Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimal Protocols to Build Strength & Grow Muscles

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series,

00:00:02.440 | where I and an expert guest discuss science

00:00:05.120 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:07.320 | I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology

00:00:11.200 | and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.120 | Today marks the second episode in the six-episode series

00:00:17.440 | with Dr. Andy Galpin, a professor of kinesiology

00:00:20.400 | at Cal State University, Fullerton,

00:00:22.320 | and one of the foremost world's experts

00:00:24.160 | on the science and applications of methods

00:00:26.360 | to increase strength, hypertrophy, and endurance.

00:00:29.480 | Today's episode is all about how to increase strength,

00:00:33.240 | speed, and hypertrophy of muscles.

00:00:35.780 | Professor Dr. Andy Galpin, great to be back.

00:00:39.400 | Last episode, you told us about the nine

00:00:42.140 | specific adaptations that exercise can induce,

00:00:44.660 | everything from strength and hypertrophy to endurance,

00:00:47.200 | muscular endurance, so on and so forth.

00:00:49.120 | And you gave us this incredible toolkit

00:00:52.240 | of fit tests for each of those adaptations

00:00:55.160 | so that people can assess them for themselves

00:00:57.440 | and then, of course, improve on each and every one of them

00:00:59.900 | if they choose.

00:01:01.160 | By the way, people can access that information

00:01:03.440 | simply by going to the first episode in this series with you

00:01:06.560 | and it's all there and timestamped,

00:01:08.160 | and I highly recommend people do that.

00:01:10.840 | Today, we're talking about strength and hypertrophy.

00:01:13.580 | And so right out the gate, I just want to ask you,

00:01:16.360 | why should people think about and train

00:01:19.000 | for strength and hypertrophy?

00:01:20.720 | And that question is, of course, directed towards those

00:01:23.440 | that are trying to get stronger and grow bigger muscles,

00:01:26.520 | but I know that many people out there, perhaps,

00:01:28.760 | have not thought about the benefits

00:01:30.520 | of strength and hypertrophy training

00:01:32.440 | and how beneficial it can be, not just for people

00:01:35.460 | that want to get bigger biceps, et cetera,

00:01:38.080 | but that have other goals, longevity goals,

00:01:41.220 | and health goals unrelated to what most people

00:01:44.360 | associate with hypertrophy.

00:01:45.840 | So what are the benefits of training

00:01:47.860 | for strength and hypertrophy for the everyday person,

00:01:50.720 | for the athlete, for the recreational exerciser, and so on?

00:01:55.040 | - There's a wonderful saying.

00:01:56.640 | I think it was Bill Bowerman, one of the founders of Nike,

00:01:59.840 | and he always said, "If you have a body, you're an athlete."

00:02:02.400 | And I think that's very important for people to understand

00:02:04.760 | because one of the major disservices we've done in this field

00:02:08.840 | is convince people that things like strength training

00:02:12.340 | are for athletes or for growing bigger muscles.

00:02:15.500 | And cardiovascular training are for things

00:02:17.480 | like fat loss and heart health.

00:02:19.920 | And that is a tremendous disservice

00:02:22.080 | because it puts a lot of unnecessary barriers

00:02:25.360 | and leads to a lot of false assumptions

00:02:27.440 | and therefore poor actions.

00:02:29.800 | Classic examples of this are people who are resistant

00:02:33.440 | to strength training because they don't want to put on

00:02:35.240 | too much muscle.

00:02:36.800 | People who only perform one type of exercise

00:02:39.480 | because they want, say, fat loss

00:02:41.040 | or they're in it for longevity and health,

00:02:43.120 | and they're not worried about being an athlete.

00:02:46.300 | And so right out the gates, we can actually draw back

00:02:49.120 | a little bit to what our previous conversation,

00:02:51.580 | when I walked you through the history of exercise science.

00:02:54.040 | And the reason I did that is to help you understand

00:02:56.680 | these are the railroads that you're running down

00:02:59.820 | and you don't even realize it

00:03:01.280 | in terms of everyone thinks of strength training

00:03:03.600 | and they immediately default to our principles

00:03:06.860 | to optimize muscle growth.

00:03:08.600 | And that's not the only adaptation one should be after

00:03:11.240 | with strength training.

00:03:12.360 | When we think of endurance training,

00:03:13.620 | we immediately default to things like, again,

00:03:15.900 | cardiovascular health or fat loss or things like that.

00:03:19.100 | What I really want to do across this entire series

00:03:22.440 | and conversations is to just break that immediately.

00:03:25.880 | Talk about all the other things

00:03:28.040 | that you can do with your training

00:03:30.680 | and so that people can be comfortable and confident

00:03:33.560 | in doing an optimal training program

00:03:35.720 | for whatever goal they have,

00:03:36.840 | whether that be specific, like growing muscle,

00:03:39.560 | or nonspecific, like just feeling better,

00:03:41.960 | having more energy, being more prepared

00:03:44.640 | for life and longevity.

00:03:46.720 | And so to directly answer your question,

00:03:48.840 | I could really, we could do 100 episodes

00:03:51.400 | on the benefits of exercise.

00:03:52.800 | And we could run all the way from mood and focus,

00:03:56.840 | cognitive tasks, to a better immune function.

00:03:59.880 | You'll get less colds.

00:04:01.280 | You'll fight them off more effectively.

00:04:04.120 | To mortality, right?

00:04:05.860 | So some of the strongest predictors

00:04:07.280 | of how long and how well you will live are exercise.

00:04:09.780 | However, there are independent benefits

00:04:12.760 | that come from just endurance training

00:04:14.560 | and there are independent benefits

00:04:15.760 | that come from strength training.

00:04:17.600 | And so to just give you one categorically,

00:04:20.860 | the way that you wanna think about this is

00:04:22.400 | resistance exercise and strength training

00:04:24.140 | is the number one tool to combat neuromuscular aging.

00:04:27.860 | You cannot get that through any other form of exercise

00:04:32.020 | besides heavy overload strength training.

00:04:34.960 | And we can walk through in detail what that is,

00:04:36.960 | but that is reason number one.

00:04:39.400 | In general, human movement is a function of, number one,

00:04:42.440 | some sort of neuromuscular activation,

00:04:44.560 | so nerves have to turn on.

00:04:46.480 | The second part is muscles have to contract

00:04:48.520 | and the third part is those muscles have to move a bone.

00:04:51.480 | All right, if you want to be alive

00:04:54.040 | and you want to live by yourself,

00:04:55.840 | you have to be able to engage in human movement.

00:04:58.680 | If you have any dysfunction

00:05:00.880 | in the neuromuscular system there,

00:05:02.540 | then you're not gonna be able to do that.

00:05:04.080 | And again, as I mentioned, the only way to preserve that

00:05:06.520 | or fight that loss of aging is to strength train.

00:05:09.900 | So people will tend to hear numbers

00:05:11.280 | like you lose about 1% of muscle size

00:05:14.880 | per year after age about 40, and that's true.

00:05:18.440 | However, what they don't realize is you lose

00:05:20.340 | about 2% to 4% of your strength per year.

00:05:23.800 | So the loss of strength is almost double

00:05:26.480 | that the loss of muscle mass with aging.

00:05:29.700 | Muscle power is more like 8% to 10% per year.

00:05:33.840 | And so we can very clearly see the problem

00:05:36.280 | you're going to have with aging

00:05:37.480 | is not going to be preservation of muscle,

00:05:39.820 | although that is incredibly important.

00:05:41.620 | It's going to be very specifically preservation

00:05:43.840 | of muscle power and strength.

00:05:45.600 | And why that really matters is your ability

00:05:48.200 | to, again, stand up and move,

00:05:50.220 | your ability to catch yourself from a fall,

00:05:52.040 | your ability to feel confident doing a movement.

00:05:55.540 | That is a function of muscle power

00:05:57.280 | more than it is muscle size.

00:05:59.100 | And so functionality is really what we wanna be, right?

00:06:01.820 | You want to be able to do whatever you want to do physically

00:06:05.320 | and feel confident in doing that as you age.

00:06:08.020 | That's going to only be obtained through strength training.

00:06:11.200 | - So is it appropriate to say that training

00:06:13.120 | for strength and hypertrophy is also a way

00:06:16.000 | to keep your nervous system healthy and young?

00:06:18.960 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:06:20.000 | It is the only exercise route we have for that.

00:06:23.560 | If you look at just basic numbers like motor units,

00:06:26.440 | you're going to see that older individuals

00:06:28.200 | have like a 30 to 40% reduction in total motor units.

00:06:31.080 | - So when you say older,

00:06:32.580 | approximately what ages are you referring to?

00:06:35.760 | 'Cause I know many people out there, such as myself,

00:06:38.400 | are 40 and older,

00:06:41.000 | but I know many of our listeners are in their 20s,

00:06:43.160 | maybe even in their teens.

00:06:44.440 | And I can imagine that people that start doing

00:06:47.760 | strength and hypertrophy training younger

00:06:49.880 | will afford themselves an advantage over time,

00:06:52.480 | but that everybody should be doing

00:06:54.200 | strength and hypertrophy training

00:06:56.060 | for as much of their lifespan as possible.

00:06:57.840 | That's really the message that I'm getting.

00:07:00.240 | So if somebody is, for instance, 45,

00:07:03.500 | would that fall into the bin of older?

00:07:06.040 | - You're gonna start seeing decrements past,

00:07:08.160 | again, around the age of 40 or so.

00:07:09.800 | Now there's a lot of genetic variation there,

00:07:11.920 | and a lot of other things go into that equation,

00:07:13.800 | like your sleep and your nutrition.

00:07:15.720 | But that's a fair number to sort of think about.

00:07:17.840 | One actually, response is,

00:07:19.640 | it's actually sort of counterintuitive.

00:07:21.120 | The wonderful thing about strength training

00:07:23.400 | is you don't actually have to start at a young age.

00:07:27.880 | You can actually, in fact,

00:07:28.880 | I was reading a paper this morning

00:07:30.000 | because of our previous conversation,

00:07:31.360 | it was in over age 90.

00:07:34.400 | So these are folks 90 plus,

00:07:36.160 | and they saw improvements like 30 to 170%

00:07:39.840 | in things like muscle size and hypertrophy

00:07:41.920 | over a very short period of time.

00:07:43.280 | I think it was 12 weeks.

00:07:45.080 | So you don't actually have to start.

00:07:47.360 | There are some adaptations

00:07:48.660 | that you're gonna need for health

00:07:49.640 | that you, God, you really need to start in your 20s.

00:07:52.640 | The reason I like to mention that is

00:07:54.000 | because if you are listening and you are 50,

00:07:55.920 | and you're like, oh, shit,

00:07:56.860 | I haven't been strength training,

00:07:58.820 | you're not toast.

00:08:00.200 | Like you should absolutely start now,

00:08:02.720 | but you're gonna be able to get to a fantastic spot

00:08:06.680 | very quickly.

00:08:08.400 | Similarly, though,

00:08:09.320 | if you are 20 or 25 and 30 and you aren't lifting,

00:08:12.400 | there are still many reasons why you should do that now.

00:08:14.860 | And I'd like to point that out

00:08:16.520 | because a lot of folks would be like, oh, my gosh,

00:08:19.120 | they said I have to do it when I'm 20 or 25,

00:08:21.380 | or I'll be sort of screwed.

00:08:23.360 | And that's not the case at all.

00:08:24.360 | There's really no age limit on this.

00:08:26.400 | In fact, there's actually interesting data

00:08:27.660 | that just came out

00:08:29.120 | showing this reduction in muscle strength.

00:08:32.600 | And hypertrophy that I sort of talked about

00:08:34.320 | is basically ameliorated with a preservation of activity.

00:08:37.960 | In other words,

00:08:38.800 | you don't lose these functionalities because of aging.

00:08:41.400 | You lose these because of a loss of training.

00:08:43.740 | To state that again,

00:08:44.920 | you don't lose these because of some innate

00:08:47.480 | physiological thing that happens

00:08:49.160 | with genes become less sensitive or you lose functionality.

00:08:52.680 | You pretty much can describe the loss of function

00:08:55.840 | of strength and muscle in aging

00:08:57.920 | as exclusively because of a loss of training

00:08:59.920 | and nutrition and anabolic resistance

00:09:01.880 | and some other things.

00:09:02.720 | So you can do a lot more than you think

00:09:06.240 | when it comes to maintaining high quality muscle.

00:09:08.800 | And that's really important to point out.

00:09:10.640 | - I'm reminded of the words of the great Sherrington.

00:09:14.640 | He won the Nobel Prize as a physiologist.

00:09:17.120 | I guess the neuroscientist try and claim him

00:09:18.960 | as a neuroscientist because he worked on the nervous system.

00:09:20.960 | The physiologist claim as a physiologist.

00:09:23.080 | - He is 100% a physiologist.

00:09:24.880 | - I would call him a neuroscientist.

00:09:26.420 | Maybe we can argue about this later.

00:09:29.000 | - We will.

00:09:29.840 | - I think one of the key things that Sherrington pointed out

00:09:34.840 | was that, and I believe the quote was that,

00:09:37.120 | "Movement is the final common path."

00:09:39.440 | And what he was referring to was the fact that

00:09:42.120 | a significant fraction of the brain itself

00:09:44.700 | is devoted to our ability to move

00:09:47.240 | and our ability to engage in resistance type movements.

00:09:51.520 | And that resistance type movements

00:09:54.200 | and the continuation of movement throughout the lifespan

00:09:57.720 | is what keeps the brain young and healthy and vital.

00:10:00.800 | And there are so much data now to support that.

00:10:03.640 | But I'm so grateful that you brought up early this fact

00:10:07.560 | that there's a neuromuscular link.

00:10:10.120 | 'Cause I think a lot of people think about musculoskeletal.

00:10:13.180 | They forget that the nervous system is really in charge

00:10:15.640 | of the strength of the muscle contractions

00:10:18.700 | and the types of muscle contractions that occur.

00:10:20.900 | I'm certain we're gonna get into that

00:10:22.560 | in a lot of depth today.

00:10:23.400 | - You're close there.

00:10:24.440 | We're not totally right, but we're close.

00:10:25.880 | Okay, well, I look forward to being corrected

00:10:28.680 | and to achieving the precision that you're known for

00:10:31.520 | around that discussion.

00:10:33.160 | So if we are to step back and say strength training

00:10:36.840 | and hypertrophy training is critical

00:10:38.280 | for people of all ages,

00:10:40.400 | for developing and maintaining the neuromuscular system

00:10:45.080 | and for our ability to function in the world,

00:10:48.260 | not just offset injury,

00:10:50.240 | but the ability to pick things up and move, et cetera.

00:10:53.080 | What are some of the other things

00:10:54.300 | that strength and hypertrophy training can provide?

00:10:57.520 | I know a lot of people use strength and hypertrophy training

00:11:01.200 | for changing their aesthetics.

00:11:03.300 | What is your sense about its potency for changing aesthetics

00:11:07.120 | as compared to say cardiovascular exercise?

00:11:09.700 | - Yeah, the mantra I always like is,

00:11:12.280 | the reason you wanna exercise is threefold, right?

00:11:14.520 | You wanna look good, feel good, play good.

00:11:16.320 | That's really, that comes from sport,

00:11:18.820 | comes from football, specifically we always say that.

00:11:21.520 | And what that means really is you wanna look good.

00:11:23.540 | People want to look the way they want to look,

00:11:26.160 | whatever that means to them.

00:11:27.120 | And there are any versions of what you feel

00:11:28.880 | to be aesthetically pleasing, and that's totally irrelevant.

00:11:32.120 | But people want to look the way they wanna look.

00:11:34.640 | Number two, you wanna be able to feel good.

00:11:36.280 | What's that mean?

00:11:37.100 | You wanna be injury-free,

00:11:37.940 | you wanna have energy throughout the day,

00:11:39.240 | you wanna be able to execute anything you want to.

00:11:41.560 | So whether you wanna go surf in the morning,

00:11:43.160 | you wanna play racquetball, you wanna hike,

00:11:44.840 | or you wanna do all three of those in one day,

00:11:46.960 | you should have the ability to do that.

00:11:48.840 | And then you wanna play good,

00:11:49.840 | which means you should be able to execute

00:11:52.000 | any, again, activities that you wanna execute,

00:11:54.820 | whatever that means.

00:11:55.660 | All right, so backing all up,

00:11:57.060 | what's that gotta do with your question?

00:11:58.860 | One of the major benefits of strength training

00:12:02.020 | is the responses tend to happen extremely fast.

00:12:05.100 | So you can see noticeable changes in muscle size,

00:12:07.460 | certainly within a month, absolutely within six weeks.

00:12:10.660 | And so we have this wonderful feedback loop

00:12:13.380 | that sort of tells you, am I doing this incorrectly?

00:12:16.780 | Oh my gosh, yes I am.

00:12:17.880 | Also, it's very addicting, the feedback, the response,

00:12:21.180 | the physical changes, whether this is actually 0.2 or three,

00:12:24.460 | look good, or feel good, play good,

00:12:26.180 | or it's even just part one, you're starting to see that.

00:12:28.740 | When you compare that to things like fat loss,

00:12:31.380 | that journey tends to be longer.

00:12:33.000 | It's more difficult, it's more relying upon other factors

00:12:35.860 | like nutrition, et cetera.

00:12:37.880 | Strength training is really about like,

00:12:39.320 | there's some very minimal nutrition requirements.

00:12:42.360 | Outside of that, it comes down to the training

00:12:43.980 | and the feedback is immediate.

00:12:46.640 | That's powerful because if you look across the literature

00:12:49.480 | on exercise adherence, you'll see that that is in fact

00:12:52.820 | the number one predictor of effectiveness

00:12:55.340 | of any training program.

00:12:56.540 | So what that means is if you were to put any variable

00:13:00.520 | possible and figure out what is going to determine

00:13:03.800 | whether or not this program works.

00:13:06.120 | This is what we typically call the methods are many

00:13:08.600 | and the concepts are few.

00:13:09.740 | So the methods of exercise,

00:13:11.120 | the methods of strength training,

00:13:12.640 | the methods of hypertrophy training,

00:13:14.480 | which we'll talk about, are infinite.

00:13:17.020 | However, there are only a handful of key concepts

00:13:19.900 | that you have to achieve in order for that program to work.

00:13:22.380 | Adherence is one of them and again, is often the top one.

00:13:26.260 | So you need to do something,

00:13:27.420 | you need to do something consistently.

00:13:29.700 | When you are getting that feedback

00:13:30.900 | and you're seeing results in your appearance immediately

00:13:33.060 | and you see that every single day,

00:13:35.180 | every time you take off your shirt

00:13:36.580 | or every time you look in the mirror, you see that result,

00:13:39.740 | that tends to drive adherence really powerfully.

00:13:42.540 | So it's important to give people wins,

00:13:44.620 | especially people who are not maybe like you and I,

00:13:46.900 | who are like, I'm gonna lift weights

00:13:48.940 | and I'm gonna exercise like no matter what

00:13:50.980 | the rest of my life, because I just love it.

00:13:53.380 | Not everyone's like that.

00:13:54.740 | And so giving them a little bit of care of success

00:13:56.740 | and if you can achieve that in, you know,

00:13:58.580 | say three to four to five weeks already,

00:14:01.020 | it's very powerful tool.

00:14:02.320 | - Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:14:04.700 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:14:07.260 | It is also separate from Dr. Galpin's teaching

00:14:09.240 | and research roles at Cal State Fullerton.

00:14:11.580 | It is however, part of our desire and effort

00:14:13.460 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:14:15.980 | and science related tools to the general public.

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00:16:43.140 | by giving you real-time feedback on your blood glucose

00:16:45.820 | using a continuous glucose monitor.

00:16:47.900 | Many people are aware that their blood sugar,

00:16:50.040 | that is their blood glucose level,

00:16:51.760 | is critical for everything from fat loss to muscle gain

00:16:56.120 | to healthy cognition and indeed aging of the brain and body.

00:17:00.500 | Most people do not know, however,

00:17:01.980 | how different foods and different activities,

00:17:04.420 | including exercise or different temperature environments,

00:17:07.860 | impact their blood glucose levels,

00:17:09.400 | and yet blood glucose is exquisitely sensitive

00:17:11.840 | to all of those things.

00:17:13.360 | I first started using Levels about a year ago

00:17:16.220 | as a way to understand how different foods,

00:17:18.120 | exercise, and timing of food relative to exercise

00:17:21.080 | and quality of sleep at night

00:17:22.660 | impact my blood glucose levels,

00:17:24.340 | and I've learned a tremendous amount from using Levels.

00:17:27.700 | It's taught me when best to eat, what best to eat,

00:17:30.820 | when best to exercise, how best to exercise,

00:17:33.720 | and how to modulate my entire schedule

00:17:36.420 | from work to exercise and even my sleep.

00:17:39.380 | So if you're interested in learning more about Levels

00:17:41.140 | and trying a continuous glucose monitor yourself,

00:17:43.760 | go to levels.link/huberman.

00:17:45.980 | That's levels.link/huberman.

00:17:48.480 | Let's talk about strength and hypertrophy.

00:17:51.140 | If you would, please remind us

00:17:53.400 | what strength and hypertrophy are

00:17:56.120 | in terms of the specific adaptation they represent.

00:17:59.660 | What I mean by that is

00:18:00.740 | when somebody is training for strength,

00:18:02.960 | what are they really training for?

00:18:04.940 | Obviously, it means the ability to move more weight,

00:18:07.940 | but I know that it includes

00:18:09.740 | a number of other things as well.

00:18:11.180 | And when one is training for hypertrophy

00:18:13.720 | for the growth of muscle fibers,

00:18:16.980 | what does that represent?

00:18:18.540 | Because I think if people understand that,

00:18:21.440 | they will far better understand the methods and protocols

00:18:24.080 | that are going to be best for strength and hypertrophy.

00:18:26.560 | - At its core, you've basically described it.

00:18:28.500 | When we talk about strength,

00:18:29.520 | we're talking about an actual function.

00:18:31.700 | So can you create more force across a muscle or muscle groups

00:18:35.580 | or total movement?

00:18:37.320 | And when we talk about hypertrophy,

00:18:38.700 | now we're specifically referring

00:18:39.880 | to just an increase in size.

00:18:40.980 | There's no actual mention of function.

00:18:44.180 | So a muscle can grow larger

00:18:46.300 | without actually technically being stronger

00:18:48.720 | for a number of reasons.

00:18:50.420 | However, there is a strong relationship

00:18:53.020 | between strength and hypertrophy.

00:18:54.260 | So a lot of the times in the general public

00:18:56.420 | in the lay conversations,

00:18:58.280 | we sort of lump those two things in as the same thing.

00:19:01.020 | And so we have to recognize people who are new to training

00:19:05.140 | or people even are intermediately trained.

00:19:07.940 | There is a huge overlap between strength and hypertrophy.

00:19:11.620 | Once you get past that though,

00:19:13.500 | they become disentangled.

00:19:14.900 | And a good example of it is this.

00:19:17.160 | If you look at the strongest people in the world,

00:19:19.400 | this would be people who compete

00:19:20.540 | in the sport of powerlifting, right?

00:19:22.740 | That's a true test of maximal strength.

00:19:24.420 | So it is a deadlift, a bench press and a back squat.

00:19:27.800 | And you're going to do a one repetition max

00:19:29.540 | in all three of those.

00:19:30.380 | So whoever wins is the person

00:19:31.740 | who lifted the most amount of weight one time.

00:19:34.440 | That's it.

00:19:35.280 | It's not like world's strongest man where it is,

00:19:36.820 | how many reps can you do in a row or your time, right?

00:19:38.940 | Is a true maximal strength test.

00:19:41.480 | And you compare those to say bodybuilders.

00:19:44.300 | Now, both of those individuals are strong

00:19:48.580 | and both of those individuals have a lot of muscle.

00:19:51.100 | However, it is extremely clear

00:19:52.980 | the powerlifters will be significantly stronger

00:19:56.540 | than the bodybuilders on average, right?

00:19:58.900 | There are individual exceptions,

00:20:00.420 | but we're just talking collective averages.

00:20:02.780 | And the bodybuilders will have more muscle

00:20:05.540 | than the other ones.

00:20:06.720 | In addition, whether you look at Olympic weightlifting

00:20:09.600 | or powerlifting or world's strongest man for that matter,

00:20:12.380 | there are weight classes.

00:20:13.900 | And the reason is as you go up in weight classes,

00:20:16.520 | you will always see the world records go higher

00:20:19.300 | and higher and higher, right?

00:20:20.420 | So you can clearly get stronger without adding any muscle.

00:20:25.420 | However, there's a point, right?

00:20:28.220 | Where you simply have to add more mass to get a higher number

00:20:31.660 | and that's why we have weight classes in those sports

00:20:34.220 | and in combat sports and lots of other things.

00:20:35.940 | So there's a lot of confusion, right?

00:20:38.720 | Because people think, man, either these are the same thing

00:20:42.220 | or if I wanna get stronger, I have to get bigger,

00:20:45.540 | which is not the case at all.

00:20:47.180 | Another misnomer here is I can't get stronger

00:20:51.020 | unless I add muscle.

00:20:52.140 | That's not true either, right?

00:20:53.260 | It's a similar idea.

00:20:55.400 | So what I'm saying is you have the ability

00:20:57.180 | to do whatever you'd like.

00:20:58.280 | If you'd like to get stronger and add muscle, great.

00:21:02.340 | If you add muscle, you're probably going to bring

00:21:05.060 | some strength along for the ride.

00:21:07.420 | However, if you wanna get stronger

00:21:10.060 | and you don't wanna add muscle for any reason,

00:21:12.740 | personal preference on aesthetics,

00:21:15.280 | whether you're in a weight class

00:21:16.300 | and you simply can't afford it,

00:21:17.780 | it is quite easy to get stronger

00:21:19.260 | and not add much muscle mass either.

00:21:21.580 | And so differentiating these two things

00:21:23.300 | is one of them is simply a measure of size

00:21:26.020 | and the other one is a measure of force.

00:21:28.660 | And when we talk about strength,

00:21:30.060 | what we're really talking about are two unique components.

00:21:32.920 | Component one is what I call the physiology.

00:21:35.200 | So what is the ability of the neuromuscular system?

00:21:37.920 | What is the ability of the muscle fibers

00:21:40.640 | to contract and produce force?

00:21:42.720 | The other one is what we call mechanics.

00:21:44.640 | And mechanics is simply things like it's minutia

00:21:47.820 | down to how long your femurs are relative to your tibia

00:21:52.340 | or other things like this is biomechanics.

00:21:54.660 | This is also technique.

00:21:56.440 | This is skill.

00:21:57.480 | This is how smooth you feel.

00:21:59.020 | This is, are you firing the right muscle group

00:22:02.420 | in the right sequence and order?

00:22:04.120 | And all of these things play into strength.

00:22:06.020 | So somebody who maybe has more force capability

00:22:10.060 | in their muscle fibers,

00:22:11.620 | but their technique and the movement is worse,

00:22:13.780 | may lose in a competition.

00:22:15.500 | Or somebody again, who's like,

00:22:18.180 | if you go into the world of speed and power,

00:22:20.680 | especially you'll hear a lot of people talk

00:22:22.140 | about like the rhythm.

00:22:23.460 | And there's just a certain rhythm that has to happen

00:22:25.220 | if you want to jump as high as possible

00:22:26.860 | or run as fast as possible.

00:22:28.580 | But that's all mechanics at this fundamental level.

00:22:31.100 | So when we look at hypertrophy,

00:22:33.200 | it's just still simply about how big the muscle is.

00:22:37.620 | So those are the really the similarities and distinctions

00:22:40.700 | between strength and hypertrophy.

00:22:42.780 | - When strength improves and when hypertrophy increases,

00:22:49.540 | is there also involvement in the ligaments and tendons?

00:22:54.540 | That is, of course, the ligaments and tendons

00:22:57.540 | are involved in the movements.

00:22:59.820 | But do ligaments and tendons themselves grow

00:23:03.420 | and or get stronger?

00:23:05.580 | - This field is really difficult

00:23:07.320 | because connective tissue is not vascular.

00:23:11.060 | And so their plasticity is significantly lower

00:23:13.940 | than skeletal muscle.

00:23:14.860 | In fact, if you look across all the organs,

00:23:16.940 | a skeletal muscle is one of, if not the most plastic.

00:23:19.460 | Meaning it's the most pliable, the most responsive,

00:23:22.620 | the one that's going to adjust.

00:23:23.660 | It's basically, it's paying attention to everything

00:23:25.660 | that's being said in the body.

00:23:27.860 | You cannot change blood pressure or pH

00:23:30.540 | or macronutrients floating around

00:23:33.560 | without muscle knowing about it.

00:23:35.000 | It is, in fact, this is why we call muscle an organ.

00:23:38.180 | People don't tend to think about this

00:23:39.340 | if you were ever on like Jeopardy.

00:23:41.380 | And they ask you that question of like,

00:23:42.440 | what's the biggest organ system in the body?

00:23:44.260 | People tend to say--

00:23:45.780 | - The skin.

00:23:46.960 | - Muscle is actually the correct answer.

00:23:48.540 | - All right, well, I'm going to cite you when I get it wrong.

00:23:50.860 | - You'll probably get it wrong on Jeopardy.

00:23:53.060 | - I don't have any immediate plans to go on Jeopardy,

00:23:54.800 | but who knows?

00:23:55.640 | - Oh, there you go.

00:23:56.460 | Celebrity Jeopardy, Henry Huberman.

00:23:57.940 | - Wait, I don't know about the celebrity part,

00:23:59.600 | but Jeopardy would be fun.

00:24:01.260 | But I will say the muscle and I'll,

00:24:04.460 | if you get a phone call on Jeopardy, I don't know,

00:24:06.020 | I haven't seen that show in a very long time, maybe ever,

00:24:08.640 | then I'll call you.

00:24:09.860 | But that makes sense.

00:24:11.820 | The muscles would be the largest organ system in the body.

00:24:14.220 | - The reason I was saying that is,

00:24:15.140 | so muscle is both listening and talking.

00:24:17.660 | It is controlling the immune system a lot.

00:24:20.580 | It's controlling blood glucose regulation.

00:24:22.740 | It is the central depot for amino acids,

00:24:26.960 | which are needed to do things

00:24:28.820 | like regulate the immune system,

00:24:30.380 | build any new red blood cells.

00:24:32.600 | A lot of this stuff is coming from skeletal muscle.

00:24:34.980 | So when we say organ, by the way,

00:24:36.980 | that's actually like a physiological definition.

00:24:39.140 | So something that's communicating

00:24:41.120 | to either another organ itself or throughout the system.

00:24:43.920 | So it's listening and it's talking.

00:24:46.380 | Connected tissue is not the same way.

00:24:48.200 | And so we do see adaptations

00:24:50.100 | with strength training in connective tissue.

00:24:53.800 | It's just much lower.

00:24:54.780 | It's difficult to measure.

00:24:56.780 | Effectively, what we know now is

00:24:58.780 | you're gonna have a combination of adaptations

00:25:01.420 | throughout the connective tissue.

00:25:02.320 | It is beneficial.

00:25:03.660 | This is probably one of the major reasons

00:25:05.100 | that strength training reduces injury risk,

00:25:07.720 | which is very, very important

00:25:08.860 | because people who tend to wanna pick up an exercise routine

00:25:12.220 | after say 10 years,

00:25:14.900 | the classic cliche is like,

00:25:16.320 | I played all these things in high school.

00:25:18.380 | Then I went to college, got a job.

00:25:19.740 | Now I'm 25 or 35 or whatever.

00:25:22.480 | You sort of wanna jump back into what you did

00:25:24.820 | when you were 20.

00:25:25.660 | Well, there's no tissue tolerance left.

00:25:27.460 | And what we almost always mean by that is connective tissue.

00:25:30.700 | The tolerance in there is not ready

00:25:32.740 | for the load you're about to handle.

00:25:34.260 | And so you go through some movement and then boom,

00:25:36.580 | sprains, tears, even like the more significant ones

00:25:41.060 | are on Achilles tear, which is gonna really sideline you.

00:25:43.780 | So those are some of the problems.

00:25:44.780 | And we know strength training has a large role

00:25:47.740 | in injury reduction for stress and strain

00:25:49.920 | and overuse injuries.

00:25:50.760 | And that's specifically coming

00:25:51.800 | for the connective tissue adaptations.

00:25:53.480 | Again, the difficult part here is it's very hard to assess.

00:25:57.380 | We actually, when I was a doctoral student,

00:26:00.220 | we played around with patella tendon biopsies.

00:26:03.440 | So I actually had one.

00:26:04.700 | This is like a-

00:26:05.540 | - There's a little piece of your patella tendon missing?

00:26:07.740 | - Yeah.

00:26:08.580 | - Because your own lab looks weird.

00:26:09.860 | - So now I've probably had,

00:26:12.080 | I don't know how many hundreds of biopsies

00:26:13.700 | I've performed on people, probably well over a thousand,

00:26:16.500 | certainly well over a thousand.

00:26:17.820 | I've probably had 35 or 40 done on myself.

00:26:21.620 | There's no problem here.

00:26:22.580 | I have no scar tissue.

00:26:23.480 | I have no loss of function and I've stuck needles

00:26:25.780 | in every leg, like all over myself, right?

00:26:27.580 | Quads, my soleus, gastroc, like all up and down.

00:26:31.700 | - Taking tissue out.

00:26:32.700 | - Yeah, you want the needle, looks like a pen basically.

00:26:35.260 | And you're live and you go in and grab a chunk

00:26:37.500 | and you pull it out and-

00:26:38.900 | - Can I come to your lab and get biopsies?

00:26:40.300 | - Absolutely.

00:26:41.120 | - Yeah, you're probably, if you're looking

00:26:41.960 | under the microscope, it'll just look like

00:26:43.520 | the molecule caffeine.

00:26:44.820 | - There's a mutual friend of ours

00:26:48.300 | who came down and did that.

00:26:50.000 | He's a big, big, big gentleman,

00:26:51.660 | big into lifting, very into strength training.

00:26:54.060 | And he went through that experience and he was like,

00:26:57.560 | "Oh my gosh."

00:26:58.600 | It was not what he was hoping to get.

00:27:00.460 | He actually had unbelievable muscle morphology.

00:27:03.840 | His fibers were, the diameter of muscle fibers

00:27:06.660 | is extremely large.

00:27:07.780 | It's one of the biggest cells by volume in all of biology,

00:27:10.340 | skeletal muscle in human.

00:27:12.040 | - How large?

00:27:13.160 | Can't help myself.

00:27:14.700 | Millimeters?

00:27:16.180 | - Well, so you have length and then you have width, right?

00:27:18.760 | So lengthwise, it can be extraordinarily long.

00:27:20.840 | You can be, the classic example is like your sartorius,

00:27:24.100 | which is like the front of your hip

00:27:25.240 | to the inside of your kneecap.

00:27:26.900 | Theoretically, those cells can run the entire length,

00:27:29.420 | which would be one muscle fiber running that thing.

00:27:31.900 | If I were to do a biopsy on you

00:27:33.740 | and I pulled that tissue out,

00:27:35.120 | I could actually pull an individual fiber out with tweezers

00:27:37.460 | and hold it up and you could see that whole muscle cell.

00:27:40.260 | - Yeah, I'm definitely not allowed to get biopsied.

00:27:42.740 | - You'd be stunned how big they are.

00:27:44.220 | Anyways, his was the size of a rhino.

00:27:46.220 | So the diameter of his,

00:27:47.220 | now he has a well-documented assistance

00:27:50.380 | in the area of muscle growth, we'll say.

00:27:52.400 | But yeah, those can be large.

00:27:55.100 | So what were we even talking about there?

00:27:57.180 | - Well, I was asking about tendons and ligaments

00:27:59.780 | because I'd like to understand the various tissues

00:28:02.580 | and organ systems that adapt when one gets stronger,

00:28:04.900 | when muscle tissue grows.

00:28:05.900 | And I do want to ask about bone.

00:28:08.740 | And here I'm not referring to bone mineral density.

00:28:12.180 | What I was going to ask is whether or not bone itself

00:28:15.980 | can grow and get stronger.

00:28:17.140 | And the reason I'm asking

00:28:17.980 | is there's a favorite result of mine.

00:28:19.620 | I have about 3,800 favorite results.

00:28:22.520 | 3,000 pet peeves and 3,800 plus favorite results.

00:28:26.680 | But one of my favorite results

00:28:28.220 | is from Eric Kandel's lab at Columbia.

00:28:30.780 | Eric won the Nobel Prize for learning and memory

00:28:32.660 | and his laboratory got really into the effects of exercise

00:28:35.020 | on learning and memory.

00:28:36.300 | And they had this incredible result, which is that

00:28:41.300 | load-bearing exercise stimulates the bones

00:28:44.860 | to release something called osteocalcin, excuse me.

00:28:48.060 | And then osteocalcin acts as a,

00:28:50.020 | more or less a hormone, travels to the brain

00:28:51.860 | and enhances the memory systems in the brain

00:28:53.620 | by enhancing neuron health.

00:28:55.200 | That's the basic crux of the studies.

00:28:57.280 | There were several of these.

00:28:58.500 | And the moment I saw the first of those studies,

00:29:02.540 | I thought, well, here's another reason

00:29:03.600 | to do resistance type exercise and not just aerobic exercise.

00:29:08.240 | And then it brings to mind

00:29:09.320 | whether or not bones themselves get stronger

00:29:12.400 | when we do resistance training.

00:29:13.980 | I don't know the answer to that.

00:29:15.200 | - Yeah, that's very clearly demonstrated.

00:29:17.720 | And we've known that for many decades.

00:29:20.280 | You have a diminishing ability to do so with age,

00:29:25.280 | particularly you need to do this in your teens and twenties.

00:29:28.840 | That's where you're going to have the largest ability

00:29:30.260 | to enhance bone mineral density.

00:29:32.280 | And it's particularly responsive to axial loading.

00:29:35.080 | Now I'm a muscle guy, I'm not a bone specialist,

00:29:37.440 | so we would have to consult somebody

00:29:39.440 | who can give you more position here.

00:29:40.680 | But that's the problem. - Can you explain

00:29:41.520 | axial loading? - It's up and down.

00:29:43.040 | It's vertical.

00:29:44.000 | - Okay, so it's almost like a cylinder

00:29:46.160 | putting weight on the small end of the cylinder,

00:29:49.280 | on both small end of the cylinders.

00:29:50.880 | If someone doesn't do this in their twenties or teens,

00:29:53.680 | however, can we assume that some degree of positive change

00:29:58.280 | will occur if they do resistance training,

00:29:59.800 | even if it's a small fraction?

00:30:02.000 | - The answer is yes, it is small.

00:30:04.720 | We have worked with a number of women

00:30:06.400 | in our rapid health program that come in

00:30:10.720 | and they are in their twenties and they're in their thirties

00:30:13.040 | and they have significant bone mineral density problems.

00:30:15.480 | And eight months later, we can see noticeable changes

00:30:17.920 | that are outside of the measurement error of a DEXA.

00:30:21.720 | - Positive changes. - Positive changes, correct.

00:30:23.560 | And if you worked with, there are many physicians

00:30:26.000 | that specialize in this area.

00:30:27.480 | You're going to need a nutrition here.

00:30:31.260 | Strength training alone is probably not going to get you

00:30:33.160 | there, particularly with women,

00:30:34.280 | because you have to figure out why.

00:30:37.040 | And there's a lot going on with the physiology

00:30:39.300 | and biochemistry.

00:30:40.400 | So you probably like almost surely needed to have

00:30:42.920 | some blood chemistry done with that.

00:30:45.200 | You have to figure out what's going on menstrual cycle wise.

00:30:47.400 | In fact, like oftentimes what we'll do for our women

00:30:50.940 | very specifically is we use a thing called

00:30:53.520 | the rhythm plus a 30 day test.

00:30:55.040 | So you can actually do a salivary test

00:30:56.440 | across the entire menstrual cycle.

00:30:58.400 | And you can take samples, it's about every other day.

00:31:01.080 | So you'll get 15 or 16 samples

00:31:03.180 | and you get a really beautiful picture

00:31:04.780 | of what's happening hormonally

00:31:06.000 | across the entire menstrual cycle.

00:31:08.780 | And that's really, really important

00:31:09.860 | because typically for women,

00:31:12.540 | if you get a single sample or simple time point,

00:31:14.980 | whether it's salivary, urine or blood,

00:31:17.920 | you can have, well, like order of magnitude difference

00:31:21.660 | in any number of metrics because of what phase you're in.

00:31:24.460 | This is one of the many reasons why it's been

00:31:26.500 | such a challenge to do a lot of physiology research

00:31:28.960 | with females.

00:31:30.440 | Some metrics change throughout the menstrual cycle,

00:31:34.220 | others don't.

00:31:35.060 | Like strength is a very good example.

00:31:36.940 | I can strengthen and I can do a one rep max test

00:31:39.000 | on a woman at any point.

00:31:40.880 | I don't have to do that at a certain phase

00:31:42.640 | of their menstrual cycle because it's,

00:31:44.160 | the evidence I think is pretty clear at this point,

00:31:46.340 | that number won't change.

00:31:47.640 | So I have no qualms including females in any of my studies

00:31:51.080 | where strength is an absolute,

00:31:52.900 | is an important dependent variable

00:31:54.500 | because I don't have to adjust around menstrual cycle.

00:31:56.780 | Other factors like anything in blood,

00:31:59.820 | anything hormone related,

00:32:00.960 | you're gonna have to automatically account for it.

00:32:02.680 | So what I would say is those folks should absolutely work

00:32:06.600 | with a qualified physician and you're gonna have

00:32:09.800 | to get some nutrition supplementation potentially

00:32:13.200 | and then maybe even some other stuff going on.

00:32:15.000 | To make that even more complicated,

00:32:17.740 | if you're on any form of birth control or not,

00:32:19.800 | that's going to change the entire equation,

00:32:21.760 | especially if it's a hormone based birth control.

00:32:23.640 | So it just gets really, really complicated.

00:32:26.640 | To answer it though, you can see adaptations.

00:32:29.880 | They are significantly diminished relative

00:32:32.620 | to if you were started in your teens and 20s,

00:32:34.240 | but there is hope.

00:32:35.380 | You just need to work with somebody who specializes

00:32:37.060 | in that area.

00:32:38.680 | - So for both men and women, boys and girls,

00:32:41.760 | what are the major adaptations that occur

00:32:46.520 | to underlie improvements in strength?

00:32:49.160 | And if you would, if you could just provide

00:32:50.880 | a bullet point list of that and then we can dive

00:32:53.980 | into each of those in detail.

00:32:56.340 | For instance, are nerves getting more efficient at firing?

00:33:01.340 | Are bones enjoying adaptations in different bone connective

00:33:06.620 | tissue relationships that underlie strength?

00:33:09.520 | I have to imagine all of these things are happening,

00:33:11.060 | but what are the major changes that are occurring

00:33:13.560 | in those organs and organ systems that reflect

00:33:15.840 | someone's ability to on one day lift 100 pounds

00:33:20.280 | and then a week later to lift 105 pounds?

00:33:23.860 | - Now, I'll try to keep this condensed.

00:33:25.820 | Again, this could be an entire university course.

00:33:28.520 | I will also try to give you a little bit of bones here.

00:33:32.300 | So normally as a muscle guy, I only,

00:33:34.500 | I take all the credit in muscle.

00:33:36.400 | Turns out the nervous system gets a little bit

00:33:38.600 | of credit too here.

00:33:39.680 | - Thank you.

00:33:41.240 | - So as we walk through it, just in, as a big picture,

00:33:44.240 | if we think about again, what causes human movement,

00:33:46.560 | basically everything along that chain

00:33:49.360 | will improve the strength training.

00:33:51.140 | And I'm not really being, using too much hyperbole there.

00:33:54.480 | It's quite impressive.

00:33:56.300 | So it's going from the nervous system side of the equation.

00:33:58.320 | What has to happen for human movement is a nerve

00:34:00.520 | has to send a signal through a motor unit.

00:34:02.360 | Now motor unit is, comes down and innervates

00:34:05.600 | multiple muscle fibers.

00:34:06.920 | So if you think about your actual muscle, it's not a thing.

00:34:09.760 | It is a component of many individual muscle fibers.

00:34:12.520 | So you've got millions, if not more.

00:34:14.360 | Think of it like a ponytail.

00:34:15.840 | So we collectively say ponytail and you think of it

00:34:18.000 | as like one thing, but really a ponytail is a combination

00:34:20.800 | of tons of individual hairs, okay?

00:34:23.800 | Muscle is the same way.

00:34:25.000 | So this motor unit comes in and innervates a lot

00:34:27.600 | of different muscle fibers.

00:34:28.980 | Now, every one of the fibers in a motor unit

00:34:31.100 | is generally of the same fiber type.

00:34:33.360 | So fast twitch or slow twitch.

00:34:35.020 | And they are not laid out next to each other in the muscle.

00:34:37.300 | They are spread out across horizontally, vertically,

00:34:40.580 | as well as closer to the bone and further to the surface.

00:34:43.760 | So they're moved throughout the entire way.

00:34:45.760 | And this is what allows you to have smoother contractions

00:34:47.760 | and you don't have specificity and things like that.

00:34:49.780 | So we see improvements from the neuromuscular side,

00:34:52.300 | like firing rate.

00:34:53.640 | We see synchronization improvements that are coming in.

00:34:57.460 | You also see improvements in things like acetylcholine

00:35:01.480 | release from the presynaptic neuron.

00:35:04.040 | So you're getting it faster.

00:35:04.980 | We see calcium recycling is improved back to there.

00:35:08.620 | So in order for, without walking into too much

00:35:11.460 | of the biochemistry, in order for a signal to go

00:35:13.200 | from nerve to muscle, there's a little bit of a gap.

00:35:15.400 | There's a physical space that happens.

00:35:17.040 | And what happens is you release this molecule

00:35:18.820 | called acetylcholine.

00:35:19.960 | This goes into the postsynaptic cleft,

00:35:21.680 | and then that actually binds to a receptor.

00:35:24.120 | That receptor actually opens up a door that lets sodium in.

00:35:28.180 | That's really what's happening.

00:35:29.080 | So it's not the acetylcholine.

00:35:30.200 | Without acetylcholine then sits on that receptor site,

00:35:32.820 | it's broken down, put back in and recycled back up

00:35:36.160 | in the presynaptic nerve site.

00:35:37.580 | The faster you can do that,

00:35:39.280 | the faster you can recycle that signal.

00:35:42.320 | And so almost everything that I described

00:35:44.960 | in that entire system improves and has been shown

00:35:47.800 | to increase with training.

00:35:49.860 | So that alone is given to give you benefits.

00:35:52.740 | We haven't even walked into getting

00:35:55.260 | from an electrical signal now into an action potential,

00:35:57.960 | which is gonna cause a muscle contraction.

00:36:00.560 | So getting from nerve into the muscle,

00:36:03.360 | we see everything from improvements

00:36:05.440 | that we call contractility,

00:36:07.020 | which means the muscle fiber themselves

00:36:08.760 | can produce more force or more velocity independent

00:36:12.120 | of muscle size changes.

00:36:14.000 | This is another component.

00:36:15.140 | When we asked like, well, how is it I got stronger

00:36:17.880 | without getting bigger?

00:36:19.620 | Well, in the muscle fiber itself,

00:36:21.940 | its ability to contract force increases.

00:36:24.500 | And this is because we have everything

00:36:25.700 | like the sarcoplasmic reticulum,

00:36:27.180 | which is the place that stores and releases the calcium,

00:36:29.700 | which is what's needed for this entire

00:36:31.820 | cross-bridge interaction from the myosin and actin to happen.

00:36:35.780 | I know a lot of, I just lost a lot of people,

00:36:37.560 | but you can go look at some of these images.

00:36:39.620 | The sarcoplasmic reticulum gets activated more.

00:36:43.000 | It gets more sensitive.

00:36:43.840 | It is better at releasing calcium,

00:36:45.540 | bringing it back in and doing it again.

00:36:48.080 | The bond between the cross-bridge

00:36:49.920 | of the myosin and actin gets stronger.

00:36:52.640 | The calcium affinity is the phrase that we use there,

00:36:56.600 | increases.

