Latest / Project StrengthCast / Programming for Success with Anas Anbar | Ep.7

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Programming for Success with Anas Anbar | Ep.7 · Project StrengthCast

• jay: Hello everyone, and Tapas: Yeah. jay: welcome to episode seven of Project Strengthcast. You know, when we started this podcast series, the objective was to get the best in the game to come and give us information on how this entire system works, like how this entire sport works in our perspectives, right? today we have someone who I think is an amazing athlete, coach, and a mentor. he's Anasabha. I have ki I have Followed on us for a long period of time now. I have consumed his content extensiv extensively. And I can say the fact that he is probably one of the the best voices in the sport at the moment. he's an elite level athlete. He's an amazing coach. as someone that's done his mentorships, both of the group mentorships that he's offered. I find an immense amount of value in terms of the information he shares. He's also one of the co-hosts for Stackcast, which is, in my opinion, one of the best powerlifting podcasts on the internet. Tapas: Hmm. jay: Right. He also has a BS in exercise science, if I'm not mistaken. And as if I if I've missed out anything, my bad on that. But thank you so much for your time. we we hope this is an amazing discussion for everyone involved. Anas: Yeah, thank you for having me. Kaushal Sumedh: We're all happy to have you here, man. Thank thank you so much for joining Tapas: Yeah, definitely. Kaushal Sumedh: us today. And we hope, you know, we get to talk to you as much as possible within the time we have. Anas: Yeah, thank you for Tapas: It's gonna be it's gonna be really good for everybody in our audience here. You know, it's gonna be a very it'll be a different look at things, different perspective. So yeah, glad to have you here, Anas. Let's just get started then. Yeah. So I'll just go over the topics here. You as you guys can already see on the screen as we normally have. we have the topic list here. it's mostly going to be organic, but our like rough outline of our topics will be We'll be talking about when designing a program, what we generally try to outline within a week, how that kind of fundamentally ties into the SRAI curve. when we design the stressors required, how do we actually find bottlenecks and how do we fix those? What fatigue actually is, this is like a very common question that people get confused on. Is all fatigue the same? And we'll also talk about like how stimulus and fatigue kind of work together, what how they're like involved. When designing a program, we also we're gonna be talking about how we design for specific cases and also the idea of asymmetry and lifting. It's been getting a little bit more popular recently, so I think that's a good topic to cover here. And we'll just end it with the same, just like going back to the beginning and talking about the SRAI curve and then its fundamental connection to programming itself. Yeah. So that's the topic list, all right. And let's just get started here. Oli. Yeah. jay: Yeah, so I Anas, I just want to start off this by going al along the lines of like when we're trying to design a weekly structure of programming, when we're trying to design any amount of any any type of programming, what is like when I for example, I'll say when I worked to like learned from you guys under the mentorships, the SRA model, right? If if someone were were to understand at a principal level what this is, how would you kind of define it to them and why is it important for them to understand this model? Anas: Yeah, so I think that's that's actually a good way to look at it. Us SRA is just a model and like models what they do is they explain how things work. And for training in general, the process generally looks like a stressor, a recovery period, then you see an adaptation. But with SRA, it's an incomplete model. It's very generalized. It's simplified. It's just like okay, what's you can get a million adaptations. There's a million different adaptations we can. can we can get. There's a million different stressors. even when we train like one set of squats has multiple different s stimuli. So it's not very specific, it's not specific enough. So for us as coaches, we have to be able to define what the stressor actually is and like what recovery actually looks like. Because stressors from a hypertrophy perspective look a little bit different. And when we talk about fatigue, the recovery period, like the recovery aspect comes into play there. because if I'm str if I'm stressing a different structure. Or I'm using maybe like more neural drive or more peripheral type like I'm using more like more of my muscle, then like the fatigue looks looks different too. So the recovery does look different too. And the adaptations also are different. If I do a set of 10, that's different than doing a heavy set of like heavy singles. So SRA is just a beginning of kind of understanding how things work. But then from there we have to understand, okay, what does each part of the training How does exercise selection influence SRA? How does load actually influence SRA? Because we know there's like a completely different interaction between load and hypertrophy and load and strength. so that's like the starting point, but from there. being very specific about the stressor and what the stimulus is and being very specific with what adaptations we're trying to get, that's where you kinda see the the top level coaches excel and like maybe like more newer pe more newer coaches don't really know the nuances within that stressor and like the exact adaptations that they're looking to get. Is that is that like a good intro for it? Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. jay: Yeah. What's your man? Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I think also like when you talk about stress, you kinda have to take into consideration athlete structure, like the the way they're built and also the technique. 'Cause technique is basically just how you can efficiently distribute load across tissue. So that gives you a good idea of how they're having stress feedback, right? So that Tapas: Movement quality. Kaushal Sumedh: the yeah, movement quality and stuff like that. Of course we'll we'll get more into it as we go on Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: here, but that's also another point where I think as you see because you were talking about like more like the better coaches have better understanding of of nuance like this. Whereas like newer coaches will just be like, yeah, I mean, we have these many sets and that's it, kind of a thing, right? Whereas like better coaches will kind of just understand based off of feedback and also looking at athlete types, because you you're like end of the day, you're human. We're all similar to some degree. It's not like it's not gonna be like, you know, you're not like special that you need something anything d too different. It on paper it's gonna look like there's just slight variations that might yield good results for each person specifically. So you might want to take a look into even like how they're built and the way they execute their technique and stuff like that as well. Anas: Yes, that's actually a good point because physiology for humans is the same for everyone. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: one th one thing I had here was like you're not gonna see someone doing heavy singles, then like they magically get better at marathon running. Like it's not gonna happen. Like it's just physiology is straightforward. But the differences are leverages, maybe like muscle insertions, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: recovery resources, life circumstances, like practical ch practical considerations there influence how the person Actually manages the stressor like how they recover from it. But at the end of the day, for you to get stronger, you'll have to lift heavier. For you to get bigger muscles, you have to challenge that muscle. That muscle has to be the limiting factor. You have to put mechanical tension on it and you have to push it pretty hard. so like it's not gonna be anything different for like different lifters from that sense, but the application of it can be like a bit more different because different leverages like will dictate how much fatigue actually gets I guess like the person gets exposed to. So that is the Tapas: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anas: like where like individual differences comes in. But it's if we look at the the principles too, maybe once once we if we get to them, principles also tell you if that work is productive or not. If the person can only can only tolerate like three sets and like maybe like after a couple of reps, force production starts to go down, then like that's not specific. specificity looks different for different people. And like if we also define specificity and those principles, Then we can get a very productive stimulus. But if you give everyone sets of eight, and if you have a person who's like tall and like with log with long leg, long legs and whatnot, and they start to fatigue that the force of production starts to drop halfway through the set, then is that really specific for strength? Not really. So that's where I guess like some of these nuances or like differences in programming that we see comes in. jay: Yeah, I I did want to kind of mention here in the fact that we kind of talk about these fundamental aspects of like we talk about things on a principle like one of the things forgive me if I'm dipping into the mentorship course that you guys just did, but like the race car analogy that you kind of did, right? like the whole idea of understanding a bottleneck, right? What is the limiting factor in this individual at the moment, right? Because sometimes when a guy joins and he he'd have done like a he comes To me for coaching or something, you'll kind of see that they have no muscle mass on them, but they are literally just pushing like top and load the whole time. Right. So when someone comes as a coach, why is it important to kind of yeah, you wanna have principles and principal understandings, but w why do you need an eye to recognize bottlenecks? And if we could also touch upon the different bottlenecks that you've you kind of would identify, you know. Anas: Yeah, so like the way I look at it is we we mentioned SRA and I think I usually tie it to SRA because for us to apply a stimulus, we need movement options first. You need to be able to actually complete the movement. You need to be able to have like enough external rotation, flexion, internal rotation to actually hit death on a squat. Otherwise, like you can't really go anywhere. So movement options are like the bare minimum. Obviously most people have those, like to a certain extent, unless dealing with my maybe like elderly type Tapas: Yeah. Anas: like jay: Yeah. Anas: demographic that okay maybe that is a bigger bottleneck Tapas: They'll have few restrictions. Yeah. Anas: For sure, yeah. Then maybe that's a bigger bottleneck like you have to actually get them to be able to squat to depth first or improve that quality first. But the the movement options give us different solutions or potential solutions for technique. If you can't really squat straight down and like you don't have like the necessary range of motion, then no matter how much queuing or whatever that you give that person, it's not gonna happen. Like they don't have the available space for it. So like that is like the entry point. That's why that's why I think it's very important. Then from there technique comes in because technique, like mentioned before, this is like the way we distribute load. This is like how we actually put more stress on the quads versus like the the back and whatnot. Within technique, obviously there's other things like slack management, center mass management, which I think also influences range of motion too. Like it influences movement options. If you're falling on your toes or falling back, then the body will start to kind of limit some of these movement options. but that is like the the entry point, like the movement. This is like the ones and zeros of what we do. So it is like the first thing that I would say we have to look at if the I'll give a heart. If the if the movement options and the technique isn't there, then it doesn't really matter what your programming looks like because like you're moving like shit. Like what's like what you where are you gonna go from there? Like you you're gonna keep lo loading your lower back. Tapas: It's just not going to be efficient. Anas: Exactly. So first like we would start with the efficiency so we can actually get the most out of our mo out of our programming. And like once we are efficient enough, then we need enough musculature to actually move that load because muscle is the thing that produces force. So that's like like the the Tapas: Definitely. Anas: steps. So you have like order of operations, movement options, technique, then the muscle mass gets loaded. And obviously that muscle mass needs enough work capacity to handle that work. then we see adaptations. But that is like the steps. And like if you start at the very end and you work on the strength programming, but the technique isn't there, the movement options aren't there, the the muscle mass isn't there. Then like what are we doing here? Like the efficiency is very low. And you're just kind of looking at the very end, like the last step, instead of kind of looking at the at the beginning. Because like one, I think Jay, I mean you you've probably know like we talk about the theory of constraints a lot. And this is this tells us that the output of a system is dictated or limited usually is is limited by that biggest bottleneck. So we want to improve the biggest bottleneck of the system first to improve the flow of progress here. Like if we start also there's like steps to it, there's order. And if we start at in the wrong order, like if you have you mentioned like some athletes come to you and they have multiple bottlenecks. Maybe their technique jay: Yep, yep. Anas: is bad and they're not efficient and they're and their muscle mass isn't there. And okay, what do we do from there? Do we work If the technique isn't there, then you won't you wouldn't be able to load the muscle musculature that you want. So it wouldn't make sense to work on the muscle mass if technique in the sense in that sense isn't there. Because like the squats and like SPD in general is not going to be efficient enough to help with that. Yes, you can do machines and whatnot to assist, but the squat is still gonna be loading the musculature that is not even like being built. Like you're working on the quads, but the person keeps hinging their squats. Like, okay, well, what's the point of doing more hack squats if the Person's not even gonna use their legs. So that that is why I think there's like an order of operations, and like the bottlenecks have to be addressed in that order, so we don't actually work on something that's not gonna give us any returns. So always start with the movement, then go into muscle mass work capacity, then at the very end, funny enough, is the strength because like the Tapas: Yeah. Anas: strength is a byproduct of everything else, and if we don't work on everything else, then the strength. Expression is not gonna even gonna show up. Because like it's a bit it's dependent. It's not like hypertrophy, you're just gonna work, go sit down on a machine and push that muscle with failure like that's it, you got your stimulus. For strength and strength expression, technique plays a big factor. The muscle mass plays a big factor, and the movement options play a big factor. If you're shifting and twisting, then you're not jay: Yep. Yep. Anas: taking advantage of your like the efficiency is low. If your work capacity isn't there, then you can't even do the work necessary to to make to make progress. So strength is very tricky, but it's very like also. So it's like an enjoyable process or problem to solve because we have other factors that play into it. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: This why Costell, you do you want to go on? Kaushal Sumedh: Don't I go. Tapas: Yeah, so the I I was just gonna say like this is why, you know, a a lot of people when they come for the first time, and there's like a very especially with like younger lifters, there's a there's an expectation that I wanna increase by this much within a month or a two month or two months. And then this is kind of what the I feel like they need to understand that there's steps to this and you need to first fix these in order to get the result. Like I can train you for that, but if you don't have movement quality properly, like you if you're not able to efficiently get out of it. whatever like output you could get, there's no there's not much point to it. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. So I I I was gonna talk about it like this this ties back into being a good athlete as well as a good coach. Tapas: Hm. Kaushal Sumedh: 'Cause a good athlete is somebody who's un is gonna understand the process and try to trust the process that the coach has set them set for them. And I also think it's the coach's job to kind of it you can't sit there and baby s like like you know, spoon feed them, but you kinda have to give them a good understanding of what we're trying to do here so that the the more knowledge the lifter has, the better they can execute things, right? Because if they're just shooting things in the dark, they just they just don't know what they're looking for here as well. While at the end of the day, most programs have like an element of strength, an element of hypertrophy throughout the year, right? It's gonna change speci specificity and stuff like that is gonna change based on what part of the year you're in, how far o out of competition you're in, and whether you're dealing with any kind of injuries or anything of that sort, right? There's gonna be differences that way. But you're always going to have to like follow the plan that the coach has set and the coach has to kind of explain that really well. And when you were talking about like movement options and stuff like that, we just have an example right here. Like I coached Tapas here for like a couple of months Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: now. And the first bottleneck that I could notice is that he had a lot of trouble because he's he's got very flat feet. Right. And flat feet itself is not a problem, but the problem is that when you're already extremely pronated, you can't pronate any further. Right? Like if you're already there, you can't go there any further. So he did not have the movement option to like Go down to depth properly, even just body weight. And then we kind of had to work that backwards. And then he started to like really push. Because the end of the day, when you like squat and deadlift is basically you just setting up all over, maintaining center of mass, and that feedback comes through the feet. Right? It's Tapas: Hm. Kaushal Sumedh: like that's what you're looking for where you're just looking for this strong push through the feet, and then you're getting every other muscle to work together to move the maximum amount of weight, right? Like there are prime movers, but then you're trying to move as much as much weight as possible. I mean, at that point of time, you're not just looking at like, are my quads activated? Because when you're looking at one rep max, you're not just looking for are my quads activated, maybe I'm not using enough or something, you know, something like that. Prime overs are prime overs, but at the end of the day, you're looking for everything to work together so that you can move the maximum amount of weight by while being as efficient as possible, right? Because there's gonna be some kind of technical breakdown as you move into like very high high stuff and Tapas: Top ends. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, top and lower like and even even if you peak really well you're gonna hit hit numbers that you've never touched before, right? That that's a scenario that I see very often. So yeah, like as you said, these things matter a lot. Tapas: They the problem can yeah, the problem can often be at the starting point, like you said, the foot. It doesn't need to go till the prime moves. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I mean that's that's the thing. Like a as Anna said, like the previous point before, like it really, really depends on that that's the big difference between good coaches and coaches that are not that good. Or like inexperienced or not willing to learn or anything of that sort. They're not willing to look at bottlenecks. They're just kinda like, yeah, I mean, you know, just do what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, just get stronger. Like, yeah, Tapas: Just get stronger. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: of course that's the goal. We all want to get stronger, but how? That's the whole point, right? Like that's what Tapas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: that's what coaches are there for. And while there are some lifters who Who kind of try to question everything, I think you should accept, you should be open to accepting questions from your athletes and being able to answer them well. Because the better you answer them, the better your job, the easier the job becomes, honestly. Like you if you take that little bit of extra time to explain that to a rifter saying that, yeah, this is something that I'm looking for here, and that's all I want you to do. This, this, this, focus on this, and that that pretty much brings out the best in them. And then you can bring out the best in you as well, right? jay: And and and I want to ask Anas: Yeah. jay: Anas just a little question here, if that's okay. like w Tapas: Yeah. jay: when we talk about the strength is like multifactorial in nature, right? And like movement competence and a cleaner looking rep. So it's not like if someone is looking at movement efficiency as an option, or like we're making them more like better at moving in general, that inherently should translate into better strength expression as well. Like I I often find that when someone moves better, they just start performing better. Like this is not my model, it's a thing I think I've learned it from a few guys. Like there's competence, capacity, and performance as like an orientation of like like like how I kind of look at pro programming. When someone's movement competence just becomes better, I assume they just start performing better. And like once they're low like you mentioned the fact that if someone can't execute a lift properly, it doesn't really matter. But once you just teach them how to execute it better, they just start performing better. So like if if you were to say, honest in your experience, when you work with a guy and just clean up their technique, the strength expression just go up because of that as well. Anas: yes, I think generally speaking on long term, it is gonna be better for sure. And the the reason why is you're using more musculature and maybe like the timing of using that musculature is more efficient. Maybe like you're not trying to squeeze your glutes on a squat or like the intermuscular coordination there between muscles is a little bit cleaner. So you don't have like the antagonist working at the same time you are using the agonist. Like a if you're trying to use your quads. using the antagonist muscles or trying to squeeze them would not help. And usually technique has like that is like one part of it, but that's not all of it. and I also think with the like we were talking about with the movement options, once you move a little bit more efficiently and you're loading maybe like a little bit more sim symmetrical from left to right, you're able to use more musculature. But we also have to keep in mind that if you've been stuck in that pattern for a while, Like maybe like you squat hip sh like in a in a hip shift into your right side, then guess what? Your left side is probably detrained now. And although you are more symmetrical, you are using a must musculature that hasn't been trained for for a while. So there is like a detraining aspect to it. So initially, it you might see a dip. You look more symmetrical, I should be stronger, but Now, like that left side is not as strong. So you have to kind bring that up first. Then the the strength strength expression will start to show up. what 100%? Like it will show up. But there there might be like a period where you see a dip because the two sides are not trained the same way. And like if you're using like 70%. of your like on the squat on on your right side, then I guess what like the left side is getting 30% of that stimulus. So it's maybe getting 30% of the adaptations and it's a little bit weaker. And like once you once you shift to 50-50 from both sides, like you you're squatting in the middle, 50-50, but the left side is still a little bit behind, or whichever side it is, it doesn't have to be a left side. Whichever side it is, it's a little bit behind. Then you can have to kind of bring that up to to speed. Then you start to see the expression is higher because I'm using more muscle mass. More muscle mass means more force production, generally speaking. and I guess like going back to what we mentioned before with like the bottlenecks, with all of this, like one thing we mentioned in the mentorship is creating a lifter profile. And I think jay: Yep. Yep. Anas: that would be a good starting point for P for coaches. It's like, okay, well, I don't know where to start. Like how do I look at these things? Okay, well just in your head or if you want to write them down, whatever. Just have a list of things that matter to strength expression and give this person a rating. This person's moving off like or movement quality is 30, 30%. and like maybe their muscle mass is there. It's like, okay, well, now I have some guesses. Doesn't obviously like this is not accurate, but you know somewhat, okay, this is the biggest bottleneck here. I see their technique is like is in a good spot, they move well, they're just shifting. It's like, okay, and their muscle muscle mass is there, their programming is clean. Like good fatigue management, like the work is specific to strength and whatever we need, but they're they're not getting stronger. It's like, okay, well look at that lifter profile and check what is the the biggest weakness there. And bring that up. Like you want to create a r a well-rounded lifter. And all of these things, like I called them before like stats, like the person's stats. And like some some of my lifters actually come to as like they ask me about like what are what are my stats looking like now? I'm like, okay, well actually your movement options have improved a little bit, but your your technique regressed or whatever it is. And they're like, okay, well how how would you rate it? I'm like, I'll just give them like a random rating. And like it's something it's like they kinda look at it as a game. Okay, these these are like the Tapas: Mm. Anas: the the ratings that I that I have to bring up. and like maybe I would that would also help with buy in because you mentioned buy in too. The person jay: Yeah, yep, yep. Tapas: Yeah yeah, definitely. Anas: yeah if the person knows what they have to work on to get better. And if they know these things contribute to my strength, then they're gonna be more willing to actually work on them. But Because like no one really wants to sit down and like sit on the the floor and do positional drills and like do split squats and whatnot. No one really wants to do that because like they don't see the value in it until you educate them about here is why this actually helps, like here's like a stat for it. like if you bring that up, we will see progress. And also like another thing, not not to go on a tangent, is everyone is focused on only tracking the top sets. And there's no metrics. