Jeremiah Bair: Hey team, welcome back to the show. Today it is Natalie and I. We are going to be digging into the exercise selection master class. So we talk a lot about movement execution, how to get the most out of every set that you're doing. But our exercise selection is such a huge part of that. Really, like alongside understanding the execution, probably the most important piece to really set us up for success, right? We have to set ourselves up for success with the proper exercise selection. And then we go into understand how to execute it. And then if we can train hard, we get a really good stimulus. So very cohesive with what we talked about last week as well, in terms of like, hey, how often should you repeat an exercise? Because a lot of what we'll discuss here will help you dictate, hey, what are those movements that we will want to keep in place for a very long period of time to really maximize our gains. So this will be a really fun topic. I love talking about all things program design, and this is probably one of my favorites. I also think this is one thing that we do that really sets us apart in like before we even build a program for a client looking at, hey, what equipment do you have available? How do you move? What are your goals? And then we can really match your movement profiles, how you're built to, hey, this will actually fit you better, or let's tweak the setup and this leg press to really make this give us a better glute stimulus. Here's how we get more quads out of this. And really just help clients get so much more out of their training than they've ever been able to do before, which is why our people build so much muscle. very long winded way of describing the importance of exercise selection, but again, one of my favorite topics. before we get into it, Natalie, you have a new son, Philisane. Congratulations, by the way.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Do I Thank you. I made the leap and adopted a dog and his name is Chop. I did not name him and I was going to change his name. I really wanted to name him like Christopher because I felt like he kind of looked like Christopher. maybe that will be his formal name, but my nieces who live in Texas, so they haven't even met him, like are in love with this dog. And they call him like Pork Chop. Because I you know, I had a bunch of nicknames for him, like Pork chop, wood chop, judo chop, chopstick. I call him chopstick a lot. And my nieces
Jeremiah Bair: Like that.
Jeremiah Is Fat: love calling him Yeah, my nieces love calling him pork chop, so that they were going to be really upset if I changed his name. So but
Jeremiah Bair: That's Chop is a dope name. I love that name.
Jeremiah Is Fat: I know, he's like he's perfect because he's such a meat head. He's like such a meat head, yes.
Jeremiah Bair: yeah. You would have to be in your family.
Jeremiah Is Fat: He is a gentle giant. I think and I mean I could like do an entire podcast on this and maybe one day we should about all our adopts.
Jeremiah Bair: That's actually today's topic. Yeah.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yes. but I will say that one of the stories 'cause like when you adopt an animal, you know, they take you through their background and like I was fostering him so I knew quite a bit. but one of the stories they said was like when they first got him as a stray, he they like went to administer some sort of like medicine via like syringe, like oral syringe, and he just like put the entire syringe in his mouth thinking that it was edible and then like figured out what it was and spit it out and I was like that is like the most chop thing you could do. Just like senselessly like I'm gonna eat this giant thing. wait, I can't. Like that's yeah, that's my dog.
Jeremiah Bair: I love him. I'm very excited to meet him. He again just always looks so happy. He like he always looks like he's so excited to meet people and all of your stories and I am stoked that he's gonna be at the Airbnb for our team retreat. But congratulations,
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah.
Jeremiah Bair: dude. Very stoked for you.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Thank you.
Jeremiah Bair: Alright, so getting into exercise selection. I think first we need to look at this from the frame of what makes a good hypertrophy exercise? What makes a good muscle group a muscle growth exercise good? So I would say there's really four filters here I look at it through. Feel free to add anything you would like here. But first, is the target tissue you were trying to grow going to be the limiting factor? I think this is a one people often overlook. So if I'm trying to grow my glutes in a squat pattern, It's okay to feel other muscle groups working. That's another misnomer. Like, hey, if we're doing or a hinge, right? Like I feel my lower back working. That's not necessarily bad. Like our erector should be working. But the target tissue should be the limiting factor. It shouldn't feel like my lower back hurts, and that's why I stopped the movement. Right. Now, on a compound movement, it might be more like an overall full-body sense of terribleness that causes you to stop the necessarily like, wow, there's this crazy isolated burn in my glutes. We should definitely be able feel that there is a lot of tension in the target tissue that we're working on. And again, that should be eventually the limiting factor that causes us to fail or would cause us to fail. If it is our lower back, if it's our grip strength on a movement like a Romanian deadlift, if it's cardiovascular fatigue, like if we're doing like, I don't know, a wad and doing an AMRAP set of deadlifts, and it's not actually like our glutes that are the thing that's about to fail, it's our lower back or just our cardio system giving out. then something other than the target tissue is the limiting factor. So, and we'll talk about this as well from a like there's gonna be two different lenses we look at this through. First the lens of hypertrophy, and then we'll talk about like the movement dysfunction side of things and like how that might change this. But purely from a hypertrophy perspective, anything you would add there.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yes, sometimes those things can point us in a direction of where we need to go.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: So, like cardio, for example, I mean let's take something like a set of split squats where or or you know, something like a compound lift where it feels like cardio is the limiting factor. Sometimes that's a cue for us, like, okay, cool, we are going to incorporate a couple hit sessions per week or something to kind of better develop the cardiovasculars. you know, capacity, or, you know, an indicator of something down the chain that needs to be looked at. I know we're getting into that later, but you know, if balance is an issue, it's like, okay, well why is that? And, you know, sometimes it's just like a practice thing, like we just need practice doing it. but other times it's like, there's actually something funky going on up or down the chain that needs our attention. So but likely to your point we are going to use some other things to address that.
Jeremiah Bair: That's a good shout though, because I think if you just listen to what I just rattled off there without any further context, it would be like, well, just change the movement. Where a lot of times that's not the answer.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Right.
Jeremiah Bair: Again, it's like a hole that we need to plug first. And as an aside with the cardio thing, yes, that is very common. Though especially for lower body training, I just often will see someone really struggling to get close to failure or like it doesn't look like they're pushing all that hard with the lower body movements and they're just gassed. It is very common, like, hey. We just need to actually bring up your cardiovascular system a bit. Anyways, filter number two. Go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: I think your your point with the cardio was something your point with the cardio was something more along the lines of a crossfit like a Hyrux workout or something where you're limited. Yeah. So I think it's just important
Jeremiah Bair: Correct, correct. Correct.
Jeremiah Is Fat: to make that distinction 'cause I know someone out there listening is like, well I get gassed by split squats, might as well take those out
Jeremiah Bair: Correct, yes, absolutely. and I mean typically this will mean a more stable exercise can be better, but again, that's not always gonna be the case, as we'll discuss more, right? For example, we talk a lot about like a hack squat versus a a back squat, a barbell back squat. It will be easier to keep the quad as the limiting factor. But again, more stable isn't always going to be better with some other considerations. But next, does it fit the client's structure and movement capacity? So generally, this just means it will be easy for us to get into the joint position we need to train the target muscle. So, for example, if our goal is to train quads, based on how we're built in the machine setup or whatever movement we're doing, it should make it easy for us to get into a position of deep knee flexion where we have some forward knee travel over the toe and hamstring is kissing the calf at the bottom of the rep. Right? So the movement should, it shouldn't feel like we're really, we really have to fight. against the the equipment we have or the machine or whatever we're using. It shouldn't feel like we really have fight that to get into the target position. Sometimes that's just adjusting oftentimes that's just adjusting someone's setup or doing a little thing like, hey, let's add squat sheaves or heel elevation here. Sometimes it is, hey, we just need to select a different exercise. Anything to add there before we continue?
Jeremiah Is Fat: A a point I make all of the time is that we don't need to be chasing some optimal quote unquote range of motion. We need to be chasing your range of motion. And a lot of times that is your active range of motion, I should specify. And a lot of times that is determined by you, like your biomechanics, plus whatever machine or you know, you are on. So I was having this conversation with a client the other day. and I I feel like I have this conversation. almost every week, you know, and it's like I I can only get so low on this or whatever. And then I show them like my hack squad or my leg press and it's like, hey, this is all there is. Doesn't always mean like just because we can't get into some textbook optimal position doesn't necessarily that's not necessarily a reason to scrap the movement.
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah. It would be cool to even like for people to see like your leg press, Andrea's, Danny's and mine all side by side 'cause they all look quite a lot different.
Jeremiah Is Fat: I Do you remember I did a an Instagram post. I still send it to a lot of my clients. the Instagram post I did about my leg press versus Andrea's and it was like why does why don't these look alike?
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, that'd be a great idea. Somebody should make an Instagram post like that. I'm just fucking with you.
Jeremiah Is Fat: You are such a loser.
Jeremiah Bair: I actually don't remember that. Send that to me after this, though. I'd love to see it. Okay, well,
Jeremiah Is Fat: So glad my content resonates with you.
