Everything We Thought We Knew About Building Muscle Was Wrong

How should you actually train if your goal is to build muscle and get stronger?

In this episode, we break down the latest American College Sports Medicine (ACSM) resistance training guidelines and turn them into practical advice you can actually use in the gym.

Also, how do the new guidelines compare to what we thought was true before? Many of our beliefs have changed, especially if we rewind to when we first started in the fitness industry (over 20 years ago for Ben).

- How many sets should you do?
- How often should you train each muscle?
- How many reps should you perform?
- Do you need to train to failure?
- How important is exercise selection?
- Does the order of your exercises matter?
- How much volume is actually necessary for muscle growth?
- And how much flexibility do you really have when designing your workout program?

Which common resistance training rules are genuinely useful, which are oversimplifications and which ones should be thrown in the fire?

The good news is that effective resistance training doesn't have to be complicated, so here we tell you the most important things you need to know, and also tell you what you have more flexibility on.

P.S., If you want to support us and would like monthly lifting workouts, you can join the Momentum by Sohee fitness app. http://momentumbysohee.com

If you are interested in fat loss science, you can purchase Ben's best-selling comprehensive fat loss book, Everything Fat Loss. http://geni.us/EverythingFatLoss

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everything we thought we knew about lifting was wrong.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

In this episode, we are going to talk about resistance training optimization or lack thereof, if you will. So if your goal is to build muscle or get stronger in the gym and you want to know what matters and what doesn't matter, this is the episode for you.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

And today's episode is inspired by the latest ACSM, a position stand on resistance training, which I believe was published in March of this year. So obviously it's been a few months, but for those of you who have been following along, we've been a little bit preoccupied with other tiny squidgy thing. Yes. But we're circling back to it now. I think obviously we're a health and fitness podcast. It would remiss uh it would be remiss of us to not do an episode on this.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yes, let's get straight into it. So I would like to talk about why this episode is important, and then later we are going to give you some very simple practical implementation tips for what you should do if you want to get stronger and build muscle. So why is this episode important? If we rewind back to when I started lifting, I think I was probably about 16 years old. So I will paint the picture for you. I was an acne-riddled, greasy-faced teenager who I think someone gave me a resistance training set, like a weight set. And it was one of those. Did you ever have it where it's plastic and I think it was filled with sand? I don't know that I had real old school dumbbells where you had to screw on and you had to put each plate on.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Okay, so they were adjustable dumbbells.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

They were adjustable and they were they were like a cheap set. Okay. And a family friend, I think, handed them over because he wasn't using them. And I basically became that teenager who was doing bicep curls in the bedroom. Because when you're 16, I think 16, you don't really know what to do. And I couldn't really bench press because I didn't have a bench, so I used to haul it off the sofa in my bedroom and do like a floor press. And I'll do bicep curls and some tricep exercises and some push-ups, never legs, of course. And that's kind of how I got into it. And if I look back at the training program that I did when I was younger, everything I do now is different. Yeah. And I think it's important that people understand the history of resistance training.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Yeah, I'd have to say the same. When you were you said you were 16 or 17, so that puts the year at 2003?

SPEAKER_03 2:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

2003?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

I and then I I started lifting when I was 18 years old.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Are you surprised because of my youthfulness?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I was trying to do the math. I don't know why my brain did not want to do year math. I started lifting when I was 18 years old, which is 2008, which means it's been 18 years that's right, isn't it? It's been 18 years of lifting. It's been more than 20 years for you.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

And basically I'm a veteran. You are a veteran. You are a veteran lifter. And I also want to make a remark that that gift completely transformed your life.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Oh, the yeah. That's a that's a that's a nice way of framing, actually. It did transform my life. My whole career and trajectory of life was changed because of that.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

So if anyone is lifting, anyone listening wants to think of a gift for someone, maybe a weight set could be it.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Okay, let's go over things that we believed when when we were first lifting.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, so this doesn't have any particular order. I just want to explain some of the bro science things that I used to believe. So very popular myth was the rep range myth. So there used to be images. Even when I did a personal training course, the image was along the lines of if you want to get stronger, you would lift one to five. If you wanted to build muscle, you would lift eight to twelve reps. And then if you wanted to improve muscular endurance, you would lift 15 or more. And in hindsight, I always find this hilarious because what happens at seven, what happens at 13 and 14? It's like the Bermuda triangle of rep ranges where if you want to get strong, you have to lift five reps heavy as possible or or fewer. And if you want to build muscle, you have to lift eight reps to twelve. But if someone does seven reps, what? Like all their gains are lost. Seven was in no man's land.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

You've never had sets of seven reps prescribed for anything?

SPEAKER_02 4:19

At the time, no. It was never, never. So all of my rep ranges in the first program that was written for me by the fitness manager of the local gym when I was probably 17, everything, everything was 12 reps. You're gonna lift eight to twelve, eight to twelve, eight to twelve, eight to twelve, eight to twelve. If you want to build muscle, eight to twelve, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah. Which don't get me wrong, I actually still like that rep range, eight to twelve. Yeah, not to this day.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

But not for science-backed reasons. I feel like it's the it's for it's more for more practical reasons.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

So I think the way to view this is something doesn't have to be a bad number, but that doesn't mean that it is the only number that works, which is how a lot of people view rep ranges. Right. It's like you have to lift eight to twelve, seven, terrible. Six, terrible, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, terrible.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Right, right, right, right. And I did also hear, as you were saying, if 15 plus reps is for muscular endurance, that means if all your reps were h high, then you weren't going to be building muscle.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Correct. Essentially. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Uh the other one that I think is important is, well, one of many that are important. So I also was straight into what we call a bro split. So if I remember correctly, the workout program that was first written, which was probably inspired by old muscle building, bodybuilding, fitness magazines, was very much like Monday, chest, Tuesday, back, Wednesday, shoulders, Thursday, legs, Friday, arms, repeat. Yeah. It was very you do one body part per day, or one to two body parts per day, and you would smash the shit out of those body parts for an hour or two.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

You know, when I when I was lifting in 2008, again, my first year as lifting, this is before we had uh the rise of the evidence-based educators on social media. Well, maybe they were out there, but this was this was back when fitness forums were big, magazines were where you got a lot of your information. I was a master lurker, by the way. I don't know if you No, I think you were actually pretty active on some forums from our priority.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

With an anonymous username, you wouldn't know who I was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

I l I was a lurker, okay? I would never comment, but I would read. And especially I was really big on the bodybuilding.com forums at the Tom, at the time. At the time. At the top. At the time. And about it, bodybuilding.com would publish a lot of different articles about, you know, here's a here's a workout for you.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

I was published on there. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

I was a paid writer for a while, but that was that came later.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

I think they paid me $25 or $50 for an article or something. Something like that.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Okay. I got paid a little bit more than that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

I might be getting it wrong.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Okay. Anyway, basically, I would scrounge together these workouts, and I distinctly remember one of my first workouts that I did was an hour-long bicep session. Doing nothing but different bicep operations, preacher curls, hammer curls, cable straight bar curls, concentration curls, nothing but curls for a full hour.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

The funny thing is about that, is to you that's obscene. But to me and other kind of wannabe fitness model bodybuilders, that's not obscene at all.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

What's wrong with that?

