Barbell Shrugged - Incorporating Olympic Lifts into Hypertrophy Training Program w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #501

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   Is there a hypertrophy effect with Olympic Lifts? What three things do you need for hypertrophy? How to write a hypertrophy program and incorporate olympic lifts. Does speed and power matter in muscle hypertrophy? Does athleticism matter in muscle hypertrophy?   Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa ———————————————— Please Support Our Sponsors   Legion Athletics Whey Protein, Creatine, and Pre-Workout - Save 20% using code “SHRUGGED”   Fittogether - Fitness ONLY Social Media App   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.masszymes.com/shruggedfree  - for FREE bottle of BiOptimizers Masszymes   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrugged family, today on Barbell Shrugged, we're talking about how you can incorporate Olympic lifting into your hypertrophy-focused program so you can get strong, jacked, speedy, all at once. You're going to get strong and speedy in the Olympic lifts. You're going to get jacked in your hypertrophy program. And next week, we are launching the Olympic lifting bundle. It's going to be five programs, one Olympic lifting course, nutrition and mobility. That's like the most complete package you could ever want. We've got an eight-week snatch program, an eight-week clean program, an accessory program for the back squat. We've got a guide and program to get you into your first Olympic lifting meet. And we're giving you a brand new course specifically on the snatch and cleaning

jerk from justin thacker nutrition for weightlifters and movement specific mobility so you've got training programs you got nutrition you've got mobility and we're going to give you a deep dive course on how to improve your snatch clean and jerk Justin Thacker. He's one of the best brains in all of strength. Rest in peace, brother. I wish I had actually gotten to meet you before I became the host of Barbell Shrugged. I wish we'd been able to do this. If anybody has ever known Justin Thacker, you should get online. Check him out.

Check out his work but everything I hear he was one of the people that I really wish I had met in strength conditioning and Olympic lifting he died last year and it's really sad because I never got to meet him and this is really cool that we were able to put this course together and and offer it as a part of this bundle Olympic lifting bundle that we're putting together. So you will be able to learn from him even though he's no longer with us. Before we get into this, before we get into the show, I want to thank our friends over at Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That's where the green, the red, and the gold juices are.

I always talk about the green and the red and the gold because those are the things that i use the most if you follow me on instagram which you should be at andrews varner that's me at andrews varner because i'm andrews varner um you will see almost on a daily basis i'm putting the legion protein powder and the organifi greens shaking them up and that's my little post workoutworkout. Then depending upon how hard the workout was, I hit some carbohydrates, but you know, I'm making sure that I get my multivitamins, not multivitamins. I'm making sure that I'm getting the greens. It's got all the vitamins and minerals. I got those mixed up. Um, but you should get over to Organifi.com forward slash drug. Cause you, what are you going to do? Eat a salad after your workout?

What are you going to do? Wake up and just start chomping on cucumbers? Yeah, right. You're not going to do that. You're not going to chomp on the cucumber eight seconds out of bed. But you know what you can do? Mix up a little green drink. And that's how you get the ashwagandha first thing in the morning.

Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Also, friends, fit together. Back in the game, the fitness-focused social media app. You just got to be on it. You've got to be on it. Fitness-focused social media. I don't do pandemics. We might be in a plague. I just want to say politics, plague, and pandemic because they all start with P. I'm sure there's something else that's super negative going on in the world of social media right now that starts with P, but those are the ones that just pop in my brain right now. Fit together, though. It's like there's a filter. Don't come here if you don't do fitness.

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It was like the most obvious reason why you need to be on fit together because you can go on and say I'm so proud of myself for X X and X PR I've been waiting for this my whole and it doesn't come across as arrogant it doesn't come across as rubbing it in people's face people are just happy for you because they know what it takes to set a new PR they know what it's like to be in the gym and be so happy for yourself and we all celebrate that in Fit Together. And Barbell Shrugged has like the biggest group on Fit Together, which is savage. It's all of our people.

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F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R

F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R F-I-T-T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R We've got to talk about the digestion system. When you put the food in your mouth, do you know how your Labor Day steak actually even became muscle? Do you know?

Do you really know? Do you have any idea how the Labor Day steak turned into a bicep that's impressive? No, you don't. So check it out. You have three. We're going to talk about two of them. You have the physical breakdown. It's like the mechanical piece to digestion, right? That's when you put it in and the food goes from steak into slimy,

gooey liquid type thing. Chomp it up with your teeth. Saliva's mixing it around, breaking it down. You have your tongue lashing around in your mouth just so you can break down the meat right down your throat, right? Then the chemical side starts to kick in. And there's this digestive enzyme. It's called protease. Protease takes meat, takes proteins, and breaks it down into amino acids. That is the thing that absorbs into your body to make the muscles. And here's the thing. You could eat like a steak with like 100 grams of protein in it. Well, guess what? That 100 grams of protein, if you don't have proper digestion or enough protease in your body, you may only get like 40 grams of it. That's like 40%. You're leaving 60% of the gains on the table. And check it out.

