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How to Build Muscle Faster: The 5 Training Techniques That Actually Work · Beyond Fat Loss

• Katie & Sean Darlow: Welcome to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast, where we don't just stop at fat loss, you'll learn about all the good stuff that follows. How to build muscle, how to enjoy more food, and how to stay lean without going to extremes. We are your hosts, Sean and Katie, and today we're gonna talk about some of the best training techniques you can learn to build more muscle and be more confident with your lifting skills in the gym. In this episode, you learn which lifting techniques are going to give you the most bang for your back in the gym. They provide the foundation for effective training and building muscle. And some of these skills will last you a lifetime. Whether you're a complete beginner, as learning from scratch, or you're a more advanced lifter that's looking to tick all the boxes, this podcast will have something in it for you. If you enjoy the podcast and you'd like to show us your support, drop us a like, comment, subscribe to the podcast. Leave a rating below or share the episode on your social media feed. Bonus points for tagging one of us. That's at Katie SKD coaching or at Sean SKD coaching. Nice and simple. Find us on Instagram. Drop us a tag if you wouldn't mind. So let's get into today's episode then. Here's a good question, Katie. If you look back on your training videos from when you first started and you compare them to now, what changes do you notice? That is a good question. And a couple of things spring to mind, but I think the most obvious point that springs to mind intensity. And by that, ⁓ how close I was training to failure. I focused far too much on just hitting the reps and weights on my program rather than taking my sets close to failure. you'd stop short of failure just because you were told to do three sets of 10 reps and you've done those 10 reps so you weren't going to do extras. Yeah, big green tick. Done the work, done the job. Pop you down in the comments. How wrong was I? That's the thing, you feel like you're doing a good job because you're doing what's told of you, you're doing what's asked. But there's a difference between doing something because you're told to do it and doing something to try and create a very specific response, like to build as much muscle as possible from that exercise, from that set. They're two different things, right? Yeah, absolutely. And when you first start out, whether you follow program from... Someone else? off the internet, you created yourself. For me, it was creating myself from me sitting on my laptop when I was young, doing all the research I possibly could to put a programme together for myself, trying to create this perfect split with the perfect exercises, with the perfect rep range. And I was following that to the letter. But I was missing a key component and that was taking my sets close enough to failure. When you look at those training videos now... compare what you used to do to what you're doing in the gym today for example what's one of the the key signs that you weren't close to failure how can you tell from watching those videos My Rep 10 was exactly the same as Rep 1. small minor changes but ⁓ much difference with the speed of the Rep. There wasn't really any signs of struggle. It just as clear cut as Rep 1. No ugly facial expressions. ⁓ not at all. No turning I don't remember us like to call it the poo face. Why does that come from anything? mean, seriously, if that's the face you pull when you're on the toilet, go to a doctor. Please just go get yourself checked out. funny. Get some more fiber in your diet. yeah. But think ⁓ the ⁓ looking now, ⁓ one the most obvious telltale signs was that my last rep of whatever set looked ⁓ exactly same as the first rep in that video. Yeah. Which I know now is a little unrealistic if I want to focus on building muscle. Yeah, it's one of the clearest signs, isn't it? If you're close to failure, your rep speed, how quickly you lift the weights should involuntarily slow down. Really key term involuntarily. So you can try and lift the weight as fast as you want, but because you're fatigued and because your muscle fibers are fatigued, you cannot lift that weight quickly. And it's a clear sign if... your last few reps you'll set are exactly the same speed as the ones at the start of your set. You're not close enough to failure. So there should be a slowing down, a considerable slowing down of how quickly you can lift those weights. Because you think ⁓ to failure or too close to failure means that you can't lift that rep anymore, right? There's going to be a slowing of the last couple of reps before you get to that. shit. shit. It's not moving anymore. It's not to move anymore. So, yeah, I that was probably the most obvious sign for myself anyway. Yeah, we can go off on this one for a long time, can't we? And I mean, I don't want to take up the whole podcast talking about the different signs of close proximity to failure. But if you consider ⁓ that there will some individuals that lift heavy weights here, the exertion and the effort required to lift heavy weights. Yes, when you get stronger and you're at the start of your set, relatively you feel strong compared to the end of your set. That's what you would expect. You feel weaker as you go through your set. But for individuals that are already lifting really heavy weights, and perhaps if you're lifting lower rep ranges, let's say if you're lifting like five to eight reps, as soon as you start lifting that weight, it's gonna feel heavy. Like, so it's probably gonna feel heavy from like rep one, rep two, all the way through your set. If you're lifting heavy weights and you're doing a, let's say like a five to eight rep range. So you can't just judge your proximity to failure based on exertion either, because it's all gonna be hard. It's all gonna feel heavy. Like there are some lifts that I do in the gym. From the second I pick up that weight, it's heavy, it's hard. I only know I'm getting close to failure when... there's either a significant increase in how hard it was compared to the start or that rep speed is slowing considerably. They usually go quite hand in hand, those two points, right? They usually do. Absolutely. But if I only focus on how hard it felt, it would feel hard, like a few reps into the set because the weight is just so heavy. And everyone's tolerance to hard is very different, right? So it's not a... a great tool to just use to understand if you're training close enough to failure. I think it's just an important point to mention here though, because training close to failure does improve, I would say, the more training experience that you have, more confident you get with your training. And so for those listening right now who might be early on in their career, yet whilst you will want to train closer failure to build muscle, it might not be the immediate thing that you focus on. And you probably don't have to be quite so precise as the more experienced lifters with this. We'll get into that a little bit later on. This is a practice, it's something that you get more familiar with over time, ⁓ it's just for individuals to understand. This is for us to say ⁓ we notice when we look back on ⁓ training videos. and what we have seen the change in as time has gone on. There'll be many parts of this podcast which will probably be more relevant for somebody that's just starting out than pushing to maximum intensity every set. Gotta think of it like this, the more advanced you get in training, the more you have to be a little bit more precise, the more you have to be a little bit more targeted. You're not gonna get the best possible results from your training without having a lot more things dialed in. If you're a little bit newer to the training scope and you're a little bit newer to lifting weights. As long as you're in roughly the right ballpark with a lot of the techniques, you're going to get some really good results. Consistency is going to pay hugely in terms of returns for you in those early few years of lifting. encourage you to pick up the techniques as you go. and try and embed these techniques in as you go, because it's much easier to pick them up earlier on, just like learning a language when you're younger, just like learning to do a martial art from a age, just like learning to play a musical instrument from a young age. If you learn these earlier on in your journey, they're going to serve you better and they're easier to keep up when you get older. Once you start progressing with your training and you start seeing some improvements, It's hard to then go back and add these new lifting habits in because it's going to make you feel like you're taking a step back to do that. So it's better to learn these from the off. But that said, you don't have to be quite so focused on getting all these things right and being super precise with them when you are a beginner. Just add a little bit each stage as you go. I think it's. by the end of this podcast, we'll be able to give listeners an understanding of the lifting habits to be aware of, but also understand that not about executing all of these in one go. It's about identifying the areas that. You need to. Work on to improve your lifts ⁓ and that. Probably with that coming a little bit clearer as we go through the podcast, like any habits that you're building in is one step at a time. It's not to ever aim to get perfection, but it's not, you don't want to get everything, ⁓ on everything in one go because it's hard to do that. It's hard to work on more than one or two things at one time and do it well, right? So that's slightly little caveat and sight under there, but that's what we do best, Was there anything you noticed in those training videos? Casey, when you look back, that has changed now. