Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2665: Why “Science-Based” Lifting Is Killing Your Gains

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Why “Science-Based” Lifting Is Killing Your Gains Exercise is nuanced: don’t discount the experience of people who have been doing it for a long time. (1:10) 7 Reasons “Science-Based” Lifting Is Killing Your Gains #1 - The people in the studies aren’t like you. (6:32) #2 – Studies aren’t run “forever.” (8:55) #3 - They don’t consider human psychology. (13:54) #4 - Great science-based programming may be inappropriate for you. (17:06) #5 - The “winning” formula doesn’t tell the whole story. (19:43) #6 - They don’t know what to test. (21:16) #7 - They aren’t testing everything. (23:04) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Pre-Alcohol by ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** Promo code MINDPUMP25 for 15% off first-time purchasers on either one-time purchases, (3, 6, 12-packs) or subscriptions (6, 12-pack) ** Special Promotion: Buy MAPS Anabolic, Get MAPS Old Time Strength for FREE! 60% Off Retail! (Ends Sunday August 24th) Mind Pump #1897: Why Phasing Your Workouts Is So Important & How to Properly Switch It Up Mind Pump #2015: How to Apply Advanced Training Techniques to Build More Muscle Mind Pump #2656: Machines Vs. Free Weight… The Final Debate! & More (Listener Live Coaching) Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Dr. Rhonda Patrick (@foundmyfitness) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded and entertaining podcast and fitness in the world. This is mind pump. Look, science-based lifting is awesome, but if you only follow science-based lifting, you're killing your gains. That's what we talk about in today's episode.

Now, today's episode is brought to you by Z-Biotics. This is a pre-alcohol drink. It's actually a probiotic that's been genetically modified to break down acetyldehyde in the gut. So you drink it, then you drink alcohol, and you feel great. Feel way better the next day. Go check them out. Go to Zbiotics.com to Z-B-I-O-C-S.com forward slash mind pump 25. Use the code mine pump-25, get 15% off.

Also, if you go to Mapsbogo.com right now, you can get MAPS Anabolic, and we will throw in for free old-time strength. So that's six months of workout programming for the price of one. Once again, go to mapsbogo.com. Here we go. These days, there's a lot of studies in regards to exercise, in particular lifting.

You can find a study to tell you which rep range is the best, how much you should rest between sets, exercises, everything. But here's the deal. If you follow science-based lifting, that's all you do, you're going to kill your gain.

There's a lot of value in the old school stuff and experience. You have to combine all of it to get the truth. Don't just follow the science-based crowd. You won't build as much muscle and strength as you possibly could. Oh, I like this. This is spicy. I like this. I like this a lot because this was suggested by our marketing team, this episode.

And I'm like, I love this because there are, you do have on social media now this kind of science-based crowd when it comes to fitness. And I call them science-based, not because we're not science-based or because other people aren't science-based, but because all they are a science-based. They don't have any experience training everyday people. Or very little. Or very, very little. Or maybe they've trained, like, a couple people like themselves. And so they live and die by the data.

So every time they communicate a point, it's like, here's what the study shed. Here's how you should work out. This is how the rep should look. This is the best tempo. And anybody with experience training a lot of people over years, especially decades, will, we'll laugh at it because oftentimes it's not the whole story and sometimes it's just completely false. And you can look at the study to see why it's false, but you won't know that unless you have that experience. I like having this conversation because I want to believe or I think that this was

probably you at one point. Do you not feel like you came from this place? I feel like when you first started, you were probably a science dork. I think he reads a lot of studies. You know, I was when I first became a trainer just because that's all I had. All I had were certifications and courses. And so I just based my training off that. But I think you guys do, right? I mean, when you first started and have experience. No, I had no idea what I was doing.

You were nothing. I was nothing. I lead heavy on the certification, but yeah, a lot of anecdotes. Yeah, it's, you know, data is great. But exercise, diet, but exercise in particular, so nuanced. and there's so many things, so many variables that there's certain things you can only learn through experience and don't discount the experience of other people who've been doing it for a long time.

