040 This new study will change how you think about fatigue

Welcome back. Thank you for joining us for another episode. I'm joined by Chris. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, thanks, Dick. And today we're going to be talking about a fairly new study, which has really interesting implications for some ways that you guys might be training in the gym. So we're going to be talking about fatigue.

We're gonna be talking about the effects of fatigue. And we're gonna talk a little bit about fatigue in a sense that is gonna be new for I suspect everyone listening.

And there's gonna be some implications that some of you will be aware of and there's gonna be some new implications that you might actually adjust what you're doing in the gym based off this. So it's gonna be a fun conversation, there's gonna be a lot coming out of it, but before we get there, I have a training plan to discuss with you all.

Now this training plan Is an old school one. This is silver era in its finest. So here we've got a 1950. uh plan by Henry Pascal. Now this was I don't know if you Chris, are you familiar with Henry Pascal? I've not come across Henry Pascal. I suspect you'd like him. He was a uh a comic book comic, what would you call it? A an a cartoonist, I guess?

And so he had a comic strip called um Bosco. And so Bosco was kinda like his alter ego. So Pascal was involved with with Hoffman, we've talked about Bob Hoffman, York Barbell. um and a lot of those sort of early silver era kind of weightlifters. And so Bosco was Pascal's sort of yeah, alter ego kind of character who was like a kind of your classic bronze era lifter. So he was your strong man, you know, big, puffed out chess. He was a a German kind of strongman and very funny cartoons. So

Pascal was uh yeah, he wrote a lot about weightlifting as well. And so this uh workout comes from a a training log, a training book that he published. which uh I think touched on sort of like some of this Bosco stuff and it was some of his own personal uh training. And so this was a plan that he was following at the time in nineteen fifty. And he talked about this as a plan that he used

simply'cause he didn't have time to do any more. This was his sort of efficiency, busy person plan, how to get the most results out of, I guess, the minimal time investment. And these are still decently long sessions. They're they he said it took him about an hour to hour and a half. So these are not super short sessions by any stretch of the imagination. But obviously at this time, nineteen fifty

You know, we had people like Steve Reeves who were doing some, you know, marathon two hour plus workout sessions. So this sort of hour, hour and a half is potentially half of what some of these other silver airlifters are doing. Now again, nineteen fifty. So we are gonna see some exercises here that are pretty old school and that maybe did drop off in the coming decade. So we have been talking about some later plans over the last few episodes.

And you know, we've talked about some new exercises that started to make their way in over the last few episodes. And you'll see some old exercises appearing here. So we have 12 exercises, which again was kind of the norm for a lot of the silver era. And we have single sets. And again, that was an efficiency thing. And we start with a he kind of talked about this as like a warming up exercise. So I I don't think he was using a lot of load with this exercise.

It was a squat and he was using a uh holding a barbell in an overhead position. So overhead squat. And again he did eight repetitions with it. Wasn't particularly intended to be a hypertrophy exercise. Then we go into a barbell curl. So we've got a two hand barbell curl set of eight, so one set of eights. and then go into a seated swing bar curl. Now I think we have talked about swing bar curls in the past. I forget I think Grimmick maybe talked about them.

And so this is not an exercise you see done today. Um, it's not an exercise you hear anyone talk about. Essentially it's a it's a seated barbell curl and you're holding this special apparatus with a fairly close grip. uh between your legs. So it's almost like a It'd be like doing a seated close grip barbell curl. So he does one set of fifteen repetitions with that.

And then he goes into what he calls the Bosco deadlift and shrug. Now, silver era, so it's nice to see this type of exercise here. Essentially the way this exercise was done was a stiff leg deadlift. And then in the top position they did a shrug. So I think he would have gone off blocks, but he didn't return to the f to the the blocks or the floor between each repetition. It was like a standard stiff leg with a shrug at the top. And then it was done for a set of ten.

And then we go into a a incline barbell press. And he said sometimes you would do this with dumbbells instead, or you could do it with a barbell, and that was a set of ten. And then we have a triceps exercise. Now I'm going to read out the description he gives of this exercise. So try to visualize this. It's a bit of a funny one. And again, it's not one

I've seen anyone do I've done it a few times myself. I think we've talked about possibly this exercise when we talked about Sig Klein in a really early episode. But the way he explains this exercise, he calls it a triceps exercise with dumbbell. And you would take a pair of dumbbells and they wouldn't be very heavy dumbbells and you would bend forward from the hips. So I guess you're in almost like a I guess the end of a good morning position.

Uh and then you'd brace yourself and then with your arms hanging down and keeping your arms straight so you're not bending the elbow. you would then bring your arms directly behind your back. And it would say you'd do that until you get that cramping kind of f sensation at the top. So that very shortened position. And then that was it. You'd return to the starting position and you go again.

Now he would do fifteen repetitions with this. Uh and personally when I've experimented with this exercise, it's very difficult to do this with a heavier load or for lower repetitions. And I suspect that's probably why he was using high reps, yeah. Then he went into a barbell squat and he was doing the twenty rep squat, which was obviously very common at this time.

Uh I don't know if he was pausing between repetitions. I have a feeling towards the end he would. So there's different ways of doing this. We've talked about the twenty rep squat in the past.

Some people would do a few breaths between each repetition, other people would get towards the end of the set, say s you know, rep ten or fifteen, and then start implementing their their the pauses. I think he did it that second way. And then we go into a what he called the Bosco chest lifting breathing exercise. Now again, as was normal at this point, people would often do the twenty rep squat and then they would do a bar barbell.

And, you know, they believed it was expanding the grip cage and making the chest bigger and whatever else. And they often wouldn't use a lot of load with that. Now he talks about using this Bosco chest lifting exercise instead of the pullover. And again I'm gonna have to explain this one to you'cause it's a it's a bit of a weird one. So he would be in a squat position.

And he would have the bar so th the bar would be in the squad rack, okay? So now he wouldn't put the bar on his back, but he would have the the bar set up. And then what he would do is have his arms, his hands placed on the bar behind him, so he's standing in front of the bar, and then lean back until he f uh sorry, lean Forwards until he felt the stretch.

And then he would push into the bar and and he said his chest would lift as he's pushing into the bar. And he would do these s twenty sort of isometric pushes down into the bar and lifting his chest each time. Now, I don't know if if you get anything out of that. I try to visualize this and think about what this is doing and

I I didn't come up with anything. But I'll I'll leave it to you in a moment. So we're almost done. Then we've got where were we after our chest lifting exercise, we've got a a what do you call a pull up with a barbell. Now, this is essentially a uh like an upright row. So he's pulling the row the the bar up to chin height and then back down. So kind of what we would just call an upright row now.

And then side bends with the dumbbell, which didn't really continue on past early silver era. A lot we talked about this in in the last few episodes. They did exist up until sort of I guess around the fifties, early fifties, and then they sort of fell out of fashion after that, but he was still doing them. And he did that for a set of ten. And then he finished Oh yeah, two more. Then he did a leg press.

Which would have been, I suspect, with a barbell balanced on his feet, most likely. Um, I'm not sure if he had a machine. Uh at that point in time most people didn't. And he did f uh he didn't actually mention repetitions but he he did say that it wasn't overly heavy. So I'm assuming probably 15, 20 repetitions like the exercises prior. And then he concluded with a Bosco Zotman exercise. Now people might be familiar with the Zotman curl. We haven't talked about this, I don't believe.

So the Zopman curls a a type of of of biceps dumbbell curl. And essentially for people who aren't familiar with it, what you would do is you would stand normally, you'd have two dumbbells, so a dumbbell on each side, in each hand, and you would alternate. So one hand would come up And uh you'd be coming up in a supernated position, a supinated wrist position.

And then when you get to the top, you would pronate while the other hand comes up in a supernated position. So you're kind of doing uh I guess a a supernated concentric and then a pronated eccentric. Now, y this would be done quite it would I don't know if you've seen videos of people doing this, Chris, but it was like quite rhythmic. It was sort of this like circular flowing type exercise. And he would do forty repetitions with it.