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I'm really glad I've got them to back out actually and see. ⁓ they're so valuable. I can't say enough how valuable those training videos are. I think for me, other... Two other areas that I noticed, two other areas that have changed for me is precision. ⁓ that I mean focusing on how my body is moving to be able to target the muscles that I want to utilize. I think when you first start out, there perhaps may be more focus on obviously totally disregarding how the body is moving, because you've got to think of that. to some extent when you're performing any kind of exercise or sport, whatever it may be. But perhaps there's more focus on where the weight is going, what the weight is doing, and what muscle you might be feeling or should be feeling over how the body is moving. Yeah, I think the margins for error for beginners are a bit broader when it comes to the movement patterns and the movement proficiency. You obviously want to perform the exercise in a way that gets you good results to be able to perform it safely and hopefully consistently as well. The margins for error are a little bit broader for individuals just starting out. You're gonna grow muscle even if your form isn't ideal, if it isn't 100%. when you get more advanced, you might notice that you do struggle to progress more with muscle growth if you're not as targeted with how you perform those movements, how your is moving. etc. Yeah, so that does make sense. Yeah, and you're able to notice that the more you get exposed to movement patterns, the more you practice it, the more you're able to visually look at your own performance and understand how your body should be moving in a particular movement. But that comes with experience and time, right? Performing these movements and repetition, it doesn't come from just doing a couple of sessions at all. that... What was your second point? The second point isn't so much a, I guess a visual thing that I can see from the videos, but something I'm more aware of, I guess. And that's my technique. It's much more consistent. I guess you can kind of see it as well in the training videos thinking about it because it's that rep to rep consistency that you can see more clearly. think when I first started, there was an aim to try and be consistent for you, but that wasn't always the case rep to rep. So think that is another point that I've noticed from training videos years ago to now that the technique I perform wrap to wrap doesn't really change too much. It's more that the speed and perhaps a teeny bit of momentum at the end ekes in to get more of the wraps. have to say though, from when we first started training together a very long time ago. your form was always good. You always had good technique. So you'd obviously spent time to learn how to lift pretty well. I think you've added tweaks to stuff now over time in response to how your body has changed, how you've grown, the areas you want to target. So you've refined your technique a bit more, but. I think your form's always been good. I think the takeaway is that... Even when you've been lifting for a long time, you can still find ways to make tweaks and make adjustments and improve things. Couldn't agree more. Instead of looking that as in, shit, I've been doing it wrong for all this time. No, that's just the wrong mentality to have. If you look at it as in... I have got so far by doing that technique and now I'm just going to refine it to take me that little bit further. That's all it is. If it hasn't been broke, then you don't need to fix it. it's been working well for you, then keep going because there's loads of different techniques ways of doing things that work. But when you reach a point where your progress is ⁓ slowing you're not getting consistent results from what you're doing, then it's time to reflect upon those techniques and say, Okay, maybe this can be improved, maybe this can be improved. But what we'll hopefully do in this podcast is we'll give you some really good foundations to kind of fast track that. rather than looking at loads of the little, what Katie's talking about here, probably like individual exercise tweaks, which probably more advanced and probably needs to be dealt with on an individual basis, to be honest. But there will be a lot of techniques that are going to be more universal, that are going to be more applicable to all the exercises, all the sets you do in the gym. And Katie probably had a lot of those habits in place already by like the odd one or two with the odd couple of exercises. Would you think it's fair to say that the technique comes more naturally to you now? absolutely agree. And I think what you just said about the foundations and hopefully this podcast set in that scene for people. you were talking, ⁓ was ⁓ like a word popping up in my brain. I was thinking, remember to say this after Sean's finished this section, because when I look back at those previous videos, there was a lot of the foundational habits that were solid and they were in place. And that's what set my scene for many, many years and has allowed me to have, I guess, a successful journey with lifting weights for so long. but it only got me so far. So that's where the fine tuning of things like making sure training close to failure, like the precision with really focusing on how my body is moving and what works well to target the muscles I want to work. And then the of rep to rep execution. what really helped me level up from those foundations. hopefully and I don't want this to scare anyone who isn't a more advanced lifter right now but if you are an advanced lifter listening to this then they may be something that you can think about right now. For those that aren't don't let that overwhelm or scare you at the moment because the most important thing to do first of all is get those foundations in place which what we're going to really cover in this podcast now moving forward. Would you agree, Sean? Yeah, absolutely. And that's not to say your advanced lifters won't get benefit out of. won't get benefit out of listening to these lifting habits too because even these lifting habits can be fine tuned and executed a little bit better to get more to be training. Definitely. as somebody that has progressed from. being stuck as an intermediate lifter for far too long to then what I would now class as being an advanced lifter. A lot of the differences were quite small tweaks, but the differences that those small tweaks have made have been considerable for me. But while you're trying to pursue these small tweaks and whilst you're already confident, consistent with the gym, you sometimes forget the foundation habits as you go and looking for that progress, looking to try and lift more weights, looking to try and do more reps, that sometimes leads you to forgetting about those foundation habits, which for a long time were your key focus. When you're starting out, when you're in your early stage of lifting, the foundation habits are your key focus. That's the most important thing for you to focus on. We need to be reminded of these things sometimes because we just naturally and we don't consider them as much. It just makes me think of... ⁓ like a quarter time in a netball match where if things are going absolutely pitong, lost the momentum, balls flying everywhere, there's no connection between units. What do you do? You don't try and add ⁓ technique and more fuel to that fire to try and fancy things up. You just go, right, let me strip that back to basics. Let's do the basic well, get those foundations back in place. Then we go from there. Then you build. Yeah. We're all in need of those reminders throughout all of our careers, whatever they're in. Sometimes the basics get complacent and when we get complacent with things, they slip. Yep. We don't live in a vacuum. We don't live in perfect circumstances. We don't go into the gym every single day with nothing else to focus on but the gym session in hand. We don't go into the gym feeling like we're super well recovered, like we're super well focused, like all of our mental energy is on that. It just doesn't, it doesn't exist. So having these reminders in place. and being able to return back to this stuff can be really useful. And there are certain contexts where you do have to remind yourself of basics. I looked at one of my lifting videos a couple of weeks ago. I was doing stiff leg deadlifts. I went up to a weight, which was the heaviest weight I've ever done for this exercise. And I recorded my set and I looked back at the set and I thought, I'm not happy with a couple of things of my technique here. That increase in weight has changed my technique slightly. So what I did was I stripped it back down. went back down in load. I knocked it back by 10 kilos. I implemented the technical changes that I wanted to do over three or four weeks. Then I. Progressed and increased the load back up, kept the visuals. So I was checking my techniques were actually happening in the lifts. Got back up to that same weight again with improved technique. Now my experience has allowed me to do that. Knowing what to look for has allowed me to do that, right? But the point is we all get to this point sometimes where we're going along, it might be when we're progressing, it might be when we've got other things on our mind, whatever, and some of our habits slip. Those reminders are really valuable in these stages, and that's me as I would class as an advanced lifter nowadays. I do it too. And especially when like, ⁓ either like said, John, it's a movement that you've been doing. for a while, you've progressed so far, you're lifting a load that is new to you. Perhaps then some of those habits have left your mind a little when you perform the movement. ⁓ it can also be when you've got a new training phase, for example, with an exercise you haven't done for a very long time. It's always handy to have these pointers in your mind that you can go back to, to tick off. ⁓ you're anything like me, you like to have a structure, like to have a method to follow, you like to know, right, I've done that, I've done that, I've done that, that's a solid rep. good, repeat that. And having that clarity is really, really helpful. yeah, you can utilize it for many different aspects of your training journey, to be honest. And I think having those mental structures to follow really breed that consistency that drives muscle growth really well. When we talk about the performance of training, it's a blend ⁓ and science. because there's a very, very, very practical component to how you lift. You can have all the theories about some of the best techniques to build muscle. We can look at the research and see what works really well in the research, but you have to be able to go into the gym and apply that. And that's practical, that's practice. There's an art to that. It's funny in a way because a lot of the research that we have nowadays on the best techniques has kind of been explored off the back of people doing a lot of trial and error with their training for multiple decades. The kind of what we class as like the old school bodybuilders, the