18 Rules for Lifting Like a Pro - Dr Mike Israetel (4K)

Dr Mike is Rell welcome to the show Chris thank you for having me look at your head in all of its high definition Glory yes I believe the folks helping us videotape this had to make 10 adjustments cuz my head is too shiny which is a compliment or an insult I can't quite tell that sums up most of my life dude I love your YouTube channel you are absolutely blowing up at the moment evidence-based training hypertrophy muscle gain all that stuff so I want to do a One-Stop shop today of everything that anybody needs to know to get as jacked as possible from an exercise science standpoint sounds simple let's do it this is literally what you've been doing your entire life yeah for sure something like that you doctor or something doctor of something sport physiology yeah that that I mean if you don't know who does oh yeah good God tons of way more qualified people but they don't have this beautiful bald head and that's why they're not in Hollywood all right so taking it from the top what are the what are the things that you see when it comes to training for muscle growth that are the biggest mistakes people make where are people going wrong the most when it comes to this thinking all that time in the gym will get you laid and Chris let me tell you from a personal story it just doesn't work nothing works help anyone who listening help send me a letter telling me how this whole thing works um on a ser serous note if I had to be scientific about it and explain the biggest source of variance in not growing muscle over let's say a timeline of about a year which is a realistic amount of time for like people who haven't seen you in a year to be like holy crap uh it it has to be consistency because if you just go to the gym and scream a lot and do crappy technique crappy volumes and crappy loads and do a lot wrong but you have a requisite intensity that's anywhere north of reading the newspaper and you just show up multiple times a week over and over you're gonna get some results if you have the ultimate evidence-based plan from gez Renaissance periodization itself and you've downloaded the RP I purch free app is a discount code in BIO I don't know is that's what influencers say but um but you do it intermittently you do it on and off stuff you you ever had conversations with people you're like in know on in Metro let's say in London where you're from I believe all English people are from London yes of course and um you know they're asking you tips because they saw that you're jacked and you start giving them tips and you eventually get into conversation of like well so like how many times a week do you lift and they be like well you know it's 5 you're like M yes yes I see where this is going they're like but like lately you know my dog's been real sick so my wife left me an interesting sounding London and yeah right so bro talk is actually Universal it's just one accent everywhere right you could be British English and then the lifting starts and you're like yeah man [ __ ] curls like Arnold did it you're like Arnold that's it drop that Meme so yeah consistency is a big deal but it's not the only deal uh if you do something consistently my thought on that is you might as well do it pretty well you don't have to go all crazy sciency like we're going to get into in the next you know whatever half hour however long it takes you to get pissed and kick me off but um but when you are consistent it multiplies the emphasis that you should be doing whatever it is you're doing quite well because with was you know committing a lot of time to it uh bit of a sunk cost there might as well optimize on the margins and then we can talk a lot about all the details okay one of the first places that people are going to go to and I'm going to guess one of the most common questions that you get asked what exercises do I need to be doing yeah all of them bro right yep that's it and then I just walk away and they're like wow that guy's supposed to be smart or something like that but then they see the back of my very shiny head and it makes them happy yes okay which exercises so there is a lot to say about it but you can start with the supposition that it's whatever exercise nominally targets the muscle you want to grow so if you want bigger biceps you know some variation of doing this is probably good and then to be honest that's maybe 80% of the answer so if a lot of people here's why I'm saying that a lot of people will look at let's say for quads they look at hack squats they look at leg presses they look at lunges and they look at regular High bar squats and they'll Vex themselves infinitely over the question of which one of these is superior which is kind of like asking you know I need to get to Austin Texas in a in in two days which airline should I take like you you ask someone who works at the airport like which airline's like really the one I should be taking they're like I mean I don't know all of them really get you there there are subtle differences but at least make sure the ticket says Austin Texas so if the exercise hits that muscle then you're good to go now there are ways of seeing which exercises hit the target muscle that you want a couple of what we RP at RP call proxies for stimulus so this is something like tension the perception of a lot of tension generated or exposed in that muscle so if you're doing chest flies and you feel a crapload of stretch and pulling in the chest that's probably good if you're doing what you think is a chest fly but you misread The Machine's instruction thing and you feel a ton of tension in your biceps or your forearms or your shoulders but you don't really honestly feel anything in the chest on a just pure physics perspective because of the mechanics of the movement your chest has to be getting some exposure but maybe you could be doing better by actually doing the exercise in a way or picking an exercise that really you feel some tension off of another clue to if you're stimulating the muscle properly is the burn and that's seen in a medical context when people don't wear proper protection I know that resonates with you personally because of the conversation we had right before this I don't mean to expose you but but Chris you could just be making better choices what I'm trying to say all theoretical I've never been with a woman as everyone who watches our YouTube knows but on a serious note the burn is in especially higher rep sets when you start feeling the accumulation of metabolic byproducts in the Target muscle so the chest fly analogy if you're doing High rep Peck flies and at the end of that set your pecs are burning hey that's probably good you're probably getting a good stimulus there on the other hand if it's just your biceps that are burning but your pecs don't really feel much are you getting a stimulus in that exercise oh yeah sure is it guaranteed to be a really robust really good stimulus probably not because you should be feeling some combination of tension and burn and then also there's pump again none of these are mandatory but together they're kind of like puzzle pieces that take what could be a C+ exercise for you and make it an A+ exercise if you're getting all the feelings right on this so another one is pump uh how much after several sets of the workout or of the exercise how filled with fluid is your target muscle so if you're doing PE flies and after a couple of sets you know a girl walks by and you're like and she's like oh my God and she runs away uh I guess that's good even though she ran away but she ran away in a way that she obviously respected your PEC size which is the whole point of the gym but if you do a bunch of sets of something um let's say you're doing Peck flies your shoulders are pumped your biceps are pumped even your forearms look more V but if we can honestly say your chest has changed in any visible or palpable way no doubt still trains your pecs but maybe not that great another one is perturbation uh which kind of presents itself in two forms one is is that Target muscle feeling really weak so let's say you do a few peack exercises and you think they're for the chest and then you try to push yourself into your car like push off your steering wheel and you feel like a profound weakness in that pack like oh my God a really good example is if you're trying to walk downstairs after you hit quads if you think you hit quads but you really hit gluten adductors you can hop skip down the stairs no [ __ ] problem are we allowed to swear in here is that not a good idea sweet um whereas if you're doing this on the handrail yes like desperately cleaning for dear life and and your legs are shaky uh another thing with perturbation is crampy none of this is required but if your chest cramps hard when you're trying to pose after a few sets of whatever you're doing the whatever you're doing absolutely hit your chest the other thing is weakness too so if I tell you hey this Mega Peck workout what's your best bench and you're like well it's like you know 200 lb for a set of 10 and I take you through a mega PEC workout after that if we put 200 lbs on there if you bench it for any close to 10 your pecs never got very fatigued which almost certainly means they never got very stimulated so you should see a pretty big repetition strength drop off if you can barely do a push-up after a chest workout oh [ __ ] something happened to your PCS for sure especially if you feel like your chest is the kind of onus of weakness in that movement so those are all ways to kind of proxy that and I saying another one again not a huge deal not the deal but a good little additive to the mix is do you feel any kind of weakness or soreness that persists for hours or days after so for example if you do some kind of new uh quad machine at your gym and uh two days later or your inner thighs are sore your glutes are physically sore your quads aren't either the way you did it which I'm sure will get to technique or just the exercise itself it says quads but it's really not quads maybe it is to some extent but you would expect if you had a novel stimulus to feel some kind of soreness but if you did something that says quads on it and then the day later you can barely walk and you're sore to the touch man you know you have to have stimulated your quads there is no alternative so all those things are in the plus- side category and any exercise that hits a bunch of those check marks for you man that's a good exercise for you and we're all different so some people respond better to PE fly machine some people to dumbbells some people to cables some people to something in between whatever exercise checks those boxes for you really well it's probably a good exercise for you at least for the time being what about stimulus to fatigue ratio I hear you talking about this all the time incessantly yep to the point where people are just done with it they're like shut up well this is a new audience what is it oh hello where are they we're in an empty room oh there's cameras that's right I know how this works from watching many adult films myself just kidding I'm in no fap for the last several hours um the fatigue part is a big part so what I just described was the stimulus proxies basically like uh indirect ways to know like hey did I get a good stimulus but fatigue is important so another way to categorize exercis is how much fatigue they cause which can be split up into a couple of different types of fatigue one is joint and connective tissue fatigue if you're doing some kind of skull crusher machine thing or tricep machine and every time you're like ow my elbows ow my elbows ow this is hurting a lot more is this an elbow exercise or tricep exercise maybe your Technique is off or maybe that exercise is just not that great so you want as joint connective tissue soreness as possible as little exposure as possible in that regard now humans are robust adaptable creatures so zero tendon and connective tissue stimulus of any kind or fatigue rather it's not the goal you just want to get really pumped and really sore and really [ __ ] up in the muscle for any degree of joint connective issue so if squats beat up your knees a little bit but they [ __ ] wreck your quads sweet but if you have like some kind of weird hack squat designed by people don't know how to make machines which is like at least half of all machines in the gym then you're like oh this is like a knee exercise and my quads don't feel [ __ ] that's bad news another thing is there's several different kinds of other fatigue one is called axial fatigue which is a special kind of fatigue that results from spinal loading so you'll notice that the amount of fatigue on the system if you do a lot of deadlifting bent rowing and uh squatting with a barbell on your back is is different and more intense than exercise programs that don't have those why uh I I'm not sure I'm not sure uh more for science to figure fure out but it seems like when the muscles that keep the spine erect uh are active a lot or something to do with the spine fatig is living [ __ ] out of you which uh almost everyone who's ever deadlifted seriously has reported that the total fatigue tolerance of the deadlift is very low you can do plenty of leg pressing and it stimulates a huge muscle mass gets you really [ __ ] up really sore tons of lunges but there the fatigue is mostly local when you do deadlifting something something leaves you that you don't quite get that systemic systemic and so axial may be a subcategory of systemic fatigue there are other ways to measure systemic fatigue your desire to train uh one of the thing one of the reasons that you want to do some exercises you generally like is because your desire to train can stay elevated and that keeps you coming back for more if you have a low desire to train it can actually physically result in the promulgation of more overreaching type of escalating fatigue and then you're just going to be [ __ ] out of the gym because you'll start hating this [ __ ] the um stimulus fatigue ratio is kind of like bang for your book it's literally and exactly only what that is cost benefit but expressed in muscle terms I've asked this question of some of the greatest bodybuilders of this era Chris Bumstead Phil Heath asked Ryan Terry who recently won the Olympia what a look that was yep and I looked at it for a long time I know he knows to I'm in his DMS what if you only had 10 exercises for the rest of your life to hold on to and build as much muscle mass as possible what would they be yeah that's a question huh so uh I would say that I'd have to go muscle Group by muscle group to make sure I check off all the boxes I I I don't know if there's 10 muscle groups and some of these so the caveat is these are just my personal Spirit exercises the ones I really like that doesn't mean they're best for everybody they can't be and I can talk about that afterwards of what the stimulus fatigue ratio actually means but I'd say high bar squats why because they hit the quadriceps and adductors and glutes very well the amount of fatigue you get from them is less than you would with other types of squats like low bar squats because until my arms got too big to hold a bar in my back uh I fit into the high bar position like a glove and I love that um I fit into very few things like a glove mostly condoms as like 80 cubic centimeters left of room but um so high bar squats I would say I would say the over standing overhead barbell press just cuz I'm like really good at it and it feels great for me to do until I guess my arms not too big I can't do that either so that's fun is there anything in that where the bracing the midline bracing is good for just other stuff generally yeah it's good for like manhood strength like if you can overhead press two plates for reps like you're a serious [ __ ] and people shouldn't [ __ ] with you probably um so that's cool for that for sure um and then I would have to say Skull Crushers for triceps barbell skull crusher uh how many are we at three three um Pull-Ups for the back overhand uh chin to Bar why overhand no underhand uh raw personal preference I can't rotate my [ __ ] in enough to do underhand anymore I've slowly become more disabled as I became more jacked isn't that great yeah there's like an ability curve where you get better at [ __ ] and then you get worse at [ __ ] so uh barbell bent rose from a deficit get two barbell Bose from a deficit so you stand on a little box and you can go super deep in the stretch and then touch your tummy and come back any reason for doing that as opposed to a chess supported or a seal manhood yeah yeah you ever seen a seal in Antarctica they're [ __ ] pathetic they always need to be rescued there's babies and stuff [ __ ] that no manhood [ __ ] like an AR would do you don't see him leaning on a [ __ ] tree branch are we five deep now I think we're five deep I haven't been keeping track I think it's five yeah yeah five more uh let's see what else stiff legged deadlift for the hamstrings you wouldn't have hit that enough with your bent over Rose no not even close yeah it's isometric only with vent over Rose you need a dynamic movement for the hamstrings um it also hits a crapload of your spinal directors and glutes and all this other stuff okay six uhhuh and then we have um the ooh yeah I have to say the cambered bar bench press for chest that's the one that just like this aale so it allows you to press it's like a Middle Ages Olden like a young boy carrying milk yeah yeah or like a torture device or something they put on a bison so he goes around in a circle and Mills Wheat or some [ __ ] yeah okay how you know English people have the last name Miller cuz like that used to be you hundreds of years ago uh my word um why the camber bar why the camber is allows you to go deeper than your own chest level and we have lots of research especially recently but lots of good theoretical work before that shows us that a deep stretch is a a pretty big deal for hypertrophy it enhances the amount of muscle growth you get rep forre it also feels [ __ ] amazing and Ultra challenging and if you do bench presses with a regular bar afterwards you're like oh my God the [ __ ] is easy as hell because it's a huge partial so I would say I'll take an in line version of camber bar bench as an extra so at seven yep I'll take dips mhm in addition to that for the lower pecs and just overall manliness di are sweet good amount of triceps as well we've got long long head on the overheads yes yep and uh what do we got two left yeah so what we missing if you're bothered about Abs if you're bothered about CS no Cavs [ __ ] that I could say something about Cavs but [ __ ] that have we done a yeah we haven't done side delts yet know so I would say super ROM laterals for side delts and you literally made your own exercise kind of a few yeah I I need more ego [ __ ] so let's just start calling them Dr Mike laterals yeah Dr Mike everything do you do you see my new drink I came out with it's the Dr Mike drink in any case it's where you do dumbbell laterals but you don't stop here you just go all the way and kind of touch your palms together at the top can you do that oh it used to be able to with enough weight I can get it up there um but then I kind of choke myself at the top yeah um so I'll take those for most of the rest of the delt and I will say the bent rows and the pull-ups take care of the rear ad quite well um and then I'll say seated incline dumbbell curls for biceps so boom like that again it's tension at the stretch great exercise um the shoulder press overhead barbell press is there if I was purely aiming for hypertrophy I would just take it out alt together because it's insanely High axial fatigue as you may suspect um and it just really like it's nothing it trains that other exercises can't train better but it's there because of again for the soul and if we're doing something as absurd as restricting oursel to 10 exercise the rest of our life I get Soul [ __ ] it's like what meal are you going to eat in your last meal before they kill you I'm not choosing macros [ __ ] that mac and cheese but what did you say only 10 minutes ago about it's important to have exercises that motivate you to do them more yes and if you enjoy manhit standing upright barbell shoulder to overhead have at it yeah exactly just know the trade-off now uh I will also say here's the trade-off the trade-off is when you go to the club and you're standing there with your buddy and he does more scientifically effective exercises and there's a girl like looking at you to and she was like I'm G to go with your friend cuz this DS are like bag and you're like God damn it but Spirit energy she doesn't know about that uh you can't over you guess you could overhead press your friend and throw him away and she's like oh my God you like such a man let's go and by doing I mean have sex in the middle of the club that's what happens yes I've seen love Island I've seen you on that show I've seen yeah yeah yeah we'll get back to talking to Mike in one minute but first I need to tell you about element element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium it helps to regulate your appetite curb cravings and improve your brain function stop having coffee first thing in the morning because your adenosine system that caffeine acts on isn't active for the first 90 minutes of the day but your adrenal system is and salt acts on your adrenal system so it helps you to wake up more effectively it reduces your caffeine consumption throughout the day and it'll keep you hydrated best of all there is a no BS no questions asked refund policy so you can buy this box 100% risk-free try it drink it all and if you don't like it they'll give you your money back you don't even need to return the box that's how confident they are that you love it right now you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box plus that no questions asked refund policy by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink LM nt.com slod wisdom that's drink LM nt.com slod wisdom what are the worst stimulus to fatigue ratio exercises if there were ones where you would say if you're looking to gain muscle start sliding these off the edge of the table into the bin yes what would be in thaty um I'll say a few things before I answer that question directly one is it's hugely individual some people get a big kick out of exercises that other people just don't like and also any exercise you do for long enough uh begins to accumulate we in sport Science called stess and it is stainess can be put mathematically as the reduction of the stimulus to fatigue ratio you need start with upright rows you're like these are [ __ ] sweet bro they're blowing up my delts five months later you're like [ __ ] this I'm never [ __ ] doing it again my shoulders hurt I don't get a connection with my muscles I'm tired of it psychologically so that's the big caveat before splitting exercises generally by their sfrs so stimulus to fatigue ratios are not a universal concept you can just apply they're always and everywhere applied in the moment for the athlete themselves so if someone's like hey what should I do for quads I'm like what have you been feeling lately and what do you not like lately and then we choose an exercise and then we go forward good example of that might be moving from walking lunges to box step-ups absolutely exactly you're just for whatever reason your joints hurt more and walking lunges you've been doing them forever you're not getting as big of pumps tension all those proxy we talked about for stimulus are down and all the fatigue proxies are up you [ __ ] hate the exercise your joints hurt systemic fatigue is higher so you do what's called exercise deletion and replacement there is no this is is one of the things there is no one right exercise uh just exactly like there is no one right food for you yes someone what's your favorite food they're like uh mac and cheese with tuna in it you're like okay that's fine it's a weird choice but whatever it can't possibly be your favorite food for forever because if you have to eat it all the time you get [ __ ] sick of it and then whatever was your second is now your first same thing works with women am I right yeah no no takers all right um I'm like a a much shorter less combat trained version of Andrew Tate also I don't know anything about women but I've run a few casinos in Bulgaria people don't know that about me isn't that what he does I'm just going to shut the [ __ ] up yeah I do have multiple Lamborghinis so oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you are spending a lot of your money on Lamborghinis at the moment it's not a lot of my money it's a profoundly small amount I'm dealing with trillions Chris I just want people to understand that most well I'll just say it regular people just there's wealth and then there's me the unwashed masses yeah Elon Musk I I've heard of him he's a cool guy he's got some money cute it's adorable really um so putting all that stimulus to fatigue ratio stuff in context like it's always an individual decision some exercise on average just on the mechanics uh don't do that great and I can specify what kind of mechanics one is if an exercise targets a lot of muscle generally it can't possibly Target one muscle a lot specifically and thus for a specific muscle it has a poor stimulus fatigue ratio deadlifts for example what exactly does the conventional deadlift train you can't answer that question because that question is an answer of like 80% of the muscles of the body glutes sort of hamstrings maybe adductors some quads technically tons of lower back but not exclusively depending on how you pull midback upper back traps holy [ __ ] so if you're really trying to grow insert any muscle here with conventional deadlifts there's probably an exercise that gives you as much stimulus for a fraction of fatigue another thing is uh range of motion if the exercise doesn't expose that Target muscle into a deep stretch uh you could do better so for example floor press I'm sure we'll have a video on the YouTube at some point about this the floor press is just you hold dumbbells or a barbell you go down onto your airbow so you're lying on the ground like an animal it's benches for civilized people my my gym are made of gold no it's Platinum I think it's diamonds uh it's very uncomfortable but the wealth alone keeps me comfortable so you touch down here and you can't possibly physically get a big stretch so in some context can be a great exercise but just on the raw probabilities probably isn't that great so those are some of the exercises that I would say like deadlifts floor presses anything you do with a partial range that's not in a lengthen deep stretch position is is probably not ideal for py rack PES are another one what exactly are rack PES training [ __ ] if I know I think they train mostly the ego because you load 18 plates on each side that one girl used to look at she's like oh my God you're like a [ __ ] superhero and you're like yeah you want to see me [ __ ] Etc then you get laid I think that's how it works all right so that's exercises you guys I think have been at least for me the one of the main reasons why I've reintroduced Tempo into my training for everything now everything is tempo whole life so given that we've yes yes slow in slow out uh that sounds good talk to me about what good technique looks like muscle growth yeah that's a great question so good technique has a huge diversity and variety of Expressions so you can't really look at a person doing an exercise and for sure be like that's bad technique because it could be good for them it could be good for the context but there are a couple of generalities that apply to almost everyone to almost all exercises that you can sort of checkbox as saying if you have these things probably your Technique is pretty good if you don't have them as a scientifically minded person or at least one attempting to be scientifically minded at the very least if you're doing a technique that doesn't check the following boxes I'm about to talk about I at least want to talk to you and get some reasoning out of you because you could have good reasoning be like yeah man my shoulder's [ __ ] injured I can't do any more range of motion okay no big deal but a lot of times you don't get any reasoning out of people they're just like that's [ __ ] what works brother and you're like my man Buck thinking sucks it's painful it's annoying why do it so one is a good technique should be focused on targeting a specific muscle or muscles and by sheer biomechanics you know if you're doing this motion it's not your biceps so sometimes people will be like I'm training delts and they'll do like alternating like lifts like this with their with their fist pointed up and that hits the front delts but it can't really possibly hit the side delts and so if you're like yeah man if you're trying to get big side delts and you do that technique I'm going to be like that can't there that you can do like a a stick and rope model of the body where you're like that do not the muscle that does that so that automatically means like if you want Big L you're going to do pull-ups a rows because it's the sheer mechanics and there are more particularities where if you pull out like this it's probably not as much lats as it is upper back if you pull down it's more lats just because how the muscle attack so that's kind of the king variable of good technique so for example if you say you're training your quads and you do a squat that's Sumo stance you're sitting back really far you're getting a very small degree of knee flexion um there are better ways to train the quads that is not the best technique for the quads all most for anyone because the better technique would be like well we target the quads that means we expose them that means we give them a high degree of range of motion which means like as you squat mostly down your toes should go over your your knees should go over your toes rather and you should go nice and deep that really biomechanically has to train your quads so that's number one another one is to have a movement that has a considerable degree of stability so if you're unstable so for example if you're doing upright rows and you keep coming up on your toes and you're wiggling around that's reducing your Force production so good technique means stable because your body will dial down how much force your muscles can deploy if you're stood on a vibrating plate or if you're on a balance beam or if you're on something else ball yeah 100% it happens completely automatically uh we've I've been directly involved in Laboratory Testing for something like this we had this is an insane study we did we had lots of spotters we had people max out in the high bar back squat and then we had them max out on a bosu ball good news they only squatted about 60% out of the one at Max for a Max still quite a lot 60% is quite a lot right a [ __ ] BOS totally but but to put it in another way unless you're doing profoundly High repetitions if you're doing sets of five to 10 with 60% of your true one rep max what would be in stability you're getting almost no hypertrophy as an intermediate or Advanced trainy but is nothing you're learning how to squat on a bosu ball which is cool at parties you can show off maybe get laid maybe not um but it's not it's no good because you want to be nice and stable so for example if you and I are training together and you start doing incline dumbbell press but I notice your feet are hanging off or kind of dangling there's two things that can happen one you're a short King like me who never grew up to be an adult height and then I'm just going to be like that sucks but good luck but if you're a tall King like yourself or a medium King how tall are you 51 oh perfect the perfect man height um I would say hey hey Chris try to put your feet down and really cork screw them into the ground to get that stability you'll find you'll get more more reps and be able to do more weight with incline dumbbells which is a really good thing so stability is a technique Universal generally speaking when people talk about sort of grinding or grounding themselves into the floor there's no Chi that's happening here this is the body responding