Bioptimizers has this savage product. It's called Masszymes. And you can get a free bottle of it. Like you really can get a free bottle of it. You go to Masszymes, M-A-S-S-Z-Y-M-E-S.com forward slash shrugged free, M-A-S-S-Z-Y-M-E-S.com forward slash shrugged free. That is where you go and get a free bottle. And guess what? Maybe you have enough. Maybe you don't have enough proteins. The only way to find out is to go over to masszymes.com forward slash shrugged

free, get your free bottle, take it for a little while. It literally costs you nothing because they're giving it to you for free. And when you do it, when you get it, you might feel better. You might have better digestion. You might feel like you're digesting more food. There's less of a heavy feeling in your gut after you take the Masszymes. Either way, give it a shot. Masszymes.com forward slash shrug free. Let's get into the show. Radical. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. My name is Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. Our screens are actually backwards today. Doug, you're down at the bottom. You're usually in my top left. That's how I read the screen, and it was backwards. Today, we're talking hypertrophy, which is really awesome because Coach Travis Mass just

wrote a really big article that I almost made it through on Father's Day about hypertrophy. Not just getting jacked, though. We're going to be talking about how you can incorporate Olympic lifts, which are more typically seen as speed and power movements, but incorporating that into your hypertrophy program. And I think a lot of times when we talk about the lifts, it's always talking technique. It's always talking about speed and power. But you can still get jacked doing some Olympic lifting,

and we're going to teach you how to do that today. Doug Larson, when you program the lifts and i actually went through the emom aesthetics strong 30 program that you put together we get to snatch in that we get to do some snatches we're excited about that um that is a kind of hypertrophy aesthetics based program so when you put that stuff in the program, what is a little bit of your thought process and how you're programming and doing it on your own? Well, I mean, for that particular program,

the Olympic stuff isn't in there specifically to aid hypertrophy necessarily. There's 99% of that program is hypertrophy training. So I threw some Olympic lifts in there just for fun, for the most part. You can use some Olympic lifting variations for hypertrophy, but for the most part in that program, I was just trying to add some fun elements for people that just like to do Olympic weightlifting. So I put some power cleans and power snatches and a few other things in there but but i actually intentionally put them in there as um easier variations where they where they wouldn't actually add that much

stress joint stress overall recovery time to the hypertrophy training which is the bulk of that program but i do think you can you can do some variations of olympic movements to assist with hypertrophy power cleans and power snatches where they're mostly concentric. There's no eccentric component at all. Don't work very well at all. But if you look at something like muscle snatches or muscle cleans or snatch pull-downs where you have long eccentrics, you're doing a snatch pull or a snatch deadlift,

and then you're doing the eccentric portion of the transition in the first pull, but under control control maintaining solid positions all the way down those types of things can actually assist with hypertrophy even though they're they're considered to be an olympic variation because you have that that eccentric component yeah bash tell me about this article dude you just got done with the seminars class who came in who talked to you what's um what inspired you sitting down and writing what looked like 5 000 words on uh on hypertrophy you thought you knew everything and now you don't again yeah it was crazy because uh my the first week of this class we had um it was my main he'll be like my main professor throughout my career probably but

we had uh dr alex cook who Cook, who's the head of exercise. Are you taking this one at Lenoir or at the community college? This is at Lenoir, Ryan. I'm done. Yeah. I just had that one class that I needed to take really to make me feel confident, you know, to get back in the swing of things. The thing at the community college was just a real advanced anatomy physiology. It's kind of like, okay, get back in the swing.

Make sure I know my stuff. Now it's all Lenore Ryan. But it's awesome. The very first week, we talked hypertrophy. And so I'm like, what? I even emailed him. I'm like, if this is a foreshadowing of what this is going to be like, this is awesome. And it just got better.

So we've done hypertrophy, heart rate variability, the latest on creatine. And we even had a lady talk just on branding yourself in this industry, which was cool. And, I mean, I learned some, but, like, definitely good for some of the other people. But it's been great. The hypertrophy was, was like i learned a lot like i thought yeah like you said i thought i knew everything i've even written a book on hybrid review i'm like man yeah actually i have a lot to learn um it's really good timing on this because

you actually wrote a comment in our members only group of people someone asked about um going to failure and you wrote back that um a lot of the new research is talking about that you should be going to failure when I feel like for the last couple of years, it's been a reps in reserve conversation and not so much a going to failure and, you know, kind of two ways to do it and like it was a chris um oh my gosh there's a guy who i read all the time yeah chris beersley yeah that's you know that's all he talks about is like you know the main the main trigger of hyperdivision is going to failure and uh but in this article there's two ways to do it like you can do that and you'll get huge guaranteed like look at all the bodybuilders obviously going to failure works but then you know is it going to help you get the correct fiber type so like there might be a time and a place to go failure even if you're a weight lifter but like maybe if you're a weight lifter um doing the majority of your work with a couple reps in reserve might be a little bit better because of the frequency so it's you know things you got to consider and there's some pretty good research that says the

fiber type so like you know you might be getting bigger but it might be the type type one fibers versus type you know the faster twitch type two fibers and so you know there's just a time to place but that doesn't mean you can never go to failure or you'll get slow it just means the majority of your training should be fast explosive and you know going to almost yeah also your your muscle cells can get bigger without having any any fiber hypertrophy like there's so there's many more elements to a muscle cell than just contractile units and so you can get a bigger cell and a bigger muscle without getting any more contractile units so like when you're doing a lot of like uh low intensity volume you're much more likely to get that that sarcoplasmic hypertrophy as opposed to like the myofibrillar right the contractile