Now, often people you hear or you see people doing these open curls today. They don't particularly look the way these guys used to do it. Again, it very much looked like this kind of almost like a a a dance, it's a very rhythmic type exercise. Let me finish there. There's a few novel exercises. What's standing out to you? Okay, so um trying to think about this uh logically, so we've got The the overhead squat as a warm up, okay fine. Um we've also got the the heavy squat uh kind of

Or the twenty rep max, uh or the ten rep max with twenty reps or however they're doing it, breathing squats, whatever. And then obviously we've got the leg press. So that's a lot of squat pattern in there. But obviously only single sets per exercise. So There's like a a warm up style overhead squat and then there's a proper squat session and then there's a leg press finishing it off. I mean

Very uh much a duplication from my point of view, really. And then we've got the same thing really with the curls. So we've got three curl variations as well. We've got the starting um barbell curl, got the swing bar curl, and then we've got the Zotman curl at the end. So again, um and it and and maybe there's a little bit of difference there, but I don't think there's a lot of difference. No Straight away I've got what looks like

three sets of a basic squat pattern and then three sets of a basic kind of standing curl pattern with a little bit of variation, but not very much in any of the in either of those situations. So Um, I'm seeing here something that I don't like, uh and I've been very vocal about saying that I don't like this. It's w when people vary stuff but they're not actually varying anything important.

So this is the appearance of variety without the actual reality of biomechanical variety. So straight away I'm I'm he's getting on my wrong side because he's doing something I don't like seeing, which is varying something for the sake of appearances rather than for the sake of actual differences. Now to play devil's advocate for one moment there, I understand what you're saying with the curls. I understand that yes, you could have very easily

selected reverse curl or you know, the the the Zopman curl he's doing is it's not the most efficient way of doing that. But when it comes to the quads Assuming he didn't have access to iron boots, then he was quite limited with what he could do for quads. Right. And one thing that I actually do like doing in my own programming is

I'm not against giving someone eff effectively two exercises that are the same. Like here we've got the squat and the leg press. It's the same, basically. I'm not against giving them both of those exercises for a single set. as opposed to giving them two sets of one of those, because I do find that that single set effect, someone's going to perform better from a motivational standpoint than doing two sets of the same exercise.

And I think that's probably fair where you're talking about uh machine exercises. I think where you're talking about requiring set up time for things like squats, I think the argument goes away because You're gonna have so much warm up and prep and getting ready and making sure everything's all right before you do the actual work set that you lose an enormous amount of that energy and motivation that you would get.

if you're just doing machine for single set. In single set for machines, I totally agree with you. If you've got two machines that do broadly the same thing but you can mentally get yourself in a place where you treat them as separate things, then fantastic. But this is where we're setting up overhead squats, uh, and then actual squats and then leg presses where you're balancing a barbell on your feet. I think you're losing a lot by doing that. Yeah. Those three sets.

Yeah. I mean arguably the twenty rep squat, like you said, it's you know potentially ten, fifteen rep max weight, might not be too much setup. Sure. Yeah, in general I I agree with you, especially on Probably is though in his case'cause he probably doesn't have a score, right? Yeah, he may have been sort of uh what do you call that? Is it a Steinball squat where you get it up from the side? Yeah.

So there's a lot of hard work in there that I think makes no sense to me at all. Um also I'm not wild about his choice of um the um lateral uh delt excise or middle delta excise, which is basically his uh upright row. Because again, he's using biceps in that exercise. Why would you choose when you could literally just do lateral raises or dumbbell, you know, from Yeah, why you're adding in there but

Why are you adding yet more biceps work when you've already got three, you know, separate biceps exercises in there? So again, not wild about that as a choice. I think that makes very little sense. The pressing exercise is fine, um, no complaints about that. I'm not seeing any um kind of lat work in here really. Um, I don't see any pull ups, I don't see any rows. Um the closest we've got to anything that trains the back is the deadlift and shrug. Yeah.

So and I'm happy to see a stiff leg in there and I'm happy to see a shrugging in there'cause those two things that tend to drop out in many of the Bronze Era um programs. So um ultimately um Or bronze and silver actually. I we tend to lose that. So I I'm happy to see hamstrings working here, I'm happy to see um uh shrugs in there for the traps, but I'm not seeing any lat work in here at all. But then to be fair, I've criticized many silver era programs um on that basis as well.

I like that deadlift shrug exercise he's got in there. Mm-hmm. and again with it being stiff leg and potentially from blocks I think that can be a fantastic bodybuilding movement you know you're getting a lot of

I i again, if you're in a hurry and you've got millimeted equipment, I think it's a fantastic uh option. You know, I mean really Um, if I've done kind of I mean, uh let me before I kind of move on to something that I think would do ninety percent of this with minimal it time input, let me just Kind of look at this thing that you've described as a triceps exercise. So just to be clear, he's not actually doing elbow extension. Correct.

So it's actually a shoulder extension exercise. Yes. So it's essentially starting with the easiest part of the motion when he's if he's bending forwards in a good morning type position, um, and essentially his arm is downwards then it's uh ninety degrees. And getting it moving from that ninety degrees is really easy because essentially

Uh, the external momentile at that point is relatively small. So it's the exercise is getting harder and harder and harder as he goes to the end range of motion. Yeah. So triceps ex shoulder ext or long head of the triceps is a shoulder extensor, but its best leverage is overhead. So it drops to zero as you get to the ninety degree point and essentially that is where you're or just past that point is where you finish. So this isn't a triceps exercise.

This is going to be closer to a posterior del and um thoracic lat exercise, really. So this is the closest thing you're gonna get to a latte exercise in that programme and it's definitely not a triceps exercise. Triceps exercise would be if the hardest part of the exercise was overhead, in a like pullover type position.

So I guess his whatever he's replaced I don't I actually don't think the exercise that he's replacing a pullover with is is actually a pullover. I think it's something completely different. But Yeah. Um the the exercise selection here makes it very difficult to analyse. I'm kind of going around in circles trying to figure out what actually this program is doing.

Yeah,'cause even what you said there, like okay, is he is he actually potentially getting some lat work then with his Yeah, well that's why straight away I'm contradicting myself because I'm like, well, I saw no lat work and now I'm realizing the triceps exercise is actually lat work. Yeah. And then if I look hard enough at this chest lifting breathing exercise, maybe I'll find something in there.

Yeah, who knows? I know. I was honestly when I was looking at that I'm like, What what are we getting? This must be something we're getting, but looks a little bit like it might be a slightly wider grip than shoulder flexion, so outside of the sagital plane, but it's not transverse plane. So it's not out here, it's somewhere down here, I think, from what you described to me. Yeah. Yeah. But that would kind of make it like a

A peck exercise, a clavicular peck exercise probably. Um which fits the description in this particular case, although obviously as we've seen, whether something fits the description isn't necessarily a guarantee. Um, so it looks to me like it's just another press, really, or a clavicular press. Um so, you know, in that s sense it fits with the the you know, it adds on to the pressing volume that he's got, which is not, you know, very much. Um

So I'm struggling really to get my head around this as a as a as a thing. There's lots of stuff I don't like about it, but there's a couple of things that I really do like. Honestly, um I would I would constrain this right down. I would cut this right back if I was if he was writing this um, you know, today with the same equipment limitations.

I would be like. Um obviously the we both think the deadlift and shrug variation is a fantastic option. But yeah, stiff legs, um, I think is a fantastic choice if you've got nothing more than a barbell. Um

obviously shrug if you can do that at the same time, okay. If you can't then you can do it separately. Um Squats obviously you're gonna be doing that because there's no real other choice, uh in in in in in terms of um training the lower body uh hip and knee extension function without that. Um Obviously he's got a bench so he can do bench presses. Um if he genuinely doesn't have access to a pull up bar, then okay, so pulling is gonna be difficult, but he could do uh some row variation.

It is interesting that he doesn't have a row in there. Obviously that was very commonly done, so I wonder wonder what the Just do a bent over row. I hate those, but you could do a bent over row. You could set up the bench to do a uh if you put the bench on blocks you can do a um a horizontal row from the floor.

Um and you can do that sagittal plane. You can do it um more wide grip and get a a wide grip version as well. Um There's just so much wasted so many wasted exercises here with the bicycle. Obviously do curls with the bice yeah. Just so much ridiculous biceps work that's probably not doing very much. Um and then a bunch of strange things that don't make a lot of sense. But yeah, I think you Yeah. Squawk.

Deadlift, um bench press and a and a row and you'd have and the shrug obviously. Uh and I think you'd have a a really solid exercise routine in five exercises that's doing almost everything that you've got here. Yeah. Yeah. That's valid. I mean really, when we've got access to machines, we start putting in stuff like I mean, okay, so he could technically do a calf raise, he could stand with a barbell and he could do a calf raise.

you know, not nice, but he could do that. But generally speaking, when we start adding in machines, we're getting stuff like recfam, we're getting better hamstrings work, we're getting more um options in terms of cables and start moving uh activation around between regions. So we get the variety that he's struggling to get. But even in the context of even in the context of the equipment that he's got available to him, I think he's got a lot of fluff in here that doesn't really make any sense.

