Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Lyle McDonald on the Truth About Training to Failure

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

The debate around training to muscular failure has raged for decades. Is it necessary? Is it practical? Is it safe?  Expert opinion is all over the map, ranging from one extreme of low-volume, maximum-intensity, “beyond-failure” training to the other of high-volume, low-intensity, “never-even-close-to-failure” training; and every degree and permutation in between. Which philosophy is right? Or at least the most right? And more importantly, which is right specifically for you and your circumstances and goals? That is, are you training hard enough to efficiently and effectively achieve your goals? In this episode, renowned expert Lyle McDonald settles these questions and more, including what true muscular failure is (physiologically); why, in some ways, proximity to failure in training matters more than many other programming variables like load and rep ranges; why many people could benefit from more proximity to failure in their training rather than less; and more. And in case you're not familiar with Lyle, he’s a health and fitness researcher and author, and one of the godfathers of evidence-based fitness space whose work has greatly influenced my own, especially in the beginning of my career. In this interview, you'll learn: - What failure is (technical, muscular, and volitional failure) and why proximity to failure is such an important factor in training for muscle growth - How close you need to be to failure for maximal muscle fiber recruitment and growth - The effects of training to failure on fatigue and how that interplays with training volumes - Whether “beyond failure” techniques like dropsets and forced reps can be effective when controlled - How to gauge and achieve effective reps for enhanced muscle development - Guidance on the optimal proximity to failure for sustainable results - Practical tips for reaching the optimal proximity to failure and incorporating variety in training to maintain long-term progress - How often you should test true failure to ensure your training intensity is sufficient - And more . . . Whether you’re seeking to optimize your workouts or someone curious about the science behind muscle growth, this myth-busting discussion will give you science-based clarity on one of fitness's most persistent debates.  So give it a listen and you'll be far better equipped to gauge your workout intensity and program it sustainably for better gains. Timestamps: (0:00) - Please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to subscribe! (3:20) - Why is Training to Failure Crucial for Muscle Growth? (08:29) - What Does Muscle Failure Really Mean and How Does It Impact Growth? (24:00) - Is Proximity to Failure More Important Than Your Workout Program? (33:11) - How Can You Optimize Volume and Reps for Maximum Muscle Growth? (43:06) - Save 25% on Pulse and Recharge! Go to buylegion.com and use code MUSCLE (44:33) - Why Are Rest Times Crucial for Maximizing Training Effectiveness? (54:05) - How Do You Recognize and Achieve True Muscular Failure? (1:01:41) - What Are Reps in Reserve and How Can They Optimize Your Training? (1:11:35) - How Can You Accurately Identify a True Failure Rep? (1:14:34) - Are Forced Reps and Other “Beyond Failure” Training Techniques Effective? (1:23:00) - Why Is Variety Important in Your Training Regimen? (1:32:01) - Where to Find Lyle McDonald’s Work? Mentioned on the Show: Save 25% on my pre-workout Pulse and post-workout Recharge now! Go to https://buylegion.com/ and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% on any non-sale items or get double reward points! Lyle’s Website: https://bodyrecomposition.com/

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am your host, Mike Matthews, and today's episode is on the topic of training to failure, which has been debated for decades now, is still debated. Questions like, is it necessary? Is it practical? Is it safe? Expert opinion all over the place has always been, still is. It ranges from one extreme of very low volume, maximum intensity beyond failure training, like Mike Menser's training

style, for example, which is having a bit of a moment, again, at least on social media. And then you can find jacked experts who advocate for the exact opposite. High volume, low intensity, never even close to failure training. And of course, you can find every degree and every permutation in between. And so then the question, of course, is which of all of these philosophies is right? Or at least the most right? And more importantly, which is right specifically for you, your circumstances, your goals? That is, are you training hard enough to efficiently and effectively achieve your goals? Well, in this episode,

renowned expert Lyle McDonald answers those questions and more, including what true muscular failure is, physiologically speaking, technically speaking, defining the term specifically because there are different definitions for muscular failure. And if you have the wrong definition, that can compromise the effectiveness of your training. In this episode, Lyle also talks about why proximity to failure matters more than many other programming variables that many people pay a lot of attention to, like training load and rep ranges and rep techniques like drop sets and supersets and forced reps and so on. Lyle also explains why many people could benefit from more proximity to failure in their training rather than less and more. And in case you are not familiar with Lyle, he is a health

and fitness researcher and writer, and he's really one of the godfathers of the evidence-based fitness space. His work has greatly influenced my own, especially in the beginning of my career. And that's why I've had him on the podcast several times. And I always enjoy hearing his thoughts about how we can get fitter, leaner, and stronger using science-based diet and training methods. Lyle McDonald has returned.

It's been a while. Yeah, it's been, I don't know, probably two, over two years. I know your email was sitting in my inbox since, I want to say 2021. And I kind of checked out of the industry and decided it was time to get back. And thanks for having me

after I kind of blew everybody off for so long. Yeah, no, I was excited when you emailed. I was excited because I wanted to have this conversation. I thought it was interesting. All right, well, cool. And so what that is, is proximity to failure is, I guess, the broad heading. Why don't we start with explaining why this is even important? Why are we going to talk about this for an hour or whatever? Yeah. So first, some definitions, because I think this is where a lot of the confusion comes from. Like when we say, talk about training to failure, like what does that actually mean in either a practical sense or physiological sense? Because

over the, I mean, decades at this point, there has been a longstanding debate over this issue. And I don't think Arthur Jones back in the 70s necessarily started it, but he really brought it sort of to a head in terms of recommending, you know, with the HIT guys that you need to take each set to concentric failure. But what does that mean? And there's been multiple definitions. And this is part of the problem, right? If you go back all the way back to DeLorme, and we're talking about the early 20th century, and he was one of probably the early people with any sort of logic to training. And he would recommend three sets of 10. And the first set was at 50% of your 10 repetition max, the most you could do, the heaviest way you could do 10 repetitions with. And then set two was at 75%, set three was at 10 RM,

and then there was this progression system. But even then, he defined it as, you know, a 10 RM was the maximum weight that you could lift through the full range of motion. And that is sort of a generalized definition. But since then, there have been others, in terms of one is technical failure, which is you only go to the point that your technique starts to degrade.

And a lot of studies use this. And I, I mean, in a practical sense, I don't disagree. I don't want people going past the point that their technique is failing. But at least in a practical sense, in a research sense, in a training sense, I think that introduces a really complicated variable. It introduced, well, two variables. One is how do we define this, right? Most of these studies don't ever say what that means.

Well, we have them do back squats until the point of technical failure. Well, what does that mean? Is it when you are squatting very upright and you tip over, how many degrees? Is it when your knees start to break in? Like, what are we defining that as? Number two, it introduces the issue of technical competency, right?

I read a study and they go, well, we have people that have been training for two years consistently and we had them squat to failure. Or beginner studies are even funnier. Yeah, right. You're going to take a beginner who can barely, their technical failure, or compare that to someone, a high-level powerlifter, a high-level Olympic lifter, whose technique doesn't break under any conditions, how close they're getting to actual physiological muscular failure,

which is what I'll get to next, are going to be very different things. A highly qualified powerlifter with beautiful technique may be able to get however many more reps just because their technique is more stabilized under load. Then there's my favorite failure, which is volitional failure, which basically means stopping the set. I don't want to do this anymore. Well, I mean, that's a set like volitional. It is when the person decides that they would fail on the next repetition. But to me, that's an utterly ridiculous argument for the reasons that I'll explain. So does that mean that if I do two reps and I decide that my next rep would be failure, even if I could technically do eight more, is that the same stimulus as actually going

for eight more reps? Because that's what that seems to imply. Well, it is. It's you stopped when volitionally you decided you were done, which is also the issue. We get into what exercise is being done. How good is the person's internal drive? Someone with extremely, a lot of years under the bar with extremely high drive

can push way harder muscularly into that before they just, most people, and again, I've been in the gym for 30 years. I'm old. Well, I've been in the gym for damn near 40 years, but 30 years professionally. I've watched a lot of people squat.

And it is interesting. It's better now, people's technique. I'm seeing a lot more technically sound squats because social media is both good and bad in this regard, but more people are at least being exposed to better technique. But I've watched a lot of people squat. And most people, when they decide they've had enough, is nowhere close to what I would consider

in terms of bar speed, in terms of those things. So what would you say? I would say that that would apply, at least in the gym that I go to. Sure, that's most people. I would say most exercises, most sets of most people. I don't pay too much attention to what other people, but if I just look at the movie reel in my head and think about how people,

the general intensity of the training, it's not particularly high. It shows that, that people- It's like two or three hours of a lot of submaximal work. Of basically doing a lot of warmups. And I'll talk about bar speed here in a second, but if we're talking about muscular adaptations, and here I'm going to focus on growth,

because strength is a different thing because you've got neurological factors and technical factors. So muscle growth. And we talk about what is needed to stimulate growth in muscle fibers. All that matters, as far as I'm concerned, is how close the target muscle was to muscular failure. But what does that mean? What does that actually mean to fail? And basically, all right, let's say you're doing

a leg extension. Let's just simplify, right? All you're doing is from here to the top and back again. You've got whatever weight is on the bar, 100 units, 100 pounds, whatever, 10 plates, whatever it is on the machine. That requires you to generate some amount of force. Now, you start the set. Beginning of the set, let's say it takes 100 units of force, just abstract units, to lift that weight through the full range of motion. You start the set.

