know it consciously or not that in those compound lifts, they're predominantly getting X muscle and then they're using another multi joint lift where they getting the other muscle that's not getting stimulated as much. And that's ultimately asking you to recover your question. Yeah, I mean, I think it is important to note that the damage is definitely skewed towards the top end of the motine at pool. So if we are dramatically reducing the level of recruiting in those secondary muscles, the problem is going to be a lot smaller. How much smaller and how much of an effect, I think it's really going to be individual and how well you manage to skew the exercise in the direction you wanted to go. But at the end of the day, the concept applies, the principle applies. And we certainly can't do, you know, what we're what you mentioned, which is like the idea of having half a set worth of damage or, you know, the same way you can't have half a set worth of stimulus. It just the concept literally just doesn't work. It's what we would say, it is not a valid construct. It violates the whole kind of basis of physiology that sits underneath what we're talking about. It doesn't make sense. I mean, ultimately none of these questions make sense if you just go back to starting with everything's happening at a fiber level. Yeah, and I've argued before that if everybody would just remember that, then almost all of the problems in the hypertrophy kind of part to the fitness industry would despair overnight. Because ultimately, whenever somebody's trying to convince you of something silly, generally speaking, they are assuming that, you know, kind of hypertrophy is not more so far as specific. And I mean, ultimately, that's the assumption behind the silly thing that they're proposing most of the time. Now, in what situations might you have an advanced lifter who's performing a multi-join exercise, again, let's go with the bench and able to count that as a stimulating set for more than one muscle. Because we made a comment either you are, I forget made a comment earlier, say if an advanced lifter, they're usually going to get growth in one particular muscle with a lifter. But there's examples or these situations where that might not be the case. Yeah. So ultimately, if you've got an exercise that is very balanced between two muscle groups, then I think you could see an advanced lifter counting that as stimulus for more than one muscle. Now, I think my example for this would be, I think the most obvious example is where you've got is where you've got multi-join exercises like a squat. And it has a very strong hip dominant component to it. So you've got a back squat and the lifter is performing in a way that is hip dominant. I think you're going to have a doctor magnus and quadriceps in that scenario. And I think you're probably going to see a stimulus for both of those things. The reason I argue that is because the quad is definitely the limiting factor, but I don't think you are going to see any other exercise in the program being better for the doctor magnus. So at the end of the day, even if the doctor magnus is not maxing out in the squat, it probably isn't quite then you haven't got anything better. I mean, you could make the same argument for a high foot position leg press if you want to. And it would be the same situation. So that kind of scenario, I think you're basically saying, well, I don't have anything better for that muscle. And it's not far away from the level of a good I'm seeing in the quad. So pretty much. So it's like, if you would, but if you were to like try and do the same thing with a dead lift, you'd be like, I'm going to argue for maybe hamstrings and a doctor magnus. And like, well, are you doing any leg curls because suddenly now it's like, well, I've got a leg curl and I can easily get way better to miss my hamstrings and the leg curl. I can't really in the in the in the dead lift variation. So the dead lift starts to be like, well, probably not going to get to the point where my hamstrings are maxing out to the level that I could train them elsewhere. So I think the context of the program is important. It's like, well, what else have you got in the program that will do this thing? You know, so the problem gets a little bit more complicated. So I think the first thing I do, if somebody said, well, am I going to get, you know, stimulus from more than one muscle in this exercise? The first thing I'll be looking at is, well, what does the rest of the program look like? So if we go back to our bench example, could you have someone who's advanced lifter who's getting a stimulus for both, say, triceps and chest? I think it's unlikely unless they have, unless they've, unless they've trained as a power lift to two fixed weaknesses, then I think it's unlikely. I think what happens with exercises like a bench presses is that you start out with whatever your sort of dominance is. And then you just kind of increase that over time. And it gets worse and worse and worse because you don't really think to fix it. If a power was going to be my next question there because so let's say you did actually identify, you know what I am or chest dominant and try to set up the technique back to here. And I'm going to do more direct try steps work. And then that's going to increase the leverages of all of the try steps in that exercise. Could you now theoretically go back to the bench and have a be a little bit more balanced? That's exactly what happens. I mean we've got data showing that that's exactly what happens. So you know if an empowered is do it all the time. I mean they they're looking for a scenario where all of their prime prime mover is not a muscle not a word I'm not a phrase I want to use. But all of that contributing muscles are you know kind of close to their maximum levels. And they're doing that by balancing those in the exercise variation that they're they're competing in. So you know the best possible bench press number that you could ever achieve would be in the scenario where all of your pressing muscles are contributing similarly that that's just kind of how it works. We don't want is a situation where one of them is contributing loads and the others are kind of taking a backseat. So they will always work for showing up their weaknesses doing it extra exercise reason or that kind of thing and get to a point where they kind of get their