Introduction 

In this episode, Hayden welcomes Eric, an exercise science expert, who shares his journey from a passion for strength training and physique development as a teenager to becoming a leading researcher in the field. Eric’s academic path, which includes a Master’s degree focusing on repetition ranges for hypertrophy and a PhD examining resistance training intensity, highlights his dedication to understanding optimal training methods.

 

The conversation shifts to current hot topics and debates in exercise science, particularly around volume thresholds for muscle growth. Eric emphasizes the variability in individual responses to training based on factors like genetics and recovery abilities, advocating for a contextual approach rather than a one-size-fits-all method.

 

Hayden and Eric discuss the importance of individualized programming tailored to personal attributes such as morphology and injury history. Eric stresses that a personalized approach, grounded in a strong theoretical framework and practical experience, can maximize an athlete’s genetic potential. The episode concludes with Eric underscoring the value of applying scientific evidence through the lens of individual needs to achieve the best training outcomes.

 

1. Eric’s Passion for Strength Training

Eric’s journey began with a strong passion for strength training and physique development during his teenage years. His early involvement in powerlifting and bodybuilding sparked his curiosity about the science behind training methods, leading him to pursue a career in exercise science.

2. Academic Path and Research Focus

Eric’s academic journey is marked by significant achievements, including a Master’s degree focused on repetition ranges for hypertrophy and a PhD examining resistance training intensity. His dedication to research has been driven by a desire to continually refine our understanding of optimal training practices.

3. Debates on Volume Thresholds

A major topic of discussion in the podcast is the debate surrounding volume thresholds for muscle growth. Eric explains that while higher volumes are generally beneficial up to a certain point, individual responses can vary greatly due to factors like training status, genetics, and recovery abilities.

4. Importance of Context in Training

Eric emphasizes that training should not be approached with a one-size-fits-all mentality. Instead, the context of each individual’s unique attributes and circumstances must be considered to develop effective training programs.

5. Individualized Programming

Hayden and Eric discuss the significance of individualized programming in exercise science. Eric highlights the necessity of tailoring exercise selection, order, variation intervals, and volume thresholds to an individual’s specific strengths, weaknesses, and goals. This personalized approach is essential for maximizing genetic potential.

6. Application of Scientific Evidence

Eric underscores the importance of applying scientific evidence through the lens of the individual. He believes that coaches and practitioners must combine a strong theoretical framework with practical experience to effectively assess and understand each athlete, ensuring the best training outcomes.

Conclusion

This podcast episode offers valuable insights into the field of exercise science, emphasizing the need for individualized training programs based on personal attributes and scientific evidence. Eric’s expertise and passion for the subject provide a compelling argument for moving beyond generic training prescriptions to more tailored approaches that can maximize individual potential.

 

 

Transcript 

Hayden Kelly: Eric, how’s it going, mate?

 

Eric Helms: I’m doing well. How are you?

 

Hayden Kelly: Good. Thank you. I’m Aidan, Hayden is currently out of the room, but he’ll be here in a second.

 

Eric Helms: Aidan and Aiden. Amazing.

 

Hayden Kelly: Aidan and Hayden, with H.

 

Eric Helms: Aidan and Hayden. Got it.

 

Hayden Kelly: That’s the H. And I’m just a standard Aidan.

 

Eric Helms: The old A like. You don’t need the extra letters. You’re you’re to the point.

 

Hayden Kelly: Exactly. Keep it simple on that.

 

Eric Helms: Love it, love it well. Great to meet you.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, you, too, man. This is a pretty interesting time for me, because I’m 24. I studied, went to Uni, left school started Uni in 2018, did my undergrad. And all throughout my undergrad I was looking at your research, listening to podcasts of you on it, and it’s pretty surreal right now. Can’t lie.

 

Eric Helms: Cool, cool man that’s really cool to hear. I actually, you probably get this as someone who is producing content in your 24 like when you make stuff and you put it out there. Sometimes it just kind of feels like you’re going…

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, yeah.

 

Eric Helms: Yeah, you don’t. You don’t know what happens. I’ll have to clean that up later. But yeah. So I always really appreciate when people give me like feedback and let me know that they’re actually hearing it. And it’s like, Oh, so me yelling into the void does something that’s good to hear, you know.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. And it’s it’s crazy. You said it as well, because as you know, you obviously have quite a big audience. But you still have that kind of uncertainty whether your message is kind of getting across. How many people you’re reaching?

 

Eric Helms: Impactful. Yeah.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, yeah.

 

Hayden Kelly: I remember watching Youtube videos of you like, I don’t know how long ago you’ve been on the, but you’ve been around for quite a while now, hey?

 

Eric Helms: So let’s let’s let’s test. I mean there, there’s probably some limit to this, because if we go back 10 years you’re in, you know you’re a child. No offense. But as a 24 year old, so did you ever watch the muscle and strength pyramid videos, the one the ones on Youtube.

 

Hayden Kelly: I’ve actually got. I’ve drawn out the pyramid now. I was just looking at before. But yeah, sorry. I should say. Nice to meet you, Eric. Thanks for.

 

Eric Helms: Nice to meet you, too. Hey?

 

Hayden Kelly: It’s live email. I thought I’d try. I said I didn’t. We were lining up. I guess we wanted to have some really influential speakers. And I thought, You know, we grab trying to get hold of you. And I thought, what’s the chances of getting him on Instagram? I better just email him through my university email and see if it’s much better.

 

Eric Helms: Far better decision. i i i respond to emails, if the DMs are yeah, I get, I get DM requests. I don’t look at them because they they raise my blood pressure markedly when I actually.

 

Hayden Kelly: He tried.

 

Eric Helms: Yeah, how many there are? Yeah.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. I’ve drawn up the or not. Just a rough sketch of it. Well, we wanna talk about that in the context of some of your papers you’ve written. So do you know.

 

Eric Helms: Where those pyramids were originally filmed on Youtube.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, I was, gonna I was. Gonna I was gonna ask about that because oh, no way. Oh. role like, wow! There you go.

 

Eric Helms: That’s right, that’s right. I’m just facing the other way in the same conference room that I did them during my the nutrition ones are my M. Phil here at AUT, and then the the training ones were during my Ph. D. So.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, we don’t. We don’t wanna like Fan Fan girl too hard. But I know it’s a bit weird. It’s a bit weird. When you have, people look like you don’t know who’s looking up to you. But yeah, we’re just saying like. so I’m doing my Ph. D. At the moment, and one day I’d love to work with. You know someone like yourself in the hypertrophy bodybuilding space. So.

