Strength Needs Structure: How to Plan the Year and Avoid Program Hopping

Welcome back to Between Two Racks. This week's episode, we're going to talk about how to set up for your best year of strength training. So let's kick it. This is appropriate because I'm sure many people are starting to think about 2026 year training goals for themselves and their clients. So this week's episode, we're going to dive in what to do so that you can set yourself up optimally for 2026. First, I think a big thing when I think of how to really set up long-term success in the gym is identifying what your goals are and then also having that discussion with your clients to explain to them why having those goals and sticking to those girls will make a big difference in the success of their training. So we always talk about it on the podcast, the program hoppers, so people that constantly change goals. Personally, I know the years that I started to see my largest success, where it was one the one that I just told Steph, I was like, "Okay, I want to get as lean as possible this year. I want to still get strong, just do whatever." You know this should be doing, don't listen to me when I think I want to change my mind. So to get us started, what is the biggest problem with the goal hoppers or not goal hoppers but program hoppers? Yeah, no. So the biggest issue there is in strength training, everything is very much built on the idea of potential. So we're going to use fears to potentially at the next phase, to potentially at the next phase, and if those potential fears aren't sequenced correctly, all you're doing is nearly restarting each time you start new fears. So you go from a fat loss phase into a par phase, you're now going from a very metabolic, highly metabolically driven fears with very little strength outcomes into a phase that requires a very substantial strength phase and neural outcomes. So the two just don't mail together. So you have to sequence the appropriate stimulus at the appropriate time to really build a well developed program in the long term. So in short, in short, so just to help some people on just like quick tips for those things. So what would you say ideally is, so say because a lot of people are going to go into the new year as we know and say they want to start with a fat loss phase, everyone's back from the holidays. So everyone wants to do a reset. So if that's what their decision is, like, okay, you're starting with a fat loss phase, what should be the next planning goal? So like a no intensity strength focus goal, which could be like it could be a hypertrophy goal, but a hypertrophy in the context of strength training. So like that average macro cycle intensity of 75 to 80% with higher than average reps, but still moderate compared to like a hypertrophy specialization phase and definitely moderate compared to what you'd be doing in the fat loss phase. So that would still be like moving in the right direction, that or a low end, absolute strength goal that there's going to be slightly higher neural components. So depending on where you're going after that, you're all right, hop into the neural side a bit. You'll have already dropped into the hypertrophy side a bit. You're going to be good. Because it's important to understand that any changes with strength training is a slow process. Everything is slow. Everything is a grind. Like we're talking about like changes of the cellular level. So it takes a while. So if you're a program hopper and you don't have a direction of where it is, you really want to go and you're changing goals or focused before you even created a positive adaptation in what you were trying to do in the first place, you're basically just spinning your wheels and going nowhere. So like Porek was saying to have a clear sense of how to move from macro to macro is super important. Going back to what I said with so many clients starting wanting to start the year with a fat loss phase. So we have all these coaches right now that most likely have done a lot of our education and they've been assessing long term periodization. So they have this year's history, possibly even the previous year's history. So I know we've talked about it before, but when they're looking at their planning for next year and you throw in one of those fat loss phases, how does it affect then like say this year they followed a perfect periodization map of their client goals and what they did. But that fat loss phase doesn't necessarily fit perfectly in that. Do they go back to where they were in their periodization planning or is it kind of like starting over? I don't know, like I think it depends on the client. It depends on the training background because because there's different ways to approach fat loss also. So somebody who's more advanced, somebody who only has like a smaller amount of fat to drop, you might want to address the fat loss strictly with nutrition and then keep on going with the training process. If it's someone who has a more drastic need for fat loss and then you go through the metabolic route. Planning on what the end goal is, it might have a trickle down effect on what's the following phase and maybe kind of need to read, adjust or restart the whole like planification process, like it's it's a hard one to answer here. It's hard because if you do have a client who has missed basically all of December, which we know happens a lot with our clients, then you probably wouldn't want to start with a high metabolic fat loss phase. Like Steph said, you want to start with really dialing in the nutrition, getting them back in the gym. I just know even for myself, if I miss a week, the first week about training, you can't put out all that effort. So maybe like Porx said, just start with a lower intensity type of macro, really dialing in the nutrition and then you can like. Because to go along with what Alex was saying, there's the training age also plays an important role because if you're training age is really low, like let's say less than six months of real training and then you miss all of December, like she was saying, honestly, January 1st, you have to start all over because in one month of zero training and that point in time, you basically lost all of that acquired like in thermoscular coordination skill. Yeah, and that's sort of where the whole structuring of phase potentiation nearly and doing that across macro cycles makes a huge difference because unfortunately in strength training, once we don't train something, it gets detrained, so that's why we have to really cognizant on how these phases go together, go together to try and limit that detrain as much as possible. So in the long term, all the qualities that we're trying to build up keep getting built up and something doesn't get neglected. So I know I just kind of shifted it so much heavily on the fat loss because it is a situation a lot of trainers will be put in at the start of the new year. But hopefully you've been working with clients or even if you're getting new clients, you can explain to them how you think of programming impureization, you don't need to go in depth. But obviously a great way to start would be an assessment of identifying where your client currently is. So that starts in the new year, so say, even if you've been training them, you just