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah. Anas: There's no metrics for hypertrophy. Like no one really tracks those metrics as well. Yes, the the you see the load on there maybe, but some lifters don't even input their their their loads on their accessories. Maybe the execution isn't even consistent. So the other qualities besides the strength expression are not really tracked. And if you can't track Tapas: Yeah. Anas: it, you can't really improve it. So That would be like one education piece also. Like there are different metrics for different qualities. You have to be able to track them, to improve them, you have to also increase buy-in with education Tapas: Yeah. Anas: or whichever way you want to increase buy-in, but that has to be there. And I think there's like a big education gap that people Tapas: Hmm. Anas: don't really understand how this muscle mass actually contribute to a strength expression, how does technique jay: Yes. Anas: or movement options, why do I care about these things? And they only see the top sets, then They're only gonna focus on the top sets and like the work that actually builds the strength is i is is gonna be missed. jay: Yeah, and and I would just say yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I don't know. Tapas: There's a pretty c yeah, gone one. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I think like a jay: Extremely like helpful in terms of the fact that people just look at strength expression as the primary thing, right? They are just trying to look and like express top and strength Tapas: Hm, yeah. jay: at all points of time. and like what Anna Anna says here, I think like for example, I personally track a lot of tonnage as like an accessory metric that I would want people to kind of like follow through and kind of like input, and you'll see the guys who input that data, you'll see the outcome start to show up a lot better, right? Like, because I would want to track those metrics. really well as well because for example if quads are a limiting factor we have a specific accessory in there for like quad hypertrophy we monitor technique and we monitor tonnage and we see that go up because I I I will say like again I go back to Anas' mentorship. I think that that that the the KPIs when you guys were like telling us like what are the things we want to keep an eye on in terms of like that. I think that is where like education becomes all the more important because I find when I started communicating it to clients they got it a lot better. But so the point I wanted to make is like yeah people need to kind of focus on what Anas just said and the fact that stop thinking of only strength expression as the goal. Look at the factors that contribute to it and that is gonna express strength much better. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I I just wanna touch up a little bit on the points that you were making earlier about, you know, like nobody wants to do the drills on the floor and the and the split squats and stuff like that because those that's the boring work. But every single person needs to understand that your coach has put stuff in the program because it's gonna help you out. And if you're somebody who has come from other coaches having problems with how they work, and you have a coach now who's willing to put in the work with you, you you're the one that's losing if you don't do the work. Because a lot of times people will take that like like so casually, they'll be Yeah, it's just breathing. Or some drills or anything else, right? They just be Yeah, I I I I I don't know whether I did it right. Well, do you have a video? No, I forgot. I'll give it to you next week. And that keeps going on for a while. Because I had a guy who did this for six months straight. And I was like, Do you realize you wasted six months of your time and your money? Like, I'm getting paid. That's okay. Yeah. So Anas: Hundred percent, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: and and then the guy was like, No, no, I'll get it to you right now. I'll make sure that it's right. See, that's a problem. And and the second problem that I see with that kind of attitude is that. Now you know that I'm upset, right? So now you're gonna try and do your best. So I can't find the problem anymore. So we've wasted six months that could have just been fixed, like six months ago, Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: had you just gotten on it instantly. So that that's what makes like a good athlete. You'll see that like really good athletes are very good with stuff like this. Like they were good, they're good with feedback, they're good with you know giving back whatever the coach is asking for. And then like if the then if the coach doesn't respond to stuff like that, then you can, you know, shift blame. But A lot of people don't do stuff on their own first, or they don't try to understand what the coach is looking for. That like that's that's what I was saying. Like, you know, both have to kind of have that communication enough. Yeah, there has to Tapas: There has to be a balance, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: be that understanding, like, yeah, I'm looking for this. I've given you this for this reason, so I want you to do this and show it back. So that's like that's like your responsibility to then, you know, film that, send it back to your coach, and then make sure that he's giving you feedback on whether you've done it right. Is there anything improved to improve? And stuff like that, so that you can get the most out of this. Anas: So so almost like you care more than the lifter themselves, like you care about their progress jay: Okay. Tapas: Yeah. That's a very common thing Anas: more than they do. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, I I see that a lot. Tapas: you see here. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: So I think that's what that's why I was like I was just throwing it out there because I see that a lot. I and you and usually, yeah. jay: It is painful though. It is painful thing to see though. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, and and usually the thing is that these are people who've gone to other coaches and you know they've gotten scammed or something or something of that sort. Right? Like either they've paid money and then they don't get the program and they just get blocked, or something of that sort, right? Usually I have lifters like that coming to me. So when when you have somebody who's willing to give it back to you tenfold. you should put in the work 'cause that's rare to find actually. You find you find you don't find too many coaches who actually care. Anas: Yeah, and like you you have to I mean, for me as a coach, like I would wanna give the most effort that I can, but obviously if you see the lifter is not trying, it's like, Okay, well, I Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Anas: have other lifters who are trying, like I'm gonna match their Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: effort. Exactly. Tapas: They would deserve my time more, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: No, absolutely, absolutely. Anas: Like if you're not Kaushal Sumedh: Like, I had this thing where I was talking to Keenan or Dungey Gaines, Anas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: Dungy Gaines, I I don't know what. Yeah. So like I was talking to Keenan a bit, like we had a call once and I was talking to him about this and you know, he was like, I'm only human, I'm gonna put in the kind of effort that I see from the other person. I was like, that's true, cause I've been coaching for like eight n eight eight, nine years now. And f i in my mind it was always like, I need to still give my hundred percent even if the person doesn't care. But then I started to realize that it takes so much out of me and becomes so hard for me. Yeah. Anas: And then the effort will be wasted too, 'cause like if you're putting a hundred percent effort and they're not doing the work, it's like, well, this is wasted. Like why should I think about the positional drills? Why do I think about like the constraints jay: Yep. Yep. Yep. Anas: I'm giving this person if they're not even gonna do it, like why would I waste my time at that point Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, exactly. Anas: because they're not gonna be done. Tapas: How would you deal with something like that in jay: Yeah, that Tapas: like your roster if that happens? Anas: I mean I would tell them, I would educate them. I think education is huge here because th they they might not be trying hard enough. Tapas: Try to increase buy in. Anas: Yeah, because maybe they don't know how this is gonna actually gonna eventually improve their squat one up max. And there's a big disconnect because you're talking about like a like a breathing drill, then like it's like it's so far on that end of the spectrum, like in that continuum, like there there's no loading, jay: Yeah, yep, yep. Anas: there's nothing. It's like, okay, then like in their heads, like why am I doing this for? Like is this an accessory? Is it just to warm up? And if if they don't really know how this is gonna help, and like they don't know like step one, two, three, four, then at the like the final step is a bigger squat, they kind of have to know what those steps are, to actually increase that buy-in and like for them to actually put the effort in. But if they don't know what it's doing, then yeah, like they're they're they're probably gonna not gonna do it. Which we you mentioned earlier in the podcast, like education and like letting the lifter know why we're doing this. So I'm not saying this is for you, like it's for other coaches, like we're just doing stuff like they're not seeing results. Or maybe it's not clear enough. Maybe even like it was educ it was communicated, but the lifter still doesn't get it. Because like I do I do understand with like the movement jay: Yeah, yeah. Anas: option stuff, especially for lifters who just wanna go in and just lift heavy. Like they don't wanna think that much because now you're talking Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Anas: about internal rotation, external rotation, here's like what you're missing there. Look at maybe like that is kinda missing the pointy and obviously the the the language has to be understandable. maybe like simplifying it will be like my first step is like, okay, let me simplify this in the like the clearest manner, make it super simple. I'm like, look, you're using one leg. Let's use both legs. Two legs? Better than one. Okay. jay: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anas: Let's let's do that. Tapas: Yeah. Anas: then like Then like that idea will start to click, maybe showing them, okay, well look, you're shifting so far into into this side. And ideally, if you were in the middle, you can push with that leg a little bit further, meaning you can eventually lift a little bit heavier. But I think most of it for adherence there is either like time constraints and people kind of see the value in the in like the actual work itself because it's loaded and this is probably like low effort, like not really helping me that much. then like they kinda start to skip it and they just kinda wanna start to prioritize the things that will maintain or increase the strength and they don't see how this like this small drill is gonna eventually help. but yeah I think it's mainly education. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: And I wanna make a little confession here if it if if it's okay with you guys. I I Annas, I think you've worked with Jamie as well, if like Jamie Smith. so like when I when I when I first Anas: Yeah, worked actually worked with him in twenty nineteen. jay: so like when when I kind of Anas: The free. jay: s s switched into like to like coaching, one of the first mentorships I did was with Jamie. his movement mentorship. And I will admit, in my own in o my own company, I lucked out 'cause Jamie like very adamant on un like understanding this element of a continuum. Like I use that with my athletes, like that that sensory movement continuum kind of thing. And I think like well, in the end, like like An as you say, like yeah, if you can simplify it and then you tell people and they still choose not to like interact with that reality, well then i i it it's at least you've made your piece in terms of that thing but Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yep. jay: i but i'm a big fan of like the the whole thing of simplifying it because in the beginning i failed because i tried to overcomplicate things right i wanted to show that i had more I I admit to this thing like I wanted to show that there was more value into what I had to say than it couldn't be this simple but in most cases like I learned Tapas: Hm. jay: from Kaushul right like Kaushul has a decade's worth of experience like taking guys national international the whole nine yards so like you told me one day it's like you gotta be simple with people right this is in their whole life so you Kind of have like that. That's one of the things that like I learned, and I fully agree with Honest: like educating guys, keeping it simple, big win from me as someone who made that mistake. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I I I was about to talk about the same thing 'cause like I I made the same exact mistake like a couple of years ago. 'Cause when I when I first started to like actually understand things on a deeper level is when I was just like, Yeah, how can I make things sound as complicated as possible so people think I'm just super smart? And like all I understood was like people were not understanding anything that I was saying. Because I tried to be as like vocabulary, you know, you know, this thing as possible, eloquent as possible. Tapas: Eloquent. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: And people were just like, Well, I I don't really get it, but like sounds nice. And I was like, Yeah, but but Tapas: Whatever. Kaushal Sumedh: I want you to also understand. Like I'm super smart, but I also want you to understand. And they'd be like, Well, I have a full time job, dude. I can't I can't spend time here. So then I started thinking about like, I did a mentorship. Before the compound performance one one, I don't know if you if you're aware of those guys. but compound performance. that I don't Anas: Which one? yeah yeah yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I don't know if they still do stuff, but like back then they did a good one where like, you know, Sean Norega, Barbels and Cats, Sean Collins, Will Crozier, a bunch of other guys had come and they gave a good, you good this thing. So like they like when I was talking to them, they they used to see my posts and they were like, you know, this stuff that you're posting is for people like me who's never gonna join you. And I was like, okay. And then they told me, like, you have to focus on making stuff that people that want to join you and your target audience can understand properly. Like, you know, if you just sit there and you start explaining, like, you you I want you to have like a little bit more foot pronation because like that, and and and they're just like, Sorry, I don't get it. That makes Tapas: Like using those terms you may think that it's fancy and all, but at the end of the day it's not going Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: to like appeal to the person you want to come to you and be a part of your roster. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, because like you you're like, especially considering how India is at the moment where we're still we're still kind of in the infancy phase of like powerlifting, raw powerlifting, catching up and growing a lot. And people also not being very proficient in English, it's very hard to explain and convert that to your local languages. Because India has like what, twenty-two languages officially or some shit. So there's like there's different there's a lot of language barrier. There are people who are and and everybody has access to internet because internet is cheap. So everybody wants to do this, but there's also that language barrier, which is why I always tell people that, okay, if you can't speak English, don't speak to me in English. You speak in Hindi, and I will try to, you know, make sense of it as much as I possibly can for you. Right? That's also a part jay: Shout out to Google Translate. Kaushal Sumedh: of good communication. Because they don't understand one thing, like as much as you want to be respectful and stuff like that, because it's a thing in India where you want to be as respectful as possible to your coach. Because you look at that like, they're my guru type, right? But when Tapas: Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you try to communicate and match me, it also wastes both of our times. As la if you don't understand. Right? So you should be comfortable enough having that conversation. This is more like Indian audience, of course. Like this is not for like a worldwide this thing because yeah, you you need to be able to speak English. Yeah, it's not a worldwide Tapas: It's not a worldwide issue, I I would assume. Kaushal Sumedh: issue. But it's something that I've seen where like, you know, athletes will not communicate properly because they can't speak. And that's just a language problem. It's not that they don't want to learn. So whenever you talk about communication and having like you know, giving them the knowledge to understand. It's also about simplifying things as much as you possibly can and also speaking in their language. Like, you know, s as simple as possible. Anas: I think sometimes it can be difficult because with with biomechanics, like how am I gonna explain biomechanics without Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. jay: Yep, yep, yep, yep. Anas: you w without using like internal rotation and like these joint Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: actions? Like what am I gonna just gonna keep pointing in directions? Which I think there is like a if you're trying to improve someone's movement options, they need like a they need some education. Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. Anas: 'Cause like even for me, like it took me a while to understand this stuff. Like even knowing what adduction looks like in real life, like you can just say it, but visually you can't tell like where like what when it's happening. Some people can even tell when it's flexion or ribcage rotation, like the spine is rotating. That is like a huge issue. Like I've seen it. People will think about like if you're just gonna flex here, you're pro protracting. I'm like, No, you're flexing your spine, you're not protracting your scap. And jay: Yeah. Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anas: if people kind of don't don't know like the difference. between those things. jay: Yep, yep. Anas: So not only is the language can be difficult and detecting it can even for an experienced coach. Like they they won't even be able to tell. Like you just kind show like what what are these drills? They kind of like reaching drills. And like people think like the more I flex, the more I just kind of crunch into my abs and flex my spine, the more protraction I'm getting. And like that is for high level coaches too. So imagine for s imagine for someone who like has jay: Yeah. Anas: never heard of retraction or protraction or any of these things and you just asking them to to do it, I think visuals there are Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: the biggest thing. And showing them the difference between those is is huge because everyone also does like the like the spinal rotation. They're just gonna rotate their spine thinking, if I rotate my spine I'm gonna gain ribcage rotation. I'm like, no, you need motion from left to right. And it's it it can be a big rabbit hole and like that is why I think there is like a big hole in the market there because edu Tapas: Yeah. Anas: there's like a there's a big education barrier and execution is another barrier and There's like many barriers to improving someone's movement options. The communication, the education, the actual execution, the loading is not there too. So you have so many things that you're working around and it's an online setting. So it's like it's even that much harder. Like that's why we see Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anas: like people who don't even know how to assess. I know like we're going on the movement rabbit hole, but it's like a classic stacked cast type thing we always do. Wait, like you you have like a few th a few problems there. Like you have like the lifter that or like the lifter or the athlete don't really have the education. They don't know how to assess. And the lifter themselves like don't really know how to do the d doesn't really know how to execute the exercises. And you have like the loading isn't present and it's an online setting. Like it's like it just makes it so much more difficult than like y'all know Tapas: A lot of bottlenecks simultaneously. Unless you're able to figure out how to just improve buying. Anas: Yeah, f and for for coaches, they have to be able to kind of solve like s way like so many more problems. They have to fix their education problem, do mentorships, understand this stuff on a deeper level, to be precise with the exercise selection, then they have to also develop an eye to compensations. It's like I can't even tell you how many split squat compensations I've seen. I stopped I stopped prescribing split squats because it's pointless. Like everyone kind of shifts towards like one side, you see like the knees kicking out. the center mass shifting away. I'm like, this is this is taking so much time just to teach a split squat. It took us way it took us way less time to teach the actual competition low bar squat than to teach this person how to do a split squat. I'm like, okay, well we're we're wasting time here and like there's so many there's so many compensations that the lifter goes through. But it's just it's difficult. there's it's so many problems and like for for a power thing coach, I feel like power thing coaching is is one difficult if you want to be really good at it, it's a very difficult job. Because like you need many skills. You need to be able to program like a bodybuilding coach for for for hypertrophy. You need to be able to be a a strength Tapas: Hm. Yeah. Anas: and conditioning coach for for for your strength. You need to be almost like a PT to understand movement. You have to be like a technician, like you have to be able to teach technique and you have to understand nutrition. You have to understand a lot of things. And like now we see the the depth of these skills is definitely increasing. But there's like there's like so much more to it. And not to mention psychology. so it's it's like a it's a very Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah. No. Anas: difficult job and it doesn't really pay that well because you need like a big roster. Powerlifters are not gonna pay you that much. And like you need to learn so much and just to make so little, then we see like the depth of these skills like kinda stops at a certain point. People think, okay, it's not worth it for me to spend like a year of education just to help this person how to do like how to do a positional drill. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. When it comes to like technical jay: And and yeah, and I wanted to kind of Kaushal Sumedh: sorry, yeah, when it comes to like technical issues and stuff like that that you were talking about earlier, I find like the way I have been able to tackle it is like make the video as simple as possible and be like, you're doing this, I ask you to do this. And just make that clear difference between like what they're doing and what you want them to do. And that usually fixes the problem, even if there's that language barrier, because they can visually start seeing what you're looking for. Right. So stuff like that kind of helps. different people will have different systems and stuff like that for you know Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: how to coach better. But that's usually like for anybody who's wondering what I do, that that that's how I like to fix things whenever I see somebody who's struggling. Right. Unless you have like a seasoned athlete who's already got a good idea, then you don't have to do too much. Right. It's just like figuring out a small, small bottlenecks here and there, programming efficiency, or maybe some kind of technical drift that you might notice as a Something that's happening unintentionally, something like that, when when the athlete is already well seasoned, right? So you have differences like that. jay: And and and and I wanted to kind of mention something, Anas regarding the education aspect, right? Like so like Auschwitz mentioned the internet's there, a lot of information gets shared. I wanna kinda use this as a segue to the next topic because I personally think this is, in my opinion, right now a big thing on the internet that Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: needs a bit of demystifying. it's the element of fatigue, right? when you kind of read about all the literature like There are guys I meet who like you understand I I sometimes say this I grew up playing some con like combat sports, so I'm like training is hard, right? You will generate some element of fatigue, right? but I know guys who weigh fifty-two kilos that will say, I'm just hitting this one set of pendulum squats. Right? And and I I I I asked them why and they'll Well, I want to minimize the element of fatigue, right? So Anas, I I think this is some Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I mean nowadays you have this thing where like sorry, but like nowadays you have this nonsense where people are like, two sets fatigue maxing, you're gonna die. That's just bullshit. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Like I I wanna say this thing, like there is a certain amount of work that you need to be doing jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: that that will make you great at what you wanna do. Like maybe you won't be world champion because genetics matter and there's a lot of other factors, right? But if you want to be great at anything, there is a lot of work that needs to be put in, and there is an amount of work that you want you that you're willing to do, even if you're not comfortable. There is never a comfortable champion. There's never been a champion out there who's never had like injuries and niggles and pains. And they they're still dealing with it. It's not like they don't have it at all. They're just so healthy that they're just feeling great all the time. Even with like, You know, recovery parameters being in, you're sleeping like eight, nine, ten hours sometimes. Like I was watching Emil Krastev talk about how you see sleeping 10 hours leading into Sheffield and stuff like that. Even after all of that, even after you have your nutrition dialed in, you have every single thing possible dialed in, even after that, you're still gonna have injuries and pain, right? Because you're pushing your limits. You're going to be pushing your limits. As you said, like Powell Fearing, there is an element of getting stronger and pushing more load at some point. It's not going to be all the time. Strength expression is the goal. How you get to go, that goal is step by step, as you mentioned. And there's a lot of things that we're looking for on that journey as we go towards that strength expression. But at the end of the day, that strength expression part, you're gonna have to push load. So this is also another thing, like especially with how programming nowadays is like very submax. Like we're all talking about how, yeah, you need to build strength, you can't express strength all the time. So you want to train and like, you know, submaximal loads. It doesn't necessarily submax doesn't mean like your training is easy. It just means you're managing fatigue a little better than you used to. That's it. You're just not redlining as much as you used to before. Right? And then over time, as you keep building, you're going to have to try and express that strength. Because there's also that neurological factor. And there's also like Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you kind of have to see at some point how technique is holding up at higher loads as well. Right? You kind of have to see like when you start pushing supramaximal loads that you were not capable of using before. Right. And like like I was talking about like earlier in the podcast, I was talking about how Peaking in some situations. Like if the peak goes really well and you've been building things well really for a while, after a period of time, and then the peak goes really well, there is a very good chance that you'll be hitting good numbers above your previous one rep max, right? And you probably never touch those numbers. Like I've seen people hit like a good 20-30 kilo PR on deadlift in like you know three to four months or something like that. Or stuff like that. That is a result of good programming and good like following the plan. Right? You can't just force these numbers. jay: And then I just want to say, Anas, like, could you give me a could you like because I think before the programming mentorship started, you would post a lot on your stories about like what is fatigue? Like, is all fatigue the same? Right? Because Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: I've seen you die on a hack squat once. Like it was crazy. Like you were pushing so hard, I was like, Jesus, I feel stressed out. Right? So like if you were to define fatigue, its role in training, its relational stimulus, and are is all fatigue the same, I think that would help a lot of people out. Anas: Yeah, and and I mean, we we've done a like a two hour podcast over this recently. But I mean like to summarize it, so I think people think this is maybe this this is a misconception. People think they can get the stimulus without getting the fatigue. jay: Yep. Anas: like okay, I can get the good part without getting the like the the bad part out of training. Where those things are connected all the time. Every time you contract a muscle, You get force output and you get byproducts. And the byproducts are fatigue. And within fatigue, there is many sites for fatigue. Because for us to produce force, the process starts at the brain. If you want to simplify it, it starts at the brain. You have nerves that go down to the spinal cord, then to the muscle, and at each step. Because have to send a signal. There's like an electrical charge. There is sodium, potassium is involved, you have calcium is involved with like with the the muscle contraction. And you have like the myosin acting, actually also contracting. So you have multiple steps, right? And as you produce force, you have to use ATP, you have to use energy. The energy comes from different different sources, depending on the sport. For us, like it comes, like it's like it's not like an It's not gonna come from glycogen. Like it's not like running and whatnot. So we know, and if we know the process of contracting a muscle and like where the energy is coming from, then your recovery process is gonna look different. For like a marathon runner, they're probably gonna focus be focused on their nutrition a lot more, kind of replenishing that glycogen because that is the site of fatigue. And the fatigue in that sense is depletion of resources. Because fatigue fatigue, like the way I defined it, is like it comes in different forms. It can be depletion of resources, ATP, sodium, potassium, calcium is depleting, whatever resources, maybe I also I don't know what it is at the man at the at the brain level. There's other things going on at the brain level. I don't go into it. It's a whole science. I I could have gone into this for maybe studied it for like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: months on end because like it's very it's very complex. Like there's so many things happening that it's almost impossible to you know just dedicate months of education just for like a two hour podcast. But the general process here is like the brain is involved. and like there's like neural fatigue or like I guess like central fatigue. And then you have like peripheral fatigue, maybe at the muscular level. And at the muscle cell, you have accumulation of metabolites. And the accumulation of metabolites comes after you produce force. ATP breaks down, you get byproducts and usually like inorganic phosphate starts to accumulate, hydrogen ions start to accumulate. That's where you kinda get that acidic type feeling in the muscle. You feel like that burning sensation is because hydrogen is starting to accumulate. And like that's like where people can think about fatigue. That is one part of it. And obviously if we if we can if we want to go deeper into it, there's like acute fatigue within the set. There's a c there's fatigue that kind of stays on for maybe like a few days. That's why some people need like two days of recovery. And some people need more, but each step is a potential site for fatigue. And there's also structural damage. People think people talk about muscle damage as if it's like a like this like terrible thing, but it jay: Okay, right. Anas: does happen. and with muscular damage, also kind of knowing the the type of muscle that's experiencing the that muscle damage. Because if we're talking like type one. Type one muscle fibers recover a little bit faster, and you can you almost don't want to worry about that type of muscle damage because the muscle fibers themselves are built to tolerate more fatigue. Like the soleus is one example mentioned, like I mentioned in the mentorship, is very fatigue tolerant because if you look at the function of the body, it's like, well, you're walking all day. So the muscle has to be more type one, it has to be more fatigue resistant. And like You can you can see those clues in physiology everywhere you go. Like, okay, why is this muscle this type? It's like, well, guess what? Type one resists more fatigue. Well, type two produces more force. But if it produces more force, there is there's a give and take there. If it produces more force, guess what? It's gonna take longer to recover. and there's a there's a lot I can I can talk about when when it comes to fatigue. But the biggest thing that I that I noticed also within fatigue and the stimulus is It's not a linear relationship. It's not like if I add one unit of stimulus, I'm gonna get one unit of fatigue. There is like this zone of overload, but there's also this zone of like kind of diminishing returns, and we start to ge we start to see exponential increases in in fatigue. let's like give like an like a just a random example. If you look at the The hypertrophy research, it tells us like the closer you get to hype the closer you get to to failure, the more hypertrophic those reps are. But it doesn't that that tells us more about the stimulus itself. But what is the fatigue cost? We know a set taken to failure is gonna be way more fatiguing than like three reps in reserve. And like from three reps in reserve, the way I think of it, from three reps in reserve to zero reps in reserve, each rep is gonna be exponentially more fatiguing. Which is not a bad thing if you can tolerate it. Because if you if that stimulus is worth it for you, then sure, like let's let's take that let's let's take that deal. But where people go wrong is like whenever they take bad deals, and like a bad deal looks like low stimulus to fatigue ratio. I'm doing, I know, lifting heavier, more load on the bar, more force production, more stimulus. But with that more stimulus comes more fatigue. If is that fatigue cost worth it? Then you see people doing more submax, but you don't wanna swing so far in that continuum. jay: So far on the one side. Anas: Yeah, that that you're not even overloading at that point. Cause you need jay: Yeah, yeah. Anas: a specific amount of you need like there's like a threshold where that is enough stimulus to actually demand an adaptation. I I know I've talked about the the envelope of function. Envelope function tells us that there's like three zones that we can be in. You have the the initial zone is like the the zone of homeostasis. That is you squatting 20% and and expecting to get stronger. Like that is that is not the stimulus. You're not gonna get stronger if you be if you produce 20, 30% of your maximal force production. You have to get into a zone where it's productive and it disrupts homeostasis. But also if you go 100% all the time, fatigue is fatigue cost is not worth it. practically it's not really also people also think okay if I if I do 100% I am getting hundred percent force production, but if I do ninety percent, I'm only getting ninety percent force production, which is not true because velocity also plays a factor here. I know I'm going on a tangent here, but just bear with me. jay: Yeah. No, please do. Please do. Anas: but yeah, so 90% doesn't mean 90% force production because velocity plays a big factor. And also if you factor in technique breakdown, then you might actually start to see a force production decrease as the load goes up. If the if the technique breaks down and you're lifting heavier, what The velocity is dropping so like so fast, and your your tech your technique is breaking down, then guess what? 90% would have been not only more stimulating, but would have been also more less less less fatigue inducing. And like that's like that's like some some disconnect between like those variables, like because we talk about the the load, how does that influence force production, and like why why do we care about SRA? If you know what the stimulus is. And you watch someone squatting 90%, squatting 100%, and you think, more load equals more force production, then like then you're missing the point. And like you don't know what specificity jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anas: is. And I think being very specific about the stimulus gives us this like lens to view to view training through. And like if you look at the people who continue to make progress, do you see them grinding reps? Do you see them grinding triple PRs? No, like they leave room in the tank because they know the cost of this. Is not worth it. And like that's come that comes like more intuitively, but knowing that fatigue cost might start to exponentially increase once you go from 90% to 95% to 100%. And the increase in force production might be very minimal. And sometimes it is it might actually start to decrease if the technique starts to break down. Yes, there are times to work on technique under those conditions so you can actually move heavier weights without your technique breaking down. That's like a n that's a different consideration. But the idea here is like the fatigue cost and like the relationship between stimulus and fatigue, we see we don't see a linear response. And also you can disconnect those two. Like it's always like whenever you stimulate, you get a fatigue cost. Like you can't really get the good part and avoid the bad part. Like another thing here is when we because we mentioned bottlenecks, and I think working hard is important, but also knowing where to put that Tapas: Yeah. Anas: hard work. is a big thing because you don't want to put if like you don't wanna be doing sets of ten on squats and pushing them pushing them to rp ten and like think well I'm working hard I should make progress well no you have to you have to adhere to specificity and specificity is related to the quality you want to work on. If we know the bottleneck is hypertrophy then yes you probably want to push closer to failure but why push it on squats? Why not do it on a hack squat because the fatigue cost is lower. And like then you start to see then you start to see those strategies that are a little bit more efficient. Like that's where some coaches are better at problem solving because they know what they're trying to get and they know how to get it the least amount of fatigue cost possible. And they know if if the person is really good at high reb deadlifts, if force reduction doesn't drop, velocity doesn't drop, that is very productive, low fatigue cost, high stimulus, cool. I'm gonna keep this. But if they see the person grinding reps on their deadlifts and like, well, high reps high reb deadlifts work, it was like Why do they work? It's because you see jay: Exactly. Anas: the relationship between force production, force production and the fatigue cost there, and like you know when to implement those things, but you have to watch how the person moves and like what stimulus you're trying to get and understand what fatigue cost comes with it. I know like this was like long winded, but that is like a summary of like the whole process. Tapas: And and this is also kind of because we've spoken about this before as well, this is kind of how we tie into deciding goals for macrocycles, mesocycles, where we kind of look at exactly what we want to fix within that as you said, like for example, you could have an hyp hypertrophy issue that you want to fix before you go ahead with more specificity. Anas: Yeah, and I think Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: specificity here also kind of like we mentioned that there's like more efficient ways to tackle those Tapas: Hmm. Anas: bottlenecks. I think, yeah, like once we understand what the stimulus is and like what areas need that stimulus. Then you can be very precise with your prescription. Because like you don't want give random stuff for the sake of it. You want to minimize that junk volume. And I think junk volume is the volume that doesn't really stimulate that bottleneck. Or like Tapas: Hm. Anas: it's not efficient f for for that bottleneck. You're kind of wasting wasting Tapas: Don't do much. Yeah. Anas: resources at that point. Like you Kaushal Sumedh: Like that fatigue to stimulus ratio is very like bad deal type that you said before. Anas: Yes. Yeah, I think Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, like that. Anas: well that that is like my lens. It's like it's like fatigue stimulus to fatigue ratio and is the stimulus actually targeting the bottleneck. I know like it jay: Yeah yeah. Anas: sounds simple and I think it is that simple, but the application of it like takes some experience kinda knowing where that stimulus is. Just by looking at the load on the bar, looking at how fast they moved, looking how they're moving, what their technique looks like. Is it hingy? Is it squatty? Is like, are they lengthening their quads? Are they lengthening their erectors? Are they moving jay: As yeah. Anas: slow, moving fast? How much load is on the bar? Then you get an idea of where that mechanical tension is going, how much force we're producing, and if it's super slow, that probably tells you it is more fatigue-inducing. jay: Okay, I just wanna say something because like Aushal did mention that in India powerlifting is still in that infancy stage in terms of raw powerlifting and how we program. Something important you mentioned here is the fact that when you want to look at bar speed and velocity, right? the thing is like when people just ramp it up to like well, they start off at five and go to nine and like in terms of the RPE scale, and you kind of see that i if I were to use like an E one Rm calculator, for example, that guy's triple at seven, the absolute load may have been relatively lower, right? But the E one Rm trending would have been higher. But the Guy goes to this RP9 kind of situation and it absolutely smokes him. Like the E1RM like tanks heavily. Like, if you were to explain to someone, like this this whole notion of like if you could just touch upon that, because I think all of us here, like when we coach in India, we see that people just want to overshoot on a constant basis, right? Like, they want to have this top-end like progression, like like stimulus provided at all times. Can you touch upon again if it's if it's something like what is the danger of going along that route? If you could like just touch upon it. Anas: Yeah, so we'll look at it from I mean, like you you guys are good with physics. so from like a physics perspective, like the simple formula. I guess like going back to the goal of power thing. What is the goal of parallel thing? Is it to lift heavier or is it to produce more force? And I think that's like a like a big distinction. The goal is not to like hit RPE ten. The goal is to produce more force. And if we look at the force formula, it includes the mass on like the mass or like the load on the bar. Gravity is a is a constant, and you have the velocity you're moving at, which is like the biggest like factor here, like biggest variable here. If the load is increasing and your velocity is like increasing or like staying, or maybe like decreasing a little bit, but we see a relative increase in force production, then like that's good. Where people run into issues is whenever they start grinding. lower masses whenever they start to grind, maybe like 80% of their max or like 90% of your max. If you're grinding 90% of your max, you're not producing high amounts of force. You're just not. So the goal here is not to move slow. The goal the goal here is to produce more force. And for you to produce more force, not only do you need the load, but also you need the velocity. Because if you're moving slow with light weights, you're producing like little to like yeah, you're producing very minimal force force. If you're if you're if the loading is high, cool, like that's that's one condition met. But is the other condition met? Is the velocity there? If the lo if the velocity is not there, then guess what? That will impact the force production. The force production is going to go down. So ideally, you would want both conditions present. You would want load on the bar is sufficient alongside sufficient velocity. And like the more we see that dropping. You're now you're drifting more towards hypertrophy and away from strength. And if the goal is to jay: Mm-hmm. Anas: build the strength and or or express the strength, then you kinda wanna only look at the force production and kind of use that and kinda know knowing how velocity actually impacts the force, then you have like a better understanding of like is set is this set productive or not. Let's look at how much force I produced. If I produce low amounts of force, it's not that productive. If I'm grinding this load, then not only is it less stimulating, it's also more fatigue-inducing. Then it's like a lose-lose situation. Tapas: Hm. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Another thing that I kinda wanna tie tie back into the stuff that I spoke about before is that while a good coach is somebody that can alter programming according to your life stress and stuff like that, you have to understand that you still have to try and take care of yourself as much as possible and recover as much as possible. Like th there'll be a lot of people who won't eat right, they'll just sleep, you know, I have like three hours and just staying awake all night. I mean legitimate reasons, then you should probably go get it checked by a doctor and stuff like that. But if if you're being a child about it, then you can't really expect programming to work. Because there as I said before, there is a bare minimum amount of requirement for you to work hard. That's a bare minimum. You have to work hard. If if if you say you want to get to where you want to get, then you have to work hard. And as Jay was talking about before, like he was talking about you said that thing, right? Where you were like fatigue, how that ties into just just the point that you're making before. jay: Yeah. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: One thing that I also kind of notice quite a bit is that athletes that are very social media focused, because he was talking about how Indians are like so like looking forward to like pushing max max all the time and stuff like that. Athletes that are very social media focused, they just don't do well. And I don't mean like athletes that are social media focused as in your focusing on social media as content. You're focusing on showing like this crazy top set so that you get like, you know, all all all the girls around just like, wow, you know, shit like that. Cause cause you see, yeah. And and there's that hypermasculine jay: It's usually the dudes that say, Good job. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: thing where you like you have like people screaming and there's lightning coming out of his eyes and there's like fire coming out of his ears and stuff like that. You don't have Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: to be so extra about stuff like that. Like i i i dag I understand. If you're if you're actually passionate about lifting, you can do that along with the lifts. You don't have to make you don't have to force load just so you can, you know, look crazy Tapas: Hm. Kaushal Sumedh: on social media and stuff like that. Cause athletes like that j j they just don't do well over long term. Tapas: We talked about this Kaushal Sumedh: And yeah. Tapas: like before also, like where we just basically trying to convey that, you know, people don't people care, but like we don't care about what you lift as much as like a lot of these social media li focused lifters think. And that kind of it like in the end it kind of fucks up their own career, right? if they continue going down that path. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I mean you could you could just end up in a debilitating injury that can just set you off ears Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: and you might just give up at that point. And I d jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I I also don't understand this whole thing of like like you know, wanting to position yourself in a place where you're like, she left me, dude. I don't know what to do. I'm gonna like I'll go I'll go and bicep her like ten K just that'll show her. Like y you guys gotta stop this shit, man. That's that's that's very corny, it's very weird. You you Tapas: Yeah. That's that's gotta stop, bro. Kaushal Sumedh: you gotta do it Anas: Yeah. jay: And Kaushal Sumedh: for yourself. That's the first thing. Because you enjoy it. No, I understand that. Like there's there's definitely a feeling. For sure, for sure. Like, no, cause if you see some of the best Anas: I mean so sometimes you can use that as fuel though. Sometimes like once once once once you've gone through like a bad relationship, you're just gonna go in. It's like I'm I'm gonna work harder. Kaushal Sumedh: athletes, they they do have a why where they started. Everybody started with for some reason. Like I also started from something like that. Or somebody could be like, Yeah, I'm gonna do it for you know my mom that died or like passed away recently, or so something like that. You have like this internal thing, right? When by why you start. But you also have to have this degree of like you care about it enough and you understand the long-term process rather than just trying to force things because you're like, you're like, I want to post something crazy today. Like, top said everybody's gonna be like, wow, you're the future and sh shit like that. You don't have to you shouldn't be doing stuff like that just for social media. Because that leads Tapas: Hm. Kaushal Sumedh: to bad selec decision making. And what is RP when you go to the gym, right? That that's basically decision making. Like RP is purely decision making in the gym. When you're at the gym, How are things moving? How do you feel? How has recovery been? And then you take a d take a an objective decision on like, okay, my warm ups are moving great. This is moving great. Objectively I can go up more and you know, but if your coach has given you caps or stuff like that, you need to follow stuff like that so that you can do better. jay: And and I I I would say like please I I always throw this idea out, like when I try to educate a lift, I'll say like whatever you take from today, like it's almost like an interest you're taking from the future, right? Your your choices. Tapas: Hm. jay: I I would say like when you're when you're consistently taking these grindy sets, like where you see Rastic drops in velocity. And you are I Anas, in your experience as well, because we've seen this, in your experience when people consistently do this, what they could once hit very easily, the fatigue buildup over like sustained exposure to this thing, me like their top end just burns out, right? Like, do you notice that kind of for them as well? And then you almost have to detrain these guys to start them off very submax. Anas: Yeah, I mean I I personally, I mean like I don't deal with that like for for with my lifters, not that much. I mean I think like most of my lifters come in because like I e I I educate about these things and they kinda know what to avoid. But yeah, I can do see it maybe like online and like with with other lifters. But yeah, I mean again, going back to specificity, like the more we grind lighter reps, like the the more unspecific the work is. Although you're you think that you're working harder. You're actually like you're you're not doing the work that is specific to the goal or like the bottleneck. Then like, okay, well at that point, like what's the point? I am doing more work. And like not really helping with with the goal here. And I think if if people want to think about working harder, think about the like the the force reduction is like the lens I look at. And like we we talked about like the formula for it. But that is like the thing. If you start jay: Yeah. Yeah. Anas: grinding light reps, like I could do like what are you what are we doing here? Like well, why are we doing this? And now jay: Yeah, made sure. Anas: why are you even doing it on a deadlift or why are you doing it on a squat? If like we know that helps with hypertrophy. But like why are doing it on a on a squat? Like, why not just go grind reps on a hack squat? Like I could grind reps on a hack squat like for maybe like three times a week. Yeah, and like I don't Tapas: Much lower cost to it. Yeah. Anas: even go to failure, I go beyond failure. I do assisted reps after jay: Yeah, I've seen that. Anas: and be fine. Kaushal Sumedh: Mm. Anas: I can I can tolerate that. But if I do that once on a squat, I'm cooked for a couple weeks or a deadlift. Like I'm just like destroyed. Like that is I'm done. But knowing where to work hard. like in that sense of like high RPE and what working hard looks like on S P D. One is force production, one is proximity to failure on like accessories. And like that's like where again like understanding the stimulus comes in. I think people like don't really understand like that that stimulus. Then they start to do random stuff thinking it's productive, but in reality it's not. It's only it's only slowing you down. jay: Yeah, like I I I mean that point right there, I think if this if anyone is like can take anything away from like the audience here, right, is that what it talks about is which fight do you want to fight and where, right? Tapas: Yeah. jay: On the accessories, what kind of a fight would you want on the main lifts? Where do you what how do you wanna fight in this situation? and as forgive me like if this is going off on a tangent. I just did want to ask this element as well, because I think this is another top like topic we haven't mentioned on the list, but I I do want to throw this up there is the element of work capacity, right? Because if if time permits, could you touch upon like work capacity and like what are the different ways in which we want to kind of look at this? Anas: Yeah, so honestly I think work capacity has been an an issue recently because people were not avoiding fatigue in the past. People were actually trying hard. but maybe they're not super specific with where they're trying. Because like we saw like the like the block realizations, like okay, you have to do this amount of work for this quality. And we saw, okay, well, if it's not a bottleneck, why spend that much time working Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: on it? And like now we're getting better as far as that goes, but now the now we've swung so far into only strength expression and like the underlying quality are not being worked, then guess what? If you're only peaking all the time, you're not stimulating enough, the fatigue like and jay: Never build. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Anas: you're not introducing fatigue, and you're not overloading the stimulus or the fatigue, then work capacity is not is not gonna increase. And like the way I define work capacity is your tolerance to fatigue. It's like the stimulus for work capacity. I think of it as fatigue itself. Like that is how you build work capacity. It's your ability to manage those like fatigue indicators, like we mentioned, like depletion of resources, like how how fast can you recover from like the hydrogen ions accumulating, like how how fast like do the do those things recover? That is like one part of it in like in a in like a short term acute sense, but obviously the more the body gets The more you expose the body to a specific stimulus and like a specific fatigue strategy, then the body gets better at handling it. 'Cause like guess what? For someone who runs marathons, they're probably way better at you with like with like the glycogen, like replenishing that glycogen, jay: Yeah, depletion aspect. Anas: like or an odd or those type of fatigue indicators. And like maybe like also like we we hear a lot about like that their stomach, like marathon runner needs like the like their stomach actually adapts to eating a specific Tapas: Mm. Anas: amount of like a drinking specific amount of carbohydrates and like they tell you okay, well I can't really handle that much of my stomach is not built for that. So there are adaptations and like the fatigue here is different. And if we don't expose ourselves to fatigue or overload, then you start to see a drop in work capacity because we just peaking all the time, we're not doing enough work to actually progressively overload. I think, yeah, just following the principles of specificity, which again, like working on the biggest bottleneck at the time. If you work on the bottleneck and you know the work that needs to be done now is hypertrophy work, then in in that sense, you are doing more work in that area and you are gonna expose yourself to more fatigue, then guess what? The work capacity is gonna is going to increase as a as a byproduct. And we don't have to worry about it. If you follow specificity and progressive overload, progressive overload also means we have to do more work, but that work has to be specific. It's not about the work itself. We have to increase more stimulus over time. And the stimulus, again, could be forced production, could be more reps closer to failure, could be more like technically efficient reps, whatever it is. But we have to be specific with progressive overload. And if progressive low load progressive overload is there, specificity is specificity is there, then guess what? You don't have to worry about work capacity. But if we're only jay: Mm, yeah. Anas: focused on strength expression, then in that sense, you are missing specificity because you're not working on the bottleneck. And if the bottleneck is not being addressed, then now we are only we're only trying to express strength and like we're not really working on the things that will kinda will make you get stronger. but work capacity itself is not something that needs to be worked on. It's just I think people mismanage their resources and like they're so focused on express strength, express strength, peak, peak, peak, peak, that the underlying qualities start to detrain. Then now you have to address them and kind of have like a few blocks away from expression. And like people think the blocks are away from expression are work capacity, but they're just building blocks. And jay: Yeah, yeah. Anas: like it's just working on the quality that is missing. It's just like specific work. so I mean I think viewing it in that sense like that is it is specific work because it is working on a bottleneck. then like people wouldn't even think of it as work capacity. It's just like training at that point. And like if jay: Yeah, yep. Anas: you again like if you're just gonna progress with your overloading, then guess what? You don't have to worry about either one. You don't have to worry about the work capacity decreasing and you don't have to worry about regressing because you're focused on peaking all the time. jay: Yeah. And and I just want to throw this there. Like, I think Tapas and I like on the first episode spoke about this. Kauschal has like talked to me about this a ton. Anas, in your opinion, like how how how limited is the perception that every block has to end in a PR? Because that is like the thing, right? So h like, is that like that that Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: perception, how misguided is that in your opinion? Like every block has to end in something big. Anas: Yeah, and again, like if we if we zoom in on those sets, what what is that top set? What is that PR set doing? Is it actually helping my future training, or is it just showing how strong I am at the moment? It doesn't really help you for the following training, training week or training session. Because guess what? You just expressed strength, you induced way more fatigue for no stimulus. You just kind of maxed out. and like maxing out doesn't have to be just like a one rep max. It could be a triple, an RPE eight, nine. From like a from again, like going back to the stimulus to fatigue ratio, the stimulus to fatigue ratio of those sets is horrendous. And the things that actually build the strength is like that those that those sets that have the highest stimulus to fatigue ratio, which are your like working sets with 80% or whatever it is. And like you don't grind reps. maybe like those those heavier reps are also very productive. But again, we mentioned there is there's like a The relationship is not linear with stimulus. So people will start to do those low stimulus stats, or maybe like the stimulus is high, but the fatigue cost is ex exponentially higher because like objectively it is more stimulating. But the the the the problem here is not the stimulus itself, is the fatigue cost that comes with it, because you need another week to recover from it. Then, like your week one is your D load week, whatever it is. then you're starting to drop the week one loads even lower. And you kind of start into start running into this cycle of just hitting an a PR set whether it's like a single, double, triple at the end of the block, the first week is like a massive drop in workload because you just fatigued yourself. Then like Tapas: Hmm. Anas: that fatigue that starts to accumulate from block to block. jay: Yeah. Anas: Then guess what? Now you're not doing enough work on the week one and we we can't you can't take a big enough jump from week one to two. And You dug yourself in a fatigue hole, you're not stimulating enough, your work capacity is down, and you're not expressing and you're not able to express strength. So it's just like a cycle where if you just I guess cash out with those topsets, then guess what? Like you there's nowhere to go. You just kind of spent all your savings and like there's nowhere, there's nowhere to go. But again, like it's always always comes back to that stimulus to fatigue ratio. And I think those like heavy. Grindy sets or like high RPE sets, like the stimulus from them is the f the stimulus that comes with them is not worth the fatigue cost. they're not very productive. I can produce if I can squat 90%, move it fast, produce 95% of my maximal force production. I would rather take that and the fatigue cost of it I can recover from by by next week. I will take that over doing 95%, produce hundred percent of my force production, but it's gonna take me two weeks to recover. jay: Yep. Anas: Which one jay: Yep. Anas: is a better, like is that extra five percent worth two weeks of recovery? It's not. And like the thing like that's where maybe for for newer lifters, it wouldn't it's not like a big consideration. And like for some lifters, like I mentioned like some of my like lighter light lighter weight female lifters, I just hammer them with like super intense, like RP eight, nine sets because load on the bar is not that like is not that high. They can recover from it. Tapas: And tolerate it. Yeah. Anas: by the next next week or maybe even like next session. But they need the stimulus. So it's not always about the fatigue cost. Sometimes you just want the stimulus. Yeah. jay: Yeah, you need to drive it here. Anas: And like w for that person, the fatigue cost is worth it because you get the stimulus and the fatigue cost for it is lower. But again, stimulus to fatigue ratio. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I think like if if I think about it a couple of years ago, Joey Flex talked about it, like money in the bank kind of a situation. But he was like, you know, the more money you make, you keep saving, but like if you go into debt, then you're gonna have to pay it back, you know, more than you were supposed to do like with interest. And that's how he kind of talks about fatigue and stimulus. And another thing, like as you were talking about like the way to avoid these things where people You know, that week the because they like the the whole thing that started a couple of I think it was a while ago where people were like, into the big week four. And then everybody was like, yeah, week four, week four, right? Like people started doing that, jay: Yeah, I must. Kaushal Sumedh: that, that thing. And yeah, and and and every time Anas: tired week four. I'm tired of week four stuff. Kaushal Sumedh: I have like whenever I have a lifter who's like, it was week four, so that's why I pushed so hard. I'm like, what would happen if you just took like ten kgs lighter? What would happen? And they'd be like, nothing. And I was like, Are you dying tomorrow? No. So then why would you behave like there's no tomorrow? Right? Anas: Yeah, I think also like educating them, telling them like, guess what? If you push jay: Exactly. Anas: there, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: guess what's gonna happen next week? Because in the in the moment, like they don't see it. And like they just think, I hit a big PR, like big dopamine spikes, like cool, like I'm just like I PR'd my my set. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: I think we've talked about it in like in our fatigue podcast. Rep P RPE PRs or ability PRs are underrated. I think shooting for those ability PRs, those are like way better investments. And maybe also thinking in the future, okay, if I do this now, how is my training next session, next week, is gonna look like? And is that gonna hurt next block? Because if you're if you're waveloading, Kaushal Sumedh: Yep. Yep. Anas: you have to consider the training. That is gonna be after this. And obviously only if you're only if you're competing. Tapas: You wanna set the momentum up properly. Anas: Yeah, and only if you're competing is like when it's time to Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yep. Anas: go for that because you just express like that Tapas: Mm. Anas: is the the the time to express. Then like the week after doesn't matter as much. but if you're continuing to train, there's no meat, like there's no competition day, like this is not the competition day, then guess what? You have to think about How how is this how is that gonna impact my following session? And you can look at that at a at a at a micro level. How is this session itself gonna impact the following session? Is that gonna help? If I go light, am I not stimulating enough? Is that gonna hurt force production? Am I going too heavy and like now I'm gonna get too fatigued? And people will kind of start to find those perfect or like those zones that they have to stay in where it's not too low, homeostasis, it's not too high, zone of failure. And like now the following session is gonna start to like the my my primary days are gonna start to regress. but yeah, I think just kinda thinking about the the consequences is is a good way to maybe like make sure those people don't don't Tapas: Understand. Anas: don't go over overboard with the with the weight selection there. Tapas: Lord Selection, yeah, definitely. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. That that's the thing like I I might sound very rude or like very direct when I say things like this, but it's because I wanna get that point across and drill it into your head so that you don't waste time and I also don't have to waste time. Right? Like like things th there's there are certain things that I'll say, like when people say like I have to push hard on week four, like I thought it was week four, so I was supposed to max out. I'm like, What what do you mean? Like you're not gonna be alive tomorrow? Is that why? Because that th I can understand that. Like this is your last day on earth, you wanna max out and have fun. Yeah, you don't you can do whatever you want. i if if you're Tapas: Sure, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: not alive tomorrow. But like, what about next plug? You don't Anas: Yeah. Tapas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: you don't wanna you don't care about next plug? As you were saying, the consequences of like, you know, things like this. And there's always this chance that when you severely start redlining stuff, injuries can happen absolutely out of nowhere. And sometimes it happens even if you're not. Right? It's it's it's such a complex thing. When we start talking about injury and stuff, like why did it happen? How did it happen? It there could be many reasons. Sometimes you're just like you're just bending over to pick a bucket up or something, an empty bucket, and it happens. Like I've seen cases like that, right? So why why would you want to get into that situ want to get into that situation? I understand you love training, you want to push hard and stuff like that. But as you said, there are consequences for stuff. Not to fear monger or anything like that. Of course, we want to push limits at times, but there's always like it's a time and place, like you said. Like are you are you focusing on building? And if you're focusing on building, then we're not going to be pushing, you know, too hard every single end of block. We're just looking to gain week to week momentum and then carry that momentum forward from block to block. So that we have a big microcycle or sorry, big macrocycle or something, like a good six months Tapas: Macro, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: of where but like yeah, consistently building things very, very well. And then when you decide to do to compete, then you can actually push the envelope a little bit more and then peak into that competition. Like depending on whatever your peaking strategy is and stuff like that. Because the different things like supercompensation effect and tapering and then there's, you know, leading into the meat and stuff like that. That that depends on you and your coach. But Anas: One one more thing about the the consequences. So the consequences are not only I have to drop loads on my my next the next week or like the week one following that week four expression. There's also consequences as far as like movement quality goes. Guess what? Once you push fatigue super high, and like if you have jay: Exactly. Anas: like some compens if you compensate a little bit, guess what? Like those areas are gonna start to get more beat up the fatigue fatigue. in in the in those areas are gonna go exponentially higher, you're gonna get tighter, the muscle tone is a lot more I guess like tighter, concentric, like a lot more tension there. Then guess what? That's gonna eliminate movement options. They're gonna start moving worse week one. And that might start to actually look in like must start to turn into compensation patterns. Like that's what I think that is one reason too. We see a lot more compensation patterns now is like people are just peaking, increasing the fatigue, moving worse, movement options are missing. And fatigue is high, you're moving terrible, and like it's like a cycle. Now I have to kind of fix my asymmetry. But it's one of it, like one one reason is fatigue management at that point. Like sometimes like those compensatory like when if you start to move like into one one area or like shift or twist, sometimes like that is like a fatigue management issue. It's not even like a like a drills problem or like a not like a like or you're just kinda missing the mobility. Sometimes you it's like a self induced compensation patterns because you just f overly fatigue yourself and like now the the movement quality is starting to decrease as the as the blocks go and there's other consequences too like mental like mental fatigue like neural central fatigue as well like you just you're not gonna feel motivated once you push that super high jay: Yep. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, even burnout is big. Anas: yeah like you next guess what like the week one's gonna be super low motivation you don't wanna train because you're just gonna you're just gonna peek peak yourself in that into that week four, moving worse, mo motivation is low, and the work capacity is lower, you're not progressing, then you're burning out. Okay, like you basically self like you basically did that to yourself. You self-sabotage yourself because you're so eager to express that you're just gonna put yourself in a in a worse situation the following block. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and like jay: This is Kaushal Sumedh: a lot of people make this like as you said, right? The simplest example that I can think of is like that you were talking about that fatigue can induce movement capacity and movement issues, is that like the simplest thing that I can think of or like something that just comes to the top like off the top of my head is how many times have you been in a situation where you haven't slept too well or like things are bad for a consistent period of time, and then you have this pinching thing at the hips. And as a result of that, you can't just hit depth on squat. Like, and when you when you have that pinching thing at the hips, it's not even like like you can you can't go to depth, and when you start forcing depth, you can't come out of depth explosive, right? So many times I see people having these issues, like and that and then that and then you have to have that talk with the athlete. Like, okay, how many hours are you actually sleeping? I want an honest answer. What's your nutrition looking like? How are outside stressors? Like, you need to keep like, of course, there's gonna be work stress and stuff like that. We live in a world where where Where we have to work. You can't just sleep at home all day and stuff like and and do things like unless you're super privileged. That's a different that's a different case. But even then you need to have like a bare minimum amount of activity outside the gym so that you can stay healthy, you know, get your steps in and stuff like that, get some sunlight, things like that. So that, you know, you like as you said, we don't we don't have that glycogen burning kind of workouts because we don't have too much cardio. So you you might want to do that as well a little bit on the side for e better recovery and things like that. That that's kinda why like everybody says like, get your steps in, eat good food, things like that. But when it comes to powerlifting, there is this thing that there is this there is this feeling or there is this narrative that is spread around saying that you don't need to worry too much about food intake. Like you can just eat, jay: Yeah, yep. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, just eat a couple of pop tarts and some energy drinks and you'll be fine. You know, a lot of powerlifters do that. Anas: I mean this is actually interesting. I'll I'll go on like a small tangent here. I think one problem we see now is like this like algorithmic alg algorithmic type thinking. It's like if this, jay: See you later. Anas: then that. If pinchy hips, then ninety ninety hip lifts. If this, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: like then do the this one thing. Or if you're fatigued, do bigger jumps. And like people just don't wanna go, like they don't they don't wanna think, they don't wanna assess. and I think the biggest thing here is like if you understand the mechanisms and like you understand the bottleneck and like what things can influence that that bottleneck. Then guess what? Like you you can be a lot more precise with your with your intervention. Because like if the person is like s super limited in the movement options, but they their sleeping is terrible, they take like a like three hundred steps a day, it's like okay, do you give them drills or do you have them walk more? Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Like 'cause you're jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: you're always trying to figure out what's the lowest hanging fruit, right? Anas: Yeah, but but it always goes back to understanding the mechanisms. And I think most people just kinda or coaches, yeah, jay: Yep, fundamental principles. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: they don't really understand the mechanisms. They just kinda think like they just think of it in like a like an Excel type. what is it called? Like a like a formula. It's like a if this Tapas: Yeah. Anas: more than Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: that. It's like dude, you're not like jay: Yeah. Anas: an ex like you're not like an Excel program. You you have to think a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah, Tapas: There can be a spectrum to it. Yeah. Anas: and you have to understand the mechanism. Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, plus you're dealing with human beings. They're not simple Tapas: Mm. Kaushal Sumedh: like one is to one, like, I put I put this in and I get that out. It's it's not that simple. Yeah. Anas: It's dynamic system, yeah. It's not gonna be like one input equals one one output. but we can also expect like if you put a specific input, you know which direction you're going. So that doesn't mean like it's like a random like a random problem. Tapas: You can influence the path as much as possible. Anas: Hundred percent. Yeah. but yeah, I think I can't like that's like why I started dive diving deeper into it. I'm like, if I don't understand how this thing works, I'm not I'm not I'm never gonna understand how to fix it if it breaks. Like if you understand how this thing works, you understand when to increase protein intake. Because like we know protein and protein intake is involved with like the the amino acids. Amino acids are the the building blocks for myosin actin, which is the the contract contractile machinery. If we know myosin actin require more amino acids. If you don't provide that bo if you don't provide your body with amino acids from protein intake, then guess what? You're not gonna recover as fast. Your your muscles might not also like repair repair in Like in the in in in a perfect manner. You might you might see some deficiencies, slower rate of progress, slower rate of fatigue dissipation, and like you're not giving the body the resources needed. And like if you're also focused on just like the glyc the glycogen, it's like, okay, well, that is like a time and place. And if we understand the sites of fatigue and like how does a heavy squat impact my muscle fibers, does it impact more on the brain level? Does it impact on the peripheral level? What what recovery resources do I need? Do I need more sleep? Do I need more protein intake? Do I do I need more walking, like more steps to increase my movement options, or do I need more drills? But kinda understanding then how these things work, then it's a lot easier to problem solve because you just kinda know, well, this is a the delimiting factor, this is what's missing, this is why you're not recovering fast enough because you're eating twenty grams of protein a day. Like how do you expect to lift heavy, like jay: Thanks for watching. Anas: destroy your contractile machinery, then not give them any resources to recover? Like you're it's not gonna work. Tapas: You're working against yourself there. Yeah. No, no, I was just saying it's just one name. Yeah, go on. jay: I think the one thing is like powerlifting. I don't know like in the states this perception still exists but here like people forget that powerlifters are athletes and like athletes Tapas: Hm. jay: have to like cater towards multiple factors. I think one of the biggest, I think maybe Kaushal you went down this rabbit hole, unless maybe you did as well the PRI rabbit hole. I went down like a thousand different rules and Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. jay: then I kind of understood that I failed in the fact that my system at that time didn't monitor things like steps, nutrition, this like anytime something went wrong I would just say well I we need to kind of use this drill or we need to kind of look at that thing and then you kind of understand and you see this play out very often like even like poor load management like Joe Borenstein for example have that post where he mentioned that like him finishing every block at like an RP 10 kind of a deadlift thing which kind of burning out his technical expression right so I think when people go down asymmetry I know asymmetry speaking of like sometimes I had a client reach out to me like what do you think what is asymmetry here nice like dude you just place the bar wrong on your back. It ain't that deep. So I just like can we kind of rectify that thing because with every time the pendulum swings it swings very hard towards one thing and now everyone's Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: gonna be kind of like spilling on this Tapas: Mm. jay: thing but as Anas kind of mentioned to me I think it's very important for someone like me who made this mistake like not so long ago that your system should cater towards all these external factors. Anas: And that's okay. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, like I I was also gonna say this thing that you know we always seem to ex like exist on extremes. Because I've seen I've seen the whole thing of like, well, asymmetry is bad and that you need to fix every single symmetry issue that you see. And then we went to like, well, the human body has like organs in it, so there's different pressure and Anas: Just self-organize. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah and stuff like that. So there's gonna be a little bit of asymmetry and humans are asymmetrical in nature as long as there's no pain and there's like movement limitations. It's okay. And then again, we went to like we go back. So there's always like this like back and forth multiple times. And there's like the cyclical nature in in fitness. Like you always go back and forth like that. So you kind of just see this. Like if you've been around long enough, you'll kind of see that these things have always already happened before. It's just that there is a slight amount of improvement in the way you look at it from a different lens. Because, like, like like Jay was saying, like a good number of times when you talk about asymmetry issues. You do see that is is jay: second of his fourth. Kaushal Sumedh: is just a setup problem in a in a lot of cases. Like a lot of people will be like, my this thing is like and then you see, like, for example, like you see somebody having a like a significant hip shift and you in a squat or something like that, and you'll say, like, can I just see your feet? And like one foot is like one foot in front of the other foot, like a whole foot away. Right? Like they're they're doing a staggered style, staggered stance kind of a squad. Like I've seen cases like that. Tapas: Hm. Kaushal Sumedh: So in situations like that, the fix is pretty simple. Just like adjust positioning a little bit. Or like the bar is just not centered on your back, which is why like I recently I just had something like that where somebody was like, I have this extreme tilt of the bar. And I was like, Can you can you see the centenary being off your back? Like it's literally off your back. And then they were like, yeah, that makes sense. So you you see s situations like that. Anas: I think okay, I'll I'll I think there is there's a case for that, but sometimes I would say that that staggered stance is the result. jay: is because of hip-hazing. Anas: Yeah, it's because sometimes it is like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Anas: sometimes it's like okay, you just didn't really look at the feet and like you set up a bit staggered, which okay, cool. The movement options are there. Well, you just maybe like took a like a bigger step on on one side. That that is Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: easier. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: What I've seen most of the time is like the body organizes in that way because Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. Anas: there's like like some limitation somewhere. So just just to be fair, like okay, if you see that, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: is is like the easiest fix, the is it is it viable? Is like is it can I just adjust the setup? If you can and like that will fix it, cool, dude. Like don't do any drills. Please save me, save me the time. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yes. Anas: But if it is, if there's like an underlying reason why the person is setting up the little bit asymmetrical. And like they can't get their elbow under the bar, maybe X on rotation is missing on that size. Okay, well, maybe this person c cannot physically get there. but also going back to what we mentioned about the like the pendulum swinging, I think it always comes down to, again, like not understanding the mechanisms. If you understand what influences mobility, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yes. Anas: then you know, okay, this is mobility, this is like the thing I'm trying to improve. What are the sub what what are the things under it? What are the influencers of that? Are they checking the boxes there? Then again, you can they can apply the theory of constraints at a at a micro level. You can apply at a at a micro level at the beginning. What's the biggest bottleneck? It's mobility. Okay. Under mobility, what are the what are the variables? It could be like adipose tissue, maybe like the the person is too big, they can't hit depth. Maybe it's just like actual like structure, maybe like some some structural things like we can't really work around. Maybe it is like more and more like motor control. Maybe it is like the steps that they're taking. so you can start to look at like the variables under that, then address the the bottleneck within the bottleneck. That way you're kind of like like the fast this is like the fastest way of addressing it. We know what the what the big bottleneck is. We know like what the contributing factors are. Then for me to get that mobility to improve the fastest, I'm gonna address the the variable that influences is influences the mobility the most. And like this is Like at a macro level, we want strength expression. Then under it, you have hypertrophy, muscle you have muscle mass, technique, movement options, work capacity, recovery, those like the variables under it. Then we know which bottleneck it is, then we know recovery also has variables under it. It could be like protein intake, could be also like your steps, could be asleep, could be like the stress you you from outside, maybe like your sympathetic tone. Those like the things under recovery. You know, okay, well, recovery is lacking because this thing is the biggest bottleneck. It could be like the person cannot really get out of a sympathetic tone. Then you could improve their recovery just by having them do some 90-90 breathing. Or but the but the but the problem is people think, okay, recovery is bad. We need more protein. It's like it's a little bit more nuanced if you understand what jay: nuance on that. Anas: recovery is, but Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: I guess like starting a little bit more zoomed out, strength expression, what's under it, what's under. each one of these variables and how do I address the bottleneck within the bottleneck to be as efficient as possible. jay: I do want to kind of ask you honestly like in these situations This is where a coach is continuing education might be very important like like you said before like a coach should have an understanding of biomechanics should have an understanding of nutrition should have an understanding of all of these factors and the question I want to ask a pastor this is that When people see this they may think every like Like they assume a high-level coach has all the answers right off the bat I would assume we are still making assumptions applying and then observing these kind of situations. It's not like you have the absolute answer in every circumstance like that's not the case right it's everyone here just trying applying best guess best evidence based approach and then reading that feedback right Anas: Yeah, and and thing is, so I I think there's like a minimum. There's like a minimum minimum threshold that the coach needs to understand. I think the the the coach has to understand those bottlenecks. They have to understand what what it is under like the quality is under strength expression. But the like the coach might not be good at injury management or like the coach might not be good at nutrition, but they at least need to know this is the bottleneck and I'm not not I'm not I don't jay: So, yeah. Anas: have like expertise within mobility. I don't have the expertise within technique. But at least I know this is the problem. So they in the they need to know where the direction is, like what direction to go in first. What influences strength expression, then like each of these variables, each of these qualities is a science on its own. Like you're not gonna be the best at any of them, but you need to be sufficient. Like you need to have sufficient knowledge. with like hypertrophy training, at least know what the stimulus is, at least know how people like get bigger, like in a like simple sense. Like you don't have to go into like the cell swelling versus actual machinery increase. I'm like, okay, like you don't have to go like that deep into it, but at least you know what variables impact that stimulus. You know approximately failure, mechanical tension. Okay, this is maybe sufficient. nutrition, you know what protein does, you know what those things do. And like maybe injury management, maybe you have a model, capacity and stress. If stress is higher than capacity, then something bad might happen. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah. Anas: but we do need like a sufficient amount, then from like a coach's perspective, again, theory of constraints. What is the bottleneck for you as a coach education wise? Then work on that bottleneck. If you're not good jay: Beto. Yep, yep. Anas: at technique and like the other stuff are good, it's like, okay, well, maybe you should work on that bottleneck from like an education perspective as a coach. Then you kinda develop like a better system. And I think most coaches, maybe in the past, you had like the the coach who was good at technique teaching, the coach who is better at programming. But those things are always like you can't disconnect them. You have to know all of them. You have like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: I mentioned, it's like jay: Yes. Anas: a there's like an order of operations. movement options, impact technique, impact the muscle mass that get loaded, impacts work capacity, impacts strength and programming. It's like, okay, well, if you if you're missing knowledge in one of these areas, that's like a like you're you don't know what's happening in that step. And if you if like one step is is missing, that could be a potential limiting factor and you might be missing it the whole time. You're working on the programming when there's like a movement option deficiency or there's like a technique deficiency. That what that's what we see most of time. People working in the wrong area and like they're not making Tapas: Hmm. Anas: progress. I mean Lifter hasn't made progress in two years. I'm like, yeah, you're you've been focused on the programming for two years. But they're squatting with one leg. It's like, okay, dude, like jay: moving forward. Anas: maybe you have to address that. Or maybe they're not eating enough. You've never asked them about their nutrition. And you kinda miss this like massive bottleneck and like the lifter doesn't make progress. And like that's that's what we've seen recently. jay: because the squat example that you guys mentioned the thing about like one guy's foot being in another position well on one Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: case it can be like a technique aspect like Anas explains that he could have like an underlying biomechanical like limitation as well right. I think yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: And like if I wanna add on to that point, like, you know, as as as you said before, Anas, like whenever you make technical changes, especially like so for example, even if like some people just feel stronger on the squat where they have like one foot like two inches behind the other one, or something like that, right? Like you you can see these kind of issues a little bit, but they might feel stronger. But if you feel like that's the button, like like if you and your coach have it have an I have a realization and understanding, like Okay, this is probably the bottleneck, and maybe we're looking for a little bit more symmetry here. Initially, when you try to fix that, you're going you're most likely going to feel weaker because you're so used to performing the pattern in another way. Right? Like you were talking about we were talking about this before. Like Jay asked you that question about like, technical expression, does it instantly change? And you were like, over time, yes. That's the big point that Tapas: There's going to be a transition phase. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, that's that's a big point. Because so many times you have this thing where you're like, okay, I want you to do this, this, this when it comes to technical thing, and they're like, it felt like shit. I don't think I can do this anymore. Right? Just jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: one second and Tapas: the fuck? Kaushal Sumedh: they're like they they they just want to give up. Like they do it not even one session. Like I see people while while while they're warming up, they're like, No, bro, I don't think this is working out anymore. Right? Like you wanna give it time. You actually wanna give it time. There's a reason why you Tapas: The first time you do it, you are going to be bad at it. That's just like something you need to internalize. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, that's what I c that's what I tell people like that like it's the first time you've ever done it, what are you expecting? Like you're not Anas: Yeah, and again, like it's like okay, well, you you're loading different musculature that's been detrained. So yeah, it is gonna Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, exactly. Tapas: Hmm. Anas: feel weaker. You haven't trained these positions or the musculature because the muscles that are working it's a byproduct of the position you get into. And if you never get into that position, the muscles involved never work, then yeah, it it's it's a weaker position now, but the potential, the ceiling for it is a lot higher. Tapas: That's Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. jay: Yeah, access to more resources in the long run. Essentially, get load structures better. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah yeah. I mean eventually Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: if you've if you see that ceiling go up, then it's worth exploring. Like absolutely worth exploring. Anas: And I I guess go going back to the the bottleneck, I think yes, like the sometimes asymmetries, yes, like the R is stronger. And I think the like Tapas: Hmm. Anas: the thing I would look at now is okay, is performance going going forward? Like are we actually making progress? If if we make in progress, there's no pain, it's like a slight asymmetry. I mean I s I bench super asymmetrical. But there is like a threshold where if I get a little bit more asymmetrical, my my performance goes down. So there's like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: a zone where it's acceptable and like it might actually be stronger. and then like work and becoming more symmetrical at that point might be I don't think it will be counterproductive, but it will it will take some time to build Tapas: diminishing returns. Anas: up. Exactly. And like it will take some time to build up. Like, okay, well, do I want to do that? Or am I improving over time? Like is my performance performance is the biggest metric here. Like if is your load on the bar increasing. like okay, if if that's if that's the thing and like you're seeing progress, then the bottleneck might not be like at like it might not be a bottleneck at that point. but if we see the person is stalling, not making progress, okay, well we have to assess a little bit more, look into it and and look at which thing could what's the biggest red flag here, then we can start to address those things. jay: I wanted to ask here in this case like in terms of when you program things like accessories for example I personally kind of look at the fact that well there are certain things I cater towards primarily from a hypertrophy standpoint but there are things I'll have throughout the year in terms of maintaining movement quality I I learned this from Norman like it's like you want to have some variable movement options at all points of time in your thing is that something you subscribe to is that something you think about like well I want to have things like arm work for example I'm a big fan of I learned this from the guys at Perfomotion like using arm work to kind of maintain shoulder health throughout the year in different positions. So are these things that you actively think about when you're programming for individuals and how important is it? Anas: Yeah, 100%. You want you want the program because you don't wanna create extra bottlenecks because you're so focused on one thing. You want to put things on at least at least main maintenance. and like I know if I don't do like enough squality work, okay, the external rotation is gonna start missing, the person is gonna start hinging more. And like I need maybe like two sets of goblet squats within the week. That is that is like the the maintenance type work that will maintain this movement quality. and like we also look at hypertrophy. Like maybe you don't want to swing so far into just like strength and not do any hypertrophy work. Maybe you'll see some some atrophy. I think most of the time with strength work it is sufficient to maintain muscle mass. But in that sense, like you want to put things on maintenance as you increase that bottleneck. It's like just because we were talking about bottlenecks, that doesn't mean everything else is like we're not working on. Just because hypertrophy is a bottleneck doesn't mean I'm not gonna work on strength, I'm not gonna move work on movement options, I'm not gonna work on technique. You have to work on them just enough to maintain them or improve them like at a slow rate, as you improve that bottleneck the fastest. So you kind of wanna manage your resources. If it takes, like if you have $10, or I guess like you have like $100 and like it takes $10 to maintain the movement options, I would put that there. I'm not gonna put $50 into the movement options just to maintain it. I'm gonna put maybe like $50 into the bottleneck. Maybe like $10 Tapas: Hmm. Anas: into movement options, $10 into technique, maybe like $20 into something else. like now I'm allocating resources the right way. And like you want XSI selection to make sure you're not because like execution here is a big thing. Cause like you mentioned, like with the with the drills and like the hypertrophy work. The execution of the exercises can change the output, like the adaptation you get. Tapas: Hmm. Anas: If you do your s if you do your hack squat and like you start to arch your back, you start to get into a lot of bouncing and like whatnot. Then you start to miss the stimulus for each for each quality. You want to know, okay, well, if I want to maintain the movement options, maybe I should keep my pelvis tucked and use that hack squat to not only get hypertrophy, but Tapas: Hmm. Anas: also get the movement options. That way you're even more efficient with your like with your budget. But yeah, I mean, I think the programming has to be The programming has to create a cohesive environment for all adaptations to happen and not leave other bottlenecks as you work on some. Like you don't wanna work on strength, then like start like start to have decay in your movement options or technique. You want to maintain everything else and I guess like knowing what things maintain them is like is like the art of coaching there too. 'cause like you know, okay, this person, if I do this much, it's enough to maintain this quality. Now let me put the rest of my resources into something else. even like some nuances with the exercise selection there, you know there's like a difference between doing like an overhand lap pull down versus like an underhand lap pull down. If the person is suffering from a lot of like upper back tightness and like they they kind of get into this like overly retracted orientation. Okay, why give them more retraction based stuff on their accessories? Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: Everything needs a purpose. And I think the more you understand your lifter, the more you can design each exercise to get Multiple qualities out of it. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that also comes with time as you keep working with the lifter, the more you understand them. Because there are a lot of people who'll have this idea that, in the first block itself, I want to see something crazy. Right? So but you you need to give that a little bit of time as you start working with the coach a little bit of time, at least a couple of months, for him to start understanding, for him or her to start understanding a few things about you. And like as you said, like what's the orientation like, what are things looking like, what are movement options that you're limited in, what's your technique looking like. And then over time, if they keep fixing things, then you know, and also you don't want to make like drastic massive changes at once. Because like too many too many technical cues or any kind of feedback can be can be very overwhelming for lifters and they might have a lot of problem in processing it and executing it well. So you want to keep things simple, but also like have just enough change to see positive results from time like over time, right? Like one step as a t at a time kind of a situation, as you said. And also you kind of see you can't as you said, like, you know, power lif as as a powerlifting coach, you have be good at so many things. And psychological analysis of the person that you're dealing with is also one thing. Because lifter psychology matters a lot. Like you have lifters who have this like some of these people are like, I need to do something crazy right now, or else I can't like my I don't feel good about myself kind of a thing. Like that's that's an identity attachment to the numbers that you do. And then there's some people who are like too afraid of doing any kind of hard work 'cause they've never played a sport in their life. So you you kind of have to like gauge and also talk to them and also adjust a little bit of RPE and programming according to that. Because perception wise, things are very different. Like there'll be a guy who'll grind things and they'll be like, yeah, that was an RP five. Right? And then there's there there's there'll be a guy who like who'll hit an RP four or five and they'll be like, I think that was a 10. That felt really hard. So you kind of have to adjust things according to that as well. And you know, there's there's just so many things like as you said. Anas: Jay, does does that does that answer the the question about like maybe like excess excess selection and how like you because like I it's a good point because we we were talking about bottlenecks a lot. And like I don't we don't jay: Yep, yep. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: want people to think, because we're talking about bottlenecks, it means like that's like the only thing you need to work on. Obviously you don't wanna Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: leave other things, you don't want to create bottlenecks in the process of addressing a bottleneck. Yeah, so you kinda wanna put things on maintenance. jay: creating borderline, right? and and I and I Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: sorry, I just want to throw this thing out there. like again, one of the things like again, Kowshul, you mentioned it when I first started like getting interested in the subject, like the golden thread of hypertrophy all through the year, right? It may Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: not be the primary emphasis, but we want to have that golden Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. jay: thread. I think there needs to be a golden thread of movement like concerns as well. Like like this accessories selected that are loadable in nature, but like we wanna just kind of keep that thing. It's it's something that I like in my limited coaching experience, when people come, you kind of see that they're like like Anas gave the brilliant example of someone is stalled for two years, right? Sometimes not a programming concern, right? It is essentially like a capacity or like competence concern in terms of that thing, right? Do they have this? And I think one of the things again I I wanna keep going back into this thing because every time Annas mentions I I say this like it's important for the coach to educate themselves but also for the coach to educ like educate their athletes as well 'cause it kind of creates a more cohesive environment and just people just get better. I think if you can ascribe logic to someone, if you if you if they can understand Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: the process, buy in becomes a lot more like relevant as well, like for them. Like Kaushal Sumedh: I mean as a coach also like the bo the more educated you are the easier it is to explain to your athletes as well. Right. That the it it jay: Yep. Simplicity. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: it makes your it makes your job and life a lot easier when you understand like what what are things that need to be simple and stay simple and what are things that are complicated that you can sort of simplify. You can't just simplify a rocket science. It's not that it's not like that, but like you can at least like try to kind of match their level of understanding a little bit as much as you possibly can so that you can get the best results out of them. Tapas: It's also like a Anas: And I think Tapas: sign of how much you know, how well you understand the fundamentals when you're able to explain it to people who are, you could Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: say newbies, yeah. Anas: Yeah, yeah, if you can simplify and like explain it in a simple manner, it usually Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: means you understand it more. And like if you just kinda jay: More yeah. Anas: yeah, like wh whenever you start hearing people Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah yeah. Anas: just kinda throwing like big words like that they don't even understand, it's like, okay, well maybe you don't you know, like yeah, that's the red flag. Tapas: Red flag. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: Like you don't really know what you're talking about. What one thing I just wanted to touch on here because we mentioned jay: Please don't. Anas: with the programming And like the the prescription there. I think some people think that the exercise selection itself is the stimulus, like the thing that will drive the the the changes. But I think for some qualities, like specifically for like the movement option technique, it's not even the exercise itself. Like just because you give someone SSP squats doesn't mean like they're gonna magically become like a squattier squatter. It's execution and can they actually carry that into jay: Yes. Anas: the squat itself and and for maybe like for hypertrophy? It's like, okay, you you prescribed an exercise, but they keep bouncing on the hack squat, or they jay: Yes. Anas: their perception of the reps in reserve is off. And they think they're two reps in reserve, but they're actually 10 reps in reserve. Okay, well, then jay: Yes. Anas: the execution there is off. And like even though the program says one thing, the adaptations are not going show up because the execution is missing. And like if the person doesn't really understand how to execute a specific exercise and they think, Contralateral spiss squat equals shifting to the other to the other side. It's like, you know, like you you you will see people, yeah, especially for powerlifters, like they're so good at compensating jay: Yeah. How do you execute it? Yeah, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: that it's not the exercise itself. It's just okay, how do you execute it? because like Kaushal Sumedh: Yep. Yes. Anas: people think okay, there's like a magical excess selection to fix a specific jay: Yes. Anas: comp compensation. Well, it's it's usually not. There's like a million ways to address that like mobility or jay: Yes. Anas: movement option, but it's not the exercise itself. It's the position you get into as a result of executing that exercise correctly. so yeah, I guess like that was that was actually that one post I was gonna make. Is the jay: Yes. Anas: one exercise and like five different outcomes. Just because you have one exercise, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anas: you can get different outcomes depending on how you do it. but yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Like but when Tapas: Definitely. jay: It becomes all the Kaushal Sumedh: you're talking about this topic, like I had a post a couple of years ago 'cause like that whole thing was in full swing of like, any exercise little it's not a it's not the most stable thing on the planet ever. You know, don't have a seat belt, you're not gonna have this, then it's the worst exercise ever, right? And people were like, Bulgarian split squats, bad for hypertrophy. Any kind of split for split squat, bad for hypertrophy. If you're not maxing out leg extension, hamstring curl, everything else is bad. Only leg press, squats are bad and stuff like that. Because like but but but when you Try to tie that into powerlifting, you need to understand that you're also looking to create movement options. It's not just jay: Exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: hypertrophy. You're looking to create movement options trying to address multiple different issues that the lifter might have. And the thing that I said was that there are no bad exercises. There's just how there's just you having bad execution. So like you have to understand that there's a multi this multiple like as you s as you talk about there's ipsilateral split squat, there's contrateral split squat, there's a reason why you might do them for each reason for like each of them. There's a re there's there's a way that your coach might want you to do them so that they're looking for a specific outcome that fixes a specific problem specific to you. It's not necessary that somebody else will have the same thing, but like, you know, they do they do the same thing, but they don't execute it and they won't see the, you know, the outcome that they're looking for. So as you said, like one exercise, five different ways to do it, and five different outcomes that they're looking for. So that that that also requires like, you know, they they call that like that coach's eye and attention to detail. jay: Yes. Kaushal Sumedh: Because if you don't have that, it's very difficult for you to figure that out like what whether there's there's an actual bottleneck there or not and whether it's something worth exploring into or if it's programming changes. Because most people, as you said, they have that either they're good at technique or they're good at programming. But in today's world, if you really want to stand out, another thing that I have I've like I have understood is like along with programming, technical analysis and giving good feedback and being a good businessman and being being able to like do well with the roster that you have And continue to build the roster that you have. There's so many other like and also sitting and talking, like you're an unpaid therapist as well. Right. There are times when you have to just sit and listen to somebody cry and you're like, you you can't just be like, yeah, I'm not paid to do this, just leave me alone. You you you can't like eventually, maybe if the if the issue is going too far, then you're like, Look, dude, I think you should go to therapist, not talk to me all the time. Right? There's definitely a boundary there that you draw. But as a powerlifting coach, there's so so many things that you need to learn. And the basics of rehab is something that I think has started to become like a very important skill in today's world, especially considering that there's a there's a very big gap between like actual physiotherapists and powerlifting. Right? There's physiotherapists that do a lot of like general activity or general sport, but there's not much for powerlifting. So when it comes to like like you want to bridge that grab. Because I I did a lot of mentorships just like Jay did, as much as I possibly could. Like I worked with Keenan, I worked with John, John Song. to understand and work on rehab and look for these kind of, you know, patterns. Cause I realize that if not me, no one else is doing this. Right? Like I ca I don't have like somebody that I can just refer to and be like, yeah, just go to that physiotherapist. 'Cause in the US you have like a more collaborative system to some degree. Whereas in jay: Yes. In India it's alien. Kaushal Sumedh: India that's that's that's impossible because nobody likes each other. So it just it just doesn't work. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: It's very jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: difficult to find people who can work together and like figure things. Yep, that that's what we're trying to change here. Tapas: trying to change that. But yeah. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: But that that's the part like you kind of have to learn all of these things and be good at it because there are going to be times, as we said, that when you're pushing the envelope, when you're trying to push your limits, there are going to be pains and niggas and you're trying to manage them as well. So you kinda have to under have a very good understanding of movement quality, biomechanics Tapas: You have to have an all-in-one approach. Kaushal Sumedh: and general physiology and things like that, along with programming, along with technical analysis, along with figuring out how to Like even how to communicate cues and things like that, right? So there's so many things when you c when you come to when you want to become a good, like a good, actual good powerlifting coach. Like any can anybody can be an average powerlifting coach. But if if you want to be good at this, you have Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: to have a very good understanding of all of these concepts as much as you possibly can, and then just keep doing it for years. I it's not that simple as people think it is. It's not general like on-floor Tapas: deaf. Kaushal Sumedh: training, like, I'll just teach somebody a squat and a hinge. And a little bit of push and press and they're fine. Like if it's just like one hour sessions, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Like just a float trainer, one hour session, guy comes in, just wants to stay fit, you make them do some stuff and then send them back home. Right? It's not that simple. Tapas: Yeah. jay: This up back, like Anas, we want to be respectful of your time as well. Like, I I I I I just Anas: Go ahead, go ahead. I know you want to say something, go ahead. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: sorry, like forgive me if I I want to if time permits, just just like this question. But I want it's something like you guys kind of alluded to here in both in terms of like managing injuries, right? It's it's a part of like the mentorships I did with you guys as well. Tapas: you jay: The disconnect we have in India is the fact that whenever you go to a physiotherapist in India, they their entire idea is to de-train the athlete, like completely Tapas: Yeah. jay: remove any and all stimulus from the individual's existence. Like bed rest is something that is very often kind of like given to someone, right? Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: And when you have like a guy who has an injury at this point of time, how important, like to t to the cliff notes, if possible, respectful of time, how how important is it to continue training in some capacity during that period of time? Anas: Yeah, and I think it goes back to like the same framework of we don't wanna create other bottlenecks as we address one. And you can think about the injury itself is a bottleneck to progress now. And I don't wanna detrain the other qualities. Like I don't wanna yes like I wanna improve how how they feel, I wanna decrease the the pain symptoms. But at the same time, yes, if you decrease the amount of work they do, like you don't apply any stress, yes, like you you'll you'll get better. You'll feel better because you're not applying anything, but you're gonna create a bigger problem. And you're gonna have to your work Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: capacity is going to drop, atrophy, strength is going down, technical efficiency is going down, then guess what? as the person like they feel healthier now, but they have so many things to build back up and like they're gonna h get hurt in the process of fixing those or bringing Tapas: Yeah. Anas: those things back. And jay: Exactly. 'Cause like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah. jay: can I can I give you guys the example of tendon health? Like in India like like I guys like Jake Terra, when I kinda look at him like how important like load exposure towards like tendon like we have is kind of important. very often, if not always, like tendon issues in India, like at least the guys that I've the physios I've kind of dealt with, they just largely say like, well, you need to fully stop training and they completely unload the tendon in every comparison. Kaushal Sumedh: I I I mean like it's not just about that. I don't know if you have any idea about needling therapy. Yeah, Tapas: Yes. Anas: Nealing, yes. jay: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: that that's a huge thing here. Like anything happens to you, they're like, Yeah, you can just needle we'll just need little just like a thousand rupees a yeah. Yeah, just yeah, jay: Turn them in a pin cushion. Tapas: the copying and the needling and all that. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah. That that's like the go to therapy thing. And the the the the the part that you were talking about before when you were like as we try to fix certain bottlenecks, we don't want to create more and more. I feel like That kind of led that whole golden microcycle thing to very lazy coaches because they're like, we found something and that that we're just gonna hammer it for the rest of your life. Right? That I jay: Yes, yes. Kaushal Sumedh: feel like that led to very lazy I'm not talking about that's a that's a bad concept, it's a good concept. It's a good concept to be able to find a good microcycle that really works for the lifter, but you have to consistently take feedback and also keep managing things because life is not the same every single day. Like th there's going to be changes over time and then you have to adjust that. Sorry? Tapas: Yeah. Anas: Yeah, we've actually done like we've done like a whole podcast about this. We've done like a whole podcast we've done a whole podcast about like the problems because there's so many problems. There's so many problems with the golden micro and like even like from like a psychological perspective too. But going back Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I mean these are these are like, you know, like another rabbit hole that you just Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anas: to like the injury stuff and like you mentioned like the tendon and like one one big issue I've seen is people looking at the like they zoom in on that specific problem and they label it with a specific term. This is tendinopathy. This is like you have a bulging disc. Then Tapas: Hmm. Anas: let's address this specific area where usually the area is getting beat up as a result of something else. It's just like like the system is moving in a way. And the thing that is taking the most beating is that thing. Are you gonna only address the are you only gonna address the capacity of the tendon? And like in that sense, they're not even addressing the capacity, they're just gonna dropping the stress in general. And like the capacity jay: Yes. Anas: is going down, detraining, and they're not addressing the cause of like why why is this area actually taking the beating in the first place? Then like you have like people like John, when we talk to him, he's like, I look at how the person moves, I'm like, okay, well, you are rotating right. It means your center mass is forward on that left side. It means the foot is not gonna be able to pronate because your center mass is so far forward. Then guess what? That leads to missing internal rotation at the at the left hip. Then guess what? Your knee is gonna start to take a beating. It's like, okay, well, there is like understanding the the demands of the sport is a is a big thing and how the person moves. Because again, like if you're only focused on the tendon, you're not addressing like again, like the bottleneck, what's causing this thing to actually get beat up. And like the I I love this framework of like the like the theory of constraints because I I can I can apply it to everything if you understand like what variables are under each one. And also mentioned with the like the injury management stuff, you have like stress and capacity. Ideally you you would increase capacity as you manage the stress on that jay: Yes. Anas: area. But people kinda miss people kinda just gonna go into either decrease stress only or increase capacity, but stress is too high and like you can't really increase the capacity. So you kinda have to manage both and under each one, under capacity and under stress, there are a million variables, but you kinda have to need you need Okay, you need a c an assessment of what's going on with the lifter. You can't just kinda look at the knee or like this tendon and forget about everything they do from training perspective, from life and everything else. Like you're you're missing you're missing the idea there. jay: Yeah, because if I were to throw out like a very simple example, a lot of the times people like for example, aggressively prehinging and shifting onto the heels at the top, they kinda get aggressively shifted forward at the bottom. And like a lot of the times people may have this patella tendon like irritation that kind of shows up from that stuff. And like I tell people, you cannot In this situation, it's essentially a competence issue. They just don't have the understanding of where foot pressure should be. So if you kind of entirely detrain them, so where I kind of come back to like the thing about the SRA curve, like the whole element of involution, right? You kind of have to understand when you kind of take stimulus away in its entirety, we are kind of like an asset. It's you're masking a problem for another problem. I think again the issue here is that people miss the forest for a single tree very often. We kind of see that a lot in injury management here because it is very hard for us to. Tapas: Like you don't consider that the person would want to come back and start training again if you just stop entirely. jay: Yep. No, because because Aktapas and I used to talk about this, like when guys get injured here, like you can't really go to a physiotherapist because the recommendation is a month's Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: worth of bed rest. It is always a month's worth of bed rest. Tapas: Always, yeah. Always, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, always. That's what I was telling Anas: We don't Kaushal Sumedh: you, right? Like you need you need to learn about rehab as well in today's day and world. You can't just be like, well, I don't know. B because I I I I'm Tapas: I can refer you out, that's not like a thing that happens here. Kaushal Sumedh: telling you, like, I have seen extreme cases where somebody is complaining about pain, and the first line of solution that the coach has given them is take Decca. I'm not kidding. Anas: Nice. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, I'm not kidding. I was like, what the actual Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, this is a well known coach. So I was like, how how do you even it blew my mind. Anas: Yeah, I think like jay: No, I think. Anas: co coaches have like a big responsibility because they control the stressor and they also have an influence jay: Very fruit. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: where that stressor goes. but most most PTs, I guess like from like from from from your guys' experience, they don't really understand maybe like the model is also flawed and they don't even under understand the stressor. jay: Yeah. Very Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: But here we have like a few good PTs who understand like the actual demands of the sport. I mean, like I I love like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anas: Jamie, Corey Hecht, obviously John and Keenan, those people can they know how things operate. They know there's like forced demands involved, they know there's like adaptations involved. and like yeah, they know like the stress and like how that is how that influences pain response. Obviously there's other variables, jay: Yes. Anas: but you you need like a simple model at at the beginning when stress exceeds the capacity of jay: Yes, yep. Anas: that area. Usually you see see some pain response. That's like the general idea. But then okay, what variables are under capacity, what variables are under stress, Kaushal Sumedh: yeah. Anas: and how do I address the the biggest bottleneck? How do I maybe shift stress away from there to actually help with the with this issue? Because like it's not always dropping the stress. You can drop the stress by shifting it to somewhere else and you can be s still squatting 90% of your max, but jay: Yeah, exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Anas: that specific area is doing less work. There's like s less stress on that specific area. just by you moving a little bit more efficiently, just by you not jamming into your knees at the bottom of the squat, then like the capacity is okay, how do I increase capacity? You have to overload that area over time, but you can't just take the stress away, then you're gonna decrease the capacity. and like there's other variables under the capacity, sleep. there's like a million things there. Like it's like you have recovery and like a million other things that you can go into and under each one there's other things that you can consider. But Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: starting with the model, then zooming. I guess like you can start to zoom jay: Yes. Anas: in after. But if there's no model, you're just guessing at that point. jay: 'Cause that is the most important thing that's missing here, I'd say. Like everyone here, like top is you guys should understand agree, right? Model based thinking, Tapas: Definitely. jay: like people don't have like a f fundamental way of passing information. Kaushal Sumedh: Yes. No, that's also because they don't understand basic principles because models are brin built off of strong principles. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Like if you have a very good understanding of trading principles and how and then then then you can build a really good model and your system by based off of your experiences. And like Tapas: You kind of want to think and when you like have an issue with thinking then you kind of develop models jay: Yes. Tapas: and like you know frameworks to go about things but if people don't want to do that then that's separate issue. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. There's a very big copy-paste culture. Cause like I sometimes I have I I've got a new client and I'm like, can you tell can you show me what your old programs look like that you've been following? So I get an an idea of how you've been trading. And I get my own programs back and I'm like, remove the regards team iron creed at least, please. Like my my stamp is there. I can Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: see like my thing there in the email. I I can see that. Like at least remove that. Don't be that lazy. And like one more one more thing that I wanted to touch upon. Like you were talking about, like, you know, coaches, like it's partial, it's it's like majorly the coach's responsibility as well, because of that load management part that you were talking about, right? a very easy red flag, actually, that you can figure out if your coach is actually invested in you or not in your long-term progress, is to understand if they're using you as a highlight reel. Because there are coaches who will force you to push that week for just Tapas: Yeah. jay: Yes. So Kaushal Sumedh: just to like Force a PR that they can keep posting and like, I made this guy do this in six months. His his squat went up went up like a hundred kilos or a hundred pounds, whatever, whatever metrics you want to use. You know, they they they they try to do this because they want to like they want to show that they're that they have the secret sauce, right? But there's no like actual secret sauce out there. All Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: good coaches do like yeah, jay: Fundamental principles and scale up. Kaushal Sumedh: fundamental, just just really good application of fundamental principles of training. Right, whether it's whether it's muscle building or strength or whatever it is, right? Anas: I I think now we don't we don't deal Tapas: Definitely. Anas: with like terrible programs as much, at least in the States. I don't see Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: like when someone is injured, usually they're programming, if anything, it's underdosed. I'm like, okay, maybe stress is not the Tapas: Hmm. jay: Yes. Anas: problem here. Usually there is that's why there's like a shift towards movement options and like how Kaushal Sumedh: Mm. Anas: that influences things. Because programming is in in a better spot. Technique generally is in a better spot. Then the bottleneck for most people is that. Well, obviously jay: Moment more. Anas: it just depends on the lifter. Cause like some lifters, like in the past, it was a lot easier to fix problems because I would get programs and I'm like, easy fix. I just have to adjust the numbers and I can and I'm done. But now like you have to look into look into it a little bit further, which is good to challenge the the coaches and can to develop those skills. which I think, yeah, there is definitely like a push forward. But yeah, th there is still misunderstanding of hypertrophy and like the things that contribute to to force production, which is why we see like the programming swing. The golden microcycle now is like it's like a mid like a middle ground, which is good. But there's like still flaws because it's it's still so foc focused on strength expression and like the other qualities are missing. Then like the future, like what I think is gonna happen in the future, is a more pre a more precise way of programming because you understand what the bottleneck is, you know how to address it and you know how to maintain everything else, then you wouldn't worry about strength expression the whole time. You know you're moving forward even though your tops don't show it. and like again, like this concept applies to injury management and like everything else. jay: Yep. And this is where I'd say like I I always notice any of the mentorships that I did where people like that I found extremely valuable, like the ones I did with you guys, it's explaining fundamental principles on that first call. Right. First first and second call it's like it's not what to do, but how to think, I would argue, kind of a situation. Because I I assume like the assumption is that when you have an understanding of the fundamental principles, you understand dose response relationship a lot better. Right? So like when you like all of us in any training program are applying a certain degree of dose. Right. Like Anas mentions that in the States programming like stimulus, that dosage is not like an issue here. It's still like I think that we're kind of like Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: cleaning up in terms of that stuff. But I I Would say, like, I think that's why coaches should like I I I keep going back to this thing. Please invest in continuing education, right? Like the things about like the constraints model, these models, when I first did it with Jamie, I was like, why is this man teaching me all of this stuff? Right? Like, I do not understand Tapas: Thanks jay: why I should think like this. But then I started to see the pattern. No human has a definitive Tapas: Thank jay: answer to their problems. Like, you need a framework and a model of thought. All right. and I think that like the fact that you mentioned the simple thing like if load exposed is exceeds capacity. capacity, then you tend to either have task failure or like variance in terms of execution, right? Have this for long enough, things may go awry. But like we this ability to fundamentally think is, and again I want to ask you this thing. Are all models absolutely right? Because like the thing is like people like models are assumptions still, right? Anas: Yeah, and again, like going back Tapas: you Anas: to the SRA, which is like one model, I think it has truth to it, but under Like it's they're specific, they're they're incomplete. Most of these models are incomplete. And because if we talk about stress, okay, well, you have to define it and you have to look at what happens like under the hood, like in a from like a like mechanisms, what happens when I apply this stressor, then you can start to see, okay, well, the stressor is like more like a bigger neural signal. Okay, well, this is a different stressor than like pushing the like your hack squad to failure. So kind of understanding those, but generally speaking, yes, there is like stressor, but the stressor can be like disruption at the muscular at the muscle at the muscular muscular level, at the the muscle cell. You might see some disruptions there. That is the stressor, but it's defined like the way SRA is is defined is like, okay, you have a stressor, you apply a stressor, they never really define it because you can define it in a different like in a million different ways depending what stressor you're actually applying. And the recovery is also not defined So you have to personally define it depending on like the task that you're applying, then the adaptations are going to be very specific. And also like within kind of knowing that those things don't happen in a vacuum, you can't isolate one adaptation on its own. So it becomes like a lot more complex because Tapas: Hmm. Yeah. jay: Yes. Yes. Anas: one set of Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: squats produces multiple different qualities and they can it can even jay: Politicians, yes. Anas: produce like cardiovascular qualities, but they're very minimal and those kind of get Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. Anas: dismissed. But it is producing those and the level of each one depends on how we actually execute the exercise. Because like a set of seven Is like with a specific load is not gonna always produce the same and of the same adaptations, it's not gonna produce the same amount of damage. It just depends on like how how you came into the session, then like and how did you execute it? How was the velocity? Is the force production high? Is the proximity of failure high or low? And like you can start to define and kind of break down this stressor and like what each stressor does. how how do we recover from each stressor and what adaptations do you get, then you can have like a a more clear model, but it's still flawed. Like it's like no one really is gonna go down into like the molecular level and kind of t tell you about okay, this is what's happening at a cell. If you want to understand if you want to have a complete model, you have to understand what happens at the cell level when mechanical tension is increased or when proximity failure goes up. But then you have variability when it comes to technique. Then like how do you factor that in into the into the model? So it's it's almost like the model is always gonna be flawed, but at least we know generally speaking how that works. But yeah, SRA incomplete, you have to define those things and kind of know what the stimulus is. If you know what the stimulus is, which is like what we did with the mentorship, can define those things. Then you have like a more clear way of tracking them because if you see the force production dropping down. Then you have an idea of what the SRA curve is starting to do. If the force production is starting to go down, it's like, okay, I'm seeing less of potential stimulus force strength. well, obviously, like you can't really track, like you don't have a force force plate. Usually you just kind of watch the load on the bar and the velocity, which gives you an estimate, but it's never gonna be super accurate because we're not tracking those things to like the specific new in level jay: For the dog, yeah. Anas: of of force production. So it's kinda hard to say. jay: And I'd say like Kausha, like even with the compound performance mentorship, you'd have they would have asked us to like they asked you to kind of create your own model. Like all coaches, like I I think the good mentorships that I've done, they've said Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Ka Kyle used to say that a lot where he used to be like all systems are wrong, it just depends on how you're using it. Some something along those lines, it's it's been like a minute, like it's been like six years or something since I've attended that. But he used to Anas: All all models are wrong, some are useful. jay: Yeah, exactly. All models are on. Yeah, exactly. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, sorry, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. It it's been like six years. I just kinda z like forgot about it. Yeah. All models are wrong but some are useful. Right? So yeah, i you Anas: I think it's it's like it's a little bit too much when people say it's like it's they're wrong. I don't think they're necessarily wrong. They're just incomplete. Like they're inaccurate. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. But jay: Incomplete. Tapas: There's a of subjectivity involved. Kaushal Sumedh: I mean all of them are incomplete to some degree because there's like there's one thing that you take and understand from scientific principles, but there's also your perception of understanding of how you even like grasp that knowledge. jay: Fly the thing. Kaushal Sumedh: And then how you apply it is completely different on how you grasped it in the first place. Like your perception of understanding is different from mine, right? And mine is going to be different from his. That's the reason why different coaches kind of function slightly differently. We all have the same scientific data available to us. Like a from a research standpoint, right? Anas: And I think that the think the incomplete part of it comes from not understanding 'cause like there's like still a lot of research at the at the cellular Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: level. Like people are still trying to figure out like what lactate does and like what all these things do. Tapas: Hmm. Anas: And when other other metrics are going up, when other hormones are are interacting, it's like this kind of changes the whole like the whole thing, like the whole model. But yeah, like generally speaking, we know which direction we're gonna go in. and like there's like a lot more research to be done. But if you don't know any like if you just think stress, squat, whatever number, whatever force production is, whatever approximately failure is equals a specific adaptation, then this is not nuanced enough. And you can go into like a lot more depth, but yeah, like there's always more research to be done, which I mean I I dove deeper into as I was creating those mentorships. I'm like, I need to understand this. if someone comes to me and challenges this model, I need to have an answer for them. which is I think it was like a good opportunity for me to improve my understanding. But now I understand that there's like years ahead for me to even understand fatigue, to understand those things a lot more. So it's it's definitely a journey. Tapas: Yeah. jay: Because like a couple of years ago that they would say like if you drain between sixty to eighty percent will be hypertrophy, seventy to like like eighty to nine hundred percent will be like something strength, then you kind Anas: Yeah. jay: of realize that all of these things, as you mentioned, are interplaying with one another. Like a set of squats will have hypertrophic neurological like and cardiovascular adaptations. We kind of want to see the picture as a whole, right? Like Anas: Yeah, but then like then like kinda knowing what that sixty or eighty percent is doing. 