Podcast Episode 47: Talking 1,000-rep workouts with Tyler Holt

Nick Collias: Hold on now. Welcome to The Bodybuilding.com Podcast. I'm Nick Collias, an editor here at Bodybuilding.com. To my right is Heather Eastman, as always. And across from us is Tyler Holt. He is a personal trainer, MusclePharm athlete. He was a Bodybuilding.com spokesmodel finalist, pro fitness model, all at the ripe young age of ...

Tyler Holt: 26.

Nick: 26. And we're both kinda, you know, bringing some beard along. His man bun... His man bun's coming along a little bit better than mine, unfortunately.

Tyler Holt: You'll get there, it's all good.

Heather Eastman: Yeah. Just keep working on it, Nick.

Nick: Gotta start fertilizer up there.

Tyler Holt: Start somewhere.

Nick: Tyler's also the creator of the Screaming 1000-Rep Arm Workout on Bodybuilding.com.

Tyler Holt: Yeah.

Nick: What are you filming today? 1000-rep rear delt workout?

Tyler Holt: Just a shoulder workout, I do have a 1000-rep shoulder workout.

Nick: Do you?

Tyler Holt: But that's not what's being filmed today.

Nick: Oh, okay.

Heather: Do you have a 1000 rep for every body part?

Tyler Holt: I do.

Heather: Okay.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, and I have…

Heather: Even calves?

Tyler Holt: Not calves. I have legs.

Tyler Holt: 1000 reps on calves might be, I don't know...

Nick: We had a great strength coach here a couple weeks ago named John Rusin, he did a big leg workout with this model and then he did 100-rep death set, he said, at the end.

Tyler Holt: Sure.

Nick: You rack up 100 reps however you can. He was telling me he did that in a seminar with a guy, who then got on a plane, flew to Europe and checked himself into a hospital for rhabdo [rhabdomyolysis].

Nick: At which point, doctors are like, "LOL, it's called DOMS."

Heather: Yeah.

Nick: But then it got me thinking, but yeah, people love to talk about overtraining, they love to talk about rhabdo...

Tyler Holt: Absolutely.

Nick: …and all that sort of shit.

Tyler Holt: Yep.

Nick: How did you just toss all that aside and embrace 4-digit leg workouts and arm workouts?

Tyler Holt: So, I started it, originally just to shock... the first one I came out with was the leg one, and I'm just kinda crazy and I wanted something just to destroy myself. And then other people kinda wanted to do it, and so it kinda turned into its own challenge, just at my gym in Colorado. And then I decided to post it and see how many other people would find interest in it, and a lot of people did.

Nick: Did they actually do it, though?

Tyler Holt: So they say. So they say.

Heather: Allegedly.

Tyler Holt: And it actually got a really good response. And so then I decided to start doing it for other muscle groups, just to shock the muscles, do something totally different. A lot of people do talk about the overtraining, and your joints, ligaments, yada yada yada, but I've had no issues, none of my clients have had any issues. If the nutrition, your recovery, your sleep, if everything is taken care of, then everything will be fine.

Nick: Sure.

Tyler Holt: It's not like, I don't do 1000 reps every single day, right? This is like one muscle group a month that I'll hit 1000.

Nick: Oh, I was gonna say, yeah, how do you plan around something like that?

Tyler Holt: And so, I released originally, the goal was to release one new 1000-rep workout a month.

Nick: Okay.

Tyler Holt: Switching muscle groups each month. So, you wouldn't even be hitting the same muscle group 1000 reps until five, six months away…

Heather: Right.

Tyler Holt: ... from one another. More if you wanted to, but how I originally had it set up was to do one every month.

Heather: 1000-rep abs.

Tyler Holt: That's actually my most requested one.

Nick: Oh, really? Oh my god, that sounds awful.

Tyler Holt: So, I don't know, I've never trained abs, so I think I would die myself if I did it, but we'll see.

Heather: I would puke. I hate abs.

Nick: Right. Well, I mean, yeah.

