Barbell Shrugged - [Muscle Science] Decoding the Latest Science of Hypertrophy w/ Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #698

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, CSCS, CSPS, FNSCA, is an internationally renowned fitness expert and widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on body composition training (muscle development and fat loss). He is a lifetime drug-free bodybuilder, and has won numerous natural bodybuilding titles. Brad earned his masters degree in kinesiology/exercise science from the University of Texas at Permian Basin and his PhD at Rocky Mountain University where his dissertation focused on elucidating the mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed research articles on exercise and sports nutrition, as well as editing multiple textbooks and authoring several textbook chapters. He acts as the Assistant Editor-in-Chief for the NSCA’s Strength and Conditioning Journal, as well as serving on the editorial advisory board for numerous peer-reviewed exercise- and nutrition-related journals. Brad is widely regarded as a „trainer of trainers.“ He is a tenured full professor in the Health Sciences Department at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY, and serves as the Graduate Director of the Human Performance and Fitness program. Moreover, he is a dedicated mentor to young sports scientists, and has served as a chair or member on more than a dozen thesis and dissertation committees. Brad is a best-selling author of multiple fitness books including The M.A.X. Muscle Plan 2.0 (Human Kinetics, 2021), which has been widely referred to as the “muscle-building bible” and Strong and Sculpted (Human Kinetics, 2016), which details a cutting-edge body sculpting program targeted to women. Brad also has authored the seminal textbook Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy (Human Kinetics, 2020), the first text devoted to an evidence-based elucidation of the mechanisms and strategies for optimizing muscle growth. In total, Brad’s books have sold over a half-million copies. Brad Schoenfeld on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged family, this week on Barbell Shrugged, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld is coming on to talk about the latest research in building muscle. What's really cool is Brad Schoenfeld, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, if you were to get into PubMed and look at all of the muscle research that exists on this planet, it's almost a guarantee that his name is going to be attached to it. So we try to get him on here at least every two years. I can't even make a joke because we do see him like every, every two years, we could bring him on, just talk about the latest research developments, um, where the industry is headed

when it comes to muscle growth, hypertrophy, um, and lifting weights. Cause he is at the forefront of all of it. And, uh, as always, he over delivers and talks about all of the pieces to building muscle that have merged recently and always a pleasure to have him on. So make sure you get over and check him out on Instagram over at Brad Schoenfeld. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a lab lifestyle and performance analysis, which everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization is going to get. You can check that out over at rapidhealthreport.com.

Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. Are you Dr. Travis Mash yet? Not yet. Not yet. Then we have a real one on today too. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. You didn't know I was going to just throw a dig right at Travis to start this thing off. Today, we're going to be talking all things hypertrophy. And I really want to dig into this because, like I was saying, pre-show, a buddy of mine, Brian Borstein, we had him on a couple of weeks ago. And he's raving about lengthened partials, sent Doug and I a program on how to implement these things. And really what he's doing is telling me about your research, which I would love to kind of understand at the top, why did really the lengthened position of these movements really start to become of interest

to you guys to start testing, doing research on it. And now it looks like there's tons of research coming out on why performing movements and getting musculature into its fully lengthened position is a much better place to really build muscle is happening when, when you stretch a muscle that is allowing it to grow bigger? Yeah. So I want to start off by saying, I think that might be a little, uh, overly optimistic in that, uh, this is why we brought you and not him. I will say that there's a starting to be an emerging body of literature that shows that the length and position of a movement, which would be the, let's say in a, it's kind of different depending on the movement, but

in a hamstring curl, it would be the position where your legs are fully straight to, let's say, halfway, going halfway forward. Same with a leg extension where you're starting out fully bent knee in that respect. So it's kind of the opposite, but fully bent knee. So from the start position to the initial range of motion. In a squat, it would be where you're in the deep, you know, butt close to the ground and then going up halfway up. So there's been some emerging literature on this for quite a while now. There was a, initially there was a good amount of literature that looked at isometrics at different, uh, lengths, at different, uh, limb lengths while you're, uh, training, uh, which did seem to again, show benefits. Um, interestingly, there's been research, which people didn't really look at it at the

time, but where they looked at, let's say a, which people didn't really look at it at the time, but where they looked at, let's say, a full squat versus a half squat. The half squat is in the shortened partial range. They never looked at a half squat going from ass to grass to the half squat position. They always looked at it going from full extension to 70, 90 degrees. And, um, it's seen, so, and they generally showed a much greater, let's say much greater, substantially greater effect, particularly in hypertrophy, uh, for, uh, the, uh, full, full range of motion squats. Um, but could that have been because they were just looking at the shortened position partial, not the, could it have been that the reason that the full range of motion was showing greater gains was because it traversed the length and range? And maybe if you just looked at the partial range, it might have shown better.

