Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon show. In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Mike Izzertal. He is probably most famous for being the founder of RP Strength, which is hands down one of the best strength and hypertrophy training programs out there. And that’s exactly why I wanted him on the show. In this episode, we talk about how muscle, skeletal muscle, is life or death. Number two, what you need to do exactly. How do you maintain hypertrophy, strength, and ultimately power? Muscle is the organ of longevity. As always, this information is free. Please take a moment to like, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and maybe an even older friend. If you like this kind of content, go to my website, dr.gabriellelyon.com, sign up for my free newsletter. We won’t spam you, but what we will do is bring you the most up-to-date, evidence-based information right to your inbox. No gym required. (upbeat music) Dr. Mike Isretel, thank you so much for coming on the show. In fact, you’re a legend, so much of a legend that Dr. Pat Davidson said that you should be in person here, but we’ll settle for remote because you are so epic. – Oh my God. Well, I’m honored. And Dr. Pat Davidson is a legend in his own right. So, and he’s prone to exaggerating on other people’s behalf. So I promise to disappoint. That’s one thing I can guarantee. – One of the reasons that I really wanted to have you on is number one, you do such a great job at explaining all things, hypertrophy, skeletal muscle health, strength, but you do it in a way that is evidence-based and replicatable. So you have many programs, you discuss many protocols, and I appreciate that. And I know that the listener and the viewer and everybody who is aging, quite frankly, needs that. – Thank you so much. Yeah, aging is really fun and everyone should look forward to it. Just kidding. I guess, yeah, there’s a lot to say about maximizing muscle growth, especially when you’re aging because of course, when you’re 22 years old, I mean, your concerns kind of involve like, where is my next alcohol binge coming from? But when you get a bit older, you start to think, well, okay, maybe I’m more concerned about my appearance and you get even older than that. You get to be concerned about especially two things with relation to muscle, and that is your ability to ambulate and move through the world. If you have low enough muscle mass, it starts to impact your strength in a way that’s not like, oh, it’s spare strength, you don’t need it. It’s like difficulty getting off the couch physically. And that’s a problem. And the other part of muscular size that really helps with aging is that muscle is a huge reservoir of essentially a glucose disposal sink, among other things. And what it does is it keeps you very metabolically healthy sort of to some extent, the more of it you have, the better. And thus for those two reasons, especially older folks, probably could be concerned with their levels of muscularity and they generally aren’t on mass currently. And that’s definitely some room for improvement there. – Do you think that that is really missed among the general population and in somewhat of health and wellness for the aging trajectory? And here’s where I’ll frame it. It seems that in the 60s, there was this change over to recognize the importance of exercise, but it really was focused on cardiovascular and aerobic type exercise. And that became where a lot of the ACSM guidelines seem to have put their energies or these other guidelines to talk about aerobic exercise for cardiovascular health. – Yeah, absolutely. And I think later on there was an evolution where strength training, phrased exactly like that, strength training, became something that was talked about more and something that was promulgated by more formal organizations such as the ACSM. But a lot of the benefits of strength training are actually the benefits of increase in muscularity. I would say most of the metabolic benefits, perhaps all of them, are dependent on muscle gain to put this intellectually. If you manage to gain strength as an older individual, somehow without gaining much or any muscle, the metabolic benefits and the benefits to health and longevity will be minor, potentially none at all. And so my suspicion is the reason strength training was the term they used and what they pushed. The strength training seems significantly more palatable and significantly less, how do I say it best, egoistic and predisposed with appearances. It seems like it’s pretty vain to train for muscular hypertrophy. And also, I think it’s a way to convince women, low-key, to start doing the resistance training that is so beneficial especially to women, especially to Caucasian women who are older, for the anti-osteopenic and osteoporotic benefits, essentially getting stronger bones so you don’t end up snapping your femur just by standing up off of a couch. And I think women in general, on average, of course, this is changing. I’d say at a moderate pace now, it used to be changing slowly. Women are a little bit diverse culturally or genetically or some combination of that to gaining muscle. I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of estimates based on your expertise and your appearance, hundreds of conversations with women that say, I don’t wanna become Ronnie Coleman by accident if I lift a pink dumbbell. – We’re all trying to make that happen. – Yes, it’s a terrible problem that’s really besieging America. Women who for the one rep of curls become an IFBB professional bodybuilder by accident. And so a lot of females especially, it’s tough to say, hey, look, you gotta train for muscle growth because like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, growth, I wanna be slim and trim and toned. And so if you phrase it as muscle hypertrophy, maybe that’s like, scientific enough to kind of be like, yeah, don’t worry, it’s all medical and stuff. And they’re like, okay, fine. But I think a lot of folks are more and more interested in truth and less interested in how things are couched and phrased to them. And I would say hopefully, slash in some measure in reality, as you get older, you’re kind of like more interested in the real deal, I think. One thing I do say when I speak to largely older female audiences is I do this kind of rhetorical thing, it’s a little funny. I think it’s funny, they usually hate it. But I say, listen, you know, like what’s the problem with putting on muscle? And they’re like, well, I don’t wanna get like too big or whatever. I’m like, I gotcha. So you’re still predisposed with your appearance just like you were when you were 17 years old. Maybe we can go to junior high school together and worry about lipstick colors. And they usually roll their eyes like, okay, I’m a mature woman, I have children, I’ve got grandchildren on the way, I can take the real truth. And you go, okay, Linda, you gotta put on muscle and you won’t explode with muscle size, but it is this point bordering on critical for your health, longevity, and dare I say, quality of life. And I think the environment is changing, but yeah, so to your point, we went from no exercise to cardiovascular exercise is the main recommendation, to strength training. And now I think the time is coming more and more for females to embrace muscle growth training. And I think more and more females are understanding that like, well, I tried muscle growth training, interestingly enough, I did not wake up Arnold Schwarzenegger the next day, but I did wake up in a couple of months, shapelier, leaner, more able, and people comment how I look younger, et cetera, and my doctor said my blood works the best ever. And I think that’s a big deal. – When do you think someone would begin to think about, you mentioned this change as we get older. And you know, in the literature, there’s the younger guys, 18 to 25, a lot of literature is skewed towards the younger population, and then over the age of 65. And there’s this whole section of individuals between those two age groups, I shouldn’t say extremes, but that muscle span continuum. When do you think that it becomes more challenging to put on skeletal muscle, if at all? And is a better way to frame that, is it strength and hypertrophy? How would you separate the two? And when do you think that the change happens? – Yeah, I would say there’s no real, there’s no real good reason in a general discussion to separate the two. They sort of go very hand in hand. And so we can speak in grand gestures about them both as one thing, for the purpose of this discussion. And what I would also say is it’s obviously a spectrum and a sliding scale. There’s not like you were 39 years old and just living your best life eating whatever. He had a six pack. And as soon as your 40th birthday hit, you woke up the next day like in a hospital bed weighing 600 pounds, no muscle mass. That’s clearly not how it works. But I would say two things. One, for many people in their 40s is when they’ll start to notice that they look and feel different than usual. I have this idea about folks who don’t exercise. And that’s still the vast majority of all humans on earth, by the way. And folks that don’t exercise have the situation up until they reach their 40s, usually. Some people it hits much earlier. And that situation is a grandiose taking for granted of physical ability, of health and of appearance. He’s just like my body. You don’t go to a college campus and talk to a 21 year old girl on a crop top and go, okay, Lindsay, what is your routine to stay like this? She’s like, I drink alcohol three times a week. I’ve had a bit of cocaine here and there, maybe that helps. But I do have a cheeseburger. What’s that? – Maybe some Twinkies. – Twinkies, cheeseburger, exactly. And