Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Important Is Getting a Pump for Building Muscle?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, my favorite people in quarantine, the dedicated Muscle for Life listeners who are still tuning in despite not having a gym to go to. But hey, things are on the up and up, states are opening back up, gyms are going to be opening back up, and we will be able to return to our beloved iron soon enough. And I hope you have been staying on top of your home workouts. If you have been good on you, because you're going to find that when you do get back in the gym, if you have been doing good home workouts, making them hard. And I understand that can be hard. Like if you only have your body weight, for example, you're going to be limited. If you are an experienced weightlifter, if you have some bands, you are less limited. If you have some dumbbells like I do.

Starting point is 00:00:49 So I have dumbbells and bands. That's what I've been using for the last two months. Then you are even less limited. And it's not the same of course, as being in the gym, but with some bands and dumbbells, you can do plenty. I have not lost any muscle in the last couple of months probably have lost a bit of strength and that brings you back to what i was going to say is when we get back in the gym what most of us are going to find is if we've been pretty consistent with our home workouts we probably haven't lost any muscle to speak of but we will have lost a little bit of strength however that's just going to be mostly due to skill degradation, right? We haven't been under a bar or over a bar. We haven't squatted or pulled or pressed in a couple of months. And while those

Starting point is 00:01:33 are not highly technical activities, they do have a bit of skill. There is a skill component. And so if you don't do something that does require a whole body coordination and balance and power production in a little bit, you'd expect to be a little bit worse at it, right? So what I think is that for those of us who have been pretty good with our home workouts and maintained our physiques pretty well, we're going to be right back to our pre-virus training numbers within, I mean, I think three or four weeks. That's what I expect. Like one mesocycle of my current training, a four-week mesocycle. I think I'll be right back to where I was. And so that's pretty cool. And I hope the same for you. And if you haven't been doing much in the way of home training and you

Starting point is 00:02:15 have definitely lost some muscle, don't worry because you have muscle memory on your side. Muscle memory is very real. And what it means is when you do get back to it, your body is going to respond like you're a newbie again. You're going to have a new wave of newbie gains. So when you consider that, along with the fact that when you look at the research on detraining, that you really don't start losing muscle tissue until maybe three-ish weeks of no training, maybe a little bit sooner if you heavily restrict your calories and you don't eat enough protein, but assuming that you weren't doing that, you're not going to lose any muscle really until the first month or so, until the second month or so. So you're

Starting point is 00:02:54 going to make it through that first month with essentially no muscle loss. Now you might lose some muscle size because if you're not training, your muscles are going to hold less water and less glycogen. So they're going to look smaller, but that doesn't mean you've lost muscle tissue. Muscle tissue takes longer to lose. So let's say that you have been slowly losing muscle for about a month or so. Let's say that comes out to a couple of pounds of muscle loss. You're going to gain that back, that couple of pounds within your first month back in the gym. So while you might have been harsh on yourself for not staying on top of your workouts and not doing everything you can to maintain your

Starting point is 00:03:32 muscle and now you've lost muscle and all seems lost. No, not at all. You're going to get back in the gym and you're going to be very happy to be there and your muscles are going to get swole fast, bro. You're going to gain whatever you've lost back very quickly. And if you have gained weight as well, I see jokes online of the COVID-19 or maybe the COVID-20 or 21 or the quarantine. As someone else put it, that made me laugh. Don't be too hard on yourself. Give yourself a break. Treat yourself like you might treat a good friend and have a bit of understanding. I mean, this has been a once in a lifetime event, a once in a lifetime catastrophe and disruption of everything. And so if you've been a bit stressed and you have been eating a

Starting point is 00:04:20 bit too much food, well, at least you had a good excuse, right? And soon you'll be able to change that. Soon you'll be able to easily lose whatever fat you've gained and get right back into the routine that you had previously and the habits that you had previously. If you did it once, you can do it again, right? All right. So that's it for today's pep talk. Let's now talk about muscle pumps. Let's talk about the pump and building muscle. This is a question I often get, how important is getting a pump for building muscle? Now, before we get to the show, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best

Starting point is 00:05:05 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 protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and dose in every product of mine is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent, no proprietary blends, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check it 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,

