Try These Exercises For Better Fitness & Fat Loss

29:14Shawn Stevenson:Up next in this incredible compilation with these four world leading experts sharing exercises for better fitness and fat loss. Next, you're going to hear from New York Times bestselling author and former professor at UNLV, Michael Easter. He's going to be sharing how rucking or urban rucking that's taken over the streets can boost calorie burn, improve cardiovascular fitness, and enhance strength, all while staying low impact and accessible. This is the art and science of utilizing a weighted backpack or weighted vest that adds resistance and some incredible benefits that you need to know about.

30:03Shawn Stevenson:Let's dive into the segment with the incredible Michael Easter. I think there's a lot of evidence that suggests it's uniquely good for fat loss. now i think there's a variety of reasons for that but the simplest way to think about it is you're combining uh endurance work which tends to burn more calories than strength work but you also are working your muscles because you are having to use your muscles to carry the weight more or less right and something almost happens where that tends to preferentially burn fat for energy So there's a study that I really love that looked at these backcountry hunters in Alaska.

30:43So for those who aren't familiar with backcountry hunting, it's basically like I'm carrying all my gear in a backpack and I'm going into the mountains for 10 days, two weeks, whatever it might be. And I can't really eat that much as I'm doing it because I got to carry in all my food. So the scientists send these guys out. They measure their body fat. They do all these different measurements before they go out. These guys are out in the wilderness for 14 days about, and then they come back. Now they had lost weight, right? You would expect that because they weren't eating that much. They're covering ground like crazy people, these heavy packs.

31:15Now, when most people lose weight, though, some of that weight is going to come from muscle. Like if I just start dieting, I'm going to lose fat. I'm going to lose muscle. But ideally, you want to hang on to as much muscle as possible, right? So when they tested these guys' body fat after the 14 days, they found that they had lost entirely fat. and no muscle at all. They'd even slightly gained muscle. It was not a significant amount, but it was there. And that was enough where you're like, wow, that's a shocker. I will tell you from my own perspective, I did this long backcountry hunt in Alaska in 2019.

31:49Just about a year ago, I did this 850 mile through hike in Southern Utah. So I have these heavy backpacks on my back the whole time. I'm covering ground. And in each of those trips, I lost about 15 pounds, but that 15 pounds, it was definitely fat. I didn't do any crazy body fat testing, but I can tell you, I can just take my shirt off and go, you look like you're ready for weigh-in at a UFC fight right now. So I think when we do think about weight loss, of course, as I'm sure you've covered, I think that diet is the number one lever to pull. It doesn't matter how much rucking you do. If you're eating 7 ,000 calories a day, good luck.

32:30But as you lower your calories to try and lose weight, the question becomes, all right, well, how do I shift the balance where I'm losing more fat than muscle in this process? And I think that rucking can be a really good tool for that because you'll burn more calories than you would just from weightlifting alone. But you also get some of that strength stimulus that seems to tell your body to hang on to that muscle.

32:52Shawn Stevenson:Amazing. Now, you don't know this before I picked up your book, which is amazing, by the way. everybody needs to get a copy. I did a show with my guys here and we released the episode and it was inspired by the Gravitostat information that came from Dr. Brennan Spiegel out of UCLA. And when I dug into the research, I was just, I mean, I was blown away. It's rare that you find something that's just like truly like a revelation, like nobody knows this. And it was a study that was published in the International Journal of Obesity. and part of that process, like you said, even you can be 7 ,000 calories, you're going to have to rub 24 seven or whatever.

33:33Shawn Stevenson:But part of that struggle that especially here in the United States, people have experienced millions upon millions, they lose weight and they gain it back, right? Plus a little bit more. And a big part of that has to do with the change in the resting metabolic rate, right? When you cut away those calories, this goes back and ties in so well with this new book because there's certain things that our body has evolved to do your body has evolved to not lose weight right right exactly but it's not like that and so having the our genes are a result of those who survived who are good at hanging on to weight right and so that resting metabolic rate going down to basically just make sure that you survive right so um what these researchers did was they took almost 20 people and they had them to wear a weighted vest.

