Speaker A
I've been expecting you. Welcome to my classroom. Hey, pay attention. This is how to look sick 101.
Clark Kent explains hypertrophy training principles focusing on low volume, high frequency, and muscle protein synthesis mechanisms.
Key Takeaways
- Low volume, high frequency training optimizes hypertrophy by managing fatigue and recovery.
- MyoPS is a more accurate marker for hypertrophy than overall muscle protein synthesis.
- Muscle growth requires balancing stimulus and recovery to avoid excessive muscle damage and fatigue.
- Mechanical tension is the primary driver of muscle growth, not muscle damage.
- Frequent, efficient training sessions prevent atrophy and maintain continuous hypertrophic stimulus.
What the video covers
- Clark Kent discusses his training philosophy based on low volume and higher frequency workouts, ideally training muscles at least twice a week.
- He differentiates between muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and myofibrillar protein synthesis (myoPS), emphasizing myoPS as more specific to hypertrophy.
- The video explains how myoPS plateaus after a few sets, while overall MPS can remain elevated due to muscle damage and recovery demands.
- Clark highlights the importance of balancing stimulus and fatigue, advocating for efficient, frequent training sessions rather than high volume in one session.
- He stresses that muscle growth is binary—either growing or atrophying—and that atrophy begins once MPS returns to baseline.
- The strategy involves allowing muscle damage to fully recover before providing another hypertrophic stimulus to maximize growth without excessive fatigue.
- Clark dismisses muscle damage as a primary driver of growth, emphasizing mechanical tension as the key factor.
- He explains the rationale behind his upper-lower split training without programmed rest days, relying on low volume and high frequency.
- Fatigue is described as unavoidable negative physiological feedback that limits performance and must be managed carefully.
- The video also touches on exercise selection and form standardization to maximize recruitment of specific muscle fibers for hypertrophy.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Training Philosophy
- 01:13Low Volume and High Frequency Explained
- 02:20Muscle Protein Synthesis vs Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis
- 03:15Plateau of MyoPS and Effects of High Volume
- 04:53Muscle Atrophy and Recovery Dynamics
- 06:14Balancing Stimulus and Fatigue
- 07:27Efficient Stimulus and Managing Recovery
- 08:45Upper Lower Split Without Rest Days
- 11:20Exercise Selection and Fiber Recruitment
- 13:52Fatigue and Form Standardization
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I want to preface this by saying I'm not here to cite any specific sources. I've come to these conclusions already based on the data that I've seen, the podcasts I've listened to, and I've also implemented that or
Speaker A
integrated it in with what I've learned through college, anatomy, physiology, exercise physiology, etc. So, to me, this always makes the most sense how I'm about to explain things, and a lot of it relies on the actual mechanisms of
Speaker A
muscle growth rather than a bunch of bullshit outcomes, right? Because I mean, you can walk outside and eat a block of cheese when it's raining, and then, you know, cite data saying, "When I eat cheese, it
Speaker A
rains outside." Right? That's what an outcome is rather than the reason why things occur.
Speaker A
So, that's why it's important to understand why things work and not just look at outcomes from data.
Speaker A
[snorts] Anyway, my training philosophy is based on low volume and higher frequency, so at least two times a week, preferably slightly more.
Speaker A
So, why is lower volume better? First, let's talk about muscle protein synthesis versus myofibrillar protein synthesis.
Speaker A
So, MPS, which is just the overall muscle protein synthesis, that's active during any kind of muscle tissue repair, right?
Speaker A
It can be from just bouts of, it can be from running, like literally any exercise at all. It can be some cardiovascular endurance-based training.
Speaker A
It does not have to be from lifting weights. Myofibrillar protein synthesis, on the other hand, or myoPS, is more specific to hypertrophy because myoPS refers to what's occurring within the actual myofibrils of a muscle cell, right? So,
Speaker A
the contractile units, not the overall muscle cell. So, let's say we do one set in the gym, right? We're going to get on this. This is a graph, by the way.
Speaker A
The dotted line is going to be myoPS, straight line will be muscle protein synthesis.
Speaker A
So, we do a set in the gym, get a good spike in myoPS, okay?
Speaker A
But, with that, we're also going to get some muscle protein synthesis. Yeah. You can see.
Speaker A
Do another set, you know, maybe you get a little bit more myoPS. So, at set two, myoPS gets a little bit more, muscle protein synthesis is going to keep going up.