Jeremiah Bair: I need to follow you. that's a great idea, though. For sure, send me that. I would love to send that to clients as well. Next. Progresssibility. Can you progress it for months on end? So once we Executed movement well, we're able to push it hard. We talked last week about the importance of significant tension. Basically, significant tension is going to be what creates hypertrophy. So we need to load the target tissue well, we need to be able to train it close to failure. Now, as you adapt, build muscle will get stronger. The loads you were previously using will no longer be heavy enough to create significant tension. So load and/or reps increase over time to continue to keep us in a place where we're experiencing significant tension. Meaning we need to be able to progress. Exercise for a long period of time via load and reps, primarily via load, within a certain range. So if it's a movement where, like, I don't know, you think of like, I'm gonna do push ups, I'm gonna have the guy at the gym put a 45 pound plate on my back. Okay, like how long can we keep progressing that, right? Can we do this for months? I mean, how many plates
Jeremiah Is Fat: Five clips.
Jeremiah Bair: can we stack on your back? Five places, five places probably the total, right? did you ever do that?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Fine plates.
Jeremiah Bair: six, right?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah. What
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, okay. Okay.
Jeremiah Is Fat: about what about you, like five, two and a half pound plates?
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, I would actually just have my buddy to just sit on my back, why it would sit on my back and we'd do it. anyways, we need to be able to regress the movement for a long period of time. So again, there will be a lot of movements where it's like either like, man, the setup feels kind of janky. I would honestly even say like setup to a degree. If it's just like a hella complicated setup to make this movement work, we might be better off with something else. I don't know about you, but I get annoyed with that shit pretty quickly. so
Jeremiah Is Fat: For sure.
Jeremiah Bair: like Even can I see myself setting this up consistently for months on end? but alongside that, can we continually add route load to this for a long period of time? and then anything to add there before we continue?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah, your isolation lifts are probably not going to fall into the category of we're just gonna be able to slam
Jeremiah Bair: Word.
Jeremiah Is Fat: reps and load week after week for a long period of time. So if you're listening to this out there and you're like, well, but my cable lateral raises haven't bro yeah, th no, that's not what we're talking about.
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, that's a good shot. I would say definitely more applicable to your compound movements. finally, does a stimulus to fatigue trade-off make sense? So I don't know, like, and there's nothing wrong with highly fatiguing movements either. We just want to make sure we are really getting a good stimulus out of them and it makes sense with the rest of the program, right? So, like if you just love ripping deadlifts from the floor or like sumo deadlifts, cool. Are we getting an incredible glute stimulus from that? Not necessarily. Is it gonna be like quite a bit of fatigue for the stimulus we're getting as a whole? A lot of times, yeah. And if it's like and which not necessarily a bad thing, right? But if then it's like And I really can't perform at all the rest of my training session because I hit like, I don't know, I rip six sets of sumo deadlifts. Cool. Not gonna be our best option here. Probably not the best example either. But again, like, or even like if we're doing like a pending like you, again, there's nothing wrong with like a bent row. I like a bent row from time to time. But if you're like ripping like a barbell bent row, and for you specifically, we don't have the capacity to really stabilize and brace that well. Lower back gets pretty achy, you're just gassed after that. We can't get good. We just like for what we get out of it, it might make more sense for us to do like a chest supported row or even like a hand supported row instead. We could get the same or a better stimulus for a lotless fatigue. That will often make more sense. Again, we could I think you can take this way too far where like it's okay, especially as you're figuring out an exercise, for it to just feel hard for a couple weeks. But we want to make sure long term that trade off makes sense. Anything you would add there? Cool. Okay. So that's kind of the hypertrophy exercise lens. Now we have to look at this again through two different categories. All this is assuming someone just moves perfectly, no injury history, etc. But there's often like a function bottleneck or maybe like a movement dysfunction bottleneck we need to address to be able to get the hypertrophy outcomes we want. Could you give us an example of like what that could actually mean? Like a movement dysfunction bottleneck.
Jeremiah Is Fat: So someone really wants to grow their glutes or they and they can't access internal rotation at the hip. Like we're gonna have really hard time accomplishing the goal if we can't perform that task. So then we would need to take that into programming consideration to address that movement deficiency. And I would say there are, you know, just categories of movements that we have in clients' programs that most of them are serving the hypertrophy bucket. Like this is going, you know,
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: this drops in the bucket of like hypertrophy, this is the main goal. And then we do have our certain movements like this that, you know, may not yield the quote best or most optimal for hypertrophy, but it is going to help us through an obstacle so that we can get there eventually, kind of thing.
Jeremiah Bair: Absolutely. It's like go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Like I I can just give an example. So I have like a like a flat dumbbell hook lying press in so many of my clients' programs.
Jeremiah Bair: Uh-huh.
Jeremiah Is Fat: And most of my clients are women. And most women are not interested in building like a huge set of pecs here, right?
Jeremiah Bair: Hell yeah, sister.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Right. So something like a flat bench, you know, it may not be your go-to for like a female client, like, well obviously
Jeremiah Bair: Right.
Jeremiah Is Fat: we're gonna want to work on our bench press. You know, we might do something more like an overhead press, an incline press, you know, something like that. But let's say we notice that this client has trouble with shoulder flexion and or they are complaining about shoulder pain in a lot of their movements, so this is a movement where I might put this in to address a A lot of those issues. even though the d quote direct stimulus would be considered pecs, right? Like it's not necessarily in their program because we are trying to hypertrophy their pecs. It is f it is in that sort of like functional bucket, so to speak. And then of course it's not like you get zero hypertrophy stimulus from it. I mean you're also training, you know, the front delts and like ancillary like triceps, if you will. So it's not like we're getting like zero from it. From a hypertrophy hypertrophy perspective, it's just that hypertrophy isn't the main reason that it is in the program.
Jeremiah Bair: Right, but then long term, hey, this person's shoulders move better because we did this hook lying press. They do care about growing their delts,
Jeremiah Is Fat: Correct.
Jeremiah Bair: they move better through the shoulders, scaps move better, we will get more delt hypertrophy because of that. So it does have payoffs there.
Jeremiah Is Fat: And I will add, and I will add, because I think a lot of people are going to listen to this and think like, like, so I guess it'll improve all of my pressing movements. Right. It improves scapular function. So it's also going to help your pulling movements. So if you are interested in growing lats, you know, and really developing like your back musculature, this is important. I mean, scaps are involved in so many of our movements.
Jeremiah Bair: Sure. And counter to so initially we talked about the first filter for a good hypertrophy exercise being is the target tissue, the limiting factor. When we're looking at this category of movements, a lot of times it might not feel like that is initially the case, right? Again, if we're looking at, hey, we're trying to get you better at accessing hip internal rotation or like I don't know, like hip extension. So we're doing a front foot elevated split squat, it might initially feel like like on your split squat, you might be Trash at split squats and you've avoided them in the past because of that. It might just feel like your balance is the limiting factor. But, or we really suck at hip stability stability, and that's the reason we haven't been able to grow the glutes. Balance will oftentimes feel like the limiting factor, not wow, there's so much tension in my glutes. But again, addressing that in the long term will allow us to get the glute growth we want. That's the bottleneck, probably. So basically think of it like we have, I like to think of it at least as we have one more pure output movements. These are gonna give us the most raw hypertrophy stimulus if we can execute well. They're typically gonna be very stable, lots of external stability, specifically, typically, and very low skill. They don't require a whole lot of thought. We can just load them up, execute well. typically lower coordination and oftentimes bracing demands as well. So examples of this would be like our hack squat, our leg press, our pendulum squat, a machine chest press, a chest support row. We can oftentimes just load them up and push. And then we have, I don't know how to categorize this, like a function plus hypertrophy type movement. They're still going to be great for hypertrophy. A split squat is still an incredible movement for hypertrophy, but they will improve function more as well. Think like scapular movement stability, hip stability, your ability to access internal rotation, etc. So, like a dumbbell row, a split squat, dips, contralateral B stance, RDL, step-ups. So based on when all this tying all this together to exercise selection, as you said very nicely before, a lot of our movements will be those, hey, from the hypertrophy lens, this is what's optimal. But then based on the client's movement abilities and bottlenecks, we'll also need to include some of these to allow for the best short and long-term progress. So go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: yeah, you know, I'm like looking like I wanna say something. because I feel like I know a lot of our clients listen to our podcast, so I can like address so many of them in one go here. But a very common client concern, complaint, comment, what what have you, will be that they're frustrated with this movement because they don't feel like they're good at it. So a common one would be like a B stance RDL. And the client will often say, But like can I please just do like a regular barbell deadlift? Like I'm so much better at it. But we've kind of determined through our training video assessment that you're not great at moving through the hip. So just ignoring this, I mean there's a reason that you don't like it. It's because you're not good at it. And if we just throw you onto like a bilateral deadlift that you can like kind of get by doing, we're essentially kicking the can down the road. And then six months from now, you're gonna be like, I don't get it, why haven't glutes grown? And it's like because your body is finding way To not be in that position that it doesn't like to be in. and then I would say a common one, since I have you audience here, a common one would be like, hey, I don't feel stable on my split squats, can I just put this on a Smith machine? And there was a time when I used to program a lot of Smith Machine split squats for that reason.