bro lifters, the ones that would just go, do it this way because it feels right. Do it this way because it builds, like this will build more muscle. I change this thing in my training and it build more muscle. And they had no proof of that other than just their own experience. But as these things have been then tested in research over time, because we now have the scientific means and the universities and the the the the software to be able to run these tests, laboratory equipment, etc. A lot of this stuff has been confirmed to be. Beneficial or accurate or true, so it's almost like it's start. started off as an art form people doing lots of trial and error and science has validated ⁓ debunked the practices time. There's actually a wide range of things that work in training, right? Which encouraging, but also can be overwhelming when you're trying to decide what to do. ⁓ really can, but ⁓ reality is there is a wide, ⁓ range of things that work. I think it's necessarily so much of a right or wrong all the time. you know, media world has led us very much down that route of this works, this doesn't. It's not a case of that with training, it's really not. lot of it is trial and error. It rarely just comes down to this works, this doesn't. It's not muscle building is not an on and off switch. And it's not black or white. There's a lot of nuance to things too. But to keep that simple for you, there are still a lot of foundations that you can apply to or lift that would set you up well for success. Yeah, there's some stuff that will be slightly more optimal than not. There's some stuff that's going to be beneficial, more progressive than not. So the will help to lead that discussion. It's also important to note though that there are a lot of things which may appear to be very beneficial, but they might also be really impractical. So you have to weigh that up as well. Because ⁓ something's highly impractical, how likely are you to be consistent with it? absolutely it's just going put a barrier your way, rather ⁓ being with something that's slightly less optimal. You're trying to be... consistent with something that's really optimal, but you just can't fit into your training session, your week, whatever it may be. If it frustrates the living daylights out of you, every time you go to do it, then that's not going to lend very well to being consistent to that thing. Nah, you're soon going to sack it off, let's be honest, aren't you? Yeah, or you're not going to put that much effort into it. You're just going to half ass it because you really don't want to do it in the first place. You can't always out willpower or out discipline or out focus something that is just really not agreeing with you. Like sometimes it's just a better choice for you and your environment, your gym is going to be able to be done with a high degree of effort. You're going to enjoy it more. You're going to focus more on that exercise. I think that sometimes it just gets to a point where people are trying to make perfect situations or perfect outcomes and then expect to be able to drag them out for a really long period of time. is going to be more valuable for your progress in the gym and building muscle over time than consistency. There's no one technique, one method, one exercise that is going to lead to more muscle growth than consistently doing things to a high standard, but for really long periods of time. So just remember that when it comes to anything, selecting exercises, training techniques, there's no magic bullet. No, if it was we'd be a minute out by now. Or we wouldn't be able to keep up because there'd be some people that can just apply the magic bullet over and over over over over over over again on repeat because they've got completely different lives, completely different living circumstances. That's not how it works. So, that said, let's discuss where you can get some of your best work done. Let's discuss some of the things which give you the most amount of benefit for the least amount of mental and... will also be very practical to perform on a day-to-day, session-to-session, week-to-week basis. cover off some of the big rocks is it the foundations that people should set to set up to give them success in their journey yeah the big rocks concept you know you want to fill a jar you fill it with the big rocks first and then all the fancy stuff like the flowers and the sand and the what not the glitter yeah yeah all that stuff yeah you don't put that in first because then your display just looks like a jar of glitter rocks go in first otherwise left for the pile of big rocks on the side And what are you going to do with them? I've never actually tried to explain that analogy properly. hear it all the time. But what is the big rocks analogy? I like to use this one. Is the juice worth the squeeze? That's the saying that I like to use. there are so many things that people try when it comes to training that just give them such marginal, minimal amount of benefits. And they're missing some stuff where if they actually just focus on that one thing, they would get much more out of this. But they're looking for the magic bullet, so to speak, before they're focusing on the habits which can be done on repeat consistently. So you have to ask yourself, is the juice worth the squeeze or are you just wasting a lemon? Okay, analogy works for you, right? I quite like that one, I quite like that one. But I've always gone with my mind, just focus on the big rocks first. anything else is a bonus that will enhance things. If you can't get the big rocks right, then all of that other glitter you sprinkle on isn't going to do anything. So yeah, whatever analogy works for you guys. Right, before we put this any further, spoken briefly about training to failure. We can't overlook this. It's impossible not to talk about this. But just to clarify, training to failure is something that is should they consistent in your training if you're prioritizing muscle growth and you want to see muscle growth. So we're just going to cover this now to make you aware of it, let you know what it is, how you can execute it. And then we go into kind of the more specific training techniques that are going to set up your foundations very well. Yeah. If you're a beginner. It should be a goal of yours to work towards training close to failure as early as you can and to make this a consistent habit throughout. If you're an intermediate or an advanced lifter, you should be doing this all the time. When you're training to build muscle, this should be on your mind all the time. This should be an evergreen habit. I don't always encourage every single client that's a beginner at the gym to pay massive amounts of attention to training super close to failure in their first few weeks, maybe first few months. I agree. I think sometimes there are bigger rocks manage than that. They're responsive to growth and strength gains anyway that they're going to get progress with strength and muscle growth without having to go as close to failure. But I do make pretty much all of my clients aware of it as early as I feel like it's appropriate to do so. And once they're aware of it, the expectation is to try and maintain that proximity to failure as much as they can. It's a skill as well though, right? And it's a skill that gets better with the more experience. So clients for me, I tend to make them aware of it fairly early on in their journey, but it may not be the main focal point of the training session or what they're working towards that particular week, that particular phase, because without the foundations in place. I wouldn't really want to encourage people to be training close to failure or taking an SS to that maximum intensity without having the foundations in place first for me personally as a coach. Yeah, I agree. I think that having the right lifting habits in place serves really well to then being able to train close to failure safely and effectively. Absolutely. I think that you can quite... quite easily find yourself on that slippery slope of, you can train really hard and really close to failure, but the exercise isn't targeting the muscles you want to target. There are a lot of technical errors in the lift. Just because you're trying to push so hard, it makes it harder to maintain good technique. And then you end up, yeah, working really hard and working some muscles, but they're not always the muscles you want to work. I think, you can actually end up finding yourself in a habit of doing that as well. So. You'll see a lot of people do this. You'll go to the gym, we go to gym and see a lot of people do this. You can't say those individuals aren't training hard because they are. we can see how strenuous the exercises are. We can see the slowing those as getting to failure, but the positioning is off. There's loads of momentum. They're not controlling the weight anymore on the way back. Just let loose some habits. All these things happen because individual has not put the habits in place and then they're just trying to... max out on the intensity side of things. As a coach, look at that and I say, this could be more optimized for building muscle. This could be improved for building muscle. The intensity is great, but it's not directed very well. Yeah, I think you explained that well, very well. And the angle I just want to add to that is If you haven't got the foundations in place first and you're trying to aim to max out on intensity, sometimes you can feel then like it's a backward step when you've got to go in your mind back to correct your position, how you perform the movement, which is sometimes counterproductive for how you feel in your journey and your enjoyment for the journey, your reward for the journey. All of that is really important too. So it's like the stepping stones. You don't want to go from A to Z without doing the whole alphabet. And this is the same with setting up your training, right? So if you can get those stepping stones in place first, get the foundations nailed, then when it's time to pull the plug and really pull the plug on training close to failure, you're going to excel and just run away with your muscle building. So yeah, what you said, Katie, spot on. Training close to failure. Ideally, we want to be working between zero to two reps from failure There's a bit of nuance to that, but I think for now what I will say is if you have not trained all the way to failure, then there are times where you should go all the way to failure so that you can judge this properly because