Hypertrophy Past and Present (68) Optimal volumes and frequencies for each muscle

0:00 Welcome back. Thank you for joining us for another episode. Today we have the second time we have looked at a fee mail plan, which is I mean we're what 60 60 something episodes in and only doing two, but you guys may not understand how difficult it is to find silver era and even golden era female plans to be honest. So, we've covered a silver era female plan before and I don't know when it must have been almost a year ago. But now we're going to look at a golden era female plan, which keep in mind when we go through it just how different it is to what you might see on social media nowadays. But before I jump into the goods, Chris, how are you doing today?

0:42 >> Doing well, thanks Jake. All >> righty, let's do it. So, we have this is a 1980s plan. Okay, so this is Claudia Wilbborne. So she won she was competing late 70s early 80s in 79 I think she'd come second in in the women's world bodybuilding championships in 1980 so when this plan was written she'd won I think Miss California so a very prominent early female bodybuilder one of the first sort of I guess female I guess leading voices in this space so very very interesting figure And the plan is a 6 day per week plan.

1:27 Now, I I think it was done as chest and back one day, lower the next day, and then shoulders and arms and repeated twice. So, I think it was in that order. It was a little bit unclear to me what order it was in, but I think it was that order. So, each workout done twice per week. So, we're just going to go through each workout and then I'll make a couple of comments in the end. Basically, every single exercise, almost every single exercise is done for two sets of 8 to 12 repetitions. a few exercises. She's added a third set to them, but mostly everything is two sets of 8 to 12. So, our chest and back day. And I think what's going to be interesting here is probably going to be the exercise selection. And there's a lot of exercises are a lot of exercises. So, do your best to kind of keep tabs. And then we'll unpack that in a moment. So, chest and back. We start with a bench, a standard flat barbell bench. Two sets of 8 to 12. Then we go into the incline press or incline bench. And then we've got dumbbell flies. So, that's our chest work. Then we've got a behind the neck lat pull down, a neutral grip cable row.

2:25 So we've got no pull-up, but it's not a bad combination. And then we've got a horizontal back extension. And they were also all done for two sets of 8 to 12. So that is our chest and back day done. Then we've got a lower day. And our lower day is squats. Two sets, leg extension. That's our quads done. actually not quite. So squats and leg extension. Then we've got a lying leg curl. And then we come back to a lunge. Two sets, 8 to 12.

2:51 Each of those exercises, eight sets done. Now, this workout, I think the first two. Great. This one a little bit interesting. Shoulders and arms day. Interesting. This might be This might be one of the first shoulders and arms days we've covered on this podcast. So, shoulders and arms. We've got a barbell overhead press. Then, we've got a lateral raise, dumbbell lateral raise. Then, we've got a bent over reverse fly. And that's our shoulders done. All those are two sets of 8 to 12. And then for arms, we've got a standing barbell curl, a seated dumbbell curl, a triceps push down, and then a dumbbell triceps extension. Now, interestingly, all the arms exercises, she's added an extra set. So, we've got six sets in total for biceps, six sets in total for triceps. We're going to come back to that in a moment, but that's our shoulders and arms stay done. Now, there's one little addition to all of this, and that was that she added after, it wasn't after every workout, but after most workouts, it was a little bit vague. It was like after four to six workouts a week, she would add calves and abs. And the calves and abs work was the same each night. So, she might repeat that five times, however many times per week. And that consisted of standing calf raise, three sets of 8 to 12. Seated calf raise, three sets of 8 to 12. Ab crunch, and that was AM wrap.

4:19 Incline sit up, three sets of AM wrap. Leg raises. I assume this was hanging leg raises, but it could have been done on a bench. two sets of AM wrap. Seated twists, two sets of AM wrap, and then alternating dumbbell twists. They love their twists in the silver and golden era. And that was done for two sets of MRAP as well. Now, before we kind of throw the baby out with the bath water here, I think there's some really interesting things in this plan, and I'm going to I'm not going to comment any further. I'm going to hand over to you. What What do you think looking at this? What's jumping out at you?

4:57 So, what's good is that we've got, everything being every every exercise is being trained twice per week, which is not the worst case scenario. Obviously, the worst case scenario is it could be once a week. So, so that's that's a positive step. >> Mhm. Also, we're only looking at two or maybe three sets per exercise, which is another positive step because we've had some golden era plans on this podcast and they've just been insane in terms of number of sets per exercise. So, >> those two those two points I think are are important to lead with.

5:40 >> exercise selection is also not horrible. There's a pretty good selection of exercises. My main criticism of almost every program is not represented here because we do have frontal plane pull down and sagittal plane pull. So straight away that that kind of ticks my kind of first criticism box of exercise selection. >> I mean you can't get much more frontal plane than behind the neck pull down. >> Exactly. Exactly. as regards the I mean I think there are kind of gaps here. I think the arm exercises are duplicated. I don't think they are particularly well chosen. as in duplicated amongst within themselves.

6:25 >> yes, it's interesting cuz actually both of the triceps exercises you would get long head and normally that's what you're going to be missing. So it's interesting she's got two exercises there that are like you're saying they're duplicated but kind of getting everything. It's interesting. So, so I think yeah, I think the arm exercises is just way over the top and unnecessary the way it's being programmed >> and it misses stuff like kind of there's no kind of focus on brachiialis really in there. you know, there's there's no brachiialis focus. I mean, if you really wanted to pack that many sets of arms in there, you would probably spread them out a bit more. I mean, I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to have a specific exercise for every single arm muscle, but if you're doing that many sets anyway, you might as well spread them out.

7:09 >> >> there's a very sort of obvious lack of glute kind of exercises in here. The horizontal back extension actually goes on the back day, which is a bit strange, but that's the closest thing to a glute exercise that exists really in the program. >> I mean, just >> we've got the lunge on the next day on the lower body day. So we got a lunge and we got a back essentially. >> So just so that people kind of have a a framework in mind. Obviously the squat is a quad exercise with the hip extensor being primarily the adductor magnus. The lunge is a little bit the other way around. It's kind of an adductor magnus exercise with the quad being bolted on.

7:49 So it's it's kind of like the opposite of a squat in the sense that your ratio of hip to knee is switched around. >> So So for me really those are very similar just different focus. >> lying leg curl is not a great choice of leg curl on its own. >> If you're going to have a leg curl as your only kind of hamstrings exercise, you kind of want to do it as seated leg curl really, but that may be an equipment availability issue.

8:17 >> It may be. We we haven't seen a lot of leg curls up to this point. Let's be fair. She has paired it on the other day with a back extension, so it maybe >> I guess it fleshes it out a little bit more as far as hamstrings go. Yeah, I mean, I'd probably want a 45 degree back extension if I was going to call it hamstrings exercise, but yeah. >> And then I mean, this may be an aesthetic choice, but there's no shrug in there, so that would probably be something else that was missing.

8:45 >> Yeah, I think it may well be. Even even when you're talking about the Draculati Alis work, it's like, well, you know, did she want that? I don't know. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she did. I don't know. The thing is if you're doing six sets of of elbow for exercise I'm making the point I'm making is you know like so just to be clear if if somebody's doing a single set of biceps curls twice a week or three times a week or whatever I'm not going to be the person who says to them they need to do you know kind of another biceps exercise or another elbow flexor exercise that's silly because they're clearly it's not important to them but if somebody's doing six sets of elbow flexor exercise in every single arm workout that they're that clearly implies that they have a goal to improve arm appearance and they'd be far better off just doing, you know, two sets of three exercises if they want to do that structure.