Speaker A
Do a third set. MyoPS is going to go up a little more. Muscle protein synthesis is going to keep going up.
Speaker A
You do a fourth set. MyoPS is going to go up and maybe like maybe it's only a little more. Muscle protein synthesis is going to keep going up.
Speaker A
And then, you keep doing more and more sets, your myoPS is going to kind of just flatline. Your muscle protein synthesis can keep going and going and going and going and going off the damn chart, right? It's not
Speaker A
necessarily indicative of actual contractile tissue growth, okay? So, that's why there are studies that say, "Oh, if I do a ton of volume, these individuals who did 8 million sets, right? Their muscle protein synthesis just kept going up and
Speaker A
up and up and up and it stayed elevated for weeks." You know why? Because their muscles are trying to recover because you've created so much muscle damage, not hypertrophy, that yes, your MPS is going to stay very high for a long time.
Speaker A
So, what happens after you give it this stimulus, right? If you can do a ton of sets, your MPS is going to return back to baseline. Now, that would usually occur within 48 hours, maybe like 72.
Speaker A
But once it returns to baseline, atrophy begins. Your body does not have a process where you're able to just maintain muscle. Muscle growth is very binary. You're either growing or you're atrophying. Now, obviously the rate of
Speaker A
atrophy is not crazy fast, right? It gets faster the longer you go without giving a muscle its proper stimulus, but it occurs a lot faster than people think.
Speaker A
And so, given this fact, right? Your MPS is going to return to baseline, atrophy is going to start. And so, while your muscle is literally atrophying in contractile filaments, your whole muscle is still recovering from muscle damage. So,
Speaker A
you're not getting muscle protein synthesis towards building that muscle. Your muscle cell is just trying to recover whilst you are literally atrophying still.
Speaker A
There's a lot of immobilization data, other things that support this. I can go back and dig all those up. I don't know. But this isn't that kind of video, right? I'm not trying to prove to you
Speaker A
anything. This is just the reasoning that I have come to and why I train the way I do.
Speaker A
So, in essence, on a graph, right? If you take a low volume group and you look at the time versus protein synthesis occurring, right? So, in this one, you can see that myoPS and MPS come back down to baseline at about
Speaker A
the same time, which is more favorable, right? Because that means muscle damage has been repaired as well as, you know, the stimulus of actual muscle growth coming back down. Whereas in this graph, right, the stimulus for growth has now returned to baseline, and now
Speaker A
you are still recovering from muscle damage. Even though maybe with more sets, arguably, maybe you can eke out like a tiny bit more myoPS. But, it's all about balancing stimulus to fatigue, right? It is a net stimulus model.
Speaker A
I did not coin the term weekly net stimulus model. I'm not taking credit for that.
Speaker A
But that's one word people use to describe it. We know that the only thing relevant for muscle growth is mechanical tension, okay? I'm not debating that. Muscle damage is a load of crap.
Speaker A
I can go run a marathon, create a ton of muscle damage, recover from it, and I won't grow anything, okay? Look at marathon runners. Their legs are not big.
Speaker A
And now that we've put into context muscle protein synthesis versus myoPS, why we care about myoPS instead of muscle protein synthesis, there's also plenty of data to show muscle protein synthesis does not have to be even elevated for myoPS to occur, which
Speaker A
is crazy, right? So, the point of diminishing returns happens a lot more quickly than people think. And I can go on a separate tangent about fatigue.
Speaker A
Maybe I will later in the video. But in ensuring that muscle damage and recovery has subsided by the time that myoPS returns to baseline, you're able to give yourself another very efficient bout of stimulus without worrying about the recovery demand
Speaker A
impacting the ability to give that stimulus, right? Because we know if you're recovering still from muscle damage, you're not really going to be able to give the same kind of stimulus to the muscle you want to work.
Speaker A
And so, what we're doing essentially is we're cutting out the middle man of fatigue. So, muscle protein synthesis and myoPS come back down, you can give yourself another spike throughout the week, right? Just give yourself spike after spike after
Speaker A
spike after spike and efficient myoPS, not just a bunch on one day, and then you have to wait it out to recover.
Speaker A
You're basically constantly fighting your body's adaptation, right? You're fighting to keep these adaptations. A lot of the ways that our body works is rooted in evolution.
Speaker A
It's very inefficient and metabolically expensive to keep muscle. So, what you are literally fighting is your body's biology to keep the muscle, and you have to do that as frequently as possible because atrophy occurs very quickly as well.
