The Biological Switch That Unlocks Growth - Dr Mike Israetel (4K)

1. 0:00 – 0:57

   Intro

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Dr. Mike Israetel, welcome to the show.

   2. MIMike Israetel0:02

      Chris, thank you for having me.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:03

      Look at your head in all of its high-definition glory.

   4. MIMike Israetel0:06

      Yes, I believe the folks helping us videotape this had to make 10 adjustments 'cause my head is too shiny-

   5. CWChris Williamson0:12

      (laughs)

   6. MIMike Israetel0:12

      ... which is a compliment or an insult, I can't quite tell. That sums up most of my life.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:16

      Dude, I love your YouTube channel. It- you are absolutely blowing up at the moment, evidence-based training, hypertrophy, muscle gain, all that stuff. So I want to do a one-stop shop today of everything that anybody needs to know to get as jacked as possible from an exercise science standpoint.

   8. MIMike Israetel0:36

      (laughs) Sounds simple. Let's do it.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:38

      This is literally what you've been doing your entire life.

   10. MIMike Israetel0:39

       Yeah, for sure, uh, something like that.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:41

       You're a d- doctor of something, doctor of something? What are you-

   12. MIMike Israetel0:43

       Of sport physiology, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson0:44

       Yeah, that.

   14. MIMike Israetel0:45

       Yeah, yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson0:45

       That. I mean, if you don't know, who does?

   16. MIMike Israetel0:47

       Uh, yeah. G- good God, tons of way more qualified people, but they don't have this beautiful bald head.

   17. CWChris Williamson0:52

       (laughs)

   18. MIMike Israetel0:52

       And that's why they're not in Hollywood.

   19. CWChris Williamson0:55

       All right, so

2. 0:57 – 3:47

   Biggest Mistakes of Training for Muscle Growth

   1. CWChris Williamson0:57

      taking it from the top, what are the, what are the things that you see when it comes to training for muscle growth that are the biggest mistakes people make? Where are people going wrong the most when it comes to this?

   2. MIMike Israetel1:13

      Thinking all that time in the gym will get you laid. A- and Chris, let me tell you from a personal story, it just doesn't work. Nothing works. Help. Anyone who's listening, help. Send me a letter t- telling me how this whole thing works. Um, on a serious note, if I had to be scientific about it and explain the biggest source of variance in not growing muscle over, let's say, a timeline of about a year, which is a realistic amount of time for, like, people who haven't seen you in a year to be like, "Holy crap," uh, it- it has to be consistency, because if you just go to the gym and scream a lot and do crappy technique, crappy volumes and crappy loads, and do a lot wrong, but you have a requisite intensity that's anywhere north of reading the newspaper, and you just show up multiple times a week over and over, you're gonna get some results. If you have the ultimate evidence-based plan from, geez, Renaissance periodization itself, and you've downloaded the RP, ha- Hypertrophy App's, uh, discount code in bio, I don't know, 'cause that's what influencers say, but, um, but you do it intermittently, you do it on and off stuff. You- you ever had conversations with people, you're like in, I don't know, um, in the metro, let's say in London, where you're from, I believe. All English people are from London, yes? (laughs) Of course. And, um, y- you know, they're asking you tips 'cause they saw that you're jacked, and you start giving them tips, and you eventually get into a conversation of, like, "Well, so, like, how many times a week do you lift?" And they'll be like, "Well, you know, it's five." You're like, "Mm-hmm, yes, yes. I see where this is going." They're like, "But, like, lately, you know, my dog's been real sick, so my wife left me."

   3. CWChris Williamson2:57

      An interesting-sounding Londoner here.

   4. MIMike Israetel2:59

      And... Yeah, right. So bro talk is actually universal. It's just one accent everywhere.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:02

      Right.

   6. MIMike Israetel3:02

      You could be British English, and then the l- lifting starts and you're like, "Yeah, man, fucking curls, like Arnold did it," and you're like, "Arnold, that's it. Drop that meme." So yeah, you know, consistency is a big deal, but it's not the only deal. Uh, if you do something consistently, my thought on that is you might as well do it pretty well. You don't have to go all crazy science-y like we're gonna get into in the next, you know, whatever, half hour or however long it takes you to get pissed and kick me off. But, um, but when you are consistent, it multiplies the emphasis that you should be doing whatever it is you're doing quite well, because but gee-whiz, you're committing a lot of time to it, uh, bit of a sunk cost there. Might as well optimize on the margins, and then we can talk a lot about all the details.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:41

      Okay. One of the first places that people are going to go to, and I'm gonna guess one of the most common questions that you get

3. 3:47 – 10:03

   Which Exercises You Need to Do

   1. CWChris Williamson3:47

      asked, what exercises do I need to be doing?

   2. MIMike Israetel3:49

      Yeah. All of them, bro. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson3:51

      Right, yep.

   4. MIMike Israetel3:52

      That's it, and then they just walk away, and they're like, "Wow, that guy's supposed to be smart or something like that, huh?" But then they see the back of my very shiny head and it makes them happy.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:59

      Yes, okay.

   6. MIMike Israetel4:00

      Which exercises? So there is a lot to say about it, but you can start with the supposition that it's whatever exercise nominally targets the muscle you want to grow. So if you want bigger biceps, you know, some variation of doing this is probably good. And then to be honest, that's maybe 80% of the answer. So if, uh, a lot of people... Here's why I'm saying that. A lot of people will look at, let's say for quads, they'll look at hack squats, they'll look at leg presses, they'll look at lunges, and they'll look at regular high bar squats, and they'll vex themselves infinitely over the question of which one of these is superior, which is kind of like asking, you know, "I need to get to Austin, Texas in, uh, in, uh, in two days. Which airline should I take?" Like you- you ask someone who works at the airport like, "H- w- which airline's, like, really the one I should be taking?" And they're like, (laughs) "Well, I mean, I don't know. All of them really get you there." There are subtle differences, but at least make sure the ticket says Austin, Texas. So if the exercise hits that muscle, then you're good to go. Now, there are ways of seeing which exercises hit the target muscle that you want. A couple of what we at RP, at RP call proxies for stimulus. So this is something like tension, the perception of a lot of tension generated or exposed in that muscle. So if you're doing chest flies and you feel a crap load of stretch and pulling in the chest, uh, that's probably good. If you're doing what you think is a chest fly but you misread the machine's instruction thing and you feel a ton of tension in your biceps or your forearms or your shoulders, but you don't really honestly feel anything in the chest, on a just pure physics perspective, because of the mechanics of the movement, your chest has to be getting some exposure. But maybe you could be doing better by actually doing the exercise in a way or picking an exercise that really you feel some tension off of. Another clue to if you're stimulating the muscle properly is the burn, and that's seen in a medical context when people don't wear proper protection. I know that resonates with you personally 'cause the conversation we had right before this.

   7. CWChris Williamson6:03

      (laughs)

   8. MIMike Israetel6:03

      I don't mean to expose you, but...Look, Chris, you could just be making better choices is what I'm trying to say.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:08

      (laughs) .

