69. Dr. Mike Israetel - How to Build and Maintain Muscle with the Co-Founder of Renaissance Periodization
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How to Build and Maintain Muscle
Dr. Mike Israetel, The co-founder of renaissance periodization. Mike’s specialization and vast knowledge of strength and hypertrophy. We dive into hypertrophy fundamentals, implementing individualization in a workout program, and integrating modest concepts when planning a workout program. Excited to welcome Dr. Mike Israetel to the podcast.
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Ken Gunter 00:01
What's up everybody? And welcome back to another episode of the professional athlete podcast. We are joined this week by Dr. Mike Israetel. So he is the co founder and Chief Content Officer of Renaissance periodization. He's a professor at Lehman cu NY, where he teaches a course on advanced training methods for strengthen hypertrophy. And I'll go as far as to say that he's an overall expert in the world of Sport and Exercise Science. So today's conversation, folks, how can I put this delicately it gets colorful. So you may want to listen to this one after the kids go to bed. If you're aware of Mike, he does amazing, amazing work through Renaissance periodization. And you would also know that He gives an incredible amount of information away for free. He also has a very special unique knack for making even the most mundane of topics interesting. I wanted to title this episode, master of anecdote, so I'm kicking myself for not doing it. Today's conversation is focused on understanding how the body actually builds muscle. How can you grow it? How do you maintain it. And what I loved about this one is he gives us a great little mental toolkit that you can kind of use and continually self check at home, to make sure that the type of training you're doing is properly structured to reflect the desired outcomes that you have. So Sonia and I talked about this a little bit afterwards, in the run it by my wife section, we both immediately changed our approach in the gym upon listening back to this episode. And look, I had a lot of fun recording this one today. So even if you're not necessarily into strength training, I know you're gonna enjoy this one. So. Alright, without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Mike to the show. Here we go.
Ken Gunter 02:03
Mike, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you on today.
Dr. Mike Israetel 02:07
I'm excited to be here. Thanks for
Ken Gunter 02:08
having Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I was just catching up with you a little bit. Before we started, I would say if someone is interested in the space of strength training, bodybuilding nutrition, it would almost be impossible at this point not to have come across some of your work or one of your companies that you have in the space. So very excited to be able to introduce you to the audience today. And if those who somehow don't know who you are, I think this is going to be the start of an incredible resource for them moving forward.
Dr. Mike Israetel 02:39
Oh, boy, way to you know, wait a wave my flag for me. I can't wait to disappoint everybody.
Ken Gunter 02:45
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Nothing but let downs here, folks. Well, perfect. So, you know, there's no shortage of directions, I think we could take this. I've been fascinated by the things that you're doing through Renaissance periodization. I haven't actually worked with the team as a customer. But I'd be lying if I said I haven't tapped into a lot of the free resources that you provide and make available. But you know, one of the things that I think has been interesting for me and just kind of following your career and your recent pursuits, is this transition and focus personally on on bodybuilding. And, to that extent, right. I've really been interested a lot of the content that you've been putting out and discussions you've had around just hypertrophy. And I feel like this is one of those topics. A lot of people don't even know what it means. A lot of folks don't understand why it would be beneficial to them, or maybe what purpose it would serve in terms of helping them reach whatever their own fitness related goals are. And I just thought to myself, you know, what, what better person to come to, to get some answers to some of these questions. So if, if you don't mind I know I'm, I'm I'm building up here. If you don't mind, I would love to start there. Could we even maybe just start by defining like, you know, what is hypertrophy?
Dr. Mike Israetel 04:08
Yeah, sure, hypertrophy is the process by which muscles grow. And I think a lot of people will understand that this some of that is genetic. Some of us are more jacked than others, some of it can be altered by how you train, and some of it can really be altered by how you eat. And plus rest and recovery. Those are kind of a big ingredients to explain or why someone is or can get more muscular than someone else.
Ken Gunter 04:40
Yeah. So what does that process look like? Because I feel like there's a lot of kind of misconceptions out there as to you know, how does muscle quote unquote grow? You know, one of the most common ones that I've heard is like, oh, yeah, you know, you go to the gym, you break down your muscles, etc. I'm down and you build new muscle on top of that. Can we talk about what's actually happening within the body? Because I think there's a lot of folks who maybe don't put the emphasis to your point on rest and recovery, because maybe they don't actually understand the processes that are happening within the body that need to take place for that muscle to actually grow.
Dr. Mike Israetel 05:21
Sure. So that's not a terrible analogy. Okay. Not a terrible why it's not great. I've heard it a bunch, I used to say it loud. I think muscle growth can be understood in a manner of seeing the body as kind of a computer, and the computer will give you the outputs that you want if you give the appropriate inputs. So you know, if I would like to, well, gee, you know, I actually I should ask it, do you have a? Am I allowed to swear? Go, please, am I allowed to talk about obscene adult topics? Yeah, that's actually the intent. Excellent. So if, if I would like to have my computer, display adult videos for my entertainment, I'm going to insert an adult DVD into the DVD ROM, by intentionally very 2002 about it. And you know, the input is the DVD, the output is pleasurable, the things on my screen, of course, downstream, it's chaos and terror. And my life is I'm a recovering porn addict. I'm totally kidding. I'm not recovering, I'm not recovering at all.
