Last time I commented that high rep training isn't practical for the average trainee because of their lack of ability to judge failure and their aversion to pain outside of a lab setting with external motivation, and ya'll we in the comments arguing I was wrong.
Ooh, you were parroting the science based youtubers in the comment section as early as when these noobs had joined sbs and replaced Eric helms(trexler isn't real)? That's because you're so discerning and intelligent to have sorted the nonsense from the best advice and has nothing to do with the seemingly vast majority of TH-cam commenters being as smart as an above average rock. I hope others join me in my effusive, totally genuine praise for you!
I remember one time getting into a rabbit hole of trying to find a protocol they were using in the paper and had to go 5 studies back and then the original paper wasn’t available with appendix anymore online
On the topic of get strong to get big I largely agree with the summary. It seems that must research indicates that muscle growth is permissive to strength gains, not the other way around. Having said that, in the first six weeks or so of a new exercise we largely see neurological adaptations occur and not much new muscle growth. I think until we get past this phase we likely aren't getting close enough to true muscular failure to see muscle growth so there is a small gem of truth to, "get strong to get big" but maybe it should be more about, "don't program hop or change out exercises too aggressively, or you'll always be in that intro phase on neurological adaptations and think you are improving but in reality constantly experiencing suboptimal gains"
I train once a month in very leisure fashion (50% bench for 6 reps, one set of bicep curls stopping where it doesn't feel nice anymore), but I do need that video footage to prove that your study has any relevance to training seriously before I believe any of its thoughts could be useful to me or someone else. Joking aside, I believe there was a time when the training in some studies made no sense when studying muscle building, so I can see why some people are still lacking trust and haven't updated. Do I remember right that periodisation was copied from strength/athlete training where it's useful for combining a couple of different goals and time limit for best results and resource management? The RP style is really convenient for a casual lifter in terms of coming back to lifting after let's say being sick or so. It's so easy to overblow the first sessions and hinder your adherence and daily life. It's just hard to remember to start with minimal volume and conservative load without someone telling you to stay away from it for your own good. When you get in the groove, accumulating volume and forcing deloads doesn't seem that great. Although it usually goes like starting with the basic lifts and low volume, adding the normal volume, adding more volume through the accessories. And then you probably don't have that much desire to raise volume in exercises. The nice thing about deloading is that it fits pretty nicely with life's periodisation. Like you have rough weeks when you just can't have the time and energy to train and you need all the energy for something else, you need your mental capability to be there. Deloading that week is wonderful, you still get some good mood from training, your aches and fatigue lowers, your mental capabilities stay unhindered from exahustion and might even improve, the stress from the other things don't hurt the gym progress. That's how I like to view deloading. My personal experience also showed that doing judo, strength training and adding a bit of running was just way too much, I started to feel like I was getting sick, I was constantly exhausted. It wasn't this normal "oh I have trouble running today because I squatted/deadlifted yesterday", it was this "damn this walk to grocery store is exhausting, I don't have energy to cook, clean or talk to people" and even the lower weights started to feel like a challenge, and it got worse and worse. It wasn't until I got sick for a couple of weeks and recovered that I had enough distance to it and realised it wasn't just somehow becoming depressed or something, it was the amount of training that kept adding. Because training felt good and I was happy to tolerate multiple things at once at first so I was happy to go running more often. The first week of training syndrome when you feel full of energy before the recovery demands hit. At least with my shitty shoulder mechanics on one shoulder, the technique in arm workout like bicep and tricep is always just starting to groove when I get to failure if it's below 10 reps. Usually it needs to be somewhere around 10-20 range for the technique to drop in the right place and the reps starting to do the work. Doesn't stop me from still hating higher reps like +10. The "get strong first to get big" has one big reality check: everyone knows at least someone in strength sports who's stupid strong despite not having a power belly and isn't like massive. You see teenagers or young adults who look like a wind blows them over at any moment and then they lift bigger weights than you. You see athletes that are strong as bull but relatively skinny. Sure the _strongest_ people are often the biggest, and the bigger you get, the stronger you usually are. But did being/becoming strong make them big or vice versa? You also see people in weight class sports get lean to fit in a lower weight class (even losing some muscle inevidently) and still being very strong. One of the best weightlifters was Pyrros Dimas and he doesn't look anything like the strongest dude, same for many Bulgarians back in the day. To me those people contradict in unsatisfactory way the idea that the route to getting big is unquestionably getting strong. However what about a casual trainer? Someone who hates going close to failure, someone who really struggles to identify 1-3 RIR, someone who gets disgusted by reps above 8? I think there's a lot of guys like that out there, who really don't like the hypertrophy focused training. Couldn't we say that for them training strength is a very convenient way to get bigger (not optimally big, but noticeably bigger in a way that people can tell he lifts)? Since the demand for squeezing out for the last reps of a long set is lesser with fewer reps in the total tank. All the adjustments to training for women has seemed to me like individualisation, not sexualisation (yes, that's the new term I propose to be used for adjusting training based on sex). Men who differ from each other also do similar changes in their training, like increasing frequency or volume because they're more capable of recovering for whatever reason. And vice versa, some men lowering frequency and volume because they simply can't handle the same as average. Isn't that how you approach women's training as clients as well if you're not taking your training straight from the bible for every client? Tbf the testosterone is located in the biggest plates. The heavier lifts you do, the more you raise your testosterone that is in the plates. Athletes in shambles for the biological passport being introduced where their normal levels of hormones and other things are recorded, then they do some squats and get surprise tested and get busted.