 

Eric Helms: Let’s go.

 

Hayden Kelly: Let’s let’s let’s go. Let’s go, brother.

 

Eric Helms: I love it no, absolutely, man, I’m just a quick hop skipping to jump across the pond, a little tasman on the way, and then we’ll get.

 

Hayden Kelly: I was. Actually, I was actually meant to be in Auckland, November last year for the Asia Pacific Society, Physical Activity Conference. Were you there.

 

Eric Helms: I was not because I was in November last year competing in WBF. World.

 

Hayden Kelly: We should be recording. Yeah, we might hit record.

 

Eric Helms: Not a bad idea.

 

Hayden Kelly: Is zoom, I think that’s let me just check.

 

Eric Helms: It says, recording in the top left.

 

Hayden Kelly: Oh, okay. Cool.

 

Eric Helms: By the way, gents, are you happy if we have a hard cut off top of the hour, I do have another meeting. I don’t. I know we’ve been bantering and catching up, and I don’t want to take away too much time, but is like 50 50 min good enough for you guys.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, we’ll we’ll do what whatever you can do, man, I might just do that again as a bit of an intro. But.

 

Eric Helms: Alright beauty, sorry for not having a little more time, but the meeting had to kind of cram around my schedule today.

 

Hayden Kelly: That’s cool welcome to the podcast. Eric. Again, just like the other guests. We’ve had absolute pleasure to have you on today. And we just. We’re just chatting there. But I missed you would have been at the Asia Pacific Society Physical Activity Conference in Auckland last year. But were you with that? Or.

 

Eric Helms: I was not. I was I believe that was around the same time as I was still in the States for WBF. World, so I was too busy being starved and half naked. Unfortunately.

 

Hayden Kelly: And would I be correct in saying, that’s the time you’re on your pro card?

 

Eric Helms: That was actually my pro debut. So.

 

Hayden Kelly: Oh, so previously.

 

Eric Helms: Yeah, I won my pro card in your gentleman’s lovely country in Brisbane, at the WNBF. Australia show that was in October, and then my pro debut was competing at worlds. If you get your pro card that the 1st year you get your pro card, they enable you to compete in the world without qualifying. So sneak in there and get stomped by the pro middleweights. Yeah, it’s good.

 

Hayden Kelly: Is, that is, that Brisbane show pro am as well.

 

Eric Helms: That one is not a pro am. It was actually the the 1st year that they had the WBF. Pro sorry the WMF. Australia, and there was a pro qualifier. But there was not a pro division.

 

Hayden Kelly: So I think it’s in May next year, saying, if there’s a amateur that’d be good one to yeah, that’s crazy. It’s been that long since you had. You won your pro card, because I remember seeing on Instagram, and did not feel like that long ago. But it’s been quite a while now.

 

Eric Helms: It’s been. Yeah. I guess it’s been 8, 8 months, 8, 9 months. If if my math serves, which typically doesn’t. So I’m probably at least off by month.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, nice. And I remember hearing on the Revised Stronger Podcast that you not too long ago, having a period of pretty awesome growth coming out of your competition season, which was a bit unexpected.

 

Eric Helms: Yeah. that is, those are Brian miner’s words. And I, I, I, will definitely repeat them, because, since I was a young girl, I wanted to be a unicorn, that that’s been a goal of mine for a long time. So while I am, I found out that I can’t be a unicorn that is reserved for only some mythical horses who grow a horn. I have been able to get dubbed as someone getting unicorn like gains, and that’s a close second that I’ll take. So for sure. Yeah.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, it’s it’s pretty crazy. Because and no offense. By this, you’re not in your 20s anymore. So to be to be able to experience as much growth as you has have. What do you put that down to.

 

Eric Helms: That’s a great question. And because I have just recently, in April, turned 29 for the 12th time. so you can do the math on that one. But you know how you mentioned before we started filming. You’re 24. We’re very close in age. If you just flip your age around the other way. so as a as someone in his early forties who actually competed and won a masters pro card as well as an open pro card last year in the same show. there’s a couple of things at play where you would typically expect. And more importantly, and not only am I am. I also old. I’ve also been lifting a long time, so I’ve been training for 20 years. I had my 20 year anniversary of lifting back in May of this year. And typically when someone is been training hard, progressively, seriously, like, I wasn’t mucking around from the very start. I was training extremely hard. you know there’s a whole, not a whole lot going on unless you’re doing something stupid early on. And I don’t think I was doing that much stupid at the start. I was eating a lot, and I was training very hard, and I was doing some pretty sufficient overload in many different ways. Obviously I improved my approach over time. But I think the biggest change number one that I’ll put at the top of the list is that when I 1st started lifting. From the very beginning I was equally striving to be strong and big. I started competing in powerlifting in 2006. I did a push pull unofficial meet at the YMCA. In my 1st personal training job, which is a lot of fun. And then, after that 2007 was my 1st natural bodybuilding season. but from the very beginning I wanted to be as big and as strong as possible. and I was competing in bodybuilding or powerlifting the whole time. And then, even when I got starting into my academic phase of my life. I was very interested, and let me learn how to do the Olympic lifts, and that became something I pursued. So by now, like, if we if I look back on my 20 years of lifting. I’ve done 20 meets with the majority of those powerlifting meets and a handful of weightlifting meets. And I’ve also done 2 strong man comps, one Highland games competition, and then I’ve done. you know, 4 bodybuilding seasons, and I want to say 18 shows or something like that. The numbers are a little off. But I’ve been a strength and physique athlete since the very start. But it wasn’t until I turn pro last year in the W. And BF. Which has been a goal of mine, for you know. Gee! Since the 1st show I attended was A. W. And BF. Show in 2005 might have been 2006. I I can’t quite remember. And I got to test judge for the WNBF. And I learned about like 1st person. What natural bodybuilding is, and that was a viable pathway. And I was like, you know, one day I want to get my WNBF pro card. Didn’t know it would take me. you know, quite so long. But we got there eventually, team and kind of the carrots and the positive reinforcement of going. You know what you have more potential as a physique athlete than you do as a strength athlete was really motivating to me for the 1st time to not have to spread my energy across trading for strength and physique sports simultaneously, and obviously there are many great legends over the history of the iron game who are very high, level strength and physique athlete simultaneously. But they are somewhat of a rare breed, built certain ways, typically not 6 foot and have more general talent than I do, I would say overall. So for me, I I realized that if I wanted to really milk everything out of myself that I could to be as successful as I could in the sport that I participate in, where I have the most potential, which is, you know, looking reasonably good naked. Then I thought me push all my chips into bodybuilding. So the biggest thing was that I no longer was having to spread my energy, and I took an approach of maximizing bodybuilding and moving some of those variables around, enabling more recovery, less fatigue, being able to suit movements to my body not having to be married to any of the the movements that are required for strength sport that allowed me to do more volume, it allowed me to train closer to failure, and enabled me to have more favorable exercise, selection, and those things all kind of happened at the same time, along with a real hefty dose of strong motivation, nothing like turning pro and then getting smashed to bits, placing 7th out of 9th among the best guys in the world on a pro pro level world stage to be like. let’s go. So I think all those factors together were a pretty strong stimulus, and I’ve been really really grateful, happy, and just excited, and feeling like a you know, a young, a young man again coming into the the gym for the 1st time, just ready to to chop in with a bit every time I step in the the hollowed halls of the iron caverns where I hoist. It’s been a good time.

