0:00 And then Kelso shrugs, which are a gigantic waste of time like all shrugs. I can't believe this is a real exercise. So, those suck. You get every single bit of stimulus for your shrugs by just doing rows and looking at the rest of your program, you continue to do Kelso shrugs. >> [music] >> Hey guys, Dr. Mike here for RP Strength and today we are critiquing user submitted workouts. That's right, users like you. We are ranking them on a scale after giving some good advice and giving some insights and maybe making fun of you a little bit in an awesome way that's super funny and all love and respect, all jokes. Your workout could get scaled as a disaster, broken, mid, solid, or if you're extra special, elite. You guys ready to get criticism out and get nasty? 3 2 1, let's do it.
0:47 So, the first workout of the day is going to be from a gentleman who spelled his own name wrong, R Y M E. You Scottish bastard. You ruined your bastard. I know that's Scottish or whatever, Welsh. You Anyway, Ryan? Ryan? Scott [music] Ryan? Maybe Ryan? Ryan Ryan? >> [clears throat] [laughter] >> Says, "I dislike doing full body, but limitations due to work / family has me only going to the gym twice a week. [music] So, I figured this is the best I could do for now. Any advice for maximizing gains until then would be much appreciated." Ryan, my best advice to you is this, >> [music] >> work really hard and annoying. I would quit the job. Can I watch the videos
1:33 first, Scott? Okay, let's watch some videos. So, first part of the workout is weighted pull-ups, three sets of 10 to 15 reps, one rep in reserve, the last set taken to failure. Good technique. Getting a full range of motion, getting nice and high. Okay, Ryan, you're doing this trippy thing where you like sort of rest pausing some of the reps at the bottom. It's totally fine from a stimulus perspective. From a consistency perspective, I'd love to see you just take the same cadence every time. So, there's that. Okay, we have bench press, very good technique, gentle touches on the chest, excellent. So, the bench press is three sets of eight to 12, one RIR, last set to failure. Excellent, the technique was really good. So, recommendations so far, because you're only training twice a week and it's full body, I would say everything taken to
2:18 failure is [music] standard. So, don't do this one RIR stuff. The amount of stimulus you need is maximum. The amount of fatigue management you have to do is basically non-existent cuz you're not going to overreach on twice a week training. Next thing is, because you want to hit your whole body, the weighted pull-ups you're doing are great, but I would recommend underhand pull-ups cuz those hit your biceps as well a little bit more. Since you're not doing any dedicated bicep work, and for bench press, I would recommend a very close grip setup so that you can you can barely touch your chest, but you have to tuck your elbows a crap load. It hits your chest and triceps, otherwise bench press mostly hits your chest the way you're doing it. All right, calf raises superset with Smith tricep extension. Way to get that deep pause. Perfect. Okay, this guy must have his own gym. He's like supersetting five machines away from each other. Ryan, you can probably go a little bit lower at
3:03 the bottom. Really milk out that stretch at the bottom for one whole second. Um, other than that, it looks good. And yeah, I noticed that you're looping your thumbs over the bar. Typically, that leads some folks to have elbow pain. I would recommend that you don't do a loop and just do monkey paw grip, so false grip with no thumb over. Then, we have leg extensions for three sets of uh 16 to 20 reps, zero RIR plus length and partials, which is great. Leg extensions here are for the sake of time are quite good. The problem is you have like adductors and you have glutes and the sartorius musculature. A- and so, like leg extensions are fine, but I would actually opt for something like walking lunges uh or Bulgarian squats. Maybe if like
3:51 squatting takes too long to set up, you can do something like leg pressing or hack squatting. So, I would say just pick more hardcore lengthened compound movements for both your quads and your hams and you get a bunch of the muscles including the glutes. Otherwise, very good. Should I grade this? >> Yeah, why not? Yeah. >> I would say this is very solid, very solid plan. Everything I said is like a bit of a technical critique, but you can take your shit into elite if you take some of my advice. All right, next up is Jason. Jason says he is going to be showing us a pull day workout with some shoulders. So, he's doing six sets of weighted neutral grip chin-ups in the 4 to 8 rep range using a descending ladder to stay within target reps. That is excellent. Let's take a look at the technique.
