WHOOP Podcast - Brad Schoenfeld: Resistance Training Tips from a Champion Bodybuilder

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by fitness expert Brad Schoenfeld. Brad is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on body composition training. He is a lifetime drug-free bodybuilder and has won numerous natural bodybuilding titles. Kristen and Brad will discuss the definition of hypertrophy and resistance training as well as their benefits (2:50), getting started with resistance training (6:35), outlining a muscle-building program (8:05), the utility of a one rep max (10:42), training recommendations for different age groups (16:00), lifting cadence and recovery techniques (20:25), nutritional recommendations (25:50), adding cardio into a workout and warmup (28:15), incorporating rest in between sets (32:05), and the process of progressive overload (33:55).Resources:Brad’s WebsiteSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome back to the The Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop. We're on a mission to unlock human performance. This week's episode, Whoop VP of Performance Science. Our fearless principal scientist, Kristen Holmes, is joined by fitness expert Brad Schoenfeld. Brad is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on body composition training. He's a lifetime, drug, free bodybuilder and has won numerous natural bodybuilding titles. Brad is the best-selling author of multiple fitness books, including The Max Muscle Plan, which is widely referred to as the muscle building Bible, and strong and sculpt, which details a cutting-edge body sculpting program targeted to women. In total, Brad's books have sold over a half million copies. Kristen and Brad will discuss the definition of muscle hypertrophy and resistance training. They also touch on the benefits of both and how it impacts your short and long-term health, how to create and get started on a resistance training program, workout recommendations for various age groups.

Did you know children as young as five or six can lift weights if properly supervised? I didn't know that. The optimal recovery times for muscle groups, how to balance your nutritional and cardio needs with a resistance training program, and the idea of progressive overload. I'm also excited to share we've got a whole new slate of whoop blue light blocking glasses. That's right. They're back. They're in stock.

We've got new fully adjustable sleep mask. The benefits of blue light blocking glasses are that they increase your recovery. I'm obsessed with them. I've been wearing them for years. They truly improve your recovery, your sleep. You wear them 30 to 90 minutes before bed and you just feel way better getting into bed. If you're looking to join whoop, you can sign up for free. How about that?

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We'll answer your questions in a future episode. here are Kristen Holmes and Brad Schoenfeld. So for today's conversation, we're going to focus on muscle growth, also known as hypertrophy. To lay the foundation, Brad, I'd love for you to start by defining hypertrophy and if you can also kind of simultaneously define strength training as well. And then we can kind of dig into where they're similar and where they're different. Yeah, sure.

Hyperchophy is in simple terms, the growth in and we're talking about muscle hypertrophy, the growth of muscle tissue. And that can be measured in multiple ways. We can look at muscle thickness, which is a single dimensional measurement. We can look at a cross-sectional area, which is a two-dimensional measurement or a volume, which is the entire muscle. That would be a three-dimensional measurement. There's many ways that muscle can be measured, MRI, ultrasound, dex.

And some of them, I don't know how deep you want to go, but some of them are more. accurate than others in that realm. And strength training, I like to use the term resistance training. I mean, strength training, if you're talking about training for strength, because that's the connotation it gives, that would be different from the catch-all, which is resistance training. So resistance training is using any type of resistance to create force on the muscles, whereas to me, strength training is a focus on gaining strength, which is not necessarily, and on gaining hypertrophy, although there is a relationship between hypertrophy and strength. There are other factors that go into gaining strength outside of hypertrophy.

From the standpoint of just benefits, I know there's overlap and there's a lot of similarities in the benefits between growing muscles and getting stronger. Are there any benefits, I guess, with hypertrophy training versus strength training that people need to understand. Yeah. So first of all, it's population specific, it's goal specific. You know, most younger individuals are training for aesthetics. Not all, but certainly based on my previous experience as a personal trainer, the vast majority of people that came in were less concerned about maxing the strength and more concerned about how they look. As people get older, strength becomes a much greater importance because it's important to dependence or independence

for your dependence on others to help you to carry out activities versus your ability to carry out those activities. So certainly that would be somewhat context dependent. But I mean if you're asking there are certainly other benefits besides aesthetics to muscle itself. And one of them, from a health standpoint, being the size of a muscle will be related to the amount of glucose that can be stored in that muscle. So thus conceivably, larger muscles can help to reduce insulin insensitivity. If you can store more glucose, you're going to have greater, or a lesser chance of being insulin resistance and a lesser chance of ultimately becoming diabetic. But look, from a health standpoint, I think strength is the more important.

if you're asking my personal opinion, I think there's certainly good evidence to back that up. Strength, especially over time, is going to be the more important factor from a health standpoint, but people need to train based on their goals. And it's not up to me or you or anyone else to tell someone why they should be training.