 

Hayden Kelly: So you said you’ve done 4 seasons, and in that time you’ve had 18 shows. So does that mean you peaked 6 times each of those seasons like is that.

 

Eric Helms: Well, one like I mentioned earlier. My math is not great. And I think so my very 1st season. I did 2 shows my second season. 5 shows my 3rd season. 2 shows 4 shows this is why the math doesn’t make sense. Yeah. I’ve done 5 seasons. That’s the problem. That’s why folks 7, 9, 2011 20, 19 20, 23. That’s how we get to the number we’re at. So I have done between 2 to 5 shows each one of those seasons I’ve had 2, 2 season, 2, 2 2 shows.

 

Hayden Kelly: Seizures.

 

Eric Helms: I’m about to have a seizure. I’ve had 2 2 show seasons, 2, 5 show seasons, and then one 4 show season in 2019.

 

Hayden Kelly: That’s really interesting that you are. You put go back what you said before. You put a lot of your progress down to. I suppose that. optimizing your stimulus to fatigue in your training cause, obviously depending on your on your morphology, you could still get a lot of good gains out of. Say, Barbell, squating but not, you know, a lot of people gonna have a lot more fatigue from that. Then it’s worth all bodybuilding alone. And it’s a bit of a controversial point, I think, on social media a lot. The whole idea of stimulus is to fatigue a lot of people. You know the anti anti-science anti-optimizers like to be like. you’re worried about the wrong things, you know, just trying hard. And but I suppose your situation is some evidence that we should be thinking about, you know, stimulus to fatigue in our training.

 

Eric Helms: To some degree. So here, here’s the thing, though I as a people sometimes think of me as an exercise scientist or nutrition scientist, but I’m I’m a sports scientist when it really comes down to it. And my quote unquote sport is strength and physique sport right? Some debate as to whether or not the the physique sport is a sport, but nonetheless and I think a really important part of being a sports scientist is knowing the sports you’re involved with. So I am. Well, I’m not trained as a historian. I have become a amateur historian of both strength and physique sport. and it is a hundred percent undeniable that some of the most impressive physikes ever that have been built were built with strength training. So if we talk about the 60s. And prior, before there was a really clear impact of the Weider Empire, the IFBB and training purely for physique sport where there were not athletic points, strength, competitions, and all this kind of being oneblended uniform place, and before the advent of actual competitive powerlifting being its own sport.

 

Here is the cleaned up transcript with character names and the original dialogue:

 

Eric Helms: 60 s. And prior, before there was a really clear impact of the Weeder Empire, the Ifbb and training purely for physique sport where there were not athletic points, strength, competitions, and all this kind of being one blended uniform place, and before the advent of actual competitive powerlifting being its own sport.

 

Eric Helms: and the overhead press, and 72 getting taken out of Olympic weightlifting. There was a time where all strength athletes were bodybuilders and all body builders strength, athletes. And you got guys like Tommy Kono winning gold medals across 3 or 4 weight classes and Olympic weightlifting

 

Eric Helms: at the Olympics and also winning a Mr. Universe title. You know, you’ve got guys like Franco, even that late past that era who are, you know, still very, very good powerlifters. And that was just the way it was done. So

 

Eric Helms: I think it’s really important to point out that 

 

Eric Helms: 90% of people, I would say, who are interested in getting as maximally strong or as maximally big as possible. They’re not gonna reach a point where there’s a bottleneck where it is meaningfully impacted by needing to go. You know what actually, I want to do hacks, not squats.

 

Eric Helms: I think it is a case where you have someone who is not potentially super well built

 

Eric Helms: for certain movements. Like I said, I’m I’m 6 feet tall.

 

Eric Helms: not your typical build of someone who’s going to be super successful in either strength, sport, or physique sport to be honest.

 

Eric Helms: And I’m also someone who is approaching the zenith of Like, where my my peak capacity and development is in both.

 

Eric Helms: So I have come to see that if I want to improve my total in, let’s say powerlifting where I’m totalling in the low 600 s. At 93, or or approaching 600. If I’m dieted down to 83. If I want to get stronger than that, knowing from my history what I have to do.

 

Eric Helms: It is 5 to 6 days of training, 2 to 3 h, mostly focused on the comp specific lifts or variations of them. And then I’m seeing these marginal improvements in my total.

 

Eric Helms: So the question is, where is the time to? Then also make sure that, like

 

Eric Helms: you know, the short head of my bicep, for Morris is growing, and that I’m you know, getting enough rear dealt growth or etc, etc.

 

Eric Helms: Likewise

 

Eric Helms: I know that if I want to make noticeable improvements over a reasonably short timeframe. In my physique I have to invest a lot of time and energy.

 

Eric Helms: and

 

Eric Helms: that means that even just working up to a single on my squat venture. Deadlift

 

Eric Helms: is gonna be taking away at least some time, if not some recuperative capacity, to where blending the 2 becomes at least a challenge from a periodization perspective, which is what I did before. I’m taking

 

Eric Helms: to some degree a

 

Eric Helms: a known reduction in at least the efficiency of getting there, if not, you know, raising the ceiling a bit by only focusing on one.

 

Eric Helms: And I think that’s a really important point, because most of the people consuming our content

 

Eric Helms: are people who are never going to have to worry about this.

