Maximizing Muscle Growth (with Pat Davidson)

In this episode, renowned hypertrophy expert Pat Davidson does a deep dive on building muscle, including:

• The required stimulus for hypertrophy – what is required for your body to put on muscle
• Key training considerations to maximize muscular development
• How the longstanding assumption that a specific hormonal response to training was required for building muscle may be misguided
• Special considerations for athletes that want to put on muscle
• What “hard gainers” – people that really struggle to put on muscle – can do to maximize their progress
• Key nutrition and supplementation strategies to maximize hypertrophy

Evolve with Pat:

• Instagram: @dr.patdavidson
• Website: DrPatDavdison.net

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Transcript

Kevin Neeld (00:01.71)
Hey Pat, thanks for doing this, really excited to have you on.

Patrick Davidson (00:04.844)
Well, I'm thrilled to be on. We go quite a ways back and I've always had nothing but the highest level of respect for you. And I think this will be a very interesting conversation. So I'm thrilled.

Kevin Neeld (00:14.926)
Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it. I appreciate that. let's jump right into it. I think, you know, my goal for today was to really do a deep dive on hypertrophy with you. I think this is a topic that is really important for athletes to understand. You know, I, in most sports, especially team sports, the players get bigger and stronger as you ascend the levels. So, you know, understanding, how to put on muscle and the best ways to do that, I think is really important, but it also has implications for non -athletes that are

know, interest in improving their health or their body composition, physique, whatever the case is. So, you know, before we get into talking about methods to help put on muscle, can you talk about what actually causes hypertrophy? So, you know, in other words, what are the mechanisms that signal the body to grow?

Patrick Davidson (01:02.156)
Yeah, this is an interesting topic, I would say, because when you get into, you know, over, like we know a lot about protein synthesis, because the answer to the question is what are the mechanisms that drive hypertrophy? It's protein synthesis. Protein synthesis has to outweigh protein degradation. If that happens, then you have an accrual of proteins.

And, you know, when we're talking about skeletal muscle, it's contractile proteins and structural proteins. We'll get into some of that. But, you know, we know so much about protein synthesis because it's directly in line with Watson and Crick and the discovery of DNA and the central dogma theory of biology, which is signal, environmental signal going to DNA, which then codes for RNA.

which makes proteins, okay? So it's always signal to DNA to RNA to protein. And that was Nobel Prize winning science and one of the most important discoveries we've ever had in the scientific community and probably the most important discovery in biology. So, you know, we understand the pieces of protein synthesis because it is going to be an activation of a specific part of the DNA.

And then we make a copy of that segment of the DNA, which is called RNA. And then that RNA travels outside of the nucleus and goes to the ribosome. And at the ribosome, we assemble a protein. So, you know, with this, we have the copying of the protein at the level of the DNA to make RNA. And then we have the RNA going to the ribosome and the information

in the ribosome is utilized to build a protein at the ribosome. So we have these two steps. We have transcription, which is the process of copying the DNA's code onto RNA. And then we have translation, which is the process of the RNA's information being utilized as a blueprint to basically build the protein. So that is mechanistically kind of like what's going on.

Patrick Davidson (03:22.06)
And we know in biology with these things, you're always looking for what's the rate limiting step in a process. And the rate limiting step is in translation. It's not in transcription. And inside of translation, translation again is the process of taking the blueprint of the RNA and actually constructing the protein at the ribosome with that. And we do that by going around the cell and gathering amino acids and then

putting the amino acids together in a triplicate formation and stringing these triplicates along until you've built the protein. So the rate limiting factor is in translation and we know that inside translation, because translation is like a million steps, it seems to be that the rate limiting factor is this step called mTOR, which is the mammalian target of rapamycin. And we believe that the thing that

So you are always trying to keep mTOR active and you don't want mTOR to become inhibited. And it seems as though the thing that keeps mTOR active is when there's a specific concentration of leucine, which is an amino acid, present inside the ribosomal region of the cell. So when leucine falls below threshold levels, then it seems as though mTOR shuts off.

And when mTOR shuts off, the entirety of protein synthesis seems to stop and we no longer synthesize proteins. So like that's like a pretty easy answer. Unfortunately, it's not very helpful in a lot of ways because, you know, people are like, what do I do? Just like keep blasting leucine. And that doesn't really seem to work. You can't just infuse leucine and just have the machinery go.

what it speaks to is that there is this process. And as long as the process rolls, then yes, you will be continuing to synthesize proteins. But it seems as though there's a lot of stops that can take place. And potentially also some areas that you can look at is like, as long as you're checking these boxes, you're probably going to facilitate this process fairly nicely.