00:36:57.840 | So we're literally walking through almost the entire process

00:37:00.740 | of skeletal muscle contraction here.

00:37:02.080 | And every step along the way, we see improvements.

00:37:04.680 | So that net result is we see, again, more force production,

00:37:08.600 | independent of any change in size,

00:37:10.760 | independent of any increase in contractile units.

00:37:13.320 | We didn't add anything to the equation.

00:37:15.080 | We didn't change size.

00:37:16.580 | We did nothing but improve efficiency effectively.

00:37:20.640 | Independent of that,

00:37:21.480 | now we can actually start talking

00:37:22.680 | about changing muscle fiber type.

00:37:24.560 | So we can change our fibers from a slow twitch fiber

00:37:26.960 | to a fast twitch fiber.

00:37:28.360 | That alone is going to give you more force production,

00:37:30.320 | again, independent of size.

00:37:31.640 | Fast twitch fibers tend to be larger than slow twitch fibers,

00:37:35.800 | but not always,

00:37:36.960 | especially in the presence of endurance training.

00:37:39.500 | So if you do a lot of consistent endurance training,

00:37:41.720 | it's very common for us to find slow twitch fibers

00:37:43.960 | that are as similar size, if not larger,

00:37:46.720 | often, very often larger than the fast twitch fibers.

00:37:50.300 | - So big, slow fibers.

00:37:52.400 | - Big, slow, very metabolically effective fiber.

00:37:55.520 | So extremely fatigue resistant.

00:37:57.680 | So it's not a bad thing to call them slow.

00:37:59.360 | It's like, we tend to say fast and slow

00:38:01.040 | and slow has this negative connotation,

00:38:03.440 | but it's like quite healthy, like fiber type to have.

00:38:07.320 | Outside of that,

00:38:08.160 | now we haven't even gotten into things like panation angle.

00:38:10.560 | So this is an angle at which your muscle fibers

00:38:12.480 | interact with your bone.

00:38:13.940 | So we tend to think about this as like a muscle fiber

00:38:16.180 | is pulling on a muscle.

00:38:17.440 | Well, some of these are oriented at almost a 90 degree.

00:38:20.860 | So a fiber runs perpendicular into the bone

00:38:23.280 | and some of them are closer to like a 45 degree

00:38:25.600 | and some of them are closer to almost parallel.

00:38:27.840 | And that confers a lot of unique mechanical benefits.

00:38:30.960 | So in one area,

00:38:32.480 | it's actually going to increase force production.

00:38:34.520 | You go the other direction increases velocity.

00:38:37.520 | And so we have all kinds of changes in the angle

00:38:39.540 | at which the muscle inserts into the bone.

00:38:41.800 | Now we're already on the mechanic side of it, right?

00:38:43.800 | So we've influenced how effectively it pulls.

00:38:47.040 | And with any of these things, it's always a give and take.

00:38:49.640 | So you're going to give up in the case of panation angle,

00:38:51.620 | you're going to give up strength,

00:38:52.760 | but you're going to increase shortening velocity.

00:38:55.000 | Or if you want to increase the velocity,

00:38:56.440 | you're going to give up sort of the strength, right?

00:38:59.320 | We haven't gotten to any of the energetics at all.

00:39:01.760 | So we haven't talked about increasing storage

00:39:04.000 | of phosphocreatine,

00:39:05.280 | which is the energy system needed to power

00:39:08.120 | that muscle contraction at the fastest possible rate.

00:39:10.180 | So we could continue to go as long as you want here,

00:39:12.580 | but hopefully you're getting the point

00:39:14.100 | of a little bit of the adaptations that occur.

00:39:16.360 | The reason I want to actually,

00:39:19.020 | why I think that stuff is important to bring it back,

00:39:21.380 | maybe for some listeners,

00:39:22.220 | I know I took you on a journey there

00:39:23.260 | and you're just like, what the hell just happened?

00:39:25.540 | That matters because again,

00:39:26.760 | this is the specific explanation for how is it possible

00:39:29.620 | that I got stronger, but I didn't get bigger.

00:39:31.640 | And this is also why strength and hypertrophy

00:39:35.180 | are intertwined and heavily overlapped,

00:39:37.660 | but are not necessarily the same thing.

00:39:39.560 | So for example, we can increase muscle size

00:39:43.280 | and actually reduce strength

00:39:45.480 | because of what's called lattice spacing.

00:39:47.660 | So what happens is you have to kind of remember

00:39:50.460 | your muscle fibers are these long cylinders

00:39:52.700 | and the way that they contract requires an optimal space.

00:39:56.300 | And so what happens is you have this molecule called actin

00:39:59.300 | and you have this molecule called myosin.

00:40:02.240 | Myosin sits in the middle and there are six actin

00:40:04.840 | that surround each individual myosin.

00:40:07.600 | In a three-dimensional circle here.

00:40:09.020 | So you got a myosin in the middle

00:40:11.020 | that has all these globular heads

00:40:12.420 | and they can reach up and grab an actin.

00:40:13.980 | And again, there's six sort of around them, right?

00:40:17.220 | Well, one of the things that can occur is

00:40:19.120 | if those actin are too close together.

00:40:22.160 | So imagine my hands,

00:40:24.860 | I'm reaching out and doing a giant T, right?

00:40:27.280 | So I'm horizontal out there.

00:40:28.480 | Well, if my fingertips are the tips of the myosin

00:40:30.940 | and I'm trying to reach up and grab an actin

00:40:32.860 | and I wanna pull those actins closer to my face,

00:40:35.700 | well, those actin stack on top of each other

00:40:37.720 | and that's what actually makes your muscles grow up.

00:40:40.200 | Like if I flex my bicep,

00:40:42.040 | it actually grows up three or four inches

00:40:44.180 | 'cause you're stacking these sarcomeres

00:40:47.120 | or what they're called on top of each other.

00:40:49.000 | All right, great.

00:40:49.840 | Well, if I'm reaching out to grab them

00:40:51.820 | and the muscle is stretched too far,

00:40:54.280 | I can't actually make that strong of a connection.

00:40:56.120 | It would be like if I reached out and grabbed something

00:40:58.000 | but I can only reach my longest fingertip on it.

00:41:00.540 | When I go to contract,

00:41:01.380 | I can't make that strong of a contraction

00:41:03.020 | 'cause my grip is weak.

00:41:04.180 | My grip's gonna break before I reach my strength limit.

00:41:07.340 | If I'm too close, there's nowhere to go.

00:41:10.240 | I'm already as close.

00:41:11.080 | So if you actually disrupt that lot of spacing too much,

00:41:14.740 | you can actually lose a little bit of strength.

00:41:17.720 | So it's not that getting bigger will ever make you weaker.

00:41:20.660 | It's simply that you're not optimizing for strength.

00:41:23.520 | You're simply optimizing for size.

00:41:26.380 | And so that can explain a little bit of the discongurity

00:41:29.400 | between growing and performance.

00:41:33.140 | I'd like to take a brief break

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00:42:25.500 | What are a few of the major changes that occur

00:42:28.780 | in muscle, nerve, et cetera when we experience hypertrophy?

00:42:33.780 | I've heard of protein synthesis changes.

00:42:39.540 | I'm assuming that's true.

00:42:40.540 | Maybe you can tell us a bit more about that.

00:42:42.920 | Changes in blood flow.

00:42:44.340 | - Yep.

00:42:45.880 | - Perhaps changes in neural innervation.

00:42:49.120 | Who knows, maybe even changes in fascia.

00:42:51.700 | I'm not aware of any specifically,

00:42:53.460 | but I have to imagine that they're somehow involved.

00:42:57.060 | - Sure, so when we talk about hypertrophy,

00:42:59.700 | a lot of the adaptations are going to be similar

00:43:01.880 | because the mode of training is close enough.

00:43:05.820 | So your nerves probably aren't smart enough

00:43:08.180 | to differentiate between a set of five reps

00:43:10.180 | or a set of eight repetitions.

00:43:11.860 | They're smart enough to differentiate anything.

00:43:13.540 | Like they know everything that's going on,

00:43:15.420 | but it's going to be a huge overlap.

00:43:17.560 | The primary difference with hypertrophy

00:43:20.020 | is a couple of things.

00:43:20.900 | So if you think about the muscle microstructure,

00:43:23.680 | I have a whole series of videos on YouTube

00:43:26.460 | if you want to see the visuals behind this.

00:43:27.860 | In fact, in there, I include the specific diameter,

00:43:30.500 | size of muscle fibers that I failed to give you

00:43:32.660 | a few minutes ago.

00:43:33.700 | - We will provide an active link to those.

00:43:35.500 | - Great, so what happens is this.

00:43:38.700 | When we talk about, and you hear this classic buzz phrase

00:43:41.620 | of muscle protein synthesis,

00:43:43.140 | generally what we're talking about there

00:43:45.140 | is contractile units.

00:43:46.900 | And so when we say contractile units,

00:43:48.300 | we're talking about the myosin and actin.

00:43:49.940 | And so what we're really trying to do is say,

00:43:52.680 | okay, there's some amount of protein turnover

00:43:55.220 | where we're coming in

00:43:57.020 | and we're trying to add more proteins to the equation.

00:43:59.620 | And so what has to happen there is a series of steps.

00:44:01.980 | So step number one is there has to be some sort of signal

00:44:04.760 | from the external world.

00:44:06.220 | This could actually, oftentimes it's things like

00:44:08.660 | stretching of the cell wall,

00:44:10.420 | which is what happens with exercise, right?

00:44:11.900 | So you're contracting, you're shortening,

00:44:12.940 | you get this big stretch of the cell wall.

00:44:14.740 | It can come from simple things like an amino acid infusion.

00:44:18.100 | This is just eating protein.

00:44:19.140 | This is why protein ingestion alone is anabolic, right?

00:44:21.940 | It will help you grow muscle independent of even moving.

00:44:24.340 | - So just eating protein will grow your muscles?

00:44:28.220 | - Yeah, certainly.

00:44:29.140 | And those data are very clear.

00:44:31.540 | Of course, like anything, there's a saturation point

00:44:35.060 | in terms of total amount you need to get to

00:44:36.760 | and things like that.

00:44:38.920 | But yeah, if you were to walk into a laboratory

00:44:41.040 | fasted overnight and I gave you 30 grams of protein,

00:44:44.620 | we would see a very measurable increase

00:44:46.060 | in protein synthesis quite clearly for several hours,

00:44:48.620 | probably four to five plus hours.

00:44:50.460 | We could maybe bring us some people

00:44:51.980 | that would know those data better,

00:44:53.000 | but many hours later.

00:44:54.500 | - With no weight training.

00:44:55.340 | - Correct.

00:44:56.180 | - I am betting that most people are not aware of that fact.

00:44:59.940 | - You know what's actually interesting about it is

00:45:02.100 | if you do the exact same study again,

00:45:04.300 | and you just did strength training,

00:45:05.660 | you would also see an improvement in protein synthesis, right?

00:45:08.180 | But those factors are independent

00:45:09.500 | and the mechanisms are independent

00:45:10.780 | such that if you do them both together,

00:45:12.220 | they stack on top of each other,

00:45:14.300 | which is really wonderful.

00:45:15.360 | And if you were to add carbohydrate into that mix,

00:45:17.360 | now you're actually adding fuel

00:45:18.560 | for the entire muscle protein synthesis process.

00:45:21.660 | And now you're going to see even additive benefits.

00:45:23.880 | And this is why for so many years,

00:45:26.440 | this is what bore the whole post-exercise

00:45:28.580 | anabolic window thing,

00:45:29.720 | which is you got to get carbs and protein in post-exercise

00:45:32.400 | to maximize muscle protein.

00:45:35.000 | Now that turned out to be not totally true

00:45:37.720 | in terms of being a natural window.

00:45:39.900 | - The window turned out to not be as strict

00:45:41.020 | as people initially asserted, as I recall.

00:45:43.960 | But still, I think that's super interesting.

00:45:46.100 | These are parallel pathways for protein synthesis,

00:45:49.260 | simply eating protein or training,

00:45:52.720 | each independently increases protein synthesis.

00:45:56.680 | I can't help but ask,

00:45:57.700 | is the same true if one does endurance type exercise?

00:46:00.700 | If I go out for a 45 minute jog

00:46:02.900 | where I can nasal breathe the whole time,

00:46:05.660 | but if I were to go any faster,

00:46:06.780 | I would have to kick over into mouth breathing as well.

00:46:09.240 | So-called zone two-ish cardio.

00:46:11.220 | Will I see an increase in protein synthesis

00:46:15.100 | as simply as a consequence of that jog?

00:46:17.520 | - No, this is one of the unique factors of strength training.

00:46:20.620 | You're not going to see that.

00:46:21.460 | In fact, it's difficult to measure protein breakdown.

00:46:24.440 | That's been as extraordinarily challenging

00:46:26.420 | to do in the laboratory,

00:46:27.260 | but you're not going to see those benefits.

00:46:29.180 | In fact, you're going to see quite the opposite.

00:46:30.560 | It's an entire molecular cascade.

00:46:32.600 | So this is kind of how it works.

00:46:35.380 | So you have to have some similar signal on the outside,

00:46:37.760 | and this can be an energetic signal.

00:46:40.980 | So this could be glucose uptake.

00:46:42.700 | It could be protein intake.

00:46:44.260 | It could be a physical stretch.

00:46:46.500 | What happens is on the cell wall,

00:46:48.140 | there's some sort of, it could be testosterone, right?

00:46:49.940 | Testosterone could bind to beta adrenergic receptors,

00:46:52.740 | and this activates a whole series of cascades

00:46:55.020 | of signaling proteins.

00:46:56.060 | And these proteins basically play a game of telephone.

00:46:58.700 | So one tells the next one, they tells the next one,

00:47:00.820 | and they sort of walk this entire way.

00:47:02.500 | Well, that molecular cascade is fundamentally the same thing

00:47:05.980 | regardless of the insult, but there are different pathways.

00:47:08.520 | And so the pathway from strength training

00:47:11.140 | or protein ingestion is going to go to the same nucleus.

00:47:14.540 | It's going to activate a whole set of gene,

00:47:16.300 | cascades that are going to tell you

00:47:17.740 | to go through this entire process of protein synthesis,

00:47:20.180 | which I'll walk through what that is in a second.

00:47:22.180 | If you do endurance training, it's a different pathway.

00:47:24.420 | And so instead of activating this entire thing

00:47:26.100 | of like mTOR and AKT and this anabolic signaling cascade,

00:47:30.180 | it's going to do a different one,

00:47:31.940 | which you can think of more of like as AMPK

00:47:34.940 | and energy signaling things.

00:47:36.140 | So there's a crossover point here.

00:47:38.340 | In fact, one of the things that you'll notice

00:47:39.980 | is mTOR and AKT don't really influence AMPK,

00:47:43.980 | but there is some literature that years ago

00:47:46.620 | showed AMPK will activate another protein called TSC2,

00:47:50.220 | and that will actually inhibit mTOR.

00:47:52.420 | And that was the first molecular explanation

00:47:54.760 | for the quote unquote interference effect

00:47:57.180 | of endurance training on hypertrophy.

00:47:58.780 | - Could you just highlight for people what this is?

00:48:01.160 | Because as you described these signaling pathways,

00:48:03.100 | I just want to maybe just put a top contour explanation.

00:48:06.960 | The mTOR pathway is synonymous with cell growth,

00:48:10.180 | both during development as organisms, humans included,

00:48:14.760 | mature, and cells get larger.

00:48:17.660 | mTOR is abundant in the system, to put it quite simply.

00:48:21.940 | And then the AMPK pathway

00:48:23.780 | and some of the metabolic signaling that you were referring to

00:48:26.380 | is more synonymous with cardiovascular exercise,

00:48:29.740 | at least in the context of this discussion,

00:48:31.620 | and fuel utilization.

00:48:34.040 | And what you described as a crossover point

00:48:36.800 | where certain forms of exercise

00:48:38.820 | can tap into both of these,

00:48:40.780 | but at least for sake of this conversation,

00:48:43.480 | we're largely separating them.

00:48:45.780 | - Yeah, because the by-product

00:48:47.620 | is the thing that matters here.

00:48:49.360 | So the result of mTOR and AKT getting into the nucleus

00:48:54.360 | is going to be increased in protein synthesis.

00:48:56.880 | The result of AMPK running down to the,

00:48:59.640 | is going to be result in increasing mitochondrial biogenesis.

00:49:02.880 | So the net outcome is different.

00:49:04.440 | Now, I do want to flag it very quickly.

00:49:08.880 | This is an extraordinarily complicated thing.

00:49:12.880 | And in fact, in our laboratory,

00:49:14.920 | we were able to be one of the first

00:49:16.720 | that figured out how to measure

00:49:18.360 | all the different subunits of AMPK

00:49:20.320 | and individual muscles by fiber type.

00:49:22.640 | - So you're ripping people's muscles out of their knees

00:49:25.080 | and their patellar tendons, just teasing.

00:49:28.200 | They're gently removing under IRB protocol.

00:49:31.480 | - Of course.

00:49:33.040 | So even when we say something like AMPK, it's not one thing.

00:49:36.040 | And when we say things like mTOR, it's not one thing either.

00:49:38.340 | It is, you have the total amount that matters.

00:49:40.160 | You have the activation.

00:49:41.080 | Activation sites are many of them.

00:49:42.460 | So it's not as simple as what I'm laying it out.

00:49:46.620 | I just want to get a big concept

00:49:49.560 | of kind of what's happening here

00:49:51.120 | to actually kind of answer your question, which is,

00:49:54.800 | okay, so how is the muscle actually growing?

00:49:57.680 | What you have to understand is a little bit

00:49:59.280 | of how protein synthesis occurs.

00:50:02.080 | So what I'm generally meaning is

00:50:03.240 | you have a whole bunch of amino acids

00:50:04.760 | and this actually goes back to

00:50:06.240 | maybe like middle school biology class, right?

00:50:08.060 | So if you take a bunch of amino acids

00:50:10.360 | and you combine them together,

00:50:12.040 | we get these things called a peptide, right?

00:50:14.120 | And if anyone has ever heard of like peptides,

00:50:16.440 | that's all it really means.

00:50:17.960 | You put a bunch of those together, you have a polypeptide.

00:50:20.840 | You put a bunch of those together and we now have a protein.

00:50:23.560 | So any protein I want to make

00:50:25.720 | is going to go through the exact same system,

00:50:28.680 | the exact same steps.

00:50:30.060 | It doesn't matter if that protein

00:50:31.320 | is going to be a red blood cell.

00:50:32.760 | It doesn't matter if that's going to be a hair follicle.

00:50:34.600 | It doesn't matter if it's going to be skeletal muscle.

00:50:37.120 | That's basically protein synthesis.

00:50:38.640 | So when we tend to think of protein synthesis,

00:50:40.640 | we just paint this picture of growing more muscle

00:50:44.080 | and that's not the only thing.

00:50:45.240 | And so when we talk about the benefits

00:50:46.820 | of having high quality muscle as being this place

00:50:49.540 | that's going to regulate most of your protein synthesis,

00:50:52.420 | we tend to lose some people 'cause they're thinking,

00:50:54.140 | oh, I don't need to gain muscle.

00:50:56.040 | And that's not what we're talking about.

00:50:57.360 | We're talking about regulating the immune system

00:50:59.320 | or we're talking about regulating any protein turnover.

00:51:02.440 | So any protein that's degraded

00:51:04.040 | or needs to be broken down in your system at all.

00:51:07.160 | Autophagy, this is such an important buzzword.

00:51:11.180 | That's just protein breakdown of an unneeded

00:51:13.880 | or damaged protein, right?

00:51:15.940 | That whole thing is going to go through protein synthesis

00:51:18.360 | to be able to come back and replace the things.

00:51:20.560 | The only reason you go through autophagy

00:51:22.240 | is so you can clean that garbage out

00:51:23.520 | and then come back and build in

00:51:24.560 | a more properly functioning protein.

00:51:26.840 | So it's not just about growing more muscle mass,

00:51:29.360 | it's why you want these systems to be operating well.

00:51:32.400 | So the protein ingestion is going to just activate

00:51:35.680 | that cascade 'cause it's basically saying,

00:51:37.160 | oh, hey, look, we have an abundance of supply here.

00:51:41.400 | Why don't we make something out of it?

00:51:42.720 | Because we don't know the next time

00:51:44.020 | this thing's going to be around.

00:51:45.520 | Carbohydrates and fat are very easy to store.

00:51:49.200 | Protein is very challenging, it's more transient.

00:51:51.800 | And so you can store some of it and keep it around,

00:51:54.100 | but most of it you're going to lose.

00:51:55.600 | And so when it's available,

00:51:56.960 | your body wants to act very quickly.

00:51:59.540 | It doesn't necessarily care if you have extra fat

00:52:01.680 | floating around in your system.

00:52:02.840 | It's all right, let's package it up and store it.

00:52:04.520 | We can easily bring this back out.

00:52:06.080 | But if you've got protein around,

00:52:07.920 | you're going to want to use it.

00:52:09.080 | And so that's why it alone will activate

00:52:11.140 | and increase protein synthesis independent of exercise.

00:52:14.120 | So those effects are additive, like I said,

00:52:16.140 | because that signaling process is independent.

00:52:18.800 | And then once you hit a rate limiting phase,

00:52:21.440 | then you are there.

00:52:23.360 | But at its onset, those things will work independently.

00:52:26.160 | Okay, so that being said,

00:52:27.560 | what is skeletal muscle hypertrophy?

00:52:29.980 | In general, we think about it as

00:52:31.520 | this increase in contractile proteins.

00:52:33.160 | So those myosin and actin effectively get thicker.

00:52:35.920 | Okay, now what happens is since they are thicker,

00:52:38.560 | and as I talked about a second ago,

00:52:40.320 | that influences and actually hurts the lattice spacing.

00:52:43.680 | And so what your body does as a result is say,

00:52:45.620 | hey, let's increase the diameter of the entire cell

00:52:49.140 | so that we can maintain our spacing between these things.

00:52:52.020 | It's effectively like if the two of us

00:52:54.100 | were sitting in this room, and you doubled in size.

00:52:57.100 | And I was like, whoa, you're in my personal space.

00:52:59.580 | Like, and I doubled in size.

00:53:00.640 | Now we're in each other's space.

00:53:02.020 | At some point, we just have to make the room larger.

00:53:04.180 | And that's exactly what's happening in the cell.

00:53:06.420 | And so as you can continue to increase muscle size,

00:53:11.120 | you're going to get myofibrillator accretion,

00:53:14.200 | you're going to continue to increase muscle fiber size.

00:53:16.940 | For years, there was this other comment about

00:53:21.260 | non-functional hypertrophy.

00:53:23.780 | And this was often called sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

00:53:26.720 | Now, this is not sarcoplasmic reticulum.

00:53:28.380 | This is a fancy way of saying my muscle is larger,

00:53:30.760 | but it has no function.

00:53:32.380 | And the question would be, well, how the hell

00:53:33.540 | is that possible?

00:53:34.620 | If I have more contractile units,

00:53:36.700 | and I can make more of these cross bridges,

00:53:38.320 | perform more of these power strokes,

00:53:39.940 | this is what these contractions are called,

00:53:41.740 | how could I possibly be losing function?

00:53:44.340 | Well, that was challenge for, that was bro science

00:53:47.700 | for a very, very long time.

00:53:49.080 | And in fact, what it really came down to was,

00:53:51.020 | are there different types of hypertrophy training,

00:53:53.500 | some that induce contractile protein hypertrophy

00:53:56.060 | and some that induce the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

00:53:59.660 | And that was significantly challenged until recently.

00:54:02.980 | Mike Roberts at Auburn did a series of wonderful studies

00:54:06.300 | that showed quite clearly that sarcoplasmic hypertrophy

00:54:08.780 | is probably happening.

00:54:10.660 | And in fact, there's probably a pretty easy explanation.

00:54:13.660 | In general, what happens is it is a increase in fluid

00:54:17.340 | in the muscle fiber.

00:54:20.220 | And so this would allow for the diameter to be larger,

00:54:22.920 | but since there is no addition of contractile units,

00:54:25.060 | no more force production happens.

00:54:27.080 | And so he actually has a wonderful review paper,

00:54:29.340 | I believe it's open access, where you can go look

00:54:31.480 | and he created a wonderful graph.

00:54:33.620 | I think that's in my hypertrophy videos on YouTube as well.

00:54:36.260 | And you can actually see that it's likely happening

00:54:38.940 | in phasic changes throughout your training experience.

00:54:41.820 | So at the beginning of your training,

00:54:43.660 | but as the years and weeks rather than months,

00:54:47.000 | and then eventually years go by in your training,

00:54:49.100 | we have a change in the hypertrophy

00:54:50.660 | that's coming from contractile units versus sarcoplasmic.

00:54:54.780 | So I think that is an important note because again,

00:54:58.740 | people are wondering like, well, how the hell

00:54:59.840 | is it even possible for me to get larger muscle

00:55:01.620 | and somehow I'm not stronger?

00:55:03.540 | Well, if it came from simply fluid retention,

00:55:05.580 | and this is not bloating, this is not,

00:55:07.980 | there's no negative really to this.

00:55:09.440 | It is simply holding of more hydration in the cell,

00:55:13.060 | the hammer gets larger, and then everything works that way.

00:55:16.540 | - Well, you just described calls to mind something similar

00:55:18.940 | in the nervous system, which is neuroplasticity,

00:55:21.100 | which of course is the nervous system's ability to change

00:55:23.060 | in response to learning and experience

00:55:24.540 | and damage for that matter.

00:55:25.980 | And we think about it as one term,

00:55:29.460 | but there are many different forms of neuroplasticity,

00:55:32.780 | a discussion that we don't need to get into now,

00:55:35.360 | but there's spike timing dependent plasticity and LTP

00:55:37.540 | and long-term depression,

00:55:38.500 | which has nothing to do with psychological depression

00:55:40.760 | and on and impaired pulse facilitation

00:55:42.520 | and on and on and on and short-term plasticity.

00:55:44.820 | And so what I'm starting to understand

00:55:47.060 | is that there are many paths to what we call

00:55:49.860 | strength increase, and there are many paths

00:55:52.020 | to what we think of as hypertrophy.

00:55:55.120 | Many of these are going to operate in parallel.

00:55:57.260 | It's going to be rare that any one of them

00:55:59.800 | is going to be active alone

00:56:02.320 | in order to create hypertrophy or strength changes.

00:56:05.060 | And that certain forms of exercise

00:56:06.960 | and certain ways of doing exercises

00:56:09.920 | in terms of sets and repetition schemes

00:56:12.260 | and rest intervals between sets and between training sessions

00:56:15.620 | are going to tap into different mechanisms,

00:56:18.460 | but also overlapping sets of mechanisms,

00:56:20.780 | which is why, if I understand correctly,

00:56:23.220 | you mentioned at the beginning that often, not always,

00:56:26.220 | but often strength increases

00:56:28.420 | are associated with some hypertrophy changes

00:56:31.880 | and hypertrophy increases are often not always

00:56:35.220 | associated with strength increases.

00:56:36.580 | Do I have that right?

00:56:37.400 | - Correct.

00:56:38.240 | And the beauty of this whole thing is

00:56:40.460 | while we don't yet know the mechanisms specifically,

00:56:44.020 | and there's a lot of confusion

00:56:45.020 | and there's a lot of changes that happen.

00:56:47.500 | We actually just submitted a paper a few days ago.

00:56:49.900 | Myself, Jimmy Bagley at San Francisco and Kevin Muric

00:56:54.740 | has a wonderful muscle physiology lab at Arkansas.

00:56:57.420 | And we actually, this is a very lay article, actually.

00:57:01.140 | It's incredibly easy to read.

00:57:03.140 | We describe the role of myonucleation in muscle hypertrophy.

00:57:08.140 | And there's actually a lot of interesting stuff

00:57:10.780 | we can get into there,

00:57:11.600 | but we're learning more and more about it.

00:57:14.060 | As a quick example.

00:57:15.560 | So skeletal muscle is unique in the fact

00:57:18.660 | that it is so large in diameter.

00:57:20.580 | It's also unique in the fact that it's multi-nucleated.

00:57:22.880 | What that means is typically in biology,

00:57:25.700 | you see like a cell has one nucleus.

00:57:27.820 | That's the place that houses and holds the DNA

00:57:29.820 | and it's the control center.

00:57:31.020 | It does a degrow, shrink, dye, repair, that whole thing.

00:57:33.660 | Well, skeletal muscle in human is awesome

00:57:35.180 | because it has thousands, if not more of those nuclei,

00:57:38.520 | which gives it that plasticity.

00:57:41.660 | And so a normal cell has one place it has to go to

00:57:44.500 | for any time it wants to up-regulate, down-regulate,

00:57:47.020 | do whatever the thing is.

00:57:48.340 | Your muscle fibers have these little control centers

00:57:51.300 | all throughout them.

00:57:52.900 | And for years, we were like, okay, great.

00:57:55.620 | The amount of hypertrophy that you can experience

00:57:58.420 | is probably limited by the amount of nuclei you have

00:58:01.940 | because you're not going to exceed a certain size

00:58:04.460 | of muscle fiber if that's going to mean you lose control.

00:58:08.300 | And so we're like, okay, great.

00:58:09.720 | We've found and identified a limiting factor

00:58:12.020 | to what will determine how much a muscle can actually grow.

00:58:15.140 | And then the next question was,

00:58:16.060 | and then where are these things coming from?

00:58:17.680 | And this is where satellite cells come in.

00:58:19.800 | And so it was very clear a satellite cell

00:58:21.220 | that's lying dormant sort of on the outside,

00:58:23.020 | the periphery of the fiber,

00:58:24.460 | will then go into the fiber, it will turn into a myonuclei

00:58:29.460 | and then it can actually increase your diameter like that.

00:58:32.740 | And so then actually it was like,

00:58:33.720 | hey, you're actually limited

00:58:35.680 | by the amount of these satellite cells

00:58:36.940 | you can get in and turn into nuclei.

00:58:38.860 | And then the evidence came out that showed,

00:58:40.780 | hey, what if you detrain?

00:58:42.600 | So what if I used to lift weights like a long time ago

00:58:44.900 | and I got big, but now I've lost a lot of my muscle.

00:58:47.380 | If I train again, you actually get that muscle back faster

00:58:51.580 | than it took you the very first time to build it.

00:58:54.260 | Like that's what we call muscle memory, like an art field.

00:58:56.240 | Now, on your side of the equation,

00:58:58.180 | muscle memory is something different, right?

00:58:59.780 | It's a nerve.

00:59:00.620 | - Well, when people talk about muscle memory,

00:59:02.380 | like the ability to ride a bicycle after so many years

00:59:04.820 | of not having tried to ride one,

00:59:06.760 | that's actually largely independent of the muscle,

00:59:10.060 | has something to do with the muscle.

00:59:10.900 | - It's exclusively independent of the muscle.

00:59:12.480 | - It's basically a nervous system phenomenon.

00:59:14.560 | - 100%.

00:59:15.400 | - So muscle memory has been co-opted

00:59:17.560 | by different communities to mean different things.

00:59:19.560 | - Yeah, so on our side, muscle memory is going to mean

00:59:22.520 | that ability to remember that muscle size, right?

00:59:25.720 | That hypertrophy, because as you explained,

00:59:28.360 | the motor control thing is a totally a nerve thing.

00:59:31.080 | That's the one, I'll give you this one.

00:59:32.560 | You guys, the nerve people can have this one.

00:59:34.280 | - Well, it seems to me that there are

00:59:35.880 | a tremendous number of parallels

00:59:37.240 | between strength and hypertrophy changes and neuroplasticity.

00:59:42.240 | This is coming up again and again in this conversation,

00:59:45.260 | because we know, for instance, that if you are exposed

00:59:48.600 | to a couple of different languages early on in life,

00:59:50.920 | you will learn any number of different languages

00:59:53.860 | far more easily later in life.

00:59:55.400 | - Of course.

00:59:56.240 | - And that's because there's some crossover

00:59:57.060 | between different languages,

00:59:58.000 | especially Latin-based languages, that allows for that.

01:00:00.720 | There's a substrate for it.

01:00:01.940 | It's similar to the ability to hop on a bicycle again,

01:00:04.880 | phenomenon, or play an instrument phenomenon,

01:00:07.440 | but it's broader than that.

01:00:09.080 | And again, I think this speaks to the huge number

01:00:12.560 | of different adaptive changes that are occurring

01:00:15.160 | in the cells and in the nerves that innervate these cells

01:00:17.160 | when one experiences increases in strength and hypertrophy.

01:00:20.520 | - So to round that out and to go back to what I was saying,

01:00:24.800 | what we're actually learning now is that nucleation thing.

01:00:28.500 | And by the way, this entire trajectory of story

01:00:30.360 | is probably over the last like eight years.

01:00:33.200 | Like this is how fast we've changed our understanding

01:00:35.880 | of how muscle grows.

01:00:37.500 | The sarcopod, in particular, I think five years ago

01:00:40.320 | was bro science, now it's pretty well established.

01:00:42.180 | The myonucleation thing was eight to 10 years ago.

01:00:44.420 | It's changing every week.

01:00:45.500 | This paper we just submitted this week showed actually

01:00:49.500 | why we had generally thought a few years ago,

01:00:51.500 | and in fact, you can find me on podcasts

01:00:53.200 | and probably in some of my videos talking about this,

01:00:55.280 | and I'm gonna tell you right now, those things are wrong.

01:00:57.740 | Like we've just had new things come out

01:00:59.200 | in these last couple of years where that detraining effect

01:01:02.040 | we thought was the reason of, well, what happens is

01:01:04.840 | if you had the muscle before and you brought in

01:01:07.960 | these nuclei and they differentiated

01:01:09.680 | and turned into a nuclei, and then the muscle got small

01:01:13.340 | again, you would preserve those nuclei.

01:01:15.680 | And that's why when you go to train again,

01:01:17.620 | they were already around, so the muscle grows faster

01:01:20.540 | the second time than it did the first time.

01:01:22.180 | Well, now it looks like that's actually not the case.

01:01:24.500 | In fact, it's actually probably what's happening

01:01:27.040 | is it's a epigenetic change in the nuclei's ability

01:01:31.980 | to access the DNA needed to grow muscle.

01:01:34.840 | It's effectively, the analogy we used,

01:01:38.100 | it's the nuclei are remembering how to ride a bike.

01:01:41.960 | So it's quite funny that you said that

01:01:43.220 | because it's not really necessarily

01:01:44.760 | that they're being preserved over time.

01:01:46.440 | They have learned the sequence it takes

01:01:48.840 | to grow the protein there, and it goes,

01:01:51.040 | it happens faster the second time.

01:01:53.740 | And we've also learned that there are specific nuclei.

01:01:56.320 | We've known this for actually a while.

01:01:57.800 | We found this in our lab and we didn't discover it.

01:02:00.500 | We saw this in our summer, however,

01:02:02.560 | but there are different shapes in the nuclei.

01:02:05.100 | Some are more oval, some are more elongated,

01:02:07.480 | and the shape determines a lot of the function.

01:02:09.280 | Some of them are hanging out more towards the periphery

01:02:11.360 | and some of them are hanging out right around the nucleus.

01:02:14.140 | Well, it looks like there's actually

01:02:15.480 | probably different types of nuclei.

01:02:17.800 | A lot of them that are specific to the mitochondria.

01:02:20.540 | In fact, you can see on some of the imaging we have,

01:02:22.880 | they're just packed around the mitochondria.

01:02:26.600 | And there are some that are probably

01:02:27.900 | specific to injury repair.

01:02:29.920 | And so this is probably explaining

01:02:31.300 | a lot of the individual variation.

01:02:33.040 | I mean, I know you've said previously,

01:02:35.200 | like you're just a very, you're very slow at recovery.

01:02:38.620 | There's a lot of things that go into that,

01:02:40.060 | and I would love to walk through sort of all the buckets,

01:02:43.760 | maybe later, into recovery.

01:02:46.020 | But one of the inherent genetic variations

01:02:48.300 | is could be simply that you maybe have more or less

01:02:50.800 | of the nuclei responsible for tissue repair.

01:02:53.080 | That's something that's been happening

01:02:54.100 | in the last handful of months that's been coming out.

01:02:56.700 | We'll see if that holds up as true or not.

01:02:59.680 | So as we're learning more and more almost every day

01:03:02.140 | about muscle physiology, what's super fun and interesting,

01:03:05.560 | and I think the most exciting, what to do

01:03:08.840 | in terms of like how to train and how to eat

01:03:11.740 | and how to do everything else to get these adaptations

01:03:14.320 | has been pretty well established for a long, long, long time.

01:03:17.440 | We're just figuring out how like what's happening

01:03:20.400 | in the muscle now, but we know what to do.

01:03:23.080 | So from a practical standpoint,

01:03:24.840 | putting together protocols for any outcome that you want

01:03:29.400 | or don't want for any modality.

01:03:32.440 | You don't have a gym.

01:03:34.360 | You have weights.

01:03:36.000 | You have dumbbells only.

01:03:37.160 | You only have kettlebells.

01:03:38.580 | You don't want to, you only use body weight.

01:03:40.720 | You only have three days a week.

01:03:41.700 | You have seven days a week.

01:03:42.640 | You want to maximize muscle growth.

01:03:44.260 | You want to get a little bit stronger.

01:03:46.040 | Any of these variables you want to throw at me,

01:03:48.520 | we have a large evidence base for exactly

01:03:50.880 | how to get those adaptations and not others.

01:03:52.440 | So while we have a lot to learn about the mechanisms

01:03:55.760 | and the physiology, we have pretty good legs to stand on

01:03:58.220 | in terms of what to do to get whatever adaptations you want.

01:04:00.400 | - So what are the essential components

01:04:01.920 | of an effective strength and hypertrophy protocol?

01:04:05.020 | - Okay, so what I would like to actually do

01:04:06.500 | is walk you through both of those

01:04:08.520 | because as we mentioned before, they overlap,

01:04:11.800 | but the training needs to be differentiated

01:04:14.320 | so that you can optimize either strength, hypertrophy,

01:04:18.400 | or if you actually want, you can get a combination of both.

01:04:20.600 | This allows you to then get the adaptation you want,

01:04:23.080 | avoid ones you don't want,

01:04:24.980 | and then get even a combination if that's the preference.

01:04:27.880 | A lot of people will talk about,

01:04:29.040 | I want to get a little stronger, I want to add some muscle.

01:04:31.780 | That's a different answer

01:04:32.680 | than someone who wants to truly maximize muscle,

01:04:35.140 | which is a different answer

01:04:35.980 | from somebody who wants to maximize strength,

01:04:38.720 | which is a different answer

01:04:39.540 | from somebody who wants to maximize strength,

01:04:41.520 | but not actually gain muscle.

01:04:42.780 | So we have all these combinations.

01:04:44.380 | What's important to understand

01:04:45.600 | before we get into the details is a couple of things.

01:04:48.280 | Number one, we've been teasing this concept so far

01:04:51.840 | of the concepts are few, but the methods are many.

01:04:54.720 | And so I want to hit those concepts right now.

01:04:56.560 | These are, as you say, these are the non-negotiables

01:05:00.320 | that have to happen in any training program.

01:05:03.280 | And I'm referring to these

01:05:04.880 | in the strength and hypertrophy conversation,

01:05:06.560 | but these are true of power development, speed development,

01:05:09.180 | muscular endurance, endurance, any other thing.

01:05:12.160 | These are things that just have to happen

01:05:13.680 | for any training program to work.

01:05:15.520 | I mentioned one a little bit earlier, which was adherence.

01:05:19.600 | And so my frequent collaborator, Dan Garner,

01:05:23.160 | will constantly say consistency beats intensity.

01:05:26.440 | Again, in fact, the literature

01:05:29.040 | will show you very clearly adherence

01:05:31.560 | is the number one predictor of physical fitness outcomes.

01:05:34.320 | So we want to do something that you will engage in,

01:05:37.160 | you'll put effort into,

01:05:38.840 | and you'll be able to repeat consistently over time.

01:05:40.560 | So that's number one.

01:05:42.000 | The second one is, and this is a major reason

01:05:45.720 | that people don't hit their fitness goals.

01:05:47.440 | In fact, I would argue outside of not doing it,

01:05:50.000 | the number one mistake they make

01:05:52.160 | is progressive overload.

01:05:54.720 | So I'm going to walk you through

01:05:55.760 | exactly how much you should be increasing

01:05:57.960 | your sets and reps and weight, et cetera,

01:06:01.360 | per week, per month, later.

01:06:03.560 | But that's the biggest thing.

01:06:04.460 | You have got to have some sort of overload.

01:06:07.880 | The body works as an adaptation mechanism, right?

01:06:10.420 | So in fact, we talked previously

01:06:13.120 | about the Harvard Fatigue Lab.

01:06:14.760 | And one of the things actually people don't realize

01:06:16.760 | is the concept of homeostasis

01:06:19.920 | is actually comes from research at the Harvard Fatigue Lab.

01:06:22.580 | It was work that they did on an endurance runner,

01:06:25.200 | I forget his name.

01:06:26.520 | And they sort of realized that after a long period of time

01:06:29.160 | working out, this is an acute exercise bout,

01:06:32.120 | the body actually comes back to some stable place,

01:06:34.600 | despite the fact he was continuing to work.

01:06:36.360 | And that's exactly what bore the phrase steady state.

01:06:39.860 | And that actually, then they launched off and said,

01:06:41.700 | wow, there's this state that the body wants to be in,

01:06:43.780 | and we'll call this homeostasis.

01:06:46.100 | So those all concepts came out of exercise physiology,

01:06:48.960 | which is really, really cool, right?

01:06:50.600 | We don't get a lot of love a lot of times scientifically,

01:06:52.400 | but that's a good one that we took.

01:06:53.980 | So why that all matters is we have got to achieve

01:06:57.080 | some sort of overload without going excess.

01:07:01.380 | So we'll cover that later of exactly what to do,

01:07:04.880 | and we'll potentially get into overtraining

01:07:06.940 | and monitoring and things like that.

01:07:08.740 | But you have to have some sort of

01:07:10.480 | consistent, predictable overload.

01:07:12.160 | That's what's gonna cause adaptation

01:07:13.480 | to continue to cause stress.

01:07:14.480 | If you don't do that,

01:07:16.420 | you can still do things like burn calories.

01:07:18.680 | You can still get some of the other benefits of exercise,

01:07:20.900 | like improved mood, cognitive function, et cetera,

01:07:24.620 | flexibility increases.

01:07:25.880 | All of those can happen without a progressive overload.

01:07:28.440 | But if you want to see these gains in strength

01:07:30.760 | and hypertrophy, you really need to progressively overload.

01:07:34.120 | So that's concept number two.

01:07:36.000 | The third one here is going to be individualization.

01:07:39.960 | And this is where we can get into things like

01:07:42.120 | personal preference, equipment availability.

01:07:45.600 | You have kettlebells or dumbbells,

01:07:47.080 | or you only have bands, or you have none of that.

01:07:49.480 | These are all smaller details,

01:07:51.560 | but that's an important component to it.

01:07:54.700 | The last one I really want to get into

01:07:56.420 | is picking the appropriate target.

01:07:59.040 | And we went through this when we talked about

01:08:01.160 | the fitness protocol.

01:08:02.220 | And if you run through something like that

01:08:04.200 | and you run some testing and figure out

01:08:05.880 | where your biggest limitations are,

01:08:07.540 | that's gonna help you identify where you need to go.

01:08:10.540 | So if you can do all those things,

01:08:13.020 | you're going to be in a good spot to balance specificity

01:08:17.440 | and variation, all right?

01:08:19.420 | So if you want to make sure you grow your biceps,

01:08:22.820 | you better make sure your biceps are working.

01:08:24.740 | Having said that, if you over rely on specificity,

01:08:28.940 | you're going to increase the likelihood of overuse injuries,

01:08:31.620 | which is going to come back

01:08:32.660 | and actually hamper consistency over time, all right?

01:08:36.300 | So this is when hedging towards specificity is important,

01:08:38.680 | but too much can cause a problem.

01:08:40.340 | If you go the other direction and you go too much variation.

01:08:44.140 | So imagine you're just sort of doing

01:08:45.460 | all kinds of different exercises every time you work out.

01:08:48.580 | That's actually not enough stimuli

01:08:50.500 | directly on the muscle or muscle groups or movement pattern,

01:08:53.060 | if you're wanting to learn a new movement,

01:08:55.420 | to get you very far.

01:08:56.560 | And so this is a classic problem of I'm doing a lot of work,

01:08:59.540 | but I don't have a very clear direction.

01:09:01.780 | I lack specificity.

01:09:03.100 | So I'm working, but I'm not seeing a lot of improvements.

01:09:05.940 | And this is like in the business world, et cetera,

01:09:08.300 | this is like doing a whole bunch of different things.

01:09:09.960 | It means you get nothing really done.

01:09:12.180 | So that's the game we're going to play here, right?

01:09:14.260 | How do we overload this stuff?

01:09:15.480 | How do we make sure we're balancing

01:09:16.600 | specificity and variation?

01:09:18.040 | How do we make sure I want to do this?

01:09:19.540 | And then how do I individualize it

01:09:21.320 | for my needs and circumstances and movement restrictions

01:09:25.720 | and of time availability and my calendar and desires

01:09:29.260 | and all of these things.

01:09:30.400 | So those are the concepts we absolutely have to hit.

01:09:33.960 | The methods that we choose run across a handful of variables

01:09:38.600 | and we call these things modifiable variables

01:09:40.860 | because as you modify them or you make different choices

01:09:43.700 | within these variables,

01:09:45.140 | you get different outcomes or adaptations.

01:09:47.880 | This is exactly what determines the nine adaptations

01:09:51.420 | that we've been talking about.

01:09:52.540 | So the way that I like to say this is exercises

01:09:56.500 | do not determine adaptation.

01:09:59.180 | So you can't simply go, I want to get stronger.

01:10:01.840 | Therefore, I'm going to choose these exercises.

01:10:05.220 | That's not how it works.

01:10:06.360 | What determines adaptation is the execution

01:10:10.120 | of the exercises.

01:10:11.480 | So deadlift is my favorite example.

01:10:13.940 | A deadlift is a common example that people think of

01:10:17.000 | when they want to choose a lower body strength exercise.

01:10:19.520 | But a deadlift will not increase your strength

01:10:21.260 | unless you're executing it in the proper fashion.

01:10:24.120 | I'm not only talking about technique here.

01:10:26.080 | I'm talking about these modifiable variables.

01:10:28.700 | The same thing for power exercises.

01:10:30.420 | We'll commonly see mistakes of doing activities

01:10:33.260 | like a box jump, which is great.

01:10:35.240 | People think, oh, I'm going to improve my power,

01:10:38.200 | which we know is extremely highly correlated

01:10:40.420 | to activities of daily living

01:10:42.420 | and particularly living unassisted as you age, right,

01:10:45.760 | is reduction of power.

01:10:47.440 | So they'll do an activity like a box jump.

01:10:49.040 | What they're failing to realize is

01:10:50.280 | unless you do it powerfully,

01:10:52.500 | you won't actually increase power.

01:10:54.960 | If you don't move fast, you won't get faster.

01:10:57.840 | So the way that we manipulate these variables

01:11:00.580 | is everything to determining the adaptation

01:11:04.200 | you get or, again, don't get.

01:11:06.960 | So with that foundation,

01:11:08.580 | I think we can kind of run right into these things

01:11:10.800 | and we can start off with perhaps speed and power.

01:11:13.120 | And what I would like to do is walk you through

01:11:17.080 | all those modifiable variables, what to do with them,

01:11:20.880 | and then hit you with as many different methodologies

01:11:23.500 | as we really have time for.

01:11:25.760 | And then we'll move on to strength and hypertrophy

01:11:28.120 | and kind of round the entire thing out.

01:11:29.520 | And then maybe at the end,

01:11:30.360 | we can talk some other variables like

01:11:33.000 | what happens if I have a training protocol

01:11:36.240 | and I'm halfway through it and I can't finish my workout?

01:11:38.720 | What should I do?

01:11:39.540 | Reduce my weight or reduce my duration or things like that?

01:11:42.640 | So there's lots of what if scenarios

01:11:44.160 | that we can go through that potentially

01:11:46.020 | a lot of people listening have questions about.