9:35 >> I mean, again, like six sets of of biceps twice a week is just over what I would recover I would consider recoverable. So, it's not actually horrible. I mean, again, volume in this context actually isn't as horrible as it at first looks like. >> No. When you see the list of a million different exercises, six different workouts, you think it's going to be ridiculous. >> It's not actually horrible. >> I genuinely think this is from memory, this is probably the best golden era plan we've seen. Or at least it's up there.

10:08 We just had flashbacks, PTSD, of all the awful ones we've looked at. that it's just it's just like you know kind of the best of a kind of you know of a very bad group of programs. But like the thing that I think probably bothers me most and it's the thing that you can't really like I've mentioned before when I look at these kind of programs I'll say is this program salvageable or not? As in can you just make a few tweaks and run it and have it work? And the thing that for me makes this not really salvageable is the fact that we're doing backto-back workouts. And not only are we doing backto-back workouts on consecutive days, we're also doing basically backto-back muscle groups. So >> when you go I know the way out and then the next day you're doing chest and back. I'm like sorry that doesn't work.

11:00 It's not salvageable. >> That shoulders and arms day is ruining it. The back extension, the horizontal extension needed to go in the lower body day. And then the shoulders and arms just needed to get distributed. >> Well, I guess really they needed to go in the upper day. It needed to turn into an upper lower. >> You can't you can't really Yeah, you can't really do this. I don't think the way it's the way it's written.

11:23 >> and that's why I say it's not really salvageable. And and that really kind of ties into a comment that has been made on socials recently, which is that people have been asking us to kind of do a podcast on explaining how we might go about constructing a body part split routine where every muscle is being trained once a week. And the response basically so far has been we can't do it because it doesn't work. And I think there's the and that really again ties into another thing a comment that I see all the time on social media which is why the question basically takes the form of why do you say X if everybody if if so many people do Y and it seems to work and I'm like >> I'm telling you what a the physiology says and based on our conversations here what silver era bodybuilders were doing and that's pre-steroids and And those two things miraculously seem to line up perfectly. so my hypothesis is that if you're seeing a ton of people on social media doing something completely different and it appears to be working for them, I'm not sure it is working for them. I think something else is working for them instead.

12:30 >> That's my answer. >> So, or how well is something working as well? I mean, like, >> can you grow any muscle in a bro split? Sure. Is it going to compare to what you would get on a on a well-designed program? No. So I mean even there's studies where people wear weighted vests and they grow muscle in the lower body. Yeah. It's like okay does that mean that's optimal? No. There's you know we're comparing >> apples. The thing is the maintenance the maintenance literature is really super clear that you know kind of well up to now this year the maintenance literature said that three to four sets once per week keeps you exactly where you have been and doesn't make you grow any further. That's where we've been. We've now got studies showing that it's probably five sets. So, you know, it's just really starting to make the concept of a bro split look basically impossible. I mean, who is going to do kind of five sets per exercise? I mean, >> well, yeah, and and I guess that's the idea of a bro. You throw so much at it that hopefully there's enough overlap in some of the exercises you've chosen that those things are going to grow and then pres >> But that's it. It's just overlap. It's it's like nobody's doing five sets per exercise. They're doing maybe sort of three or four sets of one exercise, then three or four sets of another exercise.

13:46 >> That's a good point. You may, if you're doing a bracelet, you may as well just pick one or two exercises. >> Five sets of one exercise, are they? >> Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. >> You actually have to do six probably six sets of an exercise at this point. Well, when I've ever talked I don't think I've I've ever programmed this, but when I've talked to someone and entertained the conversation about how one would make a bro split work, that's what I always come back to is like realistically for me to have any confidence this is actually going to work. I'd want to give you six sets per exercise.

14:16 >> Per exercise. >> Yeah. Which Yeah. It then does it it now that I'm thinking about it, it is a very funny program cuz it's it's basically like you would do one or two exercises per workout and you would just do your your six or seven sets or maybe maybe do one exercise eight sets and that's your bro split. There's no point doing these four or five different exercises of the same muscle. >> No, absolutely no point. I think I might actually go write this out and and post it online. See what people think because it is it's it's not what a gross bit looks like. You know, when when people follow me grow splits, >> that's not it.

14:53 >> The benefits of exercise variety do not apply in a bro split. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I've been going over all of the the maintenance literature and single single workout stuff really heavily over the last week or so and there was one study I saw I'll flick it to you later where they had advanced and they had beginners doing five sets once a week and beginners to see growth and the advanced people didn't and that was on a on five sets once per week and that was not a maintenance study. They hadn't previously done higher volumes and drop down and whatever else. but you know, to your point of like how many sets does does it take for someone who's who's experienced at all to maintain or grow muscle and yeah, it seems questionable that five sets might even be enough.

15:41 >> Well, yeah. I mean, there was that study that just came out recently with the flywheel that was five sets once a week. >> Yeah. Yes. True. Yeah. So, there's there's sort of mounting research now suggesting five sets. Yeah. Anyway, that is not the topic of today's podcast. Did did you have anything to say on a calf and abs day? >> Well, there were two decent cal well there were two complimentary calf exercises which I thought made sense.

16:07 and I mean we can kind of pick up on calves as we talk about today's topic actually because I think it will be it will be relevant but yeah I mean nothing specific about that workout. >> Okay. I did think it was an interesting combination the seated and the standing. And you know to be entirely fair apart from those couple of gaps you mentioned exercise selection wise traps and draial mainly maybe the leg girl I genuinely think that the exercise selection here was very very good. If we just overlooked that arms day and rejigged what days the exercises were done I genuinely think this has the makings of a very good program. And you know it's interesting I made the comment at the start you know how this would differ to a female plan you would see today. It's interesting that she was putting so much emphasis on arms and you know maybe a little bit on shoulders. Like shoulders kind of almost had their own day. and I think females today do tend to still prioritize shoulders but like you mentioned glutes actually really took a a back seat here. So interesting to compare how goals and aesthetic desires change over time. Now, I selected this program for today's topic cuz what we've had a lot of questions over and it seems to always be a hot topic online and and it's there's some posts I see online that really trigger me like just it's easy to look past silliness and then sometimes there's something that's so silly and it's it's hard to to not take the bait.

17:32 And one of the posts that I find hard not to take the bait on is when I see these posts repeatedly just flash up every other day and it'll be this is how much volume every muscle needs and this is how many times per week each muscle needs to be trained. And it's just these completely arbitrary things where it's like the biceps must have exactly 24 sets a week, but then the quads must have exactly 16 and the biceps need to be trained four times per week, but the quads only need to be trained twice.

18:01 just like weird arbitrary silliness and I do overlook it and I I do tend to be able to control myself and not take the bait. But I thought, you know what, this is a topic people are interested in. I've been getting questions on it. Do you need to train? Should you train each muscle the same amount of volume, the same amount of sets, the same amount of times per week? Does it differ? Why would it differ? How does it differ? And even looking at plans like this, we see that these people did think maybe abs needed more work, maybe calves needed more work, calves six days a week, but the I I guess arms really that were sort of twice a week unless you count the overlap there. So should one train muscle with different frequencies and with different volumes. And you're already starting to smirk and laugh a little bit.

