I Trained SUPER LIGHT then SUPER HEAVY Every Other Day - "Greasing The Groove"

Greasing the groove. This is typically a term thrown around in calisthenics, tricking, and other acrobatics. It is essentially just practicing a movement outside a normal training regimen and not practicing that movement to failure or even exhaustion for that matter. Rather, just practicing that movement to remind yourself how it is done, to further embed that skill into your central nervous system so your body will fall deeper into the groove of doing that move. So what about something more simple like weight training? Could greasing the groove have merit there? Well that's exactly what I wanted to find out. So for 10 days I utilized this technique and this is what happened. But you gotta focus. Day 1, a few days after doing the micro workout experiment, which was super interesting to me by the way, check that video out if you want to. Anyways, I decided to start this greasing the groove experiment training legs. And my idea was literally just to do all of the movements I was planning to do the next day for the actual workout but with little or no weight or to a lesser intensity, just to get my body used to the movement within a 24 hour time frame. Would this somehow charge myself over the next 24 hours to better perform in the next leg day's workout, or would this perhaps pre-fatigue me? Well, going over to the next day, the actual leg workout, starting just like I did the previous day with lunges, but this time weighted. And very interesting, it actually felt pretty good. It's not like I had more energy, but it felt like my knees were stronger. And when I went over to squats, well, it felt like the same thing. It felt like my knees were already warmed up, and I felt like I was able to put more power through them confidently. Now over the past couple of months, I haven't been able to go up super high in the squats due to recovering from a lingering back injury. However, also on this day, I felt no sketchiness in my back. Could greasing the groove be like greasing my joints? I don't know. Now when it came to the plyometric portion of my workout, this also felt really good in my joints. Absolutely no pain or even uncertainty. And I felt relatively explosive, especially after doing those two leg compound movements. In fact, my joints felt so okay that I felt confident enough to try a few max rim touch attempts. Something I felt like I haven't been able to go max out in in months. And it looks like I've got a lot of work to do. That's okay. Did I feel any stronger so far? I don't know, but I'm excited. I feel like I can start to build back that like that whip strength. Felt good, but yeah. And this brings me to day three, greasing the groove for the next day's arm day. That's right, I'm planning to throw at least one arm focus day in a week because I have noticed that my arms are actually a weak point for me. Especially from the front view. So starting with three sets of curls with the 45 pound bar, leaving many reps in reserve. Remember, I'm not trying to go to absolute failure or even fatigue. Just grease the groove. Moving over to triceps, which I was planning to be a super set of overhead cable extensions with cable pushdowns, but trying my best to make that mind muscle connection to my triceps, which is actually a point I feel like I have difficulty making that mind muscle connection with when lifting. So I'm hoping that by greasing the groove with this, when it comes to the workout the next day, I would be able to do it even better with better contractions. Better mind muscle connection. After finishing up with lateral raises supersetted with front raises, I was curious to how the next day's arm workout would actually go. And the next day while headed to the gym, the plans changed. Update. On the way to the gym, just discussing with the lady here. How sore we are. I'm telling you, if I went to go train arms right now, I'm fearful that it just wouldn't be. Man, I've got, I've got grease brain. I'm afraid it wouldn't be effective. And like, I would just be doing basically junk volume. So maybe I greased my groove too hard yesterday for arms. The plan is what I'm thinking is to just wait till tomorrow. Hopefully my triceps un-sore themselves. So yeah, this, this whole thing, it was going good at first. Now it's kind of getting weird right here. So I just think it all piled up too quickly. I might've went too hard yesterday, even though I thought I was just, um, putting some grease in the groove. So I'm literally just going to take today as a rest day now. But that doesn't mean we're not still greasing the groove. We greased it yesterday and that grease can carry over a day. There's no rules, right? So tomorrow I'm going to hit up arms. Hopefully everything still stays the same. It's not rocket science. It's groove greasing. Sorry about that. So the gist was somehow that small grease the groove workout of arms the day prior made me super sore the next day. Maybe choosing a lighter weight was allowing me to get a better mind muscle connection. And that grease the groove workout actually turned out to be a mini regular workout. Regardless, by the next day, I was feeling a lot less sore and ready to attack arms. And luckily I was able to go pretty intensely. But did I feel like I had a groove greased out that I could just sink into and go more intensely than normal? I couldn't say for certain. And then also, if I think about this, this is the third day of trying to focus on arms. And I know the day prior I didn't do any workouts, but still, I'm just thinking like a three day time frame. And what I'm getting at is, is this making