Hello, my fellow found my fitness, friendly faces. Let me start out by saying this episode is amazing. Everything you want. And need to know about the science of resistance training with applications for every fact coming from one of the leading researchers in the field. Dr. Brad schoenfeld dr. Schoenfeld is a professor at Lehman College in the Bronx in New York City. His research primarily focuses on muscle adaptations to strength, training and muscle hypertrophy publishing over 300
studies in the field of exercise and Sports Nutrition. As a scientist, Brad began his career as a competitive bodybuilder and personal trainer. In my opinion, this gives him a unique practical lens through, which he communicates his academic expertise in this episode Brad and I discuss practical perspectives on, whether we can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. In other words, recomposition, what's the minimum effective dose of resistance training?
How many hours per week, should you trained? Not to be a bodybuilder but to just get great results, we talked about how to prevent muscle loss while in a caloric deficit, loading versus volume. Whether you need to lift heavy weights to gain muscle, whether you need to train to failure. Will you get better results? The Chronic interference hypothesis. Does performing resistance training and aerobic exercise back-to-back Act synergistically
Mystically or are they at odds? Why power training may be really key for aging.
We talked about time, efficient training using drop sets supersets and multi-joint exercises. We also talked about how multi-joint exercises are key for building and preventing the loss of bone mass, is there a benefit to Eccentric movements or negatives and whether or not we should emphasize them in our training? We talked about intercept recovery and how often and how much to train the same muscles? Some active ways to speed up recovery.
Such as Omega-3s and being Physically Active throughout the day to increase blood flow, what exercise-induced soreness really means. Should we try to get sore? Is it necessary for a good workout is stretching important resistance, training in youth, should kids train when should they train and how and so much more
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And now on to this fantastic podcast with dr. Brad schoenfeld. So Brad, thank you so much for coming out. Really excited to learn everything that were, you know, going to talk about today related to a muscle hypertrophy and muscle adaptations in response to resistance training, but maybe we can just start with resistance training. I mean, why should people care about resistance training?
So when my humble opinion, certainly there are every form of
Sighs are most forms of exercise are very beneficial doing. Something is always better than doing nothing for your health. But if I were to say, if I were to pick one activity that is indispensable, it would be a resistance training and there's a couple of reasons. So certainly cardiovascular exercise, it's been much more well-researched over the years and indisputably it has great effects on your health and wellness. But resistance training has many of the same benefits.
It's as cardiovascular exercise, but it goes well beyond what you can get through aerobic training and particularly dealing with muscle strength, obviously and bone density and other things like posture. And so, aerobic, exercise itself has very minimal effects on your strength levels, on muscle development on muscle hypertrophy, even on bone development. So certainly running has certain benefits to the Bone but nothing in
Way that resistance training does. And again, things like your posture. People don't even consider doing. If you are sedentary and not doing anything over time, you're going to lose muscle. Your posture is going to go and you could do all the aerobic training you want. It's really not going to have these benefits.
So that, that you just mentioned two things that I was unaware of in the bone bone density, in the posture. So can you talk a little bit more about that resistance? Training, affecting bone density. That seems very relevant for
Particularly postmenopausal women,
it is so osteoporosis which is basically porous moans. It's when over time, the aging process, your bones. If you are sedentary in particular, will start to degrade and the 80% of osteoporosis people with osteoporosis are women because women generally number one, start out with less bone mass and there's also effects of as you mentioned estrogen is osteoporosis
Detective. So when women undergo menopause, postmenopausal either going to have increased bone resorption, which is going to increase their chances of getting osteoporosis that porosus and resistance training, by pulling on the bones of muscle pulling on the bone. So there's an interaction. You musculoskeletal system is the muscle that allows when you have movement it's the muscle pulling on the bones to to move and strength. Training really is
Is the primary way to strengthen the bones. So while you're strengthening the muscles, necessarily the bones become strengthened as well and certain ways that are going to be more appropriate than others to maximize that process but really no matter what type of resistance training you do. Whether it's like those heavy loads, Etc. You're going to be strengthening bones where and it's always by the way specific to the Joint that you're working. So it's wait.
During exercise in particular is what strengthens bones if you're doing cycling or even the elliptical machine, it's really not weight-bearing enough to have substantial effects on bone, bone development and swimming and other Endeavor whereas running to some extent. There is ground reaction forces but it's mostly specific to the femur to your lower body musculature, whereas the spine and the
Wrist is going to be a major area for osteoporosis particularly women. Anyway, long story short is that resistance training when done regularly and consistently over time has profound effects on staving off the tension for osteoporosis and even building bonds, particularly when you're younger,
is there are there? He said there are certain types of exercises that may you know, be better or is there any types of
Sizes that you can talk about I mean yes it
seems. So most of the research has been using some what-have-you moderate to heavier loading. I'm not convinced though it's I think it's the fact that it's an effect that we just don't have research. That's really looked at doing the lighter load training with bone density and I would surmise if you are training with a good deal of effort, high levels of intensity of effort that you would achieve similar.
Their effects. But it also does seem that doing more multi joint movements. So, multi joint, meaning, like squats movements that are utilizing more than one joint multi-joint has more than one Joy. So, rather than curl you can get better effects overall on bone because of the loading that is imposed, its will get, not really great evidence. This is more speculative based upon the literature of scene.
SWAT again. I am a fan of any type of resistance training over not, but if you're looking to maximize bone development, I would certainly say you want to include some multi joint movements and I think just in general, there's other reasons why you'd want to as
well. And it besides the squad's, what are some other like
rodents presses? I mean, push-ups any type of movement where you're involving more than one
joint someone that doesn't like someone that's working with dumbbells for.
People who is not going to go use a machine. Can you do them? Can you do multi joint is
without shoulder. Press the chest press, you could dumbbells a great shoulder, press chest press, you can do squats, you can do a goblet squat re hold the dumbbell here and do a squat. So, yeah.
Well, that was very, I didn't realize I'm going to had a question there about bone density, but I didn't realize that it really does play a significant role in in that in the bone density. And it's really, it's really,
Good to know about that muscle mass in general aging. I mean, what about someone who hasn't, let's say, you know, they're more of an endurance athlete like throughout most of their, you know, young adulthood and they're getting into even just maybe perhaps older age. Is it ever too late to start resistance training to help, you know, build muscle mass, help prevent the atrophy that's happened going to going to happen?
Absolutely not so
I in my previous life, I was a personal trainer before becoming an educator researcher and I mean, literally, I was involved in the training of thousands of individuals and I had clients at the time that were 60s, 70s, and 80s. Never lifted a weight, and saw a huge benefits in relatively short periods of time. We carried out a maid analysis on the oldest of old, which was 70 and above with a 70 is actually not that. It's the new 50 now is
But 70-plus years old and up to octogenarians. Nonagenarian profound improvements in muscle strength, muscle hypertrophy within 12 week, 8, to 12 week, training programs. Never these are novice trainees. We've never done anything before. Now, I will say this with the caveat it's always better to start. When you're the earlier, you start the better because once you start losing to get
It back as hard as so. Yeah, you can always improve upon where you're at a given point in time, but trying to get back to where you were, when you're in your 20s is going to be almost impossible. If you're not storing through Yosemite. However, if you start when you're in your 20s, you can maintain a majority of your muscle mass. And certainly, I would say this someone who is not doing anything in their 20s. I've had clients in their 70s who were stronger and more fit than people in their 20s who
Were you serious lifters? So yeah, it's always best to start when you're younger, and I will say this, to, for women in particular and particularly in reference to bone density, it is very important to start early again. It's never too late because you can get some
house early. How early,
I mean as early as you can but certainly like in your teens and twenties because you do build up a bone bank, I mean
The analogy. I like to use is having a retirement account, if you? Yeah, it's never too late to start technically but if you start when your 50s your retirement is not going to be what it is if you start your 20s. And there is this concept of a bone Bank. Where if you start, when you're young and particularly again, for women, who have the biggest issue with osteoporosis, you end up staving off the possibility of having osteoporosis. If you start when you've already lost,
In density, it's very difficult to get back. You can Stave off you can certainly prevent the progression of osteoporosis, but getting back. Your bone density becomes much more
difficult. So it's very similar to this concept of building up a muscle Reserve right where because that's also right when you correct your I don't know 30s even maybe you start to lose the muscle mass and so yes if you like you said having a starting with that bigger Reserve is always better because things are going to be taking away from it. So you want to
Have like a bigger starting point. So so that's really great to know because, you know, in particular for women, I think, you know, and at least for myself in particular and I know like many of my friends and growing up even, you know, throughout high school and we were always endurance. We were endurance athletes. You walk into the gym and there was mostly guys in there lifting weights, you know, the wrestlers, the you know, and and so, I don't know that this may be changing. Now where women are starting to understand the
Of resistance training and building up muscle mass and bone mass through resistance training. But you know for me it was always endurance. If I'm doing my endurance then I'm checking the box. I'm I'm you know I'm getting that exercise I'm going to be healthier because of it so this is all it's really so important. I think for for young women to to really it's easier to convince young man who like want to get the muscle. I mean for them they've got other
Goals as well in mine. But I think there's there's now a growing interest in bone mass and bone density and preventing osteoporosis as well. So that's really great to know what about starting. Like so starting young like, you know, can you start like in childhood?
Absolutely. So there's compelling research. Now that children kind of it's never too young to start provided the true.
Some maturity is such that they're able to, to lift. I will say that always, it should be done, especially early on if you're dealing with children, six seven, eight years old, you want to have a fully supervised environment even beyond that, until they are in their teens even. But yeah, there's really compelling research now that resistance training and youth not only is not detrimental. So I mean it does not I want to dispel the myth now that it's stunts.
Growth. I mean, there's this myth around forever that, you know, the training, if you do resistance training, early on, it will stunt your growth. This is zero evidence. You would think the opposite
because growth hormone increases with resistance training. The
growth hormone really does not have the effects on interestingly, even though the name is growth hormone that's it's really not the driving force of development. Well, it is on
high. Yeah, but that's what I
do for a mon is pulse at all and the effects on growth hormone.
For never bends, it's actually interesting. It's never been studied, but it's possible. And the effects on growth hormone with resistance training are very specific to the one hour or so after the workout. But it was thought that you would injure the epiphyseal plates in the bone. That would, you know, somehow stunt the growth. Anyway, zero evidence to that the issues can be that if someone is not, I want to emphasize if your child is not emotionally mmm.