Sometimes they'll counter the data, but if I were confronted with, you know, three or four strength coaches who've been training people for years and years and years, and they were telling me that a study was wrong, I would probably listen to them over the study because of their experience. Again, I like the data. The science is great, but you have to combine it with experience to get the full picture. And there are flaws in studies. And it's not just their bias because some company, you know, that's what people immediately think, right?

Oh, the study is fake because a company is trying to sell something. That's not what we're talking about. It's just the way that studies are put together, they can't possibly give you the full picture. Well, I think, too, just the amount of experience. It limits a lot of that experimentation, that self-expermentation, that, I've noticed, too, like, there's another side to this on social media where people are like really anti the science-based community because of the fact that like everything is so dated and they won't even venture into discussions with, you know, especially for like ranges of motion and like valuable exercises. This is where I've found there's a lot of separation with that and like things like Jefferson Curles. and my view of that has changed a lot as I was like a young trainer and like naive

and listening to a lot of the parameters of safety versus like how to actually prep somebody up to accomplish like a valuable exercise like that and build up their strength in that direction. So and too like again, context matters and in all that with athletes and with what their capabilities are and what you're actually trying to reach in terms of power output in certain ranges of motion. So there's a lot of, like, nuance that, like, science community just, so much, so many blanket statements that they're just like, here's the fine line. And we can't venture out of that.

Well, once you've trained enough people, there'll become a time where you will actually have trained a person where the science doesn't work. Yep. And so you could have, you could have. That's so many times. Yeah. And I think that's where I think I finally landed there where it was just like, I think that's also too where I've I feel like sometimes I can go really hard in the opposite direction

of like when someone starts to tout a study it's just like cool um good to know you know what I'm saying but until that client's sitting in front of me and I hear them out and I account for all the other variables I really don't give a shit about that study because every study that is pointing me in a direction is also taking me in the wrong direction with said client and so you see that enough times and you realize okay well this isn't the end all be all Yes, it's a good starting point or a great idea many times or to give you some sort of direction. But I think you get yourself in trouble if you base all of your decisions based off of what the research and the science is. Yeah. So one of my favorite points, we'll start with kind of the first thing to consider with the data is that oftentimes the people that are in the studies are not like you.

I remember this years ago, I had this, she was a psychology professor. her. And we were having conversations around behavior science and medical science. And I loved asking her questions. And I would bring up studies to her all the time. And she'd say, you know, Sal, she said, do you know what a majority of those studies are testing? And I said, no. She said, college aged males. Yeah, broke college aged males. The vast majority of those studies that you quote, by the way, this isn't just fitness studies. This is all studies. All studies, if you look at all studies, unless they were specifically reaching out to a a particular demographic.

The vast majority of studies that are done, especially on exercise, by the way, are done on college-aged males because those are the people that sign up for studies. They're the ones that sign up for $25 a day so that we can beat you up with this workout routine or test out this new theory. And so if you're a 45-year-old woman

or you're a dad with a job and you're, you know, in kids, or if you're younger than that, or maybe you are a college-aged male, but you don't match. like the sample size, those studies may not apply for you to you. And so you have to be careful with that. This is especially true for women, by the way,

especially paramenopausal and menopausal women who often don't get put in studies. This is very little representation. Very low representation. And so that's what I would see very often. I would see very often certain studies on things like intensity. And I try it to my clients.

I'm like, whoa, they did not get the result of the study show. In fact, I went in the opposite direction. What is going on? so look at the studies and fitness studies are almost always read them and here's what you'll typically see 40 college-aged athlete-athletic males or 40 novice males. It's always these college-aged males that are in these studies. And, you know, that's a demographic whose body and life at that particular time in their life is just going to respond differently to exercise, to intensity, to rep ranges, to, you know,

different movements. And you have to consider that when you're looking at a study, which when you train lots of people, you see that very clearly. Because I'll tell you what, the average client that you get as a trainer is not a college age male. That's the least likely client that you get because they typically can't afford training. Well, and then your second point

that you're about to make right now, which I think is the most important is that these studies are ran in these short periods of time. Just windows. And I don't care. Even if your client fits the study group, we understand evolution and adaptation.

