Podcast 230 // How much is too much reps & sets | School of Calisthenics

welcome back to another podcast this week we're going to talk about we're going to get a little bit granular this week i would like to use that word jacob sometimes i hear people saying that is a good word because it perfectly describes where we're going we're going into a little bit of training program detail around reps and sets now don't switch off and get bored because there's some juicy stuff within this whereas i think a few people in the fitness industry have lost their mind when it comes to thinking about where we should structure and how we should use reps and sets to create specific adaptations or maybe non-specific adaptations that will all be revealed as we dive into this week's conversation all right so when you said granular i was thinking grains and i wasn't if we were discussing my second favorite carbohydrate obviously the first being the potato and the second being um oats maybe that can be that could be for for another day but something if you're not necessarily um this is going to segue into the earth and thanking the podcast sponsors um if you're not trying to um fuel yourself sort of ketogenically then carbohydrate is a great energy source to do something like a big a big long run what's more exciting than a big long run or a short fast run or any number of different distances of runs between five and 21k um would be to do some runs with some obstacles in them which sounds very much like an obstacle course but the podcast sponsors spartan it's not just any obstacle race it's like what we would sort of call um the uh the real deal or as i think the french would describe it as the uh the creme brulee or the de resistance is french isn't it what's the friendship pierre the resistance i don't know actually is that the rolls-royce of obstacle course races in my book this one that's that's still got me there i don't even i don't even know what that means um what's going on in my mind is i don't even know if you if that i'm wondering is jaco know that it's not called the creme brulee or the creme de la creme is that what you meant but you've intentionally went to creme brulee by the way the mysteries of your mind all of those all of those things all of those things um now very excitingly um not only are spartaway sponsoring the podcast but as part of that they are very kindly and very generously offering and if you haven't heard listen to this then where have you where have you been but there's 53 places available to come and join us at a spartan right where you can actually join any spartan race you want but the invitation is to come and join us on the 16th 17th of july the midlands um and uh obviously there are a lot of space has been taken the tea the wolf pack is growing for that event but there are still some spaces available you do have to do a couple of things one is um to show that you are actually going to take part in this and that you've done more training than tim thinking that tim has done zero training don't be scared if you haven't done much but just you can at least mock yourself up and pretending that you're doing some training for it to get one of the free spaces uh worth over 90 pounds i think to join the event and it's going to be free if you do these things take a picture or a video of you in your training slash getting ready for pretending like tim to train for the event uh tag spa at spartan use the hashtag spartanrace and then importantly tag us at schoolgarces and send that picture or video to us on instagram so that we can validate you have done all those things and then you will be given the free code to use on the website awesome um it is true i have a minimum amount of training and it's also basically we did a tough mudder before there was a covert thing and um that was i think that was about eight or nine miles was it wasn't that far was it it should have been called a tough colder because i didn't get that muddy but i got very cold and wet yeah and it took us a while to get around um so i'm basing my experience off that i'm going can i do that twice hopefully a little bit faster and and what the thing where we did went wrong on the tough mudder was we spent far too long pissing about on the obstacles so there was one bit where we remember those big bowlers the toblerone rollers in the water and like ideally would have got it and got out because spending water time in cold dirty water is only going to be negative for performance and we were there for half an hour yeah we're going to the team environment i'm going to help everybody get through and everyone there was there was a nice um element that but yes that we we did probably spend at least half an hour doing that initial uh obviously so for anybody listening to this guy there's actually now there is there is i understand there is a 10k team so like we are kind of by default having to look at the 21k because i can't do the sunday um but there is now a 10k option so you can do that you always have five capture on the sunday as well so there are many people at both days and my number one rule for or suggestion for your um approach and obstacle course race if you haven't done one before is that of selfishness get yourself around don't worry about anybody else that will mean that you get the most the best out of the experience is that is that the right message in gekko and where we're at going with this one um it's it's it's it's great it's great messaging if that's what the person wants to hear um i don't know that it's necessarily the number one rule because i do believe um we had a couple of fairly like one person doing like the european championships or something join us last time and uh shout out to um to to fit geek ocr steve who i believe the number one rule was something to do with around footwear which um i think mine was highly inappropriate at the time um but uh you're gonna do this one either let's not put i i've i ain't got anything else i've got rid of everything i only i'm only vevoing so yes i'll be in my vivos big logs on right let's get off this one into some chat about reps and sets so sit back and enjoy this week's podcast where we get a little bit granular there we go twice in the one in one sitting around program design and how to actually get what you want or whether that might look like here's the jingle listen players you're listening to the movement strength and play podcast