Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Interview With Author and Scientist Brad Schoenfeld

Episode Date: March 5, 2015

In this podcast I interview the one and only Brad Schoenfeld and we talk about the rock-bottom fundamentals of building muscle and strength and losing fat, the myth of "functional" training, and more! JOIN MY BOOK LAUNCH: http://www.muscleforlife.com/launch/ ORDER THE M.A.X. MUSCLE PLAN: http://amzn.to/1EpHo0M BRAD'S WEBSITE: http://www.lookgreatnaked.com/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: “Muscle Memory” is Real and Here’s How It Works: http://www.muscleforlife.com/muscle-memory/ The Definitive Guide to Effective Meal Planning: http://www.muscleforlife.com/healthy-meal-planning-tips/ The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ How Training Frequency Can Help or Hurt Your Muscle Growth: http://www.muscleforlife.com/training-frequency/ The Definitive Guide on How to Build a Workout Routine: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-build-a-workout-routine/ The Definitive Guide to Post-Workout Nutrition: http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-post-workout-nutrition/ The Definitive Guide to the “If It Fits Your Macros” Diet: http://www.muscleforlife.com/what-is-if-it-fits-your-macros-and-does-it-work/ 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/

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That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike, and thanks for stopping by the podcast. In this episode, I am excited to interview Brad Schoenfeld, who is a best-selling author of multiple books. He's been published in every fitness magazine you can imagine. He's appeared in all kinds of TV shows. Probably one of the leading experts, really, in this industry.

Also, he has authored numerous studies. Um, and he's one of the, one of the, one of the few guys whose work I really follow and whose work I really look up to. Not that I think I'm so amazing or anything. There's just so much bad stuff in this space. You know, I kind of keep a short list of people whose blogs I follow and whose, uh, whose, whose, uh, ideas I, I, I kind of wholeheartedly agree with. Um, so yeah, I think you're going to like what Brad has to say. whose ideas I kind of wholeheartedly agree with. So yeah, I think you're going to like what Brad has to say.

He's very educated. He really knows what he's talking about. He has a ton of experience. So let's get to it. All right. Hey, Brad, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I appreciate it. My pleasure, Mike.

Yeah, I'm a fan of your work. Your blog is one of the handful of blogs that I follow regularly and read everything that you put out. And so I am excited to talk to you. Cool, man. Yeah. All right. So let's just get right into it. So every day, I mean, I spend a fair amount of time answering people's emails and social media messages and whatever, and field a lot of different kind of questions. And one of the most common frustrations that at least I run into with people emailing me and reaching out to me is just information overload. Because, you know, I guess it's like if you want to, regardless of whether you want to, you know, learn a hobby or get into fitness or whatever, when you first get into pretty

much anything, when you start diving into studying it, there's just so much information out there. And, uh, and at least in the case of health and fitness, there are also just so many opinions on what's the best way to get fit. And so, so much of that, you know, sounds kind of convincing on the surface and a lot of different people seem to be well-spoken and seem to be educated and know what they're talking about. You know, a lot of cases, guys and girls might look the way that other people would want to look. And it can just be hard to kind of judge the relative importance and seniority of everything. Yep. So I thought it would be a good idea to get from you just to help clarify for the listeners, what would you say are the fundamental

kind of non-negotiable aspects of building muscle and strength and losing fat? Like what are the bottom line musts and must nots that no amount of fancy diet schemes or training schemes are going to change? Yeah, it's a great question. So as far as building muscle, first and foremost is volume. So there is a clear, what's called a dose-response relationship, meaning that when you increase volume, at least up to a certain point, you also see supporting increases in muscle growth and muscle strength. So doing a HIIT-style routine where you're doing one set to failure certainly can produce good results, but you're not going to maximize your muscle mass.

And this has been demonstrated quite clearly in the literature as well as anecdotally. And that means that you need to push your volume up to a higher point if you want to maximize gains. Now, the problem is that if you consistently train at high volumes, you will tend to get overtrained. At some point, you're going to get overtrained. And certainly, there's a U-shaped curve. So after a certain point, if you do too much volume, it actually ends up falling off. The results, you actually will delve into overtraining and end up falling off. Like an upside-down U?

