TMGP Ep 02 with Dr Milo Wolf

hi gains gurus and welcome to tmgp the muscle growth podcast episode 2 I am your host Rosco and today we are welcoming Dr Milo wolf onto the show at the age of 14 Milo transitioned from soccer to a New Passion elevating his home workouts to the next level motivated to pursue physical fitness he joined a gym and embarked on a journey into lifting weights nowadays Dr Wolf has a PhD specializing in muscle hypertrophy and strength research for over four years Milo has been a guiding force helping individuals achieve their goals of gaining muscle increasing strength and achieving leanness drawing from his extensive background in both bodybuilding and powerlifting Milo brings a wealth of knowledge and practical experience to his coaching having not only trained but also competed in these disciplines given that brief glimpse into Dr Wolf's remarkable background let's jump right into the QA Style Show hi Milo hello Rosco is it is it Dr Milo now or soon it's Dr mil wolf now officially officially huge congratulations very well done thank you man I appreciate that how long how long was that dissertation how long in terms of years taking to finish a PhD in terms of length of the actual thesis yeah to finish the PHD sure well it took me just under 3 years is I actually didn't do a masters so in the grand schin of things I was fortunate enough to finish when I was 23 like I'm 23 years old now no ways wow that's incredible thank you man I appreciate it but yeah it flew by like it's like anything that takes a few years I think where initially or anything a bit challenging initially think it's going to be harder and you're not sure you can do it and then by the end of it you're like wow it's flown by really so and it's done and now you're Dr Wolf I'm Dr Wolf now dude who is the family actually oh what there's three doctors in your family or three PhD that is correct yes very impressive very impressive who else in your family has a PHD uh my father and one of my brothers wow how many how many kids are you uh there's four of us all boys so okay okay so you got that competitive Gene going between each other indeed yeah and given them the Hest I think that's Amplified okay okay no I get you the last in the in the list I was wondering um was this PhD was it on the effects of range of motion and muscle hypertrophy and strength that's exactly the topic the reason I'll give some background go hey the one that got me uh in trouble with paulter for example um so the reason why I did this PD to begin with before I go into the results a little bit is back in 2020 I was working for rization and I had a general interest in their stance of for range motion and the evidence we had on for range em motion I was finishing up my undergrad on Sport Science and I was thinking about next steps at that time there had just been the release of a systematic review on the effects of range of motion during resistance training on hypertrophy and strength and so given that I was already applying for range of motion within my training I my sort of I guess my company that I was working for was generally Pro range Mo motion and kind of had a dog in that race it felt like a horse in that race rather um and given that it was with the recent SM review kind of showcasing that there wasn't that much data out yet I thought well it looks like an area that could use some more evidence right we could use some more studies in order to have more robust conclusions about what range of motion really is best during lifting to get hyper strength at the time the systematic review basically concluded that a full range of motion wherein you get a full stretch on the trap and you get a full Peak squeeze was better for hypertrophy than a partial range of motion when you're talking about any exercise you always have the choice of do you want to go through a full range of motion so go through as much movement during that exercise as you can or do you want to adopt some sort of partial range of motion where you perform a little bit less than that full range of motion and in the systematic review especially in the lower body four range of motion seemed better for hypertrophy whereas in the upper body there was a little bit less data and there was a little bit less clarity as a result and so I was like okay if there's only Six studies overall in this area for hypertrophy then it might conceivably be something that requires more studying and so I got started with the PHD and 3 years later here we are huge congrats and that's an amazing reason for doing a PhD and um what were your what was your full conclusion I think I did I did read that um partial range of motion in the lengthen position uh actually induced better hypertrophy results than for R motion is that is that correct that is correct that is the long and short of it now let me give you some background first as I just mentioned in that 2020 systematic review by Brat shonfeld and colleagues they found a full range of motion was better for hypertrophy our met analysis on the topic with a few more studies found that actually yes full range of motion was better for hery than partial range of motion when you simply dichotomize the two into full or partial range motion so it was generally in line with what a previous systemview had however when you kind of looked at partial range of motion more closely you can separate partial ranges of motion into different sort of categories depending on which muscle length you're performing a partial rep at specifically because a full range of motion involves as implies a full range of motion across a variety of muscle lengths when you're talking about a small range of motion you can kind of pick where you perform it you can either perform it at shorter muscle lengths right when the muscle is more contracted or squeezed like the top of a bicep curl at longer MUSC lengths like for example the bottom half of a bicep curl where the biceps are more lengthened or stretched kind of the same sensation you'd get when you're stretching your hamstrings out that sort of position and then you could also do some mid-range partials or what people often refer to as constant tension reps where they avoid both full P contraction and a full stretch now it turned out that when you broke down the comparison of foring for that thing into four range of