Uploads from Sam Sulek

All right, this is a little bit early to bring this up, but honestly, not a bad time to uh to just just do a little what's the word I'm a little gratefulness check, right? Look down or uh I guess if you're holding your phone, you're already using them, right? Your fingies, you got all of them. Or at least if you have most of them, you're doing good. But the 4th of July is coming up quick, right? I think there's a large percentage of people had to do a phantom fireworks pretty soon. Maybe not. Honestly, I feel like the 4th of July is pe people treat it like Christmas. They don't uh you don't get gifts early. Nobody I don't think anybody's thinking, "All right, it's June 17th. Let's go get fireworks for the for the 4th of July." It's usually always the night before, you know, or the the day before. Sometimes the day of, right? But just keep this in mind, right? I'd say out of everything, I don't know, these two are pretty important. I'd rather lose one eye than one hand for sure. And I value these pretty good, too, cuz this is how I [ __ ] see everything. But if you uh if you know a group where dude, this we're going to do some [ __ ] Roman candle fights, that's actually not so bad. Uh you know, those aren't those are probably not going to explode as as rough. The real danger is when you get into get into mortar territory. Now, I'm not talking from experience, you know. I've uh I've just seen my fair share of Instagram reals videos. That's one thing about Instagram. They uh Instagram does not give a [ __ ] Uh [laughter] you'll see the craziest stuff on Instagram reels if you start scrolling. uh honestly like shocking, but you know, I'm uh just a little bit of a a warning and it's not impossible that uh somebody watching this video right now could let's just say benefit from this warning, right? You never know. I mean, what percentage of uh of fireworks not you wouldn't say enjoyers, what would you say engagers, purchasers? what what percentage end up having having some sort of bodily harm? So, all I'm saying is be careful. You know, how the hell are you supposed to get a forearm pump if you've got no digits on your left hand, right? Or even worse, you get the whole thing blown off with a freaking M80 or uh, you know, a Cat Whistler or a freaking I don't I don't know, a cherry bomb. I don't know all the names, but don't do that, you know. And I don't I think that's obvious, but every year every year if you're scrolling, we're gonna see some damage. We're gonna see some damage happen, which uh [sighs] Oh, well, come on. It's not going to blow up in my hand. What do you think I'm stupid? 3 seconds later, ambulance. Awful. So, just don't do that. That's my That's my Sam's piece of advice on this Wednesday. Don't blow your hands off. >> [snorts] >> uh this indep is it independence day? Yeah. But getting back to what what's going down today with arms, I'm thinking I want to go nuts. I'm thinking I want to thrash arms. So, how am I going to do that? Let me think about it. I know tries buys, maybe a little bit of forearms are going to be involved, but the actual specifics, you know, we'll see what happens. So, if you've got a really particular arm day that you love, I want to hear it. You know, I want to read I'm every time I do that, if I ask for like somebody to break down their full routine or something, I'm sc's not like a million comments, you know? There's usually only a couple hundred. So, I can scan them and I want to see what you guys are doing or or not what, but how you guys are training because that gives me some inspiration, right? like uh if you've ever done a super set of maybe rope extensions into easy bar curls, that's one that I really like cuz with a rope extension, really solid squeeze, you're kind of burning yourself out with relatively light weight and then you start manhandling the easy bar and really forcing extra blood into your triceps and just totally wrecking them in just a little more of a kind of brutish way or any combination of anything else. You know, usually with a superset like that, I would say light squeezing first and then a more basic movement afterward. Like I wouldn't want to do incline bench followed by um I guess that's not true. A couple chest days ago, I did 150s on incline. Actually, this is a while ago, maybe like months, but I did 150 on incline and then immediately jump onto the cables and hit some hand overhand press. But that's not like a super squeezing movement. But just as like a rule of thumb, you know, if you start with a light squeezing set of rope extensions and then burn out with a slightly heavier push down or maybe dips or something, that's a good combo. That is a really good combo. Same thing with biceps. You know, I think I might want to add some supersets in today. Maybe start with bicep uh or you know not start but for a set bicep bias pull downs. Super good squeeze at the bottom and then once my biceps are pretty fatigued shoot the cable down to the floor do some easy bar cable curls as a kind of burnout like that. I don't think every set needs to be, you know, a superset intensifier, you know, drops, uh, like self-assisted rep kind of deal, but it definitely helps. You know, I, uh, I've gone back and forth on this pretty wild or pretty to a wild degree, right? So, I've had periods of time where every set that I did, every movement, every everything was a drop set. And now that I'm thinking about it, I haven't been doing so many drop sets lately. Maybe uh maybe this should be a drop set day, but it would be every set of curls, 40s for 15, 20s for 10 push downs, stack for whatever, drop it in half, bust another five or something, you know, something along those lines. And it definitely worked because my logic at