076 Is maximising the stimulus the same as maximising muscle growth?

In this episode of Hypertrophy Past & Present, Jake and Chris explore the high-volume, full-body training routine of Silver-Era bodybuilder Al Berman and how they would modify it using modern exercise science. They then dive into the science of maximising muscle growth, discussing why maximising the hypertrophy stimulus of a single workout may not be the best strategy for maximising growth over the week, and how training volume, frequency, fatigue and stimulus saturation all influence the results.

Key topics include:

• Al Berman's 1951 full-body training routine and how Jake and Chris would modernise it
• Can a single set stimulate muscle growth, or is there a minimum volume threshold?
• Diminishing returns: Why each additional set provides progressively less muscle growth
• How fatigue and stimulus saturation limit the hypertrophy stimulus of a workout
• Why maximising the stimulus of a single workout isn't necessarily the best way to maximise weekly muscle growth

Want to train like a Silver-Era bodybuilder? Join our Hypertrophy Past & Present Training group on TrainHeroic, featuring Silver-Era-inspired training programs adapted using modern exercise science.

https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/workout-plan/team/hypertrophy-past-and-present

What is Hypertrophy Past and Present?

A deep dive into the science of muscle growth. Hosted by Chris Beardsley and Jake Doleschal, this podcast explores hypertrophy training through the lens of pre-steroid era bodybuilding and modern muscle physiology.

Jake (00:00)
Welcome back to another episode of Hypertrophy Past and Present. Chris, how are you doing today?

Chris (00:06)
I'm doing well, thanks Jake.

Jake (00:08)
Is it raining outside? I feel like I can hear maybe that's just my s

Chris (00:12)
It was raining yesterday. ⁓ It's not raining now. I don't think. ⁓

Jake (00:18)
Just my audio. I just had a storm a moment ago and it's cleared up. So I feel like we're playing tag team here with our weather. So we'll see how we go over the over the podcast. I have to apologize because last week we did an episode that was a little bit different to normal, and we actually spent a bit longer analysing a silver era plan and redesigning it. And we did a little competition as to whose is better. And I told everyone, I promised I was going to post it online, and we recorded our episode and I went away for a few days. I'm totally forgotten.

Chris (00:24)
Hmm.

Jake (00:47)
So my apologies to everyone, but I will endeavor to remember to do it after today's episode and you can judge us. You can say which workout you liked more. And as you and I just discussed off air, you think I might have an edge with this one, because this is not your favorite routine that you've seen. So

Chris (01:04)
Absolutely, I had the edge last time and I think I won. And I think you're going to win today.

Jake (01:11)
So maybe I ⁓ I intentionally forgot to post it. So today let's jump in. We've got Al Berman, and I have a suspicion that no one listening to this has heard of Al Berman. If you have sent me a message, maybe there's a couple of you, but Al Berman is not a very well known silver era lifter. So he was late forties, early fifties. He didn't win any massive titles, didn't win the America. ⁓

Or universe or anything like that, but he did win a lot of regional. Like he he won, I think, Mr. New York and and some of those smaller competitions. Had a great physique, but not someone who is discussed a whole lot. Now, I came across a a routine of his ⁓ which he wrote in a magazine about the time he won. I think it was Mr. New York. And so this is ⁓ I think it was 1951. Now I will just note

1951, we've we've had quite a lot of routines about that time, 1951, 1952. ⁓ there was a really cool magazine published in 1952 that looked at a lot of the like the most well-known bodybuilders at that time, and it asked it interviewed each of them and asked them to discuss what their favorite routines were. And so we've used a lot of those routines in the past.

⁓ and I think what's interesting when you look at all those routines that we've discussed so far, there's about half a dozen of them between sort of 1950 and 1952 from different lifters. What you tend to see is A, that they're all full body, ⁓ generally full body three times a week. However, this one is a bit of an exception. This is actually full body every other day. And then the other thing you see is there's real consistency with the number of sets that being done. So by far the most common that you're seeing.

in the sort of elite and these are lifters who have, you know, won usually Mr. America at this point. They they were generally doing about three sets per exercise. Some of them did as few as as one or two sets, ⁓ but usually is that that three sets, maybe maybe two or four for some exercises. C Klein, we've gone through one of his routines from this same year, and he was still doing single sets. So there were still people doing lower sets, but we're seeing some people push up into that, you know, sort of three or four sets.

Reg, you know, we've discussed some of Greg's stuff. Obviously, Greg is well known for his five by five system. Really, two of those sets were warm-up sets. He was usually doing three sets. We have discussed a Floyd Page routine where Floyd actually went up to five sets. But he it was what you tend to see with these lifters at this time is they kind of say, look, three sets is sort of your norm. After a while, try four. And after a while, you can try five, but don't ever do more than five. I've seen so many of these lifters say, don't ever do more than five.

And if you're not working, if it's it's not working for you on five, drop back down. So it seems to kind of be this like I was gonna say unspoken, but really it's explicitly spoken, this rule that hey, five is probably a limit for like everyone. So this routine today, it's five sets. So this is the highest, really, the highest volume routine we've looked at in in this sort of era, this time period. So again, every other day, so high really high frequency and high volume.

Now we start with a dumbbell latrograze. Now, just a reminder, when you see people talk about a lactrograze in this era, usually they're talking about flies. However, in this article, he speci he specified he was doing shoulder lactrograzes, which I thought was quite interesting in 1951. Nonetheless, so we've got a dumbbell latriase, five sets of 12 repetitions. Chin-ups, five sets of 12. I mean, you can't complain too much. You love your chin-ups. So chin-ups. Then we've got a stiff arm pullover.

They s they did distinguish between stiff arm, bent arm. For whatever reason, he was doing stiff arm, barbell pullover, five sets to twelve. Bench dumbbell, they called it a dumbbell ⁓ dumbbell fly crossover or dumbbell crossover fly, I think they called it, but essentially it's a it's a dumbbell fly, like a chest fly, five sets to twelve. Then we've got a bent over barbell row for five sets to twelve. And this is super cool. you guys may remember me talking about doing this a while ago. He then took 10 minutes off.

He had an intermission, probably had some juice. All these guys were drinking the OJ back then. He then came back and he did his his arms and his legs. So he came back and then he did five sets of 12 barbell curls. He did five sets of 12. This is called a side press. This is a little bit weird. It's like a single arm dumbbell overhead press when you lean to the side. So you've got so it's it's my understanding is it's more sagittal plane. And then you're you're tipping yourself over and you're you're pressing like directly upwards.

So whether you I don't know if that's anterior delt, triceps, upper chest, I don't it's getting a bit of a combination of things, I imagine. Kind of fell out of favor a little bit after this time period. Then we have abdominals, as was fairly common. He was super vague with abs. He was like, I do my abdominal work. Okay, what's that? Doesn't say, probably a hundred crunches or something. And then he's got his legwork. Now, his legwork was a leg press.

Which again, nine and fifty-one, interesting. He was probably doing that with a barbell, is my suspicion. ⁓ and he did say he would do when he was trying to gain weights, gain muscle, he would do sets of twelve here. So he seemed to like his sets of twelve. When he was cutting for competition, he would go high rep up to 40 repetitions, as we've discussed. His guys had high volume cardio stuff for their pre-comp. Then he did his squats, barbell squats, and he was doing sets he he did 15 repetitions. He then did quarter squats.

Jefferson lift, which is like a deadlift between your legs. And then a barbell hack squat, so deadlift behind your legs. Now he did not specify sets for this. So you could look at this and and assume maybe he was just doing a single set. Each of these exercises are quite similar. So maybe he just did one set of 12 to 15 reps for each of these. Or did he follow the the other format and

Stick with five sets for each of these. I find that really hard to imagine. I think most likely he did single sets, but just to be clear, the the magazine article did not state.

So you can't be too mad, we've got a chin up.

Chris (07:26)
I think I can be reasonably mad about the silly volume. mean, I think five sets every other day is just stupid. I mean, I understand that he probably wasn't doing, you know, those early sets to failure, but again, what's the point in doing them?

Jake (07:38)
Yeah, look, that is a a valid thing to say. He did say that he did the same weight for all five sets. So, you know, I I think that those earlier sets were probably a couple of reps in reserve.

Chris (07:45)
Yeah.

So yeah, I I think really that's the kind of.

The only the only non exercise selection comment that I really have is is that the volume was inappropriate. I don't really have anything else that isn't an exercise selection comment, to be honest. I think obviously every other day is a great strategy. It's cool to see that being done all the way back in the 1950s, you know, kind of pre pre-anabolic steroids coming in. I mean, I think a lot of

Jake (08:28)
Mm.

Chris (08:32)
the current science based lifting community think that every other day lifting is something that they invented. So it's nice to see that that goes all the way back, you know, to. Sure, I mean.

Jake (08:39)
Mm, mm.

Well, it even goes back to Hoffman. Hoffman talks about it as far as I recall and he says you would you may not do this because you'd have to train every second Sunday. But if if you're happy to train Sundays and do every other day.

Chris (08:55)
which kind of in and of itself tells you how old the idea is. So but that's now that's I think that's is cool to see that is called obviously that it's a classic full body routine. But again, I don't. Really like the volume recommendation, I think that is it doesn't unless you're a strength athlete.

Jake (08:59)
Yeah.

Chris (09:23)
I don't think it makes sense to do a lot of sets and leave reps in reserve. I if you're strength athlete, then fine. mean, yeah, by all means, do more sets and leave reps in reserve. for a hypertrophy focused plan, ⁓ much better off just kind of reducing the number of sets and going close to failure, I think. ⁓ That's just the way I would see it.

