[Music] doctor pack here real doctor with another fellow doctor at arguably the medical center of New York here I AG your house Dr Brad shanfeld thank you for being on the channel and I want to talk specifically about minimum effective dose training and essentially have somebody who is known for maximizing adaptation maximizing hypertrophy maximizing muscle growth looking into the research and actually producing much of the research around maximizing muscle growth and just hear from you and have people here from an expert who's focused on the maximization side of things how little does one need to make solid hypertophy Gates and is that really the case even for those that are trying to get really jacked it it's a great question a great topic because the vast majority of people are not looking to be bodybuilders or or even to optimize their muscularity they're looking to get some muscle looking to get some strength and they want to be healthy and for the vast majority of people the the type of stuff that I do is just not within their purview that they don't really care about that they just want a a more moderate G word they don't they don't aspire to get those gains they're looking for mod gains but time is of a much greater Essence to them and uh they're not going to want to spend the time or the effort to do what what it takes to optimize results mhm and how much would you say a regular person would need to do in order to make substantial gains and get pretty jacked obviously it doesn't need to be the lowest amount they can do to make some solid gains but what is a sweet spot as far as trading volume goes and just some general recommendations for somebody who wants to look visibly more jacked not necessarily become a mass monster or absolutely maximize or at least make a safe bed and maximizing their true potential but what's the the least they could do and still end up being jacked yeah so when I'm answering a question like that I have to speak in generalities CU there's a lot of interindividual responses that need to be taken into account probably a majority of people can get a majority of their gains doing single set training three times a week two three times a week so anywhere between an hour to an hour and a half a week of training they can make when I say a majority certainly more than 50% of their genetic potential now I I will also say with that that there are respond responders and poor responders so those who are poor responders generally do better or they will need more volume to bring that up uh so there are people that if they did that routine they would not make substantial gains and that's going to be a we determine on an individual basis yeah I would even go as far as to argue that 10 sets per muscle group per week for the majority of people is not really that much volume to do and you can get it done in a relatively time efficient way if you're aware of your surroundings and you're int intentional your training well I I would agree with that but then it depends on how much time do you want to allocate so some people only have an hour hour and a half or I should say they perceive they only have that they only want to allocate that amount and that if you tell them when you start talking about 10 sets they're going to be in the gym for several hours a week and that could be four probably around four or five hours a week when you're talking that type of and that could be problematic for some people as you know uh time is considered a primary barrier to uh exercise adherance however the great doctors here at Leman College uh recently AKA today pre-printed a brand new study on supersets um and how that affected hypertrophy so can supersets be a potential strategy for people to not only hit that minimum effective dose with effective being relative to the individual and obviously some adjustment needed but um are super a potential game Cher for people yeah Game Changer is a strong word but I I mean certainly it's a strategy that can really help to save time and as our study indicated really all the muscular adaptation strength um obviously hypertrophy muscle endurance and even power were very similar uh between conditions between Su set group and the uh traditional set group and the superet group was almost 40% less time that he took to to finish the workouts so uh maybe game changers isn't even too strong word that it certainly can make a huge difference in the amount of time allocated and that gives you the ability to add in more sets particularly for those quote unquote who are poor responders uh they can get more volume in in similar time and yeah cuz we we specifically looked at Super sets that uh took about 20 seconds to go from uh one exercise to the other and it was Agonist antagonist super sets um and then a couple of minutes break between each superet which can then be tailored to the preference of each individual correct but overall it does seem that making really really solid gains doesn't is not really rocket science no so I've always said that uh if you want to just get a good physique uh and gain some strength look good feel good get good health benefits really minimum dose training is extremely effective uh and unless you are really looking to be a bodybuilder to optimize you know be one of these people who wants to optimize every Morel muscle you can build that's when the nuances of training become more important so you you can reach you know it's always difficult to put an exact percentage on it but let's say 3/4 of your potential or so fairly minimalistic routines now it it kind of goes up quickly where you get a lot of the gains very quickly and then kind of tapers off so you need somewhat more and more the the higher you want to go the more in depth you need to uh or the more Focus you need to have on the nuances of training to really take your body to its ultimate level yeah that makes sense and what do you think are some of the nuances that people tend to overthink or at least perceive as oh I saw this brand new study by Dr Sean F's lab or this is the the new technique people that are talking about and they tend to over focus on relatively minute details that mostly uh cater to those who want to optimize and I mean virtually all the variables so for for instance uh frequency you know do you need two days a week or one day a week if there is a benefit to doing more than one day a week per muscle group so not you do need to I should clarify when I say two days a week