to us being more stable and exclusively the force production is I believe I believe Chi is entirely a myth also like all pretend things uh there if you really want to go down that road there's a lot of very sad YouTube videos of actual ma Fighters challenging Chi practitioners in China [ __ ] them up I mean [ __ ] man one lady thought she could block like a running punch just standing there and but the guy just went right through her I stopped watching after this was very sad the sad part is that they get physically hurt but it's more sad to watch their ontological understanding of the world collapse think I must have misaligned my chi that's what happened uh only stevenh Seagal can do [ __ ] like that I I want to be on the record saying that all right control decentric so control in general especially on the Ecentric most people can't help but control the concentric because it pushes back like you can only move a concentric so quickly especially with heavier weights especially close to failure so someone can't really spastically do the concentric they're they push against it it's kind of autocont controlled if you're uh trying to gun your car up a really high hill and you have anything other than a Tesla it's going to be seemingly like you're controlling it but it's just pushing back that's autoc control on the central cover on the way down people a lot of times are like Let It Drop which again isn't terrible it does marginally increase your chance of injury but what it does is it takes a very muscle growth promoting part of the movement which is the Ecentric and the Ecentric actually requires less nervous system stimulus to do the same amount of physical work which means its inherent stimulus to fatigue ratio might be higher because it's probably a little bit more stimulative than the concentric as a phase by itself but requires less less nervous system fatigue so over the weeks of controlling your Centric you may get more out of your muscles with less payment on the nervous system fatigue side well you've got to lift it back up so it needs to come down you've lifted it it has to come down and you might as well collect all the coins on the way down you're like there's free hypertrophy coins just do it it's like watching someone play Sonic the Hedgehog but they jump over all the coins at least the Jewish part of myself pH I'm like oh but you missed the coins what are you doing reset the level oh just try to pick up the any case this will get us canceled for sure um so control the Centric is a big deal control in general is a big deal um and then another checklist we want is I used to say full range of motion and I still think that's mostly correct but we're learning there are different parts of the range of motion which are more or less hypertrophic so I can say is mostly a full range of motion is good technique so if I see you like a quarter squatting I'm going to be like you probably went lower that's a good thing but more importantly still from an empirical perspective is just not robbing yourself of the deep stretch so if I see you do cable flies and you're stopping here I'm going to talk to you and I better hope you have two [ __ ] up shoulders cuz if they're totally healthy I'm going to say go Ultra deep for that super big stret don't avoid that what's happening in that deep stretch [ __ ] if I know science and [ __ ] you're the guy yeah look man we don't know all of the [ __ ] you know what I'm saying put me on the spot like that there's molecules in there and cells God knows what else Chris no so uh we don't actually know exactly why a stretch stimulates hypertrophy there are several candidate mechanisms being investigated and I can regail you with the details but it's a little bit pointless because all the details could be totally wrong it's a candidate mechanism that that fails inspection right so in a in a few months few years we'll know exactly why that occurs but we have something better than a candidate mechanism we have very good control trials where the only difference between groups or applications is one group goes nice and deep and the other does not we have studies on for example the quadriceps where the volume and the load is identical between groups you even got clever studies where uh people train one leg with a deep stretch only bottom third and the other leg they train only with a top third of leg extension that's a big deal CU autoc control it's not like genetics doesn't matter nothing matters the same body you got to split test the left and the right amazing how great so a lot of those studies are showing that the Deep stretch just causes more growth now it's 5 to 10% more growth so you can do topend partials you can bench like this and and get plenty of muscle growth tons of ifb pros and jacked up juice heads do it and they're still jacked but from an efficiency and Effectiveness perspective all those guys could have been bigger if they went in for that really deep stretch so to me that's a big part of really good technique it's really interesting to look at sort of all of this as a suite especially when it comes to the technique for muscle growth that you have this if we're looking at stimulus to fatigue ratio of something that's important especially as everybody slowly makes the inevitable journey toward death and getting old Jesus Christ man there's that's incredibly maab way to put it I'm apocalyptic guy I'm British yes of course yeah the the Battle of Britain never got over that so death is always imminent I understand everyone's getting older everyone wants to avoid injury by reducing down the amount of weight that you use this is one of the reliable Ways by focusing on a controlled Ecentric that also helps because you're not going to allow you're not going to surprise yourself and get into a a place or a range that you didn't mean to get into totally uh totally by focusing on deep stretch as well also going to reduce down further the amount of weight that you need to get the amount absolutely so yeah stability unstable exercise is much more injurious than stable exercise if you have your feet quart screwn in and you're just moving exactly how you want you're probably not going to [ __ ] up if you have quite a bit of weight on a bosu ball I'm sure you've seen YouTube videos of various accidents like hey you can [ __ ] your [ __ ] up if you get really unstable what when it comes to Tempo because obviously what we're talking about control Ecentric and concentric that's at least got something behind it mhm Jeff npod did some study saw him on Tik Tok talking about it how how long do I I need to take on that Ecentric portion yeah it's a good question the literature we have so far as far as I'm aware of it and because I am science I'm very aware of it it didn't impress you no one's claimed on your show before that they are science itself you fused first yes um it seems to not matter much anything between a repetition that in total takes 1 second including Ecentric and concentric and all the way up to a total of 9 seconds which is a lot of pain it seems to be that if you do more quick repetitions you can get more repetitions M if you seem to do slower repetitions you get fewer but each one has a lot more stimulus it's kind of like filling up a glass of a certain height if you go really slow it takes you longer you fill up the glass if you go really fast it doesn't take as long fills up the glass the glass filling is what we want anyway there's a certain amount of stimulus you can drive to your muscles you could do it more slowly you could do it more quickly it doesn't seem to matter for hypertrophy however under control as the big caveat so if you just dump the stuff on you and then kind of Crank It Up and then dump yeah that's not going to be as hypertrophic as some monum of control now if I go down this fast and come back up I still 100% control the Centric as long as I'm doing that I can go Ultra slow I can go a little bit more quickly and anything in between at least tentatively for now we can say one thing almost for sure it doesn't make a huge difference presumably when it comes to like practically functionally doing this in the gym focusing on a little bit more of a Tempo let's say maybe a two count or a three count down ensures that control is something because the difference between half a second down and one second down in terms of control everyone's done a one everyone's thought that they're doing a three count Tempo but it's actually been like a oneish yes and a lot of it is still like but that if you actually hit a two to three count to me that seems like all right this I can't escape this I can't escape the degree of control that I need yes that's absolutely true and I'll layer another thing on top of it one of my last points for what makes good technique is repetition consistency most of your reps should look about the same that doesn't mean identical there's actually a little bit of an injury preventative benefit from exposing yourself to slightly different bar positions it makes you more resilient if you're one machine likee thing all the time and you get out of it in real life you could find yourself a little bit hurt but mostly the rep should look the same the ability to make the Reps look mostly the same and also move in the movement Arc in which you want because remember the first principle of good technique is like are you moving in a biomechanical way that targets the muscle that's a lot easier to ensure if you slowly work into the Ecentric hitting the right positions like if I just squat down however the [ __ ] my body tells me I'll do a fine job I've been squatting a long time but maybe I'll sit back a little too far I won't expose my quads as much if I can take the time to go a little bit slow on the Ecentric I can actually figure out how my quads feel tension wise while I'm doing it and regulate my exposure as I'm doing it I'm sitting back a little too much I'm like NOP no nope I sit forward and my quads get [ __ ] up I can feel the tension right away only because I'm controlling the entric a little bit longer am I able to get that feedback right away it's like during a football play your coach can't tell you what to do during the play you got to play beforehand you [ __ ] figure it out the ball is [ __ ] hiked and then [ __ ] happens it's too fast but if you can go a little bit slower you can Auto regulate your Technique and do a better job during that and small bonus is your injury probability at least nominally on theoretical grounds will reduce and I'll take anything that reduces my injury probability by some amount and doesn't reduce the mechanisms of hypertrophy at all so some people say Tempo doesn't matter and I say totally it's like if you get the same high quality meal at two restaurants same [ __ ] meal it doesn't matter which one you go to yeah but what's the price if one is 75% cheaper my [ __ ] Jewish ass is there ASAP I'm there early at the door no way I could be investing instead of doing that in any case I'm there as soon as it opens blah blah blah so if you get uh even a theoretical downside of injury risk uh that's a little bit smaller I'll [ __ ] take it with that in mind does does it make sense for trainers athletes as they get older to focus more on tempo as you get as you increase in age the focusing more on Tempo means that you use less weight reduced injury risk when you're younger I I saw your video on Sam suck homeboy very strong lifting full stack all the rest of it but he's made of rubber and Magic he's 22 or something yes we were all made of rubber and Magic back then yeah in my case it was a type of rubber that wasn't able to get erect huh oh [ __ ] I'm onset again uh yes so what I would say is this it matters for everyone because injuries are no fun in any case there are also injuries that can go with you the rest of your life you do a major distal pectoral tendon rupture full evulsion you're just never going to be the same again we need another 15 years of medical Tech to reattach that thing in a way that it doesn't look [ __ ] up or feel [ __ ] up you don't want to do yourself dirty when you're 22 rip a Peck off you just never the [ __ ] same you don't look the same you don't perform the same powerlifting it's kind of done for you bodybuilding is kind of [ __ ] weird at that point so people say yeah when you're young you can get away with [ __ ] when you're young but statistically it's still a downside uh what I will say is I'll put it another way exactly agreeing with your point that's my favorite kind of point one that exactly agrees with me why do you think I'm on the show I'm just here to feed the go and be like yes Chris I would I'd like to feed with something else but uh we signed a couple of papers that said I couldn't physically touch you during the show um when you are young I [ __ ] get it I get it yeah I can do this the [ __ ] [ __ ] over there seeing you do it you're getting late whatever ego [ __ ] live your life when you're older and this is like a particular pet peeve of mind I see like a [ __ ] balding 48-year-old man swinging the [ __ ] dumbbells around him but come here dumb [ __ ] [ __ ] what are you doing how old are you it's like uh I've talked to I've actually talked to a few women in my day nothing sexual um when you're 13 years old 17 years old and you have what I would describe as very understandable but kind of a childlike relation to body image and stuff like that like you're unable to go through a muscle gain phase cuz any amount of extra Pudge on you just feels totally wrong you're 17 [ __ ] it I get it I get it [ __ ] we all had body imit issue I talked to a 37-year-old woman or 47y old woman who knows she needs to gain muscle but is unwilling to gain an extra half centimeter of pudge I'm like look Linda how old are you she's like I'm 47 years old what do you do for a living I'm actually a managing an accounting firm so you're intelligent and responsible and you can see ahead right she's like well yes of course I'm like you can't make the trade-off to get a [ __ ] half centimeter of fat on your ass so you gain more muscle and she's like God damn it you're right so just the same way if I see an older you see a younger guy swinging weights around I'm like whatever to be 20 again my man I see a 40-year-old doing it I'm like dude come on it's like seeing a 45-year-old like just after watching Fast and Furious 18 or whatever like rev his [ __ ] up against a younger guy and what the what the [ __ ] really this is what we're doing so it's always good for everyone but for older people they just have no [ __ ] excuse slow your [ __ ] down control your [ __ ] we talked about concentric Ecentric you mentioned about stretch at the bottom pause pausing reps and isometrics what what what needs to be said there isometrics just don't seem to be as hypertrophic um isometrics in a stretch position are plenty hypertrophic in a contracted one they're not so for example if you're doing cable flies if you stop at the squeeze oh sorry if you stop and squeeze people will give that cue it's totally cool for variation it's fun it's awesome it grows muscle but I wouldn't say it's essential it might be a downside so all that energy you're spending stopping at the squeeze you could put into the Ecentric which probably grows more muscle so if you going to do a pause you're going to be pausing at the stretched position not at the contracted position more often yeah pause at the stretch is cool for a couple reasons one it absolutely reduces the injury probability that reversal at the stretch is the single generally most dangerous time for muscular injury right because you've got weight going down and you're about to contract while it's yeah that's how I ruptured my achilles yeah oh I've heard that story it was terrible y it's the ultimate scary story of warm up for forever if you've coming back to sports correct yeah um the the direct Force plate measured pulse of force at the bottom of the movement as the highest it will be in its entire movement reversing it's also technically your chest at its weakest position so it's if you want to pause there again the absolute risk of injury in the gym is [ __ ] tiny it's