Jake (09:28)
Mm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Hm. Hey, maybe that's why he got stuck at Mr. New York and didn't didn't make Miss America.

Chris (09:54)
That's why, yeah, he was always a regional competitor.

Jake (09:56)
⁓ to play devil's advocate, so the five sets, I know we talked about this a few weeks ago, I think, when we were talking about how some muscles might tolerate you know different volumes slightly better from a recovery standpoint. Someone would you say that there are some people who could get away with five sets for most muscle groups like this and recover 48 hours later?

Chris (09:59)
No.

⁓ I would probably say that you're talking about a couple of percent of the lifting population. I would say two or three, four percent of the lifting population. I wouldn't say that they would be so common that you would necessarily even know somebody who can do that. I'm not.

Jake (10:46)
And potentially that avatar would be someone who genetically is that way inclined anyway, and they probably have low levels of stress in their life, they're probably fairly young, like there'd there'd have to be like a a bit of a perfect storm of things going on, wouldn't it?

Chris (10:59)
Yeah, mean, equally, you could probably go and find one relatively easily. You just have to go to the local running club or long distance cycling club and you could probably just pick anybody in the building and they would be in that category. ⁓ But that's not what we're talking about. talking about the lifting community. So that's a separate question. But yeah, I don't think you're going to necessarily even meet one. ⁓

Jake (11:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (11:29)
It's just, it's just more group of people.

Jake (11:29)
Which I think is worth noting, right? Because like even what you said there, even if it is just a couple of percent, there's some people who could do this. And we're gonna talk in a moment about you're gonna discuss like what the idea is of maximizing hypertrophy. How could one maximise hypertrophy? And it's true that there could be some people like maybe Al Berman who for him maximizing hypertrophy did mean he could do five sets. But there's the majority of people who it's not gonna be five sets.

Chris (11:58)
Well, to be fair, I mean, he's probably closer to four, ⁓ given that he's leaving reps and reserve on his earlier sets. I mean, he may even be three and a half. mean, the issue is it's not just about saying ⁓ that. I think he's over his recoverable volume, I mean, I mean, he may have been very close to it. May have been just under it or whatever, I don't know. But ⁓ the issue is that

Jake (12:03)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm, mm.

Chris (12:27)
If you're doing 13 exercises and you're sort of planning on doing five sets on most of those, I think that is just silly. I think you are going to end up hitting the end of that workout and you're not going to be doing a very good job of your last couple of exercises, even with your 10 minute break in the middle. genuinely, I don't think it makes any sense.

Jake (12:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

The 10-minute break is really interesting because obviously he's doing these sets at 12. I don't think he was doing long rest periods. The way you discussed it, it sounded like his heart rate was still fairly high. And so that 10-minute break is interesting to sense that it sounds like he kind of knows that there's some CNS fatigue that's accumulated in this workout, and he's letting that dissipate. But like it's it's almost taking care of kind of the inefficient way that he's kind of programmed the rest of the workout.

Chris (13:07)
Yeah.

it at least acknowledges that there's an issue there. ⁓ But yeah, think that's kind of the way that I would, but again, mean, like, as I've said a number of times before, even with those criticisms, this is still a pretty good program. I mean, I wouldn't recommend it as is.

Jake (13:21)
Yeah.

Well look, that's a that's a question. What would you need to change, right? So what's that's what we said last week. What's the minimum amount of changes you would need to make to stand by this as a good

Chris (13:49)
So, yeah, so ⁓ last week, I think what we did was we had the two separate things, didn't we? We said the first thing we're gonna do is how can we make the program as it stands into a viable routine that would be happy to recommend to somebody as like, this is a good routine. The reality is that it's already better than most of what people are gonna find online today.

In fact, I could literally just say do one or two sets instead of five and it would be OK. I mean, you could just literally change the set recommendation and it would stand. I mean, it would be OK. In order of adjustments that I would make to to make it into a really good program rather than just a kind of acceptable program, I would start by removing some stuff.

Jake (14:29)
It wouldn't be bad. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (14:46)
because I think we've got duplication. don't think it's necessary to have squats, quarter squats, Jefferson lifts and hack squats. I think that's just overkill. I think all of those are basically doing the same thing. Jefferson lift I can kind of park for a moment because I'm probably going to switch that out for something else.

Jake (15:02)
Let me play devil's advocate for one moment there. So quarter squats, normal squats, doing the same thing. Yeah? Jefferson lift, hack squat, doing the same thing. Like the these are basically the same exercises, just altered the setup slightly. If someone were doing single sets, is that such a bad idea to do two variations of almost the same exercise, maybe get a bit of motivational boost from doing a slight variation?

Chris (15:25)
Honestly, for a bodybuilder, don't think it makes any sense because the setups are going to take you so long that you're just going to waste a whole lot of time. mean, I'd rather the effort went into something that was a different area of the body, to be honest. ⁓

Jake (15:41)
Sure, but between the Jefferson lift and the hack squat, there's probably no setup required. He's probably using the same weight. The normal squat, quarter squat. Arguably he's gonna have to add more weight for the quarter squat. So yeah, you're probably right.

Chris (15:50)
That's, I I'm taking the quarter squat down no matter what you say, because the amount of weight that you have to use to make that feasible is not valid in any scenario.

Jake (15:56)
Ha ha.

He did s I think he was saying something like four fifty pounds maybe. So yeah, you're lo you're loading a lot of plates on.

Chris (16:10)
I know it doesn't make any sense. anyway, I would I would take out essentially the quarter squat and the hack squat straight away and say that, ⁓ no, I'd actually take out the squat as well. Take the squat, quarter squat and hack squat and literally just leave the leg press. I'd be like that. That's enough. I just take three exercises straight away. ⁓ I would then what else would I take out? Actually, I wouldn't take out anything else. Everything else is going to be a

Jake (16:21)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (16:39)
a switch rather than a removal. So, yeah, I would start by taking out squats, quarter squats and hack squat. And I just leave the leg press as my primary hip and knee extension exercise. I would then probably switch to Jefferson. I mean, if you wanted to leave the squat in instead and keep the squat and not the leg press, I mean, I'm I'm ambivalent. I'm not making an argument for which one of those is preference. So whichever one someone wants to keep. And if you want to keep it more kind of.

Jake (16:41)
Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Chris (17:07)
you know, silver era esque, then fine, let's leave the squat and lose the leg press. I'm not really bothered. ⁓ I would switch to Jefferson for a stiff leg deadlift because we don't have any hamstrings otherwise. So I want to get that in the program. And I think that's that's an exercise that will be in keeping. Those those are my major changes, really. After that, I will be starting to push it towards something that I want rather than

Jake (17:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (17:36)
than what the program was written to do. So ⁓ I think that with those changes, those two, those two changes, I get pretty close to the spirit, keeping the spirit of the program while also ⁓ losing a whole load of redundancy and just bringing in a muscle group that's not being trained. Arguably, if I wanted to continue down that road and say, well, no, let's keep

Jake (17:56)
Mm.

Chris (18:05)
adding stuff that's not being trained, I could put a car phrase in there. You I think that would probably be a good addition. ⁓ And given that I've taken all of those exercises out, I could put in a Kelso shrug. And again, I think that would be in keeping and probably work quite well. But really, for me, the two fundamental things are to get rid of the redundancy and to switch the Jefferson for actual hamstrings based deadlift.

Jake (18:22)
Mm.

Mm. Mm.

Chris (18:32)
I think those are really big things after that. Yeah, car phrase is cool ⁓ and Kelso. That's cool. Inkeeping. Now someone could argue, yeah, but there's loads of other stuff you could put knee extensions in. Yeah, but this is a silver era program. I'm trying to keep with the spirit of the actual routine. I'm not going to be throwing in knee extensions and stuff like that and what have you, because that isn't really what the program was supposed to do. And you can end up changing the program so much that it just ends up looking like another, you know, kind of

Jake (18:35)
Yeah, it's

Mm.

Chris (19:02)
maximalist program that someone would write. And so I'm not going to do that. So I think as as it stands, I would say, OK, redundancy has to go. So take the squat, take the either leg press or squat out, take the quarter squats out, take the high squat out, change the Jefferson for a stiff leg deadlift. And then if you want to add a calf raise, cool. If you want to add a Kelso, cool. After that, I don't think I would mess around with it anymore, because otherwise it would just turn it into a maximalist program that anybody could.

Jake (19:05)
Mm.

Mm, mm. Yeah.

Chris (19:30)
But as it is, no, think it would. Yeah, that would be what I would do to make it workable for somebody just to pick up and run today as you know. I would drop it down to either single sets or two sets, depending on what person wanted. But, yeah, personally, two single sets, but someone wants to do two. I think if they had the carvers and the Kelso's in there, that would be 12 exercises, maybe. ⁓

Jake (19:37)
And you said you've dropped it down to single sets?

Chris (19:56)
So, yeah, either 12 sets or 24 sets. mean, yeah, I mean, that's a lot. 24, I think, but probably doable. In the case of somebody wanted to do two sets, I would probably encourage them to go down the leg press route rather than the squat route. But even so, yeah, that probably works.

Jake (20:16)
I mean look, I wouldn't do something too dissimilar. I would keep the upper body stuff as is, the same way you have. I'd be tempted to change the side press to just a seated sagittal plane overhead press.

Chris (20:28)
Yeah, I nearly did that.

Jake (20:30)
⁓ and then realistically, most of the time the Silver Era guys weren't doing hamstrings, right? So I think I could make an argument that adding in any hamstrings work is kinda shifting the Silver Era plan a little bit anyway. So I would be taking out the quarter squat, the Jefferson lift and the hack in the same way they ⁓ essentially you did, and I'd be throwing in a seated leg girl. Now, if that's violating the Silver Era esqueness of this plan too much.