Correct. Exactly. An upside-down, an inverted you. So the key here really is to periodize volume where you have certain periods of training in somewhat lower volumes. It doesn't necessarily have to be one set, but somewhat lower volumes, and then you gradually increase that over time, over a given period of time, whatever that is. It could be a couple of months, three months, and then have periods of what are called deloads between that

where you then take small breaks where you're training in a much lower volume and lower intensity fashion to allow rejuvenation. And this kind of wave-like pattern of volume where you're going up and down with volume will ultimately maximize your muscle. And I want to emphasize what we're talking about here is maximizing muscle mass or what I'm talking about because gaining muscle is quite easy. Well, up to a certain point, just I mean, if you lift, you lift and you overload your muscles, at least certainly at the initial stages, you're going to gain a lot of muscle. Now, I assume you're talking here about more intermediate to advanced lifters

where it starts to get harder, and that's where you really need to start pushing things. Next would be a variety of exercises. I see people, one of the big mistakes I see people who want to maximize muscle is that they do the same lifts over and over again, and same basic lifts. And you have to remember that muscles are compartmentalized they have different heads and if you're training with the same movements you're going to work the muscle in a given way but you're not going to maximize stimulation of all the fibers so we know that like an incline press is going to target the clavicular head while a

flat press is going to target the sternal head. The triceps are going to be maximally targeted, the long head with an overhead type movement, whereas the medial and lateral heads with a movement where the elbows are close to the sides. We can go on and on with this, but varying the movements, and you don't have to get crazy with it. I'm not saying you need to be doing different exercises every day, but there has to be a good variety of movements where you're working the muscles through proper planes of movement

and inclines and angles to maximize their development. Yeah, I've found that having a foundation of the big lifts, like, okay, your pull training is going to be built on something like a deadlift or your leg training is going to be built on something like a squat or your chest on something like a okay, your, your pull training is going to always going to be built on something like a deadlift or your leg training is going to be built on something like a squat or your, your chest on something like a, like a press, but then, uh, changing. So like certain aspects of the training, not changing in that I'm going to be dead lifting every week. And yeah, sometimes it's going to be heavier than others depending on, on volume and such. But, um, then though there are aspects of the, of the workout that change every so often

to, like what you're saying, to put muscles through, to just target them differently. Is that something that makes sense to you? Yeah, there's many different ways you can ultimately, the practical application of it can be done in multiple different ways. So I can give the science of it, the actual art, which you're talking about now, there's not one way I would say it has to be done in this fashion. As long as you're injecting some type of variety in that context, you can keep the structural lifts, your core-type movements,

which I think is a very good strategy, and then have some isolation, single-joint moves that work the muscles differently, many different ways to approach that. Yeah, like assistance work it might be called in some programs, yeah. Yep. And the final thing I'd say is to have a trend through a spectrum of repetition ranges, loading zones, and I've actually through my lab been doing quite a lot of work on this, was looking at how different rep ranges affect muscle growth.

And the working hypothesis that I've come to, and this certainly seems to play out from my experience in working with a lot of high-level physique athletes, is that if you train through, you want to have some heavy loading days, even kind of your power lifting three to five rep zones, then your eight to 12, your basic hypertrophy zone, and then doing, it Then you're eight to 12, you're a basic hypertrophy zone. And then doing, it's actually been surprising to me, but finding that the higher rep ranges really do promote muscle growth,

contrary to what has been thought. And the working hypothesis I have now is that it really helps to optimize muscle fiber development across the full spectrum of type 1 and type 2 fibers, where the higher reps, when you're talking your 20, 25 reps, significantly higher repetition training, seems to keep the endurance-oriented type 1 fibers under load for a period of time that will stimulate them to a greater degree than you would with a heavier load, and your heavier loads tend to bring in the type 2, the higher threshold motor units

that are associated with the fastest type 2 fibers, and they are not optimally activated, at least through the research I've been doing, through your low load. So kind of in combination, they have a synergistic effect. So really that would be kind of my summation of the hypertrophy aspects. So when it comes to fat loss, really that's going to be obviously a function of diet. Basically I follow what's called the hierarchy of nutrition where first and foremost, when you're talking about losing body fat, it's cutting calories.

