TMGP Ep 10 with Dr Pak

oo another white boy with a podcast pronouns Jim bro another white boy with a podcast you want to see the video it went viral hi gain gurus and welcome to tmgp the muscle growth podcast episode 10 I am your host Rosco and today we are welcoming Dr pack onto the show he fell in love with resistance training when he was 16 years old and it changed his life his passion for training and nutrition kept growing since then eventually leading him to pursue a career as an educator and researcher in sports science he developed a passion for coaching during the first years of his academic career where he helped fellow lifters and friends with their strength training and nutrition discovering his love for coaching he began working with competitive powerlifters recreationally active individuals and athletes to gain experience and further develop his skill set he believes that a genuinely evidence-based approach to training and nutrition should be guided by the current available scientific evidence as well as professional experience while factoring in individual preferences and idiosyncrasies as a coach his aim is to create a collaborative atmosphere based on the consolidation of his experience and the client's feedback which in turn will generate an Adaptive plan of action that best suits the client's goals pack did his PhD in sports science at soland University UK on the topic of the minimum effective training dose for strength in powerlifters his research focuses on muscle strength hypertrophy and strength sport performance pack has worked for over 5 years with physique athletes powerlifters and recreationally active individuals looking to get stronger and improve their body composition pack has also done an amazing 13 years in the gym training and lifting given that brief glimpse into Dr pac's remarkable background let's jump right into the show hi pack hello Rosco how are you I'm well thanks and yourself I'm fine another day here in the in tropical Southampton United Kingdom fantastic can you please give me a brief introduction to yourself and what you do sure my name is pack well actually that's my my nickname my actual name is patrl Andrew lik kakis I was blessed to have both surnames from both my mothers and father's side I am um a researcher SL educator in all things lifting and more specifically in like exercise science as it pertains to muscle growth and strength and yeah I publish research make videos uh write articles all sorts of educational stuff uh related to Lifting for lifters for people that like going to the gym getting jacked getting strong and just enjoy the iron and you love and I LIF as well I'm not sure if I can demonstrate if I can uh if I have the appropriate citations here I do do some Recreation lifting myself and I've been Lifting for for um I think it's 11 12 maybe no no actually it's 13 years now so yeah lifting has been one of the the best things that have happened in my life and I want to get more people to lift and help people who already LIF you know do things differently so what got you into lifting and research in the first place what what perked your interest um so I was always somebody who was very who enjoyed geeking out about things uh I was heavily into computers when I was a kid and that as part of like learning about being self-taught and learning about you know how to program how to hack how to do all sorts of stuff I got used to searching for things myself so when I got into lifting and I saw that you know what I actually like this uh this lifting thing it was um yeah it it was natural for me to be like okay how do I do this better or what's the best uh you know whatever program to follow as we would as we would say back in the day or what should I eat in order to maximize growth and yeah from a research standpoint that essentially started when I did my undergraduate degree and I met some of my mentors James steel and James Fisher who got me into research but while learning about what you know makes a good program or what's the best way to eat for lifting I noticed that hey the science is actually where we need to look for uh not the majority of the answers but at least for a base for most answers and when I saw that as somebody who likes searching for stuff I was like hm maybe I could do that at some point um either as a hobby or for a living and you made it you're living it's a hobby believe it or not like it is my living in the sense that it is indirectly feeding into my living as in like the content and the coaching but like research itself like the research um projects that you see us putting out there it's um you know that's mostly like from a financial perspective on the hobby side as far as output yeah it seems like we're making a living out of it so so the um research is for fun like that that that's what you do for fun almost as well as for Academia it's because of my personal interest but if I was to say today look no more research projects this year my net income would not change it's not that I am cont contracted to do research so it is something that I do because I enjoy it and it gives me a greater purpose so that for me is more important than the financial aspect of it but I don't you know there's show is the possibility that at some point in the future I may be in Academia but not yet absolutely so how was the um the change or the conversion from computer hacking to I guess hacking muscle growth was it quite an easy one or completely different or how did it go for you it was completely different in the sense that obviously completely different fields but a lot of the skills that I learned while you know learning about computers I was then like they transferred really well to everything else so being able to search for stuff and being very presistent with searching um is something that transferred greatly to the research side of things additionally um a lot of skills that have to do with being comfortable around computers and Technology also came in handy now I wouldn't say there was a direct transfer obviously because you you don't learn about physiology or the literature on muscle growth when you're dealing with computer science but it definitely made certain things easier or at least less intimidating when doing a degree when dealing with with software and so on and so forth so did you actually