Barbell Shrugged - 159- The 3 Things Most People Don't Know About Muscle

Episode Date: January 14, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Dr. Andy Galpin, muscle physiologist, and we talk about the top three things you don't know about muscle. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Dr. Andy Galpin. We've actually replaced Chris Moore with Dr. Andy Galpin. And we added another camera and took one host away and then added a permanent guest. Does that make any sense? A permanent guest. A permanent guest. Not a host. I am actually permanent guest. Does that make any sense? A permanent guest. A permanent.

Not a host. I am actually just kidding. Andy is a semi-permanent guest. We are filming in the new Barbell Shrug headquarters. I know it doesn't look like much now, and we know that. This is the before episode. This is the before episode. Look, he's got rings. Oh, I took them down.

They're on the ground. They're on the ground. Alright, sorry to break it to you folks, but Chris Moore is still on the show. He is here. He's still here. We're recording. You started the show without me?

We started the show without you. He didn't even bring a scotch. Empty glass. Nice contribution, Chris. I think it's above the microwave. You were bringing the scotch, but we got glasses with ice in them. Oh, jeez. Today we're going to be talking about the three to five things you don't know about muscle.

The three things, sorry. We're going to be talking about the three things you don't know about muscle. The three things, sorry. We're going to be talking about the three things you don't know about muscle. The reason we're talking about that is because we do have Dr. Andy Galpin here. Welcome back, Andy. You happen to have your PhD in something called bioenergetics. Close. Something like that. Yeah, human bioenergetics.

Sounds like horse shit to me. You basically have been studying muscle your entire adult life, maybe even prior to that. Who knows? Yeah, I certainly wouldn't consider myself quite adult yet. I know your real friend says you're not. The duration of your life. Yeah. You've been geeking out over muscle and strength and training. Yep.

And we go pretty hard into it. So everything we do, we actually collect muscle samples. So we go in with a muscle biopsy, a big needle. We take muscle samples. By the way, I was Andy's first muscle biopsy candidate, subject, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, which was pretty awesome. Yeah, victim was probably closer to what actually happened. I'm just going to pour this out with a heavy hand.

Stab me with a hollow pen. Yeah, about the size of a number two pencil went into my vastus lateralis. And then because I had had enough of these done in the past, I knew what it was supposed to feel like. So I was like kind of coaching him as he was doing it. It was a lot of fun. I'm not saying I

could do it better. I would probably totally hose it up. But I knew what it was supposed to feel like. The best part of getting those is your muscle starts twitching and contracting. Yeah, it was supposed to feel like. The best part of getting those is your muscle starts twitching and contracting. Yeah, it can. Super Charlie Horse. Like intense, weird-feeling Charlie Horse.

A whole lot of pressure and your whole muscle just cramps. Yeah, we've certainly gotten a lot better now. Thank God. Than when we started. Well, I mean, it doesn't matter now because I'm not giving you any more. Yeah, right? Do you give us some booze and talk us up and loosen up the sphincters and everything before we get in there? Yeah, not really. Actually, I spent some time in uh stockholm sweden with a

guy named paratesh the paratesh yeah the paratesh one of the most famous probably the first muscle physiologist in terms of like actual muscle so doing biopsies but he actually got strength and conditioning so he was doing things like fiber type differences between bodybuilders and uh rowers and things like that. So he really got the practical stuff. Like fundamental studies. Yeah, which was really important. But I got to watch him do biopsies and help him do biopsies after I had already been pretty good at them myself.

And his technique, I'll say, was a little bit different, which was crazy because, you know, I'm in and out in like less than a second. In the muscle, chop, gone. He's got a guy on the table In the muscle, chopped. Gone. Where he is, he's got a guy on the table and he's, the needle is in his leg. He's grabbing his thigh. He's talking to the guy

because the guy's muscle is doing exactly what you said. His muscle is kind of smarty and it's grabbing and the whole thing's in Swedish so I don't understand a word and I'm just grabbing the suction and Parrish is like,

run, run, run, run, run. And he's like, calm down. And the needle is like in his leg. 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. He's chopping sort of away. The guy is like in his leg. 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds. He's chomping sort of a way.

The guy's just like relaxing. Does that affect the quality of the muscle? What kind of emergency responses are going in the tissue right there that could affect the result? Well, it just depends on what you're looking at. In that particular case, what we were looking at, it didn't matter. But the sort of theory behind it is there's not actually pain receptors in muscle itself.

There are pressure receptors. So if it feels like an awkward pressure, the best example is I can give you is it feels kind of like somebody's jabbing. Oh, that's awkward. Yeah. And you're just kind of like, it's kind of weird. And so you're not like in pain, but you're just like, like, you're not comfortable either. You're cutting out a piece of the muscle and you can't feel the muscle being cut off. Yeah. And you can't feel that you feel the needle in, but you feel like a pressure. It just sort of feels weird. So, like for example, we've done studies for my thesis. In fact, all

of us were sort of involved. Maybe I can't say that. Probably not. Too late now. But when we did biopsies, then we did clean pulls. So from the floor all the way up at 85%. And we did eight sets of three. But we did a biopsy,

did eight sets, did a biopsy, did eight more sets, then did a third biopsy, all from the same incision. So we've done biopsies of the soleus. I had people run a marathon. I knew there was a reason why I decided not to be in this.

Yeah, right? Had to do a biopsy after. So it sounds terrible and it looks awful, but it's actually not that. Don't leave out the tendon biopsy. Oh, fuck. It crippled me for two years.

By far the worst one. I couldn't kneel down for months. Oh, man. I was probably a year and a half, two years on that one. Yeah, to fully recover. Thank you guys, because that helped me get into my PhD program. Appreciate it.

Patellar tendon biopsy. Yeah. We actually got rid of that biopsy needle. It's gone. People don't do that anymore. Well, it's funny because they were like, two or three days, you'll be fine. And then like two years later, I'm like,

my knee still bugs me. Yeah. Well, they had done it on a bunch of people who, and they had it and they waited and they were like, are your knees fine? And they're like, yeah, no problem, no problem. And so they're like, oh, we've done it on a dozen people and we haven't had any issues.

So we guys do it. And we're all like, yeah, sure. Hey, why not? We're used to being guinea pigs for awfulness. I mean, I remember the awfulness that we haven't had any issues. So we guys do it and we're all like, yeah, sure. Hey, why not? We're used to being giddy pigs for awfulness. I mean, I remember the awfulness that we did for your thesis. Try to figure out a piece of tendon out of your knee. Here's a hundred dollars.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Aren't you a poor college student? It was more like, more like we're going to give you five free insure bottles. Yes. I had no food.

Yes. I remember that. Do I get chocolate yeah free calories yeah let's do it yes well

so anyways they'd never done it with anybody and then they actually do it with us and we're only we're the first three people that they'd ever done it

with and we're the only one that actually really take their knee through a full range of motion at a heavy load like strength train and full squat

and jiu jitsu yeah and all of a sudden all three of us are like oh my knee is just blown to pieces now. Yeah.

And they're like, oh, well, I guess it doesn't matter if you don't actually use your knee, but if you use your knee, then we probably shouldn't take a biopsy of it. So, yeah. Yeah, not a good idea.

Now, those have been gone. Before we go any further, make sure to go to barbellstruck.com, sign up for the newsletter. That was almost like an evil laugh. Sign up for the newsletter that was like almost like an evil laugh he said sign up for the newsletter

and you will get threatening no no threats no pictures of genitalia only only great information and knowledge

will we share that's right so we want to talk about what's the first thing we were going to talk about these are the three things you didn't know

about muscle so what's the first thing we don't know talk about that these are the three things you didn't know about muscle so what's the first thing we don't know about muscle um we'll probably start off because we don't know tell me what i need to know that i don't know yeah we'll probably start off with uh i'll guess the idea of do you have to break it down to grow that's a common belief that muscle is broken down hey i've read that you eat you get the protein you rest and you rebuild in a stronger way. Flex Magazine taught me that years ago. Right. Right.

And it's actually, so it's one of those things where I tell students, all right, if somebody's asking you and you don't really want to pay attention, you're tired of hearing them, then just tell them yes. And it's a pretty good, like we were talking about earlier, it's a pretty good- It's an approximation or- Yeah, it's a pretty good approximation. It's an adage of, okay, you have to do the type of workouts that cause damage. So if you're a little bit sore, you probably worked hard enough. If you worked out and it wasn't hard enough to make you at all sore, it, really, really convince yourself that we need to go through this process.

We have to burn a lot of physical energy, which comes from sugar and fat, to actually power this growth process. I mean, think of the basic molecular science of it. If I take a bond of two atoms, if I break a bond, what happens? Energy's released. Gives off energy, right? Oh, thank God I got that one. Don't fuck. No, idiot. Fuck, I right? Oh, thank God I got that one. Don't fuck. No, idiot.

Fuck, I went to college, didn't I? So if you want to build the bond, which is all you're doing and you're growing new muscle, you need energy. There you go. Logic. Once you put all this shit together,

it requires the energy to keep it. Well, more of that, though. Okay, we have the energy to put two bonds together, but do we have two things to actually put together? So what we're talking about now is we need energy, which comes from sugar primarily at the cellular level, and I actually need pieces of material, which is amino acid.

So if I don't have amino acid, I don't have sugar, I have to have this. That would be protein. Yeah, sorry. Amino acids are the little. You link them together into change, you get protein. Exactly, right. So the really crappy analogy I give is you want to come to my house and build me a new training garage right well if you show up and you're hungover and you haven't had food in three days and i have this big pile of metal this is what you're gonna end up with right here

you have no energy you're not gonna build me a shed right building likewise you energy, you're not going to build me a shed, right? A building. Likewise, you show up, you're full of energy, you're full of piss and vinegar and all that great, and I have no metal, I have no wood, I have no material. So I've got to have both. But then the last thing is there has to be some motivation to do it. So if I say, like, great, here I have material, and I have food and sugar, I'm going to power you for it. A biological incentive to do this work.

Yeah, exactly. And I need an incentive. And if your incentive is, I'm going to give you $1 for 14 days of straight work. There's no incentive. Your body's like, I'm not investing this time, not doing it. The value's not there.