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Have you have you never heard of the eight-hour arm day? We don't need to go into it. I mean, the name's fairly self-explanatory. There's a lot of voluntary.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

That's wild.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

But obviously, for anyone who knows at least a little bit about lifting weights, we all know how you can you can imagine how unnecessary a whole hour devoted to all nothing but bisex exercises is.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

If we're doing if we're doing this chronologically, at the moment people don't know that. Let's pretend that you think that is what's important. Then next one is tempo. So when I was qualifying and and training to be first a fitness instructor, then personal trainer, but for whatever reason on our course, everything was a two-two tempo. I wasn't taught that. Two seconds up, two seconds down. Yeah, this wasn't necessarily like everyone was taught it. It was just for whatever reason on my personal training course, that was like a default. So you had people doing one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. And I think part of it is like a technique standardization, perhaps, but it's kind of odd that everything had the same tempo.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Or maybe for the sake of having control repetitions and being less ballistic.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah, I don't know, but I mean a squat isn't necessarily the same as a bicep curl, isn't necessarily the same as a whatever. So everything having the same tempo, in hindsight, kind of odd. Another one which is kind of built onto that, which is very bodybuilding-esque, is you should squeeze the muscle. So if you were doing a say a chest fly is a great example. You're doing a chest fly or a cable fly, as you would come in, you would try and squeeze. And I remember even with friends.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

What squeeze your packs?

SPEAKER_02 9:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like a very intentional thing. Like you would you would intentionally try and like it's a like mind-muscle connection. So my friends would say, Imagine there's an orange there and you would try and squeeze the orange.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

So would you say, would you if you were doing a glute exercise, would you say you have an orange in your butt cheeks?

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Um well, I mean that implies maybe a cutie. That implies that I did leg day a lot. So at the time, no. Also, I don't think you think about your glutes that much when you were doing squats. I wasn't doing dedicated glute exercises. But in hindsight, probably. Yeah. Interesting. Juicy orange.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah. And I didn't get told that specifically, but I uh That's a very, very bodybuilder-y. But I also think it's important to talk it's good to highlight these things because you were taught different things than from what I was taught. You were you were lifting in in England in the mid-2000s.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

I thought you were gonna say you were lifting and then pull out a a date that you were lifting as I was like steady on making me sound old. You're like you were lifting way back in.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Back when I was still a fetus.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

You were living in the mid-2000s in England. I was in I was in California at that point in 2008. Maybe we were being fed slightly different information. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Our age gap isn't that big, by the way. It was just I started slightly younger as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah. We're about three years apart.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah. Right? Something like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Is that right? Yeah. Anyway, uh, let's go over volume.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Yeah, so if I was doing a bodybuilding split, one to two muscle groups per day, it was like four to five exercises, and you would do three to four sets. So as an example, and I remember this vividly, the first it's easy to remember Monday. It was the first workout in my training week. So my first workout, Monday, started flat dumbbell press, four sets of eight to twelve. Yeah. Incline dumbbell press, four sets, eight to twelve, decline dumbbell press, four sets, eight to twelve, dumbbell flies, four sets, eight to twelve. That was my chest day. That was my Monday.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah. Basically, any and all variation of chest exercise you could think of, you would do a bunch of sets.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Definitely hit the different angles of the chest. That was that was it. But that that was a pretty standard volume. It was the same for say shoulders. It would be say dumbbell shoulder press, four sets, eight to twelve. Then there would be uh like a lateral raise, a reverse, blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah. Yeah. Standard, standard volume, high, high, a lot of focus on a muscle group per training day.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, and for me it was a lot of volume emphasis, the more sets I did, the better. And I wasn't really thinking about the quality of the sets or whether I was actually progressing on those exercises over time.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

I feel like that's important, and we'll probably loop back to that later.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Yeah, and so I thought if I'm not spending a full 60 minutes plus on one muscle group or maybe two muscle groups, it wasn't a good session.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

For sure. Yeah. Yeah, if I if I was training arms, for example, when I left the gym, I expected to not really be able to lift my arm. That was a sign of a good workout.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

And then how happy would you be?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Let's say you have arm day, whatever, and you try to take a shower and you gotta do that thing where you take you gotta throw one arm to throw the other arm to your head to wash your hair.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

I remember once actually walking out of the gym and I went to lift my protein shake. Because of course, you also protein shake immediately. Oh yeah. As soon as you finish your last set, you're slamming a protein shake. So I finished my last set, had my protein powder ready, water in, and then as I was walking across the car park, I couldn't bend my elbow to my mouth. So I had to go kind of 90 degrees and then.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

And then was part of you kind of happy about that?

SPEAKER_02 13:04

It was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

The fact I still remember Oh my god, that was the greatest that was obviously the greatest workout.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Sick pump, bruh. Yeah, sick pump. Yeah, that was uh that was the fact I still remember it shows how much I loved that arm there.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah. Okay, what about exercise selection?

SPEAKER_02 13:18

I think the biggest thing with exercise selection is probably it had to be free weights. So machines in general tended to be, at least from my perspective, I'm not speaking for everyone, but there definitely used to be a sentiment that free weights were superior, probably from a muscle building perspective, definitely from a, I'm gonna use the phrase loosely, but people used to say from a stabilizer perspective, it would be more quote unquote functional to do a dumbbell bench press than a machine chest press, even though they're the same movement pattern. So very much a free weights over machines.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah. And then on the note of exercise selection, I was also told things like you have to do a barbell back squat. You have to do the conventional deadlift. That's a great point.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

That is very much uh, yeah, that I'm I echo that. I agree with that. Obviously If you're not squatting, you're not training properly.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

If you're if your squat isn't if you're not doing the barbell back squat, and if your squat isn't perfectly upright, and you're going what they say ass to grass, where you go, you know, really, really low, you're not doing them right.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

That takes us very neatly to another point, which is range of motion. So squats are a good example where people would say you have to go all the way down or it doesn't count. So ask to grass or go home was something that I was taught. For whatever reason, and this isn't from a bodybuilding perspective as much, but I think it's interesting that people hear this is again when I did my first fitness instructor course, for whatever reason, we were taught to do everything at 90 degrees, and I think it from their explanation, it was more to do with safety. So when we had, bear in mind this is like a the the beginning of a fitness instruction course, not a personal training course which became more advanced or strength and conditioning course, but we would do dumbbell press and we would literally go two seconds down, and then the moment that our humorous was in line with our torso, that's the end of the rep. Very, very kind of partial reps. Yeah, uh I wouldn't cut this. Yeah, so I think from a bodybuilding perspective, there were certain things where it's like your bench, the bar should touch your chest. If you're squatting, you should go after grass. But I think from a a different kind of safety perspective, I think more people would say 90 degrees, and the reason I think that's important to flag now is because there are also many people that have heard that they shouldn't squat with their knees going over their toes, for example. Yeah, so in s from a different angle, some people were encouraged to do partial rep training because they thought if they squat below parallel that they would fuck their knees up or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Right. Which we've now come to learn. It's quite different. Yeah, yeah. That is not the case.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

But this is not the episode for that myth.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Correct. We also have advanced techniques like drop sets. I won't even put in cluster sets in there. I'm not sure if everyone knows what cluster sets are.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Um, pyramid sets, things like that. Did you do a lot of them?