It's watching your energy in versus energy out. So it can be done through doing more exercise, but there's diminishing returns there. If you end up getting overtrained, it's going to end up interfering with your strength training and certainly have negative effects. So you need to balance that. And just to interject real quick, sorry, so the listener can just, that's something you have to kind of think you have to kind of learn with your body like i know with my body when i'm

in a calorie deficit i'm usually when i'm cutting i'm in a 20 25 deficit and i can i can train i can lift i can do about six hours of exercise a week basically what it boils down to and uh so i'm i'm doing about four hours of lifting, maybe six and a half, four to four and a half hours of lifting a week, and about two hours of high intensity cardio, no more than two hours. And I know that with my body, I can do that. And I can lose fat is, you know, easily and I can get lean. But if I start pushing beyond that, I just don't feel good anymore. So and that's something you know, I've been I've just been I'm sure Brad, you've seen the same thing. Some people, some people's bodies are just more resilient than others it seems like

when it comes to that yeah well you first of all you just bring up an excellent point that i was going to uh mention that certainly there's a huge inter-individual response and that goes for both exercise as well as nutrition um and you have to know your own body. So when we talk about these things, we talk in generalities. But as you mentioned, some people can train long and hard without ever overtraining or pretty much never overtraining. And that's going to genetic center into that as well as things like nutrition, whether you're in a deficit or not, sleep patterns, stress patterns. So there's so many lifestyle factors combined with genetics.

But the point here that I want to make at the top of this hierarchy is your energy and energy-atom. You just hit the nail on the head that it's not people talk about. It's all about hormones or whatever, and that's just silliness. Your hormones could be going whatever if you're not having an energy. If you're in an energy surplus, it's just basic physics that you're not going to lose body fat. Yeah, I don't know.

I'll get sometimes, every now and then, I'll get blog comments. I talk about these things extensively on the website in different contexts and whatever. But I get people that will try to say that, oh, that's old. Like, that's old think. You know what I mean? Now we have all this new research. Like, no, metabolic research goes back a century now.'s, it's at a point where there's no question. These are, these are laws of thermodynamics. This is not just, uh, you know, uh, theories. Uh, there's a reason why every

single, you know, uh, medical weight loss routine involves calorie restriction, calorie deficit. It's just how the body works. There is no question. Yeah, and it's been demonstrated in metabolic ward studies where it's quite clear that if you're not in an energy deficit, you will not lose weight, and if you are, you will. So the first law of thermodynamics has been convincingly portrayed in the literature. So again, that is really at the top of the hierarchy. The next would be protein,

which hopefully most of your listeners. To jump in on that last point, something that you might have just give the reader before we get on to the next thing, it just occurred to me is that one of the things that I think throws people off a lot with calories in, with energy balance, is that calories in, that's easy to quantify. If you track everything you put in your mouth, then there you go. And you know, we can get very, very accurate on that, but the calories out, the energy expended can be trickier to, to determine. Do you want to talk on that for a minute? Just cause I think that's where it throws a lot of people off, at least when they, cause I'll have people that come to me, I'll have girls come to me,

you know, let's say she's five, five", 5'6", 130 pounds, eating 1,900 calories a day, wondering why she's not losing weight. That's actually quite a bit of food. If you could be in a good deficit at 1,900 calories a day, you'd have to be really physically active. And your point is extremely well taken. So it's very difficult, it's not impossible. If you don't have access to metabolic tools, instrumentation,

you're not going to be able to reach. It's basically just going to be an estimate because, first of all, yeah, you can track your calories in pretty well, but even there's some variation there. Calories out, yeah, trying to know how much you're actually expending during exercise and physical activity is very difficult. Knowing what your metabolic rate is is impossible unless you're going to have it measured.

And even more so, when you start to go into a deficit, your body is going to do something called adaptive thermogenesis where your body starts to adapt to the weight loss program and is going to start to fight it by suppressing metabolic rate. So you have to remeasure that again. And your NEAT, what's called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is things like fidgeting and how much you move around just without exercise, that often is suppressed as well, that you become more sluggish and you don't burn calories.

So there's a whole very complex aspect to this. So basically, you're just left in the normal everyday, I don't want to scare people away on this, but you basically now are left to estimate and that if you, it's very, really an easy thing to do. You weigh yourself. If you see you're not losing weight, you can have to either expend more energy or cut more calories and it just becomes a continual process. It makes it easier if you're in a lab and have access. Sure. Yeah. And then, you know, and also just so the listener knows, like, again, it's a point of learning your body. I've learned the kind of my, I should say, quote unquote, sweet spots for losing fat, for maintaining. It also depends how lean I want to stay because my maintenance calories are a bit lower if I want to be really lean. But you learn your body. As you

know, you know, I know that if I wanted it to be in a slight calorie surplus to bulk, as it would be called, I would need to be eating about 32, 3,300 calories a day. That's in, and over time I'd probably have to increase that, but that's just given my, given my body composition and my activity level, that's it. And if I want to maintain right now, I'm, I kind of maintain around 8% or so I like to stay lean. So if maintenance for me is probably about 27, 2800. And if I wanted to get leaner, I'd have to go down to 23, 24. That's where I'd start probably. And, uh, you know, so it's part of learning your body. As Brad said, you don't have to be like, you don't have to think it's too complicated. It's just know that, um, you know, if you're first go at it, if you're first,