18:43 >> Well, I I don't like modal verbs. >> Should >> I don't like shoulds and coulds and musts. I mean it's not really I don't think it's >> you scarred me for life with that you know everyone everyone is close to me >> I know once once you once you've seen it you can't unsee it >> you can't unsee it I force myself to unsee it when I hit record and then when I'm done should is out of my vocabulary and if anyone uses it when they're near me oh we will have a whole conversation about being prescriptive don't let me tell you >> no I don't I don't do prescriptive so let me propose a structure for us to have this conversation so that we capture as much useful information as possible and I don't kind of derail us by going down too many rabbit holes.

19:27 let's consider the possibility that we could talk about volumes being different for different muscles. We could talk about frequencies being different for different muscles. we could also talk about volume and frequency combinations being different for exercises. So that's a a slightly separate thing, but I think we can bring that in >> separately on top of So okay, so we've got three things to think about then.

20:01 Okay, so we've got volume and frequency on the muscle by muscle basis. Then we've also got the exercise kind of add-on. Additionally, I think there is a difference between saying that a muscle is ideally trained with a given frequency and can be trained with a given frequency. I think those two things are separate. The reason I think they're separate is because on the one hand, what we're talking about is hypertrophy stimulus and the process of leaving that hypertrophy stimulus period and starting a new one. And secondly, what your muscle damage response is likely to be.

20:44 >> Because I think what we're going to >> kind of find is that, and the calves are a great example of this in the program we just looked at, is that you can, >> as in you can get away with training a muscle like the calves every day in a way that you can't with the biceps. >> Yeah. So I think there's a difference between saying you know what is the optimal approach to I mean again optimal has a bit of a buzzword kind of way to it but you know to obtain the ideal result to obtain the maximum hypertry across a long period of time you know are we better off training the muscle with this frequency or that frequency or this volume or that volume or whatever then I think ultimately the that is one question then a separate question is if I did start training the carbs every single day would that set me back a long way or a little way or not at all? If I try start training the biceps every single day, would that set me back a little way, a long way or not at all? I think the answer to those questions is resoundingly different.

21:43 >> Whereas I think if you're talking about the ideal hypertrophy kind of type program, I think the the answers are actually quite similar. But, you know, let's let's kind of dig into this. Would it work for us to go muscle by muscle or did you want to go prefer to go topic by >> using muscles as an example in each topic category? I think that will give people a better idea of what's going on. >> Okay, we can do that.

22:11 It would be easier for people's note takingaking if we were going muscle by muscle, but I understand that we'll probably end up >> would it though because what are you referencing stuff against? I mean like you're just going to get random numbers which and those random numbers might differ between people. I mean ultimately and this is a problem that I think the trying to search for a polite term here. this is a problem that a group of people have in the fitness industry which is that they desperately want specific numbers for everything.

22:41 >> and the reality is physiology is directional not sort of specific numbers based. So you you're going to kind of get comparisons and this muscle is in this direction, that muscle is in that direction and give you a broad kind of number category associated with each of those things. But generally speaking, the direction is the important thing, not the kind of absolute number. that seems to be lost on a lot of people unfortunately. M and you know like you said we'll anchor it with some numbers to guide you but yes obviously it's more in the relative to other muscles that it's going to be interesting.

23:18 >> Okay. So we'll start with we'll start with volume. >> Sure. >> All righty. Now are we we're talking within session volume >> of course. >> Yeah cuz weekly volume is a it's not an overly helpful metric. Okay. >> Great. So what what would one have to consider when it comes to how much volume would be ideal for muscle? Do we need to talk about how many regions that muscle may require like how many different exercises might be required to stimulate it?

23:47 >> That's actually an even that's that's another question in tile isn't how many exercises do you need for a muscle group? I mean that's an entirely separate question. >> I mean ultimately that tends to be the question that we answer when we do a entire podcast on a specific muscle. >> Yeah. So I don't propose that we try and do that today. that would be like trying to do 12 podcasts in one go. >> so let's let's not answer that question. Let's kind of stick to volume.

24:13 and yeah, not not try and think too much about separate regions of a muscle. I mean ultimately I think the reason why people assume that different muscles will I mean let me phrase it like this. I think what people are saying is that to get to a certain hypertrophic stimulus magnitude, different muscles will require different numbers of sets. Is that a fair kind of statement of the problem?

24:45 >> Yeah, I I think there's probably two parts to it is, you know, what is going to stimulate some kind of hypertrophy and then what is the ceiling of >> Okay, so you want either end. So what you're saying then is that some people think that a certain number of sets won't stimulate any hypertrophy in one muscle, but it would stimulate hypertroy in another muscle. >> and then the plateau as we go up the set do those response curve the plateau is going to occur later in one muscle than it might in another muscle. So we're two two problems. Is that fair?

25:16 >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. let me let me address the sort of well I mean ultimately the physiology is going to address both of these simultaneously but basically hypertrophy is muscle fibers specific. So the reality is that you might have hundreds of thousands of muscle fibers in a muscle and they don't really interact with each other from a hypertry point of view. So and you can easily demonstrate this by the fact that if I walk across the room, I'm going to use u some muscle fibers. They're going to be loaded in the sense that they're shortening slowly and they're going to be triggered to grow. Now the reality is because I walk across the room every single day, multiple times a day, and have been doing that for decades, there's no further capacity for those fibers to grow. So they kind of just cap out. They reach their maximum size and nothing else is going to happen. So they're receiving a mechanical stimulus to grow, but nothing is actually going to trigger them to grow further than they have already grown. It's like there is a stimulus, but it can't translate into anything.

26:22 So ultimately what we've got there then is this kind of layer generally regarded as the low threshold motunit muscle fibers that are receiving a stimulus. The rest of the muscle fibers not receiving a rest of the muscle fibers in the muscle are not receiving a stimulus. So we've kind of divided off which muscle fibers are receiving a stimulus from the ones that are not receiving a stimulus. So there's two kind of categories of fiber in the muscle. So basically that is kind of one of the kind of basic principles of stimulating rep theory saying that you know you can kind of sort of identify loading that's happening and where that loading is happening. So the fiber the muscle fiber specific nature is critical. Now, if you now consider if the muscle fiber has to receive its own mechanical loading to grow and it doesn't know what any of the other muscle fibers are doing, it doesn't matter whether you've got 200,000 mus in the muscle or a million muscle, does it?

27:18 >> I mean, like ultimately, if you take a large muscle like one one of the quadriceps like the vasis lateralis or if you're talking about, you know, a kind of a small muscle, you know, like the brachiialis, I mean, like it actually doesn't matter how many fibers there are in that muscle. It's like whether the fiber is loaded or not and they all kind of don't talk to each other. So it's it's very much a they're they're agnostic about whether anything else is whether any other fiber is growing. I mean so the the very premise behind asking you know can I can I get a you know sort of you know can I identify a different ideal volume for one muscle from another muscle. just it doesn't actually pass the first physiological questioning line.

28:06 >> Yeah. Okay. So ultimately you've broken it all the way down into muscle fibers which is what this question this whole thing is about. If we're looking hypertrophy we're looking at hypertrophy of individual muscle fibers. And so the same magnitude of stimulus is required for any fiber to grow provided that that fiber can still experience growth. Well, what I'm pointing out is that the main reason why two muscles will be different from each other in size because that's the main I'm assuming that's the main reason why someone would say the quads need more volume than the biceps or something like that. Yeah.

