Ep5: Fitness Alchemy: The Secret Recipe for Fat Loss and Muscle Gain with Aaron Wright

What's going on, everyone? Matt here for another awesome episode. This is our first episode that I'm going to be interviewing another guest. So super, super excited. So this is the pt, Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle Show. I'm your host, Matt Dart. I'm here with Aaron today. He's actually one of my clients that I mentor in the industry. So I'll get him to share a little bit about his story and, you know, what he's up to. But we're going to dive into, you know, some of his skills, some of the things that he's passionate about that you guys can relate back to your business and ultimately help you, you know, serve your clients and get your clients awesome results. So, Aaron, how are you today, my friend?

Yeah, I'm doing well. Just finished training not too long ago, so nice upper body session. So, yeah, that's always, it's always fun.

Nice, mate. And if you guys aren't, I'll. I'll get Aaron to, you know, tell us where to follow him because his workouts are pretty, pretty advanced from the stuff that I do anyway. So I always learn a few things from Aaron, watching what he does and his clients as well. So remind me at the end to get your socials off you at the end. But yeah, give us a bit of that insight, you know, see where you train, which club are you at and give us a bit of a backstory in terms of, you know, why you got into the industry.

Yeah. So run my business out of Anytime Fitness in Stafford, located in Brisbane, and I've been part of a few gyms, but I've mainly stuck with Anytime Fitness for, like, since I started training, really. Um, so, like, yeah, a long time. So I pretty much just do my training there normally in between clients or at the end or something because it's quite convenient. But yeah, I like it.

Nice, mate. What's. I know you, obviously you're always studying to improve yourself in terms of knowledge of exercises. I know you're researching about supplement brands and stuff like that at the moment as well, but what type of training do you do?

Yeah, so I guess going back to the history, I started out just trying to get big and jacked, which I don't know what inspires most people, but for me it was like cartoons and stuff and wrestling, just like, you know, that old, like the WWE and stuff as a kid and like. Yeah, yeah, and Dragon Ball Z and stuff. Just used to like, see them and I was like, I want to look like that. So I started training to get, you know, to get bigger. So I guess my style was more like hypertrophy, like muscle building, bodybuilding style. And then a few people that I found in the industry kind of really pushed that like, getting stronger was the best way to grow. So some of their programs was kind of centered around like progressive overload and, you know, adding weight and stuff. And. Yeah, so that kind of got me. I was kind of always trying to like, push the weight up anyway, but I guess that just made it stuck.

Yeah.

And yeah, so essentially I did that and I was just trying to always get stronger. And then I noticed I was like, you know, quite strong compared to other people and stuff. And it eventually that eventuated into powerlifting. So I was like, well, how do I compare my strength with other people? You know, rather than just like eyeing people off in the gym or something. So, yeah, so eventually that became powerlifting and I probably done like five competitions now. But I always love just getting. Getting bigger. So my training at the moment slack or for the last few years has kind of been what you call power building. So like combining strength or even specific strength with squat bench and deadlift as well as, you know, stuff that's going to promote more growth because if you just do kind of strictly squat bench and deadlift and specifically powerlifting training, it's, you're going to run into like, opportunity cost of where you could build more muscle. So it's kind of where you find this like, healthy mix of progressing in the big three, but also driving, you know, a lot of hypertree as well.

Yeah, yeah, I'll just, I'll dive into that a little bit because, you know, I like my type of training that I do is like, I'll do, I'll do like the, you know, typical, the bench, squats, deadlifts and stuff. But I probably am in that boat where I'm missing opportunities for the other muscle groups to kind of build as well. So I'm curious because a lot of, a lot of pts that listen to this, you know, probably finishing their course, been in the industry for, you know, a little while, but, you know, certainly probably not, you know, 10, 15 years or anything like that. So how would you incorporate that into like, obviously you work with some beginners, some intermediate people and some advanced people as well. So how do you have that conversation with someone that's quite new to the gym?