Patrick Davidson (05:45.132)
You know, so what it comes down to really is like, you, you see that there's like certain levers that you can pull that allow protein synthesis to work at a pretty high level. And these would ultimately be the signals that you're sending to initiate the process. So we kind of have, you know, resistance training or, you know, creating muscular tension as an area of signal. We have a nutritional status.

as an area of need and signal and as well as like just requirement to be there like assembly materials. And then we have areas such as like lifestyle, sleep, you know, stress management, things like that. You know, it's when you get into the mechanisms, people try to take advantage of it and sell gimmicky products and crap like that. But unfortunately, like

where the mechanisms seem to lead us in terms of like things like human randomized controlled trials and studies on what kinds of training methods actually work. It seems as though it leads us sort of like to a lot of these things of like the basics are really, really critical. So what you really need is a foundation in your life to be able to drive this stuff is you need to have a sufficient level of protein, which is

a gram per pound of protein, a gram per pound body weight of intake. So a 200 pound person would need about 200 grams of protein. More than that doesn't seem to be beneficial. And you need to be in a total calorie surplus. So if you are in the maintenance level or in a deficit, you're probably unable to drive any appreciable muscle gain.

you know, no matter how hard you're training, no matter what else is kind of going on, unless, you know, something like steroids would be in the mix. But thinking along the lines of like a normal natural athlete, you really need to be able to put yourself in a calorie surplus, or every other piece of the puzzle is going to be meaningless. Now, on top of that, there needs to be some level of resistance training. And we're probably going to talk about some of the

Patrick Davidson (08:08.748)
the specifics about the mechanics involved with what seems to be ideal. But what we can kind of say is that people have lifted weights for a long time and there seems to be a pretty widespread of methods to be able to use for resistance training input as to what would grow tissue. So if you are lifting enough weights with some form of resistance training, you're in a surplus

and sleep seems to be this really critical ingredient as well. You know, insufficient levels of sleep will sabotage you in ways that we really can't even mechanistically explain altogether at this point. But, you know, at the end of all of this stuff of protein synthesis discussion and signals and Watson and Crick and blah blah blah, it's kind of like you need to train, you need to eat, and you need to sleep. And if you're doing those things,

then you're going to provide the general environment for being able to grow skeletal tissue.

Kevin Neeld (09:08.61)
No, that's great. And that's a good segue into let's dive into a little bit more of the resistance training strategies that people might use. Cause I, you know, I think when I, when I was first introduced to, to strength training, you know, I was 13 years old. I was lifting with my older brother at the local gym. You're doing body parts splits. And, you know, I, at the time that was kind of all, all we knew, you know, we're pulling from old school magazines and whatever we can get our hands on and

Patrick Davidson (09:29.196)
Mm -hmm.

Kevin Neeld (09:36.942)
I feel like so much has evolved and changed over the last 20 plus years since I was going through that. But still, that's what a lot of high school age kids first exposure to strength training looks like. It really, wherever that messaging is coming from, it seems like that is still the approach that is the entry point for a lot of people into strength training.

The reality is because the window of adaptation is so large for people that are untrained and particularly, and maybe we can touch on some of this too, but the hormonal environment of particularly high school age males at that time, it's gonna work for them. So I think that there's this thought process of like, well, I did this and then it really helped me a lot without an appreciation for, was that?

the best strategy for that goal and will it continue to work forever? So, or moving forward. so, you know, let's kind of talk, you know, I think with hypertrophy, you know, as two extremes, you kind of have, you know, you see some of these world -class cyclists that have just huge legs. And then on the other side, you have power lifters that obviously have developed a lot of muscle mass. And, you know, if we remove the, the pharmaceutical interventions,

Patrick Davidson (10:34.924)
Yeah.

Patrick Davidson (10:56.428)
Mm -hmm.

Kevin Neeld (10:56.462)
from the conversation, you're left with two somewhat extreme opposite approaches, but in not that the outcome is the same, but both of them have developed some muscle mass. So can you touch a little bit on, you know, maybe what are some of the common threads that are leading to hypertrophy despite, you know, what is, what is happening in the body that's leading to hypertrophy maybe in those two extremes and then

Patrick Davidson (11:09.612)
Yeah.

Kevin Neeld (11:22.318)
You know, talk a little bit about what some of the big rocks are from a strength training standpoint that can lead to hypertrophy.

Patrick Davidson (11:26.508)
Yeah. You know, I'd say that it's really hard to remove steroids and performance enhancing drugs from the conversation because you know, as long as those things have been around and they've been around for a long time, like people will get their hands on them. And you know, I don't.

I don't think that food or resistance training is as powerful of a signal and a stimulus for growth as performance enhancing drugs. Like that is a better tool than everything else for being able to drive muscle. And, and I think that you bring up a really good point of seeing like kids and puberty teenagers being able to drive really good growth because they're in a chemical environment that is promoting growth. So

It's not dissimilar from performance enhancing drugs. It's an environment that promotes growth. And you know, you can see people, it's almost like alchemy with performance enhancing drugs. Like someone could be in a really terrible diet and use really kind of like crap training and still have amazing growth takes place where it's like, that shouldn't happen. Like what are you building this tissue from? You're literally able to eat your own fat and use that as energy.

to drive the machinery of protein synthesis to grow tissue. And it's kind of like, wow, that really kind of obfuscates the conversation. So, you know, that's what it does ultimately is it's kind of like, it's hard to evaluate from a scientific controlled perspective or discussion, like, hey, what works? Because we have this enormous variable that's probably more powerful than any others that more people are probably using than we know about. And it just makes it hard.

we do have a pretty decent amount of scientific evidence at this point and there's, there's some good backing. And so there are some, I think there's some decent recommendations that you can go with for like, what's a good idea from a resistance training standpoint to really drive muscle. And so, you know, I think you have to start from like the most basic place of, do you have an exercise that actually targets and works a muscle? You know,

