Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Greg Nuckols on the Best Way to Get Jacked

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

There aren’t very many people in the fitness space who I think everyone should follow, and my guest on this episode, Greg Nuckols, is one of those people. I’ve been reading his work for about a year now and really appreciate what he’s doing. When I have a question, his site, Stronger by Science, is one of the first places I check for an answer before venturing off into literature. As you can guess, I was really excited to get him on the podcast to talk about what he specializes in: the science of getting bigger and stronger. And specifically, I wanted Greg to address a hot topic these days, and that’s the relationship between gaining strength and size. In other words, does maximizing muscle strength also maximize muscle size, or as many people say, is strength training rather poor for making your muscles bigger. I get asked about this all the time and there’s a lot of misinformation out there, so I thought this would be a worthy discussion, and as expected, Greg knocks it out of the park. As you’ll see, he breaks down the relationship between strength and muscle growth and gives simple, practical insights that you can immediately apply to your training to get bigger and stronger, faster. Greg also touches on a number of other interesting topics such as how motor learning affects our progression in the gym, how important adequate sleep is to muscle growth, how to manage personal expectations and break through plateaus, and more. So, if you want to get stronger and gain muscle as quickly and enjoyable as possible, then I think you’re going to like this interview. Here it is... 5:15 - What is the relationship of building muscle mass to building strength? Is there a ratio? How does it change from beginners to veterans? 11:43 - How do our motor skills influence our strength gains? 22:55 - What advice do you have for beginners on gaining full body strength? 27:47 - What advice do you have for intermediate and advanced lifters to continue building muscle mass and strength? 30:27 - How do your sleeping habits affect your muscle mass? 35:35 - What are some psychology studies on how your personal expectations affect the results of your strength? 43:25 - What advice do you have for intermediate and advanced lifters who have hit a plateau on building muscle mass and strength? 46:35 - How can people connect with you and find your research? 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, it's Mike, and I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you're going to like my books. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger, Leaner, Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger if you're a girl. I mean, these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or live

in the gym grinding through workouts that you hate. Now you can find these books everywhere. You can buy them online, you know, Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audio books like me, you can actually get one of them for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audio books and you can see how to do that there. I make my living primarily as a writer, so as you can imagine, every book sold helps. So please do check out my books if you haven't already. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I think you're going to really like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion. As you may know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted who knows how much money over the

years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that's why I finally decided to just make my own. Now, a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting studies on our website, which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which

means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long overdue. And ultimately, if you like what you see and you want to buy something, then you can use the coupon code podcast, P-O- A S T. And you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get Muscle for Life There aren't very many people in the fitness space who I think everyone should follow, and he's one of them.

I myself have been reading his work for about a year now, and I really appreciate what he's doing. Whenever I have a question, his site, which is called Stronger by Science, is one of the first places that I go to check for an answer before venturing off to other websites, books, and so forth. And so, as you can guess, I was really excited to get Greg on my podcast and talk to him about what he specializes in, and that is the science of getting bigger and stronger. And specifically, I reached out to Greg because I wanted him to address a hot

topic these days, and that's the relationship between strength and size. This is something that I get asked about all the time from people wanting to know if maximizing muscle strength also maximizes muscle size, or if strength training is actually a rather inefficient way to get bigger muscles. This is something that Greg has researched and written about extensively, and I knew he could knock it out of the park, which I think you'll agree he does. As you'll see, Greg breaks down the relationship between strength and muscle growth, and he gives simple practical insights that you can immediately apply to your training to get bigger and stronger faster. Greg also touches on a number of other interesting topics in the interview, such as how motor learning affects our progression in the gym, how important adequate sleep is to muscle growth, how to manage personal expectations and breakthrough plateaus, and more. So if you want to get stronger and gain muscle as quickly and enjoyably as possible, then I think you're going to like this interview.

Here it is. Hey, Greg, thanks for taking the time to come on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm excited to have you because like I was saying just before we started, I'm legitimately a fan of yours. I read everything that you put out and I admire your level of technical knowledge and your ability to break things down and make them understandable. And also I really liked it. You come at, you create you very, very unique content. You're not just doing the same thing that everybody else is doing, which is refreshing to see. Thanks, man.