01:11:47.960 | So, sound like a plan?

01:11:49.960 | - Sounds like a plan.

01:11:51.480 | I'd like to take a brief break

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01:12:53.700 | So, just to interrupt briefly and make sure

01:12:55.280 | that I and everybody else have in mind

01:12:58.040 | the proper nine adaptations that we've been referring to

01:13:00.560 | and that were discussed in detail in episode one.

01:13:03.180 | I have listed number one, skill and technique.

01:13:07.480 | Number two, speed.

01:13:09.500 | Number three, power, which is speed times force.

01:13:13.320 | Number four, strength.

01:13:15.120 | Number five, hypertrophy.

01:13:17.640 | Number six, muscular endurance.

01:13:20.560 | Number seven, anaerobic capacity.

01:13:23.920 | Number eight, maximal aerobic capacity.

01:13:27.320 | And number nine, long duration steady state exercise.

01:13:31.080 | - Yep, you nailed it.

01:13:31.920 | Thank you for that.

01:13:32.880 | It was probably important clarification for everybody.

01:13:35.860 | So that being said, let's jump right into speed and power.

01:13:39.240 | Now, I'll do these a little bit simultaneously.

01:13:42.640 | They are different.

01:13:44.320 | If you're a high performance athlete,

01:13:45.840 | you really need to separate these two things.

01:13:48.680 | For the most people though,

01:13:50.160 | we can probably think about them as the same thing.

01:13:52.200 | There's not a lot of pure speed training

01:13:55.100 | that the general public is interested in.

01:13:57.960 | If you wanna actually further break down speed,

01:13:59.700 | there are multiple components.

01:14:00.780 | There's acceleration, there's top end velocity,

01:14:02.960 | there's change of direction or agility and things like that.

01:14:05.740 | So we'll just kind of call them all that speed

01:14:07.980 | and power for now.

01:14:09.080 | Now, at the onset, there's this three to five concept

01:14:12.680 | that we talked about many times

01:14:16.040 | where this is really fairly true

01:14:18.280 | for speed, power or strength.

01:14:21.280 | Now, I didn't develop the three to five.

01:14:23.440 | It's just an easy way to help you remember one concept

01:14:27.720 | that will run true across all these things.

01:14:29.320 | So three to five refers to three to five days per week.

01:14:34.320 | Pick three to five exercises

01:14:37.820 | and you're gonna do three to five repetitions per set.

01:14:41.120 | You'll do three to five sets

01:14:43.300 | and you'll rest three to five minutes between each set.

01:14:48.180 | If you do that and you execute any of the exercises

01:14:52.220 | that you choose at a high intent.

01:14:55.160 | And that part is critical.

01:14:57.040 | You don't get faster by moving kind of fast.

01:15:00.740 | You can't improve power by moving like, eh, powerfully.

01:15:04.180 | You have to be trying,

01:15:05.020 | regardless of whether you're actually moving faster or not.

01:15:08.660 | Anytime you're talking about speed or power,

01:15:10.540 | you're by definition using sub-maximal weights.

01:15:13.700 | So you're going to be able to lift it.

01:15:15.100 | That's not the question.

01:15:16.320 | The question is how fast can you lift that implement?

01:15:19.900 | And so intention is incredibly important.

01:15:21.880 | So if you do that, the same for strength, by the way.

01:15:25.080 | So if you land on that,

01:15:26.180 | that allows you to run the gamut

01:15:27.860 | from as little as three days a week.

01:15:30.560 | You're doing three exercises.

01:15:32.240 | You can do three sets of three,

01:15:34.100 | which is a very, very low volume.

01:15:36.100 | It's a very low amount of days, easy to handle.

01:15:40.640 | All the way to five sets of five,

01:15:42.360 | of five exercises, five days a week.

01:15:43.920 | So it's, again, it's just one sample.

01:15:48.180 | That's something easy to remember

01:15:49.780 | and is quite effective for a very long time.

01:15:52.300 | And this has been tested quite extensively

01:15:54.880 | in both the coaching realms,

01:15:56.280 | as well as the scientific realms,

01:15:57.640 | to be quite productive and easy to follow and grasp.

01:16:01.240 | If you do that, all you need to do

01:16:03.260 | is slightly increase the load or the volume,

01:16:06.940 | but mostly the load over time.

01:16:09.220 | And the number we want to look for there

01:16:10.700 | is something like a three to 5% increase per week.

01:16:15.400 | So an example would be if you're going to do an exercise

01:16:19.180 | at a hundred pounds,

01:16:21.280 | you can't necessarily just add five pounds every week.

01:16:23.500 | That's going to connect to you pretty quickly.

01:16:25.000 | And so you may have to run a smaller increment.

01:16:28.020 | If you're doing like a lower body exercise

01:16:29.920 | where you might have a couple of hundred pounds

01:16:31.380 | on the weight,

01:16:32.260 | you can probably get away with adding five pounds

01:16:34.120 | 'cause it's still a low percentage of the total load.

01:16:36.360 | So that's roughly the guide that we want to get to

01:16:39.940 | for speed, power, and strength.

01:16:42.100 | - So that sounds incredibly simple and effective,

01:16:45.060 | yet I have a number of questions.

01:16:47.700 | First off, if somebody is using the three to five approach,

01:16:52.700 | does that mean they should not be doing

01:16:54.780 | any other weight training of any kind

01:16:57.780 | in those workouts or at all?

01:17:01.140 | - No, you can certainly do that in combination

01:17:04.020 | with anything else you would like,

01:17:05.140 | especially if you think about speed and power.

01:17:08.380 | Those are very non-fatiguing.

01:17:11.000 | And so if you can imagine you're going to go to the beach

01:17:15.380 | and you're going to take a 10 pound to 20 pound

01:17:18.180 | medicine ball with you,

01:17:19.580 | and you're going to do four different exercises

01:17:22.020 | where you're throwing the medicine ball

01:17:23.220 | as high as you can in the air,

01:17:24.740 | four times in a row, taking a break,

01:17:26.740 | and you do two or three hits of that.

01:17:28.060 | You do maybe three or four different types of throws.

01:17:30.940 | That's very good for improving power, extremely good,

01:17:34.780 | but it's not very fatiguing.

01:17:35.820 | So you could certainly finish that workout in 20 minutes

01:17:39.060 | and then run on and then do any number of other things.

01:17:41.500 | So you could do some high intensity anaerobic capacity work.

01:17:44.840 | You could do steady state stuff.

01:17:46.020 | You could even do hypertrophy on top of that.

01:17:48.660 | So there's two major categories

01:17:51.760 | of what we call periodization.

01:17:53.260 | There's many, many, many of them.

01:17:55.060 | But the two that have the most scientific literature

01:17:57.580 | are what's called linear periodization,

01:18:00.180 | and another is called undulating,

01:18:02.100 | or often daily undulating periodization.

01:18:04.700 | And I'm flagging these two, again,

01:18:07.420 | despite the fact there are many, many, many more,

01:18:09.280 | because they represent two different concepts

01:18:11.020 | what you actually just touched upon.

01:18:12.100 | So linear periodization is a hallmark

01:18:14.460 | by basically saying we're going to train

01:18:15.900 | one adaptation at a time.

01:18:17.980 | So imagine going, say, six to eight weeks,

01:18:20.300 | and you're only doing strength,

01:18:22.140 | or you're only doing hypertrophy,

01:18:23.460 | or endurance for that matter.

01:18:24.980 | So in that particular case,

01:18:27.200 | you would not do anything else in combination.

01:18:30.260 | If you contrast that to undulating periodization,

01:18:33.200 | you would actually be doing multiple different styles

01:18:35.500 | of training, either within the same day,

01:18:38.880 | or just different days.

01:18:40.120 | So it could be Monday is power, Wednesday is strength,

01:18:43.380 | Friday is hypertrophy, whatever.

01:18:45.420 | Or it could be a little bit of strength every single day,

01:18:47.700 | a little bit of hypertrophy every day,

01:18:48.760 | a little bit of power every day,

01:18:50.180 | and you would just change the amount of each

01:18:52.720 | that you do within the day to alter the emphasis.

01:18:56.220 | Now, if you look at the studies,

01:18:59.060 | and there have been many RCTs on this,

01:19:01.860 | the result of both of these training programs

01:19:05.300 | is generally basically the same thing.

01:19:07.660 | They are equally effective.

01:19:09.740 | Here's the major difference, though.

01:19:11.660 | One, if your goal is very specific to one outcome,

01:19:16.260 | you want to hedge towards specificity.

01:19:17.860 | So if you're like, hey, I'm trying to maximize

01:19:20.540 | the amount of muscle I can build in the next eight weeks,

01:19:22.980 | then you don't really, anything else besides that

01:19:25.460 | is just distraction and potential interference.

01:19:28.520 | Does it really matter or not doesn't matter,

01:19:30.300 | but it's not helping anything else.

01:19:32.420 | So linear periodization is fundamental at providing focus,

01:19:36.200 | and therefore the adaptations tend to be oftentimes larger

01:19:40.140 | in that specific area.

01:19:41.120 | The downside is you now go six to eight to 10 weeks

01:19:45.360 | of doing nothing else, and so you are losing

01:19:48.040 | those other adaptations at a faster rate,

01:19:50.960 | and you can imagine doing something like speed work only.

01:19:54.220 | Again, speed work, by definition, is non-fatiguing.

01:19:57.540 | So when oftentimes we think of speed work as like,

01:19:59.540 | oh, I did ladder drills, and I did all these things,

01:20:01.500 | and I threw up at the end.

01:20:03.420 | But that's not speed work.

01:20:04.580 | You just did a different type of endurance training,

01:20:06.420 | okay, which is great and important.

01:20:07.660 | So true speed work is very high-rest,

01:20:10.700 | very low fatigue, and actually truly trying

01:20:12.680 | to reach a new level of speed or velocity.

01:20:15.540 | So non-fatiguing.

01:20:16.620 | If you did that exclusively for 10 weeks,

01:20:19.240 | you would be pretty unfit by the end of it,

01:20:21.900 | 'cause you would also lose a decent amount of muscle mass,

01:20:24.100 | not because there's an interference effect,

01:20:26.580 | but simply because of the fact you have not stimulated

01:20:28.380 | muscle growth for eight to 10 weeks.

01:20:30.520 | And so neither one of these is better than the other.

01:20:33.180 | We're gonna see this classically across all program design

01:20:36.940 | or periodization strategies.

01:20:38.700 | It's just a give and take.

01:20:40.520 | There are tons of different systems,

01:20:42.040 | and perhaps at the end, we can talk about some

01:20:43.800 | of the more advanced periodization styles.

01:20:46.220 | These ones are both effective.

01:20:48.180 | You could do these with beginners.

01:20:50.360 | You could do these with advanced athletes.

01:20:51.960 | You could do them any of the spectrum,

01:20:53.240 | but they're some of the more well-documented ones.

01:20:56.380 | It's just a pro and con game, right?

01:20:57.820 | It's what are you willing to give up?

01:21:00.040 | The way that you solve that problem is going back

01:21:02.820 | to that fitness assessment and your analysis,

01:21:05.720 | and really, truly understanding what your goal is.

01:21:09.980 | Is your goal to do a little bit of strength and a little bit,

01:21:12.120 | okay, great, maybe undulated periodization is an approach.

01:21:15.160 | If your goal is really to maximize strength,

01:21:18.040 | and maybe you can wait on putting some muscle mass on,

01:21:20.360 | maybe linear periodization is a better approach,

01:21:22.880 | or another style of periodization

01:21:24.080 | that's optimal for strength gain.

01:21:25.140 | So it's just simply about addressing your things.

01:21:28.260 | One of the major problems folks have,

01:21:30.220 | in addition to lacking progressive overload,

01:21:32.540 | is they don't have any foresight past the next day

01:21:35.160 | of the training, right?

01:21:36.600 | And so it's really important that you set off blocks

01:21:40.080 | that are anywhere between six to 12 weeks long,

01:21:43.560 | where you're going to have the specific plan.

01:21:45.100 | Ideally, you have an idea for the whole year.

01:21:48.400 | I actually have like a structure

01:21:49.680 | I could walk you through for that.

01:21:51.860 | But even if you don't have that,

01:21:52.920 | really think about what you want the next 12 weeks,

01:21:55.620 | and then maybe the next 12 weeks after that.

01:21:57.240 | And that's gonna give you a lot of guidance

01:21:58.880 | about what to do and what to focus on.

01:22:00.960 | - Terrific, what about warming up?

01:22:05.000 | - I was taught that one should do higher repetition movements

01:22:09.040 | with lighter weights in order to warm up.

01:22:10.640 | And then one of the things

01:22:11.540 | that did make a big positive difference for me

01:22:14.360 | in terms of strength and hypertrophy training,

01:22:16.680 | was to do a moderate repetition warm up

01:22:20.600 | with a fairly lightweight,

01:22:22.040 | but then to actually keep the number

01:22:24.240 | of warm up repetitions fairly low,

01:22:27.180 | and work progressively toward the first so-called work set.

01:22:31.760 | When you say three to five,

01:22:34.720 | that's three to five work sets, correct?

01:22:36.540 | - Yep.

01:22:37.560 | - Are you also gonna tell me three to five warm ups?

01:22:39.880 | - No.

01:22:40.720 | - Are you also gonna tell me

01:22:41.540 | that it has to be done between three and 5 p.m.?

01:22:42.960 | (laughing)

01:22:44.560 | So in terms of--

01:22:45.400 | - With three to five friends?

01:22:46.760 | - In all seriousness, what does a good warm up look like?

01:22:50.440 | And I realize this will vary

01:22:51.480 | depending on how cool your training environment is,

01:22:53.780 | time of day, et cetera,

01:22:54.820 | but as a kind of umbrella for a good warm up.

01:22:59.820 | - Okay.

01:23:01.000 | - What should people do?

01:23:02.040 | - The, you've already sort of jumped the gun with my answer.

01:23:05.360 | It is honestly very dependent upon the person.

01:23:08.120 | So some folks respond very well to a minimum warm up.

01:23:11.220 | Others, I've had lots of actually professional fighters

01:23:14.080 | I've worked with,

01:23:15.060 | where I actually have a Major League Baseball player.

01:23:17.400 | Right now, he's one of the best pitchers in the game,

01:23:19.760 | probably the best.

01:23:21.080 | And the longer we warm up, the better his numbers get.

01:23:24.480 | We actually did a vertical jump test with him.

01:23:26.360 | He's gonna kill me 'cause he got so mad.

01:23:28.720 | I wanted to see how long it sort of took him

01:23:30.680 | to reach a peak vertical jump.

01:23:32.880 | And most times this takes people

01:23:34.640 | something like five to 10 sort of reps.

01:23:37.920 | And I said, take it up all the way

01:23:39.500 | to a maximum vertical jump.

01:23:41.920 | And then what I want you to do is continue to jumping

01:23:43.540 | until you have three consecutive jumps

01:23:45.400 | or you're down lower than 90%.

01:23:47.920 | And so what we're trying to look at is sort of,

01:23:49.800 | when is he gonna break?

01:23:50.840 | 'Cause in baseball,

01:23:51.800 | he's gonna throw like 100 pitchers or so.

01:23:53.480 | And we're trying to figure out when is his peak velocity

01:23:55.720 | on his fastball gonna drop

01:23:57.080 | and sort of basis conditioning on that.

01:23:59.080 | It's a different style of conditioning.

01:24:00.240 | It's power endurance is really what it is.

01:24:03.160 | He called me in the middle of it.

01:24:04.560 | I'm like, oh, you've done whatever.

01:24:05.520 | And he's just like, no,

01:24:06.360 | like how many of these am I supposed to do?

01:24:08.360 | And I was like, what are you talking about?

01:24:09.440 | He's like, I'm on rep 130 or something.

01:24:11.840 | And I was like, what?

01:24:13.680 | And I'm like, what rep did you peak on?

01:24:14.840 | He peaked on rep 70, something like that.

01:24:17.220 | 69, I think technically, 'cause he's goofy.

01:24:20.720 | So he's a classic example.

01:24:22.160 | I've worked in for many, many years.

01:24:23.560 | We have a ton of data on him, a ton of biological data,

01:24:26.560 | a ton of neuro-muscular stuff, like all kinds of stuff.

01:24:29.440 | And it just, the more he warms up,

01:24:31.620 | an absurd amount of warmup, the better he gets.

01:24:34.320 | And the better he gets in power production

01:24:36.200 | and the better he gets in speed and velocity.

01:24:38.180 | So his warmup prior to games is, it's totally absurd.

01:24:42.040 | And just the more volume we throw at him, the better he does.

01:24:45.040 | I have other folks, you get past like two or three reps

01:24:48.260 | and fatigue starts to set in.

01:24:49.820 | And now you're actually like reducing power production.

01:24:51.720 | So there is a ton of variation that goes into that.

01:24:54.820 | I can give you some guidelines though.

01:24:57.840 | You need to differentiate if you're training for speed,

01:24:59.680 | power, strength, or hypertrophy.

01:25:01.480 | Here's why.

01:25:03.040 | If we understand a little bit about

01:25:04.600 | what's causing the adaptation,

01:25:06.160 | that's going to tell you what you need to do or avoid.

01:25:08.800 | For example, volume is the primary driver in hypertrophy.

01:25:13.660 | Intensity is the primary driver in speed,

01:25:17.720 | power, and strength.

01:25:19.480 | All right, so what that means is,

01:25:21.080 | you need to preserve intensity for the first three.

01:25:23.240 | You need to preserve volume in the second one at most.

01:25:25.560 | So if your warmup is so extensive in the hypertrophy training

01:25:29.800 | that it compromises your training volume because of fatigue,

01:25:32.440 | even if it compromises the last set of the last exercise,

01:25:36.040 | then you're actually probably walking yourself backwards

01:25:38.600 | by doing that extensive.

01:25:39.760 | You'd have been better off starting your first working set

01:25:42.480 | slightly suboptimal, right?

01:25:44.680 | 'Cause you're just trying to accrue volume at that point.

01:25:48.960 | Strength and power is the opposite.

01:25:50.720 | Until you're moving very, very fast or powerfully,

01:25:54.960 | you're not really causing the adaptation.

01:25:57.040 | So there's no point in starting your working set

01:25:58.840 | until you're really basically at 100%.

01:26:01.520 | So the warmup should be as long as it takes you to get

01:26:04.480 | to where your mobility is in the right spot,

01:26:06.480 | like your joints feel good, you feel fresh,

01:26:08.840 | you feel activated, and you really feel peak power.

01:26:11.840 | Anything before that is a warmup set.

01:26:14.160 | In the sport of Olympic weightlifting,

01:26:16.720 | a lot of times the coaches will measure barbell velocity.

01:26:19.760 | Travis Mash has done a fantastic job with this.

01:26:22.160 | He's got a lot of data

01:26:23.040 | on what's called velocity-based training.

01:26:25.280 | Brian Mann at Missouri and Miami, tons of work here.

01:26:28.680 | And generally those communities are not going to count

01:26:31.920 | any repetition as a working set

01:26:33.800 | until you exceed 70% of your one rep max.

01:26:37.740 | Where that's changed because of a lot of people

01:26:40.160 | doing the velocity-based stuff

01:26:41.120 | is now they're basing that simply on an achieved velocity.

01:26:44.520 | And so really the warmup is irrelevant.

01:26:46.600 | They don't even, it's sort of just like do whatever you want

01:26:48.600 | and we're gonna measure the barbell

01:26:49.600 | until you actually hit an outcome.

01:26:51.200 | And now you're at what a working set.

01:26:53.280 | So different ways to think about it,

01:26:56.020 | depending on what you're training for,

01:26:57.640 | that'll give you a little bit of a guideline.

01:26:58.960 | If you're training for anything past hypertrophy,

01:27:02.540 | then really, and especially even hypertrophy,

01:27:04.280 | it just comes down to, are you feeling ready to work?

01:27:09.280 | Are you cold?

01:27:10.480 | Are you moving through the correct positions?

01:27:12.380 | And if all those things are fine,

01:27:14.260 | I don't care if you start a little bit early

01:27:15.640 | and save some gas, especially if you're a person like you

01:27:18.520 | who may be a bit more inclined to fatigue quickly,

01:27:22.920 | relative to Trevor who just has no response

01:27:25.820 | to fatigue whatsoever.

01:27:27.480 | - Is it useful to do more warmup

01:27:30.240 | at the beginning of a workout,

01:27:31.960 | say before the first exercise,

01:27:34.120 | and then once one has achieved both local

01:27:37.160 | and systemic warmup, in air quotes,

01:27:39.800 | then perhaps on the second or third exercise,

01:27:44.800 | fourth exercise, et cetera,

01:27:47.640 | one or maybe even zero warmups?

01:27:50.160 | - Yeah, fair point.

01:27:51.480 | We generally think about warmups in a couple of ways.

01:27:54.560 | This is a very clever question.

01:27:57.040 | You want to have some sort of general global warmup scheme.

01:28:00.900 | We tend to prefer dynamic warmups.

01:28:03.900 | So this is whole body movements

01:28:05.660 | rather than like sitting and stretching,

01:28:07.840 | static stretching, things like that.

01:28:09.260 | - So something that involves momentum.

01:28:11.320 | - Yeah, momentum or movement, right?

01:28:13.040 | So this is like, think about this in like old gym class.

01:28:17.840 | It's like your high knees and your butt kickers

01:28:20.080 | and just different things like that,

01:28:21.240 | where you're moving in different planes.

01:28:23.320 | You're moving joints through tons of range of motion.

01:28:25.480 | You're getting a lot of movement there.

01:28:27.080 | So you're getting the local warmup.

01:28:28.960 | You're also getting the total systemic activation.

01:28:32.160 | Everything else is going on there.

01:28:33.200 | So that is what would be considered to be a general warmup.

01:28:36.000 | Five minutes is a very sufficient number.

01:28:38.880 | Perhaps 10 if you're a slow goer,

01:28:41.120 | achy and some things like that.

01:28:43.240 | And you really got to get the ankle warmed up

01:28:45.440 | if you're doing lower body stuff,

01:28:46.620 | really make sure that that's moving correctly.

01:28:48.980 | The hips and knees will follow.

01:28:50.920 | Upper body stuff really good.

01:28:52.460 | The shoulder blades and the neck,

01:28:54.240 | like making sure you're going there

01:28:55.440 | and the elbows will follow after that.

01:28:57.480 | So five to seven minutes of a general warmup.

01:29:00.960 | A lot of the times like classic exercise science,

01:29:03.320 | it will even just put you on a bike,

01:29:05.200 | cycling for five minutes.

01:29:06.240 | I don't like that personally.

01:29:08.220 | Dynamic movement is more preferred.

01:29:09.440 | If you really just move five to seven minutes,

01:29:11.040 | you'll be fine there.

01:29:12.080 | Now, specificity within each movement.

01:29:14.680 | It's very important that your first exercise of the day

01:29:17.800 | is generally the thing you've prioritize.

01:29:20.280 | That's oftentimes the most important you're going to do.

01:29:23.300 | It oftentimes is also the most complex

01:29:27.040 | and the most moving parts.

01:29:29.280 | So it tends to be multi-joint,

01:29:31.500 | therefore you need to have movement precision

01:29:34.720 | and skill dialed, right?

01:29:35.920 | You don't typically start your workouts off

01:29:38.160 | with the forearm curl, right?

01:29:39.920 | Like that's, you don't need a tremendous amount of warmup

01:29:42.340 | to get going on that.

01:29:43.460 | You're going to start off with medicine ball throws

01:29:45.640 | or a snatch or some agility work.

01:29:47.960 | You need to have the whole system going

01:29:49.560 | because multiple joints are moving,

01:29:50.880 | position matters, technique.

01:29:52.280 | There's just a lot of skill requirement, et cetera.

01:29:55.580 | So the individualized workout

01:29:58.720 | or the specific workout for the specific movement

01:30:01.160 | for that very first one,

01:30:03.120 | my general rule of thumb is like whatever it takes

01:30:06.160 | to move perfect in that first exercise.

01:30:09.160 | Past that, you don't necessarily need

01:30:11.400 | to do individualized warmups for your next movements

01:30:13.620 | unless it is a movement you're trying to learn

01:30:16.680 | or just even get a little bit better at.

01:30:18.680 | Like drop the load a little bit,

01:30:20.280 | work on some accruing some practice reps, fantastic.

01:30:24.080 | Or it's another dissimilar complex movement.

01:30:27.300 | So let's say your first exercise was a front squat

01:30:31.320 | and you got loaded for that

01:30:32.200 | and now you're going to move into a pull-up

01:30:33.640 | but your mechanics aren't the best there.

01:30:34.960 | And so you really need to change

01:30:36.720 | and do some maybe more specific activation warmups for that

01:30:40.120 | or something else or it's running

01:30:41.700 | or something totally different.

01:30:43.080 | So yeah, you don't need to rewarm up

01:30:45.080 | for every single exercise as you go.

01:30:47.200 | Generally, once you're good to go,

01:30:49.440 | the same muscles that you're going to use

01:30:50.820 | in the next exercise are warm, same joints,

01:30:53.840 | then you're good to go.

01:30:55.600 | - You talked about intent within the movement.

01:30:59.440 | What about specific cadences for repetitions?

01:31:04.720 | - I was taught that one should lower the weight slowly,

01:31:08.720 | the so-called eccentric portion of the movement,

01:31:11.040 | and then to try and explode the weight

01:31:15.840 | through the concentric phase.

01:31:18.300 | And then also make sure that one is using

01:31:21.400 | full range of motion and perfect form as it were.

01:31:26.360 | Now, of course, that is one tiny slice

01:31:29.440 | of the possible rep cadences

01:31:32.740 | and ways to approach resistance training.

01:31:35.640 | Although I think it's a pretty good one.

01:31:38.120 | What are the general parameter sets

01:31:40.680 | that one needs to consider?

01:31:41.880 | You could imagine lifting four seconds concentric,

01:31:45.200 | pause for one, pause for two, eccentric.

01:31:48.200 | I realize there's an infinite number of variations here,

01:31:51.320 | but is there a way to use rep cadence,

01:31:54.060 | repetition cadence that is,

01:31:55.860 | as a way to work through weak points

01:31:58.720 | and to be strong in every position of the movement?

01:32:01.840 | - Yeah, a lovely question.

01:32:03.380 | I think the way I would like to answer this

01:32:07.300 | is maybe going back just a touch to get directly to that.

01:32:11.960 | So I think if we walk through power, strength,

01:32:14.980 | and hypertrophy, and I hit you with the concepts

01:32:17.960 | that are specific to each one,

01:32:20.120 | that's going to lay out your answer

01:32:21.820 | because the most true answer there is

01:32:23.800 | it depends on the goal.

01:32:25.320 | The answer for what is optimal for strength

01:32:28.340 | is diametrically opposed for potentially what's optimized

01:32:31.660 | for hypertrophy.

01:32:32.680 | The same exact thing can be said for momentum.

01:32:35.260 | So we've classically heard things like this.

01:32:37.800 | Don't bounce at the bottom.

01:32:40.040 | You're cheating.

01:32:41.200 | So if you're doing a lat pull down or something,

01:32:44.480 | you don't bounce and rebound.

01:32:45.880 | You stop at the bottom, slow down.

01:32:49.160 | All of these things are thought to be truisms

01:32:52.240 | of strength conditioning, but guess what?

01:32:54.000 | Those are all truisms assuming we're trying to grow muscle.

01:32:58.560 | And that actually goes back to our conversation

01:33:01.120 | in episode one about a lot of the things

01:33:03.860 | we think are just fundamental truths

01:33:05.360 | about strength training are just fundamental truths

01:33:07.840 | that came from the bodybuilding world.

01:33:09.580 | And they're not wrong.

01:33:10.420 | They're good ideas.

01:33:11.580 | But there are other adaptations one needs to get

01:33:14.600 | from strength training that are not just maximizing

01:33:17.120 | muscle growth.

01:33:17.960 | So what I will lay out to you is a case

01:33:19.720 | for which you should bounce,

01:33:22.400 | a case for when you should go fast,

01:33:24.180 | a case for when you should be under control.

01:33:26.840 | All of these things are different variables

01:33:29.500 | we can modify and get different adaptations for it.

01:33:32.400 | - Is there a way that you could lay out for us

01:33:35.100 | optimal repetition cadences for strength specifically

01:33:40.100 | versus hypertrophy specifically,

01:33:43.300 | just to sort of bookend the conversation

01:33:45.520 | and then migrate toward the middle in terms of rep cadences

01:33:48.800 | that would satisfy the desire to have a bit of both?

01:33:51.920 | - We can get pretty close.

01:33:53.400 | Yeah, so when you're talking about strength

01:33:56.640 | versus hypertrophy, remember strength is movement.

01:34:00.200 | Hypertrophy is muscle size.

01:34:02.520 | That's the key to your answer here.

01:34:05.060 | So when you're trying to get stronger,

01:34:06.780 | what you're effectively trying to do

01:34:08.680 | is get better at producing a certain amount

01:34:10.520 | of force through a movement.

01:34:12.240 | Now force is mass times acceleration.

01:34:16.160 | So what's the mass in the bar multiplied

01:34:18.300 | by how well I can accelerate it.

01:34:21.020 | Intentionally going slower is only reducing acceleration.

01:34:27.020 | Right?

01:34:27.980 | So it's hard to argue that going slower

01:34:32.580 | is going to improve strength

01:34:34.660 | 'cause you're simply reducing acceleration.

01:34:37.080 | So you need to practice lifting heavier at a faster rate.

01:34:42.080 | Now, does that mean if you're trying to get stronger,

01:34:46.220 | there are no phases of your training

01:34:47.820 | in which you will slow down or pause?

01:34:49.280 | No, of course not.

01:34:50.680 | There are certain rules in different organizations

01:34:53.160 | where you have to pause the bottom.

01:34:55.260 | Like there's all kinds of little things like there.

01:34:57.300 | But in general, we wanna think about

01:34:59.180 | what are we trying to do here?

01:35:00.900 | We're trying to get better at moving a heavier mass

01:35:04.500 | at a faster rate of acceleration.

01:35:06.100 | That is more force, that is more strength.

01:35:09.180 | Hypertrophy is not that.

01:35:11.540 | The goal here is not a functional outcome.

01:35:13.860 | It is what is needed to cause

01:35:15.580 | the most amount of hypertrophy.

01:35:18.100 | And when you get to hypertrophy then,

01:35:19.580 | your optimal cadence is up to you.

01:35:23.100 | You can do any combination.

01:35:24.300 | In fact, you could do it the same exact cadence

01:35:27.540 | that you did your strength training with

01:35:28.940 | and get the same adaptations as hypertrophy

01:35:31.860 | if you modify the other variables appropriately.

01:35:34.460 | Or you could go slower.

01:35:36.820 | Or you could do pauses.

01:35:38.900 | Or you could do a thing that is called triphasic training

01:35:42.740 | where you spend the first phase,

01:35:43.940 | several weeks of your training,

01:35:45.160 | where you do eccentrics only.

01:35:47.000 | So you're just lowering the bar and you're basically stopping.

01:35:49.860 | You could then do the next phase of your training,

01:35:51.700 | which is isometrics.

01:35:52.880 | You're just holding at that bottom position.

01:35:54.860 | And then the next phase of your training,

01:35:56.060 | you're focusing on the concentric portion of it, right?

01:35:58.440 | Triphasic, one, two, three,

01:35:59.500 | eccentric, isometric, concentric.

01:36:01.960 | So that's a fantastic way of developing actually strength,

01:36:05.100 | a little bit of hypertrophy,

01:36:06.580 | but you're manipulating the variables

01:36:08.460 | in terms of how you execute the repetition range.

01:36:11.260 | You can actually induce a lot of hypertrophy

01:36:13.980 | moving the weight fast, as you mentioned,

01:36:16.100 | even down, slow, under control.

01:36:17.260 | Now, one thing one will never advocate

01:36:20.540 | is moving any sort of weight or load uncontrolled.

01:36:23.760 | The assumption here, when I'm saying go fast,

01:36:25.500 | is you're always in control.

01:36:27.000 | I never want you bouncing and crushing your sternum

01:36:29.720 | with a barbell if it does.

01:36:30.740 | But you can move at a lot of rates.

01:36:34.060 | The isometric I mentioned,

01:36:35.160 | because this is when things like

01:36:36.280 | body weight training come into play.

01:36:38.560 | Absolutely, you can gain strength.

01:36:39.920 | And even a little bit of hypertrophy,

01:36:42.140 | especially in the upper body, doing isometrics,

01:36:44.520 | is much harder to do this with the lower body.

01:36:48.000 | You outrun that coverage really quickly.

01:36:50.480 | You need load.

01:36:51.700 | But there's a lot of ways.

01:36:52.620 | This is also probably why people have done things

01:36:54.520 | like gone to yoga only, or Pilates,

01:36:58.060 | or some of these things that are body weight based,

01:36:59.760 | and there's no external load,

01:37:00.720 | and they've actually increased muscle size.

01:37:03.320 | - So I'm getting the picture there are a ton of options

01:37:05.920 | in terms of rep cadences.

01:37:07.760 | However, can we say that one should pick

01:37:11.800 | a given rep cadence within an exercise,

01:37:14.940 | rather than changing it from set to set within an exercise,

01:37:17.280 | or that one should perhaps even pick a certain rep cadence

01:37:20.420 | for an entire workout?

01:37:22.160 | I'm suspecting that your answer is going to be, it depends.

01:37:24.920 | - Yeah, it is.

01:37:25.820 | - But if, you know, I'm not going to use the,

01:37:27.720 | if you had a gun to your head kind of situation,

01:37:30.220 | but if you had a gun to your head,

01:37:32.060 | what would be the rep cadence that you would prescribe

01:37:35.400 | for strictly strength or as much strength

01:37:39.420 | with as little hypertrophy as possible?

01:37:41.420 | And in picking that rep cadence,

01:37:43.720 | then it therefore has to thread

01:37:45.680 | throughout the entire exercise bout.

01:37:48.300 | - So you're actually right.

01:37:49.320 | You can, because of that undulating periodization stuff

01:37:51.480 | I talked about, you can actually do this in a lot of ways.

01:37:53.760 | So you could do one exercise at the beginning

01:37:57.020 | where you have a set cadence,

01:37:58.440 | say a three, one, one is like a very one.

01:38:01.400 | - So that's, so that's lifting for three,

01:38:04.260 | pause for one, lower for one.

01:38:06.060 | - Generally the opposite.

01:38:07.760 | - Okay, so the first number is always the eccentric.

01:38:09.780 | - Generally.

01:38:10.620 | - Okay, so lowering the weight for a count of three,

01:38:15.360 | pause for one.

01:38:16.640 | - It totally depends on the exercise.

01:38:17.840 | Like a deadlift starts comp centric and finishes eccentric,

01:38:20.440 | but a bench press starts the opposite.

01:38:21.600 | - Okay, so it's start to finish.

01:38:22.680 | - Start to finish is the better way to think about it.

01:38:24.200 | Yeah, so I'll clarify actually.

01:38:28.220 | When we say three, one, one,

01:38:29.160 | we're generally talking about almost always

01:38:31.340 | the eccentric is the slower portion,

01:38:33.720 | regardless if it's the first or the last, right?

01:38:35.880 | So whether you're doing a bench press

01:38:37.800 | where the eccentric is lowering the bar to your chest,

01:38:40.840 | that's the first part of the movement.

01:38:42.480 | One, two, three, pause one, one up,

01:38:46.020 | which means accelerate as hard as you can on the way up.

01:38:48.600 | That's what you described.

01:38:49.920 | - Right, as opposed to say a row.

01:38:51.660 | - A row, which is actually gonna be starting off concentric.

01:38:55.200 | So you're gonna be pulling that thing to your chest

01:38:56.760 | as fast as you can under control,

01:38:58.240 | not slamming off your chest, holding for one second,

01:39:00.180 | and then taking three seconds to lower it back on the rack

01:39:03.120 | or on the ground or whatever.

01:39:04.400 | So the reason we do that is somewhat intuitive,

01:39:07.500 | but it is, again, to make sure you're not advancing a bar

01:39:10.500 | or an implement onto your physical body

01:39:12.780 | at an extremely fast rate.

01:39:13.800 | That's very difficult to deal with.

01:39:16.120 | So a three, one, one is a very standard strength protocol

01:39:20.980 | that is something you can just run with.

01:39:22.800 | If that's all you ever wanted to do,

01:39:24.240 | it'd be absolutely fine.

01:39:25.540 | - Lower the bar for a count of three.

01:39:27.800 | It actually ends up being approximately three.

01:39:29.400 | - It is super.

01:39:30.240 | - Partly anybody is counting off seconds precisely.

01:39:32.660 | I mean, I suppose it's doable, but then pausing briefly.

01:39:36.560 | - Yep, and that brief is almost,

01:39:38.820 | that pause is almost unmeasurable.

01:39:42.780 | It is simply, are you under control

01:39:44.800 | before you transition from the eccentric to concentric

01:39:47.620 | or contact to each other?

01:39:48.760 | It's just a safety thing.

01:39:49.660 | So once you feel down, you've reached complete range

01:39:51.500 | of motion, you're ready to transition, then just go.

01:39:53.220 | You don't really need to go like thousand one

01:39:55.340 | and then go up.

01:39:56.180 | It's just making sure, again,

01:39:57.000 | we don't slam weights off of body parts.

01:39:59.480 | - And that final one in the three, one, one

01:40:02.440 | is the execution of the usually concentric portion

01:40:06.360 | of the exercise.

01:40:07.300 | - Yep, as fast as you possibly can.

01:40:08.900 | - Okay, so that would be for the majority

01:40:12.940 | of the outcome being strength.

01:40:15.240 | - Yep.

01:40:16.080 | - Okay, and of course we should acknowledge, again,

01:40:19.240 | there are a ton of variations that one could implement there

01:40:22.140 | but that would be a good starting place.

01:40:24.060 | On the opposite side, for somebody who's mainly interested

01:40:26.900 | in hypertrophy, what would be the rep cadence that,

01:40:30.240 | if you had a gun to your head, that you would prescribe?

01:40:33.980 | - I would probably do the exact same thing,

01:40:35.500 | but I would make the last number two.

01:40:38.240 | So three, one, two.

01:40:41.760 | You could also just keep three, one, one.

01:40:44.760 | It is still very fine.

01:40:46.800 | Even exploding on the contract is still highly effective

01:40:50.300 | for training hypertrophy.

01:40:51.140 | So if you want to keep it super simple

01:40:52.740 | and just make rep cadence not a variable

01:40:55.320 | that you play with, 'cause you have other ones to move,

01:40:57.120 | that's great.

01:40:57.960 | If you want to add a little bit of time

01:41:00.020 | to the concentric phase, fine.

01:41:02.460 | It's not gonna do, it's not going to make enough

01:41:05.200 | of a difference for most people

01:41:07.680 | for you to really worry about.

01:41:09.400 | I guess that's sort of the point I really want to make.

01:41:12.440 | This is, we're classic, this is a classic example

01:41:14.440 | of we're deep into a method, right?

01:41:16.920 | If as long as you hit the concepts I talked about earlier,

01:41:19.220 | whether you want to do three, one, one, three, two, three,

01:41:21.280 | three, three, three, three, triphasic,

01:41:23.780 | this is just a method choice.

01:41:25.120 | It doesn't mean they're irrelevant.

01:41:26.920 | There are subtle changes within them.

01:41:28.940 | It's just 80/20 rule, right?

01:41:30.560 | So 80% of the benefit is gonna be from the concept.

01:41:33.120 | 20% is this small thing.

01:41:34.880 | If you're super into this field,

01:41:36.920 | or you actually want to work with a qualified,

01:41:39.440 | certified coach or something,

01:41:41.280 | there's lots of reasons to play with this.

01:41:42.960 | If you're just on your own here and running this thing,

01:41:45.720 | three, one, one is fine.

01:41:46.960 | Three, one, two, totally fine.

01:41:48.560 | Anything like that.

01:41:50.040 | You really just want to make sure

01:41:52.520 | that in the strength side of the equation,

01:41:55.440 | you're under control and you can add enough load

01:41:58.680 | to stimulate strength and not get hurt with an acute trauma,

01:42:02.640 | right?

01:42:03.460 | On the hypertrophy side, you're just wanting to load enough

01:42:05.880 | to where you can hit volume,

01:42:07.460 | 'cause you got to put a lot on there.

01:42:08.560 | So if you want to go lighter, if you want to go slower, fine.

01:42:12.400 | If you go slower in your repetition,

01:42:14.160 | so maybe even like a five second eccentric,

01:42:17.640 | a two second pause, a three second rise, that's great.

01:42:21.520 | You can actually then stimulate the same amount

01:42:23.320 | of hypertrophy and either do it with less weight

01:42:25.960 | or do it with less repetitions.

01:42:28.680 | So it's a variable you can play with if you're like,

01:42:30.640 | hey, I don't have enough weights at my house

01:42:35.180 | or I only have a kettlebell or a dumbbell.

01:42:37.620 | How am I going to stimulate hypertrophy?

01:42:39.740 | Your only option is really doing more reps.

01:42:41.740 | Well, eventually that train runs pretty shallow.

01:42:45.120 | Okay, here's the thing you can play with.

01:42:46.660 | Maybe just add time under tension,

01:42:48.640 | is what we're calling it, right?

01:42:50.260 | Just do slower repetitions, go longer ones and hold it.

01:42:53.180 | So it's a variable that we use to individualize programs

01:42:56.300 | rather than something that you should really be focused on

01:42:58.140 | as like a core aspect that's going to be driving

01:43:00.660 | whether or not your program works.

01:43:02.340 | It's just a tool we can play with in the what if scenarios.

01:43:05.900 | I will use this stuff a lot when I'm traveling.

01:43:08.660 | You can do a tremendous workout in your hotel room

01:43:11.260 | just doing like a 10 second eccentric,

01:43:13.500 | a 10 second hold, a 10 centric concentric.

01:43:16.700 | - Yeah, I've had some decent hotel room workouts.

01:43:19.280 | They're not my preference,

01:43:20.340 | but by simply doing things like 10 second

01:43:25.340 | lowering handstand pushup against the door.

01:43:28.820 | - Totally.

01:43:29.800 | - Obviously assisted for me,

01:43:31.720 | I can't do a free handstand pushup.

01:43:34.300 | I just don't have the skill or the strength or both.

01:43:37.620 | You can do some sort of configured dips

01:43:39.860 | between the beds or chairs and this kind of thing.

01:43:43.280 | - Rear foot elevated split squats are great to do in hotels.

01:43:45.620 | Put your back foot up on a bed

01:43:47.660 | and get an amazing split squat workout done.

01:43:50.100 | Yeah, glute bridges, lots of stuff you can do there.

01:43:51.780 | - Yeah, and with a jump rope.

01:43:52.780 | If you've ever heard someone jumping in the morning.

01:43:55.520 | It may or may not have been me.

01:43:58.300 | It could be any number of things,

01:43:59.200 | but I am known to skip rope in hotel rooms.

01:44:02.500 | Not to get overly detailed,

01:44:05.140 | but I think there are going to be a number of people

01:44:07.680 | wondering about how to breathe during repetitions

01:44:12.180 | and how to breathe in between sets.

01:44:15.180 | So I'd like to just briefly touch on this

01:44:16.780 | and this is something that I know

01:44:17.900 | we're going to return to again

01:44:19.240 | when we have our discussion about recovery.

01:44:21.500 | But is there a general rule of thumb

01:44:25.060 | for how to breathe during repetitions, during work,

01:44:29.340 | for strength, maybe even strength versus hypertrophy

01:44:32.860 | in a way that maximizes oxygen input to the system,

01:44:36.980 | keeps you alert and conscious,

01:44:40.260 | but that also protects the body

01:44:42.520 | by creating some rigidity in the system, right?

01:44:44.980 | Because certainly being deep with all your exhale,

01:44:48.580 | the body is a very different beast in terms of stability

01:44:51.540 | than with the body full of air

01:44:53.300 | versus breathing during the repetition movement.

01:44:55.940 | - There's a maneuver that has long been labeled

01:45:00.180 | the Valsalva technique.

01:45:02.000 | So what that really means is you're trying to use air

01:45:04.860 | to create intra-abdominal pressure.

01:45:06.900 | And what you're really trying to do

01:45:08.100 | is create a cylinder around your spine.

01:45:11.260 | The real issue you have to play here

01:45:13.380 | is regulation of blood pressure and spinal stability.

01:45:17.300 | Now you should be able to breathe and brace.

01:45:19.860 | What I mean by that is you should be able

01:45:21.260 | to create total intra-abdominal pressure,

01:45:23.640 | regulate spine control while breathing.

01:45:26.740 | It's just very hard for a lot of people to do.

01:45:28.340 | It's a skill you should absolutely work on.

01:45:30.980 | You can actually, you can do this and you can go around.

01:45:32.980 | Like I do this trick in class and students can come

01:45:35.260 | and I can push any part of my entire abdomen super tight

01:45:39.640 | and I can talk.

01:45:40.480 | Now it's gonna be a little bit labored.

01:45:41.540 | You can hear a little bit of a difference,

01:45:42.780 | but you should be able to do that.

01:45:44.180 | If you have to like hunch down

01:45:46.020 | and you can't even muster a breath

01:45:48.180 | and it takes that to create pressure,

01:45:50.600 | you're not actually, you don't really understand

01:45:53.340 | the abdominal control necessary to create that stability.

01:45:56.740 | So step number one is that's the goal.

01:45:59.260 | Now with the blood pressure thing,

01:46:00.420 | we have to be careful because a standard blood pressure,

01:46:03.580 | ideally, if we sat around right now,

01:46:06.040 | it was probably something like 120 over 80,

01:46:08.340 | systolic versus diastolic.

01:46:09.960 | That's a normal number, right?

01:46:11.460 | High blood pressure is something over that.

01:46:13.360 | Well, with an acute bout of exercise,

01:46:15.900 | you can see that number reach as high as like 450 over 350,

01:46:19.300 | which effectively means you have total blood occlusion.

01:46:21.780 | Right, your blood pressure is so high,

01:46:22.820 | blood is not moving anywhere.

01:46:23.900 | And so in the middle of a very heavy set,

01:46:25.560 | especially complex movements,

01:46:27.320 | especially when they're loaded on your body,

01:46:29.740 | this could be an overhead press or squat variations,

01:46:33.060 | anything like that, blood pressure is gonna be a problem.

01:46:35.460 | And the reason why that matters

01:46:36.440 | is that's what's gonna make you pass out.

01:46:38.080 | It's not the fact that you ran out of oxygen

01:46:39.720 | in three seconds.

01:46:40.940 | It's the fact that blood pressure got so high,

01:46:42.680 | you blacked out.

01:46:43.860 | And so we're gonna have to play this game

01:46:45.660 | of releasing a little bit of the pressure

01:46:47.180 | so we can actually get blood to move a little bit,

01:46:49.480 | making sure that we don't lose spinal stability

01:46:53.660 | so we can finish our workout.

01:46:54.600 | That's really the question you asked, right?

01:46:56.260 | How do I play this game of,

01:46:58.220 | oh, I have several hundred pounds on my back or my chest

01:47:00.960 | and I don't wanna exhale, right?

01:47:03.540 | So that I don't lose spinal stability,

01:47:04.900 | but at the same time, I don't wanna pass out, right?

01:47:07.260 | Which is a problem.

01:47:08.300 | So kind of a couple of rules of thumb.

01:47:10.580 | If you're going to be doing something

01:47:11.980 | in which you can complete the entire exercise

01:47:14.420 | without a breath and it is of a maximal or close to load,

01:47:17.940 | that's probably your best strategy.

01:47:19.700 | So in that particular case,

01:47:20.620 | you'll see a lot of breathing techniques

01:47:22.780 | where you're gonna take a very large inhale.

01:47:25.200 | Ideally, this is done through the abdomen,

01:47:27.300 | not the shoulders.

01:47:28.260 | So we shouldn't have seen clavicles rising during this thing.

01:47:31.220 | You'll see a common mistake of the bars on their back

01:47:33.780 | and you see people do this like big inhale thing

01:47:36.000 | and all they do is elevate their clavicles.

01:47:38.140 | That's not necessarily going to increase pressure

01:47:40.300 | through the abdomen, which is what you're looking for.

