Modern longevity is crowded with promises, but the useful conversations stay close to biology. This discussion on muscle, aging, and evidence points to a steadier truth: healthspan is shaped by the signals we repeat, the capacity we preserve, and the recovery we protect.
Full transcript with timestamped links back to the original YouTube conversation.
It's pretty clear that uh activities of daily living, even if you're quite active, you're still going to have sarcopenia. It's the only thing that really counteracts sarcopenia. Today's episode is a deep dive into all things muscle resistance training and healthy aging with two of the most influential voices in this space, Brad Showfield and Alan Aragon. The lowest protein intake to be would be around 1. 2 g per kilogram. And if you want to maximize gains, one point I think is the good target for the most individuals. The lever of resistance training is far stronger than protein effects. There was a study of 90 year olds in a nursing home. They had them do just leg extensions 3 days a week. This was 10 subjects. The average increase in strength was 150%. The average increase in functional capacity was 50%. But to me, the coolest part of this study was I think that provides a lot of hope for the listener. What do you think is most important to focus on? Strength, [music] power, muscle growth. I'm going to let Brad kill the answer to that. What's the goal here? If someone even hasn't been training [music] for 10, 20 years, and now they're 50 and thinking, can I build muscle now? I will say this first. Today I wanted to get the pair review of you back on so we could really go deep on muscle physiology. Obviously everyone right now is really interested in longevity. That's become a bit of a a kind of trend which I think is a positive thing [snorts] and muscle has very much become a central part of that conversation around longevity. So I I want to take this conversation through the lens of muscle physiology and aging but then weave nutrition and the importance of different aspects of our nutrition throughout that that conversation.
At the very top though, what I'd like to do is just refresh myself as to how both of you became interested in in all of this in the first place. So maybe Brad, we can start with you. If I if I've done my research correctly, did did this interest of yours in muscle and body composition, was that through your own training in the gym? Yeah. So, um, the I'll give you the short course because the long course we'd be here for a couple hours. But I had a very windy road to get to where I am, but I started out as a really skinny kid. I found bodybuilding or bodybuilding found me or some combination. And it it just changed my life and uh ultimately it led to me becoming a personal trainer and [snorts] I competed in bodybuilding shows. I started training competitive uh physique athletes and I started then really getting into the science of it. Uh so this was all kind of a process that evolved over time and I ultimately found I had a greater interest in teaching and educating on it than I did in actually showing people how to do a lat pull down. And so then you you went into the academic side of things, correct? Uh been in academia now for 16 years. Published like 300 plus papers at this point. Close to four. I'm just about at four now. Yeah. 400. And at what stage of your career would you say that you became interested in in how muscle physiology physiology influences or affects aging itself? Was that something that you appreciated early on or was the early part of your career more focused on performance and aesthetics? Yeah, it was an evolving process and early on it was just purely about gains about uh you know maximizing bodybuilding [gasps] uh type gains and as I guess it's progressed as I've aged uh you know you start realizing mortality and try to do what you can for myself to avoid the pitfalls of the
myself to avoid the pitfalls of the aging process. Um so yeah it's uh become much more of a focus. Would you say in your in the field of kind of muscle physiology in general when you started out were were scientists talking about the way in which scaladal muscle influences aging? I mean it was a little certainly [snorts] [snorts] uh more aerobically there was a focus on aerobic exercise and uh the cardiorespiratory system with V2 max and the aging process but really not much uh and hopefully we can get into this a lot more as far as resistance training goes. Um most of the early resistance training research prior to when I got into the field was strength co it was strength related. It was um when I say strength related, it was uh athletic related. So it was on building strength and power and muscle hypertrophy, which was my focus as a former bodybuilder and physique coach. Um was secondary to the fact that there's a relationship between strength and hypertrophy. That increasing muscle size will necessarily to some extent increase muscle strength. But um hypertrophy was kind of like the bastard child of uh of strength. the research, strength and conditioning research and particularly there was the negative connotation with bodybuilding because of steroids even though there was a lot of steroids in sports too which somehow got shuffled under the rug. But anyway, but uh when I came in my focus as a personal trainer, the vast majority of my clients were not coming in telling me they want to take a a second off of their sprint time or add a an inch to their jump height. they wanted to look great naked or they [snorts] wanted to, you know, increase the size of their muscles and reduce body fat. So, uh, I honed in on that. That was my focus certainly. And, uh, kind of the rest is history.
kind of the rest is history. And Allan, what was your on-ramp early days? Couple things really similar to Brad's actually. Um, well, I grew up in a lot of my adolescence was in Southern California, so the later adolescence. And so, uh, naturally in when you grow up in LA, um, everybody wants to be involved with fitness and personal training back in the 80s and 90s was this sort of subversive uh, emerging kind of a fringe type of potential occupation for for those people who know the right people. And I just thought it was really cool the idea of being able to have a career just training folks, helping people get fit, working with celebrities. And uh that was just that was sort of the allure career-wise to personal training for me. Um earlier than that, it was more like just seeing bodybuilders on the magazine covers, you know, the classic dudes. um just being into uh various comics where they looked like the bodybuilders on the magazine covers and I think there's this kind of innate thing within guys where you know you just want to you want to see if you can um materialize those things and so that that was sort of the beginnings for me. Um, as I got towards uh, college and just, you know, graduating high school and just thinking about careers and stuff, there was this fork in the road where I really didn't know where to go in terms of either an exercise direction or a nutrition direction because I genuinely liked them equally, but but I just, you know, I didn't flip a coin. And I got a bunch of advice from a bunch of people I trusted and and I just uh went with a nutrition degree and then just started collecting personal training certifications and then a
training certifications and then a decade went by and then I met Brad [laughter] [laughter] and got to do a bunch of research publications. So he has about a hundfold my research publications but um yeah that that's kind of where it is and it's really interesting to have fallen into that role and gotten invited by other groups of researchers all over the world as a result of uh the stuff that I initiated initiated with Brad. So and I I'll also add that Allan certainly shaped my nutritional um the way I look at sports nutrition. So, I mean, I had certain uh beliefs back then that Allan opened my eyes to a lot of nutritional fallacies that really stuck with me and really shaped my not only shape my views at that time, but my desire to really delve into the literature on the topic and become more of a certainly secondarily a nutritional researcher as well. Alan, would you say over the the course of your career, has your appreciation for the role of of nutrition and exercise with regards to the aging process, has that been something that you've become more interested in? Yes. I I would say yes. As chronological age marches forward, you get to thinking more about like for example, when you cross over 40, statistically, you're kind of at the halfway point in this little earthly journey. And so you start thinking about it more. And then certainly as you cross over 50, then you're like thinking about the statistics of um muscle mass reducing about half a percent a year starting 40 at the population level. And then from 50 forward, it starts reducing one to possibly 1 and a. 5% annually. And then at 60, it starts reducing about 3ish% annually. And then you start looking at
annually. And then you start looking at the statistics of um sarcopenia prevalence in people 60 and up and it's about 10 up to 20% of the population of 60 and up. And you really start thinking about these things and you also start being glad that you started training and got into those habits and secured that kind of that muscularkeeletal infrastructure earlier on cuz it's not like you can necessarily catch up especially skeletally. It's like [clears throat] saving saving money before you retire. That's right. Yeah. There's been some really impressive research recently with I mean you see the MRI and CT photos of uh the M's athletes that have trained their whole lives and they preserve muscle like at 70 you know 60 70 years old fairly close to the 20-year - old athletes um not much of a drop off and they actually have higher muscle uh at least lean mass oh muscle mass levels too than those who are inactive that are sedentary at in their 20s. And the difference between the M's athletes at 60 plus versus the sedentary 60 plus is just extraordinary. I mean you see the uh differences are it's frightening what the uh losses as Allen had mentioned. I think that provides a lot of hope for for the listener because often the way that I kind of hear this topic spoken about is age related muscle loss. And that sounds like it's inevitable because it's inevitable that we're getting older. Um, and one of the things I want to to get into when we get there is to is is how much is this baked in and how much say do we actually have in this process? What can we do to attenuate or slow down these things that we're talking about? I recently ran a 12week transformation contest in my online community. And the winner of the
online community. And the winner of the female category was a 65year-old. Okay. a 65-year - old woman and she lost 9. 5 lb or about 5 kg of fat mass and she gained 1. 6 kg or about 3. 5 [music] lb of lean mass in the 12 weeks as a 65year-old and she's not on testosterone. When I was a teenager, my dad had a heart attack. He was in his late 40s and I was the only person with him. Looking back, I think he just assumed that he was too young for something like that to happen. He rarely saw a doctor and he had no idea where his risk factors were at. That experience fundamentally shaped how I think about health today. And it's exactly why when I interview experts like Dr. Thomas Dpring, Dr. Robert Eckle, and Dr. Lawrence Sperling, I pay very close attention when they all say the same thing. The most important cuttingedge cardiovascular risk factors markers like apo B and LP little A are almost never included in standard blood panels. That's why I use Function. I get over 100 lab tests each year, plus follow-up testing halfway through to track my progress. Function gives me the data that my dad never had, the markers that genuinely matter for cardiovascular health. You can't manage your heart health if you don't know your numbers. Standard tests check the basics, but they often skip over the markers that tell you whether or not you need to take action through lifestyle changes and / or medication. Own your health for $ 365 a year. That's a dollar a day. Visit functionhealth. com / simon and use gift code simon25 for a $ 25 credit towards your membership. Maybe we could define a few terms here. So you said sarcopenia 10 to 20% of people over the age of 60 probably have sarcopenia. What what does that actually
sarcopenia. What what does that actually mean? So sarcopenia the the simple definition would be an age related loss of muscle mass or age related loss of lean mass. It kind of falls this under the umbrella of frailty which is just sort of a general wasting and degradation of the the bodily systems. So sarcopenia it's been categorized into two main definitions. So there's primary sarcopenia which is just sort of the normal physiology of aging. [snorts] Um, and that [clears throat] can include um things like annual hormonal decline starting like age 35ish and also a drop in the muscle protein synthesis response to both feeding as well as training. Um, there's just sort of this natural decrease in the um insulin sensitivity of endothelial tissues. There's this decrease in so-called microvascular profusion or blood flow to the muscles in response to various stimuli and when blood flow gets decreased then delivery of nutrients amino acids specifically gets decreased and then you compromise muscle protein synthesis. Uh there is increases in insulin um resistance, decreases in satellite cell activity. um there's increases in in inflammation as we measure through IL6, CRP, TNF, alpha, various markers of that that seem to converge towards this blunted anabolic response as we age. So there that's sort of this odd mix of the so-called primary um sarcopenia. When you say blunted anabolic response, meaning that the muscle cells, muscle tissue is is not responding in the same
tissue is is not responding in the same way as it would earlier in life to lifting weights or eating protein, something like that's right. So, for example, in younger adults, you'll see muscle protein synthesis. So for listeners um the way that protein the way that muscle grows or stays the same or decreases is based on um a process called muscle protein turnover. So there's the muscle protein synthesis side of it and then there's the muscle protein breakdown side. And so as long as muscle protein synthesis outpaces muscle protein breakdown then we can see muscle growth and if there's an an equilibrium there then we see maintenance of muscle. So with older individuals um it's not like with younger individuals where you can stimulate MPS maximally under resting conditions with like 20 25 g of high quality protein. With older individuals it's you almost need double that per dose in order to get a similar muscle protein synthesis response. Does everyone get anabolic resistance? So if we go back and think about those masters athletes, people who've been exercising their entire life, right? Yeah, maybe like us sitting in this room. Are we going to eventually, no matter what, we're going to get to that stage where we require double the protein or is that someone who's been sedentary and then developed anabolic resistance because of the sedentary lifestyle they were living? Okay, so that that kind of has a complicated answer. Um Brad brings up the really excellent point where you see masters athletes cross-sections of their, you know, of the quads and you put them next to um people half their age, 35 year olds and it's very similar. There's just slight slight differences in sort of the quality and the firmness and the tone of the muscle. Um, in theory, old muscle can be rejuvenated with progressive resistance training and
progressive resistance training and physical activity and proper nutrition. Now the degree to which it can be 100% rejuvenated I guess that's open to to speculation speculation but with with secondary sarcopenia there the factors that that come into play there are inactivity diseases diseases and poor nutrition. So with inactivity and diseases and poor nutrition, you have the so-called secondary sarcopenia which has an acute nature up to 6 months as well as a chronic nature longer than 6 months. And so there's this weird kind of overlap between primary sarcopenia and secondary sarcopenia because the inactivity factor is really maybe the strongest thing and that happens regardless of how you define sarcopenia. So yeah, Brad, do you know of any research comparing young and old muscle and sort of waking up, rejuvenating, etc.? Yeah. So it's um to unpack this a little more, number one, anabolic resistance exists on a continuum. It's not you either have it. Well, it is depends on your your qualification as to where it actually set sits on the spectrum. But I mean, you can be somewhat anabolically resistant or you could be very anabolically resistant. And um certainly we know just through like these mast's athletes, they're maintaining a lot of their muscle uh throughout their older years. So obviously they're not as as anabolically resistant as younger individuals. The issue really is in terms of trying to study this in a controlled fashion. It's very difficult to find a cohort of older individuals that have been training for long periods of time. For the vast majority where we do a lot of studies in younger people, it's quite easy or certainly easier to do studies on trained younger individuals. To get a a cohort of trained older individuals becomes much
trained older individuals becomes much more of a much more difficult process. So most of the comparisons that we have are between like untrained younger and untrained older and certainly the we there's substantial differences in their anabolic responses but we can speculate again I think uh through these mast's athletes just because we see the maintenance of tissue that's not only uh mo more so than much more so than other older individuals but more so than younger individuals who've never trained. So it's showing that they've on on average maintained greater muscle over the years than younger subjects. So I would say that yeah uh you certainly can somewhat avoid anabolic resistance, but we also know that the aged muscle in these mast's athletes is not quite what the younger athletes is. And and there you're going to I mean Allan talked about some of the issues hormonally. There's just going to generally be drop offs in testosterone, which is the primary male hormone. For women, it's estrogen is the primary female anabolic hormone, which goes down really precipitously [snorts] after menopause. Um, and then there's things like, I mean, again, Alan brought a lot of this up, chronic inflammatory response. I mean you can osteoarthritis often sets in with older individuals and that tends to or can produce more chronic inflammation just also interfere with training ability. So there's a lot of things that happen as you get older that you there's certain things that that you just cannot completely control for. But what I would say personally just in looking at the objective trying to be objective in the overall literature while you can't completely offset it, you can substantially reduce the effects of it. And can you compensate or kind of override it by adjusting the amount of training you're doing and or the amount
training you're doing and or the amount of protein you're eating? I'm not certainly not by the amount of protein. Well, when you say you will need more protein. So, we're I don't know if you want to get into the leucine threshold, but there's uh there's a essential amino acid called leucine, which is thought to have and this fairly well established. It produces a trigger post exercise to kind of kickstart the muscle building process. And um it's not an onoff switch. So, but if you're deficient, somewhat deficient in the leucine response, uh you're not going to achieve the rob as much of a robust response and that again does seem to it's in older individuals, untrained older individuals, it's substantially greater, but we don't have good evidence, at least from my interpretation of the literature, in uh in well-trained older individuals to make that determination. I wouldn't think that consuming protein would offset it well in other than the fact it's going to help you to maintain more muscle or consuming sufficient protein but it's not going to in by itself counteract anabolic resistance the training response is a different matter and uh yeah so I mean training number one it counteracts chronic the chronic inflammatory response is really concrete evidence that chronic inflammation um has really negative effects on muscle building and this would be cyclical. So the loss of muscle would tend to create more chronic inflammation. The creation of more chronic inflammation would tend to reduce the muscle and it's kind of this cyclical birectional. Um and there's, you know, some other factors hormonally. It's not really clear, but there's at least some evidence showing that you can at least keep your testosterone levels a little higher uh with training with chronic training. Satellite the satellite cell response is really important. So satellite cells are muscle stem cells
satellite cells are muscle stem cells and they have multiple roles in in muscle development including donating their myionuclei as well as communicating between the cells and and kind of coordinating the muscle building process and these again are cyclical factors. So when you start to lose muscle uh and by the way I should mention that with sarcopenia there can be a loss there's can be apoptosis which is death particularly of the type two muscle fibers which are your your strength related fibers which really has negative implications for carrying out strength related task and power in particular. Um so these satellite cells within type two fibers tend to get the act activation tends to be reduced which then you get more sarcop you get more muscle loss which again has negative effects on on the muscle quality and and quantity. So these are all factors that again if you're training training can counteract to some extent all of those factors. It is possible despite the anabolic resistance. It's definitely possible if someone even hasn't been training for let's say 10 20 years and now they're 50 and they're listening to this and thinking gosh I've got all of these things happening at the the level of the muscle. Um can I build muscle now? What do we understand from from the literature as to what's possible if someone is in their 50s or 60s and and begins doing the things that we're going to speak about and unpack resistance training and the nutrition. What could they expect? Yeah. So, the response again is certainly blunted from younger individuals, but you can make really impressive gains in a very short period of time. We've carried out multiple meta metaanalytic uh studies on this and we actually did one in the oldest of the old so people that are 75 years and older and they had [clears throat]
