Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Steve Hall on How to Program Effective Specialization Routines

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

Whether you have lagging or weak muscle groups, or just want to focus your efforts and grow certain body parts faster than others, specialization routines can help you. These specialization training blocks involve prioritizing specific muscle groups to get them to grow faster while maintaining your size and strength in other muscle groups. In this episode, Steve Hall offers tips and guidance everyone can use if they’re interested in trying a specialization routine. In our discussion, Steve and I discuss . . . What specialization routines are and when it's appropriate to try a specialization routine Examples of how specialization routine might look Whether you can prioritize more than one muscle group at once How exercise selection and rep ranges play a role in specialization routines Duration of specialization training blocks And more . . . In case you’re not familiar with Steve, he’s a competitive natural bodybuilder and the founder of Revive Stronger, where he uses his decade-plus of experience in the gym to coach his clients. He’s also a fellow podcaster, hosting the Revive Stronger Podcast, on which he shares evidence-based bodybuilding content. So, if you've ever wondered about whether you should try a specialization routine or how you’d program your own to grow certain muscle groups faster, you’re going to enjoy this podcast! --- Timestamps: 0:00 - Try Pulse today! Go to https://buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! 7:20 - What are specialization routines? 10:15 - Why can’t you just grow all your muscles together? 15:30 - Can a decade of specialization training get you to your best physique ever? 20:41 - When do you suggest starting specialization training? 24:20 - Why can’t I maximize the growth of every muscle? 29:33 - How much upper body training can I do without the wheels falling off? 32:06 - What are examples of a specialization routine? 38:00 - Can I specialize a pair of muscle groups when training? 55:14 - What should my rep ranges look like with specialization training? 1:05:42 - What are your thoughts on duration? 1:11:40 - Where can we find you and your work? --- Mentioned on the show: Try Pulse today! Go to https://buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revivestronger Steve’s Website: https://revivestronger.com/

Hey there and welcome to another episode of Muscle For Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview I did with Steve Hall about specialization routines, which are training routines to target lagging or weak muscle groups, or targeting muscle groups that you just want to train a lot, that you want to focus your efforts on. And when that is the case, generally speaking, what you want to do is train the target muscle group or sometimes muscle groups, as you will learn in this interview, as much as you feasibly can while training everything else enough to at least maintain your muscle and strength. So you want to use your time or the majority of your time and your energy to focus on the muscle group or groups you want to specialize

on without neglecting everything else and falling behind. Now, as you can imagine, there are many wrong ways of going about that, but there are also quite a few correct ways of going about it. And in this episode, my guest Steve will offer tips and guidance that everyone can use in setting up effective specialization routines, including what these routines are and when they are appropriate, when you should consider using one versus some other type of split or setup, like a push-pull legs routine or a body part routine or a full body routine and so forth. Steve and I talk about how specialization routines might look, like practically speaking, when you are programming them, how that can look, whether you can and should prioritize

more than one muscle group at a time and more. And if you are not familiar with Steve, he is a competitive natural bodybuilder and the founder of Revive Stronger, where he uses his decade plus of experience in the gym to coach his clients. And he has a lot of success stories to his name. He knows how to get people into great shape. And Steve is also a fellow podcaster. He hosts the Revive Stronger podcast, which I have been on, on which he shares evidence-based body building content. But first, many people think that if they just eat well, if they eat enough nutritious foods, they don't need a multivitamin. And while there is truth

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If you are an existing customer, try Triumph risk free and see what you think. Hey, Steve, welcome to my podcast. I guess it's about time that I reciprocated. You had me on your podcast some time ago, and I don't think I intentionally didn't invite you. It probably just didn't occur to me, but here we are. Thank you so much for having me on. When you sent me the email, I was like, you're one of the podcasts that for me, at least when I got into the podcast game, I think you may be already in it or were certainly very soon after, if not before me, I don't actually know. But you're certainly one of the foundational fitness podcasts out there.

So it was exciting to be invited on. And it's great to see that you've been keeping going as long as I've been going with my one, you've still been going with yours because there's so many out there now. So yeah, thank you so much for inviting me on, Mike. It's a big honor. Yeah, yeah. My pleasure. And good timing for, I think, probably both of us. I don't remember when I released the first episode. And I do remember it might have been like 2016-ish or something like that. But I do remember, I would just turn on my webcam and just kind of ramble until I ran out of rambling. And then I would turn off the webcam. And that was the beginning of the YouTube channel. And I would just throw them on YouTube.

And then I was like, oh, I guess I can take the audio and put it up as a podcast as well. And, you know, it was good timing that it wasn't nearly as glutted as it is now and not nearly as professional as, you know, there are some well-produced shows now. If I look back to my first episodes that I put up, like I was this like embarrassed little kid that didn't really like what he was doing. I had terrible internet. I had like just my laptop and headphones in.

And yeah, like people have almost like Joe Rogan style setups now. So there's a lot of competition. I mean, maybe not so much in our space, but I see, I always like to see the production values that some of these

bigger media companies, some of them that just specialize in podcasts and they're doing, I mean, I don't even know what the really popular stuff is like serial fiction or serial nonfiction crime and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, it's impressive to see the amount of work that is going into some of these shows. I wouldn't say it rivals what we see in the streaming world,

but it's maybe comparable with audio only. Yeah, I see some like things that are like Netflix specials, like documentaries going on. I'm like, oh, damn. So I was like, oh, I can actually use my like DCLR camera as a webcam. And I was like learning about all these things. I was like, I need to keep up with these kids. We're like, let's call them kids as if I'm old

or if they're particularly young, but like these people who have like these big gigs. And yeah, one day maybe I'll be able to fly people in for a podcast and have like a round table type of setup. That'd be a lot of fun. Yeah, that would be fun. But I wanted to bring you on the show to talk about specialization routines,

which is something that I've commented on here and there, but I haven't written or recorded anything long form on it. And it's something that I do get asked about fairly often. And so I wanted to get you to come on and help us understand what specialization routines are. I think just as like I was saying offline, if we kind of treat this as a specialization 101 talk, I think that would be very useful to a lot of people listening who have heard about this or maybe they haven't. Or maybe they haven't and they're going to learn about it now so they can understand what a specialization routine is and how it works and when to know if it's right for them. Maybe we could talk a little bit about programming, how some of those routines could look like and and see where that direction takes us. For sure. Yeah, I think it's it's one of those topics that guess, like you, like me, for the vast majority of like trainees and listeners, for me, at least I try as long as possible to grow everything. So like specialization, I'm like, I don't want to do it. Like, I want to grow everything. It's like, it's like deloading where you just you have to begrudgingly get to the point where you're like, all right, I actually will deload on schedule. I'm not going to wait until I get sick or something, you know? And then so many, I guess, let's say guys, or I guess girls are specializing very early too. Like you see these girls now probably specializing on glutes and guys, like we all specialize like chest and arms initially, like not on purpose necessarily, but there's definitely, there definitely can be a time and

place. So I guess if I was to define the way i see a specialization routine i almost see them as like there's kind of levels like there's like the most strict specialization routine where maybe you're focusing on one muscle group and then everything else is on the back burner so you're just trying to build up say the quads and then everything else is maybe at maintenance in and around there but then i see there is like an entry level kind of just when you're on the cusp of needing to specialize where maybe you're like, oh, like I can still grow a lot of things, but maybe I can pick like a couple of muscle groups to prioritize and leave everything like it's growing, but not at its best rate. And so I'm just going to focus

