2 Truths and A Lie - 29.02.24
There’s ALOT of bullshit out there. I probably believe in some of it if I’m being totally honest.
I’m going to give you 3 statements, and you’re going to reply to this email with which one you believe to be the lie. Just like what you used to play in school that would usually oust the people in your class and all their lore.
1) Protein feeding window is important.
You probably would know this as other names. Think ‘anabolic window’, or ‘meal frequency’. Usually these things are promoted by massive body-builders with deep voices and the most shaky scientific explanation you’ve heard in your life. Is it a real thing? You tell me.
2) You can’t prioritise multiple things in your training at all times.
There’s been a recent trend (if you discount CrossFit and other multi-functional modalities of training) of training multiple qualities of fitness at the same time. With the recent push for hybrid training also comes the idea that you can be excellent at multiple different modalities of training. e.g running a marathon and competing in powerlifting. How much impact does one have on recovery for the other? How much damage are you doing to your body? How good can you really be?
3) Training more times per week equates to more gains.
We all know the person that doesn’t believe in rest days. Days away from the gym seem foreign to them, they usually have a day specifically for calves or biceps, and they’re jacked for it. But for the average joe isn’t it true that training twice per week can be as beneficial?
Reply to the email below and let me know which one you think is the lie. (hint: theres no wrong answers, and they’re all wrong answers… Context matters.)
Pineapple; the greatest pre-workout supplement.
Its been a while!
Ive been slogging away at some back end stuff for the coaching business, and continuing to push clients to new heights, as a result, the newsletter has been on the back-burner.
I also went down a 3 day rabbit hole of research specifically for this newsletter, spurred on only by a call with MY coach in which I asked a question.
06.02.24 - Pineapple; the greatest pre-workout supplement.
When we talk peri-workout (surrounding your workout) nutrition, pre-workout meals often consist of simple carbohydrates and easily digested proteins. Why? Because carbohydrates and easily digestible proteins fuel your performance, rather than taking away from it to completely digest high fat/fibre meals.
So how can take this to another level? Pineapple.
For one, pineapple is a fruit, so you’re checking off an Australian healthy eating guideline just by including it in your diet. But if you’re like me and don’t much care for what the government says you should eat, you’ll be excited to know that enzymes in Pineapple actually aid in digestion, perfect for squeezing that little bit more out of your pre-workout nutrition.
Bromelain is a proteolytic enzyme found almost exclusively in Pineapples, and has been shown in studies to increase efficiency of protein digestion, and in some studies even shows an anti-catabolic effect, meaning it spares the breakdown of muscle tissue. General benefits of Bromelain in healthy populations can be noticed in as little as one 80mg serve, with or around one of your meals. In some animal research (here we go…) consistent dosing of Bromelain was shown to have an anti-hypertensive effect, meaning lower blood pressure, and an increase is permeability of blood vessel walls, and greater blood fluidity (thinner blood). All this to say that it MAY (again, animal research IS NOT clinical) allow your body to more efficiently absorb nutrients into your blood, reduce hypertension, and POTENTIALLY create a better ‘pump’ due to thinner, more easily transported blood.
Pineapple also has very high concentrations of Vitamin C, which we know has a positive benefit to hormones like testosterone. Think about it like this; vitamin C has more research showing a testosterone increasing effect than any off the shelf ‘test-boosters’. Save your money and eat some f*ckin’ fruit.
Bromelain is at its most concentrated in the stems of Pineapples, however pineapple flesh contains concentrations of around 0.43%, meaning In 200g of pineapple flesh you are getting a dose of around 80mg of Bromelain. Around 50mg of Vitamin C for the same serving size.
Eating pineapple is, at best, a 1% benefit to your training, potentially more for your digestion. The research is still new, and not very built upon. But if you’re like me and you’re searching for any little 1%er to get you ahead, you may as well. Plus - its f*ckin’ delicious.
So next time you’re eating your oats, cream or rice, or cereal pre-workout, try pairing it with some pineapple for a little boost in digestive capability.
03.02.24 - STOP burning yourself to the ground so quickly.
So it’s freshly 2024, and you’re thinking you need to get into the gym to achieve those goals you have set. SO MANY TIMES I’ve had discussions with clients who want to be in the gym 5,6,7 days per week, thinking it will get them to their goals faster. IT WONT.
Being able to train more than 4 times per week usually means you’re sacrificing the intensity of your workouts for the frequency of them. YES you can make progress this way, but you are LITERALLY being less efficient than if you were to train HARD for 3-4 days in the week. Why?
Volume and Intensity are ANTAGONISTIC.
Meaning as volume increases, Intensity is more difficult to maintain. Same thing; as Intensity increases, volume is more difficult to maintain. This is because as you approach failure on your sets, your body is using up more resources and creating more damage to the muscle fibres than if you were to cut a set 3-4 reps shy of failure. The more damage your muscle, the longer it will take to recover. In the beginning, recovery of the targeted muscle will take a long time; you will have created a “Pit” of muscle damage that you need energy and time to recover from.
If you were to train 3-4 reps shy of total muscular failure, to achieve the same level of stimulus and muscle damage, you will need to do significantly more SETS, which translates to longer and more frequent workouts.
So if you’re already feeling the burn of this year, think about ditching that 5th, 6th and 7th day training, and pushing harder in the workouts you DO hit.
Here is a free 3 day split I put together that is sure to get you results; just plug your hard work into the program.
BIG ARMS here.
BIG GLUTES here.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
11.01.2024 - 5 tips for beating hunger, how complaining is ruining your life
Hello!
Hope everyone is having a good time crushing their goals for the year! Topics disscussed today:
How to beat hunger.
Why complaining is ruining your life.
I really enjoyed writing todays email, because it’s a combination of things i’ve learned more recently. Writing these things helps me to solidify the knowledge and practice my recall of my studies; it makes me better at coaching because the more knowledge I can ready draw from AND deliver - the more value i can provide to my clients.
04.01.2024 - 5 tips for beating hunger.
If you’ve started this year thinking how good it will be to get shredded in 2024, chances are you’ve been hungry. Chances are you’re hungry right now. So how can you beat some of that hunger before you lash out and cheat your diet?
Here’s a couple of ways to get ahead of your appetite for a more pleasant and successful dieting period:
Increase fibre in your diet; generally fibrous foods are ALSO low calorie density (meaning the volume of food is higher for the same number of calories in other foods) and the fibre helps to slow down (or speed up) digestion. So on top of feeling more full, chances are you’ll be fuller for longer too.
Calorie Density is your best friend; foods like peanut butter, sushi, avocado, are probably not your best options when it comes to dieting. Although avocado does have high fibre content, it is also a food comprised almost entirely of fats; the most calorie dense macro-nutrient. In order to feel fuller, you’re probably best opting for a slightly lower fat diet, increasing the calories derived from carbohydrates or protein accordingly.
Make sure your protein is high; protein dense foods like animal meat and egg whites are typically aq chewier food than carbohydrate or fat sources. This is GREAT because we know from studies that the more you chew your food, the more appetite suppression you will get from it. Think about chicken breast - typically pretty well cooked - is a food that requires some effort to chew through, and break down enough to swallow. So get the protein up to indirectly increase how much you chew your food.
Eat less ’tasty’ foods; when you’re making those protein pancakes that only have ‘x’ number of calories in them, you’re sending signals to your brain via your senses (smell and taste) that there is tasty foo to be eaten. So even if they are super low calorie, you will set off a reaction that will INCREASE your appetite for the rest of the day, following days, or weeks.
Get comfortable being hungry; recognise that you are in a fat loss phase - essentially strategically starving your body of energy INPUT so that it uses fat to create OUTPUT. This is not a comfortable process, and it will take some willpower to stick with it. Recognise that, and refuse to let it prevent you from achieving your goals!
09.01.2024 - How complaining is ruining your life.
Complaining - especially about menial shit - is one of the biggest pitfalls of younger people. I see so many people around me complaining about their situation, bitching and whinging about how they can’t get what the want because ‘x’ or ‘y’ reason, and doing nothing to work through it.
Fundamentally complaining eats away at your self-efficacy; that is, your belief in what you can control.
Because when you complain about things that stand in your way, you are doing more than having a whinge. You are pushing the blame for your situation off your own shoulders. When you do this consistently and thoroughly enough, your ‘shoulders’ (self-efficacy) atrophy, and you become incapable of believing that you are in control.
Next time you want to complain about that annoying little thing, remember that by verbalising your complaints you are not only defeating YOURSELF, you’re also signalling WEAKNESS to those around you.
Once you become known as the ‘resilient/hard’ person, your self-efficacy is reinforced externally, you become ‘that bloke’ or ‘that bitch’. People will respect you for your ability to handle yourself in times of adversity.
Don’t complain, you’re only defeating yourself.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
04.01.24 - Why THESE exercises probably aren’t for you, Periodising your life for maximum return.
WELCOME TO 2024
Is this the year you finally quick messing around, telling yourself that you’re going to get in shape starting Jan 1, and by Jan 4 (today) you’ve already had 3 ‘cheat meals’?
Today we cover:
why certain exercises are probably not for you
Setting priorities for success.
Enjoy today’s email, i’m super excited for a year focused on clients and content.
