“Don’t let psychological needs dictate physiological reality.” – Borge Fagerli
Borge Fagerli is a health and performance mentor and coach. Borge is behind the Norwegian training system, Release Your Potential, the nutritional model The BioRhythm Diet, based on recent understandings of circadian rhythms, and Myo-reps – a highly effective and efficient training method.
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We cover:
- The How, Why and When of Myo-Reps
- How to individualise training, nutrition and lifestyle for optimal health and appearance
- Borge’s carnivore diet experiment and current diet
- … and much more!
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Selected Links from the Episode
- High intensity training
- Myo-reps
- Doggcrapp training
- The Influence of Frequency, Intensity, Volume and Mode of Strength Training on Whole Muscle Cross-Sectional Area in Humans
- Momentary muscular failure
- Are you doing too much volume?
- Fuckarounditis
- Myo-reps demonstration
- Flux
- ARX mention “Corporate Warrior Podcast” when you order to receive an exclusive deal of $500 off shipping and installation of your ARX machines.
- Blue blocker glasses ( Amazon US / Amazon UK )
- The Energy Blueprint
- Forest bathing
- Intermittent Fasting
- LeanGains.com
- Zero Carb Diet
- The Zero Carb Experience
- Ketogenic diet
- Robb Wolf’s 7-day Carb Test
People Mentioned
- Mike Mentzer
- Dante Trudel
- Mathias Wernbom PhD
- Martin Berkhan
- Mike Pullano
- Ari Whitten
- Menno Henselmans (Listen to my episode with Menno here)
- Dr Ted Naiman (Listen to my episodes with Ted here: Part 1 and Part 2)
- Robb Wolf (Listen to my episode with Robb here)
- Dr Shawn Baker (Listen to my episodes with Shawn here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
413 – Cardiac Rehab & Cabin Gyms: An Intimate Look at Jon Allen’s Personal Training Business
412 – Dr. James Fisher Unveils Trainee Perceptions on Supervised Resistance Training
411 – Maximizing Profits: Secrets to Boosting High-Intensity Training Prices Without Losing Clients with Luke Carlson (Timeless Throwback)
Really enjoyed this right up to the bit about eating whales, FFS.
I guess only acceptable animals to you for consumption are cows and chickens? Gods forbid we acknowledge other cultures have different customs from our own.
Nah, I’ve eaten pretty much every animal that’s available in the UK, including most “game”although I no longer eat hare for “ethical” reasons. I also eat all the bits that most people turn their nose up at….
Almost nobody in Norway eats whale meat anymore, almost all of it is exported to Japan or fed to animals in the fur trade (another thing that should be consigned to history). Although Minke whales aren’t listed as a threatened species, shooting them with explosive harpoons is about as barbaric as hunting foxes with dogs.
Yes, point well taken. Touche, sir.
I guess I eat whale meat maybe 2-3x/year, but eating whale is still quite common in Norway to my knowledge…as a guy who live here and grew up here.
I’m not expecting everyone to embrace my food habits, and I’m sure I might have a thing or two to say about all the foods you eat – if I actually cared that much. I just find it a little strange to judge a podcasts merits based on what a given person chooses to eat. You must dislike a lot of people around the world if that’s how you judge humans. 🙂
I’m not the expert on humane practices for killing animals, but saying that whale hunting is the same as hunting foxes with dogs? Seriously? Have you actually watched the slaughtering of cows, pigs or chickens? If you want to go down that road and use it as an argument for anything, you should probably be a vegetarian.
Hi Borge
I really enjoyed listening to your views, especially as i have my own studio with clients of my own. It was a great podcast and thanks for sharing with us.
Thank you, Jon – appreciate it and glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah, I dislike a lot of humans around the world. Yes, I’ve seen how farm animals are slaughtered but that’s what farm animals are for. I’d be willing to slaughter my own livestock for food but I wouldn’t be willing to shoot a whale with an explosive harpoon.
Hi Borge & Lawrence – wow what a world class podcast! I LOVE the way that you are pushing at the boundaries of HIT now Lawrence: I for one have been doing various n=1 experiments over the last 3 years and pretty much ended up in alignment with Borge’s views. I call my approach a kind of ‘HIT +’ approach – in that for me personally I seem to respond well to taking every set to failure (ie consistently high intensity), but as per Borge’s view: I find that I do need that little bit extra stimulus above ‘pure’ HIT’s ‘single set to failure’ philosophy. The emerging research on occlusion/ muscle hypoxia/ metabolite accumulation seems to empirically show this to be the case too – so my hunch is that it may not be just me who would benefit from this style of training. So, what I do is, rather than additional ‘rest/ pause’ or ‘myo reps’, instead I quickly break down my barbell/ dumbell and try and crank out second and third higher rep ‘drop sets’ with much reduced load: but always to failure, with as little rest as possible between these 3 sets within the ‘drop-set’ (usually about 1 minute rest by the time I have broken down the barbell/ dumbells). Borge: do you feel this ‘drop-set’ approach would work as well as your ‘Myo reps’ approach? I just find that by dropping the weight, it gives a psychological boost and is less prone to causing the neurological aspect of overload which you mentioned? It also allows for more overall volume in terms of number of reps per workout, as well as providing variance in rep range within each workout. I know that Dr Carl Juneau and Martin Berkhan are equally keen on dropping weight in this way? To be honest, I really believe that you, Martin and Dr Juneau are on the cutting edge of training at the moment with this very aligned ‘HIT +’ philosophy..
One more question for you Borge if you don’t mind: you didn’t really touch on the concept of frequency.. My view on this is that frequency needs to reflect mainly the intensity you train at, but also to a lesser degree the volume per workout. The reason I say less for the volume is that if you are working out longer at a lower intensity, then I don’t believe that will impact your recovery time so much as working out at a consistently high level of effort (intensity). My current protocol involves Doug McGuff’s ‘Big 5’ full-body routine (ie upper body vertical push & pull, upper body horizontal push & pull + 1 exercise for legs – eg wall-sit). I workout alone from home so need to be creative (and safe!) with a bench, dumbells and barbells.. I do a ‘drop-set’ for each one, consisting of 3 mini-sets per exercise, each one separated by approximately 1 minutes rest as I break the barbell/ dumbell down to a lighter load. As per Mr Berkhan’s approach, my first set aims for 8 reps, then 10 reps on the 2nd set at a lower load, then 12 reps on the 3rd set at a considerably lower load. Each one to failure. It takes me about 1 hour in total. Maybe it’s just me, but even though each set is to complete muscular failure, I don’t feel too bad afterwards, although a little drained the next day and a bit sore the next 3 or 4 days – but not overly so, just so that I can notice it. Although I could push myself to do it more frequently, my body seems to be telling me that for such a high stimulus, I should wait 1 week to do it again (although this approach does suit me fine as with a lot going on right now, once per week is ideal in terms of my lifestyle).. My question though is do you not agree that ANYONE who works out with a very high stimulus (ie very high level of intensity/ effort) should wait 1 week to workout again? As Dr McGuff has written, if you are breaking down muscle fibres, as will happen with any high intensity stimulus, you have no alternative but to wait till the muscles have recovered and then over-compensated which takes 1 week. Surely there are no short-cuts here – it takes what it takes in terms of recovery time? Even splitting up your routine would not help much since there is so much crossover in terms of muscle-group involvement, and also in terms of neurological stress… And on the flip-side I have yet to see anyone show ANY downside in terms of muscles wasting away if you wait 1 week between workouts, plus of course your joints, cartilage and tendons need more time than muscle fibres to regenerate. So, with all that in mind surely once per week is the optimum frequency? Apologies for the long comment by the way!