Yeah. Yeah, I love how you always say that everything is context-dependent. And people, when they go in to start any activity, they'd be thinking about their goals. and their level experience. And maybe are there different considerations, you know, if you're a beginner, do you think, do you start with strength or do you start with hypertrophy? What would be your personal or your opinion based on the research that you found?

So neither. Oh, okay. You should, in my opinion, you should focus on learning movements. So it's motor learning, basically. It should be the focus in the initial one, two, three months or so. So your initial phase of training should, at least the way I approach it and always have, is to try to ingrain the movement patterns into the subconscious. Once you have mastered the movement patterns, then you focus on whatever it is,

you are, then it's goal dependent. So I personally feel that the most important thing, and I think it's kind of tough to argue with it, that if you don't know how to do a movement, you're not going to be able to move to the next step. So if you're performing something poorly, you're not going to, it'll, you'll have suboptimal results, whether it's strength, hypertrophy, muscle endurance, or whatever. So learning those movements is central to taking that next step. Amazing. So what would be, you know, if we're starting, maybe we can kind of move through beginner, intermediate, advanced. And, you know, if the goal is to increase muscle size, what would be kind of the, the, the, the repetition?

competitions, you know, the frequency, kind of how would you program across those three levels? Broadly, I know, obviously, it's, you know, there's non-competition folks. So just kind of thinking about the general population, but someone who's beginner versus intermediate versus experience. So from my perspective, the training should become more individualized and specialized as you become more advanced in the sense from a volume perspective that when you're first, when you're an intermediate and first developing your muscle, you just want to develop all the muscles as much as they will develop. But as you start to become somewhat more advanced, you then want to look at what muscles are more well developed and which muscles are less well developed.

And you can allocate more volume to the muscles that are less developed and less volume to the muscles that are more well developed. So that your overall training volume doesn't change that much from the total amount of work that you're doing, total amount of sets that you're doing across all muscles, but that you're apportioning it, kind of like a budget towards muscles that might need it more. And again, this is where the art of training comes in.

So there are no cookie cutter. I know everyone wants to just do this many sets and this many reps. And that's just not the way it works in an applied science. We all, if that worked that way, everyone would be Mr. Olympia because everyone would have the same physique. And that just doesn't happen. So we respond differently as humans. So volume certainly is an important concern.

I think one of the most important things that, probably the most important thing from a hypertrophy standpoint, is proximity to failure. So training close to failure. I think the literature is now showing that we don't necessarily need to train to failure, certainly at least all the time, whether some failure training might be beneficial is somewhat equivocal, but I think the evidence is becoming fairly clear that you can achieve optimal

hyperch fee if you're within a couple reps of failure. But you need to train, that's still training very hard. You're training a couple of reps away from failure. And I think most people don't know their proximity to failure. and most people never really have trained. To know how far you are away from failure, you need to train to failure. And thus training really hard is important. And perhaps then some failure training might be beneficial, particularly as you're getting more advanced.

And again, these are individual things that you can't just give a one-size-fits-all. Talk about the utility of a one-wrap max and kind of understanding where that kind of moderate-to-heavy load might actually be for you. Yeah. So personally, I don't think having a 1RM, if you're looking for hypertrophy, to me, I think it's pretty irrelevant. I think you want to pick a repetition range. So I'll give you, for instance, let's say you want to train at 80% of your 1RM on squats. For you, that might be 10 reps. For another person, it might be 15 reps. For another person, it might be 6 reps. So the variation between individuals in percent. 1RM versus a submax lift is very vast. And by the way, I'll give you a better, for instance. We carried out a study some time ago where we had subjects going to failure with a leg press at 75% 1RM and 30% 1RM. In the 75% 1RM, the variation, we had 11 well-trained subjects.