motion versus partial range of motion at shorter muscle lengths and partial range of motion at longer muscle lengths you basically saw that the muscle length at which perform these partials is really important specifically when partials are performed at longer muscle lengths you get more hypertrophy versus a four range of motion and when these partials are pered at shorter muscle lengths you get less hypertrophy than a four range of motion so it seemed to dictate the relationship between range of motion and hypertrophy is muscle length so essentially on that average when you're training and what length is your muscle being trained so this General principle was not just evident in the studies comparing length and partials to 4 in motion for appro Fe but also in the broader set of studies comparing more shortened training to more lengthen training specifically alt together there's about 25 studies and kind of three or four broad categories category one is studies looking at two groups doing isometric cont fractions where the muscle length doesn't change it stays constant right like just a whole essentially where one group would train at long muscle lengths so isometrics at longer muscle LS and one group at shorter muscle LS very consistently across these five studies better hypertrophy with longer muscle L training then you had eight studies comparing partial repetitions at different muscle lengths so either at Short muscle lengths or long muscle lengths doing just partial repetitions so not even the full AG of motion and again out of those eight studies seven studies should benefit to lower muscle Life Training and one study should no difference and then finally you have comparisons of both shortened partials and lengthened partials to for rang of motion directly and Within These studies very consistently lengthen training wins out again where across five studies one of which is unpublished on length and partials versus full range of motion four of those studies showed the benefit to lengthened partials being better than full range of motion for approach fee and one studies found no difference so altogether there has not been a study comparing for range of motion to length and partials length and partials were worse for hypertrophy than full range of motion so the way I see length and partials right now as compared to full range of motion for hypertrophy is that at the very worst you're not missing out on any growth but it's very likely that you'll get some additional growth by incorporating them do you know by what percentage um on average that kind of extra growth might be yes so we run some analyses that are essentially exponentiated uh log response ratios long story short generally can probably expect a greater growth of about 5 to 10% relative to 4 in motion W that that's quite a significant amount that's very um significant indeed so should we hop straight into some of the um to given us a little bit of um background into yourself um can we get your journey into the world of uh sports science what got you into it originally and why why you chose the studion for sure so what got me into Sport Science originally back when I was about 14 or 15 I go into lifting weights and after like a year or so of just doing some am s sorry am I allowed to swear go for it go for it absolutely after a year or so of just doing some dumb [ __ ] when I first F started um I slowly got more into reading the science behind it I remember reading things like Strong by science or strength Theory at the time as it was known you're now work at mother that is correct do now work at about the full circle moment that's very cool um but yeah basically started reading into the science a little bit more behind it initially just to further my own results a little bit I think and then gradually started coaching people and saw reading into the science as a means to lead to Greater practical results which was kind of a cool application of evidence and so when I was 17 I had to decide all right well what do I want to do with my higher education pathway I thought the one thing that I seem to have nearly uh um boundless interest in is Sport Science and lifting weights and the academic version of that would be Sport Science and so I went to the UK did my underground in sports science and then 3 years ago started my PhD in sports science and that's kind of what led me here on the way I did compete in powerlifting and I did compete in natural waterb building as well so I've got some experience in a variety of sort of strength and physique sports but that's kind of my background as far as both Academia and my training goes I guess that's quite a background um sorry where are you from sure so my parents are originally Austrian but I was born in Belgium raised in Belgium and when I was 17 moved to UK to study wow that that's really cool lots of lots of traveling how was it being away from home was it all right well I'll say the first few months of being at University were pretty rough I think like especially I was 17 so I was relatively young but I think for most people the first few months can be quite a reality change check you know yeah exactly yeah I completely get you um uh in terms of the fundamentals of hypertrophy what is your definition and uh how does it differ from strength or other training sure so for hypertrophy we're generally talking about an increase in muscle size right that could be constituted of like a variety of things from pyop plasmic hypertrophy potentially that's nor as well established as some people think to simple myi hypertrophy that's a lot more well establish people think essentially my hypertrophy refers to an increase in the contractile elements of muscle fibers and a commant increase in for example sarcoplasm um generally we measure hypertrophy in a variety of ways from ultrasounds to MRIs to CT not CT scans sorry to um Lex scans and a lot of other methods as regards the mechanisms that actually induce hypertrophy it seems like the main one that's been most substantiated is mechanical tension so essentially within your muscle fibers you have a variety of sensing proteins that when you apply tension to the muscle whether that's active tension like when you're actually producing Force to lift the weight for example that's called active tension or when your muscles are exposed to