The Truth About Effective Reps and Periodization With Lyle McDonald

Today's guest is the legendary Lyall Macdonald, whom I'm delighted to announce will be writing the foreword for my upcoming book, Solomon's Guide to Fat Loss. Look out for it. In today's episode, Lyall and I go deep down the rabbit hole. We discuss periodization, specifically what it is, what it's supposed to do, whom it's for, its historical origins, and why advanced periodization strategies make little sense for natural bodybuilding. We also discuss the theory of effective reps and the concept of reaching one's natural muscular potential. For those of you who are tired of overengineering your hypertrophy mesocycles and want to know what actually drives tissue adaptations, this one is for you. Let's get into it.

rabbit hole. We discuss periodization, specifically what it is, what it's supposed to do, whom it's for, its historical origins, and why advanced periodization strategies make little sense for natural bodybuilding. We also discuss the theory of effective reps and

I think we should hammer on effective reps first because I think it'll be faster.

I think we should hammer on effective reps first because I think it'll be faster.

So, you'd think of effective reps as this sort of unifying theory of volume that makes a lot of debates dissolve basically. So I, I yes, I do it in my mind and realize it is the effective reps model and I'm going to walk through quickly what it means just so we're on the same page. It is just a model. Has there been much direct data on it? I don't, I wouldn't say yes. So it is entirely possible in the way all scientific models go that it may be replaced by something else. But as it stands, it is the only way that I can see to rationalize all the seemingly different data, all the seemingly different training programs or even the studies, how they can all seem to reach the same place. And again, we may find out, we may find that there's a better model and I would like to see it tested a lot more formally. But I do think that at this point in the game, it's the best model we have. And in science, that's the best you can do, right? The current model we have, we have older models of hypertrophy and I'm going to briefly run through those because most of them turned out to be wrong even if people still claim we don't really know what causes growth, but I do think the effective reps model is the best explanation, certainly the best one I can come up with. So what is that? What is an effective rep? So real quickly, some background physiology. For all practical purposes, we have two types of muscle fibers: type one, slow twitch, red by the old designations; type two, fast twitch, white by the old designations. There are lots of subcategories. There's a 2A, a 2B. Actually, no, there's not a 2B in humans. A 2X, you can have hybrids. 2X when recruited become 2A for all practical purposes. Type one, type two. That's all you need to really know. Type one, slow twitch, good at endurance, don't grow much, low force production. Type two, more anaerobic, higher force production, contract a little bit faster, more growth potential. Now, during activities, your body will recruit muscle fibers from the smallest, weakest, what are called low threshold motor units, type one, progressively into type two up to the highest threshold motor units depending on force requirements. So it's called Henneman's size principle. Not to be confused with Henneman's wives size does matter principle. But let's not get—sorry, it's one of, I've used this joke for over a decade. Okay. So the size principle just says that as force requirements go up, fibers will be recruited in an orderly fashion from smallest, weakest to largest, strongest, for lack of a better way of describing it. So you start walking, very low force production, mostly type one fibers. You start jogging, little bit higher force, little more fibers. You start running, let's say, at a pace you could only hold for like 20 minutes. At this point, you're getting a lot of type two fibers, maybe not all of them, but more because—and then let's say you go all out sprinting. You're going to get basically, you're going to have to recruit the highest fibers, highest threshold motor units, the type two fibers. The same thing happens in the weight room. And it gets—although it gets a little bit more complicated, right? Is if you're doing a very light, let's say you're just lifting, you know, a three pound weight, a kilo and a half, doesn't require a lot of force for most people, right? So it's not going to recruit the highest motor units unless you take it to exhaustion, right? Whereas if you're doing, say, a one rep max, your absolute heaviest weight, it's going to pretty much recruit all muscle fibers that your body can. Now what the effective reps model says is that only repetitions that are done under conditions of full muscular recruitment count towards the training stimulus. Okay, that is the strongest version of the model and I say that because the strongest version of the model is wrong. But let me come back to that. Put a pin on that in a second because then we ask how do we get to full muscular recruitment? How do we get full fiber recruitment? And there's two ways to do it. One is to lift a weight that is heavy enough, generally at about 80 to 85% of maximum, about a 5 to 8 repetition max, you will get essentially full muscle fiber recruitment from about the first repetition. Maybe at 85% the first couple won't be, but like at a five rep max, right? Five by five hip drive in case Rip is watching this. Right? If you're doing an all-out set of five, you will basically recruit all muscle fibers you can from the first repetition. Now, let's say you take a 15 rep max. The way you can lift 15 reps to concentric physiological failure. That's zero reps reserve. For the first 10 reps or so, you will not get full fiber recruitment. But as you fatigue, as your muscles need to generate more force increases, you will get to full fiber recruitment at the end of that set. So for a, if you did a set of five all out, I mean grinder could not do six. You'll get five effective reps. Every rep will be under full recruitment. If you did a set of 15 to failure, you'd get about five effective reps, maybe four the first, but it takes you 10 to get there. You look at the low-load training, those 25 to 30 reps to failure, the last five repetitions are under conditions of full recruitment. You just had to dick around for 25 reps to get there. Right? So, a max set of five, a max set of eight, max set of 15, a max set of 25 will all get you roughly five repetitions under full recruitment. Now, we have an explanation of why the studies are like rep. What's the claim? The repetition range doesn't matter for hypertrophy so long as you go to failure, right? That's what, uh, I think Stu Phillips is one of the people who's repeated that, Fisher and Steele. And there's truth to that. Now, we do know if you're training heavy, let's say you're doing 80% for a set of five, like an eight rep max, you will get some repetitions under maximum fiber recruitment even if you don't go to failure. But if you're doing a set of 15 or that low load crap, growth does not occur unless you go to failure because if you only do 15 reps of a 25 rep set, you didn't get to full recruitment. So there we have an explanation for the data set where heavy sets not to failure generate growth, but light sets must be taken to failure to generate the same amount of growth. And it has to do with the nature of fiber recruitment. Okay. So again, two ways to get to maximum fiber recruitment. Go heavy. And that's where some of the stuff about, oh, the optimal rep range are, go is four to six. That's where that comes from. Or even an article I wrote years ago where I said if you had to pick one repetition range for hypertrophy, what would it be? I said five to eight. Because if you're in that range, that's where you will maximize the number of repetitions. And this is before the effective reps model was developed, but that's where you will maximize the number of repetitions they used to call stimulating reps, etc. Again, you can do sets of 12 to failure. You just have to do eight or nine submaximal reps to get the full recruitment. Now, what about going heavier? Why not do triples? Well, a triple max triple vers

quickly what it means just so we're on the same page. It is just a model. Has there been much direct data on it? I don't I wouldn't say yes. So it is entirely possible in the the way all

scientific models go that it may be replaced by something else. But as it stands, it is the only way that I can see to rationalize all the seemingly different data, all the seemingly different training programs or even the studies

how they can all seem to reach the same place. And again, we may find out, we may find that there's a better model and I would like to see it tested a lot more formally. But I do think that at this

point in the game, it's the best model we have. And in science, that's the best you can do, right? the current model we we have we have older models of hypertrophy and I'm going to briefly run through those because most of them

turned out to be wrong even if people still claim we don't really know what causes growth but I do think the effect of reps model is the best explanation certainly the best one I can come up with um so what is that what is an

effective rep so real quickly some background physiology for all practical purposes we have two types of muscle fibers type one slow twitch red by the old designations type fast twitch white by the the old designations. There are lots of subcategories. There's a 2A, a

2B. Actually, no, there's not a 2B in humans. A 2X, you can have hybrids. 2X when recruited become 2A for all practical purposes. Type one, type two.

That's all you need to really know. Type one, slow twitch, good at endurance, don't grow much, low force production.

Hype two, more anorobic, higher force production, contract a little bit faster, more growth potential. Now, during activities, your body will recruit muscle fibers from the smallest, weakest, what are called low threshold motor units, type one, progressively into type two up to the highest

threshold motor units depending on force requirements. So it's called Henman's size principle. Not to be confused with Henman's wives size does matter principle. But let's not get sorry it's one of I've used this joke for over a decade. Okay. So the size principle just

says that as force requirements go up fibers will be recruited in an orderly fashion from smallest weakest to largest strongest for lack of a better way of describing it. So you start walking, very low force production, mostly type

one fibers. You start jogging, little bit higher force, little more fibers. You start running, let's say, at a pace you could only hold for like 20 minutes.

At this point, you're getting a lot of type two fibers, maybe not all of them, but more because and then let's say you go all out sprinting. You're going to get basically you're going to have to recruit the highest fibers, highest

threshold motor units, the type two fibers. The same thing happens in the weight room. And it gets although it gets a little bit more complicated, right? Is if you're doing a very light, let's say you're just lifting, you know, a three

pound weight, a kilo and a half, doesn't require a lot of force for most people, right? So it's not going to recruit the highest motor units unless you take it to exhaustion, right? Whereas if you're doing say a one rep max, your absolute

heaviest weight, it's going to pretty much recruit all muscle fibers that your body can. Now what the effective reps model says is that only repetitions that are done under conditions of full muscular recruitment count towards the training stimulus.

Okay, that is the the strongest version of the model and I say that because the strongest version of the model is wrong.

But I let me come back to that. Put a pin on that in a second because then we ask how do we get to full muscular recruitment? How do we get full fiber recruitment? And there's two ways to do

it. One is to lift a weight that is heavy enough, generally at about 80 to 85% of maximum, about a 5 to eight repetition max, you will get essentially full muscle fiber recruitment from about the first repetition. Maybe at 85% the

first couple won't be, but like at a five rep max, right? Five by five hip drive in case Rip is watching this.

Right? If you're doing an allout set of five, you will basically recruit all muscle fibers you can from the first repetition.

Now, let's say you take a 15 rep max. The way you can lift 15 reps to concentric physiological failure. That's zero reps reserve. For the first 10 reps or so, you will not get full fiber recruitment. But as you fatigue,

as your muscles need to generate more force increases, you will get to full fiber recruitment at the end of that set. So for a if you did a set of five all out, I mean grinder could not do

six. You'll get five effective reps. Every rep will be under full recruitment. If you did a set of 15 to failure, you'd get about five effective reps, maybe four the first, but it takes you 10 to get there. You look at the

lowload load training, those 25 to 30 reps to failure, the last five repetitions are under conditions of full recruitment. You just had to dick around for 25 reps to get there.

Right? So, a max set of five, a max set of eight, max set of 15, a max set of 25 will all get you roughly five repetitions under full recruitment.

Now, we have an explanation of why the studies are like rep. What's the claim?

The repetition range doesn't matter for hypertrophy so long as you go to failure, right? That's what uh uh I think Stu Phillips is one of the people who's repeated that Fisher and Steel. And there's truth to that. Now,

we do know if you're training heavy, let's say you're doing 80% for a set of five, like an eight rep max, you will get some repetitions under maximum fiber recruitment even if you don't go to failure. But if you're doing a set of 15

or that that low load crap, growth does not occur unless you go to failure because if you only do 15 reps of a 25 rep set, you didn't get to full recruitment. So there we have an explanation for the data set where heavy

sets not to failure generate growth, but light sets must be taken to failure to generate the same amount of growth. And it has to do with the nature of fiber recruitment. Okay. So again, two ways to get to maximum fiber recruitment. Go

heavy. And that's where some of the stuff about, oh, the optimal rep range air go is four to six. That's where that comes from. Or even an article I wrote years ago where I said if you had to

pick one repetition range for hypertrophy, what would it be? I said five to eight. Because if you're in that range, that's where you will get maximize the number of repetitions. And this is before the effective reps model was developed, but that's where you will

maximize the number of repetitions they used to call stimulating reps, etc. Again, you can do sets of 12 to failure.