want to figure out, okay, what's the biggest limiting factor here? So that first block, that first phase of training, we'll be having to focus on the foundation of what that is, like what they're missing. So for assessments, if you're doing like a movement analysis, what would be your decision then after getting those results of your assessment with what your first phase would be? Well, especially if you've already trained them, it might actually be in a movement analysis that is the assessment. It could be you assessing their strength number from the previous year so you now know where you're bringing their strength, orientated goals, and it could be that you're assessing their relative strength on your use, not the dictate whether they need to work a more hypertrophy or they need to work a more relative strength. So we could assess lots of different ways. So if it is the movement analysis, that could dictate, all right, is there any predictor movement limitation? This client currently has that is going to limit their long term progress. So say they have a long term goal of a two times body weight squat, but we know their squat pattern looks like shit. All right. There's no point working towards that strength goal now. We need to improve that squatting pattern first so we could, that's where we could maybe use a power block and then go and address the limitations they currently have, which is going to set them up the best to meet their strength goal later near. Is it, are they going to meet in that first 12 weeks? Fuck no. They might squat properly for the first 12 weeks, but we're setting them up long term that they can meet that goal. And that's why you have to always take the big picture in the view because building strength on dysfunction that we always say is you're just wasting your time, you spend your wings. And then to, to that effect though, like I'm like, what I'm coming back to the whole fat loss situation because at the same time, like when you said that you had a bias with the fat loss with your initial question, but, but it's important to understand though that body composition is an important factor to optimize, to leverage everything else. Because if you're a client, let's say the client is 30% body fat, but the client's ultimate goal, the respective of body fat is increased hypertrophy, hypertrophy work will be optimized when body composition is better. If you're leaner when you start hypertrophy, the net gain of weight you, you build will be a higher percentage of it will be muscle as opposed to fat. If your goal is power, you'll have way better power outcome. If you're leaner than if you're fatter. If your goal is strength, now you could argue that you don't necessarily need to be lean to build strength, but at the same time you could argue that if you're leaner, your recovery is improved. Hence, you can have higher frequency, higher training volume to drive more strength. So in a way, irrespective of what the goal is, if your client is too fat to start with, it might not be a bad thing, no matter what, to focus on fat loss irrespective of what the ultimate goal is simply because you know you're going to leverage everything else. And then base off of that, then you can look at the map assessment if the training ages low, and there's an issue with a motor pattern, and then you need to use a leaner approach in terms of exercise progression to get to a proper back squat, and then if you get the proper back squat, then you look at strength ratios, and then you look at strength up optimization on a neural level instead of a skill level. So it's so layered. It's hard with there's so much nuance to saying fat training for fat loss or fat loss training because the year that I made that decision and said, okay, I'm going to get super lean, I did not do any fat loss specific phases. I was doing all strength training. It was like absolute strength and relative strength, but I was using the nutrition to drive all my results. So like, yeah, I was fat loss training, but not in the weight room specifically. So I think it's also like how do you make that decision for a client, I'm assuming some of it goes on training age and knowing how well they actually train in the gym on if you're choosing a fat loss specialization phase where it's actually more metabolically demanding versus doing nutrition driven fat loss with them. Yeah. Then it depends how far away from their goal there is and like you said, you're a year to work towards that goal. We're not going to give someone metabolic work for a year. So it's one of those that, all right, are they 15 percent body fat away from where they want to be? Okay. 15 percent. Unless it's a long term goal, we're probably going to have to introduce some level of metabolic work. Three percent away from the, what do they want to be? Okay. Different story. So if they're saying, all right, by December, 2026, I want to be in my best ship ever, there's a chance they never need to do metabolic style fat loss work. Could it still benefit them? Definitely. Possibly. Big question, big picture. It always depends. But do they need it? No. We can address that in many other ways. If they say come March 1st, they want to be as mean as possible, well, they're going to fucking do some metabolic work and work their ass off, but it's just two different situations. So it's always context dependent. Like one way you could look at this is, if the client's ultimate goals are more like physique based, like it's more hypertrophy, it's more looks like straight per se or power is not necessarily something that motivates the client. And the fat loss that needs to be achieved is higher than spending more time doing metabolic type work will be beneficial because you will speed up the process and the negative effect you'll get in terms of neural output that will ultimately affect strength is not as a big of a deal. If it's someone who's really focused and driven by strength numbers, then you might want to reassess and consider, well, you know what? Let's focus more on nutrition so that the training stimulus can stay more like around the strength realm and the nutrition is doing the work. And then the other layer is then the training age because if your training age is really, really low and you're really fat, then the problem with the metabolic work is it might not be as effective as you thought it'd be for fat loss purposes because your ability to tap into motor units and generate output with the training is not there. So then you might want to do strength training that is more neural dominant to learn to recruit more motor units so that eventually the training becomes more dominant if you're doing metabolic type work, then you might add extra work with let's say modified strong men conditioning sessions where now you can generate output and metabolic outcome without necessarily the need for building and thermoscular coordination. There's just, there's multiple routes, but in my opinion, no matter what, the fat loss is something you need to consider and get rid of early. I think most clients, like the real, like the gen pop, like it's not, doesn't necessarily have a specific goal, like we know those clients, I mean, they would all have to start with nutrition, right? That first like three weeks drop inflammation, drop