Absolutely. All right. So specifically I wanted to get you on to talk about something you wrote about recently, and that's the correlation of size and strength. This is something that I get asked about fairly frequently. Actually, I'm a guy or a girl. I want to get bigger. Should I just, should I just get stronger? Should that just be my thing? Should I, you know, just follow a strength training program, just get on a barbell and get my big lifts up? And is that it? Is that all it's going to take to, to get really big? That's kind of like, that's usually from the people that are newer. And then I get, I get questions from people that are a bit more experienced and a bit more, you know, more like intermediate advanced lifters who now, you know, they've, they've, their newbie gains are long, long gone. And now it's, it's, it's actually quite

hard for them to continue to gain strength. They have to work, you know, you get to that point where adding 20 pounds to any lift, you have to work very, very hard for it. So then, then that question kind of turns into, so what, what does that mean for them? Like, are they just kind of, are they just going to plateau basically in terms of size because there's not that much more strength they can gain or do they need to dramatically change their training? So, so as to gain more strength or what to do, you know what I mean? I gotcha. Um, yeah. So in a general sense, there is in most populations a pretty big disconnect or not like a huge disconnect, but a reasonably large disconnect between muscle mass and strength. between either fat-free mass and various measures of strength or muscle cross-sectional area and various measures of strength, you tend to see that muscle size explains roughly half of

the variation in the data. So, like, if you take a simple correlation, you'd get a correlation coefficient of 0.7 to 0.75. And so, like, to get an idea of how much of the variation that explains you just square that number. So a nice, nice, easy round number is that muscle size explains roughly half the variation in strength. Um, so in general, if you're getting stronger, you're probably getting bigger. And if you're getting bigger, you're probably getting stronger. Um, but it's, it's definitely not a one-to-one relationship. However, uh, that does change a bit in people who are more well-trained. So in studies that look at the relationship between changes in muscle mass and changes in strength with completely untrained people, uh, changes in strength with completely untrained people uh kind of strangely there's basically no relationship whatsoever so um the the proportion of the variance in strength gains that

gains in muscle size can explain are like three four percent like basically no relationship um like some people get way way stronger but don't gain all that much muscle and vice versa. Um, however, in pretty much every study that I've seen thus far, that's been, uh, been conducted in people who had at least six months of training experience, gains in size and gains in strength were pretty closely related, um, with, with anywhere between 40 up to 80% of the variance in, uh, strength gains explained by gains in size. So for, for new people, I guess that, I mean, anybody that spent some time in the gym and just, just around people that are into weightlifting, that kind of, that, that meets with experience that you'll see people when they're,

when they're brand new, they can do just about anything, uh, in terms of a program and, and, and gain a fair amount of size, at least for the first six months or so. Um, and even though, you know, their whole body strength may not even change that much because they're just doing a bunch of like bicep curls and, you know, pec deck and stuff and whatever uh but then but then they that that approach plateaus and if they don't i mean yeah there are a fair amount of people who get interested in power lifting and maybe get their deadlift up to four or five and still don't even look like they lift yeah i mean my brother actually ran into that funny enough yeah we look very different genetically i i would i would guess, like I got one of those DNA, I think it was DNA fit was the company, one of the tests where

you can look at a bit of, uh, you know, under, under the hood, so to speak. And so I get, I would guess that our profiles are, would be, uh, different in, in, in significant ways in terms of athleticism, especially muscle building, because he, um, in, in a year or so he got pretty strong. He was, I want to say pulling after a year or so, he got pretty strong. He was, I want to say, pulling after a year. He was pulling in the mid threes. He was squatting. He may have put 315 up for reps.

He at least got into the 295 range for reps and 225 on bench for at least four or five reps. But he barely looked like he lifted. Yeah. And so, like, that can happen as well. People who gain a lot of strength and not all that much muscle, but then, you know, once someone's being, once someone's like benching four or five or deadlifting 600, they're going to, they're going to be jacked. Like, yeah, to that level without, without looking pretty big. So, um, both in terms of just like looking at a cross-section of people not with training the

proportion of strength variance that muscle mass can explain uh is higher with well-trained people than untrained people so uh throughout that roughly 50 percent of the variance explained statistic for like general population before uh when you look at elite athletes on the other hand so um study was done on like national and world-class power lifters another one was on national and world-class junior weightlifters they found that muscle mass could explain up to 90 percent of the variation in strength. So essentially, like if someone's lean body mass was the only thing you, like if you knew someone's lean body mass and you knew that they were like a really,

really serious power lifter, you could just based off of that, you could predict their squat bench and deadlift within about 15 to 20 kilos. So can we bet on these? Can you bet on powerlifting? Unfortunately, no. I don't know that that would see all that much action with the bookies. But yeah, so it becomes much, much more predictive in well-trained populations. And I'm sure we're going to get into this more as the podcast goes on.

