Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 186 - Dr. Mike Israetel: How to Reliably Grow Muscle + More!

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

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All right, guys. So I am here with Dr. Mike Israetel of Renaissance Periodization. For many years now, Mike has been one of the few people, few scientific minds that I go to for just kind of succinct explanation of how a muscle grows. There's a lot of noise in this space. There's a lot of people who communicate how to grow muscle, I think, well, but I do think Mike is world-class, one of the best. So today I'm excited to talk to Mike about muscle growth, all the different variables that can impact muscle growth and how you can kind of weave that into your training and what you're currently doing. So Mike, welcome in. How are you, man? Thank you for having me. It's awesome to be on and I hope I don't let you down

with all that bareness in introducing me. Dude, Dude, you could never. I'm excited we're getting the chance to talk. And like I said, there's a lot of people who really tout and speak with absolutes that they know how to build muscle. And I think you're one of the guys who really does. And one thing that's been particularly fascinating to me recently is finding ways people like you and I who like to bodybuild, I bodybuild recreationally, you bodybuild professionally, but we take this stuff seriously. How can we communicate these concepts to the general population? How can we succinctly describe what it is that we do to build muscle? And I think that might be the best jumping off point, which is when you're training to

develop muscle, what are you really looking for? What should your training look like from an effort standpoint? Very good question. I think we can approach it from a pretty simple framework of ideas. And then generally, if you're a person, and if after I say all these ideas, you're listening and you say, well, actually, I already knew all that generally, and that makes a lot of sense. I wanted more specifics. You know, shameless plug. You just type in my last name and YouTube or just go to Radisson's Productions YouTube channel and just go to all the older videos we have.

And by now, we've addressed damn near everything up to a pretty complex level. We have books linked and everything that are even more complicated. complex level we have books linked and everything uh that are even more complicated so as i promise even though i'll be speaking in insanely simplistic generalities there's unbelievable amount of detail to be discovered it's kind of like you know if someone sort of draws what a leaf looks like and it's like that's nice it looks like my hand or something they're like that's all you know about leaves but you're talking to a botanist they're like oh no no no i can go much further it's going to be very annoying and we'll talk about cell membranes and everyone's going to They're like, that's all you know about leaves, but you're talking to a botanist. They're like, oh, no, no, no. I can go much further. It is going to be very annoying.

And we'll talk about cell membranes and everyone's going to get bored to tears. So basically, here's the deal. Growing muscle is conceptually a matter of turning on the molecular machines in your muscles that grow muscle. So the real question is sort of twofold. One, when we turn them on, how long do they turn on for? Because they turn on for some time, they grow some muscle and then turn off or they turn down. And so that answers the question potentially of like, how often do we want to turn these machines on? And thus, how often do we train? And then also, what are the stimulators? What are the things in the gym that we can do that turn these machines on?

Then of course, on the nutrition recovery side, how do we make sure these machines have plenty of power, oil, or whatever the hell else machines use in order to have their task actually accomplished, right? Because you could have like, buy a really cool new drill and you hit the on switch and it doesn't do anything. You're like, right, batteries. Fuck, I forgot. So is it okay if I swear every now and again, or do you do? it rip i love it i love it and i can also do a clean podcast i'm in the world first i swear to god no so first question is how do we stimulate muscle growth and that's generally from training but we have to meet a few conditions and they're not so complicated. First is, you know, you have to do a hard set, at least one. And that set is of, uh, some kind of, uh, exercise that targets the muscle group

that uses it, that pushes that muscle close to its failure point, something like three reps or two reps or one rep or zero reps away from where the muscle just can't move anymore and it goes, Hey, I'm done. So one set like that with a weight that challenges you somewhere between five reps and 30 reps into the set. Okay. So that's one set. And how many sets of those do you need to have a good workout?

And it's very generally the answer is like anywhere between three and 10 sets. So like maybe something like six or seven sets for many people per muscle per session is real good. So someone can ask the question of how many sets do I need to do that are close to failure maybe something like six or seven sets for many people per muscle per session is real good. So someone can ask the question of how many sets do I need to do that are close to failure between five and 30 reps each of chest exercises in order to get a bigger chest. I say any one time you go to the gym, maybe like somewhere between three and 10, maybe like six or seven. And that's like a pretty decent answer. There's tons of variation, blah, blah, blah, but that's just super, super basic. And then the next question is, okay, given that I'm training my muscle groups and checking off

the boxes, and let's say one day I train on my lower body, the next day I train on my upper body, getting, you know, roughly three to 10 sets for each one of the major muscle groups. How often do I have to come back to the gym in order to start that process again? Because the muscle growth is stimulated and that's really great. How often do I need to re-stimulate? And the answer is, oh gee, you know, every two to four days, which translates to training, most muscle groups can get really, really great results being trained two to four times per week. Now, if you happen to be very big and very strong and very male, that's

probably closer to two times a week in many cases and, and and with muscles that are also big and strong, and I suppose muscle individually have gender. Yeah. Like my quads are boys, but my glutes are definitely girls. You know what I'm saying? I don't think that works. No doubt about it. But, uh, so in any case, so there's, there's that, but you know, higher

frequencies tend to benefit people that are a little bit smaller, a little bit not so advanced in their strength and their progression and female. So if you are a female and you weigh 115 pounds and you just started lifting, you know, a year ago, you may be able to hit every single muscle group in your body, like four times per week. And the real way to tell is it's actually, again, quite simple. Are you sore in that muscle when you try to train it again? If you are, you're training it too soon. And, or are you really tired? Because sometimes the muscle's not sore. There's no, you touch it and it feels fine, but you're trying to lift your normal weights and you're like, oh, how did I ever do this? Something is missing. You need to take more time. And then lastly, we said, okay, I guess we kind of introduced the idea of recovery there

because clearly we need more time. But if I want to train three days a week, is there any way I can speed up recovery so that I do recover for each one of those sessions and can justify three days a week? And the answer is eat a diet, you know, four to seven meals per day, rich in complete protein sources, plenty of carbs and fats on top. When you're gaining muscle, preferably a few more calories than it takes to stabilize your weight. Do you want to gain weight? Because your muscles are made of stuff. What is it? I think J.M. Blakely might have had this quote of like, your body's not built on hopes and dreams. It's built in matter, actual stuff. So we'll tangent, you and I planned a tangent off on that.

Yeah. I think that'd be a really good segue at some point to discuss the caloric requirements for actually accreting muscle tissue, which I really respect. And I love where people are coming from when they say, you know what? Muscle growth is great, but I'd like to accomplish that with absolutely zero fat gain. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes. And it's like, okay, but it's probably not going to happen. Well, whatever it takes, depending on what you mean by that could happen at great expense. But, uh, so in any case, you know, you eat well-rounded diet, multiple high protein meals per day, enough calories to grow, to add a little bit of tissue over the course of several months

at a time, nutritious foods, generally a bit of junk is totally fine. And then you sleep like, you know, however much sleep makes you not tired. And that's actually a little gem I'd like to drop into the conversation. It's not so related. Always get constant, perseverative questions, which is understandable, of course, by people just pouring over mounds of data, mounds of sleep studies, and trying to figure out how many hours do I need to sleep per night? We have a really easy answer for you.