Yeah, so something you might graduate to might start off just with like the movement patterns. You might even start people off with like machines, but like a horizontal press, so like a, a cable chest press or Something before you start them on a bench press even. And then when they get like. And then you might graduate to like a dumbbell press or a barbell press or something like that. But, like, a good example is you can use the hack squat or the V squat to kind of teach the squat pattern, because you can't really stuff that up. It's just goes up and down. They don't have to think a whole lot, but people might think, oh, the machine's doing the work for you. But no, people can learn a lot from that. And they can kind of build the prerequisites to then get under a bar quite quickly. So you might only need to do a few weeks at like a machine based and just follow those movement patterns, whether it's like a hinge squat press. And then you can kind of get them to a bar or something or get them to dumbbells, depending on what you think's best and what they want to do. Like, I don't force people into, like, spot, bench, and deadlift, even though a lot of my training revolves around that. I might just have them do a variation of those. So I think, like, for instance, I think a Romanian deadlift is more specific to building a physique than a deadlift, like a conventional deadlift. So I might have a lot of people not do any conventional deadlifts and just do Romanian deadlifts instead, Particularly those that are just chasing, like, aesthetic, you know, like a look. But if a client, you know, specifically is like, you know, I want to get my bench press up, or I love bench pressing, I love deadlifting, then I certainly won't take that away.

Yeah, not gonna lie, I don't have too many people saying they love deadlifting.

Yeah, well, you'd be. You'd be surprised. But yeah, I've definitely gotten a few.

For those who don't know Aaron, Aaron has the lowest average client clientele I've ever seen.

He's average age.

Average age.

Yeah.

Whereas my. My clientele stems anywhere from 17 to. I just actually, I got someone sign up the other day that's 83 years old.

Nice.

And here, here is Aaron training mid 20s for pretty much everyone.

So, yeah, low, low 20s even.

It's interesting. It's interesting how different demographics because we're only like your gym, and my gym's only 20 minutes apart, but completely different demographic. Interesting. But I, I also wanted to dive in because, like, obviously you do a lot of strength training, but I would imagine. And I wanted to bring up fat loss in terms of, you Know, doing strength training to achieve fat loss. I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about that because, you know, most of the general population want to, you know, lose fat or lose weight, which essentially is losing fat.

Yeah.

How would you. How would you train someone to lose fat but also, you know, have the benefits of gaining muscle as well?

Yeah, great question. So that's where you can be very specific to your exercise selection. So a good example might be like, you got like a concentration kill, like, you know, like elbow tucked to your knee, one arm at a time. Just. What's another example? Oh, yeah, that's. That's a pretty good example. You got that versus, like, I know if you've seen someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger's, like, old training videos and stuff, but, like, he used to love doing heavy barbell cheat curls where he would just load up a heavy bar, like heavy bar, slap a bunch of weight on it and just do these. Just do these. Yeah. Kind of where you add a bit more of a swing and get a bit of hips going and what you'd call, like, body English. Bring like some body English into the mix and just like, heave ho this gigantic weight. I think it would, like, often start strict and then kind of as these fatigues change, add a bit more like, body English to it. So comparing, say like a set like that to like a concentration pill or something is like night and day difference. Like one you've got, like, you know, you can pretty much do the concentration curl in like a parasympathetic state. So, like, you're not really deviating from like, your rest and digest, but you could draw the line at about 100 beats a minute between, like, where you're going between parasympathetic and sympathetic in terms of like, rest and digest versus like fight or flight. So you're not really deviating much past parasympathetic just by doing some concentration curls and some other, like, really isolated movements. But if you're doing heavy cheek curls, you're getting quite sympathetic. So, yeah, I might program something like that. I don't treat as much as Arnold does. I'll kind of cue my clients to like, go a little bit like a kettlebell swing where they. They might hinge a bit of the hips, but they just stand tall. They don't like, bend back.

Yeah.

And. And what I might. And then I'll have them at the start actually go strict. Keep it nice, strict form. And as they fatigue, we can kind of change the mechanics of it to bring some body English into It and then start like swinging in a bit. As long as I don't lean back too much. And then you'll get this like. Yeah, night and day difference. You got like this high ventilatory state. Blood pressure's up, heart rates up, oxygen's down. Very different environment you're creating. And you can, you know, you can add specific rest times to that. Like maybe you're doing 60 seconds, 90 seconds. You can even like measure heart rate. And you don't let it get too low before you commence your next set. Yeah, with, with like squats, you might pick a movement pattern where like you have no rest at lockout. So you're kind of doing like, you could also call them piston squats. So like, you don't really stop at the top at all. You kind of like. Yeah, yeah. So you can do those. You might describe like four sets of eight or four sets of ten with like one minute rest. And you'll notice like. Yes, exactly.

