You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson.
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Welcome to The Model Health Show.
This is a special alert.
Summer is not over.
We still have time to enjoy the sun and the fun and to create some real transformation with our health and fitness.
And today's episode is going to provide you with four
World-leading experts sharing their greatest tips, the best exercises for better fitness and better fat loss.
Now, some of these things you might not have even heard of before.
And some of these things are tried and true, but they're going to explain it in a way that's going to help it to click so that it sticks.
All right, so again, we've got four world-leading experts in health and fitness to share some of the greatest insights to help you
Again, summer is not over.
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Utilize these incredible strategies and see the benefits show up in your life as predictable as the sun rising every single day.
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Now, with that being said.
Summer's still here.
It's not over.
It ain't over.
All right, shout out to Teddy Riley.
We've got four world-leading experts to provide some of the very best strategies and specific exercises for better fitness and fat loss.
And we're going to kick things off with
Not only has this individual transformed her body, she is now at almost 50 years old, achieving a 400 meter world championship as a master's level sprinter,
And decathlete running her fastest times.
She's a D1 college athlete running the 400.
She's running her fastest times in her 40s.
So this isn't just a mere appearance of fitness.
This is that real fitness.
And in this segment, she's going to share with you
Why right now utilizing some smart sprinting is one of the fastest ways to put your body into a fat burning state.
She's going to share how sprinting triggers our bodies to burn more calories after the workout as well, plus some safe, smart, practical ways to add some sprinting into your training.
Summer's not over.
Let's dive into this first segment with the incredible Cynthia Monteleone.
It burns fat better than endurance training.
When you think about the average population and say, this is a bone I have to pick, a woman who turns 40 and she thinks, okay, I need a goal.
I'm gonna train for a marathon.
She has no business training for a marathon.
I'm like, girl, you need to train for the 100 meters instead.
Why?
Okay, so...
Usually she's trying to lose weight because around that age, even earlier, even age 35, women's hormones are starting this roller coaster.
And so maybe things that she's done before hasn't worked anymore.
I hear this story all the time with my clients.
Well, I used to be able to just grind it off and now the weight's not moving anymore.
So they think, I need a bigger goal, I'm going to train for a marathon.
But what happens is that they're running like all this mileage slow because they haven't really gotten strong enough to run fast or
You know, they're not in shape, so they're running all this mileage slow, trying to lose this body fat.
But they're actually, their body fat is clinging to them, and they're not losing the weight.
Maybe they'll lose a few pounds if they're, you know, majorly overweight at first, but...
Um sprinting actually has a better epoch
You know epoch yeah post-exercise oxygen consumption
So you're basically you need to feed your body again uh longer after sprinting
But that but also the rise in catecholamines
So adrenaline noradrenaline all of these catecholamines linger
A long time after sprinting.
Whereas in endurance training, it's kind of like endurance training heats up the body like a thermostat just during that time.
But sprinting lights the fire and that fire keeps burning through the night.
If you can imagine that for fat loss.
So I always tell women, no, like train for the 100 meters instead if really that's your goal is to get in great shape.
Related to that, you have a better holding of muscle mass.
With sprinting.
I mean, you can just see that clear as day if you look at a marathon runner next to a 100-meter sprinter, right?
So you're having this muscle mass that we all know is beneficial to us for many different reasons as we age, but...
Yeah, so you're gonna be stronger, you're gonna be more able to move better as you age, that sort of thing.
You actually want the strength and the power output.
And when sprinting is studied and longevity, actually power and longevity is studied, it's found that the neural wiring is what's most important.
So for example,
If you have 100 meters, someone running 100 meters, they have the strength and the physical capacity to run that full 100 meters at the same pace, or at max velocity, but they don't, they slow down.
And the question is why?
And the answer is, it's actually the neurological timing and rhythm.
So training your nerves to keep twitching fast is extremely important as we age.
So what happens is that as we get older, particularly in the research after age 60,
Our neural wiring starts to break down, unfortunately.
So there are ways to keep that going.
And sprinting is like the top of the pyramid in ways.
We have these things called NMJ, neuromuscular junctions.
And it's where our nerves tell the muscles to contract.
It's that junction where that happens.
And that happens from our brain, and that happens from our spinal cord.
And as we age, those signals become disrupted.
So if you can imagine it like fiber optics, when you're young, you got the high speed, you can go live, you can play your video games really fast and react really fast.
Our muscles will react to as fast as we wanna go because our brain sending the signal, our spinal cord sending the signal and our muscles are like, yes, we're fast, go, go, go.
As we age past 60 especially, these NMJs are not getting the signal as well and they're breaking down.
And sometimes other nerves are like having to do the job of the ones that are breaking down.
And so researchers looked at what are the things that keep these NMJs firing well?
What are the things that keep producing output?
What are the things that keep producing fast twitch?
Which, why is that important as we age?
Well...
It prevents falls, you know, it keeps people safe.
All the things we need as we age keeps us young biologically.
So, yeah, they found that sprinting was actually the top of the pyramid, the number one thing, because anything our body has to do to use maximal effort and coordinate
Is the peak of it, we'll say.
I wanna dig in a little bit more with these fast twitch fibers.
So we've got slow twitch fibers on the other end, and then we've got some intermediary as well.
But these fast twitch fibers are really important, not for...
Just the longevity benefits, but also the potential for like our metabolic health too.
Because they're tied to so many more motor units.
So when we're sprinting and working hard, we're creating a cascade, an amplification effect for our bodies.
And you mentioned that EPOC, and so what we're doing is we're not just like, quote, burning fat during the workout, but we're kind of,
Blocking our body from storing more fat over the course of the day.
Like we're changing the way that our body's operating by engaging in a sprint.
And so I wanna ask you how, because you've worked with people in the real world on this, how do you get people to go from not sprinting or being afraid
Of sprinting to start to incorporate and to add some fast movement into their lives.
Yes, I'm so glad that we got to this because we want the action, right?
We want to be able to share what is the path to get to this point.
So what I have people do is I have them actually, if they're very beginners, they start by walking up a hill.
Why?
