Barbell Shrugged - The Doctor of Growing Glutes with the Glute Guy Dr. Brett Contreras - The Barbell Life

Episode Date: July 21, 2019

Fitness Instructor who is known for sharing workout related content to his Instagram and for his over 360,000 followers. He is a published author and lecturer known for focusing on the importance of workout techniques related to glutes. He is also the owner of company and brand The Glute Lab.   He earned his PhD in Sports Sciences and is CSCS certified. He earned recognition in the fitness world for being the inventor of The Hip Thruster gym kit. He was then featured in multiple press outlets including Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and FLEX. In this episode of Barbell Shrugged the crew digs into coaching CrossFit games athletes, the journey of a professional CrossFit Coach, and managing business, life, fatherhood, and fitness.   Minute Breakdown: 0-10 – Speaking bro and not getting hung up in the PHD to connect with people  11-20 – Eliminating ego and always learning 21-30 – Why strength and conditioning needs to be lead by researchers and science 31-40 - The value of motor recruitment and soreness 41 -50 - Genetic coding and muscle type  51 -60 - Specificity in training for sport    Bret Contreras on Instagram Pre-Order Bret’s new book “The Glute Lab”   Travis Mash on Instagram ------------------------------------------- Please Support Our Sponsors   Savage Barbell Apparel - Save 25% on your first order using the code “Shrugged” -------------------------------------------- One Ton Challenge Weekend   August 1st - 4th   Find your 1rm in the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, dead, bench.    Add them up to find your One Ton Total.    The goal is 2,000 pounds for men and 1,200 for women.    4 days. 6 lifts. 1 goal. 1 Ton.    http://live.onetonchallenge.com   “What is the One Ton Challenge”   “How Strong is Strong Enough”   “How do I Start the One Ton Challenge” --------------------------------------------------- Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbl-contreras --------------------------------------------------- ► Travel thru Europe with us on the  Shrugged Voyage, more info here: https://www.theshruggedvoyage.com/ ► What is the Shrugged Collective?  Click below for more info: https://youtu.be/iUELlwmn57o ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

August 1st to August 4th, the One Ton Challenge. In your backyard, four days to find a one rep max of the snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press. You're gonna add them all up, find your one ton total with the goal for men being 2,000 pounds and ladies 1,200. The leaderboard goes live on Thursday, August 1st and shuts down on sunday august 4th if you're going to be at the crossfit games make sure you come and hang out with us the one ton challenge live at the crossfit games friday august 2nd from 5 to 8 p.m in the fit aid lounge it's going to be

so much fun west kids is in the house morgan King, Katie Cork, Savage Barbell, Whoop, FitAid. So many cool companies. Romwod is going to be in the mix. We've got a stacked lineup of incredibly strong people that we're bringing straight to you. Make sure you get over to live.onetonchallenge.com. Register for the leaderboard. Get your name in the mix. Free downloads making strong people stronger. That's a killer e-book with a starter kit on how to get strong and how to dominate the one-ton challenge. It's been awesome. Week one is in the books with all the new shows.

Jason Kalipa on Mondays. Ryan Fisher Tuesdays. Shrug Wednesdays. Thursday, the muscle maven. Friday. Friday. That's our boy Dr. Sean Pastuch laid it down last week. And then Sunday, the Barbell Life with Travis Mass,

the strongest man in the world, best coach of weightlifting right now. Friends, I appreciate you being here. Thank you. We'll see you after the show. You're listening to The Barbell Life. On today's episode, we talk with Dr. Brett Contreras. Now, he is one of the smartest people in the strength world, and one of his greatest abilities is to take all of his research and boil it down into simple core concepts that everyday people like you and me

can understand and implement. So we talk with Brett today about why so much of the strength world ignores science and how coaches and athletes can use that to perform better, and we also go really deep on Brett's science-based recommendations for building muscle. Now, obviously, you can tell that's something we've been focusing on so much lately, muscle gain, because as you may have heard, we've just launched our new guides on hypertrophy, MASHJACT, and Train Stupid. Now, MASHJACT is all about combining science and experience to create the perfect

muscle gain programs, whether you're a strength athlete, a bodybuilder, or just an average Joe wanting to look absolutely awesome with your shirt off. So check that one out. And if you're particularly interested in weightlifting, you can check out Train Stupid, which is all about the training and the programming of our amazing record-breaking athlete, Nathan Dameron. Now, you've heard us talk about these books already, but one new important point to mention, we're going to raise the prices on these Monday night at midnight. So you've got just a few days left.

Maybe even when you're listening to this, a few hours left. Go ahead, get these guides at their launch prices before we crank up the prices. So head on over to mashelite.com to get them now. And now I'm Loren Pen penniless joined by malcolm moses hampton and travis mash as we talk with dr brett contraris hey welcome back guys today we have the doctor of glutes doctor glute dr glutes dr glutes dr glutes dr brett contreras welcome to the show man thanks for having me back oh i'm so excited man like you know i have like uh two groups of friends that would seem i have like you know some that are just like wicked in this in the middle of the research doing the

research like you know stuart mcgill and you and then i had the dudes who like the coaches who were like you know in the weight room it's so exciting it's like i love both sides yeah the worlds combined yeah but i mean brett i mean you train a lot of you know a lot of people too but uh but like you're that research like and you know what you're able to do is that you're able to take information that like the same information i just read that was blowing my wig back and you make it sound so simple and I think to me that's a that's a talent and that's also a testament to how really smart you are I think that if a person is super smart they can make something very complicated seem simple which you're very good at that which I'm well I I will say when I a lot of times I'll be on the phone with some of my friends or when I go – we have a powerlifting gym out here that I go train at a lot.

And I'm proud of the fact that I speak perfect bro. I can just blend in. I can blend in with all the meatheads just perfectly. I never want to be one of those nerdy scientists that can't even relate to people. You'll hear me, even though I have my PhD, you'll hear me saying stuff like, I'll be mentioning my gains or something. I feel this for my pecs when I do this or something. You are an inspiration then because I'm struggling with the same thing all the time.