study computer science no I was uh full full selftaught okay okay okay cool and then you what were your exact degrees sorry my exact degree so the first one was Fitness and personal training so it was a Bachelor of Science in Fitness and personal training which is I think Eric Helms has done something similar uh which was essentially like sports science plus a practical element to it uh and then I published a few studies and went directly into a PhD my PhD was on the minimum do for strength for powerlifters and yeah those are my my two degrees essentially well since you mentioned the minimum dose for strength um is that the paper with regards to increasing your one uh rep max is that correct yeah there is so there are a few papers that came off the back of my pH D and there's one systematic review which was essentially the literature review of the PHD there is a paper that was a pilot study and then there's a multi- experiment paper where we looked at and I think that's the one you've read as well where there's like five different studies as part of one single Paper looking specifically at powerlifters which one do you think would be best to give a high overview of maybe the the one that's got the five cuz that'll be all inclusive yeah I mean the the literature review essentially showed that in trained men doing you know two to three sets uh I'd like 8 to 12 repetitions per exercise per week was enough to um to lead to significant strength increases in Squat and benchpress strength in trained individuals so that's the gist of that when it comes to the the big paper where we uh interviewed powerlifters we interviewed coaches we did studies um and in general we had a more holistic uh view on power lifter specifically because before that paper there was not really much um much literature directly looking at powerlifting and then the concept of the minimum dose what we found was that powerlifting athletes that look to incorporate a minimum effective training dose approach can do so by doing approximately three to six working sets of one to five repetitions each week with these sets spread across one to three sessions per week per lift so per Squad deadlift and so on and so forth um at loads somewhere um above 80% want a r or at an rpu of let's say 7.5 to 9.5 and they they you know if they do that for six to 12 weeks they should expect to gain strength U but interestingly we also found that if you want to spend even less time at the gym even as little as a few singles per week so like one to three singles per lift may still get you some gains although the likelihood of those games being meaningful is much lower than if you were to do a few more sets very interesting and you mentioned that Squat and bench was used was deadlift um were there deadlift parameters as well or was that ignored for the purpose of these studies so for the for the studies yeah of course we did both all three lifts but for the literature review there were no studies available online that had looked at the deadlift in the concept um of the the minimum effective dose so we couldn't really uh look at the deadlift because there was nothing to look at uh but then we did our studies and we always included the deadlift in order to fill that Gap and you know make things a bit more a bit more clear as far as powerlifting strength goes and was it similar for the um squat bench and deadlift in in that study yeah so when we actually took a bunch of powerlifters and had them follow different protocols um all three lifts seem to benefit maybe not perfectly equal but they they all seem to respond similarly to the different protocols um it's important to know that the deadlift like because of how we structured the program um that the participants followed the deadlift did have the less the least volume out of the three lifts so it was like bench was first in terms of volume then Squad then deadlift and that was just simply because that's how you see things done on average in the field again this was just a just an observation but yeah overall overall it's um the guidance the the guidelines that I presented um should work just fine for any of the three lifts and you mentioned uh RP and I think I might be mistaken but you guys did a um a finding with come some kind of study where you measured different kinds of uh I guess monitoring how close to failure you're going where I think it was to do with a percentage of one rep max one of them was way better than RP or R what what were the findings of of that study and what was the study called um are you talking about the accuracy in predicting uh repetition Reserve yeah so I think so yeah so the so this study was called accuracy in predicting repetitions to task task failure in resistance exercise a scoping review and exploratory metaanalysis which was uh led by Israel Halperin and we uh had the chance to help out as well and by we I mean myself and Milo wolf this was a a project that was led by Israel and was also um sort of semi spearheaded co-s spearheaded by James steel and we essentially found that although participants were imperfect so we looked at how good our people at guessing repetitions in reserve now the we looked spefic specifically at like acute designs or mostly acute designs um so what we found was that participants were imperfect to um to in their ability to predict failure independent of their training background but their the fact that they were imperfect was not that like that extreme in terms of practical meaningfulness because they were just off by about a repetition so they were just like either under under or over um one repetition and and we saw that as you did like for those that lifted heavier weights and did less reps repe um prediction accuracy was um was better and as like repetitions increased in a set prediction accuracy was uh impacted somewhat negatively but overall the findings of this and obviously terms of this Supply were that for um like Port training individuals and untrained individuals predicting where in reserve may be more straightforward than sometimes people make it out to be although terms are going supplyer as always as always so so the next one I'd like to go into is a really really cool study which is optimizing resistance training technique to maximize muscle hypertrophy a narrative review I think is that your most recent