How to Build a Strength Training Program (Complete Guide)

In this week's episode of the Enterprise Fitness Podcast, we take you behind the scenes of a live event that we had, the Elite Results Bootcamp. We present on a number of different topics from training, nutrition, but more importantly, how we get the elite results we do here at Enterprise Fitness. So check it out and let's jump in. Today's theme is going to be strength, so save your hypertrophy questions for tomorrow. Likewise, save your fat loss questions for day 3. So today's focus is what? Strength. In the back, I didn't hear you guys. What is today's focus? Strength. Right, so we've got to play along. I want 100% participation. Who's committed to being 100%— being playing full out today? Say aye. Aye. Say it, try again. Who's committed to being 100% full on in the next 3 days and getting all they can over the next 3 days? Aye. That's better, that's what I thought. All right, so strength is something very near and dear and close to my heart. I'm one of the few coaches in the world who earns a PIC Level 5 in the Polyquint Strength Institute, and the way to do that is I remember going to Charles after training Janet, who won the Australian title and the Miss Olympia. She won the Australian 4 times and she won the Miss Olympia 3 times. And I said, Charles, when will I get my PIC Level 5? And Charles, you know, God bless him, he's passed away now. Late and great, great Charles Poliquin. He said, Mark, you train bumfuck athletes, train a real athlete, and then I'll give you your PIC Level 5. Charles didn't mix words. And that was awesome about Charles. So I set on a journey to train quote unquote real athletes. And 2 weeks later, I had a boxer come to me and I thought someone was pulling my chain because he was the former sparring partner of Floyd Mayweather. You guys know Floyd Mayweather is kind of a big deal. And his resume was very, very impressive. Former sparring partner of Kostas, all these people. So of course I took him on as a client. He won the Australian welterweight title. Aussie strength coach, and then I met a guy by the name of Andrew Maloney. Andrew Maloney won Commonwealth Games gold in Aussie strength. That's how I got my PIC Level 5. I had to prove to Charles that I could train real athletes as well. Obviously, I'm a lover of strength and yeah, all things strength. The guys here are all very, very strong. We're going to get into how we build not only world-class physiques but get you world-class strong. Who's excited about that? Good. All right, so the roadmap today is all things strength. Tomorrow's perched feet, fat loss, and transformations. Just so you're aware with all things How do you say food? Because one thing I want you guys to do over the next 3 days is I want you to, one, hydrate. What do I want you to do? Everyone, what do I want you to do? Two, I want you to eat. What do I want you to do? Right, you're going to need your carbs. If I was doing this course, I probably would have ice cream every night. Yeah, I would have ice cream, sorbet, right? Because you've got 2 workouts every day, they're hard workouts. We're not going to take it easy on you. If you have an injury, please let us know. We'll work around your injury. But this course is designed for you guys to find another level. So the first workout on every day is 12:15 to 1:15. Lunch will be at 1:15 to 2:00. So that way, if you want to finish off the workout, you can. And the second workout of the day will be 3:00 to 4:00. So we have great Melbourne's best coffee. So if you want a coffee, it's $3. You can see, Yana, she can get you a coffee. We have Jocos in the fridge. They're what, like $6 or something? We have electrolytes. We have a heap of supplements on sale. We've already got one hooked here who just bought a whole bunch of stuff from ours. But we'll talk about supplements as well. But if you need that, all right. All right, so let's get into the meat and veg of this presentation. I'm gonna move pretty fast. So if there are questions, and we are recording this, and by the way, this will go on YouTube, right? Just FYI. I'm gonna move pretty fast through things. So if I do lose anyone, please put your hand up, or even keep your questions, and we'll— when we do a review, please ask your questions. You've got notepads, you've got pens. Anyone not have notepads and pens? No? Great. All right, so keys to strength: stability, skill acquisition, muscle, joints, levers, neural load, volume variation. I've just said a whole bunch of stuff. We could do, you know, we're getting into all of them. So let's, let's break down all these things, but these are your keys to strength. If you don't understand one of these elements, you're not going to be able to get as strong as you possibly could. So this is where kind of the misunderstanding of strength comes in. So stability— there is a saying, proximal stability equals distal output. Does anyone know what I mean by this? No? Okay, so the tighter you get on an exercise, the more you're able to pull in the joint to end range, the more stable you're going to become. And I'm going to do some demos of this. So for example, if you want your abs to be tight, everyone pull their ribcage down and stack it on top, right? See how you're now— your spine is now stacked, your ribs are now stacked, you're able to resist forces of rotation in this position. So whenever we're getting under anything, let's say a deadlift or a squat or a bench press, we want to be as stable as possible. If I've got the— yeah, so there are 3— let me go back. There are 3 major hubs of stability. There is your scapula, your pelvis, and your spine. When we lift anything, if we're lifting for the output of strength, we want to stabilize these hubs as much as possible. So who's seen a bench presser when they set up— and we'll do heaps of demos later on— but who's seen like a powerlifter when they set up on a bench, they get that really, really big arc? Why do they do that? That's an example of proximal stability creating distal output. They're pulling the scapula down. When you extend through the thoracic, you externally rotate to the near end degree, which then creates a much more stable base in the scapula, which allows more force. So a principle when we're, when we're coaching you, because we are going to be coaching you a lot today, tomorrow, the next day, we're going to be looking when you train to get more stable, be in a more stable position. Sometimes what it feels, it feels like you go backwards, but it's not. You're lifting with correct technique and form where you're not going to hit a ceiling of what you're limited to. So ensure that that stability piece is something that I would say probably 95% of general trainers, most of your clients, they will wash over. They'll see an exercise, they'll do, okay, this is a bench press, but they're not actually stabilizing this joint. And again, the reason why this is important is because if you don't want to be uncapped in terms of what your potential can be, you need to make sure that you're looking after the hubs of stability. And again, those hubs of stability are your spine, your scap, and your pelvis. Same thing, like, if I'm on a squat and I'm like all floppy, right, my back's not protected. The minute I stack my ribs on top of my pelvis, I pull everything in tight, I push my heels to get my feet centered, now I'm in a stable position. I'm stacked. Now I'm able to exert as much force as possible. Does it all make sense? Say aye. Good. The other saying for this and the mental image is you can't fire a cannon out of canoe. Probably the best way to demonstrate this, if you can just stand up for a minute, don't hurt me when we do this, but face me, face me. If I'm trying to push him, right, and put a little bit of force on me, let's go here, right? If I try and push him and I'm out here, right, say we get in a fight and see how my shoulder is not in a stable position. He could tear my external rotator in this position, right? I'm really pushing, and if he puts a lot of force on me, look, he's already gone into a— see where he's automatically— see where his shoulder is? It's not perfect, but his elbow, they're already stacked. If I'm out here, he can tear me. It's not a stable position. It's a cannon over a canoe. If I thoracic extend, I come up nice and high, see everything's stacked, see where my elbow is, everything's down. Now I can push him. We can have that