It's just know that if you're first go at it, if you're first – you work it out, maybe using the catch McCardle or whatever, and at first it doesn't – you're not seeing the weight loss. It doesn't mean that your body is broken or that it doesn't work with you or whatever. It just means something is off, and you have to relook at what you're actually eating. Are you overdoing it on your quote-unquote cheat meals, or are you overestimating expenditure? So there is a bit of a learning process, and for some people, there's no learning process. Some people, they just go by the estimation in their body. They lose all the fat they want, and, you know, good for them, but that's not everybody. And you really hit the nail on the head again.

You said it as well as I could have said it. It's a matter of experimentation. You've got to get to know your body. And once you do, it becomes a lot easier. So the initial phases of getting used to this is difficult or can be difficult sometimes, as you said. Some people do nail it. But that's something that with a little practice, pretty much you can know your body after a few months or so

and basically have it down for the rest of your life. Yeah, totally. So sorry to cut you off. Back on the protein thing. I just thought it would be a good thing to jump in on. Yeah, so the next thing would be protein. So we're talking about calories in, calories out. It's not, we're just talking about the loss of weight

where we're not looking at body composition, where that weight's coming from. And that's obvious. You can lose weight, but you can be losing a lot of muscle, which often happens depending on the dietary approach. And that's why. You can lose weight, but you can be losing a lot of muscle, which often happens depending on the dietary approach. And that's why protein is extremely important, if nothing else, to prevent the loss of muscle while you're in a caloric deficit. Generally, your protein needs actually go up even more

depending upon how large the deficit is. So a good rule of thumb is about a gram per pound of body weight. It's a little higher than you probably need, but to me it's a nice buffer to make sure that you're getting in the proper amount of protein. Also protein satiating. I mean, you know, when you're cutting, it helps keep you from getting hungry. So, you know, at least you got that as well.

And we're talking your goal body weight, by the way. So if you're currently 50 pounds overweight, if you're 250 and you should be 200, you shouldn't be basing it at 250. You should be basing it at 200. Right, right. So you're really looking at about what's your goal body weight, your lean body weight would be there. Then comes the nutritional quality, which is, again, further down the hierarchy, this pyramid.

I never would say that some people just dismiss you can eat anything, and I do think there is an importance to quality. If nothing else, you're getting proper nutrients here. If you're going to be sucking down Mountain Dew all day, you're not going to be getting your important vitamins and fiber and other things. And you're going to be miserable because you're going to have no calories for food. Well, that's true too. And then there's hunger issues as well. The carb to fat ratio would then be underneath that, where again, to me, it's way overplayed, the ketogenic diet versus the

low-fat diet. Some people do better on one. Again, this is where inter-individual response comes in. I'm not saying it's not important, but you need to know how your body responds. Some people are a little more insulin insensitive and do better on a higher-fat diet, where others do better on a higher-carb diet. There's actually been a couple of cool research studies that have looked at this. And that's something that you just got to get used to. And it also has to do with the enjoyment as well. If you're not going to enjoy it, if it's completely miserable to be on that diet,

you're not going to stick with it. And adherence is obviously paramount, the most important thing. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people forget that too. I mean, they think that because low carb is kind of trendy these days. And generally, I mean, I'm not a fan unless you carb is kind of trendy these days. And generally, I mean, I'm not a fan unless you said, unless the person is, has a good reason to do it. I mean, when, when you, as you know, when protein is, when, when you're looking at a high protein diet

over time, the fat loss is, is negligible. There's not really different between low carb and high carb. So if you're in, if you're lifting regularly, heavy weights, low-carb sucks. I mean, no one has a good heavy weightlifting workout on a low-carb diet that I've ever run into. I don't know if you know people that – No, I agree. I mean, I think now – well, I think generally speaking, it is a performance detriment to be on a low-carb diet, although I do have a colleague that I'm waiting for the data to come out that he just conducted a study showing pretty much equal results on muscle building on a ketogenic versus a high-carb. I've heard it, yeah. Actually, I heard it. I think I saw

a preview of this. So, yeah, I'm waiting to see the data, and again, I always reserve judgment. I'm always willing to change my opinion, but look, again, it does come down to then you have to say what's more important, the fat loss or the muscle gain. And these are things I can't, it's up to the individual. You have to make your own decisions there. But I just think it's way overblown as far as importance goes. I mean, that's more the point here. And the final thing would be the timing of nutrients.