um publication yeah so that was um a public that came out uh I think was like a month ago it was published in it was published on the 29th of December and we essentially wanted to lay a base for future research on on technique and its effect on hypertrophy as it stands there's not really much data on the effect of exercise technique on hypertrophy and we wanted to again lay that foundation so we can do future research and we chose a narrative review which hits relatively low at the hierarchy of scientific evidence it's not like as a systematic review which sits quite at the top because it's essentially our uh take of the literature and that's it like there's no systematic search but because there's no currently there are no studies directly examining the concept of exercise Technique we couldn't really do much more than just a narrative review so we looked at the current literature attempted to provide a definition for what exercise technique means and essentially looked at the components of exercise technique and how one can should manipulate those in order to maximize hypertrophy and what were the findings so keep in mind that again this was meant to be like a a base for future research so it's not like we did original research or a systematic review and these so and these findings are the the end o b not that they would be even if we had done a systematic review but overall like as long as you're biasing um long muscling so as long as you're employing a range of motion that allows you to get uh a full stretch on the muscle and you are spending about 2 to eight seconds per repetition with whatever Ecentric or concentric um duration you choose B you know as long as you stay within that range um you are most likely taking a lot if not all boxes as far as technique goes now when it comes to body alignment body positioning and and and movement patterns um those there's no direct research on you know specifically manipulating different exercises and you know the changing let's say slightly how wide you grip a bar or where exactly you grip a handle or whatever we don't have any research showing whether changes um that are often presented as gamechanging for hypertrophy whether those actually make a difference that doesn't mean that they don't make make a difference uh but we don't know at the moment and the idea that they are um you know that they are gamechanging that idea is not really based on much so as long as you take the quote unquote textbook um form show for an any given exercise let's say a lat pull down where you're told to grab on the bar bring it all the way down bring it all the way up avoid you know swinging heavily as long as you take that that uh form and you to modify to the range of motion and temporal recommendations presented in the narrative review you're likely maximizing hypertrophy obviously assuming that you're taking sets close to failure absolutely and on that long length uh muscle the puls um for something like a biotic of muscle what side matters like for the hamstring for example where would it be considered stretch would it be at both um like how how do you decide for or something it's biarticulate like that a muscle so keep in mind that we we didn't necessarily specifically say for people to do like partials but rather to make sure that whenever they perform an exercise the muscle they try they're trying to Target is fully stretched um but keep in mind there's again a lot of like asterisks and caveats on that so I'd say that the the way to conceptualize this is if you're sitting on a machine on a leg curl and you are able to slightly change your your position so that you can have you know your knee fully flexed and your your hamstring fully stretched then that should be your goto you shouldn't necessarily go out of your way to get in a position that feels uncomfortable or think about it much more than just okay make sure that I'm getting a nice stretch on whatever I'm doing for example on a radian deadlift make sure that you are getting a deep stretch uh versus um adding you know seven plates and being on a seven plate deficit because we don't really know whether that will make even more uh of a difference you could do it based again on the findings of this review you could do it in an attempt to absolutely maximize adaptations or make an educated bet as far as making more gains goes but I would urge people to not get into into this paralysis paralysis by analysis mindset where they're now having to overthink whether their muscle is actually fully stretched or not like when you're doing a bicep curl all we're saying is make sure that your elbow is fully extended and that you are not like stopping shy of having that bicep um sort of fully stretched but you don't necessarily need to think past that and that's why I'm I'm giving you more of a a practical takeaway sort of response to to the question so something like aan U behind the back coal uh bicep Coe be perfect for for Bice or perfect in inverted commas for for getting that stretch position yeah but again that's that's that depends like CU we didn't specifically touch on exercise selection we said that within whatever exercise you're doing make sure that in during that exercise that you are biasing long muscling so whether you choose an exercise that um allows you to get even more length is was slightly outside the scope of this that makes sense so but yeah uh yeah that would be a great that would be a great uh exercise however again in this like in the whole discussion of optimizing X selection I do think that as long as you're performing two to three exercises per muscle group it is very unlikely that you're missing out on Gaines even if those exercises are not the best optimal yeah and like Optimal keep in mind is is is theoretical like we don't have yeah theoretical for some exercise like we do have data on for example seated and um so B bent lying yeah yeah SE and lying leg curls but also bent and straight uh straight leg Cal raises and the straight leg Cal raises seem to actually be like yeah completely like much much better and with um the the bent knee there's there's more data coming out on that soon um but yeah over overall like it's likely you're missing out on a lot of Gaines for your biceps if you're doing some form of curl and you're also doing a bunch of you know back work