you’re like, oh, this person knows nothing. They’re just riding on the assumption that their body does cool shit all the time. That assumption tends to fragment for people at various timescales between age 20 and probably age 50. A lot of people will notice in their 40s when that happens. So that’s the first thing I’ll say. The second thing I’ll say is in people’s 60s and 70s, especially their 70s, the realization is no longer like, wow, kind of look like crap. I don’t look like I’m 20 because culturally and based on how the, especially the female lifespan and events in a female life work, childbearing age, you have children, et cetera, you get married. A lot of women, understandably, I don’t either endorse or resist this, but a lot of women, when they’re 47 years old, they have a husband, they have two kids. One of them is getting married soon and there’s gonna be grandkids on the way. They just don’t care about how they look. When you’re 23 and you’re husband hunting, you really care about how you look. I mean, like, holy shit, it might be the number one thing you care about. But when you’re 47 and you’re married, blah, blah, blah, I mean, someone comes up to you at a grocery store and they’re like, hey, you look like you don’t train. You look like you’re not in fitness. And they’re like, so what? I’m a grown woman, get out of my face, who cares? I’m not trying to bebop around in clubs and pull my shirt up. Hell’s wrong with you. And you’re like, wow, yeah, point taken. So to a lot of people that begin to have these physical transformations in their 40s and 50s, well, you know, they have a higher level of body fat, they have a lower level of muscle mass, they don’t quite move as athletically and fluidly, they don’t recover it from injury or illness kind of quite as well as they did in their 20s and 30s. It’s not this pertinent thing. And you can, I don’t wanna say rationalize it away, but it’s socioculturally sort of not controversial. It’s a coming up to Bill Gates and being like, how much do you bench? He’s like, do you know who I am? It was an insanely relevant question. Like we’re judging him for not being jacked. Like this is not a person who specializes in being jacked. In much the same way, older women and older men, they don’t specialize in being jacked and lean and fit. Whereas if you’re out of shape when you’re 19, that’s approximately a problem for you that you feel all the time. You go to frat parties in college, people kind of look you up and down, they walk away and you’re like, what the hell? I’m dry out here. And they’re like, well, you know, you don’t look like a 19 year old, I’m sorry. You need to go to the gym, you need to control your diet. And then you’ll have all the same great fun and attention everyone else is getting. When you’re 40s and 50s, that’s just not the lifestyle. And so people tend to kind of be like, no big deal. In their 60s and 70s, those same people reach another dropping point, another bend in the curve, so to speak. And every individual reaches this on their own time. There’s lots of variation. And it’s usually not like a very notable right away kind of bend in the curve, but they do tend to notice. Okay, it’s not that I am undermuscled aesthetically. I didn’t never cared about that. It’s not that I have a high degree of adiposity or body fat tissue and it’s bothering me like, oh, my bras don’t fit the same way. Whatever, I haven’t cared about that in years. My husband loves me, it just doesn’t matter. It’s that I am really having trouble. Like we went to South Florida, we tried to rent bicycles to ride around. And I could really hard to get onto the bicycle. And I honestly like my quads cramped and I gassed out after like five minutes and my whole family was with me as a family reunion. There’s 25 people that are riding the trail. All of a sudden my husband has to hang back with me and we’re walking our bicycles. I had to sit down and have a drink of water. It’s too hot. And you’re like, oh my God, I’m physically unable to do activities of daily living in some capacity. And another way people get hit with that is blood work. So you go to the doctor when you don’t train and you don’t really diet well. And you go in your 40s and 50s. If you’re the average person that’s just not grotesquely over fat or just took the random shitty genetics lottery, you’re gonna be fine. Most people, they go to find the doctor, says, yeah, your levels look good. The doctor easily adjusts it for age. So levels look fine. Instead of expecting your blood to look like you’re 20, but if your blood will go to sleep, the average not gonna die tomorrow, 45 year old, it’s not really a problem. In the sixties and seventies, some people get hit with that nasty blood work for the first time. And the doctor’s like, look, like you’re pre-diabetic in the way that like you’re gonna be diabetic in a couple of weeks if we don’t do anything about this. What? What? But I eat, I’m not like grotesquely fat. I don’t really have diabetes in my family. Like the hell is going on? And it’s some combination of usually having too low of a level of physical activity, too high of a body fat level and too low of a muscle mass. And in your sixties and seventies is with insanely pertinent that you take care of this now. But I don’t wanna say it’s too late, but you’re starting the race when the gun went off a long time ago and now it’s serious. And what I would tell people is if it’s, I try, I’m politically a libertarian and I just think freedom is great. And I think people should do what they want as long as they’re interested in paying for the consequences. So to really get down on people’s throats in the forties and fifties about, you gotta exercise and they know, Socrates said the body and mind, blah, blah, whatever. F all that, right? Am I allowed to swear on your show or do you generally have a more family show? – No, you can swear. We’ve had lots of team guys on this and– – Oh, okay, sure. – Their first language is swear language. – Yeah. So I generally don’t try to press upon people when they’re all the way up through their fifties. I’m like, you have to do this. But in the sixties and seventies, if people ask, of course, this is really, really important. And you need to really think about this because now it’s literally a matter of life and death. And what I’m saying here, my big spiel, sorry for ending for so long. – Yeah, this is a good story, I’m enthralled. I really– – Yeah, yeah, my big spiel here is, you don’t wanna wait until the bad blood work shows up and until you can’t ride the bicycle at the family reunion. You wanna start, you wanna ideally lift weights as a lifetime habit. But if you don’t, in your forties and fifties is really when to pick up the pace. And it’s not hard, it takes, I can get into how much lifting you should do. – I wanna hear it all. I wanna hear it all. – Sure. – And you know– – Totally, we can get to that. But it’s just not a ton, it’s all about consistency. And if you can start in your forties and fifties, you’re gonna age in a way that people see at the grocery store and they just start a conversation and blah, blah, blah, well, I went to high school, blah, blah, blah, and you’re like, well, I went to high school in 1970, whatever. And they’re like, how old are you? And they’re like 67 and they’re like, no way. No way you’re 67. You look 45 and you’re like, well, I do eat well and I do exercise. That’s what you wanna hear. You don’t wanna hear the doctor come in with a clipboard and go, look Janice, like you’re diabetic and this is bad and you gotta get on medicine and blah, blah, blah and all that bad stuff you do not wanna hear, especially in your later years. – Thank you, Tip thesis, for sponsoring this episode of the show. I have been using thesis as my go-to neurotropic for a handful of years now. In fact, thesis has been a game changer for me. I’m not gonna lie, I did take clarity right before I shot this podcast episode and here’s why. Because I went to takethesis.com, I took the quiz, I got my first starter pack of many different formulations and by the way, these are my three favorites. I use them routinely. takethesis.com, use the code DrLion, you’ll get 10% off your first box. Here’s why I need it. We all need a cognitive edge. It’s just the reality, the way in which we process the world, our memory, our sharpness and thesis, these blends are blends that I have never seen before. There are multiple scientific studies backing each element in the blend and it’s just extraordinary. You definitely need this edge and I certainly have been using them and really, really love them. Go to takethesis.com, enter the code DrLion and you’ll get 10% off your first box. Get some. Now, back to the show. Thank you to Puri for sponsoring this episode of the show. One of the reasons why I always take an Omega-3 fatty acid is for overall brain health, doesn’t matter your age, even my kids take Omega-3 fatty acids, mood, it is wonderful for mood and overall cardiovascular health and inflammation. I am bringing to you Puri-03, which is a high quality, well tested fish oil. Let me tell you about this. So Puri is, Puri-03 is third party tested and certified by Clean Lake Projects, I’m sorry, Clean Label Project. And what it is, is it makes available the testing results. No contaminants, no heavy metals, these are things that as a provider, as a mom, I’m very concerned about. I don’t wanna be giving a supplement that is a concentrated supplement that has a whole bunch of contaminants. Puri-03 is a world class supplement line and company. I absolutely am thrilled to bring this to you. And by the way, they are offering my audience 20% off, all you have to do is use the code DrLion for 20% off. Puri Omega-3 fish oil has a high dose of 2000 milligrams