01:47:41.900 | So you wanna be thinking about belly moving out

01:47:44.240 | in all four areas, in front of you,

01:47:46.220 | to your left and right and to your back.

01:47:48.380 | That's that quadrant sort of idea of stabilizing your spine.

01:47:52.000 | You can do that independent of your clavicles moving.

01:47:54.920 | Your shoulders don't need to rise for that.

01:47:57.000 | You don't really need the oxygen for metabolic purposes.

01:48:00.540 | You're just using the air for a brace.

01:48:03.640 | That's really all you're after.

01:48:04.860 | - So you're trying to visualize your torso

01:48:07.660 | as more or less a cylinder.

01:48:09.140 | - Yep.

01:48:09.980 | - And you're trying to fill it with air,

01:48:11.980 | the logic being that if I were to push down

01:48:13.860 | onto a full unopened can of soda water,

01:48:18.860 | for all you sugar-phobes out there.

01:48:20.740 | - Soda water.

01:48:21.680 | - And then push as hard as I could.

01:48:25.700 | It's gonna be hard for me to crush that can,

01:48:27.920 | but if the can were empty

01:48:29.320 | or if it were a little bit kinked in the middle,

01:48:31.780 | then I could likely crush that can.

01:48:33.820 | - Yeah, what you're really doing

01:48:34.780 | is you have your spinal erectors in the back, right,

01:48:37.200 | and then a whole series of abdominal exercises,

01:48:39.240 | and you actually have some neural control,

01:48:41.160 | somatic control of contracting those.

01:48:44.140 | But you don't have muscles on the inside that you can do.

01:48:47.920 | So you're basically bringing in air

01:48:49.300 | and saying I'll use air to push from the inside out,

01:48:51.800 | and I'll use muscles to push from the outside in

01:48:53.920 | to create this brace.

01:48:55.200 | And I don't want over-compression with the muscles.

01:48:57.800 | This is, like if you see people

01:48:59.520 | that have just enormous spinal erectors,

01:49:02.400 | sometimes that's an indicator of actually a poor breathing

01:49:05.540 | or bracing strategy,

01:49:06.960 | because they're using spinal erectors

01:49:09.160 | to create all their compression

01:49:10.200 | and not actually using the inside of them.

01:49:12.040 | That's not always the case,

01:49:12.900 | but sort of like a thing to think about.

01:49:14.760 | So over-compression through the spinal erectors

01:49:17.580 | is not necessarily ideal.

01:49:19.480 | If you wanted, the best scenario

01:49:21.640 | is a little bit of a brace of both.

01:49:23.200 | So we use some air to push this side,

01:49:24.640 | we use some musculature to press that way,

01:49:26.560 | and then that spine is nicely held in position.

01:49:31.600 | Again, not in a position where I've locked down my diaphragm

01:49:33.960 | and I can't get any air out.

01:49:35.660 | I should be able to get that brace pattern

01:49:38.440 | and then be able to speak.

01:49:39.280 | Like I'm doing it right now.

01:49:40.240 | And you'll see like a little bit of a,

01:49:41.760 | if you're really paying attention to my voice,

01:49:43.580 | you can hear a little bit of a subtle difference,

01:49:45.440 | but I should be able to do this for quite a long time.

01:49:47.720 | Right, like I could take a maximum rep right here

01:49:50.320 | in this position, whether I'm overhead pressing,

01:49:52.640 | doing some sort of row, like anything,

01:49:54.520 | and feel very braced in the entire quadrant.

01:49:57.620 | - This is very helpful.

01:50:00.100 | I'm going to work on it,

01:50:01.780 | but can we say that an effective way to start off

01:50:06.260 | in terms of breathing during repetitions

01:50:08.360 | would be to take a gulp of air during the lowering phase,

01:50:12.800 | the eccentric phase,

01:50:13.640 | and then to exhale during the concentric exertion phase.

01:50:17.800 | I ask that because that's what I've been doing for a while

01:50:20.160 | and it makes me feel safe.

01:50:22.200 | I don't know if I am, and it allows me to exhale

01:50:25.200 | as I exert the hardest portion of the exercise.

01:50:30.160 | And perhaps I also borrowed that from martial arts

01:50:33.000 | where one most often is trained to exhale on the strike.

01:50:38.360 | If you're going to be doing, again,

01:50:39.860 | the number of repetitions can be completed

01:50:41.560 | without a breath, a lot of times you're better off

01:50:44.560 | saving that exhalation until you complete.

01:50:47.360 | - Wow, but- - But you don't have to.

01:50:48.480 | - But for a reasonably heavy set of hack squats

01:50:50.960 | or even leg extensions,

01:50:52.160 | and given that I already can't leg extension

01:50:55.000 | my body weight as we establish- - Maybe this is why.

01:50:57.300 | - Yeah, maybe this is why.

01:50:58.640 | The idea of holding my breath for an entire compound set-

01:51:03.780 | - So again, I'm clarifying. - Brings to mind,

01:51:06.480 | you know, like, where's my insurance card?

01:51:08.760 | Who's going to drive me to the hospital?

01:51:10.880 | This kind of thing.

01:51:12.520 | In all seriousness, what if I want to breathe during the set?

01:51:15.600 | - Yeah, so I'll clarify.

01:51:19.220 | I'm generally meaning if you're doing like a one rep max

01:51:22.080 | or something like that.

01:51:23.040 | - Okay, well then certainly I could hold my breath

01:51:24.580 | for a one repetition maximum.

01:51:26.140 | - You know, maybe like a double or something like that,

01:51:28.620 | depending on what you're doing, like maybe a triple.

01:51:31.240 | A bench press, you can probably do three

01:51:33.520 | and get away with it.

01:51:34.360 | A squat, it gets harder, deadlift.

01:51:35.720 | So it kind of depends on the exercise.

01:51:37.360 | You want to take that breath though

01:51:39.040 | prior to the eccentric portion, not during.

01:51:42.680 | So breathe in, lock, we're set,

01:51:46.460 | and now start our movement pattern, wherever it's going to be.

01:51:49.120 | Exhaling on the concentric portion during it, it is fine.

01:51:52.400 | It's no problem, especially if you're not extremely heavy.

01:51:56.240 | - And what are your thoughts on grunting and screaming?

01:51:59.080 | - Yeah, fine, I don't care.

01:52:00.440 | - I don't tend to do that.

01:52:01.480 | I'm occasionally known to squeal or whimper,

01:52:04.420 | but I do it very quietly.

01:52:06.980 | - I think of you and I think squeal, whimper, absolutely.

01:52:09.220 | - Thanks.

01:52:10.500 | - If you're going to be doing multiple repetitions,

01:52:12.960 | what we actually do for the NFL Combine

01:52:15.600 | is we teach them a very specific Excel strategy.

01:52:17.500 | So there's one test that they do,

01:52:18.920 | which is they bench press 225 pounds

01:52:20.720 | for as many reps as possible.

01:52:22.040 | A lot of these people will get 25 to 40 repetitions.

01:52:25.100 | So we have a very specific breathing pattern.

01:52:26.640 | It would be something like,

01:52:27.520 | if we think that they're going to do around 25 reps,

01:52:30.160 | say that's like our goal, we might say,

01:52:32.260 | okay, do the first 10 without a breath, and then exhale,

01:52:36.120 | reset, and then do five breath.

01:52:38.320 | And then you might do five breath, three breath,

01:52:41.400 | two breath, and then one breath per rep

01:52:43.400 | until we can't get any more.

01:52:44.860 | So we'll have very specific strategies for them.

01:52:47.740 | So what I would say is think about

01:52:49.240 | how many you're going to complete,

01:52:51.080 | and then breathe according to that.

01:52:53.680 | And it tends to increase in frequency

01:52:55.800 | as the number gets closer to failure,

01:52:57.600 | 'cause you're gonna want that air a little bit.

01:52:59.400 | But you just wanna make sure that

01:53:01.680 | when you're breathing back in, you're in a safe spot.

01:53:05.740 | So you don't wanna be catching that like,

01:53:07.540 | re-breath when the weight's on you.

01:53:10.300 | You wanna be in a locked out position

01:53:11.800 | or away from you when you're standing.

01:53:13.920 | So it tends to be like at the end of the exercise,

01:53:16.500 | not in the middle of it,

01:53:17.740 | which is going to be a recipe for problems

01:53:19.980 | if you take your breath then.

01:53:21.380 | - One of the reasons I'm so happy to have you here,

01:53:25.680 | having this discussion is we can really get into the weeds,

01:53:28.180 | but also hit a number of questions that I hear a lot.

01:53:30.960 | - Yep.

01:53:31.940 | - How does one contend with the first attempt at a lift

01:53:36.020 | not working out?

01:53:36.900 | Is it too heavy?

01:53:38.700 | Something goes wrong, hopefully not injury promoting wrong,

01:53:42.000 | but something goes wrong.

01:53:43.400 | Do you count that?

01:53:44.240 | Do you reset the workout?

01:53:46.440 | And then the counterpart to that question is,

01:53:50.260 | what do you do if it's too easy?

01:53:51.820 | It went wrong because you didn't put enough weight

01:53:53.860 | on the bar, didn't pick up a heavy enough set of dumbbells.

01:53:56.100 | Do you abandon the set and replace it with another?

01:53:59.900 | And I guess this is really a question of

01:54:02.380 | how much margin for error is there in volume

01:54:05.900 | when doing this three by five program?

01:54:07.980 | - Sure.

01:54:08.980 | Two things that I'd like to start with.

01:54:11.520 | Number one is I talked about linear periodization

01:54:13.980 | and undulating periodization.

01:54:14.900 | There's actually a new model, newish model

01:54:17.260 | called auto regulation,

01:54:18.940 | which basically says you're going to go in today

01:54:21.420 | and depending on any number of biomarkers,

01:54:24.160 | performance markers, or your performance,

01:54:26.520 | you will adjust your training based on

01:54:28.820 | how you're feeling that day.

01:54:30.540 | And so 70% is not maybe, for example,

01:54:32.820 | not necessarily 70% of your one arm repetition max

01:54:36.380 | highest ever.

01:54:37.380 | It's 70% of what you can actually do that day.

01:54:40.420 | And so it actually allows you to auto regulate

01:54:42.400 | your training based on actually what's happening.

01:54:44.260 | And so you don't have to have as much long-term planning

01:54:47.140 | in your program design

01:54:48.380 | because it'll sort of figure itself out as you're going.

01:54:51.660 | You can use velocity to determine this auto regulation.

01:54:54.480 | You can use actually, it's like taking it up

01:54:56.640 | to close to a max for the day.

01:54:58.460 | And then basing all your percentages on that daily max

01:55:01.660 | or a lot of different ways.

01:55:02.580 | So that is actually one very effective strategy.

01:55:05.440 | And there's a lot of research coming out on auto regulation.

01:55:07.500 | There's a lot of different ways to do it.

01:55:09.740 | So that's one thing to say.

01:55:12.380 | Another thing to say is this, three to five, okay.

01:55:15.960 | It depends on if we're going for speed, power or strength

01:55:19.020 | because while all those other variables

01:55:21.200 | are the same for three to five,

01:55:22.980 | the core difference between whether that is a power workout

01:55:26.100 | or a strength workout is the load, right?

01:55:29.760 | So if you are at a moderate load,

01:55:31.540 | say 30% of your one repetition max up to about 70%,

01:55:35.840 | that's going to be a power-based adaptation,

01:55:39.140 | assuming you're going with high intent.

01:55:41.700 | - Can you, sorry, I have to interrupt.

01:55:44.460 | Maybe just clarify what intent is.

01:55:46.680 | - Yeah, you're attempting to move the implement

01:55:48.860 | or go through the movement pattern as fast as you can.

01:55:51.700 | - Great, thank you.

01:55:52.920 | - If you're trying to go for strength

01:55:54.740 | and you're below 70%,

01:55:57.580 | you're not really going to be improving strength

01:55:59.420 | because the total mass is not heavy enough.

01:56:02.940 | And so really when we say strength,

01:56:04.580 | we're assuming you're at at least generally 70% or higher.

01:56:09.500 | Now, if you're new to training,

01:56:11.940 | totally different thing, right?

01:56:12.780 | But if you're moderately trained to highly trained,

01:56:15.320 | you're going to be well north of 70%.

01:56:17.340 | So anything below that, we don't really count anyways.

01:56:19.500 | Those are warm upsets basically.

01:56:22.540 | So one thing to actually give you some very specific numbers

01:56:25.760 | here, and I don't have all of these memorized.

01:56:27.780 | We can perhaps provide a chart later

01:56:30.700 | or send out something to them.

01:56:32.580 | But there's a chart that you can look up

01:56:34.000 | called a pryllipin chart.

01:56:35.840 | - How do you spell that?

01:56:36.900 | - P-R-I-L-I-P-I-N, pryllipin.

01:56:41.720 | And there's actually been a few studies on it.

01:56:44.100 | It's been around for a very long time.

01:56:47.460 | It's sort of in the coaching realm.

01:56:48.860 | And then a handful of studies out of New Zealand came out

01:56:51.680 | in verifying and validating a lot of it.

01:56:53.580 | But what it effectively does is if strength is the goal,

01:56:56.460 | and this comes from the powerlifting, weightlifting

01:56:58.240 | sort of communities who are optimizing for strength,

01:57:00.920 | then how much time do I need to spend

01:57:03.860 | at each intensity range?

01:57:06.580 | So 70%, 80%, 90%, et cetera.

01:57:08.860 | Because specificity is going to say this.

01:57:13.060 | If you want to get better, neuromuscular guy,

01:57:16.140 | at shooting a basketball, the most important thing

01:57:18.480 | you could ever do is shoot a basketball.

01:57:19.800 | Under the exact circumstances

01:57:22.060 | that you're going to do it, right?

01:57:23.180 | Specificity always wins.

01:57:25.080 | If you want to get better at strength,

01:57:27.020 | the most important thing you need to do

01:57:28.900 | is that exact movement at that load.

01:57:30.980 | And in this case, if you wanted to get better

01:57:32.700 | at your bench press, lifting at 100% of your max

01:57:37.700 | on a bench press is the most specific thing

01:57:39.780 | you could ever do.

01:57:40.660 | The more you can do that, the faster you will increase

01:57:43.620 | your bench press max.

01:57:44.980 | However, that's very hard to do without getting hurt.

01:57:48.900 | It's also not addressing what I call your defender.

01:57:52.440 | So if the reason you can't bench press

01:57:54.480 | higher than whatever you're benching now,

01:57:56.600 | it may not be your pure strength.

01:57:58.080 | It may be any number of things like

01:57:59.840 | you don't have enough muscle or technique or these things.

01:58:02.500 | Okay, great.

01:58:03.340 | So specificity over here.

01:58:05.000 | Variation on the other side.

01:58:07.940 | So we're playing this game we've talked about

01:58:09.660 | of how do I make sure that I can have enough specificity

01:58:12.640 | in my training without leading to overuse injury?

01:58:17.900 | How do I maximize or how do I reduce my chance of injury

01:58:21.420 | while getting enough specificity?

01:58:22.700 | And so we have a classic paradigm over here.

01:58:25.060 | One actually training protocol you can look up

01:58:27.340 | is called the Bulgarian method.

01:58:29.100 | And the Bulgarians were amazing

01:58:32.020 | at the sport of Olympic weightlifting.

01:58:33.900 | Probably, in fact, the patriarch of this entire thing

01:58:38.900 | recently passed away, Ivan Ibejev.

01:58:43.360 | Niamh Suleimanoglu, pocket Hercules,

01:58:45.160 | one of the greatest weightlifters of all time

01:58:46.620 | came out of the system.

01:58:47.620 | And they do a lot of things.

01:58:48.780 | But one example in the Bulgarian system

01:58:51.200 | is you're going to do a one repetition maximum snatch.

01:58:54.780 | You're gonna take a little bit of a break.

01:58:56.140 | You'll do a one repetition maximum clean and jerk.

01:58:58.140 | Take a little bit of a break.

01:58:59.260 | Do a one repetition maximum front squat.

01:59:01.500 | Take a little bit of a break.

01:59:02.380 | And you're gonna repeat that two to three times

01:59:03.780 | a day every day.

01:59:04.620 | That's specificity, right?

01:59:07.300 | Those people get extraordinarily strong.

01:59:09.900 | Now they don't do that all year round.

01:59:11.180 | They don't do that with all their lifters.

01:59:12.500 | But this is when we're trying to peak

01:59:14.420 | for a major competition like the Olympics.

01:59:16.020 | We are going so far into specificity.

01:59:19.700 | And that was very counter to the Russian system at the time.

01:59:22.320 | Which is much more of our classic

01:59:23.720 | periodization sort of approach.

01:59:25.820 | Okay, specificity is tremendous.

01:59:27.720 | But in doing that, the Bulgarians just brutalize

01:59:30.740 | a lot of athletes, right?

01:59:31.740 | 'Cause it's very difficult to handle something like that.

01:59:33.720 | And you can't really do that that long

01:59:35.280 | without getting wrecked.

01:59:36.360 | - And there the goal is to win medals.

01:59:37.940 | - The goal is, it's a totally different thing

01:59:39.620 | than longevity out of here, right?

01:59:40.900 | Like we're trying to push the boundaries of--

01:59:42.940 | - Or aesthetic changes.

01:59:44.660 | Unless someone has a naturally balanced physique.

01:59:46.900 | - Totally. - In general,

01:59:47.740 | if people do one sort of movement,

01:59:50.140 | I find that they tend to resemble the equipment

01:59:52.220 | that they did that movement with over time.

01:59:54.320 | - Right.

01:59:55.160 | - That was a joke against kettlebells.

01:59:56.340 | - Of course, of course, of course, I got it.

01:59:59.000 | So we know specificity is technically optimal,

02:00:02.740 | but it's not realistic.

02:00:04.020 | Not for that kind of a extreme situation.

02:00:07.380 | So how do we balance these things?

02:00:08.720 | Well, it turns out this Parillipin chart

02:00:10.520 | gives you guidelines for how much time,

02:00:12.940 | and by time I mean how many repetitions,

02:00:15.340 | to stand in each of these rep ranges

02:00:18.660 | so that you get kind of the best of this world.

02:00:20.740 | You're gonna find the same thing, by the way,

02:00:22.240 | when we get into endurance training.

02:00:24.020 | There's only so much training you can do

02:00:26.060 | at 95% of your heart rate,

02:00:27.620 | before it starts becoming quite detrimental.

02:00:29.780 | You need to actually spend a lot of time

02:00:31.500 | at those lower intensities.

02:00:33.740 | So the Parillipin chart walks you through how many sets,

02:00:37.420 | and it gives you a range.

02:00:38.740 | I think that the bottom of it is like,

02:00:40.920 | how much time do you spend at 60 to 70%

02:00:43.380 | of your one-rep max?

02:00:44.220 | And it says a minimum of this set to a maximum of this set,

02:00:47.060 | but the ideal number of reps per set per week is 18.

02:00:50.140 | And then it walks you through,

02:00:50.980 | and so there's four criteria on it.

02:00:53.660 | I think it's 55 to 65%.

02:00:56.180 | Again, how many reps there?

02:00:57.260 | It's like three to six reps per set.

02:00:59.540 | 18 to 30 reps total,

02:01:04.020 | and I think the ideal rep range is 24, something like that.

02:01:07.420 | So it gives you a 55 to 65, 70 to 80,

02:01:10.660 | 80 to 90, and the 90 plus percent.

02:01:12.200 | And what you'll see is the 90 plus percent number

02:01:14.560 | is more like one to two reps per set

02:01:17.580 | for a total of about seven total repetitions.

02:01:20.820 | If you start cruising past that,

02:01:22.880 | other bad things start to creep up in there.

02:01:26.440 | So that's a really effective chart.

02:01:28.540 | What it really highlights though,

02:01:29.800 | is even somebody who's trying to maximize strength,

02:01:32.880 | you're going to spend something like 35 or so percent

02:01:36.940 | of your training time between this like 55 to 65% range.

02:01:41.640 | So you're asking, you're like,

02:01:42.540 | "Well, do I even count that one?"

02:01:43.860 | The answer is yeah, in that range.

02:01:46.260 | If it's below 55, 60%, you probably don't count it.

02:01:50.540 | Now, again, some coaches don't count

02:01:51.860 | unless it's even above 70.

02:01:53.460 | Fine, it's not a major distinction,

02:01:55.340 | but you're going to spend the bulk of your time

02:01:57.860 | accumulating some technique, basically,

02:02:00.340 | and skill and tissue tolerance, very important.

02:02:03.220 | The next step up is like 28%, I think,

02:02:05.900 | is sort of the cutoff of how much time you spend

02:02:09.060 | between 70 and 80% of your one-hour max.

02:02:11.440 | And then it jumps down to like 23%,

02:02:13.580 | and then all the way to 70%.

02:02:15.100 | So you can walk yourself through that,

02:02:16.380 | and that gives you an extremely good guideline.

02:02:18.980 | And you'll notice all of these

02:02:21.220 | are still in the three to five range.

02:02:23.020 | It's just really, you're manipulating it by total sets

02:02:25.460 | or total exercises.

02:02:26.340 | So that can give you some structure to play with.

02:02:29.240 | - We will provide a link to the Prilopin chart

02:02:32.980 | in the show note captions.

02:02:35.660 | Training to failure when the goal is strength.

02:02:38.380 | - Yeah.

02:02:39.580 | - Should one do it?

02:02:41.220 | Should one avoid it?

02:02:42.900 | Or does it depend?

02:02:43.980 | - Well, yeah, it always depends.

02:02:45.800 | The way that I'll generally say it is

02:02:47.340 | because of what we just outlined in the Prilopin chart,

02:02:49.660 | you don't have to go to failure to see strength things,

02:02:52.440 | especially early or even moderate.

02:02:54.620 | And I'm talking maybe five plus years

02:02:56.860 | in your lifting career.

02:02:58.340 | - Would you call beginner zero to five years of training,

02:03:02.060 | intermediate five to 20 years of training?

02:03:05.600 | - Yeah, something like that.

02:03:06.940 | - And then advanced would be people

02:03:08.040 | that really put the time and energy

02:03:09.380 | into fine tuning their program.

02:03:10.920 | - The vast majority of people who think they're advanced

02:03:12.880 | are really what we would call intermediate.

02:03:14.880 | - In all domains of life.

02:03:16.700 | - Fair, even as a scientist.

02:03:19.800 | It's quite rare to reach that number of advanced.

02:03:21.860 | So I actually don't have any problem

02:03:24.100 | going to failure quite often.

02:03:26.320 | I'm also fine with people

02:03:27.500 | who don't wanna go all the way there.

02:03:29.100 | You can get most of what you need

02:03:30.760 | getting what we call technical failure.

02:03:33.060 | So this is like, okay, that was really challenging.

02:03:37.140 | Boy, you started to have some breakdowns of technique.

02:03:40.740 | We're gonna call that good.

02:03:41.980 | The only exception here I wanna point out

02:03:45.320 | is people who are either novice or beginners,

02:03:49.080 | they really have no concept of what 100% means.

02:03:53.520 | And so I think it's actually very fruitful

02:03:55.920 | to take them to 100% just to give them a guideline

02:03:59.340 | of where it's at.

02:04:00.240 | Now, of course, do this on exercises that they are

02:04:03.080 | comfortable with or close,

02:04:04.660 | and maybe this is on a machine,

02:04:07.300 | maybe this is single joint movements

02:04:09.340 | or whatever it takes for them to have confidence.

02:04:11.060 | But actually, I don't think you should be scared of these.

02:04:13.600 | They're not really that much more dangerous

02:04:16.440 | than anything else.

02:04:17.640 | I mean, think about it.

02:04:18.640 | If you're gonna do a front squat or any exercise

02:04:21.680 | and your one rep max is 200 pounds,

02:04:23.880 | is it really that much more dangerous

02:04:26.060 | to do one try at 205 pounds

02:04:29.000 | than it is to do five tries at 190 pounds?

02:04:32.600 | Like, is it really that much more?

02:04:33.920 | No, like it's not.

02:04:34.760 | So you can do, like we talked about in the first episode,

02:04:37.680 | you can do a repetition max estimate

02:04:40.320 | where you get to like 85 to 95% of where you think you are,

02:04:44.720 | and then instead of adding load,

02:04:45.800 | you just do as many reps as you can,

02:04:47.960 | Google that number and that'll tell you the conversion

02:04:50.000 | and estimate of what your one rep max is, that's fine.

02:04:52.080 | But also, I have absolutely no issue.

02:04:54.480 | In fact, I generally encourage it

02:04:55.760 | to pick people up to that level.

02:04:58.280 | Certainly not day one or anywhere close to that,

02:05:01.040 | but at some point, let's see what you actually got.

02:05:03.880 | I'm just gonna cut it off early.

02:05:05.720 | What I'm gonna consider to be one rep max,

02:05:08.200 | anything more than a minor technical breakdown

02:05:10.180 | is for that group, we're gonna stop and call that good.

02:05:13.400 | - And ideally with a spotter, especially bench pressing,

02:05:16.720 | don't bench press alone in your basement kind of thing.

02:05:18.680 | A few people die each year

02:05:19.960 | from bench pressing alone in their basement.

02:05:21.960 | Or use dumbbells if you're gonna do that.

02:05:23.600 | It's harder to die using dumbbells.

02:05:27.040 | I suppose you could drop them on your head or something,

02:05:29.720 | but not get stuck under them.

02:05:31.560 | Exercise selection and frequency of exercise implementation

02:05:37.800 | across the week.

02:05:39.340 | So I can imagine with this three by five routine

02:05:42.760 | done three to five times per week,

02:05:45.720 | you can imagine changing up the exercises every workout.

02:05:49.200 | Although considering that most of these three by five

02:05:53.320 | routines are going to be done with compound movements.

02:05:55.640 | - Generally.

02:05:57.160 | - Sooner or later one runs out of movements

02:05:59.900 | if the goal is to hit all the major muscle groups.

02:06:03.960 | However, let me give an example and ask if it's okay

02:06:08.960 | to for instance, do the three by five routine

02:06:11.120 | where one of the exercises for back is say a bent over row.

02:06:15.200 | You do that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, okay.

02:06:19.640 | I can imagine one could do that and still recover

02:06:22.400 | and improve over time.

02:06:23.820 | But five days a week, bent over rows five days a week,

02:06:27.140 | is that okay?

02:06:28.500 | I mean, can one still progress?

02:06:30.780 | And there I could imagine it's a strong answer of depends

02:06:35.820 | because some people recover more slowly than others.

02:06:39.300 | I'm very comfortable doing hitting muscle groups

02:06:42.260 | once directly per week and once indirectly.

02:06:44.420 | That's worked for me far better than

02:06:46.580 | two or three times per week.

02:06:48.420 | I get looks of sympathy when I say this,

02:06:50.680 | but it's actually, it's just how my physiology works.

02:06:54.200 | - Kind of.

02:06:55.040 | - Yeah, well, and maybe I'm not optimizing

02:06:56.640 | a number of different features.

02:06:57.680 | But the point being that some people really do seem

02:07:00.380 | to be able to train a muscle every day

02:07:03.560 | and still make progress.

02:07:05.040 | Other people seem to have trouble

02:07:07.600 | when they train a muscle every day.

02:07:08.960 | So how does one establish exercise selection

02:07:12.400 | when the goal is to make progress?

02:07:14.120 | And this brings up something very important

02:07:17.080 | and we're gonna have a whole episode about this,

02:07:19.080 | but local versus systemic recovery.

02:07:21.520 | Is the whole nervous system becoming fatigued?

02:07:25.320 | And is the muscle group

02:07:28.600 | and the related musculoskeletal systems becoming fatigued?

02:07:31.880 | - We're gonna go back to thinking about,

02:07:34.380 | when you make these comments about

02:07:37.360 | it takes you three to five days

02:07:38.720 | and you've got better results in there.

02:07:40.760 | The assumption that you're probably running under

02:07:43.360 | is your training style is more reflecting

02:07:47.120 | that recovery time than it is your physiology.

02:07:50.200 | It's not you, it's how you're training.

02:07:51.980 | So if you look at, again, all the Olympic weightlifters

02:07:56.160 | that are competing, they're gonna be squatting

02:07:57.680 | or some variation of squatting every day.

02:07:59.860 | That's gonna happen.

02:08:02.400 | A lot of the times they're training multiple times a day.

02:08:04.600 | And they will be doing some basically barbell full squat

02:08:07.780 | multiple times a day, every day, six days a week,

02:08:10.800 | something like that.

02:08:12.560 | They're the best in the world at getting powerful.

02:08:14.800 | They're tremendously good at getting strong.

02:08:17.000 | You can do it, right?

02:08:19.360 | It comes down to what does your volume look like?

02:08:22.400 | What type of movements are you doing?

02:08:24.580 | What rep range?

02:08:25.960 | What overall volume are you hitting?

02:08:28.320 | And how are you doing it?

02:08:29.160 | If you look at athletes, they train their legs every day.

02:08:33.000 | When they're running around,

02:08:34.760 | they're doing speed and agility training every single day.

02:08:37.800 | They don't need three days to recover.

02:08:40.060 | Can you imagine a basketball player trying to ask

02:08:41.640 | for like three days to recover between practice?

02:08:43.280 | - Right, well, to be fair, as you chuckle at me,

02:08:46.340 | I'm doing other things on the intervening days.

02:08:49.180 | So I'll train a muscle group like legs,

02:08:51.420 | and then I'll give it four days before I do an indirect,

02:08:54.180 | what I call an indirect exercise for legs,

02:08:57.880 | which for me would be sprinting.

02:08:59.680 | Then I get two days and then I'm training them again.

02:09:02.360 | - But nonetheless, an athlete has to do that every day.

02:09:04.440 | - Right. - Right?

02:09:05.280 | So the answer is you absolutely can train

02:09:08.500 | any of these muscles every single day.

02:09:10.880 | It really comes down to volume, right?

02:09:13.600 | And it comes down to movement type.

02:09:16.280 | And how are you getting it?

02:09:17.120 | So in the case of weightlifters and athletes,

02:09:20.120 | what we tend to see happen is there's two things.

02:09:23.840 | There is a long period of conditioning,

02:09:26.520 | and I don't mean endurance.

02:09:27.440 | What I mean is tissue tolerance and conditioning.

02:09:29.500 | So they're not going to start off their career

02:09:32.320 | at that pace, right?

02:09:33.240 | Their career might start off at five days a week,

02:09:36.520 | but maybe every other of those days is a PVC pipe only.

02:09:40.800 | And you're just training the movement patterns.

02:09:42.400 | You're working on technique, et cetera.

02:09:44.160 | And then eventually, maybe after six months or a year,

02:09:47.080 | those PVC pipe days turn into barbell only days.

02:09:50.160 | And so now you went from a pound to 45 pounds.

02:09:53.160 | And eventually as your years go on, that wraps us up.

02:09:56.000 | So it depends on the style.

02:09:57.000 | In general, speed and power stuff is so light,

02:10:00.980 | it almost requires, because it's non-fatiguing,

02:10:03.360 | it requires almost no recovery.

02:10:05.600 | So if you were truly doing, say like,

02:10:09.000 | it's funny, because when you say I do legs on Mondays,

02:10:12.640 | you don't even realize it.

02:10:14.560 | But an athlete does legs every day, right?

02:10:17.040 | But you're saying legs,

02:10:17.880 | and what you're really saying is,

02:10:18.880 | I do hypertrophy legs Mondays.

02:10:20.400 | - Pretty much, I don't want to get into what I do,

02:10:22.680 | specifically, because it's less important

02:10:24.400 | than what other people choose to implement.

02:10:26.000 | But the repetition ranges anywhere from four to 12.

02:10:30.080 | - Correct, so you're smack dead

02:10:32.840 | in the peak soreness, longest recovery range.

02:10:36.080 | - Volume is relatively low intensity,

02:10:37.960 | very, very high.

02:10:39.000 | Workouts are very, very short.

02:10:39.840 | - So if you were to switch that,

02:10:41.600 | and you were to stay under four repetitions,

02:10:44.200 | higher quality, higher rest in between them,

02:10:46.340 | I would be willing to bet a large amount of money

02:10:49.040 | that you'd be fine the next day.

02:10:50.400 | Certainly 48 hours.

02:10:52.120 | And if you were to actually go way lower,

02:10:54.280 | and keep, you know, three to five,

02:10:56.360 | and keep it very, very light and trained for speed,

02:10:57.940 | you would have absolutely no issue the next day.

02:11:00.780 | So it really comes down to a function of training.

02:11:02.460 | You're right in that hypertrophy zone,

02:11:03.840 | which is something that you probably need 48 hours

02:11:07.060 | at minimum to recover from.

02:11:08.520 | Because what you won't see are bodybuilders

02:11:13.080 | training the same muscle group on multiple days,

02:11:15.740 | like very often.

02:11:16.580 | At most, it would be indirect.

02:11:18.140 | But generally, they're not going to do that every single day

02:11:20.420 | for the same reason.

02:11:21.260 | So you're training in that style,

02:11:23.520 | that's what it's gonna take to recover.

02:11:24.680 | If you trained in a different style,

02:11:26.600 | then it wouldn't take that long to recover.

02:11:28.400 | - So for the person starting out,

02:11:30.160 | would you recommend they pick three to five exercises

02:11:33.580 | and stick with those so that they can get their skill

02:11:36.440 | and movement and positioning and breathing,

02:11:39.040 | all that really dialed in,

02:11:40.200 | and then start to experiment by varying one or two

02:11:43.620 | of those exercises over time?

02:11:45.320 | - That's great.

02:11:46.160 | If you look at the conjugate model,

02:11:47.960 | so these are the strongest powerlifters

02:11:50.300 | as a collective group that ever existed.

02:11:52.280 | What they're very good at is they keep

02:11:53.480 | almost the exact same weekly structure,

02:11:55.580 | but they make a very small change in exercise variation.

02:11:58.920 | So for example, say Wednesday is bench day, right?

02:12:02.040 | They're going to always bench on Wednesdays,

02:12:03.980 | but maybe this week they're going to do close grip bench.

02:12:06.660 | And then maybe next week it's going to be

02:12:08.060 | maybe a special type of barbell.

02:12:10.700 | And then maybe the week after that,

02:12:11.740 | it's maybe they'll change the range of motion a little bit.

02:12:15.920 | So it's actually the exact same exercise

02:12:17.600 | where they're making a very small variation.

02:12:19.100 | And that change alone allows them to do enough specificity,

02:12:23.000 | but also gives them enough variation

02:12:24.460 | to where it's not the exact same stimuli

02:12:26.260 | in the exact same spot over and over and over.

02:12:28.940 | And that's what allows that group,

02:12:30.940 | plus lots of other assistance,

02:12:33.700 | but it's what allows that group

02:12:35.140 | to train very, very, very heavy, very consistently,

02:12:38.540 | and not have to worry about too much planning

02:12:40.800 | for periodization and other stuff like that.

02:12:42.820 | They get their back off

02:12:44.020 | by making small variations in exercise.

02:12:46.060 | I will say a major mistake folks do make

02:12:49.260 | is they change their exercises entirely way too often.

02:12:52.560 | If I were to have to pick one or the other,

02:12:55.780 | I would say don't change anything

02:12:57.380 | on your exercises for six weeks.

02:12:59.340 | Probably realistic, maybe even 10 to 12 weeks.

02:13:02.180 | And then you can make some changes.

02:13:03.860 | You should not be changing every single week.

02:13:06.620 | The general public, you're not gonna see progress.

02:13:08.620 | It's gonna be very difficult to do that.

02:13:10.020 | So it's going to take you three weeks, generally,

02:13:13.340 | to figure out the groove of the exercise,

02:13:15.060 | to figure out how well you can load it,

02:13:16.940 | what's too much to where you woke up unbelievably sore,

02:13:19.580 | that was a train wreck, how much do I load it at,

02:13:22.380 | what position, how long was this gonna take?

02:13:23.760 | It's gonna take you three or so weeks.

02:13:25.460 | And then you can really start pushing there.

02:13:27.600 | So changing it before that or in that timeframe

02:13:30.140 | is you're not gonna be able to progressively overload

02:13:32.540 | 'cause you're just not gonna know exactly where you're at

02:13:34.140 | on all the exercises.

02:13:35.140 | So it's very important to create standardization

02:13:37.900 | within them and then see some progress in a movement

02:13:40.980 | or a muscle group, whatever you're going for,

02:13:43.300 | and then make some changes.

02:13:45.240 | - So before we dive into our discussion about hypertrophy,

02:13:48.620 | can we just get a brief recap of the general parameters

02:13:53.300 | for an excellent power and strength training program?

02:13:56.740 | - Okay, let me hit you with these rapid fire

02:13:58.780 | and then you can maybe come ask questions along that.

02:14:01.060 | Remember those modifiable variables, okay?

02:14:03.580 | So let's go through them in order

02:14:04.940 | and then what they mean specifically

02:14:06.240 | for power versus strength.

02:14:07.220 | So modifiable variable number one is called choice.

02:14:10.700 | So which exercises do I select for strength?

02:14:13.220 | In general for power or speed or strength,

02:14:16.420 | we wanna select compound movements.

02:14:18.460 | You don't often see people doing maximum strength work

02:14:21.580 | for like a tricep kickback, right?

02:14:23.480 | It's typically multiple joint movements

02:14:25.820 | and typically complex movements.

02:14:29.140 | In selecting these compound movements,

02:14:32.020 | we generally wanna actually think about exercise selection

02:14:34.740 | of movements rather than muscle groups.

02:14:37.160 | So this is an important distinction

02:14:38.300 | because we'll see this as a different answer

02:14:39.620 | when we get to hypertrophy.

02:14:40.440 | What I mean by that is when we think about,

02:14:42.820 | again, strength training,

02:14:43.960 | we tend to think about bodybuilding concepts.

02:14:45.660 | We go to the gym and we do things like,

02:14:47.740 | I gotta make sure I get my chest today

02:14:49.660 | and I gotta make sure I get my hamstrings.

02:14:51.900 | Now you're selecting exercises based on a muscle

02:14:54.060 | you wanna work.

02:14:54.900 | For strength development and power,

02:14:56.780 | we wanna think about movements

02:14:58.800 | rather than individual muscle groups.

02:15:00.040 | So there should be things like,

02:15:02.180 | I need to train explosive hip extension,

02:15:04.960 | which is like a vertical jump or something like that.

02:15:08.340 | I wanna train pushing or pulling movements

02:15:11.720 | or I wanna train rotation,

02:15:13.920 | which is a whole area we haven't gotten into,

02:15:15.440 | which is very important for overall health

02:15:18.220 | and wellness and longevity.

02:15:19.220 | So we wanna select big movements by the muscle,

02:15:22.380 | the movement patterns that we wanna introduce.

02:15:24.380 | And we just wanna select a reasonable balance between these.

02:15:29.100 | I don't care what the exact ratio is.

02:15:31.340 | You just don't wanna go an entire six months

02:15:34.220 | without doing anything in this rotational area

02:15:36.780 | or an entire eight to 10 weeks without doing something

02:15:41.060 | that's a lower body hinge.

02:15:44.740 | So any number of examples there.

02:15:46.420 | So just think about the rough movement patterns,

02:15:48.440 | upper and lower, push and pull,

02:15:50.980 | and then some sort of rotation.

02:15:52.620 | That puts you in a pretty good spot.

02:15:53.740 | If you're using three by five method

02:15:56.300 | and you're going to pick as little as three exercises,

02:15:58.540 | just pick one from each one of those groups.

02:16:00.160 | Pick a rotation, pick a push and pick a pull.

02:16:04.020 | - I can easily think of a push and a pull.

02:16:06.620 | So for example, bench press or shoulder press,

02:16:10.300 | row or chin for pull and then squat or deadlift for hinge.

02:16:14.780 | What would be a good example

02:16:17.040 | of a quality rotational movement?

02:16:19.300 | - Yep, so anytime you can use a cable machine,

02:16:22.900 | like at the gym and you can do,

02:16:24.600 | it's kind of hard to describe this exercise,

02:16:26.140 | but basically you're gonna stand facing the cable

02:16:29.340 | and you're going to pull it towards yourself

02:16:30.740 | and then rotate like you're pivoting,

02:16:31.920 | like you're either swinging a golf club

02:16:34.900 | or hitting a baseball bat.

02:16:35.900 | So you're facing one direction, I'm facing you right now,

02:16:38.740 | I'm pulling the cable towards myself

02:16:40.280 | and then I'm gonna spin, do a 180 degree pivot

02:16:43.060 | and face exactly away from you when I finish

02:16:45.540 | and then return it back in that same spot.

02:16:47.720 | So that's a rotation.

02:16:48.740 | - Great, we will provide a link to an example of that

02:16:51.140 | that you consider a quality example.

02:16:53.060 | - A medicine ball throw, any number of things like this

02:16:56.580 | are great rotational exercise, all right?

02:16:59.540 | So we select our exercises based on that.

02:17:02.120 | We generally then, because of that as a case,

02:17:04.340 | we don't worry about things like eccentric versus concentric

02:17:08.020 | because you're generally doing

02:17:09.100 | a whole body athletic movement, right?

02:17:12.040 | Which the eccentric concentric portion

02:17:13.740 | is going to be folded into that

02:17:15.740 | and you really can't separate them out, all right?

02:17:18.300 | So that's exercise choice, our first variable.

02:17:20.380 | The next one is exercise order.

02:17:22.380 | So because that everything driving power and strength

02:17:26.160 | is quality based, you wanna do these

02:17:28.980 | at the beginning of your workout.

02:17:30.540 | You would not want to do anything fatiguing before this.

02:17:34.260 | So no cardiovascular training,

02:17:36.500 | no other repetition to failure stuff.

02:17:39.100 | If you do those before and now you're slower,

02:17:42.240 | all you've done is practice getting slower.

02:17:44.620 | And so these need to be done when you're fresh.

02:17:46.580 | You also need to do them when you're very fresh

02:17:48.620 | because they are the most neurologically demanding.

02:17:50.620 | They're complicated.

02:17:51.460 | They tend to have multiple steps

02:17:52.740 | and they're often in multiple planes

02:17:54.380 | and coordination is a difficult thing.

02:17:56.220 | And if you're trying to do all that at maximum speed,

02:17:58.780 | your nervous system needs to be tremendously fresh.

02:18:00.740 | And so any amount of fatigue here

02:18:01.980 | is only going to compromise the results.

02:18:04.860 | To kind of recap that, one of the major mistakes

02:18:07.580 | when training for strength and especially power

02:18:09.820 | is people worry way too much about fatigue.

02:18:11.980 | Those things should not be part of the equation.

02:18:13.780 | And in fact, if they are, that's a very good sign

02:18:16.480 | you're not doing this correctly, right?

02:18:18.180 | These are non fatiguing movements, especially speed and power.

02:18:22.140 | So choice, order is next.

02:18:24.420 | The next one after that is volume.

02:18:26.940 | And we sort of hit volume and intensity,

02:18:29.460 | which is the other one.

02:18:31.260 | We talked about that.

02:18:32.860 | The volume is basically identical

02:18:35.580 | between power and strength.

02:18:38.100 | The general number we're going to look at here

02:18:39.820 | is something like three to 20 sets.

02:18:42.420 | - Total per workout.

02:18:43.660 | - Per workout.

02:18:45.160 | But that would be like 20 would be

02:18:47.500 | a little bit of a special case.

02:18:49.140 | Three to five is what I told you earlier, right?

02:18:51.320 | I'm just saying like sometimes

02:18:52.380 | you can actually go quite higher in these cases,

02:18:54.680 | but that's the general range.

02:18:57.140 | - And once somebody finishes the three by five workout

02:19:00.420 | for power or strength,

02:19:02.820 | if they decide they want to throw in

02:19:04.580 | some calf raises and curls and forearm work

02:19:08.260 | or a little bit of a jogging on the treadmill or something,

02:19:10.900 | that's okay?

02:19:12.040 | - Absolutely.

02:19:12.880 | There is very little risk of interference

02:19:17.000 | for things like speed and power.

02:19:18.900 | Strength, you have a little bit of a risk only

02:19:22.360 | because now you're introducing fatigue,

02:19:24.040 | which if you're really pushing strength,

02:19:26.400 | that might compromise your recovery.

02:19:28.220 | - I could imagine doing the three to five routine

02:19:30.660 | for strength or for power,

02:19:32.140 | and then somebody finishing up with 10 or 15 minutes

02:19:35.540 | of hypertrophy arm work,

02:19:37.140 | and then being very seriously compromised

02:19:40.100 | if they try and come in the next day or even the next day.

02:19:42.180 | - Correct.

02:19:43.020 | - And do those big compound movements for speed and power.

02:19:46.180 | - That's right.

02:19:47.020 | - Not just because they're sore,

02:19:48.140 | but the muscles may actually still be damaged.

02:19:50.880 | And I know later we're going to talk about

02:19:52.320 | the somewhat tenuous relationship

02:19:54.660 | between soreness and recovery.

02:19:56.260 | - Yeah. Yep.

02:19:57.380 | So that's a really nice heuristic to pay attention to is,

02:20:01.400 | you can, but just be careful.

02:20:03.800 | Energy starts to matter at that point.

02:20:06.080 | If you're really truly trying to maximize strength,

02:20:09.300 | you would do nothing at all outside of that training.

02:20:11.940 | If you're just like,

02:20:13.680 | I kind of want to get stronger and some other things,

02:20:15.680 | and you're willing to lose strength,

02:20:17.420 | you know, 5% of your strength gains,

02:20:19.780 | then you're totally fine.

02:20:21.320 | The same can be said, by the way, for supersetting.

02:20:24.200 | So supersetting is an idea that says like, wait a minute,

02:20:26.740 | you're telling me, dude,

02:20:28.020 | I got to take five minutes in between each set.

02:20:31.780 | - Well, that's not so much a problem nowadays

02:20:33.340 | with phone, with smartphones,

02:20:35.260 | because people are filling their intercept intervals

02:20:39.020 | with social media and texting.

02:20:40.900 | - Correct.

02:20:41.820 | You don't really have to go that long.

02:20:43.620 | In fact, there was actually a study that came out

02:20:45.420 | in the last month that showed, you know,

02:20:46.900 | like really two minutes is probably sufficient

02:20:49.180 | for most people.

02:20:50.340 | Having said that,

02:20:51.180 | if you really are trying to push maximum strength adaptations

02:20:54.260 | like three to five is very, very reasonable.

02:20:56.560 | Those training sessions are long,

02:21:00.000 | because you have to take,

02:21:00.840 | you're spending more time not doing anything

02:21:03.020 | than you are doing something,

02:21:04.020 | but you're trying to maximize quality.

02:21:05.820 | So that's just sort of like part and parcel.

02:21:07.800 | If you're not super worried about it,

02:21:09.440 | you can actually do supersetting,

02:21:10.660 | which is, let's imagine again,

02:21:12.100 | you're going to do some lunges,

02:21:14.420 | and while your legs are resting,

02:21:15.940 | doing their three to five minutes,

02:21:17.220 | you can go over and do an upper body row or pull.

02:21:21.200 | And when your upper body's resting,

02:21:22.220 | you're going back to legs.

02:21:23.140 | So that really cuts your time in half.

02:21:25.500 | Is it ideal?

02:21:26.340 | No, we actually ran a study maybe 10 years ago in our lab,

02:21:30.100 | and we looked at that specifically,

02:21:31.660 | and we did see a reduction in strength performance

02:21:33.820 | in the supersetting group,

02:21:34.820 | relative to the group who did not superset.

02:21:37.420 | The question then it becomes like,

02:21:38.660 | is it enough for you to care?

02:21:40.060 | So if you were to, if I were to say,

02:21:41.260 | "Hey, I can cut an hour off of your workout time,

02:21:44.240 | but you will lose 5% of your strength gain,"

02:21:47.340 | almost everyone would take that exchange.

02:21:49.400 | With the exception of people

02:21:50.240 | who are getting close to competition,

02:21:52.100 | or really trying to set a new lifetime PR or something,

02:21:55.180 | then you might say, "No, I don't want any interference there.

02:21:57.820 | That last little margin is what I care about.

02:22:00.000 | Give me the extra rest."

02:22:01.620 | Great.

02:22:02.460 | So it's not a, does it work, does it not work?