If you’re looking for a coach to help you acheive your goals in 2024, Hit me up for a killer deal!
11.12.23 - Why you shouldn’t be doing THESE back exercises.
Single-arm-illiac-sagital-pulldowns, Bandded-chest-supported-stiff-arm-pulldowns-lengthened-bias… STOP.
Optimising your exercises in the gym probably doesn’t matter to you. Intensity of effort in exercises is a much better predictor of gains than your single arms sagittal pulldown at a 45 deg incline. Stop worrying about how aligned your muscle is to the force you’re placing on it, and start trying to squeeze and stretch the F*CK out of that muscle under load. Before you start doing the fancy shit, learn what you have to do to mentally prepare yourself for a set that will take you deep into your own head noise. Learn how to focus past the agonising tension of a simple cable row, learn how to squeeze harder, even when the weight isn’t moving. Learn how to ask yourself for ‘One more rep’, 3 times in a row. If your goal is hypertrophy, I hate to say it but a 5 degree difference in the angle of your fucking shoulder joint isn’t going to grow your arms an extra inch, but your ability to tolerate the pain of muscular tension might. Fundamentally, muscle fibres are recruited more in relation to Intensity of Effort as opposed to alignment of tension.
Quit whining, and train F*ckin harder.
26.12.23 - Priority; Periodise your life to maximise your return.
When you’re just starting out lifting in the gym, it’s easy to get excited by potential for results. It can be easy to think that buy sacrificing as much as possible from your previous way of living (nights out, take-away food, family dinners, coffee/cake catch-ups) you will see a massive result very quickly. It’s simply not true.
The amount of (particularly young men) who are deterred from their coaches, or the gym altogether, because they’re not as big as Eric Bugenhagen in their first year of training is simply astonishing. There seems to be this idea that 80% of the results you see in Fitness was achieved in the first 12 months. Untrue.
In this way, women are often surprised by their progress, because they focus on training while they’re training, nutrition while their meal prepping, BUT THEY HAVE OTHER THINGS TO KEEP THEM OCCUPIED IN-BETWEEN. This isn’t just about women of course, the blokes who get into the gym just to make 1 positive change in their life see great success still. Those who come into the gym thinking that this has to and will be, the be all and end all of their life, get sick of not seeing massive improvements each session. They want to see the numbers grow faster. The become un-motivated.
What’s the point to this anecdote? Having a focus outside of your fitness may be the best thing for your personal growth. It could be something creative, it could be your career, it could be the relationships you cultivate, pick ANYTHING else and make it a priority outside of the gym. Still make time to train, still make yourself disciplined and educated about your nutrition. But shift your focus somewhere that you want to see an improvement QUICKLY.
The number of blokes I’ve spoken to who got into the gym to ‘get laid’ is nuts. I’ve had clients who mention something along those lines to me and my reaction is always “have you tried just talking to chicks?”. The gym can improve confidence, 100%, but it isn’t going to suddenly magically make every woman of your dreams froth at the mouth at the idea of talking to you. So what should he do? Make time for gym - it will help for confidence - but make your priority OUTSIDE of the gym meeting people - particularly women - and watch your goal of ‘getting laid’ manifest itself.
Of course the same is true with career. Men and women are beginning to better understand that how they present themselves will affect how they are perceived for particular careers, and its brining a lot of them into the gym. Fantastic! But in order to further your career, you can’t put it on the back-burner to get jacked. Instead, make time for the gym, and double down on being the best at what you do. You’re capable of both, but only one is guaranteed to make you more money.
At the end of the day, this all comes down to managing priorities. Periodise your life to maximise your return.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
07.12.23 - how to avoid fat-gain at Christmas, ensuring a successful New-Year.
Hello Friends! 👋
Been a minute… My focus recently has shifted away from the ‘marketing/business’ side of the coaching business, instead I’ve been focusing on investing my time and energy into developing my skills and knowledge-base as a coach. Forgive me for a sporadic schedule with these newsletters, i’m juggling alot of different aspects of business all at once and i only just learned how to ‘catch-the-ball’.
This week:
Avoiding fat-gain in the holidays (without insulting your mother)
How to make the most out of your New-Years motivation.
This will be the last newsletter until the new-year, i’m going to be doing the family thing, as well as continuing educating myself on fitness so i can bring some more new concepts to these things next year!
28.11.23 - Avoiding fat-gain over the holidays…
The Christmas / Holidays period is a time where most people feel guilt about enjoying the food that brings their family together, especially in a dieting / weight loss / fitness context. It’s sad to me that people feel that way, when the only reason they gained the weight they’re trying to lose in the first place is poor dietary choices anyways. My honest opinion around Christmas time is:
Unless you are a competitive athlete where dieting is essential, there is nothing stopping you from having a “re-feed” period between Christmas and new-year.
‘How do I do that?’ Simple, bring your calories back up to maintenance (that’s right, this is not going to let you eat 4 fruitcakes to yourself), and enjoy Christmas food and socialise with those who are most important to you.
‘How long can I do a re-feed for?’, as long as you need to get the social events out of the way. Personally I wouldn’t need to re-feed for any more time than Christmas to new-years, as that’s the only time where socially enjoying food would apply to me. However, if you’re someone who has a lot of family, or work / friend Christmas events and those events span longer than a week, you could assess potentially cycling calories (where you eat in your normal deficit through the week, and a slight surplus over the weekends / event times). This might help you to continue with your goals, or at the very least not put on those un-necessarily DREADED Christmas Kilo’s.
The alternative (this one is for the hardcore fitness guys); sit your family down and explain your goals, and why you have them. Explain to them that you sticking to your plan over the Christmas Holidays is important to you, and in no way a reflection of how you value their time, or your mums cooking (this is essential, your mum might try to kill you if she suspects you’re eating chicken and rice to avoid her cooking). Most of the time it takes one conversation with Family and Friends for them to understand, and become supportive. They’ll stop asking you why you hate yourself, and they’ll start saying “don’t you touch that cake”. If they don’t support it? Try and understand why, and if you can’t or you suspect it is jealousy of your dedication, fuck em’ do your thing.
There is more than one right answer when it comes to dieting over the holidays, but there is one glaringly obvious wrong answer; ruining your relationships over a 300 calorie deficit. Enjoy your Christmas pudding while it lasts, and understand that one week off dieting doesn’t mean you’re doomed to become your old, fat self.
05.12.23 - Set your goals NOW!
It’s December! Aside from Santa visits, new-years celebrations and reflecting on how well you have done this year, there is one key thing you should be doing NOW that most leave too late; assessing where you’re at, and where you want to be at the end of 2024.
You see it all the time, the drunken resolutions on December 31st where people claim they’re going to do this-that and the-other in the new year, then after a week they’ve fallen off the bandwagon. But why? Those resolutions usually ARE something that is held in high priority, so why do people just fall off so quickly after starting? -
In-adequate planning. When has someone given you a 12 step plan on how they’re going to lose 20kg while drunk on New Years Eve? NEVER. Aside from them not wanting to waste your time, the truth is most people believe that a lofty and difficult goal like that is a matter of working really hard for the first 3 months of the year, or even if they understand it will take a long time, they underestimate the dedication you have to have to do things daily with no immediate demonstration of result.
Homework!
Sit down at some stage this week with a writing tool of your choice (I use a physical journal), and do the following - in order:
List all of the things that you have done this year, and make remarks on anything that you may have fallen short of.
List ALL the biggest things you would like to have done come December 2024.
Pick 2-3 of the Highest priority and forget about the rest (for now, you will have time to come back to those).
Divide each of the Big lofty goals into 4-12 ‘mini-goals’ or ‘tasks’ that need to be done in order for you to hit that end goal.
Be realistic, and set time frames for each ‘task’ (I.e getting a meal plan or coach for a weightless goal would take you 20 minutes if you really wanted it, where as sticking to that plan and seeing results might take MONTHS)
Make a list of everything that may get in the way of your goals in the new year include dates / time-frames if possible. (I.e weightless goals are impacted by the number of social events over the course of the year - weddings, easter, birthdays etc)
Define rules and strategies around each of the interruptions to the goals, be realistic and know yourself enough to accurately define boundaries.
By now you should have some semblance of a plan, that will take you from where you are, to where you need to go, with all the things that need to be considered accounted for.
Keep the plan somewhere safe, do what you can in these final weeks of the year to make sure you’re set up for success, and let the rest of 2023 play out.
This exercise might take a while, but it will give you an insight into the direction you are headed in the New Year!
Congrats on making it through this one, and I hope your goals go smoothly in 2024.
Why wait till 2024 to see results? 10th House Coaching is taking on new clients!
10th House Coaching is a system built to be applicable to the daily needs of my clients and promote changes in both physique and mindset. The work won’t be easy in itself, but you will never have to be confused about what you are doing in the gym again. You will have a plan of attack for each week to make sure every day is lived as a process to the goal. An entirely personalised coaching experience designed to take you from where you are, to where you want to be. The best part? Your first 2 weeks are FREE.
The best-er part? After the first 2 weeks, it will cost only $99 per MONTH. (there are coaches charging this much PER WEEK )
The best-er-er part? If after the first 3 MONTHS of paid service you aren’t happy with the experience, you will get a FULL REFUND.