of Omega-3 fatty acids, EPA, DHA in natural triglyceride form. I personally can tell the difference. They also have products that have little packets where you can throw it in your bag, it has vitamin D in it, it has magnesium, no fishy flavor, nothing. It truly is what I think is going to be on the forefront of top products. So support your health, throw it into your regular routine, go ahead and grab your Puri-03 and that is p-u-o-r-i.com slash DrLion, that’s p-u-o-r-i.com slash DrLion. And there’s a few things that are extraordinarily important for the audience. And number one, this body composition issue. Lindsay, 19 in college, she might have a moderate body fat percentage. We have no idea what her skeletal muscle mass is. We don’t do a great job at measuring that. Her body frame will likely stay the same depending. And that composition of body fat, skeletal muscle, lean tissue, all of those will change. But she’s not gonna feel the loss of skeletal muscle that happens with inactivity or sedentary behavior. And that’s probably one reason why people don’t do anything about it and or they think that aerobic exercise while good is a replacement for resistance training, which it’s not. How much skeletal muscle do you think individuals should have? I say this cautiously in the way that probably more is better and we don’t have a great way of measuring it. I can put this into operational terms as opposed to measurement terms. Since measuring it requires that you go to a DAXA and blah, blah, blah and all this other stuff. And even that by the way, is an extrapolation of total lean tissue, which includes bone and organ. It’s not only a portion of that is skeletal muscle. For sure, for sure. I would say that if you in the nude cannot tell any of your large muscle shapes apart from others, you probably could use more muscle. Is there something like your deltoids for your shoulders that look bulgy? Is there something like your, do your legs look bulgy in the lower part close to the knee in a way that they don’t look bulgy in the upper part? If you look like you have no muscle in the mirror, if you look at a picture of a bodybuilder and you go, ooh, he’s got all these freaky weird things, but I actually have all those. They’re just not nearly as freaky or weird or ripped. But I’d see like, oh yeah, I have traps and I do have delts that look like that, but I do have them. If you just can’t see anything resembling muscle, if you just look like one of those like really crappy Dr. Seuss drawings where it’s like an outline of a person, just like a silhouette, maybe that’s a concern. Another thing is if you are not able to do basic activities of daily living, maybe you don’t have enough muscle mass. That’s definitely a concern. – And when you say daily living, you mean walking up the stairs, carrying groceries, a lot of women struggle to put their bags in overhead compartments. I would consider that activities of daily living. – Brilliant. So if you can’t put your bag in an overhead compartment, you probably have a problem. I would say there’s actually a really easy test anyone can do to see if they’re aging gracefully or aging not gracefully. Do this under the supervision of an adult, of ability if you want to do this yourself at home and you’re not sure if you can. Lie down on the ground, either facing up or facing down, it doesn’t much matter. And without grabbing any walls or chairs or anything else, carpeted room, carpet all around, you’re in the middle of the room, stand up to full height. Sit back down in a way that you’re not falling. But you’re, however you do it, lack of athleticism, no problem, crouch down, reach your hands forward on the ground, lay back down, stand back up. If you can do 10 of those in a row and not throw up or pass out, you’re good. If you can’t do 10 of those in a row, you may be beginning to concern yourself with either having some combination of inadequate muscularity or excessive adiposity. Not enough muscle, too much fat. Now to you and I, this sounds preposterous and to many of your listeners, no doubt, it sounds preposterous because they’re like, “Dude, I can do a Turkish getup with 50 pounds. What are you crazy? Well, you’re not the target demographic for this sort of thing then. But imagine a 67 year old woman who is lying down on the floor. Have you, okay, actually, I have what exact, exact example of this. What the hell is her name? She’s like a Democrat, Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi, there’s a video of this. If anyone wants to go looking for us, not hard to find. She was kneeling during the whole George Floyd situation in like the Capitol building. They did like a take a knee for a minute situation. And she’s kneeling, everyone else is kneeling. And then they stand up afterwards. I’ll tell you this, man, it was tough to watch. She had to put two of her hands on her knee. And it was like a max combination decline press and deadlift at the same time to just stand up off of one knee. It took everything and she stumbled. And you’re like, “Oh my God, if she was lying down on the ground, it would be preposterously difficult for her to get up 10 times in a row out of the conversation.” That is what I’m talking about. And if you can hop, skip and jump and 10 times, no problem. Hey, great. Keep training. Keep doing you. If you can’t do that, then you’re in a bad spot. And a lot of the situation with older folks, you know that like lifeline commercial back in the days where late night commercials like I fallen and I can’t get up and they pull on this cord. I do. Not being able to get up after you’ve fallen is categorically, unless you’ve become injured on the way down, is categorically failing the fitness test of life, I would say. And if you can do that, if you can get up with no assistance from lying on the ground, oh, getting up out of the chairs, no problem, groceries, no problem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if you can’t get up under your own power without assisting or grabbing anything else, yeah, it’s time to put on some muscle. How are we going to do that? How? And this is really your wheelhouse. Aside from being a very good storyteller, by the way, Chris Williamson is a friend of mine. And I just loved your interview with him that I called him and was like, “No, it’s true. I had this guy do.” And it was just, Chris said, “You are phenomenal.” And you are. So thank you for the story. And now tell us how to get more muscle. Because the reality is, is it is, you can always get stronger. I mean, there’s data, 80, 90-year-old individuals that are getting stronger. Again, whether you’re trained or untrained, there are ways to improve. Hypertrophy as well. I know that strength, hypertrophy, we’re probably going to use in combination. What would be an approach for a, I’m going to give you two scenarios. An untrained female or male who’s listening to this and going, “Man, I’m 40 and I’ve been doing marathons and now I have dad bod. What am I going to do? So I’m doing a lot of cardio.” And then the second is, I am fully untrained. I no longer can wear a crop top. So the first thing I’ll say is, everyone should begin lifting weights roughly the same way. The rates of progression will differ. How much interest people will develop in it, and thus how much more of it they want to do for extra credit will differ. But the beginning is roughly the same. So I’ll give a couple of tips on this. One is, generally you want to choose body weight, barbell, dumbbell, anti-gravity exercises as the preferred method of training. That doesn’t mean that’s all you do, but you should be interested in doing things like bent over rows, deadlifts, squats, overhead presses, upright rows, stiff-legged deadlifts. Why those exercises? Because the exercises train large swaths of muscles at the same time and they’re insanely economical. I could tell you isolate your delts, isolate your biceps, isolate your forearms. You’ll be in the gym for an hour and be like, “Jesus Christ, this is stupid.” These exercises also replicate the fundamental movement patterns that humans are able to do, that from which jumping and running and walking and pushing and pulling and putting your luggage up on the top compartment all stem from. They require a lot of balance and they are easily progressable, easily loadable. They also encourage you to move, and this is sort of tip number two, through a very full range of motion. If you’re preparing yourself for life, life doesn’t end below 90 degrees in the squat. And if you find yourself below 90 degrees in the squat and you haven’t been training there, you are two things less strong in that position and more likely to get hurt if you have to try really hard in that position. So these compound exercises, generally some isolation work is totally fine. Free weight exercises. Another benefit is they greatly encourage the development of balance, but not balance in a circus seal kind of like, “Look, I can stand in a BOSU ball. No application of this whatsoever, but here I go. It’s fun for TikTok, but I assume if you’re in your 60s, hopefully you’re not on TikTok.” I mean, maybe you are, or what am I judging what the Chinese government does with their time? So the compound free weight exercises are testing your balance while you’re trying really hard through a full range of motion. That transfers to activities of daily living to an immense degree, and it makes you have the kind of balance that, “Look, if I can walk out with some amount of weight that challenges me, squat it 10 times up and down to completely full depth under full control and rack it, if I’m walking down an airplane aisle and they get some turbulence and I have to grab the seats and kind of support myself, man, this was a joke. It’s a joke. But if I