by the school of calisthenics here are your hosts tim and jacob now that i want to break out of what is potentially a little echo chamber um today in terms of we jacking out a conversation around what do we see in the fitness landscape at the moment what's happening out there in fit world and one of the things i see and i don't know if it's just being manipulated by the algorithms that rule more about my life than i probably appreciate but i tend to see the fitness industry is hell-bent on volume at the moment and i don't see many people structuring programs around three sets of ten or eight reps four sets you see a little bit more of kind of like the maximal strength ranges where people might be kind of doing powerlifting type work five by fives four by five that sort of stuff but what i do see a lot of is like 50 40 30 20 21 15 12 9 these kind of rep ranges and when i came through strength and conditioning school those weren't an option like they were not on the representation to put that down at that point like it was typically not in certain sectors around 2008 if you put any more than 12 on um on a training program then you effectively were a pt not a strength and conditioning coach that was literally what got said to me once and since proven to be completely not a garbage um but i do think it's interesting to think about this because people often get pulled into and influenced by what other people are doing so why do we find ourselves doing these higher rep ranges and why are people programming them and there's a real source of where that's come from but what's why are we not still using or why might we choose to use a four sets eight reps type of protocol with a 90 second rest period in between that still has a massive value and it's actually where the sign sits in terms of physical adaptation so we're going to dig into a little bit this one but jaco give us a little bit of flavor as your experience as coming through the programming scientific kind of approach to writing training programs for athletes and then what that's look like in terms of a calisthenics program and anything else you want to wax on this one um i just you're reminding me of yuri i didn't mean to do that then you're reminding you remind me um of i'm thinking i'm just it's just took me back to pre-season where we didn't do a lot of high rep stuff typically like when i was playing rugby and we came back to one pre-season and snc coach joe brunski had uh it was like i've got this new i've got something got something new and a bit nasty for you and it's like well you you basically just used to think use the off-season to dream up ways to just torture us when when you'd come when you come back he he'd be like he'd be allowed six weeks to do whatever he wanted with you um and he called it r20 which was like 20 repetitions with good form uh let's say but um like a reasonable pace and it um and we were doing like five six eight set like a lot of sets was like you were doing way over um a hundred reps in quite a short space of time and it would be a good three or four days before you could sit on the toilet without um sort of going like so there was a lot of stress on the body and we weren't used to as you said like we weren't used to those higher rep ranges because you'd be sticking in your typical either if we were doing power or we're doing like more maximum strength stuff it would be like you know threes to fives for the max ring stuff and then like your eights your tenzin and you know meiji maybe dabbling into a 12 but nothing nothing that high um the to sort of like if i'm just reflecting on my own training and that definitely created an awful little different stimulus and in terms of like hypertrophy a lot of the boys in pre-season did like really well on that interestingly i didn't i didn't respond well to it like i it was almost like it was i don't know what it was almost like i was like my body was just like eating itself i didn't i was struggled to like i was a bit of a hard classic sort of like your hard gainer anyway and um that much volume um yeah whereas but but for from i was more of the the anomaly most guys like packed on were doing sort of like almost like a kilo a week or something like that if you were like getting your nutrition anything like so packing on some decent decent size in pre-season for a bit um the the something we've talked about before is like and i did it yesterday um i did sevens oh sure just to complete it just to be complete we've joked about this before but it's in that it's in that range where y7 just never gets any love but like i at the moment don't i actually i mean this is this will be slightly but my training is different at the moment particularly because i'm trying to do like an ultra marathon where it's like i'm not you know you don't count your reps when you're running but then with the strength stuff that i'm doing um i'm i incorporate some of that the breath work stuff so i'm actually doing a little bit of like i might be i might be counting my reps during a breath hold for example so i'm but i'm not trying to do a certain number of them and then i'm trying to be able to be in control of my breathing when i finish that and it might be i end up doing 18 reps or whatever or whatever it ends up being but it's i'm not setting out an intention for but i'm looking for a different purpose to the training i'm not and i'm not doing low rep stuff because i'm not at the moment requiring like a a strength adaptation and i also don't need sort of hypertrophy stuff at the moment because of the thing that i'm trying to do in a couple of months time so um as we would i guess always saying a lot of our advice it always depends and one of the and the most important thing is like doing making sure that you're training reflects the things that you're trying to improve on so um it might be nice potential well you can you can share any thoughts on that um as well as like if someone is wanting to do we've probably talked about this before in terms of those different rep ranges like if you want to do more strength endurance this is where you need to hit and if you want to do more hypertrophy this is some of the stuff that you need to to hit it's just my big thing for people is just for myself is like no making sure just knowing that like does your training reflect what you want to do and it might be some of the something for me sometimes for me now is simply as like i just