And what happens over time is you evolve and you adapt. And so therefore it changes the variables of what went into that original study. So even the client who matches this person perfectly and this study shows that this is what happens or this is the best way to do X, Y, and Z, well, that's currently at the state where those people are all at that moment. Take that out nine months a year, two years. And that changes a lot because of adaptation. And so, and when we talk about training since the whole, that whole process of building muscle and burning body fat is getting the body.

to adapt, that's a, that's such a key variable that, like the, the, like, let's say just to give people an example, uh, we found out that, you know, you know, we study these three groups of people and this rep range is the best for building muscle. Well, that's based off of where they're currently out. You take those same exact people extended out nine months and the, the, the, the range that was worse for them now becomes one of the best for them because their body's now adapted. And that works for a lot of different things. And so it's where the stuff like this is like really, really tough that you have to understand how to read between the lines. That's a great example. A lot of studies, there's some studies that counter this now at this point. But at one

point, all the studies showed this. And still, I would say a majority of studies show this, that the muscle building rep range, right? The hypertrophy rep range, they would call it, is between 8 to 12. Now, the problem with this is that just because of the way studies are funded, it's so challenging to run. It would be so difficult to do a three-year study on workout programs. If you took three groups of people with 30 people each and you followed them for two years, that would cost so much money, it would just, it wouldn't be feasible. So they're 12-week studies. They're 16-week studies. And then they'll compare a rep range of 1 to 5, 8 to 12, and then let's say, you know, 20 to 30.

And what they'll find in that study is, oh, 8 to 12 built the most muscle. Well, here's what we know, just to back you up, Adam. Stick to a rep range for too long, however great it is, at some point in your training stops working as well as it used to. You do. And one of the best ways to get out of it is to go in a different rep range. Right. But you wouldn't see that in a 12-week study.

No. You would see that in a two-year study, again, which they're not going to make because they can't get funding for something like that. It just, it would be ridiculous. Well, another great example of this also is when we see this, we see this comparison of like a leg press and a squat. And in a short period of time, the strength gains and the muscle building that you can see done in a leg press is really close to like what a squat is in a very small window. Extend that out over a year, two year or three year, and you would start

to see that gap widen because of how difficult it is to perform a squat and all the variables that come with that versus sitting on this track that's very easy for someone to get good atain the skill. Right. In other words, you could sit you could take somebody who no injuries you know college age male whatever and you can have them uh drive a leg press with good intensity very quickly it's real fast it's a real short learning kind of jump right in you jump right in go for it a barbell squat uh is a very complex movement unless you've been practicing it for a couple years uh there's a long uh learning curve with the with the barbell squat so in a short period of time a leg press might actually outperform in fact

there are studies that show that a hack squat will outperform a barbell squat for quad growth for over a 12-week period. And people in some of the fitness community get that confused that they think it's a superior movement because of a study like that. And that's not true. It's because you're looking at it in a six-week period of time.

But you keep going, keep going, keep going, as your skill develops over a barbell squat, which requires far more skill, far more mobility, a better connection than a hack squad or a leg press, then you'll start to see the squat starts to take off and continue to build and build, whereas the hack squat and leg press start to become more limited. But you won't see that in a study because, again, studies are done for 12 to 16 weeks.

So again, studies aren't run forever. So the only way to know this kind of information would be a trainer or a coach who's trained lots of people for years and years and years. And this is what you see when you train people for years and years. I can throw a client on a leg press. we'll get some great results but if I get that client to learn how to squat

which is going to take three months maybe six months and then we start squatting and then we keep squat and I train that person for three years that squat produces returns time and time again whereas that leg press

I have to move from that at some point because it stops producing those returns. Next up is they don't consider human psychology. This is, by the way this is the most important thing

to consider when it comes to exercise. The biggest problem with exercise is not the program the exercises, the reps. The biggest problem is adherence. Yep. Okay.