A lot of duplication in here that doesn't make any sense. And ultimately you could do a better job with five exercises in my opinion. Yeah. What I do like about it, I do like the single sets, and I do like the fact that when he is training a muscle group with more than one set.

he's choosing to do an additional exercise for that instead of an additional set. I do like that. True. I do like that most of this is sort of in that eight to ten repetition range. Yes, there's some that go up to fifteen, some that even go up to twenty. I actually quite like the fact that he's not wed to just one of those repetitions.

'Cause that's the way I would choose to train as well. If there's some exercises where I know I don't need to do any additional one up sets and I can do a set of eight or a set of six or whatever, I'll do that. And there's others where that's not feasible and I'll do a set of ten or twelve or fifteen or whatever it might be. So I think that's convenient. But and and you know, twelve exercises. I think a lot of people do quite well with about twelve exercises in a workout.

There's nothing magical though about twelve. It's not magical. If seven of them are duplications. Oh I know, I know. But it as a as a outline of a training program, if you took out the exercises and you changed the exercises up, the actual foundational outline I think is quite good. But yes, the exercise selection leaves a fair bit wanting, doesn't it? It does, it does.

so moving on We're talking about fatigue, which we have talked about multiple times, but we're talking about it from a different perspective today.

We are, because there is a uh study that came out at the end of last year that um I've only recently s sort of had the time to go through and I've been very excited to read it. Um, just to set the context, um there's obviously a couple of uh things I want to say about context. But the first thing I want to say about context here is that um this is a rodent study. So if you're listening to this and you think that rodent studies aren't relevant, you can stop listening.

Um in fact you probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast at all, but um you know, anyway. Um if you generally think that brain studies aren't interesting or that they're of some kind of minor relevance in comparison with uh long term human studies, then again, as I say, you can stop. But this is a rodent study that has attempted to solve a fundamental problem about hypertrophies, asking a fundamental question. It's not tinkering around the edges. It's not

Asking questions that aren't striking at the heart of how hypertrophy actually happens. It's going right to the... very center of the questions that we're interested in and it's saying, how does this actually work if I control all of these other variables that I'm, you know, kind of interested in?

Now, this is only very rarely done. So um let me just kind of uh give a little bit of very quick background to the situation. But um Essentially we've got I think I think this is the third in a series of really important studies um that have actually tried to get you know, fundamental information about higher birth works.

The first study is one that I'm um v always talking about. It's an incredibly important study. It's called increased hypertrophic response with increased mechanical load in skeletal muscles receiving s identi identical activity patterns. That was published in 2016 and it's one of the fundamental studies behind why I keep pointing out to people that force velocity relationship is the underlying principle behind mechanical tension that drives hypertrophy and muscular contraction.

Because what it did was it had two groups of rodents, one that trained with um isometrics and one that trained with an identical um amount of activation, but with high velocity contractions, so isokinetic. So essentially you're using electrical stimulation to make sure that muscle activation is absolutely maximal and identical in all of the contractions that you're doing in the training programme.

and you match that activation between the two groups. The only difference is the force that the fibers produced because of the force velocity relationship. And what they found was that the high force, the isometric group, um, achieved quite a lot of hypertrophy, whereas the Uh the high velocity group achieved uh almost no hypertrophy. Um but fibertype shifting was identical in both of those two groups.

Now that's really, really important because what it shows you is that mechanical tension from the force velocity relationship is driving the hypertrophic response, the actual fibre growth, single fibre growth. Um, whereas activation is driving fiber type shifting. So I keep telling people calcium ions drive fiber type shifting. Well, there's another um kind of uh sort of item uh in the list of things that adds to that conclusion.

So this was a really, really fundamental I think this is the fundamental hypertrophy study because it shows you that Uh not only is um hypertrophy uh a single fiber phenomenon, but it's actually driven by things that are happening inside fiber uh relating obviously to the force velocity relationship, the binding of actin and myosin. So massively, massively important study. Not just another rodent study, but possibly the rodent study when it comes to

Um second study then is the volume uh study. So this is like exactly the same idea. You electrically stimulate um muscles in rodents for a period of uh a couple of weeks. And what you're doing there is you're just testing um whether or not you're getting the same uh kind of uh hypertrophy with uh different contraction modes. Um and essentially this study showed that you could do uh essentially the same volume of

um contractions in different contraction modes and get exactly the same muscle growth. That is um the studies that was published in 2017. That study is called effects of contraction mode and stimulation frequency on electrical stimulation induced skeletal muscle hypertrophy.

Really, really important study basically telling us that contraction mode uh doesn't really matter if you get the same kind of talk time integrals. Uh now I would argue that your eccentrics are going to give you more sarcomerogenesis in that context.

And your isometrics and concentrics are going to give you more myocribul addition in that context, but fundamentally the total muscle volume growth is going to be the same in those cases. So another really, really critical study for understanding exactly how hypertrophy is happening. And this final study in the three is one, as I say, that was published just at the end of last year. Um, and this study is um

Basically looking at how fatigue modifies that dose response relationship. So it's called effects of repetition duration on skeletal muscle hypertrophy in a rat model of resistance exercise. published uh just this year, although as I say, uh technically uh it was available right at the back end of twenty twenty five. Now

That was my context for the literature. So if you're interested in this from an exercise science point of view and history of exercise science and the longer I do this job and the longer I think about this stuff and the older I get. the more I become interested in how excise science changes over time and the history of this process. That's just a I guess a kind of a by product of just being here a long time. So um the other context though is

What are we actually talking about with this study? Now I'll get into the details and I'll explain what the study did in a moment, but I just want to again put a kind of notice at the top of this section. Like I put a notice at the beginning of the last section to say, you know, if you're interest if you don't think rodent studies are important, then you can leave. At this point I'm going to make the notice that um if you

are listening to what I'm saying over the next ten, twenty minutes and you start to think that I'm talking about time under tension or doing repetitions with different uh speeds, so slowing down the repetition, then you aren't understanding what I'm saying.

This is not about rep I know the title says repetition duration. This is not about repetition duration. I'll explain why that is in a moment, but fundamentally what we're talking about here is the negative effect of fatigue mechanisms on the hypertrophic stimulus that they're experiencing.

because of the reduction of mechanical tension that those fatigue mechanisms create. So that is the essence of this investigation. It's saying if I have identical talk time integrals, but within those talk time integrals some of the uh groups are experiencing fatigue mechanisms Do I end up with the same hypertrophy or do I end up with different hypertrophy? Is it essentially uh affected by the presence of those calcium fatigue mechanisms? Um, but we'll get into that shortly.

So what did the study actually do? Well basically they had three different groups of rodents training for four weeks. And they did electrically stimulated contraction training, which means that you're getting maximal uh or the equivalent of maximal recruitment. So you can imagine that in a human situation this would be like doing maximum voluntary isometric contractions.

Um, three times a week for four weeks or probably longer in the case of humans, because we tend to need uh much longer studies to get the same level of statistical significance that we would get in rodents. So you can imagine if you did this in a human trial, you'd be looking at eight weeks probably Um three times a week training, maximal isometric contraction. And they had three training groups and they all aimed to

produce the same talk time integrals, which is essentially like saying you're getting the same uh amount of uh force over time, uh, or area under the curve that force is generating. And one group did um

Oh well just to be clear, all groups are training with sets of ten contractions, ten isometric contractions. One group's training with one second duration contractions, one group's training with three second uh duration contractions, and a third group is training with nine second duration contractions.

Remember, these are all uh maximal isometric contractions with electrical stimulation. So you're kind of hitting the muscle as if it were a stimulating rep um kind of context in this sort of strength training situation. To keep force uh teep talk time integrals the same. The one second contraction group is training with nine sets, the three second contraction group is training with five sets.

And the nine second contraction group is training with three sets. Because if you think about it, if they're all doing ten contractions per set and they're taking seven seconds of rest between contractions, they're all taking these um

sort of different uh duration contractions for the same number of uh contractions per set, then your one second contraction group only has ten total seconds of uh contraction, so they need to do nine sets. Um your three second group is uh getting three seconds of contraction per um

uh per or sorry, doing three second contractions and they're doing ten of those so they get thirty second sets. And your nine second contraction group obviously is getting ninety seconds um across the whole set and so they only need to do a far fewer number of sets. So y what you're doing is you're essentially experiencing an enormous amount of fatigue in your nine second contraction group and very little fatigue in your one second contraction group um on each step-by-step basis.

