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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 (00:01)
Welcome back to our second episode of hypertrophy past and present. Now, if you're joining us for the first time in this podcast, what we endeavored to do is go back in time and look at bodybuilding before the introduction of anabolic and examine it through the lens of modern muscle physiology. To do that, all the fun stuff, we've got Chris Beasley here. Chris, my co-host, how are you doing?
Chris (00:23)
I'm doing well, thanks Jake, good to be here.
Jake (00:26)
And we're going to introduce you to begin with with another old school bodybuilding plan. Now, if you did join us last week, we started with one of the first bodybuilding plans that was mass produced and that was by a company called Milo Barbell Company. Now, when we did examine that, we looked at some things that they did quite well and some things that perhaps could have been evolved or adapted over time and maybe made a little bit better. But as a foundation, there was some really interesting, I guess principles or core elements of that plan. And today the plan is about 25 years later. So what we have to begin with here is a York Barbell Company plan. Now, Milo, here's your little history 101 lesson. Milo Barbell Company turned into York Barbell Company. It was bought by guy named Bob Hoffman. And they continued on a lot of the similar work. They made barbells, they made plans and or what they called courses back then and they developed a number of different courses. And the course we're gonna look at today was one of the later courses they developed. And I mentioned last week for you guys who joined us that the first Milo course didn't have any sets. Sets did not exist at that point. No one talked about sets. What they said is you would do this movement and you do 15 movements of it, or you do 10 movements, and that's how many repetitions you're doing. No one thought about sets.
Now at this point in time, we're talking about 1951 is when this plan, least a version of it I have was published. And at this point, they've now started to develop sets. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about the sets and the way they do that in a moment, because it's quite interesting, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. I wanna tell you about the plan first. So the plan is another 12 exercise plan, which is interesting because they followed that format from Milo Barbell Company.
And if you listen to the way they talk about it, they essentially say that it takes about 12 exercises to adequately stimulate the entire body. And I actually think that's a fairly fair observation. There's a couple of exercises, maybe I'll do differently and I'm sure we'll talk about that. But that's interesting in and of itself that as a complete body plan, they think you need about 12 exercises. So those 12 exercises were exercise one was a one arm seated dumbbell supinated curl. So not alternating, but one arm at a time. Exercise two was a flat bench. So this is obviously an adjustment from last week because they didn't have any real much chest exercise last time, they didn't have a bench. So here we have a flat bench and they specifically stayed to do the widest possible grip. Then we have a regular deadlift. And I'll talk about that more in a moment as well, but for now, regular deadlift.
And then we have a bent barbell pullover. They loved the pullovers back then. Then we have a dumbbell side to side bend. Then a triceps overhead extension with dumbbells. Then a bent over barbell row using a fairly wide pronated grip. And then we have a wide lat pull down pronated grip. Now they did specify they prefer to do this behind the neck.
And you could also do a behind the neck pull up instead if you wanted. And then we have a standing calf phrase with dumbbell. So you're holding a dumbbell in one hand and doing a calf phrase. Then we have, now this one, you're gonna have to use your imagination with me. So it was called a back press and shoulder spread. And what they did is they used a kind of like resistance band type piece, a chest expander essentially, but like a band.
And they had their, imagine their elbows by their side and hands pointing out to the side. And what they would do is extend their arms, so you're kind of moving into like a crucifix position. And then once you've extended, you protract your shoulder, or you fully extend, then you retract your shoulder blades, and then you protract again. So it's.
Chris (04:17)
So this is a frontal plane movement. Right, okay. So it's kind of like a lateral raise, or it's doing the same job as a lateral raise. Because it's obviously abducting the shoulder, which obviously the middle though is going to be the prime mover there with a little bit of anterior. So not getting ahead of ourselves too much, but there is a...
Jake (04:19)
Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
Chris (04:37)
very big difference between this program and the previous one in terms of the amount of overhead pressing work. So last time one of the things that you explained was that there was a really big focus on overhead pressing or at least on the deltoid complex itself which was achieved through overhead pressing because of the focus and the aesthetic goals that those guys had at that time and it's really fascinating to see that that has changed
Jake (04:41)
Yes, yes.
Chris (05:03)
as we've passed through this generation, if you like, 25 year period. And we've moved away from that focus on overhead pressing and shoulder development. And we're now looking at a different selection of exercises, which probably has a different set of aesthetic goals. But I think this is probably the exercise that they're doing for the shoulder ⁓ complex. It's just interesting. I wonder why they moved away from doing the overhead pressing and towards this.
Chris (05:30)
perhaps slightly less conventional exercise. I mean it's not like over pressing is difficult to manage, or set up or handle, so it's very curious whether there's any historical reason.
Jake (05:39)
So there's a bit of context I haven't given you here. So I will give you some. I showed you this plan. I do need to finish. There's two more exercises. The next one is a reverse crunch, which they call the leg raise. And then it finishes with a squat, which they would have called a deep knee bend. Now...
That's all I've shown you, but there's a bit more context. And the additional context to that is firstly, this was what they call the Mr. America course. So they claimed that a lot of the Mr. America competitors and winners, and that includes people like Grimick and Steve Reeves and George Eifferman and Delinger, they say that these people followed this system or something very similar to it. So this was not their standard beginner plan or a specialization phase or anything like that. This was like, this is what you do to look like a Silver Era competitor, someone who's going to get on stage. So that's context number one. Context number two, I don't know whether to start with this or not, but I will say it now, is when you look at this in the way that they present it, they're super, super vague with sets and with repetitions. And when they talk about sets, they're now at a point where they say, you know what, sets will produce better results.
But the way you do your sets are either you add a second or third set to the muscle you're trying to develop and then everything else gets one set. Or better yet...
what they suggest you do is you add an additional one or two exercises for that muscle group. And they actually provide additional exercises for each of these categories. So when you look at the bench, so they've given the wide grip bench, the additional exercises they provide are multiple versions of overhead pressing, incline pressing. And so that is ultimately what they're suggesting is actually have another
One or two exercises if you want to develop the deltoids that will include some kind of overhead pressing. Now, there's a couple other bits I wanna mention, but I might just pause there. Apart from the overhead cresting that you've mentioned, what are your initial thoughts?
Chris (07:43)
There's so much to say here. It's really, really interesting, especially, as I say, when you compare it with what we talked about last week. So obviously you've already highlighted that we've now got a bench press in the trading program, which we didn't have in the previous time. And we talked in great detail last time about why that might be. We've still got the pullover, though. So it's interesting that that hasn't dropped out, even though they've kind of...
put in an exercise which with the wide grip is going to be extremely effective for training all regions of the pec. So it's like we've got this additional exercise that does that job, but we're still keeping the pullover in the program. So there's an interesting kind of overlap there in having that still there. I suspect that that's not necessarily going to be potentially the perfect combination of exercises, at least as far as I'm concerned. Interesting that you've got this
Chris (08:34)
I can't remember actually, did we have obliques in the last training program? Do we have the side bends in the last training program?