34:24Shawn Stevenson:But what they did was each pound that they lost, and by the way, put them on a calorie restricted diet and one group, no weighted vest and the other group wearing a weighted vest, but every pound they lost, they added a pound to the weighted vest. And so what this did was, and the researchers affirm this presence of this gravito stat was they did the short-term diet they lost weight people wearing the weighted vest lost 25 pounds over the course of the study the study was six months long and so the weighted vest group lost 25 pounds the non-weighted vest group lost 23 pounds not a big difference that wouldn't be enough for me to be carrying a weighted vest around for you know 10 hours a day as a participant but the magic was in the follow-up two years later they bring the participants back in.

35:13Shawn Stevenson:As expected, the people who were not wearing the weighted vest, they regained the weight that they lost. Now, here's where the magic was. The people who were wearing the weighted vest, they only gained back half of the weight that they lost. During the study, they found that the people who weren't wearing the weighted vest, their resting metabolic rate went down by about 250 calories a day. So they were burning 250 less. The people wearing the weighted vest, their resting metabolic rate only went down 16 calories a day. And so it's something about having that load on their frame that was kind of informing their biology that they don't need to slow that resting metabolic rate down.

35:53Shawn Stevenson:So remarkable. It's kind of like insulating people against weight regain. Yeah. And that's, that's the big thing is what, and it's great that the study was pretty long too, because this is why I think most people stop dieting at about five and a half weeks. And what tends to happen is that your body is cranking up hunger signals as well. So I think one of the findings from the gravitas that hypothesis is that those hunger signals don't get cranked up as much either. Now that really, to me, is kind of one of the limiters of diet, right? It's like everyone can eat fewer calories for a handful of weeks, but what are you going to do when all of a sudden your biology goes, Hey, you're losing weight.

36:33We need you to eat more. So we're going to ramp up your hunger signals. We're going to make you obsess more about food. So if we can find ways to prevent that, that seems like a smart idea to me. You know, the tagline is like, you're getting more from every step. Every step is going to be a little bit harder. And because of that, you're going to get more benefits from it. So for me, it's like, and I think what I love about it, and we were talking about this before we hit record here is that it's so approachable and easy. If I want to go for a run, I got to get on my special run clothes. I got to get on my special run shoes.

37:11But if I want to walk with weight, it's like, if I'm taking the dogs for a walk, I'm just going to throw on a pack that has whatever, 20, 30, whatever pounds in it, right? I already have to take the dogs for a walk. It is not that big of a deal. I don't have to put on special clothes. I can just wear normal walking shoes, but I can get a lot more from that walk by simply throwing on that pack. And I'll tell you in the case of the dogs for dog owners out there, uh, if your pack has a hip belt, you can thread the leashes through the hip belt. And then now your hands are free to, to, you know, send emails, take calls, whatever you might have to do and just get creative with caring.

37:46I think, you know, to go back to my original point, like this is the, this is the human act. This is the human physical act and we just don't do it anymore. And so I think starting to try and figure out how can I weave more of that back into my daily, weekly, monthly, yearly fitness practice, I think would do people a lot of good. And I'm not saying, you know, stop running. I'm not saying you don't need to ever lift weights. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that all types of exercise are good, but we've just totally missed this really, really good one. And we should think about adding it back in.

38:20Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. All right. Up next and running the anchor leg in this incredible compilation of exercises for better fitness and fat loss. To close things out, you're going to be hearing from the one and only Jay Ferruja. He is the high performance coach to elite performers in the WWE, UFC, Major League Baseball, the NFL, the list goes on and on with those accolades, but also everyday people who want to get into the best shape of their lives, seek out Jay Faruja because he has over 30 years of experience and more than 10 ,000 transformations have been attributed to his work. 10 ,000 bodies getting fitter and in need of a sitter because they're going out tonight.

39:12All right.

39:14Shawn Stevenson:The incredible Jay Faruja is about to share with you why most people waste valuable time and energy warming up incorrectly. You can be getting more gains. And I'm telling you this firsthand, firsthand experiences. This was a game changer. This was a game changer for me. I've been able to put on muscle faster than I have in years by simply utilizing his insights when it comes to warming up. My strength gains were almost immediate, but especially accumulating over the weeks and months afterwards. And also my efficiency, my time in the gym has been so much more efficient. And so I can't thank him enough for this insight, which you're going to learn about, but also going to be sharing the truth about the amount of volume that you need to build muscle and change your body faster.