the time was, well, I've got a little more juice in the tank. You know, sure, I can't curl the 40 anymore, but I can curl the 30. I can curl the 20 for a couple. So that kind of partnered with my like, you know, kind of meatthead just running through a brick wall approach was like, "All right, well, if I can, then I should. If I can do 25 sets for a bicep workout, then I should." That was kind of my logic. I think slightly flawed, but the energy was in the right spot. So, we'll see. As long as you got a as long as you spice it up a little, I think that's all you need. You don't need a super set or a drop set or whatever every set. But I think you need to throw them in every so often. It just kind of changes it up because you can kind of cheat to failure with heavier weight, right? And what I mean by that is I I think I do this. If you pick a really heavy dumbbell or a heavy whatever, well, the set is over pretty quick. So maybe I like doing heavy sets, lowerish reps, you know, eight to 10. Um lower in terms of like, you know, hypertrophy numbers. I'm not saying three reps, but like, you know, 8 to 10 and then that's failure cuz the set's over as soon as you get to that eighth one. It's not as torturous as a long squeezing one. So I think best of both worlds, maybe hit a heavy set of curls for 10, you know, as many as you can get. really kind of maybe go heavier than you think you should because you're going to do more reps afterward. If I do a set of the 70s today for standing dumbbell curls and then no, I only get five reps, put it down and do a drop set. I think that's still a good set. The set isn't over at five. It's still going further and beyond just with less weight. But yeah, it's just a different way to achieve failure. And that's my whole thing. You know, if I stand for anything when it comes to somebody's training, it's not necessarily that I'm uh, you know, a diehard proponent of any one single style, right? Whether it's like, you know, full the Oh, [ __ ] What was it? For a while, we were all freaking out about uh what was it? Yeah, lengthened partials. So, I I'll do lengthened partials just when I do partials at the end of a set. Like, if I can't do a full rep, I'll still try to do a few more extra. But there was a period where uh I see a bunch of videos of guys training and it was just reps in the lengthen position, you know, cuz some study said that that was 5% more effective or something. Um, you know, I there's no there's no hill to die on when it comes to training like that. You know, there's no one specific little detail where it's like, whoa, I I started holding my my concentric for two seconds instead of one second. Now I'm Mr. Olympia. like it just that's never gonna freaking happen. Uh but just as more of a overarching theme, I'm saying change it up, right? Do in different ways. Don't uh surprise yourself a little. I'm not saying shock the muscle, but I guess I kind of am. So if you're always, let's say you go to the same gym, your gym is badass, you live at maybe you live in Vegas and you're going in New Tech Gym and you just got [ __ ] everything. Plus, there's like a million bodybuilder characters in there, so you're just amped from the environment. You're spoiled in a good way. If that's you, and you always come in, you're like, "All right, biceps, preacher, dumbbell, cable, something. Preacher, dumbbell, cable, curl machine." And you just repeat that on end. You love it. If it works, it works. Can't deny that. But, you know, yeah, man. Flip it upside down. flip the script. I used to never want to start my chest days with anything other than my max bench press. So, I mean, like, you know, incline, whether that's dumbbell, Smith machine, barbell, like in my head, I used to think, well, why would I want to start with cable flies or squeezing cable press? I want to start with the heavy [ __ ] first and then work my way down lighter. So that was kind of my logic at the time, which I still that logic still kind of makes sense. But I think I was missing out by trying to only do all my days like that. So instead of thinking, okay, I'm only starting with crazy heavy press, you know, now I'm cool starting with like lightish squeezing, holding, burning sets of hand overhand press, you know, or just different things like that. So, it's not so much that you've got to repeat the exact same workout every time and make the workout 1% better every time. That's not a bad approach, but I think it's more so, you know, come in like a beast. Come in 1% more like a beast every lift and then expose yourself to slightly different training. So depending on how busy you are or how busy your gym is, that may, you know, it might make it easier or harder to be able to do that because if your gym is packed, you've got to be on your toes. You've got to be a little bit more flexible with what movements you're doing because you know what are you supposed to do? Sit and wait 10 minutes for the preacher because you had your pre you had the preacher curl set up in your mind like, "All right, I'm doing preachers first." Five guys are on it. They're all super setting or they're all working in together. They're going to be there for a while. Guess I better grab a chair. You know, that's nuts. So, actually, now that I think of it, I guess if you were kind of up and coming in a gym with a little bit more foot traffic, you probably have a little bit of an advantage cuz you're a little bit more trained to overcome that difficulty of I want to use the Smith machine, but this guy's on it. Some people that shuts the workout down. It doesn't end it of course, but I mean I've seen guys wait 20 minutes. I've seen 30 minutes waiting for a piece of equipment. Now, you know, if I'm doing legs and I've really got