older and they had [clears throat] particularly you see the biggest gains in strength. I mean there was a one standard devi um standardized mean difference which is uh um comes down to standard effect of a standard deviation of one roughly one standard deviation improvement in 8 to 12 weeks. uh and the uh effect size the standard mean deviation was 0. 3 in muscle hypertrophy which is somewhat less but still quite impressive for people that are you know quite sarcopenic at that point. These are people that had not trained before and this is in comparison other untrained individuals. So we compared um a training regimen of 8 to 12 or 8 to 16 weeks some it was a while ago so I forgot the specifics versus a control condition where they didn't train didn't do resistance training [snorts] and uh just really profound differences in this population and uh and you see it all there's other made analyses showing again quite robust 15 20% in some cases increases in muscle cross-sectional here, fiber cross-sectional area in [snorts] these older individuals and strength improvements. Uh, huge strength improvements. I'll give you one example that to me is the epitomizes [snorts] the effects of strength training. There was a study by uh Maria Fidone. This was a seminal study dating back to 1990 and it was carried out on non-aggenarians, 90 year olds in a nursing home. They went in, they had them do just leg extensions three days a week, eight 8 to 12 reps, I believe. 8 to 10 reps for eight weeks, three days a week. Again, 90 average age 90 years old. After eight weeks, this is 10 subjects. The average increase in strength was 150%, the average increase in functional capacity was 50%. But to me, the coolest part of this study was three of the 10 subjects were able to walk without the assistance of their
walk without the assistance of their cane [snorts] after eight weeks. And and you people think that the leg extension yet non-functional exercise. I don't think there's anything more functional than being able to walk without the without assistance. So it's really impressive. Uh just kind of highlights what the power of resistance training can be. You've mentioned uh muscle quality a few times. and you've mentioned strength. [gasps] If I'm thinking about the the listener now who is hearing all of this and thinking, okay, what's what's the goal here? So, is it that I I want to build muscle and build muscle size? Is that the most important thing? Or is it that I need to build strength and power? And I guess if we think about the overall goal, what really matters to the individual, it's what you just mentioned, which is I would say their physical capacity to do the things that they love to be independent, right? That's what we all want. And also to reduce their risk of chronic disease. So, if we if we're thinking about muscle tissue and the things that are happening as we age, what do you think is most important to focus on? Strength, power, muscle growth, or is that the wrong way of thinking about it and it should just be all of those? I'm going to let Brad kill the answer to that. I just wanted to relay to you the previous question about people starting in their, you know, 50s or 60s and wondering whether there's hope to, you there's whether there's hope to, you know, to to get this muscle building process started. Well, I recently ran a a 12-week transformation contest in my online community and uh the winner of the female category was a 65year-old. Okay, so a 65-year - old woman and she
lost 9. 5 lbs or about 5 kg of fat mass and she gained 1. 6 6 kg or about 3. 5 lbs of lean mass in the 12 weeks as a 65year-old. And she she's not on um testosterone. She's on a very low estradiol dose because she's had her um massive um um ovarian cancer operation. And so there's really I mean there's hope for people on the second half of life for sure. I just wanted to give that example. That also speaks as well to the fact that, you know, I very much positioned this as a conversation around healthy aging and avoiding chronic disease and frailty and being independent. But let's be honest, most people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Also, if you were to survey people, I think a lot of people's goals is to look be a bit more toned. And a lot of people do care about like how we look and and that's adds into confidence. So that's I think an important thing for us to as we go through this conversation to kind of speak to the fact it doesn't have to be one or the other. You can make improvements across the board if you want to. Well, I was just going to say you really can't disassociate or you should certainly you shouldn't disassociate building muscle from increasing strength and power because number one they're interrelated. It would be extremely difficult to focus just on strength and not gain any muscle because if nothing else increasing muscle will have it's not a direct uh a linear uh relationship but there's certainly a functional relationship between muscle growth the size of a muscle and its ability to produce force but I think there from even from a health perspective both of them become really important so strength obviously has functional importance and uh independence power which is uh really the ability it's kind of strength over
the ability it's kind of strength over time it's force over time the ability to carry out strength in a rapid fashion that becomes extremely important to avoid falls and other debilitating injuries but I think sometimes people lose the fact that muscle is more than just for [snorts] aesthetics that muscle I mean there's several things number one it serves as a kind of a reservoir for and Allen had touched on insulin resistance earlier but it serves as a reservoir are for glycogen storage and and increasing the sensitivity of the insulin receptors is part of on the muscle part of what resistance training does. But having a larger muscle allows you to store more glucose and thus certainly diabetes and insulin resistance is a huge issue. Muscle also um secrete so this is something that a lot of people don't realize as well is that muscle is a secrettory organ. It secretes what are called myioines which are basically substances produced in the muscle. A lot of the myioine functions are or intram or intrinsic. They're within the muscle but they also are secreted into the circulatory system kind of in in an endocrine fashion and they interact. So they can reduce chronic inflammatory responses. you get uh anti-inflammatory myioines that can we talked about the issues with chronic inflammation and they have other effects on on multiple other tissues that have health related uh benefits. So again I I don't think we should be looking to separate just focus on strength or just focus on muscle. They're interactive and they're I think they're all quite important. There's a lot of anecdotes in CrossFit communities where people get on a GLP-1 drug and it's fantastic for the fat loss and appetite cutting aspect. Then again, they actually forget to eat and then they forget to fuel properly and then they can't necessarily train to the capacity that they would have if they had remembered to eat and fuel. So there is a lot of caution involved with that. If you're taking a fistful of 10 or 20 capsules every morning, I don't
or 20 capsules every morning, I don't blame you for thinking that this doesn't feel like real health. Enterate. Look, I get the skepticism about supplements. Partnering with any supplement brand is not a decision that I take lightly. But even with good intentions and a very solid diet, nutrient insufficiencies are more common than people realize. And most people are not tracking their levels. That's the problem that IM8 Daily Ultimate Essentials solves. One serving delivers 92 bioavailable nutrients including choline, B12, iodine, selenium, K2, zinc, etc. in science informed doses. And it's NSF certified for sport. So it's on the label is in each serve and nothing more. For listeners of the proof, use the code simon at im8alth. com for a special discount on your first order of IM8 Daily Ultimate Essentials. That's imagehealth. com and use the promo code simon. Replace your cabinet full of supplement bottles today. And when you say uh quality, how do you define muscle quality versus quantity? Yeah. So, a couple things. I mean, one of the things that you see which is really profound in the older individuals um sarcopenic individuals is fatty infiltration of the muscle. When you look at these MRIs, it's not just that the size of the muscle decreases substantially, but the within the muscle, you see this marbling kind of like a a [snorts] T-bone steak. Wagu. Yeah. Right. And um it's been well documented that the fatty infiltration of muscle has negative effects on the muscle's functional capacity in including it's it uh enhances the when I say enhances it increases insulin resistance. There's that and of course quality also is the um the loss of the [snorts] [snorts] type two fibers as I mentioned. So when
type two fibers as I mentioned. So when you're having apoptosis of type two muscle fibers, you're going to have a reduced capacity to produce strength and power. And that's where I mean a fall, you know, when you're 20, I remember [laughter] when I was 30, I I broke a wrist. It's like I was in doing it in martial arts and uh people were signing my cast and it's kind of a cool thing. I mean, you break your hip as an older individual. The last statistics I saw on that were something like 50% never regain their functional capacity. And I mean personal story, my dad, it happened to him. He fell in the hospital while trying to get onto his get he was out of his bed trying to get up into his bed. Seven day he had broke his hip. Seven days later he was dead from sepsis uh complications from the surgery. So definitely something that we want to avoid if we can given that mortality, right? Sorry about that. [gasps] [gasps] Can we double click on the type of fiber? The type two and type one muscle fibers. What I'm hearing is that it's it's important as we age to try and attenuate stop in particular the loss of the type two muscle fibers. Um, what is it about type two muscle fibers that makes them different to to type one and why is that important for generating power? Yeah, and they're both quite important. The type they they're kind of have a ying and yang function. So, type one fibers are endurance related fibers. uh they are able they're I don't want to say indiffatiguable but they they don't fatigue easily but they also cannot produce nearly as much force as their counterparts the type two fibers which are strength related but they fatigue quite easily. So you're basically the human body is such so beautifully designed to carry out multiple functions. If you want to go for a long distance run the type one fibers become much more important. If you want to lift very heavy heavy objects your type two
very heavy heavy objects your type two fibers become important. Um as mentioned the functional capacity I mean opening the top of a a bottle I mean carrying packages all your functional tasks or many of your functional tasks involve strength strength endurance related um functions and uh and power becomes extremely important to reduce. So when you're falling if you somehow and balance becomes an issue with a lot of people as they get older. If you lose your balance and you start to fall, you have to be able to rapidly engage your strength to reverse that fall. You might have strength, but if it's it's not the power aspect. Again, type two fibers have both a strength and power related component. And there's ways to train for for each as well. Yeah. Which I I definitely want to get into. Would you say overall this uh appreciation for having enough m muscle and also having quality muscle and how that affects aging and our our risk of falls. But not only that, our our risk of metabolic conditions, things like diabetes and other chronic diseases is something that is appreciated generally across medicine. Now outside of your fields like in in the same way that we might think about [snorts] high cholesterol or high blood pressure I think that it's increasingly beginning to be recognized in that sense as the u sort of the muscularkeeletal system being the I guess the conductor of what the consequences are for other systems of the the And so not only that, but not only does it dictate movement, but it the musc muscle skeletal muscle for the most part it dictates fuel use and fuel partitioning. And so um with the
partitioning. And so um with the preservation of that and the preservation of function then people begin to see the importance of you know why is is it so crucial to avoid things like sarcopenic obesity and and dinenic obesity there there really shouldn't be this kind of conflict between whether strength or power is more important. You know what the power for for the listeners the way you train for power is you you try to maximize the speed of the movement over these sort of lower to moderate loads like 40 to 60ish% of one RM whereas with classic strength training you're you're trying to basically increase much heavier loads like or not necessarily moderate to heavy loads and so I think that both adaptations adaptations can and should be trained for that. But yeah, I I agree that there's a a growing recognition of the importance of all of this stuff across um domains in the health sphere. You mentioned it earlier, but I think we should come back to this. My understanding is this is not an old person's problem. Like if we're not active in the way that we're going to speak about, some of these changes can begin as early as 30. So perhaps we can just double click on on what do we see out there if someone's living cedentury. When will would someone start to experience these changes at a muscle level and start to see the reduction in strength and power? So I've come across literature citing the beginnings of muscle degradation and the negative part of the aging process starting in the early 30s. And that time in life coincides with a sedentary shift a few years after college where you
a few years after college where you literally settle into the seat of your sedentary job. And so whereas an individual might be walking around across campus or back in the' 80s you, you know, cycling around on the BMX um or skateboarding in the' 9s. Now we're just sort of like this, right? This is the sport right now. Uh [laughter] um um that's the island pubetting. Right. We're double time on the pubmed. [snorts] Yeah. It it's it really just this co coinciding of the sedentary shift in life is really where you see inactivity, muscle disseuse and this in quotes, you know, secondary style sarcopenia that's driven by inactivity. And then people are just so distracted with the stresses and obligations of life and career that they drop the ball on nutrition as well. And so um there are definitely people who at 35 are I would say biologically older than healthy, well-trained, well-fed individuals double their age. So that's the reality of things and that's a good thing. And from from like an evolutionary perspective, how would you explain what's going on? I mean, we hear that phrase, use it or lose it, does it just not make sense to have a lot of muscle if you're not using it? Well, I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, having muscle was energetically expensive, energetically wasteful because if you're not using it, it muscle protein synthesis is a very energyintensive process. So, if you're not using the muscle, you'd have to go scavenging for more food just to preserve the muscle. And that didn't make any evolutionary sense. But of course, from an evolutionary standpoint, you didn't have your McDonald's and your
you didn't have your McDonald's and your Burger King and your your delies to go to. So, you had to scavenge for your food, which necessarily made you need to use the muscle for the most part. And I also did want to add on to what Allan said that it the and he described it very well, but you have to remember that there is a genetic and lifestyle component to sarcopenia. So some people if you have the Filipino genetics uh you can probably preserve more muscle over time. Um is that true? You have the Eastern European genetics, not so much. Um so I I got the short end of the straw there. Um but in all seriousness uh if you have good genetics to some extent you're no matter what if you're sedentary you're going to start losing it at some point but the onset is going to depend somewhat on your genetics and also somewhat on the extent of your activity with your sedenturism. So if you're highly sedentary it's going to make that more it's going to increase the likelihood that you start earlier and and cause greater loss as far as the quantity of muscle. And if you're gardening, if you're doing some, you know, general chores and getting out there, walking a lot, to some extent, it'll help to uh to prevent loss. I will say this, it's pretty clear that uh activities of daily living, even if you're quite active, you're still going to have sarcopenia. Really, resistance training is the only thing that really counteracts sarcopenia. I asked you this, Alan, I think a couple years ago, so maybe I'll throw it to Brad, but I imagine, and I've had this question from people in the community who sort of point to long lived populations and look at centinarians and in areas of the world where, you know, gyms aren't kind of pervasive and people are just really active in terms of like how they grow their food and or walking to and from work or to and from the grocery or um and they're not necessarily doing
and they're not necessarily doing dedicated resistance training. So if someone was thinking is resistance training really required or can I just be physically active in my daily life and point pointing to those centinarians. How would you explain that? Again it depends upon what the activity is. Resistance training is moving weights is basically using your muscles against a resistance. It doesn't necessarily have to be formal uh weight training, you know, using machines or or free weights. uh if you're just like I said if you're walking and there's some good compelling evidence on it that that I've seen that just general everyday living tasks now that's not in the you know going into the um Okinawa region or whatever but just in the studied populations that we have of um the US and Europe [snorts] [snorts] you will not see you will see some retention of muscle as opposed to people who are very sedentary but it's you still see sarcopenic changes that happen over time. It is um imperative now if you're a brick layer or something you're doing if your job is or UPS worker where you're carrying packages that is a form of resistance training and that can help again to reduce the effects of sarcopenia. So again this is on a continuum. It's not you're either well there is a definition for sarcopenia as far as two standard deviations of muscle from a healthy individual and a slow walking speed that is the medical definition and by the way sarcopenia is now a a medical condition. It is a you doctors can actually bill for treating sarcopenia. It has an ICD10 code as of like 10 years ago. [snorts] Um, but with that said, and again, I don't know how much you want to get into the variables here, but to truly achieve your best
here, but to truly achieve your best results, you're going to need to train relatively close to failure. UPS worker is not struggling to if he's struggling to pick up that package, he's not going to be working there much longer. Yeah. I want to get into the variables and what effective kind of optimal resistance training looks like. Certainly Certainly I want to add to Brad's comment about the genetic and environmental interplay of the development of sarcopenia. I think that individuals vary psychologically and just sort of their attitude towards keeping the fight going as they advance into 60, 70, 80 years old. Um, I've noticed that with a lot of folks north of 70, they kind of lose their give a damn. They, you know, there there's certain, um, there's almost this downshift in fire for training and pushing and pulling. And so, um, I think that the psychological state and the attitude in general towards getting after it and training is very different usually, uh, between folks in their, let's say, 30s to 50s or even 60s versus people 65ish and up, 70 and up. There tends to be the shift where people really do slow down psychologically, motivationally for the training aspect and doing what it takes to stave off sarcopenia. Do you think that's because people underestimate how important muscle is to their quality of life? I I think they there is the element of people's just simply not being aware. That's that's huge. Um, my wife started training her parents who were in their 80s and they certainly had no idea, you know, what the value would be for that in terms of getting rid of pain and restoring function. Um, it's pretty remarkable remarkable cuz I imagine a lot of people still see