on these areas, for example. So that might be like, I don't know, you get this intermediate bodybuilder who's got judging feedback and he's like, you need to bring up your delts and like arms big time, but everything needs to improve. So you might end up putting those more on the front burner, kind of leave some behind. So I think there is some kind of levels to it, but yeah, the most strict form, or I guess the most common definition is like a specialization routine is when you pick a muscle or so, and they're the ones that you're really trying to focus on to grow it, at least in the hypertrophy space, which I'm sure there's like powerlifting specialization routines and things which I have, I probably can't really speak too much because I've gone

so down into the hypertrophy route. That's like my baby now. Yeah, yeah. And I guess a question that is probably in some people's minds as well. Why can't you just grow everything maximally forever? What's the point of because this sounds like we're kind of talking about body part routines aren't isn't that not a good way to train yeah i think it's a great question because i even find myself with so many of the people i end up working with and even myself it's like you can do so many things to allow yourself to keep growing everything before you need to specialize in that so many people have so many holes within their like lifestyle they're training nutrition already it's like oh their arms can't grow but they're not really training their arms properly or they're leaving them towards the

end of their session they don't necessarily need to specialize but they could do them earlier or four legs or something so i think it's so important that people come to the point where they're like okay i've got every single duck in a row so So in terms of my lifestyle, my sleep, I'm getting eight hours almost consistently every night. It's not like I'm sleeping four hours every night and thinking, oh, I'm going to have amazing training. I'm going to grow really well. And then stress levels. So if you're like, I don't know, you have exams and you're just a very stressful person. You never take any time to chill out. Like you can't expect to be growing particularly well. You might find that you can't grow everything. Whereas if you had that in check check maybe that would open that avenue

and then with nutrition i think a big one for me is like surplus like i don't know about you mike but i've been there and done that in terms of trying to eat like maintenance and recomp and it's just like it's like you're trying to cycle up calorie cycling yeah it's like you're trying to cycle uphill with like the break on at the same time it's like just put that surplus there release that kind of break and you you'll likely see way better growth so i think a lot of people hold themselves back because they don't have those basics in place their macros kind of obviously prioritizing protein carbohydrates fats nutrient timing even that's like a more advanced concept which i think people think oh it's not important

like i'll just do calories and macros like if if it fits your macros, it's like, actually, if you prioritize carbohydrates around your training, that can actually be leading to better training sessions, that sort of thing. So that's important. And then, I mean, a big one that I think, uh, I think in the industry now, it's getting better, but in terms of training, like technique, I think at least when I started, it was just about more load to the bar. And if that meant less range of motion, like shittier form, whatever, it didn't matter. It's just like all about load on the bar. Or some people would even formalize it. Oh, cheat sets.

I'm doing, you know, like I program in my cheat sets. It's a great way to get injured and not see great progress. I've definitely done that myself. Like I have long-term shoulder injuries because I just like I just had the ego and just thought pushing harder was better. And when you're a kid, teenager, you think the body is just unbreakable, but it's really not. So having stellar technique, it just improves the stimulus that you're going to generate through the muscle and reduces fatigue, which ultimately opens up the amount of volume you can do, which is probably a key driver of hypertrophy. So if you can get that all in place, that's going to be so, so much better for you.

So having that technique in place. And again, a lot of people think they have good technique until you like review their form or even like people are now filming their sets in the gym. They're like, oh damn, like I thought I'm swinging that way more than I thought I was. Whereas if you have great technique, that helps. Training intensity too.

I don't know if this is really a common term, but I talk about intensity discipline. So how many reps in reserve was that really? Like, was that really a one to two or was it more like a four if you really had to try, you know? Again, I work with people online, so I get like form videos in and they're like, yes, Steve, this was like, definitely, I had no more reps left in the tank. And I look and the first rep looks, it's great technique. It looks, and that's the thing, you can can have great technique but if you don't have the intent there like you said that's kind of you need to meet a minimum threshold of relative intensity to provide

a stress to be able to then grow so you're completely right especially as like more newbies are the ones who maybe they don't know they listen to your podcast my podcast they're like oh I should be doing leaving reps in reserve because that's probably a safer way and maybe i can get good just as good as stimulus and then they're not actually very good at rating it and they kind of get scared of failure it's like oh no sometimes you need to you need to make sure you're working really hard because if it's not hard it's not overloading you're not going to stimulate growth so i think lots of people don't have that in check and a big one i didn't have in check as well was like deloading like i would never take well even rest days i'd just be like seven days a week just go at it and I'd end up just regressing because my fatigue

would just build up and then again try to kind of risk injury that sort of thing so I think a lot of people unfortunately don't have those like basic things in place and I think you just get better over over time like I view bodybuilding is very much like a lifestyle and at the start when I tried to make it a lifestyle it was very like extreme it was very difficult for me whereas i'm sure you're the same now mike where like you get a lot of these ducks in a row just because it's just routine it's just habit you sleep well you eat at the times you eat you hit your protein what have you just like a second nature like if you were to try and do a technique like that was bad you'd be like this just feels so wrong i can't do it it feels like i'm doing something completely wrong so once you've got all those ducks in a row it's just incredible how much

better your training is and how much you can actually therefore grow everything and i think for a lot of people it doesn't take it takes them up to like a decade to get to that point where now they're like oh man i'm doing everything right but now i'm hitting that wall of nothing's really progressing like it should be that's at at least how I, why I see a lot of people not needing necessarily to go down that route, at least for a long time. Yeah. Interesting. A decade. Cause there, there's no, I would say conclusive, as you know, definitive quote unquote settled answer to just how big and strong can you get given your, your genetics and your anatomy. Um, you know, I've written about this, I've spoken about this, and based

on my understanding of a lot of the material that is available, let's just say your average guy is probably going to be able to gain 45-ish, maybe 40 to 45 pounds of muscle over the course of his lifetime, like kind of period regardless of what he does inside the gym and outside of the gym. And you will have some outliers who can gain a bit more than that. You have some people who are going to gain a bit less than that. Like if a guy's five, five and has a small skeleton, obviously he's going to gain less muscle than the dude who's six, five and was like benching 225 at 14. But again, if we just take kind of an average and let's say you took that guy and for women listening, you could probably cut that in about half is the rule of

thumb is that most women are probably 25 to 30 pounds of muscle gain is going to be about everything that they're going to be able to tack on to their skeleton. And so if you started year one, either the man or the woman started year one and did everything mostly right, we don't have to be perfect, of course, but started off with good nutrition, good training, good sleep, good recovery, blah, blah, blah, that it'll take maybe five to seven years was kind of my just backing into based on rates of muscle gain per year, five to seven years before that potential progress becomes so small, it's hard to measure. I mean, maybe a pound of muscle gain a year, something like that. In some people, they might be able to get a bit more out of that based on

where they're at. But yeah, I would say that certainly if somebody knows what they're doing within a decade or so, they're going to have more or less their best possible physique if they've been doing a lot of the correct things. Do you agree with that? some people that are fortunate enough to land into that position where they have so they get they i don't know they land onto your podcast and they've got and they're in year one of training it's just like wow or they pick up your books and it's just like wow like they're just doing everything so right from the get-go like they are almost like unfortunately or fortunately they hit their peak or near their peak sooner than the person who yeah because i mean if you if you think of a guy who let's say he gains 20 pounds of muscle in his first year, which would be a great first year, but certainly doable. And then we could probably expect about half of that in year two and then have kind of halves,