fight, right? So that's another example. Thanks, Tim. Let's give him a round of applause. And that's the visual image of when we talk about you can't fire a cannon out of a canoe. We want to bring those hubs of stability into that center point so we're able to express force. This is the fundamentals of strength. So stability, stability, stability, absolutely key. The next principle we're going to talk about is skill is a strength. Sorry, skill— strength is a skill. Strength is a skill. So you've probably seen on YouTube, Instagram, Anatoly the Cleaner, I Am Your Cleaner. Who's seen this? No, only a couple of people. The guy who— you know what I'm talking about. So there's this powerlifter, world champion powerlifter, one of the best in the world. He goes to gyms and he punks a lot of really, really big guys, right? And guys will be lifting like, you know, 140, 160 kilos, and he'll go up and lift it with one hand and then put it overhead. And he's 60— no, he's 74 kilos, right? The guy's a beast, right? He's a champion powerlifter. Strength is a skill. The way we get strong is with practice. And with frequency. And it's practice, not performing. So one of the things that a lot of people get wrong when they try to build strength is they try and go 1RM every day, right? And this is where you've got the, the Russian kind of way of doing things versus the Bulgarian way of doing things, which is balls to the wall. In Bulgaria, they have a saying which is, you know, if the rabbit doesn't run to 100% every day, it gets eaten. Well, the thing is, we're not rabbits, right? We're people, and we need to have the skill acquisition phase. And this again is something that's very, very much washed over when it comes to general population clients. Because if you can develop the skill, let's say, of deadlifting, where every single rep looks the same— and I have a saying that people have to earn their weight to the bar. You don't just go, okay, here, let's put 100 kilos on the bar, you should be about right. Every rep should look the same. The only thing that should change from rep 1 to rep 5, let's say for example, is what? Speed. Exactly. Speed of the bar, that's the only thing that should change, right? The speed at which they lift, technically the way they set up, the way they move, everything should be identical from the same. Strength is a skill, the way you can train that skill, the only way to fast-track that is with frequency. And again, if you're doing high frequency and high volume, which we'll talk about later, then the intensity has to go down. If it's high intensity, you're going to do less frequency. Yeah, these levers, if you start to think about them, either have high frequency, lower load, or high load, high frequency, right? This is how we're manipulating things. And again, it's practice, not performing. So the bigger the muscle, again, we can develop muscle, we can develop strength through— then again, that's one way to develop strength is we have a bigger muscle that's going to be able to pull bigger numbers. That's only part of the picture. If we want to get really freakily strong, it's about our nervous system. It's about our tapping into the muscle, the motor. So again, the best example of this is Anatoly, where he's 74 kilos and he's lifting weights that 100 kilo, 110 kilo guys would wish they could lift because he's so efficient with his nervous system. So there's the muscle component, and absolutely you can be big, but you can also be weak and big. Pound for pound, you can look like a Christmas tree. The way I like to train people, and I like to train people here, is you're not just built for show, you're also built for go. All right, so we're not just developing multiple, uh, essentially just hypertrophy. We're creating bigger and thicker motor units and bigger connections. So in other words, joints move muscles, muscles move load, so you need to look after your joints. So when it does come to strength, people— again, another thing that people wash over is the joint preparation aspect, how joints move, how a movement should look. And this is where depending on what you're training for is depending on the setup of that exercise. So for example, if I wanted to lift maximum weight on a squat, mechanically, the way I'm built, it is a wider squat. But most of my lifting life, I've squatted pretty narrow because it's more relevant to what I want to be strong in, which is a front squat, and have more crossover to more of athletic. But if it was just for powerlifting, for sure a wider lift for my mechanics. So this is where you've got to look at— to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if the goal is just strength and you just want to lift as much load like a powerlifter, you need to look at the joint setup and mechanics of that. That's going to be very different than if you're looking for athletics/aperture fee gains/general strength, because general strength and powerlifting are two different things. Again, there is going to be crossover and correlation, but the more specific you are in powerlifting, the more specific you are, the less it's going to cross over, right? It's to a point. So for example, we're training an athlete, we're going to get all their bench press used with a bi-chromial grip, which is hands straight out in front. If we're training a powerlifter, well then it's going to be that optimal of— and again, even in that, if we're training a powerlifter for a max bench, some people like to go wide. The wider you go, the more skill-oriented it is, the more you have to rely on precision, whereas if you do go more, you have a more degree of error to getting it wrong and being able to power up with your triceps. And it is different styles of benching. It's not wrong or right, It's again, a little bit of mechanics, a little bit of preference, the ideal versus what the optimal is and what people's preference are. These things do need to be considered when we're getting very, very strong. So, but point here is look after your joints. And this is where, again, if you're very strong, you probably need a lot longer to prepare to go into your lifts than if you're very, very weak. Again, because there's the neuromuscular component of how, how do you function from the shoulder? Do you lift from the shoulder? Like if I'm going to point my finger, Do you lift from the finger, then the wrist, then the elbow? Or do you lift from the shoulder, then the elbow, then the wrist, then the finger? Right. And I'm saying this kind of might not fully understand what we're getting at yet, but when we go into a squat doing things like pre-movements like clams, for example, glute bridges, getting the body primed, doing primary exercises to make sure we're moving the correct and moving in the correct motor pattern and the correct muscles are functioning at the right time. All right, next point: levers. This is one that's, you know, again, if we, if we are looking at moving as maximum amount of strength, we do need to consider levers. This is just one point of many. Like I said, the opposite of levers is preference, because again, on a bench press, the wider we go with our hands, the shorter the range of motion we have technically. But the wider we go with our hands as well, the more technical the lift becomes. We have to be more exact, and there's less margin for error. Again, when we look at this example with a deadlift, we're not— we don't— the best deadlifters in the world, yes, they have a very, very tight lumbar spine, but their upper back, the thoracic, is round, right? And that also, that rounding, when their ribs are stacked, creates less range of motion. So if I'm, if I'm trying to retract on a deadlift through my scap, then I have to have a very strong scap to do that. Almost every world champion deadlifter, when they pull that, their scap's going to be in this position here. So we need to consider levers when we're lifting as well. What are the levers? And again, this comes back to the point that I was saying about, say for example, a good example is me with my squat. Mechanically, I'm set up, I've got pretty long femurs, a wide bar, a wide stance squat mechanically would be ideal for me. I hate wide bar squatting, I hate wide stance. It does just, it jacks up the adductors, it doesn't feel good, so it's not my strongest position. but from a lever perspective, that is where I should quote unquote squat. Again, these are things that we can consider