Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Eric Helms on Supersets, Dropsets, Forced Reps, and More!

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

If you've been lifting weights for any amount of time, you've undoubtedly heard about "advanced" training techniques like drop sets, supersets, forced reps, negatives, and the like. Years ago, I thought such methods were great ways to boost muscle and strength gain and so used to do quite a bit of them. These days, I do very little because I now know that straight hard sets are the bread and butter of getting big and strong. That said, that doesn't necessarily mean there's no place for "fancier" stuff, but only if you do it right. That’s what I invited Dr. Eric Helms back on the show to discuss--which of the common unconventional training methods are worthwhile and which aren't and how to use the good ones correctly and effectively. If you're not familiar with Eric, he's a natural bodybuilder and powerlifter, coach, researcher, writer, member of Legion’s Scientific Advisory Board, and all-around mensch, and in this interview, he discusses the evidence for and against "advanced" training techniques and explains exactly what to do and what not do in the gym to get the most out of your training. Oh and if you like what Eric has to say, then you should definitely check out his podcast, The Stronger by Science Podcast, as well as his research review Monthly Applications in Strength Sport (MASS) because I think you’ll really appreciate what he and his colleagues are doing. I know I do! 7:06 - How do advanced training techniques fit into our fitness journey? 12:00 - Do you recommend supersets? 21:38 - What do you think of pairing movements that don’t affect each other? 28:25 - What are your thoughts on drop sets? 33:07- Do you use drop sets in your training? 35:21 - What are your thoughts on forced reps? 41:04 - What are your thoughts on pre exhaustion training? 55:03 - What is MASS? 57:41 - Do you offer a free preview of MASS? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, hey, Mike Matthews here from Legion Athletics and welcome, welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. Now, if you have been lifting weights for any amount of time, you have undoubtedly heard of advanced training techniques, you know, stuff like drop sets, supersets, giant sets, forced reps, negatives, and so forth. And many years ago, I thought that such methods were great ways to boost muscle and strength gain and were essential for intermediate weightlifters. I thought I was an intermediate weightlifter, actually a newbie weightlifter, but I didn't know that.

And so I used to do quite a bit of things like drop sets, super sets, giant sets, negatives. And these days I do very little, maybe some super sets here and there, maybe some drop sets here and there, because I now know that straight hard sets are the bread and butter of getting big and strong. And you don't need anything else really to get to where you want to be. That said, that doesn't necessarily mean there is no place for the fancier stuff. There is, but only if you do it correctly. And that's what I invited Dr. Eric Helms back on the show to discuss which of the common unconventional training methods are worthwhile and which are not, and how to use the good ones correctly and effectively. Now, if you are not familiar with Eric, he is a natural bodybuilder and powerlifter, coach, researcher, writer, member of Legion's scientific advisory

board and all around mensch. And in this interview, he discusses the evidence for and against advanced training techniques and explains exactly what to do and what not to do in the gym to get the most out of your training. Oh, and if you like what Eric has to say in this episode, then you should definitely check out his podcast, the Stronger by Science podcast, as well as his research review monthly applications in strength sport or mass, because I think you will really appreciate what he and his colleagues are doing. I know I do. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now this

book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire. And if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free

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Hey, I'm good. I'm good. Can't complain. Just busy trying to get ahead on work because I go out of town in a couple weeks. I'm going to go to Italy with my family for a couple weeks and I can do some work while I'm there, but it's not going to have really my setup. And why would you do that to yourself? Italy is amazing. I just had the pleasure of being there not too long ago after my competition in April. So it's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. I've been to Rome. That's actually where I proposed. My wife was in Rome, but we didn't go anywhere else. So this time we're going to fly into Genoa, I guess is probably how to pronounce it. And then stay in Portofino for a few days and then go to Venice for a few days and then go to Florence for a few days and then go to venice for a few days and then go to florence for a few days and then back to portofino for like a day or two and then leave florence wasn't it was incredible that was probably the highlight of the trip where we had it it was really really cool so you're gonna have a great time man yeah yeah i'm looking forward to it i've been wanting to go to

florence sometime just because it was the heart of the renaissance there's so much to see there just all the standard touristy stuff is basically what I want to do. Yeah, and it's worth it. It's well worth it. It's just there's so much history to kind of stand in the midst of. Totally. Well, that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about getting jacked as usual.

Try to look like some of those statues in Florence. That's what we're here for. There's your transition. You're a smart man. You're a smart man. You're a smart man. That's you right now. We were just talking just before we got on. You are like in super shredded mode right now.

Anybody who wants to mire, as the kids say, go check out Eric's Instagram. Yeah. Middle of the contest prep season, seeing if my brain still works. So good stuff. I heard you were eating a snack just before, so maybe that's enough to carry you through the next 45 minutes. Yeah, but no longer than that. 46 minutes, all of a sudden I'll be unable to interpret research. So be wary. It's downhill from there, man. And then it's just Netflix comes on. You can't stop your hands.

Exactly. So today, the discussions will be about advanced training techniques, I guess you could say, or intensity techniques, stuff like supersets, drop sets, force reps, pre-exhaustion. You recently covered this in Mass, and I really like your take on these things. Because back when I first got into weightlifting, these are the kinds of things that you find in bodybuilding magazines and are often recommended because they sound fancy. And if, if the magazines told you like, Oh, you're new to weightlifting. Yeah. Just, you know, squat deadlift bench and overhead press for the first year or so. And, and then we'll talk about, uh, we'll talk about the rest after that. Probably wouldn't sell as well. So instead, the workouts are, they try to sell you on the innovative breakthrough training methods. And so I did a lot of this stuff back when I first started training, but I don't think I got too much out of it, honestly.