   10. MIMike Israetel6:08

       All theoretical, I've never been with a woman, as everyone who watches our YouTube knows. But on a serious note, the burn is, in especially higher rep sets, when you start feeling the accumulation of metabolic byproducts in the target muscle. So, the chest fly analogy. If you're doing high rep pec flies, and at the end of that set, your pecs are burning, hey, that's probably good. You're probably getting a good stimulus there. On the other hand, if it's just your biceps that are burning, but your pecs don't really feel much, are you getting a stimulus in that exercise? Oh, yeah, sure. Is it guaranteed to be a really robust, really good stimulus? Probably not. 'Cause you should be feeling some combination of tension and burn, and then also there's pump. Again, none of these are mandatory, but together they're kind of like puzzle pieces that take what could be a C+ exercise for you and make it an A+ exercise, if you're getting all the feelings right on this. So another one is pump. Uh, how much, after several sets of the workout or of the exercise, how filled with fluid is your target muscle? So if you're doing pec flies, and after a couple o- of sets, you know, a girl walks by and you're like, "Sup?"

   11. CWChris Williamson7:12

       (laughs) .

   12. MIMike Israetel7:12

       And she's like, "Oh my God (laughs) ," and she runs away.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:14

       (laughs) .

   14. MIMike Israetel7:15

       Uh, I guess that's good even though she ran away, but she ran away in a way that she obviously respected your pec size, which is the whole point of the gym. But if you do a bunch of sets of something, um, let's say you're doing pec flies, your shoulders are pumped, your biceps are pumped, even your forearms look more veiny, but did you again honestly say your chest has changed in any visible or palpable way? It no doubt still trains your pecs, but maybe not that great. Another one is perturbation, uh, which kind of presents itself in two forms. One is, is that target muscle feeling really weak? So let's say you do a few pec exercises, and you think they're for the chest. And then, you try to push yourself, uh, into your car, like push off your steering wheel, and you feel like a profound weakness in that pec. You're like, "Oh my God." Um, a- a really good example is if you try to walk down stairs after you hit quads.

   15. CWChris Williamson8:02

       Yep. Yep.

   16. MIMike Israetel8:03

       If you think you hit quads, but you really hit glutes and adductors, you can hop skip down the stairs, no fucking problem. Are we allowed to swear in here?

   17. CWChris Williamson8:08

       Of course.

   18. MIMike Israetel8:08

       Or is that not a good idea? Sweet. Um-

   19. CWChris Williamson8:10

       Whereas if you're doing this on the handrail.

   20. MIMike Israetel8:12

       Yes, like desperately clinging for dear life and-

   21. CWChris Williamson8:14

       Yep.

   22. MIMike Israetel8:14

       ... and, and your legs are shaky. Uh, another thing with perturbation is crampy. None of this is required, but if your chest cramps hard when you're trying to pose after a few sets of whatever you're doing, then whatever you're doing absolutely hit your chest. The other thing is weakness too. So, if I tell you, "Hey, this mega pec workout, what's your best bench?" And you're like, "Well, it's like, you know, 200 pounds for a set of 10." And I take you through a mega pec workout. After that, if we put 200 pounds on there, if you bench it for anything close to 10, your pecs never got very fatigued, which almost certainly means they never got very stimulated. So you should see a pretty big repetition strength drop-off. If you can barely do a pushup after a chest workout, oh shit, something happened to your pecs for sure.

   23. CWChris Williamson8:52

       Mm.

   24. MIMike Israetel8:52

       Especially if you feel like your chest is the kind of onus of weakness in that movement. So those are all ways to kind of proxy that, and I would say and another one, again, not a huge deal, not the deal, but a good little additive to the mix is do you feel any kind of weakness or soreness that persists for hours or days after? So for example, if you do some kind of new, uh, quad machine at your gym, and, uh, uh, two days later, your inner thighs are sore, your glutes are physically sore, your quads aren't, uh, either the way you did it, which I'm sure we'll get to technique, or just the exercise itself, it says quads, but it's really not quads. Maybe it is to some extent, but you would expect if you had a novel stimulus to feel some kind of soreness. But if you did something that says quads on it, and then a day later, you can barely walk and you- you're sore to the touch, then you know, you have to have stimulated your quads. There is no alternative. So all those things are in the plus side category. And any exercise that hits a bunch of those check marks for you, man, that's a good exercise for you. And we're all different. So some people respond better to pec fly machines, some people to dumbbells, some people to cables, some people to something in between. Whatever exercise checks those boxes for you really well, uh, it's probably a good exercise for you, at least for the time being.

   25. CWChris Williamson10:01

       What about stimulus to

4. 10:03 – 13:04

   The Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio

   1. CWChris Williamson10:03

      fatigue ratio? I hear you talking about this all the time.

   2. MIMike Israetel10:05

      Incessantly.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:06

      Yep.

   4. MIMike Israetel10:06

      To the point where people are just done with it. They're like, "Shut up."

   5. CWChris Williamson10:09

      Well, this is a new audience. What is it?

   6. MIMike Israetel10:11

      Oh, hello. Where are they? We're in an empty room. Oh, there's cameras. That's right. I know how this works from watching many adult films myself. Just kidding. I'm in NoFap for the last several hours. (laughs) Um, the fatigue part is a big part, so what I just described was the, uh, stimulus proxies. Basically like, uh, indirect ways to know like, "Hey, did I get a good stimulus?" But fatigue is important. So another way to categorize exercise is how much fatigue they cause, which can be split up into a couple of different types of fatigue. One is joint and connective tissue fatigue. If you're doing some kind of skull crusher machine thing or tricep machine, and every time you're like, "Ow, my elbows. Ow, my elbows. Ow, this is hurting a lot more. Is this an elbow exercise or tricep exercise?" Maybe your technique is off, or maybe that exercise is just not that great. So you want as little joint and connective tissue soreness as possible. As little exposure as possible in that regard. Now, humans are robust, adaptable creatures, so zero tendon and connective tissue stimulus of any kind, or fatigue rather, it's not the goal. You just want, uh, to get really pumped and really sore and really fucked up in the muscle for any degree of joint connective tissue. So if squats beat up your knees a little bit but they fucking wreck your quads, sweet. But if you have like some kind of weird hack squat designed by people who don't know how to make machines, which is like at least half of all machines in the gym, then you're like, "Oh, this is like a knee exercise and my quads don't feel shit." That's bad. Another thing is there's several different kinds of other fatigue. One is called axial fatigue, which is a special kind of fatigue that results from spinal loading. So you'll notice that the amount of fatigue on the system if you do a lot of deadlifting, bent rowing and, uh, squatting with a barbell on your back, is, is different and more intense than exercise programs that don't have those.

   7. CWChris Williamson11:55

      Why?

   8. MIMike Israetel11:55

      Uh, I- I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Uh, uh, more for science to figure out. But it seems like when the muscles that keep the spine erect-

   9. CWChris Williamson12:03

      (laughs) .

   10. MIMike Israetel12:03

       ... (laughs) uh, are active a lot or something to do with the spine-... the fatigue's living shit out of you. Which, uh, almost everyone who's ever deadlifted seriously has reported that the total fatigue tolerance of the deadlift is very low. You can do plenty of leg pressing and it stimulates a huge muscle mass, gets you really fucked up, really sore, tons of lunges. But, you, there, the fatigue is mostly local. When you do deadlifting, something, something leaves you that you don't quite get back.

   11. CWChris Williamson12:27

       Systemic.

   12. MIMike Israetel12:28

       Systemic. And so axial may be a subcategory of systemic fatigue. There are other ways to measure systemic fatigue, your desire to train. Uh, one of the thing, one of the reasons that you wanna do some exercises you generally like is because your desire to train can stay elevated, and that keeps you coming back for more. If you have a low desire to train, it can actually physically result in the promulgation of more overreaching type of escalating fatigue. And then you're just gonna be fucking out of the gym 'cause you'll start hating the shit.