40:07Shawn Stevenson:Okay. Volume is a key, key, major key alert, key component of getting the gains that you want. He's also going to share the top three lower body exercises to get the biggest benefit in the shortest amount of time. Why does this matter? Because our lower body muscles have so much, yes, muscular potential, but that additional muscle, that body recomposition can also up-level our personal metabolic rate so that we're burning more calories just by living life. So this is a super rich way filled with insights to close everything out. Let's hand the baton to the one and only Jay Farroucia. Talk a little bit more about junk volume and also start off by talking about how much volume do we ideally need to target to build muscle, maintain our muscle and also stay relatively lean.

41:10So it's a complicated answer and it's, it becomes more, it becomes increasingly difficult to give a clear answer on that just because of all the research we have now and just the individual kind of differences between people. And so we used to look at weekly training volume, which I think is still a good metric, but it really kind of comes down to how much volume you do today in today's workout will determine how much you can do 48, 72, 96 hours later. And so I like to look at, there's a few ways to break it down. Like you can look at per workout, how many total sets should you do? That's an easy way to measure volume.

41:48So I generally keep most of my clients in anywhere between eight total work sets and about 15, 16. That's it. Now, most people go to the gym. They probably do exponentially more than that. They're probably doing 20, 30 sets. So we'll look at that. So in general, eight to 12 for most of my guys. And then we look at also body parts specific, right? So generally, like there's been meta-analysis multiple over the last few years where they study, they look at people doing five sets per body part per week versus 10 versus 15 versus 20. They make the most gains in the five to 10 range. There's some crazy outlandish studies where they'll say the more volume, the better.

42:25But then if you, if what you look at with those is the rest periods, this is kind of crazy. And it's hard to even wrap your head around. If you have short rest periods, because each set is less efficient, you need way more volume. But if you're resting three minutes between sets, then you're fully recovered. You don't need as much volume. So it seems to be for most people, that's why I like to look at studies, but also like to base it on 30 years worth of experience that I have. And then talk to other people who have that kind of experience too. We know that it's the sweet spots right around six to 10 sets per week per body part.

43:00Now you can do all 10 of those sets on Monday, or you could do three, three, four on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there's different ways to break it up. But it's not that easy, though. That's the thing. And that's where it gets a little complicated. And then we also have like, this creates fatigue too. So going back, so let's say I go to the gym right now, I do eight sets of chest. That's my whole workout, eight sets of chest. That will create more fatigue for me tomorrow that I've went to the gym and did eight sets, but did two sets of back, two sets of chest, two sets of eyes, two sets of tries, because I won't have as much soreness and muscle damage.

43:33So soreness and muscle damage creates fatigue. So now tomorrow's workout is going to suffer more if I just did eight sets of chest. See what I'm saying? Of course. So, so you, ideally you want to break up the volume and do a little bit less. You don't want to cause all that inflammation and all that fatigue, right? So that's where it gets a little tricky to give a super strict kind of, you know, straight answer. It really depends on the individual. I would say for most people do less. Like I start most people lot on a full body workout, either three days a week or every other day, I actually prefer every other day.

44:07When you're doing that, you really want to start at baseline, which is one set, which is crazy. You do a few warm upsets, you do one hard set for body per each body, chest, shoulders, back, legs, you know, whatever. And then we assess volume and how much you can recover from and then we'll push it up a little bit. When you do it that way, the strength gains are insane. Like you'll gain strength. Most of my guys like, dude, it's like I'm on steroids. these strength gains are crazy. Now where we get more complex is certain muscles take longer to recover. So you might be able to run that for like, let's say six, eight, 10 weeks and everything is skyrocketing, but chest always is the slowest.

44:41Pressing people are like, yo, I'm stalled out, I'm pressing. Pressing universally stalls out the fastest. Pecs are just easily damaged and they're hard to recover. Hamstrings probably second or tied depending on the individual. Hamstrings get damaged very easily. They recover slowly. So that's why it's hard because it's like individual muscle. It's like, and then what are you doing? Right? So if you're doing a bunch of, like, for example, if you do three sets of a standing leg curl, which trains the hamstring in the shortened position, that's exponentially easier to recover from than if you did three sets of stiff-legged deadlift that trains the hamstring in the lengthened position.