Jake (08:39)
We did not have the side bend. We had, I don't actually recall now.
Chris (08:43)
but we potentially had something similar. But obviously we've also now got the leg raise in this training program, and we've got the regular deadlift. We talked last time about there was a straddle lift which kind of looked like either a Jefferson deadlift or maybe something that was a little bit more squat pattern in its kind of function rather than necessarily its appearance, but it was functioning more like a squat type pattern. Now,
One of the things that we didn't dwell on last time, because potentially it was just too obvious, is that at the time when bodybuilding was really getting going, there weren't things like knee extension machines and leg curl machines and all of those type exercises that we rely on a lot today for maximal development of the rectus femoris and the hamstrings. But they didn't really do deadlifts either last time and they didn't do leg raises. Now the interesting thing about leg raises is that it's basically a hip flexor exercise. Now yes, you can argue that it involves the abs and other things and what have you, but fundamentally the first part of hip flexion is actually the rectus femoris. So what's really interesting here is that from last time to this time we've now got two exercises that do hamstrings to a certain degree and they do
Chris (09:53)
rectus femoris to a certain degree. And that is literally two of the major observations I had last time, missing things. So we're starting to see corrections over time or developments, evolutions over time to fix or fix or fill in areas that potentially weren't being developed so much last time. And just to...
Jake (09:53)
It's worth noting with the deadlift as well that one of the alternative exercises they provide is a stiff leg deadlift.
Chris (10:21)
Yeah, exactly, which would be really, really perfect for the hamstrings in the context of the equipment that they've got available to them. So I'm just flicking back to last time's conversation and the exercises that were included there. They did have a weighted crunch, but I can't see a side bend there. I think.
Jake (10:42)
They had the one arm overhead dumbbell exercise that involves some bending.
Chris (10:45)
OK, of course, that would definitely that would definitely probably count in that category. But just to kind of conclude that little section of that concept that I'm trying to articulate there. There is also a wide grip lap pull down here, which we didn't have last time. And I think I probably highlighted that as my biggest criticism last time. I think I said something along the lines of, you know, a pull up bar is not, you know, difficult to set up. Why couldn't we have a pull up bar and do wide grip pull ups and have lower lat development? know, well, we've got that now. We've got wide grip pull ups, which is clearly going to develop the lower lats very effectively. I'm not really seeing a perfect full lat development because I think the grip width on the row is quite wide. So.
OK, fine with the pull over and the wide grip row and the the wide grip pull down, you're getting a 90 % development on the back. But if you wanted to absolutely max that out, I'd want to see a narrow grip row or a narrow grip pull down or a narrow grip pull up as well. And I suspect you're going to tell me that narrow grip pull ups were obviously a possible alternative to the wide grip ones. Exactly, exactly. So I think, you know, we're probably approaching a point where
Jake (11:54)
Exactly and rows and dumbbell rows as well, yes.
Chris (12:02)
these guys, if you count the alternatives, then these guys have probably got pretty much everything that you can do with the available equipment of the time. And again, I'm saying that in complete ignorance of when the first knee extension machine was built, when the first leg girl was built, have to forgive me, of machinery as regards the gym. But I think this is really interesting because it actually does nail so much more in comparison with what we saw last time.
Jake (12:28)
So with each of those alternatives, there's about five or six alternatives they provide and they're fairly thoroughly done. So even just for exercise one, which is interesting in and of itself, the single arm seated dumbbell supernated curl.
Even if we talk about motor unit recruitment, doing one arm at a time is quite interesting. But for example, the variations they provide for that include a curl with an incline bench, hammock curl, a reverse grip curl. So the variations are generally different enough that they are actually providing pretty much comprehensive development of each of the muscles. Now, there's another point I wanted to make. I touched on it loosely with the sets and how they said, well, you could just add in an additional, you know, some of these exercises.
Now, as far as repetitions, I find this quite interesting, because they were really kind of laissez-faire with the repetitions. And effectively what they said was, well, know, six to 15 is a sort of good starting point. Like you do this double progression method, start with six, add a rep or two, once you get to 15, go heavier, go back. But then they're kind of like, well, but also sometimes, you know, maybe go for 15 repetitions in total and you could do a set of, you know, a set of seven and a set of eight, or you could do three by five, or you could do five triples. And they're kind of just like,
And the sets don't really matter, like go for about 15 repetitions and however you want to get there, two sets of seven or five sets of three, the whatever, you know, that's, that's pretty good. Right. And even that point is quite interesting. Well, if you're getting 15, 12 to 15 repetitions in more than one sets, they're generally fairly good set formations. So I find it interesting that there's sort of a de-emphasis on this is exactly how many sets you need to do, this is exactly how many repetitions you need to do. And it's almost like, think 12 to 15 reps is good, get there with fives or with sixes or with sevens, we don't particularly mind. That's ultimately gonna lead you between two and four sets.
Chris (14:23)
From a physiological point of view, what's really interesting about that is that that will actually give you more or less the same amount of post-workout fatigue. So if you do one set of 15 or you do three sets of five, that's not gonna be miles apart in terms of what your post-workout fatigue is gonna look like. So in terms of constructing a program that allows you to just keep doing whichever of those combinations you wish, but still keeping the same structure,
Chris (14:50)
over time and doing the same number of workouts per week, that will work really nicely. So from a physiological point of view, it's interesting to see that they develop that kind of approach to the problem because it will work from a frequency standpoint. What it probably doesn't work from as a standpoint is the idea that it's going to give you the same amount of muscle growth because I don't think that's going to happen. If you do three sets of five, you're going to get way better results than one set of 15, for example. But ultimately, it's not so far apart that you would necessarily notice that immediately. It's probably something that's going to just kind of catch up with you after a couple of months of training. So that is an interesting observation because it's kind of two totally separate kind of sides of things. say, from a, you know, if they were looking for, can I recover and make this program work? Then that framework you've just explained is perfect because it does. If you're looking at it from the point of view, does this get me where I want to go?
Chris (15:46)
that's where it starts to break down because I don't think it is going to get them to the same place if you persist in that type of training, you know, if you persisted doing single sets of 15 and somebody else persisted in doing three sets of five. But that's what you're describing to me is that that's not how it was used. They would mix and match and they would do different things at different times. So maybe it just wasn't being observed because simply it wasn't being compared with anything. So you can kind of see how they might have got to that.
Jake (16:11)
Hmm we had a conversation a long time ago and you made this point that there's not a lot of value in periodizing repetitions. And at the time, there was a conversation that was happening alongside that where, you we're kind of talking about, does periodization make sense at all? And, you maybe there was an idea that maybe periodizing different exercises could make more sense to the regional hypertrophy as opposed to different repetitions, because you're not getting a repetition specific hypertrophy benefit, right? Like a set of 15, a set of five is going to give you the same form of hypertrophy. Now, what I find interesting in this is there doesn't seem to be that emphasis on, well, when you do the 15s, you get this type of growth. When you do the fives, you get this type of growth. They even suggested going down, doing a five, four, three, two, one at some point. And they don't say, well, that's gonna give you this type of growth compared to the 15. So it's almost like they know, hey, this growth is all the same, essentially. They do talk about flushing your muscle and stuff, but they don't sort of emphasize you need these different repetitions. It's almost more like an enjoyment sort of aspect or a variety motivation. And I think that's really interesting concept where it's like, hey, this is all doing the same thing. Change repetitions if you want, because it's motivating. You don't need to get locked into thinking you're getting anything different out of it, but you are getting some extra motivation.