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Uh yeah, so I think for the magazines that I used to read, I think they would call them shock techniques. Okay. And the justification at the time was you would try and shock the muscle into growth. And I think if I try to give a really easy explanation of this, imagine that you're doing a program for six months and at some point you hit a plateau, they would often recommend that you would change things up. And the idea was if you change things up and you give your body a new stimulus, that you would inspire new growth. But because of that, it became a very lazy justification for do really random things, and that is why people do things like drop sets, where if I did a chest day, at the end I was doing a cable fly, and you might say, do one set 12 to 15, and as soon as you finish, drop the weight 10%, sure, go to failure. Right. Again, drop 10%, go to failure, drop, blah blah blah, and you would do say, I don't know, five extensions of that set. So yeah, there are a lot of kind of quote unquote shock techniques with the idea that you would surprise the muscle.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Or confuse the muscle. Confuse the muscle.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Muscle confusion was a big thing. And I've I kind of find it funny because it it's such a an intellectually lazy way of just being like change the variables. Just change it.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Do something different. Just do something different. Now don't get don't get us wrong, drop sets and those kinds of ad advanced techniques, they're not they're not not legitimate. We're not saying you can't do them. I'm in fact, I think from a for the goal of getting in more volume, or I we would say increasing the training density of a session where you do higher volume in a you know shorter period of time, for that purpose or being more efficient with your workout, those can be great techniques because obviously you're squeezing in more reps and so on in a given time period, which is great. Um, but as far as this specific claim about shocking the muscles or confusing the muscles, for that reason is unnecessary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Then the last couple that we can finish off with quickly, rest periods. Rest periods at the time for me were a very firm aim for two minutes, for example. If you're doing a bench press, be bench press, two minutes, bench press against the.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Were you also quite strict though with looking to the exact second with your time?

SPEAKER_02 18:35

I went through a period of being strict. Yeah. Yeah. I was too. I have um I don't I don't keep track of that, I haven't kept track of that for years now. Yeah. But it was very much a let's let's optimize your workout. Here's how much rest you should have. And there were different muscle building theories about the ideal rep range. But if you were doing a bench press, for example, you might say two might say two minutes between sets of bench, but then if you're doing a bicep curl because it's an isolation exercise, smaller muscle groups, maybe you would do say 60 to 90 seconds, but very deliberate rest periods and very strict rest periods.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah. I still am a fan of prescribing or recommending at least approximate rest periods, but for me it's two things. One is to ensure that people aren't resting too long and then their workout is unnecessarily long, and then two, I still want them to rest long enough to make the next set high quality.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Maybe we can loop back to rest periods later, but uh as an example of that, so I had a guy who wanted to build muscle, and I asked what his programming was, and he would say he'd do this exercise, and he made himself sound like he was very, very advanced. And the first programme I went through with him, it was like we'll do a chest exercise, we'll do a back exercise, we'll rest. He he lasted approximately three sets, and he looked already like he was on quite a steep decline, and I was very confused because he talked about himself as if he was quite an experienced lifter, yeah. And my mistake, or perhaps his mistake and how he explained it, but either or I hadn't checked his rest periods. So when he explained his programme to me, I was like, oh, he you know, he does a lot, he's very used to this. But what I didn't realise is his workouts were taking him something ridiculous, like two or three hours, because he was resting so long between sets. So then I realized that he was resting probably a minimum of five minutes between sets, even if it even if it was a bicep curl. So the moment that I got him resting only a couple of minutes, he just he couldn't keep up. So yeah, there is a there is definitely a a a worthwhile discussion about rest periods.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Keeping your rest periods reasonable, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah. And then the final one is proximity to failure. We can't forget that. Proximity to failure, we will talk about more later. But at the time, it was train to failure or you are leaving growth by.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Now, what does it mean to train to failure?

SPEAKER_02 21:01

The nerdy answer is actually there are very different definitions of what failure is. The easiest way that most people view failure is you cannot complete another rep. You have different failure, like if I'm doing a squat and my technique falls to ship, I could keep going, you might say that's technique failure. Or you might say that something is a momentary concentric failure, which is I'm coming up and I hit a wall and I literally can't come up and then I drop back down. Yeah. There are others others as well. But in general, you can't lift one more rep.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Yeah. Also, I think from a practical standpoint, unless you're someone like you who was a mega fitness enthusiast right away and would spend a lot of time in the gym and really enjoyed the workouts, not everyone the idea of lifting to failure might actually deter people from wanting to lift.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Yeah, that there's a difference between giving a hardcore young guy who's super enthusiastic, super energetic, super. Keen to optimize everything, telling him to go to failure on everything, and saying that to 50-year-old John or Jane Doe who are going to the gym for the first time never lifted weights before.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Right. Especially if you're coupling that with the notion that you have to do conventional deadlifts or you have to do below parallel depth barbell back squats.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Deadlifts to failure will humble most people.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yeah. I would I would be like, I don't want to do it at all. Yeah. I don't even want to bother.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Yeah. So let's fast forward why this position stand is such a big deal. So ACSM, American College of Sports Medicine, have over 50,000 members. They are very well regarded. And this is quote unquote a position stand, which is kind of like let's get lots of experts together and come up with some best recommendations.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah. And what's really nice about this is they take a group of researchers with to represent their organization. They say, okay, you guys are going to go out and look at all the different reviews that we have on the specific topic, get together, come to an agreement, and put together this document that then reflects our organization's stance on this topic. And this one for the ACSM, this was its first update to the resistance training guidelines in, I want to say 17 years. So it's been a really long time. And there were some big changes that they made as far as the recommendations compared to the last publication. And for that reason, especially on social media, which was great, there was a lot of uh visibility on this paper when it came out.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

So let's pick one resistance training variable as a super easy explanation, all just so you all understand. So let's pick rest periods. In research, if you want to know if one rest period is better for muscle growth than another, you might get two groups of people and say, you rest one minute between sets, you rest three minutes between sets, and then over the course of eight weeks or whatever, we're going to see who builds more muscle. That is a an A versus B looking at one variable straightforward. Then what you have are things like meta-analyses, where you look at all the research papers that have done something similar and you pull them together, and you're like, oh, actually, even though one research paper said this, when we look at all of them together, the results actually say something a little bit different. So that's kind of synthesizing a wider body of literature to often come up with a more trustworthy answer. And then what you have are umbrella reviews, which is kind of zoomed out again. So you can often do things like pooling lots of different meta-analyses together. So this is like the most overarching conclusion that you will come up with on resistance training variables, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, umbrella review would sit at the very top of the evidence pyramid. I feel like a lot of times we do talk about meta-analyses, which are great, uh, but as I'm gonna say I almost said Ben, which makes me feel so weird.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

I don't like you when you call me by my name.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

As you, as my co-host was saying, an umbrella review is even a higher level above that. And we don't see them happening very often or published very often, I don't think. So when it happens, we want to pay attention, and it's pretty cool. Um, okay, so this is gonna be basically the umbrella review of all the evidence to date on all the different variables in resistance training, including the ones that we've discussed at the beginning of the episode. Moving on to the next section, let's go over what the research actually said. Now, this position stand covered many different things, such as lifting for running performance, lifting for power, and so on. But for the purposes of this episode and what we think the vast majority of our listeners will be.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

We should hedge our bets to be succinct.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Yeah. We're gonna stick to what the research recommends for strength and for muscle.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

So, variables that mattered. If your goal is strength, here are the things that matter the most, probably. Number one, exercise is done at the beginning of your workout. This is fairly self-explanatory. If my goal is to deadlift as much as possible and I'm a power lifter, a deadlift is going to be my primary focus. So I am going to deadlift first when I have the most energy. I would absolutely not go for a run, do an hour's worth of weight training, and then deadlift at the end when I feel weak. I have experimented with exercise order a lot. I've actually experimented with way more resistance training variables than I've ever talked about on social media, and I might give examples towards the end. But I have experimented with resistance training variables a lot, and doing things at the end of your workout when you're tired can sap your performance. And of course, if you want to lift as much as possible, doing it when you're tired is not smart. Yeah. Fairly satisfying.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

I think this is at least partly why, generally speaking, when it comes to program design, a lot of times people will say if you're gonna do compound exercises and isolation exercise in a session, so compound exercise is an exercise that hits more than one muscle group at a time. For example, a squat would hit basically most of your quads, but also your glutes, etc. Some adductors and so on and so forth, versus a leg extension, which would be considered an isolation exercise because it hits only your quads, right? That's why they generally speaking, at least partly they would say, okay, we want to put the isolation exercise at the end, and then the bigger multi-joint compound lifts towards the beginning when you have more energy.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

I'm fine with that. Yeah, that's a general rule of thumb that I've heard and stuck with.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yeah, yeah. Next variable that matters is for for building strength specifically, you do want to be lifting heavier loads. Now, they specifically specified, they specifically specified.