as you know, from each year throughout, uh, from, from there on. And then, so again, probably around five to seven years is now we're pushing that 40 ish pounds of muscle gained. Yeah, I think it's that I just, I see it so often in practice where people just like, I don't know, maybe they're on the path and then they step off it because they're, I don't know, they see something that they like, Oh, maybe I can recomp and do it this way. And it's like, and then they, they just end up getting more and more things. Right. Exactly. So I can even use myself an example, like in my, I was gained like 10 pounds stage weight from my 2017 to 2021 season it was just like night and day body different bodybuilder but I just did so

many things of what I listed out at the start right I was doing a lot of them right before there was just like a surplus one that I was like ah like I'll just like you get comfortable in your kind of off season and you're like I'm eating a lot of food it's a bit uncomfortable to push it more but like you know without discomfort doesn't come change so i think that's where maybe my experience with trainees and people i see out there and myself it's like taking a bit more time than what would ideally happen in practice like you say on paper and i don't know how you feel about it mike but i like to have this limitless mindset almost to muscle gain in terms of like genetic ceilings like theoretically absolutely there's a genetic ceiling but in practice i'm like i don't know how many people actually get there so i like to have

this like just growth mindset of just like i'm just gonna keep growing like it doesn't matter you can tell me that i'm not but i'm gonna keep trying to grow at my best rate so yeah like you said anywhere between five to ten years i I think absolutely is like, you've definitely done your due diligence of growing virtually all your muscle mass. Now's the time where maybe focusing a bit more on specialization is going to take you down the right route. Yep. Yep. That makes a lot of sense. So that could be one scenario just to summarize for people listening where you've put in the work you've, you've, um, you've gained, let's just say it's going to be at least most of the muscle and strength that is genetically available to you. And there is a muscle group or

muscle groups. And we'll talk about, I mean, obviously there's a difference between saying I really want to focus on my, my legs, my quads and my hamstrings. That's different than, oh, I would like more side delts. Like, you know, okay, you can do a couple more, right? But we'll get to that. So that's a scenario. Or maybe it's a muscle group that you just really like to train in. It sounds like it would be fun to do. Or maybe it's an exercise. Like I'd really like to bench three times per week and really train my chest really hard because I like it. Do you think that though, for people who have not gotten to that point yet, so they still, they still could just follow a more balanced routine and, and

continue gaining muscle and strength more or less all over on their body at a, at a good rate. Are there any scenarios where you would suggest they consider doing a specialization routine. Again, like for example, I would say maybe if they, if it just seems like it might be fun, uh, that's always, that's always a good reason. I think to try things that, uh, so long as they're not fundamentally flawed, because of course, the more fun we're having in the gym, generally speaking, the better the results, right? Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's not like you can't specialize on something else in future if you want something else to grow. It's not like you're dedicated to delts for life. Now, you just have to specialize on those, nothing else. So you can layer them in and periodize them

so that that can be really fun. Because again, like you know, Mike, bodybuilding training, hypertrophy training, there's only so much you can can do it is kind of the boring basics over and over again rinse and repeat to some extent so if it can if it's someone's preference they're just like don't like steve i just want to have huge like delts it's like okay we can we can make that happen let's go for it let's see what happens and uh another one i think yeah you said preference and i think the only one that's a bit more specific to my sort of areas like if they're kind of bodybuilding category is dictating that so if they're men's physique and they don't really need their legs so much which is a great position to be in because like you said some muscle groups really free up a lot of kind of extra volume recovery for other areas so you could kind of bring those back or like a bikini athlete again they could

focus on the glutes a bit more so yeah absolutely I think it doesn't have to be that you're at that point where you need to do it. It could be a preference thing or maybe dictated by kind of your bodybuilding goals. I've heard from some people over the years who liked to rotate from one kind of prioritization to another. So for a few months, they like to do extra chest volume and they understood that that meant they had to do maybe a little bit less for their shoulders or they had to dial back a little bit to be able to do that in other muscle groups. And then though, after a couple of months of that, they would do some lower body prioritization. And then after that, they would do some back, some pole prioritization. And that seems like a reasonable approach as well. If

they enjoy that more than just following, again, a more kind of standard balanced routine. Yeah, I completely agree. Like the result in the end is probably about the same, right? It's probably very similar because it's probably going to grow more than it would have if you like focused on everything. But actually one that I just thought of was sometimes like if you get someone who ideally they'd be spreading their volume over like four to six sessions or what have you. And they're like, they're an advanced trainee, but they're intermediate to advance on that cusp of needing to do it anywhere. then they're like i can only train three days a week it's like well

you'll be like you're not very lucky to grow everything at this point because like you're just gonna be quite fatigued and the the total volume you're gonna have to do in every session is just gonna be unrealistic so maybe we should focus on i don't know half your physique and put half on the back burner such as that um that sort of scenario or i don't know if they're like a like i said get your ducks in a row but maybe some of them you just can't like you have a very stressful job or you have kids and your sleep is just out of your control for a little bit maybe you decide all right like i'm not i can't push everything so let's pick and choose my battles here and just pick a few things maybe yeah yeah and um for those intermediate and advanced trainees again you you might have already answered

this, but I just want to make sure that we give people this answer. And that is, so if they're wondering, why can't I just, again, maximize growth of everything? And that's not to say that they have to follow a specialization. Like I don't follow a specialization routine because I actually, I like a more balanced routine personally. And I'm not in bodybuilding. So I don't have to nitpick my physique and say, oh, well, I need to work on my lats

more than anything else over the next six months or whatever. But again, this is just a question that people ask me and so uh just gonna give that to you the the easiest way i have to look at it is i don't know if you've had mike israel on your podcast but he kind of came through with the volume landmark so he may have already spoke about those and that's my favorite way of explaining it because it just it makes it quite simple in that generally we're trying to take muscle groups from their minimum effective volume up to their max recoverable volume and that's like their max

adaptive volume is where they're growing their best so anywhere within there is great training and so essentially the need for a specialization routine comes in when you can't take your every muscle group within your body to though it's mrv before your systemic mrv just caps you off so it's just as you get more advanced there's only so much you can take on so an analogy i kind of i think works is as you're kind of studying to learn as a basic like kid at school you can take on like so many different subjects but as you get more advanced and you learn more and more advanced concepts you have to specialize more and more and more because you just don't have the capacity to take on everything at that advanced level to the point of which you're like in a master's in this really like specific area it's kind of similar with when you're a

trainee like you just don't have the capacity systemically to grow everything at its maximum so you have to pick and choose again like maybe reduce somewhere so you can open up that room for something else to grow so it might be that in a kind of mesocycle, if you're going through a training block and you get to this point where you're like, man, I feel just completely zonked. My sleep isn't great. My appetite sucks.