I guess I was consistent, so I got something out of my first few years, but not very much. Yeah, I tend to agree. I want to hear your thoughts on where do these things fit in to our, I'd say more just like our fitness journey, right? From the first couple of years and then into the intermediate phase and beyond. You know, I was like you, and I think, I think that the magazine culture that we came up in, if you were to get prior to the current social media boom that kind of dictates the way information is parsed in the fitness industry, means that they've got to have

some new article that's not new at all every time a magazine comes out. And there was 20 of them. You had MuscleMag International, Muscular Development, Flex, et cetera, Men's Fitness, and then a ton of lower tier ones that were all trying to produce the same, same content. And they've got many times contracts with, you know, IFBB pros and bodybuilders and fitness models. And it's like, Hey, tell us your workout. And these guys are like, look, it's the same thing. It always has been like, all right, our editor will take care of it. And maybe we'll talk about, you know, it seems like they're throwing a dart at the dart board, um, bicep training for advanced off-season games or something like that. And so invariably, you have to get this recycling of different standard training if you were to be honest about it.

So what I think comes out of it is they have to sexify it. The use of supersets, drop sets, forced reps, rest pause, of these things were cycled in and out at that time just to keep it fresh. Pre-exhaustion. I remember when, I remember when that was a thing, when I was working with a trainer years ago and he was all about pre-exhaustion and he had a lot of buzzwords to explain why that was, but. Yeah.

And, uh, interesting enough, there has been some research on that and it doesn't do exactly what it was originally proposed to do. And, you know, Dorian Yates was a user of that and also forced reps. And at least he was actually doing those things. It wasn't just like random IFBB pro. And then we said he does supersets, you know, I think placing these techniques in with the word advanced or with special, I actually don't agree. I don't think these are advanced techniques. I think they are interesting strategies that may allow you to be time efficient or in some cases, potentially enhance performance, but in other cases actually degrade it. And I think that's

an important thing to point out too, is we have to think about rather than how these have been positioned by magazines, but what do they logically do? Logic is one thing. But the next step, and we've now actually got a fair amount of research on these, is what happens when we actually test them in a lab setting or an applied lab setting. And we're still far behind the amount of time that's been spent using these. I was recently reading a book by Dave Draper, and he was talking about using antagonist paired sets back in the mid 60s. Him and Arnold really liked to structure their training. So they would do, you know, a push and then a pull back to back. And they found it was time efficient.

I remember Arnold's chest and back workout was like the, I remember that from Arnold's book back in the day. Yeah, and we'll get into it. But there's actually some of those things that they kind of intuitively landed on do make sense. And then some of the things that have been more kind of just pushed because magazines got to put something out every month perhaps don't make quite as much sense. So I think overall, if I was going to give a big high-level summary, it's each one of these techniques has potential to be positive or negative depending on how it's used and the logic you put into it and the context. You know, sometimes, I mean, everyone relates to this. You go to the gym on, let's say, a Friday or a Saturday at your normal time. In your head, it's normal. And you forget, oh, shit, this is the day the gym closes an hour early. I only have 30 minutes left when I thought I had an hour and 30.

And you scramble to figure out what to do. And maybe you're doing something suboptimal, but you get in all your sets in those 30 minutes when otherwise you probably wouldn't have. And this is why it's, you know, research can only tell you so much. Like there's a lot of research showing that short rest intervals are inferior to longer rest intervals for hypertrophy and strength. But in the real world, if I told you, hey, we'll take two people and they can do as many sets as they can in an hour. And one guy or one person in this example goes, okay. And the other person goes, okay. And one person just is not in as good a shape and takes longer rest. Another person takes shorter rest and does more total sets. Even if they're a little more fatigued,

they're going to get more growth because they're going to get more volume, even if per unit, it's a lower efficiency. But that's not the way research is done. You know, we match the volume, we equate it, and then that's when those longer rest periods start to make more sense. And it's kind of the same thing. Anytime one of these advanced techniques is basically manipulating what you're doing during your rest period, it can increase fatigue. And there are ways to increase fatigue, which might be worse, better, or just kind of similar to if you had rested too short. Probably Mike, and if we can talk a little more high level about this, if you want, or we can get into the weeds on a specific study, how do you want to kind of run with this? Do you want to just start with, maybe just talk about each of these techniques, right?

So like we could start with supersets. That's probably the most common one, at least the one that I'm most commonly asked about, because in my books for men and women, which is how a lot of people find me in my training recommendations, I don't recommend superset. I don't say don't do supersets. They're just not in the program. And so people often reach out to me like, Hey, I see all these people in the gym doing supersets and I read about them and I hear about them. Why do you not have me do supersets? So yeah, let's define our terms first. So supersets are basically when you do two exercises back to back without rest. And depending on how you think of them or where you read about them, you might get to rest after each pair or you just keep going until you finish all your sets. Traditionally, I think, you know, you do one set of one, one set of the other, rest, and then repeat. And while there's not a ton of research on supersets, the research that is out there shows you can have vastly different effects depending on what two things you're supersetting. So if you're supersetting two exercises for the same muscle group, let's say a dumbbell shoulder press and a front raise, this seems to be a largely negative

effect, at least for acute performance, which we would think if you extrapolate it out to actual longitudinal hypertrophy would probably be worse. And this kind of basically comes down to the idea that while fatigue is part of creating a stimulus for hypertrophy, the actual performance of being able to generate more tension is the main principle. So if we get fatigue that helps us generate more tension or that is a result of generating more tension, largely good. However, if we place fatigue kind of in the order of operations as being more important than generating tension in the muscle, then we're kind of in the order of operations as being more important than generating tension in the muscle, then we're kind of putting the cart before the

horse. That's kind of like- So that could be similar to doing that where you're supersetting to front delt exercises, let's say, or primarily front delt. Could be similar to just maybe only working in the 30 plus rep range or something or 20 plus rep range. Yeah. I mean, if you get really,