inflammation, they haven't been training. Even if it's just 10 days, they've been on vacation, you know, they're inflamed, they've been eating a lot of sugar, you need to reset those patterns, you benefit just doing a three week, no matter what, if you want to start doing the metabolic stuff, I think I would almost wait three weeks, just do one phase of like three to six weeks phase of just like general strength training, really, really hammer the nutrition and then get into metabolic work, especially if they have the short term goal, you know, they want that beach body for spring break. With our new online, like the PAB course being out, I do think it's time for a lot of coaches to take the time to truly understand how to apply PABs because the start of a year is a great time to use those so that like when you were saying they have a long term strength goal or even a long term physique goal, you can't have them doing all of the movements or all of the training if they're so limited or they have strength limitations, injury limitations, anything, that's the time to set it up so that it doesn't stay an issue in the long term because you're only going to continually compound any issues if you're not addressing them. Yeah, it's one of those things that PAB is designed as the foundation, it's why it's an under strength preparation, it is a bias onto which to build more complex strength programming, whether that is strength programming dictated towards body composition, strength, part, whatever that is, it's there to lay that foundation of better movement patterns, more resiliency around the joints, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So no matter what, it's a great, there's never a bad time to do, well, there is a bad time to do PAB. If you're trying to peak, don't do PAB, but in terms of long term programming, there's never a bad instance of starting that long term programming with a PAB block. No matter what, it's going to create greater upside than jumping ahead and getting into more advanced techniques very quickly, the start of the year, if that's the time you're sharp with clients, great time, they're coming off probably an on active training period. So introducing all these single joint movements, working through long range of motion, spending longer times under tension, that's all going to be very, very, very beneficial for these trainees in their long, in their preparation for the best training year ever. I mean, actually, like, honestly, if you're looking at training on its most simplistic components and you're looking at your long-term success on a true face potentiation or linear approach, like a very good balanced year for the majority of your clients could literally be back row one of a new year. So January 1st, you introduced like a PAB macro cycle. Then macro two, then you move into more of a standard hypertrophy training protocol. And then macro three, now you move on to maximal strength. So either a little bit more of absolute strength bias or relative strength bias. And then macro four, depending on the skills and goals of the trainee, then it could be a power macro or a relative strength macro assuming that macro three was absolute strength. So now it's very linear. It's literally optimized for face potentiation because phase one builds into phase two, phase two builds into phase three, phase three builds into phase four. But the good thing is now year two. So now like you finished your power relative strength cycle in December. And then you take the Christmas New Year's off, then you start January again. Well guess what? It might be a great time to do another PAB macro because now you've spent like three macros, training hard, hammering the joints, like the high forces demands of power, for example. So PAB could serve as a unloading macro for the more advanced trainee. It could be used as a fine-tuning macro for the intermediate trainee. You need some work in very targeted areas. So in my opinion, like if you don't have any like truly specific goals, this is a very healthy and smart way to set up your years and have like continuous success for a few years at least. It's interesting because you know, most clients won't say they don't have any goals. Like it's always, they will have goals and the majority of them will be physique driven or just health driven. I want to feel good. But unless like you were saying earlier, Porik, unless they're like, okay, I'm starting the year and by March, I have a trip that I'm going to get the best. It's way better to always think of that long term approach and then help them with nutrition to help guide the physique and the goals. But to just constantly just give someone only fat loss and hypertrophy, like high intensity training, you're not setting up for the long. Like you're going to, they're going to hit a plateau, they're not going to continually progress in the gym, they're going to get frustrated. So with those clients that do have the physique goals, but not a time specific, it's definitely setting it up the long term to build on the specificity as they go through the year. And most of them, like, while they will have the physique goal, they suck at setting goals because they're not on specific by the goal, I want to look better. Okay. Cool. Like by nicer clothes, you're going to look better. Like it's one of those things, like what do you mean? What do you actually want out of this train? What is the time frame? Because it all makes such a difference into how you program, but if obviously if they're not going to give you more specific goals, setting up for that, it's a long term client that you're going to be able to have the greatest impact on, because no matter what, long term, you're going to have a better ability to create outcomes than short term. So setting up that you're taking a long term approach is always going to be the most beneficial way. It's almost like the goal is to never have to do a fat loss specialization, right? If they really follow the plan and their nutritious is on point, then they shouldn't really need to do that unless, well, that's the, I think the biggest selling point and with long term periodization is that it's that gradual, you're earning it, you're keeping it, you're maintaining it. So even if, okay, you get, you reach that goal for March and then they go off. It's not that you're back to the starting point. Okay, you go up a few percentages and, but it's easy to get it back off because you have the strength, you have the coordination, you have the movement ability. You know how to train well, so it doesn't take you forever again to get back to it. The one thing, though, that I want to say and I've realized this over the years, training people is goals are important, but it becomes tricky, in my opinion, with physique oriented goals, because if you have a very specific target in terms of fizzy goal, like you're, let's say you're like, okay, I want to weigh like 225 and I want to be 8% body fat. And this is your goal and then you train for that goal in mind and you're going to do everything you can to reach that, though these results. Now the problem is you might set like a certain time frame, so let's say you're 12 weeks or 16, whatever it might be, but then what happened if you don't reach it in the time frame