squats on my mind, I might wait a little bit. You know, if I just finish hamstrings and quads is about to start, I'll wait. I'll wait a little bit. That's different. But if you're midbody part, if you're midchest, you've already done three sets of incline dumbbell and maybe one set of pec deck, but then you didn't really like the pec deck, so you moved on. You did something else. And now you are itching for that incline arsenal press, the uh the converging one with like the two styles of handles. You're like, "This is going to be [ __ ] sweet." And it's occupied. And it's not like, "Oh, we got one more set, bro." It's this guy's camping out. He's got three dumbbells next to him or three sets of dumbbells cuz he's doing a circuit workout and that incline press machine is crucial to him getting that workout done. You know, it happens. What are you going to do? So, either you say, "All right, [ __ ] It's taken. Let's pick something else." Boom. No pause in your momentum. You keep the lift moving. Solid workout. or you get faced with uh with a tiny little bit of gravel. You know, it's like you're riding a you're riding a skateboard and you get a rock right in the front wheel, right? You're boned. So, just try not to do that. And the way that I look at it, which I don't see a lot lately, is I kind of just consider muscle groups or different exercises in different categories. Right? You've got regular pressing, you got flies, you've got actually for chest, I mean that's really all pressing and flies for back pull downs and rows. For quads, leg extensions, leg press, squats, it's kind of the same thing but a little bit different. So if I in my head, dude, all right, incline press, incline machine press. That's all I'm thinking. And it's taken, I've got absolutely zero issue saying, all right, it's taken. Let's just pick a different press. And if that press is taken, okay, let's do a different press. And then if all the presses are taken, then I say, "All right, [ __ ] We're doing a fly instead." You know, and I think some people don't like the idea of that because it it's not in the program. I I I had it envisioned in my mind that I was going to do hammer strength press and and and then I was going to do cable flies, but now the the press is taken. What am I supposed I don't think people are thinking about it that bad, but I think that happens. And then it's like, you know, cuz that's hard. If you've uh let's say you're not super comfortable with the gym yet. If you have your workout clearly envisioned in your mind, you've got this is how I'm going to do it. This is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to feel. I'm going to I'm going to take my pre I'm going to listen to this song. You think you've got everything perfectly planned, solid, your prep is good. But if you don't have the, you know, just ability to kind of, you know, move on your feet and shift the workout and adapt to what's going on, I your workout's going to suffer. And if you're mid lift and then you introduce a 15minute break between two sets, [snorts] I don't know about you, but that [ __ ] kills me. You know, if I um we've all been there, you know, it's kind of gross to talk about, but let's say you ate something that really didn't agree with you. You're uh you're taking some you you feel something bubbling, right? Nature's calling, dude. I want to try to thug it out, finish the lift, get a solid pump, and then head over to the locker room or the bathroom or whatever, you know, and take care of business because I mean, I've had this has happened a few times. I I said once a while ago that it's never happened. Like, you know, I've never qu cut a lift short. Uh, I guess I was lying. It has happened before. Mainly on legs, you know. So, hamstrings, 15 sets, uh, or no, what am I saying? Like eight sets, hamstrings are done. I start quads, you know, leg extensions to warm up, and then maybe a squat. And then, okay, now I'm ready for some leg press. You know, get one set of leg press in. Hell yeah, this is going good. You could just get that nasty kind of feeling. All right. Okay, I get and then, you know, rather than coming back for the next four, I'm like, I already kind of lost it out of there. So, it's unfortunate, but what I'm getting at is don't kill your momentum. Once you're moving, once you're in the gym and you're making some [ __ ] happen, try not to let anything take you out of that loop. You know, I'm not saying you need to [snorts] walk around with a stopwatch, okay? one minute rest. Okay, it's at the set. You know, it doesn't have to be that specific, but you know, don't catch yourself chatting for 10 minutes if you're doing, you know, four sets of push downs and you start talking to your buddy at set number two, right? The lifter is going to suffer. You're not going to get the gains you want and you did everything right. You're in the gym, you're getting after it. Odds are, let's say you're doing your cardio. Whoa, hell yeah. But then you're kind of killing the intensity of the stimulus by just, you know, chatting it up. There's nothing wrong with talking and kind of goofing off in the gym, but, you know, do it between sets. Give yourself, you know, 30 or something seconds to get amped up for your real working set. And then by the time it's uh, you know, you've actually finished it, you got to rest for 2 minutes anyway, right? That's perfect time for banter. So, just keep your momentum up. That's my uh that's my mission statement. I guess that's my second mission statement. One, don't blow your hands off. And two, keep up your momentum during your lifts, right? Break a freaking sweat. But now that now that I'm even talking about it, I think this might be a faster pace lift because I want to freaking get