Starting point is 00:05:53 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, then you will get double reward points on your entire order, which is essentially getting 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, that URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. So first let's talk about what is the pump, right? So this is a temporary increase in muscle size that occurs when you lift weights and especially when you're using higher reps and shorter rest periods and the reason for that is what happens is when you contract your muscles you have different metabolic byproducts like lactic acid for example that build up in the muscle cells and

Starting point is 00:06:41 around the muscle cells and then your heart pumps more blood into your muscles to carry those waste products away and get them out of the body. And that makes your muscles swell. Now, these compounds also pull water into the cells and that makes the cells even larger. And as the cells expand, they reduce the amount of blood that is able to escape the muscles. So more blood gets trapped in the muscle cells and your muscles, right? Because normally blood can pass between muscle fibers. But when those fibers expand, when they swell, they pinch off the veins that are trying to carry blood back to the heart, the deoxygenated blood back to the heart.

Starting point is 00:07:21 And the net effect of that is your muscles get pumped. They get blood that gets pumped into them faster than it can pump out. And that blood that pools in your muscles gives you a pump. Now to get a really big pump, you can do more reps in a set. So your muscles produce more and more of these metabolic byproducts and produce them faster. And then your body's trying to get them out even more aggressively, right? So the pump gets bigger. You can rest less, right? Than you normally do in between sets. If you follow any of my programming or my advice, you're probably resting a couple of minutes, two to four minutes in between your hard sets. If you cut that in half, that's going

Starting point is 00:07:57 to make it harder for your body to remove the metabolic byproducts because it's working to do it while you're resting. And if you cut that rest period short and start training again, then of course your body can no longer remove those metabolic byproducts because it's working to do it while you're resting. And if you cut that rest period short and start training again, then of course your body can no longer remove those metabolic byproducts. You can also do more sets. So if you do more work in a workout, you're going to experience a bigger pump up until a point. Of course, there is diminishing returns with all of these things, but if you do more work in your workouts, that's going to mean more blood flow to your muscles and that's going to mean more metabolic byproducts. And so then pump training, training that emphasizes getting a pump usually involves higher reps. So you're usually doing sets of like 12 to 15 reps. And it also usually involves short rest periods in between sets, anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds of rest in between

Starting point is 00:08:42 each set. And you also usually do quite a large number of sets, at least as many as you need to get a really big pump. But again, pump workouts generally are higher volume workouts. And while you can certainly gain muscle with that type of training, you can gain muscle with many types of training. It's not optimal. So for example, there was a study that was conducted by scientists at the University of Central Florida, and they took resistance trained men and they split them into two groups and they had one do pump style training. So 10, 12 reps per set, 70% of one rep max, one minute of rest in between sets. And then the other group did a more of a strength style

Starting point is 00:09:21 workout, three to five rep range, 90% of one rep max, three minutes between each set. And by the end of the study, both groups gained about the same amount of muscle, but there was a small trend for greater gains in the group that used the heavy weights. And there are other studies that echo those findings. And then there's also the strength component too. We know that training in the three to five rep range is more effective for gaining strength in the 10 to 12 rep range. And we also know that as you become more experienced, as you become a more advanced weightlifter, once you are, let's say, solidly into your intermediate phase as a weightlifter, your newbie gains are behind you. The correlation between strength and size becomes stronger, meaning that when you're a newbie, you can gain

Starting point is 00:10:05 a fair amount of strength without gaining that much muscle, without gaining maybe as much muscle as you'd expect given how much you are progressing in your strength. However, once you progress into your intermediate phase, so if you're a guy, let's say after your first 20-ish, 15 to 20 pounds of muscle, you're no longer a newbie. For women, about of muscle, you're no longer a newbie. For women, about half that, you're no longer a newbie. At that point, a lot of the muscle that you're going to gain from that point on is going to come from gaining strength. Again, that relationship becomes much stronger. The most reliable way to continue gaining muscle as an intermediate plus, as an intermediate and beyond weightlifter is to increase your whole body strength. And the best way to judge your whole body strength