Tyler Holt: Maybe I'll throw one together.

Nick: Over the course of a 1000-rep workout of any body part, it's gonna become an ab workout.

Tyler Holt: Oh, sure!

Heather: Yeah.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, I think most of the workouts, I mean, my abs afterward have been feeling it pretty much anyway.

Nick: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Heather: And you put your clients through this as well?

Tyler Holt: Oh, yeah.

Heather: Okay.

Tyler Holt: I make 'em all do it.

Heather: What kind of preparatory phase is there before that? Like, you're not gonna put a new client through it?

Tyler Holt: No.

Nick: No. First workout, it's an assessment. We're gonna do a little movement screen, 1000-rep movement screen.

Heather: You should just have a camera on their face when they walk in and you tell them, "So, today's 1000-rep... ".

Nick: It is the screamin' 1000...

Tyler Holt: It is. Absolutely. No, not all of them do it until they're ready. You know, I've had clients that have been with me for 4 or 5 years, and basically, if I've had a client for longer than 6 months, I think they're pretty well accustomed to my style of training and I'm throwin' em in ...and now obviously, you know, it's at everyone's own pace, own weight, it's all relative. Everyone can make it through it. It just depends on their level.

Heather: I think, speaking to the overtraining issue. That's what people forget when they look at something like 1000 reps, is that you can scale it back. You don't have to be doing 1000 reps at an insane max, or anything like that.

Tyler Holt: Yeah.

Nick: You can't.

Tyler Holt: You can if you want to.

Nick: That's the nice thing about it. It's kind of self-limiting.

Tyler Holt: Another thing, I think that just the 1000-rep part, if I had posted that workout and hadn't said anything about the number of reps in there, I don't anyone would have thought any differently of it, to be honest with you. But, just cause it says a thousand reps, people lose their mind a little bit.

Nick: Right. Mm-hmm (affirmative). So yeah, you bring up a good point about shock workouts, people love to have the occasional workout where they just totally leave it out. How do you find the right spot in the program for something like that? I mean, is it just like on the calendar for a month ahead of time, or do you say, "You know what? Today I feel good, today I really just want the worst pump of my life? I'm just going to leave it all out there.”

Tyler Holt: I plan it out, because I have my videographer in Colorado, we film it so I can release it on social media and everything. So, it is pretty planned out. So I definitely make sure that I'm feelin' good that day and that I'm ready to do it, yeah.

Nick: So, it's not the sort of thing where you just come in, you take the pre-workout and you let it tell you what to do.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, I don't think the pre-workout's gonna be like "unhhh, I'll do 1000 reps today.”

Nick: Sure, why not? Now you did do a really interesting leg workout last time you were here. You were here for the spokesmodel competition last time. And, we wanted to go over some of what was in there. There were gallop lunges, first thing.

Tyler Holt: Yep.

Nick: Gallop lunges, first, tell us what a gallop lunge is?

Tyler Holt: So, a gallop lunge, you stick with one leg the whole time, but you go down into a lunge, you explode off the front leg, and it's more of like gallop motion, but you stick...

Nick: Kind of a little skip.

Heather: Like a skip in place. Kind of.

Tyler Holt: Almost like a skip, yeah. But you're moving forward. Yeah.

Heather: But you're moving...

Nick: Yeah.

Tyler Holt: And you lunge, kind of hop forward lunge, but you stay on the same leg the whole time.

Heather: Prancercize.

Nick: So, there's that… (laughter). Little bit, little bit. And then after that, leg presses with just epic drop sets, right?

Tyler Holt: Yeah, yeah. I think that was like a hundred rep drop set, or something.

Nick: Exactly. Band-resisted stiff leg deadlifts, and BFR leg extensions.

Tyler Holt: Yes.

Nick: And I looked at that, and I thought, that's a really interesting workout. Not only because it has a lot of different modalities in there, but there are a lot of different ways in there to increase the intensity without increasing the weight.

Tyler Holt: Correct.