Ken Gunter 06:29
I was like, I was like, We gotta switch gears here,
Dr. Mike Israetel 06:32
we got a different direction about hypertrophy,
Ken Gunter 06:35
hypertrophy, I got something else, I'm gonna talk about
Dr. Mike Israetel 06:37
a current porn addict. But in any case, you know, so the computer does all the really trippy stuff of like, you know, it doesn't matter how closely you look at a CD or DVD, you don't, you don't see any porn, unfortunately, the ridges don't really do any of that. So there has to be some sort of process in the computer, which gives us what we want. Now, in much the same way, you lift weights, in order to actually just do a few very simple things, in order to turn on the machinery of muscle growth that sits in your muscles more dormant than that. So it's kind of like you know, the machinery up keeps your muscle size, it's always breaking down your muscles, it's always reconstructing them, your muscles every oh, gee, every few days are probably constructed a new and definitely completely new every few weeks. And it's basically like, your body trades out old malfunctioning muscle for new muscle all the time. And we want to do is we want to tilt that equation of breakdown. Because usually, if the breakdown rate is the similar as the building rate and then your muscles stay the same size, okay, we want to do is we want to shift that equation, at least somewhat into the direction of build up. And and so what we do is we present some kind of stimulus in order for the body to actually turn on that machinery. So unfortunately, it doesn't just turned on to max tilt, just recreationally for fun. So one of the ways in which the body can turn on the machinery the simplest way, and there are a few other ways, but is the detection of tension in its own muscle fibers. So if the muscle cell detects a lot of tension, passing through it and being generated by it, it goes, Oh, gee, that's a lot of force. And there are a few molecular machines that literally are designed to detect tension. And then they communicate to other molecular machines, whose job it is, is to orchestrate and coordinate muscle growth. So if the molecular machines designed to detect tension detect enough of it, they sort of wake up the part of the body that part of the cells builds muscle away, hey, you get up build this muscle damage. There's tons of tension and right yeah, it's got you know, I like to think of a muscle growth machine is kind of like a handy mechanic with like a cigarette permanently hanging off the lips all the time, doesn't matter what he's doing asleep, backs, food mechanics, stuff, cigarette, half, half, half smoke cigarette, always there. So basically, these the, the molecular machinery, designed to build muscle in your body is quite intricate. But it's all there. It's already It's all designed by evolution to be ready to do it. It just has to have a compelling reason. And what we as a species, and actually all all mammals and pretty much all animals have evolved to do is there's two sort of evolutionary pressures. One is, you know, building shit is really really calorically expensive. And food in our ancestral environment doesn't just lay around we didn't have like a Wegmans, you familiar with Wegmans? Very familiar? Yeah, I got, you know, so can you imagine that there are people in this world that haven't been to a Wegmans?
Ken Gunter 09:32
It actually, yeah, it is a travesty. It's a
Dr. Mike Israetel 09:35
travesty. It's a crime on a global scale. Thinking about Russia and Ukraine. We got to talk about there not being Wegmans everywhere. You got to get people in Wegmans. Seriously, but just build a Wegmans and the Russia Ukraine border and I guarantee you everything will be totally fine. So um, could God what was the How did I get to the migrants part? When you're talking about the mechanic with the school right? Yes, that's right. That's all so so basically evolution designed all current human animals, essentially, to be very conserving on their energy expenditure, including intracellular, because like, if you're building muscle all the time, that cost a ton of protein a ton of calories. It just like there's not a ton of like Philemon Yan steaks laying around in nature, like it's really tough to do. So your body generally doesn't like to do it unless it's given a very good reason. And so if your muscles are asked to produce a lot of tension, and are pushed pretty close to their limits, that combination with a few other things, is basically telling the body through an evolutionary lens, sort of like, Hey, she, it's hard out here, my muscles are being used in a way that is really like, is really challenging them, maybe I need more of these things, so that I can do this task that I'm trying to do to survive better, and the body goes fine. And it's always always aware of the fact that it doesn't want to spend any extra calories on this process. So sort of begrudgingly starts to turn the gears and let's muscle growth, though and complete the process. So basically, you train, you present tension to the muscles, a few days later, that process is concluded, and you have new muscle on your body. And if you don't train again, in a few days, your body sort of looks around and goes, well, it looks like we don't need this shit anymore. Take it apart boys, and they just take it apart back to your normal state. So in order to continue to have muscle and to build more, no, you know, every week or twice a week or even a little bit more often, you re present that stimulus, that tension. And that tells those molecular machines, hey, tell that you know giant muscle building machine in the in the in the cell to really get going and build some muscle memory works, you have to re stimulate that machine all the time, because it goes through a cycle and a few days, and then it just shuts up and doesn't do anything. Because it has to have a continual good reason. It's kind of like, how good are you at the spoken German language? Well, if you learn it as an adult, for your Germany being stimulated all the time to speak German, you're probably pretty good at it. But if you leave Germany for four weeks, you're gonna be rusty, because the speaker your brain doesn't really like to keep it around. It doesn't use all the time. Now your brain for sure. But your brain has memory and all this other stuff your body, much less so. So if you stop training, gee whiz, it really starts to dump muscle fast. And that's why you have to train you know, a few times a week for the same muscle group to really keep it on track for growth and growth and growth.
Ken Gunter 12:10
Yeah, boy, a bunch of things there. Number one, you made me reflect back on all the Japanese I took grade seven through junior year of college and how little I now know.
Dr. Mike Israetel 12:20
That's a I mean, it's great that you took it and you knew it, but it sucks that you don't know much anymore.
Ken Gunter 12:24
I mean, very little I can remember how to apologize because I was late quite often.
Dr. Mike Israetel 12:29
Important thing to know is immediately upon landing in Japan begin to prolifically apologize,
Ken Gunter 12:34
Sumi ma San. Yeah, exactly. You're good. But ya know. So there's a couple things you said there. And I am glad I asked this question now. So one of the things that I've been trying to get my head around. And this has come up a couple times recently. So it's, it's not that we're actually in tell me when I get any of this wrong. So when you say,
Dr. Mike Israetel 12:55
I'm just kidding, I have to say, please continue.
Ken Gunter 12:59
So so when you say build new muscle? Can you clarify what you mean by that? Because I was under the impression that in actuality, right? We only have like a finite amount of like, I guess what's the right way to say as muscular cells, satellite cells, okay? And that, in actuality, when we grow our muscles, get them bigger, you know, put on sighs it's not that we've created more of those cells, it's that they're actually getting larger by a bunch of biological processes that I admittedly don't understand.