Uh and given that you're doing three minutes of rest between sets, it really kind of allows your one second group to get a lot of rest and avoid accumulating fatigue, whereas your nine second group is really suffering quite a lot. I'm just gonna pause there and check with Jake that that is making sense to him before I carry on.

Yeah it is. I'm trying to think if there's anything that needs clarification, but I I think that's fairly straightforward. It's interesting there were seven seconds between repetitions. That's that's quite a long time or between those contractions. Yeah, exactly. And that that really kind of allows us to see that metabolite accumulation is probably not going to be a major problem in these situations.

Because obviously metabolites are clear really, really quickly. So if you allow that rest period, like with clusters, if you give uh a cluster set scenario and you're giving ten seconds maybe between repetitions, then that gives you a lot of time to clear metabolites. Um, you know, whereas other mechan uh and spinal CNT actually Whereas a lot of other mechanisms like the calcium ion stuff is just not going to be able to do anything in that short period of time. Yeah.

Now the the rest periods, the um contraction duration, all of that is similar to what we would see with humans. Yeah, like doing a three second or or nine second isometric or taking three minutes off between sets or doing sets of ten, that would be fairly standard for for us to do.

A second contraction in a mouse compared to a second contraction in a human, is that relatively equivalent? Not really. Um so generally speaking, rodents um have much more oxidative muscle fibres than we do. So they are going to clear fatigue much more successfully. Um, but equally we are dealing with electrical stimulation here, so you are dealing with pushing things up to the absolute maximal level. So you are getting into territory that a

uh rodent typically wouldn't get into. Um so y the swings and roundabouts really. But yeah, generally speaking, the smaller the animal, the more oxidative its muscle fibres and the faster it's going to uh be able to deal with fatiguing mechanisms. So We've got these three training groups, and essentially they're aiming to produce, and they did actually produce pretty much identical talk time integrals.

But the longer the contraction duration the longer the total time and the lower the average talk. So essentially you're reducing the uh amount of torque that you're getting on average in any given contraction. And to compensate for that you have to do a lot more contraction.

So essentially you're getting uh a lot more actual exercise time with maximal activation, but because of the force being lower in each of the muscle fibres that are working, you're having to do that in order to match the total torque time integral of the uh one second contraction group. So what I'm saying here is that your one second contraction group is getting the same talk time integral in a much shorter period of time than your nine second contraction group. Yeah. Yeah. And

This really strikes at the heart of some of the um assumptions in some of the competing models that are starting to be formed for how hypergy works. Because some people are arguing that um talk time integral is what determines hypertrophy in a strength training context. So literally

All of the reps in a strength training set they think are stimulating. So if I do a thirty rep max, they think all of those repetitions are somehow stimulating. And that um what you're then doing is you're saying, you know, you're just apportioning the stimulus across the entirety of the set. Um and you add all of that up and it somehow magically gets to the same stimulus that a ten rep max would get to or a five rep max would get to.

What we're seeing is that this study here, by showing that the hypertery is actually very different between these three groups, it's really high in the one second contraction group, it's lower in the three second contraction group, and it's very, very low in the nine second contraction group. What it's showing is that this talk time integral does not determine

um hypertrophy of a strength training uh kind of workout or set. If you get uh if you allow the fibers to produce higher forces, and get your talk time integral mainly through force and not through time, then you get a strong hypotrophic response. If you try and compensate for your um reduced force because of the reduced mechanical tension, you're gonna end up and then obviously compensate for that by doing a longer duration of um repetitions, you actually get a worse effect.

So put another way, if I translate this to a human strength training context, if you do a if you do three sets um of um, say, I don't know, eight rep max and you say leave three to five minutes between each of those sets, then you're gonna get a strong hypertrophic response from that three sets of eight.

You'll of course see a little bit of fatigue towards the end of each set and you'll see a little bit of more fatigue um from set two to set three, but fundamentally you're getting a pretty strong hypertrophic response. In contrast, if you did that as a drop set and you did three sets of eight but you had to drop the load going from set one, set two to set three'cause you're leaving no rest period between those things.

Essentially what you're going to get in that scenario is much, much reduced hypertrophic stimulus because of the fatigue mechanisms that are building up inside the muscle fibers and actually in the human context. in the central nervous system because of course in this rodent model we are uh not allowing the central nervous system to get involved in the

fatigue uh processes, but in uh obviously a human scenario we we would see that. Essentially you are reducing the hypertrophic stimulus that those uh additional drops are producing in comparison with the three straight sets. So this is really, really important rodent study'cause it's showing us

really clearly that fatigue mechanisms are having a negative impact on hypertrophy. And that's for me the critical part of this study because I've been trying to educate people about the negative effects of fatigue for a very long time now in terms of hypertrophic scenarios. And While I think most people follow my logic, there are a kind of a a group of hypertery researchers and their influencers who are really resisting that and are essentially trying to argue it doesn't happen.

I think this is a s extremely solid um rodent study. Like I said, it's probably one of the three great rodent studies that is pushing um to demonstrate that uh hyp in a way that hypertrophy researchers just can't ignore any longer.

So you made a comment when you were contrasting it to what we would see in humans who would be doing something similar and you mentioned that obviously in in a human context there's going to be central nervous system fatigue, which we're not seeing in this study, right? And So when you do something like a drop set that you've just explained, then obviously there's going to be central nervous system fatigue and that's going to cause a reduction in mode and disagreement.

Now, in this scenario with the rodent study, there's not actually reduction in mode and recreatment that's occurring, and yet there's still diminishing returns on hypertrophy. Basically all fatigue mechanisms, with the exception of a disruption in coordination, which is an artifact All co all fatigue mechanisms are trying to do the same thing. Their purpose is identical and that is to protect the muscle fibers from running out of ATP.

And that's why a lot of people who come at fatigue mechanisms expecting to see fatigue being created by a loss of energy availability, they get enraveled in how fatigue works very quickly and they get confused. because that's the opposite of what fatigue is doing.

Fatigue is stopping you getting to that point. Fatigue is not caused by a loss of energy availability. Uh fatigue is actually stopping you getting to the point where you're losing energy availability, or at least at the ATP level. You can lose energy availability at the glycogen level, that's totally doable.

All right, you're never gonna lose it at the ATP level. Um so Ultimately, um CNFT mechanisms are stopping you activating the fibre in the first place, whether they're at the superspinal or spinal level. They just stop you activating the fiber. And that basically means that you don't use any ATP because the fiber's not activated. You can't really use ATP very effectively unless the fiber is activated. Um

like the next link in the chain. If the fibre is activated, then you can either switch it off at the cell membrane level with uh cell membrane and uh kind of losses of excitability and that can happen for a number of reasons but primarily I think the main reason is it gets damaged.

Um you can lose it at the electrochemical junction, the triodic junction, which is what is technically referred to as excitation, contraction, coupling failure. Um or you could lose it at the sensitivity uh level. You could lose it from um actin losing sensitivity to the presence of calcium ice. So you can lose um the ability to respond to the presence of an activated fiber. But again, by losing those um

Losing the ability to activate the internal part of the fibre, even though there's an activation on the external part of the fibre, means you can't create cross bridges. If you can't create cross bridges, you can't use ATP. And if you actually if you stop the um the flow

earlier than that, you can actually stop excitation contraction coupling happening. And that uses a lot of ATP. So ultimately, uh all of this stuff is really just stopping you from using ATP. Now, the reason I'm setting this context is because If you use electrical stimulation and you just kind of move everything one step down and you say, Okay, we can't use um CNFT mechanisms now.

Um, it doesn't change anything. It just means that now your calcium ion relativity mechanisms, as I call them, are now going to be entirely responsible for protecting you and they are just going to go to the max in order to try and make that happen.

you're just gonna push them to the point when they do as much as they could possibly do in order to stop you running out of ATP. So you're just magnifying the effect of calcium m related PT. So really, from a kind of esper experimental design perspective All that's going to be different is that you are going to move the limiting factor one step down from the CNS to the calcium ion fatigue mechanism.

So what you couldn't so people are going, Oh no, no, no, now this experiment is irrelevant, you can't use this to translate to humans Yes you can, because the C N S T mechanisms do exactly what the calcium mechanisms are doing, except one step up the chain. They just stop you using the fibre.

