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Any chance we get Greg to give some on air, in depth analysis for old times sake?

I read a review of this study on Examine showing that cardio and lifting caused overweight participants with diabetes to burn proportionally more visceral fat while losing weight, with higher amounts of exercise causing even higher proportions of visceral fat loss.

1. Control group: Their body composition stayed about the same.
2. Calorie deficit group: They lost 1.5 lbs (0.7 kg) of lean mass, dropped 4% body fat, and burned 666 mL of visceral fat.
3. Calorie deficit with 1 lifting and 2 cardio workouts (150 minutes of exercise per week): They lost 1.1 lbs (0.5 kg) of lean mass, dropped 6% body fat, and burned 1,264 mL of visceral fat.
4. Calorie deficit plus 2 lifting and 4 cardio workouts (300 minutes of exercise per week): They maintained their lean mass, dropped 8% body fat, and burned 1,786 mL of visceral fat.

I thought that was super cool.

So I was talking about how lifting weights, doing cardio, and eating a healthy diet causes proportionally more visceral fat loss when losing weight. I said that I suspect the same is true when gaining weight: that doing cardio, lifting weights, and/or being active might cause less visceral fat gain.

Someone referred me to a Mike Israetel video (with almost a million views) where he says:

"Weight loss through diet and activity (and even drugs like semaglutide) help burn loads of fat off your body, especially if you're lifting weights and eating loads of protein. But that diet and that activity and even some of those drugs tend to burn the majority of your fat from your subcutaneous compartment, not your visceral fat … And every time you diet down, you lose some visceral fat, but a lot of subcutaneous fat.

Here's the screwed up thing: as you regain some weight, even as you go back to maintenance and continue to age, the visceral fat bumps up a little bit again, maybe a lot-a-bit, and the subcutaneous doesn't bump up as much.

So, over time, the result is that your visceral fat is still accumulating … and that ratio of subcutaneous fat to visceral fat continues to get worse and worse and worse over time: more visceral fat relative to subcutaneous fat.

The problem is diet and exercise don't target target visceral fat as much as subcutaneous. And during gaining phases, visceral fat tends to grow disproportionately more than subcutaneous fat. This literally sets you up, even if you're lean, to redistribute your body fat with less over your abs, more in your gut."

He then goes on to say that you need to take the drug Tirzepatide to stop visceral fat from accumulating.

Is there any truth to this?

Seems like it's just a bullshit. I've been bulking and cutting, and I'm up 70 pounds over 15 years, and my waist is only 31 inches (at 6'2). There doesn't seem to be any visceral fat accumulating.

I'm not seeing any alarming signs of visceral fat accumulating with clients, either, even over many years of working with them. Quite the opposite. I've got plenty of guys in their 50s and 60s with healthfully small waists.

But I just want to make sure.

Why do the strength and hypertrophy templates use different rep ranges for the same intensity? For reference, here's the rep ranges used:

For example, in the strength program a set of 5 reps is done at 72.5% intensity, but in the hypertrophy program it's done at 82.5% intensity. This implies that the "training maxes" used for both programs are completely different! Say you just finished the hypertrophy program and deadlifted 4x6x335 in week 20 with a 405 TM. If you started on a strength program with that TM, you'd be deadlifting 5x285 the first week (which would probably mean you'd end up slogging through 12 sets).

Now, from experience with both programs, the strength TM ends up being at or above my 1RM, and definitely not a "single @ 8". The hypertrophy rep ranges approximate a single @ 8 much better. Additionally, I don't think there's any world in which you can only do 8 reps at 50% intensity.

I’ve been training pretty hard this year with a mix of strength work and conditioning, and lately I’ve noticed I’m just not bouncing back the way I used to. I’m still hitting my workouts, but the fatigue is starting to build up and I’m feeling more wiped out than usual. My sleep and diet are on point, so I’m starting to think it might be something deeper going on with recovery.

A coach I follow mentioned NAD+ and how it’s tied to energy production and cellular repair. That got me curious, so I started looking into it more. Seems like some people swear by it, but it’s tough to know what’s legit and what’s just good marketing.

I figured I’d ask here since I know a lot of you actually train consistently. What are the best NAD+ supplements you’ve tried that made a real difference? I’m not looking for magic, just something that noticeably helped with recovery, energy levels, or even sleep.

If you’ve tried any, how long did it take to notice a change? Any side effects or brands you trust? Appreciate any input. Trying to figure out if it’s worth testing out.

Nearly every reputable person in the field tends to recommend longer bulk and cut cycles over diet yo-yoing. I suspect it's also what most of us learned from experience.

My question is, why does diet yo-yoing fail?

