In my 20's I used to play 4 hours of basketball a day at LA fitness AFTER training. Train first, then hoop. Would always think that other people just "didn't want it as bad" or "weren't willing to put the time in." Now at 33 with a family and a business I can relate way more to my athletes who need a quick workout and can't spend hours in the gym. And this is being in the strength and conditioning field WITH a garage gym. Couldn't agree more Edit: Wouldn't do barefoot grounding even if I had the time lol
Dude I REALLY liked how you hit on the condescending nature of fitness professionals. I’m a personal trainer with wife and kids and other trainers I work with don’t have kids and are ALWAYS talking about “how easy it is” It’s a lame take and you’re right it makes you MORE unrelatable to your clientele.
Ive hit PRs off 4 hours of sleep/“under-fed”/dehydrated and ive also had “bad” sessions where most of, if not all, of those variables went as well as they could’ve. Some days we have it and some days we don’t, getting into the gym is the only way to find out. My favorite “ego lifts” by your definition are zercher deadlifts from the floor, atg weighted dips, deficit pendlay rows, and barbell bulgarian split squats Question for your next training vlog: are there any particular strongman-type exercises you’re fond of doing/watching?
2 thoughts, 1. I appreciate my Garage gym so much. Even working a fulltime job and having 2 young daughters, I can manage 3-4 1 hour sessions a week. It's a struggle even then. I know 100% , though. Had I not built the gym, I would have fallen off. 2. I suffered terrible insomnia due to sleep apnea. I finally got in for a sleep study (don't get me started on Canadian healthcare) and eventually got it sorted. Massive difference once I got the dental appliance to open my airways up. I was basically a zombie for 3 years. A lot of weeks, I'd have 3-4 hours a night, waking up at 2-3am. Night terrors, heart issues. Now that my sleep apnea is sorted out, even with a toddler and a baby, a "suboptimal" 6-7 hours, is miles better. I had a year of really good gains off the back of actually being to get real sleep. Having had terrible sleep, ok sleep, and good sleep, I will never take "ok" sleep for granted, and If I'm feeling any kind of rested, I'm going to work out.
It the best man. And I watch ALL the others but this one is the best, most honest, and best takes on the many false “absolute truths” in the fitness industry
Great points on sleep, very important but worrying about only getting 6.5 hours is doing more harm then just getting up and getting after it...Last of a dying bread is a banger
Coincidentally or not, I asked these two questions in the same comment on one of your videos a few weeks ago and they're both being addressed in this vid. Hi Will! Comments/clarifications/rebuts below if you care to read. Heavy agree on training hard to make you tired. I often tell my clients some form of the phrase "have you earned the right to sleep?". Are they sitting all day, not training hard most days of the week, and generally maintaining a very inactive lifestyle. Such a good point to make. Many people struggle falling asleep due to the fact that they’re in a caloric surplus, with little to no activity, and TONS of screen time and wonder "why am I having such a hard time getting to bed?" That said, a couple comments/rebuts. Warmer temperatures (sauna, warm baths/showers) may actually have a greater effect on lowering your core body temperature via thermoregulation and evaporation - I'd be curious to see if instead of a cold shower you took a luke-warm one, just to clean off the sweat from the sauna but keep your skin temperature somewhat warm. If it's cold, you body's response might be to warm your internal temp, shivering, blood flood, etc. (while your actual skin temp may be cooler). I'd be curious if you made that change how you'd feel. Food for thought! You state in your video that you aren't proactive about your recovery at ALL, but literally go on to describe a recovery strategy that you try to do 1-2x per week that seems to be reactive in terms of doing it when you feel run down, but that's inherently proactive to encourage better sleep and recovery for tomorrow based on how you feel today. A little bit of contradiction. Sleep and nutrition are definitely scape goats, but do you feel that sleep is an important aspect of performance/health at all? On days when you sleep poorly are you a proponent of NOT adjusting your training based on your perceived level of recovery by sleep? (not talking about Whoop score lolol.) RE: Ego lifting - I really like your take, but I would argue that your stance doesn't really use the conventionally accepted definition of ego lifting. A semantic difference, but for the purposes of an argument it's a bit of a persuasive fallacy. Ego lifting commonly assumes lifting more than you should and in a way that compromises technique. So it seems like you AREN'T a proponent of ego lifting, and maybe your definition is more you're a proponent of novel stimulus?
