Barbell Shrugged - Know Pain, Know Gain and Why Sore Muscles Are Not The Answer w/ Dr. Andy Galpin — The Bledsoe Show #127

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's show is with Dr. Andy Galpin. I popped up for a visit to talk No Pain, No Gain. We built a lesson into our Enlifted program that addresses this topic, and I thought it would be nice to give you a peek into the level of thoughtfulness that we're bringing into the coaching program at Enlifted. Mark England and I are holding weekly group live video calls and a community conversation through our Slack channel about building a more powerful foundation as athletes and for life. We will be opening the doors to the new coaching program

Starting point is 00:00:30 next week. Head over to enlifted.me slash shrug today and get early access and your first seven days of training for free. That's enlifted.me slash shrugged. And if you have any confusion about what that link looks like, head over to my Instagram, Mike underscore Bledsoe, and you can click the link in my bio and find it from there. Inside there is coaching, lessons, and a community. Get in there first to start your own developmental process with guidance from guys who have been there and done that. We can help you skip all the BS we ran into throughout the years. So I'll see you over there. And for the coaches out there,

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Starting point is 00:03:19 and when it's time to dial it back. And it's also tracking all the little things that I'm doing and how that's impacting my recovery. So even though I've been doing this for a long time, and I eat intuitively, and I train intuitively, it's been really nice to have this band to create confirmation, but also remind me, hey, when you do this, you don't sleep as well. When you do this, you sleep way better. And it also tells me, you know when you do this, you don't sleep as well. When you do this, you sleep way better. And it also tells me, you know, sometimes I may not feel great, but it says, hey, today's actually a day you can push it. Or today's a day you should dial it back.

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Starting point is 00:04:28 All right? So that's WHOOP.com. Code is SHRUG. Now for the show with Dr. Andy Galpin. Enjoy. Enjoy. No pain, no gain. Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Starting point is 00:04:45 I'm here with Dr. Andy Galpin. We want to dig deeper into this lesson, create more context, because we do realize that if looked at too narrowly, there's a lot of, well, what if this and what if that? Andy, we were hanging out downstairs, and you said, oh, I can already see where people might take know, might take this one way or another. What are some of those ways that you see? When you saw that, you go, oh, where people might not get it.

Starting point is 00:05:13 Or maybe there's some really valid points on where it might be appropriate. Yeah. college professor of strength and conditioning is I have people in my classrooms at very different levels in very different interests and very different levels in academia and so I'm fairly good at now identifying how a bunch of different people could possibly interpret the same thing and so this is a classic one of them if we step back just a touch I know that in this course and this program you emphasize vocabulary a a lot because it's so powerful. Well, if we look at what a cliche or stereotypes are, they're things that tend to be true so often enough we sort of accept them as truth, right? It doesn't necessarily mean they're inherently true or right or wrong, but they tend to be there.

Starting point is 00:05:59 So if we look at these things like no pain, no gain, there is some truth there and there is some fallacy. And so I think what really the conversation we are going to have right now is more about, okay, well, what aspect of that is right? Because if you just jump up and immediately say, yes, 100% true, you should never experience pain, especially in context of exercise. Well, this is going to be a huge problem, right? You're never going to induce overload. You're never going to cause adaptation, right? Physiologically, you adapt because of a stressor. And so there has to be some level of pain right now.

Starting point is 00:06:32 I know as a part of this program, I don't know if you've got there yet, but at some point you're going to talk about, well, what do you mean by pain? Yeah, we definitely get into that. That's a big part of the conversation. And that's what I'm talking about. Okay, well, there's levels to this truth, right? On the other side of the equation, whether we want to look at the research, whether we want to look at our combined 40 or 50 years of strength training experiences between us.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Something like that, yeah. We can say, okay, well, you know what? There's an asymptote here, right? Or I can't just. And so this is when we can start to put context around this conversation and go, okay, well, what's the physiology? What's the science behind how much should I push? What's pushing me?

Starting point is 00:07:10 What's my situation? What's my goal? And all this stuff. And then the conversation now evolves. And, again, it turns out that vocabulary is going to be very important, how we choose to define our verbs and our nouns. Yeah. And one thing I'll point out is the no pain, no gain is a very, I'll touch on absolutes. You know, it's an absolute statement. And so there's very little wiggle room inside of that statement. And if you're consuming the course, then you know that, you know, creating more distinctions between phrases and words is very, very powerful. And so this is having a cliche term being thrown around constantly is problematic because it may only apply 10% of the time.