28:39 Okay. So, you're saying why do they even come up with that conclusion? Yeah. I suppose they are saying bigger muscles. What do they say? Bigger bigger muscles. No, but they normally say smaller muscles can be trained more often. So, there seems to be >> deal with frequency in a minute. >> No, I know. But it's it's what bigger muscles need more volume but then like less frequency. >> I'm pointing out that the the the difference in size between muscles is completely irrelevant for anything because the reality is that every fiber is active is behaving on its own and it's hypertrophying on its own. So it doesn't matter if you've got two muscles that are completely different sizes. The fibers don't know that they're in muscles of different sizes. They just don't know.

29:19 >> Yeah. So, you know, it's like that that that just drops away. Now, conversely, if you wanted to say, well, okay, does fiber type make a difference? You know, am I going to see different volumes being required to create the same hypertrophy in different muscle fiber types? Well, interestingly, you aren't going to get the same hypertrophy in a slow twitch fiber as you are in a fast twitch fiber. It's going to grow at different rates. can you apply more volume to that storiach fiber?

29:53 Potentially you could and recover from it. Yeah, potentially you could. but the problem is that you still got some fast twitch fibers in the muscle even though it's a generally slow twitch muscle. You still got some fast twitch fibers. So you're still going to have that damage problem at the top end of the muscle anyway. So you're going to have a frequency issue if you start loading a muscle with too many sets. So it's not only that slower twitch fibers had a a lower ceiling for how much growth they can experience.

30:18 >> They'll also grow slower. >> They will also grow slower even with the comparable stimulus. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. Now I guess you sort of pointed to the bigger muscles, smaller muscles thing. I suppose when people are saying that they're to be fair to them, maybe they are kind of alluding to what you've just said there as far as fiber type makeup. I think those are the only two things you could unless you want to point at regions in which case it's excess variety not actually volume per se is the issue >> but if you wanted to point at two factors that would be reasonable to discuss it would be size and fiber type proportion that's the only two things I can think of apart from the region specific issue >> but size itself like you said it doesn't really matter because one >> size is is a is a fiction it doesn't trackly well with fiber type Okay.

31:09 >> not not brilliantly. >> I mean there is a tendency for for bigger muscles to tend to have more slow twitch proportion. but but you can easily find like if you pointed at the quad and then at the at the the solius, you'd clearly see there's a discrepancy there. and you can point at some really Yeah, I mean it doesn't work perfectly. It doesn't work.

31:46 >> I'm just trying to think why why is this idea of muscle size become a thing and that's the best I can. >> I don't think it's confounded by fiber type proportion. I think those are two separate things. But again, I mean I'm not the right person to ask about belief systems in the fitness industry. Okay. So, we can do away with the muscle size thing. And so, now you've mentioned the fiber type makeup will influence how quickly it will grow if it's more slow twitch fibers. Well, it'll it'll influence how quickly each individual fiber grows. And that's my point because even in a slow twitch dominant muscle, you're still going to have fast twitch fibers at the top end of the muscle and they're going to get trashed to bits if you start hitting the whole muscle with a larger amount of volume. So, you're going to have a frequency issue if you start playing around with volume for that reason.

32:30 So let's use two. >> But equally there's but just to be clear when we look at the bottom end of the spectrum and say okay do you actually need a different number of stimulating reps or sets in order to produce hypertrophic stimulus? The answer is no. You'll get a hypertrophic stimulus with a minimal amount of volume. I mean, literally one set >> will do it and the amount of hypertrophy will be still there a few days later.

33:00 So, if you train twice a week, then you know, you'll grow. it won't last a whole week, but you know, it's enough to get you to the next training session if you're training twice a week. And if you train three times a week, then it's probably less than one set. It's probably like three stimulating reps. >> So, an example, >> the reality is the bottom end of the spectrum is much lower than most people. I mean, I still get questions from people saying, you know, I'm training three sets twice a week. Is that enough to cause hypertrophy? I'm like, what planet do you want?

33:28 >> Yeah. >> I mean, I still get questions like that. I mean, like, it's mad. I mean, I don't know what brainwashing has happened over the last couple of decades. But people literally think that unless they're doing a billion sets in the gym every time they go, then they're not triggering any muscle growth. >> Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, like you said there, the floor is very low. single set is enough for every muscle we're talking about. Like it's it's not going to change from a muscle to muscle basis.

33:54 Now give let's use an example of a very fast twitch dominant muscle and a very slow twitch. I guess the classic slow twitch example is going to be the calves. >> What would be a very fast twitch muscle elbow flexes? >> Well, the the example Yeah. The example that the research literature uses pretty much all the time is is the elbow flexors. >> So say we had someone who was doing one set of calves compared to one set of biceps.

34:25 It's reasonable to assume that the biceps would be growing quicker than the calves. >> Well, it depends on your starting point. I mean the other issue is that if you've already kind of reached your maximum kind of I mean one of the problems that we have when looking at growth rates of fiber muscle fibers of different types is that and this and the opposite problem and we actually talked about this u in and the same problem actually occurs in the opposite direction when you look atrophy because we actually did a whole episode on how fiber type doesn't determine the rate of atrophy. It's the muscle fiber size that determines the rate of atrophy.

35:12 >> And the reason that research got itself sew in a knot around that question is because they weren't controlling for the state of fiber size when they started the atrophy process. So they would take a muscle muscle with a bunch of muscle fibers in it at different fiber types and you know look at say a muscle with predominantly fast twitch or a muscle with predominantly slow twitch and they would see different kind of rates of atrophy in those muscles but if you control for the starting fiber size those differences go away. so I think one of the problems we've got when we look at, say for example, you know, you're looking at how fast does the calf muscle grow. If most of the muscle fibers in the calves are already maxed out in terms of size, >> then >> you're not going to see a lot of whole muscle growth in that situation, it's not going to happen, >> you know. So that and that you know that if it's a postural muscle and you're sort of using a high percentage of your maximum kind of strength every day and therefore a high level of recruitment every day just using that muscle it's going to be m you know kind of the level of plateau is you know the fiber size is going to be quite high up and size principal sequence >> so I mean you can kind of do this in animal models and you can look at muscle fibers slow fast and you can generally see that slow twitch fibers will grow slower than fast twitch fibers. But the problem is if you're taking the average of a whole group of muscle fibers and 80% of your slow twitch fibers are already maxed out and only 10% of your fast twitch fibers are already maxed out and then you put them both through the same training program and you get very small growth in your slow fibers and very large growth in your fast twitch fibers. It's like oh clearly fast twitch fibers grow faster than slow twitch fibers. Well, no, it's not anything to do with that is it? It's literally that most of the fibers that you were training in the slow twitch group just couldn't grow. Yeah. Okay.

37:05 So, really you're saying let's if we use our example, they have calves and biceps. The reality is someone may have many more muscle fibers in the biceps that they're able to grow. >> Can still grow. You've got to be really careful with what you're actually measuring and what it means. And this is one of the things that I get very aggravated about with hypertroy researchers is you know the fact they don't take basic physiology into account in these kind of scenarios and they just kind of go oh you know slow twitch grow grew very little and fast twitch grew a lot therefore you know this is the conclusion I'm like well hang on a minute what happens if most of the fast twitch muscles were capable of growing because they got capacity and most of the slow twitch muscle fibers couldn't >> you know you're skating over something that's got nothing to do with f well indirectly does have a little bit to do with fiber type because the size the maximum size that you can reach is smaller with a oxidative fiber but it's not actually the the fiber type that's driving that problem. M so to go back to our cars and biceps example. So adding more sets in in that single workout for the calves while they may be able to do it because they are largely so twitch that may not necessarily equate to substantially more growth comparatively to something like the biceps.