Towards, you know, the middle of the the day are your eyes like dry and hurt i don't know you're like okay if i get a pillow i'll pass out forever that's the answer you need more sleep at night if during the middle of the day you're like damn golden and you only really get tired towards the end of the night when it's time to go to sleep then you're sleeping enough and whatever number that is for you is the number for you it's like if aliens you know kidnapped you and put you up with a ship and they're like hey human how much food do humans need you're like you know we all kind of you know slightly different amount of food but generally humans will stop eating and that's when you know they're done right it's it's not that complicated

but a lot of us go crazy crazy crazy about how much sleep do i need and it's usually the people diving deep into literature that are they know they're really tired and they know their kids are harassed in the middle of the night. And they're like, well, I guess if I get six hours, do you feel rested? They're like, no, God, no, I haven't felt rested in years. Well, guess what? You haven't been building your ultimate muscle in years. So that's kind of the foundation of muscle growth, but there's lots to say about various mistakes and misconceptions people have about parts of those processes. No, I think it's a wonderful little kind of, it's just a good foundation. It gives us a point to jump off from that I think is just phenomenal. And you really kind of

wrangled in a lot of the main issues. But one of the big ones that I would love to talk about, and it kind of comes back to just calibrating the intensity of your training, And it kind of comes back to just calibrating the intensity of your training. When you say getting like three, two, one reps from failure, how does somebody figure that out if they are either one, not somebody who's trained to failure often, maybe they aren't comfortable training to failure because they don't have a spotter, or maybe they're trying to train to failure with a movement that they should not, like perhaps a barbell squat. Are there ways to build the intuitive ability to go, yep, that's where I need to stop. That's that one to two, three rep sweet spot. Yes. So the first core principle, if you're going to try to get close to failure and see what that feels like to make sure you're doing it and checking that box and your training is the principle of your technique is always and everywhere. Number one, if you go to failure on a squat of which the last rep doesn't look like a squat, but it looks like someone being born in reverse. I don't know that calling me crazy, but I think you failed the squat

as it is instructed in a book like five reps before that okay so using mechanical failure as the term there to define when you've hit yeah technical failure mechanical failure whatever your term you just can't move the weight anymore with without good technique now if you can like arch your back like cat do some crazy stuff then you're not really training anymore you're just surviving or something like that. Yeah. Somebody's like, Hey, how was your training today? You're like terrible, but I got a bunch of reps. Okay. That sucks.

So first of all, technique always has to be good. And then being that the technique is good for all of your reps, especially difficult to do as they get closer to failure, but figure that out. Uh, that's a really core foundation. Once you have that foundation and that's something you've sort of committed to practice then what you can do is like add a rep and or five pounds to the bar every time you come to the gym or every week and sooner or later you will hit failure because you can't just become the strongest thing that's ever existed it'd be funny if there's some

old lady listening to these videos in france turns out five years later she just become the strongest thing that's ever existed. It'd be funny if there's some old lady listening to these videos in France. Turns out five years later, she's like the strongest single living entity in the universe. It's just like, I guess I just kept adding five pounds and now gravity bends around me. Like, that's not going to happen, right? So if you start out lifting 50 pounds in, you know, let's say a squat or something, and then you slowly add five pounds here, a rep here, five pounds here. At some point, you're going to be doing sets of 30 with 225 pounds.

Your legs are going to be unbelievably enormous. Everyone's going to hate you. Your boyfriend's going to leave you. Your husband's going to leave you. That's right. It's two different people. And you're going to be hopeless and alone, just like you always thought you were going to end up.

But on a serious note, as you keep adding, at some point, your body's going to be like, whoa, this is really hard. And then you'll notice a distinct slowing down of repetitions. So this isn't always the case because some people so athletic and explosive that they actually move at roughly the same pace. And then one rep just doesn't go anywhere. They go halfway up and then it just comes back down. Generally speaking, you'll see at least one rep get harder. Even if it doesn't slow down, it's going to feel like the weight is heavier. If the weight starts out feeling heavy and you stop the set and a weight feels exactly as heavy, you didn't get close to failure.

Those last couple of reps have to be like a little grindy. Even if they don't look like it, they have to feel a little grindy. And then, you know, you're getting there and then you still add five pounds to the movement next week and you still add a repetition potentially. And then you still want to confirm it. You want to get to actual failure. And there's some, like you said, very great point. There's some machines that are more conducive to that.

So for example, if you fail doing upright rows, I mean, you just like lower the bar to wherever you got it and then you're done. And then it's fine. If you fail with squats with no spotters then like you know it's not a high probability that you're gonna die but you could sure have a very bad time of it uh so you got to pick some lifts and then when you learn what failure is like from the lifts on which you can fail then you kind of start figuring out oh this is kind of what it's probably going to be like on lifts that i can so for example what your quads feel

like when you go to failure on lunges they get get real sluggish. It feels like you're out of touch with them. And then they just move real slow. And it feels like halfway through the range of motion, they're like rocks and you can't feel like they're drunk. Like it's the best way I could describe it. I do walking lunges all the time. Oftentimes the weight vest, it's a unique form of fatigue. That's kind yes almost not specific to the quads but like for high high level quad training high volume quad training feels unique it's weird it's like your your brain is sending signals do something and the quads are like what they're passed out by the bar cigarette butts on them so you know drunk so uh in it when you know that you

have that feeling in lunges but look look, nothing's going to happen. Lunges are just going to sag down to the ground and scoot on your butt and laugh and it'll be fine. Then you'll get up. But when you're doing squats later, later that week, later that month or later that year, and you feel that feeling in your quads, but the rep goes up rack that bar. You don't have that many reps left, possibly zero, possibly one. Yeah, no, I love that. You, you hit on something too, with the velocity thing that I thought was great. And it's something I noticed a lot, especially when I was training clients one-on-one in a personal training setting. I did this all

the time, especially when I was in my undergrad. You get really tuned into the velocity at which a client could do a specific lift on. And you'd be like, okay, I think we have about two or three more. And they'd be like, oh my gosh, how did you know? You'd be like, well, I think we have about two or three more. And they'd be like, oh my gosh, how did you know? It'd be like, well, there's like a precipitous drop-off in the speed of the reps at a certain point. And I remember going to a sports performance symposium for the Sacramento Kings NBA team. That's an hour from where I live. And on all these gorgeous Sorenix squat racks, they have mounted these individual gps units which track the speed of the athlete through space so they can actually use rep to rep velocity to gauge

the speed at which these guys are moving or moving the bar or whatever and it's like a great way for them to manage fatigue because they're so interested in that but i have noticed and you have noticed and even people who train athletes whose who's maybe output is more geared towards power and like relative strength than it is hypertrophy. But like that velocity thing is pretty consistent. When you start to feel that big slow down on the concentric, like that might be your first key that you're getting close and then the sensation and then you better throw, you better get out of there because you might end up pinned. I love that. Yes. And it's different for different people.

So the average person, the slowdown maybe is two or three reps left. For some people, they slow down after a set of 10 to failure. They'll slow down after rep two or three and just keep grinding miracles. They have no idea why the hell they can do that. Not to bring up sports again, but if you watch the NFL Combine, it's a great example of how some people can just do the 225 bench press, absolutely textbook form, extremely fast, and then they hit a wall and it just dies. And then other people, they're just counting reps.

It's like, I thought this guy was done five reps ago. How is he grinding this out? And this is across all positions, across all body types, you see this variance. So now that people have an idea of, okay, I can work my way to that point where I can effectively gauge whether that set was or wasn't effective. Something that I think would be also decent to hit on is range of motion. You hear a lot of people communicate that there are dangers of training through extreme or full ranges of motion. And you're somebody who I think trains through a very, very full range of motion relative to what some people might train or what some people

might think is safe. What are the benefits for muscle growth specifically of training through a full range of motion? And what are people leaving on the table by training only in their active range or only through the range of the target tissue? Because I get lost in this noise a lot myself because people can make such compelling arguments, but I do feel like there's an answer here. Yeah. A lot of people that use the term active range have no idea what they're saying. And I mean that in literal sense of they couldn't specifically define that term that is universally applicable and internally coherent. It's just they have some notion of what that means and they haven't really been super specific about it. Sure. So that being said, I think that there's a couple of real big benefits.