Starting point is 00:07:59 And the other 90% of the time, it's being misused. Well, look, this is something Chris Moore and I used to love. We both have an equal massive hatred towards cliches. I hate them. I can't stand them. This is like a writing snob issue too. Anyone who's had any training in writing,

Starting point is 00:08:17 you do not use cliches under any circumstance because it shows number one, you lose clarity. A hundred percent, you've automatically lost clarity. And number two, it's lazy. You couldn't think of a better way to phrase that. And you went to blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:32 Yeah. So I hate cliches. This is why I love when you brought this up. I'm like, yeah, let's take this one down. Fuck them. I hate them all. Let's take this one too. Dude, if you can think of any more, bring them up.

Starting point is 00:08:42 We'll dissect them. Oh man, I hate them all in life. I'll try to think of some ones that have a context of strength, conditioning, exercise, nutrition stuff, but I fucking hate any of them. Training cats and dogs out there. I mean, you name it, I'm like, oh, come on. That's the best you can come up with? I'm not reading your shit.

Starting point is 00:08:55 You're not creative. You're not clear. Oh, you know what I'll do? Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society. He gives a speech. I think this is a movie. I'm so bad at pop culture, so this could be the wrong one,

Starting point is 00:09:10 but you'll correct me. Where he gets up and he starts talking about language. I think he's teaching a creative writing course. And he stands up on the table and he's screaming at the kids and he says something like,

Starting point is 00:09:23 your character is not very tired. Your character is exhausted. And he just goes through this whole list of things, right? But the end of it is funny because he's like, you know why? Because when you write well, and you do this instead of that, and this instead of that, he's like, fucking chicks like it better. And chicks like creative guys. And he just goes in this huge tire. It just goes nuts.

Starting point is 00:09:45 And it's awesome. I'm like, yes, this is the greatest thing ever. So go look that stuff up and you'll find why cliches suck. So anyways. All right. So we'll bring it back. No pain, no gain. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:56 Okay. You know, it's, you know, when does it work and when does it not work? So I think the first step to all this equation is always we have to talk about, well, what's the goal? Like, why are we exercising in this workout this week, this month, this year? What's our focus? That is always going to drive what we do. So if you're a 23-year-old who is in the middle of competing, and your vision and your goal is to make the Olympic Games, this is different than a 45-year-old trying to reclaim some physical practice. And there's everything in between.

Starting point is 00:10:28 And so it depends on who we're talking about and what the goal is. And we'll just go through you and I as an example. Two very, very good-looking guys. Extremely. Extremely athletic. Just about as bulky as you could ever get. Yet functional.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Mid-30s guys, the days of us where our primary training goals of maximizing strength are generally gone. Now, I think if you went the rest of your life never trying to do anything heavy or strong, that would be a problem. And so what you're probably most likely going to do is say something like, okay, you might take a day of a part of a week that's a part of maybe a month of your year where you say, you know what, it's time for me to put some load back on. Okay, great. But you're not going to do that 11 months of the year. You're not going to do that 12 months of the year. You're not going to do that all seven days of that week and all parts of that workout and every movement in that individual workout will be to maximize

Starting point is 00:11:22 strength, right? And so if we look at no pain, no gain, you might go, you know what? Hey, this is a month or a week or one part of my workout today where the goal is get really tired. In that particular case, having an idea in your mind of when I get tired, I'm going to get mentally tough. I'm going to not quit when I don't have to I'm going to keep going I think in that place if no pain no gain is something that you can wring in your head really fast that helps you keep going

Starting point is 00:11:51 that's a good thing but that's because you have had now the conscious effort to say look I say no pain no gain under the guile of I'm not breaking movement quality I'm not going to put myself in a position to harm ligament, joint, things like this. I'm prepared for this.

Starting point is 00:12:08 I've practiced this movement. This is part of my plan. Then I have no problem with you saying pain is weakness, whatever other cliche you want to say. Don't be weak here. Keep pushing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? But that's because it was planned, it was conscious, and it was appropriate. Well, there's also,

Starting point is 00:12:23 if it's planned, then you know what kind of pain to expect. Yeah. There's like, oh, there's going to be a burning in my legs. My lungs will be on fire. We could call that pain, and we could also call it a lot of other things. But if you're going into a workout where you know it's going to be painful, you know there's going to be burning sensation in your legs and your lungs are going to be on fire,