Patrick Davidson (13:44.556)
And I love the bringing up cycling, like the velodrome cyclists that do have like monstrous quads and very obviously peddling one of those bikes is clearly a quadriceps specific exercise. And you can see that reflected in the development of the quads. So if you, you know, long story short, you're not going to grow big biceps by squatting. You know, it's just not specific enough. Like we're really

operating inside of the principles of training, which is going to be specificity and overload, individual differences and reversibility. Like kind of everything ultimately comes back to those four pillars. And the more that we're able to dive inside of specificity and overload in particular, we get a sense of like what really works. So on the specificity pillar, you know,

The exercise needs to be specific to the muscle. And it seems as though we have to drive fatigue into the muscle and we have to make the muscle create tension and work in order to be able to respond in the aftermath. So that's like as dumb as it gets, but also still like important because there are people out there that like subscribe to this like drink a gallon of milk and squat every day.

concept for overall body growth and it's like well that doesn't make a ton of sense if you want to draw you know if you want to build your shoulders in your chest that's probably not the best way to do it you probably need to do some exercises that would create you know follow the anatomical pathways of that particular muscle from insertion to origin and the you know the joint actions that it creates so that's number one

Now number, the second thing that I think is really the most important thing in terms of the hierarchy of variables is, is the exercise supported? You know, I think that people make the mistake of like operating in open space in very unstable environments with their exercise selection. And that's not a great setup to be able to drive enough force into a muscle tissue.

Patrick Davidson (16:05.58)
So, you know, I operate with this concept that I refer to as ground that I look at as like the most unifying concept of exercise science as I see it. So, you know, I define ground as interacting with external support and interacting with things that provide neurological feedback. So,

And I actually organize athletes according to a ground spectrum. So I kind of look at like low ground athletes that interact with very little ground on one end of the spectrum, which I would say like good examples are divers and half pipe skateboarders. And on the other end of the spectrum, athletes that are high ground would be like power lifters and the interior linemen in football. So when I look at what makes someone a great low ground athlete,

I think that it's the ability to turn and tumble in space at high velocities. And when I look at what makes someone a great high ground athlete, it's the ability to prevent yourself from being turned and tumbled by external forces. And there's certain adaptations that make you better at being a great high ground athlete. And I think that's generally building more mass and more skeletal muscle tissue.

And I think that there's certain adaptations that make you better at low ground athletics. And I think that that is having really great joint positioning and being able to have incredible motor control and ultimately increase your mechanics for what would make you be able a good Turner and Tumbler, which is a deeper conversation than what we want to get into here. But so I think that

You can also categorize exercise along this continuum as well. So, you know, when I think about high ground exercises, if I'm talking about a squat pattern, for instance, an exercise that would have more external support and more feedback would be something like a hack squat or a pendulum squat. You know, it's got a back pad. It's got hand holders. It's got handles that you would hold on to. It's got a foot plate.

Patrick Davidson (18:22.828)
It's on a track, so it only moves along that line. You know, it really is going to, what I think about from this perspective is the more ground that is inserted into an exercise, the higher the probability that the person is going to recruit and fatigue the target tissue for the motor pattern for that particular motor pattern. So if someone, you know, like a very high ground squat is like I said, a hack or a pendulum.

A high ground squat would be something like a barbell squat. A moderate ground squat would be something like a split squat. A low ground squat would be something like a split squat in the frontal plane. And then a very low ground squat would be some kind of a lateral stance frontal plane split squat. That's sort of the way that I categorize things. And the

Basically, when I'm looking at the athlete, I put them on the ground spectrum for where I believe they reside. And then I put, I ultimately try to match them with similar ground exercises as the majority of their training volume. And then they would receive some level of volume outside that exact slot for the remainder of their volume. But when I look at someone and I say, hey, I want to put as much tissue on you as possible,

I generally go with very high and high ground choices. And I just stay in that wheelhouse and I don't really bother with the exercises in moderate to low ground. You know, basically it's like, you need to be able to anchor yourself with external support so that you can create more leverage with your joints to be able to drive things with more force. You know, when

When you really get down to the concepts around utilizing resistance training to grow tissue, there's potentially a few signals that could be being sent to the DNA to initiate the protein synthesis concepts. Historically, we've talked about tension and metabolites and other waste products and things like that, but it seems as though the only thing that's really remaining at this point is tension.

Patrick Davidson (20:49.996)
It seems like metabolites don't really matter. You know, pH doesn't matter too much. Heat doesn't matter that much. It's just purely tension. So when I'm trying to think of ways to establish exercises that can drive as much tension into a muscle as possible, the first thing that comes to my mind is it needs to be strongly externally supported so that I can really go in and hammer that particular muscle with a lot of force.

Now, after I've looked at that, which I still, I look at it as like, that is the most critical variable. And when I see people, like I go to the gym all the time and I just see people like kind of flopping around with unsupported exercises. And I'm like, I don't know what you're working with this exercise. You could be working a million things. You know, exercise to me is almost like trying to putt a golf ball, which is, it's hard, it's hard to do.

But if you're moving around the whole time as you're trying to putt, you're really decreasing the chances it's going to go in the direction you want it to. You want to be very still, anchor yourself so that we know what the only moving thing is, is like, you know, shoulders are in club. I don't want, you know, knees and hips and back moving all over the place. I'm going to increase my probability of hitting the target with fewer moving pieces. So,

Now, like once I've established that as kind of a foundation for the design of the exercise, now I can look at a couple of other variables, which would be like the velocity and the length of the tissue. So, you know, what I look at like from a velocity spectrum is if you're able to move fast, it's you, you're not, you have not done what you need to do to be able to drive growth.

