50 participants is already a big study.
30,000 [music]
lets us make very strong claims about
how it's best to train and not train. If
your trainer or your coach violates
these basics often, you could be very
skeptical and you should be asking
questions. So, let's find out what the
study has distilled down as best
practices for getting jacked and strong
and even powerful. This umbrella review
is massive, so good luck debating this.
You guys know how [music] you can think
that your local gym bro
is super jacked at like a lean 180 lb.
And then you see like an NPC heavyweight
bodybuilder at like 220 lb and you're
like, "Oh my god, there are levels to
this."
But then you see an Instagram pic later
of [music] that same 220 lb heavyweight
taking a pic with Mr. Olympia Nick
Walker.
And Nick is 280 lb shredded at like
5'6".
And then you think nothing makes sense
anymore.
Now, other than going home, looking at
your leanish 165 lb physique, which you
should be very proud of, but you look at
it in [clears throat] the mirror, you
begin to cathartically cry your eyes out
for about 2 hours.
You'll also likely realize that there
are absolutely levels to size. This is
true in bodybuilding.
But believe it or not, it's also true in
studies about bodybuilding.
A training study with like 50
participants in it is actually a very
big study for muscle growth in the
science space. That's a lot of people. A
lot of these studies have 12 to 20
participants.
And this study is doing curls in the
mirror and grinning cuz it's huge.
But then comes along a systematic review
of the literature that combines 20 such
studies.
Literally picks up the curl machine
itself and eats it. Now, that's size.
But today's study, which I will
summarize the results of for you, is
something in a still totally different
level.
If our systematic review gets done
training and walks into the gym parking
lot, it gets stepped on
Godzilla style by today's massive study,
whose head is in the clouds and is
chomping at helicopters.
This study was what's called an umbrella
review, which means it took not
individual studies to view, but took
systematic reviews themselves and folded
them in to one giant analysis. Scott,
you're not ready for this 137
total systematic reviews
>> Damn.
>> to be exact, which is basically
unprecedented in the training and
science space.
>> [gasps]
>> Oh, by the way, that's a total of 30,000
individual participants from all the
studies in it combined. Guys, think
about it. 50 participants is already a
big study. 30,000 lets us make very
strong claims about how it's best to
train and not train.
So, let's find out what the study has
distilled down as best practices for
getting jacked and strong and even
powerful. I don't mean in powerful in
the political sense. I mean the ability
to produce high forces and velocities at
the same time. Explosiveness. All right.
Oh, real quick, huge props to Dr. Stu
Phillips and Brad Schoenfeld. Brad
Schoenfeld invented hypertrophy, by the
way, and Stu Phillips, I believe,
invented protein.
And their teams for making this happen.
The PMID for this is 41843416,
if you want to nerd out on PubMed and
read the whole thing. All right.
Let's begin. Five insights to share
courtesy of Dr. Brad Schoenfeld and his
team for the insights on muscle growth.
Insight number one
from this massive review
is that higher weekly volumes, numbers
of sets you do per muscle group cause
more growth.
With almost all studies saying
definitively that doing more than 10
sets per week for a muscle is going to
get you more jacked in almost every case
than doing fewer than 10 sets.
And the insight here is that basically
the more you do, the more you grow if
you can recover.
And if you look at all of the studies
they used, there's evidence that well
into the 30 plus weekly sets per muscle
group range gives you dependably more
growth. Yes, I said 30.
So, if you do five sets,
you won't grow as much as if you do 10
or 15 or 20 or 25 and even 30 plus.
So, a way to look at this is to look at
the flip side and see how it's wrong.
If a program you're considering claims
that the best gains in the world are
going to occur at like eight sets per
muscle per week or even fewer,
either the person who wrote the program
has a serious recovery issue or you have
to be very skeptical that this is
remotely close to the truth.
And if you want to get more jacked,
doing more volume is a dependable way to
do so as long as your recovery is taken
care of with lots of good food, lots of
stress management, and excellent sleep.
Now, here's the nuance.
You go from five to 10 sets, you're
going to grow way more. You go from 10
sets to 20 sets, you're going to grow
more but not as much as from five to 10.