Because that forces your foot into dorsiflexion, which is your toe up.
It forces you to drive up the hill and
And that's your sprint position, that's your driving sprint position.
So, other than forcing you into the correct position, it gives you resistance to help build your tendons and your muscles needed to sprint.
And it's low impact.
So that means you're really not going to get injured by going up the hill.
And as you walk up the hill, and I would say maybe like walking maybe 30 seconds up a hill, that's something about that length.
And then walking back down, do it maybe 10 times.
And then after that, start to incorporate a little bit of jogging up the hill and then slowly get faster.
The other thing is to strength train for sprinting.
So there are specific movements that will strengthen your muscles for sprinting and prevent injury.
Of course, my mentor, Charles, was a strength coaching genius, and I learned all of the protocols from him and then, again, took it and specifically made it better with my experience from clients.
But there are certain, like, for instance, the split squat.
That is a great exercise.
Exercise for strengthening the tendons and your ankles, creating that tendon stiffness we talked about, because you need to be able to spring back.
And that's just one of many, for example.
Would you say like the two foot on the ground split squat or a Bulgarian split squat with one foot up?
Definitely knees over toes style.
And if anyone's familiar with knees over toes guy, he, you know, is the first one to say he learned everything from Charles.
So he basically is, has rebranded Charles's ACL protocol.
So it's good information.
It works.
But yeah, like a knees over toes style escalator forward, not elevator up and down.
The Bulgarian, you can target the quad or the glute, depending on what you're doing.
And glutes are important for sprinting, so don't neglect those.
But this is more about the stability needed to control that movement and using eccentrics.
So a lot of, I'll tell you, this is, you'll find this fascinating.
Between age 40 and 43, when I won that race and ran that fast, I did zero Olympic lifts, which are very popular for track and field athletes.
I wasn't ready to do those Olympic lifts.
I had a great strength coach as well, who was one of Charles's students, Malcolm William.
But basically, when you're doing eccentric movement, so eccentric is the lowering portion, doing it with a tempo of four to six seconds, say.
You're controlling the movement and you're recruiting more muscle fibers, especially fast twitch.
A lot of people think, oh, I need to move.
If I move fast, then I'll get fast twitch.
But actually the slow eccentric is what's gonna build your muscle and recruit those fibers.
A lot of people don't know that.
So move- Yeah, it's a recruitment sequence.
Right, move slow to be fast is what I say.
So things with so that let's just say the split squat, maybe a four second down, hold for one at the bottom and a one second up,
You can manipulate that according to time under tension and your goal and all that stuff.
We don't have to get into all that detail, but that's just one example of a great strength exercise.
My dad, 82, I had him doing Polican step-ups off of his outdoor step.
He did...
He lifted weights, he did shoulder press movements, bicep curls.
Is this a step up on like an apparatus?
Are you using something?
You have a heel elevation.
So if people don't have a slant board, then you would use maybe a couple, stack a couple of plates or something like that.
My dad did it.
He had just like a block of wood that he propped up on and he held onto the railing of the stairs at first until he was strong enough, which is a great progression.
And this targets the VMO, which is your vastus medullus oblique of your quad.
It's right above your knee and it protects your knee from
Taking all the stress of sprinting.
So it's like one of the number one exercises you should do.
Just kind of like going down a stair.
Yes, correct.
Yeah.
And that one's really important.
Deadlifts, of course, Romanian deadlifts with a slow eccentric.
And that actually is one of the number one exercises, it turns out, for neural firing as well, is a slow Romanian deadlift.
You can just do it with dumbbells.
So we're talking about beginners, right?
So those are some great places to start.
And then after, like, for instance, we'll talk about my dad because he's 82, right?
So he did his hills in his driveway.
And then he did some down the street.
He didn't even go to a track.
Sometimes he went to a track for a time trial, but he just did, he would walk for maybe 45 minutes and intermittently sprint for 10, 20 meters until he became comfortable, got faster as time went on.
Grass sprinting is great to keep the tension off the joints.
But yeah, I have many different protocols for beginners that depending on what level they are, but anyone can learn.
But what about say like me right now, we talked earlier, I have no ACL pole vault, I was pole vaulting and fell straight down violently and shredded my knee.
So that was about six months ago.
So right now I'm not sprinting at the moment.
But I am still sprinting because I'm on the assault bike.
So assault bike especially, you're using your total body for that momentum.
So if you say, oh, I can't run and my joints this and my knees that, well, you can get on a stationary bike and you can do intervals.
If you can do the assault bike with the upper body, that's better.
But anyone can sprint on a stationary bike or rower or that sort of thing.
So you can also start there.
That's a great place for beginners to start.
And not every day.
I really have to stress that.
I see some...
I try not to get too upset about it, but like sometimes I see influencers out there and they have no idea what they're talking about.
They don't have sprinting experience.
They just know that sprinting is trendy right now.
And they say, I sprint every day.
I sprint 100 meters times whatever every day.
And this is incorrect.
Like do not sprint every day.
Okay.
Three days a week is plenty.
I like to prescribe a tempo day, a fast day, and a kind of mixed race model type day.
Um, that way you're hitting different energy systems because let's think about it like weightlifting.
You're not going to just max out on bench every single day, right?
Like if you go to the gym, you're not like, okay, I'm maxing today.
And then you go to the gym the next day and you're like, I'm maxing today too.
And then you go the next day, I'm maxing today too.
Like, that's not how you do it.
You do reps in different rep ranges for different purposes, like hypertrophy or strength or endurance, that sort of thing, depending on your sports goal or your fitness goal.
But you're not maxing it every day.
So you don't want to do that with sprints either.
The tempo helps with that.
Tempo means you're going about 85% to 95% for multiple reps with a little bit less rest.
Then the second day would be a little bit shorter, faster, more rest.
And the third day, maybe you're combining a little bit of the two and going for like a peak performance type thing.
All right, I hope that you enjoyed that first segment.
We've got so much more in store for you.
Up next, you're gonna hear from an all natural
IFBB professional bodybuilding champion.
And he's got a quick hitting tip for you.