really high rep, you do start to run into issues, especially if you're doing like heavy compound, another way it gets, it wouldn't be heavy, but like compound full body lifts that would generate so much cardio metabolic fatigue that it actually is going to make say the RDLs you do have those squats difficult. So there's a number of parallels you can think of where, yeah, we think, yeah, fatigue is good. I want to create fatigue and, and that's how I train muscles and then they'll grow. But we want the right kind of fatigue. We want, you know, fatigue that comes from creating tension, stimulating and fatiguing muscle fibers versus global fatigue, cardiometabolic fatigue, or generating so much local fatigue that it actually creates a feedback loop and generates central fatigue, which we can talk about and inhibits your ability to actually recruit fibers. Let's say you did have front raises and a shoulder press to do on that day, but you also had, let's say you're doing like a shoulder and leg day or something like that. If you were to do squats and then, you know, take a break, do your shoulder press, take a break, do leg extensions,

and then do front raises, your delts would have recovered somewhat from the acute stress of those shoulder presses, and you'd probably be able to perform more reps with heavier load. And this is an example of, oh, you can do more total work, you can probably create more tension. And this seems to be reflected in the research, that when you train a muscle group, and then basically keep training it, it's the same thing as not taking a rest interval. So if you're doing shoulder press and you go right to front raises, this parallels the same research we see where people don't take enough rest and the performance goes down and subsequently you'd expect long-term outcomes to be worse. And also, it would also be similar to just doing, let's say it's two sets of 10, right? In both of

these exercises, it's similar to as if you were if you were just doing that was the regular way you trained was you always did supersetted two exercises in a row for every muscle group that you did that you worked on. It would be similar to just training in a higher rep range as if you're doing one set of, you know, 20 plus reps or whatever, which we know it would just not be optimal and not be an optimal way to train, right? Yeah, exactly. There's a certain point where we're doing a certain amount of high reps, especially if we're talking about like these isolation movements, typically they're going to be doing high reps anyway. So it'd be like a set of 40 and that's exactly right. We start to

see if you're using loads that you could do that many reps with, it's typically below the threshold for what's optimal. Like you can go pretty light and get effective stimulus. You know, you can be doing, I'd say you're, you're probably 40% of one RM is kind of the bottom zone for if you're actually going to failure, you're probably going to still produce equal hypertrophy compared to another set at a higher load. But at a certain point, like if you're doing two 20 rep supersets, yeah, that's probably not optimal. And, and that's a great way of looking at it, Mike. And basically what you did is you reverse engineered it and you asked people to think about this logically. Instead of saying, hey, X IFBB Pro said supersets are good.

You said, hold on, wait a minute. My anterior delt is basically just doing 40 reps in a row here. And is that optimal? What do I know? Does that make sense? Would I do that if it was just a shoulder press? Probably not. And that's exactly what the research tends to show, is that performance goes down when you pair the same muscle group with another exercise for the same muscle group and do no rest. Interestingly enough, there are intelligent ways to do supersets though. This is what's called an antagonist paired set. So an agonist in muscle physiology is a muscle that is producing the main movement and its antagonist produces the opposite movement. So, for example, your quad versus your hamstring. One does knee flexion, one does knee extension.

They oppose one another. So in an antagonist paired set, that might be when you're doing a superset of, let's say, leg extension and then leg curls. be when you're doing a superset of, let's say, leg extension and then leg curls. Interestingly enough, the research on this largely actually shows improved performance and at worst, the same kind of performance compared to traditional training. Meaning that if I was to do a set of, let's say, 15 leg extensions and I rested 30 to 60 seconds, which is a key point I'll talk about in a second, and then I went over and I did a set of leg curls, rested 30 to 60 seconds, rinsed and repeated, kind of going back and forth with opposing muscle groups. This has actually been shown to enhance total volume, which is pretty interesting. Now, why might that be? Well, for one, you're simply not training the same muscle group again,

and it's essentially getting a rest during the time period where you are training the other muscle group, because if it was active, it would be an opposition. However, if you think about it, when you look at someone doing a leg extension and a leg curl, if you couldn't see the exertion, if you looked at the first few reps, and if you couldn't see where the pad was, whether it was on the back or the front of their ankle, it just looks like their leg going into extension and deflection. So both muscle groups, whether they're the active component working during each exercise, are getting moved through a passive range of motion when they're not. So it's essentially helping to clear out some of that metabolic waste, we think, from the previous set,

enhancing recovery during that time period, maybe even priming it and getting some coactivation, things like that. so we don't know the exact mechanism by which it does enhance performance but it's been shown both in bench press and bench pull so basically a barbell row that's supported compared to a bench press and in leg extensions and leg curls that when you pair back-to-back exercises that are opposing one another in that manner with a little bit of rest in between you don't need much even just a minute or two or 30 seconds on isolation movement, that that can actually enhance performance. And that's called an antagonist paired set. And like I said,

that's been intuitively used by bodybuilders since the 60s, like Dave Draper, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah, I mean, that's something I've done for years now before understanding it the way that you just explained with for my arms, for example, it just, it seemed that I didn't really lose much by doing this. If I'm going to do some arms training, do a set of biceps rest. Yeah. Most would be a minute. I think usually I was like 30 or 45 seconds to a set for triceps. I did it just to save time really. Absolutely. And I think that's the main benefit or potential benefit of supersets is in the real world where sometimes we kind of look at people and go, how did they develop such a good physique, but they're so not

evidence-based. I'm seeing all these supersets and drop sets, et cetera. And it's like, well, people have a certain amount of time to train. And while they may be making the efficiency of each one of those sets a little less, because, you know, it's doing a continuous set of 40 or et cetera, compared to the person who's maybe read a textbook, and they're going, right, I care about strength and size, I'm going to rest five minutes between each set, and I'm going to focus on the big compound lifts, they might be able to get through three times as much volume per muscle group, even if that volume is a little inefficient, and they're going to be able to grow more. So it's kind of like, all right, well, what's the best of