Jeremiah Bair: Same.
Jeremiah Is Fat: But again, I think a and sometimes that's can still be a really good movement, depending on the person.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: But in a lot of ways, it's like, well, there's a reason that you don't like the dumbbell version and that you don't feel balanced and that it doesn't feel effective. And, you know, there does need to be a little bit of that in your program. I w this is where I would say, you know, the nuances start to come in and like individual programming considerations, of course, but this is where it really does need to be A blend of these things, and we have to have a sprinkling of this. I would say your program should not be entirely addressed to your movement deficiencies and dysfunctions unless you are going through some sort of rehab, you know, situation or like rehabbing an injury or something of the sort. But, you know, your movement should primarily be in that first bucket of serving your your main goal. But we do need a little bit of a balance here, like a little bit of a sprinkling of. these other movements that are essentially going to make those A like those primary movements, your primary lifts, way more effective.
Jeremiah Bair: For sure. I would say within a training day, like a rough idea and it we'll talk through kind of a checklist or some more examples here shortly, but a rough idea of like how I generally distribute this is I would say like I'm probably gonna want like four to six of the movements in my training day to be more of those output movements where hey, we're optimizing for the best hypertrophy stimulus we can get here. And probably one to two of those more like quote unquote function movements. And sometimes they're sometimes it can be the same movement, whereas like this is a killer hypertrophy movement. And we're gonna like improve function as well. But again, like I think like roughly like 75 or 80% of that program being output, the other 20-ish percent being like those more like hypertrophy and function movements at the same time. So let's say we were to put together a simple weekly checklist. Like, hey, these are the most common kind of movement dysfunction we see, or we want to avoid. Here's like If we like keep this movement in place, this will probably make us keep us in a place where we can avoid this. So for example, like poor hip stability. I'm just gonna run my like rough checklist by you. You're way more, way better at this than I am. So I I wanna hear your thoughts here. But I would say roughly like, okay, to help us address or avoid poor hip stability and internal rotation, we could keep a split squat or launch variation weekly without external support. Cool. That should tick that box. Scapular movement, shoulder stability. If someone can do it like a dip, or even like a dumbbell press, if given we're not at too high of an incline to where like they aren't able to get overhead without rib cage flare, like a 30-degree incline press, I really like for a lot of people. or a dip, I again I think is really killer here if somebody can actually execute it well. And then from like a stability anti rotation perspective, like a single arm row without chest support. really gets us better at strengthening of course like we're gonna get a lot of lats there, but also gets us good at stabilizing through the cord, using our using our lats to help stabilize our spine, et cetera. What would you add there or change?
Jeremiah Is Fat: No, I think some of the lifts that you have here are good. I mean, honestly it a lot of like the movement buckets just like really naturally fit this whole scheme. In terms of like upper body unilateral, lower body unilateral, like push, pull, row, like you know, like all of all of those buckets are gonna like you're gonna cover all of these bases. I do like something that does challenge rotation, 'cause that brings in like extra core like trunk stability like you mentioned the dumbbell row single arm dumbbell row I should specify. I I know you mentioned a thirty degree incline press. I really like like a an anterior del press for a lot of people. just I
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, same.
Jeremiah Is Fat: but same same idea there as you in terms of like you're not sitting at a ninety degree angle trying to get directly overhead.
Jeremiah Bair: Most people can't.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Right. And yeah, you listed half kneeling landmine press as well, which is definitely in like most of my clients' programs. for a lot of reasons. scapular function, like s serratus like involvement. and then a lot with a lot of these, it's like that there's always a core element, right? Like what your your core
Jeremiah Bair: Mm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: and like obliques are are having to do or like are required. so like even landmine del press, for example, like yeah. We're working on scap stuff, but we're also working on stacking that rib cage over the pelvis. That's part of why it works
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: so well, is like the awareness piece is there, and people can get really aware and intentional. and I mentioned earlier, like the dumbbell hook lying press, same thing. So, for those that don't know, hook lying is means that when you're lying flat on a bench, your feet are up on the bench. So your trunk has no choice but to stack itself. So we're kind of ticking a lot of boxes with with a lot of these movements.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. So if we were to distill this into a very general, which is the hard part about this because so much of it is going to be specific to your limitations, but a very general, like, hey, it's probably a good idea for most people to do like one of these at least once a week. Would you agree, like probably a split squat or a lunch without external support? for our our like pressing type pattern, what would what would be your choice there? Would it be a press?
Jeremiah Is Fat: for a pressing.
Jeremiah Bair: Basically think like scaps. Think like scaps. Think general scap movement quality.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah, I'm probably gonna go I'm probably gonna go with a half kneeling landmine press.
Jeremiah Bair: Sick. Okay. Okay. And we can c I would agree. Well I mean the same thing. We like teach that ribcage stack. Probably gonna get the most out of that. and then for like a single arm row without chest support.
Jeremiah Is Fat: for a single arm row
Jeremiah Bair: What do you choose would that like on our top? Like let's say we have to choose three to four movements total, patterns total.
Jeremiah Is Fat: To address common dysfunctions. Yeah, I would say like since we're talking specifically about addressing dysfunction, then yeah, I would put a dumbbell row there.
Jeremiah Bair: Or avoiding it. Okay, sick. Sick. Okay. Cool. All right. anything else to add there before we move on? The self is is just cool, like when you understand this, even things like, hey, this person really struggles with like depressing their scaps when we're doing presses. So I can even like I've become a big fan of just a standing dumbbell bicep curl. A lot of people similarly there don't understand like how to just keep the movement more stable by keeping scaps a bit more depressed and we're just all over the place, like tipping forwards and backwards. So if I can just it's a very easy way to teach someone though, like, hey, just pull your shoulder blades down, keep them there. Now we can carry over kind of like that skill to even like a press. It's just kind of an aside. anyways, next up we have bias. So we are going to have a couple different categories that our movements fall into. We're gonna have more length and bias movements, which generally are gonna be more quote unquote omni, meaning they are going to challenge more tissues at once. These are typically gonna be the meat and potatoes of our programming. And then we're gonna have more, and this can be again like we like lengthened, mid-range, short bias. think like mid to lengthened, gonna be our meat and potatoes. And then we have more short bias movements, which are going to be harder in the shortener contracted range. So we could think like for quads, easy example. Hack squad is gonna be more lengthened bias, gonna be very challenging at the bottom, easier at the top, really challenging in the stretch. Lengthened equals stretch. Short bias movement would be a leg extension. Hardest at the top, easy at the bottom, hardest when we're contracted or squeezed. again, short bias movements aren't going to be the meat and potatoes of the program, but they're an easy way for us to lay on more volume with less fatigue. They allow for more specificity. So, like, we might not get as many glute gains out of a hip thrust as we do a rear foot-elevated split squat. Don't come at us, Brett Contreras. But We can use that to layer more volume. Either, hey, we don't have the recovery capacity to keep just stacking on split squats and leg presses to glow our group glow our gr grow our glutes, cheese, or we won wanna be very specific with like maybe Natalie doesn't want to grow her quads anymore and she really don't want to just build a dump truck. So we're gonna keep the volume specific to that. Even from like a load management perspective as well. If it's like, hey, my knees are getting pretty beat up or my hips are getting beat up or my lower back is from all this hinging I'm doing. This is a way to help us with load management and continue to drive volume to the area without having to stress other tissues around it that might be limiters. very general principle. Again, this isn't said in stone, but roughly I would say like 70% of our volume, we probably want to bias more towards mid to length in range. And roughly like 30% is gotta be more toward bias. Again, given like specific injury considerations and things like that. Would you agree with that rough ratio?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah.
