Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Brad Schoenfeld on the Science of Time-Efficient Training

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Most of us lead busy, hectic lives and we have to face the fact that we’re going to die with a long to-do list. “Ain’t nobody got time for that,” after all. So it’s no surprise that when life throws you a curveball and your time is suddenly strapped, your training might have to take a backseat. Other times it’s not obligations that get in the way, but perhaps you just want to spend less time in the gym so that you have more time and energy to devote to other pursuits. Or maybe you’re someone who’s just getting started in the gym and doesn’t want to devote hours every week to getting fit. No matter the reason, the good news is you can easily maintain (or even gain) muscle and strength with surprisingly little training. In this podcast, I interview Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, who recently released a narrative review of what the scientific literature says about time-efficient training. That is, Brad and his colleagues evaluated the research to determine the most effective way to strength train with the least amount of time. Brad practically needs no introduction, but in case you’re not familiar with him, he’s an internationally renowned fitness expert, author, educator, lecturer, and researcher, who’s published over 200 peer-reviewed research articles on exercise and sports nutrition. He’s truly an authority on all things related to body composition, hypertrophy, fat loss, and natural bodybuilding. So, if you’re someone who wants to learn how to get the most out of your training with the least amount of time in the gym, or you’re an optimizer who wants to train as efficiently as possible, definitely listen to this podcast! Timestamps: 7:23 - How do you maximize muscle growth while minimizing time spent in the gym? 8:22 - How little training can you do while still making gains? 12:54 - What's the minimum amount of training to maintain muscle you've already built? 17:48 - How do you program a minimalist routine? How do you get the best results with minimal time in the gym? 20:59 - How many sets should you do? 24:22 - How do you count the direct and indirect volume with multi-joint exercises? 28:48 - What movements should you include in your routine? 40:38 - How long should you rest between sets? 46:35 - How should you pick the number of reps to do on a particular exercise? 48:52 - How should you use drop sets? 49:46 - How do you count drop sets? Mentioned on the Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://buylegion.com/mike Brad’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradschoenfeldphd/?hl=en Brad's Textbook: Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy - https://www.amazon.com/Science-Development-Muscle-Hypertrophy-Schoenfeld/dp/1492597678/?tag=mflweb-20 Brad's Book: Max Muscle Plan - https://www.amazon.com/M-X-Muscle-Plan-2-0/dp/171820714X/?tag=mflweb-20

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. And if you like my podcast, go ahead and take a moment to subscribe to it in whatever app you are using for two reasons. One, it'll make sure you don't miss any new episodes because they will be queued up for easy listening. And two, it will help others find me and my work because it will boost the rankings of the show on the various charts. Okay, so this episode is an interview that I did with the one and only Brad Schoenfeld about time-efficient training. And this is something I get asked about fairly often because most of us are leading a pretty busy, pretty hectic life. And we have to face the fact that we're going to die with a long to-do list. It's just going to happen. And we want to make sure that training regularly

is not left on the list. We want to make sure that we make time for that. Now, how do we get the most want to make sure that we make time for that. Now, how do we get the most for that time though? How do we get the biggest bang for our training buck? Well, that is what this episode is all about. So if you're somebody who wants to spend, I wouldn't say as little time in the gym as possible, but who wants to spend enough time to reap most of the benefits that regular training has to offer and no more than that. For whatever reason, maybe there are other things you want to do with that time. It could be hobbies or it could be work or it could be family time or whatever. Then you are going to learn how to make your workouts and your workout routine as time efficient as possible. That's what Brad gets into in this episode.

And this is also useful information for those of us who spend a bit more time in the gym on the regular. Someone like me, for example, I spend about an hour per day, five days per week strength training. So for those of you who are like me, who already are spending a fair amount of time in the gym, understanding how to make your training more time efficient is helpful if you have to cut a workout short. So maybe you only have 30 minutes today as opposed to the normal 60 or 70 minutes, or maybe you are needing to modify your routine to just maintenance for a week or two. Maybe you

have other obligations or maybe you are going on vacation and you don't want to do no exercise at all. You don't want to do no strength training for a couple of weeks, but you also want to be more relaxed in your schedule and ideally be able to pick up after your vacation where you left off. That for example, is what I like to do if I'm going to be out of town for let's say seven days or longer. If it's only a few days, what I'll usually do, like let's say I'm going to be going somewhere on a Thursday. I'll just do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday workouts. And if I'm going to be coming back, let's say the following Monday or Tuesday, then I'll just do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday workouts. And if I'm gonna be coming back, let's say the following Monday or Tuesday, then I'll just take the next few days off.

Maybe I'll squeeze in one workout. And I find that so long as I get right back into the gym when I get back, I haven't lost any strength or performance. But if I'm going to be gone for a longer period of time, then I do try to schedule in a couple of strength training workouts. And I try to make them as time efficient as possible. Again, with the goal of being able to

just resume my normal training when I return, not come back and have lost three weeks of progress, at least in terms of performance, because I took 10, 11, 12, 13 days off. And so again, if I have piqued your interest, I think you are going to like this episode. And in case you are not familiar with Brad, he is an internationally renowned fitness expert, author, educator, lecturer, and researcher. He is a credentialed scientist and he has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers on exercise and sports nutrition. And he is one of the preeminent authorities in the evidence-based fitness space. This guy knows his stuff.

Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which, thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial

sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster. And you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to buylegion.com slash Mike.

That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash Mike. And just to show you how much I appreciate my podcast peeps use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. Dr. Schoenfeld, thanks for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure, Mike. So I wanted to have you, I mean, there's so many things that, that we could talk about and, uh, you're, you're like the, the grand poobah of gains. Um, but I wanted to get you on to, uh, share with the listeners, your thoughts on time efficient

training, something that I've commented on tangentially here and there, like how to properly use supersets or how to reduce volume if you just want to maintain your muscle and strength and you don't have enough time to get in the gym and spend the hours per week necessarily that it takes to progress as an intermediate or advanced weightlifter. But I haven't, I haven't written or spoken, um, generally about how to, uh, make your workouts shorter, uh, but also make them effective. And of course there are many reasons why people may want to do that. Again, it may be time constraints that are just, uh, general like, Oh, well for the next two months, um, I only have 30 minutes a day that I can lift weights. So what am I going to do? Or if it's just kind of out of curve balls of life where

you wanted to get in and do your one hour lower body session today, but you just found out that you have a call you have to be on or whatever. And so you only have 30 minutes. And yeah, so I wanted to get you want to talk about how to maximize results while also minimizing time in the gym. at least through fairly limited brief workouts and certainly maintaining gains requires much less training. So when you can have a much more efficient training strategy, if your goal is just maintenance now, if you want to be a bodybuilder and are looking to, to maximize your genetic potential, that certainly will require more first of all, more time and also more manipulation. But yeah, it's, I think, something that really is somewhat underappreciated that you can really make huge strides with fairly limited, with a fairly limited time commitment. Can you be more specific with that? Because I'm sure people are wondering now, like, well, what do you mean? How limited?

with that? Because I'm sure people are wondering now, like, well, what do you mean? How limited? You know, again, there's not an exact, I don't want to give like hard cutoffs. I can give some generalities that I mean, training several hours a week, you know, let's say two, three hours a week, three days a week to three days a week, even two days a week, you can see a majority against, but certainly like three days a week uh half hour to 45 minute sessions and would you say that that would be effective for somebody who's new and then at how how far do you think that that approach and again i know you're just speaking generally but i'm curious as to your thoughts on how far you think that approach can take that person so again let's let's assume that they have their

honeymoon phase ahead of them. So their body's going to be hyper responsive. And then where does it go from there if they're training just a couple hours per week? Yeah. So I'll preface this by saying there's a large inter-individual variability in people. So some people who are poor responders might only see, and again, I hate to throw out percentages, but just as a general example, might see 40 or 50% of their gains with something like that over time, whereas someone else might be able to realize 75% or even more of their gains. And some people maybe even a little less. Volume certainly is a driver or appears to be based on the research for response. So there seems to be a relationship between poor responders and volume where increasing volume has fewer poor responders. So again, these are just generalities and

it's specific to the individual, but certainly I think one of the things that's even more well-established is that once you've gotten gains, that maintaining the gains can be achieved with substantially reduced volumes and time commitments. So, and that seems to be pretty much across the board. And before we segue to that, I just want to comment that some people may be a little bit surprised that even 40 to 50% of genetic potential training a couple hours per week is pretty good considering, let's say the average uh the the physique that he's after at least the average guys i've interacted with over the last years uh six seven years whatever maybe that's 25 to 30 pounds of muscle gain let's say that they will be quite happy when they've

gained anywhere between 20 and 30 pounds of muscle in the right places on their body and brought their body fat percentage down to maybe somewhere in between 10 and 15% where they look athletic, they have some abs, fairly easy to maintain. And I think you would agree that that's probably about, maybe it's a little bit more than 50% of the average guy's genetic potential for muscle gain. But at least my understanding of the research and the models that are out there is that your average guy can probably gain between 40 and 50 pounds of muscle over the course of his fitness journey over his lifetime. And so to be able to get halfway there,

and that's a pretty cool transformation to go from a normal dude to plus 20, 25 pounds of muscle on a pretty minimalistic training routine. Like you said earlier, that's encouraging. Totally agree. First of all, I think that is a fairly good ballpark and it certainly does depend on the individual, uh, as mentioned earlier, but, uh, yeah, I think one of the most important take-homes here is that everyone has the ability to substantially improve their physique. And we're not even talking about health markers and other factors that go along with it. There's just so many benefits to resistance training. But purely from a muscular standpoint, we're talking muscle development, so hypertrophy, if you will muscle growth and strength really it's