both worlds? And something like an antagonist paired sets are a really good idea. That's a way that I've programmed. If you read, you know, the muscle and strength pyramids, I recommend, you know, doing a chest and back and then arms back to back and then leg extensions back to back. So if it's an upper body movement, pairing your pushes and pulls set to set, even like you said, if it's isolation arm work or isolation leg work, same exact thing. And that's a right? Because I don't know about you, but I probably wouldn't want to superset, let's say, a heavy set of squats with something that is not an antagonist paired. There is no, obviously, the squat works so many muscles, but let's say go back to back. And I've tried this before,

doing like a legs and shoulders. I used to do that. I just found that the squats, because the squats were generally heavier, I'm working in no higher than 10 reps. Often it was somewhere around probably six reps and getting close to technical failure within one or two reps. I was just kind of gassed and I just wanted to, I felt like I needed a few minutes of rest just to be able to give my next set of squats, everything that they, everything that I could to maintain the weight and the performance as opposed to, okay, go from the squat into something that sure, it has nothing to do with legs. My legs technically are resting, you know, go do some side raises even. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, Mike, that exactly mirrors some of the little bit of research that's been done on this.

So after some of the antagonist paired set research came out in the right around 2010 or so, that's when there was kind of a boom of it. There was a study I believe done. It might have been squats and bench pull and bench press or just squats and bench or just squats and bench pull. I can't quite remember the study, but it was one of those three designs. And that's exactly what they found was that even though the quote unquote prime movers in the upper body exercises that were paired with the squats should have been rested and weren't being trained in each movement,

there was actually a decrement in performance very slightly on the number of reps they could perform during squats. And that's because these big lift compound movements, even when the muscle isn't being trained directly, it might be trained isometrically. And more importantly, if you do a hard set of squats close to technical failure like that, it's a full body exercise from a cardio metabolic standpoint, and you just might be too gassed. And that's exactly what they found. don't think are well suited to this. I think, you know, a bench press and a bench pull is probably as much of a compound as I would do it with. I mean, you're, you're lying on a bench, either face down or face up and it's only upper body. So it's not that hard, even though it is a compound movement. Or maybe a seated overhead press. I don't, standing is a little bit more difficult, but yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think most upper body movements you'd probably be fine with. Uh. The ones I wouldn't recommend combining with would be things like a deadlift or an RDL or any squat variation.

Probably not even a leg press if you're going pretty hard because you can push yourself harder on those. So maybe, I think it depends on the person likely. But I think that that's a really good point is that it's not just about pairing movements that shouldn't affect one another, although that is a big part of it. If you want to get some of that, quote unquote, little bit of magic that is in the APT, the antagonist paired sets, it is about actually pairing antagonists, which therefore prevents you from doing something that trains the full body, you know, even isometrically. you know, even isometrically. So like a deadlift, a squat, you know, lunges, RDL, those are all movements that you probably want to do on your own. And if you're a power lifter, I would probably even tell you to do a bench press on, on its own because you're in that arch position, you've got leg drive and it's an important lift to you. You don't want to risk it. So, but yeah, but if you're, you're a bodybuilder, I think pairing benches with rows, you know, overhead press with lat pull downs,

curls with tricep push downs, leg extensions with leg curls. And I do think you could do some things like if you wanted to do squats and then calf raises, I think that's probably fine. If you wanted to do something like, let's say an RDL and a lateral raise, I think that's probably fine. But you want to pick that other exercise that really is quite not fatiguing and then loosen up on your rest interval, you know, and you may even find that you have to rest in long enough while doing that, that it doesn't really give you a time advantage. So is it even worth it? So I think you have to consider that kind of on a case by case basis. Yeah. You know, something else that I have liked to superset into my workouts really, again, just to save time is if I'm doing any sort of ab training, leg raises, or maybe cable crunches, or, you know, planks, rollouts, whatever.

And what I do not like to do, though, and I've tried it before. And I mean, it sounded like a bad idea, but I was just curious, was trying to superset any sort of core work into heavier squats and deadlifts in particular. And of course it makes sense why that's not a good idea because exercises already put a lot of strain on your core. And those are some of the muscles that you do want to have rested and recovered. And so going from a heavy set of squats to having a fatigue core now to like doing a core exercise and then maybe resting 30 seconds or so max 60 seconds back into the squats. It didn't work well. So just for anybody out there wondering on what about ab work, I do think, and I let Eric give

his thoughts on this as well, of course, but I do think ab work is, or core work is a good candidate for, for super setting, but I just wouldn't recommend messing with the heavy squats and deadlifts. Just really take your rest. Yeah, I agree. It's one of those times it pays to be a student of your sport or your practice, you know, just to have a basic understanding of what's involved where and that. Don't think of exercises for muscle groups like squats aren't for quads. Squats are squats. They train a lot of your body. And, you know, if you wanted to do sets of knee ups in between sets of bench, you know, while you're already there and just kind of sit up and do them, that's great because you don't need your core stabilization to while you're lying down. But yeah, pairing up core training,

even though the core is only trained isometrically through squats and deadlifts, that's an important isometric function to keep you upright. You know, you don't have a spine on the front of your body. So the importance of keeping that fresh and being able to maintain rigidity, press that against your belt if you're wearing one or just against your TVA. If you're not, stay stable, definitely. Just got to think about any time you're doing a paired sets is the exercise I do paired with the other shouldn't be fatigued or fatiguing for the other muscle groups trained and vice versa. And ideally, just stick with the antagonist paired sets and you know that you'll be safe. Hey, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the

best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, and bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check everything out, just head over to legionathletics.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire order if it is your first

purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase with us, you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Let's move on to drop sets. Yeah. So the drop sets and rest pause have been researched only a little more recently, and they've actually got some promising studies behind them doing drop sets where, for example, you'll do a certain load and then once you've hit failure, you then drop the load and then extend the set. The way they've been done in the research has been so that the reps aren't super crazy high to the point where it'd be suboptimal,

