Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / The ONLY Strength Standard You Need to Progress Forever (Control Systems) | Ep 282

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The ONLY Strength Standard You Need to Progress Forever (Control Systems) | Ep 282 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:01
  Philip Pape: Are you chasing arbitrary strength standards, constantly comparing yourself to what others can lift?
• 0:06
  Philip Pape: Maybe you're frustrated that your squat still isn't at body weight or your bench press hasn't hit two plates yet.
• 0:12
  Philip Pape: Here's what most lifters miss that true strength development works just like a control system.
• 0:18
  Philip Pape: It's not about hitting random numbers.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: It's about creating the right feedback loop for continuous progress.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: Today, we're talking about why progressive overload is the only strength standard you'll ever need and how understanding control systems will transform your training forever.
• 0:44
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 0:51
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're talking about the most important principle in strength training, the one from which all others derive progressive overload, or what some people like to call progressive loading, because technically you're not overloading, but that's a different topic and we're going to look at this progressive overload or what some people like to call progressive loading because technically you're not overloading, but that's a different topic and we're going to look at this through the lens of engineering control systems.
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: I'm surprised.
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: I have never talked about control systems before, but here we are.
• 1:16
  Philip Pape: A control system is a feedback mechanism that helps something, improve or maintain stability, like, for example, for example, the speed on your cruise control in your car right.
• 1:27
  Philip Pape: Or another one I like to talk about is your thermostat Keeping your house at the perfect temperature.
• 1:32
  Philip Pape: It's always feeding back based on what the actual temperature is, and your body has a similar system for adapting to training.
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: And if you can understand that and tie it to this concept, it is kind of going to revolutionize how you think to getting stronger.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: Now, before we get in to this episode, if you want to experience a program that applies this and all of our other principles for nutrition training mindset with scientific precision I'm just kidding, not that scientific, there's a little bit of flex in there I want you to consider joining Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 2:06
  Philip Pape: We now have, as of the end of February, going into March, we're going to have our first monthly challenge.
• 2:13
  Philip Pape: Every single month we're going to have a challenge in the group in addition to the custom nutrition plans, workouts, tracking tools, courses, the supportive community check-ins all of that to help you reach your strength and physique goals faster than ever.
• 2:26
  Philip Pape: So if you want to try it free for 14 days and get your first challenge at absolutely no cost, use the special link in my show notes.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: That is the only way to get it.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: You have to click the link in the show notes to join for free for the first 14 days, wits and Weights Physique University and get to try the first challenge at no cost, and I will be unveiling what that challenge is soon.
• 2:48
  Philip Pape: But you can join at no cost.
• 2:50
  Philip Pape: Reach out to me if you have questions.
• 2:53
  Philip Pape: And now I want to get into today's topic, which is progressive overload, and we're going to cover it from a different perspective.
• 3:00
  Philip Pape: First we're going to talk about control systems, because control systems are a really good analogy to our bodies in the context of strength training.
• 3:12
  Philip Pape: Then we'll talk about the three components that regulate your training adaptation, and then how to apply this framework to your own training so you can get some consistent progress.
• 3:19
  Philip Pape: Now I've talked about progressive overload before.
• 3:21
  Philip Pape: I usually approach it in the more traditional sense, talking about increasing your weight and your reps and all of that.
• 3:28
  Philip Pape: But today is going to be a different angle that I think you're going to appreciate.
• 3:31
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about control systems.
• 3:33
  Philip Pape: These are actually everywhere in engineering.
• 3:36
  Philip Pape: They're everywhere in your life.
• 3:38
  Philip Pape: You don't even realize they're there.
• 3:39
  Philip Pape: They monitor outputs, they compare them to a desired target and then they make adjustments and anything run by a computer today pretty much has a control system and that's how things can run optimally and automatically.
• 3:51
  Philip Pape: So I mentioned the cruise control in the intro your car's cruise control very common system that we're all familiar with.
• 3:57
  Philip Pape: It is measuring your speed on the road, it compares it to your target speed and then it adjusts the throttle.
• 4:03
  Philip Pape: Now, of course, if you're driving a Tesla or something that has automatic driving, that is a much more advanced control system that's using sensors and cameras and everything to keep you on the road.
• 4:13
  Philip Pape: But just back to the cruise control, you know if you go uphill it's just going to add more gas.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: If you go downhill, it eases off and it does it in a very smooth way.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: Well, generally it does.
• 4:22
  Philip Pape: It's not jerky, it's not like over responsive.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: The system's always working to maintain that perfect speed.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: Well, your body works the same way when it comes to building strength.