My motivation to train is really terrible. All signs kind of needing to deload systemically. But you're like, these various muscle groups feel like fresh. But if I go in and do like, my bicep feels fresh. But if I go and do a curl, I'm just like, I just don't have it in me to give it to it. So if you're getting to that stage with some of your training, like in that final week before you're thinking I need to pull back a little bit, that might be where you're like, okay, maybe you're not growing everything at its best. Maybe you need to pull some things back and prioritize, or you might decide, right. Like very similar to myself, Mike, I don't like specializing because I

kind of want everything to grow. I kind of, I do pull back some areas, but not maybe as much as I should. You just accept slower rates of growth and have a more balanced routine if that's again, your preference. Yeah. Yeah. And just to put some hard numbers to it for people to think with, if you open up your Excel spreadsheet and you start fiddling with your programming, you find that it's hard, even if you are generous with indirect volume, which for people listening, so an exercise provides direct volume for muscle groups, like the bench press, direct volume for the pecs, indirect for, say, the triceps, the front delts. Some people might say that it's direct. I mean, I personally, in my training, would count that as indirect volume. But so even if you are taking that into account, it's hard to

get past probably about 15-ish hard sets per major muscle group per week without spending an hour and a half, two hours plus in the gym five days per week or getting in there six days per week for maybe 60 to 70 minutes. And you're going to need just about, I mean, yeah, anybody, everybody gets to that point where that is, that's really the minimum amount of volume that's required just to continue growing at any rate. And if you really wanted to get to that maximum recoverable, you probably are going to push closer to 20. You go beyond that, it gets real hard. Maybe you could do that for your biceps, but like go try to do 25 to 30 hard sets for your lower body a week using 70 plus percent of one rep max. And you only can do that for maybe four or five, six weeks until you tap out. Yeah, you just tap out, right?

But so the point is, is just to give some hard numbers to what you were saying is, okay, if you get into that 15 to 20 hard sets per week range, that's appropriate for an intermediate slash advanced weightlifter, right? Who wants to continue growing really any major muscle group at this point, if they have trained in a, at least a balanced fashion up until this point. And to, to then look at that practically, okay, you can't do that for every major muscle group. Like you said, eventually it just runs you into the ground. And so then you have to pick and choose. So you might be able to say, all right, I am going to take my lower body up to 20 hard sets per week. That's not going to be 20 sets of squats,

but we're going to be doing a lot of lower body training. And the question is then how much upper body training can I do without the wheels falling off? Right. Yeah. that's when you have to choose kind of i guess the initial move into specialization would be like maybe it would be like half your body you look to grow in the other half you take back and maybe you select actually i'm just going to leave it not a maintenance because i mean actually if like if you really want to open up a lot of recoverability the amount of volume you need to maintain is so pitifully low versus how much you need to grow you could like maybe you need 10 sets to grow your quads a week just minimum volume but maybe it's four to maintain and then you're doing four sets across the week where you were previously taking them like 10 to 15 sets like the amount of recoverability you open up is

huge but for that person just getting into it they might just decide right i'm going to leave muscle groups around an amount of volume like 10 sets for example i know it's going to it's going to grow but very slowly i'm going to prioritize these other ones and put them closer to like 10 to 15 and see how i go with that and if i start seeing good response via that you can run that for a while and then you might slowly like take more muscles to like that minimum growth point and then you might find ah i do i'm not that probably a lot of people get here because I think you need to probably be very advanced. But then you start being like,

okay, I actually need to take some of these to maintenance completely to free up space for other areas. Or if you are, like anyone could be like this, but for me as like a bodybuilder, I don't really need bigger biceps. It's probably blasphemy for a lot of people, but my biceps are just like

the ridiculous genetic point at this point. So I'm just like, all right, just leave them way on the back burner you don't want to grow that anymore let's leave that maintenance and i can push things like side delts no one can have big enough side delts let's bring it more there and this is where i find auto-regulation really helps for me so i'm looking at like within sessions and then across sessions how's their recovery in terms of when are they seeing that fatigue and soreness if they do get sore drop off are they ready for their next session and then also within a session are they finding that they're getting good local muscular fatigue

the muscles getting tired it's maybe getting tight potentially pumps and things like this so they're getting good cell swelling within the muscle and like just dictating okay if you're recovering on time and you're getting like medium okay pumps disruption fatigue maybe we can push a little bit more see how you respond and then just every week kind of tinker with it a little bit but it does need to be small changes because otherwise like people will just end up like ramping up adding an extra five sets a week and they're fine depending on the muscle group but they'll probably be sore for like two weeks and just can't get back into the gym. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Let's now talk about how a specialization routine might look. Maybe we can give some specific examples of how it might be programmed. And I'll leave it up to you. I mean, you've worked a lot of people. You can pick whatever muscle groups, give some examples that would be relevant to, I think we have very similar crowds. So yeah, if it was something like, let's say you're kind of intermediate to advanced bodybuilder

who he wants bigger side delts might decide that, okay, typically I, like you said, I can take these from 10 to 20 sets. And that means that I can get that done over the course of maybe two sessions normally, like I can spread that volume. But if I'm looking, if I can ramp these up a little bit higher to maybe up to that, like 20 plus mark to see if I can recover from that much, because I'm holding other things back. Maybe you decide, right, I'm going to start off with a higher frequency. It doesn't mean you have to start with like that high end level of volume. We're starting hopefully everything at minimum effective volume. At least that's the way I tend to program. So that's the kind of early intermediate who's just getting into it. That's actually a good point. If I can jump in quickly,

just to get you to clarify. So for people where they're from, they're doing whatever they're doing right now, what is your general recommendation on increasing volume like like you just said okay doubling the amount of volume that you're doing just one week to the next not a great idea so i would say generally for my guys i'm looking in that first week of training like a good um kind of feedback or biofeedback in terms of to know you're achieving around minimum effective volume is first of all looking at the science which tends to say in around 10 sets for a muscle group tends to be like the average for a muscle group and again that includes indirect sets so for something like arms

you don't need 10 sets of direct work for your biceps for example you might be getting virtually all of it from your rowing and pulling and things so So I would start in around there and I would ask for their feedback in terms of, like I said, those kind of in session feedback tools. So in terms of pump, like, do you feel like you got anything there or do you feel like you didn't train or like, was it high, like the best pumps you've ever had? And in that first week, I'm looking for like, you know, you've done something, you've overloaded that muscle group. Same for disruption. I call it where you're getting kind of that local muscle fatigue. it feels tired it feels a bit tight some muscle groups feel more disruption versus pump like i don't know about you mike but a hamstring pump i don't really get my pumped hamstrings but they feel like tight and like i'm gonna cramp or something they hurt yeah exactly

that's what hamstrings do they just hurt whereas quads like they can feel like full and like that so i try and get that semblance of stimulus within that session. Like, have you got a good stimulus within that session for that muscle group after you've done all the sets for it? And I'm looking for that like low to medium sort of stimulus in week one. And then I get them to rate their recovery. So I get a readiness score when they come to train that muscle group again. How ready are they?

Are they fresh? They have like no soreness, no fatigue. They're feeling good to go. Or are they like just okay? Like it's, I don't know's a bit tender to touch or they're a bit tired going in there. They don't feel amazing. Or is it fatigued? So the definition of fatigue is basically underperforming to where they'd expect. Or they're going in there and they're just like, I'm trashed. So I'm hoping in that first week, they're pretty fresh for everything because you're just doing the minimum effective and you're just getting a good stimulus stimulus but you know you've got more to give in future so i kind of use that as a baseline for assessing minimum effective volume and then from there

i'm like okay so you're recovering now if we're looking at specialization i'm being i'm picking that muscle group and being like right maybe we add to a set to this session here see how you recover from that maybe we add one to this one as well i don't tend to add more than about two sets to a muscle group per week even two is quite a lot um but one to two tends to be where i go or leave it at naught so if even in week one if they were like man i got high pumps disruption my in-session stimulus was just out of this world sometimes i get this with people for hamstrings, for example. They do like two sets of RDLs. They're just like, they're like blown off the bone completely.