can’t do that, I might fall into somebody’s lap.” And I usually I pretend to fall into people’s laps on airplanes because I don’t get any physical touch at home and I’m just desperate for it. Everybody wants to ride on an airplane with Dr. Mike? I actually have my own fleet of airplanes. I don’t like to talk about how I’m a trillionaire too often, but it comes up always. It’s just, it’s annoying to count all this money is what I’m trying to say. This is terrible. But so that’s some of the reasons why these kinds of exercises are preferred. Now, I’m not going to say don’t do machines, but if you learn to lift with compound barbell, dumbbell, and bodyweight exercises, and then you go and use machines, you’re automatically the best at every machine, no problem. But if you learn to lift with machines, then the transfer to real world is tougher and the transfer to training that occurs in a free weight environment is also tougher. So it’s kind of like you might as well make things a little bit challenging up front, and then you’ll have a very, very easy time with it. So I would say those are the kinds of movements you should be prioritizing. I would say training in repetition range of sets of five to 10 is a good idea. Anything less than five is super cool, but for beginners, it’s not enough repetitions to train their nervous system, to learn the technique very well. Like if I trained you in a karate move, and I said, okay, here’s how it works, practice it, you did it three times. And I was like, boom, you’re ready. Let’s go do a tournament. You’re like, well, hold on a sec. We did a lot of reps of it. You would be more able to replicate that in real life and in future training sessions. You don’t want to do too many more reps than 10 to begin with for a few reasons. One is when you’re learning technique. And the next point is you have to get the technique very good. You should become a technique stickler. Technique is the basis on which everything else is built. On the basis of what you build all of your muscle and all of your strength, and ensure that your injury risk is as minimum as possible. Anything much more than 10 reps, especially more than 15 for beginners, tends to be so fatiguing and so painful that they start to just get the reps in versus worrying about quality and technique. And so sets of five to 10 are enough reps to learn, but not so many reps that you start learning the technique wrong because you’re practicing it wrong because after set, after rep number 12, you’re like, “I’m just trying to stand up and down and even care what my back or chest position looked like in the squat.” And then also, especially for Caucasian women in their later years, sets of five to 10 are heavy enough to robustly build bone mass, and heavy enough to robustly build a lot of joint connective tissue integrity. Sets of 15, 20, 30, etc. definitely do those things well, but not as well. And so because of that agglomeration of factors, sets of five to 10 are my preferred method of training beginners. And I mean for the first several years of training. Compound large muscle mass exercises in sets of five to 10 with a big onus on range of motion and total control. The eccentric has to be controlled. You can do the concentric of the up phase of an exercise explosively or not. It doesn’t much matter. But controlling the eccentric, that doesn’t mean going slow. It just means never deactivating your muscles and just dropping into a squat, for example. That’s the core. And then the last thing I would say is you should begin with very few sets. I would arguably say begin with one set of everything. When you show up to the gym, a lot of people think it’s kind of comical for two reasons. One, it’s embarrassing because you did one set of everything. You look around and make sure no one notice you and you fuck off. But how many days? How many days of this? Yes, yes. So I’ll get to the days in just a sec. You know, maybe you go in and you do all that. Yeah, yeah. Well, so in that first workout, because you just did one set of everything that was a little bit challenging for you, you just didn’t feel like you really challenged yourself a ton. You’re not super sore. You’re a little sore. You’re not super beat up, but that’s part of the plan. We don’t want to get you so messed up that you’re so sore that you don’t train for two weeks. And then what? I don’t even know what the plan is after that. To your question of how many times a week, I would say very many people should begin with two time a week training. That is you training whole body, both times a week, say Monday and Thursday. It’s doing something like, you know, some close grip pressing, some rowing, some upright rowing, some shoulder pressing, some hip hinge work and some squat and lunge work. And that’s it. You go home one set of each of those movements with good technique with a load that. Here’s the rule for how much weight to use a weight that is a little tough. It resists you. You can tell you’re lifting like it’s not like picking up a Coca-Cola can and going, we no problem. It should be like, Ooh, okay. Dr. Mike, you don’t, you don’t drink Coca-Cola. So you wouldn’t really know. I never let that poison enter my body. I actually don’t consume anything corporate, but it’s for another discussion. So it should be challenging, but something you have to be able to do good technique with. And that is picking the weight. And then if you train twice a week, just begin it twice a week. And some people will say, well, I want better results. I’m going to go more times. What I would say is this do only twice a week lifting for the first several months. If you like it, if you really like it and you really want more, expand your program to three times a week. And then later, you know, you’re going to learn stuff. You’re going to be in the social media space about how lifting works. You’re going to start to understand the concepts principles. You’re going to go and download the RPI Pertrophy app. I’m under contract to mention that at every podcast. I’m kidding. But, uh, you know, it’s a fine app, not really for beginners. It’s more for people who know, who know some things. And then the other, the app and other products out there and other podcasts, you’ll listen to, you’ll know what you’re doing by then. But for beginners, two times a week for a while until you get the hang of it and you like it because consistency trumps all. And over time, during those several few months, you’re going to be really meticulous about your technique. And if you notice that you can get through all of your sets in such a way that you recover for next time, no problem. And that they’re no longer very challenging, increase the weight a little bit and maybe add a set or two to your program so that, you know, you’re a sore and tired for a few days before you come back the next time and then go from there. And so over time, you’re going to start with very little weight, very few sets. I would say one set the first time you show up of everything. And then over the months and weeks and months, you increase the load considerably in such a way that it’s challenging you, but you can still do good technique and you increase a set here there. So by the end of that, you’re lifting twice a week, but it’s four or five sets of every exercise. And the weight is considerable. You’re going to look different. You’re going to feel different. And then you’re through your very early beginner phase. And the rest is a matter of minute details at that point. And how fast could someone begin to put on skeletal muscle their expectation? If we were to say they’re listening to this because they want body composition changes or they know nothing about weightlifting. What would you tell them that they can expect? Yeah, assuming that overall calorie consumption is adequate. Dietary protein is adequate. Which demographic are we speaking to? 40 40s. We’ll say men or women for these men or women in the 40s. I have two things to say about that. One is try to relieve your cognitive processes of expectation. Because statistically, we have no idea what kind of responder you are. You could be a person who touches a weight and three weeks later, you’re like, okay, this isn’t saying I have veins in my arms. This is crazy. You could be the kind of person that after four months of lifting, you’ve gained some strength, but you really just can’t visually tell anything. Let’s see for the average person. Just do the movement and increase the weights over time and increase the sets over time to your ability to recover for at least about three to six months before looking in the mirror with attention. I mean, you could look in the mirror all the time. Whenever I do it every minute of every day, they actually have a mirror behind the camera right now. Always look at myself, but to really try to appraise how differently you look. I would say give it three to six months. In most cases, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. If you think you’re going to have radical visible changes within weeks, it’s possible, but unlikely. If you think nothing’s going to happen for years, possible, but unlikely. So I would say in the order of three to six months is when you can expect to be like, wow, actually look different. I feel different. One of the ways you know muscle is getting put on is you’re just completely different strength level than when you started. When you started, you remember doing body weight lunges and wobbling on rep number six, and now you’re using the 20 pound dumbbells in each hand and doing sets of nine and eight. No problem. That’s not someone having a bad day. It’s someone who is a completely different level of physical ability. Once you can demonstrate that you probably look different too. And looking