45:15Now we're going to have a ton of soreness, muscle damage, and fatigue. Whereas with the standing leg curl, we're going to have no muscle soreness, no muscle damage. So very little fatigue, right? So you might be able to do more. So all these things have to be taken into account, which is like, it gets very complex. I like to simplify things, but if we're really talking, you know, like really dialing it in, it is like rocket science. Yeah. Yeah. Literally.

45:38Shawn Stevenson:And we are the rocket, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And this, this is such an important thing. You mentioned the rest time, like this is something that we don't really consider. And a lot of these studies, and one of the ones that I saw recently, a big meta analysis, looking at the amount of volume to get in, we're recommending 60 to 90 seconds between sets, but you had to do more volume over the week. You got to do more sets. So it's just less efficient. Yeah. But you can come into it with the mindset of like, I have less time in the gym, so I need to move faster. Right. And so you can have that mindset, but also you could be like, I have to do less sets if I'm taking more time in between sets.

46:14Shawn Stevenson:So it's just a different way of looking at it. Either way, you can get an efficient, kind of much shorter workout than what we've been programmed to think about. And I know you've done this, you've seen this, you see guys that are in there for two hours, you know, like literally it's been many times over the years I go to the gym and somebody's already in their workout and I finished my workout and they're still going, you know, and they're just like, and, and, you know, usually some, you know, sometimes like an older, you know, uh, and they're just like, you know, I just got my first hour in, you know, about to get into the hour two, you know, just like, you know, more power to you, man.

46:49Shawn Stevenson:So it's just, again, it's changing our mindset because also, and this isn't to take away something else, which is important, which is the joy part of it too. Totally. Because this individual, this is a big part of his enjoyment, being there at the gym. And so what we're talking about, by the way, we're talking about efficiency and getting in the best shape of your life and transforming your body. And so one of the takeaways now is, again, having less sets, right? So let's actually, can you detail, like explain a little bit more for us what we mean by volume? Like, what does that mean? I mean, the easiest way is just the number of sets you're doing for a body part or muscle group.

47:29And then you asked before about junk volume. So that would be what I would describe as junk volume would be any, for the most part, any sets 15 reps and above. That's really junk volume. Now, guys are our age, 50, 60 might say, well, I can't do the exercise unless I do 15 to 20 or my joints kill. If that's truly the case, then yes, true. You should do that many reps. But I would say to that person, hey, let's try to find a similar movement that fits you well. It doesn't hurt your knees, your elbows or whatever. If you can do that safely, then we can bring the reps down to a more productive rep range.

48:02It doesn't cause as much fatigue, right? Some people just be like, oh, I can't squat unless I do 30 reps. I'm like, yeah, OK, but maybe let's play around. There's some machines, maybe there's a different variation of a squat that you can do. You'd have to be really banged up not to be able to do something in an 8 to 12 range. So it would be things over 15 reps I would call junk volume for the most part. There's always exceptions. Sets that are further than two reps from failure, I would consider junk volume because then you're just not stimulating any gains really. It's kind of a warm-up set. And then excess warm-ups are things that I think are junk volume too.

48:36And even fitness pros and influencers don't know this. When I train together, I'm like, how do you not know how to warm up properly? Nobody knows how to warm up properly. The way I think you should warm up, which reduces a lot of fatigue. So most people will go in and they'll do, let's say they're, let's just say they're going to bench press, right? They'll do 10 or 12 reps, put on more weight, do 10 or 12 reps, put on more weight and keep getting up until they're working weight or top weight or whatever. What I would advise most people to do is go in first set, maybe do eight to 10, but you want to do the least.

49:06them out. And you're only trying to prepare yourself for the work sets. So then I might do five to eight, then I might do three reps, and then one, one, one. Now, if you're moving, let's say from your first pressing exercise, if you're moving to a second pressing exercise, you're already warmed up. But most people will do that again, 10, 10, 10. It's like, that's not doing anything. It's just causing fatigue. And it's a complete waste of time. So then what I would do is if we're going to the second exercise, I might literally just do one to three reps, just that you You can call them feeder sets, just feeling it out, whatever.