It still amazes me how much you can bounce your knees directly onto the floor on those lunges. I wonder if Wolff's law also applies to impact on the patella and the patellar tendon with impacts like that, would the patella become thicker and denser if you repeatedly bang it into the floor and progress load over time gradually?
I love how pissed off Will got about this one influencers “24hrs a day” post - both during this video, but also clearly earlier when he scoped out her profile to make sure he had more ammunition😂😂
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if most of these fitness people you're describing viewers are 20 somethings with no responsibilities. Thanks a ton for addressing this cuz this is really hitting home for me at this point in my life.
1 poor sleep doesn’t affect performance. 5 poor sleeps per week is an issue. And yeah, like you say, you can’t control falling asleep and staying asleep when you are already in bed, but you can do a bit more throughout a day to make your night sleep better. Just being exhausted is not enough. In fact it often leads to a much worse sleep if you are overstimulated. The balance is the key: train hard enough and relax enough. Sleep trackers do a great job to help people find this balance. Lots of stats are pretty useless but some can really help you with improving sleep quality: HRV and minutes of deep and REM sleep. The higher these numbers the more ready you are to train hard this day. Just need to learn which activities cause the decrease of those for YOU. For instance, sauna gives me that “relaxed” feeling but it wrecks both HRV and deep sleep numbers. Finally I discovered why I always felt weaker and a bit moody at training the day after intense sauna session. The solution was to plan sauna before days off only. The same with alcohol (yeah, I know, you are not supposed to drink at all if you are serious about the results), only before the days with no training. But what has the highest impact on sleep to me is the workout intensity and its timing. Sprint or heavy weights = can’t deep sleep for at least 8 hours afterwards. Intense conditioning = maybe even more. Very light (Zone 2) aerobic training is the only kind of activity I can do in the evening and expect more or less restoring sleep that night. I know that everyone is different. That’s why I’m really happy I started to track my sleep with gadgets and build my own routine instead of copying the others.
Will are you a fan of Alex Leonidas’s work ? And I’ve consistently gotten 6.5 hours while working 7-12’s in a plant. This phrase, Napoleon Bonaparte prescribes sleep like this: 6 hours for a man, 7 for a woman, and 8 for a fool
Haha on the comments on Chris Williamson. Yeah it’s a bit much the whole kind of elite content creator routine hyper-optimisation bio hacking schtick. Yes, out of touch to most working people.
18:50 But surely this goes back to the argument of load management. Rounding your back on deadlifts, flaring your elbows on bench press and divebombing/good morning squats are all things considered 'bad technique' but then there are exercises like the Jefferson curl, guillotine press, cleans and actual good mornings which exaggerate these qualities. We accept that as long as you don't progress too quickly or train with too much fatigue then you don't have to worry about getting injured.
19:21 I think Jordan approaches technique more from an efficiency position but he also typically throws a disclaimer that egregious unreasonable departures are probably not awesome. Also from what I understand over the years with the technique to injury discussion, load and fatigue management (with load representing weight, stress, volume, total time, etc) is typically more identifiable as the potential catalyzers of most injuries. And it kinda makes sense pragmatically: for example, take someone who squats like they’ve never taken a shit in their lives (that just means they have really, really bad form in a funny sounding way) and they’re using manageable loads, not far exceeding volume, and have been doing this for a while. Likely won’t be at much risk for injury if nothings out of the ordinary. Also plenty of people injure themselves using perfect technique. Maybe they did 30-40% more volume or yolo’d weight this session or their cat died recently so stress levels are through the roof. I’d care less if they’re good morning the weight a bit because they used excessive hip drahve and more about what’s pushing them to make the decisions in the gym that result in poor outcomes. I’m curious, does that make sense or resonate with you at all? Because this is always a topic I try to get fresh perspectives on and I highly value your opinion on this subject matter
i think your comment above is a better summation of the bbm/Jordan and Austen philosophy on the topic. i would add they probably also cautious to say something like poor technique directly causes injury since that can create a fear stigma that would probably feed into some kind of movement fear. per your comment above, if so called form breakdown is occurring and causing an injury it is probably due more to poor load management or other external factors controllable and uncontrollable. some days you can have up to a 20% max variation in performance for ostensibly no reason.
it's insane how these people can't form a mental association between having less responsibilities in life than the everyman, and having more time to train than the everyman.