They still haven't done that study, but there's quite a bit of research now that have looked at the hamstrings, the quads in particular, biceps and triceps, so the limb muscles in single joint movements, and looking at half, basically partial reps in one position, a shortened position versus a lengthened position. And the majority of those studies tend to show greater to, somewhat greater to, markedly greater results in muscle development. Now, generally speaking, some of the interesting findings are generally the hypertrophy seems to occur more distally. So in the lower aspect, but when I say distally, for those who don't know, let's say in a quadriceps, it would be the portion of the muscle that's closer to the knee. So the lower, the inferior position of the muscle or portion

of the muscle. So there's some theories as to why that might be, but it doesn't necessarily manifest in a uniform manner. So there seems to be non-uniform benefits to the length and position. Now, with that said, we haven't looked at it in a lot of muscles, so we really don't have any evidence in the torso muscles, the pecs, the lats, the deltoids, the glutes. So could it be that it might be muscle specific? I think there's at least reasons why I could speculate that might be the case. Is there a piece of this? Because, you know, if you were to not have run this research, really what we're trying to figure out is like, how much weight can we put on this muscle and then move it through a full range of motion to grow muscle tissue. But if you're doing it from like

this very stretched position, isn't that going to limit the amount of weight you're actually going to be able to lift? So the loads are going to be lighter. Or does that just really get into, we have to be taking things as close to failure as possible, no matter what the load is? Well, the loads would be lighter than if you did a shortened partial, not if you did a full range, because the full range is going through the length and range. You're going to have to, I mean, that's where, depending on the movement, the sticking point, usually if it's an ascending strength curve, it would be in the lower portion anyway. No, but the load would be heavy. So this is the interesting thing.

The loads have been equated in these studies for, let's say, a bicep curl, where we're looking at a full extension to 50 degrees and then 50 degrees to 100 degrees would be the shortened position. You're going to use – studies have looked at heavier loads in the shortened position versus lighter loads, and we still see this development. And some interesting findings too. The length and position also shows a greater full range strength. Now, you could say that's kind of expected in movements where your sticking point is in the length and range. But one of the interesting things is that the length and position in one of our studies showed similar strength gains to a full range of motion. So in a full range, so you'd figure the specificity of full range would show greater. So anyway, there's some interesting things. Now, again, we're, I think, a while away from really,

first of all, understanding mechanistically. Again, there's speculation as to mechanisms, but mechanisms are always difficult to tease. What would you speculate? I'm curious. What would you speculate are the mechanisms that would cause this? Well, a couple of things. First of all, in the lengthened position, there's greater forces that are... So there's a force-length relationship, and there's generally greater force that are acting. Your muscle generally is going to have greater force-producing capacity in a lengthened position when it is lengthened. There is some evidence that muscle damage may play a role in this. Again, I'm somewhat still skeptical of it,

but we do know that muscle damage tends to occur closer in more distal regions, and that seems to be where the hypertrophy is occurring. Other people have had some other thoughts to to uh uh you know to mechanistically why it might occur but but look i i think the most important point for practitioners is they don't care about the mechanisms they can't right tell me how to train and uh i i think the uh take-home message here is that well the two at least two things. Number one, when you're doing, um, as a general rule, when you're doing, uh, weight training throughout a full range of motion, don't short change the length and position. Uh, it doesn't mean you might not use, uh,

shortened partials for a certain specific goals. Um, but as a general rule, if hypertrophy is your primary goal, make sure if you're going to do a shoulder press, don't do just this, like load up the bar really heavy and do little partials like this. Make sure you're coming down into the length and position. Same with a chest press. I see these people, they do like the last 20 degrees of a chest press was really heavy but put on four plates on the bar and they're doing uh the upper partial you know the upper short and partial whereas again seemingly now we don't really have data on the pecs at this point to know but i would without having that data i think it's it's a good uh we i think it would be a good practice to take all movements through a full range of motion if possible.

And I think secondly, I think there is a potential benefit to including some length and partial specifically in your training. How you go about doing that, it really depends on the overall composition of your routine could it be that you just um as the repetition as you get close to failure you just then rep out a partial uh length a few length and partials uh could it be that you just do an extra set that specifically focuses on length and partials, anything in between. I mean, those are all possibilities. And we certainly don't have any data on that to make any good recommendations. Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com.

When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you.

Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able

to go over to rapidealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. You have data on the muscle group. Go ahead. Sorry. If you're training a muscle group that crosses two joints, if you're training hamstrings as an example,

if you're doing RDLs, then you're lengthening at the knee and then you're bending at the hips. You're getting a full stretch in the hamstring and at the you know at the end of the movement where the load becomes the highest is also when the hamstring is stretched the longest uh to your point about um about damage that seems to be those types of exercises seem to be the exercises that cause the most soreness yes would would ensuring that you have those types of exercises in your program do you feel would that be essential to creating maximum hypertrophy and actually actually i'll give you a second piece of that you can comment on both at the same time like i remember years and

years ago and i haven't heard this term thrown out in a long time but i was taught to to get full hypertrophy you want to have a passive tension exercise which is kind of what we're talking about and an active insufficiency exercise. And how that was defined was like a tricep press down would be active insufficiency. And then to make sure that you're at full tricep length, you would also do overhead tricep presses. That way you're getting a full stretch for that muscle group that crosses two joints. As an example, same thing with like incline dumbbell curls versus like concentration curls. You're getting a full stretch of the shoulder for one and then you're kind of taking you're taking the full stretch out by doing

concentration curl uh for the other so do you feel like you need to have both of those types of movements to have a um to have the full benefits of hypertrophy if one's kind of getting the distal end is the other getting the more proximal end of the muscle or the belly of the muscle so this starts to first of all get into some of the uh mechanistic aspects i don't know how deep you want to go but there's also so if you want to talk more mechanistically number one in a way so there's passive elements and there's active elements uh and and sensors so there there is evidence that there are different sensors that work for active tension versus passive tension. And that is, again, another speculatory reason why length impartials might work as well. But I talked earlier about the length tension relationship and to your point

about the active insufficiency versus passive tension, that would be correct. So your point about, let's say, the overhead tricep extension versus the tricep press down, that would be more a function for the long head of the triceps, which crosses two joints, whereas the other two heads, the lateral and medial heads, do not. Thus, when you make a muscle what's called actively insufficient is when the muscle is being shortened at one end, it doesn't have much further to shorten. And thus conceivably your other muscles that are synergists in that exercise would tend to take over. So in the case of the, let's say a tricep press down, the long head would be somewhat actively insufficient,

and thus the lateral and medial heads would tend to take over a greater portion of the movement and focus on that. Whereas if you then stretch the muscle, you're going to get, again, greater tension in the muscle, and there's going to be more passive tension, which again, there might be transduction through different pathways, mechanotransduction and stop me if I'm getting too geeky. So this is where I always try. This is great. It's fantastic. So, yeah. So when you're then in the overhead position,

you will then tend to target the long head. And we have data that's published data that seems to show that is the case. Another very good example, classic example, is in the calves. So the gastrocnemius crosses the knee joint, the soleus doesn't. When you do a straight leg calf raise, the gastrocnemius is going to be stretched as much as it can and thus be able to take over a greater amount of the work, or at least a good amount of the work, because there's greater tension in the muscle. Whereas the shortening is going to actually, when it's in the bent position, you're going to shorten that muscle. Again, it's not going to

have much further to shorten, and thus the soleus tends to take over that exercise. There is some evidence that that is the case. We're actually going to be carrying out a study on that next semester to see how well that actually translates into practice. In my mind, that was like almost common knowledge. I assumed there were, there was already research out there on that specific thing, but is that not the case? So they haven't looked at direct hypertrophy there's evidence there's other types of evidence that acute evidence they've looked at and certainly from a mechanical modeling standpoint uh but yeah interestingly it

has not been uh there's a paucity of research on it at this point have you guys looked at what what's happening um obviously we're talking about passive elements. You're talking, you know, tendons. You're looking at, like, a titan. But, like, have you looked at, you know, are the actual tendons, are they getting hypertrophy? Are you noticing extra? Because, you know, with Dr. Barr, you know, he recommends doing the isometrics in a fully lengthened position to maximize tendon growth. Have you looked at that at all or noticed that?

So my work has not been in the tendon area, and we haven't looked at tendon hypertrophy. So I'm tangentially familiar with that research, but certainly I'm not a content expert in tendon hypertrophy and i wouldn't really i wouldn't want to comment on that as far as i wouldn't have the expert content expertise to to know that literature sure that's exciting though yeah uh what else is going on the lab what are you guys uh that was that was um really everything i wanted to know about the length and piece of that. That's awesome. What else do you guys have going on in the lab right now?

Yeah, we got a ton of stuff. So the first thing that I always want to give a shout out to my students, I'm the director of the Human Performance and Fitness Program, which is the master's degree program at our university. And I have some of the top graduate students, in my humble opinion, I am somewhat biased, but they are the top students in the country. Better than those ones out at Fullerton, for sure. Not disparaging any of them. I'm just saying that ours are top of the food chain. And they make my, first of all, they make my life worthwhile but they uh facilitate

what i do without them i'd never have the ability to be as productive as i am and they keep me vibrant um so yeah we have a lot of theses that have been carried out um so i'll give you a we can go on and on some of this but i had had a really cool thesis that was done that was published about six months or so ago that looked at, to me, one of the questions I always wanted to have answered. And my master's student, Daniel Plotkin, carried it out for his thesis. He is now a doctoral student in Mike Roberts' lab at Auburn University as a PhD candidate. But we looked at the focus of the study or the purpose of the study was to say, do you necessarily need to add load onto the bar? Is that the only or certainly the best way to progressively overload for hypertrophy and strength as well? But hypertrophy was the main focus of the study.