Starting point is 00:12:47 but then your elbow feels like it just snapped, it's time to shut it down. No doubt, 100%. Again, this is back to the beginning where you have to define those terms. What do you mean pain? On pain today, I mean discomfort of exercise fatigue. Okay, then great, great fuck it go for as much pain as you want or pain as in like i feel that twinge in my back again and i'm pretty sure

Starting point is 00:13:11 it's gonna put me on the couch for a couple days like that's not the pain we want to almost ever get through with some extremely small exceptions um the the way that i have a tree um that i use in my class an algorithm if you will, where we go with all these. And then one end of the spectrum, because I do work with professional athletes. And if it's like, hey, you know, we're in Tokyo right now and you're on the platform and gold medals in front of you, I don't really give a shit how much pain you're in of any kind of pain. Like, get it. Yeah. Okay. But that is so unbelievably rare if you

Starting point is 00:13:46 think of it that seriously in your garage when you're training on tuesday like you shouldn't have that level of commitment to pain that level of commitment to muscular fatigue any of these things um i'm okay with again appropriately dosed But, yeah, joint pain is something that you and I all too well, and anyone from our age and our time of fitness is going to come back to and be like, yeah, I wish I wouldn't have done that. I think you're going to have a hard time finding people in their 40s that have this much training experience that can say differently. We all have something on our body where we're like,

Starting point is 00:14:23 there's no coming back from this. I wish I would have done this so much. On the other end of the spectrum a little bit, most of the time when people talk about no pain, no gain, oftentimes we're talking about muscle hypertrophy. And so we can get in because that one is more tangible scientifically. And so we can certainly have that conversation because again, there's- By hypertrophy, you mean growth growing muscle mass yes yeah so we can spend some time here we are still learning what the molecular mechanisms that are required for muscle growth in a normal healthy context are there's three primary ones but recent studies have shown those are even questionable. And so it looks like

Starting point is 00:15:07 mechanical tension, muscles having to contract with force, is really about the only thing we're fairly certain of. And so because the way I'm, the reason I'm explaining that to you is because we don't know exactly physiologically what is needed to cause muscles to grow from an exercise perspective. What we do know very clearly is there is a dose response. Okay. And so that allows you to take an adage of no pain, no gain and say, okay, well, there's truth there because we see very little muscle growth if you're doing a workout and there's no fatigue at all right you're not going so that's true so if i'm doing a workout on a scale of one to ten of fatigue and i stop at one where there was no pain there will be no gain and this is what i meant when i was earlier i'm like well i can see

Starting point is 00:15:57 what the haters are going to hate because that's totally true oh if i go out every day and and if i just do body weight squats one set of one i'm I'm not going to grow. No, you're not. 100%. That's not enough stress. That's not enough pain. I'm back to that word to induce any growth. And that's totally accurate. So at that point, the scale is linear. More pain, more gain. So that part of it is truth. There is our truth there, right? But at some level, I generally like to say like a 7 out of 10. Maybe 8. And by the way, that scale slides as you're more trained. So the more trained you are, you can push that a little bit more to the right. If you're very untrained, maybe you should stop at a 5.

Starting point is 00:16:38 How would you qualify, on average, how you could categorize yourself as untrained or trained? And I say this because I've witnessed people like we claim to be much more trained than they actually are yeah yeah i mean typically we're talking um in my mind you're you're completely novice still under a couple of years yeah you've been training for a couple years strength training for a couple years strength training you still be considered novice. Most definitely.

Starting point is 00:17:05 You're not even intermediate. Like, I would still, at our level, call us both intermediate. Yeah. At best. Yeah. The first, I would say three to four years. You get past your three, four, five, you're maybe now in an intermediate zone. But under that, a couple of years, you're novice.

Starting point is 00:17:21 I don't know what you want to call it. This is one of those things where somebody who's been in the game for so long, they know where they're not. That's why you're like, oh, we're still intermediate. The average person would call themselves intermediate and us advanced. But seeing what we've seen and knowing what we know. I had Morgan King compete yesterday. She's advanced. What she can do, and she's younger, 33 or something,

Starting point is 00:17:46 like 34, and still she's intermediate to advanced because she doesn't have a huge training age. Right. She didn't start lifting until she was in her mid-20s. Or we started lifting in our teens. Right. Right. So we just have those years on us. If you look at the Russians, if you look at any of those classic

Starting point is 00:18:02 things, they have a very clear direction and delineation of what these things are. And it's not. Oh, no. I've never fallen in an advanced category when I look at those charts. I go, no. Nope. Not even close.