02:22:04.380 | It's always a, what are you willing to give up versus get.

02:22:08.020 | - The practicalities of supersetting

02:22:09.780 | are staggering, push-pull, push-pull,

02:22:12.320 | in my mind are real because you have to take over

02:22:15.320 | large segments of the gym,

02:22:16.960 | which oftentimes leads to a situation

02:22:19.000 | where your rest times are too long or highly variable

02:22:22.920 | because people are working in.

02:22:24.180 | - Or you can't finish your set

02:22:25.180 | 'cause now someone jumped into the machine.

02:22:26.740 | - Right. - Totally screws.

02:22:27.580 | - Right, you lose three to five of your friends

02:22:29.820 | because it's obnoxious

02:22:31.220 | when you're taking over all the equipment.

02:22:32.700 | But in all seriousness, I think it's wonderful

02:22:35.620 | if you have the space and the format to do it.

02:22:38.260 | But at least in my experience and observation,

02:22:41.160 | these people know who they are.

02:22:43.140 | It's not practical to do on a regular basis

02:22:46.060 | if you train in an open commercial gym.

02:22:48.120 | - Yeah, tough to pull off.

02:22:49.420 | So we've covered choice, order, volume,

02:22:54.420 | and intensity to a sufficient level.

02:22:57.060 | The last one is frequency.

02:22:58.580 | And we've already sort of indirectly talked about that.

02:23:00.640 | Where frequency can be as high as you'd like in this area,

02:23:03.500 | it really depends on your recovery.

02:23:04.820 | If you're really truly pushing maximum strength,

02:23:07.500 | you probably do need a few days to recover,

02:23:10.540 | although that's dependent upon you.

02:23:11.740 | But speed and power can be done multiple times a day,

02:23:13.780 | almost every day, basically.

02:23:15.440 | The one exception would be maximum sprinting speed.

02:23:18.900 | You need to be careful there for things like hamstring

02:23:21.720 | and injury, especially if you're pretty fast.

02:23:23.240 | So you wanna be a little bit cautious of that.

02:23:25.200 | But if you're doing easier movements,

02:23:27.420 | like medicine ball throws or kettlebell swings or something,

02:23:29.860 | you could do those quite often

02:23:31.000 | as long as the volume is staying pretty low.

02:23:33.620 | Last little piece here is progression.

02:23:36.560 | How do I progress over time?

02:23:38.520 | So I mentioned this earlier,

02:23:39.400 | but just wanna fill this gap right back in

02:23:41.020 | before we head over to hypertrophy,

02:23:42.180 | which is three to 5% increase per week

02:23:45.240 | of intensity in general.

02:23:47.760 | And you can do upwards of about 5% increase

02:23:50.100 | in volume per week over time.

02:23:51.600 | And I generally recommend running that

02:23:53.420 | for at longest eight weeks.

02:23:56.620 | But probably most realistically,

02:23:58.160 | you wanna go about five weeks or so,

02:24:00.720 | and then have some sort of a deload or back off week.

02:24:03.880 | If you do that, you're generally gonna be

02:24:05.820 | a pretty good spot.

02:24:07.340 | So those are like the core concepts.

02:24:09.100 | Now, there's a whole bunch of fun methods

02:24:12.640 | you can play with within all these categories.

02:24:15.100 | And I would like to actually cover just a couple of them

02:24:18.320 | if we've got a little more space for that.

02:24:20.080 | - Sure, I'd love to hear about those.

02:24:22.520 | I'd like to also just queue up one,

02:24:25.080 | which is while I joked about people texting

02:24:28.280 | and doing social media between sets, and I--

02:24:31.000 | - That's not a joke.

02:24:31.960 | - Well, I confess, I stopped bringing my phone into the gym

02:24:35.720 | because of the urge to take my mind off of the workout,

02:24:40.180 | and I just started enjoying my workouts a lot more.

02:24:42.620 | And the workouts go far better that way.

02:24:45.460 | And they're just much more efficient.

02:24:46.980 | For me, I realize that some people,

02:24:48.780 | their careers take place in the gym,

02:24:50.340 | and so I don't look down upon anyone

02:24:53.380 | using their phone at the gym.

02:24:54.460 | But that really tends to help me.

02:24:57.340 | But I do wonder whether or not there's an optimal behavior

02:25:01.720 | or mindset in between sets.

02:25:04.740 | I've heard before that pacing around

02:25:06.780 | can actually help diffuse some of the lactate

02:25:09.580 | and other metabolic byproducts of work and exertion

02:25:14.100 | that can lead to better performance.

02:25:16.000 | I've also heard that shaking the muscles out.

02:25:19.400 | I mean, there's all sorts of gym lore about this,

02:25:22.740 | but maybe there's also some decent science.

02:25:24.620 | I'm just curious if you have any specific recommendations

02:25:28.880 | that people could play with or try.

02:25:30.540 | - Yep, so for speed and power,

02:25:34.080 | you want to walk this balance of stiff but fresh.

02:25:39.060 | And so if you were to literally finish a repetition,

02:25:41.100 | sit on a bench for five minutes,

02:25:42.680 | you would stand up after that fairly stiff,

02:25:44.980 | and you wouldn't feel so smooth.

02:25:46.200 | This is all non-science.

02:25:48.880 | This is all practical application, right?

02:25:51.640 | - Anic data.

02:25:52.580 | - Anic data, there you go.

02:25:54.140 | Strength is a little bit different,

02:25:55.340 | but it's the same concept.

02:25:56.320 | You're walking that line.

02:25:58.060 | In general, a lot of the times,

02:25:59.760 | if you see powerlifters and weightlifters in between sets,

02:26:01.980 | they're going to sit down and not move.

02:26:03.720 | For hypertrophy, it can be a little bit different

02:26:05.120 | because you're getting towards fatigue.

02:26:06.500 | And so the factors you mentioned, like clearing lactate,

02:26:09.100 | well, first of all, lactate is not actually causing fatigue.

02:26:12.460 | That's a giant myth that we'll--

02:26:14.020 | - Which is why I teed it up, no, I'm just kidding.

02:26:17.160 | - But in the case of, again, speed and power,

02:26:18.340 | you're not going to fatigue,

02:26:19.180 | so fatigue management's not really an issue.

02:26:20.820 | You want to make sure that you're getting

02:26:21.980 | complete neurological recovery,

02:26:23.540 | which is a little bit slower than muscle.

02:26:25.820 | Energetically, you're not out of any gas whatsoever, right?

02:26:29.380 | You are not in a lack of fuel,

02:26:31.660 | you're doing three repetitions of a vertical jump.

02:26:34.140 | No clothes. - Plenty of glycogen.

02:26:35.960 | - Totally.

02:26:36.880 | - What about stretching between sets?

02:26:38.740 | - Yeah, you probably don't want to do that either.

02:26:41.060 | There are very clear examples of pre-exercise stretching,

02:26:44.920 | static stretching, being quite detrimental

02:26:47.120 | for maximum power production.

02:26:48.480 | The same thing for speed and strength.

02:26:50.460 | And that's been shown actually a number of times

02:26:52.180 | in a number of laboratories,

02:26:53.280 | which is like a classic hallmark any scientist looks for,

02:26:57.660 | like really jumping on board with an idea.

02:26:59.740 | If it's shown not only multiple times,

02:27:01.320 | but in multiple laboratories for multiple scientists,

02:27:03.440 | and they're all seeing the same thing,

02:27:05.200 | you start to get a lot of confidence

02:27:06.560 | that that's a real finding.

02:27:07.420 | And that's been shown,

02:27:08.560 | we've done that in our Center for Sport Performance,

02:27:10.900 | not myself, but one of my colleagues

02:27:12.440 | has done a lot of stretching research,

02:27:13.580 | and he's seen that a lot.

02:27:14.760 | On everything from vertical jump

02:27:16.740 | to isokinetic dynamometers and force velocity curves.

02:27:20.000 | And there's, we've seen this in sprinting,

02:27:22.140 | we've seen this in speed, we've seen this in loaded stuff.

02:27:24.120 | So you don't want to spend a ton of time stretching,

02:27:27.000 | statically stretching a muscle prior to it.

02:27:29.520 | If you do that, and you have to do that, say for example,

02:27:31.900 | you finish that, you're just like feeling really tight.

02:27:33.920 | Yeah, go ahead.

02:27:34.800 | Like you need to get in the right position,

02:27:36.480 | especially for most people where,

02:27:38.320 | are you willing to sacrifice 10% of power

02:27:40.820 | to make sure you don't get hurt?

02:27:42.040 | Yes, that answer is almost always yes,

02:27:44.820 | outside of some very specific athlete scenarios.

02:27:47.080 | So if you're not in the right position,

02:27:49.720 | I actually remember having this conversation with Kelly,

02:27:52.360 | Kelly started a long time ago, it was just like,

02:27:53.960 | yeah, fine, I'll lose 5%.

02:27:55.920 | That means I'm not gonna get in a bad position

02:27:57.640 | and hurt my back.

02:27:59.440 | And I totally, totally agree.

02:28:00.840 | So if you gotta open up a hip or an ankle or something

02:28:03.360 | to get there, get in the right position, number one.

02:28:06.040 | We'll live with the 5% reduction in power.

02:28:08.040 | And if you do, just reactivate.

02:28:10.660 | So before you go do your working set,

02:28:11.920 | go do something fast again, a vertical jump,

02:28:13.840 | a short sprint, an acceleration,

02:28:15.400 | and sort of get that system cleared back up.

02:28:18.760 | If you didn't stretch it for long enough,

02:28:21.000 | and you didn't hold it for long enough,

02:28:22.260 | you should be able to be just fine.

02:28:24.300 | So when it comes to hypertrophy,

02:28:27.120 | you can really stretch what you want.

02:28:28.720 | 'Cause it's not driven by intensity or outcome,

02:28:31.240 | it's being driven by an insult into the tissue.

02:28:33.680 | And so if you're pre-fatigued for hypertrophy,

02:28:35.400 | it doesn't matter.

02:28:36.440 | If you're pre-stretched, that doesn't matter.

02:28:38.460 | We're not going for quality of outcome,

02:28:40.280 | we're going for quality of internal signal,

02:28:42.800 | which is not gonna be changed by your force output.

02:28:45.640 | So it doesn't really matter.

02:28:47.000 | - You mentioned a few other things

02:28:49.520 | that one might consider in light of the list

02:28:52.880 | that you provided of choice, order, volume,

02:28:55.740 | frequency, and progression.

02:28:57.560 | - Right, so starting off with power,

02:28:59.560 | I just wanted to hand the listeners here

02:29:02.420 | with a whole bunch of different methods to go play with.

02:29:04.700 | So as long as you hit those concepts,

02:29:06.760 | the repetition range for power,

02:29:08.420 | 30 to 70% of your one repetition max,

02:29:11.080 | depending on the exercise and your training status,

02:29:13.700 | you're gonna get power.

02:29:16.000 | As long as you're attempting to go fast,

02:29:17.320 | it's gonna be great.

02:29:18.160 | A lot of things you can try.

02:29:19.480 | Plyometrics are a great example

02:29:23.100 | of things that are effective for power development.

02:29:26.800 | We've mentioned medicine ball throws, short sprints.

02:29:30.400 | You can even do sprints on like an air bike,

02:29:33.600 | which is a great, super safe activity.

02:29:35.960 | You can do them from like a rolling start

02:29:37.620 | where you kind of like get going a little bit

02:29:39.420 | and then you explode for five seconds

02:29:41.160 | to see how fast you can get, or a dead start.

02:29:43.760 | Like both of those are very, very acceptable.

02:29:46.640 | Weightlifting movements, so snatches and cleaning jerks,

02:29:48.820 | are tremendously effective.

02:29:50.480 | In fact, they are pound for pound,

02:29:52.280 | by far the most effective exercise choice

02:29:55.200 | for power development, like without question.

02:29:57.480 | So those are good ones.

02:29:58.580 | Clapping pushups, speed squats.

02:30:00.720 | These are a whole host of different things

02:30:02.620 | that you can do for speed and power development.

02:30:05.240 | Depending on your kettlebell swings, another great one.

02:30:08.600 | All these can be done depending on your preference,

02:30:11.360 | exercise availability, what's at your gym or not gym,

02:30:14.620 | any of those things.

02:30:16.200 | - If somebody is more focused on strength

02:30:18.360 | as opposed to power,

02:30:20.200 | what are the additional variables they should consider?

02:30:22.520 | Again, within the context of this overarching theme

02:30:26.000 | of choice, order, volume, frequency, and progression.

02:30:29.800 | - Absolutely.

02:30:30.640 | It's almost identical with a couple of small exceptions.

02:30:33.320 | Number one, you probably can't do as many working sets

02:30:37.640 | per week for strength

02:30:38.840 | because now you're introducing a heavier load

02:30:40.880 | and that's gonna represent some sort of fatigue.

02:30:43.340 | Load on the tissue, all those things.

02:30:46.380 | So you could probably get away with doing 20 sets of two

02:30:50.600 | of a vertical jump four or five times a week.

02:30:53.760 | You probably couldn't do that at a 90% on squat, right?

02:30:57.200 | So the total amount of sets

02:30:58.600 | and the total amount of weekly load you can get to

02:31:00.580 | just needs to be lower.

02:31:01.680 | And then the intensity, right?

02:31:02.760 | So we talked about that needs to be generally higher

02:31:04.600 | than 70% with some portion of that being working sets

02:31:08.680 | and some portion of that really truly being at 90% plus.

02:31:12.000 | Everything else is pretty identical.

02:31:14.460 | You still wanna emphasize maximum speed,

02:31:16.800 | despite the fact you may actually not be moving faster

02:31:19.280 | because you've introduced load.

02:31:20.620 | You still need to be attempting that,

02:31:22.000 | but you're gonna be picking complex exercises.

02:31:24.480 | You're generally going to be hedging more towards

02:31:27.680 | marbles and machines.

02:31:29.160 | So this is a case where body weight training

02:31:32.680 | can be effective again, particularly for the upper body.

02:31:36.180 | But at some point,

02:31:37.240 | you're really gonna have to move past that

02:31:39.000 | because there's just a certain amount of load

02:31:40.900 | you can't put on the lower body with just your body weight.

02:31:44.080 | You get limited by how much you weigh or,

02:31:46.920 | I mean, there's a couple of things you can do,

02:31:48.120 | but you're gonna run out past that pretty quickly.

02:31:50.960 | And so when it comes to strength,

02:31:53.040 | they tend to be less athletic movements

02:31:55.540 | because we have to have a barbell on us.

02:31:58.160 | We have to be on a machine or something like that.

02:32:01.320 | And so that's a subtle difference in exercise choice.

02:32:04.200 | We need to also be careful about the eccentric portion

02:32:06.920 | and things like that where we don't have as much risk

02:32:09.420 | in like a speed or power line.

02:32:11.020 | So some of the different things you can play with there,

02:32:14.220 | we've talked about doing things like pushes and pulls.

02:32:16.280 | I also love carries.

02:32:18.200 | So a farmer's carry, pushing a sled, dragging a sled,

02:32:22.160 | all kinds of things, a yoke lock,

02:32:23.940 | all kinds of carry modalities

02:32:26.320 | that are very, very effective for strength.

02:32:29.160 | There's eccentric overload training,

02:32:31.920 | which we really haven't gotten into,

02:32:33.040 | but it's a really advanced technique

02:32:34.260 | where you can actually load at greater than 100%

02:32:37.960 | of your one repetition max,

02:32:39.580 | but you're only going to do the eccentric portion of it.

02:32:42.320 | So physiologically, you are much stronger eccentrically

02:32:44.640 | than you are concentrically

02:32:46.280 | for a variety of muscle tissue reasons, actually.

02:32:49.600 | And so imagine if you can do a bench press at 200 pounds

02:32:53.000 | and what you might actually do is load it to 220

02:32:55.560 | and you would have a spotter

02:32:56.800 | and maybe even use it in a rack

02:32:58.280 | and you would lower it down under control

02:33:00.120 | all the way to the bottom and then stop.

02:33:02.840 | Your friends would lift it back up at the top

02:33:04.920 | and then you would just practice that eccentric portion.

02:33:06.920 | You would actually be able to lower, say 220 pounds

02:33:09.040 | effectively, despite the fact that you wouldn't

02:33:10.920 | have been able to lift it back up.

02:33:12.800 | You don't need to start there,

02:33:13.880 | but that is a very effective method for increasing.

02:33:16.880 | In fact, one of my doctoral students right now

02:33:20.280 | is doing a project on this at USC

02:33:22.560 | and he's focusing directly on this

02:33:25.720 | and it's quite clear that's oftentimes more effective

02:33:29.200 | at strength development than anything else

02:33:30.440 | 'cause you can actually, just like in the speed example,

02:33:33.080 | where you want to actually practice moving faster.

02:33:35.280 | So instead of practicing at 100% of your one

02:33:37.160 | or max for strength, you actually practice

02:33:38.640 | at higher than that to get better at it.

02:33:41.640 | So that's another much more advanced tool.

02:33:44.700 | Please don't let me get sued by saying all that.

02:33:48.160 | Like folks, be careful, make sure you're doing

02:33:50.600 | the proper exercise in your positioning

02:33:52.240 | and in like caveat, caveat, caveat, okay.

02:33:55.480 | But outside of that, it can be, it's totally fine and safe.

02:33:59.000 | - Yeah, when people get injured, they can't train,

02:34:01.160 | can't train, you don't progress, you lose progress.

02:34:04.280 | So certainly that's worth highlighting.

02:34:06.560 | - So two more, little more advanced techniques

02:34:09.040 | that I want to throw out there.

02:34:10.040 | And one of them is called cluster sets.

02:34:12.360 | So cluster sets are, there's a bunch of ways to do it,

02:34:14.500 | but imagine taking a mini break

02:34:16.580 | in between every single repetition.

02:34:18.920 | So say you're gonna do five repetitions in a row.

02:34:22.000 | What you're actually gonna do is do one repetition,

02:34:24.600 | set it down, pause for five to 10 seconds,

02:34:28.320 | and then do the next one.

02:34:30.360 | Pause, do the next one, pause, pause, pause, pause, pause.

02:34:33.480 | So you can imagine doing like a squat

02:34:35.600 | and you're gonna go down, explode up,

02:34:37.360 | you're gonna stand there, you're gonna rack it out.

02:34:39.360 | You're gonna kind of like shake back out, catch your breath,

02:34:42.520 | walk back in, do another one, rack it out.

02:34:46.360 | And you're gonna repeat that until you've executed

02:34:47.860 | your three or four or five repetitions.

02:34:49.920 | And then you take your three to five minute break

02:34:52.400 | before your next set.

02:34:53.960 | That is an incredibly effective way for both strength,

02:34:56.960 | power, and actually even hypertrophy.

02:34:59.160 | Because you can keep the quality, the force output,

02:35:02.300 | the power output very, very, very high.

02:35:04.640 | 'Cause you're getting these little mini breaks

02:35:06.600 | and you're not getting fatigued setting in

02:35:08.100 | by the time you get your, say, third or fourth

02:35:10.000 | or fifth repetition in that set.

02:35:12.280 | After repetition one, you start to see very small,

02:35:16.820 | subtle reductions in power output

02:35:18.720 | because you start to see a little bit of fatigue.

02:35:20.700 | You take those five to 10 seconds off,

02:35:22.820 | even up to 20 seconds you can actually do it.

02:35:25.400 | You don't see any drop in force output

02:35:27.480 | over the course of the five.

02:35:28.380 | And so what you really have done is you've gotten five,

02:35:30.980 | in this example, first repetitions.

02:35:34.260 | Which is the way that we would kind of say it, right?

02:35:35.680 | So all five of those had the same quality as rep number one,

02:35:39.040 | which is, again, as we're talking,

02:35:41.020 | that's the driver in strength.

02:35:42.820 | And so that's the one we want to preserve.

02:35:44.080 | So it takes a little bit longer.

02:35:46.280 | For some exercises it's not very good.

02:35:50.100 | It's great for like a deadlift.

02:35:51.640 | 'Cause you set it back down, shake it back out, regroup.

02:35:53.760 | Hard to do with the bench.

02:35:55.180 | You got to re-rack it back in, then re-rack it back out.

02:35:57.560 | It's like kind of a pain in the ass.

02:35:59.500 | So there's some exercises it doesn't work well with

02:36:01.360 | and some that it does.

02:36:02.280 | But cluster sets, and a lot of research on those.

02:36:06.160 | Very effective.

02:36:08.600 | - Would you recommend if somebody is doing cluster sets

02:36:10.520 | that they do them for every session within that week,

02:36:13.060 | or just this is an occasional thing?

02:36:15.000 | - You could do it.

02:36:16.080 | This could be your training strategy.

02:36:17.720 | Yeah, absolutely.

02:36:18.560 | So you can really take it that serious.

02:36:20.600 | In fact, like if you look at, again, the weightlifters,

02:36:23.080 | they will do cluster sets by default.

02:36:25.080 | Not even trying.

02:36:25.920 | So say they'll do like a clean,

02:36:27.400 | and then they'll drop the weight back out.

02:36:28.600 | They're supposed to be doing, say, a set of three.

02:36:30.480 | But almost always, they're gonna like shake it out,

02:36:32.280 | re-grip, and then pull it again.

02:36:33.360 | And sometimes their set of three takes like a minute.

02:36:35.840 | And then it's like, you hear it's funny,

02:36:36.960 | 'cause it's like I set a triple PR.

02:36:39.560 | You're like, no, you did three singles.

02:36:41.960 | Like what's the difference between doing three singles

02:36:43.520 | and a set of three when you took a minute between each rep?

02:36:46.760 | I love that community.

02:36:47.600 | So yeah, I mean, it could be your strategy.

02:36:50.040 | It could be like, hey, for this five-week block,

02:36:52.640 | this is all my training.

02:36:53.640 | Especially for your compound movements.

02:36:55.260 | If you're gonna go to start doing

02:36:56.280 | some of the smaller movements, maybe you give up on that.

02:36:59.540 | It could also just be something you do

02:37:00.780 | for your one primary exercise for the day.

02:37:03.600 | So do that thing that is the most important first,

02:37:05.680 | and just do it for that one.

02:37:06.580 | And then the rest of them, you can kind of ditch it

02:37:07.960 | if you need to save a little bit of that time.

02:37:10.680 | It can also be something you do by feel.

02:37:12.960 | So you're two reps in, and you go,

02:37:15.080 | guy, like I'm not feeling like Poppy here.

02:37:16.500 | Like re-rack it, catch my breath for a quick second,

02:37:18.760 | and do it.

02:37:19.600 | So it doesn't have to be ultra-planned.

02:37:21.320 | I guess what I'm doing is I'm giving you an excuse

02:37:25.120 | to make sure you're super fresh for every rep.

02:37:27.600 | It matters.

02:37:28.760 | The last one I wanna talk about here

02:37:31.100 | is what's called dynamic variable resistance.

02:37:34.420 | So dynamic variable resistance

02:37:35.940 | is fixing the problem we have

02:37:39.420 | with what's called the human strength curve.

02:37:41.600 | So theory of constraints, again.

02:37:43.820 | You're only as strong as you are

02:37:46.260 | in your weakest point of the movement.

02:37:47.980 | So depending on the movement you do,

02:37:49.640 | this happens at a different range of motion.

02:37:51.840 | Well, the deadlift is easiest example.

02:37:54.720 | It's also because we've done research in my lab

02:37:57.400 | using this stuff on the deadlift.

02:37:59.280 | So I can speak to it very directly.

02:38:00.960 | When you go to pull it off the ground,

02:38:02.220 | some people are gonna fail right at the bottom,

02:38:04.300 | meaning they won't get the weight off the ground at all.

02:38:06.240 | Some people will fail just below the knees.

02:38:08.400 | That's like kind of like the hardest transition period.

02:38:11.040 | And then some people will fail right at the top

02:38:13.680 | just before they can lock out.

02:38:15.320 | Okay, great.

02:38:16.400 | So what that means is at some point of that lift,

02:38:19.220 | you're going to only be limited

02:38:22.260 | by your strength in the weakest area, all right?

02:38:25.900 | So if you have a constant load on the bar

02:38:29.100 | in those other two parts of the range of motion,

02:38:31.780 | where you are not the weakest,

02:38:33.920 | they're never truly being tested for their maximum strength

02:38:36.780 | 'cause they're always being limited by the previous one.

02:38:39.060 | And this is the same argument that we would get into

02:38:41.100 | if people ask about what do we think about using straps,

02:38:44.300 | strapping your hand to a bar for deadlifts,

02:38:47.900 | things like that.

02:38:48.740 | There's pros and cons here.

02:38:49.740 | There are times when you wanna use a strap

02:38:51.580 | and there are times when it's a bad idea.

02:38:53.420 | So what dynamic variable resistance is

02:38:55.380 | is either using things like a heavy band

02:38:58.060 | or chains on the bar, if you've ever seen people do that.

02:39:01.380 | So in my lab, we actually have a force plate on the ground

02:39:03.460 | and then we have built in basically hooks

02:39:07.380 | on the front and the back

02:39:08.220 | so we can actually set a barbell on top of the force plate

02:39:10.860 | where you stand on it

02:39:11.980 | and then run bands from the back to the front

02:39:13.780 | running over top of the weights.

02:39:15.700 | And so when you stand up, as you're going up vertically,

02:39:19.060 | the bands are getting tighter and tighter

02:39:20.460 | and pulling the weight towards the ground.

02:39:22.300 | So the weight is getting heavier and heavier as you stand up.

02:39:25.700 | So as you start to gain mechanical advantage

02:39:28.580 | in your positioning, you start to increase load

02:39:32.060 | 'cause the bands are getting tighter and tighter and tighter.

02:39:34.320 | So this allows you to train that full part

02:39:36.900 | of the strength curve and to challenge your stronger areas

02:39:40.980 | with heavier weight and your weaker areas with lower weight.

02:39:44.740 | You can do the same thing with a bench press.

02:39:46.500 | You can do it with a squat and any other exercise variation.

02:39:49.620 | And dynamic variable resistance is incredibly effective

02:39:53.900 | for a number of things.

02:39:55.320 | You're going to give up a little bit

02:39:58.060 | because the total load you can put on the barbell is lower

02:40:02.680 | because you're gonna be adding, in large cases,

02:40:04.740 | several hundred pounds of band tension.

02:40:06.980 | And so pros and cons, it's always a game.

02:40:11.220 | It changes the curve, but it's a very good technique

02:40:14.100 | that people, it's fairly easy to implement.

02:40:17.540 | It's fun, and in fact, if you try this on a bench or a squat,

02:40:20.500 | you're gonna be, the first time you give it a go,

02:40:22.060 | you're like, "Oh my God,"

02:40:23.260 | 'cause the bands are pulling you all over the place.

02:40:25.500 | So you have to get very stable very quick.

02:40:27.980 | Been shown a number of times, a handful of studies

02:40:29.820 | out of many laboratories

02:40:30.860 | to be a very effective training technique.

02:40:33.100 | A little bit more advanced,

02:40:34.140 | but I wanted to throw that in there for the folks

02:40:35.940 | that are maybe just tired of sort of doing the same

02:40:38.540 | barbells and dumbbells and machines,

02:40:39.880 | and you want to try something different,

02:40:41.460 | a very effective technique.

02:40:42.840 | - Sounds like fun.

02:40:43.780 | - Yeah, it's great.

02:40:44.660 | - With your permission, I'm going to read back

02:40:46.460 | my summary list of training for power

02:40:48.580 | and training for strength, according to your description,

02:40:51.460 | and you can tell me where I'm right and where I'm wrong.

02:40:54.400 | I'm going to pick three to five exercises,

02:40:56.960 | and these should be compound exercises,

02:40:58.860 | so multi-joint movements.

02:41:00.900 | I'm going to perform those exercises

02:41:03.160 | for three to five repetitions each.

02:41:05.640 | I'm going to do three to five movements total per workout,

02:41:11.420 | and I'm going to rest three to five minutes between sets.

02:41:15.820 | Okay, if I'm training for power,

02:41:18.220 | the weight loads on the work sets, so not the warmup sets,

02:41:22.140 | but the work sets are going to fall somewhere in the range

02:41:25.480 | of 30 to 70% of my one repetition maximum.

02:41:29.260 | - Yep, and the larger the movement,

02:41:31.700 | the higher that number goes.

02:41:33.380 | So on a squat, you're okay getting 50 or 60%.

02:41:36.340 | On a bench, you would not want to go that high.

02:41:38.820 | You would want to stay close to that 30 to 40% range.

02:41:41.080 | So the way you scale that up and down

02:41:42.660 | is dependent upon the difficulty of the movement.

02:41:45.660 | - Great.

02:41:47.300 | If training for strength,

02:41:49.060 | I'm going to have my work sets be 70% or more

02:41:54.060 | of my one repetition maximum.

02:41:56.940 | - Yep, and the only thing to add there is,

02:41:59.760 | in the case of actually all of them,

02:42:01.580 | it's okay to go less than three reps per set.

02:42:05.220 | So a single or a double, one or two reps per set,

02:42:08.420 | is also fantastic.

02:42:09.480 | So we use three to five as the concept, but less is okay.

02:42:12.940 | Going more than that is generally not a good idea.

02:42:15.820 | So less is okay, more is generally not.

02:42:18.520 | - Okay, and then you listed off a number

02:42:20.280 | of really valuable, I don't even want to call them

02:42:23.540 | fine points, but important points to keep in mind

02:42:26.500 | within each and both of these programs.

02:42:29.540 | One that really stands out in my mind is this idea

02:42:33.060 | of if I perform this three by five program,

02:42:37.000 | but I'm also including some hypertrophy work

02:42:39.740 | for arms or calves or muscle groups

02:42:42.580 | that might not be hit as directly as one might like

02:42:46.820 | during the three by five component.

02:42:48.820 | That's okay, but do that after the three by five training.

02:42:52.180 | And keep in mind that that additional work

02:42:55.820 | can potentially compromise recovery for the three by five

02:42:59.020 | power promoting or strength promoting program.

02:43:01.740 | The example being, for instance, if one does arm work

02:43:06.420 | on the first workout of the week,

02:43:08.420 | or even the third workout of the week,

02:43:10.600 | or the fifth workout of the week,

02:43:12.580 | and that arm work is higher repetition,

02:43:14.260 | hypertrophy directed work, it's reasonable to assume

02:43:17.880 | that it might impede some of the three by five

02:43:21.080 | power promoting or strength promoting training

02:43:23.180 | in the subsequent workout.

02:43:24.380 | So just to be mindful of that,

02:43:26.160 | and perhaps throttle back on the intensity or the volume,

02:43:28.740 | or if my goal is strictly power or strictly strength,

02:43:33.740 | probably best to leave out other forms of training.

02:43:36.820 | - Yep, love it.

02:43:38.620 | One last little thing I don't think we did justice

02:43:41.820 | is intention.

02:43:43.440 | And the reason I wanna go back to this now is because

02:43:46.920 | we've talked a lot about specific loads you have to hit.

02:43:50.600 | And that's generally the case.

02:43:52.260 | But if intention is there, you can fudge those numbers

02:43:55.920 | in terms of how much load goes on the bar.

02:43:57.620 | In fact, you can get as low as no load on the bar.

02:44:00.640 | A great example here is like a plank exercise.

02:44:03.360 | So you can do a plank in which you get in a position

02:44:05.280 | and you simply contract the least amount necessary

02:44:09.440 | to hold the position.

02:44:10.540 | Also, you could contract as hard as possible,

02:44:15.020 | pulling your scapula down and back, squeezing your core,

02:44:17.960 | squeezing your quads, squeezing your glutes.

02:44:20.480 | That is actually going to still help strength production

02:44:22.880 | because you're attempting to contract very, very hard,

02:44:25.760 | even though quote unquote, the load is the same.

02:44:28.640 | That thing extends to weight on the bar.

02:44:32.480 | So you could theoretically see large improvements in strength

02:44:36.280 | at 50% of your one at max,

02:44:38.880 | if you're contracting as hard as possible.

02:44:42.000 | And so there's a lots, lots and lots of different ways

02:44:45.720 | you can train for strength that are outside

02:44:47.800 | of this weight lifting, weight training spectrum.

02:44:51.040 | And if you hear things like this and you're like,

02:44:53.840 | wow, I know I read this book or I saw this other coach

02:44:57.580 | who, you know, was like, I got so much stronger that way.

02:45:00.160 | Well, if intention is there, those are absolutely possible.

02:45:03.780 | This could be anything from body weight style of training.

02:45:07.320 | It could be very low load implement stuff.

02:45:09.880 | So a kettlebell, a light kettlebell or a ball,

02:45:12.680 | it could be single leg training.

02:45:14.040 | It's like all kinds of different methods.

02:45:16.240 | They will only work for strength though,

02:45:19.160 | when you're past your first handful of months of training,

02:45:22.520 | if intention is there.

02:45:23.800 | And if it is, then these specific numbers and protocols

02:45:27.040 | don't matter as much.

02:45:27.920 | So don't get too caught up in them

02:45:30.300 | if you're not worrying about exercise quality.

02:45:33.200 | And this is very, very important because

02:45:35.320 | you mentioned earlier about how you stop taking your phone

02:45:38.360 | into the gym with you.

02:45:39.740 | One of our former students, Ramsey Ninjem,

02:45:42.600 | is the head strength conditioning coach

02:45:44.360 | at the University of Kansas.

02:45:45.460 | And he made a great post a couple of days ago

02:45:47.880 | where he gave sort of a tip of,

02:45:49.840 | how do I improve training quality?

02:45:52.120 | And one of his tips is set your playlist

02:45:54.880 | before you go to the gym.

02:45:56.360 | And the reason is people spend so much time in between sets

02:45:59.360 | just finding the next song that they like.

02:46:01.720 | It makes their workouts so long and so unproductive.

02:46:05.620 | So that is one strategy or do what you do,

02:46:08.080 | which is ditch the music entirely.

02:46:09.920 | When you don't have music or a phone to look at,

02:46:12.600 | you only have one job.

02:46:13.900 | You only have one thing to pay attention to.

02:46:15.240 | And what you'll find is the quality of the training

02:46:18.060 | will go up exponentially.

02:46:20.000 | You will feel kind of quote unquote bored,

02:46:21.680 | but that just means you'll go back to training

02:46:23.800 | and you'll get a lot more done

02:46:24.680 | 'cause you have one thing to focus on.

02:46:26.120 | So you can get a lot more done

02:46:28.180 | when you avoid those distractions.

02:46:29.800 | And when you're doing strength and especially power work,

02:46:33.440 | since it's not fatiguing,

02:46:35.400 | strength will be a little bit, but power won't be.

02:46:37.600 | People tend to get very bored.

02:46:39.440 | They're used to either feeling a pump or a burn or a sweat.

02:46:42.920 | And that's their like perception of my quality of workout.

02:46:46.500 | These exercises will not hit that for you.

02:46:48.940 | So there has to be another metric you're looking at,

02:46:51.360 | which is I'm going to try to move as well as I can,

02:46:54.860 | as hard as I can.

02:46:56.480 | That's going to produce your results.

02:46:57.780 | If you can't do that,

02:46:59.200 | then you might as well just not do these workouts.

02:47:01.240 | Go do something else.

02:47:02.080 | You're just gonna be wasting time.

02:47:03.740 | You're gonna be burning a very low amount of calories.

02:47:06.020 | You'll have wasted an hour

02:47:07.520 | and you're gonna go right back to the place you were.

02:47:09.360 | So be very intentional.

02:47:11.340 | There are actually some studies showing

02:47:14.240 | that music can enhance performance.

02:47:15.640 | We've done some of these in our lab.

02:47:17.340 | So what's that mean?

02:47:18.180 | It's not about the music per se.

02:47:19.360 | It's about the focus and intent

02:47:20.600 | and do whatever it takes to be very focused and intent.

02:47:23.120 | And you can actually get in and out very quickly

02:47:24.980 | and get a lot of work done and see a lot of results.

02:47:27.860 | - Love it.

02:47:28.700 | Okay, let's talk about hypertrophy,

02:47:31.620 | the topic that occupies the minds of so many youth,

02:47:35.860 | young men, but also a lot of women.

02:47:38.640 | I think one of the really interesting progressions

02:47:40.680 | that's taken place in the last decade or so

02:47:43.600 | is that far more men and women are using resistance training

02:47:48.600 | in order to evoke hypertrophy, growth of muscles.

02:47:52.160 | For aesthetic reasons and for all sorts of reasons.

02:47:55.740 | What are the ways that people can induce hypertrophy?

02:48:00.320 | - So not to correct you or insult you,

02:48:02.240 | but probably a better way to think about that question

02:48:04.720 | is really what stimuli do I need to give the muscle

02:48:08.900 | to induce hypertrophy?

02:48:10.880 | Now there are hormonal factors that are important.

02:48:14.200 | There are nutritional factors,

02:48:15.360 | but just to stick with the context of training.

02:48:18.360 | This is really gonna frame a lot of our answers.

02:48:21.040 | And as you'll see,

02:48:22.240 | it's one of the reasons why I call hypertrophy training

02:48:24.920 | kind of idiot proof in terms of programming.

02:48:27.680 | Now the work is hard, difficult and all that,

02:48:31.160 | but the precision needed is a lot less

02:48:34.740 | than what we saw in power and strength.

02:48:37.760 | And so if you note there,

02:48:38.680 | like it's very important that you do it in this style

02:48:40.920 | with this intent and within these parameters.

02:48:44.040 | And if you're outside of the parameters,

02:48:45.080 | it's not gonna be it.

02:48:46.060 | Hypertrophy has a very broad range

02:48:50.000 | in terms of your actual applications.

02:48:52.000 | And this is why you have and will continue to see

02:48:55.540 | countless styles of training that all work.

02:48:58.820 | I mean, I know you were mentored earlier in life

02:49:02.040 | by one of my favorite people in this entire field,

02:49:04.480 | Mike Mentzer, like just an absolute character.

02:49:07.040 | His style was completely different

02:49:08.620 | than what you would see in a classic textbook

02:49:11.400 | or any number of different influencers

02:49:16.680 | or coaches or individuals.

02:49:18.680 | And if you've ever thought to yourself,

02:49:20.200 | like why is it all these programs work?

02:49:22.320 | And people love to jump to things like,

02:49:23.860 | well, it's the steroids.

02:49:25.280 | Like just get that out of the equation for now.

02:49:27.840 | Independent of that,

02:49:28.680 | that's not even part of the equation,

02:49:30.200 | you're still going to see results.

02:49:31.400 | And the question is like, why?

02:49:32.880 | Well, that's because what's driving changes

02:49:35.160 | in the strength and power

02:49:37.880 | are the adaptations of specificity.

02:49:42.020 | What's driving changes in hypertrophy

02:49:45.440 | is much more well-rounded.

02:49:46.640 | And so you have options to get there.

02:49:48.840 | Remember, you're training a movement

02:49:51.020 | and now you're training a response

02:49:54.380 | and a muscle that cause the growth.

02:49:55.560 | That's very, very different.

02:49:57.240 | So if we look at like the classic dogma,

02:50:00.120 | we have to basically challenge the muscle

02:50:03.360 | to need to come back, in this case, specifically bigger,

02:50:06.200 | and the nutrients need to be there to support that growth.

02:50:09.400 | Okay, the nutrients aside, perhaps we can come

02:50:11.400 | and a few more minutes and talk about that.

02:50:13.520 | So all we really have to do

02:50:15.680 | is going back to our dogma of activation

02:50:18.440 | of something on the cell wall.

02:50:19.880 | We've talked about this earlier.

02:50:21.100 | That's got to induce that signaling cascade.

02:50:23.260 | That's got to be strong enough to cause a nucleus

02:50:26.480 | to react to it, to go to the ribosomes,

02:50:28.880 | to initiate this entire cascade of protein synthesis.

02:50:31.620 | Okay, so that signal has to be one of a couple of things.

02:50:34.320 | Either it has to be strong enough one time,

02:50:38.120 | it has to be frequent enough,

02:50:40.560 | or it has to be a combination of these things.

02:50:43.960 | All right, so I can get there with a lot of frequency

02:50:47.380 | and a moderate signal.

02:50:49.260 | I can get there with very low frequency and a large signal,

02:50:52.560 | like more akin to what you did with Mike back in the day,

02:50:54.920 | I'm sure.

02:50:55.760 | - And still train that way.

02:50:56.800 | - Still train that way.

02:50:57.640 | - Each muscle group mainly once a week directly

02:51:00.000 | and once a week indirectly.

02:51:02.480 | - So all you have to do there to not fail

02:51:05.560 | is to make sure the training is hard enough

02:51:07.640 | and it's going to work.

02:51:08.600 | If you choose the frequency path,

02:51:10.400 | then you actually have to make sure

02:51:11.520 | you're not training too hard

02:51:13.160 | to where you can actually maintain the frequency.

02:51:15.120 | The only wrong combination here is infrequent

02:51:18.000 | and low intensity and low volume.

02:51:19.880 | That's it.

02:51:20.720 | As long as one of those three variables is high,

02:51:23.360 | you're going to get there.

02:51:24.360 | Because the mechanisms that are needed to activate

02:51:27.120 | that signaling cascade are wide ranging.

02:51:29.040 | And this is why when we even see things like

02:51:31.720 | blood flow restriction training, right?

02:51:33.820 | This is when you put like a cuff on your arm or your leg

02:51:36.120 | and you block blood flow and you use no load

02:51:38.840 | or as low as say 30% of your maximum.

02:51:41.560 | And you take it to fatigue failure.

02:51:43.660 | That actually is an equally effective way

02:51:46.000 | of inducing hypertrophy.

02:51:47.520 | Despite the fact that you're using three, five, 10,

02:51:51.000 | maybe most 20 to 30% of your one at max.

02:51:53.960 | Why?

02:51:54.800 | Because you went through the route of metabolic disturbance.

02:51:57.920 | Other ways, say a higher load,

02:51:59.640 | maybe as heavy as you can for say eight repetitions

02:52:03.480 | is going to get through what's called mechanical tension.

02:52:06.320 | And so there's these different paths

02:52:08.060 | that we can get to the same spot.

02:52:09.000 | Now, eventually these things have a saturation point.

02:52:11.880 | So you don't need all three of these mechanisms.

02:52:14.340 | The third one of course being muscle damage or breakdown.

02:52:18.000 | And I know we want to chat a little bit about that,

02:52:20.260 | but none of these three are absolutely required.

02:52:23.380 | You can have multiple of them in a session.

02:52:26.220 | You don't have to have breakdown at all.

02:52:27.880 | That is a complete, well, really it's a flat out lie

02:52:31.760 | that you have to break a muscle down to cause it to grow.

02:52:34.980 | That's just not needed at all.

02:52:36.520 | You have to have one of these three things though.

02:52:38.680 | And so again, this allows you a lot of flexibility,

02:52:41.080 | which is why crafting your program, which is best for you,

02:52:44.880 | is actually fairly simple when it comes to hypertrophy.

02:52:47.520 | You just have to make sure you do the work.

02:52:49.640 | And you want to make sure you have a few standards in place

02:52:52.400 | with the exercise choice and some other things

02:52:54.600 | that we'll hit in just a second.

02:52:56.880 | But that's really the fundamental way of getting to it.

02:52:59.640 | Making sure either that signal is loud enough

02:53:02.680 | or frequent enough to give the nuclei

02:53:07.040 | a convincing enough reason to spend the resources,

02:53:09.480 | 'cause you have to remember two things.

02:53:11.560 | In order to grow new skeletal muscle,

02:53:13.720 | you need amino acids, which are your supply.

02:53:16.840 | And then you need primarily carbohydrates

02:53:19.000 | as the energy source to power that synthesis process.

02:53:21.600 | You remember basic chemistry that says

02:53:24.320 | if you're gonna take two atoms

02:53:26.300 | and you're gonna pull them apart or put them together,

02:53:28.920 | that's going to take energy.

02:53:29.960 | Typically, and in most of actually metabolism,

02:53:32.920 | when you split a bond, you're gonna get,

02:53:35.780 | it's called exergonic.

02:53:36.620 | You're gonna get energy from that.

02:53:37.880 | But when you put them together,

02:53:39.960 | that's going to take energy.

02:53:41.140 | This is why we call that protein synthesis, right?

02:53:43.700 | So you have to convince your nucleus that one,

02:53:46.940 | invest those resources in energy, primarily carbohydrate.

02:53:49.960 | But number two, and more importantly, invest that supply.

02:53:53.740 | There's a ton of possible ways to get energy,

02:53:55.760 | but there's a very low amount of amino acids available.

02:53:58.180 | And you need them for many more things

02:54:00.040 | than just taking your biceps

02:54:02.020 | from 17 inches to 18 inches, right?

02:54:04.900 | It's not going to do that if you're in a position

02:54:07.560 | to where again, you can't sustain immune function.

02:54:09.680 | If red blood cell turnover needs to be higher

02:54:12.120 | or any of the other main,

02:54:13.240 | like tons of things that you need proteins for.

02:54:15.900 | So you have to be able to say like, are you sure?

02:54:18.240 | You really want to spend these resources

02:54:20.260 | and build it into muscle.

02:54:21.100 | Because once we do that,

02:54:22.720 | it's very difficult to go backwards, break them back down

02:54:26.440 | and bring the amino acids back into that availability pool.

02:54:29.440 | So we can use them for either another function entirely

02:54:32.680 | or even another muscle group.

02:54:35.300 | That's called protein redistribution.

02:54:36.840 | By the way, when you say,

02:54:38.580 | maybe you don't do a lot of upper body work

02:54:41.860 | in your training and you're not eating enough protein

02:54:44.380 | or a minimal amount,

02:54:45.560 | and you're doing a lot of lifting in your legs.

02:54:47.280 | You'll notice your legs will get larger,

02:54:49.620 | but that's actually a lot of times

02:54:50.760 | you're pulling the protein from,

02:54:52.900 | say your upper body in this case,

02:54:54.000 | and redistributing it back down to the quads.

02:54:57.120 | So that's what you have to get to.

02:55:00.300 | And in terms of application, what numbers to hit,

02:55:02.600 | we can go through each one of our modifiable variables,

02:55:05.400 | just like we did with speed and strength and power

02:55:08.880 | and walk through some of our best practices

02:55:10.960 | in each category.

02:55:12.240 | - Yes, so I'd love to talk about those modifiable variables

02:55:15.600 | as they relate to choice of movements,

02:55:20.600 | order of movements, volume,

02:55:23.740 | so sets and repetitions and frequency of training.

02:55:27.940 | And I'm particularly interested in frequency of training

02:55:29.920 | because that relates to the so-called split

02:55:32.360 | where typically one is not training

02:55:35.940 | their whole body every workout,

02:55:37.420 | although there are I'm sure hypertrophy workouts

02:55:39.780 | that are whole body workouts,

02:55:41.840 | but where people are dividing their body parts

02:55:45.360 | onto different days.

02:55:47.080 | So we'd love to go through this list one by one,

02:55:50.760 | starting with exercise choice.

02:55:52.940 | - Cool, great.

02:55:53.920 | So in the previous section,

02:55:55.140 | we pretty much said exclusively choose your exercises

02:55:57.760 | by the movement patterns.

02:55:58.900 | And you want to balance between pushing and pulling

02:56:01.000 | and rotation and things like that.

02:56:02.760 | In this particular case, you have the option to do either.

02:56:05.440 | Here's my recommendation.

02:56:06.760 | Most people default almost exclusively

02:56:08.880 | to choosing by body parts here, right?

02:56:11.640 | I'm going to do calves and shoulders today

02:56:14.380 | and chest and back,

02:56:16.120 | whatever combinations of things they want.

02:56:18.360 | That is clearly effective strategy.

02:56:20.240 | However, many studies have actually been done

02:56:22.900 | where you choose by movement patterns

02:56:24.840 | and that is actually equally effective.

02:56:27.400 | Now, one little caveat I actually should have said

02:56:29.400 | a few minutes ago.

02:56:30.460 | When we talk about the research on muscle hypertrophy,

02:56:33.200 | it is important to distinguish the fact

02:56:35.320 | that the vast majority of this research

02:56:36.700 | is coming from a novice to moderately trained individuals.

02:56:40.220 | There's actually more and more research coming out

02:56:41.900 | on trained individuals,

02:56:42.980 | but that's still moderately trained, right?