I was just hanging out with my family this past weekend and I'd start talking about something. It doesn't matter what it is. And they're just like, I need you to use smaller words. I need you to use different words right now because I'm struggling. Struggling with understanding. Malcom is like one year exactly away from being a medical doctor. He's at Wake Forest University studying medicine right now.

I was trying to figure out when we, because I think I was on the last time we spoke and it it was in october of 2015 yeah so you're crazy yeah i was that long ago well it's a hard life being a scientist because you see so much stuff online that's wrong and you and or just in everyday conversation you'll be at a party and people will say well you know what they say they say this and it's wrong and you're like do i spend my whole life correcting people or not yes you do and and just you know go along with it just so you aren't because it takes a lot of energy to i'm sure it's a pick your battles type thing it's funny you say that because that brings us to the very first topic and this is is really Malcolm's question.

But how can we better disperse, you know, the new science out there? You know, when you guys are finding this new research out, how can we get this information, this quality information to the masses so that it can be applied better? We're in a world of, like, over-information thanks to the Internet, which is pros and cons. The Internet gives you tons of great information, but also you internet which is there is pros and cons internet you know gives you tons of great information but also you can get on there and get tons of junk so what what can we do to get this awesome information out to the masses well it's funny

you just you just gave my answer it's the the internet is a a you know they're pros and cons it's a double-edged sword because I think back to like, you know, well, I'm 40 years old and I started reading muscle magazines when I was 15. I did not have the internet until I was like in my 20s. I didn't have nice websites. There wasn't this influx of information. So, you know, if you wanted to learn about powerlifting back in the day, you subscribed to Powerlifting Magazine and, you know and you tried to meet people who were in the know. And you tried to find a gym that – if you wanted to learn about bodybuilding, you read the bodybuilding magazines. And there was like Muscle and Fitness and Flex.

Flex, man. Muscle Mag. Muscular Development came out. There was Ironman. yeah there was muscle man muscular development came out there was iron man but you you you you read those magazines and there were there were like that's there were like you know five things you read back in the day and so everyone had you know it was exposed to the same information but like you know back in the day if say arnold came up with something or some or like the mr olympia started doing something it spread like crazy and everyone started doing it.

Right. And, you know, the information was so limited. So on the plus side of that, you know, it was like word could get out because everyone subscribed to these magazines and was, you know, or at least someone at your gym would. And then the gyms would teach it to the members. It would trickle down all across the world. Whereas now, the magazines are struggling big time. I quit writing for the magazine, any magazine. I quit all of my columns and everything because the paychecks are – you have to fight them every month to get paid.

And they're all the same. They don't have – they're trying to avoid bankruptcy. So the magazines now aren't nearly as popular as they once were. Now it's all online, but there's just so much information. It's funny because you think, oh, I've been in this industry for a lot of years. And you meet people who – they're're like do you know this person do you know this person he has one million followers on instagram i'm like i've never even heard of him man i was i was just thinking the same thing the industry is so big and so so how can we

how can we do better well it's i think it's a new day and age. So we're battling this information age where we're competing for – and here's the thing. How many times do you scroll up and down Facebook and you see these sponsored posts? And the sponsored posts are always BS because it's the sleazy marketers that are selling snake oil who can afford to sponsor these ads. And those are what gets spread to the masses and the new facebook algorithms for example i used to get way more traction on my stuff than i do now because they changed the algorithms around they made it tougher for a scientist facebook made it way harder for scientists to because we don't write the sensationalistic headlines we don't you know um and we don't have time the scientists are you know and we don't have time

the scientists are busy doing science we don't have time to make some awesome video that's gonna go viral or some you know so so we have an uphill battle and but we just got to do the best we can and that involves you know this this first of all the scientists should try to relate sometimes in the academia circles it's like this circle jerk where they're just writing to impress each other. And, you know, I'm on a lot of papers. I've published – I've been on over 40 published papers. But a lot of times I feel like my role is just to help be the intermediate between the coach and the scientist, because I'm always thinking of the coaches. I picture some, you know, I picture a guy like, like some, like Jim

Wendler, or like Mark Ripito type of guy who's smart, but maybe not a scientist, but they're smart. But I picture them reading the abstract. And if you don't write it to where they can understand it, you got to tell them what what's important. If they go to read a scientific paper and the abstract is so confusing, it's not going to spread. It's not going to make a difference. You have to make sure you word the abstract properly. You have to speak. You have to communicate effectively. And then you also have to, if you want your science and your research to spread, then you have to be online. You have to be on Twitter. You have to be on Facebook and Instagram and build a following because, I mean, it's just how it is.

It's a new era. So I think the scientists need to, but it goes both ways as well because America tends to have this weird attitude about science. I don't see it. Well, I've talked to people and they, you know, I was talking to an Australian coach and a UK coach and they were like, oh, it's the same thing in our countries. But I feel like it's worse in America because, I mean, my PhD supervisor said it best, John Cronin.

He said, Brett, you guys rely on population, you know, to win. He's from New Zealand. He's like, you know, on population to win. He's from New Zealand. He's like, we rely on science. You guys have 300 plus million. We have 4 million. We don't have the population you guys do. So they have the All Blacks there, and they're the number one rugby team in the world. I know.

I love the All Blacks. Yeah. Yeah. Huge fan. The reason yeah huge because of their science they they have to be scientific and their their strength coach and that's what always bothers me when you get these arguments about science versus in the real you know the trenches the the practical guys versus the scientists and it's like a lot of places in the world it's just assumed you're going to have both if you you're a high-level coach, you have to have both.