Chris (17:28)
Absolutely, and I think that if we just trim the edges of that and say, you know, if most of our variation is bouncing between two sets of seven to eight and three sets of four to six, then those two rep ranges are awesome. They're really, really awesome, I think. If most of the variation is bouncing between those two, and very occasionally you might bounce up to one set of the higher rep end of the spectrum and maybe a scattering of reps a lower than that, but those are done, if you imagine a normal distribution, those are done much, much more infrequently than the two in the middle, then I think that would be the perfect balance, I think, of getting that little bit of variety and enjoyment and what have you, as you say, all doing the same thing and still remaining within that framework of always recovering in pretty much the same period of time. So, you know, a lot of the time we try and balance these ideas of motivation and interest and enjoyment with the
Chris (18:21)
ideal, optimal program that we're all seeking to find, or most of us are seeking to find. But I think this is a really interesting way of trying to solve that question because it says, look, here is a way of making sure that the fatigue problem is nailed down, it's squared away. And you're not having to worry about redoing your entire program every time you change rep ranges. But equally, you've got that ability to move things around.
Jake (18:34)
Yeah.
Chris (18:44)
I think that's a really, really nice way of doing it. And just as I say, refining it very slightly and creating a bit of a normal distribution and saying, well, look, most of the change has got to be between the two in the middle, two sets of seven or eight, three sets of four to six. But then occasionally you can drop down to sort of a scattering of lower reps and occasionally you can jump up to one sort of slightly higher reps than that 14 to 15 territory if that's something that you really feel that would be motivating to do for a couple of weeks. And it all kind of works. I think that's really, really nice. That's very good.
Jake (18:46)
Mmm and they also emphasize Ideally just doing once a week what they call working on the nerve effectively, that's Ultimately going to failure or going near your your absolute limit. So That I think is quite interesting as well If you think about the fact that you're repeating this this workout plan say Monday, Wednesday, Friday then maybe the Monday session, you're quote, working on the nerves, you're taking that set to failure. And then essentially those that Wednesday, Friday session, you might be matching that. And so it's that little bit easier in a sense. I think that's.
Chris (19:42)
So we're one rip in reserve unless we've dedicated a particular session to training to failure. Get it? Nice.
Jake (19:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is very much the format I follow with my own programming.
Like for me personally in the gym, I change reps as I feel. I might do sets of five some days or some weeks. And if I'm just doing one set, then I might do 10 or 12 repetitions because I don't need to warm up as much. And then sometimes I might do this five, four, three, two, one tight thing and doing generally one of those sessions to failure and then matching it for those other two sessions. So I think for me, I look at that and I'm like, this is a really nice, complete plan.
Chris (20:19)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's certainly with access to today's equipment, we would tweak things and do different selections of exercises. But when you look at the limitations of the equipment they had access to, it becomes quite difficult to beat these kind of programs. know, it's especially when you look at the I mean, especially when you look at the alternatives that they provide and you say, you know, actually, I don't like this this kind of weird shoulder expander.
Jake (20:31)
Mm.
Chris (20:45)
thing that you described. No, I actually just want to do a standard overhead press and you know that's that's my preference. And if you kind of start to select those or you know, you'd like to say I don't particularly want to do a conventional deadlift, I'd much rather do a stiff leg to guarantee really good hamstrings development because I know that conventional isn't going to be as good at that. So, you know, when you start to take out some of that kind of exercise that you don't necessarily prefer and you sort of impose or you know, replace those with ones that you think are better or just more preferable to you, then I think actually this starts to look like a pretty perfect program in many respects. And as you've made the point repeatedly, certainly 100 times better than most of what we're going to see online today.
Jake (21:30)
Absolutely. Chris, I know you want to move on and talk about another topic. I have two questions for you on this and then I'm to let you do that. So my first question is, what do you think is happening in that shoulder expander exercise? So they do talk about going into protraction, retracting, protracting. What is the value do you think of doing that?
And then the second question I have is simply following up same question I asked you last week. What is one thing in particular you think that would make this plan even better beyond the exercise selection? Is there anything else that you think could be improved upon?
Chris (22:03)
So both of those questions are not vanilla in the least. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do them justice, but I think really the exercise itself to me, as I say, feels like an overhead press replacement in general in the grip, the front of plane. So for me, it kind of is trying to do the lateral raise part of modern program.
The protraction bit is quite interesting and it'd be really fascinating just to kind of sit down with an anatomy textbook. I'm sure people out there can do this probably better than I can and just think about which muscles that might be working. My gut feel is it might be serratus anterior, but again, it's like, I just want to sit down and think about that. It's not something that I would want to rush into assuming. You know, I think...
Jake (22:45)
Mm.
Chris (22:49)
There's a tendency today, especially on social media, for people to be like, well, you need to have an answer for everything right away. I'm like, no, that's not how this works. Curiosity is going to get you to the right answer over a longer period of time rather than just knee-jerk jumping to an answer and then having to defend it for the rest of your life because you said it. That's the problem, I think, with the internet. It's eternal and you can't kind of walk back stuff very easily. So I think, yeah, my answer would be I don't know. And I, as I say, I think a starting point would be the serratus. But if somebody comes out and says, it can't possibly be the serratus because x, y, z, I'd be like, OK, that's interesting. So what's actually doing that?
Jake (23:27)
For what it's worth, believe that this made your shoulder span wider. That was the point of doing this exercise. Don't know if that adds anything to it. Okay.
Chris (23:35)
⁓ Not really, mean,
that's kind of what we're doing with shoulder training anyway. Yeah, I don't know. It's a very interesting question. I'm sure that there are some anatomy aficionados out there that can shed some light on that. It's not really something that I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about. In terms of your second part, as I said,
Jake (23:42)
You'd hope so, yeah.
Chris (23:57)
It depends on whether you get to include the alternative exercises or not. Not including the alternative exercises, think really straight away I'm going to be like, I need a stiff leg deadlift in there rather than a regular deadlift. I need a narrow grip row in there because otherwise I'm not getting that upper part of the lat fully developed. I really don't like the lateral raise imitation and much rather a proper overhead press in there, but that's just me. I think overhead presses are brilliant for what they do. And my personal aesthetics go much closer to what we talked about last time in terms of what those guys were trying to do anyway. I have that tendency to look at the ancient Greek statues and think that is probably a better look than a lot of what we see, you know, kind of today. but that again, that's my personal preference and it doesn't really necessarily translate to other people's experiences. So yeah, I think that would probably be my list really. I don't think I've got much more to add to
Jake (24:50)
Yeah, wonderful. So moving on we've got another topic we're going to cover. Do you want to introduce us to it?