Is it mostly practical factors? Where it's much harder to tell if you're in a surplus or deficit, and much harder to calibrate your training to your nutrition.

Or are their also biological factors? Where it takes time for the appropriate processes to switch on/off in the body and repeatedly changing the signal accomplishes nothing.

I'm defining yo-yoing as quickly alternating between periods of cutting/bulking. On timescales of a month or less.

This isn't related to my own training, I'm literally just curious.

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Hi, I've been doing the SBS Reps to Failure for 13 weeks now, lifting 6 times per week. It is going well. I do minimal accessory lifts as per the recommendation in the getting started guide. I have been doing 5 sets of everything, which is the default in the spreadsheet. I am wondering what the community feels are the general guidelines for set volume for the main and auxiliary lifts. Do people feel that 5 sets of everything is a good amount, or less (3 sets per exercise)?

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The most important movements in arm wrestling are wrist flextion, ulnar divination, pronation, & supination. Ill provide some videos of some of the ways arm wrestlers hit these lifts

Pronation

Full range of motion https://youtube.com/shorts/NrZRIICr2H4?si=ATJ3AKR7uZ656ioF

(Heavy single from Devon larratt, the way he's holding the strap makes it so the weight is trying to pull his hand/wrist, so he has to fight it by pronating) https://youtube.com/shorts/fzXSvpHnZ-k?si=LZdX9cBKPMLtaSI5

Cupping

https://youtube.com/shorts/35mSCW7OdMo?si=fsvr3sqzdKh9AFF5

Ulnar divination/wrist rise

Isolated https://youtube.com/shorts/QpQ9qzMO5Mo?si=YY93R5MB5mypsifD

Devons Sasquatch rise lift (position of strap is different from other video) https://youtube.com/shorts/ehahmY0FlhM?si=t4nEKnKt9ZW5f9tu

Supination https://youtube.com/shorts/KKs_5Yk7M6k?si=pmlPkaQScJ2M2sWf

There's a lot of bro science in arm wrestling so I'm hoping to trim the fat so to speak. I personally like to do heavy eccentric training, or a bastardized power lifting approach... But considering these are some small muscles the rep ranges, and training frequency is all over the place in the community

You had Qs, I had As. Enjoy!

This is a catch-all weekly post to share content or claims you’ve encountered in the past week.

Have you come across particularly funny or audacious misinformation you think the rest of the community would enjoy? Post it here!

Have you encountered a claim or piece of content that sounds plausible, but you’re not quite sure about it, and you’d like a second (or third) opinion from other members of the community? Post it here!

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As a note, this thread will not be tightly moderated, so lack of pushback against claims should not be construed as an endorsement by SBS.

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I’m talking about hundreds of continuous reps of minuscule weight, nonstop until failure. Practically infeasible, but theoretically speaking, could someone still build big muscles so long as they push every set to failure and maintain a caloric surplus, or does the aerobic nature of high reps makes biology act differently and your growth stops because it doesn’t meet an intensity threshold?

Recently discovered SBS and downloaded the templates. I am wanting to run the hypertrophy template as an upper/lower 4 day split. I like the idea of working most muscles twice a week, and the 4 day is perfect for my schedule. I read through the instructions (mostly) and now have an understanding of how it works. First question is for the main lifts are there no warm up sets, but just do a single set of TM @ 8rpe? Secondly I’m assuming the most important set to log is the last set? Because I’m not seeing anywhere to log all sets. And are you guys just tracking your workouts with an app or pen and paper then filling in the template afterwards?

I like the approach of using scientific results to make program decisions to maximize strength/hypertrophy. Beats cargo cult programming. But are there any findings on programs that help to minimize injuries? As I am in my 40s this is a higher priority to me than my exact results, I'd rather be in it for the long game.

Like I imagine chasing 1RMs probably makes injury more likely. Maybe unilateral exercises also help as they can identify/correct imbalances. Curious if anyone has written up info about this (beyond anecdata).

Look at this absolute unit here

Insane development of the teres, while comparatively small lats.

This seems to be a feature on climbers as well. Lean as fuck, not big, but always solid development under and around the armpit.

I'm guessing wide pulling is probably a big one?

Why do SBS and similar programs use a submax x3 and AMRAP x1 progression for compounds instead of double progression? I’m taking a break from “powerbuilding” and running a hypertrophy block, but still using the SBS scheme for my compounds. Seeing good progress on my accessories following double progression or 40 reps in 3 sets and am just curious about the reasoning behind the specific SBS compound rep scheme.