How could science ever make you a worse coach? And how could more experience ever make you a worse coach? The thing is, there's a lot of jealousy and a lot of – I think it's a survival mechanism. I always say this you know there's fighting online and it's like all this bashing and it's it's it's it's insecurity but it's probably a genetic it's probably a biological yeah yeah it's like passed down i mean think about it if you had no confidence if you just went around looking at every everyone else like god there's so that person's so much smarter than me that person's so much better of a coach than me that person is so much better in every way shape or form than me you'd have no confidence and you wouldn't procreate you wouldn't pass on your genes

so it's probably something passed down for many generations that were kind of ingrained to like you know look pick out the flaws in people so you got the coaches making bashing the scientists for being you know esoteric and not grounded in in practical uh things so you got the coaches making bashing the scientists for being you know esoteric and not grounded in in practical uh things and you have the totally no exactly saying yeah and then you have the scientists looking down on the on the coaches saying oh they don't they're they don't know what they're talking about their science is all wrong so and really we need to be working together and absolutely we need to be working together. Absolutely. We need to be working together more. And we also have to put our egos aside and try to learn from each other and ask questions.

Because you don't see a lot of mingling between the two camps. Here's my thing, bro. I'm trying to have the best athletes in the world. So if you've got a nugget for me, I want to know. I don't care. All right. So Brett Gutierrez is smarter than me. There it is.

I'll tell it to you. That's all right. My athletes are the strongest athletes in the world, so I'm happy. He's happy. I'm happy. I don't care who's the smartest. Right, and so I guess my question for you, Brett, is like who do you think is out here? Because it really does sound like it's a communication issue,

and we've kind of been talking about this to some extent just in the things that we're doing, is who's doing a good job of kind of communicating good information? And like you said, like making sure it's accessible. That's the issue with all of, I would say, like intelligent conversation is that a lot of times intelligent people are too busy trying to prove that they're intelligent and not spending enough time making sure that they're sharing what they what they found so i have well first to address something you said travis that's the way it should be you have no ego it's it's about your your athletes but you have confidence because you've been successful in many ways in life so it's like that's how i am it's like cool uh this guy's way stronger than me has a way better

physique than i'll ever have but i don't't care. I'm not threatened by him. I promote people like crazy. I tag people online. I give credit where credit is due. I never steal anyone's stuff. And I'm a crediting machine. I tag people on my social media all the time. You see this attitude with a lot of people.

They don't ever tag anyone. It's like they have this mindset that, oh, I'm going to tag them. All my my followers are gonna leave me and follow this person and be giving them all this free money that's not the way it works you tag someone they might get a few hundred followers but it's not like you're you you if they're if they're smart and they're good in a certain way then you want your followers to follow them but all it really does is shows your shows your follower that you're a secure person and you are you give credit where credit is due and they like you more for it and it spreads good you know it's just but it's good it's just the right thing to do but

um anyway to um to answer the next question who's doing a good job well i have you know you can go to my twitter feed and see all the people that i follow i follow a ton of scientists and it's funny because out of the different social medias twitter's the hardest to get followers it's like instagram easy facebook but twitter it's like it's slow growing you feel like you're not making much of a difference on twitter but i twitter i'm on twitter because of the people i follow the scientists anytime they come out with something new boom i got it i get access to that so i have a big group of people i follow who i think are doing a good job but do they ever reach the masses not really it's it's kind of like um

you know it's the marketers who are reaching the masses with their pseudoscience. And it's always been that way, hence the term snake oil salesman. That's been around forever. And it's more probably I think about this a lot because I'm not involved. I'm not entrenched in other industries. But I bet you our industry is the worst because everyone has this – not everyone. Most people have a vanity aspect and it's like it's hard working out and eating right is hard work if there's something that's you know can if there's a supplement or a method that's you know makes it gives you better results without

having to put in the effort then how nice would that be i'd be first on the list to buy that supplement the problem is it's too good to be true. But the people who I think are doing a good job with making better athletes, I follow a guy named J.B. Morin. He's a French researcher. I think he does a good job because he's doing meaningful science. And then also he travels. He goes around. He was just in Phoenix.

He did something with Exos and influenced the track and field, the bigwigs and track and field community, and then he did a free seminar for me at my place, and I had Buddy Morris over here, the strength coach for the arizona cardinals and so it's just you got to be he's he works hard he works his butt off as a scientist and researcher and as a speaker traveling all over the world presenting and and getting his information across to the masses and i think we need and now there's a couple of uh coaches like i can't remember the guy's name cameron something i think or but he's a he he's where he works for Joe DeFranco, and Joe DeFranco's like head strength coach now, and he's doing all their stuff.

And I listen to podcasts with him, and I'm like, wow, he's doing great. That's the way to be. He's a good scientist. And, you know, I've always had a lot of respect for Joe, but props to him for hiring this younger guy who is the perfect blend between a scientist and a practitioner. He's experimenting with the stuff he reads about. And there's a lot of new technology coming out with these apps, which I have to laugh. I spent $12,000 on a force plate.

I spent $5,000 on an EMG unit. I spent $12,000 on ultrasound EMG unit. I spent $12,000 on ultrasound. Ultrasound so I could measure muscle thickness. That's a measure of hypertrophy. Otherwise, you need MRI or something. I'm doing some research. I'm trying to get some research off the ground at Wake Forest to do something very similar. That's really cool.

It's like $30,000. Now you're coming out with some of these apps for $10 that can do a lot of this stuff that you know i spent dang it i know i mean i said all the time but anyway he's he's using these apps he's doing the science he's he's um you know he and that's the way it should be so we need more of that and you know we need more coaches that are there's this attitude in the u.s like you, screw the research, or I am the research. I don't need the science. I just don't like that attitude at all. I totally agree.

It's a mixture of the two, man. It's like you've got to have them both. There are some – I read some research, and it obviously seems very flawed, whether it's the population that they tested doesn't affect my athletes. Because if you just get some general people, it's hard to apply that to incredible athletes. I mean, it's a little different genetics. And talking to my friend Andy Galpin, which if you don't know him, that dude is awesome.