I'm like, okay, I wish I had your hamstrings. So then you maybe just leave it there, knowing that they're getting a really good stimulus. And then I'll keep assessing their in-session stimulus and then their recovery rate in terms of readiness and then auto-regulate their set volume to decide, should I add a little bit more here or should I not? And again, that's a great way for people just to set up their program, minimum effective volume, and then they can kind of pick and choose

where they want the muscle-wise to grow the best. Because it tends to be that the more volume you can do and recover from tends to lead to more hypertrophy. So that's kind of the route I'm going down with that. And then eventually you'll hit your systemic MRV as you keep progressing in terms of like adding a bit of load or an extra rep and things like that. Yeah. That makes me think of an endurance training. I know a general rule of thumb is to not increase your volume by more than 10%. I think, I believe it's per week endurance training is, I was just reading some stuff on this. Anyway, it was it was every week or every two weeks, something like that. And just to that point for people who, you know, say somebody they they go for for a run every day and now they want to train for a marathon to make sure that they don't just go from relatively low volume to a lot of volume. Same same principle applies in in lifting.

Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. And what about pairing muscle groups up? So let's say somebody says, yeah, I would like to work on my side delts, but can I do more than that? Can I quote unquote specialize or can I prioritize? Let's see, I'd love to do my side delts and my biceps and my triceps. and my triceps. Like, especially for people just getting into it, I think you'd be silly not to pick a few muscle groups, especially if like you said, like if you're wanting to do like hamstrings

and quads, like they're two big muscle groups that are very fatiguing, especially like systemically fatiguing. So full body, whereas like side delts, I don't know, like they're just for me, they're such a small muscle group. And I know from personal experience, it's like training abs. It's just annoying. Abs for me, they're way worse. But side delts, at least they get a bit of a pump. I don't even bother anymore because I'm like, yeah, my squatting, my deadlifting, my overhead pressing keeps my, yeah, my core looks fine. Good enough.

So for sure, if there's some smaller muscle groups, you could do delts and arms. Absolutely. That would be no problem. But if you're picking large ones like your back as a whole, that's's some smaller muscle groups, like you could do delts and arms. Absolutely. That would be no problem. But if you're picking large ones like your back as a whole, like that's quite a big muscle group. So you probably wouldn't be able to do or it depends on the person. Like if they're just getting into it, they might just pick one thing to leave on the back burner and then everything else they try and grow.

But they're probably not going to open up much recoverability if they pick like biceps or delts, because because realistically they're just not going to be fatiguing the rest of your physique to a large degree so you might want to if you are to do that you might pick like biceps triceps and delts and then try and grow everything else i don't think there's like a perfect formula it's probably one of those things that you need to like go in there and try for yourself and see how much it opens up but i'd say like legs if you like if you're in that lucky position i have some clients like this where they have just like huge legs and like awesome we can leave those on maintenance do like f all sets on those and we can just plow on with upper body they don't love it because they

like always the people love like hard leg training yeah it's their strength yeah exactly it just opens up so much recoverability for them though so uh yeah, that's always nice. In my experience with my own training and just having heard from and worked with many people over the years, lower body, like you said, that seems to be its own, like, that's it. If you're going to prioritize your lower body, that's what you're going to be pushing toward, let's say that 15 to 20 hard sets, you know, for your, for your lower body per week. And, you know, I would, I would argue that if you could still grow on 10 sets per week or 12 sets per week, you probably could just stick with a balanced routine then, because you can get

10 to 12 sets for everything every week and probably four or five hours per week, really, if you're on the clock and not wasting time. And then you could do some prioritization again if you just want to, if it just sounds like fun, something different, something interesting, understandable. But if we're just talking about results, it's probably worth considering just sticking to balanced training

if that's all you need to grow. But I don't know about you. I've found that in my training, 10 to 12 sets, it's really maintenance. I know it's more than what is needed for maintenance, but I don't see much or any progression in muscle groups that are only getting 10 to 12 hard sets per week. And I would say I probably do a pretty good job with the basics that you mentioned earlier in the, in the interview. It's just not enough volume for anything at this point. And I've found that the muscle groups that do progress and it's slow, like I'm not in a regular surplus,

for example. So I understand that like a win for me is if I, if I'm adding five to 10 pounds, um, to my squat in four to six months on, on, cause I do some AMRAPs every four months or so just to test my strength. Right. And I'm happy with that. And, uh, it's, it's slow progress, but I also understand that I'm paying a price for having abs. I mean, it just is what it is, right? And I understand that. But for me, I need to get into that 15 to 20 hard sets per week range to really notice progress, even in my numbers, to notice over the course of several months that my reps and reserve are going up on that exercise. I'm getting stronger. Oh, look at that. I finally am able to add a reserve are going up on that exercise. I'm getting stronger. Oh, look at that. I finally am able to add a little bit of weight to that exercise.

And so in my experience, and again, this is, this is, um, I've seen this with many other people, lower body is if I'm going to prioritize that, I really, I just don't have it in me to prioritize anything else. I have to keep everything else probably around that maybe eight to 10 hard sets range. So I can do three lower body sessions or two really difficult lower body sessions per week. And then if we, if we look at the upper body back and maybe pecs, depending on the exercise, if I wanted to do it that way, I probably wouldn't be doing a whole bunch of bench pressing and dumbbell pressing. I would do some of that, but I would include some isolation work for pecs, maybe some pec deck and some other things that allow me to add volume to the pecs without beating up my shoulders and without heavily recruiting my triceps and my shoulders.

without heavily recruiting my triceps and my shoulders. And then like you said, arms and delts all together has also worked well for me. If I just look at what it took to program that, and I don't know about you, but I've never really noticed too much systemic fatigue that comes with that additional, there's maybe a little bit arms and delts. I'd say that's probably the easiest in my experience

that I just, of the three that I laid out. And it's more just additional localized fatigue, which then makes some of that other training a bit more difficult, or it just reduces your performance. Like your bench presses is not where it normally is because your triceps are just a lot more sore than they normally are because you're doing, you know, 30 to 50 percent more volume, direct volume for your triceps than you normally do. Yeah, it makes just a touch on kind of the amount you need to even see like progress.

I imagine you've been training now for way over a decade. Am I right? 20, no, 20 years, 20 years. I'm 38. So, yeah, OK, well, you're looking? No, 20 years, 20 years. I'm 38. So yeah, okay. Well, you're looking great for 38. Like doing very well. I'm not far behind you. I've been going for like 15, 16 years now, and I'm 32. So I'll be getting there at the same time. And I, but it makes sense in theory, your kind of minimum effective volume just to meet a threshold to just grow creeps up over time because the body is just, you end up getting that kind of anabolic resistance, which is like completely sucked. And genetically, I was really

not made to be big and strong. I have small wrists. I was, you know, I was, um, I was like an endurance guy. I played hockey and I was good at cardio. Um, but I have a small skeleton. I'm a little bit taller than average. So that works to my favor to some degree. And I took a genetic test some time ago, and I think there were two things. One was a gene, a polymorphism that was associated with higher than average testosterone levels, which I've never even done blood work, so I couldn't tell you what my testosterone is, but I just remember this from a genetic test. And then there was another one that was associated with recovery. And apparently they had seen that

one in a lot of high level athletes and you just, my body apparently, yeah, apparently is good at recovering. So maybe those genetic advantages have compensated some for what I lack anatomically because I do not have big bones. I was never a big, strong guy. I was like, again, as kind of a skinny, fast kid who got into weightlifting. I find the topic of genetics like completely fascinating, especially in relation to bodybuilding because you just brought up a great point. I kind of call it like genetics tot trumps because you're going to score well somewhere. Like there's so many things that influence genetics and that and genetics is

so huge part of bodybuilding and how big you're going to be but they impact everything from like mindset to like the things you mentioned in terms of frame size and muscle fiber type and recovery rates and injury proclivity that sort of thing so yeah people don't realize how much that can impact but um yeah one thing you mentioned was i thought very interesting about exercise selection which needs to be definitely brought in i think for specialization in that like you don't want to if you specialize legs you don't want to just like plow everything through like back squats it's probably gonna ruin you remember the old 10 remember the old 10 by 10 by 10s did you ever do that oh i i don't think i actually did that i go into like five through one and things like this so i luckily i didn't get into the German volume training.