Chris (20:51)
Yeah, yeah.

You

Jake (21:00)
I'd be happy to turn that into a stiff leg deadlift. But what I would do here, if I had a stiff leg deadlift, I would go with a leg press. If I was able to do a seated leg curl, I'd personally probably go with a squat. So I want something in there that's gonna get a bit more erectors. I you know, we've talked about this before. I think that there's some value in having a little bit more of a diffuse stimulus there for a natural lifter. So that's probably the only variance I would take based on what you've had.

Sets, I'm a little bit more liberal here. I would drop it down, but not as much as you. I would probably go to I would add a set to what you did. So I would do two or three sets. ⁓ But the reps would have to change for me. If I was doing two sets, I'm happy to keep it to that, you know, 10 to 12, like what he's doing here. If I added a third set, really I want to drop it down to like five to seven, five to eight.

Chris (21:41)
Yeah. Yeah.

sense. So we're basically saying the same thing, I mean literally exactly the same apart from you're kind of floating towards a stinted leg curl but yeah mean yeah basically we're saying the same thing. that would be what we would make to try and keep as much of the routine as possible. Sounds like we're on a tie there, neither of us have managed to do it in fewer steps.

Jake (22:00)
So we're look, we're not n miles off. Yeah.

A Liberty with a machine.

No.

Chris (22:27)
For me to make this workable for me, I would probably have to change quite a few more things.

Jake (22:34)
You'd have to change a lot. You're gonna change a lot more than my my routine is not too dissimilar to this, so I've got the advantage here.

Chris (22:42)
I would have to change quite a lot. So ⁓ just going down the list, lateral raise fine. ⁓ As long as it was a machine, I could do that. ⁓ Obviously, chin up is cool. Stiff arm pull over. OK. ⁓ Honestly, I'm going to complain about that after a week or two. ⁓ But OK. ⁓ Dumbbell fly crossover. ⁓

Again, same territory, anything where I'm maximally kind of in a either maximally horizontally ⁓ sort of abducted position or extended position. I'm not going to be very happy with that ⁓ for very long. So the chances are I'm probably going to have to switch those for like a row, like a close grip row and a press of some sort instead of the stiff arm pull over and the fly.

Barber Row is just going to go or get switched for the Kelso that I was talking about earlier. Barber Curl, OK, fine. Side press will have to get changed for an overhead press, it's on description.

⁓ dominoes, OK. ⁓ leg press, obviously, OK. And then the other stuff we've already changed. So, yeah, for me, I'm I'm not just I'm just not going to be very happy with my shoulder and in those kind of extreme kind of positions. I'm not going to do that. cranking on my joint at my age is just not a very clever idea. So I probably have to switch those for slightly more kind of, conventional options.

Jake (23:56)
Mm.

Mm.

Mm, yeah. Machines. Yeah.

Chris (24:21)
Well, it doesn't have to be machines. I mean, I can do presses and pulls. just those those kind of straight arm variations. I'm not going to be very comfortable.

Jake (24:31)
My routine is is quite similar to this. So I'm following a a ⁓ modernized version of a Reg Park plan at the moment. And it's basically what I'm doing. So later raise that he's got here, I'm doing behind the neck, but I could just as easily I'd be happy to do a later raise. Chin up, I'm doing, but I'm doing it as a a pull up, I'm doing body grip, but I'm happy to go here, chin up. Stiff arm pullover, I'm doing a machine pullover. D the dumbbell fly, I'm doing a pec deck.

Barbell row, I'm actually doing a seated cable row. I don't like any of the machines in my gym. So all that so far is kind of the same. Barbell curl, I'm I'm actually doing a dumbbell concentration curl at the moment. Feels a little bit nicer than the elbow. Again, same, same. Side press, I'm doing seated sagittal plane overhead press. So very similar to what he's got here. I'm skipping the abs. And then leg press, I'm for legs, I'm just doing squat. I'm doing seated leg curl. If I can be bothered, I'm doing leg extension.

Maybe carves. So kind of, you know, we've we've explained, hey, they're not doing a lot of lower body work here, that's what's lacking. I'm adding a little bit of that in. But the gist of it, honestly, it's very similar to what he's got here. I'm following Reg's sets and reps. So I'm doing I'm doing two sets of five. Reg was doing three sets of five. He's a wild man who would be in the gym for hours. I don't have that kind of time. ⁓ but the the overall format.

that these guys are following, I think makes a lot of sense. If again, if we just add a couple of machines in with what we've got access to and if you want a little bit more lower body work, I'd be pretty happy with that.

Chris (26:08)
Cool. Yeah, now that makes sense.

Jake (26:11)
Okay. I I I do have a slightly higher volume ⁓ allowance than you do, it does seem. So nothing that BPC can't fix. So we are talking about actually maximizing growth, aren't we? So do you want to introduce where we're gonna go with that?

Chris (26:18)
We'll wait until you get to my age.

Well, yeah, so basically this comes back to a.

Yes, it's not so much of a debate as just like a ⁓ claim or an idea that's been put out there by other influencers. And it relates to I mean, ultimately, claim is a little bit odd because it relates to trying to maximize the hypertrophy stimulus of a single workout. So what I'd like to do is talk about what that

means in technical terms, you know, how would you go about maximizing the hyper to be stimulus of a single workout for a particular muscle group and then kind of try and ground that in what that means for a training program, because I think that's really where the wheels come off the idea, because I don't think you can have your cake and eat it. I don't think you can.

Jake (27:39)
Mm.

Chris (27:40)
maximize the hypertrophy stimulus for a single workout and also maximize the amount of growth that you get from a training program. I don't think those two things are compatible. ⁓ So, yeah, basically that's that's kind what I want to address today. I think it's a useful exercise because I think it reveals quite a lot about how strength training programs actually work, but it also reveals a lot about how people tend to think about them. I think that thought process necessarily is correct.

Jake (27:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. You can ask one or the other question. I don't think you can really like you can ask both questions, but you can't follow a plan designed to meet the requirements of both of those questions. And I remember when I first started talking to you years ago, I got stuck in that first question. How do I maximize a single session? And at that time, you know, we're w I was, I guess, working off the idea that hey, maybe we're looking at I don't know, five, six, seven sets worth of stimulating repetitions.

In a in a single workout. And I'm trying to think of all these ways. How can I get 25, 30 maximally simulating reps in a single workout per muscle, designing all my plans to try to achieve that? And then eventually it just dawned on me that like, actually, wait, that's the wrong question. The question is, how do I maximize my week? Not how do I maximize a single session? So bit of a bit of a spoiler, that's where we're gonna end up, but let's go.

Chris (28:52)
Sure, exactly. That's that's the problem. That's exactly the right way to frame it, think. So, yeah, essentially, ⁓ well, let's let's take a little bit of a step back, because even within this idea of what's happening in a single session, there's actually more going on. You know, the first question that you might ask if you were like coming to this, you know, area of study for the first time, you might say.

what is actually necessary to stimulate hypertrophy at all? mean, like what would be the bare minimum that I could possibly do and actually create hypertrophic stimulus? Well, fortunately, we have got studies where people have done single sets and they've achieved muscle growth. So you kind of, you know, we know that if you do a single set for a particular muscle group in a session, then

you know, that is enough to have created some of the muscle growth, because if it wasn't, then you can't add that later in the week. You can't say, yeah, well, you did three sets across the week. You did three sets across the week. It doesn't work like that. You have to do them all in the same kind of period of time. And so if if your single set wasn't enough to meet the threshold in that single workout that you did, then coming back and adding another set later in the week isn't adding on top of that, because

Jake (30:00)
Just nothing to build on. Yep.

Chris (30:19)
you've already passed the point when the moment was available for you to stimulate the hypertrophy. So all we can say is that one set is sufficient to get you over the threshold of actually triggering hypertrophy at all.

Jake (30:33)
And that's based off more than just one study. I know sometimes when I say this online, I get feedback there's that one really obvious study.

Chris (30:37)
yeah. Well, You're referring to you're referring to you're referring to the single sets twice a week. That's that that has limited data behind it. I argue that strongly, but that has limited data behind it. But if you wanted to look at any of the old volume studies, they all start with single sets three times a week.

Jake (30:46)
Yes.

Yeah, okay. So the the single set twice a week. So that's well I think that study was published last year perhaps ⁓ in train lifters and they're doing a single set twice a week with reps from reserve and there was growth at the end of that time period, whatever that was, eight weeks or whatever. ⁓ and the argument, the criticism there is, well, hang on, the some of these muscles had multiple exercises, right? So I understand why people would push back on that. Now, A, realistically, most people are not gonna train a single exercise per one set, one exercise per

Her muscle, but that's irrelevant to what we're talking about here. There are other studies that have looked at a single set twice a week and have seen growth, and that's where they're doing like it'll literally just be one elbow flex exercise and they see growth. So, okay.

Chris (31:38)
Sure. But I think those are mostly untrained people. yeah, mean, essentially, yeah, but that's a two times a week point, which is a separate issue. That's more of a frequency kind of atrophy sort of weekly net stimulus issue. What I'm talking about here is the specific question of if I do a single set, does, because let me just. ⁓

Jake (31:49)
Mm.

Is that is that giving you something you can build on?

Chris (32:02)
Yeah, so let me just try and ⁓ encapsulate this in a different way. I think there are people, very large number of people who believe that unless you do a certain amount of volume in one sitting, then you don't meet this kind of threshold of volume necessary to trigger growth at all. It's like there's some kind of volume related like.

Jake (32:15)
Mm. Yeah.