Speaker A
So, this is why we do low volume and we do high frequency so that we can just keep giving ourselves stimulus, comes back down, stimulus, comes back down, and we're not worried about the fatigue aspect or muscle damage.
Speaker A
Now, a couple words about fatigue. Fatigue is not just feeling tired, okay? It's negative physiological feedback that your brain picks up that you cannot avoid. It's not something you can just bypass.
Speaker A
And when we train, we accumulate fatigue within a session and post-session. There are a ton of mechanisms at play. I don't need to get super deep into the physiology behind a l
Speaker A
I think it's going to overcomplicate it unnecessarily. I would never program more than two sets for a given exercise because I think right around then you start to get the um diminishing returns for sure, especially if you want to keep your frequency high.
Speaker A
Again, right? Arguably, you can still get a little a little more stimulus, but you're going to be creating a lot more muscle damage beyond a certain point.
Speaker A
And that point occurs very quickly, especially when you're training very hard. I'm trying not to overcomplicate things, but there's just so many little nuances and things to take into account.
Speaker A
It's like, "Woo." All right. So, what I personally do is an upper lower split without rest unless I have to.
Speaker A
I would not recommend that. I just I can't take rest days. So, this is the way that I found I can see the best results and still train all the time. It's super fun. I'm just in an infinite cycle of upper lower upper
Speaker A
lower upper lower. So, that's that's Yeah, so the golden rule is to load each joint action with at least four or maybe six sets for a given week. Um but you have to remember which muscles are active and some of that overlap because
Speaker A
it will play a significant role. So, you know, think of something like the lats, right? The whole lat is active on a lat pulldown, but you know, prioritizing shoulder adduction is going to be a little bit more lower lat, whereas shoulder
Speaker A
extension is going to be slightly more upper lat. And so, I would say if you want to be very maximalistic about it, on every single upper day, you do one set of each exercise for the specific joint action, so that you can
Speaker A
um account for a bit of that overlap, cuz there are I mean, obviously, you're still mainly training the same overall muscle, it's just slightly different regions.
Speaker A
Same thing with the chest, right? When I do an upper chest movement, I'm doing some kind of shoulder flexion um with slight adduction.
Speaker A
And then when I do, you know, something like a pec deck, I'm prioritizing horizontal adduction, um which I'm going to get a little bit of upper chest activation, but mainly, you know, uh mid chest. So, throughout the week, right, I'm kind of rotating
Speaker A
between either doing two sets of a joint action that will hit every region of the muscle, or on a given upper day, I might do one set and one set. It just depends on how long it's been since you've hit that specific
Speaker A
joint angle. Because we know that atrophy happens very quickly, so because hypertrophy is specific to the fibers that are experiencing the highest degrees of mechanical tension, we don't have to worry as much on a higher frequency upper lower split about
Speaker A
atrophy occurring within those specific fibers for that given joint angle, right? So, um I'm just going to use the lats here cuz it's very easy to do so. If I were doing something like an upper lower rest, upper lower rest, etc. And let's
Speaker A
say like, you know, I hit two sets of a wide grip here, one set of a sagittal movement, right? This is in the sagittal plane, shoulder extension. If I was to do that, like a close grip thing, and then a wide grip,
Speaker A
so I balance biasing the upper and lower fibers of the lats, and then I go back to a two sets of a wide grip on the next upper day, that's a lot of time before [snorts] I would then hit these specific fibers
Speaker A
in a single arm lat pull down again, right? A lot longer than if I were to just do upper lower, upper lower, upper lower.
Speaker A
Yes? Does that make sense? So, I think if you train that way with rest days on your upper and lower days, um you can get away with a little bit more volume, and you also don't have to worry about leaving a rep in reserve. I
Speaker A
would say if you do what I do with upper lower without rest, you need to leave a rep in reserve on some sets. I would definitely recommend it. Just experiment a little bit, throw it in there.
Speaker A
Um Again, this is just kind of an overview. But as far as like indirect work for secondary muscles goes, I do not count that in my volume. Um I do not count back training towards biceps. I think if
Speaker A
you do that, you are doing something horribly wrong. Um same with triceps and chest, like any of that. I think that's a load of garbage. You do have to keep some of these overlaps in mind and nuance it a lot more when you do upper
Speaker A
lower with no rest days, right? Because the fatigue cost is going to be greater than if you were to actually take programmed rest days.