You two would be best friends. It's funny. We've never met in person, but we've texted each other. We've reached out a bunch. We keep missing each other, but I do think we'd be good friends if we lived in the same city. I mean, dude, the minute I met Andy Galpin, it was a bromance instantly. Even my wife was like, you know, this is getting weird. You know, like it's just I am a strength coach who's super, you know, fascinated with, you know, guys like you who are more of the exercise scientists,

you know, because I'm trying to find anything to help my athletes, and this dude was a wealth of knowledge. But, you know, really what I'm trying to get at too is i really because i want to make sure i get on certain points is guys like you and andy in a world now i'm going this is going to be totally applicable to to me so um because this is my show but but you know with now that usa weightlifting is totally decentralized i would love to find to hear from people like you and andy and he's going to be on my show in a day or two but like how do we get guys like you more involved with us because here's the thing let me clarify before you answer is that we're always hearing you know strength

coaches in america or you know way that the coaches um about what the chinese are doing or what about the what are the russians doing what are the whoever's doing and um which infuriates me because i feel like we have guys like you and andy and coaches like me in america and on a level playing field giving the same athletes like i would rather have what you know what are we as americans doing because at the end of the day if you look at the olympics america just last i checked in 2016 dominated the olympics however in our sport we just don't seem to have evolved whether it be recruiting process or getting guys like you more involved so how can we take a very decentralized program and somehow, you know, one thing for sure is weed through the not so good scientists, but get guys like you and Andy involved and take that information and, you know, discern what is applicable to coaches like me.

So I think the onus is on the researchers. So it's funny. I live in Phoenix, Arizonazona and there's a lot of good coaches out here but i've just i don't reach out to people much i have my own little cave that i stick to and there's this there's a strength coach from ireland his his name's robbie bork skinny little guy and he's just the greatest networker i've ever met so he comes into phoenix to do an internship with altus you know they train like the top sprinters in the world and they have like a hundred athletes it's it's amazing to go i watched them i watched a practice session and i was just

enthralled but um he did an internship there and then you know he's like he comes and meets me and he's like do you ever talk to this person this person i'm like no he's like, he comes and meets me and he's like, do you ever talk to this person, this person? I'm like, no. He's like, man, what are you doing here? Phoenix has so many good strength coaches. Why don't you network? And I don't know. I just.

Great question, man. Yeah. Yeah. So he has this dinner. He invites me to this dinner. And I show up to this dinner and it's this James Fitzpatrick guy who owns a facility. He's big in the CrossFit world. And then Mark Verstegen is there, Dan Paff, Stu McMillan.

Dan Paff has probably trained more Olympic track and field sprinters and jumpers than probably anyone, including Carl Lewis including like carl lewis back in the day he's been around forever and here i am having dinner with all these guys and it was really nice and i'm going how did robbie some random guy from ireland put this together and none of us put this together so it's just putting their ego aside and contacting them i have this my former intern andrew vagotsky is such a smart guy. He's like 25. He's so much smarter than I am.

And I'll always be talking about something. I'll be like, well, did you email the person? I'm like, no. It's just – so if we want to make an impact, we got to be going to the – we got to be connecting with the influencers. Like if you – if I wanted something to be big in the track and say I was on to something big and it involves sprinting or weightlifting, I've got to figure out who are the influencers. Who do people listen to in the weightlifting community? Who are the biggest voices? I need to connect with that person get on the phone with them like the old days you know and talk to them and teach them

what you know and then that's how it can trickle down in my opinion but it's it's you gotta set your ego aside and reach out to people please do any scientists listening please reach out to me all right yeah if you've got some good information i'm all all for it i have zero ego when it comes to that i'm just you know my ego goes down at the competition not in who knows what like all i care about am i winning or am i not and so if you got something for me i'm all ears and so i'm very humble you know i even got one of our former interns greg knuckles like yeah he is super smarter than me. He's smarter than everyone I've ever met.

But so, like, I, you know, I'm always reading his stuff, you know, like, yeah, he's smarting me. Greg and Andrew, I think, are the two smartest guys in the field. They're just young. They're going to go on to do huge things. But I'm on a lot of email chains with Greg. We're publishing a squat paper together with a bunch of guys, and he's so smart. Dude. He's in a different league.

He's in a different league. I mean, talking about a dude who aced his SATs in ninth grade. Yeah. Yeah. I tell people all the time I'm going to be a doctor. Not that smart. But I'm interested in all these really smart people and all these talented people. And I do appreciate this kind of sentiment of getting people together in the same space, either if it's a digital space or the same room, to kind of collect the information.

All right. I agree with what you're saying. So now let's move on to, I'm really curious now that I've read a lot of your articles and papers that you've published about hypertrophy. I want to get it from your own mouth. I'm sure you already spend more time with Brad. Is it pronounced Schoenfeld? I'm taking it? Yeah. So tell me, what are some of the keys that you've learned from him

i want to hear from your mouth i read it from your papers so i'm intrigued now i mean like i just wrote this you know i wrote this book who's going to go out to you know here in a couple days i guess by the time you guys are listening to this it'll already be released i'm sure but um i i'm intrigued now with hypertrophy like i've always put a lot of my athletes through hypertrophy cycles, and I think it's a huge, you know, it's been a huge impact to why we're winning. But I want to know, like, you know, what have you learned in your studies? You know, what's the latest, I guess? So it's actually an exciting time for hypertrophy research because,

so in 2010, Brad Schoenfeld came out with a review paper and i was so happy that's why we became friends i was so happy back then i was like i remember thinking god i want to why can't someone just write a review paper summarizing all the research on hypertrophy and you know because i i'm so interested in that stuff. But back then, you know, this was seven years ago, I didn't, I wasn't as good of a researcher. Plus, even now, ironically, I'm going back now because I'm presenting at the end of the month on the mechanisms of hypertrophy. So I'm actually, instead of just relying on Brad, I'm actually going back and finding all the research myself. But back then, I wasn't as good a researcher.

So Brad comes out with this review paper, The Mechanisms of Muscular Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training or something like that. And I read it and I was just so thankful. So I reached out to him. I emailed him. And I remember feeling so gay at the time. I'm like, bro, we should talk on the phone together. It felt so weird being like, we should talk on the phone. And he's like, yeah, I'd love to.