Holy wall of text… 😉
Dropsets are a viable alternative at heavier loads. Berkhan uses 6-8RM for the first set of his RPT protocol.
I don’t think it is a good strategy to drop the loads when you are already working at only 40-60% of 1RM with Myo-reps. The average load will be higher with Myo-reps vs. dropsets.
I seem to recall that we covered frequency in this podcast, but I might misremember – and I can’t be bothered to go back an listen to it all again 😀 I think waiting 1 week to work out again is a mistake, as we have good research showing the muscle is so plastic in nature that it can be trained every day – but for most people a 2-3x/week frequency is the best option. If you really drained your nervous system so hard that it takes you a week to recover baseline strength, I don’t consider that effective training. I think you should balance fatigue, not chase it – the best way to increase performance is to induce a sufficient amount of a stressor and balance that with recovery, to quickly get back to baseline AND supercompensate – then apply the stressor again.
A relevant analogy is getting a suntan. It makes no sense to sunbathe once weekly and get a sunburn, then stay indoors for another week to let things heal up and then repeat the process. You get the best sunprotection AND colour from frequent exposure at a gradually higher intensity and duration, at a rate that the skin can adapt to.
There are many similarities to how you get stronger and bigger.
And here is the logical fallacy – you assume that by driving yourself deep into fatigue, creating more “inroad” or whatever term you think is appropriate – you will create more growth. This isn’t necessarily true. 1 set can only create so much stimulus, governed by the combination of tension and time under tension that muscle experiences, compared to what time-tension integral it is already used to. Doing forced reps or intensifying techniques will only moderately create more stimulus for growth, but potentially create excessive neuromuscular fatigue (remember to keep the nervous system and contractile tissue separate if you want to understand the process).
It seems as if the growth potential from a single bout maxes out around 4-6 sets, and going to failure *might* push that down to 2-3 sets max – but the muscle growth process is essentially back to baseline within 2-3 days. Grinding out failure reps (or even worse, beyond failure reps) doesn’t amplify the growth response, but dramatically prolongs the neuromuscular recovery – so even if the muscle growth response is back to baseline you are still unable to produce maximum force from that muscle.
So long answer with a short summary: No, I do not consider 1x/week to be optimal, even if it “works”. Because it obviously does. But having a deeper understanding of the underlying physiology enables you to actually work less but achieve more.
Hope that made sense.
Here’s a thought experiment, from the Myo-reps e-book:
“Let’s say you can achieve a hypothetical 100 percent training effect by doing 8 sets, but you need at least 3-4 days of recovery.
Over fifty days, you can do ten workouts, so let’s give it a theoretical value of 10 X 100(%) = 1000.
Doing 1-3 sets provides 80-85% of the maximal training effect, and is a more conservative volume which allows you to recover faster and train more often.
Daily stimulus of the same muscle group is possible, but let’s assume an average Joe/Jane and allow 48hrs of recovery.
Over 50 days, that’s 25 workouts.
25 X 80(%) = 2000.
Double the gains, bro! And most likely with more motivation and less pains and aches.”
Very impressive response Borge – you clearly have done a lot of work in this area. It does give me pause for thought – HIT guru Dr Doug McGuff in his renowned book ‘Body by Science’ (as quoted in Tim Ferriss’s ‘4 Hour Body’) states unambiguously that it takes muscle fibre 1 week to recover and repair after a single set to failure high intensity workout. More so for connective tissue. That’s the main reason I was waiting 1 week, together with some aches in my arm ligaments whilst I was experimenting with training 3 times/ week. You can’t both be right though: so I need to consider which side I fall down on (I know Menno Henselmans is in alignment with your view though).. I currently only do 3 sets per muscle group per week (in the form of 1 group of 3 RPT drop sets per muscle group to failure each time) but as I train full body with free weights from home, it takes me 1 hour 20 minutes in total, but I don’t feel completely shattered afterwards. In fact I did that yesterday and slight aches today but otherwise fine. So, yes I could probably do it again in 2 days – time allowing. The thing is I am happy where things are right now, and the main thing for me now is just to ‘stay in the game’ consistently over the long term (ie years) whilst still making some ongoing progress. So rather than throwing in a 2nd workout each week and risk having an overuse injury, happy to carry on for now as I am and save the time. It also makes the workout really enjoyable when it comes round – something to look forward to since I am so recovered and ready for it after waiting 7 days. I may very well switch it up at some point by shifting away from the heavier loads of Berkhan’s RPT approach to the lighter loads in your Myo reps approach. I’m sure it will work just as well, and be even more time efficient since no need to break down the weights between sets. Thanks again for your considered reply!
There is no study I know of showing that recovery takes a whole week, so I would have to defer to Dr McGuff for a reference on that.
E.g. Jones et al. (2006)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17194226
…studied the time-course of full strength recovery after a full-body training session of 3 sets to failure for each body part in reasonably trained men.
75% of these guys recovered within 48 hours. Now consider the following.
• 48 Hours was the first time point they looked at, so most of them must have recovered before this time.
• Before the experiment, the participants had to abstain from training for an unlisted period of time. After detraining you are more prone to muscle damage.
• All sets were taken to complete failure. 3 Sets to failure per body part would be quite stressful for daily training, especially under these recovery circumstances.
Then our very own Truls Raastad (2000):
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs004210050673
Looking at recovery time of a hard but realistic workout in competitive
powerlifters and strength athletes. The workout consisted of 3 maximal sets of 3 for both the squat and the front squat with a 6 minute rest interval, followed by 3 maximal sets of 6 in the leg extension with a 4 minute rest interval.
Recovery was assessed using jump height, leg extension torque and electrical stimulation.
The conclusion: “All performance measures showed the same pattern of recovery after the 100% protocol. There was a drop in performance of 12 ± 22% post-exercise. Recovery was biphasic, with rapid recovery occurring during the first 11 h, followed by a leveling off or a second drop in performance until the next morning, 22 h after exercise. All variables returned to baseline levels 33 h after exercise.”
So that’s full recovery within 33 hours after 9 all-out, high intensity sets.
Now, these are all to perhaps expand your perspective on how quickly the body is capable of recovering, and not necessarily a recommendation. Also keep in mind that even though protein turnover in connective tissue is slower than in muscle, by increasing training frequency it can actually be beneficial for connective tissue health as well – as long as you don’t overdo things and create inflammation, of course.