cuz I imagine a lot of people still see resistance training as something for bodybuilders. Yes. There there is that attitude. Yeah. And when you know you you talk about people like the centinarians, the super centinarians, they they do a lot of yard work and housework still. And so there's a bunch of pushing, pulling, and squatting going on through the course of the day, course of the week, and and walking of course up and down hills. And so, uh, the major muscle groups get stimulated to a different degree than somebody, let's say, living in the suburbs. I also wonder if there's a kind of sneaky component to this where you know usually people I guess through 30s 40s 50s are gaining that little bit of body fat and maybe at that time of your life particular if you're looking at scale weight it's not clear that you're losing a lot of muscle right unfortunately. Yeah. So um whereas you know the the holy grail would be to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. So with the aging process it's just the opposite and with the gain of fat tissue you get the gain of these inflammatory uh atypocines that can inhibit in in turn inhibit the muscle anabolic processes and then there is this birectional negative uh outcome of this reverse recomp or sarcopenic obesity development with people staying relatively the same weight in some cases. So, and I'd also like to mention too when it comes to like the blue zones and I've not seen research on it and maybe it exists as to the extent of the psychopenic changes in those individuals but looking purely from a mortality standpoint to me is misguided that it's quality of life to me becomes as or certainly more important uh in all facets but particularly in aging. So you can live. We we were able to keep people living longer. Just genetic factors can people
longer. Just genetic factors can people can live. But it how they're living is of course of paramount importance. And if you're if you need to be physically dependent on others to carry out tasks while you're living, how much is that really living? Which reminds me of some of the animal studies looking at calorie restriction where they extend lifespan. And then the same question arises as to if those animals were out in the wild and in the environment, what would their quality of life look like? Yeah. The animal the the whole caloric restriction thing with aging. We can break it down really simply to that caloric restriction extends longevity to the degree that it brings an individual to a healthy body composition. So caloric restriction beyond that you begin to cross this line of diminishing returns where you see lean body mass compromise and then functional compromise. And so it's there's nothing inherently beneficial about caloric restriction. There's nothing inherently beneficial about for example extending fasts. Um if it reduces body fat uh to a healthy degree then great it's working. But you can't take a normal weight or certainly a lean or an athletic active person and figure, oh, we're just going to caloric restrict so we can increase longevity. It doesn't work that way. Obviously, right now, GLP1 agonists are very, very topical. And clearly, um, a lot of chronic disease burden in America is driven by excessive body fat. And so it makes sense that JLP1 agonists have um you know entered the conversation and are pretty heavily prescribed now. I think 30 plus million Americans are on a GLP1 agonist. Um, do you have any any concerns with regards to people using those medications and losing a lot of weight
medications and losing a lot of weight if [snorts] they're not also thinking about what we've been talking about so far, which is the importance of muscle and protecting protecting their muscle quantity and quality? It's not emphasized enough that the reduction of uh appetite or sometimes in a lot of cases a near elimination of of appetite and cravings is going to result in just obviously re reduced food calorie nutrient intake and then the subsequent losses in muscle tissue, lean body mass in general. Um you know there there is a joke about semiglutide giving you like semi glutes, right? because there's people forget to train, people forget to eat, and especially in athletic communities where like, for example, there's a lot of anecdotes in um CrossFit communities where people get on a a GLP-1 drug and it's fantastic for the fat loss and the appetite cutting aspect, but then again, they actually forget to eat and then they forget to fuel properly and then they can't necessarily train to the capacity that they would have if they had remembered to eat and fuel. So there is a lot of caution involved with that. I I sidetracked myself with thinking about semi semiglutide being semiglutes but um yes to to your your previous question about the relative uh urgency of fat loss versus muscle gain. I know you loaded that question with, you know, 45 caliber hollow point, but yes, they're both important and um I think that there there are ways to sort of individualize the situation to see who needs one versus the other more. I think at the population level we can build the case that um the the global obesity prevalence is headed towards 25ish%. The obesity prevalence in the United States
obesity prevalence in the United States is a little over 42 or 43%. With no difference between no significant difference between the sexes and so that is an urgent catastrophic problem. Right. True. But if people understand the relationship between muscle preservation and health and as it ties into fat loss, well then they've kind of figured out the whole thing. Um there's some really interesting research. I think it was a 2018 2017 study by a guy named Clark where he took a cohort of uh obese individuals individuals and and super interesting study never been replicated. It's a two-year study. Put them on a periodized progressive resistance training program. And he put them on a diet that was a maximum of 100 grams of carbohydrates a day. And he put them on a total caloric intake, which was roughly their RMR, their resting energy expenditure. And that was their assignment. Another part of their assignment was okay, you are going to focus on increases in strength performance with this progressive resistance training program and you're also going to um increase endurance performance with this cardiorespiratory program. And you specifically are not to focus on body weight. You are specifically not to weigh yourself. Now, there's a bunch of consistent research showing daily weighing is beneficial for weight loss and weight loss maintenance. But with this particular study, with this particular assignment, they lost a little over a third of their body weight in the 2-year period just by focusing on training performance. So, um it's really interesting to me that this study or some variant of it has not been redone since Clark did it. Yeah. I'd also say there's the classic uh fat but fit research which shows that
uh fat but fit research which shows that those who are overweight and even obese and are fit more fit are actually healthier have better health related markers than those who are thin or normal weight but unfit not and again fitness has multiple connotations so it's not just resistance training but you [snorts] know there's obviously aerobic capacity and other factors but certainly I would say fitness per se. If you had to pick, you shouldn't have to pick one. It is a false dichotomy. So, if you're both leaner and and more fit, that's going to be the best. But, uh even if you are overweight, just getting into the gym and and getting fit and particularly I am somewhat biased as a exercise um strength related researcher, but resistance training to me is the uh most important thing you can do. I certainly not disparaging. I think aerobic exercise is extremely important. As I've gotten older, I've uh become more and more a believer in the importance, but I think that if and you shouldn't have to choose one, but certainly resistance training is indispensable and it gives you a lot of the benefits that aerobic training does by itself. For sure. You don't want to downplay resistance training. You're going to end up surrendering your brokard. Very true. Yeah. I just had uh um Dr. Robert Eckle on the show who's a and endocrinologist and scientist that's interested in obesity and he was talking about exactly what you just spoke to this kind of idea of metabolically healthy obesity particularly in some individuals who seem to be quite active and they're actually looking at redefining obesity as preclinical obesity and clinical obesity kind of based on this in that some people with excessive ataposity seem seem to not be getting the the same metabolic consequences as as others, which is interesting. Um, at a high
which is interesting. Um, at a high level, if we think come back to like the the problems we're talking about here for the American population is excessive body fat and being undermuscled. That's what I'm hearing. And and some combination of both. Would it be fair to say that in terms of the lifestyle elements that are driving those problems, excessive body fat is largely driven by nutrition and being undermusled, if you look at the average American diets today, is largely driven by being sedentary and not doing resistance training. That's fair. I'd say I'd agree with that. Yeah. I mean there there's some nuance to that but the big picture. Yeah. Right. So you look at resistance training though not necessarily as the big lever to lose body fat but more as a lever to improve your muscle. Correct. And it's very easy to outeat your exercise. Uh it's very hard to out exercise overeating uh because ultimately it comes down to calories in calories out energy and energy out as to whether losing body mass per se. Now the what tissues you're losing of course will somewhat depend on the uh your activity levels but yeah I mean if you're you do an hour of running you'll burn 600 calories. That's like a bag of potato chips. So it's pretty hard to uh for mo most people food is just so there's an overabundance of food in our society. So so available and just people like they the snacks they just take food. It's without even thinking most people it's just offered everywhere. It's as opposed to you talk evolution from an evolutionary standpoint where it was very difficult to to get food. Uh it's uh so important to focus on from a fat loss perspective, focus on nutrition. You see people that at the beginning of the year, I'm just going to
beginning of the year, I'm just going to exercise and that's going to take care of everything and it certainly will help. I'm not certainly putting down that it's not a component, but uh the most important factor there is your nutritional intake, which is where the the GLP1 agonist seem to be effective in in an environment where there's a lot of hyper palatable foods and a ton of food noise. It it makes sense to me why people are getting the results they're getting on those drugs. Practically speaking, I think for the general population who is still interested in building muscle, a practical minimum is possibly three protein richch meals a day. And then you can just kind of optimize up from there. You can use Brad and my model if you're a bodybuilder to where you do a minimum of four protein feedings a day. That's somewhere between the 04 to 0. 55 g per kilogram of body weight per meal in terms of protein content, which would translate to roughly 30 to 50ish grams of protein depending on your body size. I'm hugely selective about the supplements that I put into my body because the supplement industry is a low trust category where companies don't really have someone watching over their shoulders keeping them accountable. That's exactly why I partnered with Momentous. They weren't satisfied with the industry standard. So, they built the Momentous standard, their own commitment to doing things the right way, not the easy way. Every single Momentous product is independently certified by NSF for sport or informed sport, meaning that it's tested for contaminants, for heavy metals, and banned substances and verified for label accuracy. So, you always know exactly what you're putting into your body. That level of testing and transparency is why Momentous has earned my trust in what is a low trust category. Two of the five supplements that I take every single day are made by Momentous. their plant-based protein powder and their Creapure creatine monohydrate. Right now, Momentus is offering our listeners here at the Proof up to 35% off your first order with the promo code the proof.
order with the promo code the proof. Head to live momentous. com and use code the proof for up to 35% off your first order. Just before somebody dings me on the uh the idea that in younger subjects muscle protein synthesis is maximal at 20 to 25ish grams. I'm aware of uh the uh Mcnotton at all study uh where they compared 20 g versus 40 g in the post exercise state with a high volume of sets where 40 grams of protein post exercise outperformed the the 20 gram by about 20%. And then of course trauma in it all comes in um couple couple years ago where he compares 25 grams of protein with a 100 grams of protein post exercise. This is milk protein. Unfortunately uh um this study is missing an intermediate dose which probably would have been super potentially been superior to that 25 or and not superior to the 100 gram. So So yeah, I I was thinking about that and um I wanted to mention that before I totally forgot to pick back up on it. Yeah. And what's what's the main takeaway from that that you want to leave? Sure. The the main takeaway from that is Brad and I were right in our 2018 paper. Man, [laughter] I'll piggyback on uh on his comment that we have a paper I collaborated on a paper with a group in Portugal uh that's hopefully final stages of of review. We actually have a pre-print out on this, but we looked at muscle protein synthesis in plant uh plant proteins versus animal-based proteins. And there was some nuances to it because plant proteins, there was combinations of different plant proteins. But the really interesting finding overall was that it really did not make much difference in the younger individuals, plant versus animal, but it did in the older individuals. And uh our hypothesis, you know, what we or explanatory rationale
know, what we or explanatory rationale was that the lucine threshold comes into play and there's evidence of this that in younger individuals lucine threshold really isn't as important. Uh the and Allan talked about 20 grams. might be that leucine as a trigger might not even be as important as long as you're getting some that you don't need a higher dose that for some for whatever reason in older individuals who are anabolically resistant that there may be this need for this really higher dose may be over as Allen said 3540 grams and in that um of total pro of I'm sorry it would be four grams uh but like a 40 gram dose of protein or more to me The interesting takeaway is is that uh plant-based proteins might have to be supplemented with leucine or you might need more uh better blend to to really get your lucine hit your lucine threshold threshold or just stack even more total daily protein. Exactly. Which is difficult for older individuals individuals which is not necessarily an efficient way to Yeah. Older individuals tend to have more difficulty with getting food in. Lower satiety. Oatite as well as the taste sens sensation tends to diminish as you get older. I was going to bring this up later um because I saw that paper of yours, but let's let's hit it now. Um Um so I I have a few questions on that and mostly because this was an area where recently recently I had Dr. Luke Vanlon on the show and great researcher. Some of the things he shared with me kind of changed my perspective a bit. So, let me throw this at you and see what you think, if I'm thinking about this the right way or not. So, um, he ran a a study, I think, uh, 2025, and they were looking at daily muscle protein synthesis. So, maybe we can double back to to what you were talking about and if that was daily or after a meal and what the difference is. And
meal and what the difference is. And they compared a vegan to an omnivorous diet. Not sure if you've seen this this study. um it was relatively new so I don't expect you to kind of have the results handy but they were looking at 1. 2 g of protein per kilogram and these subjects were 72 years old and they did like a 10day crossover looking at eating an omnivorous diet and then a a vegan diet. There was no resistance training in this study and they were looking at daily muscle protein synthesis and in in that diet where they gave the subjects the food so they know exactly how much protein they're getting. they didn't see a difference in daily muscle protein synthesis and then interestingly they extended that study and this [snorts] is about to be published so I will put a caveat here and say got to go through peer reviewed got has to go through that process so we'll come back to that but I just wanted to throw out what he shared with me and and see what you thought so they they ran that study and had subjects prepare their own food, right? Trying to target these protein levels. What do you think happened though? When they were doing the vegan diet, they ate less calories and less protein. And subjects had less muscle protein synthesis and and the muscle size was actually uh reduced compared to the omnivorous phase. But what was interesting was that if the subjects were doing resistance training, it didn't seem to make a significant difference between the two groups. So my question, I guess, um, and I realize I just threw a lot at you at once. So, um, feel free to comment on what part of that you you want to, but my question is, how much do those differences, I guess, in the animal
differences, I guess, in the animal versus plant protein matter if if the right resistance training stimulus is there? I just saw a study where older subjects, not exactly sure the age bracket, but older adults were supplemented with two 50 gram doses of protein, high quality protein on top of their habitual intake. So you're supplementing the diet with 100 grams of protein. So it almost doesn't really matter how low your habitual was. you're you're definitely there with it didn't do anything to increase uh lean body mass because there was no resistance training program. So the lever of resistance training is far stronger than than protein effects for sure. And so um [clears throat] I wanted to add that what what did you see in your study Brad? Well, ours was a MA and uh so you know that's not necessarily indicative the muscle protein synthetic response is a one out. So you it's an acute study. So you don't can't necessarily we we can infer it's hypothesis generating but really Luke's study I'm interested in seeing that you can't necessarily extrapolate that into long-term gains. If you're asking me my opinion, I see no reason as long as you're you have a good mix of plant-based proteins. If you're hitting your target, which is again, if you're talking about optimization, probably 1. 6 to 2. 0 gram somewhere in that realm, but even, you know, 1. 4 in that population. So, if we're not talking a bodybuilding population that's looking to maximize every gram of muscle they gain, I [snorts] just don't think it's going to make much difference between plant and animal. But there's different couple different pieces of literature we can point to. I mean, Nunes Nunez Nunez Nunes at all did
mean, Nunes Nunez Nunez Nunes at all did a a recent meta analysis, well done meta analysis. They I mean they didn't sub analyze like like we did with trained and un untrained subjects but um they found this this cutoff um at about 1. 59 g per kilogram of body weight uh being helpful to um the range of uh adults up to the older adults. Whereas they didn't see anything from the 1. 6 and up with older adults. But the authors also conceded that, hey, there's basically no research on older adults consuming 1. 6 g per kilogram and up. And so I would speculate that in certain metabolically compromised states like sustained hypocchloric conditions, older folks on plant-based diets diets can benefit from the 1. 6 and up. uh just like they you know the younger younger um folks were seen to benefit from 1. 6ish grams per kilogram of body weight in first Heavia Lraine and colleagues and then Montene and colleagues. So the these were two studies that pitted complete plant-based versus omnivorous diets. the only two of their kind with resistance trainees and they didn't see any differences between groups in terms of size and strength gain over I believe 12week period on uh both of those studies 10 or 12. So when we're thinking about about optimizing protein intake and you mentioned like 1. 6 g per per kilogram from all of the available research do we know if 1. 6 g per kilogram is significantly better than say 1. 2 two grams per kilogram where a lot of people probably naturally fall or is it only clear that 1. 6 grams per kilogram is significantly better than
kilogram is significantly better than the RDA of8 g per kilogram. So I think the first thing that I want to point out is the use of the term significantly because that gets kind of bastardized when we talk about this. Usually when people talk about significantly greater, they're talking from a statistical standpoint, which is really, and again, I don't want to bore everyone to death with statistical uh jargon, but it comes down to a p value. It's a probability value. It's not about a magnitude of effect. People when we usually use the word significant, you think, wow, that's a big effect. You can talk about statistically significant and the magnitude of effect can be small. Again, from my reading of the literature, it's a continuum. So, it's not the we shouldn't use these binary cutoffs. 1. 2 what about 1. 3? What about 1. 4? So, as you start getting lower, uh you will start to see some reduction in the gains that people experience. You know, at what point is that going to be practically meaningful? Again, I think this is where an interaction between lifestyle factors, genetic factors plays into it. And it's hard to to give an exact. people want these cut offs. I certainly would say if you're at the RDA, you're going to substantially and this from a I think most people would practically meaning consider it practically meaningfully reduce the um effects the magnitude of effect that you achieve. So you'd say the the floor of that range of where you would want like the lowest protein intake to be would would be around 1. 2 gram per kilogram. I mean, if you want to maximal maybe. Yeah. I mean, if you want to maximize gains, 1. 6, I think, is the good target for the most individuals. And there's going to be variability when you it's not like everyone has the exact same target anyway because these are averages that we derive that that provide guidelines. But, uh, you know, again, genetics and other factors are going to enter into that. But, as you start, I would just say shoot for that. And if you're less, at some point you