The only thing that's gonna differ is that'cause the fibers get switched off in both cases. So you're reducing tension in both cases. It doesn't matter. The end result from a hypertrophy point of view is identical. The end result from a muscle damage point of view is completely different. So so like if you're using obviously uh CNFT mechanisms to switch the fibers off, you're not gonna get the same post workout tea because you're not gonna get the calcium ion influx. If you

to use this study and say, well, what was the muscle damage result? Then you get a completely different answer because your CNFT is protecting you not only from running out of ATP, but it's also protecting you from the calcium ion influx creating muscle damage after the workout. So you wouldn't be able to use this study to say, well, how does post workout fatigue work? Because you are not experiencing the same um kind of

stimulus for post workout fatigue if you haven't got any CNS fatigues. Uh if you lose the access to CNS fatigues, then you are essentially not protected as much as if you have still got those. So

Um, but from a hypertrophy uh hypertrophy point of view, switching uh which part of the planet my brain is in right now, um, whether I'm thinking in English or uh American English. Um, so depending on which um uh kind of uh Yeah.

question we're asking. If we're asking about fatigue, then we can't really uh map this. But if we're asking about hypertrophy, then we can map it perfectly, because all that's happening is that the fibers are being switched off higher or lower in the sequence before they actually get the chance to produce mechanical tension.

And it's the mechanical tension that's obviously stimulating hypertrophy,'cause that's what we talked about at the very beginning when I said um, you know, there's been a the classic rodent study that we saw in twenty sixteen that shows that tension is the driver of hypertrophy on a single fibre level.

Your comment about CNS fatigue protecting you from the muscle damage, that's something we've highlighted in the past where I've mentioned some of the ridiculous workouts we see in the golden era with some of the insane amounts of volume. In some ways, some of those very short rest periods and high repetitions are having a protective effect because they're causing such a high amount of this CNS fatigue that it's mitigating at least some of that damage than if the fatigue mechanisms weren't there.

Yeah, totally. If you're out of breath or if your muscles are burning, then those two things are going to be using RPE that you can't dedicate towards central motor command. So yeah, I mean uh I and I see this still. I mean I literally was in the gym yesterday and there was a guy training um sitting next to me and he was um literally, really breathing very, very hard during his set.

Um, you know, he was absolutely blowing like a train. And that is going to be using RPE that he is not dedicating towards the motor unit recruitment signal, so it's going to reduce the number of activated fibers. I mean that has a negative effect on hypertrophy because you're not getting the fibres available to train. But of course it also then protects you because you're not getting the muscle damage.

So in both of these scenarios if you do has have CNS fatigue that's there and basically stopping the activation

compared to in this rodent study where the CNS fatigue wasn't interfering and then it was more calcium ionulated fatigue mechanisms. In both of those, if we were to actually able to look at muscle fiber hypertrophy, we're gonna see that the hypertrophy that the that group experienced, reduction hypertrophy in that rodent study, it would be coming from muscle fibers that would be higher up in the high threshold motor unit pull, wouldn't it? They're going to be affected more so.

Correct. So both C N S Teague and or me or all C N S T mechanisms uh work top down. So basically they start by reducing your access to the highest pressure of motor units and they work downwards. And the purpose of that is to avoid the glycolytic fibers at the top end of the motor unit pool um being stripped of all their ATP. So that's how it is designed to work.

Um calcium ionine related feed mechanisms inadvertently work in exactly the same way because they are going to be most prevalent in fibers with minimal mitochondria because mitochondria are the first line of defence against calcium accumulation.

So if you've got fibers at the top end of the motoric pool, Um, in their being activated by electrical stimulation, then the mitochondria are going to give up very quickly in those fibers because there aren't very many of them and they're weaker than the mitochondria in the low uh in the slow twitch fibers that are low threshold.

And so ultimately they're gonna experience those calcium related D mechanisms very, very rapidly. So irrespective of whether you're doing this with this is why I'm saying, from a like system point of view, CFTs and um calcium amulet Ts are doing pretty much the same Yeah.

As far as the muscle as long as we're talking about hypertrophy and not uh muscle damage, then they are literally doing exactly the same thing. Um so from this study's point of view, what people are gonna be like, Oh well it's electrical stimulation, I can ignore it, it's a rodent study, I can ignore it. I'm like, you don't understand how fatigue mechanisms work.

If you actually work through the things that are the processes uh that are working in this situation, you can actually just map this perfectly across to something like drop sets in humans. Yeah. Yeah, so what is But what you can't do, and just coming back to the contextual m remark I made at the beginning of this section.

You cannot say, Oh, so this is like saying that I shouldn't do slow repetitions, I shouldn't slow down my rep. No. If you slow down your rep in a strength training set, you are reducing motivating recruitment to do that. That's the only way we've got of doing that action.

If you say to me, Well, I'm I'm gonna slow down my repetition and do like four second lifting phases, I'm like, the only way you can do that is by reducing your effort level, which is reducing recruitment and you're changing the recruitment that's the muscle fibers are experiencing. now you're not m you're not comparing like with like anymore. The two scenarios are totally different.

So why is someone Who's just listened to explain this study and they might be asking, Well, hang on, I'm I'm not doing isometrics, I'm not doing nine second isometrics and doing ten repetitions. We're not even doing drop sets either, yes. So how is this relevant? Yeah.

So what it also tells us is that any um rep that's done with a maximum level of effort and a maximum uh sorry In this stimulating rep model, we say that any repetition that's done with max recruitment and maxed and high mechanical tension is a stimulating rep. Now You can drop one level down from that. So the beginning, a stimulating rep is high recruitment plus high mechanical tension. That's the axiomatic basis of stimulating rep theory. You can't have um transverse

um hypertrophy, increase in myofible uh number without both high recruitment and high mechanical tension. Drop down one level. What does that mean in practice? It means that you need a high level of effort to map to high levels of recruitment.

And also a high and a slow movement velocity to map to the high mechanical tension. Okay, so those are our two practical implications. Why can't we just say that all the time? Why can't I just say that a stimulating rep is high effort plus slow movement velocity? I can't say it for two reasons. One, I can't say it because a high level of effort doesn't always mean maximum levels of motivate recruitment.

'Cause I can have a high effort that comes from other sources of RPE. I can feel RPE if I'm breathing hard, like the gentleman sitting next to me in the gym yesterday. I can feel RPE if I've got metabolite burning sensations in the muscles like we're talking about with golden era bodybuilders.

So I can have sensations that are adding to my effort perception that don't actually give me the high recruitment because they're chewing up RPE that I would use for recruitment if I had it available. But I don't because I'm dedicating it to these sources of pain and suffering instead. So I can't map high effort perfectly to motivate criminal. This goes back to a debate that has been going on a long time whereby every so often I say that

you know, doing light loads to failure doesn't actually hit max levels of recruitment. And I suddenly get all the screeches from the fitness influencers shouting, Yes it does, yes it does, yes it does and then I dig out all the data and I show people again and then they all go quiet. Um and it's literally this ex that's what's happening in that scenario. You've got

an effort perception coming from something else that is then pushing your pushing a discrepancy between motino criminal levels and effort levels. What we're seeing here is an identical situation on the tension side. If I've got a slow velocity, like an isometric contraction, or the end of a strength training is there, do I automatically therefore also have

a high level of mechanical tension in that single fibre. No, I can have calcium amuletive D mechanisms that are reducing the tension inside the fiber, and now I can have a slow moving velocity without a high level of mechanical tension stimulating hypertrophy. Hmm. So what we're seeing then is that we've got um uh our a end goal here for stimulating rap theory, which is high recruitment and high mechanical tension per fibre, drop down one level and go

uh usually a high effort should map to a high level of recruitment, but it doesn't if you've got a fatigue mechanism in the CNS. And here again, we're doing the same thing, just one level down. We're going Um, okay, now uh slow movement velocity doesn't always map perfectly to a high level of mechanical tension on the fiber level if I have calcium ion relative D mechanisms. That's it. That's that's the essence of what we're saying here today. Yeah.

I think that's a really good uh summary, I guess, of of what this adds to the narrative because you hear people say things like, Oh, it's it's all about hard sets, right? I think that's the language they use. It's you know, however many hard sets one does. And as you've just explained there, and obviously there's other issues here with that terminology, but a hard set is not a creating for fatigue.

For the purpose of people listening to the podcast, that was Jake responding to the expression on my face. Yeah. So we've we've acknowledged that there's an issue with recruitment if fatigue mechanisms are at play, but we haven't generally acknowledged that there could be an issue here with mechanical tension with fatigue mechanisms at play. So that's really interesting that we're saying actually m both of these two uh I guess variables that we need, they're both impacted by fatigue mechanisms.

Exactly. And that then has huge implications for how we program strength training. Now, again, anybody who's been following the work that I've been doing over the last few uh years on fatigue will not be surprised by anything I'm about to say. Um, all we're doing is just integrating this new finding into the evidence base that shows that what I've been saying is in fact a good map.