passive tension which is a type of tension that occurs when muscle length is increased past resting length as for example would be the case to partials when these proteins within your muscle sense these things this tension they then initiate the hypertrophy response which happens via and T typically in part um and so that's broadly speaking how feel occurs but there are other potential smaller mechanisms that are less well substantiated I think the most meaningful one and the better substantiated one would be the presence of metabolites for example the presence of lactate in and around muscle has been shown to confer potential hypertrophy even in the absence of mechanical tension and other potential mechanisms that are a bit less likely include things things like muscle damage where it's a bit less clear same thing for muscle hypoxia where it's also less clear whether it plays a role but broadly speaking tension is the main one with metabolites potentially playing a smaller but likely still meaningful role in some regard wow that's very thorough thank you thank you very much for that um what role does nutrition play in supporting muscle hypertrophy sorry could you repeat your question sorry yes um is the lines a little bit bad sorry um what role does nutrition play in supporting Hy trhy sure so nutrition should te typically be viewed and I'll be borrowing some language that I think is just common in sport Science but I think maybe I've heard it from Eric Helms or maybe I've heard it from lecturers in my undergrad days but nutrition is generally viewed as being permissive of training adaptations in resistance training versus being something that initiates them right so just because for example you eat a lot of protein without lifting weights doesn't mean you're going to grow muscle absolutely lifting weights or resistance training is the initial stimulus it's kind of like the switch you have to flick or the B you have to turn in order to even initiate the process of muscle growth then depending on how favorable a variety of conditions are like for example your nutrition your stress your sleep Etc that will then dictate how much of a muscle growth response you see in the case of nutrition it comes down to a few main things one is protein intake an adequate protein intake of at least 1.6 g of protein kilogram of body weight is going to be beneficial in optimizing the muscle hyper response likewise calorie status can play a role where it seems like at least being at maintenance or in a slight Surplus is going to be required to get a solid hyper response and ideally optimized the hyper response so a surplus of a couple hundred calories for example so a few hundred calories above your maintenance calories is typically going to be sufficient to optimize muscle hypertrophy um as far as nutrition goes those are the main things there are small factors like for example protein distribution just making sure you get some protein in at a variety of points throughout your day ideally three or four times a day with protein per meal being around 0.3 to 0.4 G per meal right per kilogram of body weight apologies so if you weigh 100 kg for example that would be 30 to 40 g of protein per meal generally those few things will go a long way towards nutrition being permissive and actually optimizing your hypertrophy uh that that's awesome man I totally agree with you what you said about the protein not necessarily being the the stimulus for growth but being what you need to recover and then to grow it's a good point exactly um for training principles what would you say is the most effective training principle for muscle growth that's a good question I think H give me a moment absolutely I think it may just be proximity to failure I was going going to suggest that yeah hey I think those I'm not sure if they're principles as much as they're variables sure principles typically people refer to specificity Progressive overload Etc sure um if I had to mention a principle I would probably say progressive overload as being the main one because we do know that generally to see your best hypertrophy from a given set it needs to be adequately challenging absolutely because when you start lifting for example you quickly become better if you don't match the density or the challenge or the difficulty of each set to Your Capacity you're not going to be making your ideal muscle growth as far as variables go I think as I mentioned volume and relative intensity or how close to failure do you take a set both seem to be the most influential at how much H appr you get other variables like frequency the exact repetition range Etc are also more so permissive right where you might see slightly worse gains if you don't have them perfectly in check but you will still see gains because the main thing is having a decent amount of volume in place and a decent amount of relative intensity absolutely and could you share some Advanced training techniques that could help uh break through plateaus absolutely so I think the main one whenever someone refers to a plateau is first just make sure you're identifying a plateau properly when you've been training for a few years rate of progress is going to slow down just make sure you're actually dealing with plateau and not just a natural slowing of progress that being said if you've identified that you've stagnated I think the bulk of the research suggests that the one thing you can do to really break through up Plateau would probably be to do more volume provided you can recover right if you look at a lot of research around non-responders in hyper training and a lot of the research on volume more broadly speaking it seems like simply increasing volume from where you are to a little bit higher if probably going to be for hypy the main thing you can do to enhance your results if you're currently stagnating a lot of people can get away with more than they think and I think some people that don't see progress May simply not be doing enough volume and or not enough not close enough to failure yeah not training hard enough as Greg de set would say exactly how how important is recovery in in hypertrophy I'm sure it's very important but what what strategies can can Aid your recovery sure so as reords recovery there's a few big things you can and should be doing and then there's some recovery