And if you're less, at some point you start to compromise gains. 1. 5, how much? I don't think that would practically meaningfully for most people. If you're a bodybuilder, I think that might be practically meaningful for many. But for the context of the person who is wanting to avoid psychopenia and the consequences that we were talking about earlier. Oh, it's true. So 1. 2 is generally kind of the the floor. That's generally what the safe minimum minimum um in our meta analysis in 2018 with Morton that was roughly the um average intake of the subjects in in aggregate before protein supplementation. So protein supplementation took them up to 1. 5ish 1. 6 and some beyond that. And so, um, there was some benefit, some concrete benefit to bringing protein up from the 1. 1 1. 2ish up to the 1. 6ish point. And then there was, you know, little bits of outlying benefits above and beyond that in ukuoric or caloric balance conditions. Now we have to consider that there are going to be some older folks who engage sustained hypoc caloric conditions with resistance training as normal weight to lean individuals. And so there was a 2014 systematic review and meta analysis by Eric Helms who found that um a dosage of 2. 3 to 3. 1 g per kilogram of fat-free mass mass maximized the retention of lean mass. in this particular population who potentially niche but we're talking lean resistance trained individuals in dieting or hypocchloric conditions. So you know here we are um in 2025 and
you know here we are um in 2025 and Ruffalo and colleagues added a whole lot more data to Helm's original systematic review. So whereas Helms looked at six studies, Ruffalo collected 29 studies and did this meta regression and found that okay so they came up with with two figures. So on a total body weight on a grams per total body weight basis protein dosing that maximally preserved lean mass in lean resistance trainee and hypocchloric conditions was 1. 9 to 3. 2 gram per kilogram of body weight. So that is very similar to Helms at all if you were to kind of ballpark that into into um you know fat free mass. But now here's the the really trippy thing. Fat the fat free mass figures are a lot more dramatic um in Reffo's systematic review than than Helms. So whereas Helms saw 2. 3 to 3. 1 gram per kilo of fat-free mass having the greatest effect on lean mass preservation, Refo at all saw 2. 5 to 4. 2 g per kilogram of fat-free mass having the greatest effect on lean mass retention in resistance trainee who are lean and hypocalic. So, [sighs] you know, the moral of the story is we've got the general population who may or may not be in a sustained caloric deficit, who may not may or may not be leaned and resistance trained, who will mostly get along well with the 1. 2 g per kilogram of body weight. And then we've got athletic populations sustaining hypocchloric conditions who can benefit from not only 1. 6 six g per per kilogram of body weight but potentially a whole lot more than that even double that per
lot more than that even double that per Ruffalo Edal's latest um systematic review in meta regression. So when you say of body weight how should people run that calculation their total body weight or their lean mass? Good point. So we can relay the figures that directly relate to lean mass, but I think it's a lot more practical to just look at the total body weight figures. So, um I think that if people people base their protein needs on ideal body weight or even target or goal body weight, they'll come a lot closer to the targets that were or or the uh values that were arrived at in research where we're looking at normal weight individuals. So, how does someone let's say someone's listening right now and wondering how to apply that to themselves? Yeah. So if to themselves, so if somebody is happy with their current body weight, then they would look at 1. 6 g per kilogram of total body weight as the sweet spot. And if somebody is severely overweight or underweight, then they would either, you know, estimate lean mass and apply some of those figures that we talked about. Or they would simply estimate ideal body weight or look at their goal body weight and base protein intakes on that as a proxy for um lean mass-based protein targets. Yeah, the um muscle protein synthetic uh data that we have is generally based on lean when we're talking younger individuals, lean younger individuals, which is somewhere between like 12 to 15% body fat in men and 20 to 24% body fat in women. Uh so that's where we're basing it on body weight. So you'd have to say if I was going to be what you figure out what your what you would be at 12% body fat what your weight would be. Certainly if you weigh [snorts] if you're 50 lb overweight you're not going to the extra protein based on that
to the extra protein based on that weight is not going to help you build muscle. So if you're someone that's let's say 300 lb and you are on a GLP1 agonist, how is that person going to calculate the amount of protein? You know, there's ways to calculate ideal body weight that dieticians have used since the beginning, but those spit out some really brutally low numbers. Um, so you would just base it on your target or goal body weight, right? Yeah. How much protein do you usually look for if you're having a protein bar? Oh my goodness. I do protein bars as just full-blown emergency foods. Me, too. So, I I really don't care. I'm um I get like disappointed if it's like a lot lower than 15 grams, but I look for 30 usually, [laughter] but yeah, I I don't really care about it. the um Allan and Brad uh not made it but it was a review [snorts] for uh four meals a day hitting at least uh4 uh4 to to point4 to 0. 55 gram has that research has that kind of stood the test of time do you still think even distributions of protein throughout the day could be if you're a bodybuilder yeah for the gen pot like I tell people this is my view I don't know about Alenbo people in the general public just hit your daily protein. You can I mean it's pretty clear too with the uh intermittent fasting research that um there's not much difference. I mean so I mean yeah if you're a bodybuilder I think that's where you micromanage and it becomes more and more important. So again these are on spectrums. Allan had a great um table that he made for nutrient timing like what's when it's unimportant. It's not necessarily one answer you can give. So, in certain populations, I don't know if you agree with that, but Yeah, I I do. And and there's some key
Yeah, I I do. And and there's some key research we can point to as well. So, yes, are we on now or Oh, we're back rolling. This is how [laughter] we do it, Brad. It's It's 24 / 7, man. Hopefully, you just cut that out there. [laughter] [laughter] This is the good stuff. So yeah, in 2020, Yasuda and Collie compared two versus three protein feedings a day in um basically untrained subjects, but they put them through a resistance training program. And they found that the the three a day, the three doses a day outperformed the the two protein feedings a day for muscle size and strength gains. And I believe it was like a 12weekish. Um that was in 2020. So, fast forward to and we finally got the three versus five by Tavvarez and colleagues in resistance trained subjects finding no significant difference between groups in muscle size and strength gains regardless of whether they had three protein richch meals or five protein richch meals. And so, you know, um we're we're sort of back to this this uh question of, you know, who are we looking at? Who are we trying to optimize for? Um there are some nitpicks I can make with the Tavvarz study because even the the even the three protein feeding a day group, they still had five meals, but two of the meals were low protein, right? They didn't do straight three freaking meals a day versus five meals a day with with the different protein spreads. So, um, practically speaking, I think for the general population who is still interested in building muscle, a practical minimum would is possibly three meals, three protein richch meals a day. And then you can just kind of optimize up from there. If you can use Brad in my model, if you're a bodybuilder to where you do a minimum of
bodybuilder to where you do a minimum of four protein feedings a day, that's somewhere between the point4 to 0. 55 g per kilogram of body weight per meal in terms of protein content, which would um translate to roughly 30 to 50ish grams of protein depending on your body size. What about this idea that if you don't eat enough protein in a single meal, you won't turn on this process of of muscle protein synthesis? Is that an oversimplification? And does that depend on whether someone's been fasted or fed before that? Yeah. Um sort of this uh the muscle full effect. Yeah. Um which can happen with supposedly an overabundance of feedings as well. So, um, yeah, that would be more of the muscle full effect. In in theory, if somebody consumed all of their protein in one or two meals, they won't get the same degree of muscle protein synthesis as if they consumed it in like, let's say, three to five meals. Um we have acute research um looking at that by I think it's Aretta uh Jose Aretta and colleagues where they compared uh two 40 gram doses versus um uh four 20 gram doses versus 8 10 g doses. That's right. And the the four 20 gram doses did best. But then again, you're looking at a design that's not necessarily externally valid. You you're looking at isolated protein doses. You're looking at kind of a low overall protein dose. And so it it it's tough to say. You just basically have to connect the dots. And if you want to hedge your bets in the direction of possibly optimal, you you really do want to have more than let's say one or two protein protein in terms of what's meaningful to the average listener again who is wanting to prevent psychopenia as they age
prevent psychopenia as they age and supplement the resistance training which we're going to get into. Kind of three three meals a day where you have a good amount of protein in each of those meals is probably going to get you there. So that that was going to be my point is that we can look at optimal and again when we look at studies you look at statistical significance but to me the most important thing certainly for the gen pop is practical meaningfulness and Allan brought this up before but by far resistance training is the primary driver and you will get with even with suboptimal protein doses you'll still get resistance training gains then then the question becomes well how much are you actually losing losing out on as far as the gains in strength and and muscle. And by the way, the gains in muscle are strength tends to be less affected by pro. It certainly is affected still because of the relationship primarily between muscle and strength. But um I would say that uh for most people it's total daily. If you're getting your total daily protein, even if you get it, it's going to be pretty hard to get it in one meal. But uh I I think that would be not the greatest. I'm not saying that would be a good way to go about it, but I don't think you'd see the vast majority of people who were just looking to gain some muscle and and be healthy that it would have practically meaningful differences. We see this again. Uh the intermittent fasting studies are really quite compelling. We've had a bunch of them now. So a six Grant Tinsley research. Yeah. I mean he's doing uh was it the 61 18 uh so six hours fed 18 hours fasted and you just don't see much difference in uh in muscle development between the two groups. So and there's again been multiple studies here. So I I'm just I I think we need to go beyond just looking at is it significant statistically significant or not and trying to tease out you know how much are they actually gaining on the uh on these regimens and
gaining on the uh on these regimens and in my opinion I think where it starts to become the real importance from a practically meaningful standpoint is for people who want to be maximally jacked you know like Allen yeah [laughter] you know Grant Tinsley's work it really influenced my my view of the whole protein distribution situation um and [clears throat] really sort of reinforced for me the hierarchy of importance. So if you get first tier of importance over here total daily protein then the distribution of those con the constituent doses of the total [sighs] oo very distantly secondary importance whereas like distribution or protein source quality of the protein source becomes more and more important the lower your protein intake is that's the more suboptimal. So yeah, which brings us back to we kind of started this with Luke Vanlon's research and we we've had a great conversation about protein now. Um, but one of the points that I really wanted to make to listeners of this show is if they're if they are eating a plant-based diet and they are in say' 60s,' 7s, and 80s when satiety can go down there there is a kind of greater degree of intentionality that's that's needed because of the satiety inducing effects of a plant-based diet. And with that that you're more likely to underconume both total calories and protein which then has could have that negative effect that we're saying we're talking about particularly if you're not coupling that with resistance training. Would that be fair? That's that's fair. Um I keep going back to the those two studies that compared vegans versus omnivores resistance trainees. But I also have to concede that look those studies involved protein powder supplementation. So one of them was um heavy aleran at all. They they boosted
heavy aleran at all. They they boosted the subject's protein intake with soy protein. And the other group had whey protein I think. So they both had like a supplement. Yeah. So that it it's not necessarily going to have a ton more fiber necessarily in that group. So in a scenario where you're not necessarily depending on protein powder then yeah um satiety could be a barrier to getting in quotes optimal. Yeah I think that's that's where I was going with intentionality. I think if you're if we're talking about up at 1. 3 1. 6 g of protein per kilogram a protein isolate which I don't think is a bad thing is going to make it a lot easier to get there for sure for most people. Yeah. particularly older individuals again the satiety aspect and also again your taste the reduction diminishing taste sensations um you can drink food and it's [clears throat] much easier to go down it didn't um Greg put uh say that it's straight to the muscle just no digestion [laughter] digestion digestion Greg oh man yeah the late great Greg we had some fun times times with him at the uh Body Power Expo. Yeah. Uh we hung out, we we ate and well we drank at at that point. But uh yeah, stories for another day. Speaking of of bodybuilders, [snorts] before we close the loop here, tie the bow on on all things protein. What about the idea of the anabolic window? So, we spoke about distribution distribution, but like what about slamming that protein shake straight after you do your resistance training? Um, is there any merit to that? I think you and I spoke about this and it seemed to to have a lot to do with whether someone was fed or not before. Oh, yeah. [laughter] So, perhaps we can refresh everyone on that. And then again, is this even important for the everyday person?
important for the everyday person? Okay. I'll I'll try to do the elevator pitch version of that. So in the anabolic window hypothesis has its origins in glycogen restocking studies back in the um late 80s. Um and so it was uh John Ivy and Robert Portman who started looking at differences in um well first glycogen restocking with with immediately administered versus delayed ingestion of carbohydrate after an overnight fast, after a glycogen depletion protocol, which is 90 to 120 minutes of moderate highintensity tapping out glycogen in the quads. So, yeah. Well, duh. There there is an anabolic window for glycogen restocking. If you're going to look at the hours post exercise, if you delay, then you know, you're going to be potentially significantly screwed by, you know, the 8-ish hour point if you have another event to engage in endurance - wise if you did not take advantage of the anabolic window. So, that concept sort of got superimposed on the Okay, what about protein timing post exercise? What about protein timing plus carbohydrate post exercise? How was you on that for a second? Oh, yeah. So in that research, if you didn't consume carbohydrates quickly enough after exercise, you weren't able to get enough glucose stored in muscle before your next event. Correct. So for endurance athletes who have this multi-stage event, then you absolutely have an post exercise anabolic window to restock muscle glycogen. And how long is that window? Oh, you know, um, Genens and, uh, as Asker Juken, they they basically said, look, if you have less than eight hours between events, between glycogen depleting events, then you better
depleting events, then you better consume um, post exercise carbohydrate ASAP, and then you better consume it to the order of 1 to 1. 2 two grams per kilogram of body weight per hour until you're restocked at like third or fourth hour and then you're ready to go by the time the next event comes through. So that was the post exercise anabolic window for carbohydrate. And so John Ivy and Robert Portman figured, hey, what about muscle building? And so they compared immediately ingested proteins and amino acids and / or carbohydrate co-ingested post exercise immediately versus delayed. And sure enough, you saw greater muscle protein synthesis with the sooner consumed protein and carbohydrates versus the delayed stuff. Um, now the thing, okay, this is a little bit of a rabbit hole here, but they used some pretty low doses of protein and amino acids in these earlier studies. And so, um, okay, so we'll we'll set that little tidbit aside for a second. So what happened after that in the decades following was longitudinal studies in other words studies that spanned beyond the acute phase of just a few hours post exercise. We're looking at weeks and months of of training and their uh results on muscle size and strength gain. So we can either look at muscle protein synthesis in the short term or we can look at gains and muscle hypertrophy actual gains in muscle size and strength in the longer term. So these longerterm studies didn't necessarily bear out the anabolic window hypothesis, especially when total daily protein intake was about 1. 6 1. 7 and up. And Brad and I did a a metaanalysis on this in 2013 where we it included like
this in 2013 where we it included like 13ish studies where we found uh no meaningful difference between the protein timed conditions versus protein neglect conditions, you know, pre and or post exercise as long as total daily protein was around 1. 6 1. 7 g per kilogram of body weight. And then after that, that that got a bunch of people mad because the anabolic window didn't necessarily exist. But Brad and I, we we proposed and we did a narrative review before we did that metaanalysis. And in our narrative review, we said, look, why is everybody looking at the time of ingestion post exercise when really it's all about optimizing the timing of availability of nutrients in blood circulation? And so there's a certain time course that you have to consider after you consume even quickly digested protein like a 40 gram dose of uh whey for example will take 45ish minutes to peak in the blood. And so we thought hey like if there's this anabolic window situation that's immediately post exercise. Why don't we test it out? And so we we ran this randomized control trial where we compared immediate pre-ex exercise protein feeding 25 grams a way versus immediate post exercise feeding 25 g of weight. And so if there was in fact some sort of immediate post exercise anabolic window which is defined as like 30 to 60 minutes post exercise, you got to have your fast digesting protein and carbs. then we we might see it with this particular comparison. So we did not see that there there was no significant difference in muscle size and strength gains regardless of whether you consume protein immediately post exercise or immediately pre-ex exercise. And and by the way there's acute research looking at the muscle protein synthetic effect of protein by itself versus protein consumed with carbohydrate.
carbohydrate. And so that remember I said, "Okay, let's put that aside for a second." Okay, so I'm gonna grab that piece. And when you consume about 20 to 25 grams of protein or more, doesn't matter how much carbohydrate you add to it because pro muscle protein synthesis pretty much plateaus at that point regardless of of carbs co-ingested with it. Now, some of the nerdier people will say, "Yeah, well, more carbs equals less muscle protein breakdown." Okay, maybe possibly. But this has been compared by Jua Holmi in 2015 where he looked at a 30 g dose of whey protein post exercise versus whey plus maltodextrin post exercise. And they carried that out for a number of weeks and they found no significant differences between groups in terms of muscle size and strength gain. And so we're we're slowly just kind of like the the anabolic window theory really is kind of falling apart as the the years go by. And then finally uh in 20 I believe it was 2023 or 2024 uh gentleman uh named Yasin Lockach he did kind of a replication of of me and Brad's pre versus post exercise study except instead of um instead of the protein neglect period being being two hours he he stretched out to three hours. So he compared a protein timed group with protein immediately pre and post versus a protein neglect group where the the where the lag was 3 hours pre and 3 hours post. No significant difference between groups in muscle size and strength gain as long as total daily protein was optimal which he did make it optimal like around 2 g per kilogram of body weight.