Yeah, Right.

So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a mixture of like exercise selection. So stuff that's going to kind of promote more sympathetic activity mixed with like, you might chuck a specific, like, constraint to it. Like no rest at lockout or something. Yeah, so that. And do a specific rest time or make a superset or you might do some giant sets or even do a circuit type stuff.

Yeah, just, just for the people that don't know what that is. What's a giant set?

Giant sets where like you have like three different exercises. Well, they could even be three of three exercises that are different, but might even target like the same muscle group in just different, like say, planes.

Yeah. So instead of a superset being just two exercises, a giant set might be three or four.

Yeah, yeah. And one that's pretty common that I might do, like start a session is like you can just use body weight. Body weight's like, actually a bit underrated. Like, you might set up a circuit with like some abs, maybe some like ab wheel rollouts, into some push ups, into some inverted like ring rows or something. And just like do those three, like, do those three rest 40 seconds, do another round. And you're just using your body weight. But you'll generate like a lot of. Yeah, generate like high heart rates, get people out of breath, kind of getting them into the right energy system. Then to start the session. Yeah, it's kind of like some say metcon, like metabolic conditioning to start and then, then you can push your strength stuff for the rest of the session. But in like, A metcon kind of way. Like us talking about the squats and the cheat girls and stuff.

So would you do that? Would you ever do strength first and then finish on that type of stuff or does it matter?

Doesn't matter so much. I think, I think what you want though is like people are going to be gassed from the training that they're just going to like really sandbag. They're like metcon at the end. It's going to be like, nah, you, you barely get a push out, push up out of them, you know what I mean? Whereas like a lot of that stuff, can we call like movement trap, like a lot of stuff. The exercises you can make specific to the work that's to come and it can then potentiate the session. So like you might be doing like a goblet squad or something which is going to like dislike goblet squats, you know what I mean? But enough to kind of get the heart rate up and that's going to potentiate the squat, the main squat pattern. That's to come. Just getting you in the right pattern. You know, kettlebell swings will be good for like your rate of force development. So that's going to help with like, say if you've got ideals and stuff like that in the session, it's going to help with that hinge pattern and just creating force through the hips and hamstrings. So I like it at the start just to like get you in the right energy system, get you kind of moving in patterns that you're going to be using thereafter and you'll find that like your sessions aren't really, your strength isn't really inhibited by that at all.

Yeah, and like, let's just say.

You.

Know, for the average person that wants to achieve fat loss, is that, are those type of sessions you do on a regular basis or are they just a couple of times a week that you would do that and then you would do the other ones just as strength or, or just as kind?

Yeah, I try, I try and do that. Like most sessions, yeah, I'll, I'll kind of start with some like met on stuff and yeah, I'll drive a fair bit of that to start and then. Yeah, and then I'll just go into some like, yeah, three sets of 10 or something, four sets of eight on like a heavier, heavier lift. You can also do things like emom, like every minute on the minute. Oh yeah, stuff and you can kind of do those. Like, you can kind of go quite heavy with those and like drive the Volume up. So you might go like six sets of three, one minute rest kind of thing. So like the weight's fairly heavy. Even though the, even though the reps is so low you can, you can driving a lot of fat loss just through that like high ventilatory state because you know you're getting under the bar, you're pumping out three heavy reps, you're only resting a minute going back, you know you have to like stay like fairly in like a fairly like excitated state because you know like, oh, this weight's fairly heavy, like.

Yeah.

So you kind of got to stay sympathetic and mentally prepared to just do that. So that's another way you can kind of do a lower version and push even heavier weight but in a fat loss kind of environment. Yeah.

What about AM wraps?

Yeah, MRAP's cool.

Same same, same but different to a degree.

Same, same but different, yeah. Oh it depends like because they're, because you're pushing so close to failure. Like it's some, it's often worth doing that on like safer movements. So like machines or like isolation like tricep extension. Quite safe. Whereas amraps on a bench or on a squat tend to be a bit on barbell bench and squat tend to be a bit iffy. Yeah. As long as someone knows, knows not to go quite to failure. But yeah, it can be a bit scary or say a squat doing an amrap. Yeah, yeah, they're good.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, could be pretty full on if you're doing pretty heavy squats on a, on an amrap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jesus.