I actually just conducted a meta-analysis of eating frequency, how many meals a day you should eat, and the old bodybuilding advice that you need to really jack up your metabolism by eating six times a day. We pretty much refuted that. There was no difference based on the timing and fat loss. I would say generally you need a minimum of three meals a day for anabolism to maximize muscle growth or to keep your anabolic system revved up to optimize protein synthesis.

But other than that, whether you're having three meals, four meals, five meals, really very little of no difference between meal frequency. And even we've kind of debunked, we also had a paper from my lab that came out not too long ago on post-exercise timing of nutrients. And we found that there's not much credence. And certainly it's not going to get the old adage again that you get jacked from taking a protein dose immediately. You have to suck down your protein drink within 20 minutes of your workout you're gonna go catabolic really is

is quite silly yeah uh and and whether it if it does have any effects they they would be pretty small and we're still not even sure they do so yeah that's one of those things personally i just have usually have some protein after just in case. And I'm the same way, by the way. I will say that I still get – when I get home, but – I'm not like racing to get my weight shake down, but, you know, I'm going to come to the office and I'm going to make a shake because it's convenient and I want to get to work, and so there we go. Right. So again, what I just said was that, or hopefully, hoping that it came across, that it's a hierarchy here, and that some people are, while some people put more credence in others,

you have to look at what's important to you and focus. Sometimes people don't see the forest from the trees. They're focusing on their timing or whatever, and they don't focus on the galleries, which is the most important. You want to focus on your most important things. It's not that the other things have no value at all, but you just need to focus on them less. You have to focus on what's most important for the most part.

Yeah, and these days it's obviously very popular to focus on the nutritional quality, that part of the hierarchy. That's what a lot of the, you know, the mainstream kind of diet quote unquote gurus push these days of these, these are the foods that quote unquote clog your hormones and make you gain fat. And these are the ones, you know, all that stuff. And, and going back to that point, because then on the other hand, we have the, if it fits your macros thing, that's kind of big in the, in the fitness world specifically. And a lot of guys, they they they look at that as a license as you were saying to just eat whatever okay i'm gonna have six bowls of apple jacks and my carbs are gonna be apple jacks you know pop tarts and yeah so

um and what are your my what's your take on in like if if because a lot of people are like afraid of certain things like they are afraid of sugar and they think it's going to make them fat. Obviously, we know that's not true. But in terms of breaking down, let's say calories from nutritious foods and that means nutrient-dense foods, not necessarily foods that like – okay, whole grains are demonized by certain diet cults I guess you could say. But whole grains are great you know, demonized by certain diet cults, I guess you could say. And then where, but whole grains are great, great sources of certain nutrition. So nutritious foods, how, how in terms of total daily calorie intake, what would you say is a good, you know, breakdown to go, okay, if you get this amount of your calories can come from,

you know, generally unprocessed nutritious foods that you're going to prepare yourself. And that's where you're going to get a lot of your micronutrients and blah, blah, blah. And then if you want to throw in some random whatever junk, I mean, I'm not into junk food personally, but my stuff would be more like I like chocolate, or I do a little dessert every day of some kind. What's your take on that? Like what's a good balance where you get to still enjoy some stuff, but you have an all-around healthy diet, you know what I mean?

Great question. I defer. One of my real good friends and colleagues, Alan Aragon, who actually has a new book out called The Lean Muscle Diet, and he touches on this, and I subscribe fully to his opinion that it's kind of the 80% rule. If you're eating good 80% of the time,

that other 20% can be used pretty much as for whatever you want. And the old if it fits your macros concept was not based on eating Pop-Tarts all day. It's been bastardized for that to kind of come to that. But ultimately, it just meant that you didn't have to worry if you wanted to have Pop-Tarts once in a while. Ultimately, it just meant that you didn't have to worry if you wanted to have Pop-Tarts once in a while. And then it kind of got, again, bastardized to the point where it said, well, you just eat whatever you want as long as you're... Yeah, and you have to remember, there's many, you even touched on it before, there's things like hunger issues. If you're just going to eat Pop-Tarts and Apple Jacks all day, you're going to be chomping at the bit to have more food because it's just not satiating.