38:24 And this is a this is a great point of again why physiology actually has huge practical implications because if the reason for the lack of slow to grow growth in something like the cars is because most of the fiber is already maxed out that tells you there's not really much you can do about the problem. >> No. And just adding more volume to it is not going to suddenly make those slow twitch fibers. In fact, it's going to be the opposite of helpful because if your problem is the only fibers that you are capable of growing are right at the very top end of the motorunit pool, then your strategy has to be to increase recruitment and make sure that any loading that you do has very high recruitment. If you spam a whole load of extra sets, your recruitment is going to go flying down and you're going to spend most of your time wasting a whole load of repetitions in a zone that doesn't actually do anything.

39:15 Okay. So to put some numbers or some some muscles to our we've covered that the floor is a single set for any muscle. That's irrelevant of what muscle we're talking about. A single set is going to be enough there to stimulate growth. And then to talk about this sort of ceiling. Are we saying it sounds to me like we've kind of arrived at a point where it doesn't really change from a muscle to muscle standpoint in terms of like okay you may have a muscle that can withstand more volume but the volume probably isn't giving you more growth because the the very reason it can withstand more volume means that it's not going to get more growth from that more volume. Is that fair to say?

39:56 So ultimately a muscle that has mostly slow twitch fibers is going to be able to withstand a higher volume in a single session without giving you a lot of post-workout. Now the issue is though that there could be a one of the reasons for that could be that you've actually you know kind of talking about a postural muscle that has high levels of recruitment and a lot of the fibers are already maxed out and there's no real no way you can really go with that. if you had a slow twitch muscle that wasn't kind of being loaded all the time at a high level of recruitment, then you know, you could, if you wanted to train that. I mean, I know that the trapezius is kind of a postural muscle in the sense that it helps you kind of stay upright.

40:54 but it's not in the sense that it's actually kind of like, you know, ground reaction forces. So, trapeze is probably an interesting one that if you wanted to, you could probably do more trap work volume and you could probably yeah, do more sets and it would probably give you a little bit more hypertrophy result. So this is kind of the thing I was kind of really thinking of when I set out this categorization because >> I think there are muscles that can tolerate a higher volume >> and that that might then I mean in the same way that two different people can tolerate slightly and we talk about how three sets you know kind of three times a week is kind of the sort of max for for for the average kind of person most of the time. You know, I think probably at this point in my life, I'm probably at two. You know, I don't think I can probably do three. I mean, maybe for some exercises I can. And actually, that's probably a good point. I probably can.

42:02 >> For for like calf raises, I probably can. >> you know, and that's kind of the point I'm making here. I think there probably are. But again, is that helping me? I don't know. Maybe not. I mean, but if I did like three or four sets with trap work with shrugs, maybe it would be helpful, you know? So, I think what I'm saying here is that categorization wise, if you want a kind of a matrix, I think, I think there are some muscles that probably can be trained with a little bit more volume than others.

42:37 do you need to? No. 100% no. Absolutely not. It's not necessary. the low level the the kind of the threshold level stimulus is going to be the same for every muscle. So you don't need to. Can you get away with it? I think you can. Is it going to make a difference? Probably not in kind of muscles that are already kind of pretty much maxed out like the calves and in the traps. It might make a difference. you might be able to get So So I think there's something interesting in here where you can kind of say well >> you know you don't need to 100% you don't need to. you can and it probably doesn't. And the worst case scenario with calves is that you've just wasted two or three extra minutes.

43:18 >> with the traps, maybe you're actually getting something. And I'm not I'm not nailing my colors to the mast here with those two specific muscles. I'm just trying to find examples. >> Yeah. I'm creating a a Chris table in my mind with color. >> Yes. No. Yes. So directionally speaking, what other muscles would we be putting towards that sort of, you know, more able to tolerate some higher volume there? >> Well, very broadly speaking, the lower body tends to drift slow twitch and the upper body tends to drift fast twitch. Obviously, the exception being the traps, especially the middle and lower traps.

43:59 so realistically glutes and quads I would probably put in that leaning towards that. Can you get away with a little bit more volume? I would say for me if you said to me practically speaking in my program or a program for somebody that I know well, what what muscle groups would I >> consider adding an extra set? >> It would be calves, quads and glutes >> and traps. Sorry, I already said traps. Sorry, probably those four.

44:28 >> I think that's totally valid. the reason I kind of didn't suggest it in my case is because, it would probably upset them quite a lot, but yeah, I think you probably could. I think you probably could. Yeah. >> And then everything else would just be on the opposite end there. >> Yeah, I think I would probably say that most of the other stuff would fall into the category of it three sets being a pretty hard limit. Amongst the elbow flexes, is there much variation between bracki radiialis byis brachi or are they fairly similar?

45:07 >> I think there is a little bit of difference, but I don't think it's that easy to really kind of >> isolate one off without the other. >> Isolate one or the other. >> I don't know. I'm sure some of the some of the guys on TikTok have found a way to do that. >> Yeah. Well, maybe we'll have a guest on the podcast who can talk us through that. Okay. So, is that the whole volume bit then covered?

45:32 >> Well, I hope so, but again, it depends on why people think they are requiring different volumes to different muscles. And I didn't really do a kind of social media review to identify the ration >> and sometimes the ration are just absolute nonsense. >> Most of the time there is none. I can tell you that now when I'm looking at these posts, there's nothing. >> No, sure. >> Okay. you may touch on this in in a little bit. I'm not sure, but is it is it worth flagging that of those muscles we've just mentioned that one could potentially give them a little bit more volume? That is going to potentially depend a little bit on the exercises one is selecting for those muscles, too.

46:17 Well, that's one of the reasons why I said I think exercise selection is is very important here. Yeah. as a as a category. So, exercise volume is going to differ. So, like if you're if you're doing leg presses and if you're doing hip thrusts, then those are two totally different kind of sort of your your your post-workout damage dose response is going to be very different >> between those two exercises because of the stretch position. So, with the leg press, you're loading muscles in stretch position. With the the hip thrust, you're loading them in the contracted position.

46:58 you're not going to get the same amount of post-workout per set. So, you can you I've said this before, you can spam hip thrusts if you want to. It's really not a problem. but you can't do that with leg presses. >> So, in so far as a muscle is able to be well activated in a shortened position, then that muscle or that exercise that is doing so, we could probably push more volume into that exercise. >> Yeah. And so if you have a coincidence between a muscle that I've already mentioned is potentially, you know, kind of >> more resistant to post-workout fatigue like the glute and then you contracted position exercise is what you're going to use to train that muscle. If you have both of those two things together, >> then it magnifies and that's I think that's one of the reasons why you can see glute training programs with a lot more volume in than you would see, you know, kind of many other programs. I mean it just the confluence of those two factors is going in the same direction.

47:56 >> Yeah. Yes. Assuming you are using those types of exercises. >> I mean like Yeah. Sure. I mean if you're trying to do it with stretch position exercises, you got some pain and suffering coming your way. But you know I mean like >> I think a lot of good glute programs now are built around the hip thrust. Sorry. >> In the silver era, there was a tendency when people were adding volume for their legs for their quads. And this this did tend to be a little bit more in strengthbased programs. But something that is quite common to see is that they will do say multiple sets, say three sets or so with a a quarter squat or a half squat and then they'll follow that up with a couple of sets of full depth squat.

48:40 Would that be an example there where adding something like a half squat, obviously they weren't really using leg extensions a lot of the time back then and you could use a leg extension now, but would doing something like a partial squat potentially allow one to do more squat volume for the quads than if they were doing a full depth? So from a muscle physiology perspective, yes. practically I don't I don't like partial squats. I think it turns it into an upper body exercise >> because of the weight that's being used or >> because of the sheer insane amount of weight that you have to use to to actually reach muscular failure in that scenario.