Exactly. And so going back to the original question of do you have to break it down to build? Well, you have to do something that tells your system, we legit need this and we need this permanent change because muscle is different than fat or sugar storage where those things can be very transient they can change within a few hours and it's not a big deal i don't want to go through the process of growing and breaking back down again unless you're like i'm if we're going to

build this thing it's going to be here for for very, very long time. So you really, really got to convince that you either have to do something very traumatic, hard. Or consistent. Or consistent. But the message has to be big enough for your body goes, okay, all right, let's do it. We'll invest. We can't not invest. Right. We're going to invest and do it. So what's the stimulus have to be that causes me to make that investment? A very quick antidote is if it's hard enough, if it's damaging enough to make you sore, it's probably enough to stimulate growth. And so the adage works like, you know, the no pain, no gain. I mean, that's something like if, you know, if a newspaper calls me for an interview, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, if you're working hard enough to move in, it probably works

now from an actual physiological and molecular perspective, that's not at all how your system's working. Not even close, right? So, if you get level of sore, okay, my pain indicator is like level one is no pain, level 10 is the worst pain I've had in my life. If I get a level five or if I get a level six, I don't necessarily grow any more. If I go to seven, eight, I'm not growing any necessarily more than that because that's not an equator of how much you're going to grow. A lot of bodybuilders actively try not to get excessively sore because if you're excessively sore and if you're at a high level, you can make yourself sore for like 10 days if you really want to. But you might miss two or three training sessions in that 10 days so if you're at baseline and then you bottom out like you're like at an absolute negative 10 train it might take you two weeks to get back to normal and then if you want to you know over compensate and gain a little bit it takes you 14 days 16 days whereas if you just bumped a little

bit below you could be at that that super compensated state you know three days later four days later and you could do that three times in that 14, 16 day window if you didn't bottom out at like a negative 10 the first time. Yeah. This is why I tell people like worry about volume week at a time or a month at a time, not at a day at a time. Like your daily volume is not nearly as important as your weekly volume. You want accumulation, not brutal acute dose. Yeah. And it actually stems from a poor understanding of the molecular mechanisms of what's actually happening. And so the way I do it in class is this. Okay. Doug, can you do like a half squat for me? Like squat down. All right. Stand back up. Good. Or full squat by power thing standards. Yeah. Right. All right. Go back down one more time. Okay, now stand back up. Now, when he sat down, did that force you guys to stand up higher?

Felt like it, but no. Yeah, no, right? He just sat down, right? So if we were all sitting down and I said, Doug, stand up, Doug could just stand up. I didn't have to lay down for him to stand up, right? Your body is the exact same way. You don't have to cause breakdown to cause growth. All you have to do

to cause growth is... Tension? Grow. Like, give it a stimulus to grow. There doesn't have to be breakdown. They aren't... Is the primary stimulus tension across the muscle?

Like, if it was a substantial mechanical strain across muscle fibers, that is a strong stimulus if something's happening. That's one of them. That's usually the stimulus necessary to get that muscle to produce more force in the future well that's that's been my understanding as well it

can be but there's metabolic stress that causes growth as well so the metabolic what about size are we talking about strength yeah no we're talking straight size right now okay just we're talking what we call muscle hypertrophy so growing thicker right not more just getting bigger it can be mechanical. We're not talking necessarily about like contractile filaments. We're talking about just the general size of the muscle

which could be, which doesn't necessarily have to be contractile tissue. Correct. Right? Yeah. So you can get bigger without getting stronger

and that's kind of the reason why. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can put more fluid in the muscle as an example. Yeah. And that's not really

a training issue usually. No, not really. Yeah. Right. And there's pathological bad issues, things that could have make that happen. But as a training issue usually. No, not really. Yeah, right. And there's pathological bad issues, things that could make that happen. But as a training adaptation, if it's bigger,

it's usually muscle hypertrophy. Yeah, generally bigger and stronger. Right. Generally. Yeah, so there could be the metabolic stimulus. It could be those things. But you don't have to cause breakdown,

not even from like a practical perspective like we're talking about, don't have to be sore. But even from a molecular, cellular perspective, it's not a teeter-totter system where the more breakdown the more growth you get like we don't have this thing they are actually the metabolic process of proteolysis which is a fancy sounding word yeah yeah lysis break prose protein so it's a breakdown of proteins And the anabolic process of the opposite side of that is protein synthesis. They're not opposite.

So they could both be upregulated at the same time. They could both be downregulated. One could go up, one could go down. In fact, testosterone is a great example. Testosterone has a very unique ability to stimulate growth and also decrease breakdown. And so you get this. This is why it's so potent. This is another reason why maybe supplementing with BCAAs,

branched chain amino acids, during training, like a lot of times the suggestion is, hey, it's going to reduce muscle breakdown if you have this. This is the argument that I hear. So like, and this is kind of how I understand it too, is like if you're taking branched chain amino acids during training, before training, you're going to reduce the amount of muscle breakdown during your session. And that's a desired effect to a degree. May or may not. The real idea though, with that is if you want to get them from supplementation

or from general consumption of protein, fine, either way, small differences. On a bigger scale level, the real idea in that particular case is our original analogy. When those people show up to build your house, you want to make damn sure that material is here now. The BCAAs would be the material necessary to build the muscle. Exactly. So, does it help? Yeah. You want to make sure that you are topped

off. The system is here. You have every supply. But it's not the stimulus. It can be. For example, if you were to just sit here and ingest some sort of bcaa whether it's food or you take a supplement the level of protein synthesis will go up and so in itself it is a stimulus it tells you to grow sugar is funny in the fact that it does the exact opposite where it actually decreases breakdown very specifically and it and it comes back to an energetic balance. It says, hey, we are in a state where we have plenty of energy. We have sugar.

Don't break things down because the reason we're breaking things down is to make energy. We have plenty of sugar. Right. This is why the combination— No reason to break down muscle if we have sugar. Exactly. This is why the combination of sugar and protein makes such a potent, make sure, all right, you want to grow. You got to make sure we got two of these things stopped

off. Yeah. A lot of people say carbohydrates are protein sparing, which basically means that it inhibits protein from breaking down. Sure. So in cases where you're, you're trying to gain a bunch of weight and you're, you have excess calories and you're eating more carbohydrates because you're trying to grow. In some of those cases, you actually don't need as much protein because you're not, you're not at reduced calories. Like when you're trying to lose weight because you're trying to grow in some of those cases you actually don't need as much protein because you're not you're not at reduced calories like when you're trying to lose weight where you're constantly breaking down protein so you need extra protein to kind of offset that the fact that you're breaking down extra protein all the time so when you're gaining weight with extra calories you can actually eat a little bit less protein than when you're losing

weight which is super counterintuitive yeah exactly and actually that's one of the things in my sports nutrition classes that jumps out at the students the fastest is when I tell them, Hey, one of the first and most effective things we do with people trying to lose weight is to bump up the protein. And they're always like, what? And that's the idea we talk about. And they're like, Oh, okay. Now it kind of makes backward sense, but yeah, that's exactly. So we have independent function of sugar and protein and we have independent function of muscle breakdown and muscle growth. There's a basic correlation there and it's, it's fairly strong, but it explains why I'm so shredded all the time.

It's like all the protein I've been eating. Why am I so jacked? Right. It's the idea of, again, like we started at the very beginning, it's kind of a vague rule of thumb that basically kind of works as generalization. If you're not training hard enough to where you're sore, you're probably not giving yourself enough of a stimulus to grow. You probably won't grow that much. I do talk to some high level athletes that they train, we'll say 10 times a week. You know, they're doing doubles most days. Some days they do a single. They take a day off maybe once a week, but they're doing a lot of sessions each week. Their volume is relatively high just

because they're doing 10 sessions, but in each individual session, it's not crazy high. For those people that are in super good shape, not just with strength stuff, but cardio, like in every possible way, they're a CrossFit Games athlete or whatever, they're in really good shape. They don't necessarily get that sore during their normal training sessions, but they still will be very, very buff dudes, so to speak. They have a lot of muscle mass, they're gaining weight, they're getting stronger, but they don't really get that sore in their normal training sessions, but somehow they're all getting bigger and getting stronger on a daily basis. Right. So the body is built to survive. It's going to adapt. And the only thing that's going to really make you get sore in that particular case is if you start now changing something. So if you change the way you're training, you pick different movements, you introduce some variation into the system. But if you stay in at least a pretty vaguely consistent.

Vaguely consistent. Somewhat consistent. Moderately consistent. Moderely consistent. Vaguely consistent. Somewhat consistent. Moderately consistent. Moderate consistent. Yeah, you're totally right. You can actually train. You can bump up intensity. You can change volume quite a bit

and not induce that much more soreness. Now, if you were to take them and completely change the movements they're doing, then all of a sudden, they'd probably get really, really sore. The novelty doesn't have to be intensely heavy or high volume. Like a small little med ball,

you throw it against the wall a hundred times, the next fucking two weeks you don't walk straight. That happened to you? At the time you could squat probably like 600, 700 pounds easy. Yeah, and then you do 150, 20-pound med ball throws. And then literally I'm sliding down the hallways the next two weeks going, Jesus Christ, my legs don't work at all.

Yeah, right? It's nuts. Only 149 left. Yeah. McGoldrick was watching me. I get like five tosses. What's funny is if you look at the volume load, it's not that much different.

The volume load compared to a squat session with a barbell versus that, the volume load might have been even similar or less. So emotionally crushing that stupid fucking workout. I get five reps into it. I'm like, oh shit, this is already hard. Don't worry, man. You only got 150 whatever left or 145 whatever.

Come on, man. Let's go. Jesus, you're demotivating me like crazy. Well, we just got a safety squat bar a few months ago. One of the best bars you can buy. Yeah. And Natasha, my girlfriend, had never used one of those things before. And I had used one a lot, but I hadn't done it in a while.

And so the first day we got it. Safety is a little misleading. In fact It should be the danger squat bar. McGoldrick's actually there and so I think we did something ridiculously mundane like three or four sets of ten with like 60 kilos

you know just like nothing and I'm just like I'm playing like the next day my hips were destroyed. And Tasha just did the barbell, and she was like, wow, what the hell is going on? That's why especially bars have their power, because even if you're trained, that's why powerlifters use them. Even if you're very trained at the squat, a very slight change in how the load is applied changes the game in a big way.

I didn't grow anymore because of the fact I got ridiculously sore that day. You just got train wrecked. Yeah, I just got, it was different. It was novel. It was novel. It was a slightly different movement pattern. And when you're that specific with your training, a little change can be really, really good. But it's important to know both sides of that.

So it's really important as you're getting close, say, for example, to a competition, that you don't deviate from what you've exactly been doing for that example. You imagine you get this wreck and sore three days before a competition. You're fucked. Oh, that's a problem.

That's a really big problem. The only real coach I ever had was Louie, and he always told me before a competition, he goes, the hay is in the barn. You will not get stronger now, but what surely can happen is you get a lot, a lot weaker. But I'm freaking out. I'm trying to shove extra work in at the last second

and then induce novelty and then totally being disrupted come time to produce force in a platform. Yeah, not a good idea. It's a disastrous idea. All right, let's take a break real quick. When we come back, we'll cover... We'll covers? We'll covers things.

We'll cover questions two through 100. This is Andrea Ager, and you're listening to Barbell Shrug. For the video version, go to barbellshrug.com. Barbell Shrug is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrug.com and sign up for the newsletter. Welcome back.

Yeah. Welcome back to Barbell Shrug. You're on. And we're back. Don't stare too deeply in there. You'll get lost. I like the sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, Doug, you were wanting to ask something about eccentric versus concentric training. So we said a couple of generalizations. One thing was that bigger is stronger, which isn't necessarily true, but it can be true. It usually is, but it doesn't have to be. We'll talk about that. And then the other thing was we said that to grow, you don't necessarily have to break down muscle tissue. But they've done studies in the past where they've done concentric only, which means that the muscles actively shortening. So an example of that would be if I, if I put a bar right here on, on a pins and I, and I squat under it and I put it in front

squat position, I just squatted it up and then, and then I just dropped it back down, right? If I just did the up portion, but not the down portion, and a lot of cases that's really hard to grow and get bigger when I'm just doing the concentric portion of the lift. The down portion tends to make people grow. So first of all, why is that? And then we'll dig into other parts. Yeah. So two quick points on that before we go. So point number one, there's no question. If you cause some physical damage in your muscle tissue, your body is going to inherently want to repair. And so now we go back to our question. Do you have to damage to grow? Do you have to, do you have to damage? No, but if you do, if you do damage, will you repair? There will be a response. Yeah, absolutely. But then the question is really, okay, is that damage necessary to grow?