Um if one of my favorite examples, if you look at the dose response of hypertrophy to training volume, you get a nonlinear curve. That nonlinear curve is quite pronounced. If we use the Schoenfeld um meta analysis and we apply a um natural logarithm to the data presented in that meta analysis.

what we see is that broadly speaking you're getting maybe like uh forty percent. I I forget the number off top of my head. Maybe like forty percent. People can correct me. I I don't remember numbers off the top of my head like this. And maybe like sixty percent if we do three sets. So Kind of going up, um, relatively in small amounts from the hundred percent uh of a one set's stimulus.

But the point is it's nonlinear. You're not getting, you know, kind of double the amount of hypertrophy by doing two sets compared to one set. It's very, very much uh reduced in that second set and again reduced even further. for the third set. And again and again and again as you go increasing and it becomes pretty minimal after five sets or so how much extra you get.

So a very, very nonlinear kind of curve. And I've published um what I think the estimates are in various different places. So don't listen to my numbers right now. Look look at the numbers that I've actually written on a chart when I've been thinking about it. Um so

The point here though is that if we look at the eccentric training literature, you don't get the same dose response curve. The dose response curve stops at around about three sets. It kind of goes up and then it just kind of plateaus. And what that's showing us is that in eccentric contractions where you're getting a ton more calcium ion accumulation, your ability to actually continue stimulating um hypertrophy later on in the workout just tanks to almost zero. Um

Wonderful illustration of exactly what we've just been talking about in the last sort of twenty, uh thirty minutes or so. That if you have you know, chucked a load of calcium ions into your muscle fiber to an extent that it's produced calcium ion relative D mechanisms, you're not going to get any more hypertrophy in that workout, no matter how much more work you do. Um

The same thing would then apply to doing a load of um stretch position strength training before you wanted to do something else. So this is why I talk about e um exercise order being important. If you're doing multiple exercises for the same muscle group, classic example being um leg press and the knee extension. Most people are gonna do the leg press and then do the knee extension. That makes no sense.

because if you do the stretch position exercise first, you're gonna have the calcium ion accumulation, you're gonna have the calcium fatigue, you're not gonna get much more value out of the knee extension, which is a con generally a contract position exercise. So Again, mapping really well to exercise order um, you know, with the calcium amphitheat mechanisms playing a major role. Um but fundamentally you can also then use it to explain the f the basic dose response analysis.

Why do we get a nonlinear response? It's because your later sets have got some calcium on accumulation. And again, do we then take measures to try and avoid that problem earlier on in the workout? Do I do Do I should I be training to failure on on every single one of my sets if I'm doing multiple sets to failure? Or should I actually give myself a rep in reserve on that earlier set? Um

Interestingly, um, this kind of would push you if you were planning on doing different rep ranges. I mean, one really interesting rep uh progression model is to do one heavy slightly heavier set and follow it up by a slightly lighter set. That way round makes a lot more sense than doing the lighter set first. It's not that the lighter set is giving you anything additional, but you're contrasting that to starting with a lighter set and then doing it.

Do the lighter set effect. So like you can see two scenarios. The person who does a heavy set and leaves one rip in reserve and then follows it up with a back off set with a lighter uh weight to failure. So let's say they do a six or a seven rep max and leave a one rep in reserve and then they do a 12

rep max, but they train to failure. That way around is way better than doing the twelve rep max to failure followed by um six rep max, seven rep max leaving a rep in reset. Um because what we're doing there is we're aiming to minimize the calcium accumulation earlier in the workout.

so that we keep our single fibre tension higher for longer. In the same way that I would say to somebody, Don't gash yourself completely with um some kind of really tiring, uh, cardiovascularly demanding exercise at the beginning of the workout and then crawl through the rest of your workout. you know, with zero ability to produce motunic cooling because you're so uh your RPE is being chewed up by the cardiovascular sensation.

In the same way, we don't want to dump calcium ions into the muscle fiber in the first set of a workout and then try and somehow create a benefit from the same in the same muscle group in later sets. It's just not gonna happen. Um, that's literally what this rodent study is showing us. We can't you can't just ignore fatigue mechanisms and expect that you can get the same result from a set with high effort and slow movement velocity. It's just not gonna happen.

So are there any other ways that you would be conscious of setting up a a training routine? to be consistent with what you said there. So, you know, you've obviously mentioned it makes more sense to do the lower repetitions first and then if you're gonna do a back off set, do it that way rather than starting with high repetitions and then going to lower. You've mentioned using stretch positions

second and doing the shortened position first. I would just quickly add to that, I do personally tend to do squats before my leg extensions because I do my squats with very low repetitions and with a stack and a leg extension I have to do about fifteen is plus repetitions. So for me in that condition, I find it makes more sense to do

do it in that order, but it's gonna depend on that person. Right. So, you know, there's always gonna be variables that you may or may not be able to control and there's gonna be different things that that's going to affect. So you need to be thinking for yourself in your own context what's going to make the most sense here. What other variables I guess might someone Yeah, you're you're picking the lesser of two evils, aren't you? Yes. Exactly, that's it.

Neither s neither to neither of the scenarios is optimal but you Exactly, neither's ideal. I could jim pin it, but yeah. Yeah. So um obviously if we kind of start from premise that something like a um a drop set is going to be about the worst way of trading. then by definition, the opposite of that could be interesting to explore. And clusters are essentially the opposite of doing a kind of rest, not a rest pause, sorry.

They're the opposite of doing a um a a drop set type uh routine. Obviously that cluster has to be it has to be a heavy load cluster. You can't just do clusters with a moderate load like a ten rate max and expect something interesting to happen.

because you're not actually a stimulating rate when you start. So it has to be a heavy load cluster. So you have to be using a five rip max. But five rip max weights done with like single or double repetitions could be a really interesting way of training once we understand that this um these fatigue mechanisms are having really, really meaningful effects on the reduced hypothetical stimulus that we're getting.

So in in that context, when we've talked about clusters in the past, I think we've done at least one, maybe two podcasts where we've talked about them. We've talked about the example of using like a five rep max load, you do a single, maybe you wait thirty seconds or so between the repetitions. And we've talked about it largely in the context of mitigating some of that more like spinal and superspinal CNS fatigue. Now, based on what we're talking about here with calcium iron fatigue.

Would that change that that sort of rest period between the cluster or what we've talked about there would still apply? I think that um In human scenarios of voluntary contractions, um, the CNS fatigues are going to be doing most of the uh work. Yeah.

I think that the reason we're seeing so much calcium and fatigue in this rodent study is simply because they wasn't an ability to create it. Yeah. But y you would basically just trigger it at a higher level because it's far better for the body to do it that way. you don't want a lot of calcium mind fatigue because you're gonna suffer horrible consequences in the post workout period if you do.

So I think honestly, we're still targeting CNS fatigues in a human perspective. And um spinal CNS fatigue dissipates really quickly. Superspinal um P and nonlinearly. So you get a huge benefit as soon as you take your kind of weight off. Um, you're immediately starting to recover incredibly rapidly from the spinal CNT. Um, so I think really ten, twenty seconds, thirty seconds is an enormous amount of time from a spinal CNST point of view.

um, from a superspinal point of fat uh s superspinal fatigue point of view, you're really looking for sensations. And people ask me questions about this all the time. And I'm like, Are you living in your body? Are you are you actually aware of what you're experiencing? Can you feel can you detect your breathing rate? Can you Yeah, you're getting this thing. Yeah.

should know this stuff. Like you m you must be living in in your body. You're not living somewhere else. You're not a computer game sprite. You know, you must be able to detect this stuff. Like feel it. You know, if you're doing like squats, then you're gonna find that you're gonna need a lot more rest between sets because you're gonna be breathing.

hard, you're gonna have that blood lactate response that's gonna provoke a cardiovascular response after every single repetition. Um if you're doing, you know, kind of biceps curls, not really. But you might be getting metabolite accumulation there, so you've got to be aware of that. So

You've got to be aware of the sensations. And even if you're not getting those, but you're getting some other disagreeable sensation, then be aware of that as well, because that's probably not a good exercise for you to do that particular thing cluster protocol on.

What you're looking for is a cluster if you wanna do clusters and experiment with them in this context, you need something where you can comfortably do like heavy load singles or doubles and then like what you're looking for is the any disagreeable sensations to die away over ten seconds or so, perfect, and then do another repetition. If you're in a scenario where it's uncomfortable, it's painful, it's giving you

Long duration, uh like disagreeable sensations. Uh like for me, I wouldn't be able to do this with squats. I would be absolutely gassed after a handful of reps. Um, it just wouldn't work for me at all. Um, I think there'd be other scenarios where it would work a lot better, but I think everybody's gonna be different. But fundamentals don't change.