with very again somewhat of a relative term but i would say very little time commitment you can make very nice gains absolutely so let's talk about maintenance so let's take somebody who i'm thinking of of listeners here this is going to be somebody who has, they have at least a couple of years of proper strength training or resistance training under their belt. They've gained a fair amount of muscle. They've gained a fair amount of strength. And now what would be your recommendations if they said, okay, I want to do the bare minimum to maintain what I have. And for whatever reason, maybe they want to take time and put it into another physical activity. Maybe they want to take up a martial art or something, or they want to take up a sport

and they don't want to lose what they've gained in the gym. Or again, life has just gotten in the way, work, family, social obligations, or whatever. How does a maintenance routine look like for that person? Yeah. I mean, it would mean, if you're talking just an overall time commitment, it's basically the same, perhaps even a little less. There was one study. So, there's somewhat limited evidence on this when I say evidence, we're talking scientific evidence research. But there was one study that had subjects train and then put them on a routine that was one ninth of the volume that they did to gain the muscle and they largely maintained what they had now these were young subjects so interestingly it does seem there is somewhat of an age factor

here that as people get older they need somewhat of a larger dose to maintain but the dose at that point would be like i I think a third, cutting it down to one third of what they were doing was enough to maintain a majority in older people, but in younger people, one ninth. Now, again, some limitations here. So when we talk in generalities, these weren't bodybuilders and I would at least, and there hasn't been a study done in bodybuilders. I would surmise- You've worked with enough of them though, exactly.

But most of them have not wanted to go down to one ninth of their volume. So bodybuilders tend to be a funny bunch. But if they had to- I mean, I would say even the lifestyle, I consider myself a lifestyle bodybuilder. I've never competed, but I'm probably into this a bit more than just the average fitness goer. And one ninth of volume, that would, I would, it's not even worth driving to the gym. If I'm going to drive there, I got to do, I got to do a little bit more than that. One third, it would be, would take restraint.

You know what I mean? Right. And I was going to say, you know, it's not clear. I would surmise that probably a little bit more volume, the more muscle you gain, at least it's a good logical, I think you can make a logical case for it. We don't have great evidence, but certainly I know from, like you said, having worked with many bodybuilders, that during a maintenance phase where they're cutting back substantially on their training, they've been able to do that on substantially less firearms. I'd also say this, this is another, I think, important factor, not that you'd ever want to completely take off. And this is somewhat of a side topic, but

if you do, when you become well-trained, your muscle has quote unquote, a muscle memory, And your muscle has, quote unquote, a muscle memory, whereby getting back the muscle comes very quickly, even if you stop completely from doing it for a fairly long period of time, for months. So just maintaining, once you, even if you would lose a little bit, you can ramp that up very quickly and get back or even improve on what you had. And one last thing on that too, this is theoretical, but it's certainly something that I think has some credence from the limited research we do have that there can be a resensitization that if you're training with higher volumes, substantially cutting back on your volume might resensitize your muscles to future periods of higher volume where you can actually ultimately make more gains over time so that needs more study but certainly uh we're getting now into more of nuanced uh programming for advanced trainees

but i think it's something to mention that's one of the reasons why with my programming and this is the programming that is in my book for intermediate and advanced weightlifting it's called beyond bigger leaner stronger one of the reasons why i like that in the beginning of a training cycle it's higher volume lower weights and then as you get deeper into the cycle the volume comes down and and the weights go up and there i think there are multiple reasons for why that's a good way of setting it up. But that was one of the things is if that does pan out, then it probably makes sense to that just be another reason to periodize your training. If you're intermediate

or advanced, probably not as important if you're brand new, but yeah, I'd agree. So let's get a little bit more specific. So, okay. we have a couple of hours per week, and that's certainly encouraging for maintaining. Let's call it one third of the volume. One ninth maybe is people, even if they could do it, they may be like, well, again, like me, if I'm going to go to the gym, I'll at least, you know, I can at least be there for 20 or 30 minutes. So what would those workouts look like? What are some kind of rules of thumb or just general guidelines that you would give people for putting together a program that allows them to get the best results within these time constraints?

So, I mean, some generalities. It's more efficient to use multi-joint exercises compared to single joint because you're working more muscle. So if you're going to do a lot of single joint exercises, if you're going to do lateral raises and rear delt raises and pec flies and leg extensions, you're just going to have to do more, a variety of more exercises to work all the major muscles completely. Whereas if you're doing a squat for your legs, I mean, the squat works basically the entire lower body. And certainly it works the quads and the glutes highly effectively, but you also get ancillary work in the hamstrings. A row is going to work multiple muscles or even it will work your sternal pecs.