after it. But yeah, nothing else to say. Let's go slam arms. There we go. All right. I'm talking from the future. Forgot to say this earlier, but tomorrow 11 a.m. Is that Eastern time? I don't know. tomorrow around noon, depending on where you are in the states, Gym Shark, I think it's the Midsummer sale, is uh I'm not sure that's the official name, but sitewide 50% off plus 10% with code Sam 10. So, depending on what you're looking for, there's some steals. There's some steals. Anything on the warmer end is probably going to be on that 50% off side. Any kind of heavy sweats or hoodies or things. So, yeah, man. I might take that. Let's just say that takes it down a notch. So, gymtruck.com. Check it out. All right. Yeah, called it. Bicep bias pull downs. I might not superset this first one. Maybe I will the next one. I'm not totally certain. But these are sweet. Underrated. I hardly see them done. And the gist is just pulling your hands toward my shoulders. That's all I'm doing. I'm not trying to get any lat activation. My lats are still tender from back. What was that? Yeah, yesterday. So, yeah, man. No. Uh, I want zero lat all bicep. So, I know it's not a conventional curl, but the action is the same, right? Straight arm, bent arm. It's just a different way to do it. So, I'd recommend it. The first time I ever tried this, it was the only move I did for that bicep day. Uh, just because I'd never felt it before. Stretch solid, but this movement is much more about the squeeze. I'd say this is uh [panting] [sighs and snorts] I don't know. I guess I can't really compare it to anything I can really think of off the moment, but whatever. Let's go crazy. [snorts] [sighs] [sighs] [clears throat] [sighs and gasps] >> [panting] >> Oh my god. >> [snorts] >> Okay. All right. Two more just like that. Okay. [sighs] [sighs] >> [gasps] >> Okay. Oh my gosh. [sighs] Yeah. One more of those. So, a little execution tip. I'm not just like pulling my arms this way. I'm almost trying to like almost rotate my elbows in and like squeeze there. So, I kind of have like a squeeze towards my shoulders, but also an inner twist of my arms. And it's making this outer section burn like a mofo. One more. [clears throat] >> [sighs] [snorts] >> Okay. All right. Yeah. Let's drop the cable. Just do some heavy cable curls right here. That'll be perfect. Decently heavy, but not the stack. So, actually, let's get the sleeves up here. I got to start wearing tanks now that I'm getting leaner. I kind of want to see myself working out. All right, I lied. We're stacking it. [sighs and gasps] Two. >> [sighs and panting] [gasps] [groaning] [sighs] [snorts] >> Okay. All right. That's That's too heavy. Let's go Let's go down to 170 instead of 250. That was good though. [clears throat] [sighs] [sighs] >> [sighs] >> Yeah. [sighs and panting] [gasps] >> [snorts] >> Okay. Oh my gosh. All right. [ __ ] I think that's all biceps gone. I might do like a pump finisher at the end of triceps. Let's start pushing something down. Hell yeah. All right, let's squeeze this [ __ ] So, this is only something I've kind of recently noticed, but doing the rope, I'm no longer just pushing out at the bottom. I'm almost kind of like I mean, look at this. So, instead of pushing here kind of with my hands like rolled over the rope, I'm almost doing them like this. So, instead of like this sideways action, it's more of like this kind of twist, like I'm trying to turn my hands inward at the bottom. And I feel my long head, which is the biggest part of your tricep, way more doing this. So, let's get a couple here. [snorts] Let's see how triceps goes. [sighs and gasps] [clears throat] All right. [snorts] >> [sighs and gasps] [panting and sighs] [sighs] [sighs and gasps] [clears throat] [snorts] [panting and gasps] [sighs] [snorts] [clears throat] [sighs and gasps] >> Okay. >> [sighs] [panting and gasps] [panting] [sighs and gasps] [snorts] [clears throat] [sighs] >> Oh, one more. light squeezing push downs to pre-exhaust. Then grab the [ __ ] easy bar handle. Throw the weight up to the stack. Go nuts. Let me [sighs] pick a better Tik Tok edit to match it, though. [snorts] [sighs and gasps] >> [sighs] [snorts] [snorts] [panting and gasps] [snorts] >> Okay. [sighs] [gasps] [sighs and snorts] Yeah. Okay. Holy [ __ ] All right, let's do an overhead extension now. [sighs] All right. Yeah, I'm I'm huffing. Those overhead extensions felt pretty good, but I think the rope and that push down kind of superset was definitely the star of the show. But let's see how we're looking from the front side. [sighs and gasps] [snorts] [sighs and gasps] >> [sighs and gasps] >> Oh my gosh. Yeah, I know it's a good pump when it's hard to even hold the uh the freaking poses. [sighs] Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. >> [sighs] [gasps] [sighs] >> Oh man. All right. What else is there? Oh yeah. How the hell could I forget this one? [sighs and gasps] >> [gasps] >> Crap. I just got like a serratus cramp cuz I was like pulling my arm up and out. [laughter] Crap. Haven't done that for I [snorts] don't even freaking know how long. But let's pop a squat, have a little postlift discussion. All right. I was scanning the comments trying to see if there was a uh any particular question or anything. Let me see. Let me see if anybody's got a good little something in here. Uh do you ego lift on everything? Asks not Zia. Yesterday I was I was ego lifting. I was going pretty heavy. So I mean can we can we get a definition? You know can we get like what is ego lifting like for real? Uh because I think it's clear when it's like 100% crazy, you know, like you ever see somebody do leg press and they put extra plates on the machine even more than it like they just stack them on the back, right? I