SPEAKER_03 27:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

They specifically said this refers to lifting at least 80% of your one rep max for that specific exercise.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

I feel like that's fairly straightforward. Yeah. If I want to bench press as much as possible for a powerlifting competition, I would not be doing sets of 20 for my entire training cycle. At some point, you need to have a heavier weight in your hands, you need to know how it feels, you need to get used to working with heavier loads, and the only way to get used to lifting with heavier loads is to lift with heavier loads. Right. I once heard the piece of advice, which sounds so silly, but is like squat heavy, too squat heavy.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Pretty self-explanatory.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Next variable is lifting through a full range of motion. This means half-reps are not gonna cut it, specifically for building strength. You want to make sure you're going through full extension, full flexion, and so on.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

I feel like we could talk about that in more detail because there are arguably different ways to look at the research, but I think that's a that's fine. Let's just say full range of motion is fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

But then I I feel like you could also argue, well, what if your goal is to increase your strength in the half squat?

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Then you would say, okay, obviously then in that case you that that would be fuller range of motion for that specific half squat exercise, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

So as an example, it's like if you look at different squat, if you look at different range of motion studies on the squat, like you might compare a partial squat to a very partial squat, like a quarter squat to a parallel squat or to a very deep squat or whatever. And generally speaking, there tended to be more muscle growth, at least marginally, with longer ranges of motion. Not always necessarily in the quads, sometimes it'd be in like the adductors, for example, on a squat. But generally speaking, full range of motion is fine.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Yeah. Now translating this to real life, I feel like thinking back to some of my clients I've trained. I almost I almost want to say I I I would I would be cautious not to force people to do full range of motion for every exercise if that is not a good idea for the individual's anatomy. And I'm specifically thinking of the back squat as well. Squat's an easy example.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Most a lot of people are like, I feel uncomfortable, I haven't done this before.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Maybe they have some hip impingement when they go too deep in their squat, or something doesn't feel good, whatever. If that's the case, what I like to tell my clients is go as deep as you can safely and comfortably go. If that is full range of motion, you know, but well below payload, great. If it's not, that's also okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

And that can often change over time. Sure. Obviously. But yeah, you don't necessarily have to commit to it's not like squatting after grass where it doesn't count, which is the advice that we would have received. Right. Right, right, right. Then sets per session, higher volumes, at least to a point. So two to three sets per exercise per workout. So an easy way to explain this is if your goal is to squat as much as possible, you are probably not going to the gym doing one set of squats and going home.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Yeah. Also, anecdotally, I can confirm that especially in our new parenthood era, I I think we can say both of our workouts have been shorter in general. And a lot of my lives for specific exercises, I will only do two working sets, but I'll say, okay, I'm gonna make them hard sets. And I have found that even with doing quote unquote only two sets of an exercise, I am still getting strength week after week, which has been fun.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

I think one of the untapped I know we're we're recommending h quote unquote higher volumes, but I think one of the untapped sources of potential from lower volume routines is knowing that if you are only doing a couple of sets, you can often push harder. So if you're going to do five sets on the squat, if you know you've still got four sets left, you might keep a little bit in the tank. Right. Whereas for me and you at the moment, because we are doing shorter workouts like 30-minute workout, I think it is a little bit easier to be like, oh, I'm gonna I'm only training for 30 minutes, I'm gonna go hard for this 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Yeah. Which I think is kind of an accidental benefit of having sort shorter sessions too.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

Yeah. The next one is training at least twice per week.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

Yeah. For a given exercise. So if you want to get better at the bench press, hitting it once a week is great. Twice a week would be even better.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yeah, so if we go back to my bro split at the beginning, if I'm doing chest on a Monday and then chest again on a Monday, it's seven days between workouts. We are saying that that is probably not the ideal way to get stronger.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

With that said, I do want to say that accessory exercises are still helpful. For example, if you not a lot of people know this, but I did a couple powerlifting meets back in my day. I was not an elite-level powerlifter by any means, but I was, I, you know, I got dabbled. I dabbled, right? It was it was recreational, it was fun. And anyone who's done a powerlifting program knows you do back squat, obviously, you do a deadlift, you do a bench press, but you do also have quite a few accessory movements. And obviously, those accessory movements, for example, if I have uh the back squat, maybe I'll do a paw squat as an accessory exercise. Maybe I'll do a leg press. I see what you're doing. I like my the thing that I want to add to this is that those exercises can also help improve your actual performance of the main exercise.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah, let's say exercise or variations thereof. Right. Probably better to train more than once per week.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

For example, when we first started dating, I don't know if you remember this back in late 2019. I said, I really want to get my flat dumbbell bench press stronger.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Because I challenged you.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yes, and I said, I've been stuck at 40 pounds in each hand or 45 pounds in each hand for something like five to eight reps for a while, and I'm not, I'm not week after week, I'm not able to get this past this point. And then you said, Why don't you add some pause reps into your training? So I think I had one day a week where I was doing regular flat double bum bench press, standard reps, and then another, another session in the same week, I would later in the week I would do pause reps, which obviously for those of you who are familiar, when you add a pause to a rep, you're increasing time.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

I feel like that's fairly self-explanatory.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

No, no, I said when you are.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Yeah, it's like for anyone who doesn't know what pause reps are, is when you add a pause to your rep.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

No, that's not what I'm saying. I said when you add a pause to your rep, because you're adding time under tension, you do have to reduce the load uh unless or reduce the reps, basically.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

So my recommendation, that is not saying that pause reps are magic or anything. It is because I noticed that when you started going heavier, sometimes your reps would get a little bit shorter. And my theory was I just think it'd be good for you to be confident pressing from your chest because you would start at the chest and then half an inch, half an inch, half an easy.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

That's probably what a lot of people do with the with the squat, for example. When they're nervous that they can't make it back up, maybe you kind of shorten the depth a little bit. Another depth a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

I think that's why saying full range of motion is sometimes good, because even if it isn't necessarily magical compared to it 10 degree less, I do think it is nice to repeat something with solid technique. And the reason I say that is because I remember giving a guy dips and he got stronger every session, weirdly stronger every session, but this was between times when I would see him, and then when I saw him next, I was like, wait, we started on this weight and you're now doing this. And I said, Show me. And he was just doing half the rep he was before. So I put him on the same weight he was when we were doing it and got him to do the same range of motion, and he couldn't he he was barely doing more than he was. So in his head, he was like, Oh my god, I'm adding like 10% every single workout, but he was just shortening the rep. So I think it's nice to standardize range of motion for that purpose.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Yeah, even things like if you're adding a pause, don't rush through the pause, things like that too. So we want to control, control every rep should ideally look, I wanna I don't I don't want to say they have to look the exact same, exact, exact same, but they should look similar.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

And then final one that matters is progressive overload.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

Yeah. What is progressive overload?