02:56:46.540 | Even those ones.

02:56:47.380 | So what happens in those people

02:56:48.760 | that are actually way past that point?

02:56:51.040 | We don't know scientifically.

02:56:52.320 | It's very difficult to do research there.

02:56:53.900 | So that's an important caveat I will acknowledge

02:56:56.720 | when I say, "Hey, you don't need to do this,"

02:56:58.400 | or, "You have to do this."

02:57:00.080 | You were assuming a training status of moderate to low.

02:57:03.900 | May or may not be true, past that.

02:57:06.700 | We don't know scientifically.

02:57:07.620 | I have certain thoughts personally,

02:57:08.840 | but the science will only take us that far.

02:57:11.220 | So that being said, you can actually choose by muscle

02:57:15.900 | or by movement pattern here,

02:57:17.460 | whichever is your personal preference.

02:57:19.200 | And this is actually where you can just become a good coach,

02:57:22.040 | whether you're coaching somebody else

02:57:23.240 | through this fitness journey or it's yourself,

02:57:25.540 | and give them a little bit of autonomy.

02:57:27.360 | So maybe you select the first three exercises

02:57:29.740 | and then let them select one every day.

02:57:31.960 | And so if they especially want to make sure

02:57:34.200 | that one muscle group grows, let them target that muscle.

02:57:37.720 | And maybe the rest of the day,

02:57:38.740 | you've actually split it up as push-pull

02:57:41.400 | or something else like that.

02:57:43.140 | All those strategies are effective.

02:57:44.440 | Personal preference, as long as the total amount of volume

02:57:46.920 | on the working muscle is equated throughout the week,

02:57:50.000 | which we'll get to those numbers in a second,

02:57:51.800 | then you're going to be in the exact same spot, no problem.

02:57:54.480 | I would actually generally encourage people

02:57:57.520 | to choose exercises in a variety of fashions.

02:58:00.540 | I actually think that it's important

02:58:02.520 | that you do some number of combination

02:58:05.160 | of what we call bilateral and unilateral exercises.

02:58:08.600 | So bilateral being, think about it like a squat,

02:58:10.740 | where bi meaning two, lateral,

02:58:12.580 | you have two feet on the ground moving in sequence here.

02:58:16.240 | Unilateral is one.

02:58:17.540 | So this could be something as simple

02:58:19.360 | as a rear foot elevated split squat.

02:58:22.020 | It could be a single leg leg press or single leg curl.

02:58:24.840 | It could be a pistol squat,

02:58:26.280 | something where the individual limb is moving one at a time.

02:58:30.120 | You need to have a combination

02:58:31.280 | of bilateral and unilateral training.

02:58:33.840 | That's good to do for strength as well.

02:58:35.300 | Probably not super important for power,

02:58:37.480 | but also very important for making sure,

02:58:40.860 | for hypertrophy's sake, you're not getting any imbalances

02:58:45.160 | as you progress, especially through months

02:58:47.300 | and years of training.

02:58:48.560 | So make sure you're doing a little bit of a combination.

02:58:51.020 | Whether you want to pick specific implements.

02:58:53.240 | That's really a methods question and a preference question.

02:58:56.600 | Then it is concepts.

02:58:58.360 | So dumbbell, great.

02:59:00.420 | Kettlebell, fine.

02:59:01.360 | Barbell, awesome.

02:59:02.640 | Band, doesn't matter.

02:59:03.820 | Body weight, none of these things are as important

02:59:06.740 | because all you're trying to do is create a certain insult

02:59:08.960 | in the tissue and the implement is just whichever one

02:59:11.640 | you feel best doing it.

02:59:13.400 | And this is where actually machines come into play a lot.

02:59:16.840 | Machines are greatly underappreciated.

02:59:19.340 | They're a fantastic resource,

02:59:21.080 | especially somebody who's either early

02:59:24.320 | in their fitness journey,

02:59:26.040 | or somebody who really is having a hard time

02:59:28.640 | targeting a muscle group with a bigger compound movement.

02:59:32.600 | So when you're choosing exercises for hypertrophy,

02:59:34.920 | you're going to want to start

02:59:36.160 | with those bigger compound movements.

02:59:37.780 | That's going to drive a lot of the adaptation.

02:59:40.800 | You can get to these single joint movements

02:59:43.060 | like a little bit later.

02:59:44.240 | But having said that,

02:59:45.880 | because of the way that people move differently,

02:59:49.200 | their anthropometrics and their biomechanics

02:59:52.160 | and even their technique,

02:59:53.560 | the same exact exercise will not necessarily work

02:59:58.280 | the same exact muscle groups for multiple people.

03:00:00.580 | So if you and I both went and did a back squat,

03:00:03.920 | if you did it a little bit more

03:00:05.400 | of what we call a high bar squat,

03:00:07.320 | so this is the bar is literally sitting up higher

03:00:09.120 | up on your neck, you're keeping your back more vertical.

03:00:12.600 | And because in order to do that,

03:00:14.960 | you shift your knees much further past your toes,

03:00:17.600 | keeping, of course, your whole foot on the ground

03:00:19.600 | in good position.

03:00:21.000 | That's going to generally put more of an emphasis

03:00:24.120 | on the knee joint.

03:00:25.920 | And so that's not a bad thing.

03:00:27.700 | You tend to see a little bit more work in the quads there,

03:00:30.880 | a little bit less work in the spinal erectors and back

03:00:33.180 | because you're actually not supporting

03:00:35.960 | the weight horizontally,

03:00:37.320 | which it's a much more difficult position.

03:00:39.340 | It's vertically stacked.

03:00:40.680 | If I were to do it in the classic low bar squat,

03:00:44.360 | which is again, lowering the bar further down my back

03:00:47.020 | towards one more like my shoulder blades,

03:00:49.300 | I probably take a little bit of a wider stance.

03:00:51.480 | And when I squat, I drive my glutes back further away

03:00:54.700 | from the midline.

03:00:55.740 | In fact, as a general rule,

03:00:57.780 | if you take the midline of your body,

03:00:59.800 | the thing that moves is the farthest away from that midline

03:01:02.280 | is likely to be the thing that's activating the most.

03:01:05.220 | So in the case of the front squat,

03:01:07.540 | you're not generally going to be using your glutes as much

03:01:10.680 | if you're in that, or not even front squat,

03:01:12.120 | just that high bar squat where you're very, very vertical.

03:01:14.140 | Your knees are going to be moving very far over your toes,

03:01:16.160 | which is fantastic.

03:01:17.640 | Therefore it's a little bit more knee dominant,

03:01:19.240 | as can we say it.

03:01:20.140 | The other version here,

03:01:20.980 | you can keep your shins really close to vertical.

03:01:23.000 | You move your butt backwards.

03:01:25.460 | You're going to have to then lean forward with your torso,

03:01:28.200 | which means it'll be more low back, more glutes,

03:01:30.300 | and a little bit less knee.

03:01:31.820 | Now that's a general statement.

03:01:33.060 | It's not necessarily always true,

03:01:34.860 | but as a guideline there,

03:01:36.060 | that is one exact exercise where you may be going,

03:01:38.160 | "Man, I'm trying to improve this clear weakness

03:01:41.860 | "I have in my quads.

03:01:43.000 | "I can't even leg extension my body weight.

03:01:44.980 | "I have a significant problem there."

03:01:46.800 | So maybe in your particular case,

03:01:49.100 | if I'm hammering you,

03:01:50.120 | or you're hammering yourself in a squat exercise,

03:01:52.080 | and you're wondering why your quads

03:01:53.440 | aren't getting any stronger or growing in any size,

03:01:56.760 | it may be because of the style of the movement.

03:01:59.040 | So I may need to go, "Andrew, all right, look,

03:02:01.180 | "squats in general, if you look at the research,

03:02:03.740 | "are an excellent exercise for quad development."

03:02:05.900 | But for you, they're not.

03:02:07.340 | Because of the way you stand,

03:02:08.760 | or just because of neural activation, it doesn't matter.

03:02:12.040 | So I need to take you to a machine

03:02:13.840 | and isolate that muscle group

03:02:15.360 | so we can make sure we see development in that.

03:02:17.720 | So if you're trying to grow a specific body part,

03:02:20.720 | area, individual muscle,

03:02:22.480 | it's very important that you're

03:02:23.680 | actually seeing progress there.

03:02:24.960 | And don't worry about, well, in the textbook,

03:02:27.760 | the bench press is supposed to be good for your pec.

03:02:30.340 | 'Cause if you're not actually moving the right position,

03:02:32.040 | or it depends on the angle in which your sternum

03:02:33.760 | actually sits in your body,

03:02:35.720 | a bench press may actually be doing

03:02:37.160 | very little for your pec.

03:02:38.880 | And you may need to adjust to, say,

03:02:40.080 | an incline bench, or a decline bench, or a pec fly.

03:02:43.180 | So machines can be fantastic at letting you isolate

03:02:46.320 | without having to worry about things like stability,

03:02:49.240 | your low back position, getting hurt, where's your neck at.

03:02:51.740 | You can really concentrate on just the movement,

03:02:54.220 | concentrate on the muscle,

03:02:56.020 | and let everything else kind of go away

03:02:57.500 | and ensure you're getting training in that specific area.

03:03:01.140 | - Those are excellent recommendations.

03:03:02.600 | One thing I wanted to ask about

03:03:04.400 | is prioritizing specific body parts,

03:03:07.360 | and therefore specific exercises.

03:03:10.400 | And here, I'm not necessarily referring

03:03:12.120 | to trying to bring up a so-called weak body part,

03:03:15.660 | an area that tends to be either genetically deficient,

03:03:19.260 | 'cause in some cases, I learned, for instance,

03:03:22.500 | having seen a lot of competitive

03:03:24.040 | track and field championships,

03:03:25.600 | I love watching track and field as a spectator,

03:03:27.980 | go up to Hayward Field in Oregon whenever there's a meet,

03:03:30.020 | and really love that.

03:03:31.980 | The sprinters are amazing.

03:03:34.160 | They have some of the highest calves in the world

03:03:36.660 | that I've ever seen, like little micro calves,

03:03:40.020 | but they're fast as hell.

03:03:42.500 | - They're right behind the knee,

03:03:43.340 | and they have a very long distance

03:03:45.000 | between that calf and their foot,

03:03:46.380 | which makes propulsion excellent.

03:03:48.500 | - They wouldn't stand a chance as a competitive bodybuilder,

03:03:51.200 | but because something different

03:03:53.180 | is being selected for in bodybuilding,

03:03:54.820 | but obviously, they're magnificent for sprinting.

03:03:58.620 | Most people, of course, reside somewhere

03:04:00.220 | between the extreme of very long muscle bellies

03:04:03.640 | from origin to insertion, or very, very short muscles.

03:04:07.820 | Usually, people have one or two body parts

03:04:10.420 | that they want to emphasize, for whatever reason.

03:04:12.780 | These days, it seems to be people are really,

03:04:15.320 | what are they saying now, like glutes are the new biceps,

03:04:17.580 | or biceps are the new glutes, or I don't know.

03:04:19.460 | Anyway, you see this stuff.

03:04:20.780 | - I love 'em both.

03:04:22.200 | By the way, I am so pro curls in the squat rack.

03:04:25.100 | - There you go.

03:04:25.940 | - Love it, right.

03:04:26.780 | - There you go.

03:04:27.600 | - Nobody kill me.

03:04:28.440 | - So everyone has their thing

03:04:30.360 | that they would like to emphasize,

03:04:31.700 | but I have a question because we're specifically

03:04:33.460 | talking about hypertrophy, which is,

03:04:37.200 | should people give themselves permission

03:04:39.200 | to not train a body part

03:04:41.500 | if their goal is balanced hypertrophy?

03:04:44.220 | I'll give a couple of examples.

03:04:45.660 | One of the reasons why I, for instance,

03:04:48.340 | not done a lot of free weight squatting

03:04:51.020 | is because, despite my quadriceps being rather weak,

03:04:54.400 | according to you, they tend to grow rather easily

03:04:58.100 | relative to other muscle groups,

03:04:59.740 | and the goal for me has always been balanced development.

03:05:03.020 | And so I emphasize hamstring work,

03:05:04.780 | and I emphasize calf work and hamstring work.

03:05:08.620 | It's not that I don't train my quads at all,

03:05:10.140 | but I do far less for them,

03:05:12.200 | and I avoid the big compound movements for them.

03:05:15.820 | I occasionally do them.

03:05:16.880 | And again, this is not about what I do or don't do,

03:05:19.680 | but I think that in the context of a conversation

03:05:22.500 | about hypertrophy, is it appropriate

03:05:24.640 | to give people permission to say,

03:05:26.180 | listen, if you're just genetically strong, large lats,

03:05:30.920 | doing a lot of chin-ups and rows

03:05:32.560 | might actually be the worst thing for you

03:05:34.380 | if your goal is balanced development.

03:05:35.980 | And I ask because I don't often hear anyone,

03:05:39.660 | any credentialed people, give people permission

03:05:44.660 | to completely avoid training a given body part

03:05:47.760 | if their goal is balanced development,

03:05:50.120 | and yet I think most people who are resistance training

03:05:53.500 | are seeking balanced development.

03:05:54.960 | I don't know anybody that actively wants

03:05:57.520 | to have big upper body, small legs.

03:05:59.100 | I think that comes from neglect and laziness in most cases.

03:06:01.860 | Sometimes it's injury-related or other things.

03:06:04.220 | But I think this is an important point to raise

03:06:07.180 | that any good program for hypertrophy,

03:06:09.460 | I would think would have to take into account

03:06:11.660 | people's genetic and natural variation,

03:06:14.700 | sport-based variation in which muscle groups

03:06:17.280 | just tend to grow easily for them

03:06:18.780 | and which ones require a lot more focus and work.

03:06:22.040 | - Yeah, absolutely.

03:06:23.620 | First of all, you have permission to do

03:06:25.660 | or not do anything you'd like to do

03:06:27.460 | in terms of hypertrophy training.

03:06:29.780 | I generally would not recommend disregarding

03:06:32.660 | a muscle group entirely.

03:06:33.840 | I know that's not what you actually suggested,

03:06:35.340 | but just to make sure that people didn't hear it that way.

03:06:38.160 | What I would do is in this example

03:06:40.140 | is I would continue to do those big movements.

03:06:41.780 | I would just keep the volume low.

03:06:43.580 | So I might do two sets or something twice a week.

03:06:47.880 | There's a whole bunch of reasons.

03:06:48.880 | You wanna make sure that those motor patterns are there.

03:06:52.000 | You wanna make sure that the,

03:06:53.660 | especially the benefit of these compound movements

03:06:55.660 | is you get to work so many complimentary muscle movements

03:06:59.640 | at the same time.

03:07:00.480 | So in the case of like loaded squat,

03:07:02.320 | you're not only working stability in the hip

03:07:05.180 | as well as the knee, but you're also working upper body.

03:07:08.540 | Your rhomboids are keeping you in position.

03:07:10.300 | Your neck has to stay in position.

03:07:11.700 | Your toes, everything is working.

03:07:13.260 | And so it's really difficult to get those things

03:07:15.620 | when you take that movement out

03:07:18.020 | and you replace it with say a machine hamstring curl.

03:07:22.320 | That whole element of balance and neurological control

03:07:25.000 | is very, very important to maintain over time.

03:07:28.140 | And that just gets removed if you go to machines only.

03:07:31.080 | So I would keep some of those things in,

03:07:33.780 | maybe even not all year round,

03:07:35.120 | but maybe one quarter of the year, two quarters,

03:07:37.040 | every other rotate at something like that.

03:07:39.260 | As long as it is getting, you're not,

03:07:41.140 | if the reason you weren't doing say those squats was

03:07:44.140 | because you're like, ah, here's my back or something.

03:07:45.520 | Okay, great, then leave it out.

03:07:46.540 | But if it's just simply,

03:07:47.360 | you don't want your quads to go too much,

03:07:48.620 | I would just keep that volume low and do something

03:07:51.240 | just to kind of touch it, keep it activated

03:07:53.840 | and to maintain all those other things

03:07:55.360 | like flexibility, range of motion.

03:07:58.280 | I would bet anything,

03:07:59.180 | your adductors are probably underdeveloped, right?

03:08:01.900 | Now you can get those by doing your squats

03:08:03.660 | 'cause you're not really doing, I'm sure,

03:08:04.780 | in much adduction training.

03:08:06.940 | And so there's things like that that just get lost

03:08:09.620 | when you're only thinking all big muscle groups

03:08:12.140 | that come inherent in doing the larger movements.

03:08:15.360 | And so you don't have to worry about them

03:08:16.620 | or train them separately.

03:08:17.940 | - I appreciate that.

03:08:18.760 | And in reality, I do two to three really hard work sets

03:08:23.560 | of hack machine squats per week,

03:08:26.100 | which is plenty for me to maintain

03:08:27.940 | and even get a little bit stronger.

03:08:29.380 | But per our earlier discussion, about a year ago,

03:08:33.060 | I shifted to doing very low repetition ranges

03:08:35.900 | to main strength in that movement,

03:08:38.000 | but I am actively avoiding hypertrophy in that muscle group.

03:08:41.340 | - Yeah, or another solution would actually be

03:08:43.260 | do something like one set to failure a week.

03:08:46.540 | Not even extremely long,

03:08:47.540 | just do something in the eight to 15 repetition range

03:08:51.460 | at the end of all that strength set

03:08:53.480 | and just get a little bit of pump there and then do it.

03:08:55.940 | So just so that those muscles can touch that level of fatigue

03:08:58.700 | touch that level of strain and mechanical tension,

03:09:01.140 | walk away.

03:09:02.260 | - Great, thank you for that.

03:09:04.120 | What about exercise order?

03:09:06.560 | - Amazing.

03:09:07.400 | So implicit in this exercise choice thing,

03:09:10.280 | it's what you're gonna notice is these modifiable variables

03:09:13.020 | interact with each other, right?

03:09:14.600 | And you can clearly see how when we talked about volume

03:09:17.500 | and to clarify volume is the repetitions multiplied

03:09:19.960 | by the sets.

03:09:20.800 | That's typically how we express volume.

03:09:22.340 | Well, that's gonna be directly influenced by intensity.

03:09:24.460 | The heavier load you put on the barbell,

03:09:26.700 | the less repetitions you can do.

03:09:28.180 | And the inverse, right?

03:09:29.700 | Rest intervals, the shorter you keep your rest intervals,

03:09:32.300 | then either the lower the weight has to go, the intensity,

03:09:34.460 | or the lower the rep range has to go.

03:09:36.180 | Order is the same thing.

03:09:37.740 | Choice is the same thing.

03:09:38.740 | So all of these things modify each other.

03:09:40.900 | They play a little bit of a hand

03:09:42.220 | in what everything else does.

03:09:43.380 | So with the exercise choice thing,

03:09:46.020 | rolling into exercise order,

03:09:47.380 | you get to play a couple of games here.

03:09:49.120 | When we talked about strength and power,

03:09:50.700 | I basically said stick to the big movements,

03:09:52.980 | most complicated and compound movements first.

03:09:55.800 | You don't have to do that with hypertrophy.

03:09:58.420 | You can do this in a couple of ways.

03:10:00.140 | You can do the thing

03:10:00.980 | you're just simply most interested in first.

03:10:03.720 | You can do this thing called pre-fatigue.

03:10:05.540 | So say you're going to do a back day.

03:10:08.100 | You could go in and do nothing but isolated biceps

03:10:10.580 | as your very first exercise

03:10:12.220 | and then roll into your pulling movements

03:10:15.580 | because what you'll see is during most pulling activities,

03:10:17.840 | the biceps are a secondary or tertiary muscle group,

03:10:20.540 | but you've pre-fatigued them.

03:10:21.620 | You've guaranteed that muscle of most interest

03:10:23.620 | that it's most training in

03:10:25.620 | and everything else is secondary.

03:10:27.040 | So you can start if you want with single joint movements,

03:10:29.880 | you can start with isolation stuff

03:10:31.180 | or you can start with compound stuff.

03:10:33.620 | Either way, it just really comes down to preference

03:10:35.460 | and what you're specifically trying to develop.

03:10:38.740 | Now this also goes back to the exercise choice question

03:10:42.340 | 'cause it's sort of the same thing.

03:10:44.060 | Like which one am I choosing?

03:10:46.220 | And where I wanted it to cap this was the exercise splits.

03:10:50.500 | And so we just sort of talked about

03:10:52.260 | am I doing body part splits?

03:10:53.700 | And I know a question I get a lot here is,

03:10:55.100 | well, which ones should I package together?

03:10:57.740 | I'm not really concerned with it.

03:10:59.600 | All you should worry about is how many times per week

03:11:02.460 | and in fact, total volume you achieve

03:11:04.620 | on a muscle group per week.

03:11:07.100 | And it doesn't really matter

03:11:08.740 | how those things are folded in.

03:11:10.140 | It's really a personal preference issue.

03:11:12.740 | One mistake that we see here commonly

03:11:15.540 | is grossly under appreciating

03:11:18.300 | that the legs are not a muscle group, right?

03:11:21.720 | So the legs have a whole bunch of muscle groups in them.

03:11:25.080 | So we see a classic split

03:11:26.580 | like I'll do shoulders and chest Monday

03:11:30.100 | and then I'll do biceps and forearms Tuesday

03:11:35.060 | and then legs Wednesday or whatever.

03:11:37.860 | And then back to upper body.

03:11:39.180 | And then I was like, you're like, wait a minute.

03:11:41.220 | You have four days dedicated to the upper body

03:11:43.420 | and one for quote unquote legs.

03:11:46.520 | Well, like I hope you can see the imbalance

03:11:49.080 | that's going to happen over time

03:11:50.380 | is you're going to do far more upper body

03:11:52.960 | than you are lower body and that's not appropriate.

03:11:55.060 | So you just wanna think about your lower body

03:11:56.620 | like you would do.

03:11:57.760 | If you're gonna do body part splits,

03:11:59.100 | then include those things as well

03:12:00.700 | and not just chunk everything in as legs once a week.

03:12:03.700 | If you wanna do that, that's actually okay.

03:12:05.700 | But that day has to be very, very challenging

03:12:07.900 | and you probably should do quite a bit of volume there

03:12:10.740 | 'cause you're almost surely not going to hit

03:12:12.500 | the total weekly volume needed to optimize muscle growth

03:12:15.740 | if you're literally only doing once a week

03:12:18.120 | of your quote unquote legs.

03:12:20.220 | - So along those lines, let's talk volume.

03:12:23.400 | How much volume does each muscle group need per week

03:12:27.500 | in order to generate and for that matter,

03:12:30.620 | maintain hypertrophy?

03:12:31.980 | - Right, so the kind of minimum number

03:12:34.120 | we're gonna look for here is 10 working sets.

03:12:36.840 | - Per week. - Correct.

03:12:37.880 | - Per muscle group. - Correct.

03:12:39.180 | - And just to make sure that everyone's on the same page,

03:12:43.060 | if I do a chin up or a pull up,

03:12:45.860 | I'm going to mainly be training my back muscles, my lats,

03:12:51.540 | if I'm doing it correctly.

03:12:52.520 | - Lats and rhomboids and biceps.

03:12:53.860 | - Right, but there'll be indirect targeting of the biceps.

03:12:58.220 | So would you include indirect targeting?

03:13:01.980 | So for instance, if you said 10 sets per week,

03:13:04.740 | let's just use biceps

03:13:05.740 | 'cause it seems that that's the go-to generic muscle.

03:13:09.620 | Why is that, by the way?

03:13:10.460 | That when people ask somebody to flex their muscle,

03:13:12.980 | they always flex their bicep.

03:13:13.860 | They don't flex their calf or their quad

03:13:15.640 | or their glutes or something.

03:13:16.540 | I guess there's some public decency issues.

03:13:19.020 | - Well, I can tell you with my children,

03:13:21.660 | that's the very first muscle I taught them to flex.

03:13:23.420 | - Their glutes?

03:13:24.260 | - No, their biceps.

03:13:25.100 | - Oh, I was gonna say, all right.

03:13:26.740 | Good, good.

03:13:31.020 | Healthy parenting advice from Dr. Andy Galpin.

03:13:33.780 | So if it's 10 sets per week for biceps

03:13:37.360 | in order to maintain or further grow the biceps,

03:13:40.820 | but does that mean if somebody does 10 sets of chin-ups

03:13:44.960 | or 10 sets of chin-ups in rows,

03:13:46.660 | that they are checking off any of the boxes for biceps,

03:13:49.820 | assuming that they're doing the movement properly

03:13:52.580 | and targeting the major muscle group

03:13:55.140 | that a given movement is supposed to target,

03:13:57.240 | which in my mind, when you're doing a chin-up,

03:14:00.140 | you're supposed to mainly be using your back muscles.

03:14:02.480 | And then there are secondary muscles

03:14:04.540 | or secondary activation of other muscles.

03:14:07.500 | But of course, some people,

03:14:08.860 | their arms grow like crazy when they do chin-ups

03:14:11.200 | and their back doesn't grow at all.

03:14:12.260 | So this is where we're back

03:14:13.100 | to the kind of genetic preloading of the system, if you will.

03:14:18.100 | So how does one meet this 10 sets per week minimum

03:14:23.340 | when dividing different body parts

03:14:25.020 | and thinking about this direct and indirect activation?

03:14:28.420 | - So two things, there's no specific exact rule here.

03:14:31.400 | And this is why these set ranges are ranges, right?

03:14:34.360 | And this is why we don't say like 10 is,

03:14:36.340 | so 10 would be sort of the minimum number you wanna get to.

03:14:38.700 | The more realistic number that most people,

03:14:41.140 | especially if you're advanced or even intermediate,

03:14:44.180 | is more like 15 to 20 working sets per week, okay?

03:14:48.100 | Now, if you're very well-trained,

03:14:49.320 | you probably wanna even push more towards like 25.

03:14:51.820 | And in fact, past that, there's not a lot of research.

03:14:55.960 | So the optimal number may be 30.

03:14:57.640 | We don't really know.

03:14:58.540 | It's just hard to get that much work in.

03:15:01.020 | It may actually even be detrimental.

03:15:02.340 | - And here we're referring to natural athletes,

03:15:04.500 | that is people who, for whatever reason,

03:15:08.180 | either because they're not taking any prescription drugs

03:15:10.540 | or maybe if they are, whose levels of steroid hormones,

03:15:15.540 | mainly the androgens, like testosterone, et cetera,

03:15:19.580 | do not exceed the normal reference range values,

03:15:22.940 | either because that's what they are naturally

03:15:24.500 | or that's what they're replacing through pharmacology.

03:15:26.780 | Whereas when we think of,

03:15:28.340 | technically someone could be taking exogenous hormones

03:15:32.560 | to replace a deficiency,

03:15:34.140 | and then there's still a normal range, okay.

03:15:36.060 | But I just wanna clarify because you work with athletes

03:15:39.840 | in a number of different sports

03:15:40.740 | where drugs are and are not tolerated, et cetera,

03:15:43.380 | and the general population,

03:15:44.740 | that what we are talking about here

03:15:46.220 | is for the general population,

03:15:47.740 | not for steroid-using athletes.

03:15:49.220 | - Correct. - Okay.

03:15:50.060 | - Yep. - Great.

03:15:51.700 | - So 10 was just sort of that like

03:15:53.420 | absolute minimum number to maintain,

03:15:55.100 | which is actually pretty cool.

03:15:56.060 | If you think about it this way,

03:15:57.820 | if you went in and you did three sets of 10,

03:16:01.340 | it's a very standard rule. - Three sets of 10 repetitions.

03:16:03.220 | - Correct. - Yeah.

03:16:04.420 | - You're already at three.

03:16:05.340 | You did that three days a week.

03:16:07.340 | You're at your nine, that's almost 10.

03:16:08.940 | If you also just went to the gym one day a week,

03:16:11.340 | you did three sets of 10 and you did three exercises,

03:16:15.380 | you're at nine working sets, you're basically done.

03:16:17.780 | So achieving 10 sets per week per muscle group,

03:16:20.620 | and now we're not even talking

03:16:21.780 | about indirect activation of a secondary.

03:16:24.480 | So you're going to hit 10 fairly easy.

03:16:27.680 | Extension of that, hitting 20 is actually still not that hard

03:16:32.180 | because of what's actually gonna happen there.

03:16:33.940 | So in your example, if you're doing your chin ups,

03:16:36.300 | well, would the biceps count?

03:16:39.120 | There's no exact rule there

03:16:40.580 | because there could be technique issues.

03:16:43.340 | It could be hand position.

03:16:44.180 | So you mentioned chin up very specifically.

03:16:45.860 | A chin up is actually gonna put your hands

03:16:48.180 | in this position where your palms are facing up, right?

03:16:50.220 | This is supination and pronation.

03:16:51.520 | So you're gonna be there.

03:16:52.420 | Well, that's actually quite different than a pull up

03:16:54.820 | where your hands are in the opposite direction.

03:16:56.720 | So a chin up actually is gonna be pretty good activator

03:16:59.940 | in your biceps for most people.

03:17:02.500 | So you would expect actually to probably count that

03:17:05.100 | 'cause it's gonna be very difficult

03:17:06.540 | to not see some fatigue in your biceps

03:17:08.220 | depending on your mechanics,

03:17:10.780 | depending on, and by that I mean,

03:17:12.860 | just the segment lengths of your bones, right?

03:17:16.300 | That's where your muscles originate and insert.

03:17:19.280 | There's nothing you can do about it.

03:17:20.280 | It's not even a technique or a focus issue.

03:17:21.880 | It's just simple fact, the matter of

03:17:23.340 | that's how you pull best in that area.

03:17:25.900 | The position of what your hands are on the barbell,

03:17:28.620 | wider grip, more narrow grip,

03:17:29.980 | it's going to change muscle use.

03:17:31.620 | So we talked about earlier,

03:17:34.180 | I think in the previous episode that

03:17:36.780 | exercises do not determine adaptations, applications too,

03:17:39.460 | but exercises do determine things like the movement plane,

03:17:43.180 | the joint you use,

03:17:44.640 | and typically the eccentric concentric sort of ratio,

03:17:48.220 | as well as oftentimes the muscle groups involved.

03:17:51.460 | So there's just not a lot of things you can do

03:17:54.260 | depending on how you are built of, you know,

03:17:56.740 | some exercises activating a secondary group

03:17:59.340 | and you don't want it.

03:18:00.180 | It's not always a technique issue, may just be,

03:18:02.260 | that's how you're built, right?

03:18:04.220 | And the same could be true for a squat.

03:18:07.180 | The high bar versus low bar sort of example

03:18:09.260 | we talked about earlier.

03:18:10.140 | It's, you know, you can see plenty of evidence

03:18:13.820 | on muscle activation studies where people even doing

03:18:17.140 | the vertical back squat style have tremendous

03:18:19.900 | glute activation and folks doing the low bar

03:18:22.960 | have tremendous quad activation.

03:18:24.980 | So a lot of it depends on personal mechanics.

03:18:27.060 | So what I counted is the question.

03:18:28.880 | Really, you just have to ask yourself, number one,

03:18:31.880 | do you really care that much?

03:18:33.540 | You know you have a range to get to.

03:18:35.180 | If you were anywhere between 10 to 25 working sets,

03:18:37.860 | you know you're fine.

03:18:39.020 | So if you count it or don't count it,

03:18:40.960 | it's just gonna change the difference

03:18:42.020 | between whether you did 17 working sets or 23.

03:18:44.440 | And either way, you're fine.

03:18:45.500 | So I don't really care.

03:18:47.020 | Number two, are you actually feeling anything there?

03:18:49.860 | So if you're doing your chin ups

03:18:51.340 | and your biceps are blowing up, I'm counting that, right?

03:18:54.580 | If you're doing it and you're like,

03:18:55.420 | no, I don't feel any fatigue there, it's all my,

03:18:57.340 | then I'd probably say, okay,

03:18:58.220 | we're not even gonna count that as towards it.

03:18:59.720 | So you can just let that guide you a little bit

03:19:02.320 | towards your count.

03:19:03.780 | - Yeah, I've always noticed

03:19:04.960 | that there are certain muscle groups

03:19:07.000 | that are very easy to isolate when under load.

03:19:11.880 | And those are almost always the same muscle groups

03:19:15.280 | that are easy to contract very hard

03:19:19.560 | without any load whatsoever.

03:19:21.200 | - Bingo.

03:19:22.040 | You know, that's actually really insightful.

03:19:23.560 | So you can kind of use this heuristic of like,

03:19:26.620 | if you can contract your lats just standing here,

03:19:29.720 | you're probably going to contract them very well

03:19:31.380 | when you lift.

03:19:32.220 | If you can't, you can probably assume

03:19:34.280 | about the same thing's gonna happen.

03:19:35.640 | So yeah, you'll know.

03:19:38.520 | This is actually,

03:19:39.360 | the lats are actually really interesting

03:19:41.540 | because they tend to be one of the more difficult

03:19:43.520 | muscle groups to learn how to activate.

03:19:45.840 | So if you're in your journey and you're just like,

03:19:47.400 | I have no idea.

03:19:48.260 | And you can look up like a lat pose.

03:19:51.500 | So how do you like, how do you puff your lats out?

03:19:53.100 | How do you show it?

03:19:53.940 | And if you do that and you're like, wow,

03:19:55.460 | there's no movement here.

03:19:57.420 | Just recognize that's extremely common.

03:19:59.680 | And that is probably going to take you many, many,

03:20:01.720 | many months of trying before you start to see some movements

03:20:04.720 | and probably even a few years

03:20:06.000 | before you really start to see activation.

03:20:07.620 | So you're not some sort of like specific,

03:20:09.920 | like special genetic anomaly.

03:20:12.320 | It's very, very common.

03:20:13.480 | It's uncommon to not be able to activate your biceps, right?

03:20:17.480 | That everyone can do that.

03:20:18.340 | But if you're just like, man, I can't get this here.

03:20:21.300 | I'm just gonna stop doing it.

03:20:22.460 | Do not do that.

03:20:23.320 | Just keep at it and just keep concentrating

03:20:25.500 | and thinking about the muscle group.

03:20:26.780 | It will take some time.

03:20:27.780 | It's very common to have challenges activating lats.

03:20:31.720 | - Yeah, I've noticed that many of the muscle groups

03:20:34.860 | that were responsible for a large fraction of the work

03:20:38.580 | in the various sports that I played as a young child

03:20:42.140 | are muscles that are very easy for me

03:20:45.340 | to selectively isolate and induce hypertrophy in.

03:20:49.200 | I suppose I'm one of those mutants

03:20:50.520 | where my lats happen to be one such of those muscle groups.

03:20:54.100 | But I think that's because I swam a lot when I was a kid.

03:20:56.380 | - I was literally going to ask when you were a swimmer.

03:20:57.860 | - Yeah. - That's like a telltale sign.

03:20:59.420 | - Every kid in my town swam and played soccer.

03:21:01.720 | - There you go.

03:21:02.560 | - And then later I skateboarded and did some boxing

03:21:06.640 | and things of that sort. - You generally hear

03:21:07.480 | that answer is you either were a swimmer

03:21:08.920 | or you were a wrestler.

03:21:10.600 | So it's like that pulling and pull toward you

03:21:12.300 | is thousands of repetitions allowed you

03:21:15.440 | to get very good at contracting.

03:21:16.960 | But because I also played soccer and skateboarding

03:21:20.860 | but I didn't do any baseball, basketball or football,

03:21:23.960 | muscle groups like deltoids are very challenging

03:21:26.520 | to activate and isolate. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

03:21:28.040 | - So I do think that early development

03:21:29.920 | is superimposed on a genetic template

03:21:32.760 | that sort of predicts which muscle groups

03:21:35.320 | are going to be easier or harder to isolate and train.

03:21:37.960 | - It's also a very good case for why it's important

03:21:40.020 | to do as many different athletic activities

03:21:43.220 | as you can in your youth.

03:21:44.920 | - Yeah, and if you do skateboard,

03:21:46.940 | definitely learn to ride switch.

03:21:48.600 | 'Cause every skateboarder I know

03:21:50.920 | has one leg that's larger than the other

03:21:52.520 | and one calf that's larger than the other.

03:21:54.480 | And actually, for that matter,

03:21:55.960 | people that do martial arts, they don't learn to,

03:21:58.320 | if they're not southpaw, if they don't learn to switch up

03:22:00.360 | and do their work southpaw, you see the same thing.

03:22:03.460 | I mean, you're building an asymmetry into the system

03:22:05.840 | and it's not just muscular, it's neural.

03:22:08.560 | - Oh, sure. - It's strongly neural.

03:22:10.780 | So yeah, kids, parents, get your kids doing

03:22:14.140 | a bunch of different things.

03:22:15.400 | I suppose gymnastics would probably be the best sport

03:22:17.960 | all around in terms of movement in multiple planes

03:22:20.840 | and activating all the different muscle groups.

03:22:23.520 | - Yes and no.

03:22:24.480 | There's a lot of benefit, no question about it.

03:22:27.680 | There's a lot of other things though

03:22:29.040 | that has limited ability.

03:22:30.500 | So almost everything in, not like gymnastics is great,

03:22:33.700 | but almost everything in that is pre-planned,

03:22:36.240 | which is a major downfall, right?

03:22:37.680 | So the joy of skating is there's so much

03:22:39.960 | proprioceptive input that you have to make decisions

03:22:42.400 | very quickly in small windows.

03:22:44.860 | Now you have a little bit of that

03:22:45.700 | when you're flipping in the air and you have to land,

03:22:47.260 | but gymnastics, gymnasts tend to have a very specific routine

03:22:50.360 | that they're working on and they work on that routine

03:22:51.940 | for years and go at it.

03:22:53.660 | - Skateboarding for me was transportation, it was freedom,

03:22:57.200 | and it didn't require any coaches or parental oversight.

03:22:59.940 | - Yeah, yeah, ball sports have the beauty of reaction

03:23:02.200 | and things like that.

03:23:03.040 | So all of them were wonderful.

03:23:04.440 | Yeah, good to do a lot of them.

03:23:07.680 | - You've established that 10 really to 20 sets per week

03:23:11.780 | is the kind of bounds for maintaining

03:23:15.460 | and initiating hypertrophy.

03:23:17.580 | - Yep, if I were to like flag one of them,

03:23:19.760 | I would say 15 to 20 is the sets

03:23:21.940 | that you want to get working.

03:23:23.320 | Now it gets complicated when you ask,

03:23:26.140 | well, how many reps per set do I have to get to?

03:23:29.540 | Okay, well, we also can complicate that

03:23:32.500 | by repetition type and tempo.

03:23:34.840 | Just sort of let all that go for now and just think,

03:23:37.560 | if you're getting close to that range, you're in the spot.

03:23:41.700 | And all you have to do now is balance two things,

03:23:45.080 | recovery and continued training.

03:23:47.240 | Okay, so if you're somewhere in this 10 to 20

03:23:49.220 | working sets range and you're in a position

03:23:52.800 | where you can continue to do that,

03:23:54.320 | you're not so sore and so damaged and beat up

03:23:57.260 | that you can't maintain that volume for eight weeks

03:24:00.500 | at a time or at least six weeks at a time,

03:24:02.740 | then I'd probably say either the style of repetitions,

03:24:05.820 | the amount of repetitions per set you're doing are too much.

03:24:07.920 | The volume is getting to you.

03:24:09.400 | However, if you're not seeing adaptations,

03:24:11.840 | then I'd say maybe the repetitions aren't enough.

03:24:14.260 | And so that's the kind of game you're running.

03:24:16.460 | Now there could be plenty of other factors.

03:24:18.360 | - Intensity.

03:24:19.240 | - Of course, yeah, intensity, intent,

03:24:23.160 | and then of course the other things,

03:24:24.560 | sleep, nutrition, et cetera.

03:24:26.760 | All these other things that go into our visible stressor

03:24:29.980 | category that we always analyze.

03:24:32.080 | This sort of brings up this idea

03:24:33.400 | of responders and non-responders.

03:24:34.840 | So we get this one a ton.

03:24:37.000 | So why is it some people, my gym buddy, my roommate,

03:24:40.880 | we go to sleep the same time,

03:24:42.080 | we're on the same nutrition plan, we work out together,

03:24:45.080 | she triples in muscle size

03:24:46.580 | and I don't have like no gain whatsoever.

03:24:49.300 | Well, there's a lot of work that we're trying to do

03:24:51.460 | to identify the molecular mechanisms behind responders

03:24:54.720 | and non-responders 'cause they clearly exist.

03:24:56.560 | In fact, this is one of the reasons why every paper

03:24:59.560 | I basically will ever publish again if I do,

03:25:02.700 | always reports individual person data.

03:25:05.720 | So rather than group averages, you get to see,

03:25:07.940 | if there's 10 subjects in it,

03:25:08.920 | you get to see how each of the 10 responded.

03:25:11.380 | Because the group average can get confusing,

03:25:14.480 | what you really wanna see is how many actually people

03:25:17.240 | got better, how many got worse,

03:25:19.480 | how many maybe changed and if so.

03:25:21.500 | So we'll always report those individual data

03:25:23.100 | 'cause when you go to train, you're you,

03:25:25.840 | you're not the group average.

03:25:27.000 | That's very important to know.

03:25:28.960 | So if you do that, you can see a beautiful line

03:25:31.940 | of these hyper-responders,

03:25:33.920 | the bell curve in the middle of the normal responders

03:25:35.640 | and those folks who like through any training study

03:25:38.240 | just won't get any better.

03:25:39.640 | If you can tease out, which you can't,

03:25:42.020 | but let's say in science you could tease out

03:25:43.560 | all the extra factors, total stress load, hydration, sleep,

03:25:47.080 | et cetera, what you often see is non-responders,

03:25:50.600 | a lot of the time, it's not that they have

03:25:52.100 | a physiological inability, it's just that they need

03:25:54.600 | a different protocol.

03:25:55.880 | And a lot of times it's they just need more volume.

03:25:58.320 | So if they can handle that and they're not

03:25:59.840 | excessively beat up, just give them more volume

03:26:01.400 | and they tend to see a lot of breakthroughs.

03:26:03.960 | You see the same thing with plateaus.

03:26:06.600 | So typically it's sort of just like, okay,

03:26:07.960 | the routine you're on, you've been on it for too long,

03:26:10.440 | we need to either go to the other end

03:26:11.860 | of the hypertrophy spectrum for intensity,

03:26:14.080 | which means like if you've been in the like 60 to 70%,

03:26:17.480 | everyone repetition max range,

03:26:19.560 | maybe we actually need to go heavier,

03:26:21.720 | take our repetitions down,

03:26:23.300 | maybe even our total volume down and go heavier.

03:26:25.240 | Try that, a great way to break through plateaus of grain

03:26:28.460 | if all the other boxes are checked.

03:26:31.140 | The other one is do the opposite, which is like, okay,

03:26:33.720 | we're gonna go higher, we're gonna go sets of 20,

03:26:35.940 | sets of 25, very high repetition range

03:26:38.740 | and really get after it, not to do as much damage

03:26:41.560 | 'cause you don't tend to get as sore

03:26:43.140 | from those really high repetition ranges.

03:26:45.360 | You'll get more sore from the lower repetition,

03:26:47.560 | higher intensity range than you will typically

03:26:50.140 | the other ones and see if we can bust through

03:26:52.880 | some plateaus there.

03:26:53.720 | So it just generally means you need to do something

03:26:55.620 | a little bit different than your training partner.

03:26:58.560 | - So we've talked about exercise choice

03:27:00.240 | and we've talked about the number of sets that one needs

03:27:03.200 | in order to induce hypertrophy per week.

03:27:06.600 | What about repetition ranges?

03:27:08.160 | You've mentioned pretty broad repetition ranges.

03:27:11.560 | How many repetitions per set is required

03:27:15.120 | in order to induce hypertrophy?

03:27:16.400 | - Yep, so there are two caveats here before I give,

03:27:18.840 | well, the number is somewhere between like four to 30 reps.

03:27:23.200 | - 30 repetitions.

03:27:24.360 | - Absolutely, in fact, I think you can go much higher.

03:27:26.340 | - The first 20 have to feel exceedingly light.

03:27:30.720 | - Correct.

03:27:31.600 | - And during those first 20 or so repetitions,

03:27:34.420 | is the goal still to contract the muscle

03:27:36.220 | as hard as possible on each repetition?

03:27:38.300 | - So this is the caveats here.

03:27:40.060 | So caveat number one is there is an assumption

03:27:45.060 | that by the end of this set,

03:27:48.320 | you're getting somewhat close to failure.

03:27:51.020 | And so you don't have to go to absolute failure

03:27:55.260 | to induce muscle hypertrophy,

03:27:56.600 | but you also have to get kind of close.

03:27:59.560 | So if you're gonna do a set of 25 and you finish it

03:28:01.860 | and you're like, ooh, yeah,

03:28:03.700 | like that was kind of starting to get hard at the end.

03:28:05.860 | That's not going to be enough.

03:28:07.620 | If you're gonna do a set of five or six

03:28:09.400 | and the same sort of expression comes out of your mouth,

03:28:11.300 | it's not gonna be, so in that case,

03:28:12.700 | it doesn't matter your rep range

03:28:15.100 | if you're not getting somewhat close to failure.

03:28:17.480 | Again, it doesn't need to be complete failure.

03:28:19.600 | A good number to think about is like minus two,

03:28:22.740 | which is what we call reps and reserve,

03:28:24.780 | which is sort of like I got within two or so reps of failure

03:28:28.140 | and then I stopped.

03:28:28.980 | - And can we define failure,

03:28:30.380 | at least for sake of this portion of the conversation,

03:28:32.900 | as the point at which you can no longer move the resistance,

03:28:37.900 | could be your body, could be a weight, a machine, et cetera,

03:28:42.460 | that you can no longer move the resistance any more

03:28:47.460 | in the concentric phase of the exercise movement

03:28:51.560 | in good form.

03:28:52.620 | - Correct, but that's a really nice,

03:28:53.680 | momentary muscular failure is how we typically define it.

03:28:56.440 | There's a wonderful review, I think it's open access,

03:28:58.860 | that just came out in the last handful of months.

03:29:01.680 | Eric Helms's team out of New Zealand.

03:29:03.400 | Eric is a great scientist

03:29:05.520 | and a very experienced physique coach

03:29:07.560 | and a competitor himself.

03:29:08.460 | So he knows a lot about this area.

03:29:10.600 | And that paper went through all the exact definitions

03:29:13.600 | in detail, all the caveats

03:29:15.880 | that we're not gonna have time to get into today.

03:29:17.240 | So I would recommend folks like check that out

03:29:18.940 | if they want more information,

03:29:20.220 | but I'll try to get to the highlights of it right here.

03:29:22.900 | So what they basically showed is going all the way

03:29:26.120 | to failure in the defining failure like you just did, right?

03:29:29.640 | So momentary muscular failure,

03:29:32.160 | you can't complete another repetition

03:29:34.460 | through a complete range of motion,

03:29:36.160 | through whatever range of motion you determined prior to,

03:29:39.080 | as well as with good technique.

03:29:40.620 | So other body parts aren't being compromised,

03:29:42.480 | sort of et cetera.

03:29:43.560 | And doesn't need to be total failure, that minus two.

03:29:46.980 | Failure is still needed in caveat two,

03:29:51.000 | which is again, very, very highly trained individuals.

03:29:54.180 | You won't see people who are like Eric

03:29:56.320 | or other folks who are six to eight to 10 years

03:29:58.780 | into very serious training who don't have to go to failure

03:30:02.980 | probably a little bit more than what I just said.

03:30:05.440 | So the layout that they brought in their paper

03:30:08.460 | was very nice.

03:30:09.300 | And they basically said, okay,

03:30:10.120 | here's a couple of scenarios in which going to failure

03:30:12.940 | is maybe the best way to do it.

03:30:14.860 | Number one, you probably should do it

03:30:17.640 | on a little bit of the safer exercises.

03:30:20.320 | So maybe taking your back squat on a barbell

03:30:23.500 | to complete failure and doing that as like a standard

03:30:26.540 | protocol multiple times a week,

03:30:27.780 | it's maybe not the best choice.