Starting point is 00:18:14 So to finish our spectrum here, once you start pushing past, say, 7 or 8 out of 10, then no pain, no gain is completely eliminated from the equation. So, and there's extensive research on this, a lot, where we can go, okay, if I stop half of the people at 7 out of 10 and I let the other go to 9 out of 10, and then we look at 6, 8, 16 weeks later, the net result, the amount of muscle gained is equal between them. Actually, if you continue to keep going past that, you will start to see negative effects of growth. So you won't lose muscle mass, but you'll have less muscle gain than the person who stopped at 7 or 8. And so that right there, at the far left end of our inverse U,

Starting point is 00:18:59 we had a true, right? As we moved up it, that statement became true. As we moved to the middle and past it, it loses its truth. And so that's why cliche is a cliche. It's not true. Is there a relationship there? Yes, of course. And if you're stopping at a three out of 10 every time, well, you better not expect to grow very much muscle mass. You're not going to get that much stronger. You may need to get the mental strength to push to a four to five, but going from a seven and going, you know what? I'm kind of tired today. I think all I could do is a seven out of 10 today. So you know what? Let me get some C4. Let me double up. Let me get pre-workout going. And you load all these things, get the music going, headphones going so I can get to nine.

Starting point is 00:19:38 Well, now you're playing the short game. It's not going to result in any more growth. And you've introduced a potential for a lot more joint ligament damage and just a whole host of other problems that are beyond the scope of this conversation. Yeah. That's actually a term we've been throwing around with the Enlifted team. We've been talking about how most people's training is really great for being in shape for a short period of time. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:02 Short game. Yeah. But if you want to be in shape for a long period of time, if you want to play the long game, keep listening. Yeah. When you were talking about that, the quote was running through my head. I believe it was Dr. Mike Stone, which is minimum dose response. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:19 Or minimum effective dose, I think it was what it was. Yeah, well, there's both of those. That's something actually the NIH the national institute of health and the national institute of aging nia are both very very interested in you may remember 15 years ago or so there was basically two forms of exercise there was strength training and there was endurance i remember and this is a large part why i'm in the field, because I hated that. I thought, like, this is so stupid. We're going to call everything either aerobic exercise or strength training?

Starting point is 00:20:50 There's nothing in between here? And certainly if you look at American Health Association, American College of Sports, you name the health, that was it. Well, it wasn't until a guy named Marty Kabbalah, Canadian researcher, came along in 2000, 1998, started doing research on what he called high-intensity interval training. Now, any of us were like, yeah, of course, intervals are way better than jogging for an hour.

Starting point is 00:21:16 We've been arguing this for a long time. CrossFit, of course, came in. But there's no science behind it. There's no science behind intervals. He introduced that, and then we had this whole new term. This idea that, okay, just going up there. That expands the whole conversation. Now we have to reframe all of these words

Starting point is 00:21:34 and all of our expectations behind what we do, and it allows us to then go, okay, let's start really questioning how we approach things and how we get there. Well, that was really, really important because now we can open up the language and we stop looking at things like the exercise mode and the detail and start going, well, what's the stimulus? What was the cause and effect here?

Starting point is 00:21:58 Oh, you want your heart to get in better shape. Well, then now you have one of two ways to stimulate it. You can ask it to do a little bit of work for a long time. Good, effective. Or you can ask it to do a whole bunch of work. But in order, good, effective, or you can ask it to do a whole bunch of work, but in order to do a whole bunch of work, you've got to do it in short bursts. Either way, you're challenging it. That allowed us to unroll this whole physiological mechanism of what's going on.

Starting point is 00:22:15 So now with minimum effective dose, this is what Marty's being funded for heavily right now, is to say, okay, well, we should have shown things like 30 seconds as hard as you can on a bike for four rounds. Well, initially they did like 10, 12 rounds. And you better believe if you've done 10 rounds of 30 on 30 off. I have. Yeah, I know. Many times. What they want to know is. I remember the first time. I want to hear. I mean, I remember the first time doing 30 on 30 off for 20 rounds is what I did.

Starting point is 00:22:46 And yeah. If you can keep the intensity, that's brutal, but it's hard too. Yeah, no, I completely fell off. After like four. I went way too hard out the gate. Yeah. So anyway, my point is now that's what he's looking at. And now they're interested in that with strength training, looking at all these things.

Starting point is 00:23:02 Because the single biggest issue generally people have with exercise is adherence. I don't have time. This is one of the reasons why he sold. It's like, literally, if you look at the training time, I need eight minutes a week. Eight minute abs. Eight minute a week, right?