Mentally ready for that yet, they get injured, but I'll say this, it's kind of to me, it's always this weird thought process that parents often have no no issues with letting their children play football and basketball the possibility of getting injured and potentially breaking bones in sports. In these, you know, major sports are much much higher resistance. Training is one of the safest things you can do in a supervised environment. So CI with children
Again, very young, as young as six, seven, eight years old, has been good compelling research on this, that they can do it. I generally say you want to start off with lighter loads with them. And again, it's getting getting them into the feel for doing it. And look, when you're dealing with children, the most important thing is making it fun. So if something is not fun, you're forcing them to do it. It's not only, is it not going to work and you're going to have a rebellion.
It's a, but it can also later on in life. Get them to a point where they're kind of adverse to doing that. So, again, I think what's really important is to make it enjoyable for them and it improves self-esteem, obviously it improves. So, you know, bullying and children and these are all things that can help to Stave off a lot of the issues that children can have makes them better athletes. So from a parent's standpoint, you can get scholarships to make them if that's the
Avenue they want to pursue, it can make them better in their Sports and lead to just a host of positive improvements
with respect to body composition. So you know, we were talking about the benefits of of resistance training on bone density, obviously muscle mass and people are now thinking about those things but, you know, back in the day, you know, body composition and it's still as important as well. But but that was kind of one of the
Major things. People would think about why they should do resistance training. How can you talk like a little bit about body like, how does resistance training, you know, affect body recomposition, can you gain muscle without gaining fat Mass sort of sort of things like that?
Great question. So, well, let's start from the basics that resistance training can improve. Certainly it, improves lean mass, which is largely muscle mass. When I do think it's important.
Understand like certain measures underwater, weighing like a lot of the measures that you'll see dexa underwater, weighing Bia, bioelectrical impedance analysis, they are looking at not necessarily muscle mass. Well, there are ways to try to derive that but when you're when they talk about fat free mass and lean mass generally, depending on the measure their combinations of in the very least muscle and water. So it's not necessarily just
if you're gaining water, that will show up as fat free Mass, that's not anything outside of fat, Mass would be fat free mass and that I think is somewhat important to understand there. But with that said, resistance training certainly can impact fat free Mass aspect and it can help with that mess. Now I want to say in general and this goes for cardiovascular exercise. To exercise is not the best way to lose body fat. It can how it's certainly I think a good adjunct to
If that was program, which I'll get to in a second but you have to do a lot of exercise to meaningfully lose fat. Whereas it's just much easier to do it through reducing the calories and nutrition, the energy intake. So for instance, if you do an hour of cardiovascular exercise and hard, you know, where you're running for the most part, I'm you can burn five, 600 calories in that hour, you know, that's you have a bag of potato chips that get
Pretty much offset everything you've done. Whereas if you focus on reducing the energy intake, through your food and using exercises and adjunct, it can certainly help with the weight loss. Not only in terms of increasing energy expenditure to some extent Because by the way, doing an hour of exercise every day for most people, it's just not a becomes very little laborious and that's just cardio. And like I said, you want to do resistance.
Painting as well and resistance training. You cardio actually is somewhat more effective just purely from creating more energy expenditure than resistance training is. But here's the catch. It is in my humble opinion, fundamental to combined resistance training, at the very least, with an energy deficit through nutritional restriction to promote weight loss and here's why if you do not lift weights,
even if you just do cardio, you will lose muscle as you're losing body fat and there are depending upon how you're going about. It evidence shows, 25% to 30% of the weight lost will come from muscles. So you might lose, let's say 70% fat and can even be more if you're a somewhat leaner and thirty percent coming from lean mass. If you don't do resistance training. Now you
About Rico resistance training. Not only will Stave off the loss of fat free Mass often but you can actually recount. Recount means you can gain muscle while losing fat. There are two primary factors and I leave out. So there's three the elephant in the room is anabolic steroid use. So if you're doing an about taking anabolic steroids, yeah, you can have serious Recon but putting that aside. That's probably not your audience are most of the people listening here, the two primary factors.
Is our number one. How how much weight do you have to lose? So we're you obese, the more weight you have to lose the easier, it is to recomm. Also, how long have you been training? So someone who has a lot of years of experience of training, that's higher to their closer to their genetic ceiling, will have a more difficult time. We comping now, I will, so by the way, so if you have a lot of body fat to lose and you're just starting out, you can do serious, recom? I see this.
All the time. Not only anecdotally, have I seen this in clients, but we have controlled experiments run through our lab where I see this all the time in individual subjects that we have you cannot however maximize muscle mass while you are losing fat. So this is important. If your goal is to go into a CMS gaining cycle where you want to let's say bodybuilders do this or strength athletes and your goal is to maximize muscle development.
Aunt, you're at the very minimum going to need to be at maintenance. In general, you're going to need to be in a small Surplus, where you going to gain a little bit, at least some amount of fat.
Okay. Boy, this was this fantastic information. I'm just it's sinking all and um so can if you are in a caloric deficit and this kind of brings us into the protein dietary protein requirements World a little bit. If you are in a calorie deficit and but you are and we should probably talk about what the protein requirements are. But let's say you are getting sufficient protein.
Intake, daily protein intake, to counter to prevent your body from pulling protein out of your muscle, basically.
Can you not lose the lean mass or muscle mass? Let's say you're not doing resistance training but you are just getting the protein in say you're doing aerobic but you're still in a caloric deficit deficit but you're getting the protein
and not lifting weights, you're not lifting weights. So the answer is it will help to preserve some lean mass but you're still no matter what you do. If you are not lifting weights, I mean this has been shown again over and over in research you will lose and well
One at least always hate to talk in absolutes, because if you're very obese, we just have a, let's say you're 100 pounds overweight, you can lose fat without losing muscle much more red because you just have so much fat to lose that the body's going to pull from the fat stores. But I'm talking when you starting to get down into people who just core quote-unquote, overweight, you're going to lose muscle if you do not resistant strain. Now even if I want to point out that even if you're lifting weights.
You are getting insufficient protein. It's going to, you're going to Leach some muscle. So you need to still take in sufficient protein and there's actually evidence that you need more protein than what has been shown for people at maintenance or above to maintain muscle, or even again at slightly when you're in a caloric deficit. So that actually increases protein, needs to some
extent. Can you talk about? Like what those? Yeah, sure. So
This we start to get into generalizations. So the general literature shows somewhere around 1.6, to one point, eight grams per kilogram per day, of protein is, required for resistance training people, which is about double the RDA. So RDA, for sedentary individuals is around 0.8 grams per kg per day per kilogram per day. You need roughly double that to you.
To maintain or to promote an AB ilysm, while your resistance training in the upper confidence interval is about 2.2 grams per kilogram. So meaning that to really be on the safe side, if you're for the vast majority of people, if you're in the Gen pop, probably not going to make a difference. But if you're a bodybuilder, when I'm coaching bodybuilders and Consulting with them, it really does not hurt to take in more protein. I mean, there's a lot of myths about kidney damage,
In healthy individuals, no good evidence. That there's any negative effects on renal function. Certainly on bone density. These are all unsupported from my reading of the literature, so there's not necessarily A downside to it. You have to look at cost benefit. Everything is cost benefit for bodybuilders. I would say go up to 2 grams per kilogram per day which roughly around for those of us in the states. It's about a gram per pound. It's not going to hurt but I would say that becomes
Is even more important to stay in that upper realm. So if you're like 1.6, if you're especially in a surplus, you generally need the needs for protein or going to be in compass because the body is going to Leach protein needs, when you start getting into a deficit, that's where I think it becomes even more important to be at that upper realm. That 2.0, 2.2 grams per kilogram.
So people that are, let's say people that are obese and I always say obese or overweight
Maybe it's important to distinguish these two based on what you just said, but if they are obese and or like, you know, overweight and they're wanting to lose fat Mass right? Should they be calculating their protein intake based on their targeted weight? Or because if they're like, you know, 300 pounds for example, or you know, that's a lot of protein, right?
Yes. That's a great question. And the answer is no. So the protein needs have been based on
On men and women, who are relatively lean, they want to say relatively for the best majority of the population, they were considerate lean. So for guys somewhere, like, in the 12 to 15% body, fat range for women around 20% body, fat or so. So if you are 300 pounds and you should be 200 pounds, you would want, let's say you would calculate it. At your the weight that you would be where you would be at your lean weight, where, you know, for a guy 12 to 15 percent body fat.
So we can then regress to saying, base it on lean mass, but most people aren't getting dexa scans to determine their lean mass or even kept, they're not going out and getting body fat caliper measurements. Just not in the realm of what most people are going to do, when you can make a general estimate. These are not precise measurements. It's not like, you know, people think that we're doing these experiments and they really nail it down into these precise areas. Their generalized recommendations, based upon what we know,
No. And there's going to be variations around the mean, you're always going to have people that are when we do research, we report the means is, you will know which are the averages. But people are in an average, you get some people that are up here, some people here and they average out to a year. So yeah. So if you're overweight obese you want to figure your protein. Needs at what you would be at a relatively lean weight, you know what's safe again for a guy 10, 12, 15 percent body fat. I will say this it
Doesn't hurt to take in, like I said, a little extra protein, it's on the good side. Protein is very difficult to store as body fat. Much more difficult than carbohydrates and fat. So it's some if you're going to learn the side of caution, that's where you want to err on the side of increased, you know, taking it a little more protein at the expense. If your goal is weight loss at the expense of carbs and fat,
right now, we had Stuart Phillips on the podcast.
A colleague of yours and he was talking about with the, with the protein requirements, like the by in being more like, you know, just to get like at least one point two grams of protein per kilogram body weight. And for me, I was like, okay, because that that that's what I'm going to try to aim for. But then, as I started to become more, do more resistance training. I realized I was meeting the buy-in, but I wasn't meeting the 1.6. And so I have to now increase.
Like a can of sardines will get me there. Like I need about 16 to 20, more grams a day so, you know, for people like, I'm like my dad, for example, he's in his 70s and, like, getting good luck. Getting in a 1.6, like, I'm trying to 1.2, right? I'm trying to like, prevent him from like just, you know, completely depleting his, you know, his amino acids from his, from his muscle every day, which he's kind of doing. So he has to supplement and do the protein-protein.
In shakes and stuff like that and I'm happy at least to get him there. Next step would be then 1.6, you know and of course adding the resistance training which should be essential but I haven't been able to get to that point yet. So I wanted to mention that with the protein requirements because you know the there was like I know the RDA is solo 0.8 and Stewart talked a little bit about like some of the flaws in the early studies that were done to calculate that and I'm just like what
During when is it time to reassess this, you know, and change it? Because a lot of people think they're they're getting enough protein and many people don't even get the RDA.