But the basic reason for that is... That was going to be my question now. Okay, so why is that? Yeah, so there are a lot of things that contribute to strength. One of the ones that I think most people are aware of is that there's a strong skill component to it. So, you know, first time you try a lift, it feels kind of weird, kind of unstable. First time you try a lift, it feels kind of weird, kind of unstable. Next time you do it, I promise you your muscles haven't gotten bigger just in that one training session, but you'll probably already be able to lift more. That continues for a bit, and that's just from learning the motor pattern of a new lift.

That's definitely one of them. People can think of that as any athletic activity. It could be throwing a football or whatever. Yeah, there's a skill component to it. Like people don't look at a deadlift. Like you're just picking something heavy up off the ground and think all that much motor skill goes into it. But there's more to it than you may think. So yeah, learning the skills.

Here's actually a good example from one study. So yeah, learning the skills. Here's actually a good example from one study. So a 2012 paper by Mitchell compared training just knee extensions, like simplest movement in the world, with before and after the study, they measured one rep max knee extension, and they also measured maximal isometric knee torque. So basically, like, how hard you could kick into the pad of the knee extension without actually moving it. And so, like, these people were doing, like, regular knee extensions, like, full eccentric, full concentric for the whole training period. regular knee extensions, like full eccentric, full concentric for the whole training period. And the 80% group did gain more strength with regular one rep max knee extension because training at 80% was more similar to a one rep max test than training at 30%. So unsurprisingly, their one rep max increased more. But they actually had identical increases in maximum knee torque so

that's something that like absolutely no skill whatsoever yeah it's into like an isometric so yeah you can see you can see the influence there of like the skill component of strength and something as simple as a knee extension so you know obviously something like a squat deadlift and especially something like a clean and deadlift, and especially something like a clean and jerk or snatch, way, way more technical than that. So the skill component is going to play a much larger role. So yes, people get more efficient with the motor patterns of new lifts. Something else that people posit is that you get better at activating more of your muscle tissue to produce force. That's probably not true. So you can study that by looking at something called percentage of

voluntary activation. And that sounds really technical, but it's pretty simple. Basically, what you do is you get people in a lab and you see how much isometric force they can produce just voluntarily. So, you know, again, if you were using leg extensions, you get someone in a knee extension machine, make sure that the arm couldn't move and just have them kick into it as hard as possible. And then you have electrodes hooked up to their femoral nerve, which is what innervates their quads, and you run a current through it to force

their quads to contract as hard as their quads can possibly contract, which is... Yeah, it's about as comfortable as it sounds. I was going to say, that sounds like no fun. Yeah, and then you compare the force they were capable of producing voluntarily versus the evoked contraction from the electrodes.

And even in completely untrained people, percentage of voluntary activation is like 95% plus. So yeah, it seems like untrained people can activate all of their muscle tissue just fine. They're just not good at putting that together efficiently to move external load. So yeah, that's probably just a pure increase in muscle activation probably doesn't explain the rapid increase in strength you see early in training.

So something else that's curious is you don't see an increase in muscle activation, or at least not like a meaningful increase. But you do see a pretty big increase in what's called normalized muscle force. And again, that sounds really technical, but again, it's pretty simple. So basically, you see what someone's muscle cross-sectional area is. So for example, like your biceps, you take like an MRI image at the midpoint of the bicep, and it would roughly look like a circle, and you just see what the cross-sectional area of that is. and you just see what the cross-sectional area of that is. So you see how much force a muscle can produce divided by its cross-sectional area, and that does actually increase quite a bit with training, even though muscle activation doesn't seem to be fully increased.

So what that tells you is that there's some stuff going on in the muscle itself to make it better at producing force independent of muscle activation. Uh, something that makes it even more curious is there's something, uh, called specific tension, which is the exact same concept as normalized muscle force, just force divided by cross-sectional area, but of individual muscle fibers instead of the entire muscle. And normalized or in a specific tension doesn't change with training. So your, your individual muscle fibers. What does it mean, Greg? Uh, no one's sure.

And so that's like, that's a super interesting open question. Um, that like the, the disconnect between fiber specific tension and normalized muscle force which are the exact same concepts but on different scales so individual muscle fibers versus the entire muscle just so everybody understands we've talked about cross section

we've talked about the size of the muscles or the size of the fiber individually so the disconnect between the two was first noted in a paper in 2012 and when i first read that i was like what like that doesn't make any sense at all um and just since then no one else has really even looked at that which is so frustrating to me um so yeah anyway no one no one's quite sure happens. Um, but the takeaway is that we just know that as, as, as you continue to train, we do know that normalized muscle force increases.