Dr. Mike Israetel 13:34
No, that's okay. Yeah. So there's a quite a bit of complexity here. But the simplest way to put it is this, okay, please, you take the average muscle cell. Yeah. And it's actually composed of what are called sarcomeres, which are the fundamental units of muscle contraction. They're like the functional equivalents of what like, what actually does the work. So it's like, you're in a bowl of rice, the lowest common denominator functional equivalent is a grain of rice, if we just multiply it, we get all the rice we want. But if you start cutting grains by thirds, I don't know you if you get so much rice out of that whole thing. So you have muscle cells, and all of them, they look like, like a cable that holds up a bridge in each one of those thick ass metal ropes is a sarcomere. And what we do is like, we can't make sarcomeres bigger, because they are only a finite size, they're actually very large, complex molecular machine. And they're not scalable. So we have to do is we have to build new sarcomeres. So we basically, inside the muscle cell, you start building a new sarcomere next to the others. When it's finished construction, it connects to everything else, and then it generates force. Now, to your point, we can run out of room inside a given muscle cell. One's gonna run out of room. It's like they basically be like, Okay, so this like bridge cable, it can be like up to one yard wide and then adding any more shit just weighs it down. So you might have to actually build another bridge cable next to it that starts out skinny and then gets big eventually, to double up on it. It's like it's, it's only so big you can make it so The way that new cells are constructed is that these cells called satellite cells are tiny and pathetic and dormant. And they just kind of sit there and don't do a whole lot, they do some regulation of muscle growth. But once we have a cell, very close to that satellite cell, a real functioning muscle cell with all the sarcomeres, that it can possibly jam in, it runs out of room and it goes, Hey, I can't do this anymore. And then the satellite cell next to it will often turn on and start to actually accrue sarcomeres and become a real full fledged cell that is a real working muscle cell. And then it gets really, really big. And so at any time living, yeah, at any time at a living human, that's been training for a few months or longer. Cells can be in any variety of configurations, you'll always have some satellite cells that aren't doing a whole lot, you'll have some that are starting to become actual muscle cells, that really big ones, you'll have some that used to be satellite cells months ago, but are now full fledged really giant muscle fibers, you'll have some muscle fibers that are still growing on their own accord still expanding with their own sarcomeres. And you'll have other ones that are really at that limit, and they're not growing anymore, and more satellite cells have to be asked to do the job.
Ken Gunter 16:12
Oh, wow. Well, thank you for dumbing that down. No, that that is crazy. Number one. Yeah, very interesting. So, you know, is it fair to say, Take bodybuilding, like, eventually, at some point for every person, a lot of that's based on genetics and their own physiological makeup? There is a maximum size that they can achieve. Like, it's some point, you know, like, I guess it's probably theoretical. But is that to say that, like, there really is, like, at some point, like there's a maximum size that can be achieved? For any given human?
Dr. Mike Israetel 16:49
Oh, that's a good question. You know, certainly kind of an asymptotic limit, you know, it might not be a true maximum, but stuff gets really hard, the more muscle you build. And, you know, in order to upkeep and continue to make more muscle, your body may not be able to throw more and more resources at it. There are also a variety of ways in which your body limits muscle growth on purpose, again, mostly to conserve calories. One of those limiting functions is called myostatin. It's a protein that's manufactured with seemingly its most important role, or the one we know about most is to take the central machinery that builds muscle, and essentially tell it to stop doing it as much. Now, there are a variety of animals in which that myostatin gene has been knocked out. Sometimes naturally, sometimes artificially same effect.
Ken Gunter 17:38
So I can I can, I can see the like, you know, the the BuzzFeed article examples popping up of like the jack mouse.
Dr. Mike Israetel 17:46
Yes. Have you seen the picture of the greyhound? No, I don't think I have. So Right. Yeah, there's myostatin negative greyhound. And he's on ultra jacked, but he's got a he's Greyhound so psychologically identical. And so he looks very scared of himself. It's hilarious. As greyhounds are very frightful animals. And he's just not like you think he'd be like confident, like a pit bull. And he's not just a huge wide eyes like What the hell have you people done to me. But in any case, when myostatin is turned off, or not present in high concentrations, muscles can get so big that they actually become slightly dysfunctional, their amount of force they generate doesn't scale as well as you would think your body. So it's almost like building a house. And the job that the builders are like, like the government showed up, and was like, Look, just keep fucking building. And they're like, what, like, what kind of rooms do you want? What kind of you want like a room for TV or room for kitchen? And they're like, it's just just build rooms to shut up and go do it. Right is asking your questions, they're gonna build nonsense that doesn't actually functionally make your house any better. Right? Same way, if myostatin is turned off completely, it seems to start building muscle in a way that doesn't make you any more strong. Sometimes it can actually reduce tendon strength and all this other weird stuff. So the definitely limits to muscle growth. But we haven't found any for sure, hard limits, yet. They're soft limits, but not so soft, too. So like, for example, you know, your human body there through the actions of testosterone will only allow so much muscle growth signaling to occur, and will create will only sort of block so much muscle loss signaling. I think if you want to grow bigger than that, you have to take more testosterone, other anabolic steroids. At some point, you take all a series in the world, and you're mostly just getting poisoned, instead of actually gaining muscle. That's how hard that process becomes. Because all of the cell machinery is fighting it. Now, this is not designed to be an uncapped process. So that being said, you have to get real jacked for that to happen. And the biggest thing is not so much hypothetical limits to muscle, but practical ones. Yeah. Especially ones like genetics. Okay, something so that process that I just described, of the satellite cells sort of waking up and being like, oh shit, let's become real muscle. cells. So in different people, there could be a very different concentration of satellite cells. And they do the satellite cells do, can sort of reproduce in a sense or multiply. But the rates of multiplication can be either super high or super low, the satellite cells can themselves become either very big or not so big. And they can grow at a slower rate or a faster rate. And then when you combine all these factors together, some people will lift weights ultra hard, and all the right foods, get all the right rest, and you just don't see much muscle on them. Another problem is muscle breakdown. There's an entirely different set of pathways that literally break down muscle tissue in order to fix the broken stuff. And also, to use it for calories for the rest of the body. Like, you know, if you're starving, starving, right, your body has the choice. Okay? Either we eat up memories literally by breaking down brain tissue, or we like take your biceps from 20 inches to 18 inches, they're going after your biceps. Luckily, for you know, your body's not going to break down the heart muscle in order to save skeletal muscle. So a lot of times people's muscle breakdown machinery just for genetic reasons, it's really pretty gnarly, and just really just can't get that jacked. So there's a huge, huge genetic difference in how much muscle people can grow based on how their molecular machinery is aligned.