maximum possible numbers. They kind of consciously or unconsciously working on that problem all the time. But whatever was on necessarily going to do that. So but if you were to do that, then I think yeah, you would probably find that you pretty much. But again, you know, stop come back to this voluntary activation question. It turns into a scapular plane. Pull up is like, you know, yeah, you're losing motina where are you losing it from it's like it's losing it from all over the place. So this is kind of why the more advanced people get, the more we're going to nudge them towards trying to use sort of exercises with lower amounts of total muscle mass because you know, that's the easiest way of just maximizing recruitment in the target muscle. And then you do something else for something else. Now, you know, this is not to say that exercise preferences are bad. I mean, everyone's got their own exercise preferences and people want to train in another way that's totally fine. That's not saying that. But you know, just in terms of the most logical strategy for an advanced lift, we would nudge them towards exercises that really do one thing really well instead of doing a bunch of things not so well. And this is also why you might have a beginner who say is doing pull ups and and rowing exercises and then not doing any direct bicep curls and nothing like that. And this still able to grow the biceps. But then you have an advanced lift that is doing that and their potential not able to grow the biceps. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I mean, it really, but again, it comes down to how the exercises have been performed and what limiting factors. I mean, I've said before that if you're doing, you know, sort of narrow grip pull ups and, you know, you're getting your chin all the way over the bar, then that is definitely an elbow flexor limit to the exercise. I mean, it's probably a brachialis, a limit to the exercise. So, you know, that's just because you're in the zone where biceps brachialis switching off and the brachialis has to do everything at that. So, you're probably going to find that your total amount of weight you can lift in that scenario is limited by the brachialis and that's going to be the thing that grows as a result. If you just stop before that point, you're going to find that you can lift loads more weight and the lat will become the limiting factor and it's done the brachialis and you'll stop to see a different type of appearance. Again, and then similarly, you're going to have different people of different, you know, leverages. Again, some people are going to have amazing elbow flexor leverage. Some of them have amazing lat leverages. Again, going to vary. But fundamentally, I would say that, you know, you'll generally see the tendency towards multidontic sizes doing one thing for advanced lifters, whether they like it or not. I feel like this needs to be said. If an exercise is being used to grow a certain muscle region muscle fibers, those are, you can't use, you can't say that that exercise is going to maintain a muscle that it's not effectively growing in that plan, right? So, if you're going to use something, it will maintain any fibers that are being activated. This is what I said when I said, you know, this idea, whenever you look at something silly that somebody is saying in the fitness industry, there's some shun behind it is that you can train muscles rather than muscle fibers. That's almost always the case. There are other situations, but generally speaking, that's the assumption. So, when people are going, "Oh, I'm maintaining this muscle with this exercise, even though it's not training." And that's an absolutely nonsense. The only thing that's happening is you're maintaining, well, actually not, you maintain a training. You're training the fibers in the direct. You're growing. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. If there's no growth, it's maintaining. It's like, the growing one, I agree. But that's the point here. The exercise is growing, what it's growing, right? Like, it's not maintaining anything else. So, if you're going to use a hit trust, unless you're going to use that for growth in your quads, you can't use it as maintenance of your quads. Well, it will grow the fibers that it's loading. So, I mean, it actually does have a pretty decent level of quad activation. It's just not anywhere close to the squat. I mean, it's good. I know, but it's not. That's why I use it as an example. Because what I hear people say is, "Oh, it's got good quad activation. Therefore, it's enough to maintain all of the quads." No, no, no. Again, fiber-specific, the fibers that it is capable of growing and the fibers that will be maintained. You're not maintaining anything that you're not hyperdrafying. And this is the problem. Because a non-physiologically-based hyperdrafing researcher might look at the ability of the hip thrust or glute bridge to maintain whole muscle mass levels of the quadriceps and go, "It's maintaining muscle mass." Well, yeah, if you look at it from the outside, that's what it looks like. But what's happening is that it's training fibers up to a certain level of protein equipment. And then it's just completely ignoring everything above that point. So, what's happening is you're getting simultaneous hyperdrafying atrophy within the same muscle. Yeah, that's going to blow some people's mind, but that is exactly what is happening because fiber-hyperdrafying are occurring. And both are hyperdrafying are fiber-specific concepts. They happen at the fiber level. That's an important point because you could have a beginner who's doing the hip thrust and they could actually grow quads, even if they're not doing other quads. You would explain them to you, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yes. But they could be doing nine other quad exercise and they could be growing quads, yeah? And then you have an advanced lifter who has been doing squats, has been doing leg extensions and they stop doing the leg extensions or whatever they do them once every two weeks. Correct. So what about the rectum disappears? Well, yeah, totally. But they're, let's say they stop being the squat as well. So now they're still doing the hip thrust, but they're actually going to be atrophy in the quad. The quad is literally going to be any smaller. Correct. Yes, they're going to be providing