Heather: Right.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, and so, the biggest piece on that, so I had a shoulder surgery back in 2013.

Tyler Holt: Just lifting heavy, it was bound to happen.

Nick: So, you were pretty young, though, to have shoulder surgery.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, I was twenty...

Heather: Math.

Nick: Math. Twenty-something.

Tyler Holt: Twenty-something.

Heather: One?

Tyler Holt: Twenty-something, 22, 23, at the time. When I was talking with the surgeon and everything, he was like "You can do the surgery, go through the recovery, and you'll be totally fine, or you can kind of live with this pain." So, the cartilage in my AC joint completely broke down, so I just had bone on bone.

And just turning my steering wheel, just everything during the day just hurt. So he was just like, "You can either live with this, or we can get the surgery. You're young, we'll knock it out, and you'll recover. You'll be totally fine." So, I did the surgery. And then after that, I really stepped back and thought like, longevity of what I want in my career with this. And so heavy just kind of went away. So I started really thinking of how can I still get the same results, still grow, still get lean, you know, anything I needed to do. How can I do that and create a different intensity without just completely killing my joints and ligaments and tendons with this heavy, heavy weight like I've been doing. And so a lot of my program with myself is just coming up with creative ways, different ways, to create the same results.

Nick: Sure.

Heather: Ok.

Nick: When you started out training, you were an athlete, right?

Tyler Holt: Yeah. I was, basketball my whole life, and a sprinter.

Nick: Now, I remember what it's like training as an athlete in high school, and I hear this a lot from people who trained as athletes in high school. They say they got more bad habits than good habits from how they actually trained in high school. Not only from other athletes, you know, hey everybody wants to get the school squat record, or something like that, but the coaches themselves were maybe not pushing them in the right direction. Do you feel like, you had shoulder surgery very young, did that contribute to that, or?

Tyler Holt: You know, when I was in high school I didn't like weight training at all.

Tyler Holt: So, basketball-wise, over the summer we did a little bit, but it really wasn't a focus, like football players obviously lift a ton, but with basketball, it was just a ton of conditioning work, and drills and all that kind of stuff. So we didn't focus a ton on the weightlifting. I had weightlifting classes in high school, but that was more of like a social hour for people.

Nick: Sure, I recall that social hour.

Tyler Holt: So, even though it was like everyone's favorite class to go to, no one really got anything done. So, I do think that coaches and the gym teachers, whatever, do have a huge say on how their athletes are performing, and there's a big lack of teaching, as far as weight training goes in high school.

Nick: Oh yeah, absolutely. Form, technique. So then once you got in to lifting, you just went all for it, then?

Tyler Holt: Yeah, I was super skinny, and I just knew I had to start lifting and eating to get bigger. So I didn't know necessarily what I was doing, I just knew I needed to be in the gym doing stuff. So, I just kind of went in, followed some programs, actually when I got into it was from Bodybuilding.com, I don't remember what program it was, but that's where I found my first one.

Nick: I think it was the fuck up your shoulder program.

Tyler Holt: Probably was.

Tyler Holt: But still, just going into it, and not knowing proper form or anything like that, no matter what program you're doing, if you're not doing it right, it can be bad.

Nick: Are you super-strict-technique guy now? Or do you feel like the volume allows you to still be a little bit looser?

Tyler Holt: I'm definitely strict on most things, especially when I go heavy. Everything's very slow and controlled.

Tyler Holt: The high-volume stuff, or the explosive stuff, not super strict on, but I also know how to control everything much better now. So the more you know how to control and stabilize, and you have better mobility, the less strict you need to be. So, form's always a focus.

Nick: Sure.

Tyler Holt: But I just know better how to control everything now.

Nick: How did you end up doing the blood flow restriction training? In this great workout that you did for us, it has a huge Q & A, and everything, it's the standard protocol, right? 30-15-15-15.

Tyler Holt: Yeah.

Nick: But how did you encounter that style of training?