That being said, you know, I think that there's a couple of real big benefits. One is various parts of your muscle contract a little better and the parts of it are more active and they probably get a little bit more growth stimulus in various parts of the range of motion of a full compound lift. So if you do partial range, you might get some, you know, five or 10% less growth in various areas that could, you have, you could have received a hundred percent or a hundred percent total growth or something. Sure. So that's a small point, you could have received a hundred percent or a hundred percent total growth or something. Sure. So that's a small point, but it's nonetheless the case. Another thing is that, um, probably disproportionate amount of the hypertrophy in most muscles occurs with their, when they're at a stretch, but they can still generate a lot of tension in that position. So if you take biceps, for example, and you straighten your arms completely and you do a fly by completely straightening your arm and doing a super, super deep fly. At some point, the stretch is so immense that your biceps are actually not even turned on much by your nervous system because it feels like, well, I can't really generate much force out of here anyway. So I'm not even going to try it. Your body does that.

Nervous system does it all the time. Does that to your pecs as well. So if you do super straight arm, strict flies all the way super down to the ground, and it's a cool range of motion. It looks cool, but you'll have to use such tiny, tiny little dumbbells because your body will only be able to produce so much, such tiny little forces out of that bottom, even accounting for the fact that the leverage is poor,

that you're just going to do a whole bunch of reps and be like, I don't know, man. I feel like I'm just going to stretch it with weights here. I don't feel a lot of tension in the target muscle. The target muscles not really going close to failure. I feel some weird pain in my joints. So definitely like a good definition, actual definition of active range of motion is not necessarily even active because there's active tension and passive tension and passive does help, but it's, you know, getting the muscle to a real profound stretch from which it can still generate a meaningful amount of tension. And meaningful is clearly a spectrum term. It's a subjective term,

but it nonetheless allows you to ground yourself in saying, okay, it's probably okay for me to use a slightly range, a slightly short range of motion and use 25 pound dumbbells for, uh, flies. Probably okay for me to use the 15s and a bigger range of motion. Well, like if I'm using the two and a half, cause I'm so stretched out or if i'm like just doing these tiny little reps with the hundreds it's probably wrong right and and most people know when their muscle itself is stretched and still feels pretty strong deep at the bottom of the leg press your quads are stretched to crap but they feel tight and they feel like they can push that's probably a real good and a lot of times it's taking exercises through their full range of just, um, exercise

motions like lat pull downs. You know, you should probably pull to the chest. The answer is why, why would you pull to the chest? Yeah, because there's all kinds of cool muscles that turn on even between your chin and your chest and you probably want to grow them too. I like a lot of people get carried away with thinking that, you know, every muscle group is trained by isolation exercise or every exercise just trains one muscle group. That's not true. We do barbell rows and we do pull-downs or pull-ups and we can get a huge back, but there's like eight different muscles

in your back. And which exercise is for the rhomboids? It really has become almost sexy to take what was once thought of as a high value compound movement that is going to stimulate multiple tissues and be like, well, yeah, but this is a lat biased version of the hyper compound movement that was once for all the muscles of the back and forearm, but now it's only for the lats. It's like, well, the other ones still work there. You just kind of change the name. For sure. And it's totally fun and totally fine to have biased versions of movements. The wide grip bench press is biased towards the chest. The closed grip is biased a little bit more towards the triceps.

And that's okay. You just have to ask yourself in your needs analysis when you're building your program, do I really need a biasing factor or do I need general growth? And also some muscles just tend to be limiting factors better. So for example, like when I'm doing my vertical pulling or something, I don't really need a lat biased version of a lat pull down. It's like my lats get great stimulus from pull downs. I had 99 problems with lat stimulus.

It's just not one of them. So like, why would I do a lat biased version if I can bias other muscles in my back and get my lats really well? No, I love that. I think it's a good segue into perhaps exercise selection specifically for hypertrophy. And I think that people like a balance. If they're not training exclusively for bodybuilding, they might say, look, okay, I want to do some hypertrophy work. I want to pick efficient exercises, but I still want to fucking deadlift or I still want to squat or I still want to bench. I like to do that. I think people enjoy doing that.

And assuming that there's maybe a blend going on, but we're looking at having a significant chunk of the workout before the development of the physique. What are some movements that you think might perhaps be overrated or like deitized where they exist on this pedestal? I was like, you have to do it where you might say, no, not so much like the actual stimulus that you're getting at the tissue isn't worth the strain of the exercise. Yeah, it's great. You put it almost into the terms I was going to put it into a more technical way to say it is the, the stimulus you're getting is perhaps not worth the fatigue that you're

getting out of it. Right? Like, um, you know, if we can make a car that it's like a Mercedes ask a hundred thousand dollar car, but it comes at the cost of $200,000 to make. It's you is, it's not a really good business model, but if you can make your a hundred thousand dollar car for $50,000, we get to keep 50,000. That's really cool. So costs and benefits play in. Um, and that way we can see that, you know, the benefit is how much stimulus you're getting to target muscle. And the cost is often fatigue.

And there are a couple types of fatigue. But generally, a lot of systemic fatigue. Some exercises just make you overall really tired. I can interfere with other exercises. If you finish five sets of deadlifts and someone's like, all right, time to train your quads with leg press. You could be like, I'm sorry, what? I don't even know where I am anymore. There are certain exercises that if done in sequence,

it all but makes you want to just fucking walk out. 100%. And even if you don't, even if you try, you just won't be able to try hard enough to do justice to whatever it is you did after. And then there's also joint and connective tissue fatigue, which is like, you know, if an exercise is great for your pecs, but it literally just beats the crap out of your elbows. I mean, how sustainable is that? You got to wonder, is there another

exercise here? Is there something I could be doing that's better? So one exercise that is very well-practiced and it is, is a very defensible and bunch of different contexts, but maybe not as much in pure hypertrophy training is the conventional deadlift or even sumo deadlift, uh, from a regular height for most people. It's an exercise of which done properly, we leverage our entire body to use as much musculature as possible that diffuses the amount of work done by any specific muscle, which is the point is when you want to lift a lot of weight, you have to spread the load out to all the muscles, right? Totally.

But it's like teaching a society a language, but only teaching one individual member a few words, and then together the society speaks a language. Well, if you want to teach one person a language, that's not a really good way to go about it. So if you want to grow your glutes, but in order to deadlift, you're using your glutes and your hamstrings, your lower back, upper back, quads, adductors, how much of that stimulus are the glutes getting? You got to share that stimulus, unfortunately. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I'm not trying to share any big glutes. I'm greedy in this bitch i'm great right if there's like a big glute little block going around in kindergarten i'm grabbing that shit i don't i

don't i don't they never learned how to share yeah that's all so yeah as a matter of fact my parole officer says you have to stop grabbing at people's glutes and that's really my problem so uh among many others of course so basically what we want are exercises for hypertrophy and all the exercises are good, but the great ones really take one, two or three muscles and they push those muscles close to their own internal limits. What's like the reason you can't do any more reps is because your biceps or chest or lats or whatever it is are just done. They're really done.