way way less injurious than rugby or tennis or anything like that it's so funny because like rich people like myself will be like Oh I'm going to ski in Veil and they'll see like a lifter lifting 200 lbs like isn't that bad for your back [ __ ] you just hit a tree on your last trip there's half your brains out of your [ __ ] face lifting is super super safe so I don't want to be like you got to [ __ ] pause at the bottom or else you're going to die but on a small relative injury risk it is reduced when you're pausing at the bottom absolutely and you get more time experiencing tension in your muscles at that lengthen position so there's an argument that pausing at the bottom is actually maybe a little bit more hypertrophic and you need less weight on the bar so all those things stack up and like the good column is at least is good probably not much better but the bad column is a little smaller to me it seems like at the very least it's a great option I'm not going to say it's the only way to train [ __ ] that but it's a good option good idea to try in other news this episode is brought to you by a product I've used every single day for over three years now and that's ag1 Dr Andrew hubman and Tim Ferris and Dr Peter AA and Joe Rogan all use ag1 because it is the best all-in-one foundational nutrition supplement on the market they've upgraded the recipe 52 times over the last decade as new research has come in and as they've improved the ingredients and it really works I tried pretty much everything on the planet and this is the best you don't need a handful of pills or potions simply one convenient and tasty daily drink that has everything that you need so if you're looking to make an upgrade to your nutrition this is the place to start best of all there is a 90-day moneyback guarantee so you can buy it and try it every single day for 3 months and if you don't like it at the end of that 3 months they'll give you your money back head to the link in the description below or go to drink a1.com /od wisdom to get a year free Supply vitamin D3 and five free travel packs plus that 90-day money back guarantee that's drink a1.com slod wisdom okay how do we warm up before we start [ __ ] final I just get in there and [ __ ] rage bro um first thing when driving to the gym there are only a few types of music you're allowed to listen to Chris let me judge your music soundtrack for warming up what what are you what's in the headphones there for you sleep token at the moment that's nonsense because I have never heard of it it must be the wrong thing okay do you what do you listen to oh well dark thoughts yes always my psychiatrist says we have to up a few different kinds of medication to make them maybe go away um blink182 really is the correct answer because you reached the age of 13 and never actually aged psychologically oh God I probably never made it to 13 11 maybe yeah um yes so what the what kind of music is that I'm trying to think of what sleep token metal like oh oh my man never mind I take back I thought it was like bring me the like kind of in the world of Bring Me The Horizon all loath misery signals misery signals yeah all of my all of the Bands uh represent the landscape of my mind holy [ __ ] it's got dark all right um yes okay warmup music aside there is actually a study that was recently conducted by Dr Brad shonfeld the world's expert on hypertrophy and his laboratory yep and they have Illustrated something that most lifters of a certain degree of intelligence level and longtime participation uh have realized and it's that there are two different kinds of warm-up the general warm-up which is when you go in and you do the elliptical for 15 minutes maybe you foam roll maybe do some Dynamic stretching that's all fine and good and then there's the specific warm-up which is whatever lift you have first in your program you do it for about a set of 12 very lightweights a set of 12 with maybe your 30 rep Maxs then you do a set of eight after a few minutes of rest with maybe your 20 rep max then you do a set of 4ish two to four reps with something like your 10 rep max then you rest a little bit and then you're ready to do whatever load that specific warm-up is a very good idea from a variety of perspectives it warms up your tissues it makes them more pliable less likely to get hurt it also activates and wakes up your nervous system it aligns your actual muscle fibers more into the direction of pull or whatever exercise you're doing it um decreases the sensitivity of what are called GGI tendon organs which are detectors in your muscles for how much force is being transduced and they start out are not warmed up by being like holy [ __ ] that's a lot of force and they actually tamper down how much your nervous system can activate after a few warm-up sets you literally are stronger why you can't cold B your one rep max exactly exactly the GTO need to kind of cool down and after a few reps a few sets of progressively heavier wait oh we're safe here this is okay yeah it's fine um okay so I'm just again I'm thinking like functionally when we get into the gym what this means let's say that we're going into to do a chest day or let's say we're going to do um a a chest and back day like just a full like a push pull day um you're going to start off with incline dumbbell press does that mean that the 1284 method for incline press do you then need to do the same thing again for back yes right would you do those two together would you go would you maybe alternate from okay I'm going to press a little bit and then during my couple of minutes rest I'll go and row a little bit and or whatever what I like to do is I like to warm up for the exercise I'm doing next Once I warm up I do that exercise and then whatever exercise I have after is one of two options one it's the same muscle group just more exercise after incline press I'm on to push-ups or something same muscle group then I only have to do what the great Jay Cutler actually termed as a feel set it's like you just put some weight on there maybe not your working weight maybe your working weight you just do a couple reps maybe 5 to 10 maybe fewer just to feel out just to get the technique right so that the first time your heavy dumbbells aren't in your hand you're like what the [ __ ] is going on just feel it out that's all you need so between every single exercise that's not the first afterwards you just need maybe one set to feel it out and then you go you don't need all three but if it's a muscle you haven't trained yet let's say we do chest and then we do back if I just did a whole bunch of bench press and then I'm doing pull-up yeah it's 1284 on the pull down or assisted pull-up machine that last four is maybe four actual pull-ups rest put your weight belt on and then go but real quick the general warm-up the idea that you come in and do elliptical or whatever if you take a thorough specific warm-up like a 1284 system uh that one study by Dr bad hofeld showed that you don't have any benefit performance-wise from the general warmup and unless you really need it like it's [ __ ] just super cold outside and even a specific warm-up isn't good enough I would say be careful on wasting too much time with a general warm-up one of the things that happens in Fitness is there's really good stuff baked into the fitness cake and every now and again we add ingredients just on fluff alone they don't make a whole lot of sense one of the major uh kind of sources of fluff is increasing the complexity and duration of your general warm-up because reasons some guy will if he foam rolls his elbows it's night and day and then he can do Skull Crushers but that's just that guy's [ __ ] up you see it and he's an advanced lifter you're like [ __ ] foam rolling bro everyone's got to do it you start doing it you take your general warmup and you do elliptical then you do some kind of box step UPS then you do some pilat stuff then you do Dynamic stretching 45 [ __ ] minutes later you're like it's time to work out [ __ ] your work out's over already you got to go back to the office so the general warmup is just not necessary if you do a specific warm up so what I do in the gym I come in I do some arm circles I do because I'm rushing I got to do some side bends and stuff and then I just go 12 84 first exercise after the first exercise I'm generally warm as [ __ ] I'm [ __ ] sweating and then I'm [ __ ] golden so you can do a general warm-up if you want but I would say for folks listening you don't have to but a specific warm-up 1284 or something like it the basic reasoning is just slightly lighter weights go to heavier weights the repetitions fall then you're ready to go train and get the most out of it all right how about rep ranges and how heavy to lift yes for there are recommended Target rep ranges for every single human physical quality that we know of so for example for strength basic strength building is like sets of three to six repetitions you do a whole lot fewer than six lets do use you do singles you can get stronger doing singles but you could have gotten stronger because you would have gotten more volume doing still very heavy weight if you did like sets of four it's just not an efficient use of your time still works not as efficient can you get stronger doing sets of eight yes but you get a lot of hypertrophy work from eight but if you do a your eight rep max it's just not heavy enough like sets of three to six would be for you to get as much strength out of it as possible so these are all Spectrum ranges there's not like at some repetition begins before it you get nothing and then you get all the hypertrophy and then after you get no hypertrophy it's kind of more of a normal distribution kind of situation but for hypertrophy it seems that anything roughly between sets of five repetitions that are challenging close to failure and all the way to 30 to 35 repetitions seems to be on average for the average person for the average muscle in medium-term several months of testing to promote almost uh I'll say it better undifferenced growth so we got group of people training sets of 5 to eight got another group of people training sets of 25 to 28 reps as long as they go close to failure and it's the same exercise they get essentially on average the same results now within a different muscle it could be different some people's biceps respond really well to heavy [ __ ] sets of 5 to 10 you do sets of 25 to they just get tired and they don't have much hypertrophy it works differently between individuals too but the overarching theme is anywhere between sets of five and sets of 30 is kind of uh unlikely to be a ton of really wrong answers you can gain muscle doing sets of four and three and two and one it's just going to take a lot more sets to get that done and obviously your joints and connective tissues are taking a [ __ ] hell of a pound because that's really heavy weight it's not Ultra efficient you're not putting your best cards on the table if you're doing that can you get really good muscle growth with sets of 30 40 50 plus reps actually yes but you have to do more sets to accomplish that and each set is psychologically [ __ ] brutal 3 minutes long I was [ __ ] that right so you do like 10 sets of 52 reps the the playing card workout [ __ ] that it's a shitload of systemic fatigue crap load of psychological fatigue for the same growth you could have gotten with just doing you know 10 sets of eight which is way easier on the whole system so uh 5 to 30 reps is really good general advice but experiment on your own time find out what seems to be giving you great proxies pump burn tension soreness whatever rep ranges give you that it's awesome and another thing is try some variety so if you train back twice a week have one of the days be slightly heavier like mostly sets of 5 to 10 some sets of 10 to 15 reps try the other day being mostly sets of 15 to 20 reps and even some sets of 20 to 30 out of a heavier and lighter that diversity there are a few studies that show diversity in rep ranges even within several months of time can help you grow so I wouldn't write that off and also more sustainable from a joint connective tissue perspective and an enjoyment perspective it's nice to people have some slightly different days she like oh another day of 28 reps [ __ ] that but 28 you get sick of after one day the next day you come in it sets a you know 5 to 10 like okay [ __ ] like this is different it's cool and it's equally effective on average what about weight the amount of weight that you choose should fall into two categories or two kind of clearance variables to make sure it goes through one is can you lift it to with good technique between five and 30 times in one set and two is that exhibition of your lifting at least within three reps is of failure cuz people will say like you give someone 10 lb dumbbells that can lift the 30s and they do five and they put it down they're like hypertrophy I hit five like but but the caveat there is that you have to challenge Cheng the muscle so the weight you end up using is whatever weight gets you within 5 to 30 reps Range close to failure and you you have to warm up to find that out and it's different for everyone but the idea that you got to go Ultra heavy to grow is true but it's not the only true thing you can also grow from light High rep [ __ ] you just have to push it close to failure why not to failure to failure is a totally fine thing as well there are downsides of going to failure all the time uh it seems that as you get closer to failure the amount of stimulus per set Rises so if you have a set where you stop at two rep shy failure and another person has a set where they stop just at failure or some someone has to drag the barbell off of them the person who went to failure is going to grow more muscle that's a good thing but it's by a small margin maybe just several per more growth the downside is training to failure generates a lot more fatigue probably not a few percent more maybe a few dozen percent more which is a big deal if you're going to use a program which mostly has you do three or two or one rep shy failure you'll get great stimulus and you'll be able to recover from lots of sets over the course of weeks and months which means you'll get a great stimulus and a great hypertrophy result if you insist on going to failure even Beyond in your sets you can get very good results but you have to reduce the total volume of your training because the amount of fatigue you accumulate is going to to be rapid it's going to happen fast so have you ever heard of like hit training Mike mener high-intensity training hit um Mike mener and those folks were fans of going to failure and Beyond with drop sets and crazy [ __ ] like that they got really good results but they don't do very many sets a few sets per muscle per workout it's all they do because they realize we can't recover from this you can recover from more if you stay a little shy of failure my suspicion is that if you want the best overall muscle growth and you have all the time in the world to train that somewhere between three and one rep in reserve on average for a program is a really good idea but you also want to test your [ __ ] every now and again it's difficult to say this says two reps in reserve if it's been months since you've actually gone to failure on that excise cuz you can be [ __ ] lying to yourself yeah it's two R someone puts a gun to your head literally maybe and they're like go to failure and you get six more reps well [ __ ] you it turns out you weren't even in that best growth zone of three to1 so what I would say is a method that we use at RP our app does this automatically it starts you a few rep shy failure and then it presents incrementally slightly heavier loads over the weeks or repetition goals that are slightly higher so takes you from 10 reps to 11 reps to 12 reps or takes you from 100 lb to 105 to 110 automatically because your body can't adapt that quickly you're going to reach failure a few weeks in four to six weeks in you'll not only have a whole range of going from three is uh in reserve all the way to zero which means you checked every box but you'll