Anyway, we started talking. We struck up a friendship. And we're, you know, he's one of my top few best buds. And we talk all the time. But I think it's important as a top few best buds, and we talk all the time. But I think it's important as a scientist not to just – you never want to just accept something without – well, on the one hand, I think you need to have a bunch of trusted individuals from different subfields because fitness is very broad like you're never going to know the most about nutrition and you know sports nutrition and recovery and strength and power and speed and they're all the top experts and every one of those things are a different person you know body composition biomechanics

there's a different expert you know there's a different group of experts in every one of those subfields. So I have my go-to people. For example, I love Alan Aragon for nutrition and sports nutrition stuff. And so I always just kind of parrot what Alan says because I trust him and I know how scientific he is. But if I really wanted to be an expert on something you have to read the research and experiment on things with yourself and clients and then become your own expert so with Brad I've always just kind of I I stick to the biomechanics and I rely on him for the physiology with muscle hypertrophy and so there's a the way Brad has always explained that there's a – the way Brad has always explained it, there's three main mechanisms. There's three main drivers of hypertrophy.

The most important is mechanical tension, putting tension on the muscle. And you can have active or passive tension, meaning the muscle generates tension when it's activated. And when it's stretched, there's tension in the muscle. And so weight training involves a combination of both. When you move, you know, when you perform a full range of motion exercise with heavy resistance, you're getting a combination of active and passive tension. And that, you know, stimulates, you know, mechanotransduction. And that leads to signaling of different pathways, which ultimately lead to hypertrophy. Right.

Well, then the second mechanism that some researchers think it's equally as important, but it's generally accepted to be second to mechanical tension is metabolic stress. Get the pump, baby. Well, it's the pump. It's the lactate. It's inorganic phosphate. It's hydrogen ions. It's all lactate. It's inorganic phosphate. It's hydrogen ions. It's all these things that are built up through exercise. And kind of like the – I won't say – it's mostly through anaerobic glycolysis but also through all the energy systems.

You get these metabolites and byproducts that are built up and through exercise. And I would think blood flow restriction, that, that, that whole protocol has definitely shown the importance of, you know, just using simple metabolic stress. I mean, I'm definitely, I agree with totally that, you know, that mechanical tension is number one, but you know, the, you can't ignore, I mean, the metabolic stress component there. Well, I, and I think the same way but so here's where the interesting arguments come into play so like it to me was always obvious yeah metabolic stress it's huge that's why bodybuilders are more muscular than powerlifters even though

powerlifters are moving more weight well not exactly so there's a researcher named Stu Phillips, and he's so smart. He's like every bit as smart as Brad Schoenfeld, but they study different areas and they have different takes on things. So Stu thinks it's just about motor unit recruitment. Obviously, you can't just activate the motor units for a split second. There's a time component. You don't have sufficient time under tension, but you've got to fully activate the motor units for a split second there's a time component you know you have sufficient time under tension but it's you got to fully activate the motor units and this happens when you take any load i mean within reason obviously you can't just lift a light load for an hour straight it's got to be something like 30 reps and below but as if you go to failure or close to it you're going to end

up activating all the motor units according to the size principle and Heneman's size principle, and therefore you'll get full hypertrophy. So he doesn't believe in the metabolic stress theory. He thinks it's just that blood flow restriction training, you know, you end up with greater activation with blood flow restriction training with lighter loads because you're going to rely more on fast twitch because the oxygen is restricted. So he thinks it's not metabolic stress. He thinks it's just a factor of getting full motor inner recruitment. He also doesn't believe much in the third mechanism, which is muscle damage.

And muscle damage is probably what we all originally, when we first started lifting, we worshipped it kind of. It's like if you weren't sore, you'd feel like you didn't get it worked out. But we overvalued it. It's not as important as the other two. And there's a recent paper that came out that showed that, yes, you have increased protein synthesis following a workout, but you only start getting hypertrophy once the damage is repaired. So there's a doubt that's cast upon the muscle damage theory as well. Now, currently, I believe that all three mechanisms are responsible for muscle growth through different pathways. And a lot of these pathways are redundant. For example, all three of them can cause muscle growth through satellite cell activation.

So you have these stem cells sitting outside on basal, on the basal lamina of the muscle cells and they, when they get called upon, you know, through mechanical tension or muscle damage or metabolic stress, they will donate their nuclei into the muscle. Now you have more nuclei because muscle cells are multinucleated and now you have more machinery to you know produce produce genetic information to call upon the parts of the cell to you know synthesize protein and build muscle and that's called the myonuclear domain theory your muscle can only get as your muscle cell can only get as big as the number of nuclei it has in it well but here's the thing there's with with research most of the funding goes towards cancer research or obesity or these big big problems we don't have enough you know that

andy galpin talking right now i know totally so it's so it's like we don't have a lot of these questions are we we're just speculating because we really don't know the answer for example blood flow restriction training has been shown to be awesome. It's great. There's so many studies in support of it. But is it beneficial when you're already lifting heavy weights? Is it additive? Like if you're already doing squats hard twice a week and hitting various rep ranges

and you throw in some bfr leg extensions and leg curls do you get additional growth is it additive of course when you take a sedentary person and give them bfr or katsu in japan they call it katsu you give them that yes they'll grow but what about uh and that's what you were talking about travis. Does it apply to our population? Do you get more satellite cell recruitment when you try to target all three pathways, or is there a limit? If you're just lifting heavy and then you throw in some high rep stuff, do you get greater growth on top of that, or is it redundant? A lot of these questions remain unanswered for now, but I bet in five years we'll know a lot more.