And the question was, if you kept the same load on the bar that you start with, but just do more repetitions rather than make the classic thing is when you get, when you can do two more reps than you did the last time at your one RM, at your whatever RM, your sub max RM. So in this case, a 10 RM, you would add more load. And so we had one group they we did 10 rms it was for lower body uh hypertrophy and we did the squat leg press uh seated and straight leg calf raise and uh one group we we started both groups off with their 10 rms so we determined what their 10 rms are and one group was we started both groups off with their 10 RMs. So we determined what their 10 RMs are. And one group was the load group.

We just added load like traditionally would be done when they were getting stronger. The other group, whatever load they started with, we kept them on that load throughout the entire program, throughout the eight week program. And we just were pushing them to do more reps. And some of them more than doubled the amount of reps they were doing 20 to 30 reps by the time they finished the and these were resistance strain subjects yeah by the way uh no differences in hypertrophy it was a wow literally zero difference in hypertrophy there was some some differences in strength benefiting the uh higher load group,

but it wasn't what I had originally thought it would be. Now, part of that could be, it was a relatively short study, eight weeks, and they both started at the same load. So over time, the other group was doing less. But for me, the really, I think, striking result was hypertrophy did not show benefits to adding load and I think basically

the study really gives credence to the fact that there's multiple ways to quote unquote overload to progressively overload it's not just about adding load with the group that was doing that didn't that was adding load did they stay at 10 reps though or

an added load the group that was doing that didn't that was adding load did they stay at 10 reps though or an added load the group that was so the group that yeah i'm sorry the group that was doing the load stayed at a 10 rm so we would add load as they were getting stronger yeah to keep them at a 10 rm okay the idea yeah maintain the 10 rm and when i say 10 rm it was eight they're not getting 10 they're they were pushed to failure so sometimes they get 12 reps 13 reps sometimes they get seven eight reps but there was somewhere generally speaking they were within a 12 rep zone and right somewhere around 10 reps was the average so that's interesting to me because like i i always assumed that you had to have the

neurological side of the movement where you're really building strength and that movement capacity. And then hypertrophy was going to be pushing reps in reserve to one or zero to failure, whatever it is. But you needed like the strength side of it to actually then fill in the hypertrophy side later on. But that's not the case. Well, so I'll give you the caveat to that is it's an eight year study. So it doesn't mean that you could do this for five, six, seven, eight years. I mean, you can't extrapolate that. My guess would be certainly that I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone train like that where they would just keep

adding reps so yeah I mean yeah I think there is but where could it have been 12 weeks could it have been six months I don't necessarily think that's out of the realm so I think at a certain point yeah you want to re rethink what you're doing I think you know to me training should always be carried out in cycles yeah anyway so, uh, you know, whatever that is, eight weeks, 12 weeks, probably don't want to go much more than four months or so. And then reevaluate, try to have different cycles that are focused on different manipulation of variables. Yeah. Mash back in the day, you would have had a squat like 225 for 120 reps just to grow some muscle, bud. That would have been brutal. I would have had to squat like 225 for 120 reps just to grow some muscle, bud.

That would have been brutal. I would have quit this program. No chance. By the way, that is the other thing I will tell you is that. You're going to be so sore. Yeah, no chance. It is not that much fun to do high reps. No.

Some of our subjects were not very happy when they got into that 25. And we've seen, we've done other studies on light loads and similar, you know, the, there's a lot of metabolic acidosis that's accumulated during that type of training. Now there is, there are adaptations that happen where when you continue to do it, it's not as bad as it is, but it's still, there's still more metabolic acidosis than certainly more than we're getting in the lower rep range. And that's just not necessarily a fun way to continue training. Yeah. What about the, now people are saying that you can do, like you're saying, you can do like a moderate to low load for tons of reps or, and you can do say the traditional fives and you get equal hypertrophy

and equal strength is that like i mean i'm not digging that i mean uh what are your thoughts on that so it's not so we've done a good amount of work on that and we've done made analyses on the topic yes a lot of other excellent research that's been carried out. No. So yes, hypertrophy, whole muscle hypertrophy seems to be very similar. I think the evidence on that is now compelling, right? Agreed. I would say with as high a level of confidence as I could give on any variable, I would say that you can achieve similar whole muscle hypertrophy across a very wide spectrum of loaded weights, up to 30, 40 even reps. can achieve similar whole muscle hypertrophy across a very wide spectrum of loaded loaded

