Baker Barbell Podcast

Andy fields questions from his inbox and his private Facebook group, ranging from how to effectively program running and strength training at the same time, how to incorporate hypertrophy movements in a home gym with limited equipment, and more.

Join the Baker Barbell Club Online for just $27/mo:

https://www.andybaker.com/landing-page/

Cox Sauce BBQ Sauce -- Get One Free When You Buy Three!

https://coxsaucebbqsauce.com

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Andy invites Starting Strength Coach, Barbell Logic coach, and entrepreneur Cameron Cox to the show to talk about the coaching business, the importance of soft skills as a coach, why being called a personal trainer is not a bad thing, and how the gym shutdowns of 2020 drove him to produce Cox Sauce BBQ Sauce commercially.

Cox Sauce BBQ Sauce -- Get One Free When You Buy Three!

https://coxsaucebbqsauce.com

Cameron Cox IG: @coachcamcox

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

It's a common complaint for lifters becoming more and more advanced -- my workouts are taking too long! For lifters coming out of a Starting Strength style LP, for instance, and starting the Texas Method or some other popular 5x5 programs, they soon realize that doing five sets of five squats across takes a LONG time, and can be quite fatiguing too. And let's be honest, most of us have lives with higher priorities than training. So training needs to fit in a reasonable time frame, and leave us with enough energy to get on with the rest of our lives.

Andy lays out ten ways you can shorten your workouts, decrease your fatigue, and enjoy training more.

1. Lower your training volume — especially if you're pushing the two hour mark on your workouts. You probably don't need as much volume as you think you do to progress.

2. Ditch your phone during the workout — let's be honest, it's a major distraction device.

3. Plan your workouts — have your sets, reps, and weights planned beforehand if possible. This way you'll walk into the gym focused on what you need to do, and probably have a more productive workout as a result.

4. Practice logistical efficiency — try to pick exercises that "fit" together, that is, that you can load and unload efficiently without excessive setup and tear down time.

5. Use supersets and circuits for accessory/assistance lifts

6. Warm up your next lift during the rest time for your current lift

7. Increase your training frequency for shorter sessions

8. Incorporate rest pause sets

9. Use the dynamic effort method for volume based strength work

10. Improve your conditioning so you can do more work in less time (increase your work capacity)

Cox Sauce BBQ Sauce -- Get One Free When You Buy Three!

https://coxsaucebbqsauce.com

Join the Baker Barbell Club Online: https://www.andybaker.com/landing-page/

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Andy is running solo today, and sharing one of his favorite methods for building muscle in short, focused, and intense workouts. Many people, especially in the barbell trainign and powerlifting world, immediately associate bodybuilding with light weights, high rep sets and a lot of them. Andy has spoken in previous episodes about why bodybuilding requires progressive overload, via reps or weight, and why it doesn't even need to be high volume. A big influence on Andy's own programming methodology is Dante Trudel, a master bodybuilding coach who preached this approach as far back as the 1990's with his "Dog Crap" training (or DC Training for short).

Dante postulated that competitive bodybuilders could get better muscle growth with less volume in the gym (which causes greater fatigue that must be recovered from) and, importantly, fewer drugs (which were needed to recover from all the volume), if they focused on lower volume but more stimulative movements. This means chosing movements that produce more mechanical tension in the target muscles, and working those movements at a high relative intensity. This was accomplished using tops sets, backoff sets, and rest-pause sets.

Dante's methods were groundbreaking at the time, and remain relevant today in the sport of bodybuilding. As Andy notes, they work well for the non-competitive bodybuilder just looking to put more muscle on his frame, since they focus on short, intense workouts.

Follow Dante Trudel on Instagram: @dante_trudel

Baker Barbell Club Online: https://www.andybaker.com/landing-page/

Cox Sauce BBQ Sauce -- Get One Free When You Buy Three!

https://coxsaucebbqsauce.com

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Andy and Dan return to programming, today tackling the big picture behind advanced programming. Essentially, advanced programming picks up when linear progress has ended -- the novice sets daily, then biweekly intensity PR's (the weight on the bar), the intermediate sets weekly PR's. The advanced lifter hopefully still sets PR's on a regular basis, albeit on a longer timeline, but even then intensity PR's are not a sure thing every training cycle.

As Andy points out, PR's for the advanced lifter come in many forms -- volume PR's, PR's for new rep ranges, intensity and volume PR's for supplemental lifts, etc -- and all of these PR's are important drivers of progress on the lifts that count on competition day. Andy and Dan lay out some simple models for programming the advanced lifter, and how they are typically organized tweaked for different personalities and body types.