when testing out things with our clients. What's the ideal? What's the optimal? This is I'm Your Cleaner, 78 kilos, sorry, he's 78 kilos. So we spoke about this before, about the neural aspect of strength. So I think I've got the slide in this one. Yes, I do. All right, so let's talk about the neural aspect. A very famous and prolific strength coach, Charlie Francis, He trained— was it Ben Johnson and a whole bunch of other very, very elite athletes? He said the central nervous system takes 7 times longer to recover to stimulus than muscles do. 7 times longer. So what does that mean? Again, the stronger you are, the longer it's going to take to recover because you're tapping into more of your muscular pool. So if you do a true 1RM max or you're truly getting close to 1RM, you need to rest about 5 to 7 minutes in between sets. This is why you see a lot of powerlifters, all they do is sit in between sets. They'll do 3 reps and they'll rest for 5 minutes or 10 minutes depending. And that's because the nervous system is like a battery and the battery needs time to recover. A way, an insight into the nervous system, so the nervous system governs everything, right? So who knows much about heart rate variability? No? Okay, your heart rate variability is essentially, there's your resting heart rate and And there's your heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is the beats within the beats of your heart rate. That is the window into how well your nervous system is, I suppose, optimized. And it is gonna be different for everyone. And there are some standards depending on your age. Generally speaking, the older you get, the lower that number will become. But heart rate variability, I definitely use it. I use an Oura Ring, which I think is a great tool, which is an insight into, and again, you can look at your heart rate as well, but your heart is gonna be the closest thing in variable to looking at what's happening from the autonomic nervous system. So in saying that, anything that's kind of above 10% of what it normally would be is indicative of that your nervous system hasn't fully recharged. So let's just use easy numbers, right? Let's just say my resting heart rate is 60 beats every night when I sleep, right? It's actually a lot lower, but let's say it's 60. 60, 60, 60. I do a massive workout that night, or I don't sleep, I have alcohol, whatever. It's at 66, or I'm sick or whatever. It's at 66. That would indicate that my nervous system isn't fully recharged, that if I go into the next day in my workout, I'm probably not— well, I'm definitely not going to— I'm probably setting myself up for injury if I'm expecting and demanding that I'm going to lift my maximal weight. So the nervous system is kind of that invisible force where a lot of people will go, oh, I'm really sore from my workout, all my muscles are really sore. At a powerlifting comp, sure, a lot of guys do get sore, but that's not why they're kind of overtrained. They're overtrained because their nervous system has been completely depleted because they've been going, they've done 7, uh, 9 lifts at 100% maximum, right? That's why they're completely depleted, because their neural force of lifting what muscle they have has been utilized. Another way to say it is everyone in this room, every single person in this room, has the potential to lift a car, right? It's called limit strength. But if you did lift the car, guaranteed you would rip your ligaments, break your bones, if your nervous system allowed you to do that. You would provoke injury into your body. You hear these stories and you've probably heard them about, you know, the grandma saved the child or that feat of strength that was, you know, unheard of and how could they do that, they must be lying. And some of these cases have gone to the federal court. There was one where a guy, basically a group of kidnappers took a bus, a school bus, and demanded ransom from the town and basically said, you know, if you don't pay us this money, we're going to kill the kids. And the bus driver felt responsible for the kids and they blocked him off. Anyway, he had to lift the equivalent of like 600 kilos of this thing they barred him in overhead, and he did. And they— the court thought that he was part of it because there's no way. But the reason they did a scan of his whole body and he broke like 60 bones doing this. But again, this is high-risk situation where the nervous system now overruns and says, well, if I don't do this, I'm going to die. So they're not situations where you're just going to, oh yeah, I'm going to do this, walk up to the deadlift and lift lift, you know, lift 300 kilos and break the world record. It's not going to happen, right? This is what we train ourselves to, this. In life and death situations, you may be able to tap into that, but it has to be very, a real situation usually for the brain to allow that harm to come to the body because you will cause harm to the body. You will break bones, you will tear ligaments. So there has to be a very big reason to do that. So that's your nervous system. Again, you could do 1 rep of that and be not sore but completely drained. And this is where a lot of guys after, say, powerlifting comps, they will have symptoms of depression because their nervous system is— they just feel very fatigued and kind of unwell. It's not that they're sore, it's that their nervous system's— so overtraining, when your muscles are sore, it's not necessarily overtraining. Yes, I'm not saying just train sore muscles, but where we're really managing overtraining is our neural output. And the way that— the only insight really into that is with our heart rate. There are other, some tests that you can do like vertical jump, grip strength as well. Grip strength is another insight into nervous system strength, but they're things that you have to look at and manage. Now, if we look at this a little bit deeper, and I got this chart many years ago off the great Christian Thibodeau in his book, Little Black Book of Secrets, and he talks about it like this, right? So in neural terms, the exercises and movements that require the highest degree of neural activity things like Olympic lifts, ballistic exercises, plyometrics, pretty much any movement that requires speed. Okay, so this is going to require the highest degree of neural activity. Below that, you have your more technical lifts that are kind of static in nature. So your deadlifts, good mornings, bodyweight lunges, free weights, say dumbbells. Below that, level 3, machines. And below that, your isolated work, your biceps. So as a general guideline, your nervous system at level 1 is very, very— involvement is very, very high. So if we're doing— let me put it another way, right? Who knows what a clean and jerk is? Put your hand up if you know what a clean and jerk is. A couple people don't know what a clean and jerk is? No? Okay, so clean and jerk is you're here, up, catch, and then you're that Olympic lift, right? So that, imagine taking that to failure. What would happen if we took a clean and jerk to failure? Yeah, you'd hurt yourself is an understatement, you'd fuck yourself, right? Yeah, well, this is where I'm going, right? Thank you, you're already one step ahead. So, if we take that to failure, we're definitely going to hurt ourselves, we're going to go overhead, and there's bad things are going to happen, right? Because it's a high neural activity, and it's an exercise that's done, it's a skill-based exercise that's done with high precision that requires lots of power. High reps on a clean and jerk is 3, 5, you know, you're kind of getting into very, very high reps, right? And this is where you get CrossFit boxes that are giving people like, you know, 100 reps and things like this, and you see their technique start to deteriorate, and then they wonder why they never improve and they always get injured. Well, there's no wonder, because you're doing a highly technical lift that requires a high degree of nervous system output. It's not designed for— there should be lots of rest in between. It's skill-based work. You want to drum in the pattern. Same as— I know there are a lot of trainers who are guilty of this— they give their clients box jumps and speed movements Box jumps and speed movements, plyometrics specifically, are designed for speed. When you're assessing a plyometric, you're assessing the contact time of the person on the ground. How fast can they