They're really pumped. They're really, they feel a ton of tension through them the burn at higher reps is insane after that set that muscle specifically feels weird like if you ever have clients do uh barbell or dumbbell lunges for the first few times or even just at a high volume anytime and then you're like hey flex your butt cheeks like try to like do the humping motion they do it they're like what the hell's happening to my ass it's like contracting on its own and it hurts am i cramping you're like yep do you think your glutes got hit like well yeah of course they're messed up they had to but after a deadlift it usually doesn't happen it's like hey do the humping motion like i don't know i'm just really tired i don't know what to tell you my back hurts my low back and i'm

exhausted exactly and and funny enough deadlifts are excellent or spinal erector exercise because they actually do tend to have spinal erectors as the limiting factor. You can see that too. You can see that on the physiques of people who have built whatever it is,

like some semblance of a physique that you'd look at on stage or a model and you're like, they have a great physique, but they have an indistinguishable, like they didn't deadlift

versus somebody where you're like, that person obviously used the deadlift. You can see it in the erectors. Yes. The cable-like erectors. So basically we want to make sure that exercises are, instead of leveraging us super well for the lift, leveraging us super well to target the muscle or muscles that we want. And again, leverage for target of the muscles is a matter of foot position. It's a matter of hand placement. It's a matter of body placement, but it's also a matter of making sure that the muscle has to work very hard and making sure that you're getting a full range of motion,

especially stretch at a lower position. And we talk about like the glutes. I mean, you can bring your knee up to your chest in most cases. That's the full range of motion and the stretch of the glutes in the human body. You ever do that during deadlifts? Not even by first. If you do some lunges or you do some Bulgarian split squats to a deficit, you're going to be like, holy shit, something insane is happening to my glutes. What is it? And it's like, well, yeah, they're being stretched under load for the first time, and thus they're going to get sore, and they're going to get pumped,

and they're going to get tension, and they're going to get a burn, and all those good things mean that they're probably going to be growing some glutes. That type of work specifically, just as a quick tangent, that's done where a muscle is in its lengthened position seems to have the highest likelihood of causing soreness, right? That type of work and work with longer eccentric periods. So somebody's like, shit, I'm sore out of nowhere. Or like, I know that can be a recoverability thing, but like if say somebody is wanting to perhaps optimize for soreness, I want an exercise that's going to make me as sore as possible. I'm an advanced trainee. Not that that would be an effective goal, but if they're just a total masochist, you might do that with those really lengthened positions and those really long eccentrics, right? Yes, and not coincidentally, those are the things that grow the most muscle as well yeah i think i

think it's a good point when people ask often like well should i be sore it's like i think yeah you probably should fucking be sore and i don't i don't mean say that to sound unscientific but the truth of the matter is like if you're not sore and you're trying to build muscle something's wrong yeah well so like we can say because this has been experimentally validated that you don't need to get sore to get jacked to put on muscle but if you have a muscle that's a problem for you like it just doesn't really ever seem to grow much and also you've never gotten it sore there's a very decent candidate hypothesis that you've just never done enough for that muscle whether that enough is range of motion or stretch under load or eccentric focus, or even just number of sets.

It's a great point. So if you can get a muscle reliably sore and heal just on time for your next session with that muscle, then you have a lot of problems potentially as to why you're not growing. But training difficulty, training stimulus is not one of them. Because if you think it's just an interesting philosophical sort of thing to think about, just a thought experiment. If I can get my muscle reliably sore to the point where it heals just before I have to train it again, and I'm not training it hard enough, what the fuck would training it hard enough even look like? I get sore through the session, then I'm not recovering. So if you are able to get sore or so fatigued that your muscle barely recovers by the time the next session is like, the reason you're not growing is some combination of genetics,

pharmacology or nutrition or recovery. That's it. It's not your training, but if you're not getting sore, maybe it's not your training. Maybe you're totally fine. But if you're not, yeah, if you're, if you're not getting sore and your muscles aren't growing like you like, and you think you have your nutrition, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, down pretty good, then it begs the question of, do your, does your exercise technique or selection and, or your proximity to failure and, or your load use, because some exercises you'll only really get sore if you're using lower reps or higher reps or vice versa. And, or of course the most obvious one is volume.

Like I remember I used to think that the leg curl was just not a very good hamstring exercise because I would do three sets of 12 uh, curl was just not a very good hamstring exercise. Cause I would do three sets of 12 or whatever, and just not feel very sore afterwards or very pumped or very anything. And, uh, I would do lots of stiff, like a deadlift at the time. And when you have two sets of eight, I would be sore for half a week. And I'd say, well, that really is a good hamstring exercise. But then I, I sort of started thinking more deeply and I started getting my PhD in sports science. And I was like, you know what, why don't I try like four or five sets of hamstring

curls? And then I got reliably sore, pump, tension, burn, et cetera. So sometimes it's just, you're not doing enough. And I will say, since you have a pretty sizable female audience, women typically can do two things. They can take a bigger beating in the gym. Yeah. Number of sets they can do is higher than that of their male counterparts. And they can also typically recover more completely and faster than male. Yes. So a lot of times,

one of the big problems that happens is female. And this is a problem that happens less and less now, but, females consume training information either meant for males or the, the FUBU effect, like for us, by us, like most males write for other males or make videos for other males and not even for the males. They just make videos for people like themselves.

And they either don't think about women at all when they make them, or they just assume women are the same. And they'll, a lot of times, a lot of women get introduced to training through like, you know, male boyfriends or husbands, fiancees, one night stands, huge mistakes, torrid love affairs. What else we got? Centaurs. I'm just kidding. I'm just thinking of the many ways that romance can express itself.

You know, centaur runs up. You're like, I don't know. It's part horse, part man, man's kind of cute and horse clearly has its advantages. I'm done. I swear to God. But in any case, so what ends up happening is women will do these three sets, 10 type of routines twice a week. And they'll say, yeah, that's fine.

I it's not that hard. And sometimes they're like, oh, it's not that hard. I did it. I successfully accomplished it. Like when, when things aren't very challenging and you're still in the beginner phases and you're getting good results, that's not exactly like a complaint you can file. Right. That's great.

The problem happens when you're not a beginner anymore, six months, 12 months, whatever, 18 months into training, you start to be like, yeah, I really wish my glutes would grow more hamstrings, quads, biceps, shoulders, whatever it be, but they're kind of stalling. And my boyfriend, everybody just grows all the time. He looks at food and weights and he grows. Fuck him. I hate him. And it's not working for me.

Well, the reality is you could be doing six sets of 10 by then, instead of three sets of 10, you could be doing three times a week training for muscle group because you can recover. And again, you don't have to, it's not a mystery is am I sore after a session? And for how long am I weak after a session? And for how long, when my weakness and soreness go away, am I hitting the muscle again? If the answer is, well, no, gee, I have like three or four days between when I'm actually recovered versus when I go again to the gym to hit that muscle, that's three or four days. You could have just been smashing it for an hour and then rolling for the other three or four days. So it's one of these things that really, really, really is, I think, important to spread the word.

A lot of times females can do more, they can recover more, and it's a good idea for them to try a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And listen, when you have a routine, which leaves you sore, what we call overlapping soreness, you're sore, you train Monday, Wednesday, Friday for your glutes, and Monday your glutes get sore, and Wednesday they're still sore, and Friday they're still sore, that's bad, that's under recovery. Until you you get to that point or a point where your weakness is so profound, you start to get weaker. Like generally speaking, a higher number of sets or higher frequency per week is marginally better. And that margin can be quite high for females that

potentially have a maximum recoverable volume, but the most they can do and, and still grow muscle of like eight sets per session per muscle three times a week, but they're doing four sets per session twice a week. And it's like, well, you know, you only get small, you know, slight increment, more gains if you do more. Well, yeah, but if you do three or four times more, gee, that's going to make a big difference in your results. And a lot of times there's also a threshold issue there where for some more advanced females that are maybe a little bit more genetically resistant to muscle growth,

four sets of, let's say, um, lunges or something or squats twice a week may at some point be what's called their maintenance volume. It's just enough training volume to maintain their size, but not enough to make them bigger. So even if they continue to get stronger through neurological adaptations and technique, they may not get much bigger. And what a they continue to get stronger through neurological adaptations and some other technique, they may not get much bigger. And what a terrible deal. I mean, like if I'm not getting bigger in the gym, why the hell am I there?