Jeremiah Bair: Cool. Okay. man, in terms of like an actual checklist, I think a good example of this is like working through. Okay, let's say someone wanted to build their glutes. Some basic guidelines based on priorities. And again, every program everyone's equipment availability will be different. So this is just rough guidelines. But let's say I'm like building a program based on someone's priority is glutes. Okay. I'm typically going to want to look at, I'm going to want the challenge the tissue in the length and range. Now, we have within that like a split squat. I for sure I'm gonna want them to do like a split squat or lunge once to twice per week. That's gonna be the most length of the glute we can get. So glute max wraps basically attaches to I think it attaches right around your butt crack area, wraps around the pelvis, then attaches to your upper leg bone. so When we're in the bottom of a riffed elevated split squat, a lunge, et cetera, we'll actually shift a little bit towards the working side and really be able to fully stretch glute max more than we can in any other bilateral movement. So that's a good way for us to get all the way lengthened. But counter to that, typically it's not quite as loadable. So typically, if I'm looking at this training week for glutes, I'm probably gonna want like one to two movements like that, and then also a few more bilateral squat patterns. I mean, we could still include like our split squat in this, but it could also be like A leg press type pattern, or even maybe like a Smith squat or something of the sort, where I'm still going to be able to challenge the glute in quite a lengthened range, not quite as much as that split squat, but still quite lengthened. But I'm also really going to be able to get a ton of output. This is probably going to be more stable and really going to be load able to load it up and challenge it well. our hinges are typically going to be more mid-range, but a hinge is going to be another key component of this if I really want to build glutes. So I'm probably going to want this person hinging once or twice per week as well. That would probably look something like, hey, maybe I'm gonna do one bilateral movement, like a bilateral RDL, barbell RDL, and then probably unilateral movement, like a contralateral RDL. and then short glute, so challenging glute and short range, gonna be a way for us to drive more volume. So gonna be important. So probably something I'm gonna do once to twice per week. It's really not gonna be like the top priority in the programming, but in general, they're like, hey, we're hinging once to twice per week, we're gonna do a split squat. Lunge type pattern once or twice per week. For sure, lengthened by a squat pattern t at least twice per week. A split quat squat could count as one of those. And then challenge gluten short position once or twice per week. Like roughly then when we're looking at our exercise selection, this is kind of an easy checklist to work through. Anything else you would add there? Okay.
Jeremiah Is Fat: No, you are the glute queen, so.
Jeremiah Bair: For sure. Wellness girls. when it comes to quads, for example, there it's pretty simple, right? We want to challenge the tissue well through its full contractile range. I would probably just do like a s squat pattern. It's gonna challenge the quad in the length and tr range twice per week. Challenge it in the short so think like a leg press really set up to get max knee flexion, a hack squat, a pendulum squat. And then I want to challenge it in the short range twice a week as well. So think like a leg extension. I don't know if it's worth it for us to go through every muscle group like this, but again, when we're looking at like bias and how these exercises play out, that's really gonna dictate like which movements we're choosing. Because a lot of times it'll like I I remember in college at least when I'd like to ask someone what their program was, and it would be like, I'm doing back squats, then I'm doing front squats, then I'm doing goblet squats, and then I'm doing leg press, or then I'm doing Smith Machine squats, right? There's a lot of redundancy there. So it's making sure we're taking all the boxes, like hey, are we challenging the tissue in the length and range, the shortened range, even like more the mid range if it makes sense? is really kind of the biggest thought process here. Anything to add there before we wrap it up on that part?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah, just you know, the Things that are gonna move the needle the most are going to be like your typically your compound movements, so your multi joint
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: movements. You wanna do a unilateral, a bilateral, and then beyond that the reason for not doing more is essentially demand not only on the tissues but central nervous system fatigue, and all and that aspect, which is where we can bring in those shortened movements or like more isolation lifts, whatever you wanna call them. So, like there is of course benefit of training a muscle group throughout its entire contract contractile range. but bang for your buck, you want to think like compound lifts. And because no one can I I don't know anyone that can just sustain an entire program of just exclusively compound lifts. and so that's where we can utilize a leg extension, a hip thrust, a 45 degree hip extension, and and things like that.
Jeremiah Bair: I think talking to the LinkedIn versus sh go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Which I yeah, I mean basically what you just covered, but I'm trying to like generalize it.
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, no, I kind of just word vomited. So that's a good way to make that more make that more understandable. I think it's also important to clarify that you don't need to train every tissue through like the lengthened and shortened range. You don't need to have like a lengthened and shortened movement in every training day or even in the program as a whole, right? Like if it's a priority muscle group, it is more likely that that's gonna be the case. But if it's like again, like you mentioned PECs earlier. PECS not a huge priority for most of our clientele. For a female clientele. So we're probably not gonna have you do like a short biased pec movement, like a peck fly. Just it generally isn't gonna make sense. Probably if we're doing a pressing movement, we'll wanna get some pec in there just from a function perspective. We don't want your pecs to just be completely neglected. But it's probably gonna be one where hey, we get a lot of bang for a buck. We're also gonna get like some front delta in this. We might be doing like an incline press type movement or a dip where we get a lot of shoulders, triceps, and then we have again like the the function benefits from it as well. Cool. exercise staples. So getting into staple movements will keep them in movement for a very long time because they tick a lot of the boxes we discussed here. I think starting with lower body first, I think we both agree that a split squat is almost always going to be a staple in almost every program. Glutes are quite important to most of our clients, even if they're not important to you from a functioning perspective. I think they're one of the best like lower body movements we can do. So that is almost always gonna be a staple in a program. Some type of hinge pattern, like an RDL. And then from like an output perspective, almost always going to be a leg press, I would say, in a program for almost as long as you're a client. Would you agree with that?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah. And we have to throw into the conversation that a leg press will challenge both glutes and quads.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm. It truly is. They're just like such a good, just such a good loadable exercise. It is so simple for us to nail. And we can almost always find a way to make the leg press work. Like no matter how shitty the leg press is, they're they're typically not like so shitty. Unlike like a lot of hack squats, it's like this actually just like won't fit you at all. And it's very hard for us to make this work. We can almost always like get a really, really killer stimulus out of a leg press. So that is gonna be, I would say, one of my staples there. Terms of upper body, do you see any consistent like wow, these are movements that I generally am gonna keep in a client's program for a very long period of time? Deeper than just our basic, like obviously there's gonna be like horizontal press, vertical press, like deeper like the specific movements or not so much.
Jeremiah Is Fat: So much. I you know, like I I would any answer I would give would be so general. You know, it would be like
Jeremiah Bair: Uh-huh.
Jeremiah Is Fat: a unilateral like a pull, a push, you know, like that
Jeremiah Bair: The the one like the c I feel like the most I can distill it down to is typically some type of single arm pull down. But that's past that it with upper body, we typically have a lot more very good options to work with. And again, if it's like, hey, this like this whatever, we have this chest supported row that just absolutely rules. Cool, we're gonna run it for a very long time. But that is a lot more specific to the clients of equipment availability versus the lower,
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah.
Jeremiah Bair: there's generally like we're gonna have a leg press, we're going to have an RDL, we're gonna have a split squat almost always. Cool. anything else to add there? Alright, so finally then when we're looking at kind of our starting point here when determining the program, our process is basically we'll have a needs analysis where we're looking at what are the client goals versus where is their current physique at? Which I think is huge. And honestly, a lot of people have never really considered like, okay, what is my goal physique actually look like? We'll always have clients submit when they submit their initial questionnaire. Give us like a physique that is that inspires you. We can't just give you this person's physique, but hey, kind of what do we aspire to look like? Then we can look at how much muscle does that person have versus where we're at? Are they a lot leaner than you? This really tells us the direction of the program. How much muscle do we need to build? Are there specific areas we do need to prioritize more? So that kind of gives us our starting direction. From first or from there, then we'll look at okay, what equipment do we actually have available to work with? And then what's your actual skill level as a client? Now We'll do a movement screen where you can really start to get a pretty good feel just from this. It's just body weight movements. It's quite simple. We don't really fully know until we actually see you in the gym, but we can start to get a pretty good feel just based on this. Like, how well does this person actually move? How much complexity should I hit them with? Or is this someone where, hey, I want to keep this like as simple and easy, like as simple and mindless as possible initially and just get them comfortable in the gym? Did you want to say something there? You looked like you were about to. All good if not. Okay. But basically that will help us determine a lot in terms of exercise selection as well, because it might be like, hey, this movement might be more optimal on paper. Like maybe me, like getting them into a hack squat, they to grow their quads, might be more optimal on paper. But man, this person can barely do a body weight squat. We might not actually be in a position where we can perform that movement well yet. So we need to work up with it, up to it. and then from there, any movement dysfunctional bottlenecks we need to address. So basically within that. I would typically like when the within the program, I would generally select these first. So again, it's typically gonna be like one to two movements per day that I'm gonna put in. Hey, we're gonna do like this half kneeling land my press, right? Or this single arm row, the split squat ever, whatever we discussed. That's in general, like when I'm going through the client needs analysis and assessment process. It's okay, where's this person at? Where do they wanna be? And it's basically like, okay, to get to where they wanna be, they need to either Build muscle, lose fat, or some combination of both, usually a combination of both. And then from there, it's what are the bottlenecks stopping them from making that happen? Losing the fat, building the muscle, whatever it may be. We typically need to really focus on addressing that first. Or simultaneously. Here again, though, it's let's make sure we're addressing those. Those will typically be the first movements I select, typically one to two per training day. And then from there, we have something like four to six slots within the day for more quote unquote output movements. Again, we have those good hypertrophy movement filters. Is the target history the limiting factor? Does it fit the client's structure and movement capacity? Can you progress it for months on end? And does the stimulus to fatigue trade-off make sense? And then alongside that, the conversation around bias, again, probably gonna want to make it roughly 70% length and bias. I would say more like 69% length and bias, about 31% short bias is the absolute most ideal range or ratio. Didn't even catch the 69 joke there, Natalie. And that is really, I would say, the process when we're coming to putting a program together from an exercise selection perspective. Anything else you would add there before we wrap it up?