it's hard to judge what true failure is unless you actually go to true failure. And there are loads of ways to do this safely. Machine weights for a start are very safe to train all the way to failure with. Dumbbells in most cases are very safe to go all the way to failure with. We would highly recommend testing this when your emphasis is on trying to get this right. yeah, it's zero to two reps from failure and make that an evergreen habit when you start to bring this into your training repertoire. As you're talking then, John, I'm just thinking this could actually be a podcast episode on its own. How to do it properly, what signs look out for, et cetera. And maybe that's one we pick up in the future to help people out when they get to that point of training. Yeah. Drop us a comment down below if you'd like that episode on training close to failure as well. I'll pop us an message on Instagram, whatever suits you. But yeah, I think that might, I think it might be helpful. Let's hear from the listeners, will they think it's helpful? and for them. So let's go into our actual lifting habits, our evergreen lifting habits moving forward then. Before we go into each individual habit, what I will say is this. We have designed a quiz which will allow you to test your knowledge on this particular topic. And if you listen to this podcast first before doing the quiz, then you already gain an advantage. So you might score a little bit higher. So everyone listening to this podcast that wants to test their lifting knowledge and test their lifting habits. And understand their lifting habits, right? Understand the habits that they've got in place and the areas that they can improve on. You can check out our description. The quiz will be linked there. After you complete the quiz, you will also get access to a free video mini-series that will explain the lifting habits a little bit more. They will be short, concise tips, and they will also have some video demonstrations involved as well. So you can actually see this in practice, because of course, you can listen to it, you can read about it, but it helps to see it as well. So not only will you... have clarity of the lifting habits that are currently working well for you and the lifting habits that you can then improve on. get lessons, aligned with what you've learned in that quiz. That sounds like something ⁓ you to get your hands on and we hope it is. Then check out the description of the podcast. Click the link. Go to the free quiz. It takes about a minute to two minutes to complete. And you'll be set up with a fantastic video series to follow to help further your knowledge and confidence in this area. It's a real good one, guys. It's probably one of our best creations yet. And I was really excited when we were creating it because I like, I wish I could have had this three or four years ago because this really would have excelled my training, but not over complicated it. It would have just told me exactly what I need to do. how to do it and how to perform it. it's instant action, it's something you can apply in your next training session. Yeah, it's literally some of the stuff that we spent weeks, months, if not years learning about training condensed into what is essentially a few short videos of about two minutes. So it's definitely, definitely worth grabbing. Yeah, for sure. I fully agree. Back to this episode then. Let's talk about the lifting habits. that you will be tested on. So get your pens and notepads at the ready because if you do this well, you can nail this quiz. Of course, it's not just down to being able to answer the questions, it's being able to put it into practice. But let's talk through the lifting habits get everyone familiar. Let's start off with Sean. Positioning, I think, because... For me, mind to muscle connection is a term that's... A lot of people are aware of, talk about. It's okay to utilize and put some focus on, but it has its flaws, right? for sure. I the concept of mind-muscle connection is a good one. Trying to think about which muscles should be working in the exercise you're performing and being able to contract that muscle, particularly for beginners that aren't very comfortable with what muscles should be working in each exercise. Feeling a muscle work can sometimes help to... ⁓ Give a little bit more understanding of what that exercise is meant to do. The problem with my muscle connection is that it's often used as a way to try and focus on getting a muscle to contract as much as possible whilst neglecting some of the other techniques that we're going to discuss. So for example, I can sit here and contract my bicep as hard as possible to feel the muscle contract. that doesn't necessarily that I'm gonna build the muscle because I'm not lifting against a lot of resistance there. I'm only resisting against gravity that's pulling my arm down. So that's not necessarily going to be enough resistance for me to grow my biceps when I can go into the gym and dumbbell kill much more weight than what gravity is pulling me down with on top of what gravity is doing. When I'm holding that weight in my hand, I'm not only lifting against gravity, I'm lifting against the... the gravitational pull on the weight, considerably more. So my body has been trained to an extent where I am no longer going to grow from just contracting a muscle. needs more, it needs to contract against more resistance. So ⁓ muscle connection can sometimes lead to people using very light loads in order to feel a muscle contract. which then isn't stimulative enough of muscle growth or it can lead to them. limiting other areas of their performance just to feel a muscle contract. Things like going through a full range of motion, things like... not necessarily training close to failure. because that added intensity towards the end of the set of training close to failure becomes the main focus and they then switch off to whether my muscle is contracting or not. think essentially what you're saying there is what we need. We need something for muscles to grow, right? It's not just feeling the muscles that means the muscle is going to grow. For muscle to grow, we need as much tension as possible in the target muscle. You're not just going to get that tension by feeling a muscle. You're going to get that tension by exposing that muscle to Lord. But that muscle then adapts to that load that you're lifting. So then it needs more load applied to it to then to keep growing. So that's where mind to muscle connection can have its flaws. Not to say to not use it at all, but also be aware of your positioning. If we think about positioning as our form, our technique, obviously each exercise will have its own individual or unique positioning and form, the way it's performed. But to speak about positioning generally, we want to try and focus on how our body is moving in order to get the muscle to contract the way we want it to contract. When you perform a row for example and you want your upper back muscles, your traps, your rhomboids, we want to think about pulling the bar in towards our chest or the stomach area. In order to get our traps to do the work in that exercise, we want to try and focus on pulling the shoulders back and having the shoulder blades come in towards each other. as we pull that bar up. Now, a lot of individuals will make the mistake with something like a row, where they're taught to pull the elbows back, which is great, there's nothing wrong with that. The elbows have to come back to row that bar up to your stomach, but they don't move their shoulders and they don't move their shoulder blades. And by focusing on those parts which need to move, the traps will pull on those body parts when they contract. to pull those body parts into position. And it's that contraction which produces the force to pull that barrel or weight up towards them. So if that position isn't correct with the shoulder blades and shoulders being pulled back, then the traps are not going to be So they're not going to experience any tension. Then therefore they're not going to potentially not grow because they're not being ⁓ Probably the simplest way to put that right. Absolutely. It's all well and good to tell somebody, you know, have my muscle connection, focus on what your traps are doing. But if they don't understand what to move to get the traps to work in the first place, then how can you have my muscle connection and muscle you don't know how to contract? It's obvious with things like the biceps. It might be obvious with things like the quads when you do a leg extension. There are some muscle groups that it's more obvious on how to contract those, but there are others where it's like them. There are other things that can come into play here. Typically, the chest, the back muscles, lats. A lot of individuals struggle with getting the muscles to work well in those exercises because they're focused so much on trying to get the muscle work that they forget about what part they need to move in order to get that muscle to work in the first place. I think it's particularly more challenging when there's more than one joint involved in a movement, right? Because things that you've described there, you know, the biceps, for example, or your quads, or your thighs, the front of your leg when you're doing a leg extension where you pick your leg up, they involve ⁓ joint. And it's easy to think about opening and closing that one joint. Even the movement itself, the opening and the closing is a simple movement to... perform to understand. But when movements have more than one joint involved in that, more than one thing that needs to be thought about, it's knowing what joints really or joints you want to put your focus on more than the other. Like you said with the row, common that the elbows get focused on more, bending the elbows and pulling the elbows back, or pulling the elbows back and then the bending. But actually, The bending of the elbow and the pulling back of the elbow is more of a byproduct of pulling the shoulders back and retracting or squeezing the shoulder blades together. It shouldn't be led by the elbows. The elbows should move because of what's happening at the shoulders and the shoulder blades for a row, for example. Yeah, going along with it. They're contributing to the movement and they have to, well... and in most cases they will do, but the primary focus should be on moving the joint which the muscle you want to work is attached to. This could get quite advanced, so we don't want to overwhelm anyone listening. But just