   13. CWChris Williamson12:54

       The-

   14. MIMike Israetel12:55

       Um...

   15. CWChris Williamson12:56

       ... stimulus fatigue ratio is kind of like bang for your buck.

   16. MIMike Israetel12:59

       It's literally and exactly only what that is, cost benefit, but expressed in muscle terms.

5. 13:04 – 21:02

   If Mike Could Only Keep 10 Exercises

   1. MIMike Israetel13:04

   2. CWChris Williamson13:04

      I've asked this question of some of the greatest bodybuilders of this era. Chris Bumstead, Phil Heath, asked Ryan Terry, who re- recently won the, uh, Olympia.

   3. MIMike Israetel13:14

      Oh, what a look that was.

   4. CWChris Williamson13:16

      Yep. Um-

   5. MIMike Israetel13:16

      And I looked at it for a long time.

   6. CWChris Williamson13:18

      I know.

   7. MIMike Israetel13:19

      (laughs) He knows too, I'm in his DMs. What?

   8. CWChris Williamson13:22

      If you only had 10 exercises for the rest of your life to hold onto and build as much muscle mass as possible, what would they be?

   9. MIMike Israetel13:31

      Yeah. That's a question, huh? So, uh, I would say that I'd have to go muscle group by muscle group to make sure I check off all the boxes. I, I, I don't know if there's 10 muscle groups. And some of these... So, the caveat is, these are just my personal spirit exercises, the ones I really like. That doesn't mean they're best for everybody. They can't be, and I can talk about that afterwards of what the stimulus fatigue ratio actually means. But I'd say high bar squats. Uh-

   10. CWChris Williamson14:05

       Why?

   11. MIMike Israetel14:07

       Because they hit the quadriceps and adductors and glutes very well. The amount of fatigue you get from them is less than you would with other types of squats, like low bar squats. Because until my arms got too big to hold a bar in my back, uh, I fit into the high bar position like a glove, and I love that. Um, I fit into very few things like a glove, mostly condoms that's like 80 cubic centimeters left of room. But, um, so high bar squats, I would say. I would say the over- standing overhead barbell press, just 'cause I'm like, really good at it, and it feels great for me to do until I guess my arms, not too big, I can't do that either. So that's fun.

   12. CWChris Williamson14:47

       Is there anything in that, uh, the bracing, the midline bracing is good for just other stuff generally?

   13. MIMike Israetel14:53

       Yeah, it's good for like manhood strength. Like, if you can overhead press two plates for reps, like, you're a serious motherfucker and people shouldn't fuck with you probably. Um, so that's cool for that, for sure. Um, and then I would have to say skull crushers for triceps. Barbell skull crusher. Uh, how many are we at? Three?

   14. CWChris Williamson15:13

       Three.

   15. MIMike Israetel15:14

       Um, pull-ups for the back, overhand, uh, chin to bar.

   16. CWChris Williamson15:21

       Why overhand, not underhand?

   17. MIMike Israetel15:22

       Uh, raw personal preference. I can't rotate my shit in enough (laughs) to do underhand anymore. And I have slowly become more disabled as I became more jacked, isn't that great?

   18. CWChris Williamson15:31

       (laughs)

   19. MIMike Israetel15:31

       Yeah, there's like an ability curve where you get better at shit and then you get worse at shit. (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson15:34

       (laughs)

   21. MIMike Israetel15:35

       So, uh, barbell bent rows from a deficit. You get too far back-

   22. CWChris Williamson15:40

       Barbell bent rows from a deficit?

   23. MIMike Israetel15:41

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson15:42

       Okay.

   25. MIMike Israetel15:42

       So you stand on a little box-

   26. CWChris Williamson15:43

       Yep.

   27. MIMike Israetel15:43

       ... and you can go super deep in the stretch and then touch your tummy and come back.

   28. CWChris Williamson15:46

       Any reason for doing that as opposed to a chest supported or a seal?

   29. MIMike Israetel15:49

       Manhood.

   30. CWChris Williamson15:50

       (laughs) Yeah.
6. 21:02 – 25:27

   Worst Stimulus to Fatigue Exercises

   1. CWChris Williamson21:02

      What are the worst stimulus-to-fatigue ratio exercises? If there were ones where you'd say, "If you're looking to gain muscle, start-"

   2. MIMike Israetel21:10

      Yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:10

      "... sliding these off the edge of the table-"

   4. MIMike Israetel21:11

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:11

      "... into the bin."

   6. MIMike Israetel21:12

      Yes. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson21:12

      What would be in that list?

   8. MIMike Israetel21:13

      Like cat style. Meow.

   9. CWChris Williamson21:14

      Yeah.

   10. MIMike Israetel21:14

       Um, I'll say a few things before I answer that question directly. One is it's hugely individual. Some people get a big kick out of exercises that other people just don't like. And also, any exercise you do for long enough, uh, begins to accumulate what we in sport science call staleness. And it is, the staleness can be put mathematically as the reduction of the stimulus-to-fatigue ratio. You need to start with upright rows. You know, like, "These are fucking sweet, bro. They're blowing up my delts." Five months later, you're like, "Fuck this. I'm never fucking doing it again. My shoulders hurt. I don't get a connection with my muscles. I'm tired of it psychologically." So, that's the big caveat before splitting exercises generally by their SFRs. So, stimulus-to-fatigue ratios are not a universal concept you can just apply. They're always and everywhere applied in the moment for the athlete themselves. So, if someone's like, "Hey, what should I do for quads?" I'm like, "Well, what have you been feeling lately and what do you not like lately?" And then we choose an exercise, and then we go forward.

   11. CWChris Williamson22:03

       Good example of that might be moving from walking lunges to box step-ups.

   12. MIMike Israetel22:09

       Absolutely. Exactly. You're just, for whatever reason, your joints hurt more on walking lunges. You've been doing 'em forever. You're not getting as big of pumps, tension. All those proxies we talked about for stimulus are down, and all the fatigue proxies are up. You fucking hate the exercise. Your joints hurt. Systemic fatigue is higher. So, you do what's called exercise deletion and replacement. There is no... This is one of those things. There is no one right exercise. Uh, just exactly like there is no one right food for you. You ask someone, "What's your favorite food?" They're like, "Uh, mac and cheese with tuna in it." You're like, "O- Okay, that's fine. It's a weird choice, but whatever." It can't possibly be your favorite food for forever, because if you have to eat it all the time, you get fucking sick of it, and then whatever was your second is now your first. S- Same thing works with women. Am I right? Eh? Eh? No? No takers. All right. Oh. I'm like a, a much shorter, less combat-trained version of Andrew Tate.

   13. CWChris Williamson22:57

       (laughs)

   14. MIMike Israetel22:57

       Also, I don't know anything about women. But I've run a few casinos in Bulgaria. People don't know that about me. Isn't that what he does?

   15. CWChris Williamson23:04

       Does it?

   16. MIMike Israetel23:04

       I'm just gonna shut the fuck up.

   17. CWChris Williamson23:05

       Yeah.

   18. MIMike Israetel23:06

       I do have multiple Lamborghinis, so, uh...

   19. CWChris Williamson23:10

       Oh, yeah.

   20. MIMike Israetel23:10

       ... like that.