Tyler Holt: What's his name, Kelly Starlet, or something?

Nick: Oh, Kelly Starrett?

Tyler Holt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw all his research on the blood flow restriction and occlusion training. I actually started following that, because he used it as more of a rehab technique. For knees and shoulders, and all that, and then it turned into the actual occlusion training. And then I tried it with one of my friends, and loved it, and then started doing that ever since.

Nick: Mm-hmm (affirmative), it's a trippy sensation.

Tyler Holt: It is. It is definitely very painful, but in a good way, I guess. Yeah.

Nick: Right. Yeah, I know, that's one of those interesting things that kind of came out of a therapeutic side of things, where they had people do, they would just tie off their legs and have 'em just walk. And then it turned into, well hey, what if we have them do a whole bunch of reps.

Tyler Holt: Yes. Well, let's train with this. Right.

Heather: What if we do reps.

Tyler Holt: Exactly. Exactly.

Heather: That's what bodybuilders have done in general, is take something that was meant to be therapeutic and been like, "What if we could use this get extra edge?"

Tyler Holt: How do we get gains from this? Yeah.

Nick: Sure. How do we get the most terrifying pump imaginable?

Tyler Holt: Right. It really, really stood out to me because of the surgery, and because knew you could do this, do a very, very light weight and still attack the muscle fibers in the same way as you would with doing something super heavy.

Nick: Sure.

Tyler Holt: So that stood out to me. So, I use that a lot with myself, a lot of my clients, and even with rehab with some of my clients and everything.

Nick: So, what are some of your favorite movements and body parts to use with that?

Tyler Holt: Leg extensions are definitely my favorite. I do it with calves, which that sucks pretty bad, too. But I've done it with just, I've experimented a lot with legs. I've done everything from squats, step-ups, lunges, curls, extensions, arms, all sorts of different angles. With biceps, triceps, ropes, all sorts of stuff.

Nick: Have you been able to figure out how to do it with the shoulder yet? I keep waiting for something...

Tyler Holt: A friend of mine, and I, we tried it with shoulders. Basically, we wrapped it right below the shoulder above the bicep, a couple of times.

Nick: Right, tried to wrap it above…

Tyler Holt: And then we tried we tried to wrap it under the armpit, up to the top of the shoulder. And so it kind of squished your shoulder like that. Scientifically, I don't know how well that worked. But it felt like it worked.

Nick: Oh, really.

Tyler Holt: But it felt like the other kind of occlusion. Yeah, you know, the burn.

Heather: Yeah, I could see that. You'd almost have to create a special band that just goes around the shoulders or something. You have the brachial artery down here, and you'd want to cut that off.

Tyler Holt: Right. And so...

Nick: What movement did you try with that?

Tyler Holt: Side raises.

Nick: Okay, I was gonna say, that's pretty much the only thing I could see working with that.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, so we did side raises and it burned like occlusion does. So...

Nick: Huh.

Heather: Alright.

Nick: Interesting.

Tyler Holt: I guess it worked, I don't know. We tried it.

Heather: So, I...

Nick: Neck training, did you try any neck training?

Heather: I want to dig into your origin story a little bit, cause it sounds like you kind of started out with the kind of "I wanna get bigger" mentality, and at what point did this really just become your life? Was there a point, or was it a gradual building.

Tyler Holt: So, I started out just working out at 24 Hour Fitness, and I actually worked in sales at 24 Hour Fitness.

Heather: Okay.

Tyler Holt: And then, hired a trainer there that was just this big bodybuilder guy and I was like, you teach me.

Nick: Make me big.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, exactly.

Tyler Holt: And so, I worked with him for a little bit. He asked if I had ever thought about competing. And I was like, "No, not at all." But he was like, "You should do this show," and I was like, "Okay." So, he got me ready for the show, I took third in the first show. And then, I just really, really started enjoying the process of everything.

Became a trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. But I actually have a degree in criminal justice, so my end game plan was to do law enforcement.