If you're looking for a change up in the gym, you can utilize this strength training technique that boosts fat loss and muscle gain through a process of muscle fiber recruitment.
Let's dig into this next segment with the incredible Torrey Washington.
Give me some secret sauce here of like something that you would like utilize.
You know, so I like...
Failure a lot, going to failure.
And drop sets I think are very effective because drop sets, you know, a lot of times people ask the question, and I'll be honest, sometimes when I'm training people, don't ask no questions, let's just work.
And because I just want them to get the work done.
And, but then they're like, why are we doing that?
But you know, when it comes to drop set, you know, it's fatiguing the muscle and every fiber, all the fibers.
So share what drop sets are.
So a drop set is, let's say you start very heavy.
For example, let's say you're doing bench press and you're doing 315, right?
And you're doing 315 and you can only max out six reps and maybe the six rep you're having a slight, you know, spotter to help you.
And so that's you just fatigue.
The major muscle group because that big muscle had to come into play to help you.
Of course, you have your auxiliary muscles helping with your shoulders and your triceps and your back to a certain extent.
So you
Get that weight to six reps, you rack it, you take off, sometimes you can take off 10% or more, and then you go and do as many reps as you can higher than what you just did.
So if you just did six, your goal is to go from eight to 10.
And so then you get that eight to 10, you drop the weight again,
10 to 12, you drop the weight again, 15 to 20, you drop the weight again, you go as many as you can.
And what you're doing is you're fatiguing every muscle fiber to the last point of failure.
And you have really just trained that muscle
All around and i think a lot of times you see it especially with people that are working out to that capacity
You can see it in their development because you see the difference between someone who's just powerless and someone who's really paying attention to their design the sculpting of the body
They look different
You know a power lifter will just be big and massive and they're strong
But
But a bodybuilder, we're not powerlifting.
We're sculpting our physique to make sure every sinew, every tendon, every fiber is able to be visible to the naked eye when you're on that stage.
That's great, man.
So with the drop set, and when you mentioned we're hitting all these different muscle fibers, so of course people know the general slow twitch fibers, the fast twitch fibers, but we have a range of intermediate fibers as well.
So you're tagging all of these bad boys.
It's basically recruitment.
Correct.
It's strategic recruitment.
And it's a very efficient, but very difficult in the mindset piece.
You know, you've said this a couple of times in the intensity, right?
And even you said, you opened this up by saying, I like failure.
And that's something that we shy away from in all areas of our lives.
And so it's symbolic, but we have the reps and reserve paradigm, but also going past that to where your muscle actually is just like, this can be a great catalyst for growth, but you've gotta be mindful of what's right for you.
And also your recovery, right?
So all of these pieces, it's an equation, but the best way to find out what's gonna work for you is to give it a try.
I'm very much into sculpting people.
I like to work with people who,
Already have an idea of how to lift.
They just need that extra tweak.
They need that control because a lot of times people just lift mindless, not mindful.
And I like to be connected to my muscle when I'm training.
And I think a lot of times we talk about, we hear my muscle mind connection, but a lot of people really don't understand
How to really control that.
And so when I'm working with people, I want them to understand that concept like seriously, because it's so important when you connect with that muscle, you can develop it more because it's just like
Manifesting your thoughts, you know, so you can manifest that muscle to grow by connecting with it because it's you, it's part of your body.
And so I train now at a spot
Split more of, I do legs about twice a week because I'm in Men's Physique.
Men's Physique is really was in the beginning, it really was nothing about legs.
And so that's what they could wear.
They could get it with the board shorts.
It was more of a beach body look.
And I didn't like it because I started out bodybuilding.
With the they call it the banana hammocks or however you want to call it some people call it manpanti i started out there in and i love the art form of posing and really presenting your physique
In the best light, showing all your strengths, hiding your weaknesses, because it's all an illusion.
It's just how you present it.
You can have a better physique than me, but if I know how to present mine better, I beat you because I know how to showcase it all, showcase it better than you do.
And that's why it's such an art form that I think people don't recognize.
And a lot of times, the guys on stage don't even know it.
They don't even know how.
I'm looking at them like, man, you have such a great physique.
You're just not presenting it well.
And so...
Posing became really a part of it.
And once this men physique came out, it changed up my training to where now you wanted more recovery to train your shoulders more, your chest more, your back more, and your abs, because those are the body parts that really create this symmetry that you're looking to have wide shoulders, small waist.
And your legs don't need to be too pronounced.
But that's changed now.
They now want legs to have
Some look to it to complete it because I've always had a physique that was balanced.
And so that's how I would win over someone else because I didn't have a standout body part.
I was complete.
Everything was symmetrical and proportionate to one another.
And so,
That also happened with my training.
I would train very symmetrically.
You know, I would do, let's say if I did back, I would do back and shoulders, you know, with some abs, just because I wanted to get at least two to three body parts in a day to allow myself to do it again sometime later on in the week.
Because I know when it comes to muscle building and growth,
Two to three times a week to allow it to grow, especially if it's a lagging body part.
And for me, I always looked at my back as being a lagging body part because I wanted it to have more depth, not width.
When I was younger, I wanted it to be very wide so I can
I used to envision myself jumping off a cliff and just over my lats and gliding.
So that's how I was able to get it wide.
And it's crazy because people used to be like, man, your lats are wide.
But it was all visualization.
I was focusing on it and mentally connecting with wanting to be wide.
So now I focus on wanting it to be thicker because in men's physique, you only turn around to the back and to the front.
You don't do the posing, which I loved in bodybuilding.
And but with IFBB,
You know, 99.8% of them are using enhance, enhancements.
So, and I'm not doing that.
So of course their body's gonna grow muscle, but the protein synthesis is gonna be a lot faster.
And so it's gonna take time with me.
Now I train back about two to three times a week and legs two times a week.
I do chest about two times a week, shoulders.
Shoulders get hit almost with everything.
You're doing chest, you do back, you're getting your front delts, you're getting your rear delts.
Medial, maybe not so much at all, depending on the movement.
I do shoulders as much as possible.
I train abs about three.
I used to train abs every day.
Now I do it almost every day.