So for most no need for a meso, no such thing as systemic fatigue, no need for planned deloads, no benefit in not keeping RIR close to failure and consistent, no benefit from re-sensitization, and no need for novelty…. Can you help me get my $29 a month back from RP? Jk. I never follow the volume first 2 weeks anyway, and I do appreciate the framework of the app, having somewhere to track my progress, and built in progreessive overload. The new “add a week” feature will be nice as you can keep putting off that deload.
@@rm06c there will always be people new to fitness as I was 5 years ago. Once they dig deeper, they’ll move on and they’ll be a new batch to continue financing lambos and paying Jared’s child support
I got RP for 6 months and it was a total waste of money. It heavily prioritizes the pump, with virtually no research to back that it should have any impact. It drove my sets up to insane numbers (like wanting me to do 16 sets for an exercise) because apparently I need more volume if I'm not getting sore. There seems to be no upper limit to this, with the only fall off being the end of a meso. Overall trash and way overpriced. I ended up building my own app (I'm a software engineer, and no it's not public) and have seen wayyyy better gains with a DUP approach, no meso, and no deloads. I've been training this way for 9 months now and haven't even needed a reactive deload. No program hopping, no mesos, just consistent progress 💪
The one thing I think was missed in the rep range discussion was injury risk and joint pain. It's likely that bodybuilders often use higher rep work because they are on steroids which are catabolic to joints and connective tissues while also making someone stronger. This is a recipe for injury when doing heavier weight sets. Even for naturals though there is increased injury risk from heavier sets and an injury will be a larger detriment to hypertrophy than almost anything. So I think there's a real use in being aware of the effect on injury risk that various rep ranges pose
Are steroids actually catabolic for joints and connective tissue, or is it that they can’t keep up with the growth of muscle? I’ve always heard the latter.
Happy Birthday Dr. Pak! I have a question about Compound lifts. Will muscle growth for the different primary movers be variable from week to week. Example for the bench, maybe some weeks your pecs will be taken close to failure and grow more and then other weeks your triceps take the brunt and grows more? Does the ratio of growth among primary movers stay consistent and linear or fluctuate from week to week? Hope that makes sense
Hi, thanks for the episode. When a lot of content is about hyping various things up, this is a very good idea to tone things down where they are overhyped. One question, I remember listening to Greg Nuckols some years ago, talking about the opposite to "getting strong to get big" - which is getting big as a foundation to gain strength long term. If I remember correctly he said that he believed this was the case (long term), but that at that time it was hard to claim so definitively. I hope I'm not misrepresenting him. I'm a recreational climber, so naturally I'm more interested in strength, so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this matter, and if there is any research supporting this. Anecdotally some climbers do periodically include more hypertrophy based forearm training with this as a rationale. But it is rather uncommon, and as far as I've seen very few higher level climbers do it (they mainly do the pure strenght adaptation finger work). But on the other hand they do so much pure climbing volume so that doing higher rep work might be unnecessary for them.
I'm 68. Studies lasting only long enough to allow all the subjects to go and write their final exams don't make much of an impression on me. Same with advice to work down in the 5 rep range (my shoulders are sore enough, thanks).
I'm 97. Studies lasting much shorter than 20 years don't particularly interest me. Neither is working down in the 5-30 rep range. I'll stick with walking for 30-35 thousand reps thank you very much
Isn't multiple one rep MAXES an oxymoron? I could buy several 90%+ singles but by definition a true 100% 1rm is not repeatable unless you calculated some specific fatigue mediated reduced load on each subsequent attempt
This was a terrific episode guys!
Especially the “get strong to get big portion”!
Last time I commented that high rep training isn't practical for the average trainee because of their lack of ability to judge failure and their aversion to pain outside of a lab setting with external motivation, and ya'll we in the comments arguing I was wrong.
Ooh, you were parroting the science based youtubers in the comment section as early as when these noobs had joined sbs and replaced Eric helms(trexler isn't real)? That's because you're so discerning and intelligent to have sorted the nonsense from the best advice and has nothing to do with the seemingly vast majority of TH-cam commenters being as smart as an above average rock. I hope others join me in my effusive, totally genuine praise for you!