want to enjoy my training so does my do i feel good and do i enjoy the session is my uh is potentially like how i'm evaluating it which is very un scientific but it's just where i'm currently at with um with my training i think it's an interesting like just conversation to reflect on because if i recognize my own biases in this like i come from a place of strength and conditioning working with athletes where we specifically need adaptations or certain adaptations for performance improvements whereas a lot of people might come at this conversation for more generalist approach and go i just want generally want to be quite fit able general like moderate levels of strength like it and that's what i kind of seeing a little bit of of just going what are you getting what is it my guess my question with training is always like what is the physical adaptation that you are seeking and because we've probably come from a background where it is quite specific i want to do a high pursuit block because that's what i need in order to get a bigger muscle which can produce more force and therefore give me better power outputs in six to 12 months time potentially whereas for lots of people going in and just getting work done is actually the most important thing but i kind of like still look at my own training and go well i'm still interested in specific adaptations so i want to and that's where you're going to utilize those rep ranges which will be in every kind of personal training and strength and conditioning book of what happens if you do one rep or what's adaptation what's the intensity that you should be targeting at that one repetition range at maximum strength type work and what happens if you get 10 or 12 repetitions because the physical logic physiological adaptation through that spectrum will be different so your max strength will typically be between one and five and there's gray areas in between right let's not think it's exclusive but typically if you want to load maximal strength you can work between the one to five rep range and those are going to be off percentages of your one repetition max of one hundred percent of your one rep max the most amount of weight you can lift for one repetition you can do no more than one through to let's say 85 percent of your one rep max at your five rep ranges so you can go five reps 85 percent you're probably not going to get six or seven out you then start to move into what's typically hypertrophy rep ranges from six through to ten to twelve but research is now suggesting that you can get hypertrophy all the way to 20 reps to your point jaco from before because what we're doing then is high gain hypertrophy of type 1 muscle fibers and type 2 muscle fibers because they both will respond differently to different sort of loading schemes i think the thing for me is where i'm looking at it and going when i see people going into workouts where they've got large kind of rep ranges where we might be going 20 ones tens all this kind of stuff thrown together 50 of that or whatever it might be mixed in with some work on like a skierg or something like that the fitness convert combined piece i think this is kind of like a self a bit of a reflective piece of going since the the crossfit and functional fitness has influenced the fitness market so much it wasn't there when i first started in the in the industry so what's happened i think now and the way that i look at it like to your something that you had done with training before but your strength work was done in the gym you're kind of one to ten rep range kind of work and your conditioning work was done on the pitch yeah whereas conditioning i think has now very much become part of the standard gym environment as we've got skiers assault bikes all that sort of all of that kind of fitness stuff has been brought inside so we've now got this kind of like combined environment where you can get away with doing a more general conditioning type program well i was actually at the gym this morning and looked at him and was like what i see group classes doing is it's it's conditioning because i don't think and people might argue if i'm wrong about this one but you're not going to get stronger from doing like high volume like kettlebell snatches or even like high volume kind of pull up work if you're mixing it in with conditioning work because you're just going to get tired so your your body's ability or your muscles ability to continue to produce the amount of force which is going to create a strength adaptation is going to be compromised so you get some strength endurance or you get maybe some conditioning or fitness type elements but if you want to get better at pull-ups or you want to get better at muscle ups then you need to go and train strength-based adaptations and respect that that needs a rest period my last point jack i'm going to bounce it back over to you so maximum strength type word because of the energy system that you're utilizing we typically need between three and five minutes of rest in between sets to allow you to go and train at that intensity to get that strength-based given your the desired objective or the target adaptation you're looking for if you go and try and lift heavy and you don't give yourself the rest period what you're going to find is that load just drops down you're just never going to get anywhere near because you're not getting a recovery in so it comes down to specificity and i guess the challenge here is like i see a lot of volume based mixed modal kind of conditioning work with some strength work in there i think my message to people really is understand what for me at least and here's my bias what is strength work and what is conditioning work and if you're doing a lot of conditioning work thinking you're going to get strong and that's going to improve your performance in calisthenics or whatever else you're looking for there's probably a disconnect there like last one yeah i look at crossfit classes and you don't get better at crossfit by doing crossfit classes you get better at doing crossfit by training your strength variables and then taking it into a class environment where you can then execute and utilize the strength that you've gained as a result of doing the five by five deadlifts with a three to five minute rest period that just doesn't get programmed really in group settings very regularly yeah yeah now that the there's one the point that you make