Like you might start a set fast, but the set needs to end very slow in order to provide the appropriate stimulus for growth. you know, we, we have this concept of, of relative intensity within resistance training, and it speaks to the idea of like, how many reps did you have left at the end of the set? And, this reps in reserve relative intensity thing.

Patrick Davidson (23:14.508)
seems to be a very important characteristic of exercises that drive growth. So if you are farther away than like two or three reps in reserve, the exercise is basically going to do nothing from the perspective of driving growth. You have to get very close to the point where you wouldn't be able to perform another rep. You have to get very close to failure. And the main indicator of approaching failure is the velocity of the exercise.

So the exercise ultimately has to become very slow as a characteristic to drive growth. The last area that I look at is the length of the muscle tissue. Okay. Well, actually two areas. I have to look at the length of the muscle tissue and then I have to look at the resistance profile, which is found through examination of the resistance moment arm. So...

It seems as though there's been a really interesting emerging body of research over the last three, four years about lengthened partials versus shortened partials versus full range of motion exercise. So, you know, some of the early studies took a look at like a leg extension or maybe like a tricep extension, you know, all of these like single joint exercises. And they just had the participants, you know,

equate volume and do a full range of motion rep or a lengthened partial so only the part that's in the big stretch position and stopping midway or shortened partial so like midway to the top of the motion and what they found was that the lengthened partial seemed to grow just as much tissue as the full range of motion rep and that the shortened partial was significantly less growth compared to

either full range or length and partial. So then they started to say, well, is it only the lengthened part of the movement that actually seems to be growing the tissue? And, you know, they've done further studies to take a look at like, well, what if we kind of modify a leg extension and we put the person, we really have them way, way back so that we put them into more hip extension. Does that grow the rectus femoris better?

Patrick Davidson (25:34.092)
than if they're sitting upright as they normally would in the seat. And it does, it seems to create a more prolific growth response by putting the muscle into greater length during the exercise performance. So it was kind of like, wow, length, length, length, length, length, everything should have length. And then, you know, there's been a couple clever studies that have played around with the resistance profile. One in particular that took a look at

an incline bench dumbbell curl versus a preacher curl with a dumbbell. So if you're doing an incline bench dumbbell curl and you're laying back onto the incline bench, your arms are hanging down by your side. At the bottom of that exercise is the most lengthened part for the bicep. And in that place, the dumbbell is basically directly under the elbow joint. And so when you're talking about moment arms, the resistance moment arm,

is the horizontal distance between the working joint and where the load is. So if the dumbbell is directly under the elbow, there's basically no resistance moment arm. There's no horizontal distance. As you lift the dumbbell up, you're moving the dumbbell horizontally further away from the elbow, you're increasing the resistance moment arm as the exercise shortens. So, you know, with an exercise like that, you're

Biasing the mid -range and because as you go into the short position, it's coming back towards the elbow So you're decreasing the moment arm. So, you know the Torque is the only real thing that matters. Okay, and torque is the combination of load and the horizontal distance away from the rotating joint so

An inclined dumbbell curl would favor more of a mid to short position of the biceps versus a preacher curl. As you're lowering it, the dumbbell horizontally continues to move further and further away from the elbow. So it's biasing. There's more and more torque as it gets longer and longer and longer. This study showed that the preacher curl significantly outperformed the inclined curl.

Patrick Davidson (27:54.604)
from a biceps growth perspective. And it's sort of leading towards this idea that if you really want to create a great growth exercise, you want to feature this combination of reaching a point of muscular length and combining it with a large resistance moment arm. So you can really start to look at exercises and say, well, a dumbbell lateral raise doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

from this lens because the stretch part for the shoulder is the bottom and the dumbbell is directly underneath the shoulder and the hardest part is the top where the muscle is very short. Now if you encounter something like that, there's solutions. You can always use a cable and change the angle of the cable so that it's going to bias the length and part for the deltoid.

you start to look at compound exercises and you realize why they're so effective because in a squat, for instance, as you're lowering the weight, the weight now stays over midfoot, but the knees and hips are horizontally moving away from the location of the load. So the horizontal distance between the working joints and the load is increasing due to the movement of the joints. And you get a sense of why

deeper squats tend to work better for promoting growth because the lower you go, the more that the joints move away from midline. So the more torque you're putting on those tissues and joints and you know, long story long, like the tension variable is probably the most critical piece. And so tension increases as you

move joints away from like as the horizontal distance between the joint and the load increases torque increases and the muscle has to create more tension to match or overcome the resistance torque demands that are being placed on it. So length is an avenue into tension is what I think is emerging from all of the analysis on this. So

Patrick Davidson (30:18.54)
If I can anchor parts of the body appropriately and give the person support and feedback and then drive length and torque into the exercise, I probably have the best case scenario from an exercise selection standpoint, as long as the person is putting enough effort into every set to where the velocity drops off significantly by the end and they're really getting close to failure.

Kevin Neeld (30:48.302)
So I want to, I'm glad you kind of ended on that note because I wanted to go back to that reps and reserve and the relative intensity idea. And, you know, one of the things that I think comes up and talking about hypertrophy is, is kind of like an optimal set and rep range. You know, was it better to stick with, you know, sets of one to five reps and accumulate more volume by adding more sets or is it better to stick with more moderate loads and

Patrick Davidson (31:03.596)
Mm -hmm.