   21. CWChris Williamson23:11

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are spending a lot of your money on Lamborghinis at the moment.

   22. MIMike Israetel23:13

       It's not a lot of my money. It's a profoundly small amount. I'm dealing with trillions, Chris. I just want people to understand that. Most... Well, I'll just say it. Regular people, there's-

   23. CWChris Williamson23:21

       (laughs)

   24. MIMike Israetel23:21

       ... there's wealth, and then there's me.

   25. CWChris Williamson23:23

       The unwashed masses.

   26. MIMike Israetel23:24

       Elon Musk? I've h- I've heard of him. He's a cool guy. He's got some money.

   27. CWChris Williamson23:27

       Cute.

   28. MIMike Israetel23:28

       It's adorable, really. Um, so, putting all that stimulus-to-fatigue ratio stuff in context, like it's always an individual decision, some exercise, on average, just on the mechanics, uh, don't do that great. And I can specify what kind of mechanics. One is, if an exercise targets a lot of muscle generally, it can't possibly target one muscle a lot specifically, and thus for a specific muscle, it has a poor stimulus-to-fatigue ratio. Deadlifts, for example. What exactly does the conventional deadlift train? You can't answer that question because that question has an answer of, like, 80% (laughs) of the muscles in the body. Glutes, sort of hamstrings, maybe adductors, some quads technically, tons of lower back, but not exclusively, depending on how you pull. Mid-back, upper back, traps. Holy fuck. So, if you're really trying to grow "insert any muscle here" with re- conventional deadlifts, there's probably an exercise that gives you as much stimulus for a fraction of the fatigue. Another thing is...... uh, range of motion. If the exercise doesn't expose that target muscle into a deep stretch, uh, you could do better. So for example, floor press. Um, I'm sure we'll have a video on the YouTube at some point about this. The floor press is just, you hold dumbbells or a barbell. You go down onto your elbows, so you're lying on the ground like an animal. And this bench is for civilized people. Mine at my gym are made of gold. No, it's platinum. I think it's diamonds. Uh, it's very uncomfortable, but the wealth alone keeps me comfortable. So you touch down here, and you can't possibly physically get a big stretch. So i- in some context can be a great exercise, but just on the raw probabilities, probably isn't that great. So those are some of the exercises that I would say like deadlifts, floor presses. Anything you do with a partial range that's not in a lengthened deep stretch position is, is probably not ideal for hypertrophy. Rack pulls are another one.

   29. CWChris Williamson25:10

       Mm-hmm.

   30. MIMike Israetel25:10

       What exactly are rack pulls training? Fuck if I know. I think they train mostly the ego 'cause you load 18 plates on each side, that one girl used to look at. She's like, "Oh my God, you're like a fucking superhero." And you're like, "Yeah? You want to see me fucking..." Et cetera.
7. 25:27 – 34:30

   The Importance of Good Technique

   1. CWChris Williamson25:27

      You guys, I think, have been, at least for me, the, one of the main reasons why I've reintroduced tempo into my training-

   2. MIMike Israetel25:37

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:37

      ... for everything now.

   4. MIMike Israetel25:39

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:39

      Everything is tempo.

   6. MIMike Israetel25:40

      Your whole life.

   7. CWChris Williamson25:41

      So given that we've... Yes, yes. Slow in, slow out.

   8. MIMike Israetel25:44

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:45

      Uh...

   10. MIMike Israetel25:46

       That sounds good.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:48

       Talk to me about what good technique looks like-

   12. MIMike Israetel25:50

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson25:50

       ... for muscle growth.

   14. MIMike Israetel25:51

       Yeah. That's a great question. So good technique is a huge diversity and variety of expressions. So you can't really look at w- at a person doing an exercise and for sure be like, "That's bad technique," 'cause it could be good for them. It could be good for the context. But there are a couple of generalities that apply to almost everyone to almost all exercises that you can sort of check boxes saying, "If you have these things, probably your technique is pretty good." If you don't have them, as a scientifically minded person, or at least one attempting to be scientifically minded, at the very least if you're doing a technique that doesn't check the following boxes I'm about to talk about, I at least want to talk to you and get some reasoning out of you. 'Cause you could have good reasoning, be like, "Yeah, man, my shoulder's fucking injured. I can't do any more range of motion." Okay, no big deal. But a lot of times you don't get any reasoning out of people. They're just like, "That's fucking what works, brother." And you're like, "My man, buck thinking. Sucks."

   15. CWChris Williamson26:42

       (laughs)

   16. MIMike Israetel26:42

       "It's painful, it's annoying. Why do it?" So one is, a good technique should be focused on targeting a specific muscle or muscles. And by sheer biomechanics, you know, if you're doing this motion, it's not your biceps. So sometimes people will be like, "I'm training delts." And they'll do, like, alternating, like, lifts like this with their el- with their fist pointed up. And that hits the front delts, but it can't really possibly hit the side delts. And so if you're like, "Hey, man, I'm trying to get big side delts," and you do that technique, I'm going to be like, "Duh, that can't..." There's the... You can do, like, a, a stick and rope model of the body where you're like, "Th- that's not the muscle that does that." So that automatically means, like, if you want big lats, you're gonna do pull-ups or rows, 'cause it's the sheer mechanics. And there are more particularities where if you pull out like this, it's probably not as much lats as it is upper back. If you pull down, it's more lats, just 'cause of how the muscle attacks. So that's kind of the king variable of good technique. So for example, if you, say, you're training your quads and you do a squat that's sumo stance, you're sitting back really far, you're getting a very small degree of knee flexion, um, there are better ways to train the quads. That is not the best technique for the quads almost for anyone, because the better technique would be like, "Well, we target the quads. That means we expose them. That means we give them a high degree of range of motion, which means, like, as you squat mostly down, your toes should go over your, your knees should go over your toes, rather, and you should go nice and deep." That really biomechanically has to train your quads. So that's number one. Another one is to have a movement that has a considerable degree of stability. So if you're unstable, so for example, if you're doing upright rows and you keep coming up on your toes and you're wiggling around, that's reducing your force production. So good technique means stable. So-

   17. CWChris Williamson28:33

       Because your body will dial down how much force your muscles can deploy if you're stood on a vibrating plate or if you're on a balance beam, or if you're on something else.

   18. MIMike Israetel28:44

       Bosu ball.

   19. CWChris Williamson28:44

       Yeah.

   20. MIMike Israetel28:45

       100%. It happens completely automatically. Uh, we've, I've been directly involved in laboratory testing for something like this. We had... This is an insane study we did. We had lots of spotters. We had people max out in the high-bar back squat, and then we had them max out on a Bosu ball. Good news, they only squatted about 60% of the one-rep max. For a max-

   21. CWChris Williamson29:04

       That's still quite a lot.

   22. MIMike Israetel29:06

       60%'s quite a lot, right? But-

   23. CWChris Williamson29:07

       On a fucking Bosu ball?

   24. MIMike Israetel29:08

       Totally, right.

   25. CWChris Williamson29:09

       Wow.

   26. MIMike Israetel29:09

       But, but to put it another way, unless you're doing profoundly high repetitions, if you're doing sets of five to 10 with 60% of your true one-rep max, what would be in stability, you're getting almost no hypertrophy as an intermediate or advanced trainee, which is enough. You're learning how to squat on a Bosu ball, which is cool at parties. You can show off, maybe get laid, maybe not. Um, but it's not, it's no good because you want to be nice and stable. So for example, if you and I are training together and you start doing incline dumbbell press, but I notice your feet are hanging off or kind of dangling, there's two things that can happen. One, you're a short king like me who never grew up to be an adult height, and then I'm just gonna be like, "That sucks, but good luck." But if you're a tall king like yourself or a medium king... How tall are you?