body weight. So this whole post exercise anabolic window concept was was great. I mean and it's still look if you want to consume protein post exercise go for it. It's an opportunity to feed. It's there's no downside to it and it can serve as one of your protein [clears throat] dosings that you could potentially optimize this distribution of protein intake through the day if your main goal is muscle mass gain. But the timing of protein appears to be highly, like I said, distant secondary concern. If you're already getting total daily protein, so people who are really kind of uh stressing out over protein timing, it's a whole lot of a do about about nothing. Yeah. I think again what I'm hearing is and you you stepped it out in terms of your priorities is that if you get total protein right then a lot of these other things kind of fade away in terms of their importance whether it's distribution or proximity to a workout or protein source. If I can add some nuance just from my own personal perspective. So in the maid analysis that Allan and I and James Kger had carried out, [snorts] as Allen pointed out, there was no statistically significant differences once protein was equated for a total daily protein intake. But if you did look, there's something called a forest plot where you get a zero line where there's no effect and then everything to the right it favors protein timing. Everything to the left favors no protein timing. The interesting thing was all of the studies showed a very it's small but there was no study that showed a benefit to nonproin timing and for me I think just in extrapolating it further for the gen pop I mean the effect size was something like 0. 16 which is a very weak standard devi you know standard mean difference
devi you know standard mean difference um but so for the gen pop I don't think it really makes any practical meaningful differences if I'm coaching a bodybuilder. That small effect may This is where to me the practically meaningful aspect comes into play as opposed to the quote unquote statistical significance. I do recommend when I've done this, hey, it's not going to hurt you and it may I I qualify. We don't need a study isn't going to tell you this, but there's the possibility that it may give you a slight edge. So yeah, I think again the hierarchy for the gem pot for probably the vast majority of your audience is not going to mean anything. And then thinking again about that that total protein number, it sounds like both of you lean more towards that 1. 6 kind of g per kilogram of ideal body weight. I've spoken with Stuart Phillips. I think he [gasps and sighs] tends to think that 1. 2 two grams per kilogram is is probably enough. Is that are you guys leaning more to 1. 6 just to be sure? Again, well, again, I think it depends upon what your idea of practical meaningfulness is. I think we have enough data that I think uh you can get better gains. Whether they're practically meaningful between 1. 2 and 1. 6 is really going to be dependent on the person to some extent. I will say this, if I'm coaching a bodybuilder, there's no way in heck I'm telling them to take 1. 2 grams. And certainly it's not going to hurt you to take uh the higher amount and potentially even somewhat more and it might hurt you from a practical meaningful. I've I've argued a lot with Stu about this and um he finally conceded that look maybe 1. 6 and up or certainly beyond 1. 6. That's what we were arguing about. We basically were we were agreed on this sort of plateau at 1. 6 six, but I got him to concede that in hypoc
but I got him to concede that in hypoc caloric conditions or or in caloric deficit, sustained caloric deficit conditions, possibly more than 1. 6 could benefit athletic populations. So, I'll add to Allen's point there. We uh it should be published imminently, but I collaborated with a group out of Germany on a study that's in its final fingers crossed uh final stage of peer review. And um we had three groups. These were resistance trained young resistance trained individuals in a caloric deficit. They were and this were they were coached um was a four-week study. So it was relatively short term but they were nutritionally coached every week. They were getting their uh diets reviewed etc. And one group got 1. 6 another group got 2. 4 and another group got 3. 2 gram per kilogram. And the uh 2. 4 4 and there was no difference between 2. 4 know very similar results 2. 4 and 3. 2 but 2. 4 and 3. 2 had greater preservation of lean mass than the 1. 6 did and so the 1. 6 I believe lost a kilogram a little over a kilogram where which would be 2. 2 to and they were doing resistance training. These were yeah they had a regimented [clears throat] resistance training program whereas the other two lost a fraction of that like point less than half a pound I think it was like 02 or. 3 kg that's great because that's a direct comparison study correct that would square with the meta regression that Ruffalo just did and it would also square with you know um Eric Helms's 2020 2014 uh systematic review and so I think you know in the conversation of you know appropriate or optimal protein dosing we have to ask who's the population we're looking at what kind of state of energy balance right right and again these are short-term I think another important point these are short-term studies so what would happen
short-term studies so what would happen if we extended that and people are taking 1. 6 versus 2. 2 versus whatever 1 2 versus 1. 6 six over longer periods of time, how would that continue to show discrepancies where that would widen the effects of muscle gain or would it somehow regress where there would be a regression to the mean? We can't say. I'd be interested to also kind of see how that study would play out in the context of people who are obese and using a GLP1 agonist. another another kind of uh context where they're in calorie restriction and there's much greater ability to preserve muscle when you're obese. But when you're these were lean subjects in the study that I was referring to uh relatively lean when you're obese your body can use the fat for the muscle protein synthetic uh energy requirements. So you can basically you're using t you don't have to use protein tissues you can use your stored fat. But I I don't know if Allan would agree. Oh yeah. for sure. Um recomposition is most pronounced. So in other words, the fat loss and muscle gain simultaneously. It's most pronounced in individuals who have the body fat to spare and also who have the margin of muscle potential to spare. So in terms of you know um hard numbers if a man's fat - free mass index is let's say below 23 or so then he's got some potential um to gain more muscle mass. The closer you get to about 25 in terms of fat free mass index the closer you get to sort of a population level ultimate muscular potential. And so if this same individual had a body fat level of let's say above 15
level of let's say above 15 then you know we you put those two together put those two qualities together he's got potential for recomposition. And when you say recomp what does that mean by definition the um loss of fat mass and gain of lean mass simultaneous simultaneous simultaneously. Yeah. And it is made possible by having the extra body fat to fuel the process and also having the potential for muscle gain in front of you. So if I were to sort of do the converse of that, you take somebody who's at a fat-free mass index significantly above 23 and a body fat level significantly below 15. Well, then this individual better choose one goal or the other whether they want to focus on muscle gain or fat loss because it's not likely going to So when when someone has more body fat, they can use the energy stored within that that tissue to fuel the muscle protein synthesis that's occurring after resistance training. Yes. Yeah. the the concept is that when you start getting leaner and leaner uh the body obviously you're uh you have to fuel protein synthesis to build muscle. It's the most important factor much more important than muscle protein breakdown at least by the evidence we have now. And um it's a very energyintensive process. So as you start becoming leaner and leaner, there's less internal energy, endogenous energy uh that can be utilized for uh fuel and that basically the muscle the body will start to take lean tissue and it's not going to take it from the kidneys or the heart. It's going to take it from your skeletal muscle. Sure. So if you have the body fat to spare, you have a a viable contributor of of ATP to to the process. And um I I want to relay to you like an anecdote I actually got from from Brett. So we're talking about recomposition
So we're talking about recomposition like with women. Brett mainly works with women. And so um women who have the possibility of recomposition in front of them in my observations need to have at least 25ish% body fat and a maximum fat-free mass index of about like 18ish. Okay. then then you have recmp available in front of you. If you're very lean as a woman below 25% body fat and also close to your muscular potential towards 19ish as a fat free mass index then you have to pick one goal versus another. But um anecdote relayed to me by Brett Contreras, our our good friend and colleague. He sees just continued recmp in women for very long periods of time, even beyond when you would think the recmp would would stop. And so um this whole argument online about you know is a caloric surplus necessary or is it not? I mean technically it is necessary but also in reality people have varying degrees of body fat to where the more excess body fat somebody has then the less they need a purposeful caloric surplus programmed into their thing to gain muscle. So coming back to general population because the average person does have excessive body fat then they're likely to be someone who can build some muscle and lose some fat and they don't need to think about okay if I want to build muscle I need to increase my calories from where they are. Not necessarily that the interesting thing I I just ran a transformation contest in in my group my online community and um it had 36 36 people like 90 I want to say at least 90% of them recmped because they had the extra body fat to spare and they had the potential for muscle gain in front of them. So um
muscle gain in front of them. So um recomp is a real thing and it's really kind of common with people who get on the progressive resistance training and begin to watch their diet a little bit better. The question also is uh can certainly recomping we see it all the time in our research but can you maximize muscle growth and that's where it starts to get the disconnect is is that certainly recmp is real and that you can do it quite readily. I would argue that the evidence seems to show that as you get leaner, certainly as you get leaner, but I think even for the majority of people, you're not going to be able to optimize muscle development as you are reducing body fat. Maybe if you're very obese, you it's not going to matter. But as you start getting to somewhat lower body fat levels, and I'm not talking about sub 10%, I'm talking, you know, 15 and belowish starts getting dicey. It's It's for men. for women 25 and right to optimize uh muscle development I I think a at least a small surplus is probably necessary necessary but the average male out there his body fat's well above 15% right yeah it is you know and towards Brad's point um and you can correct me on this if I'm getting the literature wrong but aren't the first three to fourish weeks there's some um edema going on at the muscular level that that would potentially um confound or blur the the whole it would depend upon the training status of the individuals, how novel the routine is. So yeah, certainly if there's a the a novel exercise routine for several weeks, particular I mean if someone's untrained, no question that's going to happen. Good point. Uh but for resistance trained individuals would really depend the at least would be blunted uh the edema and it goes away after a few weeks. Got it. Good point. I guess the the person listening who let's just say they are representative. They're going crazy. We've driven them crazy with details. No, this is great. But let's
No, this is great. But let's if we bring it to the surface about what people the average person what they really care about is let's say they're going to their local gym and they're they they've had a coach you know set up a resistance training program and they've had someone look at their diet and the the question that they are wondering is okay if I'm le eating less calories and I'm losing weight am I going to be able to protect my muscle and all of these things that we've been talking out in the same process. And what I'm hearing is that if they providing they're not super low body fat percentage to begin with if they have the resistance training in place and they consume enough total protein, providing that the diet isn't crazy low in calories, and maybe you can speak to that, then they can in fact build some muscle. Maybe it's not optimal for bodybuilding, but they can build some muscle and strength whilst losing some body fat. That's the formula basically. Resistance training, sufficient protein, don't go too aggressive on the caloric deficit for sustained periods. And then, you know, that's kind of the the recipe for uh retaining muscle while losing fat. Extreme caloric deficits, energy deficits can start to leech more muscle. Now, again, it depends on what your starting point is. If you're obese, it's not really gonna make that much difference. But as you're getting even into the overweight category, that's where you're you go on like these 800, 600, 800 calorie fasts, semifast. Uh you can start to see some issues issues particularly if your protein is not higher. what's the the pace of of weight loss that you think indicates is representative of a good calorie deficit so someone can kind of keep an eye on that. Okay. So in proportional terms observationally like 1%
observationally like 1% drop in body weight per week would be the general upper cut off that you'd want to see if you really want to maximize the preservation of lean mass during the fat loss process. And so that range is typically, you know, like half a percent to a full percent of your total body weight per week. That that is pretty ideal for keeping your muscle while losing fat. Now, um there is research showing um more aggressive deficits working to affect greater fat loss, but you still you begin to see sacrificing of lean mass um just as the lower you go in calories. for example, um very low calorie diets, like below 8 800 calories, massive lean mass losses. Typically, even if you have protein high, wi with protein high, you can keep the lean mass losses down to roughly a third to a fourth of of the weight that you lose. If protein is high enough and if there's resistance training training without those factors, you are just seeing seeing unacceptable lean mass losses really with diets that are 800 calories and below which I have to imagine can occur in hospital as well. Yeah. Yes. And and you know what and those lean mass losses at the 25ish 33ish percent that I'm talking about they're with individuals who start off in um a state of severe obesity. So if you put a normal weight person on a very low energy diet or certainly if you put a lean person on a very low energy diet, you can easily see lean mass losses be right even with fat losses and even more than the fat losses. um with just outright consecutive day fasting 4 days and plus you see 2 / 3 3 / 4s
fasting 4 days and plus you see 2 / 3 3 / 4s of the losses being from lean mass and so uh these 800ish calorie diets 6 to 800ish calorie diets are not too far from a outright fast. How much of that is recoverable and maybe is is water or glycogen versus actual muscle tissue? A lot of it, [laughter] [laughter] a lot of it, and even if it's actual muscle tissue, muscle is an amazingly malleable and um, you know, reconstructable reconstructable tissue of the body. But the the bummer is that over the long term, this is going to affect hormonal health and then skeletal health and then the other systems follow that when you're really aggressively dieting all the time. Do you think that's happening to a lot of people that kind of do the the annual really low calorie diet, lose a bit of weight, then regain it across the year, and then do it again the next year? Are they just are they losing a lot of muscle in a short period of time and then repeating that over years? Yes. Basically, usually with these very low calorie diets, 800 calories and below, um people don't sustain them for more than two one one to three months at a time. 3 months is extraordinary. It's usually medically supervised. But in the context of let's say the annual detox [laughter] the annual detox routine um it's I think it's more of a psychological detriment than it is a a physical or physiological detriment because it really kind of makes people lose hope and lose motivation with this yo-yo dieting effect. And instead of building these durable habits over the course of the year and not needing to do the January detox, they just sort of uh subconsciously depend on my annual detox, which is going to make me drop 10 lbs. And little are they realizing
lbs. And little are they realizing they're dropping like, you know, anywhere from like four to eight pounds of lean body mass when they do this. Yeah. There there's uh another uh piece here that I want to mention. Uh there's a concept called the fat overshooting hypothesis where when you lose rapidly lose body weight and you lose a substantial amount of lean mass, the body tries to overcompensate because obviously losing lean mass is a threat to survival and all the body cares about is surviving. [snorts] And uh when you then the body tries to then gain back the lean mass and what it does it overshoots the fat re gaining of fat. So you end up with a greater fat accumulation than you started with. And there is, you know, a good deal of support for that uh theory. That is related to the collateral the so-called collateral fattening phenomenon where if you lose a lot of lean mass in the fat loss process, then you have a higher degree of appetite stimulation and cravings at the end of the dieting cycle. and the body essentially wants to get back to where it was in terms of uh energy homeostasis. And so um yeah, losing too much lean mass while you're dieting can make you actually hungrier on a chronic basis versus having preserved that lean mass. And that's called the collateral fattening phenomenon. Just quickly, you mentioned someone would be better off forming more durable habits than doing these kind of yo-yo diets, severe calorie deficits. [gasps] [gasps] What are those big ticket items, those durable habits that would serve someone better and help protect their lean mass? Okay, so everybody differs in minimum effective dose of what's appropriate for their lifestyle, their schedule, their goals for exercise. So on an individual basis, you need to
So on an individual basis, you need to find that and you need to find what you can stick to or progress within. Um that's sort of like the kind of overarching principle and the details of that are, you know, they're they're details. And then with the dietary habits, you need to find an eating pattern, an eating routine that you can maintain and be consistent with. And the only type of eating routine you can be consistent with on a long-term basis is one that you don't hate. One that preferably you like it, you look actually look forward to the meals. And then you can just maintain this routine dayto day. And everybody is going to differ in their sets of meal archetypes for the, you know, breakfast, lunch, and and dinner meals. or some people will have more of like this grazing type of pattern. But you need to find that pattern that you enjoy and can stick to. And so with the exercise and the nutrition being these healthy patterns that can just go on day to day, then you have to look ahead and say, look, if if I have body weight to lose, then somewhere between as low as little as half a pound to a full pound is perfect per week is perfectly acceptable because then by the end of the year, you're 50-ish pounds down or by the six month point, you know, be 25 lbs down. And even if by the end of the year you only lost half a pound a year and you're 25 lbs down, well, hallelujah because you got back to a a healthy weight in a year, whereas it took you 10 to 20 years to accumulate the excess body fat. And so I think that's kind of the big picture people need to look at instead of focusing on, oh boy, I'm reactive. I'm just sort of gaining this this body fat and having this unconscious routine that's
this unconscious routine that's detrimental by the time the holidays hit or after the holidays and here we are back at January. Uh, I got to get these 10 pounds off, you know. So, it's a complicated thing and it's a lot of habit building. Did you have anything to add to that, Brad? Yeah, I think intrinsic motivation is extremely important in this case. So, you need to constantly have a reason why you want to do something. So if it's losing weight, you need an intrinsic motivation to be doing that. And if you want to maintain your weight, you need to be intrinsically motivated. Like Alan said, certainly most people, if they don't enjoy their meals, they're not going to stick with it. I I'll give the counter to that. If you're a bodybuilder, I mean, [laughter] for for years, you know, my bodybuild I mean, for many years, it was just routine. They I didn't even think about it. Food was fuel. And I didn't have I didn't enjoy it. I didn't not enjoy it. It was just there. I did what I had to do. But again, it was my intrinsic motivation to have an eightack all the time. Yeah. The only thing I'd add to what you said, Alan, is what if someone's thinking, well, the foods I like to eat are fast food and pizza and pasta. Sure. Um Yeah. How would you suggest they think about that? [laughter] That just requires some education about um the the various food groups and some proactive self-experimentation on the part of the individual where they just break out of their routine and try different healthy foods across and within the groups. They it has to be a proactive process because a lot of people don't even realize that they would enjoy whole and minimally processed foods. They just literally have to try that and entrain the sort of classically condition the routine. And then over time you find that you one of the reasons why you like the food the the healthy food more than the junk food is because you subconsciously know it's