think of it like this. A great way to experience better muscle activation and potentially better mind-muscle connection. and to get loads of tension into the muscle you want to work is through focusing more on the body parts which are meant to be moving than just the muscles themselves. You get to kill two birds with one stone if you do it that Because if you move your limbs or you move your body correctly, the muscles attached to those parts will have to contract to do the work. Whereas there are some muscles like we've identified that are difficult to contract in isolation, especially if you don't know how to move the body parts to get those muscles to contract in the first place. Well said, well said. You're not expected to understand all of the muscles in the body and how they work and needs to be moved to contract XYZ, not at all. But by focusing on how ⁓ body should move ⁓ a particular movement will most likely put you in a good position for targeting the muscles that you want to work. And the video demonstration in the free grift with the quiz shows this really, really well. So point one is position or form. Focus on the body part you want to move to contract the muscle you want to Point number two then, controlling the eccentrics. So Katie, take us away with the eccentric portions of the lift. What is the eccentric portion of the left? I think that's important for us to cover because there might be some people listening that know what eccentric is and something going, I don't even know what that word is for. So the eccentric portion or part of a lift is the part where the muscle is or For example, let's imagine you're doing a bicep curl. I think most people will know what a bicep curl is. You can do it and imagine you're doing it with me right now if you want. put your arm out straight, and then you want to flex and bend your arm towards you. As you're taking your arm away from you and opening up the elbow joint, that is the eccentric part of a bicep curl. So the bicep muscle is lengthening, it's being stretched. As you pull your arm back up towards you and you're bending the elbow, That's what's called the concentric part of the lift where the muscle is shortening. So think eccentric is always where the muscle is lengthening. The reason why we're making this clear distinction is because most people are familiar with the concentric portion of the lift. That's typically the part where you feel like your muscles are doing a lot of work. It's typically the part where people put most of their emphasis, but forgetting about the importance of the eccentric part of the lift is a big mistake for muscle growth. Why? There's over 40 years of research that pretty much backs up that the eccentric portion of the lift is just as hypertrophic or more hypertrophic than the concentric part of the lift. So this means that the eccentric parts of the lift can grow your muscles either equally as well or better than the concentric part of the lift. So, when you're going through the stretching or the lengthening portion of a lift, a lot of people will think of this as the lowering portion for certain exercises. You want to remain in control of that weight. You want to resist whatever is pulling that weight back in the opposite direction to the direction that you lift it in. So if we're... Going back to our bicep curl analogy, if you're standing up holding a dumbbell in your arm and you do a bicep curl to bring the weight up towards your shoulder and flex your bicep. As you then lower the weight back down towards the bottom of that curl. gravity will be pulling that weight down in your hand. You don't just want to let the weight drop to the bottom instantaneously, because you're not performing the eccentric portion of the lift then. Your muscles are not experiencing tension because they're not resisting that pull. You're literally just dropping your arms to the bottom. Gravity is doing ⁓ of the work. The tension in your muscles is released. So it's good practice for you to get used to resisting. could be on a cable stack, it could be on a machine as the machine arm pulls the weight back. Always think about providing some resistance to that and remaining in control of that. You don't have to resist with all your might. We're not trying to stop the weight from moving here. But you do need to apply just enough resistance to get that eccentric portion to last a certain duration of time. think a simple way to look at it is you want to control that weight, not the weight controlling you. So if you feel like the weight is pulling you back to the cable stack or it's pulling the dumbbell down towards the floor it's you're dropping into a squat, the weight is dragging you down. That's the weight controlling you. You want to flip that on his head and you want to be in control of the weight. There was somebody in the gym yesterday he was a textbook example of everything that you shouldn't do that we're going to describe in our lifting habits here. And what I will say is that every single time he was lowering the weights down on a machine, well, he wasn't lowering the weights down on the machine. He would do whatever part of the concentric lift he could. he'd do the first part of the lift where he would flex his muscles and contract. But then when it comes to that stretch and lengthening portion, he was just letting the weights drop from the top of the repetition right down to the bottom of the repetition. So every machine, was smash, smash, smash ⁓ single time against the weight stack. Now, for a start, this is really disrespectful because it damages the gym equipment and can put it out of order so other people can't use it. It's disrespectful to the gym that invests a lot of money into the equipment. I think it's probably more common in corporate gyms because you get thrown out of that stuff in private gyms. Gym owners that look that actually have invested their own hardened cash and business money into that will definitely be more on top of it than the public gyms. But the main point is that this guy is trying to lift as hard as he can through a portion of the lift to try and stimulate muscle growth. But yet... His lifting habits are costing him muscle growth because he's not controlling the lowering phase of the lift. The most common reason why people don't control the lowering phase of the lift is because it's hard. Controlling the lowering phase is hard. When you resist it, it is hard. But here's a little bit of reassurance for you. Your muscles will always be stronger, eccentrically. So they will always be stronger in the length and in part of the lift than in the short and in part of the lift. So no matter how hard you find it to complete your last few reps that you're lifting the weight. up with or into the shortened position with you will always have a little bit more strength to be able to stretch or lengthen back against resistance. without having to just let the weight drop. Think of the, think of an elastic band. I think it's the best way to explain this isn't it, is that when an elastic band is stretched, think of the force that it has to imagine letting go of my imaginary Roxy fan now and flinging it at you. Yeah of course she's aiming it at me. I mean you won't see this but she's aiming this at me. Actually I mean, I wish I had an elastic band right now. Maybe for the nostrils, But point of the story is that elastic band when it's lengthened, when it's stretched right out, has a lot ⁓ force behind it. It has a lot of... tension behind it. compared to if it was just shortened and... in this natural floppy state. In order to perform a full rep, you have to do the stretching or the lengthening phase and then the contraction or shortening phase. So you need to perform one after the other. Knowing what we know and what science has told us over a very long period of time with much research behind it that eccentric muscle actions can grow muscle, it just makes sense to take advantage ⁓ that portion of the lift. Even though it's hard, it makes complete sense to do it. Because you're basically just throwing muscle growth away by not doing it? Yeah, you're already in the gym, you're already performing that rep. miss out on half of that rep and half of the gains that you could have basically? Or potentially more based on some of the research we have. Yeah, you're right, potentially more. So yeah, it seems silly not to put some emphasis on that and control it, right? And have control over that part of the lift. How long would you say, I guess it can be helpful for people to work within like a bit of a time frame, time scale, how long should they do that for? So, start off with the eccentric part, how long should that be? The good news is, it's quite a broad range of what works here. anywhere from one to four seconds is recommended based on the research we have. So it doesn't have to be really, really, really slow, but if you want to do things slower, then you also can do as well. There are some exercises where you might feel like going slower through the lending phase allows you to maintain better form or better positioning. The caveat is that the longer your eccentric lift, the less weight you'll probably lift overall because you're fatiguing yourself a little bit more on the lowering phase than on the concentric phase. But you're still getting the same sort of value of work done. The research shows that these broad rep ranges work. The weights will just be relative to how long you decide to do these reps for. So don't think of it as in, if I lengthen it for longer, then I lift less load and therefore it's worse. Because it's not, because your muscles are experiencing a similar amount of tension. If you take your set close to failure, you're slowing down your eccentrics for a little bit longer. There's a ⁓ bit more time. under significant tension there. So it kind of balances it out. And sometimes for advanced lifters, having a slightly slower lowering phase might be a good way for you to be able to hold your weights back a little bit so you don't have to keep lifting really, really, really heavy top end loads all the time. An important thing to note though is you don't want your total rep time, your total rep duration to be eight seconds. So keep your reps under eight seconds in total. If your reps last longer than eight seconds, they may be less stimulative of muscle growth. That makes sense. And the easy way to do it is just counting your head when you're the first part of the lift and when you're doing the second part of the