Kevin Neeld (31:15.63)
you know, accumulate fatigue through higher rep set. So, you know, when you talk about that two to three reps in reserve is kind of a demarcation line where if you're not, if you're not crossing that, it's probably not a potent stimulus for growth. You know, if you're doing a set of four or a set of 20, that two to three reps in reserve represents a significantly different percentage of the total volume of the set. So.

Patrick Davidson (31:45.388)
Go.

Kevin Neeld (31:45.933)
You know, I, and I think you kind of alluded to this with, with velocity loss and fatigue, but can you touch on, you know, what, what maybe is the most important factor in determining, with those two strategies, what's actually going to lead to growth and, you know, maybe also Pat, like why would somebody be better off pursuing one of those strategies over the other?

Patrick Davidson (32:10.252)
Yeah, you know, I think that this is one of those logistics kinds of answers. And so what's interesting is we've got meta analysis level research at this point that shows that you can experience equal hypertrophy from loads going anywhere from 85 % of the one rep max down to the 30 rep set, you know, like as long as it's, you know, your 30 RM.

up to 85 % of your one rep max, which is somewhere around, I think like five, you can get equal growth from those. That's a huge swath of real estate that you get to operate in from an intensity perspective selection process. You know, again, you just have to get close to failure. So if you're doing your 30 rep max weight,

We gotta do at least like 28, 29 or 30 of those things. And sometimes that makes sense and other times that makes no sense from a selection process. So the times where it would make no sense would be like if you were selecting a squat, for instance, that is horrific. And there's a lot of other factors that would probably interfere with you being able to approximate failure. Like, you know, the mental...

challenge of battling through that many reps of an exercise like that, the cardiovascular challenge of it, the metabolic stress of it. There's a lot of other things that could stop the set prior to muscle failure, fatigue, sorts of stuff. So with a set of squats, for instance, you're probably much better off operating in that sort of six to 15 range.

And that depends on a lot of things. It depends on how a person's feeling. It depends on different people just liking different things. As a for instance with me, if I'm in a major calorie surplus and I've been putting on a lot of weight, it just feels kind of nice to have something heavy. Versus if I'm in a deficit and I'm deep into it and extremely fatigued and getting lightheaded, I'm not picking the heavy one. That's the worst feeling in the world. I'm going to pass out.

Patrick Davidson (34:27.596)
I'd much rather go for like 12 to 15 under those circumstances. So there's, you know, then there's like an exercise like a cable lateral raise. And it's like, I don't want to do six of those. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't feel right for those small muscles, something in the range of like 15 to 20 to 25. That could be perfectly fine for an exercise like that. So, you know, generally I would say the more compound it is,

the more total tissue involved with the exercise, the heavier the exercise, the more you're probably going to see it be like towards the heavier end of the spectrum. And then the smaller the exercise, the lighter the exercise, the smaller the muscle group, probably going to be just fine towards the lighter end of that spectrum. You just want to avoid conflict. The thing that should end the set should be local muscle.

Factors like the muscle is done. You want to avoid other confounding factors influencing the end of the set

Kevin Neeld (35:34.286)
So in the discussion about tension and length, one of the things that comes to mind is just the different emphasis on contraction types. So more eccentric lengthening under load traditionally involves more damage, which there may be a thought process that more damage provides an opportunity for more growth. What are your thoughts on the impact that contraction type has?

Patrick Davidson (35:45.612)
and

Kevin Neeld (36:02.798)
You know, I kind of along with that is when you're talking about tension and time and torque and fatigue, this idea of using isometric contractions and sustained holds and, you know, is that a strategy that could generate, generate hypertrophy?

Patrick Davidson (36:15.948)
Mmm.

Patrick Davidson (36:19.98)
Yeah, so really good topics here. You know, I think that we know that damage is not a good proxy to use for what's going to drive growth. Like damage is not real. It doesn't seem to actually be related to growth. And we do know that excess damage is counterproductive for growth. You know, like when you're after exercise, you have to repair tissues.

And then you have to build tissues. So if you actually spend less energy on repair, better, that's much better because now you have more energy and more resources to direct towards growth. So, you know, just getting sore is not, it's kind of an old adage at this point. It's not a good reference point to look at and say, that was a really good job that we did there for driving growth into that tissue. Now, conversely, if there's,

no soreness, that's also probably not good either because it probably means that you didn't drive enough stress into the tissue. So there should be, you know, as you're training and you're going through the weeks upon weeks of accumulating volume and load, it should be kind of a similar level of soreness as you, you know, in the aftermath of training tissue. And I think that

the lengthened exercises with high torque can definitely create more damage. You know, it's just more stressful overall. So you could look at it from a number of different ways. You could say, well, in the beginning, maybe I don't need to use these lengthened position high torque exercises because the person is so sensitive to growth, I can get away with other exercises.

that are actually shorter positions and less total torque put on it and experience some growth and I can save these lengthened exercises with high torque for as the person has adapted more and become more difficult to drive growth into. It's just like saving an Ace card or something like that. I don't know what the answer is on this by the way. These are all very, it's like we're just finding out the concepts.