And, of course, the quality, there's protein quality. Now, again, I'm not one to say that you have to have way – like that protein quality needs to be focused on above all, but there is credence to the fact that certain proteins are higher quality. If you're going to just eat, let's say, a soy protein, you can have to have a lot more of it to compensate for the are higher quality. If you're going to just eat, let's say, a soy protein, you're going to have to have a lot more of it to compensate for the lack of quality. Anyway, there's other issues there that I don't know how much you want to get into

them, but really to me the relevance is, and I think the more practical aspect take home for most people that would be listening, is that if you eat well 80% of the time as far as the foods, whole foods, unprocessed, that you can have 20% to do pretty much whatever you want as long as you're staying within your, if it fits your macros. And the macros, again, the macros are specific to the individual and also above all the total calories that you should be consuming. Yeah, I mean, in the end, obviously, it goes back to that top of the pyramid you're talking about, which is the energy balance.

It's just tracking macros just for the listeners. Once you work it out, it's just an easier way. It's less to think about than calories. Because if you know, like, okay, I know that if I were going to be cutting right now, I'd probably start with 200 protein, 250 carb, and 50 fat a day. That's probably where I'd start. And that's easy to think with. You know, I can now make a meal plan with that as opposed to 2,500 calories. It's just tracking macros is just a shortcut.

But you've got to, of course, the calories in the end, you can track all the numbers you want. But if you're overeating, you're overeating, and that's just it. And then, by the way, again, the most important thing to track is your protein intake. Right. If you're off on your fat and carbs, for most people, it's just not going to make, within reason, it's not going to make much difference at all. Right, right, definitely.

And you want your, I should mention, too, with fats, you need to get your essential fats. It's not the types of fats that you're eating are very important there uh you want your especially your omega-3s but both six is also important too so you want to have a compliment your omega-6s are pretty rich in the american diet many people are deficient in their omega-3s so it's uh it is a very important thing to make sure that you do get at least say if if you're taking a couple of fish oil caps a day, then you don't have to worry about that. Yeah, that's a good point. I'm not a big fan of fish, so I tend to just supplement,

especially the fattier fishes. I don't like how they taste, so I choose to supplement. Yeah, that's awesome. That's very great. I like the way of thinking of it in terms of a pyramid like that. That's great. So let's move on to the next subject here. That is quote unquote, you know, functional training, very popular these

days, CrossFit's big. And a lot of people are obviously going in that direction. And I'll get people that write me here and there that they're asking about how they can make their workouts more functional because a lot of the workouts that I'm recommending are, are, uh, you know, built around your, your basic big compound exercises with some assistance work and in, in terms of workouts for advanced lifters, periodization and, uh, deloading and so forth. But I know that, uh, you know, you have some, some thoughts on this on what, what, what is quote unquote functional training anyway, and is the traditional bodybuilding approach, quote-unquote, like unfunctional?

Again, this is one of my hobby horses, and it's really a great question. And the term functional fitness, by the way, there's no definition for it. If you ask 10 people, they'll have different definitions. And if you want to just talk about it as the ability, which if you're talking about for the general population, which to me is the ability to carry out everyday tasks. So the activities of daily living, that to me is functional. A bodybuilding routine, show me a bodybuilder that can't lift packages, pick up a child, go to the train station. Sit down on the toilet and stand up. Yeah, it's just silly that a bodybuilding workout, number one, as you mentioned,

virtually all of them will employ squats and rows and all the free weight type moves that would be done in three-dimensional space that would get stabilizer muscles involved. And the thought that like a body, it kind of goes, the thinking is that the bodybuilders, they're so muscle down, they can't scratch their head. Well, number one, that comes from taking professionals, from taking a lot of anabolic enhancements, for lack of a better term. Right. And a lot of time and outstanding genetics for it as

well well right but even without that they're not going to so if they can't scratch their head it's because they're because their biceps are 25 inches if they were not on what they're on on the here that they're on they'd be able to scratch their head so again they choose to not scratch their heads they work hard so they cannot scratch their heads. It's the bulk getting in the way. It's not the training per se. The average person who's training is not going to get anywhere near that. And we wish it was that easy to build that much muscle in the natural state. So, again, that doesn't happen.