The only thing you have to lose? Your negative self-belief, and your mind with the results you get.
Reply back to this email “IM READY” and I will be in touch shortly.
Online and In-Person options available.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
22.11.23 - The Interference Effect, and why you should Practice Daily Discomfort.
Another week of a 10th House Newsletter! A couple of fun ones this week.
The Interference Effect (and why its probably bullshit)
Why you should Practice Daily Discomfort
Been working away at a course by Jackson Peos so expect to see some information i gather from that over the next few weeks. Both here and on Instagram.
Why am I taking the Peos course? To be a better coach. Speifically to be a better coach for MEN, ONLINE.
If you’re a bloke looking to make a serious change in a 12 week time frame, reply to this email or find my form here.
21.11.23 - The Interference Effect.
First off, if you are not an elite level athlete, where a tiny split of a second in an event matters for placings, or where a half kilo makes a difference in passing to the finals, the interference effect should be the LEAST of your worries.
The Interference effect is a concept describing a decrease in strength performance when concurrent endurance training is taking place. This study was, very simply, a shit-show.
The concurrent training group were doing the combined volume of BOTH training regimes, irrespective of potential over-training.
The study showed strength gains almost the same as the strength only group for the first 7 weeks (indicating after 7 weeks the subjects began to become overtrained)
The study states that strength performance is negatively impacted by concurrent training, but endurance is not impacted by strength training 🤔
Here’s what I think.
All volume / training stress equated, you would see a line in strength performance that matches the strength only group AT LEAST, or potentially PASSES the strength training group. Why? Because we KNOW that a strong cardiovascular system is better at transporting blood, oxygen and nutrients around the body. What does the body need to perform near-maximal feats of strength? Blood, nutrients and oxygen. Better cardio could mean more development of capillaries in the muscles, meaning your muscles have access to more blood, which means they have access to more ENERGY to demonstrate strength.
The enemy is not running, or cycling or walking. The enemy is shitty recovery protocols and inability to regulate stresses.
This is why you don’t need to cry and moan about running “ruining your gains”. No more excuses, just improve.
19.11.23 - ‘Practice Daily Discomfort’ - Jackson Peos
It’s easy to live a comfortable life now. The struggles of our parents, grandparents and ancestors beyond that are all but over. Of course, some of us are still poverty stricken, dealt a bad hand, or in ill health, but for the most part we numb this pain in our lives out with ordinary pleasures.
A lot of the time when it comes to physique transformation success, it comes down to how much effort and sacrifice you are willing to devote to your goals. But even if you are ready to sacrifice and put in effort now, your ability to endure the pain - the discomfort of pursuing your goals - will determine your overall success. It’s easy to go your whole life distracted from the pains of your situation, to dream of a future that can’t materialise itself. What’s infinitely more difficult is taking action, taking responsibility, and putting in work to make your vision a reality. But to achieve the goal, you probably need some kind of conditioning - training if you would - in how to ENDURE suffering.
THAT is why you should seek daily discomfort. Waking up earlier than you usually do is a discomforting experience. Going for a run is a discomforting experience. Taking a cold shower or ice bath is a discomforting experience. They are all things that don’t usually attribute towards your goals directly (unless your goal is to be more fit, wake up early or be good at cold exposure) BUT THEY DO provide value in conditioning your ability to numb out the complaints, the pain, and the desire to quit. Where most productivity guru’s go wrong with these things is looking into ‘morning-ritual-holistic-health’ bullshit from the mindset of “this must be great for my health”. It is, but only so much as it improves your will-power, adherence to your training or diet plan, and adherence to a consistent sleep schedule. Here is your home work for the week;
Pick one of these things and do it every day until the next email. I don’t care when you do it, morning, after work, during your lunch break - doesn’t matter. What’s important is you’re picking something that you KNOW you don’t like, but you KNOW is making you better at doing the nessess things you hate.
Daily Run. “Oh but im bulking!” Shut the fuck up, lace up your trainers and run, maybe you’ll be mentally resilient enough to eat an extra cheeseburger later too lard-ass. Start small so it doesn’t impact recovery that much, but make it long enough that it sucks to do.
Cold shower. This is one you need to make sure you don’t actually just enjoy doing. This isn’t appropriate from a mental conditioning perspective for me because I actually enjoy taking a cold shower to wake me up - nothing like
Wake up an hour before you usually do - AND DON’T GO BACK TO BED. Don’t lay in bed scrolling instagram, don’t start playing video games. Get up and do ANYTHING else - doesn’t matter what.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
15.11.2023 - Do I HAVE to train to failure to see gains?
Much shorter email this week!
I put alot more effort into researching and learning about training from Israetel and Nippard over the last week so here is an email diving into their approaches and thoughts around training to failure. Too many people do what Israetel says, without looking at what he actually DOES. No sane human could look at his RP Leg Training Series and claim that their RPE 8 sets are the same as those guys RPE 8 sets. Why? Because everyone has a different understanding of where ‘failure’ is. So if you’re newer to the gym and not making gains, training to failure could be for you. But read this email first and tell me what you think.
15.11.2023 - Do I HAVE to train to failure to see gains?
Short answer; no, but that doesn’t mean you get to half ass your training.
In recent times coaches and influencers like Mike Isratel and Jeff Nippard have promoted a “smarter” approach to training, wherein you squeeze as much reward from your efforts as possible. What people DON’T hear them say (which they do say and promote) is that NOT working hard is not going to produce results. So here is a rundown of Mike Isratels approach to training, and how although he isn’t taking every set to “failure”, every set is still much closer to failure than you are probably training.
Proximity to complete failure - This is the key to judging intensity of any muscle-building training. Muscle has a pretty hard time developing when you’re only training within what you can comfortably lift for a comfortable number of repetitions. This is the whole point of an RPE or RIR scale, where you’re measuring your perceived proximity to failure or your ACTUAL proximity to failure. You’ll notice when Isratel talks about intensity, he will continually mention that muscle growth is best when youre training within that 1-3 Reps in Reserve range.
Approaches to failure - the foundation of what makes Mike Istratels Leg Training videos look so f*cking brutal is the number of approaches TO failure he and whoever is featuring will do. Instead of blasting one tough set to failure, he extends the length of a set with rest-pauses so that you’re working for a very long time within that RPE 8-1 level. Right when you think you have maybe 1 clean rep in the tank, taking a 5-10 second rest will mean you can smash another few reps, and approach failure again. Approaching failure is about milking as much as you can out of the “this-fucking-sucks” zone, and making progress off that.
Recoverability - I’ve mentioned Mike Istratel in an email previously, in the context of Maximum/Minimum recoverable volume. Essentially you want to be working with a volume of workload that is going to provide stimulus for new muscle growth, but NOT burn you down to the ground mentally and physically. If you were to do the rest-pause/myo-rep sets described above, for 3 sets, on 6 exercises for chest; your chest won’t grow substantially more than only doing 2 sets on 2 exercises, but you WILL be more substantially impacted the next few days. Pick a starting point for volume that gives you the gains without the intense DOMS.
A quote I recently heard from Jackson Peos made sense to apply to this email. (paraphrasing as best i remember) “when you’re going to failure, those last reps that are the hardest (…) are like squeezing the f*ck out of a lemon. Most people will not see a result because they don’t squeeze it hard enough (…) you have to sit IN that space of the set sucking to squeeze the most juice out”. This applies to everyone EXCEPT those who are genuinely overtrained. A topic for another email.
In the end, no you don’t have to train to failure to see gains. You can get massive muscle gains without training to failure, AS LONG AS you’re working harder every time you come into the gym. Eventually, if you’re progressing in weight, reps or form from week to week, you will EVENTUALLY hit a point where that last rep IS failure. When that happens, there’s many things you can do. But that’s for another email.
If you’re tired of running in circles in the gym, tired of being confused about how much to eat to acheive your goals, tired of being unmotivated and lazy: A coach will help to set you on a path you’re destined for.
10th House Coaching is a system built to be applicable to the daily needs of my clients and promote changes in both physique and mindset. The work won’t be easy in itself, but you will never have to be confused about what you are doing in the gym again. You will have a plan of attack for each week to make sure every day is lived as a process to the goal. An entirely personalised coaching experience designed to take you from where you are, to where you want to be. The best part? Your first 2 weeks are FREE.
The best-er part? After the first 2 weeks, it will cost only $99 per MONTH. (there are coaches charging this much PER WEEK 😳)
The best-er-er part? If after the first 3 MONTHS of paid service you aren’t happy with the experience, you will get a FULL REFUND.
The only thing you have to lose? Your negative self-belief, and your mind with the results you get.
Reply back to this email “IM READY” and I will be in touch shortly. 💬
Online and In-Person options available.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
08.11.23 - Rep Ranges and Muscle Growth, How to fix a broken battery.
“Coaching is taking a player where they can’t take themselves.”
– Jose Mourinho
This week:
Which Rep Range is Optimal for Muscle Growth?
How to fix a broken battery.
Been an intense couple of weeks. My schedule has been a little all over the place, but i’m getting everything done regardless.
Hope this email helps you through your week!