Patrick Davidson (38:45.548)
We don't know how to play the cards yet. It's like we're beginning to see the whole deck and people are already speculating on the best strategies for playing the game. So it's possible that that's a good way, or it could just be, well, always use the lengthened high torque exercises and just really dose them much easier in the beginning and be more careful about initial volume for what you use. I think either one is fine.

I tend to go with the second method because I want to spend my time teaching the person how to execute the activities that we're going to do long term. And I think from a long term perspective, the higher tension, higher torque lengthened exercises I would, I think are the appropriate tool for the job for growth promotion. And I want you to learn how to do those with the highest level of proficiency possible.

And generally speaking, like I'm not a big exercise variation person. I want a few good choices that stay in that program for a long time. And that gives me a better lens on whether or not you're experiencing progressive overload. I can see, you know, what's going on with your fitness levels more clearly as opposed to if it's a new thing all the time. I don't know if you're getting better as a result of neural adaptations or if this is really a fitness improvement.

that's driving this quantitative increase. So that's sort of the approach that I would take thought process wise with that. And then as it comes to like prolonged isometrics, there's actually quite a bit of research in the last few years on the hypertrophy that results from prolonged stretching, static stretching. And so we've seen like, I'm glad I haven't been a subject in these things. They'll put people into like calf stretches.

for like 20, 30 minutes and you know, with some kind of a device and it'll be at like, you know, I think 85 % of tolerance. Like it's a really nasty stretch and they'll see very large amounts of overall calf hypertrophy after weeks of training with this method. So, you know, it's, it seems as though you can utilize and that, cause that is an isometric, you know, it really is.

Patrick Davidson (41:12.972)
I look at stretching as just another form of resistance training, basically. That's all it really is to me, conceptually. So if you put someone into some kind of a high tension position and they hold it, you should be driving those responses. I think it's just psychologically more difficult and like...

timing more difficult, logistically more difficult to utilize that approach if the only goal is growth. But I think that isometrics for prolonged periods have additional benefits as well, seemingly with tendon health and chemical changes inside the tendon. So if you want to sort of kill multiple birds with a stone, I think that that's an avenue you could look into.

Kevin Neeld (42:06.19)
Yeah, it's pretty common for us in the early phases of the offseason to emphasize some of those longer duration holds for a lot of the reasons you just mentioned. And, you know, it's a stress that does check a lot of boxes and I think is important, but it is one that the athletes are not sad that we move away from as the phase progresses on. It can be pretty boring and monotonous to get through some of those. But, you know, we've talked a lot about different strategies that

Patrick Davidson (42:24.524)
Yeah, nobody likes that.

Kevin Neeld (42:36.334)
that will lead to a local tissue response. And earlier you had mentioned the chemical environment globally on, you know, whether we're talking about puberty or, you know, more pharmaceutical interventions. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, the impact that a local, you know, chemical environment or a global chemical environment can have on a hypertrophy and really the, not just the impact, but

Is there a requirement for that? And, you know, I, I remember, you know, at different stages, I've come across things where, you know, there's recommendations of doing something that's going to lead to a massive hormonal response and then, you know, doing other exercises, because once those hormones are circulating through your blood, that maybe you can get to drive them into more of a local tissue environment. And, you know, that could be a strategy to lead the hypertrophy. So, you know, I, I'm just, I'm interested on.

Patrick Davidson (43:09.164)
I mean.

Patrick Davidson (43:34.732)
Yeah.

Kevin Neeld (43:35.63)
you know, local metabolism versus global chemical environment and what impact, if any, those two things have on hypertrophy.

Patrick Davidson (43:44.396)
Well, we have reached a stage where we can confidently say scientifically that the hormone hypothesis has been debunked. And I know guys that spent 40 years in a career looking at hormones and resistance training that leads to hormonal responses. And it's, you know, some of our best scientists in exercise science, they spent their whole careers looking at that. And it's kind of crazy now to look back and say,

Wow, that was an area that just didn't pan out, you know, and for a long time, that was considered to be the most important area of what you wanted to try to drive to be able to promote growth. Like, all the recommendations were like, well, you know, three sets of 10 with 60 seconds rest on compound exercises, because that's going to lead to the biggest growth hormone and testosterone responses. And when you create that, that's what's going to lead to the morphological changes.

And I don't know who was the scientist that came along and basically was like, actually, if I plotted out on a big curve of hormones on the y -axis and time on the x -axis, we can see that exercise that drives hormonal changes, it leads to such a small amount of time under the curve where the hormones are elevated that they don't cause any

and they don't result in any drive of anything. Basically, what emerged from this analysis was that all we're witnessing is a stress response. You know, like Sapolsky would be thrilled with hearing this in some ways. But it's like when you stress someone with heat and acid and load and cardiovascular challenge, it's like all hands on deck because this is such a

horrible thing that you're making me do that yeah, my endocrine system comes online as well to try to release as many chemicals to get me through this awful experience as possible. But interestingly enough, it has no correspondence to actual growth results from a long term perspective or even a short term perspective. This is very different from what you would see with puberty or from performance enhancing drug use because that is a

Patrick Davidson (46:10.86)
period or those are environments where you have elevated androgens and anabolic for a long period of time. It's the time under the curve of the chemical environment that matters so much. And that's why those two areas are so powerful for establishing a growth promoting environment. Now, the one thing that seems to obfuscate this is blood flow restricted training.

where it's like that seems to result in, you know, pretty substantial growth. And, you know, the old explanation for it was that you are trapping all of these waste products in the local environment. And then when you release the tourniquet, the, you know, this basically poisonous soup just is released into the bloodstream.

and the chemoreceptors in the arch of the aorta read this and recognize that it's like this very threatening concoction and they signal to the brain to be able to start the hypothalmic pituitary cascade of being able to promote this enormous bolus of growth hormone release because you do see like this 300 % rise in growth hormone from BFR and

But that's like irrelevant at this point because it's like, yeah, sure. You get this big rush and growth hormone, but it's like, you know, not enough time for it to be a significant. And so I don't think anybody's quite sure at this point why BFR in particular does seem to promote these, these, this response. I think that it's speculated that you are essentially starving the working cells of oxygen.