And bodybuilding is a very functional training style. It's done in the way most people do, using a couple of different, but even if it's not, even if you're just using machines, I hearken back. So this kind of depends upon the, certainly would depend somewhat on the individuals that you're looking at, but the classic study that looked at nursing home patients just using the leg extension. Now I can't think of any exercise that would have less functional relevance

than a leg extension. Well, after eight weeks, a group of nursing home patients, and this study was done back in 1990, three days a week, three sets per session of leg extensions. After eight weeks, they improved their functional capacity by 50%, leg strength by 150%, and two of the 10 subjects were able to walk without their canes after this eight-week protocol.

Now, you tell me what's more functional than being able to walk on your own without assistance. So it's really just silliness that's been taken to an extreme. Now, I also want to point out that if you're an athlete, if you're looking to maximize performance where the differences between the functional transfer there is much more specific, then obviously a bodybuilding routine, the principle of specificity would state that a bodybuilding routine would not optimize that performance. So it really then starts becoming who are you talking about as far as the functional transfer? What are they looking, who are you talking about as far as the functional transfer, what are they looking to do. There certainly can be people with certain job tasks that would benefit from certain

types of moves put in that are specific to their work environment or things they do, mountain climbing, whatever they might want to do as a hobby. And those are things that would have to be accounted for. But just on a general level, I would challenge anyone to show that a bodybuilding routine is not going to allow them to carry out their everyday tasks in a very efficient manner. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. And I totally agree. And while we're on the subject of functional training, let's quickly talk about CrossFit. What's your take? about CrossFit. What's your take? Again, don't have a problem with CrossFit per se for what it is. If you're looking to be a jack-of-all-trades, it's not going to maximize it. If you want to

maximize something, you have to train specifically for that. The thought that you're going to maximize hypertrophy and maximize strength and maximize muscular endurance, that doesn't happen. You can't maximize everything in one type of routine. So it's kind of a jack-of-all-trades routine that I think has relevance for those who want an overall good fitness routine. I think the implementation is not done well in many of the centers. Now, with that said, I don't do CrossFit. I've just spoken to people and I've tested some people who are CrossFitters

and they often will have strength imbalances because they're not training through a full spectrum of planes with movements in all the planes. There's certainly, from what I've gathered, an increased incidence of injury. Does that mean it has to be that way? No, that's just the way that many of these facilities are carrying it out and that I think a lot of the people who are owning CrossFit boxes are really not fitness people and they do a two-day course and come out thinking that they're now exercise physiologists and they really don't have a grasp of how

not only to train safely but also to manipulate intensity. We talked about deloading, that it's kind of push yourself, push yourself, push yourself without ever coming down, and that's usually a recipe for overtraining and disaster ultimately. So, again, can CrossFit be a viable strategy? I think it can if it's carried out properly. So it really then comes to the implementation, not the concept. Yeah, and it's unfortunate that it is so easy, like you say,

you take a weekend course because Olympic lifting is inherently, it's not that it's inherently dangerous, but the injury rates are inherently higher with Olympic lifting than just your traditional bodybuilding routine because the movements are trickier, especially you start adding weight. Even when you know what you're doing, you're at an, you know,

you're increasing the risk of injury. Not that you shouldn't do it, but you just, it's just part of the game. It just comes with it. So, you know, when,

when you have a bunch of people that, especially people that are out of shape and they're new to weightlifting, I don't think starting them out on ramping them up to heavy Olympic lifts is the way to start somebody with weightlifting. Absolutely. And that's a great point that even high-level Olympic coaches who have basically gotten master's degrees in exercise physiology, there still is a higher incidence of injury in that type of sport than there is in the general resistance training population just because of the complexity of the moves and the speed of the move that's being carried out.

And that's being carried out in people or under the supervision of people who are very experienced. So when you're not so much experienced, a two-day course doesn't exactly qualify for someone who has their master's degree that's gone through six years of schooling and understanding biomechanics and ex-phys and other things. So yeah, great point. Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Okay, last but not least, kind of a random question, but I get asked it fairly often, so I want to kind of get your take on it. How long can you go without training before you start losing muscle? So let's say you're

going to be out of town or you get hurt or for whatever reason, because a lot of, a lot of people will write me and they'll be paranoid that, you know, if they miss a workout for a week, are they going to lose a, are they going to lose muscle two weeks or, or they'll come back after a couple of weeks and they're significantly weaker. And then they're freaked out that they lost a bunch of muscle. Yeah. So there's no, uh, I can't give you an exact point because it will be different for, number one, we talked about before, inter-individual differences, but it's also going to depend upon how long have you been training for,

how intensely have you been training, how much muscle do you have. So many things come into this. What I can tell you without question is that, number one, you start losing strength before you lose muscle, muscle mass. So strength, actually, the neural aspects deteriorate a little more quickly. A week, you will not lose anything. Two weeks, you will start to lose some strength, usually a little more than that before muscle starts being lost.