a hyperdrafying system with the sum of the quad. So you've got one lifter where it's able to actually stimulate growth and another lifter where they're actually going to be experiencing atrophy in that muscle, doing that same lift. And so what a hypertrus search who doesn't have that physiological background would look at that and go, this is very confusing. We don't know whether the, whether the quad's graph to hip thrust training or not because we've got these studies shown that it does and these studies shown that it doesn't. And it's like the physiologist is literally just scratching the head, going, what are you talking about? It's obvious what's happening. It's literally just a virus pursuit phenomenon. You know, this is another great example of why if you try and understand the hypertrus literature without having a physiological background, it will make no sense to you at all. It would literally just make you just be staring at you going, what on earth is happening here? You've got, you know, numbers flying around all over the place and sometimes this thing does this thing and another time this exercise does a different thing. And I don't understand why any of this is happening. And so they stop playing this kind of game of, you know, the top trumps where they're like, you know, sort of, or, you know, this exercise, I've got these, these studies here that will prove this point and these studies over here that prove that point. And we just count the number of studies and we come out with our evidence is in favor of this, this because I've got five studies over here that show that thing and only four studies over here that show the opposite thing. It's like, well, no, think about it physiologically and actually all of those nice studies together now fit together because you've actually understood the variable factors are. I think that's really the difference by raised in the podcast. Was it last week? How are you going? Well, there's evidence based on physiologically based on science based. The two things are different, you know, evidence is about, you know, how many studies have I got showing this thing and how many studies have I got showing the opposite thing? Science is about saying, well, how does this actually work? What's driving these results? Can I come up with one explanation that explains all of these data, you know? I mean, ultimately, if you look at the stretch, like the length and partial stuff, right? I mean, well, you've just explained that you could do a study in muscles that experience stretch being out of hypertrophy and you could do it in beginners and you could do 15 of those studies and then you could do one in an advanced lifter and you could be like, look, 15 of these showed growth. Clearly, it's better because you've already got one. But now you do 20 in advanced lifters and you're like, oh, now the evidence is, you know, swung the other way. It's like, well, no, again, like you've explained, if you're busy, well, as you can understand what's happening. Exactly. And like, you know, we were talking about a whole one-chip podcast topics that we were going to do and, you know, one of the titles, one of the topics we're going to cover in a future podcast is going to be, you know, does fiber type affect the rate of atrophy, you know? And so I was explaining the kind of studies I've been pulling together on this. And there is actually a really simple explanation for why we see really, really randomly different results across all kinds of different study designs. Sometimes you see slow-touch fiber atrophying more than fast-rich fiber, and sometimes you see the opposite. And it's like, well, why is that happening? And actually there's a really simple explanation for why you see all these various results. But the instinctive response of a lot of researchers is to go, well, I've got seven studies showing this thing and eight studies showing the opposite and, you know, all its contentious. And there's actually a really simple explanation, which I will not say it because I'm going to do it as a future podcast topic. But if anybody wants to know what it's worth, there's an explanation. never heard, I've never heard anyone give the explanation even remotely close to it. So if someone's listening to this and like, "I know what it is because they hear everyone talking about online, I don't think you do." You do, yeah. So we'll see what happens. But there is, I think, a very simple explanation that can be used to essentially predict the results of most of the studies that I've seen in this in this area. But, you know, it has to be this, you have to do it from a scientific point of view. You have to go, "What is actually happening? What is happening on a muscle fiber level? What is happening on a whole muscle level? What might we see in detraining studies? What might we see in verbalisation or bedrest or those kind of studies?" And then based on those physiological predictions, then look at what the studies actually show and then say, "Well, okay, what's the explanation?" And it is actually fairly straightforward. It's just you have to do it scientifically. You can't do it even from an evidence base in the way you just get nonsense outputs. You know what's occurred to me? This whole half a set idea, it's the exact same idea or mentality that people would use to justify something like an upper lower split or a part split. Right? Where they say, "Well, you're getting a cross-oval stimulus and that's maintaining in blah, blah, blah." That's exactly what this half a set is saying. The same that this is. Because it's relying on the same assumption. Yes. The assumption is that you can train muscles. Yes. As soon as the muscles act, something is happening. To every single fiber. Yes. That's the assumption. And if you kind of push a high-perture researcher hard enough on this topic, you press them on this topic, they're eventually be forced to admit that they are assuming that any stimulus is occurring across the entire two of the muscle rather than on certain fibers. And ultimately, that is their kryptonite because once you face them with that, everything about their entire model or model breaks down because this just clearly not happening. We know that high-perture is a fiber-specific phenomenon. And so any attempt to claim that the entirety of the muscle they're receiving a stimulus is nonsense. And that's why they don't overtly