elements of the muscle hypertrophy so they're not necessarily the same thing so to your point travis like you know some people have like you know like bodybuilder muscles but they have it looks like they like inflated their muscles like a balloon like with a bicycle pump they're just they're very they're very swollen almost looking which which looks great aesthetically um you touch them and a lot of guys like if you touch power lifters and strongman like they kind of have that that rock hard element element to them that some other people don't have. And I think my guess in that case is that some people have just more contractile density because of the type of training they do. The heavier type of training, I think, leads to more density,

and the more volume-oriented, lighter reps, you're more likely to have that sarcoplasmic hypertrophy where you're bigger bigger but you're not necessarily that much stronger but if you're a weightlifter and you're competing you want to be as strong as you can pound for pound so you don't need a lot of cellular volume but you definitely need a lot of contractile units yeah and for anyone out there like to make it simple like the sarcoplasmic is talking about you know mostly you know inside the cells like kind of liquidy and so you're talking more about that versus myofibular is like the

actin myosin you know the actual protein you know the two big ones that actually interact to create contraction so like you know that's the two biggest separators versus sarcoplasmic versus myofibular so when you're talking specifically hypertrophy though that you actually do want to be training to have more fast twitch muscles to start so that you have like a higher uh i guess like a higher range or is is does it really even matter for hypertrophy training to be worried about the fiber types? Yeah, man, because like, uh, your body is super adaptive and like, you know, as I, when I wrote this article,

obviously I always type in a couple of people and normally look and see like, what has Andy said about this? And I look at, um, you know, what has Greg Knuckles said about this? And, uh, yeah, like, you know, Andy being, I think the go-to on this one, because he's done the research, but yeah, super, you're like the way I train, I can being, I think, the go-to on this one because he's done the research. But yeah, the way I train, I can actually get my fibers to adapt to a faster twitch versus if I train slow, they can adapt and become slower. So yeah, it's very important. Depending on what you are, if all you care about is aesthetics, it probably doesn't matter. You might be filled with type one who cares, but like if you're trying to be functional,

yeah, you definitely want to consider. Well, I think that most people just enjoy, at this stage, and specifically me, like they, I enjoy doing the lifts, but I'm not competing in weightlifting. They're just fun. And I've done them for so long that I just really enjoy the movements and the way my body moves. But the goal really is to just stay strong

and hopefully get stronger over time. And I feel like the majority of the fitness, kind of the fitness space is moving in that direction of it's like as crossfit's going through the weirdest thing in the world right now um which we don't have we're definitely not gonna get into now because it's gotten so crazy um but as crossfit like peaked and the whole world was so interested in learning the olympic lifts um and and the whole world was so interested in learning the Olympic lifts and the technique and all that. And now it's like, okay, well, I understand that, but I really just want to lift weights and have fun and get stronger. But, Doug, you mentioned earlier doing a lot of the muscle snatch

and muscle clean, stuff like that. Those movements that are like a part of the lifts, um, those are actually like a ton of fun to, to do in training and incredibly hard. And I actually find myself doing a lot more of that stuff than, than the full lifts because my body gets so beat down um i guess when in that program are people doing a lot of the like muscle variations of it or are you do have it set up in there just so people can enjoy the lifts like like i do no for strong 30 specifically yeah it's it's just uh olympic movements for enjoyment yeah i didn't put a lot of muscle snatches muscle cleans in there i totally could have i could have added

those in for some of the kind of the upper back overhead days like yeah muscle snatches muscle cleans they're not going to be that taxing on your lower body compared to your upper body yeah um well that's how i used to do them when i was in my bodybuilding training type not that i was ever training to get on stage but that's that was how i actually learned the lifts was doing like hang muscle cleans into push press um the other thing that everybody's going to want to know about is like the volume of this and if you look at an Olympic lifting program, if you see a triple written in your programs, you're like, coach is such an asshole. He's making me do conditioning today. Nobody likes to do threes and fives, but when you get into hypertrophy training,

those rep ranges start looking like 8, 10, 12, 15. Could you do the lifts for that many reps and actually get some sort of benefit out of it still i would say that um when it comes to reps with the Olympic lifts i mean you can do anything you want i guess but like should you probably you know probably not and now you know like when i was coming up or when i was in college we would have thought what you just said is 100% the gospel like you know if you want to do hypertrophy, you're eight to 15. And now it's, you know, we're finding that it doesn't really matter. You can get hypertrophy at threes, you know, as long as

you're getting, you know, you're taking the muscle as close, you know, to failure one or two reps out as possible. That would be the key is like, does it really matter how many? However, if you're looking at sarcoplasmic, well, then that's totally different. Then, yes, you're going to have to go, you know, at least six and beyond to get that, you know, sarcoplasmic pump. You know, but does that really matter? Probably not. You're probably not going to be getting like a huge pump by doing snatch and clean. If you do the muscle snatch, I yeah i've gotten i'm getting massive pump in my giant traps shoulders yeah and i think there's something to be said for limb lifting

in general when it comes to certain body parts like uh anytime i start doing weightlifting if i start doing cleans or snatches you know my traps get huge whether i'm doing muscle or not am i even my small calves get bigger when i do bigger for some reason when I do the Olympic list. I'm starting to wonder, is it because the certain muscles that are more fast twitch in nature, are they becoming more adaptive? The gastrocnemius is considered to be fast twitch by nature. So is it growing because of that? That's the question.