And I do...
Glutes which men used to not train glutes because they were like why we can do that with squats
But now when it comes to bodybuilding you're very much focused on isolation because you want to develop that muscle so that it can really pop on stage you know
So it has, and it sometimes evolves, it changes, but it pretty much is very simple, basic movements that I stick to.
I don't really go into the fancy training methodologies that are out there because people get bored.
And I think they'll recognize that linear progression is where it's at, but they want to do all these crazy things just to stimulate themselves because they don't have the pure love for just the growth of it.
Because if you're not training with the intensity,
You're not gonna really get the results.
And I've seen people train where once they work out with me, they're like, man, I don't do this on my own.
And I think it's because they may not have as much of a love for it, but when they do get it,
They get it because that intensity is what really helps you get the most out of your workout.
Up next in this incredible compilation with these four world leading experts sharing exercises for better fitness and fat loss.
Next, you're gonna hear from New York Times bestselling author and former professor at UNLV, Michael Easter.
He's gonna be sharing how rucking or urban rucking that's taken over the streets
Can boost calorie burn, improve cardiovascular fitness, and enhance strength, all while staying low impact and accessible.
This is the art and science
Of utilizing a weighted backpack or weighted vest that adds resistance and some incredible benefits that you need to know about.
Let's dive into the segment with the incredible Michael Easter.
I think there's a lot of evidence that suggests it's uniquely good for fat loss.
Now, I think there's a variety of reasons for that, but the simplest way to think about it is you're combining endurance work, which tends to burn more calories than strength work, but you also are working your muscles because you are having to use your muscles to carry the weight, more or less, right?
Something almost happens where that tends to preferentially burn fat for energy.
So there's a study that I really love that looked at these back country hunters in Alaska.
So for those who aren't familiar with backcountry hunting, it's basically like I'm carrying all my gear in a backpack and I'm going into the mountains for 10 days, two weeks, whatever it might be.
And I can't really eat that much as I'm doing it because I got to carry in all my food.
So the scientists send these guys out, they measure their body fat, they do all these different measurements before they go out.
These guys are out in the wilderness for 14 days about, and then they come back.
Now they had lost weight.
You would expect that because they weren't eating that much.
They're covering ground like crazy people, these heavy packs.
Now, when most people lose weight though, some of that weight is going to come from muscle.
Like if I just start dieting, I'm going to lose fat, I'm going to lose muscle.
But ideally, you want to hang on to as much muscle as possible, right?
So when they tested these guys' body fat after the 14 days, they found that they had lost entirely fat and no muscle at all.
They'd even slightly gained muscle.
It was not a significant amount, but it was there.
And that was enough where you're like, wow, that's a shocker.
I will tell you from my own perspective, I did this long backcountry hunt in Alaska and
2019, just about a year ago, I did this 850 mile through hike in southern Utah.
So I have these heavy backpacks on my back the whole time I'm covering ground.
And in each of those trips, I lost about 15 pounds.
But that 15 pounds, it was definitely fat.
I didn't do any crazy body fat testing, but I can tell you, I can just take my shirt off and go, you look like you're ready for weighing at a UFC fight right now, you know?
So I think when we do think about weight loss,
Of course, as I'm sure you've covered, I think that diet is the number one lever to pull, you know, doesn't matter how much rucking you do, if you're eating 7000 calories a day, like good luck.
But as you lower your calories to try and lose weight, the question becomes, all right, well, how?
Do I shift the balance where I'm losing more fat than muscle in this process?
And I think that rucking can be a really good tool for that because you'll burn more calories than you would just from weightlifting alone, but you also get some of that strength stimulus that seems to tell your body to hang on to that muscle.
Amazing.
Now, you don't know this.
Before I picked up your book, which is amazing, by the way, everybody needs to get a copy.
I did a show with my guys here and we released the episode and it was inspired by the Gravitostat information that came from
Dr. Brennan Spiegel out of UCLA.
And when I dug into the research, I was just, I mean, I was blown away.
It's rare that you find something that's just like truly like a revelation, like nobody knows this.
And it was a study that was published in the International Journal of Obesity.
And part of that process, like you said, even you can be 7,000 calories, you're gonna have to rub 24 seven or whatever.
But part of that,
Struggle that, especially here in the United States, people have experienced, millions upon millions, they lose weight and they gain it back, right?
Plus a little bit more.
And a big part of that has to do with the change in the resting metabolic rate.
When you cut away those calories, this goes back and ties in so well with this new book, because there's certain things that our body has evolved to do.
Your body has evolved to not lose weight.
Right.
Exactly.
Your body is not like that.
And so our genes are a result of those who survived, who are good at hanging on to weight.
And so that resting metabolic rate going down to basically just make sure that you survive, right?
So what these researchers did was they took almost 20 people and they had them to wear a weighted vest.
But what they did was each pound that they lost, and by the way, put them on a calorie-restricted diet, and one group, no weighted vest, and the other group wearing a weighted vest, but every pound they lost, they added a pound to the weighted vest.
And so what this did was, and the researchers affirmed this presence of this Gravitostat was
They did the short-term diet, they lost weight.
People wearing the weighted vest lost 25 pounds over the course of the study.
The study was six months long.
And so the weighted vest group lost 25 pounds.
The non-weighted vest group lost 23 pounds.
Not a big difference.
That wouldn't be enough for me to be carrying a weighted vest around for 10 hours a day as a participant.
But the magic was in the follow-up.
Two years later, they bring the participants back in.
As expected, the people who were not wearing the weighted vest, they regained the weight that they lost.
Now, here's where the magic was.
The people who were wearing the weighted vest, they only gained back half of the weight that they lost, all right?
During the study, they found that the people who weren't wearing the weighted vest, their resting metabolic rate went down by about 250 calories a day.
So they were burning 250 less.
The people wearing the weighted vest, their resting metabolic rate only went down 16 calories a day.
And so it was something about having that load on their frame that was...
Kind of informing their biology that they don't need to slow that resting metabolic rate down.
So remarkable.
It's kind of like insulating people against weight regain.
Yeah.
And that's the big thing.