yeah yeah I think it would be a really cool uh and and really deep study to do one where you take different exercises for different muscle groups and try to figure out what yields the best results overall to try and aim for that that optimized kind of training program would you think something like that would be would be possible in in what sense could you elaborate B sure so for example you take chess for example and then you do maybe you get you you try you look at different programs online and then based on these programs you then try and use educated guessing to see where you can like get good uh stress positions for example maybe with the camed bar for bench is a really good one um and then versus a regular uh bar for bench versus chess uh chess press flies those kind of things and then you basically take the group of um exercises and you have um athletes or trained athletes maybe uh do different ones and see which ones can elicit the best results overall on average yeah in in an imaginary world where we you know we were able to do like ideally we would like if I if I had Millions I would I would pour a lot of my own money back into research and research obviously keep in mind everything that we're discussing here in the grand scheme of things and like public health and so on and so forth these are not even Minor Details these are like things that are not important whatsoever like maximizing muscle hypertrophy is especially in the context that we're talking about is literally for those who care to do it just for the sake of doing it to an extent right keep in mind that understanding how muscles grow and whether long muscle Lings play a role that's a different that's a different story but then specifically taking like different variations of exercise and testing that would be really cool um but I I fear not fear I feel that you know unless we had a huge um sample of people that we could look at for long periods of time um we wouldn't really detect any any any any meaningful differences especially um yeah especially when it comes to um yeah especially when it comes to you know 8 to 12 weeks of muscle growth sure you feel me get you but sorry again like if you're somebody who wants to geek out over building muscle and like the gym is your hobby yeah now that we were seeing that the stretch is important yeah playing around with that specialty bar or adjusting your push-up so you can get a bit more of a stretch can be fun and it can come with a nice you know Placebo dose of oh I'm getting more out of this are you getting much more in reality I don't think so does it make for for a fun training and kind of make you feel that like your training is more uh effective and allow you to stick to training more sure and I do it as well like I I like to do adjust things so I can get a nicer stretch but in my head the few times where I don't have access to my usual chest press and I'm on this sort of like shitty chest press where I cannot get a a really really proper stretch am I worried that I'm missing out on games no not at all I just take that set to failure and like that's that you're happy yeah it's interesting didn't Milo mentioned that there was 5 to 10 increase with using long L partials versus full range of mission yeah so and that's that's something that a lot of people miss out on we do have uh the data does indicate that partials at long muscle lengths May indeed be superior to just a full range of motion for reasons that we don't fully understand yet and again in the context of absolutely making every possible educated bet to maximize muscle growth yeah would include uh partials and long muscle lengths and I personally do partials at long muscle lengths uh for some exercises but we are still figuring things out and at the same time context is important so yes you may be able to eek out a bit more uh growth and that's also something that is difficult to measure cuz how do you know like that that you're actually growing more from uh from whatever you may be doing because I've seen people say oh I tried this and I'm seeing results and it's like yeah are you really seeing results in just you know a couple of months but oh Placebo no it's not it's not Placebo it's that time is passing as well you're still engaging in training is it is it that you you did this to this one thing differently or that H it's been another three four months of natural progression yeah yeah exactly but yeah people are somewhat losing their like Milo has been has been pretty clear about the what the literature shows and the literature does indicate that there is indeed something to working at long muscle length and there's more research needed as we said on the paper as well which m is an author on um but in the context of um maximizing muscle growth I I would say you'd be a fool to not include some length and partials no some length and partials in there full range of motion sure but we're seeing consistently that that short range um is not really like it's not really doing that much obviously I'm not saying do every exercise as length and partials keep keep things at full real as well but avoiding length and partials completely if you're the guy yeah it may be a bit silly if you're the guy that is like on it with everything else because you see people making like doing other things that are far more speculative than length and partials and trying other exercise techniques and prioritizing um you know how a muscle feels or the pump or this and that or the other and then choose to ignore lengthen partials because it uh because the literature is not 100% conclusive yet sure it's not but worst case scenario based on the evidence that we currently have you're not going to miss out on on on on growth and if anything you may actually get a bit more growth that you weren't getting before for reasons that we don't fully understand just yet absolutely I totally agree and it's good to have that that balance of what you know like the full range and then adding in some long length partials I I remember reading about the um training exercise technique and the most important thing that I found from the study was basically putting your muscles in such a group in such a way to Target the muscle as well as prevent a risk of injury is that the best kind of like te overall technique advice we can give try and try and