Chris (24:57)
Sure, so as always, that was the hypertrophy past section, and this is now the hypertrophy present section. So when we look at hypertrophy happening, obviously we are looking to produce muscle growth over time, and that is the net result of us producing a hypertrophy stimulus in a workout, and then losing some of that hypertrophy stimulus at the point when we start the next workout. Now, the way we talk about this is that each workout has a hypertrophy stimulus period. So we do the workout and then for a short period of time afterwards, and the duration of that time is going to be the topic of today's conversation, we do a workout and for a period of time afterwards there is a stimulus period in which the muscle fibers are increasing in size. Now, during that period of time, the muscle fibers are not able to lose any size. That's why we're protected in that period of time. When we leave that period of time, we go outside of the hypertrophy stimulus period. We're now losing some of the muscle size and the muscle fiber size that we've gained. And obviously, if you look at low frequency training programs where we're talking about training a muscle only once per week, for example, then you're going to have a hypertrophy stimulus period for however long, say 48 hours just as a starting point because that's traditionally what the literature has referred to, then when you leave that 48 hour window, you've now got five days in which you're going to see a loss of muscle size. Now the maintenance literature is brilliant at encapsulating this problem because they do one workout a week of three or four sets, you get to the next workout the following week and basically all of that hypertrophy you stimulated in the window post that workout the previous week has now gone. You've lost all of it but you haven't lost any more. So that's why we call them maintenance programs because you kind of create a hypertrophy in one workout and then you lose it by the time you get to the next workout. And that is very, very contentious in areas of the internet where they like to claim that you can do one set per week, you know, once a week and still achieve growth over time. That's just not what any of the maintenance literature studies show. They all show that three or four sets once per week basically just keeps you spinning your wheels and you stay in the same place over time. So basically what we're interested in is this duration of the hypertrophy stimulus period. Now the reason this is so important is because when you start to move away from the one set per week program where you've got this huge period of time in which you're losing muscle mass from workout to the next and you start to say well what happens if I now do two workouts per week or three workouts per week and what happens if I want to compare three workouts a week with two workouts a week. Well in that scenario you're saying okay well the duration of my stimulus period now matters quite a lot. For example, if my stimulus period lasts 48 hours, then I do my three workouts per week and I get a stimulus period that basically covers almost all of the time apart from one day a week. And I only have one day a week where I'm likely to lose any muscle size. So if I'm training Monday, Wednesday, Friday, then Sunday is the only day I'm likely to see any atrophy happening, which makes the full body three times a week program really, really nice in that context.
If then I'm doing upper lower and I'm only training a muscle twice a week, now I'm struggling because now I've got multiple days per week. So I do my workout and I get two days of sort of hypertrophy stimulus, but then I've got a day still of atrophy before I do my next workout to the same muscle group. And then I've got three more days after that, I think. So two more days, two more days, sorry. So a total of three days per week, three days per week in total of atrophy where I'm actually losing some size in comparison with the full body where I'm training three days a week and I'm getting basically only one day. So it's three times as much atrophy over the week as the full body period. That's what's really important.
Jake (28:36)
So just to clarify in case we've lost anyone, so you're saying that, because people do talk about atrophy a lot and they say, and I'm one of them, and they say that look, we've got all these studies that show X amount of muscles lost in X amount of time in one week or two weeks or four weeks or whatever. And you're saying, look, we can leave that aside for now. What we know is the maintenance studies tell us that there's three to four sets worth that's lost in seven days. So then what the question is is when over that seven day period do we lose that almost four sets worth of growth. And you're saying that if it were two days, then that would say that that full body three times per week would mean there's only one day a week where there's some of that atrophy occurring. And you're saying that upper lower, upper lower where each muscle is getting trained twice a week is going to have, what is it three days per week of atrophy if it were a two day stimulus period. then the question, now the question is, well, is it two days?
Chris (29:23)
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And so obviously if you are a defendant, a proponent of upper lower splits, you've got a very strong motivation to argue that it's 72 hours instead of 48 because you completely then match what upper lower programs are doing with what full body programs are doing more or less. You go from three days versus one to one day versus zero.
Jake (29:47)
Yeah
Chris (29:51)
So you close the gap quite considerably in terms of the atrophy. Now, it doesn't actually completely fix the problem because you still have to go back and explain how the maintenance studies work. So if you have maintenance studies showing that, as you said correctly, three or four sets per week is the amount of hypertrophy stimulus that's then lost, the amount of hypertrophy that has been stimulated, which is then lost. If you do it with a 48-hour window, you've then got five days, which is basically saying that you lose 20 % per day of that previous workout stimulus. So if you are doing a full body program with three sets per workout, and you're doing that three times a week, then your one day of atrophy is losing 20 % of one of those workouts per week, which is really not very much at all. Now, if on the other hand you said, no, we think it's 72 hours, then what you have to then do is go back to your maintenance studies and say it's not five days anymore, it's four days. So now you've got a four day window, so you're now losing 25 % per day. So this is one of the fascinating things that people who argue for 72 hours to most periods haven't thought through. Because when they make that argument, they don't realize that they then have to go back and face the maintenance literature, which is very, very consistent. And that's one of the cool things about it. There's just every single study shows the same thing.
Jake (30:45)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (31:11)
So they now have to go back and say, actually, I've just kind of I've just kind of undermined my own argument, because on the one hand, I'm arguing that the stimulus period is longer. But on the other hand, I'm now arguing without realizing I'm now arguing that my actually rate is faster. So.
Jake (31:26)
Which is also, that would mean that that, not that it matters as much, but it means that that one day, if it were 72 hours stimulus period, it means that that one day they're getting exactly, exactly, yep.
Chris (31:33)
The one day matters even more. Yes, exactly. So it's like you can't have both things at the same time. You kind of end up in this situation where you're arguing against yourself because you haven't thought everything through. And that's why I think it's kind of weird when people have these conversations because they're not realizing that they're arguing with themselves in a vacuum and that actually when they come out and start trying to fit it together with everything else that's happening in the literature, it just doesn't work. Anyway.
But the topic of today's conversation is how long is the stimulus period? what a lot of people will do is they will say, we're just going to use the duration of the post-workout elevation in muscle protein synthesis rates or myofibrillip protein synthesis rates. Now, let me just clarify a couple of things very quickly. When we talk about an elevation in either muscle protein synthesis rates or myofibrillip protein synthesis rates, what we're saying is that we're increasing the rate at which new proteins are being constructed so that we add that protein to the muscle fibers. We're always making proteins and removing them. And what we're saying is that we're just increasing the rate of making synthesis and that's allowing us to then accrue more protein inside the fibers and that makes them bigger. So what's the difference between muscle and myofibrilla? Well muscle includes everything, including the non-contractile elements and myofibrilla just includes the myofibrils. So what we're saying is anything that is inside a myofibril.