Yeah, I distinctly remember the 10 by 10 squats. Although it might have been. Yeah, it might have been on a Smith machine. This was a long time ago. But but I remember for days after because the gym I was going to was upstairs. And I mean, I had to hobble down the stairs. I had to brace myself and hobble like sideways down the stairs for days after that. I thought that was cool at the time. I think to probably a lot of the audience,

that sounds quite cool. It sounds a bit cool to me still. I'm like, I'd be like, yes, Mike, nice. That's awesome awesome so at least if you were deloading the next week maybe not if you had like legs in a couple days like no chance but yeah it's a case of when you are specializing on a muscle group you probably want to really be careful with your exercise selection to at least have some movements in there that are less systemically fatiguing they don't be up the joints and ligaments and tissues like that so much so like for quads you would definitely want to be having a leg extension in there and you might just want to have more variation in general the more volume you're putting through a muscle group you probably want to spread that probably over higher frequencies

but also then probably more variation whether that at least be exercise rep range but also probably exercise selection as well so like quads you certainly want to have more than like a back squat a leg press you probably want to have like a leg extension in there as well and maybe even like a lunge pattern even for like the side delts at least two variants in there you don't want to just be dumbbell lateral raising like four or five times a week doing 30 sets or something you're just like the wear and tear on those joints and things won't be great and that's one of the benefits of like daily undulating periodization when that was huge like one of the biggest things is just you get to like provide a stimulus and wear and tear in one area and then it gets to recover and you kind of can use a similar area, but slightly different area of that kind of muscle tissue

because you're using different muscle fiber types and things by using a different rep range, for example. So yeah, I just wanted to touch on that because I think that's important. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. And I mean, I'd be curious as to your your thoughts on it. But I've always said that I don't think there is like a simple kind of one size fits all approach to that exercise selection. I think it really depends on the person and how much abuse their body can take. can take. But I think that it's definitely clear, yes, that if you're going to be doing 20 hard sets per week for your lower body, that is not going to be 20 sets of squats. It's just not. Unless those final five sets are going to be with like 135 on the bar, you know, if you're a guy or if you're a gal, like, you know, the bar or something or 50 pounds on either side or 25 on either side or something like that that's something again from mike israel brilliantly termed i think a lot of us inherently experience with exercises

is that stimulus to fatigue ratio how much of like the stimulus factors are we getting in terms of like pump disruption my muscle connection versus joint and connective tissue kind of uh fatigue and like systemic fatigue where we just feel wiped and there are some exercises like barbell back squats you probably get a lot of both they normally go hand in hand a little bit but like a deadlift that's always the joker in the pack like huge like stimulus within there but the fatigue cost you probably don't want that in a specialization routine full stop like so you have to be careful with these things and like you said it's going to differ person to person because we're all built slightly differently like a back squat could be perfect for someone whereas like someone else

might want to be doing the hack squat likewise different exercises so i like that stimulus fatigue ratio to individualize exercises and even like down to how they perform them in some ways you might perform it like within the realms of principled good technique but it looks slightly different to someone else because like you know know, everyone's N equals one. Like you have to individualize on that level once you're that advanced. Yeah. It's a good point with the deadlift too, that I think it's a great exercise. I mean, I deadlift every week, generally speaking, and I like it because it is a time efficient way to train basically everything on the backside of your body. So I do like it for that reason. And I don't agree with people who say that it has no place in a hypertrophy routine.

I understand why some people don't do it. I get that. But I think some sort of hip hinge, some sort of variation has many uses. Maybe it's not always just a conventional deadlift. Maybe sometimes it's a rack pull. Maybe it's an RDL. Maybe it's a trap bar.

However, to your point, in a specialization routine, the amount of fatigue that comes with the deadlift has to be taken into account. And I would say I have pretty good cardio, I have pretty good recovery, but the hardest shit I do, period, is at the beginning of my macro cycle. It's sets of 10 on all the big exercises. And so I'm doing four sets of 10 on the deadlift and pretty heavy for me. It might be my last round. It might've been 350 or so, something like that. And so by that fourth set, I'm probably at a true RAR of maybe two, one or two. I could get one or two more, but they're going to be grinders. And by the end of that fourth set, I could just leave,

go home and take a nap. I could, I don't, but that's how fatiguing it is. Just worth mentioning, because a lot of people listening probably also are deadlifting often. And if they are going to try some specialization, you can either drop it or maybe if you really like it, maybe drop down to one set per week. Yeah. Yeah. It's surprising. Even one set, like you'll stop the set and you'll be like, if you're reasonably strong,

you know, you've done a good amount of stimulus just from one set. It will feel wrong to do one set, but sometimes that's enough for some exercises. And I think it's very well said, like, I don't even, I don't like to think any exercises as long as they're not stupid, like a bozo ball squat for quad hypertrophy it's like that's not it's too unstable we're not doing that but they're like under the knowledge of just like decent exercises none that are bad like deadlift isn't bad necessarily it's just needs to be in the right context and thought about because you do have that high fatigue cost so i think that's well like you said you can step it back or you might move to like a Romanian deadlift,

straight leg deadlift that it's probably you're using less loads, less axial fatigue. So you can maybe get away with like still specializing on something else within that routine. But it's very time efficient. I can say that that's for sure.

Like it's not very time efficient when you're trying to do all these machines and isolate muscle groups. And that's one of the problems becoming advanced. It's also kind of fun, right? I mean, there aren't that many exercises where you get to that primal kind of rage and you get to move a lot of weight, you know? Yeah, I'm not sure if when I retire from like competitive bodybuilding, I think I'll just like, I'm going to have so much. Not that my training isn't fun, but there's an element of just like, I need to do this. I think I'll just like, I'm just going to have so much, not that my training isn't fun,

but there's an element of just like, I need to do this. I want to do this, but I should do this. Yeah. Yeah. It's there's, there's the discipline it takes to do what you need to do versus what you want to do.