Not only does it work the back musculature, the lats and the rhomboids, trapezius, but also it's going to work your sternal pecs. It's going to work your biceps, break your radialis. So anyway, if you're looking to optimize time, focusing on these multi-joint, large muscle multi-joint exercises just makes sense. I personally think also using a total body routine would be more effective in these types of lower volume workouts, just because it allows you to hit your muscle more frequently over the course of the week with lower volume. And this is somewhat debatable through research too. So I will say that it's an equivocal, through research too. So I will say that it's an equivocal, this is more personal opinion, just based on anecdote that I've experienced. But I do think that total body routines here can be more of an effective measure. I mean, generally from some of the limited research we have is that

the benefit to split routines are that they allow you to utilize higher volumes with greater, allowing for greater rest in between your workouts. Whereas if that's not the issue, then it just, at least to me, makes more sense to use more of a total body approach to training. Some people find full body workouts more enjoyable too, just because there's more variety in them. It's completely up to the person. Some people like the pump of working multiple muscles too. So I do agree. There are people that do like total body workouts better, but I've found that's very subjective to the individual. But I would say generally, one or two sets per exercise would be sufficient. Using strategies

like supersets, especially like agonist antagonist supersets can be very effective in this regard as well. And even drop sets can allow you to get in a little more volume within the context of a shorter workout. So using some of these more, I would call them advanced, quote unquote, advanced training strategies. So those are kind of some basics. Okay. Makes sense to me. And a couple of follow-up questions.

As far as volume goes, what would you recommend for, let's, let's, we could look at it in terms of maybe working sets or hard sets per major muscle group, at least the big ones throughout the week. Should there be kind of a minimum number people should be shooting for? Yeah, probably three to four sets per week per muscle group. There's some, you know, some good evidence that that's sufficient. I would say if you're below, if you're only getting like one set per muscle per week, it's probably not going to, yeah, you'll still get some gains. Certainly it's not doing something is better than nothing. And especially at the, or I'm talking newbie stages, you can make some gains. That's not certainly

going to be sufficient for a trained person to continue making gains. Which for anybody new listening, I mean, you heard that, like you could start with one set per major muscle group per week. If you're struggling to get into a routine, that would be, I think, a good example of the tiny habit to use BJ Fogg's term, the tiny habit approach would be like, okay, can I just do one set of these big exercises per week? Sure. I can, I can make that happen. Especially if let's say I, you know, they have, they may be starting with just body weight. So that would be very easy. Or maybe they have some dumbbells at home, one set per week, if you're brand new.

And once that is the norm, once that's your habit, then maybe make that two and so forth. I mean, it might sound kind of silly, but I think there's something to be said for that bare minimum approach, depending on the person. Yeah. And again, such an important point because the vast majority of the population doesn't lift. And many of them cite, I don't have time as a reason why they won't lift. And by the way, these types of workouts can be accomplished with fairly minimal equipment in the home even. So I mean, you can, certainly I was homebound for COVID and it wasn't a great bodybuilding routine, but I was able to get good workouts where I may certainly think I maintained the vast majority of my muscle. It's fairly limited equipment.

Same. And all I had was modular dumbbells. I had some bands. I had a bench and I had a pull-up bar that I couldn't use because the molding in my house didn't accommodate it. So I ended up doing pull-ups on an I-beam in the mechanical room in theing in my house didn't accommodate it. So I ended up doing pull-ups on an I-beam in the mechanical room in the basement of my house. Yes, same exact setup. I also added a weighted vest for doing things like walking lunges around

my basement and squats with bands. But anyway, but yeah, I had the really the exact same setup and was able to get effective workouts. And certainly we're both very advanced lifters for someone who's a newbie or even a, you know, let's say an intermediate with a few months experience of training. You can make decent gains. Totally. Totally. Okay. So, so let's say around at least, at least three to four hard sets per major muscle group per week. I'm curious how you would count that volume because you mentioned the importance of multi-joint exercises, probably bilateral as well, just because they save time, I'm assuming would be the reason for that. And what would your thoughts be if you were programming it? How would

you look at direct versus indirect volume for people listening? Let's say, okay, you're going to do some bench pressing. Obviously that's direct volume for your chest. That's how you think of it in your anterior deltoids, but it does train your triceps as well. Maybe not as much as a triceps exercise, but it's, it's not nothing for your triceps. It does count for something, right? Absolutely. And I'll start by saying that our group and collaborations that I've done have demonstrated on numerous occasions that even resistance-trained subjects can make gains in their biceps and triceps without doing, quote-unquote, direct biceps work. I see it all the time. Really every one of my studies where I have not done direct biceps and triceps work,

we've pushed the subjects hard and they have gotten gains. And these are trained subjects. Now they're not advanced bodybuilders. I would certainly guess if they were, you're talking like a competitive bodybuilder, probably they would not have seen these gains or certainly to the extent that they did. But when you're asking to quantify, we actually wrote a paper on this about calculating set volume that I collaborated on with some of my colleagues. And it's hard to pin that down as a general type of rule. I would say, let's say for the biceps and triceps, perhaps counting it as a half a set. So let's say if you would want to, for every one set that you're doing, you'd need two sets to get gains, or you can, let's say if you're doing two sets of

a back exercise, if you added in one set of of biceps exercise, you probably would be at least getting sufficient, you know, volume for your biceps. But these are, again, are difficult things to quantify. I would also say that for other muscle groups, let's say the hamstrings and the squats, while they're working, they don't seem to get as much of a stimuli as the biceps do, let's say, in back type exercises or the triceps in pec exercises. By the way, another interesting point. So we can get into the weeds with this, nuances, but I think this is important to point out. get into the weeds with this, nuances, but I think this is important to point out. So I collaborated on a paper with colleagues of mine in Brazil not too long ago,