And it's great that the study was pretty long too, because this is why I think most people
Stop dieting at about five and a half weeks.
And what tends to happen is that your body is cranking up hunger signals as well.
So I think one of the findings from the gravitas that hypothesis is that those hunger signals don't get cranked up as much either.
Now, that really, to me, is kind of one of the limiters of diet.
It's like everyone can.
Eat fewer calories for a handful of weeks.
But what are you going to do when all of a sudden your biology goes, hey, you're losing weight.
We need you to eat more.
So we're going to ramp up your hunger signals.
We're going to make you obsess more about food.
So if we can find ways to prevent that, that seems like a smart idea to me.
You know, the tagline is like, you're getting more from every step.
Every step is going to be a little bit harder.
And because of that,
You're gonna get more benefits from it.
So for me, it's like, and I think what I love about it, and we were talking about this before we hit record here, is that it's so approachable and easy.
If I wanna go for a run, I gotta get on my special run clothes, I gotta get on my special run shoes,
But if I wanna walk with weight, it's like, if I'm taking the dogs for a walk, I'm just gonna throw on a pack that has whatever, 20, 30, whatever pounds in it, right?
I already have to take the dogs for a walk.
It is not that big of a deal.
I don't have to put on special clothes.
I can just wear normal walking shoes.
But I can get a lot more from that walk by simply throwing on that pack.
And I'll tell you in the case of the dogs for dog owners out there, if your pack has a hip belt, you can thread the leashes through the hip belt.
And then now your hands are free to, you know, send emails, take calls, whatever you might have to do.
Just get creative with caring i think you know
To go back to my original point like this is the this is the human act this is the human physical act and we just don't do it anymore
And so i think starting to try and figure out how can i weave more of that back into my
Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly fitness practice, I think would do people a lot of good.
And I'm not saying stop running.
I'm not saying you don't need to ever lift weights.
I'm not saying that at all.
What I am saying is that all types of exercise are good, but we've just totally missed this really, really good one.
And we should think about adding it back in.
Yeah.
All right.
Up next and running the anchor leg in this incredible compilation of exercises for better fitness and fat loss to close things out.
You're gonna be hearing from the one and only Jay Farrugia.
He is the high performance coach to elite performers in the WWE, UFC, Major League Baseball, the NFL, the list goes on and on with those accolades, but also,
Everyday
People who want to get into the best shape of their lives seek out Jay Perugia because he has over 30 years of experience and more than 10,000 transformations have been attributed to his work.
10,000 bodies getting fitter
And in need of a sitter because they're going out tonight.
All right?
The incredible Jay Faruja is about to share with you why most people waste valuable time and energy warming up incorrectly.
You can be getting more gains.
And I'm telling you this firsthand.
Firsthand experiences.
This was a game changer.
This was a game changer for me.
I've been able to put on muscle faster than I have in years by simply utilizing his insights when it comes to
Warming up.
My strength gains were almost immediate, but especially accumulating over the weeks and months afterwards.
And also my efficiency, my time in the gym has been so much more efficient.
And so I can't thank him enough for this insight, which you're going to learn about, but also going to be sharing the truth about the amount of volume that you need to build muscle and change your body faster.
Okay.
Volume is a key, key, major key alert.
Key component of getting the gains that you want.
He's also gonna share the top three lower body exercises to get the biggest benefit in the shortest amount of time.
Why does this matter?
Because our lower body muscles have so much, yes, muscular potential, but that additional muscle, that
Body recomposition can also uplevel our personal metabolic rate so that we're burning more calories just by living life.
So this is a super rich way filled with insights to close everything out.
Let's hand the baton to the one and only Jay Faruja.
Talk a little bit more about junk volume and also start off by talking about how much volume do we ideally need to target to build muscle, maintain our muscle and also stay relatively lean.
So it's a complicated answer and it becomes increasingly difficult to give a clear answer on that just because of all the research we have now and just the individual kind of differences between people.
And so we used to look at weekly training volume, which I think is still a good metric, but it really –
Kind of comes down to how much volume you do today in today's workout will determine how much you can do 48, 72, 96 hours later.
And so I like to look at
There's a few ways to break it down.
Like you could look at per workout, how many total sets should you do?
That's an easy way to measure volume.
So I generally keep most of my clients in anywhere between eight total work sets and about 15, 16.
That's it.
Now, most people go to the gym, they probably do exponentially more than that.
They're probably doing 20, 30 sets.
So we'll look at that.
So in general, 8 to 12 for most of my guys.
And then we look at also body parts specific, right?
So...
Generally, like there's been meta-analysis multiple over the last few years where they study, they look at people doing five sets per body part per week versus 10 versus 15 versus 20.
They make the most gains in the five to 10 range.
There's some crazy outlandish studies where they'll say the more volume, the better.
But then if you...
What you look at with those is the rest periods.
This is kind of crazy and it's hard to even wrap your head around.
If you have short rest periods, because each set is less efficient, you need way more volume.
But if you're resting three minutes between sets, then you're fully recovered.
You don't need as much volume.
So it seems to be for most people.
That's why I like to look at studies, but also like to base it on 30 years worth of experience that I have and then talk to other people who have that kind of experience, too.
We know that the sweet spot's right around six to 10 sets per week per body part.
Now, you can do all 10 of those sets on Monday, or you could do three, three, four on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there's different ways to break it up.
But it's not that easy, though.
That's the thing.
And that's where it gets a little complicated.
And then we also have like, this creates fatigue too.
So going back, so let's say I go to the gym right now.
I do eight sets of chest.
That's my whole workout, eight sets of chest.
That will create more fatigue for me tomorrow than if I went to the gym and did eight sets, but did two sets of back, two sets of chest, two sets of bias, two sets of tries, because I won't have as much soreness and muscle damage.
So soreness and muscle damage creates fatigue.
So now tomorrow's workout is going to suffer more if I just did eight sets of chest.
See what I'm saying?
Of course.
So ideally, you want to break up the volume and do a little bit less.
You don't want to cause all that inflammation and all that fatigue, right?
So that's where it gets a little tricky to give a super strict kind of straight answer.