03:30:30.100 | So maybe if you're gonna do barbell back squats,

03:30:32.860 | you take that to your one or two reps in reserve,

03:30:37.440 | stop there, it's a lot of work.

03:30:39.020 | And actually going back to our discussion

03:30:41.140 | of the purlipin chart, it's a similar idea, right?

03:30:43.460 | Where you're gonna spend most of your time

03:30:44.980 | in these working sets, 70 to 90 sort of percent.

03:30:48.420 | And then you're gonna take that failure

03:30:49.780 | to maybe the hack squat machine,

03:30:51.660 | or maybe even to the leg extension machine.

03:30:53.360 | So a little bit of a safer exercise.

03:30:55.060 | They also can tend to be single joint exercises,

03:30:57.420 | don't have to be, but they're just ones

03:30:59.440 | that are not as complicated and you're not likely

03:31:01.980 | to injure other body parts when you're doing it, all right?

03:31:05.700 | So that's one way to go about it.

03:31:08.300 | Another way to go about it is simply doing it

03:31:10.380 | on like the last movement of the day, right?

03:31:13.720 | And so again, you're not gonna do it

03:31:14.900 | on your first three or four exercises,

03:31:16.540 | but whatever your last finisher is,

03:31:18.460 | you'll hit total failure on that one.

03:31:20.580 | And that kind of keeps you in a range of,

03:31:23.220 | yeah, you hit some failure.

03:31:24.600 | You got a lot of overall work done.

03:31:26.420 | So that's a lot of stimulus.

03:31:27.660 | That's a lot of noise going to that nucleus

03:31:29.860 | that says grow, grow, grow, grow, grow,

03:31:31.600 | but you didn't totally obliterate yourself,

03:31:34.820 | especially if you don't have the assistance

03:31:36.600 | of anabolic steroids, right?

03:31:38.460 | That's very, very important.

03:31:39.580 | If you have those, you can push this a lot harder

03:31:41.620 | 'cause your recovery would be significantly enhanced.

03:31:43.660 | If not, you kind of wanna walk away from that.

03:31:46.060 | - I have to assume that 99% of people listening to this

03:31:49.020 | do not, and yet among those who are not taking anything

03:31:54.020 | in terms of anabolic, I think there's a large range

03:31:58.080 | of recovery quotients out there.

03:32:00.060 | Some people just tend to recover better.

03:32:01.700 | Some people I think also are far more diligent

03:32:03.820 | about what I would call the necessary

03:32:06.980 | but not sufficient variables of adequate sleep,

03:32:09.900 | proper nutrition, limiting stress, and so on.

03:32:15.440 | - Yeah, I can't wait to break all that stuff down.

03:32:17.200 | I've got a whole, I've got a very long discussion

03:32:19.500 | for all those things.

03:32:20.340 | - We will get into it in all its practical realities

03:32:24.060 | and actionables before long.

03:32:27.140 | What about rest between sets?

03:32:28.880 | - Great, this is the interplay now.

03:32:30.820 | So one actually thing we said for a long time

03:32:32.900 | is you wanna stick between 30 to 90 seconds of rest

03:32:36.260 | between sets of hypertrophy.

03:32:38.340 | And that's because you're trying to activate

03:32:42.380 | this metabolic disturbance or disruption.

03:32:45.300 | You'd need a little bit of a burn,

03:32:46.520 | a little bit of a pump to go there.

03:32:48.080 | More recent research, a lot of these

03:32:49.600 | out of Brad Schoenfeld's lab and others have shown

03:32:52.280 | that that's just doesn't seem to be the case.

03:32:53.900 | Again, for moderate to newly trained individuals,

03:32:58.680 | whether that's the case for the highly trained folks,

03:33:01.060 | I don't necessarily know.

03:33:03.040 | I don't think there's any difference here.

03:33:04.800 | So you can take up to three to five minutes

03:33:06.940 | of rest in between sets and be fine.

03:33:09.440 | The caveat here though is this.

03:33:11.360 | If you're gonna rest longer,

03:33:13.760 | that means the metabolic challenge is lower.

03:33:17.220 | So you need to then increase the challenge

03:33:19.620 | in either mechanical tension,

03:33:21.260 | which think about as weight, load or muscle breakdown.

03:33:25.660 | So you can't lower one of the variables,

03:33:28.020 | keep everything else the same and expect the same result.

03:33:30.280 | So if you're going to have more rest,

03:33:32.380 | then you need to either preserve the load on your bar

03:33:36.260 | or the volume.

03:33:37.540 | One of the two has to happen.

03:33:38.940 | So this gives people a lot of opportunity.

03:33:41.100 | I generally tell people if you're gonna train

03:33:44.640 | for hypertrophy, it's probably best to stay

03:33:46.680 | in the two minute range at most.

03:33:49.160 | You can go longer, but a lot of people have a hard time

03:33:52.640 | actually coming back and then executing that next set

03:33:55.120 | with enough intent to get there

03:33:57.680 | and or it's going to make your workouts tremendously long.

03:34:00.840 | So you can stick to the shorter one.

03:34:03.240 | You don't have as much mechanical tension, but that's okay.

03:34:06.120 | You can still get there.

03:34:06.960 | But in reality of it is you can do whatever you would like.

03:34:10.560 | Tell me if this is a reasonable structure

03:34:12.660 | given what you've told us.

03:34:14.760 | Three exercises per muscle group.

03:34:16.580 | First exercise, slightly heavier loads.

03:34:20.760 | So repetition ranges somewhere between,

03:34:22.940 | let's say five and eight with perhaps hitting failure

03:34:26.460 | or close to it on the last set.

03:34:29.120 | Rest periods of somewhere between two

03:34:32.020 | or let's get wild and say five minutes, okay?

03:34:35.020 | So it's a little bit more of a strength type workout

03:34:37.500 | at that point, but then moving to a second exercise

03:34:40.080 | of three or four sets where the repetition range

03:34:43.040 | is now eight to 15.

03:34:46.200 | Shortening the rest periods to 90 seconds or so.

03:34:49.640 | And then on the third exercise,

03:34:51.440 | repetition ranges of 12 to 30.

03:34:56.400 | This number 30 kind of makes me wide-eyed.

03:34:59.280 | I can't remember the last time I did a set of 30

03:35:01.080 | thinking it was for hypertrophy,

03:35:02.480 | but what you're saying makes absolute sense

03:35:04.640 | and is research back.

03:35:05.960 | So very short rest intervals, maybe 30 seconds

03:35:10.960 | between sets.

03:35:13.400 | Would that allow somebody to target all three forms

03:35:17.640 | of major adaptation?

03:35:19.320 | I mean, in my mind, it works.

03:35:21.400 | You're talking about mechanical loads,

03:35:23.080 | you're talking about stress and damage,

03:35:24.880 | and you're talking about metabolic stress.

03:35:27.580 | Is that better than to, for instance,

03:35:30.440 | do all the high repetition work in one workout per week

03:35:34.600 | and then higher loads in the other workout?

03:35:37.800 | Does it matter if you divide them up or combine them?

03:35:40.480 | - It would not matter.

03:35:42.000 | I would say it matters in the sense

03:35:44.000 | of your personal practical situation.

03:35:46.440 | - Well, long rest, for me,

03:35:47.920 | I love training heavier with longer rest,

03:35:51.400 | but I'm hearing that there's real value

03:35:54.440 | to doing these higher repetition ranges.

03:35:56.920 | - So the formula you set up there in a second is great.

03:36:00.520 | If you wanna do it the other way, that's fine.

03:36:03.160 | It's kind of idiot-proof.

03:36:04.680 | You can set this up however you'd like.

03:36:06.520 | You could actually do the inverse.

03:36:08.280 | Theoretically, you could do the sets of 30 first

03:36:11.440 | and then move to your sets of 80.

03:36:13.140 | It doesn't really matter because we're trying

03:36:15.800 | to just get to a certain total stimuli

03:36:18.040 | and you're gonna hit it eventually.

03:36:19.320 | So you have a lot of room to play here.

03:36:21.720 | You also have a lot of room to adapt

03:36:23.400 | based on your circumstances.

03:36:25.240 | God, I'm short on time today.

03:36:27.240 | Typically, my workout takes me 60 minutes

03:36:29.120 | for this plan I have.

03:36:30.040 | I've only got 35 today.

03:36:31.920 | What do I do?

03:36:33.400 | Well, if you're training for strength,

03:36:35.860 | that's a different answer

03:36:37.640 | than if you're training for hypertrophy.

03:36:38.820 | If you're training for hypertrophy,

03:36:40.600 | you need to make sure you hit that total volume.

03:36:42.800 | So in this particular case, lower the load,

03:36:45.160 | lower the rest intervals, and just get to the burn

03:36:48.160 | and get going as much as you can.

03:36:49.600 | If you're training for strength,

03:36:51.240 | I would rather you cut your volume in half.

03:36:54.180 | Get those few repetitions done at that high load

03:36:56.880 | and just don't do very many sets today.

03:36:59.220 | That's a better result.

03:37:00.400 | So the goal that you're going after

03:37:02.940 | is going to determine what we call chaos management,

03:37:05.880 | which is that thing like that,

03:37:07.680 | running out of time today, my time is short,

03:37:09.420 | or you don't even think my time is short,

03:37:11.240 | something got cut off, I'm not feeling it today,

03:37:13.080 | I'm in a hotel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

03:37:15.480 | which is life, right?

03:37:16.400 | That's gonna be 10 to 50% of your workouts

03:37:19.320 | is gonna be chaos management.

03:37:21.040 | Well, how you make those decisions

03:37:23.600 | is gonna go back to understanding, number one,

03:37:25.740 | what goal you're going after, and then number two,

03:37:27.720 | what are the physiological consequences,

03:37:29.560 | we call these physiological limiters,

03:37:31.760 | for each one, and that's gonna tell you

03:37:33.840 | what to select and prioritize,

03:37:35.440 | the volume, the intensity, or whatever else.

03:37:38.480 | - I'd like to ask about frequency,

03:37:42.880 | but I'd like to frame it a little bit differently

03:37:45.920 | than that.

03:37:47.640 | I'd like to ask about total workout duration,

03:37:50.360 | which dovetails with frequency,

03:37:52.200 | because if one is hitting the appropriate number of sets

03:37:56.400 | per week, and one is combining different muscle groups

03:38:00.000 | on the same days, well then workouts are going to be

03:38:02.920 | a very different duration than if one is doing

03:38:05.160 | a different body part each day, for instance.

03:38:07.680 | And so I feel like any discussion about frequency

03:38:10.500 | has to be within the context of workout duration,

03:38:13.160 | and vice versa.

03:38:14.200 | - Yeah, if you are a lifting junkie,

03:38:18.200 | and you're very consistent in your schedule,

03:38:20.040 | I'm actually okay with body parts,

03:38:21.580 | but most people are not that.

03:38:24.240 | And so the concern there is, if you say are isolating

03:38:27.000 | and waiting to do your glutes on one day of the week,

03:38:30.040 | and something happens on that day,

03:38:32.640 | you might go another 13 days now,

03:38:35.140 | before training, between workouts.

03:38:36.940 | And that's really difficult to maintain.

03:38:38.560 | The frequency won't be high enough,

03:38:40.240 | unless the load and volume on that one day

03:38:43.600 | is astronomically high.

03:38:45.520 | It's just not gonna happen.

03:38:47.080 | So while if you look at the research,

03:38:49.500 | frequency, in terms of how many days per week,

03:38:52.140 | doesn't matter that much, as long as the total load

03:38:54.920 | and failure are equivalent.

03:38:57.260 | Practically, it's a challenge.

03:38:59.820 | So it's hard because life gets in the way for most people,

03:39:04.360 | especially if you have kids, and a job,

03:39:05.960 | and all these things over there.

03:39:07.140 | So I actually prefer doing something more like

03:39:09.700 | three days a week of total body.

03:39:11.980 | And if something happens, you've just missed

03:39:14.180 | that body part for 48 hours, 72 hours.

03:39:17.180 | I like that a little better for most people,

03:39:18.760 | not because it's more effective,

03:39:20.400 | but just because it's a little bit more resilient to life,

03:39:24.520 | and you can get there.

03:39:25.660 | If you wanted to actually do a little bit of a combination,

03:39:27.800 | so if you wanted to do like two days a week of whole body,

03:39:30.400 | and then two days a week of a little bit

03:39:31.760 | of a body part split, then you're actually sort of hedging

03:39:34.560 | against all risks there.

03:39:36.720 | As long as you get to that total number there.

03:39:39.160 | Now, there is actually some evidence in a couple of ways

03:39:42.000 | that maybe a little bit more frequently

03:39:43.920 | is a little bit better.

03:39:45.060 | But the difficulty is now going back

03:39:46.520 | to the practicality question of like,

03:39:47.940 | how many people really can train just their strength training

03:39:51.580 | six days a week?

03:39:52.980 | Wow, that doesn't count any of their long duration stuff,

03:39:55.360 | it doesn't, their high heart rate, their flexibility.

03:39:58.160 | Okay, it's just really, really, really hard

03:39:59.940 | to get all that stuff in.

03:40:01.180 | So it is, it tends to be easier on folks

03:40:03.880 | in terms of execution and long-term adherence,

03:40:07.580 | in my opinion, to get that volume accomplished

03:40:11.100 | in a little bit more frequent patterns,

03:40:13.860 | but not once a week.

03:40:15.460 | So I like to kind of have it right there

03:40:17.420 | for most people, again, not because it is technically

03:40:20.700 | quote, unquote, more effective,

03:40:22.040 | but because you're less likely to fail to progress

03:40:26.520 | because of skipping a workout, something popping up,

03:40:29.400 | your power going out and your garage door being locked

03:40:33.000 | on you or whatever.

03:40:34.160 | - Imagine that, that happened to me this morning, folks.

03:40:36.200 | Couldn't get out of my driveway

03:40:37.360 | 'cause the gate, the electronic gate was down

03:40:41.000 | because the power was down.

03:40:41.960 | Anyway, solve that problem.

03:40:43.960 | The way you describe it, my sense is that workouts

03:40:46.320 | will last somewhere between one and two hours of real work.

03:40:50.560 | Is that about right?

03:40:51.400 | - It doesn't have to be nearly that long.

03:40:53.240 | I mean, you could certainly get enough

03:40:54.260 | to work done in 30 minutes.

03:40:55.940 | - Even a whole body workout.

03:40:57.600 | - Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

03:40:58.840 | So if you're doing that three days a week,

03:41:01.120 | so remember the numbers we're trying to hit here.

03:41:02.840 | Let's say we're trying to hit 15 working sets

03:41:04.600 | per muscle group per week.

03:41:06.040 | That's five working sets per day for muscle groups.

03:41:09.160 | So if you did one exercise for that day,

03:41:11.080 | let's say you did squats, you did five sets,

03:41:13.200 | you did that three days a week, you're done.

03:41:14.380 | There's your 15.

03:41:15.800 | - But there are other muscle groups to hit

03:41:17.720 | on the same day you're doing squats

03:41:19.060 | if you're doing whole body.

03:41:20.480 | - Yeah, so you've gotten them all ready.

03:41:22.120 | And so like all the leg muscles in that example

03:41:25.440 | are taken care of.

03:41:26.960 | - So you would not do separate hamstring work necessarily?

03:41:29.120 | - You wouldn't need to.

03:41:30.080 | Now, hamstrings is actually a little bit of a caveat.

03:41:32.280 | Like that's a good example of an exercise or a muscle group.

03:41:35.300 | That's probably really good to make sure you isolate.

03:41:37.400 | It's challenging to get with your standard deadlift

03:41:40.860 | and squat.

03:41:42.120 | It's one of the probably ones that's most important

03:41:44.400 | to go target outside of that.

03:41:46.160 | But in theoretically though, outside of that,

03:41:48.160 | you would get most of your leg muscles done

03:41:50.640 | with even a single exercise.

03:41:52.000 | And even if you wanted to change it up.

03:41:53.360 | So you said, all right, Monday,

03:41:54.960 | I'm gonna do a squat variation.

03:41:57.360 | Wednesday, the next day lift,

03:41:58.840 | I'm gonna do some sort of deadlift hinging variation.

03:42:02.380 | And then maybe Friday, my third day,

03:42:04.080 | I'm gonna do some sort of unilateral,

03:42:06.640 | maybe rear foot elevated split squat or something like that.

03:42:10.040 | All right, maybe even a lateral lunge,

03:42:12.040 | maybe a different plane.

03:42:13.360 | Okay, you're in a pretty good spot.

03:42:14.640 | You're gonna hit most of those muscles

03:42:16.880 | to your 15 working sets,

03:42:19.600 | especially if you take sort of that last set each day.

03:42:22.200 | It's a pretty close to failure.

03:42:23.840 | That's gonna get some more serious work done,

03:42:25.680 | but you're not gonna be so fatigued.

03:42:26.720 | You can't come back and train it a couple of days later

03:42:29.280 | and you'll be fine.

03:42:30.240 | So you could even split that up into two days a week.

03:42:32.960 | And now all you really have to do

03:42:34.060 | is hit something like seven working sets.

03:42:35.900 | So maybe that's two exercises per day,

03:42:38.400 | maybe some sort of a leg press and a leg hinge,

03:42:42.040 | you know, three to four sets each.

03:42:44.480 | You're gonna hit six to eight sets that day.

03:42:46.840 | You did that three days a week.

03:42:47.680 | Now all of a sudden you're at that 20, 24 sets,

03:42:50.280 | body being a bit of a boom.

03:42:51.120 | Same thing with the upper body.

03:42:51.960 | I just gave lower body examples

03:42:53.160 | 'cause, you know, I like the lower body more.

03:42:55.280 | So it's not that challenging to get to those numbers

03:42:59.020 | and split, and those workouts can be extremely short.

03:43:01.200 | So if you were doing that three days a week,

03:43:04.140 | you know, you're doing that one exercise upper body,

03:43:06.960 | one exercise lower body,

03:43:08.000 | that certainly shouldn't take more than 40 minutes.

03:43:10.360 | - I'm happy to hear that, not because I don't like training.

03:43:14.480 | Please excuse the double negative.

03:43:17.380 | But I've found that resistance training workouts

03:43:20.120 | that extend longer than one hour of work

03:43:22.320 | and certainly longer than 75 minutes of work

03:43:24.180 | leave me very fatigued.

03:43:25.480 | - Oh, sure.

03:43:26.320 | - And fatigued to the point where concentrating

03:43:28.520 | on cognitive work throughout the day can be challenging,

03:43:32.000 | need a longer nap in the afternoon.

03:43:33.680 | I'm a big proponent of naps in the afternoon in any case,

03:43:36.000 | but requiring longer naps in the afternoon, et cetera.

03:43:39.420 | So at least for me,

03:43:41.380 | restricting the resistance training workouts

03:43:43.440 | to about 50, five, zero to 60 minutes of real work,

03:43:48.440 | for me three or four times per week,

03:43:50.220 | has helped tremendously.

03:43:51.840 | So it's a case where doing higher intensity work

03:43:54.980 | in a shorter period of time

03:43:56.640 | and actually hitting muscle groups less frequently,

03:43:59.160 | for me that's, again, once directly, once indirectly,

03:44:02.180 | has worked really well.

03:44:03.920 | And as you mentioned earlier,

03:44:05.580 | this could very well be explained

03:44:07.620 | by not my recovery quotient

03:44:09.840 | as some sort of a genetic or physiological variable,

03:44:12.680 | but the way that I'm training.

03:44:14.100 | And indeed, I like to do a few forced reps

03:44:16.640 | and go to failure on too many sets.

03:44:18.100 | And you know, I weaned in that genre of training.

03:44:21.440 | - It's also fun, like to just train hard.

03:44:23.560 | - It is. - It's really fun.

03:44:24.520 | - It is, I think that I've learned a lot

03:44:26.640 | by training to quote unquote to failure.

03:44:28.680 | - Of course.

03:44:29.520 | - I think there's a lot of learning in there

03:44:31.200 | provided it's done safely.

03:44:32.540 | But what you're describing actually inspires me

03:44:34.680 | to at least give a try to these other sorts of splits

03:44:37.560 | and ways of training for hypertrophy and strength.

03:44:39.840 | Because this notion of not necessarily

03:44:41.780 | having to go to failure

03:44:43.300 | and still being able to evoke strength

03:44:44.960 | and hypertrophy adaptations is a really intriguing one,

03:44:49.960 | dare I even say a seductive one.

03:44:51.900 | And that leads me to a question that is based on findings

03:44:56.500 | that I've heard discussed on social media,

03:44:58.680 | which means very little, if anything,

03:45:00.640 | unless it's in the context of people

03:45:02.840 | who really know exercise science

03:45:05.480 | and you're one such person.

03:45:07.120 | And that's this idea that because resistance training

03:45:11.720 | can evoke a protein synthesis adaptation response,

03:45:14.840 | but that adaptation response is lasts about 48 hours

03:45:21.560 | before it starts to taper off,

03:45:23.760 | that the ideal in quotes frequency for training

03:45:27.280 | a given muscle group for hypertrophy is about every 48 hours.

03:45:31.560 | Is that true?

03:45:32.920 | - Yes and no.

03:45:33.940 | So a couple of things there.

03:45:36.140 | Remember in order to grow a muscle,

03:45:37.780 | there's multiple steps here.

03:45:38.940 | So you have the signaling response,

03:45:40.320 | which actually happens within seconds of exercise

03:45:43.100 | and can last depending on the marker,

03:45:45.200 | up to an hour or two hours.

03:45:46.860 | Step number two then is gene expression.

03:45:49.540 | And when we see that that's typically peaked

03:45:51.500 | around two to six hours post exercise.

03:45:53.900 | And then you have following that protein synthesis.

03:45:56.340 | And that's that longer timeframe,

03:45:58.460 | somewhere between 12 hours there.

03:46:00.960 | It's certainly not peaked for 48 hours.

03:46:03.180 | It may be still there 48 hours from now,

03:46:05.300 | but it is absolutely coming down at that point,

03:46:08.040 | depending on sort of a number of factors.

03:46:10.000 | So that part of it is sort of true.

03:46:11.480 | So this is a combination of like some half truths

03:46:13.760 | and some like maybe just pedantic things

03:46:16.280 | that aren't really that important to differentiate.

03:46:18.640 | The real question I think is like, okay,

03:46:21.720 | is it okay to train sooner slash is it better

03:46:24.040 | to train sooner or actually is it better to wait longer?

03:46:27.600 | There's no real reason to think that you need to train

03:46:30.520 | if the goal is hypertrophy,

03:46:32.560 | any sooner than 48 hours afterwards.

03:46:34.920 | I can't think of an advantage that that would confer.

03:46:38.820 | I also can't think of any practical applications,

03:46:43.040 | athletes, physique, bodybuilders, coaches

03:46:46.100 | that ever found tremendous success doing that.

03:46:48.580 | So I would be very skeptical that that is any way better.

03:46:53.120 | Now, could you do it in some instances of say,

03:46:55.900 | you know, you've got travel coming up like that

03:46:57.900 | so that you just, yeah.

03:46:58.740 | - You wanna preload the system by destroying the muscle.

03:47:02.000 | - No problem.

03:47:02.840 | - Waiting seven days or 14 days.

03:47:04.960 | I've known people who have done that before.

03:47:06.520 | - I do all the time. - Vacations or layoffs.

03:47:08.080 | - Every time, like every single time.

03:47:09.400 | - So annihilate themselves and then take a two week layoff.

03:47:11.920 | - Yeah, and it's like, there's no benefit there

03:47:13.480 | other than psychological, like I just love it.

03:47:15.940 | Like it feels great to be super sore.

03:47:17.400 | I feel less crappy not training for those couple of days.

03:47:19.460 | 'Cause I'm like, oh, I'm super sore anyways.

03:47:20.600 | - You need the extended rest.

03:47:22.600 | - Yeah, of course.

03:47:23.520 | And it's just like, it's just a crappy justification

03:47:27.160 | in my brain that like, excuse to do something really wild

03:47:31.240 | and that I totally don't need and get way sore

03:47:32.940 | that I should get.

03:47:33.780 | - Dr. Andy Galvin's suggestions of what not to do,

03:47:36.120 | but that he does.

03:47:38.260 | - Yeah, 100%.

03:47:39.240 | - Do as I say, not as I do.

03:47:40.660 | The famous words of every research professor.

03:47:42.400 | - Yeah, I think 48 hours is a reasonable time to wait.

03:47:46.560 | Can't think of any advantage of going sooner than that.

03:47:48.300 | There's really not a tremendous amount of advantage

03:47:50.040 | of waiting much longer than that.

03:47:51.280 | Certainly 72 hours is fine.

03:47:53.640 | As long as you're hitting these concepts we've talked about,

03:47:56.380 | you can let really life determine that.

03:47:59.880 | - I mean, there's situations too with like,

03:48:01.720 | particularly our athletes where we have to kind of break

03:48:04.520 | that because of schedule obligations.

03:48:06.440 | So they're playing every fifth day, every third day

03:48:08.960 | or something like that.

03:48:09.800 | You're just gonna have to lift them back to back days

03:48:11.800 | and you're just gonna have to get it done.

03:48:13.840 | But yeah, I can't think of why I'd go out of my way

03:48:16.140 | to do that.

03:48:17.200 | - The second part of that question is,

03:48:20.540 | let's say somebody trains a muscle, they train it properly.

03:48:25.220 | They hit it in the appropriate rep ranges

03:48:26.800 | and appropriate rest, et cetera, that the stimulus is there.

03:48:30.260 | The adaptation is set in motion.

03:48:31.740 | They're getting somewhere at 48 hours or so,

03:48:36.680 | a protein synthesis peak that's gonna taper off.

03:48:40.600 | But they don't train it 48 hours later or 72 hours later.

03:48:43.840 | They train it five or six days later.

03:48:45.720 | Not because they're lazy, not because they don't care,

03:48:49.520 | but because they have other priorities that are woven in

03:48:52.920 | with getting hypertrophy in this muscle.

03:48:55.880 | There are people who exist only to get hypertrophy

03:48:57.880 | in a given muscle group, but let's be fair.

03:48:59.480 | Most people would like to grow that muscle group,

03:49:02.720 | but then does it necessarily mean that the muscle

03:49:05.680 | starts to revert to its pre-hypertrophic state?

03:49:08.720 | That is, does it atrophy and get smaller again?

03:49:10.840 | Because if it doesn't, I could see a lot of reasons

03:49:13.440 | for hitting a muscle group once every five days

03:49:15.100 | or seven days, provided you hold on to the hypertrophy

03:49:18.120 | that you initiated five or seven days ago.

03:49:20.280 | - Yeah, there's no reason to think you will lose anything

03:49:22.740 | in that sort of a time domain, five to seven days.

03:49:25.240 | The only challenge with training that infrequently

03:49:28.220 | is can you actually get enough total volume done?

03:49:30.880 | So if you're gonna train a muscle once a week,

03:49:33.440 | you either have to go to real failure,

03:49:36.380 | real damage and soreness, or you have to figure out

03:49:39.080 | a way to hit 20 cents that day in that muscle.

03:49:41.580 | Not at all impossible, especially if you're thinking,

03:49:43.600 | well, actually all I have to get is 15,

03:49:45.340 | and I'm gonna do five sets of three exercises.

03:49:48.840 | That's not outrageous, not at all.

03:49:51.080 | So like absolutely possible.

03:49:52.440 | If you're wanting to go more towards 20,

03:49:54.500 | we're getting closer to that 25.

03:49:56.480 | Like now it starts to get pretty challenging.

03:49:58.400 | So scientifically the research will suggest

03:50:01.700 | it's gonna be equally effective.

03:50:04.040 | Practically it's challenging for people

03:50:06.040 | to hit sufficient volume without just being

03:50:08.520 | so demoralized afterwards because they're in so much pain

03:50:11.120 | they can't get out of their car

03:50:12.480 | 'cause their legs are so trashed.

03:50:13.720 | They can't sit in the toilet and get back up

03:50:15.160 | without crying from pain, so.

03:50:17.440 | - That's not good.

03:50:18.280 | - No. - That's not good.

03:50:19.520 | - I say that 'cause those are actual examples

03:50:21.160 | that have happened in my life.

03:50:22.700 | - Yeah, I'm realizing as we're having this conversation

03:50:25.840 | about ways to stimulate hypertrophy

03:50:27.960 | that I've sort of defaulted to more intensity

03:50:31.280 | as opposed to volume because of the time factor.

03:50:33.280 | I have a lot of other things going on in my life.

03:50:35.140 | And so within that hour, I can't get enough sets

03:50:38.600 | in across all the muscle groups I need to hit.

03:50:40.520 | And I'm only gonna do it about once a week.

03:50:42.700 | And so it's, at least for me,

03:50:45.360 | more advantageous to just train extremely hard.

03:50:47.480 | I actually use the pre-exhaustion technique

03:50:49.120 | that you mentioned before,

03:50:50.600 | or pre-fatigue as you referred to it,

03:50:52.740 | hitting something really strong with an isolation exercise,

03:50:54.980 | then doing compound exercises.

03:50:56.920 | I'm starting to think, based on what you've told me,

03:51:00.320 | that pre-fatigue and then a compound exercise,

03:51:05.000 | in some ways, it's not really two sets.

03:51:07.340 | Because if you're going to failure, forced reps,

03:51:09.800 | you're kind of pushing past failure,

03:51:11.500 | then you're doing a compound exercise

03:51:13.200 | and you're doing that two or three times.

03:51:15.240 | Well, that sounds like four to six sets,

03:51:18.220 | but the forced repetitions are almost

03:51:21.060 | like an additional set, right?

03:51:22.900 | - Yep.

03:51:23.740 | - And so it's not 20 sets,

03:51:25.380 | but it's four to six really, really hard sets

03:51:27.920 | that go beyond what we normally think of as a set.

03:51:30.660 | - Totally.

03:51:31.500 | - Okay, so the difference between running on concrete

03:51:33.560 | and running on sand.

03:51:34.520 | When I go for a sand run, it's a very different experience.

03:51:37.300 | - Totally, yep.

03:51:38.200 | And this is why, I should have mentioned this

03:51:40.620 | at the very, very beginning of our chat today,

03:51:42.840 | but all of these numbers that I'll give you

03:51:45.800 | for any exercise adaptation, you cannot think

03:51:48.860 | of them as hard lines.

03:51:50.820 | They are gradients.

03:51:52.520 | And so when we think about the number for hypertrophy

03:51:55.460 | in terms of repetitions, I said four to 30.

03:51:58.180 | What do you think happens at three?

03:52:00.220 | Do you think hypertrophy just stops?

03:52:02.180 | In fact, the number you'll see in literature

03:52:03.620 | is more like six to 30.

03:52:04.980 | I actually slide it down to four though,

03:52:06.980 | like personal preference because of that.

03:52:08.440 | But it just fades away.

03:52:09.440 | What do you think happens at rep 31, 35?

03:52:11.700 | It just fades gradually over time.

03:52:15.280 | So you actually sort of brought this up

03:52:16.760 | one of your other questions, and I'm not sure

03:52:18.540 | if you were even thinking about this, or maybe you were.

03:52:20.540 | I just babbled on about something else.

03:52:22.540 | But if strength happens between this like one to five

03:52:25.960 | repetition range, and hypertrophy typically happens

03:52:29.420 | in this like eight to 30 range.

03:52:31.500 | What happens if I were to do the sets of six?

03:52:34.020 | Or God forbid, seven.

03:52:35.300 | Like seven and nine are these numbers

03:52:36.740 | you just absolutely don't do in strength training, right?

03:52:39.060 | It's just like sets of one, two, three, four, five, six,

03:52:41.680 | got eight, 10, 12, like do not program a set of 13.

03:52:44.420 | - Now when I'm training sets of seven to nine.

03:52:46.300 | - Yeah, it's great, right?

03:52:48.480 | We'll use sets of seven a lot with weight lifters

03:52:51.060 | 'cause you can actually count numbers more effectively.

03:52:53.200 | - But what happens in seven to nine rep ranges?

03:52:54.740 | - Great, so this is actually a wonderful area

03:52:56.940 | of these like five to eight repetitions

03:53:00.680 | where you're gonna get a nice combination

03:53:02.240 | of a lot of strength gains and a lot of hypertrophy.

03:53:05.100 | So someone is coming in going,

03:53:06.480 | "Man, I wanna get stronger and I wanna add muscle.

03:53:10.220 | "What do I do here?"

03:53:11.220 | Well, that's actually a really nice answer.

03:53:12.980 | Train pretty hard in that like four to eight repetition range

03:53:16.860 | and you're gonna get a lot stronger

03:53:18.060 | and you'll still induce a lot of hypertrophy.

03:53:20.420 | If you want to really maximize hypertrophy,

03:53:23.920 | I would probably spend most of your time

03:53:26.000 | in the eight to 15 repetition per set range.

03:53:30.080 | You can go up to 30, admittedly though,

03:53:32.540 | I don't think it's optimal to spend most of your time

03:53:35.000 | at more than 15 reps per set.

03:53:37.300 | It's very challenging to maintain the focus required

03:53:40.720 | at rep 27 to actually get sufficient failure by rep 30.

03:53:44.460 | You just give up way too early, it's hard to do.

03:53:47.020 | The same thing at the bottom end of that spectrum

03:53:49.500 | in terms of really heavy to get there.

03:53:52.040 | So I really honestly think eight to 15 is still,

03:53:55.240 | it's cliche, it's that textbook number,

03:53:56.760 | but that's the reason that's a textbook.

03:53:58.540 | It is tried and true and very, very, very effective.

03:54:01.140 | If for instance, you wanna get stronger though

03:54:04.380 | and not invoke a lot of hypertrophy,

03:54:07.300 | you have a couple of tricks you can pull.

03:54:09.220 | Number one, stay south of that five repetition range.

03:54:13.320 | You do sets of one, sets of two,

03:54:15.420 | go as heavy as you can with all appropriate considerations

03:54:20.220 | and stick within maybe even up to three reps per set.

03:54:22.760 | You start getting to four to five to six,

03:54:24.580 | now you're gonna start itching towards

03:54:26.180 | that hypertrophy range.

03:54:27.680 | So stay down there, do a lot more total sets.

03:54:30.740 | So do a classic example would be something

03:54:32.860 | like eight sets of three, right?

03:54:35.460 | You're gonna get a lot of practice.

03:54:36.740 | You're gonna get 24 very high quality reps

03:54:38.700 | with a lot of rest in between.

03:54:41.260 | You go from there, you go to managing caloric intake,

03:54:44.540 | making sure your protein is still on point,

03:54:46.760 | you wanna recover, but if your total calories

03:54:49.300 | aren't greater than 10 to 15% above your maintenance needs,

03:54:53.620 | then you're not gonna be able to put on

03:54:54.940 | a whole bunch of muscle mass

03:54:56.460 | 'cause you just don't have the fuel for it.

03:54:58.660 | You can also then space your workouts out

03:55:01.060 | so that stimulus isn't coming extremely often.

03:55:03.700 | So if you do that thing a couple of times a week,

03:55:05.620 | it's not enough frequency in that signal.

03:55:08.020 | So remember that signal has to be frequent or loud.

03:55:10.660 | You didn't make it super loud

03:55:12.460 | and now you're not making it super frequent.

03:55:14.140 | You can get very, very, very strong like that

03:55:16.800 | and put on very low amounts of hypertrophy

03:55:20.060 | if that's sort of the choice.

03:55:22.300 | - So you told us a lot about volume and frequency

03:55:25.200 | and how that relates to protein synthesis and recovery

03:55:28.060 | to evoke the hypertrophy adaptation response.

03:55:31.640 | How should people think about systemic damage and recovery?

03:55:35.700 | - Because obviously the nervous system

03:55:38.180 | and the way it interacts with the neuromuscular system

03:55:40.700 | is the site of all the action here

03:55:43.260 | or at least a lot of the action.

03:55:45.200 | And the nervous system can in fact become fatigued.

03:55:49.100 | It has a great capacity,

03:55:51.640 | but the whole system that we're talking about

03:55:53.920 | can be worked to the extent that even if a muscle group

03:55:58.180 | like the biceps or the back is being allowed to rest

03:56:00.700 | while you're training legs and other muscle groups,

03:56:02.840 | that your whole neuromuscular system needs rest.

03:56:06.160 | How does one determine whether or not your entire body

03:56:08.840 | needs complete rest or low level active rest

03:56:11.720 | or exercise of a different kind?

03:56:13.200 | - Yeah, yeah, sure.

03:56:14.040 | So I want to actually tackle this

03:56:15.640 | 'cause we're on the topic of hypertrophy.

03:56:17.240 | I'm assuming that that's the goal in mind here.

03:56:19.880 | - Yes, here I'm asking specifically

03:56:21.520 | within the context of hypertrophy,

03:56:23.020 | I realized that for other training goals,

03:56:25.440 | the answer to this question could be quite different.

03:56:26.920 | - Yeah, okay.

03:56:27.760 | So we actually do this in a couple of different ways.

03:56:28.800 | Let's start local and work back to systemic, right?

03:56:30.960 | Because number one, what you're really concerned about

03:56:34.600 | is at the local muscle level

03:56:37.520 | is am I going to create excessive damage?

03:56:39.900 | And I don't necessarily mean muscle damage here.

03:56:41.560 | I mean injury, right?

03:56:42.680 | So the kind of rule of thumb we use

03:56:44.240 | is like three out of 10 in terms of soreness.

03:56:46.040 | If you're more than three out of 10 in terms of soreness,

03:56:49.200 | we're going to start asking questions.

03:56:50.740 | If you're higher than six out of 10,

03:56:52.840 | we're probably not training.

03:56:54.140 | - This is a subjective measure.

03:56:55.200 | - Total subjective measure, right?

03:56:56.620 | And you'll know very quickly, right?

03:56:58.640 | I feel like if you can barely graze your pec

03:57:01.120 | with your fingertip, and then you're like,

03:57:02.220 | ah, I don't care what you score that, we're not training.

03:57:05.320 | There's just no damage.

03:57:06.440 | If you're three out of 10, if you're just like,

03:57:08.300 | oh, I'm kind of like a little bit stiff here,

03:57:10.040 | but once you get warmed up, you start feeling okay,

03:57:12.400 | you're probably okay to proceed there.

03:57:14.280 | So that is a very easy way to just think about soreness.

03:57:19.160 | You're going to be a little bit tight

03:57:20.160 | depending on your training frequency.

03:57:22.060 | Now, zooming out to systemic, we use a whole host of things.

03:57:24.880 | So we actually have a whole host of bowel markers we use.

03:57:28.120 | You can get a lot of these from blood.

03:57:29.080 | So you can look at things like creatine kinase.

03:57:31.220 | That's the very common one marker of muscle damage.

03:57:33.960 | We'll actually look at LDH.

03:57:36.200 | We'll look at myoglobulin.

03:57:38.280 | That's just like, if you think about hemoglobin

03:57:39.960 | is the molecule that carries oxygen throughout your blood.

03:57:44.000 | The myoglobin is the part of that that's actually in muscle.

03:57:47.160 | So when muscle gets broken down,

03:57:48.580 | that gets leaked out and put in your blood.

03:57:50.240 | That's one of the markers, actually,

03:57:51.480 | that's going to be associated with things like rhabdo,

03:57:53.240 | which is like, you're going to see your urine is purple,

03:57:56.160 | and it's extremely dark

03:57:57.120 | because you've got so much muscle breakdown that happens

03:57:59.420 | and kidneys get a problem

03:58:00.720 | and you put a bunch of stuff in there.

03:58:01.880 | So we use those biomarkers.

03:58:03.440 | We'll actually also look at probably a couple of things

03:58:05.500 | you're familiar with, ALT and AST.

03:58:07.980 | These are excellent biomarkers of muscle breakdown.

03:58:10.080 | So if we are actually suspecting

03:58:11.520 | that this is a chronic problem,

03:58:13.640 | we're going to actually go and pull some blood.

03:58:16.440 | If it's just like, I'm super sore today,

03:58:17.960 | we're going to use that subjective marker.

03:58:19.400 | But if we're seeing this as constant,

03:58:20.720 | like, man, are we really pushing you way too much?

03:58:22.800 | Is there some sort of systemic problem?

03:58:25.120 | We're going to blood

03:58:25.940 | and we're going to look at all those different things.

03:58:26.920 | Now, AST to ALT is really specific

03:58:29.580 | and I don't want to take us too far off track here,

03:58:31.520 | but the ratio to those things

03:58:33.260 | is actually very important as well.

03:58:34.400 | So if you look at the AST to ALT ratio,

03:58:36.960 | typically the number we'll look at is like 1.67

03:58:39.680 | as that ratio is like higher than that,

03:58:41.320 | you have a pretty high risk of muscle damage.

03:58:42.840 | But really between me and you and a few of these listeners,

03:58:47.840 | anytime we start seeing AST out kick ALT,

03:58:50.600 | we're immediately thinking,

03:58:51.760 | as in the ratio of being higher than one,

03:58:53.780 | we're immediately thinking

03:58:54.840 | like there's something happening muscle damage wise.

03:58:56.740 | So that's actually a sneaky good indicator

03:58:58.520 | of just total muscle mass

03:59:00.240 | because the vast majority of that's going to be in muscle.

03:59:02.580 | So those are actually some markers that we like a lot.

03:59:05.320 | If muscle damage is the thing we're concerned with.

03:59:08.960 | If we are more concerned with things

03:59:10.440 | like total training volume, systemic overload,

03:59:13.920 | then we may turn to something more like sleep.

03:59:16.820 | There's a lot of information we can actually glean

03:59:18.980 | from changes in sleep behavior and function.

03:59:22.320 | You could also look at things like HRV,

03:59:24.360 | heart rate variability, which is a very classic marker

03:59:27.140 | and much more sensitive to changes with training

03:59:29.840 | than something like a resting heart rate,

03:59:31.800 | which is one thing you can actually do

03:59:33.440 | that's totally cost free.

03:59:34.380 | Just look at your changes

03:59:35.940 | and any elevation resting heart rate over time,

03:59:39.420 | especially more than three to five consecutive days

03:59:42.060 | is an indicator.

03:59:42.900 | But HRV is much more sensitive

03:59:45.600 | to things like training induced overload.

03:59:47.520 | So that's a quick version of stuff

03:59:49.540 | that we're going to pay attention to.

03:59:50.480 | The last one I would add there is simply motivation.

03:59:53.880 | So if you're really training hard

03:59:55.200 | and you like training hard

03:59:56.040 | and you just like cannot force yourself to go anymore,

03:59:58.920 | that end of itself can be a good indication

04:00:00.800 | of it's maybe not the day, maybe not the week.

04:00:03.640 | With all of these things,

04:00:05.640 | you want to be careful about overreacting

04:00:07.240 | to a single day measure.

04:00:09.200 | Again, we need to look at at least a trend

04:00:11.800 | of more than three days.

04:00:12.960 | Honestly, I'm looking at more than five days.

04:00:15.280 | I'm going to pull back from that

04:00:16.800 | and think about what phase of training we're in,

04:00:19.000 | what part of the year we're in,

04:00:20.220 | typically with our athletes we're in season,

04:00:21.840 | pre-season, post-season, off-season, et cetera,

04:00:24.160 | to make our decision about what we're going to do about it.

04:00:26.560 | Are we canning the entire workout?

04:00:28.240 | Are we doing a modified, lower version, lower intensity?

04:00:31.580 | My default generally, if hypertrophy is the goal,

04:00:34.860 | remember volume is the driver there.

04:00:38.040 | So if I can, like, can we get in?

04:00:40.040 | Can we go real light?

04:00:41.560 | Let's go to six out of 10 RPE.

04:00:44.040 | So relative perceived exertion.

04:00:46.200 | Maybe we'll reduce the range of motion.

04:00:48.360 | Maybe we'll make it a little bit easier.

04:00:50.600 | Maybe we'll go to machines or instead of going a squat,

04:00:52.880 | we'll just do leg extension, something like that.

04:00:56.300 | But I want to still get enough volume in there.

04:00:57.920 | That will keep you on target.

04:00:59.920 | And again, even going at 50%, not to high repetition.

04:01:03.680 | 50% for a set of 10, three sets.

04:01:05.800 | Just get a nice blood flow in there,

04:01:07.480 | get it in, get it out, aid in recovery,

04:01:09.720 | and then move on and come back the next day.

04:01:11.180 | That's probably what I would do

04:01:12.280 | rather than canning the entire session.

04:01:15.280 | - How do other forms of exercise

04:01:18.960 | combine with hypertrophy training?

04:01:20.960 | For instance, can I do cardiovascular training

04:01:26.020 | for two or three days per week,

04:01:28.880 | provided that cardiovascular training

04:01:30.580 | is of low enough intensity

04:01:32.760 | and not disrupt hypertrophy progression?

04:01:37.400 | And can I do that cardiovascular exercise

04:01:42.240 | before or after the hypertrophy training?

04:01:45.820 | Or does it need to be separated out?

04:01:47.960 | - The answer to this is really what we call

04:01:50.320 | the crossover air interference effect.

04:01:52.400 | It's really an energy management issue.

04:01:54.840 | So the only time endurance exercise starts to interfere

04:01:59.360 | or block or hinder, attenuate hypertrophy

04:02:02.600 | is in one of two broad categories.

04:02:04.280 | Number one, total energy intake or your balance is off.

04:02:07.900 | So you can ameliorate this by just eating more.

04:02:10.500 | If you do that,

04:02:11.340 | then the interference effect generally goes away.

04:02:12.780 | The second one is you want to make sure

04:02:14.400 | you avoid exercise forms for your endurance training

04:02:17.480 | that are the same working group

04:02:19.280 | and specifically the eccentric portion.

04:02:21.040 | So for example, we see much more interference with running

04:02:24.020 | on leg hypertrophy than we do cycling, right?

04:02:27.240 | Less eccentric pounding and loading, less damage,

04:02:29.480 | less things to recover from.

04:02:30.880 | The tissue seems to be totally fine.

04:02:33.200 | The only other thing you need to worry about here

04:02:34.600 | is total volume of your endurance work.

04:02:37.240 | So if you're doing a moderate intensity

04:02:39.740 | for a moderate duration,

04:02:40.880 | say 70% of your maximum heart rate for 25 minutes,

04:02:45.440 | it's unlikely to do much damage

04:02:47.480 | in terms of blocking hypertrophy.

04:02:49.240 | You're totally fine.

04:02:50.600 | Can you do it before or after your workout?

04:02:52.120 | It's probably not going to matter that much, right?

04:02:54.140 | So pre-fatigue is okay for hypertrophy.

04:02:56.240 | So if your pre-fatigue is coming from endurance,

04:02:58.240 | then you're totally fine.

04:03:00.160 | Not a big deal.

04:03:01.000 | Afterwards, cool.

04:03:02.300 | You want to break it up into multiple sessions.

04:03:04.440 | That's probably better, right?

04:03:05.840 | So if you do your endurance work on a separate day,

04:03:07.960 | that's probably best case scenario.

04:03:09.880 | If you can't do that,

04:03:10.720 | but you can break it up into two workouts.

04:03:12.200 | Say you lift in the morning

04:03:13.400 | and then you do your "cardio" at night.

04:03:15.840 | Maybe that's second best.

04:03:17.200 | Third best is doing it at the end of your lift

04:03:20.080 | and finishing it.

04:03:20.900 | That's fine.

04:03:21.740 | Just make sure that you're maximizing your recovery

04:03:24.840 | on all the other tricks we'll talk about later.

04:03:26.960 | Make sure the calories are there.

04:03:28.400 | Make sure you're not doing a lot of eccentric landing

04:03:30.460 | in that endurance stuff and you'll be just fine.

04:03:33.000 | - And where does higher intensity cardio

04:03:35.520 | fit into a hypertrophy program?

04:03:37.120 | So higher intensity cardio, for instance, in my mind,

04:03:42.520 | is getting on the assault bike and doing eight intervals

04:03:47.520 | of 20 second sprints and 10 second rest in between,

04:03:50.560 | or perhaps going to a field and doing some bounds

04:03:53.760 | and sprints and things of that sort.

04:03:55.680 | Not going all out, not running for one's life,

04:03:58.760 | but getting up to about 85, 90% of running for one's life.

04:04:03.760 | - So we have a lot less information

04:04:05.600 | on the potential interference or not of high intensity stuff.