SPEAKER_02 35:59

Uh the easiest way to view it, I think, is doing more over time. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean more weight. It is the idea that if you are adapting to a stimulus that you are putting on your body, the stimulus needs to change. So if you wanted to get faster at running 5k, you would expect to run a little bit faster in your training programs. Yeah. If you were trying to get better at walking, you wouldn't walk one mile at the same pace every single day. You'd have to change something. So it doesn't necessarily mean you have to lift more weight. Sometimes it's lifting the same weight for more reps, or sometimes it's lifting the same weight with better technique, or for a slower tempo, or there are lots of different ways you can lean into progressive overload without being like, you have to add weight, have to add weight, weight, have to add weight.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Yeah. Now I want to touch on this a little bit because I once had a client who said the the way she interpreted progressive overload was you have to continually do more and more in the genome over time, which means that your workouts are always going to get longer and longer and longer until infinity. Which obviously that's not what we're saying. I think lifting to infinity is definitely not what we're saying. Where imagine you're lifting for 20 years. Does that mean your sessions are all all now have to be three hours long? That's not what it means. Um, but I will say yes, the the most common way to implement progressive overload would be to increase the total load you're lifting and or the repetitions, but you can also do things like uh lift the same reps and the same load, but maybe reduce the rest periods in between.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Are you doing something a month from now that you couldn't do a month ago?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Essentially.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Also, I would also ask if the weight you were doing two weeks ago at a given exercise today feels significantly or noticeably less challenging for you, that is a good sign you should be doing more. That that to me is a pretty good I hope like easy to understand thing. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Let's fly through variables that did not matter.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah. The first one was lifting to failure, which we kind of touched on earlier. Nice to know.

SPEAKER_02 38:10

Lifting to failure is not absolutely critical. However, lifting close to failure or at least working hard is still important. Yeah. So it doesn't mean you have to fail every single set, but the flip side of that doesn't mean that you can pick a weight that you could do 50 reps with and you only do it five times and you're going to be stronger.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

It still has to be challenging. And you can say you want to go to uh there's a term called reps in reserve, which means when you get to the end of the set, how many moral reps could you have done to then reach failure, right? Or how many reps do you have left in the tank? We want to reach an RIR of they say two to three reps in the tank. To me, yeah, personally, I like to go one to two. Yeah. But basically close to failure is the goal.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

Next one is machines versus free weights. So my earlier belief when I was younger that you had to live with free weights versus machines was misguided. If you want to get stronger, you can pick either. I think in general it is still worth driving home that you tend to get stronger at the thing that you're practicing. Right. So if someone wanted to get better at a squat, I do think it is smarter to prioritize a squat versus a leg press, for example. But if your goal is to get strong, you can get strong with various different vehicles.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yeah, yeah. Also, this seems so like a small detail, but they enlisted unstable services as not being important, which I like because I don't know about you, but I've definitely done squats on a bosu ball before.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

I didn't go through that phase, but I know that I know there's a big phase where people were like, well, if I can squat on a BOSU ball, I will be so my my balance and proprioception and everything will be so amazing that when I go to squatting on the ground I'll be super strong.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

But again, you have to squat lots to squat lots. Yes. And squatting on an unstable surface does make it slightly tricky to also the risk to reward.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

I I want to say the risk-to-reward ratio of doing a barbell squat on a bosom ball is not Oh, I forgot you said bosu balls.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

I know some people that used to do stability ball squats.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

I've also seen that, which makes me very nervous.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

I have seen a stability ball explode with someone on it, and because of that I wouldn't, amongst many other reasons, I wouldn't have a squat on the stable.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Yeah, I've also done uh push-ups on a bosu ball where I thought, okay, it'll work all my stabilizer muscles, so I should I should never do push-ups with my hand on a stable surface.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah, yeah. Next one is time under tension. So time under tension, I have been through phases probably 15 years ago-ish, where rather than saying the best rep range for muscle growth is eight to twelve, you would have a certain time under tension. So for example, we want this set to last 40 seconds, and because of that, you might do a two-second down tempo, two second up tempo, four seconds in total, ten reps will be 40 seconds. Yeah. Time under tension, there isn't a magic time under tension, doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Yeah. But you still obviously you still want your repetitions to be controlled.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's more like don't strive for a certain time under tension is right. There is no magical tempo that's going to Like if you if you slow down your rep by an extra half a second and you make your sets five seconds longer or eight seconds, you know, the splitting massive.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

And then the last variable that was not important was periodization. Um not that not they're not saying it's completely useless, but that there doesn't seem to be an inherent advantage uh when it comes specifically to building strength.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Do you want to talk about what periodiz I I struggle with saying the word periodization is?

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Um, I mean, not not really. I think it's a little bit boring for this podcast, but in general, it would be structuring your workouts over a longer period of time. So, for example, I remember being on a strength and conditioning course where they would get you to design a program that was periodized over the course of 12 months. So you might go through uh say, for example, you were a bodybuilder, you might go through a higher rep phase for a while, then you might go through a relative strength phase or a maximal strength phase or whatever, and you would plan your years through different meso cycles. Or if you were very advanced, you would if someone was Olympic athlete, for example, they might do uh their periodization over a four-year structure between Olympics.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

And I do feel like if you are a high-level athlete like that, of course, it would make more sense to have an off-season versus a wrapping up period and you're peaking and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

But I think, yeah, so if it was if it was say me or you, I wouldn't say to you, well, three months from now you have to be doing this kind of program. If you were doing marathon training, of course. Right, right, right, right, right, right. So moving on, let's go to muscle building, what matters and what doesn't matter. Of course, there is going to be some overlap here, but not everything. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Yes. The first variable that absolutely does matter for building muscle is going to be your total weekly training volume. Okay. In general, they say 10 sets per muscle group per week at a minimum is recommended. However, training frequency, how you split that up is going to be less important. For example, they for example, they found that uh getting the same volume in one session versus five sessions per week has similar results as far as muscle gain went.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Can I tag in really briefly on that? So when people talk about training volume, I think one of the things that most people don't realize is often if you change one variable, you change another variable. So for example, if teenage me benches once a week and then I increase to benching twice a week, I haven't just trained changed my frequency. If I was doing three sets of bench on a Monday and I Adding three sets of bench on a Thursday, I have also changed my training volume. And often when people say things like, Well, I changed my training volume and I started getting different results, or I changed my training frequency and I started getting different results, you are often changing multiple variables at a time. So what Sohi is saying is if you have 20 sets for a workout, how you divide that over the course of the week is not as relevant. But training frequency can still matter because training frequency often changes training volume. So I just wanted to explain that because I think some people trip over one not realizing they're forgetting the other.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Is that fine?

unknown 44:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

That's fine. Yeah. And and and generally speaking, I would say if you if you could only do one session a week, you're probably gonna expect that one session to be a little bit longer because you're getting in more training volume compared to the individual sessions if you were to train five or six days a week.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

Yeah. Something like that. Uh as we also already said for strength, training close to failure is still important. So you don't have to push two failure, but if you are doing a bicep curl and 12 reps, your 12th rep would be hitting failure. I literally can't do this 12th rep. You don't have to fail, you don't have to go to that point. But you wouldn't pick that weight up and just do two and expect the same muscle building stimulus. So it makes sense to aim two to three short failure. Yeah. Flirt with failure, pick a weight that's going to be challenging, and you'll probably be fine.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Yeah. The way that I like to think of it too is when I finish a set, I'm usually thinking, I don't think I would have been able to do one more rep. I would not have been able to complete what what you said, the concentric repetition of the next, uh or the contrasting concentric phase of the next rep. And and I know people are gonna be wondering what is concentric. Concentric.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Well, you're saying you that's how you view your sets at the moment, you don't want to do one more rep.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

I would not be able to do the next rep. Oh, okay. Finish the next rep. That's how I know when to stop, basically. And obviously we we do have the advantage of having lifted for so many years, so we have a lot of experience, but I do think that this is something that people can learn over time is what does it feel like to be pushing close to failure?

