How to Build Muscular Strength & Power | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | We just get a brief recap of the general parameters for an excellent power and strength training
00:00:09.440 | program.
00:00:10.440 | Okay, let me hit you with these rapid fire.
00:00:12.200 | And then you can maybe come ask questions along that.
00:00:14.760 | Remember those modifiable variables, okay, so let's go through them in order.
00:00:18.400 | And then what they mean specifically for power versus strength.
00:00:20.600 | So modifiable variable number one is called choice.
00:00:24.140 | So which exercises do I select for strength, in general for power, or speed or strength,
00:00:29.800 | we want to select compound movements.
00:00:31.860 | You don't often see people doing maximum strength work for like a tricep kickback, right?
00:00:36.900 | It's typically multiple joint movements and typically complex movements.
00:00:43.440 | In selecting these compound movements, we generally want to actually think about exercise
00:00:46.900 | selection of movements rather than muscle groups.
00:00:50.560 | So this is an important distinction because we'll see this is a different answer when
00:00:52.960 | we get to hypertrophy.
00:00:53.960 | What I mean by that is, when we think about, again, strength training, we tend to think
00:00:57.820 | about bodybuilding concepts.
00:00:59.020 | We go to the gym and we do things like I got to make sure I get my chest today and I got
00:01:03.260 | to make sure I get my hamstrings and now you're selecting exercises based on a muscle you
00:01:07.440 | want to work.
00:01:08.440 | For strength development and power, we want to think about movements rather than individual
00:01:12.860 | muscle groups.
00:01:13.860 | So there should be like things like I need to train explosive hip extension, which is
00:01:18.460 | like a vertical jump or something like that.
00:01:21.600 | I want to train pushing or pulling movements or I want to train rotation, which is a whole
00:01:27.660 | area we haven't gotten into, which is very important for overall health and wellness
00:01:32.100 | longevity.
00:01:33.100 | So we want to select big movements by the muscle, the movement patterns that we want
00:01:37.180 | to introduce.
00:01:38.180 | And we just want to select a reasonable balance between these.
00:01:42.280 | I don't care what the exact ratio is.
00:01:44.700 | You just don't want to go an entire six months without doing anything in this rotational
00:01:49.420 | area or an entire, you know, eight to ten weeks without doing something that's a lower
00:01:56.620 | body hinge.
00:01:58.140 | So any number of examples there.
00:01:59.780 | So just think about the rough movement patterns upper and lower, push and pull, and then some
00:02:04.880 | sort of rotation.
00:02:06.020 | That puts you in a pretty good spot.
00:02:07.020 | If you're using three by five method and you're going to pick as little as three exercises,
00:02:11.980 | just pick one from each one of those groups.
00:02:13.580 | Pick a rotation, pick a push and pick a pull.
00:02:17.340 | I can easily think of a push and a pull.
00:02:20.020 | So for example, bench press or shoulder press, row or chin for pull, and then squat or deadlift
00:02:26.900 | for hinge.
00:02:27.900 | Yep.
00:02:28.900 | What would be a good example of a quality rotational movement?
00:02:32.460 | Yep.
00:02:33.460 | So anytime you can use a cable machine like at the gym and you can do, it's kind of hard
00:02:38.380 | to describe this exercise, but basically you're going to stand facing the cable and you're
00:02:42.900 | going to pull it towards yourself and then rotate like you're pivoting, like you're either
00:02:46.640 | swinging a golf club or hitting a baseball bat.
00:02:49.300 | So you're facing one direction.
00:02:50.940 | I'm facing you right now.
00:02:52.060 | I'm pulling the cable towards myself and then I'm going to spin, do a 180 degree pivot and
00:02:56.500 | face exactly away from you when I finish and then return it back in that same spot.
00:03:01.100 | So that's a rotation.
00:03:02.100 | Great.
00:03:03.100 | We will provide a link to an example of that, that you consider a quality example.
00:03:06.300 | A medicine ball throw, any number of things like this are great rotational exercise.
00:03:12.100 | All right.
00:03:13.100 | So we select our exercises based on that.
00:03:15.500 | We generally then, because of that as a case, we don't worry about things like eccentric
00:03:20.420 | versus concentric because you're generally doing a whole body athletic movement, right?
00:03:25.480 | Which the eccentric concentric portion is going to be folded into that and you really
00:03:29.340 | can't separate them out.
00:03:30.740 | All right.