And that's what we kind of went out to be. Okay. So we've already kind of established that. Now your original question of eccentric concentric, We definitely know that with eccentric exercise, you generally get more sore, right? We also know with eccentric exercise, you generally lead to more growth, right? And then again, that furthers that stereotype that, okay, therefore, this has to cause that, and that's not true.

To answer the eccentric question that, yeah, that usually happens because the force is usually so much higher. You can lower in a squat more than you can raise. Exactly. You can lower 500 pounds even if you can't squat 400, let's say. Right, so the real question is if you were to do your concentric or your up portion only with the same exact force that you did your lower portion

with the same amount of time, with the same stress, then what would the relationship of growth look like? And we don't really know that well. But we don't really have anything to suggest the simple lengthening portion of it is any more inherently better for growth than the concentric portion, outside of the damage issue. So outside of the normal damage.

But this is a great thing. In fact, I remember this is something I picked up from you a long time ago and that I work with right now with all of the normal damage. But this is a great thing. In fact, I remember this is something I picked up from you a long time ago and that I work with right now with all of my MMA athletes, trying to use as much of your conditioning as concentric as possible. To don't beat yourself up. So you don't get sore so that I can train. And I learned this really quickly when I first started working with guys.

And you imagine now you're a professional mixed martial artist or kickboxer, and your whole job is to inflict damage and now you're gonna go train with a professional other person whose job is to inflict damage and your legs are really sore

from doing a bunch of eccentric landing you've got a hundred box jumps or sprints and somebody who's professionally trained at kicking you

in the fucking leg kicks you in the fucking leg when your leg is fucking sore this is the worst thing that you could possibly experience I've never got punched in the face like a legit kick to the leg hurts worse than a punch in the fucking leg when your leg is fucking sore. This is the worst thing Punch in the face like a legit hurts worse than a punch I just one time just this he's like here's where you want to generally put your leg during a kick and that fucking hurt Yeah, even a kick. It was just a demonstration of what a kick could be

Yeah Legs are sore and someone comes by and hit you in the leg with a baseball bat Which is basically the same thing as getting kicked by a tie box It's important to take advantage of that knowledge of what's happening next in your training cycle, where you're at, what are your scenarios, what are you working with. That's why Prowler is an awesome conditioning tool. Yeah, exactly. It beats you up acutely, but you can recover quickly.

And if you have nothing else going on, and if growth, maximizing growth is your absolute most important goal for the next six or eight weeks or four weeks, go for it. Fine. And if you want to take the strategy of, okay, I'm going to work, I'll do something like, imagine doing a really heavy eccentric RDO. So you're going to take on

a huge load. You're going to lower it. Do this if you don't want to sit on the toilet comfortably for a month. Exactly. If you're like, I'm not going to train again

because I'm going to Bora Bora for a week. Fine. Great strategy. It happens. That was how I'm looking at it. I think too, if you're doing a lot

of eccentric training, you're normally, the time under tension with that muscle is longer than the normal. You know, you're purposely trying to go slow

through that range of motion so now the time under tension is higher. And having a muscle under tension for a longer period of time can be really great for and that's a good stimulus to have yeah yeah but there's nothing magical about

it again just because you got more sore or not sore what about like the old bodybuilding thing if you got to get you got to get a pump you got to feel the burn to cause growth yeah same thing it's just not true at all again we nail in the metabolic thresholds what actually will cause growth say that again the metabolic stimulus is it so important to go so extreme to failure, to failure, to failure? It's actually really interesting. I'm sure you guys have seen some of the blood flow restriction stuff. Yeah. Where essentially somebody wears like a blood pressure cuff.

Didn't you do some of that? Bloomer did. It was big in Japan for a long time. Yeah, yeah. Occlusion. Yeah, yeah. Blood flow occlusion. Well, essentially we're going to cut off some blood flow to your area and you're going to do a lift.

And say you're going to do like 10 pounds of a curl. And you're going to just get rippingly sore and you're going to cause as much if not more growth. And that actually stuff has been pretty impressive, the amount of growth that they're showing with that. And the basic explanation they're trying to figure out, they don't know why it's happening. People are mainly just guessing. But one of the biggest ideas is maybe it's the metabolic stress in addition to the mechanical stress like you talked about the physical stretching of the cell wall you're heightening the stress yeah and so maybe this combination so what the application of this is okay maybe i can

do something with a very very light load and actually induce a lot of growth because it's that's an interesting idea yeah metabolically fatiguing, right? So is that a trick to make the muscle bigger, but the tendons and the ligaments won't respond as well, and they won't be as strong as they would be if you're lifting something that was heavier, and then you go out and play a football game, and you fucking get hurt?

No data. No data. We haven't got there yet. It's a great point. I feel like it's a really roundabout way to make the muscle grow, because it's easier to make the muscle tissue grow compared to the soft tissue

support structures like ligaments and tendons. Do you want to go through another tendon biopsy to figure it out? Or you do something like that during periods of training where you really would rather not lose strength or mass, but you don't need to have so much fatigue because you need to be recovering from a competition season or something.

Because one of the most fundamental ideas you can utilize in your training is make things harder without necessarily making things heavy yeah and the current thought right now is you only need about 30 so if you do more than 30 of your water at max you're actually completely occluding or stopping blood flow even like in a normal setting if you do a bicep curl at 30 blood flow in the tissue is actually stopped. It's getting trapped. So while it's contracting, it's squeezing down on your blood vessels and it's stopping blood flow. And then when you release, like in between the reps, is it opening back up?

Yeah, yeah. It's not including the whole set necessarily, is it? Would there be a benefit to maybe a tempo here? Yeah. So you got the contraction for a longer period of time? The idea is kind of what Chris brought up is now let's move this on to uh clinical patients and populations or other things or uh my one arm is in a cast things like that i can't necessarily grab 100 kilo bar because it's all these things but what can i do if i can wrap this blood thing on it

do some movement i may actually stimulate a little bit of growth or equal growth or maintenance of my tissue instead of losing it all because I can't physically hold a hundred kilo bar because it's my knee shot or something like that. But I can hold a 20 kilo bar, wrap it around here and stimulate some growth. So it all kind of comes back to the general point is there's a lot more going on in muscle than we really appreciate right now. Classically was taught and if you take an undergraduate class and you bring up muscle physiology, people will talk about

muscle being stupid. All right, muscle just does whatever the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. Yeah. Not quite.

What we realize now and this is sort of point number two and I like to ask this, if you guys were to ever go on Jeopardy. I hope so. Yeah, right?

I hope not, man. That's one dumb. They ask us to wait go on Jeopardy. I hope so. Yeah, right? I hope not, man. That's one dumb. They ask one dumb. I'm a rapist for 500. If they were to ask you a question, what's the largest organ in your body? Some people would say skin. Skin would be the answer.

If you're on Jeopardy, say skin. That's going to be the right answer. But we actually know that that's completely wrong. And it comes back to the basic idea to be an endocrine organ. What that essentially means is, are you an organ that's sending out signals? And for forever, we thought signals go to muscle. So nerve sends it to muscle, blood sends it to muscle, and then muscle does. But now what we realize is that muscle is actually our biggest endocrine organ. Muscle sends signals back. Is it telling the brain, here's the activity

that is being experienced? It's telling the brain. It's telling your immune system. It's telling your nervous system. It's telling your skeletal muscle. It's telling your liver. It's telling everything. It's telling it what's happening. So it's not this one-way street of stupid muscle, smart brain. Fascinating. Yeah. And so the basic idea then is how important is muscle quality in general function? you have a problem regulating hormones can't control your blood sugar you have high quality function not a brain problem it could be it could be an organ issue it could be a brain issue but it also could very well be you're not helping yourself by having small amounts and very poor quality muscle mass it's not fixing what do

you mean by quality of muscle so again muscle that functions as it's supposed to. So if you can't do basic human movements, that's a very vague indicator that your muscle can't function. So the muscle may exist, but it's not contracting. Or if it's not being stimulated in a consecutive cumulative way, then there's no sort of skill for it to be sending these signals out, right? It just doesn't, it just not, that part of the cascade is just not there. So data is incomplete. So as a, as a quick sort of story, um, when I was in my doctorate, we had to actually go through medical school. So one of the classes I had to take was a medical physiology class. So

I'm in school with only other MDs, like other real doctors,bags, yeah. But med school works different and what a PhD means is... Chris, you know... I'm sorry, no scotch here. I know at least two or three doctors are really awesome.

Here's the problem with Chris. We know a bunch of cool doctors. Chris worked with some doctors at one point in his life and I think it made him a little bitter.

That's what's happened here. Hey, also, maybe I'm just telling a joke, dude. We don't all believe that. Maybe it's a fucking

joke, bro. Hey, loosen up. I'm just telling a joke, dude. Lighten up, man. Maybe it's a fucking joke, bro. Okay? Loosen up. All doctors are douchebags, right? It's a joke. Well, my class at this time is being taught by a PhD, not an MD.

So it's kind of a funny dynamic where you have a PhD teaching MDs. And MDs, they have a doctorate of medicine, which essentially means they learn a whole bunch of information and it's incredibly hard,

but it's basically learning algorithms. So if it's this, then that, then not that, then that, then it's this, then that, then that, then that, where a PhD is a doctorate of philosophy, which means you have a doctorate of thinking. And so when we sit in this class, like every time he would ask a question, I would totally be over here and the whole rest of the class would over be here. Cause I'm just completely

thinking like other ways where they're just like, Nope. You're kind of thinking, what if, and they're like, what's the formula? Yeah. And I'm thinking why? And they're like thinking, Nope. It said in the book, this, this, this boom, there's the answer. And that's not to say they're, they're stupid. Cause they were way smarter in that sense than me. Cause those algorithms just blew me away. But we go through a section now in med school, you take one class at a time and it's three or four hours a day and it's like six weeks. And in med school, three hours of class time is like seven book chapters. I mean, it's a ridiculous amount of information. So we spent- Like Dr. Seuss chapters?

Yeah, something like that. that no like 50 page you know yeah 8 point font terminology really tough to get through not really well written chapters and we spend like two weeks on renal physiology

which is kidney right and we're talking about acid levels and base level and sort of all this function which is an insane amount of information

and essentially the whole time we're going through he's like okay so if they have this this this this and this give them this drug this this, this, and this, give them this drug, this, this, this, and this, and that, but give them that drug. And it's really complicated. It's actually really fascinating. But he gets all the way to the end. And I'm so fucking tired of taking notes on what

drug to give to what, to this, whatever he finishes. And then he goes, Oh shit, shit. There's, we have one other drug. Actually you take it and it does all this and i was like oh fuck here we go again and the students are just like tell me what it is yeah like i'm ready to write the script right now and he's like now remember it's a phd and he stands up and he goes it's fucking exercise and i was like thank you and was like oh shit like looking at me i can throw this shit away yeah and he's like yeah he's like And was like, oh, shit, like looking at me. I can throw this shit away. Yeah, and he's like, yeah. He's like, that's the one thing that we have actually found.