I don't know. And then I would say one thing about the muscle snatch is that I would definitely add that. If you're a powerlifter, I have almost all my powerlifters do muscle snatches simply because all you do all day long is internally rotate. And I feel like that's where a lot of people get in trouble and get injured. So we either do dumbbell cleans or muscle snatch muscle snatches just to like get that external rotation component yeah it's kind of like a modified face pull in a way yeah which i do that too like i feel like you know back in the day louis simmons would only talk about doing rows versus presses and uh which are fine but you know i feel like most research would point to

worrying more about external rotation versus like rowing versus pushing. So I wish I had done more external rotation as a powerlifter. I feel like I would have stayed in the game a whole lot longer. Yeah. I feel like if you limit yourself to one rep range,

just have your reps, all you're doing is one to three or one to five, you, of course, have some potential to grow within that rep range. But if you can expand, and sometimes you're doing heavy threes and fives, but then you have other movements where you're doing eights and tens, and then occasionally you're doing twelves and fifteens. If you can do that whole range, you don't need to go a whole lot higher than 20. Once you're higher than 15 or 20, your gains are probably going to be, there's a point of diminishing returns there where you're working hard and it probably burns and you put a lot of effort into it.

But it's probably not going to produce a lot of growth. But from that 1 to 15 15 1 to 20 range i think you should you should have a few sets a week that if your primary goal is weightlifting and you want to be strong and have crisp technique on the Olympic movements you still should have a few things that you're doing that are in those higher rep ranges if you're trying to grow and put on muscle mass you don't necessarily have to do sets of 12 for snatches. You can do your snatches for heavy doubles and then some heavy squatting. And then maybe you're doing lunges for sets of 12. You can just add in something at a higher rep range just for hypertrophy purposes.

I think one of the craziest things in that, you know, when I read that article, the research article, was that it was the speed of contraction they found has a lot to do with hypertrophy. So that really excited me, of course, since I'm interested in velocity. So then I started wondering, crossfitters are jacked by nature. I feel like all the top ones look like almost bodybuilders and like i wonder by doing the you know doing the snatch and clean for reps if that is it because you know they found that you know the faster the eccentric you know contraction the more hypertrophy so i'm like you know because you know there isn't and if you do weightlifting you clean it and you jerk it and you drop it and snatch and you drop it but like

with snatching and cleaning like for reps you know you're you're lowering it fast touching and going and i wonder if there's something to do you know with that this that very fast eccentric contraction you know the lipidless but it's a different a player you know of course you know they found all in all they recommend doing you know the speed on concentric and eccentric but there are some pretty good studies that said you know eccentric speed alone created a lot of hypertrophy so something i'm going to dig into deeper so high speed eccentrics create a lot of muscle damage if you ever if you ever done uh you know like ghd sit-ups where you're you're going really fast granted you're hitting like super end range and so that that that also creates a lot of soreness

or if you're doing like if you ever done ply so that also creates a lot of soreness. Or if you're doing like, have you ever done plyos? And you haven't done plyos in a long time. And your calves and your gastrocs are getting that high speed deceleration before you rebound and jump. Those tend to make people very, very sore. And so if you look at kind of the three elements of hypertrophy, of mechanical tension, metabolite development and and microtrauma which which is you know what we associate with soreness um high speed eccentrics definitely have that

soreness component covered and they they probably have to some element the the mechanical tension element because whenever you're decelerating the forces on your muscles are always going to be higher than when you're accelerating right probably not a lot with metabolites because you're not getting a pump and going to failure there's not a lot of blood flow when you're doing something low volume like like plyos typically you don't do plyos for for volume to fatigue usually you're doing them right when you're fresh and you're in you're moving you're moving quickly moving well but all three of those elements are are important which is which tying it back to what i said about the rep ranges a minute ago and mechanical tension tends to be like the the lower rep higher um higher intensity lifts and then um the metabolite conversation usually happens

when you're getting a pump you know when you're you know eight reps plus and then my trauma can happen in either case but i think i think mechanical tension really is is the most important than everything else it is up to um the kind of spin off of that that's what the article said too is that is the number one. There's a lot of mechanisms within mechanical tension too. A lot of stuff that I had never honestly heard of. And so there's a lot for me to dig into. But yeah, the other ones, probably not so much.

Like the pump, you say. I actually want to go back to the eccentrics because that's an interesting thing to me that i feel like i'm always outside of when i'm doing crossfit and not really thinking about the like high speed eccentrics but um the majority of the of the time people think about always doing really slow negatives yeah thinking rdls or rows or something along those lines are always thinking about controlling the movement and time under tension for building muscles in their accessory work or you know whatever their goal is that may just be like a main movement but um doing rdls doing rows and having like a three to five second negative eccentric portion of that lift is pretty much the standard idea in hypertrophy training.

And now the research is coming out saying we should go fat. Not that you need to the eccentric piece starts to get probably a little bit more dangerous for lack of better term that people are just dropping weights control this is more more awareness of of movement patterns and their body in space yeah you still want to control it and. You're basically just going to go as fast as you can under control. I used to watch Louis Simmons guys, the benchers. They bench. In their speed days, it's fast down, fast up.

Whereas I would normally control it and then explode up. But now looking back, once again, he probably was right. So now I'm going to add that to my bench training, you know, without bouncing, going as fast as I can. Like George Halbert was like, he's still probably, in my opinion, one of the best bench pressers of all time. He was, man, he did like over 700 at 198 before we even actually, before the shirts got really good.