Like maybe I could spend more time doing something else. If I'm going to the gym with the intention of improving, I kind of want to know what it takes to improve. You know, like if you get into, like you have an opportunity to drive like a go-kart race car and you're like, all right, like which way do I turn? And no one tells you, you're like, well, I don't think the point is just to ride this thing around.

Isn't there like a race course? Like, oh yeah, yeah. Turn left over there, right over there. I don't, thank God somebody told me. So if I'm going to the gym and I want to get glutes or quads as big as possible, I kind of want to know like, Hey, what's, what's the least I can do to get some results at least. And then what's the most I can do if i'm really like gung-ho about it and that range the maintenance volume is what

it takes to maintain minimum effective volume is minimum amount that it takes any detectable gains which people obsess over but i'm not so interested in because why the hell would you want minimum gains and then the maximum recoverable volume is much higher somewhere between minimum effective maximum recoverable that's where you want to. And that's generally found by doing enough sets every session, two to four sessions a week, in which that local muscle is either sore and are quite tired for until that next session comes up. And if you're doing that, where can you even hypothetically do? Hey, guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so

much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Yeah, no, I love that. And I think for me, I see this a lot because I've worked with women in person. I work with many women now still in person and online, and they just seem to be a little more fatigue resistant than men. And I find they actually tend to enjoy more variety in their training and more exercised. So I'm wondering here, what's the most effective way if you're trying to incrementally up that volume?

Would it be better to just say, hey, look, I have my five exercises that I'm doing this session. I'm going to add a set to these? Or would you add in additional exercises to perhaps oblige that desire for variety? Or is that actually less effective because you're maybe going to do better doing a fourth set through a movement that you've already substantially fatigued that muscle in through a full range of motion? For example, when you do a dumbbell bench press, the fourth set is harder than the first set. Would the fifth set be more effective than the first set of a cable fly? How might one add those sets in? Because that's a philosophical thing that I've kind of always wondered. Yeah, that's a really good question. So generally speaking, it seems like

the stimulus to fatigue ratio is stable and or improves over the number of sets you do with certain exercise. But we have found mostly through lots and lots of coaching experience, the personal experience at RP, is that right around anywhere between five and seven working sets into an exercise, you develop a considerable amount of staleness where if you just switched exercises, the, everything feels better. The stimulus seems better. Yes. There's only so many barbell squats you can do until you're like, I'm done with this.

If only to get the fuck out of the squat rack. And it's not even, there's a psychological component, but there's certainly a neurological and a fatigue component as well, because you're just bashing this particular group of motor neurons and motor units over and over and over where you could be bashing a slightly different pool. It would feel better, hit slightly different parts of the muscle, et cetera. So I'd say if you start out with like three sets of squats and potentially you can recover from up to six sets of total quad work, just stick with squats on that one day now if you train quads

monday wednesday friday one day squats another hack squats and others deep lunges hey there's your variety because right is also cool week to week i think a lot of trainers get obsessed with injecting as much variety as possible into a single session yes you gotta remember like okay if there's three leg exercises that you like to do, use all three of them Monday. Fuck, are you going to do on Wednesday? All three of them again, that's kind of lame. But if you really beat the shit out of one on Monday, beat the shit out of another on

Wednesday, beat the crap out of the other one on Friday, then by the time they get to next Monday, they're like, oh, cool squats again. I feel like it's been ages. And that really keeps the client excited and refreshed. Now, if you're doing eight or 12 sets per muscle group, what you do is you start out with two exercises because they're going to have to take up that volume. But just start with like, you know, two sets of each one, right? Two sets of dumbbell press, two sets of incline barbell press. And then as you go through your chest workout over the weeks, you add sets to whichever one feels better, right?

The stimulus to fatigue ratio is higher. You just say, Oh, I was really feeling inclined. So I added a few sets, but now like sort of tired inclines, I'm just going to do five sets for the next few workouts. I'm going to add a few sets to the dumbbell press and so on and so forth. So there is a possibility to like, after you get to five sets of incline, you add dumbbell press sets. But what we found is, you know, different exercises hit different parts of your muscle.

They hit different joints differently and they can actually have like sort of interfering effects. So for example, if you are doing lat pull downs and then you start doing rows for lats because you need more volume, if for weeks you've been doing lat pull downs and you also have like, let's say a stiff, like a deadlift progression on another day of the week, let's say two days later, yeah, like, look look it's a vertical pulley movement it doesn't all that progression's great your hamstrings are getting great glutes getting great lower backs everything's great but you throw in bent over rows to that lat day and the next week your sldl

falls by 50 pounds or something because your back is still tired your lower back and you're like ah crap so basically like uh for lack of a better term, we sort of described it as injecting exercises into the middle of a mesocycle can have a bit of a chaotic effect. Yeah, definitely. It feels like it would. It's just whenever you sit down, even when you're trying to position specificity,

like base days, like, oh, I want to put my pull day here and my leg. Oh, shoot. I don't want those too close to each other because if they're too close to each other, I have to make a lot of trade-offs. And when you get to the like granular level of individual exercises, oh, it does actually become a little bit complicated to add new ones in there unless you're kind of reckless yes and if you start adding exercises so you do a one-off a one pass essentially like uh optimization problem when you're arranging exercises through the days and the weeks for different muscle groups it's

okay my shoulder is going to be shoulder joints to be a little sore after this but compensate with this exercise you can solve that equation now and then make a really good program that works really well. Of course, learn on the fly. You can modify something, but if you're going to be injecting halfway through different exercises, you have to resolve that optimization problem. And that kind of explodes into combinatorial fractal BS of like, okay, well I'll change this to that.

No, wait, that affects this. Fuck that. Like I want a good, decent program. And then the simplest thing for me is to progress in sets within the exercise. Throwing in whole new exercises is again, logically very feasible, but practically, uh, it's kind of a, you know, it's kind of a big deal. It's almost, um, you know, it's disruptive. And if that same thing occurs in a bunch of

other situations like if you're gonna you know going into war and you need certain battlefield equipment etc you kind of want to know what sort of like if you're a supply and refueling base and in a war zone you kind of want to know like what kind of shit am i going to need to refuel because i have the different nozzles and spigots ford they go yeah by the way tanks are coming like nobody fucking told me they're going we need we need tanks now like well you guys should have said this up front because now this is going to delay everything and it's going to suck you kind of want to know the scope of the problem and keep things as simple as they can be to still get your really great results without needless complexity uh you

know and it's almost as like another stupid analogy if you put ice cubes in a drink first then you pour the soda. The soda just goes all around the ice cubes. Everything's great. Can you technically pour soda in first and then insert ice cubes one by one? Yes, but it's annoying. It's time consuming. You have fingers all over the ice and it splashes and that's super annoying.

You got to wipe everything. So maybe you're real close to the soda and then you drop them in like this. And somebody say, well, it doesn't matter which way you do it. Like, no, it doesn't for sure, but practically it does. So let's just do it the simple way. That's why I like to do all the exercises we need the whole mezzo through no new exercises to disrupt things, but we just increase and decrease sets as we need. I love that.

I think that's something that's been tough as a trainer is like, because you go, okay, I understand the need for variety as somebody who lifts and doesn't want to go insane. And I understand for you that you want variety, but selecting or optimizing for variety at the expense of the efficacy of the actual session isn't really a good idea. those exercises. And then if you can pick your spots and find ones that maybe do work well, that you can layer in without too much competition, you might be able to have a little fun with it, but it's best left kind of chaos free so that you can actually overload across the block as intended. And you really just said it all. And I used to actually describe this to my clients verbatim because Nick and I, the co-founder of RP, him and I trained a bunch of really, really sharp folks in New York city.