And then about my third year in college, I think I kind of knew in the back of my head that I wanted to continue just with training and fitness. It was just much more rewarding to me to help people, and all that, in that way.

Nick: There are a lot of good bodybuilders/police officers out there.

Tyler Holt: There are.

Heather: That's true.

Nick: Ronnie Coleman, is one example. There are many others.

Tyler Holt: Ronnie Coleman.

Heather: Yeah.

Tyler Holt: And I think perhaps, if it were a different time…

Nick: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tyler Holt: I might still be a cop. But, I'm kinda glad I'm not a cop right now.

Nick: You gotta chase your opportunity.

Heather: Right.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, exactly. And so, graduated college was still at 24 Hour Fitness and kind of saw that I had a ceiling there.

Tyler Holt: As far as what I could do, who I could reach out to. Couldn't do online training, I was just basically stuck in 24.

Then I think at that point, was when I was like, this is just what I want to do. So I started my own training company, left 24, was renting space at the gym, and in the back of my mind, I kinda always just wanted to have my own gym, as well. Things went south with the owner of that gym, pretty quickly, I had 60 days to figure out what I was going to do with my life, because he was like, "You guys have 60 days to get out, I'm takin' my business plan this direction," meaning the trainers that were there, and basically we weren't part of that plan.

So, I called one of my clients does corporate real estate, and I was like, just find me a building somewhere. And so she found us a building, myself and my two business partners, and in 60 days we just kind of cranked it out and opened up a gym. And at that point, I had started getting into fitness modeling a little bit. And then at that time as well, I had already gotten my pro card for competing. Didn't compete. I haven't competed since I got my pro card, because I got more into the fitness modeling. And then, I just kind of kept doing that, just started building myself on social media. And then, this past year, decided to do the Spokesmodel Search again, I had done it back in 2012, 2013, or something. Nothing came of that, obviously, but I just decided, “Why not?” Now we're here.

Nick: So, what's the name of your gym?

Tyler Holt: 212 Performance Gym.

Nick: Okay.

Heather: Okay.

Nick: Yeah, so that's one of the great fantasies, right? Is like, yeah you know I'm just not going to be a consumer of the gym anymore, I'm gonna go out, we're gonna have our own… Our own playground.

Tyler Holt: Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, absolutely. You know how those things, like being at a corporate gym, you know how you find out how you don't want your gym to be, how you don't want to treat people. So, it's easier if you can just create your own, so that you can have everything exactly the way you want it.

Nick: Yeah. And does it live up to what you want it to be, though? To have?

Tyler Holt: Yeah, oh yeah. Absolutely.

Nick: I mean, it's everybody's fantasy, right?

Tyler Holt: Right, yeah. It's amazing, I love it. It's been open for three years this next month.

Heather: Wow.

Tyler Holt: And it's cruisin', I love it. Yeah.

Heather: Congrats, that's sort of a big accomplishment.

Nick: So, that means you're out there shopping for equipment, and you're like all of a sudden, you're like I have to think about what goes in it. Right?

Tyler Holt: So, within that 60 days, I was like, "I have no clue how we're gonna put all this together in 60 days."

Nick: Craigslist.

Heather: Yeah. You have no idea.

Tyler Holt: There was a gym, I don't know, like 15 minutes away from where we're at now that was actually going out of business, the guy was moving to Florida. So, we went in to look at all the equipment and he wanted sixty grand for everything, and I was like, we're still trying to find money, so you do what need to do to sell your equipment, if we can piece some stuff off of you, well, we will. And he sent me a text three days later and was like, I'll give you everything for twenty grand. I asked my business partners, I was like, how much money you guys got? I was like, "Will you take 18 cash?", cause we all had savings, and all that kind of stuff, and he goes, "Sold." So we got an entire gym's worth of stuff for 18.

Heather: That you own.

Tyler Holt: That we own, outright.

Heather: Cause a lot of those big gyms rent.

Tyler Holt: Right.

Heather: Yes.