my overall workout schedule more inefficient? Now, one thing you might be thinking, and what I was also thinking is, bro, greasing the groove only really works for skill based movements like calisthenics, balance, tricks, etc. However, in my search for greasing the groove research, I came across a ton of anecdotal evidence suggesting using the technique of greasing the groove might be beneficial for things like Olympic lifting, powerlifting, etc. Now, while those types of workouts aren't exactly more bodybuilding style workouts like I am doing right here in this experiment, what I was hypothesizing is that everything kind of crosses over, like a Venn diagram. And maybe some of the benefits of greasing the groove regarding the central nervous system, mind-muscle connection, and even things on a cellular level could perhaps be enhanced in between the main workouts to more rapidly improve hypertrophy. Now, with the trouble I had the previous day, I figure just like everything else, there is probably some line of balance that needs to be found. Off to the gym to grease a groove. Whose groove? My groove. We're gonna switch up, we're doing compounds. Oh gosh, man. Yes, so even though I just trained arms the previous day, I felt like I was lacking training the major muscle groups of my body so far this week, and decided to do full body compounds, but for only greasing the groove on this day, with the expectation of the next day to do full body compounds, the regular workout. Starting with seated rows at a very light weight relatively, moving over to incline press with also a very light weight relatively, just trying to channel the motion, feeling the muscles and joints working through that motion to hopefully better perform it the next day. Moving over to a few sets of front squats just with the bar, and then finishing up with two sets of lat pulldowns relatively very light. I was 40% at the most on anything. Will I double up and just, you know, soak up that grease, or is tomorrow gonna be like just fatigued? We'll see. And well, when the next day rolled around, I increased the weight to my normal workout weight, starting off with the same exercises as the previous grease the groove day. It was feeling alright, but then going over to incline press, it just didn't feel like all of my strength was there. In fact, none of these lifts felt outstanding. And then to make matters more concerning, my knees were actually feeling kind of achy, and I ended up skipping the front squats I was planning to do and training forearms instead, a muscle group I didn't even grease the previous day. How could I? So it was not the best workout. I didn't really PR on anything, not even close to my PRs. I never felt like a full amp in there either, to be honest with you. Maybe I'm just having a day, or maybe I greased too much of my groove. These greasing the groove jokes, man. It's like a dad joke, but a dad would never joke about such a thing. What day is this even of this experiment? I'm so groove greased, it's not even funny. I think it's day seven. I was gonna do this for 10 days. Oh my gosh, okay. Hopefully it's just that level. Maybe I was just having a bad workout, or maybe I was just doing a ton of junk volume, causing myself to be ultra fatigued. So could greasing the groove just be a ton of junk volume? Well, like I hypothesized before, there's probably a balance to be found. And maybe I was just teetering that balance towards that overdoing it junk volume side. So the next day, I decided to re-grease for legs, but do it a little bit differently. First of all, for each greasing the groove exercise, I only did a maximum of two sets. I also substituted my first exercise, which would have been bodyweight lunges, for five minutes on the Stairmaster. I figure the greasing the groove exercises didn't have to be exactly the same as the main workout exercises, as long as they channeled similar muscle groups, priming them for action the next day. And hopefully the next day, I wouldn't be sore, but rather ready to attack legs. So after five minutes of the step mill, two sets of very light hamstring curls, and quadricep extensions, and two sets of bodyweight squats, was I greased, but not over greased? Well, on day 10, after a light 10 minute trampoline session to warm up, I then decided to add some additional grease to my grip by doing two sets of 25, using the guide Captains of Crush to hopefully prime my grip for the end of the workout, when I would try to close the two. Anyways, off to the gym to train legs where I was expecting to go full intensity, with hope that the workout would feel extra good from greasing the groove the previous day. Weighted walking lunges felt okay, but then when I went over to front squats, things didn't feel that good. I remember early on in this experiment, after greasing the groove for my leg day, my squats actually felt better. My joints felt better. However, at the end of this experiment, my joints felt bad. Specifically, my right quadricep by my knee. It kind of felt like the beginning of tendonitis, perhaps. But was this really due to just greasing the groove the previous day, or was it due to other things, like adding in the trampoline as a warm-up, for example? Well, almost always, previously, I would warm up on the trampoline for leg days, and I had no problem. But for some reason, during this experiment, it felt like I was just overdoing it. I finished up the rest of this subpar workout, trying to work around that ache in my quadricep. And then I took a swing at the two, and nope. Not even close. I'm sorry, guys. When I finally close this two, it's gonna be a partay. Disappointed in how this was