It's how are you going to do this? That is literally the biggest. If we can solve that right there, we have solved the fitness epidemic, the problem with poor fitness and health. We've solved it. It's not, again, the programming. It's not the exercise.

It's not what the best rep range is. How do we get people to keep doing this forever? When you sign up for a study, you're doing what they're telling you to do. You're there for 12 weeks. You're doing it. What they're not seeing is, are people going to do this? Do they like it? A good example is if a client asked me, Sal, what's the best form of activity? If I just want to be active, I'm always going to follow it up with, what do you like doing the most? Because cycling may be way more effective of an activity for fitness and health than, let's say, salsa dancing. But if you tell me, I hate cycling, I love salsa dancing, that's the one I'm going to tell you to do. Do the one that you love. And they just don't consider human psychology. And human psychology,

is very complex. And again, you get a lot of insight into this when you train people for years and years and years. And I'll give a great example. When you first get a client, what they're really concerned with initially is results. I want to get results. But if I'm going to train this person for five or six years,

are they going to get results for five or six years? Well, no, that's not how the body works. How do I keep that person consistent for five or six years? If I'm a trainer and if I'm stuck on results, trying to get your results for five to six years, I'm going to lose you after a year. that's going to turn into is me hammering you. We're trying to figure out a way to drive you and motivate you.

What could you possibly do? It's just not going to happen for the average person. I'm not going to become a fitness fanatic in that sense. Most people won't. Human psychology is the most important thing to consider. And by the way, studies on human psychology, because someone may say, oh, well, let's look at studies on human psychology. Those are the least likely studies to be duplicated and replicated.

So if you look at all the human psychology studies, about 80% of them are never able to be replicated, which basically means you you can throw them out the window because human psychology is so complex. Whenever I think about this point, I always remember talking to clients about swimming. Swimming is like one of the best forms of cardio.

When you think of like the risk profile of it, the amount of calories you burn. It's amazing. It is one of the best. But it's like, so, and clients, I'd had clients that would come to me because they read some article or they heard that.

And they'd ask you, is this true? Yeah, it's totally true. But do you have a pool? No, but my local rec center does. Are you going to go over there and get it? It's open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. And like, does that fit your schedule? And is that, it's like, I mean, yes, it is.

But swimming occasionally is not better than you walking every day, 10,000 steps. And so you have to factor that part in. It's like, it doesn't matter that that form of cardio burns a fraction more calories or it is a little bit less risk or whatever the profile is that makes it superior. If they're, if they can't adhere to it and can't do it consistently. So you have to always factor that in. Right. Next up is that great science-based programming may simply be inappropriate for you. And I have a great example for this. If I were to look at all studies on cardio for fat loss, for performance, for time invested in ROI, right? Return on investment. Period. End of story on paper. High intensity interval training is superior. It's the most superior form of cardio on paper. Now ask me how appropriate it is for me. to apply high-intensity interval training to the average client. It's almost never appropriate.

It's almost never appropriate unless I have someone I've been training for a while who's already really fit, they don't have any joint problem, stress looks good. Then we're going to do high-intensity interval training. You know what's usually appropriate for most people? Walking. Walking on paper, 20 minutes of hit cardio versus 20 minutes of walking, hit cardio is going to blow it out of the water of fat loss. Blow it out of the water for performance and stamina and endurance and muscle preservation,

all that stuff. But for most people, hit cardio is way too stressful, way too hard, actually sends them back. Injury risk goes through the roof. It's just simply inappropriate. I always think about the studies that we have to show how great training to failure is. There's all kinds of research to show how much muscle gain you get by training to failure. But the truth is, 90% of my clients should almost never be training there, if ever, and it may be a fraction of their time. Yet everybody hears about that, and then what do they go do?