So to address that two things, I think that are important. So one point two is better than 0.8 certainly. But I mean, there's good literature showing we've done work on this that if you want to maximize an AB ilysm. So, again, it doesn't mean that you're not going to gain any muscle if you're taking
1.2, but it will impair the gains that you're going to get them. Especially when you're talking about older individuals with that their anabolic Ali resistant. So it becomes even more important. And I think this is another important thing when you're dealing with older individuals, the resistance not only antibiotic resistance to resistance training but also to protein, where the per dose aspects need to be higher to some extent, to get what's called leucine, which is one of the essential amino acids and there's
How deep you want to get here but there's a lutein. Leucine threshold leucine is the amino acid that seems to kick-start the muscle growth process. And if it seems to be somewhat higher, at least some of the literature does show that in older individuals getting more, leucine is important to kick start that process. As you point out though, unfairly for older individuals, it becomes increasingly difficult to get protein in and I'm a big fan of Whole Foods like supplement.
Station is something that you do when you cannot get Whole Foods in. But as you get older taste buds, start to dissipate, your food does not have good taste. So older individuals have difficulty chewing sometimes too, and that is where supplementation can come in and it's much easier to drink a whey protein or casein or egg protein shake and get that protein in through supplemental means if you're not meeting your daily requirement. So I think that's where
And for anyone, I mean women it seems that women often also are not programmed to take protein as much. And yeah, it's just very easy to do through protein shakes if you're not going to be able to do it through Whole Foods.
What's the loosing, thresh? Like can you like in terms of protein? Like obviously we'll get we can get into the vegan vegetarian because the whole other thing, but like, if you're eating meat chicken, poultry fish, you know, if you're getting the essential amino,
Oh, acids like what gram dose per meal? Would you say would be important for that Crossing that loosing threshold? And what
age? That's what these are gonna get hard. Cut offs in either of those, I've seen three grams where it starts to increase from 2 to 3 grams of leucine. As you get older. Where is that cut off from being quote unquote? Older. There isn't one. And if you don't necessarily, I certainly don't think you need to take leucine as a supplement.
But if you're taking it a high-quality protein Source, you know, you're if you're eating meat based proteins, which by the way, aren't just meet there, also milk and eggs, Etc. So proteins from animal should say, animal-based sources, you're going to be getting quality proteins that are rich in leucine. And again, it's just getting the proper dosages and which might be, it's been shown. There is a graded
As a recent study out of Luc van, loons, lab is a terrific researcher protein, researcher in the Netherlands and they looked at again my memory. Now it's been a while since I hope this study but it was they did 0 15, g of protein. I believe these weigh, 30 and 45 I think it was. But anyway, it showed a dose-response relationship for a muscle protein synthesis where they kept getting a greater response. Though. It did seem to
Somewhat Kur, the curve wasn't, it wasn't a linear relationship so there was, you know, more parabolic where it started to Trail off after 30 grams, but it did continue on above the 30 grams. So, just shows that an older individuals that it's needed to take more per dose protein to hit that leucine threshold, particularly in the time after resistance training.
I mean, yeah, that's talking about a dose that
You're going to have in your animal products, but then you're also probably going to have a protein shake with it because it's quite, I mean, I guess unless you can eat large, large, large steaks, and stuff. But for me, I know, as a female 2, I won't be getting,
this is a chicken, is 30 grams of protein? I think so sweetie. I mean, it's for, you know, if you
guys hate 4 ounces of chicken. Yes, it's pretty good with respect to what we were talking about with the being in a caloric deficit.
It and I'm gaining muscle mass and how its, you know, you have to do the resistance training and get the protein. But it seems, as though, gaining isn't, you're not going to be really gaining. If you're, if you're in that calorie deficit, if you are the person that is actively doing calc restriction, for recom, like, you know, I guess aspects, but what about, you know? So like something I practice is time restricted eating or I like to eat all my food within at like 10:00 hour window.
You know, I don't go too crazy, but, you know, like, I like to have a resting period and, you know, when you're, when you're not digesting and all that you are in a repair process, right? You're in repair mode. The problem, a lot of people make with time restricted eating, is they go? Oh, in order to eat within this 10 hour window, I got to skip breakfast, right? So they skip meals, which ends up being caloric restriction in, you know, combined with the time restricted eating. And so what I do is not get meals
It's like you're not skip breakfast. I do not skip meals, unless, you know, there's some circumstantial thing that happens where I have to get somewhere or whatever, right? But if I'm getting all of my protein within that 10 hour window. So it's more of a, it's a intermittent fasting but not being in a caloric deficit so getting the same calories that I would get, if I was eating my food throughout the day and then I'm adding in resistance training making sure I'm eating the protein.
Is that going to be conducive with with gaining muscle mass?
Yeah, absolutely. So we actually are starting to get some good research on this topic. Now time restricted feeding, it's interesting you bring that up I have a paper currently in review, a review paper review paper currently in review with my colleague, Alan Aragon was a big nutritional expert and it's best. We covered this exact topic. The interesting thing with time restricted feeding number one, there's various iterations of it. So there's
Twenty three or four hours eating and then 20 hours off the 618 is 816. So there's all variations, then there's also the 25 concept where you fast for two days and then eat at five days or so, a lot of that will depend upon the specific type of time restrictive. Eating what you're talking about a 10 hour window is much more friendly towards anabolism, but most of them is interesting because conceivably space.
Sing out your protein. Would logically have benefits and there's been some research, even longitudinal research that backs backs, this up that you get better utilization of protein. If it's spread out, let's say at least over three meals, relatively space like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and perhaps even for. But now again, if you're so this is where the nuances come in, if you're a bodybuilder, I would recommend trying to take in protein across the day as much as possible because
When you're not eating your catabolic, eating is anabolic. So what not eating is cat about, but for these studies on time, restrictive, eating really don't show much difference. Now are measures that we have a current measures of looking at hypertrophy or even MRI, which is the gold standard still has a margin of error. It's not like we're doing. You're looking at a cadaver. You're actually measure. You doing like rodent research. We actually can
Way the muscles Etc. So, our measures might not be sensitive enough to detect subtle differences, but for the vast majority of people, you're not looking to body build, it's just not going to be much of a difference. If you're going to do a 420, I would say you're then going to be in a lot more and there's been researched as one study certainly showed diminished anabolic diminished muscle hypertrophy with a 420 versus a traditional eating pattern. I could see where a 25.
Might be have issues. So again, I would say, if you're going to whatever you do, try to structure your training, within that eating window, that you have, because, and there's actually been quite a lot of research on this that the body is highly anabolic for at least 24 hours if not more after a workout. But when you start getting outside of, you know, six eight hours or so, it's probably going to Trail off, will, you might not Harvest some of the gains? Depending
Upon what you're looking for, you know, if you're especially if your goals are more optimized and muscle mass, so I would say it's beneficial to try to get the feeding in within that window, whatever it is, if you're going to be, lets say in a 10 hour window, try to tray, try to train with in the earlier part of that eating so that you're going to be able to eat after your workout. And not go, let's say not do it right after your final meal and then be catabolic for 14 hours.
Okay. So is there some
With the anabolic window. Is there some kind of boat? It's really boring door. Yeah,
we've done a ton of research on this so certainly it's there is somewhat of a window and even in the paper we published which people take. There's no antibiotic when that's not what our research showed but it showed that it's really minor the much more important thing is getting your total daily protein intake. And that's what we're kind of to your point. If you're hitting your daily protein requirements of whatever your window is if you're doing let's say certainly
Ten hours, but even like a 816, which is the most common or time restricted, feeding strategy. If you're getting 1.6 grams per kilogram, hear you pretty good. You're going to get the majority of your games, regardless, then it starts to come down. You kind of mention this with us to Phillips and similar veins, that that's kind of, like the now you're starting to get more like the cherry on the sundae here. If you want to eke out the maximum amount of gains, and
Really, it's like I said, more of a barn door, it's not this narrow window. And the kind of, I think what we've debunked is that after 45 minutes you, oh my God, I got to swim my shake immediately after training or I go catabolic. And even if you're an advanced bodybuilder, I don't think there's utility the utility in that is virtually nil, but I do say, when I'm coaching bodybuilders, you get your protein in as quickly as you can. After a workout, don't have to stress and slim your shake the minute you finish your last set. But um,
Because small, this is where even small amounts of gains can be the difference between winning and losing a competition. So again, it's highly context-specific we try to make these General guidelines and apply it to the population, but everyone has their own goals or on lifestyle that they have to deal with and other factors. And that needs to be taken into account.
If you are working out at home, let's say and you can go and you're not a professional body, but your
All, you know, I guess I wouldn't call it a gym go or if you're doing it at home, but you're a recreational at home gym, co-worker, and you can go and take your shake right after your workout because you're at home, and it's not stressful and you don't have to think about packing it and all this. I mean, would
that not going to hurt and it could have like it even if it helps the tiny bit. It's yeah I would say it's that is the cost benefit where there is really no cost and a potential very small benefit. Now again if you start going longer and longer if you're taking
And five, six, seven, eight hours. And again, if you're doing a, let's say 1014. And you train right after your last meal and then go 14 hours, then you can start compromising some gains. So there's no hard rule to this, it's on the Spectrum, but I would say the quicker, you can get it. In conceivably, the better, it's just no downside to it.
With your, with your you mentioned, the the aging study. Where
The, the fellow from the Netherlands was looking at, I guess on a, you know, per per meal effect, with respect to protein intake and muscle protein synthesis. Is it like, you know, you're, you're not going to have three. Like most people aren't going to do three meals with 40 or 50 grams of protein without supplementing. On top of that. Maybe, you know, maybe there's, you know, some people that will do it but not like all the women in older, folks, you know, for the for the
The majority, I think of those types of people, they might not be taking in that much protein per per meal. Should they try to at least get 40 grams and in at least one meal? Yeah. And yours is 30 enough. I mean, so is 40 better than 30 for these older. People is something they should even think about or is it like just the cherry on top? What you're don't stress yourself kind of
things? Yeah, it's good. Great questions. And one of the things I think that needs to be understood is that the studies are sterile? So what?
I mean by that is that they're taking people, they're going to look at kind of proof of principles. They take them fast it, they're having nothing in their body and they're giving them me. Wait, let's say a whey protein shake way is a very fast-acting protein that gets into your body very quickly into your circulatory system. The body gets to use the meat amino acids quickly. When you're eating a whole meal, the amino acids are released in a much more time-release fashion because the body has to digest the food break it down, there's fats that are going to delay absorption. So again, you're eating, let's say.