@@rockyevans1584 lmao you ok bro?
@@n00dle_king I'm fine up here on my high horse.
Happy bday Pakman!
HB Dr.Pak ! I'm so sad that we didn't get something to chew on the LP studies I'm so waiting for it 😭
I remember one time getting into a rabbit hole of trying to find a protocol they were using in the paper and had to go 5 studies back and then the original paper wasn’t available with appendix anymore online
On the topic of get strong to get big I largely agree with the summary. It seems that must research indicates that muscle growth is permissive to strength gains, not the other way around.
Having said that, in the first six weeks or so of a new exercise we largely see neurological adaptations occur and not much new muscle growth. I think until we get past this phase we likely aren't getting close enough to true muscular failure to see muscle growth so there is a small gem of truth to, "get strong to get big" but maybe it should be more about, "don't program hop or change out exercises too aggressively, or you'll always be in that intro phase on neurological adaptations and think you are improving but in reality constantly experiencing suboptimal gains"
Happy Birthday Dr Big Pec
I train once a month in very leisure fashion (50% bench for 6 reps, one set of bicep curls stopping where it doesn't feel nice anymore), but I do need that video footage to prove that your study has any relevance to training seriously before I believe any of its thoughts could be useful to me or someone else.
Joking aside, I believe there was a time when the training in some studies made no sense when studying muscle building, so I can see why some people are still lacking trust and haven't updated.
Do I remember right that periodisation was copied from strength/athlete training where it's useful for combining a couple of different goals and time limit for best results and resource management? The RP style is really convenient for a casual lifter in terms of coming back to lifting after let's say being sick or so. It's so easy to overblow the first sessions and hinder your adherence and daily life. It's just hard to remember to start with minimal volume and conservative load without someone telling you to stay away from it for your own good. When you get in the groove, accumulating volume and forcing deloads doesn't seem that great. Although it usually goes like starting with the basic lifts and low volume, adding the normal volume, adding more volume through the accessories. And then you probably don't have that much desire to raise volume in exercises.
The nice thing about deloading is that it fits pretty nicely with life's periodisation. Like you have rough weeks when you just can't have the time and energy to train and you need all the energy for something else, you need your mental capability to be there. Deloading that week is wonderful, you still get some good mood from training, your aches and fatigue lowers, your mental capabilities stay unhindered from exahustion and might even improve, the stress from the other things don't hurt the gym progress. That's how I like to view deloading. My personal experience also showed that doing judo, strength training and adding a bit of running was just way too much, I started to feel like I was getting sick, I was constantly exhausted. It wasn't this normal "oh I have trouble running today because I squatted/deadlifted yesterday", it was this "damn this walk to grocery store is exhausting, I don't have energy to cook, clean or talk to people" and even the lower weights started to feel like a challenge, and it got worse and worse. It wasn't until I got sick for a couple of weeks and recovered that I had enough distance to it and realised it wasn't just somehow becoming depressed or something, it was the amount of training that kept adding. Because training felt good and I was happy to tolerate multiple things at once at first so I was happy to go running more often. The first week of training syndrome when you feel full of energy before the recovery demands hit.
At least with my shitty shoulder mechanics on one shoulder, the technique in arm workout like bicep and tricep is always just starting to groove when I get to failure if it's below 10 reps. Usually it needs to be somewhere around 10-20 range for the technique to drop in the right place and the reps starting to do the work. Doesn't stop me from still hating higher reps like +10.
The "get strong first to get big" has one big reality check: everyone knows at least someone in strength sports who's stupid strong despite not having a power belly and isn't like massive. You see teenagers or young adults who look like a wind blows them over at any moment and then they lift bigger weights than you. You see athletes that are strong as bull but relatively skinny. Sure the _strongest_ people are often the biggest, and the bigger you get, the stronger you usually are. But did being/becoming strong make them big or vice versa? You also see people in weight class sports get lean to fit in a lower weight class (even losing some muscle inevidently) and still being very strong. One of the best weightlifters was Pyrros Dimas and he doesn't look anything like the strongest dude, same for many Bulgarians back in the day. To me those people contradict in unsatisfactory way the idea that the route to getting big is unquestionably getting strong. However what about a casual trainer? Someone who hates going close to failure, someone who really struggles to identify 1-3 RIR, someone who gets disgusted by reps above 8? I think there's a lot of guys like that out there, who really don't like the hypertrophy focused training. Couldn't we say that for them training strength is a very convenient way to get bigger (not optimally big, but noticeably bigger in a way that people can tell he lifts)? Since the demand for squeezing out for the last reps of a long set is lesser with fewer reps in the total tank.
