-: We're gonna compare tension on the continuum here,
looking at intensity.
Which would be like the amount of tension
versus that volume.
And then as we go into like,
using metabolic or fatigue based stuff,
and that is the,
that is source of our hypertrophy stimulus,
is that oxidative stress.
And kind of look at how these things,
compare in terms of intensity to volume
or just like what's being accomplished there.
So,
when we look at intensity,
load is gonna be the highest.
The amount of tension is going to be the highest.
So whatever I'm trying to accomplish,
whether it be I'm trying to have more of the
mechanical tension signaling,
or more of the mechanical damage.
The amount of work that I'm gonna need to do
is actually gonna go down because
the amount of tension per every rep that I do is so high.
So what I'm gonna do here, is the height here
is gonna represent the amount of tension
and kind of the width of these columns
is gonna represent the volume of that
that I kind of need for that stimulus.
So, what you'll see here is,
we'll have something very high and very narrow.
So,
the tension is very high,
therefore the volume does not have to be as much
to accomplish some of these adaptations.
When I get into where I'm focusing a little bit more
on what we would call volume.
Meaning that, we're gonna be above the threshold
for tension that is needed for stimulus.
But,
we are not gonna be exceedingly above it so,
if I illustrate that we'll say like okay, maybe say like,
this dotted
line
here,
trying to draw a dotted line.
There it goes, skills.
Okay, that's gonna represent the threshold for
tension that is gonna be hypertrophyally stimulating.
Anything below that we'll say is,
not really gonna be stimulating those mechanoreceptors
to say hey, "we should turn on mTOR."
So, when I get to the volume
we're not gonna need to go all the way up here,
but I do need to pass that line.
But what'll happen is, I will have a much
bigger
base.
So my amount of tension is not as high
as when I'm focusing on more intensity based
heavy load based hypertrophy.
But I will have significant more volume here.
And this is where most
hypertrophy programs are going to exist in this,
because you're getting the threshold
and then you're trying to maximize quality of work there.
What this is gonna do is it's gonna open up your programming
to be able to do more exercises.
Cause when you don't,
when you're trying to do high intensity work,
one you have to kinda like build up to those loads
in the workout, that takes time.
And then you need,
usually you need to do a lot of sets of these
because your doing very low reps,
and so what happens is
you don't get to do a lot of exercises.
So,
depending on the muscle group, it may be very easy to do,
or very hard to stimulate all of those fibers
with few exercises.
Some muscle groups simply just,
they need to be trained for more angles.
So think back to course one,
we've got converging muscles,
we got multiple muscle bellies
like the quads and the hamstrings.
Certain things are gonna be better
if we have more exercises.
So this opens up my programming library
to be able to utilize more tools, more exercises,
more super sets, you know and different types of
training methods in this particular system.
When it comes to oxidative stress,
the majority of that work, that I'm gonna end up doing
is going to exist below that line.
So the tension is not going to be super significant,
but,
I'm going to need
a significant amount of, we'll say time under tension.
I'm gonna need a lot of just stimulus
because over here this is what I'm trying to do, right.
So I'm trying to get those oxidative stress things.
So that's my marker.
So no longer is the system dependent
on being above that threshold for tension.
Now it's more about having that tension just long enough,
just the amount of work being done
from a metabolic standpoint
is ultimately what's gonna lead to that.
Now there are some double dipping systems out there.
So where you can kinda like,
your kinda pushing into almost all three if you will,
but ultimately what it comes down to is
it's this net effect,
which this is going to be a driving factor
in terms of how will I adapt to that training so,
say you do a tri-set, like three exercises in a row.
And you do, "okay I'm gonna do 10 reps, 10 reps, 10 reps
"of these three exercises."
That's gonna look like pretty close
to this style of program because the intensity
is never gonna be relatively high.
Maybe that first one, you're able, while you're fresh
you're able to hit this marker for that set of 10.
You're able to get above that threshold for tension
but by the time you get to the second exercise
your fatigued enough where the muscle as a net
is not getting above there.
But,
because
of the fatigue,
and the muscle fibers
not all being able to contribute.
The tension per fiber
can start to creep up this,
creep up here.
So what happens is,
a small percentage of the fibers
actually end up
dipping up
over
this line.
So because when you're fatigued,
your crossing the threshold.
But when you're not fatigued,
you're not, and when your fatigued
some of the muscle tissue is not doing anything.
So obviously the muscle tissue that can't really contract
is not creating a significant amount of tension.
But the stuff that's left over to do the work,
is.
So in terms of, getting hypertrophy,
getting tensioned based stimulus,
in the majority of the muscle tissue,
well this is not the ideal mechanism.
This is the best way to get the most mechanical tension
in all of the muscle fibers but,
what happens over here, is you end up doing
reps on reps on reps on reps on reps.