23.10.23 - Which Rep Range is Optimal for Muscle Growth?
Since the Golden Age of body-building, there has been a myth propagated by very proficient body-builders that 8-12 reps is the “optimal” rep range for promoting muscle growth. There was even studies (albeit flimsily constructed) that seemed to prove that 1-8 reps was best for strength gains, 8-12 best for muscle growth, and anything over 15 would make the muscle more efficient (muscular endurance).
More recently scientist’s and researchers have observed that it is not the executed rep range that promotes the adaptation, instead it is the proximity and approach to muscular failure that provides the stimulus to promote muscle growth.
What this means is every rep range is effective for muscle growth, so long as you are training proficiently hard, and with proximity to failure. This could mean 1 set of prolonged exposure to maximal or near maximal effort - think rest-pauses, myoreps, partials, or any other way to extend a set “beyond-failure” would be more effective than 3 sets taken to an RPE 7, REGARDLESS of rep range.
So next time you’re trying to optimise your workout, ask yourself; is there any more gains to be made by just working a little bit harder on each set? Personally, I aim to make every set difficult for myself. Whether that be from rest-pauses, slowing down the eccentrics, extending the set with partials, or forced reps, the goal of every set is to output effort and recruit and fatigue as much muscle tissue as possible. If you’re trying to stay within the 8-12 rep range, often you will encounter a situation where increasing the weight will make the reps too hard to hit 8 reps, but 12 reps feels too easy (think lateral raises where a small jump in 1-3kg could be as much as 50% of the working weight). Instead of staying at 12 reps and making sub-optimal gains in the belief that “optimal” is the goal, add some reps. Maybe when you hit 15 reps at the current weight, 8 reps at the next weight up is now possible. Now do that weight until 15 reps is clean. There is more than one way to progressively overload, and the great thing is that all of them work. As long as you’re working within a high effort, you WILL make progress.
08.10.23 - How to fix a broken battery.
Day in day out I am working. It seems to be a constant pursuit of improving my skills as a coach, with regular intervals of other work, training or learning about the intricacies of business and marketing. If I mapped my week out, I would be working somewhere from 50 - 70 hours per week (all admin and social media work included).
Some days (like the day I am writing this) I feel flat. Like someone left my door open and the little cabin light has run the battery out. But like a car, a flat battery isn’t the end of the world, once you get the jumper-cables, you can get it going again almost instantly. That’s how I’m able to keep going.
Here are my jumper-cables for my internal battery:
Hydration
Days that I miss my hydration in the morning end up being genuinely hellish. The afternoons that I miss my hydration make the morning coffee caffeine crash worse, it makes me feel tired, and it is not as easy as just drinking some water to ‘catch-up’ because the body’s rehydration process takes longer and is more complex than just ‘more-water = no more dehydration”. Moral of the story; pay credit to good morning hydration.
Social Break (put the phone down)
If you’re struggling with energy through the day you might need to ask yourself if you’re a social person or an introvert. You need to make sure you’re not overreaching into your social battery for your energy in the day, especially of you have other energy consuming task s that need doing. Personally I’m an introverted person, and social interaction is usually the hardest part of the day. So days where I have lots of clients on I make sure to spend time doing things like this, where I can work and think on my own. For me I also limit social media consumption on days where I have a lot of clients, as I find interacting with content online is also draining. Learn how your social life affects your energy. Does interacting with your mates inspire you and fill you with energy, or does it sedate you?
Nap Time
I also personally love a quick nap on days where energy is low. Other people would probably consume more coffee to make up for poor sleep, or lack of sleep. Personally I prefer to have a short nap listening to a podcast (usually after lunch or meal 2/3 of the day) then spending 10ish minutes getting up and doing something work-adjacent. Any longer than 20 minutes may not be a good idea, as it can negatively affect the sleep of that night. No nap can adequately replace a solid sleep routine so make sure you’re optimising sleep as much as possible as well and you will notice your energy levels be better throughout the day.
Motivation 🤝 Discipline
There has been a move away from motivation as the foundation of making a change recently, instead people are idolising the state of discipline. Yes discipline is needed, but you also need to understand how to motivate yourself to stay disciplined. Discipline-ception. Figure out how you can push yourself to stay committed and perform REGARDLESS of energy levels. Just like training stress, you WILL eventually adapt, your energy will come back. Sometimes the act of continuing is enough to motivate you to continue.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
30.10.23 - How to increase your metabolism, how to stop being ‘x’.
This is a thicc boi, strap in.
Super stoaked to be back again! This week we cover:
How to increase metabolism
how you do small things is how you do all things
I missed 2 weeks ago, you’ll notice an odd date on last weeks email; thats because SOMEONE forgot to click ‘send’.
21.10.23 - How to increase your metabolism
Is there a way to increase your metabolism, so that you can eat more in a caloric deficit or at maintenance?
There are many ways that fitness influencers and guru’s online will tell increase your metabolism in a bid to get you to buy their shitty product or service. Some of the most insane ones you’ll hear are:
Squeezing a lemon into your water of a morning
This does FUCK ALL for your metabolism, the feeling you get that you associate with a “faster metabolism” is actually the bacteria in your gut readjusting themselves around the citric acid you’ve just dumped into your belly before so much as a slice of toast has been eaten. If you like that feeling, now try having a coffee on an empty stomach (Except that might actually increase resting heart rate enough to put a few calories on your daily expenditure).
Eat spicy food
The thought behind this is pretty funny too; because it makes your body-temperature temporarily higher and increases your heart rate spicy food is believed to increase the amount of energy required to digest and regulate your body-temp. While some of these claims may be true, the actual effect it has on your daily caloric expenditure is next to nothing.
Drink more cold water
Similar to the spicy food one, the theory here is that your body will expend more energy to heat the water up in your belly, thus increasing total energy expend.
So what is there that might ACTUALLY help to increase your total daily energy expenditure enough that dieting doesn’t suck so much anymore?
Cardio
Cardio is one of the most tried and proven methods for increasing total energy expenditure throughout the day. Simply put, expending calories through any form of intentional cardiovascular exercise like running, swimming, bike-riding, incline walking, stair-master’ing etc IS EFFECTIVE at increasing your daily metabolic rate. The other important thing to note is that it IS NOT 100% EFFECTIVE. Studies have shown that for every calorie expense increased by intentional exercise, the body will naturally down-regulate Non-Exercise Activity automatically, leading to around a 30% compensation of energy. This means for every 100 calories expended on a bike, treadmill or rower, an average of 30 calories is NOT added onto daily energy expenditure due to compensation in other areas like walking, fidgeting, even just moving around.
Aggressive cutting vs Slow Dieting
Spurned on by brief waves of motivation, many people had themselves into a very aggressive weight loss phase, sometimes literally halving their previous caloric intake. Not only is this not sustainable, it may also be less effective than a slower dieting phase. This is because a sudden drop in caloric intake, or a deficit that is too aggressive can cause the same metabolic compensation as adding cardio. As an example; Any more than 0.5-1% of BW loss per week may increase likelihood of your body’s metabolic rate down-regulating. This means your maintenance calories will be lower, meaning you could be eating less food and not losing as much weight relative to your deficit as if you were eating more food BEFORE coming down further in energy intake.
NEAT (steps, little activities, ‘NEAT-smuggling’)
NEAT is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is a fancy term used to describe all of the movement through your day that is not intentional exercise. Think walking, fidgeting, all the little movements you make to go about your day. Jeff Nippard coined a term that I have fallen in love with recently called ‘NEAT-smuggling’, essentially doing little things through the day to elevate the amount you move outside of training and the gym; Park a little further away from work, the gym etc. Standing up from your desk to perform little stretches, post-nutrition walks (also aids digestion). Basically anything that is not high enough intensity to be considered exercise, but requires body movement and thus calorie expenditure. NEAT tracking is also a very common way to track energy level during any kind of dieting phase or period.
Reverse Dieting
A method that is slowly gaining popularity in the fitness space is Reverse Dieting. Essentially, instead of incrementally INCREASING the deficit of calories, you incrementally DECREASE the size of the deficit. You might start with a 500calorie deficit, then 2 weeks later move to 300 cal, then 200, 100 until you’re at maintenance then go again. I actually like this method partially because of the sense that it makes in regards to when you begin a dieting phase, you’ll typically have more resources (fat) to be converted into energy for your body, but as the phase prolongs, that fuel is less and less, thus eating more calories makes sense. Think of this as insurance against the metabolic compensation effect.
27.10.23 - How to stop being ‘x’ (“How you do small things is how you do all things”)
It’d be easy to be lazy. It’d be easy for me to give up on coaching. I’d be leaving behind clients that I have ALREADY positively impacted with my time assisting them towards their goals; but I know they’d find someone else, or even better that they would be okay on their own. But what is an easy decision is often conflated with a small decision. Me doing that is not a small decision. But how I ACT when it comes to that ‘small’ decision, is a testament to my character in ALL decisions.
It’d be easy for you to skip the gym, to miss a meal, to ‘cheat’ on the diet with a pack of chips. “It’s too hard” is a statement you’ll probably hear often.
How about a reframe:
“Sticking to my diet is too hard” - “I can’t stick to my diet because I lack self discipline”
“Going to the gym after work is too hard” - “I’m too lazy to go to the gym after work”.