you decided, so then what you, so you keep on going until you reach the goal. But then you start detraining other things, you start like having like joint issues because you keep grinding and grinding. Now you're starting to have like diet fatigue, so you're more likely to start cheating and blah, blah. So then you don't reach your goal and then as you didn't reach your goal, now we also detrained a bunch of other stuff, so now like you're burnt out, then we cannot link to start over. But so the way I see it is, that's why I always semi jokingly say when people ask me, what do you train for? I always say just to be jacked because to me being jacked, I know it's very non-specific, but my goal is I want to slowly keep getting more muscular, leaner and stronger, that's very non-specific. But the reality is once you've been training for a long time, change like physiological changes are very, very slow, like I was saying in the beginning, you need time, you need patience, you need to accept the grind and the process of eating, recovering, training, eating, recovering, training. Eventually, if you keep doing this consistently with effort, then 18 months, two years later, you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, wow, like now I have the physique that I wanted, but it took a while. So but what's important is in that process of getting jacked, is now you can have more targeted goals that are a reflection of the macro cycle you're doing. So if I'm doing a absolute strength macro cycle, then I could add a specific target, okay, I want to increase my squat by 20% over that 12-week period. So now you have a very specific target that you're aiming for that's numbers oriented, that's strength oriented, but as you're going for that goal for that 12-week phase, one of the side effect is improvement in jackness that in a year, two years later, you'll see. But if you don't have little goals like this and your only goal is 225% body fat, then to me it becomes like a process where you almost have more room for failure than success. It's almost like you want the goal to be, to maintain being like six weeks or 12 weeks away from a crazy transformation, either like your body or strength or power or whatever. So you're always like, you're just close enough, but you can't, you know, obviously you can't maintain that high intensity type of training forever, but you want to be close enough that you can do, you can get there really quick. The gradual part of it, like you're not always just slamming yourself to get to it. Everybody that I've ever met in my life that's truly jacked, that's kind of like the approach they take. They never stop, you just keep going with consistency and with true effort in a scenario that's feasible for them to maintain that output for an extended period of time. But every time you, especially with the physique goal, you go to a route of, okay, now I got six weeks, I got 12 weeks, I got this event, I got this photo shoot, I got this wedding, I got this vacation, then you're falling in the trap of, you know, because you're running yourself through the ground with a physique goal, then strength numbers decreases. It's like, you have to be careful, like if you're a physique competitor, it's a different story. That is what you're doing, I get it, but I do feel that, like Alex says, trying to avoid the extreme is the best way to truly have long-term success. Well, and especially if you, like it, it all ties back into what you were saying, how important, focusing on physique early on with clients and not physique when you're saying like they're getting ready for a bodybuilding show, physique in the sense of like a healthy leanness that's maintainable for Jen pop. So I know we don't have specific numbers here, but we do have like general numbers for saying, if you're working with a male client, you probably want him around 18 is like a safe percentage to get, like obviously it's not lean, but it's manageable for most Jen pop to reach and maintain. Yeah, I mean, depending on what tracking device you're using, I like 15 personally for a male, but. And 18 for females? No, it's like 23. 23 for females. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're talking here about like having a healthy level of body fat, you know, where you're healthy, you can train hard, you're, if you focus on hypertrophy with a small surplus, like your ratio of muscle to fat lipogen, that genesis won't be like. It's those numbers where like you were saying it's in that safe part where they're not far away from being able to just drive nutrition for a shorter, shorter period of time and reaching a goal. Because unless, until you've done it, I don't think people genuinely understand that getting lean, you express your judgment. Yes. People have, there's can be plenty of people that are carrying too much body fat, but you don't even know that they're probably fucking jacked because they have a lot of muscle, they're just not lean enough to see the muscle express it. Yeah. Yeah, no, there's a crazy change and it's always different for everyone, but you can go, you can get like 1% leaner and look 20 times heavier, just from not their slight bit of leanness and everything, all of a sudden pops and then it is even more amplified when you're trained and the pumps are more extreme and everything is slightly more shredded. So it's, yeah, it's a huge difference. For me personally, it's like all of this year 2025, I've sat more around the 15-16% like on the embody, that's what I've been at and then because I've been as low as, I know on, did I get to 10 on in body, I think you reached 10.4 at one point. But like I like that sweet spot of like you were saying it's 1%, but say I've been at 15-16. When I get to 12, like the 12-13, like I'm shredded, like to me, I'm like all of them shredded. So it's crazy what that little change makes and it's just nutrition that drives it so much because it's not like I've mass, my muscle didn't disappear. Yeah, but the good thing is like for you when you sit around at 15-16, which is kind of like your quote-unquote set point at this point in time, what's cool now is if you are in a situation where you want to get shredded, now you know that it's, you're a few weeks away. So it's way easier and more realistic to have high effort for a four to six week period than it is to start thinking, okay, now for the next 12 to 24 weeks, I need to be hardcore and I have the perfect lifestyle and dialed in like that's brutal and that's the problem like it's one of these things where the risk of the rebound following that period of time is huge. So like I'm just such a big fan of the slow grind, patience, improve your habits. But then I love the fat loss specialization, but as a, as a special tool, as a, as a needs, like sometimes somebody will need it and benefit from it and it's actually going to be helpful in the bigger picture. Like if you've been training heavy on and strength dominant for a while and then you're, you're starting plateauing with the strength and you're starting to have some lingering like connective tissue issue because you're always lifting heavy on average. Well, guess what? Even if you're not that fat to do a 12 week fat loss specialization where now everything changes right now you're doing full body, it's