So you're still kind of getting a lot of tissue so,
it doesn't mean that this is not a good hypertrophy method.
The thing is, this comes with, that oxidative stress.
This does not come with that oxidative stress.
So you have to look at the individual
in terms of, what are they able to adapt for,
what are they able to tolerate.
Somebody that is very metabolically conditioned
maybe be able to jump over to this
and do rather well because they could be getting some of the
metabolic benefits and some of the hypertrophy benefits
simultaneously.
They could kinda be double dipping in a way.
But you have somebody that's very poor conditioned,
what's gonna happen, is that oxidative stress,
that metabolic fatigue, is gonna be the thing that limits
what they can do in the workout.
So the amount of tension and amount of tissue they can use
is gonna drop so fast, that these spikes that go above there
are gonna be so few and far between
that it's not gonna be that efficient
in terms of a hypertrophy mechanism.
Now let's look at another concept.
So we talked about a tri-set where,
we're doing like 10, 10, 10 in terms of the reps.
So let's look at a tri-set where we are actually starting
with a high intensity exercise.
So you could have something that was like four to six reps.
And then you could have something that was like six to 10,
and then maybe something like 10 to 12,
there are all sorts of different combinations
that we could do.
But your first exercise looks like this.
Your second exercise maybe looks like this
and then your third exercise looks kinda like that.
Obviously it deviates, so if you go up in the reps too much
in the second exercise,
or if this exercise is too long or too fatiguing
where you kinda skip this whole middle portion
because you just don't have enough
ability to get over there.
You end up jumping right from here
to something that looks more like that
in terms of what's being stimulated every rep.
But, if you're doing those
it's like a heavy to lighter type super set tri-set
whatever it may be.
You get some of this high mechanical damage
in this one here.
And then you get some mechanical damage
because of fatigue here,
and then you also get the oxidative damage on top of it.
So if you're looking for the grand-daddy
muscle damaging protocols, those are the type, right?
So a lot of times that's what people jump into.
Like the first hypertrophy program
or whatever that they decided to do they're like,
"oh yeah I'm gonna do this, because it'll be hard."
They will be sore, like of course you're going to be sore.
But, for most people that's not what they need.
They don't need the cluster of all of this stuff
because you're recover is only so much.
So what you'll have is you'll have
people that do this program
and that's the program where they're like,
"oh yeah I trained legs, it was awesome,
"I couldn't walk for a week."
Well if you couldn't walk for a week,
that means inflammation of elevated, and like you're,
not actually building much muscle, for that entire week.
So if you're training like that year around,
how big do you think you're legs are gonna be
from that not walking a week workout system.
So you need to look at in the context of,
okay is it valuable to be able to do
all these things simultaneously,
who would that be applicable for?
Cause most people, the reason that their hypertrophy
programs are not working, in addition to just
bad execution, bad programming, bad nutritional alignment,
is that they're training a system
that they don't need to train, right?
Their ego, or their you know, the workout should be a war
type mentality.
You have to remember that training is training,
competition is competition.
If you start treating your hypertrophy workouts
like they're competition to how much damage
you can do to your tissue,
guess what?
Well the workouts are gonna win
and the results and recovery is not going to win.
You're gonna break your body down,
and at best case, if you have good genetics
or you're using a lot of drugs, or whatever it may be,
maybe you survive that system.
You know, maybe you're in the .0001%
that can somehow build some muscle in that system.
But if you are in anyway a normal human being,
that is not a sustainable thing, other than for the,
the most advanced people for a very short period of time.
If they are appropriately trained to
actually recover from that type of a system.
So,
let's look at some other things here.
So let's look at, kind of what's going on
in terms of the physiology when I'm pushing these
different mechanisms.
If we're looking at the amount of protein synthesis,
so the amount of mTOR that's gonna be stimulated
the amount of ribosomal activity that's going to happen.
What you will see is a trend where,
and we're doing high intensity work.
Because there's not quite as much volume, it'll be here.
The highest amount of that mTOR work is gonna go here.
And then it's really gonna kinda drop off.
There's gonna be the lowest amount of that protein synthesis
when we are doing this metabolic oxidative style
of hypertrophy.
Remember, when we're doing that,
the main adaptation we're getting is
that satellite cell donation.
That Myonuclear adaptation.
So that's the main thing
that I'm gonna be getting from there.
Protein synthesis is gonna occur the most
when I'm doing this volume based work.
When I'm over here, I'm not getting as much volume
but I am getting a lot of mechanical damage so,
I'm not getting as much of the stimulation
of the mechanical tension, but I'm getting more damage
because the intensity is so high.
In terms of that mechanical tension,
once you reach a certain point,
the Z line can't yell any louder.