around like the disconnect i think is is something that i feel is it is important that me [Music] training or a person training in a way that is helping create everything from like they want to do something very specific around like learning a skill or they want to do something specific in terms of maximal strength or they want to do something specific in terms of hypertrophy or they want to do something less specific they just want to move better they enjoy or be more flexible whatever it is if the training reflects that then there is no disconnect and like we're all good like do the thing that you're trying to do if you are trying to do x but i've got a bit there's a disconnect or we've got confused or we've got misled or whatever it's called to do it but your training doesn't actually reflect what you're trying to achieve then that disconnect is um for some reason i don't want to use the word problem but i've said it so because i don't feel like it feels like it fits but it's almost like um yeah that's just where someone that's where you want to um if you feel like that's maybe you like connect with someone a coach or get some advice from for some people and try to maybe maybe do a bit of learning yourself to understand like okay these are things i want to do what how does my training need to reflect um to make this happen that's the that's sort of my my personal takeaway from this and just like reflecting on my training and going like okay is it is what i'm doing now currently setting me up for what i think i hope i'm getting out of it if that makes sense and not not not getting out not but particularly if you're not getting if you're not getting out of your training what you're hoping to then maybe there is a disconnect that's probably one thing to reflect on i think for most people that in our community most people with doing calisthenics are going to want to get stronger like that's going to be an objective and i think a lot of people are also wanting to make sure they maintain some level of kind of metabolic conditioning or fitness um and i think that's for me where it's important just to differentiate between the two of how do you get more specific about getting the strength gains that you want to get you closer to your goals and then also building that conditioning components and and not kind of mushing them together so that you end up with something which is kind of to be fair if you mush it together like you'll get fitter like you'll get fit this is the easiest one it's the most simple one to get just do more work and do less rest and and change the intensities around that it's not difficult to do that um if it's a non-specific adaptation it's different if it's sport specific but where the strength side of things is it takes more time go um just to say like um i'm trying to get good at running a long distance but i'd also still want to be strong i like to i still want to have some strength so what i could do in theory would be well put a weighted vest on and go and run a lot that's ticking both those two boxes isn't it but it but it but we you laugh because you know that it isn't ticking those books it's just like mushing mushing the things together saying do i do some trait just some of my training focus on some strength and then on a different day or in different things then i'm going to do the same then i'm getting um different doses but trying not to mush them um together too much the other thing i was going to say actually which is about you were talking about like respecting the rest period you need in between some maximum strength working let me say any strength rate ratio is if you're trying to achieve something in calisthenics something that feels impossible you've never done before there's going to be yes probably a skill element to it but there's going to massively be a strength and the stronger you are we've said this low sounds the stronger the easier the thing is to do um and we we've had this question a few times before where we find it difficult to just not do anything for three to four to five minutes because we feel like we're unproductive so it's like can i do a bit of stretching or can i do a bit of this i kind of do a bit of this in that respirator it's like you can but just understand that you're potentially diluting what it is that you're then going to go and do the more um effort and energy that you're using up during that rest period it's going to influence then your actual force output for the strength gains you're going to get and that so if you know that you're doing that then that's fine and you might be trying to juggle a couple of things at once but know that you are diluting it rather than almost challenge if you find it very difficult to sit and just wait for those three minutes then um maybe that's a good challenge for you with just like maybe you do a tiny bit of mindfulness then maybe we talked a little bit around um can you can you can you do something with your breathing to just down regulate a little bit for those three four five minutes so you come back into the session back into your then work um a little bit more facilitating that recovery so rather than diluting and diminishing in that rest period can you maximize that rest period would be something that i would be considering to do but if that takes that's going to then take a little bit of discipline what it might look like from uh if you're going to try and help recovery for breathing which i think we've probably talked about last time but just a very very simplest one of life have you breathing in control in and out through the nose and extending the exhale is more parasympathetic promoting for that uh for that recovery response so doing some longer nasal exhales for a few minutes is is going to be beneficial for that recovery period so there's something you can drop in straight away or have a go at dropping in straight away and you feel like you're doing something which is often one of the big things for people i think it's like the challenge around that about rest periods particularly is where people want to be productive think i've got a limited amount of time so if i go into the gym and i'm trying to get this maximum strength adaptation and i've got to do three minutes minimum between sets you look at how much you can actually get done in a workout and think that's not great like i'm not i don't think i've achieved a lot and and oftentimes when we're talking