Speaker A
Sometimes if I'm doing something like a shoulder press on a given day, right? I'm going to be mindful of when I train shoulder flexion for the upper chest because that's going to destroy my front delts. So maybe on that day,
Speaker A
um where I have a shoulder press program, I could do something like just doing a pec deck. And then the next upper day, um I can do one set of a pec deck and then one set of an upper chest thing.
Speaker A
And by only having 48 hours between that, I know that my upper chest fibers are not going to atrophy that much just because um that prior workout, I did not hit it specifically.
Speaker A
Right? And they're also getting a slight indirect stimulus from pec deck. So a lot of these things are very, very nuanced.
Speaker A
In summary, with upper lower on a higher frequency without rest days, I don't have to worry as much about training those specific joint actions because those fibers will not experience as much atrophy as if I were doing upper lower with rest.
Speaker A
If they're doing upper lower If I was doing upper lower with rest days, I would worry a little bit more. So basically, as I go throughout the week, I'm I'm rotating all these exercises here and there. I just like, you know
Speaker A
what? I I look at my notes. I'm like, "Okay, did I hit this joint action last time? Oh, I didn't do any direct work for these specific muscle fibers. Okay, I'll throw that in this workout." And then if I did do that the workout
Speaker A
before, then I'll say, "Eh, it's fine. I don't need to worry about hitting the specific fibers. I can mitigate that atrophy a little bit just by hitting the overall muscle um and prioritizing maybe, you know, a different part of that same muscle if
Speaker A
that makes sense. Not all joint actions are created equal within the same muscle regions if if a certain part within a muscle group or muscle does not have the same attachment. So, let me explain, right?
Speaker A
If I'm hitting hamstrings, the whole hamstring except for the biceps femoris short head, I believe, is trained when you do a stiff-legged deadlift. So, in order for my biceps femoris short head to not atrophy, um I'm making sure that I hit a
Speaker A
stiff-legged deadlift on one hamstring focus day, and I do at least, you know, just throw in one set of a hamstring curl. And then on the following lower day, I'll do two sets of a hamstring curl, but not work on the hinges.
Speaker A
So, I'm making sure the biceps femoris short head's not experiencing any atrophy, um and still benefiting from high frequency. Same thing goes for the long head of the triceps, right? Because the long head of the triceps does shoulder
Speaker A
extension, if I do a movement that involves shoulder flexion, right? Think of a press or like a JM press, the long head of the tricep is shut off, and it's not active um because you're creating antagonist joint torque at one
Speaker A
part of the tricep by doing shoulder flexion. Like think of a rubber band, right? You're like stretching it at one end, but then you're shortening it at another. So, nothing's happening. It's not producing any any work because you're performing the opposite joint
Speaker A
action at one end of the muscle in this in this long head specifically. So, if you want the long head to benefit from high frequency, right? Let's say one upper day I do one set of a JM press and one set of a, you
Speaker A
know, normal rope extension. Right? Cuz a rope extension will hit all heads of the tricep, but also hit the long head. The next upper day, I'll just do two sets of a rope extension with no JM press, and that's going to hit all of
Speaker A
the tricep heads. Again, these are very slight nuances. Um, I would not worry about trying to bias little things like that.
Speaker A
Um, especially if you're newer to training. It matters a lot more if you're really trying to squeeze out the last bit of recruitment you can from those those those specific fibers, you know what I mean? When like biasing stuff. So,
Speaker A
another thing with upper lower is uh what matters the most in terms of what you want to prioritize is how you sequence things.
Speaker A
Um, personally, you know, I leave arms for the end for instance of every upper day because I know that that's a strong point for me, but I do rotate through having a different focus on every upper day um to
Speaker A
maximally recruit those top end muscle fibers. So, I have one day where I do a shoulder focus, one day where I do a back focus, and one day where I do a chest focus. And all I'm doing, I'm not
Speaker A
adding more volume. I'm just hitting it earlier in the session. The upper and lower days that I post I I do exactly as shown with that exact rep scheme.
Speaker A
I can talk about a couple other things, right? Like rep schemes. Uh we know that with things like fatigue, higher reps are going to give you more of that typically for no additional benefit unless you are so stupid that you can't
Speaker A
standardize your form with low reps. I hate when people say that. They're like Oh, uh uh volume is bad because like you can't standardize your form if you do low reps. Like Okay, then just standardize your form.