up to 30 40 even reps um now strength wise that is not necessarily the certainly on from a strength perspective if you're looking at dynamic strength carried out on a similar testing uh implement so let's say you're doing squats in your uh in your program and you're testing one RM squat, clearly a benefit to heavier load training, to one RM squat. The benefits somewhat, I don't want to say it disappears, but it certainly attenuates, it diminishes when you test on a neutral device. So when we do like an isometric demometry, let's say we're going to do an extension for, for quad strength, you see much less difference between the heavy and lighter loads than that. So what I would say is you can, I think this is a good thing too. You can achieve a good amount of strength

with light loads. You're not going to get the transfer to dynamic strength as well. But you will see neutral testing pretty equal. I don't want to say equal, but close proximity. But I think for the average person, I think their transferred activity is a daily living. it's probably not going to make a whole lot of difference in my humble opinion. They're doing light loads. Now, if you're a power lifter, yeah, you got to train with heavy loads. Sure. I mean, anyone that would tell a power lifter, yeah, you just got to do 20 rep sets and you're going to then have your great one.

I mean, that's just they need their head exactly. They'd shape travis yeah they'd be insane but they would be getting beat too last place we're losing but we've got good body fat we feel good we feel good okay i'm winning though yeah right i mean that was that was bad i mean how long are those uh you know are those studies carried out you know because that's the one i heard that you know they did the one was even talking about the uh the isometric mid-thigh pull that was fairly you know equal or at least similar but like how long are those studies being carried out i mean usually 8 to 12 weeks so in our lab uh we can never go above 12 weeks. When I say never. Yeah, a semester. Yeah, it's carried out during the semester. So you end up over holidays, first of all,

you eat, whatever they're eating. But generally, they're also off, they go on vacations. And it's just very difficult to carry out longer term studies. Even if I could, even if let's say we had no semesters and it was in people drop out, people get, they want to do their own. They don't want to stick to the same program. It's a canned program. You're not going to, you don't tailor these to the individuals. And most, especially when you're doing trained lifters, they don't want to give up their normal training for anything more than eight to 12 weeks. So just multiple days, we're trying to get the long-term studies. Like people always say, Oh, carry out these long-term. And I'm like, you know, first of all, you're, you're living in fantasy land. You've never carried out a study before. And also I would say

that I think it kind of misses the point that when you look at the, as I just mentioned before, the fact that training generally, in my opinion, should and often is carried out in blocks. So we're approximating a training block and you're not going to look at doing anyone that's doing the same program over a year. I'm saying why, you know, tell me why, but that's certainly not what I would suggest doing. And I don't think most, uh, uh, fitness professionals would recommend that either. Certainly if your goal is to maximize either strength or muscle mass results. Yeah. Right. Uh, I noticed on your Instagram the other day as well, talking about, um, animal-based proteins versus plant-based proteins. That one really caught me because I would not have assumed that there was no difference

between plant and animal-based proteins when it came to building muscle. Yeah, so that wasn't our study, first of all. That was a, they looked at acute muscle protein synthesis. Again, really interesting. So this is a topic where I've changed my mind, or certainly I've had a shift in opinion over the years where I used to believe that there was something inherent in animal proteins other than, I thought, obviously, it was somewhat qualitative.

And I thought that even if you tried to get equal quality, there was other benefits to animal proteins. And there was some early research that seemed to show that. But this study looked at a blend of proteins that was able to get an amino acid profile that matched. So they did corn, pea, and wheat, I think, protein. So it was a combination of corn, pea, and wheat. And the profile, the leucine content was similar. And anyway, no difference in muscle protein synthesis over the period measured. And interestingly, there was an attenuated response of amino acid, essential amino acid entry, but there was no difference in the vegetable plant-based protein, but there was no difference in muscle protein synthesis. And this does align. There's been several studies, including one that our group carried out when they used a fortified plant protein. And no differences in muscle growth across fat-free mass, depends on the metric use. But I think the evidence is now becoming

quite compelling that as long as you're getting sufficient protein, sometimes it's more challenging to do it. I think there are some practical issues with it, but it can be done. It's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. Plant-based protein, you can achieve equal muscle growth with a plant-based protein. You got to be more, I think, when I say I think, that's in my opinion, you got to be more focused on your protein intake. When you're eating animal-based proteins, you just don't have to think about it. But I will say, i want to say this too the comments that you get on like on my my page making everybody mad it's a religion like nutrition has become religion or oh yeah it's it's not i have no you know i have no stake in the game here so uh no

horse in the race uh to to know, to pull an accident. It doesn't matter to me. And I look, I eat animal based protein. So it's not like I am championing the plant based cause. But I think it provides a an option. Options are good. Choice is good. So why would you like, I don't know why someone would get mad.