That means that your slow twitch fibers, which would normally be used Excuse me to lift light loads are unable to really participate and you're forcing your faster twitch fibers to participate in higher rep situations Which they're very poorly equipped for and as a result they fatigue tremendously in those circumstances and the whenever a fiber is recruited and fatigued

Patrick Davidson (48:32.844)
it will be subject to adaptation. So that's, I think, probably the explanation that holds the most water.

Kevin Neeld (48:41.934)
Well, it's really well said. I want to transition a little bit. I think, you know, anytime you're working with people that have this goal of putting on weight, you're going to hear at some point, somebody is going to say, you know, I've tried everything and I just can't put on weight. And there's this idea of, you know, the quote unquote hard gainers that, you know, it doesn't come as easy for them. So, you know, I'm curious in your experience,

What are some of the things that when somebody comes to you and they say, I've tried everything and I can't put on weight, what are some of the things that they're typically missing or what are some of the strategies that you might use if, maybe on the other side of the spectrum, if you feel like what they've tried is appropriate and they're still really struggling, what would some of the strategies be that you would help to send us a stronger signal to their body to help get them over the hump?

Patrick Davidson (49:31.852)
Yeah, I mean, you got to look at what they're doing training lives. Sure. That's like, and again, like I usually see when I, again, I go to the gym and I see people basically using low ground exercise selection and stopping well short of failure and never reaching stretch positions. So like they don't check the right mechanical boxes when left to their own devices. Oftentimes.

And that makes sense to me because it hurts. Like the stuff that works kind of hurts. Like more supported equals heavier and heavier plus stretch is threatening. And why would I do that to myself as a biological organism? Unless I know that there's some like really crazy abstract goal that's in the future. I'm willing to suffer for this thing in the future. But if I don't understand the premise,

I would never do that. So you have to educate and coach people on how to do the right exercises, but it's probably less important compared to the actual nutritional status. And, you know, the only way that you know that you're in a calorie surplus is if you're gaining weight. You know, the only way that you know that you're in a calorie deficit is if you're losing weight. And if you're staying the same weight, you are at maintenance and,

You know, all of these things have a window. So maintenance, it's not like this person's maintenance diet is 2200 calories. And if they eat 2250 calories, they begin gaining weight. Like if you go, if you eat over this imaginary, like let's say the person believes that their maintenance calories is 2200 and they eat 2300 calories, the body will change some operating strategies.

and it will increase things like non -exercise activity thermogenesis, or it will put more resources into reproductive pathways, or it will do something to utilize this energy. And you will stay at maintenance despite having increased 100 calories. There's some threshold and window that you have to go above and beyond because maintenance operates in a window. So let's say that that window is between

Patrick Davidson (51:54.156)
2000 calories and 2500 calories. You really have to get above and beyond 2500 calories a day to begin the process of gaining weight. And people oftentimes report that like, but you don't understand I eat so much. And it's like, if we, if we actually break it down, what they usually do is they have a couple of big meals a day.

And that's not the best way to go about eating a substantial amount of calories. You know, I think pretty much every competitive bodybuilder in the world at minimum is five meals a day. You know, because like if you eat really a huge meal, you stuff yourself and it's hard to come back and eat again pretty soon after that.

If you eat like a pretty big meal and then a couple hours later, you eat a pretty big meal. And then a couple hours later, you really, in order to get enough food in, I think that's the only way to actually do it. The other thing is like, you know, we live in this sort of like obesity focused culture and sports and science community. And we sort of have recommendations on how to avoid obesity as the primary dietary information that people are getting. And

It seems as though the hyper palatability hypothesis is the prime, is probably the most correct one. Like the tastier your food, the more likely you are to eat more of it. And so if you decrease palatability, and palatability comes in a lot of forms, like from the perspective of like, you know, combinations of macronutrients, combinations of, you know, salt and seasoning, and also,

like the combinations of mouth feel are all important variables that lead to palatability being better. Like as a, for instance, pizza is very palatable because it has a really good ratio of carbohydrates and fats together with substantial amounts of sodium. And also the mouth feel differs between bites. Like you kind of get like crispy crust and gooey cheese.

Patrick Davidson (54:20.204)
And then if something has every bite feels the same, your brain is less interested in it. Pizza also switches a little bit between like a sweeter part and a more savory part. So it's got all of the things that would drive you to want to eat more of it. So I look at it like if somebody is a really hard gainer.