4:38 Okay. Whoa, that's a grinder. Interesting. Lots of time taken between reps. I don't have a problem with that. It's going to be a bit of a difference for tracking. Like to see how your progression is cuz if you take different amounts of time between reps on different days, it can kind of throw tracking out the window, but these are very, very good repetitions. Okay, and the next exercise is going to be Smith machine. Three sets of Smith machine overhead presses at two RIR in the 10 to 15 range, lighter than usual to manage fatigue done on a pull day for more weekly shoulder volume. I think that's totally fine. I think also the Smith machine overhead press trains mostly the triceps, upper chest, and front delts and it does not train the side delts much. So, I would suggest you replace that with a face pull, lateral raises, upright rows, any one of those that actually hit the side delts
5:24 substantially more. The technique here is very good. I would say Jason, if you can sit closer to the machine and tilt your head back more, arch your back more, you can keep the barbell closer to your face and that will allow you to exert more power and more force and that'll be better for your shoulders than keeping the bar a little bit away from your shoulders as you are doing and then you're descending really, really low. I'd like to see you hit more of your clavicle area than to send that low, though there's nothing particularly wrong with what you're doing. All right, next up seven sets of Smith machine rows kept in the 10 to 20 range while pyramiding up in weight from 85 lb to 125 then back down. So, I do have a bit of an issue with the pyramid situation as you're describing it. If you're starting at 85 lb and going for sets of like maybe 20, then the big problem with
6:09 that situation is going to be that by the time you get heavier like to 125 lb, you're not going to be able to exert as much force as you were otherwise exerting. And the only real advantage of going heavier is higher overall force. So, I would say almost as a rule, the heavy stuff you want to do earlier in a pyramid and the lighter stuff you want to do later. So, what I would recommend you do is start set number one at 125 lb and then do set number seven at 85 lb and then just like descend all the way through in between instead of pyramiding up and then back down. Let's take a look at the technique here. Looks very good. Looks very good. >> Wow, what's on those wrists, Mike? >> Oh, shit. Are those Versa Grips? >> Yes, they are. >> My dog getting himself some excellent back work without having to
6:54 worry about his grip. Phenomenal product. Link in the description. Link in the description, Scott? Excellent. Yeah, get those Versa Grips, fellas. It really is a huge difference with Versa Grips because you know for a fact your back's the limiting factor. Jason, I would say you can like shoot your butt up more into the air, maybe even stand on a bit of a some sort of platform and then lower your entire upper body down keeping your chest up. Hinge down more so that you are not as a vertically oriented and that you get a bigger stretch to your back muscles and hit more of the mid back instead of just the very upper back. All right, and then five sets of rope cable curl isolation / pump and he's targeting 10 to 20 plus reps with a 45-lb high rep set and then heavier at 55 and then three sets back at 45. Again, I would start with the
7:40 heaviest, start at 55 or 65 lb and then slowly work your way back down to the 40s range. Let's take a look at the technique. Very close grip and your must have wrists and elbows made of gold. Excellent. I love the machine, too. Got that good eccentric control, that good stretch. Jason, this is a workout that I would rank as somewhere between solid and elite. I would say you can replace the shoulder work with something that trains more of a side delts. I would also save the shoulder work for the end. If you need extra work, it's probably better to put it at the end. You want to really focus on your back and biceps, putting those in the beginning. One thing I really love about your workout Oh, also, the other thing is like, you know, the whole pyramid thing. I would just like go heavier earlier and then lighter later. One thing I love
8:25 about your workout, Jason, is that you have a meat and potatoes number of sets. So, this is great. Uh very, very awesome and ranked as a solid plus elite minus workout. All right. Next, we have Brian. Brian does jiu-jitsu. He says, "If this is a jiu-jitsu day, I'll do this in the AM so I have plenty of time to recoup before class in the evening." And he starts off with deadlifting [music] five sets of three to five reps. Whoa. Excellent technique in the deadlift. I love the gentle touch on the ground. He's keeping the bar close to himself at all times and racking after the shit. Amazing. Excellent deadlift technique. Very good. If you want to be strong for jiu-jitsu, doing sets of three to five in the deadlift is going to get you strong as fuck. This is great. All right. Next up, Brian is going to be doing bench press [music] for three sets