 

Eric Helms: I mean, most strength and physique. Enthusiasts are not going to reach

 

Eric Helms: the top end of their potential as much as we all strive to do it. Other things get in the way first, st and worrying about whether they should be doing a heel. Elevated Smith machine, squat or a squat, is not my 1st choice of what we need to discuss or talk about. It’s probably things like setting an appropriate surplus, you know, making sure you’re getting enough protein being consistent in the gym, finding a way to overload you without injure injure you, and sometimes it matters with certain anthropometric characteristics.

 

Eric Helms: But it’s almost exclusively a topic for people who are pushing above the standard within the sport already of either powerlifting or bodybuilding. If you talk to top level bodybuilders or powerlifters, they’re

 

Eric Helms: they’re big because they have to be at that level, or they’re strong because they have to, because they’ve been overloading all that time, and the squad bench and deadlift might be decent vehicles. But you do start to have to play an optimization game once you’re trying to become optimal. But I think 90% of people are not there yet, and it might be something worth talking about. They’re absolutely the size of whether it’s a big rock, a pebble, or a piece of sand changes over your training career.

 

Eric Helms: And Eric helms in 2,010

 

Eric Helms: probably wouldn’t have gotten much additional benefit to going. I’m going to go all in on bodybuilding compared to now, where I physically don’t have the recuperative capacities, nor do I have the time

 

Eric Helms: to

 

Eric Helms: improving both simultaneously at best.

 

Eric Helms: like what I mentioned. I know what I have to do to improve in powerlifting, or I know what I have to do to improve in body building, and at best what I could do is then maintain the other quality.

 

Eric Helms: So it becomes just a simple logistics game. It’s a similar principle to

 

Eric Helms: what is progressive overload for a given person. Right? So if you were to give, and we’ll use a different sport just to make this even even more relatable

 

Eric Helms: if you take professional Marathon runner and you have them start running twice per week at a 10 min mile pace. They’re going to see their VO. 2 Max decline.

 

Eric Helms: They’re going to actually start, you know, getting in poor shape. But if you take 90% of people on the planet and you have them start running, you know, 5, 10 min miles twice per week. They’re going to see market improvements in health. Right? So it really depends upon the person and the context.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. So I suppose don’t get lost in the weeds with with that kind of thing for most people something I’ve wondered when it comes to stimulus to fatigue, cause I thought about it a bit.

 

Hayden Kelly: You know whether it is applicable for most people.

 

Hayden Kelly: I have a few clients who I guess you’d call them hobby builders.

 

Hayden Kelly: but they also work pretty hard jobs like Monday to Saturday working, you know, 8 to 8 to 10 HA lot of physical work. So they’re training. That total training volume

 

Hayden Kelly: isn’t super high, but their body, in terms of experiencing stress doesn’t know where that stress is coming from the gym, or coming from, you know, carrying

 

Hayden Kelly: wood, or, you know, concrete all day.

 

Hayden Kelly: So

 

Hayden Kelly: do you think it could have some some more application for people who like that? Or still, is it not really something to think about.

 

Eric Helms: No, absolutely, I think.

 

Eric Helms: I don’t really think we need to refer to it as this new fancy term stimulus to fatigue ratio, because this is not really a new concept? The idea is just good planning for training. What is the time? Availability of the person? What is their injury. History? What is their 

 

Eric Helms: constraints as far as equipment? What are their desires? And then what are the recuperative capacities? And what does our prior training history tells. Tell us, and then then, therefore, what’s the good choices to make as far as training planning on a microcycle level.

 

Eric Helms: on a message cycle level, and then a within session level.

 

Eric Helms: So I think

 

Eric Helms: a lot of the times this stuff is going to become apparent, and it’s more important on the individual level than generally like, I’m not a big fan of saying, like a squat has a poor stimulus to fatigue ratio than a hack squat.

 

Eric Helms: because that’s gonna be a lot less true for some people and a lot more true for others. And when that ratio is so far below, what is your theoretical ability to handle fatigue. Does it matter? So like, let’s say you’ve got somebody with the lim links to where they’re super upright on the squat. They have no injury history. They get plenty of sleep, and they’re only training 3 days per week.

 

Eric Helms: Who cares? Right?

 

Eric Helms: But if you take someone who has had prior hip surgery. They’re 6 foot. They’re in their 40 s. They only have a certain amount of time to train, and they’re trying to place in top 5 at Wbf worlds.

 

Eric Helms: you know. Then then then then you actually do have to ask that question because you are stretching the capacities of what you have. So sometimes it’s like this.

 

Eric Helms: like theoretically optimal. Only matters if you have to play the optimization game.

 

Eric Helms: So yeah. But but but I think your points well taken like, if you’ve got somebody who is a manual laborer, they’re gonna have less recuperative capacity. They’ll also have more work capacity, but they are also gonna have less recuperative resources to dedicate to the same amount of training. And it. It’s the same way you think about strength conditioning in general.

 

Eric Helms: like you have to be very careful when you’ve got, say, a motivated Rugby squad who thinks like more, is better, and smashing myself is the way I make progress. The S. And C. Comes in teaches them some things they need to be doing some weight training.

 

Eric Helms: But man in the in season it’s like what’s the least amount we can do, and then you need to be ready to play like, please, please don’t do any extra training outside of everything, because I’m carefully coordinating this with the dietician with the actual sports coach, and then with the S. And C. Sessions, and if you’re going on a random run, or doing like some crossfit class on the weekend. I don’t know about that. That’s when guys start getting injured and we start losing games.

 

Eric Helms: And I think that’s a very different scenario than when they’re in the off season, and you don’t have to deal with it. So a lot of it is just kind of matching the recuperative capacity of the person to their ability to put a stimulus to the demands of the time in a periodized fashion based upon what’s going on. And then you just apply those concepts to each individual in their kind of circumstances. And

 

Eric Helms: to be honest for physique and strength sport.

 

Eric Helms: we’ve got it easy. There’s really only one type of dimension of training, you know. Most athletes will tell you.

 

Eric Helms: Oh, your your training is your sport. Okay? Yeah. Your sport’s my training, right? So

 

Eric Helms: and the flexibility you have as a body builder is nice, you know. If if

 

Eric Helms: if you if you get an injury or or some type of issue, or you have an orthopedic concern that would, you know, end the career of a powerlifter. You potentially still have a lot of options left as a physique athlete.

 

Hayden Kelly: Love that you mentioned work, capacity, other as well, that those type of manual laborers would have that greater capacity to handle stress because

 

Hayden Kelly: I was chatting to one of my colleagues last week, saying, Man, I think I should go to some concrete in the off season, because

 

Hayden Kelly: I have some clients who can sleep 6 h, work all day, come to the gym and train legs like absolute savages, whereas I sleep, you know 7 h, and I feel the effects of my training compared to 8 h.