now know something about yourself you'll know exactly how high your best performances so for the next Messa cycle Next program you construct you can be like okay I know how strong I am let me start a little bit less than that and progress again to see if I can go a little bit higher so I would say going from some number of reps in reserve all the way to failure in a single Mesa cycle it's probably a good practice for many people but not required you can always go two or three reps in reserve as long as you do enough sets you get very close to Ideal hypertrophy outcomes and you'll do very well in muscle growth if you just take everything to failure you just have to really watch your fatigue management and not do too many sets cuz then you'll burn out what about sets sets are influenced by a few things one of the big ones is your proximity to failure so what I'm going to say next about how many sets you should do is if you go close to failure all the time you do on the lower end of this range at least start there if you do you know two or three reps in reserve you can be on the higher end of this range couple ways uh to think about sets there sets per week and there sets per session I like to think of per group session some people get overly obsessed about how many sets do I need to do per exercise there is an answer to that question but it's much more interesting to talk about per muscle group because you can train your chest with three exercises and do two sets each or you can train it with two exercises and do three sets each the total amount of working sets is by far the biggest determinant of how much muscle you're going to grow per session so in a session theoretically you can do anywhere from one set for your muscle just one set of curls in the leave and as a beginner especially you'll get some robust gains or as someone who's more advanced if you train your biceps every single day just one or two sets of curls ends up being a lot of weekly volume and plenty of stimulus and that's totally fine way to grow on the other end in the session you can do as many as 12 to 15 sets for the biceps or for the chest the downside there is on the higher ends of that Spectrum you reaching into what's called Junk volume where yeah you're training but your nervous system is so tired it's not even recruiting as many of the muscle fibers as you want anymore it's like it's taking the day off and you're just kind of robotically moving through that um 30 rep cut off theoretical very rough cut off of anything lighter than your 30 rep max probably won't grow as much muscle that's always and everywhere your fresh 30 rep max so if you're on exercise number five for your pecs you're doing cable flies with 100 lb for sets of 15 even if to failure that is to failure as we observe it externally with this pre fatigue but oh my God and at that point your nervous system is [ __ ] checked out a lot of your faster twitch muscle fibers the ones that grow the most they're not even [ __ ] Contracting anymore and you look at 100 pounds and someone's like how many reps did you do 15 how many could you have done if you were fresh like I don't know 40 well that's 10 away from 30 that already is starting to get junky it's just the stimulus isn't worth the fatigue anymore a couple of Studies have been done actually more than a few and a lot of good metaanalytic data has been synthesized probably some of the best of which is by a gentleman named James creger who has a lit review the weightology lit review I sign up for it I pay real money for it my own money Chris you know how painful that is to part of my own money and um he has uh hinted at the fact that close to the best answer on average huge cat on average is something like 5 to8 working sets per muscle per session so if you're training your biceps and you do three sets per session totally cool you just have to do more sessions per week if you're doing something like nine sets for biceps again totally cool you just have to train them less frequently so they can recover for a lot of nine sets of work but if you're doing 15 working sets for just your biceps in one session the literature would say that's not optimal and the reasoning would be like your last five sets are just a gigantic [ __ ] waste of your time you're just not you're cashed out it's like frying an egg after it's already fried just gets more burnt and nothing good happens to it on the other hand if you're doing just one or two sets for biceps per session you had better be doing a lot of sessions over the week and if you're only training once or twice for biceps you say look man your muscles could take more of a hit which brings me to my next Point how do you determine if you're doing the right amount of volume for you and I would actually keep this relatively simple however many sessions you have per muscle in a week which I'm sure we'll get to how many sessions is a good idea let's just say it's two let's say you train your chest on Monday you train chest again on Thursday if after Monday's workout let's say you're doing three sets of chest by Tuesday evening you're like not sore you're not tired you're [ __ ] ready to go your strength is as high as it'll ever be someone could ask the theoretical question of why the [ __ ] are you waiting Wednesday as a whole day to just go Thursday you could have already hit it again so if you're well beyond recovered next Monday you can do four sets or five sets for chest to get you close to just barely recovered for next Thursday if you're just barely recovered let's say Wednesday you're still a little tight a little sore a little weak feeling and Thursday morning you're really good to go perfect is that MV yeah so if you go over that value you might have exceeded your mrv well there's more technical way to diagnose that maximum recoverable volume but a kind of way to make sure you're not excessively over it so make sure you're healed on time but if you're healed too early then you could be at your minimum effective volume or even maintenance volume you think you're growing but you're really doing so few sets that you're not accomplishing a whole lot so the point is to challenge your body such that it is recovering until gee a day or several hours before you hit it again if you do eight sets of chest on Monday by the time Thursday rolls around you're still sort of a touch and you're weaker than usual you're not going to get as robust of a stimulus and thus you next time shouldn't do eight sets maybe you should do six so by adjusting the number of sets week over week for any given muscle to challenge yourself to recover close to just on time for the next time you hit it not too far back definitely not under recovered you end up Auto regulating yourself into probably close to your ideal volume for how much muscle you can gain how long do you rest in between sets yes oh in between actual sets as you go okay so I have a unique take on this you might not hear it in a lot of other places it's just one minute and it's the right answer for everyone next question no wait wait that's not it um a lot of answers you'll get on the internet from folks that also know what they're talking about is some number of minutes and I understand that answer because it's very usable let's say two to five minutes or something like that the problem is that is not a theoretically based answer it's just a it's just a notional answer like here's the number you're not really sure why and there are many exceptions for example if you train your calves and calf raises are you telling me I need to rest five [ __ ] minutes after my calves 10 seconds after I don't even feel lack gaset anymore I'm [ __ ] totally good to go so we do at our p is we have a four Factor checklist model where if you can checklist four things after your last set is over you can begin your next set as soon as those checklist items are checked you can wait longer and there may be some small upsides to it but someone could say if you wait much longer you're just kind of wasting time so here are the checklists number one your cardio can't be a limiting factor so if you just did a set of squats and you turn to your training part and you're like should I do another set no because then what's going to stop you in your set of squats is you can't breathe it's not your local quad musculature that's being brought close to failure remember the local musculature brought close to failure is the way we get the most robust gains that's the mechanism by which we grow so that's no good so wait until you're back to at least normal-ish breathing that's checklist one another one is kind of your neural nervous system strength which means do you feel do you feel strong like in here you know not in the pecs in the heart which we all know emotion comes from the heart no wait it's The Brain if you're [ __ ] like yeah let's [ __ ] do this you're ready if you still feel like curved up in a ball and defeated how are you going to push it close to failure in the next side you're not you're going to stuck so number one cardiovascular system needs to be mostly recovered number two you need to have your neural strength back like you need to be like yeah [ __ ] let's do this the second to last one is the synergists need to no longer be a liming factor for example in the squat you can say okay after 3 minutes I'm breathing normal I feel [ __ ] strong again and my quads feel like we're ready to go but my lower back is still cramping still has lactic acid it's still weak if you do another work set what do you think is going to be the limiting point it's going to be your lower back which means your quads are like did anything happen did we just try or what the [ __ ] went on if your lower back has five good reps in it but your quads have 10 good reps in them it doesn't matter if you tell yourself I'm one rep in reserve you're six reps in reserve for the quads for the muscle that matters so the synergists have to be good to go another example is forums and the lap pull down if your forums are still throbbing and you can't grip anything it's not time to do lat pull Downs again you got to [ __ ] rest out even if your lats feel quite good and that last four Factor model checklist is does the Target muscle have enough recovery in it for it to be able to do at least another five repetitions because any set less than five reps can be hypertrophic for sure but not not the most efficient use of your time is you're not sufficiently your comfort so uh let me give you two extreme examples one is calf raises uh just on the seated calf machine not the one where your legs are bent but the one where your legs are straight bent leg calf raises actually mostly hit the Sol muscle which is deep to the gas Rock it's not the cool big diamond shaped one it just sucks I learned a lot about this while I was trying to regrow the bottom half of my right limb yeah yeah that sucked well it worked yeah I actually overshot it I overshot it and had to regrow the other one more that's awesome yeah well yeah and the third limb looks quite good as well um so calf raises cardio uh three seconds later you're breathing normally you might have been breathing normally the whole time check when do you feel strong again could be 5 or 10 seconds later yeah my calves feel fine synergists there are no synergists the thing the machine starts at your hips and goes down there's no no synergist so that auto checks itself and then how long until I'm not feeling like my calves are full of lactic acid uh maybe five or 10 seconds so there is a world in which 10 seconds between sets is the right amount or a correct amount of time to rest for calves can you rest longer sure no big deal but you may be taking incrementally exponentially more time for linearly better gains which generally is just like just do another set and someone's like well if I do five sets where I rest longer I get just as much growth as if I do seven sets where I Le rest shorter yeah but the rest longer takes you eight total minutes to train and the rest shorter takes you three total minutes why don't you just do two extra sets you'll be four versus eight minutes wise and get the same hypertrophy so if a muscle [ __ ] pretty recovered and you're pretty good to go I say just go again and if you need more stimulus just add more sets so on calf raises it could be a correct answer to say it's 10 seconds rest four Factor model all checked out on squats for sets of 15 holy [ __ ] I've rested I did this one thing once which is on YouTube somewhere where I did uh 45 lbs four plates in the squat for five sets of 10 and I rested for something like 7 to 10 minutes between each set I also after set three and four and five I threw up independently after each one of those sets so it's going to take some time and honestly it was four Factor model based even though I didn't know at the time I came up with that [ __ ] later but like it took me four minutes to stop breathing hard it took me another several minutes for my [ __ ] lower back to be like okay I'm Healed enough so very different answers but generally the most simple way I can condense this whole conversation if you're ready to go again if everything's [ __ ] working and you feel strong go if you're not ready if you're breathing hard if you still feel weak if your muscles are still cramping you have to rest no matter what you saw on the internet 1 to 2 minutes 2 to 3 minutes those are allistic uh ideas this is a theoretical basis that's a bit more sound outside of the practicality of people just having lives outside of the gym some people that aren't you would know anything about having lives outside of the gym um is there a upper bound on how long your session length should be is there some accumulation of something that's happening in there when you just take time in the gym yes it assuming you're going pretty hard generally what we see is after about two hours of consistent hard training in the gym the amount of systemic fatigue you're going to have acute systemic fatigue short-term fatigue that lasts hours is going to be so high that you can no longer recruit individual muscle fibers very well for whatever you're training and it's kind of like it's just um yeah you're doing training but not much is happening you're much better off cutting off that session going and getting some rest doing more weekly sessions some people be like I train twice a week but it's three hours each time yeah but that last hour kind of [ __ ] sucks three times a week for two hours better in most cases now some people can train up to two hours and have really good performance especially of a intra workout drink with some protein and carb I was going to say obviously you're going to run out of fuel by this stage as well totally totally uh certainly down on fuel there's so many sleep token songs or blink2 that you can listen to as well that's right yeah you're going through your playlist to see what what [ __ ] uh so yeah generally under two hours for many people anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour and a half is where their best workouts will occur and you could have great workouts to last less than 45 minutes but I would say is a bit of a technical efficiency question there is especially with people with lives outside of the gym which is nominal concept I don't know about allegedly um if you [ __ ] got to the gym you went the locker room you stared at some dicks you put on your workout clothes you came out it's already such a sunk cost you might as well go Crush out an hour an hour and a half workout have like a one toone travel to training ratio on time yes and that's for some people not bad you just don't want it to go much worse than that uh so a lot of times people will say well aren't 20-minute workouts effective yeah if you do many of them throughout the week sure if you have really low ball fitness goals but I would say yeah get in there in 45 minutes or an hour and a half is a really good answer for many people if you do much longer than that the only question I have for you is do you still have a lot of [ __ ] energy to keep going and if the answer is like dude I [ __ ] my [ __ ] up after 2 hours and 15 minutes