Starting point is 00:23:17 Now he's like, well, what if we did five rounds? Would four give him the same result? Would three give him the same result? This is something that they have been interested in, a very effective thing. The downside of that equation is, well, maybe over a long period of time, six months, eight months, the added volume would be better. And that's probably oftentimes true. And so I think with no pain, no gain, we have to go back to where I started here, which is, well, what's the point of today's workout?

Starting point is 00:23:47 What's this week supposed to be doing? What am I focusing on this month? What's this year all about? And we don't have to have a written down program for every single day of rep and exercise, but we have to have something in our mind of going, you know what? I have been pushing really hard for three months. Maybe I need to throttle back. or the opposite. I've had three months of a reset. I haven't done anything hard, but my heart rate hasn't gotten up in three months. I haven't really pushed any kind of fatigue in three months. It's time for me to get after it a little bit. Again, not breaking position, not getting in bad spots. Okay. But at some point you do have to have, and that point no pain, no gain is actually like,

Starting point is 00:24:24 okay. Yeah. Because you're not, you're not adapting, you're not getting stressed. Yeah. There has to be some stress for adaptation. So there's truthiness in it, as we like to say. Yeah. Right. Stephen Colbert is famous. Thanks.

Starting point is 00:24:36 Truthiness. I want to touch on a couple things. One is frequency and the other one is movement quality. And so I know that if someone goes through, and I've gone through brutal workouts in the past that were so brutal that had I done less, I would have been in the gym three more times that week. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. And so I think a lot of times people go, no, I'll still hit the gym even though I'm super sore and all this.

Starting point is 00:25:02 But the truth is I think the average person is likely, you know, they hit it really hard on Monday, and then Tuesday they don't really feel like it, Wednesday they don't really feel like it, and then they got in only three times. And I know for myself that I would miss days, and I didn't realize it was because I destroyed myself on Monday. I just didn't realize it was because I destroyed myself on Monday. I just didn't know. I didn't realize that. But I was like, why? Why have I?

Starting point is 00:25:27 I would even get upset at myself for missing sessions. And I didn't even know it was because I blew my load on Monday. Yeah. Well, there can also be a little bit of a delayed effect there, too, where you might be able to get back in the gym that week and push through it, et cetera. But how many of those can you go through? How many weeks in a row can you do?

Starting point is 00:25:47 Eventually you lose. Eventually you break. Again, I'll give you examples. I could tell you example of example of professional athletes. Professional lifters, weightlifters, powerlifters, they break too. They all eventually break with that stuff. It's not sustainable. For my own personal

Starting point is 00:26:04 health and fitness and whatever you want to call it, the... I like movement practice. I think that's my favorite. Yeah. I would agree. People go, do you work out? I go, I move. I move these days.

Starting point is 00:26:15 I don't know if... You might be confused if you were to work out with me about what we did. I fell into hatred of workout like 20 years ago, probably. Yeah. I train or I play or yeah I do these things. A lot more play. So one of the things that I've learned about myself is you know well what's more important you know intensity volume these are arguments and I look at like intensity volume that that's a big you know either volume these are arguments and i look at like intensity volume that that's a big you know either or conversation and people ask me you know what's really important i say frequency because i found for myself is the more frequently i move you know you're going to

Starting point is 00:26:57 accumulate more volume if you're moving more frequently but for me i go the less time I have between movement sessions the better I feel I can get into action faster and I overall feel better and I'm in better shape I would say that even I look better when my frequency is high even if my intensity is really low so this is incredibly interesting

Starting point is 00:27:26 because I know you so well, and I know your training background, and I know where you're at now in some things and where you've been before. Your answer to that just astounded me. It's right and wrong like anything else. The way that I like to approach it is it comes down to goal. And so I'll give you some tangible examples here. I like to run through the entire spectrum of physiological adaptation. We'll just call it exercise. At the far left-hand side, we'll call it skill. At the far right-hand side, we'll call it maximum aerobic endurance. If you're looking to develop skill, whether you want to shoot a basketball better, you want to air squat better, it is unquestionable. The driver of physiological adaptation is frequency. Practice.

Starting point is 00:28:14 You have to practice, practice, practice. Mike Bledsoe, when you go to work out for your day, your brain is so focused on that left end of the spectrum because you're wanting to learn this movement better because you want your shoulder to move better so when you go back to training, it doesn't hurt so fucking bad. Or whatever things you're interested in, you're really on that left end of the spectrum. Which is great because you spent so many years on

Starting point is 00:28:40 the middle right of the spectrum which would be like strength, hypertrophy, all this stuff, right? And so now you've gone and you've looked at that and you've gone, you know what? I just spent 15 years right in this spot. Maybe I need to spend a year off center line. Yeah, I've been about four years off of center line.