Yeah, it's it's very it's gonna be very exercise dependent. You know, with a squat the last thing I would wanna do is do that with an actual barbell squat. I don't know if I mean we're obviously talking about like pendulum squat type. And you've got very good

uh kind of set up with a rack. I mean like when I was doing a lot of powerlifting style squatting, I was very attuned to exactly where my barbell was and where my rack was. And I could literally just lean forward very slightly and it would be on the pins. Yeah. Or you've got like a a monolift or something, like in depending on the equipment you've got. if you've got the access to this kind of stuff then, you know, you can do it with a barbell. But

Like if obviously you've got a pendulum squat or something or a hack squat or you've got the system uh machines in place, it's a lot easier. Yes. Uh you don't have to worry about that like re racking process or anything like that. Same with the bench. You know, I I wouldn't want to do this with a bench press. Uh you could do it with the chest press machine. Yes, exactly. So I think this is lo uh it's going to fit machines a lot better.

Um, but again, maybe people are gonna struggle to be able to do uh heavy loads with machines. Most people are gonna be working moderate loads with machines just because unless they've got jim pins or other ways of making the stack heavier, it's gonna be very tricky for them to be working in that zone. So based off this study, it may it's to me it sounds like the shorter intervals of a maximum stimulating repetitions we can do

more often the better. So w if we were to do, say, many sets of a single, I mean I I guess sort of like what we just said there, the cluster, but it it sounds like potentially lower repetition, maximum stimulating rep sets, for more sets could be better than high repetition sets. But ultimately that fits perfectly with just the h like knowledge that we've gained over the last sort of five, ten years, which is that short rest periods aren't very clever for hypertrophy.

I think what we're seeing here is another step in that direction of moving forward from the short rest period uh data and saying Not only are short rest periods between sets not very clever, but um allowing your set to drag on um, you know, way past the point of being effective is not very clever either. Um so Honestly, I don't think that this study changes anything for me. Because ultimately it just

kind of adds uh more weight of evidence to the argument that I've been making consistently for the last few years. Um what it does I think is push that idea right up into the hypertrophy researchers' faces because this is a hypertrophy study.

All of the studies that I've been working off the last kind of however many years have all been fatigue physiology studies. And I just keep bringing the fatigue physiology. Hypertrophy research just keep going, I'm not interested, not interested, not interested. This is now a hypertrophy study that's showing exactly the same thing.

And that's a game changer because now it's a study in their literature body that they're interested in reading, and it proves the point that I've been making all along, which is that fatigue mechanisms are negative for hypertrophy, not positive. Well, actually th maybe let me restate my my statement or question in in that term there. So essentially what w what we want is as many of our maximally stimulating repetitions as possible to be done in an unfatigued state. And so

Hang on a minute. Hang on a minute. So terminology. So from my point of view, a stimulating rep is high recruitment and high tension. So what you just said there was technically not

possible because if it's a stimulating rep then it must have automatically, axiomatically high recruitment and high tension. You want all of your high effort, slow velocity reps to be done in low states of fatigue. Well so if we were to say a set of five. So a set of five, we're going to agree that that is all maximally stimulating. But there's going to be more fatigue. It's not like we're having an argument.

But this actually this ties back to something that you um pointed out before we jumped on the podcast today, which is that this observation that you're now um homing in on could actually explain the study that we last did as a study review on this podcast. Because we've only asked this is only the second study that we've done a full review of. Not that we've done a full review but this is only the Bring things about our podcast.

I occasionally remember things and that was a study that actually I was quite interested in, so I do remember that we covered it. My increasing decline into old age is becoming a meme on the internet actually. People write to me and say, You're forgetting stuff and you can't remember what you're saying in the middle of a sentence. I'm like, Yeah, I know that's what happens when you get old.

Yeah. Uh the last study we actually reviewed and the only other study that we reviewed on this podcast, uh, was the study l regarding heavy load um producing similar hypertrophy to moderate loads in a long term strength training program in humans, which was radical because prior to that we'd never really got anything heavier than about an eight rep max ish.

So it was kind of really, really kind of important. It also starts to indicate that, you know, maybe there is a possible benefit of heavy loads that goes above and beyond the just the number of stimulating reps. And this study would fit perfectly into that category because as you rightly point out, if I'm doing a five rate max or if I'm starting to do singles with five rate maxes,

I might actually get more stimulating effect from doing that than doing um sets of moderate loads to failure and getting ostensibly what looks like five stimulating reps. But the actual stimulus of those stimulating reps in the vertical isn't actually as high as the stimulation that I'm getting from singles with heavier loads. And this study is pushing us in that direction. It's literally just for G mechanisms.

Yeah, so it's interesting that the rhetoric is obviously that what's best for hypertrophy, I mean most people nowadays will say anything from a set of five to thirty. But technically speaking, based on this you could say, well, potentially even those sets of fewer than five repetitions on a rep by rep basis, those repetitions might even be more stimulating compared to a single rep in that set of files.

Yeah. I mean obviously the people who are saying that, you know, hypertrophy is identical between five and thirty reps, um, as long as you're doing the same number of sex to failure, uh are abstract readers, aren't they? I mean, they're not going any deeper than that. Sure. But that is the general narrative. Yeah. Sure, but you can find like uh um probably uh a hundred, if not a thousand, um, influencers on the internet who'll say that who have no idea where that knowledge has come from. Yes.

you know, I mean drop down a level and start kicking around the the mechanisms of how that works and you start to see that there's got to be variability in there somewhere. Um And indeed there is variability in that, as we did when we as we talked about when we did the last study review. Um so but yeah, I mean I think you could get to a point where you're like, um, is it worth

trying to build programs for hypertrophy around the idea of doing heavy singles with five rep maxes or heavy doubles with five rep maxes. And I think there's definitely something worth exploring in that.

I personally I think you're gonna lose something on the progressive overload side and the motivation side and but if you're able to like we you you actually wrote a programme a while back where you had a an A B split and one of the workouts was progressive overload based where you had an actual rep max that you were trying to push forward.

And the other workout was a cluster workout where you have any interest in actually pushing anything forward. You're just getting volume in for that protocol. And that could be awesome in this context of what we're talking about here today, because you're getting the progressive overload and pushing things forward. And getting the feedback that you're making progress, but at the same time, you're actually getting this very what could be a very elegant way of

maximising the hypertrophic stimulus in a workout. And also, incidentally, I mean, this has been not really highlighted as we've gone through this, I'd have mentioned it. If you minimize calcium iron related fatigue um during a workout, that minimizes post workout fatigue as well. So if you go into a workout going, I want to get the maximum um stimulus in each stimulating rep, so we're gonna end up having to grade stimulating reps at this point.

But if I want to get that automatically minimizes your post work fatigue. Yeah, I mean for quite a long time I thought that almost probably the best way to train hypertrophy would be largely what a lot of power lifters do, but just change the exercise selection.

You know, you talked about uh a hepburn method with Rob and on your other podcast and something like that. You know, you're getting very stimulating repetitions, you're doing your sets of two, three, four repetitions with a five, six max rep load. It can kind of makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Yeah, I think it does. Um I mean I think it starts to um make higher numbers of exercises challenging.

It does. And that's why I tend to combine them. So I often will do multi sets on one exercise for muscle. where we might do fewer than five repetitions and then so it might be say two sets of of I think one of my groups at the moment we're doing two sets of three to four repetitions and then the second exercise we're doing a single set with a set of ten.

So instead of that back offset for that same exercise, we're getting in a different exercise and kind of doing that back offset idea, but with a different exercise and set. But, you know, to your point. it does become challenging if you're having to set up very heavy loads, you're having to do warm up sets. It is it's hard to justify doing that for a single set of very long repetitions.