modalities that you may have roll every now and then can often come at some sort of cost the main ones that really don't come at any major cost but do improve your recovery quite substantially are maximizing your sleep in bed or so sorry your time in bed rather obviously your sleep as well as a consequence but the best the most documented and evidence-based recommendation for improving your sleep typically provided you're not dealing with insomnia or anything is simply to do something called Sleep extension which is when you spend an additional hour or two in bed at night in order to get a greater quantity of sleep and that seems to be the best way to improve your sleep when things like sleep hygiene are already in place and that sort of stuff and sleep is very consistently associated with better performance cognitively and physically and thus would reasonably be expected to also lead to Greater hper in long term if you sleep well as opposed to poorly so sleep's a huge one another one is stress stress can be difficult to manage in some regards but there are tools like for example mindfulness meditation and generally just Stress Management like not overworking yourself that can be helpful but keeping stress not necessarily at a minimum but at a reasonably low level is good right if you're constantly finding yourself so stressed out for example that it impacts your sleep or that you're finding it difficult to get sessions in or you finding that your hunger is Disturbed Etc then there's a good chance that your levels of stress are interfering with your muscle growth then besides stress and sleep the main things for Recovery are kind of taken care of and so we're down to like secondary recovery modalities that have some trade-offs for example one of the when you compare different modalities different strategies one of the ones that seems more efficacious is a sports massage but it seems as though the issue with that even though it does help with recovery overall is that it's well expensive and thus might not be something you can use all the time then there's other recovery modalities like for example the sauna or a cold bath where because you are you're enhancing recovery but you're also typically messing with the signaling Pathways for hypertrophy you're typically getting greater recovery but the expense of getting quite as much muscle growth and so for example when you look at the Met analysis on cold water immersion after training you see that people grow less muscle across mle studies when they immerse themselves in cold water after training as opposed to just chilling out instead and therefore some of these Rec recovery modalities can be useful in certain contexts but honestly sleep and Stress Management are the main thing absolutely and I see a lot of um influences on the whole cold water immersion and saying it's the best thing for uh for hypertrophy and things and it's just not it's absolutely been proven now to to not be good for for growing muscle at least but would you say there is some benefit to it for other factors not muscle growth but I I don't know maybe it healing other parts of the body yeah so it's interesting generally I'm as a sports scientist much more familiar with the evidence around cold water immersion and hypertrophy and resistance and recovery but I am for other benefits uh from what I gather and this is really not my expertise it has substantial benefits for recovery but again at the expense of hypertrophy and it may or may not have benefits for other stuff like potentially for some mental health stuff potentially for overall health longterm and that sort of stuff but to be honest they seem like relatively secondary effects especially when you compare them to like if you compare the health effects of taking ice baths versus the health effects of Simply being more physically active physically physical activity is going to play a much larger role in overall health in that absolutely no I saw that um being Physically Active is one of the best things especially in elderly people to prevent a and slow will slow it down I guess in comparison to people that don't exercise um 100% activity is the one thing that can help with longevity and with quality of life quite substantially maybe even more so than weight management AK keeping your weight in a healthy range is supposed to be overweight or OB sorry about the delay um what what are some signs of overtraining and how can individuals avoid it yeah so the primary way we Define overtraining syndrome in sports science to my knowledge is essentially whether or not performance is returning to Baseline between bouts of exercising right and if there's a consistent and marked decline in your performance from one week to the next and it's continuously dropping and dropping there's a good chance that you're training so much that your body cannot recover and you're becoming overtrained if your training stress is exceeding your recovery for only a few days or like a week or two at a time that can result in something called overreaching which is essentially a much milder version of over training and that can sometimes be used within Sport Science to great effect where for example power do might functionally overreach because it has a purpose so it's called functional in order to have greater performance that a power of meet to what extent this actually happens is relatively unclear as of yet but there is such a thing but when we're talking about a marked decline of performance week to week for weeks on end and typically other perturbations like emotional perturbation like excessive soreness like fatigue like sleep perturbations like appetite perturbations all of these things in addition to a marked decline performance week to week suggest that you might be over tring now I think this is actually quite rare within resistance training it occurs a little bit more readly in other sports but it's worth keeping L okay no it's it's interesting why do you think it happens not as much in resistance training as much as other other training and which ones do you do you mean in particular yeah so generally sport where you have a higher overall workload and by that I mean volume typically of exercise and volume can be simply defined as energy expenditure for example something like for example Triathlon I believe has higher rates of