Yes. Um, so looping back to what put us down this road to begin with, um, talking about why there would be a stronger relationship between muscle mass and strength in trained populations and untrained populations. The biggest reason for that is that there are these other factors that contribute to strength development beyond muscle mass. So you have the skill component, you have normalized muscle force, a couple other small things as well, but those are definitely the two other biggies apart from purely the amount of muscle you have. Sure.

And those adaptations take place really early in training. So, you know, like the skill component can keep increasing with more training experience. Like I've been squatting for probably 15 years now, and I'm still fine-tuning my technique little by little. But my squat isn't—actually, no, squat's not a good example because I actually really sucked at squats for a long time. Binge press. I'm still trying to refine my binge press technique little by little. But for all intents and purposes, it looks about the same now as it did when I'd been training a year. Like, I may have made, like, small improvements since then, but more or less, you pick up a movement within a few months, maybe a couple years if it's really technical. But then past that point, the contribution of perfecting motor patterns, it still plays a role, but it plays a much, much smaller role.

Right. Exact same thing with normalized muscle force. That could be more, more maybe relevant to in a competitive kind of, you know, setting as opposed to just kind of working out. Yeah, for sure. And same thing with normalized muscle force. So in the first month or two of training, you get really big, really rapid increases in normalized muscle force. So in the first month or two of training, you get really big, really rapid increases

in normalized muscle force. But past that, it's pretty much flat. It can fluctuate a little bit on kind of like short time scales. So maybe it's going to be higher after you've like tapered and peaked for a competition versus just in normal day-to-day training when you're kind of fatigued. But in terms of like your kind of average baseline level

of normalized muscle force doesn't really seem to meaningfully increase with training after a couple of months. How does that work though? Because, you know, for your first year, let's say guys can gain, you know, probably somewhere about 20 pounds of muscle if they, if their body responds well to, and they do a good job, it should be going up as they gain size, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, but so you're saying though, the relationship doesn't, it just kind of tends to, it sits once after a couple of months you have now as, as muscle size increases, it's just going

to go up in a linear type of fashion. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cool. size increases, it's just going to go up in a linear type of fashion? Yeah, exactly. The fact that those adaptations from skill development and from normalized muscle force, since those things mostly take place during the first few months to a year of training, that explains why you don't see that strong of a relationship between gains in size and gains

in strength in untrained populations populations because they'll have different baseline levels of skill different baseline levels of normalized muscle force which really weaken the relationship between muscle size and strength but in more well-trained populations their normalized muscle force is basically plateaued their level of skill may be gradually increasing but it's essentially plateaued their level of skill, maybe gradually increasing, but it's essentially plateaued. So then muscle size does explain much, much more of that variation in strength. And, you know, that also, and just a practical takeaway for everybody listening there is, you know, I've, um, over the years, I mean, I've been in touch with thousands of people. So I've, you know, seen a lot, especially people new to weightlifting where, uh, seen the scenario where they got into, again, they got in maybe doing some, you know,

magazine workouts, doing whatever. And they thought like, Oh, this is easy. You know what I mean? They don't, they, they can just kind of do stuff and you just basically, you know, it's just kind of like, you know, you, you just jump in and volume is out the roof and you just kind of do whatever. And, uh, but then they, then they get confused because they, they come, they come through the end of that, you know, had made some progress, but, but they're not strong at all. And they're not even used to training like that. So they're in a weird place where then they're just confused. You know what I mean? So would you say then that it's best for people that are new to focus on gaining whole body strength because I mean they're

gonna they're gonna gain size regardless and then it's that's gonna become very important once their newbie gains are all washed up yeah so with new lifters I think I think there are three basic things you need to focus on and to varying degrees based on what your athletic background is so I think the first is just developing full body strength by learning like the core compound movement so squat bench deadlift rows pull-ups overhead press no dips push-ups allups. All the fun stuff. Yeah, just fundamental compound lifts. I think that that should be one of your top priorities early on.