Hi Will, I tweaked my hamstring two days ago playing basketball. It doesn't hurt too much but I notice a some degree discomfort. The day after I did some bw hinges and hamstring bridges and it feels better now. Any advice to deal with the injury?
Hey man, I would really appreciate it if you could go into more detail about your opinion about the relationship between technique and injury. Would you throw some example in there, pretty please ?
Anecdotally, I seem to recover worse if I am chronically underslept. On a work-out to work-out basis my performance likely isn’t much worse if I can get my head on straight and focus, but it seems that injuries and chronic pains tend to creep in more when I sleep worse. Admittedly, those times in life I also tend to be more stressed and less nutritionally balanced, so there are some confounded. N = 1
hmm, not sure I agree with scaling rpe like that. Cause if your work sets are 350 and mine are 150, obviously 5-10 lbs is not the same for both of us. But love the content overall
You can still function and perform well in the gym if you're on peds. It's not debatable that it's unhealthy for you, especially if you're slamming coffee, cigs, stimulants, or sauzule to do it.
Is an EMOM like an Egirl that's a MILF? 🤔 Yeah mayne, some of these people are out of touch with reality. There was a period of time when I had to take care of multiple family members with alzheimers and other debilitating diseases for over half a decade, bro. Plus other responsibilities, it was almost impossible to find time to work out in a gym back then. Working out is a privilege, IMO. Nah bro, ego lifting is bad. People should never do that. 🙄😏 Good talk, Will.
18:55 about evidence based guys...is Alec Blenis legit and where he make mistakes? Make video about that and help us see the truth about "technique thing" more clearly.
Thank you for calling out these Huberman/tech bro content creators and their neurotic obsession with morning routines and optimization. Shit is so annoying and completely divorced from reality for most people.
The barbell medicine guys seem like they got good content, but I do remember Jordan dogging Squat University on his idea that hip anatomy could change how someone performs a squat, which is fine if you disagree with that statement, but he also says he can’t frontsquat due to his “anthropology”. That to me sounds quite hypocritical, but maybe I’m misunderstanding what he’s saying.
Going off the assumption you are on at least a TRT dose of testosterone, sleep won’t be as important compared to someone who is natural. But for a natural, sleep is the most important part of training once you have dialled in diet and what you’re doing in the gym.
@@kapoioBCSI have no issue with it either way but does put things into perspective regarding recovery. I’d also prioritise sleep a lot less if I was on PEDs. Will’s training philosophy and work ethic is top tier regardless.
In my 20's I used to play 4 hours of basketball a day at LA fitness AFTER training. Train first, then hoop. Would always think that other people just "didn't want it as bad" or "weren't willing to put the time in." Now at 33 with a family and a business I can relate way more to my athletes who need a quick workout and can't spend hours in the gym. And this is being in the strength and conditioning field WITH a garage gym. Couldn't agree more
Edit: Wouldn't do barefoot grounding even if I had the time lol
Dude I REALLY liked how you hit on the condescending nature of fitness professionals.
I’m a personal trainer with wife and kids and other trainers I work with don’t have kids and are ALWAYS talking about “how easy it is”
It’s a lame take and you’re right it makes you MORE unrelatable to your clientele.
2:27 - 2:53 Real talk. The hottest spot in hell is reserved for millionaires talking about their morning routines.
really liked that will talked about that, he is a man of the people
Will you are the man. For the people. I am grateful I heard your message. Keep going.
Ive hit PRs off 4 hours of sleep/“under-fed”/dehydrated and ive also had “bad” sessions where most of, if not all, of those variables went as well as they could’ve. Some days we have it and some days we don’t, getting into the gym is the only way to find out.