Chicken with, you know, broccoli and rice, Etc. You reading a whole meal. There's time delayed release of nutrients into your body so you don't that's why I said the most important thing. 90% is targeting your I hate to give exact percentages because I'm just pulling that out of here, but I just want to emphasize. The vast majority, is getting your total daily worrying about getting your total daily protein intake stressing over
This, you know, my new show of how much is in the meal. If you're getting, if an older individuals taking in 1.6 grams, they're going to be doing fine, they're not going to be meaningfully compromising their gains unless they're looking to body build, do a master's level bodybuilding show.
Okay, well, that's good to know. I mean, for the people like like us, you know, shifting a little bit into mechanics and like the training load. I mean, that's a big one.
I mean.
For the longest time. You know I remembering any chair lift heavy or lift big or go home or something like that. I mean you like you know go heavier. Go home. Yeah. That's it. Like what does the science say about that? Like your this is you know you've really contributed to this this area about. Do you need to train heavy to get your gains?
So this is an area that I've done. Pretty much a one as well. I've changed my opinion on it, so many things that, you know, that I learned as an up-and-coming Sports scientist and that were treated as though.
In textbooks that my views of certain respects, done 180, and nothing can be characterized more so than loading. So I had always thought that if you're doing anything over 12 to 15 repetitions as basically glorified cardio and that, you know, it's just muscle endurance. You're not going to gain muscle. The literature is now compellingly shown I just there's so much literature on the topic. Our lab is done quite a bit of research, as well as many others.
And it shows that you can gain muscle similar amounts of muscle, regardless of the loading across a wide range of loading spectrums up to 32 even 40 repetitions which is a long as a long set. And that's what the whole muscle level. Now there may be and I want to really emphasize. This is not this is so equivocal. There may be some muscle type muscle, fiber type specific benefits to do
Railroads, for type 1 fibers, and type 2 fibers for heavy loads. I, if you're asking my confidence in that literature, it's modest at best but I can't rule out that that would be the case. But when you're looking, let's say an MRI data or ultrasound which we've used extensively really shows no difference and I tell you what, I think. So quite funny story looking back but still Phillips had published a study sir.
Circa, 2012 and he went on social media with Facebook at the time, and it was on untrained subjects, doing leg extensions. And it showed that there was no difference in whole muscle hypertrophy between 30% 1rm, which is like 30 Reps versus 80% One Arm, which was like eight reps. And I remember as clear as day saying, still, come on this is untrained subjects. Doing leg extensions. That's they get Jack from doing spin cycle, that was I think my exact quote and I said I'm going to do this.
The in trained individuals you're going to see is going to be no, no question. The older individuals are going to need the heavier loads to get those highest threshold motor units. The type to fibers into play and lo and behold I carried out the study and no difference. It was really a crow and and since then there's just been so much evidence. Not only in just across the spectrum of populations. Untrained trained older younger men.
Women really any and every population has been extensively studied, and it really is a beautiful thing because it provides so much flexibility and options to carry out resistance training and it's particularly I think beneficial for issues like training through injuries. So your training, through injuries in heavy, loading can be contraindicated. And also, particularly for the older individuals because joint related issues as you know,
As people get older, they get osteoarthritis and other joint related issues, where heavy loading can be very uncomfortable for them and perhaps debilitating. So it's kind of contraindicated and they can use lighter loads. Now, the caveat to this is, is that the lighter loads have to be taken with a high degree of effort, so they have to real. If you do not extensively challenge, your muscles, meaning that the last few reps are difficult to complete your
You're not going to achieve gains so that when I talk about light loads, it's not this, you know, taking pink dumbbells and just, you know, doing some with them. OK, I stop you must challenge the muscle. So, heavier up when you lift heavier, just innately, you're going to challenge the muscles regardless, because the weight is already heavy with lighter loads. The first number of repetitions are very easy to complete. And if, if it's easier to complete, you're really not doing much for
For challenging and this goes back to a survival mechanism. So the reason that the body, I think this is important because the reason that the body adapts to strength training is survival, the reason that the body adapts to any thing is through a survival mechanism and if you are not challenging it in the way, it is not accustomed to being challenged, it has no impetus to adapt. So the reason that you will get these out of tations and strength and power and hypertrophy muscle endurance,
Bone density Etc. Is because the muscles and Bones, Etc, tendons, ligaments are being challenged beyond their present capacity.
And so, as you get stronger, then you have to push past that and challenge them more. So the, so the big take home for lifting lighter, which is what I tend to do, is to get fatigued, right? When you're doing it and see, often means more reps which I enjoy doing. I've done both and I do find for me. I like doing the lighter lifting and more reps.
Versus doing heavier and fewer reps. And I also notice I'm less likely to injure my wrist if I'm doing I'm doing and now maybe that wouldn't. If I was doing things like proper form and all that, maybe it wouldn't be such an issue. But you mentioned the muscle type 1 and type 2 fibers. And maybe there's some evidence that lifting a little heavier might help shift a little bit more type to can you talk just for a moment like what what are? What are the roles?
Of those types of fibers and do people should people aim to kind of gain both of those or are there distinct differences, you know, in terms of with aging their roles in aging?
Yeah so great questions. So I'll tackle the second question first, yes, aging is mostly specific ones. Aging the what's called sarcopenia which is the age related loss of muscle is most specific to the type to fibers which are your strengths awaited fibers. So just to kind of even Circle back for those who don't know,
Type 1 fibers are endurance oriented fibers. They do not produce Force as well as type 2 fibers. But they're they're indefatigable. They can go on for longer periods of time, they're hard to fatigue, whereas your type 2 fibers fatigue relatively easily but they have the capacity to produce greater force. As you age, the type one fibers are more well-preserved where the type to fibers? There's even what's called apoptosis, which has been shown
As a loss of fibers but certainly there's a diminishment with a fibrous gets more smaller. The it's more specific. This are competing effect is more specific to the type to fibers, which is obviously problematic. Because the ability to produce force is where your functional capacity. Primary functional capacity, at least from being able to open cans and joy jars. Avoiding Falls Etc, sir.
Going back, this is then the training effect, I want to emphasize, you're going to train. If you are training hard regardless of heavy light, you're going to be targeting both one and two fibers. So we're talking now nuan's so if you're a but I think this is where this kind of gets lost and context that we're I think this would have the greatest if it is. In fact, true greatest relevance would be to, let's say bodybuilders who want to maximize their muscle development, it probably better as beneficial.
Shal to utilize some heavier training and some lighter training. So that you at least make sure your kind of hedging, your bets and make sure that you're maximizing development of all fibers, for the average individual. If you are training hard, regardless of how light or heavy, you're going to be getting type 1 and type 2 fiber development and it's been well documented that light load training does Target the type two fibers which had been. That was one of the myths. It used to be taught when I was an up-and-coming.
Sports scientist. That if you just use light loads, you would not activate the highest threshold motor units, which are associated with these type, two fibers. And thus, you would not optimize your strength and power and hypertrophy.
So we were talking about the resistance training, we've mentioned, strength training, and then there's power training and I think this probably has a little bit to do with what you just mentioned. With the problem with aging, right.
And so can you just briefly talk about differences? And then in maybe we're like just one shine more than the other with respect to like what older individuals should be doing or focusing on or is it like we're you know women versus men surrendering differences there as well.
So the definitions do somewhat vary depending upon who you ask, I'll give you mine. So resistance training is kind of a catch-all for any type of exercise that moves against true.
Distance, this would be bodyweight exercise. Push-ups pull-ups, bodyweight squats would be a resistance exercise, free weights machines cables. Any of these would be considered resistance, exercise strength training often is used synonymously with resistance training, but also, it can be thought of specific to, let's say powerlifting where you're moving, very heavy loads and necessarily, when you're lifting heavy loads you're doing, you're moving them. Very slowly, you can't, if I give you a very
Very heavy load to lift. You can't move that fast, or you'd be able to do more than than whatever you're doing. You be able to do more repetitions than what you're doing, whereas power is the ability to produce Force overtime. So more quickly, the more rapidly you can produce Force. The more power you generate power is developed on a foundation of strength, but it also involves this time component. And there is evidence that at least it is some training.
Needs to be done. Quote unquote explosively. So moving weights quickly or when I say, weights, doing resistance quickly to generate maximum power and our group was involved recently in a made analysis, on older individuals that showed functional improvements were optimized when they did training that involve moving, the concentric action quickly and then doing the control D Centric. So I do think it's important.
And for older individuals to incorporate some power training in their programs, doesn't mean that every set needs to be done in this respect. But at least having some of the the training that will be devoted towards power training. And I think it's really exemplified by the fact that hit hip fractures, so when older individuals fall, and it's a frequent thing. Now, particularly in those who are sedentary, they are not able to quickly reverse their fall.
And avoid the, you know, the resultant effect of a hip fracture and studies show that individuals older individuals, when they get a hip fracture, it's been a while since I've looked at the literature. I think it was 50% never recover full function and die with. And I think two years half of them go into convalescence, they have to be under constant care, they're not able to be functionally independent. So I mean, that's a big thing, you know, there's a younger individuals.
They can get their cast signed by their friends or whatever and it's not a big deal, but older individuals, these are really important, you know, issues that you want to Stave off. And I would say that having some power training. And then again, other types of training, it's not, this is another thing I think is really important. We often think in binary terms train this way, not that way or, you know, there's programs that are devoted, this is how you should train. Its
We should be thinking of training as combining different concepts to a given goal because often doing some light or go to training with some heavier load training if possible sometimes that's not possible but sometimes it is doing, you know, like I said some power training with several training or lighter load, moderate rating. These are things that ultimately can optimize the effects for a given goal
for thinking about the power training. For me, I would think, well, sounds like, would be
Easier if I had lighter weights. Can you do? I mean, is that still considered power training? If there are does it have to be like a heavier, like a fast movement with a
heavier? No. No. You. So again, you're not going to be able to move heavy heavy, and lighter relative terms. So if you're using a very head, let's say you're doing what's called a 3rm. The maximum amount of weight you can lift, three times. Once, I'm doing a bench press with the 3rm even on my first rep, if I try to move it fast, I'm not going to be able to because the loaded if, if I could I'd be
To do more than three reps with that. So, you're going to have to choose a weight that is relatively light. Let's say you're able to do a minimum of 10 repetitions or 810 repetitions. So, again, light exists on a Spectrum, 8 is lighter than 33. Reps is heavier than a traps 8. Reps would be heavier than 15 reps 15 reps. So, what what point is that you know, that optimal effect? There's no research that indicates that at this point
Where your, but if you're not going to be able to use heavy little be above, let's say eight, I'd say. You'd have to go a minimum as light as minimum of eight repetitions 8. RM, if you could do more, if you could do a heavier load, you're not going to be able to move it quickly enough to get that benefit. By the way, there's other things you could do. You can do biometric training. Now, for some older people that can be somewhat dangerous but I mean, you can throw a medicine ball that's the way of power training. So take a medicine ball. I mean,
All the people can easily do that, we're for the upper body, these are good upper body movements, that would be, I think very user friendly for people that are older, can be fun, which, again, it's kind of do, see kind of this trajectory from youth to getting into our adulthood and then aging, we're making it fun again. A lot of times is important for older people.