We continue to spend trillions of dollars on trying to fix diabetes, but the one thing that we've always consistently found to be the most effective, I'm not saying exercise cures your diabetes, but one thing that's been the most effective. We found out that you can't say that. Dr. Kirk Farson, we've gotten to this with him.

Basically, you can do all these interventions. The drugs are great, and if you know what to use, great, but if you haven't say that. Dr. Kirk Marston, we've gotten to this with him, but basically, you can do all these interventions. The drugs are great and if you know what to use, great, but if you haven't done the exercise part, for example, then why would you go

to something more disruptive or a tougher intervention? And so, my version of it is, what's the exercise actually doing? What it's actually doing is muscle.

Muscle is what's sending signals to your liver telling it to raise and lower blood sugar. So if you're having an issue regulating blood sugar, if we start back to the initial problem, okay, well, what's regulating blood sugar? It comes back to muscle. You got shitty muscle.

You have no muscle. You haven't stimulated your muscle. It's not working very well. It doesn't know what it's looking for. A drug can do the signaling or healthy muscle tissue can do the signaling. Yeah, it's extremely effective. And so what people don't really understand is like,

well, I can't sleep at night. Really? And we know that it's sort of this blanket statement that we know exercise is like fixes everything. Right. And now we're starting to finally figure out why. And it's because like, oh shit, it's because all these signals are coming from muscle, all the inflammation stuff, all the oxidative stress that's super popular right now, all that information comes from muscle. It's called cytokines or myokines, like muscle signals of inflammation. It's telling all this stuff to be cleared.

It's sending signals to your muscle. It's sending signal to the brain. All this stuff's happening. So what's really interesting in the health field is the shift of paradigm of like, wow, we used to think muscle was something that you did because you wanted to be either looking good naked or you want to be a better football player. Right. Right.

Like those are the two. What else would you need muscle for? Like, no, I want to be healthy. I don't need muscle. Well, people, people like, you know, they just a lot of especially like people who are very intellectual. Like so. Not you, but other people. Right.

We're all very physically oriented. That's a joke too. That's also no joke. I love you. But like people who are very intellectual sometimes they see someone who is like they see like doing

really physical exercises almost like like you're a meathead like you're a dumb person and when I see this person who's buried in the books all the time I'm like

I'm like you're shortening your lifespan your brain would probably work better if you exercise like I'm like I'm thinking like, you could optimize what you love to do if you just, like, committed 30 minutes to exercise. You're a comprehensive organism.

They wrote a whole book on that called Spark. Have you read Spark? No. Yeah, it's all about how exercise affects your brain. You'd probably love it. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the basic idea. It's really funny.

So, like, in this medical class class they would throw you out like a blank scenario and here's here's a person's blood volume here's their resting heart rate here's their level of calcium in their blood here's their all these levels here's their ph like what's going on and every time my answer would be like oh my gosh like you have a blood volume of six liters i'll be like fuck that guy's fit as hell And everyone else will be like, he's going to die of a heart attack. You're like, what? Ah, shit. Like, oh, yeah, I guess you're right.

Because my normal association goes that way. Right. Because what I'm getting at is increasing blood volume is one of the most significant, probably the most significant adaptation with endurance training, more blood volume. Right. It's also a key indicator of high blood pressure. Right. That's why they put you on diabetics if you've got high blood pressure, lower blood volume right it's also a key indicator of high blood pressure right that's why they put you on on diabetics if you've got high blood pressure right to lower blood volume things

like that and so but it's the you're trying to fit more blood in the same space and blood pressure goes up yeah exactly but in an athlete that's probably the most adaptation you can have probably the most important adaptation for endurance is more blood volume right so well in the case of the endurance athlete they have more space to put that more blood volume because they have higher capillary density. They're growing new pathways to put that new fluid in some cases. You need more blood. Well, that's exactly what it is.

And you have more muscle mass and you need more blood. Right. So in the particular case of bad, it's a situation where you sort of self-induced more blood when you didn't need it. In the other situation, you have a rationale. You need excessive blood. You put yourself in a stimulus for it.

But it was just the perspective like you're saying like my idea and my thought on all these things is so over here and there's this over there

because of our clinical background versus my I created a great gradient for you to learn too I was thinking in such a contrasting situation I had to challenge

what you thought was true and you had to challenge what they thought was true and it was great from them too I had so many great interactions with those MDs because you know what you guys have.

They studied like a wild animal. Like what kind of person are you? They were trying to poke you with a stick. Well, like you guys know, I'm sure you guys have covered it a hundred times. Me, that scientist? There's no, there is no,

and this is not a shot at physicians at all because it's so hard. I'm telling you guys, med school is really, really hard. They're not just giving out fucking medical degrees. Yeah, it's so tough. Pharmacy school, whatever. They're really's so hard. I'm telling you guys, med school is really, really hard. That's giving out fucking so tough. Pharmacy school, whatever. They're really, really hard. But they don't cover nutrition. They don't cover

things. But it's fucking hard to get through what they're getting through. So you can't just be like, well, they should add that too. It took me 10 years of school to get that. You're just going to add that on top of their 10 years too? That's not fair. You have to just recognize what their expertise is they're doctors of medicine they're not nutritionists not nutritionists they're not physiologists they're not strength

conditioning coaches all right so you can't just add it on so we learned a lot from each other because we had this other expertise and they had a lot of expertise and and a lot of like we were talking about earlier the electrolyte stuff you're talking about that's why i was able to be like nope here's what's going on because of that that medical class, I was like, no, I know exactly what happened with these things. So it was a great perspective on both those things. But that's when it really cemented to me the importance health-wise of muscle.

You know, like the great way I put it too is like you said a bit earlier, where generally people associate resistance exercise and muscle are things for young athlete aerobic not what you want to do if you want to be healthy you better get on the track for that yeah yeah and that's fine too you can be healthy that way that's totally fine right but we're missing the big idea we're not seeing the big picture of what health truly means right we're

not seeing and now the physicians are really starting to see the importance of muscle for health, which is why you're seeing the prescriptions change. Like you said, the correlates between your ability to exert force like your legs with age, being so highly correlated with whether or not you're diseased or susceptible to injury or more. And autonomy too, I'd imagine. Yeah. There's actually a guy that I worked with a little bit named John Myers at Stanford. He did a couple of really monumental studies.

So study number one, he looked at what was most significant predictors of how long. Don't say, oh, like you've read this shit. No, no, no. I know what he's going for. I remember that publication. No, no, no. I know. I've heard him talk about this, but not on the recording.

Oh, dummy. I thought he said, oh, because his hands went deep into his pocket. I was also playing pocket pool. No, no, no, but I love this. Yeah. No,

I saw this in your class once. I actually sat in one of your classes and you talked about this and I was just like, everybody should hear this. Yeah. And so this is, keep the framework that this work is done in not young, healthy people.

Right. So he's looking at, um, mostly people who have had some previous cardiac issue, have had a heart transplant, heart attack, something like that. But he was trying to tease out what are the most significant predictors of how long you're going to live, right? And the number one thing he saw was your VO2 max.

And then another group came back a few years later and did a similar type of thing and added leg strength to the picture and found out VO2 max was the most significant outside of leg strength. Where did LDL fall? Yeah, it did not make the significance level. Right. Like didn't land on the list. Nor did blood pressure, nor did. So let's review that real quick.

All things that Dr. G is looking for. This is a really good point because people want to put so much emphasis on these blood panels. Because the blood panel is an easy test for a doctor to do. And that's why they do it. Well, it's realistic. And it's a number and all this kind of stuff. But I remember you were giving this and I was like, it's one of those things where it should be so obvious. Yeah.

And it should be an easy test to conduct in a lab or at a physician's office. But it's not so obvious. Yeah. It's so, and it should be an easy test to conduct in a lab or, you know, at a physician's office, but it's not being done. And, you know, people can argue why or why not. Yeah, there's a lot of good reasons. It's one of the only tests

that the doctor can do to you. Right. As well. Right, right. The patient doesn't have to do anything. They don't have to interact. There's a lot of, and I don't want to waste

the rest of the time talking about why. There's a lot of good rationale for those things. But the actually example I give is Doug in my class. And so people are always confused at this point. They're like, oh, you're a strength coach, of course. That's why you're trying to play off strength.

Doug, he's so handsome and all that, blah, blah, blah. Of course he is. But what I show them is this. In fact, after I've been giving this lecture for several years, a new paper came out just this year that showed that lean body mass, so the amount of muscle mass you have on you, is actually the third. So now we have this trifecta of like the three most significant predictors of not how likely you are to get hurt, not how unhappy you're going to be,

like the three things that are going to directly tell us how fucking long you will live, how strong your legs are, your VO2 max, which is your heart you know essentially like heart thing and how much muscle mass you have right and this is what's actually happening is this so i show a picture of doug doing a squat actually with the camber bar squat there you go um which is the bar and i said all right now and they all know you for the most part because of the tech squat assignment that i make them do and so they see you do this squat. We force people to watch my show. Just the way I like it.

You love forcing people into things. That's why you're about to... Never mind. So I show them, alright. Imagine Doug stood up with his barbell. What's going to happen to his heart rate if he stood up once with that barbell? What's going to happen? Going up. Yeah. How much?

Quite a bit. I mean, you do a heavy set of squats. Just the bar. Oh, a little bit. Going up? Yeah. How much? Like, what do you think? Quite a bit. I mean, you do a heavy set of squats, you're fucking toast. No, no, just the bar. Just the bar. Oh, a little bit. 20, 30 beats. Okay, fine. Whatever. So he goes up to 80, 90, 70 beats a minute. Now, what if he did the exact same thing, just one rep, and he had 300 kilos on the bar? Because I know you can squat

300 kilos, right? Easily. Would that probably be fucking vicious? Now it's going to happen to Harvey. It's probably, you know, 180 to 200. Well, it's going to include, probably. Right. Like, he's going to happen to heart rate. It's probably, you know, 180 to 200. Well, it's going to occlude, probably. Right. Like he's going to stop. Okay, yeah. Like, if not, higher.

And so let's take this on the opposite direction. Now imagine standing up off the toilet is like 300 kilos to you. And you go to the physician. Which is sad to say that people can barely do that sometimes. Right. And now you go to a physician, they're like, wow, your heart rate's really bad. It's a cardiovascular issue. Your heart's out of shape.

Is it? Is it really a cardiovascular issue? Or is the fact that everything is so hard because muscle function is so poor that it causes you to respond because now you've occluded blood flow everywhere. So you're getting a cardiovascular response. Everything's a max effort. Yeah, exactly. So like going to check the mail is a max effort. And so in fact, some really cool studies have been done where they'll make people do really heavy leg presses. So like machine leg press, four sets of 10, you know, partial range of motion leg press.