First and foremost, you should do what you feel best doing – any program that just makes you lose motivation is unsustainable. So there is an obvious mental aspect here. But if progress isn’t to your satisfaction, then I would for sure entertain the thought of trying a few workouts with maybe 1 rep in the tank vs. going to absolute failure, and see what happens when you increase training frequency (as leaving that 1 rep in the tank will allow you to do) 🙂
Brilliant – your thoughtful response has won me over Borge – you have convinced me of the potential benefit of throwing in 1 more session per week. And, that would offer me the opportunity then to try out your myo-reps approach mid-week (full-body workout, 1 exercise per muscle group). That would actually work very well for me – since it will provide a variation on my other usual session focused on heavier RPT training. I will stick with going to failure each set though: I am too OCD and would not enjoy having to ‘hold back’ reps (hence my background with the HIT approach). We’re all different I guess! I’ll report back in a few months how I’m getting on with it. Lawrence, if you’re reading this: next time you get Doug on your podcast (part 5?) why don’t you ask him if he has changed his view since writing Body by Science that it takes muscle fibre 1 week to repair and then over-compensate from a ‘single set to failure’ approach?
PS I’m now going to hunt out your eBook Borge to buy a copy of that – if it’s as good as your comments here, I’m sure it will be very instructive.
PPS: What brand is the 99% dark chocolate you use? If it’s Lindt, I’d go down to the 85% if I were you – since that is the highest cacao % they sell which is not ‘dutched’ (ie alkalised) which as I’m sure you know deactivates the beneficial polyphenols. According to Mr Lindt: “I am pleased to inform you that apart from some versions of Excellence bars with high percentage cocoa content (i.e. Excellence 90% and 99%), dutched cocoa is not an ingredient or process step we use for our products.”
By the way, just in case you’re interested here’s the quote from ‘Body by Science’ written by Dr Doug McGuff, as it appears in Tim Ferriss’s ‘4 Hour Body’: “Building muscle is actually a much slower process than healing a wound from a burn (which typically takes one to two weeks.) A burn heals from the ectodermal germ line, where the healing rate is relatively faster, because epithelial cells turn over quickly. If you scratch your cornea for instance, it’s generally going to be healed in 8-12 hours. Muscle tissue, in contrast, heals from the mesodermal germ line, where the healing rate is typically significantly slower. All in all – when you separate all the emotion and positive feedback that people derive from the training experience – solid biological data indicate that the optimal training frequency for the vast majority of the population is no more than once a week”.
So, I imagine your next question is: exactly what “solid biological data” is Doug referring to? Maybe you can raise that with Doug next time you speak Lawrence – since it is in sharp contrast to Borge’s/ Menno’s experience and the empirical studies Borge links to above?
I have a copy of Body by Science, and I couldn’t find exactly the quote that you cite from 4-Hour Body. So either I missed it, or Tim Ferris paraphrased something from the book, or was relying on other sources. In any case, in Chapter 3 (The Dose Response Relationship of Exercise) Doug discusses the impact of exercise on muscle fiber, and then details the recovery processes. Toward the end of that discussion we find this:
“After these inflammation responses have been completed, signs of tissue remodeling, or building of muscle, are then observed. The muscle fibers build back to their preworkout size, and then, if further time is allowed, will build up to a level that is greater than it was before the workout. The length of time required for the entire process to complete itself is dependent on the intensity of the workout stimulus and the corresponding damage to the muscle fibers. Typically, it falls in the neighborhood of 5 days (on the quick side of things) to six weeks.”
So, according to Doug, it might take up to 6 weeks to fully recover from an intense workout, and yet he has his clients train once a week. He then cites his own experience training clients, as well as the experience of others to conclude there is no benefit to training more than once a week. (Of course, this is not the universal recommendation of all HIT trainers. There are many HIT proponents that suggest 2x’s per week. And I know of no credible reports of people getting great results by training once every 6 weeks.)
So why the difference between training practice and the physiology that Doug discusses? Well, for one thing, it may just mean that you can’t reliably translate the physiology studies that he cites into training recommendations. Also, that section of the book is built almost entirely on the idea that exercise produces muscle injury, which subsequently has to heal before you get overcompensation. That may be an oversimplified, perhaps somewhat dated view of the process.
Since BBS was written, there has been a lot written about the role that hormonal and myokine signalling plays in triggering muscle adaptation. Some of that signalling may be in response to injury or micro-trauma in the muscle, but I’m not sure that it has been proven that recovery from micro-trauma is the central driver of hypertrophy. In fact, some recent studies have suggested the opposite.
It has long been know that eccentric contractions produce a great deal of DOMS, and this has been associated with greater levels of micro-trauma. This caused some people to conclude that more micro-trauma (and more soreness) meant bigger gains. Being really sore after a hard workout was seen as positive reinforcement. However, there have been some studies recently, which suggest that while eccentrics do boost muscle protein synthesis, it isn’t necessarily productive, i.e., MPS is elevated because greater damage was done, but that isn’t necessarily associated with greater hypertrophy.
To play the devil’s advocate: perhaps Doug’s protocol does produce a lot of microtrauma, necessitating longer recovery. But if it is nonproductive muscle damage (doesn’t lead to hypertrophy), perhaps the need for long recovery means the protocol is suboptimal? It might be the case that training with a little less intensity and inroad, but more volume, would allow you to productively train more frequently? Just food for thought….
Great answer. The mistake lies in thinking that every workout causes damage to the muscle. It doesn’t, except in beginners for the first workouts.
The repeated bout effect (RBE) is an adaptive process that reduces the strength of the exercise stimulus (whatever it may be). So, with metabolic stress from “doing reps”, the cell/body adapts by increasing its ability to both reduce inefficiency of energy delivery and metabolic byproducts. To adapt, the body will increase glycogen stores, glycolytic enzymes and creatine phosphate, increase its buffering capacity, and increase antioxidant enzymes. The mechanical tension causes deformation and Z-line streaming, and the body will adapt both by strengthening connective tissue and adding sarcomeres. Research shows that the elevation in MPS (protein synthesis) goes towards repair and not muscle growth for the very first workouts. Hence, actual damage needs to be repaired until the muscle can grow. So damage isn’t even needed, it is actually counterproductive.
This is RBE in a not very detailed nutshell, the body adapts to a stimulus both by ensuring that it won’t experience as much damage the next time, but also increases energy supply, resources and contractile tissue to be able to perform the task better next time.
Now, the data is showing that 2-3/week leads to faster growth than 1/week.
The more time the muscle spends in an anabolic state (producing contractile proteins) the faster it will grow.
You will still get RBE lifting once per week, especially since you will likely have to lift harder and longer – but a 1 set to failure workout is at the very lowest end of the spectrum. Total volume over a certain time period is important. So with once weekly training you end up having to squeeze a week’s worth of training into a single session.
As RBE sets in, the duration of anabolic activity following each workout shortens to a number of hours, rather than days. We have good data showing that window goes from 24+hrs in beginners to less than 12hrs in advanced.
So while there is good reason to believe that you can grow a muscle training it once per week, and given enough time it’s very possible you may end up at the same point as someone who is training more frequenty.