Another thing, especially if you're focused on building muscle and hypertrophy, I really think you should get into isolation lifts relatively early on, just so you get an understanding of what it feels like to use the muscles you're trying to build. I mean, so many new lifters just don't know how to feel their lats when they're doing pull-ups or something like that. I had that problem. Yeah, so something like pull-overs or straight-arm pull pulldowns, which are going to be all lats, or essentially all lats. They can be good just to get a feeling of what it feels like to use your lats, which you can then carry over into the compound lifts. I had that with shoulders as well, like side raises, rear raises, to actually get form and feel it where you're supposed to feel it.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, so, so that's number two and number three. Uh, and I have no scientific evidence for this whatsoever, but just, just my own, uh, my own observations on this is people tend to make better progress long-term if they're just generally athletic and have a decent proprioceptive sense and like understand how their body moves and where it is in space um so i think a lot of new lifters should also be doing some sort of like calisthenics or like um like i or uh i'll offer up yoga i mean i i felt like i got benefits from yoga uh and i think i think stabilization work is also important so uh things like unilateral carries like a suitcase carry where just in a farmer's walk which are only holding a weight in one hand

just you feel what it feels like to or so you learn how to like stabilize your body laterally i think just kind of calisthenics are kind of like weird off-centered or unilateral movements like that are good for just developing an understanding of where your body is in space and how it moves and i think that's important for building a good foundation for further development that That's a good point. I actually haven't, I mean, you're the only person that I've heard talk about that actually, but it totally makes sense. I would say also something that helped me and I'm sure has helped you a lot over the years is working on camera. So you can actually see what your body is doing as opposed to what you think it's doing. And I was a little bit surprised even with a few like with squats and stuff

where at first, of course, it's about reaching depth and then you finally get that. But then you start honing in on some of the finer points and being able to see what did I just do versus what did I feel like I did has helped. Oh, for sure. With motor learning, there are a lot of things you can do but two of like the easiest most basic things you can do is either have more feedback so that would

that would include things like videotaping yourselves comparing what it looks like on camera to how it felt when you were doing it and also less feedback um so like if you generally squat in front of a mirror don't squat in front of a mirror um then once you get reasonably good at any of the core lips uh try doing them with your eyes closed um and if possible with noise canceling headphones on just because that's taking away uh like, like audio feedback and visual feedback. Uh, so it'll force you, um, like to, to rely on kinesthetic feedback. Yeah. Really be aware of your body.

So yeah, um, manipulating how much feedback you're getting, uh, either by giving yourself more by taking video or by taking some away, uh, can, can help with mastering this. That's a good tip. That totally makes sense. Okay. So let's shift gears now and talk more to the intermediate and advanced people. And so they're at a point now where,

um, let's say they've been training reasonably well for a few years and they've, they've gained a fair amount of strength. Um, and you've, you've kind of already maybe answered some of the questions that they would, that they would come into this podcast with, but they are, I mean, as you know, you do run into where it's not as easy. It feels much easier to gain strength, at least for the first year or two, where, you know, just if you're, if you're, your calories

are at least in a range that makes sense and your macros in a range that makes sense and you're recovering and so forth. And you're just kind of putting a lot of work into the barbells where you just, you know, you gain reps every week or two and eventually you turn that into weight and so forth. That gets harder, though, as time goes on. So what advice would you have to or do you have for those people and how? Because like, OK, so they need to they need to make sure, they're getting stronger, even if it's just a slight increase. And, uh, but you know, what got them there won't necessarily get them to where maybe they want to be. If they really want to achieve, let's say a large percentage of what's potential, what's possible

for them genetically. Yeah. Uh, so I mean, the first thing is just patience um this is something i've seen more times than i can count uh and it's happened to me probably like three or four times just in my own training career like someone will get to like a given point in like strength and or muscular development and then they're training hard they're training smart they're eating well they're sleeping well and just for like six months or a year just literally nothing happens and then i've been there yeah and then just out of nowhere over over like two months, you put on, you know, six or seven pounds of lean body mass and your lifts go up 10%. Like, I have no idea why that happens, but that just happens. Like, you just grind away for a while and eventually you reach a breakthrough.

So, yeah. One thing is just patience. Generally, if you keep training hard, good things eventually happen. In terms of things that are within your control, once the easy gains are in the rearview mirror, stuff outside of the gym starts playing an increasingly large role. So making sure you're sleeping enough, making sure you're eating enough protein, trying to manage stress outside the gym. Oh, if I can give a quick sales pitch really quick for my favorite thing for augmenting training, it's this thing called sleep. People so undervalue sleep for everything. So just two quick studies to run by you.

One, it was a metabolic ward study, so that means that the people were living in a lab, so every part of their day was controlled. So you know there weren't outside influences. You're not relying on journals and so forth.