Starting point is 00:10:50 is your estimated one rep max is on your squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press. So the reason why I bring that up is when you look at a study that goes for eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, that's useful information, but that's not a large period of time, especially for an intermediate to advanced weightlifter. You don't expect to see much of a change in that short period of time. And we know that if you zoom out and you start stretching that timeline out to something a bit more appropriate, like let's say a year, that the intermediate weightlifter who gains the most whole body strength over a year is almost certainly going to be the one who's going to gain the most muscle. And there are genetic factors to

Starting point is 00:11:32 take into account here, and that won't necessarily be true. So you could have somebody who, let's say, gained the most, let's say, a group of trainees that were all more or less at the same point in their journeys, and they all have decent genetics. Nobody's an outlier in that regard. You might have someone who gained the most whole body strength being beat out in muscle gain by the number two or maybe the number three, but not by the number 10. That's just not how it works. And so just keep that in mind when you are reading about or listening to discussions about rep ranges and muscle building. As an intermediate weightlifter, the best thing you can do is to periodize your training, to continue doing the heavy stuff and to work in some lighter, not light, but lighter stuff. So to work in a rep

Starting point is 00:12:19 range anywhere from let's say two to 12 reps, depending on the exercise and depending on where you're at in a training cycle or a training block or a mesocycle, different terminology for the same thing, a period of training. And that's something I'm going to be talking a lot about in the book that I'm currently wrapping up, which is a new, really just overhaul, rewritten from scratch version of Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. This is going to be the second edition and it's a brand new book. I'm very happy with how it's come together. And if you are an intermediate male or an advanced male weightlifter, I think you're going to be very pleased with it. It's going to be out this summer, I think August.

Starting point is 00:13:03 And yes, I will do a version for women as well. I didn't do one previously because I wasn't sure what to put in it. Honestly, I hadn't worked with enough intermediate and advanced women to know what that book should be like. When I wrote the first edition of Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger, I did feel like I knew enough to do the subject justice, to do a good job with it and provide something valuable. This new second edition, I think is far better, but that's what I would expect. That's a good thing. I think that means that I have learned a lot in the last five years and I'm going to update that knowledge and pass it on. And now though, I have worked with enough experienced

Starting point is 00:13:39 women to know what that female book should be like. So I'm looking forward to doing that as well. Okay. So let's get back on topic here. So we have this downside to pump training in that it is not great for building muscle and gaining strength, especially if you're an intermediate or an advanced weightlifter. If you're a newbie, you can do it, but you are going to have to start lifting heavy weights eventually. So you might as well start early. That's my theory because you are going to get more acquainted with that style of training. You're going to get used to squatting heavyweights and pulling heavyweights and benching heavyweights. There's going to be less of an awkward transition from a lot of pump style training to a lot of heavy style of training.

Starting point is 00:14:19 And for your newbie gains, you're going to do just as well in your first year lifting a lot of heavyweights as you will lifting a lot of lighter weights. But if you lift a lot of lighter weights, again, you're going to have a jarring transition that you then started doing a lot of heavier strength training, it was a bit uncomfortable at first and it was a bit awkward and they had to adjust their weights down. They weren't able to handle the loads that were being calculated by calculators, for example. So they would put in their numbers for, oh, well, this is what I can squat for 12 reps. And then the rep calculator says, oh, well, you should be able to do this for four or five reps. And because they were really not used to training like that, they couldn't, they couldn't. They had to sometimes use 60, 70, 80% of their calculated numbers, which again, is not a huge issue. It's just kind of obnoxious. It's easier to just start with your heavy lifting as early as possible

Starting point is 00:15:26 and get used to that style of training and then add in some pump related stuff when you need to add more volume to continue making progress. And that, for example, is a good use of pump style training. I do, I guess you could call it pump style training on isolation exercises. In the beginning of my training blocks, I'm doing sets of 10 to 12 reps on certain isolation exercises, for example, not on my compounds. I start with sets of 10 in a four month training block on my compounds. The first week are sets of 10, and then I'm going sets of eight and sets of six, then I'm deloading, and then I'm doing sets of eight, six, four, deload, four, six, two, deload. And that's all going to be explained in Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger 2.0.