I hope so, man, because we had my man Zach Long on our show, who's kind of a blood flow restriction, I call him an expert. I mean, he's a physical therapist, but he's super smart. And he was talking about it, and it definitely intrigued me because I was thinking, like, for example, say you have a weightlifter and you identify that their vastus medialis is super weak it would be super cool to think that blood flow restriction would work because you know when you're only you know we're only using that metabolic stress component they can it's not going to affect their training you know there's no damage being done so

you can recover because you know weightlifter you know we have to go very frequently so you know i don't have you can't just squat twice a week you know because we're clean and jerky and snatching almost every day so i need recovery is important and so um if that if blood flow restriction does apply to our population that would be a super cool thing i just need to see a little bit more research before i actually start using it and i think that's um that's i'm doing a presentation at the end of the month on advanced training techniques and it's like when you go look at all these things like rest pause training drop sets negatives and all these things it's like the a lot of the research you either have mechanistic research where they show cool this led to high levels of activation or lactate production or creatine kinase, some measures of tension or metabolic stress or muscle damage or something. So that just points out mechanisms.

That doesn't tell you in an actual training protocol, does it work? Does it beat out? Does it outperform what's popular? But then you have studies comparing it to just traditional training. And a lot of them, some show benefits, some don't. Some show that it's the same. So it's like you can do heavy weights or blood flow restriction training and get a similar amount of growth. So you would conclude, most people would conclude, oh, that's no better than what's popular, so I don't need to do it.

I don't know. If that were true, what you just said, if blood flow restriction was equal to going heavy, then there would be times, obviously, that blood flow restriction, to me, would be super important because, you know, I could do it without and I could recover much faster. Because, you know, going heavy, there's going to be an element of damage being done. The CNS. Exactly. And that's where I'm going in my presentation. I'm going to point out, you've got all these advanced methods out there, and it's like, what's the theoretical rationale?

What does the research say? And then I'm going to say, okay, now let's break it down into how can we make this practical? When would it be useful? And the stronger you get and the older you get, the more beat up you get. In your 20s, you don't think about this stuff much because you're invincible. But when you get older, the value is, God, I want to throw on some cuffs and do some BFR training. Exactly. I'm going to accentuate the negative component.

I'm going to do a drop set here because I get the same hypertrophy in less time, and I'm not so beat up the next day. Right. Yeah. I mean, I'm 44, and I'm very beat up. So, yeah, it definitely made the hair on my neck stand up. I'm like, huh, that would be awesome if what you're saying is true. But, yeah, like there just needs to be a little bit more clarification on a lot of these more advanced protocols.

You know, I just need to see, you know, is it as applicable as I think it is. Yeah, Brett, when you, you know, we were talking earlier about all the bad information that you see online. But when you look at what you see many gym goers incorporating to try to have hypertrophy, I mean, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see and what are some of the best prescriptions that you would give to people? Oh, good question. So I used to just see some skinny guy in the gym and I thought, you know, God, that guy needs to squat and deadlift. He wouldn't need it. He's going around doing all the isolation movements or something. And then I started reading up on the genetics of bodybuilding. In fact, I wrote a good article about it in 2010 called The Truth About Bodybuilding Genetics. And I've stayed on

top of it ever since. That was seven years ago and I've stayed on top of it ever since. That was seven years ago, and I still stay on top of it. And there's so much of it is genetics. There's such a genetic component to strength, to hypertrophy, to body composition, everything you can think of. Soft tissue strength, desire to exercise, pain tolerance, you name it, there's a huge genetic component. That's what Andy Galpin blows us away with,

this genetic coding. Muscle types and everything, yeah. And then what genetics are actually turned on. It's insane. And you have some guys who, and we've known that since we were in high school, there were these guys who haven't touched a weight and they're jacked and you're going, I lift so hard and i'm not nearly as muscular than them and and you know why so we

always think that the biggest dude is just doing something better than us and you know the the vast majority of people out there want to follow the routines of the person who has the physique they want to look like or this the best the has the physique they want to look like or the strongest power lifter. Bad mistake. And it doesn't necessarily, they could just have good genetics and they could be doing something that doesn't even. The moment I picked up a barbell, I was stronger than everybody. Yeah, right.

I mean, day one. Like, I totally remember the moment I lifted, I was just above everyone, you know. So, yeah. So, you don't necessarily, I mean, now you should listen to me because I'm smart, but just because someone is strong, that might be the last person. I say this all the time. Let's say, like, just to back up what you're saying, you take a guy like Ed Cohn. Do you really want to listen to what he says about deadlift?

I mean, you see the way he's built. He's got these monster arms. He's locking out his knees. I want to see the guy who can deadlift a ton of weight where he's locking out at his waist because he's not designed to deadlift and he's done something cool you know what i mean i'm not saying oh by the way edcon's super smart you should listen but i'm just saying like or you really want to take advice from a seven foot six dude on how to dunk a basketball yeah they never really had to overcome much right yeah it's like i always get out of my glute seminars i'll say all right here's this lady named jen selter and uh she's got

so many followers on instagram like nine million followers or something crazy like that and she has this amazing butt and here's her workout and i show it and it it's like the it's not even a good glute activation workout that you would do before a workout it's like you know 15 body weight squats and these kicking movements kicking is hip flexion it's like she doesn't even know what works the glutes and I always have my attendees right I say raise your hand if you would atrophy from this if you if this was your workout your glutes would shrink and everyone raised their hand i'm like this isn't even a good pre-glute activation workout that you do before the workout i'll tell you what her glute workout was was her mom and dad having sex

that's exactly what her glute workout was she's got the these genetics from the gods and so she doesn't understand but to answer your question question about what things are useful for hypert popular, daily undulated periodization. That's just one way. But all the ways of periodizing are good. But you've got to deload sometimes. You've got to – you need specifics. You can't just go in and do pure muscle confusion, pick five new exercises every time you train. You've got to buckle down.

Go with the movements that feel best for you. And I don't care if you're doing bench press, close grip bench, incline press, weighted push-ups. They're all going to get your pecs, front delts, and triceps bigger. But pick the ones that feel right for you and get stronger at them and learn how to periodize your training to tease out muscle hypertrophy. But the problem is a lot of people don't understand that all right like you can go you can go up in strength without using a muscle

more like ground reaction force and muscle force are different so if i squat more weight and i'm standing on a force plate, that will register more ground reaction force. So you could say, oh, force went up. Well, that's external force. Your internal force in the muscles, you've got to make sure you're using them and using good form. And this is where the bodybuilders have always said, make sure you're feeling the muscles. So, you know, probably in powerlifting, you know, especially equipped powerlifting, the best way to, you know, think about what Louie always said, the pecs aren't that important in a bench press. The triceps and front delts are more important.