Yeah. He's a freak. He, I would always look to him and then he got the 220. So then he's in my weight class. I remember him doing just weights where I was just like, how is that possible? But then I eventually got up to two, but not quite as much as him. But he would bench. His speed benching, it was like fast down, fast up.

And at the time, I was like, I don't even know how he does that because I have a really hard time of turning that around. So I look back and was like, maybe I should have spent more time on that one, especially based on this study. But I'm going to start doing it now. I probably have to go light and work up to how much I can handle by going fast down, fast up without bouncing off your chest. Yeah. Well, I actually, when you were talking, I can't remember who we were talking to, but you were talking about the speed days at Westside and saying that the really light days, I think we were talking to Corey actually, and he was talking about the super light speed days and how that it was Corey. that really added to a lot more just injury. And maybe just, maybe that's just for him or maybe that's a consistent thing. But with the weights being so light or, or too light specifically for an individual person that doing those

eccentrics like that as fast as possible actually leads to. I would say what those dudes get get injured is all the other stuff. Their speed days would turn into max out days. And so now you've got guys going as fast as they can with two doubled minibands and benching. I doubt doing eccentrics with bar weight only hurt any of those guys, but it's the other craziness that they did you know you have to go there to see you know like when they're if you'd have to go there during a time where there's like a bunch of the really good ones in there and

they're battling and you would see why they get hurt it's like you know same reason if i'd been there i would have got hurt because you know chuck would have done something that i would have done more and i would have gone faster and he would have gone faster and then he would have punched me and I would have punched him back. So, like, that's what would have happened. And so, like, I don't think it's just like that. The key, like you said, like is, you know, you have to get the tendons used to it so I wouldn't go.

If you're a guy out there, let me give a disclaimer. If you're out there and you're doing five seconds down, two-second pause in the chest, three-second concentric, don't today just go as fast as you can. You might want to work towards it, drop the weight, and get the tendons used ligaments with the faster eccentrics and just eccentrics in general were found to get stronger and to adapt, have better adaptations. Yeah. So I definitely want to see that, and I definitely want to study that very thing because obviously when velocity kicks in, it makes me like, oh, I want to figure that out more. But I've never seen that mechanism. Yeah. figure that out more but i've never seen that mechanism but what it did debunk i will say you

know they did debunk back in the day like when i was there they would have said that hormonal you know uh the hormonal the acute hormonal response to training is what caused you know the hypertrophy so like you know as soon as you get done lifting heavy weights you get the spike of testosterone igf1-1, growth hormone. They would have thought that was the key. You get a little bit bigger spike if you go every 30 seconds to a minute versus taking full recovery. Most people were prescribing people to do their sets with only 30 seconds or a minute in between. But then they have found completely that's not true.

So like the hormonal response has very little, if anything, to do with, you know, so that pump we get probably has very little, if anything, to do with like hypertrophy. You know, at most, at best, it's sarcoplasmic in nature. So it has nothing to do with getting stronger. Yeah. So It appears. The full recovery sets, as far as I've seen in research lately, has led to greater hypertrophy than submaximal rest.

If you're doing a heavy set of six or eight, then you're going to get that three, four, five minutes, however much you need depending on the movement, until you're at full recovery and then more sets like that where you're performing at your best where maybe you could do a set of eight with 225 but if you're only doing 30 second rests well now you're doing sets eight with 165 or whatever it is just just to be able to to hit your set numbers and so at the end of the workout you look and you go did i do five sets of 165 or did i do five sets of eight with 225?

And if you're able to do five sets of eight with 225, well, that's a totally different stimulus for your body. You have more of a pump probably with the lighter weight just because you're doing more repetitions in a shorter period of time. um as far as hypertrophy goes it seems that the the full recovery with maximum performance the heaviest weight you can do for that rep range a true eight rep max and then maybe a couple downsets of basically the same weight seem to work better than the short rest intervals yeah and then and one of the biggest triggers for hypertrophy this is something new that I learned. It's like the mechanistic target of rapamycin. M-T-O-R. I'm sure that Doug...

Yeah, mTOR is like the key. Here's the problem. It can also inhibit muscle growth too because what it does is that if there's a lot of energy supply, glycogen there for ATP, the whole ATP, ADP, the phosphagen connection there. As long as there's enough energy, it's awesome and it's going to help you grow.

However, if there's not enough energy, it will start to conserve energy. So it will inhibit things. And you'll actually go backwards so you got to be very careful you know that's a good thing it can also be a bad thing so you know getting full recovery is going to be key so if your goal is hypertrophy and getting bigger you know definitely i would say 100 go and take full recovery between sets. Yeah. When I think about a lot of my Olympic lifting training, and a lot of this was under the lens of positional work and kind of like working through weaknesses and stuff,

but isometrics, did they mention anything about isometrics in the studies? Is there anything new coming out on that? They did. They talked about isometrics and then isokinetics, which is like the same speed. But, yeah, not a lot of hypertrophy from isometrics, but a lot of muscular strength in some. But it only affects that small window. It's like, what is it? I think we talked about this once, and I think you said it was like 15 degrees above and below the angle that you're working i think that's about what most

people are saying so like but yeah as far as the burden probably not but by doing isokinetics which is the same speed which you can pull as fast as you as hard as you want but you're still only gonna go get a certain speed that might be the best way to go because here's why. It's because you're doing a full, you know, you're going as fast as you possibly can. You know, you're recruiting all the type two fivers you want. However, you're also getting time and attention because it won't let you go faster.