hey slow clap these are all averages apparently it works for you amazing but ask yourself like am I really doing the kind of work it's like um you see a guy talking to a girl at the club after five drinks it's [ __ ] what is it what the kids call it RZ he's got the RZ he's got oh [ __ ] off no I don't uh whatever that is I don't have it but uh you don't know I don't know what it is I do have it oh God okay there test I can take for RZ the nurse comes out and she just gives you a pamphlet shei is a death sentence I'm like oh [ __ ] God I knew how to do is it terminal do doctor I peed blue yesterday I knew it was bad comes out and tries to tell you that it's terminal but just gets lost in your eyes oh my God what's terminal again I'm like I don't know you tell me I try to like do Locks of my hair but I realize I'm [ __ ] bald see that's why I don't have is so five drinks in my man's kicking it you know you ever see someone lay down some game you're kind of like in the booth next to him and you're like [ __ ] and hit it she's like oh my God h a uh that's you in the gym after an hour right after two and a half hours you're like that guy laying down game after 15 drinks and you're like you know I'm like big on YouTube and she's like look man I'm gonna leave with my girlfriend's You're great and you're like I see Kelsey she's like it was Karen she walks off you're just watching it from the periphery like that guy should have stopped [ __ ] drinks ago you know that's two hours and 30 minutes in the gym guy just quit while you're ahead come back next time how often should people train each week sets muscle groups yes training frequency etc etc yes so there are two questions there one is how often should you train any given muscle per week and the answer to that is generally anything can work between one and six times you can train the same muscle even seven times a week if you like uh generally you can train it once neither one is going to give you the ideal although six is probably a better answer than one muscles just don't take that long to recover so people say oh I just I hit my chest once a week well how long were you sore for they're like well halfway through the week I was healed did you feel strong after like yeah how the [ __ ] are you waiting another three or four days just leaving like you could be [ __ ] doing it again but you're not so I would say anywhere between two and four times a week for the same muscle is a good idea two is great for a lot of people three and four is more for like specialization phases and folks that just recover really rapidly like yeah your chest might not heal three times a week from any kind of normal training but but your forearms might heal just fine you might be able to train him four five days or maybe 18 days a week like you seem to with your [ __ ] everyone's got something you yeah I had nothing for a long time chis I had nothing and no one that head though I I didn't even have the head back in the day you know how many when did you get that head when I started doing drugs I'm kidding actually have photographs of myself when I was lifetime drug free and my head is almost identically shaped quite sad as a matter of fact um there was a an uh an interaction I had in high school right I was talking to an acquaintance SL friend more acquaintance than friend and uh I had an interaction with a girl and I was like I had insanely low self-esteem in high school and I was like what did she think about that and he's like yeah she actually thinks you're you're really cute other than the way that you act at school a total introvert [ __ ] weirdo she was like and the shape of your head and I was like what the [ __ ] I didn't even know my head was shape weird back then so I had hair and stuff I was like what I just never made sense of it and then later um uh the internet told me that my head was shaped really funny so uh in any case two to four times a week is a great per muscle uh session number the other question is how many total sessions how many total times in the do I go into the gym so I'll say this for folks that just want to be healthy and already have a decent amount of muscularity two times a week is totally cool you train with weights Monday and Thursday whole body you're going to get a ton of great health a ton of benefits ton of physique it's going to be awesome for just general recreational Fitness you know like fit dad that kind of body if you're professional bodybuilder I'd like to see you training anywhere between five and that's on the low end and more like six to n sessions per week so Jared feather ifp Pro my biological son um he's currently in uh in Thailand I think lost found in a sense but also lost slowly colonizing something like that being colonized in any case colonizing Co oh lots of that yes so um that's why he's there so uh he trains usually nine times a week which means some days he does two a days he's literally a professional bodybuilder it's his job to do that what else you going to do he's got nothing else he sits in his apartment stares at a [ __ ] wall or he's training no wait that's me Jesus he sits in his apartment with ladies I've been told uh for a serious effort at changing your body composition at trying to get more jacked and lean if you've had enough of adult Fitness and you want to be that guy at work that's [ __ ] people are talking about three to five times in the gym per week each of them an hourish of in length hour to an hour and a half that's what i' call a serious effort so if I'm in the elevator with someone and they make the mistake of talking to me and asking me about workout routines and how they can get more jacked and they're like yeah I've been seeing games blah blah I'm gonna ask the question of how many times do you go to the gym per week if they say two I'll be like you could definitely benefit from going like three or four but if they say four or five any addition of days beyond that outside of an attempt at professional bodybuilding just yields very small Returns on investment it's what they're doing within the session that you're going to look at is that's what happens next if they say oh I train 5 days a week my next thing is to ask them a series of other questions which you and I I think will'll get to at the end of this is how to troubleshoot because there's a lot there's a big can of worms and some of those questions may not even be training related there all automatically be like how much are you sleeping and what's your diet like and then you get the whole like well you know ever since I started [ __ ] my secretary I sleep a lot less and I'm like hey my man but you could do less of that grow more muscle how should people progress weights over time that's important secretaries oh just in hypertrophy yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah progression over time very very important question so there are many ways to do it but some of the ways run into problems if you just add reps or load when you feel like it you could be on to something but also you could just be being a little [ __ ] you know like when exactly when you're squatting over four plates do you feel like squatting more than that [ __ ] that never I feel like not squatting at all on the other hand if you go up by very large amounts you risk some technical Decay and some injury probability your body's used to squatting four plates you put a fifth plate on there sure you're still good for a few reps but that is a very different exercise at that point your connective tissues are used to four plates they're not used to five some [ __ ] can go zigg when a chit a zagged and then and then you're [ __ ] so what I would say the safe bet and a good bet good bet from the perspective of kind of mandating herself to progress safe from the perspective is not extreme is one of two options maybe a combination of both adding just a little bit of weight to the bar every single week while you're in what's called your accumulation phase until you get tired and need a D Lo or uh adding a repetition maybe two so for example if you're doing push-ups at home by yourself where no one loves you no one cares if you live or die the mailman might say the smell is bad after a while and your cats have started to eat you you know that sort of thing if you're at home working out with push-ups you can do a set of 18 fresh close to failure next week it's 19 the week after 20 the week after that try 21 when you can't beat 21 and you get 20 your PEX are still tired and sore it's probably time for a few days off or a few days of active rest kind of situation recovery until you come back and start hitting it again and then you slowly climb back up 19 20 21 22 alltime PR amazing so adding reps is an awesome way to progress the other way is adding load small loads right the only kind I'm blown nowadays hey anyone no one all right um so you go 100 pound on dumbbell press then maybe your gym goes up by well [ __ ] it dumbbell press was a terrible example I'll say why in a sec barbell regular barbell bench press 100 pound week uh 10 reps week one week two try 105 still 10 reps then 110 then 115 then so on and so forth if you can't match or beat your PRS then you have to take some rest take it easy recycle those numbers and then try again the trippy thing about lifting and progression and hypertrophy and strength is you progress by these tiny little increments but tiny incremental progressions over months and months of training lead to Big gains some people get impatient and they want to [ __ ] slap the wheels on like they've been like pressing four plates for a while like yeah man [ __ ] feeling it today put five on that [ __ ] it's like okay but you could get hurt have smaller plates we do have smaller plates and you you'll be baffled as to why we have them it's for that slow steady progression well the there's another thing that happens as well which is people who are still using the exact same weight that they were 10 years ago it's my weight that I use I've heard people describe that like yeah I use three plates on the bench like okay you've attached yourself to a load very interesting I imagine that must happen a lot to you uh attach yourself to a load oh boy Chris if you saw our dungeon gy you I I get attached to all sorts of things through the skin do you ever do you ever total side note but there's this thing where people put hooks through their like back skin and they're hanging I've seen it a few times on the internet just just browsing it's not what I finish to but Midway through yeah start yeah Midway through I start with some seduction Midway through weird [ __ ] and it's like an INT session sort of pick me up little break yeah very nice M uh yeah but people do like you know I mean this is we could get under troubleshooting but from my side it's someone who's trained for 15 years and seen from the the Frontline Vanguard of the [ __ ] of the gym floor yeah the [ __ ] one of the one of the biggest pieces of [ __ ] is that no one's progressively overloading because nobody's tracking anything totally and you go in have for that and it's like link below and it's like uh 12 reps at at 18 kilos on side laterals like that's you know that's like on a good day that's how I feel and like that's what I do and like you've been locked in there for five years yes at that weight yes and if you want to just get the same physique at the end of the day every single time that's a swell way to do it but most people aren't in the gym to get the same physique they want better one of the really cool things about either increasing your load Andor reps is it forces you to [ __ ] try yeah 100 PB for 18 was something you could do this week you do 105 for 18 it might be really close to your limit or not kind of two extreme scenarios there one is like you hit your limit real quick hey congratulations you were training hard this whole time good for you but you tested it now you know the other one is you one 100 for 18 reps 105 110 115 120 finally at 135 you hit 17 reps guess what [ __ ] I got news for you you've been at 10 reps in reserve your whole [ __ ] life and all of a sudden the reason that you haven't been progressing is like oh [ __ ] I've never been training remotely hard enough uh so that can fix that problem big time that's why I really like that kind of uh a forward-looking progression formula yeah there's feedback in the mix but you have to challenge yourself in ways that are programmatic that might not be your per thing to do when I have a leg press session like so I use the RP hypertrophy app for my own training legit yes it's my app but I actually [ __ ] use it because it's [ __ ] awesome it doesn't always give me things that I want to do man last week I did XYZ on the leg press now it's uh one rep more and [ __ ] five pounds more I don't want to see that [ __ ] on there I want to go by feel and go light but the app's like hey science predicts you're going to be able algorithm says yeah Mr algorithm says shut the [ __ ] up and do it and then you can find a lot of inner strength if you have a goal that's a little bit outside of your ability you can find the inner strength to go you know what okay okay okay [ __ ] it I'll try and then you win and then you win again next week and you win again next week and when your body is physically too [ __ ] up to keep progressing you'll know because you'll be unable to match your old rep PR from the week before you did 500 for 19 to leg press last week this week you put 505 on like the thing says your goal is supposed to be 19 reps you get to 14 you're like oh [ __ ] help help and people [ __ ] press it up for you you get out you're like huh maybe it's just a oneof next leg session you come back you do the same thing on hack squat your legs are [ __ ] done they need at least half a week maybe a whole week of easy time to Deo but then you've earned your de lo you're not just de loing because you're like yeah [ __ ] it I'm not feeling training you know for a fact objectively you are no longer able to overload your musculature because you're not strong enough anymore you're not making progress then it's time to pull back so you get this amazing thing of you know exactly what to do each time and when you're done you know you're [ __ ] done it's like how do you know like how does the hero stop chasing the bad man in the movie that captured a little girl when he gets hit by a [ __ ] truck and he can't walk anymore you know he didn't give up you want to be that guy get hit by that truck of just a little bit more weight or load weight or reps than you could do how should people periodize the way that they put all of these all of this together by downloading the RPM per app Chris but if you're a person with too little money I would never associate you with you in person my Butlers might see you at the store or something like that uh but they don't generally look in your direction so um generally the progression should be roughly linear you add a similar small amount of load over time or repetitions sometimes both you keep progressing over time over some number of sessions until two sessions in a row you can't hit that same PR you hit in the last session you're no longer strong that means your current level of cumulative fatigue is too high to present the most robust Overload at that point you continue to progress linearly until you cannot progress anymore then it's time to do one of two things one is a recovery half week which means for half a week whatever you were going to do you take that same session and you divide everything roughly by half half the load half the Reps half the sets it's so [ __ ] easy it's a warm-up the whole workout takes 20 minutes that lets your muscles recuperate a ton so you have another few weeks of progression later if multiple muscles have AR to that breaking point at the same time and systemically you feel [ __ ] up your desire to train is really low you kind of sore all over and all the joints um you your maybe your sleep is kind of thrown off your appetite is lower that means you're just overreached total body then you probably need more like a week of half of everything that's called a D Lo week you take one