and we looked at single versus multi-joint. We looked at, it was a pec, so it was a chest press, an overhead tricep extension, or a combination of chest press and tricep extension. And it was really interesting that the chest press for the lateral head of the triceps, the pec deck actually showed greater gains than the overhead triceps extension. For the long head, the overhead triceps extension showed greater benefit than the pec deck and the medial head was similar for both regardless. So it's kind of interesting, and this goes into specific to the triceps, the fact that the long head is a biarticular muscle, so it crosses both the shoulder and the elbow joints, whereas the medial and lateral heads just cross the elbow joint, and thus the overhead tricep extension stretches the long head. And that's at least theoretically, we didn't do mechanistic work, but theoretically why the

long head is better worked with an overhead extension. And conversely, when you bring your elbows down, it deactivates the long head to some extent and thus places greater emphasis on the other head. So this is to me more, if you're a bodybuilder or someone that wants to maximize their gains, I think more relevant. If you're the average guy or gal who just wants to quote unquote tone up, gain some muscle, I think we're overthinking things. And if you just do the multi-joint exercises, you're going to get, again, a majority, most of what you would through the single joint. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere,

definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And what type of movements would you want people to think with? Like, for example, would you recommend, all right, make sure that you have a squat in there. Make sure that you have like some, you know, the old push pull legs type of approach, even if it, even if it is a full body setup. And if we're going to, if we're going to do some pushing or pressing, should there be a horizontal and a vertical? Same thing with the pulling?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So generally one lower body hip hinge exercise that it's triple extension that involves the ankle, so like a squat, a triple extension, meaning that the ankle joint, knee joint, and the hip joint would all be involved in extension on the concentric action. That would be exercises like a leg press, a squat, a lunge would all fit into that category. And they would work pretty much the lower body, a chest exercise. So a push for the pecs, so that would be a horizontal press, a overhead press, some type of overhead press for the shoulders that would really target not only, I can get into a little more context of this momentarily, but you'll get at least some of the middle and push your deltoids to a greater extent. And a pulling exercise that would be like a row

or a chin where you're getting, they obviously are somewhat different. And if you're a bodybuilder, that can be the difference between winning and losing a comp, but your back muscles will get worked overall. So this is, again, you'd have to give more context as to who you're talking about training now with the shoulder. So then you have to start saying, well, what about the lateral delts, the middle delts? They don't really get like in an overhead press. It's mostly a front delt exercise. So would it benefit if you really want to work your middle delts? Yeah. Again, for the, for a lot of the population, I don't think it's an issue really, what they're going to get out of that. But if it is, I mean, aesthetically,

that's where an individual has to make their own decisions about what else do they need to do. The calves. So a squat will work the calves, quote unquote, but are you going to get optimal calf development from it? Absolutely not, or not even optimal. That's a muscle again, like the hamstrings that just doesn't get a high degree of stimulation. So you'll get some calf development, but I would say both the hamstrings doing something like a stiff legged deadlift would be beneficial there, which is a technically a single joint exercise or a hamstring curl if you want and a calf raise so perhaps just one set of each of those to really if you want to talk about rounding it out and that's where the nuances come in so if you just want to get quick workouts do four exercises you're getting

out of the gym in 20 minutes or less one or two sets of each of those. But to get a more well-rounded workout, adding, let's say, a set of hamstring exercises, set of calf raises, and perhaps a set of lateral raises would also be beneficial. So if I'm hearing you correctly, if someone is not a bodybuilder, at least not a competitive bodybuilder, maybe they would consider themselves like me. And yeah, many people have seen it. They would go, I'm a lifestyle bodybuilder. I they would consider themselves like me. And, um, yeah, many people have seen it. They would go, I'm a lifestyle bodybuilder. I mean, I'm into it, but I'm not too concerned with, like you said, do I need to be doing the horizontal row or should I do the barbell row or should I do the chin, uh, for my back development? And I know this is what

I'm going to be judged on. Um, people like us, there's a lot of flexibility here. There are some, again, general guidelines to follow to make the workout effective. But as far as exercise choice goes, so long as they use their time efficiently with compound exercises, bilateral exercises, again, they can choose. I guess if it were me, I would probably, I mean, I'd be thinking about some of these programming points, the more technical points. And then I would be thinking about which exercises I enjoy the most and which ones I feel like they engage my muscles the most and which give me the biggest pump and maybe which ones I notice, um, the most soreness, even though I don't get very sore, but you know, that may be an indicator that that

exercise is a little bit better than another. Is that, is that accurate? Yeah, absolutely. And preference is always going to be paramount. If you're a bodybuilder is just going to do stuff because that's his job. If you're talking about the average, Joe average or Jane average, who just wants to, when I say average, the average person, not average in terms of their abilities, but just what the average goals are for a person. It comes down to doing it. It's the same for nutrition. I could give someone the best diet in the world. They hate the foods that they're eating. It's not going to work. They're not going to do it. A bodybuilder will eat wheatgrass all day if

you tell them to, but most people won't. So yeah, preference is going to be really important. I also would say now, again, we can start complicating this. I would say ideally, it would be beneficial to rotate exercises over the week where if you're going to do a chin on day one, do a row on day two during the week. And you don't have to, you don't have to vary the exercises continuously over weeks, but just, you know, over the course of a week, get in some different exercises to stimulate the muscle slightly differently. That would help to get better gains if, uh, if that's something that you're interested in doing. That makes sense. That makes sense. A good general programming tip.