Jeremiah Is Fat: No, I think that's a nice summary.
Jeremiah Bair: Thank you. All right, well, hopefully you all enjoyed the show. If you did, leave us a five star rating and a review. If you would like to apply to work with our team, hit the link in the show notes and we will catch you guys next time.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Do I Thank you. I made the leap and adopted a dog and his name is Chop. I did not name him and I was going to change his name. I really wanted to name him like Christopher because I felt like he kind of looked like Christopher. maybe that will be his formal name, but my nieces who live in Texas, so they haven't even met him, like are in love with this dog. And they call him like Pork Chop. Because I you know, I had a bunch of nicknames for him, like Pork chop, wood chop, judo chop, chopstick. I call him chopstick a lot. And my nieces
Jeremiah Bair: Like that.
Jeremiah Is Fat: love calling him Yeah, my nieces love calling him pork chop, so that they were going to be really upset if I changed his name. So but
Jeremiah Bair: That's Chop is a dope name. I love that name.
Jeremiah Is Fat: I know, he's like he's perfect because he's such a meat head. He's like such a meat head, yes.
Jeremiah Bair: yeah. You would have to be in your family.
Jeremiah Is Fat: He is a gentle giant. I think and I mean I could like do an entire podcast on this and maybe one day we should about all our adopts.
Jeremiah Bair: That's actually today's topic. Yeah.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yes. but I will say that one of the stories 'cause like when you adopt an animal, you know, they take you through their background and like I was fostering him so I knew quite a bit. but one of the stories they said was like when they first got him as a stray, he they like went to administer some sort of like medicine via like syringe, like oral syringe, and he just like put the entire syringe in his mouth thinking that it was edible and then like figured out what it was and spit it out and I was like that is like the most chop thing you could do. Just like senselessly like I'm gonna eat this giant thing. wait, I can't. Like that's yeah, that's my dog.
Jeremiah Bair: I love him. I'm very excited to meet him. He again just always looks so happy. He like he always looks like he's so excited to meet people and all of your stories and I am stoked that he's gonna be at the Airbnb for our team retreat. But congratulations,
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah.
Jeremiah Bair: dude. Very stoked for you.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Thank you.
Jeremiah Bair: Alright, so getting into exercise selection. I think first we need to look at this from the frame of what makes a good hypertrophy exercise? What makes a good muscle group a muscle growth exercise good? So I would say there's really four filters here I look at it through. Feel free to add anything you would like here. But first, is the target tissue you were trying to grow going to be the limiting factor? I think this is a one people often overlook. So if I'm trying to grow my glutes in a squat pattern, It's okay to feel other muscle groups working. That's another misnomer. Like, hey, if we're doing or a hinge, right? Like I feel my lower back working. That's not necessarily bad. Like our erector should be working. But the target tissue should be the limiting factor. It shouldn't feel like my lower back hurts, and that's why I stopped the movement. Right. Now, on a compound movement, it might be more like an overall full-body sense of terribleness that causes you to stop the necessarily like, wow, there's this crazy isolated burn in my glutes. We should definitely be able feel that there is a lot of tension in the target tissue that we're working on. And again, that should be eventually the limiting factor that causes us to fail or would cause us to fail. If it is our lower back, if it's our grip strength on a movement like a Romanian deadlift, if it's cardiovascular fatigue, like if we're doing like, I don't know, a wad and doing an AMRAP set of deadlifts, and it's not actually like our glutes that are the thing that's about to fail, it's our lower back or just our cardio system giving out. then something other than the target tissue is the limiting factor. So, and we'll talk about this as well from a like there's gonna be two different lenses we look at this through. First the lens of hypertrophy, and then we'll talk about like the movement dysfunction side of things and like how that might change this. But purely from a hypertrophy perspective, anything you would add there.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yes, sometimes those things can point us in a direction of where we need to go.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: So, like cardio, for example, I mean let's take something like a set of split squats where or or you know, something like a compound lift where it feels like cardio is the limiting factor. Sometimes that's a cue for us, like, okay, cool, we are going to incorporate a couple hit sessions per week or something to kind of better develop the cardiovasculars. you know, capacity, or, you know, an indicator of something down the chain that needs to be looked at. I know we're getting into that later, but you know, if balance is an issue, it's like, okay, well why is that? And, you know, sometimes it's just like a practice thing, like we just need practice doing it. but other times it's like, there's actually something funky going on up or down the chain that needs our attention. So but likely to your point we are going to use some other things to address that.
Jeremiah Bair: That's a good shout though, because I think if you just listen to what I just rattled off there without any further context, it would be like, well, just change the movement. Where a lot of times that's not the answer.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Right.
Jeremiah Bair: Again, it's like a hole that we need to plug first. And as an aside with the cardio thing, yes, that is very common. Though especially for lower body training, I just often will see someone really struggling to get close to failure or like it doesn't look like they're pushing all that hard with the lower body movements and they're just gassed. It is very common, like, hey. We just need to actually bring up your cardiovascular system a bit. Anyways, filter number two. Go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: I think your your point with the cardio was something your point with the cardio was something more along the lines of a crossfit like a Hyrux workout or something where you're limited. Yeah. So I think it's just important
Jeremiah Bair: Correct, correct. Correct.
Jeremiah Is Fat: to make that distinction 'cause I know someone out there listening is like, well I get gassed by split squats, might as well take those out
Jeremiah Bair: Correct, yes, absolutely. and I mean typically this will mean a more stable exercise can be better, but again, that's not always gonna be the case, as we'll discuss more, right? For example, we talk a lot about like a hack squat versus a a back squat, a barbell back squat. It will be easier to keep the quad as the limiting factor. But again, more stable isn't always going to be better with some other considerations. But next, does it fit the client's structure and movement capacity? So generally, this just means it will be easy for us to get into the joint position we need to train the target muscle. So, for example, if our goal is to train quads, based on how we're built in the machine setup or whatever movement we're doing, it should make it easy for us to get into a position of deep knee flexion where we have some forward knee travel over the toe and hamstring is kissing the calf at the bottom of the rep. Right? So the movement should, it shouldn't feel like we're really, we really have to fight. against the the equipment we have or the machine or whatever we're using. It shouldn't feel like we really have fight that to get into the target position. Sometimes that's just adjusting oftentimes that's just adjusting someone's setup or doing a little thing like, hey, let's add squat sheaves or heel elevation here. Sometimes it is, hey, we just need to select a different exercise. Anything to add there before we continue?
Jeremiah Is Fat: A a point I make all of the time is that we don't need to be chasing some optimal quote unquote range of motion. We need to be chasing your range of motion. And a lot of times that is your active range of motion, I should specify. And a lot of times that is determined by you, like your biomechanics, plus whatever machine or you know, you are on. So I was having this conversation with a client the other day. and I I feel like I have this conversation. almost every week, you know, and it's like I I can only get so low on this or whatever. And then I show them like my hack squad or my leg press and it's like, hey, this is all there is. Doesn't always mean like just because we can't get into some textbook optimal position doesn't necessarily that's not necessarily a reason to scrap the movement.
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah. It would be cool to even like for people to see like your leg press, Andrea's, Danny's and mine all side by side 'cause they all look quite a lot different.
Jeremiah Is Fat: I Do you remember I did a an Instagram post. I still send it to a lot of my clients. the Instagram post I did about my leg press versus Andrea's and it was like why does why don't these look alike?
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, that'd be a great idea. Somebody should make an Instagram post like that. I'm just fucking with you.
Jeremiah Is Fat: You are such a loser.
Jeremiah Bair: I actually don't remember that. Send that to me after this, though. I'd love to see it. Okay, well,
Jeremiah Is Fat: So glad my content resonates with you.
Jeremiah Bair: I need to follow you. that's a great idea, though. For sure, send me that. I would love to send that to clients as well. Next. Progresssibility. Can you progress it for months on end? So once we Executed movement well, we're able to push it hard. We talked last week about the importance of significant tension. Basically, significant tension is going to be what creates hypertrophy. So we need to load the target tissue well, we need to be able to train it close to failure. Now, as you adapt, build muscle will get stronger. The loads you were previously using will no longer be heavy enough to create significant tension. So load and/or reps increase over time to continue to keep us in a place where we're experiencing significant tension. Meaning we need to be able to progress. Exercise for a long period of time via load and reps, primarily via load, within a certain range. So if it's a movement where, like, I don't know, you think of like, I'm gonna do push ups, I'm gonna have the guy at the gym put a 45 pound plate on my back. Okay, like how long can we keep progressing that, right? Can we do this for months? I mean, how many plates
Jeremiah Is Fat: Five clips.