It really depends on the individual.
I would say for most people, do less.
Like I start most people out on a full body workout either three days a week or every other day.
I actually prefer every other day.
When you're doing that, you really want to start at baseline, which is one set, which is crazy.
You do a few warm-up sets.
You do one hard set for each body part, chest, shoulders, back, legs, whatever.
And then we assess volume and how much you can recover from, and then we'll push it up a little bit.
When you do it that way, the strength gains are insane.
Like you'll gain strength.
Most of my guys are like, dude, it's like I'm on steroids.
These strength gains are crazy.
Now where we get more complex is certain muscles take longer to recover.
So you might be able to run that for like, let's say six, eight, 10 weeks and everything is skyrocketing.
But chest always is the slowest.
Pressing, people are like, yo, I'm stalled out.
I'm pressing.
Pressing universally stalls out the fastest.
Pecs are just easily damaged, and they're hard to recover.
Hamstrings, probably second or tied, depending on the individual.
Hamstrings get damaged very easily.
They recover slowly.
So that's why it's hard, because it's like individual muscle.
It's like, and then what are you doing, right?
So if you're doing a bunch of...
For example, if you do three sets of a standing leg curl, which trains the hamstring in the shortened position, that's exponentially easier to recover from than if you did three sets of stiff-legged deadlift.
That trains the hamstring in the lengthened position.
Now we're going to have a ton of soreness, muscle damage and fatigue.
Whereas with the standing leg curl, we're going to have no muscle soreness, no muscle damage.
So very little fatigue, right?
So you might be able to do more.
So all these things...
Have to be taken into account, which is like, it gets very complex.
I like to simplify things, but if we're really talking, you know, like really dialing it in, it is like rocket science.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Literally.
And we're the rocket.
And this is such an important thing.
You mentioned the rest time.
This is something that we don't really consider.
And a lot of these studies, and one of the ones that I saw recently, a big meta-analysis looking at the amount of volume to get in, were recommending 60 to 90 seconds between sets.
But you had to do more volume over the week.
You got to do more sets.
So it's just less efficient.
Yeah, but you can come into it with the mindset of like, I have less time in the gym, so I need to move faster, right?
And so you can have that mindset, but also you could be like, I have to do less sets
If I'm taking more time in between sets.
So it's just a different way of looking at it.
Either way, you can get an efficient, kind of much shorter workout than what we've been programmed to think about.
And I know you've done this, you've seen this,
You see guys that are in there for two hours, you know, like literally it's been many times over the years, I go to the gym and somebody's already in their workout and I finished my workout and they're still going,
You know?
And they're just like, and, you know, usually some, you know, sometimes like older, you know, and they're just like, you know, I just got my first hour in, you know, about to get into hour two,
You know, just like, you know, more power to you, man.
You know, so it's just, again, it's changing our mindset because also, and this isn't to take away something else, which is important, which is the joy.
Part of it too, because this individual, this is a big part of his enjoyment being there at the gym.
And so what we're talking about, by the way, we're talking about efficiency and getting in the best shape of your life and transforming your body.
And so one of the takeaways now is again, having less
Less sets, right?
So let's actually, can you detail, like explain a little bit more for us what we mean by volume?
Like, what does that mean?
I mean, the easiest way is just the number of sets you're doing for a body part or muscle group.
And then you asked before about junk volume.
So that would be what I would describe as junk volume would be any, for the most part, any sets 15 reps and above.
That's really junk volume.
Now, guys our age, 50, 60, might say, well, I can't.
Do the exercise unless I do 15 to 20 or my joints kill.
If that's truly the case, then yes, true, you should do that many reps.
But I would say to that person, hey, let's try to find a similar movement that fits you well, that doesn't hurt your knees or your elbows or whatever.
If you can do that safely, then we can bring the reps down to a more productive rep range that doesn't cause as much fatigue, right?
Some people just be like, oh, I can't squat unless I do 30 reps.
I'm like,
Yeah, okay, but maybe let's play around.
There's some machines, maybe there's a different variation of a squat that you can do.
You'd have to be really banged up not to be able to do something in eight to 12 range.
So it would be things over 15 reps, I would call junk volume for the most part.
There's always exceptions.
Sets that are further than two reps from failure, I would consider junk volume.
Because then you're just not stimulating any gains really.
It's kind of a warmup set.
And then excess warmups are things that I think are junk volume too.
And even fitness pros and influencers don't know this.
When I train together, I'm like, how do you not know how to warm up properly?
Nobody knows how to warm up properly the way I think you should warm up, which reduces a lot of fatigue.
So most people will go in
And they'll do, let's just say they're going to bench press, right?
They'll do 10 or 12 reps, put on more weight, do 10 or 12 reps, put on more weight, and keep getting up until they're working weight or top weight or whatever.
What I would advise most people to do is go in, first set, maybe do eight to 10, but you want to do the least amount.
You're only trying to prepare yourself for the work sets.
So then I might do five to eight,
Then I might do three reps and then one, one, one.
Now, if you're moving, let's say from your first pressing exercise, if you're moving to a second pressing exercise, you're already warmed up.
But most people will do that again, 10, 10, 10.
It's like, that's not doing anything.
It's just causing fatigue.
And it's a complete waste of time.
So then what I would do is if we're going to the second exercise, I might literally just do one to three reps. Just that you can call them feeder sets, just feeling it out, whatever.
Just kind of training your nervous system for a slightly different move.
Like if you're doing an incline press into a flat press.
So a lot of people just waste time and do junk volume with their warm-up sets.
Like if I'm on a machine that's selectorized with the pin, right?
I'll do...
I'll sit there and do all my...
Instead of doing 10, I'll do 5, move the pin down.
3, move the pin down.
2, move the pin down.
1, do the pin down.
1, 1, 1.
Because I'm...
Pretty strong so i might be doing the stack on that but i'm not going to do a set of 10 walk around do another set of 10
I'll just get the entire warm-up done and maybe do 15 reps going all the way down the stack in 30 seconds
Then i'll rest two or three minutes before i start my work set so that's what i mean by people warming up incorrectly
It's just creating
Fatigue.