   27. CWChris Williamson29:48

       5'10".

   28. MIMike Israetel29:49

       Oh, perfect. The perfect man height. Um, I would say, "Hey, hey, Chris, try to put your feet down and really corkscrew them into the ground to get that stability." You'll find you'll get more reps and be able to do more weight with incline dumbbells, which is a really good thing. So stability is a technique universal, generally speaking.

   29. CWChris Williamson30:04

       When people talk about sort of grinding or grounding themselves into the floor, there's no chi that's happening here. This is the body responding to us being more stable, and the force-

   30. MIMike Israetel30:15

       Exclusively.
8. 34:30 – 43:23

   Using Tempo in Training

   1. CWChris Williamson34:30

      It's really interesting to look at sort of all of this as a suite, especially when it comes to the technique for muscle growth. That you have this... If we're looking at stimulus to fatigue ratio if s- something that's important, especially as everybody slowly makes the inevitable journey toward death and getting older-

   2. MIMike Israetel34:49

      Jesus Christ, man. There's-

   3. CWChris Williamson34:52

      What?

   4. MIMike Israetel34:52

      That's, what, an incredibly macabre way to put it.

   5. CWChris Williamson34:54

      It's... I'm apocalyptic guy. I'm British.

   6. MIMike Israetel34:56

      Yes, of course (laughs) . Yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:58

      (laughs)

   8. MIMike Israetel34:58

      The, uh, the Battle of Britain, it never got over that, so-

   9. CWChris Williamson35:00

      (laughs)

   10. MIMike Israetel35:00

       ... death is always imminent. I understand.

   11. CWChris Williamson35:03

       Everyone's getting older. Everyone wants to avoid injury.

   12. MIMike Israetel35:05

       Yes.

   13. CWChris Williamson35:05

       By reducing down the amount of weight that you use, this is one of the reliable ways, by focusing on controlled eccentric-

   14. MIMike Israetel35:11

       Yes.

   15. CWChris Williamson35:12

       ... that also helps because you're not going to allow y- you're not gonna surprise yourself and get into a- a place or a range that you didn't mean to get into.

   16. MIMike Israetel35:18

       Totally.

   17. CWChris Williamson35:18

       Uh-

   18. MIMike Israetel35:19

       Totally.

   19. CWChris Williamson35:19

       ... by focusing on deep stretch as well, also going to reduce down further the amount of weight that you need to get the amount.

   20. MIMike Israetel35:25

       Absolutely.

   21. CWChris Williamson35:26

       So, yeah.

   22. MIMike Israetel35:27

       Stability. Unstable exercise is much more injurious than stable exercise. If you have your feet quartered in and you're just moving exactly how you want, you're probably not gonna fuck up. If you have quite a bit of weight on a BOSU ball, I'm sure you've seen YouTube videos of various accidents, like, yeah, you can fuck your shit up if you get really unstable.

   23. CWChris Williamson35:43

       What... When it comes to tempo, 'cause obviously we're talking about controlled eccentric and concentric that's at least got something behind it.

   24. MIMike Israetel35:51

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson35:53

       Jeff Nippard did some study, saw him on TikTok talking about it. H- How long do I need to take on that eccentric portion?

   26. MIMike Israetel36:00

       Yeah, it's a good question. The literature we have so far as far as I'm aware of it, and because I am science, I'm very (laughs) aware of it... That didn't impress you? No one's claimed on your show before that they are science itself?

   27. CWChris Williamson36:13

       You've fused. You are one.

   28. MIMike Israetel36:14

       I'll be the first. Yes (laughs) . Um-It seems to not matter much. Anything between a repetition that in total takes one second, including eccentric and concentric, and all the way up to a total of nine seconds, which is a lot of pain. It seems to be that if you do more quick repetitions, you can get more repetitions.

   29. CWChris Williamson36:34

       Mm-hmm.

   30. MIMike Israetel36:35

       If you seem to do slower repetitions, you get fewer, but each one has a lot more stimulus. It's kind of like filling up a glass of a certain height. If you go really slow, it takes you longer, you fill up the glass. If you go really fast, it doesn't take as long, fills up the glass. The glass filling is what we want anyway. There's a certain amount of stimulus you can drive to your muscles. You could do it more slowly, you could do it more quickly. It doesn't seem to matter for hypertrophy. However, under control is the big caveat. So if you just dump the stuff on you and then, uh, kind of crank it up and then dump, yeah, that's not gonna be as hypertrophic as some modicum of control. Now, if I go down this fast and come back up, I still c- 100% control the eccentric. As long as I'm doing that, I can go ultra slow, I can go a little bit more quickly, and anything in between. At least tentatively for now, we can say one thing almost for sure. It doesn't make a huge difference.
9. 43:23 – 46:38

   Pausing During Reps

   1. MIMike Israetel43:23

   2. CWChris Williamson43:23

      We talked about concentric, eccentric. You mentioned about stretch at the bottom. Pause, pausing reps-

   3. MIMike Israetel43:30

      Yes. Yes.

   4. CWChris Williamson43:30

      ... and isometrics. What- what- what needs to be said there?

   5. MIMike Israetel43:32

      Isometrics just don't seem to be as hypertrophic. Um, isometrics in a stretch position are plenty hypertrophic. In a contracted one, they're not. So for example, if you're doing cable flys, if you stop at the squeeze... Oh, sorry. If you stop and squeeze, people will give that cue. It's totally cool for variation. It's fun, it's awesome, it grows muscle. But I wouldn't say it's essential and it might be a downside. So all that energy you're spending stopping at the squeeze, you could put into the eccentric, which probably grows more muscle. And I think-

   6. CWChris Williamson43:57

      So if you were going to do a pause, you're going to be pausing at the stretched position, not at the contracted position.

   7. MIMike Israetel44:02

      More often, yeah. Pause at the stretch is cool for a couple reasons. One, it absolutely reduces the injury probability. That reversal at the stretch is the single generally most dangerous time for muscular injury. Because-

   8. CWChris Williamson44:13

      Right, because you've got weight going down and you're about to contract while it's... Yeah. That's how I ruptured my Achilles.

   9. MIMike Israetel44:18

      M- yeah. Oh, I've heard that story. It was terrible.

   10. CWChris Williamson44:21

       Yep.

   11. MIMike Israetel44:21

       It's the ultimate scary story of warm up for forever if you're coming back to sports (laughs) .

   12. CWChris Williamson44:25

       Correct, yeah.

   13. MIMike Israetel44:26

       Um, the d- direct force plate measured pulse of force at the bottom of the movement is the highest it will be in its entire movement, reversing. It's also technically your chest at its weakest position. So it's... If you want to pause there, again, the absolute risk of injury in the gym is fucking tiny. It's way, way less injurious than rugby or tennis or anything like that. It's so funny because, like, rich people, uh, like myself will be like, "Oh, I'm going to ski in Vail," and they'll see, like, a lifter lifting 200 pounds, like, "Isn't that bad for your back?" Motherfucker, you just hit a tree on your last trip. There's... Half your brain's out of your fucking face. Lifting is super, super safe. So I don't want to be like, "You gotta fucking pause at the bottom or else you're gonna die." But on a small relative injury risk, it is reduced when you're pausing at the bottom. Absolutely. And you get more time experiencing tension in your muscles at that lengthened position. So there's an argument that pausing at the bottom is actually maybe a little bit more hypertrophic and you need less weight on the bar. So all those things stack up and, like, the good column is at least as good.