But again, it's quite minimal. Significant muscle loss doesn't happen until you've been out certainly over a month when you'll start to see appreciable for most people appreciable muscle loss right and then on top and then if you get back you have muscle memory on your side which is very real so it's like you know that's my normal thing is like don't worry you're gonna miss a couple weeks it's not a big deal you're not gonna lose anything you're gonna come back a little bit weaker and if you did lose any muscle because maybe and for whatever reason you're going

to gain it back very very quickly and not only that some people need it depends how hard you've been training but that can actually foster increased growth so you might lose a little at the beginning but not only would you gain it back some people will then actually be able to go past the plateau they might have hit because they'd been over trained i mean usually the people that are worried about that are the ones that are just pushing balls to the wall every time they're training, and they're the ones who need often that extra deload. So if they take a couple weeks off, certainly three weeks is certainly not going to hurt them and possibly can end up benefiting them down the road.

Yeah, yeah, I've had that before. Just like you say, pushing hard to where I just, you know, you start getting your, your workouts start kind of going to shit and just tired and not having the strength and not wanting to be there and then take a week or two off and then come back totally refreshed and break through whatever I was stuck with. Okay. Awesome. So now let's change gears here real quick and tell me about about you have a book that's been out for a couple years, and I know it's sold well. And I've run across a lot of people have read it. And so what, you know, tell us about it. Yeah, it's called the max muscle plan. It's a six month periodized program that takes a person through on a step by step basis how to

maximize their muscle. And it discusses not only the program itself, but teaches people how to customize it to their own abilities, needs and abilities we talked about. That's really important. So it's called The Max Muscle Plan, published by Human Kinetics, and that is out in all major bookstores as well as on Amazon. I also have a popular website called lookgreatnaked.com where I run a blog and have

a free newsletter and give out free advice and free articles, discuss my research a lot. So check that out as well. Yeah. And I highly recommend you check out Brad's stuff. Like I said, he's one of probably six or seven blogs that I check regularly just because I'm always looking for, just trying to stay on top of the research side of things. And Brad knows a lot more than I do, so I just defer to people smarter than me. So I recommend that you add his blog to your feedly or whatever you use. And I haven't read your book, Brad, but like I said, I've seen it on Amazon, and I've had people, you know, I've come across it, so I need to add it to my list.

I'll have to get you a copy. I'll have to let my publisher know, and we'll talk after, but I'll get you out a copy. Yeah, no problem. I'll buy it because I like to do that. So I'm going to add it to my list. I kind of have my reading list is like on a rotation of I'll read a health and and fitness book and then I'll read a business type of book and blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to add it to that list. Cool.

Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks a lot for taking the time, Brad. I really appreciate it. I know we covered a lot of great stuff. I think listeners are going to appreciate it. And yeah, so thanks again. My pleasure, bud.

Hopefully we talk down the road. Definitely. Hey, it's Mike again, and I hope you liked the interview. down the road. Definitely. Hey, it's Mike again, and I hope you liked the interview. Before I sign off,

I just wanted to take a second to basically plug my book launch that I have going. You may have heard about it, but I recently released the revised and expanded second editions of my books, Bigger Leaner Stronger, which is for men,

and Thinner Leaner Stronger, which is for women. And I have a whole giveaway that I'm doing. I'm giving away over $10,000 of stuff. And that's real stuff that has real value, not like $10,000 in shitty PDFs or something like that. Um, like we actually spent my, one of the guys that works with me, he spent months contacting companies and gathering up all kinds of stuff. Um, so, uh, if you want to check it out, you can get the books and then get all kinds of bonus cool things for buying the books

while we're doing this book launch. And then you also enter to win big prizes or big giveaway packages. You can learn more at muscleforlife.com, just spelled out muscleforlife.com forward slash launch. So yeah, check it out. I think you're going to like it.