That's regarded as myofibrilla protein synthesis. Muscle protein synthesis is more general. Now, a couple of quick observations on that. The myofibrilla stuff is predominant, is what we really are increasing when we're trying to create hypertrophy because, you know, 80, 90 % of the fiber is myofibrils. So if we add new myofibrils, that's how we make the fiber bigger and that makes the fiber stronger. And so that's what we're more interested in problem is that we've got a lot more data on muscle-providing synthesis, so it's useful to refer to that. And of course, if you've got data for muscle-providing synthesis, it does include what's happening in the myofibrilla portion. It's like a sort of Venn diagram. sits inside the other.
The other observation that's very important is that some people, and this is not in the scientific literature, this is definitely a fitness influence, a phenomenon, some people are running around saying that muscle protein synthesis includes muscle damage repair, whereas myofibrillal protein synthesis doesn't. That's absolutely not true. So you have to repair myofibrils, therefore myofibrillal protein synthesis rate elevations are doing muscle damage repair in the same way that muscle protein synthesis rate elevations are doing damage repair. And that brings me to where we're going to start today's conversation, which is that you can't actually use the duration of your post-workout muscle protein synthesis rate elevation or your post-workout myofibrillate protein synthesis rate elevation to tell you how long the hypertrophy stimulus period lasts, because you've actually got a very large chunk of muscle damage repair happening from those two rate elevations as well as the hypertrophy that is happening. So you've got to look at when and how muscle damage repair is happening and when it's likely to need those rate elevations in the same way that you've got to look at when the hypertrophy stimulus might be being processed and when it therefore might need those MPS and MIOPS rate elevations. basically, hopefully this is a kind of a sufficient introduction to get people up to speed with where we are in terms of understanding the tools that we've got for measuring the duration of the hypertrophy stimulus period and what the limitations are with using MPS and myops raid derivations in this particular context.
Jake (35:05)
So just quickly again, to summarize in case you lost anyone. So the acronyms we're working off here are MPS and MIOPs. I'm sure you guys have all seen that online. And we were talking about the stimulus period and when that stimulus period is over is when that atrophy begins. And so we're trying to work out how long is that stimulus period. And unfortunately, we can't just look at stimulus period. We have to look at stimulus period plus damage and you're saying that my ops is actually telling us both stimulus period and damage. So now we need to work out how can we separate those two.
Chris (35:35)
Exactly. And what I've done is I've collected three observations which you guys at home can go and have a look at. there's infographics available on these and studies and various bits and pieces that you can look at. The first thing I want to just describe is that we've got some really nice data on what you can call non-exercise muscle injury. So if you injure a muscle like your bruise because you bump into a hard object or you maybe there's a like you've got a study where maybe a muscle is cut slightly it's called a laceration in the literature. So bruises are called contusions in the literature and cuts called lacerations. And you can do also something called volumetric muscle loss which is where they actually cut a little piece of muscle out of a tissue. So there's various different models that they can use which are creating damage of a muscle.
And muscle is extraordinarily resilient and it bounces back from these situations very, very effectively. So we see these models available in the literature where they create non-exercise muscle injury and then they measure the rate of muscle protein synthesis over time. And one of the really fascinating observations that comes up time and again is that initially in the first sort of 24 to 36 hours or certainly in the first 12 to 20 hours, there's actually a reduction in NPS. The NPS doesn't increase in the first 12 to 16, 20 hours. And then it starts to come back above baseline again. So we're not seeing any kind of elevation in NPS as a result of this muscle damage. Now, the reason for this goes beyond what we're going to talk about today, but it's because fatigue mechanisms and muscle damage mechanisms actually do occur in the period of time after the what they technically call an insult basically the point in which the injury or the damage happened mechanically as in the cut or the laceration or the volumetric loss you then see a period of time in which you've got subsequent additional damage mechanisms happening the same way that we see post-workout damage mechanisms happening because of calcium ion accumulation so you've actually got a period of time in which you're actually creating even more damage and you're clearing things away and you basically just clearing the ground in order to rebuild the structure that you've you know kind of damaged so there's nothing really going on in terms of MPS for quite a period of time and then you start to see an uptick and it starts to increase and increase and increase and really it's kind of around so it depends on the study I suppose but I did an infographic of this recently let me see if I can grab it that's not the one I was looking for here it is
So yeah, it kind of comes above. It kind of comes above the point where you would say it's an elevation in in an NPS around about, you know, sort of 24, 36 hours. So we're seeing that muscle damage process really started to kick up over the second day of our original 48 hour window. Now in these damage models obviously the damage is quite severe so you see them kind of continuing up and increasing to 48 and 72 and what have you. So this is not really in the context of what we're interested in but the important thing that we're starting with then is that when we have muscle damage happening it doesn't actually elevate MPS in the first probably 12 to 16 hours at all. In fact it decreases it and then you start to it come above baseline and really it gets into meaningful territory around about 24 to 36 hour period of that post injury point. So first thing I wanted to just help people understand is that when we're talking about MPS, it happens, it starts much later when we're talking about damage and it goes on for longer. So if you create a large amount of damage, what you're expecting to see is very little happening in that first day or so and then you're expected to see days and days and days afterwards of elevated MPS. Now the really interesting thing is, if you look at, I believe, the longest duration of MIOPs in the literature, MIOPs not MPS I believe, is actually from aerobic exercise workout. So a lot of people go, if I do this wonderful, amazing high volume strength training program that I've created that I think is the best thing since sliced bread.
And, I think it's going to create, you know, seventy two nine six hours of miles. Well, it might do, but it's not it's probably not doing that because it's produced this wonderful hypertrophy stimulus, you know, because we've got this aerobic exercise workout that will do exactly the same thing. And I guarantee you that's not producing any hypertrophy. So.
Jake (39:58)
Yeah, so no one's arguing,
hey, I can go for a very long downhill run and that's gonna get me jacked.
Chris (40:04)
Well, the interesting thing
is it wasn't even a downhill run. You know, it was actually mostly mostly concentric. So ⁓ the really interesting thing is it definitively does look like, you know, if you just do a decent volume of contractions, obviously in the calcium ion relative D model, we understand how that works. But you are going to see a sort of perpetuated MIOPs elevation, which is
Chris (40:26)
obviously not doing hypertrophy, but the duration is extended because you're creating this damage. So first things first, the first point I wanted to make is that NPS when it's elevated due to damage is going to start later and go on for longer. And obviously that is then very interesting when we look at the studies that are trying to identify the duration of hypertrophy because quite simply they can't because any time you create damage in the workout that you just did, you're gonna have a trail of myops going on for days, potentially has absolutely nothing to do with hypertrophy.
Jake (40:53)
You to clarify one point there, so you're saying that there's this delay of 16, 24 hours when there's just damage. Have you told us how quickly...
Chris (41:06)
when there's not damage, sorry, when there is damage happening rather than damage repair happening. just to clarify, what we're saying is that the processes that are necessary to occur before you can start rebuilding the damaged tissue involve all of this calpain activity to start degrading the proteins and then subsequently you've got an inflammation process which does the same job but also clears those.