Chris (32:29)
like the muscles sitting there going, no, you need to do more reps before I decide to grow. It's like there's this kind of idea that

Jake (32:33)
Yeah. Well, literally back in the day, I when I was in Bro World, I was taught that the the more advanced the lift is, obviously the more volume that they need. And if you're not escalating that volume, then like doing more volume than you've done in the past is what causes that gross stimulus, right? So for example, let's say you had a workout where you were meant to be doing eight sets for a single muscle and you had done six sets the week before.

If you just did four sets this week, you were not going to grow this week. You had to match or exceed the volume previously. Like that was that was a mentality. So I do think that there's in some parts of the world, fitness industry, that there's this idea that hey, actually there is a threshold, and that threshold actually goes up as you become more advanced. And if you don't like it's the last sets that are most valuable. It's not the first sets. If you just do the first sets and you use you.

you know, skip off kind of the extra volume that you needed, you're not getting anything out of that.

Chris (33:35)
And I think that probably comes from two places. I mean, I've talked before about how I think a lot of exercise scientists have come into the strength training, have come to try and model strength training like endurance exercise. I mean, you have to remember that a lot of the early exercise science was kind of done in aerobic activities. And I think there's this kind of idea that

Jake (33:55)
Mm.

Mm.

Chris (34:04)
strength training works in the same way that you kind of have to keep increasing the amount of volume you do the same way that you would do for endurance exercise. And I think that gets supported when the hypertrophic researchers fall into their traditional mechanistic errors of assuming that fatigue is stimulating for muscle growth. And so you kind of that compounds the problem because you've got this frame that you're starting from, which is exercise, you know, is is

Jake (34:12)
Mm.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris (34:33)
aerobic exercise is your starting point, so you try and then model your strength training in the same way. So you're kind of assuming that volume is a driver. And then you kind of then fall into trap mechanistically of thinking that fatigue is a driver. And then you end up in this mess because you're making assumptions that are just not supported by physiology.

Jake (34:54)
Mm.

Chris (34:54)
But equally, I also think there may be an anabolic issue there as well, because if somebody is accustomed to thinking in terms of how anabolic work, then they will naturally again assume that you have to if you want to get more than what you've currently got, then you have to have the dose. Well, yeah, OK. It's the same kind of mentality, isn't it? So I think there's probably multiple drivers there. I think there's probably a driver from the aerobic exercise framing that we've started from in exercise science. There's probably a driver.

Jake (35:10)
Ha ha ha.

Chris (35:22)
the hypertrophy mechanistic errors that are going on. And then there's probably the anabolic thing, but they're all pushing in the same direction. So it's hard to know which of them is carrying the most weight. But I think those are the kind of sort of ⁓ factors that are driving people's thought processes subconsciously ⁓ when they're trying to make sense of this. But yeah, I mean, ultimately, I do think that there's a lot of people who believe that.

You could do like a certain number of sets in a workout. And if you don't do enough, then it's simply growth will not happen. People think that growth just doesn't happen if you don't go over a certain number of sets. ⁓ But I think we do have enough data to show that you can trigger growth with single sets. ⁓ You don't need to go over a certain volume threshold in order for that growth. mean, and physiologically, would be lunacy to believe.

Jake (35:55)
Mm.

Chris (36:16)
that you needed to go over a certain volume threshold. mean, there's literally no mechanistic underpinning for that to happen. You know, we've got, you know, like if you hit, if you mechanically load a fibre and that amount of mechanical tension now, again, I'm going to say amount and people are going to think volume is not its magnitude. So you hit a certain magnitude of mechanical tension for a fibre.

Jake (36:22)
Mm. Mm.

Chris (36:45)
probably doesn't matter how long that magnitude was ⁓ provided for. You've probably triggered hypertrophy of some description. ⁓ And then obviously then you can add to that by doing additional loading moments. But ⁓ I think once you go over the threshold loading magnitude, then I think you've probably triggered hypertrophy. So I think you probably can trigger hypertrophy less than a single set. ⁓

you know, whether how that's a lot is a separate question, but, know, it probably probably does actually trigger it to happen. So I would argue you probably there's probably a better argument to say that a single stimulating rep is enough to trigger hypertrophy than there is to say that you would need like a whole set worth. I think physiologically, it's easier to argue that a single rep is enough than it is to argue that a whole set is necessary, because again, once you open the door and say you need

like a volume component, it's like, where are you getting that from? How is that working? Where is it coming from and how does it process? How does it how is it getting processed? Very, very difficult to go down that road mechanistically.

Jake (37:49)
Yeah.

Okay, so the idea that there's this like volume threshold that one must meet per muscle in a single session, and that is multiple sets worth, there's really no basis for that claim. I I have a feeling online, I think why people are making that claim is because they just don't like the idea of single sets, and I think they're kind of trying to probably discredit the idea of single-set routines. but nonetheless, so if we're saying that the flaw for the threshold is

possibly as little as a repa or a couple of reps, but certainly l a set is gonna be sufficient.

Chris (38:32)
Well, would would say to anybody who wants to argue from a mechanistic perspective that you need more than a rep, I would say, you know, what data are you looking at? What mechanism are you looking at? Where is the data that shows that you need to go? You know, where is the threshold effect? There's no threshold effect I can see anywhere in the physiology. I can see a threshold on the magnitude, but I can't see a threshold on the duration anywhere.

I mean, it just scales dose responsively. Well, if it scales dose responsively, then it starts from zero and works its way up and it starts moving straight away. If it starts moving straight away, then there's no threshold. So I think when you start looking at this physiologically, you kind of realize that there isn't a very strong argument in favor of that being like, you

Jake (39:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm.

Chris (39:23)
⁓ you do these repetitions and nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then suddenly you go over this point and then, OK, now you've got hypertext, you've done a certain number of repetitions or a certain amount of time under tension. There isn't anything in the literature that suggests that that is possible. And there's no mechanistic explanation of how it could be. You know, this is kind of one of those interesting things. If you actually sit with a problem like this and think about it, you realize that it's far, far more logical and sensible to.

Jake (39:31)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Chris (39:52)
except something that, know, and face value looks a bit weird, but actually it's like, well, this makes much more sense than assuming that the muscle just sits there and waits for you to get to a certain number of repetitions. go, yeah, now you've got to the right number. Now I can grow. It's like, where are you getting that idea from? That makes no sense.

Jake (40:00)
Yeah.

Y yeah. Yeah, yeah. Three didn't do anything, but now four will yeah. Like theoretically if you did a single rep every eighteen hours, twenty-four hours, you know, you you would think that should lead to growth and like the the question is going to be when you lose that growth worth of that single repetition. The that seems a much more defensible kind of question to ask than

Chris (40:12)
There is no logic behind that.

I think it probably would, yeah.

Jake (40:35)
is one rep causing any gross stimulus? Like why like you're saying, physiologically, why would it not be?

Now that certainly doesn't mean it's gonna maximize the growth stimulus, does it?

Chris (40:46)
Well, that's that's it, isn't it? So like basically what you kind of do is you look at the you say, OK, well, where's the where's the minimum point? And then ⁓ where's the maximum point? Because those are the two obvious boundary conditions to a problem that you're looking at. So you can say, OK, well. ⁓ Pretty much all the data that you've got everywhere, wherever you look, shows that the dose response curve is nonlinear.

Jake (40:57)
Mm.

Chris (41:16)
So we kind of get the biggest gains ⁓ from a workout from the first kind of reps and sets that we do. And then as we do more and more sets, we get less and less benefit from each additional set.

So, mean, obviously, you know, there's Brad's original meta analysis, you've got the Pellan meta analysis, there's a whole bunch of rodent studies that have done this with with muscle growth, with stretch induced growth, that's what I've heard. Genesis, they've done it with muscle protein synthesis. And literally every single data set you look at has a curve that kind of slopes, you know, kind of very fast at the beginning and then starts tapering off as you add additional sets or time.

Jake (41:51)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Chris (42:01)
reps, whatever it is, I mean, every single data set looks exactly the same. And we were chatting about this before we came on the podcast and you were like, you know, I think pretty much everybody now accepts that there's a nonlinear dose response of, you know, kind of. Hi, but to be to work out more, you know, I'd like to think that was true. You never know in today's day and age, but yeah, so that's kind of where we are.

Jake (42:15)
Mm.

Mm-hmm. I think that there's there's an argument over like how steep that curve is. So, you know, obviously we've talked about Pellin's data, there's Schoenfeld's Remett did a within session I don't know, meta regression or whatever the analysis was he did. And there's disagreement over like, okay, is it six sets to double the first set? Is it another

Chris (42:31)
Yeah.

Jake (42:48)
Two sets, is it four, like how many sets is it, right? And then obviously, like you said, you can go back to the rodent data, you can see diminishing returns with MPS, you can see when they do like the electrical stimulation, there's diminishing hypertrophy. So we all know, I think we all know that there's some diminishing returns. Is it like extremely steep? Is it flatter? We don't know that bit necessarily.

Chris (43:11)
Yeah, I think that's probably a good place to be. If that's where we are, then that's a good place to be, because I mean, I think that's what the data show. you know, obviously the Schoenfeld data seems to indicate a very, very steep curve at the beginning and then a very, you know, kind of very flat plateau. So you kind of get a lot out of your first set or two, and then it really does kind of tank. Pellan probably shows the opposite. really does.

kind of show, but again, I've argued why that is. I think that's because the Pellan data simply includes a lot of ⁓ obviously later studies because it was published a lot later than the Schoenfeld analysis. And I think a lot of those late studies show have really high volumes and include a lot of muscle swelling. And so you tend to see this artificially inflated, literally artificially inflated effect ⁓ at higher volumes, which pulls up the curve.

at the top end. ⁓ you know, I think that's that's probably what that's doing. But, I mean, ultimately, you know, there is a there is a nonlinear dose response effect ⁓ within a single workout. So, you know, you're not getting the same benefit from your fifth set as you were from your first or second. mean, that I think, you know, as you say, probably a lot of people are now coming to terms with that. I still think there's probably some people who can't quite get their heads around it. But

you know, hopefully that will change.