49:25 >> You can >> honestly I don't think it's a good idea. You could probably do a similar thing with a lot of exercises. But then that comes back to the question of is that muscle activ like a bench for example. Yeah, I also see that in the silver era sometimes again mostly strength plans where they're doing a a top half bench, you know, bench from blocks or whatever and then they'll follow it up with a few sets of of full depth bench. But the question there will be, well, is that top half bench really giving you what you want from a chest standpoint?

49:59 Yeah, I mean that's always the issue with with exercises that have a have differing muscle contributions across the range of motion. >> Okay, this is this is interesting. So far we've I mean people are going to quote you like, "Wow, you've just said people can do four, five, 17 sets of glutes in 17." I'm pretty sure I didn't say >> in a single workout. Okay. So the the flip side of this then is how often can you do it and what do we need to think about when it comes to how often a muscle can be trained.

50:34 >> So I think again the two physiological variables that get quoted are muscle size and fiber type. So people will go you know the muscle is big therefore it kind of takes longer to recover. The muscle is small therefore it recovers quickly. I mean, I've seen some pretty famous internet sport scientists making that claim a number of times. And the issue is that the literature actually uses two muscles that often get quoted in that context, the quads and the and the biceps or the elbow flexors. Literature actually uses the fatigue literature which exercise scientists often don't read. uses that those two examples is the opposite way around. So the quad gets used as the example of a muscle that recovers quickly and the elbow flexors gets used as the example of a muscle that recovers slowly. So ultimately the smaller muscle is taking longer to recover. Why is that? Well, it's because it's fast twitch. Size actually doesn't really come into it very much. In fact, bigger muscles tend to have bigger voluntary activation deficits, which makes them a little bit more protected against post-workout damage because they don't recruit as many of the higher thresh fibers attached to them. So, generally speaking, the bigger a muscle, the harder it is to recruit all the motor units, therefore, the less post-workout fatigue you're going to create.

51:57 I just don't get why muscle size why that's something that people have >> because we live in this kind of framework that I've kind of popularized which is that hypertrophy is muscle fiber specific and it is and you know kind of the research literature accepts that point but they don't actually pull on the thread and go well if that's true what does that then mean and that's what I've spent the last kind of 10 years doing is pulling on the thread going if that's true what does it mean >> means all these things that we talk about now and that you know kind of get repeated across Tik Tok every single day, hundreds of thousands of times.

52:29 >> Even if it weren't true, why would they make that claim, though? I can't even rationalize. >> When people think of a muscle as a single kind of homogeneous thing, then they kind of they like they think of it in terms of being something that, you know, experiences more damage because, you know, you've kind of got more. Yeah. Right. >> There's more damage, more of it. Yeah. What a primitive way. >> They don't think of it in terms of single fiber phenomenon. It's just like it's a it's a whole great big thing because they're looking at it from the outside and they've got no spreading out stimulus amongst such a big thing. So obviously that big thing. Oh my gosh.

53:08 Okay. >> I know it's mad. And you've got to kind of step outside of this model that we live in in order to appreciate where some other people are coming from. But also why those people haven't actually moved forward in 10 years. Yeah, >> they've got nowhere to go. >> It's funny. I mean, even in the silver, I don't hear any weird explanations like that. Like they, you know, they said some pretty whack physiological things back then, but I didn't I didn't see that. I don't know why.

53:34 >> So, I think the frequency thing is is mirroring the volume thing in the sense that people think of it in terms of being, you know, can I you know, have a different frequency because it's either a bigger muscle or a smaller muscle and the recovery rates are different and then, you know, kind of But fiber type is really the bigger driver. It's like if you got a really fast twitch muscles. So the same thing really applies. But we kind of covered this with volume because I said look >> can you train with more sets? Well yes for the same recovery. You can do a an extra set or two with a muscle like the glute or trapezius or maybe the rear delt like you suggested. But it's now we're just talking about the flip side.

54:11 Can you train with a higher frequency? Well if you kind of wanted to up to a limit. The reality is if you start training inside the 48 hour stimulus period, you're probably not going to be getting ideal results. So, I mean, I think you can like a a really really slow twitch muscle, train it with a contracted position exercise. You could train it daily and it probably wouldn't kind of set you back. Would it give you an enormous benefit? I think it's questionable. M and I don't really want given the data as they are at the moment regarding post-workout stimulus periods being really kind of gnarly and difficult to pause. I don't want to come down hard on one side of the of the of the question here.

54:55 So, I'm going to say I think it's probably debatable whether you could get a benefit out of it, but I don't think it would create a serious problem. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. So >> I think if you tried to train biceps every day, I think you probably run into pain and suffering quite quickly. >> So we're we're going we're using the same sort of exercise group muscle groupings that we used a moment ago. >> It's literally the flip side of the coin because when we talked about the volume question, I was literally arguing it from a point of view of can you based on the recovery potential. Frequency is literally the opposite side of the equation. It's like all we're saying now is can you train it more frequently because of the recovery potential. Well, yes. You've just got to be aware that your 48 hour recovery period still sorry, your 48 hour stimulus period doesn't change just because your recovery period has changed. Again, I know that the bodybuilding community tends to think the recovery and stimulus periods are identical. They're not.

55:50 >> Yes. Okay. So, let's put some some numbers to this. So, can even a muscle that's easily damaged, let's go with the biceps again. Could one do a single set of biceps and be recovered again in 24 hours? >> Yes. I mean, you could do a four rep max. >> yeah, you know, I think you'd probably be recovered in in 24 hours. >> and we're not obviously we're not saying every single person who's listening to this, that's definitely going to be the case. But broadly speaking, okay, one could do something that's not going to cause tremendous amounts of damage for even a very fast twitch dominant muscle, fiber type muscle, and still be recovered probably in 24 hours. So certainly if we're talking 48 hours, which is our kind of like starting point.

56:38 >> Well, yeah. I mean, like two or three sets of biceps curls, you should be done in 48 hours, most people. Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. So, as a again, as like a bit of a flaw there, we're saying kind of everything should be fine for at least sort of two sets, probably even a third set every 48 hours. You know, assuming you're not doing anything a little bit silly, very high reps, whatever. Yeah. Very slow eentrics, whatever. now again if we go to the those muscle groupings you've used so you said basically those ones that are easily damaged okay they can probably do two or three sets those ones who are who who which are you know harder to damage potentially potentially double that >> I wouldn't go as far as that >> if you're doing hip double >> well again I mean it depends on rep ranges and stuff like that >> but yeah I mean you can definitely add a couple of sets on there I I mean, I think probably five sets three times a week of hip thrust is probably okay.

57:36 >> Mhm. >> But again, I mean, everybody's going to be different. When I give numbers like three time three sets three times a week, that is designed to capture the vast majority of situations for the vast majority of people. >> Yes. If you program this way, you should get good results. It's like you don't need it. >> It's not actually possible to give you a recommendation that captures every scenario and every person all the time. That's why I have to give you numbers.