get off the ground and onto where they're jumping to? As that starts to slow down, that's an indicator that they're no longer able to keep that velocity and they need to have rest. So this is where true plyometric work is very, very boring because you're doing 3 to 5 jumps and you're resting 3 to 5 minutes, right? Your fat loss client, that's not going to be appropriate for them because number one, they're too heavy, number one, they're too heavy, right, to withstand the joint, they're not strong enough, and also the contact time on the ground is way too long to be considered ready for plyometric, right? So this is your level one. You don't take those things to failure. They have a high degree of neural activity. Your level two, I am not in the camp— I don't think you should ever take a deadlift to failure. It's too neural demanding. Bench press, if we're benching together and I touch the bar, that rep does not count. If I have to come in and touch the bar, I'm grabbing the bar and racking it, right? It's no, yeah bro, it's all you. It doesn't happen on a bench press. It's technical. Bench press is technical. There are no forced reps on a bench press because there's high neural demand and high skill output. Same as a squat. If I have to come in, that's sets over. So those movements are kind of one step below. Then we've got everything else, like if we're using machines, yeah, we'll definitely take those to failure, beyond failure. If we're doing biceps, taking those beyond failure, right? So there are things that will take well beyond failure and use a lot of different methods like cable machines, machines, leg extension, all these kind of things which you'll definitely discover tomorrow. Yeah, which would be a lot of fun. Calves, you can train multiple times a week, take them to failure. They're very, very high resistant. Again, more— the more slow twitch in makeup a muscle is, generally the more volume it can handle and the less neural output is going on, the more isolated something is. Any questions on that? Good. Yes. So in the example with your HRV, just say you came in here at 66. Would you still train? Great question. So I'm just going to repeat the question for the audio. So the question is, if my HRV was above, say, if my normal is 60, my baseline is 60, and it was at 66, would I come in and train? The answer is I would check in and see how I feel, but I would not go for a 1RM. I've done that. I've taken the caffeine and it never ends well. Um, I usually just start to dig myself a hole. That is harder to get out of. So what I do now is I come in and I move. So it may be a skill day where I'm doing a lot of primers, like a lot of stability work, and just practicing the movement without the expectation I'm going to go for 1RM. So I'll still move, I'll still do something. On those days particularly, I like to convert more to a bodybuilding style of training and again move, because I do think the movement aspect is important to keep the body circulation going. But I'm not, certainly not expecting of myself that I'm going to be lifting max weights. Where this becomes really like this, where this has become really kind of profound for me is in— do you guys just want to get him a chair? Where this has become really profound for me is when I'm training specifically for strength. For hypertrophy, you can kind of get away with a little bit more when it comes to hypertrophy because the goal of hypertrophy is more muscle, right? So it's about more recovery. But when it comes to strength, you are demanding of yourself 1RM, and if you're not, if you're spent, then it's going to be, you know, you can cause yourself issues. Does that answer your question? Yeah, and I guess leading into managing the rest as well, like if you're actually, like, when would you know that you'd take a day off for that then? When would I know if I take a day off? Is it just like you come and move a little bit, like still feeling fried, and it's like, all right, Well, the numbers don't lie. I say like, males lie, females lie, numbers don't, right? In business, in training, in everything, numbers don't lie. So if I'm due to hit, say, 150 kilos on a squat, whatever it is, right? And I'm warming up and my 120 feels like shit, then like, I know it feels like shit. I know it's moving. And sometimes I can warm up through it and, you know, it starts to click on and I start to hit my numbers. But if that doesn't happen and my heart rate and I look at my— I'm like, these things aren't matching up. So it's data, right? It's data because I know what 120 kilos should feel like. I know what 140 kilos— this should be easy. If I'm neurally tapped, then I can feel everything's moving slower. You can video yourself. I know when I lift really well because I'm lifting those weights fast versus I'm lifting the same weight but really, really slow. Again, sometimes it takes a couple of sets to get into that pattern. And it takes a couple of sets to neurally wake up. But if that doesn't happen after, say, the, you know, fourth set, then I know my nervous system— and it correlates to my heart rate— then it's a good indicator for me to go, well, this all matches up and tells the same story. Because you're going to be— and if you train with a coach, like if you train with me, I'd pick it up straight away because I know how you'd lift. Because some people do lift slow, some people lift fast, but you start to see how this looks if you're on or if you're not. So this is where the coach's eye becomes important. If you don't have someone who knows how you lift, then having that outside data to check yourself in becomes very, very helpful. And that's where you can look at the heart rate variability. Does that answer your question? Yes. Do you have like a protocol that you follow in terms of building up that strength, like during the warm-up to those maximum efforts? We'll talk about that. Yeah, let's, let's park that one and come back to that question. All right, so another way to think about this in terms of developing strength is— and people have, like, it's been popularized by a few coaches on, well, on the interwebs, and that's the element types. And they call it earth, fire, wood, but really I like Tudor Bompa's way of doing it, which is volume, load, variation. And volume, load, variation— when you think about levers when you, when you're doing a training program when you're training for strength. They're your 3 main levers of creating strength and creating— how do I say— a program and protocol, whether it's for yourself or for a client or for an athlete. They are the 3 main variables that you're going to pull on. So let's talk about volume. Volume is your sets, how much volume of work someone can do. Now, if someone's weak, or let's say for example, I get a new client, so I get one of you, one of you guys want to train with me, right? And I look at the way you squat and there's some discrepancies in the way you squat, I don't really like the way you squat and I want to change something, even though it might be small changes, like you squat well but I want to change like your rib stacking, your feet position, this kind of stuff, I'm definitely going to use the lever of volume in that first phase. Why? Because I want to rep in over and over and over again to get that motor pattern down pat. So volume is going to be the thing that I, that I work on. If you're enjoying this presentation, make sure you hit subscribe on our YouTube or follow us on our podcast available anywhere where you listen to podcasts. All right, so let's talk a little bit about ratios. Now, this is from the great work of Charles Poliquin, and Charles, having trained, I think it was 800 Olympic gold medalists, thousands of athletes across the world, he started to notice a trend of strength numbers that basically correlated to performance. And there's what's known as the mother lift, depending on whether you have a lower body dominant sport or an upper body dominant sport. If it's a lower body dominant sport, it almost usually always is a high bar back squat. If it's an upper body dominant sport, it's usually the bi-chromial bench press, and that's usually indicative of your 100%. So in this case, we've got the example of lower body. It's a— and when we say back squat, this is not a low bar squat, right? And it's not a powerlifting squat. High bar squat, the way we define it in this, for the purposes of measurement, because again, when we measure