maybe stabilize the muscle to focus on that specific muscle as well as um control the weight is that more or less the guideline there yeah so the the issue with um you know safety and preventing injury when lifting is that we don't have a lot of direct evidence on what really impacts injury and if we look at you know sports like bodybuilding and powerlifting injur iny rates especially in bodybuilding are very low compared to other sports um and people are doing all sorts of stuff when uh with bodybuilding and including you know a lot of volume and you know putting their bodies through different Lanes of motion but I digress when it comes to exercise technique it's in my opinion and take this with a grain of salt I think that one should have and it's different for perin strength right when you talk about strength you need to become as efficient as possible at moving the weight from point A to point B while doing so without pain and while feeling strong so the way a deadlift may look may not if if a deadlift doesn't look as aesthetically pleasing uh but allows you to get the the weight from point A to point B quicker for strength that's that's correct technique assuming there's no pain blah blah blah but overall doing things in a consistent Manner and and having an excess technique for hypertrophy that allows you to get a nice stretch and to obviously lift consistently in a similar manner without pain or discomfort is the way to go now that may look slightly different for you than for me because of how we're built like your squad may look a bit more upright than mine or vice versa um but I don't think that one is inherently worse for injury assuming that again you're managing load appropriately you're not randomly lifting with a different um different technique from one day to the other and and you attempting alltime PRS with a rounded back although you've never lifted with a rounded back before um but I if you're consistent and there's no pain and discomfort I don't see why any lifting technique is inherently um more danger maybe not any I don't see why like any any might be a bit extreme but I think like you can get away with much more than people think and like for example you do you watch rugby uh every now and again like just just to throw in a silly anecdote like you see players like rockby players do all sorts of weird movements Bend get up get hit while moving while jumping fall um change direction and and you you see athletes in other sports like Combat Sports where they train with they do all sorts of crazy workouts on top of a lot of cardio on top of boxing on top of getting hit and they they're still not breaking in half so the idea that you doing a squad in a controlled manner where you're like there not moving not being pushed randomly when you least expected from a from a different from a different from a different angle and you're slowly adding weight while feeling comfortable yeah stable and you know there's no pain you're attempting another rep I just because you know your your upper back slightly rounded on that last rep because you're I don't know because it was tight because you had already done a few reps I don't think that that it may look ugly it may look like something is wrong but I don't know uh I don't think we have any evidence to say that it is that bad sure and I totally agree with you like it's it's in a controlled environment and like you mentioned like other people are other sports and athletes are getting hit from all kinds of siid at anytime and they're they're not breaking like you mentioned and I think that's an important thing um that I to like drive home is that um like we're not fragile or we shouldn't be we're trying not to be so like deadlifting squatting Bene pressing like try like your Bol to like move and to if you want to be strong then you can be strong exactly exactly and the idea that being in the gym and getting your bones and M muscles stronger is making you more fragile like that's so yeah that's so antithetical thing where I'm like I don't know I don't get it but hey ho yeah a lot of doctors and phys maybe not phys but a lot of doctors are so against lifting and chiropractors and a lot of people I'm just like that's why I quite like those doctors and things who lift I think there's even an Instagram page like that yeah yeah for sure yeah yeah but anyway um back to the concentric and Ecentric portion of the left you mentioned that 2 to8 uh second tempo is is good you can't tell whether increasing concentric or increasing Ecentric makes much difference as long as it's uh between 2 and 8 seconds with regards to that um sometimes I don't do it anymore because I've started using constant tension but does that imply constant tension is used in in these studies because there's no mention of a rest at the bottom or the top of a rep yeah so the the idea of constant tension is was a bit of a weird one because if you are going to failure or very close to failure you are recruiting all the the the different fibers that you want to recruit but trying to slow things down to with the thinking that ah this allows the muscle to be in constant tension the force there may actually be lower therefore recruiting less uh less fibers when in reality if you're taking that set to failure you just reach the same point just just faster but later okay well faster if you're doing Conant tension no no theoretically not really because it's it will take you longer if you're just like really slowly lifting until the until you get to the point of like failure that may take less time than using a heavyweight and going okay up down up down okay now I'm struggling everything is recruited muscle cannot produce Force anymore the end does that make sense sure so I I kind of meant like for example yesterday I was doing bicep calls and I was going quite heavy and I wasn't able to maintain constant or what we're calling constant tension with regards to for example on the way down I was almost stopping to like get energy to go back up again is that would you say not not the right way to do it or do you think because maybe stopping and then getting energy to go back up allowed me um to recruit more um more muscle fibers because of the rest there there thereby um allowed me to maybe push myself one or two extra reps so I don't think that it would makes uh it makes