   14. CWChris Williamson45:28

       Yep, yep.

   15. MIMike Israetel45:28

       Probably not much better. The, the bad column is a little smaller. To me, it seems like at the very least, it's a great option. I'm not gonna say it's the only way to train, fuck that. But it's a good option, good idea to try.

   16. CWChris Williamson45:38

       In other news, this episode is brought to you by a product I've used every single day for over three years now, and that's AG1. Dr. Andrew Huberman and Tim Ferriss and Dr. Peter Attia and Joe Rogan all use AG1 because it is the best all-in-one foundational nutritional supplement on the market. They've upgraded the recipe 52 times over the last decade as new research has come in and as they've improved the ingredients, and it really works. I tried pretty much everything on the planet, and this is the best. You don't need a handful of pills or potions, simply one convenient and tasty daily drink that has everything that you need. So, if you're looking to make an upgrade to your nutrition, this is the place to start. Best of all, there is a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it every single day for three months, and if you don't like it, at the end of that three months, they'll give you your money back. Head to the link in the description below or go to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom to get a year's free supply, vitamin D3, and five free travel packs, plus that 90-day money back guarantee. That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom.

10. 46:38 – 52:45

    The Ideal Way to Warmup

    1. CWChris Williamson46:38

       Okay. How do we warm up before we start?

    2. MIMike Israetel46:40

       Fuck, if I know. I just get in there and fucking rage, bro (laughs) . Um, first thing, when driving to the gym, there are only a few types of music you're allowed to listen to. Chris, let me judge your music soundtrack for warming up. What i- what are you... What's in the headphones there for you?

    3. CWChris Williamson46:53

       Sleep Token at the moment.

    4. MIMike Israetel46:54

       That's nonsense. Because I have never heard of it, it must be the wrong thing.

    5. CWChris Williamson46:58

       Okay. Do you... What do you listen to?

    6. MIMike Israetel47:00

       Oh, well-

    7. CWChris Williamson47:02

       Dark thoughts?

    8. MIMike Israetel47:03

       (laughs) Oh, yes. Always. My psychiatrist says we have to up a few different kinds of medication to make them maybe go away. Um, Blink-182 really is the correct answer.

    9. CWChris Williamson47:14

       Because you reached the age of 13 and never actually aged, psychologically.

    10. MIMike Israetel47:19

        Oh, God, I probably never made it to 13 (laughs) .

    11. CWChris Williamson47:21

        Right.

    12. MIMike Israetel47:21

        11, maybe.

    13. CWChris Williamson47:22

        Yeah.

    14. MIMike Israetel47:23

        Um, yes. So what the f-... What kind of music is that? I'm trying to think of what token-

    15. CWChris Williamson47:29

        Sleep Token?

    16. MIMike Israetel47:29

        Sleep Token?

    17. CWChris Williamson47:30

        Metal. Like half of it.

    18. MIMike Israetel47:31

        Oh, oh, my man. Nevermind, I take back. I thought it was like trip hopers or some shit.

    19. CWChris Williamson47:33

        Like Bring Me The Hor- Like, you're kind of in the world of Bring Me The Horizon or Loathe, Misery Signals.

    20. MIMike Israetel47:38

        Misery Signals.

    21. CWChris Williamson47:40

        Yeah, all of my... All of the bands, uh, represent the landscape of my mind.

    22. MIMike Israetel47:46

        Holy shit, this got dark.

    23. CWChris Williamson47:47

        Sleep Token (laughs) .

    24. MIMike Israetel47:47

        All right. Um, yes. Okay. Warm up music aside, there's actually a study that was recently conducted by Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, the world's expert on hypertrophy, and his laboratory.

    25. CWChris Williamson48:00

        Yep.

    26. MIMike Israetel48:01

        And they have illustrated something that most lifters of a certain degree of intelligence level and longtime participation, uh, have realized, and it's that there are two different kinds of warmup. The general warmup, which is when you go in and you do the elliptical for 15 minutes, maybe you foam roll, maybe you do some dynamic stretching. That's all fine and good. And then there's the specific warmup, which is whatever lift you have first in your program, you do it for about a set of 12.... very light weights, a set of 12 with maybe your 30 rep max. Then you do a set of eight after a few minutes of rest with maybe your 20 rep max. Then you do a set of four-ish, two to four reps, with something like your 10 rep max. Then you rest a little bit, and then you're ready to do whatever load. That specific warmup is a very good idea from a variety of perspectives. It warms up your tissues. It makes them more pliable, less likely to get hurt. It also activates and wakes up your nervous system. It aligns your actual muscle fibers more into the direction of pull or whatever exercise you're doing. It, um, decreases the sensitivity of what are called Golgi tendon organs, which are detectors in your muscles for how much force is being transduced, and they start out, uh, not warmed up by being like, "Holy shit, that's a lot of force," and they actually tamper down how much your nervous system can activate. After a few warmup sets, you literally are stronger.

    27. CWChris Williamson49:18

        Which is why you can't cold bar your one rep max.

    28. MIMike Israetel49:20

        Exactly, exactly. Y- the GTOs need to kind of cool down and after a few reps, a few sets of progressively heavier weight, they're like, "Eh."

    29. CWChris Williamson49:27

        Oh, we're safe here. This is okay.

    30. MIMike Israetel49:28

        Yeah, it's fine.
11. 52:45 – 57:19

    How to Know How Heavy You Should Lift

    1. MIMike Israetel52:45

    2. CWChris Williamson52:45

       All right, how about rep ranges and how heavy to lift?

    3. MIMike Israetel52:49

       Yes, for, there are recommended target rep ranges for every single human physical quality that we know of. So for example, for strength, basic strength building is, like, sets of three to six repetitions. You do a whole lot fewer than six, let's use, you do singles, you can get stronger doing singles, but you could have gotten stronger because you would've gotten more volume doing still very heavy weight if you did, like, sets of four. It's just not an efficient use of your time. Still works, not as efficient. Can you get stronger doing sets of eight? Yes. But you get a lot of hypertrophy work from eight. But, uh, if you do it, your eight rep max, it's just not heavy enough like sets of three to six would be for you to get as much strength out of it as possible. So these are all spectrum ranges. There's not like, at some repetition it begins, before it you get nothing, and then you get all the hypertrophy, and then after you get no hypertrophy. It's kind of more of a normal distribution kinda situation. But for hypertrophy it seems that anything roughly between sets of five repetitions that are challenging, close to failure, and all the way to 30 to 35 repetitions seems to be on average, for the average person, for the average muscle, in medium term, several months of testing, to promote almost, uh, I'll say it better, undifferentiable amounts of muscle growth. So we got group of people training sets of five to eight, got another group of people training sets of 25 to 28 reps, as long as they go close to failure and it's the same exercise.

    4. CWChris Williamson54:16

       Wow.

