The 6/12 Method – Behind the Block
There's a lot of science, study, and design behind our training program. This block is about building as much muscle as we can.
also, KPI's (key performance indicators) are back and we're measuring our improvement level.
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[00:00] We have a new accumulation block. What's the theme of this month and can you tell us a bit more about it?
[00:05] Six-twelve is the overall theme. When we're thinking accumulation, we think 1) building muscle and 2) working on work capacity. And one of the biggest premises behind that is, do we wanna further delineate that between functional hypertrophy or hypertrophy?
Functional hypertrophy would be kind of what we did last block, working a little lower rep scheme. But kind of in that intermediate zone, where you're developing the size of the muscle fiber in conjunction with building strength.
Hypertrophy, on the other end, we're just in trying to improve the size of the cell. So really not mattering which way we wanna do it or if we wanna improve the size of the muscle fiber or the actual cell itself. The goal is just a bigger muscle, in a sense.
This block, we're shifting more towards the hypertrophy side.
[00:50] One of the biggest premises from that six-twelve is looking at using a heavier loaded movement from that six, right? To get greater motor unit activation. And when we get more motor units activated, we get more muscle fibers. And when we're trying to get a whole area really bigger, the more muscle fibers we're gonna get, the more hypertrophy holds we're gonna get and the bigger bang for our buck from that A series.
[01:14] So the premise is six-twelve and trying to leverage that. Now, an extra twist to that is we're doing a reverse pyramid. So we're starting off heavier and we're going to work our way down. Traditionally, you go work your way up, right? Or straight sets. We're going to go the opposites and there's a couple reasons behind that.
One is quality. When you're getting to your fifth or sixth set, it's really hard to maintain great position just from fatigue. So we don't want to get that as a limiting factor. Keep people safe, maximize the movement, but also a bigger part of it is, from a tonnage perspective, is how am I going to equate more total load on the bar over the course of four weeks.
Potentially, if I can get a heavier weight earlier, as opposed to just fending off fatigue, we should theoretically be able to get higher weight over the course of the four weeks. That should create more of what we want, which is ultimately hypertrophy.
[02:08] In the previous intensification block, it was the last set of 5 reps that was just a killer. Are you going to get to that same point when it's week four of this block? Where it's just like you've got to get your mind right when you're in the rack?
Yeah. So when we look at things like RPE (rate of perceived exertion) and workload – which is just your workload multiplied by minutes of activity – we can see a lot in terms of how you interpreted the difficulty of that program. And the overall stress on your body and your body as a system.
Typically, what we see in accumulation block is really, really high workloads week one, as opposed to intensification block, it's the opposite. We see actually, really low, low workload and when we have a really high workload week one, we're in survival mode for the next two to three weeks.
Where we're trying to hopefully avoid that. And honestly when you're in constant survival mode, you're not going to get the full benefit of the program. You're not going to really get the fight to put more weight on the bar. You're just thinking how can I make it through this as opposed to how can I do this to the best possible quality and the most effectiveness.
If we're going to try to reverse the trend a little bit, go heavier and work lighter, we hope to maintain a lot higher quality. And get overall higher weights recorded throughout the four weeks. As opposed to getting week three and week four and reconciling the fact that I'm just completely gassed.
[03:43] You mentioned this a little bit but I want to kind of circle back to it. Last block was that traditional five by five. Traditional in the sense of, I feel like a lot of folks are familiar with that set & rep scheme.
How does the work that we did in the last block lead us into what we're going to be doing in this block?
The effect of improving:
the neuromuscular quality of improving motor unit activation
greater rate coding – which is firing
synchronization of motor units – using the right kind of motor units in harmony.
We essentially have a bigger engine to work with when we're doing something that's designed to build muscle. And we're going to be able to utilize higher weights. Which from that perspective, you're going to get more out of our training sessions.
We're stronger, more efficient, and when we're doing something like six-twelve – which is going to be a lot of reps – the more weight and the better technique I can have for that, the more overall effect I'm going to get from it.
Which is completely contingent upon what we did in the previous block of building strength up to the highest possible levels.
[04:52] I don't see barbell back squat on the program this block. Is there a reason for that?
[05:01] We try to get back-to-back blocks of our same A series. Last block, we utilized front squats as one of our A series. And we like to parley that into an accumulation block. Why?