“The stress of this coaching job is too hard on me” - “I lack the ability to regulate work stress”.
The beauty of seeing these things in this way is it gives you a measure by which you can improve. It directly identifies the flaws you must overcome to gain something positive; e.g. I need to learn how to better regulate stress, I need to learn how to not be lazy, I need to learn how to hold myself accountable. Then, once you do those things, you become less lazy, less unmotivated, and less stressed about it!
If you take the small things that you are thinking about doing to give yourself “just a little break” when you SHOULD be knuckling up and getting it done, then that is no longer an alternate universe version of yourself who is lazy, unmotivated, stressed out, depressed etc. You’ve brought that person into the ‘Main Timeline’.
“How you do small things is how you do all things”
Snoozing the alarm might be an indicator of poor sleep, or it could be the indicator of a slip of will, the avalanche of which will lead you right back to where you started. I know for a fact I’d rather make up for the sleep the next night over giving myself another reason to resent my own decisions or ‘lack of productivity’ in the day.
An example of me missing the small stuff; Last week you would’ve received an email dated 17.10.23 in the subject line. The week before that - No email.
That’s because the week before last, I forgot to hit the send button (not a massive deal I’ve come to terms with that being a silly mistake), BUT despite having content ready for another email, which I could’ve sent off AS WELL and made up for a week of missed content, I didn’t follow through. “Ah well 1 is enough it’ll just mean a missed week on the website”.
Bottom line is, take responsibility for what you have control over. Use that control as effectively as you can to make the change you want to see.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
17.10.23 - Training Frequency, Eating for Muscle Gains.
Welcome back to the weekly 10th House Newsletter!
Hoping your last week has been full of improvements, perhaps you’ve been intentionally working harder since last week’s discussion on testing your capacity for work. I’ve been particularly busy this past week BUT as i’m sitting here writing this; i’m not feeling overwhelmed, or tired, or stressed. I’m just happy to see how much work i can put into something. This entire coaching thing is still operating at a deficit in regards to money, but the enjoyment i get out of learning and improving my process every day-week-month is rewarding enough. A piece of me hopes that you who is reading this can find something that enthrals you even HALF as much as what i am doing.
This week we cover:
How many days per week should I be training?
How to eat in a bulk and actually gain muscle (not just fat)
05.10.23 - How many days per week should I be going to the gym?
Too often I get untrained clients come in expecting to look like their favourite celebrity if they train hard 6 days a week and take the 7th day as an ‘active recovery’. If their goal is too look as gaunt and unhealthy as Christian Bale in The Machinist, that might be a good idea, because training like that when coming from a background of no-training whatsoever will only result in you burning yourself into a crisp.
You need time to recover, and especially as a person new to the gym, you don’t need THAT much volume to make huge progress, AND make yourself really sore for the next day.
The ‘best-split’ for an ABSOLUTE beginner in the gym, in my opinion, is full-body 2-3x per week, depending on how long you can spend in the gym each session. You can get easily 10 sets per major muscle group in those sessions; but you won’t even need that much volume to make substantial gains in the beginning. Instead opt for around 4 sets per muscle group per session (which might only take you 1 exercise to complete).
Once you get more advanced you may experiment with higher volume, or push the intensity of each set closer to failure. Doing this it can become more taxing and less generally effective to be on a full body split, so you might switch to an upper-lower (my personal favourite split for clients). Does it matter which split you choose at that point? Not really, assess how many sessions per week you want to be doing and decide based off that.
My usual long-term changes I prescribe for clients (and myself) is full body 2x per week for the first phase or 2 (this does extend longer for general clients who just want to keep fit without investing a huge amount of time in the gym), followed by a switch to a variation of an Upper-Lower split, and THEN into a PPL. Most people can get a great workout in doing upper-lower 4 days per week, and we only look at pushing to a PPL for people who are getting serious about their physique or strength goals, and who really just enjoy spending their time at the gym 5+ days per week.
In short; Start small, and build up as your progress. Don’t kill yourself in the gym out the gate expecting a drastic result, build the habit, build the tolerance, THEN step on the gas.
09.10.23 - “I eat heaps bro my metabolism is just too fast” CRASH COURSE IN MASS GAINING NUTRITION.
Struggling to gain weight in a bulk? Here is a crash course in nutrition for mass gain.
Protein; KEY. DO NOT MISS YOUR PROTEIN. Protein should be consistently at 1.2-1.8g per Kg of bodyweight If you miss calories on a day, you (with the relaxed approach to a bulk) can make up for that with additional carbs that are going to restore depleted glycogen and improve your pumps on another day. If you miss your protein, additional protein the following day WILL NOT result in higher muscle gain, as your rate of protein synthesis remains fairly consistent. Protein first, Then fats, then carbs.
Track your calories (for a few weeks at least); You may be under the assumption that you just need to ‘eat big to get big’ or you might be thinking “I’m already eating tons and I just can’t gain weight!”. If you’re anything like I was, chances are you are far from eating ‘tons’ and what you consider to be ‘tons’ is a cutting diet of a bikini competitor. Shit food doesn’t equal ‘tons’. Maccas for brekky, KFC for dinner and forgetting lunch doesn’t equal ‘tons’. When I first started tracking calories I was self proclaiming to be ‘eating heaps’, only to find out I was averaging 2200 calories per day. A decent amount of food, but one that was BARELY my maintenance. Track your shit, up the calories, chances are if you’re not sleepy and physically sick for a week or two at the start of your bulk, you’re not eating enough.
Fats ARE higher in calories, BUT they don’t fuel you like carbohydrates do; When I first started a bulk back at 17, I was eating the fattiest foods known to man because they were more “calorie dense” and “easier to down”. The result? A lethargic, lazy, poorly performing, pump-less Josh. Stick with around 1-1.2g of fat per kilo of bodyweight (recommended for hormone health) and upper the carbohydrates in order to hit your calorie goals. For most of you you will be shocked at the amount of rice and potatoes you now need to have with your meals, and to that I say; How good! That’s the beauty of the Bulk, you actually get to eat! If you’re still struggling with this consider options like Mashed potato, risotto or pastas for carbohydrate sources, as the more pureed food is more dense in the calories you want, and may easier to down.
Y’know whats great? All that advice can be applied to a weight-loss phase as well! Protein first, then calories; defecit, then to get more advanced to make your fat intake as static (as in consistent) as possible and REDUCE carbohydrates (not cut them out) to continue to support health in a deficit.
Go out there and do your best this week! Share your wins with me, share your losses. Instagram DM’s are open for anyone who just wants a chat, or reply to this email with any questions, recommendations, ideas you want me to cover, or inquiries about training and nutrition programs!
If you’re finding genuine value in the content i am putting out on this email it would mean the world to me if you could spread the word with your friends, or someone you think might enjoy or benefit from the work i do here.
Next week:
Hayfever may be ruining your pumps.
Men and women differing training requirements (was meant to be this week but i need to find more research)
Which rep range is optimal for muscle growth? (the answer is not 8-12)
If you refer a friend for this email, let me know! I would be more than happy to repay you with a training program specific to your goals, or a few weeks personalised online coaching for free. I appreciate the support, see you next week!
10.10.23 - The Miracle Macro, Our Ultimate Revenge.
I missed last week! (and i’m a day late)
Last week was the busiest week of onboarding clients I have had to date, and as such it became extremely difficult to output anything worth reading into these emails. We are back this week with:
Why is protein so important?
Thought of the week: Making Success your Revenge.
04.10.23 - Protein; The Miracle Macro
I’m sure by now you’ve heard that a high protein diet is beneficial to pretty much every human alive. But why is protein such an important thing to take into account?
For one, most people are not intaking enough protein to properly support muscle growth and recovery. Regardless of goal, whether it’s going fat, gaining muscle, or performance and weight maintenance goals - Protein is the key to recovery and hunger management throughout the dieting period. Here’s a few key reasons to start taking your protein intake seriously.
Recovery: Protein is a long chain of amino acids, which you could think of as the little building blocks for generating muscle. Think; protein goes in, is digested into smaller molecules of amino acids, then re-arranged as muscle tissue in your body. Without the right supply of protein to your body, rebuilding muscle tissue that is damaged from working-out becomes a much less efficient process, and your body will lack the critical building blocks it needs to regenerate.
Hunger Suppression: The specifics on how this works are generally contested in a scientific setting. Some believe that eating a high-protein diet reduces appetite because of protein longer time to digest, others say it has to do with how long the amino acids are in your system for before use. What we DO know is that the majority of people who consume a high protein diet experience appetite suppression, which can help with dieting or periods of weight/fat-loss.
Metabolic Boost?: Funnily enough your body actually requires energy to digest food. Scientific studies have shown that protein has a higher thermogenic effect than the other 2 macros (carbs and fats). This means that it takes more energy to digest and process protein than it does carbs or fat. So a higher protein diet means you may increase the thermogenic effect (energy expenditure) of your entire diet. Keep in mind this is not a substantial difference in energy expenditure, so it won’t make up for shitty tracking or food choices in a weight-loss phase.