different is much easier to see when you’re leaner than when you’re significantly over fat. So there’s definitely a caveat to throw in there. So for significantly over fat, you might look pretty similar, but under the hood, things are definitely happening. And the way you know they’re happening is your rep strength has gone up substantially. And then it’s working, and then you’re getting all the metabolic benefits. And then after a year or two of that, maybe it’s time to consider your diet and consider your body weight and start to trend those things in the direction of fat loss. What I’m hearing you say is, is you really do feel like it’s a slower progression so that people maintain consistency for a beginner. But what about, I’m going to switch gears here. What about an intermediate or more advanced training individual that needs to balance volume, intensity, frequency, and has been, you know, one of the things that I see, you may or may not know this about me, but I trained in geriatrics. So I’m a trained geriatrician. And it was very fascinating to see something kind of happens in their 40s. Let’s say an individual is a twice a week, Jim Goer, they do the same things. They never progress their weights. They love to go on the cardiovascular elliptical machine. And then 40, 45, like you said, there’s no magic number. They start to get a tire around their bellies. You definitely begin to see these while their weight might not change. Their body composition has definitely changed. Yeah, those individuals would have a higher training age. But again, this kind of circles back to how do we continue to progress and balance an aging muscle, which by the way, an aging muscle responds like a young muscle with enough volume, intensity, and nutrition. Not totally the same. You just answered your own question. So one thing is, look at your relative effort in the gym. Young people can do fuck all barely try and grow tons of muscle. You’re not young anymore. So you might have to get your teeth a little bit. When you feel like not doing any more reps, do a few more reps. That’s point number one. Point number two is frequency. If you’re training twice a week, and your results are like, try three times a week. After a few months, if your results are still not what you’d like, try four times a week. You may have to reduce other hobbies that are physical in your life. But because muscle growth is so important, if it’s important to you, you will do that. The other thing is nutrition. Eating a sufficient amount of daily protein spread through at least three, but ideally four high protein meals per day. And how many grams of protein do you typically recommend? A gram per pound of body weight covers almost every demographic group. For young people that are beginners, it’s overkill, but there’s no downside other than the fact that you have to like chew on more chicken and it costs a tiny little bit more money. For older folks, they actually need more protein by some decent margin, but that’s still almost always covered by a gram per pound. There are absolutely cases in which you need more. I would say if you’re not getting the results you like and you’re at a gram per pound and you’re in your 40s and 50s, try eating a gram and a half per pound body weight per day. It’s a lot of protein, but if you’re very serious about results, give it a shot. After a few months, you’ll be able to tell if it’s working or not. Generally, that’s not needed, but a gram per pound is, I’ll put it this way, a very different amount of protein than the average person your age is eating. It’s notably different. Like my wife and I were watching a show called Super Rich in Korea. It’s on Netflix. Hilarious. And there’s a scene there where some folks are cooking meals for each other. And this one gentleman, he’s young and his father is older, but they’re like luxury brand owners in Italy, like perverse money, right? Money, growing money. The younger man is actually a trained chef. And he cooks dinner for him and his father. And my wife and I were like, eyes wide open, scouring for where the fuck is the protein in this meal? Yeah, but it just never happened. He had like, he made like a risotto and they had a little bit of prosciutto on the side. It was like an honorable mention. You ever watch how regular people eat out in the world and you look at someone’s meal and you’re like, where’s the protein? You can’t eat like that anymore. If you’re concerned with muscle mass and it’s serious and you’re older and you don’t like the spare tire, every meal has to be built around protein. We actually have an upcoming product at RP that we’re going to be selling for a very low price. It’s called the simple science diet. It’s the, the simplest diet we’ve made and it’s based on fist and finger measurements of nutrients. Every meal you have, if you’re serious about this, should have a roughly your fist size of protein in it. Some kind of lean protein. Do you care about the source? Do you care about the source? Not a ton. I mean, as long as if it’s animal based protein, not a ton. If it’s plant based, a lot of them are pretty damn good now and also not a ton. The source is something to consider as a secondary or tertiary concern, but it is comical to me when people are concerned about the source. When I’m like, bro, you don’t eat protein. It’s like a guy who’s like not dating and he’s like, well, like, I gotta, gotta have the right girl. Like shut up. You don’t have any girls at all. What are you talking about? Like date some girls and then you can get specific on who you’re dating. So protein amount comes first. Most sources are totally fine, but it’s gotta be something that takes up a decent part of your plate. And does that mean that you have to go out of your way a little bit to have some protein in some meals? Well, yeah. And that’s just what it’s going to take. If you’re at the Italian restaurant with your extended family and you’re like, Hey, can I get a little bit of extra chicken breast in this pasta? The waiters like, of course you can. And then people like, Oh, extra chicken breast. This guy that while they say that, and they sort of, you know, jokingly make fun of you, they also realize that when you stand up to go to the bathroom, you have a protruding chest and a flat stomach and kind of delts and you’re 48 years old. And they’re like, Frank just looks better than all of us. There’s a reason for that. Frank eats protein. Frank goes to the gym. So yes, high protein is a good idea. It isn’t always fun. No, but I will say two things. One, you will get in the habit of it. It’s not that a couple of weeks in, you’ll be like, I feel like I always eat like this. I’m sure, um, doc, that when you go and construct meals, wherever you are in the world, like finding a protein sources, number one, right? Like where’s the protein here? Like if you’re in a, in a lounge flying, you know, you know, go into the Delta lounge. You’re like, they’ve egg whites, they have salmon. Like what do they have? That’s protein. Most people don’t build their meals like that. They just go straight for whatever it is. They’re feeling that day. That’s a habit that’s easily built after a few weeks. You’re going to be like protein. Where’s it at? So that’s a big deal. And also like I could be recommending much more disgusting things to eat than protein. I mean, you’ve got steaks, you’ve got chicken, you’ve got fish, you’ve got milk products, tons of great vegan options. Eating high protein diet is fun. It’s good. It’s not like we’re asking you to like drown yourself in protein powder. You know, if someone was like, look, you have to have two pounds of green veggies with every meal, you’d be like, Jesus. But that’s not what we’re saying. So a lot of people when they say, well, I’m really having trouble getting in a lot of protein through the day is some combination of like, don’t worry. There’s protein shakes that you can have that are totally going to help you out. And, or, and I mean this mostly jokingly, you’re just fucking not trying. You like started bitching before you even tried to solve the problem. It’s like people, their computer has some kind of error message. And instead of reading it, they’re like, uh, it, it something’s wrong. Like read it. It says, like, Hey, everything’s fine. Just click this button. It’ll go away to, oh, I can do that. Same with getting a lot of protein in your diet. You don’t have to freak out about it. It’s not rocket science. Do you think that there are common misconceptions out there that people, maybe it stops their ability to have hypertrophy or build muscle that you’re seeing in the Oh my God. Yeah. And also I want to know selfishly, where does sprinting fall in? We’re talking a lot about hypertrophy. If someone is more, uh, I would say I have an old, older training age for someone like me. Where do we then begin to think about adding, um, other modalities to support, say VO two max or, uh, other options for training. Yeah. Flexibility plyometric strength, explosiveness, athleticism, balance for sure. So first of all, hypertrophy training takes care in a very good way, not an ideal way in a very good way, pretty much all of those. So I currently only train in hypertrophy training. And I also train in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You would never roll with me and say, Oh, this guy really should train for strength and not hypertrophy because his muscles are useless. I’m a giant fucking problem because I’m really strong because I’m really Jack. So getting Jack gets you eight tenths of the way to getting as strong as you’ll ever be in any kind of modality. If you want to do movement pattern work, sprinting, jumping, climbing, et cetera, that’s totally cool. As long as you’re putting in your hypertrophy