Ken Gunter 21:13
interest interesting. Yeah, I find myself often wondering, you know, I love watching world Strongest Man, like if I'm a man, I'm gonna throw on something as a grown man to get me motivated. That'll usually be it. And at some point, I'm like, man, you know, how far away are we from? human potential? Like, how strong How big could a person actually get? And I think what you said provided like a good perspective. It's like, is it capped? I don't know. But at some point, there does become like, functional limitations. Yes. Even if the body could continue to get stronger, bigger. To what extent does like, you know what I mean? The the other? I don't know. Just just God. Yeah. That's really interesting. So actually, this might be a good segue, we'll see how it turns out. But this is a question. I as a father of three with a full time job and a podcast on the side, often asked myself, I'm very interested to understand, sheerly out of necessity, necessity of time, you know, what is the minimal amount of work I can do to get my desired end result, right? So if it's, like, I just want to look great, or I want to get a little bit bigger. And I don't have unlimited amount of time, I'm often trying to figure out like, hey, how many sets? How many reps? Can I get away with doing? And still getting some of that, you know, it's just a growth to keep it simple. And in kind of trying to answer that question, I've stumbled on a couple of your articles and some of your work and maybe even videos where you start talking about, you know, four different, I guess I'm gonna call them categories, but you tell me how you think about it. ways in which you think about volume, and the impact that it's actually having on your body, or whatever it is that you're trying to train. So I'm speaking specifically like maintenance, the minimally effective volume? Could you talk a little bit about, I guess that, then how you think about that, and how maybe people like myself could think about that, of
Dr. Mike Israetel 23:20
course. So the first term to become familiar with is maintenance volume. And that's the amount of volume you need to expose yours amount of training, you need to give your body in order for it to not get any smaller, muscular wise. So like, you know, you're pretty jacked, you probably train somewhat to stay that Jack, if you were this jack, just not doing anything. I'd be insanely impressed, not say I'm not impressed, regardless, but, you know, so you do a certain amount. And it turns out that maintenance volume is actually can actually be quite low. And then the next question is low compared to what? And the answer to that is minimum effective volume, minimum effective volume, the least amount of training you need to do in order to get actually bigger? Now, the difference between minimum effective volume and maintenance volume in people that have been training for a while, is often more than 1/3. Oh, wow. So for example, if you're doing squats, three sets three times a week, nine total sets of squats. Now, in order to get your quads to grow somewhat, it's possible that with just three sets total per week, you could have the same size quads for years and years and years. Interesting. Yeah. So the next term after is the maximum recoverable volume. And that's the most volume you can do is still recover from and that's kind of a top end cap to how much training you can do if you want the best results is certainly not higher than that. Because anything you can't recover from, you probably won't grow from, especially in the long term.
Ken Gunter 24:47
So for someone like myself, right, I'm just turned 35 You know, keep myself in good shape. And I'm like, hey, look, I'm happy where I'm at. I like my body composition. I feel strong, you know? I can do all the things I want to do in life. For someone who may be is there, right, and they might be concerned with just maintenance volume? Look, I have 20 minutes to work out three days a week, you know what I mean? And I need to make the best and highest use of that 20 minutes? What are the sorts of like reference points or indicators that they can look at? To determine like, Hey, I've, I've honed in on what my actual maintenance volume needs to be? Is it just subjective like, Hey, I'm still to 20? My strength is about what it was the last three weeks? Or are there is there maybe a better way that someone like myself could assess that,
Dr. Mike Israetel 25:37
I think the best way is the way in which you said and really the strength is the thing that determines most of it. So what you do is you train with a certain amount of volume to to improve. And then let's say, Oh, I don't know, I'll make up a fictitious example, it's summer, and your kids are all back causing chaos and havoc, and you just don't have time to train because we got to keep mom saying etc, etc. So that starts and you say, Okay, I can't train the normal amount. Yeah, what I'm going to do is, I heard it's like a third or even less, so I'm going to cut my my total training volume by half, to half, and then you do half and you see how your reps strength is affected week, after week, after week, month after month. If you still getting stronger, it's higher than minimum effective volume. Because you're probably still making annotations, what you want is to get to a place where week after week after week, you are no stronger, but no weaker. And that might have to have some calibration. But you might start with you know, say 10 sets for your quads every week, drop it to five, and you still making gains slower, but you're still making them Okay, let's drop it to three, and then you start making gains. And then after a month, you actually get a little weaker and Oku i think the answer is for four sets of quads per week, you do that for a while. And for two months straight, you do four sets, and you basically just make no gains, but you lose nothing. And then all of a sudden, it's like, wow, I guess pretty close to I think I think my maintenance volume is you could do that for every single muscle group, every body part and it works just about the same.
Ken Gunter 26:59
So the flip side of that, right, and I built it out, stopped me if I got this wrong, that maintenance volume is roughly a third of the minimum effective volume to grow. Yeah. Okay. So then that kind of my next question then would be when we start talking about, hey, look, I have a very specific goal. It could be a competition and event or whatever it may be. And I want to try and push that upper boundary towards that maximum recoverable volume. What are the sorts of indicators that someone should be looking at to determine like, Hey, am I over pushing it? Yeah, I'm now very on the side of like, in a couple weeks, I'm going to be overtrained and I'm really gonna feel like I am for it.