Well, I try to take a look at the foods that they're eating and I try to find ways to make the food more palatable and then I try to increase the number of feedings per day for that person. And I think that those two approaches are more likely, if somebody doesn't want to eat, they're probably not going to eat. You know, it's like as simple as that. So I have to make them want to eat. And so I have to try to keep them hungry and I have to give them foods that taste really good. And

It's basically the opposite approach of what you would go with for preventing obesity.

Kevin Neeld (55:21.07)
No, I think that's been pretty consistent with my experience too. You know, you've talked to some of these high school kids that like we talked about earlier in the perfect stage of their own development to put on significant amounts of weight. And, you know, when you bring up the nutrition question, typically they'll say like, I eat so much all day long. And really what that equates to is, you know, they have like a waffle or something small and insignificant for breakfast. They have a couple of snacks for lunch, and then they come home and gorge on whatever their parents make for dinner.

reality is that in that 24 hour cycle, they're really having like one meal with any actual nutritional substance to it. And, you know, I think just the idea of, of regularly scheduling inputs and meals so that you're not overeating in one so that you're also allowing yourself to accumulate more over the course of a 24 hour time period is, is really important.

Patrick Davidson (56:09.164)
Yeah.

Kevin Neeld (56:19.118)
Pat, what about from a supplementation standpoint? Is there anything that you've seen that really makes a significant impact on building muscle?

Patrick Davidson (56:27.66)
You know, I, I have personally like dabbled with performance enhancing drugs. And I think that's valuable for me from a, like seeing what actually works and getting a sense of like, like once you've experienced that, like you kind of recognize like, God, these things are, are driving it. You know what I mean? Like, so there's like the, the supplements that are worth your money are like protein supplements, creatine.

You know if for aerobic performance caffeine Maybe fish oil to a certain degree but like everything else is pretty much garbage like fat burners in particular like the most garbage thing in the world But it's it is kind of like after having experienced what PEDs do it's kind of like my god like this is what You know is selling all of these supplements. You know what I mean? You just see

People that have been using PEDs for substantial amounts of time and have accrued unbelievable amounts of tissue as a result of that and now they're You know just trying to sell you this bullshit that doesn't really do anything and and I think for me just having a first -hand experience with that has been You know at the very least Maybe not as eye -opening as it would be for some people but like it just it just drives the point home like

You know, we are victims mostly of marketing and, you know, sales driven through corporations that are trying to, to make as much money as they possibly can. and largely through products that are, are not that helpful, you know, like compared to quality training sleep and getting a calorie surplus in, you know, it like the supplements that people get excited about are, are

Literally nothing.

Kevin Neeld (58:26.19)
No, I think that's a great point that, you know, and I think that's been one of the themes that I'm taking away from this whole discussion is that, you know, there's, there's a lot of noise in the training space in general, but particularly with hypertrophy and body composition changes. And, you know, what I've heard from you over the last hour or so is that really like a lot of the foundational big rocks executed consistently over time are where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. If you're looking to put on muscle mass and.

You know, I think in a lot of the populations, certainly where I am now, where the schedule dictates some challenges in terms of sleep and lifestyle, but you know, even thinking back to the, my time working in the private sector where you're dealing with a lot of high school and college kids, I feel like sleep is one of those things that is easy to overlook and frequently gets pushed to the side that can have the largest impact.

you know, certainly obviously relevant to hypertrophy in this discussion, but on other markers of, of, cognitive performance on, on motor learning on, you know, just more global markers of both learning and performance that, you know, I think that that it's good to hear you say that within the context of this message too, because I think that's an important one for people to hear and probably put a little bit more effort into.

Patrick Davidson (59:31.756)
Thank you.

Patrick Davidson (59:43.948)
Yeah. If people would focus on sleep, the way that they do on meaningless supplements, like they would get, I mean, look, if everyone was getting eight plus hours of sleep, that would probably be the biggest impact change on their body composition that they could get.

And it's free. You just have to go to bed.

Kevin Neeld (01:00:10.286)
Well, Pat, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Where can people learn more about you? And, you know, I know you have some courses, let people know what you have out there.

Patrick Davidson (01:00:21.484)
Yeah, you know, all my stuff kind of runs through Instagram at this point. Like I've got a website, but you know, the main hub is just my Instagram page, which is at Dr. Pat Davidson, Dr. Pat Davidson. And yeah, I have a number of things that I offer. I have built an app actually that's able to see whether or not you're getting close enough to failure for your sets. Like it actually uses your phone.

and you can video yourself like people do in the gym and it displays the velocity of your reps and when they've gotten slow enough then they start to show green in the velocity bar graph that's being given to you as feedback and so you actually know that like the exercise that you did would be able to promote muscular growth so long as all the other things we've talked about are in there but

You know, I've got that I've got seminars that I teach on resistance training on speed and agility on changing table tests. I try to that's that's probably my main career area of focus is is around that. It's it's all the seminar series is called Rethinking the Big Patterns and. You know, it's centerpiece is what I was talking about with ground and then seeing the way that ground is

able to be manipulated in all of these different ways that ultimately provide the coaching guide on exactly where to start with people and exactly the trajectories to take with different populations from an exercise selection and exercise design perspective. So, you know, that's those are those are some of the areas that I focus on career wise.

Kevin Neeld (01:02:14.478)
Cool, yeah, we'll be sure to link to your Instagram account and then to your website and the different courses in the show notes. But thank you again. I really appreciate you taking up the time to talk to us today.

Patrick Davidson (01:02:26.7)
Absolutely. Thank you.