So adding more resistance, adding more load
is not necessarily gonna extend the
protein synthesis signal but,
the subsuing damage that occurs is going to
stimulate those Myonuclear benefits
at the satellite cells.
So let's put that one up here
on top of this here, just like a different color.
So,
if we were to look at the Myonuclear benefits of this,
what you would actually see is
and keep in mind, this is very, very relative.
As we get into all the different
types of hypertrophy programming,
I could draw stuff
that looks like squiggly lines all over here.
But the general concept is gonna be,
alight I'm gonna have higher amounts of Myonuclear here
little less,
and a little bit more, right?
Cause over here I'm getting it from
that high amount of mechanical damage,
over here I'm getting it from the oxidative damage,
and then here I don't have quite as much mechanical
quite as much oxidative.
It doesn't dip to nothing though,
because I still have a little bit of both.
I'm getting some mechanical, and who knows.
As I get over here maybe I'm getting a little oxidative
what's really gonna be dependent,
is how many of these sets am I taking to failure.
Cause that's when I'm really gonna be transferring
more of that work per fiber and I'm gonna see more of that.
So if I'm looking at these things and I start taking
more of the sets to failure in here.
What you would see is this line starts to come
up and kind of level itself out.
So we'd see more Myonuclear damage,
it end up being almost a horizontal line okay?
The problem you end up getting with that right,
is well now I'm trying to, I'm getting greedy,
I'm trying to accomplish all of these things at once.
What will happen if I'm getting to failure
too much early in the workout,
most people will not be able to maintain execution
later in the workout, or they'll drop off.
What will happen is that this will transition over into this
because it becomes metabolically exhausting.
And the nervous system may not be able to keep up
if you get neurologically fatigued,
well then I can't create as much tension
so what happens is,
what you start to see is your affecting
fewer and fewer muscle fibers throughout the workout.
So is your net actual muscle gain
getting better if you just take all the sets to failure,
no it actually drops off.
You're training some fibers more intensely
but you're getting less stimulus in the total muscle
because you're just stimulating the last fibers because
more and more of them are becoming fatigued
and the nervous system is becoming fatigued
can't contract as many of them simultaneously.
So,
so the other thing that we should look at,
so we have,
we did Myonuclear, we did just the protein synthesis aspect
of it right.
And then we did like the mechanical tension.
Well Myonuclear mechanical tension and oxidative combined.
The other thing that we should look at then is,
okay what about those metabolic benefits.
So any of those adaptations that would occur.
And that's essentially gonna look like a line,
like this, right?
So,
I'm gonna get the most metabolic signals here,
none over here.
So,
if I'm trying to double dip
obviously I want to be on this half
of the continuum if you will.
If we look at most people, and why they're coming in.
A lot of the times, they're gonna have been doing
too much volume and too much,
they're gonna be almost like hybriding that combination
of these two.
And so in reality what they need to do is
get out of that phase.
So sometimes the healthiest place for a person to
hypertrophy, is over here,
not because it's so much better,
but because it's the least amount of this.
So we get into periodization, and you're looking at
what type of a hypertrophy should this person be going in,
we have to look at how are they able to deal with
lactic acid, how healthy is their liver.
How well are they able to deal with oxidative stress.
Like do I need to actually give them a break
from this stuff, therefore I am here by default.
So it's important that you understand
all of these mechanisms going on,
and what's going to facilitate adaptation versus
what things are now getting in the way.
Cause when you get to periodization,
they'll look and see like,
okay these stim lines and these adaptations are cool.
And none of them last forever.
They all,
your body will start to say,
"hey, we did that for a while,
"now we're not gonna do it anymore unless you take a break
"and go and do something else."
So when we look at,
the amount of tension that you need,
we have that threshold.
The higher I am above that threshold
the more mechanical damage that I'm going to ensue.
But not necessarily more protein synthesis okay.
The more volume of work I do above that line
opens up the most like versatility and programing
is ultimately usually gonna help me
facilitate hypertrophy in the largest amount
of muscle fibers within that individual muscle.
As I get over into metabolic,
oxidative stress is now going to become
a part of the component.
Now I'm going to be getting that satellite cell signaling,
that Myonuclear adaptation from that alone.
But I can still get some tension benefits
because of the fatigue.
Some of those fibers are going to be taken to that
higher threshold of tension
as I continue doing reps into fatigue.
It's just going to be a smaller number of fibers
being stimulated per rep.
So you still get hypertrophy
just not the same level of hypertrophy
or protein synthesis being stimulated over here
as here and then the other things to understand is,
how much longer does it take for me to switch over to
run protein synthesis
after a metabolic type hypertrophy workout
versus a volume based hypertrophy workout,
versus an intensity based hypertrophy workout.