 

Eric Helms: Yeah, and there is actually a fair amount of data on

 

Eric Helms: how people respond to training when they have different intrinsic capacities. Right? A useful heuristic, which I think is true enough is that

 

Eric Helms: you? Essentially, you know, you’ve you guys have probably heard of the fitness, fatigue model, which is a useful model. It’s wrong, as all models are, but it’s a helpful way to help us understand things that when you train you get 2 things you get some amount of fitness from it, and you get some amount of fatigue, and when you look at the the combination of the 2, you get some element of performance.

 

Eric Helms: And then, if you overlay the biopsychosocial model on top of that, then maybe you have something that approximates reality. Right? And it’s it’s a it’s a useful way of looking at things.

 

Eric Helms: So we also have people who seem to respond more to training.

 

Eric Helms: And I think it’s helpful to look at response to both factors.

 

Eric Helms: So you can have someone, and I’ve you know, worked with them, or I’ve seen them who could be a high responder to the stimulus and a high responder to the fatigue. And these are the people who become like hit dogmatists and like oh, you only need to do 3 sets, and that’s all you need to do. And then, hey, you know, they they do a little bit. They grow a lot, but they also get real beat up from it, and they need their recovery.

 

Eric Helms: Then you get people who are maybe

 

Eric Helms: high responders to the stimulus, but they also don’t respond very well to the fatigue. And now you’ve got to cross the champion right? Then you layer training over that because you can, of course, train yourself like you mentioned

 

Eric Helms: to become better able to handle more work, and that may or may not be useful, I think, for if you want to compete in crossfit, for example, absolutely because the output of your total amount of work is important.

 

Eric Helms: If you want to be a physique athlete or a strength athlete, you need to know? Like, okay, well, if I acclimate myself to this higher workload, is it actually going to improve my bottom line?

 

Eric Helms: Because handling a bunch of work is not necessarily. How much do I need to improve to get my my strength, my my force, production, capabilities up? Or how much do I need to do to maximize the anabolic signaling. I could be doing a bunch of other adaptations that improve my ability to handle work.

 

Eric Helms: But we’re doing work to grow or get stronger. We’re not doing work to do work, unless, of course, you’re in a sport where work is measured.

 

Eric Helms: there’s kind of a cool study that was done in.

 

Eric Helms: I want to say they’re middle distance runners, although it could be misremembering.

 

Eric Helms: But what they looked at was they did they looked at muscle carnacing levels which are a proxy, for whether it’s more type one or type 2 dominant because of the muscle fiber characteristics, they didn’t actually do biopsies.

 

Eric Helms: and they looked at an overreaching protocol in more slow twitch or fast twitch, quote unquote dominant runners.

 

Eric Helms: and they found that when they used an overreaching protocol.

 

Eric Helms: The more fast twitch dominant runners were less likely to recover, and it was going to be quote unquote, non-functional overreaching. And you saw measurements of, say, isometric knee extensor force were lower compared to those who were more slow, twitch, dominant.

 

Eric Helms: And I think obviously this isn’t the same sport, or even the same type of training, but that’s maybe one of the many physiological characteristics that could influence the response of an athlete. You know, we know that fast. Twitch. Fibers, on average.

 

Eric Helms: tend to, you know, produce more power. Obviously they contract faster, but they also tend to be a little more responsive to hypertrophy. They have more potential to be larger. So if you have more of those, maybe that’s part of the characteristics of someone who is both quite fatiguable, because that’s the nature of fast switch fibers.

 

Eric Helms: They fatigue quite quickly. They’re not around for for the for the long haul, if you will and they also respond pretty well to training. So you can get people who operate along the spectrum where they could be either high responders to the stimulus

 

Eric Helms: and the fatigue, or one or the other, or some poor soul who has a high fatigue response. You know low stimulus response. Then it’s, you know, maybe play chess.

 

Hayden Kelly: You mentioned Eric, in your transition.

 

Hayden Kelly: I guess, with the specificity of your training, evolving more towards the physique sports. Now that your

 

Hayden Kelly: able to train with higher volume

 

Hayden Kelly: within your periodization.

 

Eric Helms: Yeah. So the limiting factors for me and powerlifting were orthopedic and and and for most part of what I could handle.

 

Eric Helms: for I actually got bilateral fai surgery in 2,017, after dealing for 4 years

 

Eric Helms: with torn labrams an and inability to squat low bar to death with any kind of frequency or load, or I would get pain that actually impeded my ability to dead lift and squat and that was ultimately also part of the reasons why I couldn’t stick with Olympic weightlifting.

 

I didn’t have the shoulder mobility, the elbow mobility. And I also had that hip issue really just not built for Olympic weightlifting. Unfortunately. At least not at the age I got into it at soHere is the transcript with character names and the original dialogue without changes:

 

Eric Helms: Powerlifting. I definitely found ways to work around that. One of them was paying for surgery, which doesn’t work for many people. I was one of the fortunate ones where I was a good candidate for that. And it did actually remarkably improve my ability to hit depth. And I didn’t have any issues. And I could tolerate then high volumes and high loading of squats and deadlifts.

 

The elbow issues are actually pretty benign that I’ve been getting. They are much more related to how much arm volume do I do? So it’s more of an accessory combination. And they they were worse when I was powerlifting because of the relatively aggressive position of being in a low bar squat. And then I’m also a max legal width bencher. So when I do high volume, specific training for powerlifting, I do start to get elbow pain. And what I eventually have to do is I have to bring the squat backward in the order I’m typically doing squat, bench, deadlift. That’s the bench first, because I get elbow pain if I squat and then bench to the point where it limits my training. So when I’m doing, say, when I’m going into a peaking block, you know, you’re supposed to get more specific, I do weird stuff like bench before I squat. But it’s really just to work around the elbow pain I’m getting.

 

And what I would do as someone who is still interested in my physique and bodybuilding training, while then I was still powerlifting is, I basically did almost all blood flow restriction training and high rep training and neutral grip work for my arm work.

 

But one of the many ways in which not having to worry about bench and squat, or at least max legal with powerlifting arched bench and low bar squats is that I can actually handle a fair amount of volume on my arms, and actually a lot like, if you count all my direct and indirect work I’m doing in the mid 30 number of sets for biceps again. That’s all rows, all that pulldowns and bicep curls together, and in the mid 40s for my tricep work, which again is all pressing shoulder and and and packs, as well as any direct trice of work. So it’s not as insane as it sounds.