My favorite “ego lifts” by your definition are zercher deadlifts from the floor, atg weighted dips, deficit pendlay rows, and barbell bulgarian split squats
Question for your next training vlog: are there any particular strongman-type exercises you’re fond of doing/watching?
LOL Will DOGGGIN folks in this one!! haha i love it
2 thoughts,
1. I appreciate my Garage gym so much. Even working a fulltime job and having 2 young daughters, I can manage 3-4 1 hour sessions a week. It's a struggle even then. I know 100% , though. Had I not built the gym, I would have fallen off.
2. I suffered terrible insomnia due to sleep apnea. I finally got in for a sleep study (don't get me started on Canadian healthcare) and eventually got it sorted. Massive difference once I got the dental appliance to open my airways up.
I was basically a zombie for 3 years. A lot of weeks, I'd have 3-4 hours a night, waking up at 2-3am. Night terrors, heart issues.
Now that my sleep apnea is sorted out, even with a toddler and a baby, a "suboptimal" 6-7 hours, is miles better. I had a year of really good gains off the back of actually being to get real sleep.
Having had terrible sleep, ok sleep, and good sleep, I will never take "ok" sleep for granted, and If I'm feeling any kind of rested, I'm going to work out.
This is my favorite channel
It the best man. And I watch ALL the others but this one is the best, most honest, and best takes on the many false “absolute truths” in the fitness industry
Great points on sleep, very important but worrying about only getting 6.5 hours is doing more harm then just getting up and getting after it...Last of a dying bread is a banger
Your message was spot on. So many influencers promoting all these life hack optimization routines. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit
My man Will that was gold fam 🫡
People asking you about kboges ties in pretty perfectly with the regular busy people training
Coincidentally or not, I asked these two questions in the same comment on one of your videos a few weeks ago and they're both being addressed in this vid. Hi Will! Comments/clarifications/rebuts below if you care to read.
Heavy agree on training hard to make you tired. I often tell my clients some form of the phrase "have you earned the right to sleep?". Are they sitting all day, not training hard most days of the week, and generally maintaining a very inactive lifestyle. Such a good point to make. Many people struggle falling asleep due to the fact that they’re in a caloric surplus, with little to no activity, and TONS of screen time and wonder "why am I having such a hard time getting to bed?"
That said, a couple comments/rebuts. Warmer temperatures (sauna, warm baths/showers) may actually have a greater effect on lowering your core body temperature via thermoregulation and evaporation - I'd be curious to see if instead of a cold shower you took a luke-warm one, just to clean off the sweat from the sauna but keep your skin temperature somewhat warm. If it's cold, you body's response might be to warm your internal temp, shivering, blood flood, etc. (while your actual skin temp may be cooler). I'd be curious if you made that change how you'd feel. Food for thought!
You state in your video that you aren't proactive about your recovery at ALL, but literally go on to describe a recovery strategy that you try to do 1-2x per week that seems to be reactive in terms of doing it when you feel run down, but that's inherently proactive to encourage better sleep and recovery for tomorrow based on how you feel today. A little bit of contradiction.
Sleep and nutrition are definitely scape goats, but do you feel that sleep is an important aspect of performance/health at all? On days when you sleep poorly are you a proponent of NOT adjusting your training based on your perceived level of recovery by sleep? (not talking about Whoop score lolol.)
RE: Ego lifting - I really like your take, but I would argue that your stance doesn't really use the conventionally accepted definition of ego lifting. A semantic difference, but for the purposes of an argument it's a bit of a persuasive fallacy. Ego lifting commonly assumes lifting more than you should and in a way that compromises technique. So it seems like you AREN'T a proponent of ego lifting, and maybe your definition is more you're a proponent of novel stimulus?
Will... a most appropriate name for this individual.
It still amazes me how much you can bounce your knees directly onto the floor on those lunges. I wonder if Wolff's law also applies to impact on the patella and the patellar tendon with impacts like that, would the patella become thicker and denser if you repeatedly bang it into the floor and progress load over time gradually?