That's like deloading for me. It takes discipline. I'm deloading this week. It's just boring. I'd much rather train and I have to force myself to not do those extra few reps, not do like, come on, you know, do your, do your four instead of your six or seven reps and

do your three sets instead of four. But I'm pretty good with it. I mean, I deal literally four weeks now and maybe that's a little bit conservative, so to speak. I might be able to push a bit further than that, but I have noticed some significant benefits on the recovery side of things just by being really quote unquote, good with my deloading as opposed to previously, I would just go and go and go until either everything was kind of hurting, or sleep was no longer good, or I would just get sick. Not that it was because of that. But you know, I would eventually after months and months get a cold or something and be like, all right, fine. I guess I'm out of the gym for a few days. I'm better with it now. It's so funny that on paper, the easier thing to do is quite often the harder thing to do for a lot of us. It's like, if you're dieting, I should take

a, I don't know, a diet break or what have you, or a refeed or what have you. If you're in contest prep, I don't want to do it. That's the hard to be it's more food it should be easier it's like this is the hard thing for me to have to do so i completely relate to that but yeah i deload normally every sixth week so i normally have five weeks and then i come off and go into a deload and then go through a cycle again but every deload i'm like like i don't want to do it though you i call it earning a deload like i have to do it i couldn't go for another week of hard training so it's like you mentioned it earning a deload like I have to do it like I couldn't go for another week of hard training so it's like you mentioned like either your deload or your deload your body will deload for you like you'll be forced into a corner at some point if you're training hard enough

exactly yeah let's talk about rep ranges so in the context of specialization and so let's say somebody is going to be doing 15 to 20 hard sets per week. This is an intermediate or an advanced weightlifter. What are your thoughts on rep ranges for that volume? So I tend to use like a 5 to 30 repetition rep range in practice. I tend with the literature is basically it seems to be so long as you're close enough to failure, you could use any kind of rep range. I think probably much past 30 and you see not as quite as good returns in terms of hypertrophy. And also who would ever want to do that? In practice, do I really use much above 20? No. So I normally use 10 to 20s. Like my

core of my work is done in the 10 to 20 rep range that tends to provide, again, the best stimulus fatigue ratio, less than five reps. I think you just find yourself getting so fatigued from that style of training and it's more strength focused, I would say. It's not that it can't cause hypertrophy. I think you could include some into a program that was smartly made, but I think generally you'll get more bang for your buck from five plus. So I tend to use that spectrum. And then I think some exercises are just inherently better in certain rep ranges.

So like a leg extension, I don't really program that less than 10 reps 10 reps tend to find that just to be pretty unproductive and like you just feel it all through the knees whereas that can work really well in that 10 to 20 rep range whereas something like a barbell back squat i'm not doing that for more than 15 reps maybe 15 is the highest i probably normally go you said so 15 i mean i haven't barbell back squat for a while i've been doing the hack squat but maybe i'd go up to 15 at most. But normally it's going to be in that like 5 to 10 rep range. It's more suited to that or like deadlifts, as you say, like deadlifts off the floor.

Actually, any hip hinge. I'm not going above like 12 reps, maybe up to 12. But normally they're in the lower rep range. Those like big compound lifts, they tend to favor those lower rep ranges. Then the isolation lifts where you need to use a lighter load just for like stability purposes and to be able to properly isolate a muscle so then that kind of already selects itself in a way when you have your exercises there and then i tend to find some

people just feel certain rep ranges better than others some people go into a rep range they're just like i just feel like i'm going through the motions with this i kind of feel tired and i don't really feel anything in the muscle particularly. So you might be able to kind of pick it via that, but I would kind of undulate through the week. So I might have probably normally I start a bit heavier at the start of the week when you're a bit more fresh. Normally after like a weekend where maybe there's been one rest day or maybe two and it's the start of your week. So normally start a bit heavier there. And then as kind of you fatigue through the week, I tend to find I use a bit more of the higher rep ranges through the latter half of the week where you don't need to necessarily be as fresh to do like a set of like, you know, 15 reps on a leg press versus

like you need to be quite fresh for your set of five on a back squat, for example. So I tend to kind of undulate it through the week like that. So I might have like, if it was a three day per week frequency for quads, say it might be something like a five to ten rep range for the barbell back squat normally i'd probably have more than one exercise but if i'm just using one exercise in a session it might then be like a 10 to 15 on the leg press and then like a 15 to 20 on like a leg extension i tend to find that kind of undulation pattern and that kind of heavy through to light tends to work really nicely in terms of like allowing someone to still get good chunk of volume done, but not just like squats, five to 10 squats, five to 10 squats,

five to 10 is probably a bit unmanageable. That's interesting because I find in my training that it's the other way around. I find that the higher, uh, rep and, and, you know, you could say higher volume, but volume can mean different things depending on, okay, are we talking about sets? Are we talking about reps? Are we talking about poundage? But I find in general with the more difficult exercises, if it's a biceps curl, but that might even be the case still. Now I'm thinking about doing heavier biceps curls versus lighter. So when I'm pushing close to failure, which is all of my working sets, I mean, I'm always trying to, you know, stay in that one to two good reps left range. Maybe my first set is like a three, but by the time I'm into set four,

you know, I want it to be pretty hard. And I find that the higher rep training is a lot more fatiguing, both systemically and peripherally, and it just drains me more. So for example, if I'm starting with a set of, if I'm doing four sets of 10 on the back squat, and then I'm gonna move on to do a leg press or some other lower body exercise, maybe a lunge or whatever, and then maybe there's gonna be some hamstring work in there as well.

And I've seen this now a number of times, even in my sheets, tracking all of of my training that my performance falls off more actually in those subsequent exercises. When I start with that, with those sets of 10 versus sets of even two, I, I do twos even in my, in my trainings toward the end of a macro cycle. And, and because I like to do it. And I, you know, it's, I think that there's an argument to be made, maybe not so much for bodybuilding specifically, but for general physique, I think there's an argument to be made to combine some strength training with some bodybuilding. But regardless, what I find is that that heavier training is harder on my joints. I'll feel that more in my knees. I'll feel it more in my back, in my hips, but it is significantly less fatiguing. So I'll

see, for example, I'll do those sets of two, maybe four sets of two with, you know, 95% on the bar, pretty heavy. And then I'll move on to those other exercises my performance will be significantly better on those subsequent exercises anyway i've just uh yeah that that's that's how it plays out for me just thinking wonder if it's because i tend to bias the higher rep ranges to like quote unquote easier exercises so they don't fatigue you quite as much whereas if i was doing them with like you said like those harder lifts, the bigger compound lifts, then they probably would just like completely wreck me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can say, for example, um, I haven't, I haven't discussed this with, with anybody. I'd be curious. I'm going to keep this in mind when I have random discussions, but those, those four sets of 10, uh, like I said, on the deadlift is the absolute hardest 15 minutes of any of my workouts that I do.

And again, I'll see that in my numbers in the following exercises versus doing, you know, four sets of two or four sets of four with significantly more weight, which might seem like that must be harder because the weight is higher. But again, for me, what I found is, and I do believe there's some research on this as well, that it's the number of reps. If we look at volume that way, that's what really drives fatigue for me with those more difficult exercises. I might not notice it yet with a set of 10 reps of a biceps curl or something. But I would suspect if I really paid attention to it, it probably would be the same. Again, that's just how at least my body responds to training.