Yeah, you kind of want to, want to spot her or want to set up some safety pins.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. What about, so with, what about people that just for the kind of the beginners out there, what if someone just has the impression that they just need to do cardio to achieve fat loss? How do you get, how do you get them like interested in lifting weights or like typical like, like male, female, someone's brand new to a gym, they're a bit anxious about lifting weights.

Yeah.

How do you get them to like be somewhat interested in doing that?

Kind of like the sweat is fat crying people. Yeah. Well, so one would be that like if you're, if you're doing cardio, this is kind of how I've explained it to people. Like if you're just doing cardio your body's going to be fairly non biased when it comes to where it's going to be getting that like energy from in terms of like tissue Is it going to be like adipose tissue, like fat, or is it going to be like muscle tissue? If you're just doing cardio, there's no real signal, there's no real guidance. Think of it like a, you know, like a lighthouse. A lighthouse, like guiding the ship. There's no, there's no guide. So your body will kind of be like. Yeah. Nonspecific. And you, you know, if that's your way to lose weight and lose fat, you're going to get a decent amount of muscle come with that. Because when most people say they want to lose weight, they just mean they want to lose fat. Y. So by doing resistance training concurrently, or instead of whichever one you got that signal, you got many signals actually that the body pickup picks up on to hold on to that. Because, you know, muscle is a, like an adaptation, a survival adaptation. Actually not many people think of it that way, but essentially it's. You've stressed the body and it's built itself back in order to survive better moving forward. So it will have more signals just to hold on to that muscle and be more likely, kind of create the opportunity, let's say, to pull that energy from fat stores. So you're kind of shifting the bias of where, you know, where you're going to make up that deficit of energy from is. Is like the best way I can kind of say it.

So in, in summary, then, there's obviously a place for cardio, but not necessarily required.

Yeah, yeah. Cardio can even like help you build muscle despite being. Just by being fitter.

Yeah, true.

Oh, did you say how? Yeah, yeah. Essentially like your ability to like, recover, your ability to handle more volume, your ability to kind of like your mitochondrial efficiency. So how. Well your mitochondria can like work with oxygen to. To produce energy to then build muscle with. So it's kind of like a lot of indirect ways to just from like being like hemodynamics, like the way you can just move blood and blood flow. Yes. Heaps of different ways in which just being healthier and having a good kind of cardiovascular capacity can set you up or set a good stage for you to build muscle and get stronger. So I wouldn't sleep on some, some cardiovascular fitness even if you just train that way, kind of like I mentioned earlier.

Yeah.

And another thing to touch on would be that when you build muscle, muscle has like an energetic demand that fat does not have, I think muscles at least four times or so, if not more energetic demand than fat. Fat's like next to zero. But yeah. So the more muscle you have, the more energy, calories you require. And when you move, there's this more contraction, there's more muscle, there's more fibers to contract for every movement you do. So you're kind of setting yourself up for just a higher metabolism and energy expenditure by growing the muscle.

Yeah. So in that case, just to touch on nutrition wise. So generally to achieve fat loss, do you generally need to eat more food if you're doing strength training?

No, not necessarily. You just kind of like eating more food will always like, you know, it doesn't hurt for strength training, but there's always like a point of diminishing returns where like, just like, ah, that was like excess. You know, you might not know it's excess, but your body will and they'll just get fatter as a result. So it's like, it's like that point where like that, that extra food is not making you any stronger than if you were eating less kind of thing. And if you compete in powerlifting, your weight is put into the algorithm. So one of the metrics used is called dots and it's essentially how much you're lifting and your body weight. So if you drive your body weight up really high, that could negatively impact your score, your dots.

What's the relevance for that score? What does that tell you?

Oh, that's, that's how you determine the winners in powerlifting. So like of the weight class. And if there's no weight classes, you might just use dots for everyone. So whoever has the highest dots wins. So like. Yeah, so that's where it might be negative. If you, if you're looking at putting a number on strength because you, if you haven't gotten strong enough proportionally to that extra weight you've put on from all that extra food, then your score might actually go down even if you got stronger just because if your weight's gone so much higher.