because you subconsciously know it's doing your body good. Right. And while while you know energy is energy making those healthier food choices does affect how hungry we are. For sure. Absolutely. Right. Which then affects our total energy consumption and can make dieting, if you want to call it that, easier or harder. It's the classic Kevin Hall studies with The Biggest Loser. The highly processed foods are highly palatable. They're designed to make you want to eat more. It's It's good for the companies that make them because you just want to keep eating Oreos. I I bet you guys must have been happy at least with the uh the two recommendations and the new dietary guidelines. one with a bit more focus on protein [laughter] than than previous years and two with the the uh the calling out of hyper processed foods. Those were good. Yeah. Oh man, those guidelines. Those damn guidelines. [laughter] There's been a lot of uh debate and and outrage. Um all sorts of of takes about those guidelines. All sorts of takes. I actually missed the P like just visually. You don't really catch that they they are promoting legumes in there. There is a bag of frozen peas. Come on, Alan. They're barely emphasized. [laughter] There's a bag of frozen peas. I'm like, where's the legumes here? So, yeah. I mean, the the previous incarnation, my plate had it had had its I could nitpick at that, too. But we can also nitpick at the the current guidelines, too. Yeah. I mean, you know, you got this fatty piece of red meat at one of the cornerstones and it's like, okay, you know, as much as I love red meat, where's the evidence that fatty red meat filling your diet up with it is going to optimize health? You know, where's the evidence outside of, you know, these sort of different communities online? Yeah, we could debate those as a whole separate episode. Maybe we can save that. Um, we need to get to resistance
that. Um, we need to get to resistance training [laughter] and what it is, what it isn't. And maybe Brad, we start with why is resistance training the right tool tool for addressing those age related muscle changes that we were speaking about at the beginning of the episode. What is it about lifting a weight or moving our body against resistance that helps attenuate slow down some of these changes in muscle? The body adapts because of survival. I mentioned this earlier. And um when you resist and train, the body is perceiving a threat to its survival because it's not if you're just sedentary, it's not used to lifting heavy things or lifting anything. um challenging and it will respond by getting stronger and getting greater muscle endurance and getting more muscle. Those are the uh this is called the principle of specificity which is a primary exercise related principle. So the more specific these specific adaptations to imposed demands. The more specific the demand is, uh the imposed demand, the specificity to that imposed demand, the greater the adaptation to that demand. And um you know, if you uh don't resistance train, the body is perceiving it doesn't need the muscle for at least the larger muscles for anything substantive. And as we talked about, it's expensive to maintain the muscle and it [snorts] gradually goes away. So you know resistance training this is there is a lot of things in res in that we can talk about with variables etc and the application that still remains somewhat equivocal. There is compelling evidence. It's not even debatable that resistance training helps to improve quality of life in in so many different ways. And what's the difference uh fundamentally
what's the difference uh fundamentally between resistance training and maybe we can define resistance training and what it is and what it isn't, but different between cardio going for a jog or a brisk walk or a hike and lifting a a weight in terms of what's happening at the level of the muscle. Yeah. Well, they're challenging different systems. Uh so aerob again going back to specificity when you're running long distances not only isn't having more muscle beneficial it's actually detrimental because you're carrying around it it's like running with a vest at that point. So the body obviously when you're carrying out long-term uh long-distance aerobic training uh the body is going to adapt by improving its cardiorespiratory response, vascular response. Whereas resistance training the specific adaptation is to improve here the size and the uh neural capacity of the musculature the type one fibers the type two fibers and their neural uh adaptations that are driving them. So essentially, biology is saying, "Wow, that was heavy." And if I'm going to be exposed to that again, I need to be I need to adapt and and be stronger and be able to to produce more force quickly. Yeah. And I don't know how deep you want to go, but basically when the uh when you're lifting a weight or again ch doesn't have to be lifting a weight where your body can be a weight, it's it's using a resistance. you can push on a wall that's a resistance. Um the the forces the mechanical forces on the muscle are converted. It's it's a process called mechanuction where the mechanical forces are converted into chemical signals and there's a various cascade of enzymes, anabolic enzymes that drive protein synthesis. The end result is muscle protein synthesis. So that's kind of the
protein synthesis. So that's kind of the very simple and short course to it and and that feeds back to what we were talking about earlier. That's when the nutrition becomes important because in terms of running that process after doing the resistance training, you need the amino acids available. Yeah. And I was thinking about how Brad talked about when you look at the forest plots and they're slightly in favor of the the post exercise uh feeding models. Um the fact that muscle protein synthesis synthesis or the anabolic response to protein feeding is marketkedly greater in the post exercise state versus the the resting non-ex exercise state. Kind of speaks to that potential little bit of an advantage there that that we're seeing. Like Brad and I were talking, we're like, man, we we never skipped the window. Even though we did the all this research on it and we show, you know, it's not going to hurt. It's [laughter] not going to freaking hurt and we're not working our asses off to freaking just purposely skip the damn window. But, you know, we're we're hungry post exercise anyway. So, it's one of those things. Yeah. Okay. So Brad, what what does a a good highle resistance training program conceptually, what does that look like for this avatar of this person, you know, in midlife or beyond that that wants to prevent psychopenia? Yeah. So I can give some general guidelines. There is no ideal resistance training program because that's always going to be specific to the individual and research is never going to tell you that. It's research is giving you the means, the averages. What I'd say is the two most important things are consistency consistency and effort. Uh I think for most people a minimum effective dose routine would be two to three days a week. uh one to two
two to three days a week. uh one to two set [laughter] I mean a half hour sessions really one to two sets of major muscle group exercises generally if you're looking for more time efficient training you want to use what are called multi - joint exercises which involve more than one joint as the name applies to squats rows presses um and the most important thing again as I mentioned is effort you need to be challenging your body beyond its present capacity you do not necessarily need to train a failure. I came from the old go all out or go home bodybuilding mentality where every set not only was the failure but it was using drop sets and forced reps and negatives negatives heavy negatives. Yeah. So uh that actually has been I think quite compellingly shown not to be obligatory to optimize development but you need to be pretty close. You need to be within a couple reps or three short of failure depending on various factors. And when you say couple couple of reps short of failure, that is the point where that person would be able to do another pull down or another squat. And what I would say is again for the majority of the gen pop, the last few repetitions need to be difficult to complete. You don't have to be uh failing on that last rep, but they have to be challenging. If you're not challenging again, the only reason the body responds that adapts is because of of a threat to its survival. It's being challenged beyond where it feels it needs to uh to go. And uh in the early phases of training, the initial phase, first several weeks, anything is a challenge if you're sedentary. So you can make gains and and most of them are neural anyways, getting the coordination aspects to learning the movement patterns. But as you start to go into two months, 3 months, etc., ETA, it becomes more and more important to be within a couple reps short of failure. For for the average person out there, is thinking
average person out there, is thinking about reps kind of shy of failure. Is that that equally as effective as just thinking about like out of 10, how hard is this? You can use an that's called a a rating of perceived exertion. So you can and I will say this for unless you've trained to failure it's very difficult to gauge how far you are away from failure and this has been documented quite well in the literature. So I think for the untrained individual uh or in the early phases of training uh using an RP where you're doing an 8 to nine I think would be a good gauge there. You should be somewhere in that. It is one reason why I think it is beneficial for most people if they can to train the failure. So at least so they get to know what failure is so you can then gauge how far away you you are when you're actually finishing a set. But yeah, I mean again for gen pop this gets more and more important as you get more interested in optimizing your right your muscularity. I want to add a little bit to what Brad is saying about failure. So, the utility or optimality of failure, it it really varies across different exercises. So, you're not necessarily going to be doing a set of concentration curls and go, "Ah, I'm going to leave one in the tank. We're good."you know. Um, however, if you're squatting or you're deadlifting or you're bench pressing, then there is a pretty high uh risk to benefit proposition going on there training to momentary muscular failure. in terms of injury and and you know there's little things about okay it can be more taxing just systemically nervous system wiseish psychologically even um to be taking certain movements to failure whereas you know lateral raises and you know a little bit easier presses you know calf raises on machines on isolation
calf raises on machines on isolation exercises then failure um is a lot more of a viable thing. Um Brad I I wanted to ask you this. Um, how do you feel about the literature looking at trained subjects, resistance trained subjects, uh, as well as untrained subjects underestimating their, uh, failure point by two to three reps? Yes. We recently published a couple studies on this and in the early so when we first we had resistance train subjects come in uh the they were within one to two reps uh of their estimate and it improved to like one or less at the by the end. So we did it pre-study and post study. So as they were training they learned they got even better at estimating. I think it comes down to the teaching of it. I think again with the untrained it becomes a bigger issue. they're much further away. Sometimes they can be three to four in some cases. And part of it depends on the repetition range. As you're using higher reps, it becomes more and more. So like 15 reps becomes harder and harder to gauge because of the acidosis. Um so it's more like in the six to 10 rep, which which is greater accuracy of looking at it. So there is nuance to that but unless you've trained a failure it's very difficult to to properly gauge and even when you have when people conceivably because a lot of times people think they've trained a failure and they they haven't but when once you acclimate them to the uh RA the repetitions in reserve uh tool they become better at doing it. So, what I'm hearing there is that if someone's relatively new to lifting, it's probably when they think they have a couple of reps left, they probably have more than that. Probably. So, you might want to go another couple and then you're probably you're getting closer to that point you were talking about. And if they're not, let's say someone is going in and, you know, quote unquote going through the motions
quote unquote going through the motions a little bit and they're more at like a six out of 10 effort and so they finish the set and they had four or five reps left and let's say this is how they're training all the time. Is that resistance training completely useless? Are they just getting less benefit? So again, it depends upon where you are on the spectrum. If you're like at a a beginner, ranked beginner or the first few weeks, the effort really shouldn't even be a factor there. You should be focusing on getting your form. In my humble opinion, it's about teaching proper form, getting the coordination, the neurocoordination, neuromuscular coordination. As you start getting more and more experience, it becomes more and more important. So, are you getting nothing? Well, you can maintain on on a lot less. So, this is to keep making gains. you can maintain by using less effort and and strength by the way. So I'm mentioning this as far as hypertrophy strength you do not need to you can train further away from failure and continue to make strength gains particularly if you're using somewhat heavier loads. Uh so again there is nuance in this as well. Um but for the gen pop um they need most of them as they're continuing they're going to plateau relatively quickly within the first several months if they're not consistently trying to progressively overload and train keeping their the intensity of effort at a high level. Can you make up for that effort with doing more sets? So, like I think at the beginning you mentioned a minimum effective dose two or three days a week. You get in there for 30 minutes and and what I heard was I think about two sets per body group. So, you might do two sets of some type of pushing, two sets of a pulling, two sets of like a squatting and and hinging type pattern. So, that would be four exercises, two sets of each as a minimum effective dose, repeating
as a minimum effective dose, repeating that two or three times a week. So I'll answer this kind of from the opposite uh side of the coin. We carried out a study relatively recently that was published where we looked at resistance train subjects training with single set routine. So these were minimum effective dose roughly four to six uh sets per muscle per week. [snorts] And we had one group train to failure on every set and the other group was at a two ri two repetitions short of failure. And uh the group that was training to failure did see modestly greater gains than the group that was training at a 2. So what I would say is if you're training at a minimum effective dose, there is a greater need to train closer to failure. Great title on the study by the way. Yeah. Okay. And without fail. And then if you're getting more than four to six sets per muscle group per week, it becomes less important to go all the way to failure. That is the current thinking of as far as the literature goes. But I will say this, the vast majority of studies on volume training have trained to valitional failure. So, uh they're not we don't have studies that are looking at training less to failure versus failure. So, I imagine most people need to take their set a little bit further. Most pe So I will say this from many studies carried out in our lab, most people do not train hard enough in their training. When we get them in to the lab and we I mean they're all supervised training and we push the crap out of them. Um they all almost universally state that they've trained harder than they ever had in their life. I'd say 90% are telling us and these are resistance trained. Some of them pretty jacked too. uh where genetics come into play there as well. But uh look, they all grow so or most of them do. So just anecdotally, I take stuff to failure
take stuff to failure often. I mean, wherever it's safe and most machine stuff, I take it to partials, you know, um like for example, you know, rowing movements, um uh various movements where, you know, I I don't I literally don't stop when um I I can no longer complete a full beautiful rep. I'll put in a you know, one or two partials. Is it okay to cheat a little bit there to get a little bit of momentum? Think think of the lying hamstring curl. I mean, who ends their set with this beautiful full range rep at the end? I throw in a couple partials cuz it's safe to do and you feel a little more you feel more broacular. So with everything that I just said, the bro in me still wants to believe that there may be some benefit [laughter] tiny benefit to training the failure. And I I agree with Allen. Like one thing I will say there's a lot of gaps in the train in the failure training literature. Number one, it's either all sets to failure versus no sets to failure. And that is not it's not a dichomous choice. You can do just the last set to failure, which I'll do. And as Alan pointed out as well, uh it depends on the exercise. Like if you're doing a set of lateral raises, I don't finish a set of lateral raises like I'm crushed. I can't, you know, I can't walk or I can't lift my arm. you rest for a few minutes and you come back. But if you're doing a set of squats uh or bent rows, I mean, it puts a lot more taxing on the neuromuscular system. So again, there's there's nuance that we haven't really looked at in the literature that may I I don't for a high highly competitive bodybuilder or someone that wants to maximize the results. There's not a downside hypertrophically at least to doing at least last set to failure. And again, I think it's a good cost benefit, but that's we don't have good evidence, is it? And it might become relevant for the everyday average person, especially if
everyday average person, especially if they're just not doing a lot of sets throughout the week. Well, so so let me clarify that as well. In the study that we had, I don't think that so yes, they did see better benefits going to failure. The other groups still saw quite good benefit. So, and these were resistance train individuals. So, that comes down then how important is that those extra gains? were very modest extra gains. How important is it? If you're someone who wants to max Well, if you're someone who wants to maximize results, you're probably not going to do a minimum effective dose routine. But what I would say is is that uh I think for the vast majority of the gen pop, training to failure is is tough and it's it requires extra effort. So, if you want to expend that extra effort, you might be able to eek out some more gains. And some people might have a psychological barrier to training to failure. And and if somebody doesn't if if somebody specifically dislikes it, then that could compromise their adherence to the And if they're not confident in that lift or form isn't great, then they they might increase their risk of injury. Yeah. I mean, again, as Alan pointed out, it depends upon what you're doing. If you're doing it on a machine, it's really safe. I mean, now look, there are certain medical conditions that they might be working through that you can't account for, but if you're a healthy individual, I don't really think safety is a much as long as you're training with good form. Talk to me about choosing load here. So, I can choose a light weight and I can get to two reps to to failure or complete failure by doing a lot of reps or I can go and select a heavier weight and get to the same kind of point of fatigue or or failure with far fewer reps. If we're thinking about this person who's interested in combating the age related muscle changes, is there a a rep range that you would say is kind of most optimal? So confidence in a an opinion exists on
So confidence in a an opinion exists on a continuum from weak to strong. If you ask me about most variables, I'm somewhere usually between weak to moderate depending on the variable. This is one area. First of all, I've changed my opinion pretty much a 180 on it. And I have the highest degree of confidence because we have literally dozens of studies now and virtually none of them. They all virtually show the exact same thing that on a whole muscle level. There is virtually no difference between training at five or six reps up to 30 plus reps or so, provided that the last repetitions are relatively close to failure with a high amount of effort. Um it's compelling. We've done studies in our lab. Stu Phillips done some really great work with that as many many others. We've done meta analysis and it's been made analysis made analyzed in multiple different ways. Uh it's just compelling and anyone I think that is challenging that is just either oblivious to the literature or they're they have a personal bias where they don't want that to be the case. Now, with that said, there are some I I will So, for the vast majority of Gen Pop, if you're just talking about the average lifter, uh I I think whatever you like. I will say this, usually training with very high reps is not fun. [snorts] Uh we had a study where we did um we gave young trained individuals 8 to 12 reps to failure or 25 to 35 reps to failure. And first week of the study, the young well-trained subjects in the 25 to 35 reps, half of them puked. Some of them had headaches. I mean, it just there's a lot of acidosis that's built up. So, it does normalize to some extent over time. You the body adapts. Uh, so by the end of the study, there wasn't really issues, but I could see that being an adherence issue for a lot of people. Um, but it gives you wide