Dr. Mike Israetel 27:42
Yeah, there's actually one really simple one, there's a bunch but one simple one does most of the heavy lifting lol. And that is asking yourself the question of am I recovered for my next workout of the same muscle group. So for example, if I train chest Monday and Thursday, and I do eight sets of chest on Monday, and Thursday, my pecs are still tender to the touch. And I'm weak as shit because I'm still sore. Clearly eight as too many. On Monday. Next Monday, I might try six. At six sets. I heal just on time to have an amazing workout Thursday, Thursday, I also do success. And then I heal just on time to have an amazing workout on Monday. Everything is good. Your healing just on time. You're getting stronger week by week. Everything's awesome. You could try to push that up a little bit and see if you still heal on time because your body gets used to stuff over time. Yes was six for a few weeks. Maybe now I'll try seven sets each time. Yeah, that'll work. Maybe it won't. But you could be in a situation where you say Do three sets of chest on Monday, three sets on Thursday. someone's like, Hey, man, Thursday, you want to train chest you're like sure you show up to their house to train chest already sounds like an adult film. And I told you I was a porn addict. See? So, you know, I show up to their house and they're like how your pecs feeling you feeling good recovered? You don't even understand the question. You're like, Well, what do you mean? Like, why are you sore? And you go, Well, I don't really get sore or Okay. Interesting. Do you get tired? Nope. I always feel great. I feel great during my workout. And after my workout. I'm like, Okay, well, I can tell you, you probably not training that hard. Nothing's trains more, you would probably grow more. So ideally, you want to be training in a certain way that gets the muscles really pumped during the workout. Really tired and feeling weird. You know how like if you try to brush your teeth after bicep workout, you like cramp and your break one of your teeth and then you yell at the dentist. lawyer gets involved, you know
Ken Gunter 29:29
that way? Yeah, you guys now gonna tell you. So you know, like
Dr. Mike Israetel 29:33
if you're walking downstairs after a leg workout, and you just skip hopping downstairs like nothing's ever happened. You may say you did a leg workout. But that's not really what happened. You just move it around for a while and you call them you should feel some kind of perturbation, something went wrong with the muscle. That's rule one. Rule two is that whole bad stuff that happened should be recovered pretty close to the time you train again. So for example, even if I don't get sore at all, let's say a train. Bye That's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If I train on Monday, by the time I go to train on Wednesday, they should be feeling pretty damn good and ready to go. However, if they're feeling good all day Tuesday, too, I could have done more on that Monday. So the sort of quote unquote the perfect bicep training system is not perfect. Just something that works. Yeah, train your biceps on Monday. They're really tired the rest of the day, Tuesday don't feel quite right. Wednesday. They feel great. You hit it Wednesday, Thursday, don't feel quite right. Friday. They feel great. You hit it Friday. And Saturday, they feel man Sunday. They feel great one extra day for us really revitalizes all the systems and then Monday coming and smash it again. Now, you could say okay, well, yeah, you train three times a week, but you never said how much? Well, that's the real question. How much? How many sets does it take to mess you up all of Tuesday, for example? Yeah, answer that question. It's a changing number. But it's a pretty stable number. Like, very, very little, you know, it's a very small chance that I'm gonna come up to you and be like, Hey, you want to train? Trust me like, Yeah, but Okay, just one set for the whole chest, right? You're gonna be like, dude, what? Yeah, if we train again, in three hours? Yes. But right. Now, if I'm training him half week later, that's not gonna be enough. And then I could tell you Okay, okay, great. So 20 sets for chest, you're glad Oh, hold on 20. I may never recover from that. And then somewhere between those two is a range of numbers, that's generally the correct answer. And that's what I want you to get to. And that way your own body can be the guide, because some people recover from volume faster. Some people recover from more volume, some people from less, it's all tailored to the individual based on their own responses.
Ken Gunter 31:32
And that's what I was just going to ask you, so it is, here's, I bet a lot of people can probably relate to this. They want to improve their bench. So they go on the internet, and, you know, they find a six week bench workout from their favorite, you know, guy who benchpress a 600. But whatever it is, right? And sometimes I look at them, and I've done it, too. I mean, yeah, probably a million times. But sometimes I look at all those sets and all that volume. And I'm like, shit, that's a lot. Yeah. What is what is the point there? And I'm? And I'm like, Well, I guess I'll try it because it worked for this guy. And I think hearing the way you just described it makes so much more intuitive sense is number one, it sounds like recognize that it is individual. There could be a number between one and 20. And it sounds like you need to listen to your body and through a little bit of trial and error. And you can probably, you can probably take an educated guess it's going to get you closer to that number. There's enough information out there. But it sounds like that, that number, that volume can really depend upon the individual and it's kind of incumbent upon you to listen to your body.
Dr. Mike Israetel 32:41
Definitely, as I think a decent analogy is like cooking from a recipe book. I think I think I've just dated myself on that one. Sorry, going on tick tock. Googling recipes. Don't ever go to tech talk.
Ken Gunter 32:58
I'm not on tick tock and stay
Dr. Mike Israetel 33:00
up stay off, but it's a place where intellect dies. So in any case, making a recipe for food. You know, if a recipe says family size lasagna, and it's a you know, two eggs and a pound of noodles, blah, blah, blah. And then you're like, alright, but there's only one of me and I'm not a glutton, like Mike is retell. So I'm just going to have a third of lasagna, what you do is you take the recipe, divide everything by three. And then like, probably that'll be a fine lasagna except 1/3 the size, right? So if you look at world benchpress champion, you have to see a few things one, amazing genetics to dedicated lifestyle to recover as much as possible and three probably copious amounts of drug use that also help with recovery. So and actually for a really well trained athlete has been doing this a long time knows the system knows their body has had a lot of practice recovering. You know, if you go and play like a rec softball game, you're sort of like a year afterwards, because you're out of shape, like me. But if you start getting into a softball league, a few games later, you feel totally fine. You can play the whole game you feel okay, right? So right, right, if you're starting a benchpress program, don't assume that the person who wrote the program also just that was their first program, it wasn't there was the 19th. So you want to do is just like in a recipe, they say, let's say three sets of bench in the program, three sets of close grip bench, and then three sets of weighted dips. And that's it, maybe just start with one set of everything. And if and listen, here's the thing, if it's not enough, you can always do more. Now, like if you do that on Monday, and you're like, man, get shut out of that next week, Do two sets of everything, I promise you'll feel something. And maybe, you know, the athletes really strong. And a lot of times really strong people because of the loads they're using. The number of sets they have to do is actually lower. It's just like, Look, you do a fucking rep with 600 pounds, motherfucker, if you did that you'd be sore for a year, but you can't. So when you're when you put your 100 pounds on that ship, maybe you need five sets, he needs three. So he may actually be that you need more volume than that guy. But if you start on the lower end of things, and then increase the volume as your body tells You can recover was just like making, you know, almost 100 For the first time and saying, Hey, look, you know, like, I'm just gonna make a third of it. And like if you're still hungry, make it again. But it's important that when you're making again, you realize there's, you're the only person make lasagna, the only person at home, you won't even like, you know, TV shows that your watch, you're hopeless and alone and no one's coming to help you. That's really the message here.