What are your thoughts on rep range? Yeah, so- In this context, of course. Correct. You can get a majority of strength gains using six plus reps. So yeah, will you get better strength gains at least for the given exercise that you're doing

with a lower rep range. Yeah. So doing singles or doubles or triples are going to get you overall better strength gains than doing, let's say eight or 10 reps for the given exercise. So what I mean by that is if you're doing, let's say squats and you're squatting with one to three reps, you're going to get better strength gains than if you're squatting with eight to 10 reps, eight to 12 reps. But how that strength transfers to functional tasks is much less established, certainly through research. And even if you might get some more strength, I'm not sure the practical relevance of it. So let's even say, all right, and there will be some practical transfer to strength. How does, for the average person who's lifting packages up, they're not,

they're looking more at endurance-based strength. They're not looking at maximizing strength. So I would just say for the vast majority of people, again, 95 plus percent of the population using a rep range of let's say six to 15 reps is going to be more than sufficient for the transfer of strength gains to their lifestyle. And it's just more efficient from a volume load standpoint to get in the volume that's necessary. Because if you're using, let's say, singles by doing this, or doubles, not that most people would, but if you would uh you'd have to do more sets to be to get effective muscle growth at least i'd also say this which is another relevant point to that if you're training let's say with six or even eight i i can even want that up to eight to 15 reps you really don't need

to do a warm-up sets i was going to ask i was going to ask about that can you cut down on your warm-up you not only cut down you really don't you can whether you need to do a general warm-up depends upon if you're coming in from like freezing temperatures etc but i i don't think for resistance training that's there's really not been established we actually did a study i collaborated on a study again with colleagues in brazil where we looked at performance on moderate repetition exercise. So it was eight to 12 reps, as I recall, and adding in a general warm up or and or a specific warm up did not enhance the performance on those sets. And I don't think, again, it's tough to look at injuries to try to study that, but I've seen no evidence that when you're training with moderate to higher reps, that injury will be significantly moderated by the use of warm-up. Now, if you're doing singles, if you're squatting 1RM, 2RM, 3RM, I think it's really important for warm-up sets to prime that activity. But again, from a time-efficient standpoint, you can ditch the warm-up.

And by the way, you can ditch the warm-up. You also certainly don't need to do stretching, assuming flexibility isn't a goal. Assuming flexibility isn't a goal. So it's long been taught that you have to do stretching either before or at the end of a workout. And that's only necessary if increased flexibility is a goal. And there's actually ample evidence that resistance training itself serves as an active form of flexibility training. So there's been a number of studies that have shown that you get similar results from doing resistance training through a full range of motion as you do through static stretching for that given joint.

Which is not entirely surprising when you think about, just for people listening, think about the flexibility that's required to do a proper squat for example uh to do some to do proper pressing to do all the exercises that we do if you're just used to doing it you're used to doing it but if you compare i mean i i've um just just in getting oh was it maybe physicals just over the years in interacting with doctors and sports medicine doctors who doctors in particular who aren't familiar with all of this stuff? They were surprised they had the idea that I'm not I'm not muscle bound, but I'm certainly more muscular than the average person. And they had they had the idea that I probably couldn't even touch my toes. For example, like I can put my palms flat on the ground. And I, I, I ironically, I have had a little stretching routine, um, more just a couple of yoga poses just cause

I do tend to, I noticed that my quads tend to get tight and, uh, doing, I forget the name of the yoga pose, but there are a couple of little stretches that help with just a couple of quirks of my body. But for the longest time, I didn't do anything and I didn't particularly have any issues, but yeah, I've maintained good range of motion despite no stretching, just by doing a lot of proper weightlifting. For golf as well, I've worked with golf instructors who assume that because I have like big chest muscles or big-ish arm muscles that I'm going to be really restricted in my golf swing. And then they're surprised that I can move just as well as anybody else, really.

Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's bodybuilders that do splits. And now there is something, obviously, if you're really muscle bound, particularly generally would take using anabolic enhancement to couch it somewhat. Yeah. I mean, if your pecs are as big as your head, you're going to struggle to swing a golf club. It's just a fact. Right. The muscle itself is restricting the movement, not the train. But the important thing to understand, it's not the weight trade, the lifting of weights itself. Correct. It's the, uh, the result of it, hyper, hyper muscularity and that, and you have to get really muscular to, uh, to see those types of restrictions. Totally. Uh, what are, what are your thoughts about rest time in between sets

with these types of workouts? Yeah, so they can be relatively short. Now, shorter rest does to some extent compromise gains. But again, if you're doing fewer sets per exercise and then going to a different movement, it's not going to be as big an issue. Really, the issues tend to be when you're doing multiple sets for the same exercise and then keeping a very short rest. Let's say you're doing 30 seconds or one minute rest and you're doing five sets of chest presses.