What about? So you mentioned with the lifting lighter and you know, the important thing of Base
Ali fatiguing yourself, right? Like you can't just do a couple and it's like you know, compare that to lifting heavy rendering a couple, right. This this whole idea of training till failure and what does that mean? Do we need to train to failure? Sad
important. Yeah, so failure for an operational definition would be the inability to perform another repetition with proper form and we carried out a mate analysis recently on this topic. And the bottom line is
That and that's kind of the go hard or go home philosophy use that's the body building that out of go hard or go home. Every set needs to be taken to failure. The evidence does not indicate. That's the case. So certainly you need to train with a high amount of effort, but to take all certainly to take every set to failure is not, not only, is it not doesn't show any benefit for hypertrophy. It actually showed a small detriment for strength. So with strength, stopping a couple reps, short affair.
Earlier seem to have better effects on maximizing strength, then training to failure. Again, there are some limitations to that research. How much of that does that mean that if you train a failure won't maximize your strength of not necessarily on board with that. But that is what our results showed. I also would not dismiss the fact that for very high level let's say you're very close to your genetic ceiling that it might make the need to go to failure at least on some of the sets.
More relevant beneficial. We don't have good at this is purely speculative on my end, but I can see at least a logical rationale where it makes your challenge. It's a way to challenge the body in a way that it is not used to. I will tell you that in when I coach bodybuilders, I generally incorporate some failure training but another area where my viewers shifted, maybe not 180, but probably 90 degrees.
He's where I used to be the go hard, go home dude, who every set need to be taken the failure. And now most sets within two to three reps of failure. So there's a concept called the repetitions in reserve and 0s. The rir scale repetitions in reserve, an RI R of 0 means you're a failure. Means you cannot have done another rep, 20 reps left before you go to failure and I are of one. Would mean that you have. You could have done one more rep and at that rep, you would
Failure from the literature, although we don't have a definitive way of making, you know, estimates on this. But my own interpretation of the literature somewhere between probably 123 rep. Rir reps from failure, would be needed to promote optimal adaptations. You can still see out of tations particularly when you're more in the new be staged, in the early stages below that. But one, two three I think is a good
General recommendation to that's necessary to see out of tations again then you start getting into the weeds getting into the nuances for the gen-pop, I probably would say. That's always going to be effective and you probably never have to go to failure for the goals of most gen pops for bodybuilders, high-level athletes, perhaps some failure, training the last step to failure on some of your exercises at least and again you want to get into the weeds probably.
Using your single joint in machine based exercises would be more appropriate for failure. Let's say than squats or biceps curl lateral, raise a leg extension, there going to be first with is less issue of injury because when you go into failure, would say in a squat, in your, if you've ever squatted and you're in that you're in the hole and you're trying to push out, there's a greater potential for injury, you get certainly going to need a spotter in that.
Hard or else your you could be stuck and you're going to have problems or a bench. Press where you're trying to do that rep. If you don't have a spot or your that that bar is stuck to your chest. Whereas, if you're doing, what's a dumbbell curls or lateral raises, the very least you're not going to be really torched after your sets. You're going to be able to come back strong. So these are just general speculative on my part but I think there's good logical rationale Behind These
Things and I do want to say that an evidence-based approach. So I do want to promote one of the things I look my biggest hobby horse in life is to promote the importance of evidence-based practice. It is not simply deferring to research. Research is never going to tell you what to do or virtually never. It's going to provide General guidelines, particularly in the applied sciences, like, exercise and nutrition. It will get get you into the ballpark, you know, give you General.
Strategies to use you. Then need to take this, to the individual. What are their genetics? What are their, what is their lifestyle? Their stress level, their sleep, their nutritional status, all of these things together. And then, of course, goals, we're going to enter into it. So developing a program from the research, means to understand the research and then to use your own expertise in combination with the goals and abilities of the
individual, right?
With the designing, the training program, sort of a spectre, kind of, I mean, sort of talking about this this and, you know, the training till failure. It sounds like you. I, that that's pretty clear for me, like, you know, maybe the bodybuilders that's a little bit more important, but for most people getting within one to three reps, until failure, kind of answers the will you get a lot of questions about? How many reps do I need to do? How many reps are need to do? It sounds like it depends on the
Listen, and when you start to feel that fatigue, when you're getting close to you know, right? Like so that's kind of what I'm thinking for yourself. Resting between those reps or between the sets or which way, is it the resting intervals? It's between the sets. So yeah, so yeah. So basically when you're getting ready to do another set like how many sets do you need to do or how long do you have to rest between them is that
important? This is so again this it's out of spectrum and it depends on it.
So, I talked to my students, they'll ask me questions, and I say you're pretty much any applied question. You're going to ask me. I will answer with an it depends because within broad spectrum. You can get if you doing a very minimalist routine, you can make gains. So if you're saying is it important, it starts to become more and more important. The more important it is to you, to maximize your results. If you were goal is just to build some muscle gain some strength of very
Most routine, I mean training an hour a week, let's say, two days to half-hour session, so we can give you very nice. Most people, very nice results. Provided you're training hard is that going to if you're looking to be a bodybuilder, is that going to or you're going to step on stage? No, I would say with 100% confidence that is not going to be sufficient to optimize your game. So volume has been shown to be a driver of hypertrophy. Again, we've done original research on this, we've done
Made an app made out of little Quirk, and there is a dose-response relationship up to a certain point. It is individual specific as well. So some people respond better to or respond, well to lower volumes. Some people need more volume to maximize the results. Hard to study, individual respond individual responses, but these are kind of General insights that we glean from the
literature. But I would say as a general guideline to optimize hypertrophy want to be somewhere between 10 to 20 sets per muscle per week. That's not going to be able to be done doing two. Half hour sessions per week, but we recently published a review paper called no time to lift its Open Access. You can maybe post on the this podcast the link to that or show the image of the study but we
Basically had kind of looked at what is your minimum effective dose? And that was roughly around four sets per week per muscle per week, which again can be done to the maximum thin 03, half hour sessions, 223, half hour sessions per week. You can get very nice results. And I think it probably for most people, the majority of gains in that period of time. And then if you want more, you're going to have to devote more time. Are there certain
Strategies that can be. So we were talking about like power lifting. Are there certain things that can be done to, you know, be able to not have to have as much time as well. I mean
types of exercises. Yeah. So a couple things number one or several first of all training with lighter loads. While again, it's a very viable option. It does extend the time of the workout. So if you're training listing with 30 reps, two sets, going to take triple the amount of time if you're training with 10 reps. So that
If you're very time, press can be a consideration. Now, how much that depending upon how many sets you're doing? If you're doing, minimal, minimalistic training, it's probably not adding that much time on. If you're doing a lot of volume, it can be more extensive but using multi-joint exercises. So again multi-joint is more than one joint, press is Rose, squats, deadlifts push-ups chin-ups. These were exercises that involve multiple muscle groups and so, on a stabilizer,
Whistles they're much more time efficient than doing let's say a bicep curl. So when you're doing what's a lat, pull down, reach it up, you're working your biceps very effectively, you're performing elbow, flexion. In addition to work in your lats, the sternal portion your packs even are working in many other stabilizer muscle groups, squats involve, many muscle groups really the total lower body and even stabilizers in your torso. So I would say focus more on your multi Drive.
Exercise. And then you can use various time, efficient strategies, so kind of these Advanced Training methods, such as a superset, which is doing two different exercises and there's different ways to structure these. The something called a pair set paired set where you do Agonist antagonist, movement such as so, the biceps and triceps are Agonist, antagonist muscles, meaning that when one is Contracting, when a shortening, the others went didn't pursue see if you do.
Biceps curl. You can immediately do a triceps. Press down after that. And really you're working the muscles and different fashion. You don't have to rest between the sets, you could do a leg exercise, followed by an up. So lower body followed by an upper body exercise. Again, you're working different muscle groups so you get it's more time, efficient, you don't have to take the rest if you're going to do, let's say sets of chest press. So let's say, I do the typical traditional way of doing sets is your do a set.
Then you rest and you do a another set for the same muscle group. You rest, that's going to take more time because you're going to have to rest between those sets there is something called drop sets where you can do a set to failure. Certainly close to failure then you'll drop the weight when I don't we drop literally but you reduce the amount of load. So let's say for instance let's say you're using you have a rack of dumbbells and you use 20-pound dumbbell
For curls, you can then when you finish you get getting really difficult on those less reps you then. Go to the 15 pound dumbbells and you do more reps because your lightening the load, you're able to do more weight, you can do triple drops. So you go from 20 to 15 to 10 the 5 Yuan and just do them without any rest and then not do any more sets rather than doing multiple sets. You just do this one. Drop set one drops. It now, is that as effective as doing multiple sets of the same muscle
We don't have enough evidence to show, but I do think we have enough where I would confidently say for the Gen pop, it will be just or close to his effective. I don't think for the majority of the populations, that will make much difference again for the high-level athlete bodybuilder, it might, that's where again context is important
where this idea of resting on this is great information because I'm typically, with the way I work out which is far from bodybuilder.