but you start with a reasonably heavy load and you do a couple drops. And this has actually been shown to be as effective as straight sets of a similar number. So, you know, three straight sets versus one heavy set and three drops or something like that. Now, that's great because it does save you time. It even saves a little bit of volume and joint stress because you don't have to use as heavy of a load. And the total reps are typically similar or less in a drop set versus the straight set. And this is essentially coming down to what is a quote unquote effective rep. So once you've done one set to failure, you're going to maintain that high level of motor unit activation. And even though you're using a lower load or even doing

fewer reps, it's going to be basically producing high tension from the word go as soon as you pick up those slightly lighter dumbbells. Now, the problem though, is that progressive overload is still the primary variable we need to ensure that we get any fitness adaptation over time. So if you're going to be comparing, you don't want to be comparing apples to oranges in your logbook over time to ensure progress. So if you've been doing, let's say, straight sets on curls, and all of a sudden you go to drop sets, you don't really want to try to compare those two. You just want to assign either drop sets or rest pause, which I'll talk about in a second, to that movement and then try to just add a few more reps here and there, you know, increase the load on your drops and the top set and just try to make those progressive increases.

And we don't really know like what's the conversion, like how many drops should I do? What's equivalent to doing, you know, three hard sets of bicep curls? Is that one hard set and two drops or is it three drops or is it four drops? That we don't know. We just know in the studies that have been done, kind of the researcher's best guess at what would be equivalent in fact was. So that's the main issue. And the same thing is true of rest pause, rest pause being instead of going immediately into a lower load, you just maintain the same load, but rest 20 to 30 seconds, and then get a few more reps going to failure and repeating again, and then doing a number of those rest pause series. And again, it's like, you know, if you do one set to failure, and then you do a few,

basically clusters to failure every 30 seconds afterwards until you can only get a rep or two, that should be equivalent to straight sets. Because again, even though you're doing fewer total reps, you're maintaining a high level of motor unit activation. You know that the bar moves slow, so you're putting a high level of tension on the muscle, and you're actually getting less total reps and either less or the same time, but a similar total stimulus. But again, you really can only compare that to itself. And we don't know how to compare that to straight sets. As a final note, I would say that these are probably, again, techniques you probably only want to do with isolation movements, doing drop sets or rest pause on big compounds, especially like the squats and the

deadlifts like we talked about, is going to generate a lot of fatigue. And the times where we consistently see benefits of drop sets and supersets, it's always being used on isolation movements. And I actually think if you were to do them on big compound lifts, you'd probably see a negative just because you'd be so fatigued from doing that, extending those sets similar to doing very high rep squats or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Do you use drop sets in your training? I use rest pause a little more. I use drop sets sometimes and it's always for kind of my final movement of the day, always an isolation movement. So I'll use them on, for example, I've done them on curls recently. So preacher curls and hammer curls, I've done those recently.

Latal raises, I've done those and calf raises. So those are the candidates that I normally use. Movements where the fatigue lasts barely into the rest period. And then when I look at my logbook, I'm trying to get a few more reps on my drop or go, all right, well, I'm not going to do anything lighter than a 15 RM on my first set. So if I can get more than 15 reps, that's when I know to increase the load on my first set. And subsequently I'll make similar proportional drops. So all of my, my loads are a little higher. So that, that's the key point there is I compare apples to apples. Yeah, that makes sense. And you're doing it just to, to get in a little bit more volume in a little bit less time in a, in a way that's a little bit easier on your body.

Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's a way to do fewer total reps, less time. And for me, I started doing this in prep, actually. And the reason being is that training is a little more mentally fatiguing in prep than other times. Like I made other cosmetic quote-unquote changes that in the off-season you think wouldn't matter. Like I've swapped out front squats for a plate loaded hack squat just because keeping my front rack position seems harder when I'm a little more burnt out from dieting. And, you know, there's probably a little less stabilization.

But those kind of cosmetic changes allow me to keep my training intensity high when my fatigue levels from outside of the gym, you know, being lethargic, having low calories, et cetera, uh, are problematic. And sometimes, man, I just want to get out of the gym and, you know, go home and eat dinner. And I'm like, all right, well, I can finish my curls in seven minutes. If I take my standard two minute rest, rest interval ish, or I can finish them in a minute. If I just do a series of drop sets or rest pause. And I think that's one reason to do it. I know James Krieger, who is someone who's experimented with some of these techniques, he does them just to reduce the total volume because he tends to get tendonitis. And I think that's also very valid. So yeah. Makes sense. I think we should move on to the next one, which would be four straps. That's something also that I think is fairly common on to the next one, which would be forced reps.

That's something also that I think is fairly common. I get asked about at least. Yeah, yeah. Forced reps also popularized by my Dorian Yates, kind of along with that pre-exhaust. These are essentially when you can't train without a spotter, you know, or maybe if you're doing like a unilateral movement, you can spot yourself. And this is where you might take your eight rep max, but do 10 reps because your spotter helped you in the last two. Now, these, not a lot of

research here, there is some. And for the most part, it shows that it's equal to normal training, but might produce a little more fatigue, which makes sense. Not great longitudinal research, so we can't say if it enhances strength or hypertrophy, but I will say that I'm not a fan of forced reps because I think it's very difficult to apply a consistent stimulus from a spotter. So you don't know how much help you're getting. And I also think it doesn't typically ingrain good form or good habits. I think it's really important, especially in the novice stages of a lifter to be able to be confident and know where their true failure is so they can do things like stop a little bit short, be safe without a spotter, but also not be sandbagging without a spotter. And then, you know, like, is it the same gym partner every time?