There's executive lawyers, all these other crazy, super rich people, super smart people who went to Dartmouth, Yale, and all this other crap. And they'd be like, Hey,

can I do the X, Y, Z exercise? It looks fun. And I was like, yeah, check this out. Yes.

The answer is yes. However, please be aware of a fall. Like I'm willing to increase variety for you to the extent that it bumps up against our borderlands of what is effective. There are a candidacy list of maybe five to 10 exercises per muscle group that I can guarantee you are very, very effective. We will use all of those if you want within the course of a week. However, I won't use exercises, you know, 13 through 57 on that list because they suck like if you go

to a really expensive restaurant that's french cuisine and they put like a mcdonald's cheeseburger on your plate you're like what the fuck they're like it's food it's variety surprise you're like hold on i will like variety but within the context of really elite french cuisine like no shit that's why you're here so i think some people can get carried away in their heads uh and this is all all met with very due diligence and do do justice um we all can get carried away as to why the we're in the gym look like no doubt your clients pay you because you're cool ass dude and you're awesome to talk to that's probably not the number one reason they're paying you like they're probably paying you to try to

look like something they really want to look like be healthy feel great and have a fucking time pushing themselves and having a good time that that's results-based and results mean we need to stick to some shit that really works and uh you know that really should be the number one thing you know like if again stupid battlefield, if you're a crazy virtual reality war game and you're like, all right, we're fighting zombies and they're like, choose your weapon. And you're like blender, like, okay. Anything North of a grenade launcher.

Like, okay. So tank or airplane or helicopter, like, yeah, all those are good answers. Cause they actually work to kill zombies blender. I don't know, maybe some creative way. So a lot of times, and the thing seems like a strange analogy, but it's really not. A lot of clients are like, why can't I do squats on a BOSU ball? And I'm like, that's like trying to blend zombies to that. These are legitimate questions that you get if you interface with the general population, because they might say, oh, I would like to work on my balance. And you might say, well,

that's wonderful. One of the best ways you can work on your balance is by not being a weak motherfucker. So let's start there. Well, what if I worked on this exercise on the little upside down ball? I'd be like, you'd probably break your ankle and be out for six months. But if you want an incredibly inefficient exercise and you're going to force the issue on it, allow me to present you with something substantially safer, but still in these... This stuff happens a lot because we have this little reptilian brain that just wants to bounce around. And I also think that a lot of trainees, I don't know, they're just like... Whether they're your personal training clients

or they're just not really invested bodybuilders, they're drawn to shit they haven't done before and they're excited by shit they haven't done before. And bodybuilders are one of the strangely small sections of the population that loves doing a lot of the same shit all the time, every day, with very little variance. And that tends to show up in their personal and professional lives too. It's just like an archetype. So some people are going to force the issue. And I love the idea of having a list of highly qualified candidate exercises. You can pick from this, but I will not allow you to go beyond that. I love that.

For sure. And the thing is, it's always super easy to explain that. Because at the end of the day, you can just real talk people. Be like, check this out, Janice. What do you really want out of this? It's just going to be like, for real? I get for real. She's like, I want to look like I did when I was 32. I'm 57. Great. That is largely possible, but it's not easy. Janice, what's your friends look like at work? She's like, I don't want to talk about it. Exactly. Do you want to look like your friends? No, they do Bosu balls. They have personal trainers because so few people are willing to do what it takes. They do the hard stuff that really works. And I look, I can tell you, Janice, I got all kinds of fun shit to do in the gym if you want to waste your time. But I have other shit that's also still some version of fun. It's a really difficult kind of fun, sometimes monotonous kind of fun. That's going to get you in the shape you want. And you can walk out of the gym every day and transfer money to me via PayPal every

three weeks with a confidence that you are doing what you're supposed to be doing to get the fucking results that you're trying to get. Cause if you're not here to get some kind of results, gee whiz, you know, we got all sorts of shit we could be doing, you know, uh, for god it's it's it's a huge open-ended thing it's like coming up to you know like in countries in which drugs are legal i'm gonna have to drug dealer and be like give me drugs and be like like just any drugs like yeah whatever like nobody does that you you know you want to mellow out you want some weed or something fine there's types of weed but there's drugs that are not weed and then it won't lead anywhere like you gotta know, you want to mellow out, you want some weed or something fine. There's types of weed, but there's drugs that are not weed. And then it won't lead anywhere.

Like you gotta know what you're in here for you in here to get muscle. You're in here to get results. You're in here to look a certain way. And that's why sometimes the more hardcore, the more heavy, the more disruptive, the more painful, the more technically demanding exercises are what's served up to feed you that, that dinner of results. And if that's not the dinner you want, you know, why are you paying me $110 an hour? I've literally given some version of that talk to people and they're like, Hey, respect.

Thank you so much. I totally. And if I ever bitch, I say this all the time. If I ever try to bitch out again, just remind me why I'm here. Clients literally say that because one of your jobs as a personal trainer is to, you know, their only job technically is to show up with two fucking open eyes. And even one open eye is a good start. Then your job as a personal trainer is to take them the rest of the way, which often includes clarifying the reason that they're there is look after three sets of leg extensions close to

failure. I'm in so much pain. I forgot why I was there. I don't want to know why I was there. It's up to the personal trainer to remind me. And the answer isn't always let the clients do boseball squats. A lot of times it's deep hack squats until you're almost throwing up. But then in six months, you're at the beach and all of your friends from work are like, holy shit, Janice, what the fuck? And you're like, I can fight crime now, motherfuckers. And you know, et cetera. That's how it is. There's something that you hit on. It'll probably feel like a hard transition. But you talked about drugs. And I'm in California and I live about 45 minutes from the Emerald Triangle. I live in Sonoma County, which outside of Humboldt County is probably where the most weed is grown in all of California. And I really enjoy cannabis. I don't drink alcohol, but I enjoy cannabis. I really enjoy cannabis. I don't drink alcohol, but I enjoy cannabis. I know a lot of lifters who do as well. And one of the more prevalent questions I've asked about cannabis, more specifically THC, but hypertrophy and cannabis consumption and muscle hypertrophy? Are they competitive?

Because if you go on T Nation like 30 years ago, weed gives you bitch tits. And I never really recovered from that fear. And I don't know if it's still warranted. So the whole weed estrogen thing, THC has teeny tiny transient effects on various hormones. And by the way, estrogen is anabolic. That's right. People need to stop shitting on estrogen, you guys. Just because testosterone is good doesn't mean estrogen is bad. That's a very good way to put it. And it's like getting estrogenic side effects that are notable on weed. It's like trying to get them from soy products. You're like, I'm sorry, I have to eat how many of these things? It's an inordinate number. So it's not something that is realistically concerned. The only realistic concern that I'm aware of, and there's not tons of literature on this is that THC, especially at peak high can disrupt with the deepest kinds of sleep. So weed sleep is sometimes like I slept, I dreamt, I don't know what about,

it was kind of restless. It's kind of tossing and turning. At some points I was probably still awake and just high as fuck. At some points I was barely in a dream, you know, like it's kind of the same thing at some point. So what I would recommend is people very seriously involved in muscle growth. Um, if you do weed, just don't do it before you go to sleep or within several hours, if you're eating edibles, don't do them within

three or four hours before you go to sleep. Generally, if you're doing smokables before two or three hours, they, and, and most people like to do weed in the evenings and weekends. So what I would say is like, start a little earlier and then be done a little earlier, and then you'll have really high quality sleep and everything kind of comes together and you'll know again that earlier the mention of sleep you'll wake up after like having just smoked a shitload of weed and then go to sleep you wake up and you'll still be groggy and tired you're like yeah and you sleep but yeah you get a two-hour nap and you feel like superman you're like oh okay i just didn't get enough high quality sleep and that really is what it is if you wake you solve that problem, you're good.