Awful. I don't rest in between sets but I'm also immediately switch to the next thing and then I'll eventually go back to that first muscle group. I was working. So I like all have you know like three different muscle groups, and all and I'm doing the lighter and faster. And then so if if you are doing a set like why is it important to rest in between the set? Is it like something to do with like muscle protein synthesis or
What? Well I mean if you're going to let's say you will give it to do four sets of chest presses, you have to rest because if you if you're training really hard and that last rep you pick up the weight, let's say two seconds. You're not going to be able to do it by default. If you're training very hard, you're not going to be able to do any more reps or else you can, you were to failure. So you have to have some degree of rest. Now, if you're resting, very short periods, let's say you arresting 30 seconds, your the amount of load
That you're going to be able to do will be much less or the amount of reps at the same load. And this is actually interesting. So it had always been promoted. This is another area where I'm shifting, my thought processes, but it has been promoted. That resting shorter was better for muscle hypertrophy. Sorta been taught, when I was an up-and-coming strength and conditioning, professional. That if you want strength, you take long rest, like three minutes in between your sets. And for hypertrophy, it's like 30 seconds to a minute because
That will maximize the hormonal response. So in between sets, or depending on the type of training that you are doing shorter, rest intervals, will promote interset rest intervals will promote greater growth hormone testosterone and igf-1 responses. After the workout is over the literature and that used to be thought to be a main driver of hypertrophy, the compelling body of literature. Now shows that
It probably doesn't have. If it does have an effect, it would be very modest, and it might not even have any effective. Also, certainly it would not be something that I consider would be important to take into account. And the issue is that volume lowered. The amount of total amount of weight that you lift in a given session, which is the amount of work that you're doing, does seem to be a factor. So let's say I'm doing a set of squats with 200 pounds for 10 reps, and then I rest 30 seconds,
Between trying to do another one after 30 seconds. Let's say I tried to use that same 200 pounds. I'm not getting anywhere near 10 reps and based on the literature that we have I'm probably only getting five reps. Whereas if I were dressed two minutes I'd be able to get much closer to that 10 reps and if I rested three more and that's why it's actually been shown that rest in short, having short, rest periods between sets if you're doing a certain number of sets and your rest in short, taking short rest,
It actually compromises. I purchase V. So it's actually has a negative effect. Giving greater Credence to the fact that at the very least, the volume load is more important than any hormonal effects that are given, which
makes sense. I mean, and but what, you know and we talked about this a little bit with with with Stewart is that as you mentioned the hormonal effects at least you know, endogenous and hormonal effects of you're getting from resistance training, not taking exogenous almost. Don't have don't
I seem to have much of an effect on muscle protein synthesis but and and still was mentioning this with growth hormone, you know, affecting collagen synthesis. And so, then a question, of course had was, well, what if that's doing something for preventing injury, because you're getting more collagen synthesis in the tendons. And I mean, I don't know that anyone's look at that.
No, we don't know. But I would say, again, growth hormones are very interesting hormone because it's pulse signal. So it's secreted, very nice.
When you're getting your groove greatest growth hormone release, its your guess is as good as mine because like you said, that's it's purely speculative, I would be skeptical that that brief spike in in growth hormone. Post exercise would meaningfully alter tendon synthesis. Let's say to would wear, it would be reducing your injury potential but without knowing it could dismiss it. We
we need
research on them with respect and I think you kind of already answered this, but I just want to make sure with designing this program differences between men and women. Should women, then really be focusing more on the multi-joint exercises, specifically. Also, because of the effects on bone mineral density and means that or it should all of us be and is Oliver, should be focusing more on
that. Yeah, what women really do? Should not train much through all different from Men, the one area that
Seems to be some evidence is that women are able to recover a little more quickly. Both intercepts so they can actually rest somewhat shorter and gain back. Most of the volume load like I said it's not clear. Whether this has something to do in da generously internally or whether it's the fact they're just in general using lighter loads than men. So it's easier to, you know, come back, if you're using 200 pounds versus 100, we don't know, and even the recovery between sessions, maybe a little better.
Her ability to recover the some evidence of that but as far as the overall program I don't program women. Much of it all differently than men
for Recovery. You hear a lot about the importance of recovery the importance of. What does that mean? What does that mean?
Well it means that you need to take sufficient time so that you're able to come back strong for your, I means a lot of different things differ depending on the context, but I think in the context of our talk that you're able to come back.
Back with sufficient energy and jointly reserves where you're able to train effectively in your next session that your training is not compromised and the next time you're going to live to some extent. It also has to do with the muscle proteins that across ponds which is roughly the time. Course, it's about 48 hours, can be truncated. A little as you get actually more advanced you can seem to get a higher Spike. So what happens quicker? And
We Trails off a little more quickly and some of the research which is I think getting a little too much into the weeds, but theoretically you probably wouldn't need to train a muscle or it would be beneficial to give it 48 Hours rest, so that you can maximize that and work on other things or even just recover. We're it wouldn't be certainly, doesn't seem to be beneficial to trade it on a daily basis, the same muscle and that having that recovery allows you to do other things.
That would potentially develop your body or and do your health to a greater extent. Does it blunt hypertrophy training the same muscle? So there's actually some interesting, it's kind of equivocal. We actually care can tell I'm a lot of work in all of these variables. So we carried out a study, we had these three young men. It might we don't have any evidence in older people and I can make a case where it might because recovery seems to be blunted and older but I'll get to that in a minute.
But in young men, we had them doing either the same exact routine don't over three days with more so when they did it over three days they perform more sets per session. So that was like, twice. Each session was twice as long or else to ensure two sessions spread out over six days, the same exact routine and no difference for most of the muscles but we looked at the biceps and the biceps growth was much greater in the in the group that did three days versus
Six days. Is that an anomaly? I again, we don't know if you'd need to replicate the study. Now, as I just mentioned older individuals recovery, does start to become a factor and this is just look aging. You can't. Certainly you can Stave off aging, but you can't prevent it and the consequences of it. So to a large extent, we can live extremely healthy and vibrant into our older.
Years provided, we take care of our bodies and do things but father, time mother time well, catch up to some extent. And we do have to take this into account with programming. So, like I said, no differences with between men and women per se, but there are differences between younger and older individuals, and one of them, when I have consulted with older individuals is to factor in, not have as much volume. So, the ability to tolerate volume seems to go.
And to some extent. And by the way, interestingly it seems their maintenance needs to be somewhat higher for lime so they can't use this Huygens but also they need to have a kind of a higher minimum volume to maintain their Mass. There is limited evidence of that but there was one study in particular that seemed to indicate that and and also having more cognizance of intercession recovery and sometimes having fewer sessions per week.
week.
How much recovery would the older people?
So again this really depends on the individual because there's other individuals like I mentioned that I can wipe the floor with 30 year olds and there's other ones. So these are things that it really will depend upon. So it depends how long have you been training there. You were just knew when you're 60 years old to training or if you've been doing it since you were 20, what are you do? You have joint related issues? What your nutritional?
Thatís what she was asleep and stress. Status are there any other medical issues? So a lot to unpack and on a general level, I think most kind of three days a week as a default that would be in good. I mentioned the two days a week. People can still make robust gains but I think three days a week would get you a little better gains and if possible even on a minimalist basis, if you can do three half hour sessions per week, I think that's a good.
Good kind of minimalist guideline for everyone, including all the people. And then, you know, some individual older individuals can do a, what's called a split body routine where they could do with say Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and upper lower upper lower, type routine and recover. Well, whereas others need that three day, we shouldn't do more than three days a week.
Is there anything that can speed up recovery? So, recovery being passive recovery active recovery.
Like things that can help speed it up nutrition wise or other things as well.
Yeah. Um, first of all, being recreationally active, so blood flow does help with recovery. One of the worst things you could do is just be a couch potato. So, what say you do resistance training, workout and the rest of the week, you're just sitting on the couch. Once, you don't bonbons and watching your favorite TV shows that's through circulation itself, is going to
Demise the delivery of nutrients and expedite delivery and Recovery in that respect. Other things have somewhat less evidence behind them. So massage has been shown to potentially help recovery. What's the problem with that was hard to Sham massages. So, when your massage feels really good and hey, I feel better, I'm going to it. Was that because of the massage, or because of the
Illogical effect that you yeah, I feel better now, I feel vibrant foam rolling. You know. These are all things that it's hard to Sham them properly and get a sense. Was it really? The was it really the treatment? Or was it these placebo effect? Because you always want to put sibo, if you do, if you're comparing it as nothing, then, hey, it felt good. So I feel have better recovery. Um,
You know, taking in proper protein itself that to me isn't a recovery strategy that just should be part of your lifestyle if you want to, if you want to maximize your results. But if you're not taking in enough protein protein, or the building blocks of your muscle and of any tissues. So you're not going to get proper, quote-unquote recovery. If you're not optimizing your protein nutritional intake and there's other, I mean, essentially
Chalo fat fatty acids particular in threes. Your mega Three fatty acids seem to have certain beneficial effects on muscle development, particularly seems for the older people, but we don't have great evidence longitudinally. We have some good
Good acute, studies. That seem to show that anyway. So these are all I think strategies again Quest benefit. Well, massage. If you're paying for it, there's a cost bad. But if you have a significant other that can massage, you admit, could that help foam rolling, you know, ruin not a cost to that. There is some evidence that Coldwater immersion we can kind of get into this, might
Expedite quote, unquote recovery so that you're not going to be a sore. So if the recovery has to do with, getting back to train ability levels, so that you're reducing soreness and heat. By the way, is another thing which generally does not seem to have negative effects of these. So again, those are potential strategies. Now, if you want to get into it's kind of interesting with cold water immersion cryotherapy particularly. It's been shown with the Coldwater immersion, there is
Emerging evidence that it actually has negative effects, particularly hypertrophy but on strength measures as well, somewhat limited evidence but it's been showed. There's triangulation of evidence meaning that we have a cute data that shows at once intracellular and a box signaling that it Blends muscle protein synthesis satellite cell. From when you talk about anabolic signaling, the pro-inflammatory response which on one end is why quote-unquote it helps with recovery.
But the acute problem for amatory response actually has been shown to have a positive effect on muscle development. So chronic inflammation, bad acute information, good. At least that's the extent of what we see from the literature and there's been a longitudinal evidence showing that it bonds hypertrophy over a longer term studies. Now, that is when you, these Studies have been done and done doing this every day, or
Very frequently post training, I would say that if you're only going to do it one time, let's say you're feeling really sore, nothing wrong with getting in a cold tub. It's not doesn't mean what you gains are going to go if you occasionally do a Coldwater immersion. But I do think that using it frequently probably if your goal was optimized, muscle growth. Not a good thing. Timing might be a concern. So if you want to do that, probably spacing it out at
Periods after, but then you might not get the benefits you want. Like if you're sore you're going to want to be doing it when you're sore. So if you're sort of the following day, yeah, I think that might be beneficial and where you've kind of gotten out of your window or at least gotten the majority of your protein synthetic responses. And but again the primary reasons that Coldwater immersion seems to have negative effects in number one blunting of the pro-inflammatory response and a number 2 blunting of the
Circulatory response that cold water restricts the circulation and thus you're not getting nutrient delivery to the muscles speculative, but that's the working Theory,
right? So that would make sense and not do Coldwater immersion after right after your training like if it's like your day like I like to do Coldwater immersion for brain benefits. Like in you know, feeling you get norepinephrine release and it affects my anxiety and my mood and focus and attention but I don't ever do it.
After strength training. So it was usually on a day that I'm not strength training. So the other the other thing would be you mentioned soreness and people using it for soreness but what should you be sore? Like should you train to be sword? Is that play a role in hypertrophy? And then you know like is that something to get more Shore with age as well? Or is, what is what's that indicative of? I mean
so another interesting question sort is to some extent is genetically influenced an inch.