That's going to substantially reduce the amount of reps that you're able to get at a given load. However, if you're moving, let's say from a squat to a bench press to a back exercise, a squat to a bench press to a back exercise. It's not going to be, there's some systemic fatigue that does happen, but it's not going to reduce that volume load nearly as much. And I mentioned earlier that you also can use these techniques, particularly like a superset or, well, particularly here, a superset, let's say an agonist-ist superset well you'll do a uh let's say you do a chest press and then follow it with a back row row for your back so you do

a chest press and then you do a row which really is working the agonist antagonist muscle groups and you just don't see much in the way of reductions in volume load so that's why that do you mean back to back uh or like maybe okay just straight into straight in because it's i've seen certain uh superset protocols uh where it's the antagonist agonist pairing where it's like well maybe you should rest 30 seconds in between them which still saves time you could but you don't need to i don't want to say you don't need to it's not yeah you don't see much in the way of drop off so the true superset is resting basically as little as possible uh you might end up resting 10 seconds by the time you

get situated sure sure into the movement but i don't think that again makes much of a difference when you're talking that the difference between 10 or 20 seconds in the overall time of a workout when you're doing limited numbers of sets you're talking a minute or two so i just don't think that does much much of a concern here would you stop there at the second and then rest and do another one or would you go one two and even three if if it was a muscle group that was not trained at least directly or maybe even as a primary indirect target of the previous two exercises? See, this, Mike, is where no one can give hard answer, cookie cutter answers. Sure.

Because that's where individual needs and goals always are going to come into play. I mean, you could start telling me, you know, I have weak pecs and I want to improve them more. So then, yeah, do more. That's where the nuances and that's where a quality personal trainer would help someone who really doesn't know what they're doing to more hone these. I'm giving very general guidelines here, but virtually my answer to any applied question is going to be, it depends. Because when it comes down to actual programming, the needs and abilities of the individual will dictate what the actual routine is. So I can give a template here, but the template is going to need to be customized to the individual.

I say this in the books that I write. I'm sure you do as well, that it's not just follow this, like this is the 10 commandments the golden hypertrophy routine or the golden yeah the one the one way the one true right routine exactly yeah yeah yeah no that yeah i i of course agree with that um there are some things though that i guess you would say would be inappropriate you'd be like yeah it's probably not a good idea like for example if someone were to ask you hey so i want to do a one rep max, should I just skip the warm up? You'd be like, nah, probably not. And so I'm just curious if somebody was thinking, well, Hey, could I, let's say my workout is going to be four exercises, a couple sets per,

per exercise. I'm gonna do a whole body. So I'm going to be moving from, you know, maybe I'll start with my squat and I'm going to move into my push. And then I'm going to be moving from, you know, maybe I'll start with my squat and I'm going to move into my push and then I'm going to move into a pull and then I have a little bit more time. So I'm going to do some, um, a little bit of arms or some calves or, or some side raises or whatever. And they're thinking, okay, if I was going to use this superset approach, I understand I can go from set one exercise one to set one exercise two. Can I, can I just go on to three and even four and then circle back around? Cause then I can get through my workout even faster, you know? Yeah. So could you, I would say if someone has more time, they should focus on their weaknesses vis-a-vis what their goals are. So if the goal is hypertrophy and you have

a weak chest i would just do more focus more on doing chest exercises in your limited time there or let's say side delts doing lateral raises if your goal is max strength or when even max let's say strength for your lower body then i would focus more on a lower body exercise that was specific and perhaps lower the reps, increase the load slightly there. So that's to me where I think the programming needs to be then specified for the individual based on goals. If you have more time, another important thing that I would point out too, is that you could split up. Let's say you have a home gym. You could do like a short workout in the morning and it doesn't, nothing says you

have to do it all in one session. You can come back and do, let's say a double split where you do a 10 or 15 minute workout in the morning and a 10 or 15 minute workout in the evening. Yep. Yep. That's a, that's a great tip. Uh, during the COVID times or a couple instances where that just given my schedule for the day that just made the most sense to do half of ish of the workout in the morning. And then I'll do the other half later. Yep. When you mentioned, uh, the rep range six to maybe eight to 15, would you recommend the, the lower, the lower reps for the compound exercises and at least the most difficult ones and the higher reps? Or would you say, if you're going to do eights, just do eights across the board? Or for people wondering, well, how do they choose? Should they do sixes, eights, tens, twelves, fifteens?