Yeah. So yeah, it's a metabolic ward study. People living in the lab, all of their activity, all of their food intake, very tightly controlled. And it was a diet study. So basically they had people in a pretty big calorie deficit, like a 40% calorie deficit. And they compared sleeping eight and a half hours a night to five and a half hours a

night. And when the people were sleeping in either condition, they lost the same amount of weight. So the number on the scale went down the same amount. But for the group sleeping five and a half hours a night, that was something like 60% lean mass and 40% fat mass was what they lost. Like they just, you just hemorrhaged lean body mass. And the group sleeping eight and a half hours a night, it was like, again, this is an untrained population. So you wouldn't expect them to lose all that much muscle.

This is an untrained population, so you wouldn't expect them to lose all that much muscle. They essentially held on to pretty much all of their lean body mass. Any of the drops that occurred were probably just water for glycogen depletion because it was a pretty low-calorie diet. They lost almost entirely fat mass and basically no lean mass. Same calorie deficit, same change on the scale. Do you want to touch on quickly, just show everyone listening why that is? Just on a purely mechanistic level, one of the shifts that they did note is there's this thing called respiratory exchange ratio or RER. Again, that sounds like a very technical term, but it's pretty simple.

Basically, when you breathe in oxygen and your body uses that oxygen to break down carbohydrate or fat or protein, the amount of carbon dioxide you exhale for every amount of oxygen you take in and utilize is different based on what macronutrient you're using. So with carbohydrate or protein, you essentially exhale one molecule of carbon dioxide for every one molecule of oxygen you take in. But for fat, it's like 0.7 molecules of carbon dioxide for every molecule of oxygen you take in. So that's basically what it's measuring. So by knowing your respiratory exchange ratio, it gives you a pretty good idea of the fuel breakdown that you're using. And so the people who were sleeping a lot had a lower

respiratory exchange ratio. So what that tells you is just at rest, just day-to-day life, they were burning more fat and less carbohydrate and protein. The total energy expenditure was the same. Where was the energy coming from? Yeah, but more of that was coming from body fat versus the group that wasn't sleeping very much. They had a higher respiratory exchange ratio, which means less of the energy they were burning was body fat and more of it was carbohydrate and protein. Um, so yeah, sleeping not enough is, is bad. Hopefully people

understand that in terms of sleeping more, uh, like more than the typically recommended seven to eight hours and take taking naps or whatever on top of, yeah. Um, this is something that hasn't gotten all that much research attention but the stuff out there right now is very very promising all of the studies looking at sleep extension so far so going from seven to eight hours a night to nine or ten hours a night all of the studies have been done at stanford thus far in a researcher named Sherry Ma's lab. And all of her subjects are like Stanford sports teams. So we're talking like high level B1 athletes. And over the course of just like two to four weeks, they're seeing like really big improvements

in performance with absolutely no change to training or nutrition or anything else, just by getting the athletes to go from sleeping seven to eight hours a night to nine to 10 hours a night. Um, so yeah, that hasn't been tested on like bodybuilders or power lifters, but I, I would assume the same general thing, like the same general factors are in play there. Yeah. And athletic, at the end of the day athletic performance is athletic performance yeah yeah exactly that makes sense okay so we have sleep more um any other oh yeah um stress management so we have the patients and i think there's also a bit of expectations in there as well i mean i don I don't know if you, uh, it's related to patients at

least, but I mean, I know I ran into that myself when, so after, you know, uh, a nice kind of upward trajectory, especially for the first couple of years of doing things right. Um, and then when things slow down, I had to consciously, you know, kind of reset my expectations and realize that, you know, year three is not the same as year two and year four is not the same as year three and so forth. Yeah, I, I agree. I think, so I think expectations can cut, can cut two different directions. Um, largely based on, um, uh, a psychology idea known as locus of control. So essentially, if you have high expectations, I think that can pretty dramatically impact the results you see. So two studies on that. One,

and these were both like super cool studies because they're placebo steroid studies. So essentially the researchers telling the participants they're giving them steroids when they're actually just giving them sugar pills. So in one of them, they got a group of people, trained them for four weeks and recorded their strength gains over that. Or no, they trained them for seven weeks, recorded their strength gains over that or no they trained them for seven weeks recorded their strength gains over that time period and then gave them a sugar pill and told them hey this is this is steroids they're going to make the jack yeah and they trained them for another four weeks over the first seven weeks across four lifts which i think was squat bench seated overhead press, and standing overhead press. Over the first seven weeks they put an average of I think like 20 kilos across those four lifts. And these were pretty well trained guys to begin with. They were

average bench was like 275 and average squat was like 360 or something pre-training. That's pretty solid. Yeah, like not people you'd expect to make like super fast strength gains. But yeah, 20 kilos, 44 pounds across those four lifts for the first seven weeks. Over the last four weeks, when they thought they were on steroids, exact same training, they put 45 kilos, which is like right at 100 pounds across those four lips. Over the first seven weeks, it was 10 kilos, not 20 kilos. So they made more than four times the gains in basically half the time just because they thought they were taking steroids. And then another study, and this is my all-time favorite study, I think, just because when you actually think through it from a human perspective, it's hilarious.