If you go from 20 sets a week to 30 sets
a week, you will absolutely grow more in
most cases but subtly more. And if you
go 30 plus, 35, 40, etc., you get very
high diminishing returns. They're still
positive returns, but they're
diminishing. So, it's your call if this
is worth
What you want to do is keep an eye on
systemic fatigue. If your system-wise,
if you still feel good energy, doing
more volume is going to get you more
jacked. And keep an eye on
prioritization as a tool.
If you want to get your pecs as jacked
as possible, maybe training your triceps
and back a little bit less to give your
systemic fatigue more wiggle room is the
way to get your pecs up to those 20, 25,
and 30 sets that will really cook it to
its maximum size.
Insight number two.
Training close to failure produces
better gains than training very far
away. So, if you're training like five
reps shy of failure or more, like six or
seven reps shy of failure, you will get
notably better gains pushing it harder.
Now, on the flip side, this review found
that going to failure produced no better
gains than staying about one or two reps
shy away from failure in the average
situation in your program, in the
average week of your program.
So, the nuance here is this. I would say
start at like three reps shy of failure
in most programs and seek to add 2 and
1/2 to 5 lb or a repetition weekly to
most sets until you hit failure and then
deload, which is how the RP hypertrophy
app will by design have you training,
though you can mod it to train any way
you like.
Insight number three.
This one [snorts] gets people.
But, this umbrella review is massive, so
good luck debating this.
Roughly even growth is seen
from sets of five reps that are hard
close to failure,
sets of 15 reps,
and sets of all the way to 30 reps or
so.
Yes, that is a true fact. So long as you
go close to failure in each set,
you can get really good gains, some of
your best gains, anywhere from roughly
five to 30 reps per set.
On the flip side, if you do fewer than
five reps per set, like you're trying to
get as big as possible doing doubles,
or more than 30 reps per set, like
you're trying to get huge and jacked by
going and putting your 50 rep max on the
bar and just doing it for 48 reps, that
is unlikely to maximize growth, though
it'll probably still cause some.
Now, the nuance here is this. These are
rough ranges,
but they do tell us something important.
The For example, the difference in
growth overall as an expected thing to
start out and look forward to in your
program between doing sets of eight reps
and sets of 16 reps are going to be tiny
and situational if there are even any
differences.
So, if you're doing sets of eight and
your triceps feel a little funny, your
elbows feel funny, you had some stress,
you didn't sleep or something, is it
okay to literally double your reps by
cutting the load substantially and do
sets of 16 or 20 or even 29 reps? Yes.
Absolutely.
To your heart's content.
Because people will say, "I'm doing sets
of eight, but if I can't do sets of
eight, I'm not training heavy, I'm not
progressing, I'm not going to grow."
That is So, every time you
hear people saying, "Man, sets of 15 or
20 is too many." Situationally, it can
be true for some exercises and
movements, but as a general rule,
anything between five and 30 reps causes
roughly the same amount of growth, at
least over the course of months of
training.
Insight number four.
Training frequency does not cause more
gains unless you also do more volume or
the quality of your training improves
substantially.
So, if you do, for example, 10 sets over
two workouts
versus you do the same 10 sets over
three workouts through the week, like
Monday, Thursday versus Monday,
Wednesday, Friday, you'll get similar
gains in most cases because you did
almost the same or just the same amount
of sets.
Now,
if you train with ultra-high frequency,
but your per-session volume is low, do
not expect magic gains.
How is this a thing? This happens all
the time. You'll have someone who's
doing, let's say, seven sets of chest on
Monday, seven sets of chest on Thursday.
And someone else will be like, "Dude,
Scott, remember that meme from back in
the day? And by meme, I mean training
priority that people had, but they
basically memed it cuz they repeated it
so much. You do whole body every day?
Whole body every day? Whole body every
day, right? That's science. Whole body
every day. You ever try whole body every
day? Dr. Mike, what do you think about
whole body every day? God damn it. I
think it's fine. It is a great way to
train. But if you do two sets of chest
every single day versus if you do seven
sets of chest on two days of the week,
you're going to get almost the same
gains.
There's no magic gains from higher
frequency, but there is a big important
nuance.