turning out, I decided to take the next day completely off, and then see if there were any physical changes to my body from doing this experiment for 10 days. Weighing in just a little bit less than before, it's hard to see any visual differences with the side-by-side. However, I think in the back view, my back looks less thick, and my right shoulder looks more bound up. Sorry for the white balance discrepancy, by the way. I think my toucan pants in the befores made the camera auto-balance more yellow. Anyways, what about the specific measurements? Well, after taking the measurements and comparing them to the before, it appears I lost a quarter inch on my right arm, a quarter inch on both thighs, and a whole half inch on both calves. Luckily, my forearms stayed unchanged, though. So I think it's clear. From my experience doing this experiment, greasing the groove for the specific type of training I'm trying to do every day before the actual workout ended up not working so well. To summarize, I think this ended up being just a bunch of junk volume. So much so that over the course of these 10 days, it actually ended up taking away energy from my actual training. And well, in my opinion, the results speak for themselves. Anyways, there was a little glimmer of hope at the beginning of this experiment. That first grease the groove workout followed by that first leg day, for some reason that first leg day felt extra well. It felt like my joints were primed, everything was primed, and everything was ready. Could there perhaps be a balance to find when implementing this technique in order to get better results than I got? Maybe. I didn't do it in this experiment, but maybe there is something to be said there. And speaking of which, throughout my research for this experiment, it isn't just some concept that I like came up with out of nowhere. Greasing the groove has been used to make improvements throughout many specialties, specifically skill-based specialties. Tricking, gymnastics-like movements, calisthenics, breaking, any other like dynamic skill set, right? And I think it really works well there to kind of like train a movement on an off day, but not to a point where you get fatigued, to a point where it doesn't even really challenge the muscles so much, or put the muscles in the central nervous system through that much volume, so that when you actually go to a normal training day, it's like you practice that movement, you went through the motion, it's like it finally builds that motor memory. When you go to actually train it, your training session is much better. Now when it comes to actual weight training and bodybuilding style movements and strength training style movements, I did find a lot of like Olympic lifters and power lifters seem to be implementing this type of technique. However, they probably found that fine line and they didn't cross over that fine line into junk volume just beneath that line, because I think I crossed over that line and definitely went into junk volume, and that's why I got the negative results here. But I did see this technique being used in strength training movements. Now I know Olympic lifting is definitely a little bit more, you know, skill-based, like there's a lot of skill to that. And you might not be thinking like a bodybuilding, just regular bro-in-the-gym type weight training movement to be so skill-based. But in my opinion, and what I wanted to explore throughout this experiment, could just greasing that groove, doing the similar movements to a very low intensity the day prior, perhaps yield a better training session the next day. And while in my experiment things went south, and I actually ended up losing gains, I still do believe that maybe there is a way, maybe with way less volume, that I could have enhanced my workouts by implementing this technique. Like it should have been way less, just like the movements basically, just the simple movements. It probably didn't have to be that long. I probably didn't have to go to the gym for some of these. Just like if I was going to do curls the next day, just do something like this with my hands, and like think about my muscle connection, just the night prior or something like that. Like it could have been way less. But I think going to the gym to grease the groove, and like actually lifting weights to grease the groove, that many sets that I did in many of these workouts, it just ended up being too much junk volume. What I'm trying to say is, I think this could still be a beneficial technique for bodybuilding style movements and bro gym movements. But I think it's way less than what I did in this video, to be honest with you. Because I don't want to throw the whole technique of greasing the groove under the bus, and say it's completely pointless. Because from my experience in the past, when I did mess around with this, especially when I was doing more skill-based stuff, I remember having one grease the groove day a week. And it was like 30% of the intensity and the volume that I would typically intend to do. But the day after that, holy smokes, so insane. Like the training session was so good after that. Like it was crazy. So I'm saying I don't want to throw this concept under the bus and say it's stupid, because I think there is a place. I just think I overdid it in this experiment. Hey, let me know your thoughts. Let me know if you've ever experimented with greasing the groove, and how that worked out for you. I hope you all still enjoyed this video, and were entertained watching this. With that being said, stay tuned. More videos coming out. Hope you all have a great day. Peace. I will see you all in the next video.