Starting point is 00:28:58 Okay, well, whatever, right? No, you know what? You're right. I've swung really hard, and I would say I'm much more in the middle at this point. It was years of playing on the skill side of things.

Starting point is 00:29:14 So as we move down and we go to speed and power and strength and we start to look at these conversations of volume and intensity so the way I like to ask is this. Imagine you're going to do a strength workout. You're going to do five sets of five. And the plan is at 85%. Okay, it's a hard day. And you get into set four. And you're on rep two. And you realize, I'm not finishing five reps. Do you take weight off? Or do you call a stop at three reps and call it good? So now I'm asking you, I'm going to quiz you on this. It's not rhetorical.

Starting point is 00:29:50 It's an actual question. Mike, the goal is strength. I'm there on a strength day in this. I'm trying to get stronger. What's the best answer? Typically, should I take weight off or should I do less reps?

Starting point is 00:30:01 Well, for me, I would, I would, um, I would do less reps. So in strength, the primary driver is intensity. And so you need to keep that load on the bar.

Starting point is 00:30:10 If you did four reps, three reps, fine. Who really cares? Don't drop the load. Because the load is the stimulus to get stronger. If now we're on the spectrum of hypertrophy, hypertrophy doesn't care about performance per se. It's related, but it's not the direct thing. That exact same workout now, when that goal was hypertrophy, since that's driven by volume, you would take weight off and keep the reps high.

Starting point is 00:30:38 Right. So the answer is totally different depending on why you're there. Now the goal is I need to just burn some stress today because I had a really bad day at work and I haven't got to train in four or five days. I need to burn some gas. Now that's a different answer. Or you know what? I feel mobilized. My neck doesn't hurt as much.

Starting point is 00:30:58 I'm not as stiff if I just get out and move a little bit every day. That's a different answer too. Okay, great. Now frequency is the driver. Now, you know what? Some people, I don't get this, but some people get very meditated. They get very Zen. It's a huge decompressor stress when they do like 30, 45 minutes of unchecked straight movement. So if you're moving for that purpose, then I would say, great, maybe frequency is your answer too, or consistency, whatever it is. So we have different reasons why we globally exercise, and we have different reasons within the single day that I go to work out.

Starting point is 00:31:30 And so that, I think, to me, drives your answer. Having one answer to all that as a spectrum, I think, is a huge problem. It's the same mistake of making no pain, no gain. It's the same one. So I don't think we should have an answer to that. I think we should then be just conscious with ourselves and say, you know what? Today I'm working out because of guilt. Right.

Starting point is 00:31:49 Ooh, okay. Hmm. I mean, it happens all the time. Yeah. I still do it. Right? I feel guilty about not training. We address that in the course.

Starting point is 00:31:57 Okay. Shocking. Shocking. Okay. That's fine. And there's nothing wrong with that. We just, it's got to be checked. Right.

Starting point is 00:32:04 And appropriately dosed. In that particular case, I'd probably say, all right, then intensity and volume, maybe let's just move to it. Okay, great. Frequencies. If you look at hypertrophy, there's been some recent changes in the research. Classically, initial evidence suggested frequency doesn't matter. Then it swung the other way and said frequency is actually the driver. You're better off taking the exact same workout, splitting it in half,

Starting point is 00:32:26 and doing it more often. And now the research is coming back actually saying total volume per week is really what matters. It doesn't matter if you do it once a week, three times a week. So I don't know where we're going to be at on that, but generally to me that tells me it doesn't matter that much. But that's for hypertrophy. That's for that goal.

Starting point is 00:32:41 Yeah, if we're looking at hypertrophy, and I think for me personally, and this is where I like to take athletes in a conversation, is the movement quality. And that was the other thing I wanted to talk about is, you know, I look at, you know, I'm 35 pounds lighter today than I was four years ago. And a lot of my muscle was really hard and it was, it was built in a very specific direction. And I had a lot of muscle built in like upper traps were very developed, lower traps, not so much. This is very typical of, uh, well, a lot of people doing strength sports. And so, you know, for me, I started looking at

Starting point is 00:33:29 my movement quality. It's like, who, for me, I was like, who cares how much muscle I built if it's not the right muscle in the right way? And so I started looking at movement quality and I go, if I get wrecked sore, if I smash my hamstrings, now every time I bend over, every time I walk, I'm practicing poor movement quality. So I'm creating motor patterns and strength patterns and a direction

Starting point is 00:33:58 that's not helpful for athleticism in the long run. And so this is why I normally like to point people towards frequency is because it allows us to maintain good movement patterns and build better movement patterns. So that's been my experience. Now, I don't think there's, I mean, it depends on the person, the goal, the age, all those things.