So that's where that flywheel comes into play. And, like, I want to do more work with that when we get to the normal run too, even with my weightlifters so yeah that's something people to consider well yeah i getting off the floor like is something that was always the hardest part for me so i would always do just like snatch or clean liftoffs getting just below the knee just over and over and over again and like the rep ranges would be significantly higher because it was practicing something and trying to get stronger. And in that position specifically, um, I was thinking back to those really, really long training days. And that would be like the hardest and the thing that I would

wake up the most sore from um and it always felt like i got so much stronger one it's kind of taking a movement that i'm not i'm not that great at and then doing it a bunch it's always going to be hard but the amount of um like just the musculature that you need to hold heavy weights at a specific place with the breathing, keeping your back in a place that you want to be or that's optimal, you're going to get really strong doing that stuff. It's not just working on the weaknesses, but putting the musculature in a really challenging spot that it typically blows by when you're doing the full lift um i think there's a ton of benefit it may not be the most hypertrophy but there's as far as like overall strength goes the ability to um just get strong throughout a movement uh breaking it down and doing like even if you do the full movement and you're doing clean pulls, you're going to get a ton of benefit in building muscle on those.

I would even say pulling into pins, you know, because then you can pull as absolute hard as you want and stay in the same position. So like for you, if it's right off the floor, like, you know, putting pins where you, you know, you're only going to move it two inches and then pull as hard as you can. And then maybe do like, you know, four sets of five there, maximum contractions. Then move it up to the knee, do, you know, another three or four more sets. I think that would be a huge benefit because, you know, you just do, I do a lot of the liftoffs, which are awesome because you're getting really good at that pattern. But like, if you, if you if you want you know to get stronger maybe pulling against something would be even better so i think as far as strength stability and motor control goes doing pauses and isometrics are really really valuable yeah i don't think if you look at any research there would be a whole lot of um solid numbers out there showing that

isometrics specifically lead to hypertrophy um i remember there was a bunch of a bunch of old uh because i remember those cybex machines from like of course 20 years ago or however long it was um they basically they basically made it where it was like it was concentric only where like they they do like a like a bicep tricep where you do like you do an active tricep extension and then an active bicep contraction so there's there's no oh yeah you're just yeah forward with the tricep pulling back with your yeah rotator cuff hamstrings and quads they had they had a couple different ones um and that was there was positive aspects to doing that you're still you're still working your muscles but uh they found that hypertrophy was very very low low in that case with no isometric and no eccentric, specifically eccentric.

But just doing the concentric work didn't lead to hypertrophy barely at all. I remember the Russian and Rocky IV doing the internal-external rotations like, rah, rah, rah. It's all high-tech. You're like, I'm not doing anything. It's a montage. Yeah, exactly. You're still about to get beat, boy? But yeah.

You're running hill sprints in the snow like Rocky. If I can change, you can change. We can all change. We can all change. Rocky changed the world. I love it. But I guess on the highest level, people just kind of need to worry about getting as jacked as possible though. Like they need to just get stronger.

If that's the most important of the threes kind of external load ones, ones, threes and fives probably is like the best route to go. And then all the accessory work can be working on the less important stuff. I would say there's still a point where, you know, there's definitely a point to do some higher reps. But, yeah, for the most part, I would say you're right. But when you go back and you do some, like I have my athletes in the accumulation phase always do some eights and tens simply because it gives their joints a break. You know, they're still able to get hypertrophy,

but they're not having to go maximum loads. And so it gives them a break and then they go back. But you'll find, here's the trade-off. If you're a bodybuilder, even though I'm a bodybuilder, and that's my main concern, I would still spend some quality time, you know, four to eight weeks getting stronger because then when you get stronger, when you go back to hypertrophy, you can do more weight for more reps.

And so there's definitely that component that people sometimes forget. Did you guys listen to the – Ronnie Coleman? Doug, I know you did. Coleman on Rogan. No. It was really interesting to me because he lifts weights that are beyond human. Yeah. Like front squatting, 800 for a double, and then being pissed off because he didn't do three or four of them.

Saying that that was like his biggest regret in his career was not doing 800-pound front squat for two more reps. And then going right over and doing like a 2600 pound leg press or something like that for 12 or 8 like it should we're not we're all not coaching ronnie coleman but if you have an athlete that is big and strong is there and like we're kind of talking about freakishly strong, but is going and doing like a triple really needed for somebody that in some cases are going to have to be front squatting that much? Or is there a point where it's like, okay, you're strong enough, and now we just need to get a giant pump and kind of just continually lifting really heavy weights

for a lot. I mean, I always say that you still, like if your goal is to be the biggest human on earth, which is, that was his goal. Still going to be, I would say still want to spend some quality time getting stronger.

I don't know that you need to front squat. He definitely was still doing that or he wouldn't have been trying to front squat. Yeah. 800 for max reps. I think that was deadlift 800. No. No, it was front squat. Dude, that's the video. Am I wrong?

What is he front squat? I'm fairly confident that's deadlift 800 pounds. I've seen him front squat 585, six plates for 800 pounds. I've seen a front squat, you know, 585 or six plates. I've seen him back squat 800. When he's got the squat suit on, I've seen him back squat 800. But like, I mean, I didn't

doubt it at all. I was curious. I was definitely like making a note to like go check that out because I've never heard of someone front squat 800 pounds. Hold on. I'm looking. of someone front squat. Hold on. I'm looking. I have it on YouTube right now. Says Ronnie Coleman doing.

