Ep 78: The Simplest Model To Get Stronger And Build Muscle || WBWL

Have you struggled to consistently build muscle and strength as you age? 

Have you seen over the months or years of training, that you have not moved up in weight? You seem to be plateauing at many of your normal exercises? 

Well this episode is for you! 

This is a very simple model that has helped me increase my pullups  from 25 lbs to 125 lb pull ups! (goal is to lift my body weight at 155 lbs) 

This model has also been taught to high school students, and they've also made tremendous strength gains using this model. 

I'll also teach you how to systematically log the data so you can SEE measurable changes to your strength. 

Hope this model will help you as much as it's helped me and 1000s of my clients. 

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Won Body Won Life Podcast. Hi, I am your host. Dr. Jason Won lifestyle physical therapist. What we do is we help high achievers eliminate pain and get stronger and get back to a more active and robust lifestyle. And today I wanted to share a very simple model on how to continue to build muscle and make strength gains. And so this model here that I'm going to show you. has helped me not just even 5x the weight on my pull ups, but also 3x the weight on my dips. Yes, you heard that. When I first started, using this exact model, which I'm going to define and title this in just a bit. I was able to go from a 25 pound pull up and now doing 125 pound pull ups at an eight rep max. And I was also able to go from a 45 pound dip and now I'm able to do three plates and more and still progressing using this model. This model has also been shown to high school kids. Yes, you've heard this. This model is simple enough. For a high school child to actually know how to use and a lot of the people that I've taught have also increased their strength like crazy, insurmountably. And also I want to show you lastly, by the end of this podcast is to ensure that you have a meaningful way of progressing and actually documenting this progress as well. So this model here is called the double progression model. And this is a model that I taught. to well over a thousand clients, and it still works. So today, so what you're essentially doing is you're using another way for the delta version model is called the two plus two rule. And basically what you're going to do is for any given exercise, you're going to obviously assign yourself a certain amount of sets. You're going to assign yourself a repetition range. Very important that you set a range and then therefore with that range, every time that you hit that upper rep range, you want to increase weight. So let me give you an example with a barbell squat, I'm going to give myself three sets of six to eight repetition. So this is a very narrow rep range, which means that I'm going to try to essentially on this training split. I'm going to try to increase weight faster. If you gave yourself an 8 to 15 rep range, then you're saying to yourself that I want to stay at a given weight longer. So with the 6 to 8 repetitions that I assigned myself, if I do three sets of six, at 100 pounds. The next time that I do that exact exercise, I'm going to try to aim for two more repetitions. So I'm gonna try to aim for three sets of eight repetitions and let's say I do and likely you should because with obvious consistent strength training, You should be able to tolerate more volume and also tolerate more intensity over time, which in other words means that you should be able to tolerate more repetitions or tolerate more weight respectively. So if I'm doing now three sets of eight at a hundred pounds. The next time that I do that specific exercise, which is the barbell squat. I know that I hit the upper rep range last week or whenever I hit that. So now I'm going to go three sets of six, which means I'm going back down to the lower rep range. And then therefore I'm going to increase weights. Usually for lower body on average, people can progress anywhere between five, 10 or sometimes for the more experienced, you can even increase 20 pounds. As the double progression model, usually I strain more, it's the five pounds, a 10 pound range. So if I'm at a hundred pounds on the previous two exercises or the two previous workouts, I'm now going to do three sets of six at 810 pounds, for example, and then eventually three sets of eight at 110 pounds. And then you go back down again, three sets of six, then at 120 pounds. So this gives you a very predictable model on how to continue to increase weight. A common question I get from a lot of my clients is if you continue down this route, can you just continue to increase weight and increase repetitions? Over and over again. And so the truth here is that no, everybody has a specific genetic limit. I think that a lot of people, you have to refine form and technique. I think that you have to also take into account how well you sleep as well as your nutrition as well. So I think that a lot of those play into those factors on, can I just continue to increase weight infinitely? And so it depends on your genetics, depends on how fast you recover. And a lot of times, yes, as far as form and technique and proper training protocols will define how far that person can go. And there are a lot of people that are a certain weight that they can possibly lift, four to five times their body weight because again, proper training, proper recovery. Okay. So for