very metabolic. Now you're improving capacities that you haven't touched in forever. So now your overall general conditioning is better, your endurance is improved, your mitochondria functions are better, your capillary density is greater, your oxygen consumption is greater, which then translate afterwards into better recovery from your training. So it's one of those things that it's not directly related to improved performance and, and strength, but to stay away from strength for 6 to 12 weeks and doing a fat loss specialization is one of those things that will benefit in the long run because now one, when you get back to strength after now, the strength will almost feel like a new novelty stimulus where now the body has something to re acquire. So I almost look at it as a one step back to go two steps forward, but once in a while, like once every 18 months, once every every two years, like a hypertrophy specialization or fat loss to me is a cool tool, but that's that's how with most of my clients, that's how I use these. Well, I even think of you right now with your training, it's not fat loss, but you're doing triceps and the like you were just the feeling for you was so different compared to what you had been doing that, I know that we keep talking about it, but like your vascularity just from doing the triceps, even though it's over the last year, two years with you doing all the cardio you vatted, like your vascularity improved, but then you just went from you're on week three or four, starting week three, yeah, of your triceps and then you were like, holy shit, I mean, been more vascular now just because of that change in your training. Yeah, but see, like I hadn't done any type of metabolic work since April and May 2022 when we all did it together. So it was like almost three and a half years, and I'm like I'm responding, like I'm actually enjoying it. I like the exhaustion, the burn, the pump, but it's a novelty stimulus. So now I feel that not only that it's sparky, I'm excited about my workout. So it's hard as hell, but I'm excited about it. It's going to create a drastic change because it's as stimulus I'm not used to, but then guess what, in January when I get back to more strength work, I'll be like hungry for it. I'll be excited for it. And then it might spark new progress. Should we do like Kilo crew metabolic work December or something? Actually, it's required, black gift, we can do, we could, you already have conditioning, you can do another conditioning. You can attempt to do a conditioning this holiday since we're not traveling and we'll be home already. Steph said to me over the weekend, he's like, are you willing to come to the gym on Thursday morning on Thanksgiving to train? And I was like, hell yeah, I won't do we can do that. Well, we, so I'll take us back so we can move forward. So your first, so setting up, getting back to the bigger picture of the episode, so setting up for your best year of training. Phase one, you want to build the foundation. So assess any weaknesses that the client has really think about, okay, how am I going to best set my clients and myself up for those long term goals? Phase two, then you can get a little bit more specific in, okay, you identified any weaknesses, you worked on them in the first macro cycle, the first 12 weeks of training. So now phase two macro cycle two, you can get a little bit more specific with the goals and then because it could be, maybe you will have some clients that still need more foundation work. You can get more specific with that work, but they might still need more. But then you get to macro cycle three. So now you're far into the year. This is when again, you're either assessing if they still need something or now you can get more specific with their angle, you're getting closer to a peak. Yes. So like the first macro of the year, we're definitely trying to lay the best foundation for that client. Whether that be a pub, macro cycle, a thought loss, macro cycle, hypertrophy, macro cycle, it doesn't really matter, that depends on where the client is, where their goals are at, and what their long term progression look like, looks like. Micro cycle two, we're going to somewhat need to re-address strength to some extent, no matter what. It has not been a priority in macro cycle one, everything else sort of has to, you have to lay that foundation first. So the macro cycle two, we're like, all right, let's take a step back. We'll move more towards a generalized strength plan, depending on where they started, where they're trying to go. That could be anything from hypertrophy based at strength plan. Right up to relative strength if it's a really advanced training and they've done a more of a hypertrophy first macro. Then macro cycle three, you have to step back again. All right. How they movement limitation still? Do we need to do another power macro cycle? How they need for more hypertrophy? Do we need to do more hypertrophy work? Are they good at all this? We need to keep driving strength, but they've just done a relative strength macro cycle. So we still need to back off because we can't just keep pushing relative strength for the rest of the year. So we're going to back off and do an absolute strength macro cycle. So it's very much you need to stick a step back at this stage, really look at where they've come from, where they're trying to go to and then decide what is the right route to get there. I know that you still have two macro cycles within this year. You don't need to get there within this phase. It is fine to step the whole way back and lay more foundation for the last phase of the year. Yeah. I mean, that was well said. Well, explain it. It's like the way I like to put it is if you're a year one trainee, so like in a true novice, we feel that using more of a linear setup for your training year is a smarter approach because you're coaxing towards the higher intensities. It's just more sustainable for long-term progress. But if you're intermediate to advanced, then like Porek was saying, like revisiting strength, then you back off. It's almost at that point. You need to look at your training year on an angelatory fashion, like the same way we look at a macro cycle with undulating periodization models. You start your macro one where it's more either metabolic dominant or lower intensity. It could be the fat loss. It could be the pub. It could be hypertrophy. But then if you're more advanced, then you revisit strength, but it's okay to revisit strength with relative strength, whereas a novice to go from, let's say, pub into relative strength would be way too abrupt, so you can't do this. So the novice, you need to understand and accept that the year will be more linear in its progression from macro to macro. But the more advanced, okay, let's jump to relative strength. Months four, five, six, you're doing relative strength. Good. Then month seven, eight, nine, now at one point, okay, now we've driven neural output. We've created a lot of more stress on the connective tissue that joins with all that heavy loading. So now I would not necessarily want right away macro three to go into power. You might want to go back to lower intensity or more metabolic kind of work to make sure that you don't keep detraining these skills, making sure that you