49:35You just kind of train your nervous system for a slightly different move. Like if you're doing an incline press into a flat press. So a lot of people just waste time and do junk volume with, with, uh, their warmup sets. Like if I'm on a machine that's selectorized with the pin, right. I'll do, I'll sit there and do all my, instead of doing 10, I'll do five, move the pin down three, move the pin down two, move the pin down one, do the pin down one, one, one. Cause I'm pretty strong. so i might be doing the stack on that but i'm not going to do a set of 10 walk around do another set of 10 i'll just get the entire warm-up done and maybe do 15 reps going all the way down the stack in 30 seconds then i'll rest two or three minutes before i start my work set so that's what i mean by people warming up incorrectly it's just creating fatigue and then what that does too is your main set your money set that you're actually going to stimulate hypertrophy with the weight's going to be so much less because you created all that fatigue and just wasted all that energy, you know, especially again, if you're over 40, 50 or whatever, you don't have the energy that you had when you were 20, you know?

50:32Shawn Stevenson:So I want to ask you about this as well, when it comes to the splits that we're doing, right? You mentioned full body every other day. And obviously there's a lot of ways to, a lot of paths to the goal. And you mentioned, you know, we can get all of those sets in the volume on a certain body part in one day, right? And that's one of the kind of standard things is like national chest day, leg day, and just split it up. But I don't think you get the touch points to keep that really good hypertrophy and your nervous system kind of trained without having those touch points more frequently. And that's just something that I found out.

51:10Shawn Stevenson:It took me so long to get that because I would, I'd go to the gym and obliterate my legs, be sore for five days and then two days off, and then I'm back to blowing my legs up again. But what about a split, right? Where we do the kind of classic split where we got a push day, pull day, legs, maybe a rest day, or just repeat? What about a framework like that? Yeah. Like you mentioned, there's so many. And what you said before was true. So personal preference and enjoyment does weigh into that. Like you might say on paper, hey, once a week split is no good, but if you love it, then it's great. Right?

51:46So that's something to really consider. The other thing I would say is most of the time I start people with more frequency, right? Like I said, like full body, the next split would be upper lower. You could do, we tend to be married to more traditional splits, like full body, upper, lower push, pull legs. But I split things up in ways that I've never seen before. That just kind of makes sense to me based on what I was talking about before, like individual body parts recovery. So at the end of let's say a pull day, I might, if someone wants to do a four day body part split, right? Like it says they're going to push, pull, legs, arms.

52:19Now I want to get more than once a week frequency. So on the, at the end of the pull day, maybe we'll add in some leg extensions. So now in addition to that leg day, they're getting a second time on legs, but they're not obliterating the legs. Right. And then on the arm day, we're hitting some dips or close grips. And now we're getting chest a second time. And then the leg day, maybe we'll throw in a row at the end. So we're back a second time. So you could still do a traditional bodybuilding split, but increase the frequency. And then again, that's individual, you know, maybe what's your, what's your priority.

52:46If it's shoulders, maybe we'll add more frequency for shoulders, backs, you know, same thing. Um, but I tend to stick with really upper, lower or, or, or, or full body most of the time for most people. And then, but you could even do things like push, pull legs. And for whatever reason, most people think you could only do push, pull legs once a week, meaning Monday, Wednesday, Friday or six days a week, Monday through Saturday, but you can do it the way I like to do it is push, pull off, legs off, repeat. So then it's once every five days, or you could do two on one off. So push, pull off, legs push and continue to do that way.

53:20So it's more frequency. What you can also do is let's say you decide I want to bring up my biceps. Normally you'd only do curls on the pull day, but I throw those rules out. So you might do push, pull off. Now we do biceps first on leg day because it's your priority. So we get them on the pull day indirectly with all the rows and the pull downs and we get them directly fresh at the beginning of the leg day. And you could do that with other body parts that are weak too, you know, just prioritize them where you want to put them. So there's a lot of ways, non-traditional ways to do splits that I think are really effective.

53:54And then again, it's just like, we assess how does the person feel? How much fatigue are you getting? How much soreness are you getting? And what are your results like? And how much are you enjoying it?