Jake (44:42)
So within that, I do I want to go down that path a little bit further. So we know based on the data we've got, human data, rodent data, that there's diminishing returns. Now, in terms of why there's diminishing returns, there's multiple things that are feeding into that, right? And so I I guess why I'm asking that question is probably where you're gonna go to next. Is so you can where's the ceiling of within session volume?

That's going to be effective. And it's not necessarily going to be total number of sets within a session that's going to match the total number of sets you can do for muscle within a session, is it? Because I I am hearing this argument that well, you can't do like full body is a bad training plan because you can't do more than and some insert some arbitrary number of sets. You can't do more than 10 sets, 12 sets, 18, 20, whatever it is. Exactly, exactly.

Chris (45:32)
Yeah, talk to Soren. We're not interested. Go talk to Soren and he'll tell you what you have to do.

Jake (45:40)
And so those two things don't follow each other, do they? Like the number of sets one can do for the entire body in a workout is not the number of effective sets one can do for a muscle in a workout.

Chris (45:52)
OK, so let's let's walk through the mechanistic side of things. So. Basically, you've got. ⁓

you've got two different categories of things that can start to influence on how much on the shape of the dose response curve, basically. So one of those things we know a lot about. Well, there is a lot of literature about it. Whether people know a lot about it is a separate question. But if you do the reading, it exists and you can learn a lot about it. And, you know, it does make a lot of sense.

Jake (46:19)
Mm.

Ha ha ha.

Chris (46:30)
And the other thing we don't really know very much about at all, and it's quite frustrating. So we know a lot about fatigue mechanisms. So there is an enormous amount of information about how fatigue works. If you're prepared to do the reading, ⁓ it is just an incredible resource ⁓ to understand how high poetry works. Most high poetry researchers refuse to do the reading, and so therefore they don't know. But basically, ⁓ you can see how as fatigue progresses ⁓ over a series of sets, can

end up with a reduced hypertrophy stimulus, either from the central nervous system perspective or from the local peripheral tissue perspective. So from the central nervous system perspective, you could have super spinal CNS fatigue. That's probably limited in a lot of the workout protocols that being done in the science based lifting community now, because people are very aware of the problem in the kind of bro split space is not understood. And I think they suffer a lot from

that. But, you know, in the kind of programs that we're talking about, I think a lot of people are not going to be seeing that as a major contributing factor. Soran is a great example, just mentioned him. I think he probably manages to avoid superspanel fatigue pretty much entirely in the way that he's constructing his workouts. It's really impressive. One of the reasons I wanted to get him on the podcast is to just kind of show people kind of where he's approaching the training program problem.

So but you could still have spinal CFD. It's an interesting one because the bigger part of it pretty much vanishes within 30 seconds or so. But there is a kind of a long tail, if you like, that does stick around for quite a long time in workout terms, like 10, 20 minutes. ⁓ That could potentially be an issue. But honestly, I think probably the main problem.

when doing multiple sets of a single muscle group is going to be the peripheral for T mechanisms. So really, as people know, that category that causes the biggest problem is going to be the calcium imulated T mechanisms. You're to have probably mainly ⁓ excitation contraction coupling failure ⁓ and a loss of myofibrilla sensitivity. I don't think cell membrane damage is really or loss of cell membrane excitability is going to be

that much of a factor in conventional strength training, at least within the kind of number of sets that we'd be talking about. But it could contribute. But honestly, I think it'll be excitation, contraction, coupling failure, or it'll be ⁓ myofibrillation sensitivity losses probably contributing the majority of the calcium ion-related fatigue mechanisms causing reduction in mechanical tension. I think that's probably going to be the major issue there.

Jake (49:25)
So the fatigue that's occurring at the muscle level is what's determining the the amount of stimulating volume that muscle can do and why you can still use this stimulating volume for other muscles.

Chris (49:33)
Because, because exactly. So ultimately, if you reduce your mechanical tension below the level necessary to trigger hypertrophy, then you could be exercising all day and nothing's going to happen. So I think that's potentially a question. mean, and sometimes with sort of excitation contraction, coupling failure, you can actually basically switch your muscle fibre off. So, I mean, again.

We know a lot about that, we know a lot about how works. I don't think that is anywhere close to being able to explain the entirety of the dose-response relationship.

Jake (50:10)
No, is it a fair assumption to say that kind of an okay proxy for the impact of fatigue within a muscle achieving a stimulus would be to look at voluntary activation levels within that workout. So if we see voluntary activation drop by, let's say, five, ten percent, whatever, from you know, set one to whatever set five, set ten of that muscle, then that's gonna give us an indication as to what impact the fatigue is having on reducing that stimulus.

Chris (50:40)
Well, voluntary regulation drops certainly would be a big factor, because that would tell you that you were, you know, experiencing CNS fatigue. ⁓ I don't think it would give you the peripheral side of things. You could just look at strength loss. mean, I think that would probably be a cleaner, a cleaner way of doing it, all honesty. But that's the point I'm making. I think that, you know, in a lot of situations, you could do multiple sets and not see huge strength losses.

Jake (50:57)
Okay.

Chris (51:10)
And I think in that scenario, it kind of is a really good pointer to the fact that it's probably the other factor that is driving the majority of the dose response shape most of time.

Jake (51:17)
Mm.

So okay, so just before you mention other factors. So even if that other factor didn't exist, from this alone, from the fatigue alone, we would have diminishing returns. Yeah. Because the other factor being a little bit kind of, you know, vague in in the sort of the data we have behind it, I can understand someone might come to it and say, well, we don't know. We don't know what impact that has. Well it doesn't matter, because we're still seeing diminishing returns anyway.

Chris (51:32)
I just don't think it would be

Sure. Yeah, you would have to. I you can't you can't get perfect linear dose response if you've got any kind of fatigue mechanisms going on. yeah, you would basically to argue that you've got a linear dose responses, you would have to say that fatigue doesn't exist or you just have to not understand how fatigue works, which I think is probably more likely to be the case.

Jake (52:08)
Yeah, 'cause fatigue is helping you get more stimulus, don't forget.

Chris (52:12)
Yeah, don't get me started. ⁓ I'm laughing because one of, I'm gonna break my own rule. I said we're not gonna do the evidence-based conversation today, but one of the funny things about the evidence-based community, when they get really aggravated with me, is that they go and try and find, ⁓

an expert that they can bring in to try and argue against what I'm saying. They can't do it themselves, so they go and find an expert and they bring that expert in and try and, you know, kind of persuade them to say something ⁓ against what I'm explaining.

Jake (52:52)
E email them with a quote from you. What do you think of this quote?

Chris (52:54)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, like, you know, taking massively out of context and basically just kind of butter the poor old guy up until he says what they want him to say. Notably, I think the point is they're kind of accepting that they can't do the argument themselves, so they have to go and find someone who can. But what I have noticed is they will never ever go and find a fatigue researcher.

Jake (53:00)
Yeah.

Chris (53:19)
And I'm talking about an actual fatigue physiologist. I'm not talking about somebody who messes around pretending to be a fatigue physiologist while talking about integrated governor models. You know, an actual fatigue physiologist. They won't find one of those because it would literally unpick everything about fatigue, everything about the hypertrophy kind of models that they have if they started actually engaging with the fatigue literature properly, you know, which is not what they're to do. So anyway.

Jake (53:23)
Mm.

Chris (53:47)
I broke my own rule there, I said I wasn't going to talk about evidence based over versus science based again, but I did. So, yeah, going on to the other thing, which is that ultimately there is almost certainly some kind of stimulus saturation effect. So stimulus saturation is what we kind of term the phenomenon whereby you tell a muscle fiber to grow.

And so it starts the process of growing and then you tell it again and it ignores you. That's kind of the stimulus saturation idea. It's the fact that you can't just kind of tell a muscle fiber to grow and then tell it again. And then it kind of goes, ⁓ right. OK, so once I've finished this bout of growing, I need to now do another bout of growing because you've just told me twice and I'm going to cue that second instruction behind the first one. So as soon as I finish the first one, I'll do the second one because you've told me and it's going to sit in the queue. It doesn't do that. It just ignores you.

Jake (54:33)
Mm.

Mm.

Chris (54:45)
So there's this kind of process by where, through which the muscle is basically kind of ⁓ starting a growth process and then ignoring any other information that comes its way until it's been through that process and done it. ⁓ How that happens is very, very difficult to pin down. I mean, it's one of the most difficult questions I think exists in the hypertrophy sphere at the moment.

Jake (55:14)
So in terms of the magnitude, like in terms of knowing okay, each additional set, like what's that saturation effect on on additional sets, we we don't know.

Chris (55:24)
That's it. That's the problem. I ultimately, we can see that we've got a nonlinear dose response and we can kind of, if you know the fatigue literature, can kind of figure out that it's not going to be attributable purely to that. So you end up going, well, OK, well, what else is going on? Well, know, stimulus saturation is the only really other ⁓ game in town in that regard.

Jake (55:46)
How do we know for sure that that's occurring?

Chris (55:50)
Well, again, this is one of those things where you you're in the process of doing science rather than evidence based practice here. You're not kind of going, I need a study that shows this. Otherwise, I am not allowed to believe anything. So I will, you know, start from your Bayesian reasoning and go, what are your possibilities? Eliminate everything that you know you can eliminate. And what you're left with is is your most likely, you know, kind of scenario. And that is pretty much the only.