don't start losing muscle mass. So it might be that now you're going back to a standard hypertrophy and then you could finish the year with another relative strength as more your focus. Or if your ultimate focus at the end of the year was power, well, then when you're backing off from relative strength instead of going into hypertrophy, now you're going to absolute strength, which is still strength, but there's a slight hypertrophy bias, but at least a transition from absolute strength to power is not as drastic than a transition from pure hypertrophy to power, which I would not recommend. You know, like I think the training age mixed in with the ultimate goal is what's going to allow you to decipher all the progression of your year will actually look. I know you brought it up earlier and we've talked about it a few times, the relative strength like assessing those numbers. I know we teach that in our comprehensive program design course and then it's part of the athlete offseason, it's one of the tests within the athlete offseason assessment. In general, like relative strength were assessing their strength numbers based on their body weight. I know we won't dive into all the details, but are there guidelines to provide to coaches on like what you're looking at for that? I think a really simple way of putting it is, if they've got low levels of relative strength, it means nearly assuming their body weight is somewhat realistic. Okay, real estate might be the right word, but you know what we mean? Yeah, I mean, if you're 4 or 60, I mean, it's going to be hard. Yeah, it's going to be hard to be good. So be realistic with your growth, but if your relative strength isn't high, so if you have a low relative strength, it generally means that you're nearly very inefficient. You don't have a massive ability to tap into a lot of high threshold more units and express for sure. And this is just generated, we're generating this number of your maximum strength compared to your body weight because that's a very easy number for people to relate to. Could you do this with absolute loads, 100%, but absolute loads are way more subjective because if I said, okay, you squat or someone squats 300 pounds, is that good? Maybe if they weigh 100 pounds, it's fucking good. If they weigh 300 pounds, it sucks. So it depends. So whereas if we say as your relative strength, you have a one-time body weight squat, you're nearly, you're not really great. Like we can really improve that nearly. But if you have a three-time body weight squat, you're like, oh, fuck, nearly they're efficient. We now need to take that into account within our training parameters. And then another one, obviously, look at is even like chin-up strength for upper body. Like, can you do a chin-up? What, how many can you do compared to your body weight? Yeah, so there's loads of ways to look at and there's loads of ways to infer what that means and how you should use that to dictate your training. But it's just one way we like to assess overall situation to see what is going to be the best structure or the best overall goal for that training to help long-term progress. Like, no test is perfect. There's always nuances, but at least we like this because it's an easy test, relevant test, that at least it gets some guessing out of the equation and knowing what to do with the training. Like we, we're assessing to have more guidance on decision-making for planning and periodization. So using your relative strength ratio is a really clever and easy way to guide these decisions. Because if your relative strength is weak and you're nearly inefficient, well, now we know that the training needs to favor neural development. And in the early stage, guess what it is? It's intermuscular coordination. An intermuscular coordination is improved at lower intensity. So I'm not going to go and do a power or a relative strength phase. If, nearly, you don't have the skills to leverage that type of training. So it's important in the decision process. Yeah, because it's somewhat counterintuitive. You say someone's nearly inefficient. Let's do neural work. Let's give them 3, 2, 1, weaves. Well, no, they're nearly inefficient. They're going to suck at that. That is going to, they're not going to improve their ability. No, they're not going to get any training effect out of it because they haven't got the ability to tap into these high-fresh or motor units and actually benefit from something not nearly driven. We need to build that skill. And you have to build that skill from the bottom up. That's going to be most clients, right? Like most like average clients can't squat their body weight. Yeah. Refer to the continuum intermuscular coordination webinar with Porx. Get ready for those clients in the new year. Yeah, but even with relatively advanced trainings, people that we would classify as intermediate that have been training for a while, like a lot of the coaches we see in the classroom here, they don't necessarily have a super high level of neural skills. So even people like that, you might need to redirect your goals and the decision making simply because it's not because you've been training for a while that you're necessarily that strong, depending on their training background, depending on what they've done. Because as we know, you can be training and training and training and training and training for years, but you're just spinning your wheels because the timing of your training makes no sense on a bigger picture. I do think I hope, I mean, we know strength training is getting popular, but I do hope then there's the push for people to really be able to understand strength training to capitalize on the fact that getting stronger should be like we always say hypertrophy is a byproduct of strength training. They're not separate. They're done together, but it's the same thing and we see it a lot. People train and train and train, but they're never actually getting stronger. And when you do focus on your strength, then all of the other side effects of training are much easier to capitalize on because you have that foundation of strength. But even hypertrophy, just historically speaking, if you look at bodybuilders in the late 40s, early 50s, a lot of these guys were really strong. And they didn't have a lot of other things they were referring like, yeah, no, no, yeah, so they had to get strong to make difference. Of course, but, but, but, but it was a big part of their, that was just the way they trained, right? Yeah, but the, it was part of their identity as well because a lot of these guys would train with Olympic lifters, would train with power lifters and no matter what, they're still this competitive edge, right? So you had bodybuilders like benching 500, like, you know, they're competed in both right powerlifting and like for one half the year that they'd part left in second half the year that it bodybuilding or the reverse. Because I mean, now the bodybuilding world is kind of niche to itself and to like a thing, but it doesn't mean that historically, I mean, we can clearly demonstrate that strength is highly related, the hypertrophy. So it's not like you need to stay away from strength, even if your goal is physique achievements. I think they they're married pretty well. So we've assessed the first three