think that's obvious. You know, this guy's just doing that for for the fun of it. Uh but I think with uh you know it's a little more nuanced with your regular working sets. You know I think some people are they I think they're form supremacists, right? They they come into the gym and this person's version of like what they can do to be very comfortable with themsel and feel good in space is to do everything perfect textbook curls. No swing, very lightweight. They're doing it perfect. They're bench pressing. [sighs] [gasps] They're doing pull downs. they're they're going light enough that they can get the bar down to their chest, bump it. Same thing, you know? Uh I guess those are kind of the main ones, right? And that's not flawed. That's not a flawed mindset to have, I feel, right? Because we all want to feel comfortable, right? So if your thing is you want to go perfect form, squeezing, light, whatever that makes you feel the most comfortable training, I'm not saying that's wrong, of course, but I think the, you know, o open your eyes, man. Open it. Widen your freaking perspective to what your training can be like. I can sit and do uh I don't even know. Let's Let's kind of think about it. What's the craziest move I could do? I don't know. I could Let's say I had easy bars in here. Um for me, I don't think I'm going to get some more equipment in this gym. I think I'm going to do another little gym tour soon. Kind of walk around, kind of break everything down. But let's say I had a stack of easy bars, right? I could get a really good set by grabbing the 50 lb easy bar and doing a one second hold squeeze two second eccentric. The set would look perfect. If uh if you showed the video to anyone and said, "Does this guy look like he's doing this set correctly?" Everybody would say yes. Right? Let's say I did it totally perfect. I think that'd be a good set. You know, take it as close to failure as you can get. But if I grab the 80 or even if I just did the 50, the same weight, but instead of doing slower controlled squeezing sets or squeezing reps, I did like, you know, maybe 20 reps instead of 12. And instead of this pace, they were quicker, right? Still got a squeeze on top, but they were much quicker. Just faster pace reps. And I get to failure that way, right? Right? I think if you showed that those two sets, a video of each of those to whoever, they'd probably say, "Oh, well, he's doing it too fast. You should do it like this." Right? And I'm not saying that people who are like physical trainer, kinesiologist, like training coach. I'm saying just regular people who don't know anything more than anybody else about the gym, the general consensus is always light squeezing, perfect form better. or not even squeezing, but just lighter controlled reps better than quicker, faster reps. And to that, I I [ __ ] disagree, man. You know, and I'm not uh this isn't like a hot take where I'm trying to tell you like, dude, if you're not uh if you don't think you're going to [ __ ] pull something, you're not going heavy enough. Like, that's not my approach, you know? I wouldn't say I'm an Well, maybe compared to the normal dude, I'm an ego lifter at heart, but not like to an insane degree. I mean, [ __ ] If I was really going that crazy, wouldn't I have a bunch of injuries right now? Wouldn't I have a torn lat? Wouldn't when I would my pecs be blown up, would my knees be exploded and I won't be able to squat because I had knee problems? I've been on a pretty good streak for the last I don't even want to count it because I don't want to put that energy out in the world. But it's been a while, right? You know, I'm not hurting myself. So, what I'm saying is there's just there's more to it. There's more to it than just a tiny little squeezing perfect set or whatever. And that's not just me saying that because I think that or like for whatever reason the idea of that sounds good. I'm just saying that based on my own personal training experience. I'm not coming in and doing a set of squeezing movements, slow, controlled burning, slow eccentric every set of every workout. No [ __ ] chance. Cuz what was I saying to the car here? I want to change it up, you know? So you've got a couple different spectrums that your sets can be in, you know? Like imagine a 3D graph where it's like this is light squeezing or this is light, this is heavy, this is fast, this is slow, this is squeezing, this is whatever. I don't know. There's like a million different ways to do it. And if your effort is there, do whatever the you can kind of do whatever. You know, if you put me in a if I get teleported right now into a freaking um what would the word be? Well, just wherever. maybe some scrappy hotel gym or something and all it had in there was a 20 pound dumbbell and a uh an exercise band. I could get an arm pump. I bet I could get it comparable to today's arm pump, even with that badass overhead extension and the rope and the cables and the dumbbells. I bet I could still get a workout of similar intensity and quality with just a [ __ ] 20 lb dumbbell. And uh well, the 20 might be kind of tricky. I might have to give myself selfresistance reps like do single arm curls with the 20 and push my arm down with the other arm to make it harder, but I think I could do it, you know? So, like I was kind of getting at in the car about like just different movements about what you have available and how you're missing out if you can't just pivot off rip like, "All right, that row is taken. That leg extension is broken. Let's do something else." Boom. Keep moving. I think the same thing applies to a less, let's just say, forced degree because if you come into the gym and somebody broke your Smith machine, you've got no choice. You have to do