00:03:31.740 | So that's exercise choice, our first variable.
00:03:33.780 | The next one is exercise order.
00:03:35.800 | So because that everything driving power and strength is quality based, you want to do
00:03:42.060 | these at the beginning of your workout.
00:03:43.940 | You would not want to do anything fatiguing before this.
00:03:47.720 | So no cardiovascular training, no other repetition to failure stuff.
00:03:52.500 | If you do those before and now you're slower, all you've done is practice getting slower.
00:03:58.340 | And so these need to be done when you're fresh.
00:03:59.960 | You also need to do them when you're very fresh because they are the most neurologically
00:04:03.260 | demanding.
00:04:04.260 | They're complicated.
00:04:05.260 | They tend to have multiple steps and they're often in multiple planes and coordination
00:04:08.380 | is a difficult thing.
00:04:09.380 | And if you're trying to do all that at maximum speed, your nervous system needs to be tremendously
00:04:13.620 | fresh.
00:04:14.620 | And so any amount of fatigue here is only going to compromise results.
00:04:18.220 | To kind of recap that, one of the major mistakes when training for strength and especially
00:04:22.740 | power is people worry way too much about fatigue.
00:04:25.460 | Those things should not be part of the equation.
00:04:26.820 | In fact, if they are, that's a very good sign you're not doing this correctly, right?
00:04:31.620 | These are non-fatiguing movements, especially speed and power.
00:04:35.560 | So choice, order is next.
00:04:38.900 | The next one after that is volume and we sort of hit volume and intensity, which is the
00:04:43.500 | other one.
00:04:45.120 | We talked about that.
00:04:46.260 | The volume is basically identical between power and strength.
00:04:51.700 | The general number we're going to look at here is something like three to 20 sets.
00:04:55.820 | Total per workout.
00:04:57.060 | Per workout.
00:04:58.060 | But that would be like 20 would be a little bit of a special case.
00:05:02.620 | Three to five is what I told you earlier, right?
00:05:04.620 | I'm just saying like sometimes you can actually go quite higher in these cases.
00:05:08.140 | But that's the general range.
00:05:10.580 | And once somebody finishes the three by five workout for power or strength, if they decide
00:05:16.780 | they want to throw in some calf raises and curls and totally a forearm work or a little
00:05:22.100 | bit of a jogging on the treadmill or something, that's okay.
00:05:25.180 | Absolutely.
00:05:26.180 | There is a very little risk of interference for things like speed and power.
00:05:32.660 | Strength you have a little bit of a risk only because now you're introducing fatigue, which
00:05:37.620 | if you're really pushing strength, that might compromise your recovery.
00:05:41.500 | I could imagine doing the three to five routine for strength or for power and then somebody
00:05:46.260 | finishing up with 10 or 15 minutes of hypertrophy arm work and then being very seriously compromised
00:05:53.380 | if they try and come in the next day or even the next day.
00:05:55.780 | Correct.
00:05:56.780 | And do those big compound movements for speed and power.
00:05:59.700 | That's right.
00:06:00.700 | Not just because they're sore, but the muscles may actually still be damaged.
00:06:04.380 | And I know later we're going to talk about the somewhat tenuous relationship between
00:06:08.220 | soreness and recovery.
00:06:09.820 | Yeah.
00:06:10.820 | Yep.
00:06:11.820 | So that's a really nice heuristic to pay attention to is you can, but just be careful.
00:06:17.340 | Energy starts to matter at that point.
00:06:19.500 | If you're really truly trying to maximize strength, you would do nothing at all outside
00:06:24.540 | of that training.
00:06:26.300 | If you're just like, I kind of want to get stronger and some other things, and you're
00:06:29.220 | willing to lose strength, you know, 5% of your strength gains, then you're totally fine.
00:06:34.660 | The same can be said, by the way, for super setting.
00:06:37.620 | So super setting is an idea that says like, wait a minute, you're telling me, dude, I
00:06:41.540 | got to take five minutes in between each set.
00:06:44.740 | Well, that's not so much a problem nowadays with phone, with smartphones, because people
00:06:49.460 | are filling their interset intervals with social media and texting.
00:06:54.660 | Correct.
00:06:55.660 | You don't really have to go that long.
00:06:56.980 | In fact, there was actually a study that came out in the last month that showed, you know,
00:07:00.300 | like really two minutes is probably sufficient for most people.