work first. And of course, the big thing about really dynamic movements, two things. One, you gotta ease into them. Do not just start sprinting. You will pull your fucking hamstring out of your femur. Or tear it like I did. Oh yeah. Sprinting is a high risk activity for folks not used to it. Once you’re used to it, it’s great. It’s amazing. So I’d say that and also. Or if you over train and have a bad stride, it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it seems like tendon injuries really take people out. Yes. And so to the bad stride thing, I would say have someone look at your technique if you’re kind of doing this dynamic stuff and make sure that you’re doing okay with it. So I think that kind of work, I would say, kettlebell work, mobility, flexibility, that’s cool. And you can do a lot of it and it takes care of all the hypertrophy for you. You do a lot, a lot of it, but generally say hypertrophy work should be kind of the basis of your training and the other work should come on top of it. Now, VO2 max. I think that there is a separate set of recommendations and in fact, a separate discussion we can have on cardi respiratory fitness. But if you get into lifting and after a few months or a few years, you’re pretty good with the basics. What you can do is start pairing your lifts in unrelated muscle group and movement fashion. So for example, if you do a set of squats, after that, doing a set of machine rows really doesn’t hit anything that your squats hit. So while your quads and glutes and adductors are recovering, your back and biceps and rear delts are getting hit. You don’t rest between those two movements or rest several seconds, just as long as it takes to transition. And you do them in sets of 10 to 20 repetition and you do them back to back to back to back. Then you pick another pairing and you do another four or five sets back to back to back to back. If you can do those kind of antagonistic or unrelated pairs of compound movements, it serves again, seven or eight out of 10 points for cardi respiratory fitness. You will be breathing heavy. You will be insanely out of breath. You will be sweating bullets. How much loader you have. That is going to be awesome. How heavy is the load? So if you’re going to pair lift, you’re going to do squats for what? 10 repetitions and then you’re going to do some kind of lap pull down. Right? Would that be? Yeah, yeah. 10. So anything between 10 and 20 reps, it’s a load that at the end of your set is really hard to lift. So typically when you lift, you go boom, boom, boom, move up and down, up and down, up and down. If I’m watching you lift, I have to see at least one of two things. It’s a call it a good working set. One is the weight actually starts to slow down in the last few reps. That’s good. Or I got to see some signs in your face and your body that you’re having a bad time. So maybe you’ve been controlling your speed the entire time and your weights never slow down. But in the last couple of reps, you’re like, see a grimace or two, something that tells me you’re trying the weights have to push back at you. It can’t be something you go through the motions for. So that is how you select your weight. Anything in the 10 to 20 rep range is really good. The challenge you in that rep range. And then you start to work up and work capacity. That can be a lot of cardio metabolic fitness right there. And of course, you can also swim. You can bike. You can run. You can do all kinds of other things. This is Zumba and all those, you know, no offense, white women classes that people do. And that’s all really good stuff. But I would say a core of resistance training, which takes care of hypertrophy and strength, is probably something would be the last thing I would ever remove from a program. Also, full range of motion resistance training takes care of essentially all of your mobility concerns. Because if you can do an Olympic weightlifter style deep squat, sit there for three seconds and come back up, you have 99 problems. Mobility is absolutely not one. This episode is brought to you by Timeline Nutrition. Mitopure, the product that I wish I had developed, but didn’t. So I’ve teamed up with Timeline Nutrition to bring you one of my ultimate favorite products, and that’s Mitopure. Mitopure is a science backed urolithin A. Urolithin A sounds like a species of something or other. What it is, it’s a postbiotic and 30 to 40% of you humans cannot make it. Why is it important? It’s important because it’s one of the first gut muscle access connection. Mitopure helps the muscle and all mitochondria when you take it. You can take it in pill form, you can take it in powder form. I recommend trying the starter kit. They have ginger and berry. I put some in my yogurt. It’s amazing. 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We have a great place that we work out. It’s called Sigma Performance Training. Amazing. Shout out to Carlos who probably doesn’t even listen to this podcast. But anyway, and I was watching my dad was a collegiate wrestler. He has always been in shape. He’s been a very good athlete. And clearly his body composition has changed. He is not overweight, but he is. He’s thinner. Not that he has that thinner and softer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he still has muscle, but and he still trains. But but clearly there there are some changes and he’s in his mid 70s. I tease him. He’s pushing. Pushing triple digits. And I look at the exercises that he was doing and he was doing battle ropes, which I thought was impressive and was also concerned that that kind of dynamic movement, if he were to injure a tendon, that’s going to take him out. And watching him do some what if these plyometric jumps, I just wonder, I guess my overall question is how do we, you know, risk benefit the movements that should he be doing those type of explosive shouldn’t an older individual do those type of explosive movements? Because we know that power declines as individuals. Yeah. How do we maintain that? Is it important? Yes, it declines, but is it important? And what can we do to train it in a way where we don’t increase our risk of injury? That’s a great question. The number one reason why power declines with age is a loss of skeletal muscle mass. The number two reason in explaining almost all of the variance between those two is a loss of strength. The number three reason is a loss of actual explosive abilities on which that you’re based on your muscle, which is based gives you the strength to move quickly and produce lots of power. So to your point, yes. Training with explosive reactive styles like plyometrics. Definitely has a higher marginal risk of injury, which is still very low. But for older individuals, you do have to ask the question of is it worth it? The way I would answer the question of is it worth it is like this. If there are activities of daily living or recreation or leisure that you regularly do that require a substantial power component, you had better be training. What would be an example? What would be an example of that? Really advanced climbing routes where, you know, you’re carabinered in, but you got to like jump from one part of the climbing rock to the other. I would get used to jumping under load if I was going to be doing something like that. If you are playing dynamic games, such at a high pace like tennis, maybe I would consider some movements in your arsenal that are more ballistic and more rapid, something like the weightlifting movements. That might be a good idea. But if you are just a person who lives normal suburban American life and you want to be lean and more lean and more jacked and just be able to play with your kids and walk your dog, the marginal tradeoff of plyometrics for injury risk is maybe not great, probably not a huge problem. The marginal tradeoff of use of your time in the gym is probably not great. My original education is in coaching athletes. And for athletes, we actually have an evidence-based cutoff for when you are a candidate for power-focused work and plyometrics are in some sense a subcategory of power. And that cutoff is, are you able to squat at least roughly two times your body weight? Now, like, who the fuck can squat two times their body weight that’s in their 60s and 70s? No one? Very, not no one, very few people. What we tend to find is that if your goal is to increase power and injury resiliency, the gaining strength pays a higher return on investment than specific power training for power up until you get really strong. Power training, plyometrics, etc. is the icing of the cake for people that have a lot of cake. But if you don’t have a lot of cake, you got a problem. So let me make a stupid analogy on the fly. Hypertrophy training is like sugar and flour. If you don’t have enough of that shit, you ain’t making no fucking cake. Strength training is like actually baking and molding the cake itself. You got to have a lot of it if you’re going to be serving people cake. Power training, plyometrics, etc. is like icing. Yeah, icing’s great. But if you don’t have enough sugar and flour, muscle size, and if you don’t have enough actual cake baked strength, then plyometric training is a curious thing. I will say one reason why people do plyometric training and other kind of power modalities, battling ropes, etc. is twofold. That kind of training tends to be generally easier, and it generally tends to be more fun. And people will try to do things that are easier and more fun, that have the stamp of this is fitness and health and this is good, more than they’ll challenge themselves with the things that maybe aren’t as sexy, but pay humongous dividends. People want to do the shit that’s fun and easy, and they’ll convince themselves, “Oh, plyometric, right? Elite