You just have to do eight or nine submaximal reps to get the full recruitment. Now, what about going heavier? Why not do triples?

Well, a triple max triple versus a max set of five. You will not get any more recruitment. The body is what's called rate coding to get more force. Just don't worry about it. But you get less volume. Max triple versus a max set of

five. Same recruitments, but it's only three versus five reps. Also, you get injured, right? You do lots and lots and lots of trip heavy triples all the time. You have to do so many sets to get the same number of

reps. So, anyway, so that's the effect of reps model. And like I said, in it strongest form, it says only the repetitions done under full recruitment count. And that's wrong in the strictest sense. Let's say you take a 15 rep max

and you stop at 10. You will not get full fiber recruitment. You will not get the highest threshold motor units, those type two five, all type two fibers, but you will stimulate lower threshold motor units. It's not that you won't get zero,

you won't get zero growth from doing a set of 10 at a 15 rep max. That's where the effective reps model in its strictest form is wrong. However, only Greg Knuckles believes that you can actually grow type two fibers without

recruiting them because he did a six-hour video where I think he made essentially that argument. But in its strictest form, the effective reps model, the way it's typically phrased, is not correct. But if you're talking about getting growth in all available

muscle fibers, you must recruit them, right? And actually, if you go back, we go back to old models of hypertrophy, there's a whole bunch of them. There was the pump theory. There was an an opposite theory that said not to

let blood pool in the muscle which led to peripheral heart action. There was the damage theory which is still around and it's still wrong. Vladimir Zatskorski in his very boring book presented a model of training where he said that

to train a muscle fiber you must first recruit it and then you must expose it to enough metabolic work or mechanical work.

Now, he was still working under a damage theory of growth and all this other stuff. But essentially, he was right. If you don't recruit a muscle fiber, you cannot get it to adapt. There's no stimulus. But just recruiting isn't

sufficient. Otherwise, you could just do a one rep max. You regret you're you'll get one you'll recruit all muscle fibers. And we know that won't make you grow. So the effective reps model says you must get to full fiber recruitment

and then get some number of repetitions to turn on protein synthesis. Like in its strictest form, it's it's not true.

You don't get full recruitment. You'll still adapt other the lower muscle the lower threshold motor units. But if you're talking about getting growth in every available muscle fiber, you must first recruit that muscle fiber either by going heavy or taking a light set to

or near failure and exposed to a certain sufficient number of high intensity contractions. So that's the effective reps model. And the next question that you're going to ask or you should ask is what are the optimal number of effective

reps for growth? Because that's always the next question people ask. And the answer is we don't know.

To me, that is still the big uncertain. All this these machinations with sets and reps and volume, these studies are asking the wrong question. 10 sets of 10 submaximally, like the Cody Horn study that Israel helped develop. Yeah, 30

sets, but they're all at four reps in reserve. You can piss around for 10 sets of 10 and get very few effective reps.

You can do four allout sets to failure and get 20. Asking about sets and reps is not the right question. We need to be looking in my opinion how many highintensity contractions. We know that high tension muscular contractions are

what turn on growth by pulling on what are called focal adhesion kinace through the integrans like titan and all the others which then turns on mtor through a phospa phos phospatal whatever it is um inflammatory compound.

That's the question we need to answer because it would just eliminate all these dumb volume debates. So Chris Beardsley in one of his articles argued that 25 effective repetitions is the optimal number. Now I have read that per workout or per week

per workout. Interesting because I think Dorian Yates would have done about that per workout with his, you know, four sets all taken to failure.

Put a pin in that. Well, I we we'll come back to that. Now, I've read that piece a dozen times. I've talked to people that work with Chris and asked them, "Will you please explain his logic to me?" And I still don't know where that

number came from. I think he looked at one of the early Kreger meta analyses and did some back of the envelope math and and I don't I just don't know. And I'm not saying that I have the answer

although I think and there's probably a range and you may it may depend on you know the the level the training status and you know the variables that there may be individual variations like but we don't really have that answer. I think

if you go back to the early war bomb meta analysis you know it concluded like 40 to 70 max repetitions per workout were about optimal and I'd have to go look. I didn't ever bother to pull all those papers because there were hundreds

of them. But like, you know, 40 to 70 reps, you're looking at between four and eight sets of say eight to 10 repetitions, like right in that range, right? And if you're assuming four to five effective reps per set times four,

you know, you're looking at 20 to 40 repetitions per workout, I think that's probably I think it's good enough for government work, but we don't know for sure. And what I would like to see studied is like to see what the the like the the the

relationship is, right? So like so for example, we know that in bone like if you're trying to stimulate bone mineral density after 20 loadings, it becomes refractory to further whether you do 20 maximal jumps or 100, you get the same

effect. It becomes refractory to further stimulus. I would expect muscle to be the same junk volume, right? Once you've stimulated beyond a certain point, more sets are probably not there's there's got to be a limit. What I would love to

see, get a bunch of people, have them be their own control, right? So we take out the individual variants, do three allout sets with one arm, six with the other, nine, 12, do it a bunch of different measure protein synthesis to see if we

can figure out is the relationship linear? Is it like you know 5 10 15 20 like is more is more more is it curve linear? Does it plateau? Does it hit a limit and then come back down? Maybe if

you do too many because the worm bomb data the curve was actually like this.

If you look at total repetitions per workout 40 to 70 was the peak at 10 to 30 and 80 to 100 it was lower. Maybe beyond a certain point you're doing more harm than good. I'm not saying you are.

I'm saying we don't have because it's not being studied systematically. But let's get back to the my suggestion or my belief that it helps us to consolidate all the different studies and all the different ways we know that

have worked traditionally in natural bodybuilders because trust me, put drugs in the equation, none of this matters.

You can do whatever the hell you want. Okay, so let's look at like a rest pause set, like a dog crap style rest pause.

You go to failure and then do many sets, however many you can get. Okay, so you do an eight, let's say you do a set of eight activation set, right? To concentric failure, could not do number nine. That gets you about five effective

reps, right? First three probably aren't. You get there pretty quickly. All right, 20 second rest. You do a mini set. I typically get three to one. So I'm getting 10 effective reps per set, right? Five during the act. That's the

whole point of rest pause is you stay maximally activated during the mini sets. Blades, bors, faggerly, my reps are similar, just submaximal. With that, you end up doing like 12 plus 4 plus 4 plus 4 plus 4 plus 4. I've read those

workouts and I get bored reading them. I would get so bored doing them, right? So figure for a typical failure dog crap Dante Trudeell style rest pause about 10 effective reps depending on your rep counts. Do two sets of that. That's 20

per workout. And we know that makes people grow. Okay, let's go to just set concentric sets to failure. Let's say you do four all out sets like Dorian like you mentioned. All out sets of eight could not do another repetition.

You're getting about five effective reps about 20 per workout. Now, do you realize, go look at Dorian's workouts.

He often did two or three force repetitions. So, he might have been getting seven or eight during a workout.

Four sets. He did a maximum of four exercises per muscle group. You're up at about 28 to 32. Well, what did I say?

Four, 20 to 40, somewhere in that range. Again, it's it's good enough, right? Even go back and so then like let's say you look at some of the early Arnold workouts that were supposedly 20 cents per muscle group. Well, go watch those

things. The first couple sets are warm-ups and the last two or three sets are usually taken. They're not grinders, but they slow down. Like go people need to go watch those videos. They were training hard. They weren't training to

failure. So they were doing five exercises, two or three work sets a piece to maybe the tune of three or four effective reps.

So what's that? five time, you know, you're looking at 10 to 15 sets, two to three effect, you're looking at 20 to 30 effective repetitions, what they used to call stimulating reps, the growth reps, the ones work out hard, right? So now,

well, let's put that. So, like, so four set, four to five sets to failure, you're looking about 20 25 effective reps. We know that that volume works because people do it. Let's now drop back to say two to three reps in

reserve, right? So now you're doing a set of eight where you could grind out 10. So now you're going to be getting three effective repetitions and you need about 8 to 10 sets which gives you 16 to 20 per week

whereas that number seems to be coming back to right then we know that if you piss about on short rest intervals of 30 seconds or do a ton of volume i.e. the show andfeld and bragado studies you need about 50% more volume. Boom. 15

sets of workout. Why do they all work and give the same growth? Because the volumes are irrelevant. The volume that's important. Each workout is getting the same number of effective reps. They're just getting there in vastly different ways from drop sets,

concentric failure, two to three reps in reserve, pissing about. Anyone that tells me, "Oh, I have to do 40 sets per week," it's because they are either rushing between their sets and getting low quality training, or they're pissing

about, right? Go look at go look at the Han study again. They worked up to 32 sets a week. They were doing sets of 10 at four reps in reserve with 10 minutes between sets because it was a dumbass

circuit routine. They were getting maybe one effective repetition per set. So they were getting 30 total effective reps per week. And you know what? They still didn't get any growth.

You could achieve the same thing with six sets to failure per week as about for 30 sets. So to me, like I said, in a week, we may have more data. This says I'm completely wrong, but that's the

only way I can consolidate all the data into a model that makes any sense. Why?

They all seem to work in the long run. They're all generating the same number of effective reps per workout.

Ly, if effective reps are all that matter, then I mean, if we equate for effective reps, say comparing three sets to zero RI um versus five sets taken to two RI, so both yielding 15 effective reps, then do you think that jump from

two RI to zero RI might carry a disproportionate fatigue cost for the actual hypertrophy it yields?

Um, so that's been the claim, right? There's still this idea that, oh no, muscular failure causes excessive neuromuscular fatigue and I find it hilarious. If you look at those studies, because of course I've looked at them, they do like three sets of 10 of

squatter bench. Apparently that's too much. But then these same people, these same talking heads will look at the Showenfeld study, 45 sets supposedly to failure a week or the Bato study, 30 cents, and they'll go, "Oh, no, that

workout's totally valid." Which is it? Is three. If 3 by 10 to failure, is too fatiguing?

How is 45 sets per week not? And I've yet to get an answer to that question, but I digress.

When you look at the earlier studies looking at neuromuscular fatigue to failure, the designs are stupid because here's what they usually do. 3x 10 RM 3x 10 at zero reps in reserve to 6x5 at the same weight. Well, yeah, 3x10 is more

fatiguing because work sets are usually more fatiguing than warm-ups. I don't disagree. That is not ecological to how people train and that's what most of the studies have done. Now, also realize that these studies don't give a crap

about hypertrophy. They care about performance because they're measuring things like vertical jump and bar speed, neuromuscular fatigue, right? So, and they'll be like, "Oh, yeah. So, you do that and for 48 hours your vertical jump is down, so your legs are tired." To

which I say, "Who cares? Most bodybuilders train a muscle group once a week. Why does it matter? Even if you train a muscle group twice a week, that's every 72 hours. Who gives a [ __ ] if your legs are tired? If you've got

neuromuscular fatigue in your lower body, oh nos for 48 hours. If by 72 you're right, it doesn't. This is for athletes. This is for performance, right? And let me say this, for example, when I was coaching Sunni, Sunni trained

six days a week. She squatted, deadlifted every 48 hours. She benched and did upper body every 48 hours. I never took her to failure. Mike's lies notwithstanding I was acutely concerned with neuromuscular fatigue bodybuild none oh god none of it matters

but it doesn't change the fact that none of this is relevant that 3x10 is more fatiguing than 6x5 at the same weight.