00:07:03.940 | Having said that, if you really are trying to push maximum strength adaptations, like
00:07:07.660 | three to five is very, very reasonable.
00:07:11.380 | Those training sessions are long because you have to take, you're spending more time not
00:07:14.900 | doing anything than you are doing something, but you're trying to maximize quality.
00:07:19.240 | So that's just sort of like part and parcel.
00:07:21.220 | If you're not super worried about it, you can actually do super setting, which is, let's
00:07:24.500 | imagine again, you're going to do some lunges and while your legs are resting, doing their
00:07:29.580 | three to five minutes, you can go over and do an upper body row or pull.
00:07:34.620 | And when your upper body's resting, you're going back to legs.
00:07:36.540 | So that really cuts your time in half.
00:07:38.980 | Is it ideal?
00:07:39.980 | No.
00:07:40.980 | We actually ran a study maybe 10 years ago in our lab and we looked at that specifically.
00:07:45.140 | And we did see a reduction in strength performance in the super setting group relative to the
00:07:48.620 | group who do not super set.
00:07:50.860 | The question then it becomes like, is it enough for you to care?
00:07:53.520 | So if you were to, if I were to say, Hey, I can cut an hour off of your workout time,
00:07:57.700 | but you will lose 5% of your strength gain, almost everyone would take that exchange.
00:08:02.840 | With the exception of people who are getting close to competition or really trying to set
00:08:06.700 | a new lifetime PR or something, then you might say, no, I don't want any interference there.
00:08:11.220 | That last little margin is what I care about.
00:08:13.480 | Give me the extra rest.
00:08:14.860 | Great.
00:08:15.860 | So it's not a, does it work?
00:08:17.260 | Does it not work?
00:08:18.260 | It's always a, what are you willing to give up versus get.
00:08:21.420 | The practicalities of super setting or staggering push, pull, push, pull, uh, in my mind are
00:08:26.320 | real because you have to take over large segments of the gym, which oftentimes leads to a situation
00:08:32.240 | where your rest times are too long or highly variable because people are working in or
00:08:37.520 | you can't finish your set.
00:08:38.520 | Cause now someone jumped into the machine, right?
00:08:40.640 | Totally screwed.
00:08:41.640 | You lose three to five of your friends because it's obnoxious when you're taking over all
00:08:45.360 | the equipment.
00:08:46.360 | But in all seriousness, I think, um, it's wonderful if you have the space and the, and
00:08:50.560 | the format to do it.
00:08:51.780 | But at least in my experience and observation, um, these people know who they are.
00:08:55.880 | Uh, it's not practical to do on a regular basis if you train in an open commercial gym.
00:09:01.600 | Yeah.
00:09:02.600 | Tough to pull off.
00:09:03.600 | So, um, we've covered choice, order, volume and intensity to a sufficient level.
00:09:10.420 | The last one is frequency.
00:09:12.060 | And we've already sort of indirectly talked about that where frequency can be as high
00:09:15.100 | as you'd like in this area.
00:09:16.940 | It really depends on your recovery.
00:09:18.260 | If you're really, truly pushing maximum strength, you probably do need a few days to recover,
00:09:23.900 | although that's dependent upon you.
00:09:25.140 | But speed and power can be done multiple times a day, almost every day, basically.
00:09:28.460 | Um, the one exception would be maximum sprinting speed.
00:09:32.320 | You need to be careful there for things like hamstring, uh, and injury, especially if you're
00:09:35.860 | pretty fast.
00:09:36.860 | So you want to be a little bit cautious of that.
00:09:38.620 | But if you're doing easier movements, um, like medicine ball throws or kettlebell swings
00:09:42.740 | or something, you could do those quite often as long as the volume is, is staying pretty
00:09:46.460 | low.
00:09:48.060 | Last little piece here is progression.
00:09:49.980 | How do I progress over time?
00:09:51.940 | So I mentioned this earlier, but just want to fill this gap right back in before we head
00:09:54.780 | over to hypertrophy, which is three to 5% increase per week of intensity in general.
00:10:00.580 | Um, and you can do upwards of about 5% increase in volume per week over time.
00:10:05.020 | And I generally recommend running that for, uh, at longest eight weeks, but probably most
00:10:10.820 | realistically you want to go about five weeks or so, and then have some sort of a deload
00:10:16.040 | or back off week.
00:10:17.320 | If you do that, you're not, you're generally going to be a pretty good spot.
00:10:19.820 | [Music]