Your muscle's fresh. You're recovered. You can generate 150 units of force. Weight's moving real easily. So here's the 100 units you have to get to do a full rep. 150, 140, every rep, your force output is getting lower because the muscle's getting tired. At the point that you can do 110 units of force, it'll start moving slow. At 105, you're working. At 100, you can barely finish the

repetition. At such a point that muscle force production cannot achieve 100 units of force, you cannot complete the repetition. That is what I would, in a purely physiological sense, the muscle doesn't care when your technique fell apart. The muscle doesn't care when you decided to quit. From the standpoint of sending an adaptive signal to the skeletal muscle, the target muscle, all that matters is how much mechanical tension it had to generate over a certain number of repetitions. There's a metabolic work component. metabolic work component. So let's say, just as a comparison, let's say that we know that in a back squat, that your quads, let's say you're using as targets your quads, that they could generate enough force to perform 10 repetitions with that weight before they would physiologically not be able to generate enough force. Well, if your technique falls apart at rep five because you don't have stabilized technique, well, that was technical failure. Does that mean your quads experienced a stimulus? No.

They're five reps from physiological muscular failure. Let's say that you stop at rep five because you don't feel like doing it. Does that mean your muscle magically knows? Well, hey, it's still failure even though, no, all muscle senses tension and metabolic work. All the muscle knows is that it was nowhere close to its limits. So to me, the best definition of failure in a physiological sense is an inability to complete

a full repetition despite providing maximal effort. If you just give up, that's not failure. It's volitional failure, but up, that's not failure. It's volitional failure, but I think that's a dumb definition. Because your low back gave out on back squats and your technique fell apart, or you gave up five reps from what your quads would experience, right? And this is one of the problems. And we're going to talk about reps and reserve and what that means. And just again, so this point will make sense. Reps reserved is a way of defining how many reps you are from hitting muscular failure. All right, so again, we'll go

back to light extension to simplify. Let's say we know that you could complete 10 repetitions and then could not complete repetition 11. Repetition 11 would be the failure rep. And we do tend to conflate those. We tend to say that the 10th rep was failure. Technically the 11th rep was the failure repetition. Some of the- Whether you tried or not, yeah. Right, and even that, like going, well I just think I would have failed on the next rep.

Like the only true way to know you achieved muscular failure is to try to do the next repetition and be unable to complete it in the strictest sense. Although with enough experience, I mean, you can develop a bit of a sense for it. Yes, you can absolutely develop a sense for it based on bar speed and past experience and the amount of pain you're going to put through.

So reps and reserve is a way of defining how many repetitions away from failure yours. So zero reps in reserve mean you could not have done another repetition, right? So if 10 reps was zero reps in reserve, you would not have completed repetition 11. One rep in reserve mean that you're one rep away. That would be nine reps. Two reps in reserve is eight, seven, six, five. Okay, so that's what reps in reserve is.

And I know we're going to sort of talk about that later. And what you typically see with that reps and reserve is that there is a change at bar speed. And somewhere, depending on the movement, depending on the person, somewhere between, you know, two and four reps reserve, you tend to see bar speed start to slow. And that's pretty much every study in the history of ever.

So, oh, I know what it's getting at. So let's go back to the squat thing. Studies will talk about, oh, we had them squat to two reps in reserve. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that that was true. If we're trying to train our quads for hypertrophy, we don't know for sure

that the quadriceps experience two reps in reserve, right? We tend to really confuse these issues. The goal is not to take the exercise to a certain reps in reserve or failure, whatever your goal is. The goal from a stimulus standpoint is to take the target muscle to a certain reps in reserve. And this is the big problem I have

with all these studies using complex movements, using back squat, using definitions of failure that have nothing to do with actual muscular failure. Again, if I put someone in a back squat and their technique is bad, their five reps in reserve from technical failure might be 10 for their quads. I mean, I don't know. The thing is, I can't say. If someone has really bad levers for squatting because they have long femurs and they're bent over, I can almost guarantee you that two reps to reserve was in their low back. Whether or not their quads got there, they might, they might not have. I can't say, and that's the thing.

We don't actually know, but we do know that people with bad levers don't tend to build big legs with squats. They get way more when they take their low back out of it. Or you just make a mistake because you're deep in a set. It's hard. You're a good weightlifter, but you shoot your hips up faster than you should have. Yes.

And then it's a grinder, and then you think, well, I guess that's it. I barely completed that. And that might have been quads. It might have not been. It might have been any number of things. Whereas if I put you on a leg press,

where the only... I mean, we could define technical failure a little more strictly, not hitting the same depth and ease, but there's really no technical failure to occur. If I take you to two reps in reserve, and for now, let's say I have a magic wand to know when you got there, or based on bar speed, I can have a pretty good idea that that was two reps reserved for the target muscle. And if I put you on a leg extension and have you do it to two reps in reserve, I can say without debate that it was your quads. So when we talk about all this, we get into all these competing variables, and I just find a lot

of the definitions of failure, well, technical failure, could be because your technique sucks. Could be because, like you said, an accident happened. It could be that your low back gave out. Well, if your goal is to target the quads, how is training it? I mean, deadlifts are even worse, like this whole thing without a deadlift. And I've asked people, okay, what is the deadlift train? And the answer is not everything because there is no everything muscle, right? Like what typically gives out on deadlifts when people do them for reps. Could be grip, say they use straps. Usually low back, which if you're trying to train low back is fine, but does that mean the upper back got a stimulus? Does that mean the legs got a stimulus?

We don't know. It might have or it might not have. So in a physiological sense, from the standpoint of what the muscle experiences in terms of tension and metabolic work. Only valid definition I can, I think, is the inability to complete another full range repetition, again, despite maximal effort. Now that gets into other things.

You brought up experience. Learning to push hard is a skill that requires being pushed hard by a sadistic coach like myself or just doing it over time. And I've given people experiments in the videos that they never do because they don't want to have to admit that I'm right. They go, look, when you think you're a failure, you're probably not.

I do that regularly in my training. Just as a rule. I mean, I avoid it on certain exercises. When I was younger, I would do it. I would be willing, more willing to do it in a back squat or just in a barbell deadlift, but now not as much. However, however, if I'm doing an isolation exercise, just something where I'm not concerned about injury, then I often will out of, let's say I'm doing three or four sets for that exercise. I often, at least in one of them, just to keep myself honest, just,

I have my little RAR that I'm trying to, and then go, well, let me see. I think I only, yeah, I think I could do one more, but maybe I can do more than one. Let me go for it. And people often really surprise themselves. When I put up those videos years ago about that, several people in my group were like, I thought I was at failure. And I went back in after watching your videos and I put 30 more pounds on and got seven more reps than I thought. I'm like, until you really had someone either do it yourself or have someone really talk you through it rep by rep, you know, I just said, just, yeah, get on a safe exercise, get on a hammer, chest press or leg extension, something you're not going to get wrecked. If something

goes super wrong, it's like, as long as the weight is still moving, keep pushing. And after you do that rep, try it again. And keep, as long as it's moving the tiniest bit, keep putting, again, you're not doing this all the time. People, when I did that series, they were like, oh, Lyle, I could advocate failure. I'm like, go back. I said actually explicitly not that I'm not recommending this. But what I'm saying is that to know where it is, you have to actually experience it. And that's the other problem with the reps and reserves thing, and I think this leads us into the main thing you wanted to talk about, is it has been shown repeatedly

that people's estimates of their reps and reserves is generally pretty bad, but gets better with experience. Right, you take beginners, and the studies are weird because you're in the middle of a set, and they go, how many more reps do you think you can get? And then they have them keep repping, but that's the only way to do it, right? Or what I tell people, I go, look,

pick a weight that you think is your 10 rep max that you can only get 10 reps with, and just go see what happens. And I'm like, maybe you're right, but based on 30 years of experience in the gym i can guarantee you in 99 of the case you're wrong what you think is your 10 rm is not any more close so as people get experience they get much better within you know a rep or two although i do think and you maybe you've done this frequently in my head like if I were to ask

you hey Mike how many more reps do you have during a set you went to you'd probably only get two yeah like program a self-fulfilling profit yeah absolutely I do it this is so dumb I'll super sound like extensions and leg curls and like I try to keep the reps uh about the same just because I like my workouts are drawn up more for aesthetic purposes than anything else. I just like, yeah, this is four by eight. This should also be four by eight because I like symmetry. But it's like, oh, well, I failed at eight on that one.

Somehow I'll always seem to fail at eight on the other one and how much of it is real and how much of it is just self. But that is a problem with this. And it has to be said- I've experienced it even more in, so currently I'm just doing a maintenance routine three days a week, kind of a push, pull legs with a little bit of extra volume for arms. And, uh, but before that, for about two years, I was pushing pretty hard five days a week,

maybe 70 to 90 minutes and, um, going for primarily just gaining strength in the big exercises, blah, blah, blah, and had it periodized and was more, I would say, systematic about how I was going. Because maintenance, you can kind of just have fun, lift some heavy weights, get a pump, and you're fine. And so previously, though, at the end of the training blocks were four months, I believe, three or four months. And at the end, I would do a round of AMRAPs on the big exercises to see if I've made any progress over the last few months. Right.

And so, okay, so, you know, gonna put whatever it is, 275 or 295 on the back squat and see how many reps I can do. And I was doing that for about two years. And something I noticed is that on those AMRAP days, which I was kind of excited for, cause it was fun. And, and I, I felt almost like that reminded me of playing sports as a kid, growing up at a competitive field. This is, this is the day I've been working three or four months and let's see what I can do. And consistently I would outperform my expectations and my expectations were based on the data I had on my training leading up to those days, where if you were to

look at my numbers, you would have predicted that I would have gotten six reps or whatever, and I'll go in there and get nine. And it just would happen consistently. I do it on the squat, deadlift and bench press. Those are the three exercises I would use to test my whole body strength. And there was definitely a psychological component. There was expectations and just being excited and looking forward to it. And that seemed to add several reps to whatever weight it was. And that seemed to add several reps to whatever weight it was. And that is, you know, that's the other issue. This gets into, like, I see it as, like, you know, there's the whole psychosocial model of pain.