It's 2001 Magonaris. That's the year and author if people want to look this up. But basically, one of the researchers was the coach for the Great Britain National Powerlifting Team. was the coach for the Great Britain National Powerlifting Team. Like the one they sent to IPF competition. So, you know, drug-tested powerlifting, supposed to be drug-free lifters. But these guys decided, hey, we want to use steroids and get away with it. So they trusted their coach enough to ask them, like, hey, can you hook us up with some steroids?

So first, the basic premise of the study is the athletes are trying to cheat and they think their coach will help them get away with it but the coach like also being a scientist was like oh these these gullible fools i will use them to study the placebo effect um so he like gave them sugar pills and told them that they were fast acting steroids. Um, and so they tested their maxes, uh, and then two weeks later they tested their maxes again, uh, being given these pills they felt were fast acting steroids. And they put, uh, an average of like four to 5% across their squat bench and deadlift, which just to put that in context, like these guys were strong,

like average body weight around 200 pounds, average squat and deadlift in the high fives, low sixes, average bench in the low to mid fours. Like they were strong. So adding four to 5% to that was like a 70, 80-pound increase in the total automatically, just because they thought they were being given fast-acting steroids. Then they trained for two weeks, still being given these placebo pills.

And at the end of those two weeks, the researchers asked them, or the coaches asked them, like, hey, how's your training been going? And everyone was like, oh, best two weeks of training the researchers asked them or the coaches asked them like hey how's your training been going and everyone was like oh best two weeks uh like i've been like hitting prs been handling more volume recovering better like everything's awesome and then the coach told half of them psych it was a placebo now time to max again and so they knew that they were drug free before when they hit those four to five percent prs they knew they were drug free over the intervening two weeks that they said was like the best two weeks of training of their life but their post-training one rep maxes still regressed to like the levels they were before that four to five percent increase yeah the other the other half they were like yeah you're5% increase. The other half,

they were like, yeah, you're still on steroids. Things are awesome. They hit more PRs on top of that. And then in the end, they regressed, though? They're just still PRing. Yeah, they didn't do another follow-up with that group. That would have been interesting.

These are world-class athletes making really with that group. Oh, that would have been interesting. That would have been placebo. But yeah, so yeah, these are world-class athletes making like really like big, meaningful gains in strength automatically and then even more over just two weeks because they think they're on steroids. So yeah, I think those two studies do illustrate the power of expectations

pretty strongly. You know, that, that is something that, that massively boosted these, these people's expectations and their results dramatically increased because of it. If self-esteem didn't matter at all, I think like setting expectations as high as possible is probably the best thing for results. as high as possible is probably the best thing for results. But then in terms of how that impacts people, that's where locus of control comes into play, like I mentioned earlier.

So if you have really high expectations and also an internal locus of control, so basically anything that happens in your life, whether good or bad, whether or not you actually had control over it, like you either blame control over it like you either blame yourself for it or take credit for it yeah it's like a sense of personal responsibility yeah pretty much yeah um as opposed to saying it was because of this or that or was this person or that thing or whatever yeah yeah so high expectations good for getting good results

but if you don't live up to those expectations and you have an internal locus of control that makes it really easy to get down on yourself and say i failed like this is yeah exactly versus like an external locus of control then it's just like oh something else influenced this yeah um so just like purely on a psychological level, sometimes lower expectations can actually be beneficial for people who like have an internal locus of control and also just aren't gifted. And so when it meet those expectations and would be kind of crushed if they didn't. Um,

but just purely on a, if you want people to make the best gains possible, high expectations are very good. I like that. That makes sense. Um, so, okay. Anything else that you would add for this intermediate or advanced person that, uh, is now going to go, okay, I need to, I need to continue working on gaining strength. Uh, Oh, okay. So I also, I have just like a little flow chart that will help people navigate pretty much any training decision they ever need to make. And it's the simplest thing ever, but it works.

So first question you ask yourself, am I making progress? The answer is yes. What you do is nothing. Don't change anything. Even if it's slow progress, slow progress over months or years adds up to a crap ton of progress. Slow gains are still gains. If you're improving, don't change anything. If you're not improving, the next question is, how do I feel most of the time? If you're not improving and you constantly feel pretty fresh, the issue is probably just that you're not training hard enough.