Jessimae seems women seem not to have as much soreness as men. There's been some speculation it might have to do with hormonal e with estrogen could be other effects as well. But so it's an interesting question is soreness generally is due to a novel response. So our novel stimuli and usually that's it's primarily due to the East Central component of exercise.
By the way, can also be done through say, downhill running would be an eccentric form of aerobic training, but let's just focus on the resistance training aspect, where the lowering so eccentric is a lowering. Basically lengthening, muscles are lengthening under tension, and even concentric exercise can cores soreness, and there's muscle damage that occurs but it seems to be also more specific to some muscle damage and even
And damage within the upon mycelium, or extracellular Matrix. Again, these aren't necessarily clear. So, it's connective tissue might be even more relevant to speculative that that might have greater relevance to soreness with, no snow scepters, that are exposed to free nerve endings, and this interaction with free radicals. It's a whole theory behind this.
Do you need to be sorted to make gains? No, I think that's pretty clear but could being sore potentially be indicative. That there may be some additional positive gains. It's not clear, but a novel response. Again, why does the body adapt it adapts? Because it is being challenged Beyond this present State novel response. Would generally indicate is being taxed Beyond its present State and thus having some degree of soreness might indicate that you are
Challenging it Beyond its present state. But again some people is genetically influenced so some people just don't get sore and some people get are very responsive to soreness. Regardless there does seem to be repeated bout effect whereas you keep doing the same thing over and over again the body adapts and gets less and less or over time. But some people keep doing the same thing and they keep getting somewhat sore where soreness is an issue. So if you are mildly sore, I think it's probably not only okay, maybe
It's positive. It certainly shouldn't be a negative if you're not sore. I don't think you should worry about that per se but on the opposite if you are very sore that is a - because that's going to impair your ability to train again. Hard. And that would be an issue.
And there are things people can do to help with this with the soreness that aren't going to blunt their hypertrophy or I mean maybe you know, be bad for them. Otherwise. So are there that, you know about and you
In
space things that people can do to improve their soreness,
improve the response to soreness.
Yeah, so that they're not maybe not as sore as long or
well. I mean, could you? Yeah, you cannot focus on The Eccentric component, which probably is not a great thing because he's eccentric not only is the central component as important. It there seems to be a synergism between eccentric and concentric exercise where the intracellular
Cascade for eccentric exercise is somewhat different than that of concentric and that would imply a synergism in terms of the hypertrophic response. There is also evidence that muscles develop regionally. So it's interesting research that like certain parts of muscles will develop more than others and eccentric exercise. Seems to work more in the distal portion of the muscle, whereas content, concentric seems to work more in the mid portion of the muscle and thus combining them.
And would be beneficial. So it doesn't seem to be although yes, you can reduce the soreness that's developed by not doing a focus on your concentric. Wouldn't suggest that by the way there was a I don't know if they're still around but there was a gym chain called curves and if you heard of them. But but they had these machines that just did the concentric exercise because the whole thing was they didn't want their, they focused on older women and they thought that this would be a negative. The soreness would
Scare them away and they just had these machines that focused on the concentric portion. But again, if your goal is to optimize games, that's not a great strategy. So look at you can do warm water bath seem to again help to alleviate soreness doing active, recovery just walking around, you know, if it's for upper body, doing certain emotions that would robic you computer.
Yeah, pump your arms. You can do the elliptical that has the arm crank just to get blood flow to the area, would help to alleviate the soreness and and the other thing I would say, if that's the goal, stick to the same exercises over and over. Now, again, one of the benefits exercise selection is another potentially important thing if you want to optimize gains and that's again promoting a novel response, factoring in different movements can be beneficial to optimize your results.
It's and that would again have to do with the novelty of the movement, but that will come with the caveat that they'll be some soreness.
So, two things that come to mind. One is aerobic exercise, you're talking about blood flow and that's another area that I was wanting to talk to you about was the combination of aerobic, exercise and strength training and the effects on muscle hypertrophy, combining them, maybe even just either with like
He's so you do strength training, one day and then America shows the other day. So that's kind of a little bit. It seems like what you're talking about having the blood flow to help even with recovery, or soreness. But also what if you do it within the same on the same day in the same session, even?
Yeah. So there's been a lot of talk about concurrent training being detrimental. That was called something called The Chronic interference hypothesis, which basically was it was actually shown in an
Animal models and rodent models where the signaling intracellular signaling for cardiovascular exercise. Upregulated your catabolic Pathways your ampk pathway. Again, I don't want to get too technical here, but the am PK is a catabolic pathway which actually blunts the mtor pathway, which is an amount of pathway in your alternatively or is your resistance, your anaerobic exercise was your anabolic pathway in that us if you did aerobic training, it would
Auntie adaptations for resistance training and that actually has been shown to be, at least, at the very least at a way over simplification. Now at some point, they're done will seem to be some interference but it does seem that. It's a lot that point is a lot further along than what we originally thought that. Yeah. And I think that more has to do with the overtraining effects than probably the intracellular signaling effect. So it's not clear but we
If some pretty good made analytic data now showing that within, you know, decent volumes are training. There does not seem to be a bunting of the anabolic effect and that's even when it's performed in the same day. There was some evidence that perhaps even at somewhat higher levels that maybe there was a negative effect on fiber, type specific particular in the type one fibers. Again I think it's a little premature to draw strong influence, inferences on that.
But what I would say is I think the general recommendations that I would make from from the literature that we have, like you said, if possible space it out. So that if you're doing resistance training Monday, Wednesday Friday, you want to do six days a week of training, do you aerobic training on your alternative days Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday? If, if not possibly do a morning afternoon type thing or evening, you do a thing, resistance training in the morning, cardio on your
Evening. And at worst, if you have to do them in the same session, do you resist? Always do the resistance training first because if nothing else. The aerobic training, can compromise your energy levels to do the stretching. It can compromise the performance, so that in itself would have a negative effect. If you're going to compromise performance on your results, I do also want to point out that this is again a very nuanced topic. So how much resistance
And you doing how much were overturning. So it's particularly, with the aerobic training. Are you doing long, slow distance? Are you doing six days a week of marathon running training? Yeah, that's going to certainly start to have negative effects on your muscle development. If you're walking 10,000 steps a day, twelve thousand steps a day, very unlikely that's going to have any negative effect. If you're doing three high intensity, interval training sessions per week, very unlikely, that's going to happen. -
Effect. So there's a spectrum on these things. It's not these are not yes or no questions that I can give a cookie cutter response. But on a general basis you need to think at the very least be in tune with your body and that's to me, one of the most important things I can communicate to the audience is to really start to be in tune with your body. If you feel, you need extra time off, you probably overdoing it. And I think a lot of times people are just oblivious to get into a routine, and it's just a have to do this.
Have to do this and try to be intuitive, use your intuition. And you know, if you think you need a day off, take a day of think you need two days off. Dean load periods when done properly can be beneficial, where you're having periods of reduced training frequency. Particularly if you're training very hard, if you're doing the typical type of workout that most gen-pop still, you probably don't need a deload because you're not training hard enough to Warrant that
But certainly if, if you're a very serious exercise or bodybuilders particular in high-level athletes, interspersing regimented periods of reduced training, frequency, volume intensity, I think are very important. How do
people that are endurance athletes like better training for a race or whatever do that. I mean like can they still incorporate their resistance training in there? Obviously very extensive.
During training program without overtraining. Is it even?
Yeah. So one thing I would say for endurance, so endurance, training athletes are somewhat of a fairly Compass, a fairly wide spectrum but let's take your typical Runner. So we're talking endurance. Cross-country you know doing a marathon type running or long-distance cross-country weight is an issue. So you want to train in a way in a more minimalist fashion because higher volume
This will tend to put on muscle mass. You want to try as an endurance based athlete to reduce muscle mass development and maximize strength development and that would be using heavier low. So that's where you don't want to do your light load training with higher volumes you'd want to focus more on your. Let's say 3 to 5 rep training for a few sets. So that is not going to the volume will be insufficient to substantially increase muscle mass. So volume is a driver
Of hypertrophy. And if you're doing low volume training with, with heavy loads, then generally speaking, you're not going to gain much weight in terms of muscle mass, but you will be able to get the benefits that will help you optimize your endurance capacity.
That that makes sense. What about stretching. That's something, you know. I see people stretching in the gym, they're stretching before said, there's
Retching in between sets after working out? Is it, what role is stretching clay in? I mean, in muscle protein synthesis or muscle hypertrophy or injury or anything flexibility anything?
Yeah. So different approach it from different levels but other basically, the most people think of stretching from a flexibility stimbler
Do people need to stretch if you need more flexibility than it would be beneficial to stretch stretching for the sake or getting I should say this. Gaining flexibility for the sake of gaining flexibility is is misguided because increase flexibility. Reduces the stability of the joint. So if you can do what you need to do from an activities of daily living standpoint from a fee of mobility and flexibility,
Stuff, but no no reason to gain more flexibility. If you are a, let's say a punter in football, you're going to need to be able to get your leg very high, a Rockette in the Radio City Musical they would necessarily want to do if they're not able to do it or even to continue doing it to do, some type of flexibility training. But for the majority of people that's not an issue. So they'd have to everyone has to assess their own. Flexibility needs with that said resistance.
Eating itself is a active form of flexibility training and there's been studies that show that compared to static stretch and you get similar benefits doing resistance training, protocols, provided that your training through a full range of motion. So if you are lifting weights total body through a full range of motion, you get similar benefits to static stretching. Combining them is even better if you want to add on your flexibility. So if you don't think you've gotten enough flexibility from,
Um, your resistance training and you need more from ADL activities of daily living standpoint then, go for it. Now, I have approached this also from a muscle protein synthesis, this is actually quite interesting. I'm collaborating with group from Germany, and they actually have other research that's recently. Come out showing that long-term if you stretch. Now, this is a lot of stretching, but they did an hour a day using the stretching boot. They got marked hypertrophy like 15%,
Growth in the calf muscles in the muscle thickness. Really interesting? Now, I don't know who wants to use a cat a stretching boot for an hour a day, but it just shows that stretching. I mean, it's there is tension during the stretch and that tension muscle tension is a mechanism of hypertrophy. So doing long did long-duration stretching and these were intense stretches that were like an 8 out of 10.
N on the discomfort scale, so not a fun thing. So it's not like, I'm stretching, you know, and they were fairly intense stretch. So it does show that stretching itself can have an anabolic effect. We recently published a study and there was some papers before this also showing this that what's called intercept stretch loaded, stretch promoted somewhat greater gains, we use that in the calf exercise. So basically subjects
Did calf raises.