I love how pissed off Will got about this one influencers “24hrs a day” post - both during this video, but also clearly earlier when he scoped out her profile to make sure he had more ammunition😂😂
these vids are awesome dude, keep them coming. one of the only "real" content creators out there
Oath!
I appreciate that!
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if most of these fitness people you're describing viewers are 20 somethings with no responsibilities. Thanks a ton for addressing this cuz this is really hitting home for me at this point in my life.
1 poor sleep doesn’t affect performance. 5 poor sleeps per week is an issue. And yeah, like you say, you can’t control falling asleep and staying asleep when you are already in bed, but you can do a bit more throughout a day to make your night sleep better. Just being exhausted is not enough. In fact it often leads to a much worse sleep if you are overstimulated. The balance is the key: train hard enough and relax enough. Sleep trackers do a great job to help people find this balance. Lots of stats are pretty useless but some can really help you with improving sleep quality: HRV and minutes of deep and REM sleep. The higher these numbers the more ready you are to train hard this day. Just need to learn which activities cause the decrease of those for YOU. For instance, sauna gives me that “relaxed” feeling but it wrecks both HRV and deep sleep numbers. Finally I discovered why I always felt weaker and a bit moody at training the day after intense sauna session. The solution was to plan sauna before days off only. The same with alcohol (yeah, I know, you are not supposed to drink at all if you are serious about the results), only before the days with no training. But what has the highest impact on sleep to me is the workout intensity and its timing. Sprint or heavy weights = can’t deep sleep for at least 8 hours afterwards. Intense conditioning = maybe even more. Very light (Zone 2) aerobic training is the only kind of activity I can do in the evening and expect more or less restoring sleep that night. I know that everyone is different. That’s why I’m really happy I started to track my sleep with gadgets and build my own routine instead of copying the others.
Will are you a fan of Alex Leonidas’s work ? And I’ve consistently gotten 6.5 hours while working 7-12’s in a plant. This phrase, Napoleon Bonaparte prescribes sleep like this: 6 hours for a man, 7 for a woman, and 8 for a fool
Haha on the comments on Chris Williamson. Yeah it’s a bit much the whole kind of elite content creator routine hyper-optimisation bio hacking schtick. Yes, out of touch to most working people.
18:50 But surely this goes back to the argument of load management. Rounding your back on deadlifts, flaring your elbows on bench press and divebombing/good morning squats are all things considered 'bad technique' but then there are exercises like the Jefferson curl, guillotine press, cleans and actual good mornings which exaggerate these qualities. We accept that as long as you don't progress too quickly or train with too much fatigue then you don't have to worry about getting injured.
My performance is low because I’m nearing 40 but my mind still remembers what I did in my 20s 😅 that’s a mind fuck
19:21 I think Jordan approaches technique more from an efficiency position but he also typically throws a disclaimer that egregious unreasonable departures are probably not awesome. Also from what I understand over the years with the technique to injury discussion, load and fatigue management (with load representing weight, stress, volume, total time, etc) is typically more identifiable as the potential catalyzers of most injuries. And it kinda makes sense pragmatically: for example, take someone who squats like they’ve never taken a shit in their lives (that just means they have really, really bad form in a funny sounding way) and they’re using manageable loads, not far exceeding volume, and have been doing this for a while. Likely won’t be at much risk for injury if nothings out of the ordinary. Also plenty of people injure themselves using perfect technique. Maybe they did 30-40% more volume or yolo’d weight this session or their cat died recently so stress levels are through the roof. I’d care less if they’re good morning the weight a bit because they used excessive hip drahve and more about what’s pushing them to make the decisions in the gym that result in poor outcomes. I’m curious, does that make sense or resonate with you at all? Because this is always a topic I try to get fresh perspectives on and I highly value your opinion on this subject matter
i think your comment above is a better summation of the bbm/Jordan and Austen philosophy on the topic. i would add they probably also cautious to say something like poor technique directly causes injury since that can create a fear stigma that would probably feed into some kind of movement fear. per your comment above, if so called form breakdown is occurring and causing an injury it is probably due more to poor load management or other external factors controllable and uncontrollable. some days you can have up to a 20% max variation in performance for ostensibly no reason.
it's insane how these people can't form a mental association between having less responsibilities in life than the everyman, and having more time to train than the everyman.