state it. It's just you have to kind of push them into a corner until they have to admit it. But ultimately, that's the assumption that's breaking their ability to understand what's happening. That, as you say, is the same problem whether you're talking about, you know, upper lower splits and maintenance ideas whether you're talking about half-set stimuli for secondary muscles or anything like that, is all the same error. And it all comes back to hypertrophy and atrophy, our fibers preserving. And the outcome is the same as well because, again, like we say, if you have a beginner who's doing a multi-joint lift, yes, they are going to experience growth in all of those muscles. And you have an advanced lifter and like we've talked about, they're probably going to get growth in most likely one of those. And you could say actually, because it's the same problem and it's the same outcome, well, that would kind of be how a split and upper lower split whatever would work as well, where actually a beginner maybe will get a crossover stimulus where they're actually able to still hypertrophy a secondary muscle on that day. But someone who's an advanced lifter, they're likely not going to get that. So I feel like you can actually make an argument that something like an upper lower split might be more slutable to someone who's maybe a bit more the beginner than it would be to an advanced lifter. Unless like, you're up there, there's better ways to program it. What you're saying there is that you have less room to maneuver or you can't make as many mistakes with an advanced program. That's it, you can't make this one you say. Yes, I mean, you basically say you can get away with the worst program with beginners because they'll grow from lifting a 10 of beams. I mean, that's that's broadly what we're saying, isn't it? Yeah. So yeah, sure, you can write the worst program for beginner and they'll still get a better. You kind of have to get things right for your kind of more advanced lifters. If you want to continue pushing forward and making progress. So yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, but I would still rather they did a decent program from the beginning. Yeah, it's makes the program better just initially. Yeah, absolutely. But I guess what I find interesting about it is it's sort of the opposite the opposite belief or kind of, you know, the way people look at these plans is I think that this stuff's going to be more suitable for advanced lift and like you're saying, well, you can make fewer mistakes. Like you don't have that margin of error there. And it's just the opposite of what most people are assuming. What's interesting is that I think we're kind of living through the end of a phase of time, which has been a great kind of bodybuilding experiment with silly routines that don't really work that well. So, you know, obviously silver era, which is how focus, you know, kind of ends in the mid-50s. And since then routines have kind of gone in, you know, various unhelpful directions and people have been doing body parts splits. And I can't think which, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. And we're kind of now seeing obviously this reaction against that as we're demonstrating that the physiology that, you know, makes most sense as the explanation for hypertrophy really just fits perfectly well with the silver era, which is the last kind of period of time in which training program made sense. So, we've had this like, you know, I don't know, 60 year period of time in which bodybuilding training has been silly. I mean, before that, it was pretty logical going back a couple of thousand years. And hopefully going forward, it will be pretty logical. And we just had this flash in the pan moment, which is really interesting because if you talk to a hypertrophy researcher, they'll say, oh, well, you know, bodybuilders have always done and always do these kind of split routines on that. I'm sorry. You know, in what universe are you living? Because prior to 1950, everybody in the history of, you know, humanity has done full body training a couple of times a week, two, three times a week. And hopefully going forward, we'll start to see a return to that tendency. And we'll be able to look at this 60 year period of time and go, actually, that was the anomaly, not the norm. People are always thinking that, you know, what we're recommending and what, you know, other people who follow the stimulating reps model are recommending is new and different and weird and like not, not the, not the accepted way of training. It's like, well, actually, no, your 60 year experiment with this split routine idea has been the, has been the weirdness. We're returning to the way that people have been training since the beginning of time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Often I hear people online say, oh, you know, no one's ever done it that way. You know, no, this is how everyone always used to do it. And I'm like, just look back a little bit further. Like you talk, you go back to the 80s and tell me, it's cool, cool. But let's just go back another one or two decades and you'll see it's completely different. We think prior to that, back to the ancient Greeks, there's been literally whole body trainings several times per week. And, you know, I think we're going to hopefully, you know, get to a point where people can look back on this as being the anomaly, you know, rather than the, rather than the accepted kind of practice, which is kind of how a lot of people see it today. And you know, I do get messages people saying, you know, why are you recommending this way of training, which is completely different from the way that everybody else trains? And like, well, because you're not looking at this from a historical perspective, you're all kind of assuming that what you see on your social media in the last couple of years or decades, I was looking at this stuff, is, is, you know, kind of the, is the baseline. And it's not. Now, the baseline, it's four body trainings several times per week. And all we're doing is identifying this 60 year period has been a bit of a silly period of time, which people lost track of what was going on because of the introduction of animal accidents. I think that's it for today, so I think so. Thank you guys for joining us. We appreciate it as always and hopefully you'll join us next week for another episode.