lift. One, two, three. Three, two, one, for example. Don't need to overthink it at all. It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect every time, but it's more just being aware that having control over the movement is most likely going to help you create as much tension. create enough tension to stimulate muscle growth. Standardize So this is what we would recommend to all of our members and it's a habit that we do ourselves. When you start your set, your first stretching, lengthening phase of the set, count the amount of seconds and try and keep that lengthening phase the same throughout that entire set. Ideally, it'd be good to have the same lengthening phase for every set of that exercise. Just make it a standard practice because then it becomes consistent, it's easier to stick to, and it's easier to judge. your performance and progression from week to week. So doesn't matter if you choose one, two, three, four seconds for your lengthening phase for each rep, but be consistent with what you choose. The more you practice this and the more advanced you get with it, see if you record your videos as well, if you're self-performing them to review your ⁓ technique, you'll notice what you naturally end up doing. ⁓ definitely has some consistency now and it's ⁓ when I look back over the videos I realize that, gosh, okay, yeah, every rep is pretty much the same. So it's handy to standardize it and... this will come with practice or try not to get it perfect straight away or not. Not so much not try to get it perfect. Don't worry about getting it perfect straight away. No, there's a broad range of works. Yeah, absolutely. Just don't let gravity or the machine do all the work. I think that's the most important point there. Are you in control or is the weight in control? That leads me on to the third point, momentum. Tell me a little bit more about that, Sean. So momentum is essentially where we try and overcome the hardest part of a lift by some additional help ⁓ either other muscles ⁓ it could be from ⁓ gravity to help us if we've got gravity to assist in pulling us ⁓ or could be from shifting position quickly and forcefully. in order to help to generate some movement before our muscles are able to do most of the work that follows. So I think a great example of this is where you see a lot of people doing like a seated row. So like a seated cable row where the first movement that you see them do is leaning their torso backwards. So they're pulling the torso backwards, which then starts to pull the cable towards them a little bit. And then you see them then row with their arms and pull their shoulders back. the first part of the lift to get the cable moving isn't actually through the muscle that they're trying to work. It's through a little bit their lower back, which is pulling their torso back. once they go past kind of vertical position with their lower back, gravity is then pulling them down. So they're being assisted by lower back muscles and gravity, which isn't really the purpose of that exercise. The purpose of that exercise is predominantly work. the back, the upper back muscles, potentially the lats, depends on how you perform it. Now, it's not to say that all momentum is bad and it's not to say that you won't work any of the muscles you want to work if you do use momentum. But you should try and keep momentum to a minimum as best as you can. You don't want it to be your go-to, do You don't want it to be what you set out to achieve from rep one. It shouldn't be your standardized approach to moving a weight. No, there is a lot of value to getting the muscles you want to work, to do the work through the hardest parts of the lift. They're going to produce a hell of a lot of tension to overcome the resistance in those harder parts. And that tension is going to be very highly stimulative of muscle growth. There is also a lot of value to get in your muscles stronger in those positions where they feel like they have to work hardest because potentially those positions could be the most injurious positions. They could be the positions where injury is more likely to occur. So there is value to working hard through those parts of the lifts. The temptation is to try and use a bit of assistance and try and pull back on the way, twist, turn, bend, other muscles from other areas because it makes the work feel easier. ⁓ And humans naturally do this, right? Our bodies are very smart. Our bodies want to find the easiest way to overcome the challenge that it's facing. It wants to find the easiest way to beat the resistance. That's not always going to be maintaining strict positioning and limiting momentum. So if you want to build as much muscle as possible, limiting momentum from other areas as much as you can is a good idea so you can just focus on doing as much of the work as possible in the target area you want to work. Very well said, very well said. I think it's about knowing when to properly use momentum, not using it as you go to. method. If every single rep has momentum, then you're leaving muscle gains on the table. You're rubbing yourself in muscle gains, aren't you? Because you're not exposing that target muscle to as much tension as you possibly could be if you were aware of limiting the momentum or using it appropriately. Yeah, you're either working some muscles elsewhere a little bit more, you're just doing less work, depending on... ⁓ how you use momentum with that exercise. The example we use in the free series with the follow-up of the quiz is really helpful here actually. I'm very much a visual learner so I find seeing those visual examples really helpful. So if you're like me and find that beneficial and your best way of learning is visually, I highly recommend doing the quiz in the description to help you out with that. Towards the end of a really hard set, you may find yourself using a bit of momentum. We don't expect every single rep to be perfect and we don't expect you to never use momentum at all. It's probably acceptable to use a little bit, but I like to give myself a bit of a rule whereby I will only allow myself to use about 10 % momentum. So. That's something that I can roughly standardize, which is a really weird term, but I can roughly standardize it and I can be somewhat consistent with that. And if I start using too much momentum, when I'm logging my reps on my training log, I will not include the reps where too much momentum is involved. So I might decide that I'm gonna do a few extra reps with the use of momentum to really make sure I'm taking that set to its limits and I'm fatiguing as much as I can, but I'm not going to count those because it's really hard to track my progress with those reps that have extra momentum involved. I can't standardize my performance and my progress then. You just see those as reps, ⁓ muscle gain, rather than logging that as a counted rep because... you're probably just going to end up cheating yourself in the long run then because you're going try and outperform those reps that weren't, I don't call them true reps because they are true reps, right? But, um, they're not complete reps, not complete reps. That's probably the best way to put that. Like they're not complete because you're not completing the rep with the target muscle that you're trying to work. Like the example here that Katie's just made, imagine that you do a set of eight reps for say cable rows, but On your last two reps, you use more momentum than what you deem to be acceptable. So you've actually only performed six complete reps and two of those are with a bit of momentum. You can easily log those eight reps on your session and say, I performed eight full reps. Then the next session, you put your weight up and you then perform eight reps again. But because it's an increased weight, now you've got four reps that are using momentum. What happens if you go up again and then you do eight reps again? But now the amount of reps involving momentum continues to increase because the muscle that you're trying to work isn't actually getting stronger, but you're getting stronger because you're able to recruit muscles in other areas or use momentum a bit more. By that stage, you're then losing even more reps in the target area that you want to work, and you're completing less reps in the target area you want to work. So a better approach would be to log those six reps. Just do the other two anyway, because you might get a little bit of extra benefit for them. But next time you go in, your goal is to beat six reps of no momentum. So you aim for seven reps the next week. It's a lot more standardized way to track progress than allowing yourself to start accepting more momentum in as reps and logging that because where do you draw the line? And making sure you're getting the growth and the errors that you want to get because you're still putting in a lot of work, you might not be getting the results that you want from it then. You you might be thinking, monster of the line, well, Christ, why have my arms grown? Why have my legs grown? Why hasn't my, my ass grown? Whatever it is you're, you're targeting, it could be that you've just allowed momentum to take over a little bit too much. One other thing with momentum, another way in which I see a lot of people using momentum in the gym and going back to my favorite character yesterday that was smashing the weights on every single eccentric, how he was using momentum when he was using the machines was for the concentric portion and what he was doing was no control over the weights on the way down, smashing the weights off the stack or smashing the machine into the safety. which was causing there was so much force going down into that machine that the weights almost bouncing back off. So it's bouncing him out of the hardest part of that lift or that exercise. So his muscles don't have to work through that bottom part of the lift where it would have been harder. And then he's almost getting some help and assistance to then complete the rest of the lift with a load that quite frankly, he could not control. He can't control it on the way down and he can't control it at the bottom. So again, it's like the errors are compounding themselves now. So he's getting much less benefit out of the exercises that he's performing. So don't use the machines to... help to bounce the weights off the bottom either. If you notice that when you're lowering down to full range of the weights are coming into contact with the safety mechanisms or the machine is coming into contact with the safety mechanisms then either