People have different abilities to push, you know, into the darkness. And there is that effect. You know, Arthur Jones famously said, when you think you're at failure, and he's like, if I stepped up and put a gun in your face and said, get another repetition, you'd probably find a way. And I don't disagree with that. But again, that is a function of learning to push hard. And that is something that it is. It is a skill. And it does have to happen over time.

You know, when I used to train general population, it's the same thing. And it would be like, you know, they would be like, a few weeks in, maybe like eight, nine, ten. And I'd be like, just try a couple more. And they'd get it. And I'd stop them. Like, I wouldn't grind them into dirt. And what did they learn?

Okay, where I think I'm done, I can go a little bit further. And you do it over time. I remember a famous story, some Olympic lifting coach. And he had an athlete. He gave him five by five in the back squat. And the athlete went four by five and then three on the last, some Olympic lifting coach. And he had an athlete, he gave him five by five in the back squat. And the athlete went four by five and then three on the last set. And the coach, and this is not something I would recommend a lot, said, do the whole thing again.

And he made him repeat the entire workout. And he got all five by five. Now, that's awful, and I don't believe in punishment as training. But what did the athlete learn? When you think you're done, you're probably not. But it does. It takes practice. And certainly, again, anyone listening to this,

I am not advocating everyone trained to failure all the time despite some lies that were made by people that were too ego-driven to admit that I was right about something. And I won't mention who. That was what I checked out of the industry. When someone just bold-faced lied about me. And nobody brought... People are still whining about stuff I said a decade ago.

But they don't care that this person is telling a bold-faced lie. And that's when I checked out for two years. I'm like, I give up. I quit. Regardless, not recommending that you do this all the time. It's not for everybody. There are different psychologies. Not saying that failure is the only way to train.

But if you're going to follow some workout that says you need to be working at two reps in reserve, you got to know where it is. That means spending some amount of time learning not only what true failure is, but how to get there. I want to follow up on that in particular. I do want, though, to just quickly have you comment for people who don't understand why proximity to failure is in some ways it's just as important in terms of programming as absolutely how many reps you're going to do and how much weight you're going to use like these things actually need to go together to absolutely produce effective training right so this gets without getting super super into the weeds yeah this is right so we have simplistically two types of muscle fibers.

We've got type one, which are more endurance, smaller, and then we've got type two, which are the higher threshold fibers, more for force and power. Now, when we start to exercise, they tend to be recruited in an orderly fashion, something called Henneman's size principle, based on force

requirements, right? So if you start brisk walking, it's type one. Jogging, you start to get some, you know, a little bit more type one at some speed, early type two, sprinting all out till eventually you get full fiber recruitment. And you can also get this with fatigue, right? Like if you are running hard early in the workout,

you may be recruiting predominantly type one, but as you start to fatigue and it gets harder and harder and harder, those will come in due to fatigue. So in the weight room, the same thing happens, right? If you're doing, let's say you're doing low load training and you're doing 20%, 25% of 1RF, that stuff. In the early part of the set, it's only type 1 muscle fiber. And it won't be until near the end that you actually require the type 2 muscle fibers to be recruited. And what it ends up being, and I got it right about this forever ago, those highest threshold muscle fibers, which have the most potential for growth,

don't get recruited at maximum until roughly 80 to 85% of 1RM That's about five to eight repetitions. Or in higher repetition sets, taken closer to failure. So there's kind of two ways to get full muscle recruitment, which is you can start real heavy and do lower repetitions, or you can start with a lighter set,

like a set of 12, and take it. And what actually ends up happening when they've looked at this with like EMG and muscle fiber recruitment is if you do a set of 15 to failure and you do a set of five at 85%, that's a limit set. Which for people listening, that's going to be close to failure for most people. 85 for five is maybe you have one more. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on the person, some will get one. There's a little variation.

What you see is that in terms of recruitment, the final five repetitions of the 15 rep sets is neurologically equivalent to that five, that set of five. And we've seen the same thing in the low load training. We know that with that low load training, you have to go to muscular failure to make it work because that's the only way

to get full fiber recruitment. The last five repetitions of that 25 rep set is neurologically, physiologically the equivalent of that heavy set of five. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that fives are the way to train for growth or whatever, but what you see when you start looking at all the studies is okay, and sets of eight,

I guess you're doing a set of eight at 80% of one rep. That's about an eight rep max. By rep two or three, you'll get full recruitment. You might get it from rep one to, it's hard to really say, it'll depend on the person. But with heavier sets, you don't have to go to failure to get growth. Because let's say you do a set of eight and a 10 RL, right?

Two reps in reserve, at least the last three or four of those repetitions, three or four reps of that eight rep set will be a full recruitment. Whereas if you're using low load training, you do have to go to failure to get growth because you don't get full recruitment until those last five. Then if you look at it in terms, if you start comparing the reps in reserve and look at it in terms of bar speed, what comparing the reps in reserve, and look at it in terms of bar speed, what you basically see is that regardless of how many reps you take to failure, set of 15, a set of five, or even a max single,

the last five reps of the set of 15 look, move about the same as the last five, of the five reps of the set of five. And the last rep of each set looks exactly like a 1RM. Because what is a one repetition maximum? It is the ability to generate force. If you've got to generate 100 units, you can do 101. Well, when did I say failure occurs during a higher rep set?

It's when your momentary force production is that level. So if all you can generate is 100 at the end of a set of 15, the end of a set of five, at the one RM, of course they'll look the same because your force production is identical to what's required. So the proximity reps and reserve matters in the sense of if you're doing a set of 10 with five reps and reserve, you're getting maybe one repetition under full recruitment conditions. Now, if you're doing a set of five at a five RM, you're getting all five reps in reserve, you're getting maybe one repetition under full recruitment conditions.

Now, if you're doing a set of five at a five-room, you're getting all five reps. And that gets into the current effective reps model, and I don't want to delve too deep. The idea there being that the growth stimulus occurs from the total number of effective reps being defined here as reps done under conditions of full recruitment. Now, I'm not saying this model is right. We need some more direct data. But to me, A makes the most logical sense. Because let's think about this.

If you don't recruit a muscle fiber, it cannot grow. Like, sort of like by definition, right? Now, we could make the argument that, yeah, doing all those submaximal sets, you're maybe getting some type 1 muscle growth, but we know that they don't grow very much. You cannot stimulate a muscle fiber to adapt if you don't recruit it in the first place and force it to produce mechanical tension. This, to me, seems like the most logical statement in the world. And yet, somehow, people are still debating this, right?

If you do not, and say it a third time, if you do not recruit a muscle fiber during an activity, during a training, it cannot grow. And that gets back to the squat example. Let's say that two reps of reserve on the squat are really five reps in reserve on your quads. You didn't get into full recruitment for the quads. Maybe you did for the low back or the upper back or another muscle group, that cannot possibly give you an optimal growth stimulus for the quads. And that's the thing, it doesn't give none without recruiting those high threshold fibers. And you typically don't see that occurring. Like I said, on a set of five, it's from about rep one. On a set of 10 to failure, it's probably rep six through 10. Now, what about in the squat, though?

Let's say you have somebody who's pretty good at squatting, and they're doing sets of five or six, or maybe they're doing sets of eight, and they have pretty good form, and it is predominantly a quadriceps exercise, meaning they're doing it right. Yes. In that case, then, would you say that it could function? Oh, no. Yes. I mean, no, absolutely. Like, don't mishear me. I'm not saying that squats are inherently bad for quads. I'm saying that telling people to go to technical failure if they have bad

levers, it may or may not be. It just adds another component to the definition of failure. Because clearly, I mean, I was. I got short femurs. I was built very well for squatting. I could squat even in flats. Very upright. I could take it to the point. I mean, and I did. Like, true failure in the squat means descending into the bottom and getting stuck and having to dump the bar on the pins. And I'm not recommending that.

Did I do it? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to most? Absolutely not. Because it's a good way to get wrecked. But yeah, if you are built for squats, and this is what you see, like we could do a whole nother hour

on my ranting about exercise selection. When someone says that squats are great for quads, go look at their biomechanics and guarantee you they're built for the movement. It is a good exercise for them. Find someone who says squats are not good for quads and either they don't know how to squat well or they're not built for it., and either they don't know how to squat well,

or they're not built for it. So it's a matter of context. For some people, squats can be a good exercise, or like look at the average Olympic lifter, but they all have about the same mechanics. They're all built very, very, very similarly, which is short with short femurs. So yeah, of course, for them, it's a great movement.

And if they're going, they're doing a set of five, and they're doing, you know, to the first bar speed drop, which is probably two to three reps reserved, absolutely, and they just do a ton of volume. So yeah, it absolutely can be. Same thing with bench press. People who say, ah, the bench is great for pecs. Go look at how they're built.

They're always barrel chestchested with short arms, and for them, failure, and they tend to have very even musculature, right? If they've got short arms with strong triceps, it's not their triceps failing on the bench, right? Again, you've got big, lanky arms like me. If I'm bench-pressing, assuming I've got good technique, and I did,

I was very stable, because I did it for years and years and years, like, okay, and I hit two reps in reserve, well, what failed? What was two? Was it my triceps? Was it my pecs? We don't know. It depends on the person. It depends on the biomechanics. It depends on the levers. Whereas if I do a pec deck and I go tilt, I know it was my pecs that failed, generally. So yeah, that's just an individual thing. But if we're looking at from pure physiology and how close you need to be to failure, you have to get at least some number of effective reps. Now, as a quick tangent, which is why I do think this model makes more sense, this gets back to what you said as a burial. We've had, well, a 30-year argument, and certainly in

the last five years, about sets and reps and volume and frequency and this and that and the other and all these different studies. And when you look at them in the aggregate, which you always have to do, and you start looking at the different things that people have made work, sets and reps don't matter. Three sets of 10 and a 20-rep max, that's a warm-up right you look at the the cody hahn study that mike isertel was on that did built up to 32 sets they were doing repeat sets of 10 at four reps reserved with like a 10 minute break because the way they set up the workout so they did a ton of warm-ups and the growth actually turned out to not even be fiber growth it was it was fluid it was

mild the sarcoplasmic growth because they were not getting ineffective reps, right? If you start to look at different systems of training, whether depending on the total volumes, the sets and the reps, failure, all these other variables, right? So I've seen the number thrown around that let's say 25 effective reps is optimal per workout. I'm not saying it is. For an individual muscle group. For an individual muscle group, thank you, yes. So I'm not saying that it is or isn't.