04:04:09.200 | The stuff we do have suggested it may actually aid

04:04:12.280 | in hypertrophy and that's because if you think about it,

04:04:14.600 | one of the potential paths to activation of muscle growth

04:04:17.200 | is this metabolic disturbance.

04:04:20.080 | You're gonna get that a lot

04:04:20.960 | with the high intensity interval thing.

04:04:22.400 | So it's not a terrible thing to do.

04:04:24.560 | I wouldn't do it to the level that it compromises

04:04:27.560 | your ability to come back and do your primary training.

04:04:29.840 | So if you're so fatigued, your legs are super heavy,

04:04:32.480 | they're depleted, you now have to ingest extra carbohydrates

04:04:35.840 | to replenish muscle glycogen to be able to handle

04:04:38.180 | both recovery and continued training, et cetera.

04:04:40.720 | That could then lead to a problem,

04:04:42.100 | but in general, we really don't see any reason

04:04:44.720 | why that is going to completely block or make it

04:04:47.880 | such that your training was quote unquote wasted

04:04:50.000 | or it didn't work.

04:04:50.940 | And in fact, actually, a very recent study came out

04:04:55.840 | where they had individuals perform six weeks

04:04:59.620 | of purely aerobic endurance, steady state,

04:05:02.920 | long duration endurance for six weeks,

04:05:04.400 | I think, prior to starting a hypertrophy phase.

04:05:06.740 | Compare that to individuals who did not do that.

04:05:09.600 | And those folks that did these six weeks of just,

04:05:12.600 | I think it was cycling actually, just endurance work

04:05:16.660 | had more muscle growth at the end of their hypertrophy

04:05:19.340 | training than those folks that did not.

04:05:21.340 | So this shows you very clearly there are a lot of advantages

04:05:24.900 | that come with being physically fit to growing muscle.

04:05:27.740 | So folks that also have actually hit plateaus a lot,

04:05:31.420 | one of the things you may actually see some benefit from

04:05:33.580 | is actually doing a little bit more endurance work,

04:05:35.480 | whether it's the steady state stuff,

04:05:36.740 | maybe it's the higher intensity stuff.

04:05:39.500 | Certainly if you're starting a training phase,

04:05:41.500 | it's a pretty good idea to do that.

04:05:43.060 | And there's a number of physiological reasons

04:05:45.340 | of why that's potentially occurring.

04:05:47.120 | But the lowest hanging fruit here is we sort of joke,

04:05:50.900 | you know, like if you're so unfit

04:05:53.060 | that you're tying your shoes in your warmup

04:05:55.180 | and you're already breaking a sweat,

04:05:56.720 | you probably don't have enough fitness

04:05:59.380 | to do enough training to get enough hypertrophy.

04:06:01.700 | So that is in fact your limiting factor.

04:06:03.980 | You're not recovering, you're super fatigued

04:06:06.720 | and damaged and sore because you're so unfit.

04:06:10.180 | So get fit first and then you can actually

04:06:12.600 | get more gains a week later.

04:06:14.480 | So you have to kind of kick the can down the road

04:06:16.640 | for a few weeks, but 10 weeks later,

04:06:18.660 | you'll be in a better spot than you were

04:06:20.240 | by investing a little bit in your conditioning.

04:06:22.000 | - So as you pointed out before,

04:06:23.000 | and I can only assume you're referring to me,

04:06:25.320 | hypertrophy training is idiot proof.

04:06:27.180 | Meaning there's a lot of leeway in the variables,

04:06:30.380 | but not so much leeway that people can do anything.

04:06:34.120 | It's bounded by these general principles.

04:06:36.980 | So with your permission,

04:06:39.400 | I'm going to do a brief overview of my notes

04:06:42.700 | based on your description of the modifiable variables

04:06:46.380 | that will direct somebody towards hypertrophy.

04:06:49.740 | Keeping in mind this backdrop of exercise choice,

04:06:52.580 | exercise order, selecting appropriate volume

04:06:55.800 | that sets in reps, training frequency,

04:06:58.120 | and needing some metric or way to have progression,

04:07:02.820 | either by adding more weight or by more tension

04:07:05.360 | or more metabolic stress and so on.

04:07:07.320 | In terms of exercise choice,

04:07:09.880 | it sounds like the choice of exercises

04:07:12.440 | is not super critical in terms of specificity,

04:07:16.220 | but that the ideal circumstances that people are targeting

04:07:20.000 | all the major and frankly secondary

04:07:23.200 | and minor muscle groups, if you can even call them that,

04:07:26.600 | across their exercise choices.

04:07:28.480 | That they're picking exercises that they can perform safely

04:07:31.960 | and that they can generate enough intensity

04:07:33.720 | so that they're getting close to failure

04:07:35.780 | without placing themselves into danger, right?

04:07:38.960 | So for some people that might mean

04:07:41.200 | including large compound free weight exercises

04:07:43.220 | like squats and deadlifts and bent over barbell rows,

04:07:46.560 | as well as isolation exercises.

04:07:48.820 | And for some people there might be a bias

04:07:51.440 | toward more isolation exercises and machines,

04:07:53.660 | but of course machines don't necessarily mean

04:07:55.380 | that you can't use heavy loads.

04:07:57.300 | In fact, plate loaded machines like hammer strength machines

04:07:59.740 | will allow for quite substantial loads.

04:08:02.420 | So picking two or three or more movements per muscle group

04:08:07.420 | can be valuable,

04:08:09.800 | but that overall consistency is going to outshine variation

04:08:14.800 | in the sense that you don't need to hit muscles

04:08:18.900 | with a different exercise every workout.

04:08:20.720 | Coming back to the same thing has a benefit.

04:08:23.840 | And we heard about this in our discussion

04:08:25.340 | around strength and power as well.

04:08:27.440 | - Okay, in terms of order of exercises,

04:08:30.440 | there too it sounds like there's a lot of flexibility.

04:08:33.280 | One could do the large compound exercise

04:08:37.040 | for let's say quadriceps and hamstrings and glutes first,

04:08:39.920 | like a squat or a front squat

04:08:41.920 | or could deadlift for that matter.

04:08:44.620 | But then if one deadlifted

04:08:46.620 | and primarily hit the glutes and hamstrings,

04:08:48.220 | then you might want to target the quadriceps

04:08:51.280 | more directly with leg extensions.

04:08:52.880 | Or if one squatted and was loading that squat bar,

04:08:56.240 | carrying the squat bar in a way

04:08:57.400 | that was predominantly quadricep

04:08:59.580 | and less so glute and hamstring,

04:09:02.080 | then leg curls would be a good choice, et cetera.

04:09:04.260 | Okay, and train your calves folks.

04:09:07.160 | Very important.

04:09:08.000 | Unless you're a genetic freak, of course,

04:09:09.840 | that's actually a good opportunity to say,

04:09:11.160 | unless you're a genetic freak

04:09:12.300 | or you just have a genetic predisposition

04:09:14.460 | or you've done sports

04:09:15.400 | and you have a genetic predisposition

04:09:17.040 | that gives you very large calves

04:09:19.400 | that don't require any training at all.

04:09:20.720 | I know people like this.

04:09:22.220 | They're somewhat rare, but they're out there.

04:09:24.280 | And those folks sometimes want to stay away from

04:09:26.840 | or minimize their training.

04:09:28.040 | You told me that even if you have a muscle group

04:09:30.280 | that's a hyper responder in terms of hypertrophy,

04:09:33.640 | getting at least one or two good hard sets per week

04:09:37.660 | is good because you want to keep functionality

04:09:39.600 | in that neuromuscular system.

04:09:40.840 | - Love it.

04:09:41.680 | - Okay.

04:09:42.500 | In terms of volume,

04:09:43.680 | again, we have a large amount of variation

04:09:46.320 | is what I'm hearing,

04:09:47.760 | that the total number of sets per week

04:09:50.380 | is a strong driving force

04:09:52.440 | of program design and selection.

04:09:55.380 | That ideally you're performing 10 to 20

04:09:59.280 | and probably more like 15 to 20 sets per week.

04:10:01.880 | And that can be divided up across multiple workouts

04:10:05.020 | or done in one workout,

04:10:06.480 | but that's 10 to 20 sets per week per muscle group.

04:10:10.960 | Not really taking into account indirect activation.

04:10:13.760 | So that would be 10 to 20 sets for biceps.

04:10:17.520 | Your back work is going to hit your biceps a little bit,

04:10:19.780 | maybe a bit more depending on the exercise selection,

04:10:22.760 | but it's really 10 to 20.

04:10:24.420 | And given that hypertrophy can still occur

04:10:26.980 | and maybe even occurs better with more volume,

04:10:30.120 | then don't include the indirect work

04:10:32.220 | unless something about the architecture of your body

04:10:35.520 | and the inability to engage certain muscle groups

04:10:38.740 | makes a pull-up really an arm exercise for you.

04:10:41.500 | Do I have that right?

04:10:42.340 | - The way that I would maybe define it

04:10:43.620 | is typically with movements,

04:10:45.060 | we consider to be there to be primary movers,

04:10:47.680 | secondary movers, and then tertiary movers, right?

04:10:50.960 | If it is a primary or secondary, I'm probably counting it.

04:10:54.040 | If it's tertiary or less, I'm probably not counting it.

04:10:56.960 | - Got it.

04:10:57.800 | So going back to our example of a pull-up.

04:11:00.560 | - So in the example of a pull-up,

04:11:01.840 | I probably wouldn't count the biceps in a pull-up,

04:11:03.640 | but I would probably count the biceps during a chin-up.

04:11:06.200 | - Would you count the rear deltoid in a pull-up?

04:11:08.640 | - Probably not, maybe.

04:11:10.440 | It just depends, probably not though.

04:11:13.640 | - Okay, train the rear delts also.

04:11:15.880 | - Honestly, the reason I answered that

04:11:16.940 | is because most people don't do anything

04:11:18.040 | for the real delts anyways.

04:11:19.240 | - But they should, right?

04:11:20.120 | - Absolutely.

04:11:20.960 | That's why I didn't want to count it.

04:11:21.780 | I wanted you to go out of your way

04:11:22.620 | to make sure you did something specifically

04:11:24.360 | for the rear delts.

04:11:25.520 | - For aesthetics and for functionality and balance

04:11:29.060 | across the shoulders.

04:11:29.900 | - Totally, neck, shoulder, all of it.

04:11:32.840 | - I'm so happy to hear you say this.

04:11:34.320 | I'm a huge fan of people doing rear deltoid work

04:11:37.560 | for all the reasons you described

04:11:38.760 | and neck work for that matter.

04:11:40.840 | I think people forget that the neck

04:11:42.040 | is the upper part of your spine.

04:11:43.940 | And for postural reasons and for stabilization

04:11:47.240 | and safety reasons, it's really critical.

04:11:48.880 | But I think most people aren't familiar

04:11:51.600 | with how best to train the rear deltoids and neck.

04:11:54.240 | And I know a number of people are afraid

04:11:55.920 | of getting a big neck,

04:11:58.080 | which for reasons that are still unclear to me

04:12:01.160 | is referred to as no neck.

04:12:02.380 | But let's leave out that no neck comment for the moment.

04:12:05.920 | What are some good exercises for targeting

04:12:07.760 | the rear deltoids and neck safely

04:12:11.100 | that people can perform for stabilization

04:12:15.120 | and for hypertrophy?

04:12:16.800 | - Yeah, I would recommend people check out Eric Cressy.

04:12:20.080 | He's a wonderful strength conditioning coach.

04:12:23.200 | He actually is, I think, the director of pitching

04:12:25.740 | for the New York Yankees now.

04:12:27.080 | - Is that spelled C-R-E-S-S-I-E?

04:12:29.360 | - C-R-E-S-S-E-Y, I believe.

04:12:32.160 | And he's got a facility in, I believe,

04:12:35.480 | Boston as well as in Florida.

04:12:37.840 | So he's very, very involved in pitching

04:12:40.440 | as well as hockey and things like that.

04:12:42.140 | So he has so many free videos and resources

04:12:47.140 | on so much of the shoulder girdle,

04:12:49.560 | mostly because he's dealt with overhead

04:12:51.460 | and throwing athletes.

04:12:52.300 | And so the precision required there is tremendous.

04:12:55.040 | So you wanna be very careful

04:12:57.260 | when you start playing in this area

04:12:58.780 | because the wrong positioning of your scapula

04:13:01.620 | can cause a whole bunch of problems

04:13:03.500 | in your neck and low back.

04:13:04.680 | And so he would be a great resource

04:13:06.200 | to go take a look at that.

04:13:07.400 | Depending on how your scapulas are gliding and sliding

04:13:10.880 | and the way that you want your rotator cuffs firing,

04:13:14.040 | your rhomboids, it's very complicated very quickly.

04:13:17.420 | So you wanna learn more, go there.

04:13:19.160 | As a very, very quick couple of answers,

04:13:22.760 | one of my favorite exercises is lying on a bench

04:13:25.840 | or putting some bench

04:13:27.280 | and then just doing a reverse fly, basically.

04:13:30.220 | The reason I like stabilizing the rest of the body

04:13:32.600 | is so you can make sure you can focus

04:13:33.900 | on just using those rear deltoids

04:13:35.560 | and putting your scapulas in the right position.

04:13:37.440 | Now there's a specific set of queuing

04:13:39.680 | that you want the scapula to move down and back for.

04:13:41.880 | Again, check out Eric or any number of folks

04:13:44.500 | in that area to do it.

04:13:45.740 | But that's a very simple way, the reverse fly to get there.

04:13:49.360 | - Great, and then in terms of neck exercises,

04:13:51.560 | I was told to avoid bridges

04:13:53.800 | because they can cause damage to the discs.

04:13:55.800 | Is that true? - I will probably never do

04:13:56.920 | a bridge ever the rest of my life.

04:13:59.400 | So isometrics are a great exercise for that

04:14:02.720 | because if you think about what you're asking muscle groups

04:14:06.520 | to do, in the neck, you mostly want it to be able to do

04:14:08.840 | a certain type of rotation,

04:14:10.000 | a little bit of flexion extension and some other movements,

04:14:13.700 | but in general, it should be being stable.

04:14:16.440 | So you wanna walk through these joints,

04:14:18.000 | asking kind of what they do.

04:14:18.920 | Are they a moving joint or are they a stability joint?

04:14:20.920 | In this case, you wanna do there.

04:14:21.900 | So isometrics are gonna put you in a much better position.

04:14:24.760 | There's some actually pretty cool devices

04:14:26.560 | that you can wear and you can put them on your head

04:14:28.120 | and you can do all kinds of movement

04:14:30.360 | and get some great training there.

04:14:32.040 | Those are great starts, but if you don't have any of that,

04:14:34.120 | just basic isometrics are a great way to go about it.

04:14:37.320 | Neck bridges would not be on that list for me.

04:14:39.920 | - No neck bridges, folks.

04:14:41.280 | In terms of sets and repetitions,

04:14:45.320 | we briefly touched on this,

04:14:46.440 | but anywhere from, I believe, six repetitions

04:14:49.700 | all the way up to 30 repetitions,

04:14:51.120 | but probably more in the eight to 15 repetition range

04:14:56.120 | for hypertrophy.

04:14:57.560 | - Most of the time, yeah.

04:14:58.640 | - And I'll just throw in there 'cause I love this idea

04:15:01.660 | that if you want to get a relatively balanced adaptation

04:15:06.660 | related to strength and hypertrophy, that seven to nine range

04:15:09.780 | that the no woman's land of training repetitions.

04:15:14.780 | - I always joke in class.

04:15:17.240 | I'm like, okay, we go through the whole thing, right?

04:15:18.800 | You're like one to five strength, eight to 12,

04:15:21.780 | hypertrophy, and you're like, great.

04:15:22.880 | And then I'm like, okay,

04:15:23.720 | so six to nine means nothing will happen at all.

04:15:25.560 | And the kids are just like writing it down like.

04:15:28.740 | - Right, a good way for everybody to remember

04:15:30.680 | that there are adaptations triggered

04:15:32.880 | in the six to nine rep range

04:15:34.040 | and it's a balance of strength and height.

04:15:35.560 | - You'll just get thrown out of any gym that I'm a part of.

04:15:37.580 | - Fantastic. - If you do that.

04:15:39.080 | - But the important point is to get close to failure

04:15:44.140 | and occasionally hit failure,

04:15:45.920 | maybe occasionally throw in a forced repetition

04:15:48.820 | or a rest pause where you rest and then do a few more,

04:15:51.560 | something like that.

04:15:52.400 | But those intensity increasing maneuvers

04:15:54.960 | will require a little bit more attention to recovery,

04:15:58.800 | either time or attention in some other way.

04:16:01.020 | - And here's a little bit of carrot I'll throw at people.

04:16:04.120 | Because people generally don't like to be told

04:16:06.480 | to not go to failure that often, right?

04:16:08.880 | So there's a handful of like half the folks are like, sweet,

04:16:11.120 | I don't have to train that hard to get there.

04:16:13.040 | And those folks it's like, well, yes.

04:16:14.640 | But I also said, you just can't like do a half workout.

04:16:17.100 | You have to get pretty darn close to failure.

04:16:19.520 | And most people don't really know what failure means.

04:16:21.760 | So for that group, it's actually,

04:16:22.960 | it's still probably harder than you think you wanna train.

04:16:25.360 | The other group though,

04:16:26.200 | that like wants to completely blow themselves out

04:16:27.920 | every single time.

04:16:29.560 | Dragging them back is more the key.

04:16:32.440 | Now for those folks, here's what I can say.

04:16:34.660 | If you make sure that your hidden stressors

04:16:37.500 | and visible stressors are completely taken care of,

04:16:40.640 | you can go to failure a lot more often.

04:16:42.980 | And so you need to dial those things in

04:16:45.120 | and then now you can go hammer yourself

04:16:46.480 | because you'll recover so much quicker.

04:16:48.080 | And we see this very commonly in all of our programs

04:16:52.160 | with our athletes and our non-athletes.

04:16:54.620 | That when we get that the rest of the hidden

04:16:56.640 | and visible stressors taken care of,

04:16:58.280 | their training volume goes up so much

04:17:00.240 | because they'll just start coming back

04:17:01.600 | and then it's like, oh my God, I'm not sore anymore.

04:17:03.800 | Oh my God, I'm not nearly as sore.

04:17:05.400 | I did this exact workout countless times before

04:17:08.600 | and now I'm doing it and I'm not sore at all anymore.

04:17:10.320 | What the hell?

04:17:11.160 | Like we didn't do anything different with the programming

04:17:12.960 | or really the nutrition,

04:17:14.020 | but we got the rest of that allostatic load under control

04:17:17.320 | and boom, things take off.

04:17:19.440 | - That's a lot like drivers.

04:17:21.120 | So many people seem to be riding the brake

04:17:22.960 | and so many people seem to be heavy on the accelerator.

04:17:25.720 | - Yeah, that's actually one of the ways we describe it.

04:17:27.180 | It's like, you want to go faster?

04:17:28.760 | People's inclination, step one is to hit the gas.

04:17:31.480 | Our step number one is making sure

04:17:33.280 | your left foot's not on the brake.

04:17:35.080 | You'll go faster with less resistance,

04:17:37.020 | which means you'll actually wear down the system

04:17:39.380 | a lot slower by just taking your foot off the brake first.

04:17:41.600 | If you're then not going fast enough,

04:17:42.980 | now we can push the accelerator.

04:17:44.400 | But I'm not pushing the accelerator

04:17:45.720 | while your foot's still on the brake.

04:17:47.140 | You're going to go a little bit faster,

04:17:48.560 | but not as fast as you should be going with that much work

04:17:51.000 | and you're going to start wearing down brake pedals

04:17:52.960 | and things like that.

04:17:53.800 | - So I like that analogy.

04:17:56.680 | So hitting that 10 to 20 sets per week,

04:18:00.800 | repetition range is pretty broad

04:18:02.980 | provided you get close to failure,

04:18:04.240 | hit failure every once in a while.

04:18:05.560 | Could be the final set of exercise

04:18:07.920 | or maybe do one workout where you hit failure on everything,

04:18:10.200 | but then you don't do it for a few more.

04:18:11.840 | Again, it sounds like there's a lot of play

04:18:13.400 | in the system here.

04:18:14.360 | Rest ranges anywhere from 30 seconds

04:18:18.080 | all the way up to three or four minutes,

04:18:19.600 | depending on how heavy you're training

04:18:21.060 | and how close to failure or to failure,

04:18:23.620 | maybe even quote unquote beyond failure,

04:18:26.480 | if there is such a thing.

04:18:27.560 | You're training, throwing in negatives and things like that.

04:18:30.340 | We didn't get into really high intensity techniques,

04:18:32.300 | but people, again, varying the extent

04:18:35.000 | to which they're pushing the system.

04:18:36.420 | But there does seem to be some value

04:18:38.940 | to mixing up the rest between set ranges

04:18:43.700 | across exercises and across workouts,

04:18:45.640 | but you could combine them all in the same workout

04:18:48.300 | is what I heard.

04:18:49.140 | - Yep.

04:18:50.340 | - And then in terms of progression,

04:18:52.860 | it sounds to me like the goal when hypertrophy training

04:18:56.400 | is not necessarily to add more weight to the bar,

04:18:59.280 | although that's one way one could do it,

04:19:01.620 | but that the progression actually can arrive

04:19:04.280 | through this really extensive kit

04:19:06.260 | of changing the speed of movement,

04:19:08.280 | changing the number of sets, adding some volume,

04:19:12.320 | maybe changing the split so that you go

04:19:14.040 | from a three day a week full body workout

04:19:16.880 | to more of a body parts, one or two body parts per day,

04:19:21.840 | every other day or two on one off it,

04:19:23.880 | any number of different variations that are out there.

04:19:25.840 | Sounds like all of these can and will work

04:19:28.040 | provided that people are obeying the general principles

04:19:31.140 | of this hypertrophy adaptation inducing protocol

04:19:36.040 | that you described and that they are meeting the necessary,

04:19:39.160 | but not sufficient variables as well,

04:19:42.240 | such as sleep, nutrition and managing the stress

04:19:46.380 | in the rest of their life.

04:19:47.680 | Do I have that correctly?

04:19:50.080 | - Yeah, that's really, really good.

04:19:52.080 | One more thing I'd like to add is this is a situation

04:19:55.320 | for hypertrophy in which there are some exercises

04:19:58.080 | that I actually don't think are good ideas.

04:20:00.000 | So I want to make sure we included those

04:20:01.440 | in the conversation.

04:20:02.800 | That's not necessarily the case for strength.

04:20:04.880 | You can really do kind of whatever you want.

04:20:07.000 | And that is specifically plyometrics.

04:20:10.680 | Although in fact, if you look at,

04:20:12.720 | there's a recent review paper came out showing

04:20:14.440 | that plyometrics are effective as well for hypertrophy.

04:20:17.520 | - Seems like one can do almost anything

04:20:19.520 | as long as it falls within this parameter set.

04:20:21.960 | - The concepts are few and the methods are many.

04:20:23.880 | And the methods for hypertrophy are many, many.

04:20:27.840 | In general though, plyometrics are not my first, second

04:20:30.620 | or even like hundredth choice for hypertrophy.

04:20:34.440 | If they're a part of a total training program

04:20:36.040 | and you get some hypertrophy as a result, cool,

04:20:38.880 | you're lucky, not the first place I'm going.

04:20:40.920 | The other major category are weightlifting variations.

04:20:43.520 | So then when I'm saying weightlifting,

04:20:44.720 | I mean specifically Olympic weightlifting

04:20:46.800 | as in snatch, clean and jerk and their variations.

04:20:49.220 | Those are just not a good exercise choice.

04:20:51.220 | It's not that they don't work.

04:20:53.200 | It's just the risk to benefit ratio starts to fall

04:20:55.800 | pretty fast in the negative favor.

04:20:58.200 | And so it's just not worth doing sets of 10 of a snatch

04:21:00.880 | unless you're in a sport where that's like the competition

04:21:03.160 | or whatever.

04:21:04.000 | But if the goal is simply hypertrophy,

04:21:05.800 | choose different exercises than that.

04:21:08.160 | - Great.

04:21:09.340 | Now I realize that we are going to do entire episodes

04:21:12.360 | related to nutrition, supplementation, recovery, et cetera.

04:21:15.440 | But I'd like to just touch on two or three specific topics

04:21:19.620 | and questions that come up a lot

04:21:21.360 | around the question of hypertrophy specifically.

04:21:26.060 | And that probably also relate to strength training

04:21:29.380 | and training for speed.

04:21:31.660 | So I'm going to ask these in, not rapid fire.

04:21:34.980 | - Sure, I'll give you shorter answers, we'll put it that way.

04:21:37.220 | - So I will ask these questions now,

04:21:38.660 | but with the caveat that we will get into these topics

04:21:41.300 | in much more depth very soon.

04:21:44.520 | The first question is about the use of cold showers

04:21:47.280 | and ice baths and cold water exposure,

04:21:49.740 | which I know many people use for resilience training

04:21:52.660 | to increase their dopamine, which it does and for recovery.

04:21:56.860 | But there's also this issue of when one should use cold,

04:22:01.860 | that is deliberate cold exposure

04:22:04.600 | relative to hypertrophy training specifically.

04:22:08.080 | And that's because I've heard that

04:22:12.160 | if deliberate cold exposure is done too soon

04:22:14.560 | after a hypertrophy adaptation inducing workout,

04:22:19.320 | all the sorts of things we've been talking about,

04:22:20.900 | that the hypertrophy response can be blunted,

04:22:23.700 | reduced or eliminated.

04:22:24.880 | Is that true?

04:22:25.740 | And if so, when could people do deliberate cold exposure

04:22:30.500 | while still also including hypertrophy training

04:22:32.540 | in their program and still get hypertrophy?

04:22:35.540 | - Great, so you know I'm a lover of the cold.

04:22:38.200 | I still have a deep freezer in my house

04:22:41.340 | that is filled with water at all times

04:22:43.000 | that is plugged in and is a frozen chamber.

04:22:45.120 | I still do the old school style of it.

04:22:46.860 | - Please unplug it before you get in it each time.

04:22:48.540 | - Oh yes, absolutely.

04:22:50.580 | And then don't do it by yourself

04:22:51.880 | so that the lid can close on top of you

04:22:53.320 | and then we don't see you sort of ever again.

04:22:55.880 | - The Han Solo effect.

04:22:56.880 | - It's time for me to upgrade,

04:22:57.800 | get one of these new fancy ones,

04:22:58.980 | but I've been using this for so many years.

04:23:00.680 | So I love it.

04:23:02.040 | Obviously I've been involved with XPT and Gabby and Laird

04:23:06.240 | and Brian McKenzie and these folks.

04:23:07.920 | So I've been doing this stuff for a long time

04:23:09.880 | but I don't even know how many hundreds of folks

04:23:11.900 | into the ice and a lot of reasons.

04:23:13.260 | So there are a lot of benefits

04:23:14.540 | and we could talk about those later.

04:23:16.640 | However, that being said, it is very, very true.

04:23:19.920 | You do not want to get in the ice post hypertrophy training.

04:23:23.280 | You wouldn't want to do that immediately after the workout.

04:23:25.020 | You probably don't want to do it before the workout

04:23:26.720 | and you probably don't even want to do it that same day.

04:23:29.220 | It is just not worth it.

04:23:30.340 | It will blunt hypertrophy in specifically,

04:23:32.860 | we've talked earlier about what's driving muscle growth

04:23:35.980 | is that signaling cascade through that gene expression,

04:23:39.740 | through that muscle protein synthesis.

04:23:41.620 | Cold exposure blocks that signal.

04:23:43.500 | Remember, adaptation comes from stress.

04:23:47.220 | You've put in a stressor in, now you've blocked that stress.

04:23:49.900 | You've literally blocked the signal

04:23:51.880 | that tells your body come back and grow larger size.

04:23:54.780 | So not a good idea to do it.

04:23:56.660 | If you're training for some other purposes,

04:23:58.760 | there may be strength.

04:24:00.260 | Maybe there's an argument there, although maybe not.

04:24:04.140 | For speed and power, maybe you can get away with it.

04:24:05.680 | Endurance, maybe a separate conversation.

04:24:07.740 | If you're in season,

04:24:09.820 | I have no problem using it immediately after a game.

04:24:12.620 | The goal is entirely different.

04:24:13.900 | Even if we did a hypertrophy type of training program,

04:24:16.220 | we're not doing it to try to maximize growth.

04:24:18.620 | In that particular case, our priority for recovery

04:24:22.180 | is higher than our priority for muscle growth,

04:24:24.840 | so we choose optimization in that category.

04:24:27.700 | You can only make those choices though

04:24:29.360 | when you truly understand what is the goal for the day,

04:24:32.100 | the week, the month, the phase of training,

04:24:33.960 | and really what part of the year you're in.

04:24:35.540 | We have that all plotted out for all the people we work with

04:24:38.460 | so I know when we wanna choose one over the other.

04:24:41.420 | It's not a, this is the choice you always make,

04:24:43.340 | the situation, that's just not how we operate.

04:24:45.960 | We need more precision in that.

04:24:47.420 | So that being said, we're generally not going to do it.

04:24:50.040 | If we want to do a lot of icing during a phase

04:24:52.900 | in which we're using a lot of hypertrophy,

04:24:56.220 | we're gonna do a couple of things.

04:24:57.260 | Number one, we may just not use it.

04:24:59.020 | So there are phases in our training

04:25:00.820 | where I don't wanna maximize recovery.

04:25:03.320 | I'm not gonna give you any tricks here.

04:25:04.940 | I'm not gonna do ice or any of the other methods

04:25:07.020 | we're gonna talk about, why?

04:25:08.460 | Because the whole point is to cause overload.

04:25:12.320 | That's what's gonna be the stimuli to cause adaptation.

04:25:14.460 | If all I'm doing is blocking that stuff,

04:25:16.420 | attenuating it, smashing it back down,

04:25:18.300 | I'm undercutting myself.

04:25:19.700 | I'm choosing to feel a little bit better,

04:25:22.020 | to have a little bit better performance right now,

04:25:24.700 | knowing that's going to compromise the results,

04:25:26.620 | I'm going to get six, eight, 10, 12 weeks from now.

04:25:29.660 | So I'm not gonna choose at all.

04:25:30.980 | And the reality of it is,

04:25:32.100 | if I really am trying to maximize hypertrophy,

04:25:34.800 | I'm probably not doing any ice work

04:25:36.260 | during that whole phase.

04:25:37.480 | Maybe like my off day.

04:25:38.860 | I know that's similar to a setup you have,

04:25:40.640 | like one day a week when I'm not training,

04:25:42.780 | we'll jump in some ice,

04:25:43.680 | maybe even do some hot cold contrast.

04:25:46.340 | I love the XPT protocol.

04:25:48.820 | We've probably talked about it before.

04:25:50.980 | That's a great setup or just not do it at all.

04:25:54.580 | It's just not something we need.

04:25:56.420 | When we move into another phase of training

04:25:58.360 | where we're trying to maximize adaptation

04:26:00.620 | or maximize the result

04:26:02.080 | and get the benefit of that training,

04:26:04.300 | now we're going to hedge more towards recovery

04:26:06.420 | and we're going to bring in some of these strategies

04:26:08.140 | and techniques and not worry about

04:26:10.000 | causing the most stimuli there

04:26:11.420 | 'cause we're trying to actualize the work we did

04:26:15.540 | six, eight, 10, 12 weeks before.

04:26:17.600 | - What about cold showers?

04:26:18.960 | Do those have the same hypertrophy blunting effect?

04:26:21.640 | - In general, no.

04:26:22.700 | In general, you can do cold showers.

04:26:24.240 | That's not going to be a problem.

04:26:25.380 | You're not going to be in there very long

04:26:26.600 | and you're not going to get nearly as cold

04:26:28.860 | as you will submerged in 30 degree ice water.

04:26:32.840 | Like the way that we do it nonetheless.

04:26:34.600 | So I have no problem standing in the shower

04:26:36.900 | for a couple of minutes using it for other reasons

04:26:39.640 | if you want to, that's no issue.

04:26:41.500 | - I'd like to talk a little bit about nutrition

04:26:43.340 | and supplementation as it relates to hypertrophy.

04:26:47.060 | Dr. Layne Norton, who's been a guest

04:26:50.320 | on the Huberman Lab podcast and we both know,

04:26:53.080 | throughout a number range related to protein intake

04:26:58.080 | on the backdrop of how much protein synthesis can occur

04:27:01.620 | by meal, across the day, et cetera.

04:27:04.980 | A lot of research done there and some important work

04:27:07.260 | by him in particular.

04:27:08.500 | And then the value that he threw out was 1.6 grams

04:27:13.060 | per kilogram of body weight being the lower end of the range

04:27:16.880 | up to, I believe it was as high as 2.4,

04:27:19.760 | maybe even as high as 2.7 grams of protein

04:27:23.940 | per kilogram of body weight per day.

04:27:25.740 | That's a pretty broad range, but it's on the higher end

04:27:29.660 | of what I think most people think of

04:27:31.220 | in terms of protein intake.

04:27:33.100 | And then again, some people might already be right there

04:27:35.300 | or maybe even above that value.

04:27:36.980 | Of course, this all depends on whether or not

04:27:38.680 | people are omnivore, vegan, meat-based, et cetera.

04:27:43.680 | We won't even go there.

04:27:45.440 | But assuming people are getting enough protein per day,

04:27:48.300 | so somewhere in that range, and they are spreading out

04:27:51.140 | that protein intake to accommodate the fact

04:27:54.580 | that the body can only assimilate a certain amount

04:27:57.780 | of protein in any given sitting.

04:28:00.260 | What do you like to see people ingest at some point

04:28:04.540 | post-hypertrophy-inducing workout in order to get

04:28:09.540 | the protein synthesis advantage, if you will,

04:28:14.780 | that is stimulated by that workout?

04:28:17.620 | Earlier, you mentioned the post-training feeding window

04:28:20.820 | that in the '90s and probably earlier,

04:28:22.940 | people were talking about, oh, within the first 90 minutes,

04:28:25.020 | you have to get 30 minutes-- - It was 30 minutes

04:28:26.300 | for a while, yeah. - Oh, was it?

04:28:27.580 | 30 minutes of, excuse me, a certain number of grams

04:28:30.120 | of carbohydrate and protein, et cetera.

04:28:32.060 | I think now the understanding is that that window

04:28:33.980 | is much broader, and how broad, et cetera,

04:28:38.620 | is still a matter of debate.

04:28:40.060 | But when somebody is training specifically for hypertrophy,

04:28:43.880 | assuming they are getting enough protein

04:28:45.540 | from quality sources in their other meals,

04:28:48.300 | and assuming that their overall macronutrient intake

04:28:51.900 | and caloric intake is high enough,

04:28:53.760 | that is, they have enough of a caloric surplus

04:28:55.480 | that they have the raw materials for hypertrophy.

04:28:59.980 | What do you like to see people ingest at some point

04:29:05.260 | post-workout in order to facilitate

04:29:07.300 | muscle protein synthesis and recovery?

04:29:09.700 | And this could include nutrition and supplementation,

04:29:12.060 | or if you want to divide those answers out,

04:29:14.520 | feel free to do so, of course.

04:29:15.460 | - Yeah, okay, great.

04:29:16.300 | So a ton of work came out of Don Lehman's lab,

04:29:18.800 | was actually Lane's mentor,

04:29:20.560 | as well as Stu Phillips at McMaster.

04:29:22.660 | So a ton of work there, and we can answer

04:29:24.460 | a number of things here.

04:29:25.880 | So Lane's numbers that he recommended,

04:29:28.580 | also known as about a gram of protein

04:29:30.740 | per pound of body weight.

04:29:31.740 | It's a great start.

04:29:32.940 | Now, once you slide below that--

04:29:34.780 | - That's per pound, right?

04:29:35.720 | - One gram per pound.

04:29:36.780 | - Right, and earlier, just to make sure,

04:29:38.880 | 'cause we're changing units here,

04:29:40.300 | it was 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight,

04:29:44.640 | all the way up to, I think it was 2.4,

04:29:46.760 | but maybe as high as 2.7 grams of protein

04:29:49.620 | per kilogram of body weight.

04:29:50.900 | - So 2.2 in that unit would be the same thing.

04:29:53.780 | - So 2.2 grams per kilogram is the same

04:29:55.460 | as one gram per pound.

04:29:56.540 | - Right.

04:29:57.380 | - So depending on where you're listening to this at,

04:30:00.300 | one of those may be easier than the other for you.

04:30:02.860 | If you start getting below that number,

04:30:05.500 | now you do start running into questions

04:30:07.660 | of protein quality, protein type, and protein timing.

04:30:10.900 | This is one of the reasons why I actually fully agree

04:30:12.900 | with Lane, is just get that number higher than you think,

04:30:15.820 | and then all those other variables don't matter.

04:30:18.220 | If that number is low, then you need to start

04:30:20.220 | paying attention to a bunch of other stuff.

04:30:21.980 | You've added now complexity to your program,

04:30:24.580 | things you've got to pay attention to.

04:30:26.320 | Just stay high and it doesn't matter.

04:30:27.980 | And so you can just leave a lot of those things

04:30:29.420 | off the table.

04:30:30.820 | That seems to be fairly clear in the work

04:30:32.820 | of some of these gentlemen I just mentioned,

04:30:34.280 | that as long as you get to that total number,

04:30:36.300 | the question about timing and types and quality,

04:30:39.520 | it seems to matter a lot less.

04:30:40.740 | In fact, Stu's recent work in non-animal-based proteins

04:30:44.900 | really showed that, to be fairly clear,

04:30:46.700 | that those are quite effective,

04:30:47.780 | assuming total protein intake is high enough.

04:30:51.260 | The amount of leucine and other amino acids

04:30:53.380 | in those actual proteins matter less

04:30:55.260 | if the total threshold is just super high.

04:30:57.460 | So just do that and you're fine.

04:30:59.280 | Now, the other caveat we have to say here

04:31:01.300 | is timing of macronutrients seems to be

04:31:04.580 | somewhat irrelevant for protein,

04:31:06.040 | but that is not the case for carbohydrates.

04:31:08.660 | So that timing does matter.

04:31:10.220 | Replenishment of muscle glycogen is very specific,

04:31:13.420 | and you want to make sure that that is around a lot

04:31:15.900 | if you're doing either maintaining training quality

04:31:18.580 | or you're sliding into endurance type of work.

04:31:20.600 | And so nutrient timing does matter with carbohydrates,

04:31:23.580 | maybe less so with protein and certainly less so with protein

04:31:26.780 | if the total protein ingestion is high enough.

04:31:29.520 | So it depends on what we're going after

04:31:32.800 | in terms of a training goal

04:31:34.820 | and where we want to get with all these things.

04:31:36.960 | In general, the way that we like to think about this is

04:31:39.960 | if you're doing a strength type of work

04:31:42.120 | where you're truly targeting that,

04:31:43.700 | then a one-to-one post-exercise protein-to-carbohydrate ratio

04:31:47.740 | is generally what we're going to go after.

04:31:49.040 | So this would be something like 35 grams of protein

04:31:51.340 | and 35 grams of carbohydrate.

04:31:53.540 | It doesn't have to be post, it can be pre,

04:31:55.940 | or my favorite is actually mid or post,

04:31:58.660 | but somewhere in that range,

04:32:00.080 | especially if you're training in the morning

04:32:01.640 | and you have not consumed anything prior to your workout.

04:32:04.460 | - And that's not necessarily eating in the middle

04:32:06.060 | of the workout that's drinking calories.

04:32:07.940 | - Yeah, it's going to be a-

04:32:08.780 | - I have to see someone eating a sandwich in the gym,

04:32:12.060 | although I'm sure it's happened.

04:32:13.540 | - Yeah.

04:32:14.380 | So one-to-one is that like sort of standard number here.

04:32:18.580 | If you're going to do sort of more

04:32:20.000 | of a really hard conditioning workout,

04:32:22.400 | that number slides up to something like three

04:32:24.680 | or even four-to-one,

04:32:25.880 | which would be carbohydrate-to-protein ratio.

04:32:28.200 | So if we want to stay at 35 grams of protein,

04:32:30.520 | we're going to go maybe as high as like 100

04:32:32.160 | or 140 grams of carbohydrate,

04:32:34.600 | again, depending on what type of training

04:32:36.880 | we're sort of doing.

04:32:37.740 | If you're going to do a little bit of a combination,

04:32:40.000 | then you, like a little bit of strength,

04:32:41.660 | a little bit of conditioning and kind of a standard workout,

04:32:43.700 | which is probably something that a lot of people will do,

04:32:45.960 | then you maybe want to go to something like two-to-one.

04:32:48.260 | So, you know, 35 grams of protein,

04:32:51.120 | 60, 70 grams of carbohydrate.

04:32:53.280 | And those are kind of just like rough numbers

04:32:54.960 | that you can go by.

04:32:56.520 | - And for pure hypertrophy training,

04:32:59.240 | would you like to see people ingest some carbohydrate

04:33:01.560 | post-training?

04:33:02.560 | - For pure hypertrophy training,

04:33:04.200 | I want to see that as many of those nutrients

04:33:07.440 | around the training as generally possible.

04:33:09.400 | Now, again, I may change my mind

04:33:10.800 | when our fasting study comes out,

04:33:12.000 | but as it stands now,

04:33:14.760 | there is no advantage to not fueling around the training.

04:33:19.740 | And there are some known

04:33:21.300 | and some other potential advantages to fueling.

04:33:23.640 | So I just see no reason to not do it.

04:33:26.540 | In fact, most people are generally going to do better.

04:33:29.860 | Now, this is not science.

04:33:31.380 | This is just my coaching experience.

04:33:33.520 | And this is with our athletes

04:33:34.860 | and all of our non-athletes that we've worked with

04:33:37.100 | and do work with.

04:33:38.260 | They're just going to be better spreading those meals out

04:33:40.220 | generally throughout the day.

04:33:41.620 | And they're going to be better

04:33:43.060 | if they have those nutrients either pre, mid, or post.

04:33:46.100 | And so they're going to get, even for hypertrophy,

04:33:48.600 | they're going to get something like

04:33:49.600 | that three to one ratio of carbs to protein.

04:33:52.060 | Personal preference.

04:33:53.980 | Some people don't like to eat before they train.

04:33:55.400 | Some people have to eat before they train.

04:33:57.140 | Some people can't put food in their belly immediately after.

04:34:01.360 | Work around that.

04:34:02.200 | You can play based on personal preference,

04:34:03.660 | but we want that fueling in there

04:34:05.960 | because we want to maximize the potential growth

04:34:07.880 | and we want to just get a jumpstart on recovery

04:34:10.240 | because we're going to be training again pretty soon.

04:34:13.480 | - Supplementation is a huge topic

04:34:15.280 | and one that we will go into in great depth

04:34:18.200 | in a soon to occur episode.

04:34:22.240 | But if you had to pick one supplement

04:34:24.800 | that can benefit most everybody, if not everybody,

04:34:28.620 | for their training directed toward strength,

04:34:32.280 | power, and hypertrophy, what would that supplement be?

04:34:35.200 | And how would you like to see people use it?

04:34:37.080 | Meaning how much should they take

04:34:39.160 | and when should they take it?

04:34:41.080 | - Sure.

04:34:41.920 | If you don't count protein and carbohydrates as supplements,

04:34:44.560 | they technically are, but we'll just walk out of that.

04:34:46.740 | - Right, sorry.

04:34:47.580 | I should be more specific.

04:34:48.620 | I'm not referring to a non-food form protein and carbohydrate.

04:34:53.620 | So powdered protein and powdered carbohydrate, et cetera,

04:34:57.940 | technically are supplements.

04:34:59.920 | They're highly processed, but I'm not including that.

04:35:02.760 | I'm referring to non-macronutrient type supplements.

04:35:06.600 | - Yeah.

04:35:07.440 | Does testosterone count?

04:35:10.480 | Well, in the context of this discussion,

04:35:12.200 | it's testosterone that people are manufacturing themselves.

04:35:14.860 | - Ah, okay.

04:35:15.840 | The cheating kind, the endogenous kind.

04:35:17.280 | No, I mean, creatine is the answer here without question.

04:35:20.940 | It is the most well studied.

04:35:24.360 | It is the most effective and its benefits are robust,

04:35:28.320 | meaning they're going to confer positive adaptations

04:35:32.320 | across multiple physiological domains.

04:35:34.640 | So we could certainly have a very long chat

04:35:36.720 | about some of the interesting things that people,

04:35:39.120 | in fact, we just had Darren Kandao

04:35:41.620 | on our Barbell Shrugged podcast,

04:35:43.060 | and he went into extensive detail

04:35:44.880 | about all the benefits of creatine

04:35:46.200 | that people have no idea about,

04:35:47.800 | including things like bone mineral density.

04:35:49.980 | You asked about that earlier.

04:35:51.160 | Creatine is actually fairly effective for that,

04:35:53.800 | let alone the benefit in things like cognitive function,

04:35:57.520 | decision-making, memory,

04:35:59.660 | the work that's being done there

04:36:01.080 | for neurological disorders, depression,

04:36:05.980 | a whole host of things that creatine is being studied for.

04:36:08.640 | Some of those studies show a lot of benefits,

04:36:11.960 | some of it show maybe a little bit, some none,

04:36:14.280 | but there's just a lot of things creatine can do.

04:36:17.040 | So when we could talk about muscle recovery

04:36:18.780 | or muscle hypertrophy,

04:36:19.920 | that's where the bulk of the research is,

04:36:23.080 | and it's very effective.

04:36:25.040 | In terms of type,

04:36:27.200 | creatine monohydrate is still the best one,

04:36:29.680 | and that's just because it has the largest evidence base.

04:36:32.440 | You can maybe make some arguments for some other types,

04:36:34.880 | but you're really gonna reach saturation pretty quickly

04:36:37.460 | within a matter of weeks in there,

04:36:39.660 | at a dosage of anywhere between three to six grams per day.

04:36:43.400 | Now, five grams is the very standard number we give.

04:36:47.000 | Reality is I change that number based on size.

04:36:49.760 | That's just the honest truth.

04:36:51.200 | If you're 225 pounds,

04:36:53.720 | you're not gonna get the same dosage

04:36:54.960 | of creatine as a 125-pound girl.

04:36:57.300 | That's just like, this is not what we're gonna do.

04:36:58.840 | So we may slide that number down a little bit closer to three

04:37:01.100 | for the smaller, girl, boy, it doesn't matter,

04:37:03.120 | it's just physical size.

04:37:05.200 | If you're one of our 275 or 330-pound

04:37:08.140 | offensive right tackles in the NFL,

04:37:10.700 | you're not gonna get the same dosage as everybody else.

04:37:12.780 | So that number's gonna go up to seven, eight, nine,

04:37:14.480 | maybe even 10 grams a day.

04:37:16.180 | So that's just kind of the scale.

04:37:17.260 | In general, if you wanted an easy answer,

04:37:18.740 | five grams is the standard.

04:37:20.620 | - Taken after training?

04:37:22.740 | - The timing doesn't matter.

04:37:24.160 | Totally irrelevant.

04:37:25.000 | Take it in the morning with breakfast, take it at night,

04:37:26.360 | take it anytime you want, take it pre.

04:37:28.140 | We tend to put it in a lot of people's workout

04:37:31.040 | shakes just to make sure they get it in throughout the day.

04:37:34.860 | But the timing is irrelevant.

04:37:36.460 | - Great, well, thank you for that very informative answer.

04:37:38.840 | And I look forward to much more discussion

04:37:41.540 | about nutrition and supplementation and recovery

04:37:44.400 | and all the rest in the episodes to come.

04:37:46.940 | This was incredibly informative.

04:37:48.540 | Thank you so very much.

04:37:50.920 | - I appreciate the opportunity.

04:37:52.300 | I had a great time doing that.

04:37:53.680 | I love talking about these things.

04:37:55.580 | I also really liked talking about

04:37:57.500 | what we're gonna get into in our next conversation,

04:37:59.280 | which is the physiology of endurance, metabolism,

04:38:02.700 | and fat loss.

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04:39:10.200 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion

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04:39:14.400 | with Dr. Andy Galpin.

04:39:15.920 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

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Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimal Protocols to Build Strength & Grow Muscles | Huberman Lab Guest Series

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