9:12 of six to eight reps and he says he's been stuck at this weight with six reps for forever. Let's take a look at the bench press. All right. Great technique. Awesome. I mean, the technique is a 10 out of 10. What I would highly recommend you try to do is go back to about 155 lb and try to hit sets of like seven or eight reps and keep one or two reps shy in reserve and then increase the weight basically put a two and a half on one side of the bar every week slightly push your grip like half a pinky length in both hands towards that side so that the weight is even and so by going up by two and a half pounds every week or so and
9:58 trying to maintain whatever number of reps you got at first which let's say you get like seven reps at one or two reps in reserve just keep increasing by two by two and a half pounds week on week on week on week and you may find yourself to at the end of that process after maybe four to eight weeks of that to be benching 170 175 lb for six reps which would be a PR progressing by small amounts of weight and not going all the way to failure is a really good way to increase your strength so you can break through plateaus give that some thought next up Brian is going to be doing a dumbbell single arm row five sets of six to eight he says he maxed out the weight of the gym they don't have any heavier dumbbells that is one hell of a thing to be able to do Brian you're doing this really dynamically which for jujitsu application I don't hate a little bit of
10:44 a swing there at the top but you're controlling the eccentric and you're getting a good stretch so I fuck with it really hard and then bicep curl lateral raise superset three sets of 10 to 12 I love to see how you do this and if it's using the same exact dumbbells the bicep curl is excellent technique maybe a little bit swinging would be a good idea a little bit less swinging and then we've got lateral raises great height great eccentric control I would like to see less swinging on those as well and then Brian finishes off the workout doing weighted decline sit-ups with three sets of 10 to 12 oh what an excellent exercise beautiful [music] very well done getting that little bit of a stretch at the bottom this is excellent for jujitsu applies a ton to all sorts of uh guard work and attacking submissions and sweeps from the guard so
11:29 this is awesome overall Brian I would say this workout is probably elite. There's really nothing here for me to criticize other than whenever you need you say you're maxing this weight out for a long time for your bench press, I would say it's time to just choose different lifts. Maybe switch to a stiff-legged deadlift or a deficit deadlift, incline bench instead of regular bench, machine row or barbell or cable row instead of dumbbell row. For the biceps, go to a cable, go to a machine, go to barbells instead of dumbbells, lateral raise. Try one of the many shoulder exercises we have on the RP Hypertrophy app. There's like like over a dozen. And the weighted decline sit-ups, there's also a bunch of different stuff like hanging leg raises and stuff that you can do. So, if this ever gets stale for you, make sure to
12:15 switch up some or all of those exercises and then you're going to be having a really good ass time. This is elite. I love it, Brian. And if it's going really well for you, >> [music] >> don't change a fucking thing. All right, next up, a gentleman that also misspelled his name. I believe his name is Alex, but he spelled it Axel. Just kidding. Maybe your name's really Axel, which is a fucking sweet name. [music] Scott, wasn't there a rocker named Axel? >> Axl Rose, Guns N' Roses. The one and only. That was my >> I want to watch you squirm. >> Same song, right? >> Yes. >> Yep. All right. >> This I'm starting off. Axel is a fencer, so I don't know if he's doing these workouts for fencing or not, but I thought this was interesting. >> That's really sweet. Wow. >> know any fencers or never seen anyone fence so >> Dude, if I was a fencer, I would always keep like one of those retractable like
13:01 old guy little like >> [music] >> It looks like a lightsaber, but then you do this, right? And it comes out. And and and cuz like talking shit outside a club is different when you're fencer. Cuz this guy is like gets in your face and you're like, bro, I'll stab you. And he's like, no, you won't. You go zip and he's like, oh shit. Like, bring your knife, big homie. We about to get it popping. All right, so Axel starts his workout off with stabbing somebody in the face. But then when everything is resolved, and really just a misunderstanding, and the health insurance covers the eye poke, Axel goes and does ring pull-ups, three sets of four clusters. What is cluster? We're going to find out soon. Whoa, Axel's a technique master. God, Scott, this is ASMR level technique, isn't it? Oh my god. Excellent, excellent technique. Amazing height. Super, perfect timing at
13:49 the bottom. Amazing chest position. So, he does five reps, then he rests 45 seconds, then he does two reps, then he rests 30 seconds, then he does one rep after a 10-second rest. I love it. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Okay, now he's got overhead presses. Oh, wow, this guy's a technique animal. Look at that. Swings his head back, touches his clavicle, pushes the bar up and back over his head for a full lock out. I mean, this is just elite-level technique. And then, he's doing clown hang muscle snatches for three sets of six to 15 myo rep matches. All right. Dude, Scott, the control on that, man. >> The control >> I would just want to like swing it and just not want to do all that work.