If you wake up after smoking weed and you feel like, am I still high? You smoke too close to when you're going to go to bed. A lot of people tell me, I smoke and I was high when I woke up. I was like, no, you smoked while you were still in bed or had an edible while you were in bed and it kicked in at fucking three in the morning and you got no REM sleep. You had to be honest with yourself about this stuff, but I think it's probably

unfair to compare it to alcohol, but these two things get thrown into the arena often like, which of these two vexes can I consume? And I see it a lot out here because I live in wine country. This is where the women wear the hats and drink the wine. And you know what kind of hats I'm talking about. I'm talking about the hats that are massively oversized with the romper. It's a look. And women come here from all around the world to drink the wine and enjoy. And so I get asked all the time, like, okay, I know that like body composition is my goal. Like alcohol or weed, which one's worse? Like I can, I can't do without one. Like I need to pick like, which of those two is more deleterious to body composition? You get a psychotherapist if you can't do without any drugs. You have a dependency issue, Cheryl. First rule of doing drugs is if you don't have any drugs around, you're still okay.

Number one rule. But okay, so that aside, by at least an order of magnitude, weed is way less deleterious than alcohol for a number of reasons. One, its actual interference with sleep is minimum compared to alcohol. Alcohol will ruin a day of sleep, no problem. is minimum compared to alcohol. Alcohol will ruin a day of sleep, no problem. Secondly, the direct chemical and pharmacological effects on muscle growth are of weed as yet unestablished and probably moot, with alcohol profound and quite impressive and not great. Another thing is alcohol has an actual toxicity to your body. THC, not in any straightforward way. In order to have toxicity to THC, you need to like mistake 10

bigs for a hundred megs and eat the whole chocolate bar of edibles instead of a few pieces. And then you're just not going to have a fun time for a few days, but still nothing we can really describe. Like if you go to the hospital, they don't pump the THC out of you. They're just like, Hey, here's the ice chips. Here's the TV. Let us know if you're okay in the next six hours.

Right. There's nothing to do for you. Um, another thing is alcohol is calories. let us know if you're okay in the next six hours right there's nothing to do for you um another thing is alcohol is calories and it's remarkable to me the number of people who honestly have no idea that alcohol contains calories whatsoever yes and often it's when paired in yes that's crazy and then with wine not only do you get the alcohol calories but you get the sugar calories so much sugar and you know you can put shit you know i'm saying these white women out there put down a lot of wine this is like basically like these these glute four out here are working fucking overtime with

this wine yeah it was like aliens draw the anatomy of a white woman they're like it it uses alcohol in wine to power it's. You're like, that's absolutely correct. It's pretty much it. It's pretty much it. But then the case is like, okay, let's say you have your sort of moderating alcohol intake or you've planned it for your macros. The next question between weed and alcohol is which one is going to be making me, or if the person isn't doing the analysis, if the trainer is doing the analysis, which is

going to make my client more likely to just have the fuck it all attitude and just be like, all right, soon as I get home from this stupid wine tour, I, which I love and I love all my friends. I'm going to open up Oreos and I'm just going to start eating them. I don't give a fuck. Like, I'm just going to eat until I don't know why my mouth isn't moving anymore. Now, a lot of people will say like, yeah, man, munchies, bro. And that's totally a thing it's a thing we can be more specific you're more so first of all and this doesn't get repeated enough it's totally a thing with alcohol it is for three or four drinks i'm trying to go to taco

bell thank you i am i grew up like or i didn't grow up but i've been living for the last nine years directly next to the school that i did my undergraduate work at. And the Taco Bell is fucking empty all day long. But at 10 PM, the line is out the door and around the block from Thursday to Sunday night because people don't go out for Taco Bell until they've started drinking. You could almost say it's not a food you would ever eat with your sober, rational mind attached. I'm totally kidding. I got to shit on Taco Bell. you would ever eat with your sober rational mind attached i'm totally kidding i gotta shit on taco bell the shot taco bell shit on enough of us you know it's just revenge shit so so that you know people make terrible choices when they're drunk arguably worse and then there's a thing with

marijuana is if you're saying okay i get it the pot doesn't really get especially if i go to sleep on time and i don't use edibles right before i go to sleep i'm gonna have really essentially no impact on my physique so i can be like you know just thc to the moon hanging out with my friends uh you know during a nice saturday afternoon but like what if i get the munchies what if this and that there's a few things i can say on that unless you just rocket ship your way into fucking mars and then if you're that high usually don't even get the munchies because you're you know have you ever been too high i don't mean to pry but yes it's too high to get the munchies you're like people like food what the fuck is food i'm trying to see my own hand in front of my face like

so that's not really a problem so generally when you get the munchies you're sort of with it still oh definitely and a lot of times you're with it enough to be like wait a minute like i have a diet to stick to and i can just eat my foods and here's another really good benefit about weed these are kind of like weed hacks can you tell i fucking use them very very i've planned this all out so you know it's legal in michigan so i can totally we weren't headed this way it wasn't on my docket at all but it had it's nice it's organic no pun intended cut me off right yeah that true. So another thing is, yes, junk food tastes amazing when you're high. However, if you really have true munchies, bro, everything tastes fucking amazing.

I'm like eating broccoli chips and I'm like, oh my God, the crunchiness. It's crazy. It's a full effect. So if you just put some meals in your fridge, because another thing, you're disabled when you're high. You're not going to go on fucking, what's that shit called? Uber Eats and try to work a fucking app when you're fucked bad. The shit is in your fridge.

You take it, you put it in your microwave, you hit the number two, it goes for two minutes, you take it out. If you just allot your meals like that, you're five steps ahead already. You could just eat what you're supposed to eat. The only thing you tell yourself is when you reach for a bag of chips that your friends have, you go, wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be doing this. And that's the thing. Like I do it all the time. I do edibles when I'm dieting pretty hard towards the end of a super hard diet.

It's just too much hunger. I don't even bother with it. But like when I die pretty hard, I still do edibles and I'm totally fine because I'm like, I'm just going to eat my chicken sausages and they taste great. And one more little tiny hack, two more tiny hacks. I like this. Great.

One. Okay. Two more tiny hacks. I like this. Great. One. Okay. Two more tiny hacks. One is you can delay when you eat on weed. Cause there's so much to do when you're just fucking high. Like you take an edible for the next three hours, your rocket shipping to the moon. You don't have to be eating because everything is so engaging and unbelievable. And you're talking a million miles an hour to your friends, or you feel like you are, and you really just said one thing and everyone's laughing at you that's all stuff that you just don't have to be eating so you can delay like if you really try not to go over your macros

like taking an edible and then sitting down to a dinner immediately is probably like the dumb thing don't do that like give it two or three hours and then when you're stoned later you can eat some food so that's a big deal and here's one more little tiny hack. It is, it's not true hunger when you're on weed. It's more of an affective drive to experience sensory pleasure, which is through food. You can accomplish much of the same with like really tasty caffeine-free diet beverages. Bro, I got the hookup.

You ready? Diet orange soda. free diet beverages bro i got the hookup you ready diet orange soda when you're high is like nectar of the fucking gods the bubbles the orange the mouthfeel you're like oh like i don't need food if i take a gulp of this it's incredible you had caffeine free diet dr pepper diet dr pepper of all the diet sodas is my favorite because for some reason that palatable artificial sweetener taste works with the other 23 flavors. I've always said, and people think I'm weird. I think diet is better than regular because the diet has this little bit of a burn on the back end of it. But Diet fucking Dr. Pepper has caffeine.