They end up applying that. And again, it really depends on where that client is at that current moment. That client is, we're still working on their sleep patterns. We still aren't hitting our macros consistently. We're all over the board, calories up and down. It's just like, man, you train to failure with all that stress and not getting with the body needs? Like, what a terrible idea. You see this often on social media where you'll get the scientists.

Really smart people, too. People that I really respect. I love their content. You just, they've never really trained a lot of people. good example, Dr. Ronda Patrick, love her, love her content. But when she starts talking about exercise, like immediately, I'm like you have not trained a lot of people because she recommends high-intensive internal training, train to failure, like intensity is what, you know, produces great results.

And it's like if you take 100 everyday people who want to get fit, you're lucky if probably 20 or 10 of them can do that and it's appropriate for them. It's actually inappropriate for most people because the intensity is too high, The skill required to do it, to perform it without risk of injury is high and they don't have it. That's why I always recommend. Then you got to add in the sauna and the coal punch go to bed at 8 o'clock at night, get up at 5 in the morning. Otherwise, you're not doing, you know, the right amount of science. That's right.

Next up is that the winning formula, the headline, doesn't always tell you the whole story. So you may see, I'll quote or I'll give an example of studies probably circulating now that people talk about, right, that the lengthened portion of a rep, builds the most muscle, right? So if I'm doing a curl, right, the lengthened portion of the rep is this part right here where my bicep is fully extended versus where I'm halfway contracted or fully contracted. When they compare all of those ranges of motion, the one that produces the most muscle growth is the lengthened portion. Okay, that's true.

But you know what the whole story is? The mid range and the fully contracted also build muscle. They all build muscle. In fact, if you combine all of them, you don't build less muscle. You build more muscle and you have more functional strength because strength is very specific. So if I just, because here's what the science-based cry, I've actually seen people do this. Train and just the lengthened ranges of motion. Do all the exercises and focus on the length.

Do these little short reps because it builds the most hypertrophy. You are training dysfunction. Yeah. And you're missing out on the muscle building of the rest of the range of motion. So although that one may be 10% better on the study, that doesn't mean the other ranges of motion don't build muscle. And what happens when we apply all of them? Oh, better function and better results. So, again, the winning formula, you need to look at the whole story.

The rep range one is a good one as well. Yeah. 16 weeks study, 8 to 12 builds the most muscle. Well, guess what that study showed? 1 to 5 also built muscle. So to 20 to 30. What if we mix them up? Maybe that'll give it the best results.

Next up is they don't necessarily know what to test. So a good example of this is when I'm looking at fat loss, I can test for fat oxidation. So what I can do is I can say, okay, we took two groups of people, put them in a calorie deficit, so the calories are the same. This one's ketogenic, and this one is balanced. So they're eating carbs. Oh, my God, fat oxidation through the roof on ketogenic.

Therefore, it burns the most body fat. Nah, stop right there. You're going to get more fat oxidation because they're using ketones for energy. But why don't we test the end result and actually see which one. burns more body fat. And you know what happens when they follow to that up with subsequent studies? It doesn't have an advantage for fat loss. They both burn the same amount of fat.

You just get more fat oxidation. Same thing with fasting. Fasting spikes fat oxidation. But at the end of the day, calories being equal, there's no additional fat loss. Another example is it's the EKG stuff. Yes. It's comparing like when you...

Activation. Yeah, when you do an exercise, oh, this is firing like crazy. But yeah, but did it build more muscle than others say exercise? And so it does not tell the whole story just because it's lighting up on the machine that more muscles being activated that grandma, did you actually build more muscle from said exercise? Right. So what they'll often do is test mechanisms and they'll look at things like protein synthesis, fat oxidation, activation of, you know, mTOR and, you know, all these different things. But really what's important is at the end of the study, did they build more muscle and strength? or do we just see these mechanisms happening?