find a way to increase your range of motion or control that bottom position. Own that bottom position. Don't just... bounce it off the machine and take it back out the hole because you are not using your muscles for a portion of that lift and that's going to eventually add up to you doing less work in the muscle you want to work. It's all about exposing your target muscles to as much tension as possible. It feels bloody hard, but if you want the results, that's what you're going to want to focus your attention on. So I briefly touched upon range of motion there. Perfect little segue into the next section. Point four now. Let's go into range of motion. So what do we mean by full range of motion to begin? Let's make sure everyone's understanding of that on the same page as we talk through it. So it's a full stretch achieving a fully lengthened position of the muscle you're trying to work. Sticking with the bicep analogy, right? Because I everyone's gonna know what the bicep curl analogy by now, but you don't wanna be stopping. that movement pattern short by not fully extending the elbow or not fully straightening the arm. If you're stopping halfway or even three quarters of the way, that's not a full range of motion. A full range of motion when you're doing your bicep curl is when your arm has reached a fully straightened position or your elbow's fully straight. you come back to the top of the movement. So you want to make sure whether you're always reaching a fully lengthened position, achieving full range of motion. before you bring the way back up towards you. So my question, well, why is that important? Well, researchers helped to answer this question for us. Going to a fully lengthened position with your reps is either going to have a neutral effect on hypertrophy. So hypertrophy is muscle growth, or it's going to have a greater effect than only working through a short range of motion. So if you were to do from a halfway down rep up to the top compared to doing the full rep, the full rep is going to get either neutral or more growth. There's virtually research that shows that doing half the rep gets more muscle growth than doing the fully lengthened position. At least no high quality research has been found to show that doing half the rep is better than the lengthened position. But there is either equal or greater growth from doing the fully lengthened position. So it makes no sense, in our opinion, to not go to a fully lengthened position. taking things to a lengthened position or taking ⁓ the full range of motion, it's not just beneficial for your muscle growth, hypertrophy, It can strengthen muscles and tendons at more extreme ranges of motion, which can be helpful for athleticism injury prevention, for example. Yeah, it's exposing your tissues to slightly more compromised positions and allowing them to get stronger in those positions. Because if you don't ever allow them to go there, then what happens if they do have to go there? We can't always predict what our bodies and muscles are going to need to do. That could be the gym or in day-to-day life. this with the previous point of doing a controlled eccentric, if you can fully lengthen your muscles and you're able to do that under control over time, then you're adding up a little bit more for muscle growth with those two actions combined. So it's a really ⁓ way to just... get a little bit more out of your training without having to do loads more sessions in the gym, without having to spend significantly greater amounts of time, you're just improving the quality of the reps that you're currently doing. And all of these things add up, What we would suggest is that exposing your muscles to full range of motion takes a bit of time to get used to, especially if you're unfamiliar with that. You might find that you can't get to full range of motion. I had a client that spent months and months trying to get their arm to fully straighten. Like you mentioned with the bicep curl, that muscle hadn't been exposed to that full range of motion for... a long time if not ever, and it took months of exposure to get that muscle to stretch and lengthen again to that full range of motion. So don't be alarmed if you find that things like squatting, lunging feels like you're going half the way down compared to everyone else. It will take time to build this up. think it's just going to a range that you're comfortable with because your body is adaptable, it's very resilient and it actually responds really well to being pushed past its limits in a safe way I want to say right because if you're pushing it to a part where it's really painful then that might be a little bit too far but if there's a little bit of discomfort generally our bodies will respond pretty well to that especially if there's repeated exposure to it so don't think about I should be looking like X trainer in this video now. I should be able to, know, squat my ass in the grass and like you said, get my arm fully extended with weight right now. That might not be you and that might not be you for a while, but it's taking it to a limit that is comfortable for you. Pushing your body that little bit further because I'm going to make a educated assumption here that your body is going to respond pretty well to that. And over time we'll be able to withstand that. further range of motion Yeah, go to your full range of motion and that range of motion may improve over time as a result of trying to train your body into those positions. ⁓ if you won't get any worse, I think that's the to put here. It's not going to get any worse, but it get a lot better. This is one of the things which we kind of touched upon, I think, in the last podcast where we spoke about the perception that training to build muscle isn't functional or training to build muscle makes you less flexible or less mobile. It will make you less flexible and less mobile if you don't go to full range of motion. Because your body then gets restricted to only being able to work through a small range of motion. Your muscles will only be able to contract and lengthen to a short range of motion. We would like them, ideally, to be able to perform through their full range of motion. That is where lifting weights tension and trying to achieve fully lengthened positions can improve your mobility, can improve your flexibility. You only have to try this for yourself and you'll see it work. Challenge yourself to go to the furthest range of motions that you are comfortable with or at least not in extreme discomfort or pain with and see how that improves for you over time. Over time, key point. Not just one attempt, not just two attempts, repeated exposure. Our bodies respond very well to that and don't be afraid to... give your body that little bit of discomfort. Yeah, standardize it, try to improve it you've got it to a point where it ⁓ full range of motion or as far as you can go with that pain, that's your full range of motion. So to give someone a helpful tool, if you're in the gym and performing a movement, if your pain goes anywhere above a four or five out of 10 on a pain scale, 10 being really, really painful, then don't push that any further. That's probably enough of a push for you to work towards and just aim for that time, that range next time, the time after. And as you... carry on training, you may find then that that range actually ends up going to a one out of 10 on the pain scale or even no pain at all as your body responds. It's also worth noting that if you have any particular injuries, then you should be consulting a physio about this as well to make sure that you're not making issues worse. sure that you're working within your capabilities and within your rate of progression too. Yeah, for sure, for sure. That actually leaves us nicely on to point five. The final point for the kind of setting up the foundations for your lifting habits. I'm selecting the appropriate weight. Just a common question, right? Quite a common question. How do I know I'm lifting the right weight? So how do you John? Well you've to bring all these points together Katie. That's what you gotta do. bringing everything together, isn't it? If you can implement all of the lifting habits that we have suggested, then you're lifting the right weight. ⁓ you select a weight and it all goes to pieces and all of the principles which we have taught, just go out the window, then there's a very good chance the weight is too heavy for you. So you can't lengthen in that bicep curl, for example. You can't control the weight lowering back down and then it just falls to floor. if you can't maintain the right positioning because the weight's too heavy. You're swinging it up because you can't lift it through your biceps. So you're doing half a squat, then doing a back extension. Then your elbows come in way out in front of you and every other muscle in the body. You turn the bicep, go into a full body movement, basically. Might be a little indication that I weight a little bit too heavy for you, right? Yes, a pretty decent indication that the weight's too heavy. And look, you'll see this in the gym. all the time. When you become aware of this stuff, you can't become unaware of it. It will become so obvious to you where somebody is using weight that's too heavy for them, inappropriately heavy, because we're not talking about perfecting things here. Things don't have to be entirely perfect. But there are certain standards of lifting that should be maintained if you're looking to feel confident in how your technique is. and progress consistently with that technique over time. Progress consistently with building muscle. There are certain standards which should be adhered to. And it will become quite obvious from looking around who's lifting weights that are the right weights for them who's not. ⁓ There's a phrase I like to use. Can you remember what it is, Katie? in the right to go heavier. Yeah, I mean, like if I was gonna tattoo something on myself when I was younger to remind me of my lifting habits, it would be that. Because I think this is a mistake that I made when I was younger. edging towards the side of ego lifting. Just because you start seeing progression, the numbers are going up, you get excited, you're like, yeah, I wanna get that goal, I wanna get that goal, I wanna get 100K for this exercise, I wanna do the full stack on this exercise. And then you kind of mature a little bit and you go, yeah, but what's the point in that if you're not using the muscles very well and you're not getting the muscle growth you