As I said, only game in town, the only thing that really can happen is that the stimulus gets ignored. I mean.

Some people might want to go down the kind of. The unfolded protein response and say, you know, this is a endoplasmic reticulum stress thing. Honestly, I think you're pretty close to the fatigue literature if you're going to do that, because the mechanisms are very, very, very close. ⁓ I don't think that you can build a case for it being, ⁓ you know, endoplasmic reticulum stress. ⁓ I think that's too.

Jake (56:43)
Mm.

Chris (56:57)
It's yeah, you're going to come up against the same limitations that you've got with fatigue. There's just not enough of it. ⁓ I think really what we're seeing is something whereby the stimulus gets ⁓ recognized and then further stimulus on top of that is like, well. You just repeating the same kind of instruction that you just given me, so I'm just going to carry on doing the instruction I've got.

Jake (57:27)
If we did electrical stimulus studies in in animals, mice or something and two plus two didn't equal four, if more stimulus didn't always equal double the hypertrophy, would that suggest th this, or could that still be fatigue mechanisms from that stimulus?

Chris (57:40)
Well, you can still get calcium ion relative T mechanisms that will impair what you're doing. I mean, the electro stimulus basically gets rid of all your CNS fatigue's pretty much it gets. also makes inroads into limiting the the it limits how much your calcium ion relative T mechanisms. It limits what they can do to an extent, but you know, you can't get rid of it.

So, no, I mean, it doesn't really get around that. It gets a little bit closer, but it doesn't get you all.

Jake (58:17)
So realistically, in in the short term, foreseeable future, we're probably not gonna have the data there to tell us

Chris (58:24)
As I said, I think it's one of the hardest problems. I I genuinely don't think that is. I mean.

I mean, yeah, I genuinely don't think that the experimental models exist for us to be able to interrogate that question. I mean, I can think of another couple of examples where there are also big experimental model difficulties, but this is one where you can't even I can't even see a way to approach the problem.

Jake (58:59)
Biologically that would be a fairly standard thing, right? For there to be a saturation effect. Like that's that's not like a unique thing when I'll look in muscle and be like, this is

Chris (59:07)
Well, yeah, again, it's like imagine one of the useful things that you can do in these kind of scenarios, if you think scientifically is to and I'm a big fan of just like trying to imagine what would be the case if, you know, certain things were true. You know, what would happen if these things were true? If like so start with the opposite, say what would happen if.

Jake (59:26)
Mm.

Mm.

Chris (59:34)
you were able to if there were no saturation effect and you could literally just keep applying a stimulus indefinitely and it would keep adding to the growth stimulus that you were getting, where you can immediately see you have some pretty catastrophic effects because what you would end up with, you could literally do like one of these crazy bro split type workouts. You could do like 100 sets or something. That's probably a bit excessive, but you could do like 30 sets in a session or so. don't think that's

Jake (1:00:00)
Yeah.

Chris (1:00:03)
completely off the charts, but, you know, and the muscle then receives that information, those those instructions. And it's like sending and imagine that you're working in a corporate environment and all of your team is sending instructions to the same printer and you all send like four different jobs to the printer. And it's like now got like 40 jobs to do. It's just going to sit there and it's going to process all of them.

And like somebody maybe comes along later that day and wants to print something and they have to wait because it's still printing the 40 odd jobs that you sent to it, you know, earlier that day. That would be the same problem with with muscles if they didn't have a saturation effect, you would basically send all these instructions to them and they would be like, OK, well, I'm now going to need to spend 12 days processing that I can't now do anything. Yeah. Do you see the problem?

Jake (1:00:39)
Mm-hmm.

I mean you could just you could work out straight for like a week and and then not have to worry about the next six months.

Chris (1:01:00)
for the next six months. So you can kind of see that it's impossible for there not to be a saturation effect. There has to be something that stops you from continuing to send instructions to the muscle that it then has to fulfill by basically spending. No, but you could get around that. You could absolutely get around that. You could get around that. You could

Jake (1:01:20)
Fatigue usually fits that role though, yeah. Like fatigue is

You could hack it with like a single repetition every five minutes or something like that.

Chris (1:01:29)
Exactly. You could do you could do kind of two or three reps in reserve, five rep maxes and just do them every kind of five minutes or whatever throughout the day. You know, you could be sat working at your desk and you could literally just go and do a biceps curl or triceps extension or whatever press or pull or something. You could just keep doing and you could do that and then you could spend like four weeks doing nothing. And technically, if there were no saturation effect, then the instructions would have to get followed. It's like sending instructions to the printer.

You know, and it doesn't work like that. And everybody knows it doesn't work like that. that so you can kind of immediately start. This is I think this is a really useful kind of thought process to go through. This is a math to evidence based practice, by the way. This is this is the kind of thing that they would literally fall out of their chairs if I said that I was doing this, you know. But I think it's important because it starts to put boundaries around the problem.

and you can start to figure out what is most likely to be the case, even if you haven't got a training study that shows exactly that thing, which is what they all want.

Jake (1:02:38)
So okay, so we don't know exactly what magnitude that this stimulus this saturation effect is having, or or what ceiling it's it's setting a cap or really anything. We just we just know that it's probably there and it's doing something. So where does that land us in terms of well, what's the maximum amount of stimulus we can get in a single session?

Chris (1:03:01)
So in terms of actual numbers, I mean, I think that there is pretty good data across the board, again, talking about, you know. Those response meta-analyses from human trials, long term training studies, looking at rodent studies, both in growth and muscle proteins. And I think there's very strong data to suggest that we go to at least five sets and we're still, you know, kind of

getting, you know, more, but obviously incrementally smaller. I think that. The problem is that because the is like I said to you before we jumped on the podcast, I said, you got to remember, it's kind of like the frog jumping on the lippads, you know, where each jump is half the size of the previous jump. You know, you never actually get to the edge of the pond because you're constantly jumping in these half jumps. And so you

Jake (1:03:57)
Mm.

Chris (1:04:00)
you kind of up at your ninety nine point nine nine nine nine percent. And the next jump just takes you, you know, halfway between where you are and where you need to go. And it's you never get to the edge of the pond. I think that's the problem with nonlinear curves. You just carry on increasing, increasing, increasing. And you just each extra set now is giving you an infinitesimally tiny extra little bit to growth stimulus is there. It's just really, really tiny. So maximizing the stimulus technically, I don't think can ever happen.

Jake (1:04:16)
Mm.

Chris (1:04:29)
I think you would have to do an infinite number of sets to actually maximise truly in the strict definition of the term maximise. And this is the reason I wanted to do this podcast topic, because the use of the word maximise by this particular influence, it's like you have to do a certain number of sets to maximise growth. Well, I think you actually have to do an infinite number of sets in a workout to maximise growth by the definition of the word maximise. Practically.

I think you can kind of start to bring that number down quite a lot. But you know, I think that is obviously well above five. ⁓ You know, I would say it's probably somewhere between eight and 12, I would guess.

Jake (1:05:09)
So so you so you are are you suggesting that there wouldn't be a point where you actually then start to regress?

Chris (1:05:15)
Well, again, that's where you would bring fatigue into it. So I think that in the scenario where you've got ⁓ fatigue is is is materially kind of affecting. So somebody's doing conventional sets, eight, twelve reps to failure. Then I think, yeah, you would probably start to see an issue where fatigue starts to chew into. ⁓

Jake (1:05:36)
Okay, so it's not that the it's not a stimulus problem, it's a by product of the fatigue that's come along with the stimulus.

Chris (1:05:44)
Yeah, so I think when we see U shaped ⁓ or kind of inverse U shaped curves, I think when we talk about a kind of a deterioration of the amount of growth that you're getting, I think that's the net effect of you creating a muscle damage problem that is ⁓ essentially chewing up your hypertrophy budget, if you like, and using that budget to repair itself.

and you know essentially you lose out compared to what you were getting previously. So you don't end up devoting all of your growth resources to growth, you end up losing some of that to the damage. So I think that's a fatigue problem and again there's management that you can do to kind of avoid some of that.

Jake (1:06:31)
So again, if you go back to that example you gave before, you're doing a single grip with the five grip max, three grips and reserve, yeah.

Chris (1:06:34)
Exactly. That's the point I'm making. So, yeah, you could avoid a lot of that. inverse U shape. But yeah, mean, like.

Jake (1:06:41)
I mean, this is why I think clusters the way that we can achieve the most stimulus in a session. Because I think that Well, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But we're talking reps in reserve in a way that you're mitigating or minimizing the other fatigue mechanisms because you can you know, there's still people who argue you can do a fifteen rep max, keep a few reps in reserve. It's like, well, that's not going to be the same, is it, than doing two reps with a five rep max?

Chris (1:06:47)
That's the same thing as reps and reserves, isn't it? It's just the structure.

No exactly.

So, yeah, I think this word maximize is deserving of very, careful analysis because I think technically you would need a very large number of sets to get to the point where you could say numerically, you would actually maximize the growth of a single workout. Practically, I think you're probably within the noise between eight and twelve sets. Arguably, five is probably where it really starts to kind of thin out. So.

somebody wants to argue it's six, seven or something like that, then I'm not, you know, kind of going to disagree too much with that. But yeah, I mean, probably around around the 12 zone, I think in Sure.

Jake (1:07:51)
But again, we're talking like sets to failure, sets of above five repetitions. Yeah. Like again, if you're doing this class of thing, then that's probably not gonna be eight sets.