Make smart decisions around protein sources. A suppliment shake should not replace whole-food sourced protein like meat, eggs, etc. But if you’re someone who is busy all day and are struggling to get in a meal, a shake or protein smoothie could HELP you hit your goals for the day.
Get your damn protein in. It’ll help you more that you know.
09.10.23 - Thought of the week - Making Success your Ultimate Revenge.
“You don’t beat them…you cast a shadow so big no one can see them to begin with.” - Alex Hormozi
Everyone has someone they can’t help but prove wrong. Everybody has a person, a circumstance or a mindset that can be disproven and buried by the accumulation of their own success. The only way to succeed is to strive, and the only strive is to become so unshakable set on your goal that your success becomes a matter of WHEN and not IF.
People who have wronged you deserve no thought during the process of striving and succeeding. Instead of giving them energy, put that energy towards the strive, the grind, the wins you can stack. Eventually they will stack so high, that you won’t see them through it.
It could be an ex, an awful parent, a bully, a colleague, a boss, a discouraging teacher. Chances are you can think of someone who you would love to “get back” for whatever it is they’ve done to you (unless you’re in your “I have no enemies” arc). The idea is to remove them from your mind as a dragon to be slain, and let them fade into the shadow of your only real dragon; your goals and aspirations.
And even if your effort amounts to nothing, chances are the effort itself will make you see through the other person. You’ll be able to see where they quit, where they gave up on their vision, where it fell apart for them. But you have to try first. You have to pick a target and give everything you possibly can to hit it, and you have to grind your way there, never quitting. Jordan Peterson (with all his pitfalls) has an amazing quote about how life should be in your 20’s;
“You should push yourself beyond your limits of tolerance in your 20’s - to find out where it is. How much can you work? How disciplined can you become? Like, can you work 12 hours a day? Can you work 8 hours a day? Can you work 3 hours a day? Like flat out, where is your limit? How much work can you do? How much socialisation? … Push yourself past, and then dial back to that point where it is optimally sustainable.” - Jordan Peterson
Try testing your limits in some way this week and tell me how you went. Begin putting in the effort that will cast a shadow of success so great your ‘haters’ become irrelevant. For some of you there is no-one you could tell who would be genuinely happy to hear that you can run 10km without stopping, that you can hit all of your nutrition goals in a day where you thought it would’ve been imposible - I’m the person who is genuinely happy to hear other people are crushing their goals.
Next week:
How many days should i be training per week?
Whats the best training split for muscle growth?
Differences in training requirements between Men and Women!
Back to the regular schedule next week, email out on the 16th.
If you’re not following over at instagram, CLICK HERE.
I post more of this stuff over there and have been on a particular spree recently. My intention is to keep the ball rolling over there AND here, but priority right now is going towards the instagram page more than anything.
25.09.2023 - A New Age of Strength and Conditioning, How much weight should I lose?, Free 3 Day Program!
This week:
The ‘new look’ Strength and Conditioning
How much weight should you lose? (or gain!)
Free 3 Day Program!
Bit of a shorter email today. Last week was a lot of philosophical BS so this week we are looking at the shift away from the ‘conditioning’ in Strength and Conditioning training, and how fast and for how long you should be aiming to bulk and cut. Hoping you enjoy these emails as they’re coming out, i’m really enjoying organising my thoughts around a topic in this format and look forward to the time that i devote to writing up these mini-articles.
If you want to see more content outside of these emails, make sure you’re following @10thhousecoaching on Instagram and Facebook
11.09.2023 - Strength & Strength; A New Age of Strength and Conditioning
Strength sport have absolutely taken off in the last 10 years. What was once a niche of athletic culture has become a standard as a starting point for almost everyone in the gym. With this, more light is being shed on powerlifting and general strength training, body-builders are once again celebrity status, and most global celebs are beginning to take their own paths in fitness (Pewdiepie and Harry Styles have broken the internet in the last 12 months with pictures of their physiques inspiring the millions of their already huge audience).
With all this extra light, once impressive feats strength are becoming ‘mid’, and new standards are set every other month. This massive growth in human strength potential boils down to (i.m.o) the neglect of the Conditioning aspect of Strength and Conditioning. Coaches now prescribe strength work as an accessory to their strength work, and for good reason; to lift heavier weight you need to be lifting heavier weight.
But what does the neglect of the Conditioning aspect of S&C lead to in gym culture as a whole? Well for one, physiques and lifts are more judged than ever. Conventional VS Sumo, wide VS close grip on bench, the Odd-Lift crew out there making 150kg look like a fucking joke. Legs are getting bigger, chests thicker and backs wider. Higher BF% is becoming attractive (swimmer physiques are out, dad-bods are in) and off-seasons are becoming glorified for the HUGE in-training lifts strength athletes are able to execute. But casual running, swimming or even just going for walks, is becoming demonized. Why? Because you’re gains are suddenly going to adapt to some light movement and you’re suddenly going to look like a marathon runner?
Skipping cardio has been a meme for longer than I have been alive for 1 reason; people do cardio at a high enough intensity that it sucks. But somewhere along the line the message got lost. Now not only was running demonised; assault bikes, stationary bikes, ski-ergs, WALKING and EVEN SUPERSETS are being demonised for “Killing your gains” as a result of a heart-rate that is higher and sustained slightly longer than doing 5x5 heavy deadlifts. But here’s thie thing, training your cardio, or incorperating SOME conditioning work into your routine is sure to result in greater potentials for strength. Why? Because better cardiovascular health and capacity = better ability to recover between sets, training sessions and strength blocks.
Cardio isn’t ‘just recovery’, it is still work that needs to be recovered from. But by incorporating cardio into your weekly volume , or by adding it in on top of your current routine you’ll do one VERY important thing; Increase your capacity for work and your tolerance to volume - directly correlated to success in strength and hypertrophy training.
18.09.2023 - How much weight should I be looking to lose?
Due to the nature of fitness culture and all the transformation-porn that gets spread around the internet, people are looking for diets, hacks, tricks and gadgets to accelerate the fat-loss process. This has been happening for far longer than anyone should expect. But we know that isn’t a sustainable approach to healthy living and weight maintenance. Most often after a 12 week excessively aggressive dieting phase (usually in a challenge format) people’s weight bounces right back, leaving them exactly where they started. So how can we make the fat-loss process more sustainable?
Increase time, decrease intensity. Typically when i’m talking to clients about phases of weight manipulation (most of my clients understand that weight is an arbitrary measure with little affect on their training performance or lifestyle outcomes) we are talking about phases that result in a 10% reduction OR increase in BW. You would have heard Calorie Defecit thrown around by now, but if you haven’t here is a VERY quick explanation;
Energy Balance is where Calorie Expend is equal to Calorie Intake, so to draw of stores of energy in the body (fat-cells) we must be intaking less energy than we are expending. Very simple and the ONLY proven method for losing fat (more on this in future articles).
When you are implementing diet plans for the 12 week challenges / magazine bikini diets you are most typically undertaking a very agressive form of caloric restricition, often a deficit BEYONd 50% of your required daily caloric intake. All of my dieting phases have been at a deficit between 10% and 40%. This allows you to lose fat at a rate of ABOUT (varied for everyone individually) 0.25% (at the conservative end of dieting) - 2% (at the more aggressive calorie restriciton end of dieting) of total BODYWEIGHT per week. If we are losing fat at a rate of 0.25% of BodyWeight per week, and the upper limit for our phase is a 10% change in Body-weight, that means 20 weeks of dieting at around a 10% caloric deficit. Thats a long time, but the intensity of the diet is not insane, and would likely not result in ANY negative effects associated. On the more agressive end, 2% of bodyweight per week, we can expect a dieting phase of around 5 weeks.
When we diet more aggressively (in that 1-2% bodyweight change per week range) i like to go into a maintenence phase immediately preceeding the diet phase for clients looking to maintain or lower their weight even further. Reason being their mind and body will need time to adjust to the changes in energy requirements, the changes in the volume of food being put in, and you will also need time to nail your macros at this new weight - because they will all change depending on what phase of training/dieting/life you are in.
So next time you see a diet on the internet that claims to have come amazing transformative effect, consider if that approach is sustainable. Consider if the person show to have transformed still craves the food they ate to get them in the ‘Before-picture’ shape anyways; They always do, and then that 12 weeks if up and the after photos are taken, you can bet they are celebrating with all of the shit that got them in that position in the first place. Maybe we need to take an approach of slow, intentional weight manipulation to achieve the results you see in thos tranformation pics. And it doesn’t happen in 12 weeks. Not without chemical assistance 😉.
I just put together a 3 Day Per Week Hypertrophy focused training program. Click here to check it out!
Ladies of the mailing list; I have a 3 Day Glute Growth program in the pipeline, keep your eye out in the next email for access to check that out.
Even if you are already on a program that is serving you well, feel free to check out the program above to give you an idea of my approach to programming. I’ve done a lot of research and learned under the Eugene Teo and many other long term industry professionals who have seen what works, and what definitely doesn’t.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
18.09.2023 - Stacking Wins, Training on a Holiday, Deficit RDL’s
This week:
Stacking Wins to progressively overload your life
Training on a Holiday
Deficit Deadlifts are dangerous?