How is that relevant? The question is, is 3x10 to failure to zero reps in reserve significantly more neuromuscular fatiguing than 3x8 at the same weight at two reps in reserve? And there's a lot less data on that. A buddy of mine

actually did one of the early studies and they found no and they did five sets at zero reps in reserve and they did four sets at two reps in reserve and then the fifth one all out and they

found no changes in in neuromuscular fatigue but he even admitted to me they didn't really use the right they didn't see any difference in either group because they used the wrong measurements. So it's not and also we could say well that fifth set to failure

might have been excessive although a lot of people in this industry will say oh yeah you should you can take your last set to failure not me I'm the one who gets accused of recommending failure and I recommend it less than just about

everybody in this industry except maybe Mike right so the question is and and there's been a couple other studies and I think yeah maybe they show that there's a little bit more neuromuscular fatigue going to true zero reps in

reserve versus two reps in reserve but Again, there's two issues I have with that. And then I'm also going to come back to another a different study that helps to answer this, which is a who cares if you're training a muscle group

once a week. Why does this matter? Why does it matter if your your vertical jump is down for 48 hours because you did a heavy leg day? I I'm waiting for someone to explain this to me for bodybuilding. Why does this make a

difference? athletes who are a sprinter who is doing sprint work every other day. This is important.

You're bodybuilders. There's also the issue that the e the the the studies invariably use squat and bench. Okay.

Are you going to tell me that three sets of 10 to zero reps reserve in the barbell curl is going to burn out your CNS? People apply this uncritically to all exercises. Yeah. All out sets of deadlifts tend to wreck people. Are you

really telling me 3x10 to failure to zerups or something to push down is really going to cause oh no the neuromuscular fatigue because that hasn't been studied because researchers don't care. They care about athletes and performance. But there's another there's

another study that indirectly points to this and they did kind of a really it did an interesting thing. They compared a bunch of repetition ranges to a larger number of sets at half that many reps.

So they did 3x 12 RM versus 6x6, right? Same weight, same volume, 3x10, 6x5, 3x 8, 6x4, 3x4, 6x2. Don't throw me to those numbers. It's in that range. Now, here's what they found. As the reps dropped, the difference in neuromuscular

fatigue was almost eliminated, which makes sense. 3x 12 versus 6x6, that's six reps in reserve. Those are warm-up sets. Of course, 3x 12 to failures more fatiguing. Duh. 10 versus five, still significantly more fatiguing. 6x5 is a warm-up is a set series of warm-ups.

By the time they got eight to four, it's getting a little bit closer because now we're at four reps reserve, right?

That's at least a stimulus that the 3x8 to failure was still still more fatiguing. By the time they got to four to two where it's two reps in reserve, there's no difference or not no functional difference. So I think beyond

a certain point I again even if it is a who cares for bodybuilders who aren't training a muscle group more than once or twice a week, there's also another thing that I've again yet to hear an get an answer to. Most of these studies

compare the same volumes. Even the ones comparing similar reps in reserve. We did three by 10 to three by eight. That's not how people train in the real world. It's not.

I realize why you have to do that for control. But are is one of these are are are one of the talking heads spouting this BS really going to tell me that three sets to failure to zero reps in

reserve is more fatiguing than say Brad's 15 set leg workout done three times a week. Really? Really? You're really going to make that claim? Now maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Having done both, I know where I stand on the

matter. Somehow again, these people are like, "Oh, no. Three sets, three allout sets will tire you out too much, but 15 sets three times a week on a 90 second rest interval." Oh, that's fine. Sure, guys. Right. That's why I think the

effect of reps that they're again, they're looking at their like I get why they have two quaint volumes. That's for study control. But show me that three by 10 at zero reps in reserve is more or less or the same amount of neuromuscular

fatiguing as eight sets at three reps in reserve because that's how people really train. We don't have that answer. I suspect there's not as much of a difference as people think. And it is interesting one of the lowload studies

or maybe the blood flow restriction studies that used it found that much higher repetitions that higher volumes were actually more neuromuscularly fatiguing than higher intensity lower rep sets. So maybe volume is more neuromuscular fatigue more neuromuscularly fatiguing? We don't

know. Someone doing eight sets at two reps in reserve. You really going to tell me that they're going to necessarily be that much less neuromuscularly fatigued than someone doing three to four sets at zero? I doubt it. I don't think the difference.

And if they're not training the same muscle group till Thursday anyway, who cares? So, I find it to be a whole and again because someone will take me out of context. I'm not saying you should train to zero reps in reserve. I never have

said that. We're looking we're examining different training concepts. There are different ways to the goal. Not everyone has the wherewithal to train to true limits or to do rest pause. It hurts.

You have to be willing to suffer for people for whatever reason and certain exercises don't lend themselves to that.

Obviously, I'm not going to have someone, you know, do I mean the 20 rep squat is a rest pause squat, but like you're not doing 3x8 to failure on deadlifts. I don't think you should be deadlifting for growth anyway, but see

the other video we did. What was it? When I went to war against the big five, I think that's what the right neither neither neither here nor there. Right. I'm not saying that the best way to train is dog crap. that the

best way to train is Dorian style. I'm saying that a all those different approaches kind of get you the same place in my opinion assuming the number of effect and of course progression over time and all that other crapola right

like that's we're talking about there's the acute stimulus which is you have to stimulate adaptation which should be some number of effective repetitions and then there's progression over time in terms of adding weight to the bar. So the number of effective reps stimulates

adaptation. progression is what keeps you growing until you hit your limits. Right? I'm not saying that four sets to zero reps reserve is the way to train.

Saying that I don't necessarily agree that it is going to be severely more neuromuscularly fatiguing than 8 to 10 sets at two reps in reserve or 20 sets pissing about for two hours when someone is in the gym wasting their time. Right?

And and again when most bodybuilders train a muscle group once a week or maybe twice a week every 72 hours. I don't see how this matters. And even then, it would only matter for certain exercises. I said barbell curls to

failure are not going to wear you out. Hack squats. Yeah, go. I'll put up my video. I do I do rest pause hack squats and and then I I go lay down. I've done 20 You do a 20 rep squat, a true 20 rep

squat. You will go lay down for five minutes. You do rest, pause, bicep curls, not so much. So this generalization of a handful of studies on big muscle group exercises looked at for parameters that are only relevant to

athletes in first place, I don't think it matters. I think it's a whole lot to do whole whole a great deal. And again, show me real world volumes and then we'll talk. Uh, I guarantee you the guy who's doing, you know, 10 sets of chest,

shoulders, and triceps in one workout at two reps in reserve, I bet he's coming out of that workout more tired than the person I put through three sets of chest, shoulders, and triceps to failure. I can almost guarantee that

he's going to be more fatigued. So, yeah, that's my take on it. at real world intensities and volumes. I'm I'm not again or I don't think the difference is that big of a deal, right?

I mean, yeah, Dorian, apparently there's a story buddy of mine told me they came to video Dorian one of his workouts. I'm like, "Yeah, you've seen the videos. You know what story I'm going to tell because I only have six."

I do. Yeah. And and and and they they video they they didn't they didn't run the camera, right? And they say, "Dorian, you know, can can you do it again?" He said, "No, come back in a week." Right. Yeah. fine.

Maybe his workouts were absolutely blowing out his nervous system. Whatever you want to say, he trained each muscle group once a week. Why did it matter?

Unless you want to make some arguments that, well, maybe that's going to make you more neuromuscular fatigued. Like, let's say you do a hard leg workout on Monday.

Some will assert that, yeah, if you blow out your nervous system, whatever that means, the people who say that don't even know what it means, that maybe your Tuesday upper body will be a little hampered by that. Maybe depends depends

volumes intensities recoveries age you know, said if you're training reasonable amounts every other day, three days a Yeah, like if you're training six days a week, it matters. If you're an athlete, it absolutely matters. If you're a bodybuilder

training a muscle group once a week, dude, I'm sorry. Lateral raises to failure are not going to destroy your CNS.

Sorry. Sorry, guys. Anyway, I think that answers the question. I had one more question on this topic.

Within those last five effective reps of a set taken to failure, are some of those effective reps, some of those reps that recruit all of the high threshold motor units more effective than others?

For example, does the zero RI rep yield more growth than the four RI rep?

Uh, I understand what you're asking and I don't I don't I would say no. Like I think if you were to get like I think you would get the same total number of effective reps in a workout, right? Like let's say

like just to keep the math simple, let's say we're only get we only want to get 10 effective reps.

Would two all out sets where you got five be more growth promoting than let's say you did 10 sets with one effective rep? I don't think so. I don't think that necessarily like getting that, you know, because the one argument is like,

oh, those last two allout reps are detrimental because of fatigue. You're asking are they necessarily superior?

And I think given the same workout total, I would say no. I don't think necessarily that that would be the case.

I don't see full recruitment is full recruitment is full recruitment. you simply once you've achieved that there's no once you're at 100% recruitment despite your football American football coach's uh endorsement to go out and give it 110% to which you go but coach that's

mathematically impossible to which he tells you shut up go run laps like once you're at 100% you're 100%. So, it's a matter of I think getting the total number of full recruitment reps no matter how you get there. I don't So, I

would say no. And I could be wrong about that, too, but I think that'd be really hard to study. I think it'd be really hard to examine if and again, clearly enough people have gotten to their limits, you know, never taking a set to

true zero reps in reserve. They do more, they make it up with more volume, right? They're getting hopefully two or three a set depending on where they stop. They just do more sets and it seems to all work out the same. So, I

would say no. Thanks. That didn't want I think you wanted to ask something about dieting and I'll just tell you the answer is I don't know, but we can address it.

Oh, yeah. It was basically so I mean we we talked about effective reps targets, reasonable effective reps targets for muscle growth. We talked about Chris Beardley's 25 reps per workout. Um, and my question was just, you know, might this change while

cutting or maintaining? Like if your goal is just to maintain your muscle mass? Yeah. And I mean, I mean, I imagine anyone, most people, you know, who know me at this point are, you know, kind of know my stance on this, which is that

during dieting, I think volume should be reduced. I mean, it depends on the nature of the diet and the deficit.

There's a whole lot of variables, but like you're doing a hard like the amount of training it takes to maintain muscle is certainly less than the amount it takes to build muscle. And the people who don't like what I have to say about

that, but those studies on maintenance weren't about dieting, so you need more when you're dieting and go, but the studies haven't looked at that either.

So, you you can't make that conclusion either, right? is if you need, you know, and again, this is true of all biomot capacities endurance anamoric threshold sprinting strength power whatever. Like you can cut volume by up to twothirds as long as you maintain

intensity and maintain. You may not get any any better, but you won't get any worse. And that's what I've always used during to diet. But again, we truly truly don't know, right? And people the argument you you'll see the argument,

you need to do more more volume when you're dieting or more volume when you're sick. I've seen that one too. or more more volume when you're stressed.

That's on the Juggernaut manual, by the way. They say you should do more volume when you're dieting, more when you're stressed, and more when you're sick.

Which means that if you're dieting stressed and sick, you should be doing the highest volumes. Genius stuff, guys.

Absolutely just beautiful. The only thing they didn't say was that natural should do more volume than than than the pros.

You should probably train more than the pro bodybuilders you follow. But brilliant stuff you need to do. And the AR, well, when you're when you're dieting or sick, you can't get as good of a stimulus airgo. I'm like, no,

that's a bunch of [ __ ] And we know for a fact that's not true. They've done studies of athletes during like final exams in college under stress and higher volumes just they burn out. They do not adapt to it. So, do we know how much?

No. But I would just cut it by twothirds, right? Like if you're doing like if I've got someone and they're doing well, you know, whatever. Well, here's how I approached it. During my diet, I was doing three rest pause sets

for some muscle groups and two for others, right? So, figure that's 30 effective reps, maybe towards the high end. During my diet, I just dropped I just dropped the rest pause. So, I went back to three allout set, three sets to

concentric failure, cut volume in half. Yeah, that's what I've done with people. Larry when he was dieting going in two years ago into that his final show, he was doing two to three heavy sets every fifth day or so like all out like heavy

because he he you know per muscle group. So he was getting you know 12 to 15 effective reps that will maintain just fine as long as the intensity is there.