athletes do this.” Elite athletes need it, and elite athletes earned it because they already really strong. And sometimes, elite athletes just have amazing genetics, and they just get away with doing dumb shit because they’re just that person that can do whatever. It just doesn’t matter. So I would say that hypertrophy training and strength training are going to cover so many of your bases that maybe battling ropes is fun, and you can do it for sure. But if battling ropes is taking the place of some of your strength and hypertrophy training, if jumping off onto plyoboxes has taken the place of that, you’ve probably thought things through insufficiently. That’s very valuable. What you’re saying is, if you care about aging well, which we all do, then you really need to focus on hypertrophy training, which is essentially muscle size for many of the reasons that you mentioned, glucose disposal, better blood pressure, better triglycerides. There’s a whole host of reasons why one– Doc, you could keep talking for another hour and still make valid points on this. It’s that good for you. And it is. It’s underappreciated, I think, in overall health and wellness, which is exactly why I wrote a book on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I didn’t call my book marginally weak. That would have been a funny title. It’s called Forever Strong. It may be a bestseller now. But just really, really thinking about ways in which individuals can take this information and implement it. It doesn’t sound difficult. I know that you’ve developed many programs. We’ll link everything. Oh, my gosh. Again, you’re a legend, even if you– Even if Pat Davidson was here, and you weren’t, and we called you, and called you. I know. It’s the fact that I have to tend to my trillions is why I’m so difficult to find. I may just fly your private jet over here. We’re in Houston. But anyway, all kidding aside, and that really, there is not a necessity to train for power. Again, with aging, people talk about this loss of power and force and the capacity to move. But if you train for hypertrophy, you’ll get strength. You’ll get these other things. And that’s what becomes most valuable. The other big takeaway is dietary protein, whether it’s 1 gram per pound, 1.5 gram per pound, the higher you get in the dietary sources, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. I do believe that’s from a protein standpoint. I think that there’s micronutrient challenges eventually that come up, whether it’s E12, heme, iron. Oh, yeah. We could have a whole different discussion about nutrition for health and fat loss and muscle gain. But as far as protein sources are concerned, then what I’m trying to do is speak to the greatest number of people and try to get people to major in the majors instead of majoring in the minors. Micronutrient sourcing for protein sources is an important discussion for people who already eat protein. And if you’re not eating protein, I ain’t got nothing to say to you. It’s like talking about your race car when you don’t have an engine. Absolutely. What are we talking about? What we didn’t talk about is some of this. And this is more for the individual who is now more advanced in training. And there’s a lot of ways to do cardiovascular activity. My favorite is lifting weights faster, or we have the double tricycle in my garage here, or I love to rock. One question that we get asked a lot is, is there interference with hypertrophy from doing cardiovascular activity prior or after strength training? Yes, there is. But that interference will generally not present itself in any measurable or notable way, unless you’re very advanced, very lean and very jacked and trying to be a competitive bodybuilder. So if you do your leg training and then you go run a marathon after, yeah, it’s not ideal. But if you are constrained on time and you only have one time of the day that you can work out, doing your cardio paired with your training is way better than just skipping one or the other. The interference effect is real, but for most people is very small. And for the rest of us, it’s very moderate. It’s not this thing where you’ll just cancel out of your muscle gains or lose tons of muscle. So I’d say if you can spread your cardio out and do it at a different time than you do your weights several hours apart, at least, that’s awesome if you can do that in your schedule. But if you can’t do that in your schedule, look, it just doesn’t matter that much. It’s like talking to someone who’s about to go clubbing in a very nice club and try to impress. If you have like a Vera Wang dress you can put on, yeah, you know, Vera never misses. But if you just if but if you don’t, any cocktail dress will do. And, you know, I don’t know how into fashion you are. It looks by your current appearance, you’re very into fashion. I actually am. There you go. I mean, it doesn’t mean I do a good job, but I have a I have great help. I’m actually I don’t like to talk about this often, but I’m I’m a fashion aficionado kind of an expert. Are you really? I’m really kind of off on guard. I’m a trendsetter. I think that’s what GQ called me before. Is it with the fanning pack? I mean, you can I can say a sense of the the humor in your voice and I do not know. I mean, that outfit. What are you wearing? Is that this is GBRS Navy Seal and special operator swag now to be honest, I only wear clothes because the government says you can’t walk around. Wait, wait, wait. What is on your shirt? My husband. So my husband was a former seal. He is now in his second career, but he’s going to want to know. Yeah, yeah. So GBRS is a company that is started by DJ Shipley and colleagues and DJ is also a very notable Navy Seal. And they specialize in training up various groups of special operators to do their thing because they come from a huge background of knowledge of actually going and doing the thing. And I think their motto is be a pro, which means whatever it is you’re doing, take it very seriously and do it really well. I have no idea how to do any of that stuff, but I think they’re great guys and we’re friends. So I was like, okay, I just like the shirt. To be honest, it’s just a great shirt. And again, I wear clothes when they just come out of the hamper and they go on my body. That’s the extent of my fashion. But in any case, I’m like, guys, let’s say you’re going to the club to meet a fine gentleman. I’m not sure why you would do it at the club, but let’s just say you’re doing that. Guys, don’t look at your labels of what your dress is, Gucci or whatever. They don’t even look at color matching. They’re like, are you wearing a dress that makes you remotely sexually attractive? You’re in. There’s some fraction of guys that care. They’re very, very small. So just the same way of am I eating enough protein versus am I getting the finer sources or am I doing too much cardio around my weight training or do I need to separate them? Is the question of do I wear that Vera Wang dress or whatever, or just do I wear any cool cocktail dress? When you’re starting out for most of the effect, you just put some fucking clothes on and go to the club. You’ll do just fine. It’s a very, very small concern. Now, it’s a concern, but a very, very small concern. We don’t. I don’t enjoy when people get so analytical and so neurotic about their approach that they start to literally raise their cortisol levels through stress concerning themselves with insanely minute things, minute things that are important for competitive athletes, but not for me. Let me ask you this. If an individual should an individual have an idea of they’re going to go to the gym. They want to, I don’t know, squat, right? I’m a hundred and maybe 110 pounds. Should I, should my goal be that I should be thinking I should be squatting double my body weight or, you know, there’s a lot of these different charts that say you should be able to squat, double your body weight, bench press your, you know, your body weight and a half. How relative is that for an individual or should an individual go, you know what? My goal is to see where my baseline fitness is. And is there a number in which an individual should be progressing for weight or is that just all completely relative? Well, doc, I’ll tell you, I can put a very fine point on this. It’s all make-believe. Charts of how strong you should be are make-believe. Someone just made them up. They’re very arbitrary. The only kinds of charts of reference standards that make any sense are international cataloging standards for weightlifting and powerlifting. So in weightlifting, for example, there are various categories of lifter, I think from category five all the way to category one. Then there’s a master lifter, which means you’re very strong. And then there’s international master of sport, which is like you’re at the Olympic level. There you will have weights for your weight class that you can look to and be like, holy shit, this is what it takes to get close to the Olympic caliber. Most people should have absolutely no concern for that sort of thing. So I say looking at strength standards, using them as goals is preposterous. The only goal you should have is, you know, every few months I should be able to look back at my RPI purchase. Yeah. How’s that for the fifth plug? It was annoying. No, no, no, no, we’ll keep it in. Otherwise, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have had John’s podcast. But, you know, any kind of logbook that you use, every few months, you should be a little bit stronger and then you’re well on your way. It’s about consistency and wherever you started from and wherever you are at any point to see a little bit of progress here and there months and years later, it adds up. That’s the okay. Now, now I’m going to