that would be of per muscle group so certainly I would think a minimum of two days a week of training for basic gains probably three would be get you somewhat better results depending on your your goals there but uh how many times a week should you train a muscle grou maybe two would get you slightly more results but the focus on that is I I think way over blown I think it's very minimal um the uh another one that's really I think overblown is rest periods we just came out with a a mate analysis on that Mike do you need 2 minutes 3 minutes and basically the M analysis that we uh carried out showed really over 90 seconds you're getting uh there's no really no differences and even with 60 seconds wasn't that big a difference from 90 seconds so again from a minimalistic standpoint you might sacrifice some gains but if you're not looking at bodybuild I don't think it's going to be appreciable enough to be meaningful for the majority of people yeah I'm full full on I'm fully behind you on that and it's something that intuitively made sense especially if you're training with a high intensity of effort and you're consistent um another thing that I wanted to touch on is um there's this misconception that science constantly changes with the recommendations and the way things are supposed to be done which I feel is a a very bad uh stra man that is not really based on much what do you think has really really changed in terms of fundamentals for muscle growth in the past let's say 15 years or so because you've been doing research for how many years now a lot of years a lot more than 15 so I I think it then comes down to what your consideration is of of change so I'll give you a few um my opinion has shifted 180 degrees on um repetition so I I was trained as a upand cominging sports scientist on The Concept that if you did more than 12 to 15 reps you were basically doing glorified cardio and that you're not going to build muscle you're not going to activate and and recruit all the highest threshold mod units which are attached to the type two fibers and over the past 15 or so years there's now been compelling evidence I mean where I there's few things that I have I'm very confident in saying but this certainly is one that you can train across a very wide spectrum of loading ranges uh anywhere between let's say 5 to 30 plus reps and get similar whole muscle hypertrophy there's nothing wrong with sticking with that hypertrophy Zone that the majority of body bus do but to say that doing higher reps is not going to get hyperjoy it's been I think undeniably refuted and and it opens up the possibility I think one of the real important factors that comes out of is for people that have joy related issues older individuals in particular where they have difficulty with osteoarthritis and other uh issues that it really can be a very effective tool failure training again so depending on what your goals are uh I I think the vast majority of evidence now is suggests Surly suggests that most people can make Gain stopping two to three reps short of failure that you need to train all L and look I came up from that Old School uh go all out or go home where I was doing not only every set to failure but I was doing four straps and drop sets and all these um extension techniques set extension techniques so uh I think the U my My Views have changed do I think there still may be for for those who are really looking to optimize results a benefit for Selective use of failure can't rule that out but I mean we can go through really all the variables and I think that we've we've seen some shifts in in most of them but uh I don't see why that would be an issue for anyone because that's what science is about and that should be what everyone wants should want to seek the truth and um if you come across new knowledge if if your goal is to optimize results if you're seeking new if if you really want to get to your optimal potential seeking the truth is is where you should be focusing now you could you could been training with a minimalist routine 20 years ago and not changed that at all and still gotten the results that you want so again where science really I think becomes more applicable is when we're talking about those who really want to take their body to its ultimate potential are close to that yeah I would even argue that science if anything has made things even more flexible so cuz people act as if every week or every month or every six months there's some huge scientific update that completely changes the basics when in reality the basics of doing enough depending on your goal if you want to maximize or not enough training volume train hard be consistent make sure you hit all your muscle groups or whatever maybe some tweaks with exercise selection and aside from that sure there is some room yeah you may be able to eek out a bit more muscle growth if you rest a bit longer or if you include some exercises that Target um that that will to better Regional hypertrophy for some muscle groups but nobody's not going to make extreme Gaines just following the most basic of principles yeah so obviously uh we have been involved in the Linton partial uh research and bringing that to the Forefront and where I think the evidence is showing at least some promise to the fact that uh training at lung muscle LS uh provides added benefit again for the average individual I don't think it's something that really is going to make an appreciable difference the the person that just wants I I think they should incorporate to me that's the type of thing that it's kind of a no-brainer to to at least look at some of that because it doesn't involve extra training or anything but if they didn't do that it's not like the difference between them making games or not making exactly so so again I think it really comes down to context in this type of situation yeah that's what I feel most people miss and it's great to hear I think for for many people watching to hear somebody who like yourself who is behind the scenes at the highest level um and behind the scenes of maximization at the highest level um essentially telling them hey the basics will get you there for the most part thank you so much for being on my pleasure thank you for your service am man hey real doctors out don't forget to like subscribe and keep an eye out for many cool research projects coming out from the lab from New York we'll see you later peace 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