 

Hayden Kelly: Still, do you still implement a lot of BFR now? Or was it more of like a a low intensity technique to try and avoid pain or injury during those powerlifting days.

 

Eric Helms: In the power lifting days, I would do it prospectively, because I knew what was gonna happen with the amount of benching and squatting. But now it’s prophylactically so. Now I have only done BFR when my elbow tendinitis has started to crop up, I basically get medial epicondylitis if I do a really high volume of highly intense arm training. But I’m actually, I’ve been through more than 6 months, 7 months now of bodybuilding specific training and without the inclusion of low bar squats and bench. It’s only been an issue for maybe 4 weeks out of that amount of time, and I just have to think about what I’m doing, shift around my rep ranges, throw in some BFR, think about deloading, etc, and it’s more of a training around it, let it resolve, and then I can get back on with the approach.

 

So to answer your question more directly, what does my training split look like? I have 5 days of training per week that I’m doing, and I have a chest, back and shoulders on day one, day 2 is legs and arms, Day 3 is a upper body day, day 4 is a lower body day, and then day 5 is an upper body day with more emphasis on shoulders and arms.

 

And as far as how I quote unquote periodize that, I would say it’s more programming than it is periodization. There’s not huge substantial shifts in the amount of sets that I’m doing, changes in exercise selection or shifting in rep ranges. It’s more of my, I have an auto-regulated progression model where I have first set RPE, last set RPE, and I’m letting the RPEs climb or IRs decline so proximity to failure. And then I have an auto-regulated rep range. 

 

So as I move up, it’s kind of what you’d call a reactive double progression model. So let’s say, for example, I meant to start at a 8 RPE on RDLs by my 4th set, I’m trying not to let it get above a 9 RPE. And then I’m training in the 5 to 8 rep range. Once I can get through 4 sets for 8 reps with my first set or my last set RPE in place with the same load, then I’ll do a load progression.

 

So as an example, let’s say I’m doing 140 kilos, and I’m able to get 4 sets, first sets at a 8, second sets at 8, and I go up to 8.5 and a 9, or even close up to a 9 and a half because of fatigue suite. I’ve got my 4 sets of 8 now I’ll do 142 or 145 something like that the next time I do that exercise. So I have a progression model. But as far as what changes mesocycle to mesocycle, that’s more from just a orthopedic consideration, or you know, if I’m getting a little mental burnout or staleness on a given exercise, I’ll swap it out just from kind of logistics and organization.

 

Hayden Kelly: You mentioned the amount of volume that you’re doing for your say triceps, and a personal question that I had around this. And I often think about this when I’m hearing the researchers talk about number of sets, volume. There is so much variability because you’re using number of sets as a way to quantify how much stress we’re experiencing, I suppose, in a study. But there is so much variability like you know how much stress to triceps experience from a compound press versus isolation. If you are standardizing everything and keeping things that say tori across the whole study, but you rest, you sleep a bit better, so your perception of what to RPE changes from one day to the next. How can I guess? How do you go? How you try and quantify this? Or how do you reconcile this in research, to try and make it as valid as possible? And should we really be looking at numbers too closely at all. I think you’d say, like, the validity, yeah, it’s something. I wonder? Because, yeah, I’m gonna be sorry. The reliability of the data. Sorry.

 

Eric Helms: It’s a different question for research, and it is in practice. So I think the important thing here is essentially statistics. So without going over the heads of any listener here, this essentially boils down to having a manageable level of variance, or basically this signal to noise ratio if you will, and then being able to contextualize the findings. 

 

So we have 2 relatively large-scale meta analyses where we are looking at volume in this way for hypertrophy, and then we also have some for a number of sets like Ralston, 2017 for strength. And you have to decide how you code things when you run a meta analysis. Right? So if you’re coding things as the number of sets per muscle group per week, and the established method of doing that is, if it’s involved in that movement, direct or indirect, primary synergist secondary, you have to have some categorization right? That categorization is artificial, but it doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re being consistent, and then it’s just going to play out the way it plays out and you have to go, do I have enough statistical power.

 

So one of the ways this potentially plays out is, if you look at Baz, Vanwollengogh’s 2021 or 2022 meta analysis of volume, they found there was no significant difference in the categorization of the 12 to 20, or the 20 plus set range for all the muscle groups except triceps, which seem to do a little bit better on 20 plus. You know, like, oh, what’s unique about the triceps that it requires more volume? Yeah, that’s probably not it. What it probably is is that we’re looking at a bunch of studies where they’re counting shoulder press and chest press as well as tricep push downs on a 1 to 1 basis. So you just have to know the limitations of the findings you have.

 

So in research, you need to make a conclusion that integrates our theoretical knowledge with the actual empirical data. And instead of just going right in practice, we need more than 20 sets on average to start for tricep volume. And then you start giving someone 20 sets of tricep push downs, that’s actually not an evidence based perspective, because you’re not integrating the empirical with the theoretical and thinking about the limitations of the data. 

 

Now, if you were to give someone 25 sets of triceps, and you’re actually counting every single sets of shoulder, bench, decline dips and everything altogether fantastic. And then you also have to think, okay, what other research is out there that would might inform me as if to if my goal is to build triceps because they’re a weak point for me, because of that meta analysis, should I choose a shoulder press, and equally weighted as it tries to push down? Well? No, because some of the acute studies and biomechanical data we have would indicate, there’s probably better choices, you know. I’d probably choose a tricep isolation exercise.

 

So it’s more of a question of, if you want to base your training on research, you need to speak the same language while understanding the limitations. So in practice it’s a different answer. It is, how do I count my volume in the first place? And if you want to say oh, I’m being evidence based, because I’m doing 10 to 20 sets, and they go, okay. How? You’re counting your sets. Well, I count my presses as half a set for triceps, and then I count my triceps push downs as one to one I go, what’s that based upon? Oh, you know the Meta analysis by Schoenfeld, 10 to 20 sets, and I’m like, well, they didn’t count it that way. So you’re not being evidence based right? If you want to count your your your volume that way, that’s fine. But don’t then think that you have a representative Meta analysis to base it off of. That’s just the way you’re counting it. And then you make adjustments from there. We’re only comparing you as a 1 to 1 case study in practice.