of those and then you restart the progression of starting a few reps away from failure and next week add a little bit of load add a rep or two and go up up up so go up up up up up relax drop the fatigue how long how many weeks does this tend to be great question if you're training pretty [ __ ] hard in the first week which you should be through your up Shy failure at least above your minimum effective volume something to give you a pump and a little bit of soreness most people training that hard if they train four five or six times per week because the systemic fatigue is huge from that much training most people can't last longer am I right uh than about 4 to eight weeks if you a beginner you could go one year without D loing cuz you just don't you're not strong enough to accumulate enough systemic fatigue you see a guy squatting 500 for 10 you're like my motherfucker's going to be feeling I don't give a [ __ ] how good a shape he is he's going to need a de pretty soon it's so extreme that at the top ends of powerlifting a very fatiguing lift like the deadlift some of the world's best deadlifters go heavy in the deadlift really heavy and hard once every two or three weeks only for the deadlift every other week is a D Lo twoth thirds of the week through the year de lo that's how much one week it can fatigue you but that's insanely exceptional so i' would say for most hard trining people 4 to eight if you really know what you're doing four to six because if you really know what you're doing you're training super [ __ ] hard you accumulate fatigue faster if you're a beginner uh if you train twice a week or three times a week if you're training smaller muscles like arms and stuff you may be able to go 12 or 16 weeks without needing a Del Lo how do you know that you keep adding load to the bar or reps and you keep getting stronger then you're good to go keep going one thing we haven't spoken about is training splits is it chest and back mhm is it chest and triceps yeah what's what is the from a science perspective when it comes to splits yes let's go to the test tubes and the measuring devices you know science uh there are a few things I like to consider theoretically before designing a training split one of them is within the context of the workout itself when you ask like what am I doing today just make sure whatever you're training gets high quality training if you pair it with whatever else you're training here's an example of when that does not happen you do legs first and then you do chest for many people who are Advanced and training hard you know this after legs [ __ ] you ain't doing [ __ ] you might be peeling yourself off the gym floor the urine stain below you maybe even a [ __ ] stain if you really squatted heavy you're not doing anything but going home and eating and and drinking and recovering so legs and then chest just might not make any [ __ ] sense on the other hand if you have something like biceps and legs bicep training doesn't make you that [ __ ] up it's just not a very big muscle doesn't make you systemically tired you can't do it after legs because you got nothing after legs but you might be able to do it before so you able to do biceps first leg second that's a workable split in and of itself that's part one so muscles need to gel well together here's another example if you do back first and then legs after can be done but generally your lower back and midback are now so tired you're going to all of your squats and good mornings you're going to fold over because of your back not your legs you have [ __ ] up a limiting factor and now that's the really big problem so as long as the exercises play well together and the muscle groups play well together which is to say you can train everything you want it hard and the muscle itself is limiting factor there's no wrong answer someone someone's like is it cool to like train chest with back or is a chest with quads or hey as long as you can [ __ ] hit all the muscles hard no wrong answers the other construct that we use in program design is if the muscle has been trained already the next time we train it is it recovered enough to train again so for example if you say okay here's my program all right I'm training three days a week okay great Monday Tuesday and Wednesday and it's chest chest chest I have to ask you the question of by Wednesday what is it that you're doing with your pathetically deflated super weak chest n you're going through the motions your super fuckets are like ah this sucks if you simply move the routine to Monday Wednesday Friday you can hit chest all three days and there's enough time to recover between so one thing that I look if I'm looking over someone's program I look for what I just generally like heris describe a symmetry like where I look for each individual musle group like quads where they at quads Monday quads Thursday seems to make sense uh and then hamstrings Tuesday and Saturday seems to make sense but if you look have hamstrings on Tuesday and then hamstrings on a Wednesday I'm going to be like can you at least try to explain that does that make sense like it there's an uh an amount of time you want for healing it doesn't have to be exactly symmetrical but it's generally stimulate let it recover stimulate again here's another thing people say well whole body training doesn't work for me whole body every day it can if you lower the volumes of everything so if I'm doing back five days a week someone could be like this [ __ ] what if it's three working sets of back no problem because the the stimulus is small the recovery isn't great and then the next day I'm ready to go but if you're doing eight or 10 sets of back yeah you're going to be training back two or three times a week so with those two constructs is are the muscles getting their due Justice the way you've arranged them in each session and also is each session sufficiently far apart to get good recovery but also not sufficiently so far that it's just too much recovery and you're sitting around doing nothing those are the two core elements of program design or splits as they're called there are so many right answers within that universe but also many wrong answers that I can't say XYZ is the optimal split so good [ __ ] detector for anyone listening to this if anyone talks about like this is the best split for legs there would have two options one YouTube thumbnail title game total respect we play it too I love it or categorical [ __ ] [ __ ] because there are so many right answers to What's the best leg split so individually based as long as you do those two check marks so splits I'm very agnostic about there's lots of wrong answers but so many right answers I can't say say this is the best split whole body every day push pull upper lower uh push legs pull complex splits Jared and I Jared feather I Pro we do multi-day splits we do like uh chest and shoulders in the AM biceps and forms in the PM tons of right answers as long as within each session all the muscles are getting Just Desserts like I've hung out with people at the gym or after like deadlifting and squatting they're over there doing forearm curls I'm like how much are you getting that like dude I'm [ __ ] I'm not even here like it's a ghost curling it's 15 reps in reserve what's a [ __ ] stupid split whereas here's another example you really want to beef up your back and you're going to do tons of heavy bent rows because coach said you need a [ __ ] mid and thick lower back but you do it the day after you've done a crapload of deadlifts and stiff likeed dos what are you doing that's the wrong and so you need to do it three or four days later when your back is fresh again so those two things of exercises are getting check marked within the session and they're spread roughly evenly or in a way that allows for Recovery between sessions all that everything that lives in that universe is a correct answer to splits and everything else is minor why haven't we talked about Maya reps or rest paes or drop sets why why hasn't that factored into this is this just sprinkles on the top of topping on the top of cake yes it's a detail that is comes from at least two other variables one are you training sufficiently close to failure three reps two reps one rep zero or even beyond beyond failure that's the first question the other question is are you training in a proper repetition range of 5 to 30 repetitions if you're doing those two things there are many different set paradigms to get those two things uh I say the third one is are you doing the four Factor rest model so for example if you're doing myor reps in the curl you do a set of 12 you put it down 5 seconds later you pick up and do a set of six put it down set of four so on and so forth can we say that you're going close to failure yes can we say it's the right load selection we can what about that four Factor rest model well if after you curl for 12 and you're about to pick up and do your six reps my reps if you're like don't do it then it's an exercise that's not good for myups you'll notice something you'll see in RP all of our talk about myups we don't often do my rep barbell back squats there is no my repping that when you go close to fail you're [ __ ] done four minutes you don't just go back and do it but for calvs you can May rep till you're blue in the face you can superet you can do all that stuff so if you're bringing the muscle really close to failure the rep range is appropriate and whenever you're doing your next work set be at a super set my cluster set occlusion whatever the muscle is limiting factor because all the other things are cool there are like at least eight different kinds of training paradigms different modalities you can use straight sets down sets drop sets my reps uh what's it called super sets there's tons of other options no wrong answers as long as just to reiterate real quick you're getting close to F and everything the load selection is appropriate not too light not too heavy and you're actually targeting the muscle itself as a limiting factor which means you've checklist the four Factor r model what should people do if they're not making progress they're at a plateau they're the guy that's been using 18s on side laterals for 5 years what's the troubleshooting checklist for you're not growing you might be a [ __ ] or there might be something up with the training yeah just quit I would say that's my best uh throw yourself out window [ __ ] it when has training ever paid off was the number of times Chris that you've physically been laid in the gym to me it's zero and everywhere else also zero I don't even know why the [ __ ] we're doing this anymore I just anytime people say oh I'm really having struggleing and lifting weights my first answer is just [ __ ] just stop but if they don't accept that there's a couple other good ideas um the list technically of troubleshooting ideas is kind of infinite but there are a couple of big picture items you really want to think through or talk through if you're struggling with with the soul situation with gaining muscle one of them sounds very pedantic but nonetheless it's worthy of repetition how do you know you're not gaining muscle had a very interesting interaction once on social media where this gentleman asked me how come he can't gain weight even though he's eating a ton of calories I looked at his calories he looked at his body and I was like the [ __ ] and I was like look man my number one suspicion is that you're not actually eating this much food consistently he's like dude I'm telling you I am and I'm like okay fine I believe you I rule that out it ended up being after I thought about it for a bit and asked him a few more questions he actually was gaining weight just not as fast as he wanted but the the the rate was like half a pound per week it was totally fine so his initial submission of I'm not gaining weight was wrong but some people when they tell you I'm really not putting on muscle size go how do you know that there's only really one Golden Fleece way of figuring it out has your repetition strength in the exercises for that muscle group been going up over time or has it been staying really steady let's say we're talking about back how's your one-arm Dumbo row how's your bent row how's your cable row how's your pull-ups how's your pull Downs if they're like yeah man over last year I've really put on [ __ ] just tons of [ __ ] strength onto them Conversation Over [ __ ] of course it's [ __ ] muscle gain at some level you can't get neural efficiency for that long but if you are stalled in your exercises you're stalled in your body weight yeah you might not be growing so one big one off that body weight thing is are you giving yourself enough nutrients to actually gain muscle one of my I'll quote myself what a [ __ ] egotistical move that is I do it all the time my man quoting me or quoting yourself both my man if you weigh 150 PBS there's no way to gain ttain or main gain your way to 180 by the laws of physics you have to gain weight and the only way to gain weight is either strangely to reduce your physical activity which most people won't do or increase the amount of food coming in so sometimes people will struggle with muscularity younger folks oftentimes males in their 20s 30s 40s but yeah man I'm just not putting on size to be like how's your eating and you often you get this like well [ __ ] you know man any he sentence it begins with well yeah you're it's already off the cliff you know my boss is riding my ass I have a family asked about your diet right I didn't give a [ __ ] about boss you can [ __ ] while you're getting fired you can eat a burrito it doesn't matter m is in retrograde that's a real problematic one when you know what's funny about uh astrology is it always says something is in retrograde that you know it's not astronomy because one thing I like to ask astrologists is so which planets are an anterograde and they're like What's that like that's the opposite of retrograde you dumb [ __ ] read an actual astronomy book just kidding people watching this who are into astrology you know what I'm saying a lot of a lot of fine ass white [ __ ] love that [ __ ] am I right Chris is that your jam dude at one of my uh live shows that I did in Austin I did some work in progress shows uh and this girl came up after we' finished and she was very nice but I asked her what she did for work and she said that she uses Quantum healing in The Fifth Dimension to inform her crypto Investments I've been doing it in the fourth dimension this whole time no wonder my crypto [ __ ] is [ __ ] damn you Sam bankman freed that's intense man what did you what do you say she was did you just assume she was asked her to say it again I said hey can you tell me that again she did and I said that's the most Austin job I've ever heard of and she probably danced away on her Bitcoin ethereum carpet I don't know Jo coin yeah do have you ever gotten Sam bankman freed on this show no he's in jail ah [ __ ] can't you do like a jail episode where you set this whole thing up in prison I wanted to do it with the guy that ran fire Festival Billy McFarland Chris I I my brown Bell and Jiu-Jitsu and I'm little jacked and I'm Russian too I got the tough guy face if you have to go to prison to interview him bro I'll be one of your security guards free of charge I want to meet him you just want to be around men him particularly want to be to he's out of jail now so what the [ __ ] am I doing on a stupid muscle [ __ ] on your show you got a huge platform interview people that Mattery cancel this episode yeah I'm trying oh he's the guy that like did the whole like shorting of whatever he could have on the economics of it it's actually totally valid what he was doing believe it or not to get Brian Kaplan on here and he'll explain all that oh no way oh that's right I I watched him on you're amongst illustrious get him on here again cuz he's [ __ ] man uh he's ignoring my emails as usual um the martinelly guy I wrot a first of all very unfortunate name second of all the way he phrased everything was like are do you have a a PR firm that's working against you telling you to do this stuff in any