So and see if they if the evidence based people get to use anecdotes well so do I and I've dieted people down to contest lean without muscle loss on those volumes. So my anecdotes mean just as much as yours, which is nothing. But the

science isn't there. They haven't really studied it under cal, at least not systematically, under calorestricted conditions. But there was this one study, I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's by Roth, where one group, I believe they

were both in a caloric deficit. I haven't examined it too closely, but I think one group did like 20 sets um per muscle group and the other did 12. and group doing 12 sets preserve just as much muscle.

Um, yeah, 38 resistance trained males randomized high volume or moderate volume. Five sets or three sets per exercise, blah blah blah. And high volume resistance training appears to have neither an advantage nor disadvantage over moderate volumes in terms of maintaining lean mass or muscle

thickness given that both muscle groups increased volume load and maintain contractility blah blah blah. um either moderate or higher training volumes conceivably could be employed by resistant trained individuals. So yeah, so there you go. Like now fine, 12 per

workout or was that per week? Um I don't have the full paper here in front of me.

It was per week. That's true. Yeah. Okay. So fine, that's six hard sets per week. My volumes are a little bit lower.

Whatever. Like, but even so, that certainly argues against the idea that you should either maintain your 20 sets per week or, god forbid, do more, which is still a recommendation. Do more volume when you're resistance training.

The purpose of resistance training on a diet is to maintain muscle. Nothing more, nothing less. It's a crap way to burn calories. It's not free calories.

I would rather have someone do a short hard weight training workout and go walk on the damn treadmill on a diet or just use a proper diet and let the deficit do the work. Weight training this idea because I've seen it asserted.

The volumes that build muscle are the same volumes that maintain muscle. No, that's not what maintenance means.

That's just dumb, right? You can't if it's if the same volume is both build and maintain that's just completely logically intractable. It can't do both.

It either makes you improve or it keeps you from deimproving. And we know from all the data that maintenance volumes can be significantly lower. Like that was the big the big discovery two or three years ago. The industry was like, "Wow, some study came

out and they were like four hard sets a week, something like that, maintained, not in a diet." And it was like, "Wow, you really don't need that much volume to maintain." Oh, really?

Wow. Cutting edge stuff, guys. Really genius. Been saying that since 2002. Yeah, you don't.

People are like, "But there's anabolic resistance on the diet and there's this and that and the other." And it's like, fine, then do five hard sets. do six sets, that's fine. Don't do 20 a week.

Don't add more volume. That's just dumb. If you want to burn more calories, go do the that the the the hamster grind on the treadmill. Go do something that was actually useful for your fat loss because doing more weight training stuff

isn't it and you just end up burnt out and injured anyway. So, yeah, I don't think we have an exact answer, but I maintain that you can significantly reduce volumes. I mean depending like if someone's only doing three or four hard

sets then just keep doing that. Yeah. I I do sort of going back completely a different topic. Um we talked about we did that that look at you know the history of of high-intensity training and we talked about Mensor and most of the workouts

Mener put up as heavy duty was while he was in prep because it was at least asserted by whatever that channel was that I found that that I I know you mentioned. I forget the name of it. Mr.

USA or something. Um, he did training more traditionally in the offseason because he couldn't generate that same kind of intensity because presumably he wasn't using amphetamines.

The training you saw was his prep training. And what was it? Low volume all out to failure. Dorian didn't change his training and prep because he was already doing low volume to failure. He just kept it heavy and kept doing what

he was doing. Because yeah, if you're only doing, you know, four hard sets at a workout, you're probably not going to cut volume much from that. But if someone's doing 10 sets and they're dieting, especially if they're dieting

hard, like into low levels of leanness, the fatigue catches up with you, man. And you can go in and hammer out three hard sets, but facing down 10 sets at two reps in reserve, you just don't have the gas for it, and you end up hurt and

injured because you're not recovering. Like this again, this idea that Von should go up on a diet is just dumb as hell. You you should do more when your recovery is systematically impaired.

It comes from the old drug approaches. Those guys brought the drugs in during prep supposedly and they raised the reps and did lower intensity. They they did that. They didn't do a lot of formal cardio, so they just did lots of weight training

with drugs. And in naturals, you just get burned out. Everybody gets broken. Whereas if you reduce your volume, just do enough to maintain. You're not losing weight on the bar. You're not losing muscle mass. I promise. And then people

of course like, "But but I feel smaller." Yeah, that's glycogen and water. Learn the difference between lean body mass and skeletal muscle. Like, yeah, you'll you might lose a little visual size because you're not as carbloated, but you'll you'll plump

right back up when you do your completion work. But anyway, so yeah, people forget what the goal of weight training on a diet should be, which is to maintain muscle and nothing more. And you should, in my opinion, do as little

as you can. Do the rest of the time walk on the treadmill. You'll get further.

Should we discuss periodization or as I like to say periodization? Yeah. Random tidbit just because it's funny. Apparently, there was at some coach conference or something. This is this could be completely anecdotal or completely apo apocryphal. Someone stood

up at a periodization seminar and said that we the terminology should be changed because he felt that it was insulting to women because of their periods. You cannot make it up folks.

Okay. Periodization. This is actually a bigger a big topic. I sent Solomon the notes that I took earlier today to sort of collect my thoughts because a lot of what's floating around out there is either very out ofd there are a lot of

misconceptions about what periodization is and isn't what it's meant to accomplish. And I think what we're going to do is go look at a bunch of this stuff and we're going to get to the end and go that for bodybuilding very little

of it matters anyway even although people have tried to apply it. So first let's sort of definitions like what is periodization like what does it have as its goal and essentially it's a way of setting up monitoring and adjusting

training with a number of goals and and the idea is to improve performance in some activity being very general right now while managing fatigue preventing overtraining ideally to reach a peak performance. And people need to really realize that most of what we're going to

talk about was for sports that actually had competition goals or performance goals. Bodybuilding is a very unique thing, right? Because of the nature of it as an activity. Now, a lot of what I'm p uh going to say I just pulled out.

There's a guy named John Keley who's written a lot about periodization, mainly kind of crapping on it, basically asking, you know, is periodization the 21st century evidence-based or traditionled? And he kind of argues that it's the latter. A lot of the ideas

floating around are just kind of assumptions that are left over. And some of the assumptions that go into these period periodized training models, I I'll define what some of the terminology is in a second, are established time frames exist to develop certain

characteristics, right? endurance, muscular power, lactate threshold, muscle growth that there is some duration of training to develop that to a certain level that you should develop fitness attributes in sequence. And this is a big part of periodization, right?

So like let's say you're a powerlifter. Your goal is to one rep max. You might sequence that of hypertrophy training, bodybuilding stuff, you know, general strength training, power training, and then, you know, practicing the one rep max. For endurance athletes, aerobic

endurance threshold speed typical most periodization schemes have developed those sequentially that there are idealized training structures for both of those that can be generalized to all people. And I I'll tell an story from my my past about that when we get

there. Now, implicit to this is that biological adaptation, growth, endurance, whatever you're looking at to a given training follows a predictable course. That if you give me 10 people and the same workout that I can know how long it'll take for them to get a

certain level of development. And we know factually this is wrong. The studies show massive variance in growth in V2 max and endurance over different time frames. Also that appropriate training can be forecast.

Right? though jumping forward and then back again. You look at a lot of the early periodization models, you find this year-long plan that is mapped out from day one to day 365, right? In terms of the volumes, the

intensities, the percentages, the sets, the reps, the durations, all of that with the assumption that you can say on day one where someone will be at day 28 or day 128. And let's just say that those types of models go way wrong way

fast. Okay, some terminology. Typically, periodization models have been broken up into different levels. The first is called the macro cycle. That's the longest cycle. In the most general sense, it's the time taken from the start of training to reach peak

performance. Now, in the early days, it was a year. And I'll come back to this again when I get to some of the models and how they've evolved over the years. That's the macro cycle. It is from the

beginning of training to reach a peak. Then we have the miso cycle. That is a smaller block. Traditionally that was a month and I'll explain the history of that because it explains the history of another common thing to target a given

improvement. Right? So let's say I've got an endurance athlete. We want to build your aerobic endurance. We're going to spend the next month focusing on training to develop your aerobic fitness. Right? That's the misa cycle.

Then you have the micro cycle which is the smallest and that was traditionally a week right that is the week's worth of training that will be developed in whatever fashion on however many days a week and volumes and intensities and all

that and then on each day there's an individual workout right so it kind of scales from largest to smallest typically the macro cycle was a year miso cycle was a month microcycle was a week and then a workout was well a

workout and there were often multiple time multiple um there might be more than one in any given day depending on the sport, depending on the activity, depending on the athlete, depending on a whole lot of things. Most of the early periodization

literature and really it sort of started in the early 20th century. Like you can go back and find like early Greek writers talking about the fitness programs. They would use like a 4-day cycle be like light, medium, hard,

light. Like they were doing that really early on. But most of the early models start like 1930s Russia.

And it was really just the scientists kind of looking at what the athletes were doing and then developing models uh about this. And most of those models were based at the time on sales general adaptation syndrome, right? He was the

one doing all the who's messing with the rats and he would put them under stress and he would see these three phases.

Yeah. Stress, right? The initial adaptation and if you kept applying the stress, the alarm and they would collapse. And people are just like, "Well, that's that's training, right? I start training you hard, you start to adapt, and if I keep

training you for too long, you overtrain and you crash, right?" So like, ah, that that hand sales that's was a big part of the basis of it was to apply enough stress to adapt, but to pull back for

recovery before. Now, the problem in the modern era, we don't we know that gas has nothing to do with it. People forget that in sales alarm syndrome with his rats, they died. Now, I've done some hard workouts and maybe people listening this have

done some hard workouts, but none of y'all have died and it's now recognized the general adaptation center has nothing to do with those. The other real base periodization had to do with super compensation and that is still floating

around. The idea here is that after training you have broken down something and over time it will supercompensate to a higher level at which point you break it down again and it supercompensates and that's totally wrong. That is

absolutely not how any of this works. And the problem was that that came from one paper by this Russian named Yakv who was studying liver glycogen in rats and he depleted their liver glycogen and then he refed them and their liver

glycogen levels overshot and he said aha you depleted substrate in the body it will then overshoot to a higher level.

That defined periodization. It still defines training. You still hear people talking about, "Oh, you grow by breaking down muscle and then it builds up." It is totally wrong because it only applies to liver and muscle glycogen only. And even then, it only happens

once. You deplete liver and muscle glycogen and you overshoot it to here. If you deplete it again to here, it doesn't it doesn't keep stairstepping up. Overcompensation is totally wrong.

But that's what early periodization systems were based on. And then it really got serious in like the 50s. That's when Matt Vev in Russia and Dietrich Har in Germany published their their periodization manuals that are shockingly similar. And I've read

I've got the translations of both and they are both utterly hilarious because they're as much politics as they are training.

The Matt VAV book and the Harbook both talk about how the purpose of sport with children is to inculate them into the proper political paradigm of socialism andor communism depending on we're talking about Germany or Russia and to

help them be inoculated against the western bgeoisi theory of I kid you not there there is paragraphs of this stuff in here which is hilarious because they're teaching the proper politics. so that people are not brainwashed by the

western gugeoisi. It's hilarious. It's hilar. It's got some great training and information, but it's just pages and pages of that. It's so funny to me, but that's really where it got started. And that really introduced the earliest periodization models.

Um, and then that would get translated into English. Uh, Frank Dick over in the UK is one of the first p people that really started that. you had tutor bomba in Romania wrote one of the first English translations of the books and it

sort of sort of went from there. So that's kind of the history of periodization. But again, people need to remember that this was for athletes geared towards sports performance.