Is it a random person? You know, how do you know whether you're actually there or not, et cetera? And then you're enhancing muscle damage a fair bit and fatigue and i don't know that you're getting a payoff from it how much different is your your rep at an eight or a nine or a 10 rpe versus the two reps past that you did in terms of the tension stimulus it is more volume but is the volume that much more effective per rep when you're going past failure that it's worth the additional fatigue? And my hunch is no, we don't have research on that quite yet. But yeah,

for the most part, it seems to be relatively equivalent, at least from the minimal data we have as far as traditional training. Makes sense. I'm not sure if you actually covered this in the article in Mass, but what about negatives? Did you cover negatives in? No, I mean, that isn't in that article, but there's actually a fair amount of research looking at what's called accentuated eccentrics, where you've done all the concentric work you can, and then you're going to continue and getting a spot on the concentric so you can do more lowering of the weight. For someone who's trying to figure out what I'm talking about, if you think of this in your head, basically, let's say you're doing bench and you're only

getting a spot on the concentric and then you do the heavy eccentric part until you can no longer control the eccentric. Cool thing is that we're 20 to 40% stronger eccentrically, meaning we can lower more load than we can lift. As a clear example of this, people don't miss squats on the way down. They miss them on the way up. They can lower it into the hole and then they're not going to stand up, right? And we've all seen those gym fail videos where someone takes a load on the way down and we know they're not going to stand back up with it, but we get that anticipation. Six seconds on the way down, legs shaking.

Yep. And they're nowhere, nowhere they're coming back and they don't. So imagine though, if you could hit a magic button and you had, you know, plate releasers or a hydraulic pump that would, would actually help you on the way back up. And there's actually in, in some high performance strength conditioning settings, they have constructed such devices. We actually have one that high performance sport in New Zealand here uses in our sports performance center. It's a Smith machine that gives hydraulic assistance on the way back up. So for example, I've played with this. I've sat in the hole with 250 kilos on my back, which is a solid 30 kilos more than my max at the time. And then on the way up, I'm doing 120, you know, and it feels really cool. And, you know, if you speculate, you would think this would allow you to exert yourself more

because you're not stopping at the point of concentric fatigue, but of concentric and eccentric fatigue. And this research is still in its infancy. And there is overall mixed data that would, that if I was to kind of take a bird's eye view, we don't know enough about hypertrophy and the strength response is inconsistent, but probably neutral. So I think it's a case where we need to see specific application of it and wait for more research to come out. Interesting. I had no idea that the contraption like that exists. That's creative. That's clever. And there's easier ways to do it.

I think it's worth experimenting with for higher. This actually would be an advanced technique, in my opinion. Some of the ways to do it that are a lot easier and don't require, you know, fancy technology like that or a really, really nice spotter on squats would be two up, one down leg press. So, for example, you do the concentric with both legs, and then you lower the load back into place with one leg, and you bring your second leg back in for each concentric rep. Because you're so much stronger eccentrically that the load you can handle for, let's say, you know, a 10 RM on concentric double leg press, you can lower with a single leg to the

point until you're actually hitting fatigue. But it's not something I actively recommend, just because we just don't know enough about it at this stage. And I'm sure it would result in a lot more muscle damage, right? So you'd be probably quite sore. It would require more in the way of recovery, right? At least initially. You can definitely expect if you're enhancing the total eccentric load beyond what you're used to, because you're used to training to the point where you've only taken the eccentric brunt necessary to go near concentric failure, then yeah, it's going to be substantially more, more time spent doing the eccentric. And because you're going closer to eccentric failure, those reps are going to slow down more and more. So yeah, it ends up creating

a substantially more muscle damage initially. And of course you will adapt if you do like a full mesocycle of including this in your training. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, pre-exhaustion. Let's talk about that next. Yeah. Pre-exhaustion is an interesting one. So if you look at some of kind of the popular bodybuilding magazines, uh, and what it was postulated that pre-exhaustion would do, it'd be like, Hey, if you do a set of leg extensions and then you go into squats, it's going to prime your quads and they're going to get really, really trained. Uh, and it's going to basically be a way of putting more emphasis on the pre-exhausted muscle because they're tired and now they have to work even harder. And that's not a completely illogical statement, but we've seen actually time and time again now with multiple

studies in the research that what actually happens is the other muscle groups in a compound movement have to come into play more. So there was a study showing, actually just recently we reviewed in mass, where at least in the first experimental session, doing triceps before, I believe, incline bench enhanced the activation of the sternal head of the pectoralis major. Because supposedly, you'd think, if you're to speculate, the triceps can't help as much, so the pec's got to turn on more. And they've shown similar things in other studies in the past. So pre-exhaust is interesting. I don't know how well we could predict how well it's going to play out. But if you have a dominant muscle group in exercise,

there is a theoretical rationale for doing some isolation work on it and trying to get more shifted to the other muscle groups. With that said, I don't know how much of a fan I am with trying to kind of manipulate training like that, especially through compound movements. I think it's important just to take these compound lifts and treat them like they are. like they are, become a master of the lift, perform them with solid form and let them develop you the way they do and kind of the natural way you're built anthropometrically with your limb lengths and your biomechanics. And then if you find that that results in certain muscles not being as well developed aesthetically, then you can just do more volume on other exercises, you know, like adding in some leg press if your quads aren't developed well from squats, or if you find deadlifts are great for building your lumbar and your glutes, but your hamstrings

aren't doing too well, hey, throw in some RDLs or some leg curls, rather than trying to pre-exhaust your hamstrings before doing a deadlift. I'd be worried about that from a safety standpoint in the long term. Yeah, yeah. And I think that is a key point is there's no reason, especially for, and I include myself in that most of the people listening and me as well, there's just no reason for us to need to stray far from the fundamentals really for what we're trying to achieve. is if you're someone who, let's say you're a guy and you're new to weightlifting and you want to have a great physique, that means you're going to have to gain somewhere around 35, maybe 40 pounds of muscle in the right places. If you're a woman new and you want to have that kind of lean, defined, toned kind of athletic physique, maybe it's 20-ish pounds, 15 to 20 in the right places with a body fat in maybe the 20% range. And for guys, maybe somewhere between 10 and 15%, like that's it. Most people are going to be very happy with that. And to get