SPEAKER_03 46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

Uh and then the other variable that I thought was interesting was that they said that uh eccentric only reps mattered more than concentric only. Okay. A lot of people, this is I see this happening a lot when people talk about eccentrics. E-centric means the contracting while lengthening phase of an exercise. And then the people will say that means when the the dumbbell's coming when the weight's coming down.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Yeah. Not always the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:33

And I see that this is incorrect. The it is oftentimes the case that the eccentric phase of an exercise happens to be when the weight is coming down. However, for an exercise like the lap pull down, for example, it's going to be the opposite because lap pull down, uh, the concentric phase or the contract contracting while shortening of a muscle is going to be when you pull the bar down. Okay. And then as the weight comes up, that's when you're stretching the lats, the target muscles. So in that case, it'd be the opposite.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

So if you found that confusing, I think an easy way to view it is the concentric phase is the portion of the lift where you are most likely to grunt. So on a bicep curl, the concentric phase would be lifting up, you're most likely to grunt. And then as you're lowering it down on the eccentric phase, you are less likely to grunt. But on the flip side, if you're doing a tricep push down, the contraction phase is on the way down rather than on the way up. So you were grunt on the way down versus the way up.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Yeah. Anyway, going back to as far as how it leads back to the muscle, again, it's um building muscle. The eccentric phase is going to be more important. That's that's the whole point of.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

If you were only doing one or other, that's like if you if you compare concentric and eccentric, then eccentric wins. But of course, most people are doing both.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

They're doing both anyway. So I feel like I feel like that's a detail that's yes, it's relevant, but also argue about that sometimes to like whether one part of the lift is important.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Right. I remember going through phases where I would do uh not only not eccentric only programs, but very, very like emphasize the eccentric because that was more important than the concentric versus just lift the weight and you'll do both.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Do you know what that made me think of? Uh years ago, I I was a member of a CrossFit box because it was nearby and I needed a facility to train. And I was actually powerlifting at the time, but they let me use their facility during their open hours to power lift. And I watched other members, and I'm by the way, I'm not shitting on CrossFitters at all, but I thought this was very interesting where they would do a cross they would do a deadlift set and they get to the top, which we know is the concept drink phase, they finish the rep and then they let go of the bar at the top. And I'd be like, Why are you not finishing the repetition? They go, What do you mean? And I thought it was very interesting how their goal was obviously they don't care about the eccentric, or at least once they what they consider the the end of the rep when they when they come up on the last rep, they can let go.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

Whereas I know some bodybuilders who will do a deadlift and they will intentionally slow down the eccentric.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Yeah. So I thought that was very, very interesting at the time. I'd never seen that before.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

So variables that did not matter for muscle growth.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

First one is training frequency, as we've discussed it. So the training volume did matter. Training frequency did not matter as long as the volume was sufficient.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Important distinction there.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

The the size of the pizza is important, but how you divide it over the course of the week is less important.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Great analogy. Oh, thanks, babe. Yeah, thanks. The other one was exercise order. Now, this is different from what's optimal for strength, right? So for strength, they said exercise order does matter. Whatever exercise you want to build muscle on, or whatever exercise you want to build strength on should be done towards the beginning of the session. But if you want to build muscle, exercise order is not going to be as important as long as they are being pushed close to failure.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Uh next thing that didn't matter is heavy loads and rep range. Now, I've made videos about this in the past. So going back to our muscle building rep range thing that I mentioned at the beginning, you have to lift 8 to 12 was a very firm belief for a lot of people. But then research came out showing that actually people can build appreciable amounts of muscle, even doing things like reps, uh sorry, sets of 25 to 35 reps, or even doing very powerlifting style programs where they're doing sets of three. So if you can build appreciable muscle using very, very heavy loads and very low rep ranges, or very, very light loads and very high rep ranges, then rep range doesn't seem to matter as much as people thought.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Given that you're still pushing close to fight and using a challenging weight.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

Right. And that I think that's the main caveat that we have to emphasize because I feel like once uh last year I did a I did a Instagram post on this because obviously there was new research and I said, Oh, exciting.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

Oh, people think it means 220 put it back.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

You don't have to do, you don't have to lift heavy to build muscle. And they thought that meant that meant, oh great, Pilates can build muscle. Or lifting light can build muscle. And then the important, which even though I mentioned it, you know how it is. You mentioned something in a video, what are the caption, they still skip over it. You still have to be pushing close to failure.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

So yeah, if I'm doing my bicep curl, bicep curl analogy, yeah. Let's say I could lift, I'm making it up, I can't remember, I haven't done them in ages. I used to be able to do, say, 30 kilo dumbbells of reps or whatever. So in theory, you could build similar amounts of muscle if I was lifting only 16 kilos or 15 kilos, like around 50%, but I still have to go until I can't really do any more reps. That doesn't mean you can just pick up a three kilo dumbbell, do 20 reps, put it down, don't break a sweat. That's not the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

Yeah, I mean you could technically argue you might be able to do 50 plus reps or however many until it finally gets to the point where it's challenging, but that's probably going to be quite tedious for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

And also I think the muscle building ceiling, so on some rep range studies, there seemed to be a lower threshold percentage where when people went too low, that would then impede muscle growth. So if you can pick if you pick a dumbbell up and you can do 50 reps with it, even if you go to failure, probably not so great for building muscle.

SPEAKER_00 52:03

From a practical standpoint as well, I would say as a coach, I very rarely prescribe rep ranges beyond 20 to 30. Even that's very uncommon, mostly because I feel like most people are not going to want to do that many reps. They'd rather lift a slightly heavier load and get the set done sooner.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

I like to go hard and fast.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Yeah. Speaking of speaking speaking of fast, the other variable that did not matter was fast versus slow repetitions.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Yeah, so my tutu tempo that I used to think was gospel. Well, actually, no, that's not true. My fitness instruction course, when they told everyone to do a tutu tempo, from a muscle building perspective, which admittedly is not what they were teaching, but tempo didn't matter so much. And I have been through bodybuilding phases where I would very strictly count re uh tempos. So it's like two seconds up, two seconds down, or sometimes four seconds down, one second up, or whatever. But I used to be very militant with my own lifting tempo. Probably doesn't matter that much.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Yeah. And then the last one was once again, periodization does not matter, similar to for strength, for building strength, which is, I think, great news. Because I I always felt like periodization made things way more complicated than it need to need to be, especially when the general public. Yes, especially with gen pop, especially when you're taking into account, well, they're traveling here, they're on vacation, well, they got sick. Now now we have to, how do you, how do you they can't f follow the program perfectly because they have they have life to live, they have stuff going on outside the gym. Anyway, so I consider that great news.