 

So it’s a mismatch in the language. And you see this a lot. The debates around how should we count compound sets towards a given muscle group? And there’s 2 different answers. If you want to inform your set volume based upon the data we have on set volume, you need to count up the same way it’s counted in that study. But then you also need to have some degree of understanding of how things work in the real world and go right if I’m plateaued on my chest, or I’m plateaued on my tricep, or if I’m a plateau on my bicep, or if I want to increase effective volume for a given muscle group, I need to be intelligent in my exercise selection. And then I just need to count things in a consistent way, so that I know when I change X, it has an impact on Y, in practice.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, in the context of looking at those factors, in isolation would like a Meta aggression model make more sense, I guess, in some circumstances. So if you’re looking at those other factors like sleep and nutrition and recovery.

 

Eric Helms: Absolutely. So there’s a number of ways you could do this. We’re gonna start talking stats now, and I don’t know how feasible that is for podcasting. But you can do what’s called just a simple categorical meta analysis, comparison. Right where you go, let’s take all the studies that are in this set range or in this set range or in this set range. And then we have an inclusion criteria where they’re operationally comparing a lower versus a higher volume. And then we can have this basically group based comparisons, if you will, on the studies that fell in these different categorical analyses.

 

Or you can do what’s called a meta regression, which is very similar to just doing a regression in an individual study where you’re trying to see the continuous effect of a variable right, which in this case would be number of sets per week, and then the outcome variable being change in hypertrophy. Right? So a meta regression is really useful because you can look at the continuous effect of a variable that we think probably has that type of relationship.

 

And then even more so, if you have more advanced statistical models you can look at it is if it’s not potentially linear like? Is this a curvilinear relationship? Is it logarithmic? Does it plateau and start to create what we think is the start of that inverted U which we sometimes hypothesize? Of the way adaptations occur. Big shout out to the team over at FAU, the guys over at data driven strength. You’re probably familiar with the pre-print Meta regression that was done on proximity to failure, led by recently successfully defended Dr. Zach Robinson. Now he just finished his PhD over at FAU, one of his colleagues, Josh Pelland, he is the lead author on what is soon to be pre-printed, and Meta Regression, looking at volume. And to give a little hint at what it looks like, because I’ve seen some of it, I’m on his PhD dissertation committee, it is a curvilinear relationship.

 

And you can even more so than looking at whether it’s a linear relationship or curvilinear, you can also do what you’re saying is, basically do moderator analyses. So, okay, if I hold X constant or control for y, how does it change the estimations and the best fit for that model? And so, for example, one outcome of this could be, if we look at that RIR or repetitions and reserve Meta regression led by Robinson, is that when they specifically looked at data of higher loads, when you’re lifting 80% of 1RM estimated or higher, all of a sudden, the beneficial effect of getting closer to failure was no longer significant, or I think they used the Bayesian model. So it’s probably not the right terminology, but there was no longer a meaningful effect of being closer to failure when they’re listing heavy enough on outcomes for hypertrophy. Right? So now you can look at the interaction of variables, which is really important, because we do think there’s an interaction between volume, intensity, frequency, training age, nutrition, recovery, etc.

 

Hayden Kelly: There’s such a heap of literature looking at the use of RPE in professional sport as well, and because it’s such a non-invasive tool, really simple and quick to administer, to ask an athlete for their, you know, how hard the intensity of their session was. Times that by the duration of the session, and you’ve got a internal load measure. But the nature of it being so subjective, I guess, is this something you’ve we’ve obviously looked at a bit of your research before we come on here. But you’ve looked at RPE and the use of RPE within, you know, strength and performance offseason sport. Is this something that you’ve tried to quantify more throughout your research? And what kind of struggles or barriers have you noticed with using RPE in your research.

 

Eric Helms: In my research specifically, I haven’t run into a ton of it. But that’s because the rationale for the research I did on RPE was built upon some of the prior issues that happened when they were taking the original Borg RPE and versions of it and applying it to resistance training. 

 

So if you’re in the powerlifting world, you think, RPE, you think, Mike, to share, you think one to 10 scale. That is the inverse of RIR. You know, you think basically, RPE is defined as how close to failure am I? But if you have been involved in the literature, you know that since 1970 we’ve had a Borg RPE scale, and that that was in the literature exclusively until 2016, when Zourdos was the first one to actually introduce an RIR based RPE scale into the literature. So we have literally 46 years of that not being the way RPE is used in exercise science. And there was a handful of studies where, the Borg RPE scale typically the category ratio scale, which is 0 to 10, not the 6 to 21 was used, because how weird is it to say to somebody, Hey, how hard was that set? 6 to 20? You’re like what, you know.

 

Hayden Kelly: Based on heart rate, right and.

 

Eric Helms: Exactly. No, for one, it it’s non intuitive. It’s really useful, like you said 6 to 20 roughly scales to 60 to 200 beats per minute, and when you go back to the literature in the seventies and eighties pretty strong correlation to heart rate. When you look at group averages, and it was used in like graded exercise tests for cardio respiratory fitness, and you would see very strong correlations between higher heart rates, higher RPEs, and then higher objective intensities on the treadmill. Right? You can program cardiovascular intensity with it, or at least you can monitor it quite easily with that 6 to 20. Then late 80s CR 10 scale comes around. Now it’s a little more intuitive, but it still has issues. So the reason I did my PhD and the reason why Mike, to share modified it just in practice to not be the Board of RPE scale is because you get funky things when you start asking people one to 10, how hard was that set? You probably saw this in practice, and it’s been objectively observed in literature. You can have someone go to failure on a set which, depending upon how we define effort or exertion, basically means they could not have made that set any harder without doing some type, you know, quote unquote intensity, technique afterwards. Right?

 

Here is the transcript cleaned up with character names and the original dialogue preserved:

 

Eric Helms: So the question is like, well, then, how do we get to attend? And the issue there is that it’s related to anchoring. So one of the ways you can improve the reliability of Borg RPE scores is that you have them do a something that is equivalent to like a 3, a 5, a 7, and a 10, and you tell them that’s what that is. Now you’ve experienced it, and then then the scores become much better.

 

Eric Helms: because if you read the side of the scale on like the Borg RPE scale, it goes from like light, moderate off day. Rest hard, you know, very hard, maximal right? And for many people, no matter how hard a set of 10 is, it doesn’t feel like a maximal exertion.