I know Chris Beardsley has thrown that number out, and I've read the article he wrote on it a dozen times, and no one can explain to me where that number comes from. It doesn't matter. Let's just assume that it is. It seems kind of low? Well, but is it? Like if you're talking about maximal muscular contractions, that's five sets of five. I mean, that's not, but regardless, okay, so let's say it's 30, like whatever, under maximal conditions, right? I'm not saying total reps, saying total maximal contractions. Okay. So let's look at, say,

five sets of eights of failure. Or whatever, let's look at sets of eights of failure. We know that the last four to five repetitions will be under effective reps. So you're looking at about five to six sets of eight. All right, now let's back off to two reps in reserve. Now each set you're doing, you're doing sets of eight at a right. Now let's back off to two reps in reserve. Now each set you're doing, you're doing sets of eight at a 10 rep max. Now we know that each set is going to give you about

three effective reps. Yeah. Well, you're going to need about eight to 10 sets per workout. Yeah. Now let's say you're, you go to even for, let's say you go to. Which also is kind of the normal prescription for an individual muscle group that that's that's i mean i i've said the same thing that if you're going to train one muscle group in a in a workout or however many muscle groups going to train you probably don't need to do more than 10 to 12 total sets in that session if you think you do you're probably not training hard enough well right but then so then let's say you look at, like, there was a study and it did, like, leg extensions, and one group used three minutes of rest, and the other group used one minute or something

like that. And what they did was they took the number of reps, like, they equated the metabolic work between legs, and they found that growth was the same. But what they also found was that that submaximal group, sorry, that's what it was. It was that one group did like two reps short of failure, or maybe whatever. It was something like that, but they needed about 50% more sets. Okay, so now if you take someone who's running around on a short rest interval and is getting lower quality sets, they need about 15 sets per muscle group. Well, in my mind, looking at it that way

in terms of the total number of maximal contractions per workout helps to, it builds a unified model. Like, yeah, if you're gonna go all out, if you're gonna go absolute Dorian Yates level muscular failure, four to five, maybe six sets depending on the muscle group is about all you're going to

have. Anything more than that is just going to be wasted volume, and you're not going to have the energy to do it. If you prefer, you're not good to go going to failure. And some people aren't. Make no mistake. They don't have the psychological drive. They don't enjoy it. They get burnt out on it. I'm not saying that's the way to train. They go, all right, I want to be a couple reps short of failure. Well, they're going to need somewhere between 8, 10, maybe 12 sets. If you want someone who's going to do the old school short rest interval, low quality training, or some of these high volume studies, my favorite that people take so super seriously is a study by Borgato that compared 16, 24, and 32 sets per week. It was one of these ridiculous volume studies.

They did eight sets of 10 RM back squat on 60 seconds. Bull crap. Just show me. Just show me. I'd like to see a video of that. They called it technical failure. So I guarantee you, like if you went to true muscular failure,

even if you stopped short of getting pins, by set three, you wouldn't get up off the floor. Yeah, correct. And then they did leg extensions by 8 to 10 RM on 60 seconds. Yeah. And they found that, yeah, basically you need massive volumes to compensate for either low intensity or low quality training. for either low-intensity or low-quality training. And if you were, I think when someone, we start mapping it out and looking at it in terms of that,

in terms of effective repetitions, a lot of the supposed contradictions regarding set and rep recommendations and all these different types of training systems will go away. Actually, let me add one more thought to that, because I think you had another thing that's being apparently promoted. You look at things like Rest Pause, like Myo Reps by Borsh Fagerly, Blade,

and I've known him for 20 years, and I'm probably still mispronouncing his last name, and I do apologize for that. Dog Crap by Dante Trudell, which is a very similar thing. I do believe Blade was actually the first to talk about effective reps, and this was back on my forum back in the 2000s. The idea here, and DogCraft, which is another little bit different rest pause system, very similar. So in this, you take that first step to concentric failure. The idea is to get maximal recruitment. In Blade's version, you stop at the first rep speed drop,

I believe. And then you rest, you take a very short rest interval, like 15 seconds, like a number of big breaths, and you go again. And the thing is that in that short rest interval, those maximally recruited fibers don't de-recruit. When you go back,

you're not starting early in that size principle thing. So the idea is get to the maximum number of effective reps in that one drop set. And again, Blade said years ago that one Meyer rep set, a typical Meyer rep set, you do like a set of eight to within one or two reps reserved, rest 15 seconds, four or five more,

three or four more, one or two more. You're getting like 20 total reps. But like 12 of them would be considered effective reps. And he said years ago that one Maya rep set was the equivalent of about three to four straight sets. So if you were to do two Maya rep sets or two dog

crap sets, you are getting essentially that same 12 maybe as many as 15 effective reps per set. So in those two drop sets, you're getting the same 24 to 30 or so effective reps. So again, we've got to do a couple of drop sets, which is lower volume, but the same number of effective reps.

You can do four to five sets, eight all out, all out failure. You can do 10 to 12 sets at two reps in reserve, or you can do 15 sets per workout to make up for low quality. Do you subscribe to that position that one mile rep or one dog crap set is the work equivalent, the bottom line equivalent of... I think there was actually a study... Like for the purpose of not, let's say say not just maintaining because that's so easy but

but actually trying to gain muscle and strength i mean in practice it sure seemed to work i mean i do think in dante's system i do think the maximally loaded stretch added a little bit of volume but i mean practically both of them had their people had success with that system yeah so like again i'm not saying that the effector revs model is correct and data may come out tomorrow that says it's absolutely wrong, but it makes logical sense to me because, again, you cannot train a fiver that has not been recruited. To get maximal type 2 fiber recruitment,

you need to get into what we are calling the effective rep range, which is, depending on the intensity, could be, again, five reps of a five rep set the last five reps of an eight rep set the last five reps of it i think it also explains why so many different systems have just worked over the years right people have gotten bigger doing higher repetitions they've gotten bigger doing lots of low repetition sets and i think if you math it out this way a lot of those contradictions fall away now what i would like would like to see, I want to see where, like, is there a per workout optimal range where beyond that you're just doing junk modeling? You know, I think we go back to the Wernbaum meta-analysis from forever ago, 20 years ago. And he put together a zillion pieces of data.

Admittedly, it wasn't a lot of advance. And he showed that approximately 40 to 70 maximum, 40 to 70 total repetitions per workout. And most of these studies were using supposedly failure. Like, I'm not going to go pull 80 studies to figure it out. But presumably, you know, it would... And it gave the optimal growth. And less than that was less than optimal. More than that was actually didn't give the maximal growth.

You know, and if you're looking at that, okay, if we're talking about sets of eight, you're looking at somewhere between five to eight maximum sets of eight. You're looking at somewhere between six to 10 at two reps in reserve. Like it all sort of, you know, it all kind of falls out of that.

So yeah, so then I guess the next question becomes like, how close to failure do you actually need to be? If you like what I so then I guess the next question becomes like, how close to failure do you actually need to be? If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me do more of it, please do check out my sports nutrition company Legion. Because while you don't need supplements to build muscle, lose fat, get healthy, the right ones can help. And which ones in particular can help you achieve your fitness goals faster? Well, maybe supplements like my all-natural pre-workout pulse that increases energy, improves mood, sharpens focus, boosts strength and endurance, and reduces fatigue. Or maybe my all-natural post-workout supplement Recharge that increases muscle and strength gain, improves post-workout

recovery, and reduces muscle soreness. What's more, right now over at buylegion.com. That's B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N.com. Pulse and Recharge are on sale for 25% off. That is all flavors of both products, as well as Pulse with caffeine and without caffeine. We have two versions. So if you want some help training harder, recovering better, gaining faster, head over to bilegion.com now, place an order for Pulse and Recharge, save 25% and check them out. I want to quickly ask you about rest times, just for people wondering. So you had commented on these shorter one-minute rest times being suboptimal. And because it's suboptimal, you have to make up for that with more volume.

Sure. I'm just thinking with some listeners who are wondering why that is, and then also trying to square that with the circle now of this dog crap myorep approach, where it's even less rest and that actually is effective you know so if you want to just quickly explain how does inter set rare intraset time different than the in yeah the mini set thing and i think it's just a map duration like at a minute you do are you're gonna get some recovery between the sets So you're not going into the second set with maintaining maximal recruitment. Just because

it's not going to be... Like, it does seem like a contradiction. And I think it's simply that with that 10-15 second rest, you're not getting enough recovery that when you start the next set, you're having to start again from sub-maximal... Baseline.

Yeah. And you see this in other activities as well, right? Like if you're doing interval training and you're doing all-out minutes, like if you're doing a minute and you gas, like if you take 10 seconds, you can keep going a little bit longer. If you take a minute,

the first 30 seconds is very easy again. Like trust me, if you do a dog crap set and take it to failure, as soon as you start that mini set, the rep speed starts out slow. Like, trust me, if you do a dog crap set and take it to failure, as soon as you start that mini set, the rep speed starts out slow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've done quite a bit over the years. Sure, because if you take a minute...

I think those sets are like three to five reps at best. Yeah. And also, what I've found in my own experience playing around with it a lot, a lot of it depends on how heavy the first set is.