I wrote most of these while away on holiday. There is a little backlog of em’ too so if you like this email there will be more stories to come. I will firmly hold till the day i die that i refuse to become a “life-coach”, i will on occasion share insights i’ve found on my journey that help me deal with how shit life can be sometimes. Hence this one is a little heavy on the “philosophy” bullshit that i give other 21-year-old personal trainers for ranting about. But know that it comes from a place of understanding of how much a well balanced approach to life can impact the results you gain from your training.
See you next week :)
13.09.2023 - Stacking Wins; Progressive Overload in all aspects of life.
If you’ve been around the personal-development wheelhouse for a while you will have heard by now the concept of “stacking wins”, and if you haven’t, welcome to the wheelhouse.
If we think about a good strength program, over the course of a macrocycle we are stacking progress ontop of itself. All that simply requires is consistency of training, good nutrition and quality sleep. Hold on… ‘ALL THAT SIMPLY requires’ ? For some who struggle with their diet good nutition is a massive hurdle to overcome, for others with a tight daily schedule staying consistent is an issue, and for almost everyone beginning to be involved in fitness getting quality sleep is considered impossible. When we’re trying to change all these things, theres a couple of approaches; 1 by 1, or all at once - Slowly.
The most common way people approach these things (and the way most people who quit do it) is to smash everything at once for one or two days, sometimes they make it a week, and then fall off. The second most common (and my least favourite) is to tackle each thing 1 on 1. The reason i dont like this way is because by only commiting to 1 thing you are less commited to the action involved - ‘oh well its only my sleep, i’ll try my nutrition next and see if thats easier’.
My personal favourite way to impliment multipe lifestyle changes at once is to begin everything in tandem, but at a very low intensity of effort. This allows you to begin by stacking small wins up over many weeks, gradually building up to the more difficult habits like tracking and adjusting your food, going to the gym more times per week, and getting a very ridgid sleep schedule in place. Everything is progression. The same way you might not be comfortable squatting a barbell on your first day in the gym, you won’t be comfortable as you adjust your life to a new - healthier - schedule. So how can we scale sleep, nutrition and gym down to build up to our desired Intensity of Effort?
Prioritise Sleep - Sleep is either the easiest or most difficult thing for people to nail, so either way there is benefit in making it the priority (at least in the beginning). If your sleep schedule is completely out of wack now (sleeping from 2am till 7am or something like that) begin by going to bed just 1 hour earlier. in a week or two of successfully doing that, go to bed at 12am, then 11pm. Then if you want to wake up earlier, creep the sleeping slot back in the same fashion.
Just track your food, don’t even worry about changing what you’re eating - Tracking your calories and macros is still my adversary in terms of habits. Trying to upheave your diet AND track your calories is going to create a tight squeeze around food that may not be beneficial in creating a long-term solution to shitty eating habits. Do this for a week or two, and take note of any meals that you particularly enjoy; do they have a place in a longer term meal plan? would they be more suited to a ‘cheat meal’?
Do 4 total sets in the gym - If you’re completely new to the gym, chances are you haven’t felt DOMS. If you haven’t experienced DOMS, the first time you get them you’re probably not going to want to go back to the gym for a while. I see far too many people overshoot the initial intensity and volume (which in the gym accrues to Intensity of Effort) to then miss the rest of the weeks sessions, the next week rolls around and - if they even make it to the gym once - the same thing happens. Start with very short, easy workouts and build upto full work-outs. This is why I and many other coaches like a Full-Body training program for beginners; less volume of work per muscle group each session.
14.09.2023 - Training on a Holiday
Some of you probably know my primary training goals are centred around performance in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. A ton of what i do in the gym is intended to keep me injury free, fit and strong so that when i step onto the mats, i can give my best efforts towards actual acquisition of skill in sessions, and prevent me from being smashed out of action in competition. So with a huge part of my life revolving around training a martial art, it may not be a surprise that even while i’m away on holiday, i’m training Jiu-Jitsu!
I think holidays (and any time of a relaxed lifestyle really) should be primarily focused on ‘filling your cup’. And in that sense, training while you’re on holiday isn’t for everyone. But if you truely love doing something it doesn’t feel like a drag, it doesn’t detract from your holiday, it enhances it. The same can be said about any kind of physical training but I will stick with the example of Jiu-Jitsu:
Before my flight i sat in the airport searching for Jiu-Jitsu gyms that would be near where i’m staying. It gave me something to think about and an item to put in my very empty (intentional) itinerary. The night i flew in i threw on my rash-guard and shorts, and headed into Rolling Fitness in Maroochydore. In a city I don’t know, where I only do know 1 out of 317, 000 people, I met people who love the same thing as me. I walked in and was greeted with smiles and laughs as i explained i was visiting for a holiday from Wollongong and that i couldn’t be away from the mats that long. The professors got it, asked me to pay for a whole weeks drop-ins (i could now visit as many sessions as i wanted) and introduced me to the other instructors. I found out immediately before the session; the professor of this gym was a former team-mate of my professor from home, and the competition team that I am now a part of ! A small world.
We warmed up with a game i’ve never seen before, shared smiles, laughs and encouragement, learned a method to take the back from guard (i’d done before but with nuisances in the movement) then got to rolling. The people at this gym were on another level. Their game seemed to be tactifully designed to take apart mine. I tapped over, and over, and over again. Each time i smiled. They would smile back as if to say “i’m happy you didn’t see that coming”. The class ended and the professor approached me and in her Brazillian accent said “it makes my heart happy to see someone from GFT here.” She showed me a tattoo of the GFT logo on her forearm, her chest proud. Not only had i stumbled into a gym, i’d stumbled into a reason to continue training. I saw the look in the professors eyes as she recalled her time competing within GFT, and felt the passion for the sport radiate off her.
All of this to say that holidays should be a time of rest and recovery, and enjoying what a relaxed life has to offer, but sometimes branching out into training for anything your passionate about can change your entire relationship to an environment. I’ll be leaving the Sunshine Coast a better grappler, returning to Wollongong to become and even better grappler.
18.09.2023 - Deficit RDL’s are a waste of time and energy.
My mate looked at me from across the gym, chest proud, chin up, face contorted in the sly “I’m the best here” look that was permanently frozen on his head.
He had 100 kg’s on the bar, he was standing on a 20 kg plate. I watched as he mercilessly stretched and contracted his hamstrings, glutes and rolled his lower back up like a French omelette to make the plates graze the floor.
Now if you’ve seen my content you know I HATE when people demonise all kinds of spinal column movement. My honest belief is that the muscles surrounding the spine must be strengthened like any other muscle (starting with very very light weights) in order to function as a key injury preventative measure. But Deficit RDL’s are completely defeating the point of an RDL IMO.
Im talking to my mate “Whatcha doin there buddy?” - “Some deficit RDL’s bro, such a good stretch in the hamstrings.”
The thing with Hamstrings is they are typically fully lengthened before the bar even touches the floor when you’re doing a standard variation, the key is keeping your back arched, hips posteriorly tilted, knees nice and straight. You don’t need a deficit to stretch your shit out, you just need to be mindful of your form. All a defecit will do (if you are reaching all the way to the floor) is impliment lumbar spine movement under load for the entire bottom half of the movement. Think about it; if your hamstrings and glutes are already fully stretched, the only way for you to take the bar lower is for you to sacrifice some arch in the back - thus taking away tension from the glutes and hams. If you’re training for Body-Building related goals (like my mate was) this is going to be of little benefit to you, especially under great loads where the movement in your spine MAY cause injury.
This is not to say deficit deadlifts and SLDLs aren’t a good movement for strength. In fact for someone who struggles to generate the force from the floor in a heavy deadlift, deficits can help you create strength in that position specifically relatively risk free; AS LONG AS YOU PROGRESSIVELY OVERLOAD i.e. you aren’t loading 90% of your 1RM deadlift off the bat. So whats the key?
We want to take our muscles through a full range of motion specific to our goals. If the goal is strength, extra loading in un-conventionally trained areas may not be a terrible thing. If the goal is Hypertrophy, we want to focus on taking specific muscles (glute and hamstring) through as much range of motion as possible, under as much tension as possible.
Josh - 10th House Coaching
Routine Tips, Increasing your work capacity, Becoming a Time-God.
This week:
New Routines and making them Habitual
How to increase your Work Capacity
Becoming your own Time-God
Fun one this week! I’m currently on a lil holiday so next week is going to be a fun one because i will have alot of time to plan out and write the articles for this newsletter. Thank you for subscribing and I hope something in this email inspires you to make healthy changes and decisions. :)
08.09.2023 - New Routines and how to make them habitual
Routine is the antidote to those days where being motivated is not an option. The most difficult part of a routine is those first few weeks when its hard to even call it a routine; its so new that your mind and body have to put alot of energy into it. Within a matter of weeks, sometimes months, the routine becomes more and more automatic, which is exactly what you need if you’re re a person that struggles to hold yourself accountable for the actions required to reach your goals.
So how can we more easily establish a new routine? Here are some ways that have worked for me and my clients.