Chris (1:08:01)
Yeah, again, it's how you get that in terms of stimulating. But ⁓ yeah, I think five is probably ⁓ where where it becomes really kind of. Practically pointless going much above that, but I think eight is probably where you would end up drawing the kind of line again. The point I'm making here is that these these kind of zones that I'm talking about.

five, six, seven, or eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. I'm just kind of picking these zones out as being like not so much inflection points, but just clear areas where there is a, ⁓ you know, a meaningful change in the nature of the plateau. Technically, I'm kind of sticking with my original ⁓ classification, which is that I think you would need nearly infinite sets to be truly maximizing because it is a nonlinear dose response curve.

Jake (1:08:56)
So let's go with ten, Plonk SL somewhere in the middle of that range you've given. So if if someone is saying, Hey, okay, it's probably let's say give it a ten, eight ten, eight twelve, whatever somewhere there to maximize in quotations, the stimulus of that session.

Chris (1:09:15)
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but just to be absolutely 100 % clear, there is no scenario on planet Earth where you can argue that that number is two or three. Just to be 100 % clear, there is no possible way you cannot argue with a straight face that you are maximizing the hypertrophy stimulus with two or three sets. That is a non-existent possibility. So it has to be five or up.

Jake (1:09:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (1:09:41)
I mean, like even at five, I think you're in very dangerous territory, but like six, seven, eight, I think we can start to have a serious conversation. I think eight, twelve is probably where the banding has got to be practically. But like anybody who says you can't maximize hypertrophy with, you know, if somebody is arguing that they want to maximize hypertrophy and then they turn around and have a program that is recommending two or three sets per muscle group, a workout, they are not being coherent.

between their programming and their argument, if that makes sense.

Jake (1:10:12)
Yes. Well, yeah, precisely. And that's kind of what I wanted to say. So if there's this idea that people are circulating saying, hey, a session should be looking at not just stimulating hypertrophy, but maximizing hypertrophy, then the only direction for you to go with that is to do eight to twelve sets per muscle in that session.

Chris (1:10:32)
If you genuinely are using the word maximizing in a proper way, then yeah, you are talking upwards of five without any debate whatsoever. And probably most likely you're going to land in the eight to 12 zone.

Jake (1:10:46)
So if that's the case, why not just do eight to twelve sets per muscle in each session?

Chris (1:10:53)
Well, this then lands us precisely back at the starting point, which is to say, it's not about how many sets you do per session and what your maximization of the hypertrophy stimulus per session is. It's what happens when you get to the end of the week. It doesn't matter what you've been doing. What matters is the results that you get. ⁓ And doing 12 sets in a single session and then doing nothing for the rest of the week on that same muscle group is going to end up.

causing you to produce a pretty poor result compared to the person who does two or three sets, two or three times a week. And that's the whole point. I mean, that's just how the frequency volume combination ⁓ problem works.

Jake (1:11:37)
And why might that happen? Because again, if we look at outcome data, then some of the data would suggest that's not the case. So why would we be thinking that doing twelve sets in one session would be inferior to doing six sets in two sessions?

Chris (1:11:50)
Well, the only outcome data that really routinely shows that you can pretty much do any combination of any any any frequency as long as you do the same number of sets per week. The only data that really shows that is data that has non recoverable volumes. You know, that's the only data that shows that if you go below that, then pretty much all the data shows that frequency matters quite a lot. And I think that's

really telling, because I think that demonstrates that what we're talking about here are two certainly separate things. But basically, ⁓ you've got I mean, I've talked this through a million times, but basically, there are two things to think about. There is the non-linearity of the dose response. if you do your let's assume you do your 10 or whatever sets in a single session, the back kind of five sets of that are pretty much garbage. I mean, they're just so tiny stimulus.

even if they're not garbage from a fatigue point of view, if you've been constructing your workout really well, even if you manage to do that, you know, they're still going to be garbage from a stimulus saturation point of view. I mean, it's not doing very much. So you're not comparing now apples and oranges. Sorry, not comparing apples and apples, you're comparing apples and oranges. So you've essentially got a bunch of sets. They're not doing very much. In contrast, if you split those out and do them across two or three sessions.

then now suddenly you're getting a lot more benefit from that. You're getting more of the earlier sets and they're far more valuable. They're gonna give you far more stimulus. You know, can't say that 10 sets done once a week is as good as five sets done twice a week, because the non-linearity won't let you say that. Non-linear. This is, I said to again, I said this to you before we jumped into the podcast. As soon as anybody accepts that there is a non-linearity occurring inside of a single workout,

Jake (1:13:37)
So

Chris (1:13:47)
then frequency matters. can't say that frequent arithmetically frequency matters. You know, it has to. You can't make the numbers square up otherwise.

Jake (1:14:00)
Yeah, so the only only argument could be to what extent? Yeah, like if you're going off

Chris (1:14:04)
Well, no, you're now back to your shape of your dose response curve that you were talking about earlier. It's how steep is it?

Jake (1:14:07)
Yeah. Yeah. So someone could argue that it's actually relatively flat and like you lose a little bit, but you don't lose that much. And so it's like, okay, then higher frequency is only a little bit better. And then if if your dose response is a lot steeper, then it's like okay, higher frequency is potentially a lot better. Like it's just going to come down to how much better?

Chris (1:14:29)
Exactly. So, you know, mean, essentially the dose response does a lot of work on its own. As soon as you have a nonlinear response, then frequency has to matter if that nonlinear response exists inside of a single workout. You know, that's that's axiomatic, that's arithmetic. But we've also got atrophy and we know that atrophy exists from the maintenance literature. So.

you know, as soon as you've got actually happening within a training week, which we know does exist, then at that point, you've also got an atrophy problem that you're not getting with multiple sessions that you are getting with single sessions. So you add that in and you've got two problems that you can't get around. So ultimately, you're always going to do better at spreading your volume out over more sessions. As long as you're recovering properly, I mean, that's the issue you actually have to recover.

Jake (1:15:28)
So, okay, and that's the key bit there, the recovery, and I wanna maybe finish with that 'cause that's gonna be important. But why what and I haven't I haven't looked at this literature well enough to formulate an idea here, but when you do see some of these frequency studies that are comparing once a week, three times a week, whatever, and they conclude, look, the hypertrophy results were more or less the same, but the amount lifted was miles more with the high frequency.

Chris (1:15:58)
Of course it was because there's no fatigue happening to the same extent. you just do a billion sets in the workout, the last sets are going to be so fatiguing that you're going to be such a bad set of TV. Your last sets are going to be garbage.

Jake (1:15:58)
Is that

So so my two questions there is does that suggest to us that in those situations where there's significantly or meaningfully more volume lifted in the high frequency, that that high frequency group is probably not suffering from from too much fatigue? I guess I could technically still be suffering from fatigue, but less fatigue than the once a week group.

might be suffering from. Like it's there could still be post workout fatigue. Cause you made a point a moment ago saying, well, we're comparing unrecoverable volumes when we're looking at some of these studies. And so how can we how can we ascertain what's recoverable volumes?

Chris (1:16:48)
Well, I mean the way that you kind of get an idea of recoverable volumes is to you gather the strength training studies that have measured

how long it takes strength train lifters to recover from a specific number of sets. And then you count the number of days. I mean, generally speaking, if you look at and you can draw a line through those data and it kind of shows you that three sets is probably recover within 48,000 five in kind of ⁓ 72 hours. I mean, that's kind of just looking at what recovery data have collected been collected.

Jake (1:17:29)
H what's your gut feeling for like how much individu I I I see this at at with Al's plan, but

Chris (1:17:33)
Well, individual variation, would say that individual variation is smaller than in the lifting community. think individual variation is probably smaller than you might you might expect. I think that I think three sets three times a week is probably a very good ⁓ normal distribution ⁓ kind of center ⁓ zone. And I would say, you know, probably maybe two thirds of people probably sit in that. ⁓

You know, I would say that you you could probably find people that would be three and a half sets ⁓ or two and a half sets ⁓ limits. ⁓ I think I might be a two and a half sets limit person. ⁓ And then I think if you were to try and find people who are genuinely two or four sets, I think you would have to work quite hard.

And I think if you wanted to find people who have five sets or one set, I think you would be looking a very long time. And again, I'm not talking about non lifting community people. I'm not talking about people who are, know, endurance athletes or I'm not talking about people who are world class sprinters. You know, if you find a world class sprinter, then yeah, sure. mean, you could probably find that they would be still suffering 48 hours after a single set failure.

Jake (1:18:47)
Mm.

Chris (1:19:00)
⁓ Similarly, endurance athletes could probably do five quite easily. But in the lifting community, I think you would find those groups of people are quite hard to track down. I genuinely don't think you find very many of them at all.

Jake (1:19:13)
When I look back to the so my litmus test is when we have an idea about how this all works, I wanna look back and see what did the silver era do and did it match up or not. And I think it's very hard to overlook the fact that by and large, what I seem to see them saying is three sets seems to be the norm. Like okay, this is kind of what kinda everyone can do, should be able to do. but they do often suggest pushing up to four and very rarely five sets.

Chris (1:19:35)
Exactly.

Jake (1:19:43)
And they they do talk about obviously assessing if you're getting weaker when you're doing that. So my if I was just to base my belief off the silver era, I would imagine that the most people are gonna fall in three sets every two days. Some maybe four, and probably most are gonna regress on five, but there might be some outliers who could do five.

Chris (1:20:02)
Yeah, so we're in exactly the same place, really. mean, I think that but I do think that the point you made last time we talked about this where we were saying, well, a lot of those high volumes were done prior to competition, and it's probably because they were more relaxed about looking slightly soft as long as they bigger. And I think that's a really, really good point, because

Jake (1:20:23)
Mm, mm.