• 4:32
  Philip Pape: When you lift weights, you create a stimulus.
• 4:36
  Philip Pape: Your body then responds by adapting.
• 4:39
  Philip Pape: It builds stronger muscles and more efficient neural pathways.
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: Right, it's both neuromuscular as well as physical muscular.
• 4:46
  Philip Pape: But here's where most lifters go wrong.
• 4:48
  Philip Pape: They focus on arbitrary numbers instead of trying to optimize the feedback loop so that they can keep making progress.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: Whether you want to call it ego lifting or just a lack of understanding very common problem, I see.
• 4:59
  Philip Pape: If I give you a concrete example.
• 5:01
  Philip Pape: All right, let's say you're squatting 225 pounds and then you try to jump straight to 275 pounds.
• 5:08
  Philip Pape: What usually happens?
• 5:09
  Philip Pape: Your system gets overloaded, your form breaks down, your reps get sloppy, you risk injury.
• 5:14
  Philip Pape: And it doesn't even have to be that big of a jump.
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: You may take a 10 pound jump and it's too big.
• 5:19
  Philip Pape: It's one of the most common reasons people fail their reps common reasons people fail their reps.
• 5:25
  Philip Pape: Then they say, hey, philip, this isn't working.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: Should I do a reset or take a deload?
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: I'm like, no, you just jumped too much and you would have known not to do that if you had taken your history and your data into account.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: But we'll get back to that.
• 5:35
  Philip Pape: So if you jump more than you can handle, that'd be like again in the car analogy you're slamming the accelerator instead of letting the cruise control make the smooth adjustments.
• 5:46
  Philip Pape: And remember when you do that your car can't quite get there and then it may eventually get there, but it's basically doing it in a very jerky way that taxes the engine, your body, like a good control system needs time to process the feedback and then adapt.
• 6:01
  Philip Pape: I mean Same idea Now progressive overload, which is the gradual increase in training demands.
• 6:08
  Philip Pape: That's all that is right.
• 6:10
  Philip Pape: It's not that your body is on its own just deciding to get stronger.
• 6:15
  Philip Pape: It is that you are pushing it to its limit and it's getting stronger.
• 6:19
  Philip Pape: And it works just like any other well-tuned control system.
• 6:22
  Philip Pape: You provide a stimulus, you measure the response and you make calculated adjustments.
• 6:27
  Philip Pape: And too many lifters get caught up chasing numbers.
• 6:30
  Philip Pape: I need to squat 315, or my buddy squats 315,.
• 6:35
  Philip Pape: I'm only squatting 275, so I'm weak.
• 6:36
  Philip Pape: But yeah, maybe for you you're not.
• 6:39
  Philip Pape: I should be benching twice my body weight.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: Whatever.
• 6:41
  Philip Pape: You know these strength standards and I've been asked many times before like what is considered strong?
• 6:45
  Philip Pape: Well, it's all relative to you.
• 6:47
  Philip Pape: Some people are super strong right out of the gate.
• 6:50
  Philip Pape: Some people are not.
• 6:51
  Philip Pape: Some people actually get stronger, faster than other people, and so if we use arbitrary standards, they are going to ignore how your unique system responds.
• 7:00
  Philip Pape: Think again about homeostasis, your body's natural tendency to maintain balance.
• 7:04
  Philip Pape: When you train, you are disrupting that balance and then your body is going to adapt to handle future disruptions better.
• 7:12
  Philip Pape: That's one way to put it.
• 7:14
  Philip Pape: Another way to put it is you are shifting your homeostasis, your capacity, your peak.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: You're shifting it outward, you're shifting it upward and it's this beautiful feedback loop that allows you to become a different person physically, but only if you respect how the system works and lean into it properly.
• 7:30
  Philip Pape: So that gets me to something very it's going to sound a little bit technical.
• 7:36
  Philip Pape: It's something we use in control systems and it's called a PID controller.
• 7:40
  Philip Pape: I'm going to use this as an analogy for the three components of training control, but you'll I'll go back and forth so you know what I'm talking about.
• 7:46
  Philip Pape: So don't get lost in the terminology.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: It's a pid controller, proportional integral derivative.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: Again, you don't have to know exactly what those means mean and I'm going to give you a very um kind of simplified definition of those.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: So it might sound complex, but your body's response to training follows the same pattern.
• 8:01
  Philip Pape: Let's let's just break it down First.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: The P.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: So remember PID proportional integral derivative.