SPEAKER_03 53:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Moving on. We went we've gone over a lot. I feel like someone could be listening to this feeling quite overwhelmed, thinking, okay, you've gone over a lot of different variables that do matter.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

They should know that we have their back and we like to summarize things.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

Yes, okay. I'm feeling very overwhelmed by all of this. If I only had to remember one thing from these newly published guidelines, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 54:00

The most important thing I think is that consistency beats optimization. And this is very similar to what we talk about from a diet tree perspective. We don't preach perfection unless for some reason people want to hit perfection. For most people, being good enough for long periods of time will beat trying to hit perfection sporadically. So the way I describe it is most people don't or shouldn't care about trying to get an A star on their workout program or their diet. Instead, can you hit a C for the rest of your life? Because most people aren't at a C, they're at a D or an E or an F or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

I would say, can you do a B minus though?

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Well, yeah, I mean depends where you are. If someone's at an F, I don't care about a B minus. If someone's at an F, I'm fine with a C or whatever. Yeah. So in general, consistency, being consistently good will always beat being sporadically perfect. Now I want to explain. If we use muscle building as the vehicle here, I have known people who will build lots of muscle tissue on very, very vastly polar opposite programs. So for example, I remember even when I was really young, a client came to me once and said, You know the huge guy that trains in here at the same time as me. And I was like, Yeah. He said, Well, I asked what he does, and he only lifts very high reps, like 15 reps to 20 reps. And he's like, But we don't normally do that. And then the flip side is you have people doing high-intensity training where they might do one set to absolute failure. So you can meet bodybuilders who will be very muscular, who like doing heavy, low reps, or lighter, high reps with different training frequencies, with different training splits, with different rest periods, with different tempos, with completely different lifting methodologies. But the whole point is if people can get results with a very diverse array and range of vehicles, I think it's important to understand that maybe the vehicle doesn't need to be obsessed about.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Yeah. Which I think that I think that's very reassuring because a lot of us feel like we are short on time, we are short on resources, and maybe the the I the workout that you were and originally taught was ideal, you can't realistically do, or it demands a a certain amount of time that you cannot commit to. And it what if you say, okay, well, I only have 20 minutes three times a week. We're telling you, you can make the most of your those 20 minutes and still make significant progress, is what I would argue.

SPEAKER_03 56:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

So you don't have to think, oh, I'm I'm this is not worth my time. I would flip it and say, how can I make every minute count of no matter whatever pocket of time that I have. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Moving on, what are the main takeaways from this? How can we apply this to the average person who wants to go into a gym and start lifting?

SPEAKER_02 57:01

I feel like if you have absolutely no idea where to start, lifting and working hard at least twice a week in the gym. Twice a week or more.

SPEAKER_00 57:11

Yeah, if you can.

SPEAKER_02 57:12

That is the same thing as at least twice a week. Yeah. At least twice a week in the gym. So twice a week or more. If you are working hard a couple of times or more per week, you are already doing a really, really good job of covering your bases.

SPEAKER_00 57:27

Now, notice that we didn't even mention what specific exercises to do or specific rep ranges, anything like that. That's going to be largely down to your personal preference and your goals. So you can tailor all of that to really however you want to do it. The one thing that I would caution against, which is something that I definitely did a lot back in the day, was don't do that thing where you every three days you change all the variables. Did you do that?

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Well, I mean, I used to try and shock the muscles, so I would vary things in the mock.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

See, I did that every I feel like I was doing it twice a week. I would change my program, not because I was trying to shock the muscles, but because I was so obsessed with, well, maybe this is better, this is changing this variable makes this program better for me. And then I would I kept program chasing basically.

SPEAKER_02 58:14

But then if if someone's goal is muscle growth, they can still do that if they want. But if someone's goal is strength and especially getting stronger at a specific exercise, of course it makes sense to repeat that exercise.

SPEAKER_00 58:27

Yeah, yeah. Now, if you were to build a program for someone based off these guidelines, how would you do that? What would that look like?

SPEAKER_02 58:37

So start with training frequency, ideally. Generally speaking, most people are not lifting weights enough, like on a population level. So first and foremost, as I've already said, are you lifting twice a week or more? Start there.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

Yeah. I would also go the the thing that I like to say is similar to diet, I feel like there's a lot of parallels with nutrition here. A lot of times I feel like what people do with nutrition is they go out and try to find the perfect diet out there. Uh, and then sometimes it ends up being where it feels like they're trying to force a square peg into a round hole. The diet does not suit them. I want to encourage you to flip it around where make the diet fit your lifestyle. In the same way, if you're designing a program, I would start and look at you as an individual first. I would say, what are your goals? What are your preferences? What are your limitations? What exercise, uh, what equipment do you have to work with? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I would get an inventory of all of that and then go from there. And I do agree that twice a week is is is the starting point.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

So I have done some really stupid weight training programs over the course of my training career because I'm stubborn and I'm also experimental. So I would do very, very different things. So I have done very high rep programs with very short rest periods. I've done very heavy programs with very long rest periods. I once went through a phase where I did the exact same program multiple days in a row with no days off. So rather than being like chest on Monday, chest again on Monday, I trained full body, but I would do full body Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Oh, wow. Exactly the same program because I was curious to see what happened. Yeah. Because when people say you should have two to three days off or whatever, I wanted to know what happened. Yeah. And even when I did some really stupid programs, I was often surprised by the fact that I still made progress. So sometimes even when I trained multiple days in a row doing the same program, I could still see myself getting stronger, at least in the short term. Yeah. So my general rule is most people can progress at most things. And I think as they go higher up the specialization spectrum, perhaps, of course, things get different. Like you wouldn't prescribe any old willy-nilly to super high-end athletes. But generally speaking, I think people can get away with a lot of variability. So machines versus free weights probably doesn't matter that much. Is there something that you want to get stronger at? In which case, focus on that. What equipment is available to you? Is the hack squat in the gym busy compared to a dumbbell split squat?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

Don't wait 20 minutes for the hack squat if there's something, a comparable exercise that you can do right away, probably.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

And I think a lot of resistance training variables, even if they look great on paper, I actually don't think they often translate to how they are programmed in the real world. So for example, if I wrote the quote unquote perfect weight training program right now, and I said, you are going to bench press first, you're going to rest this many seconds, you're going to do exactly this number of reps with this time under tension, then you're going to go to this exercise, this exercise, this exercise. I could map it perfectly. And someone would go into a gym on a Monday evening and say, Well, I have to wait 20 minutes for the bench press because a group of guys are on there.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

Which by the way, I used to do back in college when I would uh get programs from a coach, it wasn't bench press, but if it was uh you squat, right? Barbell squat, we only we had eight squat racks. I would sometimes wait up to 30 minutes for a squat rack to open. Yeah, I'll always done that for sure. And I'm thinking, and of course now I'd be like, Well, there goes my entire workout window. I've done nothing. I have to leave now.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

So I think a very easy, I think an easy take-home is if someone's lifting at least twice a week. Next question, are there any specific exercises they want to get stronger at? Because if so, of course it makes sense to do those or at least do variations of those. Or otherwise exercise choice doesn't matter that much if you want to get if you want to build your chest, you don't have to barbell bench press. You can dumbbell bench press, you can machine bench press, whatever. But if you want to get stronger on a barbell bench, it kind of makes sense to barbell bench.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