The variation in reps went from 7 to 21. Someone got seven reps at 75% and the highest than 21. At 30%, it was, if I'm recalling, somewhere around 22 in the lowest and 72 or 70 something in the highest. So, I mean, a 50 repetition range across individuals. So again, it really underscores the importance that you can't use a 1RM to predict a sub. one, a submax repetition. So for me, you want to look at repetition zones from a hypertrophy standpoint. Now, if you're looking for strength, then your 1RM is going to be, of course, much more important

because training closer to your 1RM is going to be mandatory if you want to maximize your 1RM. Right. But from a hypertrophy standpoint, I tend to look more in loading zones. So you, let's say, have a heavier loading zone, three to five reps, a moderate repetition. zone 8 to 12 and a higher rep zone 15 20 25 plus and from that context um they're really up to at least 30 plus reps some perhaps probably even a little higher uh it really does not make much difference on a whole muscle level which rep range you train it the literature and this is something i've kind of done a 180 on over the years when i was an up-and-coming student it had always been

preach that you should train in this magical hypertrophy zone of 8 to 12 reps and that it's going to increase your hormonal, milure, and other factors which will maximize results. And really, that is not pandat in research from our lab and others. I think to me, this is one of the most compelling bodies of evidence of any of the variables, probably the most compelling, that you can achieve whole muscle hypertrophy across a broad spectrum of ranges. Now, with that said, I do think that it makes sense to train in a majority of your sets within that moderate rep range, kind of 8 to 12, 6 to 12. But I do think there's at least some evidence that using some lighter and heavier load

sprinkled in also can enhance that effect. And it's possible, although there's certainly conflicting evidence on this, that you might be able to alter fiber type differences, is where lighter loads might target your type 1 fibers to a greater extent, and your heavier loads, somewhat heavier loads, might target your type 2 fibers. I think that's an area that needs more exploration, although I'm becoming less convinced that that might be the case.

But I do think we do have some evidence that for various other reasons, there might be beneficial effects of training across the spectrum of loading ranges. Do you think, are there any... different recommendations you would have from in terms of just age. So if you're just starting out, do you recommend children, you know, lift and what would that recommendation be? And then kind of as we age, you know, just wanted to get your kind of opinion across the age spectrum and what you'd recommend, you know, differently or maybe it's the same.

No, absolutely. So first of all, I think children should start lifting as soon as they are mentally mature enough. so they have to be able to focus, you know, if they're all over the place. But I mean, children as young as five and six, certainly, depending on their mental maturity, can start to lift. Now, I personally would start them with lighter loads. Well, I would start anyone with lighter loads, but even maintain fairly somewhat lighter loads, at least throughout the majority of childhood and into adolescence. When I say lighter, I wouldn't be doing singles and doubles, you know, one-arms.

But, I mean, five, six reps plus I think would be appropriate in that age group. Can you just do a little myth-busting around strength training and hindering the development of puberty and, you know, just would love to get clear the air there? Zero evidence of that. Zero evidence that it will stunt children's growth. And in fact, so the issue with growth is always centered on that it negatively affects the growth plates, which there is no evidence of. What can affect the growth plates negatively is an injury to the bone. And where might, now, could that happen in resistance training? It can if you're not careful.

But if you are in a supervised format, which, by the way, any children, I would certainly recommend that they do that, certainly until they're, teenagers in a supervised environment. I wouldn't generally recommend an eight-year-old be just going into the basement, lifting on their own or even a gym. But the chances of getting hurt and people, you know, parents have their children play sports. The chances of getting a bone injury in basketball or soccer or football, certainly, is much greater, much, much greater than it is in resistance training, and that's where you can get an injury to the bone that would affect the growth plates and potentially stunt growth. So I think parents worrying about that or people in general worrying about that is a little

disingenuous if you're going to have your kids play sports, and I don't see most parents not allowing their children to play sports. And from an older person's standpoint, it again will then be individual-specific now, generally speaking so as people age there's a high incidence of osteoarthritis and bone-related issues which often will if not contraindicate heavier loads make them uncomfortable to use so that's an area where utilizing lighter loads it's really beautiful that training with lighter loads has a really a very high beneficial effect on muscle development. It is not as great for strength, although you still will get stronger, and I will argue that from a functional standpoint, you'll probably, I don't think it's going to make a much difference in an older person's ability to carry out functional tasks. Most people are not looking to maximally lift, push something, especially most older people. They're looking