any difference especially especially if you're going to momentary failure to the point where you're actually not able to complete another rep the fact that you rested a bit more and got a couple more reps in um I think if anything that may actually lead to a bit more uh growth in theory than having stopped uh having stopped a bit earlier so the idea of constant tension is it's it makes some sense intuitively because you're thinking oh the muscle is constantly getting some stimulus but if you're going close to failure or to failure you are taking those boxes regardless okay so you think it's more or less not advantageous one way or other maybe would your recommendation be to do a little bit of both just because we're not sure on which one might be better or it doesn't really matter do what what suits you really as long as you're going to failure yeah within R we know we know like we know we have a hint though because if there if there was a case for going much slower and seeing greater hypertrophy we would see that in the literature but as it stands um super slow reps actually may yeah may lead to a bit less growth so if it was if the idea of constant tension was was actually based had some actual base then we would be seeing that in the literature and it would definitely be clear that slower tempos lead to Greater hypertrophy but in reality do whatever Tempo you like if you want to optimize muscle growth stay within two to eight seconds per repetition and the whether you do it a bit slower on the entric or the concentric is totally up to you the great equalizer will be going to failure so whether you do that that those few reps a bit slower is not really a big deal sure um I noticed that um one of the few direct studies on the topic of different exercise um specific techniques was on C basically I think if you point your toes inward or outward depending uh your cough uh muscles would grow differently I think is that is that correct and how how would you use that information for other muscles so this is um these what we discussed on the paper is that at the moment there's like not really much in terms of like manipulating body alignment and body positioning to elicit different hypertrophy responses but that there is one study there's actually maybe two studies but there's one specifically on the Cales called different foot positioning during Cal training to induce portion specific gastrus muscle hypertrophy but again in the reality uh in the reality of things we um we don't really know how that would work on other muscle groups now what they did there is that they looked they they had conditions they had a few conditions one where the foot was pointed outward one where where the foot was pointed Inward and one where the foot was pointed forward and they noticed different um different CH different hypertrophy responses to different parts of the uh of the gonus heads um versus the different foot positioning so uh the feet pointed foot pointed outward potentiated the increases in muscle thickness of the medial gastronomos head where the foot pointed inwards provided greater gains for the lateral gastrus head now the author said that the the that the results suggest that head specific muscle hypertrophy may be obtained selectively for the gastron after N9 weeks of Cal uh Cal training but like we could take those results and really extrapolate on let's say the lats um or the biceps uh there may be something to it but obviously like keep in mind this is one study and we have to also take in consideration the um the the potential limitations of the study so I wouldn't necessarily try and extrapolate from the study to to other muscle groups as it stand so I would say again if you're performing any exercise as you've you know seen on YouTube and you're going to failure and you're biasing long muscle lengths and your Tempo is within two to eight seconds and you're somewhat controlling the Ecentric you're most likely covered uh as far as the majority if not all of your muscle gains go that's good I I'm doing that and that's simple and easy to easy to put into practice just a last note on that particular paper before we quickly jump into the throwing cold water on uh cold water immersion that that paper um can you quickly just give your definition of strict technique so yeah my my definition would be strict technique is the technique that allows you to Target the musculature that you're trying to Target without unnecessarily involving other muscle groups whereas lening technique would be technique that does Target the intendent muscle group but also involves other muscle groups and yeah something along those lines that it needs needs a bit of uh needs a bit of thinking um that's pretty much exactly what's written in the paper so oh nice perfect what I was looking for and then okay let's jump into the throwing cold water on uh on uh muscle growth uh that systematic review with the meta analyses of the effects of post exercise cold water emerging on resistance training uh induced hypertrophy yeah so so this one's a big one on uh Tik Tok and Instagram and all social media where a lot of bodybuilders and athletes and whatnot they they say that the reason they get so big uh or one of them at least is that they do ice baths and swim in the ocean and things and I think from from this review and other logic I guess we can extrapolate that that might not be the case um especially with related to muscle growth at least yeah so this is um systematic review with a with meta analysis uh by Alec Pinero shout out to Alec and shout out to the rest of the team from the lab over at NYC that essentially looked at you know the effect of uh you know cold post exercise specifically post exercise cold water immersion on resistance training induc hypertrophy and found that you know doing cold water immersion immediately follow in resistance training may have a negative effect on hypertrophy but more research is definitely needed and you you know it is even highlighted on the paper that given the very low quality of the studies examined the results of the study should be interpreted with some caution but as it stands we don't have any solid evidence hinting on positive effects so they are hinting on negative effects which is you know not the best point Pro uh Pro cold water emergence so the idea that you