Starting point is 00:34:20 That's why I like to call it a physical practice. Mm-hmm. If you look at, again, the evidence of DOMS, delayed on-site muscle soreness, being sore from exercise, more doesn't equal any more growth. And it certainly is going to harm any of those other training adaptations

Starting point is 00:34:35 that require frequency. Right. Which is a lot. I mean, if... Skill, speed, power. I was going to say, unless you're a bodybuilder, then there's a lot of skill that's necessary. You could argue that even for bodybuilders, the skill of posing could be...

Starting point is 00:34:53 If you're in that part of your training cycle, that matters. But that would be... I'm reaching there. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to call bodybuilders unskilled. Well, I mean... But most other sports, there's a level of skill. Here's the deal. I'm still improving my squat.

Starting point is 00:35:11 Sure, me too. And I've been squatting intentionally since I was 15. I've been trying to improve my mechanics for 22 years. Yeah, me too. And I have been spending the last four months rebuilding mine um morgan just like again like eyes on the prize for 2020 olympics we spent three months rebuilding her squat and if you watched her and if you listen to any commentator of her all they will talk about is how like she is technically the best it's just just, it's a maze. Like, of all the

Starting point is 00:35:45 team members, like, man, she's technically perfect. And yet, we're going, ugh, we gotta fix this. It's a problem. This is not, this is over here, right? Spencer's trying to fix everything, and yeah, I would agree. The movement practice is so important though, because, like,

Starting point is 00:36:02 for example, I'll go train, okay, maybe it's a day where i'm going to get in and i'm going to do a bunch of heavy squatting or heavy you know i joke heavy now right heavy ish right or well the point is you're going to do it to really fatigue and you're going to try hard with it a lot i'm going to be really hard well in my in my mind, tomorrow, the movement practice is not going to be heavy lifting for two reasons. Number one, I know I'm going to be a little bit not all there from today, but I don't want to do so much today that I can't move at all. And so, for example, I had a heavy squat day on Saturday or whatever I did. Sunday, I might do a yoga flow

Starting point is 00:36:46 and then ice bath and sauna. Maybe it's walking. Maybe it's all this stuff, right? If I'm so sore, I can't do that. Like that was a problem, right? But I don't have to be so easy on my squats that I feel perfect every single day. Right.

Starting point is 00:36:59 I don't need to be there. I might though, like I did this a few weeks ago, I went through a phase um actually it was the week of thanksgiving where i was doing doubles and sometimes triples like workouts in the day so i trained like 12 times in in four days or something like that and just did a whole bunch of stuff and the goal there was to just obliterate myself only using very easy movements and nothing particularly hard at any individual time but i got really tired because of the accumulated volume yeah and i did that specifically because i wanted

Starting point is 00:37:31 to see at what point my knee started giving me problem and i did all that and it didn't and then i paid it back the next two weeks i spent two weeks okay like i got to repay that debt got to get back in there and about a week and a half after that, Ooh, and he started not feeling great. Right. So it didn't hurt at all for the 12 days of nonsense. Six days in the recovery started hurting,

Starting point is 00:37:54 which means if I'd have kept that up, what was going to happen? Oh, it was going to blow up and flame took two or three days, really backed off. And now it feels spectacular. Yeah. Right.

Starting point is 00:38:02 And so, but, but that was a test week on purpose for me because I've been going through the knee rehab stuff i wanted to see really like where is my dose line here yeah to there i haven't done anything like that in years and and i probably won't again for years but again everything is was very um i keep coming back to conscious and there was a reason and a thought and every single time in all of those workouts it was going like okay how's any feeling right now like anything that's not supposed to be there was a stop or you know let's move to upper body move whatever we're trying to do

Starting point is 00:38:32 the biggest issue i think with this conversation is people just have a problem if that forethought isn't there if it's why am i working out hard oh because of any of these other reasons i'm not any of the stuff i'm sure you cover, right? Or like I have to so I can add more muscle. Number one, we don't have to. The evidence is clear. Physiology shows us that. Research shows us that. If the other side of the equation is doing this because of some mental poor relationship with exercise, well then either one of those equations means we're not dosing something properly.