 

Eric Helms: If you take someone who is in the military or special forces or an elite endurance athlete, and you have them do a set of 10 to failure on a bicep curl. How hard is that going to be compared to what they’ve experienced as maximum exertion. Not very much, and they’re gonna rate it lower. But if you tell them that a 10 RPE means I could not have done another rep, and I couldn’t have done that same set with even at 2 and a half kilos more. Now they actually have something objective to anchor that score to, and the reliability tightens up quite nicely.

 

Eric Helms: And that was the rationale, for why? I said, Hey, we should probably be looking at resistance training based RPE being related to proximity to failure, because that is one of the ways that we measure element of effort in in resistance training. And those and all the data after that has indicated much tighter findings.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, that’s really great insight. And it was also used in Martin Raffaello’s paper, which I believe you are a part of, and I was lucky enough to go down to Melbourne a few weeks ago to JPS and and meet those guys there.

 

Hayden Kelly: A question I posed, I believe to Brandon Kempton when we chatted to him in one of our actual episodes, was around that paper. A lot of the questions that people would have is okay. So we get this idea that maybe training say, one rep from reserve is just as stimulative as going to failure. And potentially, you know, less fatiguing as well, but a lot of the the top body builders all throughout time have constantly pushed to train to failure beyond failure, and constantly trying to increase that ceiling of intensity. So for the average person, how would you best integrate information from research like this into training.

 

Eric Helms: Okay, so the average pretty damn serious person. Yeah, I think we know enough now to say that there is a relationship between proximity to failure and the stimulus where that matters is going to be context dependent. But I would say, like like a really really decent heuristic is probably, like, you know, most of your sets should be either to failure or at a quote unquote 0 or IR, just technically not failure. It means you still completed the rep. But you don’t think you could have done another one. or 1, 2 or 3 reps in reserve, depending upon the goal depending upon the amount of volume and your individual response.

 

Eric Helms: I think there’s there’s a lot of nuance here. It’s decent to tell people 0 to 3 R. But ultimately it comes down to training age. What are your weak points? What’s your exercise selection? What’s your adherence and all these factors. And I think that is the next phase of a lot of the research we need to be doing is looking at these interaction effects and figuring out which ones are, gonna you know, impact our decisions as practitioners.

 

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, I think we talked to Brandon a bit about that in terms of maximal strength testing. And it’s a bit harder when you working the rowing, pulling movements as opposed to pressing or lower limb. That’s also why it’s great, or I like being able to extend a set on back exercises, whether that’s through length and partials. Or you know, if it’s cable road using the erectors a little bit, just to get that extra momentum and range, or get a lot more of a stimulus.

 

Hayden Kelly: Look, Eric, we’d love to keep chatting all day. To be honest, we have. We have a lot of questions, but I know that you are a busy guy. We are conscious of time.

 

Eric Helms: Well, 1st off Hayden and it great to meet you both. I would love to come back on, because we can always chat about another topic and dive in, and I’d be honored to be back on. I appreciate you guys having me on. And for anyone who is wanting to get more of my perspective on things first, the one stop shop. If you’re interested in more of the bodybuilding, SCI side of things is 3DMuscleJourney.com. That is the number 3. The letter d then muscle journey.com. From there you can find links to our podcast you can find links to our Youtube you can also find our old blog articles you can sign up for our newsletter, or you can even go to the 3 DM. Vault and take some of our practice courses.

 

Hayden Kelly: Beautiful. I think one extra thing. Just before we wrap up we had a question from a listener that we wouldn’t wouldn’t mind you answering, if you have time.

 

Eric Helms: Let’s go.

 

Hayden Kelly: And that was, how has your mindset mindset changed or shifted since solely just focusing on bodybuilding.

 

Eric Helms: I’d say the big shift is thinking more about, how do I optimize my recovery on kind of a more microcycle scale? The difference between in my mind, body building, and powerlifting our strength, sport, or sport in general is that you have this objective performance metric. But body building to me feels almost more like, you’re trying to constantly cultivate the ideal environment that should be conducive to growth like, how do I make it so that I can push my recovery capacities do a whole lot of work at a high intensity. How do I bring the mindset that I need to the gym? How do I each set maintain intentionality, pushing on the concentric, controlling the eccentric and taking myself really to the true RIR I’m trying to get to. Body building is so much about rinsing and repeating the same process, but still being extremely intentional and being okay with doing the same damn thing over and over while being incredibly present.

 

Hayden Kelly: What an amazing way to wrap up that was really insightful. Others, very resonant. Resonate a lot with that and just think in terms of you being able to apply yourself from a research perspective while you’re dividing down for comp and controlling those external factors which try and disrupt that consistent environment that’s optimal for growth. So, mate, there’s so much, there’s so much more that I need to ask you, I’ve got pages worth of notes. And so I’m gonna I’m gonna hit you with an email after this, and we’ll tee up another one when you got some time. So thanks, Eric, thanks for your time, Mike. Thanks, mate.

 

Eric Helms: My pleasure, and I love to be back on. Thanks, guys.

 

Hayden Kelly: See you, Buddy.

 

Eric Helms: Take care!

 

Hayden Kelly: Well, best.

 

Eric Helms: You too.

Hayden Kelly: Very good. That was good quality video, amazing chat. The reels are not gonna be right. Maybe it shares them. But I’m gonna email him after this for them. Would you like part 2, part 3?Are you a bit cold? I’m fucking freezing.More like and the less structured which I liked. It was more dislike. That’s me. Okay, he does that all the time. But he does so many podcasts. And I listen to his podcast.

Hayden Kelly: Later. Intelligent codes. So he’s so little that would. That puts me. The other thing I’m gonna do is anything I’ll see about it, really. But that is just project is, look just trying to steer, to ask what the for some people that are.It’s very interesting, but I just but I think, for like. See if, like Brandon, listen to that, for instance, or like bottom is like research, I think the whole meta aggression thing makes sense because it’s like, basically what you’re doing is you’re like isolating one variable’s influence on like ROI training. So it’s like you’re looking at. How does sleep? And controlled directly influenced. Ahri. When you control every black, and you very sleek, but you alter, but you keep everything else consistent, so it’s like you can get a direct indication of whether. Like varying sleep. Varying nutritional status, hydration influences like RIR training or something like that. So it’s like basically saying he was saying, when you do a meta analysis you can’t control for those variables. But if you do a Meta aggression, it’s like you do it the opposite way around. Yeah. So, but that that’s why he was saying at the end, there with Meta aggression. How like Martin’s work is really good because they use Meta aggression. So they would like, actually isolate Chinese bear Boosmore.Yeah, of course, I I went off now like total.Yeah, I was good, like. Even if they were at this.