And it was usually athletes that had to juggle multiple capacities in terms of some type of endurance component, some technical component, some strength power component, speed component depending on the nature of the sport.

that is a very different type of training than say powerlifting or Olympic lifting where it's just one thing or bodybuilding. So a lot of these models it gets complicated and this is lead into like a a real semantic distinction but it's

an important one because most of these supposed periodization studies are in the weight room and they they supposedly study periodization and what's forgotten is that for athletes you're juggling many more different things. Right? When I was speed skating, we had to deal with

aerobic endurance, anorobic endurance, speed, technique, the weight room, in line. Like my coach was juggling all these different characteristics. Doing a study where it's just weight training, that's not really periodization, especially not over an 8 to 12 week span

where what you're looking at is variation in sets and reps at most. And really, that's more accurately considered programming, right? If you're looking at an athlete who may be doing an 8-week block of focused weight training for whatever

reason, that's a small component of their overall periodization plan. And what you're doing in that eight weeks is really program. It's not periodization.

So, we have this issue with these studies that have been done that supposedly show the superiority of period periodized training. And the the famous one and one I will come back to crap on multiple times as we discuss

this because it literally set strength training back by decades was done by Mike Stone in in the 80s and having read Mike Stone good old Mike Stone and having read that the Soviets started with higher volumes and lower intensities moving to lower

volumes and higher intensities and I'll come back to that when we talk about models. They set up this six-week program. Now, one group did like 3x6 RM in some basic barbell stuff. The other group did three weeks at 10RM,

like a week at eight, two weeks at five, like one like a week at five, a week of three. So, it's kind of that old, you know, 108 531. They were like hypertrophy strength power peak.

And what they found was that the periodized group made better improvements than 1RM. See, periodization works well. Does it really?

The problem is that if you're testing 1RM, of course, the group that did the 1RM is going to show better improvements and studies much later. I mean, in the last 10 years or so, one I think it was

Fischer and Steel did it. They just had a group doing 3x6, practice the test like once a week, like practice the 1RM test, and they made the same improvements.

The Stone study did not show that periodization was superior. It showed the specificity was superior.

It shows that if you're going to test one RM, you're going to have to practice it.

So, if that 3x6 group had just done the occasional heavy single like once a week, they probably would have gotten the same gains. And I say that it setback strength training because if you actually look at what like Soviet

Olympic lifters were doing, high volume for them was like sets of five in the Olympic lifts at 75%. They were not doing sets of 10, but powerlifterss for decades started at like 15 in the squat and went like 15 12 8 5 31 and

it doesn't work. But I'll come back to that. So we really have to separate like true periodization in the sense of taking an athlete with multiple capacities to a peak to an 8 to 12 week weight training program that's really

just programming that one capacity, right? and and John Keley has made a big a big issue with this. Um but we then would ask you know again is periodization superior to non-p periodized training whether in its literal sense or what we just talked

about now yeah again a lot of those short-term weight training studies do show that yes periodization works because it lets you test what you're like actually train what you're testing duh um and many will argue that well the

best athletes the winners use periodization but Arthur Dler who wrote the excellent One encyclopedia of weightlifting pointed out that you know what so did all the losers. So you can't really use that as an argument, right? Just the fact that

all the winners used it is really offset by the fact that 99% of people who used periodization lost, which doesn't sort of belize the fact that yes, most sports still do use some form of periodized training. But again, we're looking at

much longer time periods uh and generally juggling a lot of biomot capacities. So from that I want to talk about some of the models of periodization because I think this is where things start to get a little bit

more interesting. So we go back to the early Matt Vev and the horror models.

That's usually what's called linear periodization and images would help but I didn't get around to getting them. But basically the idea was that over a year span you started at low volumes and relatively low intensities and volume would go up to a peak and then would

start to come down as intensity went higher into your competition and technical work started low and came up like that.

And on the one hand, there's some logic to that, right? You're starting training for the year. You don't do a lot of volume. The intensity is not that high.

You build up and you build volume first and then you as you move in, you peak.

But the thing about the technical work doesn't make any sense, right? If you're an Olympic lifter and you're not worrying about technique till month 10, you're doing something very wrong.

Right? This is a point Mel Cif made in in I think super training that that that whole idea doesn't really hold. Um there was also the problem that over a year of training like that's a long time to

spend at low intensities. Now it worked to a certain degree but also and these models are still around. They still have relevance but like this is in the 50s and 60s the level of performance was much lower than it is now. Not to

mention that most athletes had one peak a year. It's either world championships or the Olympics. So they could spend an entire year working to that one goal and they would do it over a span of a year.

Also, one thing that gets forgotten like you if you go back and look at cycling like the 70s and the 80s, guys would spend the first two months just pissing about on the bike.

High re, high cadence, low gears. But what people forget is they also took two two months off of training at the end of their previous season. They had to get retrained. So they had to use very low intensities. And in the modern era,

nobody does that anymore. Nobody takes two months off after their competition season because they can't afford it.

Levels of performance have increased so much that those types of models spending months pissing about it. Yeah. In endurance sports, you still spend most of your time at pissing, you know, pissing around because that's the nature of the sport. But an Olympic lifter who

takes two months off and is starting and doing lots of work, that's just wasted time. That's not doing anything productive for them. So those models still have relevance. But there's also the problem that over a year, like I

said, they used to plan everything out. You could find these books and they would have the entire year planned. And when I was in college, endurance training was programmed like that. And I have these books. They're still on my shelf. And it would be like,

okay, in a year you need to do on the bike 1,200 hours. Divide it into January is x%, February is x% x%. Each week is a certain percentage of that. A certain percentage will be aerobic training, threshold training,

sprint training. And you plan your entire year out ahead of time. It was beautiful. It was it was a a neurotics wet dream. I had the prettiest graphs. I had pie charts. I had gra it was beautiful. It didn't work worth a damn,

but it looked beautiful. Right? So that's those you've got those old program. Now if if you're the Russians and you have 100,000 athletes to throw at a sport, you can probably use a generic model. You just need one just

only has to work for one or work for 10 and then one guy has to pass the drug test, right? So those models don't really exist anymore. And probably the first major adaptation and this happened sort of in the 80s. Sports started to

evolve and you started to have qualifiers and earlier events that were important and again to spend a year working to a single peak is just too long. So you started to see double periodization where you would have a

six-month block that looked the same, right? You started at generally lower intensities, what was called the preparatory phase. Then you moved into a preparation like a competition phase as intensity came up. Then you competed then you recovered and then it also got

divided into early and late preparation and early and late comp. And so you would do two of those in a year and then it went to three. Right. Charlie Francis were the first people I'm aware of. He he had a triple periodization scheme

working to a peak for the indoor which was 60 meters then the early outdoor and then uh the important outdoor events Olympics or world championships and he would peak his athletes repeat it because otherwise they would spend like 12 weeks on any

working to any given peak because any longer and you just can't you can't sustain that and they also at that point athletes turn to race for money he wanted to race his athletes as often as they could because the more they won,

the more they earned. So as sport changed, all those big annual models tended to really, really, really go away. So they're still relevant. You know, if I had a beginner in the weight room, I'm going to start them with low

volumes, low intensity, but with a lot of technical work, and I'm going to bring it up gradually. I'm not going to do that for a year. So that's linear periodization, right? The idea basically being that volume builds linearly,

intensity, then they overlap. But I would add one thing and I know I'm kind of all over the place but my notes weren't that clear still. Now you see this idea of the four-week messa cycle that I mentioned

right because what I just said the macro can be a year but it could be three months right it is a macro cycle is simply the duration from beginning to peak and over the years that has condensed become a lot shorter because a

year most people don't compete to one event by and large and certainly not in in a straight shot but there was this month meo cycle where you basically would go easy, medium, hard, and then a fourth every fourth week was a recovery

week. And that is so entrenched in the field. It's in Sean Feld's book for bodybuilders, which is dumb as hell. No bodybuilder needs an easy week every month. I promise you. But here's where it came from, and people forget this. So

the Soviets were taking their kids to sports school to sports schools. like they had centralized sports schools that the kids wanted to go home once a month. So what they would do is they would beat up on them for three

weeks and then they would go home and have a week off. That whole 3-1 cycle came out of the practicalities of well if we're they're going to get a easy a week off every month, we're going to have to absolutely beat the crap out of

them so that they can supercompensate, which again we know is not what's going on. The Germans had a 3-1 cycle for a different reason. It fit their oral tyrannabal cycles. They ran their oral tyrannabal three weeks on, one week off.

So they would load their athletes heavily for three weeks and give an easy week when they came off the drugs for a week. And that has become ingrained in training. And I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, but it's also not

necessary in many cases, right? Because what you do with those cycles and the Russians had all these four-week cycles where it was like light, medium, heavy, easy, and it was light, heavy, heavy, easy, and heavy, medium, light. And

there's all these different cycles. And I I wrote a thing on my on my Facebook group. I know you saw it just recently about why I never used those models.

It's because I didn't understand them. I could discern absolutely no logic to when anything was used. So, I was too dumb to understand them. So, I had to come up with something that made sense to me and it and it wasn't that. There's

also the issue that that type of thing where you're just like blowing the athlete out in week three. That really only works when you got people that are really technically stable, right? My own speed skating coach, right? He typically

worked with older athletes. We didn't have great technique. We were still developing it. And when he used to do that 3-1 cycle, he found that week three when the volume was the heaviest, everyone skated like crap. And then

during the easy week when they were still tired, they still skated like crap. So he was getting two good weeks of training every month. So he abandoned that completely and he never overloaded.

And I don't do that with my athletes either. But I'll come back to that.

So that was the basic linear model. And like I said, it still has its application probably more for endurance sports although even then most endurance athletes aren't just spending all their time doing nothing but low inensity endurance. But I'll come back to that as

well. So in the weight room, right? And so linear modeling say powerlifting would just be like I said that old 12 108 531 system. You just start with high volume and build the high intensity and it worked for a while but even in the

early days a lot of the athletes started to abandon it. Ed Con who used that for years later in his career he just kept his power lifts at fives and less because doing sets of 12 didn't carry over technically drained his top end and

got him hurt. So he he he very much moved away from that because and then Louis Simmons whole westside thing came out of he'd used that type of approach and all it did when you're doing sets of 12 to 15 and building a hypertrophy all

you're doing is draining your one RM by the time you get to low reps you lose all the muscle size right so those types of linear programs kind of went went away really quickly and I'd also say Charlie Francis he got away from that

too like sprinting training early on you would run distance for three or four months which is doing nothing for a sprinter then you would do long speed and then you would do short speed at the end. And he threw that out completely.

His guys were doing top top speed sprint stuff year round. They were doing other work at the same time just in different proportions. But again, I'll come back to that and talk about block training.

Then the weight room stuff after we had the linear model 15 12 108 31 whatever the hell it is that again it set back strength training for decades because Stone didn't know what the Soviets were actually doing. said their their high

volume, low intensity Olympic lifting was fives at 75%. It wasn't tens at 60%. And for a strength power athlete, those tens don't don't do you a whole hell of a lot of good. So in the weight room stuff, you then also had what's called

undulating periodization. And there's a couple different models of that. One is daily undulating periodization that I'm sure you've heard of. And this was studied, I don't know, 20 years ago. And the idea, it kind of goes to what I was saying. If you're

doing only high rep work, you're d-training your max strength. You're d-training your top end. If you're doing only topend work, cripples and singles, you might be losing muscle size. So daily unulating periodization was like, well, what if we do all three in the

same week? So you'd have one day of 15s, one day of eights, and one day of fives.

Or for a strength power athlete, one eight one day eights, one day of fives, one day of threes. You did all three usually full body and that's fine. It basically it makes you decent at everything and not great at anything.