Having kids is definitely a game changer, regarding making time to train. Priorities change dramatically.
Thoughts on grip training?
Hi Will, I tweaked my hamstring two days ago playing basketball. It doesn't hurt too much but I notice a some degree discomfort. The day after I did some bw hinges and hamstring bridges and it feels better now.
Any advice to deal with the injury?
Hey man, I would really appreciate it if you could go into more detail about your opinion about the relationship between technique and injury. Would you throw some example in there, pretty please ?
Waiting for that RPE vid
Imminent
Anecdotally, I seem to recover worse if I am chronically underslept. On a work-out to work-out basis my performance likely isn’t much worse if I can get my head on straight and focus, but it seems that injuries and chronic pains tend to creep in more when I sleep worse. Admittedly, those times in life I also tend to be more stressed and less nutritionally balanced, so there are some confounded. N = 1
Hey Will! Have you heard about ''Easy Strength'' by Dan John? If so, what are you thoughts? Cheers.
I would pay to see you rant abt speed profiling (James wild) and sprint models in general such as those promoted by Altis
hmm, not sure I agree with scaling rpe like that. Cause if your work sets are 350 and mine are 150, obviously 5-10 lbs is not the same for both of us. But love the content overall
Yeah I feel ya. Something that can be individualized.
Hey will, big lurker fan here! I wanted to ask you what kind of floor protection you use there, thanks
Hey will what do you think of dumbbell or bent arm barbell pullovers for shoulder health / lats?
Straight out of a hot ass shower to laying down under a cool fan puts me down damn near instantly.
There's a guy at my gym that needs to only do Larson Press for about a year.
Eminem the best workout music 🔥
You can still function and perform well in the gym if you're on peds. It's not debatable that it's unhealthy for you, especially if you're slamming coffee, cigs, stimulants, or sauzule to do it.
I feel so god damn vindicated right now 15:28 thank fuck someone saying it
based
Is an EMOM like an Egirl that's a MILF? 🤔
Yeah mayne, some of these people are out of touch with reality. There was a period of time when I had to take care of multiple family members with alzheimers and other debilitating diseases for over half a decade, bro. Plus other responsibilities, it was almost impossible to find time to work out in a gym back then. Working out is a privilege, IMO.
Nah bro, ego lifting is bad. People should never do that. 🙄😏
Good talk, Will.
Based
18:55 about evidence based guys...is Alec Blenis legit and where he make mistakes? Make video about that and help us see the truth about "technique thing" more clearly.
Thank you for calling out these Huberman/tech bro content creators and their neurotic obsession with morning routines and optimization. Shit is so annoying and completely divorced from reality for most people.
Algo
Comment for the algo
algo
Algo comment
The barbell medicine guys seem like they got good content, but I do remember Jordan dogging Squat University on his idea that hip anatomy could change how someone performs a squat, which is fine if you disagree with that statement, but he also says he can’t frontsquat due to his “anthropology”. That to me sounds quite hypocritical, but maybe I’m misunderstanding what he’s saying.
Smart dude. Provides a lot of good information and takes. But his world view leads him to many bad takes too lol
Geeze. Easy on the good dad, good husband virtue signaling 😂
Lol
Going off the assumption you are on at least a TRT dose of testosterone, sleep won’t be as important compared to someone who is natural. But for a natural, sleep is the most important part of training once you have dialled in diet and what you’re doing in the gym.
He is at least at a ‘’sport’’ TRT dose, even if he denies it
@@kapoioBCSI have no issue with it either way but does put things into perspective regarding recovery. I’d also prioritise sleep a lot less if I was on PEDs. Will’s training philosophy and work ethic is top tier regardless.
Lol I don’t take any dose of TRT
@@willratelle8027lol dang thats gotta be flattering. I strive to be called fake natty
@@SpaceMarine777 it's not, it's just annoying these clowns on youtube comments pretending they're experts