With higher frequency, you're often able
to lift more load on average cuz you're
not as tired from the earlier sets.
You'll often be able to get more reps
per set.
And because you can only cram so many
sets into one workout until you're so
tired that you're not even lifting
meaningful weight, you can almost always
put in way more weekly sets with higher
frequency.
But by itself, the frequency isn't
magic.
And here's another nuance that's really
important.
Much over 15 sets per muscle per session
makes the last set so under stimulated
because you're so zonked and tired that
more frequency is best.
And because 20 sets beats 10 sets weekly
almost every time on volume, two
sessions beats one session weekly almost
every time. So, let me help you
interpret that a little bit more. If you
say training volume is the only thing
that matters and frequency doesn't,
you're mostly correct. But if you do
more than one session per week and often
more than two sessions per week for
smaller muscle groups, you can multiply
the volume and quality of the session so
much that higher frequency ends up
growing you more muscle than lower
frequency. But it's not the frequency
itself doing it. If you just split up
the volume and intensity and everything
is the same and do it more frequently,
you probably get no better gains. It's
the extra volume and quality that does
it.
This is really good news because
anything between two and four times per
week for muscle can be really, really
effective and the rest depends on
preference, scheduling, and particulars
of your body response.
Insight number five and our last insight
for hypertrophy. Rep duration,
exercise order, and advanced
periodization nuances are barely
detectable in the literature.
Now, most of this literature is on
relative beginners.
And most of this literature is only
several weeks to several months of
training. So, we have to have a big
grain of salt here. But, there is a lot
of wisdom to be taken here. First of
all,
repetitions that take between two and
nine seconds per rep like if you do slow
versus fast eccentrics are all about the
same raw effect on overall hypertrophy.
And, really important point, if you
expect a new periodization nuance like
training three on one off or training
five on one off or some other magic
split to just get you totally jacked
where the other one just didn't get you
jacked at all, you were in for massive
disappointment. The basics still cover
almost all of training.
And if you're overthinking, do I do
flies versus presses for chest
development, you're probably just
overthinking.
Most exercises done with proper
technique are really, really awesome and
specifics of exercise selection or
exercise order probably just don't
matter much.
What matters a lot in the nuance is
individual responses and preferences.
And small periodization differences that
affect variables like volume, load, and
effort will make a difference because
they affect volume, load, and effort,
not because there's some magic
arrangement there that works super,
super well.
Don't think that this is a free pass to
do whatever. Never violate the basics
and then a lot of periodization systems
work really well. But, there are lots of
periodization systems that violate the
basics and those will for sure matter
and that you won't grow nearly as much
from them.
All right.
Four insights in strength.
Insight number one, twice-weekly
training for strength beats once-weekly
training. Why? Because your nervous
system gets more practice, literally
more practice doing the lifts and
getting better at them. It's like if you
want to get good at singing, but you
just sing once a week. Singing twice a
week is going to get you way better at
singing. It's more opportunity for your
nervous system to practice and your
nervous system loves lots of volume,
loves lots of frequency. It thrives on
that sort of thing.
If you can only recover from really
heavy training once a week, do not
despair. You can do those exact same
lifts on another day later in the week,
but lighter and not even close to
failure and for way less volume, like
three sets of five with 50% over runner
at max and you get awesome nervous
system gains that actually make you
stronger for the next time that you do
that lift. And so, if you have a heavy
session in in one part of the week, a
light session in the other part of week,
that actually makes you stronger than
only going heavy if only going heavy
once is all you can recover from. So,
that frequency still applies even if you
go only go heavy one time a week.
Here's the nuance, though.
Getting into three and four weekly
sessions for the same lift, some of them
hard and heavy, some of them light and
easy, actually boosts gains even more if
you want the best results in a lift. So,
for example, if you're really serious
about increasing your bench press in the
medium term, several months, and it
really matters to you to get as big of a
bench as you can, do not just train it
once a week. I would recommend doing
something more like two heavy sessions
Monday, Wednesday, and then Friday a
light recovery session in which you use
awesome technique exactly like you would
if you were going heavy. That amount of
frequency is going to get you your very
strongest. Insight number two.