Ken Gunter 35:20
Yes, stay in school kids. By yourself. Oh, perfect. No, this is I mean, in a very weird way. Very helpful. Um, so one of the things that you said, and I want to dive a little bit deeper into that, because I think, and I'm speaking from personal experience, but when I talk to friends, family who are trying to get into working out, they're trying to get a sense of like, Hey, am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? You said a couple things there. It's like, hey, look, you have a hard bench workout on Monday. You still sore to the touch on Tuesday, you feel great on Wednesday, like that's a good indicator that like you're getting close to like the right amount of work. Are there any other kind of indicators? I keep saying indicator but indicators like that, that people can use to kind of gauge whether or not they're getting honed in on the right amount of work?
Dr. Mike Israetel 36:12
Yeah, why don't you can use in the session itself? Okay, well, hold on my battery's very low on my device. Let's see if I can James Bond the shoot really quick. Come on. Alright, we're in the green. Perfect. So one you can use in the session itself pretty reliably, is how much of a pump Are you getting? Hmm. So generally speaking pump has been linked to being part of what causes muscle growth, but also the damage. And like lactic acid and other byproducts, regeneration that occurs during really hard training that grows you also causes a pump as a byproduct. So you can kind of if the amount of training volume that you need to grow is like a glass. The pump is kind of like how much water you pour into it. If your pump is so big that you're like you're I swear to God, my pecs are going to rip open and just like muscle is going to shoot out. Right, you probably overdid it, in most cases. Interesting, ultra sore for way too long. Especially if it's your first time doing this program. Okay, but if you don't get any pump at all, you probably did way too little. So what I would say is like, once you have like a decent pump, go shut Yeah, my biceps are looking pretty, pretty. Feeling pretty tight. Now. And I would say like, that's a good time to cut it off. Go home, rest, eat, etc. Repeat, see how sore you got or how tired you got? See when you feel better. And then for next week, you can say okay, well, this amount of pump gave me this much soreness, and I'm just going to do a few more sets, and it'll be perfect. So I think that pump is really helpful. Because that first week that you're doing a program, like you could have no idea how close to the target you are, if you don't have something in the session to a proxy, like a pump, you know, hey, like you want to do another set of squats or I don't know, maybe, then turns out that you already six, that's too many of squats, and you can't walk for a week and a half, or just being close. And it was sort of easy the whole time. When you have a nice pump going, it's probably time to leave the gym, at least in that first week. So you can see how well he recovered.
Ken Gunter 38:25
Yeah. All right, I'm doing some reflecting, hence the dramatic pause. So it almost feels like you know, if you're someone who is really you're interested in pushing it, and you want to actually, you know, to recall the maximum recoverable volume, it almost feels like at some point, you've had to push it too far, to understand where to bring it back to you. Because otherwise, it's like, I'm always kind of leaving a little something on the table. I don't know if it was to your point, an extra set two sets. I don't know any initial thoughts to that before I tell everyone to go out and kill themselves. Hey, listen to me talk
Dr. Mike Israetel 39:07
to that, as always start on the low end, we always say minimum effective volume pretty close. And then as you figure out that you can actually train a little more, do a little more, and then do a little more and then do a little more as your body says, Hey, you're good to go. And then what you're going to be doing this entire time is training, getting a pump getting sore repeating, and your body is going to be getting stronger. So you're going to throw an extra rep, or an extra five pounds on the bar every week, every other week, something like that. Yeah, maximum recover volume is really detected quite well when you stop getting stronger. And also when you're really really fatigued and you feel the burden of the program. Because you stop getting stronger, that oftentimes means that you're no longer recovering. Sport Science definition of recovery is a return to past performance. Like if you are weaker than you were last week, and you're beat to shit. It's pretty obvious that the reason you're weaker is because you're beat to shit. And tada, you're doing too much work. You did last week was more than you could recover from from this week. Thus, it's your maximum recovery volume. So just keep going. And then when you really hit a strength plateau and maybe even get weaker, while at the same time doing very high volumes, being very kidding, just feeling sore and beat up all over your whole body, well, gee, you know, maybe it's just an off day. So say come back later that week. So for example, I'm doing 10 sets of chest. On Monday, last week, I did nine sets of chest on Monday and nine sets on Thursday, this week, 10 sets, I do my 10 sets, but my performance is crap. Like I'm literally weaker than I was the week before. I'm like, okay, maybe nine sacks was just over my maximum recoverable volume. Maybe I'm just having a bad day, you know, my wife yelled at me. Before I left, she made fun of the shape of my penis again, not the first won't be the last. So I'm upset. I go to the gym, I looked down, clearly misshapen penis, and I just underperforming. But then, but then maybe I say okay, but maybe I was just in my own head too much. I got to try it again. So we recommended RP is going back Thursday for your chest workout and said, Okay, let's see if the shit works. And then if Thursday, you're again underperforming, your muscles are still sore, still beat up, then you had done too much. And then it's time for what we call a D load, which is a week of intentionally super easy training, to just let you recover. So that next week after, you can go back to what's roughly your minimum effective volume, and start that slow, gentle climb all the way back up to your maximum recoverable.
Ken Gunter 41:30
So I'm glad you brought that up with D load Oh, excuse me with D load weeks. Are you? Are you taking a D load week? Based on? I don't want to say feel? But like, you know, a lot of a lot of programs, right? It's like, hey, every fourth week is going to be a D load week. Yeah. When you are either training for yourself gearing up for a competition or when you're working with an athlete? Do you allow for like more flexibility based upon how the athlete is feeling? Or the or do you tend to stick to a more like strict rigid schedule?
Dr. Mike Israetel 42:07
Well, sort of? The answer is both the answers were funny enough. Right now I have Dr. James Hoffman, who's my co author, and most of my books, he's probably one of the world's experts on on recovery. Um, he actually wrote the section in our book describes exactly this. But so I think
Ken Gunter 42:21
I'm listening to that book right now.
Dr. Mike Israetel 42:22
There you go. There you go.
Ken Gunter 42:24
So it's a loaded question.