54:04Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Now you also mentioned, and this is awesome by the way, you also mentioned how far we want to go in that set, right? You mentioned after getting past generally 15 reps. And again, there's situations for that. Maybe you want to train endurance in some kind of way, to be able to do a bunch of muscle that, you know, I don't know, you're doing a movie with Tom Cruise or something, you need to do some wild stuff. But in general, again, if we're looking at what's most effective, we're not getting that high in our rep range, but how far do we wanna go? And so my question is, do we wanna go to a place where we are at complete muscle failure, right?

54:46Shawn Stevenson:So how do we know that our set is the right number of reps? right so to produce hypertrophy to elicit hypertrophy you want to have really high levels of intramuscular force production you want to be recruiting uh those fast twitch fibers so you do that with heavy loads um generally in a five to eight five to ten range and then you want to be close to failure now how do you know what failure is you have to train to failure on a lot of things for a while and then you know what it is because there's been studies and just real world experience where people think they're at failure and they're actually five to seven reps from failure.

55:26So it's like, that was a complete, that was a warm upset. That was a complete waste of time. And even myself, I've done that. And after training for 30 years, like sometimes if I'm just by myself, I'll be like, I think I have a pretty good gauge of what one rep in reserve is. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe, and then I'll get an extra three reps sometimes like, geez, you know, so you really, sometimes you have to push to failure. I don't recommend doing it all the time. That's why, but I do like lower volume. One of the benefits of lower volume is you can train harder. And I like to train hard.

55:55If I had to leave a bunch of reps in the tank, it would just not be enjoyable for me whatsoever. So lower volume, I tend to train. I tend to work with a lot of type A guys. It's always been that way for 30 years, competitive athletes, now WWE guys, and then just guys our age who are just type A hustlers, right? So they want to train hard. So then again, volume should be lower because you can't train super hard and do a ton of sets, right? You're just gonna be burnt out all the time. So get to know what failure feels like on all the exercises you're doing, and then leave about one to two reps in the tank, generally one in the tank for the most part.

56:27There's a there is a significant difference. Like let's say you do 12 sets. If you did those 12 sets to failure, and then next week you did those 12 sets, but you left one rep in the tank, you'll feel the difference in terms of fatigue throughout the week. And also your progressive overload, which is the fundamental main rule we want to be following to make any progress is you'll get significantly better gains, right? So each week that you hit that particular workout, you'll go up more and more and faster than if you hit failure on every set.

56:56Shawn Stevenson:Okay. Now, what about the variety of exercises, right? If we're talking about, let's just talk about back, right? We're training our back, you know, with a lot of trainers, you know, it's, it's a mindset of like, I got to keep my client interested, you know, I got to keep mixing it up. Yeah. So what is your perspective on the variety of exercises and how frequently you're changing the exercise you're doing? Yeah. So I used to do that where I would try to entertain clients years ago, but I found that what's entertaining is actually making progress and getting stronger and seeing numbers go up. I like that more.

57:31My clients like that more. So I think too much variety is no good. And so we started talking about fatigue. Too much variety causes too much fatigue. because if I go in, let's say my workouts, five exercises, if I've been doing those five exercises for weeks in a row, I don't have the CNS demands of having to learn and the coordination demands of having to learn that new movement. Even if it's a movement you've been doing for 20 years, it's still when you do it for the first time in let's say six to eight weeks, you're kind of adapting, figuring things out. So it's more nervous. It's more CNS fatigue.

58:02If I go in and do five different movements all the time, just for variety, like central nervous system. Yes. Yep. And so it's just more demanding. So you're going to increase more fatigue. And then it's really hard to track progressive overload and progressive overload. You know, some people could argue, oh, you don't have to go up every workout and you don't, but it's the only legit measure we have to know is your programming good. Is it working? Because if you're going up in weight, that's black and white. We know if you're just like, oh, I feel good. I'm getting a pump. It's like, yeah, but that's abstract.