there, you don't need to do any of the things that we've been talking about. And then once you're there and you go, okay, what's next for me? If you want to keep going in, in terms of achieving your genetic potential for strength and muscle gain, you still probably don't need to, you can still get there without doing any of the stuff that you've been telling us about in this podcast. Would you agree with that? And you could probably get there just by applying the fundamentals. Like you just said, like, Hmm, I like, I mean, I, to speak personally. So I, I, uh, after maybe four or five years of good, proper training, um, after maybe four or five years of good proper training, after maybe six or seven years of kind of wonky training, I noticed that I had gained a lot of muscle and I looked better

for sure, but my lats were just lacking. I had a strong back. It was kind of strange, but my lats, to me, it just looked a little bit disproportionate. And so I just did some standing pushdown downs and just added some extra volume for, I don't know, a year or so specifically targeting the lats. And what do you know, my lats improved. So that we know works. There's no way it won't work. Now, what if I would have tried to do some pre-exhaustion with my deadlifts or my other pulling? Would that have worked? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it would have hurt your back, you know, but no, I, I, I totally echo you. The,

um, the idea that the, the basics are kind of, uh, ho-hum, whatever, like that, that's what everyone has to do when they start, but then it gets fun later. I think that totally doesn't match up with some of the most successful coaches across a full spectrum of sport, strength and conditioning, bodybuilding, and powerlifting. It's that these coaches realize that these fundamental, quote-unquote, basic exercises, for the most part, and a basic strategy, produces the most efficient bang-for-your-b buck results. So what do they do with their programming, even at the highest level, is they find a way to emphasize it even more. Because we often forget when we look at these sexy new ideas or techniques in nutrition or training, that there's an opportunity cost. That if you're spending all this time focusing on these shiny objects, that takes away from your time that you could be spending rigorously and effectively applying

the fundamentals. Now that's a principle-based statement, which means that's how you should think about it as a coach, as someone who's thinking about a broad spectrum of people from a theoretical basis. If I'm going to write my book or if you're going to write a book, we're going to emphasize that. But individual solutions, and that's exactly what an advanced athlete is defined by the need for individual specific case by case solutions is going to dictate things like, yeah, of course, we're going to spend 80, 90% of our time doing presses, pull squats, pull downs, chinning, rose dips, et cetera. But Hey, damn it. My, my lats aren't very well developed, but that's a Mike Matthews specific situation. And you found a Mike Matthews specific solution. Ironically, that's actually also an Eric Helms specific

problem and solution that I found right around 2007. This is the point I developed enough physique where I actually got on stage for the first time. I'm certainly not a high level bodybuilder. I was a novice bodybuilder and didn't do very well. But I was the strongest guy in the gym kind of thing and had a physique worthy of the stage, at least the natural stage. And I had a T taper, you know, I had great rear delts, good, good mid mid back development, but pretty poor lat development as well. And I also needed to specifically target my lats and get a better mind muscle connection and make sure that I could actually put tension into that muscle group. And that took some years of training and experimenting for sure. So that's kind of the key here is that everyone should be rigorously

applying the fundamentals, but then at a certain point you may need specific solutions to a specific problem. Yeah, you know, that makes me think of, um, I think it was elite swimmers. It was just anecdotal, but it's, you had these elite swimmers that they have to be in the pool hours and hours a day. And so you have all these different types of exercises or drills that they're doing, but really the point was, and I think there was, this is also, it reminds me of cycling as well, where in the end, it's kind of like, we're talking about work capacity or we're talking about whoever can crush themselves with the most volume and recover from it is ultimately probably going to perform the best. And the fancy drills and games and things that coaches would come up with

were mostly just to keep the swimmers and cyclists from burning out psychologically and just getting so sick of doing the exact same things for hours and hours and hours. But in the end, I mean, if that were not a factor, if someone were to say, I'll do, if they could somehow, they could just do the same boring shit day in day out for months and years on end and, and just keep going and still be able to push themselves, they wouldn't need much in the way of fancy programming, so to speak. Yeah. And also, I think you're right. But it's also important to realize that elite sport and fitness are very different animals. For sure. For sure. No, I'm not saying it. I know weightlifting is different. It just makes me think of that,

where there's a, I do think that there's a parallel there. Yeah. And what I was saying is that elite sport and fitness are different animals in that the availability bias that coaches pay attention to is, yeah, I've got you in here Monday through Saturday training for three hours in the pool, but then I've got a specific issue. You've got a small injury or we can't get around this one problem or you consistently bonk at this point and I need to find a specific solution to that individual problem. And then when I solve it, all of a sudden, now we can actually move forward, we had a little block. And now I'm thinking about, oh, that was the solution. So it's important for these elite sport coaches to have

a big tool belt, so they can fix problems when they come up. But they kind of forget that 90% of the time, I've got these people swimming if they're swimmers and cycling if they're cyclists. And they focus on the 10% because that was a difference in their day-to-day routine. Also, it's important to remember that in elite sport, the difference between the first fastest person in the world and the 10th fastest basically doesn't matter outside of the context of them actually running a 100-meter sprint. Like to any other metric in the world, the difference between the two is almost nothing. And if you take the fastest man in the world on a bad day and compare him to the 10th fastest man in the world on a good day, you might actually swap.

There are times when Usain Bolt is running over 10-second 100 meters as he's warming up for the year and peaking. So I think we forget that we get these snapshots and just how small the differences are between, you know, high level athletes so that those marginal differences that only make up 0.1% of their training actually make a difference if they do. So that's another one of those things that we forget is we get so focused on, oh, what did XYZ athlete do to win the Olympia or this powerlifting meet or that or whatever? And it's like, well, you're forgetting that they were already totaling 850

kilos at 105 kilo body weight, you know, which is incredible. And then what they did to go from 850 to 880 over a three-year span, it might've been what they did, but the whole point is, is that they're the only people in the world at all totaling over 800. So it's, it's kind of like we forget how far the fundamentals take you. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Are there any other, those are all the ones that I had on my list. Are there any others that you think we should touch on? No, those are the big ones, man. I, yeah, the, the cool study by Wallace that came out just this year where basically they compared all these together.