for more muscle endurance related, the functional aspects of aging are on muscle endurance related qualities, which would be very specific to the right or low training as well. What I would say is you get older, and this is not really a hypertrophy factor, but one of the most detrimental effects on aging is the loss of power. And power is strength over time, basically. It's the ability to carry out force over time and again one of the most detrimental things that occurs is a fall so older people often will have a fall they'll break their hip and the last statistics I've seen is that something like 50 plus percent of those of elderly individuals who get a hip fracture never recover from that injury and that is a function

of power so if you are falling the ability to reverse directly and retain your balance is basically a function of power. So it's strength, but you have to be able to enforce that strength in a very short period of time. And there is emerging evidence that training with faster concentric repetitions, more explosive concentric repetitions, will help to improve the power, particularly in older individuals. Our group carried out a meta-analysis on this topic and found a modest benefit. fit to at least doing some training with faster concentric actions. It doesn't mean that all your sets need to be done fast concentrically, but at least

including some training that involves fast concentric actions would be appropriate. Amazing. Help me, would you recommend folks, you know, lift five days a week, just alternating muscle groups? Like, what would you, do you have a sense of what's most effective? So you can get bigger muscles with a fairly basic type of routine and fairly low volume routine. So there's an added value to volume, but the plateau, so it's not like you just get a linear increase. As you start getting more and more sets, the added value of those sets becomes less.

It doesn't mean it's non-existent, and at some point it does become non-existent. But this is why it is, like I said, would depend upon if you just want bigger muscles, you say, yeah, someone wants to come in, you get your average guy who's coming in or gal and says, I want to get bigger muscles. A three-day-a-week routine, four-day-week routine would be certainly sufficient. If you're talking about a bodybuilder, I think some of that training, if you're asking me how I would program, it would generally be in cycles and blocks of training where that would go from somewhat lower frequency to higher.

And I think at some point you need to be, at least for a short period of time, to get in the sufficient volume to maximize results at a five or six day a week frequency. But the majority of training, I think, if you structure it properly, can be carried out quite well within three to four days. And would you say you need 24 hours, 48 hours before kind of hitting the same muscle group again? like what would be that recovery time between you wouldn't want to lift your quadriceps, for example, you know, two days in a row. So kind of what do you think is the, what does the research say in terms of how much time you need between training muscle groups? So it's interesting.

There is actually some conflicting evidence on this. And there's been a few studies that seem that have suggested, well, one in particular, although it was never published, suggested that training six days a week, the same muscles over and over was actually more effective than doing it three days a week. But more recent evidence, our group published a study on this. It, interestingly, doesn't seem to show as much of a detriment depending upon how it's structured if the volumes are lower in each session. But personally, I don't think that's the best way to train. And I think having 48 hours rest between muscles is generally a good rule of thumb. Now, remember, outside of the lower body, or even with

depending upon how you structure lower body training, that can be an issue. But when you train the upper body, there's going to be overlap. So you think, let's say you're doing a back, so you're training your back, you're getting your biceps involved. So then if you're going to train your biceps on the same day or a different day, if you're training it on a different day, can you train it the next day? Or do you have to now then, let's say you're doing your shoulders and your chest, your triceps generally are going to be involved, at least in some of those movements.

So again, there's going to be, it starts to get somewhat hazy when you're talking about direct versus indirect effects. And even by the way, people often don't consider this, but a lat pulldown works the sternal portion of the pecs. Now, how much work does that get? Is that really going to fatigue the chest where you're not going to be able to come back the next day? I think that's highly debatable. but it's just pointing out that it's not clean, like a lot of people think that when you're training back, you're just working your back muskulature. The body doesn't work in that context.

What are some of the recovery modalities that you recommend, you know, for folks who are really trying to make gains and are, you know, in the gym, you know, five, six days a week? Are there kind of certain things that you recommend from a recovery modality? Well, rest. So, but to me, the most important recovery modality is an active recovery. You don't want to just be lying on your bed because blood flow itself delivering your body, quote unquote, recovers through nutrient delivery, and that is facilitated through greater blood flow, which is diminished when you are very sedentary. So doing some type of walking, other than that, a lot of it comes down to personal preference.