Earlier exercises in a session get the
best strength gains compared to later
exercises in a session.
The explainer here is that you get
stronger from lifting heavy and you can
lift your heaviest earlier in the
session because that's when you're not
super fatigued, which is a big limiting
factor to how strong you can get.
So, doing the flip side would be stupid.
Don't put deadlifts last in your day
after five other back or leg exercises
if you want to boost deadlifts the most.
Save later exercises for hypertrophy
work, for technique work that's lighter,
or for supplementary work to work on
some other kind of part of your body or
some muscle that's limiting you in some
other way.
Assistance work it's called in strength
training.
I think strength expert Dave Tate said
it really really really well, maybe the
best.
This is something that the video guy and
I have been discussing for the past
several years and coming back around to
how wise this really is.
We've been discussing it from a
hypertrophy perspective where it's a
little bit more open, but in strength
it's even more precise. Dave said this.
He said, you really only have about
two core exercises that you can do per
session in which you can truly go hard
and heavy. I think Dave used the example
of like heavy squats and then heavy good
mornings,
heavy deadlifts, and then heavy leg
presses.
Exercise number three, whatever you
think it's doing for you is not going to
be super strength enhancing. If it's for
hypertrophy, cool. If it's for light
recovery work and technical work, cool.
But if you want to go heavy three
exercises in a row, I got news for you,
pimp. Exercise number three, you're too
fatigued and what you feel is heavy
isn't actually heavy enough to give you
your best strength gains. So, smart
strength programming means picking like
two movements per session, going really
hard on them, and then a couple other
movements for later in the session for
hypertrophy or assistance or technical
work or recovery or mobility or whatever
else you need.
Insight number three,
training over 80% one rep max is notably
better for strength than training under
80% one rep max.
The nuance here is basically 80 to 90%
one RM is where you make your best gains
on your heavy sessions in strength work
through the week.
Now, you can do lighter work for
technique, but going into hard sets of
three to six reps
has no good replacement. You can try to
get stronger without doing it and that's
that 80 to 90% range, but it's probably
not a reality.
Over 90% lifting often limits volume a
ton and cranks up your fatigue and
injury risk. Rarely go here, but a
steady diet of good old 80 to 90%
training, good old fives, will get you
strong strong strong.
Insight number four for strength,
as few as two heavy sets per session
can boost strength meaningfully in very
many people. So,
if you do like five sets of squats, and
the first two or four sets of hard three
to six reps heavy that 80 to 90 range,
you will gain loads of strength, even if
the last sets sets number three and four
and five are for like sets of eight to
10 reps or something like that. Here's
another thing.
You don't have to do loads and loads of
sets of three to six reps to gain
strength. Even just two sets per session
of three to six reps helps a lot.
I would say the nuance is this.
Something between two and five heavy
sets per session per movement. Like if
you're doing a squat and bench session,
you do two to five heavy sets of squats,
two to five heavy sets of bench, that's
probably the best for most per exercise
recommendations. Less than that, you
could have done more and gotten
stronger. More than that, and you're
probably just getting really, really
fatigued and not getting a whole lot out
of it.
All right. Lastly, three insights for
maximum development. This is force times
velocity, explosiveness.
Insight number one, the key to power
development is maximum intent to move.
Every time you are training for power
effectively, you want to push or pull
the bar as hard as you can on each
concentric of every single rep.
And especially if you're doing lighter
technique work,
I see a lot of people benching as fast
as they can when it's heavy.
But when they get to their light
technique work later in the week, they
just kind of mail it in. You've got to
move fast, and then you'll get your most
powerful because power is force times
velocity. If you go and train heavy, the
force component's taken care of really
well, velocity doesn't change, and you
get way more powerful. But if you're
training lighter, especially, then you
need that high velocity to be a stimulus
because the force is too low.
>> [gasps]
>> You can do any exercise that's for
power, like squat jumps and
weightlifting derivatives till you're
blue in the face. If you mail in the
velocity and don't go your fastest on
the concentric, you'll get almost no
power increases and sometimes no power
increase at all.
That's huge.
I spent a lot of my career
as a strength and conditioning coach
working with athletes.
There are two types of athletes.