Having tried both sides of the spectrum in both myself and a few thousand clients, it’s just been my experience that the body has a more productive adaptive response (with less maladaptation) with more frequent stimuli than from an occasional highly damaging assault (also as per the sunburn analogy.
Remember that protein synthesis only goes towards growth after all damage has been repaired- and this also speaks highly in favor of more frequent, less damaging training as a better way to go in the long term.
This is my honest opinion and experience, and I think I have provided the extent of my perspectives both in the podcast and here in the comments section, and see no reason to have an endless debate on this.
I think everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I just hope this has sparked some introspection and reflection on current beliefs.
I appreciate everyones interest, and thank you for a great discussion 🙂
Borge,
Thank you so much for stimulating such a productive discussion on the blog.
My personal position is that I’m highly skeptical that the gains, if possible, are even worthwhile. I’ve heard people say that SSTF will get you 80-85% of gains but I’m not even sure that’s true. And I don’t think anyone really knows yet.
Let’s say you’ve been doing SSTF every 4/5 days for 3+ years, you will have stimulated vast majority of your gains IMO. Depending on the individual, the gains from this point are so incredibly marginal to make them almost pointless to chase, like a pound per year.
I think myo-reps, rest-pause and other advanced techniques are potentially great for getting past sticking points and showing improvements in strength, but I’m skeptical they will stimulate greater gains beyond SSTF. I really do not think we can forget about the importance of genetics in this discussion, which really seem to determine our muscle growth potential and cap it.
I don’t want to come across as negative and I think it’s important to continue to experiment and N=1, but I also think that we’re in danger of some serious mental masturbation.
All of that being said, I’m looking to experiment soon with something like rest-pause / RPT / myo-reps in the coming months. I’ve tried SSTF 2x per week and high protein >165g and that hasn’t seemed to make any difference beyond my personal plateau.
Sounds very interesting Lawrence – you seem to have established that SSTF x twice per week will not raise you above your plateau, neither will following a high protein diet. That gives you a great baseline to work from.
So I invite you to join me on my experiment: ie stick with twice per week (or every 4/5 days): but switch away from SSTF for a few months: with one session following Berkhan’s ‘heavy’ RPT protocol and the other one Borge’s ‘lighter’ myo-reps (ie rest pause). We could then compare our results after a few months and get an N=2.. (N=1 is so pase now..) I’m planning to start my N=1 next week, so will report back in a few months…
These N= “experiments” are worthless, it’s not how science is done, you’re all just providing anecdotes not data. Sorry to rain on your parade.
lol, but Andrew, the point is that we’re trying to figure out what works for us individually. We’re not doing science. Because clearly, no one knows (no science can say) the exact optimal protocol for each individual. We’re not trying to provide data in this context. For example, if I do myo-reps and get additional gains, that does not necessarily transfer. But it may inspire another to experiment 😉
Most trainees that are grasping at straws i.e. Myoreps, carnivory, occlusion training, etc are already very close to their genetic potential. Say you trained in your usual way consistently for 6 months and controlled for all variables; sleep, stress, nutrition etc and then transferred to a specific advanced technique while keeping your variables identical for another 6 months and made gains that were significantly more than you expected then that’d be great for you but there would still be confounding factors that you’d have missed and it would end up just a “cool story” for others to attempt to “replicate”. It’s all fun and games for the individual but that’s all it is. I just think it’s all a bit wanky, dressed up in sciencey sounding language.
I read your comment Andrew and to be honest you got my goat there a bit – so far this blog has been characterised by thoughtful, intelligent people giving their views in an open-minded and above all respectful way – with the intention of trying to build our collective understanding. A negative comment like the one you made above pisses on everyone’s parade and drags everyone down. Lawrence your comment pretty much captured the rest of what I was going to write. Listen, because of what I have learned from Borge over the last few days I am going to throw in a 2nd workout per week of about 20-30 minutes doing lighter, higher rep myo-reps. I’m going to enjoy it and it will most probably increase my overall sense of well-being, and possibly strength over the long term. All for free! So, please everyone, a little more gratitude to Borge and Lawrence for giving their time for free is in order I think!!
Sorry I missed this as you replied to Lawrence, not me. I’m not ungrateful at all, this podcast has given me such a wealth of information that I can’t be more thankful for it. That however does not change the fact that N=1 type anecdotes provide very little useful data. A layperson is almost incapable of designing a self experimentation routine that controls for all biases and variables, they end up generating compelling narratives but little in the way of useful data. Self reporting is highly biased and in untrained individuals almost totally subjective.
I do agree with the premise – SSTF should take you very close to your genetic potential given enough time, except that for a lot of people it doesn’t. I would be out of a job a long time ago if things were really that simple. I have had people ranging from the HIT side of the spectrum to the high volume bro-split side of the spectrum gain more strength and muscle mass in only 3-6 months of training than they managed in the last 2-3 years, so I don’t think the absolutist model of a single mode, volume and frequency of resistance training is a good one.
We also have some very interesting research looking at how satellite cells contribution to growth (through myonuclei addition) is a major bottleneck, as a certain type of loading, frequency and volume eventually halts activity. At some point, a single set at a given frequency will not add more growth, as the mechanotransduction pathway is maxed out. By introducing certain types of stimulus (and I have good reason to believe that this is a strong metabolic stimulus via occlusion training or Myo-reps/rest-pause techniques) you can restart the muscle growth process.
If you are interested in reading some of my preliminary thoughts on the matter, here is an article I wrote a few years ago:
https://www.elitefts.com/education/training/reignite-progress-with-new-science/
I wouldn’t expect a slight increase in frequency and more protein to provide any measurable gains, no. We are talking a realistic expectation of maybe 1-2kg of muscle mass per year at the advanced level, and provided you are doing everything right. I think SSTF 2x/week to be at the very lowest end of the optimal combination of volume and frequency, and you would not be seeing any measureable difference from SSTF every 5-7 days. At least not wrt muscle growth (strength is a different discussion).
You (and I) may very well be at your maximum genetic potential, and just accepting that and using a minimalistic approach would be the best use of our time, since we can’t gain more why put in a lot of work when a little work is enough to maintain?…but I guess we wouldn’t be in this business at all if we didn’t have anything to strive for 🙂
I’m also not saying that one should switch into a German Volume Training approach, I’m only trying to make you entertain the idea that there could be some unrealised potential from added volume and frequency.
Now, this is coming from a guy who’s been fighting the high-volume mentality for years, so I just want to have everyone meet somewhere in the middle – the area where the most people will get the most gains.
This is a really interesting discussion guys and genuinely adds to the content of the podcast, thanks! I think the only thing to add is the question “why do you want to chase your genetic potential to the nth degree?” For the average trainee it really is mental masturbation, 85% and a healthy life is great for me although I understand it is somehow very important to work tirelessly toward 100%for some people.