But you found one the other day that I saw that had no caffeine and I've never fucking seen it anywhere. I barely see it anywhere. It's like a unicorn. You just shoot it on site, put it in a museum as soon as you get a chance. But you're right with the diet soda. I probably, I will go for those. And that's a good, that is a good hack. Like if you know you're going to have the predisposition to want to grab things, just keep the right things around and in front of you.

And you'll probably just grab and enjoy whatever the fuck it was, even it's not enjoyable 100 protein bars and fruit fruit when you're high tastes oh yeah baby fucking good and protein bars normally taste like blarg but when you're high as fuck you're like the chocolate quote unquote i don't know if it's right chocolate like you can enjoy tasty foods when you're high if you have a lot of that, but if like, you know, trying to chase a body comp goals and you're in a fat loss phase, like the client I have right now in my head is like Sandra, a female client. She's 36 years old. She's 130 pounds. And she's like, I want to go on this weekend with my friends.

It's fucking amazing, but I don't want to turn to fat pigs. My cut is going really well. And I just don't want to backtrack. If you give her all these strategies, she can use them and not just like find herself at the bottom of the fifth can of Pringles. Pringles are great, but they have a price. They do. Just a quick little circle the wagons here before we're done because I love that.

And that was a nice little halftime show on this. But with shifting gears to the nutritional component of muscle growth, there is one question that I get probably more so than any other. And I think that this has been more popular from the female following that I have for obvious reasons. But I think many women are intimidated at the notion of gaining too much body fat while working to build muscle. And so they attempt to build muscle while eating at maintenance, or they try to, I suppose, find a way to build muscle while eating in a deficit. And for some populations, you are going to build muscle no matter what. But at what point is a natural lifter shooting themselves in the foot trying to build muscle in a deficit or at maintenance, at what point do you just have to commit? Yeah. I'll give another great sort of, it's barely an answer because geez, it's kind of like a self-defining thing at the point at which

when you're trying to do that shit, it doesn't seem to work anymore. So like, let's say you've done three fat loss phases and three maintenance phases between them as a client, it's been a year and a half. And every time you grow muscle, you grow out of maintenance, you get stronger, you more rippling everything, and you even grow it on a deficit. But the fourth time you go on a deficit, you actually get a tiny little bit weaker on your exercises and your physique looks a tiny bit flatter. And you're like, fuck, you actually get a tiny little bit weaker on your exercises and your physique looks a tiny bit flatter. And you're like, fuck, what am I doing wrong? And then you look at the literature of what growing muscle on deficit

is like. And half the studies are like, you know, what you should really do is get into a surplus and you're like, god damn it. I knew they were going to say that shit. So when you can't grow muscle anymore in a noticeable way, it feels like some women will have a goal of being like, look, I notably want fucking bigger hamstrings. I think it's going to look amazing. I want it, I want look, I notably want fucking bigger hamstrings.

I think it's going to look amazing. I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it. And I don't give a fuck anymore about what happens. I want big hands. And if they want to avoid the sociological and sort of internal pain of having to gain

some fat, then yeah, fuck it. Like you may be able to get them big ass hams and maintenance and deficit because it's possible for a while. But we know in sport physiology that the most profound muscle growth occurs in a small surplus, at least gaining weight. And almost always that requires a little bit of fat gain in addition to muscle gain. And here's the thing. The most beneficiary person of that is the person who is drug-free and female, which

I assume the vast majority of listeners podcast. Like if you're a dude, you're jacked up on tons of steroids, you can do all kinds of shit. You can grow tons of muscle in a deficit. And then what? Like, you know, you're a dude on steroids. So that's not you. If you're a female and you are drug-free, you need all the help you can get. And when you can no longer gain the requisite muscle that you want in a situation of a deficit or maintenance, then it's probably a good idea to say, okay, I got to get into a surplus, but what is it that I need to do to gain some muscle?

Because it's very easy to think surplus cookies, the cookie monster, my ex boyfriend leaving me because I'm too fat and you're back in this fucking thing where you're like okay i'm just going to gain like pregnancy weight that's just not how it works let me put this into perspective a very highly effective muscle gain plan for a female is to 12 weeks of muscle gain and half a pound gained per week which means you gain six pounds half of that let's say is muscle that means you gain three pounds of fat what kind of psychotic asshole friend is gonna fucking give a shit about three pounds of fat on your body what the fuck and if you care about that you need to get some woosah time with your inner child, work that shit the fuck out.

Real talk, ladies. I'm tired of this shit. I swear to God, I used to rag on my female clients all the time and give them the realest talk of their lives. And fitness, of course, there's many more real talks to give, which I'm not qualified to. But it's like this. I've literally had 30-something-year-old women, 20-something-year-old women be like, oh, I

don't really want to put on fat. I'd be like, hey, what's that one issue of Teen Magazine that came out recently be like, Oh, I don't really want to put on fat. I'd be like, Hey, what's the, what's that one issue of teen magazine that came out recently? They're like, I don't read teen magazine. I bullshit that you acting like you're 12. Like, Oh no, I'm going to get a little fat. Are you not a warrior goddess? Are you not a princess? Are you not an adult female fucking responsibilities? And oftentimes children, they're like, well, yes. So can you take 12 weeks out of your life and put on three total pounds of fat yes you fucking can you did that on port of all yara six months ago anyway and it took you fucking four days they're like right okay you know what i'm saying so once

you put it in like that and like listen also the number of weeks it takes to take three pounds of fat off your body is at most three weeks three fucking weeks later you get all of the muscle and none of the fat and it will sell it like that and another real quick you got to tell them look you will gain some fat and yeah your jeans will fit a little tighter and yeah that top you're going to be spilling out of a little bit more but like you know what i'm saying girl just go out a little less towards the end of that shit like real life look look i would love for women to like i'm a i'm mildly on topic i'm a thickness fiend google my wife you feel me i love that shit but i can totally understand women just don't want to be thick and that's totally fine you do you girl but you just have to understand that like some small ass short-term trade-offs and maybe

you wear some some fucking sweatshirts for a while. And then you peel that shit off. You're going to be fucking stud. Whereas the alternative is the following. You never have a little bit of a thicker phase and three fucking pounds. And it hurts my face to say thicker at three pounds. The girl, oh, I gained three pounds. Get out of here. Nobody noticed that shit that you gained three pounds. You're unwilling to do that.

Then five years later, you could have all the muscle that you wanted and be like a shapely goddess. And you're like, oh my God, I fucking did it. I can't believe it. I'm an unreal shape. And now I'm the girl in the best shape of all my friends. Or if you say, well, I only gain muscle and deficit only in a maintenance, you could be damn near that same bitch at the end of five years. And you'd be like, Sandy, you, you lift weights. You have a trainer, right? Like, I can't believe this bitch asked me if I lift weights. I've been lifting weights for five years. You couldn't tell? And they're like, not really. How come?

Because you still weigh 115 pounds. You're skinny. People think you're Kate Moss. If you weigh 125 by then and you got some decent muscle on you because you did the adult thing and gained a little bit of weight, a tiny little bit out of your comfort zone. You didn't turn into my 600-pound life candidate the next fucking day, then you'll get all those benefits. So it's really about being an adult at the end of the day. It's about being an adult and doing painful shit to get the good stuff at the end. It's true. It's going to, look, if you aren't willing to gain the three pounds of body fat here, I can almost guarantee you'll gain it at some point. When you

don't want to. When you're experiencing the wretched, horrible impact of sarcopenia that comes from having built no fucking muscle your entire life. You can't build muscle while simultaneously trying to eat like it's 1985 Vogue magazine. I love it, Mike. Where can they find you, dude?

Just YouTube. Renaissance Periodization on YouTube. Don't turn it on when your children aren't around. Or children are around. Yeah. Or children are around. Not for children. It's not for adults. It's for nobody.

There you go. That's perfect. Mike, man, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.