Starting point is 00:39:07 You might get away with it like we did for a handful of years, but you will then be us in 10 years making the same conversation to the other 22-year-olds. Yeah, we're both a couple surgeries in at this point. Oh, yeah. Maybe more. I've had five on just one knee alone. Yeah. So, I mean, I can speak to this quite well.

Starting point is 00:39:24 But I've also experienced this with working with athletes in general. I've done this a lot. More doesn't get you there. There has to be some level of muscular failure for hypertrophy. But failure needs to be redefined.

Starting point is 00:39:41 Failure doesn't mean muscles failed for a month. Like, muscle has failed, and then it's now out for a month like muscle has failed and then it's now out for a month right it is like what i typically say is um save one or two yeah it's pretty i think that's a pretty uh it's a protocol i don't know if this guy you know is the one who created this but uh apolloquin type of uh yeah protocol would be you know i don't one who created this, but a Poliquin type of protocol would be, you know, negative. I don't think you could ever give anybody credit

Starting point is 00:40:08 for creating anything in this space ever again. But, you know, go too short a failure. Yeah, yeah. And then that's probably a more appropriate point of failure because those last two reps to that, like, actual failure are a little, can be, you know, poor movement quality. If you're on a machine and you're doing a single joint movement, you can get away with that a little bit be, you know, poor movement quality. If you're on a machine and you're doing a single joint movement,

Starting point is 00:40:27 you can get away with that a little bit more. Yeah. You're doing complex movements that you're only moderately skilled at, squatting, deadlifting, overhead pressing, like something in there, then you've got to be very, very careful with that. And this will sound like advice from people that don't lift, because, again, you'll get away with it for a few years,

Starting point is 00:40:51 but your clients won't, or your friends won't, or the advice you're giving out there, and it's just not necessary, like we've seen there, under very specific circumstances with a lot of training. Even if you look at guys, like like any advocate of training super hard, the inspirational guy you follow on Instagram, etc., they're probably not doing that every time either. Like a Mark Bell,

Starting point is 00:41:15 you name the person, pick who you want. It's like, oh, no, no, okay. Yeah, I went there today, but I'm going to go to 8 out of 10 most of the other times. Yeah. Okay, i'll get you there it's it's not generally a sustainable practice uh and if we don't have a sport we're competing in we don't have a championship on the line what's the rush yeah and what would you rather

Starting point is 00:41:38 do train pretty consistently for five years or train your fucking ass off for a year and then sit on the sidelines for three yeah anything else you want to say about no pain no gain or weakness leaving the body pain is weakness leaving the body yeah i think i've said a lot i think you said enough because you're good enough andy that's the second time you've affirmed me today and i would appreciate a third before you leave before i get out of here yeah thank you yeah before you leave my home i want to be told again how good i am i was like what i did something this morning with natasha oh i can't remember i wish i remembered oh oh oh it was last night i cooked my deer steak yeah and i just nailed it and we let it rest and she's cutting it on the board.

Starting point is 00:42:25 Like we're doing Hanukkah, you know, stuff, whatever. So the family's over. And it was perfect. Like picture. And I'm like, Natasha, tell me how good I am at cooking that steak. And she said, you're the best. I'm like, no, no. Tell me again how good I am at cooking that steak.

Starting point is 00:42:37 And I made her tell me three times. I'm like, I need you to just keep telling me how good I am at cooking deer steak. You heard it here, folks. Dr. Andy Galpin is good enough at cooking deer steaks. Just good enough. Just good enough. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, man.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Oh, thanks for listening to the show. Make sure to go subscribe to my channel, The Bledsoe Show, on Stitcher, iTunes, wherever you are listening because my show will be coming off the network at the end of June. And if you want to make sure that you do not miss out on any of my interviews

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Starting point is 00:43:38 This coaching program is the coolest thing that I've put together so far. It's going to be a lot of fun. I look forward to hanging out with you on the group calls and in the Slack channel and watching you go through all the lessons that we put together and seeing what comes of it. Oh yeah, and for the coaches out there, go to thestrongcoach.com. Get your free coaching. These are emails that are going to help you build your coaching business. They're going to help you communicate with your clients better and know where you want to take your career. All right?

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Barbell Shrugged - Know Pain, Know Gain and Why Sore Muscles Are Not The Answer w/ Dr. Andy Galpin — The Bledsoe Show #127

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