something, the measurement standard always has to be the same, otherwise the numbers are null and void. Does everyone understand that? Like, if I say we're going to do squats and this side of the room does low bar, this side of the room does front squat, and this side of the room does high bar with no tempo, I can't measure any of that. So the way we measure it, it's always a 4-0-1-0 tempo. What is it? Yeah, does everyone know what we mean by that? Tempos? So it's 4 seconds down, as fast as possible up, right? That is the tempo that all the measurements are based on. That is our nominal data. And the high bar squat, again, it's athletic stance. That's where we're at with the high bar squat. And the depth of the squat your ass should cover your ankle. Okay, it's a deep squat. It's not a shallow squat. It's, it's, it's below, way below parallel. So that's 100%. A deadlift in a clean conventional grip should be 125% of your squat. And the front squat should be 85% of your high bar squat, which gives us indicators of if things aren't operating well. Now again, if your front squat isn't— and again, for athletes, if your front squat isn't up to the ratio of your high bar squat, that's a very telltale sign that your upper back, lower back, that whole chain, that posterior chain is too weak. And as an athlete, we want to get that stronger. And when I say athlete, I also mean is it just someone who's training for general strength, right? So everyone benefits from this. If we look at the upper body model, the 100% is your bench press. 110% is a— that's a close grip. 110% is your mid grip. Incline press is 83%. Strict overhead press is around the 70 to 60% depending on hand grip. A chin-up should be 81% and a dip 105% of your bench press. Now, the reason why this is helpful is because let's say, for example, which is actually true about me, If my bench press is 100 kilos and my shoulder press is only 50 kilos, how might I get my bench press stronger? Sorry, bring up your rotator cuffs. Bring up my rotator cuffs, right? Get my shoulder stronger. Likewise, if my chin-up is piss poor and let's say only 60% of my bench press, well, that's feedback to say my antagonist muscle groups aren't strong enough to stabilize the protagonist muscle groups. See how it makes sense? The way you want to think about this, the way you want to think about the body is like a Formula 1 car, right? In a Formula 1 car, if all we had was acceleration, would we be successful or would we be dead? Hands up for successful, hands up for dead. Yeah, everyone put their hands up for dead. You think we'd be dead? Yeah, yeah, right, we'd be dead. So in a Formula 1 race car We have world-class acceleration, but we also have world-class brakes. Yes or yes? Now, if we want to build world-class strength, we need to have world-class acceleration, but we need to have world-class strength. Now, sorry, world-class brakes. In the human body, the way this corresponds is your protagonist-antagonist muscle groups. So if I focus on bench press, bench press, bench press, bench press, and I get my bench press to 150 kilos, and then one day I tear my rotator cuff, I wonder why, and my chin-up, I've never done any more than body weight. Well, it's no wonder why, right? I haven't gotten my lats strong enough, haven't gotten my rotator cuff strong enough, haven't got my shoulders strong enough to stabilize that force. And I probably wouldn't even get that close, right? I'd probably be benching all shoulders, massive, and no upper back, and a lot of postural— I would probably wouldn't be able to wipe my ass, right? My hand probably wouldn't be able to go back. And that's not an exaggeration, right? You wouldn't be able to do it if you were that strong through here and didn't have the equal amount of muscle mass to bring that shoulder back. So we always need to be looking at what is the gas. If we are going to get the gas and the acceleration stronger, we also— and a lot of the time, the fastest way to strength is actually through strengthening the what? Antagonist, the brakes, right? The fastest way to strength is what? Antagonist. Strengthening the brakes, strengthening the opposite, the things that we don't like doing. Most people are good at bench press because they like bench pressing. Great, let's do rows. Let's do 2:1 ratio of rows, and just to be safe, let's do a 3:1 ratio of rows. We're going to do 3 rows for every 1 bench press to make sure we get our back strong so we can keep bench pressing and stay healthy. So these ratios, and when we get on the floor, These things become very, very evident when you start looking at the pre-exercise, the pre-movement things to activate, the pre-activations. And a lot of the pre-activations that we teach and we do, it's all about the, the back, it's all about thoracic extension, it's all about external rotation, so that when we get onto the bench press, we're what? Stable, right? Because that stability is going to be the brakes to our acceleration. And we start to put nominal data on as we look at these numbers. Okay, this all makes sense now. I know why I'm weak. I'm weak because I'm not training my brakes. Strength is very simple. It's not easy because you do need to navigate things like injuries, right? Because the stronger you get, the more you're getting closer to that fire, the more the weight can actually hurt you. If you're weak, you can get away with a lot of stuff, right? The weaker you are, the more stuff you can get away with. This stuff really starts to matter when you start getting strong, and you— unfortunately, if you haven't learned it and you just get strong, then you're really in a bad position when you're strong because that is when you'll get injured. So strength ratios and structural balance— you'll get fewer injuries, you remove the constraints longevity, and you address weak links. When you address weak links, you get the biggest improvements, right? This is something, this is a concept I put together to help you kind of navigate when you're thinking about programming. Who thinks that would be successful if on Monday, if we were to learn a language, right? Which group do you reckon would be more successful? If we're going to learn, let's say, French, if for 2 weeks all we did was learn French, Right? Or do you think if we had a month and Mondays we learnt French, Tuesdays we learnt Japanese, and Thursdays we learnt Italian, but we had longer time, which group do you think would be more successful learning a language? French, right? Why? Constantly practicing what? The one skill. The one skill. Right? The biggest thing— and by the way, I didn't tell you this when you signed up to the course— on Friday I'm going to assess your programs. I'll explain that in a bit. But the biggest mistake that I see trainers make when it comes to programming is they try and teach their clients French on Mondays, Italian on Tuesdays, Japanese on Thursdays, and whatever other language on Fridays. Is their programs don't have a direction of where they actually want to really go. And part of it is deciding and crafting, this is where we're going. We are focusing on rehab, we are focusing on strength, we are focusing on hypertrophy, we are focusing on fat loss and excluding the other variables. And if you get that, that's nice, but it was a gift free with bonus, with the program. It wasn't what we were training for. We were training for strength. This is what we were aiming at. And this is where I see the biggest thing. So if you're training for a bigger bench press, make the program about a bigger bench press. If you're training for a body comp, make the program about body comp. Don't try and mix too many things in. So if you look at this as a compass, this concept is the compass of programming. If our north star is strength, neuromuscular, and to the east is hypertrophy, to the south is endurance, and to the west is coordination, it's very, very— well, it's almost impossible to train effectively, let's say, as an Olympic weightlifter and run a marathon, right? So are we training for maximal— again, when I grab that bar, maximum neural efficiency— or am I training like a marathon runner for inefficiency? Because strength endurance is about repeating effort. Training like a weightlifter for power is about when you grab that bar, you're using as much neural activity as possible. If I'm a marathon runner, I don't want to be too neurally efficient because I'm actually going to