overtraining Simply by by virtue of moving around a lot and having a variety of disciplines involved they can often be trading 20 30 hours a week versus like relatively unver of for someone train for more than 10 15 mils a week in the gym so and let's see sorry I forget his name but the guy did the our arm workout um it's a bit of yeah yeah you just do two two and a bit of those and then then you're 20 hours but hopefully most people aren't doing that are there um Are there specific Health markers that athletes and bodybuilders should monitor regularly yeah so I think honestly if I had to name one and this is going to be rarely an issue when you're talking about an athletic population and bodybuilders who are generally in reasonable Health but I think if you're natural the one Health marker that might be worth keeping track of especially if you don't have any prior concerns about health like you don't have any conditions that predispose you to anything the one thing I would probably keep track of the most is simply your waste circumference we have pretty compelling data especially like in men and females that um your waist circumference to height ratio is pretty predictive of longevity Health outcomes Etc and so if you keep track of your waist circumference and for example it's typically below half of your height then typically for health you're relatively in the cay things like BMI for example like body mass index have a lot more limitations when it comes to health because if you're someone who lifts especially you can have a relatively higher BMI and still be in excellent health and so even though your BMI might be overweight or even obese yeah you might still be in excellent health and to lose weight when you don't exactly exactly was waste conference you're talking about a part of the body that does hyy a little bit but for the most part it is impacted by fact atos tissue andic visal adpost tissue with an ectopic OST tissue both of which are associated with meaningfully worse health and so I think honestly like for health if I had to give one measurement that would be it if you're someone who's potentially on steroids and I'm not super qualified to speak on this I would say blood test Supply you that day I think if you have prior health concerns or if you've had a flag in the past for stuff you might want to take your blood pressure relatively consistently and maybe take some blood tests like every every year perhaps but I think waste circumference for most people is the one thing people are working absolutely I think blood tests even for people that aren't necessarily on on steroids should people should try and do blood tests every now and again just in case they have something wrong with them that they otherwise wouldn't know about for sure I think it it can be less frequent for people who don't have any prior reasons to but it certainly doesn't hurt to do it unless you're afraid of an need indeed in that case maybe not yeah um what are some common injuries associated with uh resistance training and how can they be prevented I'm sure you're going to say something about probably overtraining or something along those lines yeah so generally training load management is a big thing so you know trying about overt training the other thing is they it's difficult with injuries because first of all there's a big disconnect between injuries in pain where you can have pain without injury and injury without pain so I'm not sure exactly what you mean by injury I'm going to assume you mean pain right yes and if you be in pain then monitoring symptoms and making modifications to training more appropriate can be good I think a good um by modifications I mean for example let's say movement really consistently causes high levels of pain for you then you probably want to modify it in some regard or substitute it for something else that accomplishes the same thing without causing that pain for you so essentially a symptoms based approach likewise I think that generally having the right prior beliefs or cultivating an attitude of resilience versus frailness when it comes to activity is good basically the way you perceive your body and exercise can impact how much pain you feel and so if we create AOL noos for example around exercise or certain movements or certain positions like for example the deadlift and spinal flexion and deadlift that's where issues can arise so that's what I would generally say um thank you very much uh can you share any personal experiences with overcoming injuries in your career and what tips would you give uh for approaching Rehabilitation yeah so I think my worst injury to date has comfortably been my left shoulder when Co first started and lockdown happened I ordered some gym equipment home gym it arrived after a couple months we got overeager and we put together the squad stands yeah I started training on them a couple sessions in I was doing some incline bench press in our garden without any spotters and I had maybe 185 to 220 on there somewhere like that and um I went to reack the weight so I was relatively close to failure and the squat stand flipped and so all of a sudden I was without spotters and I had to find a way to dispose the barall and as it came crushing down on me I essentially tried to throw it forwards and I threw it forward to get it off of me and not be cred I felt my left shoulder just go and be very be essentially and so for about a year if not a bit more and it's recurring to an extent um I had a lot of pain which prevented me from really training marle body all that well and basically the way I trained around it was make modifications to training to make it less painful right and to still get a training effect in or training stimulus while managing pain symptoms essentially so case that was doing higher rep walk like doing 15 or 20 reps at least per set for the upper body still close to failure but really reducing that load picking more machine based exercises cuz it seemed to be like in my general shoulder area and machine based exercises seem to be better for it um that can really vary person to person by the way so definitely listen to your symptoms a little bit um and then gradually as pain allowed right like if my pain was below a four out of 10 on a given exercise I would gradually inch Clos closer and closer to my normal training again