And then you've got the bodybuilder saying you've got to learn how to use your pecs. So if you want muscular pecs, then you have to – it's not just about getting stronger, it's about getting stronger while using the pecs, with the mind-muscle connection, whatever you want to call it, but trying to make sure your form uses that. So it's not just about powerlifting, it's about bodybuilding and powerlifting. So I say those two roads, progressive overload and the mind-muscle connection flow together. And that's why, for example, my glute glute programs yes we are trying to get stronger at squats and hip thrusts and deadlifts and and but we're also doing lots of high rep higher up work where i'm not saying okay you did um you did 30 of these band you know lateral band walks or

frog pumps or quadruped banded quadruped hip extensions i want you to go for 33 we're not trying to go up it's quality not quantity you're trying you're just trying to feel the muscle you're trying to yeah feel burn and get a pump not trying to go up so that those two roads go together i think to optimize or to maximize hypertrophy and and it's hard it's hard because with women it's easier to this is why I like training women. A lot of them are, once they get lean, they're happy with their upper body development, their legs, but they want more glutes a lot of times. So it's easy because I can help them, and they're not trying to grow every muscle. But with the bros, we want everything big.

We want traps. We want all three delt heads. We want bi's, tri's, lats, pecs, glutes, quads, hammies, calves. We want everything big. We want traps. We want all three delt heads. We want bi's, tri's, lats, pecs, glutes, quads, hammies, calves. We want everything. So it's really hard to do. So that's one challenge with program design. How do you deliver optimum stimulus to all the muscles without overdoing it? Because, yeah, you can't have like a power lifting and a bodybuilding routine together.

It won't work. You can blend them a little bit but if you're trying to maximize your squat but then you're also throwing in leg extensions leg press hack squat lunges you know it's gonna be really tough to recover and do enough frequency to get strong yeah well squatting is hard three times a week is hard enough and then you know so you've got to figure out what can you recover from. And then, all right, so you're trying to get better at your squat. Then you're also trying to get your strongest deadlift.

I always say powerlifting would be easy if it was just the squat or the bench or the bench and the deadlift. But now you throw in squats and deadlifts compete with each other a little bit. They totally do, yes. Yeah, so it's like you know if try to when you're trying to maximize both of them you sometimes sabotage but it's easier when you focus on one or the other but then what if you're what if you like the hip thrust what if you like the bulgarian split squat what if you like heavy back extensions well you know it's like then then you start trying to go up on five different exercises and it's too much. You can't juggle everything at once.

You end up – Can't recover. Right. Man, that's – all right, so awesome. All right, so here's an important one because I wish Malcolm was here because this is his question. He's read some of the stuff you've been writing on exercise transference. And he said, example, like that the hip thrusts, you know, transfer better to squat.

And to deadlift. And deadlift. Better than necessarily the deadlift to squat. The deadlift transfer to squat, yeah. So, you know, how, what is, explain how all that works. Okay, so, so I'm going to answer this in two parts the first part we can go by research and we can see what you know we have a couple studies already we'll have a case study with identical twins which is nice because i was the trainer for that i also have a study from

new zealand straight coaches who looked at adolescent male rugby players. And then there's a pilot study that came out of this coach from Oregon. And what these show is that the hip thrust, if you were to just to do one, say you were trying to maximize your squat and you wanted, you could do one assistance lift, either the hip thrust or the deadlift, the hip thrust is a better assistance lift than the deadlift for squats. And also either the hip thrust or the deadlift, the hip thrust is a better assistance lift than the deadlift for squats. And also for the hip thrust is also a better assistance lift for deadlifts than, than the squat is. So it's a, it's a good assistance lift. And I always think it's funny when I read these articles that are bashing on the hip thrust, you know, I want to go.

So it's clearly just jealousy. Cause I'm like, okay, so let me get this straight. Out of all these assistance lifts, reverse hypers are good. Back extensions are good. Pull-throughs are good. Glute ham raises are good. But the hip thrust is not good. Come on. Obviously, they're all posterior chain exercise.

What did you do to these people, man? One of the reasons I'm going to reach out to you is like I'm reading like these dudes just bashed on you. All they could really say was like the only thing that they had, they said, well, you know, we've been around all the greatest power lifters, and I've never seen any of them do that. Let me just be the first to say is like most of the dudes writing these articles are guys I've beaten, and I used it. So, I mean. Yeah, man. I still use it. I remember you programming that in for me like years ago.

Well, so here's where I think the confusion lies. So, because I try to say, why are they so angry about this? Man, like what's their problem? And I think when you're a power lifter you're focused on your squat and your deadlift and it gets so hard to keep going up over time that you really need specificity right you could the case that um um you know that you you should only do three lifts as a power lifter you could make a good case for pure specificity that any distraction from anything you do that's extra you could have just been doing specificity your your exact lift

in the exact way you perform it you know on the platform or whatever you in competition don't do front squats don't do high bar back squat if you do low bar back squats use your same stance just do as much volume as you can do that throughout the week and you know what whatever you can recover from and throw in sprinkle in deadlifts with whatever you can recover from and bench press and just do those three lifts and you've got some successful power lifters who do that but it's like i think because some of these guys who are raw squatting freaking over a thousand pounds now and it's like how long does it take to them to get to their how long are they squatting to where they i mean i would bet you it takes them an hour to work up to their top sets of squats you know right

yeah i haven't ever trained any of them i've seen them train but it's like it gets so specific at that point but i will tell you you take beginners like the people we typically start with when we personal train or the athletes we typically get when they first start training with us, and you have them hip thrust and it builds their squat and deadlift. That's why I will write something about hip thrust on my social media channels and you'll get all these people going, thanks, Brett. When I started doing these, my squat went up, my deadlift went up, because it's a good assistance list but the stronger you get you can't okay it's like when i started doing reverse hypers i noticed a distinct boost in my deadlift but now not so much now i don't now i just phase it in every once in a while i love the reverse hyper but

what's going to get my deadlift stronger is intelligent specificity i gotta do you know i got a sumo pull mix in the conventional because I know the conventional helps, but is the hip thrust going to build my deadlift? Well, it's funny because I just missed a 635-pound sumo deadlift, and I missed it above the knees. I'm like, I can hip thrust 815 pounds. How did I miss the lockout? It's because I'm so weak off the floor. By the time I got past my knees, I was just shot. But anyway, I do see their point about powerlifting. People start worshiping the assistance lifts. Now, we have data showing that it does transfer.