Jeremiah Bair: can we stack on your back? Five places, five places probably the total, right? did you ever do that?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Fine plates.
Jeremiah Bair: six, right?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah. What
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, okay. Okay.
Jeremiah Is Fat: about what about you, like five, two and a half pound plates?
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, I would actually just have my buddy to just sit on my back, why it would sit on my back and we'd do it. anyways, we need to be able to regress the movement for a long period of time. So again, there will be a lot of movements where it's like either like, man, the setup feels kind of janky. I would honestly even say like setup to a degree. If it's just like a hella complicated setup to make this movement work, we might be better off with something else. I don't know about you, but I get annoyed with that shit pretty quickly. so
Jeremiah Is Fat: For sure.
Jeremiah Bair: like Even can I see myself setting this up consistently for months on end? but alongside that, can we continually add route load to this for a long period of time? and then anything to add there before we continue?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah, your isolation lifts are probably not going to fall into the category of we're just gonna be able to slam
Jeremiah Bair: Word.
Jeremiah Is Fat: reps and load week after week for a long period of time. So if you're listening to this out there and you're like, well, but my cable lateral raises haven't bro yeah, th no, that's not what we're talking about.
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, that's a good shot. I would say definitely more applicable to your compound movements. finally, does a stimulus to fatigue trade-off make sense? So I don't know, like, and there's nothing wrong with highly fatiguing movements either. We just want to make sure we are really getting a good stimulus out of them and it makes sense with the rest of the program, right? So, like if you just love ripping deadlifts from the floor or like sumo deadlifts, cool. Are we getting an incredible glute stimulus from that? Not necessarily. Is it gonna be like quite a bit of fatigue for the stimulus we're getting as a whole? A lot of times, yeah. And if it's like and which not necessarily a bad thing, right? But if then it's like And I really can't perform at all the rest of my training session because I hit like, I don't know, I rip six sets of sumo deadlifts. Cool. Not gonna be our best option here. Probably not the best example either. But again, like, or even like if we're doing like a pending like you, again, there's nothing wrong with like a bent row. I like a bent row from time to time. But if you're like ripping like a barbell bent row, and for you specifically, we don't have the capacity to really stabilize and brace that well. Lower back gets pretty achy, you're just gassed after that. We can't get good. We just like for what we get out of it, it might make more sense for us to do like a chest supported row or even like a hand supported row instead. We could get the same or a better stimulus for a lotless fatigue. That will often make more sense. Again, we could I think you can take this way too far where like it's okay, especially as you're figuring out an exercise, for it to just feel hard for a couple weeks. But we want to make sure long term that trade off makes sense. Anything you would add there? Cool. Okay. So that's kind of the hypertrophy exercise lens. Now we have to look at this again through two different categories. All this is assuming someone just moves perfectly, no injury history, etc. But there's often like a function bottleneck or maybe like a movement dysfunction bottleneck we need to address to be able to get the hypertrophy outcomes we want. Could you give us an example of like what that could actually mean? Like a movement dysfunction bottleneck.
Jeremiah Is Fat: So someone really wants to grow their glutes or they and they can't access internal rotation at the hip. Like we're gonna have really hard time accomplishing the goal if we can't perform that task. So then we would need to take that into programming consideration to address that movement deficiency. And I would say there are, you know, just categories of movements that we have in clients' programs that most of them are serving the hypertrophy bucket. Like this is going, you know,
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: this drops in the bucket of like hypertrophy, this is the main goal. And then we do have our certain movements like this that, you know, may not yield the quote best or most optimal for hypertrophy, but it is going to help us through an obstacle so that we can get there eventually, kind of thing.
Jeremiah Bair: Absolutely. It's like go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Like I I can just give an example. So I have like a like a flat dumbbell hook lying press in so many of my clients' programs.
Jeremiah Bair: Uh-huh.
Jeremiah Is Fat: And most of my clients are women. And most women are not interested in building like a huge set of pecs here, right?
Jeremiah Bair: Hell yeah, sister.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Right. So something like a flat bench, you know, it may not be your go-to for like a female client, like, well obviously
Jeremiah Bair: Right.
Jeremiah Is Fat: we're gonna want to work on our bench press. You know, we might do something more like an overhead press, an incline press, you know, something like that. But let's say we notice that this client has trouble with shoulder flexion and or they are complaining about shoulder pain in a lot of their movements, so this is a movement where I might put this in to address a A lot of those issues. even though the d quote direct stimulus would be considered pecs, right? Like it's not necessarily in their program because we are trying to hypertrophy their pecs. It is f it is in that sort of like functional bucket, so to speak. And then of course it's not like you get zero hypertrophy stimulus from it. I mean you're also training, you know, the front delts and like ancillary like triceps, if you will. So it's not like we're getting like zero from it. From a hypertrophy hypertrophy perspective, it's just that hypertrophy isn't the main reason that it is in the program.
Jeremiah Bair: Right, but then long term, hey, this person's shoulders move better because we did this hook lying press. They do care about growing their delts,
Jeremiah Is Fat: Correct.
Jeremiah Bair: they move better through the shoulders, scaps move better, we will get more delt hypertrophy because of that. So it does have payoffs there.
Jeremiah Is Fat: And I will add, and I will add, because I think a lot of people are going to listen to this and think like, like, so I guess it'll improve all of my pressing movements. Right. It improves scapular function. So it's also going to help your pulling movements. So if you are interested in growing lats, you know, and really developing like your back musculature, this is important. I mean, scaps are involved in so many of our movements.
Jeremiah Bair: Sure. And counter to so initially we talked about the first filter for a good hypertrophy exercise being is the target tissue, the limiting factor. When we're looking at this category of movements, a lot of times it might not feel like that is initially the case, right? Again, if we're looking at, hey, we're trying to get you better at accessing hip internal rotation or like I don't know, like hip extension. So we're doing a front foot elevated split squat, it might initially feel like like on your split squat, you might be Trash at split squats and you've avoided them in the past because of that. It might just feel like your balance is the limiting factor. But, or we really suck at hip stability stability, and that's the reason we haven't been able to grow the glutes. Balance will oftentimes feel like the limiting factor, not wow, there's so much tension in my glutes. But again, addressing that in the long term will allow us to get the glute growth we want. That's the bottleneck, probably. So basically think of it like we have, I like to think of it at least as we have one more pure output movements. These are gonna give us the most raw hypertrophy stimulus if we can execute well. They're typically gonna be very stable, lots of external stability, specifically, typically, and very low skill. They don't require a whole lot of thought. We can just load them up, execute well. typically lower coordination and oftentimes bracing demands as well. So examples of this would be like our hack squat, our leg press, our pendulum squat, a machine chest press, a chest support row. We can oftentimes just load them up and push. And then we have, I don't know how to categorize this, like a function plus hypertrophy type movement. They're still going to be great for hypertrophy. A split squat is still an incredible movement for hypertrophy, but they will improve function more as well. Think like scapular movement stability, hip stability, your ability to access internal rotation, etc. So, like a dumbbell row, a split squat, dips, contralateral B stance, RDL, step-ups. So based on when all this tying all this together to exercise selection, as you said very nicely before, a lot of our movements will be those, hey, from the hypertrophy lens, this is what's optimal. But then based on the client's movement abilities and bottlenecks, we'll also need to include some of these to allow for the best short and long-term progress. So go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: yeah, you know, I'm like looking like I wanna say something. because I feel like I know a lot of our clients listen to our podcast, so I can like address so many of them in one go here. But a very common client concern, complaint, comment, what what have you, will be that they're frustrated with this movement because they don't feel like they're good at it. So a common one would be like a B stance RDL. And the client will often say, But like can I please just do like a regular barbell deadlift? Like I'm so much better at it. But we've kind of determined through our training video assessment that you're not great at moving through the hip. So just ignoring this, I mean there's a reason that you don't like it. It's because you're not good at it. And if we just throw you onto like a bilateral deadlift that you can like kind of get by doing, we're essentially kicking the can down the road. And then six months from now, you're gonna be like, I don't get it, why haven't glutes grown? And it's like because your body is finding way To not be in that position that it doesn't like to be in. and then I would say a common one, since I have you audience here, a common one would be like, hey, I don't feel stable on my split squats, can I just put this on a Smith machine? And there was a time when I used to program a lot of Smith Machine split squats for that reason.
Jeremiah Bair: Same.
Jeremiah Is Fat: But again, I think a and sometimes that's can still be a really good movement, depending on the person.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: But in a lot of ways, it's like, well, there's a reason that you don't like the dumbbell version and that you don't feel balanced and that it doesn't feel effective. And, you know, there does need to be a little bit of that in your program. I w this is where I would say, you know, the nuances start to come in and like individual programming considerations, of course, but this is where it really does need to be A blend of these things, and we have to have a sprinkling of this. I would say your program should not be entirely addressed to your movement deficiencies and dysfunctions unless you are going through some sort of rehab, you know, situation or like rehabbing an injury or something of the sort. But, you know, your movement should primarily be in that first bucket of serving your your main goal. But we do need a little bit of a balance here, like a little bit of a sprinkling of. these other movements that are essentially going to make those A like those primary movements, your primary lifts, way more effective.