• 8:06
  Philip Pape: The P is proportional control.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: This is your body's immediate response to a training stimulus, like right in the moment when you lift a weight.
• 8:14
  Philip Pape: That's challenging but manageable, meaning you can actually do it, and that includes for all the reps.
• 8:21
  Philip Pape: So that means if you're doing a set of five, that means you lift a weight that you can get for a set of five and it's not like a max, all-out grindy set.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: Your body then responds proportionally proportional.
• 8:32
  Philip Pape: It recruits the right amount of muscle fibers, it helps you maintain proper form, right Balance, stability, all that and it helps you complete the movement successfully.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: A lot of this is neuromuscular.
• 8:41
  Philip Pape: A lot of this is based on movement patterns.
• 8:43
  Philip Pape: This is why having enough reps and enough practice and frequency is important.
• 8:47
  Philip Pape: But the point is your body will proportionally respond.
• 8:55
  Philip Pape: If you, however, try to go too heavy, too fast, the system gets unstable.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: You're going to fail your reps or your form is going to break down.
• 8:58
  Philip Pape: That could be the potential for injury.
• 8:59
  Philip Pape: Your nervous system also gets overwhelmed, especially on really big lifts like deadlifts.
• 9:04
  Philip Pape: But if you increase it just the right amount, right, just that five pounds on your bench press, or maybe it's two pounds with microplates depends on where you are your body's going to adapt perfectly.
• 9:15
  Philip Pape: There's a nice sweet spot.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: It's not super wide, but it's also not so precise.
• 9:20
  Philip Pape: You have to be down to a decimal point or anything like that.
• 9:22
  Philip Pape: And again, I've seen this countless times with clients those who try to force huge jumps in weight inevitably are going to plateau.
• 9:30
  Philip Pape: I don't even call it a plateau, I just it's like um, they, they feel like the program's wrong for them or it's not the right weight or not the right lift or whatever, and they immediately go to the doom and gloom.
• 9:41
  Philip Pape: All these potential issues and, granted, if you're not sleeping enough, you're not eating enough, those could definitely be the issues.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: But sometimes it's just you're not increasing by the right amount or you're not taking enough rest period and you're just over.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: It's not only progressive overload, it's progressive way overload, okay.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: But if you respect this proportional ability for your body to meet the demand only up to its limits, right, and getting into that sweet spot with those small calculated increases, now you could build strength consistently for years on end.
• 10:12
  Philip Pape: I mean years and years.
• 10:13
  Philip Pape: So that's proportional control.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: Then we have integral control Remember PID proportional, integral, derivative.
• 10:20
  Philip Pape: So integral control.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: This is really looking at history.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: It's looking at the accumulated training over time, not like your injury history or your training or diet history over the years.
• 10:30
  Philip Pape: This is more of the recent, like the last few days or last few weeks of training, and this is also why tracking your volume and your progression and what you're lifting and how much you're lifting really matters a lot.
• 10:44
  Philip Pape: Okay, your body, just you know it doesn't just respond to what you're doing today.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: It kind of remembers the workload that you've handled over the past few days, weeks, even months.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: And so if you brought me someone and said, hey, write a program for them, I wouldn't know what is optimal for them unless I talk to them about what they've done recently, right?
• 11:05
  Philip Pape: Or I would have to get them into a kind of prep, easy kind of prep phase for a few weeks just to work all the fatigue out of their system.
• 11:14
  Philip Pape: Actually, there's a good analogy when we talk about dieting and prepping for fat loss, kind of getting the food-related calorie deficit stress out of your system similar idea.
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: So your body kind of remembers this kind of like.
• 11:28
  Philip Pape: You know it's like your bank account.
• 11:30
  Philip Pape: I mean, you know, if you put $1,000 in the bank today, that's great, but if you've spent so much money the last six months that you're in a million dollars of debt, that thousand dollars isn't going to do much.
• 11:41
  Philip Pape: So I don't know how great of analogy that was, but it came to mind.
• 11:44
  Philip Pape: And back to training.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: This is where the program, a lot of programs themselves, like in isolation, actually fall short because it's all about this individual workout, right?
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: Hey, come buy my latest workout, like I have a workout for you.
• 11:57
  Philip Pape: Or follow this workout on YouTube and it just says just jump right in, it's not personalized, it doesn't count for history.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: If, if you're going to buy a program from somebody, um, take, take my coach, andy Baker, for example.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: He sells templates on his, on his website, but when you download one of those templates, it's this like 20 page PDF explaining the principles behind it, and there's actually a lot of work you have to do to make it work for you.