of people. Um, but it gives you wide freedoms. I mean certainly you're training around a joint related injury or something that uh gives you options. I I'll also say this um a moderate rep range with the so-called hypertrophy range which has been pretty much rebutted refuted um still to me is an effective I think it provides an efficient means of training and I do say as a general rule it's probably best for most people to train the majority of their sets in that rep range 8 to 12 6 to 15 somewhere in that range I will also say there is some evidence that training across a spectrum of repetition ranges may modestly enhance the hypertrophic response. Why might that be? Well, there's a few possible reasons. There's some evidence. I think it's still relatively weak but possible that there may be fiber type specific effects where heavy load training may preferentially um hypertrophy the type two fibers and uh the higher load training might preferentially uh hypertrophy the type one fibers. We have a mate analysis actually that's currently in process so I don't have any results yet to tell you but we'll see about that. There's strength related factors. where building more strength with some lower reps may transfer into your moderate rep training to create more mechanical tension which is the primary mechanism for muscle growth. There's buffering capacity that's achieved so you get greater buffering capacity with somewhat higher reps which may transfer to moderate rep. So again this this is really getting into the weeds where it would be have potential benefits I in my opinion for bodybuilders or people like Allen. But if you could and let's say you weren't working around an injury, um some variability might be a good idea. Yeah. Look, I I think number one, uh it can add spice to a workout. So, it's not going to hurt. Here's the thing. It's
going to hurt. Here's the thing. It's not going to hurt you to vary your routine. There's no evidence that it's going to have negative effects for certainly from hypertrophy standpoint. [snorts] Um and it may produce everything is costbenefit to me. There's a potential benefit albeit modest or somewhat small but then it comes down to preference for we've talked about this over and over but the most important thing in a routine is adherence. If it's going to help you to for the gym pop now again bodybuilder there's no question adhering you tell a bodybuilder to stay in the gym six hours he's staying in the gym six assuming he doesn't have a job. [snorts] you tell him to eat the grass off the uh you know in the field, he'll go out and start scooping up grass. It's just just anything for the game bodybuilders do. But just to be clear for for the person who's making sense of this, the take-home message is that whether you choose a weight that you can do six reps with or 15 reps with, it's making sure you're taking that set to the same point of fatigue. So, it's the effort that matters most. Exactly. And there's some evidence that it becomes more somewhat less important with heavier loads uh and somewhat more important with lighter loads. Um you still got to be challenging your muscles, but it's just easier to overload to challenge the muscle with the heavier load. At least that's the current theory on. What about the speed in which we do the reps? So if we think about a squat, the the time it takes for us to kind of go down to our our deepest position and then the time it takes for us to come back to a standing position. Yes. So we just uh recently published and made analysis on that very topic and basically it showed that within modest uh tempos so up to like 4 seconds eccentric or so concentric is when you're lifting against gravity. Eccentric is when you're lowering against gravity. Very little if any difference between uh
Very little if any difference between uh speed tempos. There was a slight benefit to somewhat faster concentric tempos. Um but contrary to popular belief, slowering slowly doesn't seem to matter. That's for hypertrophy again, not for strength or power, which I'll get to in a sec. I'll say this that it makes sense even though we didn't see it on eccentric. If you just let the weight drop, number one, there was really no that wasn't what was being studied. So people think I could just like do reps like this. Lowering it under control, number one, is making the muscles do work. And that if nothing else, just logically beneficial. Well, it's more mechanical tension, Ryan. Exactly. And number two, you're not putting the joint under if you're just dropping the weight, the joint is under stress. So just from a injury standpoint. Now, with that said, if you're looking for power development, first of all, strength is moving, you're necessarily going to move a weight more slowly as you start getting as you're getting closer to failure. So, the initial reps you can be pump, let's say you're doing a 10 RM, first few reps, you can do quite quickly. As you're getting to your seventh rep, your eighth rep, your ninth rep, and close to failure, it has to the velocity, there's going to be velocity loss as you're going. So, you're not going to be able to move it. there's an intent to move it quickly. You're trying to push it quickly, but just the the resistance is not going to be able to move quickly. I will say this and Allen brought this up earlier earlier for power development, lighter load, somewhat lighter loads and moving the concentric portion quickly becomes very important for power because power is both the strength component. So you got to develop strength but also you got to develop the speed the the rapidity aspect. And we published a meta analysis and this becomes more particularly more important for older individuals. If you're a power athlete as well of course that would be important but as people get older we talked about the issue of falls etc. And um what we found we did
falls etc. And um what we found we did this made analysis or I collaborated with colleague of mine in Nuke Balachandran really excellent researcher [snorts] and uh we showed a modest effect size or moderate effect size for doing explosive concentric with a controlled eccentric versus doing a controlled concentric and eccentric. So and these were on qu um functional capacity. So get up is not going to like that. What's that? Fred Han is not going to like that. [laughter] [laughter] So when you say that becomes more important for elderly for functional capacity. If if I kind of walk and and I trip on something and I need to catch myself, I need a certain amount of power. Is that when that comes into play? You know, again, they didn't look at your ability to recover from a fall from older people. They looked at functional capacity, which involves power. So you would just you can assume. So it's never been trying to study. You're not going to subject an older individual to a fall to see if they can recover from that. I would hope. There's no way you'd get ethical approval for that. So, you just have to infer that this greater functional capacity translates. How do you recommend this this person again who is interested in just healthy aging? How do you recommend they think about their training in terms of power and and risk of falls? what are the actual things in the gym that they're thinking about? Yeah, I think that at least a portion of the training should be uh devoted to somewhat explosive, fast, concentric actions. Doesn't have to be all your sets, but doing some sets. And again, this this is where prescription is very individual. So, it's hard to give a, you know, a specific recommendation here. It's just more general that you want to incorporate incorporate some faster concentric actions with controlled eccentrics
controlled eccentrics uh and particularly in the lower body for so like on a leg press uh you know for and particularly as you're aging and so what might that look like in terms of let's say seconds going down and up as fast as you can so bringing it up quickly as fast as you can and then lowering it making sure the muscle lowers it under control. I don't like to necessarily give there's no one second or two second. If you were lowering it to the point where the muscle is doing the work and not gravity isn't letting the weight uh crash down, then you're good, right? Which on a leg press is like as your knees are coming into you, you're you're slowly letting the plate down and then you in this case, if we wanted to train for power, push it up as quickly as you can. Correct? Okay. And how long should someone ideally be resting between sets? Yes, we uh recently published a made analysis on this and and again this somewhat is [snorts] is dependent on on appreci what what you consider appreciable. So resting 60 seconds or less compromises muscle development to some extent. um 90 seconds and above did not seem to show much different whether it's 90 seconds or 2 minutes or 3 minutes did not really show much difference. So that would seem as this it's not a hard cut point that like at 89 seconds in your bed 90 but you still gain muscle at 60 seconds. So again it depends upon you there's a trade-off then of course as to getting out of the gym more quickly. Um, you also don't necessarily have to do sets in straight set fashion. So you can do like circuits or agonist antagonist supersets where you do let's say a shoulder press into a lat pull down. So there's different ways to structure that as well. But the issue seems to be and
as well. But the issue seems to be and we actually carried out a original study that seemed to show this that you compromise um the reason that there's a reduction in gains with the shorter rest periods is you're compromising volume load. Meaning that if you do a set uh and you're doing it close to to failure, close to failure and you're resting only a minute, the next set you're going to have to drop the weight substantially to get the same amount of reps. Or if you're doing the same weight, you're going to get much fewer reps. Whereas if you rested somewhat longer, 90 seconds, 2 minutes. Now, you're of course getting out of the gym more quickly, so doing shorter rest periods can make you allow you to do more sets, and you make up that volume load with more volume. So, that's where kind of the trade-off and there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer there. Um, some people like training faster and again, you're not you're still going to get gains. Uh, so I also want to point out that there's very little research on this in resistance trained individuals. As a matter of fact, our group is the only one that carried out a study in resistance trained individuals on the topic. So hard to give concrete uh guidelines for people who are more well trained. So is the the part of rest that is important is providing rest for the muscle group that you've just exercised or is it total body and and I asked that you mentioned antagonistic muscle group. So, when I'm short on time, I know I go in, I do uh a set of of bit like chest press and then I'll go straight to the lat pull down or row and work the opposite muscle. And my thinking is well, I'm resting my my chest during that exercise. And so, I can get through that volume in half the time. Yeah, to some extent that's true. There is a neuromuscular effect. So the body you are not only resting a m when you're
you are not only resting a m when you're resting it's not only specific to the muscle but your central nervous system is actually carrying out which muscles are going to be active. So there is an effect on the central nervous system and that's less studied but what we do know is that you maintain the majority of your volume load uh when you're agonist antagonist super setting. I want to add to this that okay so there's a a theoretical optimal repetition range for let's say hypertrophy there's a theoretical optimal um interet rest interval for hypertrophy there's a theoretical optimal tempo for hypertrophy so all of these things if for example you're somebody who prefers higher reps than what would be considered the moderate range the sweet spot or you prefer shorter rest periods than what might be the you know a little bit more conducive to efficient gains and hypertrophy. You can progressively overload anything any sort of routine like high rep short rests progressively overload it over a period of weeks and months and you're still going to get hypertrophy. It might not be as efficient but you're still going to get it. And if you do what I just said, you'll also be forcing more cardiorespiratory adaptations in the process. So for folks who are, you know, who are not necessarily have just hypertrophy on the brain and let's say they're dealing with certain injuries or let's just say you prefer your repetitions at like 12 or 15 and up, you're not compromising um hypertrophy goals, per se. you're as long as it's progressively overloaded over time. So, um I think that's not talked about a lot. There's I see a lot of folks online saying got to be four to eight reps. Boom. Period. Done. Got to be that. Yeah. You got to be 2 minutes,
be that. Yeah. You got to be 2 minutes, 2. 5 minutes between sets. Period. Done. Boom. No. Okay. You can progressively overload basically any rest interval and any any repetition range to achieve hypertrophy. Yeah. It's important to not let optimal or perfection be the enemy of good here. Sure. Because coming back to I mean what you mentioned with nutrition, all of this is about what is sustainable. What is someone going to enjoy most so they keep doing it for not just a couple weeks program but for decades. Well, I'd also say that what some influencers claim is optimal is not optimal at least by any scientific standard. that's optimal by their own personal experience or or just their own um intent to make money off [laughter] of a program or something. For me, one of the biggest takeaways here that we've spoken spoken about is just the importance of effort and intensity intensity in what we're doing when we are lifting weights. Um, other than heavy metal music, um, from a nutrition perspective, is there any important things to get right that will help us with that effort when we're lifting weights? It kind of comes down to total daily nutrition as a first priority. And then as a second priority, it comes down to the individualization of of the meal that that fuels the workout in terms of composition and placement. So, um, generally speaking to for the goal of maintaining muscle tissue, uh, even whether whether you're trying to just maintain it or whether you're trying to grow it, um, you need to be careful of the severity of of any energy deficit that you end up sustaining. So generally speaking that that um half a percent to full percent body weight loss per week is a good guideline. Another guideline that roughly correlates with that is keeping the caloric deficit to 10 to 20% below maintenance if you engage a deficit. Sure, you can go you can have a
deficit. Sure, you can go you can have a more aggressive deficit than that 25, you know, 25 to 40. There's a lot of research on 40% caloric deficits, but once you reach that, once you significantly cross over the 25s and certainly to 40, you start finding real difficulty in maintaining lean body mass. even with you know high protein intakes and resistance training a 40% deficit pretty rare to see um LBM be retained and certainly gained um so that that would be okay so the that would be the big picture of um energy balance for recovering and being able to carry this through. Uh the other part the secondary part would be are you properly fueled leading into the training bout. So a simple way to look at it is you don't want to train with hunger pangs. You don't want to be certainly don't want to be hangry while you're training. And um there is in fact some research showing that breakfast versus skipping breakfast, having breakfast versus skipping it is going to increase in greater number of repetitions. So a greater lifting capacity. Now, with that said, if you're somebody who routinely skips breakfast and trains, then you can become somewhat adapted to that routine and just be fine with it. But generally speaking, if you want to optimize the performance of the training bout, most people are not going to do it after an overnight fast. I I' I'd also add too there is some evidence that ketogenic diets are inferior to not high carboh but to somewhat moderate lower to moderate carbohydrate diets for performance aspects that the glycogen depletion probably is interfering in anorobic and and that's it's not with your heavy lifting but when you're getting more into your moderate to
getting more into your moderate to higher repetition ranges. Uh oh. Yeah, absolutely. The uh YouTube comments have just gone off. [laughter] [laughter] I hey I'm I'm just the messenger here you know people don't like it they complain the authors authors there's going to be a whole lot of people citing Jeff Volc there there's a meta analysis done by King and colleagues I I believe it was where they concluded that resistance training training um um it it actually uh it it's benefited by pre-ex exercise carbohydrate intake. So sort of acute carbohydrate intake, it benefits resistance training that is over a certain amount of volume and um I but it makes sense, you know, you're looking at a glycolytic activity. you're looking at. Um, and certainly like if even if you are relatively glycogen loaded going into the resistance training bout, if you have a higher volume of resistance training, then the sets at the end of your workout are not going to necessarily be as productive as somebody who had a meal pre-ex exercise. um the math doesn't work out perfectly when you try to figure out why is that but the fact is it is what it is and that's what was seen in the majority of the studies uh in this particular meta analysis. So if you want to be on the safe side [snorts] then training fasted is not the ticket for maximizing resistance training performance although you'll find select a [clears throat] minority of folks who prefer it that way. [snorts] Um Brad mentioned the ketogenic diet. This is just one of those things where the higher carb conditions always seem to have the edge in lifting capacity
to have the edge in lifting capacity even if sometimes it does not reach statistical significance. there. Still, if you look at the data and you look at where the plots lean on the graphs, it's almost always going to be in favor of the non - ketogenic higher carb condition. And um that's just kind of the way it is. Now, this is not to say that you cannot gain muscle on a ketogenic diet. Absolutely. You definitely can gain muscle on a ketogenic diet as long as your total calories are in place and your resistance training is progressive. But it's the equivalent of trying to swim upstream or trying to box underwater compared to a much less encumbered and and optimized process with enough carbohydrate in the diet. And that enough carbohydrate in the diet, we don't don't we can't put a finger on where that is, but it's more than ketogenic level carbohydrates, which are 50 grams a day or less. Bodybuilders have certainly figured that out. They're not shy on rice and oats and potato. Yeah, they have. I mean, if you look at the literature in aggregate, it appears to be a minimumish of about 3 g per kilogram of body weight. that would possibly be the the lower end of what might still optimize muscle recovery and growth. So, but that hasn't been systematically investigated and compared head-to - head with lower amounts. So, are there any other uh compounds like caffeine or creatine uh or other supplements that can help with effort the intensity? caffeine and creatine they I mean they both have good track records for um working for erogenesis or or performance enhancement for resistance training as well as um certain types of um aerobic training like caffeine is a little bit more of a multitasking full spectrum performance enhancer whereas creatine
performance enhancer whereas creatine enhances a little bit more of the the moderate to high intensity side of the uh energy continuum there we we just did a a meta analysis on regional changes in uh muscle muscle size measured by like things like MRI and um ultrasound and computer tomography that showed these tiny little increases these little sad increases in u muscle size as a result of creatine supplementation. But out of the 10 studies that that we included in this meta analysis, only one of them was on bonafide trained subjects and and another one was on recreationally trained subjects. We have to look at the the totality of the evidence. Um there's a bunch of other data on trained subjects showing that those on creatine have a 20% increase in strength versus the control group who had on average a 12% increase in strength over the course of of over the course of the studies. And um there's also the the fact that some people are non-responders to creatine. So up to somewhere between 20 to possibly 30% of individuals do not respond well or they just negligibly respond to creatine supplementation for a different set of reasons. So but okay bottom line even though Brad and I did that that uh creatine and muscle architecture [laughter] meta analysis people blame us for killing creatine. We didn't I'm going to I'm I'm here to tell you you take creatine in a bit. We didn't kill creatine. creatine still I I would hypothesize that um trained subjects can make creatine work better because they can potentially train harder and and put it to work more put more and also I would say that um just if you look at the strength figures over time that can lead to hypertrophy that maybe is not necessarily detected within the confines
necessarily detected within the confines of these shorter periods of weeks and in fairness our MA did show that you got greater hypertrophy it was just a modest effect. It it basically what we did because most of the data that's been proposed is based on fat-ree mass and fat-ree mass of course is not necessarily muscle mass. It is both muscle tissue but other tissue particularly water. [snorts] Uh and creatine of course is an osmoide. It attracts water and there's also evidence that it might have effects on extracellular water. If it's intracellular, that's interesting because that actually increases the size of the muscle, but there's some evidence it might have effects extracellularly. So, we wanted to see when you're actually measuring muscle size, looking at the muscle itself, is there an effect? So, um I'd say that and I I'd also say the other [snorts] to to Allen's point, um the effects on strength are impressive and it [clears throat] also somewhat depends upon your diet. So, someone like yourself who's a uh plant-based, you know, has a plant-based diet, you'd probably be more responsive because meat, meat and fish, uh so beef, uh fish have high amounts of creatin internally. So, when you're consuming them, you tend to get more creatine stores. So, some of that may this can be, as Allen said, genetic components as well. But uh those who are plant-based are not eating a lot of meat. How do you like Yes, we do take creatine. Yeah. How how do you dose it? Is it do you do like the 0. 1 gram per kilogram type calculation or just 5 grams a day? No, that that's great that you bring that up because um for increases in muscle hypertrophy, five grams seems to be the statistical average, the cut off. But for gains in strength, they've shown it roughly does fall on. 1 g per kilogram of body weight.