Sweet training program, bro. Yeah, right. Well, no, okay. Now you've got 70 year olds, never trained before. And they get way bigger, way stronger, blood markers go up. But what's really impressive. You're a sad angel, man man what's really impressive is that their spontaneous activity levels go up enormously probably sexual function and all the stuff they wanted to do they're much more likely to get up

and go watch their grandkid play baseball they're gonna go check the mail they're gonna go walk why because and how do you think everything's not so fucking hard anymore well sounds like if you're really weak it's not that much different than having just a poor heart or a really chronically high blood pressure. All these things that you think are the chronic stimuluses that are going to wear you down. This is a big one. Right, and so it's like, okay, you got this heart problem.

We're going to give you heart medication, heart medication, heart medication. Because why? When I put you on a graded exercise test, which is like a standard test you do in a hospital if we think you have a cardiac issue, right? We'll put you on a treadmill. We'll see how you respond to exercise. Oh, we get these terrible

cardiovascular responses. So is this causing more of a problem because they don't see the problem with muscular strength. You're putting the heart at more risk by doing all this stupid shit.

Yeah, and so we say, okay, then therefore the prescription is we got to do a lot of things that are going to tax your heart. When in fact, just make you fucking stronger and things become easier cardiovascularly. It's not so much of a stimulus. It's not stress to your heart. When in fact, just make you fucking stronger and things become easier

cardiovascularly. It's not so much of a stimulus. It's not stress to your body. And so- You could probably up the heart's training frequency. So now you have

more leg strength. Now you're more willing to like probably- So this is- Exercise the heart at a moderate level- Right. Regularly.

Or whatever you want to do. You have the option. I thought we should really- We got to really make more of a- Theoretical land, yeah. We got to really make more of a point of that because when you're taught

maybe in school, when you're saying strength that you know it's important for health but it's because of like fall risk yeah if you're weak that's important going up a flight of stairs that you won't be able to produce force fast if you stumble to catch yourself you fall and break your fucking neck or your hip and that's going to be a way out but also this is this seems like more of a profoundly impactful issue than that well it's actually funny in in our department we have one of the most successful centers for successful aging. And one of the biggest things we have in it is our risk of fall prevention or something like that. And they're all just super excited last year because they sort of figured out like, wow, actually, leg speed and leg power is more important than anything else in reducing risk of fall.

And we're like, yes. You got to be able to put your foot down quickly. Come talk to a strength coach. Yes. I mean, there's a correlation between leg strength and balance. Well, and speed now. They're finding that speed and power are more significant. And speed and power goes away a lot faster than strength.

Strength can stick around. Yes. Hence the old man strength myth, which is debatably not even a myth. Like strength does stick around. Speed and power goes away very quickly. Yeah. it goes away chronically like over age but one of the things actually i've picked up probably maybe even unaware of your knowledge is that's one of the first things that i watch for with my athletes with overtraining well i saw strength hands and handles but speed goes quick yeah you can fast you can survive with more and more weight on the

barbell but if the vertical jump or you lose a step, that's your canary in the coal mine. Well, yeah, the reaction times to all that stuff. If you're looking for it, fine. You can measure it and see how they're responding and then cut the training load and see how the speed comes back. You want it to go down sometimes. You want to see how it comes back,

but it's the first thing to go. Do we have other questions? I want to say, let's get back. I want to go through. You talked about muscle as a hormone. It kind of causes your body to produce hormones. Can you, can you go into like all the benefits of exercise, like things that the muscle does? I mean, maybe talk about glute four or, or just, you know, all that kind of stuff or, or insulin sensitivity and, and exercise.

Yeah. The answer would be yes. Like all of it. All of it. It's so... We're going to need an explanation. It's so wide ranging. You pick your any random topic. Inflammation. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about the...

You name one of them and I'll tell you. The hormones that are somewhat responsible for helping you burn fat, right? Sure. And muscle size and exercise. Yeah Sure. And muscle size and exercise. Yeah. Or muscle, yeah, muscle size and exercise. I'm like, they rhymed.

Am I saying the same thing twice? Yeah, I'm not used to rhyming. Think of it this way. So one of the things that we have sort of recently started pioneering is this idea that muscle is a reserve. All right. And so what ends up happening is, okay, we know we store adipose tissue fat as fat.

I certainly know that. Yeah, I know. I know. Look at me. Look at me. But you're a chubby chaser in a way,

Andy. You love it. The good thing Natasha's not in the room. I was going to say, you talking about Natasha? No, dude.

We have a long history, Andy and I. Yeah. A long, a chubby chaser? No. Together? He convinced me for the longest time just to give in No, dude. We have a long history, Andy and I. Yeah. A long, many. Do you want me to chase him? No. Together?

He convinced me for the longest time just to give in to his seduction. Well, now his wife's going to hate you. I'm the only one clean in this whole room right now, which is surprisingly new. There's nothing clean about you. Nothing. I could go there, too. Oh, man.

How about, I'm still waiting for the day, a throwback Thursday post, that we dive into your mom's camera and your aunt's camera. So, muscle, hormones, reducing fat. Oh, okay. So, the reserve. So, this is the basic idea.

If you are- I's like, what? What happened in the past? What happened between Andy and Mike's mom? You were there too. Okay, okay. My mom's like, don't go to the gym for a week. Muscle reserve. There's a reason why I met

years without missing a holiday at the blood soak house. There's a week. Muscle reserve. There's a reason why I met years without missing a holiday at the blood cell house. There's a reason. And it wasn't the crown royal. But it helped. So the idea is this. Your body has to be able to adapt to any

which means it needs to be able to have a reserve. It needs to be able to have a reserve of amino acids in particular. Because amino acids, again, are these building blocks of proteins. But what we forget is that protein isn't just skeletal muscle. Your hair, your teeth, your immune cells. Everything is. Everything is made of protein.

So if I don't have any muscle mass, I can't store amino acids. If I can't store amino acids, I can't respond to instantaneous changes. I can't build new antibodies. I can't build new immune cells. I can't respond to changes, right? So we have this big reserve, so you need more Glut4 transporter. Do you know what Glut4, the transporter to back up? Glut4 is a transporter that allows sugar to be brought into a cell, right?

So I have to build more transporters to bring in GLUT4. Do you know what those transporters are made of? Amino acids? Yeah, there we go, right? So I can't regulate that. I can't build new immune cells if it has to go to my central nervous system. I can't build new immune cells if it has to go to my brain or wherever it's going to go to.

But it's all coming from a muscle, right? Most of this is being stored. It's kind of your backup. It's your garage, right? It's your shed. It's everything is in there. And if I don't have a shed, I can't hold that much. So I can't really respond and adapt and change too much. So you name all these things you want to talk about in inflammatory cells. You want to talk about dealing with oxidative stress. These are big popular topics right now. Reduce inflammation, all this stuff. It's all coming from mostly muscle. So, talk about a big impact on all kinds of disease states.

Yeah, well, disease, not even disease, but normal disease. Like, you're not sleeping enough. Alright? So, how are you going to respond to that? Your muscle is going to send signals to try to fix things. You're going to give up muscle to preserve brain function. You're going to give up muscle to preserve spinal function. Alright? You're going to give up, there are

four things your body regulates over everything else. Blood pH, you got to be at the right acid base level. You should fucking die. Blood pressure, got to be able

to circulate, right? Weird how this trend, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blood sugar. Because sugar is fucking toxic as hell. Right, it's one of the most important,

it's the most important fuel for our brain. Not too much of it's a bad thing. Right, it's going to regulate that level. That's why it keeps your blood sugar sort of at that level. It's the most important fuel for our brain. Not too much of it's a bad thing. Right. It's going to regulate that level. That's why it keeps your blood sugar sort of level. And the last one. So more muscle on that.

That's a big one. Yeah. More muscle will help you regulate blood sugar better. Yes, exactly. If you don't, I mean that, which is a huge key into being leaner.

Yeah. Yeah. Anything you like, you name your goal. Number four, Andy, number four. Sorry. I want to derail you there. The fourth critical thing your goal. Number four, Andy. Number four. Sorry.

I want to derail you there. The fourth critical thing to preserve. Oh, sorry. Blood electrolyte levels. The amount of negative and positive charge in your muscle versus in your blood. All right. So there has to be. You can't function without that.

That would be salts. Like I told you guys. The electrical wiring doesn't work. Yeah. I told you guys a thing earlier about, do you guys remember Dr. Kevorkian? Yeah. The suicide guy. Assisted death.

Assisted death guy, right? Super controversial topic. Do you know how he worked? Do you know what he did, what he gave to people to kill him? I do now after he told me earlier today. After I told you earlier. What did he give?

Potassium or something? Yeah, so he basically gave people an IV of straight potassium. Potassium is K plus, positive charge. And so what he was doing was screwing with the difference in electrical charge between the blood and outside and muscle in this particular case cardiac muscle so what essentially happened is now there's no difference in gradient of charge and it becomes an equilibrium and then the heart just goes like all right no reason to change

electrons and heart just stops sorry Sorry, heart starts beating. So the point I'm getting at with that is- Don't inject yourself with huge amounts of potassium. Stop eating bananas. We've learned this today. Listen, I know what I learned from that episode. I got this cool new drug. It's called potassium.

Want to go in the back and check it out? No. You get super wasted on potassium. You got any coke? That'd be good enough for me. That's a joke. No part of it. Right?

So the point is, we want those things to be super dialed. We want them in this range. Everything else can be fuck away everywhere. We don't really care. Who gives a shit about that? Yeah, but we got to have that stuff in its range for those main functions.

And so muscle is what's giving us that wiggle room. And so we actually published a paper. So having more muscle allows me to do stupid stuff and survive. Yeah, so here's a great example. We published a paper last year where I went to Sweden, and we took all kinds of studies of everything of these cross-country skiers that were in their 80s and 90s. They were world and Olympic champions in the 40s and 50s

and had never stopped training. So there's a race over there. I don't know if you guys came across it. Did you guys see the... We saw some in the airport. The big downhill sort of jump. Anyways, there's a race in Sweden called the Vasa Lopet. It's like their version of the Boston Marathon.

Well, I'll have to go together sometime. Yeah, right? Well, these guys are on their 60th, like six, zero consecutive year of running this race. Fred Ishu style, man. Yeah, right? Well, these guys are on their 60th, like six, zero consecutive year of running this race. Fred Ishu style, man. Yeah, right? Ridiculous, right? And we took all these measures of these guys and we compared them to age matched, but non,

people that have never exercised in their life. And what we found is their buffer is up here. And so we know sort of where you have to be at where the line of independent living hits. So you go below this line, you're going to assisted living. And our controls, like if this is the line, our controls are right here.

They're like hovering right over. So one thing happens, they slip and fall, they get the flu. Like one thing happens, they fall below the line, they're screwed. Our guys are here.

They were double where they're at in terms of VO2 max. The VO2 max of these guys was almost... The numbers you were telling me of these guys with VO2 max, I was like, is that real for like a 20 year old? Like, yeah. Like, like I, there are the, probably the average college student will never get to this point. I try to explain this to our people. We had a, so our group average was right around 40 milliliters per kilogram per minute. An average college person is right around 40.