Like, if I only get eight reps to failure on the main set, I'll get like eight, three, one. Exactly. If I get like 15 reps on the first set, I'll go like 15, five, three, two. It depends on the muscle group. It depends on the exercise. I get, it's not as much for me.

I don't get as big of drops on isolation movements as say like a hammer chest press because my triceps personally give out on the chest press compared to a tricep pushdown that's more isolated. So yeah, so when you take a minute, those first few repetitions are easy again because you're getting enough recovery. Not full recovery if you took two minutes,

but with 15 seconds, you're not. It's basically just to give you a little bit of a break. We go back to that idea of your, as you're critiquing during the set, 10, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you get to here at 8. If you rest at 15 seconds, your force production only comes back to here initially. Whereas if you rest a minute, it's coming way back up.

And as far as training effectiveness, why, if you only rest, let's say, a minute and you've gained back 30 units of force production, why can't you just go do your next set and take it, take it, let's say you take it up to failure. Now you're going to get fewer reps. Right. is that less effective physiologically than resting adequately to recover? I mean, if it's the beginning of your workout, you're going to recover all of the force production that you had in that first set. It seems to me when you look at the couple studies that have looked at this, it's simply that the weight drops are so massive, like the absolute mechanical tension just keeps dropping and dropping and dropping. So that like the total, again, do it with a minute rest.

Like unless you're dropping the weight quickly, you're going to be going like 10, 6, 2 repetitions. You're just not getting the same amount of mechanical work unless you drop the weight enormously. Like this is a really... And could you look at that through the lens of effective reps? Even your effective reps are going down? I think so. It's like you're getting enough recovery between the sets to be starting at a higher force level. But then there's also just, there is a cumulative fatigue, but it's more metabolic. It's more acidotic that's occurring

in some of the fibers. I mean, it's a good question. And I think I'm basically hand waving it away, but I'm just telling you that like, that's what the studies have seen. Yeah. I mean, practically also, if you're using heavier weights, so let's say if you're working in the rep range of four to eight or certainly let's say four to six if you take that first set close to failure and you and you rest a minute i mean you're gonna get you'll drop about three maybe on that on that second set maybe even two if it's a four that might even turn into a one to two. Ken Leister wrote about that one time. He had a workout because he was a very HIT proponent. He was like, take your first set to failure and rest 60 seconds.

You will either drop half the reps or have to cut the weight and have to maintain the rep rate. Loads drop so, so, so rapidly under those conditions. I mean, that can happen even with higher repetitions where you're having to adjust the load to, to keep the repetition range, depending on what you're talking about. But yeah, like it's in that, in the paper that kind of looked at this, they were trying to equate the total like work volume in terms of like the

total volume load, which is wait times sets time of wait times reps total. And to equate the volume load, they had to do 50% more volume. So I, you know, it is that just whatever the total amount of of work, whatever amount of stimulus that is. So it's like, yeah, there are still questions, make no mistake.

To me, the effective reps is the best model we have now, but that doesn't mean that it won't be replaced. It just seems to be the only way I can rationalize all the different systems of training, all the different sets and volumes. When you look at all the studies in the aggregate, the ones that seem to require higher volumes are using short rest intervals, are using lower quality training, whereas the ones that aren't, it actually goes back to the reps and reserve thing. I vaguely recall James Steele and James Fisher, who were kind of on the HIT, the high intensity training failure end of things, in the studies they've done

on estimating reps and reserve, people are way better at it on machines than they are on, say, a squat. Because again, anyone who's done high-rep squats, you have, I have, I've grinded out 20s for you, I did it forever until I burnt out on it. It's generally systemic fatigue. Same thing with deadlifting.

You are breathing, you are gasping, you are breathing like a freight train. It is not local muscular fatigue, whereas nothing hurts more than high rep leg extensions with short rest intervals because it is so local. Like I said, so if you're doing these studies that are like, oh yeah, we did 15 sets or however many sets of squats on a short rest interval,

I guarantee you by the end, they're stopping that much shorter failure because it's central. It is volitional or technical. Also, with short rest intervals on complex movements, your technique falls apart. Leg extensions just hurt. But on squats here,

I had a buddy who tried it. He's an highly trained squatter, Olympic lifter. And he was like yeah i tried to do eight sets of 10 on 90 seconds and by set four like i mean he's built for squatting he's like i couldn't do it i couldn't get best right four no matter how much i lighten the load so so yeah so i guess that's that's kind of the best i can come up with and i guess the only other question i know you had one thing you wanted to bring up and we've got hopefully a few more minutes like how close to failure you need to be.

Like how much reps in reserve? Yeah, practically now. So people are thinking, right? So what modifications should I be making in my training, if any, but how should I be thinking about this for tomorrow's workout kind of thing? Right. Well, so the first thing I would say for most people

is you gotta find out where it actually is. Because I can say for the grand majority of people, what they think muscular failure is and what it true, like true, true muscular physiological muscle failure, I can almost guarantee them that what they think it is, is not what it is. And I've been on the internet a long time. I know everyone trains harder than any 10 trainees, but I also know what I've seen in the gym. And unless the internet is the magical unicorn trainees that I have somehow never come across, I mean, whatever, when I've been in high level powerlifting gyms, that's a very different thing. But if you're talking about the average

trainee, they are not training as hard as they think. I mean, and you brought this up earlier, and I would also say this, if you physically can do 15 sets for a muscle group, by definition, you're not training as intensely as you think because it cannot physically be done. I can drop anybody in two or three truly all out sets. I mean like will not be able to get up on the floor. And again, I'm not saying this is how you should train. I'm making a point.

If you're ever in Austin, trust me, I'll prove it to you. There was a research group that put up some videos of what they were doing in their studies one time and they did it. They had someone do a set of leg press to true failure. The guys finished the rep and just rolled out of the machine and collapsed on the floor. You're telling me you could do 15 sets of that?

You're lying to me and you're lying to yourself. So the first thing is that, and what I would recommend... Then go into the hospital with rhabdo. Yeah, exactly, like I'm not, you know, Dorian Yates has put up some videos of him, he trains people now, and like watch him take people to a true all-out set of leg presses, and that person will collapse on the floor afterwards.

It cannot be done for a high volume, by definition. So the first thing people need to do is figure out where that is. And like, to your point, pick an isolation movement. Pick a bicep curl, something you're not going to get hurt on, and just do rep after rep after rep. When it starts to move a little bit slower, dig it in, keep it moving. Every rep you get, lower it, big breath, try another one. Try another one until it physically will not move

until no matter how much effort you're exerting. Now compare that to what you previously thought was your limits. Or, like, the problem is if I go, you know, estimate, pick a way to go, yeah, I think I can do 10 reps with this. And then just see. Just do rep after rep after rep.

I met this football coach one time, this coach, and he said, yeah, he went and asked his male and female do rep after rep after rep. I remember this football coach one time, this coach, and he said, yeah, he went and asked his male and female athletes to estimate their 10 RM. And without fail, the men way overestimated how much weight they could do. And the women were like 50%.

Again, this isn't meant to be some like commentary on gender. Studies show that everyone is just about half of what they think they are. Men tend to be more egotistical than women. Yeah, very much. I don't think that's a controversial statement. Yeah, I don't want people...

I think that's biological. Yes, I don't want people to hear me going, women are weak and don't push hard. Because in my experience... No, no, I think it's just less ego. I think it's what it is. Yes, exactly. I just want to make sure the message is not being...

In my experience, once women learn to push hard, they're actually, they push harder than that in mice, depending on the movement, regardless. So they are built to push babies out, which is, I came across some research on that some time ago that basically the conclusion was that the researchers, they couldn't explain how women could survive that much pain, that biologically the amount of pain that, that a woman experiences on average in childbirth should kill them. But somehow it doesn't. Yeah.

And there's, I mean, and I agree. And there was, there was just, there was another data set back in the day that was like, Oh, women have lower pain tolerances than men,

but it's very stimulus specific. It's like, yes, put have lower pain tolerances than men, but it's very stimulus-specific. It's like, yes, put their hands in cold water, and that's one thing, because women do run colder, but in other situations, it's absolutely the opposite, and it has to be. But, so yeah, and then I would tell someone, okay, you've just done that all-out set of bicep curls or push-downs or machine chest press something.

Go, okay, now think back to the last, like take your final failure rep and sort of look back at the previous three or four reps. What were the movement dynamics? Usually about three to four reps, it starts to slow down a little bit. You're having to exert a little more effort. So if you made it to 15 and you think back, all right,

at rep 11, well, that was four reps reserved. You've now learned a very valuable thing. Now, for me, what I've noticed well, that was four reps reserved. You've now learned a very valuable thing. Now, for me, what I've noticed is it seems to be exercise specific. There's some movements for me that are just like eight, nine, 10, done. For whatever reason, shoulder seems to fail real quickly for reasons. Pressing, any pressing for me is that. Yeah, and that could be because biceps are giving out or a stabilizer whereas like leg extensions are just like just for me chest just

grinds and grinds and then it'll just barely make it through the sticking point and you do to a degree have to determine it, you know, given exercise, given muscle group, maybe it's fiber, I don't know, it just, it is what it is. But you need to first get an idea of like, alright, I would generally

say if the bar doesn't slow a little bit, maybe not max, but if it doesn't, you know, you look at the average stat. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, you know, grindy, grindy, grindy. It didn't slow. You're not even within four reps to failure. You're not even four reps in reserve, rather. And going to what you said about, I watch people in the commercial gym, in my gym, for me to see anyone take a set

to where it slows down a little bit is rare. I mean, I'll see it. In my gym, it's just the more experienced weightlifters, generally, those are the only ones. Yeah, yes, I'll see it. And it's usually people doing certain movements and usually they're going very heavy. Like I'll watch someone back squatting, you know, they'll have three wheels on each side and they'll usually go to like the first bar speed drop or maybe a rep in there. And again, I'm not saying it's not generally safe to grind squats to limit failure, but if it didn't slow

down at all, I can guarantee you that you're kind of nowhere close to what your true reps and reserve are. And at least some of the early studies did find that, A, three to four reps and reserve seem to be about the range. And again, if we go back to that effective rep model, in a submaximal set in a higher rep set, you're not going to even approach full recruitment till about that point. You may get more recruitment as you go, but beyond a certain point, recruitment is maximized. And also the idea that people can't max recruit all their muscle fibers is untrue. But regardless, if it doesn't slow at all, I can guarantee you did not recruit those high threshold fibers at all. This is one of the reasons because I think

it helps mitigate the mistake of just not training hard enough. Because when you have to do a set of six or seven or eight, if you're paying attention at all in terms of your load, there are going to be some effective reps in there. Maybe you're not pushing to a true one RIR or zero RIR. Maybe it's actually a two or three, but you did get some effective training in there because the weight was heavy enough. You didn't, you didn't make the mistake of you were supposed to do 20 reps and you were supposed to go to a zero or one RIR and you, you ended that at an eight RIR. Okay, you did another warmup set. Great. Yeah, no, and I, yes, I agree with you completely.