be using more muscle than the other guy. This is where if you look at an Olympic athlete like a weightlifter, a powerlifter, you get them to do— they're going to be able to achieve what most people would achieve in 12 reps in 6 reps. Why? Because their nervous system is more adapted. They're using more of their neural pool, so when they train, they're getting a lot more stimulus. If you look at a guy like Dorian Yates, who most people know in the days of bodybuilding, he only had to do 6 reps because he was strong. He could do the job of 6 reps in 2, 3 sets that most guys would need to use however high volume because he was so strong. Because he was neurally efficient. Neurally inefficient, you need to do more sets, you need to make up that gap with volume, right? So when we look at this as well, hypertrophy and coordination don't always go hand in hand. If I'm an MMA fighter, the focus is on my skill. Yes, muscle is important, it's going to bulletproof my joint, but I'm not going to exclude and just train for MMA— train for bodybuilding at the expense of MMA. It's going to be coordination first and then building muscle structures around those joints, not the other way around. And a lot of people get these things ass backwards, right? So we want to set our intent of where we're going. And I've given some examples there, like neuromuscular is some classes of powerlifting. Again, depending on what weight division you're in, if you're in a lightweight division, then you don't want any muscle. Like, uh, Natale, the cleaner, I Am Your Cleaner, the gym cleaner, he, I dare say, is all neuromuscular because he's trying to stay at a light body weight. If you're in that heavier category, like over 110 kilos, well, then sure, you can do some kind of power building work. It's not going to matter as much. Then you've got your endurance. Endurance definitely can enter that realm of bodybuilding, and coordination is that endurance slash coordination. And neuromuscular weightlifting is kind of one of the— weightlifting is the one sport that I'd say is, is probably the true neuromuscular, like it is all about being as efficient as possible, and also high degree of coordination too. So let's talk about this training on a continuum. So these are just some, some quick 101s. Some of you, this might be review, some of this might be totally brand new, but I should say this at this point here is your neuromuscular adaptation is what's known as a relative strength phase, and the reps are going to be anywhere from 1 to 5 sets, anywhere from 5 to 12 sets, and your rest time is that 180 up to 5 minutes really, depending on how strong you are. So if you're going for one rep max, it's going to be 5 to 7 minutes, right? If it's, you're doing sets of 3s, you're probably looking at 3, 4, 5 minutes per set. Your time under tension, does everyone know what I mean when I say time under tension? A couple people don't know what I mean. So time under tension is, if I'm doing 5 reps and it's a 4-0-1-0 tempo, let's say every rep should take me 5 seconds. And if I'm doing 5 reps, how much should one set take me? Sorry? So if every rep takes me 5 seconds to perform and I'm doing 5 reps, it's 25 seconds. Now some of you going, why the fuck is this important? Am I right? Well, I'll tell you why the fuck it's important is because your time under tension creates the stimulus effect of what's going to happen in your body. So again, if I'm in a fat loss phase, Does everyone understand that lactic acid is actually very, very beneficial for a fat loss phase? So if I write a client 12 reps and they do 12 reps in 25 seconds, that's a very different effect than if you did my 12 reps in the 60 seconds that were allocated, right? So if you're doing a fat loss phase, I want it to be 60 seconds. Time under tension is very, very important to control with your clients. I remember I had Andrew Maloney here. I wrote 3 exercises on a piece of paper And he looked at me with a very cheeky look like, yeah, you've got to be like, you're joking, this is, this is too fucking easy, right? And we did it, and I can't remember, I think it was like slant board squats, push-ups, and something else, I think chin-ups. But I completely fucked him that session. Why? Because I controlled his tempos and I controlled his rest period. And his tempos were, it was long tempos, I think it was like 60 seconds of every exercise with, I think, 30 seconds rest between exercises. And then The lactic acid that he was feeling just stacked and stacked and stacked and stacked. And he was fucked at the end of it. He goes, "This is one of the hardest things I've done." And it's because I controlled the variables. So this isn't something to go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand that." No, no, no. Do you understand it? Because when I go on the gym floor and I see you guys train and I write 4-0-1-0, if you don't do 4-0-1-0, trust me, you'll hear about it from me or one of my guys, right? So tempos are important. We wanna make sure of that because this is gonna be your standard base. Now on that point as well, There are a lot of people on the internet— God bless the internet— that will say tempos aren't important. Having kind of walked around and tried training tempos, not training tempos, my stance on it is tempos are important because it standardizes the lift for your clients, it standardizes the lift for yourself, and it's something that can be measured day in, day out. It is the same lift. When you remove the tempo aspect of it, sure, you're going to be able to lift a bit more weight, but that would be kind of my, like, 10% of training that I would do. If I just wanted to be a meathead for a day or so. But my actual training is I'm training with tempos. Why? To keep myself safe, to keep my clients safe, because I never want to get under a— I never want to, like, as a trainer, I never want to unrack a bar and someone do like, oh, am I going to get the rep today? I don't want to be guessing. I want to make sure that that person's going to get the rep. So standardization of the lifts are very, very important. So tempos are important, but tempos are important for that other reason, is that it determines the neuromuscular effect. Or the muscular effect or the lactic acid effect that I'm going to have on the body. So I can change the tempo, I can give you 6 reps, but if I give you a 3-second pause, that's a very different training effect that's going to be now muscular rather than neuromuscular and stability. So tempos are important, and the energy system that we're using is anaerobic. Then we have functional hypertrophy, that's just 6 to 8 reps, 4 to 6 sets, 120, so 2 to 3 minutes rest in between that, and your time under tension is going to be anywhere from 20 to 50 seconds, and that's your anaerobic lactic energy system. This is a really great rep scheme, really great phase of training for just maintaining strength, getting generally strong. Functional hypertrophy is one of my favorite rep schemes. And then we have muscular adaptation. This is your hypertrophy. So traditionally it's 9 to 12. This isn't exactly right because there is actually research that shows that you can have hypertrophy from anywhere from 2 reps to 20 reps. And I'm going to talk about that tomorrow because there's one key factor we're going to go into, really look at every— all things hypertrophy tomorrow. So, but traditionally it's 9 to 12, 3 to 4 sets, 40 to 90 seconds rest between sets. It's a lot less. Again, even though you're doing more sets and more reps, rather, there's less rest. And your time under tension is 40 to 90 seconds. Again, a very different feeling than 20 seconds. And that's your anaerobic lactic. And strength endurance, 13 to 25 reps, 1 to 3 sets, rest 10 to 90 seconds. Your time under tension, 50 to 120 seconds. And that's your aerobic energy system. And we're going to be doing that system on day— what day we're doing that energy system on? 3. All right. And then when it comes to load, It's thereabouts, 85%, 79 to 84%, 70 to 80%, and then endurance 69% or thereabouts. And there's your rest. So fat loss, so conditioning rather, neuromuscular 4 to 7 minutes, muscular 100 seconds to 180. Conditioning, conditioning is sport specific, right? Unless we're training for fat loss, we can design it the way we want. But your conditioning is going to be based on sport-specific. So if I'm training a boxer and they've got 3-minute rounds and they've got 60-second rests, what do you think their energy system work might be? How might I design it? Would I design it with 5 minutes of work and 1 minute of rest? Would I design it with 1 minute of work, 1 minute of rest? Or would I design it with 3 minutes of work with 1 minute of rest? 3 minutes of work. Now, if they're an amateur boxer and their rounds are 2 minutes and they get to rest 60 seconds, would I design it for 3 minutes or 2 minutes? 