Right. So I'm telling my like 22 year old kids, like literally if a tiger breaks in here and it's a run to the death, you are going to get eaten. This 90 year old will outrun you. You will stop before this 90 year old. And it's crazy because they have that buffer because their muscle function was incredible.

It's up there. I mean, they weren't lifting, they were just skiing, but their muscle function was so well preserved that if something bad happened, they'd tear an LCO. Were they doing just cross-country stuff or also some jumps? No, just straight cross-country skiing.

That's probably, I think, isn't that like the number one exercise for heart health or something? People with the highest VO2 max. They have the highest VO2s. Well, yeah. Okay. That's sort of like not true. I won't correlate that too much.

But yeah, they have the highest VO2s. Well, yeah, okay, that's sort of like not true. I won't correlate that too much, but like, yeah, they have like the highest VO2 max. Supposedly some kid, 18, 19-year-old kid this last year popped like a 96. Whoa. Yeah, he's supposed to be, yet to be scientifically

verified, which is ridiculous. That's insane. For example. Mine was 56. Is he an X-Man? Last time I did it. Yeah, you're probably

mine. Yeah, mine was 57, just, you know, one point over. I think you were 41. This guy's the next step into evolution, man. Yeah, you're probably right. See, if you and I got superpowers. 57, just one point over. I feel like you were 41. This guy's the next step into evolution, man. Yeah, I mean, a great example like a Lance Armstrong would be maybe the small 80s. Don't bring cheaters into this discussion.

Damn dirty cheaters. Everything he did in his whole life doesn't matter now. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the real answer is what does it do for all these particular things? It gives you buffer. It gives you wiggle room. It gives you the ability to adapt, handle insult. It's incredible, really.

It needs to be said more often. People need to understand how important it is. It's not just for vanity. It's not just so you can look huge and pick up chicks or whatever the fuck you're going for. It's for you to be healthy and long living. Yeah, and of course there's a law of diminishing gains. Like, you know, I'm not saying you need to squat 700 to have a healthy heart.

You know, you get to a point. But if you can't, let's say, do a body weight squat, you got a problem. If you're 25, and you can't do a push-up.

If you don't have an excess amount of strength to do everything you need to do, there's a problem. Yeah. So what I got from this is like,

you want to have plenty of leg power. Yeah. You want to have a great VO2 max and being lean is good. If you're covering those three bases you're

probably going to live a long healthy life barring like an accidental train cross or something. Tiger loose in your fucking classroom. Yeah.

Tiger loose. And of course. Then you just have to beat the other guy. Yeah. The slowest man. There's plenty of things that can cause

you to die. There's no guarantee by any means. But you're stacking the deck in as much advantage as possible. You'll be resilient. Yeah, you can handle the change. But when we see people lose mobility, it's because of a loss of muscle function. We don't see people lose mobility because of a loss of cardiac function.

We just don't see that. Pretty rare. I heard a while back the number one reason that people get put in nursing homes, not the number one reason, but a big reason

people get put in nursing homes is from a loss of thoracic mobility. Thoracic rotation. He's already doing the thoracic rotation. I don't know if that's... Basically,

they can't turn on and wipe their own asses and so the family's like, okay, you're going to the home. I don't know if that's true at all. I've heard the same thing. It's a great story, though.

It probably came from Doug. That's where you heard it. Yeah. It might be. Doug's like, I know. I'm putting my parents in the home once I have to go to the home. That's right. I'm buying a bidet if that happens.

I heard that from Mike Boyle. I'm not sure where he heard it from, though. Yeah, he probably made it. He heard it from another guy who heard it from somebody, I think. Yeah. And then I got hurt. Doug's mom better keep that thoracic rotation going on.

You're going in a home. He's not looking for any reason to send me back to your home. He's not going to spray you down with a water hose. Mom, you look like your rotation's getting a little shitty. You should probably check out a home.

What? Let's be clear. You wipe my ass a million times, not returning the favor. That's a pay it forward type of thing. You wipe your kid's ass. Yeah, pay it forward, not back. To your point about the cross-country skiers,

I did read some studies a while back when I was putting together the MMA talk. I mean, you did years and years ago. Ten years ago that we presented at a conference in Orlando about the cross-country skiers who improved strength levels and improved their VO2 max and performance independent of aerobic training. Like they're already high-level guys that have like VO2s in the 80s. They did strength work and their VO2s went up

even though they didn't change any other aspects of their training and they were already really well trained. Actually, to add more to that, what they actually did is they removed a third of their training and inserted essentially plyometrics. and that's the response they had and yeah we've seen that dozens of times where uh i mean don't get me wrong if you just do box jumps you're not your vo2 is not going to go to 80 like that's not at all yeah all of a sudden just saying that strength training is also important for endurance athletes yeah it's incredibly important and i think what

especially if you've already lifters that are having VO2s in the 80s that are really good cross-country skiers because they do a lot of strength work. Not that I'm aware of. I actually think you are quite aware of that. Didn't you try to move to CrossFit for a little bit there? I did a riot,

but the biggest problem I found... The biggest problem I found was gravity. Yeah. It's everywhere I go, really. It rides you all the time. Yeah. Especially on pull-ups and shit. It's everywhere I go. It rides you all the time. Especially on pull-ups and shit. It's tough. We've known that quite well shown in

orienteers, rowers, skiers, runners, cyclists, swimmers. I saw Ari have a huge base of endurance training. It's not like they are no longer novice at this. There's not much more room for improvement. So a novel, potent, intense stimulus that gives them this big now buffer of muscle tissue and such has a huge impact.

Well, we actually just published a point counterpoint. So I run a column for the National Strength and Conditioning Association. I should do another of these for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, you did one. You did what? High bar versus low bar squat or powerlifting versus weightlifting. Something like that. Yeah, then a benefit of weightlifting versus powerlifting for sport.

We just did recently one on what's the role of strength training and endurance. We had somebody who, for whatever reason, still didn't think that it was important. One of the main journal editors came back and was like, are we really still asking this question? I'm like, well, no, but I guess he is. He's like, are we really still asking this question? And I'm like, well, no, but I guess he is. He's like, do we want to run this?

Like nobody, nobody thinks that there isn't a huge rule. And I'm like, well, let's just do it one more time. Yeah. One more time. Let's run it out there.

Some people are never going to accept it. No. And then that's fine. But I think one of the reasons of that is our third sort of thing that we're going to talk about today. Brilliant segue. Hey, you like that? Oh, wow.

I was like, damn, that was masterful. Yeah, right? Got you on the show four times. He hasn't really done it yet. Maybe he's going to mess the whole thing up. I don't know. Finish the segue. Finish the segue.

Yeah. A lot of pressure now. Camera in the face. Is the idea of association of muscle size and strength. Right? And so clearly we know there's a correlation between how much muscle you have and how strong you are. That's the reason there are weight classes. If you had more, you're going to be stronger, typically, right?

But what's really interesting is what's happening that allows people to be strong without being big. And so if I ask, and I'll actually set you guys up for complete failure right here. All right. I've looked dumb before. Do it. I did this at the American College. I was going to say the opposite of whatever I said. I did this at the American College of Sports Medicine conference,

and I just had the whole room just flat wrong on this idea. And so the basic answer is this. You guys have all been through. You all have at least an undergraduate degree in exercise science kinesiology. Well, Doug and I have master's degrees. That's why I said at least. Now we're going to sound more wrong. We're not as smart as you, but we're doing all right.

Well, we do have the exact same master's. We do. All right. So what actually physiologically, what allows you to be stronger without necessarily being bigger? Because clearly more muscle means... I know what people would say.

So what would people say that allows you... I think you're tickling towards nervous system adaptations. Nervous system adaptation, right? And I have a whole room of American colleges, sports medicine professionals saying...

Everybody thinks he's going to say this. ...neurological adaptations. And I say, those are absolutely true. Totally true. But you're dead wrong. I want to guess now.

Dun, dun, dun, cliffhanger. We'll see you next week on part two. Just kidding. Is it true but partial? Is that what you mean? No, it's totally true. Like there are some very serious

neurological adaptations. You know, all the classic ones you've heard a hundred times in class. But what they're not appreciating is the muscle adaptations. So there are a lot of adaptations in muscle that allow you to produce more force without the muscle actually being any bigger.

And that part of the equation is forgot. It's like heightened phosphorylation and all that jazz. Give us examples there. This has been a long time since I talked to this. I was a muscle physiologist at one time. You were a good muscle physiologist. I was good. In fact, actually, by the way, you're going to be –

we have submitted a paper last week with your name on it. Really? Yeah, FYI. Did you put our name on it? No, we did work together. People don't know this shit. We did work together in the lab for a long time, Andy. Yeah, so you have some protein signaling pathway stuff coming out.

Well, there you go. Yeah, look at this. No, but for a while we were studying in the lab, had people detrained, had them trained, take a biopsy, break down the muscle, run your electrophoresis, and see what proteins were turned on, basically, which ones are downregulated, and how's that affecting performance? Yeah.

So, what ends up happening is, the way that muscle grows is, it's pretty specific. So, it takes some, kind of some complex explanation of what actually happens.

But, the way that, actually, I think, the way that you explain it, Doug, is really crazy. It's kind of like a,

the way your muscles set up is like a, I like a cable, but I think you said a hair. It's like a ponytail. Like a ponytail. That's what it was. But you've got big muscle and then thousands of tens of thousands of individual muscle fibers are put together like a ponytail would be or a cable wire.

Yeah. Right. And wrapped around each individual muscle is insulation. Right. And what actually, how you actually transmit force is the muscle contracts and it pulls the insulation. The insulation all comes together and forms a tendon.

A tendon attaches to the bone, pulls the bone. So where force transmission actually happens is that insulation. And so we have a lot of connective tissue or fascia changes that allow greater transmission of force, that allow you to be stronger without necessarily the muscle being any bigger at all.

This is why massage and everything is so damn important for strength. Well, yeah, maybe. Maintaining of the fascia. We don't really know. It's pretty unstudied. But in theory. Sounds like we should study it. Go ahead.

Good luck. Oh, shit. But we also have changes inside the muscle itself. So, for example, we know very clearly, we know that there are slow twitch and fast twitch muscles, right? It's not uncommon for me to see a slow twitch muscle that's faster than a fast twitch muscle. It's not uncommon for me to see a fast twitch muscle that has more endurance properties than a fast twitch muscle. It's not uncommon for me to see a fast twitch muscle that has more endurance properties than a slow twitch. Right?

And there's a nature part of that as far as I think. But there's also a training. Everyone has been arguing fast twitch, slow twitch, and whether they can cross over and all that stuff. Oh, absolutely. You're basically saying that all that argument probably doesn't even matter. Well, it does.