'Cause like jay: Yeah. Anas: if you if you zoom in on the the force production and the mechanical tension on approximately failure, then those are better metrics to track than saying jay: Exactly. Anas: seventy percent equals this. It's like, well, it can equal a million things. Just depends on jay: Yep, yep. Exactly. Anas: what force you're producing and how where that tension is going and how close to failure you're going. So But yeah, I I guess that people you kinda like this like algorithmic type thinking. Sixty or eighty percent equals this. I'm like, dude, just like cab back a little bit more nuance. We're talking about force production, Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: we're talking about powerlifting. You need to understand force production a little bit more. jay: And and that is why, like, I think the biggest challenge in India is simply because again, this may be going off on a tangent, but all of us here would have experienced it. Our education system is not really catered towards like individualized thinking. Like you like when you have to think about Tapas: Critical. jay: like this, you critical thinking, my apologies. you kind of have to have like an understanding of the foundational principles, apply it, and have the risk of being wrong. Like here, I think the biggest issue is like you have the risk of being wrong and looking like a fool, but if you understand the fundamental principles, you know where to tweak. Like the last, like the last Call on the mentorship, right? Where we talk about how to kind of look at stimulus, how to look at the the week, how to respond to an athlete's response. I think that is probably in my opinion like one of the most amazing things, like I like you know, in the in your first version of the mentorship, you guys have that, but you don't delve into depth here. I think how to read data and kind of apply fundamental principles to data becomes all the more important, right? When you have that fundamental understanding. Anas: Yeah, yeah, hundred hundred percent. I had something to to say. I just I I missed it. I should have wrote it down. But yeah, like I guess like that like the idea here is not understanding like the mechanisms always leads to misapplication. And yeah, that's what it was. Also like defining those principles because like now there's like misunderstanding of the principles. If you ask anyone it's like, okay, define specificity. They tell you just a squat. Like if I squat, if I do the competition squat. This is specific work. like the heavier I go, it's more specific. Well, it's like it's not. Like you have to define it a little bit more clearly. And like that's where we kind of go into like the the goal of the task. The goal behind powerlifting is force production. And what's under force production is not necessarily a exercise selection. It's about like more motor unit recruitment, r the rate coding, like the like how you coordinate those those contractions. Those things are the goal. It's not like the the end result is more force production and like the squat is gonna be heavier, but it's not the stimulus there. The stimulus is the things that contribute to force production. So I guess like defining Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Anas: specificity, which was like a good exercise for for me, Skylar, and Sean to do is let's define these things clearly, because in the past the definition of them wasn't clear because if they tell you do more squatting, well We see a lot of people training un unspecifically and they still make progress. Like, how does that make sense? How is that a principle? If it's always, if it's always like people don't people contradict it and like they still make progress, and like it's not a principle. The principal has to be immune to those changes, like or like different applications. And like once you look into okay, well, it is bottleneck related, the specificity means work on the the the biggest bottleneck. jay: Yeah. Anas: To your progress, then like that is like, okay, I gotta challenge you to like prove me wrong there. Cause like everyone, jay: Yeah, yeah. Anas: that's what they do. They work on bottlenecks, like the things that kind of inhibit their force production. They then they start to make progress. That is specificity. It's not do the squat, do more heavy squats, you'll get better at better, you get better at squatting heavy. It's like, no, dude. Like it's everyone, like looking at programming now, everyone does the opposite and then it's and they still make progress. then like that that principle is not applied and like look at progressive overload, just do more. I'm like more of what? What are we doing here? Like you have to be specific jay: Yeah. Anas: of like doing more of what? And like that's where where like the stimulus comes in. Understanding those principles also, like just reading them off of like a chart and like that's not enough. You have to challenge them too and look at okay, well, does anyone actually violate those principles and make progress? If there is, then the model or the principle is flawed. jay: Because that's what I appreciated about the first call on the mentorship, right? Like again, you go back to athlete profile creation. In creating these athlete profiles based off of prior data, you can kind of somewhat see the bottleneck kind of like emerge here and there, right? You'd have a good understanding of these things. And I I think that is that extra step like a coach should take. Like especially here now, like I always have like an initial consultation call where I kind of run guys through the things like, Can I ac have access to your previous programs? What are the issues that you're having? You get a good understanding of the limiting factors. And then you're I So correct me if I'm wrong, you're making a best guest assumption in those in those circumstances, and then you're applying fundamental principles to that. And I love the fact of like looking at specificity through a problem-solving thing. You're all here to solve problems for athletes. Identify the specific problem, provide a specific solution for that. Understand that those specific applications will also have other tangential impacts. And like I I really enjoyed that. That's one aspect I keep going back to your mentorship, is how to think that was really I appreciated that aspect. Anas: Okay, one I guess like one last question for you for you, because like you you've done the two mentorships. What do you think can be can be improved upon? jay: Like i i in my case the only thing that like I I I loved in terms of the content, maybe one more week of like practicality would have been like practical examples. And the other thing that i isn't not nothing y'all can do is just the time zone difference that we have. Like I'd have to wake up at two o'clock in the morning. That's the only thing. But honestly, man, it it's just I would just say like a bit more practicality towards the end, a practical example that maybe one more call. That was the only thing because I understood all like a ton of the principles. I understood everything there. when you guys do the next version of the mentorship I'm still signing up for it. I I don't know if you remember. I was the guy who kept messaging you about like the programming mentorship. Anas: You you yeah, you brought us a lot of people too, which which we appreciate. I think like you brought us like a jay: Pleasure, man. Anas: few a few a few more people who signed up because of because of you. It's like, Yeah Jay sent me, Jay sent me. I like, Cool man, like thank you thank you so much. jay: No, ca ca 'cause I learned a lot. Like I I learned the import of education because like stack cast in my opinion is like an unlike I I I tell guys like please watch it. There is so many things that that are there in on the podcast that you can just learn a ton of because you all interact consistently with high level coaches, right? That are experts in certain aspects. You just had like I think John Song on like a couple episodes or all you guys you guys consistently have guys like maybe Joe Stanick, you guys have these guys on. And I think a lot of information like this is very helpful and coaches need to consume information and I ha have the guts, I'd say have the balls to actually apply it. Right? Because like yeah please. Anas: Yeah, and and the the mentorship was like a way to kind of organize these because like the podcast is like obviously like not organized. We're not talking about like the steps and like with with the mentorship stuff, at least like that was the thing that of like that I saw missing in the market is there isn't like that principle based or like model based thinking. Like it was like algorithmic type thinking. I'm like, let's try to tackle this. Like one, we'll learn in the process and two, we will help everyone. And like yes, like we'll obviously like make money, like it's not it's a lot of effort. and like it w it was successful. It was good. And like I've learned like in those like past like year or so from from creating it. I've learned so much and like my model has become like a lot more robust. but yeah, like I think looking like watching stuff online is very helpful, but you need to also spend time organizing it. Because there's like a lot of jay: Yes, very true. Anas: random tidbits, which which is cool, but you need a framework to organize it. Like models are good, but you need a framework to organize these like specific models. Because like there's a model for for technique, there's like a model for hypertrophy, there's a model for like for each variable, then like you kinda have to organize them in a specific framework. And like that's where like the theory of constraints comes in. but yeah, I think. organization is a is a big thing and like that's where like a mentorship like that would be would be helpful or like I guess like one on one mentorship with someone who understands it and they can kinda pick the holes you have in your understanding, then you can be like a little bit more direct and fast because you don't wanna just go over like eight weeks of mentorship or and learning just to learn one thing. Sometimes it could be faster if you're kind of a little bit further along. Okay, what is like the missing piece here? Again. Theory of constraints. What's the bottleneck for my learning? And like you need someone jay: Yeah. Yep. Anas: to kinda identify that and teach you that. And like that will be like a little bit more efficient. jay: I think we're at like two and a half hours, Tapas: Alright, yeah, I was just gonna say like this by itself could be a whole episode. Limit by half an hour, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Yeah. We've already pushed your this thing too far. Yeah. jay: Yeah, time man. Like w I I I I wanna say a big thank. Thank you from all of us. Anas: You you good did you d did you guys have anything else? Like I'm I'm here for for it. Kaushal Sumedh: I mean we we don't wanna bother you for too long. that yeah, we we we like we we've we've we've been feeling yeah, we've been feeling a little jay: No, th the thing is that like see we want you to come back as a returning guest, dude. Anas: Hey, I'll I'll I'll I'll Tapas: Yeah. Anas: come back if you guys enjoy this, if this kind of gets some some positive feedback, I'm more than open to it. Kaushal Sumedh: No, no, absolutely, man. Absolutely. Tapas: Absolutely. jay: No, 'cause this is why we started this thing, man. Like I like I I swear to God, like I'm I'm Tapas: It's going to be great. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. I I think there's just just one thing that I wanted to say, like why I really wanted to bring on more people from outside India is that the like India has like a lot of like India is always following the US in footsteps. Right? They're always Tapas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: following their footsteps. So i we're always like like a good ten, fifteen years behind what the US wants to is already doing. So when when we have coaches like you from the US or even UK or any other place that's doing well, it it puts a lot of Faith in what we are trying to do as well, because when you're saying similar things, it it's not about Tapas: shows where we can go. Kaushal Sumedh: whether we are getting more clients or not. It's just that the belief and the whole system changes. And I have always been somebody who has like I used to go way out of my way to promote other coaches that I thought had the potential to do well. And like eventually whether they did or not is a different case. But when I saw the potential, I would always give them a shout-out because all you know, there's that saying that rising tide lifts all shes jay: Race of the whole ship now. Kaushal Sumedh: all ships, right? So I've always believed in that like it's not just me who has to be a great coach for this country to do well at a world stage. We need multiple coaches. Because the USA has multiple coaches that are doing well. And that's why US does so so well at like a global level when it comes to powerlifting, right? Like there's there's that the Song Dynasty, there's Joey Flex, there's like the like there's the Mar Marcellus. Tapas: Hawk. Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, and now there's Evan Hawk, who's who's is not too like like he's pretty recent, right, compared to all of these other guys. So like you see so many other coaches and even Keenan Keenan, even we was like Anchor Strength has like a good number of I was watching that, like the dots thing or something like that, like how many, like the Anas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: average highest dots, top ten or something like that. And you see like a lot of them have like so many lifters who are at the world stage. And when we have people like you come over and say, like, yeah, this is a thing, you don't want to max out every single week, because we we we've been like like we're beating a dead horse here, like so many. Every single day, I have to keep saying, like, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. And when guys like you come here and you talk, there's there's a lot more authority as well. Because you're Tapas: Hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: pretty strong too. And and people wanna listen to stronger people as much as like even if we're saying the same thing, you know, sometimes it's like, you know, y your wife doesn't listen to you, but it's she's Tapas: gives you more credibility. Kaushal Sumedh: gonna listen to somebody else who's gonna say the same thing because of the tone, right? Or credibility or whatever. Like not my wife, my wife listens to me. that's Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I I'm avoiding jay: He's scared. Kaushal Sumedh: no no no no like actually like a Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: anytime somebody is like, my wife does this, I'm like no no no, I'm happy, I'm good. Not my wife though. But Tapas: I'm Kaushal Sumedh: I see but I hear that a lot, so that that was just a that was just an example. But yeah, like w I I'm really happy that jay: Can can I mention one little thing here? Kaushal Sumedh: you you got got on here. Tapas: Yeah. jay: Can I mention one little thing here? Is like one of the things that Anas like we want to have voices, like like we we wanna have people like you on again is because like people need to understand it's a big problem here. I'll say it. I've been against it. like people in tested sports competing untested. Because the assumption is that the only way you can like like it is I Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. It's a huge problem in India. Tapas: Yeah, very, very big problem. jay: have had clients who are 15, 16 years old who have been asked Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: by their coaches to blast more gear than like prime Ronnie Coleman, right? I am like, this is not a necessity to get a hundred kilo bench, right? Kaushal Sumedh: No, like I I as I said before, right? Like the first line of rehab for for like a pretty well known coach was, you need to start DECA. That was his first line of rehab. And that's very common. It's very common. Like e if you go to the most local powerlifting gyms at a very grassroots level, this is such a big problem because people just don't believe that it's possible to do something naturally. jay: Possible, yeah. Tapas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Because if I remember like when I I I know I've seen you from I think when you were with Steve, Steve Denovi, like a couple of years ago, I think. That that's when I first Came across your thing. And back then, if I remember correctly, you were already like you were one of the 74s that was almost there. Like you like w not like almost there, almost there, but like you're one of those guys that was in contention to pushing past the 750 and going on to that 800 kg total, right? Anas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: And you were benching what, like 190 something at that point? Anas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, so so so those numbers solidify these things even further, right? and and the fact that like you test jay: No, 'cause we wanna have that education aspect. Kaushal Sumedh: yeah, yeah, plus like you're you're intested. I'm assuming that your natural because you know, I can kind of you kind of get an idea of when you're talking to somebody and you see someone, you're like, Yeah, yeah, like I don't think he's on the juice or something like that. So I like to I I really like to promote this because it's a huge problem here. Like I've seen so many kids. I I've had like 17-year-old, 18-year-old coming and telling me, like, you know, I have erectile dysfunction problem because my my coach told me that I'm supposed to take this, this, this. And I'm like, dude, that's bad. at the age of seventeen, eighteen, that's horrible. It might it might sound funny to some people, but it's really bad. jay: Yeah. That that is why we th I wanna say thank you, man. Like, you know, your time Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: Yeah. jay: that is I swear to God, I was up for like thirty four hours and I saw your DM and I was just like I was like, Am I like hallucinating? Tapas: Remember he just sent me the screenshot like instantly I was Kaushal Sumedh: No, like I Tapas: like bro Kaushal Sumedh: I've been telling people the whole day. I was like, we got a podcast with Anas I'm I'm really excited for that. Usually I'm not that excited for anything. Yeah, like I I'm usually not n not Tapas: Whoa. Kaushal Sumedh: not about the podcast stuff, but like I'm usually not so excited about anything. I'm j I'm very like like chill, yeah, nonchalant kind of a thing. But but like jay: Nonchalant. Tapas: No, Iceland, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I I was telling people a lot of people and I was like, you know, this the first time this is happening in India where we're bringing somebody on and we're very we're we're very happy to have that happen. So that we can like pick your brains and see where we can take this, you know, moving forward and have and have more and more guests coming in. Tapas: And this is also kind of like, and this is also kind of like what we are trying to achieve with our whole thing over here where we're just trying to make like average people, like not average, but like lifters in the community overall, just like a little bit, you know, more educated, smarter, whatever it helps to just make the overall space a little bit better. And yeah, we're really like happy that you came on, you know, with everything that's going on. then like a few, have Jamie lined up and Norman as well. So. It's the first time anything like this is happening here. So yeah, we're very excited for this and we hope to have you on again as well. jay: And everyone, yes, man. That's why we're not like taking our like more time because I would say, Tapas: You jay: guys, watch StackCast, it's very, very, very Tapas: Yeah. jay: informative. Like, if these guys drop another mentorship, I'm signing up. I think you guys should also sign up. It is extremely valuable. It will teach you how to think. If you know how to think, you will know how to solve problems. Like, Anna's, I Tapas: Definitely. jay: want to say from the bottom of my heart, like, thank you so much for your time, though. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: It may it means a lot to us. This is the first step. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, I like I said, I might not look like that, but I I'm actually really happy. Yeah, yeah, pretty this this is this is me being like super excited. Like most excited jay: Very excited. Tapas: Excited is Ben Evert Kaushal Sumedh: I've been in like like the last so many years. Also, like just give Anas a follow. I think his Instagram is jay: Please, please do. Kaushal Sumedh: Anas Anwar. And that Tapas: Yeah, definitely. Kaushal Sumedh: reminds me I also need to follow. My bad. jay: Anas, is there anything Anas: Okay, thank you. jay: you would like to like say? Like is there anything you guys wanna like like give people a shout out? Like anything in particular you wanna bring up? Tapas: Anything you would like to say. Anas: No, I mean like th thank you for I guess like I invited myself, but yeah, thank guys for for having me on and like I I love doing this stuff. I like I I like getting on podcasts and like sometimes like people don't wanna ask and like just like I I wanna do more of these things. So I always enjoy doing these and yeah, like thank you for having me. Thank you for signing up for the mentorship and like promoting it. I'm I'm really happy that you've you've enjoyed it and got a little bit something out of it. Yeah, and like yeah, like if you guys wanna follow us on we actually have like a YouTube as well for Stacked Cast. We have a p the podcast obviously and Instagram. We're trying to push those a little bit more. but yeah, I think that's like that that's it for me. I mean yeah. jay: And guys, if you may Tapas: That's pretty much it. jay: if you made it this far, as usual, Tapas will provide his Tapas: No, no, no. jay: credit card details. Like anyone who gets to the end of the podcast, they get credit Tapas' credit card details. Tapas: That. jay: Just shoot him a DM, he'll get it to guys. Tapas: See the more credibility we get because we got like 600 views on the previous episode the more people actually DM me so you know that's... Yeah... jay: The people DMing him for his credit card details, thanks to me. Anas: That's actually good like that's Tapas: This has been ongoing for the past three episodes. Anas: that's actually some like good exposure. Like that's like you get like a decent amount of listens which which is which is solid. And like yeah, you guys definitely have like different problems to solve than than us in the in the US. Tapas: Yeah. Anas: We don't have like the people kind of blasting gear here. which is yeah, like it's jay: Yeah. Cheese. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. Tapas: We have as we said like we're like still in the infancy Kaushal Sumedh: I mean when b when you take a look at yeah, but but but when you take a look at the USA numbers, man, they're pretty crazy. 'Cause that that Anas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: that's the first line of things 'cause 'cause here I I remember like when I first started powerlifting was like what like nine years ago or something like that, nine, ten years ago. The first line was like, if you want to hit a five hundred kilo total, you need to take take like DECA and test at least. And I was like, five hundred doesn't sound much, right? Like it it's it's a very basic number. But like you take a look at some of these guys, like for example, Anthony McNaughton, he's close to a thousand kgs. SSJ Bob has pushed thousand. You see Rondell and Star Rondell has pushed like what ten fifty? unofficial ten fifty? jay: You see will you see like ask them? Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, Austin Perkins, okay, you can't you can't talk about Austin Perkins. Like that that guy's just insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like jay: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's an anomaly. Tapas: He's like an outlier of all kinds, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: just insane. But like you you see these numbers and then you're like, is it actually possible? Because like we see people here blasting gear for like much lesser numbers. jay: Four hundred totals, yeah. Anas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah, like much, much poor poorer totals. Anas: But but they probably is like no they probably just don't have any muscle mass. The like the programming is trash. They're everything jay: Exactly, exactly. Anas: yes, like one variable Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah, yeah. Anas: is good, but everything else is just like trash and yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: Everything else is bad. And and there's a huge dependency on gear here. Like there's a huge dependency on gear. Like I I I have I went to a commercial gym and the guy just casually so the first thing they see is because like I'm like 6'1, close to 120 kilos. So the first thing they think is that I they assume that I'm also on stuff, right? Anas: Mm-hmm. Kaushal Sumedh: So the first thing they come is like, this is what I'm taking. What do you think? And I was like, I have no fucking clue, dude. I have no idea. Anas: Taking, yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: I don't know anything. And they're like, I had a guy come up to me and he was like, Is it possible to squat 120 kg naturally? Because I'm taking this, this, this, this, this. And he he listed Anas: That's that's great. Kaushal Sumedh: like five different compounds. And he's like, I've only hit 100 kg squat. And I was like, if I tell you I've squatted 270, even though that's not so impressive impressive at my body weight, you'll combust. So I just looked at him Anas: Yeah. Kaushal Sumedh: and I was like, I don't think so. And I just walked away. Because there's no way you can like change somebody's mind like that, who's who thinks a hundred Anas: Yeah. Tapas: badia Kaushal Sumedh: kg squat is like you need to take, you know, everything possible. Tapas: Yeah jay: That that that Anas: Yeah. jay: is why we wanna have guys like you on. The mentorship Kaushal Sumedh: Yeah. jay: that you guys have, we will always promote things like that because like you said, it's a fun lack of understanding of fundamental principles, right? if you can scale on them, the whole sport becomes a lot more exciting. like again, from my end, thank you, Anas. Like the DM kind of like woke me up from like a four-hour nap and I was like stoked. I shouted out to him, I like beyond excited. We wanna have you over again, dude. Thank you so much for your time. Tapas: Yeah, definitely, definitely. Anas: For sure, yeah. Yeah, let me know. Tapas: Yeah, all right. I think jay: All right guys, peace. Anas: Thank you guys. Kaushal Sumedh: Thank you, thank you very much. Anas: Thank you guys for having me. Kaushal Sumedh: Thank you. Absolutely jay: Thank you, Anas. Thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure. Kaushal Sumedh: like as Jay said, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It might not look like that, but yeah, 'cause I I'm just a little the saying. Tapas: Well yeah. Three hours. Anas: Thank you guys. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. jay: Yeah by the way, one once this thing kinda cuts off, like it usually splits us off in a different room. So like if it's an abrupt goodbye, yeah. Yeah. Anas: Leave it. Yes. Kaushal Sumedh: Also like you d do you need to keep it open, the tab to process? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anas: Yeah, I'll keep I'll keep Tapas: Yeah, we do. Okay, wait, wait, wait, let's just end the episode jay: Did you not? Tapas: then we'll talk. Wait. Alright, so, yeah, thank you for tuning in. Alright, whatever Jay said about the credit card, forget that. And jay: Yeah. Tapas: other than that, yeah, we loved having Anas on board and we hope to have him on again. We would love any feedback as always from anybody watching, you know, we're still looking to improve in our infancy. yeah, I hope that you found value in this one and we'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.