And then what that does too, is your main set, your money set that you're actually going to stimulate hypertrophy with, the weight's going to be so much less because you created all that fatigue and just wasted all that energy, you know?
And especially again, if you're over 40, 50 or whatever, you don't have the energy that you had when you were 20, you know?
So I want to ask you about this as well, when it comes to
The splits that we're doing, right?
You mentioned full body every other day.
And obviously there's a lot of ways to, a lot of paths to the goal.
And you mentioned, you know, we can get all of those sets in, the volume on a certain body part in one day, right?
And that's one of the kind of standard things is like national chest day, leg day, and just split it up.
But I don't think you get the touch points to keep that
Really good hypertrophy and and and your nervous system kind of trained without having those touch points more frequently right and that's just something that i found
It took me so long to get that because i would i go to the gym and obliterate my legs yeah be sore for five days and then you know two days off and then i'm back to blowing my legs up again um but
What about a split, right?
Where we do the kind of classic split where we got a push day, pull day, legs, maybe a rest day, or just repeat.
What about a framework like that?
Yeah, like you mentioned, there's so many.
And what you said before was true.
So personal preference and enjoyment does weigh into that.
Like you might say on paper, hey, a once a week split is no good.
But if you love it, then it's great, right?
So that's something to really consider.
The other thing I would say is,
Most of the time I start people with more frequency, right?
Like I said, like full body, the next split would be upper lower.
You could do, we tend to be married to more traditional splits, like full body, upper, lower, push, pull legs.
I split things up in ways that I've never seen before that just kind of makes sense to me based on what I was talking about before, like individual body parts recovery.
So at the end of, let's say, a pull day, I
If someone wants to do a four day body part split, right?
Like let's say they're gonna push, pull, legs, arms.
Now I wanna get more than once a week frequency.
So at the end of the pull day, maybe we'll add in some leg extensions.
So now in addition to that leg day, they're getting a second time on legs, but they're not obliterating the legs, right?
And then on the arm day, we're hitting some dips or close grips.
And now we're getting chest a second time.
And then the leg day, maybe we'll throw in a row at the end.
So we're getting back a second time.
So you could still do a traditional bodybuilding split, but increase the frequency.
And then again, that's individual, you know, maybe what's your, what's your priority?
If it's shoulders, maybe we'll add more frequency for shoulders, backs, you know, same thing.
Um,
But I tend to stick with really upper lower or or full body most of the time for most people.
And then but you could even do things like push pull legs.
And for whatever reason, most people think you'd only do push pull legs once a week, meaning Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or six days a week, Monday through Saturday, but you can do it.
The way I like to do it is push, pull, off, legs, off, repeat.
So then it's once every five days.
Or you could do two on, one off.
So push, pull, off, legs, push, and continue to do that way.
So it's more frequency.
What you can also do is, let's say you decide, I wanna bring up my biceps.
Normally you'd only do curls on the pull day, but I throw those rules out.
So you might do push, pull, off.
Now we do biceps first on leg day because it's your priority.
So we get them on the pull day indirectly with all the rows and the pull downs and we get them directly fresh at the beginning of the leg day.
You could do that with other body parts that are weak too you know
Just prioritize them where you want to put them
So there's a lot of ways non-traditional ways to do splits that i think are really effective
And then again it's just like we assess how does the person feel how much fatigue are you getting how much soreness are you getting and what are your results like and how much are you enjoying it
You know
Yeah.
Now, you also mentioned, and this is awesome, by the way, you also mentioned how far we want to go in that set, right?
You mentioned after getting past generally 15 reps. And again, there's situations for that.
You know, maybe you want to train endurance in some kind of way, you know, to be able to do a bunch of muscle ups.
You know, I don't know, you...
Doing a movie with Tom Cruise or something, you need to do some wild stuff.
But in general, again, if we're looking at what's most effective, we're not getting that high in our rep range, but how far do we wanna go?
And so my question is,
Do we wanna go to a place where we are at complete muscle failure, right?
So how do we know that our set is the right number of reps?
Right.
So to produce hypertrophy, to elicit hypertrophy, you want to have really high levels of intramuscular force production.
You want to be recruiting those fast twitch fibers.
So you do that with heavy loads, generally in a 5 to 8, 5 to 10 range.
And then you wanna be close to failure.
Now, how do you know what failure is?
You have to train to failure on a lot of things for a while, and then you know what it is.
Because there's been studies and just real world experience where people think they're at failure,
And they're actually five to seven reps from failure.
So it's like, that was a complete, that was a warmup set.
That was a complete waste of time.
And even myself, I've done that.
And after training for 30 years, like sometimes if I'm just by myself,
I'll be like, I think I have a pretty good gauge of what one rep in reserve is.
And I'm like, I don't know, maybe.
And then I'll get an extra three reps sometimes.
Like, geez, you know, so you really, sometimes you have to push to failure.
I don't recommend doing it all the time.
That's why, but I do like lower volume reps.
One of the benefits of lower volume is you can train harder and i like to train hard
If i had to leave a bunch of reps in the tank it would just not be enjoyable for me whatsoever
So lower volume
I tend to train
Uh i tend to work with a lot of type a guys
It's always been that way for 30 years competitive athletes now wwe guys and then just guys all rage who are just type a hustlers right so they want to train hard
So then
Again, volume should be lower because you can't train super hard and do a ton of sets, right?
You're just gonna be burnt out all the time.
So get to know what failure feels like on all the exercises you're doing, and then leave about one to two reps in the tank, generally one in the tank for the most part.
There is a significant difference.
Like let's say you do 12 sets.
If you did those 12 sets to failure,
And then next week you did those 12 sets, but you left one rep in the tank.
You'll feel the difference in terms of fatigue throughout the week and also your progressive overload, which is the fundamental main rule we want to be following to make any progress.
Is you'll get significantly better gains.
So each week that you hit that particular workout, you'll go up more and more and faster than if you hit failure on every set.
OK. Now, what about the variety of exercises?
If we're talking about, let's just talk about back.
We're training our back.