    5. MIMike Israetel54:17

       They get essentially th- on average, the same results. Now, within a different muscle, it could be different. Some people's biceps respond really well to heavy shit, sets of five to 10. You do sets of 25 to 30, they just get tired and they don't have much hypertrophy. It works differently between individuals too. But the overarching theme is anywhere between sets of five and sets of 30 is kind of, uh, unlikely to be a ton of really wrong answers. You can gain muscle doing sets of four and three and two and one, it's just gonna take a lot more sets to get that down, and obviously your joints and connective tissues are taking a fucking hell of a pounding 'cause that's a really heavy weight. It's not ultra efficient. You're not putting your best cards on the table if you're doing that.Can you get really good muscle growth with sets of 30, 40, 50 plus reps? Actually, yes. But you have to do more sets to accomplish that, and each set is psychologically fucking brutal.

    6. CWChris Williamson55:04

       Three minutes long.

    7. MIMike Israetel55:04

       I mean, fuck that, right? So you do, like, 10 sets of 52 reps. The, the playing card workout. Fuck that. It's a shitload of systemic fatigue, crap load of psychological fatigue, for the same growth you could have gotten with just doing, you know, 10 sets of eight, which is way easier on the whole system. So, uh, five to 30 reps is really good general advice, but experiment on your own time. Find out what seems to be giving you great proxies. Pump, burn, tension, soreness. Whatever rep ranges give you that, it's awesome. And another thing is, try some variety. So if you train back twice a week, have one of the days be slightly heavier, like mostly sets of five to 10, some sets of 10 to 15 reps. Try the other day being mostly sets of 15 to 20 reps, and even some sets of 20 to 30. Kind of a heavier and lighter. That diversity there are a few studies that show a diversity of rep ranges, even within several months of time, can help you grow. So, I wouldn't write that off. And also, more sustainable from a joint connective tissue perspective, and an enjoyment perspective. It's nice that people have some slightly different days. So you're like, "Oh, another day of 28 reps, fuck that." But 28 you get sick of after one day. The next day you come in and it's sets of, you know, five to 10. Like, "Okay, fuck." Like, this is different, it's cool, and it's equally effective on average.

    8. CWChris Williamson56:15

       What about weight?

    9. MIMike Israetel56:18

       The amount of weight that you choose should fall into two categories, or two kind of clearance variables to make sure it goes through. One is, can you lift it to, with good technique, between five and 30 times in one set? And two, is that exhibition of your lifting at least within three reps-ish of failure? 'Cause people will say like, you give someone 10 pound dumbbells that can lift the 30s, and they do five, and they put it down. They're like, "Hypertrophy, I hit five." Like yep, but, but the caveat there is that you have to challenge the muscle. So, the weight you end up using is whatever weight gets you within five to 30 reps range, close to failure. And you, you have to warm up to find that out, and it's different for everyone. But the idea that you gotta go ultra-heavy to grow is true, but it's not the only true thing. You can also grow from light, high rep shit, you just have to push it close to failure.

12. 57:19 – 1:06:16

    Should You Train to Failure?

    1. MIMike Israetel57:19

    2. CWChris Williamson57:19

       Why not to failure?

    3. MIMike Israetel57:22

       To failure is a totally fine thing as well. There are downsides of going to failure all the time. Uh, it seems that as you get closer to failure, the amount of stimulus per set rises. So if you have a set where you stop at two reps shy of failure, and another person has a set where they stop just at failure, or some- someone has to drag the barbell off of them, the person who went to failure is gonna grow more muscle. That's a good thing, but it's by a small margin. Maybe just several percent more growth. The downside is, training to failure generates a lot more fatigue. Probably not a few percent more, maybe a few dozen percent more, which is a big deal. If you're gonna use a program which mostly has you do three or two or one rep shy of failure, you'll get great stimulus and you'll be able to recover from lots of sets over the course of weeks and months, which means you'll get a great stimulus and a great hypertrophy result. If you insist on going to failure even beyond in your sets, you can get very good results, but you have to reduce the total volume of your training because the amount of fatigue you accumulate is going to be rapid. It's gonna happen fast. So, if you've ever heard of like, HIT training, Mike Mentzer, high intensity training, HIT, um, Mike Mentzer and those folks were fans of going to failure and beyond with drop sets and crazy shit like that. They got really good results, but they don't do very many sets. A few sets per muscle per workout's all they do, because they realize we can't recover from this. You can recover from more if you stay a little shy of failure. My suspicion is that if you want the best overall muscle growth, and you have all the time in the world to train, that somewhere between three and one rep in reserve on average for a program is a really good idea. But you also wanna test your shit every now and again. It's difficult to say this has two reps in reserve if it's been months since you've actually gone to failure on that exercise.

    4. CWChris Williamson59:08

       Mm-hmm.

    5. MIMike Israetel59:09

       'Cause you can be fucking lying to yourself. "Yeah, it's 2 RIR." Someone puts a gun to your head, literally maybe, and they're like, "Go to failure," and you get six more reps. Well, shit. You, it turns out you weren't even in that best growth zone of three to one. So what I would say is, a method that we use at RP, our app does this automatically, it starts you a few reps shy of failure, and then it presents incrementally slightly heavier loads over the weeks, or repetition goals that are slightly higher. So, takes you from 10 reps to 11 reps to 12 reps, or takes you from 100 pounds to 105 to 110. Automatically, because your body can't adapt that quickly, you're going to reach failure a few weeks in, four to six weeks in. You'll not only have a whole range of going from three-ish, uh, in reserve, all the way to zero, which means you checked every box, but you'll now know something about yourself. You'll know exactly how high your best performance is, so for the next mesocycle, next program you construct, you can be like, "Okay, I know how strong I am. Let me start a little bit less than that and progress again to see if I can go a little bit higher." So I would say going from some number of reps in reserve all the way to failure in a single mesocycle is probably a good practice for many people, but not required. You can always go two or three in, uh, uh, reps in reserve. As long as you do enough sets, you'll get very close to ideal hypertrophy outcomes, and you'll do very well in muscle growth if you just take everything to failure. You just have to really watch your fatigue management and not do too many sets, 'cause then you'll burn out.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:00:27

       What about sets?

    7. MIMike Israetel1:00:29

       Sets are influenced by a few things. One of the big ones is your proximity to failure. So what I'm gonna say next about how many sets you should do is if you go close to failure all the time, you do f- on the lower end of this range. At least start there. If you do, uh, you know, two or three reps in reserve, you can be on the higher end of this range. Couple ways, uh, to think about sets. There's sets per week and there's sets per session.I like to think of per muscle group per session. Some people get overly obsessed about, "How many sets do I need to do per exercise?" There is an answer to that question, but it's much more interesting to talk about per muscle group, because you can train your chest with three exercises and do two sets each, or you can train it with two exercises and do three sets each. The total amount of working sets is by far the biggest determinant of how much muscle you're gonna grow per session. So in a session, theoretically, you can do anywhere from one set for your muscle, just one set of curls and leave. And as a beginner especially, you'll get some robust gains. Or as someone who's more advanced, if you train your biceps every single day, just one or two sets of curls ends up being a lot of weekly volume and plenty of stimulus, and that's a totally fine way to grow. On the other end, in the session, you can do as many as 12 to 15 sets for the biceps or for the chest. The downside there is on the higher ends of that spectrum, you are reaching into what's called junk volume, where, yeah, you're training, but your nervous system is so tired it's not even recruiting as many of the muscle fibers as you want anymore. It's like it's taken the day off and you're just kind of robotically moving through. That, um, 30 rep cutoff, theoretical, very rough cutoff of anything lighter than your 30 rep max probably won't grow as much muscle. That's always and everywhere your fresh 30 rep max. So if you're on exercise number five for your pecs, you're doing cable flys with 100 pounds for sets of 15, even if to failure, that is to failure as we observe it externally.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:02:34

       With this pre-fatigue.