What's called plantar flexion for their gastrocnemius and Soleus which of the two. So is most to a calf muscles and this was actually within subject design where one leg they just rested for 2 minutes between the sets, they did their calf raise and then they rested to is the other group of the other leg. They would do this set and then immediately after the session the set they would descend into a stretch and with the weight still on. So they were basically as a loaded
Stretch and it's intense. I mean, it was, you know, they were kind of hurting it that last we're doing what they could to endure towards the end of the stretch and they did it for 20 seconds and then they rested for the rest of the rest interval. And we found somewhat greater growth in the soleus muscle and really no difference, no substantial difference in the gastrocnemius. Now interestingly, the Soleus is a type one dominant fiber muscle.
It's about 80% so to archetype one fibers. So it kind of raises the possibility is the stretching, at least the loaded stretching, that we're doing, more specific to type one fibers them time to. Not sure.
And all this talk makes me think about yoga. And, I mean yoga, I mean, it's stretching, but it's also like pretty intense me. You're holding the pose and your muscle starts her, like, what are you? What are you? What are your thoughts on yoga? Does it somehow? Do you think it could? You could extrapolate a little bit?
Yeah, so I know again, there are different. I'm not a yoga specialist, but I have to know something about it, and there's different forms of yoga that have some of more, quote, unquote, strength related. Focuses within them. You certainly can gain muscle from yoga. But is it going to optimize muscle? No, because again, you're not really as a general rule, at least from what I know through most of the forms of yoga, you're really not.
Challenging over time, maybe at the beginning when you're a newbie you can that's where you're going to see your gaze. But over time you don't challenge the muscle, sufficiently to need to adapt. So you will Plateau rather quickly and you'll maintain. So you can get some gains at the beginning. Can there be ways that you might adapt your alter the yoga principles to doing that? I would guess but I'm not familiar enough with the strategy to
So, maybe yoga when shouldn't be used in instead of a resistant strain, but in addition
to the ground, if you want to optimize again, I resistance training is Paramount regard with all of these other things are potentially beneficial. And again, if you have all the time in the world, no more till we to the extent, I should say it would, as long as you're not overtraining to the extent that you don't overtrain within your body's capabilities, but
I think if you can only do one, my objective somewhat biased view is that resistance training is irreplaceable.
Yeah, I there were some people that were kind of, you know, mostly women wondering, oh, can you ever be considered resistance training? And I was thinking, well, you know, that's a good question because, you know, I could in my head come up with the way, what? Yes, it would be. So that is good to know.
One thing I want to talk to you about, we're getting any, we're getting close to the end and this is something that I know you talked about in your book before. And I've heard people talk about, in fact, I think Joe Rogan was the first guy told me about this and talked about it and I was like, you might just see my face on camera. I'm like, what this Blood Flow Restriction, what is it? You know, are there benefits drawbacks to it?
What is? So again, another topic that you've carried out quite a few studies on
So we talked about Light low training, Blood Flow, Restriction, Training uses a cough and it's used proximally in the muscle. Meaning the upper portion of the muscle that you're looking to train. The caveat is number one. You can only use it on your arms and legs, you can't train with, you really your chest, your back, your shoulders, because your we can do it proximal, but let's take your biceps. For instance, you would cough up by the deltoid, the deltoid muscle, as you show them all. So you put a
place a cuff here and then you do it's a biceps curls, tricep press Downs. You same thing would be the cuff of the same place with the legs. You would cuff at the groin area. You know, the upper thighs, very upper region of the thine do and say, leg extensions with squads. And you do generally, you do this with very light loads, they've tried it with heavier loads, but doesn't seem to work as well, that it's even very light. Let's 20 to 30 percent 1rm, but when you using the these very light loads, you fatigue much more quickly than if you just did.
The light load without the cuff. So let's say if you're using 30%, 1rm your first set, you might get 25 reps in your second set. You down to 20 and then 15 and usually the rest intervals are rather short between them.
Good evidence that it promotes similar muscle development to doing traditional resistance training, or regardless of the rep range strength is similar to a light load training without Blood Flow Restriction. Your strength is not going to be it's is good for hypertrophy, but strength is somewhat compromised which is always going to have your what heavier loads are going to be better for strength. It's just the way it is but you still will get
You doesn't mean this is again, it's been taken. It's not binary, it's not strength, no strength. You just don't get quite as much strength but you can substantially improve your strength as well, even in well, trained subjects. Now, the thing is, is it better than light low training? Well, you can label training, I should have mentioned this, it is, when you've done it, you say it's not fun for a lot of people because you just get metabolic acidosis. We again, you have to train hard and you get this burn.
You doing it over 30 repetitions. Let's say in your 23, Second rep. That's a 90 second set. Oh, it's, you know, 89, 70 80. 90 seconds is a long period of time where you're experiencing that burn, quote unquote. Whereas if you're doing a leg of, let's say a leg extension, or a biceps curl with Blood Flow Restriction, you're cutting the time, you're still using the lighter loads, meaning that you're not putting as much joint joint stress Lon, but you're cutting the time of that sentence is somewhat reducing the discomfort.
Is it necessarily better from a result standpoint than lighter low training? There's been no evidence that we've had and sorry that I've seen on that, but there is some hypotheticals I can I can make cases for certain like the hypoxia hypoxia-inducible factor is a substance that is thought to increase the hypertrophic response. Intracellular hypertrophic response.
Storing. There are some logical rationales but we don't have any longitudinal evidence showing its better. And like I said, the limitation to it is the inability to do it. It's only specific to the extremities. There are some potential
I want to least bring up the fact in general, it's shown to be safe but and blood people that have blood pressure issues. I'm not completely convinced there might not be a potential issues and the other thing that I want to point out too, is that the research we have is in very controlled environments. With researchers that know what they're doing. You get people, they just like put a cuff on their Palm starts turning purple. We're you can really do some damage if you're not doing this properly. So you have to be cognizant of how to go.
Go about doing it. If you're going to employ being far,
that was, I was going to ask you about that. Like what kind of stuff are we talking about here? Like in your they always think of a tourniquet with blood pressure or it's
like well this would be in research settings that are actually blood pressure type. Cuffs that are used that we can monitor the pressure that's going on people just use like bandana ties that and they use a rating scale like a discomfort scale of one to ten and saying you should be at a six or a seven. But a lot of times people don't gauge
One, the see, you know, one of the 10 well and they can be, they're saying they're 27 in their arms turning purple. So you got to be careful.
Yeah. Well, this has been a really enlightening podcast for me really, really, really appreciate. I'd love to ask you before we, before we go about your personal routine. I mean, you're a busy busy guy, you're a professor, you're publishing a lot of scientific papers, you're an educator, and
And you're also like, very spoken on social media, talk about, like, what, how do you find time? And what is your routine? Kind of generally? Speaking look like
sure. So for me exercises, like, brushing your teeth, you have to do it. It's not really fun for me anymore because I trained hard when I do train and it's least resistance training was, but I, my routine is much more streamlined from what it used to be. Number one, just ton factors, I'm not looking to, I was a former bodybuilder.
If I was body building, I'd be doing something much different than I'm doing now and as I've gotten older, the recovery issues start to come in. So I'm on a four-day week resistance training routine. I do basically a two-on-one off two months old till one that I take a rest and I trained to additional days and take another couple days off. I do an opera Lower Split, my workouts, last 45 minutes to an hour. So I'm training like three and a half four hours a week. I trained quite hard when I do train.
While sets or within that, like one to two reps of failure, and sometimes I do do a set to all that failure and I just again, Lower one day, upper the other, and I do look every day to get substantial steps. I focus on the step count. So I targeted twelve, twelve thousand steps a day aerobic. When I say Roberto training, just the general step count, which is for overall health. And again, my focus at this point is
I'm sure that I'm maintaining my health. That's the most Paramount to me and, you know, still looking good. Buzz is an issue, but I'm not looking to step on stage at this point and thus again its goal specific and lifestyle specific. So I'm so busy as you pointed out with training with them research and teaching and also travel that getting the workouts. And when I travel, by the way, it's
Even now coming at the end of San Diego, it's going to be tough to get. Maybe I'll get one day where I usually would get to of a workout but becomes more difficult when I'm away. And those are kind of structured D, loads for me
about your protein intake to you. Is that like, are you
doing some important points X? Yeah, maybe even a little more, I just make sure. I don't micromanage it, but I make sure that I'm getting I know just in general what I need to eat and I say a little more is not going to hurt me, so I'm probably getting a little more than
that, is it harder when you're traveling
to know,
I mean I I was at breakfast this morning, I had my omelet and cheese and yeah I'll make sure I get that
awesome. Well so Brad you're all over social media you've got two books, can you mention the books? And then maybe so you're on Twitter, you're very active on Twitter and you tweet very interesting studies, and I follow you on Twitter, you're also on Instagram. You're very active there and you again your breakdown of the studies are grade. So I definitely want to
Make sure people, follow you on your social media channels. Thank you.
Yeah. So, my two books, I have a textbook which is much more technical for those who want to get into like the weeds of science is called the science and development of muscle, hypertrophy published by human kinetics. And that's a hard cover that sort of serious, textbook, we use it graduate level for exercise science students. But I mean, if you're, if you have a background, something like yourself certainly would understand it. But I also have a
The consumer-friendly textbook on optimizing muscle mass called The Max Muscle plan and that's also human kinetics. Both of them can be found on Amazon and yeah you could follow me. Just Google me and you will find
me. So you're at Brad schoenfeld on Twitter, right? And at Brad. Schoenfeld PhD on
Instagram right
Brad. Pleasure. Thank you so much for all the great information. Thank you for having me.
Thank you folks, for listening to this episode and a huge. Thank you to dr. Brad schoenfeld for coming on the show and for the amazing research that he and his lab have done and continue to do as Brad mentioned in the episode research and exercise and nutrition is only going to be able to provide General guidelines which are then applied to the individual considering important factors such as genetics lifestyle, and nutrition among others. For those of you interested in diving a bit deeper,
Her into genetics and fitness, you can check out our free genetic report on Fitness, which focuses on Snips related to Fitness including endurance. The capacity to improve vo2max with endurance training, reduce lactate transport out of muscle, and susceptibility, to muscle fatigue, and men and susceptibility to injuries to soft tissues, including Achilles tendon, ACL and tennis elbow, and more to get that information and more. All you need is your raw data.
A data which you may have gotten from a provider like 23andMe or ancestry DNA. You can find that basic report at found my fitness.com, forward slash genetics forward, slash Fitness. That's found my fitness.com, forward slash genetics forward, slash Fitness fitn ESS, or you can just scroll to the bottom of the genetics page.
Age and look for the big list of free. Basic reports. All you need is your DNA final. Thanks so much for listening and catch you all soon.