I mean, it does, but like, but there's like this other factor that they're totally missing. It's not so simple as either matter. Well, it does. I mean, it does, but there's this other factor that they're totally missing. It's not so simple as either or. Yeah, no, exactly. And just to clearly answer that question, there is absolutely no discussion whatsoever whether or not you can change fiber types

with exercise training. No discussion at all. But more to your point, that's not the only part of the equation. For example, it is very clear. A great study we did a few years ago with a cross country team. So we took a cross country team. We tracked them throughout their season. We just let them do their season. We took a biopsy of them before the last three weeks of training. And we took a biopsy after their conference meet. So

essentially we took a biopsy pre post their three week taper. So this was a taper study. And what's crazy is we studied the individual muscle fibers. We identified the fast ones and we studied them. Essentially you take the fiber, you put it on a force transducer. I still don't know how to do that shit. It's not that hard. It's really, I've never done it myself. The tweezer. Pretty easy. And you put it in this machine. It looks like a single hair almost. Yeah. And you've seen how hard that piece of hair is contracting. Exactly.

It's exactly what we did, right? And what we noticed, you know what happened to the amount of power in the fast fibers after the three-week taper? They went way up. Also, they got way bigger. So the diameter, the size of the fibers got way bigger

by reducing training. Well, there's, you'll see athletes actually gain weight during a taper and they freak out. Yeah. And so, but it's like one of those things where you know that that's going to happen. So as a coach, you're like, you want to gain a few pounds. Don't freak out. That's normal. Right. And the real point of that is the fact that you can change the inherent properties. So a fiber can get faster itself. It can produce more force and faster without getting any bigger. It can also get bigger, which also helps. It could be a combination of getting stronger and bigger, but your muscle, each individual fiber does not have to change its size to produce more force. There are a lot of mechanisms, like the things you talked about earlier.

For example, it gets more efficient, we'll kind of call it. The calcium, which is needed to go in so that the two components, the actin and myosin, can grab each other and pull. You get more efficient at doing that. You become more responsive. It becomes more sensitive to this dimminess. It doesn't need as much. You have a top-to-bott everything gets more skill and that's a great way to say it because

that's exactly what i say it is we have to understand that being strong is definitely definitely a skill right so it's a neurological skill you got to learn how to activate the right motor units and be synchronized but there's a muscle skill as well. So inside the muscle, independent of nerve, there's a lot of changes happening that allow you to produce more force, to be more efficient. We go back to what we're talking about, about the blood flow occlusion. Think of it this way. If you are so efficient with your muscle, you can produce X amount of force and you don't have to generate any more motor fibers i'm not going to occlude as much blood flow right so i don't need to turn on as many fibers to

produce x amount of force so if we think of this is what brian mckenzie is always talking about when he's talking about being you have to move efficiently that's going to enhance your endurance people are like what are you talking about right You use less muscle to produce the same movement. You don't have to block off blood flow, which means I get nutrients in, I get nutrients waste out. And so I'm not going to get as nearly as fatigued. That's why you can go watch 10 athletes perform side by side, like an endurance type event, CrossFit or running even.

Jiu-Jitsu. Novices versus skilled Jiu-Jitsu. You can spot who's going to win. Not all the time because there's some other factors obviously. A lot of times the people who are moving

the most efficiently on the, say it's a three day event and they're doing event after event after event. The person who's still moving like they did it the first day,

you know, they have that efficiency. They're just not being taxed. You know, they didn't break down on day one and just totally smoked themselves. That's all the more reason to be super relaxed while you're competing. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's actually one of the things when, um, when I first started doing, uh, combat sports. So when I first started doing, uh, jujitsu and kickboxing

and stuff, I actually was not, I mean, I just got done competing in national championships and weightlifting. So I was the furthest thing from fit, you know, in that sense possible. Right. But I was actually, I was by far the most fit usually at those practices because the one thing that I learned from weightlifting, unlike powerlifting, powerlifting is like go crazy, turn everything on, squeeze everything, grab and pull. And we're like, that doesn't work. So I had to learn to pull as hard as I can, completely relaxed. And then when I started learning how to punch. By the way, it does work for palatting too. If people fail, like after you experiment, you see the same lesson pop up. Yeah. And so when, when actually Doug started teaching me how

to punch, I was like, oh yeah, same thing. I have to learn how to snap as hard as I can with complete relaxation. And that's actually helped me with my athletes a lot too. The same thing is, Hey, I learned this. And so one of the benefits we have found from integrating weightlifting in is they have to learn that too. So my people that have a hard time striking and stuff like that, it's like, Hey, I'm going to let you learn how to use your muscle a little bit differently. And here's a tool. I don't care that you learn how to snatch well, and I don't care that we can fight this thing but i want you to learn how to go as hard as possible and being very relaxed about it and using everything you need and staying very

calm everywhere else and snapping and popping and getting your plyometric effect it sounds a little bit about like the uh the chinese weightlifters are talking about right now the coaches are you know being as relaxed as possible during the lift. Yeah. I mean, that's never worked for me, being super jacked up during a snatch, especially.

I felt this so intensive when I tried to do some grappling, and when you're uptight and tense. I love watching Chris grapple, by the way. Oh, my gosh. It's the most... I was playing right into it, too. You were grabbing that dude

when you were competing at the Arnold Classic, and you were squeezing his neck, and I knew it was totally wrong, and you shouldn't be doing it, but I was just like into it too you were grabbing that dude when you were competing at the Arnold Classic and you were squeezing his neck and I knew it was totally wrong and you shouldn't be doing it but I was just like keep squeezing him squeeze him as hard as you can and don't stop you've got three minutes left this fucking guy was like 350 pounds he was on me the whole time I finally got around him but didn't know how to

execute the choke so I said fuck it I'm just going to squeeze this guy's head this poor guy as hard as fucking possible so for three minutes'm just going to squeeze this guy's head, this poor guy, as hard as fucking possible. So for three minutes, I'm going to do a max effort head squeezing this guy, but not quite on the chin enough to make him pass out.

But what you learn is that this is just not, this is not the way you do it. Because you, I lay on the floor for fucking an hour after that. I'm like, oh my God,

oh my God, oh my God. I play college football. I've run so many crippling like gassers and shit. I've been to the point of death so many crippling gassers and shit. I've been to the point of death so many times. This was way harder.

This was fucking tough, dude. This was like, I've broken myself. I'm not going to recover. Everything's bad now. Other guys can react. But Alex, the guy who's such a world champion level jujitsu practitioner, it's almost like such a zen state of like, hey, this is what you do to talk the guy out.

You just soak him. Everything's okay. He could just, in the same situation, he would just slip his finger underneath this guy's neck and in two seconds the guy would be fucking done. He wouldn't even breathe twice during the whole process. It's a huge lesson about why you should be relaxed. Yeah.

And actually, before we shut down, I want to add some practical tips to some of these, what we've we calling them? Bold lies? Practical tips. These bold lies. I don't know. So wait, what was the first one we went over?

We went over to be bigger, to be stronger. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So practical tip on that would be, I think you actually already hit it. And that is, if maximizing growth is the single cellular goal, right? If you're like, okay, the next four or six or eight weeks, granting more muscle mass, this is the goal. I think you probably want to put yourself depending on where your previous training is, but you want to put yourself maybe a little bit of sore. But like you said earlier,

you don't want to be the so sore where you're like, okay, I'm out for another week and a half now. That's just not because what we do know that cumulative um frequency is going to be really really really important so you need a you need a measured training yeah if you're stimulus if you're extremely trained um you probably you may not need to get to sore may not really happen if you're very very untrained this is actually a lesson doug and i learned many many years ago where every time we started a new program it would be like day one monday let's do it like stereo pop bro let's crash this is like after football season ended we were like in the hypertrophy phase of our next year of

training and we were just coming into 10 or five sets of 10 on squats and then five sets of 10 on rdls and five sets of 10 on munges. With like a timer going off every 45 seconds, like ding, there you go. Up again, back again. That was 10 years ago. We would just be so wrecked afterward for the first two weeks. Not necessary. Yeah, totally not necessary. I would actually encourage, I'm so, I'm actually maybe swung too far where the first week or

even the first time I put a new exercise in or a new variation, I'm doing like a few, maybe 25 total reps of it, broken up over three or four sets. And then I'm done and I'll see you in like the next few days. I'm like, okay, everything's still working. Okay. Like, all right, we're here. We're fine. And then the next thing. So I would say that if, unless you're extremely trained, just go way slower than you think. You don't need the German volume training, do you? Oh, geez. Let's get started on that. I don't think anyone needs that.

You know what's awesome about that? That's 10 sets of 10 if you didn't know what it was. Yeah. It's fucking hard. One of my best grad students I've had, Jacob, is from Germany. And I had him in my program design class. He actually went to Colorado with Steve Fleck.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So he did his undergrad there. And he came to us afterwards. He's a brilliant fleck oh wow yeah yeah so he does undergrad there and he came to us afterwards he's a brilliant kid he's just a super good awesome guy he's gonna do a lot of great things cool accent all that but he was in my program design class and somebody asked me a german volume training question and i was like um jacob you're from germany is that a thing is there german volume training he's like no such thing like some american made that ridiculous but yeah you don't so it's not a badge of honor to wear to no to be wrecked wreck wreck sore like it happens once in

a while but that shouldn't be the goal anymore no if you're brand new it's kind of cool but it's a bad thing it's not a good thing it's potentially a bad thing potentially yeah and it's gonna ruin training so a little bit of like oh ah next day like a couple days later we're back to get it again that's probably where you want to be if growth is your optimal if if growth isn't your goal then being sore is not really needed often at all yeah other than when again when you change make a slight change so that would be my take on practical for the first thing is soreness is not oh sorry last tiny thing on that this comes up in my class all the time um most of

this audience probably doesn't care but one of the things we're gonna make them listen yeah one of the things that my students complain about a lot is people associate how sore my trainer made me with how good of a trainer they are oh yeah which is not Which is not at all. No pain, no gain. That's very true, though. As far as sales go, if you get a brand new person, you make their abs really sore and the butt really sore, they're probably going to come back.

Yep. So if you're a coach, you got to keep that in mind, too. The way I said that, actually, is I tell my students. That's exactly what I tell them to do. If you get a new client, you want to make more sales,

make this hurt, make that hurt. For the guys, make that hurt and that hurt and this, and you're fine. Yeah, program the squad responsibly. Don't even put it in there. Just like a thousand glute bridges, crunchies. Don't care what it's doing,

like how effective it is. Make this, this and sore the first week and you'll keep them as a client. You're not doing any good, but just keep them as a client. You're making money and I can allow you to keep coaching, which is going to allow you to do good. I'll keep them around as a client.

The best thing you can do. It'll retain them. So they'll train more. Yeah. So you can actually start integrating. It's kind of like there's a certain level of fun that needs to be in your training.

Oh yeah, of course. Because retention is sometimes much more important than having the perfect program. Oh I know. Yeah. Because if they leave

you can't help them. Yeah. If they're motivated they think it's working and they're having fun and they train harder and that's what also gives training results.

Yeah. Which is what I tell my students the number one most important thing you could ever do with your client is straight bold-faced lie to them. As long as you know you're lying to them. You're beautiful and everything's fine. Yes, Doritos, a whole bag

counts as a block. What was the second thing? What other tips did you offer to them? The other one was the endocrine portion of it. The only tip I would give to that is if your goal is to compete in athletics, you've probably have a desire to have a lot of muscle or at least have well functioning.