58:32That doesn't tell us anything. but if you're able to press 100 today then you go up to 102 and a half and then 105 and we see it going up and then it plateaus then it goes up okay now we know it's working then we can we can say like hey man let's pull out one set here let's stop one rep short of failure here then it becomes like a science experiment versus just guesswork we're just throwing things against the wall and hoping they work you know now with this said which exercises are best now i know this is tough

59:00Shawn Stevenson:all right but maybe this is even a little selfish all right so let's let's talk about training legs and the reason this matters thank goodness there's been like a paradigm shift in in training legs all right there's been a lot of lollipop people walking around you know where leg day has been skipped many a time right and so but there's so much metabolic benefit performance uh power there's so many remarkable and vital reasons to train your legs. So I wanna ask you if I had to, life or death, three best leg exercises. All right, and again, keep in mind as well, this can be of course for everybody, but specifically for people who are over 40.

59:50What do you think? I would say some type of knee flexion. So that could be some type of leg curl.

59:58Shawn Stevenson:But what are the three best? I don't want to some type. What's the best? We just want to build the biggest legs we can without wrecking your joints. Feeling good? Yes. Okay. So a seated leg curl. Okay. I personally like a glute ham raise for variety and because you just feel good. Like your knees, hips, and back feel great. It's a bodyweight exercise, but it's really hard to do. Most division one athletes can't even do one rep. So we're just going, picking one. I'm picking a really well-designed seated leg curl. The reason a seated is better than a lying and a standing is because the seated trains the length in position.

1:00:31See if I'm here and my leg straight out, it's training from a stretch position, which generally, if you're looking at exercises and ranking them in a hypertrophy perspective, you want to train the stretch position and the mid range. The shortened position doesn't really matter that much. That's why I like the leg extensions, just icing icing on the cake. So I'm going to go seated leg curl, some type of squat variation. now this is where we it's hard to pick one because everybody's so different what kills your knees my knees might feel great someone else like so it's going to be some type of squat um if i had to pick one i would say generally most people can do a safety bar squat especially if we add a little heel wedge because most people don't have the ankle mobility to do it perfectly so if i had to pick one that would be it a safety bar squat with either a 10 or 15 degree wedge Safety bar, what is that?

1:01:20The safety bar is the bar with the pad and the shoulder thing that comes here. So it's a back squat bar, but it has a piece in the front. Exactly. So you can have your, the benefit is really for shoulder health. If you get older and you're tighter, sometimes it's hard. You don't have the external rotation to get back here. And then all of a sudden you're kind of hurting your shoulders on leg day, which makes no sense. So then you go press and you're like, why are my shoulders stiff from leg day? Right? It doesn't make sense. And it does, you tend to be able to stay upright a little bit more. There's some things, some benefits.

1:01:51So a seated leg curl, a safety bar squat with heels elevated, and then you got to do some type of single leg thing. So that's, if I had to just pick one, of course, there's all different split squat variations. There's walking lunges. I would go with a rear foot elevated split squat. Those would be the three. Isn't there another name for that? Bulgarian split squat.

1:02:08Shawn Stevenson:The Bulgarian split squat, yes. Yeah. The last time I trained with Luca, we did that as well. And there's so many different variations of that too. Obviously, you can do a weighted. You can do one hand with the weight. Yeah, one hand here, one hand here, two hands, safety bar, regular bar. I mean, there's a million ways to do it. If for the purpose of this exercise that you're challenging me on, I had to do one, I would have it with stability because we're looking at hypertrophy. So without stability, you're going to have less force production, less intramuscular force production. So if I'm having to balance now, if I hold that dumbbell in one hand on my rear leg and I hold on to the upright of the power rack, I'm going to get a greater hypertrophy stimulus out of that.

1:02:53If you're an athlete and you're just training stability and whatever, fine. But if we're just looking at hypertrophy, I'm going to grab on. And anytime I increase the stability of an exercise, it's better for hypertrophy. Now, that doesn't mean you just do machines because then you walk around like Frankenstein. But, you know, you prioritize some things.

1:03:10Shawn Stevenson:Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. Again, it ain't over. Summer's not over. Take advantage of these insights. Go and put something into play for yourself. Utilize this time. Give yourself a goal. Mark some dates on the calendar. Give yourself maybe a 30-day transformation time period and just start putting some things into place for yourself on a consistent basis. just adding on, you know, a little bit by little bit. And listen, I hope again that you enjoyed this. We've got so much more in store for you coming up. We've got some incredible masterclasses and world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon.

1:03:52Shawn Stevenson:So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.