And you asked what is it better for, the squat? What is the hip thrust better for, the squat or the deadlift? I think it's better for the deadlift. But here's what's funny. I will tell you that a lot of the powerlifters who have hip pain, they do some hip thrusting before they squat, light hip thrusting, and it helps them feel pain before they squat. Bro, I have arthritic hips, and if I do hip thrust before I squat,

it allows me to squat much better. So you could argue that it helps through that mechanism, not through a distinct like strengthening factor but through a you know whatever is going on or if you improve your mechanics a little bit or whatever is going on that it can help you tolerate more squat volume but i think uh with the deadlift it really helps lock out strength and there's one study we have showing that it led to way better increases in isometric mid-thigh pull strength which is kind of like a deadlift lockout position, not the same. You're using more quad.

But anyway, I think it helps with the deadlift lockout. I think it transfers to the deadlift more than the squat. But I hear all kinds of anecdotes. It ranging from my squat boosted 100 pounds when I started hip thrusting to it didn't affect my squat, but it helped my deadlift. Now my lockout is my strongest component. It used be the weakest and now it's my strength to I start doing them and I didn't notice any transfer at all so you hear all of it but you hear that with every popular assistance lift so it depends on the person I would say this as far as you know

the specificity thing is like um i definitely think that you know specific specificity plays a role but i've noticed a lot of the guys who really you know focus all on that and they just limit it down to squat bench deadlift i notice a lot more i mean maybe this is just it's just observation too so this is not a study but i've noticed way more injuries you know um i know in the weightlifting world, the Chinese who are completely opposite of what you're saying. I mean, they're very specific, you know, they snatch, clean, jerk, squat. They only squat a couple of times a week.

They do tons of assistance work and hypertrophy work. And not only are they beating everyone cause they, you know, in the Olympics, they just, you know, they outperformed everybody, But they look better and they're healthier. And so I think there's something to be done. I agree with that. And I will tell you, like, so, well, it's like I'm not qualified to say, hey, because like Milanochev does just the three lifts. I'm not going to say your training is all wrong. If you did this, you'd be better.

But what I will say, I can speak confidently about average personal training clients, you know, because I've trained for 20 years. I've been a personal trainer and I will tell you, I've had times where my girls are, they're all doing the same program and they've stalled out on their bench for, you know, three straight months. I take the bench press out. I had them do incline press and pushups, dead stop pushups where they got reset at the bottom they did that for six straight weeks and then upon returning to the bench press yes three out of the six girls set prs their first time coming back same with box squats i gave them box squats where they had to sit back and keep vertical shins and like three out of the six girls set prs in their free squat

upon returning to them and so variety i i know variety is helpful for man there's an intermediates and i could train the best in america and i agree with you high school athletes collegiate athletes this stuff's all useful but then there gets a point where when you're training the elites where things can distract detract from your performance we get too focused on strength so the answer to your question is um are hip thrusts a good assistance lift? Yes, they are. But don't worship them. You know, at the end of the day, if you want your squat to go up, first make sure your squat is prioritized.

And don't think, oh, I'm going to do hip thrusts and my squat's going to go through the roof or deadlift. But yes, it's a good assistance lift. And if you do it intelligently, I think it can prolong your training career. I mean, having big glutes is important, you know. See, that is – okay, because we're out of time. But I want to end on that point you just made. Prolong your training career. And let me just say, as an ex-world champion,

is that the guy who can lift the longest, the heaviest, is the one who ends up being the absolute best. So, I mean, if you might be specific, you know, you might only snatch, you might squat, bench, deadlift seven days a week, and you might go up 100 pounds in each of those, but can you

do that for the next 10 years? Because that is going to be the guy who's crushing it. You know, like Ed Cohen, he was very much more of a bodybuilding type, you know, straight linear periodization. And he's still yet the best of all time. So like our squats on his offseason, high board, deep squats. And yeah, I do.

I exactly with all my powers do the exact same thing. You know, I'm a little bit more frequent, but like but I'm I'm very much into the hypertrophy because I want to keep my athletes healthy. I don't want them to be wrecked at the end of this whole thing either. A lot of the guys in D.C.P., they get the bench, squat, deadlift three times a week, or maybe they deadlift once a week, but they're doing such high volume of benching and squatting three times a week, and they end up damaged for good. For life. I wish.

I wish I could just add more and more volume and I could recover from it that's when I start getting beat up and I have to go back to use variety I have to use I agree with you Travis this was a great podcast good time to finish it up here

but thanks so much for having me on anytime you guys want me on I'm game we're going to be able to find out more about you I just have a website brettcontreras.com if you forget my name or forget how to spell it or something you can just type in the glute guy and I come up my website

that's the hub for everything you know you come up too if you type in I produce FYI oh really good for you I know because I just did that. Hey, thanks for being on, Brett. It was an awesome one. We appreciate it, man. My pleasure.

And once again, we should do this every year I have me on. And I love this stuff. You guys ask great questions. So thanks to you. Well, thanks so much to Brett for being on. Not only is this guy super smart, but he's just a nice guy and he's fun to talk to. So hope you guys learned a lot. Again, head on over to mashelique.com to get mash jacked and trained stupid while you can still get them at their launch prices. You've just got a few days

to do that. Well, hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Outro Music