Building Training Volume for the Advanced Strength Athlete

https://www.andybaker.com/building-training-volume-for-the-advanced-strength-athlete/

Cox Sauce BBQ Sauce -- Get One Free When You Buy Three!

https://coxsaucebbqsauce.com

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Andy and Dan take a break from programming and nutrition talk to chat about the business of coaching. Whether you're a professional trainer or coach, or exploring the idea, you'll need a good grasp of marketing fundamentals. Andy walks through some mistakes he made early on in his career, as well as mistakes he sees other coaches and gym owners make consistently, and some strategies to avoid them. These include identifying your target clientele, following the three "M's" of marketing, and creating organized processes for marketing and sales.

Interesting in consulting with Andy on your gym or coaching business? Andy offers phone consultations via his website:

https://www.andybaker.com/phone-consultations-training-or-business/

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Not everyone wants to be a powerlifter, or a strength athlete, or, frankly, even to lift heavy weights past a certain point. If that's you, or someone you're working with, then it's important to understand that traditional strength programs like the Novice Linear Progression probably aren't a good fit. That doesn't mean that this population, the so-called "general fitness" population, can't get stronger and build a better physique. It just means their training needs to be structured in a way that hits on a wide variety of physical adapations -- strength, conditioning, hypertrophy, etc -- while staying fun.

Andy and Dan share their strategies on programming for these clients, without compromsing on their core principles of strength and progressive overload.

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Andy and Dan discuss how to organize your program during a cut. Whether you have a lot of weight to lose or just a little body fat to trim off, you will be operating in a caloric deficit, meaning your recovery resources won't be optimal for strength training. Consequently you have to throw out the idea of making linear strength gains (unless you are a rank novice) and instead focus on preserving as much muscle mass as possible.

Strength gains are still possible, but they are no longer the focus during a cut. Instead, the strategy is to train in slightly higher rep ranges (Andy prefers the 5-8 rep range), to avoid the tweaks and injuries that tend to happen on heavy singles, doubles, and triples, and incorporate cardio that will increase your calorie burn without burning too much glyocgen in the process.

The Rotating Linear Progression:

https://www.andybaker.com/what-is-a-rotating-linear-progression/

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

Andy and Dan discuss a perenially popular topic for lifters and trainees everywhere -- how do I do cardio? When, how much, what kind... it's a question that comes up for coaches all the time, and it's worth exploring the various ways it can be approached. As Andy points out, people train for a variety of reasons, but only a small percentage of the trainees at any given gym are serious strength athletes or sport athletes. Most people are training to be generally healthy, so a good coach should incorporate some amount of conditioning into his programs. Of course, for the competitive athletes, the conditoning must be very specific to the sport, if not just sport training itself.

For the majority, however, Andy says the best cardio is the cardio you will actually do. There's no getting around the fact that cardio is boring. Despite whatever novelty you introduce at the beginning, it eventually gets boring. So, the best way to stick with your cardio and get the benefits -- whether its fat loss, heart health, or general preparedness for life activities -- is to remove as many obstacles to doing it as you can. Do your cardio right after your lifting, while you're still at the gym. Don't wait to do it later, because odds are you won't. Don't choose exercises or implements that require a lot of setup, like strongman carries or tire flips, because that extra time spent setting up will eventually dissuade you from doing it altogether.

The best cardio for most people is something simple, that you enjoy... or at least don't hate.

Cardio article on Andy Baker's website:

https://www.andybaker.com/what-type-of-cardio-should-you-do/

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com

The goal of physique training, or hypertrophy training, is pretty simple -- get bigger. Increase the size of the muscle bellies. Measuring progress is a trickier proposition, however. Muscle growth takes time, and you cannot expect to see the measuring tape on your biceps going up on a weekly, or even monthly basis. So how DO you measure progress and know if you are getting anywhere?

Similar to strength training, setting PR's consistently over time is an excellent predictor of progress. Just like driving up your accessory lifts over time can lead to increases in your 1RM, increasing the amount of weight and/or reps you can do on a well-chosen selection of exercises will lead to muscle growth over time. To that end, Andy recommends all physique athletes closely track their progress on every exercise, preferably keeping a written log and tracking PR's.

Check out Andy's Upper/Lower Hypertrophy Split Program here:

https://www.andybaker.com/product/the-baker-barbell-upper-lower-hypertrophy/

Andy Baker

Blog: www.AndyBaker.com

IG: @bakerbarbell

Owner of Kingwood Strength & Conditioning

Co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training

Co-author of The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40

Dan Flanick

IG: @coachdanflanick

Gym: https://www.skaneatelesstrength.com