want out of it anyway? Absolutely. It's less about the weight you're lifting and more about how you're performing that lift through those five points that we've mentioned and then making sure you're training it close to failure, right? If you can do those well, it doesn't really matter what number is on the dumbbells, on the plates you're lifting, on the cable stack you're lifting. So you're all those points well, then you're going to be putting yourself in a position where you are building the muscle that you want to achieve the physique that you really want. Don't get me wrong, the numbers going up is a good indication that things are going in the right direction, but they're not the be all end all. We want you to push for progression. We want you to try and add more load. We want you to try and do more reps. It's important that you try and do that because you need to continually try and push your body beyond its set point and beyond its limits to try and get it to continually get stronger and continually grow. So we want you to try and do that. We want you to have progressive overload in mind. But we do not want it to happen at the expense of good quality lifting techniques because the thing that you're trying to achieve then kind of like you're taking one step forward and one step back. You're increasing the weight or you're doing more reps, but your lifting technique means that your muscles are doing a little bit less work than what you want them to be doing anyway. you kind of... taking from one hand to give to the other. gonna hit a roadblock eventually with that aren't you? You're gonna hit a roadblock, it can be hard for Just going in circles. Yes. You're going in circles and it can be really frustrating. I've been there, I've been there, I have done this, I have lifted like this. I've always prided myself on good quality lifting technique. I've always had form in mind, but I wasn't training with enough intensity. And then when I started to add too much, more intensity in. and I started trying to increase my load, the techniques then went out the window. I didn't bring it all together until much later on in life. And I got caught up in... I want to lift heavy. You do, you get excited. You want to see that progression. You feel like being the one of the only people in your gym that can lift that weight or lift that exercise is really cool. And you're like, yeah, look at me go. But then you realize, well, okay, but I've been lifting this weight for a long time now, or getting stronger and I'm lifting all this weight, but then my body isn't really changing. Eventually, it catches up to you. eventually lifting inappropriate weights will catch up to you. Sometimes it's in the form of an injury because your muscles aren't progressing in the way that you would expect them to. Tendons haven't caught up to that load because you're just putting too much through it. Because all the momentum is going to other areas and then It's got to a point where your tendon acts as like a circuit breaker and it can tear or rupture because you've lifted far too much weight for what that muscle and tendon is capable and has been trained to do. But because you've been using loads of momentum and got it up to this stage and it's not had the prep there, now you're trying to say, okay, so you contribute this time, but you can't. It can't, it's not had the exposure to do it. Your body is strong, capable, adaptable. Just give it the respect it deserves when choosing the weight that you're lifting. This is about swallowing your ego and starting with an appropriate weight and building up from there. Your body does not give a shit what weight you lift. It really doesn't. It doesn't care what number is on the dumbbell that you pick up. It doesn't care what, what fricking hole you put your pin in the stack. You care about that or you care about what other people think when they look at what weights you're lifting. But your body doesn't care. Your body only cares that the weight is ⁓ enough load and that you're working those hard enough, i.e. taking them close enough to failure with good lifting technique. to get the muscles to fatigue in that exercise as much as possible. That's all your body cares about. It does not care about the numbers side of things. Just needs the right stimulus to grow. As long as it gets to that point, as long as the work is done. That's all that matters. So if you have to eat humble pie and lower your weights down a little bit to improve some of these lifting techniques. that then you start to progress with and push closer to failure with, you will see ⁓ really, really positive returns in your muscle Like Katie said, if you don't do that, and if you keep lifting for the sake of wanting to put big numbers on your program or wanting to show everyone what you're capable of in the gym, eventually you're gonna hit a roadblock. You're still gonna have humble yourself and knock your weights back down in any way or just get frustrated you can't take things further. Set the foundations right. Get your foundations right. This course outside of training, but gonna keep it for training for this podcast. Set the foundations right and you can set yourself up for a lifetime of success with your training career. I promise you from an experienced trainer perspective, worked with a lot of clients in person, worked with lot of clients online, spent a hell of a lot of hours on the gym floor myself. I have far more respect for anybody that is lifting with good quality technique and bringing the intensity whilst maintaining good quality technique than anybody that lifts big load with really, really poor technique and poor lifting habits. I respect the person that's got good lifting habits and good lifting technique far more than the other guy or the other gal. You're the gal, ⁓ Yeah, the gal. In with the gals, now you? Down with the gals. I But no, I couldn't agree more, I think it's, don't compare yourself to anyone else. What everyone else is doing, worry about what everyone else is lifting. Just think about, am I lifting well? Are my foundations in place? Am I getting out? Am I getting what I want out of my training? I'll never forget one of the first times that I saw a real life bodybuilder in person and I watched how he was lifting. and he was doing lateral raises with dumbbells that were far lighter than about seven or eight people in the gym at the time also doing lateral raises. and he was about three or four times the size of everyone else. And his technique was phenomenal. And he was an eye-opener at the time because I was like... expecting him to go over to the rack and pick up the biggest set of dumbbells I've ever seen and start doing lateral raises with them based on his muscle size. And then he started lifting the lighter ones. And it was because his technique was so much better with those lighter ones that he was able to target his muscles in exactly the way that he wanted to target them. other in his body weren't getting involved in that movement. there might be something in that. I agree. I absolutely agree. So hopefully by listening to this podcast, you'll have a really good idea of some of the top lifting techniques that you can go through in order to get the most out of your training, get the most out of your muscle growth and start to feel like every rep you perform in the gym is performed with confidence and proficiency. Just to quickly run through what these five points are. We have position or form, focus on body part or the area that you want to be moving. We have controlling your eccentric portions. So one to four seconds through the stretching or lengthening phase of the movement, resisting against gravity or whatever is pulling you back, limiting your momentum, doing as little work as possible through momentum, trying to keep as much work as possible in the target muscle that you're trying to work. using full range of motion, so full stretch or working to a fully lengthened position of the muscle you're trying to work. and put that all together, selecting the appropriate weight for you to be able to apply all of the techniques we just mentioned. And of course, on top of that, Train with intensity. Train in close proximity to failure as soon as it is appropriate for you to do so on your journey. Zero to two reps from failure each time. Very, very helpful summary. I would just like to add, remember, don't need to get all of that perfect first time. Take one or two points initially, work on it, go again. If you go into the gym and just do one point for that one session, Each time you go, that's a massive win. Within a couple of weeks, you can have all of these things nailed down and you can make them consistent for the rest of your life. So just tackle one at a time and you'll be good to go. have covered a lot of information in this episode, but you will be surprised by how much you'll remember ⁓ maybe already knew before listening to this episode. If you want to put your knowledge to the test, we've got just the thing for you. Like Sean's mentioned earlier on in this episode, we've designed a really handy short quiz to test your lifting habits. It takes just two minutes to complete. You can use it to see what you already know and which areas you can improve on to get better muscle growth in less time. As a bonus, when you complete the quiz, you receive a short mini series that will cover all the points we've mentioned so far in a very concise way and they're also paired with visual demonstrations for you to follow. And you can keep those forever? Yeah, you will have lifetime access to those. I can't bang on enough how they are and I just wish I had this tool years ago. So if you want to get your hands on all of this amazing free stuff, head to the description, pop your details in. Only city deals, it's just your email so we can actually send free gift over to you. Pop it in and you'll be able to complete the quiz straight away. That covers everything for this podcast, but next week we'll be tackling a common problem faced by many gym goers. How do I know if I'm actually building muscle? Let's say you've been applying all of these techniques, but now you actually want to see if you're getting the returns for all the hard work you're putting in. We'll talk about the obvious and not so obvious signs that you're growing the muscles you want to grow. We'll also talk about having realistic expectations and how to maintain enjoyment in the process when muscle building appears slow. Thank you for listening. We'll see you all next week.