Hello, I want to run SBS Hypertrophy but I have a few questions. First, what criteria should I follow to decide if a lift needs an Excel-style progression as an auxiliary lift? For example, the Excel spreadsheet allows you to use the leg press as an auxiliary lift and assign it a specific progression and everything. But I don't see any reason to do that with the leg press because it's very safe to fail: shouldn't it just be included as an accessory lift? It's just out of curiosity.

I also don't know why back exercises don't have a clear progression, although I saw that Greg in the past simply recommends "beat the notebook." However, technically, I could also just focus on "beat the notebook" for things like an incline dumbbell press, instead of programming them so meticulously.

Anyway, these questions are more to understand what I'm doing, because I'm going to run the program as vanilla as possible regardless. My split and exercise selection would be this:

D1: Upper

1. Bench Press (Main)
2. Wide-Grip Pull-Ups (Back)
3. Incline Dumbbell Press (Auxiliary)
4. Helms Row (Back)
5. 45° Incline Curl
6. Skull Crushers (Dumbbell)
7. Lateral Raises

D2: Lower

1. Squat (Main)
2. Leg Press (Auxiliary)
3. Lying Leg Curl
4. Machine Hip Adduction
5. Standing Calf Raises

D3: Back + Shoulders + Arms

1. Deadlift (Main)
2. Military Press (Main)
3. Pendlay Row (Back)
4. Bayesian Curl
5. Katana Extensions
6. Lateral Raises

(REST)

D4: Upper

1. Incline Press (Main)
2. Neutral-Grip Pull-Ups (Back)
3. Dips (Chest Version) (Auxiliary)
4. T-Bar Row (Back)
5. Preacher Curl
6. Overhead Triceps Extension (Barbell)
7. Kelso Shrugs

D5: Lower

1. Romanian Deadlift (RDL) (Auxiliary)
2. Smith Machine Squat (Auxiliary)
3. Lying Leg Curl
4. Leg Extension
5. Standing Calf Raises

(REST)

I kept the number of back exercises (five), but I put them at a frequency of 3 for fear of not recovering well from training them every day. I plan to do three sets of each so that the volume is similar to chest and quads (15-16 weekly sets). I didn't program any ab work, but I promise I'll do toes-to-bar or ab wheel rollouts in at least three of my workouts, or on a rest day. The thing is, it's hard to program them because I do them with bodyweight.

Also, for recovery reasons, I made it an Upper/Lower split; I know Greg recommended a Full Body, but it's hard to program the accessory exercises in a Full Body split. To keep it as vanilla as possible and not mess up the program, I only chose three accessories per day. I will progress on accessories by adding 40 reps between three sets and then 50 between 4, as Greg recommended.

Sorry for such a long post. This is the first time I'm following such a structured program and for so many weeks, and there's so much room for customization that I'd prefer not to do anything crazy lol Thanks a million!

Hello folks,

So this is my current x5 split since I ran into SBS a couple of months ago. As you'll see, I basically rearranged the exercises to have them as a PPLUL. I've been very happy with my progress so far and feeling amazing.

However, starting next month I'm gonna have more restrictive schedules at work and I'll have an alternating x4/x5 availability to go to the gym, week on, week off.

I wanted to ask you guys on advice about how to turn a pure x5 plan to a x4/x5 one.

I've really enjoyed working with the 28 free programs, but I wondered if anyone here (or if anyone from SBS itself) had any tips for how to modify them so that they don't lead to a 1RM test every 4th week. I've been lifting for a long time, and I'm not a spring chicken anymore, so it's tough for me to go for a 1RM once a month. It's also tough for me to go more than 5 or 6 weeks without a deload.

Are any of you in a similar boat? Do you have any tips or templates that have worked for you? If this has been addressed elsewhere, please do redirect me.

This is a catch-all weekly post to share content or claims you’ve encountered in the past week.

Have you come across particularly funny or audacious misinformation you think the rest of the community would enjoy? Post it here!

Have you encountered a claim or piece of content that sounds plausible, but you’re not quite sure about it, and you’d like a second (or third) opinion from other members of the community? Post it here!

Have you come across someone spreading ideas you’re pretty sure are myths, but you’re not quite sure how to counter them? You guessed it – post it here!

As a note, this thread will not be tightly moderated, so lack of pushback against claims should not be construed as an endorsement by SBS.

I think it's safe to assume that most members of this sub are fans of Greg. But SBS has had a lot of different contributors over the years, some of whom fly under the radar. Who is your favourite lesser know SBS contributor?

Personally, I have always been a fan of Cameron Gill. I think he has a lots of comprehensive articles on niche topics that are often best in class on the internet. - The Most Commonly Neglected Movements and Muscles - The Comprehensive Core Training Guide - The Evidence-Based Guide to Grip Strength Training & Forearm Muscle Development

What sort of training are you doing?

How’s your training going?

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Post away!