You know, with a lot of trainers, you know, it's a mindset of like, I got to keep my client interested, you know, got to keep mixing it up.
So what is your perspective on the variety of exercises and how frequently you're changing the exercise you're doing?
Yeah, so I used to do that where I would try to entertain clients years ago.
But I found that what's entertaining is actually making progress and getting stronger and seeing numbers go up.
I like that more.
My clients like that more.
So...
I think too much variety is no good.
And so we started talking about fatigue.
Too much variety causes too much fatigue.
Because if I go in, let's say my workout's five exercises.
If I've been doing those five exercises for weeks in a row,
I don't have the CNS demands of having to learn and the coordination demands of having to learn that new movement.
Even if it's a movement you've been doing for 20 years, it's still when you do it for the first time in, let's say, six to eight weeks, you're kind of adapting, figuring things out.
So it's more CNS fatigue if I go in and do five different movements all the time, just for variety.
Central nervous system.
Yes, yep.
And so it's just more demanding.
So you're going to increase more fatigue.
And then it's really hard to track progressive overload and progressive overload.
You know, some people could argue, oh, you don't have to go up every workout and you don't.
But it's the only legit measure we have to know.
Is your programming good?
Is it working?
Because if you're going up in weight.
That's black and white.
We know.
If you're just like, oh, I feel good.
I'm getting a pump.
It's like, yeah, but that's abstract.
That doesn't tell us anything.
But if you're able to press 100 today, then you go up to 102.5 and then 105, and we see it going up, and then it plateaus, and then it goes up.
Okay, now we know it's working.
Then we can...
We can say like, hey man, let's pull out one set here.
Let's stop one rep short of failure here.
Then it becomes like a science experiment versus just guesswork.
We're just throwing things against the wall and hoping they work, you know?
Now with this said, which exercises are best?
Now I know this is tough, all right?
But maybe this is even a little selfish, all right?
So let's talk about training legs.
And the reason this matters, thank goodness there's been like a paradigm shift in training legs, all right?
There's been a lot of lollipop people walking around, where leg day has been skipped many a time.
And so, but there's so much metabolic benefit
Performance, power.
There's so many remarkable and vital reasons to train your legs.
So I want to ask you if I had to like,
Life or death, three best leg exercises.
And again, keep in mind as well, this can be of course for everybody, but specifically for people who are over 40.
What do you think?
I would say some type of knee flexion.
So that could be some type of leg curl.
But what are the three best?
I don't want to know some type.
What's the best?
We just want to build the biggest legs we can without wrecking your joints.
Feeling good?
Yes.
Okay.
So a seated leg curl.
Okay.
I personally like a glute ham raise for variety and because you just feel good, like your knees, hips, and back feel great.
It's a body weight exercise, but it's really hard to do.
Most division one athletes can't even do one rep.
If we're just going, picking one, I'm picking a really well-designed seated leg curl.
The reason a seated is better than a lying in a standing is because the seated trains the length in position.
See if I'm here and my leg straight out, it's training from a stretch position, which generally, if you're looking at exercises,
And ranking them in a hypertrophy perspective, you want to train the stretch position and the mid-range.
The shortened position doesn't really matter that much.
That's why like a leg extension is just icing on the cake.
So I'm going to go seated leg curl, some type of squat variation.
Now, this is where it's hard to pick one because everybody's so different.
What kills your knees?
My knees might feel great.
Someone else is like, eh.
So it's going to be some type of squat.
Yeah.
If I had to pick one, I would say generally most people can do a safety bar squat, especially if we add a little heel wedge, because most people don't have the ankle mobility to do it perfectly.
So if I had to pick one, that would be it.
A safety bar squat with either a 10 or 15 degree wedge.
Safety bar, what is that?
The safety bar is the bar with the pad and the shoulder thing that comes here.
So what that...
It's a back squat bar, but it has a piece in the front.
Exactly.
So you can have your...
The benefit is really for shoulder health.
If you get older and you're tighter, sometimes it's hard.
You don't have the external rotation to get back here.
And then all of a sudden...
You're kind of hurting your shoulders on leg day, which makes no sense.
So then you go press the next day, you're like, why are my shoulders stiff from leg day, right?
It doesn't make sense.
So, and it does, you tend to be able to stay upright a little bit more.
There's some things, some benefits.
So a seated leg curl,
A safety bar squat with heels elevated.
And then some, you got to do some type of single leg thing.
So that's, if I had to just pick one, of course, there's all different split squat variations.
There's walking lunges.
I would go with a rear foot elevated split squat.
Those would be the three.
Isn't there another name for that?
Bulgarian split squad.
The Bulgarian split squad.
Yes.
Yeah.
The last time I trained with Luca,
You know, we did that as well.
And there's so many different variation of that too.
You know, obviously you can do a weighted, you could, you know, do one hand with the weight.
One hand here, one hand here, two hands, safety bar, regular bar.
I mean, there's a million ways to do it.
If for the purpose of this exercise that you challenged me on, I had to do one, I would have it with stability because we're looking at hypertrophy.
So without stability, you're going to have less force production, less intermuscular force production.
So if I'm having to balance now, if I hold that dumbbell in one hand on my rear leg and
And I hold on to the upright of the power rack, I'm going to get a greater hypertrophy stimulus out of that.
If you're an athlete and you're just training stability and whatever, fine.
But if we're just looking at hypertrophy, I'm going to grab on.
And anytime I increase the stability of an exercise, it's better for hypertrophy.
Now that doesn't mean you just do machines because then you walk around like Frankenstein, but you prioritize some things.
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today.
I hope that you got a lot of value out of this.
Again, it ain't over.
Summer's not over.
Take advantage of these insights.
Go and put something into play for yourself.
Utilize this time.
Give yourself a goal.
Mark some dates on the calendar.
Give yourself maybe a 30-day transformation time period
And just start putting some things into place for yourself on a consistent basis.
Just adding on, you know, a little bit by little bit.
And listen, I hope again that you enjoyed this.
We've got so much more in store for you coming up.
We got some incredible masterclasses.
And world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon.
So make sure to stay tuned.
Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.