Yeah, four sets of, I would pick four sets of two reps versus four sets of 10 if I was going for the easier workout for short. Like four sets, especially on a deadlift, man even a squat like I definitely pick that I mean it's cardio by set three or set four it's cardio you do well to do that in 15 minutes I'd be like man that'd take me like an hour session I just feel it done I can't yeah yeah yeah maybe I mean you know I'm resting probably about three and a half minutes

in between those sets and i don't certainly by by set three or four i don't want to do it and and so but i know that like by three and a half max four minutes i'm recovered and i don't want to do it uh but it's not because i need more time. You just got to gut it out. So coming back to rep ranges with specialization. So there'd be a number of rep ranges. And it sounds like, and this makes sense, that you would stick with as a baseline, stick with the rep ranges that are best suited to the exercises that you're doing that produce the best training stimulus for you. No, yeah, totally. And then you might decide right i i want to have a spectrum of rep ranges because i believe that has benefits

but then you might decide right especially if you're intermediate or advanced right for sure and then you might decide right this exercise and rep range just seems to be like producing way less fatigue and way more stimulus and that's the one that you prioritize adding maybe set volume to you're like the other ones you maybe keep a bit more behind and that's how you can kind of pick and choose your battles a little bit there yeah i think also you just need to keep to keep in mind um how your joints are faring right because again those those heavy sets particularly uh with the compound exercises are, are tough on the joints. It's not that it's quote unquote bad for your joints, but, um, there's, you would not be able to, if you, let's say you just wanted to do a lot of squatting for whatever reason you

wanted to do 15 to 20 sets of squatting per week, there's no way you're going to be able to do sets of fives for like your, your, your knees and your hips and your back is just going to give out. So I think there's the, there's the muscular fatigue. There's just the systemic fatigue, but probably something to be said also for just keep, yeah, just keeping your joints jointing and not, not getting to a point where it's now painful and you can't even do the additional volume you need to do because it hurts. Yeah. And that's where I think even,

especially for like a squat, you could modify it to try and improve. Like if you're like, I'm using squats to build my quads, then use a weightlifting shoe, maybe even pause at the bottom in the hole a little bit to make it less less like risky on the joints and things. So you can do little things like that. Yeah. Cause then you can take weight

off the bar, right? For people, if you, I don't know if, if people have never done pause squats, um, those are also used in strength training, like pure strength training as well. Those are, those are nice in that you can get a really good training stimulus with a bit less weight, which is now a bit easier on your joints, right? A hundred percent. And then I think actually a good point with the joint and connective tissue is the fact that you you might not be able to just like prioritize on that muscle group for like ever because like when you do run high volume routines that's one of the things that ends up like you can only do it for a certain period of time before that all catches up is the duration what are your thoughts on duration so i i tend to find like i actually haven't like i said actually in practice i haven't ran that

many with people when i do it's not normally to like a large extreme in terms of like we're absolutely specializing on this but if i was to do it i i like to think that there's some kind of i would call it like directed adaptation in that there's like, you get the ball rolling and you see a bit of a snowball effect. So I like to at least run two mesocycles worth, because I think one is kind of like, you just kind of get in that momentum going. So I'd like at least two, maybe up to four. And I think after that period of time, that's quite a lot already. So I would probably rotate it after that. How long would that be? Because, you know, mesocycles, the length can be different. It sounds like you have a six week

from what you were saying. So, yeah, I tend to have five weeks of accumulation, one week deload. And that's how I tend to go about things. But for my kind of that intermediate to advanced trainee, they might find they're four to like six to maybe actually four to eight weeks,

even depending like a female who's less advanced. They might be able to extend that a little bit more. But in general, like that be then uh if you're doing it for at least two so 10 weeks up to like doing it for uh 20 weeks that would probably be where i'd look to do it for yeah yeah that that makes sense to me i uh three to four months seem to be a sweet spot for me personally and and that's that's what my I have four month macro cycles right now and other things can work of course, but I find that to be workable for me where it's four weeks,

four months of these four week mesocycles, three weeks of hard training, one week of deload, do that for four months, progressing from lighter weights and more reps. So more volume in that sense to heavier weights and fewer reps, and then ending with some AMRAP unless, unless I've been cutting, which I was cutting for probably about six to eight weeks. So there's no point to AMRAP. Well, yeah, I'm weak. I know I don't need to AMRAP to tell me I'm weak, but if I'm at least around maintenance calories, then it's fun to end with put some heavy weight on the bar and see what i can do at least for the big exercises yeah and i think that the amraps is great because especially as you're an advanced trainee which

anyone who's most people who are listening to this and going to specialization are going to be performance is our key indicator for whether or not we're actually growing and gaining muscle tissue because like you said at this stage like a pound or so, like a year, we're pretty decent. So can you see that visually in the mirror? It's pretty hard. So especially when you're in the thick of like a surplus, probably you're gaining more fat tissue than you are muscle. Yeah, you just kind of look a little bit fatter. Exactly. You don't know why. Did I get fatter or is that muscle? I don't know. fatter exactly you don't know why you don't did i get fatter or is that muscle i don't know exactly so uh performance is great then you can kind of see okay so i think i've been doing a good job with this specialization routine let's pick a whatever if we're doing quads let's look at my

amrap for my back squat that should probably should be improving kind of in that deload and as i'm doing that amrap so i can compare performance over time so i think that's yeah a great example yeah yeah exactly and that that's that's a great example. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's what I use it for. I use it to gauge progress and then to kind of recalibrate my training weights up or down. I mean, again, depending on mostly for me, it's depending on nutrition and sleep. And the nutrition is just calories, just energy balance. Am I in a deficit or am I maintaining? But maintenance, as you know, to stay lean, unfortunately, really what that means is you're just in a deficit, even if it's a slight deficit, more often than you're in a slight surplus. If you want to stay

pretty lean, you can never eat exactly the amount of calories, of course, that you're burning. And so you have to err on the side of under eating, not overeating, and then compensate for that by occasional bouts of overeating. If you just notice that you've lost a little bit of weight, you do it the other way. I guess you can do it the other way, but it's just not what most of us tend to do, right? Most of us tend to just, if we want to stay lean, we're going to err on the side of eating too little, not too much, right? Yeah. I think it's just human nature to tend to eat a little bit too much. And especially in like our modern society with all the palatable food, it's just way too easy. So you keep a lot of those like diet habits. So you eat lean proteins, lots of fruit and veg. And then, yeah, you just were

like, oh, like I seem to have lost a chunk of weight here. You know, I almost have that like refeed to get you back up. And so, yeah, that's a different, I guess that's a point of which you make these sacrifices when you want that six pack year round. And I, I can, I can see why you might want to have that. Yeah. I mean, again, for, for me, I guess I just kind of like it and you could say maybe it's good for my work, uh, to some degree. And I don't, I don't compete. Um, so, you know, and, and on the whole, I'm pretty happy with my physique. And so I don't know, it just, it just, that, that 10 ish percent body fat range for me is a nice spot to maintain. And I can, I can enjoy my lifestyle too. I don't have to make any major sacrifices. I don't have to be neurotic about my food. I don't have to weigh and measure everything. I can

just kind of eat the stuff I like. I know the portions and make little adjustments here and there depending on what I see in the mirror. And so that's why I do it. I mean, I can, I can see the absolute appeal, especially the position I'm in right now, where it's like, like you said, the kind of the diminishing returns are absolutely real at this stage of your bodybuilding career. Once you're like 15 years in the amount of effort you have to put forth to gain the smallest amount is like ludicrous, but I'm a competitor and I want to do my best and I still have some more years in me. So we'll see how we go. But I'm very tempted by the like maintenance kind of more comfortable eating and being a bit leaner.

It'll be like your retirement, basically. That's retirement. Yeah, I can enjoy that for a little bit. Well, this was this was a great discussion, Steve. I really appreciate you taking the time to do it. And why don't we wrap up with where people can find you and find your work? If there's anything in particular you want them to know about, let's let them know. For sure. Yeah. Thank you so much again, Mike. It's been a great chat and I appreciate being invited on. I'm mostly present on Instagram. So I'm Revive Stronger over on Instagram and our website is ReviveStronger.com. There you can find everything from online coaching to the podcast

and things like this. So yeah, if people want to look over there, that'd be amazing. And again, thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, my pleasure. 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 muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, Mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.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.