    9. MIMike Israetel1:02:35

       But, oh my God, and at that point, your nervous system has fucking checked out. A lot of your faster twitch muscle fibers, the ones that grow the most, they're not even fucking contracting anymore. And you look at 100 pounds and someone's like, "How many reps did you do?" You said, "15." "How many could you have done if you were fresh?" Like, I don't know, 40? Well, that's 10 away from 30. That already is starting to get junky. It's just the stimulus isn't worth the fatigue anymore. A couple of studies have been done, actually more than a few, and a lot of good meta-analytic data has been synthesized, probably some of the best of which is by a gentleman named James Krieger, who is, has a lit review, the waitology lit review. I sign up for it. I pay real money for it. My own money, Chris. Do you know how painful that is to part with my own money? And, um, he has, uh, hinted at the fact that close to the best answer on average, huge caveat, on average, is something like five to eight working sets per muscle per session. So if you're training your biceps and you do three sets per session, totally cool. You just have to do more sessions per week. If you're doing something like nine sets for biceps, again, totally cool. You just have to train them less frequently so they can recover for a l- a lot of nine sets of work. But if you're doing 15 working sets for just your biceps in one session, the literature would say that's not optimal. And the reasoning would be like your last five sets are just a gigantic fucking waste of your time. You're just not, you're cashed out. It's like frying an egg after it's already fried. It just gets more burnt and nothing good happens to it. On the other hand, if you're doing just one or two sets for biceps per session, you had better be doing a lot of sessions over the week. And if you're only training once or twice for biceps, you'd say, "Look, man, your muscles could take more of a hit." Which brings me to my next point. How do you determine if you're doing the right amount of volume for you? And I would actually keep this relatively simple. However many sessions you have per muscle in a week, which I'm sure we'll get to how many sessions is a good idea. Let's just say it's two. Let's say you train your chest on Monday, you train chest again on Thursday. If after Monday's workout, let's say you're doing three sets of chest, by Tuesday evening, you're like not sore, you're not tired, you're fucking ready to go, your strength is as high as it'll ever be. Someone could ask the theoretical question of why the fuck are you waiting Wednesday as a whole day to just go Thursday? You could have already hit it again. So if you're well beyond recovered, next Monday you can do four sets or five sets for chest to get you close to just barely recovered for next Thursday. If you're just barely recovered, let's say Wednesday, you're still a little tight, a little sore, little weak feeling, and Thursday morning you're really good to go, perfect.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:05:14

        Is that MRV?

    11. MIMike Israetel1:05:15

        Yeah. So if you go over that value, you might have exceeded your MRV. Well, there's more technical way to diagnose that maximum recoverable volume, but a kind of way to make sure you're not excessively over it, so make sure you heal down time. But if you heal too early, then you could be at your minimum effective volume or even maintenance volume. You think you're growing, but you're really doing so few sets that you're not accomplishing a whole lot. So the point is to challenge your body such that it is recovering until, gee, a day or several hours before you hit it again. If you do eight sets of chest on Monday, by the time Thursday rolls around, you're still sort of a touch and you're weaker than usual. You're not going to get as robust of a stimulus. And thus, you next time shouldn't do eight sets. Maybe you should do six. So by adjusting the number of sets week over week for any given muscle to challenge yourself to recover close to just on time for the next time you hit it, not too far back, definitely not under recovered, you end up auto-regulating yourself into probably close to your ideal volume for how much muscle

13. 1:06:16 – 1:12:35

    How Long You Should Rest Between Sets

    1. MIMike Israetel1:06:16

       you can gain.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:06:16

       How long do you rest in between sets?

    3. MIMike Israetel1:06:20

       Yes. Oh, in between actual sets-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:06:22

       Yeah.

    5. MIMike Israetel1:06:22

       ... as you go?

    6. CWChris Williamson1:06:22

       Yeah.

    7. MIMike Israetel1:06:23

       Okay. So I have a unique take on this. You might not hear it in a lot of other places. It's just one minute and it's the right answer for everyone. Next question. No, wait, wait. That's not it. Um, a lot of answers you'll get on the internet from folks that also know what they're talking about is some number of minutes. And I understand that answer because it's very usable. Let's say two to five minutes or something like that. The problem is that is not a theoretically based answer. It's just a, it's just a notional answer. Like here's the number. You're not really sure why. And there are many exceptions. For example, if you train your calves in calf raises, are you telling me I need to rest five fucking minutes after my calves? 10 seconds after, I don't even feel lactic acid anymore.I'm fucking totally good to go. So, we do at RP is we have a four-factor checklist model, where if you can checklist four things after your last set is over, you can begin your next set as soon as those checklist items are checked. You can wait longer, and there may be some small upsides to it, but someone could say if you wait much longer, you're just kind of wasting time. So, here are the checklists. Number one, your cardio can't be a limiting factor. So, if you just did a set of squats and you turn to your training partner and you're like, "Should I do (gasps) another set?" No. Because then, what's gonna stop you in your set of squats is you can't breathe. It's not your local quad musculature that's being brought close to failure. Now remember, the local musculature brought close to failure is the way we get the most robust gains. That's the mechanism by which we grow. So that's no good. So wait until you're back to at least normal-ish breathing. That's checklist one. Another one is kind of your n- neural nervous system strength, which means do you feel, do you feel strong, like, in here? You know, not in the pecs, in the heart, (laughs) which we all know emotion comes from the heart. No, wait, it's the brain. If you're fucking like, "Yeah, let's fucking do this," you're ready. If you still feel, like, curved up in a ball and defeated, how are you going to push it close to failure in the next set? You're not. You're gonna suck. So, number one, cardiovascular system needs to be mostly recovered. Number two, you need to have your neural strength back. Like, you need to be like, "Yeah, fuck it, let's do this." The second to last one is the synergists need to no longer be a limiting factor. For example, in the squat, you can say, "Okay, after three minutes, I'm breathing normal. I feel fucking strong again. And my quads feel like we're ready to go, but my lower back is still cramping and still has lactic acid. It's still weak." If you do another work set, what do you think is gonna be the limiting point? It's gonna be your lower back, which means your quads are like, "Eh, d- did anything happen? Did we just try, or what the fuck went on?" If your lower back has five good reps in it, but your quads have 10 good reps in them, it doesn't matter if you tell yourself, "Oh, I'm one rep in reserve." You're six reps in reserve for the quads, for the muscle that matters. So, the synergists have to be good to go. Another example is forearms in the lat pulldown. If your forearms are still throbbing and you can't grip anything, it's not time to do lat pulldowns again. You gotta fucking rest out, even if your lats feel quite good. And that last four-factor model checklist is, does the target muscle have enough recovery in it for it to be able to do at least another five repetitions? Because any set less than five reps can be hypertrophic for sure, but it not, not the most efficient use of your time because you're not sufficiently recovered. So, uh, let me give you two extreme examples. One is calf raises, uh, just on a seated calf machine, not the one where your legs are bent, but the one where your legs are straight. Bent-leg calf raises actually mostly hit the soleus muscle, which is deep to the gastroc. It's not the cool big diamond-shaped one. It just sucks, and...

Episode duration: 1:59:52