14:35 >> [laughter] >> Just hoist it up there. >> Yeah. All that. Axel, elite. I don't know how to give you any more advice. Just keep being a pimp. Again, don't get too addicted to these particular movements. Always variation is good every few months, but as long as you take steady progressions, a rep here and there, a couple kilos here and there, man, you're well on your way. Beautiful, gorgeous, 10 out of 10. All right. Armuan says he's an intermediate lifter, but he's doing his first bodybuilding show in 2028. So, he would love the critiques. Scott, have you ever planned anything that far ahead in your life? >> I sure haven't, man. >> What are you doing in 2028, Scott? >> I'd be lucky to be alive. >> You know what I'm saying? I'm going to start with being alive, and then we'll go from there. This is the second leg day of the week. He starts with standing calf raises, five sets of 15 on the machine. He's doing that bottom half of
15:20 the range of motion, ultra deep for that stretch, completely locked out knees. Okay, then he moves on to seated leg extensions, eight sets of eight. Armand, you got a masochism problem or some shit like that? So, you could do eight sets of eight, you really could. If you want to save time at the gym, I would just turn this into either a giant set or myo-rep set. So, the giant set would be like you just like take 64 total repetitions and you do as many of them as you can until you hit roughly failure. You rest for 30 seconds, you hit as many as you can, you add those numbers up and all when they add after multiple sets all the way to 64, you get the same anabolic stimulus as eight sets of eight, but probably in like half the time or less. All right, let's take a look at this technique. Phenomenal. The eccentric control is excellent, even a little pause at the bottom. Oh, Scott,
16:06 look at that awesome legs leg curl machine. This is exactly how I looked last weekend except I was tied up. And then we have hip thrusts, five sets of eight. Come on, Armand, we were on a roll, man. You got to get a few more sets of eight there. Let's see what the technique there looks like. Whoa, holy shit. Scott, not only is Armand ready to take it from those leg curls, but he's ready to give it back for the fucking extensions. God, the hip thrust, wonderful. I mean, very few people in the gym you'll see actually follow through a hip thrust like that and that is the part that activates your glutes a fuck load. He's going down super deep into the stretch as well. Smith machine squat, two sets of 12, one at the beginning and one at the end and four sets of six in between. So, what I would say is just after warming up, go to sets of six. You're your strongest then. The
16:52 other thing I would say is Smith machine squats, I would put way ahead of everything in this workout. For the rep set scheme, eight sets of Smith machine squats is fucking brutal, you're the man, your legs are going to be massive. Sets of six is a great rep range for Smith machine squats and I suspect you're going deeper than the devil the himself, so this is dope. Let's all take a look at your rep scheme and your arrangement just a second. Let's take a look at the technique here. Holy Scott, how did you know How did I know based on what he did for the other exercises that he was going to sink this up infinity dunking them? So, Armond, I'm going to tell you two things. One, you know way more about your program and your needs and your limitations and and what you have to do than I do. So, this could very well be an awesome way to arrange your exercises and your sets. [music] But, what I would say is instead of doing lots of straight
17:38 sets, try to do something like myo reps or myo rep match or giant sets. Instead of doing eight sets of eight, maybe start with a set of 10, keep the weight the same, and then do myo rep match sets of 10 until you get like as much volume as you would with eight sets of eight. This will save you lots of time. It is totally fine to do calves at the beginning of your workout. And because you do extensions after, it gives your calves a break and then they're not a problem limiting you for other things like squats. What I would typically do is save calves for last cuz it's just honestly not that hard to train. And if you take them with a shitload of sets really close to failure, I would absolutely try to just do like one giant myo rep set. But, I would save calves for the end of the workout. Though, if they're really high priority for you, I think this is great. What I would do next is probably just do the Smith machine squats right away. And then seated leg extensions, and then
18:25 lying leg curls, and then hip thrusts. You could also, if it's more glute priority, do hip thrusts first, then Smith machine squats, then leg extensions, then leg curls. If it's hamstring priority, I would probably do like leg curls first, then hip thrusts, then extensions, and then Smith machine squats. Just trying to cluster the muscles to stay close together and train. So, I'll tell you this workout arrangement is solid. Your technique and execution is 100% elite. Keep up the great work. I wouldn't want to compete against you in bodybuilding in 2028 cuz I think you're going to do great. All right, next is Sebastian. >> We saved Sebastian for last because he's the most detailed one of them all. >> Sebastian, clearly an autist, has a lot to say. Sebastian, all love and respect, my friend. Sebastian says, "I'm