know jumping in a in a cold shower or an ice bath post training you know it is it is not really is not really grounded on much and if anything there may be a negative effect on muscle growth based on this review and some previous data so I'm not saying hey if you love ice baths and they they help you um I don't know wake up or feel more you know ready for the day or it's a practice that for some reason you enjoy doing like this is not going to destroy your gains keep in mind like and there are there may be applications for them as well let's say you're an athlete and you have a game coming up and you want to incre decrease inflammation and you don't really care if you impact the hypertrophic response from that one workout by a tiny bit because keep in mind like you'd have to be legit ice bathing after every workout for like long periods of time to really destroy your gain so not even destroy to really negatively affect your gains yeah exactly so let's say you're like we said rugby before let's say you're a rugby athlete and you had a very hard leg workout an snc workout and your legs are extremely sore and you have um you have a a match coming up on a Saturday and you had that workout on a Thursday it may be it may help for you to do to take a few ice paths in between to sort of allow you to feel less discomfort less soreness and let some of that inflammation um dissipate yes in theory you are negatively in quotation marks U affecting some of the hypertrophic responses to that workout but it may be more important for you to you know get 96% of whatever gains you're getting and feel less sore so you can perform at the game versus caring that much about whether hyperv is optimized but yeah overall if you like ice baths just just don't don't feel like you have to do them postwork workout uh as you're probably not getting much from them and do them whenever you like and be cautious with how much you ice bath you know don't lose your mind absolutely I was surprised that they managed to do you so long in the ice paath I think or in the cold water I saw that it was Lot most of studies were 20 minutes for me that sounds incredible I don't think I could do that but uh well done to those uh 30 participants I guess yeah it's the same with like otheres that that you see the methods and you're like whoa that's crazy but that's why their studies and they're not you know uh yeah they're they're they're designed to look sometimes at the more extreme side of things but I've heard of people doing more more than yeah I mean I guess they've got lots of time clearly in their days that's good good for them oh do you think that SAA and steam room and the inverse like the I guess or the opposite um heat would be beneficial um I'm not fully like I'm not insanely confident in my uh knowledge in in those areas but from the little bit that I know I think I can confidently say that I know that there's no you know magic sort of effect on muscle growth or an insanely negative effect of muscle growth I know that there may be a net benefit in some cases or the the or the opposite but similarly to cold water immersion we're not talking about a make or break sort of effect but definitely nothing that you should be going out of your way to include if um unless again you're an athlete that is working uh that that is training multiple times uh sometimes multiple times per day and doing all sorts of sessions and you you know you have um those are the scenarios where these things I'd say play a role for the average lifter who just trying to get bigger and stronger just as long as you're sleep sleeping you know 6 to8 hours a day and you're getting you're getting your protein in and you're eating healthy um it's unlikely that these practices are going to make a an insane difference to anything absolutely and on on that note of sleeping check out episodes seven and eight uh with the Sleep consultant Riley Jaris just uh thought I'd add that in there okay and then yeah it's really cool he's he's amazing he's a biohacker and deep and optimizing and everything so to finish off um if you are traveling on a spaceship to Mars and wanted to maintain muscle size what 10 exercises or pieces of equipment would you choose to take with you there can be any machine or exercise but you have limited space it's arbitrary I know but and it's Mar so everything will be different I get you but if you can only take 10 exercises can you give the exercise name the kind of gri width or with uh like grip that youd use and then the bar type that let's go 10 exercise to maintain Dr pack yeah for sure um let's let's remove Mars and say cruise let's say cruise ship so grab brilliant I just thought Mars would be cool cuz it's so different but sure two Cruise so I would definitely have a barble because that then allows me to do a bunch of stuff easily um some and some form of uh cable pulley system because then I can do a bunch of other stuff and that's all the equipment I would need um as far as exercises go so you've provided me with a table and I'll just off the back of that I I'm going to tell you what I think I would have so I would definitely be doing um some form of deadlifting for my my hamstrings lower back um Erectors glutes and it would probably be a Romanian deadlift just because that includes a bit more um length and work of the hamstrings and you know you have to control the Ecentric which you often completely skip on like competition style deadlifts um keep in mind the pulley system that I mentioned will also have like a pull-up bar I would do some po so I would do a strict overhead press for shoulders deficit push-ups for chest squats I personally like lar squats but you know I would do those um including some for more yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't bother that much with like Cissy squats or anything else because we're we're talking about hey you're on a ship you're trying your best to do to make do with whatever you have just squats would do um same goes for my hamstrings just deadlifts would be fine so we have deadlifts squats strict overhead press deficit push-ups then I would do um a Beijing curl on the on the pulley system I would do an overhead cable tricep extension on the pulley system and behind the back cable lateral raise again on the pulley system uh an AB cable crunch on the pulce on the