But that is, you know, certainly something I think that could be experimented with. I mean, the thing about um the The thing about the science baselifting community is that they are generally quite um open minded and curious. and they are happy to experiment with all kinds of interesting ideas and it'll be interesting to see if they are uh able to experiment with this and take it in directions that um produce us interesting results. Um and

One of the interesting things that comes out of their experimentations is that they very quickly start to arrive at practical ways of doing things because they're inventing on the fly of how to make something happen. So very quickly you get from you know, like a year ago or two years ago, um, the availability of options for stabilization during strength training uh exercises with cables was almost nonexistent. you literally I mean like I I still go in the gym and I see some poor guy trying to do

some exercise with a cable and he's got his feet on the ground and that is the only point of stability he's got between him and the cable that he's trying to do some kind of, you know, shoulder exercise with. And of course the load that he's able to move is just tiny because he's feet are the only point of contact with any sort of external surface. Um so but now you see people on TikTok with all kinds of elaborate stabilization um

pieces of equipment that have even not just pieces of equipment that they've kind of made themselves, but they're actually now available to them. They can buy. So In the space of a very short period of time, we've seen some incredibly fast movement in improving stability, uh, and therefore increasing motor equipment in specific situations. So I think it's a lot of people give the science baselifting community um

a lot of criticism. And I think they just don't understand what they're trying to do. I think they they think w from looking outside, because um bodybuilding has over the last sort of thirty, forty years and this is obviously post um Silver area, but in the last sort of uh thirty, forty years Bodybuilding has uh developed uh very strong um kind of

group membership trends. So it has very uh strong uh trends and um conventions around the kind of clothes that people wear, the kind of training that people do, the kind of language that people do and how they describe things, wh how they talk about set, how they talk about reps, how they talk about

um what they're doing um before and after the gym. There's lots of very strong group membership type trends. And so when those people look at the science based lifting community, they expect to see the same thing. They look at them and they go, Where are your trends? Where are your kind of language um kind of uh habitual usages? What what what what am I expecting to see? And those do exist. But that's not really what the community is trying to do as a base Kind of

purpose. Their purpose really is experimental. That's what they are trying that's they're the thing that actually gets them thinking and going to the gym and doing stuff. And it's not just belonging to a group and going and

doing the sets and the reps and what have you. It's actually creating new ways of doing things and solving problems based on an understanding of how physiologically um muscles are actually responding to exercise. Um so I think that when people criticize that group, they're criticizing it from a fundamental misunderstanding of what they're trying to do. I'm not kind of like trying to Yeah.

say that I'm, you know, defending them as a like a group. I'm just saying people are misunderstanding how they're thinking. Yeah, they uh they feel like symbolic arguments against the community. I don't entirely understand them a lot of the time'cause usually it's rooted in this sort of idea of, well, no one ever used to do that but

A lot of the time people did use to do that if you go far enough back. And you know, one of the my favorite criticisms is at the moment, you know, a lot of people are are criticizing the use of stability devices like seatbelts. And they're saying how stupid to use a seatbelt and a machine and you know for stability purposes. But you know, I've shared this online, like there's photos of Reg Park getting people to sit on him, literally hang off him in machines, in lap pull downs for stability.

It's like, well, you know, you don't you don't see science based lifters walking around going to a lap pull down and get someone to sit in the lap. They'd be made fun of today. But Dredge Parker was doing this f you know, seventy five years ago.

So it's it's an odd argument to be like, Oh, you know, this is just a a new invention and it's a TikTok phase or whatever. Well no, actually the best bodybuilders before anabolics were all aware that stability mattered and, you know, these variables that people are trying to problem solve now matter.

But that point you just made there, it's a phase, it's a TikTok phase. That again actually is um is is t is is starting from the point of view of a settled, established group with its own existing habits and usages that have solidified Um, the science based community is not trying to really do that. The science based living community is actually rooted in experimental kind of

practices. It's like it's like if s if somebody's looking at the science based lifting community from outside and they're seeing everything changing all the time. they're not going to understand why that is if they start from their perspective, which is that a group should have established kind of practices and ways of doing things that identify them as a group. If they then look at the science based lifting community and go, why are these guys changing everything all the time from week to week?

And I go, that doesn't make any sense. Well y it doesn't make sense because you don't understand what they're trying to do. It's experimenting with stuff to try and figure it things out and find ways of solving problems that are presented to you by how physiology actually works. Physiology isn't changing.

But the experimental side of it is how to match um the practical processes with that physiology. Um and that's what will look very strange from the outside because people are essentially i you've got a marketplace of ideas of all these people trying to solve ways of gaining stability of um, you know, maximizing whatever thing they're trying to maximise. It could be that they're trying to isolate or not isolate but target one particular area of a muscle. And so

They're moving the resistance profile around all over the place by doing things, um, you know, they're changing, you know, um how the exercise is done in other aspects or whatever they're doing. But fundamentally, it's experimental. And people who are coming from the perspective expecting a group to be settled are not gonna understand that. It's just gonna look weird.

And y if you understand how groups work and how group dynamics work, it's really interesting to just see those disconnects between people who are coming from the outside and looking at them going I don't understand this. Well, yeah, you don't because you are applying your template of what a group should look like to this group and they're not trying to achieve what your group is trying to achieve. Mm-hmm.

Before we conclude, I do need to ask and hopefully this isn't a can of worms like my question to you last week was, but there might be people who've listened to this study that you've explained. And and now questioning, well, hang on, what do I do if I was performing isometrics?'Cause we've talked in the past about doing isometrics and we've talked about doing

you know, five to ten seconds. And we've just said here that in this rodent study the nine second isometric was far inferior to these shorter isometric contractions. Does that change the way someone should be performing isometric? So um obviously the context in which the nine second isometrics is having a negative effect is when you're doing ten of them in a row. Without spinal fatigue that's inhibiting.

And you haven't got the CNS fatigues that are kind of protecting you to a certain extent. I mean, they're obviously gonna have the same negative effect from my pertretry point of view, but they're not gonna have a kind of post workout fatigue impact. Um I mean I've I think I've been reasonably consistent in asking people to target five second isometrics. I don't think um because that ultimately is the MVC kind of standard. It's the one we use.

for testing maximum strength. I think three to five seconds is pretty solid uh zone to get uh maximal force output. Um, I think that drifting higher than that towards ten seconds is fine if you're not gonna do lots and lots of repetitions. Um if you're gonna do two or three repetitions, I think up to ten seconds is probably okay. But honestly, um I would probably still personally prefer splitting that into two fives. Um doing double the number of total conjections and doing them as five seconds.

Really, it's the people who are stort sort of going off the top end of ten seconds and doing twenty second isometrics that are gonna be the people that are creating problems for themselves. I mean, I think uh ten seconds is probably still just about okay as long as you're not doing a whole one. Uh Some of these things bring back bad memories for me.

I've no. Okay, good. Well I've done like thirty second isometrics in the past, even when I was talking about Zopman curls. I remember back in the day we used to do I think it was a hundred Zopman curls to finish our our arms work out. Like man, some of this stupid stuff that that I've done or that people do today. But there we go. Okay. Five to ten second isometric.

Would you say when someone does an isometric, is there uh you're not you're not gonna be getting max effort immediately, right? Like there might be a about a second, would you say, until there's max Voluntary activation. So if you're doing like say you were to do a three second isometric, mm, it maybe that's a little bit on the short side.

Well, the voluntary activation depends on how you're approaching the isometric. So um in a Um, in a bodybuilding context, generally speaking, we probably wouldn't go absolutely

sort of um max effort from the very start of the contraction. You do see that in some sporting contexts where people kind of try to produce max effort from out straight out of the gate and that's a separate context. Personally, if I'm kind of thinking about or programming or even um attempting a max effort isometrics

There is no scenario in the world that I'm gonna start with max effort straight out of the gate. I'm just not gonna do that. It makes no sense from an injury prevention point of view. So I'm I'm I'm gonna start building force and it's gonna take me a second or two to build to max force. And that's just how I feel more comfortable doing them. And I think unless you're an athlete in using isometrics for a very specific atlet athletic purpose.

I would always do them in that way. Um So yeah, you are gonna need a solid five seconds in that scenario uh and you're probably only gonna get three um true max effort, um like uh max mechanical tension um kind of seconds in that scenario. Um so again, if you wanted to push that up to seven so you get full uh kind of five seconds, uh it that would make sense. But um again, you know, we're we're we're talking about somewhere between, you know, kind of

three and ten seconds. We're not talking about anything longer than that. Yeah. I think that's that's the important thing. Yeah. Yeah, great. Okay, so clusters, isometrics, lower repetition sets potentially. Anything else we covered? I think that was that were the key ones. Reps and That's good stuff, yep. exercise order, stretch positions. I mean, ultimately none of this is new to anybody who's kind of followed the FA looked through the FAQ, followed what we've been saying.

uh and understands how calcium amulated fatigue works. That's that's really all it is. And if you want to map it perfectly to humans, you're gonna need to have the superspinal and spinal CNS fatigues on as well. But fundamentally it doesn't really change that much. Perfect. Well, thank you guys for listening. Join us again next week for probably not a study, maybe, maybe not our third study review. Who knows? It might be. We don't know what's going to come out, but for another interesting