2 minutes with 1 minute rest. Exactly right. So you're conditioning— you condition— if they're a soccer player, you want to know what position they're playing, because if they're a goalkeeper versus if they're a midfielder versus if, you know, whatever position they're playing, that's going to be indicative of how you want to train them from the conditioning point of view. So conditioning is one of those things where people go, oh yeah, I'm a sports conditioning coach, but I don't know the first thing about conditioning because they don't even understand the sport that they're conditioning people for. That's the first question is, what sport do you play? And then looking at what your heart rate does during that sport, because that's what we're going to design the conditioning based on. And this is where people get confused with fat loss. Fat loss is really a bad diet. You're never going to out-exercise a bad diet. Yeah, I hate to break that one to you guys, but, um, that's just not going to happen. So indicator and predictor lifts— it's a lift that indicates or predicts performance and strength in a specific athletic endeavor. So you pick the lift based on the sport, and obviously every sport is going to have its own requirements. So you can use it for competitors. So for example, the boxers I trained, we would use an incline barbell bench press as an indicator lift, meaning that if they start at 40 kilos starting, like I test them at the beginning of their training, and then we improve to 55 kilos, that's an indicator that their punching power has gone up. So all things considered equal, their skill, all things considered equal, as they move into the the ring, they should have a lot more punching power, which makes them a better athlete, which makes them a stronger athlete. Stronger athlete is a better athlete. So it's an indicator lift. If I'm training a soccer player, I could use a front squat, meaning if they start with me at 80 kilos on a front squat and they get to 120 kilos on a front squat, that would indicate that they're going to be more powerful when they get to the ball. They're going to be a stronger, therefore a better athlete. This is also a psychological edge that you could put in still into your athletes. So they feel like they're improving, that they have more confidence on the field. Now, you could use this for your competitors as well. So you have any competitor and they want to improve their shoulders, rather than just say, oh, you know, visually, let's chase this arbitrary kind of visual that can kind of be sometimes misleading, is what is an indicator if I want bigger shoulders? Let's use the military press. Am I improving on the military press? You can, you can definitely utilize performance lifts for your competitors as well, breaking down the muscle group that they want to work on and if they're getting stronger in those muscle groups. So the main lifts for performance are high bar squat, front squat, deadlift, flat barbell bench press, incline barbell bench press, chin-up, neutral usually, overhead press, and dip. So these, what, 8 lifts, going to be kind of your biggest base If you're improving across these 8 lifts, then you're in pretty good stead. As athletic, as athletic realms go, this is pretty tight. And credit to Stefan Kozulc from Kilo Strength in Florida. That's his Big 8. So programming blocks, set a realistic time frame, work on areas of dysfunction. I can't stress this enough. Again, most people give people things of what I enjoy. You want to look at dysfunction first. What is the dysfunction? Let's improve the dysfunction, because improving the dysfunction is the fastest way to improvement. General clients plan programming outcome with more time. Athletes, you plan with less time, because when you're training athletes, nothing ever goes according to plan. They'll get caught up and, yeah, I've got an Olympic tryout, I didn't realize I was going to make the team, or yeah, I've got to go to Spain and fight this guy, I just got a call from my sponsor, or Whoever knows, like athletes, it's always varied on what's going to happen. You don't know exactly what's going to— you get last-minute calls all the time. So, but general clients, you can plan things very slowly and progressively and it doesn't have to be overwhelming at all. So the average phase for programming blocks is 3 to 6 weeks or 3 to 6 cycles depending on how fast the cycle gets through. So the average is going to be for average clients 4 weeks. They're going to do the same program 4 times through. For the beginner, they— a beginner can do the same program for a lot longer. So if I have a pure beginner, I could probably take a beginner on that same phase 6 phases through, because if they're learning the movements, they need to get accustomed to learning the movements. It's not going to be about output. For someone who's really advanced, it's going to be 3 weeks, right? So the more advanced you become, the faster you can train— change that, uh, and not the faster you can change the exercises. Go all in on the outcome. I gave the example before about language. For learning a language, we're not trying to learn 3 languages at the same time, we're trying to learn one language. Mixed programs give mixed results. And always, always, always write the program backwards from the outcome that you want to achieve. I know this sounds really, really simple, but it's often overlooked by so many people. So let's say, for example, I have someone who comes to see me and they want to compete next year. Well, I'm going to plan, I know what I'm going to give them before the comp. I'm going to give them high reps, they're going to be in a calorie deficit, they might be doing cardio. I'm going to be trying to get them as lean as possible. Then I'm planning back all this way. Where are they now? Where do I need to get them? How much time do I have? I've got to get 10 kilos of body fat off them? Yeah, no problem. I'm going to do a recomp phase, I'm going to get them strong phase 1, then I'm starting to plan this phase out. Most people don't factor that in. They go, okay, they want to compete, let's start with competing phase 1 and get them really lean now. Well, I don't need you lean now. I need you to get strong, put some muscle on you, and then start to bring your calories down over time. I don't need to do that right now. So always write the program, do an analysis of the gap, write the program backwards from where they are, because that tells you the timeline that they're at. And again, A telltale sign that you have an incompetent coach, and hopefully you're not an incompetent coach, but a telltale sign they're an incompetent coach is you're burning fat all year round. That's not a goal. Fat loss, burning fat loss from an athletic standard is not a goal. That's an outcome, right? The goal is strength, improve movements, improve muscle mass, improvements in areas. Fat loss is a byproduct. So linear periodization, just some quick references, refers to a system developed in the 1950s and '60s by the Soviet Union whereby training volume progressively increased over time and training intensity progressively increased over time. These are just systems to understand when we're talking about training blocks. There's also undulating periodization, which is you can have daily undulating periodization where I don't really like that system as much. But you can undulate again volume-based. This is more for— I use daily undulating periodization for more kind of a power building type of phase. If someone's quite strong, I wouldn't use it for general population clients. But if someone was, let's say, kind of on the tail end of a comp and we needed to manage them more closely, then daily undulating period when they're coming in with high levels of fatigue, that's when I think it is appropriate. Undulating means to move up and down, and it can be daily, monthly, weekly. And again, it's to manage fatigue. And accumulation fatigue. That's where I would use it. If I've got a general population client, they don't deserve it, right? Frankly, they don't deserve it because they're not, they're not probably training enough, right? They're probably training 3 or 4 days a week. But I mean, if they're training 4 days a week, maybe, but what level of intensity? If I've got a competitor, on the other hand, who puts in a lot of work, and again, we spoke before about a powerlifting comp, if I'm getting ready, getting really strong, then daily undulating can, can make sense. But it's going to be more reactive in some sense, based on how someone feels. It's not necessarily going to be set, right? But it's another system. So I think I just want to double-check. Cool. So review. So to put kind of a summary or review on this, right, in the internship we talk about screening. We talk in depth about screening. We're not going to do screening here. Screening— if you want our screening and assessment stuff, that's at the internship. That's our 2-day course. But you identify client problems through screening. I've got a whole bunch of YouTube videos on that as well. So screening— you screen, identify, you select the exercises to correct the issues, and you program to build muscle and strength. 