I think a massage can be, I don't think that necessarily helps with recovery, that it's necessarily beneficial from a mechanistic standpoint. But I think anything that mentally makes you feel better, such as foam rolling, massage can be effective in that respect, although I don't feel that most of those modalities have good evidence from a mechanistic standpoint. I think there's some good evidence that psychologically they can make you feel like you're better recovered, which is going to get you better workouts, which is fine. So a placebo effect can be very good. Yeah, absolutely. But whether that actually is doing anything to you, I'm still not convinced. I know you spend a lot of time in the nutrition world. Are there any things

from a nutritional standpoint that you would recommend protein immediately post-training or, yeah, or anything you can say about, I think protein would be really beneficial for our listeners. Yeah, so getting in enough protein daily, I think is A number one, is the critical factor. And that's going to be if your resistance training, a minimum of around 1.6 grams per kilogram a day. And probably I generally recommend a little higher as a safety margin, around 2 grams per kilogram, which is just under a gram per pound or so for our American. American friends. The rest of the world is on the metric system. Totally.

The timing aspect is another area where I've done kind of a 180 on. I used to feel it was a very important, so even critical factor. And now, again, the more recent evidence seems to show that if it has a benefit, it's going to be small. And I generally think that as long as you're spacing out your protein across three to four meals a day, they're fairly evenly spaced throughout the day, the timing is superfluous. It kind of takes care of itself. So it's good to hear that we don't have to freak out about the timing necessarily as long as we're kind of spreading it out through the day throughout the day. I would say bodybuilders probably are thinking about like getting a right after training. You said it's

marginal, but there probably is. So if you're a bodybuilder, I to me do recommend that bodybuilders take a protein shake immediately after training. And I say immediately in close proximity to their following their training bout because there's no downside to it. If there's a benefit, it's going to be small. But for a bodybuilder, small differences can be the difference between potentially winning and losing a competition. I don't think for the average individual, it's going to make any difference visually.

But when your body fat's very low and you can add, you know, a few extra ounces of muscle, even, that could be practically meaningful. What would you say from the standpoint of, you know, if folks are adding cardio, is there, I know the general recommendation is, again, it's probably going to differ, you know, from person to person, but would you say that if my focus is on my lifting program and I'm really interested in muscle growth, should I prioritize that first and do cardio, second, you know, what would be the order of operation from your standpoint? Yeah. So if you're going to do the cardio and lifting in the same session, you prioritize. And as a general rule, cardio is going to

negatively or can negatively affect your lifting session. There really is no good evidence that lifting negatively affects your cardio session to much of a degree. But that would also be dependent upon what you do in the cardio session. So certainly prioritize lifting. If your goal, to maximize muscle building strength. There is evidence that if you do cardio first, you're going to have negative effects on your lifting session. Yeah. Is there any evidence? I guess I'd love to hear what you recommend for a warm up before lifting, you know, to really maximize your lifting session. You know, what should you do in advance of the session? So this kind of comes down to where you're coming from. So if you're coming out of a cold environment,

Like if you're walking in the cold to a gym, I'd recommend getting on a bike or a treadmill and doing a five, 10 minute, you know, brief warm up, general warm up. When it comes to a specific, so, and by the way, if you're warm, it really, that's generally not going to be a issue from a lifting standpoint.

And we've, I can get into, we actually carried out a study on this. If, if the goal is, lifting heavy, then I recommend doing some specific warm-up sets with the lighter weights. So let's say you're going to do a 3RM, you're looking to get a 3-RM, your best served by doing, let's say, a warm-up set with 50% of your 1RM, and then go up, so let's say 8 reps at 50%, and then do 4 or 5 reps at 75%, and then do your 3RM. if you're training in the moderate to higher rep range above certainly eight or so reps

really no no good reason that you need to do a specific warm-up and we actually carried out a study where we had groups do we had the same individuals and they were kind of was a crossover study but they did just the resistance training with some maximum weights eight to 10 reps we had another time they did a general warm-up and another time they did a specific warm-up and another time they did a general and a specific warm-up before the lifting really did not have an effect.

Now, where it starts to become a little more complicated is with your more complex exercises. So if you're going to squat, I think that's an area where you might consider doing a specific warm-up just to kind of get the groove to a squat and that again is more specific to the individual depending upon how heavy you're going to squat and other factors the absolute not the relative but for the most part above

eight reps or so the warm up seems to become superfluous okay yeah I definitely know like when I'm cold it takes me a couple a couple sets to get into it so yeah I think for me for me for be person. I know you always say this, you know, it's context-dependent and it's very personal. So people just have to figure out what works best for them. I'd love to get into just as we kind of wrap things up, I just have a couple pretty specific questions. When we're talking about kind of rest between sets for hypertrophy, look, what, you know, how much time do I need between sets, generally speaking? So as a general rule, two to three minutes.