Yeah, right, interesting.

So, so yeah, it kind of like a good way to look at it is how is your body responding to X amount of food? How is your strength responding to X amount of food? And you probably had run a few metrics for that certificate. You'd look at your scale weight, you'd look at the mirror, you might do some measurements with tape, stuff like that. You can, you know, jump on a jump on what they call it 363-60s body scanners and you know, measure your body fat percentage because, you know, we know that scale weight by itself isn't, isn't to be all. End all.

Yeah, just I Just want to touch on that because a lot of, like, obviously I talk to a lot of pts, but a lot of them don't track any of these metrics. They don't do measurements. Like, they'll. They might do the scale weight, but as you said, it's. If you're just comparing the scale weight, there's a lot of variables that affect that. So what stuff do you track for your clients in terms of, like, measurements? Do you do any fitness testing? Do you obviously. Or how often would you, like even. How often would you review progress before you make any changes?

Yeah, so when it comes to body composition and like, say fat loss or somebody trying to gain weight, I think the weekly is pretty good. You could definitely do it like every fortnight, but, you know, that's just a. There's a lot of food in between, even a week.

Yeah.

And the body can kind of can make some, some decent changes in a week too. So I, I like to look about every week and yeah, I'm looking for a couple of things. So definitely the mirror. So like, but like, you know, photos. So I took photos for any visual changes, but also comparing the visual changes to what the scale say. So has the scale gone up, but do they look leaner? That's, you know, that's definitely happened many times. And then. Yeah. So one, you can make one redundant or you can use that to like, like infer some muscle gain. It can be like, has the scale stayed the same but have they dropped some centimeters on their waist?

Yeah.

And then you can be like, oh, that's, that's a recomp going on. You know, that's fat loss occurring with muscle gain occurring and make some good conclusions there. So definitely good to run a couple of measurements concurrently because if you're just going off scale weight. Yeah, it's, it's quite flawed. And if you're just going off pitches can also be a bit flawed. So I like to have a few going.

Yeah, well, that, that makes sense because as you said, like, it's happened to me plenty of times before where you, you look a lot leaner, but you've gone up in weight as well, so.

Particularly in beginners. Yeah. People, people new training, particularly say people that are returning to training as well, have a lot of muscle memory there. They're, they're kind of prime candidates where they can kind of, you know, lose a lot of fat, build a lot of muscle and have all sorts of recomp going on.

Yeah. I'm curious if you can, if you, if you're suggesting or you can, you know, review metrics like every week. How would, or how would you suggest doing that? I know, obviously I know your process already but can you, can you share how you would do that? Whether it's check in form or whether have to send photos or whatever it is. Can you?

Yes. So you might just like have a table, say you could use, you could use an app or you could just use like Excel or Google Sheets. I use Google Sheets because I like having just like a live document. You could just have like the seven days and then you can get them to record their weight throughout those days. Doesn't have to be seven. I like kind of a minimum of three. You know, weight can fluctuate a lot based on stress and hydration and all sorts of stuff. So if you're just weighing yourself once a week, also quite flawed and you know, all my kind of nutritional clients see how flawed it can be once they start doing that and have a look. But yeah, you might have like seven days laid out and then you might be get them to weigh themselves three times, three to seven times a week and then you just have that averaged out and then you can kind of look at like rather than maybe looking week to week, you look at the average of the week versus the average of the next week and then, and then you might have another kind of thing next to it which is just once a week, say on the check in day, like a waist measurement and then. Yeah, and then get them to send some photos and maybe even ask for this objective. Do you feel. Lena, you know, have you been noticing anything? How are your clothes fitting? So it could be like a subjective element to that where they might just put that in like a comment section and then you can always set up like a graph that just there just is attached to those inputs on say a sheet. So you can just have a graph that will start, that will just populate like the average weight or even the, or even the weight every time it's done. And the waist measurement you can kind of like over time. Yeah. Have that graph displayed for a better visual.

Yeah, sounds like you're a bit of a wizard on Google Sheets, mate.

Yeah, yeah. Spend a lot of time on Google Sheets.

Yeah.