Familiarity. It's an easier transition to a new style of rep scheme. When you change the exercises, you're going to encourage some muscle soreness and that can be a limiting factor, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. That's kind of like showing you that you have some neglected areas.
But for us to get the most out of this block, we like to have that limited exercise variation from a strength or intensification block to an accumulation block to get the kind of maximum benefit as quickly as possible.
We'll transition to back squat next block.We're going to hit a big intensification block again. But the premise is let's get some familiarity with it so we can get quicker results.
[05:52] Is that also the same reason why it's not a single leg squat? Is it that same sort of purpose?
Yes. When we utilize some sort of unilateral movement with the barbell or dumbbell, it's kind of like we only have so many bullets in the chamber. We can squat with the bar, right, so front squat and back squat. Unilateral work is a kind of recharging the system, clearing some asymmetries, developing some unilateral strength again, which we did a couple of blocks ago. It's a nice little break from monotony.
Just getting some things dialed in and acknowledging the fact that when you bi-laterally load a lot, you typically start developing a lot of asymmetries. When you get back to doing unilateral exercises, it's really transparent. But until you do that, you don't really notice it. You're just kind of banging front squats and going through it. You're like, "Alright, this is hard. This is hard. I'm getting stronger. I'm getting stronger".
And then all of a sudden, some sort of mild injury, or you start plateauing and it could be from sort of deficit from right to left or some sort of asymmetry that's causing pain or dysfunction.
[06:55] Low incline bench is the A series of practice two. Is this a fat grip and if not, why not?
It is a regular grip. Fat grip is one of our tools we use a ton here. We them to get greater activation through the whole shoulder girdle. Another big part of it is, they potentially limit the bar weight, where it's kind of a restricted plate. It's going to cap you at a certain point to not surpass the structure unit in your shoulder.
And breaking from Fat Grip work and getting really good block of developing just good volume. Again our goal is to get as much weight on the bar as possible with great technique to maximize the effectiveness of it.
It's nice to break away from the fat grip and utilize just a traditional barbell.
[07:40] Moving into the B-series. Can you talk a little bit about the B-series and the science, organization and purpose behind those pairings?
The periodization is going back to that functional hypertrophy versus hypertrophy. If we're looking for a time under tension guideline, it's anywhere from 45 seconds to a 1 minute 15 seconds to really work hypertrophy in a traditional sense. Really glycolytic. It means it's probably more of a lactic energy system.
Goal is burn through as much glycogen as possible and the more glycogen we burn through, theoretically the more mTOR pathways are stimulated or protein synthesis pathways. We want that. We want that during this block.
[08:37] 1) the B-series has to be consistent with the block's theme of accumulation. The goal's got to be hypertrophy. And then 2), picking exercises bio-mechanically that can sustain that much time-under-tension attention.
It'd be really, really hard to do barbell overhead splits squat for eight each leg with a 4/0/X/0 tempo. Technique would break down quickly. Extreme example, but what we want to utilize is movements that really facilitate, "Hey, I can load this for a bit of time without structurally breaking down".
And the other aspect from a program design aspect is balance is always going to be a big part of what we're doing structurally.
So we tell everybody we want to be able to push as much as we pull in every direction. If we're doing a push in the A-series, we're going to compliment that with a pull in the A-series. And then same thing on the B-series going down.
So whatever we didn't do in the A-series, we're going to focus on that in the B-series. So we have a foundational movement or a correlated movement going on in our A-series, we're going to utilize some sort of accessory work in the B-series that's the antagonist to that A-series.
[09:46] Now, looking at the bookends of each session, we've got a warm-up and we've got, in this case, a KPI with the assault bike.
Yep.
[10:02] Can you talk a bit about the theory, organization and the reasoning behind the warm-up as it pertains specifically to this block?
The accumulation warm-up, we know the show. It's going to be that 45 minutes we're in the weight room and getting after it. So we don't want to have this super high threshold strategy where we're kind of getting people dialed up to train. It's got to be a part of the session.
We really feel strongly that we can improve motor patterns through a good quality warm-up of guided flexibility, mobility and just straight up movement training. And we also feel that it should compliment what we're doing in the training sessions. Our movements should mirror or mimic some of the things we're trying to do in the weight room. So it's not foreign or completely juxtaposed to what we've been doing outside. They should complement each other nicely.