and now it's gotten to the point where I don't need to avoid anything anymore because of pain so I still have some pain every now and then like every few months but it's very manageable and that's generally been the thing of like gradual exposure gradual reacclimation to previous training stressors as symptoms are that's an excellent strategy and and thank you so much and I'm so glad that um you're feeling a lot better and you're able to get back to original capacity for sure thank you man I appreciate that um in terms of the mental aspect of training uh how does the mental aspect of training play into achieving your hypertrophy goals sure so as far as the mental aspect of training goes uh do you mean like sort of the effect of training on Mental Health do you mean like sort of what mental strategies I might to use to enhance training so I guess I guess that your mental your mental health could could be part of it but also kind of when you're not feeling like training you're kind of mentally fatigued overcoming those kinds of of factors sure so with regards to feeling mentally fatigued and those sort of factors I think that when you're talking about encouraging any sort of behavior ideally and again not my a of expertise but ideally from my understanding you would want to create an environment that facilitates the behavior as much as possible and you would want to make the behavior as much of a habit as possible so in my case that means for example training more frequently rather than less frequently to make it more of a habit facil ating the act of going to the gym for example by having my gym stuff ready by the door so I don't need to think a lot lot decision fatigue or a lot of friction when engaging with that behavior and so even on days where I'm a little bit less motivated just by having that ease of initiating that behavior of going to train that simply makes it easier I will say I think it's a virtu of cycle in which by training my mental health improves and my sort of vigor and other like Vigor energy Etc improve on a day-to-day basis which then again makes it more likely for me to train and that's again relatively well documented in research that exercising improves mood States overall as measured for example by the profile of mood State skill no absolutely and you make a really good point about the reducing friction and I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize how big of an impact it can have I um take my gym stuff to work and it's just super easy I get dressed at work and go straight from work to ger and it's seamless whereas I used to come home first then get changed then go I I don't have problem with Rob motivation but it's a lot easier now literally going straight from from work and that kind of thing and preparing for putting your putting your stuff out I go to work in my gym clothes and then just put a a buttonup shirt over that and then yeah you're ready to go kind of like clock K exactly just not as big yet but we'll we'll get there not quite we there we yeah we will we will 100% um could you share a particular I guess a particular particularly challenging or inspiring experience from your own training or coaching career I guess your shoulder is is one thing but something else maybe or sure um I think maybe the thing that people would find most inspiring or challenging was probably preparing for a bodybuilding show while also doing my PhD full time while also doing coaching full-time so for context um I was coaching about 40 or50 clients I was doing I had some other projects going on um 40 or 50 that's a lot of clients that's a lot of clients wow and doing pH and it's online for for it's online that stuff so it's a bit different than in person would be rough indeed um yeah but I think that like basically if you're motivated and if you can set up your systems properly you can do a lot more than people might think and it can take you to further than you might have thought previously so it's I think generally that experience of having to juggle those few things is probably the I don't know maybe the most motiv or inspiring thing I mean that's that's amazing like doing so much and juggling all of that you could get a job at any circus of the professional juggler I'm sure hey thank you thank you there another thing you can add to the CV um can you talk about any turning points or aha moments in your journey to becoming an expert in in hypertrophy and and health good question I think one of the main turning points was when I started the PHD when I decided to take a bit further when you decide okay I'm going to invest in education or or something like Academia another one would be in the first year of my indeed in the first year of my undergrad for example I bought even though I wasn't particularly uh wealthy at the time first year of my undergrad when I 17 I purchased lifetime access to mass at the time so the monthly applications in sports science research review and like just those decisions those turning points where you're like okay I'm going to invest in education or I'm going to dedicate myself to spending a bit more time learning I think those are the ones that really in any field make you go from a hobbyist more so than to someone that might know a bit more and and you studied it so you definitely by default a bit more yeah 100% are you familiar with the the gains guru's uh hypertrophy research blueprint um did you get a chance to look at it by any chance yeah so I took a very quick glance at it basically seems to be summarizing most of the topics um within lifting and giving some idea of the state of evidence there correct yes exact that's exactly it absolutely do you have any it look like a decent resource okay awesome do you have any add say like um sorry go for it no sorry the line it's it's just uh taking time for for the line to go go through I wanted your uh comments advice anything yeah no I mean it looks pretty good I think for it to be like generally with spreadsheet sheets you have the concern of usability like websites and apps are typically designed to be as user friendly as possible I absolutely if um the information seems decent I think if it was more user friendly that would be um a really accessible resource that that's exactly that's a great point to make so the whole reason for it being an Excel is just it's in