I, you know, actually recently a friend showed me a video where there was a like an Excel championship went down. It's kind of like, it's kind of like the E Games, but it was like Excel and there was like all these like world class participants and I think that's a bit of an upset. I think this guy, like a bit of an underdog in there. He took it out or something. But yeah, there's. That cracked me up.

How would you even do that? They have to solve certain formula.

Yeah. I dare say there'd be like questions about like, here's a scenario and they've got to like, you know, we have X. X client is seeking, you know, this figure. Here are the components or something.

Yeah.

And they've just got to get. Come up. Who probably come up with someone that gets the correct information. But also they say there's a time component to it. So that's my guess. I haven't, I haven't watched. Watched it unfold too much on it. But yeah, wild.

Just, just going back to the, you know, strength training for fat loss. Do you, do you feel with like retention? Like, one of my other episodes was talking about retention and I talked about forecasting results, like, consistently. So like, one of the things that I recommend is generally every four weeks to do a reassessment of where they're at and then reforecast goals. Do you feel like. Because I think a lot of like newer pts will kind of, they won't, they won't have the confidence to have control to say, hey, cool, we're going to do this. Whereas they might kind of be like, oh, well, let's just try this and try this. What would, what do you think the benefits are of, you know, perhaps combining strength plus cardio or even just strength in terms of overall retention? Because obviously you would have, you can therefore have like strength goals, which is obviously going to take a longer time than weight, weight loss or fat loss, for example. Do you think it makes a big difference in terms of retention if you're focusing on those areas?

Yeah, I think if you, if you can just provide value, but more importantly, if the client can perceive value for the key, they're more likely to have better attention from that. So it's, you know, if you're just being like, all right, four sets of 12 and then jump on the StairMaster and that's as far as you go. You know, you like to create a staleness and some boredom and might lose the client's perception of or perceived like, value. So like, but if you, you could jazz that right up, you know, you could be like this week's four sets of 12 and that's going to set you up for this or something. Or that's a, that's a great amount of reps for this exercise, for this movement because of what it's supersetted with or because of the rest time associated. You can just explain a little bit about your personal intent behind what you're getting them to do. You know, whether that's the exercise selection, the, the sequence that it's in, why you want them on the StairMaster for X amount of minutes or X amount of heart rate or whatever. So I think, I think explaining things, explaining the why will create better adherence for one, because they know, they know why they're doing something, they're more likely to do it particularly if like in their solo sessions. And. Yeah, and it'll just have more confidence in you because. And they'll feel a bit more empowered as to why they're doing stuff. More trust, more, more perceived value in what you're offering. Yeah, and, and it's definitely good to check in every so often and do like a reforecast and stuff. Like, you know, I have a form and it's kind of like how happy are you with the kind of structure of the training and the program and stuff. And, and then like how well does this training do? You find this training reflects your goals and so you could do that and they might put it as a two out of five or something because you just haven't explained that what they, what you have them doing is great fat loss. So they might think, they might have this idea that it's crappy based on a magazine they read or something. So because you haven't explained anything, but at least that forms a good, a good chance to, then you can have that conversation. But if you're like, you know, telling them your intent and stuff, like during the sessions, you'll find that you'll kind of always get fives and all they'll really offer is, or you can really do in terms of changing the direction is when there's kind of a, when you tick off boxes, tick off goals and have new goals.

Yeah, that's a really good point because I have that conversation a lot with a lot of people in terms of they need to understand why they're doing something because otherwise there's no, you know, there's no buy in, as you said, there's no adherence to what they're doing. So of course they're going to, you know, give up and quit or if, if it gets a bit too boring and you know, they're, they're not seeing the perceived value, of course they're going to get up and leave. So my question to that is how often, so how often would you, I know you like you would review things you know, every now and then, like possibly per week or even per month. But in terms of the stuff that they do on their own, some pts have differing, differing opinions on this. Some trainers like to have like the same exercises for like a whole, I don't know, 12 week period. So they can track that performance of those exercises. Whereas some trainers, they might change the exercises, you know, every week, possibly or even every couple of weeks so there's more variety. Do you, do you think that makes much of a difference and if so, why?