I would wager that pretty much EVERYONE subscribed to Corporate Warrior now knows that in order to get 70-85% of them gainz then alls you need to do is a SSTF once or maybe twice/ week, get yourself adequate protein (1.6g/ Kg), get your 7-8 hours sleep and avoid chronic stress. Job done, case closed. If that’s all you’re interested in, why are you still following this blog, it really is that simple. Every guest that Lawrence has ever had on agrees on that. … The rest of us find it interesting chasing that last elusive 30-15% (depending on your perspective) – even though when you get to this level the results seem to be less generalisable (ie scientific) and much more dependent on individual make-up (ie N=1). Some protocols may appear to be a less viable trade-off in terms of pushing extra gainz (eg some may argue Brad Schoenfeld et al’s higher volume approach is not worth the extra time involved). Other protocols use solid science to offer greater benefits for lesser additional input in terms of time (eg Berkhan’s RPT and Borge’s myo-reps – which add in metabolic stress/ muscular hypoxia and their effect on satellite cells into the mix). Anyone that is convinced that chasing that last 30-15% is a complete waste of time would be better served subscribing to a different podcast.
Not really, I’m extremely interested in HIT as an amazingly efficient way to gain optimal health, I’m also super interested in the science behind it. I’m not however a bodybuilder and never will be. This is the path to an increased quality of life and an increased health span for me, not to get girls fainting at my rippling muscles.
This is exactly the premise I present in this article 🙂
http://borgefagerli.com/are-you-doing-too-much-volume/
Fantastic! Coincidentally aligning perfectly with my current mindset.
All I can say to this, is if every strength/ fitness guru was as clear, open-minded and well-referenced as the comments Borge has made here, no doubt our collective knowledge would be exponentially more advanced. One of the most profound comments made yet on your blog I’d say Lawrence – worthy of reading a few times over..
Well said Lawrence and i agree !
Hi Greg, just FYI the above quote is from p64 (at least on Kindle), under the section ‘A Biologic Model’, ie the final paragraph in Chapter 3 of ‘Body by Science’. And yes, you are right – I know that since Doug wrote BBS with John Little he has more recently started focussing much more on myokine signalling. Will be interesting to see where that line of research will take him. Maybe the subject of a future podcast Lawrence? From a personal perspective though, I get a lot of satisfaction from going to failure every set. Not sure how motivated I’d be to mostly do it with 1 or more reps left in the tank. Definitely food for thought though. Each to his own I suppose!
Excellent contribution Greg. Thank you for taking the time.
For 100% dark chocolate try “Willies Cacao” it’s amazing although I don’t know its status re “Dutching”
Recovery is one thing but overcompensation is another so while it may take 3-5 days to recover it may take a further 3-5 to overcompensate . i find that i need at least 7-10 days before i feel ready to hit the same exercises again .
You’re conflating muscle growth with neural recovery. Please read carefully what I wrote above, and keep in mind that actually being able to display an increase in strength from hard sets to failure can take several days. The actual muscle growth, which is on the order of grams and not measurable with anything you would have available, is back to baseline within 1-2 days. So using your strength recovery as a proxy for supercompensation is a misunderstanding and misapplication of the physiology.
I’m not using strength as a proxy for muscle growth Mr Fagerli as you may recover your strength fairly quickly after the workout . I’m simply saying that overcompensation ( muscle growth ) may take longer for the body to synthesize which certain research has indicated .
I would love to see this research, as all the research I have seen throughout the years shows that the muscle growth/supercompensation process is finished on the order of 1-2 days.
This is a very good point that Borge makes – I see a lot of deeply held opinion here, but only 1 or 2 people presenting their views as conclusions based on either underlying research studies or thousands of hours of experience. I find it hilarious when someone like Borge presents his opinion, based upon hours of combing through scientific studies and thousands of hours training people, and then someone replies by saying it can’t be right because it conflicts with their personal deeply held views. Hell, I’ll be the first to admit that I whole-heatedly bought into Dr McGuff’s view that muscle needs 7 days to recover and compensate – the argument he put forward in Body by Science was so convincing and seemed to be based on hard science (as per the title!) Yet, because Doug does not provide the hard references to back up his views, and Borge does, I have to concede that Borge’s approach has ‘won’ this argument for me – at least for now. I eagerly await to see if Doug can respond by providing the research studies to back up his view that it takes one week for muscle to repair itself. Until then, the ball is firmly in Borge’s court as far as I am concerned…
An example you can check out is Body By Science by Doug McGuff and John Little as they’ve compiled plenty of research in that book that indicates what i was referring to . There’s plenty of research that indicates recovery / growth takes longer for the body to produce then people think it does . From my personal experience and observation recovering / overcompensating from a hard workout would not be complete within 1-2 days . I find it very interesting that we’ve all had the experience of taking 2 weeks or more off from the gym and yet come back stronger ! In fact many of us have also experienced size increases during the layoff as well . The exercise community if you will is a very segregated one and people are very entrenched in their dogma / beliefs ! I’ve always been a very skeptical person and also a logically grounded person as well so i always questioned what i heard and saw . If i thought that working out more would cause more muscle growth / strength then i would do it , but i see no reason to do more . I utilize HIT training because it’s the most time efficient and productive method of training along with being easier on the body in terms of wear and tear !
Again – how do you subjectively “feel” that the muscle needs that many days to supercompensate? Do you really believe your subjective feelings trump hard science using finely tuned instruments being able to see exactly what is going on inside your muscles? I guess you will just have to hold on to that opinion then, and I see no point in continuing this discussion.
“The exercise community if you will is a very segregated one and people are very entrenched in their dogma / beliefs ! ”
No shit.
It is true that the muscle growth process takes more than 2-3 days in absolute beginners, but as you go beyond the first 6 or so months of training and the body accumulates RBE (and also grows bigger and stronger muscles), the muscle growth process drops to about 6-12hrs. This is all explained in several mechanistic studies, this is one of the early ones:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18032468
Now, to repeat myself again – you are conflating your strength recovery with actual muscle growth, and I have tried to make you understand that these are separate processes. You can have strength gain without muscle growth, you can have muscle growth without strength gain.
The reason it takes you that long to recover YOUR strength is because you are training to failure (and maybe beyond that point) creating a lot of neuromuscular fatigue. It may also be that you have both a higher stress level and lack of quality sleep, which are known to prolong neuromuscular recovery. Maybe you have low grade inflammation from lifestyle factors or age, this also limits neuromuscular recovery. I could go on and on, but the point is just that you are using a poor proxy (strength increase) for judging when your muscle has supercompensated.
Another thing to consider is that strength recovery can actually speed up as you train more frequently, as shown by Raastad et al. (2003).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12753488
They studied intermediate male trainees training either 4x per week with a typical upper-lower split (5 exercises, 3-4 maximal sets each per session) or every day. A major strength of this study is that all participants had to perform a standardized strength training program for a month before the experiment started. After this period, they were squatting 110 kg (242 lb) and front squatting 85 kg (187 lb) for 6 reps each at a bodyweight of 82 kg (181 lb).