• 12:20
  Philip Pape: And this is not a criticism on Andy, he wouldn't mind me saying this.
• 12:23
  Philip Pape: It's because he doesn't know where you started from and you need to figure that out as you get into the program.
• 12:29
  Philip Pape: He's not just going to say, hey, do these exercises these days and you're done.
• 12:33
  Philip Pape: Anybody can do that with chat GPT today.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: That's going to fall short and you're done.
• 12:38
  Philip Pape: Anybody can do that with chat GPT today.
• 12:39
  Philip Pape: That's going to fall short.
• 12:40
  Philip Pape: Um, the bigger picture is are you gradually increasing your volume or have you gone with too much volume recently?
• 12:43
  Philip Pape: Are you balancing intensity and volume over different exercises, days and weeks, right, Because your body knows this, even if your mind doesn't realize it, and that's why you need um, well, I guess I'm going to get, I'm going to get to the third piece now when I talk about deloads.
• 12:57
  Philip Pape: But that's why you have to be aware of your history when you program.
• 13:03
  Philip Pape: So the last part is derivative control.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: So remember PID proportional, integral derivative Derivative control is the rate of change, so that's how quickly you're progressing or accumulating fatigue, right.
• 13:15
  Philip Pape: And this is why we need either deloads or we need a program that naturally incorporates resets or variety or undulation or waves or whatever it is.
• 13:27
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be complicated Some are more complicated than others Some sort of cycling that is in there where you don't even need a deload necessarily, right, some programs you just design it that way and then six weeks and then you have a deload.
• 13:38
  Philip Pape: Others it's kind of built in.
• 13:41
  Philip Pape: You know, like I'm following a program that's based on a base strength and then peak strength, and every third week you reset slightly, but the reset is heavier than three weeks before that.
• 13:53
  Philip Pape: So it's kind of a natural deload.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: Your body has limits on how fast it can adapt, so if you're pushing too hard, too fast and the system starts to get too fatigued, you start breaking down.
• 14:02
  Philip Pape: That's where you're going to hit a wall and you're going to keep hitting a wall until you somehow release all that tension and go at the right rate of change.
• 14:11
  Philip Pape: So both the history of it how much have you accumulated and then also now what we're talking about is the rate of change, how fast and how hard you're going as you work through this are really important.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: It's like balancing all of this out is critical.
• 14:24
  Philip Pape: So now, how do we use this knowledge to build your real-world strength, to become as strong as possible, to keep doing it without injury, to keep going and being consistent?
• 14:35
  Philip Pape: The first thing is to forget arbitrary strength standards.
• 14:39
  Philip Pape: Don't worry about it, stop asking about it, stop worrying about absolute numbers and instead create a system that respects how your body actually adapts to training and you may respond differently than someone else to a certain amount of volume.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: You may respond differently when you're in fat loss versus when you're not, or when you're eating certain foods versus not, when you're training fasted or not, how much cardio or sports or other things you're doing outside of the lifting sessions.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: So, going back to our three components, if we want to apply these to real life.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: Let's start with proportional control.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: This means you're going to make small, consistent increases in either load that's, the weight on the bar and or reps.
• 15:20
  Philip Pape: So if you're bench pressing 185 for three sets of five, you may not want to jump to 215 next week or next session.
• 15:28
  Philip Pape: Whatever program you're following.
• 15:29
  Philip Pape: You may want to go from 185 to 190.
• 15:32
  Philip Pape: And if you've been doing that for a while and it's getting really, really hard, you might want to go from 190 to 192 and a half.
• 15:40
  Philip Pape: This is where microplates are helpful and a lot of people somehow don't even realize they exist.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: I shouldn't say it that way.
• 15:45
  Philip Pape: That sounds patronizing.
• 15:46
  Philip Pape: I should not have said that, but what I mean is a lot of people.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: You could sense some of my frustration here and how many times this comes up.
• 15:55
  Philip Pape: For those of my clients listening who have benefited from me sharing microplates, who didn't know this before, I apologize if that comes across as insulting, but I guess I'm just saying I'm surprised that it's not part of the common lexicon, like so many other things.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: So look for microplates which include both small fractional plates for your barbell but also plates that can go on dumbbells, and then that way you can progress in the right levels and then, as you get closer and closer to your limit, until you reduce the frequency.
• 16:30
  Philip Pape: In other words, if you're squatting three days a week, you can only go up so so much doing that before you have to now increase once a week, right.