pulley system um a deficit barble row known on the pulley system and um some form of pull down on the pulley system either single arm or um or if I had the the option to have like an actual bar I would do like a l pull down on there even had to sit sit on the floor and just Pro you probably with a um with a reverse [ __ ] but like yeah I think that that that would not only allow me to maintain I think that would make for a pretty pretty not complete gain yeah solid gain like you you're obviously missing like a couple of exercises for for like hamstrings and and quads so you get that rectus foror sort of growth and you work the hamstring um differently as well with the the the curl but overall with these exercises I'd be not just covered but more than covered and keep in mind I'd need a rack for that bar in order for some of those two workers right you've got you've got all of that sorry I missed um after overhead extension so basan calls overhead extension then the next thing I got was AB cable Crunch and bble rope pull down what was after uh overhead extension do you remember um behind the back lateral raises that's the one yeah so it would be Squad deadlift op and the op is because I love op um deficit push-ups I think are a great underrated exercise for for chess development um and I don't like um genetic yeah Asian curls some form of lad pld down and then barell Rose deficit barbell Rose um overhead tricep extensions and yeah I did the added the ab direct ab work as well cuz that's been a a thing lately so on the ab cable crunch um are you supposed to be facing the machine or away from the machine I'm not sure about supposed um I personally face the machine like what is better okay it depends on it depends on the on on how the the pulley I guess is is made and if it's a good quality one or if it's pulling you uh if it's pulling you again against it but I guess facing against it maybe I don't know if it's if it's pulling you back and you have to resist it it may make it a bit less diff less easy to focus on the exercise um but again Minor Detail I'd say try both sides whatever feels whatever feels best as long as again you can get a nice stretch and go close to fader you know absolutely know I totally get assumed and do you feel like on the like do you just hang on to it or how how do you do that I usually use a rope I make sure to you know get a nice stretch Flex my spine and yeah that's about it go to the point where I can't do any more uh partial reps and then I call it a day but it's the you know like AB training is is a bit weird because people like treat it as if it's like this this different thing where it's like same way you train your your biceps like you got a if you want H AB hypertrophy sure the same if you're doing a bunch of I mean it's not even the same way yes sure you'll get some core development from like all the isometric work that may be going on when you deadlift and squat heavy but like you know it's you gota you got to actually Target the muscle as you would with any other muscle you know going to failure two to eight seconds all of that stuff yes keep it simple so closing thoughts what advice or parting words of wisdom do you have for our listeners who are looking to embark on their own journey of Ling and muscle growth yeah look it's it's not that deep like as long as you develop uh it's it's useful to develop a certain etiquette when it comes to training and keeping things quote unquote strict or you know borrowing a bit from the optimization crowd and and like going in and being like okay I'm doing this l pull down I'm not going to effing jerk the weight like an absolute loser and and you know like not pay any attention to to the form or the muscle involved but at the same time there comes a sweet spot where you know you are keeping things relatively strict H but at the same time you're not there worrying constantly about whether what you're doing is uh is is optimal in in in the in in the reality of things muscle growth takes time it requires consistent hard um effort consistent amounts of high effort in the gym whether you did a single arm pull down across the body or like um a regular l pull down and the grand scheme of things I believe is not going to make a big difference and anecdotally from looking at people we've seen people develop all sorts of um like muscular physiques over the years even when less equipment was available even when optimization was not so much of a thing even where more Bro Science was was out there and people were doing things that we know are wrong you know and were doing like short short um uh length partials for example doing 21s and all sorts of BS people were still trading very hard performing you know multiple exercises per muscle group going to failure or very close to failure doing uh a multiple doing m multiple sets per muscle group a week and they saw amazing growth um it's cool to geek out and it's cool to want to know more about you know um how you can potentially get that extra bit of growth out of each exercise but for the love of God like pick a few exercise per muscle group obviously don't go out of your way to pick up to pick the worst exercise known in in history no but like even that's hard to do I would want to do it yeah I would even argue that bro if if you go to a gym and you pick two machines per muscle group and like not open a book or read anything about uh exercise science or about hypertrophy and just make sure that over the years you're doing more weight and more reps and you're pushing yourself hard on those machines while obviously eating and sleeping you're still going to see massive amounts of muscle growth it just takes time so enjoy the journey [ __ ] fall in love with the process have fun with your friends have those YOLO sessions as well with the lads where you all go there and do a bunch of random stuff don't lose your mind over the Minor Details geek out if you like to but always remember that hey engaging in high intensity of effort resistance training is for for long periods of time it's where it's at it's not the details are not that important absolutely like using science as a base and then effort as the key ingredient is the way to go exactly nice well thank you so so much for your time goodbye Gaines gurus thank you for listening and see you on the next episode of TM GP