Athletes that understand that weight
training is important and will move the
bar as fast as humanly possible. They
get better, they get more powerful. And
athletes that see weight training as a
giant distraction from what they
actually want to do, which is play and
practice their sport. They mail in all
the reps and they never get the power
benefits nearly to the same extent and
often not at all.
Now, the nuance here is this. You don't
have to jerk the bar right off your
chest in the bench press for example,
but at the very least you have to
accelerate the bar. You can start slow
at the bottom and then whoosh the bar as
fast as you can because mega speed is
key for power.
Insight number two for power.
Low to moderate volumes are better than
high volumes.
Sessions of two to five sets of two to
five reps per set
are going to be how you gain the most
power.
If you do 10 sets per session of
weighted jumps, that will mostly just
beat you up more. Your fatigue will rise
and fatigue clamps down on power way
before it clamps down on strength and
way before it clamps down on
hypertrophy. So yeah, you'll get more
jacked and you'll probably get stronger,
but you won't get as powerful. Power
training has a very small bandwidth of
volume. It's in that low to moderate
range, just a few sets per session.
Anything more when you start to get
really tired is no good and there's
actually a way to figure out how to do
this. Here it is.
Every set of power training you do
has to feel to you like you're moving
fast fast fast. You feel your swag.
If at some point, set number six of a
power movement, you're feeling like
you're going slow, you're not training
for power anymore. You're writing down
that you're training for power, but in
reality, you're just training for a
shitty version of strength and
hypertrophy.
Big deal.
And here's this, because power training
is very fatigue sensitive,
you can combine it with low volume
strength training and get stronger and
more powerful at the same time for sure.
But if power is really important to you
at the time being, you cannot combine it
with hypertrophy training because
hypertrophy training demands so many
reps and so much volume, it will fatigue
you. And then your power training will
be so overly fatigued that it won't
really be effective anymore, even if you
still do it and go through the motions.
Which is why in modern periodization, we
have elements of time during the year
for a few months that you put on size,
time where you put on strength, and time
where you maximize strength power, in
which hypertrophy training and high
volume training is totally absent. That
means you're good to get jacked first,
then stronger, then you take your new
jacked strong muscles and you teach them
how to move fast in a low fatigue
environment, plain and simple.
Final insight for power.
30 to 70% of your 1RM loads are the
best.
Why?
Power is about moving that bar fast,
or your body really fast. If the bar
isn't moving fast, you're not training
for power.
What you want to do is train for
strength in the 80 to 90% range, and
that's going to enhance your power just
because it brings up your strength a
ton, as long as you do maximum intent to
move, moving that bar, even though it's
moving slow, as fast as you can. At the
same time, either later in that session,
or earlier in that session, or in
another session, you're going to want to
train with 30 to 70% of 1RM in the power
moves.
That is going to max out your power.
Now, the nuance is this,
in reality, 30 to 70% is a very expanded
figure.
Most of the studies show that the closer
you get to 30% of your 1RM max, the more
power you can actually enhance as long
as you're also training for strength in
other sessions.
And your volumes need to be low. Your
reps need to be between two and five
sets, so So, basically this,
Two to four sets
of two to four reps
at 30 to 50% of your one rep max is
probably the best range for power. And
in addition to that, in other sessions
or that session, you can train with
similar sets and similar reps, but at 80
to 90% for strength. That's how you're
going to maximize power.
All right. Let's wrap all of this up.
There are loads of amazing ways to
train.
Dozens and dozens and dozens, so don't
ever feel super limited.
But, the big takeaway here is that some
stuff is really pretty well understood.
And so, don't go off all of the basics
that we talked about here and do the
opposite of them, unless you have a
super super compelling reasons to do so.
If your trainer or your coach violates
these basics often, you could be very
skeptical and you should be asking
questions.
And if you want to learn way more detail
about training, especially if you want
coach-level insights, our other YouTube
channel, which is quickly growing, RP
University, is putting out a completely
free and comprehensive college-level
curriculum regularly on all the science
and practice of training, diet, and
recovery to get yourself and or your
clients as jacked, lean, and healthy as
possible. Guys, I will see you here next
time and I will see you there as well.
Peace.
>> [music]