Broken structures away and only then when you've cleared the decks and you've got everything where you need it You can start putting the new structures back in place and that's when you see the uptick in MPS relating to the Damage repair or damage replacement is probably a Damage structure replacement is probably a more technically accurate term
So what we're gonna do next is talk about two separate situations where we can look at different training variables. Training variables are things like rest period duration, volume, and rep range, and all those kind of things. So we can look at what happens when you start manipulating training variables to the post-workout MIOPs. So when we talked about the damage repair, we talked about MPS, because that's what the data is.
Now we're going to talk about myops because it's a little bit more precise and it gives us a bit more comfort that we are talking about exactly what we want to talk about. So when we look at myops rates after a workout, so we've moved away from non-exercise muscle injury and now we're talking about strength training workouts, you can look at the effect of things like repetition range and you can look at the effect of things like rest period duration. Now, the really cool thing is that if you manipulate rep range and you say
OK, I'm going to do two different workouts, same number of sets to failure, one with more moderate loads, maybe eight to ten rep maxes, one with lighter loads, 20-25 rep maxes. And you're to say, I'm expecting that these will produce very, very similar post-training program hypertrophy. And therefore the hypertrophy component of my myops should be exactly the same. But we know the repetition range greatly affects post-workout muscle damage with lighter loads producing way more muscle damage than heavier loads. So what I'm expecting to see is a MIOP's curve that differs between the two workouts only because of the muscle damage component. And what's really cool is if you look at these studies what you find is that the first 24 hour measurement, the measurement taken in the first 24 hours is identical between the two workouts. And that's literally exactly what we've just spent the last
Chris (43:24)
five, ten minutes talking about, which is that muscle damage NPS just doesn't exist in the first 24 hours, so it can't contribute, which is exactly in line with what we're now describing. And the interesting thing is that if you then look at the second measurement in the second 24 hour period, when you take that measurement, now MIOP's rates are much higher in the light load group compared to the moderately heavy load group. So literally everything we've just talked about in terms of non-exercised muscle injury is jumping off the page at us and saying, that's exactly what you would expect based on the information you've got about damage from different sources. when people, just as a very, very quick interjection, when people want to argue that damage from contusions and lacerations and excise are different things, that's ignorance. They don't understand how damage works. They need to go back and look at how calcium ion accumulation actually causes damage in every single situation in exactly the same way, regardless of how you instigate it. So I'm not having that argument here. I'm happy to have that argument in another location, but that is just how damage works. So we've got this observation that light loads is doing this different thing from moderate loads and only where the damage is high. Now this brings me to the possibly the most important thing I'm going to say today. If we now look at rest period durations, we get the opposite effect. So rest period duration, long versus short rest periods, a long rest period gives me more hypertrophy than a short rest period.
So I'm expecting that my ops is going to be elevated because of that extra hypertrophy stimulus I'm getting from that long rest period. But long and short rest periods don't cause massively different outcomes in terms of post-workout fatigue. So I'm not expecting my muscle damage MPS to be substantially different between these two situations. If I now go and look at the literature that's compared my ops rate elevations after strength training workouts with long rest and short rest, what I find is that my difference is exclusively located in the first 24 hour measurement. Exclusively. And that tells me that, and just to be clear, that means on the second 24 hour measurement, the second day measurement, there's nothing different between the long and the short rest period groups. If hypertrophy was happening on that second day in a meaningful quantity, if myops was being directed towards hypertrophy on that second day, we would see differences between long and short rest but we don't see any differences. What that tells me is that hypertrophy stimulus is largely occurring on that first day. And just in synchronization with this, and this is a separate point, if you look at MPS rates in the famous Damas review paper, which graphed them out and showed them how they happen over time, the spikes are happening in the first 12 to 16 hours.
Jake (45:55)
Hmm.
Chris (45:57)
You know, so what it looks like to me when I'm looking at this literature in its entirety and considering every aspect of it, what I think is happening is that we do a strength training workout and we get a really big spike in myops that is directed towards or MPS myops, which is directed towards hypertrich. That comes flying down after 12, 16, 20 hours, however you want to describe it, depending on whether you're looking untrained or trained people. And you start to see it coming really flying back down. And then the kind of the slow, long what you call a fat tail in that second day and third day and potentially fourth and fifth days, depending on how much muscle damage you created, is doing muscle damage repair rather than the actual hypertrophy stimulus. So it's really starting to make us look like, really starting to make it look like the hypertrophy stimulus period is actually a lot shorter and most of what we're seeing trailing after it is actually doing muscle damage repair.
Jake (46:48)
In that, Damas study that you just mentioned, so you said there's this big peak in that sort of 12 to 16 hours comes down. Does it tick up again or does it then continue to trail down after that 16 hours? Do you recall?
Chris (47:02)
So basically, if you look at untrained people, it kind of peaks around a sort 16 hour mark, and it comes back down to a lower level around the 24, and then it kind of just sits there. If you look at trained people, it's even more kind of shortened. It's kind of peaking around six hours, and it comes flying back down already at about 12. And then again, from that point, it then just ticks onwards. So I think we've been thinking about myops in the wrong way for quite a long time because we've been kind of looking at it in its entirety and go and this is and this is a methodological issue because what happened I forget the exact number of years ago, but what happened Maybe eight or ten years ago approximately was that researchers switched from using Very short period of time in which they would measure myops MPS over maybe three or four hours using one particular technique and they started using a totally different technique and they measured it area under the curve for say 48 hours or 24 hours and that means you don't see the shape of the curve anymore and I think on the one hand it's fantastic to be able to do area under the curve measurements and see what's happening across 24 or 48 hour windows but we lose something when we do that because we no longer know what the shape of the curve is
Jake (48:18)
So I've got a couple of questions for you, but just before I ask that, so just to again, sort of summarize. So what you're saying is when we look at the injury caused without any hypertrophy stimulus, we see that there's no elevation in myops for that, well in MPS for that first 16-ish 24 hour period. Then when we look at two conditions where we have the same hypertrophy stimulus, but different amounts of damage. What we see is the first 24 hour period of myops looks the same. And it's only after that that we see a change in myops. And then almost the opposite, not quite, but almost opposite condition where we have a variance in hypertrophy, but not in damage. In the group that sees more hypertrophy, we see a change in myops elevation in the first 24 hours. But then after that time period, it looks relatively similar again. So my question for you of that is, do we have data in like a single set, how long that causes an elevation in myops?
Chris (49:16)
So this is actually the third point that I wanted to describe. So basically, the two previous examples I gave, one of repetition range, light versus moderate loads, one of rest period, short versus long rest periods, we can do exactly the same study design, or they have done exactly the same study design, and they've compared one set and three sets. Now this is really, really interesting. So basically, if we now look at how myops rate elevations work with single sets, we essentially get an elevation which now there's two ways of thinking about this. You can either do it statistically or you can do it numerically. If you look at it statistically, then what the research will tell you is that basically one set will elevate myops for 29 hours, 28, 29 hours or so. The issue with that is that it doesn't numerically get all the way back down to baseline. So if you do an extrapolation, just extend the line in a linear way, then you'll get down to baseline around about the 35, 36 hour point. So that's really, really interesting because one set probably doesn't cause a sufficiently large amount of muscle damage to really produce MPS myopterate elevations for very long at all.