fall on. 1 g per kilogram of body weight. And this would be a good target for older individuals as well as individuals who feel that they might be hypo respponders to creatine supplementation. I just realized as well now that we're talking about creatine. We didn't talk and I don't think we need to go too deep [snorts] about the effect that resistance training is also having on the skeleton on on bone and and whether that in some ways may affect the load that someone selects and like the number of reps they may want to do. So, it's interesting you bring that up. there's been this load threshold theory that has uh been proposed as far as um what you need to impact bone tissue. I'm skeptical of that research because it doesn't take into account again the effort. So, it's kind of like what we used to think with uh with light load training that it didn't affect muscle uh or it didn't have substantial effects on hypertrophy. It was because most of those studies they were very far away from failure when they were using the lighter loads and um we don't have as much so looking at bone development is a much more difficult study to carry out specifically because the building of bone is a much longer process. So you can see very robust gains in hypertrophy within 6 8 weeks whereas for bone it takes months you know six usually you need a six month study to see somewhat appreciable gains and uh I I am skeptical again we don't have great evidence on this yet but if you're training close to failure I think that the the stimulation of bone probably is not this is my speculating now without a lot of hard evidence but we don't have evidence against it the the evidence that's been used to say that you need to train heavy for bone has been in my opinion based on somewhat biased data that hasn't looked at really training hard with the lighter loads. So once again we come back to effort. I'm
once again we come back to effort. I'm hearing effort is is kind of the top priority when it comes to training and I'm hearing total daily protein top priority when it comes to nutrition at least for the specific things that we're talking about along with calories with right protein and calories and complete micronutrition if possible. Brad, how do you think about this resistance training program over time? Let's say in the two different contexts. One person who's happy with their strength and their muscle mass and the other person who's looking to progress that to increase their strength further to build more muscle. What are the differences in terms of how you might play around with that program for maintenance versus progression? maintenance requires much less volume and even somewhat less effort. So, uh you can get by once you've built muscle, much easier to maintain it, uh to continually build more muscle and particularly as you start getting closer to your quote unquote genetic ceiling. Allan talked about the fat-free mass index. the higher the more experience you get and the closer you're getting to your genetic ceiling, the more that using a science-based approach becomes relevant and and necessary to continue to make gains. So, in the early phases of training, almost anything is a stress, an unknown stress to the body and it causes it to respond for the most part. But um look, there's genetic, there's lifestyle factors. So there's so many things that enter into it. And I think it's very important to point out as well that evidence-based practice is not simply looking to research. As a researcher, you know, obviously I'm very u biased towards the importance of research, but it's only one component of the evidence-based approach and there pretty much all equal with including your personal expertise and the needs and abilities of the individual. And
and abilities of the individual. And research will never tell you what to do. It's only going to give you general guidelines and much of the research certainly on variables that you're talking about have a lot of gaps in the literature. um it makes it difficult the the confidence in my uh opinions on the topic are less than I'd like or if I can't make a strong opinion I'm not going to make a strong opinion. So you need to express the uncertainty of the data uh the the supporting data when you're looking at the evidence-based implications. So these are all things that uh I know people want hard guideline. They want to give cookie cutter and this is what you do. Just do 8 to 10 reps of three sets. It's just not not the way science works and not certainly applied science. But providing the effort is there. If if someone's not seeing progress, they need to increase their volume. Yeah. So there's different strategies but certainly that would be one of the volume has been shown to be a driver. You know the you can make certainly very good gains with a minimum amount of volume but there's a dose response relationship that's been shown over and made analyses. Um so yeah I think that would be certainly in my opinion one of the first things that I would look at but there's others as well. So that would be just to be clear to the listener that would be looking at okay for a pushing movement if I'm doing six sets in a week and the efforts there. If I want to progress that and get uh an increase in strength in my pushing movement, build the chest muscles, I might increase that to eight sets or 10 sets a week. Absolutely. But you also have to realize and this is where I don't know how much into the weed you want to get but volume is not necess or doesn't necessarily have to be a static variable that's you do the same amount of volume across your career. I mean you can stagger volume so
career. I mean you can stagger volume so you can do you can cycle you can do what's called various uh variations of periodization doesn't have to me periodization really is planning it's not following the the Soviet model. So I mean but you can do some like a month of somewhat lower volume then progress to moderate then higher and then cycle back with uh de lo periods. There's all sorts of strategies that could be used but uh this is where the personal expertise. So again the research is going to give you the general guidelines here and even with that the uh there's gaps in that literature. So you need to use your expertise but I think this is the most important point ultimately everyone becomes an n equals one experiment. You use what we know through science to give you kind of put you in the right field the right uh uh you know the general area that you need to be and then you got to tweak that to to your own needs. Yeah. I think that a lot of people don't realize that volume whether you know you're trying to optimize it or not. It can be specific and and different with each muscle group that that you want to focus on. Absolutely. So some muscle groups you may not really give that much of a darn about you. You know, you don't necessarily need need to bring them up in terms of muscle size andor strength. So you train them at minimum effective dose or or some people not you know just skip legs completely. No I'm kidding. Um [laughter] but for healthy aging you think um training legs is even more important. Absolutely. Yeah. Well I think it's always important to train legs. Please don't take that snippet and then like [laughter] Allan wears one pants to the beach so it doesn't run. But but yeah certain muscle groups that you want to focus on the progress of then you can apply these you know progressive overload high effort um
progressive overload high effort um optimizing volume but that doesn't necessarily have to to be the case with every muscle group. Such such a great point in that the research really most of the research we have on volume really hints towards specialization cycles where you focus on because we don't have good evidence for volume for all the muscle groups as to what to do. They're kind of extrapolated when we give general guidelines as to ranges of volume. So yeah, I think Allan's point is so important that uh it's not not a one-sizefits - all where every muscle gets the same needs the same volume. You might do that, but usually to me volume should be strategically used for those more for those muscles that are less well-developed and less for those who are more welldeveloped. Is effort the the best indicator of how effective your workout was versus say how sore you feel the next day. Effort always is, as we talked about, the most important uh factor. having a high level of effort, but soreness is really not a great gauge of um of the quality of a workout. We actually I collaborated on a paper with my good buddy Brett Contreras on this some years ago and I think the general take-home is still the same. Soreness is is most indicative of a novel stimulus. So that so basically s soreness is related to in some extent muscle damage and muscle damage when you have a novel stimulus your body is more prone towards developing muscle damage. There's something called a repeated bout effect whereas once you do the same movement even for once you know another session uh you you start to diminish that response. So varying the if you vary your exercise a lot, you'll tend to get more sore. But do you necessarily need to do that? Probably not. Uh I again we
to do that? Probably not. Uh I again we don't have great evidence on this. So number one, different people get sore differently. Uh on a general basis, women seem to get less sore than men. It's thought that estrogen might be involved in that and um and efforts can enter into that to some extent. volume. What I would say is is that um if you're too here's the the rub. If you're very sore, it's a negative because you're not going to be able to come back to train properly. So, I think some mild soreness is not a negative. It's certainly not going to hurt you. Uh you can certainly train when you're uh when you have mild soreness. Whether that promotes whether the novelty of that enhances results, I still think is questionable. And certainly some people might not get that mild soreness and it doesn't necessarily it's not necessarily indicative that you didn't get a good workout. So that would be certainly down the the totem pole as far as what would be indicative of a workout quality. Are there any things that people can do that would enhance their recovery, reduce muscle soreness such that when they go back in to do their next workout, they they can work out with a greater intensity, whether that's from a nutrition perspective or or elsewhere? [laughter] [laughter] So, just kidding. I've gotten a lot of folks, you know, coming up to me and and saying, you know, I'm sore all the time. um what can I do? And they're looking for a nutritional solution. And I ask them, all right, so how many what kind of volume are you running? You know, and how fast are you pushing it? How fast are you pushing the progression of that volume? They're like, oh, well, yeah, I'm doing like 25 [clears throat] sets a week and 25 to 30 sets a week and I'm taking every set to failure. I'm like, "All right, think about cutting back on on your your basically your training load and then
basically your training load and then see if uh if your soreness goes down too, because that that chronic soreness that never goes away could be an indicator that you're just at least overreaching if not overtraining." Um, and so I would begin there. And then nutritionally, there's a lot of uh rumors floating around about BCAA supplementation being great for um reducing d uh reducing delayed onset muscle soreness or doms. The body of research on that effect really does not necessarily look at protocols that are optimized in total daily protein. And when I say optimized in total daily protein, I mean at least 1. 6 six grams per kilogram of body weight. And when they do apply branch chain amino acids on on one group, they don't they almost never equate the other group with an equivalent increase in just regular old protein. Um branch chain amino acid supplementation has shown some benefit in bed rest uh patients. Uh HMBB has actually shown some benefit in bed rest patients, but um really a better route for recovery if you're compromised somehow on on the amount of protein you can consume is taking a full spectrum uh essential amino acid supplement. And that basically you've got the branch chain amino acids in there plus the rest of the essential amino acids working together. And at least in theory, it's it's more effective and to to a small degree. So if you can't increase the protein, then you can supplement with EAA. I haven't met a lot of people in the real world who can't just add a scoop or two of protein to their diet where they would need to resort to amino acid supplementation. Another thing that that people can do, I mean, since we
that people can do, I mean, since we were talking going all the way back to the beginning of the conversation where we talked about how sarcopenia happens, how it's this sort of mix of decreased muscle protein synthesis, increased um chronic inflammation factors and stuff. And so that's where uh we look at what the general population is missing in their diet. And there's a handful of things. One of them is omega-3 fatty acids. And so there's a decent body of research showing that when you bolster that nutritional shortcoming in the older population, you see increases in even things like muscle protein synthesis, but um increases in strength, reductions in inflammation, and then you have this combination of positive things that can mitigate these factors of the aging process that we're trying to mitigate. So um the dose of uh omega-3 is is something that's that's heavily debated. You know um you have two or three two to three grams of combined EPA and DHA showing benefit in the older population. But then you have research showing that much above one gram of combined EPA DHA you might be flirting with atrial fibrillation. So you kind of make the judgment call on there. And if you're afraid of that, afraid of AIB, then you just increase your fatty fish intake because then you're sort of getting this whole food matrix thing where you don't really see this association with atrial fibr fibrillation with an increase of fatty fish. Another well recovery indirectly would be uh vitamin D3. And so there is it's just sort of widespread at the population level under consumption of vitamin D3 amongst the old older population. D3 status is usually pretty terrible. A pretty high prevalence of that. And so just bringing that status up can really help with not just the um it can help with the muscularkeeletal side as well as a bunch of other functions. Uh the interesting thing about vitamin D3 utilization is
thing about vitamin D3 utilization is there's some controversy over whether or not it's affected by body fat level. So since we can synthesize vitamin D from just sunlight, it's been hypothesized that if somebody has a lot of body fat, then there's a impedance in that process of synthesizing vitamin D3 from sunlight. However, there's research showing that despite fat loss and differences in body fat, um that sometimes fails to correlate with how the body processes vitamin D3, but there's newer research show showing that if you have a lot of visceral fat, then the visceral fat is what can reliably impair utilization of D3. So, um, that's basically the story with with vitamin D3 and the dosing for vitamin D3 has been anywhere in the literature benefiting like one to 2, 000 IUs as sort of a shotgun solution. Um, even as low as like 500 IUs is fine, but usually 1 to 2, 000 IUs is is typically what's going to rescue um, most folks at the sort of the gen pop level, their their shortcomings in vitamin D3 status. Um, HMBB like Brad brought up, it just keeps it's just hit and miss. It's really a dice roll with how how well it works and when and and for whom and it it's a much bigger gamble than the other other factors that we pointed out. I'd also add there's some alternative therapies, massage, foam rolling potentially, and heat application. So again getting blood flow to the tissue is very important for the recovery process for nutrient delivery and uh all of them have had some evidence showing potential improvements uh from DOMS. Now the alternative is how much of that is placebo effect because it's very difficult to sham that in a uh you know in a controlled study. So it it feels
in a controlled study. So it it feels good though so it's not going to hurt you and that may be of some benefit to it. What about cold plunging three times? To ask that should people be careful of of cold exposure? So the cold exposure unfortunately has negative effects and we've carried out recently published and made analysis on this topic. Uh it decreases muscle protein synthesis, it decreases muscle development, muscle hypertrophy and it decreases strength. So that's if you're working out hard, that's probably not the best strategy to use. Now again, if it's an occasional I I'll give it this. doing it frequently. If you're just really sore one time and you do a cold punch, it's not like you're going to lose all your gains. So, I I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with an occasional cold plunge, but keeping that as part of a regimented intervention, I think, is not the smartest thing. Also, thinking about interference, if that's the word we want to use, kind of blunting the the gains, adaptations from resistance training. A lot of our listeners are pretty active people that are doing jogging or hiking or playing tennis, this kind of cardiovascular cardiovascular exercise. What would the most optimal kind of uh way of positioning cardio around resistance training be? And is there any risk of having them in too close proximity or one before the other which blunts the adaptations from lifting weights? So this is another topic where my views have shifted over the years. Um there was the chronic interference hypothesis which says that aerobic training uh promotes catabolic signaling and resistance training promotes anabolic signaling. So you're going to get this interference with mTor. mTor is a enzyme that's a nodal point for uh muscle protein synthesis. um most of the uh more emerging or most of the emerging research
of the emerging research refutes that uh as a matter of fact in untrained individuals because again it's they're they're basically sedentary. Um adding in cardiovascular exercise seems to have a positive hypertrophic effect. Um there certainly is going to be a point where doing more cardio or doing a lot of cardio can interfere. You know, if you're running a marathon and going out and doing marathon training, yeah, you're you're going to have trouble building muscle. There's certainly some inflection point where that's going to have negative effects. But for most people doing moderate uh or or if you're an athlete like a soccer, they say in Europe football, but that's not American football. Um not Australian football either. I love Europe. [laughter] So um but or basketball players, tennis players, a sport that is very highly anorobic, anorobic requires you're doing a lot of practicing, you're doing a lot of combined training. That's where you risk really this interference and potentially overtraining. But for most people, doing moderate cardiovascular exercise with moderate resistance training, it's just not a factor. uh if you want to look at optimization, yes, it's best to separate your sessions, but for most people that's again not going to make an effect make much of any effect. And again, what I would say if you're going to do them in the same session and you want to try to optimize results, do your resistance training before you do your cardio. Uh cuz that's where there could be some performance interference at least so you're not fatigued fatiguing yourself because then that's going to affect the effort. Um, is there a way you can compensate if you are that highly active individual who is doing the basketball, the tennis or pickle ball around the resistance training? Is there a way you can compensate through consuming more protein, more calories or is it just the activity itself that is is going to come at the
itself that is is going to come at the cost of muscle? I think it's it really uh depends on how dire or advanced your muscle growth goals are. you know, if if you're looking at the general population who wants to maintain, let's say, an average healthy degree of muscle mass or even a little bit above average, then I don't think it matters that much. Uh especially with the the type of recreational volume that the average person will will do in the course of a week, they may have like four or five 30 to 60 minute bouts of recreational uh play. And so I don't think it matters too much. Um, I want to sort of uh drill down on what Brad mentioned. If you want to have the most productive resistance training bout, you're probably not going to want to even play like a vigorous pickle ball game right before your resistance training session. Uh, if anything, you know, save it for afterwards or at least separate those guys by well, the the literature bats around 6 hours, but that is a pretty arbitrary number. You guys into pickle ball? I am not, but I'm willing to [laughter] try. I've never played it. I know people love it, so I Okay. Uh, we've been going for 4 hours at this point, so um I'm sure there's still a lot of people. My about to explore. [laughter] I'm just getting started here, man. Come on. Uh, we we have room. We'll if we can convince Brad to make the the trip across the country again, we'll make sure we have a round two. But before we wrap up, I'm curious uh from both of you, maybe we can start with Brad. What are some questions that remain unanswered, unresolved that you're still interested in and would would like to research from here on out? Oh god. I mean again, I think it's not a specific question. It's getting greater clarity. Uh so I mentioned
greater clarity. Uh so I mentioned earlier like take rest intervals. We only have one. We had nine studies in our mate analysis. There was only one that involved resistance trained subjects. So I think it's just a matter of getting more data on populations and particularly like with resistance trained individuals um um historically the uh data has been skewed towards untrained subjects. One of the things when I came into the field that I tried to change, I'm like, you know, why do we care about what's happening in the not why do we care, but that's not really to me the most interesting question. What happens in the first two 2 4 6 8 weeks. What's important is what happens over time and how do you keep making progress? So I think that uh there's just so many gaps in in most of the variables the the literature on the variables that uh we just need more data and more I think welldesigned studies there's some studies that um most studies or certainly a majority in resistance training are underpowered. It's one of the things that our lab has really tried to focus on is getting more subjects involved. We almost always in our parallel group designs try for 50 subjects now. So 25 per group even that is still some not that large. Uh but I mean we're there's still a lot of studies where you get like 8 n 10 subjects per group which just is you just need a lot more studies than to get proper meta analytic derivatives from that. So I don't know what Allan would I just sit back and watch Brad crank out like three studies a week and I'm good. [laughter] [laughter] [gasps] [gasps] Um, cheers. You know, we're talking about uh Tavvarez and colleagues who just put out the three protein feedings versus five. I'd like to see an arm with like two protein feedings in that and then see if if in fact this this minimum of three that we're looking at with sort of, you
that we're looking at with sort of, you know, at least younger resistance training subjects is going to hang in there with the the three and the five. I I find that interesting because a lot of people um have, you know, they they intermittently fast. They they push the boundaries with low meal frequency for one reason or another. I think it would just be interesting to have that data. Um for for the longest time, we we uh we were waiting for a study directly comparing comparing some higher amount of protein dosing versus 1. 6 g per kilogram of body weight in resistance trainees. So we kind of got that with Bairi in 2023, but but it wasn't in hypoc caloric conditions. These guys were recreationally trained and these were men who were averaging 21ish% body fat. So So uh you know, we're not quite there. I think it would be great to I actually spoke with Yasuda and said, "Hey, um I'd love to see your your uh your two to three study replicated, but in resistance trained subjects." Your two two protein meals versus three two meals versus three meals on muscle size and strength gain, but in resistance training subjects. So, I planted the seed. I know he's thinking about it. Um, I know he knows I'm kind of a big deal because I know Brad Showfeld. And so a lot of times, you know, researchers will want to get get on that train to just get their stuff out. So, we'll see. Yuda, I'm talking to you, buddy. And, you know, to follow up on what Allan's saying, one of my real issues and why I don't really do much in the nutritional realm where it's somewhat limited is that it's so difficult to control um nutritional studies. Uh, so resistance training, when we're doing a resistance training study, I can when they're in the lab, we control every aspect of their routine. Um, we don't know what happens when they go out and and eat. We try to get food diaries. They're
try to get food diaries. They're historically inaccurate. But when you have a sufficient number of subjects, you can assume that there's enough that are randomized that there's enough uh uh variance that the variance is going to be small enough where it's not going to affect when you have enough subjects. when the focus is on the nutritional outcome. Very I I'm just not trusting a lot of the data that we get. You tell someone to take three meals of protein, how do you know what they're taking unless you're doing so yeah, I'd love to have unlimited funding and do get bodybuilders in a metabolic wy. Yeah, exactly. you're getting millions of dollars in funding, but it just becomes difficult for me to trust uh with a high degree of confidence the results because people I just know when I I get all the time we get food diaries from you know subjects and they say, "Yeah, I had 800 calories uh it's a fiveday food diary. They average 800 calories and they gain like five pounds across the study." And it's the statistics on that are are alarming. So across the body of studies on um subjects with obesity, you see an under reporting range of about 25 to 50%. In the non-obese [clears throat] population, they average right around 20% under reporting. And that's probably a generous uh a charitable estimate. Amongst registered dieticians, they under report by 10ish percent. So you're looking at the most highly trained nutrition professionals still unable to accurately report. And so um and not only that, people misreport to higher degrees depending on and in different directions depending on the food group. So they'll under reportport the junk and they'll over report the lean proteins, you know. And so I guess in terms of how you interpret that, I mean there could be pros and cons because you can supply everyone the food and yes, you can get a very clear idea of how the nutrition is is affecting whatever the variable is because you you know that it's accurate
because you you know that it's accurate like they're in a metabolic ward like Kevin Hall and you know they ate it. [laughter] [laughter] The downside is, and it's interesting because like that's what Luke Vanlon's study showed, is that it's also interesting to know when you just tell people to do something like what actually happens in real life when when behavior and so I guess in some ways the the less controlled the food is maybe the more representative it is of of real life. Classic, are you looking for ecological validity? Are you looking for internal validity? Ecological validity is the generalizability to real world. Yeah. then you get good results you know you very you can be I think very interesting results from just telling people what to do and seeing what happens but if you're looking for proof of principle for what actually is accurate when you do something um you know and look and you yeah you can provide people with food number one very expensive to do that and number two doesn't mean they're not having Twinkies after your uh yeah I had that nice meal of chicken and rice and I think I'm going to have like a tub of Oreos with unless you set up cameras. [laughter] [laughter] All right, guys. I think we did it. Is there anything before we wind up here that you didn't get a chance to speak about that you want to or something you want to add to what we covered? Just that it's always a pleasure being with my bud here and uh he's a wealth of knowledge. So, both of you right right back at you, Brad. Yeah, this was I knew this was going to be awesome and I'm really happy with it came out and thank you so much for pulling this together. That was not an easy task. No, of course. And uh yeah, I appreciate both both of you immensely and your contribution to science in respective fields and collaboration. So, thanks for doing this and I do hope we have a round two. Likewise, and we will. There you have it, friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did and want to stay up to date with future episodes, be sure to hit that subscribe button on YouTube and follow on Apple or Spotify. Finally, thank you for showing up and the effort
thank you for showing up and the effort that you're making to take control of your health. I look forward to hanging out with you again in the next [music] episode.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
Muscle is not simply tissue for performance. It supports glucose control, joint integrity, balance, bone health, and the ability to remain independent with age.
Losing muscle narrows life. Building and preserving it widens what remains possible.
Adequate protein gives the body material for repair. Resistance training gives it the reason to use that material. Either one alone is less complete than the two together.
The signal is elegantly simple: supply the tissue, then ask it to adapt.
The strongest longevity strategy is rarely extreme. Progressive resistance training, enough protein, daily movement, and recovery create durable change.
Muscle responds to repetition. So does confidence.
Muscle is the body’s reserve currency for aging well.
Train strength consistently with progressive challenge across the major movement patterns.
Use protein as a daily repair signal, especially as aging raises the cost of maintaining muscle.
Track function, not just appearance: strength, balance, stamina, and recovery.