Literally people get mad at the fact that you, you dare to show. They thought you were on their team. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Somehow, somehow showing evidence. I'm not just like going out and saying everyone should be eating plant-based proteins. I'm posting a study that shows equal. So it's just kind of silly. And to me, I think, you know, people need to reassess their priorities when they start. Sure. Sure. As long as you're getting enough protein and, you know, the right ratio of amino acids and your match kind of amino acid for amino acid, and you have enough leucine, et cetera,

like you were saying, it doesn't matter where it comes from. Once it's in your body, your body doesn't know the source really. It just knows if it has it or not. But to your point about practical considerations, like I ran numbers one time on like trying to get enough protein and enough leucine from like a beans and rice type combination. And it was like to get my 200 grams of protein. If I, if I was trying to get it from beans and rice, I also had to eat 4,000 calories of beans and rice in order to get my 200 grams of protein. And the leucine content was a third of what it would have been if I would have eaten steak or whatever it was. So, yeah, practically, I feel like if you're still just eating plants to try to get your protein, then you have a lot more planning to do in order to get, say, 200 grams of protein for a 200-pound person than if you're eating animal protein.

So the practical considerations are real, I feel like. But if you're just choosing, well, I have a plant-based protein powder and it's matched amino acid for amino acid, very similar to what a whey protein would be, then in my mind, it'd be the exact same. There's nothing wrong with having a plant-based protein powder. Well, I'd also point out, though, that, yeah, you don't necessarily have to get all your protein from food sources. So this is what I would say. With eating an animal-based diet, it's much easier not to need supplementation. Like you mentioned, yeah, if you want to go all

plant-based, you probably would do well by having some protein supplements. And no, I am not paid by the vegetable plant-based protein supplement. We're going to see you on the next Game Changers film for sure. I'm just saying that is- We had a sponsor for a long time that they had like vegan protein and they would just send us just buckets of it. And I was like, great, free protein powder. Like maybe the amino acid profile is not the exact same as whey protein but who cares it's still just a bucket of amino acids that i can put in my body in addition to the rest of my diet like at the end of the day

i'm getting enough of everything and that's really all that matters exactly if something makes you mad you really should check yourself you might you know you might make me raise my eyebrow you know i hear things all the time that make me say, huh, like the fact that high reps and low reps create the same opportunity. It makes me raise my eyebrow. But if it makes me mad, then yeah, that's right. Then it's my religion. Then other people will get mad.

It's a religion. Yeah. No, it doesn't make you laugh. If you want to get mad mad you get mad at like world poverty something not not training or nutrition no those are things right they should never be a culture or religion it just is really right and look at scientists like me it's about the data and and the data in the context of what i know practically to to work so you have to understand the limitations of things yeah and doug to your. So you have to understand the limitations of things.

Yeah, and Doug, to your point, if you have to go eat 4,000 calories, you might as well go lift a lot of weights to go with those 4,000 calories. Sure. You're going to have plenty of calories to get out. If you're trying to get strong, 4,000 calories isn't going to hurt you. Yeah.

Hey, Brad, I got a question for you. So I've read for many years on random internet sites and whatnot about sarcoplasmic versus myofibrillar hypertrophy. To what degree is that really a thing that you can influence? What does the research actually say on that outcome and how much control you have over it? So interesting topic. I've kind of had a shift in my opinions, somewhat shifted back and forth on this. Whereas I was somewhat doubting that there was any practical relevance of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. I think some of the newer data has given me cause to reassess my opinion on this. And yeah, so first of all, there does seem to be, there certainly is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy per se, where there's going to be growth in the sarcoplasma of the cell. The question is, can you influence it to a greater

extent than contractile hypertrophy and specifically through a certain type of training, through one type of training or another. And some recent work out of my colleague's lab, Dr. Mike Roberts, I mentioned my former student is there now, and was in collaboration with another colleague of mine, Cody Horn, did some really interesting work work and did seem to show that your higher repetition, higher volume training had a greater effect on the sarcoplasmic fractions. Is that just like glycogen storage and capillary density, mitochondrial density type stuff? Not necessarily clear here. It could be T tubules as well, but yeah. So look, generally there's going to be proteins, glycogen, these molecules, these substances will draw their osmolites and they will draw fluid into the cell as well.

So other non, non-contractile proteins, the development of these non-contractile proteins and glycogen as well, would conceivably draw greater fluid into the cell and cause greater hypertrophy. I will say a couple of things. I think the evidence still remains relatively weak on it. So my opinion is therefore quite weak as well. If you've have a, if you've gone to my head, do I say, yes, there's sarcoplasmic, that you can do high reps and cause sarcoplasmic hypertrophy? Certainly I wouldn't say that,

but I think it's interesting. And I think there's some evidence to indicate that. And if you're a bodybuilder, there's really no evidence to indicate that there would be a benefit to heavier load uh lower volume training in that respect so at least some of the training seems to be uh pointing towards that you should at least do some in that realm i think the other important thing uh to to consider here which some people kind of throw out there is that well well, this is just temporary. Like somehow it just goes away.