The daily training group then significantly increased their lower body training volume and started training their quads with 3 maximal sets of 2 exercises, i.e. 6 heavy sets every day (42 sets per week!). This resulted in a significantly greater strength gain in the leg press of 12% in the daily training group compared to 5% in the upper-lower split group. Squats increased by 19% vs. 4% in favor of the daily training group.
Let’s make sure that got through. Daily, heavy, high volume training was well over twice as effective as the typical upper-lower splits.
Moreover, the researchers studied the recovery capacity of the participants before and after the training program. The test workout consisted of 3 sets of 6 for squats, front squats and leg extensions with their 6RM and a long rest interval to allow for complete recovery between sets (8 min. for the squats; 3 min. for the leg extensions). So that’s 9 sets for the quads with heavy loads taken one rep to failure.
A host of recovery measurements indicated the daily training significantly improved resistance to fatigue to the point that leg extension strength recovered within 22 hours after the test session. To quote the researchers, “In conclusion, 2 weeks of heavy training reduced acute neuromuscular fatigue after a test workout. As a result, recovery was complete 22 h after the workout performed after the heavy training period but not after the workout performed before the heavy training period. This faster recovery may explain why daily bouts of leg extensor strength exercise were well tolerated by most subjects.”
So to conclude, I think it would serve you well to at least entertain the idea that you might be the one clinging to dogmatic beliefs, and that this belief could also be self-limiting (the brain tends to work that way).
At the end of the day, you should just keep doing what you feel best doing, and based on the articles I have posted links to before I think you know that I’m not necessarily a fan of super high volume or frequency – I fall somewhere in between, and I have good research AND experience to back that up with. I also do think that a simple HIT routine can be great for most people, especially if it is fun and sustainable. That IMO trumps all the science on what is “optimal” 🙂
Let me make this point very clear , i’m not conflating strength increases and recovery with overcompensation / growth ! I explained this to you already in my previous posts . What you don’t seem to understand is that scientific research can’t be used as the ultimate arbiter of how you should conduct your training . The problem with scientific research is that you can find such that will support any conclusion that you want ! And i’m speaking of peer reviewed research , the supposed creme de la creme of research here . I conduct my training the way i do for reasons previously stated and in my observation and experience i have seen / heard nothing that has convinced or swayed me otherwise . By the way , you don’t have to be condescending saying things like lets make sure that got through as i can understand things perfectly well , good day to you sir .
Fair enough, and I honestly didn’t mean to be condescending. Your N=1 is always a good place to start, and I’m a big fan of individualizing training prescription – that’s basically what I have built my career around.
I also think it is a mistake to ignore research. There is more agreement than you seem to think, you just have to place it in proper context – i.e. the study I posted showing how McGuff’s research (which I have yet to see, though) can be explained by his subjects being newbies, whereas the process happens faster in advanced lifters. I.e the MPS increase is the same as in a newbie, but the duration is shorter – which is why muscle growth is harder to come by as you get more advanced.
I just want to understand how you have arrived at your conclusions of muscle growth needing days to happen when it is impossible to measure by anything but a microscope?
I don’t simply go by subjective feelings to conduct my training as well which is why i’ve maintained an accurate logbook for the last 10 years and have training logs going back 20 years !
Hi Enlite, can you give specific examples of the research presented in Body by Science that show that it takes muscle 7 days to recover/ grow? I have a copy of that book and was won over by the attractiveness and sciencey sounding principles which were put forward. But from memory, it is purely a ‘point of view’/ conjecture book: I don’t remember ANY references to research papers to back up the assertion that 7 days are required? If you can provide references, then by all means continue to debate the science further with Borge, but if you can’t then you are just speaking from your own personal opinion. But as he says above, if you are happy with your dogma and it seems to work for you then go for it: just don’t confuse that with scientific or even N=many debate!
I’m speaking from my personal experience / observation as far as training goes as well as adhering to sound logical principles , and what is practical and sensible . As for BBS my understanding is that research was sighted in that book but i can’t confirm this as i have not actually read that book in it’s entirety . There is research that validates HIT training such as the Nautilus West Point study , old i know but look at Ellington Darden’s work as well as Luke Carlson of Discover Strength and others as well . You have to go seek it out yourself .
How do you grow before you recover ? First you say that recovery can take several days and then you say that growth is back to baseline within 1-2 days , but again how do you grow before you recover ?!
At which point are we actually splitting hairs here ?! Muscle growth is a neurological process as the neural pathways are contained within the muscle tissue itself . Recovery does precede growth but they’re both neurological processes .
It is not. Muscle hypertrophy is specifically defined as the growth of contractile structures and the extracellular matrix supporting that growth (supply of energy substrates). The neurology is considered entirely separate, and there isn’t real “growth” of the neural pathways per se, the neural adaptations concern the supply and coordination of electrical signals to the motor unit complex.
I’m simply saying that the muscle itself wouldn’t function without the neurological support structure and i see what you’re saying , but lets remember that the human body is an integrated unit and that’s the point i was making .
The sunburn analogy was meant to indicate over training and i don’t think that training to failure is analogous to a sunburn either . It may not be necessary to train to utter failure to induce muscular growth however if that’s you’re goal i think it would behoove you to do so because the body needs a strong stimulus to induce growth . Rest Pause is a great technique for inducing muscular growth and something i’ve been using in my training for some time .
The initial set i perform is done to failure or very close as a preparatory set followed by 2 more sets which really bring on the pain . However i only perform one exercise per body part as i see no need to do more than that . Doing less volume and more frequency of training is something that Doggcrap training promotes and it does bring people results in the short term . However i don’t think it’s a viable long term strategy because of cumulative damage and eventually you will over train yourself as many do following that protocol . I’m currently performing two sessions per week but i also split the workouts into upperbody/lowerbody sessions to make the workouts manageable . Great interview !
Thank you Enlite. Appreciate the input as always.
You’re welcome Lawrence and great interview as always !
I agree, chasing fatigue as in DC training and many HIT protocols isn’t very productive as it will limit both volume and frequency, and given that stress and sleep has such a huge effect on recovery time you would be better off *managing* vs. *chasing* fatigue.
Read this:
http://borgefagerli.com/the-most-ignored-causes-when-your-results-are-lacking-part-1-stress/
Fantastic comment and great question Rob. Thank you for inspiring me and my readers / listeners with your curiosity and open-mindedness.
Wow. A pound of fattier beef alone would be up over 1000 calories!, wouldn’t it? To eat 6 lbs of animal protein like that throughout the day would mean that Borge is ingesting over 6000 calories a day JUST to meet his protein requirements (not including the eggs, apples, nuts, chocolate, etc. that he also mentions). That seems…impossible.
I have never eaten 6lbs of beef in a single day, so this must be in reference to Shawn Baker’s diet. My personal protein intake was at the highest point 300g, the equivalent of 3lbs of beef.
My apologies; i must have misheard that part. I thought you’d said you were eating 2 lbs at each meal. Sorry for the misunderstanding, Borge; and thank you for sharing your knowledge, experience, and insights!
If I did, I probably converted wrong from metric. I would eat approx 400g of meat at a meal, and 3 meals per day. Now, my protein intake is lower, I’m having carbs, and I moved to 4 meals.