Tyler Holt: Cause it's cheaper, just to lease the equipment.

Heather: Yeah.

Tyler Holt: But we own it, outright. We got a huge deal on it, so I mean it was just like timing and everything was lined up just perfectly.

Nick: Is it pretty standard stuff, or is there one thing in there where you were like, "Oh, this thing's so cool, I can't believe we have one of these."

Tyler Holt: No, I think it's all pretty standard.

Nick: No reverse hypers, or pullover machines, or anything like that?

Tyler Holt: No, no, you know those pullover machines are so hard to find.

Nick: They're hard to find!

Tyler Holt: I love them, and they're so hard to find.

Nick: No unloaded ones.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, they're like throwbacks and no one wants to get rid of them. They're just a classic piece of equipment.

Nick: Yeah, I feel like there's a gap in the market there. Where somebody needs to create the modern equivalent...

Heather: Somebody could step in. Old school equipment.

Tyler Holt: Bring 'em back.

Nick: Or create a way you can alter a cable machine or something, because adding a whole other machine... every gym is already packed to the gills, there's no real estate for it.

Tyler Holt: Sure.

Tyler Holt: And that's kinda how we are right now, we've kind of got our weight side, we also have a big turf area inside the gym for our performance stuff and sled pushes and all that. Obviously, our room for more gym equipment is limited. We've traded some stuff in and out, and added new and got rid of some stuff here and there. But adding in, as much as I would like, we don't have the real estate right now.

Nick: C'mon, pullover machine, people. We need one in the Bodybuilding.com…

Tyler Holt: Someone's got one. Let me know, yeah.

Nick: That's the 4th powerlift, that's what they called it, in the 70's...

Heather: That is.

Tyler Holt: Yep, yep.

Heather: I love that you basically took lemons and turned it into lemonade. You had 60 days, and you just figured it out. That's awesome.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, and that was probably the most stressful sixty days of my life, but definitely a blessing in disguise. It just gave me that fire under me and we just made it happen.

Nick: Mh-mmm. And so now you have your pro card, you say you're not really using it. What are you gonna do with the rest of your twenties then?

Tyler Holt: More opportunity has came from not competing, than actual competing.

Nick: That's what we hear from a lot of people.

Tyler Holt: Yeah. And so I'm on with MusclePharm now, so traveling around and get to do stuff like this with you guys, which is amazing, and going to expos and all that. Honestly, I have no idea what's ahead of me, but everything is just continuously getting better and better and better. So that's just what I'm gonna keep on goin' for.

Nick: Awesome. So, now, where do we find this 1000-rep leg workout? We know where to find the 1000-rep arm workout, that's on Bodybuilding.com. Where's the other one living?

Tyler Holt: So, everything's on my Instagram, @tholt21, but I've been getting so many messages from people, "Where is this, where is this?", I think I'm just gonna put 'em all together and put 'em on my YouTube channel.

Nick: Which is?

Tyler Holt: Which is, I actually don't use that very much, so I think it's like THolt, Tyler Holt... I'll have to get it...

Nick: But it's about to explode!

Heather: The link's gonna be in the bio.

Tyler Holt: I'll have to get it together. I should probably just create a new YouTube channel.

Nick: Once you do...

Heather: That's okay, we'll put the link in there for you.

Tyler Holt: Yeah, exactly, so... But I was going to see how the response to that turned out and then hopefully, I would like to do a 1000-rep series with you guys and MusclePharm or whatever.

Nick: Hey, we'll see what we can do.

Heather: We could probably set something up.

Tyler Holt: Because I need somewhere to put them all, so people can find them all, and put that on my social media.

Nick: Sure. Alright, well, Tyler Holt, thank you for coming and talking with us.

Heather Eastman: Thank you.

Tyler Holt: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Nick: You can find him on Bodybuilding.com, even if you can't find him on his YouTube just yet.

Tyler Holt: Yep, there you go.

Nick Collias: Alright, have a good day man.

Tyler Holt: Thanks, you too.