58:01 It's like the five stimulating reps. People get really upset about the fact that I've said it's five stimulating reps and they're like, you know, oh no, no, no, it could be six or it could be four. And I'm like, I've literally written articles about that. That's that's not how my model works. You're not you're not saying, >> you know, I'm giving you a I'm giving you a a summary, best possible answer for the vast majority of people. That's how that's how it works. when I do my my health consulting work and I write health protocols I obviously use a lot of supplementation and one thing I always teach my mentoring clients is there's supplements that that could work there's good literature on some supplements but some supplements have either high side effects or the the percentage of people who they work for is just quite low like it might work for 30% of people or 50% of people and for me when I write protocols I don't want to use a supplement where there's a 50/50 50-50 chance will help that person or not. Yeah, I want to use a supplement where I feel fairly confident 80 90% plus that this is going to have a beneficial effect and that person's not going to have, you know, negative side effects or whatever. I think that's how we're looking at this. It's like, okay, could some people listening to this add an extra set or add an extra two sets, whatever. Yeah, you could. But >> oh, I mean, seriously, I've I've and I've told this story a hundred times, but you know, I when I was working as a personal trainer very very very long time ago, I used to do some strength and conditioning work with endurance cyclists. And those guys would literally be able to bang out set after set after set after set of of back squats. And they could come back in they could have come back in the following day and done it again, but usually come back in a few days later and they do the same thing again. and it would just be nothing.

59:41 They just wouldn't it wouldn't even register as fatigue for them. >> Just not even there. It's absolutely insane. I mean, until you've actually worked with an endurance athlete and seeing what their slow twitch fibers are capable of doing, it's really difficult to believe. Like, and I would contrast that when I would be kind of doing, you know, my strength training at the same period of time, >> and I would contrast with what they were capable of recovering from, what I was capable of recovering from, and it would just be like worlds apart. Yeah, you know, >> I had that same conversation with a friend this week who trains with a lot of endurance type athletes >> and he was saying like the volumes that they're capable of doing with just, you know, very little recovery time, it's just not it's not what we're talking about when it comes to most people like these.

60:25 >> No, it's not. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Now, >> just to be clear, there's there's some really nice there's some really nice literature showing that if you take a group of untrained people, take a group of untrained people and you give them a really horrible kind of muscle damaging kind of eccentric only workout with elbow flexes for example. So, you're looking to create a really kind of big muscle damage effect.

60:56 You give those people, this group, large group of people, you've just pulled them off a university campus and kind of, you know, gone through the protocol with them and they've, you know, agreed and then you've kind of sat them down on the dynamometer and you've got them to do, you know, whatever it is, 100 reps of eccentric bicep curls like and and then they come in the following day and you measure their elbow flexor strength and some of those people are going to crawl in the door and they're going to basically display a level of strength that's like 30 or 40%. what it was the previous day. I mean these people will not have been functional in their daily life with that arm that you trained the previous day in that story.

61:35 >> Okay. Now contrast that with some other people are going to bounce in the door and they're going to be 5% stronger. >> Yeah. It's why >> and that study exists. I mean it's insane. And so like again people are going oh well you know can I do this? Can I do that? Can I do the other? I'm like I don't know. I don't know. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, >> but on average the big group of people in the middle of the normal distribution, we kind of have this fairly good idea that yeah, you know, three sets three times a week or three sets every 48 hours is a pretty good kind of benchmark. can people fall either side of that? Yes, absolutely.

62:12 Can muscles fall either side of that? Yes, absolutely. And generally speaking, a couple of muscles are going to fall that side and a couple of muscles are going to fall the other side. And that's all we're talking about today. And as a coach, if you're listening to this and you're a coach, you can learn or or even yourself, you know, you can learn yourself and you can learn your clients well enough to know when you can quote unquote break these rules a little bit. But these general guidelines we're giving, you know, this is, as we said now, designed to work for almost everyone who's listening.

62:43 So, every muscle can be trained every 48 hours. Okay, we've established that. And so the idea that some muscles can only be trained twice a week would only be true if someone was using so much volume in those sessions that they obviously weren't recovering from. >> Yeah. I mean that's a volume problem. I mean like if if if you were if you were to throw one set I mean and this applies to exercises as well. So like I know that some people have said oh well you know you can only train squats twice a week. I'm like well no I mean absolutely do a single set of squats three times a week. I mean there's nothing stopping you. you do bodybuilders through 1950.

63:19 >> Yeah, exactly. I mean, and it will be better than whatever you're currently doing with squats. I promise you, you know, so you know, frequency is is so much better than volume. It's not funny. you know, we've been through that before. >> And so you mentioned a moment ago, you mentioned around the stimulus period and you said, "Okay, like the stimulus period about two days, give or take. We've done whole episodes on this, but that's there's there's no case where again if you were to do a muscle with low enough volume, one or two sets, there's no case where training that again 2 days later doesn't make sense in terms of you don't there's it's not like a muscle somehow has some muscles have a longer stimulus period and therefore they should be trained 72 hours.

64:06 >> They don't have the longest. No, that's not No, no, no, no, no. The only thing that's going to differ is the recovery period according to the fast twitch fiber portion and the voluntary activation percentage. and then if you've trained it with a contracted or a stretch position. >> Okay. >> ultimately but ultimately I mean like just coming back to this idea that you might be better off training a muscle or a specific exercise with a lower frequency. Ultimately, anybody making that case is going to run face first into the dose response curve.

64:40 >> Yes. >> Face first. >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. Face first. And and it's going to make it very clear that they're wrong because the dose response curve is super clear that as soon as you've gone past that first set, your second set is just 40%ish of your first set stimulus. So, the idea that you would want to do more volume in fewer sessions is insane. I mean like anybody recommending that is not looking at at the at the data.

65:09 >> So I you know I think ultimately it's the question has to be is can I recover from that? Well yeah you can. There's pretty much no unless you're doing super maximum eentrics there is no scenario in which you can't recover from like a single set in 48 hours. >> Yeah. Yeah. So regardless of which data set you use everything is showing that that second set is less stimulating than the first set. >> Yeah. I mean like we can argue over percentages but at the end of the day it's still a you know kind of curve that is nonlinear and it's still plateauing. So >> and even if it was 90% you know even if it was far far more stimulating than what any of the data suggests it's still not as stimulating the first.

65:49 >> Yeah. So yeah, I mean, and this is ultimately why the weekly net stimulus model works and nobody's been able to produce a model that's better because everybody else wants frequency to not matter. And I'm like, you can't you can't say that frequency doesn't matter. It has to matter. Now, how much does it have to matter in the sense that we've established now some muscles, maybe even all muscles, could be trained every single day and be recovered? Now, I know we've done episodes on this. I don't expect you to go super deep into it, but is it is there a case where it's worth doing muscles or training muscles more than every second day?

66:30 >> I I honestly I think we've answered this as best as I possibly can in the in the stimulus period episode that we did. until there's new data, I don't think I can give a better answer than I've already given. Mhm. >> it it's I mean it's it's really really difficult question to to get an answer to because muscle protein synthesis rates alone don't give you the answer. >> No >> because they're doing other things as well. You know those rate elevations are doing damage repair. They're doing somogenesis. I mean >> okay sometimes they're just doing turnover because the muscle has available protein that it wants to use.

67:12 I mean like that's what happens after protein feeding. >> So when it came to volume, we had some some sort of exceptions or some muscles there where it didn't necessarily have to look the way that it looked to other muscles. Some some muscles could potentially use higher volumes and whatever else. But when it comes to frequency, I'm struggling to think of a situation where the answer is not train that muscle every second day if possible. Obviously, there'll be some outliers. Maybe someone's >> as I say the only scenario in which the only scenario in which people start to argue that muscles need to be trained less frequently is because they aren't they're doing too much volume for them in a single session >> and if they're making and if they're doing that then they are going to basically be arguing against the dose response curve.