ask additional questions. These might be very shiny. I got to try to get off this podcast. Sorry. Ridiculous. Intensively. We can measure strength clearly. We can measure VO2 max. That seems very straightforward. How does someone measure intensity? There’s a lot of discussion. Oh, are you, this is your level of intensity. Seems also very subjective. I’m certainly not an expert. And I’m just going to put in there for an older individual, does a one rep max matter? And should they even know that? God, no. God, no. I’m very glad to hear you say that. Yeah, my God. I mean, like you can try one rep maxing. The marginal probability of injury is substantially higher than what sets a five to 10. Again, absolutely low, but relatively higher. So if you go out into the sun and do some tanning for 20 minutes twice a week, your relative risk of skin cancer is multiplied many fold. Your absolute risk of skin cancer barely budgets because just on average, most people just don’t get skin cancer in the proximate term. So with one rep maxing, yeah, you’re getting a little bit of a higher injury risk. The question is for what benefit, right? Perfectly fine to accept a higher risk of injury for benefit. For example, you know, to your husband’s career, former career. Oh, now he’s running marathons. He, by the way, he’s built like a breacher. So he is this large human. That’s hilarious. He ran one of the marathons with Mark Bell. But, uh, yeah. Did he beat Mark? Yeah. Good. Thank God. And then he just ran a Boston marathon. But again, um, wow. Impressive. Also, please. I believe people listen to your podcast. So you’re going to have problems. To someone that’s a special operator. Is there a risk of going into the line of fire? Yes. But if they’re American hostages that need rescuing, it’s worth the risk. There’s a very easy story to tell yourself when you’re in the helicopter of why the fuck am I here with a loaded weapon? Very easy story for one rep maxing. When you’re in your fifties, the story is beginning to be a caricature. It’s not, you can tell yourself it’s for a good reason, but it’s not. Now look, if you’re competing in powerlifting, yeah, hell yeah. One are max bread and butter, but if you’re not, there’s nothing you’re going to gain. Dipping below five repetitions per set on the grand analysis that you wouldn’t get from sets of five to 10 reps. What about in 10? You will gain a marginal probability of injury and really just not jealous. I agree. I agree. I’m glad to hear you say that just because I’ve been looking in a lot of the literature. That’s what I like to do in my, my spare time. Boring is read. And you know, I just keep thinking all of the, you know, they, they take these protocols, which are necessary. And then they discuss it as if they, that could translate out to the general population based on these one rep, Matt, you know, one rep max isn’t in it. And it doesn’t really. Yeah. I can, I can answer. I can tell exactly why they do one or max is in the research literature. There’s a very easy way to metric strength. So you test people at the first week of eight weeks and I’m one rep max. It’s a pretty unequivocal test of your abilities. And then you test them eight weeks later. And if the one or max went up, you can categorically say strength one up. The measurement tool is not something you train with. It’s, it’s, it’s like, assuming that you need to build a DEXA scan the size of your gym so that it can scan you while you’re training. What? The DEXA has nothing to do with actually getting a jacked. It’s the lifting that does one rep max is a great for testing strength, but they’re by no means remotely the best way to build it and muscle for sure. And then what about intensity? What about measuring intensity? So there are several different kinds of intensity. You already alluded to one based on one repetition max. There’s absolute intensity, which is technically speaking, how much force you’re producing, which one rep max is in the most you can produce. There is relative intensity, which is some percent of that maximum. And then there’s probably the most pertinent form of intensity, which is actually not called intensity. It’s called effort, relative effort. Relative effort is how hard you’re pushing yourself in any capacity based on your maximum ability to push yourself. So someone who’s training for marathons can do a 20 mile run and you can say, what was your relative effort? And I’m like, yes, I don’t know, like 90%. You know, I was pushing it, but not pushing it super hard. Where if someone, you know, runs the Boston marathon, you can say, what was your relative effort? Like, I don’t know, 102.5%. I think I lost a leg back there somewhere. So relative effort is difficult to measure because it involves a large degree of psychological. There’s a kind of a psychological gateway in there somewhere as what you’re actually capable of and what your brain will let you do at any one point, what you have interest in, as far as pushing yourself hard. There’s always a distance between those for folks like Navy SEALs. That distance is nominal. They’re just be like, hey, try your hardest until you pass out there. You got it. But for most folks, some fraction of what’s that comes for the comes to the dishes. You got to phrase it like a God and country kind of matter. Like there are dishes at the bottom of this pile that need rescuing. So most people won’t try their hardest. And thus it is difficult to measure their actual relative effort. So when they tell you, hey, I have two reps in the tank, maybe it’s two. Maybe it’s four. Maybe it’s 18 reps in the tank. Beginners generally on average don’t tend to try as hard as they think they can. But intermediate and advanced lifters have been tested multiple times on multiple studies. And when they say I’m two reps in reserve, they’re probably at worst four reps in reserve. And sometimes they’re actually at one or zero reps in reserve. They’re just lying in the opposite direction. So relative effort is difficult to measure, but I say there are proxy variables to it. And there’s one really good way to get yourself out of the entire discussion and solve the problem. Proxy variables include slowing down of the bar or implement or whatever it is you’re doing. If someone runs a marathon and they’re running at the exact same speed the entire time, they probably didn’t try their hardest unless they’re really good at pacing. If they decline in speed over time, especially towards the end, you know they’re really trying to push it. Same idea with barbells. So you can tell through that method. You can tell through the method of, does it look like they’re trying in their faith and in their sweating and in their breathing. If someone racks a barbell squat and they don’t breathe heavy and their face never greenest, there’s a possibility that they tried really hard, but it’s very, very remote. So it ends up being a guessing game and we can be okay at guessing. There’s nothing wrong with educated guess. I’d say the best way to obviate the question entirely is whatever it is they did today. Let’s say they did eight reps with 85 pounds on the squat. Next week when they come in and it’s 90 pounds on the bar, it’s eight reps again. The week after that, it’s 95. It’s eight reps again. And if they’re pushing to try to match their PR every single time with a little bit more weight, eventually one of two things will happen. They will underperform and it will be because they just stopped trying really hard or they’re going to push really close to their limits. And as people do this with themselves and that’s how most good training goes. They just go harder over time, take a break, come back harder over time, take a break. Most people will get better at pushing themselves because they care about still meeting their goal. When I did 90 pounds last week in the squat for a set of eight and I care, right? 95 pounds this week, I look at my hypertrophy app, I go, so you set of eight, that’s the goal. I’m going to try real hard. You got to have some ego for that. You got to give a shit about how progression works. If you don’t care, relative effort is a difficult discussion to have because why would you try? You don’t care. And then you have 99 problems, but all the technical aspects of lifting is not one of them because you have to give a shit a little bit in order to get most of the benefit. Thank you so much, Dr. Mike Isertel. You are amazing. I am very excited for you and your wife. By the way, you guys are both welcome to fly in your multiple private jets. Please come and stay with us. We will podcast in person. I think that you and I have a lot to chat about. I really appreciate your approach. It is straightforward. It’s evidence-based and I think that you program better than nearly anyone that I have seen it. Let me tell you why it’s important to me. I’m a practicing physician. I recognize that muscle is the organ of longevity. It’s everything. It’s going to trump diet. It’s going to trump, you know, and I say that, not that that means you could go and eat whatever you want, but the influence of having healthy skeletal muscle is primary. The way to get it through resistance training changes the metabolic homeostasis of the body to a greater degree than anything else. And you do it very well. Thank you so much. It’s huge. You’re an excellent interviewer, by the way. I do this a lot and you’re really standing out. I thank him. I thank him. Thank you so much for the kind words. Five dollars. You got my vending. Oh, I got it. I got it. I got it. So yeah, five dollars. All it takes to get my endorsement folks line up and pay me money. But yeah, it’s been wonderful. It’s been awesome. And I look forward to perhaps having a conversation in person later on. Thank you so much.