You know, it's like a pump. It's not a pump. Again, when you draw fluid into the cell, because you're increasing the non-contractal proteins and non-contractal element components, the fluid is going to stay in this. The muscle needs to have a certain ratio of fluid to various elements in their substances. And it's not like that's just going away. Now it is true that generally speaking, it's not going to contribute much to strength. That could be why there might be some disconnect between getting bigger and perhaps strength increases if you're looking at it from a linear standpoint. But I also will say it's not like there's a huge difference in the growth. It's not like you're getting 20% growth versus 5% growth. I mean, we're talking a few percent here in terms of

the difference. So would that be practically meaningful? Probably to a bodybuilder it would. Would that be practically meaningful to the average gym goer? That's up to them to decide. But as a geek who is a former bodybuilder and likes to swim in that stream, I think that certainly it's some interesting evidence that has practical implications for those who want to maximize their mass. Yeah. One of the things that we're seeing a ton of and hearing about, you know, through countless podcasts and whatnot, is the connection between, obviously, exercise and brain health. But even more specifically, when it comes to brain health, lifting weights and building muscle on the longevity side.

Have you seen many papers come through really connecting muscle to brain health, longevity pieces? I have. Again, that is not my area of expertise, so I don't really delve heavily into the literature, but I mean, yeah, I've seen the, I've seen made analyses on the topic. And there does seem to be a connection as to specifically resistance training, whether it is. So again, the mechanistically is it have to do with blood flow and, and other or, and, or other factors, or is it the muscle itself? I mean, muscle is an endocrine organ. It secretes

substances into the bloodstream. I don't know the answer to that. I haven't looked that deep into that literature. Yeah. Dr. Tommy Wood, we talked to him for a while about brain health, and it was awesome because he was saying basically like lifting weights is one of the six things i was like wondering where where the specific connection between like increased it kind of makes sense on the longevity side that you're just strong and healthy uh and your your joints are going to move well your body's going to move well if you're training but how it relates to really like brain health over a long period of time is very interesting. Andy Galvin makes a good guess at that, talking about lactate, how lactate is used really more efficiently, you know,

in the brain than even glycogen or glucose. But that, but that's Andy's, it's not my realm. Yeah. And again, I don't, I haven't delved heavily into the literature and it's not my area of expertise, but I can make some guesses, too, that, number one, we know stress has negative effects basically on all your organs. Lifting weights is a very good stress reducer, so could that have something to do with it? We know that mental focus, constantly having mental focus, we know doing crossword puzzles has big effects on your brain. Well, can lifting weights, because there's a lot of focus that's involved in lifting weights, could that be a thing? So there's a lot of hypotheses

that I could just think of without knowing the mechanistic aspects of that literature. And my guess is they probably don't have a good handle on the mechanisms anyway, just because it's pretty difficult. What a lot of people who are not involved in research don't appreciate is that mechanistic work is very difficult. There's so many confounding factors when you're trying to tie a mechanism into an outcome that people who have very strong opinions on mechanisms usually aren't the people that are doing the research. Right. And especially if it's someone's brain, we can't, what can you do to find out, you know, it's like, you gotta be careful.

Yeah. You know, I would like to ask, you know, I know with Chris Beardsley talks about like, you know, talk, obviously you say the same thing about mechanical tension, but then he talks about the most important parts to really get the maximum amount of opportunity would be like a maximum effort, a maximum velocity, and that you go as close to failure as possible. Would you say that sums it up? I think you need to train relatively close to failure or quite close to failure. And there's some emerging evidence that shows that, but do you necessarily need to train to failure? I am not. I used to be on that

band before I got into research. I was a bro for many years following, you know, muscle and fitness was my Bible when I first started training. Me too. The routines of the bodybuilders. So it was go hard or go home. But I think, look, we did a meta-analysis. When you look at it on a binary basis, go to failure, not go to failure, it doesn't seem that going to failure is obligatory for maximizing mass. So I think that certainly a high degree of effort, what I don't think is debatable is that you have to have a high degree of effort. But the proximity to failure, I think, remains to be determined. Yeah, he even said that. I mean, he was like, I think by like an 8 RPE or something like that, where you go close, but you're not there.

But it's about, plus, if you're're talking about it's the maximum amount of reps that begin to slow down so you get maximum force maximum cross bridges you know but that's your world that would yeah certainly that will always happen when you uh where i say virtually always happen when you go towards failure when when you're approaching failure, the weights, the repetition speed will necessarily slow down. Sure. So that's what he was just saying. It's like it has to slow down.