And from the other lens, do we have a better shot at improving movements unloaded outside. Where it's a little less threatening and people just move freely and we can see people as they are.
We like to tell our coaches, always use your movement prep period as a means to look at how your members or athletes are doing. It creates a great diagnostic for what your sessions going to be like. If you feel like it's low energy, you've got to meet them when they come in the weight room and try to break that before it even becomes a problem.
If you see people really restricted and stiff, it's a great opportunity to go to them like, "Hey, is everything all right? Do you have something going on," and creating your inventory of maybe modifications you might be doing in the weight room.
[11:37] And then in terms of KPIs. KPIs are what we call a Key Performance Indicators. There are two parts to that. 1) We want to assess you're structurally balanced. So looking at your push versus your pull. Going back to what we talked about in our A and B series: if you push it, you better be able to pull it.
We utilize a upper body assessment which is a pretty simple way to assess where we're at in terms of our balance of pushing and pulls. We do a body weight bench assessment versus a neutral-grip pull-up assessment.
The goal is to have an equal amount of reps between the two. Is it a hundred percent across the board? No. But it gives us something to strive towards. And if we can pull as much as we're pushing, we should have a pretty solid structure going on in our shoulder girdle. That means we're doing our job of balancing out as well as encouraging putting some weights on your pull-ups and your rows to really make sure you're complementing all the weight that you're pushing, pressing-wise.
[12:33] And the other KPI assessment is an assault bike. Again, simple, low barrier of entry, everyone can do it. Not easy by any stretch of the imagination but we can get a really good snapshot of just what your energy systems are doing. Most of the stuff we do in the weight room is pretty glycolytic or lactic, right? We're burning through a ton of glycogen and it's going to accumulate a lot of acidity.
We should theoretically be really, really developed in that energy system. What do our other energy systems look like? Like our alactic? Do we have power? Can we generate a lot of force, just one all-out efforts?
We use a .2 mile sprint in the assault bike to see that. And a really good time for that is 21 to 20 seconds. We've actually had a member hit 19 seconds, which is generating ton of force and power. A one all-out effort, you can see some things. Another way you can look at tension vertical jump, or some other things, like a broad jump or a med ball throw. Space... time... equipment... kind of hard teaching... We just don't have the set up right now to do that.
Assault bike facilitates that big time.
[13:34] The next level would be a 0.5 mile, which is looking at more of that lactic and glycolytic system. We should be really good there. This is kind of our bread and butter. We know that this helps a lot with body composition and building muscle. It's that most visceral of the energy systems, the one people can walk away from and say, "Okay, that was a really hard training session." But it's good to see where we're at.
And the final one would be a 1.0 mile. All-out effort, see what you got for one mile, and gauge what our energy systems are telling us. We should be really developed in all areas and if we have a limiting factor – if I don't have a really good 0.2 mile percentile compared to the rest of the gym – I gotta develop strength and power. If I have a poor 1.0 mile, I probably have a poor aerobic fitness and that's going to limit my ability to recover from these workouts.
[14:16] And from a health perspective, we're only as good as our mitochondria dictate us to be. The more aerobic pathways we have, our mitochondria are a bit more dialed in.
Out of all this, from a recommendation, I can definitely tell someone you need to improve your pull strength. You need to improve your alactibility, or your aerobic ability.
The whole goal of this is just strength and weaknesses and seeing where we're at. And see if the program's actually helping people and making people better for the long-haul. And we need feedback from time to time to see how it's going.
[14:50] Anything else you'd like to mention?
We do utilize a cool down period at the end. From there we rotate between a couple different modalities. ELDOA being one, which is what we're using this block. ELDOA is essentially utilizing fascial slings to create distraction at certain points in the spine.
We see a lot of compressive loads going on in our weight room. We like to use something like ELDOA at the end to help decompress. And always make sure we're including some sort of recovery at the end of training sessions. If they don't get enough of it from us, they can kind of adhere to it on their own. A little bit of homework, but let's expose them to as much modalities of recovery.
[15:35] The other one we're using this block is a yoga circuit. Just a simple, seven exercise circuit. Flow through each one of them. See if you have any nicks and dings, things you're walking away with. We're just trying to curate that holistic approach.
Let's develop really good strength, hypertrophy, power. Let's develop really good movement, and let's give some really good means to recover from these challenging workouts.
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