Fine. But the tip I would give it would be in the opposite side of the spectrum. So if your goal is something besides being an elite level athlete, which is actually most people, what if I want to be, what if I'm just a girl? Yeah, fine. Who wants to be lean?

Yeah, you want to be lean, fine. I want my muscles to appear longer. I want toned long muscles. I want toned long muscles. I want my legs to look good. Break your bones, pull them out longer. Look at you prancing now.

I know. Actually, you brought up, I totally forgot about this. I can't believe I did. But the main signal for regulating adipose storage. Ooh. Another way of saying the signal that tells you to store fat, subcutaneous fat. Yelling at your man.

Donuts with insight. Red wine and chocolate. Maybe Rosa, the pink stuff, know sexiness no people watch sex and see anymore i do i love it where do you think that signal is coming from the sex in the city signal i'm confused yeah my satellite muscles you're saying it's muscle right and so in fact the i mentioned the one thing i told students earlier about if losing fat is your primary goal, one of the first things we encourage is more protein. The other thing that we encourage is do you have enough muscle mass? You need to put on muscle mass because we know very specifically at a molecular, cellular level, at a hormone level, the signal going out from your body to your bloodstream telling you

to store fat and not store fat is coming directly from muscle. If you don't have that signal, if you don't have a lot of function or a lot of control of it, we have a problem. So making sure that your client or yourself has adequate amounts of muscle mass, if weight loss is the goal, it's critically important. I think a lot of people think weight loss or fat loss, they think fat loss and they think more conditioning. And it can be. Yeah. And it can be. Yeah. Because conditioning is very important there too. That's great for burning fat, but setting yourself up for a foundation great for burning fat is having more muscle. Yeah. So the same things that build muscle mass when you're getting bigger are the same things that keep muscle mass when you're getting

smaller. So strength training should always be in the program. Always. So that's why with our barbell bikini and barbell shredded programs for helping people get leaner, half the program is hypertrophy. Half of it is building muscle so they can have the foundation to which the conditioning is going to push it even further. I actually use the barbell bikini as an exact example of this is how you're going to go about it. Another thing that happens, it's actually a pretty small contributor, but it's such a good idea, is the fact that at rest, do you know how metabolically active your fat is? So in other words, how much energy does it take to keep your fat alive?

Basically none. Almost nothing. Do you know how much energy it takes to keep muscle alive? Couldn't quantify, but a lot. A lot, right? More than fat, right? Now it's a fairly mild contributor to the idea, but it sets the idea up again. Okay, now if I have something that's continually causing

or needing maintenance and needing energy, now we're constantly working outside of the 23 and a half hours of the day that we're not exercising. You're spending calories maintaining the muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you're going to use. That's why my wife hates that I can get away with maybe eating that cheap meal. And she can't because I've got 50 pounds of more muscle than she does.

And so, like, I'm metabolically more, I guess, inefficient. I'm burning more calories all day every day. You have more wiggle room yeah that's just really what it comes down to so and it sucks for her but that's just the way it is understanding that the signaling importance of muscle and that it's not something just for looks or muscle and lifting and running and jumping performance that there's a very legitimate health and there's a very legitimate longevity and a very very legitimate body composition all right very legitimate component from skeletal muscle is probably the take come on good for that so for all the people that want to get bigger without or excuse me they want to

get stronger without getting bigger you were saying that you know everyone thinks it's it's neural changes which which is true but there's changes to the muscle as well. Is there any practical thing we can tie into that concept? Yeah. And so what I was saying that is appreciating the muscle fatigue aspect of it too. And so a lot of people talk about, and we touched on this last time, that, for example, there are certain activities, box jumps, snatch, clean and jerk, weightlifting, Olympic weightlifting movements, weightlifting movements.

People tend to gear those as, well, those are neurologically fatiguing. My muscle is fine. I'm just tired neurologically. Like horseshit. They're both very, very equally tired. So that needs to be appreciated in your program. You're not neurologically tired more than your muscles tired on both ends. So when we were putting together your programs,

that needs to be recognized that if you're doing conditioning for your muscle and thinking you're doing lifting for your nervous system, it's not working like that. They are connected. Yeah, we need to balance your conditioning. So if strength is the optimal goal, we want a power or strength, either one of those or speed. This has got to be recognized in the rest of our program.

Because every other thing that we're doing is going to be taking away from the muscle's function. Its ability to recover. Its ability to... That's why it's not a good idea to mix CrossFit football and CrossFit endurance and think you have the most well rounded program in the world. Yeah, I don't know the specifics of that, but I'm going to guess no.

Two random programs with different goals doesn't equal well rounded. Yeah. So the take home message again would be just to appreciate the fact that muscle is being fatigued from those things too. Here, practical. People think, okay, I'm not sore. My legs aren't heavy. My muscle must be fine. Like, but I'm not here. I'm not here. Like, I'm not totally strong today. So it's got to be a neurological thing. Just because you don't feel sore or feel fatigued in muscle, it could be very well fatigued it could very easily be it's very practical yeah so that needs to be appreciated I sometimes feel fatigued but I'm not

really probably that happens a lot in this case perception is not reality well that happens in weightlifting all the time you know every time you pull the snatch and you're like and you pull it off the floor and you think there is absolutely no chance this is going over my head. Oh my God, it went over my head. It's also like some of the shittiest workouts

you ever think you're going to have. Don't tell them to be so shitty. I've had PRs on days where there's Or some days you feel fucking great and it's not happening. It's like what happened like on meat day I showed up

and I felt great and why did I have such a shitty meat? Yeah. Awesome. So that would be my take home is just appreciate the fact that muscle is paying the price too. So for every little thing you're doing, uh, and even the most innocent

things. So we've shown, shown some pretty cool recent data, um, from a friend of mine in our department who showed that, um, stretching. So if you were to like a hold a hamstring stretch, if you take it to terminal stretching, so you take it to the point of it's discomfort and you hold it for a minute or so you take it to the point of its discomfort, and you hold it for a minute or two, he showed in that particular study, vertical jumping power was reduced 48 hours later. So significantly, and that actually comes back to probably that connective tissue thing we were talking about. Highlighting the idea, again, you have to really pay attention.

Something's happening here. You have to appreciate the muscle aspect of what's going on of all these things it's not just nerve just because you're not tired or sore doesn't mean muscle isn't tired or sore so if you need to adjust your program you have to ride the wave go easier that day whatever you have to do more skill more speed fine you got to recognize that too. Sometimes mobility really can make you worry. You're kind of less springy. It's the Mark Verstegen example of having snap where like he says,

if you go like this and you snap down versus pulling it and getting a little bit of tension, then you snap down really, really hard. If I had like way more mobility in my finger and I pull up to that same point, but there was no tension, then I'd be right back to going like that without any snap, so to speak.

Or do that again. Put that in there. Now, pull it up there and leave your hand in that position for a year and a half. Now, if you let it go, what's going to happen? It's just going to lightly...

Yeah, and so this is a concern with, you know, those things and where that... Because clearly, anyone that's done any really good mobility stuff feels like, well, this usually feels really good and you feel better.

So there's a lot of interesting things in that field that we just, we have no idea of what's really happening big picture yet, you know, for all those things. Yeah. That wasn't an argument for don't do mobility. No, no, no, no. No, that's why I wanted to. But it is potentially something to think about.

But what I'm getting at, the way we brought that up, because that's not at all, I'm glad you said that, because that's not at all what we're saying. It's just that appreciation that muscle is going through things too that aren't just because you aren't sore. Doesn't mean muscle isn't paying prices for things. So if speed or strength is the maximum goal, pay attention to everything else too. Everything else has to be appreciated. Awesome.

Thank you, Andy. Yeah. That was pretty dope. That was a lot of shit. If you nerded out... Lots of shit. Lots of shit. It all sucked. Boy, CTP, you didn't actually press record.

We talk about lots of things. You didn't press record, did you? If you nerded out on this tremendously, make sure to go over to barbelluniversity.com and sign up. Put your email there. That way we can notify you

anytime we start putting together more information like this. Sweet. What other episodes were you on? 19. 19. And? Oh, shit.

My PCTP. I'll stop giving a shit. Too many episodes. 78, 92, 88. Like four or five times. You've been on a couple other times. Just search Galpin at barbellshrug.com and you'll figure it out.

That'll be on there. Thanks, Ian. Anything else you want to mention before we go? I do, actually. Do it. A couple of things. We have had a pretty good response from the previous times I've been on here

of people asking me about wanting to come to Fullerton for our Center for Sport Performance because I hear this type of stuff. And we've had some really good interactions, so I would further encourage people again if they're interested in this type of stuff, please get at us. We love new grad students.

The best way you're going to learn is you hear something like this that interests you and you think this is something you want to learn more about, get in your fucking car and go see Andy. Hang out for a little while. Even if you don't go to school there, spend some time, hang out. If you want to volunteer,

do something to contribute value to get more information out of Andy, I'm sure he'll take it. At the school, not his house. Youend some time. Hang out. If you want to volunteer, do something to contribute value to get more information. At the school, not his house. At the school. You need an assistant. Careful. I don't know where she's at. She doesn't know she's getting fired. Never. I have

a pretty packed speaking schedule coming up next year. So if you're interested in that stuff, just let me know on the social medias, and I can sort of tell you. For example, I'm confirmed. I've got San Diego, Orlando. You'll be at Fetivation with us. Yeah, there you go.

Oh, shit. There you go. Paleo FX, all that stuff. I'll be in Sacramento, be all over sort of the country in a bunch of different places. So just get at me on the social media. Yeah, if you want to see Andy speak, and we'll be there too, Fitivation is one. March, the weekend of March 20th in New Orleans. And then also at Paleo FX in April in Austin, Texas.

Yeah. I'll link to your social stuff in the post again. Yeah, solid. So people can find. And if you follow Andy on Instagram or what have you on Twitter, you'll be notified. He's got some cool stuff going on.

Yeah. At Dr. Andy Galpin DR, Andy Galpin. And I post a lot of our research stuff so you can see some pretty cool images of the muscle stuff

that we do. All that stuff's on there and all the other real practical stuff we do. We have some really cool conferences we put together. I actually have

the first ever MMA specific conference at the nsca that's coming up at colorado springs very cool so we have some big heavy hitters my ufc guys are going to be there um but we have a lot and if you're interested in having me come out i'm doing several talks early january um at local southern california crossfit gyms some small seminars on um nutrition and stuff so get me on there if you're interested or if you want me to come out. It's no problem. We do that stuff all the time.

Yeah. Also, if you only listen to the show on iTunes or you just watch the show on YouTube, go to barbershop.com and actually watch the episode on the site. Chris has been doing awesome write-ups for months now. And you might be missing out on those cool write-ups because they're not on YouTube, obviously, and they're not on iTunes. Try to add a little more information, you have more context, and also anything we reference,

try to link to it so you can easily click and find more about whoever we had on. Yeah. And I'll throw up some of our pretty aesthetically pleasing research stuff that you guys can throw up. Yeah, send it to my way

and I'll post it. Yeah. So, yeah, and we did the daily, so I'll probably have a few more daily entrances coming in soon. We got a whole bunch more shit

to do with Andy. All right, muscle on three. Three, two, one, muscle! Wow.