If it's going too fast, you don't get the myosin acting cross-predates. And there is some good evidence, emerging evidence with velocity loss studies where they actually measure the amount of velocity loss and that having a higher velocity loss up to a certain point is uh shows greater hypertrophy so right so yeah kind of are you on that note like what uh what's the research show using accommodating resistance specifically for hypertrophy usually that's in kind of more strength realms,

kind of a power lifting thing that's branched out into other, you know, into CrossFit gyms and the like, but what does it, what does the research say about hypertrophy specifically for chains and bands, et cetera? Not much. It's actually, there's a paucity of research that's actually looked at direct use, direct measures to look at hypertrophy. There's been a few that have looked like fat-free mass,

but they're not very good proxies for hypertrophy for various reasons. Or when I say the accuracy of trying to predict whole muscle hypertrophy at a given point, given site does not match up that well with a direct imaging measure like ultrasound or MRI. So we just don't have a lot of data to go on. It's an interesting topic, and I think one that needs to be explored more. Remember that chains in particular are only relevant on an ascending

strength curve. So basically where the repetition is hard at the beginning and then gets easier as you go through the top. So if you're doing like a lat pull down, a chain's not going to be of any value. So there's limitations to being able to use chains and in a bunch of different moments. Yeah. I've heard that the only difference is that it might shift like the muscle

that's being um i guess that's experiencing the most force like for example in the back squat if you use bands or chains when you're at the bottom where normally you know that would be where you experience the most force it shifts it to the top which then the muscle like the uh the glute has been known to experience and and like uh only at extension is glute going to be you know i guess activated so it shifts it from the uh what was it the oh the adductor magnus when you're in a squat and we're trying to do hip extension that's where it's creating the most force to the glute at the top when you use bands i mean we have you read that no i i haven't and i think the glutes just for me from a uh modeling standpoint the glutes would not have much they're

not really under opposing gravity much in the upper portion so i don't know why that would be the glutes are maximally i'm saying with the the bands. No, I'm saying with bands. Yeah, no, I know. They're overcoming bands. Yes. But I don't see. Anyway, I don't see why the glutes are more active. But what I would say is, is that I can make a case why a logical case, I think, does lend itself towards the use of chains and bands in that in that realm, in the sense that you can increase the mechanical tension throughout the range of motion of the repetition. And that conceivably should, or I mean, if you

look at mechanistically that mechanical tension is a primary driver of hypertrophy, then that conceivably should transfer to a later hypertrophic response. But logic, what we know through research is logic does not necessarily play out in practice. So we can speculate, but until that work is done, I don't have a strong opinion on it. Earlier, when we were talking about plant protein versus animal protein, you said that you kind of changed your mind on that. Have there been any other areas where over the years you've really shifted your thinking and you thought one way years ago and now you've really changed your mind on it based on new research that has emerged yeah so many i mean we mentioned light load heavy load i always

thought that if you went above 15 or so reps, 12, 15 reps, basically you're doing glorified cardio. From my standpoint, obviously that's not the case. Nutrient timing, I used to think that it was really important to chug down some protein immediately following a workout. My opinion is quite drastically changed on that where the window is really more of a barn door and that as long as you're getting your meals spread out throughout the course of the day, it really becomes somewhat irrelevant. I used to think that short rest periods were more beneficial for hypertrophy because of the hormone hypothesis. So the hormone hypothesis is where there's a spike in growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1, so anabolic hormones, immediately after a workout, and that is potentiated by

shorter rest periods. At least that's what some research shows. But the preponderance of research or recent research has shown that the hormone hypothesis really doesn't do much from a hypertrophy standpoint. And we've carried out research and others have that shows that taking short rest is not beneficial and might even be detrimental. When I say short, like a minute rest, uh, and that probably two to three minutes is more appropriate for resting, at least for most, uh, exercises. So, I mean, that's just a short sampling of, uh, of some. Yeah. Dr. Schofield, it's always a pleasure to have you on shrugged. It was a pleasure to be on. We'll be back in two years. Give us the big review over the last two, two years coming up.

So where, where can people find you and learn more about your lab research? Is there a place that they can go kind of donate? I know funding is always a big piece of this. We, I mean, people can contact me if they want to sponsor our research. I'm always seeing.

Galpin has like a, a page for it and everything. Galpin's more high-end than me. Galpin's technologically savvy. I just post stuff on the internet. He's more high-end than all of us. People want to find me, I'm on Instagram. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook to some extent.

The algorithms suck on Facebook, so I don't do too much. But certainly Instagram and Twitter, I'm quite active. Search me and you'll find me. I love it. Coach Travis Fash. Matcheslead.com. You can go to Instagram, Matcheslead Performance. There he is.

You can find the man on Twitter arguing with people. Doug Larson. I'll do that, too. All right. Brad, always good to see you. And I appreciate being on the show, man. Always fun. My pleasure, man.

You can find me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. And we are Barbell Shrugged, Barbell underscore shrugged. Make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody receives inside Rapid Health Optimization. That's over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.