All the adjustments to training for women has seemed to me like individualisation, not sexualisation (yes, that's the new term I propose to be used for adjusting training based on sex). Men who differ from each other also do similar changes in their training, like increasing frequency or volume because they're more capable of recovering for whatever reason. And vice versa, some men lowering frequency and volume because they simply can't handle the same as average. Isn't that how you approach women's training as clients as well if you're not taking your training straight from the bible for every client? Tbf the testosterone is located in the biggest plates. The heavier lifts you do, the more you raise your testosterone that is in the plates. Athletes in shambles for the biological passport being introduced where their normal levels of hormones and other things are recorded, then they do some squats and get surprise tested and get busted.
Funny to hear Milo pick up more of Greg's vocal tics
Same quality consistent advice guys good show. 😂 Excited about the new studies!
So for most no need for a meso, no such thing as systemic fatigue, no need for planned deloads, no benefit in not keeping RIR close to failure and consistent, no benefit from re-sensitization, and no need for novelty…. Can you help me get my $29 a month back from RP? Jk. I never follow the volume first 2 weeks anyway, and I do appreciate the framework of the app, having somewhere to track my progress, and built in progreessive overload. The new “add a week” feature will be nice as you can keep putting off that deload.
But think of poor Dr Mike and his butlers and lambos 😢
@@rm06c there will always be people new to fitness as I was 5 years ago. Once they dig deeper, they’ll move on and they’ll be a new batch to continue financing lambos and paying Jared’s child support
I got RP for 6 months and it was a total waste of money. It heavily prioritizes the pump, with virtually no research to back that it should have any impact. It drove my sets up to insane numbers (like wanting me to do 16 sets for an exercise) because apparently I need more volume if I'm not getting sore. There seems to be no upper limit to this, with the only fall off being the end of a meso.
Overall trash and way overpriced. I ended up building my own app (I'm a software engineer, and no it's not public) and have seen wayyyy better gains with a DUP approach, no meso, and no deloads. I've been training this way for 9 months now and haven't even needed a reactive deload.
No program hopping, no mesos, just consistent progress 💪
The one thing I think was missed in the rep range discussion was injury risk and joint pain. It's likely that bodybuilders often use higher rep work because they are on steroids which are catabolic to joints and connective tissues while also making someone stronger. This is a recipe for injury when doing heavier weight sets.
Even for naturals though there is increased injury risk from heavier sets and an injury will be a larger detriment to hypertrophy than almost anything.
So I think there's a real use in being aware of the effect on injury risk that various rep ranges pose
Are steroids actually catabolic for joints and connective tissue, or is it that they can’t keep up with the growth of muscle? I’ve always heard the latter.
@@Kyle111 it's both
How about set per set stimulus for, let’s say, 8-12 vs 15-20 reps?
Happy Birthday Dr. Pak! I have a question about Compound lifts. Will muscle growth for the different primary movers be variable from week to week. Example for the bench, maybe some weeks your pecs will be taken close to failure and grow more and then other weeks your triceps take the brunt and grows more? Does the ratio of growth among primary movers stay consistent and linear or fluctuate from week to week? Hope that makes sense
Hi, thanks for the episode. When a lot of content is about hyping various things up, this is a very good idea to tone things down where they are overhyped. One question, I remember listening to Greg Nuckols some years ago, talking about the opposite to "getting strong to get big" - which is getting big as a foundation to gain strength long term. If I remember correctly he said that he believed this was the case (long term), but that at that time it was hard to claim so definitively. I hope I'm not misrepresenting him. I'm a recreational climber, so naturally I'm more interested in strength, so it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this matter, and if there is any research supporting this. Anecdotally some climbers do periodically include more hypertrophy based forearm training with this as a rationale. But it is rather uncommon, and as far as I've seen very few higher level climbers do it (they mainly do the pure strenght adaptation finger work). But on the other hand they do so much pure climbing volume so that doing higher rep work might be unnecessary for them.
Since it’s shown to matter, what body part is the LP study using?
How is hypertrophy being measured? I can’t help but suspect this idea that more volume = more hypertrophy is just sarcoplasm.
I'm 68. Studies lasting only long enough to allow all the subjects to go and write their final exams don't make much of an impression on me. Same with advice to work down in the 5 rep range (my shoulders are sore enough, thanks).
I'm 97. Studies lasting much shorter than 20 years don't particularly interest me. Neither is working down in the 5-30 rep range. I'll stick with walking for 30-35 thousand reps thank you very much
Isn't multiple one rep MAXES an oxymoron?
I could buy several 90%+ singles but by definition a true 100% 1rm is not repeatable unless you calculated some specific fatigue mediated reduced load on each subsequent attempt
3:30 fuck yeah!
Lengthened partials comes to mind 🤔
For the algorithm