Oh, back squat. Look at that. Sorry. Sorry, fam. I mean. Now I have Ronnie Coleman screaming in my ear right now. This is brutal. I did not bat you guys. Because he's such a beast. Now I have Ronnie Coleman screaming in my ear right now. This is brutal.

I did not doubt you guys because he's such a beast. Doug is just down there shaking his head like, wrong lift, wrong lift. Front squat. I haven't watched those videos in a long time. Can anyone front squat 800 pounds, Travis? I've never heard of it. Is that a thing? My best of all time was 290, and I'm really good at front squat, which is like, what is that, 638?

So that was my best, and it was really hard to not pass out. So I think is there any human out there who wouldn't pass out from that? You know, just like 800 pounds is a heavy, heavy, heavy back squat. I can't imagine somebody doing it. But, you know, I don't know. Chris Duffin tripled thousands, so he might. Maybe he could.

Probably could. He probably did it multiple times. I don't know about multiple. In the training up to 1,800 for three seems like... You blew me away when you said that 800. I won't say anything, but I was definitely about to go check that out. I had the wrong lift sorry team oh i mean good thing i'm back checking the show now

i cannot believe that ronnie coleman still like presses to this day he's still working out oh yeah he doesn't miss a day he loves it he still does well it's like specifically they still does things like leg press like he has he has has double hip replacements and 14 back surgeries, and he's still doing something that's, in my opinion, just fucking terrible for your back. Why is he still doing that after so many surgeries? He's incredibly experienced. I just feel like he should know not to do that at this point i think it hurt

so many times he could choose some other movements and still have good enough progress for someone who's completely retired and has all kinds of of orthopedic injuries i would do hack squat before i would do i just think you just get that major interior pelvic tilt and just like it just stretches your lumbar spine yeah that's the spot of your body who shouldn't be stretched with over 2 000 pounds i wouldn't do that like i hate leg press the only time i've ever hurt my back lifting uh was leg pressing and like i thought i was i was in college and i went home and i was lifting with you know the local boys who love and like we got into who can leg press the most and of course i went back down and then um i did it but then there's a car on top of the press machine and my

back like as a first time i like where i couldn't stand up my back was hurting so bad but you can't leg press a full range of motion, what most people would consider a full range of motion on a leg press without being in a horrible position. Flex lumbar. Get on a leg press machine and go to

the point where your knees are all the way bent, where you're all the way at the bottom of the movement, so to speak. Then look where you are. Your knees may be six inches away from your shoulders. Then stand up and do a squat and squat down until your shoulders are six inches away from your knees. You're going to look completely ridiculous.

You're totally out of position. People will try and argue, like you're you're you're pushing with your legs and it's pushing through your your low back it's like kind of most you're going to push through like not not all the way at the bottom below your spine you're going to be pushing kind of with like your the top of your lumbar spine which means the bottom of your lumbar spine the part that normally gets injured the part where you normally herniate a disc you know l4 or 5 l5 l6 at the very bottom that's the part that when you flex actually gets hurt and so when

you're leg pressing more often than not you are completely round at the bottom and it's very difficult not to be around at the bottom i'm like i'm very conscious of this and i go leg press it's i can tell that i'm out of position regardless of effort. Or I've got to make the range of motion really, really short. But even if I do, it still is not that great. I'm very against leg press in general. It doesn't allow your knees to travel. So you can't get good range of motion without doing what you're saying.

You know, your knees need to travel. To get full range of motion on squat, your knees are going to have to travel forward. You know, they have to. So, like so like you know they're in a fixed plane you can't it's yeah i totally agree i haven't like pressed since i don't think i've like pressed since that moment in college like where i got jacked up i'm like probably stay away from this but well and on at the at the very top of the movement you're the you don't have to see but one hyperextension of the knee on a leg press machine before you just will never do it again.

Those are the grossest injuries of all time. That thing just comes flying down. If you want a machine to do hack squat, I think the hack squat is a fine movement. Your knees can travel if it's a good machine. Depends on, obviously,

the design, but I like the hack squat. I can stay stable. Your spine will probably stay as neutral as it's ever going to stay, because you've got something to push your back against. I like that. You can get huge. That's the one where your feet are out in front

of you, right? Yeah. You're kind of getting a little bit more quad focus in there yeah it's mainly quads like you're quite opposite of a leg press you're kind of like you're standing with your back on on something that slides up and down versus having the weight slide up and down by moving your legs right yeah yeah i think it's it's it's a fairly if yeah if you want a machine, I'm going with that one. Probably not the leg extension. I've heard pros and cons. I think like Stuart McGill would say, there's that biological tipping point of the leg extension, you know,

because you're really changing the mechanics of things. You've got your – man, it changes the moment arm like crazy. It's way out in front of you. So I'm not sure I would do that one either. You know, I guess light would be all right. But then what's the point? I don't know. Why lift if you're going to lift light?