Jeremiah Bair: For sure. I would say within a training day, like a rough idea and it we'll talk through kind of a checklist or some more examples here shortly, but a rough idea of like how I generally distribute this is I would say like I'm probably gonna want like four to six of the movements in my training day to be more of those output movements where hey, we're optimizing for the best hypertrophy stimulus we can get here. And probably one to two of those more like quote unquote function movements. And sometimes they're sometimes it can be the same movement, whereas like this is a killer hypertrophy movement. And we're gonna like improve function as well. But again, like I think like roughly like 75 or 80% of that program being output, the other 20-ish percent being like those more like hypertrophy and function movements at the same time. So let's say we were to put together a simple weekly checklist. Like, hey, these are the most common kind of movement dysfunction we see, or we want to avoid. Here's like If we like keep this movement in place, this will probably make us keep us in a place where we can avoid this. So for example, like poor hip stability. I'm just gonna run my like rough checklist by you. You're way more, way better at this than I am. So I I wanna hear your thoughts here. But I would say roughly like, okay, to help us address or avoid poor hip stability and internal rotation, we could keep a split squat or launch variation weekly without external support. Cool. That should tick that box. Scapular movement, shoulder stability. If someone can do it like a dip, or even like a dumbbell press, if given we're not at too high of an incline to where like they aren't able to get overhead without rib cage flare, like a 30-degree incline press, I really like for a lot of people. or a dip, I again I think is really killer here if somebody can actually execute it well. And then from like a stability anti rotation perspective, like a single arm row without chest support. really gets us better at strengthening of course like we're gonna get a lot of lats there, but also gets us good at stabilizing through the cord, using our using our lats to help stabilize our spine, et cetera. What would you add there or change?
Jeremiah Is Fat: No, I think some of the lifts that you have here are good. I mean, honestly it a lot of like the movement buckets just like really naturally fit this whole scheme. In terms of like upper body unilateral, lower body unilateral, like push, pull, row, like you know, like all of all of those buckets are gonna like you're gonna cover all of these bases. I do like something that does challenge rotation, 'cause that brings in like extra core like trunk stability like you mentioned the dumbbell row single arm dumbbell row I should specify. I I know you mentioned a thirty degree incline press. I really like like a an anterior del press for a lot of people. just I
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, same.
Jeremiah Is Fat: but same same idea there as you in terms of like you're not sitting at a ninety degree angle trying to get directly overhead.
Jeremiah Bair: Most people can't.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Right. And yeah, you listed half kneeling landmine press as well, which is definitely in like most of my clients' programs. for a lot of reasons. scapular function, like s serratus like involvement. and then a lot with a lot of these, it's like that there's always a core element, right? Like what your your core
Jeremiah Bair: Mm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: and like obliques are are having to do or like are required. so like even landmine del press, for example, like yeah. We're working on scap stuff, but we're also working on stacking that rib cage over the pelvis. That's part of why it works
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: so well, is like the awareness piece is there, and people can get really aware and intentional. and I mentioned earlier, like the dumbbell hook lying press, same thing. So, for those that don't know, hook lying is means that when you're lying flat on a bench, your feet are up on the bench. So your trunk has no choice but to stack itself. So we're kind of ticking a lot of boxes with with a lot of these movements.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. So if we were to distill this into a very general, which is the hard part about this because so much of it is going to be specific to your limitations, but a very general, like, hey, it's probably a good idea for most people to do like one of these at least once a week. Would you agree, like probably a split squat or a lunch without external support? for our our like pressing type pattern, what would what would be your choice there? Would it be a press?
Jeremiah Is Fat: for a pressing.
Jeremiah Bair: Basically think like scaps. Think like scaps. Think general scap movement quality.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah, I'm probably gonna go I'm probably gonna go with a half kneeling landmine press.
Jeremiah Bair: Sick. Okay. Okay. And we can c I would agree. Well I mean the same thing. We like teach that ribcage stack. Probably gonna get the most out of that. and then for like a single arm row without chest support.
Jeremiah Is Fat: for a single arm row
Jeremiah Bair: What do you choose would that like on our top? Like let's say we have to choose three to four movements total, patterns total.
Jeremiah Is Fat: To address common dysfunctions. Yeah, I would say like since we're talking specifically about addressing dysfunction, then yeah, I would put a dumbbell row there.
Jeremiah Bair: Or avoiding it. Okay, sick. Sick. Okay. Cool. All right. anything else to add there before we move on? The self is is just cool, like when you understand this, even things like, hey, this person really struggles with like depressing their scaps when we're doing presses. So I can even like I've become a big fan of just a standing dumbbell bicep curl. A lot of people similarly there don't understand like how to just keep the movement more stable by keeping scaps a bit more depressed and we're just all over the place, like tipping forwards and backwards. So if I can just it's a very easy way to teach someone though, like, hey, just pull your shoulder blades down, keep them there. Now we can carry over kind of like that skill to even like a press. It's just kind of an aside. anyways, next up we have bias. So we are going to have a couple different categories that our movements fall into. We're gonna have more length and bias movements, which generally are gonna be more quote unquote omni, meaning they are going to challenge more tissues at once. These are typically gonna be the meat and potatoes of our programming. And then we're gonna have more, and this can be again like we like lengthened, mid-range, short bias. think like mid to lengthened, gonna be our meat and potatoes. And then we have more short bias movements, which are going to be harder in the shortener contracted range. So we could think like for quads, easy example. Hack squad is gonna be more lengthened bias, gonna be very challenging at the bottom, easier at the top, really challenging in the stretch. Lengthened equals stretch. Short bias movement would be a leg extension. Hardest at the top, easy at the bottom, hardest when we're contracted or squeezed. again, short bias movements aren't going to be the meat and potatoes of the program, but they're an easy way for us to lay on more volume with less fatigue. They allow for more specificity. So, like, we might not get as many glute gains out of a hip thrust as we do a rear foot-elevated split squat. Don't come at us, Brett Contreras. But We can use that to layer more volume. Either, hey, we don't have the recovery capacity to keep just stacking on split squats and leg presses to glow our group glow our gr grow our glutes, cheese, or we won wanna be very specific with like maybe Natalie doesn't want to grow her quads anymore and she really don't want to just build a dump truck. So we're gonna keep the volume specific to that. Even from like a load management perspective as well. If it's like, hey, my knees are getting pretty beat up or my hips are getting beat up or my lower back is from all this hinging I'm doing. This is a way to help us with load management and continue to drive volume to the area without having to stress other tissues around it that might be limiters. very general principle. Again, this isn't said in stone, but roughly I would say like 70% of our volume, we probably want to bias more towards mid to length in range. And roughly like 30% is gotta be more toward bias. Again, given like specific injury considerations and things like that. Would you agree with that rough ratio?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah.
Jeremiah Bair: Cool. Okay. man, in terms of like an actual checklist, I think a good example of this is like working through. Okay, let's say someone wanted to build their glutes. Some basic guidelines based on priorities. And again, every program everyone's equipment availability will be different. So this is just rough guidelines. But let's say I'm like building a program based on someone's priority is glutes. Okay. I'm typically going to want to look at, I'm going to want the challenge the tissue in the length and range. Now, we have within that like a split squat. I for sure I'm gonna want them to do like a split squat or lunge once to twice per week. That's gonna be the most length of the glute we can get. So glute max wraps basically attaches to I think it attaches right around your butt crack area, wraps around the pelvis, then attaches to your upper leg bone. so When we're in the bottom of a riffed elevated split squat, a lunge, et cetera, we'll actually shift a little bit towards the working side and really be able to fully stretch glute max more than we can in any other bilateral movement. So that's a good way for us to get all the way lengthened. But counter to that, typically it's not quite as loadable. So typically, if I'm looking at this training week for glutes, I'm probably gonna want like one to two movements like that, and then also a few more bilateral squat patterns. I mean, we could still include like our split squat in this, but it could also be like A leg press type pattern, or even maybe like a Smith squat or something of the sort, where I'm still going to be able to challenge the glute in quite a lengthened range, not quite as much as that split squat, but still quite lengthened. But I'm also really going to be able to get a ton of output. This is probably going to be more stable and really going to be load able to load it up and challenge it well. our hinges are typically going to be more mid-range, but a hinge is going to be another key component of this if I really want to build glutes. So I'm probably going to want this person hinging once or twice per week as well. That would probably look something like, hey, maybe I'm gonna do one bilateral movement, like a bilateral RDL, barbell RDL, and then probably unilateral movement, like a contralateral RDL. and then short glute, so challenging glute and short range, gonna be a way for us to drive more volume. So gonna be important. So probably something I'm gonna do once to twice per week. It's really not gonna be like the top priority in the programming, but in general, they're like, hey, we're hinging once to twice per week, we're gonna do a split squat. Lunge type pattern once or twice per week. For sure, lengthened by a squat pattern t at least twice per week. A split quat squat could count as one of those. And then challenge gluten short position once or twice per week. Like roughly then when we're looking at our exercise selection, this is kind of an easy checklist to work through. Anything else you would add there? Okay.