If I were to hear, you could do sixes on the the squat or 15s, I'm going to do sixes. So there's somewhat of a greater benefit to the, uh, somewhat lower to somewhat lower reps from a strength standpoint. So I would say that if you're just doing a one set, uh, then that would be appropriate. I also do, again, there's just so many ways we can go with this, but I would say if possible, you can period, when I say periodize, that would say weekly, daily undulating periodization where day one, you might do eight reps. Day two, you might do 10 reps and you might do 12 to 15 reps on your third day. Let's say if you're doing a three-day workout.

Yeah, that makes sense. But do you have to? No. Is that how much of a difference is that going to make for the average person? Not much. Would it make potentially a little? Yeah. So that's, these are things that I think would be more of importance for someone who is looking to optimize what they're doing during that time,

rather than just someone saying, you know what, I just want to maintain, or I just want to gain some muscle. Yeah. And my preference for the sixes over 15s in the squat is simply because 15s on the squat, if you're going to take that close to failure sucks. It does, but I will say too, there is at least some evidence that muscular endurance, that if your muscular endurance is one of the goals that you will get some enhancement muscular endurance from doing those 15 rep squats versus the eight rep squats. So there would be somewhat of a synergy from the strength endurance continuum standpoint. Although again, how much, I think it would be more appropriate to someone that has specific goals in that fashion yeah yeah that

makes sense uh last question for you you had mentioned drop sets what's the appropriate way to use those yeah so um for those who don't know drop sets are where you train at or near failure, and then you reduce the load a given percentage. And usually that's 20 to 25%, although there's nothing written in stone that it has to be. And that can be somewhat specific to the exercise and the limitations that you might have. I mean, if you have, let's say you're limited in terms of dumbbells, you're dropping down, you're doing 25 pound dumbbells for a set, and then you have 15s. Well, that's fine. You could drop, you don't have that 20% increment, that's a 40% decrease. So you can drop down 40% at that point, you drop down to the 15.

And then you rep it out and do what you can to fail, and you can do double drops. So you can then drop it another 20, 25% or more. And how would you count? So let's say you're doing that. Would you look at that in terms of like for the volume? Would that be, would you look at it through the kind of the rest pause lens where you're doing a couple drop sets as one macro set, so to speak, or would it be, okay, I need to do three, I need to do three sets of this exercise, and I can do that very quickly if I just go bang it out in a drop set fashion? Or would the idea be to do three drop sets with their little mini sets in them, you know? to suggest that using drop sets appropriately can substitute for volume of additional sets. Now, there are some limitations with that evidence and how much, from a statistical standpoint, how much practical meaningfulness, not just significance, quote unquote, statistical

significance is there. But for the purposes of the majority of the individuals, you can use that as more volume. So yeah, just count that as additional volume. So yeah. By the way, one last point that I forgot to mention that this is all predicated on training fairly close to failure. So it's not like you're going to be doing, which is just this, I mean, generally that's going to be the case anyway. Yeah. No, it's a good point. It's a good point. It's something that I guess I've taken for granted in the whole discussion, but it's worth punching up. And I think it becomes a little more important, too, as you're reducing volume,

that you should be at least within one or two reps of failure, if not hitting failure, at least on some of the sets, especially as you get more advanced. So that's something to keep in mind, that that doesn, especially as you get more advanced. So, uh, that's something to keep in mind that that doesn't mean that you still need to train hard. And if not, you maybe even have to train a little bit harder. And then that's a topic I would love to have you back on sometime to talk about. Um, because, uh, it's, it's something that I think is particularly important for intermediate and advanced weightlifters to understand. And there are different ways to approach training to failure, right? I mean, you could probably talk for 45 minutes, just about submaximal versus, you know, pushing

close to failure and when you might want to use each of those strategies, how you may want to combine them. Failure in the context of different exercises, like probably not a great idea to do that on the deadlift very often. Probably not a big problem if you do it on the cable curl, you know. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head and it's a very nuanced topic that really would warrant an entire podcast to really delve into the complexities of it. Yeah, I would love to do that maybe as a follow-up. Sure. Well, that is everything I had on my outline. This was a great discussion, a lot of practical information. I really enjoyed it. And I'm sure people listening did as well.

Why don't we wrap up with where people can find you and your work. And if there's anything in particular you want them to know about, anything new and exciting that you have that you maybe just released or that you have coming out or anything else at all that you think the listeners may like if they are still listening because they liked this discussion? Sure. Yeah, people can follow me. I'm all over social media, primary focus on Instagram and Twitter. You could just search for me and you'll find me. My goal is to put out free content to educate the public on evidence-based practice, which is basically taking science and putting it into practice, getting the practical value from science, not just looking at research. And again, I put out a ton of content i have a textbook called um science and development of

muscle hypertrophy which uh if you're interested in the geekiness of the science that's a good book to to get and i have a uh second edition of my book called the max muscle plan max max muscle plan coming out uh shortly that uh is more of a consumer-oriented book that discusses a template for training to maximize muscle growth. So you can check that out if you're interested. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking the time to do this, Brad.

And I look forward to a follow-up on training to failure. That would be a great next one. My pleasure, Mike. Anytime. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which, of course, then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you.

And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.