something else. But if it's not broken, then you're just going to fall into those same patterns of what you've been doing forever, right? It's like uh if you what's the what's the word I'm thinking of? [sighs] It was like this analogy where obviously you're going to want to walk down the beaten trail because you've walked it so many times just from building up that habit. You're not going to want to branch off and try different stuff. So, I want to change it up, you know? So, I mean, I think that should apply to everybody, you know. So, if you can tell your training is very repetitive, I would imagine you would benefit from changing it up. I'm not saying it's a guarantee, you know, maybe I don't know that. But from what I can tell, you know, [ __ ] I don't want my arm days to look the same. I don't want my chest day to look the same. I don't want my leg day to look the exact same as it did last leg day. Now, I fall into my own patterns. I always do some leg extensions first and then maybe a squat and different leg press or [ __ ] squats and leg extension supersets and things like that. You know, I've got like basic frameworks that I kind of repeat because I know I like them. I'm not saying every workout has to be computer randomized, but within a little bit of variability. [ __ ] man. If I did uh Yeah, I did that row over in there in the corner last time for back or at least for my upper midback rows and that was like the heavier set. Well, next time I do back, I don't want to do that machine. I want to do uh I want to do this chest supported row in front of me or maybe this one over here that's more vertical. I just don't want to repeat the same stuff. But that doesn't mean you have to switch machines. You can do the same [ __ ] but just do it in a different way. Instead of just doing a like a regular set of 40s for that finisher, which that wasn't total failure. That was just to get some extra blood flow into the area. Uh but it was still a good squeezing burning set. So maybe instead of doing it like that, I did uh you know do some half reps or pause reps rather. So go halfway up, pause, then finish, halfway up, pause, finish. the weight was the same but the execution changed right so I mean what are all the variables you can even control in your workouts right you've got exercise selection you've got workout pattern so that might be you know start heavy finish lighter start lighter do a few heavy sets in the middle finish lighter you know any kind of combination of those two then you've got your pace maybe you do some not total failure heavy sets but maybe quicker pace really squeezing burning sets and you and do shorter rest periods and thus a little bit more volume or maybe heavier, more crazy intense sets with assistance. And then you got to do less volume and a little more longer rest periods. So I guess you're kind of set by set intensity. I don't know. There's probably like eight [ __ ] things. And I want all these to kind of change. But the one thing I don't want to change is my kind of not even subjective, my objective effort, right? So some days I might feel like total [ __ ] Uh, I haven't lately because I've been getting really good sleep and I drink all my water and I eat well or I mean I've been eating way better. I'm talking whole foods at the wazoo. Just makes me feel better, you know? So, I guess all of the guys who are saying you got to stop eating so much [ __ ] ice cream. I guess you're on to something. [laughter] But I'm dieting, of course, so that's a little bit different. Um, but a [ __ ] I just distracted myself. What was I saying? Bulk. But even if I wake up off, even if I come in and uh let's say I I had a chest day like two weeks ago and I wanted to do heavy incline Smith, felt a little something in my shoulder, not like rotator cuff, but like up here. I think I went too heavy the last time and I kind of felt like a minor tweak or something. Not major, but enough where I'm like, I probably shouldn't make this any worse, right? So instead, I just did, you know, light squeezing cable, lighter squeezing cable, and it was still a badass workout. And I still brought it and every set I was still pushing as hard as I could. So even though it wasn't a super crazy heavy 365 on incline, it was just, you know, like 100 lb handoverhand cable press, guess what, [snorts] man? Still got a badass pump. Chest still felt like it got well stimulated. And that workout was totally different than what I had planned when I walked into the gym. So, I guess what I'm uh what I'm really getting at is if I could have a key term that I would look for in somebody's training or that if somebody really came up to me and asked me for like some tips, not like necessarily super specific tips, but just a tip in general, I'm going to say, "Fuck, man." Right? Be versatile, be agile, be able to kind of adjust accordingly. You know, you don't want to be the dude where as soon as there's one wrench in your gears, you throw a fit and you're like, "Oh, it's not exactly what I had planned in my mind, right?" What What the hell ever totally goes 100% according to plan? You know, you almost got a plan to have random [ __ ] show up so that you can adjust accordingly for it, right? So, it's certainly not bad to come into the gym with a perfect lift written out. You're ready for it. you know, I'm going to do this, this, this, and then this, and then I'm going to pose down. I'll look just like this and this lighting, and but sometimes that doesn't happen, right? And you got to be able to handle that. And it's not like it's the most serious thing in the world, right? Nobody's having a panic attack because they come into the gym, they want to do Smith machine press, and the Smith is taken, right? It's not like the