and obviously then we have the final macro cycle of the year when that is just hopefully everything has gone as planned and you're capitalizing on the original set goal. This is going to be the peak, the show of what you've been prepping for. Especially if it's a strength or par orientated goal. Obviously if it's physique goal, it's somewhat of a year round grind towards it, but it still should be you, if even if it is physique goal, it should still should be you trying to capitalize on the rest of the year. But as a strength or par goal, now you've truly led the foundation for a full year. It's now time to really dial in having something. So your exercise selection specificity is going to be higher. Your number sets that you're doing for those primary exercises is probably going to be higher. You're going to have you might have to back off your remedial, your assistance work to allow for greater exposure of those you maybe are going to have to play about with slightly more advanced thing like mesocycle load and help really truly express strength as to the fullest potential as possible. So this is where the bells and whistles can come out a little and things can get more complicated, but it also does have to. It could just be the highest intensity fears of the year and a byproduct that will allow you to show your greatest strength potentially the year as well. So there's loads of ways to do it and depend where someone is in their trend career really does dictate how much bells and whistles they need. Just the cool thing like I know that power as a general goal for most trainees is not a very popular thing, but for us it's important that's part of who we are, Kilo. So we're always going to talk about power, but I think that one very miss understood part about a power cycle is if your year is built so that your peak macro. So month 10, 11, 12 is power. One of the advantages to keep in mind, we've mentioned this all the time, but Zatziorski's fitness fatigue paradigm, what's good with power is if the first three months, three macros of your year were really intense, a lot of heavy training, you've built some size and yearly stages and now you're doing your power. What you're going to notice is by the end of the macro because the volume is so low and it's all about quality and you're not trying to train to failure at this point in time is a lot of trainees, I'm talking more about the I intermediate or advanced trainees, they're going to feel great because now the volume is decreased, so now they can actually express their level of fitness and their preparedness and some of them sometimes they will compensate by a slight increase in muscle mass because the overall volume does not create fatigue and now they can actually recover, they're going to feel great, their strength is going to be great, their nervous system will be wired and then you start the next year and they're feeling refreshed, they're feeling good, they don't have any pain or anything like that, so then these people, then you can start the next year with a hypertrophy macro, they might not be even a need for a pub and then you can leverage the hell out of your hypertrophy because now your nervous system is super wired, your level of fatigue is nowhere to be found, you're fresh, so guess what's going to happen with your hypertrophy, you're truly going to leverage it, so I think that if you're somewhat advanced to plan for power, can have benefits outside of just power per se, and I think that's a misunderstood or disregarded aspect of macros like that, and power doesn't have to be that complicated at all, we could simply just, you can reduce your strength work to somewhat of a maintenance and add in some lighter, higher velocity movement or exercises of the exact same movement pattern, like you can just do squats at 60% for low minus adds, low one reps and express power and you'll get the benefits, is it going to be the best power program ever? No, you can be really complex, you can do loads, but you're not doing it for like an athletic performance. Exactly, that's the key point, and that's where I think people get confused because so much of the power information comes from the athletic world, and there's a huge difference between training power for an athlete and training power for a recreational lifter, because if me personally, I don't compete in sports anymore, so personally if I'm doing power, I'm doing power to improve power in the gym lifts, so I can just do power with explosive strength, I might not need to focus on starting strength, I might not need to focus on reactive strength, I could just do explosive strength with a strength, a classic strength exercise like Boric was talking about, I'm doing bench press at 50, 60% of one arm explosively, and bam, that's it, like is it, is it the ideal? No, because there is a deceleration component, but it's a different stimulus, you're tapping into different motor units, to me, it's a cool thing, I think people should aim to venture into power training a little bit more. That was a slasher, and even with the power course, we are very specific in saying that it's a course for power in the weight room, in the gym, it's not that you can't take those principles and understand them to be able to better apply in the athletic scenarios, but that is specifically we're talking about power expressed with weights in the gym. What do you guys think? This is not going to be a popular questioner. So you have a client, so a lot of my clients were like this, right? We know, I know that they train, they don't have like a specific goal, but fat loss is always kind of a goal, they travel a lot, they mess up all those things, and I know at the last macro of the year, this is when it's the holidays, they always mess up, so I want to do a fat loss, I want to do full body with them, I want it to be metabolic because they're not going to be good with their food, so if I work backwards, then macro 2, I would also, I'm trying to just bear with me, macro 2, I'm also going to do a fat loss phase, I'm trying to set up the macros, all right, so then the first, so January, that first macro, I'm going to do more like hypertrophy type of intensity, like not a high, like general strength, but a low intensity, then macro 2, then I go into fat loss, intensive, macro 3, I would do more of a absolute strength, and then macro 4, I would do another fat loss, just because it would, having the macro 2 there will prep them for the summer, again, they're not good with their nutrition, so they're getting more metabolic work in the gym, and then macro 4, like I said, because it's the holidays. Yeah, I mean, that would work, that would work, but it would be more reactive, like it's not your, it's- This is your planning, but I know, but we all have those clients that just year in, year out, they're always, like they just want to train, they don't want to focus too much on nutrition, so that's a way that I still get them to strength train, and I still get them metabolically more in the better. But at the same time, I would wonder that, you know, you're saying, you're assigning that full 12 week time in the 2 in the 4 to a fat loss thing, but sometimes if, because you're talking about clients that, like you said, have a hard time, like sticking to the nutrition, but