And also the other question I would ask too, if when I'm building a custom program for a client, I love to ask what exercises do you do you like? If you're gonna be excited about it, I'll do it. What exercises do you strongly dislike and you never want to do some biceps. If you never want to do burpees, which fully understand I'm not a burpee fan either, don't worry, I'd like to know that. If you don't like doing uh Bulgarian split squats, I'll I'll give you a different single leg lunge or squat exercise instead.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

So I think another thing that's important to for people to understand is training frequency kind of accommodates what muscle groups you're going to hit. So if someone can only train once per week, it would make no sense to train just chest.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:23

Yeah. Obviously.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

Like hopefully that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

Week one is chest, week two is quiet.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

You repeat chest every six weeks. So if someone is only lifting once or twice a week, you're going to do a full body program just by default because otherwise you're going to be skipping major muscle groups. But if someone is a hardcore bodybuilder and they're lifting five to six times a week, they probably don't want to do full body anymore. So your training frequency will then often kind of dictate your what muscle groups you're hitting.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:54

Yeah. For example, uh, as he said, once or twice a week, we typically do typically do full body sessions. When we move to three times a week, you can do I well, there's a few ways to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

I would even with three times a week, you could go like You can do three you can do full body sessions.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:07

You can do like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday sessions situation. Personally, uh unless I know someone's schedule is reliable, uh, with the Monday, Wednesday, Friday or whatever, I kind of lately I have been I lean more towards a lower, upper full body for three times a week. And the reason is from a practical standpoint, not research-based practical, I find that it works better with uh people who need a bit more flexibility in their schedule.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:34

Um, because how they can move one of those.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:37

Yes, for example, I'll I'll say this week, for example, um, I can only lift my my only days to lift are Monday to Thursday this week. If I want to train three days, um, that's why yesterday, Monday, I did my full body session. That way I can have a full day off today, then tomorrow I can do lower body, and then uh Thursday I can do upper body. So I feel like it gives me more flexibility. Whereas if I had to do back-to-back full body sessions personally, I wouldn't like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:05

So if someone has I wouldn't feel super fresh. How many days a week they think they can train realistically, start there. Yeah, then that kind of dictates your split. You will break things up more if you are trading more frequently, then pick exercises you like. Yeah, I think is fair. Like someone who wants to get a big squat is not going to say, Well, the exercise I like are lateral raises. They're probably going to enjoy squatting. Yeah. But if someone is trying to build their legs, for example, and they like doing a hack squat or they like doing a leg press or they like doing a split squat or whatever, there are many different ways to get from A to B.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:43

Yeah. And then obviously, if you decide that you want to do full body sessions, you want to make sure that you you choose a variety of exercises that then make sure that all the muscles in your body are targeted. For example, you would want to have a squat, you'd probably want to have some type of hinge exercise. Whether that doesn't have to be a conventional deadlift. It can be a good morning, it can be a Romanian deadlift, it can be a back extension. You have a lot of options here. And then I honestly we don't I don't want to get into the weeds with this, but it really depends on who you're talking to as far as what are the main movement patterns to program in a workout. But you want to have some kind of upper body pushing exercise, you know, a push-up, a bench press, a military press. You want to have some kind of pull, lap pull down, chin up, pull up, row, something like that. And then from there you can go. Um, some people will say you want to add in a single leg exercise or a frontal plane exercise, or or maybe some adductor work or some core work or something like that. So lots of ways to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:40

I think it depends how how you're looking. If someone is purely trying to bodybuild, they might not even care about it. Right. They're not gonna care about. I'm just gonna bench press in five different directions. Doing dead bugs. No. I feel like I have a potentially strong finish. Okay. Is there anything important you want to say first?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:58

Well, I I think we should I wanna we we want to give a nod to the uh muscle and strength training pyramid, which anyone who's a great example. Anyone who's a mega fitness nerd and who especially I feel like this was 10 years ago, maybe more, but anyway, coincidentally, he was my PhD advisor. Uh Dr.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:17

And a good friend of our author, Bandy Morgan.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:21

Yes. Dr. Eric Helms, very, very legitimate fitness professional, I would say. One of my favorite people, actually. He developed what's called the muscle and strength training pyramid. So when we come over to basically obviously think of a pyramid triangle, at the bottom is going to be what's going to be most important. And so, should I read out the muscle and strength pyramid?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:43

So think of a pyramid based on muscle and strength.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Should I read out? Okay. At the very bottom, most important thing is going to be adherence, which is basically what we've been saying. What you said earlier, consistency beats optimization, or something I that I say is consistently good enough is going to beat occasionally perfect. And adherence is the most important thing. From there, level two, we've got volume, intensity, frequency, level three, progression. Then we move on to exercise selection, rest periods, and at the very top we've got tempo. So that's kind of the order you can think of it in as far as what what are the variables that are most important when it comes to resistance training.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

Yeah. So my summary, I think a good summary way to finish, is I have been on various strength and conditioning courses over the years and trained with um a variety of sometimes very highly qualified people. I have been on strength and conditioning courses where we would try different programs and we would often have very meticulously written programs. Everything is timed, everything was this, everything is very structured. And there would sometimes be people who have the most perfectly written program who would have very piss-poor execution. So I have seen people who have what should have been very hard programs and they have left the gym and you wouldn't have even known they've worked out because they trained nowhere close to failure, they were using weights that were too light. That will undo everything else. It doesn't matter if you have perfect exercise selection, it doesn't matter if you have perfect rep range, although that doesn't exist, doesn't matter if you have perfect tempo, which again doesn't exist, doesn't matter if you have the perfect training split, again probably doesn't exist, but you could have something that you think is absolutely perfect, and if you are not pushing hard, you will not get even close to the results that you could be getting. So in general, I would if you were a client and you came to me and you wanted the best results possible, the most important thing that I would care about is how hard you work in the gym, and that makes up for a lot of things that become minor details. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

Yeah. And even even things like if you don't have 60 minutes to do a full workout, don't bother. I would rather I like kind of similar to what you were saying, I would rather someone show up for 30 minutes and make every set very high effort, high quality, as opposed to 60 minutes of dinking around.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:15

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:16

You're gonna get a lot more out of those 30 minutes. So honestly, nowadays, I don't care how long my workout takes. Meaning, if it takes me 25 minutes, but I did all my sets and they're high quality, I'm happy. I'm not thinking, well, it would have been better if I had a full 60 meter. It's fine. I know that I can still make decent progress as long as my sets are being pushed pushed to failure.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:39

And some people, if they're high-end athletes, won't be able to do their workouts in 2020.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

Sure, yeah, but we're talking to everyday person.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:45

I know, I just have to put in the stipulation because someone will be like Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:48

And you you know, the thing I want to say about the these new ACSM guidelines at position stand is that I love that it actually found that we don't have to give ourselves more rules. It gave us a lot more flexibility and a lot more leeway to implement the workouts, but essentially how you want to. And I feel like the more we can tailor it in a way that the individual is going to enjoy, the more likely they are to keep showing up. And that's the goal, isn't it? It's not only to have them do a 12-week program and then disappear until next year bikini season comes around again. I say bikini season in heavy quotes, but it's to get them to show up in a way where they're like, oh, I can keep doing this. And then hopefully a year from now, they're still they're still doing it. Yeah, they're still getting after it. And okay, I don't want to laugh. But as we found that something really is better than nothing. So once again, we are finding this recurring theme where it is not all or nothing, it is going to be all or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:49

That's it. That's the end. High five, good job. I hope you liked it.