80% of the time, diet to lose fat, and you can't exercise a bad diet. So you're not programming for fat loss. Traditionally, this might look familiar for some of you. I'm looking at you because it certainly looks familiar. Traditionally, programming cycles are taught as accumulation, intensification, accumulation, intensification, accumulation, intensification. It's basically a fancy word to say accumulation is you do a phase of high volume with a phase of high intensity with a phase of high volume with a phase of high intensity with a— so every 4 weeks you're shifting from accumulation to intense. I don't like that system as much because I'll tell you, for most general population clients, you need a phase here that is skill acquisition. And skill acquisition is— and also when I say skill acquisition, it's also about teaching people stability. Again, when we go get into this, you'll, you'll see what I mean. Teaching people how to stay stable, and that for a general population clients can take 4 weeks, it can take 8 weeks, it can take 12 weeks. But even for like, say, athletes as well, you need to have a skill acquisition phase. The progression loads that I like rather than, I mean, accumulation intensification is using the 8 to 12% rule, which means that from phase 1 to phase 2, instead of accumulation intensification, we're increasing loads by 8 to 12%. So it means the reps are going to come down, but increasing intensity 8 to 12% when we move into accumulation phase. Or we increase it by 2, we add 2 reps if we're moving to accumulation, or we subtract 2 reps if we're moving into intensification. So using reps or using intensities can be another good way to progress load and volume. So here's an example of a beginner trainee, accumulation 1, they're doing 10 to 12 reps, accumulation, then they move into their second phase, so accumulation 1, intensification 1, they're doing 5 sets of 6 to 8. Accumulation 2, so their third program, they're doing 5 sets of 8 to 10 reps. And then Accumulation 2, which is their fourth program, they're doing 6 sets of 4 to 6 reps. So that's just an example of how you might lay this out. This would be indicative of 4 phases. For an advanced athlete, we've got here 5 sets of a relative strength, so 4 to 6 reps, then moving into Intensification 1, clusters, so they're doing 5 reps but in clusters, then moving them back into accumulation, which they're doing 5-5-3-3, and then moving them back into intensification, which is 3-2-1-3-2-1. So you can see how we're using— in that one, we're using the rule of +2 -2 for moving from accumulation to intensification. Again, accumulation is higher volume, intensification is higher intensity. You should be thinking about these when you're stacking programs on top of each other. Is this an accumulation phase? Is this an intensification phase? So in programming, you need enough sameness so you can measure improvement, but not so much that the body stagnates. And this we'll talk about later, but these I wanted to include here. I'm not going to talk all about these now, but these are some rep schemes that I wanted to include in your, in your take-home packs. Rep schemes and systems that we'll frequently use in relative strength and in functional hypertrophy, which is what we're talking about today. Primarily the function of the relative strength one is what we're looking at, right? So these are from ascending, descending cluster, 5x5, wave loading, pyramid, 1 to 6 system, and different ways that we accumulate ascend and descending rep structures that we'll use in terms of that relative strength. So these are just systems that kind of like, uh, our go-to systems that we'll talk about them. Uh, in coaching phases, I think when we're coaching a phase, you want to think of it like this: week 1, you underachieve. Week 2, you achieve. Week 3, you overachieve— that's when you really push. And week 4, depending on the athlete or the client, you deload. Most of your clients don't deserve a deload, right? They don't train hard enough. I just say that generally, right? If you've got a really— someone to train— if you guys train hard you probably do deserve a deload. But that's one thing I always add in there. All right, practice quality movements. Let me lay out while we wrap up the 7 mistakes. I'm going to tell you— so I'm going to summarize this presentation by telling you what not to do, right? So mistakes that people make when building strength is 1, they They don't periodize. They don't have a plan. So not periodizing, what that means is they don't have an outcome. They don't plan backwards from where the client is. They don't think about the dysfunctions and things that need to get strong. They just focus on the thing that they want to get strong and don't think about the antagonist and protagonist muscle groups and skill acquisition phase. Two, they rely on fixed training systems. A fixed training system is they go from a 5x5 to a Hepburn method to cluster sets to wave loading, to a different scheme of wave loading, and they don't actually have any structure of piecing these things together of accumulation intensification or plus and two minus reps, or they're not using load variation in a very sophisticated way. They're just using— they're stacking systems on top of each other and hoping for the best. Mistake 2 is that not performing exercises correctly. They wash over the details of how to set up. Every set, every rep should look the same, minus speed. That should be the only difference. Mistake number 4 is they rush movement competency and they progress too fast. They think near enough is good enough. No, you want your training to reflect mastery. You want every movement to really get into that level where it's consistently the same each time. Mistake number 5 is there's no rationale behind the programming. If you ask them, if I asked you, I want you to think about this now, if you write a program for your client and I asked you, Hey, why'd you write that? Why'd you do this? Why'd you give them this exercise? There should be rationale behind everything that you write on that piece of paper for that client. If there's not a rationale there, then you've got to question, why am I giving them— why am I wasting this segment of time for that? Mistake number 6, lack of rapport with the client, as in you give them all the right things, but the client doesn't believe, like, or trust you. Therefore, the program isn't really hitting the way it should. Mistake number 7 is not understanding the purpose of screening. People think screening is a checkbox system where you just tick a bunch of boxes and say, yeah, I screen the client. No, screening is your data of how to inform and write the program. Screening is paramount to writing programs because it informs the starting point of where you need to be. So that wraps up our first presentation of our 3 days on strength. Thanks for listening to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast and watching the full presentation. If you've enjoyed this, remember to hit subscribe and leave us a comment wherever you're listening to this through, or a review, would be forever grateful. Till next week, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.