So whatever that means for you, make your training harder. So it could be increasing intensity, like increasing the amount of weights you're lifting. It could be increasing volume, doing more reps, more sets, more exercises. It could be increasing frequency, so training more times per week or hitting each muscle group more times per week. Just if you're not making progress but you generally feel good and fresh all the time, you have to do more. Yeah, you just need to train harder. That's what's going to do it for you. If you're not making progress and you generally feel worn down, then the next question is basically, am I taking care of stuff outside the gym as well as I can?

So, you know, if you're if you're like a new father or a new mother, like you're not going to sleep for two years and that's just how it is. So that's that's something that's impacting your gains that you can't really do anything about. But if you're not sleeping enough, but you could sleep more, if your diet isn't great and it could be better, then if you're not making progress, you feel worn down all the time and there's stuff like that outside the gym that you can address, that's where you want to put your focus. But maybe you're taking care of business outside the gym or at least doing so as well as you can. When you're not making progress and you're feeling worn down all the time,

then basically what you need to do is make your training a little bit easier in some way. So we're not talking cut volume by 80% overnight, but drop a set here or there. Maybe don't push quite as close to failure. If there are a couple accessory exercises that don't really give you that much bang for the buck, bang for your buck in the first place, drop them out of your training program. So just like small tweaks to make your training

a little bit less stressful so it matches your recovery ability. And that's really about all there is to it. That's great. That's perfect. Okay, well, I mean, I'm sure we could go another two hours because you know a lot of things, which is awesome. I mean, I covered all the points that I, those are my questions for you and addresses the questions that I get asked as well. So let's just end with where can people find you and find your work?

You also just released a research review. And so if you want to tell everybody about that, I, I, I, this is obvious, but I'll say it for everybody that I highly endorse Greg and his work. And again, I'm, I'm a fan of his, like he, I check his site at least once a week to see when's the, when's the next, when's the next. So I'm going to give you the soapbox. the next. Um, so I'm going to give you the soapbox. All right. Uh, so you can find me at stronger by science.com. That's, that's where all of my content is. Uh, in terms of social media, I'm, I'm pretty active on Facebook, just Greg Meffles. Uh, and then the business page is, uh, stronger by science.com for stronger by science. Uh, I'm also on Instagram, also just Greg Knuckles, but don't really follow me there

unless you just care about seeing pictures of my dog. So yeah, website and Facebook. And do you want to tell everybody about your research review? I'm getting to it. Okay, good. So the research review is called MAS, which stands for monthly applications in strength sport uh and essentially it's me and eric helms and mike sortos um they are much more

qualified than i am eric is uh defending his dissertation soon so he's soon going to be dr helms and dr sortos is dros. They're active researchers in the field of exercise science. Zordos is also a powerlifter and Eric is a powerlifter and natural bodybuilder. So we have experience reading and doing research. And also from a practical perspective as well, all three of us are coaches. So we know how to read and interpret research, and we know how to identify the research that's most useful and relevant for people who their primary goal is getting stronger, building muscle, or losing body fat. It's a very narrow research review. If those are your training goals, it's perfect for you. If your training goals are anything else, it is entirely irrelevant to you.

So we go through 50, 60 journals every month, screen close to 1,000 articles, and pick out the nine studies that are going to be most useful, relevant, and applicable to people trying to get stronger, get bigger, lose body fat, and break them down on a technical enough level that you get everything you could possibly want out of a study, but also in a very readable and understandable and reader-friendly format with practical applications to help you improve your training or if you're a coach improve how you train your clients. So basically trying to bring

the research to everyone who either just doesn't have the time or the ability to follow it for themselves so they can stay up to date with the latest science but not have to be overwhelmed with trying to read a bunch of studies and burn dozens of hours of their own time doing that on their own. Okay, good. So where can they get it? Where can they... Because the first issue you're giving away, which I think is a great idea just to get

people in and so they can see how high quality it is. Yeah, absolutely. You can find it at strongerb by science.com slash mass dash issue dash one. And I'll put that also, I'll have that link put, you know, in the description of the YouTube video and I'll put it in the blog post and so forth. So people can just quickly download it right there. All right. Perfect. Okay. Awesome. Well, uh, that's everything. I really appreciate again, you taking the time, Greg, it's been very enlightening. It's fun for me to get people like you on the show because I just like to listen to you be smart and educate us on all kinds of good things. So it would be great also maybe sometime in the future we could do this again on some other subject.

Yeah, that would be awesome. And thanks for having me, Mike. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four

to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.