Preparation - Lets say you want to start going to the gym straight after work, because thats the only time that is going to work for you to get a workout in. If you have to think very hard about packing your gym bag in the morning, and other tasks you typically do are getting missed (like emptying the dishwasher), on a day where you’re less motivated you are more likely to empty the dishwasher and forget to pack your gym gear. We want to keep the current routine as similar as possible, and incorporate some kind of key to make sure the gym-bag gets packed into the car. This will require some preparation. The night before, you will have to have the gym bag packed and placed by your work shoes (preferably with your gym shoes in the bag as forgetting your sneakers is a devastating realisation that you don’t need at 5:30 when you’re in the carpark of the gym). In short, execute everything with such preparation that it take zero mental effort to execute the routine.
Accountability - One of the key factors to why people achieve such amazing results with a Personal Trainer as opposed to when they go out on their own is the accountability that a trainer provides. When you hire a personal trainer, you KNOW they’re going to be waiting for you in the gym when you arrive. Thinking about missing that session this afternoon because work was busy; “well shit now I have to find time to call my PT to reschedule or cancel, and I KNOW he is going to convince me to come in anyways. It’s not that bad I guess I’ll go.” You can achieve the same effect by getting a friend to tag along to the gym at the same time, although with everyone’s busy schedules this can be a challenge. The accountability method itself doesn’t matter, so long as there is a REAL consequence to breaking your promise to yourself, or at least mental shackles that make it harder to backflip out of anew routine. My point; Create a framework of accountability that has a genuine affect on your day, don’t just tell someone, tell them how excited you are about the session.
Mindset - Its very easy to get caught up in the new-ness of a routine. Often we become so involved in how new something is that its exciting, until that day that you wake up and its not. Everyday that you are implementing a new routine, make sure to remind yourself that this is how things are normally now. Don’t let the new-ness distract from the fact that you are fundamentally changing something in your routine, and remind yourself that it is (for now) a permanent shift. This is new, for now, but eventually it will stop being new and it will start being normal. People at work will start to pick up on it; “you going to the gym after this?” and my personal favourite “How the FUCK are you going to the gym after THIS?!”. With time your response will be automatic; “yeah always” or “Damn right i am”. The key; This is your “new-normal”, be grateful.
10.09.2023 - Increasing your ‘Work-Capacity’ (MRV)
Dr. Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodisation coined the term “Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)” but what is it, and why do people with high MRV make the best gains?
MRV is essentially a concept that revolves around your ability to recover from work. Ideally your MRV is as high as possible as a result of good diet, sleep, and hydration. When your MRV is higher it will mean you can get more total volume across each session, week, and training block. Imagine this, someone with sub-par genetics and a terrible diet who doesn’t sleep much might be able to effectively train and recover from 4 sets of a muscle group in 1 session. Because of this, if he is training each muscle group 2x per week, his total weekly volume is 8 sets and he may be barely recovering from even this.
Now imagine someone with decent genetics (or the same sub-par genetics if that proves my point better) who eats well, sleeps great and is always keeping their hydration in check. Their ability to recover is greater, and so they may tolerate 6 or 8 sets of a muscle group in a session. Over a week this is 12 -16 sets per muscle group. Just increasing their capacity to recovery, we have effectively DOUBLED our potential for muscle synthesis. So how can we improve our MRV?
Sleep well, Eat well, Hydrate often. You can also impliment cardiovascular exercise, and muscular endurance training which may help to mitigate some of the DOMS that may impact your ability to train through the week. Personally I aim for 90 minutes of Zone 2 cardio per week, and if i’m not doing Jiu-Jitsu 3 times per week, I get a higher intensity circuit workout in as well. It’s certainly not for everyone but it works to keep my recovery in check. Keep in mind my MRV is very high as a result of training a mix of CrossFit and MMA for years as a kid, you may want to just start with 30 minutes of zone 2 per week. Remember adding more work into your week will mean you have MORE to recover from.
Get your recovery sorted and slowly increase your total weekly volume, your MRV will grow and so will your muscles!
11.09.2023 - Thought of the Week; Be Your Own Time-God
I realised recently that I am a subject ridiculed with hypocrisy. I preach to clients as well as on my social media that there are no perfect circumstances under which to begin training. I hear all the time “aww work’s hectic right now I just don’t think I’ll have time. I’ll start when things are less hectic and I have time to.” My objection to that question always follows a similar line of reason “but what happens if a quiet tomorrow doesn’t exist? Will you wait even longer? You’ll give up?”. Arnold says in his motivational speeches, interviews and newsletters; “you don’t find time, you make it.”
But here is where my hypocrisy lies; I don’t make time for things that are not training and work. And to some extent that is because I find immense joy in the journey I am on, but in others, it is due to me saying the exact same thing that I hear constantly about holidays, days off work (not slow days I mean days where I literally don’t touch my laptop or phone). “I’ll go to X when I have the time or a little more money or the plans are a little better. Life’s just … etc etc”
Im writing this from my airport terminal. This is the first legitimate holiday I’ve been on EVER in my adult life. Where am I going? An hour flight north, to the Sunshine Coast. I booked the flight a month ago after deliberating the trip over and over to a co-worker, who finally gave in and told me “mate just book the fucking ticket”. The same co-worker is the result of his own holiday. He would have been only a little older than me when he booked his ticket to come to Australia for travel. 6 months in he was working casually and renting. 15 years later he is full-time, living and working in Australia with 2 kids, a house and an attitude that sparks life in the rooms he walks in. Because he booked 1 fucking ticket.
I’m not expecting anything like that to happen - and frankly don’t want it to - but it goes to show that by MAKING time and not waiting to FIND time, your life could be changed permanently. You could see the world, you could lose that 20kg, you could fall in love, but none of that happens if you stay shelled up and refuse to take control over time itself.
JOSH - 10TH HOUSE COACHING
05.09.2023 - Facing Hard Truth, Rest Periods, Sexual Performance.
Weekly Email 30.08.2023 (DELAYED)
WELCOME to the very first 10th House Weekly Newsletter.
This was originally meant to be posted on the 25th or August, but due to mix-ups setting this whole emailing system up its coming at you now.
This will be a place where I will discuss and answer the most common questions posed by my clients, because if they’re asking, you’re probably unsure as well!
On top of that there will be a collection of random thoughts surrounding whatever happens to be captivating my attention that week. More often than not these are notes to self that I think may resonate with you, a larger audience. My goal is never to come across as pretentious or ‘Know-it-All’ vibes, because frankly I am continually learning and expanding my knowledge as well. Hell on occasion you may see the words “I was wrong” written in these e-mails. I’ll do my best to make it fun, like this installment:
REST PERIODS AND SEXUAL PERFORMANCE | 23.08.2023
Question I get asked THE MOST by my In-Person clients is; “How long should I wait before I go again?”
Usually, in fact almost always, they’re asking me that WELL before they are recovered enough to go again. So usually - almost always - I will say; “when you can ask me that again without huffing and puffing”.
Rest times are not something that are set in stone for MOST fitness goals, especially those pertaining to muscle growth and strength increase. When it comes to endurance and conditioning, rest times ARE important to get right in order to drive the correct metabolic adaptation (big word for pushing yourself to adapt to different conditioning methods). Rest times will change depending on how depleted you are on any given day, or your age, or your cardio. Imagine you’ve just done the deed with your partner and a minute later they go “alright your recovery time is done we can go again now.” If you’re young, and your cardio is good, and you’ve nailed your diet, you might just be able to. But if you’re beginning to realize how old your getting and you’ve been sneaking out of the gym before your coach makes you do cardio then GOOD LUCK being ready after just 1 minute rest.
In short rest times should be adapted to how you are feeling. As a rule of thumb when I’m doing hypertrophy or training with my clients, I get them to tell me when they feel ready for another set, we then wait at least another 20 seconds before we begin the next set. Otherwise their performance through the session will get worse and worse. And as your coach I’ll be left feeling like your sexually dis-satisfied missus, waiting for you to show me what else you have left.
TRUTH AND REALITY TO US | 26.08.2023
“Truth is not what you want it to be, it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” -Miyamoto Musashi
Often the narrative we tell ourselves about our situation is a foolishly sugar-coated distortion of the truth. There will always be aspects of ourselves that we hide from our thoughts. Jung called it The Shadow. There is, deep inside us all an aspect of ourselves that has the potential to make us unhappy, and it is not until that is integrated that we can experience true joy.
Think of the overweight person who tells you that they can be ‘healthy at any size’, or the lazy person who scoffs at those with ambitions and drive, or the doubtful person who makes you feel hopeless for pursuing your dreams. All of these people are hiding from the truth. The overweight person is probably also unhappy with their appearance (or at least was at one point), the lazy person is usually horribly depressed (or was before they absorbed themselves into their narrative), the doubtful person is probably scared of failure - for themselves AND for you. We tend to create mindsets or ‘copes’ that make it easier for us to deal with what may be a difficult to change situation.
I’m writing this getting over a cold. I could have easily told myself “you’re sick, it can wait till tomorrow, get some rest or it will get worse.” In fact, I did, many times. Some of this is true, rest IS important. But I’m here now. I’m doing okay. I’m feeling better already actually.
Sometimes the antidote to a web of lies is an undeniable stack of actions that prove you are worth half of what you claim to be.
JOSH - 10TH HOUSE COACHING