There was also a weekly this is a Polloquin had this model of of weekly undulating. So like you do two weeks of hypertrophy. So you do like two weeks of twelves, two weeks of fives, two weeks of eights, two weeks of threes. The idea

is that by flipping back and forth you would never lose the previous adaptations. So undulating means a couple of different things. So that was another common model. Um and then after that the more advanced model. So one of

the Russian theorists uh Veros Shensky um came up with what he called his conjugate model and he wrote this really scathing paper the death of periodization. Apparently he and Matt Vev didn't get along like they had like a personal feud. So Veroshansky wrote

this paper how periodization was dead but what he really meant was that linear periodization was dead. His model was the con called the conjugate model. And the idea was that you would do basically still sequentially training, right?

Strength, power, whatever. But during each block, you would blow the athlete out with volume, just exhaust them so that they would basically get weaker and that they would rebound into the next block. So during this block, you would

just blow them two months in the weight room just absolutely wrecking their right and they would get weaker and slower and then last couple weeks you would bring in their next sports training and then about three or four

weeks in they would rebound. Now, what's interesting is how he came up with that model, which basically was that when he was younger, he was a nobody coach and the Soviets in charge wouldn't let him have access to the facilities for his

jumpers and his his track athletes. All he had access to is the weight room. So, he's like, "Well, it's the middle of the winter. I'm just going to weight train the crap out of you." So, he just threw

all this volume at them. And he found that they got weaker and slower, but then as soon as they switched, as soon as they were able to get into their sport, a few weeks later, everybody's going faster. He goes, "Aha, this is the

model of periodization." And it was just kind of an accident. This is where when you see those ideas like when Mike Israel says, "Oh, if you're getting stronger, you're not doing enough volume. If you're getting stronger week to week, you're undertraining."

That's where crap like this comes from. The idea is that if you're not training so much that you're getting worse, then you're not going to you're going to have to hope down the road that you get that overcompensation, which again isn't a

thing. When I was speed skating, we had a Russian coach who hadn't learned anything since 1973. And I watched him do that to his athletes. He buried them in volume.

Buried them. They were getting slower. They were looking worse. And um one of them actually peaked.

He he hit PRs about a month after trials because if you don't hit it just right, it works. You've got 100,000 athletes.

And honestly, as as um uh Glenn Penley uh told me one time, rest in peace, Glenn, um Verosky was not a top Russian coach. He was a vocal Russian coach.

Most Russians were not training this way. and and Ver Koshinsky had one of the hilarious this sprint periodization where you spent the first two months lifting weights. you weren't even on the track and then you started running two

months later when you were already tired from all the weight training which is why all those you know fantastic Soviet athletes since Valerie Borzov in 1977 right the whole model doesn't doesn't work I I would only mention in passing

westside barbell from Louis Simmons Louie called that conjugate but it's not there was one barbell club in Russia that used a ro exercise rotation that called it a conjugate system but it's not conjugate system is really a sequential system like linear but with

massive volumes. Westside was what's called a concurrent system. You train max strength uh tech uh speed and hypertrophy at the same time. It was not conjugate in terms of what we're really it's confusing.

Another approach that was similar to conjugate was Ishin's block training. He took a little bit different approach to it. His was like a double triple periodization. He would say, "Okay, we're going to do a 12-week block. The first six weeks, however long it was,

we're going to pick one, maybe two capacities, maybe aerobic, endurance, and an that are that are complimementaryary, and we're going to maintain all the rest, and we're going to throw all the volume into that to get an adaptation.

And then we're going to have three weeks where we're going to switch, and then we're going to peak, compete, and then do it again. So really all block training is is a condensed form of linear but with with very focused

training loads. So there's all the and there's other models too. There's one called fractal. I forget the guy's name.

There's cif cybernetic periodization which I'll I'll come back to in here in a second. And what people forget about this is that I watched this great video once by NCSA conference. I couldn't find it to if he paid me and he looked at all

these different models and all the research because they seem to be you know reasonable and he pointed out that it depends on what you're talking about right those linear models where you start at low volume you know build

volume and then intensity like for endurance sports for beginners those are appropriate those undulating models that's for like team sports where a basketball player or an American football player or a football player doesn't need to be they don't need

maximum aerobic power. They don't need maximum strength. They don't need ma they need mediocre amounts of of all of them, right? Mixed sports undulating makes perfect sense for them. They just need to build each of them a little bit

without being quite so focused. Those conjugate block systems were really suggested for higher level athletes.

Right? If I have a beginner, I can build everything at once. You've got they've got the adaptive capacity, right? You can crank technique and that you know low rep and hypertrophy all at the same time. I've got an endurance athlete.

I can do it all at once. But as you get to higher levels, you have to get into those concentrated loading where it's like we're going to spend six weeks really focusing on endurance and maintaining the others. And keep that in

mind because I'm I am going to come back to that when we talk about bodybuilding.

the idea of throwing all your volume into one or two capacities and yeah, we'll come up against that again. So really which model is best depends on the situation and again these were all really aimed at athletes and even like I said block

training which again I will probably will come up the most is you're training everything in a given messycle just with different proportions right and I think this is what you tend to see is more common in modern sports

right even endurance athletes they now mostly do what's called polarized training training. 80% of their volume is zone 2 aerobic, but they're always doing a little V2 max. They're always doing a little bit of speed work. It's not as important to their sport. Right?

I mentioned Charlie Francis. His guys were always doing top speed sprint work. Earlier they worked on top speed, but then that would was always part of it.

And then they would emphasize speed, endurance, and other things just depending on where they were. My coach did the same thing. We would run the you know when we when we came out of transition we'd have a 12-week block

mostly focusing on aerobic endurance. We had a little bit of speed work in there.

We had a lot of tech and then we would move into more anorobic. They move to the ice be more technical. Like we were always doing a little bit of everything.

It's just the proportions changed. And that's really where those block training ideas come in. And those tend to be better when people get more advanced. I mean you just you can't bring up everything at once when you get to the

highest levels. You can't put the volumes and intensities in. I kind of mentioned concurrent versus sequential.

Concurrent systems, you do everything at the same time like not the same workouts, right? Like you might have, you know, a strength workout and a hypertrophy. You know, look at Westside, right? They had a max effort and they

did hypertrophy work. They had dynamic effort and hypertrophy work. They're doing all in different workouts sequential. You build it at once. Those are really older models. Again, you'd go, "Okay, I've got a powerlifter. I'm gonna train him like a bodybuilder. Get

the muscle mass." All right, great. His one RM is crap now. Now, I'm move him into eights. Half and half fives. Okay, great. Now he's getting stronger, but he's losing his muscle size by the time I get to 3x3 and singles.

Hopefully that hypertrophy will give him more size for the 1RM. But if he's lost that muscle size because it was eight weeks ago, right, because he's not doing any sort of maintenance loads.

That's the problem with sequential training is you have to hope that the adaptation from the earlier training maintains and it doesn't maintain forever.

So that's where you get concurrent kind of does it all at once, but the block does it all at once, but by focusing on different things depending on what's relevant. And again, it all a lot of it depends on

how many capacities you're trying to develop really plays a big role. People forget about that. Endurance sports, aerobic endurance, threshold, sprint speed, not a hell of a lot else, right?

Team sports mostly technical and tactics. They've got some aerobic component. Strength is mainly, you know, to keep them in one piece depending on the sport. strength power athletes, sprint athletes, top, you know, top speed, speed, endurance, the start,

very. And if you're looking at a powerlifter or Olympic lifter, they got to do one thing. Lift the heaviest or shot putter. One thing, one max rep, that's it. One max effort. And if you look at shot put systems, they lift and

they throw. That's it. They lift and they throw. You look at Bonderch hammer stuff, you throw the hammer and you th and you lift. That's it. because there's one B. So that really dep that really affects what periodization model and

what you're doing, how many you're having to juggle. Some sports have a lot more things to juggle than others and the training becomes a lot more complicated. Top of the competition schedule. I've got a good buddy guy named Will Hefernon who is an AIS

trained coach who thought periodization was bull. But he worked with team sports, right? Rugby, Gaelic football, something else, some other team sport.

If you're playing every week, you don't have a peak, right? You can't only care about peaking for the finals if you don't qualify, right? Like you have to be able to compete on a weekly basis. So there really is no peaking in the same

sense. Whereas if someone is their goal is the Olympics, like that's it. That is when they are planning their entire peak and they may have events leading up to that. They have to qualify. But it's it depends on so many different variables.

uh like that when I was speed skating, we did time trials either weekly or at least every couple weeks. We had to be prepared to race. It's a weird sport. Um you know, same thing. The national team, yeah, they had world championships, but

they had qualifiers, they had events that they had to be said, we'd watch these coaches bury them in volume and they'd be going slow. You can't afford that. If you're having to to compete in an important in an important event every

couple three weeks, you have to you bury the athletes in the offseason. When you're in season, you just don't have that ability because they have to be able to race well all the time. So, if you look at modern sports,

most of this stuff has gone away. You don't see these long linear models. you you don't see athletes getting that far away from their competition demands, right? So again, you look at the Soviet Soviet Olympic lifters, they would spend

a ton of time just doing fives at 75%. Shed loads of volume probably when they were doing more heavy androgens and then they would move to doubles and singles as they got closer to competition.

probably when they switched to slow to fast clearing anabolics, right? A lot of this sync with the drug cycle as much as anything else. But then the Bulgarians came around and Matt uh uh Eva threw all that out. He's like no preparation

cycles, no competition, no volume. It's all specificity all the time. And the Bulgarians started handing the Russians their butts. And if you look at like modern Olympic lifting training, it's really a a a synthesis of the two, right? Chinese Olympic lifters and they

are one of the dominant teams. They always practice heavy competition lifts year round singles, doubles, triples, 90% or heavier for two or three weeks and then an easy week. Then they do assistance work and then they do bodybuilding work. And I do mean

bodybuilding work. You can find lists of their exercises. They're doing pec deck or crossovers, leg extensions, lateral raises because a bigger muscle is a potentially larger muscle. Olympic lifters cannot top sprinters cannot afford to not be running top speed year

round. That's why most of the top uh track sprinting like 100 meter 200 meter especially in the US come out of there's a reason that it's a lot of Jamaicans on top of genetics they have great weather year round they can be on the track

running winter countries don't produce a lot of 100 meter sprinters you can't sprint half the year because you're living in a frozen tundra a lot of skiers um same thing uh modern track cyclists the sprinters they sprint year

round because sprinting top speed takes forever ever to develop. They they cannot afford to spend two months just doing easy aerobic endurance. So in the modern era, a lot of those early models are just gone. What you see mostly is

these concurrent models with different focuses. Folky, folk folks, folky, different emphases, emphasises. I'm going to go with emphases. Well, I could pick a better word anyway for that reason. And I will only say smuggly that I've trained my powerlters like that

since 1998. They always did heavy competition work, singles and doubles, assistance work, and then hypertrophy work. And that's what pretty much everybody in the strength powers sports does these days. So that's kind of a really major look at, you know, overview of of

periodization, what it is, what it's meant for, why most of the short-term studies really don't say what people think they say. um what the models might be for, how they're misapplied.

And that kind of brings up the question, which is for hypertrophy, for bodybuilding, does any of it matter?

And I'm pretty much going to say no. Um I mean, I've seen people try it. I've come up with some interesting theoretical models that I'll I'll describe, but bodybuilding of all the activities is probably the one that has been the

least likely to to adopt any sort of really period real periodization models and probably because they don't apply for a number of reasons. Like at most if you're looking at competition bodybuilding now, you got two phases.

the off seasonason where you get big and hopefully not too fat and contest prep.