• 16:39
  Philip Pape: Even if you're squatting three times a week, you may only go up once a week, for example, right.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: So it's got to depend on what level of training you're at.
• 16:45
  Philip Pape: So that's proportional controls, those small, consistent increases.
• 16:48
  Philip Pape: If you're a beginner, I definitely love focusing on increasing load, and then, as you become more advanced, you can learn how to increase on reps as well, or back and forth load reps, depending on what you're working on.
• 16:59
  Philip Pape: For integral control remember, this is the one based on accumulated fatigue you're going to want to track three metrics.
• 17:07
  Philip Pape: The first one is your volume per exercise.
• 17:10
  Philip Pape: This is sets times reps.
• 17:11
  Philip Pape: It could be times weight as well, so that's called tonnage, but even sets times reps, just the volume per exercise, okay.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: And then number two is the volume per muscle group, because that way you can see how many sets you're doing per muscle group, which will also tell you maybe you're not doing enough, depending on what your goals are and then your overall training load across your what some people call mesocycle or a block like a four to six week block.
• 17:38
  Philip Pape: What's your overall load?
• 17:39
  Philip Pape: And there's some cool apps that do this as well.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: If you're into that, like I use Boostcamp.
• 17:43
  Philip Pape: You could find a link to that below in the show notes.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: But with Boostcamp you could actually see a graph of your volume over time.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: So the program I'm following you'll see it go up for three weeks and then drop, and then go up for three weeks and drop.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: So that can be really helpful for those who are trying to make sure that you're in the sweet spot.
• 18:01
  Philip Pape: Now, if you're following a, if you have a personal trainer or you're following a really good coach or using one of the programs like that are already in Boost Camp, for example they're probably already set up to give you a reasonable volume.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: But you need to know hey, I'm feeling really fatigued, do I have too much volume?
• 18:18
  Philip Pape: Well, you don't know that unless you track it, and a lot of people don't track this stuff.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: I'll tell you, even in my lifting community, with all the buddies that lift, that I know a lot of them don't really think about volume.
• 18:26
  Philip Pape: A lot of them are following lower volume programs anyway.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: You may not have enough volume, though, for what you're trying to achieve, or you may have too much, and it depends on what phase you're into.
• 18:37
  Philip Pape: You may have to drop the volume, for example.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: So tracking, that's the only way you're going to know, right, that you're progressively overloading without overwhelming your system.
• 18:47
  Philip Pape: And then the last piece, the derivative control.
• 18:48
  Philip Pape: This is more.
• 18:49
  Philip Pape: How do you know, do you need recovery or deload, unless you've already built it in, which I talked about earlier, which is a really smart strategy.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: Just build it in and be proactive.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: But I want you to be tracking your biofeedback.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: How's your sleep quality?
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: How is your recovery?
• 19:03
  Philip Pape: I mean, are your warmup sets feeling smooth?
• 19:08
  Philip Pape: Are you feeling kind of wiped out right from the beginning?
• 19:09
  Philip Pape: Is your overall performance trending up or down?
• 19:11
  Philip Pape: How is your motivation?
• 19:12
  Philip Pape: How is your energy right?
• 19:13
  Philip Pape: All of that is important and, again, it may indicate a problem with your diet, with your carbs, with your meal timing, something else like with your sleep, with your stress.
• 19:21
  Philip Pape: But as long as you have the information, you can then start digging into the why behind them.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: And these indicators are great because they tell you whether you're adapting optimally or you need to adjust something.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: Of course you can use aura rings, you can use your Apple Watch, and those all have different measures of stress and resilience.
• 19:36
  Philip Pape: It's all good stuff, just make sure you're correlating it with what you're doing.
• 19:40
  Philip Pape: So the key to all of this?
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: To progressive overload and notice.
• 19:43
  Philip Pape: I'm just talking principles here.
• 19:44
  Philip Pape: This one principle is going to translate to everything else.
• 19:47
  Philip Pape: It is even more important than, for example, mechanical tension.
• 19:50
  Philip Pape: Right, we talk about mechanical tension being the driver of hypertrophy and muscle mass, but I've never seen a really good lifter not also progress by virtue of using mechanical tension.
• 20:01
  Philip Pape: Thus it's sort of a secondary principle, if you will.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: As long as you're progressing, that tells you you're doing the right things.
• 20:07
  Philip Pape: Now you may have to uncover what things you need to do right to get to proper progressive overload.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: That's a whole different deep dive.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: So the sustainable feedback loop is pretty cool once you've implemented it.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: It makes you a lifter, it makes you confident, it helps you get progress.