stakes are that high on a day-by-day basis. But the guy who can't handle that as well as the dude who just says, "All right, machine press." Instantly walks over to it, gets started, versus the guy who kind of flinches, right? He kind of hesitates for a minute. He's like, "Ah, crap. What do I do?" You know, he gets in his head just a little bit, even if it's just a little, right? I'd say this is a pretty common theme with anything progress related in the gym in any facet is tiny little itty bitty things like that, they add up. So, what happens after somebody's worked out a thousand times and every time they came into the gym, if something didn't go their way, they had to take a couple minutes and readjust and refig it out and they get out of the zone versus the guy who didn't have that moment of hesitation. He just said, "All right, I'm curling something." You know, and I I can't stress enough, this doesn't seem like a big deal in the moment, but over time, I think it really adds up. So, it's uh you know, it's it's like if somebody takes you out to dinner or something or you go out with your buddies or whatever, and it's like, "All right, who wants dessert, you know, you just made sure to order uh I mean, I just did this last night. I got like this salmon with like vegetables, whatever. Uh if I'm dieting, sometimes I'm just going to say, you know what, I don't even want to give myself the opportunity. Can I have this steak with no mashed potatoes?" Uh yeah. Can I do the fish and chips with no chips? Can I do this salmon thing without fingerling potatoes? Like little things like that. And you know, let's say somebody else at the table orders dessert. Oh, come on, man. What What's one bite of tiramisu? Come on. What's one bite of this chocolate ice cream? Right now, I'm not saying you need to be a total robot and just say like, "No." Right? But if every time that opportunity presents itself and you just [ __ ] crumple and take it and you're like, "Hey, you know what? Refeed." You get you get one refeed every couple freaking weeks. You know, you can have a nasty refeed day like once a month and if you're dieting pretty well for the rest of it, you'll still make solid progress. And really, it actually would count as a refeed and it wouldn't throw you off. But that's all I'm saying. These things compound, right? Every time you slack, every time you back off just a touch, every time you say, "Eh, you kind of that was fine. I put the weight down." When really you had five more reps in the [ __ ] tank. Every time you do that, that takes you down a notch. Even just by a teensy little bit. And sometimes it's even more subtle than that. It doesn't take you down, but it doesn't push you forward. Right? And with a life with the gym in general, you're fighting inflation. If you stay in the same spot from last year to this year, I don't think you maintained. I think you fell backwards, you know, because everything else around you has been moving. So, you got to move with it, right? The tide isn't going to stop flowing. So, even if you're not doing enough to, you know, let's just say bring it. And you're just at the cusp. You're just like, I'm pretty consistent. Maybe I'm not consistent enough. I don't know. It's kind of hard to lock in. I'm going to have to make ground beef or I'm going to have to eat a bunch of just plain rice. I don't want to do I want to go to Canes, right? It adds up. That's all I'm trying to say. So, every tiny win, every moment where instead of eating a whole [ __ ] dessert, you say, "Hey, man, I'll take a bite of yours, right? Hey, man. I'll be back in a second. Let me hit my set and then we'll come back and chat." All those tiny little things. every time you open the cupboard and then close it cuz you know you shouldn't be eating those Doritos, right? That's a tiny little W added to your [ __ ] scorecard. And day by day, you don't notice a difference. But year by year, right, [ __ ] man. You're going to separate yourself from the herd. Not for the sake of being better than anybody else like that, but just, you know, for your own progress's sake, if you feel me there. But the camera's at 1%. I'm going to swap the battery out. Now we can get in the car. Let's freaking get out of here. Gymshark.com. Check it out. There we go. Now we're back. Yeah. A little Yeah, if you watch the whole thing, I guess you just got some dja vu. But yeah, so getting back to kind of what I was saying in there just when I was finishing up, it's it's a conundrum, right? Because on a day-by-day basis, when you're looking at your gym uh your gym routine and your progress on just a 24-hour time period, one workout is pretty [ __ ] inconsequential. One day of, you know, sticking to your diet is relatively, you know, benign, right? If you totally slack and just blow it if you got back on track for the next however many, right? But if you actually want legitimate progress, then you can't look at it like that, you know? You got to treat it as though it is not like a life or death kind of situation, of course, but it's got to be pretty [ __ ] important, you know, because it just adds up, right? It really does add up. So, you know, you might go to the gym 100 times, but if only 30 of those were really good, productive workouts, and the rest you just kind of went through the motions, let's just say I would not expect results. I would certainly not expect them, you know, and that's where I think people jump to uh jump to anything. They jump to, oh, maybe my split is wrong. Oh, maybe I'm eating uh maybe I'm eating too many potatoes instead of uh rice. Maybe I maybe I I just don't react well to to beef. Maybe I should only be eating chicken. Maybe I should do a uh a white fish only diet like Jay Cutler when he was doing