Dr. Mike Israetel 42:26
Right? The question is really like, or do we use autoregulation? Which is sort of a quote unquote, going by field? Or do we use pre planned strategies for D loading? You know, like, week four is a D load? Right? Right. And it's less of a versus and more of a both? Hmm, um, so basically, you plan because let's say you are an experienced athlete or lifter, you know, yourself. They said, like, I know that four weeks of increasing training difficulty is all it can take you generally the fifth week is a giant disaster. So I'm just gonna plan to deal with the fifth week. But maybe you're really feeling your swag at the end of the fourth week, you know, like, Fuck this, I got another than do. Maybe after week three, you're like, I'm gonna die. If I do another week, then just on Week Four instead of week five. So it's both play a factor. If you're an athlete with a distinct competition schedule, you don't play as much of an autoregulation game. Because like, look like for a bodybuilding show, generally, to look your best. It has to be at the end of the D load week. That means you probably shouldn't take a deal of the week, two weeks before, because then you have to do two weeks in a row. And then you're just not as jacked as you were supposed to be. And you're like people like Oh, I thought you looked better last week. And those pictures like Goddamnit I did look better. I'm dead look better, because I totally miss time. I should. So here's a place you don't want to be. Yeah, three weeks out of a bodybuilding show. You are in total dogshit shape. Like I'm sorry, you look good. But you are just overreached, like crazy. You're way under recovered. Right? That's a bad idea. Because then if you take a D load week, the week after, then what do you do we prefer to show dealer again, there's just kind of no right answers there. Right? Yeah. So ideally, for athletes with very distinct competition schedules, like let's take, oh, hey, the Winter Olympics are on TV now. So you know, winter Olympians that compete. Let's say that ski jump people compete six times a year, one of those as the World Championships, they kind of know their D load weeks, literally a year advance Olympic sports, they usually make what's called an annual plan, which is exactly what it sounds like one year ahead, plan if I'm wrong. Now, of course, there's some adjustment within that, but generally, like a deal of weeks to deal
Ken Gunter 44:28
with, because you got seven times they're gonna peak. Yeah,
Dr. Mike Israetel 44:31
exactly. For the rest of us, we should probably have a general idea of how many weeks we can survive. And then at the margins, we can auto regulate it. It's kind of like, let's say, you're going to like a dance club with friends. You know, like you show up there midnight, and the club closes at four. And one of your friends is totally psychotic, super addicted to like dance music, and they're going to have to be there for at least two hours. Well, so that doesn't really answer the question of are we leaving at 2am 3am or 4am? What the previous planned is like if someone's like, Hey, can you be at this like diner at 3am? It'd be like, well, I can't I don't know. I don't, I'm not sure. But let me tell you later, because at 2am, you come up to your drunk friend like, hey, Stacy, you want to go home, she's a job, I'm gonna say like, right? Or you get into the music, and you're like, hey, I want to be helpful for or it's just a shitty night and things suck. And there's a fight that breaks out and like, you know, 2pm, your 2am Everyone leaves and you leave. And thank God, right. So it's kind of like, we have a general plan, we sort of know what to expect. And then at the margins, we can adjust if needed.
Ken Gunter 45:33
Got it. That makes perfect sense. I don't think there's any need for any further questioning on on my part. On that top, I'll
Dr. Mike Israetel 45:39
be like, Can I get a more dance club analogies? Yeah. Hey,
Ken Gunter 45:43
what dance club? Fantastic time. Um, so man, I got a bunch of things, I would love to ask you. So let me let me narrow it down. And since we brought up peaking for bodybuilding, there's, this is gonna be a little bit of switching gears, but it's something that I've always kind of been interested in. And I feel like I get varying answers, depending upon the way to put it lightly. So I, you know, people seem to have very strong opinions on whether or not you can both the building muscle and burning fat at the same time, and in my mind, I see bodybuilders and I'm like, well, then what the hell else are these guys doing? But I wanted to pose that question to you, you know, like, are they to kind of like conflicting processes with different demands? And so it's not really feasible to do both while at the same time? Or? Is it absolutely very possible? You just have to be prescriptive in how you approach it.
Dr. Mike Israetel 46:45
Mm hmm. Oh, I got all kinds of analogies. So let's go. take me take me to the club. Get right to the analogy. That's right. So similar to asking the question of, can I be very comfortable and also travel at the same time? So first of all, if you want to build muscle and burn fat at the same time, if you want to really meticulously plan out your life and your nutrients and get our super rigid diet, super rigid workout schedule, do everything right, get enough sleep, it is possible. So you're just paying a cost. They're like you do if you want to be comfortable and travel, you show us how can we get a first class ticket to go to Hong Kong, you will be very comfortable, and you will also be traveling at the same time is not an easy thing to do. Generally speaking, in most of us, when we travel, we take a bit of a hit to the discomfort. So just the same way. You know, if you're building muscle, it's probably best to just focus on building muscle. That's how your body does it best. If you're burning fat, it's probably just best to hold the muscle you have and burn fat. So you know, if you really want to be comfortable, I mean, you're not going anywhere. If you really want to travel, that means you're okay not being super comfortable for a while right? Now, you can do both at the same time. If for example, you're new to training, and the analogy there is like your bar for what is comfortable is really low. Like we pick up a fucking caveman who's never seen civilization, we put them into a regular American Airlines, just you know, Economy class seat, he's gonna be like, Oh, my God, this surface is so soft, would bring me drinks and food. I've never been this comes from my life, right? So he can absolutely be comfortable and travel at the same time. It's really low bar for entry. So people say like, yeah, I can burn, you know, burn fat and gain muscle at the same time. And you look at their body, you're like, well, there's not a whole lot of evidence that you did any of that, because you're still small and fat, but doing well used to be smaller and fatter. Like I gotcha. But we call that sort of new gains, right? beginner, you can absolutely do both at the same time. Yeah, there are in many ways, antagonistic processes. I'll put it to you this way. The cellular regulating machinery that allows most of your muscle growth to occur, at many levels, senses, how many, how much nutrient exposure the cell has, which is another way of saying, are you eating a ton of food, if it senses there's lots of nutrients around, it'll allow muscle growth to occur very well. If it senses there's not a lot of nutrients around, it'll dampen muscle growth significantly, because remember, that whole shit we talked about earlier with evolution, if your body thinks you're starving, which is what it thinks when you're losing fat and eating fewer calories, it's not really prioritizing muscle growth a whole lot. And if you really slam great nutrition and or super hard training, you immediately get some, again, if you are relatively a beginner, and bodybuilders the way they do it a lot of times is they'll take a crapload of drugs and yeah with what you go from taking no drugs to a ton of drugs, you don't kinds of crazy shit, that wasn't an expense to your health and longevity and all that stuff. So what I would say is, can you build muscle and burn fat same time? In many cases? The answer's yes. It's a more answer of Yes. As if you've never really really lifted much your diet and much you're taking drugs a whole lot. The answer is more like not really if you've already been doing those things for 10 years. And then the second answer is yeah, you can anywhere from Yes very much you can or if it's very difficult, but is that your best bet? Is that right dealing with you? Want to do? You know, can you imagine picking up your relatives from the airport, and you pick them up in like a limo, and they're like, oh my god, we're gonna go to your house, like, No, we're gonna drive this limo around for two days, while you're here, we're gonna be comfortable and travel at the same time, they're gonna be like, you could have picked us up in like a bicycle, if you just drove us to your house, we could be really comfortable and you could have driven us back. A lot of times trying to get the best of both worlds is a bit of a fool's errand, it's gonna take you the same amount of total time anyway, I recommend splitting it into two phases, a muscle gain phase and a fat loss phase.