to athletes about maximum strength training i said you're going to leave the gym feeling like you've not done that much work today you're not going to be covered in sweat you're probably not going to be that sore like it's gonna feel like you've just lifted some heavy weights and gone home and that's the thing that i think i want to get across to people is just to understand that that specificity and it might not seem like you've done a lot but in terms of getting the fastest way towards getting your goals if that's a muscle up for example you need to build that maximal strength in the pulling movement to then be able to get the power output that you're going to need the fastest way to do that is just do really high quality work and you hit the nail on the head jacket when it comes down to discipline of actually coming in and going i'm just going to hit these reps that's the target for the session today yeah that's what i'm going to focus on and you can look at the rest of your trading week like i don't tend to mash together into one session fitness and or conditioning and strength i'll have a strength based sessions most of the time and i'll put a conditioning based session in there because the focus then for me means that i don't if i've got like lifting based movements within it i don't have to worry about that being that hard i can i can just hit that an intensity which is just going to get the conditioning output rather than going in there and going i need to go and do some heavier weights and then compromising on technique and form because that's not the focus of that workout i can do that work and i can do i can get better at shoulder pressing or whatever it might be in my strength-based work the conditioning is then like just get heart rate up do a moderate amount of work make it difficult but move well and then just see those two different things that flies in the face we're like where a lot of people are out but that's kind of where my thoughts and opinion are about structuring a workout at the moment it's just quite because i want this i'm chasing specificity of adaptation effectively and not trying to just kind of blur it because i think when your time this is kind of because i'll look back to my first point yeah when you're time poor like i want to know that what i'm doing is getting me what i need or what i want rather than just kind of like it's that classic shotgun versus a sniper project i can do all of this work some of it might be getting stronger some of it might be getting me fitter some of it might be negating each other i just gonna do a lot my my solution to what i want is just to do a lot i'm like i actually want to do less that's not lazy it's just like i want to be specific so i know what i'm getting and therefore i can be confident that my training program is going in the right direction yeah and then and and also then like when you're efficient with your time means you can go and do more of the other other thing that you might love training but there'll be other things in your life hopefully that you love also and it's like you've got more time to go and do those other things that you love doing like going and running a spartan race or hopefully you have some things that you love that are non-training based as well perfect well that was just a bit of a download some stuff that was running around that heads this week around sort of just what we're seeing out there people doing and just some clarity on there because we know that training program design is complicated and difficult and can be confusing and you can often just go get pulled into seeing what's happening on instagram and also remember like so what you see on social media is going to be a snapshot of a workout so people will probably typically post the hardest thing that they're doing or the bit that's like the most insta-worthy and but that kind that that one minute that they show you doesn't necessarily represent everything that they're doing so just bear in mind what a whole session might look like and just get some clouting what am i actually doing and understand a little bit more about the reps and sets if that is if you are chasing specific physiological adaptations in terms of maximum strength or hypertrophy or strength endurance whatever it might be get clearing rep ranges respect those because they're proven in the science to work and tried and tested through generations of elite athletes bodybuilders power lifters all that sort of stuff um and then look at how what does it mean when or what does it look like when you're doing those other elements of your training program um i might do this because i'm good well i would always want to encourage people to go i want to see more people sharing the catch me like here's the worst thing i did today in my training session on here's the thing i'm work all the things that i do here's the thing i'm worst at like let's start let's um you know think thinking the opposite of a highlight reel must be a low light reel rather than sharing your things yeah well i think i'm rubbish rather than showing the creme brulee let's share the um eaton mess i like eating this i was gonna say just like something a bit something like that it surprises me you don't like eating cream mate too sweet i'm not a big fan it's basically sugar maybe also my experience of uh catherine makes things and when it just looks a bit messy she might call it and eat a mess okay and maybe it's actually nothing to do with that because when you said eat a mess i think i had more of a picture of rocky road in my head and that's not the same thing ah okay now eat something that's right cream meringue i think i've got some kind of fruity sort of stuff in it well right it's a similar rocky road right so if you've got any questions that you'd like us to answer guys please send them to us uh you can get us on our email addresses it's tim at or david at school of calisthenics.com um or you can instagram them to us if that is also a preferred medium we're not on tick tock are we jaco um yeah we are on tick tock there we go i don't even know that um so if you once again if you want to get in touch with us you can do that and we would love to answer your questions so send them in and uh we'll do that next time we have an available starting up busy podcast schedule until next time keep exploring your physical potential through movement strength and play class dismissed [Music] you