Because at the end of the day, do you care? Does anybody care what the mechanisms are happening? Or do you really care about the end result? It's all about the end result. And then finally, they're not testing everything. They might test hypertrophy. But in the study, because you can't test for everything in a study, it's impossible. It's not feasible.

It would cost too much money. It only tells part of the story. Yeah. Okay. This built the most. Here's a good example. Machines versus free weights. Okay, when we're comparing machines and free weights for hypertrophy, guess what we find in the studies?

They both produce similar amounts of hypertrophy. So does that mean that I could just do machines then? And I'm going to get the same results. Maybe you will on hypertrophy, muscle growth, but are we going to get the same results on everything else? Are we going to get the same function, stability, the same mobility? Are we going to the same health benefits? You need to test, you need to look at all those things. By the way, to answer the question with that, similar hypertrophy, but free weights carry over better to everyday life and to sports because...

More functional benefits. Well, because real life is typically moving things that are free and not on tracks or in a fixed position. So you want to look at the... So they can't possibly tell you the whole picture. This, you know, a particular exercise raises the most growth hormone. This particular exercise produced the most endurance are the people, do they have the best life quality afterwards? So they get the best results in terms of stamina, endurance, mobility. All of those things are impossible to test.

But experience and experienced coaches and trainers will know because they've seen it. And they can tell. Like, yeah, both great exercises, both build the legs really good. But when I have my clients do this one, you know what else happened? They had better mobility and they had less back pain and they just felt better. Well, yeah. And are they miserable doing the thing too? Yeah.

Because sometimes the best thing for you, if you dread doing it back to your adherence point, and you don't like doing it. I don't care if it is the best thing. And it even gives you the best results. If you've experienced, and this is a part of what we're experienced just comes in, if you've had hundreds of people you've trained and you've applied the science that you know to it,

and you realize that, okay, only 5% of those people actually liked that process or adhered to it for more than a few weeks. Everybody else bailed on it because they hated it or complained about it while they did it. And so it's like, okay, well, that's great. that in theory, this would be the best route to do it, but in actual application in the real world,

most people dread it or don't like it or don't enjoy it. So therefore, I'm not doing it. Here, I'll give a great example, right? So we tend to advocate, generally speaking, for full body workout routines versus body part splits. Okay, so here's what the studies will show. Body part splits versus full body. If the volume is controlled, then you tend to see similar results.

But here's, now I can make lots of arguments. with data on why full body routines are better but the data that I can cite is going to kind of suggest here or there or whatever it's not like super conclusive but here's the bottom line the average person working their full body three days a week over the course of five years

versus training the whole body over five days they'll do one or two body parts a day right here's what ends up happening over the course of five years you miss workouts that's right you end up missing workouts and what workouts do you tend to miss the ones you don't like so you end up not training your legs or your back or whatever body part your hate You know what happens when you do full body workouts?

You train your full body three days a week. You know what happens when you miss one workout? You still train your full body. Yeah. Two days that week. Yeah. So full body workouts are superior for that one factor. That's why our original program, MAPS enabolic, is a full body workout routine.

And it's also our most popular. By the way, our routines are based off of data combined with experience. And right now, if you go to MAPSbogo.com, you can get MAPSanabolic, and then we're going to throw in a very popular program. old-time strength. This is a Map's old-time strength is a workout routine based off of the programs that strength athletes followed at the turn of the century.

During the bronze era before steroids, before supplements, when they had to be stronger than they actually looked even. So you buy Maps Anabolic, you get that for free if you go to MAPS program. Such a cool combo to run after MAPS Antibolic, too. Maps Anabolic does such a good job of building strength

in the Sadgill plane. Then you go over to something that has like these dynamic, unique movements. So the combination of the two of those back-to-back are like one of my favorite ways to run out program. It's six months of program. Again, it's Mapsbogo.com. It's the price of Maps Anabolic. You get old-time strength for free. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Max

and maps aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other values. valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com.

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