Speaker A
Don't be an idiot. But lower volume allows us to preferentially bias those harder to recruit muscle fibers that are only turned on during the highest degrees of effort. So, by um decreasing our perception of effort, you know, picking stable exercises, lower rep
Speaker A
ranges, you know, maybe like the four to seven-ish range. That's usually what I stick to.
Speaker A
Um you are allowing your body to send a lot more of that effort perception towards your actual set, right? So, you're able to get more what we call motor unit recruitment, which just refers to the uh body's like the degree of neural drive
Speaker A
you get to the muscle because it'll at the end of the day it is all neuroscience truly.
Speaker A
And our brain has finite resources, right? If we could just train every muscle at the same time we would, but you can't do that because of your perception of effort.
Speaker A
So, in preferentially biasing those type 2X fibers to the max, which, you know, they experience atrophy quickly, like all that, you're going to be growing a lot more than if you're doing a bunch of garbage volume um and using muscle
Speaker A
fibers that are lower down the motor unit pool. Now, when I say the word motor unit pool, that just refers to um every level of muscle fiber that is recruited based on how much neural drive is going to them.
Speaker A
And so, something like a type one fiber, which is aerobic, right? Used for things like running, day-to-day exercise or activity, they are always active and they will be maximally recruited every time that you maximally recruit type 2X fibers.
Speaker A
But on the flip side trying to max out lower down muscle fibers is going to give you a very quick point of diminishing returns because they are maxed out very quickly and sure they have some capacity for growth.
Speaker A
And now you know muscle fibers like it is a spectrum from type one to type two X.
Speaker A
They're still there's no point in trying to go lower down the motor unit pool to bias those fibers when they're going to grow regardless and you could be spending that time instead maxing out your type two X fibers which have a lot more capacity
Speaker A
for growth and as a byproduct the all the other muscle fibers will still be getting good enough stimulus to grow.
Speaker A
But yeah, the fiber type argument is another reason why lower volume is better and why we don't need to bias those lower down fibers and we want to maximize our motor unit recruitment because you cannot get maximum motor
Speaker A
unit recruitment if you have a lot of fatigue and muscle damage built up that you need to also recover from.
Speaker A
And if there is a specific muscle region that you want to bias then make sure you are giving it proper frequency and the proper stimulus to grow. I think that that about sums up why I do upper lower
Speaker A
six days a week very low cortisol split and I get to train every single day and do all the optimal low volume [ __ ] without all the fatigue. I can get into each of those specific mechanisms more
Speaker A
in other videos. This is just kind of a scatterbrained ramble. Thanks for watching. I'm going to see you Lex in a couple days and um I also have a full presentation on neural mechanical matching that I made back at college. So if you all want to
Speaker A
see that badly enough I'll drop it. It basically just refers to um training muscles where they have the best leverage and why and guess it's more like analyzing biomechanical stuff but yeah.
Speaker A
Hope this helps and um hope you guys study cuz there's going to be a quiz at the end of my semester. There's no summer break around here.
Speaker A
Thanks for watching. I could also talk about central nervous fatigue, which I didn't really because my split kind of ignores that a little bit.
Speaker A
But again, when you're doing less volume, you're not building up as much central nervous fatigue. I don't know. I think a lot of that is overstated.
Speaker A
If you're not familiar with what central nervous fatigue is, basically when muscle damage is present, your body has receptors that pick up that damage and they send that signal through your bloodstream.
Speaker A
Those those, you know, those inflammation signals through your bloodstream to your brain and your brain's like, "Eh, I don't want to train as hard now because of that muscle damage I have to repair." Which is why usually I would advocate for taking rest days.
Speaker A
Which is why I think like it's better to take rest days than not at all.
Speaker A
But if you're doing already like pretty low volume, you're probably going to have less muscle damage to recover from in the first place, thereby not having as much central nervous fatigue. You're getting less of those signals, less inflammatory
Speaker A
signals right? So, because the way CNS fatigue works is even if I do like biceps the day before and then I go hit legs the next day, your brain is still going to be detecting those signals of inflammation
Speaker A
from the muscle damage in your biceps, and so you're going to get less recruitment that your brain is able to give and allocate towards your quads.
Topics:hypertrophymuscle growthmuscle protein synthesismyofibrillar protein synthesistraining frequencytraining volumefatigue managementupper lower splitstrength trainingClark Kent