Jeremiah Is Fat: No, you are the glute queen, so.
Jeremiah Bair: For sure. Wellness girls. when it comes to quads, for example, there it's pretty simple, right? We want to challenge the tissue well through its full contractile range. I would probably just do like a s squat pattern. It's gonna challenge the quad in the length and tr range twice per week. Challenge it in the short so think like a leg press really set up to get max knee flexion, a hack squat, a pendulum squat. And then I want to challenge it in the short range twice a week as well. So think like a leg extension. I don't know if it's worth it for us to go through every muscle group like this, but again, when we're looking at like bias and how these exercises play out, that's really gonna dictate like which movements we're choosing. Because a lot of times it'll like I I remember in college at least when I'd like to ask someone what their program was, and it would be like, I'm doing back squats, then I'm doing front squats, then I'm doing goblet squats, and then I'm doing leg press, or then I'm doing Smith Machine squats, right? There's a lot of redundancy there. So it's making sure we're taking all the boxes, like hey, are we challenging the tissue in the length and range, the shortened range, even like more the mid range if it makes sense? is really kind of the biggest thought process here. Anything to add there before we wrap it up on that part?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah, just you know, the Things that are gonna move the needle the most are going to be like your typically your compound movements, so your multi joint
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm.
Jeremiah Is Fat: movements. You wanna do a unilateral, a bilateral, and then beyond that the reason for not doing more is essentially demand not only on the tissues but central nervous system fatigue, and all and that aspect, which is where we can bring in those shortened movements or like more isolation lifts, whatever you wanna call them. So, like there is of course benefit of training a muscle group throughout its entire contract contractile range. but bang for your buck, you want to think like compound lifts. And because no one can I I don't know anyone that can just sustain an entire program of just exclusively compound lifts. and so that's where we can utilize a leg extension, a hip thrust, a 45 degree hip extension, and and things like that.
Jeremiah Bair: I think talking to the LinkedIn versus sh go ahead.
Jeremiah Is Fat: Which I yeah, I mean basically what you just covered, but I'm trying to like generalize it.
Jeremiah Bair: Yeah, no, I kind of just word vomited. So that's a good way to make that more make that more understandable. I think it's also important to clarify that you don't need to train every tissue through like the lengthened and shortened range. You don't need to have like a lengthened and shortened movement in every training day or even in the program as a whole, right? Like if it's a priority muscle group, it is more likely that that's gonna be the case. But if it's like again, like you mentioned PECs earlier. PECS not a huge priority for most of our clientele. For a female clientele. So we're probably not gonna have you do like a short biased pec movement, like a peck fly. Just it generally isn't gonna make sense. Probably if we're doing a pressing movement, we'll wanna get some pec in there just from a function perspective. We don't want your pecs to just be completely neglected. But it's probably gonna be one where hey, we get a lot of bang for a buck. We're also gonna get like some front delta in this. We might be doing like an incline press type movement or a dip where we get a lot of shoulders, triceps, and then we have again like the the function benefits from it as well. Cool. exercise staples. So getting into staple movements will keep them in movement for a very long time because they tick a lot of the boxes we discussed here. I think starting with lower body first, I think we both agree that a split squat is almost always going to be a staple in almost every program. Glutes are quite important to most of our clients, even if they're not important to you from a functioning perspective. I think they're one of the best like lower body movements we can do. So that is almost always gonna be a staple in a program. Some type of hinge pattern, like an RDL. And then from like an output perspective, almost always going to be a leg press, I would say, in a program for almost as long as you're a client. Would you agree with that?
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah. And we have to throw into the conversation that a leg press will challenge both glutes and quads.
Jeremiah Bair: Mm-hmm. It truly is. They're just like such a good, just such a good loadable exercise. It is so simple for us to nail. And we can almost always find a way to make the leg press work. Like no matter how shitty the leg press is, they're they're typically not like so shitty. Unlike like a lot of hack squats, it's like this actually just like won't fit you at all. And it's very hard for us to make this work. We can almost always like get a really, really killer stimulus out of a leg press. So that is gonna be, I would say, one of my staples there. Terms of upper body, do you see any consistent like wow, these are movements that I generally am gonna keep in a client's program for a very long period of time? Deeper than just our basic, like obviously there's gonna be like horizontal press, vertical press, like deeper like the specific movements or not so much.
Jeremiah Is Fat: So much. I you know, like I I would any answer I would give would be so general. You know, it would be like
Jeremiah Bair: Uh-huh.
Jeremiah Is Fat: a unilateral like a pull, a push, you know, like that
Jeremiah Bair: The the one like the c I feel like the most I can distill it down to is typically some type of single arm pull down. But that's past that it with upper body, we typically have a lot more very good options to work with. And again, if it's like, hey, this like this whatever, we have this chest supported row that just absolutely rules. Cool, we're gonna run it for a very long time. But that is a lot more specific to the clients of equipment availability versus the lower,
Jeremiah Is Fat: Yeah.
Jeremiah Bair: there's generally like we're gonna have a leg press, we're going to have an RDL, we're gonna have a split squat almost always. Cool. anything else to add there? Alright, so finally then when we're looking at kind of our starting point here when determining the program, our process is basically we'll have a needs analysis where we're looking at what are the client goals versus where is their current physique at? Which I think is huge. And honestly, a lot of people have never really considered like, okay, what is my goal physique actually look like? We'll always have clients submit when they submit their initial questionnaire. Give us like a physique that is that inspires you. We can't just give you this person's physique, but hey, kind of what do we aspire to look like? Then we can look at how much muscle does that person have versus where we're at? Are they a lot leaner than you? This really tells us the direction of the program. How much muscle do we need to build? Are there specific areas we do need to prioritize more? So that kind of gives us our starting direction. From first or from there, then we'll look at okay, what equipment do we actually have available to work with? And then what's your actual skill level as a client? Now We'll do a movement screen where you can really start to get a pretty good feel just from this. It's just body weight movements. It's quite simple. We don't really fully know until we actually see you in the gym, but we can start to get a pretty good feel just based on this. Like, how well does this person actually move? How much complexity should I hit them with? Or is this someone where, hey, I want to keep this like as simple and easy, like as simple and mindless as possible initially and just get them comfortable in the gym? Did you want to say something there? You looked like you were about to. All good if not. Okay. But basically that will help us determine a lot in terms of exercise selection as well, because it might be like, hey, this movement might be more optimal on paper. Like maybe me, like getting them into a hack squat, they to grow their quads, might be more optimal on paper. But man, this person can barely do a body weight squat. We might not actually be in a position where we can perform that movement well yet. So we need to work up with it, up to it. and then from there, any movement dysfunctional bottlenecks we need to address. So basically within that. I would typically like when the within the program, I would generally select these first. So again, it's typically gonna be like one to two movements per day that I'm gonna put in. Hey, we're gonna do like this half kneeling land my press, right? Or this single arm row, the split squat ever, whatever we discussed. That's in general, like when I'm going through the client needs analysis and assessment process. It's okay, where's this person at? Where do they wanna be? And it's basically like, okay, to get to where they wanna be, they need to either Build muscle, lose fat, or some combination of both, usually a combination of both. And then from there, it's what are the bottlenecks stopping them from making that happen? Losing the fat, building the muscle, whatever it may be. We typically need to really focus on addressing that first. Or simultaneously. Here again, though, it's let's make sure we're addressing those. Those will typically be the first movements I select, typically one to two per training day. And then from there, we have something like four to six slots within the day for more quote unquote output movements. Again, we have those good hypertrophy movement filters. Is the target history the limiting factor? Does it fit the client's structure and movement capacity? Can you progress it for months on end? And does the stimulus to fatigue trade-off make sense? And then alongside that, the conversation around bias, again, probably gonna want to make it roughly 70% length and bias. I would say more like 69% length and bias, about 31% short bias is the absolute most ideal range or ratio. Didn't even catch the 69 joke there, Natalie. And that is really, I would say, the process when we're coming to putting a program together from an exercise selection perspective. Anything else you would add there before we wrap it up?
Jeremiah Is Fat: No, I think that's a nice summary.
Jeremiah Bair: Thank you. All right, well, hopefully you all enjoyed the show. If you did, leave us a five star rating and a review. If you would like to apply to work with our team, hit the link in the show notes and we will catch you guys next time.