67:59 >> Yes. Because it will always be more effective then to spread out that volume. Yeah. So, so really what we're saying is is >> if your volume is is stopping you from training that muscle again 2 days later, then it is best to reduce the volume to the point that you can then train that muscle again 2 days later. >> Of course. >> Yeah. >> But that's the essence of how the dose response curve works. >> Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now we've got so I mean ultimately as we're working through this you could write a plan alongside it in your mind and the plan so far would look like full body every other day but the only thing that would differ is some muscles might have >> and obviously you know your goals are going to change here but yes some muscles have an extra one or two sets.

68:45 >> Yeah. >> Okay. And then the last point was remind me something around exercise. I think it as we've gone along. >> Well, were you going to talk about somogenesis? Was that part of it or not? >> So, I think I mean sodenesis is a really interesting one because on the one hand it looks like it dissipates more quickly than hypertrophy does >> when you stop training it. But on the other hand, there's been a rash of studies in the last couple of years suggesting that the maintenance volume is lower.

69:22 That's why when the new fly oil study came out showing that the maintenance volume is actually higher, >> I was like m okay that makes more sense. So, you know, we'll see. But I think where we're going to probably end up is that sarcomis is probably behaving more or less the same as hypertrophy perhaps >> with a little bit more of an aggressive loss of size in scenarios where you completely remove the stimulus. but you know, I don't know.

69:53 >> So, the practical part of that for this episode would be if you do have a muscle that benefits from being trained in that stretch position, let's say the quads, then we've now established the best program here would probably be to train the quads, let's say, three times a week or every other day. Do you need to do that stretch position exercise for the quads in each of those sessions? Or so you could do you could do leg extension.

70:21 Bear with me. You're going to say it's too much, but you could do leg extension in each of those sessions and you could do say a set of squats on every second session. And the squats there could be maintaining the sarogenesis and then the leg extension could be your main sort of >> Yeah. But bear in mind the squats were also doing a whole bunch of other stuff. >> Yes. >> Yes. So but yeah interested in in quad then yeah I mean you know >> I suspect that the actual volume stimulus for zenesis is probably quite a lot lower than a than a single set but you know I don't know.

70:59 >> Yeah. So potentially potentially could do like a rep or two every every other day. >> I think you probably could just do a rep or two. Yeah. >> Interesting. And obviously in that scenario, a squat makes no sense. But you know, a leg press, single leg leg press, you probably could make that work. >> Yeah. But if you've set it up at that point, you may as well just do the set. Hey, >> well, that's the issue. I mean, that's the issue with some of these complex exercises that by by the time you've kind of got to the point where you're doing your work. So, it's like, well, I've just spent 20 minutes getting this far. I'm not going to just do a single set and then stop.

71:32 >> The flywheel seemed really interesting. It made me wonder, why don't gyms have flywheel exercises? machines. >> Well, because they create super maximally eccentric loading. and you can actually hurt yourself doing that if you're not careful. >> Okay. Safety issues ruining the world. Okay. Is anything else then? Is that is that the whole how often and how much volume she would be using for each muscle topic covered? >> Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean I kind of wanted to set it out as you know what from a hypert stimulus period you know optimal solution what would be the answer and basically frequency doesn't really change on that front volume might change a little bit you might be able to get an extra set and in some cases it might not be doing anything really >> in some cases it might be giving you a bit of a benefit so my example there was car calve muscles it might not really be doing anything extra.

72:31 because by the time you got to your extra set, your super spinal fatigue is kicked in. You're not really getting much of the volume in the place that you need it. whereas maybe the glute or the kind of u adults, it might be a beneficial effect. So you kind of there's like this stimulus period and volume combination. sorry, volume frequency combination taking into account the stimulus period taking into account the fact you can do a little bit extra volume on those muscles. Okay, fine.

73:00 you know, and then exercise selection. If you overlay that on top, then you can kind of say, well, if I'm doing a stretch position exercise, I'm going to have to be a bit more careful. If I'm doing a contract position exercise, I can be a little bit more aggressive. And that's all it really does. but you're only ever changing volume up and down slightly around about the midpoint. >> You're not changing frequency because that's insane because you're arguing against the dose response curve.

73:27 >> Yeah. And similarly with exercise selection again, all it's going to do is move you up and down against the midpoint. If like, you know, it's a super damaging exercise, really strange position, okay, well, you're going to notch the volume down slightly in the workout. If it's a much more contract position, you can notch it up a little bit. I mean, that's literally all that changes. You're just nudging the >> kind of midpoint. >> It's very, very simple.

73:49 >> Yeah. Yeah. So if you are programming and you know you're looking at like let's say you wanted to quote unquote volume max you particularly wanted to add more sets for a particular muscle for whatever reason then you would be selecting those exercises that are training that muscle in a more contracted position where possible and if you just weren't concerned >> and you use heavier loads and you'd leave a a rep in reserve here or there.

74:13 Yeah. But if you were just doing your single sets or or you know two sets per muscle, then arguably you would probably pick an exercise which is training that muscle where in a more lengthened position where it has good activation. Yeah. and and and just to kind of make a point that needs to be repeated. adding extra sets is going to have very tiny beneficial effects. If you've already done a couple of sets for a muscle group, you are talking about maybe adding 10 20% of your first set stimulus by doing another set. I mean, it it's it's tiny, you know, it really isn't worth if it if it makes you feel tired or not motivated to do the rest of your workout, then don't do it. I mean, it's absolutely >> Yeah. Obviously, you need to be looking to hold programming context. Yeah. Yeah.

75:06 I posted I posted a a study this week where participants did one set in one limb, three sets in the other limb, three times a week, and the limb that they were doing, the the two extra sets each workout, it grew 60% more. Right? That's kind of roughly what we would expect based on the pretty much not too >> and everyone was losing mind be like of course you would do the two exercises. Why wouldn't you? That's so much more growth. And it's like yeah okay but now spread that across every single muscle.

75:34 >> Now imagine you're doing like 15 exercises per workout in a full body routine and now you're going to do 40 45 sets instead of >> 15. No, you're not. >> And then the solution is break it up and just spread the muscles out and do a split. And now you've run smack into the dose response curve and you've just lost all your points. Yes, congratulations. Back to the bottom of the queue. >> Oh goodness. Okay, I think that's it. I think we've covered that topic. Any final words from you before we wrap up?

76:04 >> no, no. I was just answering your questions. >> Okay. I I'm going to conclude with this. I had a kid stop me in the gym this week and he doesn't listen to our podcast. I can't even shout him out here, but he does obviously follow us on on social. Obviously, he does follow us on social media and he was saying how much the stuff we've, you know, talked about and post and whatever has helped him. And it was a 17-year-old kid and he was he was talking me through his workout plan. He was talking me through like sort of the neuromechanical matching aspect of the different exercises he was using. And I was just like, man, I wish I was having conversations like this when I was 17. I mean, when I was 17, I was probably doing Grande style, eight sets of eight or German volume training, 10 sets of 10, and oh, just absolute nonsense stuff. And the fact that kids nowadays are doing intelligent, he'd been he'd been lifting for like less than 2 years.

76:55 And the kid was jacked and you know, kudos to him. Anyway, it filled me with a little bit of hope and a little bit of jealousy that that wasn't my early lifting experience, but it is what it is. So, that's my good news story for you to finish with. Okay guys, thank you for tuning in. Join us again next week for a new topic.