Most people you watch in the gym are just doing repeat warmup sets. Yeah. The bar is never, and that's why they can do so much volume. And, but even with that, like maybe with short rest intervals, they might, because of cumulative fatigue,

start to get, but even with that, right? Like let's say you're doing- That loses its efficacy quickly. I mean, I made that mistake before I knew what I was doing many years ago. We all did. It also, I think we can- No adaptations to speak of, really, for years.

Yes. I think we can also get into the issue of, you know, junk volume and you're generating, all you're doing is extra work. Like, that was part of Dante's philosophy. And again, I'm not saying this is universally right. He believed that volume was what over-trained you. And there is an element of truth to that. He wanted to generate the maximum stimulus in the least volume possible. That was sort of underlying philosophy of dog crap. And again, not recommending it. It burns

a lot of people out. Not everyone has the mental, the mindset or the drive to do that. And you don't have to. There are multiple paths to the goal. But I can say with some degree of certainty, if you are never getting to the point where the bar is slowing, at least somewhat, you're not getting anywhere close

to an effective rep. Now, yeah, if you go to the first bar speed drop, and that's four reps in reserve, you might need to do a higher volume. And that's fine. It's not my preference because I'm old and I reps in reserve. You might need to do a higher volume, and that's fine. It's not my preference because I'm old and I'm in maintenance, and I don't want to be in the gym that long anymore. I'm built for failure. I prefer intensity, so I gravitate towards the low. Again, I'm also in maintenance and have been for years. My trainee is an elite female powerlifter.

I don't take her to failure because I have to worry about systematic fatigue between day to day to day. But I take her close, I mean she's within a couple of reps. And if you start to look at the research, typically what you see is three to four reps in reserve is about the minimum intensity. And that would be your first bar speed drop under most conditions.

Some of it does find that with greater proximity to failure, as 4, 3, 2, 1 reps per reserve, there is frequently more growth. And then at least one of the review papers, you might as well, Eric Helms and a couple of others, they contended that going to true failure could be a negative due to excessive neuromuscular fatigue, and that gets to a whole separate issue. Because I remain unconvinced that somehow three sets to failure to excessive neuromuscular fatigue, and that gets to a whole separate issue. Because I remain unconvinced that somehow three sets to failure causes excessive neuromuscular fatigue, but 26 sets of quads is somehow less fatiguing. But when you compare three sets of 10 to failure to six sets of five at the same weight, well, yeah, you've compared three

work sets to six warmups. I have no doubt that the failure is more fatigue. But again, I'm not saying you should go to failure. You frequently do see bigger repetition drops set to set to set with failure. RPE, ready, perceived exertion, is maximum. Not everyone's good for that. But you need to know where it is first. And once you know where it is, somewhere between zero and four is going to be the sweet spot as far as I'm concerned. And you're going to simply have to compensate by adjusting volume. As you get closer to zero, you're going to be able to and need to do less volume. And as you get farther from zero, you're going to need proportionally more volume.

And again, even if we don't think of it in terms of effective reps, even within that reps reserve, I think that starts to eliminate the supposed contradictions in different training systems. Yeah, if you want to do 15 sets at four reps and reserve, cool. You want to do four sets at zero reps and reserve, cool. You want to do eight sets at two reps and reserve, big picture stuff, it's probably going to be a wash in the long term. I mean, even go back and look at, you know, Arnold and those guys, they trained hard. You know, they would do 15, 20 sets per muscle group, many of which were warmups. But if you look at their actual work sets, they went till it started to slow and that was, they didn't grind, you know, then you had Dorian and he would only do four work sets to failure, but make no mistake, at least,

you know, he'd do like three or four warm-ups, because you're not going to go to a hammer incline press and throw four wheels per side and do that cold. You know, probably if we went in and tried to add it up, he was probably getting a little bit more, but his four limit sets, truly the limit, and he usually had his partner help him through the last couple, were probably the physiologically equivalent of Arnold's 15. Or Lee Haney, who was kind of in the middle. He said, stimulate, don't annihilate. He was kind of mid-range volume, not going to Dorian-level intensity, going a little bit harder than Arnold intensity. You look at Naturals,

it all kinds of comes out in the wash in the long term. And there are other systems that are more periodized, and you've mentioned this, more frequently early in the cycle, you may be going three to four reps in reserve, so that you're, and then as the weights go up, and presumably they're going up a little bit faster than you're adapting, couple weeks in, you might be in the three reps reserve range. A couple weeks in, you're in the zero to one reps reserve range.

Then it gets grindy. Then you stop and start over again. One thing I often recommend, and this goes back to something you said, and then we can wrap it up. Since most people, even if you know what failure is, I like the way you put it. You got to keep yourself honest sometimes. You'll have someone,

let's say they're doing four sets of eight to 10, supposedly two reps in reserve. Maybe they'll get a little lazy. Every few workouts, take that final set and do an AMREP, as many reps as possible. Take it as like, don't do it on the first set

because then the next three sets will be very bad. You know, get your work in on that fourth set, go all out. So again, safe movement until it will not move any further. And see what happens. If you were supposed to be in an eight to 10 rep range and you only got 12,

well, you're perfect. You're right where you need to be. You're at two reps of reserve, don't change anything. And if you get 15 reps on that final set, you need to stop sandbagging, add a little weight to the bar next time. And again, I'm not saying do that every workout. Add some weight. You'll be right where you need to be. Every few workouts, keep yourself honest. And especially

the intermediate or even the advanced level. Because not everyone's good at reps and reserve. Again, it is a skill. But even with that, my trainee, I've asked a reps and reserve or RP, and for her, it's easy, easy, easy, hard. She just, once it gets past a certain point, it's all hard. She's terrible at it. So I don't do it anymore. You mentioned also, some people fail very quickly. I think of one of the guys who works with me.

He's always been very strong, very explosive, and then fails. It's weird to watch. And he knows how to work work and he's not afraid to push to failure blah blah blah that's just physiologically he'll just he'll put 315 on incline bench and it's just rep rep rep rep fail it's odd actually i have i have a training partner and i i don't know if it's neurological or fiber typing where it is very much a go no go thing some people have great grind. Some people, it just,

and he'd be in the middle of a set. It might be, and it'd just be like, just exactly like you said. And suddenly everything would just shut off for whatever reason. So there, but that's another reason that you kind of have to do this. I also don't think that's the average training. I've seen-

No, no, no. I mean, there's like a spectrum. That's the extreme. And then you maybe have the extreme grinder. All they see is these sort of these rep slowdowns occurring in a fairly consistent manner. And there's variability on the exercise on the person. But again, you don't know until you know. Until you've actually tried to do the next repetition, the next repetition, you will not know for you personally. Comparing between individuals is a fool's game. It's a matter of you figuring out for you. It may depend on the movement, the exercise, but until you've figured it out, you will not know. Then you can decide. And if

you want to follow an established training program that puts you at, on average, two to three reps in reserve, cool. Now you know what that actually means. But most people who think they're at four reps in reserve, based on what I've seen, more like eight. And doing it every so often at the intermediate level, where you may not be adding weight rapidly, every three or four weeks, just test it out and see where you're at. Especially if you're just not good at it. If you're not good at knowing your reps and reserves,

or it's one of those movements that just fails really quickly for you. Just do it, do an all-out set, last set of an exercise. That'll let you gauge something else, and then we'll definitely wrap, this was another, I think a recent one that Eric Helms said. I forget if it was an intervention study or a review, and it pointed out that most people suck at those.

My words, obviously not their language. Most people are bad at those. It said it may be important for these studies to do a sort of a, not a break-in workout, but sort of like a familiarization to teach people what actual zero reps and reserve are. Because otherwise, telling them to stop at two reps and reserve means nothing unless they happen to be really experienced and really experienced people don't typically go into these they're not the typical subjects because again i don't care if you're a cop they're a college student who's

got four years of training i've watched these people train and the grand majority of them i was i was once a college aged male with four years of training, and I wouldn't have been very useful in that study of two reps in reserve, go squat to two reps in reserve. Okay, sure. I don't want anybody listening to this to think that I'm being some utterly self-superior on high. We all went through it. I went through it. I went through it. The difference was I got very involved with the old hard gainer philosophy, just because that was my mentor early on, which is more low volume and more intensity. So once I got through college, where I guarantee you I did the same stuff as everybody listening

to those, because we all went through it. It was like, oh, I was dumb and I read the magazines. We all did. We didn't know any better. You can't. You can't know what you don't know. And through that, the focus was on low volume, higher intensity. And I did a lot of training like that. And that happens to be like, and I was a good endurance athlete. I know how to

hurt because you have to be to go an hour all out. And so I'm very good at it, but not everybody's built for it. Psychologically, physically, physiologically, not all movements lend themselves to it. Look, your whole workout doesn't necessarily have to be like this, right? Because people, again, when I say these things, people go, well, you just, you like failure. Because have I ever said that anywhere? No, what I'm saying is you gotta know where it is.