Ken Gunter 50:32
And Does the order matter? Is not ordered generally, like you know, like, let's say you have a an aspiring bodybuilder, I don't know why focusing on bodybuilders, I just feel like it's such a great physical representation. Yeah, people have built a lot of muscle and you don't have a lot of fat does is that kind of like the process or the order that you would recommend.
Dr. Mike Israetel 50:53
So well, it depends on how much body fat the person is carrying, and what they want to look at the end of all this. So if you're carrying lots of body fat, sometimes it's easier to do the fat loss phase first, because then you look cooler, it motivates you a lot to keep gaining muscle, because during the gaining phase, you'll have to gain some fat along with muscle. If you already fat to start with, just psychologically, you might not be interested in getting even fatter. So maybe you start with a fat loss phase and then do a muscle gain phase. On the other hand, you could do the reverse if you're already quite lean. And if you come to me and your 9%, body fat, anything below 10% for a male makes them less likely to gain muscle, they just regain fat when you feed them again. So if you can't yell Yeah, if you come if you they've done a few studies on bodybuilders, where they measure muscle gain after a show until the guys get 10% or above, they don't actually gain any new muscle. They just gained fat and they are eating and training. They're trying desperately, but it just doesn't happen because your body it goes into sort of like panic mode of being like holy shit, you did it you starve to death. Fucking I'm gonna make you as fat as we need to feel confident again, right? Like, that's basically your body's like, I don't like being a body does not like being lean. It doesn't like being on the edge. Evolutionarily, it detects like, This isn't good. This isn't good. We need body fat again. So we'll build that back up. It'll prioritize it over muscle. So you control your 9% fat. Say, should I cut first? Or should I or fat loss versus your muscle gain first to be like fat loss to what motherfucker? You want to step on stage? Nope. Just gain the muscle first and then you can burn the fat off and you can gain a few pounds of muscle and then come back down to nine percenters.
Ken Gunter 52:22
Ah, yeah. Wow, man. You know what I love about this? So much of this stuff can be so incredibly complex. I mean, like, you know, even one of the first questions I asked you like, well, like, you know, how does muscle actually grow? You're like, well,
Dr. Mike Israetel 52:40
there's only so simple I can make that I didn't want to insult you. But me and Mike. Well, imagine two glasses. One is orange shoes. One is grape juice.
Ken Gunter 52:48
But what's so amazing about all this, too, is it's like, look, we can also take this up to a more macro level and say, What is your body trying to do? Your body's trying to survive? Yes. Right. It is trying to keep you alive is trying to like protect from the downside. You know, and so like, when you look at it through that lens, you're like, Oh, of course. Right? You know, like once you've gotten really lean, your body's gonna prioritize, like making sure you're able to survive the next time. You don't have food for an extended amount of time.
Dr. Mike Israetel 53:16
You can know what your body prioritizes by looking at the population and seeing where do people accidentally end up if they don't pay attention? How many people have you known that accidentally end up really fat, right? Tons of like, half the people I know, like, Cheetos. How many people do you know that accidentally gained a shitload of muscle and lost a ton of body fat? That'd be amazing. You're like, What the hell is wrong with you? She's a guard. Oh, no.
Ken Gunter 53:41
Ah, I love it. I love it. Well, this this has been amazing. Like I said, I could ask you questions for hours. But I know you got to run so there's there's no shortage of places that people can find you. But for people who want to know more about what you're doing, I'm certainly gonna link to Renaissance periodization I know you have a couple other projects you're working on. But you know, where can we send them?
Dr. Mike Israetel 54:03
Yeah, thank you so much for offering to send to send me people newer, as we call them. Your microchip will be implanted, you will stand in line, the usual
Ken Gunter 54:13
URL all gonna be mechanical,
Dr. Mike Israetel 54:16
cigarette hanging out. So I would say the best place to send folks is YouTube. And just Renaissance periodization on YouTube. They can try Mike as well on YouTube. Dr. Mike muscle growth is probably the simplest thing to type in. To for sure. Get to the RP YouTube channel, where all of our videos are we make like four or five videos a week. They're informational. And sometimes my attempts at comedy probably fall flat. But like if you try to type in Renaissance, you may realize you don't know how to spell that. i Yeah. And my last name is impossible to spell. So just Dr. Mike muscle growth and gee whiz, you know, first first couple hits have to be something related to that show.
Ken Gunter 54:54
Perfect. Perfect. Well, awesome. Thank you. You know, thank you for all that you do. Honestly, I know that The Renaissance is doing really well. But you guys put out so much free content and you've put out so much content over the years. I mean, it truly is a help to people who are motivated and want to get better. So we really appreciate it. Yeah. We'll have to have you back.
Dr. Mike Israetel 55:16
I would love to as long as we can continue this, you're speaking about DVD porn and stuff like that.
Ken Gunter 55:22
I mean, that's, you know, why talk about anything else? Right. Alright, well, thanks a lot, Mike. Appreciate it.
Dr. Mike Israetel 55:28
Take care. Thank you guys.