That's it, right? Those are the two phases of training. During the one, you train to get bigger and you eat to get bigger and during the next, during the dieting phase, you starve for as long as you can stand it and hope to make the

stage. Right? That has been like classical bodybuilding in terms of periodization because a lot of what I talked about just doesn't really apply.

I mean, I've seen people try to do like undulating periodization for bodybuilding, but it doesn't work because you end up with three stupid full body workouts in different repetition ranges. I'm like, that's for athletes who need to be mediocre at one

thing or mediocre at a bunch of things and not great at any given thing. Right?

Hypertrophy, there is one goal to get bigger. Now, in recent years, I've seen people try to make some periodization schemes based on data that turns out to not really be that relevant. So, like Brad's Brad's book, for example, Max Muscle 2.0, which

we should really, if it mattered, we we should dissect at some point because it's it's tragic.

Sounds fun. All right. So, it's got like a general a break-in phase like be the beginner phase, but then there's the metabolite phase, right? There's all that data on like the metabolite theory of growth where you did lots of high

reps and short rest to rate, you know, all that crap. Well, guess what? It is crap. Metabolites are not having a direct effect on muscle hypertrophy. All they're doing is getting you to full muscular recruitment sooner. All roads

lead to tension. There's a paper that just came out that said, "No matter what, tension is the primary driver of hypertrophy. You know what I've been saying since 98 and everyone is finally coming back around to acknowledge after

we went through the volume nonsense. There is no metabolite stimulus of growth. It's just get another way to get to high tension." Like fine, it's it's different. It's easier on your joints and connective tissue. lowload BFR stuff looked really

edgy on Instagram, I guess, but it's not like aerobic endurance training and threshold training are distinct physiological characteristics or distinct from sprinting. Metabolite growth training and tension growth training are just two paths to the exact same goal. They are not they're you're

not they're not different. Now f I think you cut out ly. What happened? That was fun. Our power my power flashed.

Oh no. And the router had to rebound. Yeah, it happens sometimes in Austin. Um okay. So picking up. So what I was saying in terms of like uh bodybuilding periodization is Yeah, I've seen that stuff. And I think Brad's saying it was

like a general breakin and there was like the metabolite phase, then there was a maximum strength phase based on that one study and then there was more of a traditional like hypertrophy split routine, but really it's it all just

comes back to tension. So, you know, there may be advantages or disadvantages, you know, spending a couple weeks lighter and doing pump pump work before, you know, more traditional training. Um, you know, and we might we might quibble about myophibr

myofibrillar and psychopplasmic hypertrophy and you know, the data the studies seem to be kind of going back and forth and back and forth. Um, I know uh Cody Han and Robert's group they argued it probably exists. The most

recent paper said yeah it probably doesn't. I would say that I think it does, but it certainly doesn't contribute much like it's maybe you know a small percentage if you maximize that pump growth and you could conceivably do

you know a pump phase of training but really it all comes back to tension. So really a lot of these periodization models at least in their strictest sense don't seem to play much role um at least not the way they've classically been

used. um where I think it's you know again yeah you know we you can do heavier work six to eight we know that that works for growth you can do lighter work it's easier on your joints if you look at my

typical programs I tend to use a mix of heavier and you know sets of six to eight and 12 to 15 you know you got attention stimulus and and a metab a mechanical metabolic work stimulus and honestly they're probably getting to the

in place no matter what. And it's really more of a practicality thing. Most people aren't going to be doing lateral raises for heavy sixes and aren't going to be doing, you know, hack squats for 15s. So, it's really

more of a a practical thing in terms of repetition range. I think about I I certainly, you know, this the threeon-one model tutor bump. I had a book. It was like periodization for bodybuilding. And it's just it's so dumb

because it it looks like a linear system. It's like week one it's like 60 65 70% 65 that's useless. Then it was like 70 75 you know 70 75 80 70 and it would would ramp up and ramp up week to

week to week. That's useless for actual hypertrophy training. It's pointless. Like even the studies like going back to some of these weight training studies most of them aren't looking at hypertrophy directly. They're looking at performance. How is it affecting one RM

jump sprint speed whatever they occasionally look at hypertrophy as a side effect and and I think one of the papers I pulled by by again by John Keley it might have been my Fiser was like yeah periodization these types of

protocols may be better for developing max strength or power again probably because the specificity thing but for hypertrophy kind of a wash so there's really that at least those types of periodization like where four weeks of twelves and four weeks of

eights and that's not what stimulates growth. Growth is stimulated by progressive tension over how you get there doesn't really isn't that relevant. About the only type of periodization I tend to use with bodybuilding, I think you do see this at

least in some of the the more logical systems is to have at least specific training cycles. This is something I put up another post in my Facebook group about this where I think most people try to push their training cycles too long

without a break where they're just not making any progress. And I I think I wrote there that in general I be looking at a lot a lot of time tested programs uh the way I set up my generic bulking

routine um hypertrophy specific training dog crap a lot of those systems for most people 8 to 12 week training cycles are about it. It's what I use with all my powerlters. 11 to 13 weeks is about right. If you start to look at most

sports unless they spend a lot of time really using some low intensities, 12 16 weeks, that's about it before you really sort of hit a wall and have to to de load or something else. And weights earlier than that. So like from a

periodization perspective, the way I set up my generic hypertrophy programs, you know, couple week runup submaximal and then you push hard for 8 to 10 weeks trying to add weight to the bar over time and that's about when people break.

I don't know why. Had a bunch of people in consults go, "Yeah, it's weird. 10 weeks, that's where my cycle ends. Why?" And I go, "Don't know." The Soviets used to talk about they called it the current adaptational reserve. This was their

voodoo to describe the body's inherent biological adaptation capacity. I found a paper about it at one point.

It's kind of like sales ideas. It's like if you constantly stress, you know, the bio adaptational energy eventually it runs out and the organism dies. Their idea was like you you only have so much of that and when it runs out the cycle

you stop progressing. And that's just when people if they're working hard start to pick up little injuries and joint pains and muscular like that. I don't know it's weird 10 to 12 weeks that's about if you're working hard and

frequently it's less. So we talked about Dorian. Dorian talked you know the way he trained. He would just go balls out for six weeks like again go look up his training and then he would take one or two weeks easy and

then he would do it again. It's like when you're going really really maxed, you may have to stop sooner than that.

Like but you look at the classical hypertrophy specific uh Brian Hawk's HST is like 12 weeks. My GBR is typically two week runup to you know 8 to 10 weeks pushing dog crap two week cruise and then eight weeks of blasting redo the

mini sets. That just seems so that that's about the only type of periodization and that's really just more programming.

It's just cycle length, right? It's not like periodization in the classic sense because there are not multiple capacities to build for hypertrophy in the same way that we tend to think of it. Now, one thing that I have done for years is

I do think and there's an article on my website and I did a video on this at some point when I was doing occasional content. I think for bodybuilders, if they're working in a generally higher repetition range, the occasional short

max strength cycle can be beneficial. And I'm talking about like fives, maybe triples. Most bodybuilders have no business doing singles just because it bumps up the neural pathways.

Like that there was that one paper a couple years ago that it either did like a three-week strength block before the hypertrophy work or I think it reversed it. And I think the block before got a little bit better growth presumably

because they were able to use heavier weights for the same repetitions which means more tension overload. So I like what I've typically done every two or three stock standard hypertrophy um cycles do like a three-week strength cycle just to kind of top off neural

factors. That's about it, you know. And then obviously when you're dieting your training may change somewhat mainly volumes and frequencies but yeah pition for bodybuilding doesn't really apply um you know I mean yeah whatever again you got power building too which is just

sort of a com a little bit of max strength work and then some hypertrophy work. So when I trained my powerlifters, you know, they were always doing heavy competition work, assistance work for triples because I can't count past three

reliably most of the time, and then bodybuilding work to support that, right? A bigger muscle is a potentially larger muscle. And I'll only say that my powerlifterss, I did have some a slightly block training approach that across a 12-week cycle, the first six

weeks, the focus was on pushing up the hypertrophy work and the assistance work and just putting in the work. And then the second half, I would switch that. I would move the hypertrophy and assistance work to maintenance and put

all the work into the competition lift. Right? Basically, because you can't bring it all up at once. You just don't have the energy. You can't put enough energy. So they would that larger muscle size better you know we weak points gave

them more potential strength in the competition lifts that they then had to express into the so I used a semi-block training approach but it was concurrent all my lifters always did competition work assistance and hypertrophy all the time just in different proportions and

with different folk folk emphases. Yeah, that. But anyway, but for like pure hypertrophy, pure pure bodybuilder, I don't think most of these periodization things really have anything to do with it. Said, "Yeah, I like I one theoretical model. I think it was like

two weeks of high rep training, mainly joint health, build some pain tolerance, it's good for connective tissue, maybe some cycloplasmic. Then do two or three like eight-week stock sander bodybuilding cycles, you know, build up to a peak, de load,

build up, and then maybe a three-week strength cycle, take a week off, start over again. That that's about the furthest I would go for bodybuilding. Again, obviously, you might be inserting mini cuts or dieting.

So, generally, bodybuilding, you've got the offseason where you get big, and you got contest prep where you diet. That's really the only phases. And it's also the only activity that what you do on stage has nothing to do with what you

did in the gym anyway. So really periodization while fascinating the models are interesting and relevant to sport certainly I don't think it really applies. And now I'll shut up and see if you have anything to say.

No, I mean uh I'm generally not a fan of uh complicated periodization schemes for bodybuilding for pretty much every reason you laid out.

I mean Okay. Okay. So, the only thing I would add as a final comment, right, and because I said I was going to mention this is if someone came to me brand new and said, I want to maximize and I laid

out like the four-year sequence I would use to get them from starting point to as far as they're going to get naturally, right? The first two or three months is essentially that linear periodization model. Low volume, low intensities,

learning to lift, figuring out what the exercises like they're not growing anyway, right? That's about the closest thing to that linear model that you might get. Building volume, tolerance, work capacity, all that boring stuff.

That could last up to six months, right? That's just basic training. That's total rank beginner. Then at either the three or six month mark, I'm going to put them through three months of learning what failure is, just because if they don't

know, all of these systems are like train at three reps in reserve is useless if you don't know what zero is.

And I guarantee you that all the people who think they're at three reps in reserve, you ain't right. Even one of the more recent papers pointed out. They were like, you know, they they made sure they brought the subjects in and had them do one

allout set initially and they made the point that the only way to appropriately utilize reps reserve is you must anchor it to zero. You have to learn what zero is for anything else to mean anything.

And most people don't do that because trust me, come to Austin. I'll prove it to you. What you think is zero, you got, trust me, you got more. I'll get them out of you. So then I would spend a few

months at least. Not because I'm saying that training to failure is ideal. I want to keep repeating that because people keep misinterpreting me. If you don't know what zero reps reserve is, you have no clue what anything less than

that is. Period. And it is a learned skill. So I'd spend three months doing that. And at that point they would be approaching the late intermediate stage and I would probably move to a basic split routine with a little bit more

volume and they're going to stay there for a good year. Your basic my you know my go-to is sort of an upper lower moderate volumes. I would mainly vary that now depend on like if they like failure trading that's just what they

psychologically enjoy and some people do and some people don't. I'm going to adjust the volumes down. If they're not good at failure or whatever, they're in a situation they can't do it safely because they've only got barbells, whatever it is, I'm gonna adjust the

volumes up and have them stopping, you know, at like the second bar speed slowing or whatever. But this the general premise will be there. They'll be running 8 to 12 week cycles, couple week breakin, try to hit add weight as

they can in good form, gain weight, add some muscle. If they have to diet every couple weeks, we'll do a mini cut and do that again and do that again and do that again. Year two, I'm probably going to

move to as a, you know, kind of advanced intermediate. Um, generally I find that since I tend to combine heavy and lighter work, doing that twice a week starts to get really tough on the joints when people get

strong. So I might move them to where they have a heavy light, which they use a lot. We use a lot in sports, right?