that um data Gathering phase and um and so we're still we're going to make it much more accessible and using friendly once we have kind of a more full um blueprint awesome sounds good man thanks do you have any questions or specific uh answers to questions that that you'd like to just just share in general um no and I think we've done a pretty good job of covering a lot of topics here no done we've done a really a really really good job I have some uh audience questions um that some people have have asked on various socials can I can I read them to you hit me go for it um the first one is from uh a female and she said how can I lean out and gain muscle without getting too bulky as someone who struggles with losing weight and is already eating a reduced in in restricted calor caloric diet and is training yeah I mean look if you're struggling to lose weight um and you don't want to gain too much muscle it become too bulky a really simple approach might be to stay maintenance now this will be predominantly helpful if you're like somewhat close to your target weight or Target look right like I think if you're within especially if you haven't been trading for very long if you're within about 5 or 10% of your target weight then a reasonable approach might just be to state of Maintenance and the research we have suggests that you'll still gain some muscle it'll be a little bit slower than usual and so you'll kind of avoid that bul up look but you'll also be able to circumvent the issue of finding it difficult to lose weight so I think that's probably the best approach continue lifting probably two to four times a week ideally for hypertrophy and go from there awesome thanks um this one's from a male how can I put on size if I'm already eating a lot and training in the gym with a fast metabolism I I seem to get this question a lot from a lot of a lot of men in particular yeah I mean the long story short is either eat more or move less now from a health perspective you'd be better off eating because movement is probably good for health sorry you said moving I know yeah yeah um so moving more is good for health and so really try and keep activity on the higher end us being equal and as far as getting more calories in so really we talking about eating more talking about getting a greater amount of calories in there's a lot of calorie dense foods out there um having some more processed calorie dense foods in your diet is not going to kill your health in fact as long as you still have a core of say 60 to 80% of your diet coming from or calories coming from relatively unprocessed foods like whole grains fruits vegetables lean meats Etc as long as most of your diet is composed of those food groups you can absolutely have some more processed foods that calorie dense like for example some crisps what have you right there are more Cal dents that are easier to eat that allow you to get more calories in and thus allow you to gain weight I think that's absolutely fine as long as you still maintain for health a core of the main food groups absolutely and then the last question from the audience um what's your take on recovery and hydration this one's coming from uh a bodybuilder as well as a bodybuilding SL lifestyle coach male as well oh true so recovery we kind of covered that a little bit earlier yeah sleep management and Stress Management are going to be two main things uh additional strategies like massage can be helpful especially if you can get it for cheaper for free if you know someone who does it um other strategies will have less applicability like for example sauna or cold water immersion or ice baths those can be helpful when you really just train too hard and need to recover even at the expense of hypertrophy let's say you're cripplingly sore but I think most of the time you're better off just optimizing your sleep spending plenty of time in bed getting good sleep hygiene like making sure your bedroom is cold and not very noisy and Prett dark and that sort of stuff that's going to be your main thing for hydration for bodybuilding specifically you shouldn't need to worry too much about hydration outside of the context of potentially peeking for a show when you're enhanced especially when you're natural probably not a huge deal either when it comes to hydration the few situations in which it might be more of a challenge or one when you're exercising or just being in very high temperatures two when you're at very low temperatures and three when you're at altitude all three of these conditions kind of mess with your perception of thirst with how fast your body loses water and stuff which just raises the need for better hydration hydrations should essentially be as consistent as possible across time if you drink a lot of water at once and then don't drink for 6 hours your body will release more of that water compared to if you had it pretty consistently across time so just small sips additionally salt intake can be very helpful generally the most salt you have in your food with your water so in a drink like Gatorade for example the more your body will retain the water and the fluid that you're consuming as opposed to just exing it again so generally those are the things but outside of these extreme circumstances just drink to thirst and provided your urine for example is a relatively relatively clear yellow or entirely clear in all likelihood you don't need to worry about hydration any more than that interesting one about the the Gatorade thanks thanks for your response um you say Gatorade over Prime I'm sure yes thought you mind okay we're coming up to a close here um if you were traveling on a spaceship to Mars and wanted to maintain your muscle size what 10 exercises or pieces of equipment would you choose to take with you uh it can be any machine or exercise but you have limited space gotcha so a barbell most of the Cals as one piece but more Cal one piece sh plates a power rack an adjustable bench so that's four things now a Smith machine some bum Bells that's six I guess um a dual cable stack adjustable so that you can variety of exercises and I mean to be honest the last three are very very optional like I think with that you can train most things I would probably say a seated light curl a let's see a seated light C probably probably a press and then finally um I don't know like