19:10 currently doing a torso limbs split." nice split, with four days on and one day off, which results in five to six training days a week and each muscle getting hit 2.75 times per week on average, so each muscle is three times in eight days. I love the tism, Sebastian. And and and this is awesome. So far all this is right on. And he says I run an A and B rotation, and the workout below is my torso B session. A and B rotation is amazing cuz it gives you awesome variation. And all obviously like if you have to do the same lift once every eight days, [music] that's phenomenal. You get tons of recovery, tons of psychological variation. This is great. And then he says, "As a little bonus, I added a form check, and if you guys select me for the video, I will send a video of me squatting naked and oiled up while screaming, 'Yes, Daddy Dr. Mike.'" Sebastian, you really yourself, my
19:57 friend, because we selected you. Scott, are we entitled to a naked video now? >> Yeah, I he emailed me, so I'll be following up with that email. >> All right, torso B. Y raises standing for one set of eight to 12 reps. Find out what that looks like. Oh, we got a little struggle. All right, well, that's that's definitely failure. Then unilateral frontal plane lat pull down, three sets of six to 10 reps. I love it. This allows Sebastian to get really really good stretch at the top, which is awesome. Machine flies for two to two sets of six to 10 reps. Okay, not touching together at the top, no big deal as long as the distance is roughly standardized. He's actually training
20:43 length and partials, which is awesome. That was excellent. Sagittal plane unilateral lat pull down. Uh-huh, one of these joints. Pretty good. Sebastian, I would say the technique critique on this exercise is at the very top, you want to let your scapulae drift forward cuz that does engage the lats even more to stretch. The next one is going to be dumbbell incline press for two sets of six to eight reps. Very low incline. Not bad, very good for overall chest development. Oh, yeah. You guys see that? Sebastian is sinking the dumbbells to outside his pecs into his armpits. That's maximum stretch, maximum growth. Phenomenal. And then behind the body cable laterals, two sets of eight to 12 reps. Uh excellent. And then Kelso shrugs, which are a gigantic waste of time like all shrugs.
21:28 Uh I can't believe this is a real exercise. Some of my friends that went to my PhD program will laugh about this. We made many jokes about Kelso shrugs. So, those suck. Um uh Sebastian, you're doing them great. So, um you get every single bit of stimulus for your shrugs um by just doing rows. And looking at the rest of your program looks to me like you continue to do Kelso shrugs. Sebastian, maybe you're injured and can't do rows. Otherwise, I would just recommend you do rows. They give you everything Kelso shrugs do and even better. Some of these exercises you collapse you can collapse into one exercise cuz you do some exercises for very few sets and they're roughly redundant. So, you have Y raises and then you have like behind the body cable lateral raise, which is like roughly uh very similar or target for
22:15 the exercise. You do two sets of behind the body cable lateral raises and one set of Y raises. I would just collapse that into either one of those, save the other one for variation later or on your other A day. And then you can crank out just as much volume and really focus on really good technique and not have to like switch positions and stuff and machines and do tons of warming up. I would say a pretty good rule of thumb for a a good workout is maximum five to six exercises. Scott, do you vibe on that? >> For sure. [music] >> Yeah. Because uh you're just not going to be able to do a whole a whole lot of hard training if you have more exercise than that. It also burns through a lot of variation. But overall, very solid. Your uh technique was I would say pretty close to elite. And uh your meticulousness is
23:02 for sure elite. Guys, that is our criticism for today. If you want me to critique your workout and to give you some jokes at the expense of your outfit or your general appearance and likely sexual orientation as well as give you actual functional advice for your workout that you're going to implement to get better results, then send us an email at [email protected] or find Scott's Instagram. It's @scotthoone on IG and I really suggest that you guys Instagram and you can try to be friends with him and send him tons of follow-up questions and DMs and pictures of your He loves the latter. If you want to submit a video and your workout, please send both video clips, ideally of your entire set at a time and and really especially towards the end. And list out everything you do, sets and
23:48 reps for that one sample day. You don't have to send us your whole workout. One sample session is what we're looking for. We will try to help you out. Guys, train hard. See you next time. Hey.