Starting point is 00:16:07 But on my isolation exercises, I am doing sets of 10 to 12. And that does help bring up lagging muscle groups because it just helps add volume to them. Because of course, when you bench press, you're not just accumulating volume in your chest, you're also accumulating volume in your shoulders and in your triceps, and to some degree, even your lats. That indirect volume does quote unquote count, but with smaller, more stubborn muscle groups like the shoulders, for example, pretty much everybody has to do more than just pressing a barbell to get the shoulders they want. And pump training, higher rep training, higher volume training is great for that because you

Starting point is 00:16:46 can add that volume selectively. Instead of trying to do a bunch more bench pressing to bring your shoulders up, you can add in side raises, maybe in the rep range of 10 to 12 or eight to 10, or even six to eight. You can do rear raises. If you want to do more anterior delts, you could do front raises. Although I would say that means you're probably not doing enough pressing. You probably shouldn't be doing front raises unless you can't press as much as you should be, which really just comes to the flat barbell bench press, the incline barbell bench press, the flat dumbbell press, the incline dumbbell press, the overhead press, whether it's barbell or dumbbell. Your anterior delts should get all the work they need with those exercises. But if you can't do that and you have to work

Starting point is 00:17:29 around an injury or some sort of restriction, then something like a front raise can make sense as well. And so I'm going to wrap this up with a simple rule of thumb, the Pareto principle. We're going to apply it to this. And that is that you should be spending about 80% of your time in the gym doing heavy compound training, those multi-joint, multi-muscle group exercises. You should be using loads that are, let's say, at least, let's just say in the range of 80 to 95% of your one rep max. And so that's in the rep range of like two to eight. And the remaining 20% of your training time though, of your volume, of the work that you're doing can be lighter stuff where it does give you a bigger pump.

Starting point is 00:18:09 And a lot of that, if not all of it, is going to be with isolation exercises. Again, so you can strategically increase your volume where it needs to be increased. And so you can look at your weekly volume, for example, per major muscle group and make sure it's where you want it to be. If you're new, something around nine or 10 hard sets per major muscle group per week is plenty. And remember, you can count the indirect volume. So if you're doing three sets of bench pressing, that's volume.

Starting point is 00:18:37 That's three sets of volume for your chest, your tris and your shoulders. Maybe exclude lats from that. And of course, then your direct volume. So whatever extra volume you're doing then in side raises or rear raises, of course, then your direct volume. So whatever extra volume you're doing then in side raises or rear raises, cool. That's more shoulder volume. If you're doing some triceps press downs or some overhead triceps presses or whatever, extra triceps volume. But if you're an intermediate or advanced weightlifter, you could expect to have to do anywhere from 15 to 20 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And the only way to do that is to include

Starting point is 00:19:06 isolation work in your workouts, isolation exercises. And really the only way to do that effectively is to include some pump style training, some higher rep training. Because if you try to do all of your work in, let's say the four to six rep range, yes, that's fine. You can gain muscle, you can gain strength. With some exercises, it's going to be pretty awkward to maintain proper form like a side raise and a rear raise, for example, but it can be done. However, what you'll find is your joints are going to take a beating. It is nice to work with some lighter weights for portions of your training blocks and then get into the heavier stuff. When you are including pump training, just make sure

Starting point is 00:19:46 that you are using some sort of progression model, just as you would with your compound exercises. You don't want to only progress on your compounds and not progress at all on your accessories. If you do that, you will see changes in your physique, but you will do better if you push to progress in both your primary work and your accessory work. And you can also experiment with different types of training too that I guess could qualify as pump training, like rest pause training or blood flow restriction training. And if you want to learn about those things, I've recorded podcasts on both, I believe, so you can find them by searching in the feed or my YouTube channel. And if you'd rather read about those things, just go over to legionathletics.com and search for rest pause. And you might have to put a hyphen in there, rest hyphen pause, and then search for

Starting point is 00:20:33 blood flow restriction. And you'll find articles that I wrote on both. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show,

Starting point is 00:21:01 they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast in whatever app you're using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right.

Starting point is 00:21:45 Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Important Is Getting a Pump for Building Muscle?

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