case uh [ __ ] did we get on this [ __ ] yeah 5D qu Fifth Dimension Quantum power ethereum crypto trading informs my informs my crypto trading this is like uh she was great I mean she's going to be richer than all of us so or hopeless and alone with no Quantum Powers Yeah something else I've been thinking about during this conversation which we haven't spoken about yet motivation to train is that even a thing that's studied scientifically yeah okay what's the tldr motivation is something spoken about an awful lot it's kind of like the god of the gaps of a lot of psychology because people want to make doing things that they want to do but maybe difficult to do easier and that is motivation for them for the most part yes what does science have to say about motivation yes uh if if you care please remind me to come back with no stupid [ __ ] jokes about the troubleshooting stuff you we get that yes we do the thing yes yes so um there are a couple things to say about motivation one is motivation itself is technically in the construct of adherence is just one of the parts of it there's inspiration there's motivation there's habit there is um interaction between sort of willpower and all that uh goggin [ __ ] which is super valid in context and then there's something called passion which once you have a passion for something you no longer ask questions of motivation like people ask me like what motivates you to go to the gym I'm like I'm addicted to going to the gym it's like asking a crackhead like what what's motivating you to do that light up that rock what it's what I want to do right so there is a whole Rich psychology around just the one part we call motivation but that richness actually informs a lot of the things that it's a good idea to employ to increase your motivation we're really trying to increase this adherence trying to make you get to the gym make sure you get in there how you get in there doesn't much matter so one is having good sources of inspiration if you surround your social media if your feed has a lot of people who look like you kind of want to look a little bit like them and they've got a lot of positive and encouraging [ __ ] to say and a can do attitude that's a good start now it's not going to keep you in the gym but it might get your ass in there on a [ __ ] rainy day another thing is to set goals motivation is in many senses defined as the pull towards a goal you get rid of a goal you're technically not motivated to do [ __ ] like animals in a lab are motivated goal- based at least neurochemically you could have hubman on here I'll tell it to you better is like motivation is is goal oriented even if the goal is equalize this amount of chemical between one brain cell and another so if you have a goal of like I want XYZ amount of reps on my lifts that's realistic or even um a motivation like I want to be able to tell myself I mad enough to go to the gym four times a week every [ __ ] day this year that's my goal a process goal instead of an outcome goal that's a big deal if you goalless if you're going to the gym for some very general construct like get fit or have abs or something you haven't really Quantified in any way at all or really contextualized it's easy to be like eh it's like you have to be able to answer the question in your head of if you're sitting like you got home after work tough day at the job you sit down on your couch you have to give yourself a reason to get up if your reason is nebulous and like I think Fitness is something I told myself do you're not [ __ ] getting up when push comes to shove you're [ __ ] that beer and you're done but if you're like I told myself contract with myself I'm gonna [ __ ] make it four times a week awesome there's another part of this motivation thing that comes in with how easy are you making it on yourself you don't want to have a big barrier to entry training Partners help a lot you sit down on the couch and your training partner [ __ ] text you and he's like where you at [ __ ] you're [ __ ] probably going to show up if it's just you it's going to be tough if your gym is 15 minutes away you'll [ __ ] do this in California traffic for 15 minutes if it's 45 minutes away holy [ __ ] that makes it really tough another thing is doing the kind of stuff at the gym you like that's where the favorite exercises comes in if you [ __ ] can't wait to smash some deadlifts hey by all means [ __ ] that optimal [ __ ] go in there and get you some deadlift so there's a lot of stuff coming together another thing I will say this is just my own little [ __ ] spin on it this is a much richer conversation we could have in great depth I want to put this in a way that's both charitable and sufficiently comedic to be expressive if you have to ask how to get motivated to go to the gym you don't need to be going to the gym you don't want it enough when you're sick and tired of looking and feeling like [ __ ] you'll show up [ __ ] I'll see you there because you're going to look in the mirror and you're going to be like [ __ ] that you're G to want to be in the gym and if you're going to make this a lifestyle you have to lower the barriers make the gym cheaper closer train Partners exercises you like and you have to raise the impetus goals inspiration and [ __ ] goddamn real desire to be there the people that have no problem showing up to the gym are the people that want to be there and no amount of Rocky Balboa [ __ ] movies are going to get you to that place a lot of that is also built with the experience of having the gym be a place where you get results by pushing yourself winning little mini challenges and having fun with it when I think about what does the gym mean to me I still remember what it meant to me when I was 15 and first walked in it was a Scary Place full of scary people that had scary things going on and I was bad at them I didn't want to be there after 25 years of training the gym is my spirit home anywhere I go I could be anywhere in the world one thing I like to do is I come into a gym let's say I'm traveling go to Thailand or some [ __ ] like that after enough lady boys you got to hit the gym you're not even strong enough to lift them up anyway uh so I come into the gym and I I I've been doing this for for a generation I grab a barbell and I just cinch in like a deadlift grip it's some kind of [ __ ] Spirit connection I belong in the gym because to me the clanking and the groaning and the smells and the machines they are experiential symbols of progress of Love of passion of feack mechanism yes of a good time so one thing is get yourself into the gym however you see fit consistently have a good [ __ ] time there doing what you love push yourself get those little Min victories RP hypertrophy apps as you're doing a little better over time and let that fill you up uh let that grow on you and then after a while also it feels great especially after the workout you like after a really solid leg workout someone could punch you in the face you be like ah that was pretty sweet endorphins see you next time buddy that's it you don't give a [ __ ] that stress relief every you're driving home after the jam hard day at work blah blah blah you're like thankful for [ __ ] it's it's like a post mushroom trip clear every single time and it's good for your health it's just all these [ __ ] massive green [ __ ] boxes all around you get into that habit and that's the big part of habit you get in the habit of doing the gym and it's all this hurricane of positive influences and reinforcement you're not going anywhere 3 days after not being in the gym like you know your [ __ ] mother-in-law drags the family to like some [ __ ] cabin in Northern California just us having fun as a family no gym after three days you're like you guys this is going to turn into some mans and [ __ ] if I don't get the [ __ ] out of here you're at the local gym doing this and then everything is right again so getting up to that point don't push yourself so hard that you hate the gym remember it's all voluntary it's all for fun it's a Leisure activity I have a PhD and a [ __ ] Leisure activity someone with PhD and bowling is equally amount of social value probably more so it's all good start start easy get to the gym twice a week maybe three times 30 minute workouts 45 minute get some progress going get into the Habit make it easy on yourself once you're in the habit for long enough you can start to crank up the intensity and you're going to want to be there and you never have to ask yourself the question again of what motivates you to go to the gym because the answer is that's where I want to be what else didn't we cover in troubleshooting what are the other big ones yeah um have you been to our earlier conversation purposefully progressing in loads of reps you haven't been pushing yourself what the [ __ ] is wrong with you like one of those guys that you mentioned like he's doing the 18 kogam dumbbells all the time have you tried the 20s have you tried doing more reps so uh making sure that person is kind of Gunn to the Head treating it as a thing another one is where are you on the balance of recovery uh versus Under recovery versus over recovery if you ask someone like oh man my legs haven't [ __ ] grown okay how hard are you training your legs like pretty [ __ ] hard how long do they get sore for like well I just don't don't get sore anymore I got sore for the first couple months of training [ __ ] anyone training legs properly properly is just going to be sore from when they finish the leg workout or a few hours later until the day before their next leg workout unless it's a deal week in perpetuity if you train intelligently that's definitely something I think that people get used to which is this uh conditioning to training MH where you you only are saw after the Christmas break yes you only are saw after the D Lo weeks and then your background and it's like oh yeah you know like weeks 4 through eight I I'm fine I'm just like I'm just recovered ask yourself to the person who is in that position ask yourself the philosophical question of is what doing I've answered that in the affirmative long ago uh I tried the whole mirror thing where I look in the mirror and I'm like you're a world renowned power bottom still oh yeah well that I earned um ask yourself a philosophical question if you're used to some [ __ ] and it's no longer experientially challenging for you are you really so sure you're growing your best overload is a principle and training but it transfers into psychology as well your body's pretty [ __ ] good at detecting what's challenging for you if you're psychologically pushing yourself to the limits quite often you can rest assured you're probably working hard enough if you've been used to some [ __ ] for months and you're wondering why it's not growing you why the [ __ ] would it grow you the body generally likes to resist being changed in many ways because in our evolved ancestral environment we're very resource constraint you don't want to piss away tons of resource for hypertrophy you have to continually challenge yourself so if someone's like well yeah I'm like recover is not a problem I'm GNA be like try training harder try training more if they say dude I basically can't recover I'm gonna say pull back so it's two different answers based on how you're doing it it's like it's like if you're uh helping someone with your area one of your many areas of expertise which is I assume talking to women for the eventuality of getting them to do fun things with you if a guy's like basically saying nothing and he comes up to you he's like what did I wrong like you got to talk [ __ ] if you got to RIS it up but if he sits there like me and he's like she's like you're like cut you off let me keep going you're like come here you have to talk less same with the recovery thing pluses and minuses um I already mentioned the nutrition the food thing sleep is huge I I'll put it very very simply for sleep I could talk a lot more about sleep and all the technicalities I'll say it this way if you are chronically underslept I actually don't need to hear about your program or your diet I don't give a [ __ ] because it's all just downhill it's like telling me about how awesome your new fighter plane is but I'm like what kind of fuel are you using you're like I we're supposed to put fuel in it I'm like the [ __ ] out of my face you have to sleep it's critical it's the Cornerstone of everything how do you know you need enough you're not getting enough sleep if you can't stay awake throughout your day without like a medical dose of caffeine you need to sleep more could be nine hours for you consistently could be six Ronnie Coleman apparently slept five or six hours a night more or less his whole life looks recovered to me you know uh huge genetic differences there and sleep requisite but you have to be getting enough sleep so enough sleep enough food the training has to be sufficiently hard and you have to recover and then everything else is details you could play with rep ranges frequencies so on and so forth that's a troubleshooting list that's available on our YouTube channel there's like an hourong [ __ ] but those are kind of the big pictures that I want to talk to people about dude you're Legend I really appreciate what you guys are doing over at RP it's genuinely genuinely uh a big change I I think back to when I first started training 2006 2007 scraping the bodybuilding.com Forum try to find a m that might have the on how to get bigger and uh putting horny goat weed in your custom my protein I still do that did I not get the memo right okay uh no it's just it's really great I really really appreciate what's happening with this sort of evidence-based Community I think that I genuinely think that what you guys are doing is making way more people way more jacked with way less uncertainty so if that's not moving Humanity forward in a a good way I don't know what is Chris thanks so much man um that really is our [ __ ] at RP like all the [ __ ] PR and marketing lingo aside and all my rich guy jokes um we're trying to help intelligent careful people get the best information and digital tools they need to make their best results because Mr Nick Shaw and I the CEO co-founder of RP we came up in a similar World in which you did where was all Bro Science nonsense and we saw that just normal [ __ ] smart people were not getting answers to their questions they had the money they had the intelligence they had the time there's just too much goddamn [ __ ] around so when we start RP we're like you know what we're not going to do [ __ ] just facts sometimes that doesn't sell that well and some people ask us like hey can you put XYZ types of workouts in your app the answer is no because they no nowhere near optimal you want someone to hold your hand uh and and do things that you think are fun dope tons of other great companies to do that you want results uh you come see us and a few of the other evidencebased folks in the space where should people go they want to download the app and [ __ ] if I know man I get that [ __ ] for free my Butler's download it for can we get my buters on the show you imagine like three-hour episode with one of Dr Mike's Butlers you're like what's your name he's like I'm Butler 57 you're like oh oh God you don't have names absolutely not sir doesn't like us to look at him in the eyes Sir doesn't like us to know him by as he answers that he kind of like tilts his eyes away like that is an abused man I've seen that before that's hot um honestly the best place to go is probably just the YouTube so Renaissance priorization on YouTube if you can't spell that I can't spell that RP strength if you can't spell that Dr mikee muscle search the channels in black and red it has RP just get in there watch the videos or Nails very well optimized we had some advice from uh Mr Chris Williamson back in the day dude I appreciate you thank you for coming through I love being out here thanks so much guys thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode with Mike you will love my 2hour long conversation with Mr Olympia Chris Bumstead which is available right here go on press it