the uh you know whichever Olympia prep he was doing as though it's just one tiny little piece of the puzzle that isn't working. And as soon as it gets fixed, it's like boom, everything will now suddenly be in perfect order. Right? As complicated as the gym is is as simple as it is. Go hard and go home. Boom. Right? repeat that process and you got no choice but to make progress. So, I uh I try not to get too far off from that logic. And it's done to get so far and not even now, but even back in the beginning when I was working out, right, I didn't give I didn't give two shits that I didn't have a mega mass row at my YMCA. You know, at the time, I wasn't really watching too many bodybuilders or like fitness influencers or anybody. Like back in 2018, 2019 or so, I was just watching like old Athleen X training videos where it was basic like the whole video was just tricep rope extension tutorial so I could see what the hell I was supposed to do or you know little things like that or different guys talking about like like what's a how to train basically just how to train tutorials you know stuff like that. uh only in like later 2020 20ish, like around high school did I really start watching anybody else and getting some more info. But it's like, dude, if you show up and kill it, [sighs] what do you think's going to happen? You know, like if you I uh I make this analogy a lot and it gets argued against by the same reverse argument, which I'm not saying is wrong, but I always say some [ __ ] like, you know, the guy who comes in and kills it, even with what I might describe as a subpar workout, you know, maybe um all he does every week is dumbbell curls for six heavy sets and straight bar push downs for six heavy sets. You know, I've done workouts like that, but I don't only do them like that. I change it up. So, somebody told me all they do for arms for the last year was six sets of heavy push downs and six sets of dumbbell curls for like 12 or something for failure every set. I might ask him like, "All right, you don't do any like lighter squeezing stuff? You don't do any?" And the guy might, you know, no, that's all I do. Just push downs and curls. That's all that's all I care about. Uh, it works fine for me. And you know, the guy's making solid progress. Well, you know, yeah, I think it probably could be better, but what he's doing is clearly working, you know, and that's what we want. That's what we want. Just legitimate progress. Now, the guy who tells me, "Hey man, I just read up on this, that, and the other. I've been really studying. This is what I got here." Maybe he hands me a [ __ ] pamphlet in a leather binder with his training routine, and it's, you know, just paragraphs of descriptions of everything. like the understanding might be there to the nth degree like this guy is a this guy's a mastermind but if his effort wasn't there and he's not really pushing his sets as hard I mean I've seen guys where they train but they're kind of slacking you know they're just not pushing it as hard as they maybe not as they should because there is no should right the gym is a voluntary thing you know there's no uh there's no status quo per se but he's not going as hard as he could where like if I was him I would go harder Um, and you know who do I think is training better? The effort guy, right? The farm uh the farm strength simple workout getting after it dude I would consider to have a better training routine because he himself is executing it better. Now the argument to that which I see is well why not be the smart dude and train really hard right? So yes that would be the best. So just do that, you know, but sometimes with all of the really specific training execution and stuff, logic, it just ends up, you know, turning into a freaking explanation pissing contest. Oh, I'm my training is actually better than yours because I can talk about it and explain it and reference 10 different things. And then, you know, some guy might say, "All right, man. Yeah, you're right." And then he just does a really badass set of preacher curls and goes home, you know. So, it's um you know, it's not a [gasps] [sighs] I this is this is kind of Yeah. camera overheated. So, yeah. What the hell was I saying? Yeah. Well, [ __ ] adds up. [ __ ] freaking adds up. That was out. That was what I was getting at, at least for the most part. But tomorrow, I don't know. I think tomorrow is either a rest day, and by rest day, I just mean cardio only day. Or maybe some shoulders. Maybe hit a shoulder forearm day. I haven't done that for a little while. That might be good. I got to test my grip strength, too. I've got a I think it's called a dynamometer. Uh whether that's right or not, whatever. But it's just this little like force sensor kind of reading thing. The most I've ever squeezed it was like 212 on my left hand and then similar on the right. But I don't know if it's because I cut my thumb pad open a couple summers ago or if it's just like the way that my hand inserts or something, but I just can't [ __ ] grab on as hard with the right one. Like it it wants to slip out of my palm, whereas the left one I can put my full force into it. But either way, gonna get some food, go finish my cardio in the basement while I edit this little thing together, and that will be all. So, June June almost over, man. July will begin, and then August, and then, holy crap, winter time, we're going to be waiting for the first snowfall. I wouldn't uh I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked with snow in August. I guess I I probably would, but honestly, the weather's been getting so freaking crazy. It's probably just going to be really wet. I don't know. Either way, badass lift. I'm feeling good. Let's go get some freaking food.