minutes rest seems to be, I don't want to say optimal, but two to three minutes rest seems to be a good general rule of thumb. However, that is more specific to multi-joint exercise, particularly more complex exercises. For your smaller muscle groups, so single joint exercises, generally you could get away with 90 seconds or so, so somewhat shorter rest. So this is where, again, it's going to somewhat depend upon your time factor. Now, if you're going to take three minutes rest, you're going to be, it's going to limit the amount of sets that you can do. And I think that this, we actually just carried out a study that was recently published,

showing there's not really much difference between two and three minutes rest. So, again, somewhat specific to the individual, some people buffer a lactic acid to a greater extent. But when you're training with your moderate rep range, So 10-R-M, 12-R-M, two minutes rest at least in the squat, which is a really taxing exercise. Yeah. And the leg extension did not seem to have differential benefits. There seemed to be a greater negative effect of one-minute rest versus two-minute rest in the squat than on the leg extension.

So that's why, again, for your smaller muscle groups, your single-joint exercises, there does seem to be. less of a reason to take somewhat long arrest into this. Okay. So from the perspective of just within a program, if you could just kind of talk about progressive overload quickly and why it's important for muscle growth. Yeah, so the basis of progressive overload is to progressively challenge your muscles beyond their present state.

And this is actually, I think, an area where a lot of people don't understand the term, Because progressive overload, I think because the term load is in the word, they think that it's just making weight heavier over time. And that certainly is one way to progressively overload. But you can progressively overload using higher volumes, greater frequency, shorter restorations, increased density of training. So more training, more work in less time, more stimulus, and other manners. So I think this is a key point here that you can use different techniques.

It's not like you have to use one or the other. You can meld those techniques into your training, and that's why training really is an art. I would also say that I'll let you provide this context. We carried out a study where we looked at, we had one group do. So they started at a 10RM for their squat. we did a lower body. So squat, leg extension, calf raise, straight leg calf rays, and bent leg calf rays.

They started out at a 10RM. One group, and this was fully supervised, trained individuals. We had them increase the load as they were getting stronger, keeping that 10RM. So they tried to keep that 10 repetition. The other group, we kept them at whatever weight they started at, they used for the entire training program. And they just did more reps. So it was all training to failure. and at the end of the study, no differences in hyperchial.

Both are effective. Which really underscores the fact that it's, there's more than one way to, or my favorite saying is many roads lead to gains. Yeah, I love that. You can use different approaches and they're equally effective in this matter. That's awesome. I mean, some people just prefer more reps and lighter weight, you know, just not, you know, and other people really like the heavier weight.

And you can mix and match. You can do a block where you are increasing reps on the next block. You can look to increase the load and continue. So it really is specific to the individual and how they decide to what they enjoy and how they decide to program. Right, right. Cool. Okay, final question.

We asked us to all of our guests this question. What are you obsessing over right now? What am I, well, yeah, is there a specific research question or just something in the kind of in your field that you're really like. I am obsessing over mentoring my students to be the next generation of exercise scientists really to carry on a legacy. And I am very proud of, I will always give a shout out to my students because they facilitate my ability to do what I do. and I have a terrific group of students who are in their master's. I'm the director of our master's program, and they're carrying out their, many of them are carrying out theses, and my focus at this point and in life is to mentor, and I obsess over that.

Well, they're so lucky to have you. They must be beaten down the door to get into your program. So that's incredible. Final question. what are the three keys to a successful hypertrophy-based workout program? Yeah, so you need to train hard, sufficiently hard, you need to progressively overload, and you need to recuperate properly, recover properly.

I would say there's obviously a lot of nuances within those, but those are three primary keys. I love it. Well, Brad, thank you so much. Really appreciate you coming on today and spending this time with us. Brad, where can folks find you? I know I follow you on Instagram, so I know that you post studies

and are really active there. If you can just share your handle, we'll also share that in the show notes. Yeah, I'm all over social media. Yeah, Instagram, I'm on Twitter. I still do Facebook. But yeah, you Google me. I would just say Google me and you'll find me.

Perfect. Perfect. Well, thank you for being an educator and yeah, just that's Herculein of what you've contributed to this space, to say the least. So thank you for all that you've done. Yeah, grateful. Thank you to Brad Schoenfeld for joining us today to talk about resistance training and hypertrophy. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, be sure to leave a rating or review.

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