That's very different than advocating it, but it's also movement specific, right? Let's say I'm training someone and they want to bench and, okay, on bench press, they might do sets of five at an eight RM, right? Keep it technically solid, keep the quality up, keep the bar speed up, their power lifter, they're doing triples at a five RM, right? I'm not going to push them to grindy failure. Let's work that point in the cycle. We get a little work in. Okay, now we're going to go do some body buffing work.

Now we're going to go do a machine chest press. And maybe I want to get a little more volume and I'll have them do four sets of eight at a 10 RM, right? We're going to get some, and then I want to burn them out. We're going to go to the crossover, go to cable crossover, peck deck, two sets, don't stop until it doesn't move. There is nothing that says these are mutually exclusive,

which is another thing that people tend to think or get that conclusion. You can do a mixture of those depending on, like I said, the I'm not going to have someone squat until they get pinned at the bottom, by and large. I'm going to leg press them a lot closer to limits. When I want to just torch their quads and make sure I'm going to have them go until it doesn't move anything, and I'll adjust the volume as we go. Let me interject. I have two more questions before we wrap up, just because I'm just curious to ask your thoughts. So the first question is, when you're talking about going until the weight

doesn't move, that looks differently with different exercises. So you take a leg press and inevitably what's going to happen is you're going to go to depth and that's going to be the end. You can't press it up. However, if I think of any sort of pulling exercise, especially if it's a machine pull, I was just pulling today. So I'm thinking of sets today where I'm pulling until i i can get a half rep now that that's it i i'm not there's no full contraction that's happening that i'm stuck here basically and and that's that's where i end the set or i think of a peck deck where maybe you can get it it's going but you get to hear and you're just like, just, just for, for people listening. So they understand, would you consider those points

failure? Now it's kind of a half rep. I could just go back up and then I could do another little, maybe it's a quarter rep now, you know? Right. And this is, you know, and we can get into those sorts of like weird pedantic arguments. I know it is, it is, it is a bit fussy, but I just wanted to, I just wanted to mention it for people wondering. And absolutely, it is the inability to complete a full repetition despite giving maximal effort. And if that's where you get stuck,

you know, if you're doing a hammer high. That's exactly what I was doing, yeah. And that's it. And no matter how hard you pull, I mean, it's just not moving. That's failure. If you're doing a chest press, it's just like, and usually it's, you know, at the sticking point. And you pull me, it's just not moving, that's failure. If you're doing a chest press, it's just like, and usually it's at the sticking point,

and you're like, that would be the definition of physiological muscular failure in that context. Like then again, we could spend another getting into the weeds of like, this is the issue with biomechanics. And really what we're talking about is the inability to get to the sticking point. And you could technically do more partial reps at the bottom, or someone helped you to the top, and you could do top partial rep. And like, that's just a bunch of semantics to try to get, and that's just detail stuff. But if you're doing a compound movement, failure will occur when you're unable to complete

the full range of repetition. Because even that, you have to define like task failure, you have to define what you mean by that, right? Like that's in the research, they talk about this. So in endurance training, you're riding a bike. You're trying to maintain 200 watts. And you can no longer maintain 200 watts. You can still do 190. Even in the gym, you can do drop sets. Failure doesn't mean the muscle is exhausted. It can still generate force.

It can't generate enough force to complete a full range of motion, which usually means being unable to get it through the sticking point. There's all these other variables and stuff, but in the most general sense, absolutely. Okay, good. And that's a good segue into... 15 second rest, then you can

let a tiny bit of recovery, you can do a few more repetitions, and then you'll go 8, 3, 1, and then you're cooked where each set is still being defined in the same way in ability to complete a full repetition. So yes. That's a, that's a good segue to my next question, which is, uh, uh, what are your thoughts on, I guess it could be referred to as beyond failure training. So here's how even this is, it seems to be having a bit of a resurgence right now on social media and elsewhere. People are, I see more people talking about

mentors, training principles. But what I'll see is things like, I'll see forced reps. So, you know, I'm doing my hammer pull and I'm stuck here and I have my buddy now taking a little bit of load off it. So I can, you know, force through that rep or I'll see it. Let's say I'm on the leg extension now and I'm doing my reps and I go to failure. And then now it's I'm resting, not 10 or 15 seconds. I'm now, you know, I'm resting just a few, a few seconds, three to five seconds. And

then I grind out another one. And then I wait another three to five seconds. What are your thoughts on these types of techniques? I'm not, well, it depends. Like, A, I'm not a huge fan because I think they get overused. But again, it's a matter of like, okay, you have to incorporate that with volumes. Because yeah, like going back to the slightly assisted rep, you're trying to do a bench press. As far as hundred units of force, you can only do 95. Assuming your training partner is not of the all-you-upright-row approach to spotting,

he gives you just enough help to get through the top. Okay, does that mean that what we defined failure as before was not really failure? Like I said, it's not that the muscle is exhausted. That's why I tend to try to be very careful in my definition, is that at least in the terms of just defining concentric muscular failure, it is the inability, maybe we should put it, you know, voluntarily or by yourself to do a full repetition.

But like, yeah, if you keep the volume low, maybe. I'm not a big, you know, you do like heavy eccentrics and you do forced repetitions where somebody's helping you a little bit to get through it in very small amounts, maybe. I'm not a big, you know, you do like heavy eccentrics and you do forced repetitions where somebody's helping you a little bit to get through it in very small amounts, maybe, you know, where you're getting

that extra rep or two. I think the Chinese Olympic lifting coaches do that to help their lifters get a little bit more out of squats. They give that little bit of help to the top

to get a little, although sometimes probably safety is to get them, get them to the top so they can rack the thing. So I'm not a huge fan more because of the way people use them which is they do it try to do it on top of high volumes of training yeah you're doing it if you want to do three all-out sets and you know

you can recover and get that little or do it on a final set to get a little bit of extra work that's fine if you're doing it you know dorian did but he also did four total work sets once a week and if you go watch his videos his training partner gave him a little bit of help on the leg extension just to get those final couple through the sticking point just enough to keep it moving but he did very low volumes so it's a matter of use like i don't personally generally do that with people but somebody wants to do it just keep volume low. If you're going to do 15 sets and do force reps on every set, you're going to have a bad time. As far as doing that

little bit of extra rest between repetitions, yeah, we all do that too. It gets a little harder to get that. At least one or two seconds you catch your breath and you're going for it. That one pound back of that one unit back of force ability that allows you to get that next rep

to get it a little bit easier. And like, yeah, if you want to get really, really, really anal compulsive about it, you can start... Oh, another definition I see, which I truly don't like, is an inability to maintain

the target rep speed. Because that, by definition, is ensuring that, from a hypertrophy standpoint, sports training is totally different. We're talking about maintaining quality and bar speed. That is a completely different thing. From a hypertrophy standpoint, you're like, oh, your goal is a two second rep. As soon as you go slower than that, that's failure. The only thing you failed on is making that a productive set. Like I think that's just the dumbest one. But yeah, you take, you you take an extra second to catch your breath. You usually see that in

leg press and hack squats because it's more systemically fatiguing. You've got the old breathing squat where that was deliberately part of it to allow you to work and get more total work in that same way. But there's also only one set. We're trading intensity in this sense or the total work stimulus per set for volume. In that sense, I suppose, I just typically see it being misused, and I don't know, for the average person. Just, you know, don't do it a lot.

I definitely don't like pure eccentrics. You know, people help you to the top, or you'll see people, like I mean, I'm doing a leg extension where People help you to the top. You'll see people doing a leg extension where they hold it at the top and you try to physically force them to the bottom and stuff like that. There are easier ways to tear a muscle than doing it that way.

But again, as an every once in a while thing, maybe it is funny that we're going... Or not, it sounds like. Or just stick to straight sets and take them close to failure. Yeah, getting within one to four reps to reserve, adjust your volume. To me, again, watching the average gym,

that's usually a young kid thing on bench press, having everybody do the all-you, upright row, bench spot, bounce-off-the-chest type stuff. I think if you look at people, you know, in the long term, that we're looking at longevity of training, you're not seeing a lot of that being done or being done sporadically, you know, do it every,

like we talked about, if you want to do an all-out grinder set in three or four weeks to keep yourself honest, great, all for it. Unless you're going to keep volume very low, I wouldn't do it all the time. But again, we've got this. The other thing I find really frustrating about the industry is during these debates, and I get it, social media, we can't have nuance. People are treating these variables as independent.

Oh, well, there's frequency, there's volume, there's intensity, there's reps and reserve. These all factor in. If you want to train higher frequency, for whatever reason, you have to keep either the volume lower per workout or the intensity lower, which may mean more volume per workout. If you want to train at a higher intensity, you must do lower volumes. On the same token, if you want to do lower volumes,

then you don't have time. I don't want to be in the gym anymore. I don't enjoy it. I've been doing this for too long. I'm only going to go and do a couple sets. If you're only going to do two sets, you've got to work to failure, or very close to it. If you want to do 20 sets, you cannot work close to failure.