those people you do still want to focus on getting them stronger? Yeah, that's macro 1 and 3. I don't know, like anything, but like that. So what she's describing is reactive periodization, so she's planning to do damage control, and that's fine, because that's going to be a lot of your gen pop clients, and those are mostly, like the two times a week type of client that's somewhat not as committed, they think they are, but they're obviously not that committed, they miss a lot, but the reality is why I'm not against this, is the reality with that clientele. I don't necessarily believe that periodization per se is a need, it's a needed tool. I mean, what's good about what Alex is describing is at least you're, you're subjecting the training to different styles of training to keep things a little interesting at periods where they want to focus more on fat loss and feel like they're achieving more fat loss while you're doing it. So psychologically, the client is more locked in, but physiologically speaking as a purist of strength training and periodization is this ideal, not no, not really, but I mean, it's fine, but we're talking about such low level of like peaking as simple. I think the best part of it is since you're doing the 12 weeks of strength in between, because they're not going to get strong, we know that, but they're going to de-tree in the metabolic functions, so at least when it's when you need to chase it, they're going to get another stimulus again, so it's not just year-round metabolic. No, that's true, because if that's always something that's bothered me, like you, you have like training facilities sometimes that their entire programming, all they do all the time is fat loss, metabolic, bootcamp type of stuff. The problem with this is the adaptation occurs really, really quick and then nothing happens, especially when it's group training and it's always the same output. Yeah, nothing happens, so at least you're creating changes and different stimulus to spark something, because I'm definitely against doing the same thing all the time, at least because some might say, well, isn't your strength work always the same thing, AB and C series, whatever, but not really, because we have changes in motor patterns, we have changes in intensities, we have changes in volume prescriptions, so that's what I mean, that you don't necessarily see with bootcamp or metabolic type work, because these are density-based, these are limited by the time frame you have for the session, so there's just, there's not a lot of variations you can do here, it cannot be that intense, so to me, what Alex is describing, I think it's smart because you want to have more metabolic work prior to the summer, because they always want to look their best in the summer, and you want to do it in the winter during the holidays, especially in the United States with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years, that's all crammed within that five week period, you want to minimize or do damage control as much as possible. I mean, I'd like that approach with a clientele for sure, especially if they don't really have, if their only goal is, I'm training to be healthy and have general fitness, that's fine. I don't know how much we started on a topic, and then we kind of, we still said it, but I think that what's hard is like, I framed it with saying how to set up, so we covered it a little bit, but it's kind of like, you have to look at everything to be able to set up for the best year, and then staying on track of all of it throughout the year. So how to set up for your base year is like, well, one, most of you, I'm sure, if not all of you, are already tracking all of the data for your clients. And I think an important one that some trainers might overlook, and I know we've discussed it a few times, is the whole, like, truly assessing your client's readiness as a whole. So in the session, post session, and it's, I know in Train Heroic, there's the readiness score, but if your client's not completing that, it's asking them just conversationally at the start of a session, well, how have you been feeling? How's it going? Like, how's your sleep? Keeping track of those things. But there is this study, though, like, it's a 22, I think, 2022 study that showed that asking the trainee about their readiness is not as accurate as having them answer a questionnaire without a person in their face. So actuality when it comes to readiness, you're going to have a more accurate score. If they're doing it on their own, answering the questions, then if you're in their face asking it the question, I would say you'd kind of want both, like, maybe not constantly asking because I look back at the freaking clients in HB when they do the readiness and then the post thing, like, you kind of need to have a grasp on what you think your clients think is hard. Yeah, but I also even think you have to ask them, you have a conversation with them, you talk to them as I go on the harsh because, yeah, it comes out really quick because it's like, oh, like, so you just asked them how their morning's been, that I had to sleep well, that's this got away from me and they're, all right, this is going to be fun. But the thing, the reason why I'm really big on the readiness, though, as opposed to chatting is, I'm not downplaying the importance of having communication and that's good. You need to have that, but why I would rely more on the numbers is because the numbers, you have them for every session, so you can have better understanding of trends that's happening with the training. So now you can know, you know what, I'm noticing that with client X, every time we do hypertrophy, if the volume, as soon as we push the higher end of the volume, the readiness score crashes. So now in the future, I might know that I need to use more of a moderate approach with volume with hypertrophy to monitor the readiness, but if you only have discussion once in a while, it's hard to really have a grasp of what's going on to help you as a coach make better decision. So going back to, so just setting up like knowing your, you have all of your systems in place, your systems frameworks to get ready for your clients, because we know the start of the year, there's that little bit of a slow, but then it ticks up and then it's busy. So you just have to be ready, be ready with all of the different tools to handle any clients that you're faced with. And if you're looking for your own training, you can hit us up for personalized programming or some of our train heroic programs. Now we have mass avenue for hypertrophy, burn borough for fat loss, tempo town for those people, I like to say the tempo town is for the people like we've been talking that just want to string. Yeah, train, you get the strength, you get the hypertrophy. And then also intense city, which ties it back into what you were saying, Steph, how power it's just never as popular. It's definitely our train heroic program that doesn't has the least amount of clients in it, but that touches a little bit on power throughout the year. Yeah, so more options. They're currently in a power micro sector right now. So we're all having a lot of fun. That's the end of the year. trainkilo.com. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Like, subscribe, share.