Chris (1:20:30)
I do think that once you start accumulating fatigue, then you will have muscle damage present. You therefore will have inflammation present. And if you've got inflammation present, then by definition, you will have swelling present. I think that's something that people just seem to just ignore. It's like they want, again, they just want to argue without actually saying, well, what are my boundary conditions?

Jake (1:20:32)
Yeah.

Chris (1:20:52)
A boundary conditions is that if you've got muscle damage present, you're to have inflammation present. You got inflammation, you are going to have muscle swelling. That's how muscle swelling happens. So it's not really one of these kind of debate or questions. It's like people all know there's no there's no muscle swelling. I'm like, did you get muscle damage? Yeah. OK, well, you got inflammation. Well, OK, we swelling.

Jake (1:20:52)
Mm.

Mm.

Mm.

So hang on, you're saying that the study that had seven or fourteen sets or twenty one sets and found that there was no swelling. You're saying that they had no muscle damage? Like what?

Chris (1:21:18)
I'm saying that physiologically, physiologically, exactly. I'm saying physiologically, you can't. It's like they're trying to argue without having any physiological priors whatsoever. And this is what I keep coming back to is that you can't expect to make any progress in science if you have no priors. You have to have some priors.

Jake (1:21:40)
If if you study with studying again.

Chris (1:21:43)
Yeah, it's like that's what textbooks are for. You're supposed to do the reading. You're supposed to have a model of how things work in your head. You know, it's like. Inflammation causes swelling. Everybody, every sports medicine doctor knows that. You know.

Jake (1:22:02)
To go back to my silver error point, you'd mentioned, you know, maybe they were okay with some of this damage accumulating. Well that's ⁓ that's fair. Obviously we've talked about that in the past, but now that I I do think about when they are often recommending up to five sets, generally they would say, hey, you'll only do this for like one month. You know, there seems to be some understanding that this probably isn't something you can just recover from indefinitely. And

I mean, th that was kind of the whole idea of this whole not this episode, but this whole podcast as a whole was like, Hey, we're just seeing so many similarities with what the Sil the Silver Era guys are doing and and what a physiological model of hypertrophy would predict that it's it's I mean, it's honestly it's kinda ludicrous to overlook that.

Chris (1:22:43)
⁓ absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's that's the whole purpose of what we're here for. But yeah, I mean, so in terms of what we're trying to talk about today, I was what I was trying to get to is that.

You can't maximize and this is the fatigue lead in that you were mentioning a minute ago. You can't maximize the stimulus from a single workout and also maximize the hypertrophy you're getting across the week. Those two things are orthogonal. They're literally incompatible with each other. So what you've got to do is you've got to make a decision about what you're actually trying to do. Are you trying to get to the end of the week with the biggest amount of hypertrophy in which case then you're to have to

you know, look at frequency as being your primary driver. If you for some reason want to do if it's a study or something you want to create a big stimulus by purchasing a workout. OK, well, then that's a separate question. But that isn't a practical strategy for progressing over time. That's not how we would go about doing it. And I think that, you know, I repeat myself again, but I think that a lot of the kind of

data that suggests that you can just do any frequency you like as long as you accumulate the same number of sets over the week. I think those are swelling studies. I don't think they are hypertrophy studies. You know, I think that all that's happening there is that people are creating a ton of swelling. And again, I've said this before, the way that those studies are constructed is that you'll do, you know, your last workout in the low frequency group.

And then three days later after the last workout, you'll take a hypertrophy measurement. OK, same thing happens with the higher frequency group. The issue is that the last workout that you did with the low frequency group will have a lot more swelling because it's got a lot higher volume. And so you end up overstating the benefit, the growth that you're getting in that lower frequency group to the high frequency group. So generally speaking, frequency studies are going to suffer.

from the swelling problem because they're going to make a high frequency group look worse and a lower frequency group look better. In contrast, if you look at the way swelling works with volume tiers, they're all doing the same frequency and they're just moderating volume. Then what that does is it makes the higher volume groups look a lot better than the lower volume groups. So you end up

seeing that volume is really, really impressive for hypertrophy. And you end up seeing that frequency is pretty much irrelevant. And people keep saying to me, why do the meta-analyses show that frequency doesn't matter and volume does matter? And like, have you thought about how swelling works? Because if you think about how swelling works, it will tell you that swelling will track volume in the same way that hypertrophy does. But swelling will not track frequency. It will do the opposite. It will make the lower frequency group look better because you will mistake the swelling for hypertrophy.

So, you know, I mean, until the hypertrophy community start to get serious about muscle swelling instead of just desperately doing studies to try and prove that it doesn't matter until they get serious. I mean, that's what they're doing. I mean, everybody knows that's what they're doing. They're pretending that's not what they're doing, but that is what they're doing. They're just trying to justify why they can ignore it. And they're going to waste another 10, 20 years. But if they actually got serious about it, they could fix this and find

solutions, you know, experimental solutions for figuring out how to take the swelling out of the equation when they're measuring hypertrophy. And we can actually start to make some real progress with this stuff, but until they do that, we're not going to get anywhere.

Jake (1:26:40)
So for as long as damage is present, then we should be seeing swelling present, is that what you're saying?

Chris (1:26:45)
I'm saying that if you create... So damage, okay, so damage can occur in the absence of inflammation, but you're going down the apoptotic route rather than the necrotic route. So essentially, if you create necrosis and you're going to have a swelling, you're have an inflammatory response from that, then you're going to have swelling. I mean, generally speaking,

⁓ Generally speaking, most strength training workouts are to have an inflammatory response. I mean, it's pretty ubiquitous.

Jake (1:27:25)
The reason I asked that question is it would it be fair to assume that the recovery timeline and the swelling timeline would more or less match each other?

Chris (1:27:34)
No, ⁓ because.

Generally speaking, ⁓ the secondary muscle damage effect tends to kick off the swelling. So that's when the really big inflammatory response arrives. Well, it varies. mean, basically, the more muscle damage you precipitate, the later it's going to be. So if you look at secondary muscle damage effects in the rodent studies where they obliterate a muscle with 10 billion

Jake (1:27:48)
And when that starts what, two days in and when's that?

Chris (1:28:07)
eccentric contractions, then it can be like four or five days after the workout before you get to the point where you hit your secondary muscle damage effect. If you look at a relatively sensible strength training workout with conventional strength training methods in humans, in strength trained humans, then you might see your muscle damage effect occur after 24 hours. And I think that's probably when it normally happens. And that's pretty much when you see the muscle swelling start to really

Jake (1:28:08)
Mm, mm.

Chris (1:28:36)
rise in ⁓ human strength training recovery studies. It kind of starts around the second day and it just kind of increases for a couple of days and then starts dying down again. I mean, I'm talking about like decent number of sets to kind of create four or five days worth of fatigue. mean, this is not like,

Jake (1:28:49)
Is it

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it is the end of it when you would see like d does recovery take place when swelling is completely dissipated? Do they match each other or still they they won't

Chris (1:29:06)
⁓ Very, very few recovery studies will actually measure swelling that far out. I mean, in general, they stop measuring and it's still elevated. So. ⁓

Jake (1:29:15)
I mean this is a problem, right? I mean like the study's looking at swelling are often like what, seventy two hours?

Chris (1:29:21)
depends on the the protocol, the exercise protocol. Some of the eccentric ones maybe go on a little bit further. But yeah, they tend to stop measuring around 48 or 72.

Jake (1:29:36)
Which I don't understand if we're saying the secondary muscle damage effect is gonna be like, Okay, well let's do twenty w let's do twenty one sets and then stop testing.

Chris (1:29:40)
Yeah, secondary muscle damage effect is in the physiology literature, so therefore that is hidden knowledge from the hypertrophy community. It's not a known quantity. It doesn't even exist as far as I'm concerned.

Jake (1:29:49)
Ha ha

Okay, where have we landed? Maximising your weekly growth stimulus, you're saying I mean what's if you were to sum this up in a line, what's the line? It's as this if you really wanted to maximise it, it'd be as much recoverable volume as frequently as possible.

Chris (1:30:15)
No, that would be maximising hypertrophy across the week. so yeah, no, absolutely. Then that would be maximising hypertrophy across the week, but that would not be maximising the hypertrophy stimulus from a single session. You'd have to do like 10, 12 sets to do that.

Jake (1:30:19)
Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

No, no, no. They they yeah, they're gonna lead you to very Yeah. Yeah, so if that's great. So if you're okay if you're listening to this and your goal is to maximize growth in a single session, then do at least ten sets, maybe more. If your goal is to maximize hypertrophy over that week, then what, you're gonna say most people that's gonna be three sets every two days? Some people possibly four. Yeah.

Chris (1:30:55)
three sets every other day or three sets three times a week? I'm just really now curious to see what ⁓ this is going to ⁓ stimulate by way of response because, ⁓ know, obviously the kind of the purpose of this claim was to, as you pointed out, argue against doing single sets. ⁓ But.

the influencers who are arguing against it are mostly programming two or three sets. And there is no way on the planet that you can argue that two or three sets is maximizing the hypertrophy stimulus from a single session. So I'm absolutely intrigued to see where this is going to go next. But if it generates an amusing response, I'm sure that we will pick it up.

Jake (1:31:40)
Ha ha ha.

And if you got to the end of and you're confused and you don't know how many sets to do, well, I would just default to go look what the silver era guys did. I will remember to put up our edited plan of Al Berman's routine today. And there you go, it's done for you. You don't even you don't even need to think about the why is the these studies showing this and this person saying that. Well, okay, there you go. The silver era plan done and dusted.

Okay guys, thanks for tuning in. We'll be back next week with a new topic.