Still have two heavy days, all six to eights. We'll have two lighter days, all sets 10 to 12. Same thing. still doing the same thing each week and possibly with different exercises. But then as they get more advanced and this this is

what I was leading into that's when I introduced specialization cycles and this is probably the closest to that Isherin block model because the way I set up my specialization cycles and have for good god going on two decades now is

you pick well let me go back like I said in Ishin's model you pick two biomot capacities which mean aerobic endurance anorobic like there's he's got charts of what's compatible and what's not compatible.

And then you maintain everything else. Well, my specialization cycles, you pick two muscle groups to focus on and put all of your energy into and you maintain everything else. And you do it for about six weeks. So, you do two week breakin,

four to six weeks of just hammering those two muscle groups. Now, what I don't what I do differently in my specialization cycles, I do not significantly raise the volume of specialization body parts. A lot of people are like, "Oh, yeah, all those

papers by Inis in 42 sets. you're going to do 45 sets for specializ like no if 16 to 20 is kind of optimal it's always optimal what I do is I reduce the volume of everything else to two to three sets

to maintenance so that all of the current adaptational energy of the body and what people find is that even at an advanced level because they're only training those two muscle groups they only have to recover those muscle groups

they make they may be adding weight weekly or even each workout despite being relatively advanced And this is in a hypertrophy range obviously. And you do that for six to eight weeks. And then you rotate to a different set of muscle groups. So you

pick two, one upper, one lower, one larger, one smaller, as long as they don't overlap. Do that for six to eight weeks. Rotate to the next two. Rotate to the next two. Rotate to the next two.

And you've done the whole body. And you can do it one more time. And then that's it. You're done growing at that point. Like pretty much that like nobody wants to hear that. But pretty much at that point, once you've

run through two, you know, a year's worth of specialization cycles, you will grind yourself into pace to get the last three or four pounds of muscle, which honestly probably not worth it for most people unless you're competitive. And

that's it. You're done. Then you basically can go find a better hobby and you can maintain on low volumes. But that's about the that's more long-term periodization, right? Looking for beginner intermediate advanced intermediate, advanced. You're looking for basic training, general moderate

volume, progressive overload, hypertrophy, maybe a heavy light specialization, and then go find something better to do with your time.

That's absolute gold, ly, you've basically given the average trainee the road map to reaching his or her genetic potential, but it's not the one anybody wants to hear. Someone in my group just came and said, he's like, I'm 44 and I heard it

takes 8 to 12 years to hit genetic limits. And I'm like, well, number one, at 44, you're not going to get as far as if you were 24. And number two, 12 years, hell no. You're I mean, yes, I

know. Look, people online be like, "Oh, you know, I was still still making game because you can train for years ineffectively and and and and still be considered a beginner." When I say, you know, four years of training, we're

talking about like proper progressive productive training. I had a guy years ago, he trained for 20 years and he came to visit me in Salt Lake. I was training for strongman and I looked his technique on everything was terrible

and I coached him like a beginner for the first few months. You can train for decades and train in effect ineffectually. We're talking about like actual productive progressive and you see it in other sports too. Like the majority of strength gains you're ever

going to make is going to be in the first three or four years. Yeah.

And if you're not close to the top, right? Same thing. You look at V2 max.

V2 max will improve for a couple of years and that's it. So if you didn't start at 60, you're never going to get to 80. No matter what you do, you're never going to be an elite in those guys

started high and had the greatest adaptation possible. The guys that are top bodybuilders usually started big and got bigger, right? If you're not close to the top by three or four years of proper training, you are never going to

get there. Yeah. And it it's kind of disingenuous the way that some really advanced built natural bodybuilders post pictures of themselves and go, "Well, this is me after 20 years of training. This takes time." And you want to ask them, "Yes,

but of those gains that you've made, how many of those did you make in the most recent 15 of those 20 years?" Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. And the answer is almost like yes. Fine. you know, elite bodybuilders, even as naturals, like there's always like a little bit of something you can improve and like that e but even with that because you'll see this claim now among

natural bodybuilders who are like, "Oh, but their their contest weights are heavier. They must still be growing." No, they've learned to diet better. The difference is that, and if I'm being super smug, a lot of what's changed in modern

bodybuilding dieting is the stuff that I really like a lot of modern bodybuilding prep with stubborn like, yeah, that was me. Um, or at least I certainly brought it to the forefront, right? The reason that their stage weights are heavier is

that they're not hemorrhaging muscle mass. They're not they're not starting any bigger in the off season. They're just not losing as much dieting down and they're not being honest about that, right? They're they're learning to hold on to the muscle better mainly by not

training like training and dieting like idiots. So, yeah. And and there was and I'm not I'm going to for for reasons that I know you will understand. Um there there was this was last year there was a a very

popular online bodybuilder and he did a video of I trained perfectly for a year and claimed he gained a pound and a half or two pounds or something.

I think everyone will know whom you're talking they will and I hope they understand why I'm not invoking because of what's going on and I don't want to get into that.

And some would look at that and go see see you can still grow. I I would say, well, number one, that could be glycogen, water, and measurement error.

Um, if you looked at the pictures he put up, he suddenly changed his posing to make it look a lot more different than it was. And two, I think it makes the point. Unless you're an elite bodybuilder grinding yourself into paste

for a year, for a pound and a half, it doesn't prove that you can keep growing once you're at the most advanced level.

It proves that you're pissing against the wind if you're bothering. There is no purpose to spend an entire year grinding your for the average person grinding themselves into paste to gain a pound of muscle.

Amen. There are better things to do with your time and actually as I tell all my consultation clients once you get to a certain like even close to your genet people go but how do I know I'm at my

genetic limits? Look you've been training hard for four or five years. You haven't grown appreciably. You're not getting any stronger. Like, yeah, we had I know we did a video on that where people were like, well, how do you know?

Like, well, you don't, but honestly, you're going to be so close that it doesn't matter. Grinding for those last two those last two or three pounds are not going to change your appearance significantly. You know what will change

your appearance when you get to that point? Getting leaner. If you give me someone who's hit that, you know, even if fine, they're only at 95% of their genetic limits. Maybe they could gain two or three more pounds. All

right, fine. You could spend a year doing that, but if you get to 10% body fat, you will look gigantic, so much bigger than if you try to put on that muscle. Getting leaner at that point has such a more profound

visual effect than that last two or three pounds of muscle, especially if it's spread out over your whole body.

Like yeah fine. You do melt in a shirt though when you get that lean.

Well, yeah. And that's, you know, again, I tell all my consultation people that they're like, and you and they know that, right? Like, okay, so Larry's a great example. You look at the picture of him and if you didn't know he only

weighed 60 kilos, you would never guess. You'd be like, "That dude must be 165 pounds. He must weigh 75 kilos." Nope.

Dude competes at 60. He weighs 132 pounds. Now, when you go to a natural bodybuilding show, which I highly don't recommend, unless you're competing, I suppose, and even then, don't do it.

They're boring as hell. They're awful. um natural bodybuilding shows, the biggest class like the 75 kilo class and any and any of y'all who are like genetic limits and FFMI and blah blah blah. Like look, these are the top guys,

the genetic elite who are training ideally and they still can't get much above 75. Like that's the biggest class.

You do not see 100 kilo natural bodybuilders in shape by and large. I go, "But you go backstage and look at these dudes and you go, "Do they even belong to a gym?" Like in street clothes, they don't look like anything.

They don't even look like they work out. And then as soon as they unrobe, you go, "Oh my god." Because at 4% body fat, even at 10% body fat, they look ridiculous. So once you put in, you know, that four years of productive

training, right? And and that's just like, yeah, fine. And you know like you're always like you can add that extra four you know five pounds or two and a half kilos to machine or whatever but like you get to the point you're

just you're not I got this big argument with someone years ago who did not want to believe there were genetic limits said well okay and I said okay I said you've been training for 10 years you're squatting 500 pounds

when are you going to squat a thousand said what are you what are you putting maybe 10 20 pounds on your squat every year if you're lucky to what 50 years is that? I was like, when are you going

to squat a thousand? He was like, when are you going to squat a thousand?

Because he didn't want to have to admit that he was wrong, right? I go after four or five years, if you're only like Con pulled 405 his first day in the gym at age 15. Two decades later, admittedly

with some assistance, he pulled 900. Right. Once you've gotten what even with Sunumi and again she was a lead competitor it took us 13 weeks to add two and a half kilos to each of her lifts and that was with grinding herself into

paste. So for the average person if you're squatting 315 now after four or five years okay great maybe you can add 20 pounds a year. You're never going to hit 405.

There's someone else in my group and he came in. He was like, "I weigh 220, 100 kilos. I'm benching 315 or 275." He's in his 40s. He's like, "I want to bench or man's benching 350. I want to

bench 405 at 165 pounds. How long that will will that take?" And I said, "Never." I go, "You will never get there. You are not going to lose 60 pounds of body weight at that age and add a 100 pounds to your bench. it is

physically impossible, right? That is just not how this works. Um, and it's the same thing with hypertrophy. Once you're at that point, uh, you're just pissing against the wind. I then that's when you go, you know, you can start taking anabolics and

you can get to that next level pretty, you know, that'll take you to the next jump, but after that four Yeah. So, to your point, these guys are like, yeah, this is 20 years of training. No, it's five years of progress and 15 years of

maintenance. Or maybe like you'll hear this thing people talk about. They're like, "Oh yeah, you develop muscle maturity over years of training." I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

Um, no one's ever really It's kind of one of those things. I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it. And I don't really know what that's supposed to to mean as a term, but the reality is

just like, nope, that's that's four or five years. That's pretty much it. five if you're lucky. I mean, again, productive real world training. And at that point, go do something better with and and then that's assuming that you

even start young enough, right? If you're in your 40s, you're not even going to get that. At that point, you're fighting the ravages of age and decrepitude because trust me, I'm there.

So, perization for bodybuilding. No, just just at least in the broadest sense. Yeah. No. Yeah. Take a couple, you know, said a couple high rep weeks will do your joints some good growth hormone helps uh connective tissue and tendon health and

your, you know, and then do some hypertrophy cycles. Keep them reasonable length so that you're not, you know, that will keep you from getting hurt.

De lo mini cut is necessary. trade productively for four or five years and then go do something better with your time like watch uh speedrun videos online with video gamers because those guys talk about now that is a place going off

topic those guys will spend 20 years grinding on Golden Eye to save the tenth of a second those guys are nuts but that's a whole separate thing I don't speedrun anymore but I used to you told you told me

um I mean I watch that stuff with fascination Because it's like these guys could be weaponizing their autism to cure cancer.

Nope. They got to they got to find the next exploit on a 30-year-old game is mindblowing to me.

Yeah. Um, in conclusion, Lyle, where can people find you? Uh, as always, my fa my website, bodyrecomposition.com.

My store store.recomposition.com body recomposition.com has all my books and still uh the Mike has no tan 10% off coupon code will always hold my Facebook group on which is just called body recomposition extremely active. Uh that's where I I put most of my posts up

lately usually when I'm trying to avoid work. Um I do have a YouTube channel and I go through phases of putting up a lot of content and then I get distracted and bored and don't for weeks. I'll get back

to that eventually. I have an Instagram at McDonald Lyle that I truly don't use.

It's occasional posts, the occasional meme, mostly dad jokes, um because I can't be bothered. And that's pretty much it.

Thank you once again for joining me. It was a pleasure. Yes, I'm glad we finally got to catch up. It's been a while.

Yeah, too long.