I wouldn't personally do that, but some people, whatever. The gym is their hobby. I think there's more productive things to do with your life. There's lots of good video games out there. Go play Pal World, right? But if that's what somebody wants to do, then so like there's all these interacting variables. You know, if you're going to be at four reps reserved,

you're going to need to do proportionally more volume to compensate for that. If you're going to be at zero, you need to do less. If you want to do high volumes, you got to bring me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's all these competing variables. And in the discussions, you just don't, like sitting with a neuromuscular fatigue thing, studies are comparing equivalent volumes, three sets of 10 to three sets of six sets of five. No, I want to show me three sets of 10 to 15 sets of eight to 10 RO. Are you really going to tell me that the three by 10 to failure is more

fatiguing than like, let's compare real world training. I get it. It's science. It's got to be controlled. I understand why they do it. But when I see people in this industry go, Oh,

training to failure is too neuromuscular, fatiguing. And they go, but somehow 45 sets to failure for eight straight weeks or 52 sets per week. Oh no, we love that study. Fine, explain to me the contradiction. Explain to me how three sets of 10 to failure is bad

and 26 sets of quads twice a week. There's no consistency to it. Not to mention the fact that even if three sets of 10 makes your vertical jump worse for 48 hours, why does this matter for bodybuilders who only train a muscle group twice a week or once a week? I've yet to see that explained either. But the point of this all being is that there are all these interactions between volume, frequency, intensity, whereas intensity I'm using here being proximity to failure, not percentages or any of that other stuff.

And I think for most people listening, the recipe that is going to serve them best. And so this is people who, let's say that take a guy, he wants to gain probably 25 to 30 pounds of muscle over the entirety of his weightlifting career. And he wants to have some abs. Take a woman, she wants to gain maybe 15-ish pounds in the right places. And she wants to be relatively lean but still look feminine. For those people, you have moderate volume, moderate to high intensity, probably moderate to maybe even low to moderate frequency is an approach that will get them there. And that you mentioned longevity, and that's a lot of people listening. They care about not just getting jacked at any cost. Maybe they want to get kind of jacked, but they also want to stay

fit and healthy. And they want to be able to do this for the rest of their life without breaking. So that's generally the approach I've tried to recommend to those people. Now, as you said, strength athletes, that's something else. People who want to become bodybuilders, that's something else. Yes. Yeah, I mean, at the extreme, but even with that, just a final story, Matt Gary, who's a powerlifting, he's apparently the coach of the US powerlifting team, which is a thing, and he's even said that,

especially in powerlifting, like longevity is important if you want to stay in the sport. He says he'll get people that come to him and go, can you put 50 kilos on my total in eight weeks? They'll go, well, maybe, probably, but it might break you and you'll probably quit afterwards, right? And that's the other thing. Again, I like science.

I believe in research. I think it's important. When you look at these papers, they're like, oh, for 12 weeks, we did this one thing and saw this growth. Well, that's great. But what about the long-term? What about, you know, you have to, 12 weeks is great,

but what about over the next year? What about, you know, you have to 12 weeks is great, but what about over the next year? What about over this given timeframe and the long term? And I think, you know, I've watched the industry went through volume for five years. And it's interesting that Mike Spencer's we're coming back into the intensity range. I've been sort of middle, you know, middle of the road, most of the time where it's like moderate volumes, hard enough without grinding you into dirt or getting you hurt, which allows progression over time,

allows you to have a life. We're not talking about wanting to be elite bodybuilders. It seems like after every wave in the industry, we all kind of come back to that, right? If you look at those general research-supported 10 to 20 sets a week, depending on how heavy you're going. Once, you know, I tend to prefer a little bit higher frequency twice a week per muscle group. I know people have made good gains once a week. Women may

need a little bit higher frequency than men, neither here nor there. Somewhere between zero and four reps in reserve, depending on the volume, the exercise, the personality type, which is something that doesn't get considered. If you look at successful hypertrophy programs and the coaches that I see having success in the long term, as much as I think success leaves clues as very trite and silly, there is some truth to it. If you look at dog crap, my reps, Brian Haycock's hyper-trophy-specific training that nobody probably remembers, my generic bulking routine, what you typically see is roughly eight to 12-week training cycles

where the goal is to set progressively smaller PRs over that duration. Then you back cycle and do it again and back to Scott Stevens Fortitude Training, it's all kind of, and we all seem to sort of come back to that every few years as people get super excited

about one thing or the other. I mean, like, yeah, for most people, doing some mentor-style training every once in a while would not be a bad idea because that will teach them where to learn. You'll know what failure is, that's for sure. You'll know what failure is that's for sure you'll know what failure is training that burns you out you know you can go back and we could make it make super hand-waving arguments you know there's that old the best workout is the one you're not doing and which taken to the logical extreme means

that whatever workout you're doing today in the gym is no longer the best workout you should change your workout now the workout you're doing you should change your workout. Now the workout you're doing, you should change your workout again during the workout, which is me being dumb. But the people are like, oh, when I change to a different style of training, I seem to start growing again. And I think, A,

it may just be psychological. People get bored doing the same thing. But I think I could make some very hand-waving arguments. There are different components of growth in terms of nervous system function, muscle. We're now sarcoplasmic versus myofibrillar growth.

I think it's possible at the higher levels that you could see rate-limiting systems. And when you change to a different system, maybe, or maybe just variety. I mean, the details of a change matter too. I mean, what are you changing from? You're changing from a bunch of 20- rep sets that actually are kind of a bunch of warm-up sets. And now you're doing a bunch of six or eight rep sets that are actually pretty hard. Well, then you would, yes, then you would expect better results. And then everyone, you know, you see people that are doing lots of low volume training and they go

back to moderately higher volumes and maybe they work or make better or whatever it is. Some of it's just variety. A lot of studies on diet find that people lose weight initially just because they like, they're more attentive to doing something new. And you can't deny that, again, for the general jacked population. Athletes will do the same stuff for a year because that's what they, the focus, it's a different. Whatever makes them a better athlete, they're just going to do that. And I'm not saying that's better or worse.

I'm just saying that it is. But for the general person, you've got life that gets in the way. You have the realities of children, of these different factors that all play into it. And for them, people get bored. And if changing the workout to something, the novelty makes you work a little bit harder

or differently because you're more excited about it, I have no problem with that. It wasn't for me. I could do the same thing for months on end and never get bored. But that's me. And that is the personality component tends to get ignored as people promote, well, this is what works for me. Well, and what are your goals? What is your purpose? If someone wants more volume, cool. I'll just make sure they're working hard enough. I just won't let it. But to truly wrap this up, because I think you need to get going,

is most people aren't even working hard enough. Not saying you have to grind to failure unless you want to and are good at it. And that's fine. Keep your volume up. You have to know where it is. Once you know where it is, it will actually

allow you to use all these awesome work at two to three reps reserve workouts, types of training programs that are out there. Even with some of the AIs that are like, oh, put in your RP and your reps and reserve. Yeah, good luck. The people that are good at that don't use these apps. The people that are using these apps don't have any clue what their true RP or reps reserve is. I don't even know which apps you're referring to. I haven't played around. Oh, I mean, there were spreadsheets and stuff. There was an old one that was like a powerlifting spreadsheet.

It was like, oh, put in your RP or reps reserve on your squats and we'll adjust your weight week to week, which is dumb. Oh, got it. Stuff like that. It's like, look, the people that are good enough at doing this don't use these apps. People using apps don't know what they're The psychological subjective element too. It just enters too much variability. It's not that simple.

And until you get good at judging rep speed and really knowing that by doing it for a while, you don't know. But it's so funny to me because I actually talked about, well, this is what failure is, and this is why you have to know what it is. People are like, well, Wilde just advocates training to failure. Are you people, I'm not using complicated language. I said over and over and over again,

I'm not saying you must train to failure. Regardless, then I look at these other training programs that are like, oh, at the end of every deadlift workout, do an AMRAP. Yeah, right. Most of these other training programs recommend going to failure. Yeah, AMRAP deadlift. Sure. I've done it. I've done 20 rep deadlifts. I would never recommend it, but I've done it once. I've done deadlifts i had mentioned i there was a point when i was doing amraps every three or four months but on the deadlift it it wasn't a it wasn't a true amrap i would i was willing to push close i was willing i mean i was i was like you were saying i mean

it's cardio by the end of the set and my quads are on fire everything's on fire but could i have done uh at least another rep or two probably but that was enough i'll give i'll give myself credit for my little one rm calculation yeah but to tell but it's they're saying yeah do an amrap on these movements at the end of every workout yeah to adjust the training i'm like that's how you burn out and and break supposed failure way more than i ever have you know do a block of, do a mentor block, figure out where it is, do it every three or four weeks if you're an intermediate to keep yourself honest. Or if you're good at it, if you're really good at reps reserved, you may never need to because you can keep adjusting it. So I think that covers it. Yeah. Yeah. Great discussion. Everything that I wanted to cover. Why don't we wrap up with where people can find you and your work, anything in particular you want them to know about?

So my website is and has always been bodyrecomposition.com. I've got a zillion articles. I don't update it because I'm not convinced people read websites anymore. I've got my store, which is where I sell all my books. I do do consultations if you want help with that to set up a training type stuff. My Instagram is mcdonaldlyle that I don't really use very much.

I alternate between dog pictures, dad jokes, and the occasional video. I've got a very active Facebook group called, again, just search for bodyrecomposition.com. That's where you'll find me best. And I always like to point out I have a lot of very, very smart people in their field who have expertise in areas that I don't, such as we've got five top physios, OBGYNs, people ask these obscure medical questions. And there's always someone who's like, I'm a critical care nurse that deals with this. I'm

just like, holy crap. I learn constantly from the people in my group. I have started doing YouTube videos. Again, we'll see how long that keeps up, including a Q&A. Go find my channel. I think that one's Lionel McDonald, but you'll find me. So yeah, I mean, I've been online since it started. So it's all kind of bodyrecomposition.com. Great. Awesome. Well, thanks again for taking the time.

I look forward to doing another one. Absolutely. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email.

Mike at muscle for life dot com muscle for life dot com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.