Just gave the myo rep concept a try! My shoulder press and seated row have been a bit stagnant, so we’ll see how this protocol influences my results. Loved the podcast and the constant stream of new ideas and ways to tweak our training protocols. Keep them coming!
Nice one Matt. Well done for actually taking action and experimenting. Appreciate the feedback. Lots more to come!
Thanks, Lawrence! Love the discussion on this episode. I’m hoping this experiment will get me through some sticking points. We’ll see. Another supervised session is coming up for me at the end of May as well. Feedback from a HIT trainer is the best thing.
Also, I’m still working on my article with the commonalities between music and HIT. At the pace I’m going, it’ll be a while, but I’ll let you know once I have something together.
Nutrition is indeed a very polarizing topic without a doubt ! I always try to go with logic/common sense with regards to food and i always come back to a starch based eating with fruits/veg . People love their meat and they will not want to hear otherwise and i myself do consume some as well but the majority of my food is starch like potatoes , rice , oats , cream of wheat along with beans peas and lentils . If we put the science aside because you can find science that will support anything , i just fail to see how a meat/animal based diet will be healthy and provide all the nutrients that starch/fruit/veg will provide such as fiber which is vital for health !
It’s Always a help to look through the lens of evolution. Also check your digestive tract system. Think about the modern versions of fruit/veggies/starch.
But, maybe you don’t want to hear otherwise!!
Well evolutionary theory if you subscribe to it goes hand and glove with consuming meat and the digestive tract of humans are very long and the food is meant to stay in there for some time in order for the body to extract the nutrients from it . The digestive tract of a carnivore is not nearly as long as that of herbivores because the exit time is much faster with carnivores . I enjoy bacon and eggs as well but i don’t try to pretend they they are healthy . As for modern versions of certain foods i’m aware that they’re manipulated in order to emphasize certain aspects while de-emphasizing others . For example wild broccoli is very bitter so the modern version is more edible and a lot less bitter .
Interesting perspective Enlite. All the power to you if this way of eating works for you. Do you mind if I ask body fat % and height to waist ratio? Personally, I prefer mostly animal-based.
I stand 5 foot 10 or so with a stocky thick build and i’m currently sitting at about 15/16 % bodyfat i definitely could be on the leaner side and i’m working on it , admittedly not the easiest because i like to eat ! I have no problems with consuming meat but i feel that carbs are also essential in one’s diet for maintaining and building muscle mass and health considerations as well .
To use sweeping generalisations, you’re both wrong. Zero carb carnivory and 100% plant based vegan diets are just different ends of an idiotic diet spectrum. Humans are omnivorous, we’re incredibly versatile creatures able to live and even thrive on a vast range of available foodstuffs. No one has some magic bullet of stupidly restrictive eating or special training that will make them into superman.
There’s nothing idiotic about consuming a starch / plant based diet and as for humans being able to consume plenty of food stuffs we all know this , however just because we can do certain things doesn’t necessarily mean that we should !
What I said to Ad. ^^^
Guys – I’m all for spirited debate but let’s keep it civil and mature.
Apologies, Lawrence.
The human digestive system from mouth to anus is nowhere near as long as a football field. It’s about 9 meters (30 feet). lol
Pardon me , but 30 feet is still a very substantial length .
There is no debate, let alone spirited. I don”t have a need to prove to others my thoughts, only to myself. It is about fucking feeding oneself to thrive and reach healthy a certain respectfull age. Since when is eating mostly animal products unable to do this?? Critical thinking skills?? Meanwhile…….diabetes is on the rise!! I leave in peace.
Who speaks of becoming superman? Why would restrictive (what that even would mean) be stupid? Magic bullet? Eating versatily means? We are both wrong and you are right? As I stated before, I do not care about what others eat and I like to live on animal based foodstuff. And I feel very good, much better compared to my time of eating modern versatile crap food. Just make sure to enjoy eating as primary and stay healthy with it. Meanwhile……..diabetes is on the rise!!!
You boys both need to brush up on your critical thinking skills.
I think you need to brush up on your critical listening skills , boy .
Enlite, do you suggest that humans are herbivore? The human digestive tract?system is IMO not VERY long and as far as I know will animal baed foor better be absorbed. Why do you eat something that you pretend to be not healthy? Why would eggs etc be unhealthy? Have you look into research of anti-nutrients and the like? I agree that everyone should make his or her own food choices but we can’t ignore our evolutionaire marks.
I’m suggesting that the gastrointestinal tract is very long from my understanding being as long as a football field or something like that . I think the evidence would conclude that humans are herbivores an example being the majority flat teeth that are meant for grinding and processing of food , like fruit and plants as well as the length of the intestinal tract as mentioned above . Some things i eat are not for nutrition necessarily but for the sheer enjoyment of it such as chocolate cake and ice cream , and i think we all do this to some extent . However i try to consume nutritious food the majority of the time for health and longevity considerations .
Well, we have a complete different digestive tract compared to herbivores. It has nothing to do with the length but herbivores ferment the food because they have a lot of bacteria working for them in the degestive tract. The question to be asked is if humans have a digestive tract that enables them to extract all the nutrients they need from animal food and if animal food deleiver all the nutrients they need? Getting these nutrients via hunting and preparing as humans did leave the teeth out of this game. Also consider how much nutrients we get out of plants and the like. Since we cannot digest much of it we cannot use much of it. We would have to eat enormous amounts of food, and graze all day. Consider how you would get enough protein. How would our brain ever have developted? Think about energy distribution among organs. Ok, we can (if one is Lucky) survive for some time on plant food, but that doesn’t make us herbivores. Some herbivores eat animals, doesn’t make them carnivores. Meat eaters thrive IMO and according reality. Nevertheless, how to eat is up to each own since we have free will.
You can use selection bias to come to your preferred conclusion but such does not prove anything . As for your question about protein i’ve concluded based on personal experience and observation that we really don’t require high levels of it , as it is very hard for the body to metabolize and highly toxic to the liver and kidneys . As for the length of the digestive tract of course logic would conclude that it’s longer in order for a slower transit and exit time to occur . You speak of having to gather and graze for food and how this would make survival next to impossible because humans would have to consume vast quantities of food . And yet think about all the energy one would have to consume and expend making tools and weapons setting traps and running and chasing down prey in order to survive !?
Another thing to consider is the consumption of this meat itself once you hunt and kill the prey . Were talking about surviving in the wild here not about peppercorn steak slathered in rich delicious sauces spices and the like which you don’t have in the wild . The fresh kill has to be cleaned because of all the filth that the kill will produce of which i won’t go into the gory details . When i hear Primal / Paleo diet proponents speak about bacon & eggs for example being staples in that diet what were these Paleo men and women doing frying up bacon and eggs in the cave ?! I’m sorry but it just seems completely ludicrous ! The consumption of starches has long been a foundation of many people for a very long time and people can look into these things for themselves and come to their own conclusions . By the way the brain feeds on glucose ( being the most energy demanding organ in the body) using half of all the sugar in the body , which is why bodybuilders for example get very irritable while on Carb restricted diets .