I think really if you want to start with a very good estimate of what a hyperotorist stimulus period duration is, then you would look at the single set literature and you would go, you know, coming back down to baseline numerically around about 36 hour point, 35, 36 hour point, that is probably what the hyperotorist stimulus period duration is most of the time, which is obviously shorter than the standard estimate of 48 hours. you know we wouldn't necessarily expect a linear line going back down to zero. You might have a long tail that sort of dribbles on for say 40, 42, know, maybe even 48 hours, I think, at the outside. the point is that ballpark, we're not seeing 72 hours or anything silly like that. You know, what we're probably seeing is half that and maybe just a kind of very low level of sort of hypotrophy stimulus lasting a little bit longer.
Now, if you look then at the three set group in the same study, now you've got a elevation which is still high at the point when your single set has come back down to baseline, more or less around that 30 hour point. So you've still got that elevation. Now, obviously, some people are going to argue that the greater number of sets is producing a larger duration stimulus rather than a larger simple magnitude of stimulus.
Now, this is really interesting because what you can do is you can say, well, any high any MIOPs rate elevation that happens in the first 24 hours is only going towards hypertrophy. That's not really that contentious if you read the literature. Now, if we accept that point, which, as I say, I do not think is contentious, then what you can do is you can say, well, OK, I've got my one set data here.
And I've got my three set data here for the myops rate elevation. And I know that all of that myops rate elevation is happening in the first 24 hours has got to go to hypertrophy. Well, that means I can now compare the sizes of those two myops rate elevations in my first 24 hour period. And I can see how much bigger is my three sets compared to my one set. And all of that extra myops rate elevation I'm getting in that first 24 hours is going to go to hypertrophy. So if you do that, what you find is that
When we use data from, say, dose responses regarding hypertrophy, mean, there's two meta analyses available. You can use the Schoenfeld one and you can use the Pelland one. So if we use the Schoenfeld one, basically what the Schoenfeld one tells you is that three sets is going to give you about one point six times as much hypertrophy as one set approximately. think if I remember that correctly, ballpark figure. Maybe it's a little bit less, doesn't matter. The point is, it's not three times. OK, so so obviously that then means that I can
Look at the difference in my up to rate elevations area under the curve for the first 24 hours and I can say is that giving me, you know, the extra 60 % that I'm expecting in terms of hypertrophy stimulus compared to the one set and it pretty much does. And if you extend it to around about the 30 hour point it absolutely does. So okay, there's a little bit of a gray area there but more or less what we're saying is that
All of the extra hypergly stimulus produced by the three set myops rate elevation area under the curve compared to the one set myops rate elevation area under the curve is happening in the first 24 to 36 hours.
Now, if you then instead of the Schoenfeld use the Pelland, which I don't like doing because it shows some rather odd results when you get to the top end of the dose response curve. But if you accept that the lower end of the dose response curve is not horrible, then then you're dealing with maybe two and half times as much hypertrophy as one set, you know, and then you're starting to say, actually, maybe there's a bit of an extension of duration in terms of the hypertrophy stimulus period from doing higher volumes. And again, that doesn't sit right with me. It doesn't make sense.
But ultimately if you do want to do that and you do want to argue for that, what you're to find is you get back down to baseline around about the 42 hours. Now, if you say that you've obviously got some kind of damage that's pulling away from that, you've got to extend that a bit longer and you might end up at 48 instead. But again, ballpark figure, what you're ending up with is inside of that 48 hour window. You're ending up at the bottom end of the spectrum, of 30 to 36 hour.
hypertrophic stimulus period estimate if you use the Schoenfeld metronasys which I think is probably better in terms of getting to the right number. The reason for that I think is because the top end of the Pelham metronasys is skewed upwards because of muscle swelling caused by very high volume training. If you look at the if you use the Pelham metronasys you can end up with 42 hours at the minimum and probably more likely 48 if you accept that there is some damage pulling away myops in that later part of the curve. So
I think you can actually use one set versus three set analyses to get very precise answers about when you're likely to see the hypertrophy stimulus period ending. But the important thing is it actually stacks perfectly with everything we've talked about already. So the difference between long and short rest periods, difference between high and low repetition ranges, and now the difference between volumes. Everything actually fits and tells you that hypertrophy stimulus is probably sitting around 36 hours and volume doesn't really lengthen it or unless that lengthening is associated with damage.
Jake (55:44)
I don't think there's much I want to add to that in case anyone wasn't familiar with what you were saying at the show in Felton Pellin so that's just we talked last week about the the diminishing returns of volume and they're the two volume meta-analyses and so they're looking at well you can start to get an idea of how much more stimulating are additional sets compared to one set and you're saying that the two meta-analyses do disagree with each other a little bit in the magnitude of that and you're saying well quite a lot quite a lot
Chris (56:07)
little bit. There are really really really big differences here.
Jake (56:12)
but they do both show diminishing returns. That's not negotiable, right? So they do tell us that each additional set is less stimulating. And you're saying, well, if we looked at three sets, it's somewhere between the Schoenfeld one was what, 1.6 compared to a single set, I think it was. And then the Pellin one was 2.5 compared to a single set. And you're saying regardless of which one we go with,
Chris (56:25)
think so, from memory, yeah.
Jake (56:34)
that magnitude of increased hypertrophy stimulus, that seems to be done.
Chris (56:37)
is happening within sort of 42 to 48 hours, absolutely definitely. And in the case of the Schoenfeld, it's done with by maybe 30 hours or so. you know, there's no need to speculate that higher volumes are dragging the hypertrophy stimulus out longer, because if you do that, you can't explain why you literally can't explain what the extra myops is doing in the first 24 hours. It's like you say, oh, well, no, we think that the higher volumes are dragging out the stimulus period for 72 hours. I'm like, OK.
Well, tell me what this MIOPs rate elevation is doing in the first 24 hours, because it's not you've got unallocated MIOPs. It's like, how are you getting higher MIOPs in the first 24 hours and also longer MIOPs? That doesn't stack with the dose response data we've got. So it's really cool, basic, very simple arithmetic calculation that you can do, you know, literally at home with a piece of I actually did it. I did it on this back of this envelope here.
Jake (57:09)
We have this unallocated miles.
Hahaha
Chris (57:34)
when I did use the trapezium rule and just did it with a pen and a ruler. And you can do it literally with the data that's available. So a very, simple calculation to do. You can just estimate how long you think myops is going to be elevated for, assuming that first day is just doing hypertrophy and not doing damage repair, which as I say, is a very defensible position. It's really not easy to criticize that when you've got tons of non-exercise muscle injury data showing that there's just nothing happening in that first 24 hour period.
Jake (58:07)
So potentially there's a little bit of this gray area in that sort of between the 24 to 48 hour period, but you're saying if anything, we're falling on this side of 48 hours and it's very hard to.