Yeah, great question. So in terms of like, I guess you can get into kind of like the progressive overload there. So like a lot of people get very like one mind, like you know, dogmatic even about progressive overload. Like the only ways to add weight to the bar. There's so many ways to progressively overload. We can shorten rest, you can add reps, you can add sets, you can add a tempo, you can add pauses, lots of different things. So I think like having the same exercise just allows it to be easier to track progressive overload because you're not really changing anything. I think, I think there's no harm in either way. I think kind of the, the client should have some input on that as well as yourself. Like, you know, so it's giving somebody cranky elbows. You know, let's find a substitute. If, if someone just hates an exercise, like find a substitute, you don't have to do it for 12 weeks just so you can say that you progressively overload that exercise. Yeah, but, yeah, but like if there's no problems with it, you'd probably should put, you might like, you could definitely run that just for ages, particularly if it's a great exercise for that muscle group. So you could kind of run that really year round. It's no harm to run an exercise year round even. But yeah, you might change it for just to give some clients some variety. Get into a bit of a different movement plan. There's a thing, there's like an adaption. You can get caught like penation angle where kind of like your tendons will kind of like adapt. They'll kind of like stiffen and even like change position and stuff a little bit to make it, to make a certain movement pattern more efficient. So that's why like another. Which kind of puts the spanner in the works of progressive overload. It's like, you know, that doesn't mean you've got built more muscle. You might have got more neurologically adept at that pattern. You might have got some penation angled adaptations which allow you to squat easier, you know what I mean? And nothing to do with building muscle. So another reason you might change an exercise is just to be in like, kind of a different movement pattern for the same muscle group, but just so you're not getting those. Those. Yeah, those adaptations you kind of like, you know, people think about shocking the muscle, it's not really shocking the muscle. It's just kind of providing a slight different stimulus. If you've. Yeah. Run into some. Some. A lot of adaptations.

Well said. Well said.

Yeah. So I don't mind doing it for the sake of that. Then you can just explain that intent to the client.

Yeah. Again, if. If people know why they're doing certain things and kind of where they're at, then there's not a whole lot of reasons why they would need to leave the service.

Changing a tricep push down to a overhead rope extension, for example, you know, working the muscle in different lengths and same. Same muscle, you know, all the same truck, small tricep, but it's different planes of motions and stuff. Different positions.

Yeah, love it. Sounds good, mate. So if anyone wants to learn off you, because I know a few pts actually use your service to learn more as well. So if you want to hit Aaron up, where can they find you on the socials, my friend?

Yeah, so I'm under Gorgonite performance. So for anyone that's seen the movie Small Soldiers, you know where the name's inspired from. But yeah, Gorgonite performance on pretty much all of the socials. Find me always chucking up some stuff in the stories.

Yeah, awesome stuff. Great conversation as always. The last question. I'm kind of finishing on this one.

Yeah.

Because you're obviously very knowledgeable about. About this stuff. So do you have a recommendation? Like, obviously we can learn off yourself as well, but is there. Is there someone else on social media, whether it's the PT or whoever that that people can follow to find out more about, you know, the performance side of things, the strength training, you know, even powerlifting. Got anyone in mind?

Anyone in mind? Oh, no, no one. No one comes to mind too much. I mean, Eric Helms, he puts out some good stuff and that's a good podcast. But, yeah, I just get my information off, like, so many different people and there's no, like. There's no, like, I kind of, like, work out what makes sense from everyone and kind of put it all together. So I can't really say any one person because a lot of their stuff I disagree with, but some of their stuff. I'm like, that's a great idea. And I'll, you know, cherry pick that stuff. So it's a bit hard to give out one person. I like following a lot of people that just put up, you know, crazy, gnarly strength feats, but they don't really provide much education on it. They're just. They're just savages. So if you're looking for a savage to follow.

Oh yeah, I gotta just throw it out there. Throw one out there. Otherwise everyone's just gonna follow you because you're the top dog, mate.

I'm a bit of a savage, yeah. What's his name? Australian fella. I can't think of it. It's Aussie fella. His name's Tom. He's like 150 kilos, 6 foot 8, trains in like, like his landscaping, Long pants, boots. Yeah, he's. He's great. It's great to watch. Otherwise. Yeah, feel free to slide into the dms. Happy to answer any questions and talk shop.

Awesome. Sounds good, mate. Appreciate your time.

No worries. Thanks, mate.