The main take home, what they found was that in terms of looking at EMG, acute muscle swelling, which gets you an idea of how much metabolic work a muscle is doing and how much blood flow it gets. And then the total volume performed that four strips, traditional sets, pre-exhaust were all about the same. And the only one that seemed to have less EMG activation and less total volume were those supersets. And that's probably some combination of just fatigue, getting less total rest, and perhaps even some central fatigue that

was mediated by just doing incline back to back with bench with no rest. So yeah, it kind of just supports everything we've talked about and all the disparate literature that we connected and their anecdotal experiences and says, yeah, one thing we know for sure is you probably shouldn't do a supersets for the same muscle group back to back, especially with compounds. Yep. Yep. And, uh, I guess then to just quickly summarize then just for people, if they're, if they're not sure in terms of practical takeaways, so there's the super setting, which is pairing the antagonist muscles. Useful. Don't mess with your compounds, but you can do it with arms. You can mix shoulders in with, if you're doing some isolation work, maybe on your legs after your squats or after your leg press. That's useful. You have drop sets

and rest pause sets, which are also useful for squeezing in some extra volume. Eric, you said you like to do them toward the end of your workouts where it's maybe, maybe for your shoulders or your arms, right? And it gets you, it gets you out of the gym faster, a little bit easier on your body, but that's not something again, that it wouldn't make sense, right? If someone is like, cool. So I got bench press, uh, first exercise of the day, let's do a bunch of drop sets. I don't, I don't know from a programming perspective, that probably wouldn't make much sense, right? Unless that's all you were doing. Yeah.

But yeah, so to summarize, basically, folks probably don't want to take the same muscle group and train it back to back with multiple exercises. In general, if you're going to do a superset, you want to do an antagonist paired set. So pairing upper body pushing with upper body pulling or isolation movements for the biceps and triceps or quads and hamstrings. And then you can do paired sets that aren't antagonists. But like Mike said, you want to make sure it's probably something that's not too fatiguing for your second movement and probably not with a big compound lower body lift that's has that total cardiometabolic cost. So keep your squats and your deadlifts on

their own. But if you want to do some knee ups while you're benching, feel free. If you want to do standing overhead press and calf raises, you're probably fine. And then as far as the other stuff out there, rest pause and drop sets can be effective. Just make sure you're comparing like to like, apples to apples. And then for as far as what we know right now, while you can get that pre-activation to do something predictable, which is make sure the muscle that you've pre-exhausted, or it's not really pre-activation, it's pre-exhaust, to have less contribution during the compound, you can do that. But I don't know that that's needed nor a good idea. And then we need more research on accentuated eccentrics

and force reps before we can really say a whole lot. But those I would classify as advanced techniques that are probably going to increase muscle damage, are probably a little riskier in the gym, and require special equipment or a spotter and someone you really trust to do them safely. Perfect. It's great as always to talk with you, Eric. Thanks for taking the time. Before we wrap up here, let's tell everybody about Mass because it's awesome and everybody should know about it. And anybody who is still listening and liked this conversation will definitely like Mass. I hope so. Yeah. And the cool thing is, so Mass is monthly applications and strength sport. That's me, Dr. Mike Zerdos, and Greg Knuckles, basically doing this sort of thing on a monthly basis.

So we release seven written articles, and then Mike and myself do one video each month on a broader topic that we cover. Each one of the written articles is on a specific study. And then if you're not a huge fan of reading, like if you've been engaged during this podcast and you like it, we do like 15 to 20 minute versions of these for each one of those written articles. So we do the audio roundtables, kind of give you the takeaway of each main study and application. So you can watch videos, you can listen to roundtables, you can read.

We've got all three modes depending on what your learning style is. And yeah, we'd love to have you there. We've got a lot of cool content and a back catalog that everyone gets access to that goes all the way back to early 2017. Yeah. And where can people find it? Stronger by science.com slash mass. Awesome. And just to add my endorsement, which is going to be in the intro as well, but I, again, this is, I've said this many times, but their research review, there are a few research reviews out there, but mass is by far my favorite. I think you guys do a really good job finding interesting research

and then explaining it in relatively simple terms that someone like me, who's not a scientist can easily understand and follow along with. And then also, I think you do a great job just connecting the information dots and referencing other research and painting a bigger picture and placing research into context. So you really feel like you're getting more out of the study review than just what that study would offer you if you reviewed it yourself. So if I were to go read one of those papers, I would get less out of it than reading it along with your take or Mike's take or Greg's take. So that's something I also really enjoy.

I find I always make a lot of highlights in every volume. I'm honored to hear that, man. Yeah, I really like what you guys are doing. And there's a lot of work that goes into that.. So I'm honored to hear that. Yeah. I really like what you guys are doing. And there's a lot of work that goes into that. Like, I appreciate it. You guys are doing it right. Thanks, dude. Yeah. That's our whole goal. If, if Matt and the mass article doesn't result in some kind of change in your understanding or practice, we always have practical applications in there. Then we haven't done our job. Yeah. Yeah. So again, everybody listening, do you, are you guys offering any sort of like free preview, a free issue or something that people can check out? Absolutely. We have a best of mass

issue that we update each year. So we've got the best of mass right now that has stuff going all the way from some of our late 2018 articles. And I think maybe a few early 2019 all the way to 2017. So that's definitely something you can get access to. For those who follow me on Instagram, I've got a link to my bio links, but if you just type in Google best of mass issue, that'll come up as well. And I think we have it linked on our main sales page. Awesome. So yeah, stronger by science.com slash mass, check it out. And hopefully the free preview is prominently displayed there. If it's not, you actually may want to just make that clear because you'll get a lot of people who that's, you know, the proof is in the pudding. If they

can just check it out, that's it. It really sells itself. So absolutely. All right. Well, thanks, Eric. Again, I always, I always enjoy talking with you. I appreciate you taking the time and I look forward to the next one. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies.

goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, thinner, leaner, stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and

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