Chris (58:12)
absolutely, absolutely yes. Yeah, absolutely. would say if I were to use Occam's razor and say what do I think the simplest possible answer is to this phenomenon, I would say the vast majority of the hyperglycerin stemose is happening in the first 12 hours. There is a fat tail that comes down to about 32 ish, 30 to 32 hours. And I would say by 36, it's probably back down to baseline. That would be my expected result if we had Star Trek type know, level of technology where we could just kind of point a scanning device at a muscle and see exactly what was happening. You know, in that scenario, I would expect that profile to happen. The peak 12 hours and over and done with and fat tail down to probably around about 30 to 36. I don't think there is much happening after that point. Anything after that point, I would say would be muscle damage repair. And I don't think that volumes would change the duration. I think they would literally just change the magnitude of the peak in the first 12 hours or so, maybe a little bit of the fat tail leading up to the 36 hours point. I'm being very, very generous and trying to be as open as possible about the calculations and the possible likelihood of numbers being different. I don't think the Pellan-Matter analysis is correct in terms of its dose-response curve slope. I don't like the fact that it continues into infinity at the top end of the scale with very high volumes. That's just physiologically impossible. So I don't think that's right. But I'm trying to be as open and as kind of clear as possible in what I'm doing in my calculations so people can see whether they would come to a different conclusion, which is cool. know, everybody can form their own views. It doesn't bother me what other people think particularly. I'm just doing this because, as I say to you when we have personal conversations, I'm doing this because I find it interesting. You know, if other people find that useful, that's fantastic, but it doesn't bother me if they disagree with me. That isn't important.
Jake (1:00:05)
Now you've potentially opened a huge can of worms which not gonna go into here, but that is if a lot of that hypertrophy stimulus is done within 24 hours, people are gonna be asking, well, hold up, can I train again in that 24, 36 hour period? We're not gonna do that here, but the question I have is you started this by saying, we need to consider this question because if we're looking at full body three times a week, upper lower, repeated twice a week, we want to know how many days of atrophy essentially are we experiencing? So based on what you said there, so what is the implication of all of this.
Chris (1:00:36)
I think people probably are going to. Obviously, we both study what happens on social media just from a academic point of view and because it impacts on what we do and also just because it's fascinating how human beings behave. So. Of course, there will now be people who argue that we should be training every 36 hours. And I've already started to see some of that popping up in my questions on social media. I'm not gonna go there. I'm not gonna go there. I really don't want to go there. I was dragged kicking and screaming into saying that full body every other day is better than full body three times a week because technically, physiologically, it has to be. I'm not gonna train like that. I like to go to the gym on the days that I like to go to the gym. I'm not changing my behaviour. But obviously some people are competitive and the edge might make the difference for them.
Chris (1:01:27)
So I have to be intellectually honest and say, I don't want to train like that. I don't like training like that. I'm not even going to program like that if I write a program for somebody. But I have to be intellectually honest and say, it is probably better than what I am programming because physiologically it's better. Ultimately, we build a model and then we have to be, we have to accept what the model answers tell us. We can't just build the model and go, I don't like the answer, so I'm going to now change the model. Why did you bother then?
I mean, it's like just do what everybody else does and just form opinions and ideas based on what you want to do. It's like the whole point of building the model is to find an answer that you wouldn't have got to just by feeling the answer. You know, so you want to feel the answers. I like to train like this, therefore it's the right answer. OK, which does what everybody else does. We're not doing that. We're trying to do is figure out how things work and then look at what the answer tells us and then go, OK, well, does that mean that, you know, full body every 36 hours?
would actually be the secret source to the next Mr. Olympia. I highly doubt it. But it's just like you have to be intellectually honest and say, yeah, that might be an answer that is an interesting thing to have a look at. no, I mean, it's the difference between what's probably optimal in physiologically determined situations and what's optimal in terms of your personal kind of preferences.
Jake (1:02:24)
Hehehe
Chris (1:02:43)
not going to be necessarily the same thing. We've just got to have the ability to hold those two things in balance in our heads and go, this is the answer on paper because of these reasons and this is the answer in practice because of these reasons. And I can hold that tension without having a kind of meltdown about it because, you know, you're able to do that. And I think that that's an important skill set. But yeah, I do expect there will be people running around saying, yeah, Chris said that we should now train every 36 hours, you know, instead of full body every other day. I don't honestly, no, but I'm just telling you what I think is physiologically going on.
Jake (1:03:14)
I don't recall if I said this last week, but some of the old school, like the the Silver era guys actually did have that conversation about how often to train in terms of, you know, the optimum time period. And some of them, and I believe I've read Steve Reeves talk about this, actually did try to space their workouts out in a similar fashion. Sort of be like, like Monday afternoon, Wednesday morning, and actually talked about doing it exactly like that. And obviously the expectation was not everyone could do this, but if you can, this is one way of doing it. And Bob Hoffman in the program we looked at today, he also talks about that you could do this every other day. And that would be a perfectly good way of doing it, except that that means you would have to work out on Sundays every other week and people didn't necessarily want to do that.
Chris (1:03:58)
very cool to see, and we repeat this often in this podcast and I hope we'll continue to repeat this, it's very cool to see that when you remove the effects of anabolic from a anecdotal experience, you learn so much more, you know, and those guys have the opportunity to learn an enormous amount without the confusing effects of the anabolic and without the confusing effects of social media.
And they were able therefore to which I actually kind of filter out to be honest as you well know but you can kind of get this perspective and see just how much knowledge they were able to obtain and how much how close their practices were to what we're talking about physiologically I'm just endlessly fascinated and and and just I just enjoy seeing that
that connection between those two things, which is ultimately what this podcast is designed to do is to share our appreciation of these two phenomena and show how close they are and just how cool that is for cutting through the nonsense that you're going to see on social media today when people are talking about things that have absolutely nothing to do with either how people have trained for hundreds and hundreds of years or even thousands of years. We go back to the ancient Greeks and ultimately how we can construct a physiological model today to explain how hyperarchy works. Those things are ultimately so close together that it's just so fascinating and enjoyable to talk
Jake (1:05:21)
So ultimately in a nutshell, the most effective way to train would be to train as soon as possible once that stimulus period is over, assuming recovery has occurred at that time point. And you're suggesting that based on everything you've gone through today and the available information we've got, that seems to be this side of two days.
Chris (1:05:40)
Yes, in that 36 hour, my personal bet is on it being around the 36 hour point. If it were to be 40, 42, I would not be surprised. I do not see it going beyond 48 hours.
Jake (1:05:55)
Anything else you want to conclude with or should we wrap up for today?
Chris (1:05:58)
I think that's been a tremendous second episode. I had great fun. I really hope people were able to follow most of, not all of that. I know that I'm sure there'll be people asking me questions to clarify my messages over the next couple of days, but that's part of the process. So yeah, I think that's good for today.
Jake (1:06:16)
Exactly. Thank you guys for joining us. Like, comment, subscribe, all the good stuff and hopefully you'll join us again next week for a new episode.