Yeah. I actually feel like I'm going to, when I get back home and done with all this travel, joining the lifetime is going to be up there just because I have like a full barbell setup in my garage. But a lot of the machines and stuff, I'm super interested to get back to. When I trained in a corporate gym, when I moved to North Carolina, I wasn't really interested in any of the machines but now that I uh just being a year later and kind of different goals and just different interests I'm kind of excited to get back on some of them like yeah just doing leg curls yeah and leg extensions um and some of the

just back machines like the very first day back into the gym, I went to a corporate gym up here. And all I wanted to do was just sit on the seated row, the seated cable row, and just pull and pull and pull. We just launched the show today on doing back training. But I just, yeah, it was odd. It was the first time I didn't go into the gym and just think, I'm going to squat for the next hour. Like I haven't been here in so long. And all I wanted to do was go to the seated cable row and just pull away. Massive pump.

I like some machines. Cable machines, not necessarily for this comment, but more of like a regular machine, like a leg extension machine or a bicep curl machine or a pec deck type machine. There's not a million applications for those machines. I don't use them very infrequently. But what I do like about them is that from a time under tension standpoint, you can get consistent smooth tension throughout the entire range of motion where if you think about doing something like uh like a pec fly you know like if you're

doing like dumbbell pec flies so you're laying flat on the bench and you have your arms straight overhead and you're gonna have straight arms as you go all the way out to the side into kind of like an iron cross t position you're gonna get max tension when your arms are all the way out at your sides all right that's gonna be the hardest part of moving that's where you're getting all the tension but but when your arms are straight out in front at your sides. That's going to be the hardest part of the movement. That's where you're getting all that tension. But when your arms are straight out in front of you overhead, that first one-third of the range of motion, you're getting very little tension almost at all because your leverage is so much better

than when your arms are all the way out at your side. But if you're doing a pec deck machine, you're going to get consistent, smooth tension at every point along the range of motion. And so you're getting maximum tension on the first half of the movement versus just the second half of the movement or sorry not just the first half you're getting maximum tension on the entire range of motion of the movement uh without neglecting that that first half of the movement for the example of the

the dumbbell fly yeah yeah that's actually one of one of the things about like the the band training that i've been noticing over the last month is just at the top, it's really challenging. And you're getting everything out of it, whatever the peak band tension of what you're using. It's just – it's kind of like creating a way to have that tension down at the bottom whether that's like pulling with your arms doing an rdl or something um but it's it's when there's like no tension on the band that you realize how kind of short the range of motion is for for peak tension um actually using the bands it's kind of like the only real downfall that i've been struggling with over the last month using them pretty consistently. I think there would be a downfall if you use a barbell plus that because, you know, the

barbell is going to be peaked in the bottom. The hands are going to be peaked at tops, you know, like your muscle. Both range of motions are going to be peaked with the different movements. So that's Charles used to say using, Charles Bullock used to say using both. You know, like, you know, dumbbell flies are great because it's peaked in the bottom. Charles used to say using both. Dumbbell flies are great because it's peaked in the bottom, whereas the pec deck might be peaked at full contraction, but it's constant.

So doing all of them is a good thing. Yeah, adding the band stuff. I was doing a ton of it at home um and and mixing it up with even if even if you just have just a kettlebell like a 53 pound kettlebell and you do you're doing rdls or deads like um just having something where there has to be tension on the muscles just makes a massive difference with the bands because it's going to be heavy as hell when you get to the top if it's not you can double loop them you can add a second band whatever it is but just having something down at the bottom so that it doesn't just go to zero tension makes it just a massive difference i think at this point most people have like a dumbbell or a kettlebell and you don't really need a ton

of weight but you need something that's there just to make sure your muscle your your muscles stay on in the bottom position uh before that when there's i mean it's literally zero zero band tension at the bottom when you're doing that stuff i think uh one secret i'm going to give away like of all the things I've ever done that improved my pull I don't know if I've told this on this show or not but like once somebody told me this is a second hand that Ed Kohn one thing he did was he would do

like four sets of six for not just three or four weeks but like for eight to twelve weeks of he would do stiff leg deadlifts I did RDLs but he did stiff leg deadlifts. I did RDOs, but he did stiff leg deadlifts. You get a four inch deficit and you're doing band-titched lots. I used a double green for this and went up to where I was doing 455 plus a double thick green band for 466. And nothing in the world has ever improved my pull like that.

I went from like a. That was when I was pretty much stuck at like the low 700 deadlift. I think my max was like 730 at best. And in a 12 week block I went from 730 to 800. Everything else the same. Just added that. I don't think I even pulled heavy in training at all. Other than that.

I would do speed one day. Where the most I went up to was like a 700 where I was going to open. And then I did that. That's all I did. You know what the dumb thing about that is? I never did it again. I needed a coach so badly.

As good a coach as I might be, I was terrible coaching myself. But why did I not do that ongoing? I was like, okay, that was good enough. I don't know what I was thinking, but that worked. Yeah. I'm never going to use it again. It's unfair.

I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, it's unfair to my competitors. So I'm not going to do it. I don't know what I was thinking, but anyway, so that was an awesome. So if you're even a weightlifter, um, which I program it for all my athletes, but like maybe doing it, I'm thinking about, you thinking about doing a complete 12 weeks of doing that. It was amazing. So anyone listening, try that out. Disclaimer, start very light because anytime you're doing a hinge with heavy weights, especially bands, you've got to stabilize the entire spine.

But make sure you prepare the back properly. But then you can work your way up. It will make your pull ridiculous. Yeah. They have it. Travis Bash. Where can they find you, my man? Mashley.com.

This is a Monday, so I don't know when we'll drop it. But it's a good Monday. Good start to the week. Beautiful. Doug Larson. You bet. Find me the week. Beautiful. Doug Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner.

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