maybe a camber bar for benching specifically that might be the best use of 10 piece of equipment I'd say and it' be relatively space conscious I think for sure by the way yeah I give the very CL no you absolutely nailed the question and I'm really sorry I I clearly didn't word it um in the best way if you had to just choose rather 10 exercises to maintain your full body compe um composition what what would you choose oh God the leg probably some kind of bench press so exercises gotra okay yes sorry say a Smith machine squat yeah Smith machine squat a deficit RL a seated light curl a CFR a reverse M cre so that's five exercises yeah then I would say an incline dumball press a last pull down a barbell row um you need a having for shoulders probably camber bar flat yeah cam bar flat bench press and then a cable ladder raise I think that would be that would keep you keep you solid in space I think that cover things pretty well that that sounds like cool um although then again with hey if go to space By the way yeah this stuff it doesn't matter need more plates cuz gravity is different exactly so maybe I you bring bands it's you know it's if if this was realistic this would be it's a it's a whole another ball game they they actually have to use I think pneumatics or something to to do it um who are your favorite researchers in in your field besides your cell or stuff you can say I guess um oh wow just me bro that's it no I that um I would say hey that's it uh I would say there like three prob three or four um I think there's a lot of up front I think there's a lot of research groups I really value within the field like for example casano and colleagues like Nunes and colleagues like there's a lot of research groups I value because they're putting out research in a variety of areas and they're very cool and they're really like the the the Beating Heart of the field I think but when it comes to favorite individual researchers I think that um my supervisor James steel is very solid mythologically I think Brad shonfeld Professor Brad shonfeld rather is uh very solid I think for example um Paul Swinton is very solid who's been doing a lot more research recently as far as the analysis component of studies goes so I think those three would probably be my favorite those are top researchers and I'm sure I've read many multiple of them their papers as well definitely Brad um Professor Shanel um for favorite influencers in the bodybuilding world I know influences is a different term but who would you who would you say besides yourself again but you can put yourself because obviously put yourself important hey man I'm I'm basically an influencer now P She doesn't count um so I would say honestly I have a soft spot for Eric Wen Haagen just in terms of being a bit ridiculous and absurd and all that um I don't know I I'm going to be honest with you like it's been since I really watched anyone Omar is actually Omar is shut out Omar is like Omar ISU even to this day like I'm actually good friends with him now but um I value Omar immensely I guess if we're talking about people that aren't strictly researchers and are more so well known on social media without taking part in much primary research maybe greig knuckles for example um I think is very solid and and I guess to go back to the favorite researchers part as well like Eric Helms for example is very solid yeah yeah um but yeah that would be my answer Eric buan Haagen omaru and uh Greg knuckles for example very solid as far as influences go yeah I know I know Greg knuckles I don't really know the others but I will definitely be looking looking into them um favorite I ones or role models in in your industry yeah so I guess different people for different things I think I look up to Brad shonfeld in the sense that he's been doing the damn thing for 20 30 years now and that's longevity yeah inish really a longer CH that indeed and then I think Eric HMS in terms of being a good science communicator and generally being relatively upstanding I think James steel and Paul Swinton as far as understanding of methods like I think that many sport scientists lack an understanding of methodology or critical appraisal of studies to the point that it's hurting their study design and study interpretation so I think those would probably be the three main ones um but in general I think there's plenty of pretty shady people in the industry and there's plenty of hard walking people in Industry that I do look up to like Knuckles and who have you yeah it's it's very diverse the the fitness industry and and I like how you uh appear to be cutting through a lot of the the [ __ ] for a lack of a better term for sure who would you recommend reaching out to and to have on this podcast and can you put me in touch with them yeah so I could put you in touch with I think one good person to have on would be Eric HMS in general he's a very good science Communicator I think he's also relatively involved with the space so I'd say Eric HMS is one of the main ones um yeah but yeah I could shoot Eric a message and see if he's interested that would be awesome thank you so much and then do you have any closing thoughts any parting words of wisdom um for people that are looking to embark on their own Journeys for for muscle growth or hypertrophy yeah don't be too concerned with getting everything right from the Geto just get going keep learning make small changes and over time you'll get to the right spot doesn't need to be perfect from the gecko and ultimately it'll be a long journey and enjoy and fulfillment within that Journey should come before needing to optimize everything otherwise you won't be sticking to it for length of time absolutely that that's some great advice what you mentioned there but it's going to take a long time and fitness is hopefully for life and it's a very much a long-term thing don't try and do everything all at once because you will get overwhelmed and there's a lot of nonsense out there so just do you do your best and that's pretty much a draft exactly you crushed it well thank you so so so much for your time I really really appreciate you coming on to the podcast and uh huge congrats on your PhD Dr Miler wolf thank you once again thank you man I appreciate it thank you sir goodbye gains gurus thank you for listening and see you on the next episode of tmgp