• 20:25
  Philip Pape: So I have a client who made progress on a beginning style three by five style program, kind of like starting strength with some modifications right, and she made progress for a while and then she started to move into an intermediate program and started to stall a little bit and get frustrated and asked her are you progressing on all of your accessory movements?
• 20:44
  Philip Pape: She's like, yeah, all of that's coming straight up.
• 20:45
  Philip Pape: I said, okay, then there's something going on with the main lifts in one of these three areas we're talking about here that we're off on.
• 20:51
  Philip Pape: We're either not increasing the right levels right, we we are, we have too much fatigue.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: I don't think that's the issue in this case, but you know, could always be that I think it's more the proportional control.
• 21:01
  Philip Pape: We're not necessarily going up in the right levels.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: Something's off in the way we're progressing.
• 21:05
  Philip Pape: If she's able to progress all this other stuff, you know it could be a form issue or something as well.
• 21:09
  Philip Pape: All right, so you know.
• 21:11
  Philip Pape: What do you do here for this system?
• 21:12
  Philip Pape: Just to recap, you're going to monitor performance through consistent tracking, so you have the data to act on.
• 21:18
  Philip Pape: You're going to make small strategic adjustments based on your data.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: You're going to have adequate recovery between training sessions, between sets and across your whole block of training and you're going to repeat this while gradually increasing demands over time as your capacity increases and then, when all of this works well, you're going to notice consistent strength gains without plateaus.
• 21:40
  Philip Pape: They're going to be very infrequent and usually for other reasons, or usually because you've just gone, you've overreached just a little bit.
• 21:45
  Philip Pape: You're going to have better recovery between sessions.
• 21:48
  Philip Pape: You're probably going to have fewer aches and pains, lower likelihood of injury and more predictable progress, like you can forecast.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: Okay, six months.
• 21:56
  Philip Pape: I want to.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: I want my deadlift to be here and I know I have a pretty good confidence I can get there now that I've gotten a predictable process in place.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: And that's how you build lasting strength without burnout or injury.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: Right, it's not as exciting as chasing big numbers every session, but it's far more effective and efficient in the long run.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: That's what we're all about, right?
• 22:16
  Philip Pape: What's what's fascinating about all this is, once you understand this control your body is a control system.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: It has these feedback loops you realize that progressive overload really isn't about just adding weight to the bar.
• 22:26
  Philip Pape: Right, it's actually about optimizing your body's adaptation mechanisms, your adaptation mechanisms.
• 22:33
  Philip Pape: The weight on the bar is just a method to get there right.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: And then that framework can apply to any fitness goal, from fat loss to muscle gain.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: They're all adaptations.
• 22:44
  Philip Pape: So then you're not just building strength, you're becoming guess what an engineer of your own physique.
• 22:52
  Philip Pape: That is what we do on this show.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: That is the point.
• 22:54
  Philip Pape: When you stop chasing arbitrary numbers of any of this stuff and you start treating training, nutrition, mental growth, all of it, relationships like the sophisticated control system, it is, I mean, your body.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: When it comes to training, everything changes.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: Your progress becomes more consistent, more predictable and, ultimately, more sustainable.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: All right, and again, if you want to apply these principles to your training, join us in Wits and Weights Physique University.
• 23:23
  Philip Pape: I'm going to give you a secret link in the show notes, and I didn't mention it earlier, but in addition to the 14-day free trial, in addition to a free challenge, you are going to get a discounted rate from what is publicly available.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: It is a rate that I am testing with new clients.
• 23:39
  Philip Pape: Keep it a secret.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: Well, I know the millions of people listening to the show won't but hearty heart, okay.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: Anyway, back in the physique university.
• 23:49
  Philip Pape: You know we use this approach, this kind of very logical, objective, efficient, confident building approach, to help you build strength and muscle and also tackle your nutrition Nutrition is a huge part of it To make this sustainable, to stay injury-free, to get the confidence in the wins constantly.
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: So click the link in my show notes for the 14-day free trial, the free challenge, the secret discounted price.
• 24:12
  Philip Pape: And remember, smart training beats random progress.
• 24:17
  Philip Pape: Chasing every time, every single time, all right until next time.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: Keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember your body is the most sophisticated control system you'll ever work with, so learn how to use it.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape.
• 24:31
  Philip Pape: You've been listening to Wits and Weights.
• 24:33
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.