Ok. Surviving in the wild will Always be very hard, no question. Try it, and feed yourself with plants and the like. The body has no emotion to how you get the nutrients. You have your opinions, and in my opinion these are not correct. I say, we agree to disagree……. life is to short to keep talking in circles.
In enjoy my meals and feel very good. You enjoy yours too!!
It’s not my opinion that vast numbers of people have a history of consuming and thriving on starches it’s a fact and anyone can look into this for themselves .
Hey Lawrence, great episode. I hadn’t heard of Borge before but definitely a interesting individual with a lot to share. Definitely going to look into more
Thank you James. Yea check out Borge’s blog here: http://borgefagerli.com/
Something that may be of interest to some…and…perhaps not!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761718/#!po=8.18182
“In conclusion, low-intensity (40% VO2max) cycle training of short duration (15 min) combined with blood flow restriction can produce a significant increase in thigh muscle volume and aerobic capacity in young men.”
Kaatsu training for cardio works! And you don’t need Tabata-like intensity measures. Of course there has never been a need for extreme training techniques (Tabata or HIIT) to attain the health improvements of cardiovascular exercise. Just like HIT…..there is very little need for extreme high intensity in resistance training or endurance training…..unless….one is in the upper echelon of competition.
I’ve (n=1) found that Kaatsu teamed with long duration isometrics to be potent stimulators of muscles and very easy to recover from…..perhaps somewhat due to my emphasis on cardiovascular conditioning.
Borge Fagerli seems an interesting man, and my intuition tells me that he would be one heck of a coach. His take on relatively high resistance(Myo-Reps) causing blood occlusion and leading to recruitment of fast twitch fibers sooner rather than later (like SuperSlow) is good observation skills. Made me rethink!
I am hoping Mr. Fagerli can further discuss this:
3. “By keeping constant tension on the muscle, i.e. shorten the ROM by 10% on top (avoid locking out the weight) and 10% in the bottom (resting the weight or overstretching the muscle), you will mimic the occlusion effect and reach higher fiber recruitment faster.”
Marc
Interesting, I do all my lifting -10% ROM as mentioned above as recommended by Drew Baye
Since Mr. Baye deliberately discredited Clarence Bass on aerobics without proper data (which by the way he has personally produced ZERO studies), facts or logic, I have quit reading anything written by him. It is obvious he has limited knowledge on cardiovascular training other than retreaded HIT dogma.
The word aerobic simply means with oxygen . Strength training is aerobic exercise ! Some would say it’s the most effective / efficient form of aerobic exercise .
I used the word “aerobics.” This addition of the letter ‘s’ allows the word to be used for more than “with oxygen.” Nice debate tactic to change the subject, however intellectually dishonest it may be. All exercise is aerobic….but not all are good choices for training the cardiovascular system. Strength training is a poor choice for training the cardiovascular system for various reasons. Those that say strength training is the “most effective/efficient form of aerobic exercise,” have zero competition evidence. If so effective/efficient….ask yourself why there is not some endurance competition wins based on such effectiveness/efficiency?
The cardiovascular system is a support structure for the musculoskeletal system , it’s not an entity onto itself . It’s stimulated through the use of the muscles period end of story . Are you seriously trying to tell me that sprinting will not stimulate the cardiovascular system as well as long distance running !? You’re conflating a particular type / modality of exercise with the cardiovascular system without realizing that the system is stimulated through using your muscles and not the particular type of movement / exercise !
* “The cardiovascular system is a support structure for the musculoskeletal system”
– This is a which came 1st argument….the chicken or egg, and is typical of a HIT-based argumentative comment. Actually, both systems are equally important.
* “it’s not an entity onto itself”
– Only you are saying this.
* “Are you seriously trying to tell me that sprinting will not stimulate the cardiovascular system as well as long distance running !?”
– I never mentioned sprinting or long distance running. Actually the results of the two exercise modalities deliver different results.
https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2008&issue=03000&article=00014&type=Fulltext
* “You’re conflating a particular type / modality of exercise with the cardiovascular system without realizing that the system is stimulated through using your muscles and not the particular type of movement / exercise !”
– First, I am in no-way anti-resistance training. Rather I’m against the uncritically applied idea that resistance training is ALWAYS superior, and cardiovascular exercise is either useless, or detrimental.
Those with poor reading comprehension may ‘hear’ what I’m saying other ways, but X-force has a very nice statement about cardiovascular conditioning, which is not a complete definition of proper cardiovascular conditioning, but is probably all any HIT aficionado can stomach.
“For cardiovascular exercise it is best to choose an activity that is appealing and that engages as much of the body’s muscle mass as possible in a dynamic fashion (tension followed by relaxation).”
” X-Force The Concept 3-1-5″
Marc
What does the the cardiovascular system do ?
You can quote studies and link them all day long but it doesn’t change the fact that you simply lack a fundamental understanding of how the human body functions . You can criticize Drew Baye and Doug Mcguff from now till kingdom come and it doesn’t change the fact that you fail to grasp the fundamental / Basic truth of the matter at hand . The cardiovascular system is stimulated through muscular work whether riding a bike or performing a leg press . The higher the quality of the muscular work ( e.g. high intensity muscular contractions ) the more profound the effect on the cardiovascular system will be !
Sprinting and long distance running aren’t different modalities because you’re running in both cases , the difference comes in the intensity / effort being employed . I wasn’t arguing the importance of either the CV system or the muscles as obviously both are important . I was simply making the point that the CV system supplies the muscle tissue with blood to feed / support the muscles . Can’t you see the futility of all this back and forth and i’m including myself in this . I will no longer engage with you on this matter as it’s ultimately pointless and will accomplish absolutely nothing .
I agree….it is futile for any further engagement with you. Anytime one does not engage with facts and logic, all discussion is generally fruitless. Stating that “you fail to grasp the fundamental / Basic truth of the matter at hand ,” without stating WHERE I am wrong is offensive of itself…..indicating you lack substantive information to share or even worse are engaging to discredit by using a false premise that the cardiovascular system is “stimulated through the use of the muscles period end of story.” Statements such as “The higher the quality of the muscular work ( e.g. high intensity muscular contractions ) the more profound the effect on the cardiovascular system will be !” are simply unproven. You are guilty of assuming facts not in evidence….ie a false premise. In the end it is simply intellectual dishonesty.
I stated where you were wrong ! If the CV system is not stimulated through using your muscles then how is it stimulated ?
It’s funny that you accuse me of using a debate tactic then turn around and admit that all exercise is aerobic !? So which is it ?
Non sequitur…..
Caveat emptor…….
Of advice from retreaded material. The original song is almost always better. Of someone who is always right and has a narrow viewpoint. Of those who are critical yet adopt those same ideas (isometrics). I smiled when Dr. MacMillan made him look foolish on eccentrics
I can’t believe this podcast has stimulated 87 comments and counting?! @borgefagerli:disqus you are a star. I’m doing my best to chime in when possible! Thank you to everyone for tuning in and sharing your thoughts in this post and others.