that matter, though, even at the age of 35, I'm continuing to increase my weights on specific compound lifts like squat, bench press, deadlift. lunges and many other exercises. And for that matter, it's because of the consistency is because of how well recovered I am from the point of sleep as well as nutrition. Okay. The next thing I want to tell you about is as far as this model, you want to apply again, a repetition range and you always want to increase your weights once you hit the upper grip range. There are a lot of protocols, but I find that this double progression model is by far the easiest and the simplest one to learn so that you can continue to make gains for months and even years and possibly even decades down the line. Now, how do you actually make this progress? It's actually track this. So when I was looking at there's one time I looked at even like Bruce Lee's believe it or not, look at Bruce Lee training. You can actually look up Google images and actually see that he was actually writing. On a piece of paper, his exact repetitions, his exact amount of sets and the exact amount of weight. And I was like, okay, if a legendary of a legendary martial artist is also logging his weights and logging his reps, why shouldn't we? And so there are a lot more advanced technologies than what Bruce Lee had. Now we have apps. Now we have a lot of trackable data. We can use spreadsheets. So I actually, for myself, I use a mixture of spreadsheets. So I put my entire training split onto a spreadsheet. I label the columns as Week 1 and Week 2, Week 3, so I'm progressing. And I also assign myself the name of the exercise, the sets, as well as a repetition range. So then I pre pop not pre, I post populate. All of my data onto the spreadsheet. I also use an app which is called Fit Notes on Android. And I actually have been logging in this specific app for well over 10 years now. So when I show my clients, they're very surprised. I've been logging actually all my data since 2014. So that's a lot of data that you can always look back at in order to continue to one up yourself. And this data really shows, once you do like a barbell squat, it shows you what you've done even years ago, but even shows you what you just did last week. And so my favorite saying that I say to my clients is what can't be measured, can't manage. And as a physical therapist, but also a strength training athlete, but also was a former math major was a math major in UC Davis. Is the fact that if you don't measure, if you actually don't log your data, there are plenty of clients or plenty of people that I have tried to train, or let's say I know them, they have not made any gains for months and even years. They're still stuck on the same weights. They're still look the same. They still perform the same. If anything, they're declining because they're getting older. So having the documentation really not just keep yourself accountable, but again, you allow yourself to follow the specific double progression model that I just put out. So when you start logging and I understand that some people are going to have that mental mindset of it's too much work to track. It takes up too much time. I know a lot. I've heard all the excuses down the line, but it's well worth it. Yeah. to spend 5, 10 minutes to learn how to track, to force yourself to track, to try to make it a habit so that maybe months down the line, you'll notice that your squat goes from 100 pounds and now you're at 175. And like I said, within eight months, I went from a 25 pound pull up and now I'm doing 125 pound pull up. And this is literally within one year. I've just through consistent effort. Okay, so that's all I wanted to share with you guys today is the double progression model, but also finding either an app or even just using a spreadsheet, or if you're very old school, even just using a notepad, right here, right? The name of the exercises, assign a set, assign a repetition range. And every time you hit the upper ref range, log that data, but then drop your reps back down and therefore you've increased the weight. Okay. And there are a lot of ways or a lot of protocols in order to increase intensity, but I think that weights and repetitions as well as frequency as well as sets, those are the easiest things to document. And I think I encourage you after listening to this podcast, to really put pen to paper virtually or physically so that you can really see the gains and start to see that you're actually building muscle. You're getting stronger as you get older. And this is something I've been following for literally almost 10, 11 years now, even prior to becoming a physical therapist. And I still apply these principles today. So that's what I got for you guys today. If you have any questions, feel free to Feel free to drop a comment or even drop a rating drop ratings. You can also drop ratings on YouTube music, on Spotify, on Apple podcasts. I greatly appreciate if you found this valuable to continue to share my podcast or even share a five star rating. That'd be greatly appreciated. And also, if you have any questions, feel free to email me jason@flexwithdoctorjay.Com. You can also text me at 415 965 6580. A lot of ways to message me as well as my team. And that's it. What I got for the training. I'll leave you always with how I always leave things. We only got one body, one life, make every action you take the one that makes you a better version of you. Take care. Transcribed